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5-17-04: News at Home

Historians vs. George W. Bush
By Robert S. McElvaine
Mr. McElvaine teaches history at Millsaps College. He is the author of EVE`S SEED: BIOLOGY, THE SEXES AND THE COURSE OF HISTORY (McGraw-Hill).

Although his approval ratings have slipped somewhat in recent weeks, President George W. Bush still enjoys the overall support of nearly half of the American people. He does not, however, fare nearly so well among professional historians.

A recent informal, unscientific survey of historians conducted at my suggestion by George Mason University’s History News Network found that eight in ten historians responding rate the current presidency an overall failure.

Of 415 historians who expressed a view of President Bush’s administration to this point as a success or failure, 338 classified it as a failure and 77 as a success. (Moreover, it seems likely that at least eight of those who said it is a success were being sarcastic, since seven said Bush’s presidency is only the best since Clinton’s and one named Millard Fillmore.) Twelve percent of all the historians who responded rate the current presidency the worst in all of American history, not too far behind the 19 percent who see it at this point as an overall success.

Among the cautions that must be raised about the survey is just what “success” means. Some of the historians rightly pointed out that it would be hard to argue that the Bush presidency has not so far been a political success—or, for that matter that President Bush has not been remarkably successful in achieving his objectives in Congress. But those meanings of success are by no means incompatible with the assessment that the Bush presidency is a disaster. “His presidency has been remarkably successful,” one historian declared, “in its pursuit of disastrous policies.” “I think the Bush administration has been quite successful in achieving its political objectives,” another commented, “which makes it a disaster for us.”

Additionally, it is, of course, as one respondent rightly noted, “way too early to make a valid comparison (we need another 50 years).” And such an informal survey is plainly not scientifically reliable. Yet the results are so overwhelming and so different from the perceptions of the general public that an attempt to explain and assess their reactions merits our attention. It may be, as one pro-Bush historian said in his or her written response to the poll, “I suspect that this poll will tell us nothing about President Bush’s performance vis-à-vis his peer group, but may confirm what we already know about the current crop of history professors.” The liberal-left proclivities of much of the academic world are well documented, and some observers will dismiss the findings as the mere rantings of a disaffected professoriate. “If historians were the only voters,” another pro-Bush historian noted, “Mr. Gore would have carried 50 states.” It is plain that many liberal academics have the same visceral reaction against the second President Bush that many conservatives did against his immediate predecessor.

Yet it seems clear that a similar survey taken during the presidency of Bush’s father would not have yielded results nearly as condemnatory. And, for all the distaste liberal historians had for Ronald Reagan, relatively few would have rated his administration as worse than that of Richard Nixon. Yet today 57 percent of all the historians who participated in the survey (and 70 percent of those who see the Bush presidency as a failure) either name someone prior to Nixon or say that Bush’s presidency is the worst ever, meaning that they rate it as worse than the two presidencies in the past half century that liberals have most loved to hate, those of Nixon and Reagan. One who made the comparison with Nixon explicit wrote, “Indeed, Bush puts Nixon into a more favorable light. He has trashed the image and reputation of the United States throughout the world; he has offended many of our previously close allies; he has burdened future generations with incredible debt; he has created an unnecessary war to further his domestic political objectives; he has suborned the civil rights of our citizens; he has destroyed previous environmental efforts by government in favor of his coterie of exploiters; he has surrounded himself with a cabal ideological adventurers . . . .”

Why should the views of historians on the current president matter?

I do not share the view of another respondent that “until we have gained access to the archival record of this president, we [historians] are no better at evaluating it than any other voter.” Academic historians, no matter their ideological bias, have some expertise in assessing what makes for a successful or unsuccessful presidency; we have a long-term perspective in which to view the actions of a current chief executive. Accordingly, the depth of the negative assessment that so many historians make of George W. Bush is something of which the public should be aware. Their comments make clear that such historians would readily agree with conclusion that then-Democratic presidential hopeful Richard Gephardt pronounced a few months ago: the presidency of George W. Bush is “a miserable failure.”

The past presidencies most commonly linked with the current administration include all of those that are usually rated as the worst in the nation’s history: Nixon, Harding, Hoover, Buchanan, Coolidge, Andrew Johnson, Grant, and McKinley. The only president who appeared prominently on both the favorable and unfavorable lists was Ronald Reagan. Forty-seven historians said Bush is the best president since Reagan, while 38 said he is the worst since Reagan. Almost all of the historians who rate the Bush presidency a success are Reagan admirers. Indeed, no other president (leaving aside the presumably mostly tongue-in-cheek mentions of Clinton) was named by more than four of the historians who took a favorable view of the current presidency.

Ronald Reagan clearly has become the sort of polarizing figure that Franklin Roosevelt was for an earlier generation—or, perhaps a better way to understand the phenomenon is that Reagan has become the personification of the pole opposite to Roosevelt. That polarization is evident in historians’ evaluations of George W. Bush’s presidency. “If one believes Bush is a ‘good’ president (or great),” one poll respondent noted, he or she “would necessarily also believe Reagan to be a pretty good president.” They also tend to despise Roosevelt. “There is no indication,” one historian said of Bush, “that he has advisors who are closet communist traitors as FDR had. Based on his record to date, history is likely to judge him as one of America’s greatest presidents, in the tradition of Washington and Lincoln.”

The thought that anyone could rate the incumbent president with Washington and Lincoln is enough to induce apoplexy in a substantial majority of historians. Among the many offenses they enumerate in their indictment of Bush is that he is, as one of them put it, “well on his way to destroying the entire (and entirely successful) structures of international cooperation and regulated, humane capitalism and social welfare that have been built up since the early 1930s.” “Bush is now in a position,” Another historian said, “to ‘roll back the New Deal,’ guided by Tom DeLay.”

Several charges against the Bush administration arose repeatedly in the comments of historians who responded to the survey. Among them were: the doctrine of pre-emptive war, crony capitalism/being “completely in bed with certain corporate interests,” bankruptcy/fiscal irresponsibility, military adventurism, trampling of civil liberties, and anti-environmental policies.

***

The reasons stated by some of the historians for their choice of the presidency that they believe Bush’s to be the worst since are worth repeating. The following are representative examples for each of the presidents named most frequently:

REAGAN: “I think the presidency of George W. Bush has been generally a failure and I consider his presidency so far to have been the most disastrous since that of Ronald Reagan--because of the unconscionable military aggression and spending (especially the Iraq War), the damage done to the welfare of the poor while the corporate rich get richer, and the backwards religious fundamentalism permeating this administration. I strongly disliked and distrusted Reagan and think that George W. is even worse.”

NIXON: “Actually, I think [Bush’s] presidency may exceed the disaster that was Nixon. He has systematically lied to the American public about almost every policy that his administration promotes.” Bush uses “doublespeak” to “dress up policies that condone or aid attacks by polluters and exploiters of the environment . . . with names like the ‘Forest Restoration Act’ (which encourages the cutting down of forests).”

HOOVER: “I would say GW is our worst president since Herbert Hoover. He is moving to bankrupt the federal government on the eve of the retirement of the baby boom generation, and he has brought America’s reputation in the world to its lowest point in the entire history of the United States.”

COOLIDGE: “I think his presidency has been an unmitigated disaster for the environment, for international relations, for health care, and for working Americans. He’s on a par with Coolidge!”

HARDING: “Oil, money and politics again combine in ways not flattering to the integrity of the office. Both men also have a tendency to mangle the English language yet get their points across to ordinary Americans. [Yet] the comparison does Harding something of a disservice.”

McKINLEY: “Bush is perhaps the first president [since McKinley] to be entirely in the ‘hip pocket’ of big business, engage in major external conquest for reasons other than national security, AND be the puppet of his political handler. McKinley had Mark Hanna; Bush has Karl Rove. No wonder McKinley is Rove’s favorite historical president (precedent?).”

GRANT: “He ranks with U.S. Grant as the worst. His oil interests and Cheney’s corporate Haliburton contracts smack of the same corruption found under Grant.”

“While Grant did serve in the army (more than once), Bush went AWOL from the National Guard. That means that Grant is automatically more honest than Bush, since Grant did not send people into places that he himself consciously avoided. . . . Grant did not attempt to invade another country without a declaration of war; Bush thinks that his powers in this respect are unlimited.”

ANDREW JOHNSON: “I consider his presidency so far to have been the most disastrous since that of Andrew Johnson. It has been a sellout of fundamental democratic (and Republican) principles. There are many examples, but the most recent would be his successful efforts to insert provisions in spending bills which directly controvert measures voted down by both houses of Congress.”

BUCHANAN: “Buchanan can be said to have made the Civil War inevitable or to have made the war last longer by his pusillanimity or, possibly, treason.” “Buchanan allowed a war to evolve, but that war addressed a real set of national issues. Mr. Bush started a war . . . for what reason?”

***

EVER: The second most common response from historians, trailing only Nixon, was that the current presidency is the worst in American history. A few examples will serve to provide the flavor of such condemnations. “Although previous presidents have led the nation into ill-advised wars, no predecessor managed to turn America into an unprovoked aggressor. No predecessor so thoroughly managed to confirm the impressions of those who already hated America. No predecessor so effectively convinced such a wide range of world opinion that America is an imperialist threat to world peace. I don `t think that you can do much worse than that.”

“Bush is horrendous; there is no comparison with previous presidents, most of whom have been bad.”

“He is blatantly a puppet for corporate interests, who care only about their own greed and have no sense of civic responsibility or community service. He lies, constantly and often, seemingly without control, and he lied about his invasion into a sovereign country, again for corporate interests; many people have died and been maimed, and that has been lied about too. He grandstands and mugs in a shameful manner, befitting a snake oil salesman, not a statesman. He does not think, process, or speak well, and is emotionally immature due to, among other things, his lack of recovery from substance abuse. The term is "dry drunk". He is an abject embarrassment/pariah overseas; the rest of the world hates him . . . . . He is, by far, the most irresponsible, unethical, inexcusable occupant of our formerly highest office in the land that there has ever been.”

“George W. Bush`s presidency is the pernicious enemy of American freedom, compassion, and community; of world peace; and of life itself as it has evolved for millennia on large sections of the planet. The worst president ever? Let history judge him.”

“This president is unique in his failures.”

And then there was this split ballot, comparing the George W. Bush presidencies failures in distinct areas. The George W. Bush presidency is the worst since:

“In terms of economic damage, Reagan.

In terms of imperialism, T Roosevelt.

In terms of dishonesty in government, Nixon.

In terms of affable incompetence, Harding.

In terms of corruption, Grant.

In terms of general lassitude and cluelessness, Coolidge.

In terms of personal dishonesty, Clinton.

In terms of religious arrogance, Wilson.”

***

My own answer to the question was based on astonishment that so many people still support a president who has:

* Presided over the loss of approximately three million American jobs in his first two-and-a-half years in office, the worst record since Herbert Hoover.
* Overseen an economy in which the stock market suffered its worst decline in the first two years of any administration since Hoover’s.
* Taken, in the wake of the terrorist attacks two years ago, the greatest worldwide outpouring of goodwill the United States has enjoyed at least since World War II and squandered it by insisting on pursuing a foolish go-it-almost-alone invasion of Iraq, thereby transforming almost universal support for the United States into worldwide condemnation. (One historian made this point particularly well: “After inadvertently gaining the sympathies of the world `s citizens when terrorists attacked New York and Washington, Bush has deliberately turned the country into the most hated in the world by a policy of breaking all major international agreements, declaring it our right to invade any country that we wish, proving that he’ll manipulate facts to justify anything he wishes to do, and bull-headedly charging into a quagmire.”)
* Misled (to use the most charitable word and interpretation) the American public about weapons of mass destruction and supposed ties to Al Qaeda in Iraq and so into a war that has plainly (and entirely predictably) made us less secure, caused a boom in the recruitment of terrorists, is killing American military personnel needlessly, and is threatening to suck up all our available military forces and be a bottomless pit for the money of American taxpayers for years to come.
* Failed to follow through in Afghanistan, where the Taliban and Al Qaeda are regrouping, once more increasing the threat to our people.
* Insulted and ridiculed other nations and international organizations and now has to go, hat in hand, to those nations and organizations begging for their assistance.
* Completely miscalculated or failed to plan for the personnel and monetary needs in Iraq after the war, so that he sought and obtained an $87 billion appropriation for Iraq, a sizable chunk of which is going, without competitive bidding to Haliburton, the company formerly headed by his vice president.
* Inherited an annual federal budget surplus of $230 billion and transformed it into a $500+ billion deficit in less than three years. This negative turnaround of three-quarters of a trillion dollars is totally without precedent in our history. The ballooning deficit for fiscal 2004 is rapidly approaching twice the dollar size of the previous record deficit, $290 billion, set in 1992, the last year of the administration of President Bush’s father and, at almost 5 percent of GDP, is closing in on the percentage record set by Ronald Reagan in 1986.
* Cut taxes three times, sharply reducing the burden on the rich, reclassified money obtained through stock ownership as more deserving than money earned through work. The idea that dividend income should not be taxed—what might accurately be termed the unearned income tax credit—can be stated succinctly: “If you had to work for your money, we’ll tax it; if you didn’t have to work for it, you can keep it all.”
* Severely curtailed the very American freedoms that our military people are supposed to be fighting to defend. (“The Patriot Act,” one of the historians noted, “is the worst since the Alien and Sedition Acts under John Adams.”)
* Called upon American armed service people, including Reserve forces, to sacrifice for ever-lengthening tours of duty in a hostile and dangerous environment while he rewards the rich at home with lower taxes and legislative giveaways and gives lucrative no-bid contracts to American corporations linked with the administration.
* Given an opportunity to begin to change the consumption-oriented values of the nation after September 11, 2001, when people were prepared to make a sacrifice for the common good, called instead of Americans to ‘sacrifice’ by going out and buying things.
* Proclaimed himself to be a conservative while maintaining that big government should be able to run roughshod over the Bill of Rights, and that the government must have all sorts of secrets from the people, but the people can be allowed no privacy from the government. (As one of the historians said, “this is not a conservative administration; it is a reckless and arrogant one, beholden to a mix of right-wing ideologues, neo-con fanatics, and social Darwinian elitists.”)

My assessment is that George W. Bush’s record on running up debt to burden our children is the worst since Ronald Reagan; his record on government surveillance of citizens is the worst since Richard Nixon; his record on foreign-military policy has gotten us into the worst foreign mess we’ve been in since Lyndon Johnson sank us into Vietnam; his economic record is the worst since Herbert Hoover; his record of tax favoritism for the rich is the worst since Calvin Coolidge; his record of trampling on civil liberties is the worst since Woodrow Wilson. How far back in our history would we need to go to find a presidency as disastrous for this country as that of George W. Bush has been thus far? My own vote went to the administration of James Buchanan, who warmed the president’s chair while the union disintegrated in 1860-61.

Who has been the biggest beneficiary of the horrible terrorism that struck our nation in September of 2001? The answer to that question should be obvious to anyone who considers where the popularity ratings and reelection prospects of a president with the record outlined above would be had he not been able to wrap himself in the flag, take advantage of the American people’s patriotism, and make himself synonymous with “the United States of America” for the past two years.

That abuse of the patriotism and trust of the American people is even worse than everything else this president has done and that fact alone might be sufficient to explain the depth of the hostility with which so many historians view George W. Bush. Contrary to the conservative stereotype of academics as anti-American, the reasons that many historians cited for seeing the Bush presidency as a disaster revolve around their perception that he is undermining traditional American practices and values. As one patriotic historian put it, “I think his presidency has been the worst disaster to hit the United States and is bringing our beloved country to financial, economic, and social disaster.”
Some voters may judge such assessments to be wrong, but they are assessments informed by historical knowledge and the electorate ought to have them available to take into consideration during this election year.

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"In the televised speech (on Iraq), Bush explained his plan for the upcoming transfer of power. It`s a two-part strategy. ... Part one, empty out his desk. Part two, rent a U-haul." David Letterman

"President Bush said today that the Iraqis are now in a position to take power. The bad news for President Bush is so are the Democrats."

"Ashcroft went on to say that our way of life is being threatened by a group of radical religious fanatics who are armed and dangerous. Then he called for prayers in the schools and an end to gun control." Jay Leno

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24 Jan 2004 00:04 GMT DJ Iraq Council Member Spends To Win Influence In Washington

Copyright © 2004, Dow Jones Newswires

WASHINGTON (AP)--A member of Iraq`s interim council with long ties to the CIA is undertaking an expensive, carefully crafted strategy to spread his views to influential Americans, an example of how those seeking power in Iraq continue to curry favor in the U.S.

In his years in exile from Iraq, Iyad Allawi was a little-known favorite of CIA officers who were wary of dealing with the flashier, better known exile leader Ahmad Chalabi. Now a member of the U.S.-appointed interim council with a key security position, Allawi has paid prominent Washington lobbyists and New York publicists more than $300,000 in recent months to help him contact policy-makers and journalists.

According to papers filed with the Justice Department, all the money comes from a U.K. citizen, Mashal Nawab, described as Allawi`s close friend and admirer.

An Allawi consultant, Nick Theros, said Allawi recognizes the importance of conveying his message to U.S. leaders while the U.S. remains the occupying power in Iraq. Iraqis also pay close attention to what is being said about their country in the U.S., he said.

"It`s not enough to just work behind closed doors in Baghdad," he said.

The U.S. plans to turn over political power to Iraqis by July 1. But before then, U.S. officials will appoint many of the people who, in regional caucuses this May, will help choose a transitional legislature. That legislature will name a provisional government. The U.S. has said it might alter the process somewhat, under pressure from other Iraqis demanding direct elections.

Some analysts have suggested that Allawi`s publicity and lobbying campaign might have been encouraged as a counterweight to Chalabi`s influence. But Theros said, "There is no official support of any sort, not in any areas of the U.S. government."

Allawi is a neurologist and businessman who, while living in London in 1978, survived an assassination attempt believed to have been ordered by Saddam. He founded the Iraqi National Accord opposition group with a number of former Iraqi military officers.

The group advocated a coup against Saddam. An attempt failed in 1996, but Allawi, with his connections to Iraq`s military and intelligence and to Saddam`s Baathist party, continued to have strong support within the State Department, CIA and the U.K.`s MI-6 intelligence service.

Allawi "had a much better track record for being forthcoming, upright. Allawi was somebody who made a lot more sense than Chalabi," his longtime rival, said Robert Baer, a former CIA operations officer. Chalabi had been convicted of fraud in absentia in Jordan in 1992.

But Laura Mylroie, a critic of the CIA`s handling of Iraq, said, "I think that confidence was entirely misplaced." Mylroie, author of "Bush vs the Beltway," blamed Allawi for what she said was faulty intelligence that endangered U.S. troops at the end of the 1990 Gulf War.

Allawi, like Chalabi, was appointed by the U.S. to the Governing Council. He heads the council`s Supreme Security Committee.

Late in October, when Allawi held the council`s rotating presidency, three U.S. firms that had done work for him submitted their reports to the Justice Department`s Foreign Agent Registration. They were:

-Brown Lloyd James Ltd, a New York-based public relations firm, $12,000 a month.

-The Washington law office of Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds LLP, lobbying at $100,000 a month. Theros said that after two months that was changed to an hourly rate that should result in $50,000 monthly payments.

-Theros & Theros LLP, the consulting business of Theros and his father, Patrick, a former ambassador, $10,000 a month.

Theros, whose firm hired the other two, said the money spent by Allawi was "the going rate here in Washington."

"It doesn`t really happen for less," he said.

No other governing council member has reported spending nearly as much over the last year, according to filings with the Foreign Agent Registration Unit. The only recent filing related to Chalabi`s Iraqi National Congress was by a Washington law firm, Shea & Gardner, that reported receiving $52,000 over six months for services for the affiliated Iraqi National Congress Support Foundation.

Another firm, Burson-Marsteller, has provided services to the foundation under a State Department contract and didn`t file with the Justice unit.

Since October, Allawi has had a somewhat higher public profile. On Dec. 28, he had an op-ed column published in the Washington Post opposing the purging of members of Saddam`s Baath party from government positions. Chalabi has advocated such a policy.

Allawi received worldwide attention the next day when two London-based Arab newspapers quoted him as saying that Saddam had acknowledged depositing billions of dollars abroad and had given interrogators the names of people who knew where the money was.

But Chalabi continues to have a much higher profile in Washington, most recently attending the State of the Union address as a guest in the box of first lady Laura Bush, along with three other Iraqi officials. During Chalabi`s exile years, he, too, worked the Washington establishment to gain influence at the Pentagon and White House.

Baer said Allawi probably learned from his rival`s successes that he needed lobbyists and publicists to try to influence the U.S. policies that would set the course for Iraq`s future.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 23, 2004 19:04 ET (00:04 GMT)

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WASHINGTON, DC—As President Bush`s public-approval ratings hit an all-time low, Vice-President Dick Cheney announced Monday that he has been "forced" to throw his hat into the ring for the 2004 presidential race.

Above: Cheney announces his bid for the Oval Office.

"Enough is enough,`" the visibly annoyed Cheney said at a morning press conference. "George blew the whole Iraqi prison-abuse speech, and he barely did better with his Nicholas Berg reaction. Now he`s below 50 percent in the polls. I`m sorry, but I can`t allow him to drag me down with him in November."

"Do I have to do everything around here?" Cheney asked, pausing to gesture angrily around the White House. "I guess I do."

While Cheney has not yet chosen a running mate, he said it "certainly will not be the president."

"I ordered him not to get up there and talk about gay marriage last week, but he insisted," Cheney added. "He said, `This will work.` Yeah, it worked to alienate a ton of voters. I`m sorry, but he`s out."

Cheney said that, while he would rather not run for president, Bush has left him little choice.

"I was perfectly happy letting George take the spotlight," Cheney said. "If things didn`t look so grim, I would`ve continued to direct the re-election campaign from the wings. But I could see that it was time to get out—now, before the first debate."

The announcement of Cheney`s bid for the presidency came as a major surprise, even to political insiders.

"It seems sudden, but it`s not," he said. "I`ve been mulling this over ever since the last State Of The Union address, to be honest. I decided to go through with it last night, when I stopped by the president`s office to discuss a speech I`d dropped off earlier that day and caught him sitting on the couch, watching Fox News and eating Fritos. He hadn`t even picked the damn thing up. I exploded. I said, `That`s it. Next year, I`m running this country myself.`"

Some have called Cheney the most active vice-president in the history of the executive branch. Cheney characterized this view of his term as the "understatement of the year."

"Every damn thing he did right since 2000 I told him to do," Cheney said. "You think Afghanistan was his idea? The tax cuts? The Medicare bill? No, no, and no. But all my years of hard work go right down the drain when he stands up in front of everyone and mispronounces [Italian prime minister] Silvio Berlusconi`s name."

Above: Bush appearing in public holding a chainsaw will no longer affect Cheney`s chances in November.

According to the vice-president, the Cheney Administration would be much more streamlined and efficient than Bush`s administration has been.

"Let me tell you this: It`d be a lot easier just to give a speech myself and do it right, rather than spending six hours trying to explain everything to the president—only to have him botch it anyway," Cheney said. "That `I don`t know what you`re saying and I don`t care` look in his eyes when I start talking policy drives me absolutely bonkers. And he wonders why the reporters are so hard on him."

Continued Cheney: "I spent days, literally days, talking him through the jobs-and-growth plan. But when he had to explain it on his own, he said, and this is a direct quote, `I`d rather that, in order to get out of this recession, that the people be spending their money, not the government trying to figure out how to spend the people`s money.`"

Disgusted, the vice-president threw his hands in the air.

"I don`t have enough time in my day to spend half of it cleaning up George`s mistakes," Cheney said. "I`d rather be preparing strategy for the next couple of wars. Those things don`t just plan themselves."

Few White House officials question Cheney`s intelligence, experience, or political effectiveness.

"Cheney`s definitely got the chops for the job," House Speaker Dennis Hastert said. "Frankly, he`s been very patient with the president. He`s given him every chance to get his act together, but you can`t keep your money on a losing horse."

Cheney`s office has been busy preparing the necessary paperwork to run against Bush. However, he has not yet removed himself from the president`s re-election ticket. Some say Bush campaign officials are trying to convince Cheney to remain on the Bush ticket, even if he runs against him.

"One thing is clear: There is no reason for Dick Cheney to leave the White House come January," Bush campaign advisor Karen Hughes said. "He`s been doing a great job."

When pressed to name a possible running mate, Cheney was somewhat reserved.

"I don`t want to tip my hand," Cheney said. "But right now I`m taking a good long look at the governor of Florida. He seems like he`d be a little easier to handle."
The Onion® is not intended for readers under 18 years of age.

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May 29, 2004
POLITICS
Exile With Ties to C.I.A. Is Named Premier of Iraq
By DEXTER FILKINS

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 28 — Iyad Alawi, an Iraqi neurologist known for his close ties to the Central Intelligence Agency, was chosen Friday to be the country`s interim prime minister when the Americans transfer sovereignty here on June 30.

Dr. Alawi, a secular-minded Shiite leader, was a compromise candidate endorsed by Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations special envoy, after days of intense negotiations involving Iraqi leaders and American officials.

Dr. Alawi, the scion of a prominent Iraqi family, is a member of the Iraqi Governing Council and played a central role in the decade-long, American-backed effort to topple Saddam Hussein.

His selection came after Mr. Brahimi tried to appoint a more apolitical technocrat, Dr. Hussain al-Shahristani, to the job, a course that sparked intense opposition from the nation`s largest political parties.

Known for his secretive style and high-level political contacts, Dr. Alawi was until late this week regarded as an unlikely choice to lead the country`s interim government. As an exile, a member of the American-appointed Iraqi Governing Council and a longstanding recipient of C.I.A. financing, Dr. Alawi is likely to face sharp challenges to his credibility among the Iraqi people.

Mr. Brahimi confirmed his choice following the unanimous approval of the Iraqi Governing Council at a meeting on Friday afternoon. A senior American official in Baghdad said the Bush Administration supported the choice. Mr. Brahimi said he would name the rest of the interim Iraqi government, including a president, in the next few days.

The selection of Dr. Alawi startled some Iraqi leaders and officials at the United Nations, who only days before believed Mr. Brahimi had settled on Dr. Shahristani, a former Iraqi nuclear scientist, to lead the new government. Mr. Brahimi`s acceptance of Dr. Alawi came after Dr. Shahristani ran into stiff opposition from the Iraqi Governing Council, some of whose members represent the country`s most powerful political parties.

The selection came together so quickly that United Nations officials in New York, as well as Mr. Brahimi`s own aides, were caught off guard. "This is not the way we expected this to happen, no," said Fred Eckhard, the spokesman for Secretary General Kofi Annan. "But the Iraqis seem to agree on this name, and if they do, Mr. Brahimi is ready to work with him."

Mr. Annan "respects" the decision, Mr. Eckhard said.

Dr. Alawi is the leader of the Iraqi National Accord, an umbrella organization he set up in 1991 with the help of the United States government. A former member of the Baath Party, Dr. Alawi broke with Mr. Hussein and fled the country for London in 1971, where he lived for most of the time until Mr. Hussein`s fall.

In the 1990`s until now, Dr. Alawi, backed by the C.I.A., was the soft-spoken foil to Ahmad Chalabi, the flamboyant exile to whom he is related through marriage. Mr. Chalabi, backed by the Pentagon, funneled what appears to have been erroneous intelligence to the United States government that helped persuade the Bush Administration to invade Iraq last year.

Dr. Alawi and Mr. Chalabi share an intense personal rivalry and dislike for each other, friends and colleagues say. The two broke in 1996, when Dr. Alawi`s group led a coup against Mr. Hussein that failed. Mr. Chalabi contended that the plot had been compromised by Mr. Hussein`s agents.

In an interview, Mr. Brahimi declined to discuss in detail his selection of Dr. Alawi, but suggested that his choice was the best possible compromise in a difficult political environment. "I don`t want to go back saying who is good and who is bad," Mr. Brahimi said. "I am sure that people know what is happening, although they are divided and they want different things, no one is going to get 100 percent of what they want."

Mr. Brahimi, a former Algerian foreign minister who was asked by the Iraqis and the Bush administration to help form an interim government here, had said he planned to look across a broad spectrum of Iraqi society in his search for the candidates to run the new government before national elections aimed for the end of this year. Earlier this week, Mr. Brahimi seemed to settle on Dr. Shahristani. But according to several Iraqi officials, Dr. Shahristani withdrew his name when he ran into stiff opposition from political leaders of the country`s powerful Shiite parties.

"Some of the parties have been wanting this post for themselves and they did not feel that a nonpartisan would be the best candidate," said an Iraqi close to the negotiations between Dr. Shahristani and Mr. Brahimi. "Without their full support, the political process would not proceed as smoothly."

With that, Dr. Alawi, one of those Shiite leaders, emerged as a compromise choice between Iraq`s two largest Shiite political parties, the Dawa Party and the Supreme Council for Revolution in Iraq. Iraqi officials said each party was pressing Mr. Brahimi to choose its candidate, but neither would support the other`s candidate. They reluctantly agreed to support Dr. Alawi, Iraqis said. "Dawa and Sciri canceled each other out, and Alawi became the choice," said Mahmood Othman, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council.

In the discussions leading up to his selection of Dr. Alawi, Mr. Brahimi touched off fears among some of the country`s Shiite leaders that he was trying to install a weak leader, with no political base, to make it easier for the Americans and the United Nations to control the nation. Some of those frustrations were still evident Friday.

"There is no real justice in this," said Adnan Ali, a senior leader of the Dawa Party. "We will support it and wait for the elections. But this decision was made without looking at the polls or at public opinion."

A senior American official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Dr. Alawi had campaigned furiously for the job, traversing the country to lock up the support of tribal and religious leaders. The American official said Dr. Alawi emerged as a top candidate in meetings with Mr. Brahimi and three Iraqis on the governing council who "market tested" the various contenders for the job.

Iraqi council members said the council unanimously endorsed Dr. Alawi. L. Paul Bremer III, the chief American administrator here, then entered the room to congratulate Dr. Alawi, followed by Mr. Brahimi.

The American official said that Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country`s most powerful Shiite leader, had communicated his approval of Dr. Alawi to the United States government through intermediaries. Ayatollah Sistani`s support is crucial; he has said repeatedly that the Iraqi government that takes over the country on June 30 should act as a caretaker only — passing few laws and signing no treaties — until elections are held early next year.

The American official played down the American role in the sinking of Dr. Shahristani and the ascension of Dr. Alawi. But he said he and other American officials were pleased with the appointment of Dr. Alawi, who made no public appearances on Friday and issued no public remarks.

In a sense, the choice of Dr. Alawi represented the triumph of politics over the notion that Iraq could or should be ruled by a group of apolitical technocrats until democratic elections can be held. "This needs a politican, not a technocrat," said Mr. Ali, the Dawa Party leader. "A technocrat would feel differently about passing something; he wouldn`t have the support of the people."

On the streets, the appointment of Dr. Alawi prompted mixed reactions, with many Iraqis reflecting, for good and ill, on his previous association with Mr. Hussein`s government. "As he was a member of the Baath Party, I would say he has a good knowledge of how to run this country," said Hassan Faleh, a 35-year-old laborer. "The present situation in this country is not easy; we shouldn`t prejudge him."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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`Ahmet der Dieb` hat viele Freunde bei den Neocons.

May 29, 2004
Conservative Allies Take Chalabi Case to the White House
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

WASHINGTON, May 28 — Influential outside advisers to the Bush administration who support the Iraqi exile leader Ahmad Chalabi are pressing the White House to stop what one has called a "smear campaign" against Mr. Chalabi, whose Baghdad home and offices were ransacked last week in an American-supported raid.

Last Saturday, several of these Chalabi supporters said, a small delegation of them marched into the West Wing office of Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, to complain about the administration`s abrupt change of heart about Mr. Chalabi and to register their concerns about the course of the war in Iraq. The group included Richard N. Perle, the former chairman of a Pentagon advisory group, and R. James Woolsey, director of central intelligence under President Bill Clinton.

Members of the group, who had requested the meeting, told Ms. Rice that they were incensed at what they view as the vilification of Mr. Chalabi, a favorite of conservatives who is now central to an F.B.I. investigation into who in the American government might have given him highly classified information that he is suspected of turning over to Iran.

Mr. Chalabi has denied that he provided Iran with any classified information.

The session with Ms. Rice was one sign of the turmoil that Mr. Chalabi`s travails have produced within an influential corner of Washington, where Mr. Chalabi is still seen as a potential leader of Iraq.

"There is a smear campaign under way, and it is being perpetrated by the C.I.A. and the D.I.A. and a gaggle of former intelligence officers who have succeeded in planting these stories, which are accepted with hardly any scrutiny," Mr. Perle, a leading conservative, said in an interview.

Mr. Perle, referring to both the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency, said the campaign against Mr. Chalabi was "an outrageous abuse of power" by United States government officials in Washington and Baghdad.

"I`m talking about Jerry Bremer, for one," Mr. Perle said, referring to L. Paul Bremer III, the top American administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority in charge of the occupation of Iraq. "I don`t know who gave these orders, but there is no question that the C.P.A. was involved."

In Baghdad, coalition authorities vigorously denied Mr. Perle`s assertion. "Jerry Bremer didn`t initiate the investigation," Dan Senor, the spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority, said in a telephone interview.

Similarly, Mark Mansfield, a C.I.A. spokesman, called Mr. Perle`s accusation that the agency was smearing Mr. Chalabi "absurd." A Defense Department official who asked not to be named said that Mr. Perle`s accusations against the D.I.A. had no foundation.

Mr. Chalabi has been a divisive figure for years in Washington, where top Pentagon officials favored him as a future leader of Iraq and top State Department officials distrusted him as unreliable. Either way, Mr. Chalabi and his exile group, the Iraqi National Congress, fed intelligence to the Bush administration about Iraq`s unconventional weapons that helped drive the administration toward war.

Intelligence officials now argue that some of the intelligence was fabricated, and that Mr. Chalabi`s motives were to push the United States into toppling Saddam Hussein and pave the way for his installation as Iraq`s new leader.

Although Mr. Chalabi`s supporters outside the administration have been caustic in their comments about his treatment, there has been relative silence so far from Mr. Chalabi`s supporters within the administration. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, who favored going to war in Iraq and was a patron of Mr. Chalabi, did not respond to numerous requests this week for an interview.

Mr. Wolfowitz`s spokesman, Charley Cooper, said in an e-mail message that Mr. Wolfowitz believed that Mr. Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress "have provided valuable operational intelligence to our military forces in Iraq, which has helped save American lives." Mr. Cooper added in the message that "Secretary Wolfowitz hopes that the events of the last few weeks haven`t undermined that."

The current views of Vice President Dick Cheney and his chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, are not known. Both strongly supported Mr. Chalabi before and during the war in Iraq.

Last Saturday, participants in the meeting with Ms. Rice and her deputy, Stephen Hadley, said Ms. Rice told them she appreciated that they had made their views known. But she gave no hint of her own opinion, participants said, and made no concessions to their point of view.

Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, also attended the meeting. A larger meeting later that day, with Mr. Hadley alone, included Danielle Pletka, a vice president of the American Enterprise Institute, a research institution in Washington.

In an interview, Ms. Pletka said that Mr. Chalabi had been "shoddily" treated and that C.I.A. and State Department people had been fighting "a rear guard" action against him.

"They`ve been out to get him for a long time," Ms. Pletka said. "And to be fair, he has done things and the people around him have done things that have made it easier for them. He is a prickly, difficult person and he drives them crazy. He never takes no for an answer, even when he should."

Ms. Pletka added: "There are questionable people around him — I don`t know how close — who have been involved in questionable activities in Iraq. He is close to the Iranian government. And so all of these things have lent credence to the accusations against him."

Mr. Perle said the action against Mr. Chalabi would burnish his anti-American credentials in Iraq and possibly help him to be elected to political office. "In that regard, this clumsy and outrageous assault on him will only improve his prospects," Mr. Perle said.

Mr. Perle said that he had no business dealings with Mr. Chalabi, but that he believed the C.I.A. and D.I.A. were spreading false information that he did. He also said that Mr. Chalabi was not alone in supplying intelligence to the United States government that turned out to be false.

"I know of no inaccurate information that was supplied uniquely by anyone brought to us by the Iraqi National Congress," Mr. Perle said.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company |

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May 29, 2004
SELECTING A LEADER
Surprising Choice for Premier of Iraq Reflects U.S. Influence
By WARREN HOGE and STEVEN R. WEISMAN

UNITED NATIONS, May 28 — After turning to the United Nations to shore up its failing effort to fashion a new government in Baghdad, the United States ended up Friday with a choice for prime minister certain to be seen more as an American candidate than one of the United Nations or the Iraqis themselves.

The man chosen to be prime minister, Iyad Alawi, is the secretary general of the Iraqi National Accord, an exile group that has received funds from the Central Intelligence Agency. His ties with the C.I.A., and his closeness to the United States could become an issue in a country where public opinion has grown almost universally hostile to the Americans.

The announcement of Dr. Alawi`s selection appeared to surprise several at the United Nations.

"When we first heard the news today, we thought that the Iraqi Governing Council had hijacked the process," said a senior United Nations official, referring to the American-picked body that voted to recommend Dr. Alawi earlier on Friday.

A senior State Department official in Washington, as well as a senior American official in Baghdad, said Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations envoy asked by the United States to choose an interim government for Iraq, had indeed selected Dr. Alawi. The State Department official suggested that the Iraqi council had merely ratified the selection after the fact in order to make it seem that the council was the kingmaker.

According to other reports, Dr. Alawi appeared on Mr. Brahimi`s short list of candidates, but it was unclear whether the selection of Dr. Alawi had Mr. Brahimi`s wholehearted support.

Statements from the United Nations seemingly confirmed the idea that Mr. Brahimi was merely bowing to the wishes of the others.

"Mr. Brahimi respects the decision and says he can work with this person," Fred Eckhard, the spokesman for Secretary General Kofi Annan, said in response to a barrage of skeptical questioning. Asked what Mr. Annan`s view was, Mr. Eckhard said: "The secretary general respects the decision, as I said Mr. Brahimi does. `Respect` is a very carefully chosen word."

Some time later, perhaps because of the skepticism that comment engendered, a less circumspect statement was issued in the name of Ahmad Fawzi, Mr. Brahimi`s press spokesman, saying: "Let there be no misunderstanding. Mr. Brahimi is perfectly comfortable with how the process is proceeding thus far."

In a telephone interview from Baghdad, Mr. Brahimi refused to discuss the selection of Dr. Alawi. "I don`t want to go back saying who is good and who is bad," he said.

But in a hint that the selection process had not gone exactly as planned, Mr. Brahimi added, "You know, sometimes people think I am a free agent out here, that I have a free hand to do whatever I want." He noted that he had been asked to take on the job in a letter to Mr. Annan from the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and the Iraqi Governing Council.

United Nations officials said Dr. Alawi had been on Mr. Brahimi`s list of acceptable candidates for prime minister, although he was not his first choice. The officials said Dr. Alawi had ranked third on the list.

The United Nations is wary of having the world organization or Mr. Brahimi himself appear too close to the United States. At the same time, Mr. Brahimi must balance many competing interests as he moves between the American occupying powers and the Iraqis.

Mr. Brahimi said he felt that regardless of how the selection of Dr. Alawi had emerged, it would free him to proceed rapidly with a host of choices he had settled on for other ranking government positions.

"This is the first name to come out, but there is still the rest of the government to complete," he said. "All of this is going to take place in the next few days, and I am very, very much involved in this process."

Among the jobs he has to fill and for which his aides say he now has names ready to go are a president, two vice presidents and 26 cabinet members for the new government, the members of a preparatory committee planning a national council of Mr. Brahimi`s design for a post-transition and the officials for an electoral commission.

The choices could become known as early as Sunday, aides said.

Mr. Fawzi said Mr. Brahimi and Dr. Alawi had met often. "His name came up frequently in the wide-ranging consultations that Brahimi conducted," Mr. Fawzi said in a telephone interview from the Netherlands, where he had gone from Baghdad on personal business.

United Nations officials said any misgivings that Mr. Brahimi had about Dr. Alawi were not about the man himself but about his past associations and how they might play with the Iraqi public, because of Dr. Alawi`s ties with the C.I.A.

"Let`s see what the Iraqi street has to say about this name," Mr. Eckhard said.

Members of the United Nations Security Council, which this week began negotiating a new resolution for post-transition Iraq, had been expecting Mr. Brahimi to deliver the names for a new government by the end of the month. They had also been told that the names would be made public as a group, not in the sporadic and individual manner that Dr. Alawi`s name emerged Friday.

Asked about those expectations, Mr. Eckhard said, "This is not the way we expected this to happen, no, but the Iraqis seem to agree on this name, and if they do, Mr. Brahimi is ready to work with him."

France, Germany, Russia and China, all opponents of the Iraq war a year ago, complained Tuesday that the draft resolution submitted by Britain and the United States had left unclear the crucial relationships between the new government, the Iraqi armed forces and the United States-led multinational force that will remain in Iraq.

In response, the American and British sponsors of the resolution promised that the names would come in time for the Council to factor them and their views into its deliberations.

Mr. Brahimi said he agreed wholeheartedly with the Security Council members` wishes. "The Security Council is right in saying that this new government must take part in the discussions on the resolution," he said.

Warren Hoge reported from the United Nations for this article, and Steven R. Weisman from Washington.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company |

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May 29, 2004
A Hollow Sovereignty for Iraq

President Bush said yesterday that he would transfer "complete and full sovereignty" to an interim Iraqi government in barely a month. But nothing even close to that is likely to happen. Recent developments suggest that this "sovereignty" will have little substance and that the president still has no coherent plan to create the security and political trust required to negotiate a constitution and hold fair elections. The sovereignty timetable remains driven by the American electoral calendar and growing Iraqi impatience with an incompetent and deeply unpopular occupation.

That unpopularity also taints the American-appointed Governing Council, which makes the council`s announcement yesterday of the selection of Iyad Alawi, one of its most prominent members, as interim prime minister disheartening. The choice of Mr. Alawi, a Shiite exile with close ties to former Baathist generals and to the Central Intelligence Agency, hardly signals a fresh start. The manner of his designation raises questions about the authority of the United Nations` special representative, Lakhdar Brahimi. Paul Bremer III, Washington`s proconsul, didn`t even give Mr. Brahimi time to announce his support for Mr. Alawi before striding into the council`s meeting to offer congratulations.

Mr. Alawi and the other appointees — who are expected to be named shortly — will have to overcome serious obstacles to establish legitimacy in the eyes of Iraq`s people. These include the interim government`s lack of an electoral mandate and its dependence on a huge, American-dominated military force, over which it will have little authority.

Because Washington left this issue largely out of the draft resolution now before the Security Council, one of the first acts of the interim government will have to be a one-sided negotiation over American forces that is unlikely to enhance its stature. Under current plans, the new government would have no authority to stop American forces from attacking any Iraqi target. It would have a theoretical right to request a full American withdrawal, which would leave it virtually defenseless.

The United States is handing the interim government a deteriorating military situation. American commanders, desperate to avoid clashes heading into the June 30 transfer, have granted dangerous concessions to Sunni and Shiite insurgents, greatly strengthening the hand of sectarian militias answerable neither to Baghdad nor to Washington.

The latest deal, reached on Thursday in Najaf, handed a partial victory to an anti-American Shiite firebrand, Moktada al-Sadr. The arrest order against him has been "suspended," and he has been allowed to keep his Mahdi Army intact. In return, Mr. Sadr agreed to pull his fighters off the streets of Najaf, and most American soldiers will leave Najaf as well. Mr. Sadr offered a similar deal in mid-April, but Washington turned him down. In the ensuing weeks, relations with Iraq`s Shiite majority grew increasingly — and, it now appears, unnecessarily — strained as American fire pressed ever closer to Najaf`s sacred sites.

The climb-down in Najaf seems like a repeat of the cynical deal American commanders cut four weeks ago with Sunni rebels in Falluja, effectively turning the city over to former Baathist commanders acceptable to the insurgents. If America`s military role is now reduced to partnering with the best-armed insurgents, it is doing nothing to make Iraq more governable by its future elected leaders.

The only comfort to be drawn from the problematic nature of the June 30 transfer of sovereignty is that it at least points in the right direction, toward the eventual end of a mismanaged occupation whose costs mount with every passing day.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Exiled Allawi was responsible for 45-minute WMD claim
By Patrick Cockburn

29 May 2004

The choice of Iyad Allawi, closely linked to the CIA and formerly to MI6, as the Prime Minister of Iraq from 30 June will make it difficult for the US and Britain to persuade the rest of the world that he is capable of leading an independent government.

He is the person through whom the controversial claim was channelled that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction could be operational in 45 minutes.

Dr Allawi, aged 59, who trained as a neurologist, is a Shia Muslim who was a member of Saddam Hussein`s Baath party in Iraq and in Britain, where he was a student leader with links to Iraqi intelligence. He later moved into opposition to the Iraqi leader and reportedly established a connection with the British security services. His change of allegiance led to Dr Allawi being targeted by Iraqi intelligence. In 1978 their agents armed with knives and axes badly wounded him when they attacked him as he lay asleep in bed in his house in Kingston-upon-Thames.

Dr Allawi became a businessman with contacts in Saudi Arabia. He was charming, intelligent and had a gift for impressing Western intelligence agencies. After the 1991 Gulf War, the Iraq National Accord (INA) party, which he helped to found, became one of the building blocks for the Iraqi opposition in exile. The organisation attracted former Iraqi army officers and Baath party officials, particularly Sunni Arabs, fleeing Iraq.

In the mid-1990s the INA claimed to have extensive contacts in the Iraqi officer corps. Dr Allawi began to move from the orbit of MI6 to the CIA. He persuaded his new masters that he was in a position to organise a military coup in Baghdad.

With American, British and Saudi support, he opened a headquarters and a radio station in Amman in Jordan in 1996, declaring it was "a historic moment for the Iraqi opposition". After a failed coup attempt that year there were mass arrests in Baghdad. Abdul-Karim al-Kabariti, the Jordanian prime minister of the day, said that INA`s networks were "all penetrated by the Iraqi security services".

Dr Allawi and the INA returned to Iraq after the fall of Saddam and set up offices in Baghdad and in old Baath party offices throughout Iraq.

There were few signs that they had any popular support. During an uprising in the town of Baiji, north of Baghdad, last year, crowds immediately set fire to the INA office.

Dr Allawi was head of the security committee of the Iraqi Governing Council and was opposed to the dissolution of the army by Paul Bremer, the US viceroy in Iraq. He stepped down in protest as head of the committee during the US assault on Fallujah. But his reputation among Iraqis for working first with Saddam`s intelligence agents and then with MI6 and the CIA may make it impossible for them to accept him as leader of an independent Iraq.


29 May 2004 12:14

© 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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Gerard Baker: "If success has many fathers and failure is an orphan, Washington, D.C., is now running the largest and most desperate orphanage in modern intellectual history."

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washingtonpost.com

An Iraq Pledge to Watch Closely

By Colbert I. King

Saturday, May 29, 2004; Page A27

"I ordered first a substantial increase in the training and equipment of South Vietnamese forces. . . . The primary mission of our troops is to enable the South Vietnamese forces to assume the full responsibility for the security of South Vietnam."

President Richard M. Nixon, on his Vietnamization policy, Nov. 3, 1969.

"Eventually [Iraqi forces] must be the primary defenders of Iraqi security, as American and coalition forces are withdrawn. . . . At my direction, and with the support of Iraqi authorities, we are accelerating our program to help train Iraqis to defend their country."

President George W. Bush, U.S. Army War College speech, May 24, 2004.

As we observe this Memorial Day weekend celebration and the dedication of the National World War II Memorial, George Bush`s pledge to prepare Iraqis to take over their country`s security should not be overlooked. If ever a presidential declaration deserved close tracking and constant appraisal, especially by Congress, Bush`s pledge to Iraqize that country`s defense is it.

Richard Nixon said much the same thing about Vietnam during the first year of his presidency. `Course, there`s a world of difference between saying and doing. After the launching of Vietnamization, it took four years and an additional 15,000 Americans killed in action before U.S. troops were finally withdrawn from ground combat. And the troops came home only because Americans, war-weary and deeply divided, lost confidence in the White House and its Pentagon advisers, and demanded that Congress impose limitations on U.S. military action.

The burning question this weekend, as we honor those Americans who have made the ultimate sacrifice for their country, is how long -- and at what additional cost in U.S. sons, daughters and treasure -- will it take before the Bush administration`s ill-fated Iraq venture is mercifully brought to an end?

We learned a bloody and costly lesson 35 years ago by gambling that we could get a foreign country ready in short order to stand and fight on its own. Nixon, as did Lyndon Johnson, underestimated the motivation and fighting skill of the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. Or, conversely, both overrated the South Vietnamese force that they equipped, trained and sent into combat. Either way, we got it wrong and the NVA got what it wanted: South Vietnam.

To hear Bush tell it this week, the United States is going to march down that same road. He set a goal of creating an Iraqi army of 35,000 soldiers fully prepared to defend their country. That`s on top of his order to train an Iraqi force of more than 200,000 police and security personnel. As with Nixon, Bush did not announce a timetable for his program. But his objective is clear: The rate of American withdrawal will be calibrated to the growth of Iraqi forces.

Again, how long?

It`s not an idle question. In an appraisal that came in decidedly on the low side, Bush admitted to Monday`s national television audience that "the early performance of Iraqi forces fell short." Fell short? "Some refused orders to engage the enemy," said the U.S. commander in chief. Mr. Bush was way too kind. Would that it were only fear on the battlefield.

What about those Iraqi police who cooperated with the insurgents? I`m referring to reports of Iraqis turning over their weapons and the buildings they were guarding. How about those Iraqis who turned their guns on us? Failures of that kind cannot be chalked up to lack of training or unit cohesion, as Bush suggested this week. Something else may be afoot.

Guns are as plentiful in Iraqi homes as sand in the desert. Yet, with a couple of notable exceptions cited in Bush`s speech, Iraqis are not showing much stomach for taking on and dismantling the terrorist forces, illegal militias and Saddam Hussein loyalist elements that Bush brands as enemies. Could it be the other way around: that the Iraqi people see the Western occupation -- not Arab militias and guerrillas -- as standing between themselves and their future as a self-determining, Islamic nation? A tougher question still: Even if the Iraqis were capable of dealing with the insurgents by themselves, would they? Does the insurgency have their enmity or their quiet admiration?

By Memorial Day 2005, we may have our answer. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz recently told Congress that it may take a year to 18 months to get Iraqi security forces fully trained and equipped -- which is a far cry from Wolfowitz on Nov. 13, 2003, when he told regional U.S. media outlets in a series of interviews that "we are getting enormous support from the people who matter most, and that`s the Iraqi people. We now have over 100,000 Iraqis fighting for their freedom." Or so he hoped at the time.

Today, as a year ago, the primary responsibility for fighting Iraq`s "enemies" rests with the United States. Meanwhile, Iraqi clergy and tribal leaders cut deals that allow a town such as Fallujah, which was once under siege by U.S. Marines, to emerge as a mini Taliban-like state under the control of mujaheddin who resisted the U.S. occupation, according to an Associated Press report on Tuesday. The selling of alcohol can get you a flogging and "Western" style haircuts are forbidden, the AP said. "We must capitalize on our victory over the Americans and implement Islamic sharia laws," cleric Abdul-Qader al-Aloussi told the wire service. Bush said on Monday night: "We`re making security a shared responsibility in Fallujah." Who`s briefing that man?

And down south? After weeks of fighting forces of the radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr, whom we threatened to kill or capture and whose militia we once promised to destroy, the militia and Sadr are still free as birds, thanks to "negotiations" by what Bush calls "respected Shia leaders."

So we have another Memorial Day with U.S. troops far from home being killed and wounded as they provide manpower in another country`s "defense." And what will be the killed-in-action total as of Memorial Day 2005?

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Am Montag ist Memorial Day in den USA.

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May 28, 2004
Tales of the New Arabian Nights
Chalabi Baba and the 40 Thieves

By PAUL McGEOUGH

Sinbad, step aside. Aladdin and Ali Baba, off with your tawdry tales so we can hear a truly fantastic story from the land of the Arabian Nights.

You would have thought by this stage of this United States presidency, that there was little left to shock. But this is the news from Washington - the CIA has asked the FBI to investigate allegations that the Iraqi exile who almost single-handedly drove the American invasion of Iraq has all the time been a double agent for neighbouring Iran, which was secretly manipulating the US to topple its arch foe, Saddam Hussein.

It strains credulity that Iran, declared by the President George Bush to be an "axis-of-evil" enemy of the US, would set out to sandwich itself between US-dominated neighbours in Iraq and Afghanistan; but too often credulity has to be left at the front door during this Iraq crisis. And it`s not as though Bush needed an excuse to invade. As early as March 2002, according to Time magazine, the President told colleagues: "F--- Saddam, we`re taking him out."

The FBI investigation of the exile Ahmad Chalabi and his Pentagon friends has opened in a week that began with a slightly wild-eyed Bush revealing his new winning plan for Iraq was his old floundering plan. It ended with a peace deal for the Shiite shrine cities of Najaf, Karbala and Kufa which was eerily similar to the deal the US accepted to end the battle of Falluja. Washington`s non-negotiable demands were forgotten and the "thugs" the US was after were allowed to get away.

Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress were the source of much of the discredited US case for war against Saddam; claims of weapons of mass destruction and links to global terrorism. Always suspected by the State Department and the CIA, Chalabi nonetheless mesmerised the Pentagon and the White House and elements of the US media - a point dramatically underscored this week by The New York Times when it admitted just how wrong it was with much of its pre-war reporting on WMD, particularly the work of its Pulitzer Prize winner, Judith Miller, who made great use of - or was greatly used by - Chalabi.

Tension has been rising between Chalabi and Washington at the approach of June 30. That`s when Washington says it will hand sovereign power back to the Iraqis. It`s also the first time the music will stop in the post-invasion game of musical chairs and when it does, Chalabi is among those tipped to be without a seat.

But the tension exploded 10 days ago with joint US-Iraqi raiding parties searching Chalabi`s Baghdad headquarters, waving a bundle of arrest warrants for his associates and fuelling speculation about their role in blackmail, fraud and kidnapping. Chalabi, a disgraced former banker, is accused of positioning his associates to control virtually all the banks in postwar Iraq and of skimming $US22 million ($30.6 million) during the introduction of a new currency last year.

He was airlifted into "liberated" Iraq by the US and immediately appointed to the Iraqi Governing Council - a position from which he took control of the "de-Baathification" of Iraq. This was a process, insisted upon by the US, of stripping all former Baath Party members from public positions. Now it is alleged Chalabi`s teams have been running an extortion racket in which many former officials have been allowed to buy protection from public humiliation.

The investigation of Chalabi is based on CIA claims that it has irrefutable, "rock-solid" evidence that he passed classified US information to Tehran. There`s potential for the neo-conservative element in the Pentagon to be embarrassed here, because of the implication that it gave the tightly-held information to Chalabi in the first place.

The investigation will focus on Chalabi`s long-time intelligence chief, Aras Karim Habib, a Shia Kurd. Some in Washington claim he has been in Tehran`s pay for years and that he has gone underground since last week`s hit on Chalabi`s bunker.

Another former US intelligence chief was quoted: "The people investigating this aren`t sure yet ... but the Defence Intelligence Agency is looking through its documents and realising they`ve been had. If it turns out to be true, it was certainly a genius operation - (the Iranians) created an anti-Saddam opposition to get rid of him and they got us to pay for it."

Chalabi and Tehran have denied the charges. But with the unravelling of the Bush case for war the picture emerging in Washington is of a conman, as opposed to a neo-con, who hounded susceptible officials and coached Iraqi defectors to tell Washington what it wanted to hear about Saddam.

Chalabi`s supporters have billed last week`s raid and the allegations against him as "the revenge of the CIA".

One of his stoutest defenders, The Wall Street Journal, editorialised on Thursday: "We think Mr Chalabi is a pawn in a much larger battle that is strategic, ideological and personal ... he has long battled the CIA over the best way to topple Saddam ... he is at odds with the UN special envoy (on the future governance of Iraq) ... he is a blunt man who can seem arrogant, even to his friends."

But a gleeful former State Department counter-terrorism official told reporters: "When the story ultimately comes out, we`ll see that Iran has run one of the most masterful intelligence operations in history - it persuaded the US and Britain to dispose of its greatest enemy."

If Scheherazade had come up with stuff like this, we would never have had the stories of Sinbad, Aladdin and Ali Baba. She would have been clamped in irons.

Paul McGeough writes for the Sydney Morning Herald, where this essay originally appeared.

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Massoud A. Derhally: `What the Arab world hears when Bush speaks`
Date: Saturday, May 29 @ 09:54:15 EDT


By Massoud A. Derhally, The Daily Star (Lebanon)

As he addressed the influential pro-Israeli American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) recently, US President George W. Bush repeatedly invoked the desire for security as a common denominator between the United States and Israel. Yet not once did he recognize the Palestinians` right to self-defense.

Bush`s wholehearted support for Israel took place while an indiscriminate Israeli onslaught on Palestinians continued in the Rafah area of Gaza, with tanks, bulldozers and helicopters. Yet somehow, Bush couldn`t muster the courage to condemn Israel`s killing of innocent Palestinians, the demolition of Palestinian homes and the displacement of more than 2,000 people. At best the president said: "The unfolding violence in the Gaza Strip is troubling and underscores the need for all parties to seize every opportunity for peace."

The reluctance to unequivocally condemn or rebuke Israel mirrored Bush`s earlier reluctance to immediately issue an apology to Iraqis and Arabs for the systematic abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Events in Iraq are consuming Bush. They are blurring the realities on the ground and complicating US foreign policy when it comes to dealing with Israel. They are also contributing to a disturbing phenomenon underscoring American and Israeli policies: The "war on terrorism" has sanctioned inhumane practices against those deemed to be "the enemy."



It is Washington`s unconditional endorsement of Israel that cultivates and nurtures anti-American sentiment in the Arab world and increases militancy in the region. The US, which many around the world look to as a beacon of higher moral authority, is today, among most Arabs and Muslims, regarded as hypocritical.

Despite the international outcry against Israel`s actions in Rafah, Bush stood before his prospective electoral constituency and ludicrously called Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon`s unilateral disengagement plan in Gaza, "a bold, courageous step, that can bring us closer to the goal of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side-by-side in peace and security." Such a message, irrespective of what administration officials say about the evenhandedness of America`s Middle East policy, provides Israel with a blank check to do as it pleases, secure in the knowledge that it will, at most, be reprimanded by the UN Security Council.

To the Arab world, Bush`s AIPAC speech typified the evangelical zeal of the president, but also his inability to grasp the fundamentals lying at the heart of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Bush said a secure Israel was in the national interest of the US. But isn`t a secure Palestine also in its interest? The lives of Israelis are sacred. But are the lives of Palestinians so cheap? The words of Israeli soldiers and government officials are credible. Are those of Palestinians merely allegations, fabrications and exaggerations? These are the questions Arabs bring up when asked what they think about US foreign policy in the Middle East.

That the Palestinians are treated as inferior to Israelis by the US, that a majority of Arabs must yield to America`s vision of how the region should behave (lest they be labeled enemies of freedom and democracy, or terrorist collaborators), both speak to Bush`s failures. Instead of leading by example, by consensus or by evenhandedness, the president leads by intimidation and all-or-nothing policies.

This is, at least, how he is viewed in the Arab world, and no light is visible at the end of that tunnel. American sponsored initiatives like Radio Sawa or the Al-Hurra satellite television channel do little to reduce anti-American sentiment. If anything, the outlets are viewed with cynicism and provoke a belief that the US prefers such gimmickry to engaging Arab leaders and peoples, or to putting pressure on Israel to honor its commitments to the Palestinians.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell told Congress that the US invasion of Iraq would play a salient role in shifting the balance of power in the Middle East, so that eventually peace and democracy would emerge from the fog of war. What Powell, Bush and other US officials fail to consider is that Osama bin Laden, Hamas and every other terrorist or militant group that comes out of the region will thrive for as long as there is no just solution to the Palestinian problem.

It would have been more appropriate for Bush to tell his AIPAC audience that Israel`s operation in Gaza would most certainly add fuel to the fire, that it would merely increase Palestinian bitterness and hatred and would definitely provide ammunition to zealots on both sides of the Palestinian-Israeli divide to carry on with their destructive agendas.

If Bush had pursued Middle East peace with the same fortitude that he displayed in waging war, he might well have succeeded in bringing about a Palestinian-Israeli settlement. Yet when the US presidential election takes place next November, Bush will primarily be remembered for his legacy of war.

Massoud A. Derhally is a freelance journalist, political commentator and former correspondent of Agence France Presse. He wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR

Copyright © 2004, The Daily Star.

Reprinted from The Daily Star (Lebanon):
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?
edition_id=10&categ_id=5&article_id=4635

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Amy Goodman & David Goodman: `Fatal error: The lies of our (New York) Times`
Date: Saturday, May 29 @ 09:49:29 EDT

By Amy Goodman and David Goodman, ZNet

In our new book, The Exception To the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers and the Media That Love Them, we titled one chapter "The Lies of Our Times" to examine how The New York Times coverage on Iraq and its alleged stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction helped lead the country to war. Yesterday, The New York Times, for the first time, raised questions about its own coverage in an 1,100-word editor`s note. Here is an excerpt from our section of the book on the New York Times and Iraq.

"From a marketing point of view, you don`t introduce new products in August." -- Andrew H. Card, White House Chief of Staff speaking about the Iraq war P.R. campaign, September 6, 2002

In the midst of the buildup to war, a major scandal was unfolding at The New York Times-the paper that sets the news agenda for other media. The Times admitted that for several years a 27-year-old reporter named Jayson Blair had been conning his editors and falsifying stories. He had pretended to be places he hadn`t been, fabricated quotes, and just plain lied in order to tell a sensational tale. For this, Blair was fired. But The Times went further: It ran a 7,000-word, five-page expose on the young reporter, laying bare his personal and professional escapades.



The Times said it had reached a low point in its 152-year history. I agreed. But not because of the Jayson Blair affair. It was The Times coverage of the Bush-Blair affair.

When George W. Bush and Tony Blair made their fraudulent case to attack Iraq, The Times, along with most corporate media outlets in the United States, became cheerleaders for the war. And while Jayson Blair was being crucified for his journalistic sins, veteran Times national security correspondent and best-selling author Judith Miller was filling The Times` front pages with unchallenged government propaganda. Unlike Blair`s deceptions, Miller`s lies provided the pretext for war. Her lies cost lives.

If only The New York Times had done the same kind of investigation of Miller`s reports as it had with Jayson Blair.

The White House propaganda blitz was launched on September 7, 2002, at a Camp David press conference. British Prime Minister Tony Blair stood side by side with his co-conspirator, President George W. Bush. Together, they declared that evidence from a report published by the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) showed that Iraq was "six months away" from building nuclear weapons.

"I don`t know what more evidence we need," crowed Bush.

Actually, any evidence would help-there was no such IAEA report. But at the time, few mainstream American journalists questioned the leaders` outright lies. Instead, the following day, "evidence" popped up in the Sunday New York Times under the twin byline of Michael Gordon and Judith Miller. "More than a decade after Saddam Hussein agreed to give up weapons of mass destruction," they stated with authority, "Iraq has stepped up its quest for nuclear weapons and has embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb, Bush administration officials said today."

In a revealing example of how the story amplified administration spin, the authors included the phrase soon to be repeated by President Bush and all his top officials: "The first sign of a `smoking gun,` [administration officials] argue, may be a mushroom cloud."

Harper`s publisher John R. MacArthur, author of Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War, knew what to make of this front-page bombshell. "In a disgraceful piece of stenography," he wrote, Gordon and Miller "inflated an administration leak into something resembling imminent Armageddon."

The Bush administration knew just what to do with the story they had fed to Gordon and Miller. The day The Times story ran, Vice President Dick Cheney made the rounds on the Sunday talk shows to advance the administration`s bogus claims. On NBC`s Meet the Press, Cheney declared that Iraq had purchased aluminum tubes to make enriched uranium. It didn`t matter that the IAEA refuted the charge both before and after it was made. But Cheney didn`t want viewers just to take his word for it. "There`s a story in The New York Times this morning," he said smugly. "And I want to attribute The Times."

This was the classic disinformation two-step: the White House leaks a lie to The Times, the newspaper publishes it as a startling expose, and then the White House conveniently masquerades behind the credibility of The Times.

"What mattered," wrote MacArthur, "was the unencumbered rollout of a commercial for war."4

Judith Miller was just getting warmed up. Reporting for America`s most influential newspaper, Miller continued to trumpet administration leaks and other bogus sources as the basis for eye-popping stories that backed the administration`s false premises for war. "If reporters who live by their sources were obliged to die by their sources," Jack Shafer wrote later in Slate, "Miller would be stinking up her family tomb right now."

After the war, Shafer pointed out, "None of the sensational allegations about chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons given to Miller have panned out, despite the furious crisscrossing of Iraq by U.S. weapons hunters."

Did The New York Times publish corrections? Clarifications? Did heads roll? Not a chance: Judith Miller`s "scoops" continued to be proudly run on the front pages.

Here are just some of the corrections The Times should have run after the year-long campaign of front-page false claims by one of its premier reporters, Judith Miller.

FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS

Scoop: "U.S. Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts," by Judith Miller and Michael R. Gordon, September 8, 2002. The authors quote Ahmed al-Shemri (a pseudonym), who contends that he worked in Iraq`s chemical weapons program before defecting in 2000. " `All of Iraq is one large storage facility,` said Mr. Shemri, who claimed to have worked for many years at the Muthanna State Enterprise, once Iraq`s chemical weapons plant." The authors quote Shemri as stating that Iraq is stockpiling "12,500 gallons of anthrax, 2,500 gallons of gas gangrene, 1,250 gallons of aflatoxin, and 2,000 gallons of botulinum throughout the country."

Oops: As UN weapons inspectors had earlier stated-and U.S. weapons inspectors confirmed in September 2003-none of these claims were true. The unnamed source is one of many Iraqi defectors who made sensational false claims that were championed by Miller and The Times.

Scoop: "White House Lists Iraq Steps to Build Banned Weapons," by Judith Miller and Michael Gordon, September 13, 2002. The article quotes the White House contention that Iraq was trying to purchase aluminum pipes to assist its nuclear weapons program.

Oops: Rather than run a major story on how the United States had falsely cited the UN to back its claim that Iraq was expanding its nuclear weapons program, Miller and Gordon repeated and embellished the lie.

Contrast this with the lead paragraph of a story that ran in the British daily The Guardian on September 9: "The International Atomic Energy Agency has no evidence that Iraq is developing nuclear weapons at a former site previously destroyed by UN inspectors, despite claims made over the weekend by Tony Blair, western diplomatic sources told The Guardian yesterday." The story goes on to say that the IAEA "issued a statement insisting it had `no new information` on Iraq`s nuclear program since December 1998 when its inspectors left Iraq."

Miller`s trumped-up story contributed to the climate of the time and The Times. A month later, numerous congressional representatives cited the nuclear threat as a reason for voting to authorize war.

Scoop: "U.S. Faulted Over Its Efforts to Unite Iraqi Dissidents," by Judith Miller, October 2, 2002. Quoting Ahmed Chalabi and Defense Department adviser Richard Perle, this story stated: "The INC [Iraqi National Congress] has been without question the single most important source of intelligence about Saddam Hussein."

Miller airs the INC`s chief complaint: "Iraqi dissidents and administration officials complain that [the State Department and CIA] have also tried to cast doubt on information provided by defectors Mr. Chalabi`s organization has brought out of Iraq."

Oops: Miller championed the cause of Chalabi, the Iraqi exile leader who had been lobbying Washington for over a decade to support the overthrow of Saddam Hussein`s regime. As The Washington Post revealed, Miller wrote to Times veteran foreign correspondent John Burns, who was working in Baghdad at the time, that Chalabi "has provided most of the front page exclusives on WMD [weapons of mass destruction] to our paper."

Times readers might be interested to learn the details of how Ahmed Chalabi was bought and paid for by the CIA. Chalabi heads the INC, an organization of Iraqi exiles created by the CIA in 1992 with the help of the Rendon Group, a powerful public relations firm that has worked extensively for the two Bush administrations. Between 1992 and 1996, the CIA covertly funneled $12 million to Chalabi`s INC. In 1998, the Clinton administration gave Chalabi control of another $98 million of U.S. taxpayer money. Chalabi`s credibility has always been questionable: He was convicted in absentia in Jordan of stealing some $500 million from a bank he established, leaving shareholders high and dry. He has been accused by Iraqi exiles of pocketing at least $4 million of CIA funds.

In the lead-up to war, the CIA dismissed Chalabi as unreliable. But he was the darling of Pentagon hawks, putting an Iraqi face on their warmongering. So the Pentagon established a new entity, the Office of Special Plans, to champion the views of discredited INC defectors who helped make its case for war.

As Howard Kurtz later asked in The Washington Post: "Could Chalabi have been using The Times to build a drumbeat that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction?"

Scoop: "C.I.A. Hunts Iraq Tie to Soviet Smallpox," by Judith Miller, December 3, 2002. The story claims that "Iraq obtained a particularly virulent strain of smallpox from a Russian scientist." The story adds later: "The information came to the American government from an informant whose identity has not been disclosed."

Smallpox was cited by President Bush as one of the "weapons of mass destruction" possessed by Iraq that justified a dangerous national inoculation program-and an invasion.

Oops: After a three-month search of Iraq, " `Team Pox` turned up only signs to the contrary: disabled equipment that had been rendered harmless by UN inspectors, Iraqi scientists deemed credible who gave no indication they had worked with smallpox, and a laboratory thought to be back in use that was covered in cobwebs," reported the Associated Press in September 2003.

Scoop: "Illicit Arms Kept Till Eve of War, an Iraqi Scientist Is Said to Assert," by Judith Miller, April 21, 2003. In this front-page article, Miller quotes an American military officer who passes on the assertions of "a man who said he was an Iraqi scientist" in U.S. custody. The "scientist" claims that Iraq destroyed its WMD stockpile days before the war began, that the regime had transferred banned weapons to Syria, and that Saddam Hussein was working closely with Al Qaeda.

Who is the messenger for this bombshell? Miller tells us only that she "was permitted to see him from a distance at the sites where he said that material from the arms program was buried. Clad in nondescript clothes and a baseball cap, he pointed to several spots in the sand where he said chemical precursors and other weapons material were buried."

And then there were the terms of this disclosure: "This reporter was not permitted to interview the scientist or visit his home. Nor was she permitted to write about the discovery of the scientist for three days, and the copy was then submitted for a check by military officials. Those officials asked that details of what chemicals were uncovered be deleted." No proof. No names. No chemicals. Only a baseball cap-and the credibility of Miller and The Times-to vouch for a "scientist" who conveniently backs up key claims of the Bush administration. Miller, who was embedded with MET Alpha, a military unit searching for WMDs, pumped up her sensational assertions the next day on PBS`s NewsHour with Jim Lehrer: Q: Has the unit you`ve been traveling with found any proof of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?

JUDITH MILLER: Well, I think they found something more than a smoking gun. What they`ve found...is a silver bullet in the form of a person, an Iraqi individual, a scientist, as we`ve called him, who really worked on the programs, who knows them firsthand.

Q: Does this confirm in a way the insistence coming from the U.S. government that after the war, various Iraqi tongues would loosen, and there might be people who would be willing to help?

JUDITH MILLER: Yes, it clearly does.... That`s what the Bush administration has finally done. They have changed the political environment, and they`ve enabled people like the scientists that MET Alpha has found to come forth.

Oops: The silver bullet got more tarnished as it was examined. Three months later, Miller acknowledged that the scientist was merely "a senior Iraqi military intelligence official." His explosive claims vaporized.

A final note from the Department of Corrections: The Times deeply regrets any wars or loss of life that these errors may have contributed to.

UP IN SMOKE

Tom Wolfe once wrote about a war-happy Times correspondent in Vietnam (same idea, different war): The administration was "playing [the reporter] of The New York Times like an ocarina, as if they were blowing smoke up his pipe and the finger work was just right and the song was coming forth better than they could have played it themselves." But who was playing whom? The Washington Post reported that while Miller was embedded with MET Alpha, her role in the unit`s operations became so central that it became known as the "Judith Miller team." In one instance, she disagreed with a decision to relocate the unit to another area and threatened to file a critical report in The Times about the action. When she took her protest to a two-star general, the decision was reversed. One Army officer told the Post, "Judith was always issuing threats of either going to The New York Times or to the secretary of defense. There was nothing veiled about that threat."

Later, she played a starring role in a ceremony in which MET Alpha`s leader was promoted. Other officers were surprised to watch as Miller pinned a new rank on the uniform of Chief Warrant Officer Richard Gonzales. He thanked her for her "contributions" to the unit. In April 2003, MET Alpha traveled to the compound of Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi "at Judy`s direction," where they interrogated and took custody of an Iraqi man who was on the Pentagon`s wanted list-despite the fact that MET Alpha`s only role was to search for WMDs. As one officer told the Post, "It`s impossible to exaggerate the impact she had on the mission of this unit, and not for the better."

After a year of bogus scoops from Miller, the paper gave itself a bit of cover. Not corrections-just cover. On September 28, 2003, Times reporter Douglas Jehl surprisingly kicked the legs out from under Miller`s sources. In his story headlined AGENCY BELITTLES INFORMATION GIVEN BY IRAQ DEFECTORS, Jehl revealed: An internal assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency has concluded that most of the information provided by Iraqi defectors who were made available by the Iraqi National Congress was of little or no value, according to federal officials briefed on the arrangement. In addition, several Iraqi defectors introduced to American intelligence agents by the exile organization and its leader, Ahmed Chalabi, invented or exaggerated their credentials as people with direct knowledge of the Iraqi government and its suspected unconventional weapons program, the officials said.

The Iraqi National Congress had made some of these defectors available to...The New York Times, which reported their allegations about prisoners and the country`s weapons program. Poof. Up in smoke went thousands of words of what can only be called rank propaganda.

This Times confession was too little, too late. After an unnecessary war, during a brutal occupation, and several thousand lives later, The Times obliquely acknowledged that it had been recycling disinformation. Miller`s reports played an invaluable role in the administration`s propaganda war. They gave public legitimacy to outright lies, providing what appeared to be independent confirmation of wild speculation and false accusations. "What Miller has done over time seriously violates several Times` policies under their code of conduct for news and editorial departments," wrote William E. Jackson in Editor & Publisher. "Jayson Blair was only a fluke deviation.... Miller strikes right at the core of the regular functioning news machine."

More than that, Miller`s false reporting was key to justifying a war. And The Times` unabashed servitude to the administration`s war agenda did not end with Iraq.

On September 16, 2003, The Times ran a story headlined SENIOR U.S. OFFICIAL TO LEVEL WEAPONS CHARGES AGAINST SYRIA. The stunningly uncritical article was virtually an excerpt of the testimony about to be given that day by outspoken hawk John R. Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control. The article included this curious caveat: The testimony "was provided to The New York Times by individuals who feel that the accusations against Syria have received insufficient attention." The article certainly solved that problem.

The author? Judith Miller-preparing for the next battlefront.

Reprinted from ZNet:
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?
SectionID=21&ItemID=5608

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Saturday, May 29, 2004
War News for May 28 and 29, 2004

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring ‘em on: Four Iraqis wounded in mortar attack near Green Zone in Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Two Japanese journalists, Iraqi interpreter killed in ambush near Mahmoudiyah.

Bring ‘em on: Five Iraqis killed in fighting near Najaf.

Bring ‘em on: One Iraqi killed, four wounded in fighting near Baquba.

Bring ‘em on: Two US soldiers wounded in ambush near Kufa.

Bring ‘em on: US troops attacked with small arms near Abu Ghraib.

Bring ‘em on: Two explosions reported in central Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: US troops mortared near Najaf.

Bring ‘em on: ICDC general and family assassinated near Kirkuk.

Bring ‘em on: CJTF-7 reports three US Marines killed in al-Anbar province.

Bring ‘em on: Two Dutch soldiers wounded in ambush near Samawah.

Bring ‘em on: Iraqi police station attacked near Basra.

Six Australian soldiers injured in vehicle accident near Baghdad.

IGC selects interim Iraqi prime minister. “The role of the UN in selecting the interim government remained unclear. A spokesman for Brahimi referred to Allawi as "prime minister-designate" and said Brahimi looked forward to working with him in selecting the members of the interim government. A UN spokesman in New York later told reporters the world body ‘respected’ the selection of Allawi but declined to endorse the nomination despite several invitations by reporters to do so. Chief UN spokesman Fred Eckhard said at the UN later in the day that the announcement was ‘not how we expected it to happen,’ according to Reuters.”

Demographics of US KIAs in Iraq. “Nonetheless, some conclusions can be teased out of the available data. A study done for the Austin American-Statesman by Bill Bishop and Robert Cushing revealed that, although the majority of the war dead come from what the Census Bureau calls "metropolitan" areas, which usually include close-in suburban counties, a disproportionately large share came from "nonmetro" counties. According to Bishop and Cushing, nearly a third (29 percent) of dead troops came from rural areas and small towns, compared with only a fifth (19 percent) of the general population. Given the concentration of political, economic, and cultural power in America`s cities and near suburbs, and the slow dwindling of opportunity in many small towns, this analysis does suggest that the lower middle class is unduly bearing the burden. But the information is hardly conclusive. The definitive answers will take years to disinter. And in the end, the truth, like the dead, may be lost in the fog of war and time.”

General Zinni uncorks on Lieutenant AWOL and his neo-con bunglers. “He says the U.S. military was provided with unrealistic objectives in Iraq. ‘We were in there talking about Jeffersonian democracy, free market economies, changing the face of the Middle East with this one blow. That was ridiculous, and I think now what we have is young kids paying the price...’”

Profiles of IGC members.

Chickenhawks defend Chalabi. “’There is a smear campaign under way, and it is being perpetrated by the C.I.A. and the D.I.A. and a gaggle of former intelligence officers who have succeeded in planting these stories, which are accepted with hardly any scrutiny,’ Mr. Perle, a leading conservative, said in an interview. Mr. Perle, referring to both the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency, said the campaign against Mr. Chalabi was ‘an outrageous abuse of power’ by United States government officials in Washington and Baghdad.” Sounds like an effort to impede a national security investigation to me.

Bible-thumping foreign policy. “Organized, motivated and self-confident, evangelicals are girding for two more foreign-policy battles. They seek freedom to proselytize in the Muslim lands of Iraq and Afghanistan. And they want to link any future U.S. aid for North Korea, in case of a nuclear accord, to progress there on human rights.” Just what our foreign policy needs: Elmer Gantry as Secretary of State.

Sergeant loses security clearance for talking to the press. “Sgt. Samuel Provance said he wasn’t surprised when Lt. Col. James Norwood summoned him to Wiesbaden on Friday, less than a week after the sergeant spoke to ABC News about his experiences at the Abu Ghraib. Provance is the only military intelligence soldier who served at the prison to publicly speak about prisoner abuses there, despite orders from his command to keep quiet. Now, Norwood, his battalion commander, has flagged Provance from favorable actions and pulled his top-secret clearance.”

Commentary

Editorial: “President Bush said yesterday that he would transfer ‘complete and full sovereignty’ to an interim Iraqi government in barely a month. But nothing even close to that is likely to happen. Recent developments suggest that this ‘sovereignty’ will have little substance and that the president still has no coherent plan to create the security and political trust required to negotiate a constitution and hold fair elections. The sovereignty timetable remains driven by the American electoral calendar and growing Iraqi impatience with an incompetent and deeply unpopular occupation. That unpopularity also taints the American-appointed Governing Council, which makes the council`s announcement yesterday of the selection of Iyad Alawi, one of its most prominent members, as interim prime minister disheartening. The choice of Mr. Alawi, a Shiite exile with close ties to former Baathist generals and to the Central Intelligence Agency, hardly signals a fresh start. The manner of his designation raises questions about the authority of the United Nations` special representative, Lakhdar Brahimi. Paul Bremer III, Washington`s proconsul, didn`t even give Mr. Brahimi time to announce his support for Mr. Alawi before striding into the council`s meeting to offer congratulations.”

Opinion: “There is a difference between the administration decision to go to war and the decision of men and women who are called to follow their leader. This leader - the president - has made poor decisions, in my view, and jumped to conclusions before the facts. As a result, we are in a war that may be more unforgettable than any other war in our history. So, on this Memorial Day, I will remember my father, brothers, uncles, friends and relatives who have died or spent time fighting in a war. I will say a prayer of thanks for their brave deeds and place a flower on their final resting place. I also will ask them to pray for us. We may have let loose dogs of war that can`t be tamed until a terrible price is paid.”

Casualty Reports

Local story: Two Nebraska Marines killed in Iraq.

Local story: Maine soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: California soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: Maine soldier wounded in Iraq.

Local story: Six Vermont Guardsmen wounded in Iraq.

Local story: California soldier wounded in Iraq.

Local story. Florida Guardsman found dead after returning from Iraq.

Off Topic

Superb rant. “When a new history of the United States of America comes to be written, the narrative will show that the biggest disaster that ever happened to that country was President George W. Bush Jnr., and not the calamity of September 11, 2001. And if George Bush should write his memoirs after being voted out of the White House, he should title the work, ‘Failure’ with the sub-title, ‘How the Son Never Rose.’ George Bush is the clearest example of how, in spite of all the privileges and advantages at one`s disposal, one can easily fail to succeed in life.”


86-43-04. Pass it on.



# posted by yankeedoodle : 4:10 AM
Comments (5)

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KERRY UNDECIDED ON RUNNING MATE, WHAT TO HAVE FOR LUNCH

‘Don’t Rush Me,’ Presumptive Nominee Tells Applebee’s Waitress

While dining at an Applebee’s restaurant in Portland, Oregon yesterday, presumptive Democratic nominee John Kerry remained undecided on a running mate and what to have for lunch, campaign officials confirmed.

After brushing off reporters’ questions about potential running mates, Senator Kerry (D-Mass) refused to be pinned down on what he would be eating for lunch despite repeated attempts by his waitress, Jeannine Damico, to take his order.

“Don’t rush me!” Mr. Kerry thundered after Ms. Damico dropped by his table for the fourth time “just to see how he was doing.”

Mr. Kerry reportedly mulled the Applebee’s menu for a full twenty-five minutes before finally ordering his entree, the Crispy Orange Skillet, one of Applebee’s Skillet Sensations™.

The Bush campaign immediately jumped on the Applebee’s incident, using it in campaign ads to paint Mr. Kerry as too indecisive and wishy-washy to be President.

In the ads, a ghostly, echoing voice asks the question, “May I take your order, Mr. Kerry?” to which, ominously, there is no response.

Shortly after the ads aired, Mr. Kerry moved swiftly to defuse the controversy over his lunch order at Applebee’s.

“Choosing a running mate may be the most important decision a president has to make, but ordering lunch is also crucial,” Sen. Kerry told reporters. “I am confident that in ordering the Crispy Orange Skillet, I made the right decision.”

In other news, the major networks defended their decision not to air President Bush’s foreign policy speech on Iraq Monday night, arguing that it was not reality TV.

**** BOROWITZ IN NYC JUNE 3 ****

Andy Borowitz performs and answers audience questions Thursday June 3 at Makor, 35 West 67th Street. 7:30 PM; tickets $12 in advance, $15 at the door. For ticket info, go to www.92y.org.

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Rumsfeld als Seinfeld, ein neues Flash-Video, und die Snuffvideos.

http://www.toostupidtobepresident.com/shockwave/campredempti…" target="_blank" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">http://www.toostupidtobepresident.com/shockwave/campredempti…

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Den Kampf weiterführen
Rede von Noam Chomsky zur Verleihung des Carl-von-Ossietzky-Preises der Stadt Oldenburg
von Noam Chomsky
Junge Welt / ZNet Deutschland 23.05.2004
* In Anerkennung seiner«kritischen Analysen der Weltordnung unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Medien« wurde dem US-amerikanischen Sprachwissenschaftler, Medienkritiker und Philosophen Noam Chomsky am vergangenen Sonntag der Carl-von-Ossietzky-Preis für Zeitgeschichte und Politik der Stadt Oldenburg verliehen. Wir dokumentieren im folgenden ungekürzt Noam Chomskys Erwiderung auf die von Michael Schiffmann gehaltene Laudatio (siehe jW vom 24. Mai 2004).

Ich werde gar nicht erst versuchen, angemessene Worte meiner Dankbarkeit für diese Preisverleihung zu finden, mit der einer der außergewöhnlichsten Persönlichkeiten gedacht werden soll, die mit Leben und Werk das symbolisierte, was das Bestreben anständiger Leute überall sein sollte, und die auf eine Weise Mut und Integrität verkörperte, wie man sie selten in einer Person findet. Es ist für mich ein besonders großes Privileg, daß ich Uri Avnery in den Fußstapfen folgen kann, denn er ist ein Mann, den ich seit vielen Jahren kenne und den ich aufgrund seiner scharfsinnigen und mutigen Schriften und seines prinzipientreuen Handelns für Frieden und Gerechtigkeit zutiefst bewundere.

Vor zwei Jahren stellte Uri Avnery in seiner Ansprache zu Recht Carl von Ossietzky in die Reihe der hebräischen Propheten und erinnerte an die durch den König Ahab ausgesprochene Verdammung des Propheten Elias als »Hasser Israels«. König Ahab, Inbegriff des Bösen in der Bibel, setzte, wie es die gräßlichen Herrscher bis zum heutigen Tage tun, die Staatsmacht mit dem Land selbst, seinen Menschen und ihrer Kultur gleich. Wenn also Elias den mörderischen König ärgerte, so ärgerte er Israel. Bedauerlicherweise bestehen solche Unsitten bis heute fort. Der weit verbreitete Begriff »anti-amerikanisch« ist ein aktueller Beweis hierfür, er widerspiegelt dieselben zutiefst totalitären Annahmen.

Die biblischen Propheten könnte man aus heutiger Sicht durchaus als intellektuelle Dissidenten bezeichnen. Sie lieferten geopolitische Analysen, die den Mächtigen nicht genehm waren. Sie warnten vor den Folgen ihrer Verbrechen. Sie forderten Gerechtigkeit und Einhaltung von Menschenrechten und Menschenwürde. Zu ihren Lebzeiten wurden sie scharf verdammt und dazu noch oftmals streng bestraft. Damals wurden die Schmeichler am Hofe geehrt. Einige Jahrhunderte später haben sich die Werte grundlegend gewandelt. Jetzt ehren wir die Propheten und verdammen die Schmeichler. Doch die Muster und Unsitten der Antike bestehen fort.

Carl von Ossietzky wurde zu seinen Lebzeiten verleumdet und brutal bestraft, man gedenkt seiner heute jedoch zu Recht als einer heroischen Persönlichkeit. Vielen anderen Märtyrern widerfährt dies jedoch nicht.

In meinem Büro im MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology � d. Red.] hängt an der Wand ein Gemälde, das mir ein Jesuitenpriester geschenkt hat. Dieses Gemälde stellt den Todesengel dar, wie er über dem Erzbischof Romero von El Salvador steht, dessen Ermordung im Jahre 1980 ein Jahrzehnt schlimmster Grausamkeiten einleitete. Vor ihm stehen sechs führende lateinamerikanische Intellektuelle, Jesuitenpriester, die 1989 zusammen mit ihrer Haushälterin und deren Tochter durch Kopfschüsse gezielt getötet wurden; dies markierte den Abschluß eines grausamen Jahrzehnts. Dieselben Hände hatten später auch die Massaker während der internationalen Terrorkampagne dargestellt, die Romeros Nachfolger als »Vernichtungskrieg und Völkermord gegen eine wehrlose Zivilbevölkerung« beschrieb.

Wie der ermordete Erzbischof, so waren auch diese jesuitischen Intellektuellen »Stimmen der Stummen« und erlitten dasselbe Schicksal wie viele tapfere und verehrungswürdige Persönlichkeiten in der Menschheitsgeschichte, die jener heldenhaften Berufung gefolgt sind. Und wie der Erzbischof wurden sie zweifach hingerichtet: Auf brutale Weise ermordet, blieben sie obendrein in den aufgeklärten Ländern der westlichen Welt weitgehend unbekannt, was für Intellektuelle ein besonders schlimmes Schicksal ist. Einzig Fachleute oder Aktivisten kennen ihre Namen oder haben eine Vorstellung davon, was sie schrieben. Wer die Lehren der Geschichte kennt, dem können die Gründe hierfür kaum verborgen bleiben, und der wird sich auch des ins Auge springenden, beschämend engen Zusammenhangs zwischen Macht und Straffreiheit bewußt sein.

Das Gemälde hängt an der Wand meines Büros, um mich tagtäglich an die reale Welt zu erinnern. Es hat sich aber auch gezeigt, daß es einen weiteren sehr aufschlußreichen Zweck erfüllt. Es kommen viele Besucher in mein Büro. Die Lateinamerikaner unter ihnen erkennen das Bild mit nahezu unfehlbarer Sicherheit, die Nordamerikaner hingegen praktisch nie. Von den Europäern erkennen es vielleicht zehn Prozent. Es erübrigt sich wohl jeder Kommentar darüber, was dies über unsere eigene moralische und intellektuelle Kultur aussagt. Leider ist das nur ein Beispiel von vielen.

Kurzsichtige Bürokratien

Zum Abschluß seiner damaligen Rede verlieh Uri Avnery der Hoffnung auf Frieden in jener krisengeschüttelten Region der Erde Ausdruck, für den er sich dort so mutig einsetzt. Damals waren die Verhältnisse trostlos. Heute ist das Bild noch weit düsterer, und was sich daraus ergibt, könnte sogar zu nuklearem Terror oder Schlimmerem führen. Aber es kann kein Zweifel daran bestehen, daß auch eine friedliche Beilegung möglich ist. Die vielversprechendste Lösung � die auch von Gush Shalom verfochten wird, der Friedensorganisation, in der Avnery eine führende Rolle spielt � wurde am 1. Dezember in Genf der Öffentlichkeit vorgestellt. Regierungen in aller Welt, jedoch nicht alle, begleiteten diese Präsentation mit Unterstützungserklärungen. Wie die New York Times berichtete, »gehörte die Regierung der Vereinigten Staaten auffälligerweise nicht zu denjenigen, die Unterstützungserklärungen abgaben«. Die Folgen dieser Haltung liegen klar auf der Hand. Ebenso klar ist, daß europäische Initiativen sehr wohl etwas Entscheidendes bewirken könnten. Dies ist bei weitem nicht das einzige Beispiel, es ist nur das bedrohlichste.

Der Ernst der Herausforderungen, mit denen wir konfrontiert sind, läßt sich schwerlich übertreiben. Uns allen ist sehr bewußt, daß Menschen derart schreckliche Vernichtungswaffen entwickelt haben, daß das Überleben unserer Gattung bedroht ist. Wissenschaftler in den USA haben unlängst entdeckt, daß US-Präsidenten über die Auswirkungen eines Atomkrieges »systematisch fehlinformiert« wurden. Sie hätten aufgrund fehlenden Überblicks über die »abgeschirmten Bürokratien«, die Analysen über einen »begrenzten« und »gewinnbaren« Krieg lieferten, das Ausmaß der Zerstörung »ernsthaft unterschätzt«. Dies führe zu einer »institutionellen Kurzsichtigkeit«, die »katastrophale« Folgen haben könne. Ich zitiere aus einem Hintergrundartikel in der bedeutenden US-amerikanischen wissenschaftlichen Wochenzeitschrift Science. Das Problem der institutionellen Kurzsichtigkeit ist ein ernstzunehmenderes als jenes der Pleiten und Manipulationen der Geheimdienstberichte im Zusammenhang mit dem Irak, die in den letzten Monaten die Titelseiten der Presse gefüllt und Schlagzeilen geliefert haben.

Atomare Bedrohung

In der Vergangenheit standen wir mehrmals kurz vor einem Atomkrieg. Im Oktober 2002 fand in Havanna eine hochrangig besetzte Konferenz zum 40. Jahrestag der Kuba-Krise statt, an der maßgebliche Vertreter aller beteiligten Seiten teilnahmen. Sie waren sich schon vorab der Tatsache bewußt, daß diese durch die sowjetische Raketenstationierung ausgelöste Krise »der gefährlichste Augenblick in der Menschheitsgeschichte« war, wie sich der namhafte Historiker und Kennedy-Berater Arthur Schlesinger in Havanna ausdrückte. Aber sie waren schockiert, als sie erfuhren, wie gefährlich die damalige Lage tatsächlich gewesen war. Es wurde aufgedeckt, daß die Welt damals buchstäblich nur ein einziges Wort von einem Atomkrieg entfernt war. Zur Zeit der Raketenkrise war noch nicht bekannt, daß die russischen U-Boote mit atomaren Torpedos bestückt waren. Als die russischen U-Boote von US-Zerstörern angegriffen wurden und die U-Boot-Kommandeure annahmen, daß ein allgemeiner Krieg ausgebrochen sei, erging der Befehl, die Torpedos abzufeuern. Dieser Befehl wurde jedoch noch rechtzeitig von einem der Kommandeure, Wassili Archipow, widerrufen. So konnte eine Eskalation abgewendet werden, die sich ohne weiteres zu einem Atomkrieg hätte steigern können � einem Krieg, der, so hatte Präsident Eisenhower gewarnt, möglicherweise zur Zerstörung der nördlichen Hemisphäre geführt hätte.

Später geschah es sehr oft, daß der Abschuß von Atomwaffen in letzter Minute noch durch menschliches Eingreifen gestoppt werden konnte, nachdem computergesteuerte Warnsysteme fälschlicherweise einen kriegerischen Angriff auf das Land meldeten. In einem Fall, und zwar in Rußland 1995, wurde der Abschuß nur zwei Minuten vor dem geplanten Zeitpunkt gestoppt. Diese Systeme sind nach wie vor auf Hochalarm geschaltet und sowohl in den USA als auch in Rußland computergesteuert.

Zumindest über die US-Systeme wissen wir eine Menge. Ein Untersuchungsbericht des Kongresses aus dem Jahr 1980 stellte fest, daß allein im Jahr 1979 78 Besprechungen zur Beurteilung von Computermeldungen eines Raketenangriffs anberaumt wurden, und dies war ein durchaus normales Jahr. Zwischen 1977 und 1984 gab es 21 000 Fehlanzeigen eines Raketenangriffs; über fünf Prozent davon machten eine genauere Überprüfung erforderlich. Heute, so wird uns berichtet, kommen solche Fehlanzeigen und Fehlalarme täglich vor. Die Systeme der USA räumen eine Frist von drei Minuten zur menschlichen Beurteilung nach Eingang der Warnung vor einem Raketenangriff ein, und danach noch einmal weitere 30 Sekunden für Anweisungen des Präsidenten. Das Pentagon hat ernsthafte Entwicklungsfehler bei den Computer-Sicherheitssystemen entdeckt, die terroristischen Hackern den Zugriff und die Simulation eines Raketenabschusses ermöglichen. Bruce Blair, der bekannte strategische Analytiker, spricht in diesem Zusammenhang von einem »Unfall, der nur darauf wartet, daß er passiert«. Russische Systeme sind weitaus weniger zuverlässig und haben sich im Gefolge des wirtschaftlichen Zusammenbruchs wesentlich verschlechtert. Somit ist die Gefahr eines aus Zufall ausbrechenden finalen Krieges größer geworden.

Provozierte Gegenwehr

US-Analytiker gehen davon aus, daß sich die russischen Militärausgaben in den Jahren unter Bush und Putin verdreifacht haben. Diese Reaktion auf das Säbelrassseln und die Aggressivität der Bush-Administration war zu erwarten. Rußland hat sich nach eigenen Angaben jetzt auch die Bush-Doktrin vom »Erstschlag« zu eigen gemacht, die eine beschönigende Umschreibung für willkürliche Aggression ist. Diese Doktrin, die in der Nationalen Sicherheitsstrategie von Bush formal verkündet wurde, hat Henry Kissinger als eine »revolutionäre« neue Doktrin beschrieben, die das seit dem Westfälischen Frieden Mitte des 17. Jahrhunderts bestehende System ebenso zunichte macht wie die UN-Charta und das moderne Völkerrecht. Die russische Führung hat auch »ein entscheidendes Detail hinzugefügt«, sie hat nämlich laut Presseberichten »festgestellt, daß militärische Gewaltanwendung möglich ist, wenn es Bestrebungen geben sollte, den Zugang Rußlands auf Regionen zu behindern, die für sein Überleben von zentraler Bedeutung sind«. Somit hat sie die Clinton-Doktrin übernommen, wonach die USA zu »einseitiger Anwendung militärischer Gewalt« befugt sind, um den »ungehinderten Zugang zu entscheidenden Märkten, Energiereserven und strategischen Ressourcen« zu gewährleisten, wie das Weiße Haus zur Zeit Clintons dem Kongreß mitteilte.

Vor zwei Monaten führte Rußland seine größten Militärmanöver seit zwei Jahrzehnten durch und testete dabei neue und noch ausgereiftere Massenvernichtungswaffen. Ranghohe Militärs stellten dabei heraus, daß dies eine Reaktion auf die Handlungen der US-Regierung darstelle � auch dies war genauso zu erwarten und vorhergesagt worden. Besorgt äußerten sie sich insbesondere über die Bestrebungen der USA, die Schwelle für den Einsatz atomarer Waffen abzusenken und Mini-Atomwaffen oder sogenannte »bunker busters«, bunkerbrechende Bomben, zur Anwendung zu bringen. Russische Militäranalytiker können nur von den gleichen Annahmen ausgehen wie ihre amerikanischen Amtskollegen, die darüber schreiben, daß sie mit ihren Waffen in Bergen versteckte russische Kommandobunker angreifen könnten, von denen aus die Atomarsenale kontrolliert werden. Das einseitige Insistieren der USA auf Nutzung des Weltalls für offensive militärische Zwecke ist ein weiterer Grund zur Besorgnis. US-Analytiker befürchten, daß Rußland derzeit versuchen könnte, es den USA bei der Entwicklung eines Überschall-Raketenträgers gleichzutun, der aus dem Weltraum wieder in die Erdatmosphäre eintreten und ohne Vorwarnung überall verheerende Angriffe ausführen könnte.

Unter Militäranalytikern aller Seiten ist unbestritten, daß die sogenannte »Raketenabwehr« der USA in Wirklichkeit eine Erstschlagswaffe darstellt und daß der Einsatz solcher Systeme bei den potentiellen Angriffszielen, nämlich Rußland und China, dazu führt, daß diese ihrerseits neue Waffensysteme zu ihrer Überwindung entwickeln. So wie etwa die USA 1968 auf ein kleines Raketenabwehrsystem um Moskau reagierten, indem sie dieses mitsamt den Radareinrichtungen zum Zielobjekt ihrer Atomwaffen machten. Die erste [von den USA � d. Red.] für diesen Sommer angekündigte Stationierungsstufe wurde als politisches Manöver scharf kritisiert, bei welchem unausgereifte Technik von zweifelhafter Zuverlässigkeit zu enormen Kosten eingesetzt würde. Eine ernstzunehmendere Kritik besteht darin, daß das System den Anschein hoher Effizienz wecken könne. In der Logik eines Atomkrieges zählt der Schein und nicht die Wirklichkeit. Eine scheinbare Wirksamkeit wird Reaktionen auslösen, die die Welt der Zerstörung erneut näher bringen.

Erbe und Zukunft

Diese Entwicklungen verlaufen nach einem historischen Muster. Mit erschreckender Eintönigkeit haben Staaten, die über die zerstörerischste Militärmacht verfügen � natürlich stets mit dem Bekenntnis zur Selbstverteidigung �, ihre Zerstörungsmacht immer weiter auszudehnen versucht. Die USA sind eine ungewöhnlich offene und freie Gesellschaft, in diesem Punkt im Grunde einzigartig, und daher verfügen wir über reichhaltige Aufzeichnungen von Dokumentationen über die internen Planungen in diesem Bereich. Der erschreckendste Gesichtspunkt besteht in der Tatsache, daß bei der regelmäßigen Entwicklung von immer schlagkräftigeren Vernichtungswaffen die Sorge über mögliche Vergeltungsschläge, die die USA treffen und aufs Äußerste gefährden würden, bislang keine bzw. kaum eine Rolle gespielt hat. Soweit wir das aufgrund vorliegender Informationen beurteilen können, dürfte diese Feststellung auch für andere Staaten gelten. Die unerbittlichen geschichtlichen Fakten sprechen eine deutliche Sprache. Der Unterschied liegt heute nur darin, daß inzwischen viel mehr auf dem Spiel steht.

Dies ist nur ein kleines Beispiel. In solchen Fällen, und dazu gehören auch lokale Konflikte und Terror, sind konstruktive Lösungen naheliegend; ihre Umsetzung wird jedoch von der »institutionellen Kurzsichtigkeit«, einer herrschenden Doktrin und der gewohnten Autoritätsgläubigkeit und Unterwürfigkeit verhindert. Wir genießen heute ungewöhnliche Freiheiten und Privilegien, die jedoch kein Geschenk von oben sind, sondern das Erbe eines langen und mutigen Kampfes. Freiheit und Privilegien übertragen zugleich Verantwortung und eröffnen Wahlmöglichkeiten. Wir haben die Wahl, das Erbe fallenzulassen, in dessen Genuß wir gekommen sind, und somit dafür verantwortlich zu sein, daß uns das Schlimmste erst noch bevorsteht. Oder wir entscheiden uns dafür, dieses großartige Erbe nutzbar zu machen, den Kampf weiterzuführen und künftigen Generationen Grund zur Hoffnung zu geben. Die Wahl könnte nicht klarer sein, und die Konsequenzen wären kaum dramatischer.

Es ist unsere Pflicht, Carl von Ossietzkys und anderer Märtyrer für die Sache der Freiheit und Gerechtigkeit zu gedenken und sie zu ehren. Noch größer ist allerdings unsere Verantwortung, uns ihrer Sache nach Kräften hinzugeben.

Anmerkungen

Veröffentlicht mit freundlicher Genehmigung der jungen Welt. Orginal unter: http://www.jungewelt.de/2004/05-28/005.php

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May 30, 2004
Report Cited Scant Evidence, Long Detention for Iraqis
By DOUGLAS JEHL and KATE ZERNIKE

WASHINGTON, May 29 — Hundreds of Iraqi prisoners were held in Abu Ghraib prison for prolonged periods despite a lack of evidence that they posed a security threat to American forces, according to an Army report completed last fall.

The unpublished report, by Maj. Gen. Donald J. Ryder, reflects what other senior Army officers have described as a deep concern among some American officers and officials in Iraq over the refusal of top American commanders in Baghdad to authorize the release of so-called security prisoners. Some of those prisoners were held for interrogation at Abu Ghraib in the cellblock that became the site of the worst abuses at the prison.

General Ryder, the Army`s provost marshal, reported that some Iraqis had been held for several months for nothing more than expressing "displeasure or ill will" toward the American occupying forces. The Nov. 5 report said the process for deciding which arrested Iraqis posed security risks justifying imprisonment, and for deciding when to release them, violated the Pentagon`s own policies. It also said the conditions in which they were held sometimes violated the Geneva Conventions.

General Ryder`s report, obtained by The New York Times, was based on a review of prisons in Iraq last summer and fall, and it made no mention of abuses at Abu Ghraib. But it warned that the continuing influx of prisoners being arrested as the American-led occupation forces fought a persistent insurrection would strain the system set up to review each case every six months, as required by international law.

"A more disciplined system would reduce the security internee population and inherent challenge of holding Iraqis that feel they have been unjustly detained," he wrote.

Since the scope of abuses at Abu Ghraib first began to come to light late last month, the military has begun to discharge prisoners from the facility at a rapidly accelerated rate. On Friday alone, 624 Iraqi prisoners were freed from the prison, in the fourth such release in May.

But the military has offered little public explanation of the process of deciding who should be released and who should remain in prison. In Baghdad this week, the top American military spokesman in Iraq offered a vigorous defense of the procedures used by American commanders for determining which Iraqi prisoners should be freed.

"We don`t put them in Abu Ghraib to detain them for a period of time or to detain them until proven innocent," said the spokesman, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt. "They are deemed to be a security threat by a judge through multiple sources of evidence. It`s that simple.

"If they were innocent, they wouldn`t be at Abu Ghraib," he said.

In interviews, senior Army officers have described senior officers on the staff of Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the top American commander in Iraq, as having been the major obstacle to releasing prisoners from Abu Ghraib. The officers have said in particular that Brig. Gen. Barbara Fast, the top Army intelligence officer in Iraq, often ruled last fall against the release of prisoners, even against the recommendation of a military police commander and military intelligence officers at the prison.

The report by General Ryder recommended that the final judgments on the release of security prisoners be elevated from the three-person review board in Iraq to the level of an assistant secretary of defense. But American commanders in Baghdad have not announced such a change in procedures.

"The percentage of persons that were released because they`ve served their time — that percentage is zero," said General Kimmitt when he was asked this week about the reasons for the releases. "The number that were released because they were innocent? That number, too, is zero. Persons are held at Abu Ghraib because they are determined to be security threats, imminent security threats here in country."

Tensions between American officials at the prison, including Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, and senior American officers in Baghdad, including General Fast, over the release of prisoners from Abu Ghraib last fall were first described publicly in the investigative report into the abuses by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, which emerged last month.

That report described General Fast, who headed a three-member detainee release board, as sometimes vetoing recommendations to release prisoners that were made by General Karpinski, then the commander in charge at Abu Ghraib, and Col. Marc Warren, a top legal officer on General Sanchez`s staff.

A confidential report in February by the International Committee of the Red Cross said that "military intelligence officers told the I.C.R.C. that in their estimate between 70 percent and 90 percent of the persons deprived of their liberty in Iraq had been arrested by mistake." Some of those people were released by units in the field without ever being sent to a permanent prison like the main one at Abu Ghraib, the report said.

In interviews since, a senior Army officer who served in Iraq criticized as overly cumbersome a process in which the Iraqi prisoners who had been labeled as security detainees, as opposed to common criminals, could be freed only by the release board.

In one incident described in detail by the senior Army officer, an aggressive roundup in September brought 57 Iraqis into custody. But a review by military intelligence officers at Abu Ghraib determined that only two of them had intelligence value and that the rest should be freed.

An American general at the headquarters in Baghdad overruled that decision, and dictated that all 57 Iraqis be kept in custody. The senior Army officer quoted the general as saying something like, "I don`t care if they are innocent; if we release them, they`ll go out and tell their friends that we`re after them."

In addition, the officer said, early judgments about who was a security prisoner were often made in haste and in error. "But once they were tagged as security detainees, it was very hard to get them released," said the officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of concern over retribution from superiors.

Only a few paragraphs of the report by General Ryder have previously been made public. They were summarized or cited in the report by General Taguba, which was completed in March and represented the results of the first major Army inquiry into the abuses, and focused on the conduct of military police. A second major report, by Maj. Gen. George W. Fay, is focusing on the role played by military intelligence, and is expected to be completed next week.

General Ryder`s review last summer of American detention facilities in Iraq was the first of two separate major studies conducted at the time, when the scope of the anti-American insurgency and its impact on American prisons in Iraq was just becoming apparent.

A second study, by Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, then the American commander at the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, remains classified. But public accounts by senior American commanders and Pentagon officials have said it focused more closely on issues related to interrogation, and that it included a recommendation that the military police who served as guards at the prison be integrated more closely into an interrogation process overseen by military intelligence officers.

In Baghdad this week, General Kimmitt defended the procedures used by American commanders there as being even more rigorous than those required by international law.

"There is a review board that is set up that is done far more frequently than required by the Geneva Conventions where a board takes a look at that person`s case," General Kimmitt said. "And after a period of time, when those persons are deemed to no longer be a threat to the security of the nation, then they are released."

A review of General Ryder`s report and of other documents and testimony about the detention system shows that there is still considerable uncertainty over the justice of the system, which is strained by the arrests of hundreds of people each week.

General Ryder recommended that "the process of screening security internees should include intelligence findings, interrogation results and a current threat assessment." He said these analyses should be provided to the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, a Pentagon civilian, who should provide "guidance for decisions" on whom to hold and whom to release, ensuring that the military was "carefully determining which detainees are to be classified as security detainees."

American officials in Baghdad have provided no indication that this recommendation was adopted. A military spokesman, Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, said in Baghdad on Friday that there were still 6,500 Iraqi detainees in Iraq, with 3,000 in Abu Ghraib alone. But he said the detainees` cases were being reviewed by military judges and lawyers, as part of an accelerated process that General Sanchez outlined in early May.

At the time of his report last November, General Ryder said that there were about 3,400 security internees in custody, and that about 900 had been released. It is not known how many prisoners now held in Iraq are classified as security internees.

John H. Cushman Jr. contributed reporting for this article.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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SPIEGEL ONLINE - 29. Mai 2004, 19:44
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,302096,00.html

Terror in Saudi-Arabien

US-Amerikaner und Italiener in Geiselhaft

Al-Qaida-Kämpfer haben in der saudi-arabischen Stadt Chobar etwa 50 Geiseln genommen, darunter US-amerikanische und italienische Staatsbürger. Zuvor hatten die Terroristen nach Angabe des saudi-arabischen Kronprinzen Abdullah mindestens zehn Menschen getötet.

Chobar - In einigen Berichten ist sogar von insgesamt 16 Menschen die Rede, neun Arabern und sieben Ausländern, die bei dem Anschlag im 400 Kilometer nordöstlich der saudi-arabischen Hauptstadt Riad gelegenen Chobar getötet wurden. Mittlerweile halten die islamischen Extremisten dort mindestens 50 Menschen als Geiseln fest.

Kronprinz Abdullah will die Terroristen gewaltsam in die Knie zwingen. "Wir werden diese niederträchtige Gruppe verfolgen, bis wir sie ausgeschaltet haben", erklärte er gegenüber der saudi-arabischen Presseagentur.

Der Hausverwalter des luxuriösen Wohnkomplexes "Oasis" sagte der Nachrichtenagentur Reuters: "Sie haben 50 Geiseln, darunter US-Amerikaner, aber mehr Italiener sowie Araber." Er sagte, die Wohnanlage habe ein italienisches Restaurant. Es lebten 20 Italiener dort. Ein Nachbar berichtete, die Angreifer hätten darauf geachtet, nur nicht-muslimische Bewohner als Gefangene zu nehmen.

Ein Polizeisprecher teilte der Nachrichtenagentur AP mit, die Täter säßen im sechsten Geschoss der Wohnanlage fest. Augenzeugen berichteten, die Angreifer hätten uniformähnliche Kleidung getragen.

Bekennerschreiben al-Qaidas

Die Gruppe bewaffneter Männer hatte zuvor das Gelände zweier Ölfirmen in Chobar gestürmt und nach Angaben des saudi-arabischen Kronprinzen Abdullah mindestens zehn Menschen erschossen. Al-Qaida bekannte sich im Internet zu dem Angriff, der sich gegen US-Unternehmen richte, die muslimische Bodenschätze stehlen würden.

Bei dem Terrorangriff wurde ein US-Amerikaner getötet. Unter den Opfern sind nach Medienberichten auch ein Brite, zwei Philippiner, ein Inder, ein Pakistaner und ein zehnjähriger Junge aus Ägypten. Auch ein kleines Mädchen sei zu Tode gekommen, teilte Kronprinz Abdullah mit. Die vier Angreifer seien umstellt, sagte er bei einem Treffen mit Professoren der König-Abdul-Asis-Universität in Dschiddah. Nach einem Feuergefecht mit Sicherheitskräften verschanzten sich die Terroristen in der Wohnanlage.

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2004

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SPIEGEL ONLINE - 29. Mai 2004, 18:09
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,302092,00.html

Terror in Saudi-Arabien

Al-Qaidas neues Schlachtfeld

Von Yassin Musharbash

Wieder hat es einen Anschlag gegen westliche Einrichtungen in Saudi-Arabien gegeben. Mindestens 16 Menschen starben, darunter neun Ausländer. Das Terrornetzwerk al-Qaida hat sich zu dem Anschlag bekannt. Der Angriff gehört zur neuen Strategie der al-Qaida, das Wüstenreich mit Terror zu überziehen.

Hamburg - Es ist ein Zufall, und doch ist es keiner: Fast auf die Minute genau parallel zum al-Qaida-Anschlag in der ost-saudischen Stadt Chobar erschien heute im Internet ein neuer Strategieaufsatz des Bin-Laden Statthalters auf der arabischen Halbinsel. Unter der Überschrift "Planung von Operationen" beschrieb Abd al-Aziz al-Mukrin, wie ein beispielhafter Attentatsplan aussehen könnte. Als denkbares Ziel hatte er sich, symbolhaft und zu Demonstrationszwecken, den ihm verhassten saudischen Innenminister Prinz Naif Ibn Abd al-Aziz ausgesucht.

Gegen das saudische Königshaus richtete sich auch der heutige Anschlag - selbst, wenn er in erster Linie im Wüstenkönigreich lebende Ausländer traf. Für das Terrornetzwerk der al-Qaida sind Ausländer und saudisches Establishment längst zu einer Einheit verschmolzen, die mit aller Macht bekämpft werden muss. "Die Allianz aus Ungläubigen und vom Glauben Abgefallenen" heißt es in den einschlägigen Dokumenten zumeist in einem Atemzug. Die Islamisten fordern sowohl ein bedingungsloses Ende der Kooperation der saudischen Herrscher mit westlichen Firmen und Staaten, als auch den Sturz der als ungläubig betrachteten Monarchie selbst.

Bekennerschreiben im Internet

Welche Seite der Allianz sie mit ihren Anschlägen zuerst treffen, ist zweitrangig. Die bevorzugten Anschlagsziele der Terroristen in Saudi-Arabien sind deshalb abwechselnd westliche Einrichtungen oder der saudische Sicherheitsapparat, die Hauptstütze der königlichen Familie im Inneren. "Mit der Hilfe Gottes hat eine Einheit unserer heldenhaften Mudschahedin heute amerikanische Firmen gestürmt, die im Ölgeschäft tätig sind und das Kapital der Muslime stehlen", hieß es in dem Bekennerschreiben, das heute auf eine arabischen Website auftauchte, die schon in der Vergangenheit mehrfach für solche Zwecke benutzt worden war.

Dem heutigen Anschlag fielen dem bisherigen Kenntnisstand zu Folge mindestens neun Ausländer zum Opfer, darunter ein US-Amerikaner, ein Brite und ein zehnjähriger ägyptischer Junge. Sieben saudische Polizisten sollen ebenfalls ums Leben gekommen sein. Die US-Botschaft in Saudi-Arabien hat nach dem Terrorakt am Samstag noch im Land befindliche amerikanische Bürger aufgefordert, das Königreich sofort zu verlassen.

Die Terroristen hatten heute am frühen Vormittag in der Stadt Chobar ein Firmengelände mit Feuerwaffen angegriffen, das westlichen Unternehmen gehört, auf dem aber auch Mitarbeiter dieser Firmen leben. Bilder, die der Sender Arabiya TV ausstrahlte, zeigen unter anderem einen Mann, der offenbar in seinem Wagen erschossen wurde. Nach Eintreffen der Polizei flohen die Attentäter anscheinend in den benachbarten Wohnkomplex. Zwischenzeitlich nahmen sie eine libanesische Familie als Geiseln; diese wurden aber von saudischen Sicherheitskräften befreit. Später hieß es, die Polizei habe das Gebäude, in dem sich die Angreifer wohl verschanzt hielten, gestürmt. Ob auch die Angreifer Verluste erlitten, ist noch unklar. Im Internet bezichtigte sich eine der al-Qaida nahe stehende Gruppe der Tat.

Rekrutierung im Internet

Der Anschlag ist der jüngste in einer Serie von Terrorakten, die Saudi-Arabien in den vergangenen Monaten erschütterten. Erst vor wenigen Wochen kamen Dutzende Ausländer zu Tode, als Selbstmordattentäter das Gelände einer westlichen Firma mit Sprengsätzen angriffen.

Die gestiegene Zahl von Attacken nach Art des heutigen Anschlags deckt sich mit einem verstärkten Interesse der al-Qaida an einer Front in Saudi-Arabien. Vor einem knappen halben Jahr begann Bin-Laden-Statthalter al-Mukrin damit, sich deutlich vernehmbar via Internet an junge, zum islamistischen Kampf bereite Saudi-Araber zu richten. Alle zwei Wochen erscheint seitdem unter dem Namen "Ma`askar al-Battar" ein Online-Magazin, in dem alt gediente Qaida-Kämpfer und -Ideologen Aufsätze verfassen, die Terror rechtfertigen und den Gebrauch von Waffen erklären. Zu jeder Ausgabe steuert auch al-Mukrin selbst einen Text bei, der sich den "militärischen Wissenschaften" widmet.

In den letzten Monaten widmete er sich den Themen "Der Krieg in den Städten", "Entführungen", "Gezielte Attentate" und "Zellenbildung". "An alle, die nach Sprengstoff gefragt haben: Sprengstoff herzustellen ist nicht so schwierig, wie es immer heißt", schrieb al-Mukrin vor zwei Wochen. "So Gott will", versprach er, werde man in dem Magazin bald auch einen Kurs zur Handhabung explosiver Materialien anbieten.

Al-Qaidas Strategie für Saudi-Arabien

Deutlich lässt sich an al-Mukrins Beiträgen seine Strategie für den Dschihad in Saudi-Arabien ablesen: Es geht ihm darum, die Grenze zwischen dem sympathiesierenden Umfeld der al-Qaida und der Stammorganisation selbst zu verwischen. Explizit schrieb er in der letzten Nummer von "Ma`askar al-Battar": Es sei nicht nötig, vor Anschlägen um Erlaubnis zu fragen oder förmlich Mitglied zu werden. Al-Qaida beruhe auf einem System von Zellen, und "strebt nicht vornehmlich nach einer herkömmlichen, organisatorischen Einbindung." Der Dschihad in Saudi-Arabien sei vielmehr eine "allgemeine und ausnahmslose Pflicht" für alle Muslime. Außer Gottes Befehl brauche es nichts weiter; jeder, der den Dschihad begehre, solle einfach mit "seinen Brüdern" eine Zelle bilden.

Gut möglich, dass einige der Anschläge, von denen Saudi-Arabien in den vergangenen Monaten heimgesucht wurde, bereits von solchen Zellen begangen wurden, die sich auf al-Mukrins Aufrufe hin selbständig gebildet haben, ohne in ihrem Leben je einen alt gedienten Qaida-Kämpfer getroffen oder in einem Qaida-Camp gelebt zu haben.

Ob al-Mukrin sich in Saudi-Arabien aufhält, ist unbekannt. Es kann also auch nicht ausgeschlossen werden, dass er selbst aktiv am Geschehen beteiligt ist und die Fäden persönlich in der Hand hält. In letzter Zeit gab es allerdings auch Indizien, dass mehr als nur al-Mukrins Getreue in Saudi-Arabien operieren: Darauf deuten Texte al-Mukrins hin, in denen er sich von solchen Anschlägen in Saudi-Arabien distanziert, bei denen auch Muslime zu Schaden kamen.

Doch ob al-Mukrin der alleinige Chefplaner ist oder nicht: Abreißen wird die Anschlagsserie in überschaubarer Zeit wohl kaum. Darauf deutet zumindest all das hin, was aus mit hoher Wahrscheinlichkeit authentischen Qaida-Dokumenten zu erfahren ist. Außerdem ist die militante islamstische Opposition in dem fragilen Ölstaat mittlerweile von beachtlicher Größe und Schlagkraft. In der letzten Zeit gebe es "viele Vorbereitungen", warnte al-Mukrin Mitte Mai. Das alles sei notwendig für "Die Ausweitung unseres Dschihades gegen die Feinde Gottes".

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2004

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Sat 29 May 2004

Will one of these men become the next Osama Bin Laden

PAUL HAVEN AND CHRIS TOMLINSON IN ISLAMABAD

FROM the Sahara to the jungles of Indonesia and in the cauldron of unrest that is Iraq, a new generation of terrorists is emerging to take the place of elders who have been killed, captured or forced underground.

Young, violent and energised by a deep hatred for the United States - as well as its western allies and Muslim governments seen as kowtowing to Washington’s will - the new class has been writing a new history of terror in blood, from Istanbul to Madrid to Yanbu, Saudi Arabia.

"These are the men that are the new, 21st-century terrorists," said Evan Kohlmann, a US-based terror expert. He said it is "very literally, a group of second generation Osama bin Ladens".

At the fore of the next generation is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, 38, a former commander for bin Laden, linked to terror groups from North Africa to the Caucuses. He has allegedly maintained ties to al-Qaeda and is believed to be leading resistance to the US occupation of Iraq.

Zarqawi might be the villain of the day, but he is by no means alone among the new faces taking up senior positions in the most feared terror groups.

In Indonesia, Zulkarnaen, a former biology student who is one of the few militants from the region to have trained in Afghanistan, stepped in late last year as operations chief for the al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah, replacing Hambali after his August arrest. Zulkarnaen, whose real name is Aris Sumarson, is believed to be about 40.

Another new Jemaah Islamiyah leader is Dulmatin, 33, a Malaysian electronics expert nicknamed "Genius" who is believed to have designed the bomb in the 2002 Bali attack that killed more than 200 people.

In Spain, a Moroccan named Amer Azizi, 36, is believed to have supervised the bombings in Madrid, acting as a link between Zarqawi and a cell of mostly Moroccan al-Qaeda members.

In Turkey, authorities say they are looking for a man in his 30s named Habib Akdas who was little known before he allegedly orchestrated bombings in Istanbul in November that killed more than 60 people.

Some of the most virulent new guard are not waiting for the capture or killing of their predecessor to move to the fore.

Last year, Nabil Sahraoui, an Algerian in his mid- to late 30s with a reputation for ruthlessness, ousted the leader of the North African Salafist Group for Call and Combat and quickly pledged allegiance to bin Laden.

Another man experts say will likely be heard from again in the form of acts of savagery is Abdulaziz Issa Abdul-Mohsin al-Moqrin, 30, a drop-out trained in Afghanistan who is believed to have had a role in the attacks in May and November 2003 in Saudi Arabia that killed 51.

Men such as bin Laden and his right-hand man, the Egyptian surgeon Ayman al-Zawahri, met in the CIA-funded Afghan war against the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Their focus on international terrorism moved into high gear following the first Gulf war in 1990-91 and the US decision to keep permanent military bases in Saudi Arabia.

Largely ignored by the outside world, they found a home in the chaos of 1990s Afghanistan, which was destroyed by war and ultimately fell under the sway of a young, impoverished Islamic student movement known as the Taleban.

Today’s terrorists have a new incubator: Iraq. The top US commander in the Persian Gulf area, General John Abizaid, acknowledged in March that foreign terrorists have "gotten themselves established" in Iraq. Officials believe Zarqawi is leading them, although some analysts warn other figures might be in the background.

Mohammed Salah, an Egyptian journalist who has focused on al-Qaeda and other extremist groups, said men such as Zarqawi and other terror "stars" are not the end of the story and are probably not behind every attack they are blamed for.

"It is important to note that it could be in al-Qaeda’s interest to propagate certain names while others work in the shadows," he said. "Also, governments sometimes have the tendency to blame any attacks on the known fugitives because they need to blame someone."

Iraq is by far the most troubling spot on the globe, but many analysts point to Africa as another area of concern. Terrorists across the continent have taken advantage of weak, ill-equipped governments and vast, ungoverned spaces.

While most African Muslims are moderates, poverty and discontent have combined to inspire a significant number of young men to join terrorist ranks.

Sahraoui’s Algerian Salafist group was blamed for the kidnapping of 32 European tourists last year. The Algerian group also has connections with similar groups in Libya and Morocco, and many of the leaders trace their beginnings to Afghanistan.

Azizi, the leader of the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, who has connections to Zarqawi and the Madrid bombing, trained in Bosnia and Afghanistan and has spent time in Iran.

Two other men appear to be leading Moroccan operations - Abdelkrim Mejjati and Saad Houssaini. Both are wanted for last year’s attacks in Casablanca and in the Madrid bombings.

In East Africa, a Comorian named Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, 30, has been identified as the leader of that region’s terror cell.

Fazul was on the list of seven people the US justice department said last week are wanted for questioning in the midst of a fresh terror scare.

Kenyan police have also accused him of planning the 2002 bombing of a Kenyan hotel and an attempt to shoot down an Israeli airliner.

His apparent second-in-command is a Kenyan named Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, who Kenyan police say built the bomb used at the hotel and fired the missile at the airliner.

In the Philippines, Khadaffy Janjalani, thought to be in his 20s, is apparently trying to bring the main faction of the al-Qaeda-linked extremist Abu Sayyaf group back to its religious moorings.

More than two and a half years after the 11 September attacks, bin Laden and Zawahri are still out there, probably in one of the endless mountain folds along the Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier.

Followers say that by simply staying alive in the face of the largest manhunt in history, they are winning the battle with the US.

But today’s new guard does not have that luxury and is far more exposed, experts say.

Men like Zarqawi are on the front lines, and they are only important while they are successful in striking out.

The increased risk means the life expectancy of today’s generation of terrorists will likely be short, and turnover at the top of terror networks will be great.

"But these guys don’t care," said Richard Evans, an editor at Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Centre. "They consider themselves to be the first members of the new Islamic vanguard. There will be plenty more Zarqawis bubbling up to the surface over the coming months or years."


This article:

http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=1&id=609722004" target="_blank" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=1&id=609722004

International terrorism:

http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=1

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washingtonpost.com

Kerry Says Global Democracy Is Not His Top Issue
Democratic Candidate Makes National Security an Urgent Priority

By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 29, 2004; 5:00 PM

Sen. John F. Kerry indicated that as president he would play down the promotion of democracy as a leading goal in dealing with Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, China and Russia, instead focusing on other objectives that he said are more central to the United States` security.

Kerry, in a one-hour interview Friday night, also rejected setting a date for the withdrawal of U.S. soldiers from Iraq. Although the notion is gaining favor with more liberal Democrats, the party`s presumptive presidential nominee said "it is not a good idea just in a vacuum" because the timetable for reducing U.S. troops must be dictated by success in holding elections and establishing security and stability.

In many ways, Kerry laid out a foreign-policy agenda that appeared less idealistic about U.S. aims than President Bush or even fellow Democrat former president Bill Clinton. While Kerry said it was important to sell democracy and "market it" around the world, he demurred when questioned about a number of important countries that suppress human rights and freedoms. He said securing all nuclear materials in Russia, integrating China in the world economy, achieving greater controls over Pakistan`s nuclear weapons or winning greater cooperation on terrorist financing in Saudi Arabia trumped human rights concerns in those nations.

"Sometimes we are dealt a set of cards that don`t allow us do everything we want to do at once," he said.

During the interview, he eschewed the soaring rhetoric on freedom and democracy that are commonplace in Bush`s speeches or news conferences. At one point, he stumbled over the words when he tried to emphasize his interest in promoting American values: "The idea of America is, I think proudly and chauvinistically, the best idea that we`ve developed in this world."

Of promoting democracy overseas, Kerry said, "how fast you can do that and how rapidly others can embrace it and what can be expected over a period of time varies from place to place." Emphasizing his interest in setting realistic goals, he added: "Beware of the presidential candidate who just sort of says with a big paintbrush we`re going to make everything all right overnight."

The interview, conducted at his campaign headquarters in Washington, was part of an 11-day effort by the Kerry campaign to flesh out his foreign-policy agenda in preparation for the fall campaign battle. Last Thursday, Kerry outlined what he called his "foreign-policy architecture": rebuilding alliances; modernizing the armed forces; deploying diplomacy, intelligence, economic power and American values to overcome threats; and freeing the United States from its dependence on oil from the Middle East.

On Tuesday, he will give a speech outlining proposals on preventing a terrorist attack using nuclear and biological weapons, which include creating a high-level White House coordinator to oversee his plan to secure nuclear material around the world and accelerating efforts to secure such materials in the former Soviet Union. On Thursday, Kerry will present his proposals for restructuring the armed forces.

Bush`s campaign ads have sought to portray Kerry as a unreliable leftist who would undermine the war on terrorism. The Massachusetts Democrat has countered with a foreign-policy critique that mainly challenges Bush on tactics, not fundamentals. Challenged in the interview on how his approach differed from Bush in certain areas, such as Iraq and arms proliferation, and Kerry often cited more attention to detail or greater urgency�in other words, competence over ideology.

During this period of campaigning, Kerry has not outlined a new strategy for the most vexing foreign policy issue: the situation in Iraq. He articulated a plan for Iraq several weeks ago which, with minor nuances, is similar to Bush`s current approach, though he has argued that Bush has so badly damaged relations with major allies that only a new president can win international support for the U.S. plan in Iraq. (Kerry also argues that Bush has progressively moved toward his position on Iraq.)

Kerry, who has devoted much of his two-decade Senate career to foreign-policy issues, was comfortable and confident in answering questions that hopscotched across the globe and various trouble spots. He provided detailed and sometimes complex answers that occasionally drew on his experiences in meeting leaders in the Middle East, Asia and Latin America.

He said he would aim to set clear priorities after deciding what is most important and achievable in dealing with other countries. He also said he would balance those goals so no single objective overwhelms the administration or leaves other concerns festering. He accused to the Bush administration of having an "Iraq-centric preoccupation" that has left little opportunity to deal with other pressing problems.

"Do you think they know where Latin America is? It is all part of the same problem," Kerry said. "It is the distinction between what is cosmetic and what is real. In the 20 years that I have been here, I have learned to distinguish between the two. This stuff going on is mostly rhetoric."

Kerry also accused the administration of having no plan to deal with North Korea`s rush to build its nuclear weapons arsenal. He derided the Bush administration`s long effort to set up six-nation talks to resolve the impasse over North Korea`s nuclear ambitions as a "fig leaf" designed to cover up its failure to have a coherent policy.

Kerry said he would immediately begin bilateral negotiations with North Korea -- a goal the Pyongyang government has long sought�but, perhaps in a nod to the sensitivities of the Japanese, South Koreans and Chinese, he also would not abandon the six-nation talks. "I would keep them both going," Kerry said. "I would do the six-party, but I would engage in bilateral discussions."

The Bush administration has argued that bilateral talks would reward North Korea for its behavior, and it was necessary to include the other nations to ensure a regional solution. Kerry declined to say what he would offer North Korea as inducements to give up its weapons but said he would be willing to discuss a broad agenda that includes reducing troop levels on the Korean Peninsula, replacing the armistice that ended the Korean War and even reunifying North and South Korea.

Kerry said Bush had made a serious mistake by not talking directly with Pyongyang. He said his advisers, such as former defense secretary William J. Perry and former national security adviser Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger had told him that when they were in the Clinton administration "they had no illusion that [North Korean leader] Kim Jong Il was probably cheating [on nuclear agreements] over here and trouble over there, but they were getting the process of a dialogue to get a verification structure," Kerry said. "You are better off engaged in that effort than disengaged."

Kerry was more cautious on whether he would allow talks with Iran, which has not had relations with the United States since the 1979 revolution. "It is one of the ironies of the Middle East," he said. "You look at Egypt and Saudi Arabia and you have governments who like us and people who don`t. In the case of Iran you have a government who doesn`t and people who do."

But Kerry he would need to know what the United States could expect if it began talks with the Islamic Republic, which is sandwiched between the two countries recently invaded by the United States -- Afghanistan and Iraq. He said he was "prepared carefully to explore the possibilities of what direct engagement might provide. But I`m not just going to engage in it for nothing."

Kerry has regularly attacked Saudi Arabia on the campaign trail as an unreliable partner in the fight against terrorism. He suggested he would punish the Saudis if they did not cooperate more fully on money laundering and the tracking of terrorist financing. "We cannot be hamstrung on Saudi oil," he said. "I don`t believe we have a free voice in the Middle East as long as we are dependent on the oil card. That is exactly what gets played. I think there has been this sweetheart arrangement that has deprived us of that ability."

On Egypt, Kerry said that he would not tie foreign aid to greater openness and reform. "I would first want to link it to the warmth of relationship with Israel and the effort to secure general stability in Middle East," he said. "You have to put your priorities first."

Kerry said that China, which is tightly ruled by the Communist party, could be the "principal partner" in his anti-proliferation effort and it is essential to build a partnership with China that recognizes "the unbelievable economic power and clout" it will acquire in the coming years. "China is moving" on democracy on its own accord, he said, asserting that although the central government is focused on party control, "the contest of different ideas at local levels is quite vibrant."

Kerry said Pakistan is a "critical relationship," and he said he would not immediately pressure President Pervez Musharraf to loosen the reins of power.

"Is he is strong man to a degree? Did he promise elections that have not occurred and all the rest? Yeah," Kerry said. "I don`t see that as the first thing that is going to happen in our priority of making America safer. It is a long term goal It is goal that I will keep on the table. But it is not the first thing that has to happen."

Instead, Kerry said, "I think the first priority is keep those [nuclear] weapons" out of the hands of radical Islamists in Pakistan, with the secondary objective of crushing al Qaeda through better intelligence sharing with Pakistani security services.

Kerry evinced little concern about the possibility that Islamic parties could sweep elections in Middle Eastern nations if open elections were permitted. He said he would not try to thwart the results if it appeared Islamic parties might win.

"The last time I looked, except for Florida, an election is an election," Kerry said.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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American Caligula
Posted May 28, 2004 thepeoplesvoice.org

By: Raymond Ponziny

"Let them hate so long as they fear." - Roman emperor, Caligula

http://liberty.hypermart.net/editorials/2004/American_Caligu…

"We will export death and violence to the four corners of the earth ..." - George W. Bush

George W. Bush, the schizophrenic by-product of an influential American family grew up in a wealthy decadent world steeped in generations of treachery and political intrigue.

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May 30, 2004
Hostages Released After Standoff in Saudi Arabia
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 4:08 a.m. ET

KHOBAR, Saudi Arabia (AP) -- Saudi authorities freed dozens of American and other foreign hostages Sunday after a shooting rampage turned into a daylong standoff with Islamic militants in the nation`s oil region. A Saudi security official said the lead attacker was in custody and two other suspects were being arrested.

At least 10 people -- including an American -- died in the attack claimed by an al-Qaida-linked group that began Saturday morning when gunmen in military-style dress opened fire on security forces at two oil industry compounds in Khobar, 250 miles northeast of Riyadh. The assailants then fled up the street, taking some 45-60 hostages in a high-rise housing mainly foreigners.

Before the release, Saudi security forces had stormed the walled housing compound and surrounded the attackers on the sixth floor of a building. A security official said one attempt during the night to storm the building where the hostages were being held was abandoned after booby traps were discovered.

But just after sunrise, three security forces helicopters arrived and dropped off commandos. Gunfire, heard sporadically overnight, rang out again. Within a few hours, the standoff was over.

Saudi officials wouldn`t comment on the condition or whereabouts of the hostages, saying only: ``It has ended. One has been arrested and two are in the process of being arrested -- they are surrounded.``

With reports of up to seven gunmen, it wasn`t clear if some of the gunmen had been killed.

Several Saudi newspapers reported Sunday that the attackers threw at least one body from the building where they were holed up and had mutilated some of the bodies of those they killed.

Reporters were kept back from the compound, but a bus carrying Saudi troops and other police and military vehicles could be seen pulling out. As forces withdrew, a Saudi soldier flashed a V-for-victory sign from the window of his gun-mounted vehicle.

Security officials have said 45 to 60 people were being held hostage, mostly Westerners including Americans, Italians and Dutch. But in Rome, the Italian Foreign Ministry said there were no Italians among the hostages. The Dutch Foreign Ministry said three Dutch hostages had been released.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Tom Casey said an American man who worked for an oil company was confirmed dead, but did not identify him or his employer. The Philippine ambassador to Saudi Arabia said that he had received reports that three Filipinos were killed in the attack.

The U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia reiterated a call to its citizens to leave the kingdom.

A statement posted on several Islamic Web sites claimed the attack in the name of the Al-Quds (Jerusalem) Brigade and was signed the ``al-Qaida in the Arab Peninsula.`` It said the attacks targeted U.S. companies and that a number of ``crusaders`` had been killed.

One Saudi official security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the method of the attack was ``definitely inspired by al-Qaida.``

The second deadly assault this month against the Saudi oil industry came as oil prices have been driven to new highs partly by fears that the Saudi kingdom -- the world`s largest oil producer -- is unable to protect itself from terrorists.

``The terrorists` goal is to disrupt the Saudi economy and destabilize our country. But they will not succeed,`` Saudi ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan said in a statement released in Washington. ``With every desperate act of violence, our effort and resolve to destroy the terrorists only grows.``

The Arab satellite station Al-Arabiya reported the Saudi oil minister met with oil executives to assure them that the attack would not affect oil supplies. He planned to meet ambassadors on Sunday for the same purpose, the station said without attribution.

Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born, anti-Western Islamic extremist blamed for past terror attacks in Saudi Arabia and the United States, has vowed to destabilize the oil industry and undermine the kingdom for its close ties to the United States.

Michael Rothman, chief energy strategist at Merrill Lynch in New York, said there might be ``a limited psychological reaction`` in oil markets but that the Khobar attack would not affect supply.

Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah said about 10 Saudis and foreigners were killed in the Khobar attack. The Saudi newspaper Al-Riyadh, quoting security officials in its Sunday edition, put the number dead at 16, including seven Saudi security agents. An American man, a 10-year-old Egyptian boy and three Filipinos were among those confirmed killed. British citizens and Saudi guards were also reportedly among the dead.

The Arab News, quoting witnesses, said the attackers dragged the body of an unidentified victim behind their car along a highway. Gunmen who attacked an oil contractor`s office in western Saudi Arabia earlier this month dragged the body of an American victim from the bumper of their car.

According to residents and employees of the Oasis Residential Resorts, where the hostage-taking occurred, the militants asked questions when they arrived that indicated they were trying to separate Muslims from non-Muslims. Islamic militants have been criticized in the Arab world for previous attacks in which Saudis and other Arabs were killed.

Lebanon`s ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Ahmed Chammat, told The Associated Press that five Lebanese hostages had been released.

One of them, Orora Naoufal, said she cowered in her apartment with her 4-year-old son for five hours after a brief encounter with two of the gunmen, whom she described as clean-shaven and wearing military uniforms.

She told AP by telephone that the gunmen asked her where the ``infidels`` and foreigners were, and whether she was Muslim or Christian.

``I replied: `I am Lebanese and there are no foreigners here.``` She said the gunmen told her to ``Go convert to Islam, and cover up and go back to your country.``

The Oasis compound is upscale expatriate housing that includes neighborhood necessities -- shops, restaurants, playgrounds, fitness centers -- in addition to a hotel and leisurely extras such as a grassy beach in a private Gulf cove and an ice-skating rink, according to the compound`s Web site.

One of the targeted oil industry compounds contains offices and apartments for the Arab Petroleum Investment Corporation, or Apicorp, and the other -- the Petroleum Center building -- houses various international firms.

The Egyptian boy who was killed was the son of an Apicorp employee, said Mahmoud Ouf, an Egyptian consular officer in Riyadh. Apicorp, in a brief statement published in the Saudi newspaper Al-Jazirah on Sunday, said three of its employees were among the dead. Apicorp is the investment arm of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Countries.

Offices at the Petroleum Center include a joint venture among Royal Dutch/Shell Group, Total SA and Saudi Aramco; Lukoil Holdings of Russia; and China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., or Sinopec. All of those employees were safe, said Shell spokesman Simon Buerk and a Saudi oil industry official, Yahya Shinawi, though it wasn`t clear whether other companies had accounted for all their employees.

In London, the British Foreign Office was investigating reports that a British citizen was killed.

Saudi Arabia relies heavily on 6 million expatriate workers to run its oil industry and other sectors. The kingdom produces about 8 million barrels of oil a day.

Saudi Arabia launched a high-profile crackdown on terrorists after attacks on Riyadh housing compounds in 2003. The most recent attack targeted the offices of Houston, Texas-based ABB Lummus Global Inc. in the western city of Yanbu on May 1, killing six Westerners and a Saudi. Many expatriates left after the Yanbu attack.

Copyright 2004 The Associated Press

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Las Vegas is at the center of a population boom that has transformed the American desert over the last three decades.

Ein Flash über Las Vegas:
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/khtml/2004/05/29/national/20…
http://www.fordham.edu/general/Graduate_Schools/The_Fordham_…
May 30, 2004
AMERICAN DREAMERS | THE BUDGET SUITES
Seekers, Drawn to Las Vegas, Find a Broken Promised Land
By DEAN E. MURPHY

LAS VEGAS, May 29 — South on Las Vegas Boulevard, well beyond the casino-scraped skyline, there is a three-story hotel where tourists seldom go.

The parking lot is sprinkled with U-Haul trucks and trailers. A school bus stops at the front office. A sign on the lawn offers discounts for guests who stay a week or more.

Inside the no-frills rooms, where sheets and blankets cost extra, a desert city`s promise of new beginnings is regularly put to the test. This busy hotel and others in the Budget Suites of America chain are the cinder-block equivalent of circled wagon trains, a community of dreamers, pioneers and strivers pulling up for a while en route to someplace and something better.

"When we got here, I slept wrapped up in my dad`s shirts," said Jamie Rose Galloway, a toughened California transplant whose family recently passed her 17th birthday in a two-room unit at the back. "We`ve been through worse. We were homeless once and lived in my dad`s truck."

Many newcomers to Las Vegas use the Budget Suites to find their footing in the slippery city, the eye of a population storm that has transformed the American desert from forlorn frontier to chosen land over the last three decades.

The metamorphosis has not only altered the barren landscape — Las Vegas and its suburbs in Clark County unfold across 235 square miles of desert, compared with 38 square miles in 1970 — it has exacted a social price that many newcomers find unbearable.

Based on federal tax returns, the Internal Revenue Service estimates that nearly 55,000 people gave up on their dream of living in southern Nevada last year and moved elsewhere. A study in 2003 by the Fordham Institute for Innovation in Social Policy identified Nevada and its neighbors Arizona and New Mexico as "social recession" states because of chronic problems like crime, child poverty, suicide among the elderly, and high school dropouts.

"It is just growing too fast for its own good," said Sarah S., a 25-year-old bartender from Missouri, who put up at the Budget Suites on her way to Dallas with her husband and 6-year-old daughter after two years in Las Vegas. "I don`t give out our full name to anyone. I learned that living here."

The hotel on Las Vegas Boulevard South, like seven other Budget Suites in the city and its suburbs, is owned by Robert T. Bigelow, a wealthy businessman and U.F.O. enthusiast who a few years ago pledged to spend $500 million developing tourism in space. On earth, Mr. Bigelow`s properties are the buzz of the Internet among people mulling a move to Nevada, the nation`s fastest growing state for 17 consecutive years, and even with the flaws, its newest perpetual dream machine.

"We were pretty lucky and our only problem was kids racing shopping carts down the hill in the parking lot," one new resident, Walt Flesher, wrote in recommending the Budget Suites on the Web site www.movetolasvegas.com. "Smashed into the side of my wife`s car a week before we moved out."

Mr. Flesher, 61, and his wife, Shelley, 57, spent three months in a two-bedroom unit on Boulder Highway, piling their furniture from their townhouse in Anaheim, Calif., into the extra room. They moved out last spring to the southern fringe of the desert after buying a $193,000 house with a brown gravel yard and a twinkling view of the Strip.

A year later, the desert has retreated and the view is now of a column of newer houses with gravel yards. Mr. Flesher`s primary preoccupation, his search for a permanent job, just ended. A computer system administrator by profession, he began working in the front office of a repair shop for Rolls-Royces and other luxury cars. The Fleshers celebrated with a $5.99-per-person steak and lobster dinner at a nearby casino.

"Thank God for the housing inflation in California, because we came out here with a good chunk of change," Mr. Flesher said. "I sent out lots of résumés and made lots of phone calls, but it was hard to even get an interview."

Waiting for the `Brink`s Truck`

The Budget Suites require no long-term commitments or credit cards. While that means little to guests with financial resources, it opens the doors to legions of credit-unworthy Americans. They arrive with a basic yearning for a good job and a house, regardless of the bumps on the road that brought them here.

"People really did once just pass through here, and now more and more they stay," said Hal K. Rothman, a professor of history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who has written extensively about the city. "Most everyone who comes here plans to move on. It is an opportunity stop. But what happens when this town loves you, it backs the Brink`s truck up to you, and lets you take what you want."

Jamie Rose`s mother, Lori Galloway, is still waiting for that truck. She is the family`s self-appointed cheerleader, seeing a garden with roses and daffodils in their future even as she recounts one hard-luck story after another.

At one low point in their lives in California, she would slip bologna and cheese under her blouse when buying bread at the grocery store. "What would you have done if your children were hungry?" she asked directly. "I could only afford the bread."

Things here are already better. She can keep meals on the table by making the rounds at church-run food pantries and frequenting bargain buffets at the casinos. She collected her family`s simple white dishware by playing a game the children call Dumpster diving. She found the vacuum cleaner that way, too.

The two blankets on their bed belong to a young mother in an upstairs unit. She lent them when her daughter, who plays with Breanne, Jamie Rose`s 10-year-old sister, told her that Breanne was cold at night. The Galloway sisters share the family`s only bed at the Budget Suites.

"I think this is going to be better for my kids," said Mrs. Galloway, whose 21-year-old son in California is expected to join them here this summer. "Jamie Rose likes to cook, and there is a great culinary school here."

Mrs. Galloway, 44, can take to complaining about gaining weight because of her heart medicine and about a government that does not seem much interested in helping families like hers, though she does collect a disability check every other week. But she catches herself.

"I sure would like a little more house," she said from the hotel sofa that doubles as her bed, before suggesting more cheerfully, "We are more of a family here."

Denny Cowie, who took a room in the building behind the Galloways after a divorce, holds a dark view of the hundreds of dreamy-eyed migrants he has encountered. He calls them "migrates" and says he also has no experience with any metaphorical Brink`s truck doling out easy riches.

Many dreams here go bad, Mr. Cowie explained between sips of beer outside his second-floor room, and his neighbors inevitably come begging - for alcohol, cigarettes, food and money. The downward spiral can get ugly, he said.

"There is nothing like coming home from work and seeing a squad car in the parking lot picking someone up," said Mr. Cowie, himself a migrant from Iowa. "Or watching doors get replaced with big holes kicked in them or TV`s with bullet holes. That stuff happens here all the time."

Like many of the Budget Suites` more grizzled residents, Mr. Cowie, who is 63, hides a softer side. Just inside his room is a desk arranged with yellowing photographs of his six sons from two marriages and the 1951 Ford pickup he used to race. In the kitchenette at the far end, Mr. Cowie keeps a cupboard stocked with bags of macaroni and cans of tomato sauce.

He buys the stash at a nearby 99 Cents Only Store, to give to his hotel neighbors when they run out of food.

Seduction and Delusion

"People can get devoured in this city," said Mr. Cowie, who works at a print shop that produces sex-business handouts available on many street corners. "The people staying here could be waiting for a house or an apartment, or maybe they have run away from something. There`s no way of knowing."

This is Las Vegas, after all, a place of seduction and delusion that treats its residents much like its visitors, anointing some as instant kings and queens while stubbornly refusing to make good on its promise to countless others. The Nevada state demographer, Jeff Hardcastle, said some surveys estimate that for every two new arrivals in Las Vegas and surrounding Clark County, one person leaves. The latest I.R.S. data puts the ratio closer to 1.5 to 1.

"You have people bouncing in and bouncing out," Mr. Hardcastle said.

No matter. More keep coming than leave from all corners of the United States, most in the single-minded pursuit of homeownership.

"There is money to be made in this town," said Rita Pina, 46, of Oakland, Calif., who has set up house in a Budget Suites near the North Las Vegas airport with her husband, Israel. "The plan is to get jobs, and within two years, buy ourselves a house."

The legions of hopeful settlers are so ample that officials here have trouble keeping up with the count. Mr. Hardcastle`s official forecast shows the state`s population growing by 1.3 million over the next 20 years, to 3.6 million. But no one really knows.

Driver`s licenses are one measure. In April, nearly 6,200 people traded in their licenses to the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles, nearly all of them here in Clark County. They came from 49 states, Puerto Rico, Guam and Canada. In March, the number exceeded 8,000. In 2003, about 250 people a day on average made the switch.

A House Built Every 20 Minutes

The new residents are only the latest to join a human procession decades long that is much bigger than Las Vegas. More than seven million people have moved to four states in the arid Southwest since 1970, churning sand dunes into urban concrete from Tucson to St. George, Utah.

Las Vegas and its suburbs have been a favored destination because of an abundance of work related to the gambling industry and an expanding stockpile of cheap housing. The state`s casinos won $930 million from gamblers in March, breaking a record set in January 2001, with half the money coming from business on the Strip.

Meanwhile, a new house gets built here on average every 20 minutes, and even that is not enough to keep up with the convoy of moving vans rolling into town.

"I am having a very hard time dealing with sellers right now because they are cocky, obnoxious and rude with so many buyers out there," said Rhonda Brinkerhoff, a real estate agent with Century 21 Express. "I made in the first three months of this year what I made in nine months last year. I`ve sold eight houses in the last two weeks. I have two buyers from New York, one from California, one from Ohio, one from Tennessee. They come from everywhere."

In the early years of the desert boom, most of the arrivals were fleeing the rust and snow and depressed fortunes of the Northeast for a place largely unknown beyond its scorched landscape.

Now they are more typically like the Galloways - failed, flawed or fed-up Californians trading one Western dream state for another. Some follow Californian businesses, which are being aggressively courted across the border by the Nevada authorities with tax breaks and other incentives.

"We have companies moving here from California with all of their employees," said A. Somer Hollingsworth, president of the Nevada Development Authority, a membership group that promotes Clark County. "The rule of thumb is that one-third of the people coming here are retirees, one-third come with a job lined up and one-third are looking for a job."

But a generation of migration has shattered many illusions about the costs of the desert pact. People still find houses and jobs here, but they also find air choked with construction dust, overstretched water supplies, poor health care, impossible traffic, soaring rates of teenage suicide and drug abuse and, seeping outward from the Strip, a 24-hour culture of gambling and sex that many newcomers with children ultimately find intolerable. In one indication of how fed up some people have become, mothers with children in tow were among the several hundred people who attended a meeting in March of the Nevada Gaming Commission to protest suggestive casino and hotel billboards.

The study by the Fordham Institute for Innovation in Social Policy reserved the "social recession" designation given to Nevada for the eight states that ranked the worst - from 43rd to 50th - in a composite of 16 social indicators, including such things as infant mortality and average wages, based on data from 2000. Most of the bottom-rung states were in the Deep South.

The survey found that Nevada was 50th in the nation in suicide among the elderly and food stamp coverage, 49th in high school completion and 47th in teenage drug abuse. It ranked 46th in homicides, 44th in teenage suicide and 43rd in child abuse. Its only ranking in the top 10 was 4th for "housing cost burden," a measure of the average construction cost of a house in relation to per capita income.

`There`s No Dream Here`

For many newcomers, even the top 10 ranking is no consolation because they cannot afford to buy a house.

An economic analysis prepared for the Nevada governor in 2002 showed that newcomers tend to be significantly worse off financially than other Nevadans. The report said that the adjusted gross income of the new arrivals was on average 30 percent lower than that of other residents.

The Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, estimates that over a quarter of the newcomers to Clark County have a household income of less than $25,000 a year. Only one in four has a college degree. Meanwhile, the cost of housing has soared, jumping 20 percent on new houses and nearly 30 percent on existing ones in the first three months of this year compared with the same period in 2003.

"I have no idea why people keep coming," said Ann Sheets, 31, a single mother of three girls who is moving back to Michigan, where she grew up. "I tried for two years, even working two jobs at a time. There`s no dream here. I see people at work in the same clothes they had on the day before."

Ms. Sheets has taken a third-floor room in the Budget Suites through July, when school lets out and she can leave for good. She intentionally chose a hotel away from the Strip, which she considers so offensive that she cupped her hands over the ears of her 7-year-old as she spoke about it.

"You can`t even drive down the street without seeing pictures of half-naked women," said Ms. Sheets, who has worked a variety of jobs, including ones at McDonald`s and on the slot deck at a casino. "Any reasonable parent that wants their kids to grow up and have a future doesn`t want to be here."

It was Ms. Sheets who sent the two blankets downstairs to the Galloways with her middle daughter, Amber, 11. Though Ms. Sheets had not met the Galloways, she had heard about them and their hopes for this city that she was giving up on. An earnest woman whose Mickey Mouse pullover did little to lighten the heaviness she exuded, Ms. Sheets wished them well.

"I don`t see the future here, but I guess everyone is different," she said.

Mrs. Galloway is banking on it. She drove her two daughters and their pint-size dog, Louie, across the Mojave from Riverside, Calif., in a 1992 Mitsubishi Mirage last November. Her husband, Tom, an imposing man with thick tattooed arms and a walrus mustache who hauls drywall on a big rig, arrived later.

There was not much to take with them. Most of their belongings, including the family photo albums and the big-screen television, were lost when they fell behind in payments on a self-storage unit. Still, the car, given to them by church friends, seemed cramped. There was a desktop computer, two big suitcases of clothing, a folder with important family papers and a small but heavy box with a dull brass finish.

The box, displayed prominently with a pair of fuzzy dice atop the television in their Budget Suites room, holds the ashes of Mr. Galloway`s parents.

"He fought under Patton and was there when the jeep rolled over on him," Mr. Galloway, 42, said proudly of his father, Nathan, who worked as a trucker in Los Angeles after leaving the Army. "He helped found the Teamsters. I met Jimmy Hoffa."

Mrs. Galloway slipped into the other room and returned with her father-in-law`s Army discharge orders from the heap of papers in the family folder. She also produced a pair of patches from his uniform.

"Luckily, this was not something we put in storage," she said. "We lost all of his medals. They auctioned them off or something."

Mr. Galloway took a Pepsi from the refrigerator and settled into the couch. The dog quickly nuzzled in his lap.

"I always liked it here in Las Vegas," he said. "It`s fresh and new. I hated California. We just figured, let`s get out of there."

Mrs. Galloway nodded. "The drugs and the gangs there. They have them here, too, but the police seem to be on top of it."

"We figured if we were going to start over again, this was the place," Mr. Galloway said. "There is no state income tax here, and it`s more likely for us to find work. If I lose my license, I can always go do maintenance at a casino."

"If you aren`t careful, you can gamble too much, though," Mrs. Galloway said.

"This is nothing compared to what we`ve been through," Mr. Galloway said.

"Yeah, this is heaven," Jamie Rose said, reaching for a cigarette.

"It`s cleaner here," Mrs. Galloway said. "Look around you. The houses are beautiful and the streets aren`t dirty filthy."

"The schools look nice too," Mr. Galloway said.

"They say the Mafia takes care of them," Mrs. Galloway said. "They all have air-conditioning and computers, and the libraries are nice."

The girls have not gone to school since they moved here, but Mrs. Galloway has filled out the enrollment papers for Breanne, who shares her mother`s smile and neighborliness and has taken to wearing a scarf over hair she just colored black cherry.

Jamie Rose, whose bared midriff reveals a pierced bellybutton, said she would rather start working to help the family get back on its feet. She keeps the card of a talent agent she was handed while watching Sandra Bullock film "Miss Congeniality 2" at the Klondike casino several miles down the boulevard. Getting that card is one of the few stories that makes Jamie Rose smile and seem like someone who just turned 17. Before their car broke down in a department store parking lot, where they finally just left it, the Galloways drove to the casino regularly for its 69-cent dinner special.

"My dream is to be an actress and have enough money to buy my dad a truck and my mom a house and a Viper," Jamie Rose said.

"You know what my dream is?" Mrs. Galloway said. "I`d like to be able to go the market and not have to put anything back."

"My own room and my own bed," Jamie Rose continued.

"A house with a yard to work in," Mrs. Galloway said.

Mr. Galloway`s cellphone rang.

"Tom," he answered.

"That`s the signal," Mrs. Galloway said. "He`s done here. He has to go back to work."

Mr. Galloway hung up. "They`re waiting for me," he said.

"Daddy, can I go to Wal-Mart?" Jamie Rose asked quickly. "I want to go shopping and buy a bathing suit and bras."

"You want to go to Silverton`s for chicken-fried steak?" Mrs. Galloway offered.

"No, I don`t need to go," Jamie Rose said.

"It`s your birthday," Mrs. Galloway said.

"No, no," Jamie Rose said. "It`s too expensive."

"We saved for it," Mrs. Galloway said. "Don`t worry."

Jamie Rose watched from the parking lot as Mr. Galloway jumped the back fence to get to his truck, the rumble of the diesel engine muffling the shouts of boys playing basketball with a storage shed roof as the hoop.

Mrs. Galloway finger-combed her matted curls, straightened her faded cotton tank top and asked a visitor for a ride to a church near the airport, which was handing out soup, canned meat and rice that day. She spoke mostly about how grateful she was to be starting a new life, but she cried all the way.



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company |

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"One of the amazing discrepancies in American society today is we`re literally changing how medicine is delivered in incredibly positive ways, and yet docs are still spending a lot of time writing things on paper - and sometimes it`s hard to read."
-- George W. Bush

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Click here to watch the trailer:http://www.dtriptv.org/watch.html

Coming to the Internet, a `Survivor` Parody of G.O.P.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/27/politics/trail/27TRAIL-TV.…
By CARL HULSE

Published: May 27, 2004

Democrats are hoping that Americans — at least Democratic-leaning Americans — have not yet had their fill of reality television.

Just in time for the summer re-run season, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is launching a "webisode" Internet parody of the Survivor series, giving visitors to the site at dtriptv.org a chance to vote some of their favorite Republican foes off the island over the next six weeks...

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May 30, 2004
MAKING VOTES COUNT
Who Tests Voting Machines?

Whenever questions are raised about the reliability of electronic voting machines, election officials have a ready response: independent testing. There is nothing to worry about, they insist, because the software has been painstakingly reviewed by independent testing authorities to make sure it is accurate and honest, and then certified by state election officials. But this process is riddled with problems, including conflicts of interest and a disturbing lack of transparency. Voters should demand reform, and they should also keep demanding, as a growing number of Americans are, a voter-verified paper record of their vote.

Experts have been warning that electronic voting in its current form cannot be trusted. There is a real danger that elections could be stolen by nefarious computer code, or that accidental errors could change an election`s outcome. But state officials invariably say that the machines are tested by federally selected laboratories. The League of Women Voters, in a paper dismissing calls for voter-verified paper trails, puts its faith in "the certification and standards process."

But there is, to begin with, a stunning lack of transparency surrounding this process. Voters have a right to know how voting machine testing is done. Testing companies disagree, routinely denying government officials and the public basic information. Kevin Shelley, the California secretary of state, could not get two companies testing his state`s machines to answer even basic questions. One of them, Wyle Laboratories, refused to tell us anything about how it tests, or about its testers` credentials. "We don`t discuss our voting machine work," said Dan Reeder, a Wyle spokesman.

Although they are called independent, these labs are selected and paid by the voting machine companies, not by the government. They can come under enormous pressure to do reviews quickly, and not to find problems, which slow things down and create additional costs. Brian Phillips, president of SysTest Labs, one of three companies that review voting machines, conceded, "There`s going to be the risk of a conflict of interest when you are being paid by the vendor that you are qualifying product for."

It is difficult to determine what, precisely, the labs do. To ensure there are no flaws in the software, every line should be scrutinized, but it is hard to believe this is being done for voting software, which can contain more than a million lines. Dr. David Dill, a professor of computer science at Stanford University, calls it "basically an impossible task," and doubts it is occurring. In any case, he says, "there is no technology that can find all of the bugs and malicious things in software."

The testing authorities are currently working off 2002 standards that computer experts say are inadequate. One glaring flaw, notes Rebecca Mercuri, a Harvard-affiliated computer scientist, is that the standards do not require examination of any commercial, off-the-shelf software used in voting machines, even though it can contain flaws that put the integrity of the whole system in doubt. A study of Maryland`s voting machines earlier this year found that they used Microsoft software that lacked critical security updates, including one to stop remote attackers from taking over the machine.

If so-called independent testing were as effective as its supporters claim, the certified software should work flawlessly. But there have been disturbing malfunctions. Software that will be used in Miami-Dade County, Fla., this year was found to have a troubling error: when it performed an audit of all of the votes cast, it failed to correctly match voting machines to their corresponding vote totals.

If independent testing were taken seriously, there would be an absolute bar on using untested and uncertified software. But when it is expedient, manufacturers and election officials toss aside the rules without telling the voters. In California, a state audit found that voters in 17 counties cast votes last fall on machines with uncertified software. When Georgia`s new voting machines were not working weeks before the 2002 election, uncertified software that was not approved by any laboratory was added to every machine in the state.

The system requires a complete overhaul. The Election Assistance Commission, a newly created federal body, has begun a review, but it has been slow to start, and it is hamstrung by inadequate finances. The commission should move rapidly to require a system that includes:

Truly independent laboratories. Government, not the voting machine companies, must pay for the testing and oversee it.

Transparency. Voters should be told how testing is being done, and the testers` qualifications.

Rigorous standards. These should spell out in detail how software and hardware are to be tested, and fix deficiencies computer experts have found.

Tough penalties for violations. Voting machine companies and election officials who try to pass off uncertified software and hardware as certified should face civil and criminal penalties.

Mandatory backups. Since it is extremely difficult to know that electronic voting machines will be certified and functional on Election Day, election officials should be required to have a nonelectronic system available for use.

None of these are substitutes for the best protection of all: a voter-verified paper record, either a printed receipt that voters can see (but not take with them) for touch-screen machines, or the ballot itself for optical scan machines. These create a hard record of people`s votes that can be compared to the machine totals to make sure the counts are honest. It is unlikely testing and certification will ever be a complete answer to concerns about electronic voting, but they certainly are not now.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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May 30, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Tilting the Playing Field
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

The American public has been treated to such a festival of mea, wea and hea culpas on Iraq lately it could be forgiven for feeling utterly lost. Americans are caught between a president who continues to wax utopian about Iraq and an analytical community that has become consumed by despair. This is no way to run a railroad. There are better ways to think about this problem. A good place to start is by thinking about Russia.

I have a "Tilt Theory of History." The Tilt Theory states that countries and cultures do not change by sudden transformations. They change when, by wise diplomacy and leadership, you take a country, a culture or a region that has been tilted in the wrong direction and tilt it in the right direction, so that the process of gradual internal transformation can take place over a generation.

I believe that history will judge George Bush 41, Mikhail Gorbachev, Brent Scowcroft, James Baker, Helmut Kohl, Margaret Thatcher and François Mitterrand very kindly for the way they collectively took the Soviet Empire, which was tilted in the wrong direction for so long, and tilted it in the right direction, with barely a shot fired. That was one of the great achievements of the 20th century.

Is Vladimir Putin`s Russia today a Jeffersonian democracy? Of course not. But it is a huge nation that was tilted in the wrong direction and is now tilted in the right direction. My definition of a country tilted in the right direction is a country where there is enough free market, enough rule of law, enough free press, speech and exchange of ideas that the true agent of change in history — which is something that takes nine months and 21 years to develop, i.e. a generation — can grow up, plan its future and realize its potential.

Democracy-building is always a work in progress — two steps forward, one step back. No one should have expected a utopian transformation of Iraq. Iraq is like every other tribalized Arab state, where democracy is everyone`s third choice. Their first choice is always: "My tribe wins and my rivals lose." Second choice is: "My tribe loses, so yours must lose too." Third choice is: "My tribe wins and so do my rivals."

Our hope should be that Iraqis back into democracy, back into that third choice — not as a result of reading our Bill of Rights but by reading their own situation and deciding that a pragmatic, power-sharing compromise among themselves is better than endless violence. Democracy will take root in Iraq through realism, not idealism. We did not and cannot liberate Iraqis. They have to liberate themselves. That is what the Japanese and Germans did. All we can hope to do is help them tilt their country in a positive direction so the next generation grows up in an environment where progressive forces and win-win politics are not stymied by a predatory state tilted against them.

"I think this is a good time for sober realism, which means focusing on what is possible in Iraq, and what is the minimum we want from Iraq, not on what we would ideally like in Iraq," notes Michael Mandelbaum, the Johns Hopkins foreign policy expert, whose delightful new book, just out this week, entitled "The Meaning of Sports," contains many parallels between what makes for successful teams and successful countries. "The minimum we want is an Iraq that is reasonably stable, and doesn`t harbor terrorists or threaten its neighbors."

As one who believed — and still does — in the possibility and the importance of tilting the Arab-Muslim world from the wrong directions detailed in the U.N.`s Arab Human Development Reports to the right ones, I detest the politically driven failures of the Bush team in Iraq. In a panic, the Bush team, having lost its exaggerated realist rationale for the war — W.M.D. — has now gone to the other extreme and offered us an exaggerated idealist rationale — that all Iraqis crave freedom and democracy and we can deliver this transformation shortly, if we just stick to it.

We need to rebalance our policy. We still have a chance to do in Iraq the only thing that was always the only thing possible — tilt it in a better direction — so over a generation Iraqis can transform and liberate themselves, if they want. What might an Iraq tilted in the right direction look like? It would be more religious than Turkey, more secular than Iran, more federal than Syria, more democratic than Saudi Arabia and more stable than Afghanistan.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Editorial - The Independent: HOW CAN A FORMER C.I.A. MAN BE AN HONEST BROKER IN IRAQ? - 30 May 2004


This United States administration will never learn. It is critical to George Bush`s hope of re-election in November that the notional handover of power in Baghdad be seen by the Iraqi people as legitimate. Yet the Americans could not stop themselves manipulating the choice of interim prime minister.

As The New York Times reported yesterday, in the kind of headline unique to the American press, "Surprising Choice for Premier of Iraq Reflects US Influence". Amid the confusion of Friday`s news, two facts stand out. One is that Iyad Allawi used to work for the CIA; the other is that he was not chosen by Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations envoy.

Mr Brahimi was the guarantor that the interim government of Iraq would be independent of the US. But Mr Allawi was chosen on Friday by the Iraqi Governing Council, which is generally seen in Iraq as a puppet theatre. Paul Bremer, the chief US administrator, attended the session and congratulated Mr Allawi on his nomination. Mr Brahimi did not. He was left to say, through his spokesman, that he "respects" the decision and could work with Mr Allawi. All he would say himself, when a journalist spoke to him in Baghdad, was: "You know, sometimes people think I am a free agent out here."

Not any more.

The idea that the Iraqi people will rally behind Mr Allawi and accept him as an honest broker charged with overseeing national elections by the end of January 2005 must now be added to the long list of Bush-Rumsfeld delusions. It is difficult to foresee anything other than yet more bloodshed and disorder stretching up to and beyond the US presidential election in November.

What is extraordinary is that the Bush administration, having made so many mistakes in Iraq, each compounding the original disastrous decision to embark on this imperial adventure, continues to make yet more. Iraqi elections were postponed until after the US ones because the Americans feared that they would be won by supporters of Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the Shia leader. That has only incited the nationalist insurgency and strengthened the hand of more extreme Shia leaders. The nomination of Mr Allawi will reinforce both trends.

If our hope that Mr Bush might learn from his mistakes has been repeatedly dashed, however, so has our hope that Tony Blair might at last start to exert his much-vaunted influence on his friend. It was reported that the British advised early elections in Iraq; if so, they were brushed aside. It has been suggested that, in the drafting of the resolution shortly to be considered by the UN, the British have "bounced" the Americans into ceding ultimate authority over US troops in Iraq. But, if it turns out that Iraqi sovereignty means anything at all in the UN resolution, which is more likely: that it was secured by British "influence" or outright French, Russian and Chinese opposition?

The only kind of influence over the Bush administration that matters is the prospect of electoral defeat. The US electorate may have given the President the benefit of the doubt over the invasion itself, but they can recognise incompetence when they see it. This is not a time for whispering in deaf ears, but for the brutal exercise of the threat of American humiliation in Iraq. Mr Blair could, if he wanted, demand a heavy price for continuing to provide Mr Bush with the cover he needs with US domestic opinion. The Prime Minister must use it, or lose any claim to recover some respect from the ruins of Iraq.

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washingtonpost.com

4 U.S. Troops Killed Near Baghdad



Sunday, May 30, 2004; 1:02 AM

BAGHDAD, May 30 - Three U.S. Marines were killed in action in the volatile al-Anbar province west of Baghdad on Saturday, while a U.S. army soldier was killed in a separate mortar attack several days earlier, the U.S. military said.

A U.S. military statement issued on Sunday said the soldier was killed in a mortar attack on May 25 south of Baghdad, which also wounded nine soldiers. There was no more information on the circumstances of the deaths.

The al-Anbar province where the Marines were killed includes the flashpoint cities of Falluja and Ramadi.

The U.S. military also said it was investigating the death of a soldier from a unit based in the northern town of Mosul on Friday, which had not been caused by hostile fire.

Since the invasion last March, at least 588 U.S. troops have been killed in action in Iraq.

© 2004 Reuters

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May 30, 2004
FRANK RICH
It Was the Porn That Made Them Do It

THE day was April 2, 2003, the town was Najaf, the mood was giddy, and, yes, the citizens did greet the American liberators from the 101st Airborne Division with cheers. One Iraqi was asked what he hoped the Americans would bring, and Jim Dwyer reported the answer on the front page of The New York Times: " `Democracy,` the man said, his voice rising to lift each word to greater prominence. `Whiskey. And sexy!` "

Well, two out of three ain`t bad.

This joyous memory came rushing back after the grim revelation of yet another kink in the torture regime at Abu Ghraib. As if sexual humiliation and violent abuse weren`t punishment enough, the guards also made prisoners violate Islamic practice by force-feeding them booze.

How do we square the tales of American cruelty with the promise of democracy we thought we were bringing to Iraq? One obvious way might be to acknowledge with some humility that our often proud history has always had a fault line, running from slavery to Wounded Knee to My Lai. (Read accounts of Andersonville, the Confederate-run Civil War prison at which some 13,000 died, for literal echoes of some of Abu Ghraib`s inhumanity.) But there`s an easier way out in 2004: blame Janet Jackson for what`s gone wrong in Iraq, or if not her, then Jenna Jameson.

It sounds laughable, but it`s not a joke. Some of our self-appointed moral leaders are defending the morally indefensible by annexing Abu Ghraib as another front in America`s election-year culture war. Charles Colson, the Watergate felon turned celebrity preacher, told a group of pastors convened by the Family Research Council that the prison guards had been corrupted by "a steady diet of MTV and pornography." The Concerned Women for America site posted a screed by Robert Knight, of the Culture and Family Institute, calling the Abu Ghraib scandal the " `Perfect Storm` of American cultural depravity," in which porn, especially gay porn, gave soldiers "the idea to engage in sadomasochistic activity and to videotape it in voyeuristic fashion." (His chosen prophylactics to avert future Abu Ghraibs include abolishing sex education, outlawing same-sex marriage and banishing Howard Stern.) The vice president of the Heritage Foundation, Rebecca Hagelin, found a link between the prison scandal and how "our country permits Hollywood to put almost anything in a movie and still call it PG-13."

Some of these same characters also felt that the media shouldn`t show the Abu Ghraib pictures too much or at all — as if the pictures were the problem rather than what they reveal. They are of an ideological piece with Jerry Falwell, who, a mere two days after 9/11, tried to shift the blame for al Qaeda`s attack to the "pagans" and abortionists and gays and lesbians who have "tried to secularize America."

This time the point of these scolds` political strategy — and it is a political strategy, despite some of its adherents` quasireligiosity — is clear enough. It is not merely to demonize gays and the usual rogue`s gallery of secularist bogeymen for any American ill but to clear the Bush administration of any culpability for Abu Ghraib, the disaster that may have destroyed its mission in Iraq. If porn or MTV or Howard Stern can be said to have induced a "few bad apples" in one prison to misbehave, then everyone else in the chain of command, from the commander-in-chief down, is off the hook. If the culture war can be cross-wired with the actual war, then the buck will stop not at the Pentagon or the White House but at the Paris Hilton video, or "Mean Girls," or maybe "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy."

The hypocrisy of those pushing this line knows few bounds. They choose to ignore the reality that the most popular images of sadomasochism in American pop culture this year have been those in "The Passion of the Christ," an R-rated "religious" movie that many Americans took their children to see, at times with clerical blessings. Mel Gibson`s relentlessly violent, distinctly American take on Jesus` martyrdom is a more exact fit for what`s been acted out in Abu Ghraib than the flouncings of any cheesy porn-video dominatrix.

The other hypocrisy of the blame-the-culture crowd is that "normal Americans" — a phrase favored by Mr. Knight — don`t partake of the "secular" entertainment that is doing all this damage. In other words, the porn that led to prison abuse is all ghettoized in the blue states. The facts say otherwise. Phil Harvey, the president of the North Carolina-based Adam & Eve, one of the country`s largest suppliers of mail-order adult products, said in an interview last week that his business has "for years" been roughly the same per capita throughout the continental United States, with those Deep South bastions of the Bible Belt, Alabama and Mississippi, buying only 10 percent fewer sex toys and porn videos than everyone else. Even residents of the Cincinnati metropolitan area — home to Citizens for Community Values and famous for antismut battles over Larry Flynt and Robert Mapplethorpe — turned out to be slightly larger-than-average users of porn Web sites, according to a 2001 Nielsen Internet survey.

Americans, regardless of location or political affiliation, have always consumed a culture of sex and violence. David Milch`s explicit HBO recollection of the cruelty and carnality that accompanied our "winning" of the west, "Deadwood," is hardly fiction. As Luc Sante and Susan Sontag have pointed out, the photographs from Abu Ghraib themselves have a nearly exact historical antecedent in those touristy snapshots of shameless Americans posing underneath the victims of lynchings for decades after the Civil War. The horrific photos were sent around as postcards in the same insouciant spirit that moved Abu Ghraib guards to e-mail their torture pictures or turn them into screensavers — even though the reigning mass-culture pin-ups of the time were Mary Pickford and Shirley Temple rather than Janet Jackson or Britney Spears.

To blame every American transgression on the culture, whether the transgression is as grievous as Abu Ghraib or the shootings at Columbine or as trivial as lubricious teenage fashions, is to absolve Americans of any responsibility for anything. It used to be that liberals pinned all American sins on the military-industrial complex; now it`s conservatives who pin them all on the Viacom-Time Warner complex. It used to be liberals that found criminals victims of "root causes"; now it`s conservatives who find criminals victims of X-rated causes. Since it`s conservatives who are now in power, we`ve reached the absurd state where we have an attorney general who arrived in Washington placing a higher priority on stamping out porn than terrorism; we have a Federal Communications Commission that is ready to sacrifice a bedrock American value (the First Amendment) to the cause of spanking Bono for using a four-letter word on TV. As Congress threatens to police cable TV as well, we face the prospect that the history in "Deadwood" may yet be airbrushed by the government until it resembles "Little Women."

All of this is at odds with one of President Bush`s most persistent campaign themes. He has repeatedly vowed to introduce "a culture of responsibility in America" in which "each of us understands we are responsible for the decisions we make in life." Up to a point. Now he talks about how the Abu Ghraib pictures are not "the America I know." (Maybe he should get out more.) If he really practiced "a culture of responsibility" he would take responsibility for his own government`s actions rather than plead ignorance and express dismay. He might, for instance, explain how his own White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales, came to write a January 2002 memo that labeled the Geneva Conventions "quaint" and "obsolete" for dealing with prisoners in the war on terrorism (of which Iraq, we`re told, is a part). The dissemination of that memo`s legal wisdom through the Defense Department and the military command over the past 26 months may tell us more about what led to Abu Ghraib than anything else we`ve heard so far from the administration, let alone any Heritage Foundation press release that finds the genesis of torture in the sexual innuendos of prime-time television.

In his speech last Monday night, the president, reeling in the polls and seeking a life raft, seemed to be well on his way to adopting the cultural defense being pushed by his political allies. He called Abu Ghraib a symbol of "death and torture" under Saddam Hussein and then said that the same prison also "became a symbol of disgraceful conduct by a few American troops." The idea, it seemed, was to concede American fallibility, if not exactly error. But by reducing the charge to "disgraceful conduct," he was performing a verbal sleight-of-hand that acquitted those troops of torture and found them guilty instead of the lesser crime of pornographic horseplay. (He was also trying to confine culpability to a "few" troops.) Perhaps he hopes that we will believe that what happened at Abu Ghraib is the work of just a handful of porn-addled freaks, and that by razing the prison we can shut the whole incident down the way Rudy Giuliani banished the sex emporiums of Times Square.

But it`s hard to imagine that any of this will fool that man in Najaf who had hoped we`d replace the terror of Saddam with that elixir he rightly called democracy. Whatever else America may represent — whiskey and sexy included — it stands most of all for the rule of law. We won`t bring democracy to Iraq until those of high rank and low alike submit to an all-American prosecution for crimes that clearly extend well beyond the perimeters of pornographic pictures that, in the end, are merely the evidence.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ
U.S. Learns Art of the Deal in Iraq
Military softens stance in Najaf and Fallouja to limit casualties and lift hopes for stability.
By Edmund Sanders
Times Staff Writer

May 30, 2004

BAGHDAD — As they struggled to hold together a fragile cease-fire agreement amid sporadic fighting Saturday, American officials were — once again — preparing to carry out a peace deal that calls for significant concessions to an adversary they once vowed to crush.

Crucial details of a tentative agreement in the Iraqi city of Najaf were still being hammered out. But as the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority prepares to transfer sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government in a month, it appears eager to reach an accord with militant Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr and his militia by following a strategy similar to the one that helped end the bloodshed in the Sunni town of Fallouja.

The compromises reflect a shift away from relying on force to resolve clashes to an emphasis on political negotiation, experts say. "I too am bothered by talking so loudly and backing off," said retired Maj. Gen. William Nash, a military analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. "But the first rule of getting yourself out of a hole is to stop digging."

The new search for political compromise carries risks, such as appearing weak militarily and losing credibility in the already skeptical eyes of Iraqis.

For weeks, U.S. forces threatened to "kill or capture" the young cleric and "crush" his Al Mahdi militia, which seized control of key areas in Najaf and other Shiite holy cities nearly two months ago.

On Thursday, the Americans embraced an offer that could allow Sadr to remain free and delay decisions about disbanding his militia or enforcing an arrest warrant against him on charges that he plotted the killing of a rival.

The proposal came nearly a month after Marines in Fallouja dropped their demands that insurgents hand in their weapons and surrender the killers of four U.S. contract workers.

Instead, the military turned over control of the city to an Iraqi force led by a former officer in Saddam Hussein`s army.

In Fallouja and Najaf, American commanders began with similar objectives: to control the territory, disarm rebels and arrest wanted men.

Yet in each case they accepted a deal that protected Iraqis they had called "thugs" and "terrorists."

Why the sudden change of heart?

Both sets of negotiations were launched amid growing anxiety that the occupation could unravel as the June 30 hand-over of sovereignty approached.

In pursuing the deals, U.S. officials hoped to end the violence, reduce American casualties and increase stability before the interim Iraqi government took office.

U.S. forces were initially unyielding toward the rebellions in Fallouja and Najaf, sending in thousands of troops to enforce order. American troops quickly discovered that the harder they pushed militarily, the stronger the opposition grew politically.

"Because of the severe attitude and reaction by the coalition forces and the efforts to suppress the militias militarily, the militias became more influential in terms of public opinion," said Paul Wilkinson, a professor of international relations at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

Before the military closed Sadr`s tiny newspaper in March, the cleric was viewed chiefly as an irritant, a minor Shiite leader who was sometimes ridiculed for having to bus in supporters to listen to his speeches.

The crackdown turned Sadr, whose assassinated father is revered by many Iraqis, into a national symbol of anti-Americanism. His defiant attacks against the occupation struck a chord with thousands of young, disenfranchised Iraqis, who rushed to join his militia. Hundreds, many still in their teens, have fought to their deaths in recent weeks against U.S. forces in Kufa, Najaf and Karbala.

Likewise, in the eyes of many Iraqis, the U.S. attack transformed Fallouja from a fundamentalist enclave tied to Hussein`s regime and stigmatized by the March 31 killing and mutilation of four American civilian contractors into a victim of aggression.

In both cities, the U.S. had little choice but to pull back and search for a political solution.

"If they had pressed on with an attempt to eradicate the militia or to suppress their opponents, the political price would have been so high it would have made the job of establishing a transitional government almost impossible," Wilkinson said.

The compromise in Najaf is also a sign that U.S. strategists may have underestimated the frustration of Iraq`s majority Shiite population and overestimated its sectarianism.

"The coalition made too much of the religious divide," said Charles Heyman, a senior defense analyst at Jane`s Information Group. "Whether they are Sunnis or Shiites or Kurds, Iraqis have a sense of being Iraqi. If a Middle Eastern country tried to take over the U.S., there would be a groundswell of opinion against them, too. There is much more that bonds us together than keeps us apart."

Despite deep divisions among Iraq`s Shiites, their political leaders demonstrated a surprising — if sometimes reluctant — unity when it came to facing American forces.

"There`s a common saying in Iraq," explained one Shiite shopkeeper in Baghdad. "Me and my brother against my cousin. Me and my cousin against the stranger."

Although other Shiite leaders, including Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, frowned on Sadr`s calls to violence and his militia`s seizure of mosques and shrines, they refused to side with the Americans against him.

"Iraqis now feel there is only one enemy against them: the Americans," said Sheik Ahmed Shibani, a Sadr aide. He said the siege in Najaf backfired by unifying Shiites. "It has caused the rise of one Shiite leadership."

Such claims may be premature. Distrust among Shiite factions remains high.

For Americans, the tentative deal in Najaf — as it was in Fallouja — is designed in part to reduce casualties, a senior Pentagon official said.

"The way you avoid casualties is by not fighting," the official said. "And that`s effectively what`s going on down there." That approach has American commanders negotiating with unsavory, "Mafia-like" characters, the official said.

Under the terms of the deal, Sadr agreed to vacate government facilities and send some armed followers home. In return, the U.S. would pull back to small bases in and around Najaf and Kufa. Eventually, Iraqi police would take over security.

It`s too soon to know whether the tentative agreement will hold. It is being tested daily by skirmishes between U.S. troops and Sadr`s militia. On Saturday, U.S. forces said they killed Iraqi militiamen who fired rocket-propelled grenades near Najaf, Reuters reported. Heavier fighting Friday left three Iraqis dead and two Americans wounded.

Although the U.S.` exit strategy in Najaf appears similar to the one it pursued in Fallouja, resolving the standoff in the holy city could prove more complicated. As the center of Iraq`s Shiite community and home to historic shrines, Najaf holds great symbolism for about 60% of the population, raising sensitivity about the presence of U.S. troops.

But a withdrawal could leave a security vacuum that could be equally worrisome, particularly if inter-Shiite clashes escalate.

The compromises in Najaf and Fallouja may also carry long-term costs if they enable local leaders to create fiefdoms. That could undercut the authority of the future government in Baghdad and its security forces, possibly threatening to further splinter the country. Already the Kurds exercise virtual autonomy in the north.

In the short term, however, the U.S. may have few options.

"Rather than trying to eliminate the factions, it is better at this stage to withdraw and allow Iraqi administration of those cities until the new government is set up," Wilkinson said.

"Eventually the new government is going to have to deal with these people if the country is going to remain in one piece. The danger of breaking into separate enclaves is real. But what`s important now is to maintain a certain level of stability."

*

Times staff writer John Hendren in Washington contributed to this report.

Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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Shooting First
The preemptive-war doctrine has met an early death in Iraq
By Ivo H. Daalder and James M. Lindsay
Ivo H. Daalder, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and James M. Lindsay, vice president and director of studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, are coauthors of "America Unbound: The B

May 30, 2004

WASHINGTON — Two years ago this week, in a speech at West Point, President Bush formally enunciated his doctrine of preemption. "The war on terror will not be won on the defensive," the president told a graduating class of cadets. "We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans and confront the worst threats before they emerge. In the world we have entered, the only path to safety is the path of action. And this nation will act."

Within 10 months, Bush made good on his promise, sending U.S. troops 7,000 miles from home to depose Saddam Hussein. Less than two months after the first bombs were dropped, Bush landed on the deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln to declare "mission accomplished" before several thousand cheering sailors. Advocates of the new approach to foreign policy felt fully vindicated.

Today, the doctrine of preemption has fallen on hard times. Far from demonstrating the principle`s effectiveness, the Iraq war and its aftermath have ultimately underscored its limits. When Bush addressed the faculty and students at the Army War College last week, he spoke of staying the course in Iraq. But the problems that have plagued the U.S. occupation over the last year make it highly unlikely that preemption is a tactic that he will employ elsewhere anytime soon.

Bush`s preemption doctrine went well beyond anything previous presidents had contemplated. To be sure, the option of using force preemptively had existed for Bush`s predecessors. Some had used it — as Bill Clinton did in 1998 when he ordered an attack on a pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan, that U.S. intelligence suspected of producing nerve gas. But Bush`s conception of preemption far exceeded responding to an imminent danger of attack. He instead advocated preventive wars of regime change. The United States claimed the right to use force to oust leaders it disliked long before they could threaten its security.

Bush`s radical departure from past practice was based on two assumptions, both of which our experience in Iraq has shown to be flawed. The first was the belief that Washington would have access to reliable intelligence about the intentions and capabilities of potential adversaries. An enemy`s society might be closed, but our modern spy technologies could pry it open. We could peer into secret weapons sites from on high and listen to conversations and other communications without being detected. Our intelligence would be good enough to warn us of impending danger.

That assumption looks dubious 14 months after the fall of Hussein. On the eve of the Iraq war, Bush told the nation that "intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." A week into the war, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld boasted that "we know where they are."

Yet more than a year later, American troops still have not found any weapon of mass destruction (unless a single artillery shell, produced in the 1980s, that possibly contained sarin nerve gas, counts). The prewar intelligence predictions were so far off the mark that the president no longer argues that the war was justified because Iraq`s weapons of mass destruction programs posed a grave threat to American security.

The second assumption that drove Bush`s willingness to launch a preventive war was the belief that the technological edge held by the U.S. made the costs of war, if not cheap, then at least acceptable.

"We have witnessed the arrival of a new era," Bush declared on the flight deck of the Abraham Lincoln. In the past, "military power was used to end a regime by breaking a nation. Today, we have the greater power to free a nation by breaking a dangerous and aggressive regime." This belief, which seemed so convincing in the immediate afterglow of the U.S. military`s rapid march to Baghdad, looks naive in the wake of the fighting in Fallouja and Najaf. Not only have the costs of war escalated significantly in the 13 months since the president prematurely declared an end to major combat operations, but the emphasis on breaking regimes ignored the far more difficult task of rebuilding nations once their evil leaders have been ousted. As we now know all too painfully, our success in ousting a tyrant provides no guarantee that we will succeed in creating a stable and acceptable successor government.

With the Iraqi threat having turned out to be far less than advertised and the cost of occupying Iraq far higher, it is hardly surprising that preemption suddenly looks far less attractive. Earlier this year, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told the Washington Post that had he known then what he knows now about Iraq`s weapons capabilities, it would have changed "the political calculus; it changes the answer you get" when asking whether to go to war or not.

Many Americans now agree. Polls show that a majority now believes that the war in Iraq was not worth fighting. Persuading them, much less the rest of the world, to launch another preventive war elsewhere in the world would be a tough sell.

It may not matter whether the public can be persuaded. The Iraq occupation has badly strained the capabilities of the U.S. military. To maintain adequate troop levels in Iraq, the Pentagon recently decided to redeploy 3,600 soldiers from South Korea — the first reduction in U.S. force levels on the Korean peninsula since the early 1990s. Congress is considering legislation to increase the size of the Army, but the Pentagon has so far resisted the idea, and even if it passes, it will take several years to expand the force.

An overstretched U.S. military is still more than capable of preventive strikes against terrorist camps or presumed weapons factories. It is in no position, however, to wage a preventive war, let alone sort out the consequences.

Iran and North Korea — the two other charter members of Bush`s "axis of evil" — present far more daunting military challenges than Iraq did. Iran has three times the population, far greater domestic political support and many more friends beyond its borders. North Korea probably has nuclear weapons and, by virtue of the fact that Seoul sits only a few dozen miles from the demilitarized zone, it effectively holds the South Korean capital hostage.

Not being a man given to analyzing his missteps, Bush will not publicly bury the preemption doctrine he unveiled only two years ago. But all doctrines must eventually be measured against experience. And for that reason, Bush`s doctrine of preemption is, for all intents and purposes, dead.


Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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Curse of wartime presidents strikes G.W. Bush
Since World War II, no war-waging U.S. head of state has been re-elected
- Richard J. Rapaport
Sunday, May 30, 2004

Uncannily like his father and other presidents before him, George W. Bush is in the crosshairs of the curse of the wartime president.

It goes like this: Since the end of World War II, America has fought in Korea, Vietnam, Gulf I and Gulf II. No president responsible for taking America into those wars, or escalating the conflict, won an additional term.

In 1952, the Korean War forced Harry Truman to forget re-election. In 1968, Vietnam finished off Lyndon Johnson. In 1992, George H.W. Bush`s unwillingness to demobilize a presidency tainted by the perception of defeat snatched from the jaws of victory led to his humbling defeat.

Like father like son, George W. Bush has cloaked himself as a wartime president. Like his father, the younger Bush fails to discern that there is something about America that does not love war or wartime presidents. Instead, Americans favor candidates who evoke the nation`s favorite three words, "peace and prosperity".

In the months running up to what would have been re-election campaigns, Truman and Johnson recognized that war had undermined their ability to deliver the Fair Deal and War on Poverty that were their respective campaign themes. Each recognized that any campaign would devolve into referendums on unpopular wars that they would lose.

In Truman`s case, by 1952 the national voice beckoned him toward retirement. Vice president for 83 days before Franklin Roosevelt`s death in 1945, Truman as president seemed a pale reflection of his titanic predecessor. But presiding over the atomic bombing of Japan, the surrender of the Axis, the Marshall Plan and postwar prosperity, Truman ultimately won America`s respect and an against-all-odds election in 1948.

Exempted from the Republican-promulgated two-term limit on presidential terms established by the 22nd Amendment, Truman could have run in 1952. His inclination had been to run. The presidency, Truman told a Florida audience, "was an all day and night job ... but just between you, me and the gatepost, I like it." Contending, however, with McCarthyism, the Cold War and especially the bloody, unending war in Korea, Truman recognized that 1952 was not his year.

Truman withdrew, bestowing the Democratic nomination on protege Adlai Stevenson. The 1952 race was tight until Dwight Eisenhower`s strategists surprised the nation and the candidate himself by inserting into one of his speeches a pledge that if elected, the old soldier would go to Korea.

The notion that the Republicans possessed a secret plan to end the Korean War drove Truman to apoplexy. "I was furious about the promise,`` Truman later wrote, "because if Eisenhower really had a solution to the Korean War, it was his responsibility to tell it to me and to the American public.``

In 1968, four presidential cycles later, Johnson took a similar jab at Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon. Unsurprisingly, the man who had been Eisenhower`s running mate promised that if elected, he would initiate his own secret plan to end the Vietnam War.

Johnson`s ire mattered little. Vietnam had tainted him as much as Korea had Truman. In February 1968, recognizing the unpopularity of Vietnam and the string of humiliating defeats awaiting him in Democratic primaries, Johnson withdrew as a presidential candidate. His anointed candidate, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, was tainted with the curse, too, and lost to Nixon.

In 1991, lacking Truman`s historical prescience or LBJ`s political savvy, President George H.W. Bush emerged from the Persian Gulf War mistaking American wartime solidarity for personal popularity. Believing the Gulf War had made him politically invulnerable at home, Bush pinned his future on his wartime presidential status, refusing to refocus on the faltering economy.

Thus began one of America`s most precipitous popularity slides. Facing Bill Clinton, a candidate better equipped than any Democrat since FDR to enunciate policies of "peace and prosperity," the elder Bush became the next victim of the curse of the wartime president and lost badly in the 1992 election.

Today, the comparisons with 1952, 1968 and, most particularly, 1992 should give Republicans fits of deja vu. Here we are with a second Bush administration presiding over a Middle Eastern "victory" that has set loose an utter hell of geopolitical demons.

Worse, the younger Bush faces an American electorate that has grown disenchanted with a president utterly clueless about the curse that has finished off every chief executive in recent American history with the hubris to take America to war.

Richard J. Rapaport is a freelance writer.

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archiv…
©2004 San Francisco Chronicle

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Zu dem Zeichner:
Muslim cartoonist has a different slant
Bendib`s pen tackles controversial issues

Jonathan Curiel, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, May 30, 2004

Scores of U.S. editorial cartoonists have examined the Abu Ghraib prison controversy, but none of them has matched the biting, almost risque commentary of Khalil Bendib.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/05/30/…

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Bush was sure that Iraq`s oil would be flowing by now ... Another big mistake
Date: Sunday, May 30 @ 10:09:15 EDT

By James Cusick, Sunday Herald (Glasgow)

IN July 2002, the Pentagon`s Defence Policy Board was given a briefing by Laurent Murawiec of the Rand Institute. The advisory group of intellectuals and government officials heard Saudi Arabia described as the enemy of the United States. The Saudis were the "kernel of evil, the prime mover, the most dangerous opponent".

The chairman of the board was Richard Perle, a former Pentagon official. Murawiec, in a lengthy presentation, did not outline White House policy. But his views were said to chime with key figures in the Bush administration such as Vice- President Dick Cheney, and the assistant secretary of defence, Paul Wolfowitz.

The presentation of this anti-Saudi analysis coincided with the growing neo-conservative debate inside President George W Bush`s administration on whether to move militarily against Saddam Hussein`s Iraq.

Perle was one of the loudest advocates of war on Iraq. The briefing by Murawiec argued that removing Saddam would be a means to an end - the end being regime change in Saudi, which the briefing argued was a larger problem because of the way it financed and supported radical Islamic movements worldwide.



Murawiec said the Saudis believed God placed oil in their kingdom as a means of "divine approval"; he said the House of Saud was central to the "self-destruction of the Arab world" and that while there was an Arabia "it need not be Saud".

In the final slide of his presentation a "grand strategy" for the Middle East was offered: it said "Iraq is the pivotal point. Saudi Arabia the strategic pivot."

The Pentagon dismissed the briefing as "not the view of the Department of Defence". But just how important the US regarded the global influence of an oil-rich Saudi and its neighbours, goes back to January 1973 when Washington first drew up a plan to seize oil fields in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi to counter the then oil embargo imposed on the West.

The 1973 US adventure in the Middle East never took place. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 did.

Saddam`s Iraq held the world`s second largest oil reserves. But after two decades of war and sanctions, the industry was virtually on its knees, badly in need of investment and new technology to boost production levels.

At its peak, Iraq produced 3.5 million barrels of oil a day. Pre-war estimates made in the US put potential output at 6m barrels a day - a change that would put Iraq in fourth place behind Saudi, the US and Russia.

A year into the US-led occupation of Iraq, and any hopes of Iraq even slightly influencing Saudi-dominated Opec are nil to non-existent. According to Paul Horsnell, the senior energy analyst with Barclays in London, the US-controlled Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) is controlling and running Iraq`s oil industry, with only day-to-day control of the nuts and bolts of the industry still in the hands of the Iraqis. With investment, technical contracts, and US oil expertise, the CPA had the means to turn round the ailing Iraqi industry. But according to Horsnell: "The CPA has only made things worse. A year of CPA control has been a story of neglect."

He says the CPA allocated the oil industry in Iraq "a zero capital budget" for this year with little change coming next year. Its control, he claims, has resulted in no new fields coming on-stream, the oil sector is in a chronic slide after the war, and the careless over-production of some Iraqi oil fields have destroyed their future potential, with some, according to Horsnell "now likely to deliver water rather than oil" due to the technical damage inflicted on them.

The transfer of power to the new interim Iraqi government is not expected to change much in the Iraqi oil sector. Iraqi oil is still technically state-owned, but the complex control network of oil revenue by the CPA is unlikely to be merely "handed over" to the new quasi-sovereign government.

Any expectation that the US occupation could quickly turn around the Iraqi oil industry, enabling it to influence or challenge Opec policy, has vanished. Output is currently at 2.8m barrels a day. The end of year target is 3m. By the end of 2005, the CPA is talking about 4m barrels a day, but no leading analysts takes this view seriously. One Seymour Pierce analyst said: "You can`t conjure a million barrels a day from nowhere."

What happens if the new Iraqi government challenges the legal validity of some of the highly lucrative oil contracts handed out to US firms by the CPA is unclear. The United Nations has already expressed its unease at the generated oil revenues in Iraq being used to fund the CPA itself and of pre-war oil-for-food funds, organised by the UN, also finding their way to the control of the CPA.

But the more immediate problem for Bush`s US administration, which needs to ensure current global oil production is increased, is to avoid Iraq descending into a civil war that would both virtually halt Iraqi oil exports, and potentially bring instability to neighbouring Gulf producers on which the US is highly dependent.

Even without the chaos of civil war, the lengthy list of sabotage attacks on Iraq`s oil facilities, and the effects of these attacks on supply capabilities, continues to raise doubts about Iraq`s long-term ability to again become a major player. One analyst said: "Political stability and continuity are crucial here. Iraq is currently without both of them. And nothing on the horizon points to that changing quickly."

Horsnell, however, is clear on one thing: "If there had been no invasion, then the current oil price would be lower."

The instability inside Iraq which has followed the coalition invasion is fuelling another peak in the price of oil, which over the past 50 years has been followed by a period of recession. If there was a neo-conservative plan for the Middle East, and Iraq was thought to be the key, it is unlocking nothing - apart from more trouble.

(c) newsquest (sunday herald) limited.

Reprinted from The Glasgow Sunday Herald:
http://www.sundayherald.com/42322

[Joerver]

Who killed Nick Berg?
May 29, 2004

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/05/28/1085641717320.html
Conspiracy theories about how the kidnapped American died in Iraq are flying around the world. Richard Neville explores the explanations.

Iraq in flames, Washington an object of disgust. What to do? At this pivotal moment, CNN and Fox News are tipped off to a clip of an American citizen being beheaded. The victim is a 26-year-old idealist from Pennsylvania, Nick Berg. Despite the perpetrators being masked, the vile deed is deemed the work of al-Qaeda.

The clip was first "discovered" on an Islamic website in Malaysia. Its Arabic title reads "Abu Musab al-Zarqawi shown slaughtering an American". al-Zarqawi is a 38-year-old Jordanian militant who fled to Iraq in 2001 after reportedly losing a leg in a US missile strike. al-Zarqawi`s face is widely known and he credits himself with the deed, so why a mask?

The timing of the video was brilliant for the West. Media pundits judged the crime a deeper evil than the systemic torture of innocent Iraqis. But some people sensed a rat. But if it was not al-Qaeda, who? Surely not Uncle Sam. That`s too dark, even for the CIA.

While this video shows a human body having its head chopped off, it does not necessarily portray an act of murder. Berg`s headless body was found dumped on a Baghdad roadside on Saturday, May 8.
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Three days later, the "live beheading" clip was uploaded from London to the Malaysian website http://www.al-ansar.biz. The statement in the video is signed with al-Zarqawi`s name, dated May 11. After Fox News and CNN had downloaded the video, it disappeared from the site.

As no autopsy is available, little is known about the state of the body. No time of death, no forensic analysis. On April 6, a month before the discovery of the corpse, Berg had been released from custody. But whose custody?

Dan Senor, adviser to the US Presidential Envoy in Iraq, has said Berg was never held by the Americans. Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, the Coalition`s deputy head of operations, claimed he was in the custody of Iraqi police from March 24 to April 6. However, the Iraqi police chief, Major-General Mohammed Khair al-Barhawi, told Associated Press "the Iraqi police never arrested the slain American".

Berg`s family are certain his jailers were the US military. His father, Michael, had been told so by the FBI. He has produced an email from a US consular official in Baghdad, Beth Payne, confirming that his son was in the hands of the US. (Later, another official said this was an error.) On April 5 in the Philadelphia office of the US Supreme Court, the Berg family had launched an action against the US military for false imprisonment. The following day, Berg was released.

The issue of custody is significant; in his final moments on screen Berg is wearing an orange jumpsuit of the kind familiar from Guantanamo Bay. The official reasons for Berg`s arrest were "lack of documentation" and "suspicious activities". He carried sensitive electronic equipment for which he lacked documents. In custody, he was visited three times by the FBI. Such interviews are bound to have been recorded but no transcripts have been produced.

After his release, Berg travelled to Baghdad and the $30-a-night Al-Fanar Hotel. A fellow hotel guest told Newsday that Berg recounted how Iraqi police had quickly handed him to US authorities in Mosul and that he had been held the entire time in a jail where his guards were US soldiers.

Berg was in Baghdad to win contracts for his family firm, Prometheus Methods Tower Service, a provider of communications facilities. He often "worked at night on a tower in the neighbourhood of Abu Ghraib", according to The New York Times.

The family last heard from him on April 9, when he said he was planning to leave Iraq via Kuwait as soon as it was safe. Berg was last seen walking with his bags the following day, apparently hoping to find his way through the turmoil engulfing the city and make it to the border.

On March 7, 2004, two weeks before his arrest in Mosul, an "enemies list" had been posted on a conservative website, FreeRepublic.com. The list was compiled from signatories to an anti-war petition, and its implied purpose was to encourage readers to harass those it named.

Berg`s father was on that list, as was the family firm, Prometheus. This information may well have triggered the arrest of Berg in Iraq.

Berg`s politics are not clear. His father, Michael, has described his son as a "staunch supporter" of US President George Bush. Friends said Nick believed he could help rebuild Iraq "one radio tower at a time". According to The New York Times, he was attracted to the Hebrew concept of tikkun olam - healing the world through social action.

The first few seconds of the video shows Berg sitting on a white plastic chair in an orange jumpsuit. He speaks directly to the camera in a relaxed way: "My name is Nick Berg ... I have a brother and sister, David and Sara. I live in Philadelphia." His white chair is identical to those in the photographs of the Abu Ghraib prison tortures, but such chairs are probably common in Iraq. It is highly likely that this segment is edited from the interrogation of Berg during his 13 days of custody.

In the next scene, Berg is sitting on the floor with five masked figures standing behind him. We do not see the figures enter. Berg looks lifeless, though his body appears to make slight movements. A man reads a lengthy Arabic statement in a passionless monotone. He is identified as "Abu Musab al-Zarqawi", a Jordanian associate of Osama bin Laden who is tied to dozens of terrorist acts.

Yet a leaflet recently circulated in Falluja, by no means a reliable source, claims that al-Zarqawi was killed in the Sulaimaniya mountains of northern Iraq during a US bombing. A US military report last month has claimed al-Zarqawi was killed in the bombing of Falluja.

Also, the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, has said that al-Zarqawi was fitted with a prosthetic leg in a Baghdad hospital, yet the tape shows no evidence of a limp. CNN staff familiar with al-Zarqawi`s voice have been quoted as saying the voice does not sound like his.

Among the many curiosities raised on the web about the fanatical five are:

· They are well-fed, fidgety, and reveal glimpses of white skin.

· Their Arabic is heavily accented (Russian, Jordanian, Egyptian).

· An aside in Russian had been translated as "do it quickly".

· One character wears wears bulky white tennis shoes.

· The man on the far left stands in the familiar "at ease" military posture.

· The men`s scarves are worn and tied by people who "haven`t a clue", says conspiracy theorist Hector Carreon, like actors in Hollywood movies.

· There is even a voice at the end that seems to ask in English, "How will it be done?" [http://www.aztlan.net/nick_berg_how_done.htm]

None of this proves a grand conspiracy, but it does raise questions. In the final segment of the tape, Berg is thrown to the ground, but doesn`t move. During the decapitation, starting at the front of the throat, there is little sign of blood. The scream is wildly out of sync, sounds female, and is obviously dubbed.

Dr John Simpson, executive director for surgical affairs at the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, told Ritt Goldstein of the Asia Times, "I would have thought that all the people in the vicinity would have been covered in blood, in a matter of seconds ... if it [the video] was genuine".

Simpson agrees with other experts who find it highly probable that Berg had died before his decapitation.

But there is still the problem of Berg`s slight body movements while sitting on the floor, before the beheading. According to a blogger (internet diarist), Nick Possum, "this footage was subsequently modified frame by frame to make Berg`s body move very occasionally". Apparently, this can be achieved with "commonly available software". [http://www.brushtail.com.au/nick_berg_hypothesis.html]

Possum believes "the available evidence surrounding the case suggests that it was a `black operation` by US psychological warfare specialists ... to provide the media with a moral relativity argument to counter the adverse publicity over torture at Abu Ghraib". The use of FBI footage in the opening sequence, if confirmed, suggests the involvement of high-level US Government operatives.

I do not know who killed Nick Berg, or how he died. But there`s something fishy about this video.

In the end, the question is: who killed Nick Berg, and why?

Copyright © 2004. The Sydney Morning Herald.

[Joerver]

Sunday, May 30, 2004
War News for May 30, 2004

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring ‘em on: One US soldier killed, nine wounded in mortar attack “south of Baghdad.”

Bring ‘em on: Driver and bodyguard of Iraqi newspaper editor killed in Baghdad.

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

Bring ‘em on: Four Iraqis wounded in continued fighting in Najaf.

Bring ‘em on: Six US soldiers wounded by car bomb near Mosul.

One US soldier dies in “non-hostile incident” near Mosul.

Chalabi staffers evicted from offices in Ramadi.

Coalition of the not-so-willing. “South Korean medics and engineers have been rotating in and out of Iraq for nearly a year, but the main dispatch of 3,000 troops is months behind schedule. Originally, the South Koreans were to go to the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk. But the South Korean government changed its mind in March because of rising violence. Since then, the search for a new location has proceeded at such a slow pace that critics have accused the Koreans of foot-dragging. It now seems unlikely that the troops will be deployed before August.”

Disillusioned. “Jabir Algarawi has returned from Iraq dejected and disillusioned. In December, the north Phoenix resident traveled to his former homeland for the first time in 11 years, eager not only to visit his family in post-Saddam Iraq but excited to play a role in the country`s transition from a dictatorship to a democracy.”

General Zinni lists Lieutenant AWOL’s Top Ten Blunders in Iraq.

Arab press reaction to Iraq’s interim prime minister.

Idaho National Guard mobilized for duty in Iraq. “More than 40 percent of Idaho`s National Guard members will be headed to Iraq with Saturday`s announcement of a full mobilization of the Guard`s 116th Cavalry Brigade. It`s the most extensive call-up of Idaho`s National Guard for overseas military deployment in the state`s history.”

Massive looting continues in Iraq. “In the past several months, the International Atomic Energy Agency, based in Vienna, Austria, has been closely monitoring satellite photographs of hundreds of military-industrial sites in Iraq. Initial results from that analysis are jarring, said Jacques Baute, director of the agency’s Iraq nuclear verification office: Entire buildings and complexes of as many as a dozen buildings have been vanishing from the photographs.”

OPTEMPO. “American soldiers are firing so much ammunition that the military`s largest supplier of bullets can`t keep up. Tanks that log 800 miles a year in peacetime are grinding through that many miles in a month, wearing out their treads. Fighting in Iraq and increased training back home are straining the military`s supplies and giving manufacturers in the United States a surge in business.”

Lieutenant AWOL’s health care plan for Iraq. “Iraq`s top surgeons, neurologists and other doctors are fleeing Baghdad, bullied into exile by a growing gang of kidnappers seeking hefty ransoms from the country`s affluent elite. ‘The kidnapping of doctors has risen over the past few months, forcing the best practitioners to leave Iraq and settle in neighbouring countries to protect themselves,’ said health ministry public affairs officer May Yassin.”

More of Lieutenant AWOL’s “Support the Troops” tax policy. “The Bush administration opposes a House-passed plan to phase out the Social Security offset, also called the “widow’s tax” feature, of the military Survivor Benefit Plan. But White House budget officials aren’t recommending a presidential veto if the plan appears in the final 2005 defense authorization bill.”

Commentary

Opinion: "It is our patriotic duty to speak out when egregiously flawed policies and strategies needlessly cost American lives. It is time for the president to ask those responsible for the flawed Iraqi policy -- civilian and military -- to resign from public service. Absent such a change in the current administration, many of us will be forced to choose a presidential candidate whose domestic policies we may not like but who understands firsthand the effects of flawed policies and incompetent military strategies and who fully comprehends the price." The writer is a retired major general in the Marine Corps. He served as director of the expeditionary warfare division in the office of the deputy chief of naval operations.

Analysis: “This time the point of these scolds` political strategy — and it is a political strategy, despite some of its adherents` quasireligiosity — is clear enough. It is not merely to demonize gays and the usual rogue`s gallery of secularist bogeymen for any American ill but to clear the Bush administration of any culpability for Abu Ghraib, the disaster that may have destroyed its mission in Iraq. If porn or MTV or Howard Stern can be said to have induced a ‘few bad apples’ in one prison to misbehave, then everyone else in the chain of command, from the commander-in-chief down, is off the hook. If the culture war can be cross-wired with the actual war, then the buck will stop not at the Pentagon or the White House but at the Paris Hilton video, or ‘Mean Girls,’ or maybe ‘Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.’”

Casualty Reports

Local story: Missouri soldier wounded in Iraq.


86-43-04. Pass it on.



# posted by yankeedoodle : 4:36 AM
Comments (3)

[Joerver]

______________________

"Newly released transcripts reveal that President Nixon was drunk during the Arab-Israeli crisis of 1973. After hearing this, President Bush said, `Hey, so was I!`" —Conan O`Brien

[Joerver]

B U S I N E S S
The Paper Trail
Did Cheney Okay a Deal?
By TIMOTHY J. BURGER AND ADAM ZAGORIN

Sunday, May. 30, 2004
Vice President Dick Cheney was a guest on NBC`s Meet the Press last September when host Tim Russert brought up Halliburton. Citing the company`s role in rebuilding Iraq as well as Cheney`s prior service as Halliburton`s CEO, Russert asked, "Were you involved in any way in the awarding of those contracts?" Cheney`s reply: "Of course not, Tim ... And as Vice President, I have absolutely no influence of, involvement of, knowledge of in any way, shape or form of contracts led by the [Army] Corps of Engineers or anybody else in the Federal Government."

Cheney`s relationship with Halliburton has been nothing but trouble since he left the company in 2000. Both he and the company say they have no ongoing connections. But TIME has obtained an internal Pentagon e-mail sent by an Army Corps of Engineers official—whose name was blacked out by the Pentagon—that raises questions about Cheney`s arm`s-length policy toward his old employer. Dated March 5, 2003, the e-mail says "action" on a multibillion-dollar Halliburton contract was "coordinated" with Cheney`s office. The e-mail says Douglas Feith, a high-ranking Pentagon hawk, got the "authority to execute RIO," or Restore Iraqi Oil, from his boss, who is Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. RIO is one of several large contracts the U.S. awarded to Halliburton last year.

The e-mail says Feith approved arrangements for the contract "contingent on informing WH [White House] tomorrow. We anticipate no issues since action has been coordinated w VP`s [Vice President`s] office." Three days later, the Army Corps of Engineers gave Halliburton the contract, without seeking other bids. TIME located the e-mail among documents provided by Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group.

Cheney spokesman Kevin Kellems says the Vice President "has played no role whatsoever in government-contract decisions involving Halliburton" since 2000. A Pentagon spokesman says the e-mail means merely that "in anticipation of controversy over the award of a sole-source contract to Halliburton, we wanted to give the Vice President`s staff a heads-up."

Cheney is linked to his old firm in at least one other way. His recently filed 2003 financial-disclosure form reveals that Halliburton last year invoked an insurance policy to indemnify Cheney for what could be steep legal bills "arising from his service" at the company. Past and present Halliburton execs face an array of potentially costly litigation, including multibillion-dollar asbestos claims.

From the Jun. 07, 2004 issue of TIME magazine

[Joerver]

________________

[Joerver]

Free at last?

14.Teil

"... Until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream ..."
Dr Martin Luther King`s favorite paraphrase of Amos 5:24

SELMA and MONTGOMERY, Alabama - There`s hardly a more moving and powerful statement in the whole United States than the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama, designed by Maya Lin with absolute Zen-like simplicity. In white lines radiating like the hands of a clock, a circular black-granite slab details the history and the names of the martyrs of the civil-rights movement from 1954 to 1968, when Dr Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee: ordinary men and women who were the leaders of a true revolution.

Water emerges from the center of the slab and flows gently across the top. Behind it there`s a wall of curved black granite, engraved with King`s words quoted above. Oblivious to Southern heat and humidity, one can actually touch the words, see them behind the water, feel their power.

Any informal conversation in Alabama inevitably touches the point that the civil-rights movement may have brought extraordinary changes to the South, and to the United States as a whole. But in the same breath our interlocutor will add that progress has not erased the legacy of centuries of racial oppression. Today it`s still the same struggle for equality in education, jobs and housing.

There were somewhat subdued commemorations in the US for the 50 years of the landmark Brown vs the Topeka Board of Education, when the US Supreme Court agreed that segregation in public schools denied black children "equal protection" before the law and cultivated a perception that blacks were inferior: in 1955, chief justice Earl Warren finally issued a court order demanding the end of school segregation.

J L Chestnut Jr, a partner at the law firm Chestnut, Sanders, Sanders, Pettway & Campbell, offers a very enlightening perspective. After Brown was decided on May 17, 1954, Chestnut "four years later returned to Selma as the first black person to open a law office in the dreadful little town of my birth. It is difficult to even imagine how awful and dangerous it was to be black in the Black Belt of Alabama in 1958." At the time, integrationists "were perceived in the white South as part of an axis of evil. The other parts of the axis were `communists` and `feminists`, but they were less menacing because most white Southerners had never met one."

Chestnut agrees that "the new army of American black voters helped produce some substantial changes on the surface, but beneath the exterior facade, much of that racial and racist substance has not really changed". The United States, says Chestnut, a huge and complex nation, remains controlled by "special-interest ruling groups which are overwhelmingly white and male. Many are racist, others mean well but don`t have a clue about the awful reality of institutional racism or what it means to be an African-American." The "terrible effects of racism and exploitation are still with us today", he adds, giving as an example: "misguided voters in Alabama, black and white, who recently helped millionaires who have never paid their fair share of taxes keep it that way and at the expense of public schools".

His judgment on the administration of President George W Bush is scathing: "Bush and his crowd prefer a more subtle racism, benign neglect, phony race-neutral debate and dishonest denial, an approach that was also perfected in the South. The Bush crowd also understands that a sense of white privilege is much harder to remove than segregation laws."

Many black Americans would agree with Chestnut. And almost certainly, all educated black Americans are fuming with the situation concerning education. There`s a sense that schools with more poor children - almost always black, and the ones who qualify for free breakfast and lunch - have more children who don`t pass.

William Honey, publisher of Montgomery Living magazine, stresses how dysfunctional the Bush educational policy may be: "The sad feature of the No Child Left Behind legislation is that schools with more children who don`t pass are branded `poor`, regardless of the quality of the teachers and administration, and schools with more `advantaged` children are rewarded with more funds to perpetuate the distinction between the education you get if you`re rich or poor."
But there seems to be an exception in Alabama itself: the 100-year-old Highland Elementary, where 80 percent of students get free meals because they`re indeed poor, but at the same time scored very high on the No Child Left Behind testing. The principal, Patricia Kornegay, is adamant: "Poverty is no excuse not to learn." So what`s the secret? It is heavy community support and heavily involved teachers, unsung heroes who have to struggle against lack of funds for professional development, very large classes, and derelict buildings.

The red badge of courage
Montgomery, self-described "Capital City of the American South", bills itself as "courageous, visionary, rebellious". The subtext that cannot be spelled out is that all these qualities seem to have stemmed from its black citizens.

The historic abyss between blacks and whites in Alabama can still be literally felt a single block away from the white-dominated State Capitol, where King ended the 54-mile (87-kilometer) walk from Brown Chapel Church in Selma to Montgomery in 1965, the civil-rights march that was the culmination of the most effective grassroots movement in the history of modern protest. As one looks at the pulpit in Dexter Avenue Baptist Church - where King served as pastor from 1954-60 - one can almost feel him talking about peaceful revolution. This is also where thousands rallied around seamstress Rosa Parks in the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-56 that led to an end to official segregation.

The Civil War started officially in Montgomery. Today the city is in full "we support our US military" mode. In Montgomery Living magazine everybody - even in the ads - is white. There`s always a subtle reminder somewhere of Ole Miss, the University of neighboring Mississippi, which was segregated until 1961. Culture is celebrated in the form of the Alabama Shakespeare Festival. Potential spectators of Titus Andronicus - a graphic story of war very much in evidence after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal - are advised that it "contains adult content".

In neighboring Georgia, George W Bush may win as "the person you most love to hate" in a cheerful poll by a Savannah paper. Not in Alabama. Here, for many people, work is just another place for serious worship. It`s not uncommon to see employees wearing Jesus T-shirts or the new craze - Ten Commandments lapel pins. The Foundation for Moral Law sells them for only US$5 each on its website.

Alabama is one of the most conservative states in the US. Take Gary Palmer, president of the Alabama Policy Institute. In a fascinating bout of historic revisionism, Palmer maintains that former president Jimmy Carter "allowed Iran, a key US ally and perhaps the most Western of the Middle Eastern nations, to be taken over by radical Shi`ites". Nowadays, along with Carter, Senator Teddy Kennedy has become "the most potent propaganda weapon in al-Qaeda`s arsenal for encouraging more deadly attacks against our forces and for undermining the morale of our troops and the American public". The solution in Iraq is, of course, to "stay the course": "If we keep killing or capturing their leaders and their followers wherever they are ... we will eventually win. We will win because we will have demonstrated to the vast majority of Muslims that we have the stomach for the fight." So in the end it`s all Teddy Kennedy`s fault, because he is "trying to slow us down, impeding our chances to win".

The last time a Democrat won in Alabama was 1976. John Kerry`s prospects may be shinier, considering that in a recent Mobile Register-University of South Alabama survey only 43 percent of people in the state now believe in the Bush strategy in Iraq. On the other hand, more than 60 percent believe the Abu Ghraib scandal was an isolated incident, 73 percent think the Pentagon should not release more Abu Ghraib photos, and 66 percent believe Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld should not resign. This all means that most people in Alabama are staunch Republicans no matter what.

Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald`s house in a beautiful, leafy neighborhood is still there: this is where they lived from October 1931 to April 1932, while Scott was writing Tender Is the Night and Zelda - one of four daughters of a judge on the Alabama Supreme Court - was writing Southern Girl, before she had one of her schizophrenia attacks.

The house still exudes an image of some sort of Southern arcadia. But then this passage of F Scott Fitzgerald`s "Echoes of the Jazz Age" creeps into mind, and spoils the magic: "Now once again the belt is tight and we summon the proper expression of horror as we look back at our wasted youth."

The road from Selma
Most army uniforms that appear on CNN and Fox News reports on the war on Iraq are made in Selma by American Apparel, the largest single manufacturer of military uniforms in the US. The firm is in Alabama, although its chief executive officer prefers to live in Austin, Texas. Inside one finds a US version of an Asian sweatshop, with dozens of seamstresses, the contemporary versions of Rosa Parks, working on assembling huge batches of all sorts of clothes, cables hanging from the ceiling and Stars and Stripes dotting the warehouse. Most employees are black. The difference with Asia is that they work eight-hour days maximum, and only five days a week.

There are still hundreds of Civil War-era houses in Selma, all of them marked by blue shields, including the fabulous St James Hotel, the oldest still standing in the South (built in 1837). But the real thing is the Edmund Pettus bridge, still carrying old Highway 80 - the Southern Pacific - over the Alabama river. Here is the intersection of Selma`s Civil War history with the civil-rights movement - which is basically the same struggle.

The National Voting Rights Museum and Institute in Selma keeps history alive, using photos and handbills to tell the whole story, centered on local grassroots activists, hugely brave and never celebrated. On March 4, 2005, there will be a huge commemoration of the 40th anniversary of Black Sunday and the march from Selma to Montgomery led by King. In 2000, Bill Clinton became the first sitting US president to come to Selma to join. In 2003, the Reverend Jesse Jackson called it "an annual pilgrimage" and said he "will never miss it": Selma, for him, is "sacred ground". John Kerry has been to the pilgrimage, marching alongside Jesse Jackson.

At the Museum and Institute, a very articulate visitor from Illinois erupts in outrage: "There`s no money for education. And now we can`t finance our addiction to oil. Since last year a barrel of oil went up by $10. Can you imagine if that lasts for a whole year? We would lose $50 billion in consumer spending, and lose 0.5 percent of our economic growth." Faya Ora Rose Toure, chief editor of the museum`s 2004 bridge-crossing commemorative newspaper, from the heights of her Malian name, says almost exactly the same words of a black community leader in Houston two weeks ago: "As we commemorate the voting-rights struggle, we must remember Dr King`s opposition to the Vietnam War. Certainly if he was here today, he would also oppose the war on Iraq."

In 1963 King said, "One day the South will recognize its real heroes." One of these heroes is the now nonagenarian Dorothy Height, who was a leader of the civil-rights movement from the beginning and then was president of the National Council of Negro Women for 41 years. Her book Open Wide the Freedom Gates: A Memoir (Public Affairs, 2003) is a must-read. Height is a supreme realist: "There are so many things that have been undone and so many ways in which we have advanced, but at the same time, the poorest seem to be poorer and the poverty among us seems to be entrenched. We have more blacks and women in high positions; we have the value of the Supreme Court`s recent decisions on affirmative action ... But we have to admit that we have a long way to go."

(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact [e-mail] for information on our sales and syndication policies.)



May 28, 2004

[Joerver]

Highway 61 revisited

15.Teil


Also in this series:
Bush against Bush (Apr 30, `04)
Kerry, the Yankee muchacho (May 7, `04)
You have the right to be misinformed (May 8, `04)
An American tragedy (May 11, `04)
In the heart of Bushland (May 12, `04)
The war of the snuff videos (May 13, `04)
The Iraq gold rush (May 14, `04)
The new beat generation (May 15, `04)
Taliban in Texas: Big Oil hankers for old pals (May 18, `04)
Life is a beach. Or is it? (May 19, `04)
Cuba libre (May 21, `04)
Miami vice and virtue (May 22, `04)
Georgia on his mind (May 27, `04) #16894 (s. weitere Postingnummern )
Free at last? (May 28, `04) #17039

DOWN ON HIGHWAY 61, Mississippi - Satan drank his last shot of bourbon, threw the velvet cape over his shoulders and hit the road. The moon was too scared to show up on that night in the Deep South in the 1920s, but the wind has howling like a hellhound. The meeting would be at a solitary Delta crossroads. No witnesses. Robert Johnson, a young black cat from Hazlehurst, Mississippi, grandson of slaves, a bad eye contaminated by cataracts, delicate fingers, gorgeous hands and wavy hair, pinstripe double-breasted suit and pork-pie hat, arrived on time. No words exchanged. No blood spilled. Lightning struck a Gibson Kalamazoo, and the whole Deep South heard the most satanic guitar sound ever extracted by human hands. Robert Johnson didn`t even blink his bad eye, Satan excused himself with a smile, and the whole future of Afro-American popular music was set in stone.

Robert Johnson`s spirit is still here - down on Highway 61, the ultimate blues trip. It`s a very quiet road, especially at night, when the only sound is the car stereo playing "Crossroads". Definitely not like in the 1920s and 1930s, before the mechanization of agriculture, when it was booming with roaming crowds.

The blues springs up from hardship. It`s an instrument of survival, offering release and relief. The blues commands the present moment, demanding that you forget the woes of your past and deal with the trials ahead. But even at a crucial crossroads, confronted by the shifting specter of terrorism and an unwinnable war, the United States still can`t take time off to sing the blues.

Whatever the contradictions of the current exaltation of an art form born of poverty to boost the economy of the poorest state in the union, the blues cannot but help Mississippi`s still depressed local economy. There`s not a single town in the Delta that does not want to have and promote its own blues museum, blues festival, or mythical crossroads. Foreign visitors come to what is regarded as a sacred pilgrimage, and American visitors seem to have shaken off their fears of a Ku Klux Klan revival, an Easy Rider shooting scenario or even obese, evil, local sheriffs.

Sweaty, swaggering, gritty, fiery blues played with volcanic intensity can be heard all over the highway, for instance at the Ground Zero Blues Club in Clarksdale or the Walnut Street Blues Club in Greenville, a large river port with a levee lined by garish floating casinos. Clarksdale, Leland, Indianola and many other towns have their annual blues festivals. And the Mother of All Blues Museums is to be found in Clarksdale, in a 1918 railroad depot not far from a mythical crossroads. Most museums have very short funds. That`s not a problem with the Blues and Legends Hall of Fame Museum in Robinsonville, based in one of the region`s nine casinos and barely a half-hour drive from Memphis.

Too many crossroads
US Highway 61 was immortalized by everyone from Roosevelt Sykes to Bob Dylan. "Sixty-One is the longest road I know/ she run from New York city down to the Gulf of Mexico," sang Mississippi Fred McDowell. The number 61 has magical powers: it is a sign, a symbol, a direction forward, a road back home. Enameled "61" pins on lapels used to designate the members of a secret blues society. Sixty-One rips through the Delta, flat, fertile cotton lands with the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers on the curved sides and Vicksburg and Memphis at its south and north poles. Highway 51 is also a blues highway, crawling north toward Memphis. And of course Highway 49 as well, immortalized by Howlin` Wolf. Mississippi has always bred almost the majority of all blues singers, and certainly the majority of the finest blues singers - including the whole Chicago blues scene since the 1930s (Muddy Waters, Elmore James, B B King, among others).

The feeling along the road is summed up by a large, smiling black fellow talking loud about Jesus in an empty, windy street in central Clarksdale: "I got stones in my pathway and my road is dark as night."

The blues - America`s original indigenous musical art form - was influenced by African rhythms and European classical music. As bluesmaster and Vicksburg native Willie Dixon put it, "blues is the roots and everything else is the fruits." The backbone of Highway 61 is the road of the 1930s Great Migration, where the blues from the Mississippi Delta - ruralized, swampy, almost the base for a voodoo ceremony - was born like a lament and traveled upriver, by boat, by train, on the back of a truck, to be finally electrified in Memphis, Kansas City and Chicago. The sound and the voices of Black America were really nurtured on the road, on the railroad tracks, in lonely churches lost in the countryside, at bar counters - and from this poetry in motion sprang up blues, gospel, jazz, rhythm `n` blues and soul. Robert Johnson could not but be a traveling man, undiluted blues material: he lived for the road, whisky and women.

Clarksdale, Mississippi, only 20,000 people, is Ground Zero, the Mecca and Promised Land of the blues. It used to be the cotton capital, the richest city in the Delta. And there it is, at the intersection of Highway 61 and Highway 49: the crossroads, celebrated by a wrought-iron guitar sculpture and unromantically surrounded by Delta Donuts and Abe`s Bar-B-Q. This is not "the" crossroads sung of by Robert Johnson ("I went down to the cross road/ fell down on my knees/ asked the Lord above/ Have mercy, save poor Bob if you please"), because 61 and 49 do not really intersect in Clarksdale. Mythology reigns: locals tell us that Johnson`s deal with the devil may have taken place in the Bonnie Blue Plantation near Clayton or in a graveyard in Crawford. A rambling man surely knew how to pick his own secluded crossroads.

Ike Turner and Sam Cooke were born in Clarksdale. John Lee Hooker left in 1941, when he was 14, to become a blues superstar. The Delta Blues Museum proudly displays the Three Forks sign from one or another incarnation of the store and juke joint where Robert Johnson was poisoned. The museum also treats the blues as a great, living American tradition through its Arts and Education Program , where veterans pass along the blues to teenagers and pre-teens.

Trying to define the blues, Robert Johnson reached for the impossible also in his lyrics. The blues may be "an old heart disease" slowly consuming us. Its poetry is filled with departures, lost letters, trains, cozy kitchens (against the rigors of winter), moans, groans, cars, phonographs evoking sexual appeal, pistols and of course crossroads (in which the bluesman`s soul is always in danger; but he still pursues his intangible belle). The road is almost always dark as a moonless night: but the bluesman can always try to reach the mountaintop, or try to interfere on Judgment Day.

We still see the rolling man, the back-door man, the drunken-hearted man and of course the hard-working man on 21st-century Highway 61. Nineteenth-century German philosophy would have loved Robert Johnson: he regarded man as a prisoner (Arthur Schopenhauer would agree). Life remains hard in Mississippi. No fancy California or Florida conspicuous consumer trappings here. We see countless examples of a generalization of social and physical insecurity, mixed with the vertiginous growth of the inequality that nourishes segregation, criminal behavior, and the dereliction of public institutions.

The poor in Mississippi are even more striking because they live at the heart of an infinitely wealthy empire. And the US system of social insecurity comes with a sociological add-on: when you fall outside the realm of a safety net, you risk being caught in a police and penal dragnet. The percentage of people in jail in the US is six to 10 times as high as in the European Union. About 5 percent of 18-year-old-plus Americans have problems with the law, and this includes one black man in five. Almost a third of the population has a criminal record.

When we`re talking to a black man in a juke joint on Highway 61, inevitably there`ll be a discussion of the fact that blacks are only 12 percent of the US population, but they make up the absolute majority behind bars. As a fellow says in a Greenville bar, "A black man has one chance in three to go to prison at least for one year during his lifetime. A white man has one chance in 23." Works by Bruce Western and Katherine Beckett have demonstrated that incarceration reduces the US unemployment rate: but for the rate to be maintained at such a low level means non-stop expansion of the penal system.

First it was the ghetto; now there`s also the penal system to encircle a population considered for the most part dangerous because superfluous as much economically - Latino and Asian immigrants are more docile - as politically: poor black people don`t vote, and furthermore the center of electoral gravity in the US has shifted to white suburbia. Jail - as well as the ghetto - works under the same logic of exclusion.

Memphis soul
The Mississippi Delta begins in Vicksburg ("The Red Carpet City of the South") and ends probably at the lobby of the grand Peabody Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee - where, at Lanksy`s, Elvis used to have his best shirts customized. The owner, Bernard Lansky, is still there, selling exclusive silk rock `n` roll motif shirts now made in China.

The National Civil Rights Museum, at the site of the Lorraine Motel, where Dr Martin Luther King was assassinated in April 1968, passionately recaptures all the crucial developments of the civil-rights movement. Room 306 can be viewed exactly as it was on April 4, 1968, the day of a shot that changed the world. The emotional impact is still tremendous. We are reminded that only 50 years ago in Little Rock, Arkansas, and only three years after the Supreme Court ruling ending school segregation, white people were marching shouting "Race mixing is communism" and "Save our Christian America". Now, Christian America is whipped into fear at the announcement of an evil, imminent attack by al-Qaeda - the successor to communism.

Memphis gave the United States the supermarket, the drive-in restaurant, Holiday Inn and FedEx, but such mercantile entrepreneurship does not mean there`s no critical thinking. Scott, a musician, thinks that "Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld should be sent by Supreme Court Justice Anthony Scalia to a 10-year duck-hunting trip in an undisclosed location, so the nation would have time to recover from the problems they created". Tim Sampson, a writer for the Memphis Flyer, thinks that maybe "next time I`ll go mountain biking with Mr Bush and a bunch of married homosexual couples and see if I can really distract him from what he`s doing. Anyway, it`s a good thing that he has that direct link to God, who speaks to him and tells him how to run the country." For Sam Dana, President George W Bush is "raising an awful lot of money to sell damaged goods. Good use of all this money might be to supplement the skimpy [military] service life insurance collected by families of all those he sent to get killed on a fool`s errand."

Commenting on Abu Ghraib, writer Ed Wethers stresses that "Americans don`t read. And we love both sex and the shame it makes us feel. What else can you expect from a nation that, on the one hand, has made Internet sex sites the biggest industry on the web and, on the other, falls into a red-faced faint over Janet Jackson`s Superbowl boob?" At the Stax legend Isaac Hayes` ("The Black Moses") superb restaurant and nightclub near blues-as-Disneyland, former honky-tonk Beale Street, Raymond, a writer, says that "Bush has proven he`s unqualified to lead. [John] Kerry has to prove he`s qualified to lead." He`s very worried about the future: "We are living in moral decline. We need someone to uplift us among the greedy and the gutless."

Graceland still attracts throngs of Elvis Presley worshippers. Very few visit the legendary Sun studios (Bob Dylan kissed the floor). But Highway 61, spiritually, cannot but end at Soulsville, or the corner of College and McLemore streets, the former headquarters of the legendary Stax label and since 2003 the site of the Museum of American Soul Music.

Jim Stewart, the co-founder of Stax with his sister Estelle Axton, born in the small farming community of Middletown, Tennessee, was a pure product of the white-ruled, agrarian, working-class South. Yet he created the pure, raw Stax sound out of an interracial company on the banks of the Mississippi River. Stewart used to say that "we were sitting in the middle of a highly segregated city, a highly hypocritical city, and we were in another world when we walked into that studio".

The studio is there, miraculously rebuilt inside the museum. Stax`s musical esthetic - starting with only one track recording - was pure Mies van der Rohe: less is more. But live, it was nothing but frenzied emotional catharsis. This is the sound that through Otis Redding, at Monterey Pop in `67, finally made white America embrace black music. At Stax, the lament of the blues and the joy of gospel fused into the meanest backbeat on Earth. As Howard Grimes, a drummer at Stax and Hi labels, puts it: "Backbeat means the church feel, the handclap. When they didn`t have pianos in church, you heard the stomping of the feet and the clapping of the hands. The foot was on the beat, and the handclap was on the `and`."

The black-owned Lorraine Motel, where the Stax family used to hang out, and where Steve Cropper and Eddie Floyd wrote the classic "In the Midnight Hour" in Wilson Pickett`s room in barely 30 minutes, was a crucial crossroads of music and politics. But within six months, in 1968, Otis Redding`s plane went down, Luther King was assassinated and Stax lost its catalogue to Atlantic Records. It rebounded. The museum, today, is a tribute to true American heroes - and to interracial understanding and mutual joy.

George W Bush will almost certainly capture Tennessee`s 11 electoral votes: after all, he did beat Al Gore in 2000 in his home state. A few days ago, in another music capital, New Orleans, a black R&B musician said, before sipping his hurricane: "You know the problem with this Bush cat? He can`t dance! He`s got no moves. That`s why we`re in this mess."

One might read volumes in this sort of color-coded message to the stiff Bush administration. As the Stax motto goes: "Dance. Try it." And while you`re at it, add a little Otis Redding touch, and try a little tenderness as well.

But the question always remains: Can a white man sing the blues?

(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact [e-mail] for information on our sales and syndication policies.)



May 29, 2004

[Joerver]

Rummy`s West Point Commencement Message
________________

WEST POINT, NY (IWR News Parody) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a crowd of graduating cadets Saturday that they will help win the global fight against terror by using effective homoerotic torture techniques as those employed at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo prison facilities.

The defense secretary urged the new officers to not entirely rely on the so-called "moral clarity" learned at West Point. He said they should instead embrace the "new neocon morality" that says "anything goes if you are an American", and that the military should not be constrained by such "silly international agreements as the Geneva Convention".

[Joerver]

The truth has a force of its own"
In a Salon interview, John Kerry talks about Iraq, his "personal" decision on a running mate and the "craven, petty, childish and destructive" politics of his opponents.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/05/28/kerry/print.htm…
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By Tim Grieve

May 28, 2004 | GREEN BAY, WIS., May 28 -- Outside, the motorcade is a noisy rumble of motorcycle engines and squad-car sirens, a roaring spectacle that stops traffic and pulls folks out of their homes to see what`s coming by. Inside the Secret Service`s black Chevy Suburban, it`s almost impossibly quiet. Two armed agents ride up front, the back flash of red and blue emergency lights illuminating their faces. The press secretary sits alone in the back, thumbing e-mails into his Blackberry. John Kerry is in the middle, waving now and then to well-wishers who can`t see him through the SUV`s dark-tinted, bulletproof glass.

Kerry knows what it`s like to be invisible.

Over the course of the last month, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee has spoken out forcefully against the administration`s disastrous adventure in Iraq. Kerry has accused the president of rushing to war, of failing to build alliances, of alienating America`s allies and of misleading America`s citizens. But the New York Times wonders why he`s being so cautious, and the Los Angeles Times asks why he isn`t doing more.

As Kerry turns away from the window and starts to talk, it`s hard to know exactly what the media would have him say that he isn`t saying now. The Bush administration`s "arrogance" has "cost Americans billions of dollars and too many lives," Kerry says. Its deceptions about the war may have taken an even greater toll. Kerry says the White House lacks "any credibility" at home or abroad; indeed, the Bush administration has misled the nation so often now that Kerry says he has no way to know whether the new terror threats John Ashcroft revealed this week represent legitimate national security concerns or simply a political ploy aimed at propping up a foundering president.

Kerry launched an 11-day "focus" on national security issues Thursday morning in Seattle, where he delivered a speech in which he called on the United States to enter a new era of alliance building even as it preserves the right to strike -- preemptively and unilaterally -- when necessary to prevent a terrorist attack. By Thursday evening he was in Green Bay, where he promised a crowd of veterans and military families that he would "never send troops into harm`s way without sending enough troops to get the job done and without a plan to win the peace."

Media second-guessing notwithstanding, Kerry`s message is starting to break through. Big crowds embraced him in Oregon, Washington and Wisconsin this week -- thousands stood in the rain to see him on the Seattle waterfront. Fundraisers in Oregon and Washington beat the Kerry camp`s expectations, and the Seattle event, which brought in an estimated $2.2 million, is believed to have set a record. National polls are giving the first signs that Kerry may finally be edging ahead of Bush, whose public approval ratings have never been worse. Perhaps more encouraging for Kerry is that he`s edging out Bush in the battleground states.

Kerry talked with Salon Thursday night as his motorcade traveled through Green Bay, where he was to campaign Friday before returning to Washington, D.C., for Saturday`s dedication of the World War II Memorial.

At the beginning of May, the New York Times all but declared your candidacy dead. Now the polls -- and the crowds you`ve drawn this week -- seem to suggest you`re very much alive. Has the tipping point come?

Well, we`re five months away still, and that`s a long time in politics. We`ll just keep working day to day. You don`t take anything for granted. You`ve got to go out and meet people and talk to them and ask for their votes and give them a reason why.

Do you have the sense that things are starting to change?

Yeah. There`s a lot of energy, a tremendous amount of energy. I think people are beginning to wake up and feel the broken promises of this administration. On Iraq, on security, on schools, on healthcare, on jobs -- they haven`t paid attention. They haven`t been there for the working people.

You gave a major national security speech in Seattle this morning, but you didn`t talk a lot about your specific plan for Iraq. Your staff suggested that you`d done that before and maybe didn`t feel the need to do that again today. Do you need to do more to get your plan in front of the public, or is this an issue where you`ve decided to stay away and let Bush suffer on his own?

It`s not a question of staying away. I speak about it every day. I think it`s just a question of how much you can fit in one speech. I made it very clear that they`ve had a bad foreign policy, that they`ve broken our alliances, that we shouldn`t go to war just because they want to go to war and that they haven`t done what they need to for the troops. And I will. It`s pretty clear.

What`s the best outcome the United States can reasonably hope for in Iraq now? Is there any hope left of achieving the vision Bush set out for the mission?

There is, if he [would do] it properly, if the president leads and does what`s necessary. But I think he`s made it far, far more complicated than it had to be -- far more risky and tenuous -- and it`s entirely possible that they won`t be able to do it.

Is the only real solution -- the only way to get the world community fully involved -- a change in administrations here?

I think it`s going to take a new president to clear the air, to turn over a new chapter for America, to renew our relationships with the level of trust that`s necessary. I don`t think this administration has any credibility left.

What`s the administration`s credibility with you now? Attorney General John Ashcroft issued warnings this week of possible terrorist attacks over the summer. Did something in the back of your mind say, "Gee, I wonder if this is related to the campaign?" or did you assume immediately that the warnings were legitimate?

I just have no way to measure it. Instead of feeling absolutely confident, I have no way of measuring it.

And you should feel absolutely confident.

I should feel absolutely confident.

According to recent polls, more than 50 percent of the American public now believes that the war in Iraq has not been worth the cost. Do you agree with that assessment?

I`ve always believed that the president went to war in a way that was mistaken, that he led us too rapidly into war, without sharing the cost, without sharing the risk, without building a true international coalition. He broke his promises about going as a last resort. I think that was a mistake. There was a right way to hold Saddam Hussein accountable and a wrong way. He chose the wrong way.

But you voted in October 2002 to give Bush the authority to use force in Iraq. Was that vote a mistake?

No. My vote was the right vote. If I had been president, I would have wanted that authority to leverage the behavior that we needed. But I would have used it so differently than the way George Bush did.

Would there have been a war in Iraq if you had been president?

I can`t tell you that. If Saddam Hussein hadn`t disarmed and all the world had decided that he was not living up to the standards, who knows? You can`t answer that hypothetical. But I can tell you this. I would never have rushed the process in a way that undoes the meaning of going to war "as a last resort."

And that`s what you thought you were authorizing -- war as a last resort?

Absolutely. You know, we got a set of promises: We`re going to build an international coalition, we`re going to exhaust the remedies of the U.N., respect that process and go to war as a last resort. Well, we didn`t.

And not only [did we] not go to war as a last resort, they didn`t even make the plans for winning the peace. They disregarded them. They disregarded [U.S. Army General Eric] Shinseki`s advice, disregarded Colin Powell`s advice, disregarded the State Department`s plan. The arrogance of this administration has cost Americans billions of dollars and too many lives.

The argument that the administration disregarded and disrespected the military seems to resonate strongly with the people who come to see you.

Well, the truth is the truth. The truth has a force of its own. I`m just going out there and telling the truth.

Are the media letting you get your version of the truth out there? Are you frustrated with what Bush would call "the filter"?

I don`t have any way to measure it. I haven`t seen enough of it or felt enough of it. I think people are beginning to look at this thing with a great deal of focus.

The campaign or the war?

The war, and the war`s consequences, and the campaign because the campaign has a direct impact on it.

Al Gore and Ralph Nader have both spoken recently about the consequences of this war -- particularly, the consequences that should be suffered by those who orchestrated the war. Gore has called for the resignation of Bush`s entire Iraq team. Nader has called for the impeachment of Bush himself. Do you believe there should be consequences for the architects of the war, above and beyond the possibility that their leader may not be reelected?

Under normal circumstances, for some people, the answer is yes. I called for Rumsfeld`s resignation months ago over his miscalculations. But I`m running for president to replace all of them. And the fastest way to deal with it is to do that.

Are you surprised that the Rumsfeld issue has disappeared so quickly? There were calls for his resignation, and then -- almost overnight -- there was nothing.

I`m not surprised, but it doesn`t make any difference to me. I called for it five months ago, and it was off the table until the prison problem. I think the impact is sinking in for the American people, and I think the American people will hopefully opt for a forced resignation.

The Bush campaign has spent some $80 million on television advertisements, most of them negative spots attacking you. The president has mocked you as a flip-flopper, and his surrogates are out there attacking you every day. Do you ever find yourself in disbelief over the way you and your record have been treated?

I find it about as craven, petty, childish and destructive in terms of America`s hopes in politics as anything I`ve ever seen.

When you were first thinking of entering the race, did it occur to you that the Bush campaign would use your Vietnam record as a campaign issue? You must have thought, knowing the difference between your record and the president`s, that at least the question of service in Vietnam would be off the table for them.

No, no, no. No, I knew what they do. I knew they`d try to do anything. I saw what they did to John McCain and I saw what they did to Max Cleland. So, you know, we were ready, and I think we beat them back. And the more they want to bring it up, the happier I am. I`m happy to go anywhere in the nation with Dick Cheney and George Bush and have a debate about what they did and what I did during that period of time. Let`s have that debate.

The Republicans did it to McCain again last week, when House Speaker Dennis Hastert suggested that McCain didn`t really know what sacrifice meant. I would have thought that rank-and-file Republicans would have been outraged, that they would have called for Hastert to resign or at least apologize. But it didn`t happen.

There is a kind of turnoff factor-slash-powerlessness that people know exists until the day they get to walk into a voting booth. So I think they just process it, put it in the ledger. And as we get into September and October, I think you`ll see that it will bubble up to the surface.

How do you break through all that? How do you keep people from just throwing up their hands and saying, "Well, both sides are lying about everything"?

I think we`re doing it. I think we`re doing very well. If you look at the battleground states, I`m told that we`re ahead in every one of them. That`s how you break through, by going out and campaigning, talking to real people. I intend to continue to do that. I love going out and meeting people and talking to them, like we did tonight.

You know, we`re having more of a conversation than a shouting match. I think that`s important. I want to talk to people about real choices. I do not want to run for president and not have used that special moment of opportunity to talk about real things with people. So I`m going to lay it out as it is.

Wednesday night in Seattle, you gave a speech at a fundraiser that was almost Reaganesque. The room was very quiet after your wife, Teresa, spoke. And you talked less about the failings of this administration and more about the need to restore faith and hope in America, the need for this country to serve as an example for the rest of the world. It was a speech -- at least 85 or 90 percent of it -- that a lot of Republicans probably would have liked, if only you hadn`t been the one giving it.

I think there`s some truth to that. I understand what you`re saying. But I think we`re breaking through with a lot of them. I can`t tell you how many Republicans have come up to me and said, "Can`t vote for the guy, gonna vote for you." There`s a huge move over of Republicans, and I`m very pleased with that.

The biggest "move over" would be that of John McCain. Is there even a possibility that he will be your vice-presidential pick?

I have just made it as clear as I can that I`m not going to discuss any aspect of this -- process, time, possibilities, hypotheticals. I`m just not going to contribute to any of this. I`m just going to keep it personal.

As you know, the Republican line on you is that you`re a "flip-flopper." Do you think the White House really views you that way, or is this just an intellectually dishonest political exercise?

Of course it is. It`s not only intellectually dishonest, it`s shallow beyond belief. It`s exactly what they said about Bill Clinton, it`s exactly what they said about Al Gore, it`s exactly what they said about John McCain. It is the standard operating approach of Republicans who have nothing to say for themselves, so all they do is try to brand somebody else.

Well, it`s not exactly what they did to McCain. Nobody`s accused you of having an illegitimate love child.

Not yet. I`m waiting for those. That`s probably August or September.

I`ll tell you what. What`s really so craven about it is that they pick something that they implement badly and screw up, like Iraq or No Child Left Behind or the Patriot Act. And when you point out that they screwed it up, they say that you`re "flip-flopping."

But they, on the other hand, break a promise to have no deficit, break a promise not to invade Social Security, break a promise to fund No Child Left Behind, break a promise to introduce the four-pollutant bill and move forward on the environment, break a promise to deal with the real health issues and prescription drugs, break a promise of humility in American foreign policy. I mean, you start running down the list -- I`ve never seen a grander array of flip-flops. This is the biggest "say one thing, do another" administration in modern history.

So maybe when you voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq, you were agreeing to never raise any questions about how the president used the power he was given.

I didn`t sign off on that. This is the biggest "my way or the highway" crowd we`ve ever had in Washington. They have no interest in legitimate governance. They have all the interest in power, favor, privilege, perks and reelection.

Does Bush understand what`s going on here? Does he have the capacity to understand that people change their minds when confronted with new circumstances? Or is he so consumed with consistency, with staying the course, that he can`t see that?

You have to go ask him. I`m not making any judgments about him on a personal level. I`m simply talking about the differences we have in terms of policy.

I think it`s important to talk about my vision of the country. I`m offering real plans, real options and choices to make American stronger. And they`re real. My healthcare plan really does lower the cost of healthcare for Americans. My education plan is going to liberate communities from the burden of special needs and help them afford after-school programs and things they need to do. My foreign policy plan is going to make America stronger in the world and deal with terror more effectively. These are the things Americans want, and that`s exactly what I`m going to do.

But how are you going to do that in Iraq? For the guy on the barstool who`s watching it all on TV, how do you explain the difference between what you would do in Iraq and what the Bush administration is already trying to do?

I`m going to keep faith with America`s honor and our obligation to our troops. I will not allow their contribution to be wasted or in vain. I`m going to stand up for them, and not extend them in some stubborn, inappropriate way. I`m going to bring other countries to the table. You know, we`re going to find a resolution that doesn`t have this sort of endless exposure to danger, leaving our troops overdeployed, overextended and undersupported.

Is there a unique opportunity in this campaign for Democrats to seize the high ground on national security and foreign policy in a way they haven`t for a long time?

Well, look, I think Democrats have always been strong on national security. We had Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy. You know, Bill Clinton was tough on Kosovo, tough in Bosnia, tough in Haiti. I think we have a great record. I`m not going to let the Republicans pretend they`re doing something better or have the better ability to do that.

But this is the first time in a long time that a Democrat will lead with that punch.

You bet I`m going to lead with it. I`m not shy about it one iota. I think these guys have made America less safe, and I think I have a plan to make us stronger.

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[Joerver]

[Joerver]

May 31, 2004
NEWS ANALYSIS
A Worn Road for U.N. Aide
By DEXTER FILKINS

AGHDAD, Iraq, May 30 — When Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations envoy, arrived earlier this month, he declared that he would crisscross Iraq to give the people a new government, one that he suggested would be more independent of America`s heavy-handed ways.

Now, as Mr. Brahimi nears the end of his work, Iraqis are discovering that his task was not so simple.

With his slate of appointees expected to be announced in the next day or two, the appointments leaked so far suggest that what Mr. Brahimi ultimately accomplishes may turn out to be less a revolution than a rearrangement, less a new cast of characters than a reworked version of the same old faces.

The reason, Iraqis are beginning to say, has been the unexpected assertiveness of American officials and their allies on the Iraqi Governing Council, coupled with Mr. Brahimi`s surprising passivity, after he was expected to have a free hand.

The danger, some of these Iraqis say, is that the new government could end up looking too much like the old one, an American-appointed council that never gained the acceptance of the people. If that proves true once the appointees are officially announced, they said, the new government could lack the credibility it needs to carry the country through the turbulent period leading to nationwide elections next year. Already, a three-day cease-fire appeared to be unraveling in the south.

"If the purpose of the process is to please the Governing Council and the political players, this will be a short-lived moment, and it will fall apart," said Leith Kuba, an Iraqi leader based in Washington. "The Iraqis will not take it."

So far, it appears that Mr. Brahimi is drawing much of his talent from the council. In his first decision, announced Friday, he agreed to select as prime minister Ayad Alawi, a man from that council who is best known for his connections to the Central Intelligence Agency. One person with knowledge of the negotiations said Mr. Brahimi had been pushed by the Americans into accepting Dr. Alawi, who was not his first choice.

On Saturday, word trickled forth that Mr. Brahimi had gone to the American-appointed council and its bureaucracy for five of the eight leadership posts he was said to have filled.

On Sunday, the alliances shifted when Mr. Brahimi teamed up with American officials in trying to choose an Iraqi president. That seemed to provoke a backlash from members of the Governing Council, who accused Mr. Brahimi and L. Paul Bremer III, the chief American administrator here, of trying to dictate to the only representative body in Iraq.

"The Americans are trying to impose these decisions on us, and we are trying to reject them," said Mahmood Othman, a council member who has been critical of both Mr. Bremer and Mr. Brahimi. "And they talk about sovereignty."

As he promised, Mr. Brahimi roamed across the country to talk with Iraqis about what the shape of their government should be. At the time, he said he hoped to appoint a government of technocrats — experts who stayed above the push-and-pull of politics.

Yet when he settled on a choice for prime minister — Hussein Shahristani, a nuclear scientist and a Shiite — he ran into a wall of opposition from the leaders of mainstream Shiite political parties, who wanted the job for themselves.

Instead of fashioning the kind of savvy compromise for which he is known, Mr. Brahimi appears to have folded, acquiescing to the desires of the Americans, who were promoting Dr. Alawi. While American officials maintain that Dr. Alawi was Mr. Brahimi`s choice, people close to Mr. Brahimi say he reluctantly endorsed him only after American officials aggressively recommended him.

One person conversant with the negotiations said Mr. Brahimi was presented with "a fait accompli" after President Bush`s envoy to Iraq, Robert D. Blackwill, "railroaded" the Governing Council into coalescing around him.

Mr. Brahimi, a former foreign minister of Algeria, was said to be deeply troubled by Dr. Alawi`s ties to the C.I.A. and to the likelihood that Iraqis would regard him as too close to the United States.

After the decision, Mr. Brahimi declined to comment in detail about the selection, but suggested, for the first time, that his role here was far more limited than originally thought.

"You know, sometimes people think I am a free agent out here, that I have a free hand to do whatever I want," he said in an interview last week.

The choice of Dr. Alawi reinforced the surprising role of the Governing Council, whose mandate is about to expire, leaving some of its members eager to latch onto the new government. Opinion polls of Iraqis show that the council has been viewed as little more than a mouthpiece for the United States.

Not only did the council endorse Dr. Alawi, but it also seems to have convinced Mr. Brahimi of its own worth. According to two Iraqis with knowledge of the negotiations, Mr. Brahimi agreed to appoint four council members and its foreign minister to eight of the senior-level government jobs so far.

"I told Lakhdar Brahimi that the members of the Governing Council have no trust from the Iraqi people," said Fakri al-Qaisi, founder of a group of hard-line clerics called the State Council for the Sunnis. "I said the decisions of the Governing Council members have always gone against the will of the Iraqi people."

The deadlock that continued Sunday over the presidency found Mr. Brahimi again endorsing the American choice: Adnan Pachachi, a former Iraqi foreign minister who is a friend. That placed Mr. Brahimi and the Americans at odds with the rest of the Governing Council, which favored Sheik Gazi al-Yawar.

Dan Senor, the spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority, told reporters on Sunday that the American government did not have "a preferred candidate" for the presidency. But earlier in the day, according to Iraqis, Mr. Bremer told the Governing Council it had to get behind Mr. Pachachi.

It was that kind of heavy-handedness, some Iraqis say, that was supposed to be missing from the new government — and which many had expected Mr. Brahimi to cure.

"It doesn`t fit what Bush says," said Mr. Othman, the council member. "He said Iraqis are free."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Iraq and the Christian Zionists

By C.B. Hanif, Palm Beach Post Editorial Writer
Sunday, May 23, 2004

To understand what is happening in the Middle East, wrote George Monbiot in The Guardian of London recently, you must first understand what is happening in the U.S., where evangelical Christians are driving President Bush`s policies. The explanation slowly is becoming familiar to us, he says, but we still have some difficulty in taking it seriously.

Mr. Monbiot recounts that in the 19th century, "two immigrant preachers cobbled together a series of unrelated passages from the Bible to create what appears to be a consistent narrative: Jesus will return to Earth when certain preconditions have been met. The first of these was the establishment of a state of Israel. The next involves Israel`s occupation of the rest of its `biblical lands` (most of the Middle East), and the rebuilding of the Third Temple on the site now occupied by the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosques. The legions of the antichrist will then be deployed against Israel, and their war will lead to a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. The Jews will either burn or convert to Christianity, and the Messiah will return to Earth."

I had heard of outrage from some Jews in this country that evangelical Christian supporters of the Jewish state have motivations other than security against its Arab neighbors. One Jewish friend likened the idea as, "To save you, we have to kill you." He, too, cited what Mr. Monbiot said makes the idea so appealing to evangelicals:

"Before the big battle begins, all `true believers` (i.e., those who believe what they believe) will be lifted out of their clothes and wafted up to heaven during an event called the Rapture. Not only do the worthy get to sit at the right hand of God, but they will be able to watch, from the best seats, their political and religious opponents being devoured by boils, sores, locusts and frogs, during the seven years of Tribulation which follow. The true believers are now seeking to bring all this about," he said, by "seeking to provoke a final battle with the Muslim world/Axis of Evil/United Nations/European Union/France or whoever the legions of the antichrist turn out to be."

Thursday`s rebroadcast of Frontline`s "The Jesus Factor" on PBS recounted Mr. Bush`s personal religious journey and the growing political influence of the nation`s more than 70 million evangelical Christians. Mr. Monbiot describes the political calculus thusly: Fifteen percent to 18 percent of U.S. voters belong to churches or movements that subscribe to these teachings, including 33 percent of Republicans. Among them are some of the most powerful men in America: Attorney General John Ashcroft, several prominent senators and the House majority leader, Tom DeLay, who last year told the Israeli Knesset that "there is no middle ground, no moderate position worth taking" toward the Palestinians.

Said Mr. Monbiot: "So here we have a major political constituency -- representing much of the current president`s core vote -- in the most powerful nation on Earth, which is actively seeking to provoke a new world war. Its members see the invasion of Iraq as a warm-up act, as Revelation (9:14-15) maintains that four angels `which are bound in the great river Euphrates` will be released `to slay the third part of men.` " And they effectively pressure the president, he said, against any pressure on Israeli Prime Minster Ariel Sharon.

Mr. Monbiot concludes: "The electoral calculation, crazy as it appears, works like this. Governments stand or fall on domestic issues. For 85 percent of the U.S. electorate, the Middle East is a foreign issue, and therefore of secondary interest when they enter the polling booth. For 15 percent, the Middle East is not just a domestic matter; it`s a personal one:

"If the president fails to start a conflagration there, his core voters don`t get to sit at the right hand of God. Bush, in other words, stands to lose fewer votes by encouraging Israeli aggression than he stands to lose by restraining it. He would be mad to listen to these people. He would also be mad not to."

What Rick Perlstein called "the absolute convergence of the neoconservatives with the Christian Zionists and the pro-Israel lobby" ("The Jesus Landing Pad," May 18 Village Voice) suggests that the bloody debacle in today`s Iraq is what the current administration wanted all along. It also may explain some of Mr. Bush`s recalcitrance -- which his supporters liken to steadfastness -- in the face of the realities in Iraq. Most of what has gone wrong there was predicted well before the invasion, by very qualified people in government, and was preceded by massive protest worldwide.

Raney Aronson is producer of the Frontline documentary, which can be viewed at www.pbs.org. In a Washington Post online interview, he was asked whether there is evidence that Mr. Bush "shares the `Christian Zionist` belief that Israel must gain dominance over the Holy Land in order to bring the Second Coming of Christ, the Rapture, etc." President Bush "has not spoken about this issue," said Mr. Aronson. "But I do believe, as he talks so often of his faith, and his belief in the Bible, (that) this is a good question for him to address."

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Der Artikel aus dem Guardian, der in #17046 angesprochen wurde.

Their beliefs are bonkers, but they are at the heart of power

US Christian fundamentalists are driving Bush`s Middle East policy

George Monbiot
Tuesday April 20, 2004
The Guardian

To understand what is happening in the Middle East, you must first understand what is happening in Texas. To understand what is happening there, you should read the resolutions passed at the state`s Republican party conventions last month. Take a look, for example, at the decisions made in Harris County, which covers much of Houston.

The delegates began by nodding through a few uncontroversial matters: homosexuality is contrary to the truths ordained by God; "any mechanism to process, license, record, register or monitor the ownership of guns" should be repealed; income tax, inheritance tax, capital gains tax and corporation tax should be abolished; and immigrants should be deterred by electric fences. Thus fortified, they turned to the real issue: the affairs of a small state 7,000 miles away. It was then, according to a participant, that the "screaming and near fist fights" began.

I don`t know what the original motion said, but apparently it was "watered down significantly" as a result of the shouting match. The motion they adopted stated that Israel has an undivided claim to Jerusalem and the West Bank, that Arab states should be "pressured" to absorb refugees from Palestine, and that Israel should do whatever it wishes in seeking to eliminate terrorism. Good to see that the extremists didn`t prevail then.

But why should all this be of such pressing interest to the people of a state which is seldom celebrated for its fascination with foreign affairs? The explanation is slowly becoming familiar to us, but we still have some difficulty in taking it seriously.

In the United States, several million people have succumbed to an extraordinary delusion. In the 19th century, two immigrant preachers cobbled together a series of unrelated passages from the Bible to create what appears to be a consistent narrative: Jesus will return to Earth when certain preconditions have been met. The first of these was the establishment of a state of Israel. The next involves Israel`s occupation of the rest of its "biblical lands" (most of the Middle East), and the rebuilding of the Third Temple on the site now occupied by the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosques. The legions of the antichrist will then be deployed against Israel, and their war will lead to a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. The Jews will either burn or convert to Christianity, and the Messiah will return to Earth.

What makes the story so appealing to Christian fundamentalists is that before the big battle begins, all "true believers" (ie those who believe what they believe) will be lifted out of their clothes and wafted up to heaven during an event called the Rapture. Not only do the worthy get to sit at the right hand of God, but they will be able to watch, from the best seats, their political and religious opponents being devoured by boils, sores, locusts and frogs, during the seven years of Tribulation which follow.

The true believers are now seeking to bring all this about. This means staging confrontations at the old temple site (in 2000, three US Christians were deported for trying to blow up the mosques there), sponsoring Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, demanding ever more US support for Israel, and seeking to provoke a final battle with the Muslim world/Axis of Evil/United Nations/ European Union/France or whoever the legions of the antichrist turn out to be.

The believers are convinced that they will soon be rewarded for their efforts. The antichrist is apparently walking among us, in the guise of Kofi Annan, Javier Solana, Yasser Arafat or, more plausibly, Silvio Berlusconi. The Wal-Mart corporation is also a candidate (in my view a very good one), because it wants to radio-tag its stock, thereby exposing humankind to the Mark of the Beast.

By clicking on http://www.raptureready.com/, you can discover how close you might be to flying out of your pyjamas. The infidels among us should take note that the Rapture Index currently stands at 144, just one point below the critical threshold, beyond which the sky will be filled with floating nudists. Beast Government, Wild Weather and Israel are all trading at the maximum five points (the EU is debat ing its constitution, there was a freak hurricane in the south Atlantic, Hamas has sworn to avenge the killing of its leaders), but the second coming is currently being delayed by an unfortunate decline in drug abuse among teenagers and a weak showing by the antichrist (both of which score only two).

We can laugh at these people, but we should not dismiss them. That their beliefs are bonkers does not mean they are marginal. American pollsters believe that 15-18% of US voters belong to churches or movements which subscribe to these teachings. A survey in 1999 suggested that this figure included 33% of Republicans. The best-selling contemporary books in the US are the 12 volumes of the Left Behind series, which provide what is usually described as a "fictionalised" account of the Rapture (this, apparently, distinguishes it from the other one), with plenty of dripping details about what will happen to the rest of us. The people who believe all this don`t believe it just a little; for them it is a matter of life eternal and death.

And among them are some of the most powerful men in America. John Ashcroft, the attorney general, is a true believer, so are several prominent senators and the House majority leader, Tom DeLay. Mr DeLay (who is also the co-author of the marvellously named DeLay-Doolittle Amendment, postponing campaign finance reforms) travelled to Israel last year to tell the Knesset that "there is no middle ground, no moderate position worth taking".

So here we have a major political constituency - representing much of the current president`s core vote - in the most powerful nation on Earth, which is actively seeking to provoke a new world war. Its members see the invasion of Iraq as a warm-up act, as Revelation (9:14-15) maintains that four angels "which are bound in the great river Euphrates" will be released "to slay the third part of men". They batter down the doors of the White House as soon as its support for Israel wavers: when Bush asked Ariel Sharon to pull his tanks out of Jenin in 2002, he received 100,000 angry emails from Christian fundamentalists, and never mentioned the matter again.

The electoral calculation, crazy as it appears, works like this. Governments stand or fall on domestic issues. For 85% of the US electorate, the Middle East is a foreign issue, and therefore of secondary interest when they enter the polling booth. For 15% of the electorate, the Middle East is not just a domestic matter, it`s a personal one: if the president fails to start a conflagration there, his core voters don`t get to sit at the right hand of God. Bush, in other words, stands to lose fewer votes by encouraging Israeli aggression than he stands to lose by restraining it. He would be mad to listen to these people. He would also be mad not to.

· George Monbiot`s book The Age of Consent: a Manifesto for a New World Order is now published in paperback

www.monbiot.com

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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The attack at Khobar shows the bitter harvest that America will reap from Iraq
Editorial - The Independent
31 May 2004

The assault on the luxurious Oasis compound at Khobar, which ended in such bloodshed yesterday, will only deepen the sense of foreboding in the West about the risks to foreigners in Saudi Arabia, about the stability of the Gulf region and about oil supplies. Which, of course, is precisely what the militants who stormed the compound and took and killed only non-Muslim hostages, aimed to achieve.

The chilling message subsequently put out in their name spoke of "slaughter" and said the struggle with America would be pursued "in the Arabian peninsula, in Afghanistan, in Iraq" and that the battle with the Saudi regime would continue until the "crusaders" had been expelled from the land of Islam. Opinions may diverge on whether the attackers belonged to al-Qa`ida or some other group. There may be differences, too, about the directness of any link between the conflict in Iraq and the growing frequency of attacks on Westerners in Saudi Arabia. But a link there assuredly is.

The continuing war in Iraq has done more than anything in recent years to intensify hatred of the West and all it stands for in many parts of the Arab world. The pictures showing the mistreatment of Muslim prisoners by US soldiers inflamed passions still further. There is a burning indignation now against Americans and Westerners in general that will mark the region for generations.

In Saudi Arabia, the US engagement in Iraq and the brutal and incompetent way in which it is perceived to have been conducted, reinforces the view among those of an already anti-Western disposition that their leaders have sold out to the infidel. Any hopes Washington might have had that the closure of its bases in Saudi Arabia would calm anti-American feeling have been disappointed. The call is no longer for US troops to leave, but for Westerners in general to leave, and not just Saudi Arabia, but the whole Muslim world.

In failing to stop at ousting the Taliban and liberating Afghanistan, the United States is now reaping the whirlwind across the whole region. Among the many justifications for the war presented in Washington, and to a lesser extent in London, was the heady ambition to create a swath of new democracies across the Arab world. What is happening is exactly the opposite of what the ousting of Saddam Hussein was supposed to achieve.

The grand plan was for Iraq to shine as a beacon of freedom and democracy, guiding its neighbours into an enlightened 21st century. The vision was for Western-style political reforms, for smooth transitions to accountable government, for peaceful co-existence with Israel and - not least - stable oil supplies to a thirsty West at lower prices. If there is the slightest prospect of such a happy outcome, in even Iraq alone, it is very far off.

Yesterday, as after previous anti-Western attacks, the Saudi authorities were at pains to stress that their country was a predominantly tranquil place, that the regime was not threatened and, especially, that oil production was safe, would remain safe, and would continue at the same pace as before. As if to underline its reliability as the world`s largest producer, Riyadh recently broke with the Opec cartel to meet US requests for an increase in production, even though other producers had declined.

The reality is, though, that Saudi Arabia`s rulers have no choice but to steel themselves for more attacks, dispatch the commandos - as they did yesterday to great effect - and pledge still tighter security. But security by itself threatens increasingly not to be the central issue. One reason why foreigners` compounds are now being targeted is that the protection for the oil infrastructure has been so effective. And even if the compounds are fortified still further, it will still be hard to prevent armed attacks on individual foreigners or groups. More and more the issue is confidence: of expatriate workers and their families, of foreign companies with staff in Saudi Arabia, and above all of the markets. With every new Khobar, that confidence seeps away.

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The oil connection

Leader
Monday May 31, 2004

The Guardian
The Saudi Arabian authorities made two pledges yesterday immediately after the conclusion of the terrorist attack in the eastern oil city of Khobar. The first, issued by the country`s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Abdullah, was to eliminate the Islamic militants "with an iron fist". The second, delivered at an emergency meeting with Western oil executives, was to continue to "provide a reliable supply of oil to meet world energy demand". Whether the royal regime can deliver on the first promise is open to doubt, and the very fact that the second one needs to be made is a confession of uncertainty. The Khobar attack comes just under a month since a similar assault at Yanbu: in both cases, armed terrorists were able to emerge without prior detection in an area supposed to be under tight security, and to roam for some time with impunity before being contained. All this was still possible a year after Riyadh had ratcheted up its own "war on terror" amid high publicity and must raise questions about the ability of its security services to gather reliable intelligence and take effective action.

As for the oil, while the militants have not yet struck at the kingdom`s energy infrastructure, they have identified a vulnerable target in the large expatriate community which services the industry. Beyond the immediate effect on foreign confidence, the most important effect is to raise a much larger question about the long-term viability of the Saudi regime. In a situation where no one has the slightest idea what might, or should, replace that regime, who can guarantee that the tap will always be turned on for 8m barrels a day?

Such doubts have of course been raised before, not least after September 11, when the Saudi connection with the hijackers led to widespread disenchantment with Riyadh among the neo-conservatives in the US administration. Although the assault on Iraq would have been launched anyway, the prospect of securing unencumbered access to an alternative oil source strengthened the pro-war argument. Not only has that prospect become a mirage, but the failure to restore peace in Iraq has destabilised Saudi Arabia further. While Saudi claims that its neighbour is now the source for insurgency against the country may be exaggerated, the Iraq debacle has at the least provided vivid "negative lessons" which inspire young militants to take up arms at home.

In spite of yesterday`s claims of responsibility by al-Qaida, it is far too simple to see this attack, or the previous ones, as the product of some master plan devised in the Tora Bora. There are probably close connections between Saudi terrorists and the most infamous Saudi-born terrorist leader: some of them fought with him in Afghanistan (and with western approval) against the Soviet occupation. Yet in a country where a corrupt and privileged elite presides over rising unemployment and diminishing incomes, where there is no room for liberal voices and the only organised opposition is more conservative in religious terms than the regime itself. Extremism has its home-grown rationale.

The western contribution has hardly been helpful: except rhetorically, the US and Britain are committed to a crude relationship of mutual need long based on oil and arms sales. If they really want to help the Saudis move forward, then they need to change the regional environment which far from encouraging democracy is now fertile ground for much worse violence. It is also time to reconsider the West`s oil-driven diplomacy - and not only because it provides an open target for terrorism by making Saudi Arabia the guarantor of stable prices at the pump. By focusing less on energy supplies and more on energy saving, we might begin to convince the people of the Middle East that it is not "all about oil".
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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May 31, 2004
MILITARY
Army Is Investigating Reports of Assaults and Thefts by G.I.`s Against Iraqi Civilians
By ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON, May 30 — The Army is investigating at least two dozen cases in which American soldiers are accused of assaulting civilian Iraqis or stealing their money, jewelry and other property during raids, patrols and house-to-house searches, senior Defense Department officials said Sunday.

In some instances, investigators say, soldiers were reported to have stolen cash from Iraqis they stopped at roadside checkpoints, apparently under the pretext of confiscating money from suspected insurgents or their financial backers.

The Army`s Criminal Investigation Command is also examining at least six cases in which soldiers on missions reportedly kicked, punched or beat civilian Iraqis, or fired their weapons near the Iraqis to scare or intimidate them.

Those statistics and broad descriptions are included in an internal summary prepared earlier this month by the investigation command at the request of senior Army officials who are struggling to understand the scope of mistreatment and potential crimes committed by American soldiers in Iraq beyond the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison and other Army-run detention sites.

While military officials here and in Iraq say the reports of thievery and lawlessness are isolated cases among more than 135,000 American troops, other military officials say the official numbers probably underestimate the actual offenses because most Iraqis are too frightened to file a formal complaint with the American authorities.

The Army has acknowledged it is investigating 37 deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan involving prisoners in American custody. Other confidential Army documents have chronicled a widespread pattern of abuse involving prisoners in American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan that implicates more military units than previously known.

But this new summary of previously undisclosed reported abuses, a description of which was provided by a senior Defense official, widens the scope of potential wrongdoing beyond the walls of Abu Ghraib and other prisons, to the daily operations of American forces in Iraq.

"We want to be viewed as liberators and as examples of a professional army working for the good of people," said the Defense official. "To have a soldier act criminally certainly can damage that reputation. For your average Iraqi, the question becomes, what`s the difference between what Saddam Hussein`s forces did and what these soldiers did?"

The summary lists categories of offenses under review — 18 theft and 6 assault cases in Iraq as of May 21 — but it does not describe details of each incident, which units were involved, whether each case is pending or closed, or what, if any, disciplinary action was taken.

The incidents were reported to have taken place in the past 15 months and were reported by Iraqis and, in a few cases, by American soldiers. Military officials said it was difficult to compare those figures with other areas where American troops are operating, including Afghanistan, where the United States has only 10,000 troops, and is conducting far fewer house-to-house searches and roadside checkpoints than in Iraq.

A spokesman for the investigation command did not respond to several phone calls and e-mail messages over the weekend.

Senior military officials have reluctantly acknowledged that small numbers of an American force in Iraq that they characterize as well trained and highly disciplined have committed assaults, thefts and other abuses against civilian Iraqis, outside of detention sites, since American troops invaded Iraq in March 2003. "There have been, sadly, cases where soldiers have operated outside established, trained rules of engagement and rules for the use of force — a very, very small number in a force of over 150,000," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the military`s chief spokesman in Iraq, told reporters on March 22. "While each of those cases is nothing to take great pride in, the fact is that 99-plus percent of the soldiers are operating well within those rules of engagement, under very tough conditions, showing remarkable restraint, day after day, operating inside this country," General Kimmitt added.

One Defense official cautioned Friday that the summary figures for reported thefts and assaults against Iraqis outside detention sites are just the beginning. The official said several Iraqis and some soldiers have come forward since the summary was prepared to make more reports of abuses, emboldened by the highly publicized Abu Ghraib cases.

Human rights advocates have complained for months that American forces had committed abuses on or near the battlefield throughout the 15-month conflict and insurgency in Iraq. A report by the International Committee of the Red Cross that was submitted to the military high command in Baghdad in February concluded that American and other allied forces had carried out "brutal behavior" during arrests of suspected insurgents that "appeared to go beyond the reasonable, legitimate and proportional use of force required to apprehend suspects or restrain persons resisting arrest or capture."

During raids, the report said, the treatment of Iraqis by the American forces "often included pushing people around, insulting, taking aim with rifles, punching and kicking and striking with rifles."

In one case, the Red Cross reported that on Sept. 13, 2003, allied forces arrested nine Iraqi men in a hotel in Basra. The men were forced to kneel, with their hands and faces against the ground. The soldiers then stamped on the backs of the necks of those prisoners who raised their heads. The soldiers confiscated their money without issuing receipts, Red Cross inspectors said. The report did not make clear whether the soldiers were American, other allied soldiers or a combination.

Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee on May 19, Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top commander of American forces in the Middle East, sounded a dismissive note about at least some of the Red Cross findings, suggesting that the organization had little understanding of the confusing and deadly circumstances swirling on the battlefield.

"I am aware that the International Red Cross has its view on things," General Abizaid said. "A lot of its view is based upon what happens at the point of detention, where soldiers fighting for their lives detain people, which is a very brutal and bloody event."

Other senior military officials in Washington said the new summary of potential abuses by American soldiers involved Iraqis who were either in American custody on the battlefield or, more likely, had "run-ins" with United States forces in their homes or on the road.

"These are either people who are under U.S. control or they`re just Iraqis caught up in the conflict or at checkpoints," said a senior Army official.

Abdullah Khalil, who worked as an Arabic-speaking translator last spring for units from the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade in and around Balad, Iraq, said in an interview that many Iraqi civilians complained to him about strong-arm tactics or shakedowns by American soldiers. But Mr. Khalil said many Iraqis said they were too frightened of the soldiers to report the abuses.

As the Army`s primary criminal investigative organization, the Criminal Investigation Command, often called the C.I.D., is responsible for conducting criminal investigations in which Army personnel are or may be involved. The command is headed by Maj. Gen. Donald J. Ryder, the Army`s provost marshal or senior law enforcement official, who conducted a review of prisons in Iraq last summer and fall at the request of the ground commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez.

With headquarters at Fort Belvoir, Va., the investigation command has sent scores of agents and support personnel to Iraq to examine cases ranging from homicide to fraud. The agents have been attached to military police units, and conduct their investigations independently of commanders in the field. The commanders receive the agents` reports, and mete out disciplinary action or initiate criminal charges based on that information and subsequent inquiries.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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May 31, 2004
Two U.S. Soldiers Die in Clashes in Iraq
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 4:54 a.m. ET

KUFA, Iraq (AP) -- Fighting raged in the Shiite holy city of Kufa early Monday, killing two U.S. soldiers and further eroding a deal to halt clashes with followers of a radical Muslim cleric.

The militiamen, allied with cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, accused the Americans of firing near the main mosque, damaging its outer wall. Attackers ambushed a patrol with small arms fire, killing one soldier, and fired a rocket propelled grenade on a tank, killing another.

The fighting also killed one Iraqi and injured eight others, hospital officials said.

In a report from Kufa, CNN, which has a reporter embedded with 1st Armored Division troops there, spoke of a ``major firefight`` which broke out late Sunday when soldiers tried to secure a police station. CNN quoted soldiers as saying it was the most intense fighting in the area in the past six weeks.

In a separate incident, one Task Force 1st Armored Division soldier died Sunday and two others were wounded when they hit a roadside bomb south of Baghdad, the military reported. More than 800 service members have died since the beginning of military operations in Iraq.

The attacks came as assailants ambushed a convoy of Britons on a northern Baghdad highway Sunday, killing one Iraqi security guard and a bystander, officials and witnesses said.

The attack on the convoy in Baghdad`s Shoala district occurred near dusk as three sport utility vehicles headed south toward the city center. Gunmen in an approaching vehicle opened fire, sending three of the four SUVs careening off the road into barricades.

Crowds of Iraqi youths danced and cheered as rescuers dragged a bloodied body, wearing a flak vest, from the driver`s seat of one vehicle. Others looted tires and set two vehicles on fire.

Two witnesses, Khalid Zaalan, 22, and Qays Hussein, 15, said there was a shootout, and armed Western men jumped from the wrecked SUVs, commandeered a passing car at gunpoint and escaped.

In London, the British Foreign Office said four Britons and another Iraqi jumped out of the vehicles, flagged down a passing Iraqi vehicle and escaped. None of the Britons was hurt but the Iraqi was wounded, the statement said.

A family of three was caught in the crossfire, according to Dr. Mazhar Abdullah of the nearby al-Sadr hospital. The husband was killed and his wife, six months pregnant, was seriously injured, the doctor said.

A preliminary report from the 1st Cavalry Division, responsible for security in Baghdad, said one Iraqi security guard was killed and another was wounded. The report did not mention any missing personnel or an escape.

In Najaf, 100 miles south of Baghdad, Shiite politicians sought to save a three-day-old agreement with radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to end the standoff with U.S. soldiers in the holy city and restore government control there.

Al-Sadr`s fighters took over Najaf and its twin city Kufa in early April after occupation authorities cracked down on his militia, closing his newspaper, arresting a key lieutenant and announcing an arrest warrant against him for the murder of a rival cleric. The crackdown triggered an uprising in the once quiet Shiite areas in which hundreds have been killed.

Under a deal announced Thursday with Shiite leaders, al-Sadr agreed to remove his fighters from the streets and begin a dialogue with the clerical hierarchy over the future of his militia and the warrant against him. U.S. troops agreed to halt offensive operations around Najaf and Kufa.

However, daily clashes since the agreement was announced have threatened to scuttle the deal. About 150 policemen sent from Baghdad to replace local policemen who deserted returned to Baghdad -- ostensibly because of lack of accommodation for them.

The move threatens to delay the start of joint patrols -- considered the key to shoring up security in the city as al-Sadr`s militiamen return to their homes.

On Sunday, U.S. troops and al-Sadr`s fighters exchanged gunfire near Najaf`s Valley of Peace cemetery -- the largest burial ground in the Muslim world. The U.S.-appointed governor of Najaf, Adnan al-Zurufi, has accused al-Sadr of failing to honor the truce.

Despite the clashes, Governing Council member Ahmad Chalabi, who traveled to Najaf to help shore up the agreement, told reporters there was a ``a momentum for peace`` and the fellow Shiite leaders were ``working to implement this so we can avoid any clashes.``

Chalabi met with al-Sadr`s aides Sunday night and afterward told reporters he had worked out a ``detailed plan for the implementation`` of the truce agreement and would present them to U.S. and Iraqi officials Monday.

``We ask both sides to stop hostilities,`` Chalabi said.

Copyright 2004 The Associated Press

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May 31, 2004
A National ID

The very idea of a national identity card has always rankled Americans across the political spectrum. It conjures images of totalitarianism — Big Brother or even the German SS soldier asking to see a citizen`s papers. But in most European countries, people carry national ID`s as a matter of course. And pressure is mounting in America for some kind of security card.

Private companies in the United States are already marketing the idea of providing a secure card for those willing to submit to extra background checks, similar to a concept proposed by the airlines. Tenants of high-rise buildings or workers at chemical plants, for example, also want security without endless body searches and bag checks. It`s time for Congress to begin a serious discussion of how to create a workable national identification system without infringing on the constitutional rights of Americans.

Concerns for security have already forced Americans to flash identification far more frequently than they would ever have imagined before the terrorist attacks of 2001. Driver`s licenses are well on their way to becoming "de facto" national ID`s. Their inappropriateness is one of the most compelling reasons for a national identification card. The states have wildly different standards for determining whether applicants for driver`s licenses really are who they say they are, making them only minimally reliable for security purposes. And turning driver`s licenses into identification cards undermines their original purpose — to make certain that drivers are qualified to handle a car or truck. The very rational argument in favor of allowing undocumented immigrants to get driver`s licenses — that it would encourage them to learn to drive safely and to obtain insurance — is undermined if the licenses are also used to demonstrate that a person is not a security risk.

Private corporations are now marketing identification systems based on personal and unique "biometrics" like eye scans or fingerprints. The airlines are also considering ways to create a kind of frequent-flier security pass for those willing to submit to a more intense identification check. These private solutions might allow corporations to work out the kinks in these new security systems, a process that could take years if the government tried to do it. But they are only appropriate for limited uses. Otherwise, the country would become a two-tiered security world where the haves zip through lines and have-nots wait endlessly and endure personal searches.

The concept of a national ID card, on the other hand, presents a host of possible problems, not all of them related to civil liberties. As the New York City Council learned tragically last year when a councilman was killed after he helped get his killer around the screening point, the point of security is not to make sure that people are carrying the correct form of identification. It is to make sure that they do not have a weapon. Almost any identification card that can be created can be counterfeited, and a fake supersecurity pass would present more dangers than a fake driver`s license.

If ever there was a good subject for a study commission, this is it. Congress or President Bush should get the best minds, the experts on security, civil liberties and technology, to start wrestling with the most nettlesome issues in this debate.

How, for instance, would government agencies ensure that documents submitted to obtain an ID card — like birth certificates or driver`s licenses — were not forged? How could access to the central database be limited and protected against misuse, particularly by law enforcement? A card might help Americans move through airports more easily or even cash checks more rapidly. But it would probably have to be voluntary. That also means the police must not be allowed to harass those who choose not to have it.

If we`re going to move to a national identification card, we can`t afford to do it badly. Now is the time to figure out how to create a card that helps identify people but doesn`t rob them of a huge swath of their civil liberties in the process.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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May 31, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
America`s Abu Ghraibs
By BOB HERBERT

Most Americans were shocked by the sadistic treatment of Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison. But we shouldn`t have been. Not only are inmates at prisons in the U.S. frequently subjected to similarly grotesque treatment, but Congress passed a law in 1996 to ensure that in most cases they were barred from receiving any financial compensation for the abuse.

We routinely treat prisoners in the United States like animals. We brutalize and degrade them, both men and women. And we have a lousy record when it comes to protecting well-behaved, weak and mentally ill prisoners from the predators surrounding them.

Very few Americans have raised their voices in opposition to our shameful prison policies. And I`m convinced that`s primarily because the inmates are viewed as less than human.

Stephen Bright, director of the Southern Center for Human Rights, represented several prisoners in Georgia who sought compensation in the late-1990`s for treatment that was remarkably similar to the abuses at Abu Ghraib. An undertaker named Wayne Garner was in charge of the prison system at the time, having been appointed in 1995 by the governor, Zell Miller, who is now a U.S. senator.

Mr. Garner considered himself a tough guy. In a federal lawsuit brought on behalf of the prisoners by the center, he was quoted as saying that while there were some inmates who "truly want to do better . . . there`s another 30 to 35 per cent that ain`t fit to kill. And I`m going to be there to accommodate them."

On Oct. 23, 1996, officers from the Tactical Squad of the Georgia Department of Corrections raided the inmates` living quarters at Dooly State Prison, a medium-security facility in Unadilla, Ga. This was part of a series of brutal shakedowns at prisons around the state that were designed to show the prisoners that a new and tougher regime was in charge.

What followed, according to the lawsuit, was simply sick. Officers opened cell doors and ordered the inmates, all males, to run outside and strip. With female prison staff members looking on, and at times laughing, several inmates were subjected to extensive and wholly unnecessary body cavity searches. The inmates were ordered to lift their genitals, to squat, to bend over and display themselves, etc.

One inmate who was suspected of being gay was told that if he ever said anything about the way he was being treated, he would be locked up and beaten until he wouldn`t "want to be gay anymore." An officer who was staring at another naked inmate said, "I bet you can tap dance." The inmate was forced to dance, and then had his body cavities searched.

An inmate in a dormitory identified as J-2 was slapped in the face and ordered to bend over and show himself to his cellmate. The raiding party apparently found that to be hilarious.

According to the lawsuit, Mr. Garner himself, the commissioner of the Department of Corrections, was present at the Dooly Prison raid.

None of the prisoners named in the lawsuit were accused of any improper behavior during the course of the raid. The suit charged that the inmates` constitutional rights had been violated and sought compensation for the pain, suffering, humiliation and degradation they had been subjected to.

Fat chance.

The Prison Litigation Reform Act, designed in part to limit "frivolous" lawsuits by inmates, was passed by Congress and signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1996. It specifically prohibits the awarding of financial compensation to prisoners "for mental or emotional injury while in custody without a prior showing of physical injury."

Without any evidence that they had been seriously physically harmed, the inmates in the Georgia case were out of luck. The courts ruled against them.

This is the policy of the United States of America.

Said Mr. Bright: "Today we are talking about compensating prisoners in Iraq for degrading treatment, as of course we should. But we do not allow compensation for prisoners in the United States who suffer the same kind of degradation and humiliation."

The message with regard to the treatment of prisoners in the U.S. has been clear for years: Treat them any way you`d like. They`re just animals.

The treatment of the detainees in Iraq was far from an aberration. They, too, were treated like animals, which was simply a logical extension of the way we treat prisoners here at home.

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washingtonpost.com

Terror Suspects Beating Charges Filed in Europe

By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, May 31, 2004; Page A01

BERLIN -- The defendant, a Tunisian man with a bushy beard, sits inside a bulletproof glass box in the courtroom. Since his arrest more than a year ago, German authorities have declared the suspect, Ihsan Garnaoui, to be a terrorist and a threat to national security, a man who plotted attacks against U.S. and Jewish targets here.

But since his trial began earlier this month, prosecutors have struggled to make their accusations stick. Witnesses for the state have displayed shaky memories. Security officials have refused to allow two confidential informants to take the stand. And a key police report is missing.

The evidence has been so thin that prosecutors have been unable to provide basic details of the attacks Garnaoui was allegedly planning, such as where they would take place or who else was involved. One of the defendant`s attorneys, Michael Rosenthal, wears a happy grin in court and confidently predicts an acquittal. "There`s nothing there," he said.

The trial already bears the hallmarks of many other failed terrorism prosecutions across Europe that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. European governments have rounded up hundreds of suspects, claiming to disrupt numerous spectacular attacks in the making, only to see the cases collapse months or years later in the courts.

Officials say that difficulties in investigating secretive terror cells, limited cooperation from intelligence agencies and judicial safeguards of defendants` rights have all contributed to this outcome. Muslim spokesmen and civil liberties groups say that police and prosecutors under intense pressure for results often simply go after the wrong people.

European governments have deeply criticized the Bush administration`s decision to keep hundreds of terrorism suspects out of the civilian judicial system and put them instead in the custody of U.S. military or intelligence agencies in places such as Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Such tactics are gross human rights violations, many officials here say. But their own approach has produced few convictions.

In Italy, nine Moroccans who had been held for more than two years on charges of conspiring to poison the water supply of the U.S. Embassy in Rome were acquitted last month after prosecutors admitted they lacked evidence against most of the defendants. Two days later, in a separate trial, three Egyptians were cleared of charges that they intended to bomb Rome`s Fiumicino Airport and an American military cemetery.

Those verdicts followed a bungled case last year in which 28 Pakistani men in Naples were exonerated of police claims that they were involved in a convoluted plot with al Qaeda and the Mafia to assassinate a British admiral.

"The reports are completely exaggerated and they create the impression that there is a threat when there isn`t one," said Homza Roberto Piccardo, national secretary of the Union of Islamic Communities in Italy. "Muslims come to Italy thinking there is legitimate law enforcement, but those expectations are immediately betrayed."

In Spain, a magistrate in charge of investigating terrorism has indicted dozens of people linked to the Sept. 11 hijackings, but has yet to convict any of them on those charges. In the Netherlands, prosecutors have lost two major terrorism cases, including an alleged conspiracy to bomb the U.S. Embassy in Paris, after judges ruled that evidence obtained by spy agencies was inadmissible in court.

France and Britain have some of the toughest anti-terrorism laws in Europe, enabling them to detain suspects for lengthy periods without trial. But they, too, have had difficulty achieving convictions.

In Britain, 544 people were arrested under anti-terrorist legislation between Sept. 11, 2001, and this January, according to figures provided to Parliament. Total convicted so far: six.

Barry Hugill, a spokesman for Liberty, a British civil liberties group, said authorities could not blame the outcomes on legal technicalities or sympathetic judges. "Given the current climate, the current fear of terrorist attack, getting convictions would not be difficult if there`s even a shred of evidence," he said.

In some cases, police or security agencies are quick to make arrests based on rumor or misinterpreted intelligence, as in the case of 10 people arrested last month on suspicion of planning to blow up the stadium of the Manchester United soccer team.

The suspects were released a week later, after authorities determined they were simply sports fans, not Islamic fanatics. "Anyone who just accepts without question what the security services say, we think is very, very naive," Hugill added.

At the same time, European authorities have been less aggressive than American investigators in the pursuit of some well-known radicals.

U.S. officials unsealed a federal grand jury indictment last week against Abu Hamza Masri, a radical London cleric, accusing him of orchestrating a hostage-taking plot in Yemen, among other crimes. The case involved the 1998 kidnapping of 16 Western tourists, a dozen of whom were British.

British officials have long considered Hamza a public menace because of his outspoken support for al Qaeda and have sought to strip him of his citizenship, possibly so he could be deported. But they have never been able to develop a criminal case against him, or to take him into custody until last week. And that was only in response to a U.S. request for his extradition.

On Friday, British Home Secretary David Blunkett said U.S. officials had simply been able to assemble more evidence against Hamza. "If we had that evidence and it related to our country," Blunkett told BBC radio, "we would have been able to take action through our courts."

In Germany, where the government estimates that more than 30,000 people belong to radical Islamic groups, the biggest targets have similarly remained beyond the reach of the law.

A German court last year did convict a Moroccan man, Mounir Motassadeq, of more than 3,000 counts of accessory to murder for aiding the Hamburg al Qaeda cell that carried out the Sept. 11 hijackings. But that verdict was overturned in March by federal appellate judges, who ruled that he was denied a fair trial and deserved a new one. Another alleged 9/11 accomplice, Abdelghani Mzoudi, was acquitted outright in February.

In the Motassadeq case, the appellate court threw out the verdict in part because U.S. officials would not allow testimony or interrogation transcripts from Ramzi Binalshibh, an al Qaeda leader and accused ringleader of the Sept. 11 plot. The defendant`s lawyers had argued that Binalshibh could have verified that their client was unaware of the hijackers` plans.

As a result, some Germans have blamed the United States for the outcome of the case and the fact that Motassadeq remains a free man.

"We have a huge problem with the behavior of the U.S. authorities," said Ulrich von Jeinsen, an attorney representing Americans who lost family members in the Sept. 11 attacks. "It is a question to the American side: What are they willing to give us? It is simple and easy. We will have a reluctance [to pursue other cases in court] unless we have an exchange of cooperation among intelligence services."

Some legal experts, however, said German prosecutors and intelligence agencies should be held at least equally accountable. Christoph Safferling, a criminal law professor at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, said the appellate judges wanted to send a signal that the German judiciary should be more skeptical of evidence in future terrorism cases.

"When you read the decision handed down, it is in some passages quite angry," Safferling said, referring to the overturning of the Motassadeq verdict. "It is quite angry that this person was convicted on such weak evidence, and also very angry with the intelligence services` [lack of] cooperation."

"The prosecutor was not well prepared in this case," he added. "They were relying on a lot of assumptions and hypotheses but couldn`t prove them. I think they were under political pressure. I think if the prosecutor had really thought about it, maybe he wouldn`t have indicted in the first place."

Public sentiment is building to change laws in an attempt to bolster security. An April poll by the Allensbach Institute found that 57 percent of Germans surveyed feared that there would be terrorist attacks in the country in the near future, the highest level recorded by the firm since shortly after the Sept. 11 hijackings.

Last week, after years of debate, German political leaders reached a compromise on a new immigration policy that among other things will make it easier for the government to deport terrorism suspects and keep them under closer surveillance.

"It needs to be possible to remove these people from Germany," said Reinhard Grindel, a member of the German Parliament from the opposition Christian Democrats. "There were holes in the laws here, and [the new immigration law] will now close them. The political consequence is that these people will no longer be able to stay in Germany."

But some scholars said it was unlikely that Germany would take stronger steps to expand police powers or allow indefinite detentions, in view of memories of Nazi rule and the Gestapo.

Special correspondents Shannon Smiley in Berlin and Stacy Meichtry in Rome contributed to this report.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Politicians Taking Top Interim Roles in Iraq
U.N. Envoy Had Sought Technocrats

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, May 31, 2004; Page A12

BAGHDAD, May 30 -- Before U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi returned here a month ago on a mission to form a transitional administration that will take power on June 30, he called for Iraqi politicians to "stay out of the interim government," and sought independent technocrats who would act as caretakers until elections are held next year.

But the results of Brahimi`s work thus far have been the opposite of what he wanted, according to U.N. and Iraqi officials. The leadership now taking shape will be heavy with politicians, prompting concern among diplomats and political analysts here that it could lack legitimacy in the eyes of many ordinary Iraqis. A government without broad support could falter in the tumultuous months after the handover, as an independent Iraq struggles to deal with a violent insurgency, religious and ethnic tensions, a stagnant economy and a host of other problems.

"The stakes are enormous," said a senior U.S. official in Baghdad, who spoke on condition he not be identified by name. "We have to get this one right."

On Friday, Brahimi endorsed Shiite politician Ayad Allawi, a member of the U.S.-appointed Governing Council, to be prime minister. Then he spent the weekend considering several other politicians and council members for the presidency, two vice presidential jobs and 26 cabinet minister posts.

The choice of president has been particularly contentious. Brahimi and the U.S. administrator of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, wanted Adnan Pachachi, a former foreign minister, to get the job. But a large majority of council members continued to back Ghazi Yawar, a U.S.-educated tribal sheik who holds the council`s rotating presidency. Although a council session was scheduled for Monday to debate the issue, council officials said they had received indications from Brahimi and Bremer that they would drop their insistence on Pachachi.

The political maneuvering came as violence continued to smolder in southern Iraq. U.S. soldiers clashed with Shiite gunmen in Najaf for the second day in a row, shaking a tentative cease-fire with militiamen loyal to radical cleric Moqtada Sadr. Fighting also erupted Sunday night in the neighboring city of Kufa. A CNN reporter embedded with the U.S. troops in Kufa said a "major firefight" occurred when soldiers tried to secure a police station. CNN quoted soldiers as saying it was the heaviest fighting in the area in the past six weeks.

A roadside bomb exploded beside a U.S. Army vehicle south of Baghdad on Sunday, killing one 1st Armored Division soldier and wounding two, the Reuters news agency reported.

In Baghdad, gunmen attacked a convoy of sport-utility vehicles carrying foreigners, killing at least two Iraqis, according to witnesses interviewed by news services. The foreign occupants, who were armed, commandeered a passing car and escaped, the witnesses said.

Brahimi, who was sent to Iraq at the behest of the White House, has been frustrated by both the council`s intransigence and pressure from the U.S. occupation authority to accept its favored candidates, according to people involved in the process.

Brahimi, a former Algerian foreign minister, became committed to the idea of a technocratic caretaker government after speaking to many Iraqis on a visit in April. Politicians, including members of the Governing Council, enjoy little public support. Most political leaders lived in exile until the fall of former president Saddam Hussein, fueling a perception that they are out of touch. Iraqis also remain inherently suspicious of parties because of the abuses of Hussein`s once-powerful Baath Party, which dominated the political scene for more than three decades.

"The majority of Iraqis with whom we spoke told us that, under the circumstances, they favored the establishment of a new caretaker government comprised of honest and technically qualified persons," Brahimi told the U.N. Security Council last month.

But as soon as he arrived back in Iraq in early May, he ran into resistance from the council. "Any future government must enjoy wide popular support so it can run the nation`s affairs at this crucial stage of its history," the council said in a May 8 statement. Such a government, the statement insisted, must have "political capability."

Several members bluntly demanded positions for themselves in the new administration.

U.N. officials initially said Brahimi would not be swayed by the council. "You don`t need all the members to say `Aye,` " a senior U.N. official said at the time. "If there are a few naysayers, you can still pull it off."

Brahimi eventually settled upon a man he reportedly believed was an ideal candidate to be prime minister: Hussain Shahristani, a Shiite Muslim nuclear scientist who spent more than a decade in the Abu Ghraib prison after refusing to work on Hussein`s nuclear weapons project. Shahristani is not affiliated with any party and has spent the past year working on humanitarian aid projects. He also is close to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the country`s most powerful Shiite cleric, whose support is essential to the viability of an interim government.

But Shiite politicians on the council who wanted the prime minister`s job for themselves refused to support Shahristani. They suggested to Brahimi that they would oppose the interim government if Shahristani were named prime minister, people familiar with the process said.

Over the course of a few days it became clear to Brahimi that he could not bypass the council, U.N. officials said. Making a clean break from the council would have risked a potentially divisive confrontation, an outcome that he and the U.S. government wanted to avoid, the officials said.

When Shahristani withdrew from consideration, Brahimi`s list of candidates able to muster support on the council dwindled to Allawi and two other members, Adel Abdel-Mehdi of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and Ibrahim Jafari of the Dawa party.

There have been differing accounts of the role U.S. officials in Baghdad played in the process. Some people involved in the process said Bremer and White House envoy Robert D. Blackwill supported Shahristani until council members backed away. Others familiar with the negotiations said the U.S. government had been worried that Shahristani was not seasoned enough and not sympathetic enough to American policies, particularly the Bush administration`s desire for U.S. forces to have unfettered power in the country after the handover.

With Shahristani out, Bremer and Blackwill urged Brahimi to back Allawi, whose party has long been supported by the CIA, officials involved in the process said. At the same time, Allawi was actively building support for his candidacy among other members of the council.

The process came to a head on Friday, when the council unanimously nominated Allawi to be prime minister. Bremer and Brahimi, who were aware of the council`s meeting, subsequently endorsed him.

Emboldened by its success, the council has pushed to select much of the rest of the interim government. Members have demanded that Yawar receive the presidency instead of Pachachi. Yawar, a Sunni tribal leader, is a moderate, but he is regarded by members as more independent and less supportive of American policies. Yawar`s tribe, the Shamar, has many Shiite members, and he has the support of most Shiite members on the council.

"Dr. Pachachi represents old Iraq while Sheik Ghazi represents the tribal and Arab values that are important to the people," a senior council official said.

The council`s effort to impose its own candidates extended well beyond the presidency. Several members said they wanted the two vice presidential jobs to go to Jafari and Rowsch Schaways of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, who is a close associate of council member Massoud Barzani.

Council members also pushed for fellow members to assume three important cabinet posts: Abdel-Mehdi as finance minister, Sameer Shaker Sumaidaie as interior minister and Rajaa Habib Khuzai as health minister, Iraqi politicians said.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Alle, ich glaube, 17 Jahre werden die USA von einer Zicadenplage heimgsucht. Hier ein ernstgemeintes Kochrezept von der Post. Colesterinfrei und gesund.


Fresh Cicadas Served Here
Wednesday, May. 19, 2004; 7:53 AM

D.C. resident Jacques Tiziou has a taste for cicadas. Watch him as he collects and prepares the young, tender, winged insects for brunch.



http://mfile.akamai.com/920/rm/video.washingtonpost.com/medi…

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Military Fatalities: US: 813 Total: 923

Mai 04: 81 Tote. Das ist der 4. Platz für den Mai 04, nach 140 Toten für den April 04, 110 für den Nov. 03 und 93 Toten für den März 03.

http://lunaville.org/warcasualties/Summary.aspx

5/31/04 iribnews: Gunmen kill senior Iraqi official
Gunmen shot and killed a senior official of a main Sunni Islamic party as he was driving home late on Sunday, the deputy head of the party said on Monday.
05/31/04 AP: Car bomb kills two, injures more than 20 in Baghdad
A car bomb exploded on Monday near the headquarters of the U.S.-run occupation authority in Baghdad, killing at least two people injuring more than 20. It was unclear if the bomb was a suicide attack
05/31/04 CJTF: Two Task Force 1st AD Soldiers Die in Separate Engagements
One Soldier was killed when his patrol was ambushed with small arms fire and the other was killed when a rocket-propelled grenade struck his tank during a patrol.
05/31/04 Reuters: Two U.S. Soldiers Killed in Cleric`s Stronghold
Insurgents have killed two U.S. soldiers in the Iraqi city of Kufa, where U.S.-led forces have been fighting the militia of rebel Shi`ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, the U.S. military said on Monday
05/31/04 AP: Two Killed in Attack on Convoy in Baghdad
Assailants ambushed a convoy of Britons on a northern Baghdad highway on Sunday, killing one Iraqi security guard and a bystander, officials and witnesses said.
05/31/04 CJTF: 1st AD Soldier Killed, Two Others Wounded in IED Attack
Three Task Force 1st Armored Division Soldiers were wounded at about 6:40 p.m. May 30 when their vehicle struck an improvised explosive device south of Baghdad...one Soldier died from wounds sustained in the attack.
05/30/04 AP: Major Fighting Reported In Kufa, Najaf
Assailants ambushed a convoy of Westerners on Sunday on a northern Baghdad highway, killing at least two people and possibly abducting others, police and witnesses said. U.S. soldiers came under fire ...
05/30/04 Reuters: Gunmen Kill 2 Foreigners, Seize 3 in Baghdad
Gunmen attacked three civilian vehicles carrying foreigners in northwest Baghdad Sunday, killing two Westerners and seizing three others, witnesses and police at the scene said
05/30/04 AP: Westerner Killed in Baghdad Attack on Three SUVs
Three sport utility vehicles were attacked Sunday evening in the Iraqi capital, and the body of at least one Westerner could be seen in the flaming wreckage.
05/30/04 Novinite: Bulgarians Nab Four Iraq Rebels
Bulgaria`s Karbala troops have seized four Iraqis who tried to sack an arms depot
05/30/04 Reuters: Foreigners Attacked in Baghdad, Some Killed
Gunmen opened fire on two civilian vehicles carrying foreigners in western Baghdad on Sunday and police at the scene said some people had been killed.
05/30/04 AP: Soldier Wounded In Mosul
One soldier also was slightly wounded Saturday when a roadside bomb exploded near a U.S. convoy in the northern city of Mosul, the U.S. military said.
05/30/04 AP: U.S. Soldiers Clash With Gunmen in Najaf
U.S. soldiers clashed with Shiite gunmen in this holy city on Sunday, a day after Najaf`s governor accused radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ...
05/30/04 Reuters: Six Soldiers Wounded by Car Bomb
six soldiers have been wounded in a car bomb attack at a coalition base east of Talafar, the name of the American military base in the northern city of Mosul.
05/30/04 AP: Two blasts hit center of Baghdad
Two explosions were heard near the U.S.-led coalition headquarters in central Baghdad on Saturday, witnesses said.

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Monday, May 31, 2004
War News for May 31, 2004

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring ‘em on: Two US soldiers, 20 Iraqi militiamen killed in fighting near Kufa.

Bring ‘em on: One US soldier killed, two wounded by roadside bomb “south of Baghdad.”

Bring ‘em on: IGC member assassinated near Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: One Iraqi security guard killed in ambush near Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Two Westerners killed, three kidnapped in ambush near Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Two US soldiers wounded in fighting near Najaf.

Bring ‘em on: Car bomb kills two Iraqis near Green Zone in Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Japanese military convoy ambushed near Samawah; casualties are reported.

Bring ‘em on: Three Iraqis killed, four wounded in mortar attack in Samarra.

Bring ‘em on: Two Iraqis killed in mortar attack on US positions near Mosul.

Bring ‘em on: Two insurgents killed while planting roadside bomb near Beiji.

Bring ‘em on: Five Iraqi policemen wounded by roadside bomb near Basra.

Lieutenant AWOL’s war trophy. “Ousted Iraq president Saddam Hussein`s pistol has made its way to the White House with United States President George W Bush proudly showing it to select visitors, Time magazine said in a report…’ He really liked showing it off,’ the report quoted an unnamed visitor to the White House as saying. ‘He was really proud of it.’” salvage has the best commentary on this item.

Redeployment. “At Fort Riley, this is the last stop before home for soldiers returning from Iraq. Mandatory "debriefs" like this one, to be conducted for thousands of soldiers in training rooms and auditoriums at bases across the country, are a novelty for the United States military. The sessions were begun in response to a spate of deaths at Fort Bragg, N.C., in 2002, when four soldiers were charged with killing their wives in unrelated cases. The sessions reflect the realization that for soldiers and their families, the burdens and sacrifices of deployment go far beyond fighting overseas and waiting at home. As these re-entry sessions show, coping with war is a long-term struggle, a way of life, falling hardest on a sliver of American society: the men, women and children of the military class, hundreds of thousands of them, many clustered in and around bases like Fort Riley.”

More on detainee deaths. “In the aftermath of the international outcry over the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, the Pentagon has repeatedly said it thoroughly investigates all accusations of mistreatment and misconduct. But as the handling of the death certificates suggests, many of the known investigations into abuses against Afghan and Iraqi detainees moved glacially, at least until the photographs of hooded, shackled and naked Iraqi prisoners appeared late last month.”

Commentary

Analysis: Meanwhile, America`s reputation has plummeted, not only in the Middle East but in European and other countries considered long-time allies. Among Arabs, the prevailing view hasn`t improved since the war was launched, Mr. Telhami said. "They believe the war was for oil and for Israel, but not for democracy, not for weapons of mass destruction, not for any of these things that were stated by the U.S."

Analysis: “Now, as Mr. Brahimi nears the end of his work, Iraqis are discovering that his task was not so simple. With his slate of appointees expected to be announced in the next day or two, the appointments leaked so far suggest that what Mr. Brahimi ultimately accomplishes may turn out to be less a revolution than a rearrangement, less a new cast of characters than a reworked version of the same old faces. The reason, Iraqis are beginning to say, has been the unexpected assertiveness of American officials and their allies on the Iraqi Governing Council, coupled with Mr. Brahimi`s surprising passivity, after he was expected to have a free hand. The danger, some of these Iraqis say, is that the new government could end up looking too much like the old one, an American-appointed council that never gained the acceptance of the people. If that proves true once the appointees are officially announced, they said, the new government could lack the credibility it needs to carry the country through the turbulent period leading to nationwide elections next year. Already, a three-day cease-fire appeared to be unraveling in the south.”


86-43-04. Pass it on.



# posted by yankeedoodle : 4:32 AM
Comments (3)

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Isn`t that cute? Thousands died so that Bush could play cowboy with Saddam`s gun
Date: Monday, May 31 @ 10:13:23 EDT


From The New Zealand Herald

US President George W Bush is boasting of an unusual piece of memorabilia brought back from Iraq: the pistol clutched by Saddam Hussein when he was discovered by American soldiers in a spider hole outside his home town after the war.

Military officials had the handgun mounted after it was seized from the dishevelled and disoriented Iraqi dictator in his underground hideout in Dawr last December.

The soldiers involved in the capture later presented it to the US President, who keeps it in a small study off the Oval Office, where he keeps his favourite mementoes, according to Time magazine.

He also keeps there a photograph of US Special Forces in Afghanistan praying after burying a piece of the World Trade Centre destroyed in the September 11 attacks.

"He really liked showing it off," a White House visitor who had seen the gun was quoted as saying.



"He was really proud of it."Mr Bush has told select visitors that the gun was unloaded when Saddam was captured - contrary to reports at the time. It is still empty.

The fallen dictator is awaiting trial, in an undisclosed location, for crimes against humanity.

From The New Zealand Herald:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/latestnewsstory.cfm?
storyID=3569585&thesection=news&thesubsection=world

[Joerver]

A geostrategy for Eurasia

by Zbigniew Brzezinski

October, 1997 "Foreign Affairs" -- Seventy-five years ago, when the first issue of Foreign Affairs saw the light of day, the United States was a self-isolated Western hemispheric power, sporadically involved in the affairs of Europe and Asia. World War II and the ensuing Cold War compelled the United States to develop a sustained commitment to Western Europe and the Far East. America`s emergence as the sole global superpower now makes an integrated and comprehensive strategy for Eurasia imperative.

Eurasia is home to most of the world`s politically assertive and dynamic states. All the historical pretenders to global power originated in Eurasia. The world`s most populous aspirants to regional hegemony, China and India, are in Eurasia, as are all the potential political or economic challengers to American primacy. After the United States, the next six largest economies and military spenders are there, as are all but one of the world`s overt nuclear powers, and all but one of the covert ones. Eurasia accounts for 75 percent of the world`s population, 60 percent of its GNP, and 75 percent of its energy resources. Collectively, Eurasia`s potential power overshadows even America`s.

Eurasia is the world`s axial supercontinent. A power that dominated Eurasia would exercise decisive influence over two of the world`s three most economically productive regions, Western Europe and East Asia. A glance at the map also suggests that a country dominant in Eurasia would almost automatically control the Middle East and Africa. With Eurasia now serving as the decisive geopolitical chessboard, it no longer suffices to fashion one policy for Europe and another for Asia. What happens with the distribution of power on the Eurasian landmass will be of decisive importance to America`s global primacy and historical legacy.

A sustainable strategy for Eurasia must distinguish among the more immediate short-run perspective of the next five years or so, the medium term of 20 or so years, and the long run beyond that. Moreover, these phases must be viewed not as watertight compartments but as part of a continuum. In the short run, the United States should consolidate and perpetuate the prevailing geopolitical pluralism on the map of Eurasia. Tins strategy will put a premium on political maneuvering and diplomatic manipulation, preventing the emergence of a hostile coalition that could challenge America`s primacy, not to mention the remote possibility of any one state seeking to do so. By the medium term, the foregoing should lead to the emergence of strategically compatible partners which, prompted by American leadership, might shape a more cooperative trans-Eurasian security system. In the long run, the foregoing could become the global core of genuinely shared political responsibility.

In the western periphery of Eurasia, the key players will continue to be France and Germany, and America`s central goal should be to continue to expand the democratic European bridgehead. In the Far East, China is likely to be increasingly pivotal, and the United States will not have a Eurasian strategy unless a Sino-American political consensus is nurtured. In Eurasia`s center, the area between an enlarging Europe and a regionally rising China will remain a political black hole until Russia firmly redefines itself as a postimperial state. Meanwhile, to the south of Russia, Central Asia threatens to become a caldron of ethnic conflicts and great-power rivalries.

THE INDISPENSABLE POWER

America`s status as the world`s premier power is unlikely to be contested by any single challenger for more than a generation. No state is likely to match the United States in the four key dimensions of power -- military, economic, technological, and cultural -- that confer global political clout. Short of American abdication, the only real alternative to American leadership is international anarchy. President Clinton is correct when he says America has become the world`s "indispensable nation."

America`s global stewardship will be tested by tension, turbulence, and periodic conflict. In Europe, there are signs that the momentum for integration and enlargement is waning and that nationalisms may reawaken. Large-scale unemployment persists even in the most successful European states, breeding xenophobic reactions that could cause French or German politics to lurch toward extremism. Europe`s aspirations for unity will be met only if Europe is encouraged, and occasionally prodded, by the United States.

Russia`s future is less certain and the prospects for its positive evolution more tenuous. America must therefore shape a political context that is congenial to Russia`s assimilation into a larger framework of European cooperation, while fostering the independence of its newly sovereign neighbors. Yet the viability of, say, Ukraine or Uzbekistan will remain uncertain, especially if America fails to support their efforts at national consolidation.

The chances of a grand accommodation with China could also be threatened by a crisis over Taiwan, internal Chinese political dynamics, or simply a downward spiral in Sino-American relations. Sino-American hostility could strain the United States` relationship with Japan, perhaps causing disruption in Japan itself. Asian stability would then be at risk, and these events could even affect the posture and cohesion of a country like India, which is critical to stability in South Asia.

In a volatile Eurasia, the immediate task is to ensure that no state or combination of states gains the ability to expel the United States or even diminish its decisive role. However, the promotion of a stable transcontinental balance should not be viewed as an end in itself, only as a means toward shaping genuine strategic partnerships in the key regions of Eurasia. A benign American hegemony must still discourage others from posing a challenge, not only by making its costs too high, but also by respecting the legitimate interests of Eurasia`s regional aspirants.

More specifically, the medium-term goal requires fostering genuine partnerships with a more united and politically defined Europe, a regionally preeminent China, a postimperial and Europe-oriented Russia, and a democratic India. But it will be success or failure in forging broader strategic relationships with Europe and China that shapes Russia`s future role and determines Eurasia`s central power equation.

THE DEMOCRATIC BRIDGEHEAD

Europe is America`s essential geopolitical bridgehead in Eurasia. America`s stake in democratic Europe is enormous. Unlike America`s links with Japan, NATO entrenches American political influence and military power on the Eurasian mainland. With the allied European nations still highly dependent on U.S. protection, any expansion of Europe`s political scope is automatically an expansion of U.S. influence. Conversely, the United States` ability to project influence and power in Eurasia relies on close transatlantic ties.

A wider Europe and an enlarged NATO will serve the short-term and longer-term interests of U.S. policy. A larger Europe will expand the range of American influence without simultaneously creating a Europe so politically integrated that it could challenge the United States on matters of geopolitical importance, particularly in the Middle East. A politically defined Europe is also essential to Russia`s assimilation into a system of global cooperation.

America cannot create a more united Europe on its own -- that is a task for the Europeans, especially the French and the Germans. But America can obstruct the emergence of a more united Europe, and that could prove calamitous for Eurasian stability and America`s interests. Unless Europe becomes more united, it is likely to become more disunited again. Washington must work closely with Germany and France in building a Europe that is politically viable, remains linked to the United States, and widens the scope of the democratic international system. Choosing between France and Germany is not the issue. Without both these nations, there will be no Europe, and without Europe there will never be a cooperative trans-Eurasian system.

In practical terms, all this will eventually require America`s accommodation to a shared leadership in NATO, greater acceptance of France`s concerns over a European role in Africa and the Middle East, and continued support for the European Union`s eastward expansion even as the EU becomes politically and economically more assertive. A transatlantic free trade agreement, already advocated by a number of Western leaders, could mitigate the risk of a growing economic rivalry between the EU and the United States. The EU`s progressive success in burying centuries-old European antagonisms would be wen worth a gradual diminution in America`s role as Europe`s arbitrator.

Enlargement of NATO and the EU would also reinvigorate Europe`s waning sense of a larger vocation while consolidating, to the benefit of both America and Europe, the democratic gains won through the successful end of the Cold War. At stake in this effort is nothing less than America`s long-range relationship with Europe. A new Europe is still taking shape, and if that Europe is to remain part of the "Euro-Atlantic" space, the expansion of NATO is essential.

Accordingly, NATO and EU enlargement should move forward in deliberate stages. Assuming a sustained American and Western European commitment, here is a speculative but realistic timetable for these stages: By 1999, the first three Central European members will have been admitted into NATO, although their inclusion in the EU will probably not take place before 2002 or 2003; by 2003, the EU is likely to have initiated accession talks with all three Baltic republics, and NATO will likewise have moved forward on their membership as well as that of Romania and Bulgaria, with their accession likely to be completed before 2005; between 2005 and 2010, Ukraine, provided it has made significant domestic reforms and has become identified as a Central European country, should also be ready for initial negotiations with the EU and NATO.

Failure to widen NATO, now that the commitment has been made, would shatter the concept of an expanding Europe and demoralize the Central Europeans. Worse, it could reignite dormant Russian political aspirations in Central Europe. Moreover, it is far from evident that the Russian political elite shares the European desire for a strong American political and military presence in Europe. Accordingly, while fostering a cooperative relationship with Russia is desirable, it is important for America to send a clear message about its global priorities. If a choice must be made between a larger Europe-Atlantic system and a better relationship with Russia, the former must rank higher.

RUSSIA`S HISTORIC TASK

New Russian ties with NATO and the EU, formalized by the Joint NATO-Russia Council, may encourage Russia to make its long-delayed post-imperial decision in favor of Europe. Formal membership in the Group of Seven (G-7) and upgrading the policymaking machinery of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe -- within which a special security committee composed of America, Russia, and several key European countries could be established -- should encourage constructive Russian engagement in European political and military cooperation. Coupled with ongoing Western financial assistance and infrastructure investment, especially in communication networks, these steps could bring Russia significantly closer to Europe.

But Russia`s longer-term role in Eurasia win depend largely on its self-definition. Although Europe and China have increased their regional influence, Russia stiff remains in charge of the world`s largest piece of real estate, spanning ten time zones and dwarfing the United States, China, or an enlarged Europe. Territorial deprivation is not Russia`s central problem. Rather, Russia must face the fact that Europe and China are already economically more powerful and that Russia is falling behind China on the road to social modernization.

In these circumstances, Russia`s first priority should be to modernize itself rather than to engage in a futile effort to regain its status as a global power. Given the country`s size and diversity, a decentralized political system and free-market economics would be most likely to unleash the creative potential of the Russian people and Russia`s vast natural resources. A loosely confederated Russia -- composed of a European Russia, a Siberian Republic, and a Far Eastern Republic -- would also find it easier to cultivate closer economic relations with its neighbors. Each of the confederated entitles would be able to tap its local creative potential, stifled for centuries by Moscow`s heavy bureaucratic hand. In turn, a decentralized Russia would be less susceptible to imperial mobilization.

Russia is more likely to make a break with its imperial past if the newly independent post-Soviet states are vital and stable. Their vitality will temper any residual Russian imperial temptations. Political and economic support for the new states must be an integral part of a broader strategy for integrating Russia into a cooperative transcontinental system. A sovereign Ukraine is a critically important component of such a policy, as is support for such strategically pivotal states as Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan.

Large-scale international investment in an increasingly accessible Central Asia would not only consolidate the independence of the new countries, but also benefit a postimperial and democratic Russia. Tapping the region`s resources would increase prosperity and prompt a greater sense of stability, reducing the risk of Balkan-type conflicts. Regional development would also radiate to the adjoining Russian provinces, which tend to be economically underdeveloped. The region`s new leaders would gradually become less fearful of the political consequences of close economic relations with Russia. A non-imperial Russia could then be accepted as the region`s major economic partner, although no longer its imperial ruler.

EURASIA`S VOLATILE SOUTH

To promote a stable southern Caucasus and Central Asia, America must be careful not to alienate Turkey, while exploring whether an improvement in U. S.-Iranian relations is feasible. If Turkey feels like a European outcast, it will become more Islamic and less likely to cooperate with the West in integrating Central Asia into the world community. America should use its influence in Europe to encourage Turkey`s eventual admission to the EU, and make a point of tre-ating Turkey as a European state, provided internal Turkish politics do not take a dramatically Islamist turn. Regular consultations with Ankara regarding the future of the Caspian Sea basin and Central Asia would foster Turkey`s sense of strategic partnership with the United States. America should also support Turkish aspirations to have a pipeline from Baku, Azerbaijan, to Ceyhan on its own Mediterranean coast serve as a major outlet for the Caspian sea basin energy reserves.

In addition, it is not in America`s interest to perpetuate U.S.-Iranian hostility. Any eventual reconciliation should be based on both countries` recognition of their mutual strategic interest in stabilizing Iran`s volatile regional environment. A strong, even religiously motivated -- but not fanatically anti-Western -- Iran is still in the U.S. interest. American long-range interests in Eurasia would be better served by abandoning existing U.S. objections to closer Turkish-Iranian economic cooperation, especially in the construction of new pipelines from Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. In fact, American financial participation in such projects would be to America`s benefit.

Although currently a passive player, India has an important role in the Eurasian scene. Without the political support it received from the Soviet Union, India is contained geopolitically by Chinese-Pakistani cooperation. The survival of Indian democracy is in itself important, in that it refutes better than volumes of academic debate the notion that human rights and democracy are exclusively Western. India proves that antidemocratic "Asian values," propagated by spokesmen from Singapore to China, are simply antidemocratic and not necessarily Asian. India`s failure would be a blow to democracy`s prospects in Asia and would remove a power that contributes to Asia`s balance, especially given China`s rise. India should be engaged in discussions pertaining to regional stability, not to mention the promotion of more bilateral connections between the American and Indian defense communities.

CHINA AS THE EASTERN ANCHOR

There will be no stable equilibrium of power in Eurasia without a deepening strategic understanding between America and China and a clearer definition of Japan`s emerging role. That poses two dilemmas for America: determining the practical definition and acceptable scope of China`s emergence as the dominant regional power and managing Japan`s restlessness over its de facto status as an American protectorate. Eschewing excessive fears of China`s rising power and Japan`s economic ascension should infuse realism into a policy that must be based on careful strategic calculus. Its goals should be to divert Chinese power into constructive regional accommodation and to channel Japanese energy into wider international partnerships.

Engaging Beijing in a serious strategic dialogue is the first step in stimulating its interest in an accommodation with America that reflects the two countries` shared concerns in northeast Asia and Central Asia. It also behooves Washington to eliminate any uncertainty regarding its commitment to the one-China policy, lest the Taiwan issue fester, especially after China`s digestion of Hong Kong. Likewise, it is in China`s interest to demonstrate that even a Greater China can safeguard diversity in its internal political arrangements.

To make progress, the Sino-American strategic discourse should be sustained and serious. Through such communication, even contentious issues like Taiwan and human rights can be addressed persuasively. The Chinese need to be told that China`s internal liberalization is not a purely domestic affair, since only a democratizing and prosperous China has any chance of peacefully enticing Taiwan. Any attempt at forcible reunification would jeopardize Sino-American relations and hobble China`s ability to attract foreign investment. China`s aspirations to regional preeminence and global status would be diminished.

Although China is emerging as a regionally dominant power, it is not likely to become a global one for a long time. The conventional wisdom that China will be the next global power is breeding paranoia outside China while fostering megalomania in China. It is far from certain that China`s explosive growth rates can be, maintained for the next two decades. In fact, continued long-term growth at the current rates would require an unusually felicitous mix of national leadership, political tranquillity, social discipline, high savings, massive inflows of foreign investment, and regional stability. A prolonged combination of all of these factors is unlikely.

Even if China avoids serious political disruptions and sustains its economic growth for a quarter of a century -- both rather big ifs -- China would still be a relatively poor country. A tripling0f GDP would leave China below most nations in per capita income, and a significant portion of its people would remain poor. Its standing in access to telephones, cars, computers, let alone consumer goods, would be very low.

In two decades China may qualify as a global military power, since its economy and growth should enable its rulers to divert a significant portion of the country`s GDP to modernize the armed forces, including a further buildup of its strategic nuclear arsenal. However, if that effort is excessive, it could have the same negative effect on China`s long-term economic growth as the arms race had on the Soviet economy. A large-scale Chinese buildup would also precipitate a countervailing Japanese response. In any case, outside of its nuclear forces, China will not be able to project its military power beyond its region for some time.

A Greater China becoming a regionally dominant power is another matter. A de facto sphere of Chinese regional influence is likely to be part of Eurasia`s future. Such a sphere of influence should not be confused with a zone of exclusive political domination, like the Soviet Union had in Eastern Europe. It is more likely to be an area in which weaker states pay special deference to the interests, views, and anticipated reactions of the regionally dominant power. In brief, a Chinese sphere of influence can be defined as one in which the first question in the various capitals is, "What is Beijing`s view on this?"

A Greater China is likely to receive political support from its wealthy diaspora in Singapore, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, and Jakarta, not to mention Taiwan and Hong Kong. According to Yazhou Zhoukan (Asiaweek), the aggregate assets of the 500 leading Chinese-owned companies in Southeast Asia total about $540 billion. The Southeast Asian countries already find it prudent to defer at times to China`s political sensitivities and economic interests. A China that becomes a true political and economic power might also project more overt influence into the Russian Far East while sponsoring Korea`s unification.

Greater China`s geopolitical influence is not necessarily incompatible with America`s strategic interest in a stable, pluralistic Eurasia. For example, China`s growing interest in Central Asia constrains Russia`s ability to achieve a political reintegration of the region under Moscow`s control. In this connection and in regard to the Persian Gulf, China`s growing energy needs means it has a common interest with America in maintaining free access to, and political stability in, the oil-producing regions. Similarly, China`s support for Pakistan restrains India`s ambitions to subordinate that country, while offsetting India`s inclination to cooperate with Russia in regard to Afghanistan and Central Asia. Chinese and Japanese involvement in the development of eastern Siberia can also enhance regional stability.

The bottom line is that America and China need each other in Eurasia. Greater China should consider America a natural ally for historical as well as political reasons. Unlike Japan or Russia, the United States has never had any territorial designs on China; compared to Great Britain, it has never humiliated China. Moreover, without a viable strategic relationship with America, China is not likely to continue to attract the enormous foreign investment necessary for regional preeminence.

Similarly, without a Sino-American strategic accommodation as the eastern anchor of America`s involvement in Eurasia, America will lack a geostrategy for mainland Asia, which win deprive America of a geostrategy for Eurasia as well. For America, China`s regional power, co-opted into a wider framework of international cooperation, can become an important strategic asset -- equal to Europe, more weighty than Japan -- in assuring Eurasia`s stability. To recognize this fact, China could be invited to the G-7`s annual summit, especially since an invitation was recently extended to Russia.

REFOCUSING JAPAN`S ROLE

Since a democratic bridgehead on Eurasia`s eastern mainland will not soon emerge, it is all the more important that America`s effort to nurture a strategic relationship with China be based on acknowledgment that a democratic and economically successful Japan is America`s global partner but not an offshore Asian ally against China. Only on that basis can a three-way accommodation -- one that involves America`s global power, China`s regional preeminence, and Japan`s international leadership -- be constructed. Such an accommodation would be threatened by any significant expansion of American-Japanese military cooperation. Japan should not be America`s unsinkable aircraft carrier in the Far East, nor should it be America`s principal Asian military partner. Efforts to promote these Japanese roles would cut America off from the Asian mainland, vitiate the prospects for reaching a strategic consensus with China, and frustrate America`s ability to consolidate stability in Eurasia.

Japan does not have a major political role to play in Asia, given the regional aversion it continues to evoke because of its behavior before and during World War II. Japan has not sought the kind of reconciliation with China and Korea that Germany sought with France and is seeking with Poland. Like insular Britain in the case of Europe, Japan is politically irrelevant to the Asian mainland. However, Tokyo can carve out a globally influential role by cooperating closely with the United States on the new agenda of global concerns pertaining to development and peacekeeping while avoiding any counterproductive efforts to become an Asian regional power. American statesmanship should steer Japan in that direction.

In the meantime, a true Japanese-Korean reconciliation would contribute significantly to a stable setting for Korea`s eventual reunification, mitigating the international complications that could ensue from the end of the country`s division. The United States should promote this cooperation. Many specific steps, ranging from joint university programs to combined military formations, that were taken to advance the German-french reconciliation, and later between Germany and Poland, could be adapted to this case. A comprehensive and regionally stabilizing Japanese-Korean partnership might in turn facilitate a continuing American presence in the Far East after Korea`s unification.

It goes without saying that a close political relationship with Japan is in America`s global interest. But whether Japan is to be America`s vassal, rival, or partner depends on the ability of Americans and Japanese to define common international goals and to separate the U. S. strategic mission in the Far East from Japanese aspirations for a global role. For Japan, in spite of the domestic debates about foreign policy, the relationship with America remains the beacon for its international sense of direction. A disoriented Japan, whether lurching toward rearmament or a separate accommodation with China, would spell the end of the American role in the Asia-Pacific region, foreclosing the emergence of a stable triangular arrangement for America, Japan, and China.

A disoriented Japan would be like a beached whale, thrashing helplessly but dangerously. If it is to turn its face to the world beyond Asia, Japan must be given a meaningful incentive and a special status so that its own national interest is served. Unlike China, which can seek global power by first becoming a regional power, Japan can gain global influence only if it first eschews the quest for regional power.

That makes it all the more important for Japan to feel it is America`s special partner in a global vocation that is as politically satisfying as it is economically beneficial. To that end, the United States should consider the adoption of an American-japanese free trade agreement, creating a common American-japanese economic space. Such a step, formalizing the growing link between the two economies, would provide a solid underpinning for America`s continued presence in the Far East and for Japan`s constructive global engagement.

TRANSCONTINENTAL SECURITY

In the long term, Eurasia`s stability would be enhanced by the emergence, perhaps early in the next century, of a trans-Eurasian security system. Such a transcontinental security arrangement might involve an expanded NATO, linked by cooperative security agreements with Russia, China, and Japan. But to get there, Americans and Japanese must first set in motion a triangular political-security dialogue that engages China. Such three-way American-Japanese-Chinese security talks could eventually involve more Asian participants, and later lead to a dialogue with the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe. That, in turn, could eventually pave the way for a series of conferences by European and Asian states on security issues. A transcontinental security system would thus begin to take shape.

Defining the substance and institutionalizing the form of a trans-Eurasian security system could become the major architectural initiative of the next century. The core of the new transcontinental security framework could be a standing committee composed of the major Eurasian powers, with America, Europe, China, Japan, a confederated Russia, and India collectively addressing critical issues for Eurasia`s stability. The emergence of such a transcontinental system could gradually relieve America of some of its burdens, while perpetuating beyond a generation its decisive role as Eurasia`s arbitrator. Geostrategic success in that venture would be a fitting legacy to America`s role as the first and only global superpower.

Citation: Zbigniew Brzezinski, "A Geostrategy for Eurasia," Foreign Affairs, 76:5, September/October 1997.

COPYRIGHT 1997 Council on Foreign Relations Inc.

[Joerver]

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[Joerver]

Face Reality

By Zbigniew Brzezinski

Friday 28 May 2004 "The New Republic" -- America`s Iraq policy requires a fundamental strategic reappraisal. The present policy - justified by falsehoods, pursued with unilateral arrogance, blinded by self-delusion, and stained by sadistic excesses - cannot be corrected with a few hasty palliatives. The remedy must be international in character; political, rather than military, in substance; and regional, rather than simply Iraqi, in scope.

Rectifying the increasingly messy Iraqi adventure requires understanding its root: the extremist foreign policy pursued by this administration. Its rhetoric has been demagogic, especially at the very top. Its strategic content has been manipulated by officials preoccupied more with reshaping the security landscape of the Middle East than with maintaining America`s ability to lead globally. Domestic support for its policies was mobilized by the deliberate exploitation, as well as stimulation, of fear among the electorate. The Iraq war is not only an outgrowth of this flawed approach to foreign policy, but also its symbol.

Unlike the 1991 war against Iraq, for which more than 80 percent of the cost was borne by America`s allies, this time American taxpayers must foot the bill, which is already approaching $200 billion. The number of Americans dead and wounded is in the thousands and climbing, and the number of innocent Iraqis killed is considerably higher. America`s relationship with Europe - which is integral to global stability and to the protection of U.S. interests - has been badly strained. America`s credibility has been tarnished among its traditional friends, its prestige has plummeted worldwide, and global hostility toward the United States has reached a historical high.

Most immediately dangerous, the war has focused Arab hatred on the United States. The U.S. occupation of Iraq is now seen by most Arabs as a mirror image of Israel`s repression of the Palestinians. The Bush administration`s unqualified support for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon`s brutal treatment of the Palestinians has created a political linkage between the war in Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that is evident to almost everyone in the world except the current White House.

The initiatives President Bush took this week point in the right direction, but they are too late in coming and involve too little change in substance. The president now accepts implicitly what top-level administration officials explicitly rejected when I spoke with them just a few months ago: the need for a U.N. umbrella over the U.S. grant of even limited sovereignty to the Iraqi government. The administration, however, still refuses to bite the bullet and make difficult decisions on the role and duration of the U.S. military presence in Iraq or on the larger dilemmas of regional peace in the Middle East.

The administration has yet to confront squarely the fact that the deteriorating situation both in Iraq and in the region will not improve without a politically comprehensive and coldly realistic revision of current policies that addresses four key points: (1) The transfer of "sovereignty" should increase, rather than discredit, the legitimacy of the emerging Iraqi government, and hence it should issue from the United Nations, not the United States; (2) Without a fixed and early date for U.S. troop withdrawal, the occupation will become an object of intensified Iraqi hostility; (3) The Iraqi government should reflect political reality, not doctrinaire American delusions; and (4) Without significant progress toward an Israeli-Palestinian peace, post-occupation Iraq will be both anti-American and anti-Israel.

First, the transfer of nominal sovereignty to a few chosen Iraqis in a still-occupied country will brand any so-called "sovereign" Iraqi authority as treasonous. A grant of "sovereignty" by the United States to the Iraqis - while an American proconsul backed by an occupation army remains ensconced in a fortress in the very heart of the Iraqi capital - will have no political legitimacy. The president`s assertion (repeated more than once in his speech on Monday night) that such a transfer will bestow "full sovereignty" on Iraq is Orwellian artifice.

The urgent need is to subordinate, as soon as possible, the U.S. occupation - which is rapidly alienating the Iraqis - to the visible presence of the United Nations, headed by a high commissioner to whom effective authority should then be transferred. A genuinely empowered U.N. high commissioner could, in turn, progressively yield genuine sovereignty to the Iraqis with much greater prospects of gaining Iraqi public support for the interim government.

The authority of any such high commissioner should extend to the security sphere. The American military commanders in Iraq should retain full discretion to respond to attacks upon U.S. forces in the manner they deem necessary, but any offensive operations they - or other coalition forces - conduct should require explicit authorization from the high commissioner, perhaps in consultation with the Iraqi leaders. That change in command and control would automatically transform the character of the U.S. presence in Iraq from a military occupation to internationally supervised peacekeeping. The U.N. resolution the Bush administration proposed Monday makes token gestures to that end, but it does not fundamentally alter the continued and overt supremacy of the United States in Iraq.

Second, the longer the U.S. military presence lasts, the more likely it is that Iraqi resistance will intensify. It is, therefore, in America`s interest to credibly convey U.S. determination to let Iraqis manage (however imperfectly) their own security. Setting a reasonable deadline for the departure of U.S. troops - far enough in the future not to look like a pell-mell withdrawal but soon enough to concentrate Iraqi minds on the need for self-sufficiency - could take practical advantage of the fact that the countrywide situation on the ground is currently not quite as bad militarily as necessarily selective TV images suggest.

April 2005 - two years after the occupation began - might be the appropriate target for terminating the U.S. military presence. A publicly known date for the departure of U.S. troops would refute suspicions that the United States harbors imperialist designs on Iraq and its oil, thereby diluting anti-American resentments both in Iraq and the region at large. Only a firm deadline for military withdrawal will convince the Iraqis that we truly intend to leave. Conversely, failure to set a date will encourage Iraqi politicians to compete in calling for early U.S. departure.

Admittedly, there is a risk that a U.S. withdrawal will be followed by intensified instability, but such instability would harm U.S. global interests less than continued (and perhaps rising) resistance to a seemingly indefinite U.S. occupation - which, in any case, has not suppressed low-level but widespread crime, violence, and terrorism. That resistance could take the form of intensified urban warfare, such as that waged five decades ago by the Algerians against the French. The United States could doubtless crush such an insurgency with an intensified military effort, but the political costs of such escalation - massive civilian casualties, pervasive destruction, and the inevitable exacerbation of national, cultural, and religious indignities - would be colossal.

The United States should consult with the principal members of its military coalition about an appropriate deadline. A set date of April 2005 could force other states, notably our European allies, to focus on the need for a wider and more ambitious effort to help the Iraqis stabilize and reconstruct their country. The militarily significant members of the coalition (those with 1,000 or more troops in Iraq) are Great Britain, Italy, Poland, Ukraine, and the Netherlands. Their views should be solicited, if for no other reason than because the publics in these countries are increasingly hostile to continued participation in Iraq`s occupation, while some of the officers commanding their contingents in Iraq have been quite critical of heavy-handed U.S. military tactics.

Third, the internationalization of the supreme political authority in Iraq and the setting of a date for U.S. withdrawal will require a redefinition of the oft-proclaimed (but largely illusory) goal of transforming Iraq into a democracy. Democracy cannot be implanted by foreign bayonets. It must be nurtured patiently, with respect for the political dignity of those involved. An assertive and occasionally trigger-happy occupation is no school of democracy. Humiliation and compulsion breed hatred, as the Israelis are learning in the course of their prolonged domination over the Palestinians.

Post-occupation Iraq will not be a democracy. The most that can be practically sought is a federal structure, based on traditional, often tribal, sources of authority within the three major communities that form the Iraqi state: the Shia, the Sunnis, and the Kurds. It would be unwise, however, to demarcate these communities into three territorially defined regions, for that would almost certainly produce intense border conflicts among them. Until the dust settles from Saddam Hussein`s dictatorship and the U.S. military intervention, it would be wiser to rely on the traditional arrangements within the more numerous existing provinces - a strategy that could promote political compromise across sectarian lines. The result would likely be a somewhat Islamic Iraqi national government that roughly reflected the country`s demographic, religious, and ethnic realities.

Fourth, but far from least, the United States must recognize that success in Iraq depends on significant parallel progress toward peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the single most combustible and galvanizing issue in the Arab world. If the United States disengages from Iraq before making significant headway toward settling that dispute, it could face a sovereign Iraqi government that is militantly hostile to both Israel and the United States.

Therefore, the United States - if it is to gain any international (and especially European) support for remedying its Middle Eastern dilemmas - will have to clarify its stand on the eventual shape of an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement. It should by now be clear that the conflict will never be ended by the two parties on their own. U.S. unwillingness to define, even in broad terms, the fundamentals of a peaceful outcome abandons those Israelis and Palestinians who genuinely desire peace to the mercies of their extremist leaders. Furthermore, endorsing Ariel Sharon`s goals but ignoring the Palestinian side of any compromise is delaying, rather than accelerating, the peace process - while compounding the suffering on both sides.

To mobilize those Israelis and Palestinians who seek peace, and to convince the Middle East that U.S. occupation of Iraq is not simply a conspiratorial extension of Israeli domination of the West Bank, the United States should more explicitly state its position regarding the six key issues that a final Israeli-Palestinian peace will have to resolve: not only (as Israel demands) that there can be no right of return for Palestinian refugees, and that the 1967 lines cannot automatically become the final frontier, but also that there will have to be equitable territorial compensation for any Israeli expansion into the West Bank; that settlements not proximate to the 1967 line will have to be vacated; that Jerusalem as a united city will have to be shared as two capitals; and that Palestine will be a demilitarized state, perhaps with some nato military presence to enhance the durability of the peace settlement.

A fundamental course correction is urgently needed if the Middle East is to be transformed for the better. Slogans about "staying the course" are a prescription for inflaming the region while polarizing the United States and undermining U.S. global leadership. A bold change of course - given the gravity of the situation confronting the Iraqis, Israelis, and Arabs more generally, as well as concerned Europeans - could still snatch success from the tightening jaws of failure. But there is little time left.

Zbigniew Brzezinski served as national security advisor to President Jimmy Carter and is the author of The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership.

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Daily Life
by Dahr Jamail | Posted May 29, 2004 at 01:16 AM Baghdad time
http://blog.newstandardnews.net/iraqdispatches/
Sometimes I forget that burnout applies to me too. After nearly two months straight of chasing stories, it was obviously time for a break. Unlike home though, one can`t go take in a movie, take a jog or even a casual stroll. Walking around anywhere in Baghdad, being a westerner, is never casual. So I`ve spent most of my day off inside.

I asked one of my Iraqi friends what most Iraqis do to relax nowadays, and he said about all there is to do to relax is to sit around and drink tea. He said, "I used to go swimming a lot, but the local pool got bombed during the war, so I haven`t gone swimming lately."

He used to go out with friends late into the night, before the war. "We used to start the evenings at 8 p.m., but now we have to end them by 7," he tells me.

So a relatively calm day in Iraq today... this roughly translates to more sporadic fighting in Kufa where US troops killed several Iraqis, the naming of a new Prime Minister who nobody voted for, two Japanese journalists being killed when their vehicle was hit by a Rocket Propelled Grenade and a tenuous "truce" in the works between coalition forces and Muqtada Al-Sadr.

The tenuousness of the entire situation isn`t helped by the machinations going on prior to the June 30 "handover." What happens next here is anybody`s guess.

It`s been interesting watching the new influx of retail goods: Pepsi, 7-up, and Coke are all here in force. Snickers, Toblerone, and other western products as well...but the most obvious are the huge stacks of air conditioners, refridgerators and small generators that tend to form small canyons along the streetsides of Karrada and Arasat, among others.

What other "progress" can I report? A journo friend visiting a mutual friend of ours in Baqubah gave me a ring on the cell tonight -- so the cellular service now includes Baqubah, which is about 30 miles northeast of Baghdad.

Yet another gas crisis has hit Baghdad. Due to the oil pipeline which feeds the refinery at Al-Dora being blown up on May 12, production has dropped a bit here since Dora provides roughly 30% of the gasoline for Iraq.

Some of the gas lines are now over 5 kilometers long, and Iraqis are NOT happy about it. Sitting in their cars for hours on end in 110 degree temps isn`t exactly helping things here, and most Iraqis (remember the 60% unemployment rate) can ill afford to pay the 5-10 times higher blackmarket rate to fill their cars or jerry-cans for their generators (remember that electricity is still far below pre-war levels).

I was contemplating going to Basra in June with a colleague, and told my translator Abu Talat about it. In shock he said, "You want to go to Basra?" I told him I was thinking about it, why? "It`s not hot there, It`s HELL!" He was referring to the heat... which if it`s that much warmer than Baghdad, I may have to reconsider. Hopefully, insh`allah, there won`t be another gas crisis here in July or August.

That`s enough of my random thoughts for tonight -- time to get some sleep while our generator is still powering the air conditioner. It`s been going out at nights now because of the gas shortage... so a few hours of good sleep before waking up sweaty is calling my name.
Disintegration
by Dahr Jamail | Posted May 31, 2004 at 08:24 AM Baghdad time

Late night writing due to the sweat alarm that has gone off, shortly after the electricity has cut out yet again. The electricity seems to have gotten worse lately, which is not surprising, in that this coincides with the gas shortage -- also growing more severe by the day.

So many things leave imprints on me as I go through the day here, it has grown nearly impossible to jot them all down. One of the reasons I’ve written fewer blogs this trip has been because it has been overwhelming. The situation is so much worse now than when I was here in December and January. And it was bad then, to be sure.

During an interview earlier today with a young Sheikh who is very much a Sadr supporter, I asked him what he would do if Muqtada Al-Sadr was captured or killed by the US military. I wondered if the seemingly unorganized followers and ill-trained militia would disintegrate and fade away.

He pulled his 6 year-old daughter forward, her cute smiling face proudly beaming from under her small hijab, and asked her my question in Arabic. Her reply: “We will always follow Muqtada Al-Sadr.”

It reminded me of another occurrence that left an impression on me my very first day in the field here this trip, at the beginning of April.

I was in Sadr City the day after some heavy fighting between the Mehdi Army and US forces, and was talking with an American tank crew. Two of the men were sweeping debris off the top of their tank, which had the few portals of its glass smashed. What other loose pieces on the tank had been torn off and were laying on the ground. Rocks were everywhere.

One of the soldiers told me a group of around 200 kids had surrounded them and pelted them with stones. All they could do was sit inside and ride it out.

He went on to tell me that he was a bit shaken up by it saying, “They are just kids, and we are a tank!” So the kids were attacking them during the day, and the men from the area attacked them at night with Kalashnikovs and RPGs.

My friend Aziz came by this afternoon... shaken. He told me that there had been an assassination attempt on Ismail Zayer, the editor of the New Sabah, a newspaper Mr. Zayer founded after breaking ranks with the CPA controlled Sabah newspaper. According to the story, a group of men in four cars, one of them an Iraqi Police vehicle, showed up at Zayer’s office and told him the Minister of the Interior had requested that he accompany them to his office.

Zayer told them he needed to change and went inside to call the Minister to verify this, as he knew the Minister personally. The Minister told him he did not order this, and did not know what it was about.

Meanwhile, Mr. Zayer’s driver and body guard were taken away by the men, later to be found shot in the head.

I’d seen Zayer’s body guard: a large man with a pony tail-not many Iraqis have pony tails. He was very friendly when I’d gone there to interview Mr. Zayer a few weeks ago. Even though he wasn’t a friend, just someone I’d met, it is always difficult to reconcile that someone I know is gone now. And not just gone, but shot in the head.

So it’s happened to me now. That which has happened to every Iraqi friend of mine. Everyone here knows someone personally who has died an untimely death.

Ater telling me about this horrible story, Aziz said, “It is getting worse by the day here.”

How is life possibly going to get better in Iraq? Kids are being raised to fight against the most powerful military the Earth has ever known. Every U.S. soldier who comes here knows they will be in-country for at least one full year. More troops are on the way. More soldiers have been killed near Ramadi and Fallujah recently. The truce in Najaf and Kufa came and went. A man has been selected by the IGC as the president whom every single Iraqi I know thinks is an absolute bastard.

One man I know, when asked what he thought about Alawi, said frankly, “He will be killed, insh’allah.” Another Iraqi friend said, “If he lasts a month, he’ll be very lucky.”

So as the Bush and Blair camps race about trying to paint a picture of stability and structure in Iraq, with June 30 is now just a month away -- this place is coming apart at the seams. For each step forward the coalition makes, two disasters occur... whether they take the form of deadly attacks on the occupying forces, more mortars blasting into the CPA, sabotage of a pipeline or powerplant, a murder, another SUV of secret service or security mercenaries taken out by an RPG, or something less obvious...

A child being raised to fight. A woman dying of breast cancer from depleted uranium exposure. A highly trained engineer, without work, sweating in his car, which he drives as a taxi, which means waiting for hours in a fuel line. A family home raided in the middle of the night by the military. Women not being able to leave their homes in safety. Nor men, for that matter. A soldier who has lost his legs in an IED blast goes home to his country. He and his family having to learn to live with his disability. An Iraqi war veteran begging on the street -- has no family.

Iraq has been shattered. And now, today, over a year since the horrible regime of Saddam Hussein was overthrown, what is left of the country seems to be unraveling more and more with each passing day.

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WASHINGTON (IWR News Parody) - Vice President Dick Cheney today helped the nation celebrate Memorial Day by shooting a few rounds from Saddam Hussein`s favorite rifle that Mr. Cheney received as trophy from his pal Ahmed Chalabi in front of the White House. To add to the dramatic effect, Mr. Cheney also wore Saddam`s favorite hat, tie, vest, boxer shorts and polyester suit. Not to be outdone, Mr. Bush then pulled out Saddam Hussein`s favorite water pistol and squirted the veterans and their families in attendance.

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Published on Monday, May 31, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
The Choice This Year Is Between Empire and Democracy
by Thom Hartmann


Having lived in Germany and extensively interviewed many (now elderly) former members of Hitler`s Nazi Party (and one spy for him) for a book I was writing on the religion of the Nazis, I can say categorically that Hitler had (or at least his people believed he had) a Vision. It was a vision of a world at peace (for 1000 years, no less), a world purified of disruptive or "undesirable" people, a world united in what Hitler called "A New Christianity," a world where things worked smoothly and people were happy because of "strong, steady leadership" (even during times of change), a world guided by a leader who held tenaciously to a singular vision.

Hitler`s idea was nothing new, really - it was the vision of Empire. Alexander the Great had a similar vision, as did several of the Caesars of Rome, the last Inca Emperor Wayna Capac, several Chinese dynasties, Papal dynasties, and various larger and smaller empires from those of the last few centuries in Europe, to those started in Mesopotamia 6000 years ago, morphed into a reactive Islamic empire during the Crusades (eventually the Ottoman Empire), and whose revival now fills the dreams of Al Qaeda.

It also appears, for the first time since George Washington outspokenly warned us of engaging in foreign entanglements abroad, that the neocon vision of Empire has largely taken over an American administration.

Vision is a two-edged sword. The upside of people holding a vision is that they will work to fulfill a vision in a way that mere money can never animate. This is true from companies to nonprofits to churches to nations. A powerful and positive vision is the key ingredient for the success - particularly long term - of any venture.

The downside is when the vision is toxic and dysfunctional (think Jim Jones or Hitler) it can cause generations - centuries - of suffering, war, and desolation.

For a bit over 200 years, the vision held by the majority of Americans and our elected officials was one of egalitarian democracy in a constitutional republic; government of, by, and for the people; and the belief that democracy was a contagious idea. In that, we`ve been proven right - the UN notes that in 1800 there were only 3 democracies in the world (none in 1775) and today there are 81 "full" democracies with nearly 100 other nations moving rapidly in democratic directions.

Empire and democracy are mutually exclusive - ultimately a nation must choose one or the other.

Interestingly, in all of history, no two fully democratic nations have ever gone to war with each other. Emmanuel Kant was right when he wrote, back in 1795, that the idea of a world of democratic nations, which was only a flickering experiment in faraway North America and just catching fire in France, might eliminate for all time the scourge of war.

Kant`s treatise on the topic, Zum Ewigen Frieden: Ein Philosophischer Entwurf (Toward Eternal Peace: A Philosophical Draft), suggested that when a nation was ruled democratically - that is, by the will of the majority of the people - those people would never choose war unless it was in self-defense. Therefore, Kant reasoned, if all nations were democratic, there would never be aggressors (because no majority of citizens would ever vote to send their own children off to die), and war would be eliminated.

Kant`s prediction didn`t come out of the blue. Similar sentiments had been suggested by Adam Smith in his 1776 book The Wealth of Nations, implied by Roseau and Locke, and were openly advocated by America`s Founders, particularly Jefferson, Franklin, Mason, and Madison.

Kant`s vision of a world at peace because of universal democracy even directly influenced Madison to demand that the Constitution explicitly specify that the ability to declare war rest exclusively with Congress, the then-only-directly-elected branch of government. (In those days, nobody ever imagined that in some future time our executive branch would lie to Congress to get war powers.)

Then came the Bush II administration, infected by the Straussian/Machiavellian belief of the Noble Lie, the paranoid requirement for Absolute Power to maintain security, all reflecting the Project for a New American Century`s vision of Empire. They ignored the lessons of history (or simply hadn`t bothered to read Kant, Locke, Jefferson, or Madison - or modern history).

The response in the world to Bush`s vision of America transforming itself into Empire - pre-emptive war, absolute good (our empire) versus absolute evil (all others), unchallengeable international military superiority with military bases in over 100 sovereign nations, "you`re with us or against us" rhetoric - has been both predictable and tragic.

Stable democracies are recoiling, distancing themselves from us as fast as they can. Evolving democracies are abandoning many of Jefferson`s visions of democracy and becoming more repressive and less democratic, following our Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib lead. And dictatorships like China point to our shift toward authoritarianism and the conquest of a non-threatening but oil-rich foreign land as justification both for internal crackdowns, renewed threats against their neighbors (particularly Taiwan), and a huge military buildup in anticipation of the day when the Chinese Empire may well confront the American Empire for the world`s last oil supplies.

Vision is the core of it all, and understanding the power of a shared vision is vital in this critical election year.

Visions are contagious. They animate and empower. They literally transform - from the small (family, community, region) to the entire planet. And they can just as easily be toxic as positive, a reality our Founders both knew and used.

When Attorney General William Wirt delivered Thomas Jefferson`s eulogy on October 19, 1826 in the Hall of the U.S. House of Representatives, he noted how Jefferson believed in democracy, national humility, and abhorred empire. Jefferson well understood, Wirt noted, the danger of past empires as well as the dangerous possibility of a future president who may seize more power than the Constitution intended.

"The successful warrior, who had desolated whole empires for his own aggrandizement," Wirt wrote about such a dangerous leader, "the successful usurper of his country`s rights and liberties, may have their hours of swelling pride, in which they may look back with a barbarous joy upon the triumph of their talents, and feast upon the adulation of the sycophants that surround them."

In the next paragraph, however, Wirt cited Jefferson`s certain knowledge that those who seek empire will not only see their nation`s downfall, but their own internal spiritual destruction as well. "...but, night and silence come; and conscience takes her turn. The bloody field rises upon the startled imagination. The shades of the slaughtered innocent stalk in terrific procession before the couch. The agonizing cry of countless widows and orphans invades the ear. The bloody dagger of the assassin plays, in airy terror, before the vision."

Empire, Jefferson believed, always ended in disaster, as the nations oppressed by empire invariably rebel. As Wirt summarized Jefferson`s sentiments: "Violated liberty lifts her avenging lance, and a down-trodden nation rises before them, in all the majesty of its wrath."

Which brings us to today. The battle of the election of 2004 - from local races to the presidency - is fundamentally a battle of visions: Empire versus Democracy.

Will we pursue, as most recently did Hitler, the historic - and failed - vision of empire, sustained by wiping out the wealth of our commons and our middle class while spilling the blood of our children? Or will we pursue democracy - helping create a humane, multilateral, cooperative world while working for greater social justice at home?

Those of us who share this latter vision of democracy must - in the best grassroots traditions of the historic vision-driven populist, progressive, civil rights, and anti-war movements - help bring it about by awakening our neighbors, friends, and co-workers; and by infiltrating the Democratic Party to challenge the corporatist vision of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), which is even today struggling to seize the soul of the Democratic Party in service of corporate rule and empire.

Shall we move back towards the failed darkness of bloody empire, or forward into the light of worldwide democracy?

The choice, this year more than most in the history of America, is ours.

Thom Hartmann (thom at thomhartmann.com) is a Project Censored Award-winning best-selling author and host of a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk show that runs in 57 markets from coast-to-coast. www.thomhartmann.com. His most recent books are "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight," "We The People: A Call To Take Back America," and "What Would Jefferson Do?: A Return To Democracy."

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June 1, 2004
THE TRANSITION
A Leading Candidate Emerges for the Presidency of Iraq
By DEXTER FILKINS and STEVEN R. WEISMAN

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 31 — Adnan Pachachi, the former Iraqi foreign minister, emerged Monday as the leading candidate to become the new Iraqi president, as American officials signaled that they would announce a completed interim government on Tuesday.

A senior Bush Administration official said Mr. Pachachi had become a likely choice for Iraqi president but cautioned that it was still possible that the appointment could fall through.

But the possibility of the appointment raised the prospect of a public dispute with the Iraqi Governing Council, which has been holding out for a different candidate.

American officials sent out notices early Tuesday morning "heralding the announcement of the new interim sovereign government" at 11 a.m. Tuesday, but offered no details.

The emergence of Mr. Pachachi, 81, a favorite of the Bush administration, followed a bruising political battle that pitted the Iraqi Governing Council against L. Paul Bremer III, the chief American administrator here, and Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations envoy.

Ahmed Fawzi, Mr. Brahimi`s spokesman, said the selection process might still spring surprises.

"It ain`t over yet," Mr. Fawzi said in a telephone interview from London, where he was boarding a plane to return to Baghdad.

The deadlock over the presidency, a largely symbolic post, has delayed the formation of the interim government, which is to take over here when Iraqi sovereignty is restored, scheduled for June 30.

If the Americans and Mr. Brahimi were intending to appoint Mr. Pachachi to the presidency, it was unclear how they would present their choice to the Iraqi people. Late Monday, several members of the Iraqi Governing Council said they would continue to hold out for the group`s choice, Sheik Ghazi al-Yawar. The council scheduled a meeting for Tuesday morning, before the 11 a.m. announcement by the Americans.

That raised the prospect of an ugly public battle between Mr. Bremer and Mr. Brahimi and the Iraqis on the council. And it suggested the possibility that Mr. Bremer, if he had an interim government in place, might move to dissolve the council himself.

Indeed, the senior administration official said there were expectations that the Iraqi Governing Council, an American-appointed board that was created last summer, would dissolve itself shortly after the new government is selected.

"What Bremer and Brahimi are doing is very bad," said Mahmood Othman, a Governing Council member who was excluded from the negotiations on Monday. "They don`t believe in democracy."

Mr. Fawzi, the United Nations official, said Monday that a list of up to 30 Iraqis for executive and cabinet positions in the interim government was "almost ready." Iraqi and American officials, as well as Mr. Brahimi, agreed last week on the appointment of Iyad Alawi, a secular Shiite leader, as prime minister.

In a frantic day of negotiations here, Iraqi leaders were gathering well past midnight to try to foster agreement on the presidency.

The dispute arose last week when Mr. Bremer and Mr. Brahimi objected to the decision by the Iraqi Governing Council to support Sheik Yawar, a fellow member of the Iraqi Governing Council, for president.

Mr. Bremer and Mr. Brahimi preferred Mr. Pachachi, a former Iraqi foreign minister and a close friend of Mr. Brahimi. Officials in the Bush administration say they favor Mr. Pachachi in part because he is seen as more likely to support the interim constitution, which provides for broad individual rights, Kurdish federalism and the separation of church and state. The Iraqi Governing Council drafted the interim constitution earlier this year, but some Iraqi political leaders have indicated they might not heed all of its restrictions.

Both Mr. Pachachi and Mr. Yawar are Sunni Arabs, the group most closely identified with the rule of Saddam Hussein. American and Iraqi officials, as well as Mr. Brahimi, agreed that the presidency ought to go to a Sunni Arab, the country`s second-largest group. Dr. Alawi, who will lead the government, is a Shiite Muslim, part of Iraq`s largest demographic group.

Though the Iraqi presidency is envisioned as a mostly ceremonial job, the deadlock took on a larger significance, with Iraqi leaders declaring that a pair of foreign diplomats were trying to dictate the future shape of the Iraqi government.

For their part, American and United Nations officials questioned the legal right of the Iraqi Governing Council, which was appointed by the Americans, to select the president.

Mr. Brahimi, a former foreign minister of Algeria, arrived here earlier this month at the invitation of the Bush administration and the Iraqi Governing Council to help form an interim government. That government is supposed to guide the country until nationwide elections are held next year.

The impasse between the Iraqi council and Mr. Bremer and Mr. Brahimi has grown increasingly bitter, with some Iraqi leaders complaining about what they described as Mr. Bremer`s high-handed ways.

The dispute highlighted the awkward relationship that has existed between the council and American authorities here. During the past year, Mr. Bremer has sometimes complained that the Iraqi leaders on the council were too passive, but the Iraqis complained that whenever they tried to assert themselves, they were blocked by Mr. Bremer.

While public opinion polls here show that many Iraqis hold the council in low esteem, the same polls show that some Iraqis on the board, including Mr. Pachachi, command widespread respect.

Dr. Raja al-Khuzai, a member of the governing council and once one of Mr. Bremer`s staunchest allies, said the experience during the past several days had forced her to re-examine her loyalty to Mr. Bremer. Only Sunday, Dr. Khuzai said, Mr. Bremer told the council members that they had no right to appoint a president and that they did not speak for the Iraqi people.

"Our lives are being threatened, and two members of this council have been killed," Dr. Khuzai said. "Mr. Bremer insulted us."

The members said they gathered for a meeting Monday morning to try to resolve the impasse over the presidency. According to several members, Mr. Bremer abruptly canceled the meeting.

With the deadlock still in place on Monday, Mr. Bremer and Mr. Brahimi appeared to be casting about for new candidates before they seemed to return to Mr. Pachachi.

Among those discussed were Ibrahim Tofiq al-Ansari, a former chief of staff of the Iraqi Army, and Saad al-Janabi, a businessman with close ties to the Republican Party and to the Central Intelligence Agency.

Dexter Filkins reported from Baghdad for this article, and Steven R. Weisman from Washington. Warren Hoge contributed reporting from the United Nations.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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June 1, 2004
COMBAT
At Least 5 More G.I.`s Are Killed in Iraq
By EDWARD WONG

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 31 — At least five American soldiers died in Iraq during a 24-hour period that began Sunday, two of them fighting insurgents in the holy city of Kufa during the unraveling of a cease-fire agreement with a rebel Shiite cleric, military officials said Monday.

The two soldiers were the first to be reported killed in combat in the adjoining southern cities of Najaf and Kufa since the First Armored Division began operations there to put pressure on the cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, to disarm his militia. At least 808 American troops have died since the war began in March 2003.

The American-appointed governor of Najaf said Monday that prominent Shiite political and religious leaders had persuaded Mr. Sadr to agree to a new truce. Under the proposal, Mr. Sadr`s militia would put away its weapons in exchange for the Americans` halting patrols for 48 hours. But American commanders had not approved the deal as of late Monday.

Violence in the country continued Monday afternoon as a car bomb exploded on a busy commercial and residential street near the fortified American headquarters in Baghdad, killing at least four Iraqi civilians and wounding at least 25 people, military officials and witnesses said.

It was not immediately clear whether a suicide bomber was responsible, though some witnesses said the light blue sedan carrying the bomb appeared to be moving along Al Kindi Street shortly before it exploded, after 1 p.m. Bits of human flesh and blackened metal parts lay strewn over the street and surrounding buildings. A guard for a British power company in a nearby two-story building showed a charred hand and forearm that had landed in the rear garden.

The bomb exploded more than a thousand feet away from an entrance to the American compound, which is sometimes used by members of the Iraqi Governing Council, witnesses said. On May 17, the president of the council for that month, Ezzedine Salim, was killed along with six other people by a suicide bomber at that entrance. But at the time of the explosion on Monday, there were apparently no prominent figures on the street.

Witnesses said the car had exploded near several construction workers who were repairing the street.

"There were no Americans there," said Thaier Stefan, a resident who pointed out a charred piece of metal that had landed on the trunk of his family sedan. "There was nothing. There were only workers rebuilding the street. I think a falafel vendor might have been killed."

The bursts of violence in Baghdad and the southern part of the country came as the American administration, the United Nations envoy here and the Governing Council wrangled over who should be appointed to be president of the interim government. More than a year after Saddam Hussein was deposed, many people here consider the security situation to be at one of its lowest points, and attacks are expected to continue unabated against the new government.

The new posts will be filled mostly by members of the American-selected Governing Council, which many Iraqis view as an illegitimate body. That would be likely to spur the insurgents on.

American soldiers standing behind concertina wire at the scene of the bombing appeared tense and nervous. After a loose power line on a side street began making noises that sounded like gunshots, one soldier fired a burst from his M-16 down the street, sending dozens of bystanders behind him racing for cover.

The explosion left a three-foot-deep crater near the sidewalk and shattered windows within several blocks. The blackened hulk of a car sat near the crater. Most of the people hurt in the blast were wounded by flying glass, said Col. Mike Murray, commander of the Third Brigade of the First Cavalry Division, which is charged with controlling Baghdad.

"Right now, my initial impression is that it`s just a random act of terrorism," he said as he stood 100 feet away from the crater. "There are some pretty desperate people out there."

In the south, two soldiers were killed Sunday evening in Kufa in separate ambushes by insurgents, the American military said. One soldier was killed when his patrol was ambushed by militiamen, and the other when a rocket-propelled grenade hit his tank during a patrol, according to a written statement.

In the conflict with Mr. Sadr, an agreement was reached Thursday under which the Mahdi Army, Mr. Sadr`s militia, would put away its weapons in exchange for an American withdrawal from the centers of Najaf and Kufa. But attacks on soldiers have continued over the weekend in Kufa, where insurgents openly parade around the streets with AK-47 rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.

American generals are giving contradictory information about the state of the violence in those cities.

Brig. Gen. Mark P. Hertling, assistant commander of support for the First Armored Division, said in an e-mail message on Monday that soldiers and insurgents engaged in a firefight on Sunday at the Kufa cemetery. That contradicted a report on Sunday by Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, a spokesman for the occupation forces, who said at a news conference that the battle had taken place in the northwest corner of the Najaf cemetery.

General Hertling also said, "There never was a cease-fire; there was only a temporary halt to offensive operations." But General Kimmitt has used the word cease-fire to describe the agreement between the American forces and Mr. Sadr.

General Kimmitt has suggested that Mr. Sadr might view the agreement as applying only to Najaf, where he lives, and not to Kufa, where he preaches at a mosque. That could explain why attacks are continuing in Kufa, he said.

A CNN reporter traveling with American soldiers in the area said the troops engaged in a "very intense firefight" late Sunday in what appeared to be an offensive operation aimed at seizing a police station in Kufa. A videotape shot in green night-vision showed armored vehicles firing their cannons, and explosions flaring in the distance.

But General Hertling denied in his e-mail message that there had been an offensive operation. He said Americans had been engaging in "force-oriented zone reconnaissance."

The recently installed governor of Najaf Province, Adnan al-Zurufi, said at a news conference on Monday that Mr. Sadr had agreed to order his militia to lay down weapons if the Americans promised to stay in their bases during the next 48 hours and let Iraqi policemen run patrols in the cities. Shiite leaders in the area have been growing steadily angrier at the continuation of fighting by both the Americans and the Mahdi Army.

Mr. Zurufi said the leaders were awaiting a decision by American commanders on whether to accept the agreement.

In other violence, a soldier from the First Armored Division was killed Sunday evening and two others were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded south of Baghdad, the military said. At 11:40 p.m., another soldier was killed and two were wounded when a roadside bomb went off in southwest Baghdad.

A soldier from the Stryker Brigade died Sunday from wounds received in a mortar attack on Saturday in the troubled northern city of Mosul.

An Iraqi employee of The New York Times contributed reporting from Najaf for this article.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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June 1, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
The Great Escape
By CRAIG UNGER

Americans who think the 9/11 commission is going to answer all the crucial questions about the terrorist attacks are likely to be sorely disappointed — especially if they`re interested in the secret evacuation of Saudis by plane that began just after Sept. 11.

We knew that 15 out of 19 hijackers were Saudis. We knew that Osama bin Laden, a Saudi, was behind 9/11. Yet we did not conduct a police-style investigation of the departing Saudis, of whom two dozen were members. of the bin Laden family. That is not to say that they were complicit in the attacks.

Unfortunately, though, we may never know the real story. The investigative panel has already concluded that there is "no credible evidence that any chartered flights of Saudi Arabian nationals departed the United States before the reopening of national airspace." But the real point is that there were still some restrictions on American airspace when the Saudi flights began.

In addition, new evidence shows that the evacuation involved more than the departure of 142 Saudis on six charter flights that the commission is investigating. According to newly released documents, 160 Saudis left the United States on 55 flights immediately after 9/11 — making a total of about 300 people who left with the apparent approval of the Bush administration, far more than has been reported before. The records were released by the Department of Homeland Security in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Judicial Watch, a conservative, nonpartisan watchdog group in Washington.

The vast majority of the newly disclosed flights were commercial airline flights, not charters, often carrying just two or three Saudi passengers. They originated from more than 20 cities, including Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Detroit and Houston. One Saudi Arabian Airlines flight left Kennedy Airport on Sept. 13 with 46 Saudis. The next day, another Saudi Arabian Airlines flight left with 13 Saudis.

The panel has indicated that it has yet to find any evidence that the F.B.I. checked the manifests of departing flights against its terror watch list. The departures of additional Saudis raise more questions for the panel. Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism czar, told The Hill newspaper recently that he took full responsibility for approving some flights. But we don`t know if other Bush administration officials participated in the decision.

The passengers should have been questioned about any links to Osama bin Laden, or his financing. We have long known that some faction of the Saudi elite has helped funnel money to Islamist terrorists —inadvertently at least. Prince Ahmed bin Salman, who has been accused of being an intermediary between Al Qaeda and the House of Saud, boarded one of the evacuation planes in Kentucky. Was he interrogated by the F.B.I. before he left?

If the commission dares to address these issues, it will undoubtedly be accused of politicizing one of the most important national security investigations in American history — in an election year, no less.

But if it does not, it risks something far worse — the betrayal of the thousands of people who lost their lives that day, not to mention millions of others who want the truth.

Craig Unger is the author of "House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World`s Two Most Powerful Dynasties."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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June 1, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Dooh Nibor Economics
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Last week The Washington Post got hold of an Office of Management and Budget memo that directed federal agencies to prepare for post-election cuts in programs that George Bush has been touting on the campaign trail. These include nutrition for women, infants and children; Head Start; and homeland security. The numbers match those on a computer printout leaked earlier this year — one that administration officials claimed did not reflect policy.

Beyond the routine mendacity, the case of the leaked memo points us to a larger truth: whatever they may say in public, administration officials know that sustaining Mr. Bush`s tax cuts will require large cuts in popular government programs. And for the vast majority of Americans, the losses from these cuts will outweigh any gains from lower taxes.

It has long been clear that the Bush administration`s claim that it can simultaneously pursue war, large tax cuts and a "compassionate" agenda doesn`t add up. Now we have direct confirmation that the White House is engaged in bait and switch, that it intends to pursue a not at all compassionate agenda after this year`s election.

That agenda is to impose Dooh Nibor economics — Robin Hood in reverse. The end result of current policies will be a large-scale transfer of income from the middle class to the very affluent, in which about 80 percent of the population will lose and the bulk of the gains will go to people with incomes of more than $200,000 per year.

I can`t back that assertion with official numbers, because under Mr. Bush the Treasury Department has stopped releasing information on the distribution of tax cuts by income level. Estimates by the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center, which now provides the numbers the administration doesn`t want you to know, reveal why. This year, the average tax reduction per family due to Bush-era cuts was $1,448. But this average reflects huge cuts for a few affluent families, with most families receiving much less (which helps explain why most people, according to polls, don`t believe their taxes have been cut). In fact, the 257,000 taxpayers with incomes of more than $1 million received a bigger combined tax cut than the 85 million taxpayers who make up the bottom 60 percent of the population.

Still, won`t most families gain something? No — because the tax cuts must eventually be offset with spending cuts.

Three years ago George Bush claimed that he was cutting taxes to return a budget surplus to the public. Instead, he presided over a move to huge deficits. As a result, the modest tax cuts received by the great majority of Americans are, in a fundamental sense, fraudulent. It`s as if someone expected gratitude for giving you a gift, when he actually bought it using your credit card.

The administration has not, of course, explained how it intends to pay the bill. But unless taxes are increased again, the answer will have to be severe program cuts, which will fall mainly on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — because that`s where the bulk of the money is.

For most families, the losses from these cuts will far outweigh any gain from lower taxes. My back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that 80 percent of all families will end up worse off; the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities will soon come out with a more careful, detailed analysis that arrives at a similar conclusion. And the only really big beneficiaries will be the wealthiest few percent of the population.

Does Mr. Bush understand that the end result of his policies will be to make most Americans worse off, while enriching the already affluent? Who knows? But the ideologues and political operatives behind his agenda know exactly what they`re doing.

Of course, voters would never support this agenda if they understood it. That`s why dishonesty — as illustrated by the administration`s consistent reliance on phony accounting, and now by the business with the budget cut memo — is such a central feature of the White House political strategy.

Right now, it seems that the 2004 election will be a referendum on Mr. Bush`s calamitous foreign policy. But something else is at stake: whether he and his party can lock in the unassailable political position they need to proceed with their pro-rich, anti-middle-class economic strategy. And no, I`m not engaging in class warfare. They are.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Army Investigates Wider Iraq Offenses
Cases Include Deaths, Assaults Outside Prisons

By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 1, 2004; Page A01

Over the past year and a half, the Army has opened investigations into at least 91 cases of possible misconduct by U.S. soldiers against detainees and civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, a total not previously reported and one that points to a broader range of wrongful behavior than defense officials have acknowledged.

The figure, provided by a senior Army official, extends beyond the much-publicized abuse of detainees in military-run prisons to include the mistreatment of dozens of Iraqis in U.S. custody outside detention centers. It covers not only cases that resulted in death but also those that involved nonlethal assaults. It also includes as many as 18 instances of U.S. soldiers in Iraq allegedly stealing money, jewelry or other property.

Previous statistics cited by Army officials have tended to avoid an aggregate number of misconduct cases or have given a lower figure for alleged mistreatment of detainees and civilians outside detention facilities. Officials also have not previously disclosed the number of investigations into reports of soldiers stealing from Iraqis.

Taken together, the 91 cases indicate misconduct by U.S. troops wider in type and greater in number than suggested by the focus simply on the mistreatment of Iraqis held at the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad. The majority of the cases under investigation occurred in Iraq, although the Army has not provided an exact accounting of all the locations.

President Bush and other senior administration officials have sought to explain the abuses at Abu Ghraib as reflecting the aberrant behavior of a few low-ranking soldiers last fall, graphically exposed in photographs and an internal Army report that emerged a month ago. But the Army`s list of investigations appears to bolster the contention of others, including the International Committee of the Red Cross, that misconduct by U.S. forces has been more extensive -- and its consequences more damaging -- than can be blamed on the troubled actions of a small group.

Although the new figures show at least 59 of the 91 investigations are now closed, the Army has reported the disciplining of only several soldiers. According to the senior Army official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, the assault cases have led to at least 14 courts-martial and seven nonjudicial punishments.

But the official had no information on who was prosecuted, for what or with what results. The Army has been slow to make these details public despite requests from Congress and news organizations for more specifics about all the investigations, whether completed or ongoing.

The lack of detail about many of the cases has made it difficult to assess the full significance of the reported misconduct. But the few specifics that have emerged about some of the death cases point to the involvement of an assortment of Army units and to abusive behavior that stretches over a long period of time, from late 2002 to spring 2004.

Reflecting the concern of senior Pentagon officials that the scope of the misconduct may indeed stem from deeper problems with training, organization and command, the inspectors general of the Army and the Army Reserve are engaged in broad reviews of policies and practices on the handling of detainees. A separate probe of the role played by military intelligence personnel also is being conducted by a senior intelligence officer.

The criminal investigations parallel these administrative inquiries. They have intensified in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal, with Army investigators taking a new look at some death cases that were initially attributed to natural causes or that have dragged on unresolved for months.

Reports about the criminal probes have dribbled out in bits and pieces. Army spokesmen said late last week that top officials were trying to put together a comprehensive record of the probes.

Of the 91 investigations, 42 involve alleged abuse inside detention facilities, and 49 deal with allegations of misconduct outside, the senior Army official said.

The inside cases can be split into two groups: Thirty of them are related to the deaths of 34 individuals; the other 12 concern assaults -- including kicking, punching or other abusive action -- on an unspecified number of detainees.

Half the death cases have been attributed to natural causes or undetermined factors. Four cases, involving eight detainee deaths, were ruled justifiable homicides, meaning U.S. soldiers were deemed to have killed in self-defense or to prevent escapes.

But 10 other homicides had no such justification. Only one case so far has resulted in disciplinary action, with a soldier being demoted and discharged after shooting a prisoner who was throwing stones at a detention center northwest of Baghdad last Sept. 11. Another homicide case, involving a contractor employed by the CIA, has been turned over to the Justice Department.

Investigations into the other eight homicides remain open amid evidence the dead detainees were assaulted before or during interrogation sessions.

Of the alleged prison assaults that did not result in death, disciplinary action has been reported in two cases. One is the main Abu Ghraib case, in which seven military police reservists have been charged. In the other case, three military intelligence soldiers were alleged to have sexually assaulted a female detainee at Abu Ghraib in October. Investigators failed to confirm the assault, but the three soldiers were faulted for being in the prison`s female wing without permission, fined several hundred dollars each and demoted.

Of the 49 cases of alleged misconduct outside detention facilities, three involved deaths, 28 centered on assaults in which soldiers allegedly kicked or punched Iraqi civilians or fired weapons to frighten them, and 18 dealt with thefts that occurred during raids on houses or other operations in Iraq. The theft cases were first reported yesterday by the New York Times.

The three death cases were described briefly by U.S. officials at a Pentagon briefing May 21. In one, a soldier shot and killed an Afghani who had attempted to grab a weapon. In another instance, an Iraqi drowned after being forced off a bridge. In the third case, a U.S. soldier shot an Iraqi who had lunged at a sergeant escorting the Iraqi.

Investigations into 39 of the 49 outside cases have been completed, the senior Army official said.

A large majority of the 91 cases -- 69 of them -- are being handled by the Army`s Criminal Investigation Division, which is responsible for probing crimes that may involve Army personnel. As a matter of policy, the organization investigates every death of a detainee in U.S. custody.

To shield their work from command influence, the criminal investigators operate independently of commanders in the field. But their reports then go to the commanders, who are responsible for deciding whether to bring charges, take nonjudicial action or do nothing.

The remaining 22 investigations, all involving allegations of detainee abuse that occurred outside military-run detention centers, have been conducted by other commands that also have authority to initiate probes. These cases have run the gamut from kicking detainees to trying to intimidate them by withholding water if they refused to cooperate, the senior Army official said.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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In Democratic Strongholds in N.J., Voters Not Yet Sold on Kerry

By Evelyn Nieves
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 1, 2004; Page A09

EDGEWATER, N.J. -- Eugene Bradley does not swing. At 50, Bradley, an operations manager for Synagro, a waste management company, has been devoted to the Democratic Party for as long as he has voted.

But these days, when Bradley thinks of the November elections, he almost always thinks of voting against President Bush, rather than for Sen. John F. Kerry. He can let loose a torrent of opinions about the president -- the war in Iraq is an especially favorite target -- but when it comes to talking up the Massachusetts Democrat who would replace him, well . . .

He would like to like Kerry. He would like to sing his praises. He would like to feel -- something -- about him. "I am not that up on him," Bradley said. "I don`t feel a connection with him. He`s basically another politician. In my heart of hearts, I think they could have dug up somebody better."

The results of a Quinnipiac University poll and random interviews in several Democratic strongholds in New Jersey suggest that plenty of voters, at least in this state, feel the same way. In what is arguably the most Democratic state in the nation -- where Vice President Al Gore beat Bush in 2000 by 16 points without breaking a sweat -- Kerry leads Bush in the New Jersey Quinnipiac poll by just 3 percentage points, 46 percent to 43 percent (with Ralph Nader at 5 percent), with a margin of error of 2.9 percent. That means a statistical dead heat in a state where Democrats control the state executive and legislature, U.S. Senate seats and most congressional district seats.

This comes at a time when the latest polls, including the Quinnipiac poll, which surveyed 1,122 New Jersey registered voters May 10 to 16, show the president`s approval ratings have dropped to the lowest of his tenure. Significantly, unaffiliated or independent voters, who traditionally vote in much higher numbers for Democrats than Republicans in New Jersey, split 46 percent to 45 percent for Bush, or 41 percent to 41 percent in a three-way race with Nader, who polled at 13 percent.

"The poll suggests that Kerry is not grabbing the independent voters the way Democrats usually do," said Clay F. Richards, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

Democratic Party officials here and nationally dismissed the poll as a fluke. They pointed to the fundraising records that Kerry is breaking, to the polls that keep looking better for him as they get worse for Bush, and to the attention that Kerry will receive when the news focuses more on the campaign. One poll in New Jersey, they added, will not stand up when the state`s residents actually start paying attention to the race. (Nearly half the voters polled, 47 percent, said they are not paying much heed yet.) "If the Republicans want to spend $1 million in the bluest state in the country, then bring it on," said Adam Green, spokesman for the New Jersey Democratic State Committee, pointing out that Kerry`s poll numbers have risen in the past four Quinnipiac polls.

Bertin Lefkovic, the former field director for Howard Dean`s campaign in New Jersey, said it is much too soon to draw any conclusions from the poll. Voters are not tuned into the election yet in New Jersey, he said, because the state primary is irrelevant -- it is on June 8 -- and because New Jersey lacks its own broadcast television news outlets, having to rely on either New York or Philadelphia stations for coverage.

But privately, party Democrats acknowledged that if Kerry has some work to do in capturing the hearts, if not minds, of the base, then he must really hustle to win over the crucial swing voters who will probably decide the election.

Interviews in northern New Jersey commuter towns chock-full of Democrats and unaffiliated voters -- Jersey City, Hoboken, Edgewater and East Rutherford -- produced a mixed bag. Voters were critical not only of Bush`s performance, but also of what they perceived as Kerry`s lack of performance.

"He`s like a shadow figure," said Omar Milosevich, a retired pressman from Hoboken. "Even when he`s there, he`s not there."

Kerry did have many loyalists. For faithful Democrats eager to see Bush out of office, the notion that voters might not cast ballots for Kerry because he does not charm them seemed preposterous.

"I`ve heard that he`s neck and neck in Jersey," said Mario Costa, 47, who runs the White Mana Diner and Ringside Lounge in Jersey City. "I think it`s nuts. You have to go with Kerry. Everybody in the world hates us because of Bush. We need a change."

Jennifer Lucci, 24, of Hoboken, was even more adamant. "I can`t even talk to anyone who is for Bush," said Lucci, a salesperson at a designer boutique. "Luckily, no one I know is for him."

But members of the Strong and Shapely Gym in East Rutherford who were interviewed split between Bush and Kerry. Democrats sided with the Democrat, Republicans with the Republican, and independents, by 3 to 2, preferred Bush.

Ralph Cardinale, 53, a building inspector from Clifton who considers himself an independent, was one of those. "I think he`s adequate as a president," Cardinale said of Bush. "Whereas Democrats seem to attack the other candidate without coming up with their own ideas. What I don`t like about Kerry is he seems to flip-flop a lot," echoing the constant refrain of the Bush campaign.

Leslie Korkgy-Valenti, 31, a history teacher from Hasbrouck Heights thought so, too. "I feel that after September 11th, Bush is the right person to lead," she said.

George Coates, on the other hand, is torn. "I think Kerry licks his finger and sticks it in the air to see which way the wind is blowing," said Coates, 65, a retired stockbroker from Clifton. He added that although he voted for Bush in 2000, "he`s someone who wore out his welcome for me faster than Clinton did. I can`t stand listening to him. I can`t stand watching him."

Does that mean he has decided on Kerry?

"No," he said, with a shudder. "I don`t like Kerry, either."

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com

Jobs Loss May Affect Who Wins The Vote

By Paul Farhi
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 1, 2004; Page A01

Third in a series of occasional articles

CANTON, Ohio -- Of all the places devoted to making and shaping metal in this weathered industrial city, few are as venerable as the tidy brick factory on Dueber Avenue. Henry Timken, an entrepreneurial German immigrant, opened the Timken Roller Bearing Axle Co. factory in 1901, and for more than a century, workers in his original plant have cranked out millions of industrial bearings, the steel components that make things such as oil rigs and computer disk drives operate smoothly.

Now the factory is at the heart of an unlikely but intriguing subchapter in the presidential campaign. Timken, which has grown into a Fortune 500 giant, has declared the aging Dueber Avenue plant and two others in Canton to be "uncompetitive." In mid-May, it announced that it would close the factories unless workers represented by the United Steelworkers of America agreed to unspecified concessions.

The announcement landed like an anvil in this section of northeast Ohio, which has been whipped by a long and stubborn manufacturing recession. The potential closings would be not only another nasty economic lashing -- the factories employ 1,300 people -- but a sentimental one as well. Timken`s roots are so deep in Canton that the company`s local workforce includes the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of former Timken employees.

But the potential political ripples are even more powerful. Timken sits in the heart of a city that sits in the heart of Stark County, one of three critical "swing" counties in a state that President Bush must win to defeat his Democratic rival, Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.). Stark went for Bush in the 2000 election, but just barely -- by 2,845 votes, or 1.9 percentage points.

If Timken`s announcement translates into broad voter disaffection locally, nurtured by grass-roots union organizers, it would be very bad news for Bush. No Republican has ever made it to the White House without winning Ohio. "They call us the bellwether county in the bellwether state," says Stan Jasionowski, president of United Steelworkers Local 1123, which represents Timken`s hourly employees. "Whichever way Stark County goes, Ohio goes."

Timken`s close ties to the Republican Party, and specifically to Bush, sharpen the stakes further. W.R. "Tim" Timken Jr., the company`s chairman and great-grandson of the founder, has raised more than $200,000 for Bush`s reelection campaign, making him one of the president`s elite "Ranger" fundraisers. In addition, Tim Timken has given nearly $300,000 to GOP candidates and committees during the past four years, according to Federal Election Commission records. His company contributed an additional $400,000 to Republicans, including $100,000 to a dinner for Bush in Ohio in 2001.

Democrats see bitter irony, and additional political capital, in Bush`s visit to one of Timken`s Canton plants in April 2003. Bush used the company`s research facility (not one of the affected factories) as a backdrop to tout his tax cuts. Standing beneath a banner reading "Jobs and Growth," Bush said the tax cuts would mean "companies like Timken have got a better capacity to expand, which means jobs."

That has not occurred here yet, as Canton`s patchwork downtown -- here a spiffy new cafe, but there an empty storefront -- attests. Ohio`s economy has generally lagged while other states` have recovered. The state unemployment rate stood at 5.8 percent in April, up from 5.7 percent in March, according to the state`s Department of Job and Family Services. Of the 214,500 jobs that the state has lost since Bush took office, 168,200 have been in manufacturing.

That has made the announced closings an easy target for Bush`s opponents. "The Timkens are more than just contributors" to Bush, says Dan Trevas, spokesman for the Ohio Democratic Party. "They provided him moral support. When you know that, you realize what a real blow this is. This can`t be good for the president."

Kerry`s only public statement about the dispute came on May 20, when he urged Bush to appoint a federal mediator to intervene. (The union welcomed the suggestion, but the company said it was premature inasmuch as formal negotiations have not been scheduled.) "The administration," Kerry said, "should exhaust every potential solution to prevent these jobs from being lost."

Kerry`s campaign has been more active behind the scenes. Jasionowski says he has talked with aides to Kerry at least three times since Timken`s May 14 announcement. Kerry staffers have also provided out-of-town reporters with periodic updates, directing them to sympathetic union officials who have weighed in with anti-Bush comments. Among the campaign`s missives to the news media was a recent memo about Timken headlined, "Bush`s Reverse Midas Touch: Ohio Visit Precedes Job Cuts."

The Timken Co. and Bush`s reelection officials think Kerry should butt out.

"The company finds it curious that Senator Kerry chose to focus on this particular matter," says Jason Saragian, Timken`s chief spokesman. "This is a business decision and not a political issue. The senator`s suggestion that the president call for mediation seems clearly politically motivated. We`re talking about a decision by a private-sector company."

Bush campaign spokesman Scott Stanzel said Ohio has begun its recovery, as evidenced by the creation of 4,300 jobs in March. "The people of Stark County know President Bush has acted aggressively to strengthen the Ohio and U.S. economies," Stanzel said. As for the Timken dispute, he says Bush "has great confidence in people at the local level to work to grow the economy and find solutions to challenges. Kerry`s approach is to have people in Washington, D.C., make decisions about local problems."

The Timken Co., which doubled its profit and had record sales in the first quarter, needs concessions from its unionized workers to bring costs at the three Canton factories into parity with other U.S. plants, Saragian said. With overtime pay and incentives, hourly employees in Canton make about $25 an hour, according to the company; the union says the average employee earns $40,000 to $45,000 a year.

But the company says its primary concern is the rising cost of benefits, such as pension contributions and a fully paid hospital plan. "The facts are we`re not competitive with other U.S. unionized facilities," Saragian said. "We can make them competitive, but we can`t do that without some assurances" from the union.

The Steelworkers` Jasionowski, a 27-year Timken employee, says the union is willing to talk, but it would like assurances, too, such as job-security guarantees. "We want them to make a commitment," he says. "If these plants go, there`s nothing left around here."

The political impact of the plant closures depends a lot on timing, says Rick Farmer, a political science professor at the University of Akron, just north of Canton in Summit County. If the factories were to shut in the fall, Farmer says, a "significant" economic impact on northeast Ohio would ripple throughout the area and could cause undecided voters to turn against the president.

"It needs to be an economic event," says Farmer, who teaches campaign management. "As a piece of bad publicity, it`s still early. Bad publicity in October is one thing. But this is bad publicity" five months before Election Day. Still, he adds, "I could see that it would make for good pictures for Kerry to stand in the same place that George Bush stood to sell his tax and economic policies."

Timken has not said when it will close the factories, or where it will continue to produce the products made in Canton. Nevertheless, the threat has caused plenty of anger and anxiety outside the factory on Dueber Avenue.

"To me this is all about corporate greed and corporate terrorism," said Pat Eslich, a die setter/operator at Timken for 16 years. "We`ve made every [productivity] goal they`ve asked us for. The terrorism comes from scaring the workers that their jobs won`t be around. They keep telling us, be competitive, be competitive, be competitive. We do that, and yet they still ship our jobs overseas."

One 34-year-old Timken employee, who refused to be identified, sounded more resigned than bitter. Standing in the employee parking lot one pleasant spring morning, he observed: "I think they`re going to close this place no matter what. These jobs are going overseas. It would be ignorant of us to think that people in another country can`t do what we do, and do it for a whole lot less. I don`t like it, but that does seem to be the way things are going."

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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A Plea for Enlightened Moderation
Muslims must raise themselves up through individual achievement and socioeconomic emancipation.

By Pervez Musharraf, President of Pakistan.

Tuesday, June 1, 2004; Page A23

The world has been going through a tumultuous period since the dawn of the 1990s, with no sign of relief in sight. The suffering of the innocents, particularly my brethren in faith -- the Muslims -- at the hands of militants, extremists and terrorists has made it all the more urgent to bring order to this troubled scene. In this spirit, I would like to set forth a strategy I call Enlightened Moderation.

The world has become an extremely dangerous place. The devastating power of plastic explosives, combined with high-tech remote-controlled devices, as well as a proliferation of suicide bombers, has created a lethal force that is all but impossible to counter. The unfortunate reality is that both the perpetrators of these crimes and most of the people who suffer from them are Muslims. This has caused many non-Muslims to believe wrongly that Islam is a religion of intolerance, militancy and terrorism. It has led increasing numbers of people to link Islam to fundamentalism; fundamentalism to extremism, and extremism to terrorism. Muslims can protest however vigorously they like against this kind of labeling, but the reality is that such arguments are not likely to prevail in the battle for minds. To make things even more difficult, Muslims are probably the poorest, most uneducated, most powerless and most disunited people in the world.

The stark challenge that faces anyone with compassion for the common heritage of mankind is determining what legacy we will leave for future generations. The special challenge that confronts Muslims is to drag ourselves out of the pit we find ourselves in, to raise ourselves up by individual achievement and collective socioeconomic emancipation. Something has to be done quickly to stop the carnage in the world and to stem the downward slide of Muslims.

My idea for untangling this knot is Enlightened Moderation, which I think is a win for all -- for both the Muslim and non-Muslim worlds. It is a two-pronged strategy. The first part is for the Muslim world to shun militancy and extremism and adopt the path of socioeconomic uplift. The second is for the West, and the United States in particular, to seek to resolve all political disputes with justice and to aid in the socioeconomic betterment of the deprived Muslim world.

We need to understand that the root cause of extremism and militancy lies in political injustice, denial and deprivation. Political injustice to a nation or a people, when combined with stark poverty and illiteracy, makes for an explosive mix. It produces an acute sense of hopelessness and powerlessness. A nation suffering from these lethal ills is easily available for the propagation of militancy and the perpetration of extremist, terrorist acts. It is cannon fodder in a war of terrorism.

I would be remiss if, in defense of the people of my faith, I did not trace the genesis of the Muslims` being labeled as extremists or terrorists. Before the anti-Soviet Afghan war, the sole cause of unrest and concern in the Muslim world was the Palestine dispute. It was this issue that led to a unity of Muslims -- in favor of Palestinians and against Israel. The Afghan war of the 1980s, supported and facilitated by the West as a proxy war against the Soviet Union, saw the emergence and nurturing of pan-Islamic militancy. Islam as a religion was used to harness worldwide Muslim support. Subsequently the atrocities and ethnic cleansing against Muslims in Bosnia, the Chechen uprising, the Kashmir freedom struggle and the invigorated Palestinian intifada all erupted in the `90s after the Soviet disintegration. To make matters worse, the militancy that was sparked in Afghanistan -- which should have been defused after the Cold War -- was instead allowed to fester for a decade.

During this time, hostility among fighters from the Muslim world turned multidirectional, seeking new conflict zones in places where Muslims were suffering. Enter the birth of al Qaeda. Meanwhile, the Palestinian intifada kept gathering momentum, uniting and angering Muslims across the globe. And then came the bombshell of Sept. 11, 2001, and the angry reaction of the United States against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan. All subsequent reactions of the United States -- its domestic responses against Muslims, its attitude toward Palestine and the operation in Iraq -- led to total polarization of the Muslim masses against the United States. It is not Islam as a religion that has created militancy and extremism but rather political disputes that have led to antagonism among the Muslim masses.

This is all history now. What has been done cannot be undone. But this situation cannot be allowed to fester; a remedy must be found. I call on the West to help resolve these political disputes with justice, as part of a commitment to a strategy of Enlightened Moderation.

When I think of the role of Muslims in today`s world, my heart weeps. What we need is introspection. Who are we, what do we as Muslims stand for, where are we going, where should we be headed and how can we reach it? The answers to these questions are the Muslim part of Enlightened Moderation.

We have a glorious past. Islam exploded on the world scene as the flag bearer of a just, lawful, tolerant and value-oriented society. We had faith in human exaltation through knowledge and enlightenment. We exemplified tolerance within ourselves and toward people of other faiths. The armies of Islam did not march forward to convert people by the sword, despite what the perceptions may be, but to deliver them from the darkness through the visible example of their virtues. What better projection can be found of these deeper values of Islam than the personal example of our Holy Prophet (P.B.U.H.), who personified justice, compassion, tolerance of others, generosity of spirit, austerity with a spirit of sacrifice, and a burning desire to make a better world.

Today`s Muslim world is distant from all these values. We have been left far behind in social, moral and economic development. We have remained in our own shell and refused to learn or acquire from others. We have reached the depths of despair and despondency. We need to face stark reality. Is the way ahead one of confrontation and militancy? Could this path really lead us back to our past glory while also showing the light of progress and development to the world?

I say to my brother Muslims: The time for renaissance has come. The way forward is through enlightenment. We must concentrate on human resource development through the alleviation of poverty and through education, health care and social justice. If this is our direction, it cannot be achieved through confrontation. We must adopt a path of moderation and a conciliatory approach to fight the common belief that Islam is a religion of militancy in conflict with modernization, democracy and secularism. All this must be done with a realization that, in the world we live in, fairness does not always rule.

The Organization of Islamic Conferences (OIC) is our collective body. We need to infuse new life into it; it is now in a state of near impotence. The OIC must be restructured to meet the challenges of the 21st century, to fulfill the aspirations of the Muslim world and to take us toward emancipation. Forming a committee of luminaries to recommend a restructuring of the OIC is a big step in the right direction. We have to show resolve and rise above self-interest for our common good -- in the very spirit that Islam teaches us.

The world at large and the powers that be must realize that confrontation and force will never bring peace. Justice must be done and be seen to be done. Let it not be said by future generations that we, the leaders of today, took humanity toward the apocalypse.

Gen. Musharraf is president of Pakistan.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Why Gas Prices Are Too Low

By David Ignatius

Tuesday, June 1, 2004; Page A23

Let`s imagine for the moment that the United States was a prudent nation and that its politicians, rather than pandering to the public appetite for cheap gasoline, decided to reduce the nation`s dependence on energy from the volatile Middle East.

After America`s annual Memorial Day drive-a-thon, the idea of such a rational energy policy may sound quaint. Millions of Americans hit the road this weekend in their cars, trucks and SUVs -- many of them doubtless grumbling about the 2004 "oil crisis" that has pushed gas prices well over $2.

It would be nice if politicians would tell these road-happy Americans the truth, which is that the energy situation will only get worse over the long run. And it would be nicer still if politicians proposed policies that would improve the energy efficiency of SUV Nation. But in America, there`s a name for such politicians: losers. The reason the oil squeeze will only get worse can be stated in two words: China and India. As those countries become more prosperous, their consumption of energy will inevitably rise -- putting further pressure on the market. That has already begun to happen with China, whose growing demand sucked up the 500,000 extra barrels a day of crude that Saudi Arabia added to the market last year to compensate for lost Iraqi production.

Optimists hope that an easy way out of the energy crunch may be found in abundant cheap supplies of natural gas, but industry economists tell me that`s wishful thinking. One Denver-based consultant says that recent price moves and merger valuations suggest a 50 percent or more rise in natural gas prices in the next three to five years. Liquefied natural gas may eventually help temper prices, but only if huge investments are made to store and transport it.

The people who make America`s gas guzzlers know exactly what would force the country to deal with the energy crunch: higher gasoline taxes. A recent article by Danny Hakim in the New York Times had some astonishing quotes from auto executives. Ford chief executive William Clay Ford Jr. explained: "Every place else we operate, fuel prices are very high relative to here and customers get used to it, but they get used to it by having a smaller vehicle, a more efficient vehicle." GM`s chief executive, Rick Wagoner, agreed: "If you want people to consume something less, the simplest thing to do is price it more dearly."

The European market illustrates how higher taxes push greater efficiency. Last week, premium gas prices in Europe were averaging more than double the U.S. level of $2.24 a gallon -- with prices at the pump averaging $5.07 a gallon in France, $5.36 in Germany and $5.59 in Britain. European consumers inevitably have demanded more efficient cars. According to Hakim, overall oil consumption has fallen in Germany and Britain since the 1970s.

The best plan I`ve seen for doing the politically impossible comes from an energy economist named Philip Verleger. He has spent much of his adult life arguing for a sensible increase in gas taxes. He first proposed such a plan in December 1973; the Ford administration considered the idea, then rejected it. He supported a 50-cent-a-gallon tax during the Carter administration; it got just 35 votes in the House of Representatives. He continued arguing for a tax hike through the 1980s and `90s and, as he says, members of Congress "just rolled their eyes." President Clinton finally embraced the idea and got a tax passed -- but it amounted to just 4.3 cents per gallon.

Now Verleger favors what he calls a "prospective gasoline tax," which would allow the country four years to get ready to do the right thing. Congress would enact a stiff tax of $2 per gallon, to take effect in January 2009, with further increases of another dollar in each of the following three years. To cushion the blow, the Treasury would borrow against the expected tax revenue to buy back the public`s gas guzzlers (defined as vehicles getting fewer than 25 miles a gallon) at their 2004 value.

Verleger estimates that this program could reduce U.S. oil consumption by almost 2 million barrels per day in the program`s first year and as much as 10 million barrels per day by 2020. At a stroke, that would reduce the power of the OPEC cartel and America`s vulnerability to turmoil in the Middle East. As a bonus, it would also reduce emissions that contribute to global warming and increase employment in the auto industry as all those gas guzzlers are replaced.

There`s one big problem with Verleger`s idea. It`s too sane. America likes roaring down Thunder Road, playing chicken with the oil cartel.

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Iraq and the Conservative Crackup

By E. J. Dionne Jr.

Tuesday, June 1, 2004; Page A23

Nothing succeeds like success and nothing fails like failure.

In politics, this means that if a leader is seen as doing well, his side in the debate holds together and suppresses disagreements that are quite real but don`t seem worth pursuing if they get in the way of winning.

It also means that if a leader is perceived as doing badly, those quite real disagreements are seen as much more important. Parts of the leader`s political coalition try to disengage themselves from the perceived failure and differentiate themselves from those whom they see as incompetent and thus representing something other than the true faith.

Former president Jimmy Carter knows what this is like. He faced rebellions on the left and right wings of the Democratic Party in 1980. The left went with Ted Kennedy when he challenged Carter in the Democratic primaries. The right defected to Ronald Reagan that fall in the great neoconservative rebellion. The first President Bush had solidarity going for him in 1988 -- the economy was strong and he was seen as continuing Reagan`s successful presidency. By 1992, when Bush looked like he was a goner, conservatives were saying the president wasn`t conservative enough. Moderates said he wasn`t moderate enough. Unfair, perhaps, but unsurprising.

The beginnings of a conservative crackup under this President Bush flow directly from the perceived failures of his policies in Iraq. Whatever one`s view of the war, things are not going as promised, or as hoped for. Bush dominated politics in the months after Sept. 11. Almost everything he said or did then was seen as a sign of strength and fortitude. Now when he does the same things, they are seen as signs of stubbornness and a lack of reflection. The line between the virtues and the flaws is slim, and decisive.

And that means that solidarity -- a characteristic of the conservative movement for the past three decades except for interludes under Richard Nixon and the first George Bush -- is fraying. Lacking unity, conservatism is expressing its variety.

There are, first, the traditionalist conservatives, the most authentic of the breed. They are skeptical of large projects undertaken by government to improve humanity because they don`t fully trust either government or humanity. It is our fate to live with imperfection and it is wise to be mistrustful of utopia.

It is this view that has made the columns of George Will, my conservative colleague, so powerful over the past few months. Will in no way sounds like a liberal in criticizing Bush`s war in Iraq. "Conservatives are not supposed to be especially nice," he wrote recently. "They are bleak, flinty people given to looking facts in the face; hence, they are prone to pessimism." In this telling, the Iraq venture looks more like exporting the Great Society`s community action program to Tikrit than a policy rooted in conservative realism.

But the neoconservatives who deeply believe in the purposes of this war are not happy either. They can`t understand how the administration could botch such an essential project. Why, they ask, were more troops not sent to Iraq at the beginning to get the place under control? Why has there been such a reluctance to smash opposition to the American venture in Iraq, to "give victory a chance," as William Kristol wrote recently in the Weekly Standard?

The isolationist conservatives around Pat Buchanan cannot understand why we went to war in the first place -- and they opposed it from the beginning. These conservatives speak explicitly about the "costs of empire," much as the left does. They argue that globalism is really "globaloney" and that being an empire is incompatible with being a republic.

With the splits on Iraq exposed, other splits within conservatism become more obvious. Small-government conservatives feel ever more free to speak out against the large budget deficits over which Bush has presided. Anti-immigration conservatives speak out against the president`s immigration policies. Pro-military conservatives criticize Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld`s dominion over the Pentagon, reflecting the views of many in the military brass who never much liked Rumsfeld or his plans.

Yes, Bush`s problems have something to do with his declining poll ratings. Trouble in politics breeds more trouble. A bit more stability in Iraq could breed a bit more stability in the conservative movement. Bush has to hope so, because it`s hard to win reelection when you have to put out so many fires in your own back yard.

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Die Bush-Doktrin
BBC – Interview
von Noam Chomsky und Jeremy Paxman
BBC News / ZNet 21.05.2004


Wenn George Bush nach den Normen der Nürnberger Kriegsverbrecherprozesse gerichtet würde, käme er an den Strang. Das gilt natürlich auch für jeden anderen amerikanischen seit dem Ende des zweiten Weltkriegs, Jimmy Carter eingeschlossen. Dieser Satz stammt von dem amerikanischen Linguisten Noam Chomsky. Sein jüngster Angriff auf die Art und Weise, wie sich sein Land in der Welt verhält, lautet: Hegemony or Survival, America’s Quest for Global Dominance [dt. Titel: „Hybris“]. Jeremy Paxman traf ihn im Britischen Museum, wo die beiden sich in den Assyrischen Galerien miteinander unterhielten. Paxman eröffnete mit der Frage danach ob Chomsky andeuten wolle, dass an der sogenannten Bush-Doktrin nichts Neues ist.

Nun, das kommt darauf an. Sie wird allgemein für revolutionär erachtet. Henry Kissinger, zum Beispiel, hat sie als revolutionär neue Doktrin bezeichnet, welche den Westfälischen Frieden, das System internationaler Ordnung aus dem 17. Jahrhundert, in Stücke reißt. Ebenso natürlich die UN-Charta. Dennoch wird sie von breiten Kreisen der außenpolitischen Elite kritisiert. Aber genaugenommen ist die Doktrin nicht wirklich neu – sie ist extrem.

Wie hätten die Vereinigten Staaten sich nach dem 9. September verhalten sollen? Sie waren das Opfer eines grotesken, vorsätzlichen Angriffs geworden. Was hätten sie unternehmen sollen, außer dem Versuch...


Weshalb nehmen sie den 11. September? Warum nicht 1993. Die Tatsache, dass der Terroranschlag am 11. September Erfolg hatte, führte zu keiner Veränderung in der Einschätzung der Sicherheitslage. 1993 gelang es ähnlichen Gruppen, ausgebildeten Jihadis, beinahe das World Trade Center in die Luft zu jagen. Mit etwas besserer Planung hätten sie wahrscheinlich zehntausende Menschen getötet. Seither wusste man, dass man konkret mit so etwas rechnen muss. Während der 90er Jahre entstanden zahlreiche Papiere, die so etwas voraussagten, und wir wissen wie man reagiert. Man bedient sich der Polizeiarbeit. Mit Polizeiarbeit verhindert man Terroranschläge, damit hatte man in der Vergangenheit Erfolg.


Aber sie sagen, dass die USA ihr eigenes Strafgericht heraufbeschworen haben.


Nun, zuerst einmal, diese Meinung stammt nicht von mir. Es ist die Ansicht von so ziemlich jedem Spezialisten für Terrorismus. Schauen sie sich etwa Jason Burke’s kürzlich erschienenes Buch über Al-Qaeda an, das ist wohl das beste Buch zum Thema. Er arbeitet die Chronologie der Ereignisse ab und zeigt, wie jeder Akt militärischer Gewalt die Rekrutierung, die Finanzierung und die Mobilisierung verstärkt hat. Er sagt, und ich zitiere ihn, dass jede Gewaltanwendung einen kleinen Sieg für Bin Laden darstellt.


Aber warum verhält sich George Bush ihrer Meinung nach so?


Weil ich denke, dass Terrorismus ihm nicht viel bedeutet, soviel wissen wir sogar. Nehmen wir zum Beispiel die Invasion des Irak. So ziemlich jeder Spezialist der Nachrichtendienste hatte vorausgesagt, dass die Invasion des Irak die Gefahr von Terroraktionen der Marke Al-Qaeda vergrößern würde, und genau dieser Fall ist eingetreten. Es geht darum, dass...


Warum also würde er so verfahren?


Weil die Besetzung des Irak einen Wert an sich darstellt, Ich meine die Errichtung...


Welchen Wert genau?


Die Errichtung der ersten gesicherten Militärbasis in einem abhängigen Vasallenstaat im Herzen der Energieproduzierenden Region.


Denken sie nicht einmal, dass die Menschen im Irak nun besser dran sind, da sie den Diktator los sind?


Sie sind zwei brutalen Herrschaftssystemen entkommen; einem, über das wir sprechen sollen und einem, über das wir nicht sprechen sollen. Diese beiden Systeme waren zum einen das von Saddam Hussein und zum anderen die Sanktionen der USA und Großbritanniens, welche die Gesellschaft zerrüttet, hunderttausende Leben gekostet und die Menschen dazu gezwungen haben, sich auf Saddam Hussein zu verlassen. Nun, die Sanktionen hätten sich gegen Waffenlieferungen richten können, statt die Gesellschaft auch ohne Invasion zu zerstören. Wenn dies geschehen wäre, so ist es alles andere als undenkbar, dass die Bevölkerung des Irak Saddam Hussein das gleiche Schicksal bereitet hätten, das andere von den USA und Großbritannien gestützte Monster ereilt hat. Ceausescu, Suharto, Duvalier, Marcos, die Liste ist lang. Die westlichen Experten, die den Irak am besten kennen, haben dies in der Tat die ganze Zeit vorausgesagt.


Sie scheinen sagen zu wollen, oder zu implizieren, vielleicht bin ich da ihnen gegenüber nicht ganz fair, aber sie scheinen implizieren zu wollen dass demokratisch gewählte Staatshäupter wie George Bush oder Premierminister wie Tony Blair sich direkt mit Regimes wie dem im Irak vergleichen lassen.


Der Begriff der moralischen Gleichwertigkeit [moral equivalence] ist sehr interessant. Erfunden wurde er, soweit ich weiß, von Jeane Kirpatrick – als Mittel um Kritik an der Außenpolitik und den Entscheidungen eines Staates zu verhindern. Der Begriff ist bedeutungsleer, es gibt absolut keine moralische Gleichwertigkeit.


Wenn es für ein Individuum von Vorteil ist in einer freiheitlichen Demokratie zu leben, lässt sich dann durch das Verbreiten demokratischer Werte Besserung erzielen, ganz gleich mit welchen Methoden?


Das erinnert mich an die Frage, die man einst Ghandi über die Zivilisation des Westens gestellt hat, was er davon halte. Er antwortete: Ja, man sollte es dort ruhig mal damit versuchen. Natürlich wäre es gut, freiheitliche demokratische Ideale zu verbreiten. Aber das ist es nicht, worum die USA oder Großbritannien sich bemühen. Sie haben es in der Vergangenheit nicht getan. Sehen sie sich die Regionen unter deren Kontrolle an. Sie verbreiten keine freiheitliche Demokratie. Sie verbreiten Abhängigkeit und Unterwerfung. Außerdem ist es wohl bekannt, das diese Tatsache einen Hauptgrund für den großen Widerstand im Nahen Osten gegen die US-Politik bildet. Das war schon in den 50er Jahren bekannt.


Aber es gibt heute eine ganze Reihe von Staaten in Osteuropa die sagen würden, dass es ihnen jetzt besser geht als unter der Herrschaft des Soviet-Reiches. Eine Konsequenz daraus, wie der Westen sich verhalten hat
.

Ebenso gibt es viele Staaten im Einflussbereich der USA, in Mittelamerika oder der Karibik, die sich wünschen, sie könnten der amerikanischen Herrschaft entkommen. Wir schenken dem, was dort geschieht, nicht viel Beachtung, aber die Menschen dort tun es. Während der 80er Jahre, als diejenigen, die derzeit an den Schaltstellen der Macht sitzen, in ihrer Reagan-Phase waren. In Mittelamerika wurden Hunderttausende abgeschlachtet. Die USA unternahmen einen massiven Terrorangriff auf Nicaragua, der hauptsächlich ein Krieg gegen die Kirche war. Sie verübten ein Attentat auf einen Erzbischof und ermordeten sechs führende jesuitische Intellektuelle. Das war in El Salvador. Es war eine grauenvolle Episode. Was für ein System haben sie dort errichtet? Waren es freiheitliche Demokratien? Nein.


Sie haben bei zwei oder drei Gelegenheiten die Beziehung zwischen den Vereinigten Staaten und Großbritannien angesprochen. Verstehen sie, weshalb sich Tony Blair in der Afghanistan-Frage und beim Irak so verhalten hat?


Nun, wenn sie sich die Geschichte der britischen Diplomatie anschauen, damals während der 40er Jahre, damals musste Großbritannien eine Entscheidung treffen. Britannien war die vorherrschende Weltmacht gewesen. Die Vereinigten Staaten waren zwar bei Weitem das wohlhabendste Land, agierten aber nur regional auf der Weltbühne. Sie waren kein Hauptdarsteller. Mit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg wurde es offensichtlich, dass die USA die vorherrschende Macht sein würden. Das war jedem klar. Die Briten mussten sich entscheiden. Wollten sie Teil eines Europas werden, dass sich wohlmöglich in Richtung Unabhängigkeit bewegt, oder wollte sie das werden, was das Foreign Office als Juniorpartner der Vereinigten Staaten beschreibt. Nun, sie haben sich im Grunde dafür entschieden, Juniorpartner der USA zu werden.

Während der Kubakrise, zum Beispiel, behandelten sie Großbritannien mit völliger Geringschätzung. Das können sie in den Dokumenten nachlesen, die jetzt aus der Geheimhaltung entlassen wurden. Großbritanniens Existenz stand auf dem Spiel, und Harold McMillan wurde nicht einmal über die Vorgänge informiert. Es war gefährlich. Ein hochrangiger Beamter, wahrscheinlich Dean Acheson, aber er wird nicht namentlich genannt, beschrieb Großbritannien als „Unser Statthalter, vornehm ausgedrückt: unser Partner.“ Nun, die Briten hören gerne den höflichen Titel, aber die Herren verwenden den echten Titel. Das ist die Entscheidung, die Großbritannien fällen muss. Warum sich Blair so entschieden hat, kann ich nicht sagen.

Vielen Dank, Noam Chomsky.



[ Übersetzt von: Patrick Mueller | Orginalartikel: "Bush Doctrine" ]

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Washington`s manoeuvring threatens Iraq`s sovereignty before it has even begun
Editorial - The Independent
01 June 2004

The tragic pattern has become almost familiar, so often have we seen it over the past year. No sooner have the first flickers of hope appeared on Iraq`s battle-scarred horizon, than they are brutally extinguished, leaving the outlook even gloomier than it was before.

One week ago, the United Nations appeared to have made impressive headway in finding well-qualified Iraqis prepared to serve in an interim government until elections next year. Now, not only is the whole process deadlocked over the choice of president, but it turns out that the guiding role the UN was supposed to have been playing has never been anything of the kind. The end-of-month deadline for naming the new government has not been met.

If the deadline had been missed because productive discussion had simply overrun its allotted time, that would be one thing. But this is not the case. Nor is it the case, as it originally seemed, that the delay reflected divisions among members of the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council or between them and the UN. The reality is more complex, more disappointing and more malign.

What emerged during yesterday`s 24 hour cooling-off period was that, far from standing aside - "taking the training wheels off", as President Bush so patronisingly said recently - Washington has been intimately engaged in the whole process of forming Iraq`s interim government, a hidden hand shaping the new structures and pushing the nominations. But for the emergence of last-minute differences and the awkwardness, perhaps, of certain influential Iraqis, the United States might have succeeded in passing off Iraq`s caretaker government as independent and endorsed by the UN, when it was actually as much a creature of Washington as its predecessor, the IGC.

Here was another lie in the making, another misrepresentation to add to the misrepresentations that have studded the US and British intervention in Iraq, from the propaganda about weapons of mass destruction on.

There were clues. The UN envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, has been increasingly open about the differences between himself and the Americans. He made clear that he would not remain in Iraq after the formation of a new government, contrary to speculation that he would take on a position akin to UN governor. He then clarified that not only would there be no role for him, but the United Nations would not play the "vital role" that the British and Europeans had favoured for it during the period between occupation and elections. Finally, there was the confusion surrounding the naming of Iyad Allawi as Prime Minister, and hints that it was neither the IGC nor the UN that had put him forward, but Washington`s proxies.

So it was apparent even before yesterday that the UN`s function in a "sovereign" Iraq would be far less than envisaged and probably far less than would make it acceptable to the majority on the Security Council. Admittedly, it was never as clear as it should have been whether the UN would actually nominate the members of an interim government or merely facilitate the government`s formation. The hope may have been that the exact mechanism would be of little consequence so long as the government itself ultimately had the blessing of the UN. Without that, it would have no chance of acceptance among Iraqis.

A "vital role" for the UN was one precondition of broad international support for any interim Iraqi government. Another was the need for a definitive end to the occupation. While it was accepted that the US, British and other troops would most likely remain, on terms agreed with the UN and the new government, it was crucial that Iraqis had to be seen to be in charge of the whole administrative apparatus after 30 June. This was the minimum that would have given the transfer of sovereignty credibility. With four weeks to go, none of these conditions has been met and the process of forming the government has been exposed as a sham. The best solution now would be a return to the drawing board, especially if the only other alternative is the battlefield.

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I must blast Saddam to Hell.

The reason why, I cannot tell.

But this I know, and know full well,

I must blast Saddam to Hell.

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The lying game
An A-Z of the Iraq war and its aftermath, focusing on misrepresentation, manipulation, and mistakes

01 June 2004

A Mohammed Atta. The Bush administration claimed that a meeting between the lead hijacker of the 11 September attacks and a senior Iraqi intelligence officer proved a connection between al-Qa`ida and Saddam Hussein. But there is no evidence such a meeting took place.

B Bush and Blair: The two leaders have reacted strongly to all suggestions they misled their respective electorates over the war, and maintain time will prove they were right to go to war. Both, though, are suffering poll difficulties, as problems in Iraq become worse, and each needs speedy improvement to shore up his position.

C Ahmed Chalabi. The leader of the Iraq National Congress, who is a member of the Iraq Governing Council, is now accused of having duped the Bush administration, as well as the media, into believing that Saddam Hussein represented a direct threat to US and British security.

D Dollars. Between 1992 and the US raid on Ahmed Chalabi`s home last week, the US government channelled more than $100m (£55m) to his Iraqi National Congress. The money may have been a motivating factor for defectors to say what they thought the Americans wanted to hear. That funding has now been stopped.

E Mohamed ElBaradei, the Egyptian head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, exposed as unfounded many of the claims put into the public domain by the US administration. The head of the UN weapons inspectors, Hans Blix, also challenged the White House claims.

F The claim that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction could be deployed within forty-five minutes of an order was a key plank of the Government`s pro-war argument and appeared in its September dossier of 2002. We now know that the discredited claim - which applied only to battlefield munitions in any case - came from the party of the caretaker prime minister of Iraq: Iyad Allawi.

G Andrew Gilligan, defence correspondent on the BBC`s Today programme, reported that the Government had "sexed-up`` Iraq`s weapons capabilities. On one occasion, he suggested that it had done so deliberately. Events since suggest that case for war was exaggerated. Gilligan lost his job in the fall-out.

H Khidir Hamza. The man known as Saddam`s bombmaker is now acknowledged to have tricked the administration into believing he had more knowledge of Saddam`s nuclear programme than he actually did.

IWas Ahmed Chalabi an agent for Iran, which used him as part of a plan to manipulate the US government into overthrowing Saddam Hussein? Washington is holding an urgent investigation into the claim.

J The Joint Intelligence Committee was accused of allowing itself to be manipulated by Downing Street in the run-up to the war, and of firming up conditional language in the key September dossier on weapons of mass destruction.

K David Kelly, the MoD weapons specialist at the heart of last year`s controversy, committed suicide three days after he denied to the Foreign Affairs Committee that he was Gilligan`s source.

L Langley. The CIA headquarters, which was regularly visited by the US Vice-President Dick Cheney as he sought to pressure the intelligence services into exaggerating the Iraqi threat for political reasons.

M Mobile biological labs. The alleged discovery of biological mobile labs for the production of biological weapons was held up after the war as proof that Iraq continued its illegal weapons programme. But the chief UN weapons inspector, Hans Blix, said there was no proof of their use.

N The Iraqi scientist Hamdi Shukuir Ubaydi buried documents related to Iraq`s nuclear programme in his garden, and they were found last June in the search for WMD after the war last June. However there was no confirmation of the US claim that they were the "smoking gun" the Americans were looking for.

O Oil-for-food scandal. The recent accusations that Saddam diverted billions of dollars from a UN humanitarian programme, and paid countries for political support, came from documents distributed by aides of Ahmed Chalabi. US and UN investigations will attempt to uncover the truth.

P The Pentagon hawks, Donald Rumsfeld, his deputy Paul Wolfowitz and senior adviser Richard Perle took their country to war on a false prospectus.

Q The Daily Mirror published photographs which it claimed showed members of the Queen`s Lancashire Regiment abusing one of its Iraqi prisoners. The photos have now been dismissed as fakes. But the regiment remains under investigation over the death of Baha Mousa, who died in custody.

R Karl Rove, president Bush`s political adviser, is accused of "outing" the CIA undercover agent Valerie Plame amid the furore over the Niger uranium claim. A grand jury is investigating the leak.

S Bush and Blair insist there will be a transfer of "full sovereignty" to a caretaker government. But the appointment of Iyad Allawi, who has close US and British links, as Prime Minister raises questions over its independence.

T The New York Times last week issued a mea culpa for failing to question a Bush administration leak relating to aluminium tubes reportedly being used in Iraq`s nuclear weapons programme. The IAEA demolished the claim, a key prop of the White House case for war.

U Iraq`s alleged attempt to smuggle uranium from Niger was used by the allies as proof that Iraq was still attempting to build a nuclear weapon. While the Bush administration now admits the relevant documents were forged, the Blair government is still sticking to the claim.

V Iraq was said to hold stocks of VX gas, the deadliest chemical agent known to man. Not a single millilitre has been found.

W World Trade Centre. According to opinion polls, a majority of Americans still believe Saddam Hussein played a role in the 11 September attacks, a view long propagated by the Bush administration, particularly Dick Cheney.

X Camp X-Ray, now Camp Delta, is the US prison at Guantanamo where prisoners from Afghanistan were flown. But its practices were adopted at Abu Ghraib jail in Baghdad. The ensuing scandal has tarnished Bush`s presidency.

Y Yesterday, denials by Dick Cheney that he no longer had any association with the Halliburton oil services company, where he was formerly CEO, were under new scrutiny.

Z Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, accused of beheading the American Nick Berg , was said to be the link between Saddam and Bin Laden. No such link has been proved.


1 June 2004 11:34


© 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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OMMENTARY
Electorate Is Wising Up to the Iraq Blunder
Robert Scheer

June 1, 2004

So, you really can`t fool all the people all the time. George W. came close, getting high marks for his "war against terrorism" and for being a "war president," even though in Iraq he ended up fighting the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Yet despite Bush`s claim again last week that occupied Iraq is "the central front in the war on terror," the grim consequences of this colonial-style adventure have finally gotten through to an electorate that understandably invested a huge amount of trust in him after 9/11.

Though Bush`s approval ratings have been falling steadily, they remained high in the areas of national security and Iraq. But no more. Polls now show that only a minority of Americans think that his handling of terrorism is good, or are "proud" of the U.S. role in Iraq.

It`s about time. With the U.S. military bogged down in Iraq, and Afghanistan still a chaotic terrorist breeding ground overrun by warlords, we are being warned that Al Qaeda is as big a threat as ever, with recruitment booming and major attacks possibly planned for this summer.

All this despite Congress writing a blank check for $200 billion and additional expenditures — mostly for the Iraq war. This inevitably means, as an internal White House budget memo leaked to the Washington Post last week acknowledges, an impending cut across the board in 2006 funding of domestic programs such as education and even for the Department of Homeland Security.

Meanwhile, the United States has moved away from its historical posture as an honest broker in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, with Bush abandoning a peace effort that goes back four administrations and even his own much-trumpeted "road map" to peace. Many supporters of Israel are critical of Bush`s ill-conceived invasion of Iraq and his embrace of fellow preemptive warrior Ariel Sharon.

"I couldn`t believe what I was hearing," said retired Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, "that the road to [peace in] Jerusalem led through Baghdad, when just the opposite is true, the road to Baghdad led through Jerusalem." These remarks from the former commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East were part of his comprehensive analysis of why the Iraq invasion was doomed to failure from the beginning, based as it was on lies, false premises, poor planning and a disregard for the history of the region.

For those who argued that Bush`s reckless use of military violence was defensible to protect human rights comes a rebuke in Amnesty International`s cover letter to its 2004 annual report: "The global security agenda promulgated by the U.S. administration is bankrupt of vision and bereft of principle. Sacrificing human rights in the name of security at home, turning a blind eye to abuses abroad and using preemptive military force where and when it chooses have neither increased security nor ensured liberty."

Even the once-cocky neoconservative intellectuals who pushed so hard for this war for a decade — and who are now enraged that their darling Ahmad Chalabi is being called to account — are suddenly abandoning ship like rats, claiming the Bush administration ruined their beautiful vision with its incompetence. "I would be the first to acknowledge we allowed the liberation [of Iraq] to subside into an occupation," longtime invasion booster Richard Perle said last week.

Oops! Too bad, we rolled craps and now more than 800 young Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis are dead. We tortured detainees, lied about Iraq`s weapons of mass destruction and gave Western democracy a huge black eye by showing how easy it was for a self-aggrandizing "war president" to hoodwink Congress and the people. One of those who was fooled was Sen. John Kerry. It is high time he showed some real, from-the-gut, anger over a president who so shamelessly led him and the nation astray. The public is onto Bush, but Kerry has to provide it an alternative by exposing the lies and deceptions that have weakened our country.

*

Robert Scheer writes a weekly column for The Times and is coauthor of "The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq" (Seven Stories Press/Akashic Books, 2003).



Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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rom AxisofLogic.com

Critical Analysis
FLASHBACK: In light of new terror warnings: Fear Factor Orange: Mind and Behavior Control in America
By Manuel Valenzuela, Contributing Editor
May 29, 2004, 17:20



Originally Published Christmas 2003 for Code Orange Alert issued by Ashcroft, once more trying to instill fear into the American public for political gain, and as relevant today as it was then in light of new Summer terror warnings.

"Freedom and fear are at war. The advance of human freedom is the great achievement of our time, and the great hope of every time now depends on us... By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions by abandoning every value except the will to power they follow in the path of fascism, and Nazism, and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way, to where it ends: in history`s unmarked grave of discarded lies."

-George W. Bush commenting on the enemy, yet also most applicable to his own policies

"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 way in any country."

--Hermann Goering,
at the Nuremberg trials

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

"It`s second nature for any system of power to try and inspire fear... Bush`s managers realize they only have one card to play. Would you direct him to focus the attention of the population on tax cuts or other gifts for the rich? Or on the Enron scandal, or the deliberate destruction of a decent environment for our grandchildren? Or would it be preferable to construct the image of a noble hero driving evil from the world while the population huddles in fear of monsters from whom our dauntless savior will rescue us? No choice... It is a frightened country and it is easy to conjure up an imminent threat... They have a card that they can play ... terrify the population with some invented threat, and that is not very hard to do."

-Noam Chomsky

"The Bush administration has presented Americans with a false dichotomy that we must choose between being safe or free."

-Emily Whitfield,
ACLU national spokeswoman

We will not fear

- George W. Bush

[The lives and sacrifices of 3000 men and women should not be taken for granted. The deadly attacks of 9/11 should not be diminished. This article does neither. Threats do exist and concerns do arise, yet what we are experiencing today is much, much more than the government protecting us. It is manipulation, the greatest form of propaganda that is abusing our emotions and fears for political and powermongering gains.]

It is that time of the year again when the nation erupts in an assortment of colors marking the holiday season. Green, red and white, Christmas colors are upon us. Colors of cheer and joy, of Christmas past and present. A new color, however, seems to have made its most unwelcome way into the cocktail of delight and merriment, once again attaching itself to the nation s pulse at a time of supposed warmth and happiness. The most un-Christmas-like color has infiltrated itself into our collective holiday cheer, creating with its presence a most frightful time of year. Like a most unwelcome neighbor or relative, orange has crept inside our homes and communities, making its annual appearance just in time to spoil our most cherished and comforting holiday.

Like a bad flu, Fear Factor Orange has returned, after its prerequisite six month absence, just in time to instill fear into our Christmas cheer. Thanks to John Ashcroft, Tom Ridge and his Department of Homeland Insecurity we must face yet another season under cover of orange gloom. It is the Fear Factor, the instrument used by this administration that conditions us all to the coming usurpation of rights, freedoms and democracy and the introduction of the police state. It is the tool by which Bush inculcates his perceived leadership into our delirious brains, thereby assuring himself of our unwillingness to abandon the President-hero, the fighter of all evil, our Crusading Commander.

Fear Factor Orange assures Bush that every three to six months the American public`s never healing scars of 9/11 will re-open, pussing out once again our still fragile memories of the horrific tragedy that the administration never fails to conjure up. With the wave of the propaganda wand, Bush and his megalomaniac marketers make out of the President a fusion of Santa Claus, George Washington, Napoleon, Gandhi and the Almighty itself, reincarnated out of thin air to save the nation from imminent peril. It is the perfect public relations gimmick to help assure Bush a second term in office. And fear not, those who have grown dependent on Fear Factor Orange, it will return once or twice more before November 2004.

Fear Factor Orange places in front of the masses the all too real and damaging emotions that we as a nation suffered on that most horrendous of days, where our innocence and perceived sense of infallibility were erased from the face of the earth. The construction of fear into our psyches places inside us our wanting for protection and salvation from those invisible yet perilous dangers of terrorism. It matters not that we cannot see the enemy, Fear Factor Orange conjures them up in our minds, full of bombs and bullets, hiding in every corner, ready to destroy us.

In our search for self-preservation, therefore, we place our complete trust on the government to become the father figure we so desperately crave. The unthinking populace thus places into the hands of Bush the means to control and empower us. Through the use of fear Bush manipulates our behaviors, making us decapitated drones signing away our souls.

Our animal emotions are resurrected every time ominous Fear Factor Orange glows from our television monitors. The rational, human brain is replaced by our primitive, older one that places the primordial necessity and interest of self-preservation ahead of the analytical, abstract-thinking side that makes us question authority and its sinister intentions.

Our ability to weight complexities is forgotten, threats are too much to handle; we refuse to believe the reality of the absurdity and refuse to listen to the absurdity of the fantasy. This enables Bush and company to further induce cooperation and acquiescence to each and every mandate they enact from average Americans who do not realize, to their great detriment, the continued erosion of their once sacrosanct freedoms, rights and democratic institutions.

Since 9/11, we have been told that in order to be made safe, in order to live in tranquility, we must place our undying trust in Bush and our government. In Bush We Trust. We must do as our government dictates for only it knows what is good for us. Fed insecurity and fear on an almost constant basis, either through government or corporate media propaganda, we are systemically brainwashed into believing that nobody is safe, that our nation is being attacked and that the future of our children is in peril.

Forces of evil greater than anything we have ever faced are said to be invisibly flying throughout the nation, like winds carrying a deadly virus or toxin intent on destroying our way of life from within. Only by following the dictates of Bush, only by ignorantly and blindly obeying his commands will salvation be in our grasp. Only then will we be delivered from evil into the valley of heavenly safety.

In order to achieve that which cannot be reached, we are told to sacrifice our freedoms, rights and liberties so we can be made safe. In truth, we are setting free onto the world and surrendering over to the authorities that control us the powers inherent in the people, those democratic principles passed down through generations of struggle and sacrifice that have for centuries saved us from the growing threat of autocracy we now face. That we continue to blindly relinquish the remaining freedoms that have not already been taken from us in the name of security and safety should only add to our growing concern at the direction this nation is heading in.

Like drooling Pavlovian dogs, we are hypnotically following the glimmer of Fear Factor Orange down the road to fascism. Fear has been used wisely by this administration to rob us of the ingredients necessary to prevent and fight totalitarian governance from ever rising out of the fires of Hades. Like a flaming phoenix, however, this form of power is quickly rising, fed by our irrational give-away of that which we hold most dearly. Into the skies the phoenix flies, gorging on America`s remaining ways of life. Smelling a most frightened nation on its journey from coast to coast, like a wild animal it grows ever more powerful, brave and confident, ready to attack our collective jugular and enjoy the tasty morsels and blood of a most satisfying kill.

Our construct of reality has vanished in a haze of fog called fear. We are scared for the present, future, our children and ourselves. Anxiety runs in our blood, filling our veins and minds. The buttons of fright and terror being pushed by Bush drive us from normalcy to panic in a cruel game of tug-of-war whose only end result is the political manipulation towards re-election and psychological domination by exploitation.

The takeover of the American mind, designed to make subservient slaves without thinking brains out of all of us, is gaining momentum, cruising like a monstrous freight train in its journey through the country, robbing and raping all who appear in its wake, infecting us with the fantasies of fear and insecurity that are slowly digging our graves.

Through the abuse and manipulation of fear, domestic and foreign policy are being concocted to suit conservative ideology. Social programs and services are being imploded by those who have for years wished them away. A police state is emerging that is subverting freedoms once deemed inalienable. Police officers now punish with impunity those who dare protest the evils of the elite. Patriot Act I, and now II, are giving the government powers once thought unimaginable, the stuff of Orwellian fiction. Government secrecy is now the norm, accountability is a thing of the past. Detentions, surveillance, intrusions and privacy annihilation, is this the America of yesteryear? Are we approaching 2004, or 1984?

Dissent and opposition are being curtailed, the nation is being wrapped around the flag. To support the pillage of our rights is to be patriotic, to fight the oligarchy is to cavort with the enemy. Our wages and soldiers are being sacrificed for the sake of the Leviathan, education is but a hollow dream that is leaving all children behind. Fascism is spreading like an epidemic, imperialism is rising its tentacles and the basic tenets of American life are being gobbled up by the corporate Leviathan. Meanwhile, Fear Factor Orange glows in the night sky, warning us all to be vigilant spies, untrusting of neighbors, aloof in our ways, living life paranoid at best and scared shitless at worst.

Catatonic we have become in our understanding of the war on terror. Fear Factor Orange, that color signifying a high threat of terrorist attack, spooks and terrorizes, creating a belief that evil people want to kill us. That the threat is even more remote than being struck by lightning does not matter to a citizenry that still suffers the post-traumatic fatigue of 9/11.

Not to minimize the atrocities by any means, but it must be mentioned that only a minute part of Manhattan was struck, only a small side of the Pentagon was attacked. Those 3000 we will never forget, heroes to all, symbols of what makes this country great. Yet we are 285 million strong, spread over vast terrains. We must realize that the 3000 men and women are being politicized for cynical purposes, to use fear as a political tool in the game of power and control. Do not forget that.

Terrorists are not nation-states, their resources are finite, their numbers small. We are told to be vigilant, to be on the lookout for suspicious activity. This, consequently, places the eyes of hundreds of millions of citizens squarely, consciously or not, on the millions of Arab men and women who live in this country as Americans. Fear Factor Orange and paranoia combine to make of these citizens walking, breathing targets of unfair stereotypes, real or imagined, that fester in the American consciousness. Profiling and labeling thus combine to segregate moral, law abiding citizens. For them, Fear Factor Orange is indeed a time to fear and grow anxious.

Bush should not be allowed to control our lives or our destinies. Ashcroft and Ridge should not dictate our stresses and concerns. Our government should not shamelessly insert fear into our already hectic lives. The threat of attack will always linger, a strike is most likely inevitable thanks to our foreign policy and arrogance, but to constantly alter our way of being, to give up our freedoms for our security, to create a world in which our children will never breathe the same rights we once had, is to acknowledge that the terrorist elements have already won.

They have succeeded in terrorizing, in instilling fear, in having our government change the basic structure of our democracy. We must fight Bush s attempts to bankrupt us of all we cherish. We must keep living our dreams, keep pursuing our goals and we must never allow our democratic principles to dissipate like stone eroded by the sands of time. Our children must live in freedom, they must savor their rights. They must enjoy the fruits of the labors and sacrifices of descendents long gone and those built by our hands and minds because if forced to live in a world devoid of freedoms, they will never know what their parents once had, and you cannot miss something you never had. Thus, they will never fight and sacrifice for that which they never knew existed.

If an attack manifests itself, whether it is today or ten years from now, we must simply rise like we always do, united as one, standing proud and strong, ready to mourn, pick up and keep on living. This is America, after all, the land of the free and the home of the brave. Suffering and mourning is the story of man, whether in World War I and II Europe or Civil War America, in hundreds of revolutions, battles or fights for freedom, to honor a people s way of life is to sacrifice and mourn, to evolve and stand strong. It is what determines the character of a people, the strength of a nation. Ask the world, nothing comes easy.

We cannot allow those who would do us harm to triumph in altering our way of life, and we cannot allow Bush and company to assist in this endeavor. Our security is important, but not at the expense of our freedoms, rights, liberties and democracy. It is not at the expense of creating a police state where we are all potential suspects and victims. The loss of our freedoms and rights should not come at the expense of the rise of a fascist state under the guise of comfort and refuge.

For if we allow this to happen, we will have neither and the great reality that is the United States will fade away into dusty memories of oblivion. In the long history of mankind our era will be but a small blur buried and forgotten by the sands of time. Don t let Bush succeed. Decry fearmongering. Remember, what does not kill you makes you stronger. Fear not, for life is all about conquering that which we most fear.

© Copyright 2004 by AxisofLogic.com

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Propaganda ersetzt die Vernunft
Uri Avnery über den israelisch-palästinensischen Konflikt
Am 4.Mai, dem Todestag Carl von Ossietzkys, erhielt Uri Avnery, Sprecher des israelischen "Friedensblocks" (Gush Shalom), den Carl-von-Ossietzky-Preis der Stadt Oldenburg. Die Jury, die sich einstimmig für ihn entschieden hatte, bestand aus Klaus Bednarz, Kerstin Hensel, Ernst Hinrichs, Jutta Limbach und Hans Mommsen. Der Preisträger bedankte sich mit der hier (geringfügig gekürzt) dokumentierten Rede.

Im Dritten Reich war Carl von Ossietzky ein Verräter. Die Masse des Volkes lief dem Rattenfänger von Hameln nach. Eine ungeheure Propagandamaschinerie trommelte zum Krieg. Anders denken war Verrat. Auf Verrat stand Todesstrafe. Er wurde zu Tode gefoltert.
Heute, 64 Jahre später, ehren wir Carl von Ossietzky als den wahren deutschen Patrioten. Als einen Propheten der neuen Zeit. Als den Realisten, der seiner Zeit weit voraus war. Der nicht die Trommel der widerwärtigen Gegenwart, sondern die Musik der Zukunft hörte.
Für viele seiner Volksgenossen, vielleicht für beinahe alle, war er ein Verräter. Aber es gibt Zeiten, in denen ein anständiger Mensch eben ein Verräter sein muss. Zeiten, in denen wahrer Patriotismus und Verrat ein und dasselbe sind. In denen die Ehre eines Volkes von den wenigen Verrätern aufrecht erhalten wird, die den unglaublichen moralischen und physischen Mut haben, Nein zu sagen, wenn alle um sie herum Ja schreien.
Die für den Frieden eintreten, wenn ein ganzes Volk vom Wahnsinn des Krieges besessen ist. Die gegen Rassenwahn und nationalen Sadismus auftreten, wenn die Demagogen des Hasses mit ihren hysterischen Stimmen die Luft verseuchen.
Millionen von Menschen in Deutschland, in Europa, in der ganzen Welt mussten ihr Leben hergeben, gefoltert, zerschossen, zerfetzt, verbrannt, vergast werden, bis die Völker Europas sich im Frieden zusammenfanden, wie Carl von Ossietzky es wollte.
Die Bibel erzählt [1.Könige 18:17f.], wie der Prophet Elia König Ahab traf: "Und als Ahab Elia sah, sprach Ahab zu ihm:‚Bist du es, der Verderber Israels?‘ Er aber sprach: ‚Nicht ich bin der Verderber Israels, sondern du und deines Vaters Haus dadurch, dass ihr des Herrn Gebote verlassen habt und wandelt den Götzen nach!‘"
Das ist für mich Carl von Ossietzky, ein deutscher Prophet, ein Mann, der der Generation meines Vaters angehörte, der im selben Jahr ins Konzentrationslager kam, in dem mein Vater mich, als neunjährigen Jungen, aus Deutschland rettete, um in Palästina ein neues Leben zu beginnen.
Ich komme aus einem Land, in dem in den letzten Wochen täglich schreckliche Dinge passieren. Die Armee, in der ich selbst vor 53 Jahren als Kommandosoldat gedient habe und schwer verwundet worden bin, hat unser Nachbarvolk angegriffen, Hunderte getötet, Tausende verwundet, überall Verheerung angerichtet. Kriegsgetöse bringt jede vernünftige Stimme zum Schweigen, Kampfbegeisterung "einigt" das Volk, Propaganda füllt unsere Medien, ein Mann der brutalen Gewalt ist am Steuer.
Es ist nicht leicht für die Wenigen — leider noch zu Wenigen —, auch in dieser Lage aufrecht zu stehen, zu protestieren, die Stimme der Vernunft und des Friedens zu erheben. Aber es gibt eine wachsende Friedensbewegung in Israel, die das tut.
Wir haben schon in der ersten Stunde dieser zweifelhaften so genannten "Operation Schutzschild" gegen sie protestiert. Tausende sind nach Jenin und Ramallah marschiert, um Lebensmittel und Medizin in die belagerten palästinensischen Städte und Flüchtlingslager zu bringen. Man hat uns mit Tränengas und Gummikugeln beschossen.
Aber schlimmer als Gas und Kugeln war der Hass, dem wir begegnet sind, das Geschrei unserer hasserfüllten, gehirngewaschenen Mitbürger, die uns als Verräter und Nestbeschmutzer beschimpfen und uns Todesdrohungen zuschicken. Wir halten Stand, weil wir sicher sind, dass wir die wahren Patrioten Israels sind, dass wir die Ehre unseres Volkes aufrecht erhalten, dass unsere Stimmen am Ende die Trommeln des Hasses und der nationalen Überheblichkeit besiegen werden.
Es ist für viele Menschen, und besonders für Deutsche, schwer, den israelisch-palästinensischen Konflikt zu verstehen. Manche stellen sich ganz auf die Seite Israels in dem Glauben, dass sie damit die Sünden der schrecklichen Vergangenheit sühnen. Andere verdammen Israel und stellen sich ganz auf die Seite der Palästinenser. Wir aber sagen: Sie brauchen nicht zwischen den beiden zu wählen, sie können für beide sein, für Israel und für Palästina, für den Frieden zwischen beiden Völkern, für die Versöhnung, für die gemeinsame Zukunft.
Der Historiker Isaac Deutscher hat diesen Konflikt so zu beschreiben versucht: Ein Mensch wohnt im oberen Stockwerk eines Hauses, in dem ein Brand entsteht. Um sich zu retten, springt er aus dem Fenster und landet auf dem Kopf eines Passanten, der auf diese Weise zum Invaliden wird. Zwischen den beiden entsteht ein lebenslanger Konflikt. Wer von ihnen hat Recht?
Die zionistische Bewegung ist im deutschen Kulturkreis entstanden. Der Gründer der Bewegung, der Schriftsteller und Journalist Theodor Herzl, lebte in Wien — in der Stadt, in der zum ersten Mal in Europa ein eingefleischter Antisemit zum Bürgermeister gewählt wurde.
Er sah, wie am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts in ganz Europa nationale Bewegungen die Oberhand gewannen, in denen für Juden kein Platz mehr war. Von den Pogromen im zaristischen Russland bis zu den Ausschreitungen der Dreyfus-Affäre in Frankreich — überall waren die Juden durch diesen modernen Antisemitismus gefährdet.
Die zionistische Antwort war: Wenn für uns kein Platz in den Nationen Europas ist, dann konstituieren wir Juden uns als eine separate Nation und gründen unseren eigenen Staat, in dem wir unser Schicksal in die eigenen Hände nehmen können. Es war eine richtige Antwort, und sie hat vielen von uns — auch mir — das Leben gerettet.
Die Schattenseite war, dass der Zionismus, der sich in Palästina etablierte, die Tatsache ignorierte, dass im Lande seit vielen Jahrhunderten ein anderes Volk lebte. Das einheimische, arabisch-palästinensische Volk wehrte sich, ganz natürlich, gegen die fremden Eindringlinge, wie es jedes andere Volk getan hätte. So entstand der Konflikt, der uneingeschränkt bis heute — und besonders heute — weitergeht; ein Konflikt, in den schon die fünfte Generation hineingeboren ist und der unser ganzes Leben bestimmt.
Er begann mit Stöcken und Steinen. Als ich mit 15 Jahren einer terroristischen Untergrundorganisation beitrat, um gegen die britische Kolonialregierung zu kämpfen, hatten wir schon Pistolen. Heutzutage setzt unsere Armee Panzer, Kanonen, Kampfflugzeuge und Hubschrauber ein, und die Palästinenser Selbstmordbomber. Und überall im Nahen Osten warten die Massenvernichtungswaffen, biologische, chemische und atomare.
So ein Konflikt erzeugt Hass, Vorurteile und Angst, hauptsächlich Angst. Jede Seite verteufelt die andere, Propaganda ersetzt die Vernunft, Mythen entstellen die Wahrheit. Jede Seite sieht nur die Gräueltaten der anderen und ignoriert die eigenen, jede glaubt an ihr absolutes Recht und an das absolute Unrecht der anderen.
Der erste Schritt zum Frieden ist, die Traumata, die Ängste, die Hoffnungen der anderen Seite zu verstehen. Für die Palästinenser bedeutet das, die Nachwirkungen des Holocausts auf die Seele der Israelis zu begreifen; für uns bedeutet das, die Nachwirkungen der Nakbah, d.h. der Katastrophe, der Massenvertreibung von 1948 auf die Seele der Palästinenser zu verinnerlichen.
Der zweite Schritt ist, eine Vision des Friedens zu zeichnen, die die gerechten Ansprüche und Aspirationen beider Seiten berücksichtigt.
Der dritte Schritt ist, die moralischen und politischen Kräfte zu entwickeln, um diesen Frieden zu verwirklichen, nicht nur in Israel und Palästina, sondern in der ganzen Welt, in Amerika, in Europa, auch in Deutschland, vielleicht besonders in Deutschland.
Keiner kann und darf vergessen, was in Deutschland geschehen ist. Was in Deutschland vor 60 Jahren passiert ist, hat einen großen Einfluss auf das gehabt, was heute in unserem Lande passiert. Das darf nicht dazu führen, dass Deutsche sich jeder moralischen Kritik gegenüber Israel enthalten. Ganz im Gegenteil — das wäre genauso unmoralisch wie antisemitische Hetze.
Das Gedächtnis des Holocaust darf nicht manipuliert werden, um Unrecht zu rechtfertigen. Der Holocaust ist einmalig, er darf nicht für aktuelle Politik benutzt werden. Weder die Israelis noch die Palästinenser sind Nazis. Jeder Antisemitismus ist abscheulich, ganz egal gegen welches semitische Volk er gerichtet ist — der alte antijüdische Antisemitismus genauso wie der neue antiarabische, antiislamische Antisemitismus.
Seit mehr als 50 Jahren setze ich mich für eine Friedenslösung ein, die das Recht beider Seiten auf Freiheit, Selbstständigkeit und Gerechtigkeit berücksichtigt. Natürlich besteht keine Symmetrie zwischen den beiden Seiten — wir sind die Besetzer, sie sind die Besetzten, wir haben eine gewaltige Übermacht, sie haben die Hartnäckigkeit eines bedrohten Volkes.
Aber so viel Blut auch fließt, so viel abscheuliche Dinge auch passieren, wie gerade jetzt in Jenin, am Ende werden unsere beiden Völker in diesem kleinen Lande nebeneinander und zusammen leben müssen, weil jede andere Lösung zu schrecklich ist, um auch nur an sie zu denken.
So dunkel auch die Gegenwart aussieht, ich glaube, dass wir heute dem Frieden näher sind als je. Auf beiden Seiten besteht eine große Mehrheit, die den Frieden will, sie glaubt aber nicht, dass der Frieden möglich ist. Die Verteufelung des Feindes, die Angst vor dem Fremden, das Unverständnis für das Recht des Anderen — sie führen dazu, dass dieser Friedenswille nicht zum Ausdruck kommt.
Wir in der israelischen Friedensbewegung, und besonders in Gush Shalom — dem Friedensblock, in dem ich wirke —, betrachten es als unsere Aufgabe, auch in den schwersten Zeiten und unter den schwersten Bedingungen dieses Ziel klar im Auge zu behalten. Wir sind engagiert, um unser Volk, das Volk Israels, zu überzeugen, dass der Frieden möglich ist, dass der Preis des Friedens viel, viel billiger ist als der Preis des Krieges, nämlich: ein freier Staat Palästina in allen besetzten Gebieten des Westjordanlands und des Gazastreifens, mit Jerusalem als gemeinsamer Hauptstadt Israels und Palästinas, die Auflösung aller israelischen Siedlungen in den palästinensischen Gebieten und eine gerechte, praktische und vereinbarte Lösung für die Tragödie der palästinensischen Flüchtlinge.
Wenn das Verrat ist, dann sind wir Verräter. Wenn es Patriotismus ist, sind wir Patrioten. Jedenfalls sind wir keine Träumer. Wir sagen unserem Volk, was der Gründer des Zionismus vor 100 Jahren gesagt hat: Wenn ihr wollt, ist es kein Märchen.
Mit freundlicher Genehmigung übernommen aus: "Ossietzky", Nr.10, 2002.

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Tuesday, June 01, 2004
War News for June 1, 2004

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring ‘em on: Explosion at PUK offices in Baghdad kills 25 Iraqis.

Bring ‘em on: Two US soldiers killed by roadside bomb ambush near Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: One ICDC member killed, one wounded in ambush near Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: One US soldier killed in mortar attack near Mosul.

Bring ‘em on: Green Zone mortared in Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Car bomb at US base in Beiji kills eleven Iraqis.

IGC selects new interim president. “After two days of bitter confrontation over the largely ceremonial post, Iraqi Governing Council members said Washington`s preferred candidate, elder statesman Adnan Pachachi, had turned down the post minutes after being offered it by the United Nations in defiance of the Council`s wishes…U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, the man charged by Washington with naming an interim government, and Pachachi, an 81-year-old former foreign minister, were among those to congratulate Yawar, a tribal chief and civil engineer with ties to Saudi Arabia.”

State of emergency declared in Kirkuk.

Combat casualties for May, 2004.

Rummy goes to Bangladesh begging for troops.

Coalition of the disillusioned. Czech Republic will withdraw from Iraq early next year.

Report from Sadr City. “In the sprawling slum known as Sadr City, prominently displayed banners written in English taunt American soldiers: ‘Welcome,’ they say, to a ‘second Vietnam.’ Militiamen loyal to rebel cleric Muqtada al Sadr regularly attack U.S. forces. Bystanders are struck by stray bullets. Residents suspected of helping the Americans are murdered.”

How to screw-up by the numbers. “About 100 police officers arrived in Najaf on Saturday to help calm the Shiite Muslim holy city, which has been besieged by fighting between U.S. forces and a militia loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. But when coalition troops arrived the next day to begin the joint patrols, the Iraqis were gone.
The Iraqis left their posts because they felt they received second-class treatment when they arrived from Baghdad, the American adviser said Monday. The U.S. adviser said no sleeping arrangements had been made for the Iraqis, they had no personal gear for their duties or changes of clothes, and they were given military rations for meals that included pork. Muslims are forbidden to eat pork.”

Casualty Reports

Local story: California Marine killed in Iraq.

Local story: Indiana soldier dies in Iraq.


Note to Readers

Some time today, this site will receive it`s 250,000th visit. I just thought you`d like to know.


86-43-04. Pass it on.



# posted by yankeedoodle : 3:45 AM
Comments (6)

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`It is the Iraqi people who want to nominate me`

A profile of Sheikh Ghazi Ajil al-Yawar, who was today appointed as Iraq`s interim president
Associated Press
Tuesday June 1, 2004

The Guardian
Sheikh Ghazi Ajil al-Yawar, the tribal chief who was today named interim president of Iraq, was born in 1958, the year in which Iraqi army officers overthrew the country`s monarchy.

Sheikh Ghazi`s grandfather, Ahmed Ajil Sheikh Ghazi, had served as a member of the King`s parliament. A year later, their Shammar tribe supported an aborted military revolt against General Abdul Karim Qassim.

During the mid-80s, Sheikh Ghazi and his family moved to Saudi Arabia. There, he studied engineering at the Petroleum and Minerals university, later continuing his studies at Georgetown university, in Washington.

He returned to Iraq after the US-led war that toppled Saddam Hussein, and was not known to have been active among Iraqi exiles opposed to Saddam`s regime.

Although his presidential post is largely ceremonial, his prominence could help Iraq to build ties with neighbouring Arab, Sunni Muslim countries - particularly Saudi, where he still has business interests.

One of Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah`s wives is a member of the Shammar tribe, which also has members in Syria.

The tribe, one of the largest in the Gulf region, includes Shi`ite as well as Sunni Muslim clans. Sheikh Ghazi, an Arab and a Sunni, built good relations with Kurds and Shi`ites who refused to endorse his rival Adnan Pachachi, who was seen as the favoured UN and US candidate for the presidency.

In an interview with the Saudi daily newspaper al-Riyadh, published today, Sheikh Ghazi belittled Mr Pachachi, saying the 81-year-old former foreign minister had been "caught napping" at meetings of the Iraqi Governing Council, and had no "popular base inside Iraq".

He was quoted as saying that UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who today announced his appointment, had told him that Mr Pachachi should get the presidency in recognition of his age and stature.

"How can honouring someone in his last days come at the expense of Iraq`s future, which needs to be rejuvenated?" Sheikh Ghazi was quoted as telling al-Riyadh.

He was also reported as saying that Paul Bremer, the head of the US-led occupation authority, had offered him "several posts," including ambassador to Washington, if he would pass up the presidency.

"I told him: `Search for whoever wants to go to Washington - I am the son of this country and am clinging to it, and it is the Iraqi people who want to nominate me, if you believe in democracy and respond to the people`s will`."

In a televised address following his appointment, Sheikh Ghazi called on the UN to play a major role in "bringing full sovereignty back to Iraq".

"Iraqis are looking forward to a free, independent, democratic, unified and federal Iraq," the sheikh, who has blamed the post-Saddam chaos in Iraq on the US-led occupation, said. He has also denounced violence against US and other forces in Iraq.

Ibrahim al-Jaafari, of the Shia Muslim Dawa party, and Rowsch Shaways, speaker of parliament in the Kurdish autonomous region in Irbil, were today named as vice-presidents in the new government.

The Shia Muslim Dawa party, once based in Iran, launched a bloody campaign against Saddam Hussein`s regime during the late 70s, but was crushed in 1982.

The group said it lost 77,000 members in its battle against Saddam. Mr Jaafari, who was born in Kerbala and educated at Mosul university, was picked as the first person to hold the rotating presidency of the governing council in July 2003.

Mr Shaways is a senior figure in the the Kurdish Democratic party, formed under the leadership of Mullah Mustalafa-al-Barzani in 1946 inside Soviet-occupied land in northern Iran.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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SPIEGEL ONLINE - 01. Juni 2004, 22:40
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,302299,00.html

Irak

US-Regierung lobt neue Führungsriege um Jawar

US-Präsident George W. Bush machte gute Miene zu dem Geschacher um die neue Regierung des Irak. Entgegen den Wünschen von USA und Uno ernannte der Regierungsrat den Stammesführer Ghasi Jawar zum Übergangspräsidenten - und trat anschließend geschlossen zurück. Der favorisierte Adnan Patschatschi hatte kurz zuvor gepasst.

Bagdad - "Patschatschi wurde benannt, dann lehnte er ab, und an seiner Stelle wurde Jawar für den Posten ernannt. Das war`s, und alle sind glücklich". Mit diesen lakonischen Worten fasste Radschaa Habib Chusai, ein Mitglied des Regierungsrates, heute die dramatischen Ereignisse in Bagdad zusammen.

Anstelle des favorisierten Adnan Patschatschi hatte der Regierungsrat überraschend den Stammesführer Ghasi Jawar aus Mosul gewählt. Doch ob wirklich alle Beteiligten zufrieden sind, wie Chusai meint, muss sich erst noch herausstellen. Patschatschi, das war nie ein Geheimnis, war der eigentliche Favorit der USA und der Uno.

Dennoch lobte US-Präsident George W. Bush die neue Übergangsregierung heute als geeignet, "die Nation zu führen". Sie vertrete weite Teile der irakischen Gesellschaft und bringe das Land der Demokratie einen weiteren Schritt näher. Die vornehmliche Aufgabe des Kabinetts werde es sein, die für Januar kommenden Jahres geplanten Wahlen vorzubereiten.

Auch die US-Sicherheitsberaterin Condoleezza Rice verkündete, die heute designierte irakische Regierung sei "großartig". Die Bekanntgabe sei ein "positiver Schritt für die Zukunft eines freien Irak", erklärte sie am Dienstag in Washington." Auf das Geschacher um die Posten im Vorfeld angesprochen, gab sie sich diplomatisch. Die USA würden das Auswahlverfahren als natürlichen politischen Prozess akzeptierten. "Sie sind keine amerikanischen Marionetten", sagte Rice. "Dies ist eine fantastische Liste, eine richtig gute Regierung, und wir sind sehr zufrieden mit den Namen, die darauf stehen."

Neue Regierung ist ab sofort im Amt

Die neue Übergangsregierung sei ab sofort im Amt. "Es handelt sich zurzeit um eine Übergangsregierung in einem nichtsouveränen Irak. Nach der Machtübergabe ist es eine Übergangsregierung in einem souveränen Irak", sagte Rice. Auch US-Außenminister Colin Powell verkündete, er sei "sehr zufrieden".

Der britische Premierminister Tony Blair zeigte sich gleichfalls erfreut und erklärte den heutigen Tag zu einem historischen Datum für den Irak. "Das neue Kabinett wird Irak nach der Machtübergabe am 30. Juni zunächst zur Unabhängigkeit und vollen Souveränität verhelfen und dann den Übergang zur Demokratie gestalten", sagte er heute in London.

Etwas verhaltener reagierte Uno-Generalsekretär Kofi Annan. Der Prozess der Auswahl sei "nicht perfekt" gewesen, gab er zu. Dennoch habe die Uno "erreicht, was sie sich vorgenommen hatte". Die Weltorganisation habe nie vorgehabt, einfach eine Regierung einzusetzen. Vielmehr sei von vornherein klar gewesen, dass die Uno sich mit den USA, dem Regierungsrat und anderen irakischen Institutionen besprechen würde.

Erst vor kurzem hatte der 81-jährige Patschatschi von sich behauptet, die meisten Iraker würden ihm als Präsidenten den Vorzug vor allen anderen geben. Das war schon beinahe ein Wahlkampf in eigener Sache. Nun machte Patschatschi "persönliche Gründe" für seine plötzliche Absage geltend und entschuldigte sich beim Regierungsrat für die Verwirrung um seine Kandidatur. Beobachter vermuteten heute, dass eine sich abzeichnende Mehrheit für Jawar im Regierungsrat der Grund für Patschatschis Absage war; andere glauben eher, auf Patschatschi sei Druck ausgeübt worden. Von welcher Seite, blieb unklar.

Der Regierungsrat selbst trat heute ebenfalls überraschend geschlossen zurück, nachdem der designierte Ministerpräsident Ijad Allawi zuvor noch die neue Regierung vorgestellt hatte. 30 Minister wird es im Irak künftig geben; fünf von ihnen sollen Frauen sein. Außenminister wird Hoschjar Sebari, das Finanzministerium übernimmt Adil Abdnal-Mahdi, während Hasem Schalam al-Chusai das Verteidigungsressort übernehmen wird. Mit der Auflösung des Regierungsrates war erst zum 30. Juni gerechnet worden, dem Datum, zu dem die Iraker wieder die Souveränität über ihr Land übernehmen sollen.

Tagelanges Ringen um Kandidaten

Tagelang hatten die Mitglieder des Regierungsrates mit dem US-Zivilverwalter Paul Bremer und dem Uno-Sondergesandten Lakhdar Brahimi über die Ernennung der künftigen irakischen Führung gerungen. Mehrere Regierungsmitglieder werfen insbesondere Bremer vor, im Sinne seines Favoriten Patschatschi Druck ausgeübt zu haben. Eine Berufung Jawars dagegen trachtete Bremer offenbar zu verhindern. Der 45-jährige Bauingenieur hatte erst vor kurzem in einem Interview die US-Truppen im Irak heftig kritisiert. Sie seien für die prekäre Sicherheitslage im Land mitverantwortlich. Gewalt gegen die Besatzungstruppen lehnte Jawar allerdings ab. Der Posten des Präsidenten wird weitgehend repräsentativer Natur sein; mehr Befugnisse wird der Ministerpräsident Ijad Allawi haben.

Unmittelbar nach seiner Ernennung forderte der neue Präsident die volle Souveränität des Irak nach der geplanten Machtübergabe Ende des Monats. "Wir Iraker freuen uns darauf, in einer Resolution des Uno-Sicherheitsrates die volle Souveränität garantiert zu bekommen, um uns den Aufbau eines freien, unabhängigen, demokratischen und föderal vereinten Heimatlandes zu ermöglichen", sagte er heute auf seiner ersten Pressekonferenz.

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2004

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Informed Comment

Thoughts on the Middle East, History,and Religion

Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan

Mehr Berichte:
http://www.juancole.com/

Tuesday, June 01, 2004

More on Ghazi al-Yawar

From an informed Iraqi reader:


I thought I`d tell you a little bit about Ghazi Al-Yawer`s background. He`s a very good guy, and highly educated by Shammar standards. He is, however, only the nephew of the paramount shaykh (his uncle Muhsin) and not a big shaykh on his own. His uncle Muhsin spent the better part of thirty years in London, and never visited Iraq. He`s married to the sister of Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia which is why the Shammar are so favored in Saudi Arabia, that, and of course, the historic ties of the Shammar of Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Now Ghazi was nominated to the Governing Council by his other uncle, Humaidi, now deceased. This aroused strong enmity between himself and his cousins, Humaidi`s sons. Humaidi was the acting shaykh and it was widely thought that, upon his death, one of his sons would take over his position. But they have been eclipsed by their cousin, Ghazi who was neither the son of the paramount nor acting shaykh. So now the Shammar are in limbo. In theory, Muhsin is still the paramount shaykh and did in fact visit Iraq after the US entry. But he is not very active. Meanwhile, the unknown Shammari, Ghazi, is set to become president of Iraq! No wonder Ghazi did not defer to Adnan al-Pachachi, as he reportedly deferred to the older Saleem who was later blown up. Even if Pachachi is his senior, we are talking about the Presidency of Iraq! This would put Ghazi, the Shammar and all educated, secular men on the map. What a great opportunity for this young man who never dreamed of being the paramount shaykh, let alone President of his country.


posted by Juan at 6/1/2004 10:42:47 PM

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une 2, 2004
MAN IN THE NEWS
A President With Panache: Ghazi Ajil al-Yawar
By EDWARD WONG

BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 1 — By all appearances, Sheik Ghazi Ajil al-Yawar seems well suited to the presidency of the interim Iraqi government, a largely ceremonial post.

His robust figure, flowing white robes and rimless eyeglasses — together with a well-groomed mustache, the essential accouterment for so many Arab men — give him a regal air that heads of state with slighter frames and less panache might envy.

But from statements he has made while on the Iraqi Governing Council and the influence he wields through his tribal position, Sheik Yawar does not appear to be the sort to content himself with presiding over parades and giving tea parties for visiting dignitaries.

Sheik Yawar is a political creature, one rooted in the sensibilities of the Shammar tribe, one of the largest and most powerful in Iraq. A Sunni Arab, he retains a fierce pride in his country, and it is pride in himself that drove him to battle Adnan Pachachi, an older former exile on the Governing Council, for the presidency of Iraq, according to a close aide.

How that political combativeness will manifest itself as the new government moves toward some form of sovereignty no doubt weighs heavily on the minds of many Iraqis and American politicians.

Though Western-educated, the 45-year-old sheik is unlikely to allow himself to appear the puppet of the occupation forces. That might not win him many points with the White House or American administrators, but it could help him gain the trust of the Iraqi people, who have turned in large numbers against the occupation in recent months.

In his first speech as president, Sheik Yawar called Tuesday for the United Nations Security Council to approve a resolution granting Iraq "full sovereignty."

In an earlier interview on television, he pulled no punches when criticizing the United States for the dismal lack of security in Iraq.

"We blame the United States 100 percent for the security in Iraq," he said. "They occupied the country, disbanded the security agencies and for 10 months left Iraq`s borders open for anyone to come in without a visa or even a passport."

Sheik Yawar was born in the multiethnic northern city of Mosul in 1958, the year that the monarchy fell in a coup that ushered Iraq into a seemingly endless twilight of military rule. His grandfather had in fact served as a member of the king`s Parliament. Sheik Yawar completed high school in Mosul and eventually moved to Saudi Arabia with his family in the mid-1980`s to study engineering at the Petroleum and Minerals University.

He did further engineering studies at Georgetown University before becoming a senior executive at a telecommunications company in Saudi Arabia. After the toppling of Saddam Hussein in April 2003, Sheik Yawar returned to Iraq at the request of his uncle, Mohsen al-Yawar, who has led the Shammar tribe for decades.

The younger Yawar`s tribal connections lend him some credibility among Iraqis, especially those from his hometown, Mosul.

"Yawar is appropriate for this post because he`s a tribal leader and knows exactly the situation in Iraq from tribal and sectarian perspectives," said Ahmad Khalaf Othman, 28, a schoolteacher in Mosul. "He`s from a big tribe and won`t accept injustice. I think his appointment will affect the resistance, but it is impossible to go back to what we once knew."

In the southern city of Basra, a prominent leader, Sheik Ibrahim al-Hassan of the Basra Great Mosque, said he had met Sheik Yawar before and considered him "humble and prudent and cultured."

Basra is dominated by Shiite Arabs, the majority in Iraq, and Sheik Hassan seemed to respect the fact that the Shammar tribe has many Shiite members.

But Sheik Hassan also pointed out what could be Sheik Yawar`s greatest obstacle as he tackles his new job. "We hope he won`t be like the Governing Council," Sheik Hassan said. "We need him to care for the people and look after the security issue."

But Sheik Yawar was part of the Governing Council, which has lost virtually all legitimacy after its inability to solve the military and political crises that erupted across Iraq in April. Like Iyad Allawi, the prime minister, and many of the council members appointed to new jobs in the cabinet and ministries, he faces a struggle to live down his role as a former council member.

Whether the sheik`s appointment will give disenfranchised Sunni Arabs greater confidence in the new government also remains to be seen. The downfall of Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, and the favoring of Shiite leaders by American administrators has increased the distrust and hostility of Sunnis toward the occupation and its Iraqi allies.

"I think he`s a good choice for the presidency, but I don`t think this will eliminate the feelings we Sunnis have of marginalization," said Mosaab Omar, 42, an electrical engineer from Mosul. "As for the resistance, I don`t think anything will change unless the Iraqi people get full sovereignty."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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June 2, 2004
THE WEAPONS
Powell Presses C.I.A. on Faulty Intelligence on Iraq Arms
By DOUGLAS JEHL and DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON, June 1 - Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has pressed the Central Intelligence Agency for several months to account for the faulty intelligence that led Mr. Powell to tell the United Nations last year that Iraq definitely possessed illicit weapons, several senior administration officials said Tuesday.

In particular, Mr. Powell has sought answers about the C.I.A.`s sources of information for the evidence, now considered false by the agency, that Iraq possessed mobile biological weapons laboratories. Serious doubts have now arisen about all four of the sources that the C.I.A. relied on, intelligence officials say. At least two of the sources were Iraqi defectors introduced to intelligence agencies by the Iraqi National Congress, led by Ahmad Chalabi, the government officials said.

The contention that Saddam Hussein had developed the mobile laboratories was a critical element of Mr. Powell`s presentation to the United Nations on Feb. 5, 2003, which was broadcast around the world. In past interviews, Mr. Powell has described an intensive process he went through at the C.I.A. in the days and nights before the speech, reviewing the intelligence.

He said last summer that the mobile labs were "some of the most solid" evidence the United States possessed, but in the past few months he has stepped back from those remarks, and then reversed himself. Two weeks ago he declared "the sourcing was inaccurate and wrong and in some cases, deliberately misleading."

"And for that, I am disappointed and I regret it," he added.

Now, said one senior State Department official, "he is asking the agency, `What can you tell me about this?` "

"He has raised a number of questions over a number of months," the official added, but has not requested a formal report.

After the American invasion last year, the White House and the C.I.A. initially said that suspicious semitrailers found in Iraq were the mobile biological weapons facilities that the sources had described, and a May 2003 C.I.A. white paper making that case is still posted on the agency`s Web site. As recently as January, Vice President Dick Cheney cited the trailers, saying if they turned out to be what he and others long suspected, he "would deem that conclusive evidence" that Mr. Hussein had such programs.

A spokesman for Mr. Cheney declined to say whether Mr. Cheney had asked for the updated intelligence on the mobile labs question.

"It`s an issue that Powell is intensely interested in," said one senior administration official. "If Cheney is still interested, he isn`t saying."

But the C.I.A. and the administration, except for Mr. Cheney, have since backed away from those assertions, which were based primarily on an I.N.C. defector to Germany known as Curveball, according to senior intelligence officials. The role played by Curveball was first reported earlier this year by The Los Angeles Times. Most intelligence analysts now believe that the trailers were to produce hydrogen for weather balloons used in artillery practice.

Intelligence officials acknowledged earlier this year that one of the four sources cited by Mr. Powell had been labeled a fabricator by the Defense Intelligence Agency in May 2002. Because of a mistake in the handling of that warning, the officials said, the information provided by that source, a major from the Iraqi Intelligence Service, found its way into the Powell presentation.

Mr. Powell was never warned about the D.I.A. concerns, officials say, even though during two of the evenings that the presentation was being reviewed, a D.I.A. official was in the room. "We believe that only the official who put the warning into the system had access to it," one senior State Department official said. "It does not appear anyone else did."

The D.I.A. source had described only the existence of mobile facilities that could have been used for biological weapons research, not the production of biological weapons.

In the past two weeks, the administration has moved to sever its close ties with Mr. Chalabi, whose group received more than $4 million a year from the Defense Intelligence Agency, and who sat behind Laura Bush, the first lady, at the State of the Union address earlier this year.

Nevertheless, at the White House on Tuesday, President Bush sought to play down the role of Mr. Chalabi and his group as a source of information in his administration`s decision to go to war in Iraq. "My meetings with him were very brief," Mr. Bush said, saying that he might have met with Mr. Chalabi at the State of the Union address as part of a "rope line" greeting. "I haven`t had any extensive conversations with him."

Government officials have described Mr. Powell as still angry about the intelligence briefings that served as the basis for his United Nations speech. "Powell has made it clear that he wants to know how this could have happened," an administration official said.

A senior intelligence official said that Mr. Powell and other senior administration officials were being provided briefings by the C.I.A. "as we develop new information" about the intelligence that led the administration to assert before the war that Iraq possessed illicit weapons.

George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, has said it is too soon to say whether the agency was mistaken in asserting that Iraq possessed illicit weapons, even though no such weapons have been found in the 14 months since the American invasion. But the agency has begun several internal reviews to examine the basis for its assertions, and while it has said almost nothing in public about any findings, the intelligence official said the information was being shared among Mr. Bush`s principal foreign policy advisers.

"Obviously, everyone is interested in the facts at hand," the official said.

Mr. Powell`s assertion about the mobile labs was one of the most dramatic elements of his presentation to the United Nations, which was intended to make public the Bush administration`s best case for invading Iraq. For days before this speech, Mr. Powell sat in a conference room at the C.I.A., examining the sources of information for each accusation that he planned to make.

But intelligence officials now say that serious doubts have arisen about the three other sources as well. Curveball had provided his information to German intelligence officials and may have been a relative of an aide to Mr. Chalabi, according to American intelligence officials. That source, described in the C.I.A. white paper as having provided "the majority of our information on Iraq`s mobile program," was never interviewed by American intelligence officials before the war, an American government official said Tuesday, and the German government had developed doubts about his information last May.

The two other sources, described in the C.I.A document as "a civil engineer" and simply "the third source," were described as having "corroborated information related to the mobile biological weapons program."

Douglas Jehl reported from Washington for this article, and David Sanger from Palo Alto, Calif.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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June 2, 2004
Chalabi Reportedly Told Iran That U.S. Had Code
By JAMES RISEN and DAVID JOHNSTON

WASHINGTON, June 1 — Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi leader and former ally of the Bush administration, disclosed to an Iranian official that the United States had broken the secret communications code of Iran`s intelligence service, betraying one of Washington`s most valuable sources of information about Iran, according to United States intelligence officials.

The general charge that Mr. Chalabi provided Iran with critical American intelligence secrets was widely reported last month after the Bush administration cut off financial aid to Mr. Chalabi`s organization, the Iraqi National Congress, and American and Iraqi security forces raided his Baghdad headquarters.

The Bush administration, citing national security concerns, asked The New York Times and other news organizations not to publish details of the case. The Times agreed to hold off publication of some specific information that top intelligence officials said would compromise a vital, continuing intelligence operation. The administration withdrew its request on Tuesday, saying information about the code-breaking was starting to appear in news accounts.

Mr. Chalabi and his aides have said he knew of no secret information related to Iran and therefore could not have communicated any intelligence to Tehran.

American officials said that about six weeks ago, Mr. Chalabi told the Baghdad station chief of Iran`s Ministry of Intelligence and Security that the United States was reading the communications traffic of the Iranian spy service, one of the most sophisticated in the Middle East.

According to American officials, the Iranian official in Baghdad, possibly not believing Mr. Chalabi`s account, sent a cable to Tehran detailing his conversation with Mr. Chalabi, using the broken code. That encrypted cable, intercepted and read by the United States, tipped off American officials to the fact that Mr. Chalabi had betrayed the code-breaking operation, the American officials said.

American officials reported that in the cable to Tehran, the Iranian official recounted how Mr. Chalabi had said that one of "them" — a reference to an American — had revealed the code-breaking operation, the officials said. The Iranian reported that Mr. Chalabi said the American was drunk.

The Iranians sent what American intelligence regarded as a test message, which mentioned a cache of weapons inside Iraq, believing that if the code had been broken, United States military forces would be quickly dispatched to the specified site. But there was no such action.

The account of Mr. Chalabi`s actions has been confirmed by several senior American officials, who said the leak contributed to the White House decision to break with him.

It could not be learned exactly how the United States broke the code. But intelligence sources said that in the past, the United States has broken into the embassies of foreign governments, including those of Iran, to steal information, including codes.

The F.B.I. has opened an espionage investigation seeking to determine exactly what information Mr. Chalabi turned over to the Iranians as well as who told Mr. Chalabi that the Iranian code had been broken, government officials said. The inquiry, still in an early phase, is focused on a very small number of people who were close to Mr. Chalabi and also had access to the highly restricted information about the Iran code.

Some of the people the F.B.I. expects to interview are civilians at the Pentagon who were among Mr. Chalabi`s strongest supporters and served as his main point of contact with the government, the officials said. So far, no one has been accused of any wrongdoing.

In a television interview on May 23, Mr. Chalabi said on CNN`s "Late Edition" that he met in Tehran in December with the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the Iranian president, Mohammad Khatami. He also said he had met with Iran`s minister of information.

Mr. Chalabi attacked the C.I.A. and the director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, saying the agency was behind what Mr. Chalabi asserted was an effort to smear him.

"I have never passed any classified information to Iran or have done anything — participated in any scheme of intelligence against the United States," Mr. Chalabi said on "Fox News Sunday." "This charge is false. I have never seen a U.S. classified document, and I have never seen — had a U.S. classified briefing."

Mr. Chalabi, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, said, "We meet people from the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad regularly," but said that was to be expected of Iraqi officials like himself.

Some defenders of Mr. Chalabi in the United States say American officials had encouraged him in his dealings with Iran, urging him to open an office in Tehran in hopes of improving relations between Iran and Washington. Those defenders also say they do not believe that his relationship with Iran involved any exchange of intelligence.

Mr. Chalabi`s allies in Washington also saw the Bush administration`s decision to sever its ties with Mr. Chalabi and his group as a cynical effort instigated by the C.I.A. and longtime Chalabi critics at the State Department. They believe those agencies want to blame him for mistaken estimates and incorrect information about Iraq before the war, like whether Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.

One of those who has defended Mr. Chalabi is Richard N. Perle, the former chairman of the Defense Policy Board. "The C.I.A. has disliked him passionately for a long time and has mounted a campaign against him with some considerable success," Mr. Perle said Tuesday. "I`ve seen no evidence of improper behavior on his part. No evidence whatsoever."

Mr. Perle said he thought the C.I.A. had turned against Mr. Chalabi because he refused to be the agency`s "puppet." Mr. Chalabi "has a mind of his own," Mr. Perle said.

American intelligence officials said the F.B.I. investigation into the intelligence leak to Iran did not extend to any charges that Mr. Chalabi provided the United States with incorrect information, or any allegations of corruption.

American officials said the leak about the Iranian codes was a serious loss because the Iranian intelligence service`s highly encrypted cable traffic was a crucial source of information, supplying Washington with information about Iranian operations inside Iraq, where Tehran`s agents have become increasingly active. It also helped the United States keep track of Iranian intelligence operations around the world.

Until last month, the Iraqi National Congress had a lucrative contract with the Defense Intelligence Agency to provide information about Iraq. Before the United States invasion last year, the group arranged for Iraqi defectors to provide the Pentagon with information about Saddam Hussein`s government, particularly evidence purporting to show that Baghdad had active programs to develop weapons of mass destruction. Today, the American intelligence community believes that much of the information passed by the defectors was either wrong or fabricated.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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A 10,000-year-old evergreen forest in Mexico has been set aside for colonies of orange and gold butterflies that migrate annually from the U.S. and Canada, in clouds that look like fire in the sky.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/02/international/americas/02b…

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June 1, 2004
Q&A: The New Iraqi Interim Government

From the Council on Foreign Relations, June 1, 2004

Joost R. Hiltermann, an Iraqi specialist for the International Crisis Group, says the country`s newly named leadership--many of who served on the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC)--may increase Iraqi discontent. "What the Americans have been saying will not happen, which is the perpetuation of the interim governing council`s power has, in fact, transpired. I find that a very disturbing development," he says. He adds, "This is a group that is unrepresentative of Iraqi society, by and large, and has very little credibility with ordinary Iraqis. Therefore, it is potentially destabilizing."

Hiltermann, a Dutch citizen, worked for a decade at Human Rights Watch before joining the International Crisis Group two years ago as Middle East project director. He has contributed to several reports on Iraq and has often visited the country from his base in Amman, Jordan. He was interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor for cfr.org, on June 1, 2004.

What do you make of the announcements on the make-up of the new Iraqi interim government?

What the Americans have been saying will not happen, which is the perpetuation of the interim governing council`s power has, in fact, transpired. I find that a very disturbing development. I don`t want to impugn anyone`s character--there are some very good people on the council--but this is a group that is unrepresentative of Iraqi society, by and large, and has very little credibility with ordinary Iraqis. Therefore, it is potentially destabilizing.

Can you elaborate?

You can look at it from the short-term American perspective and the desire to have stability in Iraq in the coming months, especially in the lead-up to the American elections in November. Or you can look at it from the long-term American interest in having stability in Iraq--and that is also an Iraqi interest, of course. In the short term, you want to bring stability now and, therefore, you go with people who have proven their loyalty and their worth. But in the long term, to keep in power a group of unrepresentative former exiles is very dangerous because this is not what the Iraqis want and this is certainly not what they had been led to expect. They had been told that the United Nations was going to come in to consult with wide sections of Iraqi society and identify members of a new provisional government.

In fact, [U.N. Envoy Lakhdar] Brahimi came to Iraq, he conducted those consultations, he talked with a lot of different people--and a government has been appointed that did not reflect his work, at least in its top leadership. And so that means that either Brahimi did not come up with any new faces during his consultations, or that his preferences have been ignored either by the Americans or the governing council or both.

What do we know about the Shiite prime minister, Iyad Alawi?

He`s been well-known for a long time by American intelligence and the American government because he is the head of one of the Iraqi opposition groups in exile, the Iraqi National Accord. [The INA] was heavily made up of elements of the Baath Party, people who had [had] a falling out with Saddam Hussein. They didn`t repudiate the Baath Party so much as they had a falling out with Saddam Hussein. [The INA] never had any support inside Iraq, as far as we know, and was heavily infiltrated by the regime in the 1990s. Alawi is a neurologist who worked in Britain in the 1990s, and he is very close to the CIA. In Iraq, he has been in charge of security for the past month. Therefore, he has important responsibilities and considerable amounts of power.

What about Ghazi al-Yawar, the newly named president?

He was in exile in Saudi Arabia. [Many of the IGC members] are exiles. He is also a professional, an engineer by training, trained at Georgetown University [in Washington, D.C.]. He [is a better representative] of Iraqis, in some ways, than Alawi [is], because he is a prominent member of the largest Iraqi tribe, the Shamer, which has the added advantage of being composed of both Sunni and Shiite Arabs. The Shamer, in fact, are not originally Iraqi. They come from the Hijaz in Saudi Arabia, and it`s a huge tribe now. Tribal affinity is not defined by religion.

He was a leader in exile, while the tribe was still in Iraq?

For Iraqis, what matters is whether people were there during the Hussein regime, and didn`t benefit from it but suffered from it. The exiles, of course, didn`t suffer from the regime, but they also didn`t benefit from it. Their Iraqi roots are so distant that they lack the credibility to be effective political leaders. Moreover, they have come in--at least this is how it is perceived by Iraqis--and have started lording it over ordinary Iraqis with their resources and their skills and a good deal of arrogance. One can disagree with that, but that is the perception.

Yawar is recognized in the tribe, but one thing to keep in mind is that the tribes are something from the past. We can easily say, "He is a leader of a tribe," but these tribes disappeared for all practical and political purposes and were resurrected by the regime of Saddam Hussein in the 1990s because a lot of his support was eroding rapidly; he resurrected them in order to provide a new pillar of support for his regime. It`s not clear that [tribal leaders] are legitimate leaders within Iraq. They play a role, but it is not a role they played in the distant past. To a large extent, they have been replaced by modern leaders, secular or religious but not tribal.

Adnan Pachachi, the former foreign minister, was the favorite of Brahimi to fill the interim presidency. Does his failure to get that post indicate American influence is waning, or did the Americans simply elect to avoid a crisis?

After the [insurgent] uprisings of April and the Abu Ghraib [prisoner abuse] scandal, the Americans have lost a lot of standing and credibility. They could not impose their own choices on the governing council, which, of course, had to sign off on the provisional government that is to come into place by [the] June 30 [transfer of sovereignty]. That said, some of the people in the new government, such as Alawi, are liked by the Americans and are seen as necessary for short-term stability. I think there was, however, probably a little disagreement on [the presidency] between the Americans and the governing council, and perhaps a little disagreement with Brahimi on that score.

Who would Brahimi have chosen as prime minister?

The preferred choice [last] week seemed to be Hussein Shahristani, a nuclear scientist. Despite being in exile over the past decade, he had a lot more credibility in Iraq [that some other candidates] for the simple reason that he spent a decade in Abu Ghraib prison and was tortured because he refused to run Saddam Hussein`s nuclear weapons program. He is a man who is close to [Shiite cleric] Ayatollah al-Sistani, who is a very powerful power broker in Iraq.

Pachachi said today that he was offered the presidency but turned it down because he felt the news media had damaged his credibility by linking him to the Americans.

His position had become untenable. Even though he has always been very careful to distance himself from American positions, his moderation put him so close to the Americans and made him so popular with the Americans that in the end it was easy to paint him as an American man. I don`t think he was that, but it was certainly easy for those on the governing council who wanted someone else for the job to portray him that way. That meant his downfall.

Brahimi announced the two interim vice presidents, Ibrahim al-Jaafari from the Dawa Party and Rowsch Shaways of the Kurdish Democratic Party. What do you know about them?

Ibrahim Jaafari was the head of one of the splinters of the Dawa Party in exile. He`s also a medical doctor. He has a good deal of charisma and benefits from the credibility that the Dawa Party has. Even though the party was in exile, it had an underground presence in Iraq during the Hussein regime and was made to suffer terribly for its existence. The Dawa still has a lot of popularity in Iraq, but because it was splintered it was not as effective as it could have been, particularly as compared to some other political actors on the scene. But Ibrahim Jaafari is an articulate and respected man who has some political power.

Rowsch Shaways is a senior member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party. Like Jaafari, he has a party behind him. He wasn`t in exile, as such. He was in the mountains until the Kurds were able to come down from the mountains in 1991, and he has been in northern Iraq since then. He`s played an important role in the Kurdistan regional government and is, therefore, an influential person.

What about Hoshiyar Zebari, who is a Kurd and the new foreign minister?

He was already the interim foreign minister under the current configuration. He`s just continuing in that position. He was the external relations man of the Kurdistan Democratic Party throughout the 1990s, based in London. He moved to Baghdad after the end of the war and has played a very important role for his party and as interim foreign minister since last September.

He said he was coming to New York right away to seek full sovereignty in the United Nations resolution now before the Security Council.

That`s right. The new provisional government is going to try to extract as much power as it can.

What do you know about the new finance minister, Adel Abdul Mehdi?

Adel Abdul Mehdi is the No. 2 official of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. That is the other Shiite Islamist party, other than Dawa. He is a very articulate man who has often taken the place of his leader on the governing council. The Supreme Council was created in Iran by Iraqis and with the full protection of the [Ayatollah] Khomeini regime. Its militia fought in the Iran-Iraq war against Iraqi forces. When they came back to Iraq, they tried to shed the baggage of that legacy, the legacy of being seen as an Iranian proxy, and they somewhat succeeded in that. They play a very important role in the Shiite community.

The interim government needs an endorsement from within Iraq. Do you think it has any chance of getting one from Sistani?

I don`t think Sistani will bless them. He has never in the past endorsed something, he`s only protested when he thought things were going wrong. He has also not engaged in specific political questions but limited himself to commenting on the degree of the democratic process that was taking place. Specifically, the two issues he commented on were the writing of a constitution and the issue of elections. My expectation is rather than endorsing [the interim government], he might object to it. Whether he will, I cannot say, but I can see that he could have problems with these appointments.

The second thing that is supposed to happen is a national conference in July, which Brahimi is supposed to prepare. It is to be comprised of a large number of Iraqis and would endorse a provisional government and select a body that would act as a consultative assembly to it.

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June 2, 2004
DIPLOMACY
Iraq`s New Government Faces Bargaining Over Its Power
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN

WASHINGTON, June 1 — The new caretaker government in Iraq was hailed Tuesday by President Bush as ready to assume "full sovereignty" after June 30. But its first job, according to American officials, will be to negotiate sharp limits on that sovereignty in many vital areas, particularly security matters.

Less than a month before the scheduled transfer of power, it remains unclear exactly how much power will be transferred.

The continued presence of nearly 140,000 American troops, and American diplomats in the ministries of the new government, virtually ensures that significant power will remain in American hands. To some, the limits that are emerging are so constraining that they make a mockery of the process.

"It`s a charade," said a diplomat at the United Nations, where a resolution blessing the interim government has been proposed by the United States. "The problem is that you need a charade to get to the reality of an elected government next January. There`s no other way to do this."

Questions about Iraq`s real sovereignty are bound to deepen, according to many diplomats, now that it has become clear that the United Nations special envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, played a secondary role in setting up the new government.

People close to the envoy say the choices, especially that of the prime minister, Iyad Allawi, were essentially negotiated between the United States and the Iraqi Governing Council, which the occupation authorities put together last year. "The visible role of the Iraqi Governing Council in choosing its own successors in Iraq is more than was anticipated," an American official acknowledged in something of an understatement.

A European diplomat said the choices announced Tuesday reflected a "very distressing" set of developments. "It`s clear that not only the U.S., but also the U.N., have ambitions for Iraq that are lower and lower by the day," he said.

As for "full sovereignty," American officials have said decision-making authority over security matters will be shared. But according to a second draft of an American and British resolution for the United Nations Security Council on Iraqi sovereignty, circulated among Council members on Tuesday night, the United States security mandate would extend to December 2005, after a constitution had been approved and a permanent government put in place.

Difficult security questions, like whether Iraqi forces can refuse to join in an American military operation, are left for future negotiations.

Confusion over sovereignty extends beyond military matters to questions of legal immunity for Americans, accounting practices, treatment of prisoners and oversight of government ministries.

Americans in the military and in private business now enjoy immunity from criminal prosecution and liability in Iraq. But some lawyers say the issue will have to be renegotiated once sovereignty is restored.

In addition, American officials say from 110 to 160 American advisers will be layered through Iraq`s ministries, in some cases on contracts signed by the occupation, extending into the period after June 30.

A senior State Department official said each Iraqi minister, not each adviser, would define the powers the advisers would have. "The ministers can ignore them, take their advice or fire them," the official said. "They go only where they are wanted."

But a French diplomat said it was not certain that the Iraqi ministers would have such broad authority, given that most reconstruction funds would come from the United States and international donors.

Other Iraqi leaders have criticized the American draft for its strict outside auditing requirements on expenditures and on the collection of oil revenues.

Under current rules, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations and the Arab Development Bank supervise an "advisory and monitoring board" that is supposed to keep tabs on Iraq`s revenues and expenditures. Some Iraqi leaders complain that the board imposes intolerable limits on their autonomy.

American officials say the board is necessary because there are still many legal claims around the world, dating from the Saddam Hussein era, and the board protects them from being seized in a lawsuit.

Another large issue looming for the interim government is the status of the laws decreed under the Iraqi Governing Council, which dissolved itself on Tuesday. Principal among them is the Transitional Administrative Law, which provides for religious freedoms and for certain powers guaranteed to the Kurdish minority.

Administration officials assert that the transitional law, developed under the supervision of L. Paul Bremer III, the American occupation administrator, remains in force.

"The law doesn`t expire with a new government coming in, any more than the laws passed under the Clinton administration expired when the Bush administration came into office," said a State Department official.

Kurdish leaders say they, too, expect that the previously enacted law will remain intact. But some experts say no law enacted under a foreign occupation and its handpicked local leaders will have standing after June 30.

A United Nations official noted, for example, that the transitional law had not been incorporated into Washington`s Security Council draft. The official said it had been omitted at the request of Shiite leaders, who dislike its protections for the Kurds and contend that it marginalizes Islamic family law.

"It`s not clear how the status of the transitional law will end up," an administration official said. "Stay tuned."

Still another matter to be decided, administration officials acknowledge, is the status of thousands of Iraqis to be detained by American military authorities even though many of them have not been charged with any crimes.

It is not clear that Iraq will have a say in deciding whether they are to be detained, or whether their families will be able to go to Iraqi courts to set them free.

"There are international norms that may apply," said a State Department official. "But this is another matter that legal experts from both sides will have to work out."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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June 2, 2004
Iraq`s Interim Government

For weeks, Washington encouraged the world to believe that the United Nations was putting together Iraq`s new interim government. Instead, the most critical appointments were made by the outgoing Iraqi Governing Council, an American-appointed body heavy with exile politicians that has limited public support and a dismal record of nonperformance. That messy process will now become the interim government`s first burden as it tries to set up elections for a legislature and constitutional assembly early next year.

The Bush administration was genuinely, if shortsightedly, delighted with last Friday`s disappointing choice of Iyad Allawi, a longtime ally of the Central Intelligence Agency, for prime minister. It was far less pleased with yesterday`s naming of Sheik Ghazi al-Yawar, recently a vocal critic of American occupation policies, for the ceremonial job of president. The United Nations envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, had strongly favored other candidates for both jobs.

In addition to Sheik Yawar, a Sunni, one of the new government`s two deputy presidents and several of the 33 cabinet members, including Dr. Allawi, a Shiite, come from the Governing Council`s ranks.

The ability of the Governing Council to essentially seize control of the selections left Mr. Brahimi looking ineffective. That does not bode well for the U.N.`s ability to help in the next phase, the organization of the elections. The American proconsul, Paul Bremer III, gave the impression of a man reluctant to part with any of the power he has wielded for most of the past year.

Positions in the interim government have been carefully parceled out to members of the Shiite majority and the Sunni and Kurdish minorities to reflect the country`s ethnic and religious divisions. The odds that the council can now start to heal those divisions are daunting. Yesterday`s deadly bombing of a Kurdish party`s offices just beyond the American occupation headquarters underscores the pervasive insecurity and sectarian divisions.

Since it is in Iraq`s best interests, and America`s, that the new government succeed, it must now be endowed with as much credibility and sovereignty as possible. An important early step would be to make sure that its leading members are closely involved in the final drafting of the United Nations Security Council resolution that will help define the nature of Iraq`s coming sovereignty.

The end of the Governing Council concludes a chapter of unpopular, ineffectual governance that failed to stem a growing insurgency and did little to lay the groundwork for a workable democracy. Although the new governing body looks uncomfortably like the old one with a new name and a few added powers, it must be helped to do better.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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washingtonpost.com

Many Hurdles Ahead for U.S.
Success of U.N. Draft Resolution May Be Pivotal for Bush

By Robin Wright and Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, June 2, 2004; Page A01

With the introduction of both a new Iraqi government and a new U.N. draft resolution, the Bush administration senses the beginning of the end to its controversial and costly intervention in Iraq. But the relief visible at the White House yesterday may be short-lived, for the United States still faces serious obstacles.

President Bush was almost giddily buoyant during a Rose Garden news conference about Iraq`s interim government, heralding the 36 Iraqi appointees as "a team that possesses the talent, the commitment and the resolve to guide Iraq through the challenges that lie ahead." Not since the "Mission Accomplished" photograph aboard the USS Lincoln on May 1 last year, when Bush declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq, has the administration appeared as upbeat about the future.

"This is a very hopeful day for the Iraqi people and the American people. It`s going to send a clear signal that terrorists can`t win," Bush told reporters, adding that Iraq is now "one step closer to democracy."

Washington hopes the new U.N. draft resolution, circulated just hours after the government was announced, will provide a further boost, drawing international support for the handover of political power now just a month away. It addresses key demands from France, Russia and China -- three of the five Security Council countries with vetoes -- plus Germany by providing an approximate timetable and terms for a troop withdrawal.

The draft stipulates that the requested U.N. mandate for a U.S.-led multinational force will expire after Iraq completes its new constitution and elects a permanent government, which it is now scheduled to do by the end of 2005.

It also pledges that the multinational force will withdraw earlier if the Iraqi government requests it, and that the Iraqi government will have complete control over its own army and police.

The resolution further stipulates that all arrangements will be made only with the full consent of the Iraqi government and makes clear that as of June 30, Iraqis will have full sovereignty and full control of their financial and natural resources.

"People can now see that we`re developing real momentum for the handover of sovereignty," said a senior State Department official who requested anonymity.

These developments, the most hopeful in months, come at a pivotal time for the administration. The chaos in Iraq, combined with the revelations about abuses of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers, has driven Bush`s approval ratings to the lowest of his presidency.

A Washington Post-ABC News poll released last week showed that 58 percent of Americans disapproved of his handling of Iraq, a politically perilous figure.

Bush aides contended over the weekend that the president has bottomed out politically. They told White House allies in Washington that the new government would mark a turning point by showing progress and would strengthen Bush for his meetings with European leaders later this week by putting Iraq`s postwar future on a multinational track.

Yet through June 30 and beyond, the United States will enter a much more complex phase on Iraq. For the past year, the U.S.-led coalition has technically had sole authority over Iraq. With the appointment of the interim government and a return to the United Nations, the United States begins to cede formal control over what happens next.

After weeks of behind-the-scenes negotiations, the messy selection of the interim government reflects the degree to which Washington had to turn to others -- the Iraqi Governing Council and the United Nations -- to meet its deadlines.

In addition, the new government has to win local support, despite strong U.S. and U.N. endorsements for including balance among ethnic and religious factions as well as between technocrats and politicians, and for including tribal leaders, women and many new faces. If it is rejected, the U.S.-led coalition has no fallback plan -- and the transition could be suddenly in jeopardy.

That is not beyond the realm of possibility, U.S. experts say. Because of the selection process and the strong U.S. ties of many in Iraq`s interim government, "there is more of an appearance of legitimacy" than the government actually has, said Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "It`s not going to convince the Iraqi people as a whole, or certainly our more violent enemies."

Bush acknowledged the threat of attacks. "There`s still violent people who want to stop progress. Their strategy hasn`t changed. They want to kill innocent lives," he told reporters.

Major U.S. concessions in the latest U.N. draft, which were the subject of intense negotiations in New York among Security Council envoys last night, also reflect the scramble to win badly needed support for an ongoing foreign military presence -- with the clock rapidly ticking.

"I`ve been speaking with a variety of world leaders, to encourage them to -- by telling them we`re willing to work with them to achieve language we can live with but, more importantly, language that the Iraqi government can live with," Bush told reporters.

But U.N. officials say the draft is unlikely to win passage before June 6, the anniversary of D-Day and the original goal. "We don`t want to ram it through in a huge hurry. We need to get it right and make sure that the status of the [military] mission and forces agreement respects sovereignty . . . so that those who say this is a shell game are wrong," said a senior U.N. official who requested anonymity because of ongoing negotiations.

In contrast to four previous U.N. resolutions, talks yesterday went well, U.S. officials said. "In months past, we`ve had knock-down, drag-out debates on substance. In contrast, we were today truly in the weeds about small, arcane changes," said a senior U.S. official at the United Nations present for the discussions.

Besides France, the biggest unknown is Spain, which co-sponsored previous U.N. resolutions advocating military intervention. But the Spanish government that deployed troops in Iraq was replaced earlier this year, and U.S. officials say it is unclear how Spain may use its Security Council vote.

After the talks, U.S. Ambassador James B. Cunningham told reporters that the delegations would "go away and reflect." Iraqi interim Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zubari is expected to arrive in New York today to brief the Security Council.

In words that may not expedite the big diplomatic push, Bush said yesterday, "You know how the United Nations is. Sometimes, it can move slowly, and sometimes it can move quickly."

Bush will try to generate further momentum behind his Iraq policy today at the Air Force Academy commencement address, when he delivers the second of a weekly series of Iraq speeches until the transition. He will detail his view of how Iraq fits into the broader war on terrorism and why the stakes are high. He plans to argue that the war is a clash of ideologies between the civilized world and al Qaeda and other Islamic extremists, and will describe similarities and differences between this war and World War II, U.S. officials said.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com

Iraqis Urged to Accept New Interim Govt.

By HAMZA HENDAWI
The Associated Press
Wednesday, June 2, 2004; 5:12 AM

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The United Nations envoy urged Iraqis on Wednesday to accept the new interim government and to work toward national elections - the next major step in the country`s advance toward democracy.

Lakhdar Brahimi spoke a day after announcing a government that will take power from the U.S.-run occupation on June 30. The new leadership will run the country until national elections, set for no later than Jan. 31.

"Will every Iraqi be satisfied of the present government? Definitely not," Brahimi said. "I believe many Iraqis, if not all, will find in this government those whom I don`t say represent them but are close to them."

"I believe the election is the most important (next) step," Brahimi told reporters. "Preparing for it and creating the necessary atmosphere for it are imperative for its success."

The new government was announced after Iraqis pushed through the head of the Governing Council, Ghazi al-Yawer, as president after U.S. favorite Adnan Pachachi stepped aside.

"Ghazi al-Yawer is qualified to fill this post and we are fully confident that he will carry out his duty with efficiency," Brahimi said.

Following the appointment of the interim government, the U.S.-picked Governing Council dissolved so that the new leadership could begin work even before it takes power from the American-led coalition at the end of the month.

Among its first tasks will be to negotiate a crucial agreement on the status of U.S.-led international forces that will remain here after sovereignty is restored and to tackle the country`s tenuous security situation.

At the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday, the United States and Britain circulated a revised resolution that would give the interim government control over the Iraqi army and police and end the mandate for the multinational force by January 2006 at the latest.

Critics - namely France, Russia and Germany - had said the previous U.S.-British resolution did not go far enough in granting Iraqis genuine power over their own national affairs. Iraq`s new foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, was traveling to New York to join the debate.

Strong explosions rolled through the heart of the capital even as word emerged of al-Yawer`s selection Tuesday. A car bomb at the headquarters of a pro-American Kurdish party killed three people, wounded about 20 and sent a mushroom cloud of smoke rising over the capital.

A car bomb also exploded outside a U.S. base in the northern town of Beiji, killing 11 Iraqis and wounding more than 22 people, including two U.S. soldiers.

Fighting broke out between American soldiers and radical Shiite militiamen in the southern town of Kufa and a Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad.

The new Cabinet - a prime minister, a deputy premier for security and 31 ministers including six women - will take over day-to-day operations of government ministries immediately, although the U.S.-run Coalition Provisional Authority remains the sovereign power in Iraq until June 30.

British-educated Shiite politician Iyad Allawi, a longtime opposition figure known for his close ties to the State Department and the CIA, was named prime minister on Friday.

The Cabinet draws its membership from Iraq`s ethnic, religious and cultural mosaic, bringing together lawyers, politicians, academics, human rights activists, engineers and businessmen from a broad spectrum. It contrasts sharply with Saddam Hussein`s regime, which revolved around a Sunni Muslim clique from his hometown of Tikrit.

President Bush said Tuesday`s announcement brought Iraq "one step closer" to democracy, but warned against a spike in violence as the date for the restoration of sovereignty draws near.

Security remains the primary threat facing the new government, which will rule until national elections by Jan. 31. The ceremony introducing the new government took place under tight security in the heavily guarded Green Zone headquarters of the U.S. occupation administration.

"Why is there - to use neutral terms - this insurgency?" Brahimi said Wednesday, suggesting that Iraq`s leaders should talk with the fighters. "I think it`s a little bit too easy to call everyone a terrorist."

During the ceremony Tuesday, Allawi focused on security, saying he would ask Iraq`s allies for help "in defeating the enemies of Iraq." He also pledged to strengthen the army and raise soldier pay. Iraq`s security forces, he said, will be a "pivotal partner" with U.S. and other coalition troops in the fight to restore security.

Switching from Arabic to English for the benefit of coalition leaders in the audience, Allawi said: "We`re grateful to the national alliance led by the Americans who have sacrificed so much to liberate us."

More than 800 U.S. service members have been killed since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

Coalition troops are fighting a Sunni insurgency in the capital and areas to the west and north as well as a Shiite revolt in Baghdad and in the south. Suicide bombings have claimed hundreds of lives across the nation.

Tuesday`s announcement capped four weeks of deliberations by Brahimi, the coalition, the Governing Council and thousands of Iraqis whose advice and views he sought.

© 2004 The Associated Press

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washingtonpost.com

In the Iraqi Interim



Wednesday, June 2, 2004; Page A24

LAKHDAR BRAHIMI worked no miracles in the appointment of Iraq`s new government. The veteran United Nations envoy had been cast by the Bush administration as a one-man nation-builder who would somehow produce an administration that was broadly representative and capable of taking over sovereignty from the U.S.-led occupation. In the end, hemmed in by hovering U.S. officials and their present and former Iraqi allies, Mr. Brahimi acquiesced to a cabinet led by the same former exiles and Kurdish politicians who populated the discredited Iraqi Governing Council. Perhaps he had few alternatives: Iraq appears nearly bereft of political leaders who are popular, capable and willing to cooperate with the U.S. plans for political transition. Maybe, too, Mr. Brahimi`s endorsement, and that of the United Nations, will help the new administration establish itself. But Iraq`s interim leaders will have to act quickly and skillfully if they are to gain enough authority to carry out their primary mission, which is to prepare for national elections six months from now.

The new prime minister, Ayad Allawi, and the largely ceremonial president, Ghazi Yawar, appear at least to understand the importance of establishing their independence from the Bush administration. Both managed to win appointment by gathering support from the various factions on the Governing Council, and thereby trump other candidates favored by Mr. Brahimi or senior U.S. officials. Both have been moderately critical of the U.S. performance in Iraq, and while acknowledging the need for continued support from U.S. and coalition troops, have vowed to push for full sovereignty in negotiations with Washington and the U.N. Security Council. Their show of independence may or may not win them much support from Iraqis, who, according to polls, largely regard the Governing Council members as U.S. puppets. The council dissolved itself yesterday, but its members or their close allies took over many of the key positions in the interim government.

A national assembly planned by Mr. Brahimi for next month, which could be attended by 1,000 delegates and lead to the selection of a 100-member national council, might bolster the interim government if it is more genuinely representative. The Bush administration could help, too, by visibly deferring to the new administration in all areas, including security. President Bush promised yesterday to be "flexible" in negotiating military arrangements in Iraq after June 30; keeping that promise will be important both to establishing the new government and to winning the broader international support it will need. U.S. troops must continue to fight foreign terrorist groups and Iraqi extremists who seek to disrupt the planned elections, and they also have to defend themselves. But Iraqi leaders should play a much larger role in deciding how to establish and maintain security in areas where an anti-American insurgency has flourished.

Even in the best of cases, the June 30 transfer of sovereignty may not substantially improve the difficult conditions in Iraq. Mr. Bush reiterated yesterday that violence may grow still worse in the coming months. Just as Mr. Brahimi had no magic solution to the problem of Iraqi leadership, there will be no easy way to end the various insurgent movements in the country -- they can neither be crushed by military force alone nor entirely tamed by political deals. The new Iraqi government and the Bush administration will instead have to pragmatically navigate a bumpy course toward the one goal that is shared with Iraqi`s majority: elections for a truly representative government. If that democratic vote, rather than Washington`s policy agenda or Iraqis` personal ambitions, remains the dominating priority, then the new administration in Baghdad will have a reasonable chance of surviving the difficult months ahead.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Costs for Iraq war eat into U.S. deficits

By Alan Fram, Associated Press Writer | June 1, 2004

WASHINGTON --Even by Washington standards, the $119.4 billion that President Bush and Congress have provided for the first two years of the war in Iraq is real money.

Though a tiny fraction of overall federal spending, the figure is huge in other ways. It dwarfs the $100 million that could hire 2,500 more airport security screeners, the $500 million that could add 69,400 more children to Head Start, the $1 billion that would let 160,000 more low-income families keep federal rent subsidies, Senate Democrats say. Or it could reduce the runaway federal deficit.

The $119.4 billion total, compiled by the White House Office of Management and Budget, is the administration`s most comprehensive tally of the war`s financial costs so far. Of the total, $97.2 billion has been for military operations, $21.2 billion for rebuilding Iraq`s economy and government, and $1 billion for U.S. administrative expenses there.

Congress approved the money over the past year-and-a-half with overwhelming votes, and few lawmakers doubt its need. But many of them say it soaks up dollars that other parts of the $2.4 trillion budget could use, from education initiatives to tax cuts and more.

"When you integrate Iraqi spending, which is necessary, with the effort to control spending, it puts more pressure on you to make harder choices," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. "If you can name one part of government immune from this, I`d like to know."

If not used for war, the money could take a healthy bite out of the government`s runaway annual deficits, which are expected to set a record this year exceeding $400 billion. The $119.4 billion is four times this year`s federal spending for biomedical research, 14 times what Washington will spend to clean the environment, 26 times the FBI`s budget.

The total would also be enough to hand every Iraqi a check for $4,776 -- about eight times that country`s average income.

Lawrence Lindsey, then the White House economic adviser, estimated before the Iraq war that it could cost $100 billion to $200 billion. Other administration officials called the figure far too large and argued that Iraq`s oil revenues would let the country largely rebuild itself.

Instead, Lindsey`s estimate has proven prophetic. In an interview last week, White House deputy budget chief Joel Kaplan blamed the war`s costs on "unanticipated events" like the bad condition of Iraq`s infrastructure and the prolonged violent resistance.

The Congressional Research Service, which provides nonpartisan analyses for lawmakers, has calculated Iraq costs for the first two years at $121.8 billion, using higher defense figures than the administration. Either way, the number will grow dramatically in the near future.

Bush has already requested an additional $25 billion for the U.S. presence in Iraq and Afghanistan next year, with the bulk of the money headed to Iraq. Administration officials have said they expect to eventually seek more than $50 billion for 2005.

Others use higher numbers. Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., chairman of a subcommittee that controls the Pentagon`s budget, says he expects the 2005 price tag to be $75 billion. Rep. John Spratt of South Carolina, top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, puts the figure as high as $80 billion.

By the time the final Iraq figure for 2005 is in, American spending there could easily exceed $160 billion for 2003 through 2005. That would nearly double the combined costs -- in today`s dollars -- of the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Civil War and the Spanish-American War.

Over the longer run, it`s anybody`s guess because of uncertainties over Iraq`s stability and the revenue that may be generated by the country`s damaged oil industry.

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated it could cost up to $29 billion annually to keep 129,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, about the number there now. The United Nations and World Bank have estimated $55 billion in rebuilding costs through 2007.

"The president has been clear since the attacks of 9/11 that winning the war on terrorism, protecting the homeland, was in fact his highest priority," said the White House`s Kaplan. "So that`s where he has focused our resources" along with trying to strengthen the economy.

Kaplan would not speculate on how Bush`s budget would be different with no war in Iraq, saying of the conflict, "That`s the world the president has had to deal with."

Even so, many in Congress say they wish the money were available for other items, with most lawmakers of both parties citing deficit reduction as a primary potential use.

"The economic pressures on this country will be so severe by 2011," when the baby boom generation starts retiring, "that right now we need to be making fiscally responsible decisions," said Rep. Charles Stenholm, D-Texas, a longtime advocate of controlling annual budget deficits.

Many Democrats also suggested various spending initiatives.

"I`d have the money going to urban districts, to rural districts where class sizes are too big, where buildings are dilapidated," said Rep. Donald Payne, D-N.J.

While some Republicans said they would also favor more spending for highways and other initiatives, others were more prone to tax cuts -- and not spending the money.

"I`d say let`s have a smaller deficit. But most of all, don`t spend it on something else. The non-defense, non-security part of the budget is out of control," said Rep. Patrick Toomey, R-Pa.
© Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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NEWS ANALYSIS
New Leaders, U.S. Bound by Their Interests
Though the officials are not Washington`s top choices, both sides can work together because they agree on key issues.
By Paul Richter and Mary Curtius
Times Staff Writers

June 2, 2004

WASHINGTON — The messy process of naming a caretaker government for Iraq didn`t give Washington its top choices for new leaders Tuesday. But the interim regime is one that Washington probably will be able to work with.

American officials said they preferred a different president and were reluctant to give members of the U.S.-picked Iraqi Governing Council prominent roles in the interim government, fearing doing so could undermine the new body`s legitimacy.

Nevertheless, many of the new leaders agree with the Americans on key issues, and both sides are bound by mutual interests. The Americans need to rely on their friends in Iraq, while the Iraqi leaders know that for the time being, they have no choice but to depend on 135,000 U.S. troops to help stave off a persistent insurgency.

There may be public squabbling over security and control of Iraqi finances, but key issues may be settled quietly and pragmatically, analysts say. The interim government is the team President Bush must work with to turn the invasion of Iraq into a success story.

Iraq`s new rulers are meant to serve as caretakers until an election process that starts in January. But many analysts believe that the seven-month period could be extended because the situation in the country might make it too dangerous to organize and hold elections.

The new leaders have apparently been given a reprieve. U.N. special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi wanted interim leaders barred from future elections, but no prohibition was adopted. Now U.S. officials and experts believe that many members of the caretaker government will use the interim period to build political bases for the future.

Both the president and the prime minister of the new government recently have been critical of the U.S. occupation, but the chafing may not go deep or be permanent.

"They can work together," said Juan Cole, a Middle East specialist at the University of Michigan. "And no, this government is not going to ask them to leave precipitously, because [the Iraqi officials] all have a big red bull`s-eye painted on them."

U.S. and Iraqi officials have offered conflicting views on the vital question of how much say Iraq should have over the operations of American forces. U.S. military leaders traditionally have been reluctant to share command with other forces.

Yet some experts predict that the Americans may agree to seek Iraqi permission for any major offensive operations. If they didn`t, it could raise questions about whether Iraqis really have sovereignty.

"In the end, it`s going to be difficult for us to order an attack that the Iraqis don`t like, because everybody will end up the loser," said Robert Malley, director of the Mideast program at the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit organization.

Some analysts believe that recent squabbling over the selection of new Iraqi leaders will give some credibility to the new government — by putting distance between it and the Americans.

"In a way, the more fighting, the better it is for the new government, and ultimately, the better it is for us," said Henri J. Barkey, a Middle East specialist at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania and a former State Department official. "It is important we lose some arguments."

A Western diplomat agreed. "It may not be a bad thing that the [Iraqi Governing Council] has expressed itself in a way that is not necessarily simpatico with the coalition," he said.

Bush, in comments Tuesday to reporters, seemed happy to point out public differences between the U.S. administration and the new Iraqi leaders. He said that new President Ghazi Ajil Yawer had offered some criticisms and that Prime Minister Iyad Allawi made "strong statements" about security matters. But it is a government "that is going to be, first and foremost, loyal to the Iraqi people … these men are patriots," Bush said. "If there`s some criticism of the United States, so be it."

Danielle Pletka, a Middle East scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute think tank in Washington, said the Governing Council trounced U.S. civilian administrator L. Paul Bremer III, Brahimi and White House liaison Robert D. Blackwill on the selection of the government by resisting their choices of new leaders.

The Western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he believed members of the Iraqi Governing Council had seized their opportunity during negotiations. First, they pushed aside Hussein Shahristani, Brahimi`s preferred candidate for prime minister, then "emboldened by that, they moved on to other posts," the diplomat said.

Patrick Clawson, deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that because some of the new leaders had credentials as independent-minded Arab leaders, the new government "could work." Yet he said he had continuing concerns about how much legitimacy a process dominated by the Americans and Governing Council could have in the eyes of Iraqis.

"A month ago, they said we needed to bring in Brahimi because the Governing Council doesn`t have much legitimacy and people don`t want the Americans to decide these things," Clawson said. "And now, gosh, it looks like we`re back to the Governing Council and the Americans deciding these things."



Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ
Revised U.N. Draft Is Vague on Key Issue, Critics Say
By Maggie Farley
Times Staff Writer

June 2, 2004

UNITED NATIONS — In an attempt to satisfy criticisms of key Security Council members, the U.S. and Britain presented an amended draft resolution Tuesday that would give Iraq`s new interim government "full sovereignty," control of its own army and police and would direct multinational forces to leave by January 2006.

But the resolution remains deliberately vague on the main concern of critical council members: whether the U.S. command or the Iraqi government has ultimate control of foreign forces.

"We wish to see the interim government`s views on major military operations prevail when the multinational force intends to carry out major operations," said Algerian Ambassador Abdallah Baali, the lone Arab representative on the council. "This does not appear clearly in the draft resolution, so we have to work on that."

The new draft does say that once a government is elected next year, it can ask foreign forces to leave early. But in the interim, the way to handle disagreements over sensitive military operations will be spelled out in a side letter from the U.S. command to the Security Council.

"Those points are in the letters, but they belong in the resolution," said French Deputy Ambassador Michel Duclos.

The draft also gives Iraqis full control of their natural resources, revenues and borders and says Iraq will gradually assume responsibility for its security.

The United States and Britain are pushing to pass the resolution before the middle of the month, preferably by Sunday, when the American, British and French heads of state will meet in Normandy, France, for a D-day commemoration.

But although many council members, including veto-holding members France, China and Russia, lauded the changes in the new draft, they said they were not going to rush its adoption. They want to be sure the new interim government is acceptable to Iraq`s people before voting, because so many of the same officials from the U.S.-picked Iraqi Governing Council are also in the next government.

Several Security Council members also said they wanted to consult with U.N. special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who tried to shepherd the chaotic selection of Iraq`s new leaders, and with the government-in-waiting about how it envisions Iraq after the hand-over of power, scheduled for June 30. Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari will arrive in New York this evening and is to meet the council Thursday.

"Our soundings in capitals and elsewhere suggest that we`ve come very close to meeting what most people want," said British Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry. "I don`t envisage running to the 15th."

Drafters changed the language on the role of the U.N. in Iraq to give Secretary-General Kofi Annan more flexibility on when to return U.N. staffers to the country. The U.N. is expected to help convene a national conference to select a Consultative Council, to help draft a constitution and to aid preparations for elections scheduled for January.

But all U.N. staffers were withdrawn from Iraq last November after repeated attacks. The draft now states that "as circumstances permit," the U.N. will play a "leading role" in those reconstruction tasks.

"I think the violence in Iraq is a concern for everyone, and I have no reason to believe that it is going to stop because a government has been designated," Annan said Tuesday.

Times staff writer Mary Curtius in Washington contributed to this report.


Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ
Democrats See Smoking Gun in E-Mail on Halliburton
By T. Christian Miller
Times Staff Writer

June 2, 2004

WASHINGTON — Democrats on Tuesday called for a full investigation of one of the most politicized issues in the reconstruction of Iraq: whether Vice President Dick Cheney was involved in a decision to award Halliburton Corp. a multibillion-dollar contract to rebuild the country`s oil infrastructure.

Democrats charged that a recently released U.S. Army e-mail showed that Cheney, president of Halliburton between 1995 and 2000, had coordinated action relating to the contract, awarded without bidding and worth up to $7 billion.

The nonprofit Judicial Watch obtained the one-page e-mail earlier this year as part of a Freedom of Information Act request to the Army Corps of Engineers, which awarded the contract in March 2003.

"Every single aspect of this is so out of the ordinary," said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) at a teleconference organized by the Kerry campaign. "It raises the real question: Can the American people trust their government to do the right thing?"

Halliburton has repeatedly been questioned on its work in Iraq, with investigations into billing on fuel contracts.

The e-mail, apparently between two Army Corp officials, refers to a decision to publicize the awarding of the contract to Halliburton, which was negotiated in secret for months. The message says that Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary of Defense for policy and a Cheney ally, had approved the decision to declassify the news "contingent on informing WH [White House] tomorrow."

Democrats said it was highly unusual to have high-ranking officials review such a contract.

Cheney`s office, however, repeated the vice president`s earlier assertions that he had nothing to do with the decision to award the contract.

Pentagon officials said the word "coordination" was simply a reference to letting the vice president know about a decision that had been made.

"You can obviously understand the sensitivity to make sure there were no surprises," said Lawrence Di Rita, the Pentagon`s chief spokesman. "That`s all it was."



Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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EDITORIAL
The Fog Persists in Iraq

June 2, 2004

As the military and security situation in Iraq has deteriorated, the United States and the United Nations have pinned ever-higher expectations on the appointment of a new interim government. That process, completed Tuesday, did not go quite as either the U.S. or the U.N. expected. The future of Iraq is not much clearer, and the popular legitimacy of the new government is an unknown.

The politicians of the old U.S.-picked Iraqi Governing Council simply outflanked the U.N. special envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, in forcing their own choices for a Shiite prime minister, Iyad Allawi, and a Sunni, Ghazi Ajil Yawer, for the more ceremonial post of president. One of the two deputy prime ministers will be a Kurd.

Political analysts believe the U.S. was weakened by military standoffs in Fallouja and Najaf and by the still-developing prison abuse scandal. It could not arrest militant cleric and militia leader Muqtada Sadr, much less provide the muscle to get Brahimi`s top choices installed.

At least former exile leader Ahmad Chalabi, whose false claims of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction played a major part in leading the U.S. to invade, has been shoved aside. Allawi, though he has received CIA funding and support, is now a critic of the U.S. and an avowed foe of Chalabi, whose own years of U.S. funding belatedly ended last month.

President Bush said two weeks ago that it was "time to take the training wheels off" and let an interim government replace the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority on July 1. That`s more an insult than a declaration of confidence in the new government`s ability to protect itself, the frightened cadre of foreign workers in Iraq or the ordinary Iraqis who are desperate to lead normal lives. A longtime exile, Allawi has little base of support inside Iraq. With the wholesale resignation of the Governing Council, his biggest local backers have left the scene.

Perhaps it is not a portent that Tuesday was punctuated by a mortar attack and two deadly car bombings in and near Baghdad. But the attacks were business as usual in a city increasingly too dangerous for walking around or conducting legitimate business.

More than 800 U.S. military personnel have been killed in Iraq since the war began, most of them since Bush declared "major combat" effectively over more than a year ago. More than 130,000 troops will stay on after July 1. But to whom will they answer? Allawi said he wanted control over U.S. forces except when they had to defend themselves. What constitutes self-defense will not be a question settled easily, if at all.

Allawi`s Cabinet is neatly divided among Iraq`s diverse and competing groups. Whether its members can even be protected from assassination precedes the question of whether they can govern effectively. That, in a nutshell, is the continuing U.S. problem in Iraq.


Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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COMMENTARY
When Dishing Out Blame, Don`t Stop With Bush
Many in government and the media went blind as a war-hungry administration shed time-tested principles.
By Moisés Naím
Moisés Naím is the editor of Foreign Policy magazine. This essay appears here by special arrangement with the Financial Times.

June 2, 2004

Don`t put the blame for Iraq on President Bush alone. Nothing, it would seem, could have stopped the Bush administration from pursuing its long-standing plans against Saddam Hussein. But placing responsibility for the Iraq debacle solely on Bush`s shoulders is too simple and even potentially dangerous. It blurs the responsibilities of others who contributed to an environment in which new, bad ideas were embraced while proven, good ones were shed.

It is important to learn that whatever the threat — terrorism included — no government should be afforded the latitude enjoyed by the Bush administration. The media — both reporters and commentators — are among the prime culprits here. The promise that democracy would spread from a liberated Iraq, for example, was as poorly scrutinized as the notion advanced by the administration that the Geneva Convention did not apply to the war against terror.

Today few doubt that the administration`s performance in postwar Iraq has been inept. This consensus, however, risks eclipsing the reality that many potentially influential players seem to have been stunned into submission or ineffectual opposition to the whims of the White House.

It is not just that intelligence agencies were too willing to confirm the "facts" that their political bosses wanted to hear. Many Democrats were too frightened of appearing "soft on terror" and thus signed political and military blank checks to an administration prone to overdrafts. Blinded by partisanship, congressional Republicans were subservient to the White House`s wishes even when these wishes contradicted age-old Republican values such as fiscal conservatism. Fearing irrelevance, U.S. diplomats were too quick to accept the notion that negotiated approaches on Iraq had run their course. Some journalists were so deferential to official sources that their reports seemed almost stenographic.

Further facilitating Bush`s failures in Iraq was the climate of opinion created by gullible newspaper commentary writers and ratings-hungry talk-show hosts. Even the normally vociferous lobby of nongovernmental organizations was strangely restrained.

Any government allocating multibillion-dollar contracts the way the Bush administration did in Iraq would normally draw the wrath of anti-corruption organizations. But in this case, the usually loud denunciations were mere whispers.

Human rights groups, while expressing concern over detainees at Guantanamo Bay and some aspects of the war, appeared torn and reticent over an initiative aimed at ousting a genocidal torturer. It took the horror of torture in Abu Ghraib prison finally to eliminate such uncharacteristic lethargy.

International leaders who joined the U.S.-led coalition were either too timid or ineffective in steering the Bush administration away from questionable decisions. Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the United Kingdom`s former ambassador to the United Nations, recently noted that "the damage to world diplomacy if America went solo was too awful to contemplate." Alas, the support for Bush by Tony Blair, the British prime minister, did not render the damage to international diplomacy any less awful.

Even leaders who confronted Bush did so in ways that only emboldened U.S. actions. French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder opposed Bush so clumsily and in such blatant pursuit of narrow political interests that their objections to the war became easy to ridicule and ignore.

The same goes for Arab states and the Arab League in particular, whose calls for immediate elections in Iraq displayed a sudden democratic fervor that the organization had never applied to any of its members.

But perhaps the ultimate enabler was the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. In the U.S., the shock and pain caused by the attacks fed the widespread notion that "business as usual" in American foreign policy was no longer an option. They also led to the renouncing of fundamental principles that never should have been abandoned. Many basic rights, including safeguards against indefinite detention without charges, were cast aside as obsolete notions for a nation fighting a global war on terror.

But neither the evildoers nor the war on terrorism will go away. What needs to go is the tragic alchemy that allows time-tested principles to be too easily discarded in favor of bad ideas. New approaches are surely needed. But they should not be embraced at the expense of the very principles that make wars worth fighting.




Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/175905_thomas02.html

Prison disaster not without heroes

Wednesday, June 2, 2004

By HELEN THOMAS
HEARST NEWSPAPERS

WASHINGTON -- Two profiles in courage stand out in the expose of the Iraqi prison disaster.

They are Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who investigated reports of the abuses of the Iraqi prisoners at Baghdad`s Abu Ghraib prison, and Army Spc. Joseph Darby, the military policeman who alerted Army authorities by turning over a disc of photographs showing the shocking mistreatment of the prisoners.

Whistle-blowers take big personal risks in terms of how they are viewed -- heroes or traitors -- and how they are treated in the aftermath of their revelations.

A statement at the Nuremberg War Crime Tribunal in 1950, where Nazi officials were in the dock after World War II, seems to apply:

"Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience. ... Therefore (individual citizens) have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring."

Such a statement would be anathema to superpatriots.

Darby, 24, of Jenners, Pa., turned over the abuse photos to an Army investigator on Jan. 13. The photos showed some prisoners hooded, stressed out, sexually humiliated, cowering naked against a wall, facing their tormentors who held back open-jawed attack dogs.

Before he turned over the photos, Darby called his mother and indicated that he was disturbed over an ethical problem but gave her no details. Seeking her advice, he was told to follow his conscience and "the truth will make you free."

Some in his hometown later grumbled that he had ratted on his buddies, but Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in testimony before Congress, praised Darby, singling him out as the soldier "who alerted the appropriate authorities that abuses were occurring" at Abu Ghraib.

Taguba, the highest-ranking Filipino American in the Army, is widely respected among his peers. Taguba`s father fought alongside American forces in World War II on Bataan and was captured by the Japanese.

Taguba`s orders last Jan. 31 were to investigate prison abuses. He obviously took those orders seriously, telling those on his team that they should follow their "consciences" and "do what is morally right."

Taguba`s March 12 report documented widespread abuse of prisoners by military police. Even so, the sensational report got the attention of Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, only after CBS-TV broadcast the photographs.

This was much too late for Rumsfeld and Myers to learn about such an important matter.

Rumsfeld and Bush were profuse in their apologies, and both men expressed disgust over what had happened in the prison.

In an address at the Army War College at Carlisle, Pa., last week, Bush called for the razing of Abu Ghraib.

He said that under Saddam Hussein, such prisons as Abu Ghraib "were symbols of death and torture." He noted that "the same prison became a symbol of disgraceful conduct by a few American troops who dishonored our country and disregarded our values."

It`s unclear at this point whether there were only "a few," as Bush described it, or whether the abuse was more widespread. Also in the pending basket: Who in the chain of command knew about the abuse and either approved of it or failed to stop it?

Coinciding with the president`s policy speech on Iraq, Pentagon officials reported that Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the top military commander in Iraq, would be replaced this summer.

Sanchez has been in the hot seat about the Abu Ghraib scandal. But Pentagon officials insist that the transfer of Sanchez out of Iraq was unrelated to the prison scandal.

Bush said last week, "Rick Sanchez has done a fabulous job."

But the timing of his removal sparked speculation that blame for the prison debacle would go higher than low ranking MPs.

The Wall Street Journal says that lawyers on Sanchez`s staff wrote the International Committee of the Red Cross on Dec. 24, 2003, and explicitly claimed that the prisoners are not subject to the Geneva Conventions on humanitarian treatment of prisoners. Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita disagreed on Wednesday, contending that U.S. commanders consider all prisoners in Iraq to be protected by the Geneva Conventions. He also claimed that all prisoners in Iraq have been treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions.

The photos show otherwise.

Bush would have won more brownie points if he had affirmed in his war college speech that the United States will again abide by the Geneva accords on prisoner protection -- to the spirit and the letter.

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

© 1998-2004 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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Maybe You Need A Road Trip
A long stretch of road, a shiny new car, a big happy dog, and thou. Balm for the soul?
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, June 2, 2004

This is the dream. It involves a shiny cool small premium new car and a big happy beautiful dog sticking his head out the window and a longish solo road trip up the West Coast from San Francisco to the northern tip of Idaho in the middle of the summer.

There is music playing. There is a huge sunroof open at all times. There is a small cooler full of ginger beer and spelt pretzels and Odwalla bars and organic turkey sandwiches. There is an in-dash CD multichanger loaded with dirtystupidfun `80s hard rock and badass electronica and Rufus Wainwright and AC/DC and Rachael Yamagata and Velvet Revolver.

This particular drive is a mere 17 hours long and consists of some seriously butt-ugly landscape (Central California) and then some of the most breathtakingly lovely and tree-engorged (Oregon), but it really doesn`t matter. It`s the trip that counts. It`s the getting out. It is the escape. Isn`t it?

It`s a peculiar all-American dream, the road trip, the fast exit, the get-me-the-f---out-of-here-I`m-going-insane, one that must be tattooed onto our very cells at birth and emerging from I`m not sure whence but attracting me like some sort of happy patriotic narcotic, creating such an itch that it absolutely must be scratched at some point despite three-dollar gas prices and air pollution like a BushCo pastime and more cars per capita than occurrences of raw unbridled love.

Flying? Ptew. Flying has become this gross convoluted nightmare of overbooked ticketing hassles and massive lines and bogus Orange Alerts and of completely disrobing at security checkpoints for the displeasure of disgruntled security personnel who for some goddamn reason are trained to believe you might be harboring a live mortar shell in your belt. Hence, driving across the country is, shall we say, more alluring than ever.

The solo trip, it is meditative. It is private time in a world gone manic and relentless and inescapable. It is rushing grinning open-windowed bug-toothed forward momentum amidst self-immolating cultural stagnation. It is the only place, besides maybe the bathroom, where you can truly be alone and in complete control of your own tiny world, surrounded by your own personal accoutrements and your own personal odors and habits and neuroses and where you suffer no danger of someone barging in just as you`re screaming the high notes to "Welcome to the Jungle" in a delirious haze of cute pseudo-rebellion.

The mystique of the road trip, it unifies. It is at once powerfully individualistic and charmingly defiant and yet it is also the great equalizer, the uniter of religions and political agendas and lifestyles and clothing choices, appealing across the board to Repubs and Demos and bike messengers and black lesbian dental hygienists from Butte, Mont. Almost everyone loves the idea. Add the big loping beautiful dog into the picture and it`s a veritable cataclysm of adorable hunky postcard jingoism.

And given how I am searching for a new car and also simultaneously for a fabulous dog in some sort of epiphanic transformative burst, I am hoping they converge in a perfect fantasia of progressive mpg-conscious Americana, despite the ideological blasphemy that my dream contains no beat-up barely navigable rust-bucket `68 Mustang rumbling down the highway and endangering small wildlife for 100 miles around, but rather presents a vehicle that is small, and powerful, and lean, and upscale, and beautiful, and European. God bless America.

There is, of course, a bit of liberal guilt. I desire this trip in the face of gas prices that give BushCo`s Saudi OPEC pals wet dreams. I do this in the face of the fact that I don`t absolutely need a new car, even though my aging GTI is getting creaky and moany and beaten down by endlessly brutal city pavement and I feel morally and spiritually sad that it has never seen much of the open road. I do this in the face of the fact that hybrids are all the rage and the Prius is a big lumpy fabulous sedan that inspires immediate guilt if you don`t really want one. And I do this even though I know the landscape will be largely depressing as hell.

It`s true. This is why there`s a bit of urgency attached. There`s a feeling that you gotta take such trips now because nature is taking a GOP-led raping like never before and the open untainted panorama is disappearing fast and for proof you need look no further than any major California highway, where you`ll find, staggered at roughly 10-mile intervals like nasty recurring warts, yet another cookie-cutter strip mall featuring a Starbucks and a Subway and a Quiznos and a enough hideous tacky land-ravaging architecture to gag a tree.

Just look. It`s getting so you can pack it all up and leave your own city and drive for 1,000 miles and never feel like you left at all, everything staid and regurgitative and everything looks exactly the same and everything is built to the same piss-poor butt-ugly cheeseball stucco standards and the only difference is the hairstyle of the gum-snapping teenage Starbucks employee and the quality of the sneers you earn from disgruntled SUV drivers who have to pay 50 bucks every hour to fill their land tanks. Poor dears.

The chain developers, they think we want mindless redundant comfort. They think that Americans love consistency, are drawn to it, feel somehow reassured that no matter where you go and no matter how far you travel you can never truly escape the bland inexorable consumerist agenda and you will never have to be without liquefied reconstituted reprocessed hormone-injected chicken nugget 10-packs. How wrong they are.

In fact, the true urge propelling the solo road trip is exactly the opposite. It is the desire to flee that inexorable sameness. It is a love for the ability to move at will, unrestricted and independent and free of logos and national ad campaigns and toxic business parks. It is, in short, the simple need to locate yourself anew, despite a backdrop of noise and media and pain.

Maybe this is just silly. Maybe the road trip is a dream that can never be truly fulfilled anymore, a false notion, endangered and nearly impossible and increasingly reserved for the dust-choked tornado-whipped flyover states where the cornfields are huge and the sky is massive and the roads are broken and dreary and pancake flat and the small towns are still incredibly, frighteningly weird.

But even that might not be so true. In other words, true escape is almost always just a phantasm -- after all, you`re in your car, you`re on the pavement, you`re still connected to, and a part of, the world. What you`re aching for is, more than anything else, a feeling. A release. A purgative power-steered burp.

After all, the road trip has always been as much a state of mind as an actual adventure, having less to do with delirious escape and of widening your numb flabby butt and tormenting your compressed spine for endless hours and more to do with refreshing your perspective, slapping yourself upside the head to remember that your immediate neighborhood is not all there is.

Because even if you can`t truly get very far, even if the landscape is nearly gone and every freeway exit looks "Twilight Zone" identical and even if GPS can pinpoint your sorry ass no matter where you are and even if you`re helping pump more billions into the gaping bloody hate-filled maw of the petrochemical/terrorist/Bush/military Matrix, well, you still gotta get out while you can.
# Thoughts for the author? E-mail him.
# Mark`s column archives are here

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…
©2004 SF Gate

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An exquisite danger

John Negroponte`s record in Honduras does not inspire confidence about his appointment as US ambassador to Iraq
Duncan Campbell
Wednesday June 2, 2004

The Guardian
Suspicious deaths in custody. Allegations of torture. Claims of a military out of control. These are some of the key issues that will face John Negroponte, US ambassador to the United Nations, when he takes over this month as US ambassador to Iraq.

Suspicious deaths in custody. Allegations of torture. Claims of a military out of control. Those were some of the key issues that faced John Negroponte 20 years ago when he was US ambassador to Honduras. So it is worth examining how he reacted then when faced with evidence of extra-judicial killings, torture and human rights abuses.

Central America in the early 80s was, for a few years, the centre of the world in much the way that the Middle East now is. There had been a revolution in Nicaragua in which a dictator had been removed by the Sandinistas, who had then embarked on a political path that was anathema to the US.

The country became a magnet for the international left, who saw hopeful signs in the revolution. El Salvador and Guatemala were in turmoil as leftwing guerrillas battled with the military in their efforts to overturn years of military oppression and corruption. In those days the enemy, as far as the US was concerned, was international communism rather than al-Qaida, but the rhetoric of "good" versus "evil" took a similar pattern to today`s.

Into this world in 1981 came diplomat John Negroponte as ambassador to Honduras. At the time, the US was covertly backing the contras, the counter-revolutionaries who opposed the Sandinistas. Honduras was a vital base for them. An air base was built at El Aguacate, where they could be trained and which was used, according to Honduran human rights activists, as a detention centre where torture took place. It was also used as a burial ground for 185 dissidents, whose remains were only discovered in 2001.

Negroponte`s predecessor, Jack Binns, was appointed by Jimmy Carter. He had made public his concerns about human rights abuses by the Honduran military. Binns has since affirmed that when he handed over to Negroponte he gave him a full briefing on the abuses. Negroponte has always denied having knowledge of such violations.

A former Honduran congressman, Efrain Diaz, told the Baltimore Sun, which re-examined the behaviour of the US in 1995, of Negroponte and other US officials: "Their attitude was one of tolerance and silence. They needed Honduras to loan its territory more than they were concerned about innocent people being killed."

For their cooperation with the US in its long-running battle to remove the Sandinistas - who, it should be remembered, won the election in Nicaragua in 1984 - the Honduran government was royally rewarded. Military aid increased from $4m to $77m a year. Had Negroponte reported to the US Congress that the military were engaged in human rights abuses, such aid would have beenthreatened. No report of such abuses was allowed to interfere with the US destabilisation of Nicaragua.

Negroponte was one of a group of officials involved in Central America at that time who have since - to the astonishment of the international diplomatic community - been rehabilitated by President Bush. His behaviour in Honduras would have come under scrutiny when he was appointed as US ambassador to the UN in 2001, but his appointment hearing came in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, when there was little appetite for such an inquiry and when there was a desire to have such a key post filled speedily.

"Exquisitely dangerous", is how Larry Birns of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs described Negroponte this week in a conversation from Washington. He called Negroponte`s role in Honduras "eerily familiar to the Bush adminustration`s present goal in Iraq". Reed Brody of Human Rights Watch had this to say when Negroponte was appointed ambassador to the UN: "When Negroponte was ambassador [in Honduras] he looked the other way when serious atrocities were committed. One would have to wonder what kind of message the Bush administration is sending about human rights."

The US policy in Central America in the 80s was essentially that the ends justified the means, even if the ends involved misleading Congress, dealing with the supposedly hated Iran, the illegal mining of harbours and the promotion, funding and encouragement of rebel forces. Many of those involved in the atrocities in Central America were graduates of the School of the Americas (which has since changed its name to the anodyne Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation) where interrogation techniques of the kind that have come to light in Iraq were taught. When Negroponte was ambassador in Honduras his building in Tegucigalpa became one of the nerve centres of the CIA in Latin America with a tenfold increase in staff. In Baghdad, he will have a similar role.

Negroponte represented the US during one of the most corrupt periods of its foreign policy, presided over by Ronald Reagan and George Bush senior. He had an opportunity to challenge what was happening, but chose not to.

His new appointment is one of a number that fly in the face of reason. Bush made Henry Kissinger head of the commission to investigate the events leading up to 9/11. At the time, many found it bizarre that a man of such limited international credibility and such impressively flexible standards of morality should have been entrusted with such a task. Kissinger accepted the post as an opportunity to serve his country - until it transpired that it would interfere with his lucrative consultancy business, at which point he bowed out. Now a man who has been accused of not spotting human rights abuses taking place in front of his eyes in Honduras is being sent to Iraq at a time when allegations of human rights abuses are at the heart of the occupation. As a policy, the appointment of Negroponte at this point in the history of Iraq seems "exquisitely dangerous" indeed.

· Duncan Campbell is a senior Guardian correspondent who for many years covered Central America

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Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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WASHINGTON (IWR News Parody) - President Bush in a rare Rose Garden news conference said that the new interim Iraq leaders appointed today were "technically not puppets", but really more like those "friendly Muppets guys".

"I mean you just wanna grab a hold of one of those pudgy little suckers and give him big hug and then a kiss on his bald greasy head.

In that way, they`re a lot like Cheney. He`s like a wind up automaton of the gas and oil industry. You know, like that little monkey that plays the cymbals that I have on my desk in the Oval Office.

Shoot. I`ve even heard that some folks have called me Karl Rove`s puppet, but that kind of talk don`t bother me none, then again, I don`t read newspapers cause my doctor said it gives me hypertension, whatever the heck that is," said Mr. Bush.

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Wednesday, June 02, 2004
War News for June 2, 2004

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring ‘em on: One US Marine killed in action in al-Anbar province.

Bring ‘em on: Four Iraqis killed, 20 wounded by car bomb in Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Fighting resumes near Kufa.

Bring ‘em on: Two Polish contractors kidnapped near Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Turkish and Egyptian truck drivers kidnapped in Iraq.

Bring ‘em on: Three Iraqi contract drives killed in RPG ambush south of Kirkuk.

Bring ‘em on: US troops ambushed by RPG fire in Sadr City.

Bring ‘em on: Police station near Fallujah mortared; one Iraqi killed, one US Marine wounded.

Bring ‘em on: Three Filipino soldiers wounded in ambush near Talayyi.

Bring `em on: Oil pipeline ablaze near Sherqat.

Charades. “Questions about Iraq`s real sovereignty are bound to deepen, according to many diplomats, now that it has become clear that the United Nations special envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, played a secondary role in setting up the new government. People close to the envoy say the choices, especially that of the prime minister, Iyad Allawi, were essentially negotiated between the United States and the Iraqi Governing Council, which the occupation authorities put together last year. ‘The visible role of the Iraqi Governing Council in choosing its own successors in Iraq is more than was anticipated,’ an American official acknowledged in something of an understatement.”

Your tax dollars at work. “Even by standards here, the $119.4 billion that President Bush and Congress have provided for the first two years of the war in Iraq is real money. It dwarfs the $100 million that could hire 2,500 more airport security screeners, the $500 million that could add 69,400 more children to Head Start, the $1 billion that would let 160,000 more low-income families keep federal rent subsidies, Senate Democrats say. Or it could reduce the runaway federal deficit.”

Brain injuries. “Traumatic brain injuries are nothing new in war zones. But Iraq is producing a higher rate of returning wounded than previous wars, military medical officials say. At Walter Reed Army Medical Center alone, doctors have identified more than 280 cases of traumatic brain injury in the past year, most from Iraq. Medical officials credit better body armor for keeping brain-injured patients alive, and better screening. But they also cite the impact of the weapons of choice among Iraqi insurgents - roadside bombs and rocket-propelled grenades.”

The writing on the wall. “A random survey of military bathroom graffiti, from Germany to Kuwait, can’t capture the outlook for most serving in the war in Iraq.” Veterans will appreciate this story.

The new dictator of Iraq. “’I don`t think he`d mind my saying this: Bremer is the dictator of Iraq. He has the money, he has the signature,’ said Brahimi after stressing he had been invited to choose the new cabinet at the request of the Americans and the now-disbanded Governing Council.” Brahimi may refer to L. Paul Bremer as a "dictator," but to me he`s still the Baghdad fashion maven and incompetent administrator of Lieutenant AWOL`s Mesopotamian satrapy.

Commentary

Analysis: “Bush`s policies were built on fantasies and cheap slogans that have now come back to embarrass their authors: The premise that ‘shock and awe’ would stun our adversaries into quick submission; the idea, accepted by no serious intelligence analyst, that radical Islamist Al Qaeda and militantly secular Saddam were part of a common terror network; the claim that a motley assortment of small nations whose troop commitments mostly numbered in the hundreds were a grand ‘coalition of the willing.’”

Analysis: “Stop-loss and the activation of the inactive reserve show how politics has taken priority over readiness. The Pentagon uses these policies to meet its needs in Iraq because they are expedient and ask nothing of the civilian populace on the eve of a national election. This allows us to put off what is sure to be a difficult debate: whether our volunteer military is adequate to meet our foreign policy commitments. Meanwhile, in the absence of this debate, the men and women of our armed forces languish.” Read this piece to get a good insight into the hypocrisy of the Bush administration when they spout off about supporting the troops.

Editorial: “The end of the Governing Council concludes a chapter of unpopular, ineffectual governance that failed to stem a growing insurgency and did little to lay the groundwork for a workable democracy. Although the new governing body looks uncomfortably like the old one with a new name and a few added powers, it must be helped to do better.”

Opinion: “Another subject conservatives do not talk about is the number of injured U.S. soldiers. It’s not a figure that’s mentioned often, even by the ‘liberal’ media, due to the fact that the data is so hard to find. In today’s European Stars and Stripes, the number of injured troops treated at Landstuhl hospital in German was listed at over 7,000. That’s just the one hospital.”

Casualty Reports

Local story: Arizona Marine killed in Iraq.

Local story: Pennsylvania soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: Michigan soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: Pennsylvania soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: Washington State Marine killed in Iraq.

Local story: Ohio soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: California soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: Ohio soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: Colorado contractor killed in Iraq.

Local story: Wisconsin Marine wounded in Iraq.

Local story: Illinois soldier wounded in Iraq.

Local story: Minnesota soldier wounded in Iraq.


86-43-04. Pass it on.



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ublished on Wednesday, June 2, 2004 by the San Francisco Chronicle
Most Iraqis Wary of Nation`s New Government
by Robert Collier


Although the new Iraqi interim government that took office Tuesday will not have full authority for another month, it already has the headaches of a formidable task -- gaining enough credibility among Iraqis to be able to exercise at least a minimum degree of power.

After days of bruising, behind-the-scenes negotiations involving U.S. officials and U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, members of the Iraqi Governing Council -- the 25-member body viewed by a wide spectrum of Iraqis as American puppets -- emerged victorious in re-establishing themselves in the new government.

This very success will make it difficult for the leaders who took over on Tuesday, many analysts and Iraqis say. They point to the choice for prime minister of Iyad Allawi, a controversial businessman and recipient of CIA largesse, as particularly likely to spur public dissent.

Allawi`s tenure on the Governing Council has prompted widespread rumors of corruption and influence peddling, including repeated accusations that he charges "commissions" to deliver government contracts to Iraqi companies.

"This is unlikely to be seen by most Iraqis as a legitimate government because it wasn`t elected by anybody, and I don`t think anybody will view it as independent," said Juan Cole, a professor of Middle East history at the University of Michigan and the author of Informed Comment, an authoritative Web log about Iraq. "Having an old-time CIA asset be the prime minister seems a recipe for derision."

Even analysts who have supported the Bush administration`s conduct of the Iraq war say Allawi and his Cabinet will have to work hard to dispel Iraqis` suspicions.

"The first thing we have to accept is that any Iraqi government and its political leaders are going to have to establish credibility with their people by being opposed to us," said Eliot Cohen, director of the Strategic Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University`s School of Advanced International Studies in Washington.

"The fact that we had some pet candidates and (the Iraqi Governing Council) didn`t want them, that`s a positive development," said Cohen, referring to widespread reports that American diplomats had unsuccessfully tried to install a loyal ally on the Governing Council, Adnan Pachachi, to the largely ceremonial post of president. Instead, the post went to the council`s choice, Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawer.

"These are not America`s puppets," National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told reporters in Washington.

Allawi and al-Yawer quickly took up the cue, pushing for a bigger slice of sovereign authority than the United States has wanted to surrender. In a speech Tuesday, Allawi thanked the Bush administration for liberating Iraq from the "tyrant" Saddam Hussein, but pointedly said his government would be seeking full sovereignty from the United Nations.

Most Iraqis will be looking first at how Allawi negotiates a status of forces agreement with U.S. military commanders. That task is not likely to be easy because the 138,000 American troops in Iraq have taken over choice real estate -- including the four-square mile Green Zone in the heart of Baghdad. The U.S. troops` frequent road closures and checkpoints have angered countless Iraqis.

In addition, much depends on whether Allawi tries to rein in U.S. counterinsurgency operations and whether he can coax the rebels to lay down their arms. "It`s clear that we cannot impose order on that country militarily, and what`s needed is a different political situation," said Marina Ottaway, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "But there`s nothing in this government for the people who are causing trouble, for the Sunni insurgency, for Muqtada al-Sadr, nothing in which they might take part."

Recent public opinion polling has showed a dramatic increase in grassroots hostility toward the American occupation.

Between October and April, the percentage of Iraqis viewing the United States as an occupier rather than a liberator more than doubled, from 43 percent to 88 percent, according to the Center for Research, an Iraqi polling firm that works for several U.S. contractors. Similarly, the percentage of Iraqis wanting U.S. and coalition troops to leave the country immediately rose from 17 percent in October to 57 percent in April.

Reports from Iraq in recent days suggest that many ordinary Iraqis have become disillusioned with politics altogether and care more about the lack of progress in reconstruction -- the frequent electricity blackouts, mile-long gas station lines, high unemployment, rampant crime and frequent guerrilla attacks that have confounded hopes that the American occupation would bring prosperity.

"Concerning the new government, I can assure you that very few people are looking at what is going on (in politics) because the situation is becoming worse than it was before," wrote one Baghdad resident, a Shiite who asked not to be identified for security reasons, in an e-mail to The Chronicle. "The electricity-cutting hours are more these days, there is a shortage in fuel, the long lines of cars on gas stations are getting more and more everyday, the bombings are more these days, particularly today, there has been many explosions today. People think that since the selected president is from the Governing Council, so nothing has been changed.

"All what people are concerned about is the living and security, no more, no less!"

© 2004 San Francisco Chronicle

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Eating Media Lunch: Anita McNaught IVs Robert Fisk
Tuesday, 1 June 2004, 9:53 pm
Article: Great Southern Television

ROBERT FISK INTERVIEW

Transcript from Eating Media Lunch
Interview by Anita McNaught

Anita McNaught: You based yourself in the Middle East 25-30 years ago� in terms of writing about history being forged, you could scarcely have put yourself in a better spot, could you?

Robert Fisk: It was 28 years ago, I went into Beirut and the civil war was already on by one year, and we actually had a bureau there and it went up in smoke within one day of my arrival which was a bad symbol at the time. I had been to the Middle East on holiday one year, by chance, when I was based in Belfast� I was only 29 at the time, so I have the times of London say to me: Would you like to be the Middle East correspondent � boy! I wasn�t going to turn that down, and of course I hadn�t been there long before I realised that I was really watching history� the Sadat peace with Israel, the Israeli invasion of 78, another Israeli invasion of 82, the Iran/Iraq war, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. I remember going through periods of absolute exhaustion going from one invasion to another and from one war front to another going across thousands of miles, and we were � all my colleagues were aware at the time � that we were watching real history being made. We thought we were reporting it accurately at the time. Looking back now, I�m not so sure but, I think those of us, who were quite young, I still feel I am. It was an exciting adventure. I remember in Afghanistan watching hundreds and hundreds of Soviet tanks - this was the Soviet Union, these were the warriors of Stanlingrad and Kursk, and watching them come through the snow, through the Sarlang pass and down the Kabul gorge.�where the British army was massacred in 1842, and watching Russian soldiers fighting, and at one point I got arrested and was put on a Russian convoy and we got attacked on the convoy, and I was sitting next to the commander, a Soviet soldier, and what an adventure! Boy, it was exciting.

And I guess one becomes more cynical with age, and sees that that event that I was watching led to an appalling tragedy in Afghanistan of 1 5-2 million Afghans dead within 8 years. But at the time of course it was like one of those novels that my father gave me when I was a little boy, I remember he gave a book his mother had given to him about the second Afghan war, and a young British hero who goes, and of course, shoots lots of Afghans, Tom Graham VC is the title of the book, and I remembered thinking in Afghanistan: this is a bit like the book! It really is dangerous here! So there was a good deal of naivety and I suppose immaturity to some extent, but we grew up very quickly, we realised quickly how dangerous it was � we started seeing a lot of dead bodies. I never realised when I went to the Middle East that I would end up seeing so many thousands of dead people with my own eyes.

McNaught: Yet others moved on, but you stayed� so something about it really got to you?

Fisk: Well, I tell you the background to this is that my father, who was much older than my mother, was a soldier in the First World War; he went to the third battle of the Somme in 1918. He was a man who was, basically very conservative, obeyed the law, admired policemen, magistrates, judges, governments but in the first WW he broke all the rules and he took a camera to the trenches. Once I was ten years old he insisted that he took me back every year to the scenes of the big battles, he took me to the big French battlefields of Ypres, Verdun etc, and from a very early age he fascinated me with the idea of history and books, so I grew up knowing all about the Archduke being murdered in Sarajevo and starting off WW1, I knew about Stalingrad and Arnhem. When I went to the ME I was acutely aware that had it not been for WW1 and WW2, I wouldn�t be there � I was in effect living on my father�s generation�s mistakes.

One of the things that�s always struck me is that in a period of just 18 months, that followed WW1, the victors drew the borders of Yugoslavia, N Ireland and most of the Middle East. And I have spent my entire professional career watching the people in those borders, Yugoslavia, Northern Ireland, burn. So for me it�s not a question of if I want to move on somewhere else � I never wanted to be a manager or an editor, or climb the greasy ladder or go to NY and sit in an air conditioned office. I want to watch the pages of history go on. You know what it�s like for me? I still feel like I�m 29 years old which is the age I was when I went to Lebanon in 1976, but for me it�s like you know you can read a book late at night, a gripping history book, very vividly written, and you think: Just one more chapter, so you hang on to see what�s next in Iran, what�s next in Afghanistan, one more chapter, or in Iraq, now, and you look at the clock and its 2.30am, and before you know it you can see the dawn peeping through the curtains. That�s what it�s like in the Middle East, that�s why I stay.

McNaught: You�re a bit of a lone wolf, aren�t you?

Fisk: You mean I�m not very gregarious, Anita..?

McNaught: You�re not one of those clubbable journalists. People who talk about you say you fly solo�

Fisk: I think that�s a bit of a mistake. I work a lot with Arab journalists, because I learn from them. I learn from their memories and I learn from their experiences. I do occasionally work with Western correspondents. I have a few friends that I will work with � Ed Cody of the Washington Post if he�s in the Middle East, but by and large I don�t see the point of hunting in packs. I think if a newspaper spends so much money and time and effort sending a correspondent to live in a region. What�s the point if he�s going to spend half his time living with other journalists? In Cairo there�s an island in the middle of the Nile where most of the journalists live and they invite each other to each others� parties and the occasional embassy person, and one token Egyptian perhaps. I don�t see the point in living like that. I don�t think you learn anything.

In Beirut for example all my friends are Lebanese, with a few exceptions � the head of the Swiss Red Cross for example � but I do not go to embassies, I don�t have any contact with them, I don�t go to embassy parties, I�ve never met any the British ambassador and unless a journalist rings up and wants to have a chat about something then I�m happy to meet, but I don�t see the point in talking to Westerners if you�re going to live in the Middle East. If they�re close friends, ok, but if you�re going to go to embassies and listen to what the first secretary says well, you can go to London and listen to what the foreign office says, or live in America and go to the State Dept.

That way, my paper gets from me totally an individual and unique perspective. Other people can give their own, but at least I give mine. The idea of going around in a pack on a story always going off on the same story, always setting the same narrative, I�m just not interested in doing that, it has no interest to me, it�s not what the story about and very often the finished version is not reflecting what I see on the ground.

McNaught: How much free rein do you have, does the Independent give you your head?

Fisk: Yes, I�m very fortunate, the Times gave me my head, but towards the end of my period, 85-86, Murdoch had been in control 5-6 years, and even the staff of the Times were beginning to be frightened of my stories. They weren�t changing them, I was doing my own thing, but you would find that a story particularly critical of Israel would have the foreign desk getting a little bit worried, and I realised the rot had set in because when the staff had become so fearful of the word from above I would start spending one third of my day dealing with their fears. And I wasn�t going to risk my life in the Middle East, which is the most dangerous story in the world, for colleagues who were going to be worried about what the boss said or what the editor was going to say.

So when I switched to the Independent, I found many of my former colleagues already run away there, and since I�ve never had anyone say: You can�t write that, it�s over the top, that�s biased � they print what I write. It�s a journalists� newspaper. And I�m very fortunate. People say: It�s great to reads something that�s different, it�s hard hitting.

People sat that it�s very nice to read what you think. And I always say, �listen, there�s an editor who has to print it�- ok I have the dangers of the Middle East, and a lot of hate mail, but it�s my editor who has to defend me to the ambassadors and diplomats in London � and he enjoys it! I�ve always tried to be a friend of the people who are printing my paper, not competing or arguing with them. And once they trust you and you trust them, it�s great being a journalist. I feel very sorry for many of my colleagues who cannot do that � who are told what to write, and told what the story is, or have their story changed. It must be immensely frustrating, and I cannot understand how they go on working in those circumstances, but they do.

But I suppose that if you treat your job like any other, driving a bus, working in a bank, then I guess you�ve got a mortgage to pay, kids to send to school, then you start making allowances and compromises that perhaps you don�t even acknowledge.. but in the Middle East you can see where the compromises are made. You only need to open a newspaper particularly in the US where I travel a lot, and the occupied territories are referred to as the �disputed territories� and it isn�t Jewish �colonies�, it�s Jewish �settlements� or Jewish �neighbourhoods�. Palestinians are always killed in clashes, rather than shot dead by Israelis, although Israelis are always killed by Palestinians, which of course they are, and �clash� always sounds like some natural disaster.. so the very language is debased in this way, because editors don�t want to upset the Israelis, or in some cases if its an Arab newspaper, the Palestinians, so what happens is a kind of semantics drains away from the story until what you�ve got is something frankly meaningless. You can turn on the news in US on ABC or CBS, and unless you know the background of what you�re listening to in the Middle East, the news is frankly incomprehensible. It�s been drained of so much meaning. It�s been compromised so much; it�s like listening to someone describing a public enquiry in Auckland into a new motorway. There�s no passion in it. Here we have one of the greatest tragedies of the modern world, and it�s being treated like a football match.

5 dead Palestinians today and 3 dead Israelis � what kind of reporting is this, what narrative of history are we setting when we report the deaths of people and the tragedy of people without any feeling, or compassion towards them?

McNaught: Lot more going on in this game isn�t there. I mean you�ve written about having a visit from the US military when you were in Iraq, about finding your phone tapped, about worrying about break-ins in your house. Is this part of the game? Did you expect to have to deal with this?

Fisk: It�s something that shouldn�t happen, but we don�t live in a perfect world. And if you�re going to work in a place like the Middle East, you�ve got to take the sticks and stones. I�m not so worried about the telephone, because they�re just doing their job. I wish they�d use British tapping equipment because sometimes my voice comes back to me one hour later, and that�s pathetic. No the real danger comes from the really very incendiary level of abuse that people who dislike what you write start sending you. What happens is for example, we had this incident some two or three years ago, in which the actor John Malkovich, speaking at Cambridge University was asked by a student whom he would most like to get rid of and he said George Galeway, the Scottish MP and Robert Fisk, and in fact he said he�d like to shoot them. And I first heard of this from a colleague who had picked it up off the A wire, who thought it was funny. I said that was not funny, this guy is not totally balanced, but much less balanced people than him will take this seriously. So we got the police and said we want to make a formal complaint about this guy threatening my life. They said it did not have intent, so couldn�t press charges. Well, thank so now you can say that if you didn�t really mean to kill me, you can say I want to kill Bob Fisk. The problem was:

The problem of course is not so much John Malkovich, I think he�s unstable to say things like that, but less stable people still took this up. Within 24 hours websites had been set up, one of which had me being beaten to death with a person kicking me in the face. Underneath was a message saying John Malkovich you�re jumping the queue. I give lectures in the US every 3 weeks, big audiences, 2-3000 people, and if just one of those people have set up that website, what do I do? I don�t have security � I refuse. By saying what he did John Malkovich has put my life in danger, but he doesn�t care. He never apologised. For me, that is serious � that I worry about. When I get letters after quite badly beaten on the Afghan border in 2001, and I get letters saying: I hope you and your �friend� Osama Bin Laden go to hell that my mother is Eichman�s daughter. My mother worked in the RAF fixing radios in spitfires. When I get mail like that, I think there are some pretty dangerous people out there. I don�t care about visits from the US army on my hotel room in Baghdad, I don�t give a dam about, but I do worry about the levels of hate mail.

One of the noticeable things when you look at the coverage of the Middle East is the widening gap between the way you see events in the ME and the rest of the Western media � what�s going on here?

Look� Ever since 1967 and you can find this reflected in a number of academic works in the US - the pressures on the Western press to report the ME, firstly from a pro-Israeli standpoint, and secondly from a pro-American standpoint, have built up. 2 reasons: The growing habit of the supporters of Israel to scream: Anti-Semite at anyone who criticises the state of Israel � it is a vicious thing to say, it is slanderous to say to innocent people. There are plenty of anti-Semites in the world and I�m against them all, but this continuing campaign is going to make the word anti-Semitism respectable, and its disgraceful to use this libellous, slanderous, actionable against a journalist who tries to do his job. In the US especially, to be labelled as someone who is anti-Semitic can lose you your job, even in newspapers.

So what happened since 1967 is a gradual softening on the part of journalists of the way they have reported events between the Israelis and Palestinians. They�ve been quite happy to criticize the Palastinians, and rightly so I think Arafat is a corrupt old man. But whenever journalists want to criticise Israelis like Sharon, who even an Israeli report blamed for the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre is called controversial, the bulldozer, anything but saying he�s got blood on his hands. Arafat has blood on his hands too.

So what you�ve got is anything to avoid upsetting the Israeli lobby. And the Israeli lobby in Washington is very powerful, especially in election years. And its true, they admit that. And they work very hard � the Arab lobby doesn�t work very hard. But the fact is that American journalists always looking over their shoulders for the fear of being accused of being racist.

There�s a second element in all this: The way in which � it�s not just American journalism, but journalism in the West - have to constantly show no bias, no passion, no thought no nothing. Everyone has to have a say, equal time to the Israeli spokesperson, equal time to the Palestinian spokesperson. and that everything has to be told in such a way that you detach yourself from the tragic events going on and I think this is a totally useless form of journalism. For example if you were reporting the 18th century slave trade. Do you give equal time to the slave ship captain and the slaves? Or reporting the liberation of a concentration camp in Nazi Germany? Do I give equal time to the SS guards? No, I talk to the victims. When I report on a suicide bombing, am I going to give 50% of the space to the Hamas spokesperson? I am not! I reported on the vileness of the suicide bombing and the victims and the terrible scenes. But this habit of says that everything has to be balanced. If I go to the Sabra and Shatila massacre of 1982, and I was there. I crawled over heaps of corpses, with my hands and feet. I though it was an outrage, and atrocity a war crime, and I wrote about it as such. And I said the Israelis sent the murderers into the camp. And that is true, it was a fact. And that is the way to report it. Not to say we are going to do a whole article as to why the Israelis sent them into the camp. I�m sorry, I was there.

McNaught: So those are the hidden forces, governing the Western media�

Fisk: They�re not hidden, Anita, they�re quite open about it. The forces putting pressure on the media are right there on your TV screen and you can see them speaking. They put their spokesmen on. I was speaking on a TV programme in Ireland the other day, when we were supposed to be discussing Iraq, and then the journalist suddenly turned around to me and said �you said the troops were a rabble in Janine, that�s a blood libel!� He suddenly started shouting. And I asked the anchorman, for libel reasons, to dissociate himself from that comment. I said that�s a lie, that�s slanderous, that�s and actionable statement, how dare you say that. You must fight back. The one thing you must not do with lobbyists, and I get this from the Arab side too by the way. You should see some of the cartoons of me as a rabid dog. Rabid dogs must be exterminated, it�s not so funny. The one thing you must not do is say: I didn�t mean that, I�m sorry. You must stand your ground, get your story right, and in the end, they�ll leave you alone.

McNaught: What does the Arab media, Arab opinion make of the influences behind the West�s media coverage of Middle East.

Fisk: Not sure what Arab opinion is because its not overflowing with democracy �and nor is Iraq � most Arabs who you talk to take the view that the Western press is hopelessly biased against them, because of Israeli influence in the US, which is not totally untrue. Also have a totally conspiratorial view of the press. That we�re all paid to write nice things about Israel and bad about the Arabs. Will not see that some people are natural racists and some are not. They won�t look for the roots of Islamophobia. There�s always a plot in the world of the Arabs �and of course there often is a plot, which makes it even more difficult to dismiss this idea! They said there was a plot behind the overthrow of Mossadeq in1953 and there was, the CIA was behind his overthrow, and so were the British.

But the big problem for the Arabs is that they do no realise how poorly they represent themselves. And it�s not my job to represent the Arab POV, although I can say what it is because I live among Arabs, but they have been so cowed by their own dictators that they cannot make a point without looking over their shoulder., is there a Mokhaberat security man some where near? What will the Saudis say if they hear me say this on television? One of the problems with the Arab lobby in the US is that they spend so much time arguing with each other. So you have a Western audience with understandably limited concentration saying: What? Who ARE these people?

McNaught: What is going on in the Middle East?

Fisk: This is about history. It about the Treaty of Sevres and Camp David and injustice. Treaties that are made by people who do not have responsibility for the countries for which they are making the decisions. What�s happening at the moment is that the US far-right government, far more far-right than we realise, a Christian zealot government, enthused by and supported by some very right wing people who are supported so Is and acknowledge themselves to be so, is pushing for the largest rearrangement, geopolitical re-arrangement of the ME. Effectively, it will benefit Israel, because in Iraq, will emasculate. Obviously in the interest of America�s interests, their major economic concern, oil. If Iraq only exported Brussels sprouts or asparagus, I don�t believe the American military would be in Iraq. And nor do you, and nor does anyone else I�ve met, including the American Military. What is happening is an attempt to re-arrange the geopolitical structure of the Middle East in favour of the US and in favour of Israel. And never have we seen it pushed to this degree. And it�s not working because the millions of people who live there don�t want it. They�re resisting. The Palestinians have compromised and compromised, they�re now living in the last 22% of historic Palestine � and now told that Settlements remain. When you put people in a corner eventually they will fight back. The Palestinians were dormant for more than a decade. Hezbollah then fought back against the Israelis. Now whatever you think of terrorist or whatever, they fought. They showed people you didn�t have to be afraid, and that�s the biggest change I�ve seen in the Middle East in 28 years � they�ve lost their fear. The Iraqis are no longer frightened of the Americans, once lost your fear; you can never be re-injected with fear again. You might die, but you won�t be afraid.

And what is happening in the Arab world � and it�s not aided by their dictators and leaders � is that ordinary Arabs are no longer afraid � they�re speaking out. And this is frightening our (the West�s) dictators in the Middle East. This frightens the Mubraks, the Mohamed Karzi�s The Saddam Hussein�s, more than it�s frightening us � because we set up these dictators in the first place. We put Saddam there in the first place, as we did Nasser, as we did Kaddfi, before he became a super terrorist, and now he�s a supper statesman again, but that�s how we play the game. When you put people in this situation, and you squeeze them and squeeze them and you heap injustice historically on them. 1842 Afghanistan, the first Afghan war, the second Afghan war, the RAF used mustard gas against the Kurds in the 1920s. When you realise the lies we told, to everyone in the region. I mean in the first world war, through Laurence of Arabia we promised the Arab world independence outside of Turkey. That would be kept as a separate state, the break up of the Ottoman empire was one of the reasons we fought the First World War. Then there was the secret agreement on the Jewish homeland in Palestine. Another secret agreement between British and French was to chop up the Middle East and run it thought mandates, they wouldn�t get the independence. We lied to all the people of the region. And we lied to the Jews as well, we promised them all of Palestine. Reread the Balfa declaration of 1917. When you do this to people, they will explode.

I was making a film 8 years ago about what why Muslims coming to hate the West � 8 years exactly before Sept 11. I went into a mosque in Bosnia, which had just been bombed by the Serbs. ON the film I say �I wonder that the Muslim world has got in store for us?�. I say �maybe I should end my reports with: Watch out!� And when that film was shown in America it was criticized as being sensational and that I should have never have said things like �watch out�, this was not an issue. The interesting thing, when Sept 11th happened, and it was an international crime against humanity, and nobody said why! We were encouraged to say: Who, well we knew, nineteen Arabs, fifteen who were Saudis, we knew they were all Muslims, or claimed to be Muslims. We knew how. It was quite ok for journalists to say they got these planes after learning to fly at flights schools etc. But the moment you said why, you were howled down, your helping terrorists. They are mindless terrorists, they don�t like democracy. But hold on � has there been some kind of a problem in the Middle East? �No�, we don�t discuss it. When I give lectures in the United States, I always say that journalists have to ask why? Why suicide bombers? Why is America in Iraq? Why are Americans under attack all across the country? If there is a crime committed, when there�s a murder, the first thing the cops do is look for a motive. It�s an integral part of crime fighting. But when we have an international crime against humanity, with well over three thousand people killed in one day, we�re not allowed to look for a motive. Is there conflict in the Middle East? I was crossing the Atlantic, my plane turned back round to Europe, and I was doing a two way interview with a Harvard professor and an anchor man in Dublin. And the professor said to me that to merely ask the question why made me a dangerous man, your anti-American and that means your anti-Semitic. I said �this is outrageous�. They pulled the plug on the guy of course.

Most of my colleagues, I�m sorry to say, didn�t ask why, and if you`re not asking the question why you`re not doing your job.

I think it�s a frame of mind. I think it�s a habit. Journos have fallen into the habit of restraining themselves, feeling that to feel compassion or passion is something unprofessional. Always struck by when I sit down to have dinner with journos, especially American, they can be quite fascinating, they know a lot, but when I open the newspaper, that knowledge and the feelings they have, and the analysis is simply not in there. Another problem is that journalists like power. They like political power, they like to be close to ambassadors, they like to smell power. I suppose I can understand it but I don�t like it. It�s become a parasitic relationship; journalists want to be known by name by the President. And because journalists like to be close to power, they can�t write what they think. What�s the point in having State department correspondent whey they just parrot what the department says � just put the State Dept spokesman up there, make him the correspondent! It�s the same thing. You look at any major story now in the New York Times, and over and over again, the end of the first paragraph of a story will end in �officials say�. We should just rename the New York Times �Officials Say�, it�s the same thing. We don�t even get scoops anymore about world politics because we don�t go for whistle blowers, we have manufactured scoops where the secretary of state will decide to give you an off the record briefing, and you have to do a big scoop, �officials say�. That�s not a scoop, we have become mouth pieces. When foreign correspondents arrive in a Middle East capital they don�t know, they go to the embassy for a briefing. Then they�ll go meet the spook, and the first secretary, then they�ll go to one other embassy, and then they�ll write the story �western diplomats say� � it�s not worth an economy fare to do that.

McNaught: Post-Gilligan it�s got worse.

Fisk: It might for the BBC, it�s not for me. I think that written journalism comes out a lot stronger. Television, with its immense technology and money involved, can�t afford to piss off governments. But newspapers can and do. You know the funny the about it is if you ever go into a television studio, every one is sitting around reading newspapers, but if you go into a newspaper office everyone is sitting around watching television. But no one watches more television and reads more newspapers that Presidents and Prime ministers. They get a pretty easy ride from us. Your covering a war, your country is involved in it, and they get frightened of being asked questions. You must challenge authority. You must challenge the authority of your own government as much as you challenge the authority of your countries enemy. They don�t challenge, look at the Kosovo war, Look at the Nato press conferences. The BBC defence correspondent was virtually the Nato spokesperson, indeed he later became the Nato spokesman. It�s absolutely incredible, this is the death of journalism.

My definition of journalism used to be that we are writing the first pages of history, that we are the only independent witnesses to wars, peace treaties, massacres and injustice. And I was discussing this with that very fine Israeli journalist Samira Hartz who works for Ha�aretz, and she and I were sitting overlooking Jerusalem rather than the sea and I told her my definition of journalism and she said: No Robert, you�re wrong our job is to monitor the centres of power. And I thought: Bugger me! She�s right! I always say: She defined it. But it is our job to challenge authority, especially our authority. Because we know, in Iraq, we know what�s going on � we know the lies of the occupying power, as much as the ruthless and cruelty of the insurgents.. we know that prisoners are being maltreated, we know they�re being humiliated, but for a whole year, apart from a few of us who were going out and talking to the families of the prisoners who�d been badly beaten, it didn�t get the headlines. For a whole year it went on � so we didn�t do our bloody job.

Because we didn�t challenge power. Because we went along with: The general says, the PM says, the president�s view is� If that�s our job, well, that�s the end of journalism. We�re out of work.

McNaught: You�ve met Osama Bin Laden. What do you think he�s playing for? Are we seeing a significant historical figure rise?

Fisk: He already is a significant historical figure, whether you loathe or love him. He is already an iconic figure in the Arab world, and one of the reasons is that however great the crimes that he has committed, whenever he speaks of injustice, he says the things that Arab presidents and generals and dictators will not say. It is the ultimate humiliation for an Arab to say that the only man who says the things that he believes in has to say it from a cave in a mountain.

What does Bin Laden want? Like everyone else, he changes. When I first met him in Sudan he was against injustice in general against Muslims. The second time I met him he wanted the overthrow of the Saudi royal family whom he regarded as heretics and hypocrites, and I think he would have rather like to be the new Emir of Saudi Arabia. I know some members of the royal family favour him and are quite sympathetic to him. The last time he had decided, with a sense of vanity, not arrogance, that he could beat America. I remember we were sitting on a mountain top and he said to me �Mr Robert, from this mountain from which you are sitting, we broke the Russian army, he was a pivotal figure. And if the idea that he destroyed the Soviet Union is an exaggeration, there is some truth in it. And then he said �We saw American morale in Somalia, my men were there,� which is true, we�re talking about �black hawk down�. And then he said �we pray to god that he permits us, to turn America into a shadow of itself.� And I can tell you, that when my plane turned around over the Atlantic on 9/11, I was on my way to America, and I turned on the television and saw that biblical image of the towers crumbing, and I thought my god, New York is a shadow of itself and who was the last person to use that phrase to me.

I think he really does believe that he can in some way destroy the power of the US, and the only way to do that is to in some way bring the US more into the Middle East, into Afghanistan, bring it into Iraq. My first reaction to that was to send a message to a person in his entourage say �won�t this just bring more occupation to your land?� And I never got a reply, but in one of his later tapes he said that Muslims must fight the infidels on the Islamic territory. I think what he wanted to do � and he�s a very intelligent man, utterly ruthless, but very intelligent � was to draw the Western powers into the Middle East and trap them there. And so far, he�s got it right.

McNaught: Iraq. Where is it headed?

Fisk: Not to civil war. There is not going to be a civil war in Iraq, unless we provoke it. I�m outraged by these occupying generals who tell us they are worries about a civil war; Al-Qiada wants a civil war. No Iraqi I�ve ever met wants a civil war. And one of the reasons, which American does not understand, is that Iraq is not a society divided by religion, it�s a society united by tribes. All of the major tribes in Iraq have both Sunni and Shi�ite members. The tribes aren�t going to fight themselves. I went the other day to the funeral of a Sunni Muslim doctor how had been murdered almost certainly by a gang of Shi�ite militia men. After the funeral we went to take tea and I started talking with his brother. I asked him if he was worried about a civil war and he said absolutely not. He said �you westerners keep wanting us to have a civil war, do you want us to be so frightened that was become obedient to you�, which is why I think we are saying this. We want the Iraqis to come to heal, �look what will happen if we go�. His brother said to me �look I�m a Sunni, like my brother I�m married to a Shi�ite, do you want me to kill my own wife!?� And I thought good point, the tribal society will hold Iraqi together. We all knew that if the Shiites joined in an insurgency with the Sunnis that would be the beginning of the end. And thanks to the preposterous policies of Paul Bremer, the American proconsul, he�s managed to go to war with sections of both the Shia and Sunni community. You know, the British invaded Iraq in 1917. It took us 3 years to unite the Shias and sunnis against the British army � the Americans have achieved it in one year � Incredible performance!

I�m always struck by the fact when the British invade Iraq in 1917, the British Army made the statement: To the people of Baghdad, our armies come here not as conquerors, but as liberators, to free you from centuries of tyranny. Sound a bit familiar huh? And in three years we were losing hundreds of men in guerrilla warfare, and couldn�t control it. And the Americans have lost it in one year. And now these photographs of the prisoners, the maltreatment, the torture � we have sacrificed our last claim to morality. There were no Weapons of Mass Destruction, so we said Saddam was linked to Al-Qaida. Then there was no link to Al-Qaida, so they said we came to rescue the people, they love us, we�re liberating them, and now we�re killing them. The last shred of morality attached to that war is finished.

McNaught: How much worse is it going to get?

Fisk: We don�t need to know what the Pentagon�s thinking is, we can see what it is: Think of something for tomorrow! It�s one day at a time now, everything has fallen aside. Liberation, reconstruction of democracy � it�s finished! There maybe some people like the President who haven�t grasped that fact, but on the ground they know it. The State department, soldiers, most of the British forces there, they speak frankly in private that it�s over, it�s all gone.

So what happens next? There�s got to be an Arab initiative. But god knows how because Arab League is spineless. Iraqi needs Arab forces, not Turkish, they�re not Arabs. It needs Iraqis to come together, not under the auspices of an occupying power, but through their own will. If the Americans leave �which they can�t do- in a generally free Iraqi, without us there, of course we should never have gone there in the first place, the tribal system could provide a form of majlis, a form of representation, which could be moderate and compassionate. It would be with out an American embassy that contains three thousand diplomats, which might become a model for the Middle East. But not with us there, not with us guiding it.

But we are doing everything wrong; everything we do is exacerbating this country towards what could be a civil war, which I suspect some people would like. It�s only a matter of time before we hear our leaders who led us into this appalling war say: We gave them every chance, but the people don�t deserve it. The letters are already coming in to the New York Times and the Herald Tribune saying this � alright, leave them to their own. We did our best, and lost 100s of our own soldiers doing it, and killed 1000s of them at the same time. It�s just another betrayal, just another Middle East betrayal.

Fisk: The problem for the Americans in Iraq is that they�ve got to leave. There�s no future for them now, they�re fighting an insurgency against everybody except the Kurds, so they must leave. And they will leave. But they CAN�T leave, because if they DO leave, the whole power and politics of the United States and this presidency is torn to pieces. You ask about why the Americans are in Iraqi, they�re there for oil, on the grounds that if Iraq exported carrots they wouldn�t be there. I was doing a story about the killing of a westerner on the street. And all of a sudden a US convoy came past, the whole ground shook. I guess two thousand years ago it would have been the Roman Army, and I began to realise then that I was watching the physical symbol of something which drives the US into these adventures, and that is the sheer almost messianic need to project physical power. The need to project it. �We can go to Baghdad, and to show you, we�ll go there.� It didn�t need a political reason � the power IS the reason.

McNaught: It�s power on steroids, isn�t it?

Fisk: It�s bigger than steroids. Power backed up by awesome technology, and hopeless semantics, total injustice and absolute abysmal powers of analysis on the part of decision makers.

McNaught: Well, let�s nail you in your own words. You�re not a polemicist, I�d call you a campaigning journalist � you disagree with that. How do you define the journalism that you practise?

Fisk: I�m a reporter, but I�m a reporter who�s allowed to say what I think.

McNaught: So you should be writing in the opinion columns, not in the news pages?

Fisk: I write in both, I write in the opinion columns, I write in the comment pages, I write in the news pages.

McNaught: But aren�t they two different jobs, and isn�t it dangerous to confuse the two?

Fisk: Why?! Look, everybody I talk to, if I sit down with you over dinner, if I talk to somebody on the train, they have a number of facts and have opinions and they express them. They don�t say: If I say to someone, what�s going on in Iraq, the don�t say, well there were 650 deaths� They say, Well it�s a real mess and here�s why. So if ordinary people can say that, why not journalists? We can�t lie. We can�t say the Americans dropped a bomb on a building when they didn�t. Or that the Palestinians shot an Israeli when they didn�t. We can�t make things up. But surely there must be a way in which a reporter who is honoured, privileged to absorb so much information, to express what he thinks about it.

McNaught: But you put an extra heaped spoonful of passion into it as well.

Fisk: Why not? Why shouldn�t we be passionate people? Why should I see a massacre, why should I see dead bodies, innocent people who have been murdered, and say well, I can�t put my feelings into this story. I�m bloody angry when I see children being killed. And I have every right to put it in my report that this is a savage outrage, and I put it.

McNaught: But aren�t you telling people how to feel?

Fisk: No, I�m telling them how I feel. The reporter is the nerve ending of the newspaper. He�s out there for the newspaper. He�s not out there as a news agency person, he�s not out there as a spokesperson for the government, or for guerrilla armies. He�s out there to say: Look � would you believe what I�ve seen today? The best way of being a reporter, the best way of writing whether it be an opinion piece or a news story with your own passionate feelings in it, is that you�re writing a letter to a friend. You want the readers to be your friend, you want to convince them, so you write a letter to your friend, and that�s what a newspaper reporter should be doing. Not writing a letter looking over his shoulder at the government and press officers.

McNaught: But this gets you hate mail, this gets you death threats. The friend you think you�re writing to is not necessarily that person at the other end.

Fisk: But most of them are. If you look at my mail bag which comes in at just over 260 letters a week, you�re looking at ten or 20 as hate mail. The problem is that the hate mail is incendiary. It�s very nasty, and it�s getting worse.

McNaught: You�ve been bracketed with John Pilger

Fisk: I don�t want to be bracketed with John Pilger..

McNaught: Noam Chomsky�

Fisk: Nor poor old Noam, I know Noam very well.

McNaught: Michael Moore� Are you happy to be in that club?

Fisk: I�m not in a club with anyone. I know Pilger, Chomsky quite well. I don�t practise that sort of journalism; at least I hope I don�t. I just work on my own � I�m me. I work for the Independent. Full stop. I think Pilger is an admirable journalist. I think he�s done excellent reports. I don�t want you to think I�m disparaging him � I just want to be on my own�

McNaught: Have you noticed the interesting use of language in this war, and the wider war on terror?

Fisk: Much much more serious than the fact that governments have adopted it, is that the press have adopted it, that the media have adopted it. When ever you turn on the television you see �War On Terror� at the top. Newspaper headlines on the �War on Terror�. It is not a war on terror; it is a war on America�s enemies. If we want a war on terror we would have an international court, which is what the American�s pulled out of, to try people who use violence in this way. We are fighting America�s enemies, and they are fighting back. And they are going to bring us in on it to if we fight with America. We as journalists should have never used that phrase, because it will now become part of the historical narrative. It�s easy for governments to say �yes we are fighting the war on terror�. Bush said at one point that it might be unending. This is preposterous. They all make out like it�s the Second World War. Nassar was the Mussilini of Cairo, Saddam was the Hitler of Baghdad, and Blair is Churchill. This is ridiculous, it is not the Second World War. Governments and news agencies are trying to frighten people; it is not World War Three. We shouldn�t allow people to say that 9/11 changed the world, it has not.

**** ENDS ****



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Hans Leyendeckers Buch "Die Lügen des Weißen Hauses. Warum Amerika einen Neuanfang braucht“ erscheint im Juni im Rowohlt-Verlag und kostet 14,90 €.

Die Lügen des Weißen Hauses

Thorsten Stegemann 02.06.2004

Hans Leyendecker zieht in seinem neuen Buch eine niederschmetternde Bilanz der Bush-Regierung und erklärt, warum Amerika einen Neuanfang braucht

Wenn die alte Spruchweisheit "Viel Feind - viel Ehr" auch heute noch gilt, stehen die Chancen von George W. Bush, am 2. November noch einmal" zum Präsidenten der Vereinigten Staaten gewählt zu werden, vielleicht gar nicht so schlecht. Nachdem Michael Moore mit seinem Film "Fahrenheit 9/11" beim Filmfestival in Cannes die Goldene Palme gewann, wollen die amerikanischen Filmverleiher den Streifen nun doch in die heimischen Kinos bringen und hoffen, dass die cineastische Abrechnung mit dem ungeliebten Präsidenten über 100 Millionen Dollar einspielen wird.

Die publizistische Einheitsfront, die Bush nach den Anschlägen vom 11. September vor allen kritischen Nachfragen schützte, hat sich längst aufgelöst, die Umfragewerte des republikanischen Amtsinhabers bereiten seinem Wahlkampftross arges Kopfzerbrechen und selbst in Hollywood gehen Stars und Sternchen gleich reihenweise auf Distanz oder sprechen dem demokratischen Herausforderer John Kerry offen ihre Sympathie aus.

Hans Leyendecker, der Leitende Politische Redakteur der Süddeutschen Zeitung [1] versucht in seinem neuen Buch, den Ursachen dieses dramatischen Popularitätsverlustes auf den Grund zu gehen. Er glaubt, dass die Bush-Administration durch die vorsätzliche und mittlerweile in vielen Teilen aufgedeckte Täuschung der Öffentlichkeit jeden Anspruch auf Glaubwürdigkeit verspielt hat. Seine Beweiskette reicht von den legendären Rede, mit der Außenminister Powell den UN-Sicherheitsrat am 5. Februar 2003 von der Notwendigkeit eines Krieges gegen den vermeintlich hochgerüsteten Irak überzeugen wollte, über die abenteuerlichen Bemühungen des "Office of Special Plans“, eine Verbindung zwischen Saddam Hussein und al-Qaida zu konstruieren, bis hin zu gezielten Desinformationen über eine "Niger-Connection“, mit deren Hilfe sich der Irak waffenfähiges Uran aus Afrika beschafft haben sollte, und einem angeblichen Besuch des Attentäters Mohammed Atta beim irakischen Konsul Ahmad Chalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani in Prag.

Interessanter als diese nicht immer gerade neuwertigen "Lügen des Weißen Hauses" ist die Schilderung des geistigen Klimas, dem Amerika und der Rest der Welt nicht nur die aktuelle Regierungsmannschaft, sondern auch eine neokonservative Revolution verdanken, deren Ausmaß und Bedeutung hierzulande zweifellos unterschätzt wird. Leyendecker beschreibt, wie die Ideen der neuen, auf politischen Einfluss und wirtschaftliche Effizienz hinarbeitenden Think Tanks in praktizierte Weltpolitik verwandelt werden konnten, und weist überzeugend nach, dass sich die Protagonisten der Bush-Administration schon vor Regierungsantritt – etwa in dem "Project for the New American Century" – für ein Recht auf präventive Selbstverteidigung stark machten und ihre Konzentration dabei immer auch auf den Irak richteten.

Darüber hinaus geht der Autor den persönlichen und wirtschaftlichen Beziehungen nach, welche die wichtigsten Akteure der US-Regierung – George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleeza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld und Colin Powell – seit Jahren und Jahrzehnten verbinden. Mit Telepolis sprach Hans Leyendecker über die wichtigsten Thesen seines im Juni erscheinenden Buches.

Herr Leyendecker, Sie selbst zitieren Niccolò Machiavelli, der in "Il Principe" bereits 1513 die Ansicht vertrat, ein Fürst müsse im Notfall imstande sein, "Milde, Treue, Menschlichkeit, Redlichkeit und Frömmigkeit" in ihr Gegenteil zu verkehren. An diese Vorgabe haben sich mehr als genug Politiker gehalten. Sind die Lügen der Bush-Regierung unter diesem Aspekt nicht lediglich eine Randnotiz der Weltgeschichte?

Hans Leyendecker: Immerhin handelt es sich um die wichtigste und einzige Führungsmacht, die sich mit einem Teil ihrer Verbündeten überworfen und die Vereinten Nationen diskreditiert hat. Die Bush-Regierung stützt ihren imperialen Anspruch auf falsche Behauptungen und gefälschte Beweise. Das ist schon eine ganz andere Kategorie als kleine Vertuschungen oder Wahlkampflügen, an die wir uns mittlerweile gewöhnt haben. Darüber hinaus hat sich auch unsere Situation durch die Politik der USA dramatisch verändert. Wir müssen praktisch überall mit einem Terroranschlag rechnen, und die Position von al-Qaida ist durch den Irakkrieg noch einmal gestärkt worden.

Sie beschreiben, dass sich in den USA ein neokonservatives Netzwerk von Stiftungen, Institutionen, Universitäten und Think Tanks gebildet hat. Ist der Einfluss und die Durchsetzungsfähigkeit dieses Netzwerkes von den Demokraten unterschätzt worden?

Hans Leyendecker: Ja, daran gibt es keinen Zweifel. Eine so effektive roll-back-Bewegung hatten die Demokraten nicht auf der Rechnung. Die neokonservativen Think Tanks sind nicht nur entschlossener als in früheren Jahren, sie werden auch viel besser unterstützt. Paul Wolfowitz spielt in dieser Entwicklung eine zentrale Rolle, weil er tatsächlich eine neue Weltordnung anstrebt. Da geht es nicht nur um geopolitische Überlegungen, in der Person Wolfowitz kommt auch ein religiöses Element zum Tragen, das idealistische Züge besitzt, die wir uns in Europa kaum vorstellen können. Er und andere Mitglieder der Bush-Regierung sind ernsthaft der Meinung, dass sie sich um die Welt kümmern müssen, wenn Gott gerade keine Zeit hat, und sie halten Amerika natürlich für ein auserwähltes Volk.

Welche politischen, wirtschaftlichen und kulturellen Ziele verfolgt die neokonservative Bewegung?

Hans Leyendecker: Amerika gibt die Regeln vor, weil die Regeln, die Amerika vorgibt, gut sind. Daneben kann sich durchaus ein freier Markt entwickeln, auf dem die Nationen einen mehr oder weniger fairen Wettbewerb austragen. Außerdem wird eine völlige Neuordnung des Nahen Ostens angestrebt. Im eigenen Land sollen Wertvorstellungen etabliert werden, die sich, das zeigt die Diskussion um Abtreibungen, gleichgeschlechtliche Eheschließungen usw., nun ihrerseits dem Fundamentalismus nähern.

Warum haben diese Ideen, die doch zunächst von einer Bevölkerungsmehrheit geteilt wurden, so schnell an Attraktivität verloren?

Hans Leyendecker: Weil sie mit der Realität nie etwas zu tun hatten, und das merken die Leute jetzt, wenn auch mit einer gewissen Verzögerung. Die Bush-Regierung war davon überzeugt, dass die amerikanischen Soldaten im Irak als Befreier gefeiert und sich daraus Dominoeffekte ergeben würden, die beispielsweise auch das Regime im Iran zu Fall bringen könnten. Diese Hoffnungen haben sich in ihr Gegenteil verkehrt, die Einteilung der Welt in Gut und Böse funktioniert eben nicht so, wie man sich das in Washington vorgestellt hat.

Haben vielleicht auch die amerikanischen Medien in den vergangenen drei Jahren einiges dazugelernt?

Hans Leyendecker: Zumindest verhalten sie sich anders als nach dem 11. September. Die letzte Bush-Rede wurde von den großen TV-Sendern schon gar nicht mehr übertragen und lief nur noch im Kabelfernsehen. Da wird längst nicht mehr jedes Präsidentenwort begierig aufgenommen. Trotzdem sind die kleineren TV-Anstalten und Radiosender natürlich noch fest in der Hand der Neokonservativen, aber selbst sie gehen jetzt gelegentlich auf Distanz zur Bush-Regierung. Natürlich würden sie nicht auf den Gedanken kommen, ihre Ziele grundsätzlich in Frage zu stellen, aber einige sind der Meinung, dass es dieser Präsident einfach nicht kann.

Sie fordern in Ihrem Buch einen Neuanfang für Amerika. Wäre der gewährleistet, wenn John Kerry die Präsidentschaftswahl gewinnt?

Hans Leyendecker: Zumindest wäre das eine Chance für einen Neuanfang. Die Positionen von Bush und Kerry sind zwar in vielen Bereichen identisch, und Kerry ist sicher auch nicht der optimale Herausforderer, zumal er mittlerweile alles zu allem gesagt hat - und auch schon das Gegenteil davon. Trotzdem können die Amerikaner nur schwer mit einer Situation umgehen, in der sie nicht mehr geliebt werden und sich überall entschuldigen müssen. Davon abgesehen braucht das Land dringend eine andere Wirtschaftspolitik, unter Bush wurde der Staatshaushalt praktisch ruiniert.

Der Soziologe Dan Clawson behauptet: "Tatsächlich kann man gar nicht von zwei Parteien in den USA sprechen, es gibt nur eine Partei, die Partei des Geldes, die von den Reichen und von den Unternehmen dominiert wird." Halten Sie diese Behauptung für ganz unrealistisch?

Hans Leyendecker: Nein, natürlich nicht, und deshalb darf man auch keine substantielle Kehrtwende erwarten. Beide Kandidaten werden von sehr einflussreichen Gruppen unterstützt, vermutlich kann Bush rund 200 Millionen Dollar ausgeben. Dafür wird man sich nach der Wahl wieder revanchieren.

Ein Journalist arbeitet selten mit Fußnoten, aber hin und wieder würde der Leser doch gerne wissen, woher Sie Ihre Informationen beziehen. Der Verweis auf Geheimdienstquellen, die ungern genannt werden möchten, ist verständlich, aber natürlich nicht nachprüfbar. Liegt da nicht auch eine Gefahr für die eigene Glaubwürdigkeit?

Hans Leyendecker: Es ist ja kein Enthüllungsbuch und erhebt auch keinen Anspruch in dieser Richtung. Es handelt sich um ein Buch für den deutschen Markt, das zu erklären versucht, was in den USA gerade vor sich geht – und zwar ohne Hass und Verschwörungstheorien, wie sie Michael Moore derzeit wieder verbreitet. Ich halte seine angeblichen Enthüllungen für absurden Quatsch und versuche auf der Basis von Gesprächen, Zeitungsberichten, Fachbüchern und wissenschaftlichen Studien eine sachliche Geschichte zu erzählen. Diese Quellen sind angegeben, dass es daneben auch solche gibt, die nicht offengelegt werden können, liegt in der Natur der Sache. Sie spielten für dieses Projekt aber nur eine untergeordnete Rolle.

Hans Leyendeckers Buch "Die Lügen des Weißen Hauses. Warum Amerika einen Neuanfang braucht“ erscheint im Juni im Rowohlt-Verlag und kostet 14,90 €.

Links

[1] http://http://www.sueddeutsche.de

Telepolis Artikel-URL: http://www.telepolis.de/deutsch/inhalt/buch/17513/1.html

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une 2, 2004
Envoy Urges Americans to Work With Anti-Occupation Iraqis
By DEXTER FILKINS

BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 2 — The United Nations special envoy called on American officials today to broaden their negotiations to include Iraqis who oppose the occupation, and he suggested that his own authority in shaping the new government had been sharply limited by American officials.

Lakhdar Brahimi, who wrapped up a nearly monthlong visit here, suggested that the Americans were pursuing a strategy in Iraq that relied far too heavily on force and not enough on subtly and persuasion. Mr. Brahimi seemed to stopping just short of calling on them to open talks with the insurgents.

"Why is there, what is, I think, to use a neutral term, there is this insurgency?" Mr. Brahimi said, addressing reporters in both Arabic and English. "I think it`s a little bit too easy to call everybody a terrorist. And I think if you find out that there are people who are not terrorists, who are respectable, genuine Iraqi patriots, you must find a way of talking to them."

Mr. Brahimi suggested he might have done things differently if he had been given a freer hand in setting up a new government, which was unveiled Tuesday. Asked about the selection of the prime minister and the president, both of which became divisive affairs, he alluded to the role of L. Paul Bremer III, the chief American administrator here.

"The government of Iraq, I sometimes say — I`m sure he doesn`t mind my saying it — Mr. Bremer is the dictator of Iraq," Mr. Brahimi said. "He has the money. He has the signature. Nothing happens without his agreement in this country."

Mr. Brahimi did not get into details, although people close to him suggested last week that he had reluctantly agreed to Mr. Alawi only after American officials had pushed him. Mr. Brahimi was said to be worried that Mr. Alawi`s relationship to the Central Intelligence Agency, which developed in the 1990`s he was trying to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein, might undermine his credibility in the eyes of the Iraqi people.

"The Americans were governing this country, so their view was certainly taken into consideration," Mr. Brahimi said. "Whether Dr. Alawi was their choice, whether they maneuvered to get him, you know, in position, that, I think, you better ask them."

American officials have offered few details about their precise role in choosing the new Iraqi government, which is supposed to take over when Iraqi sovereignty is restored on June 30 and guide the country until democratic elections are held, most likely in January 2005.

"We were expressing views and we were coming up with names, but it was collaborative," was how a senior American official characterized the negotiations in a meeting with reporters Tuesday.

Mr. Brahimi`s remarks seemed to portray some disagreement with American officials, not just on the individual selections for the new government but also on broader issues as well. In a statement, Mr. Brahimi alluded to the suffering of the Iraqi people as a result of the American invasion and its chaotic aftermath.

As for Mr. Brahimi`s suggestion that the Americans talk to more Iraqis opposed to the occupation, the Americans appear to have already begun moving in that direction. In Falluja, the scene of heavy fighting in April, American commanders set up a security force composed almost entirely of former Republican Guard soldiers and anti-American insurgents. The city has been mostly peaceful since then, although it is not clear how much control the Americans exercise over the city itself.

In southern Iraq, American commanders said recently they would consider inviting some members of the Mahdi Army, with whom they have been fighting pitched battles, into Iraqi security forces.

With violence continuing around the country, Mr. Brahimi said he was concerned about the ability of the Iraqi government and the United Nations to set up a workable election system if the fighting did not subside.

"If security does not improve significantly over the next few months, there will be a problem," he said. "What I have been told is that there is every reason to believe and hope that security will improve significantly by the end of the summer."

Mr. Brahimi did not elaborate on the basis of his prediction. American officials here have said repeatedly that they expect the insurgency to intensify as the transfer of sovereignty on June 30 nears, and possibly to continue at a high level for some time after that.

Mr. Brahimi said he had met with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country`s most powerful Shiite leader, and that he "kept in touch with him throughout" the process of selecting the new Iraqi government. Mr. Brahimi said he did not seek Ayatollah Sistani`s approval for the new government.

"I think he made it very clear that it was not his role to participate in selecting the government in one way or another," he said. "What he was worried about were a number of things that had to do with the overall image that the government would have."

As it happened, one of the country`s Shiite parties, the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, released a statement today in which party leaders expressed "reservations" about the way in which the selection process for the new government had ended with the "marginalization and exclusion" of what it called popular Islamic leaders.

The statement did not provide details, but it appeared to allude to reports of heavy-handed efforts to ensure that the new government was friendly and compatible to America interests.

Later in the day, Dr. Alawi held his first cabinet meeting, inside the American-controlled Green Zone. Much of the discussion focused on the how much authority the Iraqi government would have over American forces based in the country. That issue is currently being discussed at the United Nations, where a resolution authorizing the presence of America troops is expected to be voted on soon.

One of the new members of the government made it clear where the new government stood.

"Of course we asked for full sovereignty," said Adel Abdul Mahdi, the finance minister and a member of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. "Iraqis insist on handling security by themselves."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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une 3, 2004
Bush Finds a Lawyer to Use if Called in C.I.A. Leak Case
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON, June 2 - President Bush has met with a private lawyer whom he intends to hire to represent him if he is questioned as part of a grand jury investigation into the public disclosure of a C.I.A. undercover officer`s identity, the White House said Wednesday.

Mr. Bush met recently with the Washington lawyer, Jim Sharp, to consult with him about the case, the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said, confirming a report on "CBS Evening News.``

"The president has had discussions with Mr. Sharp, and in the event he would need his advice, the president would likely retain him," Mr. McClellan said in a telephone interview.

"The president has stated on numerous occasions that he wants the White House to fully cooperate, and that would include himself," he added. "He wants the investigation to come to a successful conclusion."

Federal prosecutors are seeking to determine who disclosed the identity of Valerie Plame, a C.I.A. officer, to the syndicated columnist Robert Novak for a column he wrote last summer. Disclosure of the identity of an undercover officer for the Central Intelligence Agency can be a federal crime.

It was unclear on Wednesday night why Mr. Bush waited until what appears to be the last stages of the investigation into the leak before he consulted with a lawyer. One administration official speculated that the president must have had some indication that investigators now want to question him.

The case unfolded after Ms. Plame`s husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador, publicly questioned the president`s assertion in the 2003 State of the Union address that Saddam Hussein had sought to purchase uranium in Africa. Mr. Wilson`s statements led to a White House admission that the evidence behind the statement was insufficient, and probably wrong, and that the C.I.A. had successfully cautioned the White House against making such statements in another speech the president had given in the fall of 2002.

Mr. Wilson and some Democrats have charged that the White House leaked Ms. Plame`s identity as a way of retaliating against Mr. Wilson.

Mr. Bush`s decision to consider hiring his own lawyer in the case surprised many law enforcement officials and political figures who have followed the politically charged case for months.

While Mr. Wilson has mentioned several prominent White House advisers - including Karl Rove, I. Lewis Libby and Elliott Abrams - as possible sources of the leak, the president himself has not been seen as a potential target of the investigation.

He could, however, become a witness if prosecutors believe he had information about the events that led to the disclosure of Ms. Plame`s name or if he had personal records that might aid in the inquiry.

Randall Samborn, a spokesman for Patrick Fitzgerald, the United States attorney in Chicago who is acting as a special counsel in the investigation, declined to comment on the developments.

Mr. Sharp, who represented Gen. Richard V. Secord of the Air Force in the Iran-contra affair but is not widely known in Washington legal circles, could not be reached for comment late Wednesday.

The Justice Department named Mr. Fitzgerald to lead the investigation last December when Attorney General John Ashcroft withdrew from oversight of the case after Democrats charged for months that his close ties to the White House posed a conflict of interest.

The developments on Wednesday came at a time when Mr. Fitzgerald`s investigation has shown signs of movement. The grand jury recently subpoenaed journalists from NBC and Time magazine to testify about the leak - a move that lawyers for the journalists said they would fight. Mr. Fitzgerald has kept a tight seal on the progress of his investigation, and legal observers are split over whether the subpoenas signal that he may be nearing an indictment or whether the investigation has hit a wall and he is seeking information from reporters as a last resort.

Senator Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat who has led the calls for an aggressive investigation into the leak, said after word of Mr. Bush`s legal consultation: "I`ve always said we should find the wrongdoers no matter who is implicated. I have confidence that Special Counsel Fitzgerald will follow the path no matter where it leads."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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une 3, 2004
Polygraph Testing Starts at Pentagon in Chalabi Inquiry
By DAVID JOHNSTON and JAMES RISEN

WASHINGTON, June 2 — Federal investigators have begun administering polygraph examinations to civilian employees at the Pentagon to determine who may have disclosed highly classified intelligence to Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi who authorities suspect turned the information over to Iran, government officials said Wednesday.

The polygraph examinations, which are being conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, are focused initially on a small number of Pentagon employees who had access to the information that was compromised. American intelligence officials have said that Mr. Chalabi informed Iran that the United States had broken the secret codes used by Iranian intelligence to transmit confidential messages to posts around the world.

Mr. Chalabi has denied the charge. On Wednesday, his lawyers made public a letter they said they had sent to Attorney General John Ashcroft and F.B.I. Director Robert S. Mueller III repeating Mr. Chalabi`s denials and demanding that the Justice Department investigate the disclosure of the accusations against Mr. Chalabi.

The lawyers, John J. E. Markham II and Collette C. Goodman, said in the letter, "The charges made against Dr. Chalabi — both the general and the specific ones are false."

They also said, "We ask that you undertake an immediate investigation to find and hold accountable those who are responsible for these false leaks."

Officials would not identify who has taken polygraph examinations or even who has been interviewed by F.B.I. counterespionage agents. It could not be determined whether anyone has declined to submit to a polygraph test.

No one has been charged with any wrongdoing or identified as a suspect, but officials familiar with the investigation say that they are working through a list of people and are likely to interview senior Pentagon officials.

The F.B.I. is looking at officials who both knew of the code-breaking operation and had dealings with Mr. Chalabi, either in Washington or Baghdad, the government officials said. Information about code-breaking work is considered among the most confidential material in the government and is handled under tight security and with very limited access.

But a wider circle of officials could have inferred from intelligence reports about Iran that the United States had access to the internal communications of Iran`s spy service, intelligence officials said. That may make it difficult to identify the source of any leak.

Government officials say they started the investigation of Pentagon officials after learning that Mr. Chalabi had told the Baghdad station chief of Iran`s intelligence service that the United States was reading their communications. Mr. Chalabi, American officials say, gave the information to the Iranians about six weeks ago, apparently because he wanted to ensure that his secret conversations with the Iranians were not revealed to the Americans.

But the Iranian official apparently did not immediately believe Mr. Chalabi, because he sent a cable back to Tehran detailing his conversation with Mr. Chalabi, American officials said. That cable was intercepted and read by the United States, the officials said.

Mr. Chalabi and his supporters argue that the accusations against him are part of a C.I.A.-inspired campaign to discredit him. His backers have been dismayed that the Bush administration recently divorced itself from Mr. Chalabi and his group, the Iraqi National Congress. They contend that the move was instigated by the C.I.A., which they say is now wielding intercepted Iranian communications as a weapon against Mr. Chalabi.

Richard N. Perle, the former chairman of the Defense Policy Board and an influential Chalabi supporter, said Wednesday that the notion that Mr. Chalabi would compromise the American code-breaking operation "doesn`t pass the laugh test." Mr. Perle said it was more plausible that the Iranians, knowing already that the United States was reading its communications, planted the damning information about Mr. Chalabi to persuade Washington to distance itself from Mr. Chalabi.

"The whole thing hinges on the idea that the Baghdad station chief of the MOIS commits one of the most amazing trade craft errors I`ve ever heard of," Mr. Perle said, referring to Iran`s Ministry of Intelligence and Security. He said it defied belief that a seasoned intelligence operative would disclose a conversation with Mr. Chalabi using the same communications channel that he had just been warned was compromised.

"You have to believe that the station chief blew a gift from the gods because of rank incompetence," Mr. Perle said. "I don`t believe it, and I don`t think any other serious intelligence professional would either."

Mr. Chalabi is not a focus of the inquiry, but senior law enforcement officials said he could be investigated in the future. They said a decision on that could be left to the new Iraqi government.

In the 1990`s, the Iraqi National Congress was part of a C.I.A. covert action program designed to undermine Saddam Hussein`s rule. But Mr. Chalabi had a falling out with the C.I.A., and agency officials concluded that he was untrustworthy. He subsequently forged an alliance with major conservative Republicans in Washington. When President Bush took office, Mr. Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress were embraced by senior policy makers at the Pentagon, which became his main point of contact in the American government.

In a telephone interview on Wednesday, Mr. Markham, one of Mr. Chalabi`s lawyers, said that Mr. Chalabi had been subjected to increasing "adverse comments" by American officials as his disagreements with the Bush administration over the future of Iraq had intensified. Nevertheless, Mr. Markham said, Mr. Chalabi "is very happy to come to the United States to appear before Congress or be interviewed by legitimate investigative agents in this matter."

The lawyers` letter said that "Dr. Chalabi would never endanger the national security of the U.S."

"Those responsible for such leaks, however, we submit are the same individuals within the U.S. government who have undermined the President`s policies in Iraq and efforts to bring democracy and stability to that country, and are using Dr. Chalabi as a scapegoat for their own failures that have cost this country dearly in the past year in Iraq," the letter said.

Last month, American and Iraqi forces raided Mr. Chalabi`s Baghdad compound and carted away computers, overturned furniture and ransacked his offices. The raid was said to be part of an investigation into charges that Mr. Chalabi`s aides, including a leading lieutenant, had been involved in kidnapping, torture, embezzlement and corruption in Iraq. It is still unclear what the connection might be between that raid and the continuing counterintelligence investigation of the possible leaks of secrets to Iran.

Richard A. Oppel Jr. contributed reporting for this article.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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une 2, 2004
Q&A: Bush vs. Europe

From the Council on Foreign Relations, June 2, 2004

Charles A. Kupchan, senior fellow and director of Europe Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, says differences over Iraq will dominate President Bush`s meetings this month with the Group of Eight (G-8), the European Union, and the NATO alliance. In fact, Kupchan, who has predicted that the NATO alliance would collapse by the end of the decade, says that anti-Bush sentiments in Europe have been transformed into anti-Americanism. That won`t change, he says, no matter who is president in 2005. "I think a Kerry victory would put the relationship on a better trajectory, but I think people are being naïve if they think it will enable us to go back to the good old days" of transatlantic harmony, he says. "Those days are gone."

Kupchan was director of European affairs at the National Security Council during the Clinton administration and is now an associate professor at Georgetown University. He was interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor for cfr.org, on June 1, 2004.

President Bush has a heavy load of high-level meetings this month: Iraq coalition partners [June 5-6], the G-8 [June 8-10], the European Union [June 26], and NATO [June 28-29]. What thematic points will be raised at these sessions?

I think the month will be dominated by developments in Iraq. Try as [leaders] might to put other issues on the agenda, the handover of power [to Iraq`s interim government on June 30], the nature of the U.N. Security Council resolution and the United Nation`s involvement in Iraq, the potential involvement of NATO, and the struggle to bring greater security to the country will be the main themes. I think the G-8 [meeting at Sea Island, Ga.,] will, as much as possible, try to look over the horizon and focus on the Greater Middle East Initiative [designed to spur economic and political reform], rather than Iraq itself, since the G-8 tends to be more economic and political in nature. The other summits will be more security-oriented.

There has been talk of having NATO play a role in Iraq but that hasn`t seemed to go anywhere. Now that the United States is turning over sovereignty to the Iraqis, will that make it easier to reach agreements with recalcitrant allies like France or Germany?

It will not hurt. Will it create a dramatically different atmosphere and enable [French] President [Jacques] Chirac and [German] Chancellor [Gerhard] Schroeder to move forward in a tangible way? I`m dubious. They`ve both come out, rather abruptly, in the last week or so to say they`re not sending troops to Iraq. They`re not going to block the NATO mission, but they won`t participate.

You`ve written about the demise of the NATO alliance over the next decade or so. In the Council`s independent task force report, for which you served as executive director, there were calls for a greater sense of urgency to keep the Atlantic partnership alive. Which of the two trends has more weight now: the slow erosion of the partnership or the need to pull it together?

Both trends are in play, and there are sentiments on both sides of the Atlantic that are pro-Atlanticist and reflect great concern about what`s happening. I would express my personal anxieties about the direction we are heading on several key fronts. One is that I am skeptical that NATO will take on significant responsibility in Iraq, despite the fact that Bush will push for it at the Istanbul [NATO] summit. My sense is [NATO`s refusal] will leave a bad taste in the mouths of Americans because the United States is in trouble right now. It is up to its eyeballs in Iraq, and the Europeans, collectively through NATO, will not help. That means, over time, the United States will pay less attention to NATO.

The second change is longer term. I detect that what used to be anti-Bush sentiment is becoming anti-American sentiment. And there is a diminishing social foundation for the alliance on both sides of the Atlantic.

Can you embellish that last thought? Some say that, if [presumptive Democratic nominee] John Kerry wins the presidential election, the Europeans would be more inclined to revive the alliance.

There are two dimensions to the problem. One is that the generation that held the Atlantic partnership together during the last decade tends to be the older generation that oversaw the rebuilding of Europe and managed the Cold War--that would be the generation of [former President] George Bush, the father, and [former German Chancellor] Helmut Kohl. The new generation does not contain what I would call default internationalists or default Atlanticists. Take for example Gerhard Schroeder or George W. Bush; they bring to the table none of the Atlanticist spirit of their elders.

If you look at younger Europeans, many of them are coming of age with anti-American attitudes, and that does not auger well for the health of the Atlantic partnership. On this side of the Atlantic, I don`t sense that people are anti-European, but they simply don`t care. They will not look to Europe as an abiding partner. The other dimension is that if there is a broader sense in Europe that the United States veered off course, I think even with a change in government skepticism in Europe will remain high.

Europeans and some Americans overestimate the degree to which there will be a major shift in U.S. foreign policy under Kerry. There`s no question in my mind that the rough edges would disappear and that a Kerry administration would reach out to allies in ways that the Bush administration has not, but as far as I can tell, there isn`t a huge difference in their approaches to Iraq. That problem will be with us no matter who wins in November. And the Kerry administration would likely continue to prosecute the struggle against terrorism, even if in a manner that would, perhaps, be more compatible with Europe`s approach.

It`s been quite evident for some time that the United States and Europe see the major Middle East issues through somewhat different prisms. The United States has tended to be more supportive of Israel, and the Europeans have tended to be more critical. Do you agree with that, and will that color discussion about calls for political and economic reform in the Middle East?

I do agree with it. The differences between Europe and the United States on what`s called the Palestine-Israel problem are as profound as on any issue. Indeed, I would say it`s the one issue on which the approaches of the two sides are the furthest apart. I do think, though, that what will happen with the two difficult issues on the Middle East agenda, Palestine-Israel and Iraq, is that they will be set aside for the purposes of focusing on areas where we agree. And that`s, in general, the agenda for long-term political and economic reform.

The Arab countries have made it easier with their generalized statement at the Arab League summit, which called for reforms in their own societies.

This part of the month`s agenda will be the one area where there will be success in a tangible way. That`s because there`s nothing to disagree about. Who wouldn`t like to see Kuwait, Iraq, and Pakistan be liberal democracies by the year 2025? It`s so far off and it`s such a long-term objective.

That`s a rather sobering evaluation of the situation. Will the EU-U.S. meeting follow much the same agenda as the G-8 meeting?

It will be more narrowly focused on the EU-U.S. agenda, but it will cover a lot of the same ground as the G-8. There may be, in the EU context, a discussion of the trade issues that are on the table. By in large, I think the month will be dominated by the Middle East and efforts to try to get the United States and the Europeans to see more eye to eye.

Why is it that the United States is so unpopular among the younger generations in Europe? You would think the broad cultural umbrella of Western society would pull everyone together.

There`s always been a certain anti-Americanism in Europe that stems from America`s power, and it`s been there right through the Cold War. But I think it`s become more acute for three different reasons. One is the erosion of liberal internationalism in this country and the unraveling of the bipartisan coalition that supported liberal internationalism from the [President Franklin D.] Roosevelt administration during World War II to [President Bill] Clinton. That`s given American policy a much harder edge to it, an edge that rubs the Europeans the wrong way.

The second is Iraq. The Iraq war has transformed European perceptions of the United States and created a situation in which American power has been defrocked of its legitimacy in the eyes of Europeans. And that is especially true in the wake of the prisoner abuse scandal, which essentially dried up what little European sympathy remained for the Iraq war.

The final point I would point to is that European politicians, rather than fighting anti-Americanism, have been using it for electoral gain. That has created a political and social momentum that is quite worrisome. Someone like Schroeder deliberately campaigned on a platform calling for standing up to Washington because he was lagging in the polls, and it worked. But that`s dangerous because it may mean that we have a new generation of Europeans who see the United States as the principal threat to international stability.

That was 2002. I had the impression that the Germans had changed their position.

I was in Germany 10 days ago in Göttingen, a small but famous university town, and I talked to an American who`d been living there for over a decade and whose kids go to the local school. He said for the first time in his life his children come home from school upset because they are isolated and taunted at school for being Americans. That`s pretty serious stuff. And it`s not just Germany. Look at what`s happening in Italy as we speak. The center-left is gearing up for the elections to the European Parliament later this month and are running on one main platform: let`s get out of Iraq.

The same platform that tilted the election in Spain. Do you think [Italian] Prime Minister [Silvio] Berlusconi is in trouble?

I think if the elections deal the center-right a huge blow, it could shake his coalition. He now has a pretty strong coalition in the parliament, so he`s in pretty decent shape. But if the election gives a huge boost to the center-left, you could see some of his coalition partners defect. Then he is in big trouble.

Does Bush`s trip to Italy [on June 4] help Berlusconi or hurt him?

The Italians are somewhat schizophrenic. They are anti-war, but they generally like Berlusconi`s cozy relationship with Bush, and they generally remain pro-American, though as we`ve been talking about, that`s changing.

For the record, are you supporting Kerry or Bush, or are you neutral?

I am a Kerry supporter.

But you don`t think Kerry will profoundly change the transatlantic relationship?

I think a Kerry victory would put the relationship on a better trajectory, but I think people are being naïve if they think it will enable us to go back to the good old days. Those days are gone.

Copyright 2004

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Bei Nachwahlen für`s House wurde zum 2. mal ein Demokrat gewählt.

June 3, 2004
The Voters in South Dakota Send a Woman to Washington for the First Time
By STEPHEN KINZER

ARKER, S.D., June 2 - Electing Stephanie Herseth on Tuesday to fill a vacant House seat, South Dakota voters sent a woman to Congress for the first time. Some said they also sent a message to President Bush about his handling of the war in Iraq.

"The president got us into something awful over there, and I don`t know how we`re going to get out," Eleanor Nold said after she cast her ballot at the Turner County Courthouse here. "It`s really an awful situation. It can`t help but influence the way you vote."

Of about 80 people who voted at the stately brick courthouse in the midmorning hours, 9 said they had chosen their candidate partly because they wanted to let the Bush administration know they were unhappy with its Iraq policies. They and others like them may have helped seal the victory for Ms. Herseth, a Democrat.

South Dakota`s secretary of state, Chris Nelson, said the "final but unofficial" vote total showed Ms. Herseth winning 131,491 votes to 128,722 for her Republican opponent, Larry Diedrich.

"This election has high stakes for both parties at the national level," Ms. Herseth, 33, said shortly before the polls closed on Tuesday. "It`s a chance to gauge the mood for change."

In Washington, Democrats and Republicans argued over whether Ms. Herseth`s victory, which followed another Democratic win in a special House election in Kentucky in February, had any implications in the fight for control of the House.

Both races took place in Bush strongholds, leading Representative Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, and Representative Robert T. Matsui, who is chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, to predict that voters will turn Republicans out of office in November.

"There is a national trend throughout the country in which people want change," Mr. Matsui said.

Though some Republicans privately expressed concern about back-to-back losses in favorable territory, Representative Thomas M. Reynolds, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, cautioned against reading too much into the Herseth victory.

"It was very much a local race run on local issues," Mr. Reynolds said. In a reference to the two senators from South Dakota, both Democrats, he added, "South Dakotans clearly do not have a problem voting for Democrats at the federal level, and this race is no different."

Here in South Dakota, Turner County voters strongly supported President Bush four years ago, giving him 2,514 votes to 1,414 for his Democratic opponent, Al Gore. Tuesday`s Congressional election was much closer, with Ms. Herseth winning 1,604 votes in the county to 1,759 for Mr. Diedrich.

Voters who oppose Mr. Bush`s handling of Iraq naturally gravitated toward Ms. Herseth because she is a Democrat. She steadfastly refused to criticize Mr. Bush`s Iraq policy, however, so those who supported it also said they felt comfortable voting for her.

Sarah Ebeling, who edits Parker`s weekly newspaper, The New Era, said she believed the American occupation of Iraq was necessary "to prevent another 9/11." But she said she voted for Ms. Herseth because "it`ll be great for South Dakota to have someone who`s so bright and appealing, and who I think is going to make a very big splash in Washington."

"Stephanie`s personal appeal is definitely her biggest asset, but the Iraq thing is also part of it," Ms. Ebeling said. "She doesn`t talk about it because she doesn`t have to. People are so upset with the way Bush is handling everything that I really think it`s playing a role in this election."

Voters who cast ballots for Ms. Herseth in Sioux Falls, the state`s largest city, said they chose her mainly for her personal qualities. Several said the situation in Iraq also influenced their choice.

"We`re in a big mess over there," Dale Wojahn, a 43-year-old businessman, said after voting at Memorial Middle School in Sioux Falls. "No one in Washington planned for what was going to happen. That was a big mistake."

The House seat Ms. Herseth won is South Dakota`s only one, and if she can hold it in November, she will be in a strong position to win a Senate seat the next time one is vacant. Some Democrats here believe she is on the brink of political stardom.

"She has incredible potential," said State Representative Ben Nesselhof of Vermillion. Jason Schulte, executive director of the South Dakota Democratic Party, said, "Her possibilities on the national scene are endless."

"You get the sense that nothing is out of reach for her," Mr. Schulte said.

In the November election Ms. Herseth is likely to face Mr. Diedrich again. That could make this state a major political battleground, since the Senate minority leader, Tom Daschle, will also be running for re-election. Some Republicans have suggested that Ms. Herseth`s victory may make it more difficult for Mr. Daschle to win, since the state`s voters, most of whom are Republicans, might want at least one Republican representative in Washington. But Mr. Schulte dismissed that notion.

"People here tend to vote for the person, not the party," he said. "Daschle`s race will be close, but I don`t think what is happening with Stephanie will affect it one way or another."

Ms. Herseth is not the only Midwestern Democrat to evoke extraordinary enthusiasm in this political season. In Illinois, Barack Obama is heavily favored to become only the third African-American to serve in the Senate since Reconstruction, and pundits are reaching for superlatives to describe his political skills and future prospects.

In the campaign, Ms. Herseth positioned herself as a fiscal conservative, but also supported abortion rights. Her youth and freshness, which grated on some older voters, made her extremely popular among women. Mr. Diedrich brought the first lady, Laura Bush, here to campaign for him, partly in an effort to win more women to his side.

One young woman, asked Tuesday why she was standing on a Sioux Falls corner waving a Herseth sign in the Election Day chill, replied, "It feels like girl power."

Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed reporting from Washington for this article.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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June 3, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Al Qaeda`s Small Victories Add Up
By ANTHONY H. CORDESMAN

WASHINGTON

Al Qaeda carried out its most successful attack since 9/11 last weekend, and much of that success was a result of the American reaction. It was the second time in a month that the terrorists struck at a soft target in Saudi Arabia`s petroleum industry. Twenty-two people — Saudis, an American and other foreigners — lost their lives, and this is truly tragic. But in the grand scheme of things, it was a small-scale attack, and should not have been treated as more. The terrorists did not strike at the Saudi petroleum industry; not a barrel of export capacity was lost.

The real target was the willingness of foreigners to stay in the country — a direct blow at the economic underpinnings of Saudi Arabia and its ability to attract the investment it needs for reform. Al Qaeda was simultaneously attacking the Saudi regime and its efforts to modernize the country and rebuild ties to the United States.

Unfortunately, the official American reaction was to panic — just as it was in early May when five Western contractors were killed. The United States did not call for new Saudi security efforts, offer aid in counterterrorism, or try to fight back. Instead, the American Embassy in Riyadh decided to forget about American investment and trade by calling for all Americans to leave the country.

This comes at a time of record high oil prices, in a country whose oil production is critical to the American and global economies and to every American business, and in a region with 60 percent of the world`s proven oil reserves. All Persian Gulf countries have their own Islamist extremist cells. If Saudi Arabia proves vulnerable, they are next. Is it any wonder oil prices soared further this week — if the Americans are going to cut and run whenever things get messy, why should oil traders have any faith in the continued supply?

It is all very well to talk about a global war on terrorism. To win it, however, you have to fight it — on every front. We know that by the time of the 9/11 attacks, some 70,000 to 100,000 young men had been through some form of Islamist training camp, and that Al Qaeda had affiliates or some kind of tie to movements in more than 60 countries. In the years that have followed, the United States defeated the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, but failed to capture many of the leaders or secure the country, and has not completed the nation-building that could bring true victory. The dispersal of terrorists has destabilized western Pakistan, and the resulting political struggle has strengthened Islamists in the rest of the country and created a new regional threat.

Yet instead of wrapping up that fight, Washington invaded Iraq. While getting rid of Saddam Hussein was wonderful for the Iraqi people, there is still no evidence that Iraq was ever a center of terrorism or had strong ties to Islamist extremists. As in Afghanistan, we failed to secure the country after our military success and have been far to slow to create a meaningful plan for nation-building. There is daily, violent evidence that the American invasion has bred a mix of Iraqi Islamists and foreign volunteers that is a growing threat.

The International Institute of Strategic Studies in London has estimates that Al Qaeda and its affiliates now have a strength of 18,000 men, many joining the movement as a result of the Afghan and Iraq conflicts. Some American intelligence experts on Iraq feel that the number of insurgents may still be growing faster than Coalition Provision Authority`s military operations can reduce them.

What we need now is pragmatism and not ideology. It seems that the administration`s neoconservatives have given up their dream of a broader Middle East initiative, which is a welcome sign of maturity. But this doesn`t mean it is time to go on the defensive.

We must do everything we can to help the region`s more moderate and friendly regimes — the Saudis and others — defeat terrorism and improve the protection of foreign workers and oil facilities. Equally important is stepping up aid and antiterrorism assistance to Pakistan. Yes, these fights have a military dimension — but the primary struggle is political, ideological and economic. We can`t win it by force or on the cheap. Victory will come only through strengthening local allies and reformers, not by trying to impose our own political values.

Anthony H. Cordesman is a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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June 3, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
The Campaign Comes to Rome
By JOHN L. ALLEN Jr.

ROME

In June 1983, Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, then prime minister of Poland, received Pope John Paul II at the Belvedere Palace in Warsaw. It was the pope`s second trip to his home country, but the first since the general had imposed martial law 18 months earlier, and in a speech before their meeting the general defended his decision. Despite the defiant tone of the speech, many reporters noticed, General Jaruzelski`s knees were shaking.

Tomorrow President Bush will call upon Pope John Paul II at the Vatican. After their meeting they will appear before reporters, but the most interesting question may be one that needn`t be asked: Will George Bush`s knees be knocking when he meets with the pope?

In some ways it`s an ungainly comparison, since the pope has never issued a condemnation of American militarism or capitalism as sweeping as his denunciation of Soviet Communism. There is also little evidence that the political price for defying the pope is as steep in the United States today as it was in Poland in the mid-1980`s. Yet the Catholic vote is important to the president, and there is no denying that John Paul II is deeply troubled by what Mr. Bush is doing under the guise of the war on terrorism.

In recent months — in papal commentaries, in speeches and interviews with senior Vatican officials, and in commentaries by the Vatican`s radio station and newspaper — the Vatican critique of American foreign policy has focused on several points.

The first is the doctrine of pre-emptive force. The Bush administration argues that when it has intelligence about imminent threats to the United States, it has the right to strike first. The Vatican insists that a single nation-state never has this right. Only the United Nations can authorize military action to disarm an aggressor, to ensure that disarmament is the real objective rather than a particular country`s political or commercial interests.

The Holy See has repeatedly complained about American unilateralism and called on Mr. Bush to work through the United Nations. But while the Vatican sees the United Nations as a sovereign entity, able to pursue policies and attain goals of its own, Mr. Bush sees it merely as an instrument of sovereign states, each of which retains liberty of action.

Underlying these disagreements is a fundamental difference between the White House and the Vatican regarding the importance of international law. The Bush administration has taken a selective approach to international law, arguing that the new threat posed by terrorism makes some old agreements irrelevant.

The Vatican insists on international law as the only way to ensure "the force of law rather than the law of force," as the Vatican`s former foreign minister, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, repeatedly put it during the months before the invasion. It has often criticized the United States for ignoring the Geneva Conventions in its treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. And the Vatican`s foreign minister, Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, in a May 12 interview with a Roman newspaper, called the Abu Ghraib prison scandal "a worse blow to the United States than Sept. 11."

Apart from these concerns about America`s respect for the world, many in the Vatican are also worried that some American values themselves are unhealthy. Ideals like individual autonomy, liberalism and pragmatic morality can be dangerous from the point of view of Roman Catholic anthropology and social ethics. They do not lend themselves to a strong sense of community, either in civil society or in the church. Vatican officials worry about their uncontrolled diffusion with America as the world`s lone superpower.

To be sure, there is a higher personal regard in the Vatican for Mr. Bush than for his predecessor, Bill Clinton. Mr. Bush and the pope agree on cultural issues like abortion and gay marriage. None of that, however, can mask their deep differences on international policy.

Hence both George Bush and John Paul II have something at risk at tomorrow`s meeting. For Mr. Bush, his image as the "religious" candidate could be tarnished if he`s seen as having been chastised by the most authoritative Christian leader in the world. The White House asked for this meeting, even adjusting the president`s schedule to make it possible before the pope leaves for Switzerland on Saturday. No doubt the president`s advisers believe a photo op with the pope could be useful in battleground states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, where the Catholic vote could be decisive.

For the pope, however, much more than short-term political advantage is at stake. In 1989, John Paul was the man who brought down Communism. But has his influence been as dramatic since? If the greatest threat today is a "clash of civilizations" pitting the Western world against Islam, then many at the Vatican say American foreign policy is stoking precisely that conflict. The question is, can the pope — now 84 and ailing — do anything about it?

Unfortunately, when John Paul II and George Bush appear before the cameras tomorrow, they will almost certainly be seated. So it will be harder to see whether the president`s knees are shaking.

John L. Allen Jr. is the Vatican correspondent for National Catholic Reporter, an independent weekly newspaper.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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June 3, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The ABC`s of Hatred
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Surely the most chilling aspect of the latest terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia against foreigners at the Khobar oil center was in reports from the scene about how the Saudi militants tried to kill or capture only the non-Muslims, and let Muslims and Arabs go. The Associated Press quoted a Lebanese woman, Orora Naoufal, who was taken hostage in her apartment, as saying that the gunmen released her when they learned of her nationality. They told her they were interested in harming only "infidels" and Westerners.

Now where would the terrorists have learned such intolerance and discrimination? Answer: in the Saudi public school system and religious curriculum.

That is the only conclusion one can draw, not only from listening to what the terrorists said, but, more important, from listening to what some courageous Saudi liberals — and yes, there are many progressive Saudis who want their country to become more open and tolerant — are saying in their own press.

The Saudi English-language daily, Arab News, recently published a series by the liberal Saudi writer Raid Qusti about the need to re-evaluate Saudi education. Mr. Qusti quotes the editor of Al Riyadh newspaper as saying the people carrying out this latest rash of attacks inside Saudi Arabia have the same ideology as the Saudi extremists who seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca in 1979. They had an ideology of accusing all others as being "infidels," thereby giving themselves a license to kill them.

"If we as a nation decline to look at the root causes, as we have for the past two decades, it will only be a matter of time before another group of people with the same ideology springs up," noted Mr. Qusti. "Have we helped create these monsters? Our education system, which does not stress tolerance of other faiths — let alone tolerance of followers of other Islamic schools of thought — is one thing that needs to be re-evaluated from top to bottom. Saudi culture itself and the fact the majority of us do not accept other lifestyles and impose our own on other people is another. And the fact that from the fourth to the 12th grade, we do not teach our children that there are other civilizations in the world and that we are part of the global community, and only stress the Islamic empires over and over, is also worth re-evaluating. And last but certainly not least, the religious climate in the country must change." (Memri translation.)

Over the last year or so, Hamza Qablan al-Mozainy, an Arabic professor at King Saud University, published two articles in the Saudi daily Al Watan about "the culture of death in our schools" and the role that Saudi teachers are playing in promoting discussions on how bodies are prepared for burial and how the kind of life a person has led — righteous or decadent — can be read from the condition of the person`s dead body. This effort to use death to get young people to abstain from the attractions of life, he said, only ends up making some Saudi youth easy targets for extremists trying to recruit young people for "jihad" operations. "Does the Education Ministry really know about the activities taking place in its schools?" Mr. al-Mozainy asked.

As the saying goes, "Denial is not just a river in Egypt" — and Saudi leaders have been in denial for too long. They need to wake up — and we need an energy policy that reduces our dependence on Saudi oil. I don`t want the difference between a good day and bad day to be whether Saudi Arabia reforms its education system.

A few years ago, Vice President Dick Cheney dismissed those of us who advocate energy conservation as dreamy do-gooders. Had he spent the last three years using his bully pulpit to push for conservation and alternative energies, rather than dismissing them, we`d be a lot less dependent today on foreign oil. Oh, that is so naïve, says the oil crowd. Well, what would you call a Bush energy policy that keeps America dependent on a medieval monarchy with a king who has lost most of his faculties, where there is virtually no transparency about what`s happening, where corruption is rampant, where we have asked all Americans to leave and where the education system is so narrow that its own people are decrying it as a factory for extremism? Now that`s what I`d call naïve. I`d also call it reckless and dangerous.

Maureen Dowd has the day off.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Sewage flows in the streets of Sadr City, Baghdad`s large Shiite slum, where cleric Moqtada Sadr has wide support

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/photo/world/G7138-2004J…
washingtonpost.com
Dying Devotion to Young Cleric Springs From Poverty, Patriotism


By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, June 3, 2004; Page A01


BAGHDAD -- Haidar Abbas was peddling produce amid the flies and dust of Sadr City, Baghdad`s vast Shiite Muslim slum, and discussing Moqtada Sadr, the firebrand cleric whose family name the neighborhood bears. As Abbas spoke, his son Bilal, 16, began to dance a little jig.

"Moqtada, Moqtada," the boy chanted as a crowd of other ragged youths approached to join in. "Moqtada is right. We follow Moqtada. We die for Moqtada."

Branded by the Bush administration as a criminal and a thug who has minimal support among Iraq`s Shiite majority, Sadr is viewed very differently from the garbage-carpeted streets of Sadr City. Here, the brash leader of an eight-week-old Shiite revolt is seen as a leading voice of the poor, a patriot fighting foreign occupation and the heir to a tradition of speaking out against injustice and tyranny. His tactics may be foolhardy, his militia might get crushed, but the message he carries reverberates deeply in Iraqi society and will not easily go away, Iraqi observers and common citizens argue.

"I don`t like Moqtada personally. Look at what he`s done -- gotten a lot of people killed by sending them out against American tanks," Abbas said. "But of course what he says, it`s true. What have the Americans brought us? We are worse off than ever. Moqtada wants them out, and who can argue with that?"

For nearly a year, Iraqi Shiites largely welcomed the U.S. invasion and tolerated the occupation. But Sadr, his followers and his clandestine militia were an exception. As early as last June, Sadr was denouncing delays in elections and abuses by occupation forces -- protests that more popular mainstream Shiite clerics did not raise until last fall. As Shiites became increasingly disillusioned with U.S. rule in Iraq, Sadr`s isolated complaints became mainstream opinion.

In April, when Sadr resisted U.S. demands that he turn himself over to an Iraqi court on charges related to the murder of a moderate cleric last year, he and his Mahdi Army militia staged a revolt that drew thousands of U.S. troops to the Shiite holy cities of Najaf, Kufa and Karbala.

American officials say U.S. forces have killed about 1,500 Sadr militiamen in eight weeks of fighting and that his militia is near collapse. Though the Mahdi Army, with its assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, has been outgunned by U.S. soldiers in Bradley Fighting Vehicles, Sadr has survived and his stature has grown.

"This offensive against Sadr has made him bigger than ever before," said Adnan Ali, a top official of the Iraqi Red Crescent Society, the Muslim equivalent of the Red Cross.

"Sadr emerges from this as a national political figure who will have to be dealt with," said retired Gen. Ali Shukri, a top adviser to the late King Hussein of Jordan with long involvement in Iraqi affairs.

U.S. officials have become aware of Sadr`s growing appeal. According to a U.S. official who has seen the figures, an opinion poll sponsored by the Coalition Provisional Authority that came out in mid-May found that Sadr was the second most popular figure in the country after Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the Iraqi Shiites` supreme religious leader.

Ibrahim Jafari, who heads the large Shiite Dawa party and has no sympathy for Sadr`s stand or tactics, nonetheless said in an interview: "He is seen as a son of Iraq who represents feelings of injustice. It was a mistake to try to push him out."

Last week, Shiite mediators brokered a cease-fire between Sadr and the occupation forces. But there has been no sign that he has moved to fulfill his promise to pull his militiamen off the streets, and heavy fighting Wednesday in Kufa signaled the collapse of the deal.

The gap between American and Shiite perceptions of Sadr reflects a lack of understanding of the complexities of Shiite religious, political and economic life, Iraqis say. Sadr benefits from the deep reverence that Iraqi Shiites still feel toward his father, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq Sadr, who was slain in an ambush along with two of his sons in 1999. Shiites suspect that Saddam Hussein, then Iraq`s president, ordered the murders. A cousin, Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir Sadr, regarded by many as the foremost Shiite thinker of his generation, was killed by Hussein`s security forces in 1980.

Sadr`s father had a style of preaching that set him apart from traditional religious figures. He directly addressed social and economic needs. When he spoke to students and followers, he used the Arabic term of endearment, habibi. He took risks by criticizing practices of the Hussein government. Once, he made a speech calling for the release of prisoners. Another time, he called on government officials to come to his office in Najaf to apologize to Iraqis for the cruel treatment of the population.

Moqtada Sadr delivers his father`s message with a street style that horrifies traditional Shiites but attracts the young underclass. By all accounts, he speaks haltingly, sometimes in incomplete sentences. He uses slang, a habit that many Iraqis consider unseemly in a cleric. And at only 31, Sadr is considered by many Iraqis to be too raw to play the role of preacher to the nation.

But to Sadr`s followers, his shortcomings are less relevant than the prestige afforded by his heritage.

"No matter how dumb he is, many Iraqi Shiites will follow him and respect him because of his father," said Shukri, the Jordanian.

"Iraqis are loyal to those they love," said Mustafa Nassiri, a sociologist. "They loved his father, so they love the son."

Hassan Ali, a porter at a Sadr City market, gave a blank look when asked whether Sadr`s lack of eloquence was a drawback. "You mean the way he talks? Who cares? Sadr is the strongest, the bravest. He`s for justice," Ali said, then added, "He`s Iraqi."

For his loyalists, the fact that Sadr is Iraqi-born is a plus. By contrast, Sistani is Iranian by birth. Sadr plays heavily on patriotism. Among the multitude of Sadr posters in Sadr City is one that shows his bearded face along with his father`s on the red, white and black Iraqi flag. The flag also flies over his Sadr City offices. There is no such banner atop Sistani`s office in Najaf.

But Sadr City is far from unanimous in its support of Sadr. It is a jumbled neighborhood that has decayed and grown ever more cramped with the influx of Iraqis looking for work in the capital. On the south end of the enclave, where better-off Shiites live, there are posters extolling Sadr`s virtues. But deeper into the slum, the posters of Sadr, his fingers thrust aggressively into the air, grow in number. At the northern fringes, hardly a wall does not bear his portrait.

Nassiri, the sociologist, said Sadr`s main support lies among rural migrants who came to Baghdad and other cities over the past several decades to better their lives -- only to find cramped housing, overflowing sewers, an inadequate water supply and no jobs. The elder Sadr cultivated Iraq`s rural Shiite poor. By contrast, the core followers of Sistani and other mainstream leaders include the Shiite merchant class, which is uncomfortable with Sadr`s populist message.

The Abu Ibrahim family in north Sadr City comes from Amarah in Iraq`s deep south. Their small, flat-roofed house contains a dozen people. The husbands of four daughters are all jobless. There is no running water and no electricity. Black, putrid sewage laps at the front door. The family lives on rations provided by the occupation authority.

In the family`s living room, the sole piece of furniture -- a flimsy armoire -- is decorated with six Sadr portraits. "We love Moqtada and we put him atop our head," said a jolly 6-year-old named Mohammed.

Um Ibrahim, the matriarch of the family, said wearily: "You can see, all the very poor, we support Sadr. We are not few. We are many. The majority are poor. And he is the only one who looks out for us. He is simple. He is one of us. He is Iraqi."

Nassiri said Sadr has particular appeal among young, unemployed Iraqis who have little to lose and are impatient not only with the occupation but with the willingness of many mainstream Shiite leaders to go along.

"Iraq is a pyramid with poor youths at its base," Nassiri said. "They feel victimized by Iraq`s past and ignored by its present. Sadr represents them, and they cannot be shoved aside, neither by the Americans or Iraqis, when they come to power."

In effect, Sadr`s revolt is not only anti-American but also anti-establishment. He has upset the traditional notions of Shiite religious hierarchy, in which influence rests with a handful of aged wise men. Graffiti on several walls in Sadr City attack Sistani as well as officials of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a political party that has cooperated with the occupation. In Shiite terminology, Sistani and the party represent the "silent seminary" that shies from speaking out directly on social or political issues. Sadr`s father, and now Sadr, represent the "speaking seminary," which tackles such issues head-on.

"The Silent Seminary is traitorous," says one message scrawled on a wall near the cleric`s Sadr City office. "Woe to the Silent Seminary," says another a block away.

"We are losing patience with the silent school. They are saying we are criminals. That really makes us angry," said Karim Manfi, a preacher at Sadr City`s Hikma Mosque, which Sadr`s organization controls. "The real problem is they are afraid of the Sadr school of thought. While we are dying, Sistani says nothing. He does not feel like we feel. The silent seminary cannot represent us."

Manfi said the tactics of Sadr`s militia, which are to fight U.S. forces openly and control neighborhoods, reflect the belief in a confrontational approach as well as adherence to the Shiites` tradition of martyrdom as the path to purity.

"We do not set off roadside bombs and hide. That is not our way," Manfi said. "Nor do we dissimulate. That is also not our way." He noted that at least 100 militia members have been killed fighting U.S. troops in Sadr City. U.S. commanders have expressed surprise and bewilderment at the willingness of Sadr`s followers to die.

Manfi`s brother, Ahmed, who was jailed for four years for protesting the assassination of the elder Sadr, said that by going into the streets to battle the Americans, Sadr`s followers were trying to wake up Iraqis.

"Moqtada is not silent, and we cannot hide," he said. "We must be brave."



© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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washingtonpost.com
To Many, Mission Not Accomplished
Residents Say Occupation`s Unkept Promises, Military Tactics Fuel Resistance

By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, June 3, 2004; Page A01


BAQUBAH, Iraq, June 2 -- Stately in the black turban and flowing robes that marked him as a senior Shiite Muslim cleric, Ali Abdul Kareem Madani received petitioners sitting cross-legged on a fine carpet. One after the other, they streamed in all day to tell him their woes and their needs.

Two factotums, standing on either flank of the soft-spoken dignitary, waved straw fans to keep him cool in the oppressive heat. The electric ceiling fan just above his head was motionless, as the power was out again in this fruit-growing farming hub 30 miles northeast of Baghdad.

"We blame the coalition forces for the lack of electricity," Madani said solemnly, as if handing down a religious interpretation. "After one year of occupation, a great country like the United States is not able to set up a big generator to give this city electricity?"

For many Iraqis, the 13-month-old U.S. occupation has failed to live up to its billing as an exercise in reconstruction and democracy-building. Like Madani, they are glad that former president Saddam Hussein has been overthrown and a new interim government has been installed in Baghdad. But most of Baqubah`s approximately 250,000 people -- and most Iraqis around the country -- have experienced the U.S. presence here mainly at the wrong end of a gun. It is that, and not the news from Baghdad`s heavily fortified Green Zone, that informs their views.

"We don`t see any civilians," Madani complained. "All we see are soldiers."

A relentless campaign of bombings and ambushes by insurgents determined to drive out the U.S. occupation has forced the military to continue a battle that soldiers thought was finished more than a year ago, when President Bush announced the end of major combat operations. The result has been persistent clashes, nighttime raids, armored patrols and detentions -- the blunt instruments of war -- that have led many Iraqis of different political and religious persuasions to resent the occupation they once welcomed.

Insurgents have organized into coherent guerrilla groups and forced U.S. authorities to deal with them as such in Fallujah, 35 miles west of Baghdad, and around Najaf, 90 miles south of the capital. In countless other locations, including Baghdad and around Baqubah, they have remained underground. But in either case, the struggle has pushed U.S. soldiers into an aggressive military role that is the face of the occupation for most Iraqis.

"If you want to give us freedom, a sort of democracy, then you don`t kill people, you don`t destroy houses, you don`t run over cars with your tanks," said Saad Abdul-Jabbar, a journalist in Baqubah who writes for the independent Zaman newspaper in Baghdad. "This only creates hatred."

Madani has his own reasons for disliking the U.S. occupation. He returned to Baqubah on May 25 after nearly 10 months in seven different Army detention centers, where he was taken after being accused of promoting anti-U.S. violence early in the occupation.

The charges against him have not been dropped, U.S. officials said. But Army Col. Dana J.H. Pittard, who recently took command here and realized Madani`s position of influence, helicoptered to Umm Qasr -- about 325 miles to the southeast, at the head of the Persian Gulf -- to secure his release from prison and escort him home, according to Iraqi and U.S. sources.

Pittard has shown himself to be a gentleman, Madani said, but the gesture did not change his views on the U.S. occupation.

U.S. authorities in Baghdad have mainly blamed the violent insurgency for delays in rebuilding. Civilian contractors have retreated from the field, and often from the country, they note, and civilian U.S. officials have been hobbled by stringent security restrictions.

But for Madani, the converse is true: The delays in rebuilding have been a big reason for the violence. Thousands of young men, having been told their country would be swiftly rebuilt, have not found jobs, he said. And Baqubah`s merchants, having heard of millions of dollars in reconstruction contracts, still have not seen the money flow or the return of municipal services.

"Services?" asked a Baqubah merchant known as Abu Ziad as he gestured toward the open sewage running in front of his sundries shop. "Look at that. Look at that. They say they have spent millions. Where are they? I tell you, it was better before."

Saad Abbas, who runs a small butcher shop on the edge of town, said his business has suffered because the Baath Party functionaries, security agents and soldiers who formed a large part of Iraq`s economy before the war have run out of money and cannot find work. The economy around Baqubah seems frozen, he said, and until it gets moving again, nobody will be able to pay for his freshly slaughtered lamb.

"The most important thing is the electricity," said Abbas, 38. "Because when the electricity stops, everything stops."

List of Grievances


Khabair Sulman Hussein Dureimi, 65, was picked up late one evening by U.S. soldiers who came to his house in Ragat Haj al-Sheil, the date-growing village he heads on the edge of Baqubah city. He was taken to the nearby Farnas airstrip that serves as a U.S. base, he recalled. There he was interrogated once, he said, and released without explanation a month later.

Because of this and other reasons, the 4,800 people of Ragat Haj al-Sheil have little good to say about the U.S. occupation.

For them, according to a conversation with several Iraqis at Dureimi`s spacious home, the occupation has meant being forced off the road by U.S. armored personnel carriers that insist on driving down the middle. It has meant being unable to get water from a nearby stream because it runs too close to the Farnas base. It has meant getting shot at when they move about the reeds and underbrush of their palm groves. And for Dureimi`s 35-year-old son, Labib, it has meant trying to leave at 5 a.m. to get a good spot in a gasoline line and having his car damaged by machine-gun fire from an armored personnel carrier crew that was startled in the darkness.

Encounters with soldiers have so soured the villagers` view of the U.S. military that even a public works project funded by the Army has become a source of contention.

Civil affairs officers from the Farnas base donated money to spruce up the village school, which villagers said had not been maintained since it was built in 1954. Workers have begun replastering the walls and pouring concrete for a playground. But the new roof, villages complained, is made from mud that will disintegrate at the first winter rain.

"The work should be done right," said Mohammed Aly, an unemployed former soldier whose six children attend the school.

Villagers complained to U.S. soldiers that the Iraqi contractor was doing shoddy work, but got no result, Aly said.

A Dialogue in Bughros


Lt. Col. Steve Bullimore, 43, of St. Joseph, Mo., the commander of Task Force 16 with responsibility for Baqubah, was well into the third hour of his meeting with local sheiks and dignitaries. I have $625,000 to fund reconstruction projects, he told them, so come forward with what you need.

"What will it take to change the minds of some of these people in Bughros?" he asked, referring to a violence-prone village on the edge of Baqubah. "Is it jobs? Is it money? Be honest with me."

Bughros has been a thorn in the side of U.S. commanders here for months. For most of the last year, U.S. forces have sought to avoid the village because they were consistently ambushed there. Bullimore -- tall, smiling and confident -- told his visitors that deal was over.

From now on, he said, U.S. forces will continually visit Bughros. They will come to help, he added, but if they are fired on, they will fire back.

"My understanding is that every time they went into Bughros, they got shot at, so they just left it alone," Bullimore said of his predecessors. "Is that right? What I`m telling you is that I cannot do that."

"Nobody is against the government," protested Aouf Khasheri, an engineer and village leader.

"My information is different," responded Bullimore, smiling.

Rocket-propelled grenades have been fired at his unit`s tanks patrolling in Bughros, he noted, and his men have been fired upon from rooftops by gunmen wearing the black clothes that are a sign of insurgents loyal to the former Baath Party government.

"Why do they do that?" asked a white-turbaned sheik, pointing out that the village contains many former Iraqi soldiers who have come home with nothing to do. "Because they don`t have jobs. That`s why they attack you."

Khasheri, dressed in Western clothes and speaking passable English, urged Bullimore to pay his respects to the sheiks before venturing into the village. When he wants to go somewhere around Bughros, Khasheri said, he goes to the sheik who controls the territory and asks authorization to proceed. Then the sheik gives him gunmen to escort him and all goes well.

That is the way the U.S. Army should do things, he suggested.

"Look at this man," he added, gesturing to a sheik dressed in traditional Arab headdress and robes. "He is 81. He is a big sheik. In Saddam Hussein`s days, people used to come to him. They did not ask him to come to their office for a meeting. No, they went to him. Now the coalition forces have killed his son."

The suggestion seemed to have little appeal for Bullimore, who pointed out that occupation rules allow only one gun per household. For those who wanted a permit to legalize their weapons, he said, a form was available with his aides that could be taken to the town hall.

`We Meet With Everybody`


Since November, Edward Peter Messmer has been trying to build Baqubah into a democratic, economically flourishing city. The going has been rough, he acknowledged in an interview, but progress is visible. It will be even more visible, he said, when the $18 billion recently approved for Iraq`s civilian and police reconstruction starts flowing through the economy.

"That right now is kicking into gear," said Messmer, a diplomat who was detached from the U.S. Consulate in Bombay to come to Baqubah.

Provincial officials said bids must be received by noon Saturday for the first of the big contracts that will be let here, primarily for sewer, irrigation and electricity-generating projects. But already, Messmer said, the amount of electricity available in Baqubah is increasing and merchants have more money in their pockets.

Baqubah residents have displayed great enthusiasm for the new organs of government he has helped them organize, Messmer said, and for the first time, Iraqi police in the past two weeks have dared to patrol Baqubah`s streets at night.

The complaints that only U.S. soldiers are visible around Baqubah are unfounded, he said, since he and his civilian colleagues from the Coalition Provisional Authority sit down regularly with local residents. "We meet with sheiks, we meet with imams, we meet with students, we meet with everybody," he said.

The rebuilding efforts will hit a high moment June 30, Messmer said, when the U.S. occupation formally ends, sovereignty returns to Iraqi authorities and Coalition Provisional Authority officials go home. To celebrate, Baqubah will hold "Sovereignty Day" festivities.

"We`re going to have a great time," he said.



© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Hat Bush gelogen?
von Noam Chomsky
Turning the Tide / ZNet 31.05.2004

ZNet > Terror / Krieg > 9/11
Hat Bush wegen der Gründe für den 11. September gelogen („Sie hassen unsere Freiheit,“ etc)?

Ich glaube hier muss man ein wenig vorsichtig sein.

Lügen setzt eine gewisse Kompetenz voraus: zumindest braucht es dazu ein Verständnis um den Unterschied zwischen wahr und falsch. Wenn ein 3-Jähriger etwas offenkundig Falsches sagt, darf man das wohl nicht als Lüge bezeichnen. Gleiches gilt für jene monströsen Enten die Reagan entglitten, wenn er der Kontrolle durch seine Berater entkam. Der arme Kerl hatte wahrscheinlich keine Ahnung. Ich denke, mit Bush verhält es sich ähnlich. Es gibt eine Liste von “Enthüllungsbüchern“ (Woodward, etc.), die ernstgenommen werden, aber ehrlich gesagt verstehe ich nicht warum. Von den Leuten die, die er interviewt, haben einige das Zeug zum Lügen, und es macht ganz einfach Sinn anzunehmen, dass sie dies auch tun – warum sollten sie ihm die Wahrheit sagen. Was die anderen angeht, so ist es ziemlich egal was sie ihm sagen. Das Gleiche gilt auch für diejenigen, die tief in irgendwelchen religiösen Kulten stecken, wie etwa die neo-konservativen Intellektuellen in Washington. Es fällt schwer darüber zu urteilen, ob sie fähig sind zu lügen, ganz so wie im Falle eines Menschen der den direkten Draht zu irgendeiner Gottheit hat.

Für jene die versucht haben, ernsthafte und ehrliche Kommentatoren zu sein, waren die Antworten auf die Frage „warum sie uns hassen“ schon immer mühelos zu finden, und das systematische Meiden der drängendsten Beweise (was Anthropologen manchmal „rituelle Vermeidung“ nennen) ist bestechend. Ich habe hierzu Einiges geschrieben – in ‚World Orders’, zum Beispiel, als die Geheimdokumente der Öffentlichkeit zugänglich gemacht wurden. Hier die knappen Umrisse. Eisenhower und sein Stab sorgten sich während der 50er Jahre um die „Hasskampagne“ gegen uns in der arabischen Welt, und sie begriffen die Ursachen: Die Meinung, dass die USA strenge und unterdrückerische Regierungen unterstützt und Demokratie und Entwicklung blockiert, um so die Energiereserven der Region zu kontrollieren. Während der folgenden Jahre blieben diese Gründe bestehen, und neue kamen hinzu. Als das Wall Street Journal und andere die Meinung wohlhabender Muslime (Bankiers, Manager transnationaler Konzerne, Firmenanwälte, etc.) nach dem 11. September untersuchten, fanden sie diese und andere Gründe: die entschiedene Unterstützung seitens der USA für Israels schreckliche Unterdrückung der Palästinenser und den Raub ihrer Ressourcen, sowie die mörderischen Sanktionen der USA und Großbritanniens, die dabei waren, die Zivilgesellschaft des Irak zu vernichten. In den Dörfern und auf den Straßen waren die Meinungen noch weitaus extremer. Da westliche Intellektuelle nur ungern unangenehme Wahrheiten über sich selbst hören, beglückt man uns statt dessen, wie zu erwarten, mit einer ganzen Reihe von Phantasiegründen darüber „warum sie uns hassen“.

So ist es bis heute.

Beispiel Irak. Als Ausgangspunkt dient westlichen Intellektuellen die unbewiesene Annahme, es ginge den USA darum, dem Irak, dem Mittleren Osten und der Welt Demokratie zu bringen – was die elitäre Presse manchmal Bushs „messianischen Auftrag“ nennt. Kritiker der liberalen Presse (z.B. die New York Review, American Prospect, etc.) pflichten bei, es sei eine edle und großmütige Vision, warnen aber, dass sie außerhalb unserer Möglichkeiten liegt, etc. Iraker sehen dies offenbar anders. Wenige Tage nachdem der Präsident in Washington vergangenen November unter stürmischem Applaus seine edle Vision bekräftigte, erschien eine Umfrage in Bagdad, in der die Menschen gefragt wurden, warum die USA einmarschiert sind. Einige stimmten mit der fast einhelligen Meinung der westlichen Elite überein: um Demokratie zu bringen: 1%. 5% sagten, es ginge darum, den Irakern zu helfen. Die meisten anderen gaben die offensichtliche Antwort, jene, die mit einiger Hysterie hierzulande als “Verschwörungstheorie“ oder schlimmer abgetan wird: es ginge darum, die Ressourcen des Irak zu kontrollieren und den Mittleren Osten im Sinne der USA und ihres Vasallenstaates Israel neu zu ordnen.

So verhält es sich außerdem nicht nur bei Arabern und Moslems. Viele hochrelevante und wichtige Umfragen werden in den Medien einfach deshalb unterdrückt, weil sie uns zu viel über das verraten, was wir besser nicht wissen sollen. Nehmen wir als Beispiel die Bombardierung Afghanistans – sie bedurfte zufolge der einhellig geäußerten Meinung in den USA und Großbritannien nicht einmal der Diskussion. Nur Traumtänzer und absolute Pazifisten konnten dagegen sein, so wurde uns von den führenden Moralphilosophen feierlich versichert: vom Herausgeber der New York Times und anderen. Um diese Haltung aufrechtzuerhalten musste man eine internationale Gallup-Umfrage unterdrücken, die gleich nach der Ankündigung der Bombardierung durchgeführt worden war. Darin fand sich nur sehr geringfügige Unterstützung. In Lateinamerika, jener Region, welche die Macht der USA am besten kennt, gab es praktisch keine Unterstützung. In Mexiko sprachen sich 2% für den Angriff aus, aber nur sofern dabei keine zivilen Ziele getroffen würden (was natürlich doch geschah, gleich zu Beginn), und auch nur sofern die Verantwortlichen für den 11.September bekannt wären (acht Monate später gab das FBI zu, dass sie noch immer lediglich “glaubten“ dass der Plan wohlmöglich in Afghanistan ausgearbeitet aber anderswo durchgeführt wurde). Befürworter, die diese Einschränkungen nicht machten, gab es praktisch keine, wohin man auch schaut. Das durfte aber nicht sein, also wird es totgeschwiegen, bis heute. Gleiches gilt für die Frage “warum sie uns hassen.”

Und anderswo. Vor ein paar Tagen lauschte ich zufällig NPR [öffentl.-rechtl. Radio in den USA], wo die üblichen schmeichlerischen Stimmen darüber sprachen, dass Moqtada al-Sadr eine Randfigur sei, und die Iraker voller Abneigung für ihn wären. Mag sein. Andererseits hatte ich eben in der seriösen London Financial Times von einer Umfrage gelesen, die als recht glaubwürdig behandelt und noch vor den Enthüllungen über Folterpraxis durchgeführt worden war. Sie kam zum Schluss, dass die Angriffe auf Moqtada ihn zur zweitbeliebtesten Person im Irak gemacht haben, gleich nach dem Ayatollah Ali Sistani. 1/3 der Befragten bekundete „Unterstützung“ für ihn, ein weiteres Drittel sogar „starke Unterstützung“. Als Grund wurde angeführt, er habe sich wenigsten der verhassten Besatzung entgegengestellt. Vielleicht ist das hier erschienen. Ich habe es nicht gesehen.

Aus den erwähnten Gründen würde ich also das, was sie beschreiben, nicht “Lüge” nennen wollen. Diese Gründe betreffen einen großen Kreis, nicht nur 3-Jährige, Kultanhänger und arme Kerle, deren Kenntnisse über die Welt so ziemlich auf das beschränkt sind, was auf ihren Merkzetteln steht.

Posted by Noam Chomsky at May 31, 2004 12:11 PM



[ Übersetzt von: Patrick Mueller | Orginalartikel: "Bush Lying?" ]

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New President, New Car Bomb
by Dahr Jamail | Posted June 01, 2004 at 10:49 PM Baghdad time

While Iraqi and American political players have been frenetically rearranging the chairs of interim government members on the Titanic that is occupied Iraq today, a massive car bomb explosion rumbles my hotel, miles from where it detonated outside of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan building near the so-called Green Zone.

So rather than celebratory gunfire for the appointment of a new president, we have a car bomb, a huge mushroom cloud and whaling sirens in the center of the capital city today.

“What good does having these new people in these new positions do me,” says my friend, Abu Talat, angry after hearing the news of Ghazi Yawar being appointed the new president of Iraq.

An Iraqi doctor sitting nearby laughs out loud and asks, “Did I miss the elections?”

Even though in a rare show of backbone the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council stood up to Bremer and company, helping to thwart the US plan of Pachachi as their first choice, most Iraqis I’ve spoken with thus far remain apathetic as another decision made which they have no control over feeds the deep layers of distrust, as well as disdain, towards the U.S. policymakers and Iraqi appointees in their country.

Those who have some hope for the new president, do so mainly because he is the sheikh of a very large tribe, and has a good reputation amongst Iraqis.

Then there is the continuing mis-reporting by mainstream media of a convoy of foreign “civilians” being killed by gunmen in Baghdad on Sunday. Keep in mind, it was the killing of mercenaries in Fallujah two months ago that led to the slaughter of between 800-1200 Iraqis when a siege of the city followed the barbaric treatment dealt the corpses of those four guns-for-hire.

A more truthful lead sentence for the incident last weekend might read: “Western mercenaries wearing black helmets and holding their guns out the open windows of heavily-armored SUVs hosting multiple antennae that stand out like a sore thumb were attacked by members of the resistance in occupied Iraq today.”

Somewhere in the story about the attack it would have to mention that several of the surviving mercenaries in the vehicles managed to hijack an Iraqi’s car at gunpoint on the other side of the highway in order to escape alive. Because according to Iraqi police and several witnesses, shortly after the attack on the mercenaries, cheering bystanders doused two of the bullet-riddled SUVs with gasoline and lit them on fire.

The American public might be fooled into thinking that innocent Westerners are being killed mindlessly in occupied Iraq, but members of the Iraqi resistance know the mercenaries when they see them. Even the children here can identify them -- they are hard to miss.

After interviewing several Iraqis on Rashid Street for their reaction to the new president today, I found myself in a café with men playing dominoes and drinking lemon chai.

The owner told us of his frustration with the security situation... that before the invasion he used to stay open until 3 a.m., and it was completely safe to do so. Now he must close by 6 p.m.

While we were getting ready to leave, the owner of the café insisted on escorting us to our car. Why? Because not far from the café a looter was robbing another looter.

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Bush takes refuge in history

Images of the second world war pepper the president`s rhetoric - but the one word you won`t hear him say is Vietnam
Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday June 3, 2004

The Guardian
Shock and awe was more than the first phase of the invasion of Iraq. It was the premise of Bush`s foreign policy. Fear of unrivalled power would prompt the dominoes to fall - the dominoes being the traditional western allies. Unilateralism (depicted as the coalition of the willing) would yield in submission. The spectacle of Iraqi democracy, a beacon to the Arab world, would refute argument and opposition.

On this gamble, the entire edifice of Bush`s policy rested. From the "cakewalk" would follow the collapse of Iranian influence, the rescue of Saudi Arabia from radical Islamist threat, Palestinian quiescence and instant solution of the Middle East crisis, the rapid spread of democracy across the former Ottoman empire, the US blessed by the grateful Iraqi street as it withdrew its military forces, leaving the leader of "free Iraq," former exile Ahmad Chalabi, in charge, and the French reduced to anxious waiters only seeking to please Bush with his order.

Now the FBI investigates neoconservatives in the Pentagon to discover who may have given secret US intelligence to Chalabi that he allegedly passed to the Iranians. The Iraqi governing council, a US creation, has transmogrified itself into the interim government, having shed Chalabi, hoping that its new identity will lend it a mask of legitimacy. Al-Qaida has found fresh fields for its deadly work. The Saudis cannot protect western businessmen from terrorism. The Middle East peace process is in ruins. The US casualty rate reached and then exceeded 800 dead soldiers on Memorial day. The French case that there was not a WMD threat, and invading Iraq would lead to fragmentation of the country and trigger more terrorism, has been vindicated.

Bush`s emissaries cannot decide whether Iraq can be a democracy or at best a warlord state like Afghanistan. They plead before the UN, once spurned, for symbolic justification. Meanwhile, Bush launches a month of European travel, less diplomacy than a tableau vivant of international cooperation that, upon his departure from the stage, will instantly dissolve into grim realpolitik. As polls show him at his low ebb, he hopes that the American public will accept the illusion as reality and reject the reality as illusion.

At the UN, the US has proposed a resolution whose only substantive element is obviously empty. No nation that is not already there will contribute troops to comprise a multinational force in Iraq. The rest is window-dressing. Having disdained the UN at the start and failed to protect the UN mission, which was blown up last August with 17 killed, the Bush administration now desperately clings to the UN as a figleaf of internationalism. Bush even claimed that the UN representative in Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi, was the "quarterback" for choosing the new Iraqi prime minister and president, and that Bush played "zero" role.

In truth, according to UN sources, Brahimi was outmanoeuvred by the Iraqis on the governing council seeking to perpetuate their power. Paul Bremer, the head of the coalition provisional authority, announced the new prime minister before Brahimi had been informed, an extension of the doctrine of pre-emption. Then Brahimi was sidelined again on the selection of the president. Presented with this fait accompli, the UN sources say, he had to accept it or else destroy any remnant of legality. "Once it was done, it was done," said a UN source. The UN plans for no central part in the new Iraq, but a small mission performing humanitarian work that will be ringed by Gurkhas.

At home and abroad, Bush is investing his rhetoric about the "clash of ideologies" and "global war" with historical analogies. On his European visits, Bush will compare Iraq to rebuilding Germany and Japan after the second world war. He will raise the spectre of the west against communism in the cold war. He will contrast Nazi atrocities to Islamist terrorism. He has even said that he will instruct Europeans that Iraq is like the United States before its constitutional convention: "I will remind them that the articles of confederation was a rather bumpy period for American democracy". Among the missing, however, are analogous figures to Washington, Franklin and Madison.

Bush`s principal analogy conflates al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein into a common threat of "weapons of mass destruction" and a "totalitarian political ideology" that is "not an expression of religion", as he explained in his speech before the Army War College on May 24. This is a world war of "two visions" that first "clashed in Afghanistan" and "have now met in Iraq."

It was in this speech that he proposed tearing down and replacing Abu Ghraib prison, despite having neglected to provide for it in his budget. The grand gesture was widely reported, the grubby absence of funding little noticed. By means of a few words, Abu Ghraib was transformed at least for a moment into a gleaming Potemkin village.

Prophetically, on the eve of Bush`s appearance at the Army War College, its strategic studies institute released a report, Vietnam and Iraq: Differences, Similarities and Insights, observing the similarities as failures of strategy, maintaining public support and nation building. It also noted: "Prospects for creating a stable, prosperous, and democratic Iraq are problematic, and observers and decision makers should not be misled by false analogies to American state-building success in Germany and Japan after World War II."

"They haven`t known what they`ve been doing since the statue of Saddam came down," a military strategist at the Army War College told me. "Bush`s speech was a vision speech with no connection to facts on the ground. That seems to be the limit of his understanding and ability. Even Vietnam doesn`t look so bad in retrospect." But Bush will not make reference to "Vietnam and Iraq" in Europe.

· Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Clinton, is Washington bureau chief of Salon.com

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Iraq`s Top Cleric Gives Govt. Conditional Approval
Thu Jun 3, 2004 08:18 AM ET

By Suleiman al-Khalidi

NAJAF, Iraq (Reuters) - Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq`s most influential Muslim cleric, gave his conditional approval to Iraq`s new interim government Thursday but said it had "mammoth tasks" ahead.

Sistani said the government, chosen by the United Nations, the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council and U.S. officials, lacked "electoral legitimacy" but said it was a step in the right direction and would succeed if specific goals were met.

"The hope is that this government will prove its worthiness and integrity and its firm readiness to perform the mammoth tasks it is burdened with," the Shi`ite cleric said in a partly hand-written statement issued by his office in the holy city of Najaf and stamped with his official seal.

Sistani, who holds huge sway over Iraq`s 60 percent Shi`ite majority, listed four key tasks that the government had to tackle -- security, basic services for all, a new U.N. resolution granting Iraq full sovereignty and the organizing of free and fair elections early next year.

"The new government will not have popular acceptance unless it proves through practical and clear steps that it seeks diligently and seriously to achieve these tasks," Sistani said.

He said the government would also be judged on how successful it was at alleviating the impact of 15 months of occupation.

Another influential Shi`ite cleric, Ayatollah Mohammed Taqi al-Muddaresi, complained that Islamists were not sufficiently represented in the new government, which he said did not show goodwill on the part of the U.S.-led occupation.

He called the new government a step toward sovereignty but urged Iraqis to use all peaceful means to ensure their voices are heard in the future of the country.

The government was sworn in Tuesday with Iyad Allawi, a secular Shi`ite and former CIA-backed opposition leader in exile, as its prime minister and Ghazi al-Yawar, a Sunni tribal leader and former executive in Saudi Arabia, as its president.

The posts were chosen after weeks of debate and discussion led by U.N. special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi in coordination with the now dissolved Governing Council and U.S. officials, particularly Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator of Iraq.

"The situation that has arisen has resulted in the formation of a new government without electoral legitimacy in addition to the fact that not all segments of Iraqi society and its political forces are represented in an appropriate manner," Sistani said, adding that he hoped elections would be held by the deadline of January 2005.

The government held its first cabinet meeting Wednesday, but the planned handover to an interim Iraqi government will not take place until June 30. Even then, 150,000 U.S.-led troops will continue to be in charge of security in Iraq.

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OMMENTARY
Risky Path for Pacifist Europe
Bemoaning war`s senselessness will not stop an enemy.
Max Boot

June 3, 2004

World War I was far from the most evil event of the 20th century. It is hard to compete in sheer inhumanity with the Holocaust, the Stalinist terror, the Chinese Cultural Revolution or the Cambodian killing fields. Even World War II, which we recall through a fond haze of war memorial dedications and History Channel documentaries, had a far greater butcher`s bill.

But if the Great War was far from uniquely terrible, it was undoubtedly the most pointless and inexplicable of all the terrible events of the century gone by and the one that set the others in motion. We are still feeling its repercussions, from Iraq to the former Yugoslavia.

The assassination of an Austrian archduke by Serbian terrorists on June 14, 1914, led to a bloody stalemate that toppled ancient dynasties (Ottoman, Romanoff, Hohenzollern, Habsburg), brought social outcasts to power (Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini) and created fresh grudges that sparked another global conflagration only 21 years after the end of "the war to end all wars." Without World War I, there probably would have been no Nazism in Germany and no communism in Russia and hence no World War II or Cold War. Untold millions might have lived out their natural lives in something approximating peace and quiet.

I have been ruminating about these "might have beens" partly because of Memorial Day and partly because of a trip I took to France not long ago. Memorial Day is an American holiday, created after the Civil War to commemorate the sacrifices made by both sides. There was much suffering between 1861 and 1865, of course, but there was also a nobility that comes from fighting over large issues that admit no compromise: One side sought to preserve slavery and destroy the Union, the other to destroy slavery and preserve the Union. It is hard to discern any issues of comparable magnitude in all the bloodletting that occurred between 1914 and 1918. The pointlessness of it all overwhelmed me as I traveled in northern France, going from Verdun near the Meuse River to the Somme near the English Channel. On these fields, the youth of France, Britain and Germany fell by the bushel in 1916.

What stands out in my mind are the crosses — row upon symmetrical row, stretching as far as the eye can see. "Mort pour la France," the French ones proclaim: "Died for France." The black German tombstones, planted on enemy soil, are denied the dignity of an epitaph. They simply bear the names of the soldiers buried beneath and the dates of their deaths. At the Somme there is a haunting inscription to the British dead: "Their name liveth forevermore."

Almost 90 years later, there is still no agreement on why they fell. Was the war a ghastly accident that no one intended (the old consensus), or was it the product of calculated German aggression (the new consensus)? And what would have been the outcome if Germany had won: Would Kaiser Wilhelm II have established a benign forerunner of the European Union or a malignant forerunner of the Third Reich?

Historian David Fromkin takes another crack at these riddles in his excellent new book, "Europe`s Last Summer." All we know for sure is that the Great War solved nothing and improved nothing. We know something else as well: The conflict caused the Lost Generation to recoil from war-making altogether. Because one war had been senseless, many concluded that all wars must be senseless. The myopic militarism of the pre-1914 generation produced, in reaction, an equally myopic pacifism among the post-1918 generation that gave free rein to predatory states like Nazi Germany and imperial Japan. The children of 1945, in turn, spurned appeasement and held the line against communism for almost half a century.

Now a new generation is in charge in Europe: the children of 1989. Their political sensibility was shaped by the end of the Cold War. Though they will celebrate the 60th anniversary of D-day on Sunday, World War II — a struggle between good and evil — no longer speaks to them. World War I exemplifies their vision of warfare: cruel and senseless. They do not want to fight alongside the United States, in Iraq or anywhere else; they see nothing worth fighting for.

It is a great mistake they are making, but an understandable one. Walking around the neatly tended graveyards of Verdun or the Somme, it is easy to see why Europeans would want to forget about war. But has war forgotten about them?

Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, writes a weekly column for the Los Angeles Times.



Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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Pelosi pulls bandwagon for recapturing Congress
South Dakota triumph has Dems thinking the unthinkable
- John Wildermuth, Edward Epstein, Chronicle Political Writers
Thursday, June 3, 2004

A pair of special election wins in strong Republican states, combined with President Bush`s skidding national popularity, has Democratic leaders giddy over the once-unthinkable possibility of taking back Congress in November.

"It`s all about momentum,`` San Francisco Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, said Wednesday. "We`re on a roll.``

A buoyant Pelosi said Tuesday`s win in South Dakota`s special congressional election and the Democrats` House special election win in Kentucky in February show that her party can win back the House and the Senate in November.

People who don`t think Democrats can win the House this year "just don`t understand,`` Pelosi said. "We`ll demonstrate district by district how we intend to win.``

But Republican leaders argue that Pelosi and other Democrats are whistling past the graveyard, which is where GOP experts expect the Democratic congressional hopes will end up.

"I`m amazed at how Pelosi can draw national implications from a South Dakota race where their candidate almost blew a 30-point lead,`` said Carl Forti, spokesman for the Republican National Congressional Committee. "I know she has an obligation to her members and donors to manufacture momentum, but the reality is it`s not there.``

For Republicans, the November election is a numbers game Democrats can`t win.

Even after Stephanie Herseth`s victory in South Dakota, Republicans still hold a 228-206 lead over the Democrats in the House, which also includes an independent. That means Democrats have to pick up 11 seats to take back the control they lost in the 1994 elections.

The numbers are tighter in the Senate, where the Republicans hold a 51-48 edge, with one independent who leans Democratic.

But those raw numbers don`t tell the story, said Dan Allen of the Republican National Senate Committee. While there are 34 Senate seats up for grabs this year, only 11 are at risk now, four of them held by Republicans and seven by Democrats.

"In order to win a clear majority, Democrats have to win nine of those 11 seats and we just have to win four,`` Allen said. "I think we`ll be on the offense, looking to increase our majority.``

Reapportionment efforts aimed at carving out comfortable, noncompetitive seats for incumbents also have hurt the Democratic chances in the House, because analysts say only as few as 40 of the 435 seats up for election have even a slight chance of shifting parties.

A few months ago, it was hard to find even Democrats who would argue with that scenario. But with recent polls showing a majority of Americans convinced the country is heading in the wrong direction and the president`s popularity slipping, Pelosi and other Democratic Party leaders believe the voters are looking for a change.

Also fueling her optimism, which still isn`t shared by most independent political analysts, are recent polls that ask people if they will vote for Republicans or Democrats for Congress in November. The Associated Press/Ipsos Poll gives Democrats a 9-point margin. A recent poll conducted for Time and CNN shows the Democrats ahead by 13 points.

Pelosi said that even a 3- or 4-point margin in such so-called generic polls would put the Democrats back into the majority for the first time in a decade.

"But we will have to win race by race,`` she said, adding that she expects the margin to narrow considerably as the national campaign heats up.

To the dismay of the Democrats, some of the toughest battles of the fall campaign in the Senate and the House will be fought in the South, where Republican strength has been growing for decades. Five retirements there mean that Democrats have to defend Senate seats in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Louisiana and Florida, while a controversial redistricting plan in Texas, pushed through by House Majority Leader Rep. Tom DeLay, could give the GOP as many as eight new congressional seats in the state.

Democrats, however, are confident they`ve pulled together the right candidates to hold those Senate seats and they have the early polls to prove it. In North Carolina, for example, Erskine Bowles is up 10 percentage points over his Republican opponent, while in South Carolina, Inez Tenenbaum holds solid leads over all three top candidates in the GOP primary.

"We`re arguably ahead in four of the five Southern states,`` Georgia excepted, said Cara Morris, a spokeswoman for the Democratic National Senate Committee. "If you look at the last three months, there have been consistent developments in our favor.``

While Republicans deny that Bush`s political problems have had any effect on the congressional races, Democrats anticipate that voters anxious for a change at the top of the ticket will be willing to sweep out Republicans in the House and Senate.

That`s not necessarily so, said Jack Pitney, a government professor at Claremont McKenna College in Southern California.

"In 1996, when it was very clear that Clinton would win re-election, the Republican National Committee ran an ad suggesting that the nation needed a Republican Congress to check him,`` Pitney said. "You can bet that blank-check argument will come up again if it`s clear early on who`s going to be the next president.``

If it looks like Bush -- or, for the Democrats, Sen. John Kerry -- is becoming a political liability, candidates for the House or Senate won`t hesitate to run a campaign that seldom if ever mentions the party leader.

"Politicians have the survival instincts of cockroaches,`` Pitney added. "They`ll do what`s best for themselves.``
Election targets

Both parties have focused on a number of key races as Republicans seek to keep their hold on the Senate and House while Democrats hope to win back both houses of Congress. Here are some of those elections:

House

Republicans currently hold 228 House seats to 206 for the Democrats with one independent.

Democratic House targets

Arizona 1st District (Flagstaff): Freshman Republican Rick Renzi

Colorado 7th District (suburban Denver): Freshman Republican Bob Beauprez

Georgia 12th District (Savannah): Freshman Republican Max Burns

Washington 8th District (Bellevue): Open seat of a retiring Republican

Republican House targets

California 20th District (Fresno): Open Democratic seat

Kansas 3rd District (Lawrence): Three-term Democrat Dennis Moore

Kentucky 4th District (Covington): Open Democratic seat

Louisiana 7th District (Lafayette): Open Democratic seat

Senate

Republicans hold a 51-48 edge in the Senate. One independent generally votes with the Democrats.

Democratic Senate targets

Alaska: Appointed Republican Lisa Murkowski

Colorado: Open Republican seat

Illinois: Open Republican seat

Oklahoma: Open Republican seat

Republican Senate targets

Florida: Open Democratic seat

Georgia: Open Democratic seat

South Carolina: Open Democratic seat

South Dakota: Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle

Source: Chronicle staff

Edward Epstein reported from The Chronicle`s Washington bureau. John Wildermuth reported from San Francisco.E-mail the writers at [e-mail] and [e-mail].

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©2004 San Francisco Chronicle

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After Meeting His Lawyer, Bush Shows Up Zonked At
Air Force Academy Graduation Ceremony
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COLORADO SPRINGS, CO (IWR News Parody) - After meeting with his new lawyer, President Bush showed up `plastered` yesterday at the U.S. Air Force Academy graduation ceremony. Mr. Bush was led to a back room where he was encouraged to lay down. Later in the day, Scott McClellan reported that Mr. Bush mistakenly thought he was drinking grape juice, but was really drinking the Chianti wine he received as a gift from his new lawyer.

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Published on Thursday, June 3, 2004 by Knight-Ridder
UN`s Brahimi: Bremer the `Dictator of Iraq` in Shaping Iraqi Government
by Tom Lasseter


BAGHDAD, Iraq - Lakhdar Brahimi, wrapping up his U.N. mission to bring an interim government to Iraq, looked a little tired and disheartened Wednesday as he said the compromise he negotiated was the best possible under American control.

When the U.S.-appointed Governing Council announced this week that it had selected a new prime minister, Brahimi seemed to be caught flat-footed. The man tapped for the post, Iyad Allawi, has close ties to the CIA. Almost immediately after being named prime minister, he called for the United States to keep its troops in Iraq, a position unpopular with many Iraqis.

Asked how big a role the American administration had in forming the government and selecting the prime minister and president, Brahimi reminded reporters that American Ambassador L. Paul Bremer runs things in Iraq.

"Bremer is the dictator of Iraq," he said. "He has the money. He has the signature."

He later added: "I will not say who was my first choice, and who was not my first choice ... I will remind you that the Americans are governing this country."

Sadoun al Dulame, the head of a Baghdad research organization and polling center, said he spoke with Brahimi last week and that the diplomat was discouraged.

"He was very disappointed, very frustrated," al Dulame said. "I asked him why he didn`t say that publicly (and) he said, `I am the U.N. envoy to Iraq, how can I admit to failure?`"

Brahimi arrived in Iraq in February with orders to evaluate whether elections were feasible in the short term and, if not, to find an alternative.

A vague U.S. caucus plan had fallen through because of opposition from Iraq`s top Shiite Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al Husseini al-Sistani, who demanded either elections or U.N. involvement. Tens of thousands of Shiites had marched through Baghdad the month before, many of them threatening violent revolt if there were no elections.

It was a daunting stage for diplomacy, even for Brahimi, a former minister for foreign affairs of Algeria whose diplomatic career stretches back to his days as a National Liberation Front representative in 1956, during Algeria`s struggle for independence.

Brahimi spent a lot of his time in Iraq listening to Iraqis from all walks of life and pieced together an expansive, nuanced picture of the nation and its needs. He concluded that immediate elections wouldn`t work.

He then went to the table with U.S. administrators and the nation`s interim Governing Council for weeks of negotiations that involved sharp dissent, political jockeying and leaks to the press.

In the end, a new government formed, announcements were made and even al-Sistani, according to reports from Najaf, accepted the result.

Reflecting on it all, Brahimi said it was "a sometimes extremely difficult negotiation process" and added, "You in the press had a field day."

After he finished speaking, he walked off from the podium, alone. A U.N. banner was tacked on the wall behind him, waiting to be taken down and replaced by the Americans in time for the next news conference.

© Copyright 2004 Knight-Ridder

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Published on Thursday June 3, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
President Bush’s Friday Meeting with Pope John Paul II Should Not be a Photo-Op
by Eric LeCompte


As U.S. President George W. Bush prepares to meet with Pope John Paul II, Pax Christi USA is hopeful that the Holy Father will continue to stress upon the Bush administration the imperative for the U.S. to radically change the course of its foreign policy from a doctrine of preemptive war to a foreign policy grounded in a commitment to the common good, concerned with the life and dignity of all human persons and centered around bringing the community of nations to a shared place at God’s table.

The timing of President Bush’s visit to the Vatican is cause for concern, especially in such a polarized political climate in our nation. Pope John Paul II has been one of the president’s most vocal critics—especially regarding the war in Iraq—and political analysts have already identified the importance of courting the Catholic vote in this year’s presidential election. The Bush administration is keenly aware of both of these facts and surely sees an audience with the leader of the worldwide Roman Catholic Church as an opportunity to repair the president’s image with Catholic voters in the U.S. The concern then is that this visit with the Holy See is primarily about “show”—namely a photo opportunity to reach the pivotal Catholic swing vote—not substance.

As evident in the ongoing criticism from Vatican officials, bishops from around the world and the Holy Father himself, there is a great divide between the Bush administration’s worldview and that of people of faith who foster a worldview rooted in gospel nonviolence, in diplomacy over war, and in a preferential option for the poor. Cardinal James Francis Stafford, former archbishop of Denver, criticized the Bush administration’s war with Iraq as “a moral failure” and warned that the U.S. war with Iraq had severely compromised future relations with the Arab world. Cardinal Pio Laghi, who in February 2003 had delivered to President Bush an appeal from Pope John Paul II to resist the temptation of war in Iraq, recently stated, “[The United States] must re-establish respect for human beings and return to the family of nations, overcoming the temptation to act on its own. If it does not stop, the whirlwind of horror will involve other peoples and will lead us ever more to the abyss.”

Approaching this meeting as a political opportunity and ignoring the seriousness of the official Catholic Church’s widespread criticism of his policies would be a terrible mistake for President Bush. To disrespect the leader of the world’s 1 billion Catholics by treating him as little more than a photo opportunity for the president’s reelection campaign would be the worst kind of political opportunism.

Rather, Pax Christi USA hopes that this visit opens the president’s eyes and ears to the truth of the Holy Father’s assertions that preemptive war is a crime against humanity and that terrorism can only be overcome through the elimination of the causes of terrorism. These are concerns rooted in values which are at the heart of many of the world’s religious traditions and shared by people of all faiths, both here in the U.S. and throughout the global community.

In their document The Challenge of Faithful Citizenship: A Catholic Call to Political Responsibility, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops wrote, “In this election year, we ask who has a place at the table of life in our nation and around the world.” The policies of the Bush administration – and any administration, Republican or Democrat – need to be accountable to that very question. So far, President Bush’s policies have run counter to the tenants of Catholic Social Teaching that form the very heart of Catholic political responsibility. Perhaps this meeting at the Vatican might serve as the beginning of a new relationship between the world’s religious leaders and the Bush administration on matters of foreign policy. If not, then the world’s religious traditions have yet further evidence of President Bush’s dismissive attitude toward criticism based on religious values and beliefs, even when it comes from some of the world’s foremost holy men and women.

Pax Christi International President and Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem H.B. Michel Sabbah recently said, “We who know that true peace can never be achieved through bombs and weapons of war must appeal to the consciences of all those who lead our nations into the ways of death blindly – those leaders who with an erroneous religious conscience think that they are doing the will of God.” As the Catholic community, especially Pope John Paul II, continues to speak out strongly against the war in Iraq and the failures of the war on terrorism, it is essential for President Bush to finally take such criticism seriously. With thousands of lives at stake in Iraq, Palestine/Israel and elsewhere, orchestrated publicity stunts intended to mislead the public—and in particular the Catholic vote—simply will not be tolerated.

Eric LeCompte is the chair of the Pax Christi USA National Council and coordinator of organizing for SOAWatch.

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Published on Thursday, June 3, 2004 by the Daily Camera / Boulder, Colorado
Hold Up on E-voting
by Howard Dean


In December 2000, five Supreme Court justices concluded that a recount in the state of Florida`s presidential election was unwarranted. This, despite the desire of the Florida Supreme Court to order a statewide recount in an election that was decided by only 537 votes. In the face of well-documented voting irregularities throughout the state, the U.S. Supreme Court`s decision created enormous cynicism about whether the votes of every American would actually be counted. Although we cannot change what happened in Florida, we have a responsibility to our democracy to prevent a similar situation from happening again.

Some politicians believe a solution to this problem can be found in electronic voting. Recently, the federal government passed legislation encouraging the use of "touch screen" voting machines, even though they fail to provide a verifiable record that can be used in a recount. Furthermore, this equipment cannot even verify whether a voter did indeed cast a ballot for his or her intended candidate. Unfortunately, this November, as many as 28 percent of Americans — 50 million people — will cast ballots using machines that could produce such unreliable and unverifiable results.

Only since 2000 have touch-screen voting machines become widely used, yet they already have caused widespread controversy due to their unreliability. For instance, in Wake County, N.C., in 2002, 436 votes were lost as a result of bad software. Hinds County, Miss., had to rerun an election because the machines had so many problems that the will of the voters could not be determined. According to local election officials in Fairfax County, Va., a recent election resulted in one in 100 votes being lost. Many states, such as New Hampshire and most recently, Maine, have banned paperless touch-screen voting and many more are considering doing so.

Without any accountability or transparency, even if these machines work, we cannot check whether they are in fact working reliably. The American public should not tolerate the use of paperless e-voting machines until at least the 2006 election, allowing time to prevent ongoing errors and failures with the technology. One way or another, every voter should be able to check that an accurate paper record has been made of their vote before it is recorded.

Both Democrats and Republicans have a serious interest in fixing this potentially enormous blow to democracy. A bipartisan bill, sponsored by U.S. Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.), is one of several paper trail bills in the House and Senate and it should be passed as soon as possible. A grassroots movement for verified voting, led by organizations like VerifiedVoting.org, is gaining momentum nationwide.

There is nothing partisan about the survival of our democracy or its legitimacy. We cannot and must not put the success of one party or another above the good of our entire country and all our people. To the governments of the 50 states, Republican or Democrat, I ask you to put paperless e-voting machines on the shelf until 2006 or until they are reliable and will allow recounts. In a democracy you always count the votes no matter who wins. To abandon that principle is to abandon America.

Howard Dean, former governor of Vermont, is the founder of Democracy for America, a grassroots organization that supports socially progressive and fiscally responsible political candidates.

Copyright 2004, The Daily Camera

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Informed Comment

Thoughts on the Middle East, History,and Religion

Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan

Immer gut informiert.
http://www.juancole.com/

Thursday, June 03, 2004

Sistani`s Fatwa on the New Government

Fatwa of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani on the New Government
trans. J. Cole



"In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.

From the office of his excellency Grand Ayatollah Sistani, may God extend his shadow.

Peace be upon you, and the mercy and blessings of God.

Many of the believers have asked about his position toward the new Iraqi government, which was constituted yesterday through the efforts of Mr. Lakhdar Brahimi, the envoy of the secretary general of the United Nations:



In His Name, May He be exalted.

His excellency the Sayyid had previously and repeatedly affirmed the necessity for the Iraqi government to possess a sovereignty that derives from free and honest elections in which the children of the Iraqi people participate in a general way.

There are many well known reasons for which elections were postponed--obstruction and bargaining, obstinacy and intimidation. The time fled, and the appointed date of 30 June approached, on which it was supposed that Iraqis would regain sovereignty over their country.

Thus, the process has become one of appointment, in order to form a new government, without achieving the legitimacy of having been elected. Moreover, it does not represent all slices of Iraqi society and all political forces in an appropriate way.

Even so, if this government hopes to establish its worthiness and probity and its unwavering determination to shoulder the immense burdens now facing it, it must:

1. Obtain a clear resolution from the United Nations Security Council on the return of complete sovereignty over their country to the Iraqis, unconstrained in any regard, whether political, economic, military, or security-related. Every effort must be made to efface all signs of occupation in every way.

2. Provision of security in every part of the country and putting an end to organized criminal activities, as well as all criminal actions.

3. Provision of public services to the citizens and reducing the effort necessary for them to pursue their everyday lives.

4. First-rate preparation for general elections, and keeping to the appointed date, which is at the beginning of the coming new year according to the Christian calendar, so that a national assembly can be formed that is not bound by any of the decisions issued in the shadow of the Occupation, including what they call the Law for the Administration of the Transitional State [i.e. the Interim Constitution].

The new government will never obtain popular acceptance save if it demonstrates through actual and practical steps that it is striving with earnestness and sincerity to fulfill the above mission. May God enable all to do as He wills and as pleases Him.

14 Rabi II, 1425
The Office of Sayyid Sistani"

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"Screw a paper trail - those electronic
Diebold machines are lucky for me..."

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All the trappings of a war leader; no gravity at all
Thursday, June 03, 2004

There`s nothing inherently wrong with a president having a war trophy to remind him of the valor and sacrifice of his troops.

Time magazine reported this week that President George W. Bush shows off to select visitors the pistol Saddam Hussein held in his lap when U.S. soldiers pulled him out of his spider hole last December.

The mounted gun, presented on behalf of the soldiers who nabbed Saddam, is kept in the president`s private study just off the Oval Office. It`s a better use for the room than repeated rendezvous with intern Monica Lewinsky.

But the idea of a president showing off war trophies in a war not yet won is unsettling, as if the capture of Saddam had been the end instead of a beginning.

It reinforces the image of Bush the cowboy, galloping into battle heedless of consequences, unable to come to grips with how that image has inflamed rather than helped in the war on terror, seemingly blind to the way the Iraq war has diminished his presidency and America.

As John Chipman, director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said this week in issuing the respected British think tank`s latest annual survey, "The Iraq intervention was always likely in the short term to enhance jihadist recruitment and intensify al-Qaida`s motivation to encourage and assist terrorist operations. . . . The U.S. is realizing the awful truth that the first law of peacekeeping is the same as the first law of forensics: `every contact leaves a trace.` "

Is Bush really so superficial that he can`t understand the mistakes he`s made? In April, he groped but could name nary an error in answer to a question.

Is he really so blind to the no-win circumstances in which U.S. troops are mired in Iraq that he can`t marshal the will and resources to plot a clear path out of the morass, talking instead in vague terms, as he did Tuesday, of the "need to stay the course and . . . help a free society emerge"?

The image of his study, where the Washington Post reports he also keeps a Taliban brick and some Bush bobble-head dolls, is all wrong. Where in calmer times that clubbiness would be reassuring, it`s disturbing in a national leader who should be confronting the bad choices he`s made and the worse options ahead - but who never admits to them.

And those easy-listening phrases often have trap doors.

At an impromptu open-air news conference Tuesday, the president tried to convey resolve and firmness in the face of terrorist provocations.

But he flubbed it by redefining "victory" in Iraq as a determination to stay no matter what al-Qaida does.

"The mission of the enemy is to get us to retreat from Iraq," Bush told reporters, ". . . which we are not going to do."

Yet that`s not our mission, no way.

If that`s the goal, we hand al-Qaida a titular victory when we do leave Iraq, as we inevitably must one day. The president`s words also reinforce the terrorists` tactical mission - to put maximal pressure on the shaky Iraqi interregnum to kick us out before Iraqi police and army forces can fill the security vacuum. Iraq would then descend into our worst nightmare, becoming a terrorist swamp atop the world`s second-largest reserves of oil, bent on sucking No. 1 oilpot Saudi Arabia down with it.

Of course, we probably wouldn`t leave if the new Iraqi government asked us to, no matter what we`re promising now or what might be in a new U.N. resolution. Yet that, too, defeats what should be our paramount goals, as defined by Chipman of the strategic-studies institute, to press for "an efficiently executed plan for the full handover of sovereignty to Iraq and stronger international support of that strategy."

On one level, Bush is right to insist that the United States won`t retreat in the face of terrorist attacks. We won`t.

But promoting the idea that U.S. troops will never leave Iraq reinforces Iraqi doubts and discourages nations who otherwise might pitch in under a more internationalist umbrella. U.S. taxpayers who`ve already shelled out $119 billion and buried more than 800 of their sons and daughters also deserve to be told how much more to expect.

The faces of those men and women should shine forth from Saddam`s pistol. And in contemplating it and them, the president must remind himself that - just as America goes to war not over sloganeering, but out of national necessity - it remains one of the core duties of the commander in chief to chart those troops` way home.

Sullivan is The Plain Dealer`s foreign-affairs columnist and an associate editor of the editorial pages.

Contact her at:

[e-mail], 216-999-6153

Copyright 2004 cleveland.com. All Rights Reserved.

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IRAQI SOVEREIGNTY MISSING


‘Here a Minute Ago,’ Says Bremer

Iraqi sovereignty went missing late yesterday afternoon, plunging into some doubt whether sovereignty could be handed over to the Iraqi people by the U.S.’s June 30 deadline.

News of the sovereignty’s sudden disappearance was announced at Coalition Provisional Authority headquarters in Baghdad by interim leader Paul Bremer III, who expressed puzzlement at the sovereignty’s whereabouts.

“To be candid, I have no idea where that sovereignty could have gone to,” Mr. Bremer told reporters. “It was here a minute ago.”

Iraqi President Ghazi Meshal Al-Yawar, who had been selected just hours before sovereignty mysteriously disappeared, expressed outrage and anger that U.S. officials had somehow permitted the nation’s sovereignty to become mislaid, stolen, or worse.

“I agreed to let sovereignty be transferred to me, and then they went and lost it?” President Al-Yawar fumed. “I’m sorry, but that really sucks.”

U.S. forces ransacked the offices of Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi for the twenty-seventh time yesterday after rumors swirled that Mr. Chalabi might have somehow slipped the sovereignty into his pants pocket and then sold it to Iran in exchange for a bag of shiny jewels.

But even after the search came up empty, President Bush insisted that sovereignty would be transferred on June 30 “whether there is any sovereignty or not.”

Mr. Bush then proposed turning off all the lights in Iraq to enable the person or persons who took the sovereignty to return it anonymously.

The President’s proposal drew praise from Mr. Bremer, who said that the plan was “extremely practical” because most of the lights in Iraq were already out.

**** BOROWITZ IN NYC TONIGHT ****

Andy Borowitz performs and answers audience questions this Thursday June 3 at Makor, 35 West 67th Street. 7:30 PM; tickets $12 in advance, $15 at the door. For ticket info, go to www.92y.org.

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June 4, 2004
NEWS ANALYSIS
As a Lightning Rod Departs, a Contentious Issue Remains
By DAVID E. SANGER

George J. Tenet`s surprise departure as director of central intelligence removes from President Bush`s inner circle one of the lightning rods for the criticism that America went to war based on faulty intelligence. But it also keeps Mr. Bush exposed to the election-year charge that his White House politicized the work of the intelligence agencies, stretching the data to justify its decision to topple Saddam Hussein and perhaps paying insufficient attention to other threats.

Mr. Bush now enters the crucial month leading to the handover of sovereignty in Iraq — and an election year when fear of a terror strike is already heightened — without a director of central intelligence with whom he clearly bonded, despite clear tensions. Mr. Bush`s decision to elevate Mr. Tenet`s deputy for the remainder of the year also means that the big issues of how to reorganize America`s intelligence operations and diagnose what went wrong in the past few years will not be seriously addressed until next year, either by Mr. Bush or his successor.

In some ways there was no other solution: White House officials acknowledged today that they did not want a confirmation fight over a new director in such a charged political atmosphere.

But even though the president may be spared the spectacle of more contentious hearings, Thursday`s resignation is unlikely to remove the issue from the campaign, or from voters` assessments of whether the administration twisted and squeezed imperfect intelligence to sell the war in Iraq as a immediate necessity.

Mr. Bush`s presumed opponent, John Kerry, has begun to make that a theme of his campaign, and he called for Mr. Tenet`s resignation months ago, along with that of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. The calls for a wider purge are unlikely to be abated. The widespread assumption in Washington was that Mr. Bush had persuaded Mr. Tenet to stay around until the election. But regardless of whether his reasons for leaving were truly personal, there was little doubt that the next few months were going to be ugly ones for the intelligence director. Three reports are in the pipeline that are expected to be highly critical of the agency`s work before Sept. 11 and before the war in Iraq.

David Boren, an old friend of Mr. Tenet, said that while Mr. Tenet left for personal reasons, "I don`t think he had any desire to see the agency be a political football, either."

In part that is because Mr. Tenet, while well-respected and certainly well-liked, is being increasingly judged as a man who was ultimately overwhelmed by the task of remaking the operations and the culture of the intelligence community. Even Republicans who have backed Mr. Bush and his Iraq strategy say that big changes are needed.

"What happened to the weapons of mass destruction is a mystery," said George P. Shultz, the former secretary of state and a veteran of Washington battles over intelligence and how it should be used. "Something happened. Something was missed. And it happened in an agency that clearly has a lot of deep problems."

At the core of the criticism of Mr. Tenet — and by extension Mr. Bush — are two central arguments. One is that Mr. Tenet failed to exercise the proper skepticism about what capabilities Saddam Hussein had in hand. But the second, perhaps more damaging one, is that he acquiesced to a White House that wanted a certain type of evidence about Iraq and was surprisingly less concerned about evidence that North Korea and Iran were making far more progress toward nuclear weapons than Mr. Hussein was.

On the first issue, there is little question that at times, Mr. Tenet was a restraining influence on a White House that often seemed inclined to turn tips into facts, and theories into evidence.

In the fall of 2002 he called Mr. Bush`s deputy national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, to warn that Mr. Bush could not state in a forthcoming speech that Mr. Hussein had tried to purchase uranium in Africa. He succeeded in having that sentence struck. But it re-emerged in the president`s 2003 State of the Union speech. After Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, told reporters that Mr. Tenet had never read the State of the Union script, Mr. Tenet had to take much of the blame for what became the first of a series of Iraq-related embarrassments. His relationship with the White House staff was never the same, though a person familiar with his views said "there`s only one relationship that matters," his relationship with Mr. Bush.

But as the Iraq momentum grew, Mr. Tenet approved a "national intelligence estimate" that described a fearsome set of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and programs to build more.

Perhaps the most damning but indirect critique of Mr. Tenet has come from an old friend and ally: Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. In an interview last year, Mr. Powell warmly described his relationship with Mr. Tenet as that of two kids from the streets of New York who "watch each other`s back."

But in recent days, Mr. Powell has demanded answers about how he could have been led so astray before he went to the United Nations — with Mr. Tenet sitting behind him — to describe mobile biological laboratories and other weapons programs that no one has located. Mr. Powell suggested that the C.I.A. had been deliberately deceived by some of its sources, including some brought to the agency by Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi exile the Pentagon once embraced, and who is now accused of undermining the occupation.

There is another set of critiques, however: That Mr. Tenet`s intelligence community missed not only evidence of the Sept. 11 plot, but growing evidence in the 1990`s that Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani scientist, was shipping nuclear goods to Iran, North Korea and Libya.

Mr. Tenet has cast the covert work that uncovered Libya`s program as a huge, unheralded success story for the nation`s intelligence agencies. But there is also evidence that while American eyes were trained on Iraq, both North Korea and Iran made significant progress in developing nuclear weapons.

It is those programs that the next director of central intelligence will have to focus on even while tracking Osama bin Laden and the Iraqi insurgency and remaking an institution that has clearly not yet transformed itself. Perhaps that is why Mr. Tenet has told friends he held "the best job in government and the toughest job in government."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company |

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June 4, 2004
Report Blames Agencies Over Prewar Intelligence
By DOUGLAS JEHL

WASHINGTON, June 3 — George J. Tenet`s resignation may have been hastened by a critical, 400-page report from the Senate Intelligence Committee that was presented to the Central Intelligence Agency for comment last month.

Government officials and people close to Mr. Tenet said the classified report was a detailed account of mistakes and miscalculations by American intelligence agencies on whether Iraq possessed illicit weapons before the United States invaded last year. An unclassified version of the report is to be made public this month. Some close to Mr. Tenet said the report was among the factors that led him to resign from a post he had considered leaving for several years.

A senior intelligence official said Mr. Tenet had neither read nor been briefed on the Senate report. The official described as "bunk" the idea that his departure had been related to the Senate findings.

Officials who have read the report described it as presenting a broad indictment of the C.I.A.`s performance on Iraq. They said its criticisms ranged from inadequate prewar collection of intelligence by spies and satellites to a sloppy analysis, often based on uncorroborated sources, that produced the conclusion that Iraq possessed biological and chemical weapons.

"There are some things that are indefensible," said a recently retired intelligence official who had seen the report. "There are some real errors, of omission and commission, and it`s not going to be a pretty picture."

A Congressional official declined to comment on the tone of the report or its specific content, but said, "Our intention has been to be as detailed and as thorough as possible, and we`ve been very specific."

The version of the report that was shown to the C.I.A. included only factual findings. Separate conclusions are still being drafted by Democrats and Republicans on the Republican-controlled panel, government officials said. But the findings alone were portrayed by three officials as likely to be particularly embarrassing to the C.I.A., whose analysts were the main proponents among those from various intelligence agencies of the view that Iraq possessed illicit weapons.

Mr. Tenet and his agency have insisted that it is too soon to say whether the C.I.A. made mistakes in its prewar assessment. But even before Mr. Tenet announced his resignation, the committee chairman, Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, said at a meeting on Thursday that he believed intelligence agencies were still "in denial."

Richard J. Kerr, a former deputy director of central intelligence who has been leading the C.I.A.`s internal review of its performance, said in an interview on Thursday that he had not read the Senate report. But he said he believed that it had been a factor in Mr. Tenet`s decision to resign.

"This has been a very rough go," he said, citing the criticism during Mr. Tenet`s tenure of the agency`s performance on other issues, including the Sept. 11 attacks, the subject of another report, by an independent presidential commission, which is to be released next month.

The reports by the Senate panel and the Sept. 11 commission will be "very critical" of Mr. Tenet and his agency, Mr. Kerr said. "I think he was at a point where he thought maybe it was better that he was no longer the person up front on this."

Until early this week, Congressional officials said, Mr. Tenet had been tentatively scheduled to appear before the Senate committee on Thursday in a closed session, in what would have amounted to a final rebuttal before the report was released. The officials said Mr. Tenet had canceled that appearance, citing other commitments but giving no hint that he was preparing to resign.

A senior intelligence official said the C.I.A., which has the power to decide how much of the classified report will be released in unclassified form, was expected to complete its review soon.

One senior government official outside the C.I.A. who has seen the report described it as prosecutorial. "This is not what you`d call a balanced, analytical document," said the official, who is not normally a Tenet ally. "It`s very, very harsh."

Mr. Tenet and President Bush said Thursday that Mr. Tenet`s reasons for leaving were personal, and others close to Mr. Tenet endorsed that account. Some, including David L. Boren, the former Democratic senator from Oklahoma who hired Mr. Tenet as a staff director on Capitol Hill, emphatically denied that the forthcoming Senate report or the one by the Sept. 11 commission had anything to do with the resignation.

But in anticipation of the report, Senator Roberts, the intelligence committee chairman, had by Thursday morning adopted a newly critical tone toward the intelligence agencies that Mr. Tenet oversees.

"Simply put, I think the community is somewhat in denial," Senator Roberts said at a breakfast meeting, at which he also called for "fresh thinking" among the intelligence agencies. A statement issued later by Senator Roberts and his Democratic counterpart, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, praised Mr. Tenet for his contributions but called attention to to the stormy environment.

"While he steps down during a period of controversy over events leading up to the attacks of 9/11 and the quality of intelligence prior to the Iraq war, we should not lose sight of a simple truth: George Tenet has served his country with distinction and honor during difficult and demanding times," the two senators said in the statement.

Among the particular criticisms that government officials said were made in the classified version of the Senate report were the failure of the C.I.A. to develop human sources of intelligence in Saddam Hussein`s government before the war. As late as 2002, intelligence officials have acknowledged, American intelligence agencies could count on no more than four informants in the Iraqi government.

The report also criticizes what is called the C.I.A.`s heavy reliance on foreign governments for intelligence about Iraq, including sources who were never interviewed by American intelligence and whose veracity is in doubt. Among those sources were one known as "Curveball," who was introduced to German intelligence by the Iraqi National Congress, a group led by Ahmad Chalabi, and who was cited in American intelligence reports as the primary basis for what now appears to be the mistaken assertion that Iraq had mobile laboratories for the manufacture of biological weapons.

The report also calls attention to what one official called "slipshod work" and "factual errors" by C.I.A. analysts and operations officials, including cases in which single sources of intelligence were identified as multiple sources, and in which at least one warning that identified a source of intelligence as a fabricator was ignored. The information provided by the fabricator — that Iraq possessed mobile biological laboratories — found its way into Secretary of State Colin L. Powell`s presentation in February 2003 to the United Nations Security Council making the administration`s case for war.

In a speech in February, Mr. Tenet acknowledged generally the mishandling of the notification about the fabricator, who was also linked to the Iraqi National Congress. Other intelligence officials, also in general terms, have acknowledged one source being listed by various names, so the accounts were presented as corroborating one another.

But government officials who have read the Senate report said it described many more mistakes and did so in abundant detail.

American intelligence agencies have been sharply criticized before during Mr. Tenet`s tenure, most notably in reports by the House-Senate inquiry on the Sept. 11 attacks and in the staff reports released this year by the independent 9/11 commission. Those reports prompted some in Congress to call for his resignation.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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June 4, 2004
A Pentagon Plan Would Cut Back G.I.`s in Germany
By MICHAEL R. GORDON

WASHINGTON, June 3 — The Pentagon has proposed a plan to withdraw its two Army divisions from Germany and undertake an array of other changes in its European-based forces, in the most significant rearrangement of the American military around the world since the beginning of the cold war, according to American and allied officials.

Pentagon policy makers said the aim is to afford maximum flexibility in sending forces to the Middle East, Central Asia and other potential battlegrounds. But some experts and allied officials are concerned that the shift will reduce Washington`s influence in NATO and weaken its diplomatic links with its allies, all at a time of rising anti-American sentiment around the world.

The proposal to withdraw the divisions comes at a time when the Army is stretched thin by deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. But Pentagon officials said the move, which has been under consideration for some time and involves forces in Asia as well as in Europe, is unrelated to the current fighting.

Under the Pentagon plan, the Germany-based First Armored Division and First Infantry Division would be returned to the United States. A brigade equipped with Stryker light armored vehicles would be deployed in Germany. A typical division consists of three brigades and can number 20,000 troops if logistical units are included, though these two divisions have only two brigades each in Germany, with the other brigade in the United States.

In addition, a wing of F-16 fighters may be shifted from their base in Spangdahlem, Germany, to the Incirlik base in Turkey, which would move the aircraft closer to the volatile Middle East; a wing generally consists of 72 aircraft. Under the Pentagon plan, the shift would be carried out only if the Turks gave the United States broad latitude for using them, something that some officials see as unlikely.

The Navy`s headquarters in Europe would be transferred from Britain to Italy. Administration officials are also discussing plans to remove some F-15 fighters from Britain and to withdraw the handful of F-15 fighters that are normally deployed in Iceland, though final decisions have not been made.

Administration officials said Douglas Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy, recently briefed German officials on the plan. The Germans were told that the withdrawal plan had yet to be formally approved by President Bush and that the United States would listen to their concerns, an American official said.

Officials said they expected the major decisions on the rearrangement to be made in a month or two. But the main direction of the Pentagon plan appears to be set.

"Everything is going to move everywhere," Mr. Feith said a year ago, as the Bush administration was beginning to develop the details of its plan. "There is not going to be a place in the world where it`s going to be the same as it used to be."

For Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the reasons for the reshuffling seem clear and compelling: that the purpose of military units is to fight and win the nation`s wars, and they should be stationed in locations that enable the United States to use them most efficiently and with minimal political restrictions.

"It`s time to adjust those locations from static defense to a more agile and a more capable and a more 21st-century posture," Mr. Rumsfeld told reporters on Thursday on a flight to Singapore.

Proponents of Mr. Rumsfeld`s plan see little merit in keeping a large number of forces in Germany now that the cold war is over. They argue that the United States would be better off withdrawing most of them and establishing new bases in Southeastern Europe, from which forces could be rushed if there was a crisis in the Caucasus or the Middle East.

"From a strategic point of view, there is more sense in moving things out of Germany and having something in Bulgaria and Romania," said Joseph Ralston, a retired general and a former NATO commander.

But some experts and allied officials are concerned that a substantial reduction in the United States military presence in Europe would reduce American influence there, reinforce the notion that the Bush administration prefers to act unilaterally and inadvertently lend support to the French contention that Europe must rely on itself for its security.

Montgomery Meigs, a retired general and the former head of Army forces in Europe, said substantial reductions in American troops in Europe could limit the opportunities to train with NATO`s new East European members and other allies. While American forces can still be sent for exercises from the United States, he said, it will be more difficult and costly to do so.

"You will never sustain the level of engagement from the United States that you can from Europe," he said. "We will not go to as many NATO exercises or have as many training events."

Other specialists have warned that the greatest risk is the possible damage to allied relations.

"The most serious potential consequences of the contemplated shifts would not be military but political and diplomatic," Kurt Campbell and Celeste Johnson Ward of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies wrote in an article published last year in the journal Foreign Affairs, well before the extent of the changes now planned became known."Unless the changes are paired with a sustained and effective diplomatic campaign, therefore, they could well increase foreign anxiety about and distrust of the United States."

Gen. James Jones, the American commander of NATO, has supported the withdrawal of the two divisions from Europe on the understanding that American ground units would rotate regularly through Europe, allied officials say. But some allied officials believe it is less clear that the Pentagon will finance and organize the regular rotation of forces that are central to General Jones`s vision, especially since so much of the United States` energy and effort is focused on Iraq.

Already, administration officials have said a brigade of troops is to be shifted from Korea to Iraq. That reflects both the demand for additional forces in Iraq and the new thinking about positioning forces in Asia.

Pentagon officials insist they are effectively managing relations with key allies. "What we have been hearing from the allies privately and publicly is that they understand the U.S. is changing and want to stay connected," said Andy Hoehn, deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy. "The real message is that we have been consulting with the allies and the result has been pretty positive."

The Pentagon plan was discussed at a May 20 meeting of top United States officials. Administration officials declined to comment on the record about the session. A State Department official said that the meeting was a "snapshot at a given time," and that some ideas have continued to be refined since then. In the meeting, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who was once the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he thought it was unlikely that the Turks would agree to allow the United States to operate freely from Turkish bases. Gen. Richard B. Myers, the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also said securing Turkey`s agreement was a long shot and indicated that he favored keeping the F-16`s in Germany, according to an account of the session that was provided.

No United States forces are to be removed from Italy. The Navy`s European headquarters, however, is scheduled to move from London to Naples.

Earlier plans to move that headquarters to Spain have been dropped. While skeptics have wondered if the switch from Spain to Italy is related to the decision by Spain`s new Socialist government to withdraw its troops from Iraq, Defense Department officials insist that it is being made on cost grounds.

Regarding Britain, administration officials are discussing a plan to remove some F-15 fighters. Some Defense Department officials have suggested moving an air command center to Britain from Germany as compensation if F-15`s are removed. But General Myers indicated that he thought the F-15`s should remain in Britain, according to an account of the meeting.

Iceland has long been a sensitive matter, with civilian officials at the Pentagon pushing to remove the small number of F-15`s that are regularly rotated through Iceland under a bilateral agreement reached during the cold war. That could upset a government that has been generally supportive of American policy and which relies on the F-15`s for its air defense.

Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, said at the May 20 meeting that Mr. Bush would not support the withdrawal of the aircraft until a way was found to mollify the Icelanders. One possibility is to make Iceland a "cooperative security location," Defense Department jargon for a base to which forces could rapidly deploy in a crisis.

The Caucasus has also figured into the Pentagon`s calculations. Here the issue is not about moving out, but whether to move in. At the May 20 meeting, senior officials agreed that stationing troops in Georgia could be destabilizing, especially since Russia still has not withdrawn all its forces from that country, a former republic of the Soviet Union. The idea was dropped.

Civilian officials at the Defense Department have pressed for a presidential speech or announcement in mid-June about the new military posture. But State Department officials have argued that this would not leave sufficient time for consultations with the allies and would make the new policy appear to be a fait accompli.

Some officials have noted that the stationing of forces in past decades has entailed more flexibility on all sides than many people realize.

During the May 20 meeting, Mr. Powell is reported to have observed that Army troops like being stationed in Europe and noted that the Germans had never stood in the way when the United States wanted to send its German-based forces on other missions. The United States sent Army units in Germany to fight in the Persian Gulf conflict in 1991 and in the Iraq war in 2003.

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June 4, 2004
COUNTERINSURGENCY
U.S. Training a New Iraqi Military Force to Battle Guerrillas at Their Own Game
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

TAJI, Iraq, June 3 — American military advisers are forming an all-Iraqi counterinsurgency force and training it in guerrilla tactics like ambushing trucks and hiding alongside the road camouflaged as bushes.

The new force, called the Iraqi National Task Force, is the most ambitious effort yet to fight the uprising using Iraqis, and it already has 1,000 soldiers, with plans to grow to 7,000.

It is being created as a response to the refusal of a group of regular Iraqi soldiers to face insurgents in Falluja two months ago. That breakdown culminated in a tense standoff on an airfield with eight American marines surrounded by an angry group of 200 armed Iraqis who refused to board helicopters.

"Basically, that scene was the trigger," said Maj. Gen. Paul D. Eaton, the senior military adviser in charge of training Iraqi security forces. "It was our fault. We tried to send the Iraqi Army into Falluja before they were ready, and they pushed back. After that, we realized we needed a force that was specially designed to fight in urban areas and ready to fight fellow Iraqis."

"I personally made the mistake with the Falluja incident," General Eaton said. "I didn`t appreciate all the conflicting loyalties these guys have — to their families, their tribes, their imams, their sects. I`ve learned a lot since then of the psychology of young Iraqi men and what we`re up against."

The general said all soldiers who volunteered for the task force had to agree to a mission statement that pledged they would fight terrorists, former elements of the fallen Saddam Hussein government and insurgents within Iraq. Some task force soldiers take an oath; others make a more informal commitment.

The new force is being trained at Taji, a big military-industrial complex north of Baghdad littered with the detritus of conflicts past: burned-out tanks, smashed factories and office buildings with hallways that are crunchy with shattered glass.

On Thursday, as American advisers watched, a squad of four Iraqi recruits ran through one of those buildings to attack a very threatening looking file cabinet.

"Keep your head up!" yelled Sgt. Michael Smith. "And remember your angle; make sure you`re looking up when you round that corner."

At another training site, two men covered in leaves and sticks crawled out of the bushes and fired a fake rocket-propelled grenade at a truck while their comrades raked the vehicle with gunfire — blanks, of course.

The lesson: do as the insurgents do.

The American advisers say the counterinsurgency task force is the best trained of the Iraqi security services and is also the best equipped — outfitted with rocket-propelled grenades, hand grenades and heavy machine guns.

Again, Falluja was a turning point.

"Once we saw what the resistance had, we made sure our guys wouldn`t get outgunned," said Capt. Howard Adlam, another adviser. "It`s a credibility issue."

Many members of the new task force said they were eager to kill erhabi, or terrorists. But when the question turned to fighting the mujahedeen, they sounded less sure.

"Many of these mujahedeen are poor farmers and uneducated," said Lt. Ahmed Hamid Kadem, a 25-year-old Iraqi officer from Basra. "I hope we don`t have to fight them. They are our people."

Lieutenant Kadem added, however, "if we must fight them, we will wipe them out."

Col. Shafeen Abdul Majid is a steely eyed Kurdish fighter who, the American advisers say, is one of the most promising task force officers. He said the key to fighting the resistance was "making your soldiers understand they are fighting for Iraq, not against it."

The new force will use sport utility vehicles so that it can be light and mobile. Units have been carefully constructed to ensure that Iraq`s three major groups — Shiites, Sunnis and and Kurds — are proportionally represented.

Most of the recruits are former Iraqi Army soldiers. The American advisers say all have been vetted through computer databases to make sure they are not wanted terrorists or suspected of war crimes, but commanders acknowledge the system is not foolproof. Members of the task force are paid the same as the regular Iraqi Army, starting around $150 per month.

The task force is part of the push to get Iraqi security forces up and running before the United States transfers authority to an interim Iraqi government on June 30.

American advisers say they are pleased with the progress. The original goal for the police force was 85,000 officers; 92,000 have been hired. The border patrol is fully staffed at 17,000 officers, and so is the facility protection services, with 74,000 officers. The civil defense corps is at 25,000 members, with another 15,000 to go. The army is the furthest from its goal, with 7,000 soldiers out of the 35,000 intended.

General Eaton, who is leaving the country in a week and handing his duties to a new team, says it is a great improvement from the situation on April 5.

On that day, as 4,500 American marines were preparing an offensive against Falluja, soldiers from the Second Battalion of the Iraqi Army were called into the fight. On the way from Taji to Baghdad, the force was ambushed. American advisers then changed plans and brought the 200 untested Iraqi soldiers to an airfield to be lifted into Falluja. None had ever been on a helicopter before.

That is when the plan went sideways. Some 70 Iraqi soldiers surrounded the eight American advisers and told them they would not fight fellow Iraqis. The Iraqi soldiers who did want to go to Falluja then started yelling at those who did not.

"I had 200 upset Iraqi soldiers on my hands, and each had 100 rounds of ammunition," Maj. Chris Davis said. "Let`s just say it was a volatile situation." In the end, Major Davis scuttled the mission.

American advisers said that the men who did not want to go to Falluja had now moved on to other work and that the new task force was ready for Falluja-like operations.

"We`re on to something here," General Eaton said. "It`s just taken us a little while to learn."

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June 3, 2004
Q&A: Tenet Resigned to Protect CIA From `Barrage of Criticism`

From the Council on Foreign Relations, June 3, 2004

Leslie H. Gelb, president emeritus and board senior fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations and a long-time friend of George Tenet, says he believes Tenet resigned on June 3 as director of central intelligence because "he felt he was doing good for the CIA and that the agency needed him to move on in order to lift the barrage of criticism that has been leveled at the agency because of Iraq."

In an interview with Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor for cfr.org, Gelb said that the top officials of the Defense Department, including Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and Under Secretary for Policy Douglas Feith, should also resign because of damage they have done to their agency.

The interview took place on June 3, 2004.

How long have you known George Tenet, whose resignation as CIA director was announced today?

I`ve known him since 1981, when I was his teacher at a seminar at Georgetown University. I was a correspondent for The New York Times and moonlighting once a week giving a seminar on national security policy for Georgetown seniors.

Did you know him professionally?

I knew him when he went to work for the Senate Intelligence Committee staff and then when he was chief of staff for the committee. I have known him throughout his career.

So you count him as a friend, evidently?

Yes. I do.

Were you surprised by the resignation?

I was not surprised that he resigned before the year was out, but I did not know when he was going to do it.

He told the CIA employees today after his resignation was announced that he did it strictly for personal reasons; he wanted to spend more time with his family. Of course, a number of people will speculate that he did it to help President Bush politically. What is your sense of it?

First of all, you have to be there with your ear to the ground to listen to the Washington drumbeats to figure out what is going on in a situation like this. Generally, you never know exactly what is going on. You hear some people repeating one rumor and other rumors come out, too. I don`t think his leaving helps Bush politically, and I don`t think he would resign to help Bush politically. I think the only thing that would lead him to resign is if he felt he was doing good for the CIA and that the agency needed him to move on in order to lift the barrage of criticism that has been leveled at the agency because of Iraq.

Obviously, he knows that the various commission reports are going to be fairly critical of the CIA and they will be coming out in the next couple of months.

That`s right. Tenet`s a tough guy and he`s willing to take shots and he would rather have the commission reports blame him than blame the agency as a whole. He`ll take responsibility and he`ll take it in this way, by resigning. He`s not your typical Washington "pol." He really came to have an emotional attachment to the CIA. You can see it in his resignation statement to his employees today. He broke down several times. This was a deep feeling for the people he was working with. It was really paramount. He`s an emotional guy.

He must feel let down by the intelligence information that his agency produced on Iraq`s weapons of mass destruction (WMD). He was quoted in Bob Woodward`s "Plan of Attack" telling the president that the evidence against Iraq was a "slam dunk."

That quote surprises me, not that that isn`t a phrase he would use. He is a big basketball fan. "Slam dunk" is a George Tenet word, but when I spoke to senior officials at the agency about WMD in Iraq before the invasion, they always told me that they did not have a "smoking gun" on any of these areas. They believed they had a lot of circumstantial evidence, but they never claimed they had a "smoking gun." The "slam dunk" phrase kind of jarred me.

Secretary of State Colin Powell apparently feels he was so misled by CIA briefings prior to his presentation to the U.N. Security Council in February 2003 that he will be embarrassed historically.

Look, I believed, Colin Powell believed, almost everybody who followed this with any care that I knew of believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. So far as I know, however, that judgment was never based on the CIA flatly stating that it had hard, concrete evidence or a "smoking gun." If it did, it could have told the United Nations inspectors where to find them. But it never happened. You also remember that whenever Tenet would brief the [congressional] intelligence committees, the senators or representatives would come out to the microphones later and would be asked if they heard of a "smoking gun," and they said no.

So without a "smoking gun," where did the firm belief arise that Iraq had WMD?

It wasn`t hypothetical, it was circumstantial and historical. We knew for a fact that Saddam had used chemical weapons against the Kurds and against the Iranians. We knew from U.N. inspections that he still had stores of chemical weapons. We knew as late as 1998 from documents that there were chemical weapons and at least biological weapons programs. And we knew from over the years that he had been putting together scientific teams and seeking to purchase equipment related to building nuclear weapons.

So these three types of information that came from direct evidence, documents, and from a variety of defectors, including Saddam`s sons-in-law, provided the basis of the judgment that many of us reached in and out of government that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.

If I understand you correctly, you think Tenet resigned for personal reasons, largely to protect the CIA?

I think his family was putting pressure on him, but also I think he was concerned about his organization getting hammered as an institution.

Do you think the agency will escape the hammering now that he`s leaving?

I think he would have been the focal point of it, given his rather strong and assertive personality. I think he came to the view that his departure would deflect a lot of the inevitable criticism from the agency.

Do you think that others should resign?

Absolutely. There has to be accountability and responsibility. And if the president doesn`t want to resign, then somebody else should.

The secretary of defense, in particular?

Yes, and his chief subordinates. The actions they took were so reckless, so careless, that they weaken the continuing role of the Defense Department by staying on.

You`re talking about Wolfowitz and Feith?

Yes.

Do you expect a new CIA director will be chosen before the election?

I strongly doubt it.

Do you think Tenet tailored his analyses to make political points with the administration?

This is a question that comes up with the CIA all the time: is it producing intelligence to political orders? To some degree the agency always does, and it is responsive to prevailing political pressures. During the Cold War, it produced intelligence estimates that played up Soviet military power any time the conservatives said they were underplaying it. I think the agency in all periods was politically responsive and that was true under George as well. But I don`t believe he cooked the intelligence to make it consistent with or support administration policy. I think he took the evidence and, when asked, would put a face on it that was consistent with the administration, but he did not invent the evidence or taint it to support the politics of the administration.

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June 4, 2004
George Tenet Resigns

It`s impossible to argue with George Tenet`s resignation after seven years as director of central intelligence. President Bush said Mr. Tenet had done a "superb job" — the same dissonant compliment he paid Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld after a visit to the Pentagon in which the two men viewed images of American soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners. It`s true that Mr. Tenet has always demonstrated intense dedication to the nation and his job, but he presided over some of the most astonishing and costly failures of American espionage in recent history.

On Mr. Tenet`s watch, the American intelligence community failed to comprehend the domestic threat from Al Qaeda before Sept. 11, 2001. It either bungled or hyped its analysis of Iraq to spin fanciful threats from chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, threats that President Bush used to justify the invasion. The C.I.A. itself apparently did not sign on to the more ludicrous visions offered by Mr. Rumsfeld`s team, like the one of grateful Iraqis showering American soldiers with flowers. But it utterly missed the dismal state Iraq was in and the strength of the insurgency that Americans would face after the fall of Baghdad.

The intelligence community`s shortcomings did not begin with 9/11 or Iraq. While Bill Clinton was president, Mr. Tenet`s team was stunned when India, a close ally, conducted nuclear tests. American intelligence did spot Pakistan`s undisguised preparations for testing its own bomb. But now we know that a Pakistani rocket scientist had been peddling nuclear technology all over the world for years, possibly with government sanction, without the C.I.A. noticing.

Certainly, Mr. Tenet was hampered by shortsighted budget cuts that began in the first Bush administration. His supporters say he bolstered the intelligence agencies` morale after 9/11 and provided stability and continuity. There is also evidence that C.I.A. analysts disagreed with the more outrageous claims about Saddam Hussein`s weapons. And the beleaguered Mr. Tenet must have found vindication in allegations that Ahmad Chalabi, a darling of the Pentagon who was long mistrusted by the C.I.A., gave American secrets to Iran.

But if Mr. Tenet secretly thought that the prewar analysis was overblown, there`s no evidence that he did anything about it. In Bob Woodward`s recent book, Mr. Tenet is depicted as assuring Mr. Bush that the case against Mr. Hussein was a "slam dunk," something that is sure to haunt him.

Mr. Tenet`s reasons for leaving were the subject of much speculation yesterday. The White House offered up the customary "personal reasons" and said Mr. Bush had not forced him out. Mr. Tenet said in a choked voice that he wanted to spare his family further exposure to the pressures of his job. It`s easy to sympathize, considering the months of criticism that he and the intelligence agencies are about to endure — from a highly negative Senate Intelligence Committee report that Mr. Tenet received this week, from the 9/11 commission`s report and from an update expected this summer from Mr. Tenet`s own investigator in Iraq on the failure to find weapons of mass destruction.

Whether the resignation was voluntary or forced, the timing was terrible. It`s too close to the November election for Mr. Bush to make any credible effort to replace Mr. Tenet. The president named Mr. Tenet`s deputy, John McLaughlin, as the acting director starting July 11, and, in theory, he could rush through a new nominee. But it is hard to imagine such a choice being based on more than simply finding someone politically bland enough to pass muster in an already tense election year.

Instead, Mr. Bush could leave Mr. McLaughlin, a veteran of three decades at the C.I.A., as the caretaker, and the White House and Congress could finally get serious about reforming the intelligence community and providing the tools the next director will need to do the job. Mr. Tenet had the responsibility to oversee, but not the power to control, 15 intelligence agencies. The biggest share of the intelligence budget was well out of his reach at the Pentagon, where Mr. Rumsfeld has repeatedly tried to usurp the C.I.A. with his own espionage outfits.

There are credible ideas on the table to start the discussion. Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has floated the notion of having his committee control all the secret intelligence budgets scattered around Congress. Representative Jane Harman, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, is shopping around legislation that seems a good start toward putting the intelligence agencies under one responsible and accountable official. Instead of engaging in a partisan confirmation brawl, the White House and Congress could spend the summer on these issues, and present the winner of the election with the chance to name an intelligence director who has the personal stature, political mandate and, ideally, added authority to institute some real reform.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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June 4, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
A Scapegoat Is Not a Solution
By PAUL R. PILLAR

WASHINGTON

Some critics of America`s intelligence services will mistakenly see George Tenet`s resignation as director of central intelligence as a first reaction to the 9/11 commission and as an acknowledgement that the C.I.A. failed to anticipate the rise of radical Islamic terrorism. In this they will echo the staff report of the 9/11 commission, issued in April, which asserted that the intelligence community failed to recognize the "catastrophic threat" that Al Qaeda represented and did not shake the pre-9/11 "conventional wisdom" about the extent of this danger.

The staff report also held that the agencies might have changed the course of history if they had produced a national intelligence estimate — an authoritative document put together by all the federal intelligence services to give the president and his national security team an overall assessment of a specific threat — on the Osama bin Laden network.

These assertions, and the lingering criticism of Mr. Tenet, raise several questions, including what "catastrophic terrorism" means, what Al Qaeda is, what the conventional wisdom was before 9/11, and what national intelligence estimates can really accomplish.

First, starting in the mid-1990`s, there was no shortage of public discussion about "catastrophic terrorism" — although almost all of it was about possible chemical, biological and nuclear terrorism, and to a lesser extent cyberterrorism. This, in fact, was the real "conventional wisdom" of the time.

Shortly before 9/11 I wrote in a book that nonconventional attacks were a genuine and probably growing threat, but that the disproportionate focus on them left a distorted picture of the terrorist threats the United States actually faced. The equating of "catastrophic" with chemical, biological and nuclear threats was misleading, I suggested, because terrorism using conventional means could produce large-scale casualties and because not all nonconventional attacks were guaranteed to do so (as the series of anthrax letters in 2001 would demonstrate).

This line of thinking can also be found in the agencies` 1995 national intelligence estimate on foreign terrorist threats in the United States, which judged that the odds were increasing that terrorists would try to use chemical or biological agents, but that they "were more likely to use the conventional weapons with which they are familiar and which can be extremely destructive."

The estimate postulated that the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 — in which the bombers` objective was to topple the twin towers and kill thousands — had probably crossed a threshold in terms of "large-scale terrorist attacks" and that more of the same would be coming. The kinds of targets the estimate identified as being especially at risk were "national symbols such as the White House and the Capitol and symbols of U.S. capitalism such as Wall Street."

Even more striking, that estimate also made clear that the most likely foreign terrorist threat stemmed from the network of Islamist groups that had formed during the jihad against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. It noted the network`s continued reliance on training in Afghanistan, and the animus of its members toward the United States. It warned that members were seeking cover by blending in with the growing Muslim immigrant community in the United States, and that they could move freely because "they know how to take advantage of U.S. laws."

Among its key judgments, the intelligence estimate assessed that members of this Islamist network posed the most likely threat of terrorist attack in the United States, and that growth of the network was "enhancing the ability of Islamic extremists to operate in the United States." It also highlighted civil aviation as a vulnerable and attractive target.

At that time I was serving as chief analyst at the C.I.A.`s counterterrorism center, and as a follow-up to the intelligence estimate, an F.B.I. counterpart and I met with senior representatives of the aviation industry to discuss its conclusions. The briefings, arranged by the Federal Aviation Administration, were meant to persuade the industry that the terrorist threat required that the security of civil aviation to be strengthened. Unfortunately, our powers of persuasion were evidently insufficient to overcome the industry`s resistance to expensive new security measures. Still, to imply that the intelligence agencies were in the dark about the possibility of a catastrophic attack is to ignore history.

As for the 9/11 commission staff`s accusation that too little attention was paid to Al Qaeda, it too is simply not borne out by the facts. The intelligence community`s early recognition of the threat was reflected, for example, in the creation in the mid-1990`s of the first-ever C.I.A. unit focused solely on one person: Mr. bin Laden. The agency communicated its assessment of the danger posed by Al Qaeda in numerous papers, in briefings to senior policymakers and in meetings of Richard Clarke`s counterterrorism group at the National Security Council. Mr. Tenet said publicly on many occasions that the agency had identified Mr. bin Laden and Al Qaeda as the No. 1 threat to American security.

It also seems that the 9/11 commission staff report, in an apparent determination to tell a tale of an intelligence service having missed the emergence of a powerful terrorist group, has the nature of the terrorism threat wrong. The report mentions several terrorist attacks by radical Islamists around the world over the last decade and implies that they were all the work of Mr. bin Laden and Al Qaeda.

This is not the case. Some were perpetrated by Muslim radicals who, while part of a wider network of like-minded Islamists, were not part of Osama bin Laden`s organization. In fact, the most exhaustive analysis of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, which reflected a decade`s worth of research, was unable to conclude that Mr. bin Laden had instigated the attack.

Far more is at stake here than repairing the reputation of the C.I.A. The conclusions of the 9/11 commission will be important for countering the terrorist threat of today, as manifested in the post-9/11 attacks from Bali to Madrid. Al Qaeda, although still a danger, has been badly damaged by the measures taken over the past two and a half years. But the broader Islamist network it supports and feeds off of may be as strong as ever, and it constitutes a serious terrorist threat that will remain even after Osama bin Laden is killed or captured.

The big lesson of the 1990`s isn`t that the intelligence agencies had no idea of the threat we faced. It is that even their repeated warnings were not sufficient to change national priorities. Two more specific lessons follow. First, national intelligence estimates are not panaceas, either in adding to what the intelligence community conveys to policy makers through other means or in stimulating new agendas. Experience has shown that major policy changes tend to come only from actual disasters.

The second lesson is that the American public needs more of an education in the complexities of international terrorism, and fewer of the oversimplifications that have characterized the current blame game. George Tenet may be leaving government service, but the public would do well to take heed of his testimony to the 9/11 commission, in which he noted that "warning is not good enough without the structure to put it into action."

Paul R. Pillar, the author of "Terrorism and U. S. Foreign Policy," is the officer responsible for Near Eastern and South Asian issues in the National Intelligence Council.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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washingtonpost.com

For Personal Reasons, Or Is He the Fall Guy?

By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 4, 2004; Page A01

When three hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing thousands, no one took the fall in the Bush administration.

When the nation went to war in Iraq on the basis of intelligence about weapons of mass destruction that turned out to be wildly wrong, no one took the fall, either.

So when George J. Tenet resigned as CIA director yesterday, it was no surprise that his departure was choreographed to demonstrate he was not being blamed for any of the intelligence failures that occurred on his watch. The administration line was that he was leaving on his own accord to spend time with his family.

But in official Washington, where every departure of any senior official is searched for hidden meaning and ulterior motives, the question lingered yesterday in the corridors of power and over expense-account meals: Was Tenet finally being served up as a sacrificial lamb by an administration that loathes to admit a mistake?

As with much news that has had Tenet at the center, there was no shortage of spin -- and many competing answers. While defenders accepted the official explanation, those eager to tarnish the administration saw the departure as proof that somebody was finally paying the price for the assorted intelligence failures. Republicans who sensed tension between Tenet and the White House believed his resignation was not unwanted.

Fueling much of the speculation was the fact that Tenet had sought to leave at several points last year, but President Bush had persuaded him to stay, as administration officials told it. Now, when the White House is under severe political pressure and Bush`s reelection may be imperiled, the president finally accepted Tenet`s resignation.

"To some degree, the White House may be making a craven calculation," said Flynt Leverett, a former CIA and Bush White House official who is now at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. "You have calls for accountability, that someone has to lose a job. In a sense, you have an easy way to have someone lose his job -- he wants to quit."

Others noted that Tenet is leaving before reports are issued on intelligence failures that led to the Sept. 11 attacks and the gathering of intelligence about weapons in Iraq. Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) said that it was "no secret" that Tenet was tired and wanted to leave but that Tenet was also well aware that the reports would soon be issued. But, he added, "I don`t think George Tenet should be held responsible or blamed for the intelligence failures of the past two years."

Former CIA director Stansfield Turner told CNN that he was very surprised by the resignation because he thought "the president was not going to acknowledge that there were problems in his own inner circle. I certainly thought that Tenet, being a very loyal type of civil servant, would not walk out on the president in the middle of an election campaign."

Those closest to Tenet tended to discount the more conspiratorial explanations.

"I`m probably the only person in Washington who takes George at face value," said former national security adviser Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, who said he had many phone conversations yesterday speculating on the motives and political impact of Tenet`s departure. Berger, who worked closely with Tenet in the Clinton White House, noted that Tenet has been at the center of intelligence decision making for nearly 12 years, either at the CIA or Clinton`s National Security Council.

Mark Mansfield, a CIA spokesman, said the critical reports -- by the Senate intelligence panel and by the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks -- had nothing to do with his departure. "It was a personal decision, nothing more, nothing less," he said.

To be sure, many of the CIA`s successes are hidden from view, while its failures generate big headlines. Tenet earlier this year offered a firm defense of the agency making exactly that point, focusing in particular on its role in cracking a nuclear smuggling ring operating out of Pakistan.

Tenet`s resignation came, moreover, just as the CIA`s critical assessment of Iraqi politician Ahmed Chalabi seemed to be borne out with allegations that Chalabi told Iran that the United States had broken its code for secret communication.

Tenet by all accounts had also forged an unusually close relationship with the president. He was a holdover from the previous administration, but -- unusual in an administration stocked with officials deeply suspicious of anything associated with former president Bill Clinton -- he won Bush`s trust and appreciation.

"It`s quite extraordinary that George was able to serve two presidents of two parties with such distinct personalities and earn the trust of both of them," said Berger, Clinton`s second-term security adviser.

In terms of policy, a new CIA director is not likely to make much difference, since the director`s role is to provide information and analysis for policymakers, not to try to influence policy. The interim replacement, Deputy Director John E. McLaughlin, is almost a Tenet clone, a self-effacing career civil servant.

Still, Tenet`s resignation signals the beginning of the breakup of a foreign policy team that has taken the country through the Sept. 11 crisis and two wars over the past 3 1/2 years. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice have made it clear they will depart at the end of the current term, and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld appears unlikely to remain in the wake of the prison scandal in Iraq and the many calls for his resignation.

Thus, even if Bush wins reelection, the foreign policy slate largely could be wiped clean in six months.

Staff writer Robin Wright contributed to this report.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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The Prism Of Abu Ghraib

By Scott Cooper

Friday, June 4, 2004; Page A23

David Halberstam concludes his book "War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton, and the Generals" with the following observation: "I should note finally that I did not go looking for the ghosts of Vietnam, but they were often there, and they found me, most notably in the damage done to two institutions critical to general public health and disproportionately affected by that war, the U.S. Army and the Democratic Party."

The ghosts of Vietnam continue to haunt the Army, which came out of that war affected by a sense of demoralization that the institution still has not shaken.

My perceptions of this affliction are born out of my own experience as a Marine, not as a soldier in the Army. Having deployed five times in support of contingencies, and having had the opportunity to reflect on civil-military relations as a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, I believe strongly that one of the keys to a healthy democracy is the relationship between a society and its military. This relationship has, for Americans, been tenuous in recent weeks.

Today we see an Army that is in agony over the twofold burden placed on it: that of transformation, which is changing many of the most sacred assumptions about how the Army should equip and man itself, and that of an extended commitment overseas, which is stretching its people and equipment to the limit. In the fallout from the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, the Army is on the threshold of a far-reaching and potentially damaging institutional crisis. This crisis is the Army`s, not necessarily the entire military`s, and it will play itself out alongside society`s interpretation of the way the Army deals with this affair.

The most important outcome of a war undertaken by a nation is not on the battlefield but within the society that fights these wars. U.S. society was transformed by Vietnam, especially civilians` relationship with the military. The wounds are still not healed, and the divide is not bridged, primarily because the Army and society often view Vietnam differently. When President George H.W. Bush claimed in the wake of the Persian Gulf War that the "Vietnam syndrome" was dead, he underestimated the depth and permanence of the scars for the Army.

The Army sees Vietnam as a great betrayal -- by both military and civilian leaders and by an American public that broke faith with its military. To many in the Army today, including the youngest soldiers who learn their institutional history as it is passed down, there were two great betrayals in Vietnam.

First, there was the hubris of Army leaders, who tied military decisions to covert political considerations and thereby sacrificed tens of thousands of lives in vain. Second, there were the elites of society who opposed the war and broke faith with those in the military who felt an obligation to serve their country.

As colonels and senior NCOs tell the story of their units and their institution to the youngest soldiers, history is transmitted to the next generation, and they see history and themselves from that perspective.

The Army`s metaphor for the Vietnam experience is encapsulated in the Rambo character of the movies: a lonely, bitter warrior whose only desire is to have his country love him as much as he loves it.

Most of America remembers Vietnam differently than the Army does. In the end, typical Americans could not see the connection between the far-off jungles of Southeast Asia and America`s security, and their support for the war declined to the point of opposition. But they also remember Vietnam as a tragic episode for an institution that they previously had respected unequivocally.

No longer were GIs the liberators, as in Europe. They were the flawed soldiers who didn`t live up to the American ideals of honor and courage. Indeed, the metaphor that still haunts middle America is My Lai. Lt. William Calley`s platoon, which massacred innocent civilians, became the prism through which the Army was seen by society.

Abu Ghraib threatens to serve as a similar metaphor for this war in Iraq.

The goons who tortured Iraqi prisoners are not representative of the Army. Neither were the members of Calley`s platoon in 1968. But the self-immolation and crisis of confidence infecting the Army is one that also threatens to create a divide between Americans and their Army, especially if the episode is viewed by the Army as an unfair witch hunt directed against it.

As the Army struggles with the excruciating issues of command responsibility, it again becomes clear how harsh and absolute military accountability is, and how necessary. The corrosive impact of the absence of accountability is an institution where people will no longer trust leaders who feel themselves beyond accountability. If the Army comes out of this affair with the same sense of victimization that it did from Vietnam, the risk is a new division between the Army and American society that will be just as toxic as the divisions of Vietnam.

The writer is a Marine aviator assigned to Cherry Point, N.C., and currently deployed to Iwakuni, Japan. The views here are his own.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Bush`s offer to Chirac: `Come on over and see some cows`
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington

04 June 2004

President George Bush left for Europe yesterday in an attempt to rally support for his plans for the handover of power in Iraq, and help transatlantic relations recover from arguably their biggest crisis in six decades.

Outwardly all will be sweetness and light during his visit to Italy and France. In both countries the focus will be on the 60th anniversary of two high points of the Second World War, the US-led liberation of Rome in 1944, and the D-Day landings.

The occasion will merge almost seamlessly into next week`s G8 summit, as most leaders attending the ceremonies on the Normandy beaches - including Tony Blair, President Chirac of France, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany and President Vladimir Putin of Russia - fly on to Sea Island, Georgia for more discussions, again certain to be dominated by the Middle East.

In the run up, both sides have been professing their desire to let bygones be bygones. Mr Bush, in an interview with Paris-Match, even invited M. Chirac to "come and see some cows" - thus extending the rare honour of an invitation to his ranch at Crawford, Texas.

The half-jocular tone of the President`s remarks is in contrast to a year ago, in the aftermath of the French/US clash at the UN, when Mr Bush angrily said M. Chirac would not be coming to Crawford "anytime soon."

But the warm words mask a sour reality. A year after the diplomatic debacle at the UN, France and Russia are once again picking holes in another draft Security Council resolution being circulated by Britain and the US - this one setting out the terms of the handover of power by the US-led force to the new interim Iraqi government.

The White House is counting on the photo-ops in Normandy and at Sea Island, to give the President a badly needed boost in his re-election campaign.

But the concrete results of a week of meetings may be few. Though most experts believe that, unlike in March 2003, a UN resolution on the new Iraq will be agreed, Mr Bush is unlikely to gain any new commitments of troops from the European allies, despite the intense current strain on US forces in Iraq.

In the latest sign of overstretch, the US Army has announced it will require all soldiers deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan to remain on active duty until their units return. But both France and Germany have made it clear again that they will not send contingents of their own, even under the aegis of the UN. This in turn makes it unlikely that any assistance will be forthcoming from Nato, which holds its own summit in Turkey at the end of this month.

If anything the opposite is more likely. Faced with continuing violence in Iraq and strong public opposition at home, some participating countries are considering pulling out. Such a move, the President said, would send a "disastrous" signal.

Nor do many European governments share Mr Bush`s argument, set out in his speech to the US Air Force Academy on Wednesday, that the war on terrorism is the Second World War of the 21st century, "the storm in which we fly."

Permeating everything is a widespread dislike of many of Mr Bush`s policies - and of the style of the man himself. Quite apart from Iraq, the objections are to Washington`s spurning of several international treaties, and its high-handed and unilateralist approach to a host of issues. For public opinion in much of Europe, this translates into huge negative ratings for the President, in France no less than 85 per cent.

"European governments for the most part would prefer to see John Kerry win the next election," argues Charles Kupchan of the Council of Foreign Relations. "They are trying to figure out how to keep this month on target, not have a train wreck. But at the same time, they don`t want to do George Bush any favours, by giving him things that would increase his chances for re-election, such as new troops or a Nato decision to go to Iraq."

The transatlantic differences have also undermined plans to bring democracy to the Middle East, which was to have been the centrepiece of the Sea Island summit.

The so-called Greater Middle East Initiative has now been watered down, after protests from Arab countries and some European leaders, who believe such change cannot be imposed from outside- least of all when Arab nations have not been consulted.

Increasingly however, the problems reflect differing world views in Europe and the US. They will not be made to disappear by the symbolism and nostalgia of ceremonies evoking great deeds of 60 years ago.


4 June 2004 09:23



© 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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Farewell to the fall guy blamed for terror blunders

CIA chief finally quits as inquiries continue into double debacle of September 11 attacks and WMD claims
Julian Borger in Washington
Friday June 4, 2004

The Guardian
In the White House he was just known as George, loyal and liked and part of the furniture. But yesterday, after seven years and two of the worst intelligence disasters America has suffered, George Tenet finally ran out of friends.

The consensus among former intelligence officials who know him is that he had wanted to go for some time. He was the second longest serving CIA director in US history, after Allen Dulles, and most of his seven years had been frantic.

His health was suffering and he was tired. Yet there was also general agreement that a loyal soldier like Mr Tenet would not have gone without a nod from George Bush.

It is certainly a convenient departure. Mr Tenet has become a lightning rod for the administration`s failure to prevent the September 11 attacks, and for its wholehearted acceptance of bogus intelligence about Saddam Hussein`s weapons of mass destruction.

The first lapse led to a second Pearl Harbour. The second led to a messy war that has US armed forces pinned down in a country where they are not wanted.

Now that Mr Tenet is outside the administration, much of the criticism - and there is plenty more to come with a string of inquiries under way into the double debacle - can be deflected away from the president as he approaches re-election. Mr Bush is known for liking to keep his team intact through thick and thin, but it looks as if in Mr Tenet`s case he was prepared to make an exception.

However, his defenders warn he is being made a scapegoat.

They say he may have made mistakes, but at least he tried to alert a new but complacent administration in the first months of 2001 that an attack was coming. They also say he was under pressure to come up with any scraps of intelligence the CIA could find on Iraqi WMD by neo-conservatives bent on "liberation".

The final judgment on Mr Tenet`s tenure is likely to fall somewhere between these two partisan views - a fall guy who probably deserved to fall.

When Mr Tenet took over as director of Central Intelligence in 1997, the CIA had not emerged from its cold war mindset and had not realised the scale of the threat from al-Qaida. It had no spies inside the organisation and no intelligence operation in Afghanistan.

"He was handed command of the Titanic at 10 minutes to midnight," argued Robert Baer, a former CIA agent, who has written critical books on US intelligence and foreign policy.

"He inherited an agency that was broken and defined by the cold war," Vincent Cannistraro, a former head of the CIA`s counter-terrorist unit, said. He added that John Deutsch, Mr Tenet`s predecessor, had cut the budget and staff, particularly in the directorate of operations, which runs clandestine operations.

"[George Tenet] brought stability and big budgets, and got it ready for the new century," Mr Cannistraro said.

Still, it was not until the bloody awakening of August 1998 with the bombing of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, that the CIA fully realised the threat posed by al-Qaida.

By early 2001, when the Bush administration took office, Mr Tenet was "running around with his hair on fire", in the words of Richard Clarke, a former White House counter-terrorist tsar, warning senior officials about an impending al-Qaida attack.

However, while Mr Tenet was raising the alarm, his agency had lost track of two suspects it had spotted at an al-Qaida meeting in Malaysia the previous year - Khalid al Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi.

As the result of a catalogue of errors and misunderstandings between the CIA and FBI, the two men were able to enter the US under their own names. When the alarm was finally raised, it was too late. They could not be found. The next time their names showed up, they were on the list of the 19 hijackers.

For this and other lapses, the September 11 commission investigating the attacks is expected to direct much of its criticism at Mr Tenet and his agency. It is due to deliver its report before the end of July.

Many political observers were surprised that President Bush did not fire Mr Tenet after the September 11 dust settled.

After all, he was the only high-level official the administration had inherited from Bill Clinton, and by firing him, the White House could have underlined the link between the attack and past mistakes.

But by then, Mr Bush and Mr Tenet had developed a close personal bond. The CIA director is the son of Greek immigrants, and grew up working in his parents` diner in Queens, New York.

Like the president, he believes in eye contact and straight talk. According to the Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward, Mr Tenet once said: "Everything is mano-a-mano, everything."

It was clearly not just a question of male bonding. Mr Tenet had become vital to maintaining contacts between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and was trusted by politicians and security chiefs on both sides.

The administration was also on the point of embarking on a war in Afghanistan, in which CIA paramilitary teams played a central role. Mr Tenet was primarily responsible for ensuring that the agency had the right people to put on the ground.

After Afghanistan, Mr Tenet`s reputation recovered, and he played a key role in the decision on whether to go to war with Iraq. His analysts were doubtful about much of the intelligence and the defectors being offered by the Iraqi National Congress, and they were especially sceptical about claims Iraq had operational links with al-Qaida.

But the vice president, Dick Cheney, and the neo-conservatives in the administration had more faith in the INC than in the CIA. Mr Cheney made several trips to the CIA`s headquarters in Langley, Virginia, to question the analysts` conclusions.

By October 2002, the CIA seemed to have changed its mind. The National Intelligence Estimate, intended to convey the considered opinion of the whole intelligence committee, which was overseen by Mr Tenet, included many claims about Iraqi WMD that were later proved to be false.

Some observers argue that Mr Tenet was so loyal to President Bush, particularly after the president had stood by him when others were baying for his resignation, that he was prepared to bend the CIA`s analysis to the White House`s will. However, Mr Woodward`s book, Plan of Attack, portrays Mr Tenet as personally convinced by the intelligence, at one point describing the case for the existence of Iraq`s WMD as a "slam-dunk".

Mr Tenet never denied making that remark.

He stayed on in the job amid ceaseless rumours of his departure, perhaps hoping that a better epitaph for his career would turn up. In the end, none did.

· George John Tenet was born in January 1953 in New York to Greek immigrants. He studied at Georgetown and Columbia universities. He is married and has a son, John Michael.

· After serving as its deputy, he became director of the Central Intelligence Agency in July 1997. Though he was a Clinton appointee, he became fiercely loyal to George Bush

· During 1998 Middle East peace talks, Tenet threatened to resign if President Clinton pardoned convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard

· In April 2000 the CIA was blamed for the 1999 US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the Nato conflict with Yugoslavia

· In June 2001 Tenet brokered a ceasefire plan between the Israelis and the Palestinians but it was never implemented

· Despite telling his top managers in 1998 that the CIA was "at war" with Osama bin Laden, the CIA failed to prevent or foresee September 11

· The recent 9/11 commission criticised the CIA for having missed "telltale" indicators of the impending terrorist attacks. Tenet told the commission that it will take five years to correct the intelligence gathering flaws exposed by the attacks

· In February 2003 Tenet was involved in the preparation of the dossier presented by the secretary of state, Colin Powell, to the UN security council which detailed evidence of Iraq`s WMD

· In July 2003 Tenet admitted that the CIA was wrong to allow President Bush to say that Iraq had tried to acquire nuclear material from Africa.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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COMMENTARY
U.S. Only Wounded Itself When It Betrayed Chalabi
By Danielle Pletka

June 4, 2004

The recent reports detailing the alleged perfidy of Ahmad Chalabi actually say much more about his accusers in the U.S. government than they do about Chalabi himself. They reveal Washington as a faithless friend and its agencies as more concerned with carrying out vendettas than with pursuing the real enemies of the United States.

But that is starting at the end of the story. The beginning is far different: Once, in the early 1990s, Chalabi was a trusted associate of the Central Intelligence Agency, the key player in a unsuccessful coup to overthrow Saddam Hussein and, as head of the Iraqi National Congress, one of the few effective Iraqi politicians in exile. Later, abandoned by the CIA, Chalabi was supported, albeit reluctantly, by the State Department.

Today, however, Chalabi is being accused by unnamed administration officials of a laundry list of treachery, including revealing classified information to the government of Iran. From CIA co-conspirator to traitor in a few short years appears to be a stunning fall from grace. But, in this case, appearances are deceiving. The truth is that those who are now accusing him are the same people who have viewed him as an enemy for many years. They are the people inside our government — at State, in the CIA and elsewhere — who oppose the administration`s policy in Iraq and who see Chalabi as its personification.

Chalabi himself never changed. He was very consistent: He wanted the overthrow of Hussein. When the CIA dumped him, he went to Congress; when Congress lost interest, he went to the Pentagon. He has never taken no for an answer, never accepted the premise that it was better to accept a tyrant in Iraq than risk destabilizing the Middle East. In so doing, he earned himself the undying hostility of a variety of powerful Washington players.

Throughout the 1990s, Chalabi was regularly accused of malfeasance by his enemies. He was convicted in absentia in Jordan of embezzling funds from the bank he ran. Those charges have never been documented.

Then State Department officials accused his organization of playing loose with U.S. money. In every instance he was exonerated by the department`s own inspector general.

The latest charges have been dizzying. The Iraqi National Congress has been accused of providing bad intelligence on weapons of mass destruction. INC officials in Iraq are being investigated for a variety of crimes. Chalabi himself, according to unnamed sources, was supposedly obstructing an investigation of the United Nations oil-for-food program. And now he is accused of spying for Iran.

But the charges don`t ring true. Wasn`t Chalabi, as chairman of the Iraqi Governing Council`s finance committee, the moving force behind the oil-for-food investigation? (Yes, he was.) And since when is it the job of intelligence sources to vet the information they pass to the U.S.? Isn`t that the CIA`s brief?

Of all the charges, passing secrets to Iran is the most serious. It is gravest, obviously, for the American who supposedly told Chalabi that we had broken Iranian codes. That person is governed by U.S. laws, and if he exists, he should be prosecuted.

Chalabi, on the other hand, is a foreigner and owes us no fealty (although it is worth noting that he denies the charges). That he has been close to the Iranians has been well known for years; the United States even paid for his offices in Tehran. So there`s no great surprise there.

But when you think about it, why would he pass secrets to Iranian intelligence in Baghdad? Why would that station chief then use the very codes Chalabi told him were compromised to pass the news back home? And why would we openly break with Chalabi unless we wished to confirm to the Iranians that the codes had indeed been compromised? It makes no sense.

In the end, little of this storm over Chalabi will matter to the man himself. As a target of American harassment, he has renewed his credibility in the eyes of his people. Rather, it is upon itself that the United States has inflicted a terrible wound.

There were all too few Iraqis who were willing to risk life and limb to topple Hussein; and there were even fewer who believed in Western democratic values. Chalabi was one. As we search the region for others who will help us spread democracy and help us rid the Middle East of its many kings and presidents-for-life, we will discover that the word has spread: The United States is a faithless friend.

Danielle Pletka is vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.


Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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Drug Up Your Teen Today!
This just in: Prozac is a better treatment than talking to your kid. Isn`t life fabulous?
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, June 4, 2004

Is your teenager depressed? Throwing things? Sulking like she hates you and only speaking in monosyllabic grunts and playing their Staind or Avril Lavigne or Hoobastank MP3s way too loud? Sure they are. Damn kids.

Are they slouching way too much and wearing low-slung clothes and locking the door to their bedrooms and masturbating chronically, and then racking up huge cell-phone bills as they complain endlessly to their best friend about their unrequited loves and horrible parents and how much they hate life and how they`re always despondent and put upon and pimply and miserable?

Solution: You need to give them drugs. Lots of drugs. Expensive ones with nice little corporate logos on them. This is the only way.

Haven`t you been reading the papers? Watching the commercials? Drugs are in. Drugs are the new black. Drugs rain down from the sky like pretty purple Skittles. Drugs are mandatory and the most important advancement in child-rearing since the invention of the cane and the padlock and the Catholic priest.

No, not the bad drugs. Not the drugs that cool people take and which make your kids party hard and dance all night and which make their eyes all red and mushy and makes colors swirl and skin feel like honey and makes them horny or hungry or feel really really good for awhile, until they don`t. Not the ones which are cheaply produced and impossible to regulate and as easy to get as degrading sexual misinformation in public schools. Not those.

No, your kids needs the other kind of drugs. The good kind. The kind that are prescribed by overpaid shrinks after the kid`s umpteenth $300 visit. The kind which run about seven bucks a pop and are made by Pfizer or GlaxoSmithCline or maybe Eli Lilly, and which are roughly three times more toxic and a ten times more synthetic and a thousand times more spiritually debilitating than the "evil" street stuff, given how they`re totally legal and corporate sponsored and therefore radiate this sinister venomous aura of happy culturally approved doom.

Behavioral modifiers. Prozac. Paxil. Zoloft. Xanax. Et al. You name it, your kids can have it, and probably should. Millions are already addicted. Millions more will be by the end of this year, if not by the end of this column. Maybe you`re one of them, yourself. Hi. Isn`t the sky lovely today? Yes, it sure is.

Just look at them, the well-drugged teens of American, all calm and happily narcotized, walking around with their eyes glazed over and their shirts untucked and their souls drained of all vital juices. God bless America at its world-record 25-percent mood disorder rate! The most-drugged nation on the planet! We`re number one! So proud.

Don`t you want your child happy and well-adjusted and violently, chemically torqued, his or her entire body ravaged by enough synthetic compounds and serotonin reuptake inhibitors and mood enhancers it would make Anna Nichol Smith giddy? Of course you do.

Hey, they`ve done studies. Studies that finally prove once and for all that Prozac is much more effective on your depressed miserable slouchy door-slammin` punkass teen than merely talking to them and loving them well and teaching them to appreciate life and sex and spirituality and fine artisan cheeses. So you know it must be true.

And do you know why? Why the Prozac is more effective? Because it`s a potent chemical narcotic, silly! It rewires their brains and poisons their little juvenile blood vessels and kills any pesky burgeoning testosteroned sex drive once and for all!

Imagine! No more worries! No more teen pregnancy! It`s just like neutering your dog! Or getting catalytic converter on the car! Or laying down beige shag carpeting everywhere! Everything calm and soft and non-irritating, all edges filed right down. Isn`t pharmacology fabulous?

Never you mind the pesky lawsuits. Like the one just filed by the New York attorney general against Glaxo over how they supposedly suppressed a bunch of studies that proved how their beloved zim-zammer brain-slammer Paxil made a bunch of kids even more twitchy and despondent and, whoops, suicidal.

Shhh. Hey, it was only a handful of kids, all right? Maybe like, ten. Or fifty. Who knows? "Acceptable losses," as they say in military parlance. Small price to pay for a whirling nation of numb smiling partially lobotomized teens who will open the door for you and say yes sir and no ma`am and wash you car for a dollar. Am I right? Goddamn right.

Never you mind, furthermore, that we have become a nation of sweetly drug-addled automatons begging at the hand of the giant pharmcos, and that only a teeny-tiny fraction of the kids whose parents now have them sucking down behavioral meds like M&Ms actually need them, actually have severe enough brain issues and chemical imbalances and psycho-emotional traumas that these drugs are small miracles.

Nossir, never you mind that the rest of those millions of nubile doe-eyed Prozac/Zoloft/Xanax teen addicts are merely being medicated to death for no viable reason whatsoever, other than the fact that they`re just a bunch of angry depressed miserable angst-ridden teens and their parents are sick of trying to cope with it.

But wait, isn`t the angry teen thing a part of life? Isn`t that a mandatory stage for just about every kid nationwide, right before they evolve past it and their skin clears up and they finally get laid and then get old enough to drink and buy a minivan and have kids and finally join AA like good Christian adults?

And is it worth noting, again, that most of our drug-happy nation is merely seeking sad, silver-bullet relief from what has become a truly staggering and vicious array of social and government-sponsored ills, and are merely poisoning their bodies and numbing their minds simply because they`re stressed and bored and overworked and undersexed?

Whoops, sorry. Got carried away there. Let`s stay focused on the kids. Happy, happy kids. Let`s not get away from the frightening fact that the U.S. now harbors millions -- millions! -- of Prozac-addicted teens and no one blinks an eye, and yet one kids ODs on ecstasy at a rave due to rampant insulting misinfo put out by the CDC and suddenly it`s furrowed brows and pointing fingers and scrunched imbecilic senators railroaded the moronic RAVE Act through congress as they suck down another fistful of Vicodin with their fourth Martini. You simpering hypocrites.

Whoops, sorry again. No name calling. That never gets us anywhere. Guess I`m just getting a bit angry. Maybe a little frustrated at the rampant wholesale corporate-sponsored government-enhanced parentally condoned drugging of kids in this country, and what that means for our future, and theirs, and the future of their attitudes and perspectives and the deterioration of their brains, penises, souls, karmas, love lives, vibration, evolutionary status.

Maybe I`m just getting a little too goddamn depressed by it all. Maybe I just need a pill. And a drink. Ahhh, there now. Much better. Thank you, Eli Lilly. We`re number one!
# Thoughts for the author? E-mail him.
# Mark`s column archives are here

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…
©2004 SF Gate

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Peter Lee: `Welcome to Cheneyworld`
Date: Friday, June 04 @ 10:33:25 EDT
Topic: Occupied Iraq

By Peter Lee

Iraq is turning into something Dick Cheney, at least, could love.

Instead of the triumphant Middle Eastern Israel-loving free market democracy dreamed of by the neocons -- or the emerging power acknowledging Shi`ite aspirations and Iranian regional pre-eminence that Chalabi was scheming to create...

...Iraq looks to become an embittered, divided country split along ethnic, religious, and class lines, overrun by militias and warlords, presided over by an unpopular, oppressive, and undemocratic regime -- and fatally dependent on the United States.

Call it Rape of a Nation.

Dick Cheney`s brutal realist faction probably calls it "Mission Accomplished".



With the neocons discredited, the bar for achievement in Iraq just got lower -- way lower.

The new model for Iraq is not postwar Germany or Japan; not even the Philippines.

It`s our banana republic clients down Monroe-Doctrine way.

We can now adjust our standards to that of the mediocre brand of clumsy, proxy imperialism we have practiced on expendable people and disposable regimes for the last 100 years.

For inspiration, we can look to the horrific counterinsurgency and pacification campaigns we presided over in Central and South America a.k.a. if you have to rape and torture, please be sure nobody gets it on tape...and nobody walks away.

Think about that as Big Media loudly proclaims the recovery of its self respect and investigatory zeal as it eagerly snuffles after the trail of leaks dribbled out oh so clearly and enticingly by the government toward the "Iran intel scandal"...

...and the blogosphere re-enacts the role of the triumphantly vengeful mob torching the neo-con Frankenstein in its tower.

While we`re slapping ourselves on the back for nailing Chalabi and the neocons, the US government and the IGC jobbed the Iraqis out of democracy and a legitimate government. Instead of a transitional administration establishing the foundation for a strong nation eager to control its oil revenues and assert its independence, Iraqis get the hollow regime of Prime Minister, CIA/MI6 asset, and IGC hack Allawi.

Blessed with a $3 billion dowry from Cheney to reconstitute the Mukhabarat, but too marginal a figure to rule without the backup of our 100,000+ troops, Allawi is ready to play the tedious old role of client on our behalf.

Call him Saddam Lite -- without the independence, impudence, megalomania, or iron-fisted control.

Inside Iraq, the neocon dream of neutralizing the militias we hadn`t been able to co-opt on behalf of soon to be self-sufficient Iraqi government died with the U.S. withdrawals from Fallujah and Najaf.

And the democratic political forces that the fall of Saddam awakened -- and were expected to shape a new Iraqi society--have been overmatched by the old despotic calculus of money, muscle, and division.

The UN played no meaningful role in the frantic farce that culminated with the IGC appointing itself as the popular and effective regime that would replace--the despised and illegitimate IGC.

The big loser -- aside from Chalabi, or course -- is Sistani and the nascent nationalistic Shi`ite political movement he represented.

A few months ago it looked like Sistani had complete mastery of the political situation. He short-circuited Bremer`s plans for elections "whenever" and got the UN called in to play the role of political broker for the transition.

At that time I would have thought the best exit strategy for America would have been to hand the palace keys to Sistani and head for the helicopters.

Maybe Chalabi thought so too, and he tried to establish his rule on the tripod of U.S. blood and iron, Sistani-endorsed Shi`ite support, and Iranian friendship.

But Chalabi tilted too far and too fast toward Iran. When the US pulled the plug on him, it looks like Sistani`s channel to the Americans and the transition process turned into a tube to oblivion.

I wonder if Sistani was caught just as wrong-footed as the neocons by Chalabi`s fall.

The most important collateral damage of Ahmed`s disgrace and the subsequent US-orchestrated IGC "coup from within" may be the decreased relevance and effectiveness of Sistani, and all political movements inside Iraq.

Instead of pushing the moderate Shi`ite agenda and supporting Brahimi`s plan for supplanting the IGC with a caretaker government of neutral technocrats, Sistani got sidetracked in the US campaign against Muqtada al-Sadr.

Sistani couldn`t bring himself either to embrace or destroy al-Sadr. As a result, instead of presiding over a united and vibrant Shi ite movement, he`s competing for the attention and loyalty of a people divided between himself, al Sadr, and Allawi.

If and when Allawi decides either to postpone or manipulate the elections, Sistani`s will simply be one, diminished voice among many.

The US will face the awkward fact that, according to international law, occupiers cannot simply unilaterally bestow sovereignty on some hapless, illegitimate group of locals and escape responsibility for supplying security in the country whose social and political systems they have shattered.

But I suppose with the help of the UN, this too can be finessed, and we will be able to enter what I called Bush`s nirvana in Iraq -- opportunity without responsibility.

Condileezza Rice, our AWOL donna of the Iraq Stabilization Group, whose job is to enable and obey instead of taking responsibility, unwittingly hit the nail on the head when she declared of the new gang:

"They are not American puppets."

Indeed not. Puppets require continual, positive, and effective control -- skills that simply aren`t in the tool kit of this administration.

The new government in Iraq is run by our stooges.

Stooges are there to be bossed around, bullied, ignored, misled, repudiated, assassinated, and exiled when it suits the fitful attention and short term interests of their neglectful absentee masters.

Our troops will withdraw to their bases and emerge only when it suits them -- and if Allawi shows himself worthy of American force being exerted on his behalf.

If our client gets carried away with economic or political nationalism, well, with 14 permanent bases inside Iraq, the Noriega treatment is just a phone call away.

We`ll get a degraded satrapy, propped up with 130,000 troops, led by opportunists who prefer the well-compensated disgrace of serving a despoiling power to the dangers of national independence.

A place where democracy is disdained and state violence is abhorred only if it is uncertainly and incompetently applied.

A country where there is power and wealth worth killing for...

...but nothing worth dying for.

Just like Dick Cheney`s America.

Welcome to Cheneyworld.

Copyright 2004 Peter Lee

Peter Lee is the creator of the anti-war satire and commentary website Halcyon Days. He can be reached at [e-mail].


The URL for this story is:
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war stories
Bye, George
It`s been a bad week for the Bushies.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Thursday, June 3, 2004, at 2:35 PM PT

The walls haven`t collapsed around George W. Bush, but the pillars are buckling, the floorboards are rattling, the inspectors are probing, and it doesn`t look good.

In the White House and the Pentagon, senior officials face the prospect of criminal charges. The vice president is accused of malfeasance, at best. A key erstwhile ally in the war on terrorism has apparently turned against us in an act of criminal perfidy. And now the nation`s spymaster has turned in his cloak—it`s not yet clear whether he jumped or got pushed; either way, Bush`s risk-rating has just soared.

George Tenet`s departure as CIA director—a post he`s held for nearly seven years—longer than anyone since Allen Dulles ran the agency under President Eisenhower—marks but the latest shock. One can imagine many times when Tenet might reasonably have been fired, beginning six years ago with his failure to detect warning signs of India`s nuclear test and proceeding with his failure to penetrate al-Qaida, his failure to track the 9/11 hijackers, and his mistaken estimates on Iraq`s weapons of mass destruction (a "slam dunk" case, he assured President Bush). Tenet wasn`t entirely to blame in each instance, but someone usually takes the rap for such catastrophic blunders, and the CIA director is a more solid choice than most—except, it has seemed, in the Bush administration, which not only issues no raps but admits no blame.

The question, then, is not, "Why is Tenet leaving?" but, "Why now?" It may take several rounds of press leaks before we know the answer. (Bush`s citation of "personal reasons" is the traditional boilerplate.) Whatever the real reason, a team player is now a free agent, and those left on the bench must be nervous about that. All presidents learn quickly that spy chiefs are dangerous creatures if let loose or treated harshly. John F. Kennedy was held in constant check by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover`s knowledge of his sexual peccadilloes. Lyndon B. Johnson kept Hoover on, telling a friend, "I`d rather have him inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in." No FBI or CIA director has wielded his leverage as brashly as Hoover did; still, the shrewd ones keep the crowbar in the closet, and Tenet couldn`t have lasted as long as he did—through the Clinton and Bush presidencies—if he weren`t shrewd.

So, what would happen if the 9/11 commission or any of the other boards of inquiry dealing with the various intelligence scandals were to re-call Private Citizen Tenet to testify? Would he suddenly remember meetings and conversations that had earlier slipped his mind? Years ago, Tenet worked as a staff member for Sen. John Heinz, whose widow is now married to John Kerry. Do they keep in touch? (Just asking.)

It`s doubtful that Tenet`s resignation has anything to do with the troubles now surrounding Ahmad Chalabi. True, Chalabi and one of his last loyalists, Richard Perle, accuse Tenet of spreading the recent accusations. And Tenet has long distrusted Chalabi, for many legitimate reasons. Still, nearly all the power centers have now backed away from Chalabi, the Iraqi exile whose deceptions helped the Bush administration build a case for war. The National Security Council disavowed him last April. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, with whom he routinely huddled, now says Chalabi wasn`t so influential after all. Bush himself, who once boasted of their many powwows, now dismisses Chalabi as someone he might have met on a rope line once or twice.

The backpedaling is fierce because Chalabi is in huge trouble and every senior U.S. official who consorted with him is under deep suspicion. According to news stories, Chalabi told the Baghdad station chief for Iran`s intelligence ministry that the Americans had broken the ministry`s codes and were intercepting all its communications.

If the stories are true, Chalabi could be charged with espionage, a crime that carries a sentence of life in prison or—under certain circumstances—the death penalty. One of those circumstances is if the accused has passed along "communications intelligence or cryptographic information"—in other words, any secrets pertaining to intercepts.

Chalabi probably won`t face the ultimate punishment. In none of the 10 espionage cases brought to trial over the past decade have U.S. prosecutors so much as sought the death penalty. But the fact that Chalabi is a British citizen does not exempt him from the second-most severe punishment under this particular American law.

As for the U.S. official who reportedly told Chalabi about the intercept, the feds wrote a special law to handle his type. Within the statute dealing with the "disclosure of classified information," there is a separate clause for those who leak—not just to foreign powers but to any "unauthorized person"—information "concerning the communications intelligence activities of the United States." Those found guilty are heavily fined and sentenced to prison for up to 10 years.

The FBI`s counterintelligence division, the CIA, the NSA, the Justice Department—the entire U.S. national-security machine—can be expected to come down very hard on this case, no matter how high it takes them. Communications intercepts are something like the crown jewels. Those in charge of guarding the jewels do not—cannot—tolerate or wrist-slap a breach.

For this same reason, it is no surprise that the investigation into the Valerie Plame affair is gaining traction. A grand jury has apparently been at work for some time, investigating who might have told reporters that Plame was an undercover CIA agent. It was revealed yesterday that President Bush himself has sought the services of an outside lawyer in case he is called to testify. The widespread suspicion is that a White House operative exposed Plame in order to punish her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who publicly revealed that Bush (or those around him) blatantly lied in claiming, in the lead up to war, that Iraq had tried to obtain uranium from Niger. Exposing an undercover agent is not just a felony, it`s one of the most reckless crimes that anyone armed with a security clearance could commit. Again, the guardians of the crown jewels will not hesitate to lock up the culprit for as long as the book allows. (Or, if they do let the guilty party slip away, expect dozens of the guardians to resign in protest. Also expect the full roster of remaining undercover spies to come in from the cold.)

Another hit on the White House this week comes from Time, which unearthed a Pentagon e-mail message indicating that Vice President Dick Cheney played a role in arranging for Halliburton to win the multibillion-dollar, no-bid contracts for construction and logistics in post-Saddam Iraq. Cheney, of course, had been CEO of Halliburton before Bush chose him as his running mate, a connection that raised eyebrows when his former company started profiting so grandly from the occupation. The e-mail is the first tangible sign of a direct Cheney link. In any event, such blatant political interference in the awarding of a large military contract is, at very least, a violation of Pentagon procurement regulations.

And let us not forget the Abu Ghraib scandal, which remains the subject of a half-dozen panels probing up and down the chain of command. This may be the most remarkable sign of the scandal-strewn depths—that even Abu Ghraib can be buried in the rubble.

Thanks to Steven Aftergood, of the Federation of American Scientists` Secrecy News, for directing me to the pertinent statutes on communications intelligence.
Fred Kaplan writes the "War Stories" column for Slate.

Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2101705/

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“Why are they doing this to us?”
by Dahr Jamail | Posted June 03, 2004 at 11:11 AM Baghdad time

He is a well spoken, handsome lawyer, just a year older than I am. He worked as a diplomat who coordinated NGOs and foreign governments in order to bring aid to his country during the sanctions.

He was detained and accused of being a spy for Saddam Hussein, even though he is not even a Baathist.

He was hung from his ankles for hours in Abu Ghraib, until he passed out.

I ask him what else happened to him in there. He pulls up the legs of his trousers to show me two electrical burns on the inside of his knees, and points to two more on his elbows.

We all know the usual parts of this story: his head was bagged and hands and ankles tied too tightly, roughly thrown in an armored vehicle and driven to Baghdad Airport prison. Then to Abu Ghraib for 2 months, then to a prison in Basra, then back to Abu Ghraib for seven months.

At the Airport prison (which Iraqis refer to as Guantanamo Airport) he was interrogated five times, then ten more times at Abu Ghraib. At each place he was beaten until he passed out, forced to beat other detainees, deprived of food and water (he lost 25 kilos while in detention), offered no medical care, received threats on his life, was threatened that his wife would brought in and raped in front of him, had rats and cockroaches as cellmates. He was kept in a cell 2 meters by 1.5 meters.

Or maybe you haven’t heard all of this already...

Maybe you didn’t hear that the lead CIA man who tortured him referred to himself as “Satan.” Or that while he was praying and reading his Koran female soldiers came in and flashed their breasts at him, then sexually humiliated and abused him.

What else is news? That there were 16 showers for 650 detainees. That there was no medical treatment, except for 30 out of 650 detainees -- who were given aspirin for infections and viruses. That when he was finally allowed to use the toilet after being forced to wait for hours, soldiers would open the door on him.

Of course there is more. There is much, much more. But I’ll save that for later, because it isn’t easy to type when ones hands are shaking.

Since he has been out he has not slept much, and has nightmares when he does manage to catch fleeting moments of shuteye.

His home was destroyed while he was in detention.

Then there is his aunt. I interviewed her tonight as well. A kind, 55 year-old woman who used to work as an English teacher. She was detained for four months, in as many prisons: Samarra, Tikrit, one in Baghdad and of course, Abu Ghraib. She was never allowed to sleep through a night, she was interrogated, not given enough food or water, no access to a lawyer or her family. She was abused verbally and psychologically.

But that isn’t the worst part. Her 70 year-old husband was detained and beaten to death. But that took 7 months.

She’s crying as she speaks of him... as are Abu Talat (my translator) and I.

“I miss my husband,” she says, standing up and addressing the room. “I miss him so much.”

She shakes her hands as if to fling water off of them... then holds her chest and cries some more.

“Why are they doing this to us?” She doesn’t understand what is happening. Two of her sons were also detained, her family completely shattered. “We didn’t do anything wrong,” she sobs.

After a short time we walk out towards the car to leave... it is already too late to be out -- well past 10 p.m. She asks us to please stay for dinner, in the midst of thanking me for my time, for listening, for writing about it all.

I am speechless.

“No, thank you, we must get home now,” says Abu Talat. We are all crying.

No words in the car as we drive toward the full moon. Finally, Abu Talat asks me, “Can you say any words? Do you have any words?”

“No,” I mumble. “No...”

Dahr Jamail is Baghdad correspondent for The NewStandard

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This article can be found on the web at
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040621&s=editors
Time to Leave

[from the June 21, 2004 issue]

We have paid a heavy price for the Bush Administration`s unnecessary and illegal invasion of Iraq: more than 800 American soldiers dead; more than 4,500 wounded or maimed; and $120 billion wasted on a war and occupation that has sullied our country`s image in the world, undercut our moral authority and poisoned Arab and Muslim minds against us for decades to come. We will pay an even heavier price if we "stay the course," as the Administration and many Democrats urge. If, as war supporters claim, our goals in Iraq (now that we`ve lost the rationale of hunting down weapons of mass destruction) are stability and democracy, we are proceeding in exactly the wrong way. In the eyes of most Iraqis, American forces have long since ceased to be nation-builders and instead are occupying forces that knock down their homes, bomb their mosques and abuse and humiliate their fellow citizens. The occupation, like other occupations throughout history, has generated a growing popular resistance that cannot be defeated militarily. It is time to change course.

We can start by turning over real sovereignty to the interim Iraqi government. However imperfect this new entity may be, it will have a better chance of establishing at least modest legitimacy if the United States treats it, in private and public, not as a puppet regime but as an autonomous government.

We can also announce that US troops will no longer engage in offensive operations and that we will pull out our forces, with the goal of total withdrawal by the end of the year. At the same time, we can try to persuade the United Nations to establish a multinational peacekeeping force to take over after our departure, and we can pledge to contribute to that effort in whatever way the international community regards as appropriate, including the possible participation of US troops.

To take these steps is not to "abandon" Iraq. Rather it is to assist in producing the stability we claim to want. The United States should continue to help Iraq by providing economic and humanitarian assistance and by supporting UN efforts to aid the interim government in conducting the earliest possible elections. This government should have authority over the economy and oil revenues and command over the country`s security forces, as well as the right to set terms for the operation of any foreign troops on its soil. Washington should announce that it will pay reparations toward the rebuilding of Iraq to compensate for the devastation wrought by the US invasion and occupation. And it should renounce any interest in controlling Iraqi assets and in establishing US military bases. Only by yielding political and economic control in Iraq and disengaging our forces, while supporting UN nation-building efforts in a disinterested way, can we hope to reverse the growing rage in the Arab world and halt the current spiral of violence.

Two arguments are advanced--including by many well-meaning American liberals--against withdrawal. The first is that we owe it to the Iraqis whose lives we have violently disrupted to remain. In this view, withdrawal is tantamount to condemning Iraq to chaos. The second argument, a corollary to the first, is that an unstable, ungovernable Iraq will become a haven for extremists.

Although these concerns are serious, neither argument holds up under scrutiny. If the United States withdraws its forces, Iraq could face a violent power struggle between Sunnis and Shiites, Arabs and Kurds or between rival factions of the same sectarian group. But the risks must be weighed against the fact that US forces themselves are a major cause of the current instability. The troops there now are doing little to provide security for postwar reconstruction; they--and those seen to be cooperating with them--are the target of a widening guerrilla war against what is seen as an oppressive occupying power. More American forces will not change that logic; on the contrary, a harsher military campaign will only cause further alienation, turning even more Iraqis--Shiites as well as Sunnis--against us. Furthermore, we are not in a position to repair the divisions among a people whose language we do not speak and whose traditions we hardly understand; indeed, to the extent that we have succeeded thus far in unifying Iraq`s fractured population, it has been in opposition to the American occupation.

With regard to the second argument, that withdrawal would inspire Islamic radicals to flock to Iraq, again, a well-coordinated withdrawal is more likely to deprive these extremists of a pretext, and a context, for future attacks. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak warned that a US invasion would create "a hundred bin Ladens," and the longer we stay, the more such extremism will be fostered. It is our respect for the will of the Iraqi people that will deprive Islamic radicals of their greatest rallying cry.

The current debate in Washington over Iraq is a peculiar one. Whether the topic is how many troops to send, or the intentions of UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, or the relationship of state and mosque, or the partition of the country, the conversation is conducted in splendid isolation from the Iraqi people whose fate is being decided. The disconnect reveals much about US policy-makers and pundits, who cannot accept that US military power will not decide Iraq`s future. Underlying it is the unspoken yet powerful fear that if we "lose" Iraq, our "credibility" will suffer an irreparable blow. But Iraq is not ours to lose. The issue is not what we want (or fear) but what Iraqis want.

The recent surge of support for the uprising in Iraq has begun to disabuse even this Administration of the notion that the fighting is confined to Baathist "dead-enders" and foreign jihadists. In a poll taken by the well-regarded Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies before the release of the Abu Ghraib prison abuse photos, 82 percent of Iraqis said they now oppose US occupation forces, and a large majority want them to leave. As important, many Iraqi leaders once considered sympathetic to the occupation have now broken with the Coalition Provisional Authority or have intervened, in the case of the battles of Falluja and Najaf, to alter what they considered to be a misguided US military strategy. After Abu Ghraib, no Iraqi leader can demand anything less than the full return of Iraqi sovereignty, including control over the country`s military and police forces. No less an American proxy than Ahmad Chalabi has refashioned himself as a militant opponent of his former patrons.

Within the UN Security Council, France and Russia are now echoing these Iraqi demands and are threatening to oppose any new Security Council resolution that does not give Iraqis full control over their future. We should heed these voices not only because they offer an honorable way out for the United States but because they increase the chances for a stable Iraq. Contrary to the views of those perpetuating the occupation, an internationally agreed-upon US disengagement from Iraq would not be a victory for terrorism or jihadism but for international law and the principle of popular sovereignty. That would be a good thing in today`s Middle East. If that region is to become a more secure and democratic place, the United States must first relinquish the dream of remaking it in its image. Instead, we should learn how to work with others, through international diplomacy and programs of economic assistance, to help those who want our help.

We also must identify those responsible for America`s catastrophic errors. George W. Bush and his advisers, so reckless with American and Iraqi lives (more than 10,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed in this war) and so heedless of the consequences of their Iraq policies, must be held accountable--through investigations by Congress and at the ballot box in November.

The current tragedy in Iraq can be laid at the door of an Administration that thought it could defy international law and the politics of the Arab world. It went to war without the consent of the UN Security Council and without any understanding of how the Iraqi people would receive an American occupation. We cannot undo this terrible misjudgment or the damage it has done. But we can avoid compounding the harm we have already inflicted by listening to what the Iraqis are telling us: to give them back their country and leave.

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Bush sucht Fettnäpfchen.

June 4, 2004
Bush`s comments against troop withdrawal plan ignites storm in Australia
By ROD MCGUIRK

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) - Australian media expressed shock Friday over U.S. President George W. Bush`s condemnation of an opposition party`s plan to pull Australia`s troops out of Iraq if it wins elections.

National broadcaster Australian Broadcasting Corp. called Bush`s remarks a "verbal belting." The Australian Associated Press news agency called it a "blistering attack." Standing next to Prime Minister John Howard after the pair held talks in Washington early Thursday, Bush said it would be "a disastrous decision for the leader of a great country like Australia to say, `We are pulling out."`

Labour leader Mark Latham earlier this year announced a plan to bring home the 850 Australian troops serving in and around Iraq if Labour wins elections due by year`s end. Howard has compared Latham to Spain`s new socialist leader, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who won office after the Madrid train bombings. Zapatero had vowed to withdraw Spanish forces from Iraq if he won.

Latham on Friday didn`t back down from his stance - but neither did he counterattack Bush, whom he`s previously described as "flaky," "dangerous" and "incompetent."

"Labour never wanted the troops there in the first place. We intend to have them home by Christmas," Latham said in a statement.

"I look forward to the day when we can put the mistakes of Iraq behind us and a Labour government can work with the United States to further strengthen the intelligence, strategic and cultural relationships between our two countries," Latham said.

Political analysts said Bush`s attack could politically damage Howard, who has made his government`s strong security and trade ties with Washington a centrepiece of his foreign policy.

"The pro-American sentiment is not as strong and the behaviour of the United States since the Iraq war started and the catalogue of failures would make it very risky for Howard to make the American alliance an election issue," said Australian National University political scientist John Hart.

Gerard Henderson, a former Howard adviser in the 1980s and now head of the independent Sydney Institute think-tank, said Bush shouldn`t have waded into Australia`s domestic politics.

Henderson, who supported the Iraq war, said he did not believe the war will figure as a large issue at the Australian election due this year.

"I think it`s better that the political debate within Australia is left to Australians," Henderson said. "I don`t know that criticism from overseas helps the cause."

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washingtonpost.com

U.S., Shiite Muslim Militia Renew Cease-Fire
Iraqi Prime Minister Calls for Continued U.S. Presence

By Edward Cody and William Branigin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, June 4, 2004; 1:00 PM

BAGHDAD, June 4 -- U.S. and Shiite Muslim militia forces agreed to withdraw from Shiite holy places south of the capital Friday, renewing a cease-fire despite an attack that killed four U.S. soldiers and wounded five others in Baghdad.

Iraq`s new interim prime minister, addressing the nation in a televised speech for the first time since his appointment last week, meanwhile called on Iraqis to help defeat terrorism and vowed to take steps to halt the influx of foreign fighters into the country. But he acknowledged that U.S. and other foreign troops would be needed to maintain security after a transfer of political power to the interim government on June 30.

The statements by Ayad Allawi, who was named interim prime minister by a U.N. special envoy, came as the U.S. military announced the capture by Iraqi police of a top aide to Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian with links to the al Qaeda terrorist network and the suspected mastermind of numerous attacks in Iraq.

A U.S. military statement identified the captive as Omar Baziyani, a "known terrorist and murder suspect" who has ties to "several extremist terrorist groups in Iraq." The statement said the capture of Baziyani May 30 "removes one of Zarqawi`s most valuable officers from his network." No details of the capture were given.

Nor was there much information on the attack that killed four U.S. soldiers and wounded five others around midday in the eastern part of the capital. The deaths and injuries were attributed to an explosion from a powerful roadside bomb that destroyed the soldiers` vehicles while they were on patrol.

The attack on the edge of the Baghdad slum known as Sadr City, a stronghold of militiamen loyal to a radical Shiite Muslim cleric, came several hours after a U.S. Army patrol was fired upon Friday morning in the same general area. A U.S. military official said that in the earlier incident, the U.S. soldiers exchanged fire with gunmen who attacked them with rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles. The official said there were no known casualties on either side in the first incident.

The four deaths brought to 600 the number of American troops killed in action in Iraq since U.S. forces invaded in March last year, the Reuters news agency reported. In addition, 217 U.S. troops have died in noncombat incidents.

In another incident about 18 miles north of Baghdad, five persons were reported killed when a roadside bomb disabled their civilian vehicle and unknown assailants came up and fired into it. The five were reported to be foreigners, but their identities were not immediately known.

South of the capital, U.S. forces and members of the Mahdi Army, a militia loyal to radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr, agreed to withdraw from the Shiite holy city of Najaf and nearby Kufa. Under the accord, which essentially renewed a cease-fire agreement reached last week, security in sensitive areas around Shiite holy sites in the two cities is being turned over to Iraqi police, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.

It was not immediately clear whether the latest agreement would be any more effective than the previous one.

"All fighting forces, the coalition forces and the al-Mahdi Army militia should leave the two holy cities and not allow any of their elements to enter again," said Adnan Zurufi, the governor of Najaf Province, in announcing the accord. He called the arrangement "an Iraqi solution to the problem."

Col. Brad May of the U.S. Army`s 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment said U.S. forces would move "to the periphery of these sensitive areas" of Najaf and Kufa, allowing Iraqi police to move in, the Associated Press reported. May said the sensitive areas were the Imam Ali Shrine in Najaf and the Kufa mosque.

Sadr, who launched an uprising against U.S. occupation forces in April after his newspaper was shut down and a top aide arrested, made no mention of the deal in a statement read on his behalf in the Kufa mosque. Instead, the statement denounced the new interim Iraqi government as a creature of "the occupying power" and said that nothing less than an elected government was acceptable.

In his televised speech, Allawi, a secular Shiite who opposed former president Saddam Hussein from exile and served on the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council that was dissolved last week, said it was "a duty of all Iraqis" to fight terrorism. He said the new interim government would tighten controls on the entry of foreigners into Iraq in an effort to prevent the influx of fighters from abroad.

"The flow of terrorists . . . through our borders will stop," Allawi said.

He also announced that the newly appointed interim president, Ghazi Yawar, would attend next week`s Group of Eight meeting in the United States to "contribute to the defeat of economic terrorism that criminals are trying to inflict on our beloved Iraq."

Allawi said he plans to meet next week with an Iraqi special tribunal that has been established to try Hussein and other members of his ousted government for alleged crimes against Iraqis during Hussein`s three decades in power.

Branigin reported from Washington.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Ein wenig Wahlkampf gefällig. Manchmal treibt der Wahlkampf kuriose Blüten.

washingtonpost.com

Rich Choices in November

By Terry M. Neal
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Friday, June 4, 2004; 7:00 AM

The Bush-Cheney campaign this week stepped up its assault on Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) for being a rich guy. No, make that for being a really, really rich guy.

"Most Americans can`t afford yachts, private planes, thousand dollar haircuts or homes in Nantucket," Republican National Committee spokesman Jim Dyke said in a news release announcing a new video game on the RNC Web site. The game is called Kerryopoly. It`s similar to Monopoly, but the properties belong to the Kerry family.

It`s a curious line of attack. The logic of Dyke`s statement would seem to suggest that most Americans can afford mansions on hundreds of acres in Texas and are fortunate enough to receive retirement or severance packages worth tens of millions of dollars, as Vice President Cheney and some members of the Bush cabinet did when they left private industry to join the government.

So why is a free enterprise, capitalistic, big business-dominated party that often accuses Democrats of dividing people on class busting a guy`s chops for having a lot of dough?

"We are speaking to the inherent contradiction in the life story of John Kerry," said Bush campaign spokesman Terry Holt on Wednesday. "He is someone who purports to campaign as a man of the people, but who resides in a whole series of wealthy million dollar chateaus and mansions. It`s just one more contradiction and example of him being out of the mainstream with America."

In other words, Holt explains, Republicans are pointing out the hypocrisy of Democrats who play class warfare, but they`re not playing it themselves. The issue, Holt and other Republican officials said, is not so much that Kerry is rich, but that he`s a phony.

"John Kerry is dividing Americans on class and income," Holt said. "Republicans don`t do that. Republicans, for example, fight for tax relief that is fair for everyone." Kerry, on the other hand, "supports repealing tax cuts for people who make over $200,000."

Kerry campaign spokesman David Wade responded: "Boneheaded attacks from this bunch are as insulting as they are ironic. It`s downright hypocritical coming from the campaign of a president whose connections got him into a `Champagne Unit` of the National Guard during Vietnam and whose path was paved with privilege from Andover to Arbusto oil to the Texas Rangers�This guy who was born on third base and thought he hit a triple is going to engage in a sad game of class warfare? . . . I don`t think a lot of Americans remember Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy because of where they came from, they remember them for what they did to make America stronger. Good luck finding Americans who think that way about George Bush."
It`s Not All Fun and Games

Here`s how the RNC news release described the Kerryopoly game: "With a roll of the electronic dice, players can land on properties like Nantucket, worth $9.18 million, Beacon Hill, worth $6.9 million, or Idaho, worth $4.9 million. Players may also land on squares for John Kerry`s thousand-dollar haircut or his $5,000 bicycle.

"Each player starts the game with $40,000 in Kerryopoly money, the average national household income. The goal is to make it around the board with as little debt as possible, meaning players must try to avoid landing on pricey properties like Kerry`s Georgetown home, worth $4.7 million, or the space for the Scaramouche, Kerry`s $700,000 yacht."

Asked what the point of this game was, RNC spokeswoman Christine Iverson said this was just the latest of four or five Web games the RNC has put on its Web site poking fun at Kerry. The most popular one so far was called Kerry vs. Kerry, which highlights the candidate`s purported flip-flops on various issues over the years.

"Kerryopoly is yet another way to familiarize voters with John Kerry," she said. "It`s interactive and a little more light-hearted."

But if most voters can`t identify with Kerry`s wealth, can they identify with Bush and Cheney`s?

"I`m happy with what I just told you," she said.

But doesn`t this theme contradict with Republican criticism of Democrats for playing class warfare?

Pause.

"No," she said. "No."

Said Democratic National Committee spokesman Jano Cabrera: "We gave them an A for it�an A for audacity."

The DNC e-mailed the following statement this week:

"Yesterday the Republican National Committee, chaired by Ed Gillespie (whose lobbying firm collected at least $27 million from corporate clients like Enron in the two years before he became RNC chair), unveiled a new internet game poking fun at the personal finances of John Kerry.

"It is unclear whether the campaign of George Walker Bush (son of U.S. President George Herbert Walker Bush and grandson of Connecticut Senator Prescott Sheldon Bush) and Dick Cheney (worth between $24 million - $107 million; former Chairman and CEO of Halliburton who received a $20 million retirement package to run for vice president) has endorsed this line of attack. Bush (a CT-born Yankee who summered in Kennebunkport, Maine, and attended the Kinkaid school in Houston before moving to Phillips Academy in Andover, MA, where he became head cheerleader and earned the nickname the Lip from his chums for his rapier wit), was unavailable for comment."
Frivolous Maybe, but It Matters

There are important things going on this election, two wars being fought abroad, an economy inching out of the doldrums, older Americans struggling to pay for prescription drugs. So why does this matter?

Well, because it could help determine who the next president will be, that`s why.

Issues matter first and foremost for voters, but intangible personal traits are also important. Most political experts agree that, fair or not, Al Gore`s reputation for stretching the truth hurt him in 2000, just as Bob Dole`s reputation for meanness hurt him in 1996, just as George H.W. Bush`s reputation for being out of touch hurt him in 1992 and Jimmy Carter`s reputation for grinning cluelessness hurt him in 1980.

Both Bush and Kerry have their own potential intangible liabilities this year. Democrats try to tag Bush as a stubborn, not-so-bright cowboy relying on platitudes and an overly simplistic vision of the world. Republicans try to portray Kerry as a flip-flopping, Boston patrician with a phony sense of noblesse oblige.

Pollster Andrew Kohut of the nonpartisan Pew Research Center can help explain what`s going on here. Despite a very tough couple of months for Bush, he wins polls by double-digit margins when voters are asked who has the best judgment in a crisis or who is the most willing to take a stand. But ask voters who is the most likeable or down to earth or honest, and voters are evenly split.

Here`s the kicker though: The one place Kerry clearly leads Bush is on the question of "cares about people like you." In the most recent Pew poll, respondents favored Kerry over Bush, 45 to 34 percent.

In March, the Washington Post/ABC News poll asked voters whether "Bush cares more about serving poor and lower income people, middle income people, upper income people, or would you say he cares equally about serving all people?" Forty-four percent said "upper" compared to 41 percent who said "all" and only 7 percent who said "poor or middle."

So what the RNC and Bush campaign are trying to do is close the gap on the one big personality issue where Kerry has an advantage.

"What the Republican party and their strategist are trying to do is say, `he may be a Democrat, but he`s a limousine liberal and he doesn`t get it,`" Kohut said. "It`s not an unreasonable position for them to take from a tactical standpoint."
There`s Rich, Then There Is Just Plain Loaded

Wealth, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Chris Rock jokes about this in a stand-up routine. People think Oprah Winfrey is rich, he says. But if Bill Gates woke up with one day with "Oprah money" he`d probably kill himself, Rock jokes.

Kerry and his wife Teresa Heinz Kerry, heiress to the Heinz family fortune, are reportedly worth about half a billion dollars. The Associated Press reported in March that Kerry and his wife own "at least five homes and vacation getaways across the country valued at nearly $33 million."

That wealth has been an issue since the primaries. Kerry was criticized by both Democrats and Republicans when he borrowed $6 million against the equity in a Boston town house, a move that allowed him to avoid the strictures of public financing in the primary. Kerry`s jetting off to his $5 million ski getaway in Ketchum, Idaho, made big news on the Drudge Report and conservative talk radio. And one of the first negative Kerry ads by a Republican-linked group, Citizens United, poked fun at Kerry`s wealth.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the 30-second ad ran in 12 states and "flashes photographs of the candidate, boats in a harbor and various pieces of real estate, while a narrator says: `Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry. Hairstyle by Christophe`s: $75. Designer shirts: $250. Forty-two-foot luxury yacht: $1 million. Four lavish mansions and beachfront estate: Over $30 million.`

"It then shows Kerry with his home-state Democratic colleague Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, as the narrator adds: `Another rich, liberal elitist from Massachusetts who claims he`s a man of the people. Priceless.`"

But Democrats defend Kerry, and say Bush, with his man-of-the-people posturing, is the real fake.

"John Kerry has never suggested anything other than the fact that he comes from a privileged background," Cabrera said. "But he`s also made it clear that that puts a certain responsibility on his shoulders. John Kerry had this background when he went to Vietnam and made the decision to run for public office. Most importantly, despite John Kerry`s background, he has been focused on the needs of others."

Cabrera said not only are Bush and Cheney rich, but they`ve surrounded themselves with people who are almost all super wealthy.

According to personal financial disclosures required by law, Bush`s personal wealth is between $8 million and $20 million. Cheney holds assets of between $24 million and $107 million.

All that aside, this much is certain: No matter who wins in November, the person who is sworn in next January will be a rich guy.

© 2004 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive

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Etwas zu den Arbeitsmarktzahlen aus den USA. Das einzige was ich davon gelesen habe, dass eine neue Berechnung stattgefunden hat, waren die Witze darüber, dass Mcdonalds-Läden nun von Bush als Indusriebetriebe eingestuft werden. Das hat aber nicht durchgesetzt werden können.
Was mir aufgefallen ist, dass die Zahl der Teilzeitsjobs sich im Mai um 500 000 erhöht hat.

URL dieses Artikels: http://www.netzeitung.de/wirtschaft/wirtschaftspolitik/28943…

US-Regierung sorgt mit neuer
Statistik für Erholung am Arbeitsmarkt
04. Jun 11:59

Der Wahlkampf in den USA macht auch vor Konjunktur-Daten nicht Halt: Eine neue Statistik hilft bei der Schaffung neuer Arbeitsplätze kräftig mit. Experten sprechen von «Marketing» für die US-Wirtschaft.

Von Marcus Gatzke

In den vergangenen Monaten hat US-Präsident George W. Bush beim Blick auf die Arbeitsmarktzahlen wohl mehr als einmal kräftig durchgeatmet. Ein großes Problem im Wahlkampf scheint sich zumindest nicht weiter zu verschärfen. Die jüngsten Zahlen zu den neu geschaffenen Stellen deuten sogar auf eine deutliche Verbesserung der Arbeitsmarktlage in den Vereinigten Staaten hin. Die oft beschworene Gefahr einer so genannten «jobless recovery» – eines Aufschwungs, der keine Arbeitsplätze schafft – scheint sich nicht zu bewahrheiten.

Ist der amerikanische Arbeitsmarkt aber wirklich auf dem Weg der Besserung? Unter Präsident Bush gingen immerhin mehr als zwei Millionen Arbeitsplätze verloren. Der Präsident hatte darauf wenig Einfluss – zugestanden. Die geplatzte Spekulationsblase an den internationalen Kapitalmärkten stürzte die Wirtschaft in eine Rezession, und die Terroranschläge vom 11. September 2001 sowie die Bilanzskandale bei verschiedenen US-Konzernen taten ein Übriges, um das Vertrauen der Verbraucher und Unternehmen in die amerikanische Volkswirtschaft zu erschüttern.

Amerikas Jobwunder ist reine Statistik

So wenig Bush Schuld an der Job-Misere hat – so schuldig könnte er aber am scheinbaren Aufschwung am Arbeitsmarkt sein. «What are they smoking at the labour department?», fragte etwa der Kolumnist der «New York Post», John Crudele.

Das amerikanische Arbeitsministerium hat jüngst eine neue Statistik-Methode eingeführt. Mit dem so genannten Net-Birth/Death-Modell sollen die neuen Arbeitsplätze erfasst werden, die durch Selbstständigkeit oder in kleinen und mittleren Firmen geschaffen werden. Bisher war die Erfassung von solchen neuen Selbstständigen - in Deutschland auch unter dem Namen Ich-AG bekannt - nicht möglich. Da den Experten des Ministeriums aber kein echtes Datenmaterial zur Verfügung steht, wird die Zahl der entstandenen Jobs einfach statistisch geschätzt. Und siehe da: 270.000 von insgesamt 288.000 Arbeitsplätzen entstanden im April allein aufgrund der neuen statistischen Methode.

Qualität und nicht Quantität

«Das Ministerium unterstellt, dass bei den Selbstständigen Arbeitsplätze entstehen, hat aber keine Beweise dafür», wirft Carsten Fritsch, Volkswirt bei der Commerzbank, den Beamten vor. Es sei ungeklärt, wie viele Jobs tatsächlich geschaffen worden sind und wie viel davon lediglich «Phantomjobs» waren, fügt der Experte an.

Es gelte zudem, «nicht nur auf die Quantität, sondern auch auf die Qualität des Stellenzuwachses zu achten». Die neu geschaffenen Stellen im März seien zu großen Teilen auf Teilzeitjobs zurückzuführen.

Auch das Wachstum könnte zu hoch sein

Den Zahlen lägen keine «erfassten Daten zugrunde», meint auch Folker Hellmeyer, Chefanalyst bei der Bremer Landesbank. Die Schätzungen basierten allein auf Umfragen. Zudem würden in den USA mittlerweile zwölf saisonale Faktoren bei der Erfassung der Arbeitsmarktdaten berücksichtigt, so Hellmeyer. Üblich seien aber allenfalls vier.

Problematisch ist nach Meinung der Experten grundsätzlich, dass die konjunkturellen Daten aus den USA nur noch quantitativ und nicht mehr qualitativ bewertet würden. Nach einem Artikel des Wirtschaftsmagazins «Economist» könnte das auch Wirtschaftswachstum in den USA deutlich überbewertet sein. Das Magazin bezieht sich dabei auf Berechnungen des Goldman-Sachs-Volkswirtes Jan Hatzuis.

Alles nur Marketing

Analyst Hellmeyer geht sogar noch weiter: «Die neuen statistischen Methoden dienen allein dem Marketing, um die hohen Defizite in den USA finanzierbar zu halten.» Die Daten spiegelten nicht die Realität in den USA wider. Ein Vergleich mit der Situation in der Euro-Zone oder auch in Deutschland sei damit, «wie ein Vergleich von Ananas und Eigelb».

Die amerikanische Wirtschaft wuchs im ersten Quartal nach ersten Schätzungen offiziell um 4,4 Prozent - die deutsche auf Jahresbasis um 1,5 Prozent. Aber Amerika hat derzeit mit einem so genannten Double-Defizit zu kämpfen. Neben einem hohen Haushaltsdefizit leidet die amerikanische Wirtschaft auch mit einem exponentiell steigenden Leistungsbilanzdefizit.

Nach 2009 könnte das Defizit im Haushalt gemessen am Bruttoinlandsprodukt (BIP) bis auf mehr als zehn Prozent steigen. Davon gehen sogar die sehr optimistischen Prognosen der Regierung Bush aus. Zum Vergleich: Deutschland hatte im vergangenen Jahr ein Defizit von knapp unter vier Prozent - und verstößt bereits damit gegen den europäischen Stabilitäts- und Wachstumspakt.

MEHR IM INTERNET
Die Arbeitsmarktdaten für April
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
Das neue Modell des Ministeriums
http://www.bls.gov/web/cesbd.htm

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Das ist dieses Modell. Ich kann die Zahlen nicht nachvollziehen.
Das einzige was ich davon gelesen habe, dass eine neue Berechnung stattgefunden hat, waren die Witze darüber, dass Mcdonalds-Läden nun von Bush als Industriebetriebe eingestuft werden. Das hat aber nicht durchgesetzt werden können.
Was mir aufgefallen ist, dass die Zahl der Teilzeitsjobs sich im Mai um 500 000 erhöht hat.

CES Net Birth/Death Model

* In 2004, the CES sample includes about 160,000 businesses and government agencies drawn from a sampling frame of Unemployment Insurance tax accounts which cover approximately 400,000 individual worksites. The active CES sample includes approximately one-third of all nonfarm payroll workers. The sample-based estimates are adjusted each month by a statistical model designed to reduce a primary source of non-sampling error, the inability of the sample to capture on a timely basis, employment growth generated by new business formations.
* There is an unavoidable lag between an establishment opening for business and its appearing on the sample frame and being available for sampling. Because new firm births generate a portion of employment growth each month, non-sampling methods must be used to estimate this growth.
* Earlier research indicated that while both the business birth and death portions of total employment are generally significant, the net contribution is relatively small and stable. To account for this net birth/death portion of total employment, BLS is implementing an estimation procedure with two components: the first component uses business deaths to impute employment for business births. This is incorporated into the sample-based link relative estimate procedure by simply not reflecting sample units going out of business, but imputing to them the same trend as the other firms in the sample.
* The second component is an ARIMA time series model designed to estimate the residual net birth/death employment not accounted for by the imputation. The historical time series used to create and test the ARIMA model was derived from the UI universe micro level database, and reflects the actual residual net of births and deaths over the past five years. The ARIMA model component is updated and reviewed on a quarterly basis.
* The net birth/death model component figures are unique to each month and exhibit a seasonal pattern that can result in negative adjustments in some months. These models do not attempt to correct for any other potential error sources in the CES estimates such as sampling error or design limitations.
* The most significant potential drawback to this or any model-based approach is that time series modeling assumes a predictable continuation of historical patterns and relationships and therefore is likely to have some difficulty producing reliable estimates at economic turning points or during periods when there are sudden changes in trend. BLS will continue researching alternative model-based techniques for the net birth/death component; it is likely to remain as the most problematic part of the estimation process.

The table below shows the net birth/death model adjustment used in the published CES estimates since the establishment of the most recent benchmark level for March 2003.

http://www.bls.gov/images/seal.gif

[fast4ward]

Operation Rainstorm





Mission Accomplished

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From AxisofLogic.com

Critical Analysis
National Nightmare, American Disgrace: Has Bush given birth to the Death of America?
By Manuel Valenzuela, Contributing Editor
Jun 4, 2004, 23:31



The nightmare of the last three years has swallowed us whole, spinning us into the black hole of empty understanding. A parallel universe of splintered dimensions have we traversed, enveloped by a once espoused fiction by visionaries past that has become our all too scary present. Our sojourn into the land of the morally bereft and cowardly led has scarred us for generations, smearing all Americans with the indelible reputation as warmongers, greed mongers, fear mongers and ignorant exploiters of less fortunate lands and peoples. George Bush, the American disgrace, the most reviled man to ever breathe the polluted airs of Earth and the worst president to ever reside in a White House that now stands stained in dark blotches of excrement has transformed the United States into the second most hated nation on the planet, seen as the epitome of a terrorist nation whose ignorant citizens stand complicit in the atrocities of their government.



Bush: Tool of Empire and Corporations



A coup that altered the very fabric of democracy in the heart of the self-anointed bastion of that very principle placed a cabal of morally corrupt and ideologically driven blood-suckers at the helm of the most powerful economy and military the world has ever produced. At the time the highest court in the land had robbed a nation of its vote nobody could have envisaged the calamity the miscreant from Texas would have on the entire globe.



The tool of Empire and Corporatism had arisen, the poster child of ignorance and idiocy had been born. The Caligula of the Pax Americana had been appointed, donning the purple, taking the throne and giving birth to the downfall of an Empire. For dozens of great Presidents have come and gone, only to be besmirched by the actions of another whose mind has never been equal to the office he holds. It only takes one man to help bring down an Empire, unleashing the beginning stage of an ever-growing snowball rushing down a mountain whose momentum cannot be stopped. Much like the worst of the Roman Emperors that helped seal the fate of Rome, Bush has never been endowed with the tools necessary to lead an Empire. Unwise, unintelligent, unlearned, immoral, debased and ignorant, Bush is unworthy of leading a nation that lays at the forefront of an ever-changing world.



Throughout history and to the world�s great detriment men of higher capacity have eroded civilization; the wonderment of Bush is that he has done so with so little and in such a short period of time. It is to history�s great torment that such a man had to exist in such tumultuous times, bringing onto our world the manifestations of ineptitude and deceit, newfound wars, deaths and untold destruction. History will not be kind to George W. Bush, and neither should we, for those whose job it is to record humanity�s foibles will forever acknowledge the rotten seed that sprouted such a diseased tree.



Perhaps in time we will acknowledge the mistake of placing at the throne he who possesses the ingredients needed to bring a mighty Empire to its knees. One day we will learn that Emperors must be molded out of uncontaminated clay, not poisoned soil, espousing honor and virtue, not immorality and connivance, possessing empathy and humbleness, not indifference and arrogance. The person who leads an Empire must lead by example, knowing the world, its people and its history. Understanding of culture, civilization, differences and humanity should be a prerequisite, not just likeability. It is ignorance and weak-mindedness that have condemned us and bankrupt morality born out of privilege that now haunts us.



Hijacked by scoundrels



We are reaping the harvest of three years of leadership by the worst scoundrels found in America that through our silent acquiescence continue to lead us to the bowels of perdition. The momentum only increases with each passing month, becoming harder to contain and reverse, guiding us deeper into dark caverns of blackness from where we might never again see the light of day. The American disgrace in Washington prevents us from waking from a national nightmare enveloped by fear, insecurity, uncertainty, death, war and deficit, both financial and moral, that is corroding what we once were and what we once hoped to achieve.



The chicanery, malfeasance, immorality and incompetence of the Bush administration has for three years nose-dived America into the armpit of world opinion, making the US a splinter of its former self among the fraternity of nations. Our reputation has been tarnished for generations, soiled in the minds of billions whose lucid dreams, once hypnotized by America�s romantic appeal, have been extinguished by the enormous hood covering a once-bright beacon of hope, freedom, democracy, human rights and liberty.



Hijacked by the neoconartists and forced to drink their hallucinatory cocktail of self-defeating illusions, America was forced to declare war in contrast to principles once held dear and true. A war that has become the greatest blunder in American foreign policy history was fought for ideology and proxy, in delusion and fantasy. Fighting for another nation�s interests, killing its enemies and furthering its goals have led America to be hated and repulsed as much as the malignant tumor that is today infecting and endangering all peoples of the planet.



Greater and greater numbers of people around the world are beginning to question the government accounts of September 11th. To many, it was the perfect tool that enabled those whose interests lie in perpetual war, dividing peoples and growing power to commence what they had been salivating for. The new Pearl Harbor can in hindsight be seen as the launching pad that enraged an American public that would otherwise have remained unwilling to embark on years of war. The question must be asked as to who benefited most from the atrocious attacks of 9/11? Which group or groups would have the most to gain from the resulting blowback that dreadful day would undoubtedly produce? Perhaps the time has come to begin questioning and seeking answers to the government�s interpretation that arose seemingly as soon as the first plumes of smoke became visible.



America has become that which she seeks to destroy



The United States has transformed itself into the resurrected remains of tyranny past, espousing the same Nazi-like treatment of Arabs as its welfare-client state in the Mideast. What has become of the protector of human rights? What has happened to a nation living the �perpetual moral high ground� it has claimed for decades? The defender of humanity has over the course of the last three years become the purveyor of brutality, unleashing two wars against Arab nations, affecting mostly civilians, killing tens of thousands, while claiming to fight in honor and in pursuit of evil.



It is America, however, that has become what she seeks to destroy, now transformed into the same beast she claims to fight and impregnated with the seeds she most wants shattered to pieces. In her belly human evil now lives, breathing and growing, spawning carnage and suffering to untold thousands feeling the wrath of terror. A metamorphosis is taking place, mutating peace into war, happiness into suffering and life into death. Infected with the appetite for conquest and blood, thirsty for revenge and power, the same enemy being sought now lies inside America, becoming everything she stands against. The enemy hides inside, growing with every bomb dropped, village razed, family annihilated, bullet shot and blood splattered. America is now synonymous with terror, evil and death. What have we become? Silent we remain, not wanting to challenge authority, not wanting to know the truth, afraid that war criminals we have all become in the complicity of our daily lives.



Being made aware of the evil perpetrated under the banner of our nation is not what we seek for fear of knowing that our cherished government does not manifest good but rather an evil the rest of the world is all too familiar with. Thus ignorant we choose to remain, oblivious to a most dreadful past and a horrid present, unwilling to question the warmongers whose consequences may yet fall on our door. Ignorance in bliss, knowledge imprisoning, and so we live comfortable that without knowing we can manage to escape the reality being committed in our names.



Iraq: A gestating pit of quicksand



The Iraq war has in one year become a gestating pit of quicksand sucking America�s energy into a nadir created out of our leader�s own willful stupidity. A war can never be justified if it is based on a caravan of lies designed to manipulate the people. A nation�s leaders deceiving their constituency in order to go to war are failures devoid of the right to govern. The decision to go to war was made, out of choice, not necessity, and only then were the excuses to justify the action concocted. Iraq was a nation targeted for war even before 9/11, a battle the neocons and Bush had designs on before their most fortuitous appointment. September 11th was the key that opened the door to an ideology that will forever be remembered as a complete and utter debacle, worthy only of being dumped deep inside the garbage bags of the world�s landfills, left to bloat and rot in eternal waste.



Like false prophets promising heaven, Bush and the neocons who controlled him offered charades of freedom and democracy that would transform the entire world. The ridiculous fallacy behind this delusion was energized by ideology and arrogance; its sponsors blinded by ignorance, politics, power and loyalty. The truth has never emerged from their mouths, living in bubbles shielded from reality they breathe, manipulating, deceiving and altering the very existence of the truth has become their full time job.



Pro-rating American deaths over the course of weeks and months so the public is not alarmed or bothered by high casualty figures, thereby never giving a true and accurate number of dead and wounded and inculcating into our minds the belief the Department of War is telling the truth about its dead and wounded, our leaders have gotten away with an Enron-style accounting of American dead and wounded. Twenty dead in one day thus is pro-rated, becoming two dead per day over the course of ten days. Some observers even believe American dead are closer to 1000 than 800, waiting to be made public according to Kenny Boy Lay accounting rules. With the Pentagon, however, to expect anything less than manipulation and propaganda is to live in the clouds. The first casualty of war is the truth, after all.



Today America finds itself trapped in a land it knows nothing about, incapable of extricating itself from desert dunes and dust storms. Its military will be bogged down for years to come, fighting a growing resistance, becoming the launching pad to further violence. June 30 means nothing but a charade built upon a foundation of charades, mere lip service to a puppet regime taking orders from the Puppet in Chief. We should not be fooled by the corporate media excitement about this date. In reality nothing will change, and the violence will most likely only get worse. In an occupation built on lies, however, only lies flourish where flies take refuge. The Iraqipation will continue, as will the lies, the charades and American deaths.



An administration filled with professional liars, lacking any concept of morality or truth in their withering minds, has entrenched the nation into a war that could not be won in a battle that should not have been fought. The rapid defeat of the occupiers, triumphantly achieved in one year, worthy of the Guinness book of World Records, has become not only an American fiasco never before seen but a conduit for an exponentially-growing hatred of the United States. Iraq was never the main front on the war on terror, but today it has become the main beacon of fire calling thousands to war.



In bringing Americans to Iraq, Bush has created the real war on terror. Calls of hatred, revenge, death and destruction to America now rise from many corners of the globe. The war in Iraq has awakened an army of dormant humans, perpetually indigent, exploited, ignorant and with futures devoid of opportunity thanks to mostly American foreign policy, whose marching legions continue to swell. George W. Bush has spawned a war that did not exist before, a war that will continue feeding itself through the principles of cause and effect, action and reaction.



The vicious circle of death and destruction now feeds the negative energy needed for human evil to ascend high into the blood-colored sky, creating dark clouds of ominous repercussions unleashing powerful bolts of hatred and revenge thundering across the vast expanse of Earth.



The fallacy of the War President



The war president thrives off of war, not peace, murder, not life, suffering, not happiness. Fear is his oxygen, insecurity his plasma. We are all being made pawns in his and the cabal of cronies� game of power and control. Fear grips us, insecurity and uncertainty enslave us to the Bush administration�s sinister intentions. Bush�s bid to retain power depends on war abroad and fear at home. It depends on lie after lie and in American citizens� ignorance to and participation in the greatest con game ever invented.



The world is in the grips of a catastrophe being orchestrated by Bush and the now quiet neocons/Likudniks that is forever altering the face of human interaction and civilization. The world has not been in such danger since the rise of the Nazis. With the increasing proliferation of technology the day is not far off when our cities will become biological nightmares we are afraid to contemplate. Small glass viles of chemicals or biological agents carried by twenty lunatics seeking revenge for the family Bush has murdered can in seconds kill hundreds of thousands in cities across the US. The day is fast approaching when this nightmare will become a reality and America as we know it will cease to exist.



The war president and the delusional neocons he fell trap to have made us all less safe, not more. The only thing Bush has done in his three years in office has been to endanger American citizens throughout the world, including inside America, and to unleash a wave of animosity and hatred the likes of which have never been seen before. In all other respects, George W. Bush has been a complete failure, worthy of being banished from the great lands of the United States the moment he is soundly defeated in early November. Such is the chaos, incompetence and failure of the 43rd President of the United States of America.



A Glimmer of Hope



Bush�s war on terror is a fallacy that cannot possibly be won. Rather, the more negative karma our weapons and soldiers set free upon the peoples of the world the more likely America will lose. Our greatest weapon is not in military might but in American goodness. The time has come for us to embrace the world, educate ourselves to different nations, cultures, religions, regions and the human condition. It is time the richest nation on Earth gives back what it has taken for decades from the peoples of the world. A year living abroad, helping those less fortunate than us should be made a prerequisite for every young American in their twenties. Instead of an army of killers we should embrace an army of givers.



The debacle that Bush has created will take many decades to rectify. It is vital to America�s national interests to reclaim our reputation and our honor. Hundreds of millions of Americans are peace-loving decent human beings, full of high morals and integrity. These last three years have sullied what we stand for, they have eroded the world�s perception of American citizens. Programs should be established to create a Department of Peace, enlisting millions of Americans to help reconnect with a world that no longer respects us. Building schools, hospitals, good will and truly winning hearts and minds is the only weapon against an otherwise bleak future.



The greatness of America lies in its people, and from us, the other superpower within the superpower, should come the change so desperately needed. The course of our ways must be altered, the leadership in Washington must be exorcised from our consciousness. Only human goodness, understanding and peace can battle those who hate us for what our nation has done to them. Only a more equal and just world endeavoring to alleviate past injustices and exploitations can lead to security and tranquility. Only by fixing what has been broken can we create a better world for us and our children.



American�s are creative, talented and incredibly gifted. Surely the collective brain can come together to help solve the grand dilemma of our time. For decades our government has unleashed incredible amounts of negative karma around the world. It is up to the children of those past generations to make right what has been made wrong. Only positive energy can combat the negative. Only a new way of combating those who wish us harm can prevent the further erosion of the America we once cherished. If we fail in this experiment, our lives, futures and progeny will forever be charged with existing with the consequences of our failures to act.



The way of the Bush must be burned like the sickness it has created. Bush is not America and we are not him. The last three years have been a national nightmare we cannot seem to wake up from. The American disgrace festering in Washington must be purged from our pores like the many toxins sweated out by an active body. The time to reclaim America from the claws of tyranny and corporatism is fast approaching. We can either take back control of our nation or we can continue to rot in an existence whose future looks bleaker by the day.



The death of America can be prevented, but not by the �war on terror�. Only by waging jihad against poverty, suffering, exploitation, injustice, inequality, tyranny, lack of education and healthcare can we triumph. If we choose wisely our greatest moments lie ahead, and, after November 2004, from our worst nightmare will we finally wake.







© Copyright 2004 by AxisofLogic.com

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Now gimme those heartland votes

16.Teil

Jun 3, 2004

OZARK, Arkansas, and SALLISAW, Oklahoma - Everybody in the United States seems to be eagerly waiting for June 22, the official release date of Bill Clinton`s long-awaited, 957-page magnum opus, My Life. Well, everybody except a lot of people in America`s heartland. In 2000, an army of swing voters switched to a cowboy straight shooter after eight years of the non-stop Clinton soap opera. In 2004, the Kerry campaign - at least so far - has been incapable of persuading swing voters to commit resolutely to sending the cowboy back to his ranch.

How many swing voters really exist across the US? Both the George W Bush and John Kerry strategy headquarters agree there may be between a critical 8 and 10 percent. They are certainly not in Sallisaw, Oklahoma - where the Cherokee Nation has been submerged on Cherokee Boulevard by the buffalo hordes of high-carb, fried-chicken buffets and low-carb thick burgers, gas stations, pickup-truck dealerships, cheap motel chains and the First Assembly of God.

There`s Bertolt Brecht at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center - but not too much Brecht distancing as far as no-nonsense Oklahomans are concerned. According to the latest statewide poll by Wilson Research Strategies Inc, Bush easily wins with 53 percent against Kerry`s 34 percent, with 13 percent undecided. Most of those polled were conservative Republicans to moderate Democrats, older than 50, white and living in the Oklahoma City and Tulsa areas - which is where the bulk of the state electorate registered to vote anyway.

Oklahomans definitely want their lives enriched by casino-style gambling and a lottery (72 percent). They seem definitely not to want John Kerry and gay marriage (71 percent). Chris Wilson, chief executive officer of the polling firm, says that "my bet is that opinions in November will be close to what they are right now".

It`s fascinating to compare Oklahoma against a national trend - where Bush has lost ground in about every poll because of the Iraq quagmire while Kerry has not advanced substantially. In Oklahoma, Bush was 10 percent ahead of Kerry last February. Now his advantage has almost doubled.

But in terms of what`s really important to their lives, 25 percent of Oklahomans say school and education, 21 percent say the economy, 16 percent better jobs and 12 percent health care. Only 5 percent are worried about moral values, only 3 percent fear crime and a mere 1 percent fear damage to the environment. The Iraq war is bundled with other issues at 5 percent.

The economy and jobs (39 percent), according to a recent nationwide poll by independent global research company Ipsos, really are the most important issues for most Americans, followed by health care (20 percent). National security comes a distant third, at 15 percent, and the Iraq war a distant fifth, at 6 percent. But schizophrenia really sets in in terms of what candidate would be a stronger leader: Bush gets an overwhelming 61 percent. But in terms of creating jobs, it`s Kerry who gets his own overwhelming 61 percent. The only point Americans seem to agree on is that nearly 60 percent believe the country is on the wrong track (because of the economy, Iraq and Bush`s tax cuts for the rich).

The view from the Ozark Mountains
The Spectator, published "every Wednesday in the original Ozark" out of a tiny office for almost a century, is more worried about the sheriff`s report and the police report. The Spectator would fight Kerry like the plague.

Informal talk across Arkansas and Oklahoma mirrors perceptions in Wisconsin, Iowa and Missouri as well - all of them close races except Oklahoma. Bush has "convictions" and Kerry lacks any. Bush`s good-ol`-boy twang works miracles. Some conservatives may even admit that Bush is way too much of a right-winger; but then Kerry`s public relations problem sets in. They don`t know much about Kerry, and they don`t like what they`ve known so far. Some, like Floyd Quesnel of Sherwood, Arkansas, even question Kerry`s war heroism: "He`s voted against all major weapons systems for the past 18 years."

Margaret Burnett of Fort Smith argues that "this is not a conventional war. Mistakes have been made; however, I believe we need to show support for our president, his administration and our soldiers." Many agree with Brad Birchfied that "Iraq is a breeding ground for those Islamic wackos, then we are justified in seeing to it that they could not train, house and equip those that want to kill us. Emotional touchy-feely stuff is not going to win this war." Not many would agree with Pat Lynch, a radio broadcaster in Central Arkansas since the early 1980s: "I am a lot more worried about the ceaseless attack on Americans` individual freedom than imposing, as if by magic, a new `democratic` Iraqi government."

At virtually every gas station across Arkansas and Oklahoma one hears complaints about gasoline prices - averaging US$2 for a US gallon (nearly 53 cents a liter) of unleaded (it`s around $2.30 a gallon, or nearly 61 cents a liter, in California). Virtually everyone ignores the fact that a similar gallon costs $4.24 ($1.12 a liter) in Japan, $4.92 in France and $5.22 in England - and people accept it as a fact of life. The US gallon is still cheaper than a Frappucino at Starbucks - which is still too exotic for most of the heartland. But the problem is that the heartland drives vehicles the size of Paris apartments, where a full tank is the size of a kitchen. When buying a new car, Americans rank fuel efficiency as their 44th priority. The deluge of sport-utility vehicles (SUVs) and pickup trucks - 54 percent of all new vehicles bought in 2003 - is not even a drop in the ocean of 204 million cars and trucks and 194 million drivers roaming across the United States. Downsizing? No way: it would be anti-American. Those without a Paris-apartment-size vehicle have to live with being a miniature pincher in a freeway of water buffaloes.

Okie wisdom strikes at the Country Kitchen in Chandler, Oklahoma, smack on the old, legendary Route 66: "You`re lucky you can still smoke. You`re lucky you still have the right to vote." If the federal government is not exactly popular in this land of pioneers, God is always the ultimate refuge. In Texola, at the desolate Texas-Oklahoma border, where a road sign reaches metaphysical Valhalla - "There`s no other place like this place anywhere near this place so this must be the place" - everyone seems to be hanging out at the First Baptist Church.

All across the heartland, post-modern life in the fast lane seems to be too much. Pop culture is gross. Moral values are in the dustbin. People dream of simpler, happier times, and during Memorial Day weekend, they dusted off their fondest memories of the greatest generation that fought in World War II. If only things were so clear-cut today. So what`s left? Well, they get their gas-guzzling SUVs straight from the car wash and get their kicks on simpler, happier, real-good-time Route 66.

(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact [e-mail] for information on our sales and syndication policies.)



Jun 3, 2004

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Nerves of steel

17.Teil

Jun 4, 2004

CLEVELAND - The vegetable farms and greenhouses are fast disappearing from the Flatlands, eaten away by sprawling suburbia. All over northern Ohio we see spectacular industrial fossils - Rust Belt remnants of the massive industrialization from the 1880s to the 1950s, the time when the Great Lakes were "the anvil of America" - producing most of the world`s iron, steel and petroleum products.

That American Dream is no more - replaced by a catalogue of ghost cities. Cleveland itself spent most of the recent decades reeling from Rust Belt decay until finally rebounding. The old heavyweight industrial Flats district, along the Cuyahoga River waterfront, is a fascinating test case of post-industrial redevelopment: bars and restaurants filling gigantic old mills, factories and warehouses, linked by a network of every imaginable type of bridge.

Blue-collar anger is also at its most visible in Cleveland. Take the former workers of Republic Steel, the third-largest group in the United States, named LTV until it went bankrupt in December 2001. After that, workers` pension rights were reduced by 65 percent. Most of the 56,000 wage earners were left with US$700 a month and lost all medical insurance. Mike is one of them. He describes their situation in a nutshell: "Some of us get odd jobs and wait to be 65 to get Medicare. And of course we pray to the Lord not to get sick."

Since 1998, 35 other US steel giants also have vanished. At least 250,000 workers have been left in the same alarming situation. Thousands have lost their homes, and have to choose between buying food or medicine for their families. When their health holds, some can be found at a local Wal-Mart, or McDonald`s, slaving away for $7 an hour.

Whose fault is it? Joe has the recipe: management greed, foreign dumping and globalization. Joe blames those "Third World countries which come here to sell their steel for nothing. In Washington, nobody cares about steel. But we don`t deserve this. We have worked all our lives. We`ve paid our taxes. We`ve fought in Vietnam."

That`s more or less the standard line at the United Steelworkers of America (USWA) union, presided over by Canadian Leo Gerard, with an office very close to the massive, rusting industrial no-man`s land sprawling around the Cuyahoga River. Gerard says, "Our industry was destroyed by unfair competition from China, Russia, Brazil, South Korea. They sell their steel at whatever price to keep their production capacity." That`s now exactly the case: They sell for less because national salaries are much lower and they can still turn a mighty profit.

In March 2002, the administration of President George W Bush decided to impose taxes on steel imports as a way to protect US steel. But the taxes were abolished last December after enormous pressure inside the World Trade Organization (WTO) from Japan, South Korea, China, Brazil, Russia and the European Union.

Nowadays US steel is concentrated in two giants: ISG and US Steel. They buy bankrupt but productive factories, but they never absorb their social responsibilities. In the past two years, ISG has bought LTV, Bethlehem Steel and Acme Steel, while US Steel bought Nucor and National Steel for next to nothing. But the future of their workers remains a blur. The factories need investment and modern equipment to face the competition, and the salaries - compared with those in Asia or South America - are huge. Nobody seems interested in investing in a sector that is not hugely profitable, is extremely competitive and seems to be condemned to extinction by many US economists.

American steel is simply not competitive anymore. Gerard says the USWA has 1.2 million members in the United States and Canada. Seventy-five percent are pensioners. Of this total, 250,000 have lost literally everything. As for those still active, they are usually older than 50, and steelworkers` health problems are known to be legendary.

All work and no play
The steelworkers` plight is to be examined under a broader perspective: the overall decline of the average American`s purchasing power. To keep the standard of living they enjoyed 30 years ago, Americans now have to work seven extra weeks a year. People in Japan, France or Scandinavia work much less, while Americans - especially married and with kids less than 18 years old - have to work much more: at least 51 hours a week. Virtually half of the wage-earning population needs to do that to make ends meet at the end of the month.

The Bush administration has presided over large job losses - Americans` No 1 concern. It may argue now that unemployment has been falling for the past few months. But it is the bigger picture that carries the really alarming figures. Wage earners who have worked for the same company for at least 10 years were 41 percent of the total US workforce 25 years ago. Now they are only 30 percent. Two wage earners in five believe they would never get the same job with the same salary and benefits if they got laid off: certainly not the steelworkers. With mergers and acquisitions and industrial restructuring "creating value" for stockholders, this number tends to skyrocket.

Enter populism
Because for the past 30 years the United States has been turning to the right, wealth today is even more concentrated than in the 1920s. The corporation rules, and wage earners have fewer rights. The most extraordinary thing is that this conservative wave is sold to the average American as a war against the progressive "elites": a virtuous war of the little guy against a despicable ruling class.

The Bush White House machine is masterful at playing the populist card. That`s how Bush gets a substantial share of the white-wage-earner vote: The Republican Party incarnates the little guy against a ruling class (stuffed with Democrats) that despises his "values". This reactionary, populist propaganda is ubiquitous in radio talk shows and on Fox News. Instead of attacking the really wealthy and powerful - after all, many or most are Republicans - the attacks are against symbols of consumer culture: smart cafes, good restaurants, the great universities, vacations in Europe, European cars. This kind of populism allegedly reflects the preferences of deep America - where the Republicans won handsomely in 2000.

So what is a real American according to this caricature? For the Bush White House machine, he eats huge Texas steaks, loves the rural world (the whole Bush-in-Crawford scenario), drinks local beer (Coors, Budweiser), works with his hands and buys US cars (never a BMW or a Jaguar).

The unemployed, unhealthy, worried, angry steelworkers in Ohio don`t buy that myth. But at the same time they balk at the prospect of independent candidate Ralph Nader actually teaching Democrat John Kerry a few lessons on how best to defend their rights. For example, Kerry may adopt a Nader proposal for the adoption of a minimum wage indexed by inflation. At least 10 million US households make less than $10,000 a year - which in India, it`s true, is no less than a maharajah-like income. And Kerry could slash all those Bush tax cuts for the wealthy: it would be roughly what the American Society of Civil Engineers said is necessary to repair the country`s crumbling infrastructure of roads, bridges, schools, libraries, public buildings and water and sewer systems.

The sad lot of the steelworkers in Cleveland is just around the corner from the school-bus hordes visiting the fake-pyramid I M Pei-designed Rock `n` Roll Hall of Fame and Museum - an apotheosis of Disneylandization. A verse from rock `n` roll heavy worker Neil Young comes to mind as applied to the steelworkers: "It`s better to burn out than to fade away."

Ohio is a key swing state. Bush and his campaign team are constantly visiting. No one gets - or stays - in the White House without carrying Ohio. But the White House better beware: For Ohio blue collars, Bush and globalization are the real evildoers. Says a former steelworker at a Wal-Mart: "We`re going to do everything in our power so George W Bush this year will join the unemployment line."

Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact [e-mail] for information on our sales and syndication policies.)

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A Warhol moment

18.Teil

Jun 5, 2004

Also in this series:
Bush against Bush (Apr 30, `04)
Kerry, the Yankee muchacho (May 7, `04)
You have the right to be misinformed (May 8, `04)
An American tragedy (May 11, `04)
In the heart of Bushland (May 12, `04)
The war of the snuff videos (May 13 `04)
The Iraq gold rush (May 14, `04)
The new beat generation (May 15, `04)
Taliban in Texas: Big Oil hankers for old pals (May 18, `04)
Life is a beach. Or is it? (May 19, `04)
Cuba libre (May 21, `04)
Miami vice and virtue (May 22, `04)
Georgia on his mind (May 27, `04)
Free at last? (May 28, `04)
Highway 61 revisited (May 29, `04) #17040 (Dort weitere Postingnummern.)
Now gimme those heartland votes (Jun 3, `04) #17247
Nerves of steel (Jun 4, `04) #17248

PITTSBURGH - All over the Deep South people tell us the same story: Were Dr Martin Luther King alive, he would be totally involved against the Iraq war. The eastern United States elicits another puzzling question: What if Andy Warhol were alive? Dr King was assassinated in April 1968. Warhol was nearly assassinated three months later, but managed to survive (he died in 1987). How would the man who transfigured contemporary art and prophesied that in the future everyone would have 15 minutes of fame react to the "war on terror" and the war on Iraq?

Andrej Warhola, Warhol`s father - a Carpatho-Rusyn immigrant from Eastern Europe - arrived in 1913 in what was at the time "the work capital of the world". He worked in the Pittsburgh mills and he provided a good education for his children. Warhol studied painting and design at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, today Carnegie Mellon University, before moving to New York and practically inventing pop art. With his paintings, drawings, sculptures and movies, and especially using silkscreen to make photographically derived paintings - a technological breakthrough - Warhol blurred fine art and pop, always juxtaposing upbeat icons of US consumerist mania (he was an avid consumer himself, of everything) with devastating images of death and disaster.

The 10-year-old The Warhol - an offspring of the ultra-well-endowed Carnegie Museum system in Pittsburgh - likes to bill itself as the world`s most comprehensive single-artist museum. As far as museums go, The Warhol is alive and kickin` and even funky, showing not only Warhol masterpieces such as Skull, Camouflage, the Marilyns, the Last Supper series and a reconstruction of the Silver Clouds installation, but also promoting new artists, special exhibitions, film, lectures, music and political debates.

So a conversation with museum-goers has to revolve around the theme of what Warhol would do today. His green Nixon silkscreen might be a hint. Would he make pink cowboy Bushes shooting from the hip like his silver Elvis? Would he paint rows of hooded Abu Ghraib prisoners like a successor to his Electric Chair? Would he make a green silkscreened Osama bin Laden posing as a biblical prophet? Would he support a Detroit techno, politically aware remix of the Velvet Underground?

The Lord will praise your vote
History has always been crucial to Pittsburgh - a stern town where the majority of residents seem to be middle-aged or older and where memories are as essential as aspirations. Although some may still consider Warhol a freak, everybody was enormously proud of the Lewis and Clark bicentennial.

Pittsburgh - in its 15 minutes of fame - used to be the heart of the US steel industry. Now the only steelworkers in town seem to be the players for the Steelers football team. Steel suburbia, as in northern Ohio, has been turned into ghost cities. Memories of mill closures, mass exodus, deep recession are still fresh. The municipality of Pittsburgh is essentially broke - firing policemen and an avalanche of municipal workers.

Bethlehem, in eastern Pennsylvania, is not in a much better mood. There was a time when Bethlehem Steel was "one of the greatest companies in the world", as nostalgia-consumed residents keep reminding us. In 1945, the company that was linked to virtually every US warship in both World Wars and to the Empire State Building employed more than 300,000 people. Bethlehem Steel officially disappeared only six months ago - leaving 100,000 pensioners and 13,000 people on salary. A fraction of these were hired by ISG. The rest - as in Ohio - feel they have been caught in a trap.

And then suddenly this week, people in Pennsylvania who go to church started receiving an e-mail with the Bush-Cheney logo. The re-election campaign of President George W Bush is avidly trying to recruit voters from 1,600 religious congregations in Pennsylvania. If you go to church anywhere in the state, you are supposed to get your 15 minutes of fame by helping to organize a "friendly congregation" where people meet all the time to sign up voters and spread the Bush gospel.

There`s a huge problem with this strategy: the churches could lose their tax breaks. The Internal Revenue Service forbids political campaigning for or against any candidate at any organization that receives tax breaks, and that includes almost every church and religious group in the US.

For Barry Lynn, the president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, this is "an incredibly bad merger of religion and politics". For the Bush administration, through a spokesman, Steve Schmidt, the e-mail is about "building the most sophisticated grassroots presidential campaign in the country`s history".

What`s at stake is a lot of precious votes. A fascinating National Survey of Religion and Politics by the University of Akron, Ohio, demonstrates that in the United States the more you go to church the more you vote Republican. For example: in 2000, 68 percent of people who go to church more than once a week, and 58 percent who go once a week voted Bush, while 65 percent of those who never go to church voted for Al Gore. The Karl Rove-directed Bush campaign is working all holds barred on the religion gap - which is nothing but the front line of the culture war that has polarized US politics.

All across the South, white, ultra-conservative evangelical churches represent the key network for the Republicans - just as labor unions in the industrial heartland did for the Democrats in the 1930s. How upscale suburbia - the deciding electoral factor - will react to a torrent of moralizing across the country is still an open question. Pennsylvania remains a key swing state.

Bush by Warhol
Warhol`s work centered on the beauty and glamour of youth and fame, the passing of time, and the inevitability of death: almost the story of Pittsburgh in a nutshell. For all of his image as a frivolous celebrity-chaser, Warhol thought a lot about the future. The future, as far as Pittsburgh is concerned, and just as with Warhol, may be incarnated again by a son of immigrants - not from Eastern Europe, but from India.

Sridhar Seetharaman, 33, is assistant professor of materials science and engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. He has earned numerous prestigious awards and he`s married a Jewish-American. With his 2004 National Science Foundation Career Award and a US$600,000 grant, he "gets to use this money to pay students to do whatever they are interested in - to study phenomena related to iron and steelmaking". He still believes in US steel. He prefers Vishnu to God. And he`d have loved to see a Bush by Warhol.

Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact [e-mail] for information on our sales and syndication policies.)

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Due to overwhelming demand, the Fahrenheit 9/11 trailer will be down temporarily.
Please check back later.


http://www.fahrenheit911.com/

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A SELFISH MEMORIAL DAY
Remembering 1% of the Fallen

NEW YORK--Memorial Day 2004 was an especially poignant day of remembrance. With most Americans opposed to the faltering war against Iraq, friends and families of nearly 800 dead and 5,000 wounded soldiers struggled to find meaning in their loss. Another 80 U.S. troops have died, and many hundreds wounded, in our long-forgotten, ongoing conflict in Afghanistan.

In an ideological role reversal, the military and pro-war conservatives have tried to minimize the magnitude of sacrifice. It took an antiwar website, and liberal-minded editors and producers, before banned photos of flag-draped coffins arriving at Dover airbase saw print. PBS` centrist-liberal "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" notes the names and hometowns of the fallen at the end of each broadcast; the hard-right Fox News, fearing introspection, glosses over the fallen. Had Ted Koppel--who is, it`s safe to guess, a Democrat--dedicated an entire broadcast of "Nightline" to reading the names of dead American soldiers during Memorial Day 1969, supporters of the Vietnam War would have praised him for his patriotism. Hippies would have derided him for pandering to the right. When he did it this year, he was accused of politicizing the deaths, undermining the war effort and all manner of unimaginable villainy.

The left nags us about the bloodbath; the right ignores it. Pro-war or anti-war, however, both sides are the same in one respect: Death only matters when it happens to Americans.

It`s a cliché of journalism: a single murdered blonde scores screaming headlines while "2,000,000 Chinese Die in Floods" gets a column inch under the fold on page 19. But chronically insular Americans have become so myopic since 9/11 that they only mourn their own soldiers--they don`t even care when their allies bite the dust.

During the first three weeks of May alone, one British contractor, a Dutch soldier, an Italian, four Kurds, a Pole and a Russian died in occupation-related mayhem in Iraq. All these members of the "coalition of the willing" died fighting alongside our forces, but Ted Koppel didn`t read their names on the air. By the way, a total of 122 non-U.S. coalition troops have died since Operation Iraqi Freedom began, 12 are missing and 125 have been wounded. Thirty-six journalists have died. So have an uncounted number of U.S.-trained Iraqi policemen.

Major Memorial Day observances didn`t include them.

Respecting one`s wartime adversaries, dead and alive, distinguishes civilized societies from barbarians. Architects of the war on terrorism, casting POWs as "enemy combatants" unentitled to Geneva Conventions protections and refusing even to count the enemy dead and wounded, have discarded this fundamental precept of honor. Dead Americans count; those they kill do not.

The following will come as a shock to readers with U.S. citizenship: The other 95 percent of the world`s population doesn`t value American lives and limbs higher than those belonging to Afghans, Iraqis or anyone else.

Belgians and Belarusians and Bolivians feel no differently about the deaths of an American corporal shot in the foothills of Bora Bora and a Pashtun Talib crushed to death by a U.S. bomb. Both deaths are equally tragic. If there`s any empathetic disparity, most disinterested observers from overseas would tend to sympathize with the Talib, who died defending his homeland from invaders, more than with the American.

It`s the same in Iraq. Vocal American critics of the Bush Administration emphasize the deaths of Iraqi civilians to make their case. Indeed, an inclusive Memorial Day would have referenced the innocents who died during our bombing, invasion and occupation. In his Bush-approved book "Plan of Attack," Bob Woodward says General Tommy Franks estimated that 30,000 Iraqis died during the first three weeks of the war. According to the Associated Press, Iraqi morgue records lead to a low-balled rough estimate of 33,000 additional civilians killed between May 2003 and April 2004. (This doesn`t include those killed in explosions or those who were buried without ever going to a hospital.) These 63,000-plus people--yes, people--paid precisely the same price as our soldiers for deposing Saddam Hussein. But unlike our soldiers, they didn`t volunteer.

No one, even Michael Moore, talks about the dead Taliban and Iraqi government soldiers, many of them conscripts. Yet the these tens of thousands, every bit as much as U.S. celebrity war heroes like Pat Tillman (killed, it turns out, by "friendly fire") died performing their duty, defending their countries against enemy forces. The fact that their side lost cannot diminish the horror of their destruction, wipe away the grief of their wives and children, or dishonor their sacrifice. God knows we try. We pretend that our 880 dead soldiers, followed at a distant second by civilians reduced to "collateral damage," are the only losses that matter out of nearly 100,000.

American lives are precious, but we-and our soldiers--are no more valuable than any anyone else. Until we accept our founding principle that we are all created equal and start acting accordingly, we`ll keep wondering why the world holds us in contempt.

(Ted Rall is the author of "Wake Up, You`re Liberal: How We Can Take America Back From the Right," out this week. Ordering information is available at amazon.com.)

COPYRIGHT 2004 TED RALL

RALL 6/1/04

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June 4, 2004
A Second Truce Arranged With Rebel Shiite Cleric in Najaf
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

AGHDAD, June 4 The rebel Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr and American military commanders hammered out a truce — for the second time — in the flashpoint city of Najaf today, according to Iraqi officials.

Both sides promised to withdraw their soldiers from the city center and turn over security to the local police.

"All the warring parties, the coalition forces and the Mahdi Army militias, should leave the two holy cities," said the governor of Najaf, Adnan Zurfi, referring to Najaf and nearby Kufa.

He also said the two sides "should not allow any of their members to enter again."

A very similar deal was cut last month but soon collapsed into gun battles and ambushes.

In other developments, the Iraqi police have detained an associate of the Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a suspect in many Iraqi suicide car bombings who claimed responsibility for the recent beheading of an American civilian, the United States Central Command said today.

The associate, Umar Baziyani, was arrested on Saturday and is helping investigators, the military said. He is also wanted in connection with anti-coalition activities, a statement issued in Baghdad said.

In eastern Baghdad this afternoon, four American soldiers were killed and five were wounded when an explosion tore into their convoy, a military spokeswoman said. No other details were made available.

In another incident reported today by the Army, American troops encountered a motorcade near Kufa, chasing an Iraqi vehicle and engaging it in gunfire.

"The driver was seriously injured and a passenger was less seriously wounded," according to a statement issued by the First Armored Division press office. "Reports indicate that the injured driver was shot at close range by a U.S. soldier and died."

"The incident is under investigation by the Army`s Criminal Investigation Division," the Army said. "Until the investigation is completed, it would be inappropriate to comment further."

The truce agreement today with Mr. Sadr is a "breakthrough," an American commander said.

Col. Brad May of the Army told CNN: "I`d really classify this as a breakthrough day. What we`re seeing is the governor taking control of the whole city and he now feels that he does have sufficient police forces to move into those areas that need the security."

The deal made scant mention of the fate of Mr. Sadr himself. The 31-year-old cleric is accused of planning the murder of a rival imam and Mr. Sadr`s capture was one of the reasons American forces started the fighting, which is estimated to have cost more than 500 lives.

Meanwhile, Mr. Sadr has not tempered his message. Today he issued a statement, read at prayer time in a Kufa mosque, blasting the new interim Iraqi government selected this week.

"I do not want to have anything to do with this government," Mr. Sadr`s statement said. "I don`t believe any Iraqi would accept this appointment of a government by the occupier."

Mr. Sadr is the son of a famous Shiite cleric who was assassinated by Saddam Hussein`s henchmen. Mr. Sadr began the most serious uprising of the occupation in April, after American authorities shut down his newspaper because they said it was printing anti-American lies.

According to the peace deal, Mr. Sadr`s militia, a black-clad group that calls itself the Mahdi Army, will disarm once local the police move in. The deal was supposed to take effect at 6 p.m. today. However, even after the 6 p.m. deadline came and went, local reporters said several Mahdi fighters were standing around a Najaf mosque, insisting no one had told them anything about leaving.

American commanders agreed to support the Najaf police if necessary but only from bases outside the two cities.

The Najaf governor praised the peace plan but said it was important for American officials to continue the gun-buyback program they started last month to get weapons off the street. The governor also said the trial of Mr. Sadr is a "national issue," meaning that his case should be handled by Iraqi authorities, not American.

The Shiite House, a group of Shiite political leaders, approved the deal, saying it was the fruit of a tough week of negotiations between Shiite religious leaders, Mr. Sadr`s militiamen, Najaf politicians and American officials.

For the past several weeks, American officials have been searching for a way to extract themselves from Najaf and Kufa, two holy cities that have become bonfires of Shiite anger.

Although the statement issued on Mr. Baziyani said he was an associate of Mr. Zarqawi, it did not give precise details of any links. But it did say, "His capture removes one of Zarqawi`s most valuable officers from his network."

Mr. Zarqawi, who is believed to have ties to Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda group, was identified on a video posted on an Islamist Web site as the man who drew a knife from his clothing to behead the 26-year-old American, Nicholas Berg, of West Chester, Pa., early last month

Later the C.I.A., after a technical assessment of the tape, said it believed with "high probability" that Mr. Zarqawi was the masked man seen decapitating Mr. Berg.

Iraqi employees of The Times from Najaf contributed to this report.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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washingtonpost.com

Danforth Nominated as New U.N. Ambassador
Former Missouri Senator Now Faces Senate Confirmation

By William Branigin and Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, June 4, 2004; 5:49 PM

President Bush today named John C. Danforth, a former Republican senator from Missouri, as his nominee to be the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Danforth, 67, an Episcopal minister who has served since September 2001 as the president`s special envoy for peace in Sudan, would succeed John D. Negroponte, a career diplomat who has been tapped to become U.S. ambassador to Iraq once political power is transferred to a new Iraqi interim government at the end of the month.

The nomination of Danforth is subject to confirmation by the Senate. As a former senator himself, and with a reputation as a political moderate, he is expected to obtain approval without difficulty.

An aide to Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the nomination would be taken up as quickly as possible.

Danforth "hasn`t had any great experience in diplomacy, but knowing how to work the crowd in the U.S. Senate teaches you how to work the crowd anywhere," said Robert Oakley, a veteran former ambassador and counterterrorism coordinator.

Danforth, an attorney with the firm Bryan Cave LLP in St. Louis, Mo., served in the Senate for 18 years before retiring in 1995. While in the Senate, he helped win confirmation for Clarence Thomas, a former Danforth staff aide whose nomination to the Supreme Court by former president George H.W. Bush became mired in controversy.

Before his election to the Senate, Danforth, a wealthy heir to the Ralston Purina fortune, served as attorney general of Missouri.

The Yale University graduate with degrees in law and divinity was reportedly considered as a vice presidential candidate by both President Bush, in 2000, and by his father, in 1988.

After leaving the Senate, Danforth was appointed by former attorney general Janet Reno in 1999 to head an investigation into the FBI`s role in the deaths of Branch Davidian sect members in a 1993 confrontation in Waco, Texas.

He was appointed as President Bush`s "envoy for peace in Sudan" on Sept. 6, 2001, and made two trips to the war-torn African country. His subsequent report recommended that the United States pursue peace in Sudan through an ongoing regional initiative led by Kenya, rather than launching its own peace initiative. But he said the United States should continue to make humanitarian assistance to Sudan a high foreign policy priority.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Steps in the right direction: Emma Watson, Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint, from top, go deeper into the spirit of the books in
"Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban."
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June 5, 2004
Cheney Reportedly Interviewed in Leak of C.I.A. Officer`s Name
By DAVID JOHNSTON

WASHINGTON, June 4 — Vice President Dick Cheney was recently interviewed by federal prosecutors who asked whether he knew of anyone at the White House who had improperly disclosed the identity of an undercover C.I.A. officer, people who have been involved in official discussions about the case said on Friday.

Mr. Cheney was also asked about conversations with senior aides, including his chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, according to people officially informed about the case. In addition, those people said, Mr. Cheney was asked whether he knew of any concerted effort by White House aides to name the officer. It was not clear how Mr. Cheney responded to the prosecutors` questions.

The interview of the vice president was part of a grand jury investigation into whether anyone at the White House violated a federal law that makes it a crime to divulge the name of an undercover officer intentionally.

Mr. Cheney is not thought to be a focus of the inquiry, which Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the United States attorney in Chicago, heads. Mr. Fitzgerald was appointed by the Justice Department as a special counsel in the case.

White House officials have denied that any senior aides to President Bush disclosed the name of the officer, Valerie Plame, to Robert Novak, who wrote in his syndicated column in July 2003 that Ms. Plame, the wife of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, was an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency.

It is not clear when or where Mr. Cheney was interviewed, but he was not questioned under oath and he has not been asked to appear before the grand jury, people officially informed about the case said. His willingness to answer questions was voluntary and apparently followed Mr. Bush`s repeated instructions to aides to cooperate with the investigation.

On Friday, a spokesman for Mr. Cheney declined to comment on the case. The spokesman, Kevin Kellems, referred questions about the vice president to Mr. Fitzgerald, whose office has declined to comment on the investigation. A telephone call to Terrence O`Donnell, the vice president`s private lawyer, was not returned.

Mr. Bush has acknowledged that he had met with a Washington criminal lawyer, Jim Sharp, about the possibility that prosecutors might want to interview him about the case. So far, the White House has made no mention of Mr. Cheney`s interview or whether it influenced the president`s decision to meet with Mr. Sharp.

Mr. Bush is not thought to be a focus of the grand jury inquiry. On Thursday, Mr. Bush said he did not object to the prosecutors` inquiry.

"I`ve told our administration that we`ll fully cooperate with their investigation," Mr. Bush said in response to a question about the case during a news conference about the Australian contribution to the war in Iraq. "I want to know the truth, and I`m willing to cooperate myself. And you need to refer your questions to them.

"In terms of whether or not I need advice from my counsel, this is a criminal matter, it`s a serious matter, I have met with an attorney to determine whether or not I need his advice. And if I deem I need his advice, I`ll probably hire him."

The decision by Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney to seek private legal counsel is routine for high-level officials when they become involved, even tangentially, in legal issues unrelated to their official duties.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Kein Ruhmesblatt für die US-Behörden

June 5, 2004
Spain and U.S. at Odds on Mistaken Terror Arrest
By SARAH KERSHAW

This article was reported by Sarah Kershaw, Eric Lichtblau, Dale Fuchs and Lowell Bergman, and was written by Ms. Kershaw.

PORTLAND, Ore., June 3 — Two weeks after United States authorities cleared a Portland-area lawyer of any connection to the deadly terrorist bombing in Madrid, high-level Spanish law enforcement officials who were also involved in the investigation are challenging key aspects of the United States` version of events in the case, touching off a muddy dispute between the two allies and painting a portrait of F.B.I. officials who repeatedly rejected evidence that they had the wrong man.

Much of the disagreement between the two countries continues to center on the fingerprints lifted from a blue plastic bag discovered near the scene of the March 11 bombing, which killed 191 people and left 2,000 injured in the deadliest terrorist attack in Europe since World War II. F.B.I. officials once maintained the prints matched those of the American lawyer, Brandon Mayfield, who was jailed for two weeks, and the F.B.I. at one point told federal prosecutors that Spanish officials were "satisfied" with their conclusion.

But in interviews this week, Spanish officials vehemently denied ever backing up that assessment, saying they had told American law enforcement officials from the start, after their own tests, that the match was negative. The Spanish officials said their American counterparts relentlessly pressed their case anyway, explaining away stark proof of a flawed link — including what the Spanish described as tell-tale forensic signs — and seemingly refusing to accept the notion that they were mistaken.

"They had a justification for everything," said Pedro Luis Melida Lledo, head of the fingerprint unit for the Spanish National Police, whose team analyzed the prints in question and met with the Americans on April 21. "But I just couldn`t see it."

The Spaniards, who continued to examine the fingerprints, eventually made their own match, to an Algerian citizen, whom they then arrested.

Carlos Corrales, a commissioner of the Spanish National Police`s science division, said he was also struck by the F.B.I.`s intense focus on Mr. Mayfield. "It seemed as though they had something against him," Mr. Corrales said, "and they wanted to involve us."

A senior F.B.I. official, in an interview this week, sought to smooth over differences with the Spanish and said that the United States was solely to blame for the faulty match. "The Spanish did not cause the misidentification to occur," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "It was squarely on the shoulders of the F.B.I."

He also denied that there were any tensions between his office and Madrid, or that American officials had applied any pressure on the Spanish to concur with their finding about the Mayfield match. The only purpose in going to Spain for the April 21 meeting was to explain the process the F.B.I. used in matching the print, and "to explain our conclusions," he said.

His comments were in stark contrast to those made only last week by senior F.B.I. officials during several closed-door briefings for Congressional staff members looking into how the mistakes could have happened. There, according to several Congressional aides who attended, officials strongly suggested that the Spanish authorities were partly responsible for the fingerprint fiasco and signaled that relations with them were strained.

"It`s really coming down to a `he said, he said,` " said one aide who attended a briefing. "They said over and over again that `we asked the Spanish for the best possible evidence.` The clear impression was they asked the Spanish for all this, and they didn`t give it to them."

An examination of court records and transcripts as well as interviews with Spanish and United States law enforcement officials and with Mr. Mayfield and his lawyers reveals that the twists and turns of the case go far deeper than problems of diplomacy. In pursuing what proved to be a flawed case against Mr. Mayfield, the F.B.I. was also beset by internal dissension between officials in Portland and Washington, a language barrier with the Spanish, and a fingerprint examination that the bureau now concedes was flawed from the start.

The result was what William Baker, former assistant director of the F.B.I., describes as "a major black eye" comparable to the wrongful arrest of Richard Jewell in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombings. The F.B.I. "can`t afford too many more of these," Mr. Baker said. "You start losing your credibility, and then judges start losing their confidence."

As far as who is right in the dispute, "clearly Spain holds the high card here," Mr. Baker said.

Amid all of the turmoil was the frightening experience of a bewildered lawyer from Portland, who grew more and more panicked that his fate was being sealed and there was nothing he could do about it. "That`s not my fingerprint, your honor," a baffled Mr. Mayfield said at one point to the judge during a hearing after his arrest, pleading not to be taken to jail. "I have never seen this bag. I have no awareness about that bag."

The bizarre tale began days after the attack, when the F.B.I., after receiving several fingerprint images from Spain, said it had found a match to the digital image of a print from the blue bag, which held seven copper detonators like those used on the train bombs. Mr. Mayfield`s prints were in the F.B.I.`s central database of more than 44 million prints because they had been taken when he joined the military, where he served for eight years before being honorably discharged as a second lieutenant.

The F.B.I. officials concluded around March 20 that it was a "100 percent match," to Mr. Mayfield, according to court records and prosecutors in Portland. They informed their Spanish counterparts on April 2 and included Mr. Mayfield`s prints in a letter to them.

But after conducting their own tests, Spanish law enforcement officials said they reported back to the F.B.I. in an April 13 memo that the match was "conclusively negative." Yet for for five weeks, F.B.I. officials insisted their analysis was correct.

In Portland, meanwhile, investigators were quickly building their case against Mr. Mayfield, 37, a Muslim convert, and arrested him on May 6 on a material witness warrant, a technique that civil liberties advocates charge that the Bush administration has abused in an effort to fight terrorism. Despite never being charged with an actual crime, court transcripts and interviews with Mr. Mayfield show he was told that he was being investigated in connection with crimes punishable by death and jailed for 14 days. On May 24, after the Spaniards had linked that same print from the plastic bag to the Algerian national, Mr. Mayfield`s case was thrown out. The F.B.I. issued him a highly unusual official apology, and his ordeal became a stunning embarrassment to the United States government.

In interviews this week, Mr. Corrales, Mr. Melida and other Spanish law enforcement officials suggested that the entire episode could have been avoided. Mr. Melida was among 10 Spanish police officials who met on April 21 in Madrid with a fingerprint examiner from the F.B.I. lab at Quantico, Va., — one of three F.B.I. examiners who confirmed the Mayfield match — and other American officials to discuss their differing views on the fingerprint.

Mr. Baker said the F.B.I. may have erred by sending examiners to Spain to try to iron out wrinkles in the case in April and May, rather than sending higher-level officials to signal that the case was a high priority for the United States. The F.B.I. official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the examiner who met with the Spaniards was one of the F.B.I.`s best forensics people, but he acknowledged that the examiner did not speak Spanish. Other Americans at the meeting did, however.

At the meeting, the F.B.I. presented the Spanish with a three-page document detailing their findings, according to Mr. Melida.

F.B.I. officials told Congressional members in the briefings last week that they came up with the match after working off a "second-generation" digital print — meaning a copy of a copy. But they gave a somewhat different explanation in interviews this week, saying they are now uncertain what generation the digital print represented. But the F.B.I. official who spoke to The New York Times on condition of anonymity added that the real issue was the quality of the latent print that the Spanish originally took from the blue bag.

The determination by an F.B.I. examiner that the print was useable was hasty and erroneous, the official said, and set the agency off in the wrong direction and corrupted the rest of the process. (In an article on May 8 in The Times, one Spanish official erroneously said that authorities there thought the prints matched.)

At the April 21 meeting, the F.B.I. presented the Spanish with a three-page document detailing their position that the prints from the bag belonged to Mr. Mayfield, according to Mr. Melida, the head of the fingerprint unit for the Spanish National Police, whose team analyzed the prints in question. The Spanish law enforcement officials kept pointing out discrepancies between their analysis and that of the F.B.I., but this did not seem to sink in with the Americans, Mr. Melida said.

The Spaniards had said the two prints had seven points, or specific aspects, in common, while the Americans insisted the prints had 15. F.B.I. officials would not discuss the discrepancies.

Mr. Melida said an examination of the two prints showed that the arcs on the lower part of the print curved downward in Mr. Mayfield`s print but upward in the print from the bag. In addition, the two prints did not have the same number of concentric rings, or crests, he said. "You`re trying to match a woman`s face to a picture," he said. But you see that woman has a mole, and the face in the picture doesn`t. Well, maybe it`s covered up with make-up, you say. O.K., but the woman has straight hair and it`s curly in the picture. Maybe the woman in the picture had a permanent?"

The F.B.I., who up until then had seen only a copy of the print, had an opportunity at the April 21 meeting to examine the plastic bag, but did not ask to do so, Mr. Melida said. The F.B.I. official who spoke to The Times refused to say why the agency did not ask the Spanish for access to the original prints or a higher-quality image during that meeting. They waited until a month later, after the F.B.I. received word of the match to the Algerian, to ask to see the bag. But it was too late. By then, the original prints on the bag had been destroyed through testing and examination, according to both Spanish and American authorities.

At the end of the meeting, Mr. Melida said, the Spaniards said they would continue to study the fingerprint matter, but they "refused to validate" the F.B.I.`s conclusions and maintained that the match was negative.

Asked about Spain`s determination that the Mayfield match was a negative, the F.B.I. official told The Times: "We didn`t know what it meant." F.B.I. officials were uncertain how or why the Spanish had come to that conclusion, and the F.B.I. was confident of its own findings, he said.

And so on May 6, in an affidavit in support of Mr. Mayfield`s arrest warrant, Portland prosecutors, who had been briefed by the F.B.I. on the Madrid meeting, stated that the Spaniards would continue to analyze the prints but that they "felt satisfied" with the F.B.I.`s conclusions.

The United States attorney in Portland, Karin J. Immergut, said in an interview that she was concerned about the questions raised by Spanish authorities. But she said F.B.I. officials assured her that the analysis conducted at the lab in Quantico was accurate and that any doubts raised by the Spaniards had been resolved.

"In terms of the doubts," Ms. Immergut said, "the issue was raised by the Spanish but it was quickly dispelled."

Her office had been investigating Mr. Mayfield since March 20, when the F.B.I. notified Portland prosecutors of the fingerprint match. Building their case for his arrest on a material witness warrant, they came up with a list of Mr. Mayfield`s potential ties to Muslim terrorists, which they included in the affidavit they presented to the federal judge who ordered his arrest and detention.

They included that Mr. Mayfield had represented a Portland terrorism defendant in a custody case; that records showed a "telephonic contact" on Sept. 11, 2002, between his home and a phone number assigned to Pete Seda, the director of a local Islamic charity, who is on a federal terrorism watch list; that his law firm was advertised in a "Muslim yellow page directory," which was produced by a man who had business dealings with Osama bin Laden`s former personal secretary; and that he was seen driving from his home to the Bilal mosque, his regular place of worship.

The document also said while no travel records were found for Mr. Mayfield, "It is believed that Mayfield may have traveled under a false or fictitious name."

Mr. Mayfield had never been to Spain, he said, and the last time he was out of the country was more than 10 years ago, when he was posted in Germany with the Army and, separately, visited Egypt, his wife`s native country. He said he had left Portland only twice in the last few years, once to take his children to a theme park in Las Vegas and once to see brother, who was dying of leukemia, in Kansas.

"Being a sole practitioner, it`s hard to stay afloat and it`s not like I had time to be traipsing around the world," he said in an interview. "If they only knew."

Meanwhile, an F.B.I. official said that Robert Jordan, the F.B.I. special agent in charge in Portland, was upset by the F.B.I. headquarter`s handling of the case and that Mr. Jordan had been kept out of the loop in key decision making matters, particularly after the case fell apart. When Mr. Jordan called officials in Washington the day the case was thrown out, the official said, he left a message but was excluded from high-level conversations about the mistake.

Spanish officials said they were not more assertive with the F.B.I. because they did not want to openly contradict their close ally in the war on terror, although they continued privately to express their doubts.

"The Spanish officers told them with all the affection in the world that it wasn`t him," said a Spanish police official who spoke on condition of anonymity. "We never wanted to simply come out and say the F.B.I. made a mistake. We tried to be diplomatic, not to make them look bad, so we just said the case is still open."

Between the April 21 meeting and May 11, six days after Mr. Mayfield`s arrest, the F.B.I. "called us constantly," Mr. Corrales said. They kept pressing us."

On May 6, Mr. Mayfield heard a curious knock on the door of his law office, on the first floor of a beige office building in Beaverton, a Portland suburb. It was about 10 in the morning and Mr. Mayfield, who had opened his still-fledgling solo immigration and family law practice a few years ago, was not expecting anyone.

At the door were two agents with the F.B.I., a pair Mr. Mayfield described in an interview as "good cop, bad cop," "tall one, short one," a burly male agent and a diminutive female agent. Reading from a list on the search warrant, which was contained in court records unsealed last week, the agents told Mr. Mayfield they were searching for, among other things, "explosives, blasting agents and detonators."

The court records show that the agents confiscated a large number of items from the office, including computer disks, bank statements, yellow Post-it Notes and confidential client files. Meanwhile, agents were confiscating things from the Mayfield`s home, including a .22-caliber handgun and .22-caliber rifle, his Koran, and what was described in the search warrant return report as "miscellaneous Spanish documents," which turned out to be Spanish homework belonging to Mr. Mayfield`s children, family members said.

In the office that morning, Mr. Mayfield, not yet understanding the gravity of the situation, was almost dismissive of the agents. He recalled telling the agents, "If you have questions, put them in writing, I`ll review them and I might get back to you."

This did not go over well, Mr. Mayfield recalled, and soon enough, he was frisked and handcuffed and marched out to a Ford Explorer that would take him to the federal courthouse in downtown Portland. On the way to the courthouse, one of the agents, "the bad cop," said something that Mr. Mayfield found particularly scary, he recalled.

"Brandon think long and hard," he quoted the agent as telling him. "You remember how the Muslim brothers stood up for Mike Hawash," one of the Muslim defendants in the terrorism case here known as the "Portland Seven," who pleaded guilty to last year to a charge of aiding the Taliban. "Well, they are not going to be there for you."

F.B.I. officials in Portland, including Mr. Jordan, declined to be interviewed about the case. Many Muslim leaders say they suspect the F.B.I. zeroed in on Mr. Mayfield because he was a Muslim who had connections to the Portland Seven and who visited a mosque that was under suspicion. But F.B.I. officials emphasized that the examiners who made the initial match between the Madrid print and Mr. Mayfield did not know his name, much less his religion.

They said that all they had was the print. The faulty match was another setback for the F.B.I. laboratory, which is considered by many to be the premier forensic crime laboratory in the country. But both the F.B.I. laboratory and the fingerprinting technique have endured stinging criticism in recent years.

Critics say the F.B.I. has resisted using uniform standards for fingerprint identification. F.B.I. officials say that human experience — rather than rigid and somewhat artificial indicators — is the best way to determine a fingerprint match, but critics say the F.B.I. should insist that its examiners establish a set number of points of similarity on a print before they can declare a match.

A Senate aide who also attended a Congressional briefing said there was great concern about the impact the Mayfield mistake would have. "This is going to kill prosecutors for years every time they introduce a fingerprint ID by the F.B.I.," the aide said. "The defense will be saying `is this a 100 percent match like the Mayfield case?` "

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President Bush and Laura Bush met with Pope John Paul II in the Vatican Friday, with the pope reiterating unhappiness over the Iraq invasion and urging speedy restoration of Iraqi sovereignty.
Police officers in Rome yesterday during clashes with marchers protesting President Bush`s visit.

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Bush Meets Pope, Who Voices His Displeasure Over Iraq
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON

ROME, June 4 - With President Bush at his side, Pope John Paul II on Friday reiterated his unhappiness over the invasion of Iraq and urged the president to speed the restoration of sovereignty to the Iraqi people.

Speaking haltingly in front of reporters and a television camera after a 15-minute private meeting with Mr. Bush at the Vatican, the pope mixed praise for the United States with a diplomatically worded but unmistakable expression of displeasure with the war and its aftermath.

The pope welcomed the establishment of an interim Iraqi government, but said it was "a moment of great concern" for the Middle East and called on the United States to work quickly toward a new United Nations resolution.

"It is the evident desire of everyone that this situation now be normalized as quickly as possible with the active participation of the international community and, in particular, the United Nations organization, in order to ensure a speedy return of Iraq`s sovereignty, in conditions of security for all its people," the pope said.

He went on to suggest that the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by the United States had undermined the broader battle against terrorism.

"In the past few weeks, other deplorable events have come to light which have troubled the civic and religious conscience of all, and made difficult a serene and resolute commitment to shared human values," the pope said, referring to the reports of abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison. "In the absence of such a commitment, neither war nor terrorism will ever be overcome."

Thousands of demonstrators marched through Rome on Friday, the first day of Mr. Bush`s three-day trip to Italy and France, to protest against the war and American foreign policy.

But the government of Italy, which has nearly 3,000 troops in Iraq, has been one of Mr. Bush`s most steadfast allies in the war, and the president`s stop here was intended in part to thank Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Two days before he goes to Normandy to commemorate the 60th anniversary of D-Day, Mr. Bush also noted the entrance of allied forces into Rome on June 4, 1944.

In choosing to meet with the pope for the first time since the war, the president was taking a calculated risk. A senior administration official, speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Thursday, acknowledged that Mr. Bush had changed his schedule to make sure he could meet with the pope and said, "The president finds it an opportunity, first and foremost, to acknowledge the tremendous spiritual and moral leadership that the Holy Father provides for the world."

Although White House officials denied any political motivation, the chance to associate Mr. Bush with that moral authority five months before Election Day has clear political implications. He is seeking to win a bigger share of the Catholic vote in his re-election race, and his appearance with the pope held the potential to assist him in that strategy and in harnessing support from social conservatives generally.

Alluding to abortion and other issues on which Mr. Bush is appealing to his base, the pope said to the president, "I also continue to follow with great appreciation your commitment to the promotion of moral values in American society, particularly with regard to respect for life and the family."

Mr. Bush`s presumptive Democratic opponent in the presidential race, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, is Catholic. But some Roman Catholic bishops in the United States have threatened to withhold the sacrament of holy communion from politicians who support abortion rights, as Mr. Kerry does, provoking a sometimes bitter debate over the role of the church in partisan politics.

But while his statement may have helped Mr. Bush on domestic issues, the pope pressed Mr. Bush on foreign policy.

"Mr. President, your visit to Rome takes place at a moment of great concern for the continuing situation of grave unrest in the Middle East, both in Iraq and in the Holy Land," the 84-year-old pope said in a quavering delivery, with Mr. Bush seated to his right.

He added that the president was "very familiar with the unequivocal position" of the Vatican in opposing the invasion of Iraq, and he said progress in Iraq was important to efforts to being peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

Mr. Bush did not respond directly during his public appearance with the pope. But he subsequently awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States` highest civilian award, and used the occasion to set out his view of how his administration views its role in the world.

The pope thanked Mr. Bush and said, "God Bless America.``

The White House also announced Friday evening that Iraq`s interim president, Ghazi al-Yawar, would come to the United States next week to attend a summit meeting of the G-8 nations at Sea Island, Ga.

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June 5, 2004
Brahimi `considers his job in Iraq completed`
By Roula Khalaf in London

Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN envoy who helped select Iraq`s first sovereign government, called on Friday for the inclusion of groups opposing the US military presence in the new consultative council that will advise the cabinet.

Mr Brahimi told the FT that the national conference due to meet this month and expected to select the council could include followers of Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shia cleric, and other national opposition groups.

Speaking by telephone from Paris after a long month of intrigue over the formation of the Iraqi government that will assume sovereignty on June 30, Mr Brahimi said he considered his own job in Iraq completed and would not play the leading role in organising the national conference.

As special adviser to Kofi Annan, UN secretary-general, he said his mandate had been to assist in the selection of a caretaker government. "I had made it abundantly clear I would not be involved after the end of June," he said.

Instead, he said, a committee had been set up to prepare for the conference. Diplomats expect it to be headed by Jalal Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of the two main Kurdish parties.

Mr Brahimi has been insisting that military means alone will not solve the insurgencies in Iraq. As part of his attempts to forge a political solution, the UN envoy had sought to include opposition groups in the government itself.

New political movements have been emerging to call for the immediate withdrawal of American and other foreign troops. Unless co-opted into the new government structures, they could provide legitimacy to the violent insurgencies.

"I don`t think we`ve been able to bring into the government people who are part of that constituency. We tried to look around and see if we could have people who could have been a bridge," Mr Brahimi said. "But there is enough in the government to move in that direction. This national conference should be used to make certain others are offered a chance to be under the tent."

© Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2004.

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June 5, 2004
REPORT FROM GENEVA
U.N. Rights Chief Says Prison Abuse May Be War Crime
By WARREN HOGE

UNITED NATIONS, June 4 - The top human rights official for the United Nations said Friday that the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers could constitute a war crime, and he called for the immediate naming of an international figure to oversee the situation.

The official, Bertrand Ramcharan, the acting high commissioner for human rights, acknowledged that the removal of Saddam Hussein represented "a major contribution to human rights in Iraq" and noted that the United States had condemned abusive conduct by its troops and pledged to bring violators to justice.

"Everyone accepts the good intentions of the coalition governments as regards the behavior of their forces in Iraq," he said in a 45-page report issued at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva.

But Mr. Ramcharan said that after the occupation of Iraq, "there have sadly been some violations of human rights committed by some coalition soldiers." Apparently in a reference to the incidents of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison and to cases where Iraqi prisoners have died in detention, he said "willful killing, torture and inhuman treatment" represented a "grave breach" of international law and "might be designated as war crimes by a competent tribunal."

He said it was a "stark reality" that there was no international oversight or accountability for the thousands of detainees, the conditions in which they were held and the manner in which they were treated. To correct this situation, he said, the occupation authorities should immediately appoint "an international ombudsman or commissioner." That person would be charged with monitoring human rights in Iraq and producing periodic reports on "compliance by coalition forces with international norms of human rights and humanitarian law."

A spokesman for the State Department, Adam Ereli, said Friday that the United States had cooperated with the high commissioner and shared his concern with protecting human rights. He said he thought a war crimes charge was unlikely to arise because the United States was already taking action on its own.

"I think the Uniform Code of Military Justice is competent to act on the abuses that occurred,`` Mr. Ereli said. "The question of investigation, prosecution and judgment is something that we`re already doing ourselves."

Reed Brody, the political director of Human Rights Watch, expressed disappointment with the report, saying that while it put forward some good recommendations, it failed to criticize "the systematic nature of the policy."

"I have never seen a U.N. report bend so far over backwards saying that no one questions the intentions of a government," he said.

"It is not sufficient for the U.S. to monitor itself," he added. "Usually the United Nations seeks to have an independent person. Imagine if this were Russia or the Sudan, would the U.N. be asking them to monitor themselves?"

In its passages about Mr. Hussein`s ouster, the report said the invasion of Iraq "removed a government that preyed on the Iraqi people and committed shocking, systematic and criminal violations of human rights."

As gains for human rights since the invasion, it listed freer speech, open political debate and greater participation by women in public life. "One should take into account in weighing what has happened in Iraq the prospects that, as a result of the actions of the coalition governments, Iraq could well be launched on the road to democracy, the rule of law and governance that is respectful of human rights," the report said.

Mr. Ramcharan, a British-educated trial lawyer from Guyana and an adjunct professor of international human rights law at Columbia University, has been a United Nations official for 30 years. He has served as acting commissioner since Sergio Vieira de Mello, the high commissioner, went to Baghdad as chief of the United Nations mission there in May 2003 on what was supposed to be a four-month assignment.

The report on Friday disclosed that Mr. Vieira de Mello, who was killed in the bombing of United Nations Baghdad headquarters last August, had raised concern about the Americans` treatment of detainees in a meeting with the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, L. Paul Bremer III, on July 15, 2003.

The White House`s top lawyer warned two years ago that American officials could face prosecution for war crimes because of the unorthodox tactics employed to detain suspected members of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

A confidential memo by the White House counsel, Alberto R. Gonzales, which was dated Jan. 25, 2002, and was uncovered last month by Newsweek magazine, urged Bush administration officials to declare captives exempt from the Geneva Conventions. Otherwise, it said, Americans might be subject to "unwarranted charges" of committing or fostering war crimes.

Critics have argued that the Bush administration`s decision not to grant suspected Qaeda and Taliban fighters prisoner-of-war status under the Geneva Conventions created the climate under which the interrogation abuses at Abu Ghraib prison occurred.

The report comes at a moment when the United States has been hoping to obtain a Security Council resolution shielding American troops serving in United Nations-approved operations from prosecution before the International Criminal Court. The multinational force remaining in Iraq after the transfer of power to Iraq at the end of this month will be such a United Nations-approved force.

Last month, the United States postponed its submission of the resolution when China indicated it might veto it. In announcing the stance, China`s United Nations ambassador, Wang Guangya, said he did not want to support a resolution that might grant impunity to people committing abuses like those uncovered at Abu Ghraib.

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June 5, 2004
Jobs and the Recovery

Help is wanted, again. Confident in the economic recovery`s staying power, American businesses have gone on an impressive hiring spree. Labor Department figures released yesterday show that the economy added nearly a million jobs in the last three months. Even the manufacturing sector has turned the corner.

There was a considerable time lag, as there often is in recoveries, between the first signs of strong growth last year and robust hiring. Employers were wary about rushing to add workers and made do with their existing payrolls for a time, helped in some cases by technologically driven productivity gains. But fears that jobs were never coming back, which led to grandstanding about outsourcing, proved overwrought.

As hiring continues, personal incomes will need to rise to sustain further economic growth. Consumer spending and confidence, so vital to economic growth, is directly linked to take-home pay. That will be especially important as the Federal Reserve lifts its emergency-level monetary stimulus. Nobody doubts that interest rates have to move up. The only question is whether Alan Greenspan will be able to hit the right balance — stern enough to keep inflation in check without applying a brake to growth or panicking the financial markets. Though it would have been wise to start raising rates earlier, the Fed might still have enough room to tighten monetary policy while presiding over measured growth. Of course, all bets could be off in the event of an external shock, like a serious disruption of oil supplies.

President Bush will no doubt be pleased with the latest job figures, although he may wish for a better economy in Midwestern battleground states, where the recovery is weaker. Since voters didn`t seem to blame the president for the slowdown early in his presidency, it`s unclear how much credit they will be prepared to give him for the recovery. Lately, Mr. Bush`s approval ratings have been falling even as the economic news has brightened.

It`s certain that Mr. Bush will continue to credit his tax cuts for the comeback. These are the same cuts, you may recall, that were first designed as a means of "giving back" part of the mounting surplus to the public. Then, as the surplus evaporated, they were relabeled a stimulus plan. Now, with no surplus and no slump — and with looming deficits a threat to long-term growth — it`s hard to think of what Mr. Bush can call his tax cuts to justify their renewal. The administration could go with truth in advertising, and simply relabel them a handout to wealthy families at a time of war and deficits.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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June 5, 2004
Kissinger Accused of Blocking Scholar
By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO

The chief Latin American expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, the nation`s pre-eminent foreign policy club, has quit as a protest, accusing the council of stifling debate on American intervention in Chile during the 1970`s as a result of pressure from former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger.

Kenneth Maxwell, a senior fellow for inter-American affairs at the council, announced his resignation in May 13 letters to James F. Hoge Jr., the editor of Foreign Affairs magazine, where Mr. Maxwell had reviewed a book on American involvement in Chile, and to Richard Haass, president of the council`s board.

"There is a question of principle at stake here," Mr. Maxwell wrote to Mr. Hoge. "It was made abundantly clear to me, as you know, that there was intense pressure on you, on Foreign Affairs and on my employer, the Council on Foreign Relations, from Henry Kissinger and others, to close off this debate about accountability and Mr. Kissinger`s role in Chile in the 1970`s."

Mr. Kissinger is traveling, said an assistant, Jesse Incao, and could not be reached for comment.

Officials at the Council on Foreign Relations strenuously denied that Mr. Kissinger, whose friends include some of the council`s biggest donors, had exerted any pressure, directly or indirectly, to silence Mr. Maxwell on this issue.

The roots of the current dispute date back to last winter, after Mr. Hoge invited Mr. Maxwell to write an extended review of "The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability" by Peter Kornbluh (New Press), a book that re-examines the American role in helping to unseat Salvador Allende, the socialist president who died during the military coup that brought the brutal regime of Gen. Augusto Pinochet to power. The book is based on 25,000 United States government documents that were declassified in recent years.

Mr. Maxwell`s essay largely summarized the unresolved questions surrounding American actions in Chile, mentioning three issues in particular: the 1970 assassination of a Chilean general, René Schneider; the September 1973 coup against Allende; and the assassination of Orlando Letelier, Allende`s former foreign minister, in September 1976.

The review, though critical of Mr. Kornbluh`s book in some respects, said that it confirmed "the deep involvement of the U.S. intelligence services in Chile prior to and after the coup."

The review outraged William Rogers, the former assistant secretary of state for Latin American Affairs under Mr. Kissinger and a vice president of his consulting firm, Kissinger Associates, who wrote a lengthy response in the following issue of Foreign Affairs.

"There is, in short, no smoking gun," Mr. Rogers wrote. "Yet the myth persists. It is lovingly nurtured by the Latin American left and refreshed from time to time by contributions to the literature and Mr. Maxwell`s review of that book."

Mr. Maxwell fired back, "William Rogers overreaches." He added, "To claim that the United States was not actively involved in promoting Allende`s downfall in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary verges on incredulity."

After the exchange, Mr. Hoge said, Mr. Rogers approached him once again, saying that Mr. Maxwell`s response to his letter had raised new charges that he felt entitled to address. Specifically, Mr. Rogers felt he and Mr. Kissinger were being accused of complicity in the Letelier assassination, Mr. Hoge recalled.

Mr. Maxwell said that he was not accusing the men of complicity but rather of failing to stop the campaign to assassinate opposition figures abroad. He cited an August 1976 order from Mr. Kissinger to ambassadors in South America, to warn governments there that the United States would not countenance political assassinations on its territory. At least in Chile, that order appears not to have been delivered, nor was it insisted upon. The next month, Letelier`s car was blown up by Chilean secret service agents on a Washington street.

Mr. Hoge said he had told Mr. Rogers that if he stuck to the historical issue, the journal would not run any response from Mr. Maxwell this time.

"He promised me that I would have the last word and that Maxwell was shut off," Mr. Rogers said in an interview this week.

Mr. Maxwell agreed he had said he wouldn`t need to respond as long as there were no personal attacks, but he changed his mind after seeing the actual letter.

Mr. Hoge still said no.

Mr. Hoge said he was not reacting to any private pressure from board members or elsewhere, but felt that the time had come to put an end to a debate that was going nowhere.

"I thought both of them had had a good go at their feelings of the Pinochet book," Mr. Hoge said.

Whether or not there were any hidden strings pulled to give Mr. Rogers the final word, as Mr. Maxwell claims, the dispute underscores an intense competition under way to shape the way that history is told, particularly regarding the United States involvement in Chile, as more and more documents touching on Mr. Kissinger`s legacy are released.

"The key is the suppression of debate on foreign policy by a major figure in a major foreign policy magazine," said Mr. Maxwell, who is now headed for Harvard University as a senior fellow at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies.

Nor was Mr. Kornbluh pleased. He, too, had tried to submit a letter, but was also turned down.

"I thought that Foreign Affairs was being grossly unfair to me as the author of the book that was the foundation for the entire debate, and to Ken Maxwell, who was obviously their own analyst and their own reviewer," Mr. Kornbluh said.

The incident has sparked dismay in some quarters. A letter to Foreign Affairs from Latin American experts who are members of the council severely criticized the way the prestigious journal handled the dispute, particularly in denying Mr. Maxwell the right to reply. The decision, it said, "denied readers an opportunity to weigh competing views, contrary to the journal`s policies and traditions."

This time, Mr. Hoge said, the dissent would appear in the letters column of Foreign Affairs` next issue.

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The Swing States:



Arizona
Arkansas
Florida
Iowa
Maine
Michigan
Minnesota

Missouri
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
Ohio


Oregon
Pennsylvania
Tennessee
Washington
West Virginia
Wisconsin


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A guide to the swing states.
http://slate.msn.com/?id=3944&cp=2101157
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A historical antecedent of the photos from Abu Ghraib: The 1930 lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Ind.
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May 30, 2004
FRANK RICH
It Was the Porn That Made Them Do It

THE day was April 2, 2003, the town was Najaf, the mood was giddy, and, yes, the citizens did greet the American liberators from the 101st Airborne Division with cheers. One Iraqi was asked what he hoped the Americans would bring, and Jim Dwyer reported the answer on the front page of The New York Times: " `Democracy,` the man said, his voice rising to lift each word to greater prominence. `Whiskey. And sexy!` "

Well, two out of three ain`t bad.

This joyous memory came rushing back after the grim revelation of yet another kink in the torture regime at Abu Ghraib. As if sexual humiliation and violent abuse weren`t punishment enough, the guards also made prisoners violate Islamic practice by force-feeding them booze.

How do we square the tales of American cruelty with the promise of democracy we thought we were bringing to Iraq? One obvious way might be to acknowledge with some humility that our often proud history has always had a fault line, running from slavery to Wounded Knee to My Lai. (Read accounts of Andersonville, the Confederate-run Civil War prison at which some 13,000 died, for literal echoes of some of Abu Ghraib`s inhumanity.) But there`s an easier way out in 2004: blame Janet Jackson for what`s gone wrong in Iraq, or if not her, then Jenna Jameson.

It sounds laughable, but it`s not a joke. Some of our self-appointed moral leaders are defending the morally indefensible by annexing Abu Ghraib as another front in America`s election-year culture war. Charles Colson, the Watergate felon turned celebrity preacher, told a group of pastors convened by the Family Research Council that the prison guards had been corrupted by "a steady diet of MTV and pornography." The Concerned Women for America site posted a screed by Robert Knight, of the Culture and Family Institute, calling the Abu Ghraib scandal the " `Perfect Storm` of American cultural depravity," in which porn, especially gay porn, gave soldiers "the idea to engage in sadomasochistic activity and to videotape it in voyeuristic fashion." (His chosen prophylactics to avert future Abu Ghraibs include abolishing sex education, outlawing same-sex marriage and banishing Howard Stern.) The vice president of the Heritage Foundation, Rebecca Hagelin, found a link between the prison scandal and how "our country permits Hollywood to put almost anything in a movie and still call it PG-13."

Some of these same characters also felt that the media shouldn`t show the Abu Ghraib pictures too much or at all — as if the pictures were the problem rather than what they reveal. They are of an ideological piece with Jerry Falwell, who, a mere two days after 9/11, tried to shift the blame for al Qaeda`s attack to the "pagans" and abortionists and gays and lesbians who have "tried to secularize America."

This time the point of these scolds` political strategy — and it is a political strategy, despite some of its adherents` quasireligiosity — is clear enough. It is not merely to demonize gays and the usual rogue`s gallery of secularist bogeymen for any American ill but to clear the Bush administration of any culpability for Abu Ghraib, the disaster that may have destroyed its mission in Iraq. If porn or MTV or Howard Stern can be said to have induced a "few bad apples" in one prison to misbehave, then everyone else in the chain of command, from the commander-in-chief down, is off the hook. If the culture war can be cross-wired with the actual war, then the buck will stop not at the Pentagon or the White House but at the Paris Hilton video, or "Mean Girls," or maybe "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy."

The hypocrisy of those pushing this line knows few bounds. They choose to ignore the reality that the most popular images of sadomasochism in American pop culture this year have been those in "The Passion of the Christ," an R-rated "religious" movie that many Americans took their children to see, at times with clerical blessings. Mel Gibson`s relentlessly violent, distinctly American take on Jesus` martyrdom is a more exact fit for what`s been acted out in Abu Ghraib than the flouncings of any cheesy porn-video dominatrix.

The other hypocrisy of the blame-the-culture crowd is that "normal Americans" — a phrase favored by Mr. Knight — don`t partake of the "secular" entertainment that is doing all this damage. In other words, the porn that led to prison abuse is all ghettoized in the blue states. The facts say otherwise. Phil Harvey, the president of the North Carolina-based Adam & Eve, one of the country`s largest suppliers of mail-order adult products, said in an interview last week that his business has "for years" been roughly the same per capita throughout the continental United States, with those Deep South bastions of the Bible Belt, Alabama and Mississippi, buying only 10 percent fewer sex toys and porn videos than everyone else. Even residents of the Cincinnati metropolitan area — home to Citizens for Community Values and famous for antismut battles over Larry Flynt and Robert Mapplethorpe — turned out to be slightly larger-than-average users of porn Web sites, according to a 2001 Nielsen Internet survey.

Americans, regardless of location or political affiliation, have always consumed a culture of sex and violence. David Milch`s explicit HBO recollection of the cruelty and carnality that accompanied our "winning" of the west, "Deadwood," is hardly fiction. As Luc Sante and Susan Sontag have pointed out, the photographs from Abu Ghraib themselves have a nearly exact historical antecedent in those touristy snapshots of shameless Americans posing underneath the victims of lynchings for decades after the Civil War. The horrific photos were sent around as postcards in the same insouciant spirit that moved Abu Ghraib guards to e-mail their torture pictures or turn them into screensavers — even though the reigning mass-culture pin-ups of the time were Mary Pickford and Shirley Temple rather than Janet Jackson or Britney Spears.

To blame every American transgression on the culture, whether the transgression is as grievous as Abu Ghraib or the shootings at Columbine or as trivial as lubricious teenage fashions, is to absolve Americans of any responsibility for anything. It used to be that liberals pinned all American sins on the military-industrial complex; now it`s conservatives who pin them all on the Viacom-Time Warner complex. It used to be liberals that found criminals victims of "root causes"; now it`s conservatives who find criminals victims of X-rated causes. Since it`s conservatives who are now in power, we`ve reached the absurd state where we have an attorney general who arrived in Washington placing a higher priority on stamping out porn than terrorism; we have a Federal Communications Commission that is ready to sacrifice a bedrock American value (the First Amendment) to the cause of spanking Bono for using a four-letter word on TV. As Congress threatens to police cable TV as well, we face the prospect that the history in "Deadwood" may yet be airbrushed by the government until it resembles "Little Women."

All of this is at odds with one of President Bush`s most persistent campaign themes. He has repeatedly vowed to introduce "a culture of responsibility in America" in which "each of us understands we are responsible for the decisions we make in life." Up to a point. Now he talks about how the Abu Ghraib pictures are not "the America I know." (Maybe he should get out more.) If he really practiced "a culture of responsibility" he would take responsibility for his own government`s actions rather than plead ignorance and express dismay. He might, for instance, explain how his own White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales, came to write a January 2002 memo that labeled the Geneva Conventions "quaint" and "obsolete" for dealing with prisoners in the war on terrorism (of which Iraq, we`re told, is a part). The dissemination of that memo`s legal wisdom through the Defense Department and the military command over the past 26 months may tell us more about what led to Abu Ghraib than anything else we`ve heard so far from the administration, let alone any Heritage Foundation press release that finds the genesis of torture in the sexual innuendos of prime-time television.

In his speech last Monday night, the president, reeling in the polls and seeking a life raft, seemed to be well on his way to adopting the cultural defense being pushed by his political allies. He called Abu Ghraib a symbol of "death and torture" under Saddam Hussein and then said that the same prison also "became a symbol of disgraceful conduct by a few American troops." The idea, it seemed, was to concede American fallibility, if not exactly error. But by reducing the charge to "disgraceful conduct," he was performing a verbal sleight-of-hand that acquitted those troops of torture and found them guilty instead of the lesser crime of pornographic horseplay. (He was also trying to confine culpability to a "few" troops.) Perhaps he hopes that we will believe that what happened at Abu Ghraib is the work of just a handful of porn-addled freaks, and that by razing the prison we can shut the whole incident down the way Rudy Giuliani banished the sex emporiums of Times Square.

But it`s hard to imagine that any of this will fool that man in Najaf who had hoped we`d replace the terror of Saddam with that elixir he rightly called democracy. Whatever else America may represent — whiskey and sexy included — it stands most of all for the rule of law. We won`t bring democracy to Iraq until those of high rank and low alike submit to an all-American prosecution for crimes that clearly extend well beyond the perimeters of pornographic pictures that, in the end, are merely the evidence.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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June 5, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Don`t Know, Should Care
By JEFFREY D. SACHS

George Tenet`s resignation this week came after failures of American intelligence in the Iraq war as well as in the lead-up to the Sept. 11 attacks. But the government`s intelligence failures extend far beyond the C.I.A. and the countries where we are at war or chasing terrorists. In the world`s poorest regions, from the Andes to Central Asia, the government seems to operate almost blindly, facing challenges that it simply does not understand and therefore can`t resolve.

This isn`t a problem that started in this Bush administration, though the combination of ignorance and arrogance in President Bush`s foreign policy has proved especially lethal. Since the early 1980`s, American development programs have been gutted, to the point that there is little institutional understanding about societies seething because of mass unemployment, rapid population growth, pervasive disease and chronic hunger.

Whether I look at the National Security Council, the Treasury, the Council of Economic Advisers, the United States Agency for International Development, or the relevant Congressional committees, I see woefully few individuals with expertise about the low-income world. This is too bad, because the low-income world (roughly, those who live and die on less than $2 per day) constitutes 40 percent of humanity — and most of the places where American troops have fought and died in recent decades.

When I went to key Bush administration officials in 2001 to urge stepping up the battle against the AIDS pandemic, my counterparts were lawyers, holdovers from the cold war and political operatives. What was lacking was professional expertise, which was bottled up at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health, neither of which had been given the lead in setting AIDS policy. Nor was USAID any better. Its budget and expertise had been so sapped by 2001 that there were few independent thinkers left, and even fewer who knew the details of the AIDS catastrophe in Africa.

Even though there is genuine interest in the Bush administration for battling AIDS, too much politics and too little professionalism resulted in years of delay in starting President Bush`s global AIDS initiative, and millions died as a result. That disheartening loss of time and opportunity has been matched in other circumstances. When it has been urgent in recent years to confront challenges arising from African poverty, Andean political instability or environmental catastrophes in Asia, there has been almost nobody to speak with in senior positions of government. When an economic crisis pushed Bolivia`s democratically elected government over the cliff last year, for instance, senior United States officials with responsibility for South America showed that they were utterly unqualified to respond.

In truth, worrying about places like Bolivia or Ethiopia is considered hopelessly soft or politically irrelevant in high government circles — until disaster strikes. That attitude is the key to understanding why our government was unable to anticipate and head off disasters in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Haiti, Nicaragua, Somalia, Vietnam or the many other places where we have squandered lives and money.

The undoing of American foreign policy is captured in the budget numbers. Long gone are the Marshall Plan times, when we dedicated several percent of our gross domestic product to European reconstruction. The United States will spend about $450 billion this year on the military but only $15 billion on official development assistance. The 30-to-1 ratio is mirrored by a similar imbalance in our thinking. Our military expertise is undoubted. Our ability to understand what exists before and after wars in low-income countries is nearly nonexistent.

Changing all of this will require much more than recognizing the errors of the Iraq war. A good starting point would be to rebuild the USAID into a pre-eminent agency for understanding and resolving human catastrophes and security threats arising from extreme poverty. This agency requires a professional, nonpoliticized leadership and staff; a new mandate to study a world economy of startling inequalities; increased financial resources to help fragile and impoverished countries before they fall into chaos; and a rank as a cabinet-level department, so that expertise gets a hearing at the centers of power.

But our efforts will need to go beyond one agency. We must have leaders who recognize that the problems of the poor aren`t trifles to leave to do-gooders, but are vital strategic issues. For the first time in decades, we must strive to understand problems — tropical disease, malnutrition and the like — that are unfamiliar to us but are urgent concerns of billions of people abroad. In the case of a superpower, ignorance is not bliss; it is a threat to Americans and to humanity.

Jeffrey D. Sachs is the director of the Earth Institute at Columbia.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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June 5, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Beating Specialist Baker
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

The prison abuse scandal refuses to die because soothing White House explanations keep colliding with revelations about dead prisoners and further connivance by senior military officers — and newly discovered victims, like Sean Baker.

If Sean Baker doesn`t sound like an Iraqi name, it isn`t. Specialist Baker, 37, is an American, and he was a proud U.S. soldier. An Air Force veteran and member of the Kentucky National Guard, he served in the first gulf war and more recently was a military policeman in Guantánamo Bay.

Then in January 2003, an officer in Guantánamo asked him to pretend to be a prisoner in a training drill. As instructed, Mr. Baker put on an orange prison jumpsuit over his uniform, and then crawled under a bunk in a cell so an "internal reaction force" could practice extracting an uncooperative inmate. The five U.S. soldiers in the reaction force were told that he was a genuine detainee who had already assaulted a sergeant.

Despite more than a week of coaxing, I haven`t been able to get Mr. Baker to give an interview. But he earlier told a Kentucky television station what happened next:

"They grabbed my arms, my legs, twisted me up and unfortunately one of the individuals got up on my back from behind and put pressure down on me while I was face down. Then he — the same individual — reached around and began to choke me and press my head down against the steel floor. After several seconds, 20 to 30 seconds, it seemed like an eternity because I couldn`t breathe. When I couldn`t breathe, I began to panic and I gave the code word I was supposed to give to stop the exercise, which was `red.` . . . That individual slammed my head against the floor and continued to choke me. Somehow I got enough air. I muttered out: `I`m a U.S. soldier. I`m a U.S. soldier.` "

Then the soldiers noticed that he was wearing a U.S. battle dress uniform under the jumpsuit. Mr. Baker was taken to a military hospital for treatment of his head injuries, then flown to a Navy hospital in Portsmouth, Va. After a six-day hospitalization there, he was given a two-week discharge to rest.

But Mr. Baker began suffering seizures, so the military sent him to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center for treatment of a traumatic brain injury. He stayed at the hospital for 48 days, was transferred to light duty in an honor burial detail at Fort Dix, N.J., and was finally given a medical discharge two months ago.

Meanwhile, a military investigation concluded that there had been no misconduct involved in Mr. Baker`s injury. Hmm. The military also says it can`t find a videotape that is believed to have been made of the incident.

Most appalling, when Mr. Baker told his story to a Kentucky reporter, the military lied in a disgraceful effort to undermine his credibility. Maj. Laurie Arellano, a spokeswoman for the Southern Command, questioned the extent of Mr. Baker`s injuries and told reporters that his medical discharge was unrelated to the injuries he had suffered in the training drill.

In fact, however, the Physical Evaluation Board of the Army stated in a document dated Sept. 29, 2003: "The TBI [traumatic brain injury] was due to soldier playing role of detainee who was non-cooperative and was being extracted from detention cell in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, during a training exercise."

Major Arellano acknowledges that she misstated the facts and says she had been misinformed herself by medical personnel. She now says the medical discharge was related in part — but only in part, she says — to the "accident."

Mr. Baker, who is married and has a 14-year-old son, is now unemployed, taking nine prescription medications and still suffering frequent seizures. His lawyer, Bruce Simpson, has been told that Mr. Baker may not begin to get disability payments for up to 18 months. If he is judged 100 percent disabled, he will then get a maximum of $2,100 a month.

If the U.S. military treats one of its own soldiers this way — allowing him to be battered, and lying to cover it up — then imagine what happens to Afghans and Iraqis.

President Bush attributed the problems uncovered at Abu Ghraib to "a few American troops who dishonored our country." Mr. Bush, the problems go deeper than a few bad apples.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Armed followers of Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr take up positions in the streets of Baghdad`s Sadr City neighborhood.
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5 U.S. Troops Killed in Baghdad Attack
Premier Urges Citizens To Confront Insurgents

By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, June 5, 2004; Page A01

BAGHDAD, June 4 -- U.S. troops patrolling in Sadr City, Baghdad`s densely populated Shiite Muslim slum, were attacked Friday with automatic-rifle fire, rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and hidden explosives. Five American soldiers were killed and five wounded in the deadliest of three clashes.

The attacks in the capital, which brought the number of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq to 601, coincided with hopes of a cease-fire between Shiite militia fighters and U.S. forces in the Najaf area, 90 miles to the south. The Baghdad fighting was a reminder of the violence that continues here while diplomats make plans at the United Nations for turning over limited authority to an interim government June 30 and restoring momentum to the flagging international reconstruction effort.

A U.S. military spokeswoman said the first attack occurred in the early morning, with mortar rounds and rocket-propelled grenades hitting a police station where U.S. soldiers were stationed. Local residents said three Iraqis were killed in the ensuing gun battle.

Later in the morning, U.S. military vehicles came under fire from rocket-propelled grenades and automatic rifles. U.S. soldiers returned fire, the spokeswoman said, but there were no known casualties. Shortly after muezzins called the faithful to Friday`s midday prayer in the strongly Muslim neighborhood, a roadside explosive detonated as U.S. troops in Humvees drove by, killing five Americans and wounding five, she reported.

Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, in his first address to the nation, called on Iraqis to rise up against the insurgents responsible for such attacks, calling them terrorists and aggressors, and promised his countrymen that the United States and its allies would genuinely give back Iraq`s sovereignty on June 30.

Reading dryly from a text, Allawi declared that Iraqis cannot accept foreign occupation but added that the 138,000 U.S. troops and their allies must remain for a time to impose order.

"Targeting the multinational forces of the United Nations, which are led by the United States, with the aim of expelling them from Iraq will inflict a major catastrophe in the country, especially if that happened before Iraq completes the rebuilding of its security and military institutions," Allawi said, referring to the insurgents` aim of driving out foreign forces.

"Let us all be one hand, act as one man, with our heads held high, to defeat terrorism and terrorists," he said. "This is the duty of all Iraqis, and I call on you to firmly confront these murderers and criminals and to cooperate with the public services to wipe out those evil forces."

But the task facing Allawi -- and by extension the Bush administration -- was evident in a statement issued by Moqtada Sadr, a Shiite cleric whose militia, known as the Mahdi Army, is confronting U.S. troops in Najaf and other southern cities. Sadr rejected Allawi`s four-day-old government, saying it is illegitimate because it was "appointed by the occupier."

"There is no freedom or democracy without independence," said Sheik Jader Khafaji, reading Sadr`s statement during Friday prayers at the mosque where Sadr often preaches in Kufa, which adjoins Najaf.

Sadr`s tough stand contrasted with that of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the country`s preeminent Shiite cleric, who on Thursday offered qualified support for the interim administration. Allawi, a Shiite Muslim who organized an exile group funded by the CIA before the war, went out of his way in the televised speech to thank Sistani and other "revered religious authorities."

Sistani also insisted that Iraq must regain genuine sovereignty, including control of military affairs. In that, he joined the main demand put forth by Sadr, his younger, more aggressive fellow Shiite cleric. The coincidence of their views, in a country with a 60 percent Shiite majority, suggests that the Bush administration will have a difficult time reconciling the promise of full sovereignty with its demand for continued U.S. command over all occupation troops.

Sadr`s followers in particular -- in Sadr City as well as in Najaf and Kufa -- have shown little inclination to embrace U.S. plans for continuing to play a major political and military role in Iraq after the formal transfer of authority. For them, Allawi`s new administration, like the Governing Council before it, is nothing more than an instrument of U.S. control.

"If the new government wants to show its good intentions, it should demand [that the] occupation . . . pull out from Iraq; this is the demand of all Iraqis," declared Nassir Saedi in a sermon at the Hikma Mosque in Sadr City, not far from where the U.S. military vehicles were attacked. He added: "The case is not a Sadr case, or a Mahdi Army case. It is a general case. Defense does not need a fatwa. The assignment is general. We must fight."

Despite the clashes and tough talk in Baghdad, the Najaf governor, Adnan Zurufi, announced that Sadr`s militia and U.S. forces in the area had agreed to renew a cease-fire they reached eight days ago but never really abided by. Because the agreement essentially was a reiteration of the first truce, it was impossible to tell whether fighting in the Najaf and Kufa area would really subside.

A U.S. commander in Najaf, Col. Brad May, told a CNN correspondent there that the deal calls for U.S. forces to pull back from positions near Shiite shrines in Najaf and make room for Iraqi police, who would patrol the streets. Ahmed Shaibani, a Sadr spokesman in Najaf, said that in return, Sadr`s fighters were withdrawing from any visible armed presence in Najaf and Kufa.

"We will withdraw the Mahdi Army from these cities if the Americans withdraw their forces," he declared.

Ahmed Chalabi, an exile politician and former Washington favorite now accused of revealing U.S. secrets to Iran, walked Najaf`s streets Friday evening to dramatize the new accord and predicted that security will swiftly return to the city and its shrines, revered by Shiite Muslims. Chalabi was among the Shiite political and religious figures involved in renegotiating the cease-fire.

"You will witness the improvement of security in the coming few days," he told reporters.

The U.S. military announced, meanwhile, that last Sunday Iraqi police captured a man described by a U.S. spokesman as "a known terrorist and murder suspect." The man, identified as Omar Baziyani, was an associate of Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian blamed by U.S. authorities for attacks on American soldiers here, according to a statement.

"Baziyani remains in detention and is providing information to coalition forces," the statement said. "His capture removes one of Zarqawi`s most valuable officers from his network."

The statement did not explain how or where Baziyani was captured or why it took five days to announce that he was in custody.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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The Fayette County Prison in Uniontown, where Graner worked as a guard.
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Wenn diese Menschen auf Grund ihrer früheren Taten auf diese Posten im Irak berufen worden sind, dann wäre diese Art der Befragung erwünscht gewesen, oder die Wärter haben sich für diese Arbeit beworben, weil sie hofften dort ihre Vorlieben ausleben zu können. Es sieht jedenfalls nicht so aus, als ob irgendjemand willens war diesen Auswüchsen entgegenzutreten
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Records Paint Dark Portrait Of Guard
Before Abu Ghraib, Graner Left a Trail Of Alleged Violence

By David Finkel and Christian Davenport
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, June 5, 2004; Page A01

In perhaps the most famous of the photographs, he is the one standing behind the now-iconic pyramid of prisoners, all of them naked and hooded as he looks into the camera and smiles.

In other photos, he is the one aiming his fist at a prisoner he has collared around the neck, kneeling on prisoners whose hands are tied behind their backs, and raising his left index finger in a "No. 1" sign as he squats next to a prisoner who is bruised, bandaged and dead.

These are the images the world knows so far of Army Spec. Charles A. Graner Jr., 35, who in the unfolding Iraq prisoner-abuse scandal has become the infamous guard of Abu Ghraib. But there are other, lesser-known images of him:

In 1991, he was a 22-year-old soldier in Saudi Arabia, calling home at all hours to see if his wife was there.

In 1992, he was working at a county prison in Pennsylvania with guards who acknowledge beating up prisoners as a means of control.

In 1994, he made a fellow prison guard sick by spraying Mace into his coffee.

In 1997, he was accused by his wife of threatening to kill her.

In 1998, when he was working as a guard in a state prison, he was accused by one inmate of slipping a razor blade into his food.

And in 2001, he was accused by his now-ex-wife of grabbing her by the hair, dragging her out of a bedroom and trying to throw her down the stairs.

These images come not from photographs or videos but from court records and interviews with people who have known Graner over the past 20 years, many of whom say they were shocked less by the abuse depicted in the pictures than by the familiar face at the center.

How did Graner become the man in the pictures? The man whose poses, smiles and coiled fist led to a presidential apology and affected the course of a war? Old friends and colleagues are not the only ones with questions. Multiple investigations have been launched into the Abu Ghraib abuse, as have court-martial proceedings against several soldiers who served as guards. Graner, who has been called the ringleader, faces charges of assault, maltreatment of prisoners, conspiracy, dereliction of duty, obstruction of justice, adultery and committing indecent acts.

Graner is secluded in Iraq and did not comment for this article. His parents declined to discuss him, as did his ex-wife.

His attorney, Guy L. Womack, says that Graner has been a good husband, a good father, and a good soldier who was following orders and did nothing wrong.

From interviews with people who had close contact with Graner at various points in his life, however, a portrait emerges of someone who went from "always smiling, always laughing" to angry by the time he left for Iraq. He went from bow ties in high school to black gloves with the fingers cut off when he was a prison guard. He went from calling adults "sir" and "ma`am" to reportedly telling an officer in Iraq to kiss his backside. He was "polite," "a gentleman," "by the book," "the guard of guards," "a jerk," "a moron" and "a dangerous man."

The portrait is one of snapshots rather than continuous streaming video. Snapshots, of course, are what illuminated Abu Ghraib. What follows are five more.
Persian Gulf War Prisoners

The first snapshot is from January 1991. Graner, 22, is somewhere in the Saudi Arabian desert, calling home to say he has safely arrived.

The person he is trying to reach is his wife, Staci, whom he married seven months earlier in a ceremony so small there was no best man. The place he is calling is Uniontown, Pa., a struggling coal town of 12,000 people in the southwestern part of the state, not far from where Staci was raised.

Graner was born two years and 17 days before her and was raised 40 miles to the north, in a Pittsburgh suburb. His father was an airline mechanic. His mother wrote in his high school yearbook: "Chuck -- You have always made your father and me proud of you. You are the best." After high school, he attended the University of Pittsburgh for two years, dropped out for unknown reasons, moved home, worked in construction, joined the Marine Forces Reserve and met Staci.

By spring 1990 she was pregnant. On June 15 they were married. On Nov. 23, visibly pregnant, she was saying goodbye as Graner`s reserve unit headed for the Persian Gulf War. And in January, according to one of Graner`s closest friends in Saudi Arabia, a fellow reservist named Leo Bonner, Graner was making the first of many attempts to call home.

And getting no answer, even though, back home in Uniontown, it was the middle of the night.

"Let`s put it this way," Bonner says of how that call, and subsequent unanswered ones that he says he witnessed, affected Graner. "There were several people who had suspicions that their wives or girlfriends were not being faithful to them, and Chuck may have been one of them.

"You don`t really know what`s going on. Your imagination runs away with you," he continues, and then he answers a question about whether Graner was upset: "Who wouldn`t be?"

Making it worse, Bonner says, were Graner`s circumstances at that point: a sprawling prisoner-of-war camp in Saudi Arabia where his unit had been sent to guard thousands of Iraqi prisoners who began surrendering in droves as soon as the ground war began. "The scum of the Earth," says Joe Dugan, Graner`s platoon sergeant. One night, when a sudden sandstorm obliterated the area where the prisoners` food was prepared, thousands of them began rioting. For hours, they set fires, rushed the concertina wire they were enclosed within, and threw whatever they could get their hands on. Finally, the Marines took their own rations and threw them over the wire to the prisoners, bringing an end to what Ross Guidotti, another reservist, calls "probably one of the most frightening nights of my life."

Months of such experiences changed every one of the reservists by the time they left Saudi Arabia, Dugan and others say -- some in positive ways, some not. There have been a high number of divorces and two suicides, including the suicide of one of Graner`s closest friends.

Graner, who was variously described by fellow reservists as a good Marine and "a class clown," was changed, too, Bonner says, not only by the experience of being in a war but also by the unanswered phone calls home.

"I would not say that no one ever answered," Bonner says of the results of Graner`s attempts, "but sometimes they did not."

The way Graner and others coped with what was going on in their imaginations was to joke around as much as possible, sometimes with each other, and sometimes with some of the prisoners.

Bonner remembers a day when, through a translator, a group of prisoners were taught to sing the lyrics "da do ron-ron-ron, da do ron-ron," whenever a soldier pointed at them. He remembers how he, Graner and other reservists would motion in different directions when prisoners asked what direction Mecca was in, leading to the spectacle of people kneeling in different directions at prayer time. "We found that a little amusing," he says.

He remembers that after the riot, when the reservists handed out their boxes of rations, they deliberately did not bother to mention which ones contained pork.

And that`s as far as it went, he says. No one got punched. No one was formed into pyramids. No one was abused.

Month after month, he says, Graner made phone calls, worried privately, joked around publicly and slept in a cot with a stack of photos of Staci nearby.

And then it was time to go home, a homecoming that Guidotti, who witnessed it and remembers it 13 years later, describes like this:

Their plane landed at the Pittsburgh airport. There was Staci. There was their four-month-old daughter. And there was Graner, seeing them and starting to cry.
Day Shift in the County Prison

Three years later, now working full time on the afternoon shift at the Fayette County Prison, Graner decided to play a practical joke on a new guard named Robert Tajc.

"He squirted Mace in this dude`s coffee," remembers Carl Opel Jr., another guard. "Just to be a jack-off."

"It was a joke," says Tajc, who drank the coffee, became nauseated, vomited and went home sick.

This, say the guards, was the daily culture of the afternoon shift, where Graner worked until May 17, 1996, in a dingy, five-story prison crowded with drug users, child molesters and people awaiting trial on every conceivable felony charge. Unlike the night shift, which was typically sleepy, or the morning shift, which was busy with prisoner transfers to court hearings, the afternoon shift had a no-nonsense reputation.

"The second-shift guards, they did have an attitude," says John Stossel, 57, who worked as a guard at the prison from 1978 to 2000. "They were fighting a war as far as they were concerned."

How was the war fought?

"Did we kick people`s asses in there? Yes, we did. I`m not going to deny it," says Opel, who was a guard at the prison from 1992 to 2002, when he was terminated for chronic lateness.

He describes how an inmate would be moved to one of the disciplinary cells on the first and fourth floors: "You`d have a group of about three or four [guards] that would go in and move this dude. Once you get him out of the [cellblock] and in the stairwell, you`d slap him around a bit, tell him, `Listen up, if you`re going to act up, you act up on midnight or you act up on day shift. You don`t act up on afternoon.` " He describes what would happen to an inmate being transported by elevator, where there was no camera: "I`ve known people to lose teeth in there," he says. "I`ve kicked a few people`s asses in there."

What Opel won`t say is whether Graner, who wore black gloves with padding across the knuckles and the fingers cut off, was one of the guards who did this. "I can`t say that," he says. "I stayed away from him because he was a jerk."

Jim Grassi, a guard who still works at the prison and considers Graner a friend, says: "I`m not going to lie to you and say no one was abused. But I can say this about Graner -- I never witnessed him hit an inmate, punch him, slap him."

Instead, Grassi continues, "he was by the book. Graner knew the policy and procedures manual better than the warden -- and the warden is the one who wrote it. When he was bored, he`d sit and copy the manual onto a notepad, just to know it better."

Why, then, would someone who goes by the book put Mace in another man`s coffee?

"I don`t know why. As a joke," Grassi says. "He didn`t think."

He goes over the details of that day. Graner laughing. Tajc drinking. Tajc vomiting. Tajc going home.

Now he thinks about Abu Ghraib. "I don`t know what happened," he says. "The only explanation I can think of -- Chuck was a real devoted family man. Chuck talked about his kids, his wife, mainly his kids. About a year before he left the prison, he and his wife split up.

"I know he took it really hard. You could just tell he was down. Real down. He wasn`t himself."
A Suit Alleges Prison Abuse

June 29, 1998. At State Correctional Institution-Greene in southwestern Pennsylvania, the inmates are eating mashed potatoes. Horatio Nimley, who is serving time for burglary, takes a spoonful. His mouth fills with blood. He spits out a razor blade. He screams for help. At first the guards ignore him. Then they take him to the nurse. And then they punch him, kick him and slam him to the floor, and when he yells, "Stop, stop," one of the guards says, "Shut up, nigger, before we kill you."

Graner.

These are the allegations contained in a lawsuit Nimley brought against Graner, five other guards and the nursing supervisor in May 1999 alleging mistreatment. By that point, abuse allegations had become common at Greene, which opened in 1993. Among the allegations over the years: Guards beat prisoners, spit in their food, showered them with racial epithets and wrote "KKK" in one beaten prisoner`s blood. The allegations weren`t without merit: In 1998, two dozen guards were fired, suspended, demoted or reprimanded.

According to a prison spokesman, none of the allegations involved Graner, who was reprimanded three times and suspended four times for showing up late for work and taking unauthorized leaves. The allegation against him by Nimley, which Graner denied, was found to "have arguable merit in fact and law" by a federal magistrate and was proceeding when Nimley got out of prison, stopped responding to motions and disappeared. For those reasons, the case was dismissed, leaving the merits of the case unresolved.

Another inmate, Nick Yarris, who was recently released from Greene after DNA tests cleared him of rape and murder charges for which he had spent 22 years on death row, says that the kind of abuse Nimley described in his lawsuit was common at Greene, and that Graner was involved.

Yarris says that in May 1998, he was assigned to pick up lunch trays left outside the cellblocks when a prisoner deliberately flooded his toilet. He says he saw Graner and four other guards pull the inmate out of his cell. He says the guards dragged the inmate by his feet and that Graner was holding a canister of pepper spray over the prisoner and saying, "We`re going to go get some." He says that the inmate was dragged into another room out of his sight, and that the next time he saw him the inmate had been beaten and was being taken away on a gurney.

In addition to that one incident, Yarris says, Graner bragged about taunting anti-death-penalty protesters who would gather outside the prison, used racial epithets and once told a Muslim inmate he had rubbed pork all over his tray of food.

Another memory of Graner: Other guards, Yarris says, didn`t seem to like him. He remembers what one guard said to Graner as Graner`s marriage was collapsing under allegations of abuse.

"Yo, Charles, I heard you got a good left," the guard said mockingly. "You`re the toughest wife beater I ever met."
Three Protection-From-Abuse Orders

"Sir, you are Charles A. Graner?"

"Yes, sir."

On June 16, 1997, Graner was in court, being questioned by a judge.

"Are you in agreement with the consent order that would be entered in this case, that you would be ordered to refrain from abusing or harassing your wife?"

"Yes, sir."

Staci was asking for a protection-from-abuse order, saying Graner had been threatening her. "On or about May 1, 1997, the Defendant threatened to kill the Plaintiff" is how her petition for relief began.

"That you would be ordered to refrain from any contact with your wife except such contact as may be necessary for the exchange of the children?" the judge continued.

"Yes, sir."

Graner wasn`t admitting to this. He wasn`t admitting to anything. He was merely promising to stay away.

"I want to make sure that you understand what will happen in the event that you would violate this court order."

"Yes, sir. I know what will happen," Graner said.

The order was for six months. Graner honored it. But on Feb. 2, 1998, soon after the order had expired, Staci Graner was back in court, asking for a second protection-from-abuse order.

"He has engaged in physical abuse directed towards you?" the judge asked.

"Yes," she said.

"The last time being approximately two weeks ago?"

"Maybe 2 1/2 weeks."

"And what did he do?"

"Picked me up and threw me."

"How far did he throw?"

"A few feet."

"And what did he throw you into? The floor? Or furniture?"

"Furniture. And he also threw me on the bed. He also, he grabbed my arm and hit my face with my arm. I don`t understand why he did that, but that`s what he did."

And so a second protection-from-abuse order was issued. Then, on March 8, 2001, after their divorce was final, Staci Graner asked for a third one because of what had happened when she arrived home with their two children the night before.

"He was there," her handwritten narrative of what happened begins. "[We] had just gotten situated when Charles opened my daughter`s bedroom door and came in. He asked me what I was doing and I said, `I`m going to sleep in here, we`re watching a movie together.` "[H]e slammed the door on his way out of her room," the narrative continued. "A minute later, he came back into Brittni`s room and told my son, Dean, to go to his own room. Dean told his father that he didn`t want to leave me and Charles yelled at him to `Go to your room NOW.` Dean started to cry and ran to his room. Brittni started to cry also and was begging her dad to `Please stop it!` "Charles followed Dean out of the room, came back into Brittni`s room and yanked me out of Brittni`s bed by my hair, dragging me and all of the covers out into the hall and tried to throw me down the steps. Both of the children witnessed this and were screaming at this point. He let go of me, turned around to the children and said, `See what your mommy is doing to us?` Then he slammed their doors and had me cornered in between their bedroom doors. He forced me to go downstairs into the kitchen with him to `talk`. . . .

"I ran past him and up the stairs to my kid`s rooms and I went into Dean`s room first (they were both in their own rooms screaming and crying for me). As soon as I got into Dean`s room, Charles was behind me and told me to get away from my son. . . . He then grabbed me by my hair a second time, pushed me down, dragged me out of Dean`s room into the hallway, into my bedroom, and started banging the left side of my head against the floor."

And so a third protection-from-abuse order was issued, based on a narrative that concluded with a final notation about what happened after Staci called the police:

"At about 1:30 a.m.," she wrote, "my friend, Kelle Martini, called me @ my mother`s house. She informed me that Charles had called her twice in a row and was hysterical. She said she tried to calm him down by reminding him that he had two children to live for and he replied, `I have nothing if she`s not my wife, she`s dead. As for the children, the moment they walked out the door with their mother I washed my hands of them.` Kelle replied, `But you`re their father, Chuck,` and he said, `Those two no longer have a father.` "

The order was for a year. There was to be another hearing in spring 2002, but on Feb. 28 a letter arrived at the Fayette County courthouse saying that Graner wouldn`t be able to attend.

"Cpl Graner will be unable to appear and protect his interests in this case until December 2002 because of his support with the training of the high volume of soldiers deploying overseas with Operations Enduring Freedom and Noble Eagle," said the letter, which was written on U.S. Army letterhead.

"This letter is a special request in my capacity as a commander, charged with a mission supporting the national security of this nation, that you delay the proceedings to allow this soldier to perform his critical part in that mission."
Mustering for Duty in Iraq

One final snapshot, then, on Feb. 27, 2003.

Another departure. This one is in Cresaptown, Md., where there are doughnuts and coffee and hand-held American flags.

This time, there is no wife to say goodbye to Graner, who is now in the Army Reserve. His family now is the other soldiers waiting with him for the transport trucks.

There is Spec. Joseph M. Darby, whose anonymous note would first bring the Abu Ghraib abuse to light and who would tell investigators that Graner once said to him, "The Christian in me says it`s wrong, but the corrections officer in me says, `I love to make a grown man piss himself.` " And Spec. Jeremy C. Sivits, who would tell investigators that in one incident he witnessed, "Graner punched the detainee with a closed fist so hard in the temple that it knocked the detainee unconscious," and then said, "Damn, that hurts."

And Pfc. Lynndie R. England, who would tell investigators that Graner "would lean on [detainees], push them around, mostly he would yell at them and put them in physically controlling positions," and that she is pregnant with Graner`s child.

Here come the trucks.

There are pictures taken, of course, because there are so many cameras.

And away goes Graner who in a few months, at least for the length of time of a snapshot, will be smiling in Abu Ghraib.

Staff writer Michael Amon and researcher Bobbye Pratt contributed to this report.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Bush takes a tongue-lashing from the Pope over Iraq

John Hooper in Rome and John Aglionby in Singapore
Saturday June 5, 2004

The Guardian
The Pope yesterday subjected George Bush to a very public, relentlessly critical assessment of the US administration`s performance in Iraq, attacking "deplorable" abuses of prisoners and calling for an international solution to the country`s crisis.

During the president`s visit to the Vatican, which the administration had hoped would help him win Catholic votes in November`s presidential election, the Pope warned Mr Bush he would never succeed in the war on terrorism if he failed to ensure respect for basic human rights.

And he urged him to involve the United Nations in an oper ation for the swift return of sovereignty to Iraq.

In a clear reference to the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib jail, the pontiff said: "In the past few weeks _ deplorable events have come to light which have troubled the civic and religious conscience of all and made more difficult a serene and resolute commitment to shared human values.

"In the absence of such a commitment, neither war nor terrorism will ever be overcome."

Mr Bush had changed the itinerary of his European tour to accommodate yesterday`s meeting with the Pope - his first since ordering the invasion of Iraq. Though the war earned him sharp criticism from the Vatican, the president is closer than his Democ rat rival John Kerry to the Pope`s stance on issues such as abortion and gay marriage.

After a string of ground-clearing exercises culminating in a visit to the Vatican by Vice-President Dick Cheney in January, it had been expected the Pope would tone down his remarks on Iraq, particularly since he was to be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest US award available to a civilian.

But targeting Washington`s reluctance to hand over full powers to the Iraq government and its misgivings over UN involvement, the pontiff said: "It is the evident desire of everyone that this situation now be normalised as quickly as possible with the active participation of the international community and, in particular, the United Nations organisation, in order to ensure a speedy return of Iraq`s sovereignty."

Mr Bush said his government would work for "human liberty and human dignity", but made no direct mention of Iraq.

The only, thin pickings to be gleaned from his visit came when the Pope expressed appreciation for the president`s "commitment to the promotion of moral values in American society, particularly with regard to respect for life and the family".

Mr Bush sped to the Vatican in a 30-vehicle convoy across a Rome eerily deserted for fear of clashes between police and anti-war demonstrators.

An anti-war march passed off peacefully with one organiser, Piero Bernocchi, estimating the crowd at 150,000. But police put the numbers at around 25,000.

Kidnappers holding three Italians in Iraq had called for a big demonstration against Mr Bush. But the hostages` relatives withdrew from the march rather than be seen to be capitulating to the terrorists` demands.

Mr Bush had come to Rome to mark the 60th anniversary of the allied liberation of the city before flying on to D-day commemorations in France.

The Pope`s fears over the war on terror were echoed by one of America`s staunchest Asian allies, Singapore`s prime minister, Goh Chok Tong. He told a summit of defence ministers, including the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, that America`s lack of an even-handed approach to the Israeli-Palestinian issue had made it "part of the problem".

"A more balanced and nuanced approach towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - an approach _that there are equities and inequities on both sides - must become a central pillar of the global war against terrorism," he said.

"The discomfort that mainstream Muslims feel with America`s Middle East policies limits their ability to fight the ideological battle."
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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Shrek: The Great Lime-Green Hope
- Emil Guillermo, Special to SF Gate
Wednesday, June 2, 2004

I have seen the future of race relations in America, and it`s that subversive little movie called "Shrek 2," where the bad guys are fairy godmothers and handsome princes, and the good guys ogres and asses.

If you`ve had a difficult time grasping the true meaning of the greatness of multiculturalism or diversity in this country, preferring instead to rail against the balkanization of America or to mourn the loss of a great American homogeneity, then get thee to your nearest 64-plex, where the sequel to the hit from summer 2001 seems to be playing in half the theaters.

Prepare to get shrekked.

There`s a reason a movie about a lime-green ogre who marries a princess has been the nation`s No. 1 movie, grossing $257 million since opening May 19 and posting the best-ever Memorial Day in moviedom, with a $92.2 million gross (including at least $30 from me).

The movie speaks the truth about where this country is moving in regard to race and culture and diversity.

But thank God it`s in cartoon form, because many people are still not ready for the truth in a more direct guise, such as a live-action film.

The truth? America is more heterogeneous than ever, and California is leading the way. In this state, we`re great blenders. And there are no taboos. The movie put a point on it when it revealed -- indirectly, of course -- that fire-breathing flying dragons can have sex with donkeys and produce cute little fire-breathing flying asses.

It`s happening right in Hollywood.

David Hayes-Bautista, a demographer at the UCLA School of Medicine who`s looking at the mothers and fathers of children born in California, is finding some startling diversity. He said young people ages 18-24 in the Southland are mixing with a vengeance.

"Of young, white mothers [age 24 and younger] in Los Angeles County, in over 50 percent of the cases, the father is nonwhite," Hayes-Bautista told me this week in a phone interview.

Compare that to older white mothers (over age 40) in Los Angeles County, where, in 95 percent of the cases, the father is white, and you see the generational shift.

"The younger they get, the more exogamous," said Hayes-Bautista (meaning the more people mix outside their race). "I`ve been noting the trend for a while, but I think some would be mightily surprised."

With all that mixing, we needed "Shrek 2," the 21st-century equivalent of "Guess Who`s Coming to Dinner."

In that 1967 film, amid America`s early struggle with civil rights, Sidney Poitier played a black doctor whose white fiancée invites him home to meet the parents (Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn). What ensues is a dialogue-rich exposé of the entrenched middle-class racism of the time.

In 2004, Shrek is the happy-go-lucky ogre who rescues and marries a princess (who happens to be a happy ogre herself ) and then gets invited by her to meet mom and dad -- ye olde king and queen.

It`s the same story, with cultures clashing and tensions rising between Shrek and the king, especially on the subject of children. Oh, what will the children be like? And then there are all the fill-in-the blank jokes -- here, it`s about ogres, but you can substitute your favorite ethnic group -- about how they burp and pass wind indiscriminately.

Sidney Poitier didn`t drink out of a finger bowl like Shrek did, but the awkward moments based on skin-color differences in the two films are similar.

Yet, 37 years later, America`s racial themes are more complicated than ever. Shrek has to be lime green. What other color can he be? America isn`t just black or white or brown anymore. The last U.S. Census put the number of those who said they are descended from two or more races at 6.8 million, equivalent to 2.4 percent of the country. It`s a crazy mulatto world -- get used to it.

Of course, as my wife, a 15-year employee with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, pointed out to me, Shrek being an ogre, the prejudice toward him can`t be a matter of race or ethnicity. What race do ogres belong to? They`re fantasy creatures, monsters. This is really a question of speciesism, she declared.

Well, yes, we must be kind to all animals.

What "Shrek 2" does do is expose the M.O. racists use to marginalize everyone else. Racists tend to turn their targets into subhumans, animals, monsters and bogeymen -- all much easier to hate than real humans.

But Shrek is a happy-go-lucky macho ogre with a Scottish accent. By making him the hero, the filmmakers have turned the hate object into the love object and have come up with the best icon since Barney the Purple Dinosaur to preach tolerance and acceptance.

And that latter quality includes self-acceptance. Shrek plays a handsome white guy for about a quarter of the movie but, choosing ogredom in the end, learns to love his lime-green self. That`s not a knock on pretty-boy white guys, either. It`s Shrek`s inner self singing, as Soul Brother No. 1 James Brown would have in Shrek`s oversize shoes, "Say it loud, I`m an ogre and proud."

"Shrek 2" does come with some minor annoyances. It`s easy to feel disdain for all the crass commercialism that surrounds it. After seeing the movie twice, I noticed Shrek was everywhere. He was on pizza boxes and bottles of pop. There`s a "Shrek 2" http://www.shrek2.com/ and Shrek glow-in-the-dark lime-green heads. My son bought the video game.

It was part of the reason I railed against "Shrek," the original, in 2001. I didn`t even see the DVD.

But I have to admit that the marketing is a bit of genius. How else do you get parents into a PG-rated film? You fill the soundtrack with disco hits the parents of your PG audience listened to in their youth.

"Funkytown"? Get down. (It may have been playing in the background when my kids, the half-Filipino/half-Caucasians I call my "Caucapinos," were conceived).

So, does that mean I have fallen into the trap of DreamWorks` marketers?

Maybe. But I still like the film.

I understand that marketing is capitalism, and capitalism is America. And, if America is buying "Shrek 2," maybe more than a handful are getting and understanding the message: The film is celebrating a new multicultural America.

What I hope doesn`t happen is that people leave the 64-plex thinking they`ve just seen a nice little film about ogres.

That`s the problem with a cartoon. It`s both an aid and a curse.

Under the guise of a movie for kids are some important ideas that are subversive to the status quo. The problem is that some people miss out because they see "Shrek 2" as kids` stuff.

But I`m hoping that one day, we won`t need a cartoon to tell us the hard truth. It will be too hard to deny.

"Shrek 2" ain`t drek. It`s a celebration of a new world and a new America, where fire-breathing donkey-dragons really fly.

Emil Guillermo is a radio and TV commentator and the author of "Amok: Essays From an Asian American Perspective," winner of an American Book Award. E-mail: [e-mail]


URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/g/a/2004/06/02/e…
©2004 SF Gate

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Saturday, June 05, 2004
War News for June 4 and 5, 2004 draft

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

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

Bring ‘em on: Five US soldiers killed, five wounded in Baghdad ambush.

Bring ‘em on: Informer’s brother assassinated in Mosul.

Bring ‘em on: US troops under mortar and RPG fire at Baghdad police station.

Bring ‘em on: CPA worker wounded, two Iraqi guards killed in Baghdad ambush.

Bring ‘em on: Italian embassy mortared in Baghdad; one Iraqi killed, three wounded.

Bring ‘em on: US troops under RPG and mortar fire near Najaf.

Bring ‘em on: Five unidentified Westerners killed in ambush near Mosul.

Bring ‘em on: Three Georgian soldiers wounded by mortar fire.

Bring ‘em on: US ammunition site destroyed by rocket fire near Kirkuk.

Bring ‘em on: Seventeen ICDC recruits wounded by rocket attack in Mosul.

Cease-fire reported in Najaf.

Marine units suffer high casualties. “Almost 10 percent of Kaifesh`s battalion has been wounded, many of them during a three-week siege of the city of Fallujah. That attack was prompted by the April 5 massacre of four American civilian contractors.”

Army units suffer high casualties. “The toll is easy to see in Cannon`s platoon. It arrived here at full strength in early March; since then, nearly half the platoon has received Purple Hearts for combat wounds, and the unit has lost 10 of its original 39 members, with 2 killed and eight seriously wounded.”

Rummy whines about media coverage of Bush’s War. "I suppose that for whatever reason, people seem to think that news isn`t news unless it`s bad news," Rumsfeld said, "because that`s essentially what`s getting reported."

Pope John Paul II spanks Lieutenant AWOL.

Stop-loss policy extended. “The first ‘unit-based’ stop losses went out in January 2002, applied to units identified in the Pentagon’s war plans for Iraq. Since that time, about 45,000 soldiers have been prevented from leaving the Army because of stop loss, Hagenbeck said.”

Family members angry about extended deployment of Army reserve unit. “The unit, which has been serving in Iraq since April 2003, was supposed to return home last October, but the unit’s tour was extended another six months. Then last month, as reservists prepared to board a homeward-bound plane, their stay was extended by another 120 days.”

Your tax dollars at work. “Since Iraq has little capacity to refine its own gasoline, the U.S. government pays about $1.50 a gallon to purchase fuel in neighboring countries and deliver it to Iraqi filling stations. A three-month supply costs American taxpayers more than $500 million, not including the cost of military escorts.”

European press round-up on Lieutenant AWOL’s visit. “George W Bush is not the USA. If in Normandy on Sunday the president of the only remaining superpower receives the thanks of the people of Europe for liberation from the Nazi terror, then these thanks belong to the descendants of Franklin D Roosevelt and not the commander-in-chief in Iraq. This must be borne in mind, because Bush mentions the two military campaigns in the same breath.” From the Frankfurter Rundschau.

Commentary

Analysis: “For the Iraqis, soccer symbolized their struggle for life and dignity. But their U.S. occupiers were quick to seize on the publicity potential. Everyone from President George W. Bush to lowest-ranking Pentagon spin doctors has rushed to capitalize on the bonanza, eagerly touting the achievement as evidence that the U.S.-led invasion has revived Iraq`s hopes and spirits.”

Opinion: “Never burdened by reality, Bush says departing CIA chief George Tenet did "superb job." That assumes Tenet`s job was to fail miserably to anticipate 9/11 and to goad Bush into going to war under false pretenses. Bush doublespeak is matched only by his amazing flip-flops, which are underreported. Armchair Strategist aims to fix this, with help from Center for American Progress, liberal (There, I said it!) think tank.”

Opinion: “And fewer still challenged our political leaders on why, after 14 months of bloodshed, we`re still taking hits in Iraq. After all, once upon a time these same cheerleaders were relentlessly proclaiming that the liberation would be quick and easy, and our forces would be welcomed with open arms.”

Opinion: “The war in Iraq the United States has been waging is so drastically different from World War II that the parallels Bush has dredged up underline both his ignorance of history and a poorly disguised intent to confuse the public.”

Casualty Reports

Local story: California Marine killed in Iraq.

Local story: Four New Hampshire Guardsmen wounded in Iraq.

Local story: Indiana soldier wounded in Iraq.

Local story: South Carolina soldier wounded in Iraq.



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"Screw Michael Moore!
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- it`s just a pack of lies!"
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May 20, 2004
You Can`t Mock the President or Say "Balls"
The Most Important Thing I Learned in School This Year

By BILLY WILSON

http://www.counterpunch.org/wilson05202004.html

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The most important lesson I learned this year in school is to pay attention in class and not to doodle while the teacher is talking. The worst thing you can do is draw a picture that shows President Bush`s head on a pole with blood gushing out of his bulging eyesballs. If you do something like this, it means you`re probably going to blow up the Oklahoma Book Depsitory, or fly remote conrtrol planes into the White House, like the CIA did on 9/11. Even if you`re only 15 like me, you can hijack a bus (like Sandra Bullock did in that cool movie, Speed), and drive it into the Bush ranch at Waco, and burn all the children to death.

I learned that drawing pictures of the President with his arms growing out of his head is no laughing matter. It`s bad to make the President look stupider than he already is. You can`t draw him writing memos on wide-ruled paper with a crayon, or dressed up like a cowboy and playing with toy pistols in the Awful Office. That type of humor isn`t funny. You can`t make him look like Alfred E. Newman from Mad Magazine, with blood gushing out of his ears.

It is OK to draw a picture of Saddam Hussein on all fours, with Condolisa Rice in a furry African bikini and rings around her neck, holding the evildooer on a leash, and Donald Rumsfeld whacking him on the behind and making him bark like a dog, because that`s just a frat prank (like the sexy girl soldier Lindy English did at that prison in IsraelI mean Iraq). But the President is God, which is why his picture is on the dollar bill, and why you can`t make him look like an elephant like those soldiers did. You know. Kneeling with his feet up in the air and one finger in his nose and the other in his anus. That`s really bad.

You can`t draw the president`s face on a stick, even if you make it look like a lollypop or a Bubblehead doll. You are a bad person if you do that and if you do that, the Secret Police will come to your house at midnight and make you stand on a box with a shopping bag over your head and electrodes attached to your generals. Then they`ll bulldoze your house into dust! (Which is way cool to see them do that on TV.)

If you make fun of the president that means you hate him and are a enemy combatant. The president has so much to worry about, like his physical fitness and if he takes his sedatives on time, he doesn`t need some wise-ass kid sneaking into the Lincoln bedroom at night and fucking his wife (you shouldn`t say fuck), or his really cute daughters, who drink a lot and fall down at parties and are pretty easy. The president was bad too, like his daughters, before he learned that Jesus wanted him to kill all the Arabs. The president is truly blessed, so you can`t tell your freinds you made a videotape of him masturbating and sent it to Seymour Hersh. You can`t do that, because one of your friends may be an informer for Homeland Security and then they`ll chop your fucking head off!

What I learned this year is that the President is not someone to mock. Even if he is an idiot and a war criminal who deserves to be hanged, and even if no one in the media has the balls to say so. (You shouldn`t say balls either.)

Billy Wilson

Billy Wilson can be reached through his teacher at: [e-mail]

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CHICAGO, IL (IWR News Parody) - The Department of Justice today raided the University of Chicago`s Dinosaur Lab and arrested paleontologist Paul Sereno and graduate student Lloyd Crandall for "heresy violations" of the Patriot Act. The Attorney General said that the President had personally authorized this action in preparation for the "Rapture", which Mr. Bush assured Ashcroft should be happening any day now.
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Weekend Edition
June 5 / 6, 2004
Over the Edge
The Madness of King George

By KURT NIMMO

It`s described as "erratic behavior" by Capitol Hill Blue.

Bush has "wide mood swings," he rants and raves against "enemies" both domestic and foreign, and quotes the Bible like a deranged Southern preacher.

It`s like the Nixon days is how a worried GOP political consultant describes it.

Only Bush, unlike Nixon, will not resign and fly off into the sunset. Nixon knew to get out while the getting was good.

God has put Bush in the White House and any number of scandals -- war under false pretense, the torture and murder of largely innocent detainees, the illegal outing of CIA operatives -- will not nudge him toward Air Force One and the isolation of the Crawford, Texas, ranch where he can receive only the best care and do little harm to the rest of us.

God is not dismissed by human protocol. Or elections.

"In interviews with a number of White House staffers who were willing to talk off the record, a picture of an administration under siege has emerged, led by a man who declares his decisions to be `God`s will` and then tells aides to `fuck over` anyone they consider to be an opponent of the administration," including Kerry and the Democrats, writes Doug Thompson of Capitol Hill Blue.

"In this administration, you don`t have to wear a turban or speak Farsi to be an enemy of the United States," says another aide. "All you have to do is disagree with the President."

Millions of us are enemies of this felonious and depraved president. In fact, if we are to believe the polls, approximately half of all Americans believe Bush has made a mess of things and should go.

Are they enemies too? Does Bush hate millions of Americans, or at least those who don`t listen to Rush Limbaugh?

Dubya "says he rules at the behest of God [and] can ... tongue-lash those he perceives as disloyal, calling them `fucking assholes` in front of other staff, berating one cabinet official in front of others and labeling anyone who disagrees with him `unpatriotic` or `anti-American.`"

Bush and Ashcroft are the "Blues Brothers" because they are on "a mission from God," say West Wing staffers. "They both believe any action is justifiable in the name of God."

Maybe even terrorist attacks and stolen elections. All is possible when God rides shotgun.

It`s obvious the ruling elite want to get rid of this former alcoholic -- a supposedly reformed addict with possible brain damage and thus incapable of holding office -- who has botched just about everything he has attempted to do over the last three and a half years. It is time for an end to the nightmare and a return to a kinder, gentler, and Clintonian version of neoliberalism.

Our rulers believe it is time for John Kerry.

It does not matter if the stories coming out of the White House are true, although many of us who have followed Dubya`s idiosyncrasies and neurosis since he was installed believe they are true. Insanity is the only logical explanation for what Bush is doing.

Bush was unstable before he entered the White House and obviously the tremendous stress of the presidency has pushed him over the edge.

Bush and the Christian Zionists, the Israel-first neocons and the Likudites in the Pentagon will probably not go gently into the good night. People who believe God is on their side are capable of doing great harm to those they perceive as "fucking assholes."

Not only those around them, but the rest of us as well.

Kurt Nimmo is a photographer and multimedia developer in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Visit his excellent no holds barred blog at www.kurtnimmo.com/blogger.html . Nimmo is a contributor to Cockburn and St. Clair`s, The Politics of Anti-Semitism. A collection of his essays for CounterPunch, Another Day in the Empire, is now available from Dandelion Books.

He can be reached at: [e-mail]

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Former President Ronald Reagan Dies at 93
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June 5, 2004
Reagan Had Long Struggle With Alzheimer`s Disease
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Ronald Reagan, the cheerful crusader who devoted his presidency to winning the Cold War, trying to scale back government and making people believe it was "morning again in America," died Saturday after a long twilight struggle with Alzheimer`s disease, a family friend said. He was 93.

He died at his home in California, according to the friend, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The White House was told his health had taken a turn for the worse in the last several days.

Five years after leaving office, the nation`s 40th president told the world in November 1994 that he had been diagnosed with the early stages of Alzheimer`s, an incurable illness that destroys brain cells. He said he had begun "the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life."

Reagan body was expected to be taken to his presidential library and museum in Simi Valley, Calif., and then flown to Washington to lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda. His funeral was expected to be at the National Cathedral, an event likely to draw world leaders. The body was to be returned to California for a sunset burial at his library.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company |

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Shiite Cleric Meets Rival and Begins Withdrawing Militia
By DEXTER FILKINS and JAMES GLANZ

BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 5 — Fighters loyal to Moktada al-Sadr, the Shiite radical who fashioned an army from the discontented populace of Iraq`s slums, began to withdraw Saturday from the centers of Najaf and Kufa where they have caused disturbances since April. At the same time, Mr. Sadr met with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq`s most revered Shiite cleric, according to several reports.

Shiite leaders and American officials said the armed followers of Mr. Sadr, known as the Mahdi Army, had cleared out of many parts of Najaf and that they appeared to be making preparations to leave altogether. The Shiite leaders said American forces, who encircled the city in recent weeks, had also cleared out of the city center and areas near the Imam Ali Shrine, one of the holiest sites in Shiite Islam.

The withdrawal, coupled with the apparent meeting of the rival clerics, who are vying for influence in the new Iraq, gave rise to hopes here that the two-month-old rebellion led by Mr. Sadr, and which at one point controlled a half-dozen cities in southern Iraq, might be coming to an end.

"The people of Najaf are walking the streets, the cars are moving on every avenue, the Iraqi police have moved back in," said Adnan Ali, a senior official with the Dawa Party, whose leaders were directly involved in the negotiations. "This is a good step forward."

The meeting, which was reported by the Reuters news agency and Agence France-Presse, suggested that Mr. Sadr was being given a face-saving gesture by appearing with the ayatollah, whose prestige across Iraq far exceeds that of Mr. Sadr.

The agreement struck Friday, and borne out Saturday, came on the heels of a previous accord, struck late last month, in which Mr. Sadr had also agreed to remove his forces from Najaf. That agreement unraveled almost immediately and led to bloody fighting between his forces and the Americans.

As in other cities in southern Iraq, Mr. Sadr`s fighters were allowed to walk off with their guns, suggesting there was little to guarantee that they would not rise up again or that the truce would hold.

Still, if it sticks, the new agreement would appear to blunt, at least for now, the attempt by the 31-year-old Mr. Sadr to seize the leadership of Iraq`s Shiite majority from its more mainstream leaders, who have largely tolerated the American occupation.

And it would appear to end a dangerous confrontation between Mr. Sadr and the Americans, whose use of armed force so near the holy shrines in Najaf and Karbala alienated Shiites across Iraq, even among those who did not care for Mr. Sadr`s radical brand of Shiite Islam.

Scores of Iraqis, including many civilians, were killed, and the Ali Shrine sustained minor damage.

American officials said Saturday that the pullback of Mr. Sadr`s forces was an implementation of the deal struck earlier this month. As a condition of the withdrawal, Iraqi officials agreed to suspend the execution of the arrest warrant issued for Mr. Sadr for his suspected role in the murder of a rival cleric last April.

Nor does the agreement require that Mr. Sadr`s fighters put down their guns; the fate of Mr. Sadr`s militia, like the man himself, has been left for a future date.

The agreement that appeared to take hold on Saturday seemed to reflect the desire of Iraq`s mainstream political and religious leaders to rid themselves of Mr. Sadr, evidently fearing that he would threaten their chances at the ballot box when elections are held next year. For the Americans, the agreement appears to reflect a desire to eliminate Mr. Sadr, whose persistence has proved a major embarrassment, as a visible problem before the Americans hand over sovereignty here on June 30.

American officials said Saturday that they were encouraged by the withdrawal of the Mahdi Army. But they acknowledged that Mr. Sadr`s fighters were, for the most part, still armed, in Najaf as in the other cities in southern Iraq where they have been allowed to walk away.

Dan Senor, a spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority here, said the American objective regarding Mr. Sadr had not changed, but he deflected questions about how and when the Americans might carry it out. Mr. Sadr, he said, had to yield to the arrest warrant, signed by an Iraqi judge last year, implicating him in the murder of a rival cleric.

"He must disband and disarm his militia, and he must meet the requirements of the Iraqi arrest warrant issued against him," Mr. Senor said. "Moktada al-Sadr must face Iraqi justice."

One Iraqi official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, suggested that Mr. Sadr had grown demoralized in the face of political isolation from other Iraqis and the relentless American military pressure. American commanders claim to have killed hundreds of Mr. Sadr`s fighters in the past several weeks.

"There is every indication that the man is in a deplorable state of affairs," said a senior Iraqi official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "He feels very weak. The Mahdi Army has suffered big losses."

The Mahdi Army took control of six southern cities in early April after the Americans closed a newspaper controlled by Mr. Sadr and made public an warrant for his arrest in connection with the murder of a rival cleric. His forces soon withdrew from all but Najaf and Kufa, two of Islam`s holiest cities, where the fighters found refuge near shrines that occupation forces were extremely reluctant to damage, fearing widespread outrage among Shiites across the Muslim world.

The meeting also confers an enormous boost in the credibility of Mr. Sadr, who comes from a long line of notable clerics but was considered little more than hot-headed intruder when he began his defiance of the occupation a few months ago.

Mr. Sadr and Ayatollah Sistani are both Shiite clerics, but comparison between them ends there in the minds of most Iraqis. The pronouncements of Ayatollah Sistani have taken on a Delphic significance. Mr. Sadr has little more than the prestige of his family`s long line of respected clerics to draw upon. His father, Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, an ayatollah who dared to criticized Saddam Hussein, was murdered with his two eldest sons by at Mr. Hussein`s orders in 1999.

There was no evidence on Saturday that violence across Iraq was any closer to ending than it had been the day before. In Baghdad, two soldiers were killed and two others were wounded when a bomb exploded, and three civilian contractors were killed when their vehicles were attacked on the main road between Baghdad and the airport.

In Mosul, a rocket attack wounded 17 people who were lined up at a recruiting post for the new Iraqi Army, where gunmen also killed the brother of the man widely believed to have betrayed Saddam Hussein`s sons to American forces last year.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Sunday Herald - 06 June 2004
New York Sign Of The Times
We’re sorry, it said. We were told lies and we printed them, it said. That was The New York Times apologising about its coverage of Iraq’s WMDs. But, asks Aaron Hicklin, how did America’s newspaper of record sink so low?

IT has long been a source of ridicule that The New York Times continues to print on its masthead the vainglorious legend: “All the news that’s fit to print”. Lately, however, the motto has come to seem as specious as it is arrogant. As the paper’s editors made clear in a recent, much discussed, apology, the Times’s definition of news has been stretched in recent years to include speculation, misinformation and outright lies. To be fair, the lies were not devised by the Times, but by Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi defectors linked to him. It was the Times’s blunder, however, to publish them, often on the front page, and without the caveat that they derived from a single, prejudiced source. Such carelessness might be expected from a Republican administration desperate to persuade a gullible US public that Saddam Hussein posed an immediate threat ; from a newspaper that has long enjoyed the moral standing of the BBC, you would expect better.

As Daniel Okrent, The New York Times public editor, put it in last Sunday’s paper: “War requires an extra standard of care, not a lesser one, but in the Times’s WMD [weapons of mass destruction] coverage, readers encountered some rather breathless stories built on unsubstantiated ‘revelations’ that, in many instances, were the anonymity-cloaked assertions of people with vested interests.”

This is damning stuff, and a lesson in ethics that other papers could learn from. It was a principle established during The Washington Post’s Watergate investigation that a story required three separate sources to get published, but who relies on three sources these days? Not the BBC, as the wretched Andrew Gilligan demonstrated. Not the tabloids (au revoir Piers Morgan). Probably not any news organisation in a competitive market driven by superficial scoops and eye-catching headlines.

Which is why The New York Times has disappointed so many of us. To British readers, used to bold type and modern design, the paper can seem remarkably stuffy. It is dull to look at and often dull to read, and this alone helped obscure the liberties that some of its correspondents took in the run-up to war. While its editorials and columnists were (and continue to be) frequently scathing of the Bush administration, its dispassionate reporting gave the impression of objectivity. Instead, the paper was simply regurgitating dubious intelligence that the administration then used to back up its twisted logic.

As it turns out, Chalabi was more Nixon than Deep Throat, poisoning the well of truth and integrity to lead America into an unnecessary war. Judith Miller, the Times correspondent who relied so heavily on his tip-offs, was not the only victim, just the most surprising given her paper’s reputation for objectivity and restraint.

Having dispatched its editor, Howell Raines, after star reporter Jayson Blair was publicly exposed for a string of invented stories last year, the Times is now under pressure from its critics to make a similarly grand gesture by sacking Miller. Personally, I hope the Times resists. Miller made an error of judgement, but if the buck stops anywhere it stops with her superiors who encouraged her “scoops” by lowering the ethical bar. Or, as Okrent expressed it best last weekend, there was a time “when editors stressed the maxim ‘Don’t get it first, get it right’. That soon mutated into ‘Get it first and get it right’. The next devolution was an obvious one.’”

It takes a long time, and a lot of effort, to fall in love with The New York Times, so maybe that’s why I find it so hard to abandon it now. The editor’s mea culpa, followed last weekend by Okrent ’s brutal observation that some stories “pushed Pentagon assertions so aggressively you could almost sense epaulets sprouting on the shoulder of editors”, strikes me as a rare example of humility in a media characterised by arrogance and righteousness. By comparison, the mantra of the British media seems to be never apologise, never explain.

Besides, memories are short. A self- perpetuating myth has arisen that, outside of America, no-one really believed that Iraq had WMD in the first place. This smug satisfaction is misplaced. Even the most sceptical commentators were willing to entertain the possibility that Iraq not only had chemical and biological weapons, but might be tempted to use them. A March 19, 2003, report in The Guardian, for example, painted a doomsday scenario in which Iraq had “500 tonnes of VX, the most lethal and advanced nerve agent, which would be delivered in aerosol form”. Its leader on the same day urged Iraq to abort any plans it might have to use chemical weapons.

Nevertheless, the differences between the American and European press were profound. When Colin Powell gave his famous “smoking gun” speech at the UN, it received almost universal praise from US papers, despite the fact that nearly everything in it turned out to be hollow speculation dressed up as fact. British papers, on the whole, were more circumspect and, in some cases, downright dismissive.

Last February, in a blistering essay for the New York Review Of Books, Michael Massing took aim at the quiescence of the US press in the Bush administration’s propaganda campaign. Witnessing the belated rush to expose bogus intelligence on Iraq which they had once treated as gospel, he wondered why the same scrutiny hadn’t been applied at the outset.

Why indeed? Much of it may have to do with America’s entrenched patriotism. As the country’s paper of record, The New York Times has long been sensitive to attacks from conservatives, eager to characterise it as a national organ of weasels and traitors. Former editor Raines, apparently, was anxious not to give ground to his critics, and may have overcompensated in the process. But the media’s failure also reflects a growing reliance on unnamed sources and off-the-record briefings, usually from members of the government, who will play reporters for suckers at any and every opportunity they can get. In the event, the press becomes part of the very propaganda it should be exposing.

Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector who was frequently demonised in the run-up to war, thinks the Times failed to understand how critical it was to the Bush administration’s case, and holds it responsible for 800 American deaths in Iraq. “I was writing op-ed [opinion and editorial] pieces for them that they wouldn’t even give the time of day to,” he recalls. “I turned out to be dead-on accurate, so why would the most credible newspaper in this country turn its back on me?”

That’s a good question, but I don’t think there was a conspiracy at the Times, just a failure to ask the right questions at the right time. It’s never easy to admit you were duped, but like many , I was fairly certain that WMD would be found in a post- Saddam Iraq, and by turns puzzled, upset and angry when they weren’t. It would be useful to know why so many of us turned out to be so gullible, but while there is merit in revisiting past failures, the real test lies in the future, and in how seriously a newly chastened New York Times goes about setting the record straight. With an election looming in November, the timing could not be more critical.

Aaron Hicklin is editor-in-chief of New York-based magazine Black Book


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June 6, 2004
France Says, Love the U.S., Hate Its Chief
By ROGER COHEN

PARIS — An intriguing idea has been gaining ground in France on the eve of President Bush`s visit. It is that the much disliked president does not represent the true America, that the United States is a shining being or entity or thing to be honored on the D-Day beaches and distinguished from President George W. Bush himself.

Politicians speak of saying yes to America but no to Mr. Bush. The newspaper Libération warns Mr. Bush that he should not take President Jacques Chirac`s expected expressions of gratitude as directed at him, but rather at America. Laurent Fabius, a former prime minister, says Mr. Bush is viewed "as the exact opposite of the values that make us love America."

The idea is very French. It is conceptual. It is subtle. It is intellectually pleasing. It projects the notion that France knows better than America what America really is or really should be. It harks back to the idea France shares with America: that the countries embody some eternal values and have a mission to export them to all mankind.

The view of America as separate from its leader also has a familiar ring. For decades after World War II, the argument that "La France" was distinct from its quisling, Jew-deporting Vichy government was a familiar one. In this view, Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain, the leader of the Vichy government, was not France, certainly not the eternal France of the Revolution, incarnated in the resistance leader Jean Moulin or in Charles de Gaulle himself.

That idea was also subtle and pleasing in its way. It enabled President François Mitterrand to continue placing wreaths on Pétain`s tomb in honor of the marshal`s World War I accomplishments. Not until Mr. Chirac took office did a French president have the courage to avow fully what France did under the Nazi occupation and accept the responsibility that the nation as a whole bore.

The truth is that Vichy was not all of France, by any means, but it was France. The attempt to abstract a nation`s essence or soul from its particular political incarnation at any one moment is dangerous. It may involve a flight from responsibility, whose essence is honesty.

The fact is, whether France likes it or not, Mr. Bush cannot be distinguished from America. He has the support of roughly half the United States. His may not be the America of New York or San Francisco, the America of Michael Moore or Woody Allen, but it is a much larger America than the one portrayed by these two moviemakers.

This America believes it is doing God`s will in fighting for freedom. It equates pacifism with decline. It supports the death penalty, low taxes and the right to bear arms.

It is skeptical of subtle arguments, wondering what they really mean. It holds that action is American and that failure to support the president in wartime is un-American. It even believes the president when he says the war in Iraq is linked to the heroism of D-Day because today`s war is also a response to an attack on America and also about "the forward march of freedom."

Of course, there is another big slice of America, the one closer to the French idea of the American soul, that loathes Mr. Bush. This America is appalled by the war in Iraq, unsurprised by untruths used to justify war and worried about a leader who so regularly invokes the will of the Almighty. It is disdainful of the president`s stumbling locution, angered by the detentions without counsel or trial in Guantánamo and elsewhere, aghast at the notion that the country may just face four more years with Mr. Bush.

These two camps make up America today and will face off in a fiercely contested election. At least until that day in November, Mr. Bush represents America, in all its many facets, the one that loves him and the one that loathes him. To pretend otherwise is ultimately misleading.

When Mr. Fabius refers to the "values that make us love America," he is in effect referring to the values that most comfort France in its self-image. That is to say, America as a symbol of liberty, democracy and justice; America as an embodiment of the values of the Enlightenment; America as the New World`s engine of ideas borne across the European continent by Napoleon`s army after the Revolution of 1789.

These ideas are inspiring. That they provoke France`s love of France is understandable. The only problem with love is that it can be blind. This problem is particularly acute at a time when both France and America feel the need to proclaim their friendship anew after a nasty falling-out. Reconciliation of any kind and however partial has to be based on each side`s seeing and acknowledging the reality of the other and the differences that exist.

To separate "America" from Mr. Bush in order to welcome him merely preserves an illusion. For better or for worse, France and America also have divergent ideas on the roots of Middle East terrorism, on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, on Iraq, on the role of the state in an economy, on money and religion and how they are talked about in national life. France`s desire to distinguish its America from Mr. Bush`s has intensified in recent months as the situation in Iraq has worsened and images of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib have reinforced all the darkest French views of the Bush administration.

The official speeches on Sunday honoring America`s sacrifice for France`s freedom were not intended to dwell on these differences. They were meant to invoke valor and shared values and an old friendship and a bond forged in blood. But to preserve the bond, it seems essential to face facts. Bush is America, just as Chirac is France. The two nations` highest offices represent every shade of opinion that makes up their democracies. No separate national essence exists.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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June 6, 2004
June 6, 1944

Sixty years ago today, the free world held its breath. In America, daily life paused almost completely, subdued by the news that the invasion of Europe — D-Day — had begun. From the 21st century, we try to imagine the scale of what went forward in that gray dawn after years of preparation — the ships and men and matériel, the reserves of willpower and determination. What we sometimes forget to imagine is the almost prayerful nature of the day, the profound investment of hope and fear it entailed. It was a day in America and in Europe when civilians as surely as soldiers felt the whole of their lives concentrated on the outcome of a few hours. There has not been another time like it, when we knew that history was about to turn before our eyes.

In a way, D-Day sums up for us the whole of World War II. It was the frontal clash of two ideas, a collision between the possibility of human freedom and its nullification. Even now, we are still learning what to make of it, still trying to know whether we are dwarfed by the scale of such an effort or whether what happened that day still enlarges us. It certainly enlarges the veterans of Normandy and their friends who died in every zone of that war.

It`s tempting to politicize the memory of a day so full of personal and national honor, too easy to allude to the wars of our times as if they naturally mirrored World War II. The iconic starkness of the forces that met on the beaches of Normandy makes that temptation all the greater. But beyond the resemblance of young soldiers dying in wars 60 years apart, there is no analogy, and that is something we must remember today as well. D-Day was the result of broad international accord. By D-Day, Europe had been at war — total war — for nearly five years, at profound cost to its civilian population. American civilians, in turn, had willingly made enormous material sacrifices to sustain the war effort. There was no pretense that ordinary life would go on uninterrupted and no assumption that America could go it alone.

We may find the heroics of D-Day stirring in the extreme. We may struggle to imagine the special hell of those beaches, the almost despairing lurch of the landing craft as they motored toward France. Those were brave times. But it was a bravery of shared sacrifice, a willingness to rise to an occasion that everyone prayed would never need to come again. This is a day to respect the memory of 60 years ago and, perhaps, to wonder what we might rise to if only we asked it of ourselves.

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June 6, 2004
A D-Day Anniversary Unites Wary Allies
By ELAINE SCIOLINO

PARIS, June 5 - Despite differences in style and substance, President Bush and President Jacques Chirac have discovered something in common: a passion for cows.

In an interview published in the Thursday issue of Paris Match, Mr. Bush suggested for the first time that Mr. Chirac could visit his ranch in Texas, saying, "If he wants to come and see cows, he`s welcome to come out here and see some cows."

Mr. Bush may not have known that the French president, who was minister of agriculture and rural development in the 1970`s, is a cow expert. He and his wife, Bernadette, have their country house in Corrèze, a farming area in central France, and Mr. Chirac likes nothing better than to inspect cows at the annual agricultural fair in Paris.

"It is obvious that if the president invites me to his ranch, I will go with pleasure, gladly, especially since I seem to have understood that he raises cows," Mr. Chirac said in an interview with NBC`s anchor, Tom Brokaw.

The comments are not altogether frivolous. Sunday is the commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy; a resolution on the transfer of sovereignty on Iraq is at a crucial stage at the United Nations; and the two men are straining to get along.

At the dinner he gave at Élysée Palace for Mr. Bush on Saturday night, Mr. Chirac even went so far as to wave away a Puligny Montrachet and a Léoville Las Cases to join Mr. Bush in a beer. (Mr. Bush drinks nonalcohol; Mr. Chirac prefers lite.)

The red mullet and veal with girolles was so good that Mr. Bush confessed that he was not sure the food at the Group of 8 summit meeting next week at Sea Island, Ga., would match up. "On the contrary, don`t bother," Mr. Chirac assured him, according to a French official. "I`m a great lover of junk food!"

At a joint news conference at the palace that was held between a working meeting and the dinner, Mr. Chirac expressed his gratitude to America and the American people - as he has done regularly of late - for "the sacrifices they made" and "the blood that they spilled" for France`s and Europe`s liberation.

But behind the pleasantries of the day, there is a deep divide.

When Mr. Bush asked Mr. Chirac, who vehemently opposed the war in Iraq, in their working meeting whether France would be willing to be more generous in relieving Iraq`s debt, Mr. Chirac said no, according to a French official in the meeting. It would be unfair to treat Iraq more generously than the world`s poorest nations, the official said.

Similarly, Mr. Bush described Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as "sincere" in his desire for a democratic Palestinian state; Mr. Chirac expressed grave doubts, the French official said.

At the news conference, Mr. Chirac described Iraq as a place where "disorder prevails." Both in public and in private, he made clear that although there was progress on the United Nations Security Council resolution transferring sovereignty to the Iraqis, security arrangements still needed to be resolved.

He also said he did not share Mr. Bush`s view that the liberation of Iraq from Saddam Hussein was comparable to the liberation of Europe from the Nazis, saying, "History does not repeat itself."

But the leaders found common ground on other issues, including the need to ensure Iran`s cooperation on its nuclear programs, their hope for reform in Saudi Arabia, the refugee crisis in Sudan and a desire to work in lock step in the war against terrorism, a French official said.

There were other gestures of friendship. At a ceremony at the Hôtel des Invalides, France gave the Legion of Honor to 99 Americans and 3 Australians, all veterans of the D-Day landings that breached Hitler`s Atlantic wall. The Legion of Honor, created by Napoleon in 1802, is France`s highest distinction.

Mr. Chirac protected his American guest from anti-Bush demonstrations, which were kept far from the palace.

Mr. Bush did not see the thousands of protesters who carried banners reading "Bush - Terrorist number one!" and "U.S. troops out of Iraq," or hear the chants, "Go home!" and "Bush, assassin!"

Mr. Bush`s visit to France coincides with a 78 percent disapproval of his policies in opinion surveys of the French. Negative feelings toward the United States are running so high that even the residue of good feeling traditionally aroused by the allied liberation of France has eroded.

In an opinion poll published by the newspaper Le Parisien on Saturday, only 48 percent of those polled said they believed that France still owed a moral debt to the United States.

Another poll to be published in Le Journal de Dimanche concluded that 84 percent of the French hope Mr. Bush is defeated in November.

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June 6, 2004
Lockboxes, Iraqi Loot and a Trail to the Fed
By TIMOTHY L. O`BRIEN

WHEN a United States Army sergeant broke through a false wall in a small building in Baghdad on a Friday afternoon a little over a year ago, he discovered more than three dozen sealed boxes containing about $160 million in neatly bundled $100 bills.

Later that day, soldiers found more cash in other hideaways near the Tigris River, in an exclusive neighborhood that elite members of Saddam Hussein`s government once called home. By the end of the evening, they had amassed 164 metal boxes, all riveted shut, that held about $650 million in shrink-wrapped greenbacks. The cash was so heavy, and so valuable, that the Army needed a C-130 Hercules cargo plane to airlift it to a secure location.

Just two days later, on Sunday, April 20, 2003, Thomas C. Baxter, head of the legal unit of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, read a brief news account of the discovery. Most of the money that turned up in Baghdad was new, bore sequential serial numbers and was stored with documents indicating that it had once been held in Iraq`s central bank. One fact particularly bothered Mr. Baxter: the money had markings from three Fed banks, including his own in New York.

Iraq, of course, had been subject to more than a decade of trade sanctions by the United States and the United Nations, so large piles of dollars, especially new bills, were not supposed to have found their way to Baghdad.

"How could that happen?" Mr. Baxter thought to himself, as he recalled later in Senate testimony. "Not only with U.S. sanctions, but with U.N. sanctions. How could that happen?"

Mr. Baxter and the New York Fed, along with the Treasury Department and the Customs Service, immediately began an investigation into Baghdad`s currency stockpile. The continuing inquiry offers a rudimentary road map of illicit dealings - including lucrative oil smuggling - in Iraq and neighboring countries during the Hussein years, the federal authorities say.

The investigation led quickly to the vaults of four Western banks that were among a select group handling the sensitive task of distributing freshly printed dollars overseas: the Bank of America, the HSBC Group, the Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS. Several other commercial banks and foreign central banks, which the Fed did not name, also served as stopovers along Baghdad`s money trail, according to a written account Mr. Baxter provided to the Senate Banking Committee about two weeks ago.

None of the four main banks the Fed scrutinized had sent currency directly to Iraq. But as the inquiry wore on last year, investigators learned that UBS, Switzerland`s largest bank, had transferred $4 billion to $5 billion to four other countries that were under sanctions: Libya, Iran, Cuba and the former Yugoslavia. Over an eight-year period, UBS employees had quietly shipped the money to those countries from a vault at the Zurich airport, undetected by Fed auditors who made regular visits to the site.

EARLY last month, the Federal Reserve Board fined UBS $100 million for the currency violations. It was the second-largest penalty ever levied by America`s central bank, surpassed only by a $200 million fine imposed on the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, or B.C.C.I., in 1991 for violating American banking laws. The B.C.C.I. case was part of a global investigation of fraud and money laundering.

UBS`s transgressions don`t appear to be in the same league as those at B.C.C.I. Several people briefed on the transfers said most of the UBS transactions involved currency exchanges for the Cuban tourism industry; such transactions anger Washington but do not evoke security fears in most of the world. A handful of lower-level UBS employees are said to have doctored trading records that misled their employers and American officials. All of them have been fired or have left the bank. UBS has not been charged with any crimes in the matter.

A former Fed official and others involved in the investigation say the hefty fine reflects the Fed`s displeasure at having been misled by UBS employees for so many years. Members of Congress have accused the Fed of being asleep at the regulatory switch, an added incentive for a marquee-size fine at a time when regulators of all stripes have come under fire for overlooking abuses and excesses on Wall Street.

Yet UBS`s trades with Libya, Iran and Yugoslavia, and the investigation into how hundreds of millions of dollars circumvented sanctions and regulatory barriers on their way to Baghdad, are hardly trivial affairs.

Of the $680 billion in cash that the Fed has in circulation, more than $400 billion, or nearly 60 percent, is outside the United States. That overseas supply, particularly in economically unstable regions, is the financial lifeblood of businesses, and even of pensioners who stow dollars in their mattresses. The authorities constantly monitor that supply to keep counterfeiters from tainting it, and hub banks like UBS play a pivotal role in ferreting out currency forgers.

Those billions overseas, however, also grease the wheels of more nefarious commerce - arms trafficking, smuggling and the timeless crafts of political and financial graft.

The trail of the cash that soldiers found in Baghdad last year remains murky. David Aufhauser, a senior Treasury Department official who supervised investigations of Saddam Hussein`s finances until October, said in an interview last year that investigators thought the funds were part of about $1 billion that Mr. Hussein`s son Qusay looted from Iraq`s central bank hours before American-led forces invaded in early 2003. Qusay Hussein, who was killed in a shootout with American troops in Baghdad last July, oversaw the Iraqi government`s oil smuggling, according to a report published in 2002 by the Coalition for International Justice, a Washington group that monitors human rights issues.

From 1996 to 2003, the United Nations controlled Iraq`s oil profits, which were intended to be used for food and other goods for Iraqi civilians. The United Nations has defended its stewardship, but the General Accounting Office recently estimated that oil smuggling and kickbacks linked to that program allowed Mr. Hussein to steal about $10 billion.

The United Nations recently appointed a former Fed chairman, Paul A. Volcker, to lead a panel investigating possible fraud in the oil-for-food program. The Treasury Department says that a large Syrian bank that does business with major American banks helped divert and disguise oil-for-food funds stolen by the Hussein government.

Senator Richard C. Shelby, an Alabama Republican and chairman of the Banking Committee, grilled Mr. Baxter two weeks ago about the monitoring of currency the Fed ships overseas, and about the challenges that arise when some people, like UBS`s former employees, cover up their use of the money.

"What about an oversight regime that appeared exceedingly dependent upon the voluntary compliance of the banks?" the senator asked Mr. Baxter about the Fed`s vigilance.

Mr. Baxter responded, "That gets into one of the fundamental problems here, and that is trying to trace bank notes once they`re outside of the United States." Mr. Baxter, a graduate of Georgetown University Law School who has spent 23 years at the New York Fed, is well regarded by colleagues and is considered a gifted financial sleuth. One former colleague fondly described him as "golden."

When Mr. Baxter, 50, began tracing the Baghdad funds last year, according to his Senate testimony, he first acquired serial numbers for some of the notes and turned over that information to Fed currency analysts in East Rutherford, N.J.

On April 24, 2003, just four days after Mr. Baxter first read about the money, the analysts linked it to 24 cash shipments the New York Fed made to special vaults it had at HSBC in London, and Bank of America and UBS in Zurich. After American forces in Iraq discovered an additional $112 million in hidden cash, on top of the $650 million they had already found, the Fed`s cashiers tracked it to the same vaults and to a Fed vault at HSBC in Frankfurt, a Royal Bank of Scotland vault in London and to other locations the Fed has not disclosed.

All of those overseas vaults are part of a Fed program begun in 1996 to combat counterfeiting, retire worn-out dollars and keep currency circulating, especially during emergencies. For example, the vaults were opened when the Year 2000 computer problem caused banking jitters overseas four years ago and again after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York grounded planes that would have normally delivered cash abroad.

UNTIL the mid-1990`s, American currency was relatively easy to forge, compared with most other leading currencies. Its colors were not as varied, it did not bear watermarks or special security bands, and its linen and cotton composition was much like that of another currency still widely used by counterfeiters to mint fake dollars: the Hussein-era Iraqi dinar.

Though successful counterfeiting is usually short-lived, and fakes are just a minuscule portion of the bills in circulation, there are moments when near-perfect copies, known as supernotes, circulate for uncomfortably long periods. Phony $100 bills are the forgers` favorite.

In 1996, the Treasury Department was about to introduce a new, more secure $100 bill into circulation in Europe, aware that the note would be eagerly snapped up in the booming Russian economy. Also aware that sophisticated Russian criminal groups and forgers would pounce on the newly minted bill, the American authorities wanted a safe harbor in Zurich to monitor it. Republic Bank, an American bank that had once handled those duties, was leaving the business. UBS was eager to make inroads in Russia, so the Fed contracted its services.

By the end of last May, according to Mr. Baxter`s testimony, nearly all banks contacted by his team about the money found in Baghdad had identified the countries or parties with whom they had traded dollars. The exception was UBS. According to Mr. Baxter`s Senate testimony, UBS initially told the Fed that it did not track the serial numbers of currency it traded and that Swiss law precluded its identifying of specific trading partners. Eventually, however, UBS agreed to identify countries. Iraq was not on the list, and that appeared to satisfy the Fed until June 25, when one of its auditors made a routine visit to Zurich.

That day, UBS gave the auditor a report showing that eight shipments of dollars had been sent to Iran, a country under American sanctions. UBS said its trading had been a mistake. A month later, Mr. Baxter and the Swiss Federal Banking Commission began a deeper investigation. By October, according to Mr. Baxter`s testimony, the Fed had learned that UBS had also traded currency with Cuba and Libya and that employees had covered up the Cuban transactions. Mr. Baxter revoked the Fed`s contract with UBS on Oct. 28. About a week later, UBS told the Fed that it had also traded currency with the former Yugoslavia, which was also under American sanctions.

UBS declined to comment on its transactions with Libya, Yugoslavia and Iran.

UBS, in cooperation with the Fed and the Swiss authorities, then began an internal investigation. Over the next six months, investigators interviewed 48 UBS employees, often more than once, and reviewed several thousand documents, including e-mail messages, Mr. Baxter said in written Senate testimony.

UBS reported the results of its investigation to the Fed on April 16, and the Fed levied its $100 million fine on May 10. Only a handful of UBS employees conducted the trades, and none took bribes or received extra income from the transactions, according to a senior investigator with the Swiss Federal Banking Commission and several others briefed on the matter.

But some on Capitol Hill say that there is more to be learned about the UBS transactions. Representative Michael G. Oxley, an Ohio Republican who is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said last week that he thought the size of the UBS fine might be inadequate "in light of the gravity" of the problems uncovered at the bank.

Although Mr. Baxter`s team quickly identified the source of the cash found in Baghdad, it is still not clear how it got into the hands of members of the Hussein government.

"UBS never had any direct delivery to Iraq," Urs Zulauf, director of the Swiss Federal Banking Commission`s enforcement division, said in an interview. "They delivered to other Arab countries that were not under sanctions."

Jordan and Syria, two neighbors of Iraq, were routinely accused by Western politicians and law enforcement officials of helping Iraq flout sanctions during the Hussein era. But both countries have repeatedly denied those accusations. A Los Angeles Times article last year said that some of the currency found by American soldiers in Baghdad had been sent to Iraq`s central bank by the Jordan National Bank. In an interview last year, an official at the Jordan bank disputed any involvement; the bank did not respond last week to calls and an e-mail message on the issue.

On May 11, a day after the Fed fined UBS, the federal government issued trade sanctions against Syria, saying it supported terrorism. The same day, the Treasury Department shut off access to the American banking system for Syria`s main state-owned bank, the Commercial Bank of Syria, citing suspicions that transactions at the bank were used to finance terrorism and launder money related to the United Nations oil-for-food program.

"Numerous transactions that may be indicative of terrorist financing and money laundering have been observed" moving through the Syrian bank`s accounts, according to a Treasury Department document, adding that the transfers include several transactions "that reference a reputed financier for Osama bin Laden."

According to the Treasury Department, Iraq`s state oil agency maintained accounts at the Commercial Bank of Syria through which oil-for-food money was diverted. Imad Moustapha, Iraq`s ambassador to the United States, said in an interview on Thursday that the Syrian bank had about $265 million in funds legally deposited there by the Hussein government. He denied all accusations of money laundering and other financial improprieties involving Syria and the Hussein government, describing them as "politically motivated" and part of a "campaign of disinformation about Syria."

The Treasury Department document says the Commercial Bank of Syria maintains correspondent accounts with a few American banks. Though not named in the document, the banks are Citigroup, J. P. Morgan and the Bank of New York. The American banks declined to comment.

Although the document says that unnamed American-based accounts appeared legitimate, it also says that "suspicious wire transfers, totaling more than $1 million" moved through those accounts on their way to the Syrian bank.

THE difficulty of mapping the full journey of the money found in Baghdad last year shows some of the forensic hurdles confronting Fed and Treasury investigators. But the supervision of UBS has shown some of the Fed`s regulatory weaknesses.

"The Fed just seemed to take UBS at their word as to where they traded the money," Senator Jim Bunning, Republican of Kentucky, said in a statement two weeks ago. "As long as the bottom line matched up, the Fed didn`t seem to worry that much about where the money went. UBS falsified documents, but I do not believe the Fed showed the proper due diligence."

When B.C.C.I.`s problems first spilled into the open more than a decade ago, Fed regulators said that the bank had lied to them and that they therefore could not have detected abuses sooner. That is the same reason they have given recently for being slow to catch problems at UBS.

Senate testimony also suggests that the Fed may have been too credulous in its relationship with UBS.

"Did the Fed ever conduct unannounced audits" of UBS? Senator Shelby asked Mr. Baxter two weeks ago.

Mr. Baxter responded, "I think they always knew we were coming."

Regulators previously walked softly around accusations of money laundering. The two biggest such investigations of the late 1990`s, involving Citigroup and the Bank of New York, did not result in any regulatory fines and stalled after investigators hit dead ends in gathering evidence outside the United States.

But Sept. 11 changed some things. Suspect financial activities that were once perceived as an exotic form of white-collar crime are now looked upon with a tangible threat in mind: terrorist financing. For instance, the Riggs National Corporation is mired in an investigation of suspect transactions in its banking accounts and, like UBS, has found itself saddled by federal regulators with a hefty fine - $25 million - for regulatory violations. Riggs has denied any wrongdoing.

During a hearing on Thursday attended by Susan S. Bies, a Federal Reserve board governor, and William J. Fox, head of the Treasury Department`s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, the Senate Banking Committee criticized several of the country`s leading regulators as moving too slowly after the Sept. 11 attacks, saying examiners might have overlooked gaps in the global banking system that may pose national security risks.

Asked by the House Financial Services Committee last Wednesday what mistakes the Fed made in its examinations of UBS, Mr. Baxter said, "We did not follow the old audit admonition: trust, but verify."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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June 6, 2004
FRANK RICH
Mr. Bush Won`t Be at the Tonys

IT`S now official. George W. Bush is not a theater queen.

The word came on May 22, after the president had taken his mountain biking fall on his ranch in Crawford. "You know this president," said Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman, taking pains to explain that his boss had been on a 17-mile marathon, not some limp-kneed girly jaunt. "He likes to go all-out. Suffice it to say he wasn`t whistling show tunes."

Let`s face it; there had been some nervousness about Mr. Bush`s butch bonafides. The president was on record as having loved "Cats." His uncle, Jonathan Bush, a New York song-and-dance man in the 1950`s, had appeared as Will Parker in a revival of "Oklahoma!" ("A first-grade hayseed!" raved a critic at The New York Times.) Then there was that lingering question about why a president who had avoided Vietnam was dressing up in Tom Cruise pilot drag and, in Wesley Clark`s phrase, "prancing on the deck of an aircraft carrier" in our current war. The scene looked more like a slab of choreography from the World War II movie musical "Anchors Aweigh" than "The Longest Day."

Had Mr. Duffy not intervened, some voters might have feared that the president would be tuning in America`s gayest awards show, the Tonys, on CBS tonight. In an election year whose signature culture war has been fought over same-sex marriage, Mr. Bush and his party have made a fetish of distancing themselves from all things gay.

Only weeks before Mr. Bush was cleared of any non-Nascar tendencies, Lynne Cheney`s lawyer halted a planned reissue of her 1981 novel, "Sisters," whose themes include Sapphic love in the Wild West. (Sample passage: "The women who embraced in the wagon were Adam and Eve crossing a dark cathedral stage — no, Eve and Eve, loving one another as they would not be able to once they ate of the fruit and knew themselves as they truly were.") Mrs. Cheney`s husband has gone her one better. He`s reversed the position he took in 2000 and embraced a constitutional marriage amendment, thereby disowning his gay daughter`s civil rights more definitively than his wife has disowned her novel.

Next thing you know the Bush 41 v.p., Dan Quayle, may be suited up again to bitch-slap Carson Kressley as he did Murphy Brown. Yet you have to wonder whether the Republicans` gay-aversion therapy this year, once thought of as a slam-dunk political strategy, will prove so smart in the end. Much of the rest of the country seems to be inching, if not stampeding, in the opposite direction.

It was only three weeks ago that the world as we know it, or at least the institution of marriage, was supposed to be thrown into chaos when Massachusetts started marrying gay couples. That night "Nightline" replayed video of the celebratory spouses, implying that such kissy pictures might jolt public opinion like the photos from Abu Ghraib. "When Americans see images like these, will they be repulsed?" was the portentous question asked by a correspondent at Boston`s City Hall. "Or will they see two people in love?"

But Massachusetts`s wedding day proved to be the show dog that didn`t bark. Americans merely shrugged, confirming polls both before and after that fateful day: voters rate same-sex marriage dead last in importance among issues in an election year dominated by a runaway real war. The only rabble-rouser "Nightline" could recruit to vilify same-sex marriage was Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council. Never mind that he bears the same name as one of Hollywood`s most famous closeted stars. Hardly had he started speaking than he invoked America`s most famous gay playwright by calling John Kerry, whose opposition to same-sex marriage he found insufficient, "a cat on a hot tin roof."

Mr. Perkins`s unconscious (one assumes) channeling of Tennessee Williams is an indication of the right`s problem this year: no matter how hard it tries to set itself in opposition to what it calls the "homosexual agenda," it cannot escape the reality that gay people have been stirred into the melting pot of America and its culture, not to be expelled again. Only the Republican leadership fails to realize this. Otherwise why would it have chosen to renominate Mr. Bush in New York?

The attempts to square the convention`s locale with the party (and the president`s) support of a Constitutional amendment discriminating against gays has already produced a hearty share of "Birdcage"-level farce, with the promise of plenty more to come. The fun began when the House`s most macho Republican, Tom DeLay, a k a "The Hammer," announced his plan to literally isolate some 2,000 delegates, congressmen and lobbyists from the multicultural-and-sexual viruses of Manhattan by housing them on a cruise ship that would serve as both hotel and "entertainment center" for the entire week. After much local criticism, he dropped the plan, only to learn that he had revealed his latent homosexual taste. The luxury liner he had chosen, the Norwegian Dawn, turned out to be a celebrated venue for floating same-sex bacchanals, including one being marketed by Rosie O`Donnell and her partner`s travel company as "the very first gay and lesbian family cruise."

Once the floating entertainment center was scrapped, the dream of All Kathie Lee All the Time was dead. The Republicans then had no choice but to book the landlocked delegates into Broadway musicals. The eight shows selected (with tickets to be underwritten by The Times, as it happens) have one thing in common: none of them has an openly gay character. The host committee has said that the list was dictated by factors unrelated to the musicals` content. If you buy that, you`ll believe that David Gest will be the next secretary of defense. Even with Ms. O`Donnell`s Boy George musical, "Taboo," out of commission, it remains as hard to shun gay culture on Broadway as Mormons in Salt Lake City. To do so means skipping two recent Tony winners, "The Producers" and "Hairspray," and most of this year`s Tony nominees. (The only harder feat would be to avoid Jews; the Republicans have booked "Fiddler on the Roof," to which they are sending the Florida delegation, yet). The Republicans were so desperate to escape Roger DeBris, the cross-dressing buffoon concocted by Mel Brooks, that they have gone and picked two shows ("Beauty and the Beast" and "Phantom of the Opera") set in France!

Another musical they`re skipping, "Avenue Q," has a gay character named Rod, a Republican investment banker who tries to pass as straight by singing of a fictive girlfriend who lives in Canada. Apparently even entertainment this light — the show stars "Sesame Street"-style puppets — hits too close to home. The political right has always been a haven for closeted gay-bashers, from Roy Cohn to J. Edgar Hoover to Arthur Finkelstein (the guru who ran Jesse Helms`s homophobic senatorial campaigns). This year, the sons of two of the most prominent front men for the Republican stand against gay marriage have come out for gay civil rights in the run-up to the convention. David Knight married his partner in San Francisco, defying California`s successful 2000 Defense of Marriage ballot initiative, whose author and most obsessive supporter had been his father, the state legislator William (Pete) Knight. He was joined in parental defiance by Jamiel Terry, an adopted son of Randall Terry, the one-time antiabortion zealot who took on antihomosexuality as his new cause after his own church disowned him for getting divorced. Jamiel Terry, who had worked as an intern for a Pat Robertson propaganda factory as a teenager, told The Washington Post that he got up to speed on his budding homosexuality by reading the collection of gay literature his father kept at home for research purposes.

The good news for those on the right appalled by such apostates is that a spokesman for Scores, the straight Manhattan lap-dance club, has taken to bragging to The New York Post of the advance bookings lined up by convention delegates. But it`s inevitable that some tabloid will uncover some swing-state delegates at a gay sex club as well. Not that there`s anything wrong with that. The only people in New York likely to be dissing the many gay Republicans who turn up here are their own party leaders.

But even some of them have started to flip-flop. They can read polls showing that support for legal recognition of gay unions is rising (by 10 points between February and May alone, from 32 to 42 percent, according to Gallup) and that voters crucial to Mr. Bush`s re-election (independents, Midwesterners and professionals) are turned off by the crusade (according to The Wall Street Journal-NBC News). This explains why The Weekly Standard, which in March confidently predicted that Mr. Bush could turn a close election into a blowout by demonizing same-sex marriage, was by May reduced to begging the White House to take up this "missing issue." It`s not just the White House that`s shying away from it. Republican leaders in both the House and the Senate have failed to bring the constitutional amendment to a vote. The conservative commentator Max Boot, formerly an editor at The Wall Street Journal editorial page, has said that the right has "already all but lost the battle" over the issue, with even the Rev. Lou Sheldon, the indefatigable gay-basher at the Traditional Values Coalition, telling The Times that he doesn`t "see any traction" and has no idea why.

Mr. Sheldon might start looking at the culture. In recent weeks, the political retreat from gay-baiting has been joined by the prime-time schedule of the unofficial Republican TV network, Fox, as well. This spring it canceled in mid-run a flop reality show called "Playing It Straight," the premise of which was to cast gay men as villains by having them pretend to be heterosexual for the purpose of humiliating women. Undaunted, the network announced a two-hour reality special, "Seriously, Dude, I`m Gay," that was to have its premiere tomorrow night. According to Fox`s initial press release, it called for straight men to move into West Hollywood lofts with gay roommates to experience "a heterosexual male`s worst nightmare" by being schooled in the "gay lifestyle" — after which they`d be judged on the experiment`s success by a "jury of their queers." After an uproar, the network re-edited the press release and, 10 days before broadcast, killed the show.

Fox`s news division stubbornly stays on the case, but its last-ditch argument seems to be that same-sex marriage is a slippery slope leading to legalized polygamy. "I want to marry a guy and a babe!" exclaimed Bill O`Reilly while trying out one such scary what-if hypothesis for his viewers last month. Someone should tell the Republican conventioneers that if you throw Hugh Jackman and a pair of maracas into that same plot, you`ve got "The Boy From Oz."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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June 6, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
D-Day, in History and in Memory
By SAMUEL HYNES

RINCETON, N.J.

Sixty years ago today American troops waded ashore onto the Normandy beaches, and the end of the Second World War began. Old men who were there remember that day. Of course they do: that was the day when their lives touched history; the day they proved to themselves that they were soldiers; the day death came near and then moved on; the day they survived.

On this anniversary, crowds are gathering — old men and others — at the new World War II Memorial on the Mall in Washington. What, I wonder, do they expect to learn or feel there? Not anything about D-Day, certainly; what has that huge flourish of arches and pillars and eagles and fountains have to do with what happened on Omaha Beach that day?

War memorials don`t embody memory; they don`t tell us war stories. What they do, and are designed to do, is make the cost of war bearable, by abstracting it. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier says that death in war is quietly anonymous, that it doesn`t matter who you were, once you`re dead. The Marine Corps Memorial at Arlington says two things: the oversized sculpture of the flag-raising at Mount Suribachi shouts Courage! and Victory!; but the words around the plinth, which are the names of battles in which marines fought, say simply that wars go on, and brave men fight them. I`m moved by the words, but not by the bronze figures.

The best and truest of our war memorials, because it says the least, is Maya Lin`s Vietnam wall, which simply repeats, over and over: Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Fifty-eight thousand times.

If you are in search of something less exclamatory than memorials, you must go to the battlefields: to Gettysburg — not for the monuments there but for the hills and valleys and stone walls where the two armies fought, and our nation`s history turned; or to the valley of the Somme; or to Waterloo. And for experience that touches the actual D-Day, to Omaha Beach. There the sea and the earth are the same, and still retain vestiges of the battle that was fought there — rusting barriers, wire, a few ruined vehicles that are their own memorial.

I went there through a snowstorm on a January day years ago. The beach was wide and empty; not one footprint marked the pure snow. I stood at the water`s edge looking up at the cliff looming over me, and I could imagine, almost, climbing it under fire from the pillboxes that stood along the crest. I walked up a narrow road cut into the cliff, and saw above me on left and right, high up, machine gun ports, and I thought of the field of fire those gunners had, and what it would be like to walk on, waiting to be shot, and I felt a soldier`s fear, a little.

Those feelings weren`t memory, exactly, but they were as close as you can get, now — a physical sympathy with those men, so young and so companioned by death, 60 years ago. My D-Day.

What, I wonder, are those old men down there on the Mall thinking about today? Not about the big abstractions of war, I`d guess — why they fought, what patriotism means, how they preserved democracy and liberated Europe. In my experience men don`t go to war for abstract reasons, or think about abstractions once they`re there. In a democratic war, which our World War II was, they go because everybody goes, and because it seems right to go, and they fight because their buddies are fighting.

No, the old men aren`t talking abstractions, they`re telling each other war stories: not about heroic deeds, but about the small particular memories that have stayed with them — the moments of fear, the thing they did in the heat of the moment because they had to, the dying.

The other day I phoned my friend Blake, an old Navy man who was in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, and had his carrier sunk under him. I asked him if he remembered seeing any act of heroism while he was in the water. "I remember watching a guy I knew drown," he said. "Is that heroism?" Most memories of actual war are like that, I think: ordinary fighting, ordinary dying.

The old men on the Mall today were lucky in their war. They went believing that it was a just and necessary war, and when they`d won they came home still believing. Being the winners in a just war gave those veterans a quality that was and is still perceptible in them, though it`s hard to define: a confidence, a sense of personal worth, a certainty about their actions in that crucial time when they were young. One worthy thing done at that age when manhood begins can make the rest of a man`s life richer, give it a sustaining value.

American wars since the Second World War have been different: lost, or not won or even finished, or trivial, and morally ambiguous at best, though brave men fought in them. The Second World War was our last just and victorious war, the last war a man could come home from with any expectation of glory.

The old men must be thinking about that as they gather together, must be glad that their time of testing came when it did, in a war where the Americans were the good guys beyond question, and the bad guys were absolutely evil. Perhaps that new memorial down on the Mall is our national monument to that last time of national goodness, before we lost our way.

I try to imagine a day 60 years from now, when the veterans of our present conflict — old men themselves by then — gather at their brand-new war memorial, somewhere down on the Mall, to commemorate their own D-Day (that would be March 20, 2063). What will that new generation of old soldiers have in their minds that day? Not the certainty and confidence that today`s old men have. Nor the sense of having served in a democratic war that every young man fought in and all the folks at home supported. They`ll remember their buddies, and the good times and the bad ones, and wish, perhaps, that their sad war had been worthy of them.

Samuel Hynes, the author of "Flights of Passage" and "The Soldiers` Tale," was a Marine pilot in the Pacific in World War II.

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June 6, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Noon, High and Low
By MAUREEN DOWD

CHICAGO

Bill Clinton was doing what he loves to do.

He was talking and talking about writing and writing to booksellers who were loving and loving it — dying to get their hands on the loquacious former president`s loquacious new memoir. At 992 pages, Mr. Clinton requires nearly as many words to chronicle his arc from Hot Springs to hot water to hot author as Ulysses S. Grant did to chronicle the Civil War.

The cheering crowd of 2,000 Clinton fans seemed primed for an articulate, passionate critique of President Bush — the kind Democrats can`t get from the lugubrious John Kerry.

One thing we know for sure: Bill Clinton is going to do what it takes to sell more books than the best-selling author he refers to as "my senator."

But, having drained his poor Knopf editors of their precious bodily fluids as they labored to excavate the book from him, the former president was playing the statesman — or maybe just trying not to turn off Republican readers. He was in a "don`t-worry- be-happy-why-can`t-we-all-just-get-along?" frame of mind, not, as he likes to say, a "blister the hairs off a dog`s back" frame of mind.

"I don`t settle scores in this book," he told an audience that seemed eager to settle some. "I think you`ll find my relationship with Newt Gingrich quite interesting. I like Bob Dole a lot. And I liked my predecessor, President Bush, a lot."

He had one sharp line about W. that got the biggest applause — "Politics is not religion and we should govern on the basis of evidence, not theology." And he got a little snippy about Ken Starr`s applying "a different set of rules to me." But mostly he kept a tone so diplomatic he made John Kerry seem fiery. "Look," he chided, "if you don`t support President Bush, why don`t you go back and read what he said in the campaign? He`s just doing what he said he`d do. You don`t have to say he`s a bad person if you don`t support him."

If he wasn`t ready to dish about his successor, he was ready to dish about his eighth-grade science teacher, a man named Vernon, who was married to his history teacher named Verna, who had a sister named Vera who taught him geometry.

He said his editor, Bob Gottlieb, had left his Yeats references but cut his movie odes: "I wanted to write a whole page about `High Noon,` my favorite movie, and why it`s an important movie."

Many leaders see themselves reflected in the plight of Gary Cooper`s Will Kane, the lonely, romantic Western hero, the retiring marshal who stays and fights the murderous Miller gang even though his Quaker bride (Grace Kelly) and all the townsfolk desert him. This reflects a certain self-pity on the part of powerful men, who are surrounded by money and henchmen and entourages and advisers, yet manage to see themselves as the lone, courageous marshal facing a noon showdown with the bad guys.

The needy, chatty Clinton somehow cast himself as the strong, silent Cooper fighting Starr`s Frank Miller.

Tony Soprano, lonely at the top, yearning for the macho black and white days before a mob boss was reduced to seeking help from a female shrink, also obsesses on "High Noon."

And the analogy has often been used by people writing and talking about the Bushes` facing down Saddam. Just as the movie was seen as a classic allegory for the cold war, when the virtuous American sheriff tried to police a paranoid world with enemies lurking everywhere, so it has been cited by some conservatives who like to see it as an allegory of Bush II`s "heroic" unilateralism. In an alienated world, a friendless W. had to do the dirty work to get rid of Saddam all by himself, a lawman who refused to be shoved, ready to die all alone on some dusty street for a tin star. "Don`t forsake me, oh my darling Spain . . . "

Although, think of how well Gary Cooper could have done against the Miller gang if, instead of one gun in his holster, he`d had the whole American military behind him or even just one cruise missile for a surgical strike on that train of Millers.

President Bush recently recounted the story of Junichiro Koizumi, the Japanese prime minister, telling him that his favorite movie was "High Noon": "One time he walked up to me and said, `You like Cooper.` I said, `I`m like Cooper?` He said, `Yes.` I finally figured out what he meant."

There was one powerful man who thought the film was the most un-American he`d ever seen: John Wayne. The Duke couldn`t bear to see a hero begging for help.

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RONALD WILSON REAGAN / 1911-2004
Effect on U.S. Politics Still Felt
By Ronald Brownstein
Times Staff Writer

June 6, 2004

No one since Franklin D. Roosevelt reshaped American politics or restored the primacy of the presidency more than Ronald Reagan.

Reagan redefined the message of the Republican Party, expanded its reach to working-class voters who had rejected it for decades, and put in place the final pieces of a conservative alliance that has carried the GOP to unified control of Congress and the White House for the first time in half a century.

As the "Great Communicator," Reagan changed the way presidents pursued their goals, elevating the role of direct communication with the public through television. He hastened the realignment of the South from solidly Democratic to the cornerstone of GOP strength. And he crystallized an antigovernment populism that still constrains Washington`s role in society.

During the New Deal period ushered in by Roosevelt, "the burden of proof was on those who tried to argue that government should not act," said veteran Democratic strategist Bill Galston. "But in the era of Reagan, which I think we are still in, the burden of proof is on those who think the government should act. And if you bear the burden of proof, you have the problem."

Following a series of presidents who failed in one way or another — Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter — Reagan at the most fundamental level demonstrated that from the Oval Office, a talented leader could change the country and the world.

After more than a decade of traumas at home and abroad — from Vietnam and Watergate to gas shortages and inflation — he showed that a president could achieve many of his goals, maintain public support and prosper politically.

Reagan left the GOP liabilities as well as assets. His unwillingness or inability to cut overall government spending while massively reducing taxes triggered huge federal deficits that tarnished the party`s reputation for fiscal responsibility.

His identification with those who sought to ban abortion or revive prayer in schools strengthened the GOP in the nation`s socially conservative regions, especially the South. But it also left an opening with socially moderate voters that Bill Clinton later exploited to realign many affluent suburbs outside the South toward the Democrats.

Reagan thus sharpened the jagged cultural divisions that have produced a nation divided almost exactly in half between the two parties. "When he left, it wasn`t a 50-50 nation, but he set in motion the Democratic revival," said Rice University political scientist Earl Black.

A former Democrat, Reagan exploded onto the national political stage with a 1964 speech promoting the presidential candidacy of Barry Goldwater. Goldwater`s campaign marked a watershed in the evolution of conservatism. But Reagan ultimately proved far more influential than Goldwater in defining the movement.

Reagan could be a bruising political adversary: As governor of California, he engaged in fierce battles with student protesters and other elements of the left. But by the time he reached the White House after defeating Carter in 1980, he had perfected a sunny, optimistic version of conservatism that celebrated America as a "shining city on a hill," yet did not seem fixated on attempting to re-create bygone days.

This was a significant switch for conservatives. Before Reagan, the defining dictum for the American right was laid down by writer William F. Buckley Jr., who once said that conservatives` role was to "stand athwart history and yell `stop.` "

Reagan embraced the religious and social values of the small-town America in which he was reared, but he projected them onto a future that he promised would be brighter than the past.

Guided by such principles, Reagan laid in the central pillars of the Republican Party`s current agenda: social conservatism, opposition to taxes, support for high levels of military spending and an antigovernment populism echoing the famous declaration in his first inaugural address that "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."

Reagan`s deeds didn`t always match his words. After the sweeping tax cuts he pushed into law his first year in office, he was much more cautious about pursuing spending cuts following sharp losses by the GOP in the 1982 congressional races. Although he restrained the growth in discretionary domestic programs, total federal spending rose more than twice as fast during his two terms as it did during Clinton`s.

And throughout the Reagan years, many prominent conservatives groused that he paid only lip service to social issues such as banning abortion; of his three appointments to the Supreme Court, two voted to affirm the legal right to abortion. For all his tough talk on welfare, Reagan never proposed rolling back the right to benefits to the degree Clinton did in the mid-1990s.

Yet those compromises — like his blending of traditional moral rhetoric with forward-looking optimism — may have helped Reagan expand his audience far beyond traditional Republican circles.

"Whether it is the auto workers in the Detroit suburbs or the small-businessmen and women throughout the Midwest, Reagan made a cultural change in the party where average people felt comfortable calling themselves Republicans," said Gary Bauer, who served as Reagan`s domestic policy advisor during his second term.

In fact, the expansion in the GOP`s base began before Reagan. Nixon, especially in his 1972 race against Democrat George S. McGovern, benefited from political tides most identified with Reagan: the shift toward the GOP among blue-collar voters in the North and evangelical Protestants in the South.

But Reagan cemented those conversions and attached them to a far more conservative agenda. "Nixon seemed to be more about what we were not — we were not McGovern Democrats," Bauer said. "Whereas Reagan felt much more comfortable talking about the values that we did represent."

But Reagan exerted his most enduring electoral impact in the South. The virtually monolithic support that Democrats had enjoyed in that region for a century after the Civil War had begun to crack in the 1960s, in the white backlash against the passage of the civil rights and voting rights legislation.

Reagan dramatically accelerated the movement toward the GOP: When he left office, the percentage of white Southerners who identified themselves as Republicans had doubled in just eight years.

Still, the GOP was not a majority party when he stepped aside in 1989. At that point, Republicans had lost many of the House and Senate seats they gained during his 1980 landslide victory over Carter, and Democrats still controlled both chambers.

But Reagan established the foundation for the GOP gains since then. Both the Republican majority in the House and Senate, as well as George W. Bush`s razor-thin electoral college majority in 2000, rest on the party`s dominance in the South, an advantage bequeathed to them largely by Reagan.

Reagan also triggered changes that helped revive the Democrats. His 49-state victory over Walter F. Mondale in 1984 inspired the creation of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, which spearheaded the critique of traditional liberalism that led to Clinton`s "New Democratic" message and his presidential victories in the 1990s.

"It was the 1984 election that I think convinced people … that the old version of the Democratic Party, whatever its historical and moral merits, was no longer a viable majority party," said Galston, who served as Mondale`s issues director in 1984 and later worked in the Clinton White House.

Much of Clinton`s agenda — which sought to balance opportunity and responsibility and prove that government activism was compatible with fiscal restraint — tried to retool liberalism to respond to Reagan`s criticisms of it.

At the same time, Reagan inspired thousands of young conservatives who have come to dominate every aspect of the Republican Party, from its elected officials to its executive-branch appointees and political strategists. Almost everything about George W. Bush`s presidency — from its focus on tax cuts to its moral certitude — reflects Reagan`s imprint more than that of Bush`s father, George H.W. Bush.

This may be the most telling measure of Reagan`s impact. He shook the political landscape so powerfully that he became one of the few who profoundly influenced both major parties, forcing Democrats toward the center while tilting Republicans toward the right.

Long after he returned to California, Reagan shaped the choices that his successors could pursue. He does so even today.


Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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COVER STORY
Gathering Clouds
Arizona`s Navajo and Hopi Tribes Have Won a Water-Rights Battle Against the Coal Company That Has Sustained Their Fragile Economies. But on the Threshold of Victory, a Sobering Question: Now What?
By Sean Patrick Reily
Times Staff Writer

June 6, 2004

"Somewhere far away from us, people have no understanding that their demand for cheap electricity, air conditioning and lights 24 hours a day have contributed to the imbalance of this very delicate place." — Nicole Horseherder, Navajo, Black Mesa


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Bilder aus der Black Mesa im nörlichen Arizona an der Grenze zu Utah. Mehr im Artikel
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Sunday, June 06, 2004
War News for June 6, 2004

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring ‘em on: Three security contractors killed in ambush at Baghdad airport.

Bring ‘em on: Three Iraqis killed, two US soldiers wounded by car bomb near Taji.

Bring ‘em on: Contract driver killed, US soldier wounded by roadside bomb near Haditha.

Bring ‘em on: US soldiers attacked at police station in Sadr City.

Bring ‘em on: US Marine convoy attacked near Fallujah.

Bring ‘em on: Ten Iraqi policemen, two civilians killed in attack on Mussayab police station.

Bring ‘em on: Four security contractors killed in Baghdad ambush. This may be a dual report of the ambush at Baghdad airport.

Bring ‘em on: One Iraqi policeman killed, one wounded by roadside bomb near Kirkuk.

US Marine dies of wounds received in action in al-Anbar province

Abu Ghraib investigations. “Disparate inquiries into abuses of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan have so far left crucial questions of policy and operations unexamined, according to lawmakers from both parties and outside military experts, who say that the accountability of senior officers and Pentagon officials may remain unanswered as a result. No investigation completely independent of the Pentagon exists to determine what led to the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, and so far there has been no groundswell in Congress or elsewhere to create one.”

Shady characters. “This leap in spending will focus fresh attention on the increasingly significant role played by private security firms in Iraq after a little-known company run by Lt Col Tim Spicer - the former Guards officer at the centre of the ‘arms to Sierra Leone’ scandal in 1999 - won a huge £280m deal with the Pentagon last month to provide security staff in Iraq.”

The NCO Corps. “When firefights erupt with terrifying chaos in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is usually sergeants -- not officers -- who steady the riflemen, maneuver the soldiers down alleyways, coordinate with other units by radio, and supervise the resupply of water and ammo and the evacuation of the wounded. Those front-line, midcareer soldiers -- noncommissioned officers, or NCOs -- carry immense power and responsibility. They lead the squads and platoons that directly engage in the swirling confusion of an insurgency, deploying again and again on missions that test their courage, endurance and ingenuity.”

Two thousand new suicide bombers recruited. “The action was intended to `show our friends in Iraq and all other Muslims that we are ready to give our lives to defend our honour and Islam`s`, Mr Samadi said then, pointing to US military operations in the Iraqi holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, which are revered by Shi`ites in Iran as well as Iraq.” Nice going, Lieutenant AWOL, you birdbrain.

Commentary

Analysis: “It`s crucial that the U.S. attempt to understand what motivates the terrorism it seeks to eradicate. Instead, the administration seems invested in denying it. In contrast to the Rand findings cited above, the State Department claims to be able to show that terrorism has decreased since the war on terrorism began.”

Analysis: “The question now is whether the press will follow the White House lead and `stay on message` or whether the spectacle of self-flagellation at the Times will lead to more even-handed coverage of a complex and dangerous story. New York-based author and media critic, Michael Massing has been particularly harsh on the journalistic lapses at the Times because of its leadership position in the media and its influence, which spreads beyond America. In Massing`s view, the Times set a pro-war tone on Iraq that many other papers followed. For him, that was the ‘pack mentality - one of the most entrenched and disturbing features of American journalism.’”

Casualty Reports

Local story: Texas Marine killed in Iraq.

Local story: New Jersey Guardsman killed in Iraq.

Local story: New Jersey Guardsman killed in Iraq.

Local story: Oregon Guardsman killed in Iraq.

Local story: Oregon Guardsman killed in Iraq.

Local story: Oregon Guardsman killed in Iraq.

Local story: Illinois soldier wounded in Iraq.


86-43-04. Pass it on.



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Wird dieser Artikel den BMW-Absatz in den USA verbessern?


In Germany, cars make the man
Forget about sex -- auto lust may be deeper, polls suggest
- Mark Landler, New York Times
Sunday, June 6, 2004

Frankfurt, Germany -- From Motown to Munich, automobiles are marketed as a tool of sexual conquest. In Germany, though, cars are so prized that it`s not clear, given a choice, that men would choose the girl over the gearshift.

Several recent surveys have studied the link between cars and sex in the German psyche. While it may not be as deep an exercise as pondering the role of romanticism in the land of Goethe, the results make for juicy reading -- and are, in their trashy way, quite revealing.

Who would have predicted that German men, offered a weekend with Pamela Anderson or a Ferrari, would chose the Ferrari by nearly 9 to 1? Or that Porsche drivers get less action of a nonautomotive kind than the drivers of Volkswagens, BMWs or even Volvos?

Porsche, after all, has built a nifty business catering to gray-haired Lotharios, who dream of gunning the engine of a 911 while an adoring woman gazes at them from the passenger seat.

Yet according to Men`s Car, a new magazine that quizzed 2,253 Germans, ages 20 to 50, about their sexual habits, Porsche owners have sex less often than drivers of any other make (1.4 times a week). BMW owners are the most active, at 2.2 times a week.

Frequency, it seems, has little to do with fidelity. The survey also notes that male Porsche owners are the most likely to be unfaithful. Nearly half the respondents confessed to cheating on their partners, compared with 46 percent of BMW owners and 31 percent of men who drive the proletarian Opel.

"This isn`t serious academic research -- it`s a form of entertainment," said Werner Hagstotz, an expert in automobile marketing at the School of Applied Sciences in Pforzheim. Still, he added, "I`m glad the motorcycle parked in my garage is a BMW."

Hagstotz is getting at something primal in this country of turbocharged engines and autobahns without speed limits. Fast cars are embedded in the German brainstem. What a German man drives says a lot about who he is, what he does for a living and how he expects to be treated by his fellow man. It may even be a means to decode his sexual DNA.

"For Germans, the car is a unique symbol of identity," Hagstotz said. "It`s like a bottle of wine for a Frenchman."

Some of the Men`s Car survey results, it has to be said, have less to do with nameplates than demographics. Porsche probably scores low on the sexual- activity scale because its owners tend to be older. BMW`s peppy 3 Series, on the other hand, is the ride of choice for young professionals.

Among German women, however, the results are an across-the-board rebuff of Germany`s high-testosterone brands. Women who drive French or Italian cars claim to be the most sexually active, while those who drive a Porsche or a Mercedes ranked themselves as the least.

The good news, for a country plagued by a low birthrate, is that just being in a car can make Germans frisky. In another poll, by an auto club in Stuttgart, one-third of respondents said they fantasized about sex while stuck in traffic jams. Only 10 percent thought about finding an alternate route.

So much for Teutonic efficiency.

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©2004 San Francisco Chronicle

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Eine Abrechnung mit Reagan!
Besonders interessant sind die vielen Kommentare. Siehe unten!
Saturday, June 05, 2004
Ronald Reagan 1911-2004

http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/2004/06/ronald-reagan-1911…

The hagiography started as soon as they announced Reagan`s death. How he ended the cold war, how he was a decisive leader, all this nonsense about Reagan which is just ridiculous.

The British have a tradition: when someone dies, their newspaper obituary tells the truth. Americans like to say something kind about the dead, no matter how scummy they were. Even Nixon got a halo in death, where only Hunter Thompson reminded people of who exactly he was and how the honors given him were, well, wrong.

This deification of Reagan began as soon as Clinton took office. There has been pressure to name everything but rest stop toilets after the man. Some right wing cranks wanted to add him to Mount Rushmore, as if FDR didn`t exist. They forced his name on an unhappy Washington DC, by renaming the airport, still called by many, National.

So let`s get past all the maudlin bullshit and discuss what Reagan really did.

First, Reagan rode to power on a wave of reaction to the Civil Rights struggle. California, a state with a deep well of racial resentment, supported Reagan, who would protect the establishment and call for students to be murdered on their campuses. Reagan was regarded as a crank by many on the left, but his appeal to middle America was strong. It wasn`t that Reagan was a racist, as fas as is known, he wasn`t. But he sure could pander to them, as he did in 1984 at Philadelphia, MS. For those of you unaware, that is the place three civil rights workers were murdered by the Klan. It would be like a British Prime Ministerial candidate going to Amritsar to talk about the glory of the British Army (the site of a 1921 massacre of peaceful Indian protesters). Reagan pandered to the racist right with ease, even as Barry Goldwater, the man he supported in 1964 with a convention speech, slowly backed away from many of his reactionary views. Instead, Reagan depicted blacks as "welfare queens" leeching off the society, when in reality, white women are the largest recipients of AFDC. Reagan used race like a club to hammer minorities and pander to the racist right.

We need to ask what hath Reagan wrought. His economic policies crippled this country, preventing the kind of long term structural changes which are still needed. How long will American businesses have to foot the bill for health insurance? How long will unequal funding for schools exist? How long will the right of women to control their bodies be subject to restrictions? This is the real, domestic legacy of Ronald Reagan. His breaking of the PATCO strike began the road to anti-Union policies across business. Once, businesses wanted labor peace, after Reagan, strike breaking was permitted, hell encouraged.

Reagan began the road of crippling America`s ability to care for Americans. Now we have this failed trickle down economic policy pushed by yet another President. One that leaves Americans in record debt and record bankruptcies. Instead of tax rates which fairly distribute the burden of funding America, the rich have been encouraged to avoid their fair share. Ronald Reagan began the bankrupting of America and the creation of a super wealthy CEO class, one where their great grandchildren will never have to work, an aristocracy of trustifarians. Under Reagan hypocracy and selfishness became the rule of the road. Not just in public life, where his staff routinely lied, eventually leading to Iran-Contra.

But if Reagan started to ruin America, his foreign policy left the dead around like fallen leaves. His foreign policy was a disater by any standard. Dead nuns in El Salvador, murdered school teachers in Nicaragua, the tortured in Argentina, the seizure of Grenade, the failed intervention in Lebanon, the aerial assasination attempt on Khaddafi, which led to the bombing of Pam Am flight 103. Reagan`s policies left a trail of failure and disaster at every turn.

How to explain funding the deeply corrupt Contras? Former Somocista generals who funded their war by the drug trade? Who murdered the innoncent. Or the war in Guatemala and the genocide of the indian population. Or the war in El Salvador, where American nuns, among many others, were raped and murdered. A government so callous that it murdered an archbishop in his church.

Reagan`s foreign policy left a trail of death and fear wherever it touched.

But Iran-Contra was the defining moment. Despite a congressional prohibition on aid to the Contras, a group inside the White House decided to circumvent the law, so ineptly, and so completely, we wound up arming Iran and getting few hostages held in Lebanon released. We also sold chemical and biological weapons to Iraq. While Saddam murdered thousands, the US government was his ally. Even after 34 sailors were murdered by an Iraqi exocet missle, we still backed Saddam. No governmental outrage, no demands on Saddam. Like the Liberty incident, we turned our backs and hoped for the best.

Reagan and his conservative hagiographers, have wanted to claim his massive defense build up broke the Soviets, which rips the bravery and courage of the Czechs and East Germans who finally overthrew their dictatorial governments.

Reagan also embraced Angolan UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi, the puppet of the racist South African regime. He repeatedly refused to back away from him, despite South Africa`s notorious, and it later turned out, mad, racial policies. Not until 1988, when the Cuban army decisively defeat the SADF at Cuito Carnevale in Angola, did the war end. The US turned its back as the South African-sponsored Renamo massacred their way across Mozambique. No one knows how many Africans died in the wars of South Africa, but US complicity with the racist regime of South Africa helped extend their lifespan. At no point did Reagan do anything to stop this.

Silent complicity was the hallmark of Reagan`s policy towards dictatorships. From Indonesia to El Salvador, the innocent died and the US said nothing, did nothing, except make their lives worse.

We backed the guerrilla groups in Afghanistan, funding the most radical ones and then leaving the country in disarray.

Reagan`s legacy is a dark one, one of backing murderers and robbing America of a fairer future. It wasn`t that he was an evil man, or a bad one. It is what he believed and what he supported caused so much pain and misery for so many people, who had to live with the results of his policies.

posted by Steve at 10:51:29 AM
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Michelle Cottle: `Team Bush is on a religious crusade`
Posted on Sunday, June 06 @ 10:49:40 EDT A mighty army of religious warriors is being assembled on the president`s behalf.

By Michelle Cottle, CBS News

Karl Rove is no idiot. I realize this observation sounds obvious. But it bears repeating -- often -- as Democrats and Washington`s chattering class become increasingly excited about conservatives` increasingly public criticism of the Bush administration.

Perhaps more than any other field, politics embraces the kick-a-guy-when-he`s-down outlook. Thus, with W. suffering a popularity slump due to his breathtakingly mismanaged Iraq odyssey, it`s unsurprising that many on the right have begun to grouse about other Bush moves that they see as ideologically impure.

Sure, the tax cuts were great. But what about the massive deficits run up on W.`s watch? The White House can jaw about the cost of fighting terrorism all it wants, but a budget analysis conducted by, of all folks, the Heritage Foundation indicates that less than half of new spending under Bush has been related to defense or homeland security. Conservatives are less than thrilled about the president`s big-government prescription-drug bill -- not to mention his noxious, federally intrusive No Child Left Behind program. And speaking of intrusive, a colorful mix of right-wingers (including the leadership of the Eagle Forum, the American Conservative Union, and the Free Congress Foundation) think the Patriot Act could use some serious tweaking before John Ashcroft starts implanting spy-cams in everyone`s underpants.



Concerns about Bush`s conservative cred won`t be eased by the fact that members of his own party have launched legislative crusades in conflict with administration positions. Georgia ex-Congressman Bob Barr is lobbying hard for an overhaul of the Patriot Act, while Oklahoma Congressman Ernest Istook keeps pestering Majority Leader Tom Delay for a vote on a balanced budget amendment. Realistically, such an amendment has about as much chance of victory this year as Dennis Kucinich. But a vote on the issue -- something Delay reportedly promised Istook just before the Memorial Day recess -- could prove uncomfortable for both the White House and congressional conservatives, as Democrats began musing about how the deficits got so big, what draconian cuts would be needed to achieve a balanced budget, and why, exactly, so many Republicans spent so many months arguing that deficits don`t matter.

The anti-Bush forces are understandably giddy about W.`s intraparty blues. For one thing, it must come as a tremendous relief to discover that even this president`s Teflon coating will get sticky if enough mud is splashed on it. (Who could have predicted Chalabi would turn out to be this big a sleazeball?) More broadly, Democrats have grown accustomed to being the party of self-destructive, internecine bloodletting. For them, the very idea of Republicans publicly savaging one another is the political equivalent of free porn.

But this brings us back to my original reality check: Karl Rove is no idiot. The dark wizard is well aware of his president`s troubles, and -- even as the Beltway boys and girls obsess over Iraq -- Team Bush is furiously sucking up to the base on domestic issues. Just this week, W. delivered a keep-the-faith barn-burner to nearly 2,000 religious leaders and social service workers assembled in Washington for the White House Conference on Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. In his best preacher`s voice, Bush spoke of souls lost and found, the power of the Good Book, and the need to surrender one`s life to "a higher being." But his larger goal: Reminding the audience of what a key friend he has been. Stressing his commitment to government funding of religious groups, Bush noted that, when an obstinate Congress tried to block his plans, he outsmarted them by signing an executive order. (Take that, you godless legislators!)

The more illuminating speech, however, came from Jim Towey, Bush`s faith-based czar, who helpfully focused the crowd on the fierce "culture war" still raging in this country. Iraq may be getting all the press these days, he allowed, "but there`s also another war that`s going on ... that really gets to the heart of the questions about what is the role of faith in the public square." If the anti-Bush forces wind up carrying the day, Towey reportedly warned, "you could almost wind up creating a godless orthodoxy." For peddling such divisive, partisan rhetoric at an official White House event, Towey most likely earned a cookie and a pat on the back from the dark wizard.

But the faith-based conference/revival was just one stop on Team Bush`s crusade. Last week, the president met with several members of the religious media. This week, during a trip West, he was scheduled to swing by Colorado Springs to kiss the ring of evangelical powerbroker James Dobson. Finally -- and perhaps most impressively -- on Thursday The New York Times broke the news that the Bush campaign is working to recruit literally thousands of "Friendly Congregations" to aid its reelection efforts by identifying volunteers willing to distribute campaign materials, facilitate voter registration, and pray for a plague of frogs to paralyze blue-state voting on election day. (Just kidding about that last part.) In Pennsylvania alone, 1,600 churches have been contacted.

This move, at least, captured the attention of Democrats, who promptly fired off outraged emails accusing the Bushies of mixing church and state. The Dems are right to be furious -- and terrified. Rove has long vowed to make sure evangelical voters turn out this year in far greater numbers than in 2000. And every new Iraq failure makes it that much more important for Team Bush to remind social conservatives who is with them on hot-button issues like gay marriage and partial-birth abortion -- home-grown moral atrocities that inflame the right far more than anything that went down at Abu Ghraib.

The Bush campaign is unlikely to spread this particular message via a nationwide TV ad blitz, since such aggressive moralizing might give swing voters the willies. But they will spread it through every conservative broadcaster, religious publisher, and "friendly congregation" they can find. A mighty army of religious warriors is being assembled on the president`s behalf. With this in mind, the Kerry camp had better not get too wrapped up in Iraq (or Vietnam). This is a two-front war. And Team Bush is working hard to convince Americans that -- as in all battles -- God is on its side.

Michelle Cottle is a senior editor at TNR.

©MMIV, CBS Broadcasting Inc.

Reprinted from CBS News:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/06/04/opinion/main621181…

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Jim Day, The Las Vegas Review Journal, Nevada

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World Leaders Commemorate D-Day Anniversary
German Leader Attends D-Day Ceremonies for the First Time

By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, June 6, 2004; 11:30 AM

CAEN, France, June 6 -- Under a pristine blue sky and with mournful martial music and cannons blasting salutes, more than 20 world leaders gathered Sunday to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Allied invasion of Normandy, the world`s largest amphibious military expedition that cost tens of thousands of lives and eventually wrested control of mainland Europe from Nazi Germany.

Thousands of aging and ailing D-Day veterans came together -- Americans, Britons, Canadians, French and others -- some in full uniform with medals, many supporting themselves on canes or in wheelchairs, for what will likely be the last major reunion of what is now commonly called The Greatest Generation. With most of the D-Day veterans now in their 80s, and dying at a rate of more than 1,000 a day, today`s ceremony bore the mark of a valedictory for those who fought, as well as a tribute to the fallen.

"France will never forget," French President Jacques Chirac said, in the first of the day`s many ceremonies, at the American military cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer . "She will never forget that 6th of June 1944 -- the day hope was reborn and rekindled. She will never forget those men who made the ultimate sacrifice to liberate our soil, our native land, our continent from the yoke of Nazi barbarity."

"In the trials and that sacrifice of war we became inseparable allies," President Bush said at the same ceremony at Colleville, facing a sea of white stone crosses and Stars of David, marking the 9,387 Americans gravesites. "The nations that battled across this continent would become trusted partners in the cause of peace, and our great alliance of freedom is strong and it is still needed today."

Later, at the main flag-draped ceremony at Arromanches, the midway point along the Normandy beaches where American, British and Canadian forces landed at dawn 60 years ago, Chirac said, "France will never forget what it owes America, its steadfast friend and ally." Like the rest of Europe, he said, "France is keenly aware that the Atlantic Alliance, forged in adversity, remains, in the face of new threats, a fundamental element of our collective security."

Today`s event took on the form of a mini-summit, with Bush, Chirac, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, Queen Elizabeth II, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin, Australian Prime Minister John Howard, and the leaders of Belgium, Norway, New Zealand and the Netherlands all in attendance for a working lunch at a Medieval chateau that survived the Allied bombing of Caen and now serves as city hall.

Also in attendance was German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, making the first appearance ever at a D-Day commemoration by a German leader. Schroeder was born just two months before the invasion began, and for many Germans, his presence here marked a long-sought recognition that the post-war period is over, and Germany has resumed its place as a full and equal partner in the Western alliance.

The presence of a German chancellor at a D-Day commemoration would have been unthinkable for the 40th, or even 50th anniversary, because the old animosities were still too raw. But Chirac`s surprise invitation to Schroeder this year was as much a measure of the personal warmth between the two leaders -- who became close last year after jointly opposing the Iraq war -- as a sign of how far Europe has come in burying its bloody past.

An opinion poll published Saturday, by the French firm Ifop for the French daily newspaper Le Figaro, showed that the vast majority of French considered Germany as a better ally of France than the United States. Some 82 percent of those polled said they considered Germany a very strong or somewhat strong ally, compared to just 55 percent who said America was a very strong or somewhat strong ally. Ten years ago, 70 percent of French people in the same poll said America was a very strong or somewhat strong ally.

"I think inviting the German chancellor is a wonderful idea," said Joëlle Delfortrie, 52, a native of the town of Sainte-Mere-Eglise. "World War II was a war waged against the Nazi regime. D-day marks the liberation of the French people as well as the German people from the Nazis."

If Schroeder`s presence here elicited any controversy, it was mostly back home in Germany, where his visit stirred a debate that mixed delicate and conflicting feelings of patriotism, guilt, remorse over the German war dead, and the sense that for Germans, D-day was as much a defeat as a liberation. Most controversial was Schroeder`s decision not to go to a German cemetery, but instead lay a wreath in a Commonwealth cemetery in Ranville, where 322 German soldiers lay buried along with 2,000 soldiers from eight other allied nations.

Some opposition conservative politicians have labeled Schroeder as an "anti-patriot" for not laying a wreath at a German war cemetery. But Schroeder defended his decision, and his visit, saying in a French newspaper interview; "I don`t understand the debate going on in Germany.... For me, it`s about commemorating all the dead who fell because of Hitler`s cruelty."

The obvious warmth between Schroeder and his host, Chirac, was on full display when the chancellor arrived for the midday luncheon at the Abbaye aux Hommes chateau. Chirac and his wife Bernadette greeted Schroeder, as they did all the other leaders, at the foot of a red carpet leading to the entrance to the chateau. But Schroeder lingered far longer than most other guests, chatting amiably and for several minutes with Chirac, who kept his left hand resting on his German colleague`s back.

The greeting for President Bush and First Lady Laura Bush was, by contrast, more polite and perfunctory. When Bush emerged from his limousine, the two presidents shook hands quickly, Bush patted Bernadette Chirac on the back, and Chirac kissed Laura Bush`s hand. Then the Bushes moved quickly inside.

Bush and Chirac went to great lengths on this visit to outwardly demonstrate that the animosity over last year`s Iraq war was over, and that the two are now working closely together on common problems. France has signaled that it is willing to work towards a new United Nations Iraq resolution it can support -- and has not threatened to use its veto if it cannot support the final version. French officials have also said they are open to allowing NATO to take a lead role in Iraq after sovereignty is transferred, and will help train Iraqi security forces, even though Paris has ruled out sending any French troops.

Still, the Iraq war has left feelings of deep ambivalence on both sides of the Atlantic, and the relationship seems unlikely to be fully repaired anytime soon. A new poll today of both French and Americans, conducted by the Ipsos polling firm and published in today`s Le Journal du Dimanche, found that only 20 percent of the French polled considered America a "faithful ally" while only 13 percent of Americans thought that about France.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Jobs, Jobs Everywhere and Not a Job to Find

Norma Sherry

http://togetherforeverchanging.org/

06/06/04 "ICH" -- If you’ve listened to Conservative Radio or Fox News lately then you already know the good news. Jobs are aplenty! In fact, according to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and President Bush, we are in the midst of a huge boom! According to the spin, more than 650,000 American workers found employment in the last two months. Mighty spectacular, wouldn’t you say?

The problem with the numbers, however, is what’s wrong with nearly every pronouncement from this administration. It’s clothed in a semblance of truth, but it disguises the real facts. The truth is we have more educated, specialized, articulate, unemployed workers than ever in our history. It doesn’t consider The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that 80,000 to 90,000 unemployed become ineligible for unemployment benefits every week and therefore, are no longer counted among the unemployed.

We’re not told that we have lost over three-million industrial jobs since George Bush took office, nor are we told that since our “recovery” we have lost over a million manufacturing jobs or three-million private sector jobs. The fact that the job “boom” was in low salaried temporary and retail positions were left out of the explanations for the “good news”, or that none of the jobs were in high-paying trades and services.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor, “employment rose substantially in several service-providing industries, construction continued to add jobs, and there was a noteworthy job gain in durable goods manufacturing.” The truth is there are more than 11-million unemployed citizens looking for work.

According to Dr. Martin Regalia, U.S. Chamber vice president for economic policy and chief economist, "These job figures are the last piece of the economic puzzle. Our expansion is strong, well balanced, and sustainable."

But, if you are an engineer from the Silicon Valley like John L. who has worked 9.5 weeks out of the last 105, do you think he`s feeling the new boom? Or, if you own a small consulting firm in Kansas City, like Lance Chalmers do you think he and his employees are benefiting from this new boom? It`s doubtful considering he is excluded from bidding on state contracts because his workforce is Americans. Do you think Jody Zenkel is feeling the effects of this new surge? Twenty years in the job market as an IT specialist and never out of work in all those years -- that is until she lost her job to a foreign worker.

Jody and John and Lance are just a drop in the bucket of the hundred`s upon hundred`s of thousands of American workers who are losing their homes, their will, their fortitude, their belief in the American dream. They are the forgotten. The dispensable. They are among the hordes of citizens that grew with the times. They educated themselves. They sacrificed so they could assure their family`s security only to be discarded like so much excess trash.

Excess trash is exactly how our corporate entities view our workforce. Worse than trash is how our government has protected them. So, here we are being told that we`re in a boom economy when the opposite surrounds us. What are we to do?

According to one executive, a man who coincidentally advises corporations interested in Outsourcing and In-sourcing, is for the IT specialist to, (1) Find a role to play on the offshore bandwagon or fight against the movement of business abroad, or (2) To embrace offshore operations as yet another opportunity to expand their professional skill set and position themselves as offshore management leaders.

Another expert advises that the IT specialist keep changing jobs and learning new modalities. I suggest, however, that this option is a misnomer, at best. Chances are once the employee leaves their job finding another will be an act in futility, particularly if they happen to be thirty-five or older. Statistics prove that the older the programmer or engineer, the harder it will be to find employment. According to the American University, it will take three more weeks for a laid-off programmer or engineer to find a job for each year of his/her age.

And if the manager doing the hiring is younger than the applicant is, well, statistics indicate the chance of getting that job is close to nil. Here`s another statistic not bantered around: only 19% of computer science grads are still employed as computer programmers twenty years later. Furthermore, if you are forty and an unemployed programmer lucky enough to find a job in your field, you can count on taking a cut in pay.

The statistics also don`t reflect the multitude of workers who have given up finding employment in their trained profession. Underemployment is a very real and serious condition in the United States. So, too, is our minimum wage. Back in 1967, a family of three could survive above poverty level on the minimum wage. Not so today. Currently, a full-time minimum wage earner can only sustain his or her family 84% of the poverty line for a family of three. These are not teenagers, folks, these are the people in the grocery lines with you. That is, if they can afford groceries.

So, what are we to do? For one, we need to begin by replacing our legislators, representatives, and our country`s leaders with truly concerned and compassionate representatives. We need to demonstrate by our vote that we the people are in charge. We need to send a loud and resounding message to anyone seeking political office or holding office that they work for us, the people. We need to shun the deceptive political commercials and the spin weavers and use our own very perceptive minds.

It is time, my fellow American`s that we make our voices heard, for if we don`t, we could liken it to Pastor Martin Niemoeller`s famous warning about the Nazi`s. First, they came for the Manufacturer`s, but I was not a Manufacturer so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Service Jobs and the Tradesmen`s, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the IT Technicians, but I was not an IT Specialist so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me. It is time, my fellow American`s, or we, too, will be lamenting the jobs we lost and didn`t speak out.

Norma Sherry is co-founder of TogetherForeverChanging.org, an organization devoted to educating, stimulating, and igniting personal responsibility particularly with regards to our diminishing civil liberties. She is also an award-winning writer/producer and host of television program, The Norma Sherry Show, on WQXT-TV, Florida.

Email Norma: [e-mail]

Copyright: Norma Sherry 2004

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Mercenaries in `coup plot` guarded UK officials in Iraq

Shocked MP demands a rethink of the way government awards its security contracts. Special report by Antony Barnett, Solomon Hughes and Jason Burke
Antony Barnett, Solomon Hughes and Jason Burke
Sunday June 6, 2004

The Observer
Mercenaries accused of planning a coup in an oil-rich African state also worked under contract for the British government providing security in Iraq, raising fears about the way highly sensitive security work is awarded, The Observer has learnt.

The Department for International Development (DfID) signed a £250,000 deal last summer with the South-African based Meteoric Tactical Solutions (MTS) to provide `close protection` for department staff, including bodyguards and drivers for its senior official in Iraq.

Two of the firm`s owners were arrested in Zimbabwe last March with infamous British mercenary and former SAS officer Simon Mann. The men are accused of plotting an armed coup in Equatorial Guinea.

MTS is based in Pretoria and run by former members of South African special forces. Its owners are Lourens `Hecky` Horn, Hermanus Carlse and Festus van Rooyen. Horn, the firm`s Iraq contact when the contract with Britain was signed, is now in Chikurubi prison in Zimbabwe with Carlse.

The pair appeared in court on 23 March accused of forming an advance party for the coup with Mann. It is alleged they arrived in the Zimbabwe to buy weapons for a coup plot in Equatorial Guinea. The trio tried to purchase 61 AK-47 rifles, 45,000 rounds of ammunition, 1,000 rounds of anti-tank ammunition and 160 grenades.

The weapons were allegedly to be used by 70 mercenaries planning an assault in Malabo, capital of Equatorial Guinea, to kidnap or kill President Obiang. But the arrested men claim they were just hired to guard diamond mines in the Congo.

Opposition MPs have been shocked by the scale of the Government`s use of private security firms to guard British civil servants in Iraq.

The British-owned company Armor Group has an £876,000 contract to supply 20 guards for the Foreign Office. This will rise by 50 per cent in July. The firm employs about 500 Gurkhas to guard executives of US firms Bechtel and Kellogg Brown & Root.

The largest UK security firm in Iraq, Global Risk Strategies, is helping the Iraqi administration to draft new regulations. Its 1,000 staff there will rise to 1,200.

Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, called on the government to review the way it awards security contracts. `The disclosure [about Meteoric] raises serious questions as to what checks were carried out by the department before it hired them,` he said.

Other politicians suggest the need for so many private security staff in Iraq highlights the potential overstretch in the British forces.

As well as their work for Britain, MTS guards Swiss diplomats and had two contracts to train the Iraqi police. Swiss politician Barbara Haering wants the South African mercenaries to be replaced with real soldiers. `We would then have assurance they are under democratic control and trained to respect human rights,` she said.

MTS director Festus van Rooyen, who is based in Iraq, confirmed his company`s contract with the department and the arrest of his former partners, but denied all knowledge of alleged wrongdoing. He claimed that MTS had worked for Nelson Mandela, Tony Blair and the Queen.

His fellow directors were on leave when they were arrested. `I was shocked when I heard of their arrest. Activity like that is totally against company policy,` he said.

Horn was in charge of the company in Iraq, including the British contract, until last February when he returned to South Africa to `chill out on a hunting farm`.

The presence of large numbers of South African mercenaries in Iraq has raised concerns, especially after some private guards were found to have dubious human rights records. Gray Branfield, who was killed while working for British security firm Hart Group in southern Iraq, had carried out many assassinations for the former apartheid regime.

Deon Gouws, who died while working in Iraq for British-led security firm Erinys, also carried out many killings in South Africa`s secret wars. Francis Strydom, who was injured alongside Gouws, was a member of Koevoet, a paramilitary unit of South Africa`s police with a record of killings and torture.

The Department for Overseas Development is also under fire for hiring international arms traffickers to fly aid missions, despite being warned their firm had been named as a sanctions buster by the United Nations.

Official documents obtained by The Observer reveal that the department hired this firm, Aerocom, to fly aid to Morocco following the earthquake there earlier this year. Aerocom was named in a UN report last year for breaking international sanctions by transporting huge quantities of arms to the war-torn West African state of Liberia in 2002.

The department`s air-freight agent needed special permission from the UK Civil Aviation Authority to allow Aerocom`s old Moldova-registered Ilyushin 67 transport plane to land in Britain. After receiving an exemption from noise restrictions, the plane loaded humanitarian supplies at Manston airfield in in Kent, and took off on 1 March.

The government had been warned about Aerocom when the Halo Trust, a respected British mine clearance charity, inadvertently hired the firm to fly equipment to Angola in March 2003. Concerns about the alleged record of Aerocom led the trust to seek Foreign Office advice. The FO gave no hint the flight should not proceed.

A department spokeswoman defended the way it awards contracts.`We check the financial and legal standing of potential contractors to ensure we deal with reputable companies,` she said.

[e-mail]
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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Military Fatalities: US 828 Total 938

June 04: 11

http://icasualties.org/oif/


06/06/04 Centcom: Mortar attack kills one soldier, wounds one
One 13th Corps Support Command soldier is dead and one is injured as the result of a mortar attack on their base camp near Baghdad at about 8 a.m. Sunday.
06/06/04 CJTF: Convoy Attack Kills One Contactor, Wounds One Soldier
One civilian contract driver is dead and one 13th Corps Support Command Soldier is injured as the result of an improvised explosive device attack on their convoy at about 1 p.m. June 5 near Haditha.
06/06/04 AP: Attack on police station kills 7 Iraqi officers
Eight people stormed into a police station south of Baghdad, opened fire and killed seven officers before planting explosives to destroy the building, police said Sunday.
06/06/04 Reuters: Car Bomb Kills 9 Outside Iraqi Security Force Base
Guerrillas detonated a car bomb outside an Iraqi security force base just north of Baghdad Sunday, killing nine people and wounding dozens in the latest attack on Iraqis cooperating with occupying troops
06/06/04 AP: 4 Office Workers Killed in Baghdad Ambush
two Americans and two Poles working for Blackwater Security Consulting, were killed Saturday afternoon when a convoy they were traveling was ambushed, said Boguslaw Majewski, the spokesman for Poland`s Foreign Ministry
06/05/04 Centcom: 2 Soldiers Killed, 2 Wounded Confirmed
Two Task Force Baghdad Soldiers were killed and two others were wounded when an improvised explosive device detonated around 9:30 a.m. June 5.
06/05/04 AP: Officials identify second Guardsman killed in Iraq
Spc. Christopher M. Duffy was killed Friday in an attack that also claimed the life of Sgt. Frank Carvill of Carlstadt. Family members had confirmed Carvill`s death late Friday
06/05/04 Reuters: Iraq Gunmen Kill Foreigner in Convoy Attack
Gunmen opened fire on Saturday on vehicles carrying foreign security guards in the northern city of Mosul, killing one foreigner and wounding two others, the U.S. military said.
06/05/04 DOD: Casualty Announced
Lance Cpl. Todd J. Bolding, 23, of Manvel, Texas, died June 3 of wounds received due to hostile action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq.
06/05/04 AP: Two N.J. Soldiers Killed In Iraq
Two New Jersey National Guard members were killed and three other New Jerseyans were wounded in an ambush in Baghdad on Friday, state and federal officials said.
06/05/04 AP: Three Oregon soldiers killed in Iraq
In the single worst loss for Oregon, three National Guard soldiers were killed in Iraq Friday when their vehicles were attacked while on patrol in Baghdad, state military authorities said.
06/05/04 UPI: Three foreigners killed in Iraq
Three foreigners of undetermined nationalities were killed by gunmen Saturday on the airport road in Baghdad.
06/05/04 Reuters: Rocket attack wounds 17 Iraqis
A rocket attack wounded 17 people lining up at a recruiting post for the new Iraq army in the northern city of Mosul
06/05/04 AP: Relatives fear for Turkish driver who was taken hostage in Iraq
Kidnapped by militants in Iraq, Yanik, a truck driver, appears in a videotape shot by his captives and obtained Wednesday by Associated Press Television News.
06/05/04 AP: Gunmen Kill Brother of Informant in Iraq
Gunmen killed the brother of the man who told the U.S. Army where to find Saddam Hussein`s sons, witnesses and hospital officials said Saturday
06/05/04 U.S. Soldier Killed in Baghdad Explosion
A roadside bomb killed one U.S. soldier and injured three others Saturday in an explosion near the Ministry of the Interior, the U.S. military said.

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DER SPIEGEL 24/2004 - 07. Juni 2004
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/0,1518,302950,00.html

Presse

Öffentlicher Kniefall

Die "New York Times" entschuldigt sich für ihre Berichterstattung im Vorfeld des Irak-Kriegs: Ihre Starreporterin hatte sich zu sehr auf Informationen von Exil-Irakern verlassen. Doch es geht auch um eine Abrechnung mit dem früheren Chefredakteur.

Vor zweieinhalb Jahren wurde die "New York Times"-Redakteurin Judith Miller schon einmal selbst eine journalistische Geschichte. Es war ein Freitag, sie hatte einen Brief aus Florida geöffnet, und weil gerade irgendein Verrückter im ganzen Land Briefe mit Milzbranderregern verschickte, wusste sie sofort, was es zu bedeuten hatte, als aus dem Umschlag ein weißes Pulver rieselte.

Sie blieb ganz ruhig. Sie rief den Sicherheitsdienst, gab ein paar Interviews, dann setzte sie sich an ihren Schreibtisch und schrieb die Titelgeschichte für den nächsten Tag. Der Brief, der sich später als harmlos erwies, war nicht zufällig bei ihr gelandet. Miller hatte gerade zusammen mit zwei Kollegen ein Buch über Biowaffen veröffentlicht, sie galt als ausgewiesene Expertin auf diesem Gebiet.

Judith Miller hatte zu diesem Zeitpunkt schon eine beachtliche Karriere bei der "Times" hinter sich. Sie hatte, als erste Frau auf einem solchen Posten, das Büro in Kairo geleitet. Sie war Sonderkorrespondentin in Paris gewesen und stellvertretende Büroleiterin in Washington. Nun war sie auch nach außen ein Star.

Sie trat in Talkshows auf und bei CNN. Ihr Buch landete auf den Bestsellerlisten. Ein paar Monate später bekam sie zusammen mit mehreren Kollegen den Pulitzerpreis für eine Serie von Artikeln, in denen sie das Terrornetz von al-Qaida beschrieben hatte, Monate vor den Anschlägen auf New York und Washington. Sie war 53 Jahre alt, und es schien, als ob sie ganz oben angekommen sei.

In diesen Tagen macht Judith Miller wieder Zeitungsgeschichte, doch diesmal könnte es damit enden, dass sie die Zeitung verlassen muss, für die sie seit 27 Jahren arbeitet. Am Mittwoch vorletzter Woche fand sich auf Seite zehn der "Times" eine Mitteilung der Chefredaktion, dass die Berichterstattung in den Monaten vor dem Irak-Krieg nicht immer so unanfechtbar gewesen sei, wie sie hätte sein sollen.

Die Redaktionsleitung kritisierte dabei insbesondere eine Reihe von Artikeln, die sich "zu sehr auf Informationen aus einem Kreis irakischer Informanten verlassen haben, deren Glaubwürdigkeit inzwischen öffentlich zunehmend zur Debatte steht". Namentlich nannte das Blatt dabei den Exil-Iraker Ahmed Tschalabi, der bis vor kurzem gerade bei Hardlinern der US-Regierung hoch im Kurs stand und nun des Geheimnisverrats bezichtigt wird.

Es war eine Entschuldigung, ein öffentlicher Kniefall, auch wenn Chefredakteur Bill Keller das Wort "Erklärung" bevorzugte. Am Sonntag folgte ein Text des Ombudsmanns Daniel Okrent, der noch einmal alle Fehler aufzählte und eine "neue Runde von Untersuchungen" verlangte.

Millers Name tauchte in der Mitteilung der Chefredaktion nicht auf, aber natürlich wussten alle, die sich mit der "Times" auskennen, wer gemeint war: Acht der insgesamt zehn inkriminierten Artikel stammen von ihr, darunter auch die beiden, die die "Times" heute als besonders problematisch bezeichnet: eine Titelgeschichte vom 20. Dezember 2001 über einen irakischen Wissenschaftler, der im Detail über unterirdische Produktionsstätten für chemische und biologische Kampfstoffe berichtete. Und eine weitere vom 8. September 2002, in dem Vertreter der US-Regierung davon sprachen, dass der Irak versucht habe, spezielle Aluminiumröhren zu beschaffen, wie man sie zum Bau von Nuklearbomben braucht.

Alles läuft auf Miller zu: Sie gilt nun als die Frau, die mit Lügengeschichten über Massenvernichtungswaffen im Irak die Begründung für einen Krieg geliefert hat. Aus Miller, der Starreporterin, wurde Miller, die Kriegshetzerin.

Es ist jetzt binnen kurzer Zeit das zweite Mal, dass sich die "New York Times" bei ihren Lesern entschuldigt. Das erste Mal ging es um einen jungen Redakteur, der vier Jahre lang Fakten und Zitate abgeschrieben, verfälscht oder erfunden hatte. Der Fall führte zu einer internen Ermittlung, deren Ergebnis vier Zeitungsseiten füllte, und dann zum Sturz des verantwortlichen Chefredakteurs Howell Raines.

Diesmal ist die Sache etwas komplizierter. Miller hat nichts verdreht oder erfunden. Für alles, was sie geschrieben hat, gibt es Recherchen und Aussagen von Informanten. Man kann noch nicht einmal sagen, dass sie es versäumt hätte, ihre Informationen bei Gesprächspartnern in der Regierung oder im Sicherheitsapparat gegenzuprüfen.

Das Problem ist eher, dass die Leute in der US-Administration, die sie um eine Einschätzung bat, oft die gleichen Quellen benutzten wie Miller. So schloss sich der Zirkel: Die "New York Times"-Reporterin bekam bestätigt, was, wie man nun weiß, Übertreibung, Halbwahrheit oder reine Erfindung war. Es ist ein Fehler, den man für so schwer wiegend halten kann, dass er weitere Konsequenzen fordert, oder für ärgerlich, aber entschuldbar - das kommt ganz auf den Standpunkt an.

Die meisten Medien hielten sich vergangene Woche mit Kritik an der "New York Times" zurück. Viele haben sich in der Frage, über welche Waffen der Irak eigentlich verfügt, selbst geirrt. Stattdessen gab es ein paar Erklärungsversuche, warum Chefredakteur Keller die Selbstkritik jetzt ins Heft gehoben hatte. Er lud durch nachgeschobene Erläuterungen zu Spekulationen geradezu ein.

"Judy ist eine unnachgiebige, furchtlose Reporterin", sagte Keller, wenn er um einen Kommentar gebeten wurde. "Es ist schon ärgerlich, wenn man zusehen muss, wie sie jetzt von diesen Medienmoralisten im Armsessel verfolgt wird, die sich noch nie in ihrem Leben in ein Kampfgebiet gewagt haben." Es klang plötzlich so, als ob er seine Entscheidung bedauere. In einigen Zeitungen konnte man lesen, er sei ursprünglich gegen jede Erklärung in eigener Sache gewesen, habe sich aber am Ende dem Druck der Redaktion gebeugt. Dass er erst seit Juli 2003 Chefredakteur ist, also für die nun in Rede stehende Berichterstattung keine Verantwortung trägt, mag Keller die Entscheidung erleichtert haben.

Verantwortlich war Raines, und daran wird auch immer wieder erinnert. Was nicht in der Hausmitteilung stand, lieferten Redaktionsmitglieder in der Woche in privaten Gesprächen nach: Dass es Raines gewesen sei, der Miller gefördert und gegen Kritik beschützt habe. Dass sein unermüdliches Drängen, besser zu sein als die Konkurrenz, die Kollegen unvorsichtig gemacht habe. Von einem "Hunger nach Scoops" sprach Ombudsmann Okret am Wochenende. Es war als Vorwurf gemeint.

Tatsächlich spricht vieles dafür, dass es auch um eine Abrechnung geht, mit dem ehemaligen Chef und den Redakteuren, die ihm zugeordnet werden. Kaum ein Chefredakteur hat die Redaktion der "Times" so gefordert wie Raines und auch zu solchen Höchstleistungen angetrieben; am Ende seines ersten Jahres gewann die Redaktion sieben Pulitzerpreise. Kein anderer hat sie aber auch öffentlich so bloßgestellt.

Unter der Überschrift "My Times" hat Raines in der Mai-Ausgabe des Reportagemagazins "Atlantic Monthly" auf 23 Seiten seine Version der Vorgänge aufgeschrieben, die im Juni 2003 zu seiner Kündigung führten. Raines schilderte die "New York Times" darin als ein Unternehmen, das in zwei scharf voneinander getrennte Kulturen zerfällt.

Da ist die "Leistungskultur", wie man sie in einem Blatt wie der "Times" erwartet. Daneben gibt es die - zahlenmäßig überlegene - "Klagekultur", getragen von einem Haufen saturierter, selbstgefälliger Redaktionsbeamter, die beschlossen haben, dass man auch mit halb so viel Arbeit durchs Leben kommt, und die sich nicht im mindesten daran stören, wenn sie beim Wettlauf um Neuigkeiten als Zweiter ins Ziel trudeln. "Bei der `Times` ist es ähnlich wie in Harvard", schrieb Raines, "es ist äußerst schwer reinzukommen, aber fast unmöglich rauszufliegen."

Raines war angetreten, die Schlagzahl des Blattes zu erhöhen. Er forderte eine Abkehr von dem, was er "Mañana-Journalismus" nannte, und wenn man ihm glauben kann, dann war es dieses Drängen, das am Ende seinen Abgang besiegelte. Der Skandal um den Fälscher Jayson Blair - aus seiner Sicht nur der willkommene Anlass für eine Revolte des Mittelmaßes.

Judith Miller gehört eindeutig nicht in das Lager der Mañana-Journalisten. Kollegen schildern sie als fleißige, leistungsfähige, extrem ehrgeizige Journalistin. Sie ist eine zierliche Frau mit Pagenschnitt und einer leisen, beinah hauchenden Stimme, aber in allen Erzählungen über sie taucht irgendwann das Wort "aggressiv" auf.

So rüde Miller mit Kollegen sein konnte, so zuvorkommend und einnehmend war sie andererseits zu ihren Informanten. Nur wenige Redakteure der "New York Times" verfügen über ein ähnlich enges Netzwerk von Kontakten. Es ist vor allem diese Stärke, einflussreiche Gesprächspartner aufzuschließen und an sich zu binden, die Miller für die "Times" so wertvoll machte. Es war, wie man heute weiß, zugleich ihre größte Schwäche.

Howell Raines hat vergangene Woche daran erinnert, dass die Zeitung investigativen Reportern wie Miller einige ihrer glänzendsten Erfolge verdankt. Auch Bill Keller gab sich alle Mühe, den internen Furor in Grenzen zu halten. "Unsere Erklärung zur Irak-Berichterstattung ist kein Versuch, einen Sündenbock zu finden oder einzelne Reporter dafür zur Rechenschaft zu ziehen, dass sie damals nicht das wussten, was wir heute wissen", schrieb er in einer E-Mail an alle Mitarbeiter. "Sie ist auch nicht als Signal gedacht, dass Ihr euch künftig zurückhalten sollt. Ganz im Gegenteil. Wie Ihr vielleicht an der Berichterstattung zum Gefangenenskandal gemerkt habt, schätzen wir hart erarbeitete, hart treffende Geschichten."

Ob allerdings ausgerechnet der Fall Abu Ghureib ein besonders glücklich gewähltes Beispiel war, ist fraglich. Drei Tage brauchte die "New York Times", um die Bedeutung der Folterbilder zu erkennen und das Thema von einer der hinteren Seiten auf den Titel zu holen.

Am Abend des 28. April, einem Mittwoch, hatte der Fernsehsender CBS zum ersten Mal von den Vorwürfen gegen einzelne Soldaten berichtet und auch Fotos gezeigt. Am Samstagmorgen darauf erfuhren viele Leser der "New York Times" auch aus ihrer Zeitung vom ganzen Ausmaß der Misshandlungen. Da hatte sogar Präsident George W. Bush schon eine erste Erklärung abgegeben.

JAN FLEISCHHAUER

© DER SPIEGEL 24/2004

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June 7, 2004
SECURITY
U.S. Releases More Prisoners; Bombings Kill at Least 21 Iraqis
By JAMES GLANZ

BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 6 — American forces released hundreds of Iraqi prisoners from the scandal-ridden Abu Ghraib prison on Sunday. Violence continued through the day, with bomb blasts killing at least 21 people in a car bombing at a military base north of Baghdad and at an Iraqi police station 40 miles to the south.

But the streets reportedly remained calm in Najaf, where the Mahdi Army, a militia loyal to the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, began withdrawing Saturday as part of a peace deal worked out with American-approved Shiite clerics. Hopes that the quiet in the streets could last were raised Saturday when Mr. Sadr met with Iraq`s most revered Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

Still, in Sadr City, the Baghdad slum named after Mr. Sadr`s father, gunmen shot at and then blew up a police station that was apparently unoccupied at the time. The police station had earlier been taken over by the United States Army. Around Baghdad, there was speculation on Sunday that armed fighters returning from Najaf and nearby Kufa could spark a surge in violence here in the capital.

Those concerns were intensified by the possibility that insurgents might try to disrupt the official transfer of power from the American-led occupation to a newly appointed Iraqi government on June 30.

After dark on Sunday, two large explosions were heard in central Baghdad. The causes could not be immediately determined.

Also on Sunday, the private security firm Blackwater USA confirmed that four civilians, two Americans and two Poles, who were killed in an attack on the main road from Baghdad on Saturday, were employees of the company. The killings of four Blackwater employees in Falluja in March provoked an invasion of the town by occupation forces.

The attack at the police station in Musayyib, south of Baghdad, began when approximately 10 men in Iraqi police uniforms entered the station and then forced the local police officers into their own cells. Then the insurgents wired the station with explosives and apparently set them off when others arrived and tried to free the police officers.

A spokesman for the occupation authorities said that as many as three separate bombs might have been detonated in the attack, which occurred around 4:20 p.m.

"A portion of the front of the police substation collapsed," the spokesman said. At least 10 Iraqi police officers and 2 civilians died in the explosions, Reuters reported.

The car bombing took place early in the morning outside the gates of a major military base in Taji, north of Baghdad. Reuters reported that a group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a militant linked by the United States to Al Qaeda, claimed responsibility for the attack, which hospital officials said left at least 9 Iraqis dead and 61 injured. The group described the bombing as a suicide attack.

The release from Abu Ghraib prison began at 8 a.m., and a series of buses carrying the detainees left the site during the day as local sheiks stood by.

The prison, west of Baghdad, become infamous when photographs of Iraqi prisoners being humiliated and abused were made public in April. An occupation spokesman said that about 320 prisoners had been released from Abu Ghraib during the day and that 3,100 remained under detention.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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CQ TODAY
For This Father`s Day, Some Advice for the First Son
By Craig Crawford, CQ Columnist

Published: June 3, 2004


Track news that interests you.

Maybe it is time for George W. Bush to consult his earthly father.

The president told author Bob Woodward that he bypassed George Bush and paid attention to a "higher father" in his consultations on whether to wage war in Iraq. He even suggested to Woodward, with whom he cooperated on the book "Plan of Attack," that his biological dad was too much of a wimp to be worthy of giving advice.

Now that the 43rd president`s chances of winning a second term are suffering the consequences of a bogged-down war, Father`s Day this month would be a fitting time to admit that the old man was not such a dummy. After all, the 41st president commanded a winning war against the same country. And he did it with an endgame.

Gone are the days of conventional wisdom concluding that the first Bush presidency bungled the aftermath of its war against Saddam Hussein. We wondered what might have been if Bush Sr. had kept U.S. troops marching through Kuwait and north into Baghdad. Now we know.

The voters of 2004 might be assured to see their president seek counsel from a predecessor who got in and out of the Persian Gulf without things spiraling out of control. But like most kids indulging themselves on a dangerous path, Bush probably ignored his father because he knew he would not like what he heard.

Before the war, the elder Bush clearly had reservations about what his firstborn son was doing. He dodged every opportunity to plainly endorse it. His former war council, including national security adviser Brent Scowcroft and Secretary of State James A. Baker III, made no secret of their opposition.

Maybe dear old dad will resist saying "I told you so" if the president comes back for some advice. He might even offer a few pointers on how to get out of a confrontation with Iraq, since he managed to cleanly end his own war in 1991 without a nosedive in approval ratings. (Those came, to be sure, and Bush lost his bid for a second term the next year.)

Bush is not likely to give in. Woodward writes that when the president was asked whether he consults his father, he replied: "You know, he is the wrong father to appeal to in terms of strength. There is a higher father that I appeal to."

Bush appearing to dismiss his father as a weakling is stunning. It suggests the current war is at least partly about the president proving he is the stronger of the two. Could this costly adventure really be about indulging a father-son rivalry? If so, a few visits to a therapist could have avoided so much.

Bush vs. Bush

The incumbent obviously wants to be seen as the better war president. But voters might well conclude in November that the first President Bush had the right approach to making war: Strictly limit your objectives and get out fast once they are met.

The 2004 campaign implicitly turns on the country`s verdict on the two Bush presidents at war. In Democratic Sen. John Kerry, Bush will be running against the presidential nominee who much more resembles his father`s cautious style.

Bush is counting on voters to rally behind his fearless determination to carry the fight to the enemy. But on Election Day, voters might yearn for less daring-do.

What an odd turn of history this campaign has become. Kerry is much more like the president`s father on matters of war. Schooled in foreign relations since childhood and on a first-name basis with leaders around the world, Kerry is every bit the internationalist the elder Bush was in a career that included service as China envoy and CIA director. His son, by contrast, grew up choosing never to travel abroad -- except for a few party trips to Mexico. He delights in dismissing the opinion of foreigners.

With the confidence of youth, the current president damned the torpedoes -- apparently content that higher forces would lead us to a safe and satisfactory outcome in Iraq.

By contrast, his father tirelessly networked foreign leaders, postponing his attack until enough countries were on board to truthfully claim that the conflict was Saddam vs. the Rest of the World. No one had to get cute with language and call his U.S.-led forces a "coalition of the willing."

A lifetime in power taught the senior Bush to be intensely skeptical about military solutions. He kept the Pentagon on a tight leash and called the troops home when Kuwait was liberated, the sole and explicit purpose of the Persian Gulf War. Military hawks, apparently including his son, thought Bush erred in failing to go after Saddam once his forces were ousted from Kuwait. That could be what Bush meant in rejecting his father as the wrong one to consult "in terms of strength."

Today`s chaos in Iraq shows that Bush Sr. was right to fear the unknown in occupying that country. His own chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin L. Powell, later summed up this concern as Secretary of State to the current Bush: "You break it, you own it," he reportedly warned the president.

Despite not being interested in his father`s counsel, Bush has often justified his war against Iraq as revenge for Saddam`s 1993 attempt to assassinate his dad. He even cited it as a reason for war during a pre-invasion speech to the United Nations.

If avenging that near-miss really was a reason for this war, here`s a nifty gift idea: In the West Wing, President Bush reportedly displays the handgun Saddam carried at his capture. Mr. President, why not give the deposed dictator`s pistol to your dad for Father`s Day?

Somehow, I think that pistol will end up in the son`s presidential library instead.

Craig Crawford is a special contributor to Congressional Quarterly and a news analyst for MSNBC, CNBC and "The Early Show" on CBS. He can be reached at [phone] or at [e-mail].

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June 7, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Level With Americans
By BOB HERBERT

It`s not too late for President Bush to go on television and level with the American people about what the war in Iraq is costing the nation in human treasure and cold hard cash. Like members of a family, the citizens of a nation beset by tragedy have a need and a right to know the truth about its dimensions and implications.

Last week the Army had to make the embarrassing disclosure that it did not have enough troops available to replenish the forces fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. So in addition to extending the deployment of many of the troops already in the war zones, the Army announced that it would prevent soldiers from leaving the service — even if their voluntary enlistments were up — if their units were scheduled to go to Iraq or Afghanistan.

Thousands of soldiers will be affected by these "stop-loss orders," which is the term the Army uses. Others have said that delaying retirements and blocking the departure of soldiers who have completed their enlistments will amount to a backdoor draft.

In any event, the Army is so over-extended, stretched so dangerously thin, that most knowledgeable observers, whatever their take on the war in Iraq, have described the stop-loss policy as inevitable.

"They don`t have enough soldiers," said Senator Jack Reed, a Democrat from Rhode Island who is a member of the Armed Services Committee. "And when you don`t have enough soldiers, you have to keep the ones you have longer. And that`s exactly what they did."

The shortage of soldiers was widely recognized by insiders, but the administration never made the problem clear to the public, and never took the steps necessary to deal with it. Senator Reed, a former Army captain, told me in an interview last week that he felt the civilian leadership at the Pentagon "should have recognized very early on that we needed a bigger army and should have moved aggressively" to expand the force.

"Last fall," he said, "I sponsored an amendment along with Senator Schumer on the supplemental appropriations bill to increase the Army by 10,000, just as sort of an opening salvo. And they vociferously opposed it. They lobbied against it and they killed it."

The stop-loss policy is the latest illustration of both the danger and the fundamental unfairness embedded in the president`s "what, me worry?" approach to the war in Iraq. Almost the entire burden of the war has been loaded onto the backs of a brave but tiny segment of the population — the men and women, most of them from working-class families, who enlisted in the armed forces for a variety of reasons, from patriotism to a desire to further their education to the need for a job.

They never expected that the failure of their country to pay for an army of sufficient size would result in their being trapped in a war zone with the exit doors locked when their enlistments were up.

Meanwhile, the rest of us have been given a pass. The president has not asked us to share in the sacrifice and we haven`t demanded the opportunity to do so. We`re not even paying for the war. It`s being put on credit cards issued in the names of future generations.

For America`s privileged classes, this is the most comfortable war imaginable. There`s something utterly surreal about a government cutting taxes and bragging about an economic boom while at the same time refusing to provide the forces necessary to relieve troops who are fighting and dying overseas.

We should stop the madness. A president who is sending troops into the crucible of combat has an obligation to support them fully and treat them fairly.

How many troops, really, are needed in Iraq? And for how long? Five years? Ten years? (Many thoughtful people who initially opposed the war but believe now that it would be wrong to just abandon Iraq think the U.S. will have to keep troops there for a minimum of five years.)

There seems to be widespread agreement now that tens of thousands of additional men and women are needed in the Army. If that`s so, how much would such an expansion cost? And who would be called upon to serve?

Mr. Bush has always been quick to characterize himself as a wartime president. But he`s never been candid about the true costs of war, about the terrible suffering and extreme sacrifices that wars always demand.

Now is the perfect time to correct that failing. The nation deserves the truth.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company |

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Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr, shown Thursday, later met with the respected and influential Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani to cement a cease-fire.
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Shiite Leaders Urge Radical Cleric to Join Political Process

By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, June 7, 2004; Page A17

BAGHDAD, June 6 -- Iraq`s Shiite Muslim establishment has launched a concerted effort to transform Moqtada Sadr`s Mahdi Army militia into a political movement and enlist the defiant Shiite cleric along with his anti-U.S. followers into the political process leading to national elections next January.

The effort was the political backdrop to an agreement Friday that sealed a cease-fire between Sadr`s militia and U.S. occupation troops in the Najaf region, 90 miles south of Baghdad, after two months of bloody clashes, according to Shiite officials who helped negotiate the accord. A heralded meeting Saturday between Sadr and Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq`s most respected and influential Shiite cleric, was designed to cement the truce and show the upstart cleric and his radicalized followers that Sistani and the religious establishment respect his views, the officials said.

The recruitment effort is based on the premise that Sadr leads a significant portion of Iraq`s 60 percent Shiite majority and must therefore be part of Iraq`s postwar politics if Shiites are to become a coherent political force. As a result, it clashes with the U.S. occupation authority`s stand that Sadr is an outlaw -- a "thug" in President Bush`s words -- whose movement must be disbanded and who must stand trial before an Iraqi court on charges that he conspired in the murder of a fellow cleric.

"Moqtada Sadr must face Iraqi justice," declared Daniel Senor, a spokesman for the U.S.-run Coalition Provisional Authority.

At the same time, U.S. military officials have dropped their previous talk of capturing Sadr; he appears in the open regularly for Friday prayers. In any case, the U.S. occupation authority ends June 30, when Iraq`s interim government recovers national sovereignty, at least in name, and the decision about Sadr`s fate in theory would then fall under Iraqi jurisdiction.

Adnan Ali, a senior leader of Dawa, a Shiite religious party, said much of the trouble that U.S. forces have had with Sadr`s militia in Najaf, the neighboring city of Kufa and the Baghdad slum of Sadr City can be traced to a U.S. decision two months ago to move against his organization, close its newspaper and arrest one of his chief lieutenants. "We feel the crisis was a penalty we paid because they were left out of the political process," Ali said Sunday in an interview.

The question now, Ali said, is the degree to which Sadr will move to make sure his followers and their ragtag militia really do put away their weapons and turn their energy to political work, as discussed in the Najaf cease-fire talks. As enticement, he added, they are likely to be offered slots in a national conference of about 1,000 Iraqi leaders scheduled to convene next month to choose a legislature-like assembly of 250 to 275 members that will supervise the interim government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.

Shiite political leaders, including members of the Dawa party, are eager to bring Sadr and his followers into the process because that would reinforce chances of a dominant political role for Shiites in the government that emerges from elections scheduled for January. A split Shiite electorate, or a section of the Shiite majority that refuses to participate, could undermine the power of having a 60 percent majority among Iraq`s 25 million inhabitants, they fear.

"The unity of Shiites is very important as we are moving toward sovereignty," Ali said.

Ahmed Shaibani, a spokesman for Sadr in Najaf, said Sistani and Sadr discussed transforming the Mahdi Army into a political movement but did not come to any specific conclusion. The subject, he added, is under intense discussion among Sadr followers, Shiite political leaders and the supreme Shiite religious authorities under Sistani.

"In the next days, there will be important discussions to work out the active role of the Mahdi Army and its conversion into a political organization," said Abdul Hadi Darraji, Sadr`s spokesman in Baghdad. "But this will not happen under the authority of the occupation or the interim government. It is up to Shiite religious authorities whether they dissolve the army or convert it into a political movement."

Hassan Adhari, who runs Sadr`s headquarters in Sadr City, the Shiite-inhabited area of 3 million people in eastern Baghdad where the cleric has his base, said the militia`s members are not formally military and thus could easily participate in January`s elections as a political party. But he made it clear that while the discussions continue, Mahdi Army fighters in Najaf and Kufa will put away their weapons but not abandon them altogether.

Under the truce accord, they pledged to avoid any armed presence in the two cities and allow Iraqi police to ensure security, while U.S. forces were urged to stay away from the Shiite shrines in the area to avoid provocation.

As the Najaf area has calmed down, clashes in Sadr City between U.S. occupation forces and armed Sadr followers have erupted almost daily. Adhari said the street confrontations are likely to ease now, though, because on Sunday morning U.S. soldiers abandoned a police station they were using as a fortified outpost deep in the slum.

The station, painted pastel blue, sat empty and half-destroyed Sunday afternoon, with a crowd of young men gathered outside to view the rubble. Residents explained that Mahdi Army gunmen had set off explosives to destroy the building shortly after the U.S. soldiers left, seeking to guarantee that they would not return.

A roadside bomb exploded nearby, however, as a U.S. military convoy passed later on Sunday, Iraqi police told reporters. The blast caused no injuries to the U.S. soldiers but killed a 14-year-old boy and injured two Iraqi policemen, the Associated Press reported. Another bomb beside an avenue just outside Sadr City killed two U.S. soldiers Saturday and wounded two others. Five U.S. soldiers were killed and five were wounded Friday in an ambush in the same neighborhood.

To the north of Baghdad, insurgents set off a car bomb at a base shared by U.S. and Iraqi military personnel on Sunday, killing nine people. More than 20 others were wounded, U.S. officers on the scene told reporters. The blast was part of an intensified campaign of shootings and bombings in the weeks leading up to June 30, but did not appear connected to the situation in Sadr City.

Assailants using automatic rifles killed seven policemen Saturday after taking over a police station in Musayyib, 40 miles south of Baghdad, witnesses said Sunday. Before they left, the insurgents planted timed explosives that went off and killed four civilians who had come later to see what happened to the policemen, they added.

Special correspondents Huda Ahmed Lazim in Baghdad and Saad Sarhan in Najaf contributed to this report.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Iraqi Civil Defense Corps officers secure an area along the Baghdad-Fallujah highway last week after a U.S. Army vehicle was attacked by Iraqi militiamen.
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Despite Agreement, Insurgents Rule Fallujah

By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, June 7, 2004; Page A15

FALLUJAH, Iraq -- The travelers entered Fallujah first through a checkpoint operated by the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, a U.S.-trained paramilitary unit meant to add muscle to the American-led occupation. The men in black berets distractedly waved cars past, onto the city`s main street.

Then it became apparent who was really in charge. A few yards in, wild-eyed young men in masks pulled cars over at will, searched them and demanded identification documents. No one could leave or enter without passing muster. Other groups of fighters in masks roamed side streets and alleys, brandishing rifles at all sorts of angles.

It was not supposed to be like this. Under an agreement made last month with U.S. Marine commanders, a new force called the Fallujah Brigade, led by former officers from Saddam Hussein`s demobilized army, was to safeguard the city. The unruly gunmen -- many of them insurgents who battled the Marines through most of April -- were supposed to give way to Iraqi police and civil defense units.

Instead, the brigade stays outside of town in tents, the police cower in their patrol cars and the civil defense force nominally occupies checkpoints on the city`s fringes but exerts no influence over the masked insurgents who operate only a few yards away.

The Marines gave the brigade the task of apprehending the killers of four American contractors whose bodies were burned, mutilated and hung from a bridge in March, capturing foreign fighters and disarming the insurgents. None of that has happened.

President Bush endorsed the Fallujah solution on the grounds that it made "security a shared responsibility." But the sight of insurgents still in control of byways and the kidnapping of foreigners and Iraqis with impunity suggests that they are sharing their power with no one.

Moreover, continuing mayhem on Fallujah`s outskirts raises the question of whether the Americans have simply created a safe haven for anti-occupation fighters. On Saturday, a Fallujah-based group calling itself the Mujaheddin Battalions announced it was transferring its fight to Baghdad -- but was still committed to the truce in its home city.

Fallujah byways are a hell of roadside bombs and ambushes. On Friday, an armored sport-utility vehicle carrying this Washington Post reporter and his driver was attacked close to Fallujah on the main highway to Baghdad. Four men in an orange-and-white taxi pumped dozens of bullets from AK-47 assault rifles into the vehicle for more than two minutes, each round causing a loud thump on the vehicle`s metal plating and reinforced windows. They shot from behind, from in front and from the sides, where their determined frowns and mustached faces were clearly visible, as they and we weaved down the highway at 90 mph. The fusillade stopped when the SUV, its back tires missing and its rear windows shattered, spun out of control. The gunmen sped down the road, evidently thinking their mission was accomplished. Neither the driver nor the reporter was injured.

Marines were once determined to put an end to the threats in and around Fallujah. After the April fighting, they were poised to stage a full-blown assault on Fallujah, but a public outcry over casualties and calls from Iraqi allies for a negotiated solution led to the new arrangement. A similar dynamic has slowed the U.S. pursuit of Shiite Muslim rebels in southern Iraq, where fear of igniting a broader revolt has stayed the hand of U.S. forces. So far, two cease-fires have been called in the south.

In Fallujah, despite the compromise, the Marines` brash adversaries dominate the streets. Yet no U.S. offensive is in the works.

"We don`t intend to go in wholesale. There`s no doubt we could clear Fallujah out, but to what end?" asked Col. Larry Brown, an operations officer with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force camped outside the city. "We measure progress in small steps. We prefer to bring them back into the fold slowly. It is a good sign that Iraqis are handling their problems."

Brown acknowledged that Marines were concerned that Fallujah could become a guerrilla staging area, but said, "it is only supposition that Fallujah is a sanctuary for insurgents. If it is in any way, then the deal`s off. There is probably a small contingent of hard-core gunmen there," he said.

"Inevitably, if we went in, there would be a lot of collateral damage. People would defend their homes. We would only go as a last resort," Brown said.

Fallujah, about 35 miles west of Baghdad in an area known as the Sunni Triangle, has been a center of anti-occupation rebellion among Sunni Muslims for more than a year. It is a city renowned for smugglers and for supplying recruits for Hussein`s army and security services. It is also known for piety; residents call Fallujah "the city of 100 mosques," several of which were used as redoubts for fighters firing on Marines.

Since the truce, Islam has emerged openly as a potent force, according to Brown and Iraqis familiar with the city. Islamic law, or sharia, is beginning to take root, to the point where clandestine vendors of alcohol have been flogged and paraded naked on the street; beauty salons have been shut down and barbers told to eschew Western cuts and not shave off beards. Among strict Muslims, beards are a requirement.

Foreigners have frequently been kidnapped by gangs of masked gunmen, who have released their captives only in response to requests by religious leaders.

On Friday, masked men in Fallujah handed out a manifesto signed by 18 groups with names such as the God Is Great Battalions, the Muhammad Messenger of God Forces, the Islamic Resistance Brigades and the Jihad Battalion. They rejected Iraq`s newly named interim government and accused the United States of "acts of killing, destruction, violation of holy places and organized plunder."

"America shall reap, with God`s help, what it has sown," the document said. It pledged to "continue resistance in all its forms as the only way to achieve victory."

Fallujah residents who supported the creation of the U.S.-backed Fallujah Brigade said the city was unsettled but not out of control. Jasim Saleh, one of the brigade`s commanders, said "it is a mystery" who was kidnapping foreigners and that he opposed imposition of Islamic law in the city. Insurgents who came to Fallujah from elsewhere are being pressured by local leaders to leave, he said, adding that the killers of the American contractors have probably already fled the city. In any case, he said, "Everyone in Fallujah condemns the mutilation."

Saleh said there was no need for the Marines to resume patrolling the city, because about 1,700 brigade members are equipped to take control. "There are still influences in Fallujah trying to spoil the accord. Many are from outside the city and some from outside Iraq, but we will soon be able to dominate Fallujah," the former army officer said in a telephone interview.

Esawi Barakat, a local tribal leader described by Marines as a power broker in the city, played down the imposition of Islamic law. Restrictions on alcohol and hairdressers only complement Fallujah`s conservative personality, he argued.

"After so many deaths, people who misbehave in front of Fallujah`s families must be punished," he said. "If you want to drink, you should go to Baghdad. Western hairstyles offend our rural tastes."

Barakat said that danger to foreigners originates with a lust for revenge after a year of turmoil that climaxed with heavy fighting in April and May. "There have been too many dead. People only think of revenge," he said. "If people discover a visitor is an American agent or traitor, they are all happy to punish him."

U.S. forces jailed Barakat for six months on suspicion of leading anti-occupation actions. He was released in April. If the city is tense, he argued, it is because residents suspect the Marines will move in again. Another tribal leader and former army general, Khalaf Aliyan Khalaf, said that keeping Marines out of Fallujah is only the first step.

"As long as the Americans are inside Iraq, there will be no security anywhere," he said.

Saleh, Barakat and Khalaf all said that forces such as the Fallujah Brigade ought to be given control of other cities in central Iraq. Brown said it was too early to expand the experiment. "The jury is still out on Fallujah," the Marine colonel said.

In Fallujah on Friday, neither police nor the brigade showed any eagerness to clear the streets of masked men. Their inaction made for a nerve-wracking trip. When my driver and I approached four policemen who were sitting in a squad car and asked them to escort us out of the city, one answered, "If we did that, they would kill us as spies, and kill you, too."

The policemen suggested that the best escape route lay on the northeast side of town, on the approach to Fallujah Brigade headquarters. As it turned out, the insurgents had set up another checkpoint there, but the gunmen manning the post remained huddled in thin shade and did not pay heed to The Washington Post`s vehicle as it passed.

At the brigade headquarters, a group of recruits stood idly among new U.S.-installed tents in a small military complex. Brigade members said that they had not entered Fallujah for several days but insisted that the masked men had no authority to stop anyone. "We are all cooperating, so it does not make any difference if we are there or not," said one guard.

The brigade has been billed as a trained unit of former Iraqi soldiers, with some additions of Fallujah fighters. At their base, a group of brigade members appeared to be unimpressed by their chain of command. They repeatedly interrupted a portly man, who said he was the commander on duty, when he advised us to move north, away from the city. The men insisted instead on escorting us back into Fallujah, and from there, would lead us to the highway. They said there was no way to get on the road to Baghdad by heading north. "Come with us. We will protect you, no problem," a bearded man said.

The suggestion appeared odd, since the Fallujah police had said there was a gravel on-ramp to the highway just a few miles north of the brigade camp. We turned down the offer.

Instead, we decided to follow a U.S. military convoy just a few hundred yards away. The convoy had stopped because someone had spotted a roadside bomb, and the troops were waiting for engineers to arrive and blow it up. The Fallujah Brigade members then tried to block the Post vehicle from proceeding when the U.S. troop convoy moved out. They allowed us to pass only when a U.S. military Humvee topped by a menacing machine gun rolled back to the brigade headquarters to see what was going on.

On the highway, the military convoy peeled off to travel to its home base just east of Fallujah. The Washington Post vehicle continued toward Baghdad. Ten miles down the road, the orange-and-white taxi carrying the gunmen appeared and began firing.

Despite damage to the vehicle, it eventually limped to Abu Ghraib prison, about 20 miles west of Baghdad, where U.S. military police gave us refuge. Few residents of the notorious facility probably ever entered the compound as happily as we did.

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Remedies for Prisoner Abuse



Monday, June 7, 2004; Page A22

THE ONLY WAY to staunch the continuing damage of the prisoner abuse scandal is for the Bush administration to fully document and publicly report on the dozens of cases of homicide and physical abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan, prosecute all those directly responsible, and hold accountable the senior military and civilian officers whose decisions and policies led to the lawlessness. President Bush should meanwhile rewrite prisoner interrogation policies so that they conform to U.S. and international law and should publish the revised procedures so that Americans, and the world, can be assured of their propriety.

For now, there is little reason to hope for such essential corrective actions. On the contrary: There is disturbing evidence that senior U.S. military commanders ignored or covered up serious crimes against prisoners, including homicides, until the disclosure of shocking photographs from the Abu Ghraib prison forced them to act, and that even now the Pentagon`s intent is to restrict charges to a small number of mostly low-ranking soldiers and resist all scrutiny of senior commanders and policies. Mr. Bush, for his part, continues to damage his credibility and America`s global prestige by insisting that the trouble concerns only a handful of soldiers at one prison in Iraq -- though more than 100 cases of misconduct in Iraq and Afghanistan have now been reported -- and to ignore the need to correct his policies.

The Pentagon boasts that a half-dozen investigations related to the prisoner abuses are underway, in addition to criminal procedures. But these studies are narrow, undermined by conflicts of interest, and leave large areas uncovered -- particularly the possible culpability of senior officers. One officer, Maj. Gen. George R. Fay, the deputy chief of Army intelligence, has been charged with investigating the interrogators in his own chain of command. He is likely to recommend action against a couple of intelligence officers, but he is not capable of seriously reviewing the decisions and policies he or his superiors made. Only one review includes figures outside the military chain of command, but this advisory panel, including two former secretaries of defense, has a mandate only to advise Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld about gaps in existing inquiries and possible changes in policy, and it has only two months to report.

The advisory panel could play an important role if it pointed out to Mr. Rumsfeld what is clear to most outside experts: Credible investigations of both the criminal cases and the chain of command will require high-level and independent reviews. Regarding the abuse cases, this could take the form of a military court of inquiry headed by a senior officer outside Army intelligence or Central Command, which oversees Iraq. Such a panel could conduct a fresh review of the cases and determine, for example, whether it was correct to close dozens of them without any charges being brought. It could also find out why a number of prisoner death cases remained dormant -- with no death reports filed and in several cases no autopsies conducted -- until after the release of the Abu Ghraib photos.

A separate independent investigation is needed to probe how the Bush administration altered standard Army interrogation policies after 2001 and whether the new policies helped to create the climate of lawlessness that clearly prevailed in a number of detention centers in Iraq and Afghanistan. The connection between CIA interrogations and other secret operations and the abuse of foreign detainees also should be established. Outside expert judgment is needed about whether the secret interrogation techniques now approved for use -- reportedly including hooding, placing prisoners in stress positions, sleep deprivation and intimidation by dogs -- are legal under the Geneva Conventions or related U.S. laws.

Since the administration is unwilling to undertake such a review, Congress must act. Under the leadership of Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), the Senate Armed Services Committee has made a start at this, and Mr. Warner has promised more public hearings. But a means is needed to draw conclusions, hold officials accountable and take corrective action -- including the rewriting and disclosure of interrogation policies. Even as the committee`s probe continues, Mr. Warner and other congressional leaders should consider how those tasks can be accomplished.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Kerry the Realist

By Jackson Diehl

Monday, June 7, 2004; Page A23

This year`s presidential election so far offers a choice in foreign policy, between a neo-Wilsonian who has made the promotion of democracy and human rights a central tenet and an old-school realist who believes it more sensible to focus on managing concrete threats to U.S. security. Sounds familiar: Only the realist is not a hard-nosed Republican standing up to a fuzzy-headed Democrat, but John F. Kerry challenging George W. Bush.

Last week Bush made another in a series of speeches that rank him with Woodrow Wilson and Jimmy Carter -- at least on a rhetorical scale -- in his zealous commitment to spreading freedom where it does not now exist. "Some who call themselves realists question whether the spread of democracy in the Middle East should be any concern of ours," he said at the Air Force Academy. "But the realists in this case have lost contact with a fundamental reality. . . . America is always more secure when freedom is on the march."

Bush might have been answering the grumblers in his own party -- but he also could have been talking back to Kerry, who in an interview with several of us from The Post 10 days ago was all but Nixonian in his realpolitik. Yes, democracy was an important goal for the Muslim world, he said. But it would not be his first priority for Egypt; nor for Saudi Arabia; nor for Pakistan. Nor, for that matter, would promoting human rights be at the top of his agenda for Russia or China.

I found Kerry impressive in his command of the substance of foreign affairs and thoughtful in his analysis of issues and leaders. He has smartly focused attention on Bush`s greatest weakness, which is his disruption of U.S. alliances, and he is more than plausible in arguing that it will take a new president to repair the damage. But Kerry seems to lack an animating vision of America`s role in the world. What he offered, at least on the evening we talked to him, was diligent crisis management and problem-solving, informed by what sounds a lot like the conventional thinking of a pre-Sept. 11 State Department.

Bush`s foreign policy was similarly modest, though more unilateralist, three years ago; now, his neo-Wilsonian passion (fueled, like Wilson`s, in part by religious conviction) prompts increasingly audible gasps from Republican conservatives. What`s been less noticed so far is that Kerry`s realism is provoking a parallel anguish in the Democratic foreign-policy apparat, where most of Wilson`s heirs still reside. "A lot of Democrats have been appalled," one foreign-policy maker in the Clinton administration told me. "Kerry doesn`t seem to realize that September 11th changed Democrats, too."

For the disgruntled in both parties, one urgent question is whether this emerging philosophical difference has any practical effect. Outside Iraq, Bush hasn`t tried very hard to put his democratic ideas into practice. And Kerry, for now, isn`t contesting Bush`s plan for Iraqi elections, though he has said that "stability" rather than democracy should be the bottom-line U.S. goal there. Even Bush officials who fully embrace his Wilsonianism (and not all do) will cheerfully admit that there are no plans to change the old realist policies toward Egypt or Pakistan. "In the short term," Bush said last week, "we will work with every government in the Middle East dedicated to destroying the terrorist networks."

The Bush Wilsonians nonetheless argue that their boss`s vision makes a difference. First, they say, rhetoric alone has an impact when it comes from a powerful U.S. president: Democracy campaigners and human rights advocates in places such as Egypt have had noticeably more room to operate since Bush embraced their cause. Second, by setting democracy as the goal, Bush creates a different climate for day-to-day decision-making in the bureaucracy. At a minimum, officials have to worry about how to dodge charges of hypocrisy when dictators are coddled.

One consequence is that strongmen of lesser importance -- such as, say, Tunisia`s -- get a lecture from the president about reform when they visit Washington, rather than a routine pat on the back. Another is that even strongmen of larger importance, like Egypt`s, are occasionally forced to release a prominent political prisoner or register a human rights group even if they get a pass on larger reforms. "In the longer term," Bush said, "we will expect a higher standard of reform and democracy from our friends in the region."

Democratic Wilsonians may console themselves that such gains are not worth the downside of Bush`s version of democracy promotion -- above all, the stunning incompetence of its application in Iraq. Indeed, Bush has done much to discredit modern Wilsonianism, so much so that Kerry`s cautious sobriety looks considerably more attractive than it otherwise might. That still leaves the question: If Bush is defeated in November, who will press the cause of democracy in the Middle East? By his own account, it probably won`t be John Kerry.

© 2004 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
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Sunday, June 06, 2004

Reagan`s Passing

I did not say anything yesterday about Ronald Reagan`s death. The day a person dies he has a right to be left alone.

But yesterday is now history, and Reagan`s legacy should not pass without comment.

Reagan had an ability to project a kindly image, and was well liked personally by virtually everyone who knew him, apparently. But it always struck me that he was a mean man. I remember learning, in the late 1960s, of the impact Michael Harrington`s The Other America had had on Johnson`s War on Poverty. Harrington demonstrated that in the early 1960s there was still hunger in places like Appalachia, deriving from poverty. It was hard for middle class Americans to believe, and Lyndon Johnson, who represented many poor people himself, was galvanized to take action.

I remember seeing a tape of Reagan speaking in California from that era. He said that he had heard that some asserted there was hunger in America. He said it sarcastically. He said, "Sure there is; they`re dieting!" or words to that effect. This handsome Hollywood millionnaire making fun of people so poor they sometimes went to bed hungry seemed to me monstrous. I remember his wealthy audience of suburbanites going wild with laughter and applause. I am still not entirely sure what was going on there. Did they think Harrington`s and similar studies were lies? Did they blame the poor for being poor, and resent demands on them in the form of a few tax dollars, to address their hunger?

Then when he was president, at one point Reagan tried to cut federal funding for school lunches for the poor. He tried to have ketchup reclassified as a vegetable to save money. Senator Heinz gave a speech against this move. He said that ketchup is a condiment, not a vegetable, and that he should know.

The meanness was reflected, as many readers have noted, in Reagan`s "blame the victim" approach to the AIDS crisis. His inability to come to terms with the horrible human tragedy here, or with the emerging science on it, made his health policies ineffective and even destructive.

Reagan`s mania to abolish social security was of a piece with this kind of sentiment. In the early 20th century, the old were the poorest sector of the American population. The horrors of old age--increasing sickness, loss of faculties, marginalization and ultimately death--were in that era accompanied by fear of severe poverty. Social security turned that around. The elderly are no longer generally poverty-stricken. The government can do something significant to improve people`s lives. Reagan, philosophically speaking, hated the idea of state-directed redistribution of societal wealth. (His practical policies often resulted in such redistribution de facto, usually that of tossing money to the already wealthy). So he wanted to abolish social security and throw us all back into poverty in old age.

Reagan hated any social arrangement that empowered the poor and the weak. He was a hired gun for big corporations in the late 1950s, when he went around arguing against unionization. Among his achievements in office was to break the air traffic controllers` union. It was not important in and of itself, but it was a symbol of his determination that the powerless would not be allowed to organize to get a better deal. He ruined a lot of lives. I doubt he made us safer in the air.

Reagan hated environmentalism. His administration was not so mendacious as to deny the problems of increased ultraviolet radition (from a depleted ozone layer) and global warming. His government suggested people wear sunglasses and hats in response. At one point Reagan suggested that trees cause pollution. He was not completely wrong (natural processes can cause pollution), but his purpose in making the statement seems to have been that we should therefore just accept lung cancer from bad city air, which was caused by automobiles and industry, not by trees.

In foreign policy, Reagan abandoned containment of the Soviet Union as a goal and adopted a policy of active roll-back. Since the Soviet Union was already on its last legs and was not a system that could have survived long, Reagan`s global aggressiveness was simply unnecessary. The argument that Reagan`s increases in military funding bankrupted the Soviets by forcing them to try to keep up is simply wrong. Soviet defense spending was flat in the 1980s.

Reagan`s aggression led him to shape our world in most unfortunate ways. Although it would be an exaggeration to say that Ronald Reagan created al-Qaeda, it would not be a vast exaggeration. The Carter administration began the policy of supporting the radical Muslim holy warriors in Afghanistan who were waging an insurgency against the Soviets after their invasion of that country. But Carter only threw a few tens of millions of dollars at them. By the mid-1980s, Reagan was giving the holy warriors half a billion dollars a year. His officials strong-armed the Saudis into matching the US contribution, so that Saudi Intelligence chief Faisal al-Turki turned to Usamah Bin Laden to funnel the money to the Afghans. This sort of thing was certainly done in coordination with the Reagan administration. Even the Pakistanis thought that Reagan was a wild man, and balked at giving the holy warriors ever more powerful weapons. Reagan sent Orrin Hatch to Beijing to try to talk the Chinese into pressuring the Pakistanis to allow the holy warriors to receive stingers and other sophisticated ordnance. The Pakistanis ultimately relented, even though they knew there was a severe danger that the holy warriors would eventually morph into a security threat in their own right.

Reagan`s officials so hated the Sandinista populists in Nicaragua that they shredded the constitution. Congress cut off money for the rightwing death squads fighting the Sandinistas. Reagan`s people therefore needed funds to continue to run the rightwing insurgency. They came up with a complicated plan of stealing Pentagon equipment, shipping it to Khomeini in Iran, illegally taking payment from Iran for the weaponry, and then giving the money to the rightwing guerrillas in Central America. At the same time, they pressured Khomeini to get US hostages in Lebanon, taken by radical Shiites there, released. It was a criminal cartel inside the US government, and Reagan allowed it, either through collusion or inattention. It is not a shining legacy, to have helped Khomeini and then used the money he gave them to support highly unsavory forces in Central America. (Some of those forces were involved after all in killing leftwing nuns).

Although Reagan`s people were willing to shore up Iranian defenses during the Iran-Iraq War, so as to prevent a total Iraqi victory, they also wanted to stop Iran from taking over Iraq. They therefore winked at Saddam`s use of chemical weapons. Reagan`s secretary of state, George Schultz, sent Donald Rumsfeld to Baghdad twice, the second time with an explicit secret message that the US did not really mind if Saddam gassed the Iranian troops, whatever it said publicly.

I only saw Reagan once in person. I was invited to a State Department conference on religious freedom, I think in 1986. It was presided over by Elliot Abrams, whom I met then for the first time. We were taken to hear Reagan speak on religious freedom. It was a cause I could support, but I came away strangely dissatisfied. I had a sense that "religious freedom" was being used as a stick to beat those regimes the Reagan administration did not like. It wasn`t as though the plight of the Moro Muslims in the Philippines was foremost on the agenda (come to think of it, perhaps no Muslims or Muslim groups were involved in the conference).

Reagan`s policies thus bequeathed to us the major problems we now have in the world, including a militant Islamist International whose skills were honed in Afghanistan with Reagan`s blessing and monetary support; and a proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, which the Reagan administration in some cases actually encouraged behind the scenes for short-term policy reasons. His aggressive foreign policy orientation has been revived and expanded, making the US into a neocolonial power in the Middle East. Reagan`s gutting of the unions and attempt to remove social supports for the poor and the middle class has contributed to the creation of an America where most people barely get by while government programs that could help create wealth are destroyed.

Reagan`s later life was debilitated by Alzheimer`s. I suppose he may already have had some symptoms while president, which might explain some of his memory lapses and odd statements, and occasional public lapses into woolly-mindedness. Ironically, Alzheimer`s could be cured potentially by stem cell research. In the United States, where superstition reigns over reason, the religious Right that Reagan cultivated has put severe limits on such research. His best legacy may be Nancy Reagan`s argument that those limitations should be removed in his memory. There are 4 million Alzheimers sufferers in the US, and 50% of persons living beyond the age of 85 develop it. There are going to be a lot of such persons among the Baby Boomers. By reversing Reaganism, we may be able to avoid his fate.

posted by Juan @ 6/6/2004 12:57:54 PM

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Ich habe 3 Artikel zu Reagan eingestellt:
# 17345, # 17319 und # 17312.
Der ausgewogeneste ist der Bericht aus der LATimes # 17312

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Towering he wasn`t

Peter Preston
Monday June 7, 2004

The Guardian
He was a "truly great American", a "towering figure" of our age. And so on and so forth from Lady Thatcher, Michael Howard, George W and all who scurried yesterday to bury Ronald Reagan in an oleaginous ocean of tribute. How deep is that ocean? It`s amazing how fast your feet touch rocky bottom.

Reagan, for the moment, has a particular niche in American folklore. He came after poor careworn Jimmy Carter; he was sunshine after rain. He made deft jokes and read an autocue better than any president before or since. He smiled and aw-shucked easily, a man for picket fences and pecan pie, a Frank Capra hero picnicking on the White House lawn. The good times rolled through his eight years of power. And - oh yes! - he was that strong guy who "won" the cold war.

Is this enough for towering greatness? Aw shucks! It barely stands straight, let alone tall. There was one hero of Ronnie`s two terms, one really strong fellow who held everything together: but his name was Jim Baker, the brilliant political manager and mate of Vice-President George Bush, who became chief of staff when a crisis of competence threatened everything, when Donald Regan bailed out and the Oval Office turned pear-shaped. James A Baker III was, for a while, the best president America never had; and Ronnie, upstairs snoozing or watching TV, was a passenger riding his luck.

There is no point, simply no point, in turning Ronald Reagan into some mythic master now that he`s gone. I travelled campaign trails with him and laughed at his jokes. He pressed flesh and political buttons better than most. He was Hollywood on a smalltown visit. Maybe, post-Carter, the US psyche did need bathing in such balm for a while. But the reputation which flows from there is hokum squared.

A champion of individual freedom? See how Reagan, the boss of the Screen Actors Guild, kept his head well down when McCarthy started firing poisonous darts. An ideal family man? Only if you like your families dysfunctional (and your Christianity stillborn again). A man of action? When the going got rough in Beirut then (to use the jargon) he cut and ran. A warrior? Only if you reckon invading Grenada was tougher than a friendly against Iceland. A wizard of detail? He didn`t understand Iran-contra from start to finish: a non-plotter who couldn`t follow the plot.

Wasn`t he, though, a true ideologue of the conservative way? That was a rubbish claim even Mrs T found hard to make with a straight face. Ronald Reagan`s sunlit years of prosperity were built from the straw of ballooning deficits. Live now, let old George Bush pay later. He believed in tax cuts, but not hard choices. There was no pain to his gain, no structural reform, no reality of change to be battled through. He let others pick up his tabs.

And as for "winning" that last war but two, the cold one before drugs and terrorism ... did Reagan, piling cruise missiles into Europe, dreaming star satellite dreams of zapping bad hats, truly win anything? Didn`t he just watch the Soviet Union self-destruct on his watch? Was Reagan around for the Prague spring which told the first story of an empire`s disintegration? Did he choose the moribund gerontocracy of Brezhnev and Chernenko?

The plain fact, which nobody discerned, is that everything the west said about unsustainable economic systems and ramshackle bureaucracies was right: the plain fact was that Soviet hegemony couldn`t last - and the "war" was mostly one of mutual incomprehension. Give Ronnie credit for not dropping the ball near the basket, but don`t make him FDR in the process.

No, the towering lesson of Reagan`s tenure was rather different. It was about what the job amounted to and how you needed to do it. Since the Warren Harding and Coolidge disasters 30 or more years ago, America had expected and wanted more: a Roosevelt to be revered, a Truman to be sustained, an Ike of experience and Kennedy filled with hope, a cute LBJ and clever (if tricky) Dicky. Some of those choices went well and some were lousy, but the hurdle of effort and expertise was set ever higher. Could the system keep on producing?

And then, ambling out of Sacramento as his 70s neared, came Ronnie and Nancy in matching check shirts. Their record may, on examination, have been scratched and fuzzy, their friends too fat and nest-feathered for comfort. But they talked the talk, seemed to walk the walk, and made the White House manageable again. You didn`t need to engage brain if you could hire it for the duration. You didn`t need to be bright or brilliant. Aw, shucks! They made George W possible.

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RONALD BROWNSTEIN WASHINGTON OUTLOOK
Kerry Casts Himself as Solid Realist and Bush as Dreamy Idealist
Ronald Brownstein

June 7, 2004

In presidential campaigns, it`s common for Republican candidates to portray Democrats as naive, dreamy and utopian in their approach to foreign affairs.

Democrats see the world as they would like it to be, not how it is. They dissipate America`s strength on idealistic causes unrelated to core national interests. They confuse foreign policy with social work.

To one degree or another, every Republican presidential candidate since the 1970s has employed those arguments. They were a central element of the case George W. Bush made against Al Gore and the Clinton administration.

And now these same arguments are moving to the forefront of John F. Kerry`s case against President Bush.

Inverting the usual debate between the parties, Kerry is increasingly arguing that Bush has committed America to unrealistic goals and unsustainable costs through his crusade to democratize the Middle East.

Kerry is presenting himself as the flinty realist who will be less ideological and more practical than Bush, more skeptical of what he calls "foreign adventures" and more disciplined in establishing achievable goals for America in an imperfect world. Unstated but implied is that he would be more cautious than Bush about entangling the U.S. in another grand but grueling cause like the invasion of Iraq.

"Beware of the presidential candidate who just sort of says with a big paintbrush we`re going to make everything all right over night," Kerry said in a revealing recent interview with the Washington Post.

Kerry still says that the president has isolated America from traditional allies, complicating the war against terrorism and compelling the U.S. to bear too much of the burden in Iraq. Kerry insists as well that Bush has over-emphasized military power, while downplaying America`s economic and diplomatic tools.

But Kerry lately has focused his attacks more on Bush`s competence than his ideology in foreign policy. And as part of that thrust, Kerry is suggesting that Bush, in his zeal to remake the Islamic world, is pursuing the ideal at the expense of the essential.

Kerry first hinted at such reasoning this spring, when he said the U.S. goal should be "a stable Iraq … whether or not that`s a full democracy." In the Post interview, Kerry moved further when he argued that for now, encouraging democracy in countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan should take a back seat to ensuring cooperation against terrorism and promoting better relations with Israel.

"Sometimes we are dealt a set of cards that don`t allow us [to] do everything we want to do at once," Kerry said.

This is a very different note than Kerry struck when he began his presidential campaign. In a January 2003 speech, he stressed his commitment to democratizing the Middle East through measures such as increased aid for reformers and tying trade benefits to economic and social reform. "We must place increased focus on the development of democratic values and human rights as the keys to long-term security," he declared.

Kerry has never repudiated those ideas, but he hasn`t mentioned them much lately, either. The result has been to leave the Woodrow Wilson-like flourishes about making the world safe for democracy almost entirely to Bush, who has amplified those themes as the inability to find weapons of mass destruction clouded his original rationale for invading Iraq.

In practice, the argument between Bush and Kerry is more about priorities than goals.

Kerry aides insist he is as committed as Bush to democratizing the Middle East over the long run. But Kerry has always been dubious of Bush`s contention that forcibly deposing Saddam Hussein would trigger a democratic domino effect across the region. And now, Kerry is suggesting the push for political reform, even by other means, must be balanced against other imperatives.

In this shift, Kerry is tilting away from one Democratic tradition — Wilsonian idealism. But he is excavating another — the realism of the post-World War II foreign policy "Wise Men" such as Dean Acheson and George Kennan. These thinkers, and presidents such as Harry S. Truman and John F. Kennedy whom they influenced, were as determined to balance America`s commitments with its capacities as they were to contain the spread of communism.

"Basically, Kerry is coming back to liberal realism," says James Chace, an Acheson biographer and author of a recent article on the Wise Men`s legacy. "These men … they were very tough-minded, all of them. They were against day dreaming; they were against sentimentality."

With these emerging arguments, Kerry is appealing to a country that may be worn out with great causes after Iraq has turned out so much more costly and complex than it initially appeared. Yet he is walking a thin line. American foreign policy has always attracted the most popular support when it reflects American values. And most experts agree that without fundamental reform the Middle East will continue to incubate radicalism.

The debate between Bush and Kerry could be settling into grooves familiar from the early days of the Cold War. In a speech at the Truman Library last week, Kerry praised "the wise and patient path" that Truman and the Wise Men set "to win the Cold War without a Third World War."

The Wise Men husbanded military strength but pressed the Cold War mostly through nonmilitary means. Increasingly, Kerry is suggesting that forceful but measured approach will be his model in the war on terrorism.

Bush wants to combat Islamic terrorism with a more aggressive "forward strategy of freedom," symbolized by the Iraq invasion. In that, he recalls the Republicans immediately after World War II who rejected containment for a "rollback" of communism.

How much risk should America bear in the name of security? The choice this fall could be just as consequential as the decisions an earlier generation made half a century ago.

Ronald Brownstein`s column appears every Monday. See current and past columns at latimes.com/brownstein.




Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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COMMENTARY
We Need a Global Attack on Nuclear Proliferation
By Madeleine Albright and Robin Cook

June 7, 2004

The time has come to prevent the nightmare scenario of a nuclear attack. The rhetoric of international leaders about the spread of nuclear weapons and materials has not been matched by enough concrete action, even as Osama bin Laden declares that it is his "religious duty" to acquire and use a nuclear weapon against the West.

When the G-8 leaders meet Tuesday in Sea Island, Ga., we urge them to put aside their differences over Iraq and unite to implement a comprehensive nonproliferation strategy that includes concrete steps and increased financial commitments to control the spread of bomb-making materials and thwart the ambitions of those who would acquire them.

First, the G-8 nations — Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, Britain and the United States — must fulfill their pledge to raise $20 billion to fund the G-8 Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction. Still $3 billion short, this important effort helps Russia and other countries safely store and dispose of chemical and nuclear weapon materials.

Even if the pledges were fulfilled, there still would not be enough money to get the job done. Securing the nuclear legacy of Russia alone will cost $30 billion, and there are other stockpiles of inadequately secured highly enriched uranium and weapons-grade plutonium around the world.

Presidents Bush and Vladimir V. Putin have launched a program designed to secure fissile materials around the world. But their plan will take 10 years to complete, during which time terrorists will still be able to collect fissile materials for a bomb.

Our second recommendation therefore is that the G-8 should commit to a far more aggressive timetable — within the next four or five years — for completing this important work.

Third, the G-8 nations must bring to bear all the incentives and sanctions they have at their disposal to stop proliferation. This includes closing the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty loophole that enables states like North Korea to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of programs to produce nuclear energy.

Fourth, the G-8 leaders should pledge themselves to active, person-to-person diplomacy that can help reduce the regional tensions that could lead to the use of nuclear weapons. For example, the scaling back of the nuclear threat between India and Pakistan may have opened the door to further steps to reduce the risks of a nuclear exchange.

Fifth, the leaders must commit their nations to develop and maintain a global network linking intelligence and export control efforts with border, port and airport security to ensure that nuclear materials and technology cannot be moved undetected.

Finally, although France, Russia, Britain and the United States have taken good steps to reduce their nuclear arsenals, more must be done. A failure in this regard would encourage states that do not have nuclear weapons to rebel against nonproliferation norms out of dissatisfaction with what they perceive to be a double standard: Some states get nuclear weapons, while others do not. We call on President Bush and the United States, therefore, to stop developing new nuclear weapons such as the so-called bunker buster. The United States should also sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Together, the United States and Britain should support a fissile materials cutoff treaty that would end the production of fissile materials for use in nuclear weapons.

Given their nuclear weapons capacities, the U.S. and European countries have a special responsibility to ensure that these terrible weapons do not spread further. Before they can fulfill this responsibility, however, they must be seen as credible proponents of nuclear nonproliferation.

The steps described here would help restore credibility to the calls for global nuclear nonproliferation, and enable the U.S. and Europe to exercise the leadership that is so desperately needed to fight proliferation.

Imagine the G-8 meeting that would follow a nuclear incident. The leaders of the industrialized world would be compelled to explain how such a terrible tragedy could have happened. It is their challenge — and responsibility — to take the necessary steps now to protect us all.

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Madeleine Albright was secretary of State under President Clinton. Robin Cook was foreign secretary of Britain and is a member of Parliament.



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Tributes and tears for Reagan
POLITICS: Reagan legacy could give Bush boost
- Carla Marinucci, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, June 7, 2004

The death of Ronald Reagan, the voice of modern conservatism, has had an immediate impact on the national political stage -- giving new life to George W. Bush`s sagging campaign by shifting the focus of the 2004 presidential election.

Political observers say Reagan`s passing provides a stellar opportunity for the Bush campaign to remind voters of GOP strengths. But there are also dangerous pitfalls in the long trek to the voting booth in November.

"Bush will be front and center on the death of a national leader,`` John Herrington, secretary of energy in the Reagan administration, said about the role Bush will take this week at memorial events that can remind voters of "his association with Reagan, and Reagan policies, and his father`s association`` as Reagan`s vice president.

But former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown said Bush runs the risk of appearing diminished by comparison.

"He will do his best to try and associate himself with Reagan -- but it won`t fly," the Democrat said. "It would be as if you`re comparing a squirrel to an elephant.``

With five months to go until the 2004 presidential election, Reagan`s death has underscored both the political ties -- and the personal differences -- between the former governor of California, twice elected to the presidency, and a former governor of Texas now aiming for a second term.

Already, analysts are speculating how the political fortunes of both Bush and his Democratic opponent, John Kerry, could be affected by Reagan`s passing.

"While it`s always uncomfortable to look at a tragic event in terms of its political ramification, President Reagan`s death does provide a potential benefit to Bush in a couple of ways,`` said GOP strategist Dan Schnur. "The news coverage about Ronald Reagan`s accomplishments reminds a lot of people, particularly swing voters, why they have voted Republican in past elections. Looking back at the Reagan legacy of tax cuts and bringing freedom to Eastern Europe, there`s a national connection to the major themes that the Bush campaign is stressing.``

Kerry has had to rethink his campaign theme since Reagan`s death Saturday. The Massachusetts Democrat was expected to come to California this week for a series of high profile fund-raisers -- including a concert by Barbra Streisand and Neil Diamond in Los Angeles -- and to underscore such middle-class issues as taxes and education. But Kerry has now canceled all campaign events through Friday.

Such moves have some Republicans saying privately that Reagan`s passing presents an opportunity for Bush to halt a recent Kerry drive in the polls. They say it will "change the channel`` on the dominant story of the Iraq war, where the combination of continued casualties and prison abuses have pushed Bush`s polls to an all-time low.

"Even in his death, Ronald Reagan`s timing is incredible," said one leading GOP insider, who -- like many interviewed for this story -- spoke on condition of anonymity. "He offers the chance for Bush to resurrect himself.``

Reagan`s legacy of optimism and hope, together with his role in ending the Cold War, could remind Americans of a larger message: "There are some things worth fighting for,`` said Hoover Institution research fellow Bill Whalen. "The American people have to be reminded at all times on the stakes, on why we fight.``

And, it could fire up the GOP faithful.

"It will certainly give us a jolt,`` said Michael Davidson, who heads the California Young Republicans, voters who still idolize the late president even though most were too young to remember the Reagan presidency. "It will cause more people who were doubting to remember what Ronald Reagan stood for, and why he was important.``

Bush is expected to play a prominent role as a "national healer`` at a funeral service at Washington National Cathedral on Friday before Reagan`s body is returned to California to be interred later that evening at his presidential library in Simi Valley (Ventura County). The occasion allows Bush to focus attention on a positive tribute, while aligning himself with the luster, the stature and the affection that the former president still generates, GOP analysts said.

Some of those familiar with plans for the Republican National Convention in New York from Aug. 29 to Sept. 2 said the event is likely to become a vast tribute to Reagan -- with at least one night of prime time devoted to his honor.

"Just like the trip to Normandy or the NATO Summit, these events give Bush an opportunity to be seen as commander in chief in a way that a challenger can`t hope to be seen,`` said Schnur.

Democrat Brown agrees that "it helps (Bush), in the sense that it diverts attention from his inadequacies for one week, and that`s a tremendous help for him.``

But he warns Republicans will likely overstep if they attempt to make the GOP convention about Reagan, not Bush.

"They`re going to try their best to get (Reagan) to lie in state in New York, to try and divert attention from the product they`re trying to sell,`` Brown said. "They`re going to try to sell the Reagan legacy as the product you`re voting for. They`re going to try to push Bush into the casket."

Reagan`s popularity "was personal," Brown said. "The public would never equate Bush with Reagan. He`s not going to hold up.``

Other political observers, too, say Reagan`s death may present more challenge than opportunity for Bush.

"It focuses everyone`s attention on the legacy of the GOP, and in that sense, the comparison with Bush is not favorable," said Barbara O`Connor, professor of political communications at Sacramento State University. "Reagan was larger than life and had a consistent and coherent plan for revitalizing the country.

"That`s been one of the criticisms of this president -- that he is neither consistent nor coherent, and he doesn`t share his reasoning in the same way,`` she said. "Reagan would share (his views) so people would understand them. That`s been lacking in this administration.``

But Schnur noted that both presidential candidates suffer by comparison. "Neither John Kerry nor George Bush is going to carry the message to the American people the way Ronald Reagan did,`` he said.

E-mail Carla Marinucci at [e-mail]

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PARIS, FRANCE (IWR News Parody) - First Lady Laura Bush unveiled her new pillbox hat in Paris today to the utter amazement of Parisians. "It`s all Karl Rove`s Idea. He told me that if I was ever going to lose that `Le Frump` image, I needed to dress more like Jackie Kennedy did when she was in the White House," said Mrs. Bush.
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Saint Ronnie

19.Teil

Jun 8, 2004

CHICAGO - It`s a long way from Tampico, Illinois to sainthood. Ronald Wilson Reagan, dead at 93, made it - at least by the standards of the hagiographic, wall-to-wall, mega-festival in his honor, an ongoing psalm until at least the funeral next Friday. For hardcore conservative corporate media, and for conservative-tinted mainstream corporate media, he is now Saint Ronnie, with Nancy playing the part of a stern Virgin Mary. History has not afforded young America enough time to nurture her own St Francis, St Paul or St Matthew. So sainthood is bestowed on dead pop stars and presidents (Richard "I`m not a crook" Nixon excluded).

"View the world" is the official slogan of the Sears Tower skydeck in Chicago. Assuming efforts by Osama bin Laden and a few misguided Arab evildoers to bring it down were thwarted by the resolution of true Reagan heir George W Bush and his team, the skyline in the most all-American city of them all may not be such a bad place to, indeed, "view the world" post-Reaganism.

A human skyscraper
For scriptwriter Peggy Noonan he was a giant. For Senator John McCain he won the Cold War. For NBC`s Tom Brokaw he was larger than life. For the Chicago Tribune, he was a revolutionary.

The weekend overlapping of the copy - George W Bush - in Normandy and the original - Ronald Reagan - dying at home in California, as observed from Chicago, was enormously engaging, especially considering the Bush neo-conservatives` irrational hate of all things French. The first white men to pass through the Chicago River were Frenchmen Louis Jolliet and Father Jacques Marquette. The fabulous collection of the Art Institute of Chicago is a feast of Chagall, Kandinsky, Matisse, Gauguin, Cezanne, Degas and Monet: but Grant Wood`s 1930 "American Gothic" would be more to the neo-cons` liking. The crowning tower of the magnificent, 1925 Chicago Tribune building borrows its design from the Rouen cathedral in Normandy.

The city of big shoulders could not but give us the skyscraper and the atomic bomb. Reagan himself had big shoulders. Reading the Chicago Tribune at Lou Mitchell`s, one of the great American breakfast joints, very close to the official beginning of Route 66, America`s Mother Road, one could not but be reminded of the timeless French dictum: "plus ca change ..."

Who said the Reagan era was over? Bush, the candid cowboy, is not really daddy`s son ... he is the ideological son of Saint Ronnie. Just like Saint Ronnie, he sold the promise of a simple man, full of good sense, a man who "says what he does and does what he says". Just like Saint Ronnie with Santa Barbara, whenever he can he escapes town to cultivate a love affair with his Texas ranch (33 visits to Crawford, all or part of 233 days). Just like Saint Ronnie fought the "evil empire", Bush fights the "axis of evil". And just like Saint Ronnie swore to end communism, he swears he will destroy terrorism.

So ideology still reigns - now stripped of popular legitimacy. In 1980, Saint Ronnie was elected with 51% of the votes, and reelected in 1984 with 59% (in 49 states). In 2000, Bush actually lost to Al Gore by 500,000 votes. Saint Ronnie got 54 million votes in 1984: Al Gore got 51 million in 2000. Saint Ronnie gave America a "war" against Grenada, a mere dot in the map. Bush, a la Alexander the Great, invaded Mesopotamia.

Unlike the myth carefully orchestrated by conservatives for 25 years now, Saint Ronnie was never terribly popular. During his era, the budget deficit exploded; America`s debt exploded; social programs which benefited poor Americans went down the drain.

Observed from abroad, Saint Ronnie indeed left his imprimatur on the soul of the 1980s, in the form of social Darwinism. Social inequality became the name of the game, with America`s rich getting richer by giving very little back to the government, the middle class basically getting by, and public services descending towards levels that would provoke revolutions in Western Europe.

Saint Ronnie`s 1980s and Bush`s early 21st century are essentially the same thing (Bush, on the record, defines his "base" as "the haves" and the "have mores"): corporate heaven; low taxes; practically non-existent social services; and - Praise the Lord - all power to religion and "traditional values". Jon Margolis, the Chicago Tribune` chief political correspondent during Reagan`s years, writes that "at least a quarter of the electorate" in the US "is devoted to Reagan`s political vision". Certainly those profited from Reaganomics - which Bush senior himself defined as "voodoo economics".

But then Saint Ronnie won the Cold War. It takes someone like Joseph Nye, dean of Harvard`s Kennedy School of Government, to risk a more measured view: "Pressure by Reagan was one factor" in the fall of the Soviet empire, "but the major cause was the failure of the communist economy to come to terms with the communications revolution".

Richard Haas, now the president of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, is a realist: it was Mikhail Gorbachev who ended the Cold War after all, because it was Gorbachev who reorganized Soviet policies. Any serious Russian scholar attributes the end of the Cold War to internal Soviet politics. If this was a Hollywood movie plot, Gorbachev offered to end the Cold War and Saint Ronnie - to his credit - rose to the occasion.

When Saint Ronnie and Gorbachev met for the first time in Geneva, in 1985, some people were saying dealing with Gorbachev was worse than a pact with the devil. Among them, two neo-con stalwarts: a Pentagon official, "Prince of Darkness" Richard Perle, and a Congressman from Wyoming, Dick Cheney. As for Pentagon head Donald Rumsfeld, everyone knows today he was very close to a certain Saddam Hussein in the 1980s.

Win one more for the Gipper
In the current religious hagiography, Saint Ronnie is infallible, and incapable of doing any harm. No one will remember that in the 1960s, as governor of California, Reagan was dubbed by Berkeley students as "the fascist gun in the West". No one will remember that, referring to AIDS, according to his authorized biography, Reagan said that "maybe the Lord brought down this plague because illicit sex is against the ten commandments". No one will remember that by the end of the 1980s, Americans` real wages were down. No one will remember that Reaganism was anti-civil rights and pro-apartheid South Africa.

No one will remember that Afghan mujahideen - who later changed into al-Qaeda allies - were received in the White House and praised by Reagan in person. Nicaraguans don`t have much to celebrate either: Reaganism led to more than 30,000 dead in Nicaragua, victims of the dreaded Contras. Nicaragua, according to Reagan, was about to invade Texas. As for the Iran-Contras debacle, Reagan first denied everything, then denied that the deal was part of an operation to free American hostages, and finally denied denying there was a deal, while denying he knew anything about it.

These, of course, are minor blemishes. How not to miss Saint Ronnie? He managed to reunify America - after Vietnam and Watergate - with his "infectious idealism" and "true charisma", as pundits never get tired of saying. Compared to the current, bitter polarization of America, that was quite an achievement.

So under the spell of Frank Lloyd Wright`s skyscrapers and Buddy Guy`s electric blues at the city of big shoulders, one is reminded once again of Karl Marx: history does not repeat itself. America instinctively knows it: the overwhelming Reagan nostalgia seems to indicate that the original was much better than the copy. So what do "the American people" really think? A true representative of "the American people" is to be found right here at the crossroads of the settled East and the wide-open West, not far away from the Chicago Board of Trade - where 80% of America`s agricultural produce is bought and sold. He`s not Hispanic (32% of Chicago`s population). He`s black. He`s unemployed. He`s hungry. And he`s homeless. "Reagan? Bush? Get off my back, man, they are the same, they declared war on me! Got a dime?"

Also in this series:
Bush against Bush (Apr 30, `04)
Kerry, the Yankee muchacho (May 7, `04)
You have the right to be misinformed (May 8, `04)
An American tragedy (May 11, `04)
In the heart of Bushland (May 12, `04)
The war of the snuff videos (May 13 `04)
The Iraq gold rush (May 14, `04)
The new beat generation (May 15, `04)
Taliban in Texas: Big Oil hankers for old pals (May 18, `04)
Life is a beach. Or is it? (May 19, `04)
Cuba libre (May 21, `04)
Miami vice and virtue (May 22, `04)
Georgia on his mind (May 27, `04)
Free at last? (May 28, `04)
Highway 61 revisited (May 29, `04)
Now gimme those heartland votes (Jun 3, `04)
Nerves of steel (Jun 4, `04)
A Warhol moment (Jun 5, `04) #17249 (weitere Posting Nummern)

(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact [e-mail] for information on our sales and syndication policies.)



Jun 8, 2004

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John Chuckman: Insanity In America
Friday, 4 June 2004, 11:06 am
Opinion: John Chuckman

Insanity In America

John Chuckman
June 3, 2004

It`s always satisfying to have a pet theory supported by new data. A large and authoritative study, just published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, confirms a favorite hypothesis of mine, that there is more mental illness and insanity, far more, in America than you find in other advanced societies.

The study, led by a Harvard Medical School researcher, found evidence of mental problems in 26.4 % of people in the United States, versus, for example, 8.2% of people in Italy. The researchers were concerned with matters such as lack of access to treatment and under-treatment, but for those concerned about a safe and decent world, I think the salient finding is simply America`s high percentage. The world is being led by a nation where more than one-quarter of the people have genuine mental problems.

The finding is strangely both comforting and disturbing.

It is comforting because it helps explain why Americans continue supporting a man proven wrong every time he opens his mouth, a man who has de-stabilized parts of the world in the name of creating stability, a man claiming sound business principles who has pitched the United States into deficit free-fall, and a man who arouses suspicion and fear throughout the world.

The study is comforting, too, because it helps explain an opposition candidate like John Kerry. How can liberals generate excitement over this stale, fly-buzzed doughnut of a candidate? I suppose the same way they get excited every time Bush`s polls dip by something little more than statistical noise. Perhaps the same way a man like Michael Moore - who makes gobs of money playing to the suspicions and prejudices of the paranoid segment of America`s great political market - could so eagerly embrace a crypto-Nazi like General Wesley Clark as "his candidate"?

The finding is comforting in explaining all those Americans shocked and appalled over The New York Times` recent apology for its drum-beating, pre-invasion coverage of Iraq`s non-existent weapons. Here is a newspaper that, more often than not, comes down on the wrong side of human rights, always protects Establishment interests, always ignores abuses until they can no longer be ignored, and yet it somehow retains a reputation in America as guardian of treasured values and as the nation`s newspaper of record.

Well, the "record" part is easily explained, since The Times often takes one position before an event and another after, adjusting its emphasis according to shifts in public opinion or facts discovered by someone else. With that kind of coverage, you surely do qualify as some kind of paper of record.

But nothing could be a bigger nonsense than The Times` reputation as guardian of values in a free society. Just ask Wen Ho Lee, or Richard Jewell, or the woman who accused a Kennedy of rape, or all the people who died unnecessarily at the Bay of Pigs. Go back and examine The Times at key points in the communist witch hunts or at the outbreak of the Korean War. Go back and examine its views and emphasis when President Johnson offered his Hitler-like lies about the Gulf of Tonkin. Go back and see how often The Times has done any real investigative journalism - when it mattered, not in retrospect - about subjects as vital as the FBI`s huge abuse of power during the 1960s or the shameful backgrounds of many of the country`s leading politicians. Just examine the statements of the paper`s signature columnist, Thomas Friedman, who sounds like Henry Ford condemned to bizarre re-incarnation as one the Jews he so hated.

But the finding also is quite disturbing. America, for many years to come, will dominate world affairs. The world will continue to be treated as though it were the backyard sandbox of the Bushes, Cheneys, Rumsfelds, Liebermans, Kerrys, Albrights and other privileged, selfish, and not particularly well-informed American Establishment figures.

I explain American insanity by a gene pool fouled with the heavy early migration of Puritans, mentally disturbed fanatics if we accept the rather detailed historical record in Europe, plus the immense stresses of a society run along strict principles of Social Darwinism. An almost unqualified admiration for greed now dominates American culture. Yes, Adam Smith`s "invisible hand" involved self-interest, but go back and read that thoughtful and compassionate philosopher and compare what he says to the chimpanzee screams we hear from America.

As to the stresses in American society, I refer not only to the struggle of individuals to survive there, but to the fact that the whole story of America has been one of unremitting aggression. It is the story of "a pounding fist," as Tennessee Williams` Big Daddy described himself.

Had America somehow come to be in Europe, its story would most closely parallel that of Germany and its long, belligerent effort to dominate the continent. It is only because so much of America`s aggression has been against what seemed lightly settled places - the Ohio Valley, the Great Plains, Canada, Mexico, and Hawaii - that people think any differently about it. Other places were not so lightly settled, and opposition in places like the Philippines was crushed with great bloodshed.

My criticism of the United States is not concerned with how it wishes to order its own society, but about how its activities spill over into the rest of the world. Its actions in the world too often resemble those of an ugly drunk pushing his way into your living room and puking all over the carpet.

Iraq provides a textbook example. The net effect of the invasion of Iraq is a badly de-stabilized country, now full of people who resent Americans for their brutality and arrogance, where once there were undoubtedly many who dreamily admired America at a distance. Saudi Arabia also has been de-stabilized, as many warned Bush that it would be before he set his crusaders marching. Many old friends and allies, like France or Canada, have been stupidly abused for offering sound advice and declining to join the march to hell. Tony Blair`s pathetic rag of a government hangs by threads after working against the clear wishes of the British people, and Blair has found the voice he thought he had earned in the councils of war arrogantly dismissed by Bush and his fanatics. Israel`s state-terror in the West Bank and Gaza, cheerily accepted by Bush (and Kerry), has risen to nightmarish levels, and if you think that has no connection with all the hatred for America in the world, you are either foolish or qualify as part of the more than one-quarter of Americans who need professional help.

Oil prices are high and unstable, as are American deficits. International security arrangements, those things so loved by police-mentalities but which have never been known to stop real bad guys, are becoming stupidly cumbersome and heavy-handed. Yet America still supports Bush, no matter what its small tribe of liberals chooses to believe. Knowing America`s record on small tribes, I suppose it`s healthy self-interest to pretend enthusiasm for tiny dips in Bush`s polls and for an alternative as insipid and meaningless as John Kerry.

While I am glad for the confirmation of my hypothesis, I can`t help feeling, as with so many studies, this one does little more than confirm the painfully obvious.

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BUSH ON TENET: ‘HIS FAULTY INTELLIGENCE WILL BE MISSED’

Sudden Resignation Leaves Gap in Fake Intelligence-Gathering

President Bush responded to CIA Director George Tenet’s surprise resignation today, telling reporters at the White House, “His faulty intelligence will be missed.”

Mr. Tenet, whose tenure as the head of the spy agency was often shrouded in controversy, nevertheless received high marks from the president: “When it comes to collecting unsubstantiated shreds of fake information, there will never be anyone in the same league as Mr. George Tenet.”

Mr. Bush waxed nostalgic about Mr. Tenet’s assertion that the evidence of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction was “a slam dunk,” calling that moment “a milestone in the history of phony intelligence-gathering.”

In the intelligence community, response to Mr. Tenet’s decision to resign echoed the president’s, with many fearing that his departure would leave a serious gap in the agency’s ability to gather and disseminate completely fictitious intelligence.

“The next time we have to convince the American people that we need to go to war, who’s going to be there to dig up the flimsy, completely bogus case that has to be made?” one agency official said. “That’s when you’re really going to miss George Tenet.”

But just minutes after submitting his resignation, Mr. Tenet suddenly withdrew it, saying that his decision to resign had been made on the basis of “faulty intelligence.”

“My bad,” Mr. Tenet said.

“It’s great to have George Tenet back on board,” Mr. Bush said, welcoming the CIA director back to his old job. “Whew! That was close.”

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Seen on the sidewalks of New York

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Monday, June 07, 2004
War News for June 7, 2004

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring ‘em on: One US soldier killed, one wounded in mortar attack near Balad.

Bring ‘em on: US Marine base camp near Fallujah under rocket fire.

Bring ‘em on: Three Iraqi Arabs killed in two assassination incidents in Kirkuk.

Bring ‘em on: Two Iraqi policemen killed, six wounded by roadside bomb near Ramadi.

Bring ‘em on: Iraqi police station in Sadr City attacked and demolished.

Bring ‘em on: Arab journalists ambushed near Iskandariyah.

Two Iraqis killed in accidental RPG detonation near Kut.

Great Mosque in Kufa on fire after explosions caused by detonation of insurgent ammunition.

Flip-flop. “U.S. President George W. Bush may use the Group of Eight Summit this week to offer France, Germany and Russia a share of $18.4 billion in Iraq reconstruction contracts as an inducement to help the U.S. stabilize the Arab nation…Bush effectively barred companies such as France`s Alcatel SA and Germany`s Siemens AG from bidding on postwar projects in Iraq because their countries wouldn`t take part in the invasion. ‘It`s very simple,’ Bush told reporters Dec. 11. ‘Our people risk their lives. Coalition -- friendly coalition folks risk their lives, and, therefore, the contracting is going to reflect that. And that`s what the U.S. taxpayers expect.’”

Employment report. “Centerville resident Robert Gross, a former Utah Department of Workforce Services executive director, returned home Saturday after spending the past four months helping the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority prepare Iraqi bureaucrats to put people back to work and handle other social-service needs when power is turned over to an interim Iraqi government on June 30. ‘Job availability will really begin to take off in earnest now,’ said Gross, citing the $18.4 billion in supplemental funding that will be released to private contractors to reverse the destruction of the war and years of tyranny before that. ‘It will emerge in the next 60-90 days in almost unbelievable fashion as contractors put the supplementary money to use on construction and reconstruction projects,’ he added.”

No more troops available. “The army has spent much of the past several months, in the words of a senior Army officer, ‘looking under rocks for every spare soldier’ to send to Iraq. It took formal action last week to stretch its troop strength as far as possible. According to the so-called stop-loss order, soldiers will be kept in uniform for an extra three months before and after their units` one-year stint in Iraq or Afghanistan. By unilaterally extending their enlistments by as much as 18 months, the policy will force tens of thousands of soldiers to put personal plans on hold. Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry calls it a ‘back-door draft.’”

National Guard stretched thin by Bush’s War. “With almost 40,000 troops serving in the unexpectedly violent and difficult occupation of Iraq, the National Guard is beginning to show the strain of duty there, according to interviews and e-mail exchanges with 23 state Guard commanders from California to Maine…Some Guard commanders are beginning to say they simply can`t deploy any more troops. ‘As far as New Hampshire goes, we`re tapped,’ said Maj. Gen. John E. Blair, that state`s adjutant general, or Guard commander. Of his 1,700 Army National Guard troops, more than 1,000 are in Iraq, Afghanistan or Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or on alert for deployment. And to get units fully manned to head overseas, he said, ‘we`ve had to break other units.’”

Bush administration solves troop shortage. “Late today, President George Bush and Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld announced at a brief press conference that up to 150,000 Boy Scouts from across America would be called into active duty in Iraq effective immediately.”

Commentary

Editorial: “Brace yourself, for there almost certainly will be more. About 700 Oregon guardsmen are stationed in and around Baghdad, where the three guardsmen were ambushed and killed Friday. Another 300 Oregon guardsmen with the 116th Calvary Brigade soon will be deployed there. By this fall, more than 1,000 Oregon soldiers could be in the thick of the fighting.”

Analysis: “The neocons were right about one thing: The Arab world, however fractious, is bound by strong psychological and cultural ties, and whatever happened in Iraq would have profoundly affected the whole. The trouble is that the interplay works both ways. Just as American success in Iraq would have made success likelier elsewhere, so the failure now so ominously threatening will breed failure elsewhere. Not merely does the situation in Palestine become worse because of Iraq, but the rebound makes the situation in Iraq worse too. This interaction between the region`s two great crisis zones is only the kernel of a multiplier effect that ramifies everywhere, with local troubles that have an anti-American aspect coalescing, emotionally, politically, even organizationally, in a single stream. An American disaster in Iraq has the built-in propensity to become a regional one.”

Opinion: “The shortage of soldiers was widely recognized by insiders, but the administration never made the problem clear to the public, and never took the steps necessary to deal with it. Senator Reed, a former Army captain, told me in an interview last week that he felt the civilian leadership at the Pentagon ‘should have recognized very early on that we needed a bigger army and should have moved aggressively’ to expand the force. ‘Last fall,’ he said, ‘I sponsored an amendment along with Senator Schumer on the supplemental appropriations bill to increase the Army by 10,000, just as sort of an opening salvo. And they vociferously opposed it. They lobbied against it and they killed it.’”

Editorial: “A separate independent investigation is needed to probe how the Bush administration altered standard Army interrogation policies after 2001 and whether the new policies helped to create the climate of lawlessness that clearly prevailed in a number of detention centers in Iraq and Afghanistan. The connection between CIA interrogations and other secret operations and the abuse of foreign detainees also should be established. Outside expert judgment is needed about whether the secret interrogation techniques now approved for use -- reportedly including hooding, placing prisoners in stress positions, sleep deprivation and intimidation by dogs -- are legal under the Geneva Conventions or related U.S. laws.”

Editorial: “Thus, more and more young Americans are being called to duty to continue an occupation that is unpopular, expensive and doomed to failure. Yet the Bush administration continues to press more and more Americans into the service of its misguided mission. Indeed, growing numbers of soldiers who signed up to serve for a specific number of years are finding that, when their service is complete, they cannot leave.”

Opinion: “This column will not change the course of national events; it will have no impact on the public mind. Even so, the Guardsman who wrote asked that I not forget their plight. So, this column is not to change public policy, but to speak for those North Dakota young men and women who feel trapped in a harsh country for a cause that has never been established by public discussion.”

Casualty Reports

Local story: New Jersey Guardsman killed in Iraq.

Local story: Illinois soldier wounded in Iraq.

Local story: Maine soldier wounded in Iraq.


86-43-04. Pass it on.



# posted by yankeedoodle : 5:15 AM
Comments (4)

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Bush, Hosting G8, May Offer Iraq Work to Countries He Rebuffed

June 7 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. President George W. Bush may use the Group of Eight Summit this week to offer France, Germany and Russia a share of $18.4 billion in Iraq reconstruction contracts as an inducement to help the U.S. stabilize the Arab nation.

``We`ve been working very hard to make sure that we`re doing outreach on contracts,`` Alan Larson, U.S. undersecretary of state, said in an interview May 28. ``There`s an interest in having broad, international participation in commercial aspects in helping rebuild the country.``

Bush effectively barred companies such as France`s Alcatel SA and Germany`s Siemens AG from bidding on postwar projects in Iraq because their countries wouldn`t take part in the invasion.

``It`s very simple,`` Bush told reporters Dec. 11. ``Our people risk their lives. Coalition -- friendly coalition folks risk their lives, and, therefore, the contracting is going to reflect that. And that`s what the U.S. taxpayers expect.``

Bush`s position was a mistake that spoke ``to the administration`s arrogance,`` said Steven A. Cook, a Middle East analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. With the cost of the Iraq war passing $100 billion and more than 660 servicemen killed since major combat ended May 1, 2003, Bush is now seeking more help as he prepares to return sovereignty to Iraq on June 30 and meet a deadline for elections there in January.

``My sense is we`ll give them bigger shares of the pie, either in construction contracts or in the political process,`` Cook said. ``It`s something tangible we can offer.``

Sea Island

Bush is hosting the 30th annual G8 Summit June 8-10 being held this year in the coastal resort town of Sea Island, Georgia. The meeting brings together the leaders of the world`s eight most industrialized nations: Canada, France, Germany Italy, Japan, Russia, the U.K. and the U.S., which together account for more than $24 trillion, or about two-thirds of the world`s gross domestic product.

The president intends to ask G8 members to endorse his Nov. 6 plan to promote democracy in the Middle East as a way to defeat terrorism. Bush wants to broaden the burden, Larson said, by convincing countries that opposed the war to agree to commit money or troops to post transition efforts.

``I don`t think you`re going to get that kind of a commitment from the French or Germans yet,`` said Franco Pavoncello, dean of Rome`s John Cabot University. ``Somewhere down the road they may. If Bush is expecting any immediate commitments, he`ll probably be disappointed.``

A German official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the U.S. is ``ill-advised`` to expect Germany to pitch in more aid, even troops, in return for contracts.``

French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier and Japanese policy chief Fukushiro Nukaga said their governments would also be reluctant to contribute more troops or money to U.S.-led efforts in Iraq. They are more interested in providing development aid, training Iraqi police, and helping Iraq reduce its debt.

Rebuilding Alliances

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, 60, agreed to meet privately with Bush, 57, on June 8, before the start of the two- day summit. Schroeder, French President Jacques Chirac, 71, and Russian President Vladimir Putin led the opposition to the war, citing international legal protections of sovereign rule, and have withheld sending troops to participate in peacekeeping.

``We`re still getting beyond the point where we had disagreements on Iraq,`` Bush told reporters June 1 at the White House, when asked whether he expected any commitments of assistance from France, Germany and Russia.

Purse Strings

Germany felt ``discriminated`` by a Dec. 5 memo from U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, 50, that stated the administration would limit prime contracts in Iraq to countries that fought the war, the German official said.

The U.S.-led Program Management Office, created to manage the $18.4 billion Congress appropriated in November to rebuild Iraq, said then about $12.6 billion will go toward electricity, transportation and telecommunications projects. About $6 billion will be spent on support supplies like computers and vehicles.

Halliburton Co., Fluor Corp., Bechtel Group Inc. and other U.S. companies through a closed bidding process have gotten most of the $6 billion in reconstruction contracts awarded by U.S. agencies so far. Engineering firm Hochtief AG, KSB AG, the world`s third-biggest maker of pumps, and other companies with a track record in Iraq, have been excluded.

``It created an even more entrenched sense of a political divide, and a sense that the U.S. would punish countries that opposed the war,`` said Charles A. Kupchan, National Security Council director on European affairs under President Bill Clinton who now works at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Test of Leadership

This year Bush dropped in public opinion polls against John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic candidate in the Nov. 2 election, with a CBS poll two weeks ago showing a 49 percent to 41 percent differential. As a result, Bush will try to show he can get along with world leaders on how best to fight terrorism and fulfill his promises for an independent Iraq and a stable Middle East, economists said, including Alan Rugman, an Indiana University professor who follows international affairs.

``I`d expect Bush to be unusually accommodating at the G8 summit,`` Rugman said. ``He doesn`t need dissension, he needs their support.``

The meeting among industrial leaders and a conference of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization later this month is a test of presidential leadership, Kerry said May 27. Kerry reiterated his position that the best way to improve U.S. national security is by widening alliances to help rebuild Iraq.

``There`s a presumption that Kerry would be more open to negotiation,`` said James Walston, who heads the department of international relations at the American University in Rome. ``We know that Kerry isn`t going to pull out of Iraq, but France and Germany probably think he`d be more happy to say `OK, let`s do this together guys.```

Sovereignty

Iraqi President-designate Ghazi Al-Yawar, 58, and Prime Minister-designate Ayad Allawi, 46, are scheduled to take control of an interim Iraq government at the end of the month and prepare the nation for elections in January.

At the government`s first Cabinet meeting last week in Baghdad, Finance Minister Adel Abdel-Mehdi said Iraq wants full sovereignty, including responsibility for national security.

Iraqi interim Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told members of the United Nations security council on June 3 that sovereignty should mean the interim government can ``control, administer and manage Iraq`s resources and assets`` and have a ``a leading role in mechanisms to monitor disbursements of its resources.``

Stability

The stability of Iraq will dominate the discussion at the G8 meeting primarily because the leaders say the rebuilding, estimated by insurance brokers such as London-based Willis Group Holdings Ltd. to cost as much as $500 billion over 15 to 20 years, can`t get fully under way until violence is quelled and the Iraqi people have complete oversight of their nation.

A U.S. base on the edge the northern oil hub of Kirkuk was attacked by guerillas last week, and two speedboats packed with explosives denoted within meters of a Basrah offshore oil platform April 24. Nicholas Berg, a U.S. entrepreneur seeking work in Iraq was captured and beheaded last month, and at least 33 employees of Halliburton Co. have been reported missing.

``The first issue in Iraq is the restoration of security,`` World Bank President James Wolfensohn, 70, told reporters during a trip to Moscow on June 3. ``If you cannot restore security it is very difficult to have investment.``

Security Concerns

Heinrich von Pierer, the chief executive of Siemens AG, Germany`s largest engineering company, said last week his company isn`t interested in becoming a prime contractor in Iraq right now because of the lack of security.

``We`re in the same situation as all the majors, until there`s a stable government and judicial systems there`s not a lot we can do,`` said Paul Floren, a spokesman for Total SA, Europe`s third-largest oil company.

Germany`s BDI industry federation, which represents more than 100,000 businesses, and Medef, France`s biggest business lobby group, last year said most companies would wait until Iraq has an internationally recognized government before aggressively seeking business opportunities. Other countries agree.

``The government of Japan is interested that contracts be awarded to Japanese companies if the situation allows, namely the security in Iraq,`` said Hatsuhisa Takashima, chief spokesman at Japan`s foreign ministry. ``Unfortunately the current situation in Iraq is too volatile for the private sector to go in.``

Arab Partnerships

Any progress on Bush`s attempt to promote democracy in the Arab world ``is going to be slow,`` said Richard Murphy, a former assistant secretary of state under President Ronald Reagan and now a fellow at the Council of Foreign Relation.

Bush invited Al-Yawar, Iraq`s designated president, to the G8 Summit next week to participate in the meetings devoted to discussing the Middle East, White House National Security council spokesman Sean McCormack said Friday.

Jordan`s King Abdullah II, a U.S. ally and neighbor of Iraq, to the G8 summit, as well as leaders from Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Turkey and Yemen also were invited by Bush to discuss his Greater Middle East Initiative, which seeks to spread democracy and overhaul economies and education in Arab states.

``It`s important for our partners to understand that I don`t view it as American democracy, nor do I think it`s going to happen overnight,`` Bush said. ``We`re talking about reform in their image, but reform at the insistence and help -- with the help of the free world.``

All the leaders of the G8 nations will be focused on ways to mend relations between Western countries and predominantly Muslim ones, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said May 26.

`Healing the Rift`

``There is a real issue in the relationship between the Arab and Muslim world and the West,`` Blair said in the House of Commons in London. ``It is immensely important that we look at ways a healing the rift. It will form a major part of our discussions.``

The G8 nations plan to issue a collective statement urging all industrialized nations, regardless of their position on the war to expand relations with postwar Iraq, a German government official said. The declaration will serve as basis for future talks with Arab countries on Iraq and the Arab-Israeli conflict.

In order for Bush to get what he needs, he will probably have to offer more than just contracts and financial incentives, Walston said.

``I can`t see anyone coming forward to put money in the hat unless Bush says he`s going to give up some security and political control,`` Walston said.

Japan

Japan, which began sending the first of about 600 troops to Iraq in January, wants a prominent role for the United Nations in that country, said Nukaga, the policy chief of Japan Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi`s Liberal Democratic Party. At the last G8 meeting in Evian, France, in June, Koizumi, 62, urged the UN to take a bigger role in Iraq.

In October, Japan pledged $5 billion in financial assistance to Iraq. This aid package includes $1.5 billion in grants, with the remaining $3.5 billion in low interest loans.

Japan, which is trying to tackle rising public debt, will probably want to avoid any move to win additional financial support for reconstruction in Iraq,`` said Shigenori Okazaki, a political analyst at UBS Securities Japan Ltd. in Tokyo.

Blair says he wants the interim government to be given veto over military planning by coalition troops. British commanders will keep control of their own forces, though Iraq`s interim government will have ``final political control`` over soldiers, Blair said at news conference on May 25.

Britain & France

``The transfer of sovereignty means the transfer of sovereignty,`` Blair said. ``Once it transfers, the troops remain in Iraq with the consent of the Iraqi government.``

Chirac on May 27 said he`ll press for changes to a draft United Nations resolution to mandate the ``multinational force must be limited in time.``

Foreign Ministry spokesman Herve Ladsous said France has ``always pleaded for the greatest transparency`` in handling postwar Iraq.

Italy`s Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, 67, pledged last month to keep troops in Iraq until the country ``can govern itself,`` and said he supports efforts to increase the United Nations` role there.

Overall, Wolfensohn said the quelling of violence in Iraq, an interim government and likely topics of discussion at this week`s G8 meeting show there will be equal access and opportunities in rebuilding Iraq.

John Chipman, director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London said Bush`s tone this week will be much more welcoming as his administration ``is becoming acutely aware of the fact that reputation, prestige and power can easily be squandered through mismanaged intervention and peacekeeping operations.``

Former assistant secretary of state Murphy agrees.

``In the back of Bush`s mind is Kerry`s challenge, which says `you`ve screwed up alliances that took decades to build,``` Murphy said. ``Its important for the U.S. and important for his own campaign that this summit be a success.``

To contact the reporter on this story:
Roger Runningen in Washington [e-mail].

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Glenn Hall [e-mail]

[Joerver]

Eine Auswahl an kritischem, was über Reagan erschienen ist.

Randolph T. Holhut: `Ronald Reagan`s squalid legacy`
Posted on Monday, June 07 @ 09:54:20 EDT (1752 reads)
By Randolph T. Holhut

DUMMERSTON, Vt. - The conservatives weep and wail over the death of Ronald Reagan and lionize him as a courageous visionary who`s in the same league with Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt - the president who "won" the Cold War and restored this nation`s "greatness" on the international stage.

http://www.SmirkingChimp.com/article.php?sid=16494

Robert Parry: `Rating Reagan: A bogus legacy`
Posted on Monday, June 07 @ 09:53:02 EDT (857 reads)
By Robert Parry, Consortium News

The U.S. news media`s reaction to Ronald Reagan`s death is putting on display what has happened to American public debate in the years since Reagan`s political rise in the late 1970s: a near-total collapse of serious analytical thinking at the national level.

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/060704.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/060704.html

Greg Palast: `Killer, coward, con-man: Good riddance, Gipper`
Posted on Monday, June 07 @ 09:49:23 EDT (1639 reads)
By Greg Palast, GregPalast.com

You`re not going to like this. You shouldn`t speak ill of the dead. But in this case, someone`s got to.

Ronald Reagan was a conman. Reagan was a coward. Reagan was a killer.

http://www.SmirkingChimp.com/article.php?sid=16491

Timothy Noah: `The man who taught Republicans to be irresponsible`
Posted on Monday, June 07 @ 09:48:15 EDT (763 reads)
Ronald Reagan, Party Animal

By Timothy Noah, Slate

I`ve registered as a Republican exactly once in my life. The year was 1980, and Ronald Reagan, who died today at the age of 93, was seeking the GOP nomination for president. Teddy Kennedy was challenging President Jimmy Carter for the Democratic nomination, and in Massachusetts, where I then lived, Kennedy was certain to win the primary. Better to cast my vote where it could do some good�in favor of John Anderson, who at that point was running as a Republican, and who seemed the only candidate capable of denying Reagan the nomination. Reagan was dangerous. He wanted to eliminate vast portions of the government indiscriminately, and he wanted to commit the military to ill-considered interventions abroad.

http://www.SmirkingChimp.com/article.php?sid=16490

Paul Waldman: `Looking for heroes: Why there`s no liberal Ronald Reagan`
Posted on Monday, June 07 @ 09:47:09 EDT (568 reads)
By Paul Waldman, The Gadflyer

We`ve been hearing a lot about "America`s love affair with Ronald Reagan" since the 40th president passed away on Saturday. And even though the idea that Americans were united in their love for Reagan is a myth - his popularity ratings were rather mediocre - it is undeniable that among Republican, Reagan is just short of a god, a sentiment that will only be reinforced by the tributes now rolling out.

So it might be an opportune time for Democrats to ask themselves what it is about Reagan that inspires Republicans to such heights of adulation - and why none of their national leaders of late has managed the same.

There was nothing particularly revolutionary about Ronald Reagan`s ideology; a variant of it had been presented to the country by Barry Goldwater, to little response. Indeed, the similarities between the two were substantial. Goldwater and Reagan were both "conviction" politicians. They were thought to be motivated by a well of belief that drove them forward, their quest for power not springing from mere ambition but an instrument for bringing about a particular vision of America.

http://www.SmirkingChimp.com/article.php?sid=16489

David Corn: `66 (unflattering) things about Ronald Reagan`
Posted on Monday, June 07 @ 09:46:06 EDT (995 reads)
By David Corn, AlterNet

Editor`s Note: This list of "66 Things to Think about When Flying in to Reagan National Airport" appeared in the Nation on March 2, 1998 after the renaming of Washington National Airport after Ronald Reagan. As Corn says, "the piece remains relevant today � particularly as a cheat sheet for those who dare to point out the Reagan presidency was not all that glorious and was more nightmare in America than morning in America."

The firing of the air traffic controllers, winnable nuclear war, recallable nuclear missiles, trees that cause pollution, Elliott Abrams lying to Congress, ketchup as a vegetable, colluding with Guatemalan thugs, pardons for F.B.I. lawbreakers, voodoo economics, budget deficits, toasts to Ferdinand Marcos, public housing cutbacks, redbaiting the nuclear freeze movement, James Watt.

http://www.SmirkingChimp.com/article.php?sid=16488

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Published on Monday, June 7, 2004 by the Wall Street Journal
Pentagon Report Set Framework For Use of Torture
Security or Legal Factors Could Trump Restrictions, Memo to Rumsfeld Argued
by Jess Bravin


Bush administration lawyers contended last year that the president wasn`t bound by laws prohibiting torture and that government agents who might torture prisoners at his direction couldn`t be prosecuted by the Justice Department.

The advice was part of a classified report on interrogation methods prepared for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld after commanders at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, complained in late 2002 that with conventional methods they weren`t getting enough information from prisoners.

The report outlined U.S. laws and international treaties forbidding torture, and why those restrictions might be overcome by national-security considerations or legal technicalities. In a March 6, 2003, draft of the report reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, passages were deleted as was an attachment listing specific interrogation techniques and whether Mr. Rumsfeld himself or other officials must grant permission before they could be used. The complete draft document was classified "secret" by Mr. Rumsfeld and scheduled for declassification in 2013.

The draft report, which exceeds 100 pages, deals with a range of legal issues related to interrogations, offering definitions of the degree of pain or psychological manipulation that could be considered lawful. But at its core is an exceptional argument that because nothing is more important than "obtaining intelligence vital to the protection of untold thousands of American citizens," normal strictures on torture might not apply.

The president, despite domestic and international laws constraining the use of torture, has the authority as commander in chief to approve almost any physical or psychological actions during interrogation, up to and including torture, the report argued. Civilian or military personnel accused of torture or other war crimes have several potential defenses, including the "necessity" of using such methods to extract information to head off an attack, or "superior orders," sometimes known as the Nuremberg defense: namely that the accused was acting pursuant to an order and, as the Nuremberg tribunal put it, no "moral choice was in fact possible."

According to Bush administration officials, the report was compiled by a working group appointed by the Defense Department`s general counsel, William J. Haynes II. Air Force General Counsel Mary Walker headed the group, which comprised top civilian and uniformed lawyers from each military branch and consulted with the Justice Department, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Defense Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies. It isn`t known if President Bush has ever seen the report.

A Pentagon official said some military lawyers involved objected to some of the proposed interrogation methods as "different than what our people had been trained to do under the Geneva Conventions," but those lawyers ultimately signed on to the final report in April 2003, shortly after the war in Iraq began. The Journal hasn`t seen the full final report, but people familiar with it say there were few substantial changes in legal analysis between the draft and final versions.

A military lawyer who helped prepare the report said that political appointees heading the working group sought to assign to the president virtually unlimited authority on matters of torture -- to assert "presidential power at its absolute apex," the lawyer said. Although career military lawyers were uncomfortable with that conclusion, the military lawyer said they focused their efforts on reining in the more extreme interrogation methods, rather than challenging the constitutional powers that administration lawyers were saying President Bush could claim.

The Pentagon disclosed last month that the working group had been assembled to review interrogation policies after intelligence officials in Guantanamo reported frustration in extracting information from prisoners. At a news conference last week, Gen. James T. Hill, who oversees the offshore prison at Guantanamo as head of the U.S. Southern Command, said the working group sought to identify "what is legal and consistent with not only Geneva [but] ... what is right for our soldiers." He said Guantanamo is "a professional, humane detention and interrogation operation ... bounded by law and guided by the American spirit."

Gen. Hill said Mr. Rumsfeld gave him the final set of approved interrogation techniques on April 16, 2003. Four of the methods require the defense secretary`s approval, he said, and those methods had been used on two prisoners. He said interrogators had stopped short of using all the methods lawyers had approved. It remains unclear what actions U.S. officials took as a result of the legal advice.

Critics who have seen the draft report said it undercuts the administration`s claims that it recognized a duty to treat prisoners humanely. The "claim that the president`s commander-in-chief power includes the authority to use torture should be unheard of in this day and age," said Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York advocacy group that has filed lawsuits against U.S. detention policies. "Can one imagine the reaction if those on trial for atrocities in the former Yugoslavia had tried this defense?"

Following scattered reports last year of harsh interrogation techniques used by the U.S. overseas, Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, wrote to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice asking for clarification. The response came in June 2003 from Mr. Haynes, who wrote that the U.S. was obliged to conduct interrogations "consistent with" the 1994 international Convention Against Torture and the federal Torture Statute enacted to implement the convention outside the U.S.

The U.S. "does not permit, tolerate or condone any such torture by its employees under any circumstances," Mr. Haynes wrote. The U.S. also followed its legal duty, required by the torture convention, "to prevent other acts of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment which do not amount to torture," he wrote.

The U.S. position is that domestic criminal laws and the Constitution`s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishments already met the Convention Against Torture`s requirements within U.S. territory.

The Convention Against Torture was proposed in 1984 by the United Nations General Assembly and was ratified by the U.S. in 1994. It states that "no exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture," and that orders from superiors "may not be invoked as a justification of torture."

That prohibition was reaffirmed after the Sept. 11 attacks by the U.N. panel that oversees the treaty, the Committee Against Torture, and the March 2003 report acknowledged that "other nations and international bodies may take a more restrictive view" of permissible interrogation methods than did the Bush administration.

The report then offers a series of legal justifications for limiting or disregarding antitorture laws and proposed legal defenses that government officials could use if they were accused of torture.

A military official who helped prepare the report said it came after frustrated Guantanamo interrogators had begun trying unorthodox methods on recalcitrant prisoners. "We`d been at this for a year-plus and got nothing out of them" so officials concluded "we need to have a less-cramped view of what torture is and is not."

The official said, "People were trying like hell how to ratchet up the pressure," and used techniques that ranged from drawing on prisoners` bodies and placing women`s underwear on prisoners heads -- a practice that later reappeared in the Abu Ghraib prison -- to telling subjects, "I`m on the line with somebody in Yemen and he`s in a room with your family and a grenade that`s going to pop unless you talk."

Senior officers at Guantanamo requested a "rethinking of the whole approach to defending your country when you have an enemy that does not follow the rules," the official said. Rather than license torture, this official said that the report helped rein in more "assertive" approaches.

Methods now used at Guantanamo include limiting prisoners` food, denying them clothing, subjecting them to body-cavity searches, depriving them of sleep for as much as 96 hours and shackling them in so-called stress positions, a military-intelligence official said. Although the interrogators consider the methods to be humiliating and unpleasant, they don`t view them as torture, the official said.

The working-group report elaborated the Bush administration`s view that the president has virtually unlimited power to wage war as he sees fit, and neither Congress, the courts nor international law can interfere. It concluded that neither the president nor anyone following his instructions was bound by the federal Torture Statute, which makes it a crime for Americans working for the government overseas to commit or attempt torture, defined as any act intended to "inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering." Punishment is up to 20 years imprisonment, or a death sentence or life imprisonment if the victim dies.

"In order to respect the president`s inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign ... (the prohibition against torture) must be construed as inapplicable to interrogations undertaken pursuant to his commander-in chief authority," the report asserted. (The parenthetical comment is in the original document.) The Justice Department "concluded that it could not bring a criminal prosecution against a defendant who had acted pursuant to an exercise of the president`s constitutional power," the report said. Citing confidential Justice Department opinions drafted after Sept. 11, 2001, the report advised that the executive branch of the government had "sweeping" powers to act as it sees fit because "national security decisions require the unity in purpose and energy in action that characterize the presidency rather than Congress."

The lawyers concluded that the Torture Statute applied to Afghanistan but not Guantanamo, because the latter lies within the "special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States, and accordingly is within the United States" when applying a law that regulates only government conduct abroad.

Administration lawyers also concluded that the Alien Tort Claims Act, a 1789 statute that allows noncitizens to sue in U.S. courts for violations of international law, couldn`t be invoked against the U.S. government unless it consents, and that the 1992 Torture Victims Protection Act allowed suits only against foreign officials for torture or "extrajudicial killing" and "does not apply to the conduct of U.S. agents acting under the color of law."

The Bush administration has argued before the Supreme Court that foreigners held at Guantanamo have no constitutional rights and can`t challenge their detention in court. The Supreme Court is expected to rule on that question by month`s end.

For Afghanistan and other foreign locations where the Torture Statute applies, the March 2003 report offers a narrow definition of torture and then lays out defenses that government officials could use should they be charged with committing torture, such as mistakenly relying in good faith on the advice of lawyers or experts that their actions were permissible. "Good faith may be a complete defense" to a torture charge, the report advised.

"The infliction of pain or suffering per se, whether it is physical or mental, is insufficient to amount to torture," the report advises. Such suffering must be "severe," the lawyers advise, and they rely on a dictionary definition to suggest it "must be of such a high level of intensity that the pain is difficult for the subject to endure."

The law says torture can be caused by administering or threatening to administer "mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the sense of personality." The Bush lawyers advised, though, that it "does not preclude any and all use of drugs" and "disruption of the senses or personality alone is insufficient" to be illegal. For involuntarily administered drugs or other psychological methods, the "acts must penetrate to the core of an individual`s ability to perceive the world around him," the lawyers found.

Gen. Hill said last week that the military didn`t use injections or chemicals on prisoners.

After defining torture and other prohibited acts, the memo presents "legal doctrines ... that could render specific conduct, otherwise criminal, not unlawful." Foremost, the lawyers rely on the "commander-in-chief authority," concluding that "without a clear statement otherwise, criminal statutes are not read as infringing on the president`s ultimate authority" to wage war. Moreover, "any effort by Congress to regulate the interrogation of unlawful combatants would violate the Constitution`s sole vesting of the commander-in-chief authority in the president," the lawyers advised.

Likewise, the lawyers found that "constitutional principles" make it impossible to "punish officials for aiding the president in exercising his exclusive constitutional authorities" and neither Congress nor the courts could "require or implement the prosecution of such an individual."

To protect subordinates should they be charged with torture, the memo advised that Mr. Bush issue a "presidential directive or other writing" that could serve as evidence, since authority to set aside the laws is "inherent in the president."

The report advised that government officials could argue that "necessity" justified the use of torture. "Sometimes the greater good for society will be accomplished by violating the literal language of the criminal law," the lawyers wrote, citing a standard legal text, "Substantive Criminal Law" by Wayne LaFave and Austin W. Scott. "In particular, the necessity defense can justify the intentional killing of one person ... so long as the harm avoided is greater."

In addition, the report advised that torture or homicide could be justified as "self-defense," should an official "honestly believe" it was necessary to head off an imminent attack on the U.S. The self-defense doctrine generally has been asserted by individuals fending off assaults, and in 1890, the Supreme Court upheld a U.S. deputy marshal`s right to shoot an assailant of Supreme Court Justice Stephen Field as involving both self-defense and defense of the nation. Citing Justice Department opinions, the report concluded that "if a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate criminal prohibition," he could be justified "in doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist network."

Mr. LaFave, a law professor at the University of Illinois, said he was unaware that the Pentagon used his textbook in preparing its legal analysis. He agreed, however, that in some cases necessity could be a defense to torture charges. "Here`s a guy who knows with certainty where there`s a bomb that will blow New York City to smithereens. Should we torture him? Seems to me that`s an easy one," Mr. LaFave said. But he said necessity couldn`t be a blanket justification for torturing prisoners because of a general fear that "the nation is in danger."

For members of the military, the report suggested that officials could escape torture convictions by arguing that they were following superior orders, since such orders "may be inferred to be lawful" and are "disobeyed at the peril of the subordinate." Examining the "superior orders" defense at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals, the Vietnam War prosecution of U.S. Army Lt. William Calley for the My Lai massacre and the current U.N. war-crimes tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, the report concluded it could be asserted by "U.S. armed forces personnel engaged in exceptional interrogations except where the conduct goes so far as to be patently unlawful."

The report seemed "designed to find the legal loopholes that will permit the use of torture against detainees," said Mary Ellen O`Connell, an international-law professor at the Ohio State University who has seen the report. "CIA operatives will think they are covered because they are not going to face liability."

Copyright © 2004 Dow Jones & Company, Inc

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POLITICS:
Global Poll Finds Pessimism, Linked to U.S. Power

Jim Lobe


WASHINGTON, Jun 4 (IPS) - With the notable exceptions of China and India, a majority of people in 19 key countries are pessimistic about the world`s current direction, says a just-released survey, which found a high correlation between that feeling and the belief that U.S. influence is increasingly negative, particularly as compared to Europe.

The survey, conducted by the international polling firm Globescan (formerly Environics International), also found stronger support for economic globalisation in developing countries than in industrialised nations, particularly in Europe, which also emerged as the world`s most pessimistic region.

And it found that a clear majority of world opinion (56 percent) does not think rich countries are playing fair in trade negotiations with poor ones, although that perception is significantly more widespread in the rich nations themselves than in developing nations.

The Global Issues Monitor Survey, the latest in a series that began in 2000, was carried out between November 2003 and February 2004 in 19 countries, almost all of which overlap with the membership of the so-called Group of 20.

In North America, they included the United States and Canada; in Europe -- Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain and Turkey; in Latin America -- Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Uruguay; in Asia -- China, India and Indonesia; and in Africa -- Nigeria and South Africa.

Virtually all of the respondents from developing nations were urban-dwellers. Nearly 19,000 people were surveyed.

The U.S. poll was carried out in mid-December, just after the capture of former Iraq President Saddam Hussein, which gave President George W Bush a substantial boost in public opinion, which has since shown a sharp decline in his standing and in general confidence about where the country is going.

The results released Friday by Globescan and an analysis carried out by the University of Maryland`s Programme on International Attitudes (PIPA) dealt with people`s confidence, perceptions of the United States and Europe, globalisation and trade and trust in international institutions. They were part of a much more comprehensive survey that is made available only to Globescan`s paid clients, mainly large multinational corporations.

The survey found that only one-third of respondents either ``strongly`` or ``somewhat`` agreed with the statement that ``the world is going in the right direction``.

As a region, Europe was the most pessimistic, with only 14 percent of Italian and 15 percent of French respondents saying the global trajectory was positive. Only 19 percent of Turks and 20 percent of Germans agreed, as did 20 percent of Argentines and Uruguayans who, along with the Turks, were consistently the most negative about a range of global issues.

By contrast, 77 percent of Chinese respondents and 51 percent of Indians questioned said they believed the world was improving, while, in general, respondents living in lower-income countries (45 percent) tended to be more positive than their high-income counterparts (28 percent).

On perceptions of the United States, only 37 percent said it was having a positive influence in the world, while 55 percent disagreed. Twelve of the 19 countries had predominantly negative views of U.S. influence, most notably Germany (82 percent), France (74), Argentina and Russia (72) and Turkey (69).

In only four countries were positive views of the U.S. expressed: India (69 percent), Nigeria (56), Brazil (52) and South Africa (51). Two-thirds of U.S. respondents also expressed positive feelings, while in the 19 countries overall, those with the most education tended to be more negative than those with less.

Moreover, views of the United States were found to be the most powerful predictor of how respondents felt about the world`s direction, according to PIPA Director Stephen Kull.

Among those who think Washington is having a negative influence, 70 percent say the world is going in the wrong direction, while those who think it has a positive influence were evenly divided between optimism and pessimism.

In a potentially worrisome sign for both U.S. corporations and foreign policy, Europe is now seen somewhat more favourably worldwide than the United States, the survey found. A plurality of just under one-half of all respondents, including U.S. participants, agreed with the assertion that Europe`s influence was positive, versus 40 percent who disagreed.

Positive feelings about Europe were lowest in Turkey (26 percent) and Uruguay (34) and highest in France (62), India (61), and Canada (60). Aside from the United States itself, respondents in only two countries -- India and Nigeria -- rated the United States higher than Europe. The gaps in favour of Europe were particularly wide -- 15 percentage points or more -- in Italy, Canada, Chile, France, Germany, Argentina and Russia, where respondents opted for Europe by a 44-15 percent margin.

On confidence in institutions, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) rated highest overall, with nearly two-thirds of respondents saying they had ``a lot`` or ``some`` trust in NGOs. The United Nations was next with 59 percent, followed by national governments (53 percent), large domestic companies (52), press (50), trade unions (48), and global corporations (42).

Those percentages represented something of a rebound for both the United Nations and executives of global companies, compared to August 2002 when confidence in the world body stood at just over 40 percent and executives of global companies at less than 30 percent.

Confidence in the United Nations rose particularly sharply in Spain, India and Russia, although it fell marginally in Germany, the United States, and Italy.

Positive views were strongest in Mexico (88 percent), Spain (78), and Canada (77), while 64 percent of U.S. respondents said they had ``a lot`` or ``some`` trust in the world body. Turkey and Argentina were the only countries where majorities expressed negative views, although in both cases those majorities were reduced from two years ago.

On economic and globalisation issues, respondents in developed countries, particularly in Europe, tended to be more critical of the ways the global economic system was working in regards to poor countries than respondents from poor countries themselves.



Overall, 55 percent of respondents said economic globalisation was positive for them and their families, while only 25 percent said it was negative. But, the fact that 20 percent said they were undecided and that only 12 percent felt ``very positively`` about globalisation showed a ``softness`` in support, according to Chris Coulter, a Globescan analyst.

In 14 of 19 countries, majorities expressed positive views, with India (73 percent) the most positive, followed by Brazil (72), South Africa (71), and Nigeria (70). Respondents in Russia, Turkey, Uruguay and Argentina were divided on the question, while only France produced a negative plurality (45 percent).

The younger, the more educated and the higher income earned by the respondent, the more positive attitude she or he had toward globalisation, according to the survey.

Large majorities, ranging from 62 percent (United States) to 77 percent (Italy), of higher-income countries, including Russia, disagreed with the notion that rich countries play fair in trade negotiations with poor countries, while, with the exception of Brazil, Uruguay and South Africa, respondents in poor countries were either split on the question or pluralities agreed.

Majorities in three developing countries -- Mexico (61 percent), Indonesia (59) and India (55) also agreed with the statement.

With the exception of Germany, large pluralities or majorities in high-income and Latin American countries and Turkey also either ``strongly`` or ``somewhat`` disagreed with the statement that poor countries benefit as much as rich countries from free trade and globalisation, while respondents were more split on the question in Russia, Nigeria, China, India and Indonesia. (END/2004)

* Programme on International Policy Attitudes

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Monday, June 7th, 2004
Noam Chomsky on Reagan`s Legacy: Bush Has Ressurected "The Most Extremist, Arrogant, Violent and Dangerous Elements" of Reagan`s White House

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BY AMY GOODMAN

DEMOCRACY NOW - The network and newspaper coverage of the death of Ronald Reagan has brought forth a chorus of praise from Democrats and Republicans alike. Much of the reporting and commentary, under the guise of respecting the dead, has represented a dramatic rewriting of the history of the Reagan years in office.

Looking back at the Reagan presidency doesn`t mean we actually have to look back. Many of the same people who populated his administration are in the George W. Bush administration as well: James Baker, Elliot Abrams, Paul Wolfowitz, Colin Powell, John Poindexter, John Negroponte, just to name a few.

We asked leading dissident Noam Chomsky to reflect on the policies of Reagan`s administration during his 8 years in power and Reagan`s influence on the current Bush Administration.

Note: This is a rush transcript.

AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, can you talk about this, the people that are now running the administration are some of the very people who ran the Reagan administration more than 20 years ago?

NOAM CHOMSKY: That`s quite true. The Reagan administration is either the same people or their immediate mentors for the most part. I think one can say that the current administration is a selection of the more extremist and arrogant and violent and dangerous elements of the Reagan administration. So on things like - I mean, that is true on domestic and international policy they are, both in the Reagan years and now, they are committed to dismantling the components of the government that serve the general population -- social security, public schools and so on and so forth, but in a more extreme fashion now. Partly because they think they have achieved a sort of higher stage from which to launch the attack, and internationally it`s pretty obvious. In fact, many of the older Reaganites and Bush, number one people have been concerned, even appalled by the extremism of the current administration in the international domain. That`s why there was unprecedented elite criticism of the national security strategy and the implementation in Iraq - narrow criticism, but significant. So, yes, they`re there, in fact, you cannot -- some of the examples are remarkable, including the ones that you mentioned. And very timely they picked Negroponte, who of course has just been appointed, the new ambassador to Iraq where he will head the biggest diplomatic mission in the world. The pretense is that we need this huge diplomatic mission to transfer full sovereignty to Iraqis and that`s so close to self-contradiction that you have to admire commentators who sort of pretend not to notice what it means, also to overlook, consciously, what his role was in the Reagan administration. He also provided -- he was an ambassador in the Reagan years, ambassador to Honduras where he presided over the biggest C.I.A. station in the world, and the second largest embassy in Latin America, not because Honduras was of any particular significance to the U.S., but because he was responsible for supervising the bases from which the U.S. mercenary army was attacking in Nicaragua, and which ended up practically destroying it. By now, Nicaragua is lucky to survive a few generations. That was one part of the massive international terrorist campaign that the Reaganites carried out in the 1980`s under the pretense they were fighting a war on terror. They declared a war on terror in 1981 with pretty much the same rhetoric that they used when they re-declared it in September 2001. It was a murderous terrorist war. It devastated Central America, had horrendous effects elsewhere in the world. In the case of Nicaragua, it was so extreme that they were condemned by the World Court, by two supporting Security Council Resolutions that the U.S. had to veto, after which, of course, they rejected the court judgment and then escalated the war to the point where finally the effects were extraordinary. By the analysis of their own specialists, the per capita deaths in Nicaragua would be comparable to about 2.5 million in the United States, which as they have pointed out is greater than the total number of casualties in all U.S. wars, including the Civil War and all wars in the 20th century, and what`s left of the society is a wreck. Since the U.S. took over again, it`s gone even more downhill. Now the second poorest in the hemisphere after Haiti and not coincidentally, the second major target of U.S. intervention in the 20th century after Haiti, which is first. The recent health administration statistics show that about 60% of children under two are suffering from severe anemia caused by malnutrition and probable brain damage. Costa Rica, the United States is trying to - doing enough low-level work so that they can send back some remittances to keep the families alive. It`s a real victory. You can understand why Colin Powell and others are so proud of it. But Negroponte was charge of it in the first half the decade directly, and in the second half more indirectly in the State Department and National Security staff where he was Powell`s adviser. And now he is -- he is supposed to undertake the same role and similar role in Iraq. He was called in Nicaragua "The Proconsul," and the "Wall Street Journal" was honest enough to run an article in which they headlined "Modern Proconsul" on which they mentioned his background in Nicaragua without going into it much and said, yes he will be the proconsul of Iraq. Now, that`s a direct continuity, but there`s a lot more than that. What you mentioned is correct. Elliot Abrams is an extreme case. I mean, he`s now the head of the Middle East section of the National Security Council. He was -- as you know, he was sentenced for lying to Congress. He got a presidential pardon, but he was one of the most -- he was in charge in the State Department of the Central American atrocities, and on the Middle East, he is way out at the extreme end of the spectrum. This does reflect the -- in a way the continuity of policies, but also the shift towards extremism within that continuity.

AMY GOODMAN: There was a very little critical comment about President Reagan this weekend on his death perhaps explained by his death, what happens when a person dies, and what people say or perhaps also because there is a kind of rewriting of history that has been going on. But one of the few people who were quoted in the mainstream media was the Mexican foreign minister, Jorge -- the former Mexican Jorge Castenada, whose father served as foreign minister as well in 1979 to 1982 who said Reagan was extremely unpopular in Mexico when he was president because of his policies in Central America, and what was viewed in Mexico as a Mexico-bashing campaign over drug trafficking. Reagan`s involvement in Nicaragua and El Salvador, viewed in Mexico, he said was unwarranted meddling that was "interventionist, rooted in cold war rivalries and disrespectful of international law." Castenada conditioned, "not only were his policies viewed negatively, but he pressured Mexico enormously to change its foreign policies."

NOAM CHOMSKY: That`s correct. Casteneda is being diplomatic. He`s understating with regard to the international law and with regard to the intervention. It was - it ended up with a couple hundred thousand people being killed and four countries ruined. And even the world - the US - the people now in office in Washington have the unique honor of being the only ones in the world who have been condemned by the World Court for international terrorism. That`s a little more than what he said, but that`s what he`s aiming at. The unpopularity continues. The latest figures show that this George Bush, number two, latest Latin American figures, among Latin American elites, the ones who tend to be more supportive of the United States, I think it was about close to 90% opposition throughout the hemisphere and approximately, if I remember, 98% opposition to him in Mexico. But to be accurate, we should say that this goes way back. So, John F. Kennedy was -- tried very hard to get Mexico to line up in his anti-Cuba crusade. A famous comment by a Mexican foreign minister when Kennedy tried to convince him that Cuba was to join in the terrorist war against Cuba and the economic embargo strangulation, in fact on the grounds that Cuba was a threat to the security of the hemisphere and the Mexican ambassador said he had to decline, the prime minister had to decline because if he tried to tell people in Mexico that Cuba was a security threat, 40 million Mexicans would die laughing, which is approximately the right answer. Here not so. The one point on which I think Casteneda`s comment that you quote is really misleading is when he refers to cold war thinking and rivalries. There were no Russians in Latin America. In fact, the U.S. was trying very hard to bring them in. Take, say, Nicaragua, when the terrorist war against Nicaragua really took off, Nicaragua tried to get some military aid to defend itself. And they went first to European countries, France, others. The Reagan administration put extreme pressure on them not to send military aid because they were desperately eager for Nicaragua to get military aid from Russia or indirectly through Cuba. So they could then present it as a cold war issue. Nicaragua didn`t fall into the trap as Guatemala had in 1954, basically the same scenario. So, they didn`t get jet planes from Russia to defend their airspace against the U.S. attacks. They had every right to do it, but the responsibility to do it, but they understood the consequences. So, the Reagan administration had to float constant stories about how Nicaragua was getting MIG jets from Russia in order to try to create a cold war conflict. Actually it`s very revealing to see the reaction here to those stories. Of course, Nicaragua had every right to do it. The C.I.A. had complete control over Nicaragua`s airspace and was using it. It was using it to send communications to the guerrilla army, which was -- guerrilla is a funny word for it, computers and helicopters and so on to send them instructions so that they could follow the U.S. command orders to avoid the Sandinista army, the Nicaraguan army and to attack what are called soft targets, undefended civilian targets. It`s a country that doesn`t have a right to defend its airspace to protect that, I don`t know what you can say. So obviously, they are a right to do it, but they didn`t. They allowed the U.S. to have control of the airspace and to attack -- to use it to attack undefended targets.

AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, you have written about the U.S. as being only country in the world to be convicted in the World Court of terrorism. And this had to do with the bombing of the Nicaraguan harbor, which took place under Reagan. Can you talk about that?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Yeah. That, too, is a little misleading. Nicaragua was hoping to end the confrontation through legal means, through diplomatic means.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean the mining of the harbor.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Yes, the mining of the harbors. They decided to -- they asked a legal team headed by a very distinguished American international lawyer, A. Chayes, professor of law at Harvard who had long government service, and that legal team decided to construct an extremely narrow case. So, they kept to matters that were totally uncontroversial, as the U.S. conceded like the mining of the harbors, but it was only a toothpick on a mountain. They picked the narrowest point in the hope that they could get a judgment from the World Court, which would lead the United States to back off from the whole international terrorist campaign, and they did win a judgment from the court, which ordered the U.S. to terminate any actions, any violent actions against Nicaragua, which went way beyond mining of the harbors. That was the least of it. So, yes, that was the narrow content of the court decision, although, if you read the decision, the court decision that goes well beyond, they`re all conscious of the much wider terrorist campaign, but the Harvard - the Chayes run legal team didn`t bring it up for good reasons. Because they didn`t want any controversy at the court hearings about the facts. There was no controversy about that, since it was conceded. However, it should be read as a much broader indictment, and a very important one. I mean, the term that was used by the court was "unlawful use of force," which is the technical term for the informal notion, international terrorism. There`s no legal definition of international terrorism in the international domain. So I bet it was in effect a condemnation of international terrorism over a much broader domain. However, we should bare in mind, it`s important for us, that horrible as the Nicaragua war was, it wasn`t the worst. Guatemala and El Salvador were worse. I suggest that in Nicaragua, the reason was that in Nicaragua, the population at least had an army to defend it. In El Salvador and Guatemala, the terrorist forces attacking the population were the army and the other security forces. There was no one to bring a case to the World Court that can be brought by governments, not by peasants being slaughtered.

...

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Chomsky, I wouldn`t want to end this discussion without talking about the Reagan years and Africa, particularly southern Africa.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, the official policy was called "constructive engagement." I recall it during the 1980s, by then there was enormous pressure to end all support for the apartheid government. Congress passed legislation barring trade and aid. The Reagan administration found ways to evade the congressional legislation, and in fact trade with South Africa increased in the latter part of the decade. This is incidentally the period when Collin Powell moved to the position of national security adviser.

The U.S. was strongly supporting the apartheid regime directly and then indirectly through allies. Israel was helping get around the embargo. Rather as in Central America where the clandestine terror made use of other states that served as -- that helped the administration get around congressional legislation. In the case of South Africa, just look at the rough figures. In Angola and Mozambique, the neighboring countries, in those countries alone, the South African depredations killed about million-and-a-half people and led to some $60 billion in damage during the period of constructive engagement with the u.s. support. It was a horror story.

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TODAY`S STORIES
Headlines for June 7, 2004

REMEMBERING THE DEAD
Ronald Reagan 1911-2004: Noam Chomsky, Helen Caldicott & Robert Parry on Iran-Contra, the Nuclear Race and Covert Wars from Central America to Africa

Noam Chomsky on Reagan`s Legacy: Bush Has Ressurected "The Most Extremist, Arrogant, Violent and Dangerous Elements" of Reagan`s White House

Robert Parry On the Reagan Administration`s Manipulation of Intelligence and Exaggeration of Threats in the Iran-Contra Scandal

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Monday, June 7th, 2004
Robert Parry On the Reagan Administration`s Manipulation of Intelligence and Exaggeration of Threats in the Iran-Contra Scandal

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BY AMY GOODMAN

DEMOCRACY NOW - "The U.S. News media`s reaction to Ronald Reagan`s death is putting on display what has happened to American public debate in the years since Reagan`s political rise in the late 70`s: a near total collapse of serious analytical thinking at the national level." So begins Robert Parry`s latest piece at consortiumnews.com called "Raiding Reagan, A Bogus Legacy." Robert Parry is a veteran journalist. For years he worked as an investigative reporter for the associated press and "Newsweek" magazine. His reporting led to the exposure of what`s now known as the Iran-Contra scandal.

Note: This is a rush transcript.

This is what President Reagan had to say as the Iran-Contra scandal was breaking:

(Tape) PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN: We did not -- repeat, did not -- trade weapons or anything else for hostages. Nor will we.

AMY GOODMAN: That was President Reagan in 1986, but his statements changed a few months later.

(Tape) PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN: A few months ago, I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that`s true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not.

AMY GOODMAN: President Reagan in 1986. Investigative reporter, Robert Parry, especially for listeners for viewers who were kids or not even born at the time, explain the Iran-Contra scandal, please.

ROBERT PARRY: Well, Amy, the Iran-Contra scandal comes out of a couple of different initiatives that the Reagan administration was following. One was as Dr. Chomsky mentioned the war in Nicaragua, which had to be done with a great deal of deception surrounding it, because congress had opposed much of that effort. The international community had opposed much of that effort, so the Reagan administration essentially took it underground with the work people like Elliot Abrams and Oliver North and John Poindexter. On one side there was an effort to maintain support for the contras, who were engaged in fighting the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. On the other side, there was a long-running policy, which we have traced back now to 1981 of secretly helping the Iranian government arm itself. That was in the context of the Iran-Iraq war where the U.S. policy became basically to secretly support both sides -- both the Iranian fundamentalist government of Khomeini, and the more secular government of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. You had those two policies running in parallel form, and then when the financing for the contras became more and more problematic, the Reagan administration decided to use some of the profits from selling arms to the Iranians to help support the contras. So, that became known as the Iran-Contra scandal when it finally broke.

AMY GOODMAN: And what about the context for this taking place. I wanted to play for you Ed Meese, the former attorney general, who is the one who broke to the national media the Reagan administration`s admission of what had taken place. He was interviewed yesterday on Wolf Blitzer`s "Late Edition" on CNN. This is former Reagan attorney general, Edwin Meese.

(Tape) EDWIN MEESE: The association or relationship with moderate forces in Iran, and part of the agreement to show good faith was to provide some defensive weapons for them. Separately from that, we had the support of the freedom fighters. When you had some people in the White House that unauthorized -- took some of the profits from the sale of arms to Iran and diverted them to the support of the freedom fighters. That was the problem.

AMY GOODMAN: He then went on to say, and I`d like to continue this quote of Edwin Meese, just to bring it right back up, to talk about president Reagan, what he did in terms of his admission. This is again former attorney general Edwin Meese.

(Tape) EDWIN MEESE: I told the President what happened, and he said, Ed, we have to get this out to the American people as quickly as we can. He called the cabinet first and we had a meeting in which it was revealed to the cabinet. An hour later, he brought in the congressional leaders and presented the whole picture to them, and then at noon, brought the press together, had a press conference, and he introduced the subject and then he was actually entertaining the Supreme Court for lunch that day, and he had to excuse himself to do that, and he asked me, then, to explain the details to the press corps. It was something that he knew nothing about while it was going on in terms of the unauthorized activity, and which he was -- was quick to make sure that all of the facts came out to the public. I think that in itself probably saved his Presidency, at least enabled him to continue to be a successful president over the next two years, which were critical in ultimately our relationship with the Soviet Union and ending the cold war.

AMY GOODMAN: Former Reagan attorney general, Edwin Meese. Your response, Bob Parry.

ROBERT PARRY: Well, that really is not quite true. It is true that they -- that the -- Edwin Meese put out at a press conference in November of 1986, the basic facts that Oliver North and the team was working with made this transfer of money from the Iran shipment weapons to the contras. However, the -- what happened after that was simply a -- the placing of the original cover-up, which had been to protect Oliver North to making him the fall guy and essentially imposing a second cover-up. Which was designed to protect Ronald Reagan, Vice President George Bush, the Central Intelligence Agency and other entities of the administration that had been deeply involved in this operation in a very -- in various ways. It took a lot more work both from in the press and most significantly by Lawrence Walsh, the special prosecutor who investigated the Iran-Contra scandal to break through many, many barriers. Lawrence Walsh, a patrician republican, if you remember, named his book on this topic, "Firewall." The reason he used the name -- the title "Firewall" is because a firewall had been built to protect Ronald Reagan, George Bush Sr. and other elements of the administration from the spread of the scandal. We learned later as the thing played out that there was a -- the C.I.A. remained directly involved in these operations, really through to the end. So, it wasn`t a case of just Oliver North and a few men of zeal taking action, it was a case of an administration essentially bringing the policy underground and then when it was exposed in part, just replacing it with a new cover-up.

AMY GOODMAN: Robert Parry today. The kind of discussion we`re hearing over the last few days is more than the discussion of a man who has just died, but it`s talking about a rewriting of the historical record. Can you talk about this discussion, whether it is in Central America or whether it`s the discussion of President Reagan winning the cold war?

ROBERT PARRY: Well, I think in essence Amy, what we have seen here is a continuation in this administration of some of the approaches that became -- that really became very prominent in the Reagan administration. First, there is the manipulating of intelligence, exaggerating dangers that occurred both in strategic level with the Soviet Union in trying to present the Soviet Union as much more aggressive and powerful and effective than it turned out to be. It was a country on the verge of collapse. Then also exaggerating the threats from praises like Nicaragua, which were a Third World countries that were very much on the defensive and they were presented as threats to the United States. This was a systematic falsification of U.S. Intelligence and occurred at the C.I.A. The analytical division of the C.I.A. was virtually destroyed during that period of the 1980`s under Bill Casey and Robert Gates. This was very important because before then, there was much more independence within the C.I.A.`s analytical division. Afterwards, there became -- the C.I.A. basically became a conveyor belt for propaganda. We have seen that reoccur now with the Iraq situation when again, intelligence was falsified, and the threats were exaggerated, and then policies were put together to respond to those exaggerated threats. We have just seen the continuation of some very deceptive approaches to government and many of the people that took part in them has -- I think the first caller mentioned and Dr. Chomsky mentioned were the same people involved today. And they just continued to follow the same policies. It was also an important element of this, which goes to the idea of perception management, which was a concept that was put in place during the early 80`s and the basic idea was that if you managed the perceptions to the American people about various event, particularly foreign events, that you can taken take actions that would not be supported by the American people, if seen in their full context. What we have seen with that is the idea if the people of the United States perceive Nicaragua to be a threat to their security, they would support the sending of weapons and the supporting the contras. If they saw the Sandinistas as being what they were, a struggling little government in Nicaragua, they probably wouldn`t. The problem has often been that in the case of these kinds of events, perception management became the role. That`s continued to today with Iraq.

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TODAY`S STORIES
Headlines for June 7, 2004

REMEMBERING THE DEAD
Ronald Reagan 1911-2004: Noam Chomsky, Helen Caldicott & Robert Parry on Iran-Contra, the Nuclear Race and Covert Wars from Central America to Africa

Noam Chomsky on Reagan`s Legacy: Bush Has Ressurected "The Most Extremist, Arrogant, Violent and Dangerous Elements" of Reagan`s White House

Robert Parry On the Reagan Administration`s Manipulation of Intelligence and Exaggeration of Threats in the Iran-Contra Scandal

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Battles Take Daily Toll in Sadr City
Baghdad`s Shiite slum, home to 2 million, once backed the American presence. Now more insurgents die there than in southern Iraq.
By Edmund Sanders
Times Staff Writer

June 7, 2004

BAGHDAD — The neighborhoods of Baghdad`s worst slum are draped in black. Scores of mourning banners bearing the names of those killed in recent weeks hang from fences, balconies and buildings along Sadr City`s dusty, garbage-strewn streets.

One banner laments a son killed "defending his country." Some bear photographs of the dead. A few have two, three, even four names squeezed onto them.

As Iraqi and U.S. leaders focus on ending the bloodshed in the southern holy cities of Najaf, Kufa and Karbala, Baghdad`s backyard is quietly boiling over.

U.S. military officials estimate that they have killed more than 800 Iraqis in Sadr City over the past nine weeks — more than a dozen a day — in battles with the Al Mahdi army, the militia of radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr. That`s more than twice the number hospitals estimate were killed in similar fighting in southern Iraq.

"It`s a daily massacre," said Qassim Kadim, a native of Sadr City, also known as Thawra.

Most of the dead are young, unemployed men who joined Sadr`s militia and have orders to shoot U.S. forces on sight. Others are bystanders caught in the crossfire, such as a 14-year-old boy who was killed Sunday by a roadside bomb targeting a passing U.S. convoy.

Either way, residents say, they are the sons of this downtrodden Shiite community, and their deaths have touched nearly everyone.

There are no gold-domed mosques here, no historical sites to draw the world`s attention to their losses. As has been the case for decades, residents complain, the suffering in Sadr City — a sprawling neighborhood of 2 million Iraqis who were severely oppressed by Saddam Hussein — goes largely unnoticed.

"So many people are dying here, and no one cares," said Mohammed Khala, 57, a video arcade owner whose apartment was recently riddled with bullets and shrapnel from U.S. tanks that attacked militiamen who had taken refuge behind his home. He broke his hand in the attack and his 5-year-old daughter suffered shrapnel wounds in the head, he said.

At least 14 U.S. soldiers have died in and near Sadr City since April. They include five killed Friday when their convoy was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade on the outskirts of the area and two killed Saturday by a roadside bomb at the same location.

The cycle of violence began two months ago, after Sadr`s militia seized control of mosques, government offices and police stations in several Shiite cities and neighborhoods, including Sadr City, which was renamed in tribute to Sadr`s father, a revered cleric who was assassinated during Hussein`s rule. Before then, it was known as Saddam City.

With few exceptions, street violence and gun battles have been a nightly ritual. Sadr forces regularly fire mortar rounds at U.S. bases and Iraqi police stations used by American soldiers. U.S. troops razed Sadr`s office last month, but his followers rebuilt it in a day. When residents emerge in the mornings, they confront a trail of burned cars, bullet shells and bodies.

"The other day I was walking home and found a man just lying in the street," said Raad Mehemdawi, 32, a warehouse worker. "When I went to help him, I realized he was dead. I called his friends in the Mahdi army and they came and carried him away."

After the war, Sadr City residents welcomed U.S. soldiers. "I want the Americans to stay because we owe them a big debt for liberating us from Saddam," said Ahmed Waleed, 32, a restaurant owner who is still a supporter.

But over time, many have lost patience with lingering electricity outages and soldiers` perceived lack of respect for the community`s religious leaders and symbols, along with the mounting deaths. Last summer, soldiers knocked a religious banner off a transmission tower, sparking a small riot that ended with a U.S. helicopter firing into a crowd. More recently, residents say, soldiers have taken to removing the ubiquitous pictures of Muqtada Sadr from billboards and fences.

"People are very resentful," said Jalbar Braian, 45, a car salesman. "We just want the Americans to go away."

Military officials say they sympathize with the plight of Sadr City residents and note that the slum`s problems predate the U.S.-led invasion. They say most residents support the American presence but are afraid to speak out for fear of retribution by the Al Mahdi army. About a month ago, a local councilman who was working with the U.S. was kidnapped and hanged from a power pole.

"If we just pulled out, the militia would take control, and 90% of the people here don`t want that to happen," said Lt. Col. Gary Volesky, battalion commander of the Army`s 1st Cavalry Division in Sadr City. "The police can`t handle it." He said the area has 500 Iraqi police officers but needs about 7,000.

In fact, police in the community are trying to avoid taking sides. One officer was demoted when he said he would refuse to fight the militia, according to Lt. Col. Raheem Qadir of the Nasr station.

U.S. soldiers occupied Qadir`s station for nearly a month until he asked them to leave because they were drawing attacks from the militia, damaging nearby homes, Qadir said. After the soldiers left, Al Mahdi fighters told him to remove the sandbags from his roof, used by U.S. snipers. He complied.

"I don`t see this as an army," he said. "It`s an uprising against the occupation. Citizens of any country being occupied by another country would react in the same way."

But on Sunday, 15 Al Mahdi army members attacked his police station again, setting off a small explosion that destroyed ammunition and a roomful of furniture. Unlike in southern Iraq, there are no truce talks or cease-fire negotiations in Sadr City, Qadir said.

But Volesky`s unit is stepping up efforts to win over residents with humanitarian projects, spending $1.1 million to fix the sewage system, which leaks into the streets. This weekend, his troops began distributing medical supplies worth several hundred thousand dollars to local pediatricians.

But such efforts are often overshadowed by street fighting and attacks. In one day last week, Sadr`s militiamen and U.S. troops engaged in 21 battles in the district. Volesky insists that the vast majority of those killed are Al Mahdi fighters, not civilians. "We are very precise," he said.

The ragtag militia`s heavy losses reflect its youth and inexperience as well as the disparity in weaponry. Some members are in their teens. At times, even U.S. military officials express concern about the one-sidedness of the battles.

"As a soldier, it`s tough to go out and have to fight, and I can tell you it`s even tougher when you`ve got 17-year-old kids picking up [rocket-propelled grenades] and aiming them at you," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the top U.S. military spokesman, said in a recent briefing.

"It`s very tough to have to do your job at that time, and we don`t take any glory and we don`t take any pride in having to do it," he said. "So, frankly, any time we have to kill one of those kids because he`s aiming a weapon at us, aiming an RPG at one of our soldiers, aiming a rifle at one of our tanks, it`s not a good day."

A father of three Al Mahdi army fighters said he`s proud of his sons, who he believes are fighting, and fought, in self-defense. His youngest was killed after firing a machine gun at a U.S. helicopter, which shot back, he said. Another lay on the bare floor of their small Sadr City home, plastic tubes snaking out of his chest after he was shot in the same attack.

The father, who would give his name only as Abu Ali, asked: "Who is responsible for the killings of these innocent young men?"

Special correspondents Raheem Salman, Saif Rasheed and Caesar Ahmed contributed to this report.





Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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June 8, 2004
Lawyers Decided Bans on Torture Didn`t Bind Bush
By NEIL A. LEWIS and ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON, June 7 — A team of administration lawyers concluded in a March 2003 legal memorandum that President Bush was not bound by either an international treaty prohibiting torture or by a federal antitorture law because he had the authority as commander in chief to approve any technique needed to protect the nation`s security.

The memo, prepared for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, also said that any executive branch officials, including those in the military, could be immune from domestic and international prohibitions against torture for a variety of reasons.

One reason, the lawyers said, would be if military personnel believed that they were acting on orders from superiors "except where the conduct goes so far as to be patently unlawful."

"In order to respect the president`s inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign," the lawyers wrote in the 56-page confidential memorandum, the prohibition against torture "must be construed as inapplicable to interrogation undertaken pursuant to his commander-in-chief authority."

Senior Pentagon officials on Monday sought to minimize the significance of the March memo, one of several obtained by The New York Times, as an interim legal analysis that had no effect on revised interrogation procedures that Mr. Rumsfeld approved in April 2003 for the American military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

"The April document was about interrogation techniques and procedures," said Lawrence Di Rita, the Pentagon`s chief spokesman. "It was not a legal analysis."

Mr. Di Rita said the 24 interrogation procedures permitted at Guantánamo, four of which required Mr. Rumsfeld`s explicit approval, did not constitute torture and were consistent with international treaties.

The March memorandum, which was first reported by The Wall Street Journal on Monday, is the latest internal legal study to be disclosed that shows that after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks the administration`s lawyers were set to work to find legal arguments to avoid restrictions imposed by international and American law.

A Jan. 22, 2002, memorandum from the Justice Department that provided arguments to keep American officials from being charged with war crimes for the way prisoners were detained and interrogated was used extensively as a basis for the March memorandum on avoiding proscriptions against torture.

The previously disclosed Justice Department memorandum concluded that administration officials were justified in asserting that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to detainees from the Afghanistan war.

Another memorandum obtained by The Times indicates that most of the administration`s top lawyers, with the exception of those at the State Department and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, approved of the Justice Department`s position that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to the war in Afghanistan. In addition, that memorandum, dated Feb. 2, 2002, noted that lawyers for the Central Intelligence Agency had asked for an explicit understanding that the administration`s public pledge to abide by the spirit of the conventions did not apply to its operatives.

The March memo, a copy of which was obtained by The Times, was prepared as part of a review of interrogation techniques by a working group appointed by the Defense Department`s general counsel, William J. Haynes. The group itself was led by the Air Force general counsel, Mary Walker, and included military and civilian lawyers from all branches of the armed services.

The review stemmed from concerns raised by Pentagon lawyers and interrogators at Guantánamo after Mr. Rumsfeld approved a set of harsher interrogation techniques in December 2002 to use on a Saudi detainee, Mohamed al-Kahtani, who was believed to be the planned 20th hijacker in the Sept. 11 terror plot.

Mr. Rumsfeld suspended the harsher techniques, including serving the detainee cold, prepackaged food instead of hot rations and shaving off his facial hair, on Jan. 12, pending the outcome of the working group`s review. Gen. James T. Hill, head of the military`s Southern Command, which oversees Guantánamo, told reporters last Friday that the working group "wanted to do what is humane and what is legal and consistent not only with" the Geneva Conventions, but also "what is right for our soldiers."

Mr. Di Rita said that the Pentagon officials were focused primarily on the interrogation techniques, and that the legal rationale included in the March memo was mostly prepared by the Justice Department and White House counsel`s office.

The memo showed that not only lawyers from the Defense and Justice departments and the White House approved of the policy but also that David S. Addington, the counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney, also was involved in the deliberations. The State Department lawyer, William H. Taft IV, dissented, warning that such a position would weaken the protections of the Geneva Conventions for American troops.

The March 6 document about torture provides tightly constructed definitions of torture. For example, if an interrogator "knows that severe pain will result from his actions, if causing such harm is not his objective, he lacks the requisite specific intent even though the defendant did not act in good faith," the report said. "Instead, a defendant is guilty of torture only if he acts with the express purpose of inflicting severe pain or suffering on a person within his control."

The adjective "severe," the report said, "makes plain that the infliction of pain or suffering per se, whether it is physical or mental, is insufficient to amount to torture. Instead, the text provides that pain or suffering must be `severe.` " The report also advised that if an interrogator "has a good faith belief his actions will not result in prolonged mental harm, he lacks the mental state necessary for his actions to constitute torture."

The report also said that interrogators could justify breaching laws or treaties by invoking the doctrine of necessity. An interrogator using techniques that cause harm might be immune from liability if he "believed at the moment that his act is necessary and designed to avoid greater harm."

Scott Horton, the former head of the human rights committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, said Monday that he believed that the March memorandum on avoiding responsibility for torture was what caused a delegation of military lawyers to visit him and complain privately about the administration`s confidential legal arguments. That visit, he said, resulted in the association undertaking a study and issuing of a report criticizing the administration. He added that the lawyers who drafted the torture memo in March could face professional sanctions.

Jamie Fellner, the director of United States programs for Human Rights Watch, said Monday, "We believe that this memo shows that at the highest levels of the Pentagon there was an interest in using torture as well as a desire to evade the criminal consequences of doing so."

The March memorandum also contains a curious section in which the lawyers argued that any torture committed at Guantánamo would not be a violation of the anti-torture statute because the base was under American legal jurisdiction and the statute concerns only torture committed overseas. That view is in direct conflict with the position the administration has taken in the Supreme Court, where it has argued that prisoners at Guantánamo Bay are not entitled to constitutional protections because the base is outside American jurisdiction.

Kate Zernike contributed reporting for this article.

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June 8, 2004
ARMED GROUPS
9 Iraqi Militias Are Said to Approve a Deal to Disband
By DEXTER FILKINS

BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 7 — American and Iraqi officials said Monday that they had won commitments from nine of the country`s largest militias to disband, but there were immediate indications that the agreement might be difficult to enforce.

A senior leader of one of the largest armed groups listed in the agreement said his militia, with tens of thousands of fighters, was not a party to it. And none of the fighters in any of the militias were required to lay down their personal weapons, officials said.

In addition, two of the largest armed groups operating inside the country were excluded from the agreement: the Mahdi Army, the militant Shiite group that American soldiers have been battling for weeks, and the Falluja Brigade, a force of ex-Republican Guard soldiers and anti-American insurgents cobbled together last month to take control there after the marines withdrew.

The deal, announced by the new prime minister, Iyad Allawi, is part of a process the officials here said would rid Iraq of any private armed groups by the end of next year. It followed weeks of negotiations with the leaders of nine of the largest militias, which together are thought to have more than 100,000 soldiers, nearly all operating outside government control.

Under the agreement, the militia leaders are said to have acceded to a timetable under which they will gradually transfer their soldiers to the Iraqi police, army and other security services. American officials said they would break up the command structure of the units by dispersing the fighters across different security units.

American and Iraqi officials said they were trying to demobilize a large number of the fighters. Under the plan, about 60 percent of the militia fighters would pass into other Iraqi security services like the army and the police. The rest would either retire and receive pensions as if they had been members of Iraq`s regular army, join private security firms or be trained for new jobs.

All told, the program is estimated to cost $200 million.

Many Iraqis and Americans have long expressed fears that the militias, if left unchecked, could derail the elections scheduled for next year and lay the groundwork for ethnic or sectarian war. Nearly all of the major political parties that are expected to field candidates in elections next year deploy sizable militias.

American officials said they had secured agreements to disband from the nine largest armed groups, three of which, they said, held an overwhelming majority of fighters: the two Kurdish political parties, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdish Democratic Party, which together deploy about 75,000 fighters; and the Badr Brigade, the armed wing of a mainstream Shiite political party, which has about 15,000 fighters.

Six other groups in the agreement deploy smaller armies. Iraqi Hezbollah, the Iraqi Communist Party and the Iraqi Islamic Party are together thought to have about 12,000 fighters. Three groups — Mr. Allawi`s Iraqi National Accord; the Dawa Party, one of Iraq`s largest Shiite groups; and the Iraqi National Congress, best known for its leader, Ahmad Chalabi — have told the Americans that they have already disbanded their militias. Their claims could not be independently verified.

American and Iraqi officials said they intended to track each fighter`s progress through the program. They also said they would require that every gun be registered with the authorities.

"I believe everyone has a true desire to end the issue of militias, and they feel the need to unify our forces for the next stage," said Hamid Majid Mousa, the general secretary of the Iraqi Communist Party, whose militia he said numbered "a few thousand" fighters.

But the agreement appeared to leave unanswered a number of questions. A senior official in the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which has a militia numbering in the tens of thousands, said his group had reached a separate understanding with American and Iraqi leaders that had little to do with the agreement to which that the P.U.K. had put its name.

Adel Murad, the P.U.K. leader, said his group had been assured earlier this year by American and Iraqi leaders that no efforts would be made to disband its militia forces. What to do with the Kurdish militias, the pesh merga, was one of the most contentious questions raised during the debate in March over the interim Iraqi constitution. The constitution said the pesh merga would be folded into the internal security services of the regional Kurdish government.

The Kurds, who have suffered brutal and persistent persecution at the hands of Baghdad governments for decades, are fearful of leaving themselves defenseless.

"The pesh merga are not included in this agreement," Mr. Murad said. "That is for the other militias. No change. Nothing. We are like any army in the area."

While American officials said they intended to disband the militias, they conceded that they did not intend to fully disarm them. Iraqi law allows each household to have a semiautomatic assault rifle.

Two American officials, who spoke to a group of reporters on the condition of anonymity, said they hoped to break the command structure of the various militias by dispersing their members among the various security forces like the border police, the army and the civil defense corps.

Still, the American officials conceded that breaking up the units was a difficult task, especially in northern Iraq, where the heavily Kurdish population has been fighting a guerrilla war for decades.

Indeed, in the Kurdish areas, where the integration process is under way, some pesh merga units have moved into the Iraqi security services with the same soldiers and the same commanders.

Even if Iraqi and American authorities succeed in breaking up the Kurdish units and moving their fighters into the security services, there will still be potentially unresolved questions of command and control. The interim Iraqi constitution places local services under the command of the Kurdish regional government, not the government in Baghdad.

The agreement announced Monday holds that any member of an illegal militia — that is, one not included in the agreement — is barred from legitimate political office for three years. That would seem to banish Moktada al-Sadr, the rebel Shiite cleric who is the head of the Mahdi Army, which American forces have been battling in southern Iraq for more than two months.

Yet many Iraqi leaders and, recently, the United Nations envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, have suggested that the violence in Iraq might be reduced if discontented Iraqis like Mr. Sadr were drawn into the political process. The American officials said Mr. Sadr was not asked to participate in the negotiations that led to the militia agreement.

For all of the talk on Monday of new beginnings, the reality on the streets seemed more or less unchanged. A senior commander of the Badr Brigade, Shaher Faisal al-Shaher, was found shot to death in his car on the side of a highway.

At the headquarters of the Badr Brigade, officials said they did not want to talk about the agreement to disband militias. Instead, they spent their time painting banners they intended to hang in Mr. Shaher`s honor.

"The brave martyr General Shaher Faisal al-Shaher," one of the recently painted banners read, "Betrayed by the criminal hand of the Baath Party."

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June 8, 2004
SEXUAL HUMILIATION
Forced Nudity of Iraqi Prisoners Is Seen as a Pervasive Pattern, Not Isolated Incidents
By KATE ZERNIKE and DAVID ROHDE

In the weeks since photographs of naked detainees set off the abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib, military officials have portrayed the sexual humiliation captured in the images as the isolated acts of a rogue night shift.

But forced nudity of prisoners was pervasive in the military intelligence unit of Abu Ghraib, so much so that soldiers later said they had not seen "the whole nudity thing," as one captain called it, as abusive or out of the ordinary.

While there have been reports of forced nakedness at detention facilities in Afghanistan and at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the practice was apparently far more aggressive at Abu Ghraib, according to interviews, reports from human rights groups and sworn statements from detainees and soldiers. The detainees said leaving prisoners naked started as far back as last July, three months before the seven soldiers now charged and their military police company arrived at the prison. It bred a culture, some soldiers say, where the abuse captured on film could happen.

Detainees were paraded naked past other prisoners and guards; some were ordered to do jumping jacks and sing "The Star-Spangled Banner" in the nude, according to a several witnesses. Also, a father and his grown son were stripped, then forced to stand and stare at each other. The International Committee of the Red Cross, visiting in October, found prisoners left naked in their cells for days, modestly trying to shield themselves behind cardboard from meals-ready-to-eat boxes.

It is not clear how the practice emerged and, if it was official policy, exactly who authorized it. Col. Thomas M. Pappas, the military intelligence officer in charge of interrogations at the prison, told Army investigators that detainees might be stripped and shackled for questioning, but not without "good reason." When Red Cross monitors expressed alarm about prisoners being left in their cells or forced to move about naked, they said military intelligence officials "confirmed that it was part of the military intelligence process."

"It was not uncommon to see people without clothing," Capt. Donald J. Reese, the warden of the tier where the worst abuses occurred, told investigators in a sworn statement in January. "I only saw males. I was told the `whole nudity thing` was an interrogation procedure used by military intelligence, and never thought much of it."

An analyst from the 205th Military Intelligence Battalion, who asked not to be identified for fear of being punished for speaking out, said: "If you walked down through the wing of the prison where they were being held, they would have them strip down naked. Sometimes they would stand on boxes and would hold their arms out. That happened almost every night — having them naked. I wouldn`t say it`s abuse. It`s definitely degrading to them."

Soldiers said at least one civilian interrogator, Steven Stefanowicz, had been so alarmed by the use of nudity that he reported a military intelligence interrogator after she made a detainee walk naked down a cellblock to humiliate him. His lawyer said Mr. Stefanowicz, who an Army report said might have been "directly or indirectly" responsible for abuses, had not thought stripping detainees was an appropriate interrogation technique, and had worried that doing so would incite more unrest at a time when guards were fending off rioters with live bullets.

Nudity is considered particularly shameful in Muslim culture, a violation of religious principles. While nudity as a disciplinary or coercive tool may be especially objectionable to Muslims, they are hardly the only victims of the practice. Soldiers in Nazi Germany paraded naked prisoners in daylight, and human rights groups have documented the use of nudity during conflicts in Egypt, Chile and Turkey, and in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation. Central Intelligence Agency training manuals from the 1960`s and 1980`s taught the stripping of prisoners as an interrogation tool. Nudity and sexual humiliation have also been reported in American prisons where a number of guards at Abu Ghraib worked in their civilian lives.

Complaints about sexual humiliation have also emerged in Afghanistan. Seven Afghan men who had been held at the main detention center in Bagram, where the deaths of two detainees and accusations of abuse are now under investigation, said in recent interviews that during various periods from December 2002 to April 2004, they had been subjected to repeated rectal exams, and forced to change clothes, shower and go to the bathroom in front of female soldiers.

"I`m 50 years old, and no one has ever taken my clothes," said Abdullah Khan Sahak, who was released from American custody on April 19 and complained that he was photographed nude in Afghanistan. "It was a very hard moment for me. It was death for me."

Zakim Shah, a 20-year-old farmer, and Parkhudin, a 26-year-old farmer and former soldier who, like many Afghans, has only one name, said female soldiers had watched groups of male prisoners take showers at Bagram and undergo rectal exams.

"We don`t know if it`s medical or if they were very proud of themselves," Mr. Shah said. "But if it was medical, why were they taking our clothes off in front of the women? We are Afghans, not Americans."

On two or three occasions, the two men said, the women commented to one another about the size of prisoners` penises. "They were laughing a lot," Parkhudin said, adding that the women taunted prisoners during showers, saying, "You`re my dog."

Three other prisoners reported being questioned while naked at an American firebase in the city of Gardez in 2003. And at Camp Rhino, John Walker Lindh, the American now serving a 20-year sentence for aiding the Taliban, was stripped and bound with duct tape to a stretcher for two days, according to the statement of fact in his plea-bargain agreement.

At Guantánamo Bay, where some prisoners from Afghanistan were taken, a few British detainees said forced nudity had occurred. One of them, Tarek Dergoul, said after his release that some detainees had been stripped of their clothing, which would then be returned piece by piece in exchange for good behavior.

But Lt. Col. Leon H. Sumpter, a spokesman for the military joint task force that runs the detention center, said in a recent interview that nudity had never occurred in connection with interrogation or discipline and had not been approved.

A military official who served at Guantánamo said that after a wave of suicide attempts by prisoners in late 2002 and early 2003, the military police guards did take away clothing from some detainees who were considered suicide risks, out of concern that they might rip up their garments to make nooses.

In its visits to detention centers and prisons in Iraq, the Red Cross singled out the military intelligence section at Abu Ghraib for using public nudity in a "systematic" pattern of maltreatment. By contrast, the committee said it had heard no complaints of "physical ill treatment" at Camp Bucca, another large detention center.

A list of interrogation techniques posted at Abu Ghraib in September, indicating which were acceptable and which needed special authorization, makes no mention of leaving detainees naked. A senior military officer said, "There was no interrogation authority that authorized the removal of all clothing from a detainee."

But detainees who made sworn statements after the prison abuse scandal broke all mentioned having been left naked, some for days. The practice goes back at least as far as July 10, when, according to his statement, a detainee named Amjed Isail Waleed was left unclothed in a dark room for five days. Another detainee, Ameen Saeed al-Sheik, said he was stripped on Oct. 7, a week before the arrival of the 372nd Military Police Company, the unit where soldiers are now charged with abuse.

By Oct. 20, forced nudity was such accepted practice that an incident report written by two of the soldiers now charged said an inmate in the cell where prisoners were held for interrogation had been ordered "stripped in his cell for six (6) days" for apparently whittling a toothbrush into what a soldier believed was a knife.

In late October, Red Cross monitors were so alarmed by the number of nude detainees that they halted their visit and demanded an immediate explanation.

"The military intelligence officer in charge of the interrogation explained that this practice was `part of the process,` " the Red Cross wrote in a report in February.

In November, Specialist Luciana Spencer of the 66th Military Intelligence Group ordered a detainee stripped and handcuffed behind his back during his interrogation, then paraded him outdoors in the cold past other detainees to his cell.

"I remember we said, `Do you really have to walk him out naked?` " said the intelligence analyst, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "And they said, `Yeah, yeah, we have to embarrass him.` "

Mr. Stefanowicz reported the incident, and Specialist Spencer was moved out of the interrogation unit. Sometime around December, the nudity seemed to stop, according to several soldiers. Captain Reese, the tier warden, credited the Red Cross.

"They were concerned with the amount of nudity, and the area was cold and damp," he said in his statement to investigators on Jan. 18. "The detainees did not have appropriate clothing and bedding. The second visit occurred two weeks ago, and things were much better. The nudity has stopped, and they seemed happy with what they saw."

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June 7, 2004
Q&A: The Iraq war`s price tag

From the Council on Foreign Relations, June 7, 2004

How much has the war in Iraq cost?

Congress has so far appropriated about $123 billion for the war in Iraq in addition to the military`s standard operating expenses covered by the Defense Department budget. Lawmakers are in the final stages of approving another $25 billion--most of it for Iraq--to ensure the U.S. military has enough money for operations through the beginning of 2005. The price tag for the rest of 2005 and beyond hinges on the size of the U.S. military presence. Military operations in Iraq currently cost some $4 billion a month. Factoring in replacements for spent munitions, tanks, and other equipment increases the monthly costs to $4.4 billion, says Rose-Ann Lynch, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Defense.

How big is the defense budget?

In 2004, funding for defense programs, outside of additional appropriations for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, was $394 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office, Congress`s nonpartisan economic research arm. Next year, under President Bush`s budget proposal, that total would rise to $421 billion, not counting war costs.

How much of the $123 billion was for reconstruction costs?

Approximately $21 billion. The new $25 billion request includes no new money for reconstruction. Instead, it is targeted for military operations.

Have analysts made projections for the total cost of the war?

Yes. Estimates range widely, depending on analysts` forecasts of the size and duration of the U.S. deployment in Iraq. Lawrence J. Korb, an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a Reagan administration Pentagon official, foresees a multiyear cost of $500 billion. Stephen Kosiak, an analyst for the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, writes that costs could run up to $300 billion over the next decade. On the eve of the war in March 2003, an independent task force report from the Council on Foreign Relations estimated that stabilizing Iraq could cost some $20 billion a year for several years and warned that expenses could be higher. Brookings Institution senior fellows Michael O`Hanlon and Lael Brainard estimated in August 2003 that military and reconstruction costs could range from $150 billion to $300 billion. Now, O`Hanlon says he thinks he underestimated. "This has been tougher and more expensive than I ever thought," he says.

How do analysts make cost projections?

One way to roughly estimate future expenses, O`Hanlon says, is to calculate a per-soldier cost based on current operations, and then project forward. With 138,000 soldiers now in Iraq and spending at an average of $4.4 billion a month, the annual per-soldier cost works out to approximately $383,000. Based on that estimate, if the ranks are reduced on a schedule similar to that used for U.S. peacekeepers in Bosnia and Kosovo--about 20 percent to 25 percent a year--costs would total some $310 billion by the end of the decade. That figure assumes that the United States maintains its current troop levels in Iraq until the end of 2005, as top Pentagon officials have told Congress, before starting the troop-reduction process.

How do the war costs relate to the overall U.S. economy?

They are small compared with the total economy, budget experts say. The $123 billion price tag has been spread over two years, with approximately $52.2 billion spent in 2003 and $70.4 billion allocated for 2004. This means the annual cost of the war is less than 1 percent of the nation`s $11 trillion economy, says Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the director of the Congressional Budget Office. "There has not been a big direct impact on the economy," he says. On the other hand, because the United States federal budget is running a deficit, the government is borrowing money to finance the war. Interest payments on the debt increase costs; according to CBO calculations, payments on interest and capital for the $87 billion approved by Congress in October 2003 for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars will total $1.1 trillion over 10 years. "In the scheme of things, the war is not super-expensive, but it also sure ain`t cheap," O`Hanlon says.

How does the cost of the war compare with other federal government spending?

The $70 billion in 2004 equals less than 4 percent of President Bush`s $2.3 trillion federal budget. By comparison, Medicare and Medicaid costs for 2004 were estimated at $449 billion--or nearly 20 percent of the budget--and Social Security costs totaled $492 billion. Regular defense spending in 2004--excluding the extra costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan--was $394 billion, according to the White House Office of Management and Budget. When economists refer to the $123 billion cost of the Iraq war, they are talking about extra spending beyond the regular defense budget.

How do war costs affect the federal budget deficit?

According to CBO estimates, the deficit under the president`s budgetary proposals will be $478 billion in fiscal year 2004 and $358 billion in fiscal year 2005. Some 10 percent to 15 percent of the 2004 deficit will be attributable to the cost of the war, Holtz-Eakin estimates. The larger contributors to the deficit, "in roughly equal measure," are the Bush administration`s tax cuts, spending increases in other areas, and the economy performing below projections, he says.

Did the Bush administration include the cost of the war in its 2005 budget?

No. Instead, it plans to ask for funding in the form of supplemental appropriations from Congress in early 2005. This has led some critics to charge that the Bush administration is trying to hide the cost of the war from American voters. "We must give the troops what they need to be successful under increasingly risky conditions. And the president must tell the hard truth to the American people about how much longer our troops will remain in Iraq and how much more it will cost," House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said May 5. The Bush administration says it can`t estimate the costs because it does not know how many soldiers it will keep in Iraq and under what conditions they will serve. One solution: the Bush administration could have budgeted $30 billion to $50 billion--assuming the war would cost at least that much. "It was a policy decision" [not to], Holtz-Eakin says.

What is the $25 billion in new funding for?

The $25 billion set to pass Congress in June is being presented as a contingency fund that will pay for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan between September 30, 2004--the end of the federal government`s fiscal year--and February 2005. One reason the money is necessary, Pentagon officials say, is that 20,000 more soldiers than expected are in Iraq and are scheduled to remain there until the end of next year. The war is projected to be $4 billion over budget by September, Lieutenant General Norton Schwartz, director of operations for the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said May 4. In addition, increased military operations may push the price tag of Iraq operations to some $6 billion a month, said Representative John P. Murtha (Penn.), the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations defense subcommittee. The president called on Congress to quickly approve the new funding. "We must make sure there is no disruption in funding and resources for our troops," he said.

How much more money will officials ask for in 2005?

It`s unclear. Many experts say the cost will be at least $50 billion. Representative David R. Obey of Wisconsin, the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said the 2005 supplemental request could be as high as $75 billion. Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee May 13, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said, "There will be a request for a full year supplemental [spending bill] early next year. It will surely be much larger than $25 billion." Using the per-soldier cost projection outlined above, the cost of the war in 2005 would be about $52.8 billion.

Were White House prewar cost estimates accurate?

There were disagreements about the estimated cost. In September 2002, White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey told The Wall Street Journal that a U.S. intervention in Iraq could cost between $100 billion and $200 billion--a figure that approximates current spending. White House Budget Director Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. labeled that figure as "very, very high" and estimated total war costs at between $50 billion to $60 billion. Lindsey resigned in January 2003.

Historically, administration forecasts of war spending have often been wrong, according to Yale economist William D. Nordhaus. Abraham Lincoln`s secretary of the Treasury estimated that the direct cost of the Civil War to the North would be $240 million; it turned out to be $3.2 billion. Because it wrongly assumed the war in Vietnam would end by June 1967, the Pentagon underestimated its total cost by around 90 percent, Nordhaus says. The total direct cost of that war was $111 billion, or $584 billion in today`s dollars.

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

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June 8, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Great Taxer
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Over the course of this week we`ll be hearing a lot about Ronald Reagan, much of it false. A number of news sources have already proclaimed Mr. Reagan the most popular president of modern times. In fact, though Mr. Reagan was very popular in 1984 and 1985, he spent the latter part of his presidency under the shadow of the Iran-Contra scandal. Bill Clinton had a slightly higher average Gallup approval rating, and a much higher rating during his last two years in office.

We`re also sure to hear that Mr. Reagan presided over an unmatched economic boom. Again, not true: the economy grew slightly faster under President Clinton, and, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates, the after-tax income of a typical family, adjusted for inflation, rose more than twice as much from 1992 to 2000 as it did from 1980 to 1988.

But Ronald Reagan does hold a special place in the annals of tax policy, and not just as the patron saint of tax cuts. To his credit, he was more pragmatic and responsible than that; he followed his huge 1981 tax cut with two large tax increases. In fact, no peacetime president has raised taxes so much on so many people. This is not a criticism: the tale of those increases tells you a lot about what was right with President Reagan`s leadership, and what`s wrong with the leadership of George W. Bush.

The first Reagan tax increase came in 1982. By then it was clear that the budget projections used to justify the 1981 tax cut were wildly optimistic. In response, Mr. Reagan agreed to a sharp rollback of corporate tax cuts, and a smaller rollback of individual income tax cuts. Over all, the 1982 tax increase undid about a third of the 1981 cut; as a share of G.D.P., the increase was substantially larger than Mr. Clinton`s 1993 tax increase.

The contrast with President Bush is obvious. President Reagan, confronted with evidence that his tax cuts were fiscally irresponsible, changed course. President Bush, confronted with similar evidence, has pushed for even more tax cuts.

Mr. Reagan`s second tax increase was also motivated by a sense of responsibility — or at least that`s the way it seemed at the time. I`m referring to the Social Security Reform Act of 1983, which followed the recommendations of a commission led by Alan Greenspan. Its key provision was an increase in the payroll tax that pays for Social Security and Medicare hospital insurance.

For many middle- and low-income families, this tax increase more than undid any gains from Mr. Reagan`s income tax cuts. In 1980, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates, middle-income families with children paid 8.2 percent of their income in income taxes, and 9.5 percent in payroll taxes. By 1988 the income tax share was down to 6.6 percent — but the payroll tax share was up to 11.8 percent, and the combined burden was up, not down.

Nonetheless, there was broad bipartisan support for the payroll tax increase because it was part of a deal. The public was told that the extra revenue would be used to build up a trust fund dedicated to the preservation of Social Security benefits, securing the system`s future. Thanks to the 1983 act, current projections show that under current rules, Social Security is good for at least 38 more years.

But George W. Bush has made it clear that he intends to renege on the deal. His officials insist that the trust fund is meaningless — which means that they don`t feel bound to honor the implied contract that dedicated the revenue generated by President Reagan`s payroll tax increase to paying for future Social Security benefits. Indeed, it`s clear from the arithmetic that the only way to sustain President Bush`s tax cuts in the long run will be with sharp cuts in both Social Security and Medicare benefits.

I did not and do not approve of President Reagan`s economic policies, which saddled the nation with trillions of dollars in debt. And as others will surely point out, some of the foreign policy shenanigans that took place on his watch, notably the Iran-contra scandal, foreshadowed the current debacle in Iraq (which, not coincidentally, involves some of the same actors).

Still, on both foreign and domestic policy Mr. Reagan showed both some pragmatism and some sense of responsibility. These are attributes sorely lacking in the man who claims to be his political successor.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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G-8 Poised to Back U.S. Plan for Mideast Democracy
But Some Skeptical Officials and Nations Say the Initiative Isn`t Supported by Funding or Fresh Ideas

By Glenn Kessler and Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, June 8, 2004; Page A05

SAVANNAH, Ga., June 7 -- The Bush administration`s plan to promote democracy in the Middle East -- the centerpiece of its agenda at this week`s summit of the Group of Eight industrialized nations -- has been accepted by Europeans and Arabs only reluctantly, and some administration officials fear that the program`s goals have been undermined to ensure its acceptance at the summit.

White House officials have said the plan, which is intended to unite all of the administration`s Middle Eastern initiatives under a common theme, grew out of a speech by President Bush last year, saying the United States was wrong to support autocratic governments in a search for Middle East "stability."

But others in the administration said the G-8 initiative was driven primarily by White House officials who are not experts on the Middle East. In their account, those officials focused on either trying to bridge gaps between the Europeans and the Americans on key issues or on trying to ensure a "deliverable" at the summit that would obscure the turmoil in Iraq and the failure to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The G-8 leaders will formally adopt the plan at the conclusion of the summit, which will be held in Sea Island, Ga., Tuesday through Thursday. A draft version circulating among summiteers said it would include creating a "forum for the future" to provide a "ministerial framework for our ongoing dialogue." It would also form a democracy assistance group that would coordinate efforts by individual nations from outside the region, begin an initiative to lend money to small businesses, and establish a task force on changing the investment climate.

Bush administration officials said the embrace of Middle Eastern democracy by the world`s most powerful economies is a signal achievement. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice, briefing reporters here Monday, suggested that the plan, the "Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiative," will help counter extremism in the region responsible for terrorist attacks.

But others -- Europeans, Arabs and some U.S. officials -- said the rhetoric is not backed up by money or new ideas. Some administration officials said they feared that $200 million now dedicated by the administration to nascent and low-key efforts to promote reform will be diverted to high-profile talkathons that shift the focus away from substance and toward process.

In a report Monday on the G-8 plan titled "Imperiled at Birth," the International Crisis Group (ICG) said, "There are few indications [the administration] is prepared to put established relations with authoritarian but cooperative Middle Eastern states at risk and pin its future on civil society and political opposition movements."

The report added that "reformers throughout the region are hard pressed to say kinder things about the U.S. initiative than that the message -- the need for more democracy -- should not be disregarded because the messenger, especially in the post-Iraq war world, is suspect."

Europeans and Arabs said they believe the administration has scaled back the initiative in its struggle to win approval. The ICG report said the G-8 document is a "considerable climb down from the lofty ambitions proclaimed in the President`s November 2003 speech, and a drastic narrowing even of the initial goals suggested" in earlier drafts.

"That is absolutely false," a senior White House official said. "I can`t see how anyone could say there is a scaling back."

As for the made-in-America imprint, White House officials said the G-8 endorsement will help erase that. They also said the skepticism toward the plan is more the result of built-in prejudices than of any administration failings.

"You are getting spin from the Europeans and the Arabs," a White House official said Monday. "There is substantial resistance to the notion of the democratization of the Arab world. It comes partly from Arab rulers who don`t want to democratize, and partly from Europeans who don`t think that Middle Easterners and Arabs are really ready for democracy. It`s an incredibly condescending viewpoint."

European officials said the Americans were the ones who adopted a condescending attitude, appearing to lecture toward Arabs and not appreciating Europe`s long-running efforts to promote reform and modernization in the Middle East.

In an effort to demonstrate engagement with Arabs on the issues, Bush invited the leaders of a number of Islamic countries to attend a lunch Wednesday with G-8 leaders, at their own expense. But leaders of some key nations, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Morocco, turned down the invitation, and Qatar was purposely snubbed because of administration anger at al-Jazeera`s coverage of the Iraq war. Rice cited scheduling issues as the reason Morocco and Egypt -- one of the effort`s harshest critics -- will not appear.

"We will continue to have good discussions with the Saudis and with the Egyptians, as well as other countries in the Middle East," she said.

White House officials point to a succession of statements from the region, such as a declaration by the Arab League on reform and modernization last month, as evidence that there is ongoing interest in democracy -- and that the administration`s push has prompted a response. The draft statement for the G-8 quotes liberally from these statements, which also included a conference held in March at the Alexandria Library in Egypt.

White House officials also say questions about the lack of money in the program are misguided. "This is a generational challenge," an official said. "No one believes that the promotion of democracy, the support for reformers in the region, is going to change the face of the region from now to January, or to a year from January. It is literally like the fight against communism."

Wright reported from Washington.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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Supporters of Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr, who rejects the militia ban, chanted his praise Friday in Baghdad`s Sadr City.
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Decree Outlaws Iraqi Militias In Effort to Bolster Security
Shiite Cleric, Aides Barred From Public Office for 3 Years

By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, June 8, 2004; Page A17

BAGHDAD, June 7 -- The new Iraqi government and U.S. occupation authorities declared all militias illegal Monday and outlined a $200 million program to redirect their estimated 100,000 fighters into official security forces, retirement or civilian professions.

According to senior occupation officials, the most immediate effect of the order, issued in the name of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, was to formally outlaw the Mahdi Army of Moqtada Sadr, the defiant Shiite Muslim cleric who has confronted U.S. occupation forces in bloody clashes for the last two months.

The order also stipulated that Sadr and his lieutenants, as members of a now illegal armed group, are barred from holding public office for three years. That put a legal barrier in the path of mainstream Shiite political and religious figures who are seeking to draw Sadr and his followers away from armed resistance and into Iraq`s postwar political process.

Sadr`s group rejected the ban, saying Allawi`s government had no authority to hand down such laws. "Ayad Allawi`s agreement does not apply to the Mahdi Army," said Omar Ahmed Shaybani, a Sadr spokesman. "The Mahdi Army is not a militia. It is the Iraqis legitimately resisting the occupation. The Mahdi Army exists as long as the occupation does."

The ban was designed in part to dramatize the intention of Allawi`s government, named a week ago, to increase security measures in a country shaken by car bombings and hostage-takings directed against foreigners, and robberies and kidnappings directed against ordinary Iraqis by criminals seeking to profit from the disorder. But whether the unelected interim government can enforce such an order remains doubtful given the shaky security situation at present, said Abdul-Wahab Qassab, a retired general staff officer who runs the Azzaman Center for Strategic Studies in Baghdad.

"Unless there is a strong commitment from the political parties, I don`t think the outcome will be positive," he said.

Nine other Iraqi political parties and movements have pledged to abide by the ban on militias and seek promised benefits, including job training and veterans` pensions for demobilized fighters, Allawi announced. "All of these parties have accepted detailed plans, timetables and terms for the transition and reintegration of the armed groups under their authority or have already disbanded their militias," he added.

Occupation officials said the timetable calls for as many as 90,000 fighters to turn in their weapons and change status by the time Iraq holds elections next January.

The two main Kurdish groups, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, field more than 70,000 of the 102,000 Iraqis believed to carry arms in armed political groups, according to senior officials of the U.S.-run Coalition Provisional Authority who briefed reporters on condition they not be named. The other main armed group is the Badr Organization, formerly the Badr Brigades, the military wing of the Iranian-supported Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Shiite group with as many as 15,000 fighters.

The Badr Organization several weeks ago announced it was disbanding as a militia to become a purely political movement, although the group`s weapons and fighters remained ready if its leaders saw a need for them again. By signing on to the militia ban, the group has now also pledged to turn in its guns and move its members into the new Iraqi army or police corps, or into civilian jobs, according to a negotiated transition schedule, the officials said.

But the Kurdish region`s two military organizations, whose fighters traditionally are called pesh merga, have a different arrangement, reflecting the semi-independence that Kurdish-populated northern Iraq has enjoyed for more than a decade. About half are expected to join the national army or police forces, U.S. officials said. Thousands of others, they explained, will be incorporated into three specialized military units -- mountain troops, counterterrorist forces and quick-reaction battalions -- under the command of the Kurdish regional government that controls northern Iraq.

Adnan Asadi, a member of the Shiite-run Dawa party, said this arrangement should last only until Iraq gets an elected government, scheduled for next January. At that time, he said, an elected national government must reassert authority over the Kurdish region and its military forces. "This is a law and should be done," he said.

But Qassab recalled the Kurds` repeated uprisings against rule from Baghdad over the last 30 years and suggested that their acceptance of central authority might not be so simple, particularly given the often ruthless suppression of their revolts by former president Saddam Hussein`s army. That is one reason for their insistence on retaining local command over part of their pesh merga military, he said.

"They are very keen to keep the ability to enforce their will wherever and whenever it becomes necessary," Qassab said.

U.S. officials have said in the past that Kurdish militias must melt into the national army at some point. The occupation officials explaining the ban, who wore button-down shirts and neckties despite Baghdad`s stifling heat, insisted that, contrary to appearances, the arrangement for Kurdish fighters does not mean they remain militias under another name.

The Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan field what amount to small armies, with organization and weaponry surpassing those of Iraq`s other militias, officials said. In addition, they maintained, the history and geography of the Kurdish-administered area requires special military units of the kind that will remain under Kurdish command.

But Shaybani, the spokesman for Sadr, said the exception for the Kurds shows that Allawi`s government does not exercise real power and could not impose its will on them, in part because their insistence on autonomy is supported by the United States.

"The pesh merga is an independent army, with a regional government," he said. "No Iraqi government can impose anything on that army or government."

On another subject, Shaybani said a large explosion Monday in a building adjoining the Kufa Mosque was caused by an electrical short circuit. Kufa, which lies next to Najaf about 90 miles south of Baghdad, had been the main focus of clashes between Mahdi Army fighters and U.S. troops until a cease-fire took effect Friday. Sadr frequently has led Friday prayers at the city`s main mosque.

The U.S. military complained that Iraqi policemen who approached the scene of the explosion were fired on by Sadr`s militiamen. Residents said the explosion came from Mahdi Army ammunition stored in the building. But Shaybani said flammable construction material was involved.

[A car bomb exploded Tuesday during morning rush hour outside a U.S. base north of Baghdad, killing four Iraqis and wounding 12 others, Iraqi police said. The explosion occurred 10 yards from the main gate of the Army`s 1st Infantry Division base in Baqubah, 30 miles northeast of Baghdad.]

Special correspondent Saad Sarhan in Najaf contributed to this report.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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U.N. Arms Inspectors Say Iraq Sites Were Cleaned Out


Associated Press
Tuesday, June 8, 2004; Page A17

UNITED NATIONS, June 7 -- A number of sites in Iraq known to have contained equipment and material that could have been used to produce banned weapons and long-range missiles have been either cleaned out or destroyed, U.N. weapons inspectors said Monday.

The inspectors` report said they did not know whether the items, which had been monitored by the United Nations, were at the sites during the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

U.N. inspectors were pulled from Iraq just before the war began in March 2003, and the United States has refused to allow them to return, instead deploying its own teams to search for weapons of mass destruction.

"It is possible that some of the materials may have been removed from Iraq by looters of sites and sold as scrap," the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission said in its quarterly report to the Security Council.

UNMOVIC said its experts and a team from the International Atomic Energy Agency, which was responsible for dismantling Iraq`s nuclear program, were jointly investigating items from Iraq that were discovered in a scrap yard in the Dutch port of Rotterdam.

Through photographs taken during an initial IAEA investigation, UNMOVIC said it discovered that SA-2 engines used in Iraq`s banned Al Samoud-2 missile program were among the scrap.

Commission experts examined one missile engine at the site and discovered from the serial number that it had been tagged by U.N. inspectors in the past and had not been declared as having been fired.

Representatives at the scrap yard indicated that five to 12 similar engines had been seen there in January and February, and that more could have passed through the yard unnoticed, the report said.

Company staff said other items made of stainless steel and other corrosion-resistant metal alloys bearing the inscription "Iraq" or "Baghdad" had been observed in shipments delivered from the Middle East since November 2003, it said.

UNMOVIC experts determined that a number of items were composed of heat-resistant Inconel and titanium -- both subject to monitoring because of their possible dual use in legitimate civilian activities and banned weapons production, the report said. The commission said its investigation was continuing.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

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A Summit for the Future



Tuesday, June 8, 2004; Page A22

THE EVE of the annual Group of Eight summit meeting offered another demonstration of how the bad blood between the Bush administration and European governments continues to hamper international consensus on Iraq. Eager to win approval for a new United Nations resolution endorsing Iraq`s interim government, the Bush administration made considerable concessions, acknowledging the new government`s right to order the departure of U.S. troops and fixing an end date -- January 2006 -- for the mandate of international forces. Iraq`s new prime minister submitted a letter to the Security Council outlining arrangements that he said would allow his government and coalition forces "to reach agreement on the full range of fundamental security and policy issues."

Yet this was not enough for France and its followers, which still appear to be pursuing the prewar strategy of using the council to contain U.S. power. Though they refuse to contribute their own troops to Iraq`s pacification, France, Germany and Russia tried to dictate military arrangements on the ground, demanding that the resolution grant Baghdad`s incoming government something it hadn`t asked for: an explicit veto over U.S.-led operations. Both sides played down the dispute and predicted an agreement could be reached as early as today. But it`s hard not to conclude from the debate that a truly cooperative Western effort to stabilize Iraq remains out of reach, despite the critical importance of that outcome for Europeans as well as Americans.

For now, the Bush administration has no choice but to press ahead in Iraq with its patchwork alliance. But in the longer run, the United States must forge a broader and stronger alliance if it is to win the war against Islamic extremism and terrorism. That`s why one of the initiatives set to emerge from this week`s summit meeting strikes us as constructive and promising: a joint commitment by the rich nations to democratic reform in the "broader Middle East and North Africa," backed by several new programs.

Launched by the White House in January as one of its major diplomatic initiatives this year, the reform plan encountered resistance in Paris -- where Middle Eastern democracy is dismissed as a fool`s errand, especially if promoted by the United States -- and from entrenched Arab autocrats, who, not surprisingly, disapprove of a program intended to strip them of power. In Washington, these all-too-predictable reactions have been seized on by administration critics as proof that the initiative is doomed to failure. Yet such assessments ignore the growing pressure for change within the Middle East itself -- an appetite reflected in an unprecedented series of manifestos issued in recent months by groups of Arab intellectuals and civil society movements calling for democratic institutions.

The G-8 platform seeks to ally itself with these reformers and support them through programs promoting democracy, economic growth and literacy. It calls for the creation of a biannual "forum for the future" at which Middle Eastern and G-8 governments would discuss reforms -- and a separate convention of nongovernment groups. No one pretends these instruments will trigger a democratic revolution overnight. But they do represent a start at two critical tasks: concrete action to promote liberalization in the Arab states, and the formulation of a common and cooperative transatlantic agenda for the Middle East. At best this summit will leave a foundation that future American and European administrations can build on -- if and when they are ready to put the rancor over Iraq behind them.

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Top Iraq Cleric Offers Caution on U.N. Resolution
Mon Jun 7, 2004 03:56 PM ET

NAJAF, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraq`s top Shi`ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, warned Monday any U.N. resolution on Iraq that mentions an interim constitution endorsing autonomy for Kurds would have "dangerous consequences."

"This law (constitution) was created by an unelected council in the shadow of occupation and under its direct impact," a statement from Sistani`s office said.

"This matter is illegal and is rejected by most of the Iraqi people. Therefore, any attempt to bestow legitimacy on this law (constitution) by mentioning it in the international resolution ... will have dangerous consequences."

Sistani`s views hold huge sway with Iraq`s 60 percent Shi`ite majority and his opposition to measures proposed by U.S. authorities in Iraq has prompted changes in the past.

Iraq`s Kurds, who make up 20 percent of the population, are pushing to have measures of autonomy granted to them in Iraq`s interim constitution enshrined in the U.N. resolution.

Kurdish Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani said Sunday Iraq`s unity could be at risk if the resolution did not endorse autonomy granted to Kurds under the present interim constitution.

"It would be a great disappointment for the Kurdish people -- we would not oppose the Americans, but we would not participate in Baghdad," Barzani told Reuters.

The United States and Britain are pressing U.N. Security Council members to pass the resolution on Iraq`s future quickly, possibly as early as Tuesday, and were struggling Monday to consider a flurry of amendments to the text.

There was little chance the latest draft would accommodate the Kurds, who are threatening to quit the government unless the resolution endorses the autonomy granted them in the interim constitution, which was signed in March.

Measures adopted in the interim constitution are not mentioned in the latest drafts of the U.N. resolution because of long-standing objections from Sistani.

Monday`s statement from the cleric urged the 15-member Security Council to take Sistani`s objections on board.

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FAREWELL TO A PRESIDENT
A Week That Could Bolster Bush
Unofficially, GOP insiders hope nostalgia for Reagan will reap political dividends.
By Doyle McManus
Times Staff Writer

June 8, 2004

WASHINGTON — Can Ronald Reagan`s political magic work in one last election — this time for President Bush?

Republican strategists acknowledged Monday that they hope the nation`s week of mourning for Reagan, who died Saturday, will turn into a boost for Bush`s reelection campaign.

Officially, GOP leaders said it would be unseemly to talk about the political impact of Reagan`s death. "We just want to make sure that Ronald Reagan`s legacy is honored," Republican Party national chairman Ed Gillespie said.

But unofficially, several Republican strategists said the nation`s outpouring of nostalgia and respect for Reagan may have offered Bush an opportunity to improve his flagging popularity — if he can find a way to don the mantle of his well-loved predecessor.

Even before Reagan`s death, Bush and his campaign deliberately borrowed some favorite themes from the Republican revolution of 1980: optimism, national confidence, military strength, tax cuts, economic recovery.

This week, trying not to sound overtly political, Republican spokesmen again looked for polite ways to remind voters that Bush is, in many ways, Reagan`s ideological heir.

"The life and example of Ronald Reagan reinforces how important conviction and determination are in a president," Bush campaign spokesman Terry Holt said in an apparent dig at Bush`s presumed Democratic challenger, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), whom Republicans have accused of flip-flops. "Reagan`s legacy of optimism and of patriotism should inspire everybody, regardless of political party."

On Friday, in a eulogy he is to deliver for Reagan at the Washington National Cathedral, Bush will have a chance to make that point himself — if only by implication. The eulogy is being prepared by Bush`s chief speechwriter, Michael Gerson, who also wrote the president`s moving speech for a memorial service in the same cathedral after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The cycle of mourning for Reagan could bring Bush one other bonus, Republican pollster Bill McInturff said: It will take Americans` minds off the recent spate of bad news from Iraq.

The revelation that U.S. troops had abused Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison sent voters` confidence and Bush`s popularity reeling during the last month, McInturff said. "It was like a national psychiatric moment," he said.

"This is a country that thinks of itself as moral and law-abiding," he said. "The prison stories compromised that … but remembering Reagan has been a perfect counterpoint, reminding us of a time that made America feel good about itself.

"This national dialogue about Reagan could wash away the focus on the prison story and do a lot to rebalance public opinion," McInturff said. "It could get [public confidence] back where it ought to be, and that will be a very good outcome for the campaign."

McInturff added that a week or two of focusing on Reagan, no matter how helpful to Bush, would not decide the presidential election. "However major this story is in June, it`s very rare that something like this will determine what happens in November," he said.

But he argued that the coming week could "reset" public sentiment and stop what had been a gradual slide in Bush`s popularity — "and if that happens, that`s a big deal."

Other political analysts said the glow of nostalgia for Reagan`s presidency was unlikely to warm voters long enough to carry them to the polls for Bush in November.

"If this had happened in mid-October, it might have been different," said William Schneider, CNN senior political analyst and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. "It would have rallied conservatives…. But it`s five months too early. A week in politics is a lifetime; five months is an eternity.

"Bush`s fate is dependent on events from here on out," Schneider said. "What if we capture Osama bin Laden? What if there`s a smooth transition in Iraq, and diminishing casualties? What if there are good economic numbers? All of those events could help Bush much more than Ronald Reagan.

"I would expect this week`s events to produce some modest improvement in Bush`s approval ratings, but I don`t expect it to last unless some of those other things happen."

But the mourning for Reagan could hide a trap for Republicans, Schneider warned: the temptation to make too much political hay of the former president`s death.

"Don`t allow any of the commemorations to turn into a political rally," he advised. "If any Republican says at a memorial service that we should win one more for `the Gipper` " — paraphrasing Reagan`s famous line from "Knute Rockne All American," in which he played Notre Dame football star George Gipp, — "they`re sunk."

In fact, Gillespie and other Republican leaders have avoided that faux pas so far.

Another political expert, former Reagan aide David Gergen, warned that Bush faces another peril: He may emerge from a week of comparison to Reagan looking distinctly second-best.

"To a considerable extent, the celebration of Reagan includes the celebration of his values and his conservatism, and that should benefit Bush as Reagan`s heir," said Gergen, who also worked for President Clinton.

"The imponderable is whether Reagan looks so large that Bush, by contrast, looks diminished," he said. "There was so much poetry in Reagan; it`s going to be hard for this president to be seen on the same plane."

Kerry faces a similar problem, Gergen said. "Bill Clinton is about to bring out his memoirs and go on a book tour," he said. "Clinton is the best orator in the country today. If you`re John Kerry, how do you compete with that?"

Kerry, for his part, has suspended public campaign events until after Reagan`s funeral, which meant canceling two large fund-raising concerts in Los Angeles and New York.

"This is a week in which there`s not much Kerry can do," said Stephen Hess, a scholar at the Brookings Institution, a centrist Washington think-tank. "The attention of the world is directed otherwise, and there`s no way he can turn Reagan into a Democratic icon.

"But a campaign is the sort of thing you measure in weeks — as in `Kerry had a good week` or `Bush had a good week,` " Hess said. "Bush will spend this week not as a candidate but as our president, and I`m sure he`ll give a very eloquent eulogy on Friday, and that will be nice. And then next week they`ll go back to business as usual."


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Sadr Army Holds Fire but Stays On at Two Holy Sites
Najaf governor claims cease-fire is working, but coalition officials deny a deal was made. Some officials believe fighters are regrouping.
By Charles Duhigg
Times Staff Writer

June 8, 2004

NAJAF, Iraq — Two beleaguered cities in southern Iraq remained quiet Monday and U.S. military officials couldn`t agree on what was causing the lull in clashes with rebels loyal to Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr.

Insurgents remained in control of two holy sites about 72 hours after an Iraqi governor asked U.S. forces to partially withdraw from Najaf and Kufa, halting six weeks of fighting. Iraqi police appeared to tolerate the insurgents` presence in the cities.

"This is a cease-fire, agreed to by the Americans and the fighters," said Adnan Zurufi, the U.S.-appointed governor of Najaf.

Army Brig. Gen. Mark P. Hertling, a commander of the 1st Armored Division stationed in Najaf and Kufa, said: "There is no cease-fire. We`re simply following the instructions of the governor."

Hertling said Sadr`s militia, known as the Al Mahdi army, "are on their way out."

Regional commanders, though, disagreed.

"The Mahdi army is sticking around, just waiting until we are gone," said Army Lt. Col. Pat White, commander of the base nearest Kufa. "Sadr`s goals haven`t changed. This just gives him a chance to catch his breath."

Observers said the recent calm was a face-saving gesture that allowed militants to avoid one-sided firefights and permitted the U.S.-led coalition to claim stability before the June 30 return of sovereignty. But the situation in which insurgents control mosques and intimidate Iraqi security forces remains unresolved, one observer said.

Fighting broke out in April when Sadr`s militia took control of Najaf and Kufa, seizing police stations and two of the holiest sites in Shiite Islam. Deadly fighting continued until Friday, when Zurufi asked U.S. forces to end patrols near the mosques and gave insurgents 72 hours to leave the city.

Three days later, up to 1,000 insurgents remained in the cities, according to U.S. military officers.

Zurufi and local security officials said they would not confront Sadr`s fighters. "We are not strong enough to arrest them. All we can do is ask them to not display their weapons," the governor said.

About 95% of Najaf`s 600 policemen have been recruited in the last week, the Najaf police chief said, and only half have guns.

Since the U.S. pullback, the cities have been quiet except for an explosion Monday at the Kufa mosque. Witnesses said the blast occurred when an ammunition cache caught fire, but fighters in the mosque blamed the United States. American military commanders said they had not sent troops or fired artillery at the site since Friday.

Iraqi officials said insurgents would use the calm to rebuild their forces.

"They will continue fighting," said Emad Zurufi, chief security advisor to the governor. "They are waiting, building up weapons and awaiting orders."

U.S. military officials believe this lull may last until sovereignty is returned on June 30.

"Some intelligence tells us foreign fighters are moving in here and regrouping," said a regional military commander who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "Sadr might be waiting until after June 30. After that it`s out of our hands, and through force and intimidation, Sadr can continue to exert himself."

Iraqi police have begun patrols near mosques, replacing U.S. troops.

Residents, however, said militiamen had been planting land mines in the cemeteries surrounding the mosques. "What do the police do?" said Qassim Juwad, a Najaf resident. "The Mahdi militiamen do not let them approach the Imam Ali shrine or the area surrounding it."

The calm also allows the U.S.-led coalition to claim stability, Iraqi leaders say.

"Every time we wanted to use a military solution, we were stopped by the coalition," said security advisor Zurufi. "There is a feeling that appearing peaceful is more important than having peace."

U.S. military officials said they had drawn up plans to invade the Kufa mosque last month, but were stopped from implementing them. Coalition officials have backed down from their plan to "kill or capture" Sadr and "destroy" the Al Mahdi army for a truce proposal that called on both sides to withdraw.

Sources within the coalition and Iraqi security forces have questioned whether Sadr controls insurgents in the cities.

A statement released by a spokesman for the Al Mahdi army, Sheik Juwad Koreishi, said Sadr had instructed fighters to partially withdraw.

"Now we`ll see if these are Sadr`s fighters," said Gov. Zurufi. "Our intelligence says they are foreign fighters, perhaps Syrians, perhaps fighters from Fallouja."

U.S. military officials agree that Iraqis have taken over the problem, and that the American forces are ready to leave.

"We`ve lost soldiers here, for what?" said Maj. Todd Walsh, a commander at the U.S. base nearest Kufa. "A real solution can only come from the Iraqis."

But Gov. Zurufi said he was "very concerned about who is here and what will happen after June 30. But I will not call the Americans. We must solve this ourselves."

Brig. Gen. Hertling, however, disagreed.

"I`m not worried," he said. "There`s not that many insurgents left — we`ve killed a lot of them. If things get bad, the governor will ask us to help."

Duhigg is assigned to the U.S. Army`s 1st Armored Division in the Najaf area. A special correspondent in Najaf contributed to this report.




Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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COMMENTARY
Actually, It Was the Inept Empire
By András Szántó

June 8, 2004

In the current orgy of commemoration, Ronald Reagan`s steely resolve in the face of the communist threat is taken as an article of faith. The Great Communicator, we`re reminded, put the world on notice that he was serious about bringing down the "Evil Empire." And that he wasn`t afraid to spend big to win.

But the burnished vision of Reagan as St. George, single-handedly slaying the fire-breathing dragon of totalitarianism, is an exaggeration. In fact, communism`s epic meltdown was more of a suicide than a capitulation.

I was there. As a 19-year-old conscript in the army of the Hungarian Socialist People`s Republic, I saw firsthand, in early 1983, that the days of superpower equilibrium were numbered.

My reconnaissance unit was housed in one of the Eastern Bloc`s westernmost barracks — you could almost see Austria from our windows. Older officers recalled that they had been the first to cross into Czechoslovakia during the 1968 revolt. In 1981, our soldiers had been put on trucks to wait for a signal to head to Poland, where martial law had been imposed after Wojciech Jaruzelski`s crackdown on the Solidarity movement.

Our superiors didn`t like to dwell on such things, but it was clear that "the brotherhood of socialist nations" was more or less a sham. We didn`t see the end coming, but we were starting to connect the dots: Budapest, 1956; Prague, 1968; Warsaw, 1981 — the numerology of dissent added up to a vague presentiment that, sooner or later, the center would not hold.

In any event, in January 1983, I was on a train bound for a major Warsaw Pact military exercise in western Hungary. The logic of the "war game" was starkly simple. Since Austria was politically neutral, NATO and Warsaw Pact forces would, in the event of World War III, invade that country from two sides. We would end up fighting Italian troops somewhere southwest of Vienna.

What I observed in those frostbitten days was logistical disarray and utter ineptitude.

We were dropped off in a valley somewhere; old trucks dressed up as enemy targets awaited our attack. But the ammunition supplies were late in reaching the artillery units behind us. Hours later, when the cannons unloaded their ordnance, they hit everything but their intended targets. One shot took out a nearby canteen.

Then helicopters came swooping down, launching missiles. Amid the chaos, I saw a tank filled with soldiers go up in flames. Central command issued an order to switch from live ammo to dummies.

Soon we were headed in our armed amphibian vehicles into "enemy territory." We couldn`t fire out from them, even if we had been allowed to use live bullets — the gun holes were sealed shut. Not much later, we ran out of gas. This, then, was the formidable adversary that threatened the free world.

But it wasn`t just that the military prowess of the Warsaw Pact was less than stellar. In other realms of life, too, change was in the air. From the hardscrabble shipyards of Gdansk to the clandestine soirees of Vaclav Havel`s Prague, the stirrings of democracy and individualism were everywhere in evidence.

After my year in the army, I attended Budapest`s Karl Marx University, and I remember photocopies of Milton Friedman`s paeans to unfettered free markets being shared by the students. When Reagan started his second term, private enterprise was already mushrooming, at least in Hungary, forming a vast black and gray pseudo-economy. The United States had already won the culture war. Some people in my crowd shared a passion not only for Coke and Pepsi but also for such decadent indulgences as poppy tea (a crude form of heroin) and hashish. Kids swapped bootlegged tapes of the latest Western albums. Adults lined up to see movies by the likes of Woody Allen. The Young Artists Club of Budapest in 1984 was a hotbed of social and sexual transgression. Religion too was thriving alongside the bubbling subcultures. Tourists lucky enough to travel to the West would return home with that ultimate trophy — a pair of Levi`s or Wrangler jeans.

All this was unfolding with little awareness of the Gipper. For East Europeans, Reagan was a somewhat whimsical figure, better known for his Hollywood roots than for his shrewd handling of the Kremlin. The spotlight was on the Politburo chiefs who followed Leonid Brezhnev, above all Mikhail S. Gorbachev — it was he, the unlikely reformer, who, in our eyes, got things moving in Russia.

No great man deserves credit for the fall of communism. Ronald Reagan played his cards well, but in Eastern Europe, as elsewhere, history was one step ahead of the politicians.

*

András Szántó is director of the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University.



Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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COMMENTARY
A Nice Guy`s Nasty Policies
Robert Scheer

June 8, 2004

I liked Ronald Reagan, despite the huge divide between us politically. Reagan was a charming old pro who gave me hours of his time in a series of interviews beginning in 1966 when he was running for governor, simply because he enjoyed the give and take. In fact, I often found myself defending the Gipper whenever I was confronted with an East Coast pundit determined to denigrate anyone, particularly actors, from my adopted state. Yet, looking back at his record, I am appalled that I warmed to the man as much as I did.

The fact is that Reagan abandoned the Roosevelt New Deal — which he admitted had saved his family during the Great Depression — in favor of a belief in the efficacy of massive corporate welfare inculcated in him by his paymasters at Warner Bros., General Electric and the conservative lecture circuit. Though Reagan the man was hardly mean-spirited, Reagan the politician betrayed the social programs and trade unionism he once believed in so fiercely.

Let`s start with his leadership of California, where he launched attacks on the state`s once- incomparable public universities and devastated its mental health system. Foreshadowing future trumped-up invasions of tiny Grenada and Nicaragua, he sent thousands of National Guardsmen to tear-gas Berkeley.

It also became increasingly clear that although the man wasn`t unintelligent, his ability to mingle truth with fantasy was frightening. At different times, Reagan — who infamously said that "facts are stupid things" — falsely claimed to have ended poverty in Los Angeles; implied he was personally involved in the liberation of Europe`s concentration camps; argued that trees cause most pollution; said that the Hollywood blacklist, to which he contributed names, never existed; described as "freedom fighters" the Contra thugs and the religious fundamentalists in Afghanistan who would later become Al Qaeda; and claimed that fighting a "limited" nuclear war was not an insane idea.

But to see him as only a bumpkin — as some did — was to very much underestimate him. Like Nixon, the Teflon president was a survivor who`d come up the hard way, and many journalists and politicians who didn`t understand that invariably were surprised by his resiliency and savvy. Although he generally was compliant with his handlers, whenever the campaign pros or rigid ideologues got in the way of his or Nancy`s instincts, they were summarily discarded.

Even when his ideas were silly, his intentions often seemed good. For example, one of his dumbest and costliest pet projects, the "Star Wars" missile defense program, which he first announced when I interviewed him for the Los Angeles Times in 1980, was touted by Reagan as a peace offering to the Soviets.

And his legendary ability to effectively project an upbeat, confident worldview managed to obscure many of the negative consequences of his policies. For example, he made the terrible mistake of willfully ignoring the burgeoning AIDS epidemic at a time when action could have saved millions. Unlike many conservatives, however, he was not driven by homophobia. Instead, Reagan allowed AIDS to spread for the same reason he pointedly savaged programs to help the poor: He was genuinely convinced that government programs exacerbated problems — unless they catered to the needs of the businessmen he had come to revere.

In the White House, he ran up more debt than any earlier president — primarily to serve the requests of what Republican President Eisenhower had, with alarm, termed the "military- industrial complex." (George W. Bush has broken that record.)

Apologists for this waste argue that throwing money at the defense industry broke the back of the Soviet Union and ended the Cold War. But the Soviet Union was already broken, as Mikhail S. Gorbachev acknowledged quite freely when he came to power in the 1980s. Rather, what Reagan does deserve considerable credit for is ignoring the dire warnings of the hawks and responding enthusiastically to Gorbachev in their historic Reykjavík summit, where the two leaders called for a nuclear-free world.

Let it be remembered, then, that in the closing scene of his presidency Reagan embraced the peacemakers, rejecting the cheerleaders of Armageddon and was then loudly castigated by the very neoconservatives — most vociferously Richard Perle — who have claimed the Reagan mantle for the post-Cold War militarism of the current administration.

*

Robert Scheer writes a weekly column for The Times.



Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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June 08, 2004
Kerry With Slight Lead in Presidential Race
Bush`s ratings still in low range of presidency

http://www.gallup.com/content/?ci=11941

by David W. Moore


GALLUP NEWS SERVICE

PRINCETON, NJ -- A new Gallup survey finds Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry enjoying a slight lead over President George W. Bush, while Bush`s approval ratings remain relatively unchanged, but for the most part in negative territory. The president`s continuing strength is in the public`s perception of how well he is fighting the war on terrorism, while his performance ratings in other areas -- the economy, foreign affairs, the situation in Iraq, energy policy, and prescription drugs for older Americans -- all elicit higher disapproval than approval.

The poll, conducted June 3-6, overlapped news of former President Ronald Reagan`s death. Some of the results reported here could be affected by this news.

The poll finds Kerry leading Bush in the presidential contest by 49% to 44% among registered voters, and 50% to 44% among likely voters.


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Presidential Election 2004:
Bush vs. Kerry Trial Heat
among registered voters
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With independent Ralph Nader in the race, Kerry leads Bush by 45% to 42% among registered voters, with Nader receiving 7% support. Among likely voters, Kerry leads Bush by 49% to 43%, with Nader garnering 5% support.


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Presidential Election 2004:
Bush vs. Kerry vs. Nader Trial Heat
among registered voters
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All the changes in voter preferences from the May 21-23 poll are within the polls` margins of error. These results suggest that the race remains close, though Kerry appears to have a slight edge at this time. This is, in fact, the largest lead Kerry has had over Bush among likely voters since early March.

Battleground States

Among registered voters, Kerry leads Bush by 20 points in the blue states (won by former Vice President Al Gore in 2000 by a margin of more than 5 percentage points), and trails Bush by just 4 points in the red states (won by Bush in 2000 by a margin of more than 5 percentage points). In the purple states (those won by either Gore or Bush by margins of 5 points or less), Kerry leads by 5 points, 49% to 44%.


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Presidential Election 2004:
Trial Heats in Red, Blue, and Purple States
among registered voters (Nader excluded)
June 3-6, 2004
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With Nader in the race, the margins are less favorable to Kerry in all three groups of states. Kerry leads Bush by 15 points in the blue states, and trails Bush by 6 points in the red states. In the purple states, Kerry`s lead is down to 45% to Bush`s 43%, with Nader getting 7% support.


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Presidential Election 2004:
Trial Heats in Red, Blue, and Purple States
among registered voters (Nader included)
June 3-6, 2004
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Bush Approval

The poll shows an evenly divided public in evaluating Bush`s overall job performance, with 49% who approve and 49% who disapprove. Bush`s approval has ranged from 46% to 49% in the past four weeks, and has hovered around the 50% level for the past five months. Since the middle of January, Bush`s approval has fluctuated only within a narrow range from a low of 46% to a high of 53%, the last time at the latter level at the end of March.


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George W. Bush’s Job Approval Rating
November 2003 -- Present
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In the public`s ratings of specific policy areas, the only one measured by Gallup where Bush receives majority approval is in his handling the war on terrorism -- 56% approve, while 43% disapprove. In all the other areas, majorities of Americans disapprove rather than approve.


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George W. Bush’s Approval Ratings
percentage approving of
Bush’s handling of each issue
June 3-6, 2004
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The ratings show little change from those Bush received last month (energy and prescription drugs were not included in last month`s poll), though they are considerably lower than the ratings Bush received last December/January before the start of the presidential campaign.

Of particular importance may be the low ratings Bush receives on two substantive issues -- prescription drugs for older Americans and energy policy. Gas prices have been a major concern for Americans in recent weeks, and only last week did senior citizens begin to feel the first impact of the new prescription drug law, enacted last fall. Neither of these areas would appear to be strengths for Bush, and may represent vulnerabilities that Kerry could take advantage of in the presidential campaign.

Survey Methods

Results are based on telephone interviews with 1,000 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted June 3-6, 2004. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the margin of sampling error is ±3 percentage points.

Results based on likely voters are based on the subsample of 599 survey respondents deemed most likely to vote in the November 2004 general election, according to a series of questions measuring current voting intentions and past voting behavior. For results based on the total sample of likely voters, one can say with 95% confidence that the margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points. The likely voter model assumes a turnout of 50% of national adults, consistent with recent presidential elections. The likely voter sample is weighted down to match this assumption.

For results based on the sample of 896 registered voters, the maximum margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points.

In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

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SACRAMENTO, CA (IWR News Parody) - California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger unveiled a shocking bust of former President Ronald Reagan that he made entirely of dog feces that he collected over the weekend in his Beverly Hills neighborhood. Mr. Schwarzenegger said it was a fitting tribute to The Gipper, who was the `fertilizer` for the modern conservative movement.
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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
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http://www.juancole.com/

Bremer Bars Muqtada from Holding Office

The Guardian reports that US civil administrator Paul Bremer signed an order Monday banning Muqtada al-Sadr and his lieutenants from running for elective office for 3 years because of their membership in an illegal militia. Muqtada and his lieutenants rejected this decree and said that the CPA and the caretaker government had no right to make such decisions.

Ash-Sharq al-Awsat reports that Muqtada`s representative in Baghdad, Shaikh Abdul Hadi al-Darraji, said Monday, "The Mahdi Army does not recognize any decrees or agreements decided on by the transitional Iraqi government, insofar as we do not recognize it, because it is not an Iraqi instituiton, but rather was formed by Lakhdar Brahimi, who represented the powers of arrogance and the authority of the Occupation." He said that the Sadrists would never recognize any government until there was an elected one.

Darraji was pessimistic that the current truce in Najaf will hold. So too is the chief of police in that city, Ghalib al-Jaza`iri, who says that if the Mahdi Army in Najaf has not disarmed or departed by Tuesday at midnight, he will gather up 100 policemen and "finish them off."

Bremer`s action in excluding the Sadrists from parliament is one final piece of stupidity to cap all the other moronic things he has done in Iraq. The whole beauty of parliamentary governance is that it can hope to draw off the energies of groups like the Sadrists. Look at how parliamentary bargaining moderated the Shiite AMAL party in Lebanon, which had a phase as a terrorist group in the 1980s but gradually outgrew it. AMAL is now a pillar of the Lebanese establishment and a big supporter of a separation of religion and state. The only hope for dealing with the Sadrists nonviolently was to entice them into civil politics, as well. Now that they have been excluded from the political process and made outlaws in the near to medium term, we may expect them to act like outlaws and to be spoilers in the new Iraq.

Mr. Bremer is bequeathing to Iraq a large number of poison pills, which will go on contributing to chaos for years after he retires to a comfortable sinecure in Washington, for all the world like Robert Clive and his bought seat in the British parliament. (Clive was the first British governor of Bengal, from 1765).

posted by Juan @ 6/8/2004 08:35:58 AM

UN Security Council Vote expected Tuesday;
Sistani Weighs in Against Interim Constitution

The final details of the UN Security Council resolution, on the caretaker government to which the Bush administration maintains it will surrender sovereignty on June 30, have been worked out. The final draft will include a provision for a joint committee of high ranking Iraqis and Americans to make decisions about sensitive military operations in the country. The US had balked at giving control over the US military to the Iraqi government.

Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani wrote a letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, the text of which was released on Monday, in which he argued strongly against any mention in the UN resolution of the interim constitution passed by the US-appointed Interim Governing Council in February. As quoted by al-Hayat, Sistani wrote:

"It has reached us that some are attempting to insert a mention of what they call `The Law for the Administration of the Iraqi State in the Transitional Period` [i.e. the interim constitution] into the new UN Security Council resolution on Iraq-- with the goal of lending it international legitimacy. This "Law", which was legislated by an unelected council in the shadow of Occupation, and with direct influence from it, binds the national parliament, which it has been decided will be elected at the beginning of the new Christian year for the purpose of passing a permanent constitution for Iraq. This matter contravenes the laws, and most children of the Iraqi people reject it. For this reason, any attempt to bestow legitimacy on it through mentioning it in the UN resolution would be considered an action contrary to the will of the Iraqi people and a harbinger of grave consequences."



Sistani`s intervention, which appears to have been successful, has infuriated the Kurds, who see the Interim Constitution as their only real guarantee against the return of a heavy-handed Baghdad in their provinces.

posted by Juan @ 6/8/2004 08:09:06 AM

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Operation Enduring Fog
The White House strategy for dealing with the Abu Ghraib scandal: Stall, control, attack, deny and scare.

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By Dennis Jett

June 8, 2004 | A strategy for some kind of victory in Iraq is in place. Unfortunately, it is not a plan for defeating those who are resisting the imposition of democracy by the United States. Rather, it is a strategy for politically surviving the scandal created by the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

If this strategy had a name, the Pentagon might call it Operation Enduring Fog. If its tactics had an acronym, it would be SCADS -- stall, control, attack, deny and scare -- tactics calculated to ensure that only a handful of enlisted men and women are punished for Abu Ghraib and that the higher-ups escape judgment.

It is therefore no surprise that the various inquiries into the abuses at Abu Ghraib and other prisons "have so far left crucial questions of policy and operations unexamined," according to a story in the Sunday New York Times. That is the intended result of the administration`s coverup strategy.

No doubt the memorials for President Reagan will also be used to help advance the strategy. Since he is best remembered for making Americans feel good about themselves without ever causing them to ask why, his long goodbye can be further used to support the notion that if our purpose is noble, our tactics don`t matter. If nothing else, his weeklong funeral will be a spectacle of distraction.

Stalling is a particularly effective part of this strategy because Washington policymakers know that if they can get through a few news cycles without any breaking news, the media will focus on something else. Promising an investigation while discouraging a rush to judgment buys the time required and allows the guilty up the chain of command to go unpunished.

The strategy is tried and true. For instance, on June 18, 2003, U.S. forces attacked an Iraqi village near the Syrian border because they received good intelligence about potential high-value targets being in the area. No one of high value died, but among those killed were a young woman and her 2-year-old daughter. When asked by journalists whether there would be a formal report on the incident, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld replied, "Everyone will know that which is available to be known" when "the dust settles." A year later, the dust has apparently still not settled.

Controlling the message is another essential piece of the strategy. Rumsfeld has already banned the use of digital cameras by troops, since he understands that what is seen is more important than what is said. And he knows that what is said is more important than what is done. The Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq has an office of "strategic communications" with a staff of about 80. A full 95 percent of them are dedicated solely to generating stories in the American media, particularly small local television stations. Many of them are Republican political operatives and campaign staffers who are being paid huge salaries to protect the American public from the reality of Iraq.

The attack phase of the strategy is being left to surrogates, rather than to those, such as Rumsfeld, who will assume the responsibility for what happened as long as they are not held accountable. Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., announced at the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the abuses that he was "outraged by the outrage" over Abu Ghraib, and by the fact that "so many humanitarian do-gooders" were "crawling all over these prisons looking for human rights violations."

Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., went even further. He told a local TV reporter there was nothing wrong with terrifying a prisoner with an attack dog "unless it ate him." He went on to say that treating prisoners roughly, even if some died, was acceptable, since interrogations are not like Sunday school. Let`s hope the next time an American is taken prisoner, the captors don`t follow the advice of these two distinguished senators.

Denial is also part of the strategy, especially since the truth can be so elusive in a combat zone. On May 18, U.S. forces bombed another Iraqi village near the Syrian border, this time killing some 45 people, about half of whom were women and children, according to a local police official. Gen. Mark Kimmit, spokesman for the coalition forces, initially asserted that the group bombed was a "high-risk meeting of high-level, anti-coalition forces."

After videotape appeared that purported to show the gathering had been a wedding celebration, Kimmit responded, "Bad people have parties too." Asked about the incident again on May 28, Kimmit said two senior officers had begun an investigation of it within the previous 48 hours. But nothing further has been revealed, and as with the attack a year ago, the media have moved on.

If even the most distinguished newspapers dutifully repeated the administration`s baseless assertions about Saddam Hussein`s weapons of mass destruction before the war, why should anyone in the media now take the time or effort to pursue why a few innocent civilians were killed?

Another aspect of denial is refusing to provide information. When Congress received Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba`s report on Abu Ghraib, some 2,000 pages were missing. One of the missing documents was a report to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld from Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the head of prison operations in Iraq, on rules for interrogating prisoners. Miller toured the prisons in Iraq last summer, when he was still commander of the prison at the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and recommended changes to interrogation procedures. Although Rumsfeld personally approved the use of "intensive interrogation techniques" against some of the prisoners at Guantánamo, just what those techniques consist of remains classified.

Scare tactics are the final element of the strategy. On the eve of the Memorial Day weekend, Attorney General John Ashcroft called a press conference to warn of new terrorist threats, even though he had no new intelligence and had not bothered to inform the Department of Homeland Security he was making such an announcement.

On June 1, the Justice Department struck again, making new accusations about Jose Padilla. He is the American citizen arrested in Chicago for allegedly plotting to detonate a dirty bomb. Officials at the Justice Department say they were just trying to educate the public by informing us that Padilla was also planning to blow up apartment buildings. Some wondered why Justice declassified this information now, since Padilla has been held without charges for two years and arguments in his case before the Supreme Court were made just last month.

Whatever the motivations, such announcements illustrate the belief that any manipulation is acceptable if it might help make us safer. Torture and abuse, throwing U.S. citizens in jail without the right to an attorney -- these are all necessary because this is a two-front war, one against terrorism and one against defeat in November.

If the coverup strategy succeeds, we will likely never know who should be held ultimately responsible for Abu Ghraib. And the coverup strategy may succeed because it has no shortage of accomplices -- those who do not question the political leadership that made the abuses not only possible but inevitable.

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About the writer
Dennis Jett is a 28-year veteran of the U.S. State Department who served as ambassador to Peru and Mozambique. The author of "Why Peacekeeping Fails," Jett is now the dean of the University of Florida International Center.

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Car bombs shake two Iraqi cities; six European soldiers die in blast south of Baghdad
- ROBERT H. REID, Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, June 8, 2004

(06-08) 04:45 PDT BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) --

Two car bombs exploded in separate cities in Iraq Tuesday, killing at least 14 Iraqis and one U.S. soldier. Dozens were wounded, including 10 American soldiers. A U.S. Marine was killed in action west of Baghdad.

Elsewhere, six coalition soldiers -- two Poles, three Slovaks and a Latvian -- were killed in an explosion while defusing mines in Suwayrah, 25 miles south of Baghdad, authorities said.

The Slovaks and the Latvians were the first deaths from either of the two countries in Iraq, Polish officials said in Warsaw.

One of the car bombs blew up as a convoy of provincial council members passed by in the northern city of Mosul. The council members escaped injury, officials said. Nine people died and about 25 were injured, the U.S. military said. The Mosul deputy police chief was hurt, but not seriously.

In the other attack, a suicide attacker detonated a car bomb during rush hour outside the American forward operating base War Horse in Baqouba, about 30 miles northeast of Baghdad.

At least five Iraqis and one American soldier were killed, the U.S. military and police said. Fifteen Iraqis and 10 American soldiers were wounded while standing at a security checkpoint.

A U.S. Marine was also killed in action, the military said Tuesday. The death occurred Monday in Anbar province west of Baghdad, but the military released no further details.

In Ramadi, a Sunni Muslim city in Anbar province, a bomb exploded as a convoy of Westerners passed by, witnesses and police said Tuesday. The Westerners fired back after the Monday night attack. Hospital officials said eight Iraqis were killed and three injured.

The identity of the Westerners was unclear, and there was no immediate comment from U.S. authorities.

Attackers also fired several mortar rounds at a military base camp in the northern part of Mosul, the military said. Two contract employees received non-life-threatening injuries.

Violence continues against U.S. forces and their allies in the countdown to the handover of sovereignty in Iraq on June 30. A car bomb exploded Sunday near the gate of another a U.S.-run base north of Baghdad, killing nine people and injuring 30 others -- including two American soldiers.

The latest violence occurred as the U.N. Security Council in New York prepares to vote on a U.S.-British resolution outlining a blueprint for post-occupation Iraq and giving international support to the new Iraqi leadership.

Late Monday, the United States won important French and German approval for the resolution. The draft was revised four times over the past two weeks. It marks an end to the U.S.-led occupation and defines the relationship between the new government and the U.S.-led multinational force which will remain here after June 30.

U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte said he expects the Security Council to approve the U.S.-British resolution on Tuesday afternoon, and council diplomats said the vote could be unanimous.

France`s foreign minister told France-Inter radio Tuesday that his government would vote for the resolution despite objections over language defining the roles of the new Iraqi administration and the U.S.-led multinational force. France is one of the five permanent council members that have veto power.

"That doesn`t stop us from a positive vote in New York to help in a constructive way to find a positive exit to this tragedy," Foreign Minister Michel Barnier. "We would have liked more specifics on what will happen in terms of stability, but for us that is not sufficient reason to oppose this resolution."

The new Iraqi interim government has made security its top priority as it assumes more responsibility for running the country. The new prime minister, Iyad Allawi, is close to the CIA and the State Department and as an exile leader headed an opposition group made up largely of former military officers who had broken with Saddam Hussein.

In an effort to improve security, Allawi announced an agreement Monday by nine political parties to dissolve their militias, integrating some of their 102,000 fighters into the army and police and pensioning off the rest.

The plan does not cover the most important militia fighting coalition forces -- the al-Mahdi Army of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr -- or smaller groups that have sprouted across the country since the collapse of Saddam Hussein`s regime in April 2003.

Those groups will now be considered illegal.

The main groups affected by the agreement are Kurdish peshmerga militiamen who fought alongside American troops during the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam. Most of the others had effectively dissolved already. The other main group still active is the Badr Brigade of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a mainstream Shiite party.

U.S. officials want to disband the al-Mahdi Army and arrest al-Sadr for the April 2003 murder of a rival cleric, although authorities have deferred both goals to reduce tensions in the Shiite heartland south of Baghdad. Instead, the coalition has opted to let Allawi, himself a Shiite, and Shiite clerics deal with al-Sadr.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for former Governing Council Member Ahmad Chalabi demanded that Jordan open a new investigation in fraud charges that led to Chalabi`s 1991 conviction in absentia in a banking scandal.

Chalabi`s spokesman, Mithal al-Alusi, said the head of the Iraqi National Congress party was unfairly tried by a military court and that Chalabi can prove his innocence before a civilian panel.


URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/a/2004/06/0…
©2004 Associated Press

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Tuesday, June 08, 2004
War News for June 8, 2004

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring ‘em on: Car bomb in Mosul kills 10 Iraqis, wounds 100.

Bring ‘em on: One US soldier, four Iraqis killed by car bomb near Baquba.

Bring ‘em on: One US soldier killed, two wounded by roadside bomb ambush near Iskandariyah.

Bring ‘em on: Senior Shi’ite politician assassinated in Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Three security contractors wounded by roadside bomb near Mosul.

Bring ‘em on: US troops under mortar fire in Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: One US marine killed in al-Anbar province.

CENTCOM reports one US soldier collapsed and died on guard duty in Baghdad.

Two Polish, two Slovakian, one Latvian soldier killed in de-mining operation near al-Suwariya.

Fallujah. “It was not supposed to be like this. Under an agreement made last month with U.S. Marine commanders, a new force called the Fallujah Brigade, led by former officers from Saddam Hussein`s demobilized army, was to safeguard the city. The unruly gunmen — many of them insurgents who battled the Marines through most of April — were supposed to give way to Iraqi police and civil defense units. Instead, the brigade stays outside of town in tents, the police cower in their patrol cars and the civil defense force nominally occupies checkpoints on the city`s fringes but exerts no influence over the masked insurgents who operate only a few yards away.”

Abu Ghraib. “An analyst from the 205th Military Intelligence Battalion, who asked not to be identified for fear of being punished for speaking out, said: ‘If you walked down through the wing of the prison where they were being held, they would have them strip down naked. Sometimes they would stand on boxes and would hold their arms out. That happened almost every night — having them naked. I wouldn`t say it`s abuse. It`s definitely degrading to them.’”

Hostage update. “An Anglican cleric seeking the release of foreign hostages in Iraq says he fears their captors are selling them off to Islamic militants in a dangerous game that leaves few clues on their fate. ‘Things are looking very bad for the hostages. The groups that kidnap them are selling them off to militant groups who sell them off again. It is very hard to track them,’ Canon Andrew White told Reuters.”

Security contractors. “After the United States, the biggest single military contributor to the occupation of Iraq is not Britain - as official figures claim - but private military companies. The figures are startling: more than 10,000 men and women perform various jobs under contract to the military in Iraq. Furthermore, official figures in Washington estimate that out of a total S$150 billion allocated by the US for military operations in the Middle East this year, over a third will go to private contractors. This is greater than the defence budgets of most countries worldwide.”

Families of reservists sound off. “It`s been 550 days since members of the 94th Military Police Company left their homes.”

Interview with Major General Batiste. “’It`s very hard to compare Iraq with back then,’ the general said in an interview after a dinner of baked chicken and green peas. ‘They were in continuous contact with the enemy. Here, we have contact with the enemy all the time, but it`s a different kind of contact. You`ve got this whole spectrum of operations you`ve got to deal with simultaneously, from combat to stability operations. The commanders are in effect military governors.’” In a nutshell, MG Batiste had summarized the reason for the failure of the US occupation: the complete lack of effective political leadership from the CPA.

Commentary

Editorial: “The Bush administration now talks about maintaining large numbers of American ground troops in Iraq through at least the end of next year. Most of that burden will fall on the Army, with limited help from the National Guard and the Marines. That is more than the Army, at its present strength, can handle without paying a heavy price in future combat readiness and re-enlistment rates.”

Casualty Reports

Local story: Missouri soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: Vermont Guardsman killed in Iraq.

Local story: New Jersey Guardsman killed in Iraq.

Local story: South Carolina soldier dies in Iraq.

Local story: Florida contractor killed in Iraq.


86-43-04. Pass it on.



# posted by yankeedoodle : 3:21 AM
Comments (8)

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Allen Snyder: `Deadly sinful Bush is no Christian`
Date: Tuesday, June 08 @ 09:47:41 EDT
Topic: Commander-In-Thief

By Allen Snyder, OpEdNews

We constantly hear that George W. Bush is a born-again Christian, having at the tender age of 40, foresworn the youthful indiscretions of binge-boozing and coke-snorting for a life of compassionately conservative public service doing God`s work here on Earth (and in Texas). Here in East Tennessee , people openly tout Bush`s alleged adherence to and promotion of Biblical Christian principles and values as a selling point for his re-installment bid.

Rampant religious ignorance is commonplace among Southern Christians, so let`s set the record straight once and for all. Ready? George W. Bush is no Christian - not even close - and here`s just one reason why. He`s committed every one of the Seven Deadly Sins, commits them regularly, and seems genuinely proud of it (or at least indifferent). To review, the seven deadly sins are pride, greed or avarice, gluttony, sloth, envy, anger or wrath, and lust. Persistent unrepentant violators are guaranteed a hellacious hot-seat.

Pride

Proverbs 3:34 reads, `God is stern in dealing with the arrogant, but to the humble he shows kindness.` Bush has been nothing but arrogant after initially promising to be the picture of humbleness and humility.



The whole notion that a way of life can be forced on others for their own good smacks of the highest sort of hubris and his telling the international community to stuff it didn`t help the cause much, either. His unwillingness or inability to admit mistakes and take responsibility for anything is evidence of how wickedly prideful he`s become.

Greed/Avarice

The list of stuff that Bush isn`t greedy about is far shorter. His depraved obsessions for power, money, oil, and empire are fanatical and likely the result of some severe and dangerous psychological psychosis, neurosis, or mania. In Ezekiel 22:12, God could have been speaking directly to Bush in one of their famous tete-a-tetes, `In thee have they taken gifts to shed blood; thou hast taken usury and increase, and thou hast greedily gained of thy neighbors by extortion, and hast forgotten me.` Good hearty Biblical stuff, and right on point.

Gluttony

Contrary to what most people think, gluttony isn`t exclusively about food; its about excess in anything. Things that Bush is a glutton for: power, approval, money, oil, and legacy. Things that Bush is not a glutton for: truth, honesty, integrity, courage, sacrifice, conservation, moderation. I guess we can`t really fault Bush here since he shares this vice with the same people who tool around in their gas-chugging SUVs, rob pension funds to pay for $250,000 knick-knacks and birthday parties, and vote Republican in national elections.

Sloth

One thing you can say about Bush, he`s not lazy. He can lie with the best of `em one minute and pack `em in at a GOP $1,000-a-plate dinner the next. But let`s face it, thanks to the dubious quality of his audiences, there are higher primates who can do Republican fundraising. When it comes to raising money and spreading lies, Bush has no equal.

Bush`s sloth is intellectual. A self-avowed and proud non-newspaper reader and information non-gatherer, Bush relies on his objective (yeah, I couldn`t believe it either) staff to tell him what`s what. So thanks to Bush`s brain-sloth and intentional ignorance about stuff that really matters, the US `s capacity to inflict wonton pain and suffering have been advanced decades.

Envy

Bush almost gets off the hook for this one. He`s already rich and powerful, so what is there for him to envy in others? Luckily, envy isn`t just about wanting something that someone else has or being something that someone else is. It`s also about thinking that others have something they don`t deserve, and Bush scores high on this part. The only people that Bush believes are entitled to anything are the people who already have most everything. So in a perverse way, we could say that Bush envies the poor anything that they get from the government because he believes it ought to belong to his crowd instead. He`s had it so easy and gotten everything handed to him, he thinks everyone else has, too.

Anger/Wrath

Matthew 5:22 reads, `whoever is angry with is brother will be liable to judgment` and Proverbs 15:1 says, `a mild answer clams wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.`

We`ve already seen what happens when you incur the wrath of George W. Bush. If you`re an American, you`re reputation is ruined, your livelihood is threatened, your family is a target, and you`re lucky to escape with your dignity intact. If you`re not an American, you`re either shipped off to one of the American concentration camps, invaded, or at least bombed.

Bush`s instinctive reaction to everything is violence and anger. That`s the way of powerful, mentally challenged people. His `bring `em on` bravado and `we`ll get `em if it`s the last thing we do` assurances do nothing but royally piss people off, make us more enemies, and show that Bush compassion is an illusion. Turn the other cheek in front of this guy and he`ll bomb it, too.

Lust

Lust is another one of those that while it may seem like its about sex, doesn`t have to be. People can lust after different things with a sexual appetite just as people can get sexual pleasure from some pretty bizarre normally non-sexual stuff. I see W, Dick, and Rummy in the Situation Room all covered in crude oil with Halliburton`s First Quarter returns profit and a big giant map of the middle East spread out on the floor like a Twister(TM) board, and...well, you get the picture.

At the end of each sinful day, far from being a good Christian, George W. Bush is really Satan`s bodyguard and playmate, as well as one seriously sinful SOB. If there`s any divine justice at all, George W. Bush will get the fiery extra-hot cubicle next to Rush, Reagan, and Bob Novak.

Allen Snyder is an instructor of Philosophy and Ethics. He can be reached at [e-mail]. This article is copyright by Allen Snyder and originally published by opednews.com but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media so long as this credit is attached.

Reprinted from OpEdNews:
http://www.opednews.com/snyder_060704_bush_no_christian.htm

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washingtonpost.com

U.N. Unanimously Approves Iraq Resolution
Security Council Endorses Transfer of Sovereignty

By Edith M. Lederer
The Associated Press
Tuesday, June 8, 2004; 5:00 PM

UNITED NATIONS -- The U.N. Security Council gave a resounding 15-0 endorsement Tuesday to a U.S. resolution backing the transfer of sovereignty to Iraq`s new government 14 months after the fall of Saddam Hussein. President Bush predicted the measure would instill democracy and be a "catalyst for change" in the Middle East.

France and Germany dropped their objections after the resolution included a last-minute compromise giving Iraqi leaders control over the activities of their own troops and a say on "sensitive offensive operations" by the multinational force -- such as the controversial siege of Fallujah. But the measure stops short of granting the Iraqis a veto over major U.S.-led military operations.

The resolution spells out the powers and the limitations of the new interim Iraqi government that will assume power on June 30. It authorizes the U.S.-led multinational force to remain in Iraq to help ensure security but gives the Iraqi government the right to ask the force to leave at any time.

Bush claimed victory before the vote, telling reporters at the Group of Eight summit in Sea Island, Ga., that a unanimous approval would tell the world that the council nations "are interested in working together to make sure Iraq is free, peaceful and democratic."

"These nations understand that a free Iraq will serve as a catalyst for change in the broader Middle East, which is an important part of winning the war on terror," Bush said.

But his administration lowered expectations of gaining other countries` military support -- one of the original hopes behind the resolution. Four members of the Group of Eight summit -- France, Germany, Russia and Canada -- have said they won`t send troops to take the burden off the 138,000 American soldiers and the 24,000 troops from coalition partners.

Nevertheless, the adoption of the resolution will likely buy time for the new Iraqi government, boosting its international stature as it struggles to win acceptance and cope with a security crisis at home.

The interim government -- put together by a U.N. envoy, the Americans and their Iraqi allies -- hopes the vote will give it a legitimacy that eluded its predecessor, the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council. That legitimacy would put it in a better position to curry support among fellow Arab regimes and seek economic help from abroad.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, speaking in New York at the Council on Foreign Relations, predicted it would have a "positive impact" on security by removing the perception of the U.S.-led multinational force as an occupying power.

Although the resolution says the interim government will have authority to ask the force to leave, new Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi indicated in a letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell that the force will remain at least until an elected transitional government takes power early next year.

French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier said many French ideas were incorporated in the final text though Paris would have liked a clearer definition of the relationship between the new Iraqi government and the U.S.-led force.

"That doesn`t stop us from a positive vote in New York to help in a constructive way find a positive exit to this tragedy," he told France-Inter radio.

Iraqi President Ghazi al-Yawer, meeting in Washington with Powell, brushed off any suggestion that there might be disagreement between U.S. and Iraqi commanders.

"We are working together," al-Yawer told reporters. "These people are in our country to help us."

He added: "We have to think proactive. We cannot afford to be pessimistic."

In Berlin, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said he hopes "that now there will finally be a stabilization of the security situation in Iraq."

France and Germany had been among the sharpest critics in the Security Council of the U.S. decision to invade Iraq.

On Tuesday, Barnier said that during the weeks of negotiations on the resolution "there was a real dialogue for the first time in this affair."

"The Americans clearly understood, after months and months of military operations, that there was no way out by arms, by military operations in Iraq," the foreign minister said.

"Washington understood that we have to get out of this tragedy by the high road."

Many other council members who had objections to the early U.S.-British drafts also announced their support for the final resolution -- the fifth since May 24. They included China, which had proposed major changes, and Algeria, the council`s only Arab member, which argued for greater Iraqi control over its own military and major operations by the multinational force.

"I hope that all council members will stand united," said China`s U.N. Ambassador Wang Guangya. "This resolution will send several political messages, number one that the military occupation will come to an end. Secondly it will say that the Iraqi people will be granted full sovereignty. So I hope that this is a very good beginning for the Iraqis."

The main compromise was an addition to the resolution summarizing Iraq`s "security partnership" with U.S.-led forces, spelled out in an exchange of letters between Allawi and Powell.

© 2004 The Associated Press

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Bush Resigns.

Jerry Ghinelli

06/08/04 "ICH"

Good evening ladies and gentlemen,

I would to like express my deepest apologies to my fellow citizens of the world, for the mistakes I made as President of the United States.

I regret to publicly admit that I am not competent to be President and yield such awesome power and responsibility. Had my father and grandfather not achieved such prominence and good fortune, I would most likely have been an average guy with an average intellect, one with a mortgage, college tuition payments and the same hopes, dreams and problems of most people in the world community.

I must now reluctantly admit that it was mistake to run for President, and I am not up to the task of being the Chief Executive of this great nation. I never studied foreign affairs or economics, and freely admit that I love baseball more than government.

However I arrived at this position, I now realize I am incapable of being President. I relied on people whom I trusted to give me advice on matters I knew little or nothing about. The treachery of those people, coupled with my inexperience and lack of enthusiasm for a job I truly don`t enjoy, lead to mistakes and decisions that I deeply regret.

Yes, I was warned in the summer of 2001 that Al-Qaeda might attack the United States. I did not know the term “Al-Qaeda,” nor did I understand the seriousness of the threat. Perhaps my advisors – whom I trusted – could have counseled me. But I accept responsibility for my apathy and my errors. After 9/11, I had no idea who the culprits were but was told they were in Afghanistan and that I needed to attack. I wondered to myself back then how people in caves without electricity could learn to fly 767s. Nevertheless, someone had to pay a price and be attacked. There is a time for love and a time for hate; this was a time for hate.

I regret the thousands of lives that were lost in Afghanistan, and I will not try to rationalize innocent civilians dying in retaliation for 9/11.

I had my mistaken suspicions that Saddam Hussein, that brutal slug, had his bloody hands in the attacks of 9/11. I wish I understood more about the history of the Middle East and the government of Iraq – perhaps I would have known that Iraq was even less culpable than our allies Egypt or Saudi Arabia, for example. I now know the mastermind of this dreadful plot on 9/11 was an Egyptian rather than an Iraqi, and that 15 of the attackers were from Saudi Arabia not Iraq.

I was deceived and lied to by a circle of people whom I trusted to give me advice. Knowing nothing about international affairs, I was easily manipulated and believed that Iraq was a mortal threat who possessed grotesque weapons and could kill millions of Americans, given the chance. I honestly believed this and felt it was my responsibility to protect America. I did not attack Iraq for oil, Israel, money, on behalf of my daddy, or to free Iraqis from Saddam. I attacked because I mistakenly believed that we were in imminent danger of another terrorist attack. I botched 9/11, and did not want to make the same mistake again.

My lack of understanding – and the treachery of those whom I trusted – have made America hated throughout the world. I made some terrible mistakes and miscalculations and caused untold suffering to thousands, perhaps millions of innocent people. I should never have run for President, a job which I clearly was not capable of handling, any more than if I were asked to remove a gall bladder and was instructed “on the fly” as to how to perform the surgery. My intentions might have been good, but I would have had neither the experience, knowledge nor desire to perform intricate surgery on a patient.

I regret the mistakes I`ve made, and come before the world to express my deepest regrets for thinking I was capable of running this great country. I hope you will forgive me – as my intentions were good and I did try my best – but I am clearly not up to the task of being President of the United States.

I therefore will not seek another term as President. I would gladly resign today but that would turn over power to Dick Cheney, whom I trusted to advise me but turned out to be dishonest, manipulative and a primary architect of my dismal foreign policy. I would suggest my party seek another candidate to face John Kerry in November: one who is respected, experienced and most of all, competent enough to appoint honest people and make decisions that will contribute to making America a great country once again.

As a man of God I`ll end this public confession by saying: "Father forgive me, for I know not what I do."

Thank you.

Copyright: Jerry Ghinelli <[e-mail]>

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Die Kurden sind ein Problem, dem viel zu wenig Aufmerksamkeit geschenkt wird.

SPEAKING FREELY
Northern Iraq - calm like a bomb
By W Joseph Stroupe

Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click here if you are interested in contributing.



As negotiations at the United Nations on a new resolution for Iraq apparently near a close, developments with respect to the Kurds and north Iraq, where there has been relative calm until now, are looking more and more ominous. Recently, the People`s Congress of Kurdistan (the former Kurdistan Workers` Party, or PKK), announced an abrupt end to its five-year ceasefire with Turkish forces, warning that it would soon resort to violent means to achieve its ends.

Within a few days of the announcement, Kurdish forces in southern Turkey did attack Turkish forces, prompting a violent response. Additionally, according to a recent Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty report, "Kamis Djabrailov, chairman of the International Union of Kurdish Public Organizations that represents the Kurdish minorities in Russia, Kazakhstan, Armenia and other CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States], told Interfax on 31 May that his organization approves the announcement three days earlier by the People`s Congress of Kurdistan that it will end on 1 June its five-year ceasefire in hostilities with the Turkish armed forces."

Hence, the regional political, diplomatic and even military mobilization of Kurdish forces, in an attempt to secure its own interests as the June 30 date for the handover of sovereignty to Iraq nears, appears to be under way. In verification of that fact, on June 7, Masoud Barzani of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and Jalal Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan threatened to pull out of the interim government unless the new United Nations Security Council resolution guarantees Kurdish autonomy and a veto over the direction of the interim government as promised in the draft interim constitution, which was very reluctantly signed by the Shi`ite representatives, but which is something the Shi`ite majority refuses to accept under any circumstances.

The Kurdish representatives also expressed their bitter disappointment over the fact that no Kurd was chosen to fill the positions of either prime minister or president. Hence, in the Kurdish view, their interests are being severely slighted as the June 30 date nears. Whether a political and diplomatic compromise can be reached that satisfies all the parties is not at all assured. The Sunnis and Shi`ites appear to be mostly content with the look of the new interim council and with Iraq`s direction, but the Kurds are certainly not content. They have been marginalized before, by the United States itself, and intend to take care of their own interests, by violence if need be. This is indeed ominous.

The pointed Kurdish demands threaten to disrupt the relative contentment with the transition process, which now exists among the Sunni and Shi`ite populations, among Iraq`s neighbors and within the international community at large. In actuality, there is little sympathy for the cause of the Kurds in Iraq and the surrounding region.

That is especially so in Turkey, Syria and Iran, where Kurdish groups are viewed as nothing more than destabilizing terrorists, threatening the national security of the three nations, which have recently deepened their cooperation in the effort to subdue such groups. And in Armenia and Azerbaijan, the last thing that is wanted is for such Kurdish groups to push the region toward violence and instability in the pursuit of Kurdish autonomy.

An independent Kurdistan is, therefore, anathema to all but the Kurds themselves. It is the United States which has greatly exacerbated the current situation by raising Kurdish hopes for an independent Kurdistan in northern Iraq. Months ago, in the atmosphere of violent insurgency in Iraq and the approaching handover of sovereignty, the US-drafted interim constitution significantly raised such Kurdish hopes, giving them a veto over the direction of any Iraqi interim government, as well as over the final Iraqi government to be seated in 2005.

Fearful of the influence of Shi`ite religious fundamentalism as the transition to sovereignty progressed, the administration of President George W Bush evidently saw the Kurds as an entity it could use to keep such Shi`ite influence in check, to limit its power in any new Iraqi regime, so as to prevent the formation of an Iranian-style theocracy in Iraq. However, as matters are turning out, the most powerful positions being filled in the interim government are occupied by mostly secular Sunnis and Shi`ites.

So, the United States now has little use for the Kurds, who see clearly that once again they are being abandoned by the US. All the parties see the Kurds, therefore, as possible spoilers of the solution currently being put together under UN auspices. Hence, little sympathy exists for them. Realizing this fact, the Kurds are already resorting to threats and violence in an effort to get a satisfactory hearing. By its short-sighted, ad hoc approach to Iraq`s complicated situation, first using the Kurds and then casting them aside, the United States may have sealed both its own and Iraq`s fate.

There appears little hope that the Kurdish demands can be sufficiently taken into consideration without at the same time losing the already cautious and tentative support of the Sunnis and Shi`ites. And there also appears little hope that the Kurds will suddenly satisfy themselves with what the other two factions are comfortable in giving them. Hence, whether the Kurds might temporarily tone down their demands for the time being, or whether they more likely will ratchet up their demands as the UN negotiations proceed and the June 30 date nears, one thing that appears certain is that they will hold a major key to how events proceed in Iraq.

The United States has let loose a Kurdish "monster", not only on Iraq itself, but also on the region at large, a "monster" which cannot easily be put back into the box. If a diplomatic solution cannot be crafted that satisfies all of Iraq`s three factions, and it is doubtful that one can, then a great deal of military muscle will be needed in the entire region to keep the disenfranchised Kurds "in check". And that muscle will have to come increasingly into play in northern Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Iran, Armenia and Azerbaijan.

In the end, the handover of sovereignty on June 30 may not change anything, except that it may well accelerate Iraq`s descent into sectarian violence, with Turkey and Syria cooperating militarily to secure their interests in northern Iraq by taking control of that region, and the southern regions of Iraq moving significantly closer into cooperation with Iran, with the US military caught in the middle. The relative calmness of northern Iraq is very likely to be much like the calmness of a large bomb - its calmness very deceptively masks the huge explosion which is likely imminent.

W Joseph Stroupe is editor-in-chief of GeoStrategyMap.com, an online geopolitical magazine specializing in strategic analysis and forecasting. He may be reached by e-mail at [e-mail].

(Copyright 2004 GeoStrategyMap. All rights reserved.)



Jun 9, 2004

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Neocon 101
Some basic questions answered.
What do neoconservatives believe?

http://www.csmonitor.com/specials/neocon/neocon101.html

"Neocons" believe that the United States should not be ashamed to use its unrivaled power – forcefully if necessary – to promote its values around the world. Some even speak of the need to cultivate a US empire. Neoconservatives believe modern threats facing the US can no longer be reliably contained and therefore must be prevented, sometimes through preemptive military action.

Most neocons believe that the US has allowed dangers to gather by not spending enough on defense and not confronting threats aggressively enough. One such threat, they contend, was Saddam Hussein and his pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. Since the 1991 Gulf War, neocons relentlessly advocated Mr. Hussein`s ouster.

Most neocons share unwavering support for Israel, which they see as crucial to US military sufficiency in a volatile region. They also see Israel as a key outpost of democracy in a region ruled by despots. Believing that authoritarianism and theocracy have allowed anti-Americanism to flourish in the Middle East, neocons advocate the democratic transformation of the region, starting with Iraq. They also believe the US is unnecessarily hampered by multilateral institutions, which they do not trust to effectively neutralize threats to global security.
What are the roots of neoconservative beliefs?

The original neocons were a small group of mostly Jewish liberal intellectuals who, in the 1960s and 70s, grew disenchanted with what they saw as the American left`s social excesses and reluctance to spend adequately on defense. Many of these neocons worked in the 1970s for Democratic Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, a staunch anti-communist. By the 1980s, most neocons had become Republicans, finding in President Ronald Reagan an avenue for their aggressive approach of confronting the Soviet Union with bold rhetoric and steep hikes in military spending. After the Soviet Union`s fall, the neocons decried what they saw as American complacency. In the 1990s, they warned of the dangers of reducing both America`s defense spending and its role in the world.

Unlike their predecessors, most younger neocons never experienced being left of center. They`ve always been "Reagan" Republicans.

What is the difference between a neoconservative and a conservative?

Liberals first applied the "neo" prefix to their comrades who broke ranks to become more conservative in the 1960s and 70s. The defectors remained more liberal on some domestic policy issues. But foreign policy stands have always defined neoconservatism. Where other conservatives favored détente and containment of the Soviet Union, neocons pushed direct confrontation, which became their raison d`etre during the 1970s and 80s.

Today, both conservatives and neocons favor a robust US military. But most conservatives express greater reservations about military intervention and so-called nation building. Neocons share no such reluctance. The post 9/11-campaigns against regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq demonstrate that the neocons are not afraid to force regime change and reshape hostile states in the American image. Neocons believe the US must do to whatever it takes to end state-supported terrorism. For most, this means an aggressive push for democracy in the Middle East. Even after 9/11, many other conservatives, particularly in the isolationist wing, view this as an overzealous dream with nightmarish consequences.

How have neoconservatives influenced US foreign policy?

Finding a kindred spirit in President Reagan, neocons greatly influenced US foreign policy in the 1980s.

But in the 1990s, neocon cries failed to spur much action. Outside of Reaganite think tanks and Israel`s right-wing Likud Party, their calls for regime change in Iraq were deemed provocative and extremist by the political mainstream. With a few notable exceptions, such as President Bill Clinton`s decision to launch isolated strikes at suspected terrorist targets in Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998, their talk of preemptive military action was largely dismissed as overkill.

Despite being muted by a president who called for restraint and humility in foreign affairs, neocons used the 1990s to hone their message and craft their blueprint for American power. Their forward thinking and long-time ties to Republican circles helped many neocons win key posts in the Bush administration.

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 moved much of the Bush administration closer than ever to neoconservative foreign policy. Only days after 9/11, one of the top neoconservative think tanks in Washington, the Project for a New American Century, wrote an open letter to President Bush calling for regime change in Iraq. Before long, Bush, who campaigned in 2000 against nation building and excessive military intervention overseas, also began calling for regime change in Iraq. In a highly significant nod to neocon influence, Bush chose the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) as the venue for a key February 2003 speech in which he declared that a US victory in Iraq "could begin a new stage for Middle Eastern peace." AEI – the de facto headquarters for neconservative policy – had been calling for democratization of the Arab world for more than a decade.

What does a neoconservative dream world look like?

Neocons envision a world in which the United States is the unchallenged superpower, immune to threats. They believe that the US has a responsibility to act as a "benevolent global hegemon." In this capacity, the US would maintain an empire of sorts by helping to create democratic, economically liberal governments in place of "failed states" or oppressive regimes they deem threatening to the US or its interests. In the neocon dream world the entire Middle East would be democratized in the belief that this would eliminate a prime breeding ground for terrorists. This approach, they claim, is not only best for the US; it is best for the world. In their view, the world can only achieve peace through strong US leadership backed with credible force, not weak treaties to be disrespected by tyrants.

Any regime that is outwardly hostile to the US and could pose a threat would be confronted aggressively, not "appeased" or merely contained. The US military would be reconfigured around the world to allow for greater flexibility and quicker deployment to hot spots in the Middle East, as well as Central and Southeast Asia. The US would spend more on defense, particularly for high-tech, precision weaponry that could be used in preemptive strikes. It would work through multilateral institutions such as the United Nations when possible, but must never be constrained from acting in its best interests whenever necessary.

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Just a beginning
By Paul Reynolds
BBC News Online world affairs correspondent

The new Security Council resolution on Iraq gives international approval to the handover plan but does not by itself mean that Iraq`s problems are on the mend.

The handover to an interim government is just one of several stages which Iraq has to go through before a fully elected government takes office by 31 December 2005.

This is the beginning. It is not the end.

It will certainly take some of the pressure off US President George W Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair because they are now able to argue that the occupation is formally ending and that the troops are remaining at the request of the interim government and under the authority of the United Nations.

The resolution, with its bonus of unanimity, has also usefully come in time for the G8 summit in the US state of Georgia which enables the West (and Russia) to show a united front after a long period of deep divisions.

`Little difference`

The United States and Britain hope that the critics will one day be confounded. They hope to look back on 30 June, the handover date, as the turning point.


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The interim government is a green-zone phenomenon
Toby Dodge, Warwick University
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But Iraq has a long, long way to go.

Toby Dodge of the University of Warwick, a critic of American and British policy in Iraq, said:

"I don`t think we have reached a new stage with this resolution. There is no multi-multilateralism here. France and Russia are still not doing anything. They have just given a nod.

"I can`t see the difference from before. The interim government looks like the governing council and will suffer from the same problems, lack of legitimacy and difficulties in delivering services.

"The interim government is a green-zone phenomenon."

The green zone is the sealed area in Baghdad from which the Coalition Authority and the Governing Council operate, as will the new government.

`Clear path`

On the other hand, UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, looking far more relaxed in the House of Commons on Monday than he has for some time, was comparatively upbeat:

The result is, I believe, a competent, professional and broad-based government acceptable to the widest possible range of Iraqis

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British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw
"The result is, I believe, a competent, professional and broad-based government acceptable to the widest possible range of Iraqis and reflective of Iraq`s diversity.
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"There will be some difficult times ahead, but the path to a free and democratic Iraq is now clear." He admitted, though, that establishing law and order was the major problem:

"The biggest challenge which the new government of Iraq will face is to build security."

Note how the word "interim", previously always used to describe the new administration, is beginning to be dropped by Western leaders as they seek to build up its status.

Hands tied

So why is this the just the beginning?

Because this interim government-by-appointment will last only until elections by the end of January next year. Those elections will be a better test of how things are going.

Although technically sovereign, the interim government cannot in practice do a great deal, partly because the majority Shia did not want it to be able to take decisions in advance of an elected government.

It will struggle to cope with the insurgency and will have to rely on the foreign troops while trying to build up its own forces. It will not have a formal veto over those forces but since its agreement will be sought over security policy, it is unlikely that anything like Falluja will happen again.

Election challenge

Its other main task will be to prepare for the elections, after which it will disappear.

The elections in January will select members of a National Assembly. The Assembly in turn will choose a transitional government.

The transitional government will have more power and among its tasks will be the framing of a constitution, on the basis of which full elections will be held by December 2005 so that a proper government can be in place by 31 December 2005.

The end of next year will be the best test therefore.

It can be seen that the interim government is a staging post, not the destination.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/middle_east/3786…

Published: 2004/06/08 21:08:07 GMT

© BBC MMIV

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June 9, 2004
CONSTITUTION
Kurds Threaten to Walk Away From Iraqi State
By DEXTER FILKINS

BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 8 — A crisis for the new Iraqi government loomed Tuesday as Kurdish leaders threatened to withdraw from the Iraqi state unless they received guarantees against Shiite plans to limit Kurdish self-rule.

In a letter to President Bush this week, the two main Kurdish leaders, Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani, wrote that the Kurds would "refrain from participating in the central government" in Baghdad if any attempt was made by the new government to nullify the interim Iraqi constitution adopted in March.

Shiite leaders have said repeatedly in recent weeks that they intend to remove parts of the interim constitution that essentially grant the Kurds veto power over the permanent constitution, which is scheduled to be drafted and ratified next year.

The Shiite leaders consider the provisions undemocratic, while the Kurds contend they are their only guarantee of retaining the rights to self-rule they gained in the past 13 years, protected from Saddam Hussein by United States warplanes.

In their letter, Mr. Talabani and Mr. Barzani wrote that the Kurdish leadership would refuse to take part in national elections, expected to be held in January, and bar representatives from going to "Kurdistan."

That would amount to something like secession, which Kurdish officials have been hinting at privately for months but now appear to be actively considering. "The Kurdish people will no longer accept second-class citizenship in Iraq," the letter said.

The two leaders also asked President Bush for a commitment to protect "Kurdistan" should an insurgency compel the United States to pull its forces out of the rest of Iraq.

To assure that Kurdish rights are retained, Mr. Talabani and Mr. Barzani, whose parties together deploy about 75,000 fighters, asked President Bush to include the interim Iraqi constitution in the United Nations security resolution that governs the restoration of Iraqi sovereignty.

But American officials rejected the Kurdish request after appeals from Shiite leaders, including Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the nation`s most powerful Shiite, who threatened "serious consequences" if any such move was undertaken. That seemed to set the stage for a showdown between Kurdish and Shiite leaders over the future of the Iraqi state.

A senior American official in Washington cautioned against reading the letter as a firm threat to abandon the central government, saying he expected the Kurds and Shiites to reach an agreement ultimately.

But in Baghdad, a rupture seemed quite possible. The Shiite leaders, whose people make up a majority in Iraq but who have been historically shut out of power, say the provisions that would allow the Kurdish minority to nullify the constitution would diminish the Shiites` historic opportunity to claim political power.

Adil Abdul Mahdi, Iraq`s finance minister and a leader of one of the country`s largest Shiite parties, said Tuesday that the country`s Shiite leadership was determined to remove the provisions that could allow the Kurds to veto the permanent constitution, even at the risk of driving them away. "It`s not against the Kurds, it`s against the procedure," Mr. Mahdi said.

Adam Ereli, deputy State Department spokesman, did not offer details on the American decision to refuse the Kurdish request regarding the United Nations resolution. But he offered general assurances that Kurdish rights would be protected. "We in the international community will work with you to make this democracy a success, to ensure that the rights of all Iraqis are honored and respected," he said.

But a senior United Nations official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said American officials rejected the Kurdish request because of concerns over offending the country`s Shiite leaders.

In a letter released Tuesday by his office, Ayatollah Sistani warned the Security Council against incorporating the interim constitution into the United Nations resolution.

"This law, which was written by a nonelected council under occupation, and under the direct influence of the occupation, would constrain the national assembly," Ayatollah Sistani wrote. "It is rejected by the majority of the Iraqi people."

The signing of the interim constitution, shepherded by American officials here, was regarded as a historic achievement that tried to reassure the country`s long-suppressed Shiite majority without alienating the Kurds.

The crucial compromise was contained in the provision that the permanent constitution would pass with a majority vote of the Iraqi people unless voters in three of the country`s 18 provinces opposed the constitution by a two-thirds vote. Ethnic Kurds, who make up a fifth of the Iraqi population, are a majority in three provinces.

Kurdish leaders say they are concerned that the new Iraqi government will not honor the interim constitution unless it is forced to.

Iraqi leaders and United Nations officials say that under generally accepted principles of international law, the new Iraqi government will not be bound by any of the laws passed during the American occupation.

A source close to the Kurdish leadership, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Kurdish leaders concluded that the interim constitution needed some sort of reaffirmation to compel the new government to adhere to it. The Kurds say they do not expect the Shiite-dominated interim government to provide such reaffirmation, so they asked the Bush administration to make sure it was included in the United Nations resolution.

Bush administration officials have maintained publicly that the interim constitution, as well as all the laws approved during the occupation, will continue to have legal force in Iraq after June 30. But privately, a senior official acknowledged that the interim constitution would need to be reaffirmed to have legal force.

The turning point for the Kurds, the source close to the leadership said, came last month when Robert Blackwill, President Bush`s special envoy to Iraq, told the two Kurdish leaders that no ethnic Kurd would be considered for the post of either president or prime minister.

After that, Kurdish leaders began preparing to cut their ties to Baghdad. In an ominous sign, most of the senior leadership of both Mr. Talabani`s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and Mr. Barzani`s Kurdish Democratic Party had left Baghdad Tuesday and gone to the Kurdish areas.

Steven R. Weisman contributed reporting from Washington for this article.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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June 9, 2004
NEW PREMIER
Ex-C.I.A. Aides Say Iraq Leader Helped Agency in 90`s Attacks
By JOEL BRINKLEY

WASHINGTON, June 8 — Iyad Allawi, now the designated prime minister of Iraq, ran an exile organization intent on deposing Saddam Hussein that sent agents into Baghdad in the early 1990`s to plant bombs and sabotage government facilities under the direction of the C.I.A., several former intelligence officials say.

Dr. Allawi`s group, the Iraqi National Accord, used car bombs and other explosive devices smuggled into Baghdad from northern Iraq, the officials said. Evaluations of the effectiveness of the bombing campaign varied, although the former officials interviewed agreed that it never threatened Saddam Hussein`s rule.

No public records of the bombing campaign exist, and the former officials said their recollections were in many cases sketchy, and in some cases contradictory. They could not even recall exactly when it occurred, though the interviews made it clear it was between 1992 and 1995.

The Iraqi government at the time claimed that the bombs, including one it said exploded in a movie theater, resulted in many civilian casualties. But whether the bombings actually killed any civilians could not be confirmed because, as a former C.I.A. official said, the United States had no significant intelligence sources in Iraq then.

One former Central Intelligence Agency officer who was based in the region, Robert Baer, recalled that a bombing during that period "blew up a school bus; schoolchildren were killed." Mr. Baer, a critic of the Iraq war, said he did not recall which resistance group might have set off that bomb.

Other former intelligence officials said Dr. Allawi`s organization was the only resistance group involved in bombings and sabotage at that time.

But one former senior intelligence official recalled that "bombs were going off to no great effect."

"I don`t recall very much killing of anyone," the official said.

When Dr. Allawi was picked as interim prime minister last week, he said his first priority would be to improve the security situation by stopping bombings and other insurgent attacks in Iraq — an idea several former officials familiar with his past said they found "ironic."

"Send a thief to catch a thief," said Kenneth Pollack, who was an Iran-Iraq military analyst for the C.I.A. during the early 1990`s and recalled the sabotage campaign.

Dr. Allawi declined to respond to repeated requests for comment, made Monday and Tuesday through his Washington representative, Patrick N. Theros. The former intelligence officials, while confirming C.I.A. involvement in the bombing campaign, would not say how, exactly, the agency had supported it.

An American intelligence officer who worked with Dr. Allawi in the early 1990`s noted that "no one had any problem with sabotage in Baghdad back then," adding, "I don`t think anyone could have known how things would turn out today."

Dr. Allawi was a favorite of the C.I.A. and other government agencies 10 years ago, largely because he served as a counterpoint to Ahmad Chalabi, a more prominent exile leader.

He "was highly regarded by those involved in Iraqi operations," Samuel R. Berger, who was national security adviser in the Clinton administration, said in an interview. "Unlike Chalabi, he was someone who was trusted by the regional governments. He was less flamboyant, less promotional."

The C.I.A. recruited Dr. Allawi in 1992, former intelligence officials said. At that time, the former senior intelligence official said, "what we were doing was dealing with anyone" in the Iraqi opposition "we could get our hands on." Mr. Chalabi began working with the agency in 1991, and the idea, the official added, was to "decrease the proportion of Chalabi`s role in what we were doing by finding others to work with."

In 1991, Dr. Allawi was associated with a former Iraqi official, Salih Omar Ali al-Tikriti, whom the United States viewed as unsavory. He and Dr. Allawi founded the Iraqi National Accord in 1990. Both were former supporters of the Iraqi government.

Some intelligence officials have also suggested that Dr. Allawi, while he was still a member of the ruling Baath Party in the early 1970`s, may have spied on Iraqi students studying in London. Mr. Tikriti was said to have supervised public hangings in Baghdad. The former officials said the C.I.A. would not work with Dr. Allawi until he severed his relationship with Mr. Tikriti, which he did in 1992.

Several intelligence officials said the agency`s broad goal immediately after the Persian Gulf war in 1991 was to recruit opposition leaders who had senior contacts inside Iraq, something Dr. Allawi claimed. The Iraqi National Accord was made up of former senior Iraqi military and political leaders who had fled the country and were said to retain connections to colleagues inside the government.

"Iyad had contact with people the agency thought would be useful to us in the future," Mr. Pollack said. "He seemed to have ties to respected Sunni figures that no one else had." The Hussein government was dominated by Sunni Muslims.

The bombing and sabotage campaign, the former senior intelligence official said, "was a test more than anything else, to demonstrate capability."

Another former intelligence officer who was involved in Iraqi affairs recalled that the bombings "were an option we considered and used." Dr. Allawi`s group was used, he added, "because Chalabi never had any sort of internal organization that could carry it out," adding, "We would never have asked him to carry out sabotage."

The varied assessments of the bombing campaign`s effectiveness are understandable, the former senior intelligence official said, because "I would not attribute to the U.S. sufficient intelligence resources then so that we could perceive if an effective bombing campaign was under way."

Dr. Allawi is not believed to have ever spoken in public about the bombing campaign. But one Iraqi National Accord officer did. In 1996, Amneh al-Khadami, who described himself as the chief bomb maker for the Iraqi National Accord and as being based in Sulaimaniya, in northern Iraq, recorded a videotape in which he talked of the bombing campaign and complained that he was being shortchanged money and supplies. Two former intelligence officers confirmed the existence of the videotape.

Mr. Khadami said that "we blew up a car, and we were supposed to get $2,000" but got only $1,000, according to an account in the British newspaper The Independent in 1997. The newspaper had obtained a copy of the tape.

Mr. Khadami, it added, also said he worried that the C.I.A. might view him as "too much the terrorist."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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June 9, 2004
INSURGENTS` STRATEGY
Saboteurs May Be Aiming at Electrical and Water Sites as Summer Nears
By JAMES GLANZ

BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 8 — An enormous power plant south of Baghdad was shut down last weekend by coordinated attacks on fuel and transmission lines, American and Iraqi government officials said Tuesday. The sabotage raised new fears that insurgents were beginning to make targets of major sectors of the infrastructure as part of an overall plan to destabilize the interim Iraqi government.

At full production, the plant is capable of supplying nearly 20 percent of the entire electrical output of Iraq. But after the war, the plant`s output plunged to nearly zero, and it is still generating only a fraction of its maximum output, said Raad al-Haris, deputy minister for electricity.

An official with the Coalition Provisional Authority, which is scheduled to hand over sovereignty to a new Iraqi government on June 30, confirmed that an oil pipeline south of Baghdad was struck in the last week. A second senior official in the Electricity Ministry said that the weekend attack was the latest in a series in the same area, and that repairs on the lines had repeatedly been followed by new strikes. This official said the pipeline also delivered crude oil to at least one major refinery, whose operations had also been affected.

By Tuesday, enough repairs had been done to bring the plant`s output to about 300 megawatts of electricity out of a possible 750 megawatts for most of the day, the Iraqi official said. Power plants around the country put about 4,000 megawatts on the electrical grid, although demand is much higher — leading to frequent blackouts, both scheduled and unscheduled — and is expected to soar even further this summer.

"As we have been saying for some time, international terrorists and Saddam loyalists continue to try to derail the emergence of a modern democratic Iraq," Dallas Lawrence, a spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority, said in a statement. "These terrorists hope that by damaging Iraq`s infrastructure, by depriving Iraqis of basic services, they will be able to impoverish the Iraqi people and capitalize on a sense of frustration."

He added: "They will not succeed."

More worrisome than this specific act of sabotage, said Mr. Haris, the Iraqi minister, is the pattern of attacks on the country`s electrical grid. He estimated that the high-tension lines that are the backbone of the grid had been attacked an average of twice a week recently, and he expressed irritation at what he said was a refusal by the Coalition Provisional Authority to provide security for the lines.

"They did nothing about the transmission line security," Mr. Haris said. "They should. They say, `We have no such capability.` "

When the Electricity Ministry asked for a helicopter to patrol the lines, it was turned down, he said.

But the American official who confirmed the weekend attack said that the authority was helping train thousands of Electricity Ministry guards, but that no force could provide 24-hour-a-day security for the more than 10,000 miles of major power lines in Iraq.

The electrical turbines, power lines and other equipment at the plant south of Baghdad have been the focus of major reconstruction work as part of the overall rebuilding of the country, largely financed by billions of dollars of American money and revenues from Iraq`s oil fields.

Even before the weekend strike, the area around the plant had been the subject of violence, including a drive-by shooting that killed two European engineers and a bomb attack on a police station.

A senior United States military intelligence official said insurgents in Iraq had begun to realize that with summer coming on, damaging the electrical and water infrastructure could sow widespread distrust and discontent with the occupation and its allies, including the new Iraqi government.

"This is a very big priority for them right now," said Ray Salvatore Jennings, representative in Iraq for the United States Institute of Peace, who often meets with American officials here. "They see this insurgency getting very sophisticated about targeting this to delegitimize the new regime."

Saad Shakir Tawfiq, an engineer who worked on the rehabilitation of the grid in 1991 and now leads a government-owned center in the Iraqi Ministry of Industry that is doing some work at several power plants, said the insurgents` effort aimed "to distract the American-backed government."

"If there is no electricity, no water, whatever, the government will fail," Dr. Tawfiq said.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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June 9, 2004
The Roots of Abu Ghraib

In response to the outrages at Abu Ghraib, the Bush administration has repeatedly assured Americans that the president and his top officials did not say or do anything that could possibly be seen as approving the abuse or outright torture of prisoners. But disturbing disclosures keep coming. This week it`s a legal argument by government lawyers who said the president was not bound by laws or treaties prohibiting torture.

Each new revelation makes it more clear that the inhumanity at Abu Ghraib grew out of a morally dubious culture of legal expediency and a disregard for normal behavior fostered at the top of this administration. It is part of the price the nation must pay for President Bush`s decision to take the extraordinary mandate to fight terrorism that he was granted by a grieving nation after 9/11 and apply it without justification to Iraq.

Since the Abu Ghraib scandal broke into public view, the administration has contended that a few sadistic guards acted on their own to commit the crimes we`ve all seen in pictures and videos. At times, the White House has denied that any senior official was aware of the situation, as it did with Red Cross reports documenting a pattern of prisoner abuse in Iraq. In response to a rising pile of documents proving otherwise, the administration has mounted a "Wizard of Oz" defense, urging Americans not to pay attention to inconvenient evidence.

This week, The Wall Street Journal broke the story of a classified legal brief prepared for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in March 2003 after Guantánamo Bay interrogators complained that they were not getting enough information from terror suspects. The brief cynically suggested that because the president is protecting national security, any ban on torture, even an American law, could not be applied to "interrogation undertaken pursuant to his commander-in-chief authority." Neil A. Lewis and Eric Schmitt reported yesterday in The Times that the document had grown out of a January 2002 Justice Department memo explaining why the Geneva Conventions and American laws against torture did not apply to suspected terrorists.

In the wake of that memo, the White House general counsel advised Mr. Bush that Al Qaeda and the Taliban should be considered outside the Geneva Conventions. But yesterday, Attorney General John Ashcroft assured the Senate Judiciary Committee that Mr. Bush had not ordered torture. These explanations might be more comforting if the administration`s definition of what`s legal was not so slippery, and if the Pentagon, the Justice Department and the White House were willing to release documents to back up their explanation. Mr. Rumsfeld is still withholding from the Senate his orders on interrogation techniques, among other things.

The Pentagon has said that Mr. Rumsfeld`s famous declaration that the Geneva Conventions did not apply in Afghanistan was not a sanction of illegal interrogations, and that everyone knew different rules applied in Iraq. But Mr. Rumsfeld, his top deputies and the highest-ranking generals could not explain to the Senate what the rules were, or even who was in charge of the prisons in Iraq. We do not know how high up in the chain of command the specific sanction for abusing prisoners was given, and we may never know, because the Army is investigating itself and the Pentagon is stonewalling the Senate Armed Services Committee. It may yet be necessary for Congress to form an investigative panel with subpoena powers to find the answers.

What we have seen, topped by that legalistic treatise on torture, shows clearly that Mr. Bush set the tone for this dreadful situation by pasting a false "war on terrorism" label on the invasion of Iraq.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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June 9, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Will the Kurds Go Home?
By BARTLE BREESE BULL

BAGHDAD, Iraq — While the United Nations Security Council wrangled over military chains of command in Iraq and the violence in Arab cities like Karbala and Falluja grabbed the headlines, a story far more important to the country`s future has been largely ignored: the growing unease of the Kurdish minority.

So while the United Nations congratulates itself on the resolution passed last night, the Kurds see only a further undermining of the conditions that make a unified Iraq acceptable to them. And we should not take lightly their threats of boycotting the government and even seceding. While the West has gone to great lengths to appease the country`s Arabs, both Shiite and Sunni, the Kurds are the only players at the table with the ability and the mettle to walk away. If they do, hopes of a democratic, multiethnic Iraq go with them.

The other day at a military hospital here, I visited a former Kurdish guerrilla who had been working as a guard at the Baghdad offices of the Kurdish Democratic Party, one of two main Kurdish political groups. His name is Saadar Khajakadir, and he says he fought Saddam Hussein`s troops in the mountains for more years than he can remember. Last week a Russian-built rocket exploded through the roof of the building he was guarding, killing one of his comrades and wounding him and four others.

I asked him if the wounds were worth it, if the political process in Baghdad was something he was happy to bleed for. "If Baghdad is where we must achieve our freedom, these wounds are an honor," he told me. "But if we do not win our freedom here, we will go home to the mountains and give up much more than blood to win it there."

That attack went entirely unreported. (One of the party`s senior military commanders, Muhammad Qazi, told me they don`t want to reward terrorists with publicity.) The same day, a suicide bomber killed a high-ranking member of the other Kurdish party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, at its Baghdad headquarters. As a double attack on Kurdish offices, it was a grim echo of the twin suicide bombings that killed 101 people in the northern Kurdish city of Erbil in February.

In addition, smaller attacks on Kurdish targets have been occurring with greater frequency than the world knows. Three Kurdish officials were assassinated in Kirkuk in separate incidents in May; when I was there last week, I visited a Kurdish family whose house had just been hit by a rocket. While I was in Erbil over the weekend, a pipe bomb in the bazaar killed one and wounded about 20. Mr. Qazi, the military commander, told me that in Irbil an "action in progress," like a suicide bomber trying to drive through barriers outside the Interior Ministry, is foiled about once a month.

This violence comes in the context of remarkable freedom, prosperity and order in the Iraqi Kurdish entity — a calm forged during the 12 years American jets in the no-flight zone kept Saddam Hussein`s troops out of the region. While Kurdish politics continues to be heavily dominated by the two main parties, there are scores of other groups in the region, including several each for the Communists, the Turkmens and the various Christian sects. Dozens of newspapers in the Kurdish area frequently criticize the two provincial administrations. Salaries for teachers, drivers and office workers have risen in the past couple of years to $200 or more a month from $20.

Of the 4,500 villages the Baathists are said to have destroyed, 4,000 have been rebuilt since 1991. Much of the mountainous countryside is dotted with young oak trees reclaiming the hills Saddam Hussein denuded. In Sulaimaniya, unmarried young men and women sit together at the outside tables of the MaDonal burger restaurant on the main street. Ready to defend all of this are 40,000 Kurdish militiamen, or peshmerga, drilled and in uniform, the only coherent domestic armed force in Iraq.

With all of this political and personal freedom long established, can the Kurds really want to be a part of a fledgling Iraq? Until now, the answer has been yes. They made a series of compromises — concessions in the interim Constitution over the oil-rich city of Kirkuk; acceptance of a new government with no Kurds in top positions — to help put the country back together.

But how much more are they willing to give up? After all, the Kurds have fought against every incarnation of the Iraqi state since the British mandate of 1920. It is almost impossible to meet a Kurd who does not have some personal horror to relate about suffering under Saddam Hussein. And now they see the chaos to the south every night on Al Jazeera. "We are the only people in Iraq with experience of functional government and democracy," Bruska Shaways, a Kurd who is deputy defense minister in the new Iraqi government, told me. "We want to export it to the rest of Iraq, but never at the expense of all we have earned."

This sentiment was echoed by Nesreen Berwari, a Kurdish woman who is minister of public works in the new government: "Why would we ever accept less today than we had for the last 12 years under Saddam?"

The Security Council was well aware of the situation. Yet it passed a resolution that not only explicitly fails to guarantee a federal Iraq, but also abandons the interim Constitution and its commitment to a Kurdish veto over the permanent Constitution. These guarantees have long been conditions for the Kurds` willing participation in the project of iraqi unity.

Is it too late to mend the rift? Perhaps not. Assuming the worst about the United Nations resolution, some of the Kurdish leaders have told me they might be open to an alternative: having their rights enumerated in parallel statements from the United States, the United Nations and the new Iraqi government. Washington would do well to press ahead on this.

The alternative is for the Kurds to head back to their lands and — even in the face of a potential invasion of the Turks — set about building one of the Middle East`s only prosperous democracies. The Kurds hold strong cards, and one of the strongest is that everybody else knows they have always stuck up for themselves in the past. If they don`t receive their guarantees, soon there may be no Iraq — just a free Kurdistan and a burning Arabistan.

Bartle Breese Bull is the author of "Around the Sacred Sea: Mongolia and Lake Baikal on Horseback."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Falls sich jemand beteiligen will. Mail Adresse am Ende.

June 9, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Poems of Blood and Anger
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

If the world leaders at the G-8 summit meeting want to understand the war in Iraq, they should look beyond the war plans and U.N. resolutions. The most incisive analysis of war has often come from poets, like Homer or Wilfred Owen.

And now the Iraq poems are beginning to come in, offering another way to memorialize the struggle there. In April, I announced a contest for readers` poems about the Iraq war. Since then, I`ve been deluged by more than 1,000 sonnets, limericks, haiku — and, alas, epics.

Many try to capture the ugliness on the ground with the beauty of verse. Tim Johnson of Northville, Minn., wrote:

Outside the city, shivering with dread,
We`re Falluja bound.
Can hear the explosions when I raise my head. . . .
Foreign soldiers, invaders from another land;
When I look through the hatred in their eyes,
I almost understand.
R.P.G.`s, mortars, and friends dead on the road.
My youth is gone,
Crushed from sensory overload.
Assaulted yesterday up an Iraqi street.
R.P.G. explosion, a scream,
Seared my face with the heat.
Dragged him through the blood-streaked dust and dirt,
His screams in my ears,
His blood type tagged to his shirt.
Covered with blood, he cried, Don`t leave me alone.
Died in my arms;
Now I just want to go home.
Officers yelling, Get out of your holes!
We`re Falluja bound;
Please pray for our souls.

An embittered second lieutenant who asks not to be named wrote:

Knock the dust off your boots, my boy,
It`s time to ride again.
The frontier has gone restless now
And we must crush this rebellion. . . .
These people understand only violence,
So let`s give it to `em now.
We`ll ride `em down like Cherokee;
We`ll trample `em like Pueblo.
These savages are ruthless;
They understand no law.
So we`ll pick up our Peacemakers,
And shoot `em like Choctaw. . . .
Rally round the flag, my boy,
And grab your rifle, too.
The Red Man`s turned Brown, my boy,
And there`s a lot of peacemaking to do.

Megan Foley, a 16-year-old from Long Island, focused like many on the ambiguities of a war that was supposed to enhance moral clarity:

Confusion, fear and lies;
What good can come when people die?
Red Blood spilt
On barren land
To complete an alchemical plan,
Red Blood to Black Gold,
Deviously poisoning, polluting, choking our Heart.
Men tortured, defiled, dishonored by their Brethren,
Captured on film, a permanent bruise
Not to be overlooked.
Truth and honor wither away;
They know they do not belong.
Boundaries grow hazy
Accompanied by roles:
Who the victim? Who the villain? Both? Neither?
For what purpose and to what end?
Why fight a war
Paid with lives
Only to gain confusion, fear and lies?

Another young entrant, Zach Chotzen-Freund of Santa Barbara, Calif., examined in this excerpt the esprit that leads 17-year-olds to sign up for war. Fittingly, he`s 17.

Off now, children! Off to war! Kill in your country`s name!
For murder on behalf of kin is what allows our boys to win
And rest someday in cherished lore. So off now, off to war!
Off now, children! Off to war! Make your fathers swell with pride!
For though you`re young, they love to hear that you`re a splendid bombardier
And dodge death like a matador.
So off now, off to war!
Off now, children! Off to war! Bring smiles to your mothers` eyes!
They hate to lose you, sure that`s true, but if flags of red, white and blue
Are at your funeral, souls will soar.
So off now, off to war!

More readers` poems are posted at www.nytimes.com/kristofresponds, my blog. I`ll run the grand winners in my next column, on Saturday.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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Memo on Torture Draws Focus to Bush
Aide Says President Set Guidelines for Interrogations, Not Specific Techniques

By Mike Allen and Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, June 9, 2004; Page A03

The disclosure that the Justice Department advised the White House in 2002 that the torture of al Qaeda terrorist suspects might be legally defensible has focused new attention on the role President Bush played in setting the rules for interrogations in the war on terrorism.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said yesterday that Bush set broad guidelines, rather than dealing with specific techniques. "While we will seek to gather intelligence from al Qaeda terrorists who seek to inflict mass harm on the American people, the president expects that we do so in a way that is consistent with our laws," McClellan said.

White House Counsel Alberto R. Gonzales said in a May 21 interview with The Washington Post: "Anytime a discussion came up about interrogations with the president, . . . the directive was, `Make sure it is lawful. Make sure it meets all of our obligations under the Constitution, U.S. federal statutes and applicable treaties.` "

An Aug. 1, 2002, memo from the Justice Department`s Office of Legal Counsel, addressed to Gonzales, said that torturing suspected al Qaeda members abroad "may be justified" and that international laws against torture "may be unconstitutional if applied to interrogation" conducted against suspected terrorists.

The document provided legal guidance for the CIA, which crafted new, more aggressive techniques for its operatives in the field. McClellan called the memo a historic or scholarly review of laws and conventions concerning torture. "The memo was not prepared to provide advice on specific methods or techniques," he said. "It was analytical."

Attorney General John D. Ashcroft yesterday refused senators` requests to make public the memo, which is not classified, and would not discuss any possible involvement of the president.

In the view expressed by the Justice Department memo, which differs from the view of the Army, physical torture "must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." For a cruel or inhuman psychological technique to rise to the level of mental torture, the Justice Department argued, the psychological harm must last "months or even years."

A former senior administration official involved in discussions about CIA interrogation techniques said Bush`s aides knew he wanted them to take an aggressive approach.

"He felt very keenly that his primary responsibility was to do everything within his power to keep the country safe, and he was not concerned with appearances or politics or hiding behind lower-level officials," the official said. "That is not to say he was ready to authorize stuff that would be contrary to law. The whole reason for having the careful legal reviews that went on was to ensure he was not doing that."

The August memo was written in response to a CIA request for legal guidance in the months after Sept. 11, 2001, as agency operatives began to detain and interrogate key al Qaeda leaders. The fact that the memo was signed by Jay S. Bybee, head of the Office Legal Counsel, who has since become a federal judge, and is 50 pages long indicates that the issue was treated as a significant matter.

"Given the topic and length of opinion, it had to get pretty high-level attention," said Beth Nolan, commenting on the process that was in place when she was President Bill Clinton`s White House counsel, from 1999 to 2001, and, previously, when she was a lawyer in the Office of Legal Counsel.

Unlike documents signed by deputies in the Office of Legal Counsel, which are generally considered by federal agencies as advice, a memorandum written by the head of the office is considered akin to a legally binding document, said another former Office of Legal Counsel lawyer.

The former administration official said the CIA "was prepared to get more aggressive and re-learn old skills, but only with explicit assurances from the top that they were doing so with the full legal authority the president could confer on them."

Critics familiar with the August 2002 memo and another, similar legal opinion given by the Defense Department`s office of general counsel in March 2003 assert that government lawyers were trying to find a legal justification for actions -- torture or cruel and inhumane acts -- that are clearly illegal under U.S. and international law.

"This is painful, incorrect analysis," said Scott Norton, chairman of the international law committee of the New York City Bar Association, which has produced an extensive report on Pentagon detentions and interrogations. "A lawyer is permitted to craft all sorts of wily arguments about why a statute doesn`t apply" to a defendant, he said. "But a lawyer cannot advocate committing a criminal act prospectively."

The August 2002 memo from the Justice Department concluded that laws outlawing torture do not bind Bush because of his constitutional authority to conduct a military campaign. "As Commander in Chief, the President has the constitutional authority to order interrogations of enemy combatants to gain intelligence information concerning the military plans of the enemy," said the memo, obtained by The Washington Post.

Critics say that this misstates the law, and that it ignores key legal decisions, such as the landmark 1952 Supreme Court ruling in Youngstown Steel and Tube Co v. Sawyer, which said that the president, even in wartime, must abide by established U.S. laws.

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washingtonpost.com

Soldier Described White House Interest
Staff Requested Data From Abu Ghraib, Probers Told

By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 9, 2004; Page A03

The head of the interrogation center at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq told an Army investigator in February that he understood some of the information being collected from prisoners there had been requested by "White House staff," according to an account of his statement obtained by The Washington Post.

Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, an Army reservist who took control of the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center on Sept. 17, 2003, said a superior military intelligence officer told him the requested information concerned "any anti-coalition issues, foreign fighters, and terrorist issues."

The Army investigator, Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, asked Jordan whether it concerned "sensitive issues," and Jordan said, "Very sensitive. Yes, sir," according to the account, which was provided by a government official.

The reference by Jordan to a White House link with the military`s scandal-plagued intelligence-gathering effort at the prison was not explored further by Taguba, whose primary goal at that time was to assess the scope of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. The White House was unable to provide an immediate explanation.

During the period in question, the last quarter of 2003, virtually every senior military officer in Iraq, as well as at the Pentagon, was intensely interested in determining who was behind the rising insurgency in Iraq and using that information to squelch it. But no reference has previously been made in the publicly available Abu Ghraib investigative documents to a special interest by White House staff.

The precise role and mission of Jordan, who is still stationed in Iraq and through his attorneys has declined requests to speak with the news media, remains one of the least well understood facets of the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal.

Jordan has been described by other military personnel as playing a key role at Abu Ghraib in overseeing interrogations; they have described him as being deeply involved in an incident on Nov. 24, 2003, when a detainee was confronted in his cell by snarling military dogs, which Taguba deemed a violation of the prisoner`s rights.

In a March 9 report on the abuse scandal, Taguba listed Jordan as one of four military intelligence officers he suspected were "directly or indirectly responsible for the abuses at Abu Ghraib." He also said Jordan had "failed to ensure that soldiers under his direct control were properly trained" in interrogation techniques and were aware of Geneva Conventions human rights protections for detainees.

Col. Thomas M. Pappas, the chief military intelligence officer at the prison, said in his statement to Taguba that Jordan was working on a special project for the office of Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast, the top U.S. intelligence official in Iraq. He also described Jordan as "a loner who freelances between military intelligence and military police" officers at the prison.

Asserting that Jordan repeatedly took part in searches of detainee cells without notifying military police commanders -- an activity that fell outside the customary duties of an intelligence officer -- he also told Taguba that "I must admit I failed in not reining him in."

But Jordan, in the statement to Taguba, described himself as more of a functionary than a rogue operator. He said that Pappas was really in charge, as evidenced by the fact that he was not responsible for rating other military intelligence officers in reports to superiors and "had no input . . . no responsibility . . . no resources" under his control. He said he was just a "liaison" between Fast and those collecting intelligence at the prison.

"My direction when it came to the [center] . . . was to set up a structure [of] target folders on individuals," he said, evidently referring to specific detainees. He said he was aware of the "rules of engagement" approved by commanders for interrogations, which have been a topic of controversy. But the rules changed several times, and he did not clarify which set he relied on.

Pappas, he said, was the officer who approved lengthy sleep deprivation or keeping detainees in isolation for more than 30 days. He also said that an "OGA" team -- or Other Government Agency, a euphemism for the CIA -- known as Task Force 121 had caused problems by bringing detainees they had captured to Abu Ghraib and essentially dumping them without conducting any follow-up. "It`s a very cowboy kind of affair," he said of Task Force 121.

Some of Jordan`s statements to Taguba were not consistent. He said at one point, for example, that "I can never remember seeing an actual interrogation going on at this site." But then he admitted being present during questioning of a detainee in the prison`s shower stalls before the use of guard dogs on Nov. 24. One of his civilian attorneys, John Shapiro, described Jordan last night as "a fine soldier who was serving his country and is cooperating in every way with the investigations" into the abuse.

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washingtonpost.com

Legalizing Torture



Wednesday, June 9, 2004; Page A20

THE BUSH administration assures the country, and the world, that it is complying with U.S. and international laws banning torture and maltreatment of prisoners. But, breaking with a practice of openness that had lasted for decades, it has classified as secret and refused to disclose the techniques of interrogation it is using on foreign detainees at U.S. prisons at Guantanamo Bay and in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is a matter of grave concern because the use of some of the methods that have been reported in the press is regarded by independent experts as well as some of the Pentagon`s legal professionals as illegal. The administration has responded that its civilian lawyers have certified its methods as proper -- but it has refused to disclose, or even provide to Congress, the justifying opinions and memos.

This week, thanks again to an independent press, we have begun to learn the deeply disturbing truth about the legal opinions that the Pentagon and the Justice Department seek to keep secret. According to copies leaked to several newspapers, they lay out a shocking and immoral set of justifications for torture. In a paper prepared last year under the direction of the Defense Department`s chief counsel, and first disclosed by the Wall Street Journal, the president of the United States was declared empowered to disregard U.S. and international law and order the torture of foreign prisoners. Moreover, interrogators following the president`s orders were declared immune from punishment. Torture itself was narrowly redefined, so that techniques that inflict pain and mental suffering could be deemed legal. All this was done as a prelude to the designation of 24 interrogation methods for foreign prisoners -- the same techniques, now in use, that President Bush says are humane but refuses to disclose.

There is no justification, legal or moral, for the judgments made by Mr. Bush`s political appointees at the Justice and Defense departments. Theirs is the logic of criminal regimes, of dictatorships around the world that sanction torture on grounds of "national security." For decades the U.S. government has waged diplomatic campaigns against such outlaw governments -- from the military juntas in Argentina and Chile to the current autocracies in Islamic countries such as Algeria and Uzbekistan -- that claim torture is justified when used to combat terrorism. The news that serving U.S. officials have officially endorsed principles once advanced by Augusto Pinochet brings shame on American democracy -- even if it is true, as the administration maintains, that its theories have not been put into practice. Even on paper, the administration`s reasoning will provide a ready excuse for dictators, especially those allied with the Bush administration, to go on torturing and killing detainees.

Perhaps the president`s lawyers have no interest in the global impact of their policies -- but they should be concerned about the treatment of American servicemen and civilians in foreign countries. Before the Bush administration took office, the Army`s interrogation procedures -- which were unclassified -- established this simple and sensible test: No technique should be used that, if used by an enemy on an American, would be regarded as a violation of U.S. or international law. Now, imagine that a hostile government were to force an American to take drugs or endure severe mental stress that fell just short of producing irreversible damage; or pain a little milder than that of "organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." What if the foreign interrogator of an American "knows that severe pain will result from his actions" but proceeds because causing such pain is not his main objective? What if a foreign leader were to decide that the torture of an American was needed to protect his country`s security? Would Americans regard that as legal, or morally acceptable? According to the Bush administration, they should.

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Full textUN resolution on Iraq

Draft text of the document setting out how Iraq will run after the June 30 handover
Tuesday June 8, 2004

The Guardian
The Security Council,

Welcoming the beginning of a new phase in Iraq`s transition to a democratically elected government, and looking forward to the end of the occupation and the assumption of full responsibility and authority by a fully sovereign and independent Interim Government of Iraq by 30 June 2004.

Recalling all of its previous relevant resolutions on Iraq.

Reaffirming the independence, sovereignty, unity, and territorial integrity of Iraq.

Reaffirming the right of the Iraqi people freely to determine their own political future and control their own natural resources.

Recognizing the importance of international support, particularly that of countries in the region, Iraq`s neighbours, and regional organisations, for the people of Iraq in their efforts to achieve security and prosperity, and noting that the successful implementation of this resolution will contribute to regional stability.

Welcoming the efforts of the Special Advisor to the Secretary-General to assist the people of Iraq in achieving the formation of the Interim Government of Iraq, as set out in the letter of the Secretary-General of [8] June 2004.

Taking note of the dissolution of the Governing Council of Iraq, and welcoming the progress made in implementing the arrangements for Iraq`s political transition referred to in resolution 1511 (2003) of 16 October 2003.

Welcoming the commitment of the Interim Government of Iraq to work towards a federal, democratic, pluralist and unified Iraq, in which there is full respect for political and human rights.

Stressing the need for all parties to respect and protect Iraq`s archaeological, historical, cultural and religious heritage, Affirming the importance of the rule of law, respect for human rights including the rights of women, fundamental freedoms, and democracy including free and fair elections.

Recalling the establishment of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) on 14 August 2003, and affirming that the United Nations should play a leading role in assisting the Iraqi people and government in the formation of institutions for representative government.

Recognizing that international support for restoration of stability and security is essential to the well-being of the people of Iraq as well as to the ability of all concerned to carry out their work on behalf of the people of Iraq, and welcoming Member State contributions in this regard under resolution 1483 (2003) of 22 May 2003 and resolution 1511 (2003).

Recalling the report provided by the United States to the Security Council on 16 April 2004 on the efforts and progress made by the multinational force.

Recognizing the request conveyed in the letter of 5 June 2004 from the Prime Minister of the Interim Government of Iraq to the President of the Council, which is annexed to this resolution, to retain the presence of the multinational force.

Recognizing also the importance of the consent of the sovereign Government of Iraq for the presence of the multinational force and of close coordination between the multinational force and that government.

Welcoming the willingness of the multinational force to continue efforts to contribute to the maintenance of security and stability in Iraq in support of the political transition, especially for upcoming elections, and to provide security for the UN presence in Iraq, as described in the letter of 5 June 2004 from the United States Secretary of State to the President of the Council, which is annexed to this resolution.

Noting the commitment of all forces promoting the maintenance of security and stability in Iraq to act in accordance with international law, including obligations under international humanitarian law, and cooperate with relevant international organisations.

Affirming the importance of international assistance in reconstruction and development of the Iraqi economy.

Recognizing the benefits to Iraq of the immunities and privileges enjoyed by Iraqi oil revenues and by the Development Fund for Iraq, and noting the importance of providing for continued disbursements of this fund by the Interim Government of Iraq and its successors upon dissolution of the Coalition Provisional Authority.

Determining that the situation in Iraq continues to constitute a threat to international peace and security.

Acting under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations:

1. Endorses the formation of a sovereign Interim Government of Iraq, as presented on 1 June 2004, which will assume full responsibility and authority by 30 June 2004 for governing Iraq while refraining from taking any actions affecting Iraq`s destiny beyond the limited interim period until an elected Transitional Government of Iraq assumes office as envisaged in paragraph four below;

2. Welcomes that, also by 30 June 2004, the occupation will end and the Coalition Provisional Authority will cease to exist, and that Iraq will reassert its full sovereignty;

3. Reaffirms the right of the Iraqi people freely to determine their own political future and to exercise full authority and control over their financial and natural resources;

4. Endorses the proposed timetable for Iraq`s political transition to democratic government including: (a) formation of the sovereign Interim Government of Iraq that will assume governing responsibility and authority by 30 June 2004; (b) convening of a national conference reflecting the diversity of Iraqi society; and (c) holding of direct democratic elections by 31 December 2004 if possible, and in no case later than 31 January 2005, to a Transitional National Assembly, which will, inter alia, have responsibility for forming a Transitional Government of Iraq and drafting a permanent constitution for Iraq leading to a constitutionally-elected government by 31 December 2005;

5. Invites the Government of Iraq to consider how the convening of an international meeting could support the above process, and notes that it would welcome such a meeting to support the Iraqi political transition and Iraqi recovery, to the benefit of the Iraqi people, and in the interest of stability in the region.

6. Calls on all Iraqis to implement these arrangements peaceably and in full, and on all States and relevant organisations to support such implementation.

7. Decides that in implementing, as circumstances permit, their mandate to assist the Iraqi people and government, the Special Representative of the Secretary General and the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI), as requested by the Government of Iraq, shall: (a) play a leading role to: (i) assist in the convening, during the month of July 2004, of a national conference to select a Consultative Council; (ii) advise and support the Interim Government of Iraq, the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq, and the Transitional National Assembly on the process for holding elections; (iii) promote national dialogue and consensus-building on the drafting of a national constitution by the people of Iraq; (b) and also: (i) advise the Government of Iraq in the development of effective civil and social services; (ii) contribute to the coordination and delivery of reconstruction, development, and humanitarian assistance; (iii) promote the protection of human rights, national reconciliation, and judicial and legal reform in order to strengthen the rule of law in Iraq; and (iv) advise and assist the Government of Iraq on initial planning for the eventual conduct of a comprehensive census.

8. Welcomes ongoing efforts by the incoming Interim Government of Iraq to develop Iraqi security forces, including the Iraqi armed forces, operating under the authority of the Interim Government of Iraq and its successors, which will progressively play a greater role and ultimately assume full responsibility for the maintenance of security and stability in Iraq;

9. Notes that the presence of the multinational force in Iraq is at the request of the incoming Interim Government of Iraq and therefore reaffirms the authorisation for the multinational force under unified command established under resolution 1511 (2003) having regard to the letters annexed to this resolution;

10. Decides that the multinational force shall have the authority to take all necessary measures to contribute to the maintenance of security and stability in Iraq in accordance with the letters annexed to this resolution expressing, inter alia, the Iraqi request for the continued presence of the multinational force and setting out its tasks, including by preventing and deterring terrorism, so that, inter alia, the United Nations can fulfil its role in assisting the Iraqi people as outlined in paragraph seven above and the Iraqi people can implement freely and without intimidation the timetable and program for the political process and benefit from reconstruction and rehabilitation activities;

11. Welcomes in this regard the letters annexed to this resolution stating, inter alia, that arrangements are being put in place to establish a security partnership between the multinational force and the sovereign Government of Iraq and to ensure coordination between the two, and noting also in this regard that Iraqi security forces are responsible to appropriate Iraqi ministers, that the Government of Iraq has authority to commit Iraqi security forces to the multinational force to engage in operations with it, and that the security structures described in the letters will serve as the fora for the multiational force and Iraqi government to reach agreement on the full range of fundamental security and policy issues, including policy on sensitive offensive operations, and will ensure full partnership between Iraqi forces and the multinational force, through close coordination and consultation;

12. Decides further that the mandate for the multinational force shall be reviewed at the request of the Government of Iraq or twelve months from the date of this resolution, and that this mandate shall expire upon the completion of the political process set out in paragraph four above, and declares that it will terminate this mandate earlier if requested by the Government of Iraq;

13. Notes the intention, set out in the annexed letter from the United States Secretary of State, to create a distinct entity under unified command of the multinational force with a dedicated mission to provide security for the UN presence in Iraq, recognises that the implementation of measures to provide security for staff members of the United Nations system working in Iraq would require significant resources, and calls upon Member States and relevant organisations to provide such resources, including contributions to that entity;

14. Recognises that the multinational force will also assist in building the capability of the Iraqi security forces and institutions, through a program of recruitment, training, equipping, mentoring and monitoring;

15. Requests Member States and international and regional organisations to contribute assistance to the multinational force, including military forces, as agreed with the Government of Iraq, to help meet the needs of the Iraqi people for security and stability, humanitarian and reconstruction assistance, and to support the efforts of UNAMI;

16. Emphasises the importance of developing effective Iraqi police, border enforcement, and Facilities Protection Service, under the control of the Interior Ministry of Iraq, and, in the case of the Facilities Protection Service, other Iraqi ministries, for the maintenance of law, order, and security, including combating terrorism, and requests Member States and international organisations to assist the Government of Iraq in building the capability of these Iraqi institutions;

17. Condemns all acts of terrorism in Iraq, reaffirms the obligations of Member States under resolutions 1373 (2001) of 28 September 2001, 1267 (1999) 15 October 1999, 1333 (2000) of 19 December 2000, 1390 (2002) of 16 January 2002, 1455 (2003) of 17 January 2003, and 1526 (2004) of 30 January 2004, and other relevant international obligations with respect, inter alia, to terrorist activities in and from Iraq or against its citizens, and specifically reiterates its call upon Member States to prevent the transit of terrorists to and from Iraq, arms for terrorists, and financing that would support terrorists, and reemphasis the importance of strengthening the cooperation of the countries of the region, particularly neighbours of Iraq, in this regard;

18. Recognises that the Interim Government of Iraq will assume the primary role in coordinating international assistance to Iraq;

19. Welcomes efforts by Member States and international organisations to respond in support of requests by the Interim Government of Iraq to provide technical and expert assistance, while Iraq is rebuilding administrative capacity;

20. Reiterates its request that Member States, international financial institutions and other organisations strengthen their efforts to assist the people of Iraq in the reconstruction and development of the Iraqi economy, including by providing international experts and necessary resources through a coordinated program of donor assistance;

21. Decides that the prohibitions related to the sale or supply to Iraq of arms and related materiel under previous resolutions shall not apply to arms or related materiel required by the Government of Iraq or the multinational force to serve the purposes of this resolution, stresses the importance for all States to abide strictly by them, and notes the significance of Iraq`s neighbours in this regard, and calls upon the Government of Iraq and the multinational force each to ensure that appropriate implementation procedures are in place;

22. Notes that nothing in the preceding paragraph affects the prohibitions on or obligations of States related to items specified in paragraphs 8 and 12 of resolution 687 (1991) of 3 April 1991 or activities described in paragraph 3(f) of resolution 707 (1991) of 15 August 1991, and reaffirms its intention to revisit the mandates of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency;

23. Calls on Member States and international organizations to respond to Iraqi requests to assist Iraqi efforts to integrate Iraqi veterans and former militia members into Iraqi society;

24. Notes that, upon dissolution of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the funds in the Development Fund for Iraq shall be disbursed solely at the direction of the Government of Iraq, and decides that the Development Fund for Iraq shall be utilised in a transparent and equitable manner and through the Iraqi budget including to satisfy outstanding obligations against the Development Fund for Iraq, that the arrangements for the depositing of proceeds from export sales of petroleum, petroleum products, and natural gas established in paragraph 20 of resolution 1483 (2003) shall continue to apply, that the International Advisory and Monitoring Board shall continue its activities in monitoring the Development Fund for Iraq and shall include as an additional full voting member a duly qualified individual designated by the Government of Iraq and that appropriate arrangements shall be made for the continuation of deposits of the proceeds referred to in paragraph 21 of resolution 1483 (2003);

25. Decides further that the provisions in the above paragraph for the deposit of proceeds into the DFI and for the role of the IAMB shall be reviewed at the request of the Transitional Government of Iraq or twelve months from the date of this resolution, and shall expire upon the completion of the political process set out in paragraph four above;

26. Decides that, in connection with the dissolution of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the Interim Government of Iraq and its successors shall assume the rights, responsibilities and obligations relating to the Oil for Food Program that were transferred to the Authority, including all operational responsibility for the Program and any obligations undertaken by the Authority in connection with such responsibility, and responsibility for ensuring independently authenticated confirmation that goods have been delivered, and further decides that, following a 120-day transition period from the date of adoption of this resolution, the Interim Government of Iraq and its successors shall assume responsibility for certifying delivery of goods under contracts prioritised in accordance with that resolution, and that such certification shall be deemed to constitute the independent authentication required for the release of funds associated with such contracts, consulting as appropriate to ensure the smooth implementation of these arrangements;

27. Further decides that the provisions of paragraph 22 of resolution 1483 (2003) shall continue to apply, except that the privileges and immunities provided in that paragraph shall not apply concerning any final judgement arising out of a contractual obligation entered into by Iraq after 30 June 2004;

28. Welcomes the commitments of many creditors, including those of the Paris Club, to identify ways to reduce substantially Iraq`s sovereign debt, calls on Member States, as well as intemationa1 and regional organisations, to support the Iraq reconstruction effort, urges the international financial institutions and bilateral donors to take the immediate steps necessary to provide their full range of loans and other financial assistance and arrangements to Iraq, recognises that the Interim Government of Iraq will have the authority to conclude and implement such agreements and other arrangements as may be necessary in this regard, and requests creditors, institutions and donors to work as a priority on these matters with the Interim Government of Iraq and its successors;

29. Recalls the continuing obligations of Member States to freeze and transfer certain funds, assets, and economic resources to the Development Fund for Iraq in accordance with paragraphs 19 and 23 of resolution 1483 (2003) and with resolution 1518 (2003) of 24 November 2003;

30. Requests the Secretary-General to report to the Council within three months from the date of this resolution on UNAMI operations in Iraq, and on a quarterly basis thereafter on the progress made towards national elections and fulfilment of all Unum`s responsibilities;

31. Requests that the United States, on behalf of the multinational force, report to the Council within three months from the date of this resolution on the efforts and progress of this force, and on a quarterly basis thereafter;

32. Decides to remain actively seized of the matter.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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Modest resolution

Leader
Wednesday June 9, 2004

The Guardian
If there were a graveyard at the United Nations headquarters in New York, it would be filled with resolutions on Iraq. They have a poor survival rate. They fail to achieve international consensus and are even shorter lived on the ground. The latest resolution could be no different to its still-born predecessors. It is unlikely to make Iraq a safer place for foreign troops to operate. Nor will it alter Iraqi perceptions about the nature of the occupation. But if it works, it could give more credibility to Washington`s case that real sovereignty will be transferred to Baghdad at the end of this month and that in turn increases the likelihood of a stable sovereign government emerging from the whole sorry saga.

To judge by the mood music emerging from the UN, this resolution stands a better chance than the others. The French foreign minister, Michel Barnier, admitted that they did not get all they wanted. But they got enough to vote in favour. Germany and Russia concurred. Washington and London had listened and changed the text four times, but the important thing was that the US had listened. In a negotiation, the French argued, you win some, you lose some. It is a long time since this sort of diplomatic language was heard in the UN`s corridors. After the mayhem of recent months, achieving a consensus on what to do next in Iraq is in itself significant.

The resolution addresses two key issues: how long foreign troops should stay on in Iraq and whether the sovereign Iraqi government has a right of veto over its operations. On the first issue, a date for withdrawal has been set, albeit a distant one. The multinational force, as it will become known, loses its mandate at the latest in December 2005 when a sovereign government is chosen or, at the earliest, within 12 months of the passing of the resolution if it is by the request of the transitional Iraqi government. In theory, this fact should remove one motivation of Iraqi insurgents to fight on against the occupation. It will not, of course, but it could weaken the case in the wider Arab world for doing so.

The second issue, a key test of sovereignty, has been fudged. The French won the argument that Iraqi forces should be put under the control and responsibility of the Iraqi government. At present they are under the control of coalition forces. But the Iraqi government will not have a right of veto over "sensitive offensive operations" of the multinational force, like the recent assaults on Falluja and Najaf. The commander of the multinational force is bound by the UN resolution to participate, when called for, in meetings of an Iraqi ministerial committee for national security. But it does not bind him to agree with its decisions. In practice, it would be highly embarrassing for the commander of the multinational force to provoke public dissent from ministerial members of this committee. But these political realities do not in themselves constitute a veto. The assault on Falluja could happen all over again. Common sense, though, suggests it is now highly unlikely to do so any time soon.

All still depends on the ability of American and British commanders to contain events on the ground and of the transitional Iraqi government to achieve national authority. One of Paul Bremer`s last acts was to sign an order banning Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shia cleric, from standing in Iraq`s first democratic elections by stating that all members of illegal militias will be barred from holding office for three years after leaving their illegal organisation. He was acting on the behest of two Shia parties, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the Dawa party, whose members have an interest in eliminating a potential rival. But this is a two-edged sword. The political ban could increase al-Sadr`s popularity and undermine the Iraqi government`s search for credibility.
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THE WORLD
Prison Interrogators` Gloves Came Off Before Abu Ghraib
By Richard A. Serrano
Times Staff Writer

June 9, 2004

WASHINGTON — After American Taliban recruit John Walker Lindh was captured in Afghanistan, the office of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld instructed military intelligence officers to "take the gloves off" in interrogating him.

The instructions from Rumsfeld`s legal counsel in late 2001, contained in previously undisclosed government documents, are the earliest known evidence that the Bush administration was willing to test the limits of how far it could go legally to extract information from suspected terrorists.

The Pentagon and Congress are now investigating the mistreatment of inmates at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in late 2003 and trying to determine whether higher-ups in the military chain of command had created a climate that fostered prisoner abuse.

What happened to Lindh, who was stripped and humiliated by his captors, foreshadowed the type of abuse documented in photographs of American soldiers tormenting Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

At the time, just weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the U.S. was desperate to find terrorist leader Osama bin Laden. After Lindh asked for a lawyer rather than talk to interrogators, he was not granted one nor was he advised of his Miranda rights against self-incrimination. Instead, the Pentagon ordered intelligence officers to get tough with him.

The documents, read to The Times by two sources critical of how the government handled the Lindh case, show that after an Army intelligence officer began to question Lindh, a Navy admiral told the intelligence officer that "the secretary of Defense`s counsel has authorized him to `take the gloves off` and ask whatever he wanted."

Lindh was being questioned while he was propped up naked and tied to a stretcher in interrogation sessions that went on for days, according to court papers.

In the early stages, his responses were cabled to Washington hourly, the new documents show.

A Defense Department spokesperson said Tuesday evening that the Pentagon "refused to speculate on the exact intent of the statement" from Rumsfeld`s office to the military authorities interrogating Lindh.

"Department officials stress that all interrogation policies and procedures demand humane treatment of personnel in their custody," the spokesperson said. "The department is committed to searching further to ascertain the original source of the comment brought to their attention by The Times."

Lindh, who pleaded guilty in return for a 20-year federal prison sentence for aiding the Taliban, was a young Northern California Islamic convert who joined the Taliban army before Sept. 11, attended a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan and was captured soon after U.S. troops invaded the country.

While Lindh was being interrogated in Afghanistan and later aboard a ship, senior Bush administration officials were strategizing on how to handle other prisoners being rounded up in Afghanistan, with an eye toward flexibility in interrogating them.

In a series of memos from late 2001 to early 2002, top legal officials in the administration identified the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as a safe haven offshore that would shield the secret interrogation process from intervention by the U.S. judicial system.

The memos show that top government lawyers believed the administration was not bound by the Geneva Convention governing treatment of prisoners because "Al Qaeda is merely a violent political movement or organization and not a nation-state" that had signed the international treaty.

However, the memos also show that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell warned the White House that a tougher approach toward interrogation "will reverse over a century of U.S. policy and practices in supporting Geneva Conventions and undermine the protections of the law of war for our troops, both in this specific conflict and in general."

The tenor of these administration memos on the handling of prisoners in the earliest stages of the U.S.-declared war on terrorism was similar to a legal "working paper" by administration lawyers in March 2003. It concluded that the president had the authority to allow any interrogation tactics that he thought would protect the American public, including torture, according to government documents. The Pentagon this week said that the paper was part of an internal administration debate and was not a policy that was carried out.

In the Iraq war that began in March 2003, administration officials said that the military would abide by the Geneva Convention. But in January of this year, a dismayed U.S. military guard turned over photographs depicting physical abuse and humiliation of inmates at Abu Ghraib.

Six Army prison guards are awaiting courts-martial in the Abu Ghraib scandal. A seventh has pleaded guilty.

The Pentagon, although condemning the behavior, has blamed it on a handful of low-level soldiers violating Army regulations. But the Department of Defense and the Senate Armed Services Committee are investigating how high up in the chain of command responsibilities for the abuses lie.

In the case of Lindh, U.S. intelligence officers first tried to interrogate him on Nov. 25, 2001, after he and other Taliban soldiers were captured by U.S. allies known as the Northern Alliance and taken to the town of Mazar-i-Sharif. There, CIA agent Johnny "Mike" Spann used an interrogation tactic of warning Lindh that he might die.

According to a video aired days after Lindh`s capture, Spann asked him, "You believe in what you`re doing here that much, you`re willing to be killed here?"

Another CIA officer, identified as Dave Tyson, told Spann within Lindh`s hearing that "he`s got to decide if he wants to live or die, and die here. We`re just going to leave him, and he`s going to … sit in prison the rest of his … short life. It`s his decision."

Lindh, then 20, did not respond. Shortly after, an uprising broke out. Spann was killed — the first U.S. fatality of the war — and Lindh was shot in the leg.

Lindh was recaptured, and over a series of interrogations — at a school at Mazar-i-Sharif, at Camp Rhino in Afghanistan and aboard a Navy ship — he was kept in harsh conditions, stripped and tied to a stretcher, and often held for long periods in a large metal container, the government and defense agreed during his legal battle.

In court hearings and legal papers, his attorneys complained that he was deprived of sleep and food, that his leg wound was not treated, and that for 54 days he was neither allowed legal assistance nor told that his father had retained lawyers on his behalf in San Francisco.

Lindh`s lawyers declined to comment on the matter this week, noting that a provision of his 2002 plea agreement stated he would not bring up the conditions under which he was held overseas.

The military, in contrast, has maintained in previous court documents that Lindh was treated well and that he was read his rights under the Miranda law against self-incrimination.

But the new records raise new questions.

According to the government documents, when Lindh was first under interrogation at the schoolhouse, authorities realized that as an American he was drawing the attention of the Defense and Justice departments. There was some initial discussion of whether Lindh, as an American, should be advised of his right against self-incrimination before military intelligence officers talked to him.

One Army intelligence officer said in the documents that he had been advised that "instructions had come from higher headquarters" for interrogators to coordinate with military lawyers about Lindh.

"After the first hour of interrogation, [the interrogator] gave the admiral in charge of Mazar-i-Sharif a summary of what the interrogators had collected up to that point," the documents say. "The admiral told him at that point that the secretary of Defense`s counsel has authorized him to `take the gloves off` and ask whatever he wanted."

The Army intelligence officer responded that if a "criminal investigator" wanted to later question Lindh, "that was fine."

But in the meantime, the officer said, he was "interested in tactical information. He was in the business of collecting [intelligence] information, not in the business of Mirandizing."

The officer did ask to be faxed a Miranda form, according to the documents, "but he never got it. He never gave Lindh a Miranda warning."

Rumsfeld`s legal counsel is not named in the documents. The office was headed by William J. Haynes II.

On Dec. 14, 2001, Haynes` deputy, Paul W. Cobb Jr., told Lindh`s San Francisco lawyers that "our forces have provided him with appropriate medical attention and will continue to treat him humanely, consistent with the Geneva Convention protections for prisoners of war."

But court documents suggest that Lindh was treated much as the prisoners later were at Abu Ghraib. Along with nudity and the sleep and food deprivation, Lindh was allegedly threatened with death. One soldier said he "was going to hang." Another "Special Forces soldier offered to shoot him."

At other times, soldiers took photos and videos of themselves smiling next to the naked Lindh, another image eerily similar to the Abu Ghraib photos.

Such actions appear to be in violation of the Geneva Convention, which requires that prisoners have adequate clothing, food and sleep and not be threatened or subjected to degrading treatment.

As the interrogation of Lindh was going on, officials in Washington were privately working out details for handling other prisoners from Afghanistan.

On Dec. 28, 2001, John Yoo, then deputy assistant attorney general, told Haynes at the Pentagon that Guantanamo Bay was a perfect place for detainees because it was not a part of the sovereign United States and therefore not subject to the federal courts. But, Yoo cautioned, "there remains some litigation risk that a district court might reach the opposite result."

The holding of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay without charge or a court hearing has been challenged by several defense lawyers, and the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule this month on whether the government went too far.



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THE WORLD
U.S. Will Revise Data on Terror
The State Department works to amend its report on global attacks after critics alleged an undercount and political manipulation.
By Josh Meyer
Times Staff Writer

June 9, 2004

WASHINGTON — The State Department is scrambling to revise its annual report on global terrorism to acknowledge that it understated the number of deadly attacks in 2003, amid charges that the document is inaccurate and was politically manipulated by the Bush administration.

When the most recent "Patterns of Global Terrorism" report was issued April 29, senior Bush administration officials immediately hailed it as objective proof that they were winning the war on terrorism. The report is considered the authoritative yardstick of the prevalence of terrorist activity around the world.

"Indeed, you will find in these pages clear evidence that we are prevailing in the fight" against global terrorism, Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage said during a celebratory rollout of the report.

But on Tuesday, State Department officials said they underreported the number of terrorist attacks in the tally for 2003, and added that they expected to release an updated version soon.

Several U.S. officials and terrorism experts familiar with that revision effort said the new report will show that the number of significant terrorist incidents increased last year, perhaps to its highest level in 20 years.

"It will change the numbers," said one State Department official who declined to comment further or be identified by name. "The incidents will go up, but I don`t know by how many."

Among the original report`s highlights: The annual number of terrorist attacks had dropped to its lowest level in 34 years, declining by 45% since 2001. Overall, fewer people were being killed, injured and kidnapped, and the U.S.-led global coalition had taken the fight to Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations with great success.

Minor terrorism events — typically those in which nobody dies — had almost disappeared, declining by more than 90% from 231 incidents in 2001 to 21 in 2003, the report said.

The annual reports were first ordered up by Congress two decades ago as the U.S. government`s reference tool on terrorist activity, trends and groups.

Since then, administration officials and Congress have come to rely heavily on the "Patterns" report in formulating counter-terrorism policies and strategies.

In recent years, the report has been translated into five languages so that U.S. allies around the world can scrutinize the hundreds of pages of data, which are based on U.S. and allied intelligence information.

On Tuesday, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) applauded the State Department for deciding to reissue the report, a step he requested in a letter to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell three weeks ago. But Waxman said the Bush administration so far had refused to address his allegation that it manipulated the terrorism data to claim victory in the U.S.-declared war on terrorism.

"This manipulation may serve the Administration`s political interests," Waxman wrote in his May 17 letter to Powell, "but it calls into serious doubt the integrity of the report."

Several State Department officials vehemently denied their report was swayed by politics. "That`s not the way we do things here," said one senior official.

Another senior official characterized the errors as clerical, and blamed them mostly on the fact responsibility for the report recently shifted from the CIA to the administration`s new Terrorist Threat Integration Center.

Waxman, the ranking Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, told Powell that the number of significant terrorist attacks since 2001 hasn`t declined as the department claimed, but risen by more than 35%. And he cited an analysis by two independent experts who used figures provided by the State Department report in concluding that significant attacks actually had reached a 20-year high in 2003.

For example, the State Department report listed 190 terrorist attacks in 2003, including 169 "significant" ones. But Waxman said a review showed the report stopped counting terrorist incidents on Nov. 11, leaving out several major attacks, including bombings of two synagogues, a bank and the British Consulate in Turkey that killed 62 and injured more than 700.

Waxman said a State Department official blamed the Nov. 11 cutoff on a printing deadline.

Waxman said the steep overall decline in terrorism claimed by the State Department was based mostly on a 90% drop in "nonsignificant" attacks in two years, without providing any detail as to how or why such a decrease occurred.

Waxman asked Powell to provide by June 1 details on international terrorist attacks dating back to 1995, an explanation of procedures used in defining terrorist acts and information on whether political appointees played a role in writing or editing the report. He said he hadn`t heard back.

Internationally, he added, "it feeds into the notion that the U.S. is just not a credible voice on important issues of terrorism."

A just-issued Congressional Research Service report has concluded that the statistical errors are just the latest in a series of problems that the "Patterns" report has faced in recent years.

The congressional study said that the State Department report — despite the perception of its objectivity — was unduly influenced by political and economic considerations.

Also, it said the department had failed to take into account the shift from state sponsorship of terrorism to Al Qaeda`s use of a far-flung network of affiliates and cells. Though some might question the findings, the congressional report noted that the State Department appeared to be using outdated criteria to determine what constituted a terrorist incident.

For instance, the many deadly attacks on coalition forces in Iraq were not included in the "Patterns" report because they did not meet the State Department`s long-standing criteria of targeting civilians or soldiers not on duty.

Potentially dozens of other terrorist strikes were left out because they were not "international" in scope, including attacks by local Al Qaeda affiliates against targets within their own countries.

Taken together, such problems warrant a wholesale reassessment of the report and its mission, preferably by an independent government agency such as the National Academy of Sciences, according to the congressional study`s author, Raphael Perl.

"Arguably, the report has been on autopilot and has not kept up with the times," Perl said in a telephone interview.


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NEWS ANALYSIS
U.S. Finds Humility, Compromise Go Long Way With G-8
By Mary Curtius
Times Staff Writer

June 9, 2004

SAVANNAH, Ga. — President Bush traveled to this week`s Group of 8 summit of industrialized nations, searching for commitments of help in Iraq and for partners in his efforts to promote democratic reform in the Middle East.

The president appears to be getting his wishes — thanks to changing circumstances and the Bush administration`s recent willingness to compromise.

Some of the nations that harshly criticized the decision to go to war now say they have little choice but to help the U.S. succeed in Iraq. Diplomats from these nations say they are lending their support because the security of the world is at stake.

U.S. success in Iraq, said a French diplomat, "is important for President Bush, for obvious reasons. But it is now also important for the security of the world. Everybody now realizes that we have no choice but to find ways to make Iraq stable and, if possible, democratic."

The U.S. received two much-needed boosts coming into this summit: the naming of Iraq`s interim government and Tuesday`s unanimous U.N. Security Council vote endorsing the new government. The resolution makes it easier for critics of the war to back Iraqi reconstruction.

Both accomplishments came only after the U.S. made significant compromises. The U.S. turned to the United Nations, a body it sidelined during the debate over plans to invade Iraq, to help put together the interim government. The appointments also reflected U.S. concessions to members of the Iraqi Governing Council, which has been dissolved.

To obtain the Security Council resolution, the U.S. bowed to demands from the French, Germans, Russians and others that it give the Iraqis more authority than the administration had originally proposed.

France, Germany and Russia still insist that they will send no troops to Iraq. But the French say they are willing to train Iraqi troops and police, to help build an Iraqi justice system and to assist in other, unspecified ways. The Germans say they are looking for ways to offer assistance. And the Bush administration still hopes to win troops from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization at a summit of the defense alliance later this month.

"The United States will be looking for signs that support for the Security Council resolution was not just symbolic," said a Western diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

NATO countries might agree to send troops if they feared that Iraq could implode in civil war and that Islamic militancy was gaining strength.

The Bush administration has faced criticism from allies and enemies for its perceived arrogance. But if there is a watchword for the administration at this summit, it is "humility," a word that came up repeatedly at a pre-summit session on Capitol Hill.

"When it comes to discussing reform, being humble and having humility is an important part of the message that we need to convey," Alan P. Larson, undersecretary of State for economic, business and agricultural affairs, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "We need to be able to convey that we believe that the work of building free, democratic, open societies is never done, that we don`t believe that we`ve achieved perfection."

Larson was referring to the Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiative for democratic reforms. But a senior State Department official, who asked not to be identified, said humility extends to the U.S. experience in Iraq.

"In many ways," the official said, "the U.S. has been humbled by the Iraqi experience. We`ve lost a lot of soldiers. We`ve seen our institutions that we`ve cherished sullied. We`ve seen adversity that, frankly, we didn`t expect — and that experience is humbling."

Diplomats said the U.S. showed humility in pre-summit negotiations. "And with humility, perhaps, comes the beginning of wisdom," the French diplomat said dryly.

Most notable, diplomats said, was the way the U.S. reworked its proposal for pushing democratic reforms in the Middle East after an early draft, leaked to the Arab press, outraged the region`s leaders, who regarded it as a thinly veiled attempt to impose an American diktat.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and his deputy, Richard L. Armitage, responded by traveling to the region to consult with Arab leaders, and by holding intensive discussions with skeptical allies.

In its final version, the initiative is expected to establish a forum for bringing together G-8 members with regional governments on a regular basis to discuss reform efforts, establish a micro-finance initiative for small entrepreneurs in the Middle East and offer training for teachers, businesspeople and vocational students. The plan emphasizes, in its preamble, that it is the result of "consultation with reform leaders in the region."



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EDITORIAL
Twisting American Values

June 9, 2004

"Everything changed after 9/11" became, in 2001, the slogan that justified new approaches to national security, including curtailment of civil liberties. Nearly three years later, we learn that even the use of torture was being justified when it came to terror suspects. The Bush administration`s Justice Department turned the Constitution on its head by telling the White House in an August 2002 memo — written nearly a year after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon — not only that torture "may be justified" but that laws against torture "may be unconstitutional if applied to interrogations" in the U.S. war on terror.

Those are the words of out-of-control government servants willing to discard the most fundamental values of this nation. But the declaration became the basis for a secret draft report in March 2003 by Pentagon lawyers to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. That report said the president`s "inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign" meant prohibitions on torture did not apply.

It is not known if the language of the draft survived in a final report, and Pentagon officials said the document had no effect on revised interrogation procedures for Guantanamo Bay inmates issued in April 2003. But the memo`s willingness to discard international and domestic laws adds strength to questions about the interrogations of prisoners in Afghanistan, Iraq and the U.S. facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A 2001 memo from Rumsfeld`s office, for instance, said intelligence officers should "take the gloves off" when interrogating the so-called American Talib, John Walker Lindh.

"A few bad apples" was the dismissive phrase used by the White House after photos of brutality by U.S. forces in Iraq`s Abu Ghraib prison leaked out. The fact that there were numerous soldiers, including alleged Army intelligence officers, in some of the pictures immediately chipped at that claim. New reports of abuse or torture of inmates in Afghanistan rolled in. Last month, the Pentagon said 32 inmates had died in U.S. custody in Iraq and five in Afghanistan; so far, eight of the deaths appear to have been homicides.

Congress must determine how far up the chain of command the abuse stretched and who authorized or tolerated it. The torture memo, all drafts of the report to Rumsfeld and the names of those who received them should be made public. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft refused such a request Tuesday by the Senate Judiciary Committee. The effort shouldn`t stop there.

In 1994, the U.S. ratified the international Convention Against Torture, which states there are "no exceptional circumstances whatsoever" to justify torture. Torture is morally wrong and practically ineffective. This was especially true at Abu Ghraib, where most detainees were not suspected terrorists. Mistreatment of inmates invites retaliation against captured U.S. soldiers, one reason many uniformed Pentagon lawyers opposed the memo`s conclusions.

The administration should open its files and explain its interrogation procedures. Anything less reinforces the image of a brutal nation unfettered by the rule of law.




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COMMENTARY
It`s the Law -- Even in War
The U.S. must abide by the Geneva Convention because compliance is in its interest -- and because it`s right.
By Allen S. Weiner
Allen S. Weiner is a law professor at the Stanford Institute for International Studies and Stanford Law School. From 1990 to 2001 he was an attorney in the State Department.

June 9, 2004

"No country integrates the laws of war into its operational military planning better or more systematically than the United States."

This is an assertion I made many times during the decade I represented the U.S. government as a career State Department lawyer.

I defended the U.S. acceptance of, and obedience to, the international law of armed conflict most vociferously in 2000, after the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia announced to the press that she was reviewing allegations that NATO forces had committed war crimes during the 1999 bombing campaign in the Balkans.

I urged prosecutors at the war crimes tribunal not to give unwarranted credit to allegations that U.S.-led NATO forces had violated the laws of war; at the same time, I sought to assure U.S. military personnel and policymakers that the United States would not only withstand scrutiny by the war tribunal`s prosecutors but would be vindicated by it.

My arguments were based not merely on a lawyer`s duty to defend his client. Rather, I spoke from a genuine belief — built upon years of experience — that the American military was committed to minimizing the most barbaric aspects of war by respecting the basic humanitarian protections embodied in the laws of war.

This is why each of the revelations that has emerged over the last six weeks regarding the military`s treatment of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has left me feeling betrayed.

As shocking as the photographs were from Abu Ghraib prison, perhaps more galling for me as a former executive branch lawyer was the claim attributed to one of the alleged participants that he had to learn about the 1949 Geneva Convention on his own by searching the Internet. How could the U.S. Army — my army, which I know to be characterized by honor and integrity — ask soldiers to detain and interrogate prisoners of war without training them in the fundamental rules that apply?

Now we`ve learned that this was more than just a breakdown in a particular military command in Iraq. White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, in a memorandum drafted for President Bush, declared — with only a thin fig leaf of legal analysis — that the nature of the war against terrorism simply rendered the Geneva Convention "obsolete." And the Wall Street Journal reported this week that, as recently as March of this year, executive branch lawyers advised Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld that U.S. personnel were effectively exempt from international treaties and U.S. laws prohibiting torture. The theory? That law prohibiting torture "must be construed as inapplicable" to interrogations conducted pursuant to the president`s wartime commander-in-chief authorities.

In other words, notwithstanding this country`s longtime commitment to democracy and rule of law, the president and those acting on his behalf in times of war are above the law.

That`s a stunning conclusion. It is also wrong. The restraints of law do not disappear in armed conflict, whether it is traditional combat or the kind of asymmetric struggle against terrorism in which the United States is now engaged. The U.S. has long accepted the notion that law applies even in war. We should continue to do so now.

The U.S., through its democratic processes, freely agreed to comply with the restraints on torture and mistreatment of prisoners of war embodied in the Geneva Convention (in 1956) and the Convention Against Torture (in 1994), as have many, many other countries.

That`s a meaningful commitment; as Justice Hugo Black once wrote, "Great nations, like great men, should keep their word."

Compliance with international laws of war, moreover, advances a number of important American interests. Most important, international law is based on reciprocity. If the U.S. determines that the laws of war do not apply to our adversaries, it undermines the sanctity of those protections and increases the chances that our adversaries — in the conflicts not only of today but of tomorrow — will ignore them as well.

Because there is no central global authority to compel compliance with international law, the system depends on voluntary compliance by countries. In a world of hardheaded realism, an American policy of disregard for international law in the interest of short-term expediency removes the principal incentive for our partners to abide by their promises to us, not only regarding the treatment of prisoners but in all the fields in which international law advances American interests.

As no less a realist than Henry Kissinger once observed, the U.S. "is convinced in its own interest that the extension of legal order is a boon to humanity and a necessity."

Finally, even in times of war, the U.S. should scrupulously apply international rules prohibiting torture and mistreatment of prisoners of war not only because it is in its geopolitical interest to do so but because it is right.

These humanitarian principles reflect profound American ideals celebrating the dignity of the individual against abuses by the state. Upholding these values, even in times of great national crisis, would reflect the beliefs that have inspired American foreign policy since the time of Woodrow Wilson.

By keeping the promises we made when we became a party to the Geneva Convention and the Convention Against Torture, the United States can instill in its citizens a sense of pride in its government, and not a sense of betrayal.


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http://www.juancole.com/2004_06_01_juancole_archive.html#108…

Wednesday, June 09, 2004

Torturegate, G8, and the Greater Middle East

The Wall Street Journal`s revelation of White House counsels` memoranda permitting what most people would consider torture-- on the basis of the president`s position as commander in chief in wartime-- is among the most chilling things we have seen from a Bush administration not lacking in chills for civil libertarians. It seems clear from the anger expressed by senators like Joe Biden in the hearings addressed by Attorney General John Ashcroft on Tuesday that they now suspect Bush himself authorized the Abu Ghuraib torture routines. And, they are helpless to do anything about it.

The revelations about the torture memos have cast a cloud over Bush`s presentations at the G8 summit in Georgia. Since the Bush centerpiece at that conference was supposed to be promoting democracy in the Middle East, the Torturegate revelations pointed to US feet of clay. Wire services noted Bush`s complete failure with Middle Eastern leaders at the summit:

"In an effort to demonstrate engagement with Arabs on the issues, Mr Bush invited the leaders of a number of Islamic countries to attend a lunch on Wednesday with G8 leaders, at their own expense. But leaders of some key nations, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Morocco, turned down the invitation, and Qatar was purposely snubbed because of administration anger at al-Jazeera`s coverage of the Iraq war. Ms Rice cited scheduling issues as the reason Morocco and Egypt - one of the effort`s harshest critics - will not appear."



That sounds pretty sad.

With regard to the memos themselves, As usual, Josh Marshall is on the case. And, Billmon has an amusing treatment of the hypocrisy of Mary L. Walker, the US Air Force general counsel who led the team of lawyers that wrote the torture memos. (She claims to be a Christian. On the other hand, we cynical lefties should remember that it was Christian soldiers who blew the whistle on Abu Ghuraib, out of stricken consciences.)

A Republican Congress is most unlikely to impeach George W. Bush, even if it does become clear that he is the torturer in chief and that Lynddie England is not the mastermind behind Abu Ghuraib. But he could be prosecuted, even after leaving office, for breaking US law against torture.


United States Code Title 18. Section 2340. Definitions

As used in this chapter -
(1) ``torture`` means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control;
(2) ``severe mental pain or suffering`` means the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from -
(A) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering;
(B) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality;
(C) the threat of imminent death; or
(D) the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality; and
(3) ``United States`` includes all areas under the jurisdiction of the United States including any of the places described in sections 5 and 7 of this title and section 46501(2) of title 49.

Section 2340A. Torture

(a) Offense. - Whoever outside the United States commits or attempts to commit torture shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both, and if death results to any person from conduct prohibited by this subsection, shall be punished by death or imprisoned for any term of years or for life.
(b) Jurisdiction. - There is jurisdiction over the activity prohibited in subsection (a) if -
(1) the alleged offender is a national of the United States; or
(2) the alleged offender is present in the United States, irrespective of the nationality of the victim or alleged offender.
(c) Conspiracy. - A person who conspires to commit an offense under this section shall be subject to the same penalties (other than the penalty of death) as the penalties prescribed for the offense, the commission of which was the object of the conspiracy.



As Steve Rendell noted in a piece a couple of years ago,

` Citing Title 18, Section 242 of the United States Code, legal writer Karen L. Snell notes (The Recorder, 10/31/01): "The use of pressure tactics, including torture by proxy, not only renders evidence obtained inadmissible in court. It`s also a crime. And it is not just the person who physically or mentally assaults a suspect who is guilty. Any person who aids, abets, counsels or conspires to commit such acts is a criminal." `




posted by Juan @ 6/9/2004 09:02:23 AM

UN Resolution Passes Unanimously
Sistani the Big Winner; Kurds Furious

The United Nations Security Council on Tuesday unanimously approved a new resolution on Iraq granting legitimacy to the caretaker government of Iyad Allawi. The resolution gives the new Iraqi government substantially more sovereignty than had been envisaged by the US in the initial draft, and the Bush administration essentially compromised in order to have an achievement for the election season.

The resolution will make it easier for the Allawi government to gain the Iraq seat at the UN and at organizations like the Arab League. It also constrains the US from undertaking major military actions (think: Fallujah) without extensive consultation with the Iraqi government, and establishes a joint committee of US and Iraqi representatives to carry out those discussions. This military "partnership" was substituted successfully for a stricter French proposal that the Iraqi government have a veto over US military movements in Iraq. Still, the language went far beyond what the US had wanted.

That the US and the UK had to give away so much to get the resolution shows how weak they are in Iraq. The problem is that they have created a failed state in Iraq, and this new piece of paper really changes nothing on the ground (see the next news item, below).

The resolution did not mention or endorse the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL) or interim constitution adopted last February by the Interim Governing Council and based on the notes of Paul Bremer. The Shiite leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani had written Kofi Annan forbidding the UN from endorsing the TAL, on the grounds that it was illegitimate and contained provisions harmful to majority rule.

The Kurds on the other hand were absolutely furious that the UN did not mention the TAL, which they see as their safeguard against a tyranny of the Arab majority. It stipulates that the status quo will obtain in Kurdistan until an elected parliament crafts a permanent constitution next year this time, and that the three Kurdish provinces will have a veto over that new constitution if they do not like it. The Kurdish leaders threatened in a letter to President Bush on Sunday to boycott the elections this coming winter if there is any move to curtail their sovereigny or to rescind or amend the interim constitution. Ash-Sharq al-Awsat`s Shirzad Abdul Rahman reports today that the Kurdish street is anxious about the future, feeling that it has been left up in the air.

This entire process is a big win for Sistani. It is now often forgotten that the Bush administration had had no intention of involving the UN in this way in Iraq. The original plan was to have stage-managed council-based elections in May, producing a new government to which sovereignty would be handed over by the US directly. It was Sistani who derailed those plans as undemocratic. When the involvement of the UN was first broached last winter by Interim Governing Council members, the Americans were said to have been "extremely offended). It was Sistani who demanded that Kofi Annan send a special envoy to Iraq. It was Sistani who insisted that free and fair elections must be held as soon as humanly possible. It was Sistani who insisted that the UN midwife the new Iraqi government, and not the US and the UK alone. It was Sistani who insisted that the UN resolution not mention the Transitional Administrative Law.

Al-Hayat reports demonstrations in favor of Sistani on Tuesday. Likewise there were rallies for the new prime minister, Iyad Allawi.

Readers have frequently asked me for a thumbnail sketch of Sistani`s political philosophy, and the issue came up on one of my lists today. I reproduce here what I wrote.

Sistani`s conception of the new Iraq is that it should have an elected parliament, which will represent the will of the Iraqi people. His language on this is almost a translation of Rousseau (one might have wished for more Locke or Jefferson and less Rousseau, of course). The parliament should consist of laypersons, not clerics. And, it should be pluralistic and represent politically all Iraqis, including Kurds and Sunnis.

This elected, lay parliament is one basic element in the good society according to Sistani.

The other is the approval of parliament and its legislation by the Marja`iyyah or Shiite religious leadership. Legitimacy thus has dual roots, in the will of the people and in the approval of the clerics.

I have compared Sistani`s vision of Iraq to Ireland in the 1950s. There was an elected, lay parliament. But if it took up a matter such as divorce, which affected the interests of the Church, the Bishops intervened and usually were able to get their way. Likewise, Sistani expects a majority of members of parliament to be lay Shiites, and he expects them to conscientiously heed his fatwas on social issues. These rulings, however, will be issued from the seminaries of Najaf and come from outside the government. Sistani expects to have no official post, and discourages clerics from seeking such posts. The clerical role is played out in civil society, not within the state, for the most part.

Sistani rejects Khomeini`s theory of the guardianship of the jurisprudent (vilayat-i faqih) in governmental affairs. He does not want to see a faqih or supreme jurisprudent in Iraq similar to the position of Ali Khamenei in Iran. But he does speak about wilayat al-faqih fi al-masa`il al-ijtima`iyyah, or the guardianship of the jurisprudent in social affairs. The mechanism for such a guardianship is the issuance of fatwas or considered jurisprudential rulings.

Sistani would also like to have shariah or Islamic canon law form the basis for as much as possible of Iraqi civil law. Certainly he wants personal status law to be shariah for Muslims. This was the system in Iraq under the monarchy, and obviously it does create a shariah bench for clerical judges appointed by the state, where the clerics can have a voice in civil affairs. (This system was introduced in Pakistan under General Zia ul-Haq, of which Sistani is well aware because one of his key colleagues is Bashir Najafi, a Pakistani grand ayatollah).

So, Sistani is not a secularist by any stretch of the imagination. If he gets what he wants, religious law will have a vast influence on Iraqi society and politics, and women`s rights will be rolled back. The ayatollahs in Iraq will have as big a megaphone as the Catholic bishops did in 1950s Ireland.

On the other hand, Sistani is not a dictator or a Khomeinist. He is much more analogous to Jerry Falwell in the US-- a major religious voice who wants to move the society in a certain direction through weakening the separation of religion and state, without himself seeking political office.

I don`t actually think there is anything "immoderate" about Sistani`s vision in a contemporary Middle Eastern context. It is not what the Bush administration wants, or what most educated Iraqi women want, or the Kurds (and probably most Sunni Arabs for that matter) want. Attempting to implement the second part of it (ayatollah influence on legislation and social issues) will cause trouble with the other communities, potentially. But Sistani has all along been a Najaf pragmatist. He has constantly spoken of the need to assuage the feelings of the Sunni Arabs and Kurds. He will try to accomplish as much of his vision as seems practicable, and no more. His tools are not militias, guns, and bombs, but persistent persuasion and discourse. Occasionally he may bring peaceful crowds into the streets to demonstrate for some law or policy. It is in that discursive practice that his "moderation" lies.

My estimation of Sistani`s potential influence is that it is generally positive given the situation of contemporary Iraq. It is important for traditionalist and even activist Shiites to hear praises of parliamentary governance and communal harmony. His potential impact on social legislation is reactionary, of course. But even he admits that the religious Shiites are likely to form less than 50% of parliamentarians, and that it is a little unlikely that he can get everything he wants any time soon. And, he is willing to be patient about his goals, as long as they are met minimally.

The one point on which Sistani`s stance raises some alarms in my mind is that he seems completely unsympathetic to Kurdish demands for safeguards as a minority, and wants to remove their veto on the new constitution to be hammered out next year this time. The potential for Kurdish-Shiite violence is substantial in the coming years.

Al-Hayat quoted Sistani`s letter to Kofi Annan about the just-passed UN resolution on Iraq as follows: "It has reached us that some are attempting to insert a mention of what they call `The Law for the Administration of the Iraqi State in the Transitional Period` [i.e. the interim constitution] into the new UN Security Council resolution on Iraq-- with the goal of lending it international legitimacy. This "Law", which was legislated by an unelected council in the shadow of Occupation, and with direct influence from it, binds the national parliament, which it has been decided will be elected at the beginning of the new Christian year for the purpose of passing a permanent constitution for Iraq. This matter contravenes the laws, and most children of the Iraqi people reject it. For this reason, any attempt to bestow legitimacy on it through mentioning it in the UN resolution would be considered an action contrary to the will of the Iraqi people and a harbinger of grave consequences."

This is the exact opposite of what the Kurdish leaders wrote to Bush.

posted by Juan @ 6/9/2004 07:37:11 AM

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SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/176910_terrored.html

Torture idea is a terrorist victory

Wednesday, June 9, 2004

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD

New memos show the terrorists have done much greater damage to America than suspected. Top U.S. officials came to believe that, in fighting al-Qaida, they were not bound by the Geneva Conventions and federal anti-torture law.

The high-level articulation of such views represents a clearcut victory for terrorists in undermining America`s conceptions of morality, international law and its own role as a beacon for human rights.

The harsh kind of treatment of prisoners seen in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay received expansive justification in a March 2003 memo prepared for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The memo first revealed by The Wall Street Journal says the president is constitutionally able to order any interrogation methods.

A State Department attorney argued against the views of the memo, which dealt with Guantanamo. Secretary of State Colin Powell knows that our treatment of prisoners can influence how U.S. troops are treated.

Pentagon officials point out that the March memorandum was supplanted by a final order in April from Rumsfeld. But the trend of thinking behind the final orders seems to indicate a defense secretary looking to wipe away traditional strictures, not uphold them.

If President Bush is serious about the values he has espoused, he will finally fire Rumsfeld and many of those around him. The president also ought to look closely for any role by Vice President Dick Cheney, whose counsel was involved in studying the issues.

Whether or not the president was part of discussions that led directly or indirectly to the harsh treatment of prisoners, he must clearly restate our commitment to humane conduct in war. And he should reconsider policies opposing the International Criminal Court`s jurisdiction over U.S. troops. The emerging insights into administration policy suggest the reason for opposition to the court wasn`t how it could affect an isolated soldier, but how international law might limit official conduct.

© 1998-2004 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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Stroke My Giant Hairy Armpit / Massive, furry sweat glands, and the hot babes who want to have sex with them. Dry pits win!
For some reason, this one annoys me the most. It`s gross and obnoxious on 100 different levels. Maybe it`s the inclusion of the horse. Maybe it`s the sunrise/sunset. Maybe it`s that the chick is holding the reins because the giant hariy armpit HAS NO ARMS. Maybe it`s because every time I see this ad campaign I want to throw things. At advertisers
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Warum überhaupt eine Achselhöhle? Mehr `Achselhöhlen` auf der Seite.

Stroke My Giant Hairy Armpit
Massive, furry sweat glands, and the hot babes who want to have sex with them. Dry pits win!
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, June 9, 2004

You know what chicks really dig? Armpits.

Not normal armpits, silly. Giant, wooly armpits the size of miniature ponies that have weird stubby legs with three (?) bubbly round Play-Doh toes apiece, huge walking armpits with no head and no arms and no genitalia and no discernable reason for existing other than to spread their creepy and disturbing image far and wide in the weirdest and least appealing ad campaign since those cute constipated animated bears hawked Cottonelle toilet paper on TV.

Have you seen these magazine ads? Have you already been assaulted? Here it is: Any one of a number of heavily airbrushed, pseudo-sultry, pneumatic chicks is posed in any number of pseudo-romantic settings: Bareback on a horse on the beach. Supine and beckoning by a roaring fireplace. Splayed across a moonlit Venetian gondola. You know, just like real life.

And by the way I do mean chicks, you know, in the most sexist and degrading way possible, in keeping with the ad`s attitude. Not women. Not ladies. Certainly not anything remotely divinely juicy and intelligent and potent and deeply feminine. Chicks. Dumb, giggly, interchangeable, "Man Show"-grade chicks who are all about Botox and tits and cheeseball romance and enough mascara to gag a Hilton sister. This is what men really want, after all. Unless they don`t. But that`s another column.

Our chick in the ad, she has company. Intimate, romantic company that we assume is a hunky virile male, despite zero detail indicating this. Because her companion is, yes, a giant hairy headless armpit. With feet.

And our chick, she really wants this armpit, is hot for this armpit, is caressing it and tickling it and wrapping her silky smooth arms and legs around it, stroking it, craving it, clearly about to let out a mad yelp at any moment and tear off her skimpy outfit and throw the giant hairy armpit to the floor and mount it and scream out sweet Jesus`s name.

The ad slogan is "Dry Pits Win." The message is: Your chick is not really dating you, dumbass. She is dating your giant hairy armpit. This is all she really cares about.

Screw emotional connection. To hell with chivalry and cooking her breakfast and remembering to bring the condoms. You really want to score with the babes? It`s all about the sweat glands, dude. Huge, dry ones. With feet.

The ads are for a deodorant called "Axe," which is some sort of mass-produced cheap-ass Wal-Mart gag-reflex men`s body spray that doubtlessly smells like a rank synthetic admixture of pine cones and road tar and Raid Ant & Roach Death, the scent of which will likely remind you of something your drunk mulleted cousin might`ve worn to the Spokane Auto Show back in 1984. Mmm, carcinogens.

These ads are currently molesting the pages of every men`s mag from GQ to Esquire to Rolling Stone. There is, naturally, a website. With music. And games. And a Flash area where you can match up your favorite Axe scent with a chick`s "personality." You will soon be able to help "Pitman" (that`s his -- its -- name) manage his/its "lady friends." How sweet.

Many thousand of dollars have been pumped into this website. Many people have dedicated endless hours of their precious lives working on it. Weep on, arbiters of taste and humanity.

Of course, this sort of gross inverse sexist marketing is nothing new. Nearly every campaign for men`s anything contains endlessly adorable sexist delusions and airbrushed cleavages and ridiculous scenarios, and every ad for the Gillette Mach 3 razor, for example, features roaring fighter jets and a skanky-hot girlfriend who slithers over to her hunky bulbous dork of a man just after he finishes shaving, and she strokes his smooth rugged manly GQ skin and coos and melts and shoots him a naughty glance that says she would like to be immediately stripped naked and bent over the bathroom sink and made mad grunting 1.7-minute love to before the second-half kickoff. You know, just like real life.

But Axe is different. The giant armpit -- er, Pitman -- is intentionally weird and openly disgusting and is obviously meant to reek its way into your memory like a nasty mental stain. This has always been the most obnoxious of marketing ideologies, that it doesn`t matter how flagrantly you baffle and annoy and repel the consumer, so long as they remember the product next time they`re browsing the discount bin at Walgreens for something to spray on their floor mats.

Then again, maybe there is no weird intent behind it. Maybe the Axe people are playing it straight, and actually think this campaign is clever and cool and gets right to the point and that no one will notice that these clearly lobotomized women are offering up their sex to a giant hairy armpit as though it was a fat Republican senator and they were a cheap hooker.

It`s just the strangest thing. And it falls right in line with that other, equally baffling marketing gimmick of animating the inanimate, of anthropomorphizing the body parts and the crappy everyday items around us and giving everything a mouth and pair of eyes and a funny accent and six bubbly little toes.

All in an effort to endear that product to you, to make you say, gosh, this isn`t just a toilet, it`s a living talking creature that makes gross faces due to my lack of a post-bowel-movement air freshener! This is not a sandwich, it`s a yammering jerk with a New York accent who demands Miracle Whip! This is not a merely a giant hairy headless armpit, it`s freakin` Fabio! I need me some of that rank Axe stuff so I can score the babes like that macho armpit dude! High five!

We have become used to it. We have become inured. We don`t even blink an eye as we say, well sure, it`s an enormous sweat gland, being groped by a skanky Maxim model. Shrug.

We say sure, here, just take a significant hunk of my brain, scrape it over the invidious Madison Avenue cheese grater, pulverize it and liquefy it and inject it with a thousand visual toxins and a million corporate logos and countless inane slogans and then reconstitute it and shove it back into my head.

And I`ll just sit here and pretend like nothing happened, like everything`s fine and that this endless barrage of surreal silly disgusting marketing swill isn`t slowly leeching all the truth and beauty out of the sacred vaults of time and love and meaning. This is what we say. Well, some of us.

And maybe you see campaigns like Pitman for the millionth time and you groan and wince and finally say to yourself, Jesus with a big fat can of happy Scrubbing Bubbles, when will it end? When will the global recoil kick in? When will the advertisers run out of nauseating ideas and when will they all be strung up by their small intestines and beaten with rolled up magazines until they cry?

And yet, before you even ask, you already know the answer. It will never end. The giant hairy headless armpits and their ilk are here to stay. And you know there is not a damn thing you can do about it. Enjoy your reconfigured brain. Dry pits win. Mwwaaa hahahahaha. Shrug.
# Thoughts for the author? E-mail him.
# Mark`s column archives are here

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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Stroke My Giant Hairy Armpit / Massive, furry sweat glands, and the hot babes who want to have sex with them. Dry pits win!
Oh right, like no one notices. Like no one at a goddamn restaurant is gonna glance over and say, look honey, that dumbass woman is fondling a giant headless hairy armpit with her toes. Could you hand me my medication, honey? I need to severly numb the savage karmic pain of this idiotic world like, now.
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Wednesday, June 09, 2004
War News for June 9, 2004

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring ‘em on: Eleven Iraqis killed, two wounded in firefight near Fallujah.

Bring ‘em on: Oil pipeline sabotaged near Beiji.

Bring ‘em on: Oil pipeline ablaze near Kirkuk.

Bring ‘em on: US convoy attacked in Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Polish Defense Ministry says Polish, Slovakian and Latvian soldiers were killed by mortar attack.

Bring ‘em on: Power plant sabotaged near Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Two insurgents killed while planting roadside bomb near Baquba.

Bring ‘em on: Insurgents mortar Iraqi security forces near Fallujah.

Bring ‘em on: Roadside bomb attack against “Westerners” in Ramadi.

US Marines feel the strain of Bush’s War. “Because two Marine expeditionary units, including one from Camp Pendleton, are deploying to Iraq now instead of this fall, Marine officials might have trouble supporting another force rotation next spring if that is required, Lt. Gen. Robert Magnus said.”

Bush-style liberation. “Most days, the Iraqi schoolgirls say, they can hear gunfire ring out in the distance, and sometimes closer to home. When a bomb detonated in front of the Red Cross headquarters in October, the explosion was so close to Mais Sami`s Tigris Middle School that the ninth-grader thought the school grounds were hit.”

Incompetence. “Several sites in Iraq that once contained equipment that could have been used for biological or chemical weapons have been emptied and dismantled since May last year, according to the report to the UN Security Council. It made clear that the US-led occupation force had not protected sites or items that inspectors tagged before the war because of their potential use in weapons of mass destruction.”

Kurds threaten to secede from Iraq.

Al-Sadr gains popularity among Iraqis. “If elections were held today, polls and interviews on the street suggest, the virulently anti-American cleric would command a big percentage of the vote. In a recent poll of 1,640 Iraqis across the country done by the Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies, the percentage of those who either somewhat or strongly supported Sadr was higher than the numbers for the new prime minister and a long list of other high-ranking Iraqi government officials.”

Ten US soldiers were wounded in yesterday’s car bombing in Baquba.

Deployed US airmen receive tour extentions.

Abu Ghraib. “The head of the interrogation center at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq told an Army investigator in February that he understood some of the information being collected from prisoners there had been requested by ‘White House staff,’ according to an account of his statement obtained by The Washington Post.”

Commentary

Editorial: “Each new revelation makes it more clear that the inhumanity at Abu Ghraib grew out of a morally dubious culture of legal expediency and a disregard for normal behavior fostered at the top of this administration. It is part of the price the nation must pay for President Bush`s decision to take the extraordinary mandate to fight terrorism that he was granted by a grieving nation after 9/11 and apply it without justification to Iraq.”

Editorial: “There is no justification, legal or moral, for the judgments made by Mr. Bush`s political appointees at the Justice and Defense departments. Theirs is the logic of criminal regimes, of dictatorships around the world that sanction torture on grounds of ‘national security.’ For decades the U.S. government has waged diplomatic campaigns against such outlaw governments -- from the military juntas in Argentina and Chile to the current autocracies in Islamic countries such as Algeria and Uzbekistan -- that claim torture is justified when used to combat terrorism. The news that serving U.S. officials have officially endorsed principles once advanced by Augusto Pinochet brings shame on American democracy -- even if it is true, as the administration maintains, that its theories have not been put into practice. Even on paper, the administration`s reasoning will provide a ready excuse for dictators, especially those allied with the Bush administration, to go on torturing and killing detainees.”

Opinion: “The entire flock of war hawks, Rumsfeld and Cheney and their aides, remains in place. They are culpable in ways far more serious than The New York Times or other news organizations that were sucked into the misinformation game. It`s time for the president to either accept his share of the blame or sack those who misled the American people.”

Opinion: “Last January, Bush praised veterans during a visit to Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The same day, 164,000 veterans were told the White House was ‘immediately cutting off their access to the VA health care system.’”

Casualty Reports

Local story: New Jersey Guardsman wounded in Iraq.

Local story: New York soldier wounded in Iraq.

Local story: California security contractor dies in Iraq.


86-43-04. Pass it on.



# posted by yankeedoodle : 2:31 AM
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Oscar Awarded Posthumously to Reagan
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une 9, 2004
Rebels Launch an Array of Attacks Across Iraq
By EDWARD WONG

BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 9 — Insurgents staged attacks on American forces and their allies on several fronts today, firing mortars at Iraqi militiamen west of here, setting two critical oil pipelines in the north ablaze and ambushing a military convoy in the capital.

In the holy city of Najaf, in the south, fighters loyal to the rebel Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr moved to seize a police station tonight despite a declared cease-fire, the second such attack in two days.

Today, the cleric`s militia, the Mahdi Army, still controlled the holiest Shiite site in Iraq, the golden-domed Shrine of Ali. An aide to Mr. Sadr asserted that officials linked to the militia would have the right to take part in future elections despite a recent order from the American administration saying otherwise.

The various assaults underscored the fact that the United States was still engaged in a wide-ranging war, one that American officials say will likely get worse as the White House tries to return some measure of sovereignty to Iraqis on June 30.

The United Nations Security Council approved a resolution on Tuesday that recognizes the sovereign status of Iraq after June 30. Whether the approval will dampen the insurgents` resolve is one of the biggest questions confronting Iraqis and Americans. With the spate of attacks on Wednesday, the insurgents gave the impression that for the moment they were determined to carry on the fight.

The attacks on the pipelines came after an assault on fuel and transmission lines that forced the shutdown last weekend of an enormous power plant south of Baghdad. The continuing sabotage of infrastructure shows that fighters are cannily picking targets that deliver basic goods and whose destruction can quickly wreck Iraqi confidence in the occupation and the new government.

An occupation spokesman said that one of the pipeline explosions resulted in a temporary drop in power output from an electricity plant in the northern town of Bayji.

An attack on Iraqi forces allied with the Americans took place in the area of the volatile town of Falluja, about 30 miles west of Baghdad. Insurgents lobbed mortars at a camp housing members of the Falluja Brigade, which was created by the Marines in late April to try to pacify the virulently anti-American city. The attack wounded a brigade member, a spokesman for the occupation forces, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, said.

The 2,000-strong brigade is itself composed partly of guerrilla fighters who were fighting the Marines and is led by Gen. Muhammad Latif, a former Baath Party member who fell out of favor with Saddam Hussein. The attack on the brigade highlighted the complex fractures among various insurgent groups in the Falluja area, which has essentially become a safe haven for anti-American forces since the Marines relinquished control. Foreign civilians still get shot at and taken hostage in the area, while marines are killed regularly by roadside bombs.

The Marines appeared to be conducting an operation at Falluja today. They used concrete barriers to block off two roads leading to the city from Baghdad. Tanks, Humvees and other armored vehicles were seen parked or driving around pastures on the side of the main highway just outside Falluja.

A wooden sign by the barrier on the highway said in Arabic: "No entry into the city."

In Najaf, 120 miles south of Baghdad, many members of the Mahdi Army appeared to have hidden their weapons in order to show compliance with a cease-fire announced on June 4 by the governor of the region. Iraqi police officers were patrolling parts of Najaf and the adjoining city of Kufa, where Mr. Sadr`s support is strongest. But militiamen still maintained a perimeter around the Shrine of Ali, dedicated to the martyred son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad.

Ahmad Shaibani, an aide to Mr. Sadr, said in an interview that it was not the right of the occupation forces or the Iraqi police to decide who would control the shrines. "Holy shrines were excluded from the agreement," he said.

He added that in regard to the shrine issue, Mr. Sadr will answer only to the marjaiyah, the most senior ayatollahs in Iraq.

Mr. Shaibani also said that L. Paul Bremer III, the American administrator for Iraq, had no power to bar any Iraqi from participating in upcoming general elections. Earlier this week, Mr. Bremer signed an order saying members or leaders of illegal militias would not be able to run for office in the near future. That would presumably bar Mr. Sadr from campaigning.

Mr. Bremer "has no right to determine the nature of the elections and whether militias have the right to participate or not, especially since his authority will end as per the U.N. Security Council resolution," Mr. Shaibani said.

Members of the Mahdi Army attacked the Ghari police station in Najaf late Monday, but failed to seize it, said Adnan Zurfi, the American-installed governor. He added that he had ordered more police forces to the area and had given permission to fire on any attackers. Tonight, insurgents attacked a different police station, but officers were reported to be repelling them.

The inability of the American military to disband insurgents so far in both Falluja and the Najaf area highlights the difficulties the occupation has had in dealing with the country`s various militias. Many fighters in Najaf appeared to have put away their weapons for now, but Mr. Sadr still remains in power and could mobilize his army at any time.

"The true solution should be to disarm the militias completely and not just settle for hiding them," said Abu Muhammad al-Jazaeri, 40, a schoolteacher living in Najaf. "The Iraqi police is incompetent. We can see that because they have not been able to control the shrine."

Sabah Mahdi, a manager in a hotel in the city, said that "the whole process is disappointing" because "Mahdi Army fighters are still here, and their weapons are still here despite the latest agreement."

In northern Iraq, insurgents staged an attack in the early morning on a pipeline connecting the oil fields of Kirkuk to the large refinery and power plant in the town of Bayji, a spokesman for the Oil Ministry, Asam Jihad, said. Insurgents also set ablaze an export pipeline leading from Kirkuk to a Turkish port city. The fire was still raging on this afternoon, and video footage showed thick clouds of black smoke filling the sky.

In northeastern Baghdad, gunmen raked an American military convoy, setting one truck ablaze, according to Agence France-Presse. There was no immediate report of casualties.

The American military said today that gunmen killed two bodyguards of a local politician in Baghdad on Tuesday and seriously wounded the politician.

A deputy defense minister in Poland said that six Eastern European soldiers serving under the Polish command south of Baghdad were killed on Tuesday by at least one enemy mortar round hitting a munitions dump. The soldiers were involved in an operation to defuse mines.

In Geneva, a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross said the organization had resumed visits to Abu Ghraib prison, Reuters reported. The spokeswoman, Antonella Notari, said the initial return took place between May 30 and June 3 and that the group had been given full access. Well before the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib became public, the American military had tried to place severe restrictions on visits by the Red Cross.

The group issued a report last year criticizing the military for its treatment of prisoners in Abu Ghraib and said some procedures were "tantamount to torture."

Jim Glanz contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times contributed reporting from Falluja and Najaf.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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June 9, 2004
Defender of the Lash & the Cattle Prod
Alan Dershowitz, Professor of Torture

By MIKE WHITNEY

"THE GENEVA Conventions are so outdated and are written so broadly that they have become a sword used by terrorists to kill civilians, rather than a shield to protect civilians from terrorists. These international laws have become part of the problem, rather than part of the solution."

This is the opening passage of Alan Dershowitz`s attack on the Geneva Conventions. It sets the tone for a polemic that savages our continued commitment to the humane treatment of prisoners and endorses "varying forms of rough interrogation".

The essay, "The Rules of War Enable Terror", employs the Harvard professor`s rhetorical skills to undermine the legal barriers that restrict the use of torture. It is a assault on the fundamental principles of human decency.

This is no exaggeration; Dershowitz is quite forceful in articulating his belief that treating people with dignity and humanity is anathema to the goals of the war on terror.

"The time has come to revisit the laws of war and to make them relevant to new realities," Dershowitz insists.

But what changes in the law does Dershowitz have in mind?

"The treaties against all forms of torture must begin to recognize differences in degree among varying forms of rough interrogation, ranging from trickery and humiliation, on the one hand, to lethal torture on the other. They must also recognize that any country faced with a ticking-time-bomb terrorist would resort to some forms of interrogation that are today prohibited by the treaty."

Ah, yes, the "ticking-time-bomb" theory once again; that "all purpose" pretext for excusing any imaginable form of cruelty. Dershowitz invokes the most extreme scenario and uses it as the rationale for overturning the laws that protect the individual.

The "ticking-time-bomb" theory has always served as a blanket justification for torture. It is the one example that convinces ordinary people that security should take precedence over human rights. When it is pointed out, however, that the victims of torture are no more than "suspects", (without positive proof of their culpability) attitudes quickly change.

Dershowitz also fails to mention that in countries where torture is permitted, its use quickly spreads to minor criminals who pose no real threat to society at large.

He knows as well as anyone, that once society entrusts the state with the power to use "physically coercive" measures, those measures are likely to be implemented well beyond their original mandate. It is a surefire prescription for widespread physical abuse against people who have no legal recourse.

We should consider the deleterious affects of abandoning our core principles for short term gain. Torture has an inherently corrupting influence on society. It deprives man of his humanity and elevates the state over the individual. The victims are stripped of their rights and left at the mercy of the state.

In Dershowitz`s world, these constitutional protections are not only provisional, but subordinate to national security; the loftiest goal of all. It is a breathtaking departure from our professed commitment to human rights, and particularly surprising coming from an "officer of the court."

But, it is not merely torture that Dershowitz advocates, but murder; "premeditated", state sponsored murder.

"Democracies must be legally empowered to attack terrorists who hide among civilians, so long as proportional force is employed. Civilians who are killed while being used as human shields by terrorists must be deemed the victims of the terrorists who have chosen to hide among them, rather than those of the democracies who may have fired the fatal shot."

There are enormous gaps in Dershowitz`s reasoning, the most prominent of which is his careless manner of excusing the killing of innocent civilians to achieve the objectives of the state. What Dershowitz blithely refers to as "proportional force" is in reality the "scattershot" justice practiced by Israel in their targeted assassination campaign. This is a policy that is so detestable, so utterly racist (it is impossible to imagine that Israel would ever fire missals into populated areas in Tel Aviv to dispatch an "alleged" terrorist; only in the enclaves of the "untermenschen") that it eschews any conceivable moral justification.

It is murder, plain and simple.

It`s absurd for Dershowitz to suggest that "democracies must be legally empowered" to carry out these crimes. Assassination is NEVER the instrument of democracy, but tyranny. There is no consensus on assassination; no public mandate; it is the usurping of unauthorized power and a violation of the government`s "sworn" commitment to operate within the law.

Again, Dershowitz demonstrates his frail grasp of the primary purpose of government. Governments are established as the guarantors of life and liberty; it is not within their authority to perpetrate illegal attacks on civilians, let alone to kill them.

The "extra judicial" killing of civilians is the highest crime government can commit. It is the complete breakdown of the legal firewall that protects the individual from the vagaries of state power.

It represents a total disregard for mans most fundamental right; the right to life. When the state claims the power to kill its own citizens or foreign nationals, the rule of law ceases to be.

In this respect, Dershowitz`s defense of "targeted assassination" can be taken as an attack on the law itself. It implies that senior members of government can ignore "whatever" legal restraints they choose as long as their activities can be construed as fighting terrorism. The law can be conveniently dismissed when it does not coincide with the objectives of the people in charge.

Ironically, Dershowitz`s belief, that it is acceptable to kill civilians in the pursuit of terrorists, is a validation of terrorism.

What difference does the motive make?

It is the willingness to sacrifice innocent people for one`s own objectives that is, by definition, terrorism

Dershowitz essay ominously takes aim at those, "In the middle, who applaud the terrorism, encourage it, but do not actively facilitate it. At the guilty end are those who help finance it, who make martyrs of the suicide bombers, who help the terrorists hide among them, and who fail to report imminent attacks of which they are aware. The law should recognize this continuum in dealing with those who are complicit, to some degree, in terrorism."

Those who "applaud terrorism, but do not actively facilitate it"?

Those who are "complicit to some degree"? Does Dershowitz mean those who understand the roots of terror?

Does he mean those who speak of the "legitimate grievances" of oppressed people, some of whom fill the ranks of terrorist groups?

Does he mean those who oppose the Bush war on terror or who write for leftist web sites?

Dershowitz`s world view appears to merge quite nicely with that of John Ashcroft; America`s menace to civil liberties. Both of them seem to prefer flexible definitions of "terrorism" so that they can include anyone who might be "perceived" as a security risk. They favor a net that is large enough to entrap any possible threat, real or imagined.

Isn`t this the precedent that led to the illegal detention of 1,100 Muslims following 9-11? (None of whom were ever connected to any terrorist group?)

Wasn`t this the same logic that put thousands of innocent Iraqis behind bars in Abu Ghraib even though (according to the Red Cross) 70% to 90% of them were simply rounded up in random sweeps?

Dershowitz comments are vague but troubling. They suggest that our due process rights are too generous and should be reworked to accommodate security concerns. In his mind, the standard has shifted from "innocent until proven guilty" to "complicit to some degree". (a disturbing trend that we see reflected in the behavior of the Justice Dept)

Dershowitz`s closing thoughts are revealing;

"The old black-and-white distinctions must be replaced by new categories, rules and approaches that strike the proper balance between preserving human rights and preventing human wrongs. For the law to work, it must be realistic and it must adapt to changing needs."

What Dershowitz is suggesting is that we toss out the cumbersome "constitutional" system ("adapt to changing needs") and morph into Fortress America, the United States of Paranoia; a country that is no longer guided by institutions and principles, but by fear and repression.

Maybe there was a time when the issues of torture and assassination could be lightheartedly debated in the insulated confines of a college classroom, but that time has passed. We are reminded almost daily, with photos and stories from Abu Ghraib, of the horrors that originate from the flawed reasoning of men like Dershowitz.

When we pick up the newspaper and see that another missal attack ("targeted assassination") has taken place in Gaza or Jenin, we are seeing the application of Dershowitz`s fetid logic.

How many innocent bystanders were killed this time in the name of fighting terrorism?

Similarly, when we read of the many abuses and humiliations at Abu Ghraib, we are observing the outcome of this flawed rationale.

In Dershowitz perspective, violations of human dignity are acceptable as long as the ultimate purpose is worthwhile. "The end justifies the means."

But this reasoning does not account for our long held belief that man is an end in himself, and that his intrinsic value provides him with certain "inalienable" rights.

Dershowitz`s views are a dramatic departure from these basic convictions.

Dershowitz`s apology for torture is not a superficial disagreement on the fine points of the US judicial system; it is a full blown assault on the foundational principles of American society.

Democracy and torture are entirely incompatible; we only need a glimpse of the photos from Abu Ghraib to fully grasp that.

There is a yawning chasm between "free societies" and the "national security state". It is the latter that emerges according to Dershowitz`s recommendations.

Torture is a dramatic expansion of state power and sets us firmly on the path of unchecked government authority. It abandons much of what is admirable about American justice and our commitment to the rights of man.

It is a detour we don`t need to take.

Mike Whitney can be reached at: [e-mail]

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June 5 / 6, 2004
A First Glimpse at Bush`s Tortureshow
John Walker Lindh, Revisited

By DAVE LINDORFF

Now that we know the truth behind how U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan have been treating captured fighters (and captured innocent bystanders), it`s time to revisit the case of John Walker Lindh, the so-called "American Taliban fighter" who is now serving 20 years in federal prison. For had Lindh pursued his case in court, instead of settling and getting slapped with a gag order, he might have exposed the whole prisoner abuse scandal two years ago, and spared the U.S.-and a whole lot of abused or slain POWs-the Abu-Ghraib fiasco.

Lindh, it may be recalled, was among a group of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters captured and later, for the most part, slaughtered in northern Afghanistan by American soldiers and their Northern Alliance allies.

Initially threatened by U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft with being tried as a traitor, Lindh was eventually charged with terrorism, consorting with Al Qaeda, and attempting to kill Americans. But he never went to trial. Instead, he pleaded guilty to just two relatively innocuous charges. But for those two charges-the first of which (carrying a grenade), probably innumerable Americans are guilty of, and the second of which (providing services to an enemy of the U.S.), could more properly be brought against a number of major U.S. corporations--Lindh had the book thrown at him by a compliant federal judge in Virginia. The judge, at the government`s request, also hit him with a gag order barring him from talking about his experience. As part of his plea bargain agreement, Lindh was even forced to sign a statement saying: "The defendant agrees that this agreement puts to rest his claims of mistreatment by the United states military, and all claims of mistreatment are withdrawn. The defendant acknowledges that he was not intentionally mistreated by the U.S. military."

This outlandish and over-the-top effort to legally muzzle Lindh appears in a harsh new light now that we know the criminal nature of U.S. prisoner-of-war policies.

In the run-up to his trial, it was clear from documents submitted by the defense that Lindh had been viciously treated in captivity. Shot in the leg prior to his capture, and already starving and badly dehydrated, Lindh unconscionably was left with his wound untreated and festering for days despite doctors being readily available. Denied access to a lawyer, and threatened repeatedly with death, he was duct-taped to a stretcher and left for long periods of time in an enclosed, unheated and unlit metal shipping container, removed only during interrogations, at which time he was still left taped to his stretcher. (Hundreds of his Taliban and Al Qaeda comrades actually were deliberately allowed to die in those same containers in one of the more monstrous war crimes perpetrated during this conflict.)

In truth, the government`s case against Lindh was always spurious at best. A 20-year-old, white, middle-class convert to Islam from Marin County, California, Lindh had only gone to Afghanistan in August 2001, scarcely a month before the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. At the time of his arrival there, the Taliban government, far from being an enemy of America, was still receiving funding from the U.S. government. Lindh, to the extent that he was ever a fighter with the Taliban (he hadn`t had time for a decent "boot camp"training in weapons use), was in fact fighting the Northern Alliance, not America, at the time of the U.S. invasion. His attorneys maintain that he never was an enemy of his own country, and in fact had been trapped with the Taliban in Afghanistan by the surprise U.S. invasion.

What appears to have led Ashcroft and the U.S. government to drop its serious charges against Lindh, and to agree to a settlement on minor charges, was his defense attorneys` plans to go after testimony about his treatment from other Afghani captives being held at Guantanamo who had witnessed it.

Had those witnesses been permitted to testify in his case--as the judge had already said he would probably agree to, given Lindh`s constitutional right to mount a vigorous defense--there would have been plenty of embarrassing evidence presented about torture and abuse at the hands of U.S. troops.

This sorry legal history raises a couple of very troubling questions.

First of all, the haste with which the government deep-sixed this case, after first trumpeting it as a highlight in the "war on terror," and the lengths to which the attorney general went to silence Lindh, suggest that the Bush administration well knew what was coming and was determined to keep its criminal treatment of POWs in Afghanistan a secret. Second, the closing off of evidence of torture, to which Lindh himself could have testified, along with any witnesses he might have called-witnesses who might well have included some of his torturers and their superior officers-allowed an official campaign of torture and abuse of POWs to continue and to expand into Iraq, ultimately leading to the Abu Ghraib scandal and the discrediting of the entire U.S. war effort. Last, but certainly not least, Lindh himself, terrified at being railroaded to a potential death sentence or a sentence to life in prison without parole, and already a victim of torture and abuse at the hands of his federal captors, remains almost certainly wrongfully imprisoned-just one more victim of America`s criminal violation of the Geneva Conventions and our own constitutional right to a fair trial.

In a fair world, Judge T.S. Ellis, who accommodated the Justice Department by slapping Lindh with a brutally harsh sentence, and by gratuitously silencing him and forcing him to forswear any future claim of torture, would reopen this case in view of what is now known about how prisoners like Lindh were being treated by U.S. forces.

This is not, however, a fair world-or a fair legal system--and as more and more judges like Ellis are appointed to the federal bench, it is becoming even less fair as time goes by.

Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing Time: an Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. His new book of Counterpunch columns titled "This Can`t be Happening!" to be published this fall by Common Courage Press.

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Jun. 9, 2004. 03:43 PM
Global military spending hits $956B in 2003

BY MATT MOORE
ASSOCIATED PRESS

STOCKHOLM, Sweden — World military spending surged during 2003, reaching $956 billion (U.S.), nearly half of it by the United States as it paid for missions in Iraq, Afghanistan and the war on terror, a prominent European think tank said today.

The money has been effective in waging war, but threats of terror and weapons of mass destruction still exist, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.http://www.sipri.org/
Military spending rose by 11 per cent, which the group called a “remarkable increase.” The amount was up 18 per cent from 2001.

The $956 billion spent on defence costs worldwide corresponded to 2.7 per cent of the world’s gross domestic product, according to the annual report.

“It’s very close to the Cold War peak in 1987,” said SIPRI researcher Elisabeth Skoens, who co-authored the report.

SIPRI also warned of fears that biotechnology research, particularly concerning human genes, could lead to the development of a new class of biological weapons.

“The free access to genetic sequence data for the human genome and a large number of other genomes, including for pathogenic micro-organisms, is a great scientific resource, but it could pose a significant threat if misused,” the report said.

Researcher Richard Guthrie said developments in mapping the human genome, which could lead to improved medicines and vaccines for heart and neurological problems, also could be used by terrorists.

“It is something to be concerned about,” he told The Associated Press, but added that no plausible threats have been made.

The United States led the world in defence spending, accounting for 47 per cent of the total, followed by Japan with five per cent and Britain, France and China, with four per cent each.

The figures were in line with estimates by Jane’s Information Group, a spokesman from the company’s London office told the AP.

The 2003 rise in defence spending coincided with a decrease in the number of conflicts worldwide, which fell to 19, the second-lowest since the think tank began issuing the reports 35 years ago.

SIPRI also noted that 14 separate peace missions began last year, the most since the end of the Cold War.

The report had mixed reviews about efforts to contain weapons of mass destruction.

It warned that attempts to halt the proliferation of nuclear weapons were hampered last year when North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and cited Iran’s apparent possession of nuclear material and information.

Guthrie said those developments were offset by Libya’s acknowledgment that it was developing its own nuclear program and its decision to abandon the program voluntarily.

“Perhaps luckily, evidence of past and present WMD problems in Iran, Libya and North Korea was strong enough to maintain the momentum of international co-operation against the proliferation menace, and many states were motivated to work for less violent solutions,” said Alyson Bailes, the think tank’s director.

Guthrie said that while the invasion may have served as warning to other states with weapons of mass destruction, it could have the reverse effect in that some states may see an increase in arsenals as the only way to prevent a forced regime change.

As for North Korea, Shannon Kile, who follows nuclear issues for the think tank, said the communist country isn’t likely to follow Libya’s lead.

“Quite frankly, this cabal of elderly generals that sit around (Kim Jong Il), sometime ago made the same cost benefit calculation, but came up with the conclusion that the benefits of acquiring nuclear weapons outweigh not having them,” said Kile, who visited North Korea in 2002.

He added that the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in a bid to find WMDs affected North Korea. North Korea, Kile said, “sees nuclear weapons as being very much a security guarantee.”

Bailes said Iraq was the biggest factor of 2003.

“It’s been an illustration of how quickly history moves these days. Many of the lessons that people initially drew from that invasion, many of the ways they thought it would change the world, look quite different from the vantage point now,” she said.

The report said the March 2003 invasion highlighted the U.S. military’s lethal effectiveness, but said the postwar occupation, which has seen more than 800 U.S. soldiers killed in attacks by insurgents, was evident that control in Iraq remained haphazard at best.

Andrew Cottey, whose report detailed the effect of the invasion and its aftermath, warned that instability in Iraq was likely to continue and could spread and bring civil war to neighbouring states.

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June 08, 2004
War on Terrors` Cost: $3550 Per Family of Four
By: IMTV Reader
Independent Media TV

The current costs of the Afghan and Iraq Wars have been reported at $191 Billion. Divide that by the current population in the United States 294,000,000 and that comes to $650 a person. About $2600 for a family of 4. The Bush Administration is going to ask for an additional $50-85 Billion to cover expense for one more fiscal year.

Let`s assume they ask for another $70 Billion. That would bring the total to $261,000,000,000. Divide that by the population (294,000,000) and you get...$887.75 per person, or $3551 for a family of four.

It is important to note that the money being spent on the war is being directly added to the record $7.2 Trillion (That is $7,200,000,000,000) National Debt as there are not enough revenues coming into the goverment to pay for the costs. Divide the $7.2 Trillion national debt, but the 294,000,000 residents of the United States and you have $24,490 per resident, or $97,960 for a family of four.

Just to be clear on the amount that Bush has added to the national debt during his presidency. Here are some further statistics. Bush was inaugurated on January 20th, 2001. At that time the National Debt was $5,706,174,969,873.86

The National Debt as of 6/7/2004 is $7,212,924,994,568.87

That means in just 3 short years Bush has increased the national debt $1,506,750,024,695.01 a 26.5% increase. To bring it home, Bush has added $5125 per person to the national debt, and for our happy little family of four? That is $20,500.

The national debt is ultimately the responsibility of the taxpayers. While defense contractors make billions and billions on war, the average person gets the bill.


Original Link: http://www.independent-media.tv/item.cfm?fmedia_id=7638&fcat…


© Copyright 2004 Independent Media TV

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Das ist die Quelle aus der einige furchtbaren Juristen ihre Begründungen her haben. Siehe auch #17461 `Defender of the Lash & the Cattle Prod`

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.geneva2…
Rules of war enable terror


By Alan M. Dershowitz

May 28, 2004

THE GENEVA Conventions are so outdated and are written so broadly that they have become a sword used by terrorists to kill civilians, rather than a shield to protect civilians from terrorists. These international laws have become part of the problem, rather than part of the solution.

Following World War II, in which millions of civilians were killed by armed forces, the international community strengthened the laws designed to distinguish between legitimate military targets and off-limit noncombatants. The line in those days was clear: The military wore uniforms, were part of a nation`s organized armed forces, and generally lived in military bases outside of population centers. Noncombatants, on the other hand, wore civilian clothing and lived mostly in areas distant from the battlefields.

The war by terrorists against democracies has changed all this. Terrorists who do not care about the laws of warfare target innocent noncombatants. Indeed, their goal is to maximize the number of deaths and injuries among the most vulnerable civilians, such as children, women and the elderly. They employ suicide bombers who cannot be deterred by the threat of death or imprisonment because they are brainwashed to believe that their reward awaits them in another world. They have no "return address."

The terrorist leaders - who do not wear military uniforms - deliberately hide among noncombatants. They have also used ambulances, women pretending to be sick or pregnant, and even children as carriers of lethal explosives.

By employing these tactics, terrorists put the democracies to difficult choices: Either allow those who plan and coordinate terrorist attacks to escape justice and continue their victimization of civilians, or attack them in their enclaves, thereby risking death or injury to the civilians they are using as human shields.

Whenever a civilian is accidentally killed or an ambulance is held up at a checkpoint, the terrorist leaders, and those who support them, have exploited the post-World War II laws of warfare to condemn the democracies for violating the letter of the law. Some human rights groups, international organizations and churches have joined this chorus of condemnation, equating the deliberate targeting of innocent civilians by terrorists with the unintended consequences of trying to combat terrorism - unintended by the democracies, but quite specifically intended, indeed provoked by, the terrorists. This only encourages more terrorism, since the terrorists receive a double benefit from their actions. First they benefit from killing "enemy" civilians. Second, they benefit from the condemnation heaped on their enemies. Human rights are thus being used to promote human wrongs.

The time has come to revisit the laws of war and to make them relevant to new realities. If their ultimate purpose was to serve as a shield to protect innocent civilians, they are failing miserably, since they are being used as a sword by terrorists who target such innocent civilians. Several changes should be considered:

# First, democracies must be legally empowered to attack terrorists who hide among civilians, so long as proportional force is employed. Civilians who are killed while being used as human shields by terrorists must be deemed the victims of the terrorists who have chosen to hide among them, rather than those of the democracies who may have fired the fatal shot.

# Second, a new category of prisoner should be recognized for captured terrorists and those who support them. They are not "prisoners of war," neither are they "ordinary criminals." They are suspected terrorists who operate outside the laws of war, and a new status should be designated for them - a status that affords them certain humanitarian rights, but does not treat them as traditional combatants.

# Third, the law must come to realize that the traditional sharp line between combatants and civilians has been replaced by a continuum of civilian-ness. At the innocent end are those who do not support terrorism in any way. In the middle are those who applaud the terrorism, encourage it, but do not actively facilitate it. At the guilty end are those who help finance it, who make martyrs of the suicide bombers, who help the terrorists hide among them, and who fail to report imminent attacks of which they are aware. The law should recognize this continuum in dealing with those who are complicit, to some degree, in terrorism.

# Fourth, the treaties against all forms of torture must begin to recognize differences in degree among varying forms of rough interrogation, ranging from trickery and humiliation, on the one hand, to lethal torture on the other. They must also recognize that any country faced with a ticking-time-bomb terrorist would resort to some forms of interrogation that are today prohibited by the treaty.

International law must recognize that democracies have been forced by the tactics of terrorists to make difficult decisions regarding life and death. The old black-and-white distinctions must be replaced by new categories, rules and approaches that strike the proper balance between preserving human rights and preventing human wrongs. For the law to work, it must be realistic and it must adapt to changing needs.

Alan M. Dershowitz is a professor of law at Harvard University and the author of America on Trial (Warner Books, 2004).

Copyright © 2004, The Baltimore Sun

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June 10, 2004
POLITICS
Kurds Win Round on Constitution
By DEXTER FILKINS

BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 9 — Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said Wednesday that his government would adhere to the interim constitution agreed to in March until elections are held next year, in an effort to defuse, at least temporarily, a looming crisis with the Kurdish leadership.

In a statement issued by his office late in the evening, Dr. Allawi`s spokesman, George Hada, declared the new government`s "full commitment" to the interim constitution until democratic elections are held later this year or in January.

The statement from Dr. Allawi`s office followed a threat this week by Kurdish leaders to pull back from the Iraqi state and possibly secede. The leaders were alarmed after officials in New York failed to include the interim constitution in the United Nations Security Council resolution, approved Tuesday, on the return of sovereignty to the Iraqis.

The Kurds are worried that without the protections in the interim constitution, they might lose the broad autonomy they have garnered since 1991 under American military protection. The interim constitution recognizes the autonomy of the Kurdish region and grants the Kurds extraordinary powers to protect it.

But the commitment made by Dr. Allawi will likely only postpone a solution. His statement binds the new Iraqi government to the constitution only during "the provisional period," which will end when elections are held.

Many Shiite leaders say it is at that point, when the Shiites will likely hold a majority of the seats in the national assembly, that they would remove the language that grants the Kurds effective veto power over the permanent constitution.

That language was a central component in the compromise that persuaded the Kurds last March to agree to the interim constitution — and to affirm a commitment to the Iraqi state.

The statement issued by Dr. Allawi`s office followed a flurry of activity involving Shiite political leaders and the country`s most powerful Shiite religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani. Iraqi officials say Ayatollah Sistani, who earlier this week warned the Security Council against including the interim constitution in the sovereignty resolution, tried to reassure Kurdish leaders.

Kurdish leaders, most of whom have left Baghdad and gone to their homes in the north, reacted cautiously to Dr. Allawi`s statement. The top Kurdish leaders spent much of the day discussing the future, which they have increasingly suggested may include secession.

"We are happy to see the prime minister reaffirm his commitment," to the interim constitution, said Barem Saleh, a senior leader of the Patriotic Union for Kurdistan.

But Mr. Saleh said he and other Kurdish leaders were disheartened by what they regarded as a casual commitment made by many Shiite leaders, who endorsed the interim constitution last March only to announce their opposition to parts of it immediately after the signing ceremony.

Mr. Saleh said the Kurdish public, which often clamors for independence from Baghdad, has also been angered by the episode.

"If a community in Iraq wants to hijack the constitutional process in the name of majority rule, this won`t work," Mr. Saleh said. "It really smacks of a lack of interest in a viable future."

The impasse over the interim constitution represents the collision of the Shiites` dream of majority rule, which been repressed for centuries, and the Kurdish desire for minority rights, trampled often and brutally in the past.

The key language that worries the Shiites — and is so crucial to the Kurds — relates to the ratification of the permanent constitution. The interim constitution says that the permanent charter will be drawn up after democratic elections, and will be put to a vote of the Iraqi people.

Under the rules, the permanent constitution will pass on a majority vote, unless two-thirds of the voters in three of the country`s 18 provinces reject it, in which case it will fail. There are three provinces with a Kurdish majority.

Mowaffak al-Rubiae, Iraq`s national security advisor and a Shiite who is close to Ayatollah Sistani, said the dispute was deeper than just one clause. The Shiite leadership, he says, believes it is wrong that an interim constitution that was drawn up by an unelected body — the Iraqi Governing Council — should bind the freely elected national assembly.

He suggested that the assembly would likely disregard all or parts of the document.

"You cannot control the will of the people," he said. "Whatever they will do, they will do."

But Dr. Rubaie said he was sympathetic to Kurdish fears and said Shiite leaders would try over the next several months to reassure the Kurds that they would not lose their autonomous status. "I don`t believe a majority of Iraqis would deny the Kurds their rights of full federalism," he said.

For his part, Mr. Saleh said he did not have much patience for the Shiite views.

The interim constitution, with all of the provisions now being objected to, was unanimously approved by the governing council`s Shiite leadership, he noted. "When we sign something, we should mean it," he said.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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THE TIMES POLL / THE RACE TO THE WHITE HOUSE
Voters Shift in Favor of Kerry
Unhappiness with Bush and the nation`s path exceeds doubt about the senator, a survey shows. But in swing states the balance is more tenuous.
By Ronald Brownstein
Times Staff Writer

June 10, 2004

WASHINGTON — Widespread unease over the country`s direction and doubts about President Bush`s policies on Iraq and the economy helped propel Sen. John F. Kerry to a solid lead among voters nationwide, according to a new Times poll.

Yet in a measure of the race`s tenuous balance, Times polling in three of the most fiercely contested states found that Bush had a clear advantage over Kerry in Missouri and is even with the presumed Democratic rival in Ohio and Wisconsin.

The surveys suggest that attitudes may be coalescing for a contest that pivots on the classic electoral question at times of discontent: Will voters see more risk in stability or change?

More than one-third of those questioned in the nationwide poll said they didn`t know enough about Kerry to decide whether he would be a better president than Bush. And when asked which candidate was more likely to flip-flop on issues, almost twice as many named Kerry than Bush.

Yet Kerry led Bush by 51% to 44% nationally in a two-way matchup, and by 48% to 42% in a three-way race, with independent Ralph Nader drawing 4%.

Lifting Kerry is a powerful tailwind of dissatisfaction with the nation`s course and Bush`s answers for challenges at home and abroad. Nearly three-fifths believe the nation is on the wrong track, the highest level a Times poll has recorded during Bush`s presidency.

Also, 56% said America "needs to move in a new direction" because Bush`s policies have not improved the country. Just 39% say America is better off because of his agenda.

Majorities disapprove of Bush`s handling of the economy and Iraq, despite recent encouraging news on both fronts.

Such dissatisfaction is moving voters like Joseph Rechtin, a retired postal worker in Cincinnati, toward Kerry, even though the Massachusetts senator has not yet made a very sharp impression on him.

"I haven`t seen that much that [Kerry] can provide us real leadership," Rechtin said. "But it`s more than three years now, and we don`t seem to be going anywhere at all, and this involvement in Iraq is taking us down the wrong path. So I definitely feel we need a leadership change."

The surveys showed that Bush still enjoyed significant political strengths, including virtually undivided support from his base and continued admiration for his handling of the struggle against terrorism. Nationally, his general approval rating is just above 50% — the mark that has divided the winners from the losers in recent presidential elections involving an incumbent.

His assets are enough for Bush to maintain a double-digit advantage in Missouri with Nader in the mix, and to remain essentially even with Kerry in Ohio and Wisconsin, even though majorities in each state say the country should change direction.

"Bush is a very strong person, and that`s what we need for a president," said Harley Wilber, a machine operator in Milwaukee and a Vietnam veteran. "If we had Kerry … in there, [he] would be kind of wishy-washy."

The Times Poll, supervised by polling director Susan Pinkus, interviewed 1,230 registered voters in the national sample, as well as 566 registered voters in Missouri, 722 in Ohio and 694 in Wisconsin from Saturday through Tuesday. The margin of sampling error for the national sample is plus or minus 3 percentage points; for the state polling it is plus or minus 4 percentage points.

The view of Bush as a strong leader is a powerful motivator for his supporters: Among the voters who express a favorable opinion of him, as many cite strong leadership as any other factor in explaining their opinion.

Michelle Mann, a stay-at-home mother in Oklahoma City, said she saw Bush as "a resolute man, and he is doing what he firmly believes is the right thing to do" without worrying about political consequences or reactions from other nations.

She added: "As long as it is best for the American people, he is willing to go the distance."

Yet the national poll found that Kerry had erased Bush`s earlier advantage on leadership skills, blunting one of the core arguments for the president`s reelection.

Asked which candidate "will be a strong leader for the country," voters divided exactly in half, with 44% choosing each; in a Times` poll in March, Bush held a 9-percentage-point lead on that question.

Also, while Bush narrowly led in March when voters were asked which candidate "has the honesty and integrity to serve as president," the two now are essentially tied, with Bush attracting 41% and Kerry 40%.

On other personal attributes, the poll indicates that Americans are making clear distinctions about the two candidates` strengths and weaknesses.

By 50% to 31%, those polled said Bush would be best at "keeping the country safe from terrorism." By 45% to 36%, Bush was picked over Kerry when voters were asked which man shared their moral values. Perhaps most troubling for the Democrat, nearly half said Kerry "flip-flops on the issues," while just a quarter applied that description to Bush.

But for Bush, the flip side of the flip-flop charge is a deepening perception that he is too rigid: By a resounding 58% to 16%, poll respondents said the phrase "too ideological and stubborn" applied more to Bush than to Kerry.

Bill Baggett, a retired accountant in Commerce Township, Mich., said he preferred Kerry`s willingness to change his mind over what he saw as Bush`s intransigence. Kerry`s flexibility, Baggett said, "to me is a sign of intelligence."

Voters also preferred Kerry by about 10 percentage points when asked which man had better ideas for improving the economy and a better chance of building "respect for the United States around the world."

Kerry has established these advantages even while voters are just filling in their portrait of him. More than one-third of them — and nearly half of independents — said they did not know enough about Kerry "to decide whether he would be a better president" than Bush. Just 53% said they knew a great deal or even a fair amount about Kerry`s domestic policies; only 42% felt that way about his foreign policies.

Yet Kerry has planted some flags with the public. He has been criticized by some Republicans and veterans over his activities during the Vietnam War era, when he enlisted in the Navy but protested the war after returning from combat. But nearly three-fifths of those surveyed agreed that "in his combat missions in Vietnam, John Kerry demonstrated qualities America needs in a president." Just one-third said that in protesting the war, "Kerry demonstrated a judgment and belief that is inappropriate in a president."

Those answers may help explain Kerry`s strong showing on what is likely to be a critical test in the election: 59% said they were very or somewhat confident he would be a good commander in chief; just 38% expressed doubts.

One of Bush`s assets is some voters` belief that he has been a strong commander in chief on one front: 54% approve of his performance in the war on terrorism.

But on the economy, 54% of voters disapprove of his performance, while 43% approve. That`s virtually unchanged from March, despite several months of strong job growth.

Eventually, that growth may boost Bush. But for now, 52% of voters said they believed Bush`s economic policies had hurt the economy, while just 22% said his actions had improved it.

On Iraq, 44% approve of his performance, while 55% disapprove. That`s down sharply from March, when a slight majority backed him on this issue. The new poll also found that only 35% believed Bush had "offered a clear plan" to achieve success in Iraq, while 44% said he had not.

Bush scores better on his overall approval rating, partly because of his continuing strength on the terrorism issue and partly because of his virtually unanimous support from Republicans and independents who consider themselves conservative. In the new poll, 51% approved of his performance while 47% disapproved, down only slightly since March.

Over the last 50 years, presidents who have won another term have generally enjoyed approval ratings about 55% or more by this point in the election year, while those who lost had fallen below 50%. So Bush finds himself on the cusp.

Bush also is bolstered by solid leads among culturally conservative groups that have favored Republicans over the last generation: married couples, rural voters, those who attend church services regularly (especially whites) and gun owners.

But Kerry has unified Democrats, muted the traditional GOP advantage among men and opened a narrow edge among suburbanites.

Kerry also performs well among many groups that his party`s nominees have traditionally relied upon: women, singles, those who attend religious services rarely or never and lower-income families.

In a three-way race, Nader has little effect on these dynamics.

With Kerry still an opaque figure for many, Bush looms as the clear fulcrum of this race. More than 80% who approve of the president`s performance said they would vote for him; more than 90% who disapprove said they would pull the lever for change.


Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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June 10, 2004
Pentagon denies sanctioning torture
By Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington


The Pentagon on Wednesday sought to counter accusations that the Bush administration sanctioned the use of torture in the war on terrorism.

The move came as the White House faced mounting criticism this week following the leak of internal reports by Pentagon and Justice department lawyers that said some forms of torture could be allowed under US and international law.

An official said a Pentagon memo in April last year outlining permissible interrogation methods contained none of the legal arguments in the draft reports.

The legal arguments had no impact on how prisoners were interrogated, the official said.

The Pentagon lawyers said in the draft report, drawn up in March 2003, that President George W. Bush`s authority as commander-in-chief could override any legal prohibitions on torture.

The Pentagon convened the working group, which included military and civilian lawyers and representatives from the Defense Intelligence Agency, to provide guidance to the US Southern Command, which oversees the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, after questions arose about the "effectiveness and appropriateness" of interrogation methods, the official said.

Donald Rumsfeld, Defence secretary, had initially approved 17 interrogation methods not included in the army interrogation manual for use in Guantanamo in December 2002 and January 2003. But the military then suspended use of the methods. General James Hill, who heads the Southern Command, said last week that he asked for the legal review because of "consternation [over] whether, in fact, we were doing the right thing".

The Pentagon official said only 10 of those 17 methods were used, and all of those were on one detainee, Mohamed al-Kahtani, a Saudi believed to have been the intended 20th hijacker in the September 11 attacks.

Following the recommendations of the working group, Mr Rumsfeld approved 24 interrogation methods, which consisted of seven methods not included in the army manual on interrogations, a long-standing manual describing permitted interrogation methods. Four of the techniques required approval by Mr Rumsfeld. The Pentagon has not released details on most of these techniques.

The Pentagon official said working group members all agreed that the methods included in the April 16 memo did not amount to torture. He added that the memo, in contrast to the broader conclusions reached in the working group draft report, applied specifically to interrogations carried out at Guantanamo Bay, and did not apply to suspected terrorists captured in Iraq.

Critics of the administration say efforts by the Bush administration to weaken restrictions on torture sent a signal that encouraged the kind of brutalisation of prisoners that occurred at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

© Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2004.

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