Guten Morgen Mr. Bush - 500 Beiträge pro Seite (Seite 54)

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Europe - United States: The Two Universalisms
By Pierre Rosanvallon
Le Monde
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3232,36-398914,0.h…

Monday 21 February 2005

It`s understood we`re all democrats. It`s also understood we both want democratic ideals to spread and govern the world more than they do now. And yet, we all find ourselves at the very least exasperated when this double assertion is drummed out in a George Bush speech. What is the error? How can such a sense of a gap between Europeans and Americans, even while we feel we share the same values, be explained, in fact? That remains the big question of the hour, and it doesn`t concern the diplomatic field and transatlantic relations only. In the first place, the world`s peace and stability depend upon it.

Three elements are generally put forward to explain such a gap. The question of style is first of all essential. It`s the president`s triumphalist, missionary, and moralizing tone that is unbearable. The assessment of the legitimacy of the methods America uses also constitutes a point of conflict. At issue in that regard is a discussion of the legitimacy of promoting democracy with war and, at the same time, of how to effect a real cost-benefit analysis of the actions undertaken with this objective.

Finally, America`s lack of moral and political coherence is an issue. America demands from others virtues of which it is not always a paragon (see, among other examples, the problem of prisoners` status in Guantanamo). America is also selective in its own indignation and courage (pitiless against Afghanistan, timid with North Korea and Russia).

These three elements undeniably constitute the main drivers of a separation, but do they, all the same, create an impassable breach? Certainly not. With regard to style, it is quite striking to observe that the charm and savoir-faire of a Condoleezza Rice seem to have suddenly created springtime in European capitals! With regard to method and coherence, it is perhaps a little facile to appoint America as the expiatory victim for our own weaknesses and internal contradictions.

There are certainly many real aggravations, political or strategic differences, including even very profound ones, conflicts of interest at play in different areas, but there is not the distance that could be qualified as philosophical. However, in my eyes, such a philosophical distance between Europe and America exists in a state of latency; however it is of another order. And it`s because that difference has been marked and obvious, yet resistant to formulation or description, that transatlantic relations have so deeply fissured.

There are, in fact, two conceptions of universalism that tend to go against one another: a "dogmatic" universalism versus an "experimental" universalism. The dogmatic universalism expresses a simple linear relationship to the world. It`s a universalism of equivalency that sees progress in the process of the world`s homogenization through a prospective of diffusion. It rests on an essential presupposition: the knowledge and mastery of the good. It does not exclude pluralism, but situates it in a sort of higher meta-political and moral plane.

Democracy is thus conceived in this framework as a very specific, absolutely unique, regime that accommodates the adoption of a certain global fundamentalism with acceptance of diversity within civil society. In other words, democracy is understood as a kind of religion rather than an ensemble of procedures and institutions. It constitutes an intangible fact, an intrinsic good, that one has only to spread throughout the world. This diffusionary vision has long been America`s. Bush, by the way, does nothing in regard to it but extend the road built by a Wilson, a Roosevelt or a Kennedy.

It is essential, however, to remember how this vision was developed, for it has not existed forever. In the America of the Founding Fathers, the question of democracy remained open. The forms of a "good regime" were still discussed and were the object of bitter controversies, between a Jefferson and a Madison for example. The term democracy, moreover, was problematic, because some saw in it the ferment of permanent instability, while others considered that it was the guarantor of social peace.

Towards the middle of the nineteenth century, a certain consensus on this point was established in America; however that consensus was achieved at the cost of a sacralization of the democratic idea, suddenly sanitized of the radical interrogations that had constituted it, rid of its subversive potential. The institution of democracy as a moral dogma was thus accompanied during this era by its definitive absractization, by the negation of its social dynamism, and the dissimulation of its difficulties. In Moby Dick (1851), Herman Melville expressed the tenor of the times very well when he spoke of "the endless democratic dignity that radiates from God in person," conflating the substance of democracy and "the absolute God," an earthly reflection of the "divine equality." The historian may easily pile up quotations from the period that prove the assimilation that operated between democracy and "practical Christianity."

The European experience is quite different. Democracy has not been instituted here as an ersatz political religion. It has, more prosaically, fed earthly activity, aroused bitter conflicts, even led to extreme perversions. Democracy has never ceased to be understood and lived as an experience, permanently connecting problems and promise. Hence, a vision at once more modest and more realistic, because it better reflects life`s processes of trial and error.

Democracy`s Apprentices

Democracy as a religion on the one hand, democracy as an experience on the other, these two approaches entail very different conceptions of the universalist perspective. Dogmatic universalism, which goes hand in hand with the apprehension of democracy as a political religion, conveys an unbearable arrogance that is only increased by its spontaneous navete.

Democracy conceived of as an experience, as an experiment, on the other hand, opens the door to a true universalism: experimental universalism. By acknowledging that we are all apprentices in democracy, this approach allows the establishment of a far more equalitarian political dialogue between nations. Democracy is an objective to be attained - we are still far from the constitution of a society of equals and collective mastery of things - it`s not an asset that we already possess. Europe has often been far from such a constructive modesty, but Europe will only make itself heard if it makes itself the champion of such a philosophy and helps America become aware of what constitutes the deepest aspect of its discordance with the world.

To commit ourselves to this path is in no way to engage in a sort of relativism that could justly be considered blameworthy. These are not hostile traditions, religions, and philosophies that we are attempting to make live together in tension (the "shock of civilizations") or in indifference (pluralism as relativism). Nor will the world be able to find a greater unity on the Utopian ground of conversion to the same political religion. The only possible positive universalism is that of problems and questions that everyone must resolve in concert. It is only on this basis that the acknowledgement of common values may acquire any meaning.


© Copyright 2005 by TruthOut.org

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[urlBill Maher Covers the Jeff Gannon Scandal]http://homepage.mac.com/njenson/movies/billmaher021805gannon.html[/url]
Guests include Leslie Stall, Joe Biden, Tommy Thompson and Robin Williams.


[urlErik vs. Erik Game]http://vredungmand.dk/games/erik-spillet[/url]

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Ob es dazu kommt ist nicht sicher, da die Bestätigung einer 2/3 Mehrheit bedarf.

February 23, 2005
Shiite Alliance in Iraq Wants Islamist as the Prime Minister
By JOHN F. BURNS and DEXTER FILKINS
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/23/international/middleeast/2…

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 22 - Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shiite doctor with an Islamist bent, was chosen Tuesday by the victorious Shiite alliance as its candidate to become Iraq`s new prime minister. The decision may well open a period of protracted and rancorous negotiations with a coalition of secular leaders intent on sharply curtailing Dr. Jaafari`s powers or blocking him and his clerical-backed coalition.

Ayad Allawi, the current prime minister, and Barham Salih, a Kurdish politician and deputy prime minister, said in separate interviews on Tuesday that without guarantees renouncing sectarianism and embracing Western democratic ideals they were poised to block Dr. Jaafari`s nomination and possibly peel off enough members from the Shiite`s United Iraqi Alliance to form a government of their own.

Iraq`s interim constitution effectively requires a two-thirds majority in the new assembly to choose a prime minister and government, and the Shiite alliance, led by two religious parties with close ties to Iran, won a bare majority in the Jan. 30 election.

Indeed, initial indications were that a potentially polarizing battle was possible, one that could expose the deep fissures in Iraqi society that have been held in check since the fall of Saddam Hussein. Those fissures not only cut across sectarian and ethnic lines but also track a wide disagreement about the nature of the Iraqi state: whether it should be religious or secular, centrally led or governed by a federal system, allied to Iran or anchored in ties to the West.

Dr. Jaafari, 58, won the nomination when his final challenger, Ahmad Chalabi, agreed to withdraw. Mr. Chalabi, a secular, American-educated exile and a one-time favorite of the Bush administration, had been pushing for a secret ballot within the Shiite alliance to determine a candidate for prime minister.

Mr. Chalabi agreed to drop out of the race, after intense pressure from the leaders of the two main wings of the Shiite alliance, Mr. Jaafari`s Dawa Party and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or Sciri, led by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim. Mr. Chalabi promised to support Dr. Jaafari, and stood with him and several other Shiite leaders at a news conference to announce the decision.

"Unity is more important than winning," Mr. Chalabi said.

If Dr. Jaafari secures the approval of the newly elected national assembly, he would play a central role in the drafting of the country`s permanent constitution, which is scheduled to be put before voters later this year. That process is likely to be one of the most contentious political battles in the coming months, with arguments over such questions as the role of Islam in government and the degree of autonomy afforded to minorities such as the Kurds.

Despite the appearance of inevitability, Dr. Jaafari faces a difficult task in persuading a large bloc of mostly secular parties to support him.

If the Kurds and Dr. Allawi do not scuttle Dr. Jaafari`s candidacy, they are likely to set a number of stiff conditions for their support, regarding not only the shape of the government but also of the permanent constitution to be drafted this year.

Both the Kurds and Dr. Allawi`s group, known as the Iraqi List, are skeptical of the Shiite alliance`s pledge that it will not build an Islamic state. Dr. Allawi and senior Kurdish leaders have said they are troubled by what they regard as the undue influence wielded among the Shiite alliance by the government of Iran, which provided sanctuary to the leadership of both the Dawa Party and Sciri during the time of Saddam Hussein.

Dr. Allawi, in the interview on Tuesday, said he intended to press his own candidacy for prime minister, and to explore the possibilities of forming a secular bloc within the assembly that could muster more seats than the alliance.

Under Iraq`s interim constitution, agreed to last year, Dr. Jaafari would need the agreement of two-thirds of the 275 members of the national assembly to become prime minister. Holding just a slim majority - 140 seats of 275 - Dr. Jaafari`s alliance would almost certainly need the support of the Kurds or Dr. Allawi`s group - or both.

At the core of a potential secular coalition, Dr. Allawi said, would be his own group, with 40 seats, and the Kurds, with 75 seats, and possibly some defectors from the United Iraqi Alliance. He noted that the alliance`s 140 elected members included many who were not religious Shiites, a group that might be disaffected enough with the choice of Mr. Jaafari to break away.

"What it boils down to is that there are a lot of secular Shiites in the alliance," he said, citing two of the most prominent political figures among the alliance`s elected candidates, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, who has been national security adviser in the interim government, and Mr. Chalabi.

In Dr. Jaafari, the Shiite alliance picked a soft-spoken leader whose personal modesty and ties to the Dawa Party, a victim of bloody purges carried out by Mr. Hussein, have made him, at least according to opinion polls, the most popular leader in Iraq. A native of the holy city of Karbala, where his father worked at the Imam Hussein shrine, Dr. Jaafari fled Iraq in 1980, after Mr. Hussein began a campaign of killing and torturing thousands of Dawa members.

Since returning to Iraq after Mr. Hussein was toppled, Dr. Jaafari has cut a cautious political path, tacitly supporting the American presence here but staking out a strongly adversarial position on many key issues.

As a member of the American-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, Dr. Jaafari pushed for a more expansive role for Islam in the country`s interim constitution. And he was one of several Shiite leaders who initially refused to sign the document, based on his opposition to a provision that would allow a two-thirds majority in three of Iraq`s 18 provinces to nullify the constitution when it goes before voters later this year. Dr. Jaafari, whose Shiites represent a 60 percent majority in the country, said the provision was undemocratic.

He eventually signed the interim constitution, but even now says he may lead a move to reverse the provisions he opposed last year. That prospect is viewed with alarm by many groups here, including Kurds, secular parties, and the Americans.

At a news conference after his nomination on Tuesday, Dr. Jaafari, who spent more than 20 years in exile in London and Iran, declared the defeat of the insurgency his first priority. In recent public statements he has made it clear that an Iraqi government cannot accomplish that without the continued support of American troops. He also promised to forge a coalition that included Iraqis of all sects and ethnicities, particularly the Sunni Arabs, who largely boycotted nationwide elections last month and who are generating most of the violence against the American-backed government here.

"If need be, we will be strong against the perpetrators of acts of violence, and at the same time we will be lenient with anybody who will work with us," Dr. Jaafari said at the news conference. Flanked by a smiling Mr. Chalabi, he sat before a poster of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the powerful Shiite religious leader under whose guidance the alliance came together.

"I don`t believe that anybody, be they Sunnis or any other religious doctrine, will allow these people to destroy our country, and there should be a force that will stop them and put an end to the bloodshed," Dr. Jaafari said.

In the interview with Mr. Salih on Tuesday, he said that neither the Kurds nor Dr. Allawi wanted to personalize the contest over the prime minister`s job, but that if the alliance wanted their backing there were "key policy issues to be addressed." Crucially, he said, the alliance leaders would have to make an "absolute commitment" to draft a permanent constitution that would embody the principles of democracy, human rights and a federal system of government, an issue of particular importance to the Kurds.

Mr. Salih made the remarks as he hurried into Dr. Allawi`s office in the heavily protected Green Zone, only moments after alliance leaders had appeared on television to confirm Dr. Jaafari`s nomination. Mr. Salih, who spent most of the 1990`s representing Iraqi Kurds in Washington, said Shiite alliance leaders should understand that the two-thirds rule meant that they could make no progress in forming the new government without the support of groups outside the alliance, mainly the Kurds and Dr. Allawi`s group.

"I think we have to send a message," he said. "The parameters are very clear." Asked if the Kurds could join Dr. Allawi in an effort to form a secular bloc within the new assembly that could put forward its own candidate for prime minister - most likely Dr. Allawi, Mr. Salih replied: "Anything is possible. In the past, it used to be Saddam Hussein who made all the decisions for us Iraqis. But now, this is an open game, and you will see shifting alliances."

Mr. Salih hinted that the maneuvering could include efforts to break up the Shiite alliance, luring secularists among the 140 alliance members who won assembly seats to join the Kurds and the Allawi group. "You will see that looking at this in terms of fixed formations is a mistake," he said.

Dr. Allawi predicted that settling the issue of who would lead the new government could take weeks, and hinted that the battle could be bitter. He said he had heard rumors that the alliance leaders had consulted with Iran`s ruling ayatollahs, and had been told that Dr. Allawi, a secular Shiite with close ties to the United States that go back at least 15 years, would not be acceptable to Iran as prime minister in the new transitional government. "I have heard that they don`t want me," he said. "Why, God knows."

Any suggestion that Iran has played a role in the alliance`s choice of prime minister would be politically explosive in Iraq, particularly among the Sunni minority population that was Iraq`s traditional ruling group for decades until the overthrow of Mr. Hussein. That, in turn, could re-energize the Sunni-led insurgency that has paralyzed much of the country in the 23 months since the American-led invasion, blighting hopes that key Sunni groups with links to the insurgents - including tribal leaders who have met secretly with Dr. Allawi in recent months - might agree to help curb the insurgency and join the political process.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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These demonstrations in Berlin yesterday were harsh, but much of the press comment was softer.
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February 23, 2005
Japan and Korea "have no plan" to sell dollars
By FT.COM
Financial Times
http://www.nytimes.com/financialtimes/business/FT20050223_11…

Japan and South Korea said on Wednesday they had no plan to sell dollar assets from their foreign exchange reserves, the world`s largest and fourth largest respectively, sending the dollar higher one day after it suffered its biggest fall in four months.

"The Bank of Korea will not change the portfolio of currencies in its reserves due to short-term market factors,`` South Korea`s central bank said in a statement issued Wednesday morning. The bank denied media reports that the bank was considering diversifying the currencies in its $200bn of foreign exchange reserves, up to 90 per cent of which might be in dollar-denominated assets.

The dollar`s strength gained more momentum after a Japanese finance ministry official told Reuters that Japan did not intend to diversify its $850 foreign exchange reserves by buying euros.

The dollar edged up 0.7 per cent against the yen to Y104.75 by Wednesday noon, while the Korean won slipped to Won1,006.

The dollar suffered its biggest fall since October on Tuesday amid concerns that Asian central banks were losing their appetite for dollar assets, triggered by a parliamentary report by BoK saying it would increase investments in high-yielding non-government debt and diversify its holdings into a variety of currencies.

A BoK official also said on Tuesday the bank had already been reducing the portion of dollar assets while increasing that of non-dollar assets, "and we will continue to do so gradually."

The reports, together with rising crude oil prices which surpassed $50 a barrel, caused a 1.3 per cent decline in the dollar against both the euro and yen, as well as a 1.8 per cent fall to a seven-year low of Won1,005 on Tuesday.

However, the BoK said on Wednesday it "means to diversify its foreign reserves into non-state bonds but does not mean to sell and convert dollar-denominated US currency reserves into other international currencies."

Members of South Korean National Assembly`s finance and economy committee are scheduled to discuss the central bank`s report on Thursday.

The report reignited fears that Asian central banks were shying away from the falling dollar at a time when the US needs to attract $2bn of foreign capital a day to cover its current account deficit. It followed similar announcements from Thailand, Taiwan and Indonesia.

Stock markets across Asia declined further on Wednesday morning, following overnight losses on the Wall Street. The Nikkei 225 average of the Tokyo Stock Exchange fell below 11,500 for the first time in two weeks, while indices in South Korea and Hong Kong both dropped 1 per cent.

Investors` sentiment was also damped by persistent strong crude oil prices, which rose above $51 per barrel in New York, its highest level in almost four months.

© Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2005.

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Bush fails to close gap with EU
By George Parker, James Harding and Daniel Dombey in Brussels
http://news.ft.com/comment/columnists

Financial Times

Published: February 23 2005

President George W. Bush on Tuesday night completed a two-day charm offensive in Brussels but failed to narrow the divide with European Union leaders over arms sales to China, tactics towards Iran or the future of Nato.

The US president`s visit ended with mutual back-slapping with José Manuel Barroso, European Commission president, pronouncing the end of almost three years of transatlantic discord over Iraq. “Europe and America have reconnected,” Mr Barroso said.

But Mr Bush`s visit to EU and Nato headquarters yielded few concrete results, and left some US officials privately warning that they expected positive gestures in return from the Europeans. The disagreements were pronounced over the EU`s plan to lift its arms embargo against China later this year.

“There is deep concern in our country that a transfer of weapons would be a transfer of technology to China which would change the balance of relations between China and Taiwan,” Mr Bush said. He added that if the EU proceeded it needed to “sell it to the US Congress”. US lawmakers have threatened to restrict technology transfers from America to Europe if the EU embargo is lifted.

On Iran, Mr Bush said that he had received “good advice” from European partners, who are trying to win guarantees that Iran will not develop nuclear weapons through a mix of diplomacy and economic incentives. But Jacques Chirac, French president, and Gerhard Schröder, German chancellor, failed to persuade him to open the way to allowing Iran to join the World Trade Organisation and buy civil aircraft engines.

Mr Bush said: “The notion that the US is getting ready to attack Iran is ridiculous.” After a pause, he added: “Having said that, all options are on the table.”

There were also disagreements over the extent to which the US should talk to Europe through the EU, and sideline Nato, the traditional forum for the western alliance.

In spite of those differences, Tuesday`s meetings between Mr Bush and EU leaders at the European Council and European Commission were cordial and constructive. “We have agreed to bury the hatchet over Iraq,” said one Bush administration official.

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Diesmal demontieren die rechte US-Hassprediger eine eigene Ikone, Clint Eastwood.

Eastwood, the Republican pin-up, is new target for the enemies of `Hollyweird`
By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles

23 February 2005

Four days before the Oscars, one could usually expect the Hollywood studios to be at each other`s throats, bad-mouthing each other`s best picture contenders and taking out full-page advertisements in the trade papers to defend themselves against the calumnies of their rivals.

This year, though, is a little different. The attacks are in full swing, but they are coming largely from outside the industry - from right-wing commentators and broadcasters who relish every opportunity to bash the liberal lunatics of "Hollyweird" and feel particularly emboldened in the wake of President Bush`s re-election.

Their principal target, oddly, is Clint Eastwood`s multi-nominated boxing film Million Dollar Baby, which struck most critics as being seeped in old-fashioned American values - rugged individualism, achieving success against the odds, even going to church and wrestling with big moral dilemmas - but which has unleashed a torrent of rage from the likes of Rush Limbaugh, the rabble-rousing radio host, and the author Michael Medved, self-appointed chronicler of the industry`s moral degeneracy.

For the past couple of weeks, the naysayers have been working up a head of steam about something the critics barely mentioned in their reviews because it concerns the unflinchingly downbeat ending, which they felt dutybound not to reveal. (Independent readers might themselves want to consider pausing here until they have seen the film.) Million Dollar Baby, they argue, is an apology for euthanasia because the crusty old boxing trainer played by Eastwood chooses to carry out the mercy killing of his charge and surrogate daughter Maggie, played by Hilary Swank, after she is reduced to immobility by a dirty punch during a prize fight.

Limbaugh has denounced the film as "liberal propaganda" and "a million-dollar euthanasia movie". Medved, in similar vein, has said it is "an insufferable, manipulative right-to-die movie" and added that "hate is not too strong a word" to describe his reaction to it.

Debbie Schlussel, a conservative talk-show host, said the film, shockingly, advocated "killing the handicapped, literally putting their lights out". Ted Baehr, head of the Christian Film and Television Commission, called it "very anti-Catholic and anti-Christian".

In Chicago, a disability advocacy group called Not Dead Yet picketed cinemas showing the film. And Marcie Roth, the director of the National Spinal Cord Injury Association, lambasted the ending because, she said, it implied that "having a spinal-cord injury is a fate worse than death". They and others deluged Academy voters with protest e-mails in the hope of deterring them from voting for the film or its participants.

Some kind of protest outside the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood on Sunday night seems almost inevitable. So, too, does the revival of a long-standing grievance against Eastwood held by disabled groups since an elderly woman in a wheelchair sued him five years ago for failing to provide adequate toilet facilities at a hotel he owns in Carmel on the central California coast. (Ms Roth accused Mr Eastwood of continuing a "disability vendetta".)

What makes many of the attacks puzzling is that Eastwood is hardly your stereotypical flaming Hollywood liberal. He is, in fact, a Republican, served as the Republican mayor of Carmel and was appointed years ago to the National Council on the Arts by Richard Nixon. To the extent that it has been faulted at all by professional critics, Million Dollar Baby has, if anything, been deemed too conservative in its view of race relations, in its unflattering portrayal of all women except for Swank`s character, and in its swipes at hillbillies and welfare cheats.

The validity of the arguments against the film may be less important, though, than the desire of social conservatives to keep up their barrage of attacks on Hollywood in general. During last year`s presidential election campaign, the film industry was repeatedly identified by Republican grassroots activists and the Bush campaign as part of a pro-Democrat liberal elite, and targeted as a source of filth, sexual promiscuity and moral equivocation out of step with mainstream American values.

According to Thomas Frank, author of the most influential political book of the past year, What`s The Matter With America?, the attacks on Hollywood (whose products are consumed with equal enthusiasm by right and left wingers) are part of a pattern by social conservatives of picking cultural battles they are almost sure to lose, all the better to stir up the resentment and outrage of their prospective political supporters.

Newspaper columnists have suggested that what Medved and Limbaugh have sought to do is not so much start a conversation on the morality of euthanasia as destroy Million Dollar Baby`s box-office chances by giving away the ending. For that reason, some of them suspect the attacks will generate only indignation among Academy voters.

Most years, the conservatives might have had a better target than Eastwood. The 2005 Oscar line-up, however, features no obvious liberal hate-figures such as Tim Robbins (last year`s best supporting actor) or Michael Moore (who tried, and failed, to get nominated for Fahrenheit 9/11). Religious conservatives could not even accuse the Academy of ignoring Mel Gibson`s controversial Passion of the Christ, since it is up for three awards.

It remains to be seen if their attacks will indeed scupper the chances of one of Hollywood`s favourite sons, or whether those bogeyman Hollywood liberals will live up to their stereotyped image and race to Mr Eastwood`s defence. All will be revealed on Sunday night.


23 February 2005 11:30


©2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.

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Es ist schon peinlich für einen Regierungschef, dass so kurz vor der Wahl es herauskommt, dass der eigene Generalstaatsanwalt den Irakkrieg 14 Tage vor Beginn als illegal bezeichnet hat und damals die Blairregierung schon Anwälte in Marsch gesetzt hat, um auf eine Anklage vor einem internationalen Gerichtshof vorbereitet zu sein.
Und das so kurz vor den Wahlen und bei einem immer weiter schmelzenden Vorsprung von Blair gegenüber den Torries.
[urlThe law and the war ]http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/comment/0,12956,1423038,00.html[/url]
In his full 13-page advice to the prime minister, dated March 7 - a document that has never been published and which was not shown to the cabinet either - Lord Goldsmith(der Generalstaatanwalt) apparently said that the use of force on the basis of resolution 1441 "could be found to be illegal".

Revealed: the rush to war
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,1423304,00…

Richard Norton-Taylor
Wednesday February 23, 2005

Guardian
The attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, warned less than two weeks before the invasion of Iraq that military action could be ruled illegal.

The government was so concerned that it might be prosecuted it set up a team of lawyers to prepare for legal action in an international court.

And a parliamentary answer issued days before the war in the name of Lord Goldsmith - but presented by ministers as his official opinion before the crucial Commons vote - was drawn up in Downing Street, not in the attorney general`s chambers.

The full picture of how the government manipulated the legal justification for war, and political pressure placed on its most senior law officer, is revealed in the Guardian today.

It appears that Lord Goldsmith never wrote an unequivocal formal legal opinion that the invasion was lawful, as demanded by Lord Boyce, chief of defence staff at the time.

The Guardian can also disclose that in her letter of resignation in protest against the war, Elizabeth Wilmshurst, deputy legal adviser at the Foreign Office, described the planned invasion of Iraq as a "crime of aggression".

She said she could not agree to military action in circumstances she described as "so detrimental to the international order and the rule of law".

Her uncompromising comments, and disclosures about Lord Goldsmith`s relations with ministers in the run-up to war, appear in a book by Philippe Sands, a QC in Cherie Booth`s Matrix chambers and professor of international law at University College London.

Exclusive extracts of his book Lawless World are published in today`s Guardian.

Lord Goldsmith warned Tony Blair in a document on March 7 2003 that the use of force against Iraq could be illegal. It would be safer to have a second UN resolution explicitly sanctioning military action.

"So concerned was the government about the possibility of such a case that it took steps to put together a legal team to prepare for possible international litigation," writes Mr Sands.

The government has refused to publish the March 7 document. It was circulated to only a very few senior ministers. All Lord Goldsmith gave the cab inet was a later oral presentation of a parliamentary answer issued under his name on March 17.

This appears contrary to the official ministerial code, which states that the complete text of opinions by the government`s law officers should be seen by the full cabinet.

On March 13 2003, Lord Goldsmith told Lord Falconer, then a Home Office minister, and Baroness Morgan, Mr Blair`s director of political and government relations, that he believed an invasion would, after all, be legal without a new UN security council resolution, according to Mr Sands.

On March 17, in response to a question from Baroness Ramsay, a Labour peer, Lord Goldsmith stated that it was "plain" Iraq continued to be in material breach of UN resolution 1441.

"Plain to whom?` asks Mr Sands. It is clear, he says, that Lord Goldsmith`s answer was "neither a summary nor a precis of any of the earlier advices which the attorney general had provided".

He adds: "The March 17 statement does not seem to have been accompanied by a formal and complete legal opinion or advice in the usual sense, whether written by the attorney general, or independently by a barrister retained by him".

Separately, the Guardian has learned that Lord Goldsmith told the inquiry into the use of intelligence in the run-up to war that his meeting with Lord Falconer and Baroness Morgan was an informal one. He did not know whether it was officially minuted.

Lord Goldsmith also made clear he did not draw up the March 17 written parliamentary answer. They "set out my view", he told the Butler inquiry, referring to Lord Falconer and Baroness Morgan.

Yet the following day, March 18, that answer was described in the Commons order paper as the attorney general`s "opinion". During the debate, influential Labour backbenchers and the Conservative frontbench said it was an important factor behind their decision to vote for war.

Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary and leader of the Commons, yesterday described the Guardian`s disclosure as alarming. "It dramatically reveals the extent to which the legal opinion on the war was the product of a political process." he said.

The case for seeing the attorney general`s original advice was now overwhelming, Mr Cook added. "What was served up to parliament as the view of the attorney general turned out to be the view of two of the closest aides of the prime minister," he said.

Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, said the government`s position had been seriously undermined. "The substance of the attorney general`s advice, and the process by which it was partially published, simply do not stand up to scrutiny," he said.

Sir Menzies added: "The issue is all the more serious since the government motion passed by the House of Commons on March 18 2003, endorsing military action against Iraq, was expressly based on that advice."

He continued: "The public interest, which the government claims justifies non-publication of the whole of the advice, can only be served now by the fullest disclosure."

Lord Goldsmith twice changed his view in the weeks up to the invasion. He wrote to Mr Blair on March 14 2003, saying it was "essential" that "strong evidence" existed that Iraq was still producing weapons of mass destruction.

The next day, the prime minister replied, saying: "This is to confirm it is indeed the prime minister`s unequivocal view that Iraq is in further material breach of its obligations."

The same day, Lord Boyce got the unequivocal advice he says he was after in a two-line note from the attorney gen eral`s office. The extent of concern among military chiefs is reflected by Gen Sir Mike Jackson, head of the army, quoted by Peter Hennessy, professor of contemporary history at Queen Mary College, London. "I spent a good deal of time recently in the Balkans making sure Milosevic was put behind bars," said Sir Mike. "I have no intention of ending up in the next cell to him in the Hague."

Mr Sands records that Lord Goldsmith visited Washington in February 2003 when he met John Bellinger, legal adviser to the White House National Security Council. An official later told Mr Sands: "We had trouble with your attorney, we got him there eventually."

A spokeswoman for Lord Goldsmith said yesterday: "The attorney has said on many occasions he is not going to discuss process issues". The March 17 parliamentary answer was the "attorney`s own answer", she said adding that he would not discuss the processes of how the document was drawn up.

The Department for Constitutional Affairs said it could not say if Lord Falconer had a role in drawing up the answer.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

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How could attorney general support such a weak and dismal argument?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1423237,00.html
The following is an extract from Lawless World: America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules, by Philippe Sands

Wednesday February 23, 2005
The Guardian
A key meeting took place in July 2002, at which various ministers, including the attorney general, were present. They were reminded that the prime minister had told President Bush that the UK would support military action to bring about regime change, so long as a coalition had been created and UN weapons inspectors had been given a further opportunity to eliminate Iraq`s weapons of mass destruction. The foreign secretary, Jack Straw, complained that the case was thin, not least because Saddam Hussein was not threatening neighbours and had a lesser WMD capability than Libya, North Korea or Iran.

The meeting also considered the legal issues, including a March 2002 paper prepared by Foreign Office legal advisers. Even at this stage the British government was acutely aware of the legal difficulties. The attorney general confirmed that self-defence and humanitarian intervention were not justified, and that, as matters then stood, claiming the authorisation of the security council would be difficult.

At this stage, Lord Goldsmith`s view seemed unambiguous. Michael Foster MP, an assistant to the attorney general, has confirmed that Lord Goldsmith was later "asked the question - would regime change be lawful per se, and he said no, it wouldn`t".

From the July 2002 meeting, the attorney general was instructed to consider legal advice with the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence. The chosen route was to build up the intelligence to support the claim that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, which could provide a potential legal justification.

In November 2002, the security council unanimously adopted resolution 1441. The resolution warned that Iraq would face "serious consequences" for further violations of its obligations, but did not authorise states "to use all necessary means" (meaning military action).

weiter:http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1423237,00.html[/B]

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Who killed Rafik Hariri?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1423210,00.ht…

Patrick Seale
Wednesday February 23, 2005

Guardian
If Syria killed Rafik Hariri, Lebanon`s former prime minister and mastermind of its revival after the civil war, it must be judged an act of political suicide. Syria is already under great international pressure from the US, France and Israel. To kill Hariri at this critical moment would be to destroy Syria`s reputation once and for all and hand its enemies a weapon with which to deliver the blow that could finally destabilise the Damascus regime, and even possibly bring it down.

So attributing responsibility for the murder to Syria is implausible. The murder is more likely to be the work of one of its many enemies. This is not to deny that Syria has made grave mistakes in Lebanon. Its military intelligence apparatus has interfered far too much in Lebanese affairs. A big mistake was to insist on changing the Lebanese constitution to extend the mandate of President Emile Lahoud - known for his absolute allegiance to Syria - for a further three years. Syria`s military intelligence chief in Lebanon, General Rustum Ghazalah, was reported to have threatened and insulted Hariri to force him to accept the extension. This caused great exasperation among all communities in Lebanon. Hariri resigned as prime minister in protest.

Syria appears to have recognised its mistake. President Bashar al-Assad last week sacked General Hassan Khalil, head of military intelligence, and replaced him with his own brother-in-law, General Asaf Shawkat. A purge of the military intelligence apparatus in Lebanon is expected to follow.

It remains to be seen whether this will calm Syria`s opponents in Lebanon, who have declared a "democratic and peaceful intifada for independence" - in other words, a campaign of passive resistance to drive Syria out.

Hariri was not a diehard enemy of Syria. For 10 of the past 12 years he served as Lebanon`s prime minister under Syria`s aegis. A few days before his murder on February 14 he held a meeting with Syria`s deputy foreign minister, Walid Muallim. They were reported to have discussed a forthcoming visit by Hariri to Damascus. Hariri had not officially joined the opposition in Lebanon, but was thought to be attempting to mediate between Syria and the opposition.

If Syria did not kill Hariri, who could have? There is no shortage of potential candidates, including far-right Christians, anxious to rouse opinion against Syria and expel it from Lebanon; Islamist extremists who have not forgiven Syria its repression of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 80s; and, of course, Israel.

Israel`s ambition has long been to weaken Syria, sever its strategic alliance with Iran and destroy Hizbullah. Israel has great experience at "targeted assassinations" - not only in the Palestinian territories but across the Middle East. Over the years, it has sent hit teams to kill opponents in Beirut, Tunis, Malta, Amman and Damascus.

Syria, Hizbullah and Iran have stood up against US and Israeli hegemony over the region. Syria continues to demand that Israel return the Golan Heights, seized in 1967. Damascus will not allow Lebanon to conclude a separate peace with Israel unless its own claim is also addressed.

Hizbullah, in turn, is possibly the only Arab force to have inflicted a defeat on Israel. Its guerrillas forced Israel out of south Lebanon after a 22-year occupation. Hizbullah continues to be a big irritant to Israel because it has acquired a deterrent capability. Israel can no longer attack Lebanon with impunity - as it did for decades - without risking a riposte from Hizbullah rockets.

Iran`s nuclear programme threatens to break Israel`s regional monopoly of weapons of mass destruction, which is the main reason it is under immense pressure to abandon uranium enrichment.

The US and Israel have been trying to rally international support against Iran, Syria and Hizbullah. The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, has condemned Iran as a prime sponsor of international terror. Syria has been condemned as a "destabilising" force in the region, and is in the dock because of Hariri`s assassination.

The US and Israel have also been urging European governments to declare Hizbullah a "terrorist organisation". France has its own quarrel with Syria, and President Jacques Chirac is outraged at the murder of his close friend Hariri, but Paris does not consider Hizbullah a terrorist organisation. For France, and for the vast majority of Arabs, Hizbullah is a national liberation movement as well as a big political actor in Lebanon.

There is far more to this crisis than a struggle between rival clans in Lebanon.

· Patrick Seale is author of Assad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East

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

http://www.juancole.com/
Wednesday, February 23, 2005

Jaafari slams Hilary

Stephen Farrell reports for the London Times that a minor tiff occurred last week between Senator Hilary Clinton and prime ministerial candidate Ibrahim Jaafari:


` Last week Hillary Clinton, the New York senator, visiting Baghdad, said that there were “grounds both for concern and for . . . vigilance” about Dr al-Jaafari’s Iranian connections. Clearly irritated, the candidate — at present Iraq’s Vice-President — brushed aside the remark yesterday. “We are not at an American traffic light to be given a red or green signal. I am speaking on behalf of a collective decision. I will stop when the Iraqi people say to stop,” he said. “Hillary Clinton, as far as I know, does not represent any political decision or the American Administration and I don’t know why she said this. She knows nothing about the Iraqi situation.” `



I take it that Hilary is laying out a Democratic Party strategy for the 2008 elections, which may well argue that Bush lost Iraq to Iran through his incompetence. The argument probably implies that Jaafari as a Muslim fundamentalist is not only close to Iran but will pursue policies and legislation that hurt women.

These points are not without some validity. But maybe Baghdad just after the elections wasn`t the best time and place for her to criticize positive feelings toward Iran on the part of Shiite politicians (which, I have pointed out, is sort of like criticizing the Irish for feeling positively about the Vatican). Jaafari is an Iraqi patriot and he has a right to be offended at the idea that he might be a puppet for Tehran. Still, it does seem inevitable that some canny Democrat will figure out that the US public has severe doubts about the Iraq adventure, and find a way to parlay that into political advantage.

Jaafari for his part was ill-advised to lash out at Hilary. If he becomes prime minister, he will need a good working relationship with the US Congress on both sides of the aisle.

Current Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi told the NYT on Tuesday that he had heard that Iran had lobbied its Iraqi allies against allowing him to continue as prime minister. Allawi professes puzzlement at this stance. Uh, Iyad, it might be because you let your defense minister, Hazem Shaalan, say that Iran is Iraq`s number one enemy! You could see how a thing like that might annoy Tehran a little bit. Not that Iran really has a veto-- pretending that it does may be an attempt to smear the United Iraqi Alliance as themselves puppets of Iran. Allawi also admits to the strategy I suggested Tuesday morning, of attempting to become prime minister by allying with the Kurds and then trying to detach 60 or so members of the UIA.

Al-Hayat, however, suggests that two can play that game. It says that of the 40 deputies in Allawi`s Iraqiyah list, 9 are thinking of bolting and joining the UIA. They include two persons who tilt toward the Sadr Movement, and 7 other members led by Husain Ali Shaalan.

It should be remembered that Allawi would need two thirds of the parliament, or about 182 MPs, to form a government. The UIA can prevent him from succeeding even if only 94 of its 140 deputies stand firm (and this conclusion assumes that Allawi could attact the allegiance not only of 46 UIA deputies but of all of the small parties such as the Sadrist Cadres and Chosen, the Turkmen National Front, the Islamic Action Council, and the Kurdish Islamic Bloc). I`d say Allawi`s task is simply impossible.

Allawi does not count on the moral authority of Grand Ayatollah Sistani, which is what enabled the UIA to be cobbled together. Sistani probably could send envoys to most UIA deputies and argue them out of supporting Allawi. And I suspect that he would do so if he felt it necessary.

Al-Hayat quotes a member of the UIA who says that the delegates who supported Chalabi would not support Allawi, and that the UIA rejects even a cabinet post for him; and that he should just get used to leading a small opposition faction in the parliament.

Persons close to Allawi, in contrast, told the newspaper that the current prime minister remained confident that he could seduce enought UIA members away from their party to form a government.

Gilbert Achcar informs me that the distribution of some of the seats for the religious parties in the United Iraqi Alliance was given in al-Hayat, and kindly provides the figures mentioned:

Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq: 18 seats
Islamic Da`wa Party: 15 seats
Islamic Da`wa Party-Iraq organisation: 9 seats
Islamic Virtue Party: 9 seats
Shia Islamic Council: 13 seats
Faili Kurds: 4 seats
Al-Sadr`s Current: 21 seats

This list accounts for only 81 of the 140 seats, though. It demonstrates that the religious parties were seriously shortchanged in the formation of the United Iraqi Alliance list.

What`s next? If Jaafari can put together a 2/3s majority in parliament, he can have the president and two vice-presidents elected. They in turn will forma presidency council that will appoint a prime minister. He and they will then jointly appoint the cabinet ministers. The final government will need a 51 percent vote of confidence in parliament. (Some commentators are saying that it needs 2/3s approval the way the initial government did, but this is not true. A simple majority can confirm the government in power). Andrew Arato reminds us of the following passages of the interim constitution.


` Article 36.

(A) The National Assembly shall elect a President of the State and two Deputies. They shall form the Presidency Council, the function of which will be to represent the sovereignty of Iraq and oversee the higher affairs of the country. The election of the Presidency Council shall take place on the basis of a single list and by a two-thirds majority of the members’ votes.

Article 38.

(A) The Presidency Council shall name a Prime Minister unanimously, as well as the members of the Council of Ministers upon the recommendation of the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister and Council of Ministers shall then seek to obtain a vote of confidence by simple majority from the National Assembly prior to commencing their work as a government. The Presidency Council must agree on a candidate for the post of Prime Minister within two weeks. In the event that it fails to do so, the responsibility of naming the Prime Minister reverts to the National Assembly. In that event, the National Assembly must confirm the nomination by a two-thirds majority. `

posted by Juan @ [url2/23/2005 06:28:00 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/02/jaafari-slams-hilary-stephen-farrell.html[/url]

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SOUTHLAND`S DESTRUCTIVE STORMS
Sunshine May Get a Chance
# Storms are likely to ease after six days of punishing rains. Mayor Hahn urges President Bush to declare L.A. a disaster area.

Herzliche Grüße an Inferno!

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Was Neues von der Bananenrepublik! Diesmal ist ein Onkel von Bush.

latimes.com

THE NATION
Company`s Work in Iraq Profited Bush`s Uncle
William H.T. `Bucky` Bush earned $450,000 on stock options with defense contractor ESSI.
By Walter F. Roche Jr.
Times Staff Writer
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-na-bucky23…
February 23, 2005

WASHINGTON — The Iraq war helped bring record earnings to St. Louis-based defense contractor Engineered Support Systems Inc., and new financial data show that the firm`s war-related profits have trickled down to a familiar family name — Bush.

William H.T. "Bucky" Bush, uncle of the president and youngest brother of former President George H.W. Bush, cashed in ESSI stock options last month with a net value of nearly half a million dollars.

"Uncle Bucky," as he is known to the president, is on the board of the company, which supplies armor and other materials to U.S. troops. The company`s stock prices have soared to record heights since before the invasion, benefiting in part from contracts to rapidly refit fleets of military vehicles with extra armor.

William Bush exercised options on 8,438 shares of company stock Jan. 18, according to reports filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. He acknowledged in an interview that the transaction was worth about $450,000.

In an earnings report issued Tuesday, the firm disclosed that net earnings for the first quarter ending Jan. 31 reached a record $20.6 million, while quarterly revenue hit $233.5 million, up 20% from a year ago. As a result, the company boosted its projected annual revenue to between $990 million and $1 billion.

William Bush, 66, a onetime St. Louis bank executive and head of an investment firm, joined the board in 2000, eight months before his nephew won the White House.

The president`s uncle said in an interview that he never used his family connections to help the company win contracts.

"I don`t make any calls to the 202 area code," he said, referring to the long-distance dialing code for Washington.

He also said he sought legal advice before accepting appointment to the ESSI board to be certain there would be no problems.

Dan Kreher, vice president of industrial relations for ESSI, said Bush was one of several people added to the company board about five years ago, and that he was selected because he had "a long history of involvement in the local business community. We`ve known him for a long time."

"Having a Bush doesn`t hurt," said Kreher, who acknowledged that the company was routinely engaged in Washington lobbying efforts. But, he said, Democrats, including a party fundraiser, also serve on the panel.

"It certainly doesn`t hurt to have people who know who to talk to," Kreher said, adding that the president`s uncle played no role in winning the firm`s government contracts.

Some of the firm`s Defense Department work has included no-bid, sole-source contracts, including a $48.8-million deal to refurbish military trailers.

Other Iraq-related contracts won by the firm include an $18-million pact awarded early last year under which a Maryland-based subsidiary was picked to provide communications support services to the Coalition Provisional Authority.

In March 2003, in announcing the U.S. Army`s purchase of $19-million worth of its protective shelters for chemical and biological weapons, then-ESSI Chairman and Chief Executive Michael Shanahan stated: "The potential threat of our troops facing a chemical or biological attack during the current conflict in Iraq remains very real."

Other company contracts have raised questions.

Last week, Defense Department officials disclosed that ESSI contracts issued in 2002 with a cumulative value of $158 million had been referred to the Pentagon inspector general`s office for investigation. The contracts were supervised by a former Defense official who was sentenced to prison for improperly aiding another contractor, Boeing Co.

Pentagon Acting Undersecretary Michael Wynne said he had referred the contracts "that appear to have anomalies in them." Wynne and his aides would not elaborate on those anomalies. Other contracts referred for review included pacts with Accenture (formerly called Andersen Consulting), Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

In a briefing with stock analysts Tuesday, Gerald A. Potthoff, ESSI president, played down the significance of the probe, stating that the company contracts were under review simply because they were awarded on a sole-source basis.

He said he was confident it would "have no effect" on the company and that the probe was focused on the actions of government officials, not ESSI.

"We will cooperate fully," he added.

The ESSI contracts now being reviewed by the inspector general came in a series of awards by the U.S. Air Force for a piece of equipment known as a Tunner.

Named after a former Air Force major general, the Tunner is in wide use by the Air Force to swiftly load and unload large military transport aircraft. It can handle 60,000 pounds of cargo at a time.

The Tunner has also proven a valuable workhorse for ESSI, accounting for the bulk of a $35.1-million or 20% boost in its revenues in ESSI`s heavy military division in 2002.

Shortly before the disclosure of the investigation, the Air Force announced that it had awarded the ESSI subsidiary another $9-million contract under the Tunner program.

The company describes itself as "a diversified supplier of high-tech, integrated military electronics, support equipment and logistics services for all branches of America`s armed forces and certain foreign militaries."

Company officials acknowledge the war is an economic boon to the firm.

In its quarterly earnings report a year ago, then-Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Gerald L. Daniels said: "The increasing likelihood for a prolonged military involvement in Southwest Asia by U.S. forces well into 2006 has created a fertile environment for the type of support … products and services that we offer."

Other ESSI products that have seen use in the current conflicts include radar and detection services, field medical stations and field electric generator units.

The company`s record growth has come from increased orders coupled with an aggressive buyout strategy. William Bush`s company, Bush-O`Donnell, was paid $125,000 to serve as a consultant in ESSI`s buyout of a military contractor three years ago.

With about 3,500 employees, some stationed in Iraq, ESSI`s North America operations stretch from Nova Scotia to Florida. Most recently the company announced its purchase of Spacelink International LLC, a Virginia military contractor, for $150.5 million.

SEC filings also cite major contracts with the military in Saudi Arabia and China.

While some of ESSI`s military contracts have been awarded through a competitive bidding process, others have not. Many of its contracts are "indefinite date-indefinite quantity" contracts, under which the size of the contracts depends on the need of the agency.

The company preference for sole-source contracts was evident early this year, with the $37.6-million purchase of Prospective Computer Analysts Inc., an electronic test equipment and engineering services firm. ESSI officials made special note that the Garden City, N.Y., firm had "a lot of sole-source contracts."

William Bush was named to the board of ESSI in 2000, eight months before his nephew was elected president of the United States.

In an interview Tuesday, the uncle said he decided to cash in the options because they would soon expire.

"The deadline was coming up, and we put in a bid on a house in Florida," William Bush said. He said he declared in advance to the company president his intentions to exercise those options.

Asked whether he was troubled by the fact that the company had earned significant revenue from the military engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan, the president`s uncle said he would "prefer there was no business in Iraq. Unfortunately, we live in a troubled world."

He called ESSI an excellent company, and said exercising the options was "certainly not" to express any dissatisfaction with its performance.

"I`m very proud of it. They`ve done a wonderful job," William Bush said.

According to SEC filings, the St. Louis business executive still has options on 45,000 more shares of the company stock. He said the options he cashed in were granted when he first joined the company board.

Bush, who also sits on the company`s audit committee, is paid a little less than $40,000 a year for his board and committee duties, including an annual stockholders meeting scheduled for next week. He and other board member accrue additional stock options annually.

Bush exercised the expiring options shortly after a series of announcements that the company had won additional orders totaling about $77 million to supply kits to re-armor and refurbish military equipment being used by U.S. forces in Iraq. The company has 35 employees stationed in Iraq to install the protective gear.

The company estimates the refurbishing work in Iraq ultimately could bring revenues of $200 million or more.

News of the armoring and refurbishment contracts boosted ESSI`s stock to a record $60.39 per share earlier this year. The stock closed Tuesday at $54.34.

In the conference call with analysts Tuesday, ESSI`s Potthoff expressed optimism that the Bush administration`s proposed $82-billion supplemental defense budget submitted last week could mean substantial additional opportunities for the company in Iraq and elsewhere.

"Personally, I could not be more happy about our company`s prospects," Potthoff told stock analysts.



Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

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latimes.com

NEWS ANALYSIS
U.S.` Prewar Visions Get Further Out of Focus
By Patrick J. McDonnell and Paul Richter
Times Staff Writers
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-assess2…

February 23, 2005

BAGHDAD — Two years ago, as the U.S. planned to march into Baghdad, many in the Bush administration had a vision for Iraq`s first freely elected government in decades. It would be a pro-U.S. regime that would support American military bases, embrace U.S. businesses and serve as a model for democracy in the region.

Now as Ibrahim Jafari seems certain to become Iraq`s new prime minister, the U.S. faces the prospect of dealing with a government whose views may be closer to Tehran`s than to Washington`s. And U.S. officials are left wondering how many of their assumptions will prove true.

The soft-spoken physician who spent nine years as an exile in Iran has lately taken pains to appear as a moderate on the issue of religion in government. He and other members of his United Iraqi Alliance slate have stressed that they have differences with the Iranian theocratic model and that Iraqis need a government that will represent all groups.

"Iraq is actually made of various populations from all nationalities, sects and religions," Jafari said during a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times in the capital. "Nobody can rule Iraq unless he would walk alongside all Iraqis and represent all the Iraqi people."

But some Iraqis and foreign observers note that Jafari heads Iraq`s oldest Islamist party, and they worry he will seek to impose a more religious government than he lets on. They note that he has been lukewarm to the U.S. presence in Iraq and has said he would like to see U.S. troops withdraw once Iraqi forces are trained.

They also recall that the late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini initially disavowed political motives after an Islamic revolution overthrew the shah of Iran in 1979. "All the experts got it wrong in Iran too," said a senior U.S. diplomat here with considerable experience in the region.

Before long, Khomeini was espousing the doctrine of velayat-e-faqih, or rule of religious jurists. The Islamic state has since been a U.S. nemesis and was named three years ago in President Bush`s so-called axis of evil.

The emergence of that doctrine in Iraq would be painful for Washington, especially since the U.S.-led war has cost more than 1,400 American lives and hundreds of billions of dollars.

U.S. officials said Tuesday that they would work with whoever was elected, although they would have preferred interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi or Adel Abdul Mehdi, the interim government`s finance minister.

One senior administration official declined to say how U.S. officials viewed Jafari. "We have a studied neutrality on that," he said.

But officials have cause for concern. Although Jafari has said publicly that he supports human rights and an inclusive government, he also wants religion to play a key role in the country`s affairs. Jafari was one of the Shiite Muslim leaders who walked out during deliberations on Iraq`s transitional law because he feared that Islam would not be made the sole source of law.

Juan Cole, an expert on Iraq at the University of Michigan, said Jafari might not suit the Americans as well as Allawi would have, but he was not expected to be hostile.

"He`ll get along with them," Cole said.

Still, some here worry that Shiite clerics could pressure Jafari. The Khomeini-like image of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the Iranian-born spiritual leader of Iraq`s Shiites, was ubiquitous on campaign posters before the Jan. 30 election for the transitional national assembly. Sistani`s tacit endorsement was considered key to the success of Jafari`s slate.

The assurances by Jafari and other slate leaders of moderation and independence from Iran have failed to mollify fears that Tehran could wield significant influence in the new government. The slate`s two major Shiite parties — Jafari`s Dawa Party and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq — are seen by some Iraqis as Iranian fronts. U.S. officials are convinced that both parties receive financial aid from Iran.

Defense Minister Hazem Sha laan, a secular Shiite, derided the slate as "an Iranian list."

Jafari and other Shiite leaders have noted the Arab character of their slate and say they resent the second-class treatment of Arabs in Iran, which has a Persian majority.

U.S. officials and others here hope that the Shiites` power will be checked by Iraq`s ethnic Kurds, who received the second-largest number of votes in the election. The Kurds, by most accounts, would oppose any Shiite efforts to turn the country toward religious rule.

The Kurds control a bloc of 75 seats in the 275-seat transitional legislature, which will ensure their role as "kingmakers," as one Western official put it. The Shiite slate won 140 seats, well short of the two-thirds needed to win key votes. And that slate, which includes a cross-section of political and religious groups, could fracture, experts warn. Still, there is little question that the Shiite Islamists are in the strongest position as Iraq lurches toward some form of representative democracy.

Shiite leaders have indicated that they plan to kick out the 150,000 U.S. troops when they are no longer needed to fight the mainly Sunni Arab insurgents.

"When there is a self-sufficiency regarding security, then the existence of foreign forces in Iraq, be they in the form of individual troops or in the form of military bases, will not be justified," Jafari said.

That message may hearten some U.S. lawmakers who favor a pullout once Iraqi forces are able to contain the insurgency, a process that could take years. But Jafari`s position would seem to rule out the hope that a stable Iraq would voluntarily host U.S. bases, providing an alternative to Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region.

Western diplomats say the major challenge facing Jafari and the new government is holding the country together.

"In the past," noted another senior Western diplomat, "the Shiite community here has demonstrated an admirable level of self-restraint and a recognition that there are extremists here that want nothing more than to trigger … sectarian strife, and even a civil war."

McDonnell reported from Baghdad and Richter from Washington.



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Für mich kann nur ein PM Erfolg haben, der erstens für Sicherheit im Irak sorgt und zweitens den Abzug der US-Truppen erzwingt.
Und das scheint sich gegeneinander auszuschließen oder es wäre fast ein Wunder, wenn das gelingen würde.
Die Versuche der USA sich 12 Stützpunkte im Irak aufzubauen und den Rest des Iraks den Islamisten zu überlassen, würden zu permanenten Kämpfen gegen diese Stützpunkte führen, besonders dann, wenn die Besitzrechte am Öl an ausländische Firmen gehen würde.

Feb 24, 2005

Pragmatists prevail
By Jim Lobe
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GB24Ak04.html

WASHINGTON - The choice of Ibrahim Jaafari as candidate for prime minister of the majority United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) is seen as an important advance for the more pragmatic forces in the administration of President George W Bush against their adversaries among the neo-conservatives and other hawks.

Jaafari, who won the UIA`s nod after the withdrawal of his only remaining rival and neo-conservative favorite, Ahmad Chalabi, was seen as the most unifying candidate who, unlike Chalabi in particular, has consistently enjoyed the highest public approval ratings in Iraq of any major politician.

He is also seen as the most eager of the religious Shi`ite candidates to reach out to the Sunni community in hopes of achieving a political settlement to the still raging insurgency.

"It is certainly true that Jaafari has a rhetoric of inclusion that stretches even to the people of Fallujah, whereas Chalabi wanted to punish all the Sunni Arabs who had had anything to do with the Ba`ath Party," noted University of Michigan Middle East historian Juan Cole.

This appears to accord well with the growing sentiment within the officer corps of the US military in Iraq, who have come to believe that there is no military solution to the mainly Sunni insurgency, and that both Washington and the new Iraqi government must try harder to drive a wedge between "nationalist" and "Islamist" insurgents by providing political incentives to the former.

That message was underlined by a Time magazine report over the weekend that US diplomats and intelligence officers have recently been in direct, albeit unofficial, contact with "former regime elements" in the insurgency for several months and that at least two meetings between US military officers and one insurgent chief have been held recently.

"Any deal with the insurgents would be up to the new government, but embassy officials say they believe that reaching an accord should be the new government`s top priority," according to Time reporter Michael Ware. "Behind the scenes, the US is encouraging Sunni leaders and the insurgents to talk with the government."

Despite working closely with Washington in the runup to the war, and in both the post-war Iraqi Governing Council and the interim government headed by Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, Jaafari, a leader of the Da`wa (Islamic Call) Party, has managed to maintain greater independence than other former exiles.

Jaafari, 55, worked as a doctor in Iraq until 1980 when he, like many other leaders of his party and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), fled to Iran. He lived there for 10 years before moving to London, where he lived until the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Jaafari`s relative popularity is explained by a number of factors, according to recent analyses, including his having lived in Iraq longer than any of his rival exiles. These include Chalabi, who left when he was still a young teenager, SCIRI`s Adil Abdel-Mahdi, whose free-market liberalism endeared him to some sectors in the Bush administration, and Allawi, who formed his own list which captured only about 14% of the vote, compared to the UIA`s nearly 50%. Like Da`wa, the SCIRI participated in the UIA. Jaafari still faces a challenge from Allawi for the premiership, but is expected to easily prevail.

Unlike the other three major candidates, Jaafari`s family was not part of the upper-class Shi`ite families from Baghdad, but rather led a middle-class life in Karbala. Also considered personally the most religious of the other candidates, he has not hesitated to point out that his wife is also a doctor.

"She goes to the hospital and cuts open people`s abdomens," he told the Boston Globe last week. "How could I support a law that says she can`t drive a car? It`s not logical."

Nonetheless, Da`wa insists that Iraq`s constitution, which must now be drafted by the new National Assembly, be based primarily if not exclusively on Islamic law, a point about which both the Kurds and secular Arabs are particularly concerned. He has also said that no laws should be passed "that contradict Islam".

Still, Jaafari is seen as the religious Shi`ite leader most inclined to reach out to both parties. "I wouldn`t say he`s secular, or religious either," Tony Dodge, a British expert on Iraq, told the Christian Science Monitor. He also noted that Da`wa appears more indigenous to Iraqis than SCIRI, which is more closely identified with Tehran.

But it is the perception of his independence from the US, and particularly the harsher features of the occupation, that may make him the most credible politician, not only to his co-religionists in the Shi`ite community which, according to recent polls, has become increasingly disillusioned with the US presence despite its election performance, but to other key sectors, including the Sunnis, whose boycott of the January 30 election was more effective than had been predicted.

In an interview with United Press International last August, Jaafari made clear that he did not approve of last April`s assault by US Marines on Fallujah, which, until a second campaign last November, was the main stronghold of both the Islamist and Sunni insurgents.

"I believe that it is necessary to deal politically with what is happening in Fallujah because it is the best solution to end military confrontation and avoid its dangerous consequences," he said. "If we fail in the first attempt, we should try a second and a third time until we achieve the aspired results based on our keenness to establish a new Iraq free of violence and which confronts violence with political solutions."

He similarly objected publicly to the US campaign against Shi`ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr`s militia in Najaf last August.

"New Iraq should be politically motivated and capable of accepting the other, by using all means except the military option," he said. "We might face military challenges in certain times, but it is important that resorting to weapons be the exception and not the rule."

This emphasis on political means to deal with insurgents is deeply frustrating to the neo-conservatives and other hawks in the administration, who hailed the virtual leveling of Najaf and later Fallujah as decisive victories over the insurgents and object lessons for those who would challenge the US, not just in Iraq but throughout the region.

US military commanders and intelligence agencies on the ground, however, were less sanguine, noting privately that they may have succeeded only in dispersing the rebels and moving Iraq closer to civil war. That assessment appears to have been behind the recent contacts.

"Sunnis are an integral portion of Iraqis, and we will include them in discussions," Jaafari said after his nomination was announced Tuesday.

That`s also what the pragmatists in the State Department and the US military appear to be doing.

(Inter Press Service)

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The unmaking of the neo-conservative mind
By Spengler
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GB23Aa01.html

When US president Ronald Reagan called actor John Wayne a "great American", a critic offered that Wayne merely played great Americans, or rather, one might add, the sort of people Reagan thought were great Americans. A solecism of the same kind is Professor Gertrude Himmelfarb`s praise for the late Lionel Trilling as "the most eminent intellectual figure of his time" in the February 14 Weekly Standard. Trilling merely wrote about great intellects, or rather, one might add, the sort of people Himmelfarb thinks were great intellects. John Wayne played Davy Crockett, the Tennessee adventurer, while Trilling wrote about T S Eliot, the Anglo-Catholic modernist.
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By chance, the Weekly Standard website posted Himmelfarb`s souvenir, "The Trilling Imagination", just as my excoriation of T S Eliot (Dead Peoples Society) appeared on February 14. She is married to Irving Kristol, the "godfather" of neo-conservatism; their son is Weekly Standard editor William Kristol. I had dismissed Eliot as the junkyard dog of 20th-century Catholic culture, a syncretist who looked through High Church forms to the paganism underneath.

In the paranoid imagination of left-wing critics, the neo-conservatives form a network of Leo Strauss acolytes infiltrating the United States` seat of power, and guide the world`s only superpower into imperialist adventures. On the contrary, they are fighting political and cultural battles of a past generation which neither were won nor lost, but merely became irrelevant. Like T S Eliot, the neo-conservatives play at faith rather than live in the world of faith, a stance that eliminates their relevance to a world in which faith politics dominate.

Himmelfarb`s fascination with Eliot is illustrative. "I was a budding Trotskyite in college," she writes, "when I came across Trilling`s 1940 essay on T S Eliot in Partisan Review. I had read only a few of Eliot`s poems ... but I had never read Eliot`s essays ... (I) was, however, a faithful reader of Partisan Review, which was, in effect, the intellectual and cultural organ of Trotskyites (or crypto-Trotskyites, or ex-Trotskyites, or more broadly, the anti-Stalinist Left)." The most tangible legacy of Partisan Review was art critic Clement Greenberg`s promotion of Jackson Pollock, which made respectable the random splattering of paint by an inebriated boor.

T S Eliot was an ex-Trotskyite`s idea of what a religious conservative must look like, and that is how he appeared to Lionel Trilling then, and still to Professor Himmelfarb today. The circumstance recalls the wife of Aldous Huxley, who remarked that he was a stupid man`s idea of what a clever man looked like. Eliot was a ragpicker of defunct cultures, and an convert out of love for religious syncretism. He was not believer, but with ichthyic frigidity believed in the need for belief.

To Himmelfarb, Eliot`s 1939 essay "The Idea of a Christian Society" was the antipode to Marxism. Eliot writes: "The fundamental objection to fascist doctrine, the one which we conceal from ourselves because it might condemn ourselves as well, is that it is pagan." Writes Himmelfarb:

Where others found Eliot interesting in spite of his politics, Trilling found him interesting because of his politics: a politics not only conservative but religious, and not only religious but identifiably Christian. And this, to readers who were, as Trilling said in his usual understated manner, "probably hostile to religion" (and many of whom, he might have added, like himself, were Jewish). Where John Stuart Mill had cited Coleridge`s On the Constitution of Church and State as a corrective to Benthamism, Lionel Trilling recommended Eliot`s The Idea of a Christian Society as a corrective to Marxism.

That is well and good, but what is it that Eliot considers to be Christian? In his 1948 essay, "Notes Towards the Definition of Culture", he writes that "bishops are a part of English culture, and horses and dogs are a part of English religion".

There is an aspect in which we can see a religion as the whole way of life of a people [emphasis original], from birth to grave, from morning to night and even in sleep, and that way of life is also its culture ... It includes all the characteristic activities and interests of a people: Derby Day, Henley Regatta, Cowes, the 12th of August, a cup final, the dog races, the pin table, the dart board, Wensleydale cheese, boiled cabbage cut into sections, beetroot in vinegar, 19th-century Gothic churches and the music of Elgar. The reader can make his own list. And then we have to face the strange idea that what is part of our culture is also a part of our lived religion.

There are religions, to be sure, that are indistinguishable from the morning-to-night activity of a people; as I wrote on another occasion, the Shi`ite Islam of Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani is one of these (Why Islam baffles America, April 16, 2004). Christianity is not one of these. It is not a folk-religion, rooted in the popular culture of a people. On the contrary: Christianity is a reproach to the daily life of the people, as radical as the commandments of Moses were to the Israelites corrupted by the paganism of Egypt.

To confound religion with culture is consistent, though, with Eliot`s artistic method. "What attracted Eliot to [Anglo-]Catholicism," I wrote last week, "was not so much the religious content, but the fact that Catholicism allows the corpses of ancient pagan cultures to stare up through the still waters of the Church. Nostalgia for dead cultures, their songs, myths and legends, was the raw material for the poetry of a generation that already had seen the apocalypse of Western culture in World War I."

To put matters another way: Christianity is "what T S Eliot almost believed", in the felicitous title of a critique by Joseph Bottum, now the Weekly Standard`s literary editor. Eliot "has confused the experience of faith with the experience of God - or at least he has confused his own waiting for faith with the faithful`s waiting for God", wrote Bottum, quoting Eliot:

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and love and hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

"This," Bottum concluded, "is not faith`s difficult search for understanding, but understanding`s impossible search for faith. And all that remains for the poet is a delicate, esthetic, self-conscious almost-spirituality - a detached and wistful watching of himself, watching himself, watching."

T S Eliot, Bottum observes, made religion respectable for the avant-garde:

For an entire generation of believers Eliot stood as an icon and his faith as a watchword. Born to an age of avant-garde art and thought that defined itself most clearly by its rejection of faith in God, Eliot with his gradual - and public - conversion made it respectable again for believers to believe.

Respectability for the avant-garde explains why the likes of Lionel Trilling would take Eliot as an icon of religious conservatism. Trilling and the intellectuals of Partisan Review remained enthralled by the cleverness of their own paint-splatterings in cultural matters. Unfortunately, they did not like the consequences of paint-spattering in the field of politics - although it must be said in all fairness that Adolf Hitler was a much better painter than Jackson Pollock, the Frankenstein monster created by the Partisan Review.

Modernism no longer matters. The obscurantism of Eliot`s poetry, the cacophony of Arnold Schoenberg`s music, the random idiocies of Jackson Pollock`s painting and their ilk have eroded the popular audience for modern poetry, music and painting. Popular religion has found its own art forms, and has simply left the High Modernists behind like the bleached bones of oxen at the side of the trail westward. Those who play at faith, like Eliot, or for that matter the neo-conservatives, simply are not part of today`s discussion.

The Partisan Review refugees cannot give their fixation with High Modernism, which believed that clever artists can reinvent their medium at will and impose new forms upon the unwashed public. The same narcissism underlies their obsession with Thomas Hobbes and Niccolo Machiavelli, that is, with the enlightened political science of manipulation. Time has long since passed them by. What men believe down to their pores and capillaries, because they can believe nothing else and still face the morrow, is the great force in today`s politics.

As I wrote about the Straussians previously (Why radical Islam might defeat the West, July 8, 2003):

Strauss has become something of a bore. The good professor (I mean this sincerely) hung his political-science hat on Hobbes, who threw out the traditional concept of God-given rights of man. He derived the social contract instead from man`s brute instinct for self-preservation ... History exposes Hobbes`s "self-preservation instinct" as a chimera. If men have no more than physical self-preservation, self-disgust will stifle them.

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


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Latest Fatality: Feb 23, 2005

Meldungen aus dem Irak:
http://icasualties.org/oif/

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Long Live Drugs And Politics
Hunter S. Thompson is dead. But what about his brand of raw, bloody, beautifully debauched journalism?
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/200…

Wednesday, February 23, 2005

I am not nearly stoned enough.

I should at this moment have, at the very least, roughly four Vicodin and three Valium and two giant nuggets of phenobarbital and a few whippets and a canister of ether and a tab of blotter acid and half an ounce of premium hash and a nice snifter of gin playing naked volleyball in my addled brain right now to properly pay homage to the late great Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, which is why I ain`t touching this HST legacy thing with a 10-foot line of premium Colombian blow.

I ain`t touching it because it`s sad and fraught and would probably fail to do the man and his masterfully debauched writing any sort of true and appropriately inappropriate justice, and given how the fine San Francisco Chronicle, like all respectable newspapers, generally disallows stream-of-consciousness fire hoses of frenetic Thompson-like curse words in its publications, I am, shall we say, a bit hamstrung.

And to be perfectly honest, I`m tragically underversed in the Thompson worldview, not really a disciple and not all that devoted to the hard-boiled writer`s life and times and the guns and his hellish relationship with law enforcement, the drugs (always, always the drugs) and Aspen lair and the feverish, obsessive devotion to politics and the Wild Turkey and the larger-than-life persona, and beyond the utter genius of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and bits of "Generation of Swine" and "The Rum Diary," I have spent insufficient time with the Legacy to perform the beautifully raunchy verbal epitaph HST so f--ing well deserves.

But one thing must be said, and said again, and repeated ad infinitum, screamed and lamented and slapped across the face of modern journalism in the wake of Thompson`s brutal and sudden but somehow morbidly appropriate exit from this bittersweet existence and upon his ceremonial entrance into the next, a place where, we just know, the hedonism runs hot and hotter and the guns are plentiful and the drugs are insanely potent and all the hookers wear Lycra and look like Jenna Jameson and can quote Nixon`s resignation speech while casually sucking the rust off a tailpipe.

Forget the legacy thing. Forget the "this man single-handedly changed modern journalism" thing. It`s only partially true, anyway, given how the period when Thompson nailed the political world to the wall and held a rusty Bowie knife to its throat was nearly 30 years ago, long before the Internet and way before Nipplegate and far before most cutely agitated bloggers were even born and back when Dubya was just knee-high to a collegiate cocaine habit.

Here`s what needs to be said, what`s worth lamenting most: there are no new Thompsons. There are no new snarling fierce-eyed one-of-a-kind journalists covering politics and the national agenda with such radical and nasty and brilliant aplomb and with such an explicit and enthusiastic disregard for standard journalistic rules and tropes, all via anything resembling a national media outlet.

In other words, while it`s true what all the staid J-school chairs and Thompson`s fellow journalists are right now saying about how HST did indeed blow the door open for a whole new breed of blast-furnace writers who merely disguised themselves as journalists to get a goddamn press pass, tragically few have dared follow HST through that door.

There are no new journalistic radicals willing to take such a risky, careening road to fame and glory. There is a tragic lack of HST-style fearlessness in modern journalism. No, we don`t need another Thompson per se; after all, the man broke the mold. But we could definitely use a few more heavyweight writers willing to take up arms, tattoo iconoclast on their tongues and scream their defiance of all things decorous and punctual and grammatically decent.

It is 2005. Fear and paranoia and snide FCC crackdowns and what I shall henceforth call the New Trepidation rule the journalism schools and newspapers today. Few if any young writers are willing the rip the breastplate off the political helldog and yank out its dung-blackened heart and hold it aloft for all to see, and then tick off a list of brilliant, drunken and completely accurate descriptive profanities and then laugh a hacking, cackling laugh and slam a shot of bourbon and stomp away to find some good cigars.

You might rightly ask, But is this what journalism really needs? Expletives and guns and drugs? Don`t we already have enough of that with the military and Lynne Cheney and the Catholic Church?

Shouldn`t journalism, in the wake of so much bland me-too political coverage and obvious liberal/conservative bias and corporate media consolidation and your inability to click on any major media Web site right now and read anything dramatically different than what any other major media Web site is offering right now, strive for accuracy and respect and something akin to that most elusive of slippery hammerheaded snakes, objective truth?

To which I can only reply, you wish. Objective truth is, of course, the great white myth of our time. It simply does not exist. The New York Times and Le Monde and all those CNN/MSNBC/Fox ticker-tape newsfeeds scrolling across the bottom of the TV like some sort of never-ending dribble of drool flowing forth from the mouth of Dick Cheney`s proctologist, we know this does not speak of true reality. This is not How It Really Is. Or, rather, these media represent only a fragment, a sliver, a whisper of darker and more complex and insidious truths, far underneath.

The vast majority of modern journalism is, after all, about as dangerous and daring and funky and raw and humanly accessible as Paris Hilton stuck headfirst in a giant pool of blood oranges and Veuve Clicquot. We simply cannot relate.

The stuffed-penguin suits and the prepared speeches and the bad toupees, the bulls-- White House press conferences and the lies about war and the utter lack of accountability in anything BushCo says and does, this is only the surface. This is the gloss and the sheen and the highly reflective coating designed to blind you to the more bitter, debauched, wondrous, cretinous realities.

And Thompson, maybe more than any journalist in the past 50 years, did more to write those realities, grip them by the throat and pin them down with a high-powered rifle and threaten them with Asian genital torture and vicious armpit tickling, all while smacking them upside the head with his personal thesaurus wrought from the secret love den of H.L. Mencken and Ambrose Bierce and Jim Beam.

Thompson may have died lonely, in pain, miserable. He may have lived a bitterly restless life, lost and unhappy and ever seeking some sort of solace, a reprieve from a world full of cretins and snakes and river rats and Richard Nixon and all of Nixon`s evil flying-monkey spawn, many of which now inhabit the White House. We don`t really know, and maybe never will.

What we do know is, the door Thompson helped blow open is now nearly completely sealed up again, spackled over with the fresh concrete of fear and reinforced with iron bars and snide FCC regulations and heavily guarded by the least accountable and most secretive and violent and warmongering government in American history. The radical free speech HST embodied, the biting and ferocious (and ultimately insightful and telling) interrogation of the various thugs of government, this approach is no longer tolerated.

Only the tiniest openings remain. Only the slimmest slivers of light eke through. The era of raw open-mouthed bitingly hilarious New Journalism in major media is giving way to one of fearful reportage and shrugging sameness and prim adjective clauses sans wit or kick or rigid middle fingers, all undercut by the uptight quasi-religious hypocrisy of the Right, worse than Nixon, worse than Vietnam, worse than you want to imagine.

So then. Do yourself a favor, reread "Fear and Loathing," flip through "Generation of Swine," realize how relevant, hilarious, debauched, glorious, sodden with crazed half-truths and drunken epiphanies and wicked observations HST`s observations still are. Wave high the flag of indignation. Scream the need for more iconoclastic voices. And laugh your ass off. This much you can do.


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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Company`s Work in Iraq Profited Bush`s Uncle

Bush Says Talk of Attacking Iran `Ridiculous`.

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Wednesday, February 23, 2005

War News for Wednesday, February 23, 2005
http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

There are some who, uh, feel like that, you know, the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is: bring `em on. We got the force necessary to deal with the security situation."
- George W. Bush, July 2, 2003

Bring ‘em on: Two people killed, 14 wounded in Mosul car bombing. One civilian shot dead by US troops in Mosul when he approached their convoy too closely.

Bring ‘em on: One Iraqi police officer killed, one wounded in attack by gunman in Kirkuk.

Bring ‘em on: One US soldier killed in roadside bombing in Tuz Khurmatu.

Bring ‘em on: Two Iraqi civilians killed and one seriously wounded in RPG attack near Kirkuk. Dawa Party local representative assassinated in Moqdadiyah.

Bring ‘em on: Three Iraqis killed in Haqlaniya when they drove toward a building occupied by US Marines during the offensive into Haqlaniya presently being conducted.

Vehicle accidents: One US Marine and one US soldier dead in two separate vehicle accidents.

Operation River Blitz: U.S. Marines fought their way into the insurgent stronghold of Haqlaniya on Wednesday, intensifying a campaign to bring Iraq`s restive western province of Anbar under control.

A column of tanks and armoured vehicles rolled into the town, about 240 km (150 miles) west of Baghdad on the Euphrates river, before dawn and were immediately ambushed.

Marines` forces responded with heavy machinegun fire and several tank rounds.

"We were hit by an IED (improvised explosive device), a daisy chain (three IEDs linked together) and then we took a rocket propelled grenade," said Sergeant Larry Long, speaking as occasional shots and blasts echoed across the western desert.

Guerilla profile: Ali (not his real name) tries to appear calm, though he is clearly concerned, his eyes darting apprehensively around my hotel room. It always surprises me how nervous fighters are when I meet them--they assume that if I`m with the US military, I`ve got unseen backup somewhere. But the man who has set up the meeting is someone we both trust, and he knows that if anything goes awry, things will be very bad for his family. These are the grounds on which we`ve decided to meet. I try to put Ali at ease, but he makes me nervous. Hiba, the translator I work with, is downright frightened. It`s not hard to understand why--without prompting, Ali launches into tales of murder and mayhem.

"We have boys as young as 13 fighting with us," Ali says. "Some of them we use to tell us where American troops are, others we give grenades and they throw them at Humvees and Bradleys. We recently killed a man who owned a uniform company because he was making uniforms for the Iraqi army. We kidnapped a cousin of Mowaffak al-Rubaie [national security adviser for Iyad Allawi`s provisional government] and killed him.... There are so many stories of operations. Four days ago we killed four police officers. We warned them three times to quit. We have agents in the government, in the police."


Garbage collector: Scott Walton studied government history in college. The U.S. Army trained him as an armor officer. He knew nothing about water-treatment plants or electrical substations.

But in his year as a cavalry company commander in Iraq, Capt. Edward S. Walton has spent as much time dealing with electrical power, sewage and garbage collection as he has fighting the insurgency. He`s now a resident expert in what the Army calls SWET — sewage, water, electricity and trash.

Soldiers such as Walton are at the forefront of a long, tedious and often frustrating endeavor. Building water-treatment plants and setting up garbage-collection routes is hardly glamorous, and work is regularly brought to a halt by insurgents. But the infrastructure projects are the third pillar of the U.S. exit strategy, along with battling insurgents and training Iraqi forces.

Journalists leave: Italy`s foreign correspondents in Iraq left or were leaving the country Tuesday after Rome warned of threats against the media and urged them to return home, a Foreign Ministry official said.

"They have all left or they are in the process of doing so," the official said, adding that he believed about 20 Italian journalists had been in Iraq at the end of last month.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, one of President Bush`s key allies in the Iraq war, said the journalists had been urged to quit the country based on information from Italian intelligence services.

Liberated women: Nearly two years after the invasion of Iraq, women there are no better off than under the rule of ousted dictator Saddam Hussein, the human rights group Amnesty International said in a report released today.

The report, ``Iraq -- Decades of Suffering," said that while the systematic repression under Hussein had ended, there was an increase in murder and sexual abuse, including some abuse by US forces.

Washington asserted that Hussein`s ouster would free Iraqis from oppression and set them on the road to democracy. But Amnesty International said postwar insecurity had left women at risk of violence and curtailed their freedoms.

Ibrahim al-Jaafari

Profile: He is a soft-spoken general practitioner whose life`s work has been guiding a secretive Islamic party in exile in Iran and Britain. It has made him resolute and cautious. He doesn`t even use his real family name.

Now the ascetic man in the background, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, will likely end up as the prime minister of Iraq.

The name of al-Jaafari`s Dawa party loosely translates as "Islamic Call" or "Islamic Propagation." While his priorities are protecting the rights of all citizens and ending the war that has claimed tens of thousands of lives, Islam is at the center of his party`s vision for the country.

As a politician, Jaafari presents a blend of a secular style, human-rights rhetoric, and commitment to Islamic values that sometimes seem contradictory to Western observers.

Potential conflicts: Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shiite doctor with an Islamist bent, was chosen Tuesday by the victorious Shiite alliance as its candidate to become Iraq`s new prime minister. The decision may well open a period of protracted and rancorous negotiations with a coalition of secular leaders intent on sharply curtailing Dr. Jaafari`s powers or blocking him and his clerical-backed coalition.

Ayad Allawi, the current prime minister, and Barham Salih, a Kurdish politician and deputy prime minister, said in separate interviews on Tuesday that without guarantees renouncing sectarianism and embracing Western democratic ideals they were poised to block Dr. Jaafari`s nomination and possibly peel off enough members from the Shiite`s United Iraqi Alliance to form a government of their own.

Indeed, initial indications were that a potentially polarizing battle was possible, one that could expose the deep fissures in Iraqi society that have been held in check since the fall of Saddam Hussein. Those fissures not only cut across sectarian and ethnic lines but also track a wide disagreement about the nature of the Iraqi state: whether it should be religious or secular, centrally led or governed by a federal system, allied to Iran or anchored in ties to the West.

Homecomings

One in six: For 14 months while stationed in Iraq, the battered Illinois National Guard 1544th Transportation Company had endured more than 100 mortar attacks and had driven more than 580,000 hostile miles transporting supplies and ammunition.

But while the 1544th`s battles in Iraq are done, the war is still not over for them and this community. Over the next few weeks and even months, in scores of individual homes here and in neighboring towns, returning veterans and their families will be quietly struggling try to deal with the hidden scars of the war.

According to the military, one of every six service members will return from Iraq with a mental disorder, and some experts believe the number could be even higher. Twenty-three percent of Iraq veterans treated at Veterans Affairs facilities have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Shoshana Johnson: She often asks herself why her life was spared.

Surviving 22 days as a prisoner of war in Iraq has been a burden to her soul, the impetus to live an honorable life as she raises a child.

Shoshana Johnson, the United States` first black female prisoner of war, spoke boldly Tuesday of her capture after an ambush to her convoy in Nasiriyah on March 23, 2003. Johnson, a cook, was shot in the ankle as she scrambled for cover underneath a truck.

The infamous ambush received national attention, producing two protagonists: Johnson and Jessica Lynch, a 19-year-old soldier who became the nation`s most famous POW and a media darling who netted $1 million in a book deal.

Scumsuckers

Sick: Military police are investigating a hoax in which a man wearing an Army dress uniform falsely told the wife of a soldier that her husband had been killed in Iraq.

Investigators are trying to determine why the man delivered the notice and whether he was a soldier or a civilian wearing a uniform.

"Whatever motivation was behind it, it was a sick thing to do," Ft. Stewart spokesman Lt. Col. Robert Whetstone said Tuesday.

Heartless: Officials with the Department of Homeland Security are warning the public about two new Iraq-related Internet scams, including one directed at the relatives of fallen U.S. soldiers.

"These new Internet fraud schemes are among the worst we have ever encountered," said Michael J. Garcia, assistant secretary of homeland security for immigration and customs enforcement. "Most troubling is the fact that some are targeting the relatives of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq. We are also concerned about the fact that these criminals are impersonating (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents and referring to ICE`s official Web site in an effort to steal money from Americans who have lost loved ones."

Foreign Affairs

The diplomat: President George Bush`s attempt to heal the rift with Europe on Iraq was marred by fresh differences over the role of Nato.

Tony Blair joined Mr Bush in hailing the alliance as the "cornerstone" of the trans-Atlantic relationship, under repair in the wake of the war.

But French President Jacques Chirac backed German suggestions that Nato should take a back seat to the European Union.

Mr Bush hit back with a warning that the "most successful alliance in the history of the world" must not be taken for granted.

And in an echo of US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld`s dig at "old Europe", he pointedly said "new" East European members did not do so.

Problems for Blair: The full picture of how the government manipulated the legal justification for war, and political pressure placed on its most senior law officer, is revealed in the Guardian today.

Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary and leader of the Commons, yesterday described the Guardian`s disclosure as alarming. "It dramatically reveals the extent to which the legal opinion on the war was the product of a political process." he said.

Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, said the government`s position had been seriously undermined. "The substance of the attorney general`s advice, and the process by which it was partially published, simply do not stand up to scrutiny," he said.

A happy member of the coalition of the willing: Pakistan has issued new rules of engagement permitting its Army to fire at US forces that cross the border from Afghanistan without coordinating first, according to a report contributed to the magazine ‘American Conservative’ by a former CIA officer.

Philip Giraldi, now an international security consultant and writer of intelligence matters, writes in the February 28 issue of the magazine’s ‘Deep Background’ column that “President Musharraf has been receiving angry reports from his military that US forces have been engaging in hot pursuit across the border in violation of bilateral agreements.

Earlier Giraldi, quoting Seymour Hersch, reported in ‘Intelligence Brief,’ a newsletter he co-edits that the White House has given the Pentagon permission “to operate unilaterally in a number of countries where there is a perception of a clear and evident terrorist threat,” including Algeria, Sudan, Yemen, Syria, Malaysia and Tunisia. The chain of command reportedly includes Donald Rumsfeld and two of his deputies.

Another happy ally: The hottest selling book in Turkey is a thriller that portrays a fictional war between the United States and Turkey.

The book describes a surprise U.S. attack on its longtime ally and fellow NATO member touched off by a clash between American and Turkish troops in northern Iraq.

Staggered by the simultaneous bombing of Ankara and Istanbul, Turkey turns to the European Union and Russia for help.

The novel, "Metal Storm" or "Metal Firtina," has proved popular even among senior Turkish government officials and has sparked its own war of words between the two countries, striking a nerve at a time when relations are strained over real events.

"The fact that it is being read so widely among the military and Foreign Ministry quarters is of concern to us," said a high-ranking U.S. diplomat in Ankara, the Turkish capital. "It reflects a certain underlying attitude, a hostility to the U.S."

(Link via War and Piece. Thanks!)

The American System of Justice

Sibel Edmonds: The Department of Justice has abandoned its claim that allegations made by a fired FBI translator are secret, paving the way for a court case that will air embarrassing allegations about incompetence, poor security and possible espionage in the translation unit of the Bureau`s Washington Field Office.

At issue are the claims of Sibel Edmonds, a contract translator for the FBI hired in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Edmonds reported that many of those hired to work in the unit could barely speak English; that they left secure laptop computers lying around while they went to lunch; that they took classified material home with them; and -- even more disturbing -- that one co-worker had undeclared contacts with a foreign organization that was under FBI surveillance.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Sibel Edmonds case, this article is well worth reading (and in the Moonie Times, too! Will wonders never cease?). If our pathetic excuse for a media gives this case the airing it deserves a whole bunch of Bush’s 9-11 derelictions will come into public view. But it is equally important for the panalopy of sins it spotlights in the aftermath of 9-11: the abuse of power to cover up mistakes, improper classification of embarrassing documents, the attempt to declare information already released to the public domain retroactively classified, usurpation of powers belonging to the legislative branch…


Ahmed Abu Ali: Attorneys for the Justice Department appeared before a federal judge in Washington this month and asked him to dismiss a lawsuit over the detention of a U.S. citizen, basing their request not merely on secret evidence but also on secret legal arguments. The government contends that the legal theory by which it would defend its behavior should be immune from debate in court. This position is alien to the history and premise of Anglo-American jurisprudence, which assumes that opposing lawyers will challenge one another`s arguments.

Ahmed Abu Ali was arrested in June 2003 in Saudi Arabia. He and his family claim the arrest took place at the behest of U.S. officials who, though unable to bring a case against him, have encouraged the Saudis to keep him locked up. The facts are murky, and Judge John D. Bates refused in December to dismiss the case, writing that he needed more information before he could decide whether a U.S. court has jurisdiction.

Since then, the U.S. government has acted to frustrate all reasonable searches for answers. It has moved to stay discovery based on secret evidence. It has proposed adding to the facts at Judge Bates`s disposal by submitting secret evidence that Mr. Abu Ali`s attorneys would have no opportunity to challenge. Most recently, it urged that the case be dismissed on the basis, yet again, of secret evidence -- this time supplemented with what a Justice Department lawyer termed "legal argument [that] itself cannot be made public without disclosing the classified information that underlies it."

This one’s a honey too. Here the Bush administration is essentially trying to eliminate a basis of our judicial system – the right to know of what you are accused and to challenge those accusations with arguments of fact. It is simply astonishing that these cases are so little known, much less discussed.


Commentary

Editorial: There is a new government taking shape in Iraq, and that is important. But it cannot overshadow the violence that continues to plague the land.

The impressive turnout in the Jan. 30 election, while in direct defiance of terrorists trying to prevent a new government from forming, does not appear to have discouraged them. More than 90 people were killed last weekend during holy days for Shi`ite Muslims, who through the elections have replaced the minority Sunnis as the nation`s leaders.

These kinds of things will not magically halt when a constitution is written and put to a vote in October. The Sunnis show no sign of accepting defeat, either militarily or democratically. There are now 155,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, and it appears they will be there in like numbers for years to come.

Comment: Jim Wilson understands how it is for most of us. We`re busy. We`re not being directly affected by what`s going on in far-off Iraq.

"Most are just living their lives," he said. "Maybe they catch a blurb at the end of the newscast about some kid who`s been killed. They stop for a second and say, `That`s a shame.` Then they`re off to go out for dinner or to a Timberwolves game."

That`s not the way it is for people such as Jim and Gayle Wilson of Wayzata. Their son, Cpl. John Wilson, is somewhere in Iraq. There`s not a day that goes by that the Wilsons aren`t offering up "a million prayers" for his safety. Not a meal that goes by that they don`t talk about their son. Where is he? Is he safe? How much longer before he comes home?

Casualty Reports

Local story: Elk Grove Village, IL, Marine killed in Al Anbar province during his third tour of duty in Iraq.

Local story: North Little Rock, AK, soldier who died in Iraq of non-combat related injuries is laid to rest.

Local story: Phoenix, AZ, soldier killed in bomb attack in Tal Afar while serving his second tour of duty in Iraq.

Local story: Hardin County, KY, soldier killed in non-combat related incident north of Baghdad.
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George W. Bush, Europe`s Godfather in Spite of Himself
By Alain Duhamel
http://www.liberation.fr/page.php?Article=277621

Libération

Wednesday 23 February 2005

In order to take root, the feeling of identity needs several factors to come together at once: the perception of common interests, the pursuit of collective ambitions, finally, a few solid adversaries, or, at least, vigorous resistance and opposition. The European Union is finally beginning to simultaneously fulfill all these conditions. With regard to international commerce or the Euro, for example, the member states involved now know that their interests coincide and are even inextricably linked. Moreover, Europe desires more and more to acquire an international personality, to defend objectives as diverse as the Kyoto protocol, the creation of a Palestinian state neighboring an Israeli state living in security, or the progressive creation of a professional European army.

The only missing element was the need for a counter-model: that`s the vocation that the Soviet Union fulfilled with an incomparable effectiveness for a long time, as the European Union emerged as an entity opposite the Soviet Union. The collapse of the Muscovite Empire left a vacuum; George W. Bush fills it in his turn, certainly on a quite different scale, with very different attitudes towards Europeans, with values, methods, and intentions radically different from those of the old USSR, but which have, from a European perspective, a similar function. The Soviet Union constituted a military, ideological, and political threat for Europe that was brutal and constant, that was made concrete by invasions and a terrifying nuclear panoply. The United States settles for aspiring to global hegemony, marginalizing the United Nations, rejecting a multi-polar world and seeking to impose, problem by problem, the formation of coalitions over which, by happy coincidence, it systematically presides. Faced with this imperial, not totalitarian - an appreciable difference - but nonetheless authoritarian, Republic, Europe has but a single alternative: unite or obey.

During the Bill Clinton era, the United States` imperial strategy operated with a virile but seductive style. With George W. Bush, the rules of the game changed: the President of the United States presented himself as the Commander-in-Chief of the West. Europe had to choose between obedience and disloyalty. It was George W. Bush`s first approach, the White House man calling out orders during his first term. He proclaimed the validity of unilateralism and preventive war, acted in agreement with his principles, attacking Iraq and the indefensible Saddam Hussein, commanding Europe to take his side, then, when he encountered resistance, undertaking to divide Europe with a rustic efficiency. Since the European Union collectively refused to adhere to his bellicose strategy, George W. Bush broke it in two, enlisting the "New Europe," and ostracizing the "Old Europe." The result did not meet his expectations. If the ever-constant Great Britain phlegmatically followed in his footsteps, if the ten new member states from the East waded into his wake, if the liberal populist governments of Silvio Berlusconi and José María Aznar competed with one another in their zeal, France, Germany, and Belgium stood firm against him, and, miraculously, a massively refractory European public opinion emerged. What the European Council of Heads of Government never was able to do, George W. Bush succeeded in achieving: the citizens of all of continental Europe and a good number of Britons, whether their governments were left or right, whether their Prime Ministers had committed themselves in the American wake or had refused, all these citizens purely and simply rejected their choices and American methods. George W. Bush was midwife to the birth of a European public opinion.

With his second term, the American president is now using a totally different technique. He is going in great pomp to Brussels; he is received by NATO, but also by the Brussels Commission and the European Council (which, incidentally, grotesquely vie with one another in their protocol pretensions, each institution asserting its precedence like old Duchesses during the time of Saint-Simon). George W. Bush is friendly to the Belgian Prime Minister who had strongly criticized him, opens his arms to Gerhard Schroeder who had energetically opposed his plans; he even smiles at Jacques Chirac whom he once cursed and whom his administration had wished to the nether regions. The White House man finally agrees to acknowledge that there is only one European Union, certainly a sufficiently heterogeneous one for him to play around with it, but which, little by little, is becoming an incontrovertible and even priority partner: George W. Bush is discovering the European Union. Obviously, he is not renouncing converting it to his views. He still expects to use NATO as a Pentagon conveyor belt. He`s trying to draw Europeans to his side with his "Greater Middle East" strategy. He continues to refuse outright to sign the Kyoto protocol or to accept the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. He still pursues the American dream of universal leadership. None of that changes the fact: George Bush I denied Europe, tried to break it apart and treated it like a continent in decline. George Bush II is rediscovering Europe, salutes it, and considers treating it like a real partner one day. The first Bush provoked the birth of European public opinion, the second Bush incites Europe to behave like an autonomous actor, like a virtual power little by little - too slowly - morphing into a real power.

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"Jeff Gannon ... He is a White House correspondent who has been lobbing softball questions at the president and his press secretary, turns out he is actually a paid escort for wealthy homosexuals. ... He actually had two jobs -- one obviously was sleazy and shameful and the other was a gay male prostitute. ... I think I know what Bush meant now when he said he has a mandate."--Bill Maher

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Wednesday, February 23rd, 2005
Juan Cole on Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the Iraqi Elections and the Future of Islamic Law in Iraq
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/23/164211

[urlDownload Show mp3]http://www.archive.org/download/dn2005-0223/dn2005-0223-1_64kb.mp3[/url]
[urlWatch 256k stream]http://play.rbn.com/?url=demnow/demnow/demand/2005/feb/video/dnB20050223a.rm&proto=rtsp&start=10:08[/url]

Iraq`s leading Shiite political slate has nominated physician and former exile Ibrahim al-Jaafari to be the nation`s next prime minister. The United Iraqi Alliance selected Jafari after the other main contender - Ahmad Chalabi - withdrew from the race. [includes rush transcript] The Shiite coalition carried last month`s elections, winning 140 of the 274 seats in the national assembly and Jafari is widely expected to be confirmed as the country`s next prime minister, replacing U.S.-backed Iyad Allawi.

Jafari worked as a doctor in Iraq where he was a member of the Dawa - Iraq`s oldest Islamic party. In 1980, he fled to Iran after a crackdown on the party by Saddam Hussein. He stayed there for 10 years before moving to London, where he lived until the March 2003 US invasion of Iraq. He has served as interim vice president in Iraq since June.

Late yesterday, we reached Juan Cole -- He is Professor of History at the University of Michigan. He runs an analytical website called "Informed Comment" where he provides a daily round-up of news and events in Iraq and elsewhere in the Arab world. His site is www.juancole.com. I began by asking him about Ibrahim al Jaafari.

* Juan Cole, University of Michigan professor

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

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AMY GOODMAN: Late yesterday, we reached Juan Cole. He is Professor of History at the University of Michigan, runs an analytical website called Informed Comment where he provides a daily roundup of news and events in Iraq and elsewhere in the Arab world. His site is www.juancole.com. I began by asking Juan Cole about Ibrahim al-Jaafari.

JUAN COLE: Ibrahim al-Jaafari is an old-time member of the Dawa Party. He was born in Karbala in 1947, went to medical school in Mosul in the north, and in the late 60s joined the Dawa Party as a young man. And the Dawa Party was set up in the late 50s to be a kind of modern Shiite answer to communism, that they would work for a Shiite state, a kind of Shiite utopia, the same way the Communist party worked for a worker`s utopia.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about what Jaafari stands for now?

JUAN COLE: Well, Jaafari is an old-time Muslim fundamentalist. He will want as much Islamic law to be implemented in Iraq as possible. The Dawa tends to view civil law in Iraq as a British colonial heritage so they want to get rid of it. And he was part of a group that attempted to implement Islamic law, even when there was an American administration. So, they would like, you know, personal status, marriage, divorce, alimony, inheritance, all those things to be governed by Islamic law.

AMY GOODMAN: What about the whole competition with Ahmed Chalabi. Did he ever have a chance? And where does he stand now? Some are saying he might be the deputy.

JUAN COLE: Oh, no. I would be surprised if Chalabi were given a very high post. He might get a cabinet post. He had some support, Chalabi did, among the United Iraqi Alliance group which was the Shiite and more fundamentalist parties, although it was a big tent and some secular groups like Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress were in it. It has been reported by AP that some of the women in the list -- about a third of the list are women -- were a little afraid of Jaafari`s Islamism and that they were -- they were the ones who were supporting Chalabi. So I think Chalabi will get something, but I don`t expect him to have any kind of executive post.

AMY GOODMAN: University of Michigan Professor Juan Cole. I then asked him about Adil Abdul Mahdi, the current finance minister, who many believed would be the new leader of the Iraqi government. Columnist Naomi Klein wrote in The Nation that al-Mahdi was the Bush Administration`s Trojan horse in the United Iraqi Alliance. Klein wrote, quote, “In October, he told a gathering of the American Enterprise Institute that he planned to restructure and privatize Iraq`s state-owned enterprises, and in December, he made another trip to Washington to unveil plans for a new oil law, quote, ‘very promising to American investors.’ It was al-Mahdi himself who oversaw the signing of a flurry of deals with Shell, BP, and ChevronTexaco in the weeks before the elections and it is he who negotiated the recent austerity deal with the IMF.” That from Naomi Klein`s piece in The Nation magazine. So, I asked Professor Cole about the man who was almost king.

JUAN COLE: Adil Abdul Mahdi is the Finance Minister. He is a member of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which is one of the two main constituents of the victorious United Iraqi Alliance, and had been in the running for Prime Minister. He withdrew, saying that he didn`t want to cause a split in the Alliance, and he will almost certainly be rewarded with some high post, but we don`t know yet which.

AMY GOODMAN: And the significance of what he was pushing for, the privatization of oil, being seen too close to the United States?

JUAN COLE: Yeah. Abdul Mahdi was a favorite of the United States because he was in favor of a kind of shock therapy for the Iraqi economy and the complete abolition of Iraqi socialism in favor of laissez-faire, free market policies. He may yet be in a position to push for those things, especially were, for instance, he to remain Finance Minister. But I think the United Iraqi Alliance, the party of which he is a part, on the whole will go much more slowly with those things. Polls show that 80% of Iraqis felt that the government was there to take care of them and they have a very socialistic outlook. So, I think shock therapy is not on the horizon.

AMY GOODMAN: Jaafari’s relationship with Iran?

JUAN COLE: Jaafari has a very good relationship with Iran -- has very warm relations with Tehran.

AMY GOODMAN: What does this mean?

JUAN COLE: Well, I think, you know, on a whole range of issues, there`s likely to be some friction between Jaafari and the US government. Jaafari was opposed to the Fallujah campaign. He felt that peaceful means could have been used to resolve those issues. He was opposed to the Najaf campaigns of the US military. He has good relations with Iran and I think would not react well to a US attack on Iran. And so on a whole range of issues from Islamic law to domestic security policy to foreign policy, he is not on the same page with the US Embassy.

AMY GOODMAN: And how has the US responded that you can ascertain?

JUAN COLE: I haven`t seen any US response to this prospect. It was reported over the weekend by the pan-Arab daily Alhayat that even the United Iraqi Alliance recognized that its prime ministerial candidate would have to get a green light from the Americans. And so I assume that if Mr. Jaafari is being announced as he was today as the prime ministerial candidate, that back-channel negotiations did take place with Mr. Negroponte and that the Americans didn`t make a strong stand against this development.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Cole, what about the women of Iraq? Where do they stand in terms of both the election, as representatives, and where they would stand with Jaafari?

JUAN COLE: Well, I think it is a mixed picture with regard to the situation of women in Iraq. On the one hand, Mr. Jaafari will almost certainly push for as much Islamic law as he can and personal status, and depending on how that is interpreted, it can be bad for women. In some countries -- Muslim countries where Islamic law has been implemented, women`s testimony in court has been reduced to half that of a man in its value, which has made rape almost impossible to prosecute. Women have been denied the ability to initiate divorce. They`ve been denied alimony. Their inheritance rights are less than those of their brothers and so on and so forth. So, a more rigid and medieval interpretation of Islamic law could take a lot of rights away from Iraqi women. Mr. Jaafari may not be able to get through so much of this program, in part because he will need groups like the Kurds to govern in a coalition and they are opposed to the implementation of Islamic law. On the other hand, a lot of what women face in Iraq these days are security issues. They`re afraid of being kidnapped, they`re afraid their children will be kidnapped, they`re open to be burglarized and so forth. The roads are not safe. So, if Jaafari is able to reach out, as he says he wants to and make peace in the country, that would certainly be a benefit for the Iraqi women.

AMY GOODMAN: You mention the Kurds. A lot of speculation about Jalal Talabani being the president. Can you comment on that?

JUAN COLE: Well it seems almost certain that Mr. Talabani will be president. The parliament requires a two-thirds majority to form a government. Mr. Jaafari will have only 51%, possibly 54%. And so he needs a coalition partner in order to form a government, and since the Kurds did so well, they have 27% of the seats in Parliament, it seems very likely that he will reach out to them as his coalition partner, which would require that the Kurds be given inducements to join this largely Shiite government, and the presidency of Mr. Talabani is their initial demand. I think they`ll get it.

AMY GOODMAN: What about these back door negotiations that Time magazine reported on this week between the resistance and the United States?

JUAN COLE: Well, those back-door negotiations were denounced by Ahmad Chalabi, who was Mr. Jaafari`s rival for the prime minister post more recently. On the other hand, they are precisely the kind of thing that Jaafari himself has called for. So, I think that Jaafari will look with some encouragement on those kinds of negotiations and I think he`ll initiate his own back-channel negotiations. He said that he thought it would be a big mistake to attack Fallujah frontally in the way that it was done, that it would be possible to bring those people in. He may be wrong about that, but his instincts will be to negotiate rather than to fight.

AMY GOODMAN: And the whole issue of a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops? Where does Jaafari stand?

JUAN COLE: Well, initially the United Iraqi Alliance did have as part of its platform a demand for a timetable. That has been taken out on reconsideration and Mr. Jaafari has spoken against a timetable. I think we have to realize that the Baathist guerillas are determined to overthrow this government, which they see as a puppet of the United States, despite, you know, I think that argument is actually pretty hard to make because I don`t think the United States anticipated this particular government coming into power. But that`s the way the Baathists see it and they will try to kill Mr. Jaafari if they can. So, I think he and others view -- he has said that he views any timetable or any precipitate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq as unhelpful.

AMY GOODMAN: And the whole issue of Jaafari, the occupation being -- where he stood originally with the occupation and whether the election was actually a referendum on the occupation, given the UIA stance?

JUAN COLE: Well, I think, you know, Jaafari led the London branch of the Dawa Party in exile, and the Dawa Party in London decided that it was better to cooperate with the Americans and get Saddam out than to remain in exile. And they all long, of course, had serious differences with the Americans over things like the implementation of Islamic law or Iran policy or security inside the country. But they -- Jaafari`s branch of the party has felt that they get more out of cooperating with the US than they lose. And, of course, in some ways he has ridden this process to power now. On the other hand, you know, the question is now the future and I think it is certainly the case that most of the Iraqis who came out to vote in the south and among the Shiites felt that what they were doing was putting in place a Iraqi indigenous government that would have the legitimacy ultimately to run the country, to restore security, and to ask the Americans to leave. I think in the long-term, certainly the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Dawa Party, and other major Shiite groups will want the US out of their country.

AMY GOODMAN: And what about the Sunnis who didn`t participate? I think –what was the percentage -- something like 2%. Where do they fit in?

JUAN COLE: Yeah. The Sunni Arabs on the whole did not participate in the election, either because they boycotted it or because security in their region did not permit them to come out. As you say, in Anbar province, only 2% participated and some of the other provinces, it was somewhat higher. But still, they only got about six seats out of the 275 in Parliament. By their proportion of the population they should have gotten 55% or 60%. They will have to be incorporated in other ways into the process. I think they will be given some high cabinet posts, they will be given a vice-presidency, they will be appointed to the constituent assembly that`s going to craft the constitution. So, attempts will be made to draw them into the government process and Jaafari is already associated with such attempts.

AMY GOODMAN: And two figures. What happens with Muqtada al-Sadr, and what happens with Iyad Allawi?

JUAN COLE: Jaafari wants a big tent. So, he has already said he will reach out to Muqtada al-Sadr, he will try to bring him into the government. Jaafari already depends to some extent on pro-Sadr figures within the United Iraqi Alliance’s party. About 18, I think, of their delegates are pro-Sadr, and then there were three who were elected as independents. So I think they will be a channel to Sadr from Jaafari, and he says he wants to try to incorporate them. It is being reported in some sources that Allawi will be given a cabinet post, possibly even the Defense Ministry. And so, again, I think Jaafari wants to work with all the major groups in Iraq to his left, to his right, other ethnicities. He is, like Lyndon Johnson, you know, he wants the big tent.

AMY GOODMAN: Where do you see Iraq in the next six months?

JUAN COLE: Well, the guerilla insurgency seems to me will continue for a long time to come, and I don`t think the elections were really relevant to it. So, we will see these reports of things being blown up and people being blown up and US troops attacked I think for a good long time to come. In the meantime, the big challenges facing Mr. Jaafari are to come to an accommodation with the Kurds on issues like autonomy, provincial autonomy, the sharing of oil resources, the sharing of the city of Kirkuk, redrawing of the provincial map of the country. Many, many issues now face Iraq, any one of which could tear the country apart and all will have to be addressed at the same time in the drafting of a new constitution. I think it is a little unfortunate the Americans have set things up so that this newly-elected parliament must now craft a permanent constitution for the country and it has to open all the cans of worms in the country simultaneously.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Juan Cole of the University of Michigan. His website, juancole.com.

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February 24, 2005
Allawi Forms Secular Coalition in Move to Stay in Office
By JOHN F. BURNS
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/24/international/middleeast/2…

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 23 - Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi stepped up his bid to remain in office on Wednesday, announcing the formation of a secular coalition that he and his supporters say will seek to outmaneuver Shiite religious parties as a new transitional government is formed.

The move came a day after the Shiite alliance that won a bare majority of seats last month in the national assembly named one of its leaders, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, as its candidate for prime minister. Mr. Jaafari leads the Dawa Party, whose official policies call for the "Islamization" of Iraqi society, but he has insisted that any government he heads will reach across ethnic and religious lines and take a moderate position on the role of Islam and other divisive issues.

By establishing the secular coalition - which he called a "national democratic coalition which believes in Iraq and its principles" - Dr. Allawi signaled his readiness to mount a potentially polarizing battle. At a news conference on Wednesday, he hinted that this would include attempts to lure defectors among secularists from the Shiite alliance`s list of candidates, stripping it of the two-seat majority it won when it took 140 of the 275 seats in the new assembly.

But the complex political arithmetic that lay behind Dr. Allawi`s challenge appeared likely to work as much against him as for him. The interim constitution, deeply influenced by American constitutional precepts, contains a web of checks and balances designed to force alliances, including a provision that effectively requires a two-thirds majority in the assembly to name a prime minister and cabinet.

Alone, the Shiite alliance - formally known as the United Iraqi Alliance - is more than 40 seats short of this bar. It will need support from one or more of three other groups in the assembly: a Kurdish alliance, which moved up to 77 seats on Wednesday when it was joined by a Kurdish splinter group with 2 seats; Dr. Allawi`s group, with 40 seats; or 9 other parties that among them have 18 seats.

But assembling a two-thirds majority looks like a much tougher order for Dr. Allawi and his group, the Iraqi List. He is hoping to win the backing of the Kurds, but would still need to attract as many as 50 or 60 of the Shiite alliance`s elected members, perhaps more, to win the prime minister`s post.

Many Iraqi politicians think it more likely that Dr. Allawi`s aim, and that of the main Kurdish leaders, is to persuade the Shiite alliance to form a government that draws its support - and its cabinet ministers - from all of the main groups in the assembly.

Several leading Baghdad newspapers reported having picked up signals from the Shiite alliance that it was prepared to offer Dr. Allawi a senior cabinet post, possibly as defense minister, or an appointment as one of the two vice presidents, with a role in security matters. Dr. Allawi said at his news conference that he had read the reports but had received no offer.

There was another indication that the Shiite alliance would seek an accommodation with Dr. Allawi and the Kurds. A senior official in Dr. Allawi`s cabinet confirmed that the alliance had formed a negotiating committee that would meet this week with Dr. Allawi and his allies in Baghdad, and also travel to meet Kurdish leaders in their homeland in northern Iraq.

The official said that issues to be discussed, apart from the question of the competing candidacies for prime minister, would be the demands of Dr. Allawi and the Kurds that the alliance commit to enshrine principles of democracy, human rights and federalism in a permanent constitution. The assembly is to draft and submit that constitution to a national referendum by Aug. 15.

A national unity government - or at least one that included Dr. Allawi, who was appointed interim prime minister last year - would almost certainly be the preferred outcome for American diplomats and military commanders.

The Americans` public position is that they will work with whatever government the Iraqis choose for themselves. But American diplomats have been privately urging the main political leaders to work for a broad-based government that will present a common front to the insurgents.

A reminder of the threat posed to a Shiite-led government came Wednesday with the assassination of a Dawa official in Moqdadiyah, a mixed Sunni and Shiite town about 65 miles northeast of Baghdad. A Reuters report quoted the police as saying that the man, an engineer, had been shot by three men as he finished morning prayers in a local mosque.

The Americans have been encouraged by a flurry of statements by top Shiite alliance leaders indicating support for the continued presence of American troops, and opposition to a fixed timetable for their withdrawal, as demanded by Sunni leaders sympathetic to the insurgency.

Mr. Jaafari said after he was nominated for prime minister on Tuesday that he favored the strong prosecution of the war, and there have been similar statements recently by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which shares primacy in the Shiite alliance with Mr. Jaafari`s Dawa.

The wide reach of the insurgency was demonstrated Wednesday with confirmations of at least 22 deaths across a 200-mile stretch of central and northern Iraq. One death was of an American soldier who the United States command said had been killed by a bomb near the town of Tuz, 130 miles north of Baghdad. Tuz lies on the road to the oil city of Kirkuk, where at least five of the day`s fatalities occurred.

The command said another soldier was killed Tuesday in a vehicle accident during military operations in Anbar Province, where the Marines began a new offensive on Sunday.

Other victims on Wednesday included three Iraqi soldiers killed by insurgent mortars that hit their bases north of Baghdad, a policeman shot by insurgents as he ate breakfast in a Kirkuk restaurant, and at least seven civilians, two of them killed by a car bomb aimed at an American convoy in Kirkuk.

In Mosul, the police said that American soldiers shot dead a civilian in a pickup truck that got too close to their convoy. Such incidents have grown more common as insurgents have stepped up their use of suicide car bomb attacks on American armored columns.

The police said they had found four other bullet-riddled bodies in three cities north of Baghdad. An Iraqi soldier and a civilian were found near Al Hajaj, and a policeman at Shirqat. A Sudanese man working as a translator for American troops was found dead in a village near Samarra.

In Baghdad, insurgents killed two government officials. An Interior Ministry official said one was a senior official in the ministry`s passport division who was killed in a drive-by shooting at his home.

The other was identified as a Trade Ministry official whose car was blocked on a neighborhood street at 9 a.m. by three men who jumped from a sedan and fired at him through his windshield. His car ran over a small boy standing by the road, killing him.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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February 24, 2005
Iraqi Army Is About to Add National Guard to Its Ranks
By ERIC SCHMITT
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/24/international/middleeast/2…

TAJI, Iraq - In a ceremony at this sprawling Iraqi Army base in early January that drew virtually no attention abroad, the Iraqi military took what American officials say was a pivotal step and a calculated gamble in the effort to defeat the insurgency.

As nearly 100 Iraqi tanks, gun trucks and armored personnel carriers rumbled by a reviewing stand filled with ribbon-bedecked Iraqi and American generals, the interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, and top Iraqi officers made an announcement: Iraq`s national guard, a regional civil defense force formed less than two years ago, would be merged into the relatively small national army.

What at first glance appeared to be a symbolic shift of command and set of new uniforms is now coming to be seen as an important example of finding new ways to train and equip Iraq`s fledgling security forces to defend the country and to allow 150,000 American troops to leave, senior American and Iraqi officers say.

The 38,000 national guard troops will swell the regular army`s ranks to nearly 50,000 soldiers, creating a unified ground force that will have common pay, uniforms and standards.

Being part of the army will make the former national guard soldiers more available for missions away from their home bases. Most guard units now conduct patrols and operations only in their region, often in tandem with American troops in places like Baghdad and Mosul.

Gen. Babakir al-Zibari, chief of staff of the Iraqi armed forces, said incorporating the national guard into the army would "ensure unity of command and effort to meet the security challenges we currently face."

The Iraqi Army is trained and equipped at higher standards than the national guard, whose heavier weaponry will now be significantly increased. Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the American officer in charge of training the Iraqi forces, said that in many of the 42 national guard battalions, the number of heavy machine guns has increased to 32 from 8 per battalion. More radios, vehicles and other equipment are also flowing in as the transition takes place.

Those changes come at a cost. The Pentagon recently asked Congress for $5.7 billion in additional money to help finance the training effort this year, and it is spending that will not give immediate results.

"In the near term we won`t see much change," said Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, who until recently commanded American forces in northern Iraq. "Longer term, I think there is goodness that can come from having more units trained and equipped to the same standards across the nation."

Important Iraqi political and cultural considerations are also at work, some of which reflect Iraqi officials` desire to exert more control since the elections held on Jan. 30, American and Iraqi officials said.

While the national guard has relied heavily on American and other allied forces in Iraq, the regular army has more direct ties - and answers more directly - to the Iraqi government.

Perhaps most important, the Iraqi Army is a highly respected institution in the country, largely untainted from the three-decade rule of Saddam Hussein, who never trusted the army and created special military and intelligence units, like the Special Republican Guard, to preserve his power.

It was no coincidence, for example, that Dr. Allawi and top Iraqi officers chose Jan. 6, the 84th anniversary of the creation of the modern Iraqi Army in 1921, to announce the merger of the national guard into nine new Iraqi Army divisions, officials said.

The national guard, originally called the Iraqi civil defense corps, had none of that institutional loyalty or history. "Civil defense" connoted the fire department and emergency services, not military fighters, American commanders said.

Incorporating the national guard into the army has given those units legitimacy in the eyes of many Iraqis and has bolstered morale, commanders say. "It`s a significant move for them to be part of the regular army," said Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., a retired commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, who spent two tours in Iraq. "It`s like saying, `You`re a real warrior again.` "

But training and equipping the national guard is fraught with challenges, and converting its units into army forces is a calculated gamble, some American officials say.

While some national guard units have performed well, particularly in securing the elections, others are still battling high absentee rates. Some American advisers expressed concern that the Iraqi Army`s command and control structure was not ready for the sudden integration of the national guard. If that is not built up quickly, it will pose a major hurdle to the Pentagon`s plan to withdraw from Iraq.

Dispatching national guard units to trouble spots across the country can also pose steep challenges. "There are likely to be some concerns from former national guard units that may not want to leave their home areas," General Ham said. "I haven`t seen that manifested yet, but I feel it may be likely."

Disbanded in the spring of 2003 by L. Paul Bremer III, the top American civilian administrator in Iraq at the time, the Iraqi military has been slowly reconstituted in several distinct units, along with separate police forces.

The original concept of the national guard was to have a modest military ability, largely to help at a local level, without adding those formations to a regular army that might become tempted to carry out a coup.

But in fighting the current insurgency, the level of force that even a well-trained guard unit can deliver is inadequate in the view of some field commanders and some Iraqi officials who are pressing for a greatly increased military ability.

Maj. Gen. John Batiste, commander of the First Infantry Division, said bringing the guard units` capacity up would be a consuming task. "The long-term goal is to get them all the same," he said. "That`s where the Ministry of Defense has work to do."

In a national security strategy paper issued on Jan. 15, Dr. Allawi said the goal of training 100,000 Iraqi soldiers by July would be increased to 150,000 "fully qualified" soldiers by the end of the year. Over all, according to the Pentagon, Iraq will have 270,000 trained soldiers and police officers by next year.

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February 24, 2005
EDITORIAL
Warning From the Markets
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/24/opinion/24thu1.html

When a seemingly innocuous remark from the central bank of South Korea makes the dollar tank, as happened on Tuesday, all is not well with the United States` position in the world economy.

The dollar has been on a downward trajectory for three years, thanks in part to the Bush administration`s decision to try to use a cheap dollar to shrink the nation`s enormous trade deficit. (A weak dollar makes exports cheaper and imports costlier, a combination that theoretically should narrow the trade gap.) To be truly effective, however, a weak dollar must be combined with a lower federal budget deficit - or even a budget surplus, something the administration clearly hasn`t delivered. So predictably, the weak-dollar ploy hasn`t worked. The United States` trade deficit has mushroomed to record levels, as has the United States` need to borrow from abroad - some $2 billion a day - just to balance its books.

Enter South Korea. On Monday, its central bank reported that it intended to diversify into other currencies and away from dollar-based assets. And why not? It holds about $69 billion in United States Treasury securities, or 4 percent of the total foreign Treasury holdings. Such dollar-based investments lose value as the dollar weakens, leading to losses that any cautious banker would want to avoid. But as the Korean comment ping-ponged around the world, all hell broke loose, with currency traders selling dollars for fear that the central banks of Japan and China, which hold immense dollar reserves - a combined $900 billion, or 46 percent of foreign Treasury holdings - might follow suit.

That would be the United States` worst economic nightmare. If it appeared that the flow of investment from abroad was not enough to cover the nation`s gargantuan deficits, interest rates would rise sharply, the dollar would plunge further, and the economy would stall. A fiscal crisis would result.

Tuesday`s sell-off of dollars did not precipitate a meltdown. But it sure gave a taste of one. The dollar suffered its worst single-day decline in two months against the yen and the euro. Stock markets in New York, London, Paris and Frankfurt dropped, and gold and oil prices, which tend to go up when the dollar goes down, spiked.

Luckily, the markets calmed down yesterday, as Asian central banks said they they did not intend to shun dollars. While such damage control is welcome, it`s no fix. Tuesday`s market episode has its roots in American structural imbalances that will be corrected only by new policies, not more of the same tax-cut-and-weak-dollar deficit-bloating ploys.

If Mr. Bush were half the capitalist he claims he is, he would listen to what the markets are telling him.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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The dollar is falling! The dollar is falling! Wird`s jetzt ernst?

February 24, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Honey, I Shrunk the Dollar
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/24/opinion/24friedman.html

I have just one question about President Bush`s trip to Europe: Did he and Laura go shopping?

If they did, I would love to have been a fly on the wall when Laura must have said to George: "George, do you remember how much these Belgian chocolates cost when we were here four years ago? This box of mints was $10. Now it`s $15? What happened to the dollar, George? Why is the euro worth so much more now, honey? Didn`t Rummy say Europe was old? If we didn`t have Air Force One, we never could have afforded this trip on your salary!"

The dollar is falling! The dollar is falling! But the Bush team has basically told the world that unless the markets make the falling dollar into a full-blown New York Stock Exchange crisis and trade war, it is not going to raise taxes, cut spending or reduce oil consumption in ways that could really shrink our budget and trade deficits and reverse the dollar`s slide.

This administration is content to let the dollar fall and bet that the global markets will glide the greenback lower in an "orderly" manner.

Right. Ever talk to someone who trades currencies? "Orderly" is not always in the playbook. I make no predictions, but this could start to get very "disorderly." As a former Clinton Commerce Department official, David Rothkopf, notes, despite all the talk about Social Security, many Americans are not really depending on it alone for their retirement. What many Americans are counting on is having their homes retain and increase their value. And what`s been fueling the home-building boom and bubble has been low interest rates for a long time. If you see a continuing slide of the dollar - some analysts believe it needs to fall another 20 percent before it stabilizes - you could see a substantial, and painful, rise in interest rates.

"Given the number of people who have refinanced their homes with floating-rate mortgages, the falling dollar is a kind of sword of Damocles, getting closer and closer to their heads," Mr. Rothkopf said. "And with any kind of sudden market disruption - caused by anything from a terror attack to signs that a big country has gotten queasy about buying dollars - the bubble could burst in a very unpleasant way."

Why is that sword getting closer? Because global markets are realizing that we have two major vulnerabilities that this administration doesn`t want to address: We are importing too much oil, so the dollar`s strength is being sapped as oil prices continue to rise. And we are importing too much capital, because we are saving too little and spending too much, as both a society and a government.

"When people ask what we are doing about these twin vulnerabilities, they have a hard time coming up with an answer," noted Robert Hormats, the vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International. "There is no energy policy and no real effort to reduce our voracious demand of foreign capital. The U.S. pulled in 80 percent of total world savings last year [largely to finance our consumption]." That`s a big reason why some "43 percent of all U.S. Treasury bills, notes and bonds are now held by foreigners," Mr. Hormats said.

And the foreign holders of all those bonds are listening to our debate. They are listening to a country that is refusing to raise taxes, and an administration talking about borrowing an additional $2 trillion so Americans can invest some of their Social Security money in stocks. If that happened, it would almost certainly weaken the dollar, further depreciating the U.S. Treasury bonds held by all those foreigners.

On Monday, the Bank of Korea said it planned to diversify more of its reserves into nondollar assets, after years of holding too many low-yielding and depreciating U.S. government securities. The fear that this could become a trend sparked a major sell-off in U.S. equity markets on Tuesday. To calm the markets, the Koreans said the next day that they had no intention of selling their dollars.

Oh, good. Now I`m relieved.

"These countries don`t have to dump dollars - they just have to reduce their purchases of them for the dollar to be severely affected," Mr. Hormats noted. "Korea is the fourth-largest holder of dollar reserves. ... You don`t want others to see them diversifying and say, `We`d better do that, too, so that we`re not the last ones out.` Remember, the October 1987 stock market crash began with a currency crisis."

When a country lives on borrowed time, borrowed money and borrowed energy, it is just begging the markets to discipline it in their own way at their own time. As I said, usually the markets do it in an orderly way - except when they don`t.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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Der Preis der Kurden wird die Quasi-Unabhängigkeit sein mit all ihren Folgen.

Kurds name their price for putting Shia party in power
By Patrick Cockburn and David Enders in Baghdad
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?st…

24 February 2005

The Kurds are to stick to their demand for the oil city of Kirkuk and a degree of autonomy which is close to independence as negotiations begin to form the next Iraqi government. The coalition of Shia parties, the United Iraqi Alliance, has 140 seats in the 275-member National Assembly but despite its electoral triumph other parties are waiting to see if it will hold together. The coalition was cobbled together out of disparate groups under the influence of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

"The coalition is not as strong as we thought - with all of the weight of Sistani, it didn`t get an absolute majority," said a Kurdish politician who asked not to be named. Nevertheless Iraqi Shias, 60 per cent of the population but never previously in power, feel that their moment has come.

The Kurds are in a strong position to press their demands because they have 75 seats. In the past they were always the core of the opposition to Saddam Hussein and their leaders have far more political and administrative experience than returning Shia exiles. The Kurds are the only people to support the US occupation.

Kurdish leaders say they will refuse to compromise over Kirkuk or the autonomy of the three northern Kurdish provinces from which Saddam Hussein retreated in 1991. They will also reject applying Islamic law in Kurdish regions.

The newly elected assembly is expected to meet in the next two weeks. It will first elect a president and two vice presidents by a two thirds majority and they in turn will chose a prime minister. He will then put together a government which must be supported by a simple majority in the assembly.

The Kurds have been keen to institutionalise the gains they made on the ground during the war in 2003, recovering lands from which they had been driven out of in Kirkuk and Mosul provinces. They also want the right of return for Kurdish refugees. Shia and Sunni parties reject this in theory but there is not much they can do about it. The wrangling over the next two weeks will also be over ministerial posts and other jobs. There are not enough of these go around. If they are allocated to each party or religious and ethnic group, Iraq may get a weak government, such as that of Lebanon. Sunni and former Baathist officials in the security ministries are also frightened that the de-Baathification campaign, suspended for the moment, will be resumed.

"We will make conditions such as the right of return for refugees and for Kirkuk to belong to the Kurdistan region administratively," said the politician. "There will be some compromising but it will be less about the federal status of Kurdistan and more about who gets what ministerial post."

It is believed the post of president will be filled by Jalal Talabani, the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of the two major Kurdish political parties. He is a vigorous and eloquent leader with his own political and military organisation who is likely to be much more important than Sheikh Ghazi al-Yawar, the US-appointed interim President.

The government must also establish a committee to draw up a new constitution. "It seems there is an agreement that the head of the constitution committee will be Fouad Massoum," the politician said, referring to the member of Mr Talabani`s party who headed last year`s National Assembly.

The Kurdish politician said a choice for the speaker, who is expected to be a Sunni Arab, could come tonight. Mr Yawar, whose party won five seats in the assembly, has been floated as a possibility, but "probably doesn`t enjoy enough support", the politician said.

Wire news services reported today that the US-appointed interim Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi, has refused to drop his bid to retain his post in the new transitional government. The post of prime minister "seems a matter for the Arabs to decide", the politician said.


24 February 2005 11:40


©2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.

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Why are we welcoming this torturer?

Europe is tacitly condoning the Bush regime`s appalling practices
Victoria Brittain
Thursday February 24, 2005
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1423861,00.ht…

Guardian
George Bush is this week having an extravagantly orchestrated series of meetings with Europe`s leaders, designed to show a united front for the creation of democracy around the world. Tony Blair talks of our "shared values". No one mentions the word that makes this show a mockery: torture.

It is now undeniable that the US administration, at the highest levels, is responsible for the torture that has been routine not only, as seen round the world in iconic photographs, at Abu Ghraib, but at Guantánamo Bay and Bagram. Meanwhile, in prisons in Egypt, Jordan and Syria (and no doubt others we do not know about), Muslim men have been tortured by electric shocks to the genitals, by being kept in water, by being threatened with death - after being flown to those countries by the CIA for that very purpose.

How can it be that not one mainstream public figure in Europe has denounced these appalling practices and declared that, in view of all we now know of cells, cages, underground bunkers, solitary confinement, sodomy and threatened sodomy, beatings, sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation, mock executions and kidnapping, President Bush and his officials are not welcome? Perhaps it`s not surprising given the British army`s own dismal record in southern Iraq. Why has no public figure had the honesty to admit that the democracy and freedom promised for the Middle East are fake and mask US plans to leave Washington dominant in the area? And why does no one say publicly that what is really happening in the "war on terror" is a war on Muslims that is creating a far more dangerous world for all?

From the flood of declassified material from Guantánamo, from recent reports by the military that reveal evidence of abuse and even deaths at Bagram being destroyed, from the war between the FBI and the CIA about who is responsible for the interrogations, from the utter confusion about who is to be responsible for the prisoners who will never be released, one thing is clear: even in its own terms, the torture strategy is a failure.

A s far back as September 2002, a secret CIA study into the Guantánamo detainees suggested that many were innocent or such low-level recruits to the Taliban forces that they had no intelligence value whatever. You do not have to be a specialist in torture to know that after a short period anyone will confess to anything to stop the pain. Men in Guantánamo have been interrogated more than 100 times - always shackled, always the same questions. No wonder prisoners simply stop answering. No wonder there are so many unconvincing confessions.

Now The Torture Papers - 1,249 pages of government memos and reports, edited by Karen Greenberg, the executive director of the centre on law and security at the New York University School of Law - shows the American government to be guilty of a "systematic decision to alter the use of methods of coercion and torture that lay outside of accepted and legal norms".

The young women interrogators in Guantánamo who put red ink in their pants, then smeared what appeared to be menstrual blood on devout Muslim men, and mocked them by turning off the water so they could not wash before prayers, did not dream up such an idea and send home for red ink. It was policy. Like the wearing of lacy underwear - only - for work sessions, it was designed to humiliate and break men. These reports have come from an army translator, Eric Saar, as well as from prisoners. Lawyer Michael Ratner of the New York Centre for Constitutional Rights, which represents over 100 prisoners, said it reminded him of "a pornographic website - it`s like the fantasy of these S and M clubs".

The lack of moral courage that prevents our leaders, religious as well as political, from speaking out against all this is deeply disturbing. Either they choose not to know or, by not speaking out, they tacitly condone it.

Whichever it is, their behaviour is in stark contrast to the dignity of the relatives of the prisoners, or of the returned prisoners in many countries. The care and concern that many of them display to the isolated, the sick, the frightened and the traumatised among the families are a testimony to the very best of the human spirit. If only these were the shared values that Tony Blair liked to highlight. These men are driven by a feeling of responsibility for trying to end the ordeal of those 540 men still at Guantánamo, including six UK residents. Among these are a Palestinian refugee, Jamil el Banna, and an Iraqi, Bisher al Rawi, men who have lived here for 10 and 20 years respectively, have families here, and who the foreign secretary shamefully refuses to bring home from hell.

· Victoria Brittain, with Gillian Slovo, compiled the play Guantanamo

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Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

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

http://www.juancole.com/
Thursday, February 24, 2005

Bomb Blasts in Tikrit, Haglaniyah, Mosul Produce Dozens of Casualties

AP reports on violence in Iraq Tuesday:


` A car bomb exploded near police headquarters in the Iraqi city of Tikrit on Thursday, killing at least 10 people, witnesses said. More than a dozen cars were set ablaze after the massive blast . . . Meanwhile, clashes between U.S. troops and insurgents in the so-called Sunni triangle of death killed six Iraqis and left dozens injured in Heet, according to Dr. Mohammed al-Hadithi . . . In Haqlaniyah, 135 miles northwest of the capital, U.S. forces and Iraqi troops fought insurgents throughout the day, the military said. American aircraft fired cannon rounds and dropped bombs to help a Marine patrol that came under small arms and heavy machine-gun fire . . . Elsewhere, a U.S. soldier was killed when assailants set off a bomb near Tuz, 105 miles north of Baghdad. In Baghdad, gunmen assassinated the director of the Iraqi Trade Ministry, Saad Abbas Hassan, as he drove down a road . . . And in the northern city of Mosul, insurgents set off a car bomb, killing two people and wounding 14, the U.S. military said. Also in Mosul, U.S. soldiers shot and killed a civilian in a pickup truck who came too close to their convoy, policeman Ahmed Rashid said . . . `



In addition, guerrillas assassinated Khalil Ali Shukri, a Dawa Party official in Baquba, according to al-Zaman. Prospective prime minister Ibrahim Jaafari is from the Dawa Party. A military officer was assassinated in Baghdad on Haifa Street, and a contractor in Salman Pak.

posted by Juan @ 2/24/2005 06:40:00 AM

Were the Shiites Cheated? And What does Allawi Want?

Al-Hayat has a long interview with an "informed Iraqi source" who is close to US officials in Iraq. He maintains that the US officials there were astounded that the United Iraqi Alliance did so well, and that they felt helpless and resigned as the process unfolded. He says that they are now asking privately if the US shed so much blood and treasure in Iraq to help fundamentalist Shiite allies of Iran take over Baghdad.

Al-Hayat also today repeats the allegation that the US or the electoral commission somehow cheated the United Iraqi Alliance of an absolute majority in parliament. (Note that this argument completely contradicts the interview they did, which speaks of US helplessness before the results.) The argument that the Iraqi elections were fixed is, however, implausible. It is sometimes alleged that the Shiites should have done better than they did, given the Sunni Arab absence. But when the smoke cleared, the UIA did have a majority in parliament, so the allegation makes no sense.

The below figures are from this wire service article and from this piece from the New York Times.

The NYT claimed that "the turnout in the three mainly Kurdish provinces in the north averaged 85 percent; in nine mainly Shiite southern provinces, the average was 71 percent."

This is the breakdown for turnout as best I could determine it, with only a couple of missing figures.

Al-Anbar (2%)
Al-Basrah (?)
Al-Muthanna (61%)
Al-Qadisiyah (69%)
An-Najaf (73%)
Arbil (?)
As-Sulaymaniyah (80%)
At-Ta`mim (?)
Babil (71%)
Baghdad (48%)
Dohuk (89%)
Dhi Qar (67%)
Diyala (34%)
Karbala` (73%)
Maysan (59%)
Ninevah (17%)
Salah ad-Din (29%)
Wasit (66%)

Now, the United Iraqi Alliance has 51 percent of the seats, having attacted the religious Shiite vote. The Iraqiya list of Iyad Allawi got the middle class, secular-leaning Shiites, with 14.5 percent. That is 64.5 percent for the two major Shiite lists. Then the small Shiite parties and the Communists (whose supporters are disproportionately Shiites) are another 3.4 percent, for a total of 68%.

If Shiites are, say, 62 percent of the population, and 71 percent turned out to vote, if 100 percent of the other groups had come out, the Shiites should have gotten 46 percent of the seats. But since the 4.5 million Sunni Arabs hardly turned out at all, and since 15 percent of Kurds did not, in the proportional system those percentages were added to the Shiite column, so they got 68% of seats in parliament. That is, it is as if 110 percent of the Shiites voted, because the absence of the Sunni Arabs magnified the Shiite vote. In fact, if the religious and secular Shiites could cooperate (fat chance), they could from a government all by themselves without reference to the Kurds or Sunni Arabs.

Precisely because the United Iraqi Alliance has ended up with 51 percent of the seats, which is enough to confirm the new government once a cabinet is selected, and since with the small Shiite parties it has 54 percent, either the US did not intervene in the ballot counting or it was completely incompetent in doing so. Personally, I don`t think the US was in a position to intervene. Grand Ayatollah Sistani would not have put up with it, and the Americans knew it.

The results seem to me entirely plausible. Friends of mine with contacts among middle class Shiites in Baghdad reported that many of them were going to vote for Allawi, so the 14.5 percent showing for the Iraqiya list is not out of line (and is much smaller than most reporters with mainly middle class Baghdad contacts had expected).

If the Daily Telegraph is right that Iyad Allawi hopes to form a government without either the Kurdish Alliance or the United Iraqi Alliance, then this whole bid of his for the prime minister post is a stalking horse for some other purpose. The UIA and the Kurds between them have 78 percent of the seats in parliament! And Allawi would need 66 percent to form a government. He says he will work with small parties, but aside from the Sunni Iraqiyun with 5 seats and the Communists with 2, most of the rest are Shiite and have already formed a coalition with the UIA. Allawi`s only hope is to detach delegates from the United Iraqi Alliance in such numbers as to put into question that list`s ability to dominate parliament. Even then he has no chance of becoming prime minister. He almost certainly is simply angling for a cabinet position, and using the threat of creating disunity in the UIA ranks by seducing some of its members as leverage.

posted by Juan @ 2/24/2005 06:31:00 AM

Show Trials and Phony Confessions Target Syria

AP reports on a televised confession of someone who said he was a Syrian agent in Iraq in charge of terrorist operations. The confession was broadcast on US-backed al-Iraqiyah television, and was produced presumably by the former Baath domestic intelligence officers appointed by Iyad Allawi.

These confessions are phony as a three-dollar bill (or a three-Euro coin). AP reports with a straight face that al-Essa "claimed he infiltrated Iraq in 2001, about two years before the U.S. invasion, because Syrian intelligence was convinced that American military action loomed." That allegation doesn`t pass the smell test with me. If this guy was sent in 2001, it was to make trouble for Saddam, not with reference to America. The Syrian Baath mostly did not get on well with the Iraqi Baath. Another confessed terrorist said he was sent to Pakistan for training and then Syria. Oh, now we have a Baath-Islamist axis again. Sure. Shiite secular Arab nationalists are just dying to get up a collaboration with non-Arab Pakistani hyper-Sunnis who paint "Kill the Shiites" on their mini-buses in Lahore.

It is embarrassing that Allawi thought he could peddle this horse manure to the Iraqi and American publics.

posted by Juan @ 2/24/2005 06:25:00 AM

Association of Muslim Scholars Denies Negotiations with US

Gilbert Achcar kindly supplied the following translation:


The following interesting excerpt from today`s (Feb 23) Al-Hayat (my translation from Arabic):


` A member of the Association of Muslim Scholars [believed to be the most popular group among Arab Sunnis in Iraq] has denied that the contacts held by the American delegation wiith armed groups involved the Association.

He declared to Al-Hayat that the practice of equating the "armed resistance" with the Sunnis is "a big mistake, and the contacts do not take place with Sunni groups but with high leaders of the dissolved Baath Party."

He added that the Association is not concerned by these contacts, because it is "a Sunni religious authority opposed to the occupation through peaceful means, and even though it considers the resistance to be a legitimate right of every Iraqi, it rejects terrorism and the killing of innocents."

He revealed that the contacts engaged with the Association in order to integrate it in the new government centered only around the procedure of writing the constitution, and were held with Iraqi political forces and with Ashraf Qadi, the representative of the UN General Secretary, and not with the Bush administration.

He added that "these meetings will remain useless if the Americans keep betraying their promises, like carrying on the military operations and arrests."
"The US administration, which is the occupying force, should have controlled the borders with the neighbouring countries that allow the infiltration of terrorist groups, and made a distinction [in their contacts] between the legitimate resistance and terrorism, unless they are the first beneficiaries of the instability of security conditions to guarantee that they will stay as long as possible." `

posted by Juan @ 2/24/2005 06:07:00 AM

Iraq-Blogging

Nick Turse at tomdispatch.com skewers Donald Rumsfeld`s various rhetorical strategies of evasion whenever he has been asked hard questions about Abu Ghraib, the situation in Iraq, etc.:


` I was truly curious: Was it a budgetary problem -- the lack of CD burners, or floppy disks, or available computers at the Pentagon? Or was no one technically capable of making copies for Rumsfeld? Or was there some kind of institutional/personal issue at stake? Were Rumsfeld`s underlings, for unknown reasons, engaging in a game of diskette keep-away "for days and days and days" (and right before his big Senate grilling too)?

Since then, I`ve paid closer attention to Rumsfeld`s problems and continued to speculate. Just take a look at a few of the numerous incidents thus far in 2005…

On January 8, 2005, Newsweek broke a story about a high-level debate within the Pentagon on implementing the "Salvador Option" -- that is, the use of "death-squads" like those the U.S. funded in El Salvador during the 1980s -- in Iraq . . . Rumsfeld went on to complain that he couldn`t find a copy of the story anywhere and could only read articles about the story. Members of the press corps promised to get him a copy and informed him that it was available in the on-line edition of the magazine. In his defense, Rumsfeld claimed that he only buys the hard-copy of Newsweek.



That Rumsfeld is such a cut-up.

Suburban Guerrilla takes an extended look at the way Pentagon reporting procedures on casualties are skewing the public`s idea of the cost of the war in US lives and injuries. He wonders what the public reaction would be if it could be proved that the true count of dead and wounded, counting all the troops and contractors and all even tangentially combat-related casualties, was 2 or 3 times what we are being told.

The Middle East Information Center discussion board highlights the excellent article by Nir Rosen on Kirkuk that appeared in the NYT magazine Sunday. Rosen`s portrait of a city that is little more than a massive urban roadside bomb ready to go off at any moment is a chilling harbinger for the future.

In the hyperlinked way of the blogging world, Andrew Arato`s guest editorial on Monday about the likely struggle between the elected parliament in Iraq and the dead hand of the American-imposed interim constitution provoked y provoked Josh Buermann of Flagrancy to Reason to some acute observations about the severe constraints on Iraqi democracy imposed by the US. He cites Kevin Carson as saying,


` Once again, as has been the case with assorted other velvet and orange revolutions, along with sundry exercises in "people power," what`s left after the smoke clears is a neoconservative counterfeit democracy. What the neocons call "democracy" is a Hamiltonian system in which the people exercise formal power to elect the government, but the key directions of policy are determined by a small and relatively stable Power Elite that is insulated from any real public pressure. the "Hamiltonian" nature of the Iraqi government and the continued purchase US policy has on its bureaucracy. `



Carson in turn quotes Milan Rai from Electronic Iraq pointing out that:


` Another device for maintaining control was Paul Bremer`s appointment of key officials for five year terms just before leaving office. In June 2004, the US governor ordered that the national security adviser and the national intelligence chief chosen by the US-imposed interim prime minister, Iyad Allawi, be given five-year terms, imposing Allawi`s choices on the elected government. Bremer also installed inspectors-general for five-year terms in every ministry, and formed and filled commissions to regulate communications, public broadcasting and securities markets. `



Rai also points out that the big fight now looming between Ibrahim Jaafari of the United Iraqi Alliance and Iyad Allawi of the Iraqiyah List is over the extent of debaathification. Jaafari wants to continue to exclude midlevel and high Baath officials from government posts, whereas Allawi had begun bringing them in, even putting one in charge of the secret police:


` Allawi restored former servants of the Saddam regime to important posts, and has filled the security forces with former Ba`athists. Saddam`s Special Forces soldiers and former intelligence officials are even being rehired as a police commando strike force. Last summer Allawi`s government appointed Rasheed Flayeh to the post of director-general of the secret police force, despite objections from the Supreme Commission for De-Ba`athification that as head of security in the city of Nasiriyah, Flayeh had taken part in the brutal suppression of the 1991 Shia uprising.

Last October, Allawi tried and failed to disband the De-Ba`athification Commission (headed by his old rival Ahmed Chalabi). Allawi wanted to be able to openly readmit former senior Ba`athists to power unless they have been found guilty of serious crimes in court, a policy supported by Washington. The Shia coalition that has `won` the elections has vowed to reverse re-Ba`athification, and it is likely that Allawi`s enthusiasm for this policy will bar him from being a compromise prime minister in the new government. `



Buermann, Carson and Rai have put their fingers on a key set of issues in understanding the contemporary situation in Iraq. How much control can the US keep, and with what tools? What is the future of the ex-Baathists? Can a stable new regime emerge that can claim popular legitimacy under the shadow of Western military occupation? Thank God someone is at least broaching the questions.

posted by Juan @ 2/24/2005 06:05:00 AM

Germans Trust Putin More than Bush

Frank Domoney kindly sends his translation of a Die Welt article that reports that over-all, the German public trusts Vladimir Putin more than it trusts George W. Bush. I was struck that it doesn`t trust either one very much, and that even in West Germany they are in a virtual tie. It is a sad commentary on the trans-Atlantic relationship, and is almost completely the fault of George W. Bush.


` Die Welt: US President calls Europeans to take part in joint working in spite of the differences over Iraq. The Germans trust Russian President Vladimir Putin more than the American President George W. Bush.

Tasked by the Die Welt the renowned Opinion Polling Institute Dimap asked the opinion of Germans about the USA. The Russian president gets a greater degree of trust particularly in the East of the Republic, according to the results of a representative poll. While the average result across the Federal republic is 29% for Putin and 24% for Bush, in East Germany Putin reaches 37% (Bush 16%) In contrast in West Germany the value for Bush reaches 27%, for Putin 26%.

It is clear from the results of the poll that both presidents are greeted with scepticism in Germany. A majority of 37% trusts neither. Infratest Dimap polled 1000 citizens between 15 and 16 February 2005

In the meantime US President George W Bush yesterday again called the Europeans, during his visit to NATO and EU headquarters, to end the old conflict about the Iraq war, and walk a common path in the future. He understood “that the Iraq war had upset many Europeans” in unusual clarity. “The decision has however been taken, we must get over it, now it is time to work together in peace”. This is in the interest of the European lands as well as the US.

Bush praised the engagement of the alliance partners in the training mission in Iraq. “Every little helps” said the US President.

Although the Bundeskanzler Gerhard Schroeder’s suggestions on the reform of the Atlantic Alliance were not explicitly discussed at the meeting of the 26 heads of state and government, the theme could occupy them further in the coming months. NATO general secretary Jaap de Hoop Scheffer announced that he would put on the table suggestions for a political reform of the alliance. Bush said that everyone had heard “loud and clear what the Bundeskanzler had said”. He alluded to the fact that NATO is the reason why Europe is today “United and Free”. It is vital for the transatlantic relationship; the only grouping that is able to meet the challenges of the 21st century. Schroeder himself said that it had “in fact given a great measure of agreement to strengthen the political dialogue”. The form would require further talks.

After the meeting with NATO seniors, Bush travelled to the centre of Brussels where he was guest in the afternoon of the 25 heads of state and government of the EU. Subsequently a visit to the EU commission lay on the agenda. At the EU the remaining unresolved subjects of conflict of the Transatlantic Relationship were to be discussed: The EU negotiations with Iran about their Atomic program, and the removal of the weapons embargo on China, which is supported by many EU states. `

posted by Juan @ [url2/24/2005 06:00:00 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/02/germans-trust-putin-more-than-bush.html[/url]

Koufax Awards

The Koufax Awards have been announced.

Many, many thanks to readers who voted mine the best "Expert Blog" and made my piece, "If America were Iraq, What would it be Like? the best post of 2004. These are humbling awards to win.

A warm congratulations to Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos for winning Best Blog. It was close between Kos and Atrios`s Eschaton, which had won twice before. Also congrats to Josh Marshall for winning Best Blog Pro Division.

Well, I had better stop there or just quote the post, to which I`ve already linked-- but congrats to all fellow winners in all categories.

And a big vote of thanks from me to Dwight, MB, and Eric for running the contest. They are a central element of civil society in the left weblogging world. Please send them money by paypal.

posted by Juan @ [url2/23/2005 06:21:00 PM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/02/koufax-awards-koufax-awards-have-been.html[/url]

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Latest Fatality: Feb 24, 2005
Military Fatalities: Total: 1659 , US: 1487 , Feb.05: 48

Meldungen aus dem Irak:
http://icasualties.org/oif/

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"The more X`s, the more popular,"
it is still the American way to lament indecency even while gobbling it up
Die Scheinheiligkeit ist überall die gleiche. Deshalb soll auch Bush das neue Buch von Tom Wolfe empfohlem haben.
I.A. macht der Moderator der Oscar Nacht der christlichen Rechten Sorge, weil er für seine eindeutige-zweideutige Ausdrucksweise bekannt ist.

February 27, 2005
FRANK RICH
Hollywood Bets on Chris Rock`s `Indecency`
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/27/arts/27RICH.html?8hpib

THE total box office for all five best-picture nominees on Sunday`s Oscars is so small that their collective niche in the national cultural marketplace falls somewhere between square dancing and non-Grisham fiction. But if this year`s Oscars are worthless as a barometer of the broad state of American pop culture, there`s much to learn from the hype spun by ABC and the motion picture academy to seduce Americans to watch even if they can`t distinguish Clive Owen from Catalina Sandino Moreno. The selling of the Oscar show is the latest indicator of the most telling disconnect in our politics: in the post-Janet Jackson era, "indecency" is gaining in popularity in direct proportion to Washington`s campaign to shut indecency down.

Hollywood can read the numbers. Once the feds vowed to smite future "wardrobe malfunctions," the customers started bolting the annual TV franchises where those malfunctions and their verbal counterparts are apt to occur. An award show sanitized of vulgarity and encased in the prophylactic of tape delay is an oxymoron. And so the Golden Globes lost 40 percent of its audience in January on NBC, the Grammys lost 28 percent of its audience this month on CBS. The viewers turned up instead at the competing "Desperate Housewives" on ABC, where S-and-M is the latest item on the carnal menu. Though this year`s Super Bowl didn`t have to go up against that runaway hit, its born-again family-friendliness also took a ratings toll; the audience in the all-important 18-to-49 demographic fell to an all-time low. The viewers perked up only for a GoDaddy.com commercial parodying a Washington "Broadcast Censorship Hearing": TiVo reported that the spot`s utterly unrevealing "wardrobe malfunction" gag was the most replayed moment from any of the game`s ads, much as the Jackson-Timberlake pas de deux that inspired it was the TiVo sensation of the year before.

This is why the people bringing you the Oscars have done everything possible to imply that Sunday`s show will be so indecent that even the winner of the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award may let loose with a Dick Cheney expletive. Rather than chase away MTV and its fans from the festivities as the National Football League did after the Jackson fracas, the academy hired as its host Chris Rock, a three-time MTV Music Video Awards M.C. Mr. Rock, as brilliant at P.R. as he is at comedy, ran around giving cheeky interviews making the outrageous charge that the Oscars might have a gay following. Matt Drudge took the bait and assailed the comedian for indecency. Mr. Rock was soiling "the classiest night in Hollywood," he said on Fox News, by taking "a lewd route ... to the gutter."

The motion picture academy`s marketers couldn`t have said it better themselves. They know a lewd route is the yellow brick road to Nielsen nirvana. Gilbert Cates, the Oscars producer, had already been putting out the message that he opposed the show`s tape delay as "dangerous to society." The academy`s executive director, Bruce Davis, elaborated to Lola Ogunnaike of The New York Times: "I like to hear that people are nervous, because that means you`re more likely to watch." Last Sunday Mr. Rock was billed by Ed Bradley on "60 Minutes" as a "nontraditional host" who is "not afraid to offend" and whose "comedy is still as profane and uncut as ever." Two hours later came the pièce de résistance: Mr. Rock in an Oscar-show promo spot on "Desperate Housewives" fondling the Oscar statuette (in all its gold nudity) and declaring, "You won`t believe the halftime show!"

It`s all a hoax, of course. ABC has merely shortened last year`s seven-second tape delay to five seconds, and viewers already annoyed that the Oscar telecast is pre-empting "Desperate Housewives" may have further reason to complain when they learn that any profane comedy or liberated cleavage will be seen only by the swells at the Kodak Theater. Next year may be another story. In a little noted report in Variety earlier this month, the academy got ABC to forgo a contract stipulation requiring a tape delay in future Oscar shows. Further ratings tumbles ensure that the war against tape delays will be taken up in earnest by media giants eager to preserve their profit centers. Already the networks are mulling a court challenge to the constitutionality of the decades-old Federal Communications Commission decency standards. The rules are so loosey-goosy it`s hard to imagine how the networks could lose.

The signs are everywhere that the indecency campaign is failing anyway in the months since "moral values" supposedly became the unofficial law of the land. To see how much so, forget about the liberal Hollywood of Oscar night and examine instead the porn peddlers of the right.

Rupert Murdoch`s Fox, always a leader in these hypocrisy sweepstakes, made pious hay out of yanking the second scheduled broadcast of the GoDaddy.com commercial after its initial Super Bowl appearance. But Fox Sports promptly plastered the "GoDaddy girl" alongside Playboy bunnies and other pinups on its "Funhouse Fox of the Week" Web site, where every adolescent teenager could ogle it to his libido`s content. No less a bellwether is the decision of Adelphia, a cable giant known for its refusal to traffic in erotica, to change its image radically now that its moralistic founder and former C.E.O., John Rigas, has been convicted of looting the company. Shortly after President Bush`s inauguration Adelphia acknowledged that it is offering XXX, the most hard-core porn, to some subscribers - a cable first, outdoing even the XX porn on Mr. Murdoch`s DirecTV in explicitness. "The more X`s, the more popular," an Adelphia spokeswoman told The Los Angeles Times.

As Jake Tapper reported on ABC News, Adelphia is a big Republican contributor. Its beneficiaries include Rick Santorum, the Republican senator from Pennsylvania who has likened homosexuality to "man on dog" sex, a specialty item that his campaign donor might yet present some day. Sift through the Center for Responsive Politics` campaign contribution site, and you will also find that Fred Upton, the Republican point man in the Congressional indecency crusade, is one of the many in his party (President Bush among them) raking in contributions from Comcast or its executives. Comcast subscribers are awash in porn. In Mr. Upton`s own Kalamazoo district, its pay-per-view networks have offered such hard-core fare as "Young, Fresh & Ripe" and "As Young As They Come No. 8" even as the congressman put the finishing touches on the penalty-enhanced Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act of 2005.

Cheering Mr. Upton on is the Parents Television Council, the e-mail factory that Mediaweek magazine credits with as much as 99.9 percent of all indecency complaints to the F.C.C. in 2004. It is also quite a little fount of salacious entertainment in its own right. On its Web site, the organization`s tireless "entertainment analysts" compile a list of every naughty word used on television and invite visitors to "Watch the Worst TV Clip of the Week." An archive of past clips - helpfully labeled individually by sin ("gratuitous teen sex," "necrophilia") - is there for your pleasure, with no requirement for the credit card number or membership fee that porn Internet sites use as a roadblock for children.

That politicians and public scolds like these have succeeded in the temporary laundering of live TV shows, and even "Saving Private Ryan," is a symptom of the political moment. It won`t last long. The power of the free market, for better or worse, will prevail, and the market tells us that it is still the American way to lament indecency even while gobbling it up. This is the year that Sports Illustrated for the first time published the number for its subscribers to phone if they wanted to skip the swimsuit issue - and almost no one called. Sandra Dee really is dead, and no fire-and-brimstone speeches by James Dobson are going to bring her back.

But that does not mean that the indecency campaign is benign. Even if it barely slows the entertainment industry juggernaut, it inflicts collateral damage elsewhere - whether casting a chill over broadcast news or crippling public broadcasting by inducing it to censor even the language of American troops in a "Frontline" documentary about Iraq. The Parents Television Council may purport to complain about "The Simpsons," which last Sunday presented an episode both sympathetic to same-sex marriage and skeptical of a Bible-thumping minister. ("If you love the Bible so much," Homer asks him, "why don`t you marry it?") But that`s a game; this organization knows full well it can`t lay a finger on Fox or its well-connected proprietor, Mr. Murdoch. The same anti-indecency forces, however, can and did set the stage for the new secretary of education, Margaret Spellings, to go gunning for a far milder evocation of same-sex parents in the children`s show "Postcards From Buster" on PBS.

Fresh from sending a cartoon rabbit to the slaughterhouse, Ms. Spellings will figure out ways to discriminate against real-life lesbian moms in other departmental policies that have nothing to do with entertainment. And she`s not the only administration official empowered by the decency crusaders to apply censorship to public policy well removed from the TV screen. No sooner were PBS`s lesbians sent to the indecency gulag than The Washington Post reported that the Department of Health and Human Services had instructed the presenters of a federally funded conference on suicide prevention this month to remove the words "gay," "lesbian," "bisexual" and "transgender" from the name of a talk heretofore titled "Suicide Prevention Among Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender Individuals," thereby rendering it invisible and useless.

At least President Bush is now on tape saying he won`t "kick gays." He leaves that to surrogates. It`s gay people and teenagers being denied potentially life-saving sex education who ultimately are the real victims of the larger agenda of the decency crusaders, which is not to clean up show business, a doomed mission, but to realize the more attainable goal of enlisting the government to marginalize and punish those who don`t adhere to their "moral values." For its part, show business will have no problem fending for itself. My favorite moment in the whole faux Oscar controversy came on a "Today" show segment weighing the Drudge Report blast of Chris Rock. "Still ahead this morning on `Today,` " said Katie Couric without missing a beat as that report ended, "former teacher Mary Kay Letourneau is planning to marry the student who fathered two of her children." America just can`t stop itself from staying tuned.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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SPIEGEL ONLINE - 23. Februar 2005, 08:01
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/0,1518,343173,00.h…
Dieser Artikel wurde auch in den USA veröffentlicht und wird sehr lebhaft von den Lesern kommentiert.
Der englische Artikel ist keine wörtliche Übersetzung.
Hier dieser Link:http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=20049&mode=nest…


Diplomatische Querelen

Warum Mainzer Metzger nicht mit dem Präsidenten reden dürfen

Von Matthias Gebauer und Georg Mascolo, Washington

Eigentlich wollte sich George W. Bush in Mainz als volksnaher und diskussionsfreudiger Staatslenker präsentieren. Doch eine Bürgerrunde mit vorher abgesprochenen Fragen lehnte das Auswärtige Amt in Berlin ab. Nun trifft sich der Präsident mit jungen Führungskräften - handverlesen von amerikanischen Instituten.

US-Präsident George W. Bush: Elite-Talk unterm Glaslüster
Fehlt da nicht etwas auf dem Programm, wenn heute US-Präsident George W. Bush in Mainz Station macht? Wo ist das so genannte Townhall-Meeting geblieben, eine Art Bürgerfragestunde im amerikanischen Stil? Noch vor wenigen Wochen hatte das Weiße Haus dieses Treffen zwischen ganz normalen Deutschen und dem mächtigsten Mann der Welt zum Herzstück des Bush-Besuches in Deutschland erklärt. Stolz erklärten US-Protokollbeamte, Bush wolle nicht nur die Politiker, sondern auch den Durchschnitts-Deutschen von der Richtigkeit seiner Politik überzeugen. Wo also könne man das besser tun als in einer offenen Runde, in der Handwerker, Fleischer, Bankangestellte und ein paar Studenten sitzen?

Die protokollarische Wirklichkeit sieht am Mittwochnachmittag anders aus. Das Townhall-Meeting ist gestrichen. Eine offizielle Begründung für die Absage gibt es weder von deutscher, noch von amerikanischer Seite. Aus dem Auswärtigen Amt (AA) hört man, das Treffen sei aus schlichten Termingründen entfallen. Alles ganz normal bei einem solchen Besuch mit vielen Ideen und nur wenig Zeit, so die Linie der Diplomaten. Hinter den Kulissen hingegen erscheint eine andere Erklärung: Eine unkontrollierte Begegnung mit dem erfahrungsgemäß US-skeptischen Normalo-Deutschen schien den Bush-Strategen zu unberechenbar. Einer Vorbereitung des Gedankenaustauschs nach US-Vorbild, bei der Teilnehmer und Fragen in einer Art Drehbuch sorgfältig ausgewählt werden, konnten die Deutschen wiederum nichts abgewinnen.

Bush mit offenem Visier

Ziemlich überrascht hatte das AA schon bei den ersten Planungen für die Mainz-Visite von Bush und seiner Frau Laura auf den unmissverständlichen Wunsch aus dem Weißen Haus reagiert, der Präsident wolle neben dem Kanzler auch mit ganz normalen Deutschen diskutieren. Weil dem Stab des Präsidenten die Sache aber so wichtig schien, machten sich die Protokollmitarbeiter das AA eilig an die Arbeit. Wo in Mainz sollte das Auditorium sitzen, wer sollte eingeladen werden? Wirtschaftsführer, Mainzer Bürger, Studenten, oder am besten alle gemeinsam?

Zum neuen Bush schien die Begegnung mit dem Bürger nur zu gut zu passen. Seit seiner Wiederwahl erscheint der Präsident selbstbewusst und schlagfertig, seinen Kritikern geht er nicht mehr aus dem Weg. Journalisten, die er einst mied, empfängt er inzwischen beinahe täglich zum Interview. Vor Publikum kann Bush locker, witzig und sehr überzeugend sein. Eine Hand am Mikrofon, die andere frei für große Gesten - Bush ist mittlerweile ein Meister in dieser von ihm hundertfach geprobten Form.

Offene Runde gegen die Missverständnisse

Das Townhall-Meeting schien der US-Administration wie gemacht, die skeptische deutsche Öffentlichkeit umzustimmen. Denn eine dauerhafte Verbesserung des Klimas, befanden die Strategen im Weißen Haus, ist nicht zu erreichen, wenn Bush nur die Politiker umstimmt. Die reagieren, halb aus Erleichterung über das Ende der Krise und halb aus staatspolitischer Vernunft, ohnehin recht freundlich. Der Präsident, erklärte einer seiner Pressesprecher noch vor zwei Wochen in Washington, werde in Europa trotzdem so schrecklich missverstanden. Umso mehr freue er sich auf das direkte Gespräch mit den Menschen.

Je länger aber die Diplomaten beider Seiten über die Tagesordnung für die Townhall-Runde diskutierten, umso offenkundiger wurden die verschiedenen Vorstellungen, wie der Programmpunkt Bürger treffen Bush vorbereitet werden muss. Das Weiße Haus, berichten deutsche Diplomaten, wollte Regeln ähnlich denen, die beim Besuch von Außenministerin Condoleezza Rice vor zwei Wochen galten.

Zensus für die Fragen

Damals wurden die Fragen für eine Diskussion mit Studenten einer französischen Eliteschule zuvor von Rices Stab begutachtet. Abgelehnt wurde etwa, was der Student Benjamin Barnier für Rice aufgeschrieben hatte: "George Bush wird in der Welt, vor allem im Nahen Osten, nicht verstanden, was können Sie tun, das zu ändern?" Genehmigt wurde lediglich Barniers Frage, ob im Irak eine theokratische Regierung nach iranischem Vorbild entstehe.

Eine solche Fragen-Regie aber war dem Auswärtigen Amt für die Mainz-Visite zuviel. Und Garantien, dass das Publikum nicht allzu kritisch nachhaken werde, wollten die Diplomaten von Joschka Fischer schon gar nicht abgeben. "Wir haben ihnen gesagt, seid nicht sauer auf uns, wenn böse Fragen gestellt werden", hat Wolfgang Ischinger, Deutschlands kundiger Botschafter in Washington, vergangene Woche bereits der "New York Times" anvertraut. Offiziell von der Agenda gestrichen wurde das Townhall-Meeting dennoch nie. Die Sache wurde ganz im Stil des gepflegten diplomatischen Umgangs geregelt - man redete einfach nicht mehr darüber.

Elite-Zirkel unterm Glaslüster

Statt der großen Runde trifft Bush nun einen elitären Kreis von so genannten "jungen Führungskräften". Eine ganze Stunde lang haben die rund 20 Teilnehmer der exklusiven Runde im edlen Mozartsaal des Schlosses in Mainz die Gelegenheit, den US-Präsidenten hautnah kennen zu lernen. Das Motto der Runde lautet "Ein neues Kapitel der transatlantischen Beziehungen". Unter den knapp sechs Meter hohen Decken des Parkettsaals sollen die im internationalen Slang gern auch als "young leaders" bezeichneten Teilnehmer als Vertreter der deutschen Öffentlichkeit ein ganz anderes Bild von George W. Bush gewinnen. Um die offene Rede zu garantieren, wurde die Presse von dem Termin von vornherein ausgeschlossen. Eventuelle Peinlichkeiten bleiben damit auch im kleinen Kreis.

Wer nun am frühen Mittwochnachmittag im "Mozartsaal" unter dem beeindruckenden Lüster am Konferenztisch Platz nimmt, suchten mehrere US-Institute in Deutschland aus. In den letzten Tagen schickte beispielsweise das Aspen-Institut und der US-finanzierte German Marshall Fund Listen mit möglichen Teilnehmern an das Auswärtige Amt. Voraussetzung war, dass die Nominierten zwischen 20 und 30 sind und bereits in jungem Alter Führungspositionen einnehmen. Folglich stehen nun keine Fleischer oder Handwerker, sondern junge Mitarbeiter der Firmen DaimlerChrysler, der Deutschen Bank oder der Unternehmensberatung McKinsey auf der elitären Gästeliste.

Bush trifft man nicht beim Brötchenholen

Eine der Teilnehmerinnen an der Bush-Runde ist die 31-jährige Berlinerin Katrin Heuel, Mitarbeiterin des Aspen-Instituts. Erst vor einigen Tagen bekam sie die Einladung aus dem Protokoll des AA und machte sich am Mittwochmorgen auf dem Weg nach Mainz. Ein bisschen nervös ist sie schon, schließlich trifft man George W. Bush ja nicht jeden Tag beim Brötchenholen in Berlin-Mitte. Von Absprachen für die Fragen oder einem Drehbuch für die Veranstaltung ist ihr hingegen nichts bekannt. "Ich werde ganz offen zu den Themen Iran, Nordkorea und Russland fragen", so die junge Mitarbeiterin der Programmleitung des Instituts am Nachmittag vor dem großen Tag. Gespannt sei sie, wie der Präsident auf die jungen Leute reagieren werde.

Aus dem Auswärtigen Amt in Berlin hieß es ebenfalls, dass es vor der Runde kein Briefing über den Ablauf geben werde - zumindest nicht von der deutschen Seite. Lediglich eine ganze Reihe von Sicherheitschecks stünde routinemäßig auf dem Plan, da für den Mittags-Talk natürlich der höchste Standard gelte. Was der amerikanische Stab rund um den Präsidenten den "young leaders" vor dem Gespräch einflüstert, ist nicht bekannt. Zum Glück aber schließt eigentlich ja schon das Ober-Thema der Runde unangenehme Fragen nach der Vergangenheit aus - schließlich soll es ja um die Zukunft gehen.

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2005

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Monday, Feb. 21, 2005
Why Europe Ignores Bush
Iraq has telegraphed limits on U.S. power, allowing others to say no to Washington
By TONY KARON
http://www.time.com/time/columnist/printout/0,8816,1029937,0…

Machiavelli`s advice to political leaders was that it`s more important to be feared than to be loved. That`s no help for President Bush on his European tour; in spite of the warm words he`s exchanging with European leaders, the reality is that the Bush administration is neither loved nor feared in growing sectors of the international community — increasingly, it is simply being ignored.

New evidence of this trend, which has developed in the wake of the war in Iraq, emerges every week: Last Friday, Russia`s President Vladimir Putin pooh-poohed the U.S. claim that Iran seeks nuclear weapons, and Moscow agreed to move ahead with delivering the nuclear fuel for Tehran`s reactors despite Washington`s opposition. And in case you missed the message, Russia has also agreed to supply advanced surface-to-air missiles to Syria, the latest focus of U.S. ire in the Middle East — again in defiance of Washington`s stated wishes.

It`s hard to avoid the irony in Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice`s suggestion, in the wake of the fall of Baghdad, that the U.S. should “forgive Russia, ignore Germany and punish France” for opposing the war. On this trip, and Rice`s preparatory one, it`s more than clear that in fact they`re trying hard to forgive France and Germany. And it`s equally clear that Russia has no interest in U.S. “forgiveness” — President Putin is ignoring the Bush administration.

Nor is Putin alone in shrugging off U.S. calls to abandon trade deals that threaten Washington`s strategic interests. The European Union is going ahead with its plans to lift the arms embargo imposed on China after Tiananmen Square, despite urgings by the Bush administration to avoid selling weapons to Beijing.

In their efforts to put a bright face on the administration`s diminishing strategic influence, the Bush administration is accentuating the positive — the Europeans have agreed, they point out, to help train Iraqi security forces. Sure, they`ve agreed to train 1,000 Iraqis a year at a location outside of Iraq. To put that in perspective, the current U.S. goal is to train a further 200,000 Iraqis by October 1 — in other words, the NATO contribution will amount to 0.5 percent of the total. That`s a little like the geopolitical equivalent of a Hallmark good-luck greeting card.

Iraq, of course, is where the problem began in earnest, even before the war. By pressing ahead to war two years ago without the evidence to back its case and without waiting for UN inspectors to complete their work, the Bush administration inadvertently created a rupture in the international system of alliances that has proved disastrous. It created a situation where longtime U.S. allies found themselves with no choice but to say no to Washington on a strategic priority — and then not only to face no negative consequences, but to see the U.S. struggle under the weight of its occupation mission and then return to Europe calling for fences to be mended without the Europeans having changed their position. Well, not quite true: a number of European countries have changed their positions — they`ve pulled their troops out of Iraq. As the old gangster movie adage goes, "You run this town only because people think you run this town." Now when President Bush comes calling offering quotes from French existentialists — “Albert Camus said that freedom is a long distance race,” the president said Monday — sweet talk about the environment and promises to make the Israeli-Palestinian peace process a top priority, the Europeans know the reason is that Washington has been humbled by events. Indeed, it may be a measure of how the strategic balance has shifted that President Bush not only tosses around bon-mots from the existentialists; he hosts a dinner for President Chirac — a European leader he plainly detests, and who has not given an inch in his opposition to U.S. policy in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. France won`t even consent to U.S. pressure to make the relatively meaningless gesture of putting Hezbollah on a terrorist list.

The net effect of Operation Iraqi Freedom has not been to make U.S. enemies tremble in the face of American power. Instead, it has made them more aware of the limits of that power. A two-year occupation by 150,000 U.S. troops has failed to subdue an insurgency by a Sunni Muslim force that U.S. officials insist numbers no more than 12,000. Today, U.S. officials concede that the insurgency can`t be defeated militarily, and it has long been evident to the Europeans and others that Washington`s military resources are badly overstretched by the mission in Iraq — and that Washington`s bean-counters are not amused by the $5 billion monthly bill for its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iran may be sandwiched between Iraq and Afghanistan, but it`s not acting as if it believes it`s in any danger of being invaded. And in light of the difficulties it has faced in Iraq, it`s hard to imagine the U.S. managing to invade and occupy a country three times as large and as populous as Iraq, an unlikely to be any more welcoming of American troops than the Iraqis have been.

The Europeans certainly welcome the shift in tone from Washington, but that won`t alter the fundamental strategic differences that transcend the common values President Bush tried to highlight. Look no further than Iran for a reminder that the transatlantic strategic divisions that opened over Iraq are, if anything, even wider than they were two years ago. The U.S. and Europe certainly agree that a nuclear-armed Iran would be a bad idea, but their ways of dealing with the problem remain poles apart. The Europeans are trying to negotiate a deal that takes account of what they deem Tehran`s legitimate security concerns — i.e. fear of being attacked and toppled — and offers Iran guarantees and incentives to stay off the nuclear path. Fine, says the Bush administration. We hope that works, but don`t expect us to be part of it. But the U.S. is, rightly or wrongly, the very personification of Iran`s security concerns, and any deal offered to Tehran is meaningless without Washington`s involvement.

Administration hawks may think they`re cleverly lining up support for tougher action on Iran by letting diplomacy run its course and fail. If so, they could be in for a nasty surprise. The Europeans will almost certainly blame the U.S. refusal to come to the table for the failure of diplomacy. And they`re unlikely to see a nuclear-armed Iran as a reason to start yet another war in the Middle East. Don`t worry says Bush, Iran is different from Iraq — Saddam violated 16 UN resolutions, while the Iran matter hasn`t even gone to the UN yet. The operative word, of course, is “yet.” Rice made clear that the U.S. intends to take the matter there, and has been lobbying to unseat IAEA chief Dr. Mohammed ElBaradei to help ease the path to refer Tehran to the Security Council. ElBaradei has refused to endorse Washington`s charge that Iran is covertly running a weapons program, despite demanding more transparency and cooperation from Tehran. But the Europeans are opposing Bush administration efforts to unseat him, perhaps more mindful than the Bushies are of just how much credibility the U.S. lost in international eyes by the total collapse in the face of reality of the case for war against Iraq it presented to the UN two years ago. And even if Washington did manage to get the Iran matter onto the Security Council agenda, its chances of getting the Council to pass the sort of resolution Washington wants are negligible. President Putin has signaled Russia is in Tehran`s corner on this one, and China`s $30 billion investment in Iran`s oil and natural gas fields make it a relative certainty that Beijing would veto any resolution designed to impose sanctions or otherwise isolate Tehran.

The rift between the U.S. and Europe is evident on issues as diverse as the Kyoto treaty and the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo. But it`s likely to be felt most acutely in the strategic realm, in which the Europeans plainly no longer see themselves as hitched to the U.S. on matters of global conflict and security. The Europeans will make their own policy on Iraq, building their own relationships with its new government independently of the U.S. And presumably, so will others — as power shifts toward a government dominated by groups historically closer to Iran than they are to the U.S., don`t be surprised to see China step forward with aid and investment.

All over the world, new bonds of trade and strategic cooperation are being forged around the U.S. China has not only begun to displace the U.S. as the dominant player in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation organization (APEC), it is fast emerging as the major trading partner to some of Latin America`s largest economies. The European decision to lift its arms embargo may reflect an awareness of the strategic significance of Beijing`s emergence as an economic power — a dynamic that will dwarf the U.S. war with al-Qaeda in terms of its impact on the global strategic balance. And as it emerges alongside other new players such as India and Brazil, the U.S. will find itself forced to engage with a growing share of the international community that no longer deems it necessary to subordinate their own interests to Washington`s, nor to assume that the two are one and the same. French foreign policy think tanks have long promoted the goal of “multipolarity” in a post-Cold War world, i.e. the preference for many different, competing power centers rather than the “unipolarity” of the U.S. as a single hyper-power. Multipolarity is no longer simply a strategic goal. It is an emerging reality.


Copyright © 2005 Time Inc. All rights reserved.

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Zarqawi gibt viele Rätsel auf.
Hier ein guter Versuch ihn einzuordnen.

Newsday Exclusive: Where is al-Zarqawi?
http://www.nynewsday.com/news/nationworld/world/ny-wozark122…
BY MOHAMAD BAZZI
STAFF WRITER

December 21, 2004

SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq -- Where is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi?

That question has confounded the U.S. military for more than a year. U.S. and Iraqi officials insisted for months that the most wanted man in Iraq was hiding in the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah. But after recapturing the city last month, U.S. forces did not find al-Zarqawi there.

The Jordanian-born militant has achieved mythic status as a master of disguise and escape. Although al-Zarqawi has claimed responsibility for scores of kidnappings, suicide bombings and beheadings of foreigners, many Iraqis believe that al-Zarqawi does not even exist. They say he was invented by the United States to justify its raids and bombing campaigns.

Al-Zarqawi`s influence on the Iraqi insurgency is more complicated than both the U.S. military and al-Zarqawi make it out to be, according to Kurdish security officials. They say al-Zarqawi is likely moving around central and northern Iraq alone, finding shelter in Sunni Muslim areas dominated by former members of Saddam Hussein`s Baathist regime.

"He can move around any number of Iraqi areas. He can change his appearance, he can change his papers," said Dana Ahmad Majid, head of security for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of two parties that control the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq. "He could be moving around alone without any problem. Al-Zarqawi is a single man, and it`s always extremely difficult to capture a single person."

Asked if he thought al-Zarqawi escaped during last month`s U.S. assault on Fallujah, Majid smiled, took a drag on his cigarette and said, "Who knows that al-Zarqawi was ever in Fallujah?"

In interviews over the past week, Majid and other security officials painted a picture of how the insurgency is operating in northern Iraq, especially in the city of Mosul and surrounding areas that have long been Baathist strongholds. The assessments of these officials -- based on interrogation of dozens of insurgents captured over the past year -- contradict some of the U.S. military`s repeated assertions about al-Zarqawi`s role in the insurgency.

Kurdish officials acknowledged that the most vexing challenge in combatting the insurgency is that guerrillas have infiltrated nearly all branches of the Iraqi government. "The terrorists` point of strength is information," said Sadi Ahmed Pire, who is in charge of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan`s security operations in Mosul. "They have exact information. They have people in every government office and department: police, national guard, the health and education ministries, the municipalities. Some cooperate willingly, while others are forced."

Pire said he has intelligence that al-Zarqawi has spent time in Mosul, Iraq`s third-largest city, and has also found refuge in a desert area called Qaim, near Iraq`s border with Jordan and Syria.

Why doesn`t Pire share such information on al-Zarqawi`s whereabouts with the U.S. military, so it can carry out raids? "If we or the Americans get ready to launch an operation, the terrorists will know about it within an hour," Pire said.

One spectacular example of penetration occurred just last month. During a series of coordinated attacks by insurgents aimed at taking over the Iraqi government infrastructure in Mosul, most Iraqi police units in the city assisted the guerrillas. "Many police commanders and the director of police in Mosul were cooperating with the terrorists," Pire said. "In one day, Nov. 9, they gave them control of two-thirds of the police stations in the city."

Among the other intelligence gleaned by Kurdish officials from their interrogations of prisoners, including several who have met with al-Zarqawi:

Islamic militant groups operate in small cells of three or four people, each headed by an "emir," or prince, who is empowered to make decisions about when and where to launch attacks and suicide bombings. "The general planning might be done by al-Zarqawi, and perhaps he might also secure some material or money," Majid said. "But the specific acts are being carried out by small cells, and al-Zarqawi might not even know about them until he hears it on the news."

It is a mistake to paint al-Zarqawi as the ultimate leader of the Iraqi insurgency because there are so many small groups of militants that might agree with al-Zarqawi ideologically but that may not necessarily take orders from him. "There are localized leaders who can make day-to-day decisions about what attacks to carry out," Majid said. "But who is the supreme leader? We don`t know."

Al-Zarqawi is working closely with a Kurdish Islamist group, Ansar al-Islam ("Partisans of Islam"), which once had about 700 members and has provided scores of recruits for suicide bombings since the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Ansar moved many of its operations to Mosul after it was driven out of a remote, mountainous part of northern Iraq by U.S. bombardment during the war. The group also has a presence in Baghdad, Fallujah, Ramadi and Baqubah -- cities where the insurgency has been entrenched.

Most of Ansar`s leaders have been killed or captured. But the group has become more difficult to track because it has splintered into small cells and some of its members have been absorbed into another group led by al-Zarqawi: Tawhid wa Jihad ("Unity and Holy War").

Most of the communication between various militant groups, including al-Zarqawi and his supporters, is done through Internet cafes. "Telephone communications in Iraq are difficult," Majid said, "but the Internet is everywhere and it is difficult to track."

Insurgents are using proceeds from drug trafficking, especially hashish smuggled from Afghanistan, to finance some of their attacks. Some suicide bombers also are being given sedatives and other drugs before carrying out their attacks. As an example, Majid cited a 20-year-old Kurd who was killed in September as he tried to ram a car packed with explosives into a hotel in the city of Sulaimaniyah. "When we examined his body, we found a small amount of drugs in his system," Majid said.

Baathist and Islamic groups have liaison officers in major cities such as Mosul to coordinate activities. And both factions are paying unemployed young men to carry out attacks against U.S. and Iraqi forces. "They pay from $50 to thousands of dollars, depending on the tasks," Pire said. "There`s 75 percent unemployment in Mosul. Maybe some of these young people are not terrorists, but they have to make some money."

One of the major questions facing the U.S. military is the extent of foreign involvement in the insurgency. Kurdish officials say the majority of insurgents they have arrested were Iraqi, but there were also some Syrians, Jordanians and Palestinians. In January, Majid`s forces captured Hassan Ghul, a Pakistani believed to be a mid-level operative in al-Qaida. Ghul was carrying a CD with a 17-page letter purportedly written by al-Zarqawi to Osama bin Laden. The letter appeals to bin Laden for help in setting off a sectarian war through a campaign of bombings against the Shia Muslim majority in Iraq.

Before invading Iraq in March 2003, the Bush administration argued that al-Zarqawi was a top lieutenant of bin Laden. U.S. officials said al-Zarqawi had taken refuge in Baghdad and was a major link between Hussein`s regime and bin Laden`s al-Qaida network. But that assertion has never been proven, and there are doubts about al-Zarqawi`s relationships with both bin Laden and Hussein`s government, as some Bush administration officials have acknowledged in recent months. In July, U.S. officials raised the reward for information leading to al-Zarqawi`s arrest or killing to $25 million -- equal to the bounty on bin Laden`s head.

The Bush administration has consistently labeled al-Zarqawi as the main force behind the Iraqi insurgency. To some Iraqis, the U.S. focus on al-Zarqawi is part of a political strategy to portray the insurgency as driven by Islamic militants and foreigners.

Kurdish officials say the insurgency found renewed strength in northern Iraq in May, after the Baath Party held a meeting in the Syrian town of Hasaka.

The party reorganized itself, expelling more than half the membership, or anyone who had dealings with the United States, the Iraqi government or even humanitarian aid groups. The new Baath leaders are Mohammad Younis al-Ahmad and Ibrahim Sabawi, Hussein`s half-brother and the former head of Iraq`s general security directorate.

The new leadership found support in Mosul, which had been an important base for Hussein`s military and security apparatus, providing more than a third of all Iraqi officers. "The insurgents are using the infrastructure of the old Iraqi army," Pire said. "In Mosul alone, there were more generals than in all of America."

Majid noted that the focus on al-Zarqawi takes some of the pressure off lesser-known Baathist leaders. "These people like to remain anonymous," Majid said. "If everyone is looking for al-Zarqawi, they have more room to operate."

Copyright © 2005, Newsday, Inc.

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So what about George Bush and this man James Guckert (a.k.a. Jeff Gannon)
- a $200/hour gay male prostitute?

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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-cole24f…
COMMENTARY
The Downside of Democracy
What if the U.S. doesn`t like what the voters like in the Mideast and beyond?
By Juan Cole
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-cole24f…

Juan Cole is professor of modern Middle Eastern and North African studies at the University of Michigan. He maintains a blog on Middle East affairs, Informed Comment.

February 24, 2005


With the emergence of Shiite physician Ibrahim Jafari as the leading candidate for Iraqi prime minister earlier this week, the contradictions of Bush administration policy in the Middle East have become even clearer than they were before.

President Bush says he is committed to democratizing the region, yet he also wants governments to emerge that are friendly to the U.S., benevolent to their own people, secular, capitalist and willing to stand up and fight against anti-American radicals.

But what if democratic elections do not produce such governments? What if the newly elected regimes are friendly to states and groups that Washington considers enemies? What if the spread of democracy through the region empowers elements that don`t share American values and goals?

The recent election in Iraq is a case in point. The two major parties in the victorious Shiite alliance are Jafari`s party, the Dawa, founded in the late 1950s to work for an Islamic republic, and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI, the goal of which can be guessed from its name. To be fair, both have backed away from their more radical stances of earlier decades. But both parties — and Jafari himself — were sheltered in Tehran in the 1980s by Washington`s archenemy, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and both acknowledge that they want to move Iraq toward Islamic law and values.

The victorious Shiite fundamentalists have already taken steps that may be making the Bush administration nervous. They made it clear that they would attempt to incorporate their paramilitaries into the new Iraqi army. SCIRI has the Badr Corps, made up of about 15,000 men under arms trained originally by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and Dawa has its own paramilitary.

The two parties also announced that they would try to bring into the government`s armed forces members of the Al Mahdi militia of Shiite nationalist Muqtada Sadr, which have fought hard battles against the U.S. military in Najaf and elsewhere. Jafari has previously said that he hoped to bring Sadr into the Iraqi government. Jafari likewise has protested U.S. military action in Fallouja.

In interviews, Jafari has warned against deliberate attempts to undermine Iraq`s relations with neighboring Iran, which he has visited on several occasions for consultations since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

To be fair, Jafari has emerged as a moderate and skillful politician, and his devotion to his faith should in principle be no more objectionable than Bush`s own devotion to Christianity. Yet it certainly seems that his new government will adopt policies far less welcome in Washington than those of interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.

In the current struggle over whether the fundamentalist Lebanese Shiite party, Hezbollah, should be designated a terrorist organization, it seems clear that both the Dawa and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq will side with Hezbollah.

The fact is, democracy is an unruly process; it doesn`t always yield the results we want or expect. Bush likes to talk in terms of good versus evil, to suggest that the forces of freedom and democracy are doing battle with the defenders of tyranny — but he should be aware that the world isn`t always that simple.

He should remember, for instance, the 2002 elections in Pakistan, pushed for by Washington, which produced an unexpectedly good showing for the United Action Council, a coalition of hard-line fundamentalist parties. Some of them had helped train the Taliban. They won 17% of the federal parliament seats, won outright in the Northwest Frontier Province and now govern Baluchistan in coalition. Their leaders argued that Al Qaeda was merely a figment of the U.S. imagination.

A full disaster was averted in Pakistan only because the federal government was still dominated by military dictator Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Nevertheless, the United Action Council has attempted to impose a draconian version of Islamic law in the provinces it controls and has not been helpful to the U.S. in tracking down Al Qaeda operatives.

Pakistan and Iraq are not the only countries where elections have had mixed results. Although the Palestinian elections in January were widely viewed as a success — producing a pragmatic prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas — remember that the radical fundamentalist party, Hamas, boycotted those elections. Then, less than three weeks later, local elections were held — and Hamas won decisively in the Gaza Strip, leaving it more influential than before and poised for even bigger wins in next July`s legislative elections.

And in recent years, democratization has also put Hezbollah in the Lebanese parliament. Serbian nationalists have won seats in Belgrade.

Are such outcomes acceptable to the Bush administration? If not, how will it respond? Given the war on terror, it is unlikely to simply take these electoral setbacks lying down.

But if Washington falls back on its traditional responses — covert operations, attempts to interfere in parliamentary votes with threats or bribes, or dependence on strong men like Musharraf — the people of the Middle East might well explode, because the only thing worse than living under a dictatorship is being promised a democracy and then not really getting it.



Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

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Published on Thursday, February 24, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
The Digital Watch Effect and the Loss of American Democracy
by Steven Laffoley
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0224-23.htm

How long does it take to lose a democracy? One generation, it seems.

Last week, Time magazine reported that 36% of American High School students believe that newspapers (and presumably the television news) should have government approval before publishing stories.

That over a third of American High School students - students presumably familiar with the basic rights and freedoms of being an American - would even consider such limits on the freedom of speech is deeply troubling. Particularly, when we remember that only a generation before, free speech was the primary tool of the politically active young. In their hands, freedom of speech ended the war in Vietnam. Freedom of speech forced the resignation of President Nixon. Indeed, freedom of speech ensured the future of a democratic America.

So why have the young people of America people turned away from a fundamental democratic freedom? Is it ignorance? Do our schools no longer teach the fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution of the United States? Or teach the long struggle to protect it? Is it misplaced patriotism? Do our young people, in this so-called "time of war," somehow see freedom of speech as dangerous to the future of America?

The real answer, I suspect, is this: we are witnessing a generational shift in the context and meaning of America. That is, for Americans under the age of 35, the understanding of "freedom of speech" and "human rights" is fundamentally different than for those over the age of 35.

I call it the Digital Watch Effect.

Consider: about ten years ago, a friend of mine - an elementary school teacher - told me that many of her students could not tell time on an analog clock (with the sweeping big hand, little hand, and second hand). As a consequence, these children did not understand what a ten-minute period was or what an hour meant. That is, their "time context" was digital watch time - a precise number without analog meaning.

Of course, for those of us who do understand the analog clock, a digital watch offers precise information in a familiar context - analog time. That is, we live, work, and think in a set context of expectations - a conscious and unconscious understanding of how the world works relative to analog time.

But for the child, the digital watch gives information in a wholly different context, a context with new rules and new expectations. Ironically then, this "precise" technology breeds a form of deep ignorance of past context.

When we apply the Digital Watch Effect to culture and politics, we see the same deep shifts of context and meaning, and the same breeding of deep ignorance. This is what has happened to the young of America. The evidence of this was made clear for me while watching a recent CNN Crossfire program.

The hosts of Crossfire reported on a poll that asked Americans the following question: who was the greatest American president? Typically, in similar past polls, Lincoln, F.D.R., Jefferson, and Washington found their way to the top. However, for the first time, another president gathered the most votes: Ronald Reagan.

When this was announced, the audience - largely a crowd of twenty and thirty somethings - wildly applauded and cheered.

I was surprised. Many of the young people in the audience were not old enough to remember the "Reagan Revolution." Nor would they remember what came before Reagan. How could they possibly understand it, let along cheer it? Reagan was no Lincoln, F.D.R., Washington, or Jefferson, right?

Or was he? Did Ronald Reagan, in fact, create the conditions for a new understanding of America?

To have experienced the Reagan Revolution, within the context of the 1960s and 1970s experience, is a wholly different experience than to experience the Reagan Revolution as the context from which all things that follow are to be judged.

And that is the political and cultural Digital Watch Effect.

After 1980, the definition of "freedom of speech" and "human rights" came under increasingly hostile fire. The Reagan Revolution signaled a new way of thinking about the American ideal. Some called it a "culture war," a term I once laughed at when I first heard it.

I`m not laughing any more.

While those over 35 fought the "culture war" with the ideals of freedom and democracy informed by their experience of the 50s, 60s, and 70s, they neglected to note that their children were growing up in a profoundly different context.

The Reagan Revolution, presently being fought and finished by George W. Bush, pursues an America where the preservation of the "State" is more important than the preservation of its citizens` "Freedoms."

The Digital Watch Effect means that the future of freedom, human rights, and social responsibility will be understood in the context of the Reagan/Bush vision of America. And from what we have seen thus far, we know that this ideal does not endorse the freedoms promised in the Constitution of the United States of America.

How long does it take to lose a democracy? Once generation, it seems.

Steven Laffoley is a writer living in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. You may e-mail him at [e-mail]

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Feb 25, 2005

Bush`s `priceless` war
By David Isenberg
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GB25Ak01.html

WASHINGTON - Although the exact cost of the Iraq invasion to the American taxpayer is not known, recent figures suggest it is a lot more than has been publicly suggested and will grow considerably higher. Part of the problem in estimating costs is that the war is obviously not over; it just keeps going, and going, and going.

According to a report on the cost of the war in Iraq released last week by the Democratic staff of the House Budget Committee, the war and ongoing insurgency could cost the United States between US$461 billion and $646 billion by 2015, depending on the scope and duration of operations.

The difference between the low and high-end estimates depends on potential costs in 2006 and beyond. The lower figure is based on a US withdrawal of forces within four years, per Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld`s prediction that all US troops could be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of 2008. The second estimate reduces US forces to 40,000 by 2010, per a previously released Congressional Budget Office model.

The Budget Committee report estimates are higher than previous estimates for several reasons: the war is lasting longer and is more intense, and the cost to keep US troops in the theater of operations is proving to be greater, than anyone anticipated.

Those estimates are also far higher than anyone had predicted earlier, including Lawrence Lindsey, President George W Bush`s former chief economic adviser. In 2002 he predicted that the cost of a war with Iraq could range between $100 billion and $200 billion at best. The administration dismissed the figure, and Lindsey was soon fired.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the cost of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and the global "war on terrorism", after the newest supplement is exhausted, could total about $350 billion over the next 10 years (excluding interest payments on the debt), assuming an eventual phase-down of US activities in Iraq and Afghanistan.

To date, Congress has appropriated $154 billion for the military operations and reconstruction in Iraq. In the upcoming weeks this total will grow after Congress enacts the president`s $81.9 billion emergency supplemental appropriation to fund these operations through the rest of fiscal year 2005. This latest supplemental includes $64 billion for Iraq and increases the total cost to the US to more than $200 billion through 2005.

One obvious question when considering costs is why the government has to ask for supplemental appropriates in the first place. Why can`t it be put in the annual budget request? According to Chris Preble, director of foreign-policy studies at the Cato Institute in Washington, DC, "There is one good argument for not using Iraq costs for not being in the annual military budget. That is the risk you build in tens or hundreds of billions of dollars that are not applied to Iraq, but applied to somewhere else. However, that concern is completely overwhelmed by the fact that funding for war by supplements really seems to be intended to conceal some of the costs, and to present costs to Congress to be a fait accompli. Congress can`t vote against such things without being accused of undermining troops in the field."

According to Chris Hellman, military-policy analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington, DC, "It seems to me you have to ask the fundamental question. I believe if the president went to Congress and said we are going to put it in the top line and we need to fund it, Congress would say `yes`. So why does the president go the supplement route? To a certain extent it hides the deficit. At least temporarily it distorts the true nature of the deficit."

Another reason, according to Hellman, is that "supplement appropriations are slushy. There is a lack of oversight, which gives a federal agency a lot of discretion. You are talking about $500 billion in total annual spending, of which 20% - the total of the supplement - is unaccounted for. No other agency has discretionary authority of 20% of its budget."

Then there are future costs that have hardly begun to be paid such as disability payments for those who are wounded in the "war on terror".

Larry Korb, a former assistant secretary of defense in the administration of president Ronald Reagan and a senior fellow the Center for American Progress, a liberal think-tank in Washington, DC, said, "You are going to have one in 10 die. That means a 90% survival rate. People forget about the VA [Department of Veterans Affairs] costs that have to be paid."

According to Hellman, "Nobody has made any effort to calculate those costs. One of the sad ironies of our technical proficiency is that our death-to-wounded ratio is completely reversed from previous wars. This could be a substantial burden to taxpayers for 40-50 years."

Then there is the reality that not all the money appropriated for the cost of war in Iraq or Afghanistan actually is spent on those wars. Korb said, "There are things in the supplement which should be in the regular budget, such as converting army brigades and the costs of military transformation, as well as regular operations and maintenance costs, plus odds and ends, like procurement of Black Hawk helicopters. Keeping these costs in the supplement allows the Pentagon to claim that their budget request comes in under last year`s budget. But when you include the costs of items in the supplement they are over by about 10 billion."

Korb`s claim is confirmed by the documentation provided by the White House. For example, the fact sheet it released about the supplement notes that it "includes $5.3 billion to begin implementing plans to restructure the army and Marine Corps into more flexible, self-sufficient modular units better able to deploy and fight the `war on terror`."

Aside from the difficulty in tracking costs it is also unclear how well the money is being spent. Last month, Stuart Bowen Jr, special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, released findings that the US occupation authority in Iraq was unable to keep track of the nearly $9 billion it transferred to government ministries, which lacked financial controls, security, communications and adequate staff.

So how much might it cost by the time it is all over? It is impossible to predict with certainty. But Korb estimates that "before it is all over the costs will run to half a trillion dollars".

But in the end the debate over the costs obscures a more fundamental question. "I think at the end of the day, whether they account for costs normally or via supplement, it is incumbent to come to Congress and say whether costs are worth the benefits. The Bush administration can`t be left off the hook for their assumption that the war would be reasonably quick and inexpensive," said Preble.

David Isenberg, a senior analyst with the Washington-based British American Security Information Council (BASIC), has a wide background in arms control and national security issues. The views expressed are his own.

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

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February 25, 2005
For the Few and the Proud, Concern Over the `Few` Part
By ERIC SCHMITT
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/25/politics/25marine.html?

WASHINGTON, Feb. 24 - The Iraq war`s dampening effect on recruiting has led to a plan by the Marine Corps to put hundreds of additional recruiters on the streets over the next several months and offer new re-enlistment bonuses of up to $35,000, military officials said Thursday.

Recruiters and other military officials say the "Falluja effect" - a steady drumbeat of military casualties from Iraq, punctuated by graphic televised images of urban combat - is searing an image into the public eye that Marine officers say is difficult to overcome.

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The Marines make up about 21 percent of the 150,000 military personnel in Iraq now but have suffered 31 percent of the military deaths there, according to Pentagon statistics.

The Army and other services have often increased the number of recruiters and dangled incentives to bolster their enlistment efforts in lean years. But for the Marines, steps of this magnitude, including the largest one-time increase in recruiters in recent memory, are unheard of in a service whose macho image has historically been a magnet for young people seeking adventure and danger in a military career.

Gen. Michael W. Hagee, the Marine Corps commandant, predicted on Thursday that the Marines would achieve their overall recruiting goal for this fiscal year, even after the service missed its monthly quota in January, the first such lapse in nearly a decade. But General Hagee indicated that recruiters were facing some of toughest conditions they have ever faced, starting in the homes of their prized recruits.

"What the recruiters are telling us is that they have to spend more time with the parents," General Hagee said. "Parents have influence, and rightly so, on the decision these young men and young women are going to make. They`re saying, `It`s not maybe a bad idea to join the Marine Corps, but why don`t you consider it a year from now, or two years from now; let`s think about this.` "

At issue is the Marines` decision to rebuild its recruiting ranks, which had fallen recently to 2,410 full-time recruiters from 2,650 before the Iraq war, as commanders siphoned off marines who had been scheduled for recruiting duty to perform combat duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"The recruiting force atrophied," said Maj. David M. Griesmer, a spokesman for the Marine Corps Recruiting Command. "Now we need to get back up to where we need to be." Major Griesmer said the Marines would add nearly 250 recruiters between now and October 2006.

General Hagee said, "We are putting more recruiters out there on the street."

In a reflection of the difficult market for Marine recruiters, the service offers bonuses of up to $35,000 to retain combat veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan.

What is unusual about these incentives is that the Marines Corps for the first time is offering re-enlistment bonuses, averaging $20,000, to its most junior infantrymen, rather than relying mainly on inexperienced troops fresh from boot camp to replenish the infantry. About 75 percent of enlisted marines leave the service after their first tour, requiring a steady stream of recruits moving through training centers in San Diego and Parris Island, S.C.

"We need infantrymen," General Hagee said, explaining the shift in bonus priorities. "That`s what we`re using over there on the ground."

General Hagee said the initial wave of bonuses had increased re-enlistment rates among infantry units, but Marine officials said they did not have specific figures readily available.

The Marines` decision to strengthen recruiting comes as the Army has added hundreds of new recruiters and is pushing incoming recruits into training as fast as possible.

In a wide-ranging breakfast interview with reporters, General Hagee touched on several issues regarding Iraq that military specialists say contribute to the climate of concern among potential recruits and their parents.

General Hagee said the military had an all-out effort under way to combat the remotely detonated roadside bombs that are the No. 1 killer of American troops in Iraq. The Marines, he said, are using a sophisticated computer program to help identify potential vulnerabilities of supply convoys protected by electronic jamming devices.

When it comes to recruiting, the traditional enticements of military service, like travel, education benefits and the Marine Corps mystique, now must vie with the concerns of recruits and their parents, recruiters say.

"The parents have always been the challenge," said Gunnery Sgt. Larry Pyles, who has been a recruiter for five years in the DuPage South office in Naperville, Ill.


Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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February 25, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Kansas on My Mind
By PAUL KRUGMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/25/opinion/25krugman.html

Call it "What`s the Matter With Kansas - The Cartoon Version."

The slime campaign has begun against AARP, which opposes Social Security privatization. There`s no hard evidence that the people involved - some of them also responsible for the "Swift Boat" election smear - are taking orders from the White House. So you`re free to believe that this is an independent venture. You`re also free to believe in the tooth fairy.

Their first foray - an ad accusing the seniors` organization of being against the troops and for gay marriage - was notably inept. But they`ll be back, and it`s important to understand what they`re up to.

The answer lies in "What`s the Matter With Kansas?," Thomas Frank`s meditation on how right-wingers, whose economic policies harm working Americans, nonetheless get so many of those working Americans to vote for them.

People like myself - members of what one scornful Bush aide called the "reality-based community" - tend to attribute the right`s electoral victories to its success at spreading policy disinformation. And the campaign against Social Security certainly involves a lot of disinformation, both about how the current system works and about the consequences of privatization.

But if that were all there is to it, Social Security should be safe, because this particular disinformation campaign isn`t going at all well. In fact, there`s a sense of wonderment among defenders of Social Security about the other side`s lack of preparation. The Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation have spent decades campaigning for privatization. Yet they weren`t ready to answer even the most obvious questions about how it would work - like how benefits could be maintained for older Americans without a dangerous increase in debt.

Privatizers are even having a hard time pretending that they want to strengthen Social Security, not dismantle it. At one of Senator Rick Santorum`s recent town-hall meetings promoting privatization, college Republicans began chanting, "Hey hey, ho ho, Social Security`s got to go."

But before the anti-privatization forces assume that winning the rational arguments is enough, they need to read Mr. Frank.

The message of Mr. Frank`s book is that the right has been able to win elections, despite the fact that its economic policies hurt workers, by portraying itself as the defender of mainstream values against a malevolent cultural elite. The right "mobilizes voters with explosive social issues, summoning public outrage ... which it then marries to pro-business economic policies. Cultural anger is marshaled to achieve economic ends."

In Mr. Frank`s view, this is a confidence trick: politicians like Mr. Santorum trumpet their defense of traditional values, but their true loyalty is to elitist economic policies. "Vote to stop abortion; receive a rollback in capital gains taxes. ... Vote to stand tall against terrorists; receive Social Security privatization." But it keeps working.

And this week we saw Mr. Frank`s thesis acted out so crudely that it was as if someone had deliberately staged it. The right wants to dismantle Social Security, a successful program that is a pillar of stability for working Americans. AARP stands in the way. So without a moment`s hesitation, the usual suspects declared that this organization of staid seniors is actually an anti-soldier, pro-gay-marriage leftist front.

It`s tempting to dismiss this as an exceptional case in which right-wingers, unable to come up with a real cultural grievance to exploit, fabricated one out of thin air. But such fabrications are the rule, not the exception.

For example, for much of December viewers of Fox News were treated to a series of ominous warnings about "Christmas under siege" - the plot by secular humanists to take Christ out of America`s favorite holiday. The evidence for such a plot consisted largely of occasions when someone in an official capacity said, "Happy holidays," instead of, "Merry Christmas."

So it doesn`t matter that Social Security is a pro-family program that was created by and for America`s greatest generation - and that it is especially crucial in poor but conservative states like Alabama and Arkansas, where it`s the only thing keeping a majority of seniors above the poverty line. Right-wingers will still find ways to claim that anyone who opposes privatization supports terrorists and hates family values.

Their first attack may have missed the mark, but it`s the shape of smears to come.

E-mail: [e-mail]

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Als John Negroponte noch Mullah Omar hieß
von Dennis Hans
http://www.zmag.de/artikel.php?id=1359&PHPSESSID=2b81b733b81…
CommonDreams.org / ZNet 23.02.2005
Für den Posten als US-Geheimdienstchef hat Bush jemanden auserkoren, der einst die Aufsicht über eine Zufluchtsstädte inne hatte, wie man sie aus Afghanistan kennt und wo sich Terroristen fanden, die Osama und Al-Qaida an Abscheulichkeit das Wasser reichen konnten.

Vielleicht erinnert man sich an Mullah Omar, dem Anführer der Taliban, jener islamischen Bewegung, die den gescheiterten Islamischen Staat von Afghanistan von 1996 bis ins Jahr 2001 unfähig regierte? Er und die Taliban spielten für Osama bin Laden den Gastgeber und boten ihm und seiner Al-Qaida Organisation somit einen sicheren Zufluchtsort von wo aus sie terroristische Angriffe planen und Rekruten ausbilden konnten, die nach Afghanistan aus aller Herren Länder kamen.

Nun, wie sich herausstellt hat Mullah Omar viel mit John Negroponte gemeinsam, einem altgedienten Diplomaten, den George W. Bush dazu auserwählt hat erster US-Geheimdienstchef zu werden – es könnte sogar sein, dass er Omar als Vorbild für den Verlauf seiner Karriere diente.

Das wohl wichtigste Kapitel im Werdegang Negropontes fand nämlich in dem gescheiterten Staat Honduras statt. Von 1981 bis 1985 war er in der Bananenrepublik der mächtigste Mann, ganz genauso wie Mullah Omar 15 Jahre später in Afghanistan „der King“ war. So wie Omar bin Laden und Al-Qaida willkommen hieß und Schutz gewährleistete, so sorgte Negroponte dafür, dass Honduras den abscheulichsten Terrorgruppen in der gesamten westlichen Hemisphäre Zuflucht bot, den Contra-Rebellen.

Genau, die Contra-Rebellen. Man mag sich an sie als die von US-Präsident Ronald Reagan in höchsten Tönen gelobte Militäreinheit erinnern, die „moralisch gesehen das Ebenbild der Gründerväter“ ist. Die viele Bände umfassenden Berichte von Human Rights Watch und Amnesty International zeigen aber, dass die Darstellung, die ich von ihnen gebe die richtige ist, und nicht die Reagans.

Genauen Zahlen über Todesopfer kommt man schwer bei, aber die Contra-Rebellen haben wahrscheinlich mehr schutzlose Zivilisten in den 80er Jahren des letzten Jahrhunderts getötet als Al-Qaida in den zehn Jahren ihrer terroristischen Aktivitäten. Die Contra-Rebellen haben allerdings eine Kehle nach der Anderen durchgeschnitten, anstatt 3.000 Menschen an einem Tag in New York und an einem anderen 2.000 in Afrika in die Luft zu sprengen, zwei von vielen abscheulichen Taten Al-Qaidas.

Negroponte wurde 1981 nach Honduras entsendet, um den dortigen US-Botschafter Jack Binns zu ersetzen, der sich den Zorn der Regierung Reagans aufgeladen hatte. Mit Binns, muss man wissen, hatte man in den sauren Apfel gebissen. Das bewies er, indem er sich besorgt über eskalierende Folterungen und Morde durch honduranische Sicherheitskräfte äußerte, zu einer Zeit, als es Richtlinie der US-amerikanischen Politik war solche kriminellen Handlungen zu verschweigen. Aus der Sicht der Reagananhänger, war Binns einfach nicht aus dem richtigen Holz geschnitzt, um eine US-Botschaft zu leiten, die im Begriff war, die größte in Mittelamerika zu werden und die Verwandlung großer Teile Honduras’ zu einem Zufluchtsort und Ausbildungslager für kaltblütige Mörder zu überwachen.

1981 verfolgte die Reagan Mannschaft eine ungenannte Strategie des „Regimewechsels” in Nicaragua, obwohl sie dem Kongress und den Medien (stimmt genau, wie heute, so waren auch damals schon beide Schoßhündchen!) vorgaben, dass es ihrem eigentlichen Ziel galt, den angeblichen Fluss and Waffen so genannter „Weapons of Minimal Destruction“ (kleine Feuerwaffen und ähnliches) von Nicaragua über Land durch Honduras und weiter nach El Salvador zu unterbinden. Dort besaßen marxistische Guerillatruppen die Dreistigkeit, sich einer Diktatur zur Wehr setzen, die seit 50 Jahren von den USA unterstützt wurde und allein in dem Jahr von 1980 bis 81 um die 20.000 Zivilisten ermordet hatte.

Dieser Waffenfluss stellte sich aber größtenteils als Fata Morgana heraus (eine weitere Parallele zu heute), insbesondere zu der Zeit als Negroponte nach Honduras kam. Die Täuschung durch das Lager der Reagananhänger, dass die Contra-Rebellen zum Ziel hätten den angeblichen Fluss an Waffen zu unterbinden, war eine notwendige Lüge, um einen gutgläubigen und schwachen Kongress dazu zu bewegen das Unternehmen zu finanzieren. Tatsächlich waren die Reagananhänger von einem Regimewechsel wie besessen und ihr auserwähltes Instrument sollte von ehemaligen Offizieren der nicaraguanische Nationalgarde angeführt werden. Diese war selbst eine von den USA ausgebildete Militäreinheit, die, von 1977-79, 30 bis 40.000 nicaraguanische Zivilisten tötete und vergeblich versuchte den Diktator Anastasio Somoza an der Macht zu halten, der seit langen von den USA Unterstützung erhielt.

Die neue Militäreinheit wurde als Contras bekannt, was eine Abkürzung für Kontrarevoluzionär ist, da das Regime, das die Reagananhänger auswechseln wollten von Sandinistarevoluzionären dominiert wurde, die sich am Marxismus orientierten und den bewaffneten Kampf gegen Somoza angeführt hatten. Die Contra-Rebellen waren verdammt gut im Töten von Pflegepersonal und Lehrern und völlig unerschrocken dabei gefangen genommene und entwaffnete, feindliche Kämpfer zu exekutieren. Exekutionen gehörten zur üblichen Vorgehensweise. Ihre Gesinnungstreue gegenüber Somoza und ihre üble Vorgehensweise hielt sie davon ab, wie eine richtige Guerilla-Armee zu funktionieren, denn sie lebten mit den Menschen, die sie angeblich befreiten, zusammen und waren in Sachen Lebensmittel, Unterschlupf und Informationen auf sie angewiesen. Daher auch die Notwendigkeit eines Zufluchtsortes in einem gescheiterten Staat, der von korrupten, brutalen Armeeoffizieren und einem herrischen US-Botschafter namens John Negroponte regiert wurde.

Ohne diesen Zufluchtsort hätten die Contra-Rebellen keinen Monat lang überlebt. So aber konnten sie zehn Jahre lang Terror ausüben. Abhängig von den USA, die sie mit Lebensmitteln, geheimdienstlichen Informationen, Waffen und Handbüchern zum Morden ausstattete, konnten sie für eine Weile plündernd durch Nicaraguas ländliche Gegenden ziehen und sich dann in ihren sicheren Zufluchtsort zurückziehen, wenn sie einer Pause vom Schänden, Foltern und Morden bedurften. Tatsächlich begingen sie derartige Verbrechen auch in ihren Lagern auf honduranischer Seite, wenn auch auf gelassenere Art.

Leider hatte die nicaraguanische Regierung weder die Feuerkraft noch den Grips, das Lager der Contra-Rebellen in die Luft zu jagen und die honduranische Gruppe zu stürzen, die die Contra-Rebellen unterstützte. Wahrscheinlich war das auch gut so, denn hätten die Sandinisten dies getan, wäre Nicaragua von den Reagananhängern zerstört worden und die US-amerikanischen Medien hätten darüber Beifall gespendet. Denn nur die USA haben das Recht einen Staat anzugreifen, der Terroristen Unterschlupf gewährt, die tausende von Zivilisten auf dem Gewissen haben.

Negropontes angebliche Aufgabe in Honduras war es, das scheinbare Ziel der US-Politik durchzusetzen, nämlich die Demokratie zu fördern. (Hat man das nicht schon einmal gehört?) Seine eigentliche Aufgabe war es, selbst den kleinsten Anflug echter demokratischer Entwicklungen zu unterbinden und dafür zu Sorgen, dass wichtige Entscheidungen der Außenpolitik nicht von der pseudodemokratischen Fassade getroffen wurden - dem bedeutungslosen Präsidenten und der Legislative von Honduras - sondern von zwei kaltschnäuzigen, abgebrühten A-löchern: Negroponte und dem Oberbefehlshaber der Streitkräfte, General Gustavo Alvarez.

Somit unterstützten Negroponte und die Reagananhänger im Namen der „Demokratie” nicht nur die Militärherrschaft, sondern verhinderten sogar demokratische Verfahren innerhalb des Militärs! (Z.B. „jeder Oberst erhält eine Wahlstimme“) Die radikalen Ansichten des Präsidenten Alvarez und seine Politik der Unterdrückung waren nicht Echo eines Konsenses innerhalb der Armee. Viele Offiziere waren der Meinung, Alvarez hätte das Land mit Leib und Seele wie einen Sklaven an die USA verkauft. Es wurden auch Stimmen laut, wegen eskalierenden Folterungen und Morden, die von dem Bataillon 316 verübt wurden, einer vom CIA unterstützten Armee-Einheit.

1984 wurde dann Alvarez vor den Augen Negropontes von einer Gruppe Offiziere entmachtet. In den USA wurde dies richtigerweise als „Regierungswechsel“ gesehen. In Demokratien kommt es aber nicht zu einem „Regierungswechsel“, wenn Offiziere der Arme ihren Chef aus dem Amt werfen, denn in Demokratien ist der Chef der Armee nicht „die Regierung“. Wären Negroponte und die Reagananhänger von ihrer eigenen Rhetorik zur honduranischen Demokratie überzeugt gewesen, hätte man aus der Amtsenthebung Alvarez’ keinen großen Hel gemacht, denn Honduras hatte immer noch den selben Präsident und die selbe Legislative. Dem war aber nicht so und sie wurde zu einem richtig großen Problem.

Zuversichtlich sie könnten die Splittergruppe reformwilliger Armeeoffiziere ins Abseits drängen, die die Amtsenthebung Alvarez’ unterstützten und von dem neuen Oberbefehlshaber der Armee forderten, die Unterdrückung zu mindern und die honduranische Souveränität wieder einzufordern, wurden Negroponte und der CIA tatkräftig. Das US-amerikanische Team war in der Lage die Krise abzuwenden, indem sie alt bewährte, die Demokratie verbessernde und Souveränität respektierende Taktiken wie Bestechung und die Schwitzkastenmethode anwandten. Der Vorgang war langwierig, aber gegen Ende des Jahres 1985 (zu einem Zeitpunkt, als Negroponte schon nicht mehr in Nicaragua weilte) waren die Reformwilligen isoliert und die Macht über die Armee lag bei einer Clique rechtsgerichteter Offiziere, die vom CIA gekauft wurden.

Die Mannschaft von Negroponte zerrüttete aber auch den Contra-Rebellen zugehörige Personen und Gruppen.

Edgar Chamorro ein offizieller Pressebeauftragter der Contra-Rebellen, unter dessen Aufgaben auch die Bestechung honduranischer Journalisten viel, wurde von den CIA-Führern gelobt, wenn er US-Journalisten über die Ziele der Contra-Rebellen anlog. In den wenigen Fällen aber, in denen er die Wahrheit über die wirkliche Ziele der Contra-Rebellen ans Licht kommen ließ, oder wie routiniert Gräueltaten von ihnen verübt wurden, las man ihm die Leviten. Von den Gräueltaten und seiner Rolle als bezahlter Lügner angewidert, trat er von dem Posten zurück und erzählte in einer eidesstattlichen Erklärung seine Geschichte 1985 dem Internationalen Gerichtshof.

In einem Brief, der in der New York Times Ausgabe vom 9. Januar 1986 veröffentlicht wurde, beschrieb er die Endergebnisse einer bestimmten Vorgehensweise, zu der das Reagan-CIA-Negroponte Konglomerat ermutigte: „Während meiner vier Jahre als Führungskraft bei den Contra-Rebellen, war es kalkulierte Vorgehensweise, am Kampf nicht beteiligte Zivilisten zu terrorisieren, um sie davon abzuhalten mit der [Sandinistischen] Regierung zu kooperieren. Hunderte Morde, Folterungen und Vergewaltigungen wurden unter der Zivilbevölkerung bei der Umsetzung dieser Vorgehensweise begangen, über die die Anführer der Contra-Rebellen und ihre Vorgesetzten des CIA genauestens bescheid wussten.“

In der Ausgabe der New York Times vom 7. Juni 1987 berichtete James LeMoyne davon, dass die Miskito Gruppe der Contra-Rebellen durch die USA „Unterstützung“ fand: „Ranghohe Anführer der indigenen Bevölkerung und Diplomaten in Tegucigalpa [der Hauptstadt von Honduras] berichten, dass der CIA in den letzten fünf Jahren durch Bestechungsgelder, Drohungen und einzelne, im Exil lebende Angehörige der indigenen Bevölkerung, die indigene Bevölkerung davon abzuhalten versucht ihre eigenen Repräsentanten zu wählen, da der Nachrichtendienst befürchtete, die Kontrolle über die Miskitos zu verlieren und, dass sie sich außerdem dazu entschließen könnten nicht mehr weiter zu kämpfen.“

So sieht de Wirklichkeit hinter der von den Reagananhängern benutzten Rhetorik zur „Förderung der Demokratie” aus: kriminelle Taktiken, um Menschen davon abzuhalten ihre eigenen Repräsentanten zu wählen, die ihren eigenen Kurs festlegen.

Als Negroponte sich dazu entschloss den Werdegang eines Diplomaten zu gehen, konnte er sicherlich nicht voraussehen, dass ihm eine Aufgabe zu Teil werden würde, die von ihm verlangte, die Institutionen eines verarmten Landes zu untergraben, um dadurch die Regierung eines korrupten und brutalen Militärs zu gewährleisten, das sein Land Terroristen vermachen würde, die von den USA bewaffnet, ausgebildet und koordiniert wurden. Die Aufgabe aber wurde gestellt und Negroponte nahm sie an. Er ist zweifelsfrei sehr intelligent und fähig, gleichzeitig aber auch von amoralischem, wenn nicht sogar unmoralischem Charakter.

Es ist anzunehmen, dass Negropontes ethisches Unvermögen und die Gabe kaltschnäuzig zu Handeln ihn zu einem idealen Kandidaten für sein neues Aufgabengebiet machten. Als Geheimdienstchef wird er Präsident Bush ein loyaler Diener sein und wenn das bedeutet Bush dabei zu helfen, die Bürger zu täuschen, um Unterstützung von Seiten der Öffentlichkeit für weitere Interventionen und Intrigen im Ausland zu erhalten, scheint uns die Geschichte zu zeigen, dass Negroponte der Aufgabe gewachsen sein wird.

Dennis Hans ist freier Schriftsteller, der an der University of South Florida-St. Petersburg die Studiengänge Mass Communications und American Foreign Policy gelehrt hat. Vor dem Krieg im Irak verfasste er die Bücher „Lying Us Into War: Exposing Bush and His `Techniques of Deceit`" und „The Disinformation Age".

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Now Syria is at the top of the bad guys` league table

Neocon pressure for regime change in Damascus is building up
Jonathan Steele
Friday February 25, 2005
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1424855,0…

Guardian
In the world of the American neocons, salsa is not a sexy dance. It is in-group jargon based on the initial letters of a congressional bill which George Bush signed into law just over a year ago.

At the time, European chancelleries barely noticed the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act. If spotted at all, it was written off as ideological froth with little practical relevance. Even now, in spite of the international interest caused by Washington`s accusations of Syrian involvement in last week`s murder of the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri, salsa has not got many European policy-makers jumping.

More`s the pity, since the act increasingly looks like a key marker in setting the tone for Bush`s second term. Don`t be fooled by the president`s visit to Europe this week. With its grand talk of a new era in transatlantic relations, the trip was designed to sound a note of reconciliation, like the earlier foray by the new secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice.

Washington understands European concerns about the need for multilateral consultation and more use of diplomacy, we were told. Even on Iran, where Europe clearly diverges from Washington, Bush put the soap on softly.

Welcome though these assurances on Iran are, they do not go to the heart of the matter, which remains the neocons` agenda for the Arab world and their support for the most hardline elements in Israel. Europe needs to be highly wary. What Bush does in the Middle East is more important than what he says in Europe.

Ariel Sharon and his Likud party have long seen their Syrian neighbour as a more direct menace than distant Iran, and the evidence suggests the Bush administration shares this view and has started to take action accordingly. Removing Saddam Hussein was the primary foreign policy goal in Bush`s first term. The No 1 focus for regime change under Bush Two is Damascus, not Tehran.

For one thing, the government of Bashar al-Assad is seen as less popular and more fragile than the Iranian mullahs. With no oil resources, Syria`s economy is weaker. Top army and security service posts are in the hands of a minority sect. Long-standing unrest from banned Islamic fundamentalist groups, as well as Kurds, can be manipulated.

This is not to deny that Iran`s nuclear ambitions are a major concern for Israel. But it is Syria`s support for Hizbullah guerrillas in Lebanon and the Hamas movement in the Palestinian territories which irritates Sharon most. Hizbullah`s reputation within the Arab world as the only group which has forced the Israeli army to retreat is a constant source of annoyance, even though the withdrawal from Lebanon took place under an Israeli Labour prime minister.

Iran also backs the two movements, but removing Syria from the equation is seen as a quicker route to weakening them. So neocon pressure on Syria has been building for several years. The key text, which analysts of US policy have been hastily dusting down, is called A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm. Drafted in 1996 for the government of Binyamin Netanyahu, it was signed by several men including Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser, who later joined the Bush team. Though some have since left, they remain influential.

Rejecting the notion of "land for peace", the paper advocated "weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria". Salsa emerged from the same stable. Under it Bush imposed economic sanctions on Syria last May. In September he persuaded France to co-sponsor a UN security council resolution which called for Syria to withdraw the troops it has had in Lebanon since the civil war.

Bush`s notorious axis of evil in 2002 did not include Damascus, but in his latest state of the union address Bush named Syria alongside Iran, signalling its rise up the bad guys` league table. It should have been no surprise that, whoever assassinated Rafik Hariri, Washington quickly activated a plan for international pressure, which was already prepared.

As the US campaign developed last year, Damascus reacted in confusion. It made the mistake of pressing the Lebanese parliament to extend the pro-Syrian president`s term. On the other hand it accepted several Washington demands. It agreed to joint US-Iraqi-Syrian controls over its border to stop insurgents passing into Iraq. While Iraqi radicals called for a boycott, Syria organised polling stations for expatriates to vote in last month`s Iraqi elections.

Unlike over Iran, European policy on Syria is in danger of getting too close to Washington`s. Jack Straw says Syria is the prime suspect behind the Hariri assassination, though there is no evidence to prove it. France joined the US this week in calling for a withdrawal of foreign troops from Lebanon. Both countries may soon come under US pressure to impose sanctions.

President Chirac did at least tell Bush that he is not ready to put Hizbullah on a list of "terrorist" organisations. The group has widespread support in Lebanon, with 12 members in parliament. Those who want a fair election in Lebanon in May can hardly advocate banning important parties.

The same is true in Palestine, where Hamas is making a similar transition from resistance movement to political party, a decade later than Hizbullah. In contrast to the Iraqi polls, it was little noted in the western media when Palestinians queued to vote in municipal elections in Gaza, giving Hamas significant victories over the Fatah party of the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. Hamas won 75 out of 118 seats on a turnout of 85%.

Next week Tony Blair hosts a conference on Palestine. It will mainly be ceremonial now that Sharon and Abbas have started their own dialogue, but it is important that it is not used to give the new Palestinian leadership monopoly support, particularly on security issues. Europe has to resist the Bush-Sharon agenda of wanting Abbas to "crack down on terrorism" in advance of Israel`s Gaza withdrawal, especially when all Palestinians have accepted a ceasefire.

Hamas`s election success shows Palestinian politics are in a state of great fluidity in the post-Arafat era, as does the strong showing in the presidential poll by Mustafa Barghouti`s civic reform movement, the Palestinian National Initiative. This week`s row in the Palestinian parliament as to whether the new cabinet should be technocratic or political shows the same desire for competence and professionalism in place of corruption and suppression of debate.

The west has erred in too many countries by favouring personalities over process. Palestine should not be added to the list. Just as on Syria, Europe must take a sensitive and independent line.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

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Lost in Europe

President Bush has reached a dead end in his foreign policy, but he has failed to recognise his quandary
Sidney Blumenthal
Friday February 25, 2005
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1424849,00.ht…

Guardian
President Bush has reached a dead end in his foreign policy, but he has failed to recognise his quandary. His belief that the polite reception he received in Europe is a vindication of his previous adventures is a vestige of fantasy.

As the strains of Beethoven`s Sixth Symphony, the Pastoral, filled the Concert Noble in Brussels, Bush behaved as though the mood music itself was a dramatic new phase in the transatlantic relationship. He gives no indication that he grasps the exhaustion of his policy. His reductio ad absurdum was reached with his statement on Iran: "This notion that the US is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous. And having said that, all options are on the table." Including, presumably, the "simply ridiculous".

Bush is scrambling to cobble together policies across the board. At the last minute he rescued his summit with Vladimir Putin, who refuses to soften his authoritarian measures, with a step toward safeguarding Russian plutonium that could be used for nuclear weapons production. This programme was negotiated by Bill Clinton and neglected by Bush until two weeks ago.

The European reception for Bush was not an embrace of his neoconservative world view, but an attempt to put it in the past. New Europe is trying to compartmentalise old Bush. To the extent that he promises to be different, the Europeans encourage him; to the extent that he is the same, they pretend it`s not happening.

The Europeans, including the British government, feel privately that the past three years have been hijacked by Iraq. Facing the grinding, bloody and unending reality of Iraq doesn`t mean accepting Bush`s original premises, but getting on with the task of stability. Ceasing the finger-pointing is the basis for European consensus on its new, if not publicly articulated, policy: containment of Bush. Naturally, Bush misses the nuances and ambiguities.

Of course, he has already contained himself, or at least his pre-emption doctrine, which seems to have been good for one-time use only. None of the allies is willing to repeat the experience. Bush can`t manage another such military show anyway, as his army is pinned down in Iraq.

The problem of Iran is in many ways the opposite of Iraq. The Europeans have committed their credibility to negotiations, the Iranians have diplomatic means to preclude unilateral US action, and Bush - who, according to European officials, has no sense of what to do - is boxed in, whether he understands it or not.

The secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, seeking to impress French intellectuals while in Paris, referred to Iran as totalitarian, as if the authoritarian Shia regime neatly fitted the Soviet Union model. With this rhetorical legerdemain, she extended the overstretched analogy of the "war on terrorism" as the equivalent of the cold war to Persia. Her lack of intellectual adeptness dismayed her interlocutors. One of the French told me Rice was "deaf to all argument", but no one engaged her gaffe because "good manners are back".

Regardless of Rice`s wordplay, it is not a policy. Rice has vaguely threatened to refer Iran to the UN security council. The "simply ridiculous" remains on the table at the same time as the US is unengaged in diplomacy. Bush doesn`t know whether to join the Europeans in guaranteeing an agreement to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons or not.

"So long as Iran remains within the non-proliferation treaty and the [UN weapons] inspectors remain on the ground there, there`s nothing the US can do within the security council," John Ritch, the former US ambassador to the UN International Atomic Energy Agency, told me.

The argument for keeping the Iranians within the treaty was overwhelming, he said. "As long as they are in the inspection system it gives us maximum opportunity to evaluate every step of their nuclear development ... The US should be willing to support a European-brokered deal under which the Iranians forgo their right to build a domestic nuclear enrichment and processing capability. Ultimately, the way to promote a satisfactory outcome is to empower the Europeans by asserting that the US will back up a sound agreement."

Bush has hummed a few bars of rapprochement. With their applause, the Europeans have begun to angle him into a corner on Iran. In time Bush must either join the negotiations or regress to neoconservatism, which would wreck the European relationship. If he chooses a course that is not "simply ridiculous", on his next visit the Europeans might be willing to play Beethoven`s Third Symphony, the Eroica.

· Sidney Blumenthal is former senior adviser to President Clinton and author of The Clinton Wars

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February 24, 2005
Abu Ghraib, a Year Later: What`s Changed?
Torture Nation
http://www.counterpunch.org/wright02242005.html

By TOM WRIGHT

If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face...forever.

George Orwell

Nearly a year has passed since the lurid photographs of Abu Ghraib first surfaced, briefly capturing the attention of the nation. Even to a public saturated by every imaginable form of transgression, the bizarre images of "Hooded Man," the piles of naked bodies and sordid sexual domination stood out, whether because they seemed like demons lurching from the Puritan unconscious, or just because they were so baldly at variance with the fairy tales through which much of the nation had been sleepwalking since September 11. But in no time, the opinion managers mounted the ramparts. Medallioned four-star generals were duly paraded before Congressional committees, hat in hand. Sober-minded Establishment figures were dispatched to contain the damage, fronting the various committees of investigation of the appalling practices that had been unveiled. It was all the fault of a few low-ranking reservists, lasting only a few weeks, we were assured.

By now the official reports have all been completed, a number of important books have been published, and the release of a great number of internal documents has been compelled by the federal courts. We are an open society, for the time being at least, and the raw, unvarnished reality of the military`s interrogation system is there for anyone to see.

That is both the good news and the bad news.

Good, because the fact of public exposure is ultimately the only real limitation to criminal violence by the state. And bad, if the public either chooses not to know about the crimes, or comes to accept them, and goes back to the Shopping Channel.

Now the public, it is true, has a lot on its plate these days, what with the SpongeBob controversy, and with JLo`s new fashion line coming out, so perhaps a short overview is in order.

The first paving blocks on the road to Abu Ghraib were laid on November 13, 2001 with President Bush`s declaration of a Military Order. This order, signaling the extent to which the Administration would feel encumbered by international law or by archaic constitutional notions like the separation of powers, authorized unlimited secret detention of any non-citizen (arrested either abroad or on U.S. soil) based only on the President`s declaration of grounds for suspicion. "Trial" would be without the right to counsel, using secret evidence, and would be held by military tribunal, i.e., by agents under Bush`s chain of command. Secret execution would be possible, and no right of appeal to civilian court would be recognized (see Secret Trials and Executions by Barbara Olshansky.)

As attorney David Cole argues in his book Enemy Aliens, such infringements of liberty are customarily first test-fitted on "aliens", then ultimately extended to citizens, as, for example, many elderly Japanese-Americans could explain. But in the present case, only five months passed before the order was extended to U.S. citizens, in the case of Yasser Hamdi. (One can only imagine what Bush might have done if he hadn`t sworn to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution").

This bold assertion of what should be frankly called totalitarian powers was met with little opposition, or even much public awareness, and was promptly followed by a declaration in January 2002 that captured prisoners in Afghanistan and elsewhere were to be transferred to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and classed as "unprivileged combatants". As David Cole explains, the wartime power to detain "enemy combatants` is well established, but the Geneva Conventions, he writes,

"require that all combatants be treated presumptively as `privileged`, and held as `prisoners of war.` The underlying rationale is that it is not illegal to fight a war, and therefore enemy soldiers are `privileged combatants` and should not be tried for their combat actions. Those who violate the laws of war-by, for example, targeting civilians, or failing to wear a uniform that distinguishes them from civilians-may be classified as `unprivileged` combatants.Where there is any doubt about an individual`s statusthe Geneva Conventions requirea hearing before a `competent tribunal` to determine the individual`s status."

Where this gets sticky is in Bush`s declaration of war, not on any particular nation or its soldiers, in or out of uniform, but rather on the noun "Terror." Thus anyone on earth potentially becomes an "enemy combatant", and faces a possible life sentence without charge or trial, without recourse to the Geneva Convention`s protections, which our new Attorney General has described as "quaint."

For soldiers and military interrogators, the distinction between captured al-Qaeda operatives and the unlucky prisoner who happens to be in your prison cell at the moment is one that is quickly elided.

Human Rights Watch has detailed the sense of impunity among U.S. interrogators that began with the Afghan war. At least six detainees are known to have died in American custody there, although only two people have ever been charged in the killings, and the inquiries have stalled. In one of these cases, Jamal Naseer, a soldier in the U.S.-backed Afghan Army, was mistakenly arrested by U.S. forces, severely beaten, and killed in March 2003. The deaths of two Afghan men in 2002 were ruled homicides by American investigators. Internal Pentagon documents report the 2002 killing of another Afghani prisoner by four American soldiers, in which there was no prosecution.

With the extension of war to Iraq, the scope of prisoner abuse had become endemic throughout the network of military prisons, and was descending to bizarre forms of cruelty and sadism. The best starting point for anyone who wants to explore this inspiring period of U.S. history is Mark Danner`s new book, Torture and Truth. He includes 500 pages of documents at the core of the dispute: from the Alberto Gonzales and Jay Bybee memos on torture to the final reports of the Schlesinger, Taguba, and Fay/Jones investigations. He includes the affidavits of the Abu Ghraib prisoners, who describe the much-publicized cruelties imposed on them by Spc. Charles Graner and his crew. But he also provides context that usually gets ignored or downplayed. In Iraq, a big part of why people are willing to look the other way on torture is the assumption that the victims were trying to harm "our side`s" troops. But Danner emphasizes that by the estimates of military intelligence officers themselves, between 70% and 90% of the thousands of people rounded up in Iraq are arrested by mistake. The prisons in Iraq are mostly full of ordinary people who did nothing.

Danner also includes the full February 2004 report from the International Committee of the Red Cross, detailing torture and abuse and given to the U.S. government, please note, well before the scandal broke. Danner notes that torture was employed even "under the gaze of Red Cross investigators, whose confidential reportswere handed over to American military and government authorities and then mysteriously "became lost in the Army`s bureaucracy and weren`t adequately addressed." Or so three of the highest-ranking military officers in the land blandly explained to senators of the Armed Services Committee on May 18, 2004. On that same day, as it happened, an unnamed "senior Army officer who served in Iraq" told reporters for The New York Times that in fact the Army had addressed the Red Cross report-"by trying to curtail the international organization`s spot inspections of the prison." (emphasis added)

The meaning of this is that military and civilian commanders were perfectly well aware of the use of torture, and had every intention of continuing its use.

Just as they do today.

Danner`s book went to print before the release in December (delayed, that is, until after the election) of nearly 10,000 more pages of documents obtained under court order through a Freedom of Information Act request by the ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and others. In their totality, they are an astonishing revelation of war crime, from prisons in Cuba, Afghanistan and Iraq, with plenty more still to come.

In one report, a Marine said he and two others were ordered to kill three Iraqis in early April 2003. He said he was threatened with death if he did not carry out the order, which they did then carry out, dumping the bodies of the dead Iraqis in a hole. In another report, an Army specialist shot to death an Iraqi prisoner who had been "verbally harassing guards" in August 2003. Although an investigation found probable cause to charge him with murder, he was instead demoted to private, and discharged.

In addition to murder, a great many other atrocities are detailed. Prisoners are tortured with electric transformers. They are shackled in painful positions for days without food and water. Iraqi children are subjected to mock execution. One marine used a flame to severely burn a detainee`s hands. Prisoners are "water-boarded"-strapped to a board and submerged until they believe they will drown. Doctors are employed to tailor a prisoner`s torture to specific medical conditions.

One of the surprises in the huge document release was that agents from the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency and especially the FBI had been complaining about the prisoner abuse, beginning in 2002 and continuing through 2004. "You won`t believe it!" wrote one FBI agent to a colleague. Agents assigned to Guantanamo complained of "strangulation, beatings, placement of lit cigarettes into the detainees` ear openings and unauthorized interrogations." One FBI official complained "I saw a detainee sitting on the floor of the interview room with an Israeli flag draped around him, loud music being played and a strobe flashing." Another reported soldiers were "beating (a prisoner) and grabbed his head and beat it into the cell floor" until he was unconscious. Another one wrote in July 2004 "on a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left for 18-24 hours or more." "On another occasion, the A/C had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room probably well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his own hair out throughout the night."

These are complaints coming from multiple government agencies, spanning a 3 year period, in some cases going so far as to urge war crimes prosecutions. As the New York Times pointed out, these documents make clear that "such activities were known to a wide circle of government officials." But White House spokesman Scott McClellan could say only that "we`re becoming aware of more information as it becomes public, as you are." The Pentagon, he assured us, takes any abuse allegations "very seriously."

This is nonsense. Of 137 people who have faced disciplinary action, only 14 have been convicted by courts-martial. 46 faced only demotion or fines. A Marine that performed torture with electricity was sentenced to one year`s confinement, and the mock execution of children earned only 30 days` hard labor. Even in the Abu Ghraib scandal, while one investigation named the two top officers at the prison and 34 military intelligence soldiers, only three faced punishment, and the two officers weren`t charged.

Apparently none of this was really torture. Now, the 1987 Convention Against Torture bars the U.S. government from "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession" But thanks to Bush`s top law enforcement officer, we now understand that pain is actually not "severe" unless it is "of an intensity akin to that which accompanies serious physical injury such as death or organ failure."

Sure, Gonzales had to publicly repudiate this language at his confirmation hearing, but no one at all believed it. Michael Chertoff will take over "Homeland Security" even though he abetted the torture of a U.S. citizen, John Walker Lindh. Jay Bybee, the Torture Memo author, has been nominated to the liberal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (new motto: "Give me organ failure, or give me death!") And most recently, John Negroponte, who will be remembered by any attentive citizen older than 40 as the Mafia don of the 1980s atrocities in Central America, will now serve his country as the first Director of National Intelligence.

Welcome to the Torture State.

Of course, the U.S. government has supported, financed and directed torture for a long time. It has propped up torture states in Iran, Iraq, Israel and Indonesia, and that`s just the I`s. But it used to have to keep it at arm`s length, to keep the U.S. public in the dark. What`s new is that it has become normalized.

And there`s no retreat here to the comfy feeling that all will be fine again when we get the Dems back in power. John Kerry and his party are guilty too. As Naomi Klein said, Kerry gave Bush the gift of impunity. If it had mattered to the Democrats, they could have run a campaign that impeded the apparatus of torture and the growing violence and lawlessness of the American state. But that was not as important as their desire to "win," so they kept silent about the atrocities, and vowed an expansion of the war. As H.L. Mencken once observed, "the saddest life is that of a political aspirant under democracy. His failure is ignominious and his success is disgraceful."

Meanwhile, we live under one-party domination with an enfeebled "opposition" party trying to appeal to the snake-handling and clinic-burning crowd before the next election. And the U.S. military is in Iraq, not to spread the virtues of punch-card voting or high-fructose corn syrup, but to dominate the planet`s central energy supplies. This it will do by any means necessary, employing torture, leveling more Fallujahs, or whichever atrocities people will accept back in the "homeland."

In the coming years, world resources such as oil, natural gas and fresh water will decline amidst over-consumption and environmental despoliation. As competition for these resources intensifies, the technological means of surveillance, control and physical domination will increase in sophistication, and will be employed by those sectors of society able to use them. These changes we accept by degrees. And we have just passed through one of them. We can only hope that there will be a corresponding evolution along a moral dimension in the complex world we are bequeathing to our children.

Tom Wright lives in Olympia, Washington. He can be reached at: [e-mail]

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Report: Iran nukes would trigger regional proliferation



SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
WASHINGTON — A new report warns that the United States must halt Iran`s nuclear weapons programs or face the prospect of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.

The Presidential Study Group, sponsored by the Washington Institute, said in a report that Iran`s nuclear weapons program marked the most difficult proliferation challenge in the Middle East and must be stopped.

"Iranian nuclear proliferation could constitute a `tipping point` in the Middle East, with states from Saudi Arabia to Egypt and possibly Syria and Algeria likely to respond with efforts to acquire nuclear capability and threatening the nuclear nonproliferation regime," the report said.



On Tuesday, the Defense Department said it has not conducted unmanned aerial vehicle operations in Iran, Middle East Newsline reported. Both Iranian and U.S. officials have reported U.S. UAV overflights over suspected Iranian facilities.

The 53-member panel organized by the Washington Institute included two former secretaries of state (Alexander Haig and Madeleine Albright), a former CIA director (James Woolsey) and a former national security adviser (Sandy Berger). The report was entitled "Security, Reform, and Peace: The Three Pillars of U.S. Strategy in the Middle East."

"Stopping Iran short of achieving a nuclear weapons capability -- by diplomacy if possible; by other means, if necessary -- is a vital U.S. interest," the report said.

The panel said an Iranian atomic bomb would spark nuclear weapons programs throughout the Middle East. The report cited Algeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Syria.

The report recommended that the United States work with the European Union to halt Iran`s nuclear weapons program. But the panel said U.S.-EU cooperation must not rule out the use of the military option against Teheran.

"Achieving international consensus on Iran should not, however, come at the cost of curtailing support to Iran`s freedom-seeking opposition, nor should it require forswearing military options to address the problem," the panel said.

"I don`t speak for the U.S. government, I speak for the Department of Defense, and the Department of Defense is not [conducting UAV operations in Iran]," Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said. "And I would welcome you asking that same question for other agencies of the government that do those kinds of activities, and I think that they would give you the same answer. But it`s not for me to speak for other agencies."

"The United States is facing an extraordinary moment of challenge in the Middle East, one that demands an integrated U.S. strategy built on a set of three pillars: security, reform, and peace," the report said. "The security agenda is the most pressing, but it alone is not sufficient. If the United States wants not just to combat the threats it faces in the region but also to change the regional dynamic which produces such threats, the administration should also pursue political, social, and economic reform in Middle East countries and the promotion of a secure Arab-Israeli peace."

The report said Iran marked the second U.S. priority in the Middle East for 2005. The most pressing issue was the acceleration of U.S. training and deployment of Iraq`s military and security forces.

"Proliferation -- including the dangers posed both by terrorist groups and adversarial states -- is the most serious threat to U.S. national security," the report said. "Among Middle East states, Iran poses the most difficult and urgent challenge."



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Ich nehme an die frage darf inzwischen gestellt werden, ob die regierung schröder an dem tag zurücktreten wird, an dem Iran genau wie nortkorea den besitz von atomwaffen bekanntgibt???


Report: Iran nukes would trigger regional proliferation



SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
WASHINGTON — A new report warns that the United States must halt Iran`s nuclear weapons programs or face the prospect of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.

The Presidential Study Group, sponsored by the Washington Institute, said in a report that Iran`s nuclear weapons program marked the most difficult proliferation challenge in the Middle East and must be stopped.

"Iranian nuclear proliferation could constitute a `tipping point` in the Middle East, with states from Saudi Arabia to Egypt and possibly Syria and Algeria likely to respond with efforts to acquire nuclear capability and threatening the nuclear nonproliferation regime," the report said.



On Tuesday, the Defense Department said it has not conducted unmanned aerial vehicle operations in Iran, Middle East Newsline reported. Both Iranian and U.S. officials have reported U.S. UAV overflights over suspected Iranian facilities.

The 53-member panel organized by the Washington Institute included two former secretaries of state (Alexander Haig and Madeleine Albright), a former CIA director (James Woolsey) and a former national security adviser (Sandy Berger). The report was entitled "Security, Reform, and Peace: The Three Pillars of U.S. Strategy in the Middle East."

"Stopping Iran short of achieving a nuclear weapons capability -- by diplomacy if possible; by other means, if necessary -- is a vital U.S. interest," the report said.

The panel said an Iranian atomic bomb would spark nuclear weapons programs throughout the Middle East. The report cited Algeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Syria.

The report recommended that the United States work with the European Union to halt Iran`s nuclear weapons program. But the panel said U.S.-EU cooperation must not rule out the use of the military option against Teheran.

"Achieving international consensus on Iran should not, however, come at the cost of curtailing support to Iran`s freedom-seeking opposition, nor should it require forswearing military options to address the problem," the panel said.

"I don`t speak for the U.S. government, I speak for the Department of Defense, and the Department of Defense is not [conducting UAV operations in Iran]," Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said. "And I would welcome you asking that same question for other agencies of the government that do those kinds of activities, and I think that they would give you the same answer. But it`s not for me to speak for other agencies."

"The United States is facing an extraordinary moment of challenge in the Middle East, one that demands an integrated U.S. strategy built on a set of three pillars: security, reform, and peace," the report said. "The security agenda is the most pressing, but it alone is not sufficient. If the United States wants not just to combat the threats it faces in the region but also to change the regional dynamic which produces such threats, the administration should also pursue political, social, and economic reform in Middle East countries and the promotion of a secure Arab-Israeli peace."

The report said Iran marked the second U.S. priority in the Middle East for 2005. The most pressing issue was the acceleration of U.S. training and deployment of Iraq`s military and security forces.

"Proliferation -- including the dangers posed both by terrorist groups and adversarial states -- is the most serious threat to U.S. national security," the report said. "Among Middle East states, Iran poses the most difficult and urgent challenge."



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Henryk M. Broder 25.02.2005 11:26FeedbackBad in der Menge
Es war schon sehr seltsam, wie der Besuch von G.W. Bush von fast allen Medien systematisch niedergeschrieben und niederkommentiert wurde. Es ging vor allem um eines: Die Sicherherheit des US-Präsidenten, der wie alle Amerikaner ein Paranoiker ist und sich schützen läßt. Was er natürlich nicht müßte, wenn seine Regierung das Kyoto-Abkommen unterzeichnet hätte, mehr für die Dritte Welt tun würde und die Absetzung von Saddam Hussein den UN überlassen hätte. Der Ton änderte sich erst, als Bush in Bratislava, der Hauptstadt der Slowakei, eintraf. Angesichts der jubelnden Massen fiel den Berichterstattern nicht auf, daß es für Bush risikofrei war, unter die Leute zu gehen, es hieß nur: Bush läßt sich feiern. So wie er sich bei uns schützen ließ. Das ist faire, sachliche Berichterstattung.
Unser Volkskorrespondent H.J. Krug schreb daraufhin den folgenden Leserbrief an seine Heimatzeitung:

"Die Sprecherin in der Hauptnachrichtensendung einer deutschen öffentlich/rechtlichen Fernsehanstalt zeigte sich erstaunt darüber, dass so viele Menschen in Bratislava dem US Präsidenten zujubelten und er dort ein Bad in der Menge nehmen konnte, im Gegensatz zu seinem Besuch hier bei uns.

Ich allerdings bin darüber erstaunt, dass Vertreter deutscher Medien, welche monatelang eine permanente Hetze gegen den US Präsidenten auf fast allen Kanälen und in vielen Zeitungen gefahren haben und nach dem Eiertanz und der Doppelzüngigkeit der rot/grünen Bundesverwaltung, von Regierung zu sprechen wäre geschmeichelt, sich darüber nun erstaunt zeigen. Wenn dann noch Beschwerde und Kritik über die strengen Sicherheitsmaßnahmen von Seiten der Medien geübt wird, dann verkennen die auch noch, dass sie eigentlich durch ihr Verhalten ursächlich dafür verantwortlich sind.

Der Hauptgrund für die Hetze scheint mir jedenfalls dieTatsache zu sein, dass Präsident Bush sich öffentlich zu seinem Glauben bekennt und weniger der Waffengang mit dem Irak und den angeblich nicht vorhandenen Massenvernichtungswaffen. Dies waren nur die Gründe die gut aussehen. Solange nicht sämtliche Moscheen im Irak daraufhin untersucht werden können, vor allem sunnitische, ist dieser Punkt nicht einmal endgültig geklärt. Fest steht, dass ein Massenmörder und sein Unrechtssystem beseitigt wurde, es eine permanente Bedrohung Israels weniger gibt und das die große Mehrheit der Iraker froh ist, endlich wieder frei zu sein.

Die Menschen in der Slowakei wissen aber offensichtlich ebenfalls sehr gut, dass sie ihre eigene kostbare Freiheit hauptsächlich den USA zu verdanken haben, im Gegensatz zu unseren verhetzten Massen hier. Aus diesem Grunde war der streng abgeschirmte Besuch des US-Präsidenten in und für Deutschland ein schlimmes Armutszeugnis, dessen ich mich jedenfalls schäme."Zurück zur Übersicht
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Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan

http://www.juancole.com/
Friday, February 25, 2005

30 Dead in Iraq Violence

AP reports that the one-day total for war-related violence in Iraq, including the police station bombing in Tikrit reported here yesterday morning, came to 30. That is about 11,000 persons a year if the rate were constant and extrapolated out. In fact, the wire services manage to report only a fraction of daily deaths from war-related violence. And, of course there is a sense in which a lot of the murders are an indirect result of the poor security produced by the guerrilla war.

AP also reports that the United Iraqi Alliance has managed to bring into its coalition formally the 3 members of parliament from the Turkman National Front, the 3 from the Cadres and Chosen list, and 1 from the Islamic Action Party, giving the UIA 148 or about 54 percent of seats.

The 30 or so more secular-leaning members of the UIA who were the core of Ahmad Chalabi`s challenge to Ibrahim Jaafari are still agitating and threatening to leave the UIA because of the dominance of the Muslim fundamentalists in it. Since, however, the UIA would still have 43 percent of seats, it could block the formation of a government by any other group. So I don`t see any advantage for the more secular group in leaving the UIA. If, on the other hand, they stick with it, and Jaafari can form an alliance with the Kurds, everyone in the UIA would suddenly have $17 billion to play with every year, more if the Iraqis get their act together.

Reuters reports on the extensive demands the Kurds are making as a price of joining the UIA governing, including the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, the creation of a Kurdistan province, semi-autonomy, and so forth. Reuters notes that these maximalist demands, most of them unwelcome to the Shiites, are slowing the formation of a new government in Iraq.

Well, now that Fallujah is liberated (i.e. wrecked and empty), residents of Ramadi are now beginning to flee in fear that they might get equally liberated. It is not clear how much liberation Iraqi cities (or ex-cities) can stand.

My op-ed, "The Downside of Democracy, appeared Thursday in the LA Times. An exercept:


` Pakistan and Iraq are not the only countries where elections have had mixed results. Although the Palestinian elections in January were widely viewed as a success — producing a pragmatic prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas — remember that the radical fundamentalist party, Hamas, boycotted those elections. Then, less than three weeks later, local elections were held — and Hamas won decisively in the Gaza Strip, leaving it more influential than before and poised for even bigger wins in next July`s legislative elections.

And in recent years, democratization has also put Hezbollah in the Lebanese parliament. Serbian nationalists have won seats in Belgrade.

Are such outcomes acceptable to the Bush administration? If not, how will it respond? Given the war on terror, it is unlikely to simply take these electoral setbacks lying down.

But if Washington falls back on its traditional responses — covert operations, attempts to interfere in parliamentary votes with threats or bribes, or dependence on strong men like Musharraf — the people of the Middle East might well explode, because the only thing worse than living under a dictatorship is being promised a democracy and then not really getting it. `



AP reports on a network smuggling Saudi youth into Iraq to fight jihad. Oh, great. The last time young Saudis went off to fight a superpower, with the encouragement of the Reagan administration in the 1980s, it turned into al-Qaeda and blew back on New York and Washington. No wonder the CIA is afraid that Iraq is a new breeding ground for future anti-US terrorism.

Bob Harris`s posting "Uncle Bucky and the Rocket-Fueled Breasts" is worth reading just for the title.

Arabic Link: Yusuf Hazim argues in al-Sharq al-Awsat that the relative calm and stability in Basra province is underpinned by a tacit alliance of tribal leaders, political parties, and militias.

posted by Juan @ 2/25/2005 06:15:00 AM

Koufax Complete List

I`ve gotten around to stealing code for the complete list of Koufax Award Winners at Wampum.

Best Blog (Non-Sponsored): Daily Kos

Best Blog (Pro): Talking Points Memo by Josh Marshall

Best Writing: Hullaballoo by Digby

Best Post: "If America Were Iraq..." at Informed Comment by Juan Cole

Best Series (tie): The Rise of Pseudo-Fascism by David Neiwert at Orcinus;

and

Cheers And Jeers by Bill in Portland Maine at Daily Kos

Best Group Blog: MyDD

Most Humorous Blog: Jesus` General by J.C. Christian

Most Humorous Post: Poker With Dick Cheney by The Poorman

Best Expert Blog: Informed Comment by Juan Cole

Best Single Issue Blog (tie): TalkLeft by Jeralyn Merritt;

and

Grits For Breakfast by Scott Henson

Best New Blog: Mouse Words by Amanda Marcotte

Most Deserving of Wider Recognition: Suburban Guerrilla

Best Commenter: Meteor Blades at Daily Kos

and

Liberal Street Fighter

posted by Juan @ [url2/25/2005 06:00:00 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/02/koufax-complete-list-ive-gotten-around.html[/url]

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Feb 26, 2005


Crusader plants new seeds
By Jim Lobe
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GB26Ak02.html

WASHINGTON - Despite the apparent decision by US President George W Bush against renominating him to the board of the US Institute of Peace (USIP), "anti-Islamist" activist Daniel Pipes is working as diligently as ever to protect the United States and the Western world from the influence of radical Islamists.

He has proposed the creation of a new "Anti-Islamist Institute" (AII) designed to expose legal "political activities" of "Islamists", such as "prohibiting families from sending pork or pork by-products to US soldiers serving in Iraq", which nonetheless, in his view, serve the interests of radical Islam.

"In the long term ... the legal activities of Islamists pose as much or even a greater set of challenges than the illegal ones," according to the draft of a grant proposal by Pipes` Middle East Forum (MEF) obtained by Inter Press Service.

Pipes is also working with Stephen Schwartz on a new "Center for Islamic Pluralism" (CIP) whose aims are to "promote moderate Islam in the US and globally" and "to oppose the influence of militant Islam, and, in particular, the Saudi-funded Wahhabi sect of Islam, among American Muslims, in the America media, in American education ... and with US governmental bodies ..."

Schwartz, a former Trotskyite militant who became a Sufi Muslim in 1997, has received seed money from MEF, which is also accepting contributions on CIP`s behalf until the government gives it tax-exempt legal status, according to another grant proposal obtained by IPS.

The CIP proposal, which says it expects to receive funding from contributors in the "American Shi`ite community" and in "Sunni mosques once liberated from Wahhabi influence", also boasts of "strong links" with Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and other notable neo-conservatives, such as former Central Intelligence Agency director James Woolsey and the vice president for foreign-policy programming at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Danielle Pletka, as well as with Pipes himself.

Pipes, who created MEF in Philadelphia in 1994, has long campaigned against "radical" Islamists in the US, especially the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and several other national Islamic groups.

Long before the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon, he also raised alarms about the immigration of Muslims, suggesting that they constituted a serious threat to the political clout of US Jews, as well as a potential "fifth column" for radical Islamists.

In addition, Pipes has been a fierce opponent of Palestinian nationalism. He told Australian television this month, for example, that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon`s Gaza-disengagement plan and his agreement to negotiate with the new Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, were a "mistake" because 80% of the Palestinian population, including Abbas, still favor Israel`s destruction.

In 2002, Pipes launched "Campus Watch", a group dedicated to monitoring and exposing alleged anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian and/or Islamist bias in teachers of Middle Eastern studies at US colleges and universities.

The group, which invites students to report on offending professors, has been assailed as a McCarthyite tactic to stifle open discussion of Middle East issues.

Pipes` nomination by Bush in 2003 to serve as a director on the board of the quasi-governmental USIP, a government-funded think-tank set up in 1984 to "promote the prevention, management and peaceful resolution of international conflicts", moved the controversy over his work from academe into the US Senate, where such appointments are virtually always approved without controversy.

Pipes` nomination, however, offered a striking exception. Backed by major Muslim, Arab-American and several academic groups, Democratic senators, led by Edward Kennedy, Christopher Dodd and Tom Harkin, strongly opposed the nomination as inappropriate, particularly in light of some of his past writings, including one asserting that Muslim immigrants were "brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and not exactly maintaining Germanic standards of hygiene".

Several Republican senators subsequently warned Bush that they would oppose the nomination if it came to a vote, and, in the end, the president made a "recess appointment" that gave him a limited term lasting only until the end of 2004. It appears now that, despite the enhanced Republican majority in the Senate, Bush does not intend to renominate him.

Indeed, both the USIP and Bush now probably regret having nominated him in the first place. During his board tenure, Pipes blasted USIP for hosting a conference with the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy, charging that it employed Muslim "radicals" on its staff.

That accusation was publicly refuted by the USIP itself, which echoed the complaints of his longtime critics, accusing him of relying on "quotes taken out of context, guilt by association, errors of fact, and innuendo".

Pipes also criticized Bush for "legitimizing" various "Islamist" groups, such as CAIR and the Arab-American Institute, by permitting their representatives to take part in White House and other government ceremonies and for failing to identify "radical Islam" as "the enemy" in the war on terror.

His own disillusionment with Bush is made clear in the AAI draft, which notes that "creative thinking in this war of ideas must be initiated outside the government, for the latter, due to the demands of political correctness, is not in a position to say what needs to be said".

AII`s goal, it goes on, "is the delegitimation of the Islamists. We seek to have them shunned by the government, the media, the churches, the academy and the corporate world."

Pipes` complementary goal - to enhance the influence of "moderate" Muslims - is to guide the work of Schwartz`s CIP, which is "headed by one born Muslim [its president] and a `new Muslim`, ie an American not born in the faith, as its executive director. This is the best combination for leading such an effort."

The "extremists", according to the CIP proposal, are mainly represented by the "Wahhabi lobby", an array of organizations consisting of CAIR, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the North American Islamic Trust, the Muslim Students Association of the US and Canada, the Muslim Public Affairs Council, as well as "secular" groups, including the AAI and the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

"The first goal of CIP will be the removal of CAIR and ISNA from monopoly status in representing Muslims to the American public," the proposal goes on. "So long as they retain a major foothold at the highest political level, no progress can be made for moderate American Islam."

In achieving its goal, CIP cites the help it can expect from its "strong links" to Wolfowitz, Woolsey and Pletka; as well as Senators Charles Schumer and Jon Kyl, among others, "terrorism experts" Steven Emerson of the Investigative Project, Paul Marshall of Freedom House, and Glen Howard of the Jamestown Foundation; and journalists such as Fox News anchors David Asman, Brit Hume and Greta van Susteren, Dale Hurd of the Christian Broadcasting Network; and editors at the New York Post, the Los Angeles Times and the Globe and Mail.

Interviewed by phone, Professor Kemal Silay, "president-designate" of the CIP who teaches Ottoman and Modern Turkish Studies at the Indiana University, told IPS he was not aware that he was to be the group`s president, but that he had talked about the group with Schwartz and agrees with both Pipes and Schwartz about the dangers posed by "Wahhabi" groups in the US and the world.

Ali al-Ahmed, director of the Washington-based Saudi Institute and named as CIP`s research director in the grant proposal, told IPS he had also talked with Schwartz about the group and strongly supported its goals, although he thought several of the groups listed as part of the "Wahhabi" lobby were more independent.

He also said that he did not know that Pipes was involved with the group.

Pipes "sees all Arabs and Muslims the same, because he has interest in the security of the state of Israel", said al-Ahmed, who publicizes human-rights abuses committed in Saudi Arabia.

Schwartz refused to speak with IPS.

(Inter Press Service)

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Would it not be much better to have a president who deliberately lied to the people because he thought a war was essential than to have one who was so dumb as to be taken in by intelligence agencies, especially those who told him what he wanted to hear?


How long can Bush get away with lies?
http://www.suntimes.com/output/greeley/cst-edt-greel25.html

February 25, 2005

BY ANDREW GREELEY

As the criminal, sinful war in Iraq enters its third year, the president goes to Europe to heal the wounds between the United States and its former allies, on his own terms of course. The White House propaganda mill will hail it as another victory for the president and ignore the fact that most Europeans still consider the war dangerous folly and the president a dangerous fool.

One hears new rationalizations for the war on this side of the Atlantic. After the hearings on Secretary of State Rice, a Republican senator, with all the self-righteous anger that characterizes many such, proclaimed, "The Democrats just have to understand that the president really believed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq." This justification is not unlike the one heard frequently at the White House, "The president believed the intelligence agencies of the world."

Would it not be much better to have a president who deliberately lied to the people because he thought a war was essential than to have one who was so dumb as to be taken in by intelligence agencies, especially those who told him what he wanted to hear?

It is also asserted that the election settled the matters of the war and the torture of prisoners. These are dead issues that no longer need be addressed. Yet the president received only 51 percent of the vote and carried only one more state than the last time (picking up New Mexico and Iowa and losing New Hampshire). This is a validation of the war and of prisoner abuse? This is a mandate to do whatever he wants to do and whatever the leadership of the evangelical denominations want? A percentage point and a single state are a mandate for more war? Never before in American political history!

Finally, we are told that the Iraqi election confirms the Bush administration policy in Iraq. The president`s supporters must be in deep trouble to reach so far for that one. All the election proves is that the Iraqis want to run their own country. It also raises the possibility that Shia clerics will deliver Iraq into the hands of the Iranians. Some kind of victory!

How do these kinds of arguments play in the precincts? The survey data suggest that war has become more unpopular. The majority of the American people now think it was a mistake, in a shift away from the 51 percent that endorsed it on Election Day. Admittedly this is only a small change in the population, from a majority to a minority. Nor do the changers earn grace for their new opinions. They still endorsed the war on Election Day and are still responsible for it.

How long can the administration get along with its policies of spinning big lies into truth -- as it has more recently done on Social Security?

Note the three most important Cabinet positions. Rice said that it was better to find the weapons of mass destruction than to see a mushroom cloud. "Judge" Gonzales said the Geneva Convention was "quaint" and in effect legitimated the de facto policy of torture. Rumsfeld repealed the "Powell Doctrine" -- only go to war when you have the massive force necessary to win decisively and quickly. Brilliant businessman that he is (like Robert McNamara of the Vietnam era), he thought he could win with 130,000 (unlike at least 200,000 as the army chief of staff insisted) and hence made the current "insurgency" inevitable.

The presence of these three towering giants in the administration certainly confirms that the president is confident that he is "right" on Iraq and that he has a mandate from the American people and from God which confirms that he is "right."

Nothing, in other words, has changed in the last two years. The war is still the "right thing to do," it is still part of the "war against terrorism," it is still essential to keep Arabs from blowing up our skyscrapers.

You can still get away with the "big lie" as long as Karl Rove and his team of spinners keep providing persuasive rationalizations. The American public is still supine, uneasy about the war, but not willing yet to turn decisively against it. Will that still be the case next year when we "celebrate" the third anniversary of the war? Is the patience of the American people that long suffering? Is there no outrage left in the country?

Copyright © The Sun-Times Company
All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Sex And The Disgruntled Teen
More proof that *not* having sex is sad and dangerous -- even in Texas. What is wrong with us?
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, February 25, 2005
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/200…" target="_blank" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/200…


Abstinence is a gnarled wart on the big toe of hot wet life. This much we know.

Or, rather, more specifically, those silly little abstinence programs wrought by the neocon Right and jammed uncomfortably into America`s increasingly crumbling and confused public schools and all of which aim to force-feed teens bogus evidence that sex is deadly and icky and fraught and poisonous and should be avoided completely if not somehow surgically eradicated, and if you really must indulge in things prurient and sticky then please go home and whip out your Bible and be sure to avoid your dad`s Hustler or the shower massager you little demonic heathen slut. Such programs are bogus and false and misleading and harmful and stupid and wrong. In a nutshell.

Did you see this story? It`s the latest finding, the outcome of the most recent and quite thorough nonpartisan study, from Texas A&M no less, surveying teens in 29 Texas schools and all proving once again that these insidious and dangerous programs have absolutely zero effect on curbing teen sexual appetites and activity, and, if anything, actually induce teens to have more sex.

It`s an outcome the likes of which we have all seen a thousand times before and for which we all can already pre-emptively guess the results, and that makes any moderately enlightened or sexually aware or even slightly educated human anywhere on the planet only say, well, duh.

After all, hormones have always trumped uptight conservative dogma. Sex and testosterone and raw human heat always laugh in the gnarled face of any oppressive and misdirected authority that attempts to curb it or reject it or shut it all down. Just ask all those gay priests in the seminary, shuffling between beds every night, just after lights-out. Shhh.

Of course teens are having sex anyway, in straight-up defiance of what they sense is pure governmental ignorance and outright lie. But the nasty catch is, as a direct result of these insidious programs -- programs that cannot, for example, contain any information about birth control or sensual awareness or moist philosophies of pleasure -- they`re just doing it badly.

Which is to say, you want to virtually guarantee more unsafe sex and increased rates of teen pregnancy and more disrespect for the flesh and a tragic ignorance of all things sensual and delicious and naked in the world? You want more sullen teens and violent youth culture and a virulent 50-percent divorce rate among people who have no idea what good sex is really all about? Keep advocating those abstinence programs, senator.

After all, don`t we all know, you might reasonably ask, that when you stab at the blood-rich heart of youthful prurience and aim your uptight dogmas in the general direction of all those white-hot urges currently flooding through just about any human body like Coors through Jenna Bush, you merely create a negative charge, a deep resentment, all coupled with general bitter mistrust of authority and the urge to smack your establishment misinformers (i.e.; parents governments teachers bosses seething joyless Christian gods) upside the head with the pig iron of their own sad ignorance? Really, don`t we know this?

I mean (you might further inquire, your bones of indignation now aflame), have we learned nothing from repressive third world regimes and dictators and fundamentalists and the Catholic Church? Have we gleaned no lesson from those who would deign to shove happily rigid doctrines down the throats of the masses only to see that oppression regurgitate as war and discord and a black cloud of joylessness and spiritual poverty and degrading sacklike clothing?

Look. We all know that telling teens to abstain from sex is like telling tequila to abstain from the lime. Telling teens to repress their burgeoning beautiful natural chemical lustful cosmic urges that have been only recently delivered to them on the wings of salacious and well-lubed angels is like telling a fervent piano devotee that Mozart is a hack.

People who advocate such nastiness should be ashamed. Ashamed and humiliated and then flogged with the dead fish of their own tepid and miserable sex lives. Just an opinion.

So then why the hell do we do it? Why do abstinence programs exist? Why does BushCo (and why do even some irritating Dems) insist on wasting millions of dollars pushing such worthless and dangerous curricula through our schools, programs that limit the minds of our youth and taint their bodily awareness and work about as well as the war on drugs? Don`t you already know the answer?

One reason and one reason only: the programs are a flaccid bone thrown to the quivering dogs of the Midwestern born-agains, that rather desperate and deeply unhappy sect of overly religious voters whose fear and dread and homophobia helped Bush con his way into a second term and who have somehow, some way swiped the reins and who have an unexpected choke hold on the national agenda. Period.

And oh my great goddess would it not just be goddamn shockingly fabulous if we could somehow be bold and different? If we could, for example and across all of America`s public schools, teach the absolute opposite of abstinence? What a utopia we could envision. What a radical and gorgeous and messy and funky and delirious new world we could perhaps slowly, slyly nudge into being. Don`t you think?

Which is to say, what if our schools, from kindergarten on, from our earliest textbooks and curricula and chalkboard diagrams, contained unashamed and unembarrassed and all-natural and healthily playful and (as time and age permitted) deeply informative and honest and raw and real information about human sexuality, all woven naturally into the curriculum much like math and reading and biology and revisionist world history and all those lies about World War II and Vietnam and Communism and religion? I mean, can you imagine?

And what if said information was designed to be all about natural, respectful, consensual sexuality, as honest and fleshy and complicated and potentially harmful but as ultimately gorgeous and peculiar and raw as human sexuality is so stickily wont to be?

Would that not, as I truly believe it would, be a major step toward curing many of the ailments plaguing our youth, and, by extension, our culture?

In other words, would a relaxed, sex-positive education planted like a hot seed from a very early age not affect a gradual and rather luscious sea change in the overall sexual attitudes of the culture, much the way you can slowly train the ear to hear nuances in music in or the eye to see the divine in nature the tongue to taste God in a bottle of Lagavulin 16? You`re goddamn right it would.

Which is, of course, exactly why the Right can`t have it. And why the culture seems so many light-years away from allowing such a mentality to invade our children and taint their precious minds with thoughts of what it means to truly respect the luminous flesh of the body and take all responsibility for its machinations and gyrations and quivering needs.

We simply don`t believe we are allowed to enjoy life in such a way. We simply are not here to dig deep into what it means to be human, fleshed, meaty and tremulous and whole. This is the prevalent dogma of our current leadership, the unhappy worldview of the currently dominant quasi-religious Right, the violently antihuman ethos of our time.

The body is a disgusting shameful vehicle and the Earth is an exploitable sandbox to be abused at will and life is merely miserable purgatory where you scratch and claw for money and power and survival while you eagerly await ... what was it again? Oh right. The Second Coming. Charming. And right now, sadly, a belief that`s all too prevalent.

So on they go, these silly programs, sucking millions of tax dollars ($160 million next year alone, despite all the studies) all wasted on teachings that are a running joke to sentient adults and a degrading slap at our youth and a giant middle finger to what the sexual human experience is all about.

Good thing teens see right through it all and have more sex anyway. But how very sad that we simply refuse, absolutely refuse, to open wide the thighs of education to teach them how to do it right, full of juicy respect, reverence, delight and true understanding. Oh, what a world we could make. Don`t you think?


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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Die Umfragen gehen weiter vom The Pew Research Center:
Nearly half (47%) say the decision to go to war was wrong, the highest percentage expressing that view since the war began.
The survey shows that Bush`s overall job approval rating stands at 46%, down slightly from 50% in January
the president`s handling of foreign affairs (43% approve/46% disapprove); last month, a small plurality (48%) approved of his job in this area. And the president continues to receive negative ratings for his handling of the situation in Iraq. Overall, 53% disapprove of the job he has done there, and 61% say Bush does not have a clear plan for bringing the situation in Iraq to a successful conclusion. That is slightly more than the number who expressed that view last fall (55% in October and September).
http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=237

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Published on Friday, February 25, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
Fables of Freedom and Democracy:
Will Lebanon`s Story have a Happy Ending?
by Laurie King-Irani
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0225-27.htm

Fables and the fabulous break into reality with slow or sudden surprise, refracting normality into something marvelous or terrifying: the red shoes that won`t stop dancing, animals dispensing sage advice, or a magical rooster that scratches the earth precisely where a great treasure is hidden. Fables often begin with cruelty, suffering, and terror only to end on a note of completion or deliverance. Just-so stories tell us life can be so just: the orphan actually has parents, the scullery maid descends from royalty, and the lost children eventually find their way home.

Fables exercise an enduring attraction and power not because they are fabulous but because they are rooted in mundane realities and express our most common hopes and fears. Along the seam of the typical and the everyday, amid the weeds beside the road, we spot something shiny, colorful, and amazing that was not there yesterday. Or was it, but we never noticed? Fables explore potentialities and question assumptions. They play with established notions of social roles, identities, institutions, and hierarchies by illuminating zones of interstitiality, those ever-present yet seldom acknowledged in-between spaces in every social and political structure. Fables deal with the emergent, the dynamic, and the transitional; they feature shape-shifting entities that are no longer what they were, nor yet what they might become. Where social structures and political hierarchies have been fragmented by war, violence, colonization, and repression, the interstitial realm can become a deep, dark wood. In such settings, fables often assume a special form: the conspiracy theory.

A Fabulous Week

Having lived in Lebanon from 1993-1998, last week`s news from Beirut held my attention and stirred my imagination with all the power of a captivating fable. Shock and horror at the killing of Rafiq Hariri and a dozen others gave way to enchantment as I watched thousands of Lebanese from nearly every point on the country`s diverse religious and political spectrum spilling out into the streets, carrying immense banners that posed questions and made demands that few dared voice publicly a decade ago. Calls for independence, human rights, and a Lebanon free of Syrian political, economic, and military domination seemed fabulous and exciting - yet perhaps too good to be true. But ascertaining the truth of what really happened in Lebanon, whether a day or a decade ago, is no mean feat. Fabulous tales abound, and not all of them are of Lebanese derivation.

Of all of the states of the Middle East, Lebanon is the most intriguing. Its history, politics, and human geography resist easy categorizations, while its diversity and ongoing crossing and questioning of boundaries attract projections of identities from near and far. Neither truly a nation nor currently a state, Lebanon is a liminal zone par excellence, a country that never fails to violate categories: Western or Arab? Christian or Muslim? Confessional or cosmopolitan? Feudal or free? Democracy or dictatorship? And as any student of folklore knows, liminality, interstitiality and the fabulous go together.

Both Hariri`s assassination and the emergence of popular demonstrations calling for Syria`s departure from Lebanon elicited the exact same question: "Who benefits?" Depending on how one answers the first question, one will get the answer one expects or wishes to hear to the second one. Hariri was killed by the Syrians, or Syrian agents, so the demonstrations will bring an end to Syrian hegemony and the dawn of a longed-for era of peace, independence and democracy in a sovereign Lebanon. Or, Hariri was killed by Israeli or US agents, so those who are demonstrating now are not exercising their own political will and agency, but rather, are simply following a script written in Washington and Tel Aviv that is meant to hasten the next stage of US imperialism in the region: regime change in Damascus.

In addition to demonstrating the standard features of the Lebanese fable form known as "khuyuut al-mu`amarat" ("the threads of the plots"), in which any anomalous or ambiguous elements - of which there are many now in Lebanon, and throughout the region -- are tied up neatly or explained away knowingly, both sets of answers also include implicit recountings of a new and imported imaginative form: fables of democracy.

Indeed, such fables now dominate daily news reports about the Middle East in the mainstream US media. President Bush`s recent speech before NATO in Brussels, like his inauguration and State of the Union speeches, partook of the fabulous: freedom and democracy were the leit motifs, and the characters and settings of the tales he related were, as often as not, drawn from an imagined version of the Arab world, where a new and powerful magical phenomenon has suddenly emerged: elections.

Like the wondrous transformations of straw into gold or ducks into swans, aggression, invasion, and occupation have given way effortlessly to elections and the birth of a new democratic order in Iraq. Magically, the election of a moderate politician who prefers tailored suits over khaki uniforms heralds the dawn of peace and security in Palestine. Any questions of compliance with international law or ongoing violations of human rights are now beside the point. A magic wand has made them disappear.

And now, a third sign (fabulous events always happen in threes) appears in the form of mass demonstrations on the streets of Beirut, where Muslims and Christians, Left and Right, march shoulder to shoulder calling for the end of Syrian occupation and surrogate rule by repressive and corrupt Lebanese puppets. For America`s neoconservatives and their friends, the only explanation for Beirut`s sudden demonstrations is that the Lebanese have been inspired - nay, enchanted -- by Iraqi and Palestinian elections and President Bush`s fiery rhetoric about freedom. The banners and chants of Beirut are widely interpreted as indigenous validations of the Bush Administration`s Middle East policy and a sign that a restructuring of the entire region is not only possible, but at hand.

Whether or not most of the demonstrators in Beirut believe this fable seems to matter little in Washington, where careful attention to and serious consideration of the words and wishes of Arabs and Muslims has rarely been high on Bush`s agenda. But attention to the stories of those who are actually taking to the streets of Beirut now reveals all sorts of fabulous elements and developments. Many are troubling, but some are truly marvelous.

Dead Men Do Tell Tales

New renditions of the perennially popular Lebanese fable of harb al-aakhireen `ala arDinaa ("the war of the others on our soil") are much in evidence now in Beirut, as well as on Listservs frequented by Lebanese in the Diaspora. This fable asserts that it is only because of external intervention and others` malice that Lebanon has suffered for so long. Rid the land of the scheming foreigners (Palestinians, Israelis, Syrians, or Americans), and peace and prosperity will surely return. This fable dovetails with another: "None of us is guilty of anything," or al-`afou al`aam, as it is officially known: the general amnesty law that exempted all Lebanese, regardless of militia or confessional membership, from prosecution for any of the numerous and varied war crimes and crimes against humanity that were carried out in the country from 1975-1991.

Darker fables still, ghost stories, in fact, haunt the sunny expanse of Beirut`s currently crowded Martyrs` Square: the untold tales of what actually happened to the 17,000 Lebanese who were disappeared during the war and who still remain missing and unaccounted for today. Even if all foreign troops and interlopers were to leave Lebanon tomorrow, no amount of elections or freedom-loving rhetoric would remove the most harmful curse hanging over the country, one cast by the Lebanese themselves: until the Lebanese confront the seductive but dangerous fables that have enabled them to avoid a critique of confessionalism and an acknowledgment of accountability for massive human rights violations, the latest marvelous stories from Lebanon cannot have a happy ending. Lebanon`s past is in serious need of policing. Without an immediate resurrection of an independent judiciary and the rule of law, the fabulous events of the last week will remain fables and dreams devoid of substance.

Has a Spell Been Broken?

Yet, something fabulous is happening in Lebanon. Not even a cynic can deny it. After Hariri`s killing, a spell was broken. An unexpected social transfiguration occurred: The Lebanese transcended the barrier of silence and stopped being afraid. In the process, and maybe just temporarily, they stopped being Maronites or Sunnis or Druse, Communist or Kata`eb, and became equals, generating something akin to what Hannah Arendt called the "space of appearance," i.e., the public realm, the only space in which human beings can truly be political actors. This, not a televised election, is what makes or breaks a democracy and lends power and legitimacy to a political order. And although conspiracy theorists try to refute it, the outpouring of emotion and opinion in Beirut was spontaneous and unrehearsed.

And it appears to be contagious: Today came news of bold and extraordinary actions in the Syrian capital: more than 200 Syrian writers, artists and human rights activists issued an open letter on Tuesday to President Bashar al-Assad calling on his regime to withdraw from Lebanon. Only a month ago, such defiance in Damascus would have seemed the stuff of fables. Friends and family experiencing the heady and liminal landscapes of Beirut telephone and e-mail us to conjure up even more fabulous possibilities: perhaps the intifaadat al-istiqlaal (the Independence Uprising), as most in Lebanon are calling the emergent events, ideas, and sociopolitical formations of the last week, might spread to Syria itself? And if so, who benefits? In their excitement and enchantment with the fabulous events taking place in Beirut, too many are forgetting or ignoring the reality that their magic circle is far from complete. Few members of Lebanon`s large and influential Shi`a community have joined the uprising. Not to ask why is to undermine the fragile beginnings of the new democratic order that may be emerging now on Beirut`s streets.

Istiqlaal or Istighlaal?

For many who actually live in the Middle Eastern countries that Bush and other neoconservatives fantasize about, notions of "independence" and "democracy" have lost their formerly fabulous sheen, magical appeal and transformational qualities. Those calling for democracy now in Beirut, and those cheering them on from afar, are accused, and perhaps justly so, of falling for the Bush administration`s dangerous and delusional rhetoric about "untamed fires of freedom." Regime change in Iraq, heralded as "complete" by George W. Bush as he strutted about in a flight suit while living out his military fantasies in May 2003, actually began a dozen years earlier with his father`s rout of Saddam Hussein from Kuwait and the beginning of a UN sanctions regime that, along with Saddam Hussein`s unrelenting cruelty, undercut the Iraqi people`s ability to be actors in a political drama that affected them so deeply. One need look no further than the days of the uprising in southern Iraq in February and March of 1991 to understand why many throughout the Middle East are increasingly nervous about Lebanon`s "independence uprising." Nor need one look further than the Bush administration`s disappointment in April 2003 that so few Iraqis were welcoming US troops with open arms to appreciate how bizarrely fabulous is the neoconservatives` conception of social and political realities in the Arab world.

Furthermore, those held beyond the reach of the rule of law, in breach of the Geneva Conventions in Guantanamo, a legal no-man`s land beyond institutions, accountability, or even interstitiality, are not just symbols of US failures in and towards the Middle East, but are, more ominously, harbingers of a future world order devoid of justice, due process, fairness and accountability at the national and international levels. As long as a place like Guantanamo can exist, democracies - and the rule of law on which they rise or founder -- are threatened across the globe. Only a child or a madman can believe President Bush`s fables of freedom when they are juxtaposed with the horrors of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.

It is not cynical, then, but quite logical to ask whether it is independence and freedom or exploitation and submission that the world`s superpower truly desires for the Arab world. Istiqlaal (independence), requires trust, dignity, justice, and equality. Istighlaal (exploitation), entails submission, humiliation, corruption, and fear. In the language of fables, is the US an evil or a benevolent stepmother? Is the Middle East about to give birth to democracy? And if so, was the child conceived naturally, miraculously, or through some sort of political artificial insemination?

Miraculous births - whether to aged women or tender virgins -- are recurring themes in the most ancient fables of the Middle East. Marriage, conception, and birth are the aims of passages between liminal stages for individuals and communities, and have always provided rich materials for some of the most compelling tales performed by storytellers of the region. Metaphors of motherhood, gestation, birth and parentage also figure prominently in everyday discussions of politics in Lebanon and Palestine. In my travels as an anthropologist and a journalist in Lebanon, Palestine, and Israel, I`ve often noticed that elections and revolutions are compared to weddings, and how political parties are likened to a child that people have created, nourished, and cared for.

Similarly, fables of perverted weddings, conceptions, and births are told to warn of political exploitation and oppression. The theme of using democratic institutions and practices to accomplish undemocratic ends emerged in a long conversation I had with a newspaper editor in Nazareth shortly after an earlier election that supposedly heralded fabulous changes and marvelous possibilities for the Middle East: Israel`s 1992 Knesset elections. In 1992, Palestinian citizens gave the lion`s share of their votes to two Zionist parties, Labor and Meretz, rather than to the communist-dominated Democratic Front for Peace and Equality, which had garnered the majority of their votes in Israeli national elections for nearly two decades.

My interlocutor downplayed Israeli and US euphoria over the 1992 Knesset election results, which brought the late Yitzhak Rabin to power, and warned that there were no magic answers to the deeper and underlying structural problems facing Palestinians in Israel: Israel was not a true democracy, and Palestinians would remain second class citizens "outside the rules of the game" until the game and its structures were changed. One election was not going to accomplish that.

He went on to compare Palestinian citizens` support for the Labor Party to surrogate motherhood, describing Palestinian citizens` votes for Zionist parties as a borrowed womb: "im panduqiut" ("a hotel-mother" in Hebrew). "We don`t matter to their overall scheme; our interests and feelings don`t concern them. They just use us as a vehicle to reach their goal, then it`s `shalom, see you around!`--until next time!" A third party to this conversation, a human rights activist, invoked a very local fable by observing: "mitl ihbaal bi-laa dannas--hadheh ikhtiSaaSnaa hon bin-naasira!" ("like the immaculate conception! This is our specialty here in Nazareth!"), drawing an ironic parallel to the famous tale of an earlier Nazareth womb being used to accomplish larger goals.

Being used or exploited to achieve others` interests has been a specialty not only of Palestine and Lebanon, but of much of the Middle East as well over the last century. Arab fears of American fables of freedom are particularly well founded now, yet these fears can themselves be easily exploited and turned to harmful ends. But if the fabulous events unfolding in Lebanon are to prove truly marvelous, if a new baby is indeed being born, it will have to be the offspring of an indigenous womb and the result of a passionate and beautifully messy conception unorchestrated by external parties seen or unseen. Lebanon, that fabulous "house of many mansions," might be a good home for a miraculous baby with many and diverse parents.

Laurie King-Irani is a social anthropologist and journalist. Former editor of Middle East Report, she now lives and works in British Columbia.

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February 27, 2005
ESSAY
Winston Churchill, Neocon?
By JACOB HEILBRUNN
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/27/books/review/27HEILBRU.htm…

Douglas J. Feith was becoming excited. After spending an afternoon discussing the war in Iraq with him, I asked what books had most influenced him. Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy and a prominent neoconservative, raced across his large library and began pulling down gilt-edged volumes on the British Empire. Behind his desk loomed a bust of Winston Churchill.

It was a telling moment. In England right-wing historians are portraying the last lion as a drunk, a dilettante, an incorrigible bungler who squandered the opportunity to cut a separate peace with Hitler that would have preserved the British Empire. On the American right, by contrast, Churchill idolatry has reached its finest hour. George W. Bush, who has said ``I loved Churchill`s stand on principle,`` installed a bronze bust of him in the Oval Office after becoming president. On Jan. 21, 2005, Bush issued a letter with ``greetings to all those observing the 40th anniversary of the passing of Sir Winston Churchill.`` The Weekly Standard named Churchill ``Man of the Century.`` So did the columnist Charles Krauthammer, who in December 2002 delivered the third annual Churchill Dinner speech sponsored by conservative Hillsdale College; its president, Larry P. Arnn, also happens to belong to the International Churchill Society. William J. Luti, a leading neoconservative in the Pentagon, recently told me, ``Churchill was the first neocon.`` Apart from Michael Lind writing in the British magazine The Spectator, however, the Churchill phenomenon has received scant attention. Yet to a remarkable extent, the neoconservative establishment is claiming Churchill (who has just had a museum dedicated to him in London) as a founding father.
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Some of this reverence has its origins in the writings of the neoconservative husband-and-wife team Irving Kristol and Gertrude Himmelfarb. As the co-editor of the British monthly Encounter in the early 1950`s, Kristol (who deplored imperialism in his youthful Trotskyist incarnation) began falling under the influence of Tory intellectuals and started his march to the right. Himmelfarb, a historian of England, has always championed a return to Victorian virtues, which Churchill, more than anyone else, embodied in the 20th century. Writing in The New Republic in November 2001, Himmelfarb observed: ``Among other things that we are rediscovering in the past is the idea of greatness -- great individuals, great causes, great civilizations. It is no accident that Churchill has re-emerged now, at a time when the West is again under assault.``

Another strand of Churchill piety can be traced to the political philosopher Leo Strauss, who fled Nazi Germany for England before immigrating to the United States. Strauss shaped successive generations of neoconservatives, starting with Kristol and Himmelfarb. He believed that the Western democracies needed an intellectual elite to check the dangerous passions of the lower orders, and he saw the pre-World War I British aristocracy as the closest thing to Platonic guardians. Upon Churchill`s death in 1965, he declared, ``We have no higher duty, and no more pressing duty, than to remind ourselves and our students of political greatness, human greatness, of the peaks of human excellence.``

In the 1970`s, a new neoconservative generation imbibed this lesson. At Harvard, William Kristol, the son of Kristol and Himmelfarb, celebrated the 100th anniversary of Churchill`s birthday in the imperial manner by roasting a pig with his fellow Straussian graduate students. Other neoconservatives used the example of Churchill to warn about the perils of pursuing arms-control agreements with the Soviet Union. In ``Churchill and Us`` in the June 1977 issue of Commentary, the strategist Edward N. Luttwak, who has since decamped from the neoconservative movement, recounted the abuse showered upon Churchill for insisting upon rearmament in the 1930`s.

After Ronald Reagan became president, Churchill worship became even more fervent. Commentary published several essays during the Reagan years depicting Franklin D. Roosevelt as selling out the West at Yalta even as Churchill was trying to contain Stalin. Reagan hung a Churchill portrait in the White House Situation Room and, in 1988, declared Nov. 27 to Dec. 3 ``National Sir Winston Churchill Recognition Week.`` In his June 8, 1982, address to Parliament forecasting the collapse of the Soviet Union, Reagan made a point of extolling Churchill.

Since then, Reagan himself has been elevated to the status of Churchill. Just as Churchill began the fight against Bolshevism, his admirers contend, so Reagan prosecuted the war to its finish with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Like Churchill, Reagan, the argument goes, was dismissed as a crackpot by the regnant liberal establishment, but proved a prophet. Stephen F. Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute states in the forthcoming ``Age of Reagan`` that both men ``transcended their environments as only great men can do, thereby bending history to their will.`` David Gelernter, a Yale professor and contributing editor to The Weekly Standard, explains that to ``grasp Reagan`s achievement, we must understand the striking continuum of pacifism from the 1930`s through the 1980`s through today -- and remember, simultaneously, that Churchill had help changing Britain`s mind (namely Hitler`s war); Bush had help changing America`s mind and his own -- 9/11.``

But is there a seamless continuum from Churchill to Reagan to Bush? Certainly Bush himself has not exactly shied away from the comparison. On Feb. 4, 2004, at the opening of the Library of Congress`s ``Churchill and the Great Republic`` exhibit, Bush stated that ``our current struggles or challenges are similar to those Churchill knew. . . . One by one, we are finding and dealing with the terrorists, drawing tight what Winston Churchill called a `closing net of doom.` ``

But after celebrating Churchill, many neoconservatives go on to champion empire, and at that point matters become trickier. Krauthammer has applauded the idea of American hegemony, which he calls ``democratic realism,`` in The National Interest. Shortly after 9/11, in an article called ``The Case for American Empire,`` published in The Weekly Standard, Max Boot wrote: ``Afghanistan and other troubled lands today cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration once provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets.`` The former Canadian press baron Conrad Black, the chairman of the board of The National Interest, is calling for the creation of a Churchillian Anglosphere, while the historian Niall Ferguson wants the United States to quit being an ``empire in denial`` and adopt liberal imperialism.

It`s hard to see why it should. What, after all, was Churchill`s imperial legacy? While he was laudably eager to establish a Jewish state, his forays into Arab nation-building after World War I, including the creation of Iraq and Saudi Arabia, plague the region down to the present. Far from helping avert the collapse of the empire, Britain`s machinations under Churchill accelerated it. At the same time, it`s not clear how ``liberal`` Churchill`s imperialism actually was. He was a rather equivocal democratizer, declaring in 1942 that he had not become ``the King`s first minister in order to liquidate the British Empire.`` He bitterly fought with Roosevelt over recognizing Indian independence, and he despised Gandhi.

For many of the neoconservatives, however, the great liberal idol Franklin D. Roosevelt was a disaster. The former Bush speechwriter David Frum has hailed Churchill as the great man of the 20th century, while denouncing Roosevelt for not opposing Nazism and Stalinism vigorously enough. It seems clear that by shunting Roosevelt to the sidelines and elevating Churchill, neoconservatives are doing more than simply recovering a neoconservative hero from the past. They are, in effect, inventing a new interventionist tradition for the Republican Party that goes beyond anything Churchill or other British statesmen ever imagined.

Jacob Heilbrunn, an editorial writer for The Los Angeles Times, is completing a book on neoconservatism.


Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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February 24, 2005
Q&A: Josef Joffe on Bush`s European Trip
http://www.cfr.org/
From the Council on Foreign Relations, February 24, 2005

Josef Joffe, the editor and publisher of Die Zeit, a leading German weekly, says President Bush used his February 20-24 European trip to warm relations with officials who had opposed the Mach 2003 invasion of Iraq. The president, who Joffe says "is a grand charmer," ended what amounted to a cold war with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. And he made substantial progress with leaders of France, Germany, and the European Union (EU) on critical issues: Iran, Iraq, and environmental topics.

Joffe, who is also a fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, was interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor for cfr.org, on February 24, 2005.

President Bush met today with Russian President Vladimir Putin. He earlier met with French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, among others. What kind of reaction did Bush receive from the elite and, also, among the mass audience and the press?

When the trip started, the international chattering classes said this was just a charm offensive, that nothing much of substance was going to come out of it. That has now changed a bit. There is now a kind of grudging, cautious acceptance of two things. One, that flattery and symbolism were the core of the message. And second, that Bush is moving on certain things dear to the Europeans.

On the first point, remember the relationship between Bush and Schroeder was colder than ice. But Bush, who in his way is a grand charmer, was able to get the message across: "Look, let`s let bygones be bygones, and let`s turn over a new leaf." And I think the chancellor responded.

On the substantive issues, let`s start with Iran. Bush says, "Let`s give diplomacy a chance." On Iraq, Europeans have come around grudgingly to the conviction that no matter how much they hated the war, they can`t let the Americans lose this one because a regime change actually seems to be working in Iraq. And as a result, the Europeans are now not going to contribute troops, but they`re contributing all kinds of help--building the rule of law, training soldiers, training prosecutors, training police, et cetera. So that is substantive.

And, finally, the rhetoric of the administration has changed in significant ways. Here is this man whose administration talked about old Europe versus new Europe. But he is now saying, "We want a strong Europe," implying we`re not going to play divide and conquer anymore. He has symbolized that point by being the first president who has actually visited the EU Council, which is the government of Europe as it were. And he`s made these very, very nice comments about this friendship being eternal, that nothing can separate us.

Bush also said some conciliatory things about the environment.

On the Kyoto treaty [on climate change, which President Clinton signed but did not submit to the Senate for approval and which the Bush administration disavowed], both sides have dropped their arrogance. The Europeans are now willing to move on an item that was very critical to the United States, which is that some countries like China have to be included [in limits on greenhouse gas emissions]. That`s not such a bad point, because China is the second-largest polluter in the world, slightly ahead of the EU and behind the United States. And, I think, on Bush`s side, there is this kind of creeping conviction that, well, maybe CO2 [carbon dioxide] has something to do with the climate. That`s a change from saying earlier that we don`t know about CO2 and global warming and we don`t care. So, on that particular item, we are open for business now on both sides.

What is your sense of the brief Bush-Chirac visit?

I think that Chirac, in particular, has a burning desire to mend fences, because he is worried about how long he can keep Schroeder in his pocket: "Might not Schroeder seek better relations with the Americans than I have?" That was a very important impulse driving the meeting with Bush. And, I think, if you want to go beyond atmospherics, look at something which was enormously surprising. Suddenly, you have both the United States and France condemning Syrian imperialism in Lebanon. I would be hard put to find a precedent where the French have linked arms with the Americans. Previously, the basic principle of French policy toward the United States has been, "We are in favor of being against everything the United States favored."

Isn`t Lebanon a unique example, because the French retain a sense of Christian unity with that country?

I understand, but the point is that there has always been a predictable plan in French policy, which is, "Whatever the United States wants, we don`t want it, no matter whether it might serve our interests or not. We are in favor of opposing." That has been the one-sentence policy of the French.

You know Schroeder well. What compelled him to take an anti-Bush line in his 2002 re-election campaign?

That`s a very simple thing. He was running a sinking political campaign. The [rival] Christian Democrats were four, five, six points ahead in the polls. He was desperately casting around for an issue that could reverse that. He knew that in eastern Germany, anti-Americanism was even more rampant than in the west. So he played that card and, as a result, squeezed by with a few thousand votes ahead of the Christian Democrats. That was a wholly calculated electoral gambit which, however, no German chancellor or candidate would ever have chosen before the [1989] fall of the Berlin Wall, when Soviet shock troops were stationed 20 miles outside of Hamburg. There were two reasons. One was a desperate electoral situation. The other was the permissive factor of the loss of strategic dependence on the United States.

It`s been reported that, while Bush has supported diplomatic efforts to limit Iran`s nuclear program, he has not offered U.S. participation in negotiations. But did the British, French, or Germans particularly want the United States to join the talks?

Of course not. Why would they? This is their game. If they can carry it off, they want to reap the profits. So, why have the United States in there?

All they were looking for was American support?

They don`t want America to start bombing Iranian sites. If they were smart, however, they would play good cop, bad cop. Have the Europeans play the good cop and tell the Iranians, "Look, if you don`t deliver to us, there are these crazy, trigger-happy Americans, who are only looking for a good pretext to bomb the hell out of you." It`s such an obvious game. It`s difficult to understand why they`re not playing it. If I were a negotiator, I would love to have "crazy" Americans on the other side of the divide to give me leverage over the Iranians.

Schroeder was quite firm that Iran must not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons.

It was a very strong quote. You can add that to the positive side of the ledger. It is another piece of evidence suggesting how the gap across the Atlantic has been closing before and after the Bush visit.

How is Germany`s 2006 election shaping up?

Keeping in mind that basic piece of wisdom that says 24 hours is a long time in politics, the Christian Democrats are [consistently] leading [Schroeder`s] Social Democrats by about six points. But the elections are not going to be tomorrow, not this year, but in the fall of 2006. So nobody should put any money on Schroeder losing the next election.

Will the United States again be a factor in the German elections?

The situation will probably not be comparable. Remember in the fall of 2002, it had become clear to everyone the United States was going to war. There was that powerful issue that could be manipulated, especially in Germany. If the United States does not bang the war drum between now and 2006, it`s going to be very hard, if not impossible, to turn the United States, or anti-Americanism, into a winning issue.

What happens next in the U.S.-German relationship? Any concrete steps that you think will happen?

I don`t know what the concrete steps are going to be. All I know is the ice has been broken and these very bad personal relationships, especially the one between Schroeder and Bush, while not having been eliminated deep in their hearts perhaps, has disappeared on diplomatic level. Who knows? Bush might invite Schroeder to [the president`s Texas] ranch. Clearly, on the personal level, the atmosphere has warmed up considerably, so you can expect many more of these interpersonal contacts.

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February 26, 2005
5 G.I.`s Killed and 9 Injured Across Iraq in 24 Hours
By JOHN F. BURNS
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/26/international/middleeast/2…

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 25 - The United States military command on Friday announced the deaths of five American soldiers and the wounding of at least nine others. The day`s biggest attack, a roadside bomb blast in a town outside Baghdad, struck a patrol on what was to be one of the last combat missions for some members of the First Cavalry Division before they returned home.

The bombing, in Tarmiya, 30 miles north of Baghdad on the Tigris, killed three soldiers and wounded nine. Witnesses said the soldiers had dismounted from a convoy of Humvees and had begun a foot patrol when the bomb detonated. Tarmiya is in the heart of the so-called Sunni Triangle, which has been hit by a new wave of insurgent attacks since the Jan. 30 elections.

The bomb appeared to have been hidden among palm trees beside the road, according to an Associated Press account quoting local residents. The account described about a dozen American soldiers lying "on blood-spattered ground" after the attack, and said American and Iraqi forces quickly sealed off the area. The dead and wounded were flown to an American field hospital in Baghdad aboard Black Hawk helicopters.
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In addition to the victims from the bomb, the command said that one marine was killed Thursday in combat operations in Anbar Province, a main stronghold of the insurgency, and that a soldier died in Baghdad on Friday from "nonbattle injuries" that it did not describe. Insurgent attacks also killed at least 15 Iraqis in different incidents, mostly in the Sunni Triangle.

[On Saturday, the military said another United States marine had been killed Friday in Anbar Province during military operations, Reuters reported.]

A command spokesman said the patrol attacked in Tarmiya was a mixed group comprising soldiers of the First Cavalry Division and the Third Infantry Division, which are in the midst of a handover of military operations in Baghdad and outlying districts. The cavalry division, based in Fort Hood, Tex., has already begun sending some of its soldiers home as part of an annual rotation in which most of the 155,000 American troops now in Iraq will be replaced by new units by April. The Third Infantry Division, based in Fort Stewart, Ga., has returned for its second tour, after leading the American drive north from Kuwait and capturing Baghdad in April 2003.

At the moment the patrol was bombed, the two top officers in the Baghdad handover, Maj. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli of the cavalry division, and Maj. Gen. William G. Webster of the infantry division, who will formally assume command in Baghdad on Sunday, were holding a joint news conference in Baghdad`s heavily protected Green Zone.

General Chiarelli said the "hardest part" of going home was the fact that more than 160 of his men had been killed, along with more than 1,200 wounded. He said the division`s casualties in the month since the elections were among the lowest since the division arrived here last year, then added, "But that could change very, very quickly."

General Webster said about 50 percent of the Third Infantry Division`s soldiers were on their second tour in Iraq, but they accepted the importance of the mission, even if "combat is a cup that soldiers would just as soon let pass, especially on the second and third time around."

But both officers said they believed American and Iraqi forces were gaining the upper hand on the insurgents, partly because of the experience American troops have gained in two years of combat, and partly because of the buildup of Iraqi Army units, with about 50,000 soldiers deployed, about 6,000 of them in Baghdad."The enemy will not likely cease his efforts, despite the foolhardiness of his venture," said General Chiarelli, a 54-year-old native of Seattle. "But he will be defeated."

Postelection maneuvering over a transitional government to take Iraq through the rest of the year on Friday showed new signs of heading for a deadlock.Among the new elements was a demand from Kurdish leaders who control a key bloc in the national assembly that any group wanting their backing would first have to commit to declaring the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk to be part of Iraqi Kurdistan. The demand seemed likely to be resisted by both the United Iraqi Alliance, the country`s largest coalition of Shiite parties, and by the Iraqi List, the group led by the interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, who has emerged as the alliance`s main rival for power.

Another new element was the wavering of a voting bloc of about 30 elected alliance members who follow Ahmad Chalabi, a onetime Pentagon favorite who declared himself a candidate for prime minister after the elections. But he withdrew this week, throwing his support to Ibrahim al-Jaafari, an Islamist who leads Dawa, one of the alliance`s two dominant religious parties. Now, Mr. Chalabi`s aides say, secularists in his group, the Shiite Council, as well as other backers who were placed on the alliance`s election list by the rebel Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, are demanding that Mr. Chalabi renounce his support for Mr. Jaafari and leave the alliance. If he does, he could become a wild card in the power struggle, and potentially even an ally for Dr. Allawi, a longtime rival.

The bomb attack on the American soldiers came on a day that caught the war`s crosscurrents as it approaches the end of its second year. The five dead soldiers made it one of the worst 24-hour periods in weeks for the American command.

Among the victims in other attacks were two women and a child killed by a bomb that exploded just after an American military convoy passed them in Baiji, 130 miles north of Baghdad. A driver for an American-backed television station in Baghdad was shot as he drove a reporter through an area of intense insurgent activity about 50 miles south of Baghdad.

Two members of the Iraqi security forces were killed: one a soldier who was shot in Nibai, about 40 miles north of Baghdad, and the other a policeman who was returning to his home in Baquba, also about 40 miles north of the capital. And three Iraqis in an outer district of Baghdad died when insurgents set off a bomb, then fired into onlookers.

But the loss was accompanied by what Iraq`s interim government said was a breakthrough in the hunt for the terrorist group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian named by Osama bin Laden late last year as Al Qaeda`s chief representative in Iraq. An announcement said American and Iraqi forces had seized two aides of Mr. Zarqawi last Sunday during a raid in Anah, a town on the Euphrates River about 200 miles northwest of Baghdad, close to the Syrian border. Anah lies on a stretch of the river where the First Marine Division began an offensive on Sunday that it described as aimed at "criminals and terrorists who have attempted to destabilize Anbar Province."

The two aides were identified as Abu Qutaybah, who is said to have been responsible for determining "who, when and how terrorist network leaders would meet" with Mr. Zarqawi, and Abu Uthman, who the announcement said had "occasionally acted" as Mr. Zarqawi`s driver.

The government also said Iraqi soldiers had captured the leader of a Qaeda-linked cell responsible for a string of beheadings across Iraq. In a statement released late on Thursday, it said that the man, whom it identified as Muhammad Najam Ibrahim, had been seized in Baquba. It gave no date for the arrest, and no details of the killings that the man was alleged to have carried out.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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Mike Luckovich The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Helen Thomas ist die über 80jährige Doyenne der US-Presse, die gesagt hat, Bush ist der schlechteste Präsident aller Zeiten, obwohl meinen Kenntnissen nach es auch noch einige andere Anwärter gibt.

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February 26, 2005
Egypt`s Mubarak Calls for Democratic Election Reforms
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Egypt-Presi…

Filed at 5:35 a.m. ET

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Saturday ordered a revision of the country`s election laws, signaling an openness to holding a contested presidential election, a scenario Mubarak hasn`t faced since becoming the country`s leader in 1981.

In his surprise announcement, Mubarak said the country needed ``more freedom and democracy,`` responding to critics` calls for political reform in Egypt.

``The election of a president will be through direct, secret balloting, giving the chance for political parties to run for the presidential elections and providing guarantees that allow more than one candidate for the people to choose among them with their own will,`` Mubarak said in an address broadcast live on Egyptian television.

Mubarak -- who has never faced an opponent since becoming president after the 1981 assassination of Anwar Sadat -- said his initiative came ``out of my full conviction of the need to consolidate efforts for more freedom and democracy.``

The audience before him at Menoufia University broke into applause and calls of support, some shouting, ``Long live Mubarak, mentor of freedom and democracy!`` Others spontaneously recited verses of poetry praising the government.

Mubarak said he asked parliament and the Shura Council to amend Article 76 of the constitution, which deals with presidential elections. Egyptian television reported that the two bodies convened emergency sessions to begin discussing an amendment.

He said the amendment would be put to a general public referendum before the presidential polls, which are scheduled for September.

As recently as last month Mubarak had rejected opposition demands to open presidential balloting to other candidates.

Egypt holds presidential referendums every six years in which people vote ``yes`` or ``no`` for a single candidate who has been approved by parliament. Mubarak has been nominated by his ruling National Democratic Party to stand in four presidential referendums, winning more than 90 percent of the vote each time.

Mubarak has not officially announced his candidacy for a fifth term, though he is widely expected to be nominated by his ruling party.

Several opposition leaders have demanded that Mubarak amend the constitution to let more than one candidate compete for the presidency.

One of the strongest voices, Ayman Nour, head of the Al-Ghad Party, was detained Jan. 29 on allegations of forging nearly 2,000 signatures to secure a license for his party last year. He has rejected the accusation, and human rights groups have said his detention was politically motivated.

The prosecutor general has denied that charge.

His detention has been strongly criticized by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and American newspapers, and Rice canceled a Mideast visit that had been planned for next week, a decision believed to be in protest of Nour`s detention.

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press

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Sneering will not help democracy

We cannot leave the building of a new Iraq to the US neoliberals
Brian Brivati
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1425817,00.ht…
Saturday February 26, 2005

Guardian
There has been no greater abdication of leadership by the left since 1945 than its failure in the past decade to articulate how we should transform tyranny into freedom. The progressives should own this issue, but today it is President Bush`s New American Century vanguard who are shaping new democracies in their own image. Ibrahim al-Jaafari, Iraq`s most likely new prime minister, faces a forbidding set of challenges in constructing the world`s newest democracy. The prospects for consolidation look mixed. Will Iraqis commit to democracy and reject the alternatives?

We cannot know the answer, but we do know that no significant left-of-centre voice, except perhaps Blair`s at the margin, is influencing the debate.

When Bush first articulated his democratisation, the left sneered. After elections in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine, progressives need to re-evaluate their view of Bush`s aims, even if still opposed to his means. While not trusting the New American Century view that we can make these states democracies from above, we need to engage with the people forging these democracies from below.

Bush and co are advocating structures based on their own underlying values. They will argue that democracies can only function with small states, low welfare, low taxes and an unrestricted market. We have been here before. Central and eastern Europe teach us that neoliberal models do not achieve democratic consolidations, but social-market models do. A free-market approach to welfare and wealth distribution produces instability. If you develop slowly, use welfare capitalism and build consensus, you consolidate quicker.

The need for consent, welfare and a developmental state are clear. The lessons from history on the importance of institutional design are more mixed. The structure of electoral systems and checks and balances channels behaviours and creates expectations of norms and values in a system. These define what makes a system predictable and so make people commit to that system.

The Iraqi majority is going to commit to democracy if it can have as predictable a future as West German or Japanese citizens of the 50s and 60s felt they had after heavy allied involvement in reconstruction was followed by intelligent applications of devolution and federalism. The bottom line is that institutions matter, but not as much as the social, ethnic and economic policies that they implement. In short, we need a bigger Iraqi middle class as soon as possible, and a welfare state.

It seems likely that the new constitution will be less federal than the transitional administrative law. Even limited devolution would be unique in the Arab world. In the medium term, decentralisation might offer better prospects for running a social-market economy that allows the state to use tax revenue and reconstruction funding to address the inequalities across the country on a subsidiarity basis. This might also allow Kirkuk to be a free port or open city - though the Kurdish parties` majority might block this. But in the short term, some heavy intervention is called for to continue reconstruction and to continue bedding in civil society. What is needed is a strong central government with significant powers of intervention and the confidence to move on to devolution in the medium term.

Material self-interest is a key to locking minority groups into democracy. Ideally these groups will coalesce around different economic and political visions that cross ethnic divides. That is going to take time. The Iraqi middle class needs to recover and grow. Symbolically, as well as in the interests of justice, a structured partnership arrangement in the oil industry between Iraqi start-ups and US oil companies (assuming that Americans win all the contracts, as in Libya) is a political necessity. A flourishing Iraqi business sector builds a middle class that buys into democracy.

Strong governments able to build new classes need mandates. The first-past-the-post system for the lower chamber will provide a strong executive office that can run over the heads of the parties to a national electorate. This would go against the proportionality inherent in the transitional system.

The human rights lawyer Jane Gordon has argued that the post-conflict structures in Northern Ireland were designed to be as broadly representative as possible to ensure that minorities felt ownership. The problem is this gives minorities excessive veto strength in the early phases of the evolution of change. A strong executive is in a better position to offer carrots and sticks to appease Kurds demanding independence or shift Sunnis away from seeing their interests as best served by terrorists. On balance, I favour a strong executive and a clear mandate; this will be a key problem in the coming months.

What happens in Iraq will shape the Middle East. Bush`s policies and the Iraq elections forced Saudi Arabia to concede male-only municipal elections. For the demonstration effect of Iraqi democracy to be most effective, there must be minimum concessions to religion on issues such as the status of women, corporal punishment and the right to trial. The new Iraq constitution has to show that secularism can flourish. Human rights need to be entrenched in the new constitution. Separation of church and state would be ideal, but is never going to happen.

In terms of security, the coalition must leave as soon as feasible. It would be great to have permanent bases in Iraq to reduce our strategic reliance on Saudi Arabia, but if I were al-Jaafari I would be seen to be saying no to the coalition. The fight against terrorists needs to be handed to the Iraq military as soon as possible, but in the short term there is no alternative to coalition as the most visible, and actual, source of security. In Germany and Japan, allied military presence was necessary for half a decade merely on internal security grounds; Iraq will be the same.

It is a double game in the next period. The first is to get as many people as possible to build on their first vote and buy further into a democratic oriented Iraq. The second is to use Iraq as a beacon of democracy in a region of tyranny, and for that we can only hope that the constitution is as liberal as possible. It is time for the left to take off the anti-American blinkers and see what voters across the Middle East want our help to build: freedom and democracy. If we don`t engage, these new states will have no idea that social democracy was even an option.

· Brian Brivati is professor of contemporary history at Kingston University

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Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

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

http://www.juancole.com/
Saturday, February 26, 2005

5 US Troops Die
Sistani Blesses Jaafari

Ibrahim Jaafari, the candidate for prime minister of the religious Shiite coalition, met Friday with Grand Ayatollah Sistani,who "blessed" (i.e. endorsed) his candidacy. This blessing will help Jaafari with the some 30 members of his United Iraqi Alliance coalition who are said to be wavering in their support of him. It may even boost him in the eyes of some of the Shiites in the rival Iraqiya list of Iyad Allawi (some of whom have spoken of leaving that list and joining the UIA), and helps make it more likely that he will emerge as prime minister.

Sistani stressed the need for Jaafari to bring the Sunni Arabs into the new government, given that they largely stayed home on election day and are poorly represented in parliament (6 of 275 seats, even though they are 20 percent of the population).

Jaafari does, however, need the Kurds to form a government. His strategy for dealing with them was telegraphed in his remarks on Friday. He said the issue of the disposition of the city of Kirkuk, which is ethnically mixed, should be postponed until after the approval of a new constitution and the election of a regular parliament (the current body is transitional). The Kurds have said that they will not accept less than redistricting to ensure their states` rights and possession of Kirkuk, so they may reject Jaafari`s gambit out of hand.

Meanwhile, the US military had announced that guerrillas have killed 4 US troops and wounded 9. Another US soldier died of non-combat related injuries.

Al-Hayat says that 9 Iraqis were killed in various incidents.

It also reported that the clerics of Ramadi issued a fatwa forbidding the killing of Muslims. This is a reference to the guerrilla attacks on Iraqi policemen.

The clerics in Lebanon used to try to forbid violence during the civil war there, too. I remember that one admitted that it was ineffective, because it wasn`t the clerics who were killing people.

Amnesty International reports that the women of Iraq have suffered substantial setbacks in their rights since the US invasion, and live in a condition of dire insecurity.

The suggestion by some that the guarantee of 1/3 of seats in the Iraqi parliament to women might make up for the situation described by Amnesty is of course absurd. Iraq is not the first country to have such a quota. It was put into effect in Pakistan by Gen. Pervez Musharraf. The move was meant to weaken Muslim fundamentalists, on the theory that women members of parliament would object to extreme patriarchy on the Khomeini or Taliban model. In fact, the Jama`at-i Islami, the main fundamentalist party in Pakistan, was perfectly capable of finding women to represent it in parliament. (US readers should remember Phyllis Schlafly!) Moreover, the 1/3 of MPs who are women can fairly easily be outvoted by the men.

If the Republican Party in the US is so proud of putting in such a quota for Iraq, they should think seriously about applying it in the United States Congress.


` . . . there are larger disparities between the Congress and the general citizenry in term of sex and race. In the House, there are currently 372 men and 63 women. In the Senate, there are 14 women and 86 men. `



Might not the US be a better country if there were 33 women senators and more like 120 congresswomen? If your answer is that it wouldn`t matter, then you cannot very well insist that it does matter in Iraq. If you think it would be important, then if you support it in Iraq you should support it in the United States.

posted by Juan @ [url2/26/2005 06:17:00 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/02/5-us-troops-die-sistani-blesses.html[/url]

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February 27, 2005
Afghans Accuse U.S. of Secret Spraying to Kill Poppies
By CARLOTTA GALL
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/27/international/asia/27afgha…

KANAI, Afghanistan - Abdullah, a black-turbaned shepherd, said he was watching over his sheep one night in early February when he heard a plane pass low overhead three times. By morning his eyes were so swollen he could not open them and the sheep around him were dying in convulsions.

Although farmers had noticed a white powder on their crops, they cut grass and clover for their animals and picked spinach to eat anyway. Within hours the animals were severely ill, people here said, and the villagers complained of fevers, skin rashes and bloody diarrhea. The children were particularly affected. A week later, the crops - wheat, vegetables and poppies - were dying, and a dozen dead animals, including newborn lambs, lay tossed in a heap.

The incident on Feb. 3 has left the herders of sheep and goats in this remote mountain area in Helmand Province deeply angered and suspicious. They are convinced that someone is surreptitiously spraying their lands or dusting them with chemicals, presumably in a clandestine effort to eradicate Afghanistan`s bumper poppy crop, the world`s leading source of opium.

The incident in Kanai was not the first time that Afghan villagers - or Afghan government officials - had complained of what they suspected was nighttime spraying. In November, villagers in Nimla, in Nangarhar Province, said their fields, too, had been laced with chemicals when a plane passed overhead several times during the night.

Afterward, Afghan and foreign officials who investigated returned with samples of tiny gray granules that they said provided evidence that spraying had occurred. Two Western embassies sent samples abroad for analysis but have not yet received the results.

At that time, President Hamid Karzai publicly condemned the spraying. Though it was never clear who was responsible, members of his staff said they suspected the United States or Britain, which together have been leading the struggle to rein in Afghan poppy cultivation, which has reached record levels. Both countries finance outside security firms to train Afghan counternarcotics forces.

President Karzai said his government was not spraying fields and had no knowledge of such activity, and he called in the American and British ambassadors for an explanation. Then, as now, the American and British Embassies denied any involvement.

"There is no credible evidence that aerial spraying has taken place in Helmand," the American Embassy said in a statement this time. "No agency, personnel or contractors associated with the United States government have conducted or been involved in any such activity in Helmand or any other province of Afghanistan."

An Afghan government delegation sent to investigate the latest incident said it found no evidence of aerial spraying. Rather, "a naturally occurring disease" had killed the crops and animals, Lt. Gen. Muhammad Daoud, deputy interior minister for counternarcotics, said in a statement.

Agriculture Ministry officials said the extremely cold weather could have affected the crops. They added, however, that the ministry lacked the technical capacity to analyze samples for chemicals.

But the people in Kanai, neighboring Tanai and at least two other villages are incredulous. For them, there is no doubt that someone sprayed their lands and, despite official denials, they blame the United States, which still controls the skies in Afghanistan.

"They are the ones with the planes," said Abdul Ahmad, brother of the shepherd, Abdullah. Between them, the brothers had lost 200 animals from symptoms that suggested poisoning, he said.

"They went mad, their eyes went blue and they could not eat," he said of their sheep and goats. "Water was coming from their mouths, they were trying to eat their droppings and they were shivering," he said. The animals appeared completely healthy the day before, he said.

"We gave our vote to Karzai so he would bring us help and now he is killing our animals," he said angrily.

While the mystery lingers around who may be responsible for a secret aerial eradication campaign here - or even whether one is actually being carried out - there is no doubt that Afghanistan`s booming poppy crop has been an intensifying concern to United States, British and other international officials.

In November, a United Nations report found that more than 300,000 acres in Afghanistan had been planted with poppies and expressed concern that the country was degenerating into a narcostate. American and other officials said they feared the drug trade had insinuated itself into virtually every corner of the Afghan economy and was financing rebels.

Some American officials, particularly those in international narcotics and law enforcement, have for months advocated aerial spraying to gain control of the problem.

Diplomats and other foreign officials involved in agriculture programs and counternarcotics efforts here said there was a discussion in 2004 between American officials and other donors over whether to use aerial eradication to stem poppy cultivation, which expanded 64 percent last year.

In December, the Bush administration presented to Congress a budget request for $152 million for aerial spraying as part of a $776 million aid package for counternarcotics operations in Afghanistan for 2005. In January, it dropped the budget line for aerial spraying because of President Karzai`s clear opposition, an American official in Kabul said.

Word of the budget request prompted 31 nonprofit groups, led by CARE International, to sign an open letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Jan. 31 expressing concern over what they considered the excessive emphasis on eradication in the United States administration`s counternarcotics strategy in Afghanistan.

"Widespread eradication in 2005 could undermine the economy and devastate already poor families without giving rural development projects sufficient time to provide alternative sources of income," the agencies warned. They called for concentration on interdiction of traffickers and support for farmers instead.

Yet American officials have not ruled out the possible need for aerial eradication and financing, which was included in a supplemental request in February for $82 billion by the Bush administration for Iraq and Afghanistan, an American counternarcotics official in Kabul said.

One option considered by American officials last year was to rent civilian planes and spray the general weed killer Roundup over the provinces of Helmand and Badakhshan, two of the largest producers of poppies in the country, according to one official familiar with the plan.

American military officials in Afghanistan and those with the United States Agency for International Development are also against aerial spraying, foreign officials in Kabul say. Development officials argue that spraying will affect all agriculture and especially the poorest farmers; instead, they advocate alternative livelihood programs for farmers to dissuade them from growing poppies.

The military fears that spraying will turn the population against the government and the American presence in Afghanistan and increase support for insurgents, who remain active in southern Afghanistan.

In fact, the belief that they have been sprayed has angered villagers all the more because the local police came here only 40 days before and destroyed their poppy fields on government orders, a fact that the district police chief, Abdul Hakim Karezwal, confirmed.

The farmers said they had instead planted wheat, which was now yellow and rotting along with the clover, spinach and greens they had also planted. Some farmers kept growing small patches of poppies inside high garden walls, but most of the fields in the village showed shoots of young wheat.

"Karzai lied to us," one farmer, Ahmadullah, said. "He said, `We will give you assistance,` and he didn`t. So we grew poppy to be able to feed our families. Then the president ordered it destroyed and so we destroyed it. And now he is destroying our wheat. What will be left of our lives? They destroyed everything. We will have to abandon the village."

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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MALE ESCORT INFILTRATES AL-QAEDA
Bin Laden Promises Overhaul of Clearance Procedures

Terror mastermind Osama bin Laden promised a “thorough review” of al-Qaeda’s clearance procedures today after reports emerged that an alleged male escort had successfully infiltrated the inner circle of the terror network.

Appearing on the Arabic-language television network Al-Jazeera, a red-faced Mr. bin Laden acknowledged that the high-ranking terrorist known to his al-Qaeda comrades as Fawzi Khalid Al-Mutairi was actually James Guckert, reportedly a former male escort with no terrorist background whatsoever.

According to sources within the terror network, Mr. Guckert distinguished himself in high-level al-Qaeda meetings by lobbing softball questions Mr. bin Laden’s way, such as, “Don’t you think it’s only a matter of time before we destroy the American infidels?” and “Isn’t it ironic that they call us evildoers when they are really the evil ones, and not us?”

In his appearance on al-Jazeera, Mr. bin Laden apologized for the lapse in proper security procedures that enabled Mr. Guckert to receive full al-Qaeda credentials, assuring his followers, “This is a case of one bad apple taking advantage of the system.”

But around the world, aspiring terrorists who have waited for months or even years to be issued al-Qaeda credentials were not so quick to accept Mr. bin Laden’s televised apology.

“I’ve been trying to get clearance from al-Qaeda for three years,” said Ahmad Al-Foudari, 34, a disgruntled terrorist from Kuwait. “Instead of going to terrorist training camp, maybe I should’ve just been a ho.”

Elsewhere, in response to secretly recorded conversations in which he advocated tolerance towards homosexuals, President Bush said today, “I must’ve been high when I said that.”
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Bush signs on to help clean air in China, India
U.S.-Germany pact to cut coal emissions
- Robert Collier, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, February 26, 2005
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/02/26/M…


President Bush, in one of the least-noticed gestures of his European visit, has pledged to help developing nations such as China and India cut back on their fast-growing output of the greenhouse gases linked to global warming.

Bush signed a pact with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder on Wednesday to help poorer countries adopt more energy-efficient technologies in power generation, transportation and industry.

Although the agreement lacked specific commitments for new spending, diplomats and analysts say it could help take political pressure off the United States, the world`s largest polluter, and remove a major obstacle to achieving the goals set out in the Kyoto Protocol, the agreement on climate change that went into effect Feb. 16 despite a U.S. boycott.

The Bush-Schroeder agreement "can be very meaningful as a start. It can get the United States and developing countries on board," said ZhongXiang Zhang, an energy and climate policy analyst at the East-West Center, a think tank in Honolulu.

The Kyoto Protocol`s weak point is that even as wealthy nations cut back on pollution, greenhouse gas emissions from China, India and other developing nations keep rising at a sizzling rate.

China`s emissions of carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas, are rising at more than twice the rate of the United States, while Germany`s overall output is dropping. In fact, China is widely projected to overtake the United States as the world`s top source of greenhouse gases by 2025.

"China is building a new 1,000-megawatt power plant every week with old, Eisenhower-era technology," said Douglas Ogden, director of the China program at the Energy Foundation in San Francisco. "They`re going to keep building the oldest, dirtiest plants unless we do something. The world can ill afford even one greenhouse gas producer on the U.S. scale, let alone two."

Poor nations exempted

China and other developing nations are exempted from the Kyoto Protocol`s rules for emission cutbacks because their governments are afraid the limits would hobble their rise from poverty.

"The European side wants hard targets from the United States and developing countries, which is ... very difficult," Zhang said. "But if they can work together to subsidize advanced technologies ... it would be very positive."

The key to the U.S.-German initiative is the most polluting of major energy sources -- coal.

Schroeder and British Prime Minister Tony Blair are pressing Bush to join them in creating an ambitious aid program to help developing nations adopt new technologies that reduce emissions from coal power plants and save energy. Blair holds the annual rotating presidency of the G-8, the group of industrialized nations, and he says he will make the proposal a top priority for the group`s summit meeting in July.

Huge coal reserves

Although environmentalists advocate the expansion of wind and solar energy production, China and India are expected to continue to rely on their huge reserves of coal for most of their energy needs in the near future. The two countries derive 80 percent and 65 percent, respectively, of their electricity from coal, compared to the U.S. share of 51 percent.

"Coal is really the workhorse for the economies of India and China in the decades to come, so that`s why coal is so important for global warming," said Bernd Kramer, minister counselor for science, technology and environment at the German Embassy in Washington.

In the next eight years, China expects to put into operation 562 coal- fired plants -- nearly half the world`s total -- and India is projected to add 213 such plants, according to government figures. The United States is expected to build only 72.

For years, the U.S. government has invested heavily in clean-energy research. For 2005, it budgeted nearly $3 billion for research and development of climate-change technology, mostly through subsidies and tax breaks for work on hydrogen fuel-cell developments and so-called clean coal technology, which releases less carbon dioxide.

Hydrogen fuel cells are widely believed to be 15 to 20 years away from commercial viability, while clean-coal technology is already on the market. The most prominent clean-coal method goes by the cumbersome name of Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle, or IGCC. Under the process, coal is turned into a gas, which is then burned in a process that allows carbon dioxide to be siphoned off rather than released into the atmosphere.

15% less carbon dioxide

Plants built with this technology release 15 percent less carbon dioxide and can be combined with a futuristic option called "carbon sequestration," in which the carbon dioxide by-product is injected into oil and gas aquifers underground, eliminating emissions altogether.

What is needed now is not further research but aid to get these two methods to market, say Schroeder, Blair and many experts.

One prominent environmental group, the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, has estimated that the extra cost of using IGCC and carbon sequestration in all plants being built in developing nations would be just $6 billion a year.

"This amount would be a huge investment in global security, and it is very low compared to the $50 billion that the G-8 gave in development assistance last year," said David Hawkins, the council`s climate policy director.

If China, India and other nations start snapping up this new technology, a big winner could be San Francisco`s Bechtel Corp., which has already built two coal-fired power plants and two nuclear plants in China, with several more under construction or projected. Bechtel recently formed an alliance with General Electric Co. to develop IGCC power plants.

Amos Avidan, a principal vice president of Bechtel, said China is eager to make its power plants cleaner and reduce the nation`s severe air pollution.

`Great potential for China`

The IGCC technology "hasn`t yet taken off," Avidan said, "but we believe it can become a mainstream technology in a couple of years or so and eliminate the cost gap. We think it has great potential for China."

Other industry analysts are more skeptical.

"The problem with these leapfrog technologies is they have a well-proven track record of mostly failing," said Dale Simbeck, vice president of technology for SFA Pacific Inc., a Mountain View energy industry consulting firm.

He noted that there are only two IGCC power plants operating in the United States, despite two decades of federal subsidies. One failed attempt was the Pinon Pine power plant, an IGCC plant near Reno completed in 2000 at a price tag of $335 million, split equally between a local power company and the U.S. Energy Department. The plant has been plagued by technical snafus and has never been fully operational.

Rigid policies

Simbeck, who has worked as a consultant on China power issues for the World Bank and the Chinese government, said China has enough technological know-how. Its main barrier, he said, is rigid government policies that shield state-owned power companies from competition.

"The Chinese are just telling the West what it wants -- `Help us build with IGCC, please help fund these with our companies` -- but it`s not necessary," he said.

Lee Schipper, director of transportation research for World Resources Institute in Washington, said China`s reputation as a big polluter is unfair. The Beijing government is spending billions of dollars annually on pollution prevention, he noted.

Bay Area experts help

China`s efficiency programs are getting a boost from European and Bay Area experts. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is working with the Energy Foundation on a host of programs, ranging from consumer appliance standards to building codes. And the California Air Resources Board has helped Chinese federal and state governments set up air-quality monitoring programs.

"China is improving at many times the rate of improvement in the United States," Schipper said. "The Bush administration should be getting its own carbon house in order instead."

E-mail Robert Collier at [e-mail].
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©2005 San Francisco Chronicle

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The Economist - North America Edition
Feb 19th 2005
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[urlBush Snakes Through Europe (Or: Art of Darkness)]http://bagnewsnotes.typepad.com/bagnews/in_a_picturepolitics_as_unusual/index.html[/TABLE][/url]

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SPIEGEL ONLINE - 27. Februar 2005, 10:51
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/kino/0,1518,343943,00.html

Goldene Himbeere

Berry und Bush als schlechteste Schauspieler gekürt

Spott über George W. Bush und Halle Berry: Am Vorabend der Oscar-Verleihung sind sie mit dem Unk-Preis der "Goldenen Himbeere" ausgezeichnet worden. Damit wurden die Oscar-Gewinnerin und der US-Präsident zu den schlechtesten Schauspielern des Jahres ernannt.

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Bush in "Fahrenheit 9/11": Himbeere für den Präsidenten

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Bush in "Fahrenheit 9/11": Himbeere für den Präsidenten
Los Angeles - Berry wurde für ihre Rolle als "Catwomen" und Bush für seine Präsenz in Michael Moores Dokumentarstreifen "Fahrenheit 9/11" als schlechteste Schauspieler des Jahres 2004 "ausgezeichnet". Der Präsident setzte sich damit gegen die "Konkurrenz" von "Alexander"-Darsteller Colin Farrell, Ben Affleck, Vin Diesel und Ben Stiller durch.

Verteidigungsminister Donald Rumsfeld teilt sich die "Razzie-Ehre" als schlechtester Nebendarsteller in "Fahrenheit 9/11" mit Britney Spears, die für ihren Cameo-Auftritt in dem Dokumentarstreifen ebenfalls eine Himbeere erntete.


Der kalifornische Gouverneur Arnold Schwarzenegger leistet ihnen als "schlechtester Razzie-Verlierer der letzten 25 Jahre" Gesellschaft. Der für seinen Kurz-Auftritt in "In 80 Tagen um die Welt" nominierte frühere Action-Star hat in 25 Jahren schon acht Anwartschaften erhalten, ohne jemals eine Himbeer-Trophäe zu "gewinnen".

"Catwomen" holte sich insgesamt vier Schmäh-Preise, darunter auch den als schlechtester Film. "Fahrenheit 9/11" erhielt dank seiner Darsteller auch vier Himbeeren. Das Historienepos "Alexander", das mit sechs Nominierungen ins Rennen gezogen war, ging überraschend leer aus. Wie erwartet nahm keiner der Himbeeren-Gewinner bei der Verleihung in Hollywood am Samstagabend (Ortszeit) seine Trophäe persönlich entgegen.

Über 650 Filmschaffende, Journalisten und Kinofans aus den USA und 15 weiteren Ländern hatten die Gewinner ermittelt. Nach Angaben der Veranstalter ist die mit Sprühlack überzogene Statue - eine golfballgroße Himbeere auf einer eingedrückten Filmspule - knapp fünf Dollar wert.

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2005

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to pull the rug out from under so.

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Ich halte das Kurdenproblem für eins der gefährlichsten Probleme in der Region.

February 27, 2005
Kurds Vow to Retain Militia as Guardians of Autonomy
By EDWARD WONG
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/27/international/middleeast/2…

SARAI SUBHAN AGHA, Iraq, Feb. 23 - The camouflage-clad militiamen marched down from the mountains in four columns of hundreds each, stomping their boots in unison.

"Keep looking forward!" an officer yelled.

"Kurdistan or death!" the soldiers shouted at once, their words thundering over the sound of heels striking the ground.

Here at a training camp in the eastern hills of Iraqi Kurdistan, there is little doubt about to whom these soldiers owe their allegiance.

Many say their first loyalty lies with a major Kurdish political party. Then they offer it to Kurdistan, the rugged autonomous region in northern Iraq the size of Switzerland. There is little mention of the nation of Iraq or the Iraqi Army.

"All of the pesh merga of Kurdistan, we`re fighting for Kurdistan," one of the soldiers, Fermen Ibrahim, 25, told a visitor, calling the militia by its Kurdish name, which means "those who face death."
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Members of the Kurdish militia known as the pesh merga, above, trained recently at their base near Sulaimaniya
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As political jockeying rages in Baghdad to determine the shape of the new government - how Islamic it will be, whether it has strong or weak central powers - one of the most troublesome issues emerging is whether political parties, especially those of the Kurds and Shiites, can keep their private armies. Kurdish leaders say they intend to write into the new constitution a system granting considerable powers to individual regions, one that will legitimize their use of the pesh merga.

If the Kurds succeed, they will achieve the right of regional powers to set up their own armies, possibly leading to warlord-style fiefs across Iraq. Until their strong showing in the recent national elections, Kurdish leaders appeared to agree, at least in public, with the American goal of dismantling militias. Now they stand in open defiance of it.

The pesh merga, with recruits from two Kurdish parties, total about 100,000 soldiers. A source of ethnic pride, they fought tenaciously against Saddam Hussein and are now relied upon by American commanders to battle the Arab-led insurgency in the north. Perhaps most important in the current power vacuum, they provide Kurdish leaders with armed backing in their demands for broad autonomy.

"We want to keep our pesh merga because they are a symbol of resistance," said Massoud Barzani, the leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the son of Mustafa Barzani, a revered Kurdish leader who founded the pesh merga in the 1960`s. "It`s not a matter to be discussed or negotiated."

If the Kurds get the constitution they want, the pesh merga would nominally fall under the oversight of the Ministry of Defense in Baghdad, Kurdish officials say, but in reality would be controlled by regional commanders. The two Kurdish parties each have a ministry of pesh merga, which they say they intend to keep.

The Kurds also say the pesh merga will maintain all the trappings of a conventional army, with an officers` college, training camps and armor and artillery units all operating independently of the rest of the Iraqi security forces.

The major Shiite parties, who have the largest share of seats in the constitutional assembly, may try to block the Kurds on the militia issue to limit the autonomy of the Kurds. But those parties have significant militias that they may seek to keep, or to at least incorporate into the Iraqi security forces as intact units. Their armies generally stay hidden on the streets of Baghdad but have been active in the Shiite heartland of the south, operating checkpoints and patrols and, in some cases, enforcing strict Islamic law, like cracking down on alcohol vendors.

The leaders of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a powerful Shiite party, have repeatedly said that the party`s Iranian-trained armed wing, the Badr Organization, at least 15,000 strong, can help provide security in the new Iraq.

The former governing Sunni Arabs, a minority now feeling threatened by the other groups, will probably oppose any move by the Kurds and Shiites to legitimize their militias.

American commanders publicly say that all armed groups in Iraq must be state sponsored and that militarized units should not be organized by ethnicity or sect. But they privately acknowledge the extreme difficulties of breaking up the militias. Lt. Col. Eric Durr, the head of civil affairs for the 42nd Infantry Division, charged with overseeing eastern Kurdistan, said it was now up to the new Iraqi government to figure out what to do with the militias.

"It`s really a political issue for the Iraqi government to work out," he said.

The Americans are relying on the pesh merga to fight insurgents. Across the north, particularly in the besieged city of Mosul, American commanders have supported Iraqi officials in deploying large units of armed Kurds into the streets.

But the pesh merga also exemplify the pitfalls of private armies - in the mid-1990`s, the militias of the two Kurdish parties turned their guns on each other in a civil war that left at least 3,000 dead.

"What I see happening now in Iraq is the potential drift toward warlordism," said Larry Diamond, a former adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority, which tried but failed to disband militias before handing sovereignty to the Iraqis last June.

"If things go bad," he added, "if the center does not hold, if ethnic and regional divisions are not well and carefully managed by the country`s political leaders, particularly at the center, then the existence of all these militias - both those preceding the handover of power and those that have arisen in recent months - could facilitate the descent of the country into some kind of Lebanon-style civil war."

The presence of the pesh merga "is bound to strengthen the resolve of Kurdish political leaders not to yield on their demands for far-reaching autonomy," said Mr. Diamond, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

The pesh merga are everywhere in Iraqi Kurdistan - along the highways, atop government buildings, riding in convoys. They wear a hodgepodge of uniforms, from traditional baggy outfits to desert camouflage hand-me-downs from the United States Army. There is one thing that appears to be consistent, though: they think of themselves as Kurds first and Iraqis second.

"If I work hard to protect my people and my cities, indirectly I`ll serve Iraq," Col. Mehdi Dosky, 44, the commander of the training camp here, said as he sat behind his desk in a dark green Iraqi Army uniform. Two officers on a couch pored over evaluation forms of the trainees. A map on one wall showed the theoretical pan-Kurdish nation that Kurds in the Middle East hope to carve out one day - a huge territory stretching from the Mediterranean to western Iran and taking in large parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.

"We don`t think it`s a good idea to disband our army," said Colonel Dosky, whose father served as a pesh merga from the militia`s first days. "We want to keep our forces and have them protect our region. The Kurds will protect their area, and other people will use their forces to protect their own areas. There are too many ethnic and religious problems right now in Iraq."

The American dependence on such proxy armies is clearest in Mosul, where Kurds make up nearly a quarter of the population. In November, Sunni Arab rebels overran police stations and forced thousands of officers to quit, and the Arab governor requested the aid of two Kurdish battalions of the Iraqi National Guard.

Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, the head of Task Force Olympia, the American force which until last week was charged with controlling Mosul, used Kurds to guard his headquarters.

But the presence of an ethnic or sect-based militia in a diverse city can quickly inflame tensions.

Such is the case in Kirkuk, the oil-rich city where Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen uneasily live side by side. At the request of Arabs and Turkmen, the American military asked pesh merga to leave the city after Mr. Hussein fell. Last summer, Kurdish officials said, the Americans allowed 300 pesh merga to return temporarily to fight insurgents.

"Always, it`s a sensitive issue," said Suphi Sabir, a senior official in the Iraqi Turkmen Front, the most prominent Turkmen party in Kirkuk. "But we won`t start a fight over it because the result would be very bad."

Warzer Jaff contributed reporting from Mosul, Iraq, for this article.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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February 27, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Tipping Points
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/27/opinion/27friedman.html

The other night on ABC`s "Nightline," the host, Ted Koppel, posed an intriguing question to Malcolm Gladwell, the social scientist who wrote the path-breaking book "The Tipping Point," which is about how changes in behavior or perception can reach a critical mass and then suddenly create a whole new reality. Mr. Koppel asked: Can you know you are in the middle of a tipping point, or is it only something you can see in retrospect?

Mr. Gladwell responded that "the most important thing in trying to analyze whether something is at the verge of a tipping point, is whether it - an event - causes people to reframe an issue. ...A dumb example is the Atkins`s diet, which reframes dieting from thinking about it in terms of avoiding calories and fat to thinking about it as avoiding carbohydrates, which really changes the way people perceive dieting."

Mr. Koppel was raising the question because he wanted to explore whether the Iraqi elections marked a tipping point in history. I was on the same show, and in mulling over this question more I think that what`s so interesting about the Middle East today is that we`re actually witnessing three tipping points at once.

Thanks to eight million Iraqis defying "you vote, you die" terrorist threats, Iraq has been reframed from a story about Iraqi "insurgents" trying to liberate their country from American occupiers and their Iraqi "stooges" to a story of the overwhelming Iraqi majority trying to build a democracy, with U.S. help, against the wishes of Iraqi Baathist-fascists and jihadists.

In Lebanon, the murder of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, which Syria is widely suspected of having had a hand in, has reframed that drama. A month ago, Lebanon was the story of a tiny Christian minority trying to resist the Syrian occupation, which had the tacit support of the pro-Syrian Lebanese government and a cadre of Lebanese politicians who had sold their souls to Damascus. After the Hariri murder, Lebanese just snapped. Lebanon became the story of a broad majority of Lebanese Christians, Muslims and Druse no longer willing to remain silent, but instead telling the Syrians, and their Lebanese puppet president, to "go home." Lebanon went from a country where few dared whisper "When will Syria leave?" to a country where nearly everyone was shouting it, and Syria was having to answer.

The Israel-Palestine drama has gone from how Ariel Sharon will use any means possible to sustain Israel`s hold on Gaza, which he once said was indispensable for the security of the Jewish state, to being about how Mr. Sharon will use any means possible to evacuate Gaza - with its huge Palestinian population - which he now says is necessary for saving Israel as a Jewish state. The issue for the Palestinians is no longer about how they resist the Israeli occupation in Gaza, but whether they build a decent mini-state there - a Dubai on the Mediterranean. Because if they do, it will fundamentally reshape the Israeli debate about whether the Palestinians can be handed most of the West Bank.

While all three of these situations would constitute tipping points by Mr. Gladwell`s definition, I would feel a lot better about all three if I thought that they were irreversible - and couldn`t tip back the wrong way.

For Iraq to be tipped in the right direction, it was necessary to have the election we did, but that was not sufficient. The sufficient thing is that a stable, decent Iraqi government emerge that can also quell the Sunni insurgency. That will depend in part on America`s willingness to stay the course in Iraq. It will depend in part on the Shiite majority`s willingness to share power with the Sunnis - particularly one of the crucial cabinet portfolios of defense, intelligence or interior - and not go on a de-Baathification rampage. And it will depend in part on the Sunni Arab leaders finally supporting the Iraqi majority.

For Lebanon to liberate itself from Syria, the Lebanese opposition groups will have to find a way to translate their aspirations into a withdrawal deal with Damascus. The Syrians will not be pushed out. And for Israelis and Palestinians to really tip toward peace, the moderates on both sides are really going to have to help each other succeed.

Indeed, in the Middle East playground - as Friday`s suicide bomb in Israel reminds us - tipping points are sometimes more like teeter-totters: one moment you`re riding high and the next minute you`re slammed to the ground. Nevertheless, what`s happened in the last four weeks is not just important, it`s remarkable. And if we can keep all three tipping points tipped, it will be incredible.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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February 27, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
W.`s Stiletto Democracy
By MAUREEN DOWD
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/27/opinion/27dowd.html

WASHINGTON

It was remarkable to see President Bush lecture Vladimir Putin on the importance of checks and balances in a democratic society.

Remarkably brazen, given that the only checks Mr. Bush seems to believe in are those written to the "journalists" Armstrong Williams, Maggie Gallagher and Karen Ryan, the fake TV anchor, to help promote his policies. The administration has given a whole new meaning to checkbook journalism, paying a stupendous $97 million to an outside P.R. firm to buy columnists and produce propaganda, including faux video news releases.

The only balance W. likes is the slavering, Pravda-like "Fair and Balanced" coverage Fox News provides. Mr. Bush pledges to spread democracy while his officials strive to create a Potemkin press village at home. This White House seems to prefer softball questions from a self-advertised male escort with a fake name to hardball questions from journalists with real names; it prefers tossing journalists who protect their sources into the gulag to giving up the officials who broke the law by leaking the name of their own C.I.A. agent.

W., who once looked into Mr. Putin`s soul and liked what he saw, did not demand the end of tyranny, as he did in his second Inaugural Address. His upper lip sweating a bit, he did not rise to the level of his hero Ronald Reagan`s "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." Instead, he said that "the common ground is a lot more than those areas where we disagree." The Russians were happy to stress the common ground as well.

An irritated Mr. Putin compared the Russian system to the American Electoral College, perhaps reminding the man preaching to him about democracy that he had come in second in 2000 according to the popular vote, the standard most democracies use.

Certainly the autocratic former K.G.B. agent needs to be upbraided by someone - Tony Blair, maybe? - for eviscerating the meager steps toward democracy that Russia had made before Mr. Putin came to power. But Mr. Bush is on shaky ground if he wants to hold up his administration as a paragon of safeguarding liberty - considering it has trampled civil liberties in the name of the war on terror and outsourced the torture of prisoners to bastions of democracy like Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. (The secretary of state canceled a trip to Egypt this week after Egypt`s arrest of a leading opposition politician.)

"I live in a transparent country," Mr. Bush protested to a Russian reporter who implicitly criticized the Patriot Act by noting that the private lives of American citizens "are now being monitored by the state."

Dick Cheney`s secret meetings with energy lobbyists were certainly a model of transparency. As was the buildup to the Iraq war, when the Bush hawks did their best to cloak the real reasons they wanted to go to war and trumpet the trumped-up reasons.

The Bush administration wields maximum secrecy with minimal opposition. The White House press is timid. The poor, limp Democrats don`t have enough power to convene Congressional hearings on any Republican outrages and are reduced to writing whining letters of protest that are tossed in the Oval Office trash.

When nearly $9 billion allotted for Iraqi reconstruction during Paul Bremer`s tenure went up in smoke, Democratic lawmakers vainly pleaded with Republicans to open a Congressional investigation.

Even the near absence of checks and balances is not enough for W. Not content with controlling the White House, Congress, the Supreme Court and a good chunk of the Fourth Estate, he goes to even more ludicrous lengths to avoid being challenged.

The White House wants its Republican allies in the Senate to stamp out the filibuster, one of the few weapons the handcuffed Democrats have left. They want to invoke the so-called nuclear option and get rid of the 150-year-old tradition in order to ram through more right-wing judges.

Mr. Bush and Condi Rice strut in their speeches - the secretary of state also strutted in Wiesbaden in her foxy "Matrix"-dominatrix black leather stiletto boots - but they shy away from taking questions from the public unless they get to vet the questions and audiences in advance.

Administration officials went so far as to cancel a town hall meeting during Mr. Bush`s visit to Germany last week after deciding an unscripted setting would be too risky, opting for a round-table talk in Mainz with preselected Germans and Americans.

The president loves democracy - as long as democracy means he`s always right.

E-mail:

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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

http://www.juancole.com/
Sunday, February 27, 2005

Pipeline Sabotage, Baghdad Bombing

Ten people were killed and 11 kidnapped in Iraq on Saturday. The current Marine offensive against guerrillas in Ramadi killed 3 and wounded 15. Al-Hayat reports this as a major US campaign in Anbar province.

Guerrillas blew up a northern pipeline on Saturday. Other guerrillas exploded a bomb in Baghdad, while in Mosul the body of a kidnapped female television presenter showed up.

James Glanz of the NYT discusses separatist or autonomist inclinations in the southern Basra province of Iraq.

Dan Murphy of the Christian Science Monitor reports on the quiet disappearance of most neighborhood "governing councils" in Iraq, the establishment of which had been touted as a Bush administration achievement in Iraq early on. The members no longe meet and many are in hiding, for fear of assassination.

Ash-Sharq al-Awsat conducted an interview with Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the victorious United Iraqi Alliance list. It seems to me really odd that no major Western media has conducted an interview with him. He doesn`t probably speak English, but surely there are translators. Putin doesn`t speak English at news conferences either.

Al-Hakim, who heads the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, emphasized that he will stand vigorously against any state that attempts to interfere in internal Iraqi affairs. Sensitive to accusations that he might be a cat`s paw of Iran, he pointed out that the al-Hakims opposed the Baath party for 10 years before the Iranian Revolution of 1979.

He said no Iraqi wanted to see US troops in Iraq, and that when he consulted with the UN Security Council about a withdrawal of US troops, the UNSC told him that was a bilateral issue between the US and Iraq.

Colin Powell was pushed out as secretary of state because he sought to rein in Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, according to the Daily Telegraph. In another part of the interview, Powell criticized Rumsfeld for sending so few troops into Iraq:


` What went wrong for Iraq was not the military campaign, which was "brilliantly fought", but the transition to "nation-building" that followed. In Powell`s view, there were "enough troops for war but not for peace, for establishing order. My own preference would have been for more forces after the conflict."

Why did you make the mistake, I ask, of putting so much weight on weapons of mass destruction? Originally, the United States had happily advocated regime change. When it began to contemplate war, was it forced to abandon this line on legal and diplomatic advice, and use WMD as the casus belli?

Not really, says Powell, because the two were linked. President Clinton and Congress had a policy of regime change, but when Clinton`s Operation Desert Fox bombed Iraq for four days in December 1998, it was because of WMD. "It was intelligence over those years, including your own secret intelligence service [MI6], which said Saddam had WMD."

So, in Resolution 1441 at the United Nations, "we gave Saddam an entry-level test: give us a declaration that answers all the outstanding questions. He failed the test of the resolution. It became a question that he was hiding something, that he was going to drag this out until the international community lost interest. "There`s no doubt in our mind that it would have lost interest. After his false declaration in response to 1441, it seemed likely he could return to his old ways. That was a gamble that the President and Tony Blair were not prepared to take." Hence the attempt at the second resolution and Powell`s famous presentation of the WMD evidence to the Security Council.

And now Colin Powell becomes more direct: "I`m very sore. I`m the one who made the television moment. I was mightily disappointed when the sourcing of it all became very suspect and everything started to fall apart. "The problem was stockpiles. None have been found. I don`t think any will be found. There may not have been any at the time. It was the best judgment of the intelligence community, not something I made up. Clinton had been told the same thing."

Matter-of-factly, he adds: "I will forever be known as the one who made the case."

With five days` notice from the President, Powell worked it up: "Every single word in that presentation was screened and approved by the intelligence community." He cites the case of the aluminium tubes, which he presented to the world as being, probably, for centrifuges intended for nuclear weapons: "We sat down with a roomful, of analysts. The Director of Central Intelligence [George Tenet] -- he`s essentially the referee on these occasions -- sits down and says: `We have concluded that they`re not rocket bodies: it`s our judgment that these are for centrifuges`. "So that`s what I said, though I mentioned signs of differences of opinion. To this day, the CIA has not said that they aren`t for centrifuges."

Another example was the mobile laboratories, supposedly intended for biological weapons. "I did not qualify that because they were very sure of their four sources, but the sources fell like straw men in seven months, including the famous German source [codenamed Curveball]. I don`t think the CIA has disposed definitively of that either."

How on earth did it come about that intelligence could be so wrong? Were they guilty of telling President Bush what he wanted to hear? "I can`t say that. What I can say is that there was a little too much inferential judgment. Too much resting on assumptions and worst-case scenarios. "With intelligence, sometimes you are talking to people who are perhaps selling you lies."

It seems that Colin Powell, the victim of weak intelligence, was also the victim of other people`s politics. He is conscious that the whole business of the aborted second UN resolution, intended to authorise attack, invites derision. "What I`m going to say will sound like spin, but think it through. We didn`t think there was a need for a second resolution, and we were quite sure of very serious problems with the French, but the UK needed and very badly wanted a second resolution. "It became clear that we were not going to get it, so we did not take it to a vote. However, a week or two later, Tony Blair was able to get the support he needed in Parliament. So my spin is that the second resolution served its purpose. The UK could say: we`ve tried but now we have to go forward." `

posted by Juan @ [url2/27/2005 06:11:00 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/02/pipeline-sabotage-baghdad-bombing-ten.html[/url]

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The Crawford Deal: did Blair sign up for war at Bush`s Texas ranch in April 2002?
We know that arguments raged about the legality of the war right up to a crucial cabinet meeting on 17 March 2003, two days before the attack began. But now new evidence pieced together by the `IoS` strongly backs the suspicion that the PM had already made the decision to strike a year earlier. By Raymond Whitaker
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=61…

27 February 2005

It was one of the most tense cabinet meetings Downing Street had seen in living memory. "We were on the brink of war," recalled Clare Short, who was there. The consequences would be dramatic, not only for those round the table, but for millions of Iraqis and hundreds of thousands of British and American troops.

The date was 17 March 2003, only two days before the war to oust Saddam Hussein was launched. "The atmosphere was very fraught by then," Ms Short, then International Development Secretary, said last week. Experts in international law were saying the impending conflict was illegal, her officials were concerned, and the military was demanding a clear statement of the legal position.

The issue of the war`s legality has erupted back into the public arena in the past week with the publication of a book, Lawless World, by Philippe Sands QC, an international lawyer in Cherie Blair`s Matrix Chambers. According to his account, the Attorney General, Lord Gold- smith, had delivered a 13-page opinion on 7 March 2003 which said that to be sure of legal authority for the war, a UN Security Council resolution specifically backing force was needed. Later, at a meeting at Downing Street, he said his views had become "clearer", and it was that clarification that was presented to Ms Short and her colleagues.

How that change came about has been the subject of intense speculation, reviving the pressure on the Government to publish the full text of the Attorney General`s advice. But the lingering questions over the war do not end there. Mr Sands and others also raise doubts about another great mystery surrounding the conflict: when did Tony Blair first sign up to President George Bush`s crusade to oust Saddam Hussein?

Last September, highly embarrassing leaked documents showed that as early as March 2002, the Prime Minister`s foreign policy adviser, Sir David Manning, was assuring Condoleezza Rice of Mr Blair`s unbudgeable support for "regime change". Days later, Sir Christopher Meyer, then British ambassador to the US, sent a dispatch to Downing Street detailing how he repeated the commitment to Paul Wolfowitz, the US Deputy Defence Secretary. The ambassador added that Mr Blair would need a "cover" for any military action. "I then went through the need to wrongfoot Saddam on the inspectors and the UN Security Council resolutions."

Throughout this period, and into 2003, Mr Blair was insisting in public that war was not inevitable. In May 2002 he said Iraq would be "in a far better position" without Saddam, but added: "Does that mean that military action is imminent or about to happen? No. We`ve never said that." Introducing the notorious WMD dossier in the Commons on 24 September that year, he said: "Our case is simply this: not that we take military action come what may, but that the case for ensuring Iraqi disarmament, as the UN itself has stipulated, is overwhelming."

In the past week, however, it has not only emerged that Special Branch officers questioned opposition parties as part of an investigation into the leaks, but The Independent on Sunday has discovered further information indicating that when Mr Blair met Mr Bush at his Texas ranch on 7 and 8 April 2002, he committed Britain to an assault on Iraq. The clue, contained in an obscure row over the Government`s refusal to answer an apparently straightforward parliamentary question, shows that both at the beginning and the end of the process which culminated in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the issue of legality was very much in the air.

As the Cabinet gathered on the eve of war, it was well known around Whitehall that the Foreign Office`s legal advisers saw no authority for the conflict without a fresh UN resolution, and that Lord Goldsmith had apparently supported their view in his written opinion 10 days earlier. The scene should have been set for a ferocious debate, but that was not what happened, according to Ms Short.

Lord Goldsmith, who is not a cabinet member, came in and sat in the place previously occupied by Robin Cook, who had just resigned. If the Attorney General was aware of the symbolism, he gave no sign of it. A two-page document was circulated and Lord Goldsmith started to read it aloud, but was told there was no need.

Until that day, the absence of any public statement had allowed doubts about the legality of the war to multiply, but now Lord Goldsmith was saying there was no problem. "I said this was odd, coming so late," Ms Short recalled last week. "Everyone said, `Oh Clare, be quiet.` No one would allow any discussion ... I was stunned and surprised, because of all the other information I had received."

But Ms Short went along with her colleagues and voted for war. "The Attorney General is the legal authority for Britain, for civil servants, the military and ministers," she said. "But now it looks to me that [the revised legal opinion] was stitched together, it wasn`t properly done. Not only are there questions over how we went to war, but about the reliability of the Attorney General in the British constitution. Our constitutional arrangements are breaking down."

Reacting to last week`s controversy, Lord Goldsmith has denied being "leaned on" by the Government to change his view, or that the two people he met at Downing Street, Baroness Morgan and Lord Falconer, were involved "in any way" with the document circulated to the Cabinet on 17 March, and issued the same day as a written parliamentary answer. Following reports that he told last year`s Butler inquiry that Lady Morgan and Lord Falconer had set out his view, Lord Goldsmith asked for the record to be corrected to "I set out my view".

"As I have always made clear, I set out in the [parliamentary] answer my own genuinely held, independent view that military action was lawful under the existing Security Council resolutions," he said on Friday night. "The answer did not purport to be a summary of my confidential legal advice to Government."

Lord Goldsmith did not mention the insistent demands that his "confidential legal advice" should be published, to clear up the many questions about it. But the speed of his reaction to news reports, coupled with the near-unprecedented use of the Special Branch to question politicians and their aides, indicates an atmosphere close to panic in government circles that the whole issue of Iraq could be reopened just as an election campaign is about to begin.

That consideration seems to apply to the refusal to answer a simple question: when did it first seek legal advice on whether an invasion of Iraq would be lawful? The Liberal Democrats, who asked the question, stressed that they did not want to know what the advice was, simply the date it was requested, but the Foreign Office has rejected a ruling by the Parliamentary Ombudsman that it has no good reason to withhold the information.

Sir Michael Jay, permanent secretary at the Foreign Office, argued that the date on its own would be "misleading". It was already in the public domain that advice was first sought in the spring of 2002; "it was not his view that the public interest required the release of anything more specific beyond that", in the words of the Ombudsman, Ann Abraham.

To put the date in context, the FO said, it would have to release a confidential internal minute and a press release. Ms Abraham said there was no need to disclose the minute, but stated: "I find it difficult to understand what harm might be caused by the department, in releasing the date of this minute, saying that it had been written because statements made in a particular press release ... suggested to them that it might be sensible to obtain legal advice in respect of those statements."

Most FO press releases are anodyne announcements of am- bassadorial appointments and guests received by the Foreign Secretary. From March to May 2002, there are only two that stand out, both on 9 April, the day after Mr Blair left Mr Bush`s ranch in Crawford, Texas. Both concern armed incursions by Israeli forces into the Palestinian areas. In one, the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, calls on Israel to abide by Security Council resolutions, saying: "Like every other country, Israel has a right to security, but the Israeli government must respect inter- national law ..." Britain`s then ambassador to the UN, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, makes the same point even more forcefully, saying: "I think everybody understands that the political and moral authority of the United Nations is not to be cast aside lightly or to be trodden on lightly."

The potential hostage to fortune in those words is emphasised in another press statement the same day by Ben Bradshaw, then a Foreign Office minister, who condemns Saddam for exploiting the Israeli "invasion" of Palestinian areas while ignoring the suffering of his own people.

Did someone in the Foreign Office realise that in the light of these statements, it might be wise to seek legal advice if Britain proposed an invasion of Iraq? According to Philippe Sands, interdepartmental advice had already been circulated the month before, "stating that regime change of itself had no basis in international law".

On the eve of Mr Blair`s visit to Texas, Downing Street dismissed suggestions that he was going for a "council of war". It might be embarrassing rather than misleading to admit that, days later, the Government was seeking to establish the legal justification for war - especially since, according to Robin Cook, Mr Blair told the Cabinet on his return from Crawford that "the time to debate the legal basis for our action should be when we take that action".

In the view of Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, the Government`s refusal to give the date it sought legal advice "can be seen as a refusal to admit that the commitment to George Bush was made very much earlier than the Prime Minister has so far been willing to say". But on this point, as on so much else to do with the war in Iraq, the Government remains mute.


27 February 2005 18:33


©2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.

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FOREIGN POLICY
Exporting Democracy Is Not for the Naive
By Charles Edel
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/suncommentary/la-op…

Charles Edel is a research associate for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.

February 27, 2005

Tired of being lectured by the United States, Russian Defense Minister Sergei B. Ivanov recently complained that "democracy is not a potato that you can transplant from one kitchen garden to another."

President Bush wasn`t deterred. In an interview before his trip to Europe, he cited his favorite political philosopher, Natan Sharansky, who asserts that "the security of … people in the United States of America depends on the level of freedom of people in the other countries because democracies are peaceful."

The debate over whether the U.S. should aggressively promote democracy in other countries is not new in American history. In the 1820s, a fierce dispute arose over whether, and how vigorously, the U.S. should support democratic revolts against tyrannical regimes in Greece and Latin America.

Fighting broke out between the Greeks and the Ottoman Turks in the spring of 1821. By the end of the year, the Greeks had issued a declaration of independence and established a republican government. Thrilled by the democratic rhetoric of the Greek rebels and horrified by Turkish atrocities, Americans embraced the Greeks` cause. There were pro-Greek rallies in New York and other states. Editorial writers from Washington to the Ohio Valley supported the Greek rebels, and politicians rose on Capitol Hill to give grandiloquent speeches praising the march of liberty and calling for aid to and formal recognition of the new Greek government.

Despite widespread popular support, however, a congressional resolution backing the Greek democrats was defeated. Its critics, led by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, warned that U.S. intervention in European affairs would anoint the United States head of a global crusade against tyranny. In a July 4 address to the House of Representatives, Adams declared that "wherever the standard of freedom or independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy…. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own."

At Adams` urging, the Monroe administration expressed ardent hope for the success of Greece`s republican government — and nothing more.

A political crisis similar to Greece`s was unfolding in Latin America. Inspired by the U.S. and French revolutions, Simon Bolivar and others led revolts against Spain as early as 1810 and asked the U.S. to recognize the new republics. The U.S. ignored the requests for years because it didn`t want to offend Spain while it negotiated for large tracts of Spanish land and navigation rights.

But finally, after the U.S. acquired Florida, commercial relations began with the fledgling Latin American republics, and Russia and France threatened to crush the new governments, Washington recognized their independence.

More than merely offering a Jeffersonian homage to "another example of man rising in his might and bursting the chains of his oppressor," recognizing the Latin American republics extended U.S. hegemony into the region and undercut European influence. The White House secured markets for U.S. exports before its rivals recognized the new nations.

Why only rhetoric in the case of Greek democracy and formal recognition in the case of Latin America`s new republics? Critics accused Adams and the Monroe administration of pursuing crass commercial interests beneath a mantle of democratic self-righteousness. But there were differences in the two situations.

U.S. vital interests — keeping European powers out of the Western Hemisphere and creating markets for U.S. exports — and democratic values intersected in Latin America. They did not in Greece. And that intersection of U.S. values and U.S. interests enabled Washington to build the necessary domestic support to intervene abroad.

Bush seems to be basing his policies on the same sound confluence. "America`s vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one," he declared in his second inaugural address. But that doesn`t mean, as he has repeatedly stressed, that the U.S. will act the same wherever democracy springs up. The administration has rightly championed democratic elections in Iraq and Ukraine. It also rightly rejects a one-size-fits-all approach to democratization, especially where the situation is more complex, as in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

But in the long run, a foreign policy that links vital national interests with national values stands a better chance of garnering domestic support. Ivanov may not understand Bush`s newfound insistence on spreading democracy abroad, but Adams surely would.



Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

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Sunday Herald - 27 February 2005
Top former CIA agent condemns new terror war
Robert Baer explains to Foreign Editor David Pratt why the ‘clumsy, knee-jerk approach’ to al-Qaeda is counter-productive
http://www.sundayherald.com/48036

A running joke in Washington late last year held that Langley, the CIA’s home in Virginia, was changing its name to Fallujah after the restive Iraqi town then held by insurgents. Like Fallujah, Langley – according to some White House wags – was full of rebels that needed to be cleared out. This would inevitably lead to lots of casualties along the way.

But putting the jokes and bravado aside, many at the CIA’s longtime base already knew that the winds of change were blowing their way, and were well aware of the reason why. George W Bush, his eyes by then firmly fixed on a second term, was consolidating his position. It was time to rein in those agencies and their operatives that were not always singing from the same political hymn sheet as the President and those closest to him.

In the months that followed, a new CIA chief, Porter Goss, would be appointed – as would a new director of national intelligence: John Negroponte. And there would be other changes too, in tactics and operations.

All of this has since set alarm bells ringing among human rights activists and security analysts who claim “hardmen” are back at the CIA helm with a whole suitcase full of revamped dirty tricks ranging from political assassinations and death squads to the shuttling of detainees to interrogation and torture facilities worldwide. Few people know more about how the CIA operates on the ground than former agent Robert Baer, one of the agency’s top field operatives of the past quarter-century.

An Arabic speaker, Baer spent most of his career running agents in the souks and back alleys of the Middle East, before becoming disillusioned with what he saw as interference by Washington politicians in the CIA’s efforts to root out terrorists.

He believes that at precisely the time when terrorist threats were escalating globally, the agency that should have been monitoring them was being “scrubbed clean” instead.

I put it to him that since 9/11, the cost of being complacent has been recognised and that the CIA is now getting its hands dirty again.

“Yes,” says Baer, “but in the wrong direction.

“It is totally reactionary,” he insists. “It’s like they woke up on 9/11 and just started shooting at anybody and anything.”

To give just one example, he says that what is referred to as “extraordinary renditions” – the controversial practice of secretly spiriting suspects to other countries without due process – is not only wrong, but often counterproductive for gathering intelligence.

“They are picking up people really with nothing against them, hoping to catch someone because they have no information about these [terrorist] networks.”

According to Baer, what happened after 9/11 was a kind of knee-jerk reaction by the CIA, taking in thousands of contractors and dispatching everybody they could, at the expense of real expertise and experienced operatives.

This desperation, he says, led to a “do anything approach” and “that’s why we ended up with Guantanamo and arresting a lot of people that were innocent.”

It was on September 15, just a few days after the attacks on New York and Washington, that George Tenet – then director of the CIA – produced at top secret document known as the Worldwide Attack Matrix for ratification by President Bush.

It was, in effect, a licence to kill. Among the actions already under way or being recommended in the document were those ranging from “routine propaganda to lethal covert action in preparation for military attacks.” Implemented as outlined, the Matrix, “would give the CIA the broadest and most lethal authority in its history.”

Since then the agency has hacked into foreign banks, used secret prisons overseas and spent millions bankrolling “friendly” Muslim intelligence services. They have assassinated al-Qaeda leaders, spirited prisoners to nations with brutal human rights records and amassed countless files.

Some might say this is what secret services do anyway, but there are concerns about how far the CIA is prepared to go.

“Everything I’ve heard anecdotally about the primary suspects connected to September 11 says they are being truly tortured. They are not [merely] being made to feel uncomfortable,” says Baer.

What did he know about the “Worldwide Attack Matrix,” and was it the blueprint for current CIA activities?

“I think it was the blueprint right after 9/11. I don’t know specifics about it, but I know what matrices are. You collect what you believe to be facts and identify people and get rid of them. Either by arresting them, or getting local government to arrest them, or kidnapping them and putting them in the extraordinary rendition system.”

The Matrix document as drafted and presented to Bush specified targets in 80 countries around the world. The CIA even prepared a Memorandum Of Notification, which would allow the agency to have virtual carte blanche to conduct political assasinations abroad.

Venezuela`s president, Hugo Chavez recently accused the CIA of having a hand in the military coup that briefly deposed him in 2002, and says the agency were hatching just such an assassination plot against him as outlined in the Matrix.

Baer is quick to point out, however, that while such strategies are drawn up on paper, they only work if there is the political will to see them through. So the question is, does that political will exist, and who in turn is calling the shots now in the CIA’s war on terror?

“I think it’s the Attorney General and the President who are basically taking the attitude of murder in the cathedral, and ‘who will rid me of these guys, these terrorists?’,” says Baer, noting that people further down the line are quick to interpret the orders as they see fit.

Certainly that political will is around today, insists Baer, “more so than in the 80s.”

Having received the CIA’s intelligence medal in 1997 and served in Beirut and Iraq at their worst, he knows all about what CIA orders often involve.

While Baer sees the agency’s move towards getting tough as necessary, he says it is being done with scarcely believable clumsiness. Recruits able to get inside terrorist groups are not being admitted to the CIA in any numbers, those with language and specialist skills or backgrounds.

“To have got into Baghdad before the war you would have had to put people next to Saddam’s sons – dirty oil traders, dirty arms traders, people that got their hands dirty.

“It’s like joining a criminal organisation. You have to prove yourself; you have to do that to get inside, if that’s you goal.”

He also sees it as an uncomfortable necessity, “to do favours for such groups. And doing favours for them means getting exceptions under US law like trading oil with Saddam.”

The danger, he says, is that the intelligence services might succumb to what he calls “pagan ethics”.

Are the likes of new CIA director Porter Goss and National intelligence director John Negroponte the sort of men to succumb to “pagan ethics”? And what of their so called “clearing out” of the CIA house recently?

“Oh come on, the guy who oversaw collection on Iraq got it completely wrong and was promoted, what kind of house-cleaning is that?

“You don’t reappoint the captain of the Titanic after he loses the boat,” Baer complains.

If he could, Baer would do one thing immediately to improve the CIA’s efficiency on the ground: change the clearance system to get recruits who can go places operatives can’t at the moment.

“What you need is some Lawrence of Arabia kind of guy. He may not get you the keys to the kingdom, but at least he’s familiar with the players.”


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Latest Fatality: Feb 26, 2005

Military Fatalities: Total: 1668 , US: 1495 , Feb.05: 57
1500 tote GI! 2 Jahre nach dem Überfall. Die lezten 500 Tote gab es innerhalb eines knappen halben Jahr. Die Opferzahl ist in den Monaten immer mehr gstiegen.
Die ersten 500 toten US-Soldaten gab es in ca. 10 Monaten.(11/03). Die 2ten 500 in ca 8 Monaten.

Meldungen aus dem Irak:
http://icasualties.org/oif/

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Da hat die USA jahrelang zugesehen wie ein pakistanischer Wissenschaftler mit seinen Wissen über die Atombombe gehandelt hat. Erst als die Gefahr bestand, dass er sein Wissen auch den Mullahs zum Bau der Bombe zur Verfügung stellen würde, hat man eingegriffen. Und das alles nur um einen Verbündeten, Pakistan, nicht zu verärgern.

THE WORLD
A High-Risk Nuclear Stakeout
The U.S. took too long to act, some experts say, letting a Pakistani scientist sell illicit technology well after it knew of his operation.
By Douglas Frantz
Times Staff Writer
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-khan27fe…


February 27, 2005

WASHINGTON — Nuclear warhead plans that Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan sold to Libya were more complete and detailed than previously disclosed, raising new concerns about the cost of Washington`s watch-and-wait policy before Khan and his global black market were shut down last year.

Two Western nuclear weapons specialists who have examined the top-secret designs say the hundreds of pages of engineering drawings and handwritten notes provide an excellent starting point for anyone trying to develop an effective atomic warhead.

"This involved the spread of very sensitive nuclear knowledge, and it is the most serious form of proliferation," one of the specialists said. Both described the designs on condition that their names be withheld because the plans are classified.

The sale of the plans is particularly troubling to some investigators because the transaction occurred at least 18 months after U.S. and British intelligence agencies concluded that Khan was running an international nuclear smuggling ring and identified Libya as a suspected customer, according to U.S. officials and a British government assessment.

Interviews with current and former government officials and intelligence agents and outside experts in Washington, Europe and the Middle East reveal a lengthy pattern of watching and waiting when it came to Khan and his illicit network.

The trail dated back more than 20 years as Khan went from a secretive procurer of technology for Pakistan`s atomic weapons program, which he headed, to history`s biggest independent seller of nuclear weapons equipment and expertise.

For most of those years, Khan`s primary customers were Iran and North Korea. In 2002, President Bush said the countries were part of an "axis of evil," in part because of nuclear programs nourished by Khan and his network.

Despite knowing at least the broad outlines of Khan`s activities, American intelligence agencies regularly objected to shutting down his operations. And policymakers in Washington repeatedly prioritized other strategic goals over stopping him, according to current and former officials.

Some officials said that even as the picture of the threat posed by Khan`s operation got clearer and bigger in 2000 and 2001, the intelligence was too limited to act on.

Other officials said the CIA and the National Security Agency, which eavesdropped on Khan`s communications, were so addicted to gathering information and so worried about compromising their electronic sources that they rebuffed efforts to roll up the operation for years.

"We could have stopped the Khan network, as we knew it, at any time," said Robert J. Einhorn, a top counter-proliferation official at the State Department from 1991 to August 2001. "The debate was, do you stop it now or do you watch it and understand it better so that you are in a stronger position to pull it up by the roots later? The case for waiting prevailed."

Current and former Bush administration officials say the patience paid off. They say that in late 2003, combined U.S. and British intelligence on Khan finally yielded enough information to persuade Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi to relinquish his nuclear technology and turn over conclusive evidence used to shut down the Pakistani scientist, who by then had been removed as head of his nation`s primary nuclear laboratory.

"A.Q. Khan is a textbook case of government doing things right," John S. Wolf, then assistant secretary of State for nonproliferation, said when Kadafi gave up his nuclear equipment.

Others say that the price of patience was too high, emphasizing that for years Khan fed the nuclear ambitions of countries that the U.S. says have ties to terrorism and pose major foreign policy problems.

"I don`t see what was gained by waiting," said George Perkovich, a nonproliferation expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "Iran got centrifuge equipment and knowledge at the very least, and possibly a weapons design. We don`t even know what North Korea got."

An American diplomat in Europe was more blunt, saying, "It`s absolutely shocking that Khan spread nuclear knowledge while he was being watched."

As a global inquiry into Khan`s network enters its second year, investigators from several countries and the United Nations` International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna are trying to answer two vital questions — how much damage did Khan do and how did he stay in business for so long?

The challenge has been made tougher by Pakistan`s refusal to allow outside investigators to question Khan, who is under house arrest in Islamabad, and because his network began systematically shredding papers and deleting e-mails in the summer of 2002, after realizing it was under surveillance.

Investigators said the previously undisclosed destruction of records is making it harder to discover whether the network sold its deadly wares, including the warhead plans, to as yet unidentified countries or even extremist organizations. It also increases the chances that remnants of the ring will re-emerge. "Regrettably, they had a long time to destroy evidence," said a senior investigator who had interviewed members of the network. "They knew they were being watched."

A detailed chronology of the long history of Khan and the spies who watched him, based on extensive interviews and hundreds of pages of public and confidential records, provides an unusual look at the inherent tension between gathering intelligence and taking action, which allowed the scientist and his network of engineers and middlemen to operate unchecked.

*

Path to Deception

Abdul Qadeer Khan, believed to have been born in India in 1935, moved with his family to Pakistan in 1952 in the aftermath of ethnic violence in India. He was a bright student whose studies took him to Europe, where he eventually received a doctorate in metallurgy.

In May 1972, Khan started work for an engineering firm in Amsterdam that was a major subcontractor for Urenco, a British-Dutch-German consortium founded two years earlier to develop advanced centrifuges to enrich uranium for civilian power plants.

Though he was supposed to work only with material labeled confidential, over the next 3 1/2 years Khan got access to top-secret dossiers on every aspect of the enrichment process, according to a lengthy report prepared last year by Dutch anti-nuclear activists.

When he returned to Pakistan in December 1975 with his Dutch wife, Hendrina, and their two daughters, ostensibly for a holiday, he carried with him designs he had copied while working in the Netherlands, intelligence and law enforcement authorities said.

His timing was excellent. Pakistan had fought wars in 1965 and 1971 with neighboring India and the two countries were locked in a race to develop nuclear weapons.

Khan mailed his resignation letter to Amsterdam and quickly assumed a primary role in the Pakistani government`s nuclear program, which would succeed in testing its first bombs in 1998 partly because of Khan`s skills.

Initially, he served under the nation`s atomic energy commission, but he bristled at the constraints and won the right to work without official oversight.

"He asked for and received autonomy and an unlimited budget," said Feroz Khan, a retired Pakistani brigadier general and nuclear expert who is not related to A.Q. Khan. "There was no accountability."

Enriching natural uranium to weapons grade is a complicated process requiring huge arrays of slim cylinders called centrifuges and sophisticated machinery to regulate them as they spin at twice the speed of sound.

Pakistan did not have the material to manufacture the delicately balanced centrifuges or much of the other equipment required, so Khan used his outsize budget to establish a clandestine procurement network.

The first purchases were from companies associated with Urenco and were orchestrated through Pakistani embassies in Europe in 1976, creating what became known as the Pakistani pipeline.

Alarm bells rang in 1978 after a British company sold Pakistan high-frequency electronic devices used in the enrichment process. The ensuing investigations pointed at Khan, according to media reports at the time.

President Jimmy Carter cut off U.S. assistance to Pakistan in April 1979 when it was discovered that Khan had stolen plans from Urenco and was using them in Pakistan`s nuclear effort.

But the U.S. sanctions were short-lived. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan later that year pushed counter-proliferation concerns to the back burner and lowered the heat on Khan and Pakistan for the next decade. During that period, Islamabad was the principal conduit for huge amounts of U.S. aid to anti-Soviet fighters in neighboring Afghanistan.

The Dutch were unable to prove that Khan stole the designs, but in 1983 he was convicted in absentia of writing two letters seeking classified nuclear information. The conviction was overturned because he never received a proper summons.

A former CIA agent who worked in the region said the Reagan administration had "incontrovertible" knowledge of Pakistan`s progress toward the bomb and Khan`s central role in procuring material, but chose not to act.

The pattern and priorities had been established. Throughout the 1980s, the Reagan and Bush administrations sent $600 million a year in military and economic assistance to Pakistan for its help on Afghanistan, according to a report last month by the Congressional Research Service.

Not until the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan did the first President Bush reimpose sanctions on Pakistan, in 1990, for developing atomic weapons.

But U.S. intelligence had not lost complete sight of Khan. The CIA was told in 1989 that the Pakistani scientist was providing centrifuge designs and parts to Iran, said two former U.S. officials who read the reports.

Not for the first time, however, U.S. intelligence officials and policymakers underestimated Khan`s talent for spreading nuclear know-how.

"We knew he traveled a lot, but we thought it was probably related to imports rather than exports," said Einhorn, who read about the Iran link when he joined the State Department nonproliferation bureau in 1991. "We thought the Iran connection had fallen off during the 1990s and that Iran was mainly looking to Russia rather than Pakistan for its nuclear supplies."

In fact, Khan started providing material to Iran in 1987 and continued as its primary nuclear supplier for at least a decade, recent reports by the International Atomic Energy Agency state. As demand for his wares grew, he turned for help to many of the companies and engineers supplying Pakistan.

*

Tapping Old Contacts

The network was a sort of old boys club from Urenco. It included Dutch, German and Swiss members, former Urenco subcontractors who had gotten rich helping Khan turn Pakistan into a nuclear power.

But rivalries developed within the group as orders from Iran slowed in the mid-1990s, and Khan, even as he ran Pakistan`s enrichment facilities, tried to expand his illicit sales to other countries, investigators said.

"Some guys got along and some guys didn`t," said an investigator who spoke on condition of anonymity. "A.Q. dealt with them individually. There were some group meetings, but there was never a meeting of all the major players at once."

Khan developed a particularly close friendship with B.S.A. Tahir, a Sri Lankan businessman who eventually turned his computer business in Dubai into the network`s operational base. The two men traveled together frequently and twice made the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

Khan visited at least a dozen countries in the Middle East and Africa in search of new customers for the network, but nuclear weapons proved a harder sell than he had imagined, investigators said.

In 1997, he got a cold reception when he told an audience of scientists and military officers in Damascus that Syria should acquire its own nuclear weapons to counter Israel`s arsenal, said a former Syrian official who attended the talk.

But that same year he appeared to strike it rich. At a series of meetings in Istanbul, Turkey, and Casablanca, Morocco, he made a deal to sell Libya a complete bomb-making factory for approximately $100 million.

This appears to have been the network`s biggest transaction, and it led Khan to take a risk and expand beyond the original participants and his own safe base in Pakistan.

The Libya deal was taking shape just as Khan reaped enormous benefits at home. On May 28, 1998, the desert of southwestern Pakistan rumbled deeply as five nuclear weapons were detonated. It was Pakistan`s first nuclear test and it answered India`s detonation of three bombs two weeks earlier.

Already a powerful figure, Khan basked in nationwide adulation as he was dubbed the father of the Islamic bomb, a title that many experts say exaggerated his role. Still, he boasted in an interview with a Pakistani magazine about evading efforts to stop him and exploiting Western greed.

"Many suppliers approached us with the details of the machinery and with the figures and numbers of instruments and materials," he said. "They begged us to purchase their goods."

Even with his role in making nuclear weapons now in the open, Khan continued to quietly make deals with other nations. In late 1998, U.S. intelligence picked up evidence that he was trading enrichment technology to North Korea in return for missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads into India, a former senior U.S. official who read the reports said.

The suspicions were added to a growing, highly classified chronology of Khan`s actions kept at the State Department, said another former senior official.

In January 1999, Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott raised the North Korean deal at a lunch in Islamabad with then-Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. He asked Sharif to stop the illicit trade in nuclear technology and end the deals with Pyongyang, Talbott wrote in his 2004 book "Engaging India." A second U.S. official who attended the meeting corroborated the account.

Though Talbott did not mention Khan by name, the second official said it was clear that Talbott was talking about Khan when he asked for a halt to the nuclear proliferation and the deals with North Korea, which intelligence data showed were being handled directly by Khan through his research laboratory in Pakistan.

"It is true that Pakistan has important defense cooperation with North Korea, but it is for conventional military equipment," Sharif replied, according to the second official. "Nothing nuclear is taking place."

Former Pakistani officials said the Americans never provided hard information that could have led to action against Khan, though critics argue that the scientist could not have conducted his business without at least a wink and a nod from Pakistan`s military establishment.

"They were very vague warnings and there was no real evidence or we would have acted," Feroz Khan, the former Pakistani brigadier general who is a visiting professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., said in a telephone interview.

The situation for Abdul Qadeer Khan began to deteriorate after Sharif was ousted in a coup in October 1999 by Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the head of the armed forces.

Aides to Musharraf said he tried almost immediately to assert control over the country`s nuclear establishment, including imposing the first audit requirements on Khan Research Laboratory, the government complex renamed after him that was his base of operations.

Khan resisted and Musharraf ultimately forced him out as head of the lab, though he lavished praise on Khan at his retirement banquet, saying his team had "sweated, day and night, against all odds and obstacles, against international sanctions and sting operations, to create, literally out of nothing, with their bare hands, the pride of Pakistan`s nuclear capability."

The unprecedented restrictions at home coincided with increasing demand for centrifuges and other goods for Libya`s bomb-making factory. Khan responded by finding new sources of equipment in South Africa and Malaysia.

Pakistan was known in U.S. intelligence circles as a "hard target," which meant penetrating Khan`s inner circle and his facilities there was extremely difficult. Pakistani authorities were aware of U.S. interest in their nuclear facilities and took steps to protect them and their scientists.

The shift to other locations for production created a new vulnerability that was quickly exploited by the U.S., most likely by eavesdropping on phone calls and monitoring e-mail.

"We were inside his residence, inside his facilities, inside his rooms," said George J. Tenet, the former director of the CIA, describing that period to an audience last year.

A former U.S. intelligence officer said the CIA and National Security Agency were focused on the Khan network and collecting important pieces of the puzzle, but both agencies argued for caution out of a strong desire to protect sources and methods.

"In the NSA`s case, we could be talking about the potential compromise of a collection system costing millions of dollars or a specific, crucial source that would be evident if the information were acted on," the former officer said.

The best public source of information for what intelligence agencies were learning at the time is a report issued in July by a British government commission. Two U.S. officials described the report as an accurate reflection of information shared between the CIA and its British equivalent, MI6.

By April 2000, intelligence showed that Khan was supplying uranium enrichment equipment to at least one customer in the Middle East, thought to be Libya, the report says. Five months later, intelligence operatives learned that the network was mass producing centrifuge components for a major project.

When the new Bush administration came into office in January 2001, the CIA briefed officials at the National Security Council on the dangers posed by Khan. The NSC officials recognized the threat as well as the need to get as much information as possible before acting, said two people involved in the talks.

"The suspicion was that the intelligence guys were all about reporting and watching and they had to overcome that," said Richard Falkenrath, an NSC staff member at the time. "The other question was, `What would we do about Khan, what would Pakistan tolerate?` "

Throughout 2001, the CIA and MI6 tracked Khan`s activities. A comprehensive assessment in March 2002 concluded that Khan`s network had moved its base to Dubai and established production facilities in Malaysia.

A few months later, new information led the agencies to conclude that Khan`s network was central to a Libyan nuclear weapons program.

By January 2003, the British were concerned that "Khan`s activities had now reached the point where it would be dangerous to allow them to go on," the report says.

Libyan officials later would tell the Americans and British that Khan had delivered the warhead plans to them in late 2001 or early 2002. Wolf, the former assistant secretary of State, said he was unsure whether the Americans or British knew about the plans until after the Libyans decided to give up their nuclear ambitions.

Even as the danger mounted, there was a new constraint on action. The terrorist attacks on New York City and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, had restored Pakistan as a vital ally, and U.S. officials were reluctant to take any step that might jeopardize the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

*

Unraveling the Network

The endgame for Khan began in March 2003. Seif Islam, Kadafi`s elder son, approached an MI6 agent in London with an offer to talk about rumors that Libya possessed weapons of mass destruction, several officials briefed on the episode said.

Intelligence agents from the CIA and MI6 held sporadic talks with the head of Libyan intelligence, Mousa Kusa, through the spring and summer. The U.S. and Britain wanted Libya to give up its chemical weaponry and nuclear technology, and Kadafi wanted assurances that in return economic sanctions hobbling its economy would be removed.

In August, with the issue still unresolved, British intelligence got a tip about a shipment that would be leaving Khan`s factory in Malaysia for Libya. U.S. spy satellites tracked the shipment, and the vessel was eventually diverted by U.S. and Italian authorities to an Italian port, where five crates of delicate centrifuge components were unloaded.

U.S. officials involved in the episode said the interception finally persuaded the Libyan leader to give up his weapons programs, a decision Kadafi announced on Dec. 19, 2003.

As part of the deal, teams from the U.S., Britain and the International Atomic Energy Agency arrived in Libya in January 2004 to dismantle the 500 tons of nuclear equipment that Khan`s network had shipped there. The most sensitive material was loaded onto a U.S. military cargo plane that had been stripped of its identifying marks and flown nonstop to the national weapons laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn.

Among the items on the plane was a sealed pouch containing the warhead designs, said people involved in the shipment.

The two nuclear weapons specialists who examined the top-secret plans said the Libyans had handed them over in two plastic shopping bags. They said identifying marks had been removed but the designs were clearly for a warhead tested by China in 1966 and later provided to Pakistan.

One bag contained about 100 production drawings for fabricating the warhead; the other held hundreds of pages of handwritten notes and unclassified documents from sources such as the U.S. Department of Energy.

The notes, written in English by at least four people, were numbered sequentially and appeared to be the detailed records of a year-long seminar given long ago by Chinese experts to Pakistanis on how to build the warhead, the experts said.

Even before Kadafi made his announcement, U.S. officials had confronted Musharraf with the Libyan evidence against Khan, leaving the Pakistani leader with little choice but to act.

But Khan remained too popular — and Musharraf`s grip on power too tenuous — for a public arrest. Instead, Khan was placed under house arrest and made a brief televised confession on Feb. 4, 2004, and he was pardoned immediately.

Since then, Pakistan has kept Khan outside the reach of investigators, leaving many questions about the proliferation network unanswered.

In one troubling discovery, investigators and customs officials in Europe say they recently found signs that elements of the network had resumed work. This time, the client again is Pakistan, which investigators suspect is trying to get material for a new generation of centrifuges.

"With Pakistan today, it`s hard to know how much they need, but already a couple of items have been stopped very recently, including a shipment of high-strength aluminum for centrifuges," an investigator said.

In the meantime, Congress has approved and funded a request for a three-year, $3-billion package of economic and military assistance to Pakistan, which remains a key ally in the Bush administration`s war on terrorism.


Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

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Schon eine seltsame Geschichte. Viele erinnern sich noch an den demokratischen Präsidentschaftskandidaten Howard Dean, der Anfang letzten Jahres als der wahrscheinliche Bushherausforderer galt und dann von Kerry übertrumpft wurde.
Auch ein Yale Absolvent, Arzt und ehemaliger Governor von Vermont. Er hatte die Demokraten von der Erstarrung befreit, in diese nach dem Beginn des Irakkrieges gefallen waren.
Er war sozusagen der einzige nicht Mainstream Kandidat.
Er wurde zur komischen Figur durch einen Videoclip, der ihn als Coleriker darstehen ließ.
Nun wird in diesem Artikel nachgewiesen, dass der Clip eine Montage war.
Es ist schon seltsam, dass sowas in der heutigen hochtechnischen Welt durchgehen kann.

Posted on Wed, Feb. 23, 2005

`Dean Scream` clip was media fraud
http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/news/opinion/1096…

By Edward Wasserman
SPECIAL TO THE MIAMI HERALD

The news media got an unusual bashing during last year`s bitter electoral campaigns. They got slapped around from all sides, and everybody argued about how the media tried either to undermine Bush or discredit Kerry or both.

Still, it`s never clear why some media wrongs are made into a big deal while others slip by. Take the CBS "60 Minutes" report on Bush`s military nonservice: The story itself was old, the dubious evidence was of dubious importance, and the broadcast had no discernible effect. It became a major scandal anyway.

On the other end of the scale is an instance of clear-cut media wrongdoing that involved unquestionably fraudulent evidence and had dramatic consequences. This one, however, has gone largely unremarked. It is the famous incident involving Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean that is known as The Dean Scream.

And with Dean`s recent appointment as Democratic Party chairman it`s being hauled out as constituting the ceiling on whatever political ambitions he might still have, proof that he`s shaky, unstable, unfit to serve - Howard Dean`s Chappaquiddick.

You`ve seen the clip. After Janet Jackson`s "wardrobe malfunction" at the Super Bowl, it`s the most famous news video of 2004. Dean is addressing campaign supporters after he lost the Iowa party caucuses in January. He`s screaming for no apparent reason, practically shrieking, ticking off the states where he`s vowing to continue the race. His face is red, his voice breaking. He looks deranged. It`s a portrait of a man out of control. It`s documentary evidence that Dean lacks the temperament for high office.

In fact the Dean Scream was a fraud, probably the clearest instance of media assassination in recent U.S. political history.

Last year, a young cable news producer attended one of our twice-yearly Ethics Institutes at Washington and Lee University, in which students and journalists gather to discuss newsroom wrongdoing. He brought two clips.

The first was the familiar pool footage of Dean in Iowa. The candidate filled the screen, no supporters were visible. Crowd noise was silenced by the microphone he held, which deadened ambient sounds. You saw only him and heard only his inexplicable screaming.

The second clip was the same speech taped by a supporter on the floor of the hall. The difference was stunning. The place was packed. The noise was deafening. Dean was on the podium, but you couldn`t hear him. The roar from his supporters was drowning him out.

Dean was no longer scary, unhinged, volcanic, over the top. He was like the coach of a would-be championship NCAA football team at a pre-game rally, trying to be heard over a gym full of determined, wildly enthusiastic fans. I saw energy, not lunacy.

The difference was context. As psychiatrist R.D. Laing once wrote: We see a woman on her knees, eyes closed, muttering to someone who isn`t there. Of course, she`s praying. But if we deny her that context, we naturally conclude she`s insane.

The Dean Scream footage that was repeatedly aired rests on a similar falsehood. It takes a man who in context was acting reasonably, and by stripping away that context transforms him into a lunatic.

But that clip was aired an estimated 700 times on various cable and broadcast channels in the week after the Iowa caucus. The people who showed that clip are far more technically sophisticated than I and had to understand how tight visual framing and noise-suppression hardware can distort reality.

True, some network news executives commented afterward that perhaps the footage was overplayed and offered the bureaucrat`s favorite bromide, that hindsight is 20/20. But the media establishment has never acknowledged this as a burning matter of ethical harm.

That`s because the Dean Scream incriminates the entire professional mission of television news, which is built around the primacy of the picture. TV producers don`t profess to offer meaning and context; they get you the visuals, unless they`re gory or obscene. The notion that great footage would be not shown just because it`s profoundly misleading - that`s a possibility few TV news executives would entertain.

That`s why they`re not eager to see the Dean Scream enter the canon of journalistic sin. And if that leaves Howard Dean`s political future hobbled by a lie, so be it.
Edward Wasserman is Knight professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University. He wrote this column for The Miami Herald. Contact him at [e-mail].



© 2005 Tallahassee Democrat and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.

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Hier noch ein inweis für alle, die heute Nacht die Oscarshow sehen wollen.
Achtung nicht darüber erzählen, denn das könnte zu Missverständnissen führen:

[urlRock: Straight men don`t watch Oscars]http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/suncommentary/cl-ap-chris-rock22feb22,1,2070973.story?coll=la-headlines-suncomment[/url]

The Show`s More Felix Than Oscar
Joel Stein
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/suncommentary/la-op…" target="_blank" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/suncommentary/la-op…

February 27, 2005

When Chris Rock said that no straight black man watches the Oscars, I was angry. Why do black men always get to represent hyper-masculinity? I never watch the Oscars, and my job is to write about entertainment. Am I going to have to also lay off the Sauvignon Blanc to buy whitey some respect?

Of course straight men don`t watch the Oscars. It`s like someone smushed together everything we don`t care about: designer clothing, dance numbers, clips of black-and-white movies and tacky gold knickknacks that don`t involve sports. And when was the last time a straight guy thanked someone for something?

If the Oscars actually cared about getting men to watch, they`d do more than hire Chris Rock. They`d put a running score in the corner and have nominees go up to the podium and act against each other in head-to-head, single-elimination competition. And then hit each other with folding chairs. That way Martin Scorsese would finally win an Oscar when the chair painlessly bounced off his giant eyebrows.

But the disturbing part is that straight men don`t like anything. Women do almost all the book buying, TV watching, magazine subscribing, shopping and talking. And this is a gender already time-constrained because its members have to sit down to urinate and concentrate on what`s going on to achieve orgasm.

When I watched a focus group rate my failed sitcom pilot last year, I was psyched that men liked it more than women, knowing the networks are desperate for male viewers. Then the executives told me that men`s opinions don`t matter because they won`t seek shows out. They are only dragged in through protracted viewings with their wives or girlfriends. This is why you guys now watch "The O.C." That, plus the producers make the girls kiss each other.

Conservatives like to blame gays for ruining the culture. But gays are the culture. And thank God. If not for women and gay men, the culture would turn into the amoral pigfest those same conservatives fear. If men controlled our entertainment choices they would quickly devolve into nothing but various forms of "Grand Theft Auto," many of which would involve cars driven by monkeys and midgets.

Academy, it`s very sweet of you to try to get us to watch your little awards show this year. Your changes are very inclusive: hiring Chris Rock, having nominees on the stage at the same time to increase the chances for a fight, giving out awards while winners are still seated to eliminate that long walk where we agree with our wives` and girlfriends` opinions of the outfits. Some of your boosters even tried printing out that little sheet so we can bet on it. And we`ll bet on anything. Give us a clock and $5 and you`ve solved the entire foreplay problem.

But men will never be able to cry in happiness at the sight of rich, famous people in pretty clothes. The reason I don`t watch the Oscars is that I can`t watch people be that unquestioningly self-congratulatory. It`s like watching "Oprah."

That scene in movies where everyone stands and claps for the main character is bad writing because no one actually cares about other people that much. But for one night, that`s exactly what happens. And either you`re a good enough person that it gives you hope in humanity, or you`re a guy and don`t watch.

So the Oscars should give up on male viewers entirely. Have Sarah Jessica Parker host. Make the stage out of ice so winners can skate to accept their awards. Get rid of that stupid best director award they keep giving to the ugly guy. Disqualify all movies that come in trilogies. Whatever it takes. For all that women and gay men give us, it`s worth it. We`ll be on the Internet.



Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

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Oscar-Moderator Chris Rock

Goldjungen, die jeder will

[urlDer Million-Dollar-Clint u. der Untergang der deutschen Hoffnungen]http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/kino/0,1518,343977,00.html[/url]

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Gerrymandering

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February 28, 2005
WHITE HOUSE LETTER
For Bush and Putin, a Romance With Signs of Rockiness
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/28/national/28letter.html

WASHINGTON - One of the strangest kabuki dances of George W. Bush`s presidency was his news conference last week with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in Bratislava, Slovakia. For 34 minutes, with bits of sweat on his upper lip, Mr. Bush had to contort himself into a public reprimand of Mr. Putin for Russia`s slide from democracy while asserting that their relationship was just great.

The body language suggested otherwise. To be in the room at the medieval Bratislava Castle overlooking the Danube was to be transfixed by the spectacle of a big, friendly Labrador retriever trying to cozy up to a cat. As the presidents stood side by side at their matching lecterns, Mr. Bush smiled and gestured and tried to warm up "Vladimir," who stood in icy repose, refusing to be charmed.

The two had come from an unusual hourlong one-on-one meeting, with only interpreters present. A senior administration official later said in a background briefing with reporters that the discussions "never got heated," but the official was not in the room.

In public, Mr. Bush was nothing but sunny. "In our meeting earlier I said, `Vladimir, when we get in here I think people are going to be very interested in this press conference, for some reason, I`m not sure why,` " Mr. Bush began, alluding to the buildup during his trip to Europe last week of his head-to-head with Mr. Putin. "Perhaps it`s because you`re a leader of a great nation and I`m fortunate to be one, too."

Mr. Bush grinned impishly; Mr. Putin looked grim.

The first term now seems like ancient history. Those were the days of romance that bloomed with the first date in June 2001, when Mr. Bush said that he had looked Mr. Putin in the eye and gotten a sense of his soul.

So far the second term seems a question of "Can This Marriage Be Saved?"

Russia experts say Mr. Bush`s determination to make freedom the center of his second-term foreign policy has created anxiety in Moscow, as did a recent dressing down by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice of the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, over dinner in Ankara, Turkey. Mr. Bush is at the same time under growing pressure from Republicans, Democrats and business leaders to confront Mr. Putin about the Kremlin`s seizure of much of Yukos, Russia`s largest oil company and its most successful private business.

And yet he still needs Mr. Putin, White House officials say, to help with terrorism and in pressing Iran and North Korea to give up their nuclear ambitions. As a result, Mr. Bush only gently rebuked Mr. Putin in public, though more directly than ever before, by saying he had shared with him his "concerns" about Russia`s commitment to democracy.

So how did Mr. Bush do with Mr. Putin at Bratislava, in the view of some of the president`s toughest critics?

"Both of them seem to have been coached," said Stephen R. Sestanovich, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the ambassador at large for the former Soviet Union in the Clinton administration. "The coaching for Bush was, `We are going to treat everything that has been said as positive, that this is a relationship that is on track.` And Putin was coached not to blow up the way he sometimes does. They surely told him, `Boss, don`t lose it, this isn`t Chechnya, this is just democracy, and the president is trying to play along with you and so you play along with him.` "

Strobe Talbott, the president of the Brookings Institution and a Russia specialist who was deputy secretary of state under President Bill Clinton, watched the news conference from St. Petersburg, the old northern capital of Russia. "I don`t know what transpired behind closed doors," Mr. Talbott said, "but judging from what we saw afterward, it looks as though President Bush avoided the temptation that statesmen have fallen into in the past, and that is trying to mollify political critics in this country by taking a tough line in public, and then saying in private `I just had to do that.` "

Not that Mr. Bush let on about much that was discussed in private. Russians said that he mentioned that Mr. Putin wanted to know in their meeting about "somebody getting fired" in the American news media - a likely reference, Russians said, to Dan Rather stepping down as CBS anchor and the dismissal of a CBS producer after a disputed broadcast about Mr. Bush`s National Guard service. The episode was closely watched in the Kremlin at the same time that the White House was criticizing Mr. Putin for a crackdown on the Russian press.

The other question is whether Mr. Bush, who prides himself on his ability to read people, feels he made a mistake in June 2001 when he enthused that Mr. Putin was "very straightforward and trustworthy."

Last week, a European official said that Mr. Bush was under no illusions. "He knows that Putin is a man loving a strong hand more than democratic institutions," said the official, who did not want to be publicly quoted characterizing the president`s thinking.

That did not stop Mr. Bush from referring to Mr. Putin in the news conference as "my friend."

"Any president is tempted to think that he knows the other guy across the table better than his critics in the op-ed pages and the Congress do," Mr. Sestanovich said. "And he`s going to think, give me a little space, I can work this with my friend. And you know, sometimes these personal relationships pay off. But presidents generally hang on to them longer than they should, and without the kind of realism of what the other guy is going to do. Sure, for a time, personal relationships probably helped us with the shah of Iran."

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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February 28, 2005
COLUMNIST
It`s Called Torture
By BOB HERBERT
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/28/opinion/28herbert.html

As a nation, does the United States have a conscience? Or is anything and everything O.K. in post-9/11 America? If torture and the denial of due process are O.K., why not murder? When the government can just make people vanish - which it can, and which it does - where is the line that we, as a nation, dare not cross?

When I interviewed Maher Arar in Ottawa last week, it seemed clear that however thoughtful his comments, I was talking with the frightened, shaky successor of a once robust and fully functioning human being. Torture does that to a person. It`s an unspeakable crime, an affront to one`s humanity that can rob you of a portion of your being as surely as acid can destroy your flesh.

Mr. Arar, a Canadian citizen with a wife and two young children, had his life flipped upside down in the fall of 2002 when John Ashcroft`s Justice Department, acting at least in part on bad information supplied by the Canadian government, decided it would be a good idea to abduct Mr. Arar and ship him off to Syria, an outlaw nation that the Justice Department honchos well knew was addicted to torture.

Mr. Arar was not charged with anything, and yet he was deprived not only of his liberty, but of all legal and human rights. He was handed over in shackles to the Syrian government and, to no one`s surprise, promptly brutalized. A year later he emerged, and still no charges were lodged against him. His torturers said they were unable to elicit any link between Mr. Arar and terrorism. He was sent back to Canada to face the torment of a life in ruins.

Mr. Arar`s is the case we know about. How many other individuals have disappeared at the hands of the Bush administration? How many have been sent, like the victims of a lynch mob, to overseas torture centers? How many people are being held in the C.I.A.`s highly secret offshore prisons? Who are they and how are they being treated? Have any been wrongly accused? If so, what recourse do they have?

President Bush spent much of last week lecturing other nations about freedom, democracy and the rule of law. It was a breathtaking display of chutzpah. He seemed to me like a judge who starves his children and then sits on the bench to hear child abuse cases. In Brussels Mr. Bush said he planned to remind Russian President Vladimir Putin that democracies are based on, among other things, "the rule of law and the respect for human rights and human dignity."

Someone should tell that to Maher Arar and his family.

Mr. Arar was the victim of an American policy that is known as extraordinary rendition. That`s a euphemism. What it means is that the United States seizes individuals, presumably terror suspects, and sends them off without even a nod in the direction of due process to countries known to practice torture.

A Massachusetts congressman, Edward Markey, has taken the eminently sensible step of introducing legislation that would ban this utterly reprehensible practice. In a speech on the floor of the House, Mr. Markey, a Democrat, said: "Torture is morally repugnant whether we do it or whether we ask another country to do it for us. It is morally wrong whether it is captured on film or whether it goes on behind closed doors unannounced to the American people."

Unfortunately, the outlook for this legislation is not good. I asked Pete Jeffries, the communications director for House Speaker Dennis Hastert, if the speaker supported Mr. Markey`s bill. After checking with the policy experts in his office, Mr. Jeffries called back and said: "The speaker does not support the Markey proposal. He believes that suspected terrorists should be sent back to their home countries."

Surprised, I asked why suspected terrorists should be sent anywhere. Why shouldn`t they be held by the United States and prosecuted?

"Because," said Mr. Jeffries, "U.S. taxpayers should not necessarily be on the hook for their judicial and incarceration costs."

It was, perhaps, the most preposterous response to any question I`ve ever asked as a journalist. It was not by any means an accurate reflection of Bush administration policy. All it indicated was that the speaker`s office does not understand this issue, and has not even bothered to take it seriously.

More important, it means that torture by proxy, close kin to contract murder, remains all right. Congressman Markey`s bill is going nowhere. Extraordinary rendition lives.

E-mail: [e-mail]

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Da haben es einige besonders eilig!

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Im Schatten des Irakkrieges ist ein Problempunkt fast völlig untergegangen.
Haiti und der US-Einmarsch.
Einiges ist dort vollständig aus dem Ruder gelaufen und nach Aussage vieler Beobachter, sind die USA nicht ganz unschuldig an den Abläufen.

Death of a democracy
Gangs of killers roam freely, rape is systematic and the poor eat mud to survive. In Port-au-Prince, Andrew Buncombe finds a people crushed by the dark hand of US foreign policy


28 February 2005

The mud biscuits sold in the markets and stacked high by the street vendors in the most desperate parts of Port-au-Prince are made in a part of the city known as Fort-Dimanche. There, close to the site of a former prison, once used by the dictator François "Papa Doc" Duvalier to lock up political prisoners, women combine clay, water, a little margarine and a scratch of salt. Sometimes they will crumble a foil-wrapped cube of bouillon into the mixture, which they stir, shape into discs the size of a saucer and leave to bake in the Caribbean sun.

In Haiti, these mud cakes are traditionally eaten by expectant mothers who believe they contain nutrients and minerals important to the health of a newborn child. But in recent months they have been sold increasingly to other people, who are too poor to afford anything else. "I have been selling more in the last year. People have less money," says Mafie, the young woman sitting behind a pile of the pale brown mud cakes at Salamoun market.

In their own way, these biscuits, known in Creole simply as terre, tell a bigger story. One year after the enforced departure of Haiti`s elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the country he was forced to flee, having been long undermined by the US authorities, is in a hellish state of affairs. Unstable, deadly, wracked by division and wrecked by a hurricane that tore through the country in September, many of the citizens who voted for the bespectacled former priest with a prayer that he might bring them hope and salvation are forced to fill their bellies with cakes fashioned from mud. Naturally enough, they taste like dirt.

Hunger is just one of Haiti`s many problems. Since Aristide was flown out of Port-au-Prince in the early hours of 29 February last year to his destination - the Central African Republic and then South Africa, where he now lives in exile - his supporters and members of his Lavalas political party have faced repression, violence, imprisonment and death.

While UN-mandated elections are scheduled for November, many of the senior members of Lavalas lie in Haiti`s fetid and overcrowded jails. To the outrage of human rights groups, few - if any - of the political prisoners locked up by the "interim government" installed by the US, France and Canada have been charged. Some of those jailed and subsequently released have revealed that they had no opportunity to make their case before a judge. Were it not for international pressure put on Gerard Latortue, the interim prime minister, many of them believe they would still be locked up.

At times, Haiti`s violence appears to be utterly out of control. Fights between rival gangs with political backing in the slums, or raids by the police who are accused of carrying out summary executions, result in corpses being left in the streets, gnawed at by dogs and pigs until someone comes to remove them.

Late last year, there were so many corpses arriving at the unrefrigerated morgue attached to the city`s main hospital, where they lay in piles and were rapidly devoured by maggots, that the authorities refused journalists permission to visit out of concern about the bad image that would be portrayed. Since September, more than 250 people have been killed in political violence in Port-au-Prince.

The Independent has also learned that, in the poorest areas of the city, rape is increasingly common as a tactic of political violence - a phenomenon that last occurred regularly during the early Nineties. Three Pakistani members of the UN peace-keeping force, known by its acronym MINUSTAH, have been accused of raping a woman in the city of Gonaives. An investigation is under way. And, as if that were not enough, a group of rebel soldiers of the supposedly disbanded army are refusing to lay down their guns.

Amid all of this violence and anguish hangs the ghostly presence of the undead. Though it is a year since Aristide left, in the poorer parts of town where his name is repeatedly invoked, it is clear he is never far from people`s thoughts.

Emanuel Exantes, an angry young man in a black T-shirt, who is also a trader at the busy Salamoun market, summed up what many people here believe. "It was wrong. It was not the Haitian people who made him go. It was the Americans. They want to kill Haiti. When Aristide was in power, they did not give him any money. Now, this new fucking person, they`re giving him money all the time. They give money to [the interim prime minister] because he is their man. Aristide was not theirs." He added: "This whole market is waiting for Aristide. I`m for dialogue but I want to see Aristide come back to the country. He loves the people. Aristide was elected for five years but they never wanted him to finish his term. You could not do that in America."

Aristide never wanted to leave the country. In the early hours of that Sunday morning one year ago, when loosely co-ordinated rebel forces were marching towards the capital, and after leaders of the opposition told Washington they would not agree to a political compromise that did not involve Aristide`s departure, the president was given a choice. "Come with or stay," he was told by Luis Moreno, the deputy chief of the US embassy, who arrived with a group of heavily armed marines to take Aristide to the airport. "Live or die".

Even at that point, the Americans could have preserved Aristide`s presidency with just a few hundred well-armed US Marines. They had, after all, done it before. Following a 1991 CIA-backed coup that ended his first term of office, Aristide was returned to power in October 1994 by President Bill Clinton, who ordered 20,000 Marines to clear the way for his return.

But in 10 years, a lot had changed. Annoyed at Lavalas`s refusal to abide by the economic "reforms" set out by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the United States had started to look into freezing economic aid to Haiti. In 2000, after Aristide`s re-election, his opponents in Washington seized on a dispute surrounding the vote for the national assembly to block a total of $500m (£260m) in relief to the avowedly Socialist leader.

At the same time, right-wing elements in Washington were actively funding and courting Aristide`s opponents. The International Republican Institute, a body that receives much of its funding from the National Endowment for Democracy, was arranging conferences in the neighbouring Dominican Republic for Aristide`s opponents to meet those from Washington who shared similar political views.

Throughout this time, leaders of business-backed opposition coalitions in Haiti such as Group 184, led by the millionaire industrialist Andy Apaid, and the National Convergence, were receiving a clear message that there was little international support for Aristide or his brand of liberation theology.

By this time, Aristide was increasingly resorting to violence. Rather than reaching out to groups such as students, who should have been his natural supporters, he used armed gangs known as les chimères to break up their demonstrations and attack them. Groups such as Amnesty International detailed how, by late 2003, the tactics of Aristide increasingly matched those of the Haitian dictators he had so opposed and campaigned against. During this period, said Amnesty, there was "almost total impunity for the perpetrators of human rights violations".

Even at the best of times, Port-au-Prince is a chaotic place. If you stay in the city itself, rather than in one of the plush hotels used by diplomats up on the hillside in the suburb of Petionville, you are awoken at dawn by the crowing of roosters and the noise of a city already on the move - the narrow roads are clogged with battered cars and colourful "tap tap" taxis belching exhaust fumes, the pavements thronged with schoolchildren and street vendors. An an estimated two-thirds of the population have no formal employment, but it seems that everyone is trying to get somewhere.

There is little security. Though the UN force has more than 6,000 soldiers and 1,400 police officers, it has a limited ability to maintain order and an apparently limited desire to intervene. Many Haitians complain that the UN representatives stand by while the police raid properties or attack people indiscriminately. A report by the International Crisis Group said: "Of particular concern are charges of summary executions in populous neighbourhoods - including the murder of street children [by police]." Last weekend, an armed ganged broke into the city`s main prison and released more than 500 prisoners, including Yvon Neptune, a former Lavalas prime minister, and Jocelerme Privert, a former interior minister. Both had been locked up for months without charge.

Outside the peeling blue-and-white prison, pervaded by a foul smell, visitors were being kept at a distance by snarling policemen, some in regular uniform, some clad in black, wearing helmets, dark glasses and carrying semi-automatic rifles.

A young woman called Josiane, who owns a drinks shop opposite the prison, had been outside the previous afternoon when a gang of armed men arrived. She pointed to six bullet holes on the wall of her shop. "They just came and started shooting," she said. "I ran into the back room and climbed under the bed. When I came out 10 minutes later, there were people running out of the jail." In the street outside her store, she had seen a dead prison guard, the only victim of the incident. She had covered him with a sheet and tried to wash away the blood. That next morning, the place where he had died was still stained red.

Exactly what had happened and who had been responsible was unclear. In a country where there are few reliable sources of information and where rumours spread at the pace of a galloping horse, it was possible to hear five different versions within 20 minutes. It was Aristide`s supporters, said one, it was a drug gang, said another, a third a stage-managed raid by the government to make Aristide`s supporters look bad.

It later emerged that Neptune and Privert had been returned to prison the day of the break-out, having apparently given themselves up. At the time of writing, 481 other prisoners remain unaccounted for. Meanwhile, Claude Theodat, the director of the prison, has been fired.

The worst of Haiti`s violence is concentrated in its no-go slums, which bear such misguidedly beguiling names as Cite Soleil, Bel Air and La Saline. In these areas, virtually cut off from the outside world, rival gangs terrorise the population. Human rights investigators say that Lavalas-backed gangs commit as much violence as those backed by their opponents. The influential businessman Apaid, who declined several requests for an interview, is said to support an anti-Lavalas gang in the "Boston" area of Cite Soleil, headed by a man called Thomas Robinson who prefers to go by the name of Labanye. A recent report by the Centre for the Study of Human Rights at the University of Miami quoted Apaid as saying he directed police "not to arrest [Labanye] but to work with him".

In a white-tiled, second-floor office, three women from the extremely poor Martissant neighbourhood explain how gangs are increasingly using rape against political opponents. The women, Malia Villard, Esamithe Delva and Ruth Jean Pierre, were all attacked in the early Nineties and later formed a group called the Commission of Women Victims for Women. Supported by the US-based Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, the group offers support and access to doctors. They declined to talk about their own specific experiences.

"At times when there is no security and the country has no control. These people can do what they want," said Villard. "Each time there is instability there is an upsurge [in attacks]. When it is quiet the problem is less because people know they could be arrested."

The women said victims were often attacked because of their family`s political affiliations. In many cases, the victims` husbands had been killed and there was no one to protect them. Other reports suggest that, in rural areas, a similar campaign of rape is being carried out by rebel soldiers. The risk of Aids and unwanted pregnancies was ever present, Villard said, and there were no longer any free hospitals. "If you are lucky, you are not dead. If you are lucky, you are not sick."

Aristide is not returning to Haiti, at least not to be its president. Despite what some may wish and what the radio stations may claim, it would take a political miracle for him to make a comeback. Unlike 10 years ago, he cannot constitutionally serve another full term. Furthermore, although some organisations still recognise him as their legitimate leader, there is little international clamouring to reinstate him. More importantly, he no longer has many friends in Washington.

In the political vacuum created by his absence, an intense debate is going on inside Lavalas to determine whether the party should select another leader and start campaigning, or whether it should boycott the November elections. One of those who recommends a boycott is Father Gerard Jean Juste, a close friend of Aristide and a Catholic priest. He recently returned from visiting the exiled former president in South Africa and some observers believe he may be the man Aristide has anointed as his successor.

The Independent found the priest in a high-walled compound on the edge of Port-au-Prince, where twice a week he provides meals for the poor as part of a project funded by a San Diego-based group called the What If Foundation. Tall, likeable, surrounded by happy, screaming children and with a populist rhetoric that he has polished in the pulpit, he was recently held in prison for 48 days. He was arrested two hours after speaking to Aristide on the telephone, and told he was being arrested for disturbing the peace.

"It must be recognised that Aristide was elected and then we must prepare for his return," he said. "You are going to have to deal with the election anyway. We are not going to participate [without Aristide]. It`s going to be like the election in Iraq. It will be futile." To what extent the priest was sticking to the party line was unclear. If he has been selected as Aristide`s successor - at least by Aristide himself - he may feel obliged to talk of a possible return. But when asked if Aristide actually wanted to return to Haiti, he deflected the question. When asked a second time, there was a brief but noticeable pause before he said he believed Aristide did.

The following day, sitting on the breezy terrace of hillside hotel, the muffled noise of the city in the background, another Lavalas leader said he believed that it was vital for the party to begin election preparations. Yvon Feuille, a popular senator from the city of Port Salut, another political prisoner who was released after international pressure, said that the interim government, for all its talk of opening a national dialogue, was doing everything it could to prevent Lavalas from getting itself organised. "That is the debate within Lavalas at the moment - whether to boycott the election or take part. The problem is that, if the people boycott, they don`t have a chance," he said. "At the same time, I say to the international community that we have to have the same rights as the other political parties."

Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere. The average income per capita may be as little as £800 a year. Given its seemingly persistent instability and poverty, many commentators have been tempted to simply write it off as a failed state, doomed to political disaster. But as Feuille and others point out, its problems have not all taken place in a vacuum; the country that became the first black republic in 1804 has suffered from a fatal mixture of economic neglect and political interference.

Even now, with a supposedly "acceptable" interim government installed, the attitude of wealthier nations appears at best ambivalent. Washington, which has recently spent many millions of dollars upgrading its embassy in Port-au-Prince, seems more driven by concern about a new batch of refugees washing up on its Florida beaches than about Haiti itself.

Two weeks ago, the World Bank announced it would release $73m in cash to Haiti`s government but only after Haiti paid $52m in arrears. Canada "helped" by giving Haiti another loan of $13m to help pay off its debt. More than half of the $1.2bn in "aid" for Haiti, announced at a donors` conference in Washington last summer, is made up of loans that must be repaid.

To get a different perspective on why things do not have to be like this, to get a sense of Haiti`s genuine potential, one needs only to take a three-hour drive across the mountains to the coastal city of Jacmel, the country`s former capital. While it is a bustling place, there is none of the chaos of Port-au-Prince and little of the violence. It is a calm, likeable place next to the sea and yet the one thing lacking is tourism. There have been barely any foreign tourists to Haiti since the end of the Duvalier regime, but Jacmel had always been popular with the Haitian elite and its small middle class. In the 12 months since Aristide`s departure, all that has changed.

Eric Danies owns the Jacmelienne Hotel by the beach. Certainly by Haitian standards, Danies is a very wealthy man and, according to the usual analysis, one might expect him to have supported Aristide`s ousting. Instead, he says that in the past year he has watched business plunge.

"Since Aristide`s departure we have seen our occupancy rate fall from 75 per cent to 10 per cent," he said. "The insecurity has increased for ordinary Haitians. They used to hold a lot of seminars here. Groups used to come to the provinces. Those groups are getting rarer and rarer. People are being told not to venture out of Port-au-Prince. The Haitian diaspora used to come here to visit their families. They have not been doing that."

From where Danies was sitting at the bar, one looks straight out across a gleaming blue sea and over an almost empty beach. The proprietor gestured to the view in front of him and reflected that this was a perfect location for tourists, a place to come and unwind. "This is what we have been trying to promote," he sighed. "And it`s not the only thing that Haiti has to offer. The skills of the people here have never been fully exploited."

THE BLOODY YEARS

1957

François Duvalier (Papa Doc) elected president after seizing power in a military coup.

1986

In response to widespread protests, Papa Doc`s successor, his son Jean-Claude, flees the island.

1990

Jean-Bertrand Aristide elected as president.

1991

Aristide overthrown in a coup led by General Raoul Cedras.

1993

The Haitian military refuses to agree on an accord allowing Aristide to resume the presidency. Failure to sign forces the UN to impose sanctions.

1994

The US threatens to invade Haiti and the military regime quickly surrenders power.

1995

René Préval elected president.

1999

Préval terminates parliament and rules by decree.

2000

Aristide elected president.

2001

July: Three separate attacks kill four police officers. Former army officers are accused of plotting a coup.

December: 12 people are killed in a raid on the National Palace.

2002

Haiti becomes a member of the Caribbean Community (Caricom) trade bloc.

2004

January/February: Violent rebel protests against President Aristide disrupt celebrations of Haiti`s independence. Aristide is forced into exile.

May: More than 2,000 are reported to have been killed following devastating floods in the south.

September: A tropical storm brings more flooding, this time in the north. Almost 3,000 are killed.

November: Violence erupts in the capital and armed gangs supporting Aristide are reportedly responsible for several deaths.


28 February 2005 11:17

©2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.

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For the first time in 70 years, the Shiites of eastern Saudi Arabia, the only part of the kingdom where they are a majority, are preparing to win a small measure of political power.
Die Shiiten in Saudi Arabien eine vergessene Minderheit. Sie leben am persischen Golf und sind Teil des shiitischen Crescent um den Golf.

washingtonpost.com
Shiites See an Opening in Saudi Arabia
Municipal Vote in East Could Give Suppressed Minority Small Measure of Power

By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, February 28, 2005; Page A14

QATIF, Saudi Arabia -- As thousands of Iraqis braved the threat of attack to vote last month, more than a dozen men gathered in Mohammed Mahfoodh`s spacious salon here. Lined with sofas and lit by a glass chandelier, the room is a frequent meeting place for the leaders of a Shiite Muslim community that for decades has been subjected to government neglect, religious persecution and job discrimination.

Recalling the scene later, Mahfoodh said his neighborhood was noisy with celebration that evening as many people returned from the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca in the west. But the main event was on the television screen in his living room, which remained on most of the night.
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The minarets of a huge government-funded Sunni mosque loom over the old center of Qatif.
A nearby Shiite mosque is a jumble of tin, wood and masonry.
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"There was something there that appealed to us here," said Mahfoodh, 38, who edits a cultural magazine called the Word that can only be distributed here underground. In Iraq, he said, "they are struggling to build a new state, with equal rights for all, while radicals are trying to defeat them. This idea, this kind of struggling, is happening here."

It is also about to show tangible results. For the first time in 70 years, the Shiites of eastern Saudi Arabia, the only part of the kingdom where they are a majority, are preparing to win a small measure of political power. Inspired by the Shiites` success in Iraq`s elections, Shiite leaders here say they intend to sweep to victory in municipal voting scheduled for Thursday and begin using the authority of elective office to push for equal rights. The voting also will likely result in at least some Shiite representation on two nearby councils.

The prospect of even incremental Shiite political gain has alarmed Sunni Muslim leaders across the Middle East, who fear that long-suppressed Shiite communities such as this one astride the kingdom`s lifeblood oil industry will push for an ever-greater role in government. Sunni heads of state have warned the Bush administration that the democratic reform it is encouraging in Iraq and Saudi Arabia could result in a unified "crescent" of Shiite political power stretching from here through Lebanon, Iraq and into Iran.

Shiites make up roughly 15 percent of Saudi Arabia`s 25 million people; the vast majority of Saudis are Sunnis, many of whom do not consider Shiites true Muslims. In a kingdom founded on one of the most conservative branches of Sunni Islam, religious prejudice has hardened into official policy and given the highly organized Shiite community here strong incentive to vote after years of sometimes violent activism.

About 40 percent of Qatif`s eligible voters registered in recent weeks, twice the percentage that did so in Riyadh, the capital 200 miles to the west, where the first phase of municipal elections took place Feb. 10. About 150 candidates, some of whom spent years in exile because of their civil rights activities, are competing for five seats on Qatif`s 10-member council. The other half will be appointed by the government.

Although the councils have little political power, they will provide a public venue for discussing employment discrimination, government-imposed limits on the construction of Shiite mosques and schools, and reforms that could give Shiites a greater share of political influence. Shiite leaders say they will proceed with caution, fearing they may overstep the kingdom`s invisible lines of permitted speech and give the royal family a reason to roll back the modest democratic reforms implemented in recent years.

"People here are ready to participate, even though this is still not up to their expectations," said Jafar Shayeb, a leading Shiite civil rights activist, who returned from exile in the United States 12 years ago and is seeking a council seat. "But we all realize we must work through this in order to gain even more."

The twin minarets of an enormous Sunni mosque loom over the old center of this city, a government gift that dwarfs the crumbling mud fortress and concrete homes around it. But only a few of the faithful walk through the mosque`s arched doors for evening prayer.

In its shadow is the Shiite mosque, a shop-size jumble of tin, wood planks and masonry capped by a tiny minaret. Shiites worship inside its moldering brick walls and in the dozens of other antique mosques across this city, landmarks to discrimination.

Shiite leaders say the local government, filled out by Sunnis from outside the region at its upper ranks, had banned the construction of Shiite mosques for 30 years and now normally limits their size. Fearful of angering Sunni clergymen, many of whom subscribe to the severe strand of Islam known as Wahabbism, the government does not contribute to those projects or allow Shiite texts to be brought into the country. Most arrive through smugglers.

Since Saudi Arabia`s founder, King Abdul Aziz bin Saud, brought this region into the kingdom, promising Shiites the freedom to live and worship as they wished, the government has rarely kept its promises, Shiite leaders here say. Though thousands of Shiites work in the area`s oil refineries, they have never risen much above the lowest ranks at Saudi Aramco, the behemoth state oil company whose headquarters are a few miles south of here in Dhahran.

Social unrest here has often been triggered by outside events, making Iraq`s recent elections particularly worrisome to Saudi leaders, who political analysts say opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq partly because of its potential effect on this region.

In 1979, nine months after Iran`s Islamic revolution put a Shiite theocracy in power in that country across the Persian Gulf, an uprising here resulted in the death of 40 people and gave rise to several now-defunct Shiite militant groups. Bombings at Aramco facilities through the 1980s, attributed to Shiites, led to a policy that has cut the percentage of Shiites in the company workforce by half.

"People hurt when they see the milk from the cow flowing to the center and the west, with only a little staying here," said Tayseer Khunaizi, a professor of finance at King Fahad University of Petroleum and Minerals in Dhahran. "Without the conquest of this region, the kingdom of bin Saud would never have survived. But deep inside of us, this is considered an occupation."

Saudi officials acknowledge that the Shiites, whom they rarely mention unless asked, are registering in higher numbers than voters in Riyadh did because they have more specific reasons to vote. Prince Mansour bin Mutaab bin Abdulaziz, a grandson of the founding king who was responsible for setting up the municipal elections, said, "In any society, the minorities are motivated."

"I don`t like to use the words majority and minority," said the prince, a professor of public administration at King Saud University. "But I think minorities are more consolidated to have their opinions expressed through the vote."

Most of the neighborhoods in this city of 700,000 are tight and squalid, crisscrossed by dirt roads. Schools occupy apartment buildings, the result of government restrictions on school construction in Shiite neighborhoods. The community raised money for its own hospital, whose concrete walls are crumbling in places into small piles of rubble. The vegetable market shares space with a gas station.

Just outside town, where the concrete houses give way to shriveling groves of date palms, thick pipelines run like rails across the desert. The Ras Tanura refinery lies low on the hazy horizon, white storage tanks appearing like stones. Water wells have nearly run dry because, for years, groundwater has been pumped into depleted oil fields to stabilize them.

Mohammad Hassan, who works on a construction crew for the Saudi Telecommunications Co., recently peered into a well where several men were attempting to start a pump. Only a few feet of water stood at the bottom, cloudy and still. Hassan said his boss is Sunni, like every boss he has ever had. He wants the elections to bring him a chance to rise in the company or secure another job, as well as provide better civic services.

"We don`t even have a real vegetable market," said Hassan, 40, a father of six. "I want my voice to carry to the government."

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

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Auf Wiedersehen am Arkansas River!

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Potemkin World… or the President in the Zone
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2222

"The great motorcade," wrote Canadian correspondent Don Murray, "swept through the streets of the city… The crowds … but there were no crowds. George W. Bush`s imperial procession through Europe took place in a hermetically sealed environment. In Brussels it was, at times, eerie. The procession containing the great, armour-plated limousine (flown in from Washington) rolled through streets denuded of human beings except for riot police. Whole areas of the Belgian capital were sealed off before the American president passed."

Murray doesn`t mention the 19 American escort vehicles in that procession with the President`s car (known to insiders as "the beast"), or the 200 secret service agents, or the 15 sniffer dogs, or the Blackhawk helicopter, or the 5 cooks, or the 50 White House aides, all of which added up to only part of the President`s vast traveling entourage. Nor does he mention the huge press contingent tailing along inside the president`s security "bubble," many of them evidently with their passports not in their own possession but in the hands of White House officials, or the more than 10,000 policemen and the various frogmen the Germans mustered for the President`s brief visit to the depopulated German town of Mainz to shake hands with Prime Minister Gerhard Schroeder.

This image of cities emptied of normal life (like those atomically depopulated ones of 1950s sci-fi films) is not exactly something Americans would have carried away from last week`s enthusiastic TV news reports about the bonhomie between European and American leaders, as our President went on his four-day "charm offensive" to repair first-term damage to the transatlantic alliance. But two letters came into the Tomdispatch e-mailbox -- one from a young chemist in Germany, the other from a middle-aged engineer in Baghdad -- that reminded me of how differently many in the rest of the world view the offshore bubbles we continually set up, whether in Belgium, Germany, or the Green Zone in Baghdad. (Both letters are reproduced at the end of this dispatch.)

Here`s one of the strangest things about our President: He travels often enough, but in some sense he never goes anywhere. As I wrote back in November 2003, as George and party were preparing to descend on London (central areas of which were being closed down for the "visit"):

"American presidential trips abroad increasingly remind me of the vast, completely ritualized dynastic processionals by which ancient emperors and potentates once crossed their domains and those of their satraps. Our President`s processionals are enormous moving bubbles (even when he visits alien places closer to home like the Big Apple) that shut cities, close down institutions, turn off life itself. Essentially, when the President moves abroad, like some vast turtle, he carries his shell with him."

Back then, I was less aware that, for Bush & Co., all life is lived inside a bubble carefully wiped clean of any traces of recalcitrant, unpredictable, roiling humanity, of anything that might throw their dream world into question. On the electoral campaign trail in 2004, George probably never attended an event in which his audience wasn`t carefully vetted for, and often quite literally pledged to, eternal friendliness, not to say utter adoration. (Anyone who somehow managed to slip by with, say, a Kerry T-shirt on, was summarily ejected or even arrested.)

In a sense, our President`s world has increasingly been filled with nothing but James Guckert clones. Guckert is, of course, the "journalist" who, using the alias Jeff Gannon, regularly attended presidential news conferences and lobbed softball questions George`s way. The Gannon case, or "Gannongate," has -- are you surprised? -- hardly been touched on by most of the mainstream media despite its lurid trail leading to internet porn sites and a seamy underside of gay culture -- issues that normally would glue eyes to TV sets and sell gazillions of papers (and that in the Clinton era would have rocked the administration). On the other hand, it did cause an uproar in the world of the political Internet, where, if we were to be honest -- and stop claiming to be shocked, shocked -- we would quickly admit that almost all of George`s world has essentially filled up with Gannons (though not necessarily with the porn connections).

After all, even the President`s Crawford "ranch" is really a Gannon-style set. And in Germany and France, George and Condi, his new Secretary of State, managed to have town-hall style meetings only with audiences of European Gannons; audiences so carefully combed over that, on a continent whose public is largely in opposition to almost any Bush policy you might mention, not a single challenging question seems to have been asked. That certainly represents remarkable advanced planning. It`s no easy thing, after all, constantly to rush ahead of a President and his key advisors and create a Potemkin world for them from which reality has been banished and in which no rough edges will ever be experienced.

This urge to shut down a pulsing planet rather than deal with it is but the other side of a no-less-powerful administration urge -- to free the President as Commander-in-Chief (and so the Pentagon as well) of all the fetters of our political system, of all those checks and balances so dear to high school civics classes throughout the land, and to encase his acts in a shroud of secrecy as well as non-accountability. More news about this appears practically every day. Just last week, Ann Scott Tyson and Dana Priest of the Washington Post reported that the Pentagon "is promoting a global counterterrorism plan that would allow Special Operations forces to enter a foreign country to conduct military operations without explicit concurrence from the U.S. ambassador there." The only authority for this would evidently be an "execute order" from the President.

So the President passes through the empty cities of the world and, even when in filled auditoriums, through a world emptied of all reality but his. As I wrote in that 2003 dispatch, this impulse to shut down and shut out

"combines many urges at once. Certainly, there`s the urge to stamp an imperial imprint of power on the world, and allied to it, the urge to control. The desire to cut off information, to rule in silence and secrecy, must undoubtedly have allures all its own. And then there`s also simple fear (a feeling not much written about since our President and his administration quite literally took flight on September 11, 2001)."

As the Iraqi letter-writer below makes clear, when you live in this way, only listening to your own voice or to those who don`t dare to or care to challenge you, you don`t always get the best advice. And while for a time you may be able to maintain your fantasies relatively intact, you`re likely to have a tin ear for how you sound to others. If, for instance, this was the President`s charm offensive, consider the "charm."

His "conciliatory" speeches and press conferences, his pledges to "listen" to the Europeans and "think over" their proposals (though not, of course, to do anything about them) were filled with nearly his normal quotient of imperial "musts," issued like so many diktats to the world at large. These pass largely unheard by American journalists, few of whom seemed to wonder how they sounded, along with the President`s typically hectoring/lecturing style, to European leaders or publics:

"The European project is important to our country. We want it to succeed. And in order for Europe to be a strong, viable partner, Germany must be strong and viable, as well… Syria must withdraw not only the troops, but its secret services from Lebanon… Iran must not have a nuclear weapon… Today, a new generation [of Slovakians and other Eastern Europeans] that never experienced oppression is coming of age. It is important to pass on to them the lessons of that period. They must learn that freedom is precious, and cannot be taken for granted; that evil is real, and must be confronted..."

One congenial crowd on the President`s tour was filled with American troops, many from Iraq, gathered at Wiesbaden Army Airfield in Germany to "hoo-ah" him. As Elisabeth Bumiller of the New York Times wrote, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice "served as a warm-up speaker. Ms. Rice was raucously greeted with shouts of ‘We love you!` In a pep talk delivered without notes, Ms. Rice asked the crowd of 3,000: ‘Do you know why America has the greatest military in the history of the world? Because it has the greatest soldiers, airmen and seamen in the history of the world.`"

So on the one hand, that diktat tone traveled to Europe inside the Bush bubble; while on the other, those grandiose fantasies of American power made it as well (even if just barely). Since most U.S. media organizations exist more or less inside that bubble too, the "charm offensive" largely carried the day -- at least in the United States, where vivid descriptions of a Bush-depopulated Europe were scarce and analysis of transatlantic handshakes, forced smiles, and body language (as if these were substantive policy) was plentiful indeed.

Of course, just about nobody in our mainstream media thinks -- or at writes anyway – that George`s musts and Condi`s grandiosity are even passingly odd, but the Europeans, evidence tells us, generally think otherwise. As Alain Duhamel of the French paper Libération reminds us, over the last two years our President has had a striking unifying effect on Europe. At the crucial moment when he and his advisors, marching toward the war they so desperately wanted, did seem successful in splitting Europe`s governments:

"France, Germany, and Belgium stood firm against him, and, miraculously, a massively refractory European public opinion emerged. What the European Council of Heads of Government never was able to do, George W. Bush succeeded in achieving: the citizens of all of continental Europe and a good number of Britons, whether their governments were left or right, whether their Prime Ministers had committed themselves in the American wake or had refused, all these citizens purely and simply rejected their choices and American methods. George W. Bush was midwife to the birth of a European public opinion."

So yes, last week European leaders stepped inside the presidential bubble, smiled, supped, shook hands, and said the right things to signal amity-restored; but they also understood that the very presence of the President in Europe and his visible unpopularity outside that bubble were indications of just how humbled the American "hyperpower" had been. And then they went their own ways.

So much for the good old days when there was to be an "old Europe" and a "new Europe" -- and National Security Advisor Condi Rice could claim our policy vis-à-vis Europe was to "forgive Russia, ignore Germany, and punish France"? Well, how the mighty have… if not fallen exactly, then slipped badly. (And neocons lurking in think-tanks all over bubblized Washington are fretting about exactly that.)

Nor, last week, could Europe`s leaders have missed the way, as a New York Times editorial put it, "a seemingly innocuous remark from the central bank of South Korea" about "diversifying" the dollar into other currencies, made "the dollar tank" and markets briefly plummet. Call it a little taste of another kind of "shock and awe." The greatest superpower with the greatest military and the greatest muscle and the greatest threat potential and the greatest power-projection ability and the greatest …. (well you get the idea) turns out to have economic feet of clay.

Thanks to this administration, our military has been overstretched and humbled by the rebellion of a ragtag bunch of comparatively under-armed rebels and fanatics in Iraq. Administration officials have managed, in a fashion that must be stunning to some of the officers who rebuilt the armed forces in the 1980s, to recreate a Vietnam-like catastrophe, a tunnel with no light whatsoever at the end -- so much for the "lessons" of that war -- and are now clearly considering furthering the Vietnam analogy by hitting out at the present-day equivalent of "sanctuary areas" in neighboring states (Syria and Iran).

No wonder the Europeans mouthed the right words, offered to train a feeble 1,500 Iraqi police recruits a year (not even in Iraq but in Qatar) -- the French donated a single "equipment officer" to the project, about as close to a smirk as you can get -- and then went about their Iran-negotiating-China-embargo-dropping-post-Kyoto-Treaty business. From American mainstream reporting, you generally would have had only the most modest idea that this was the case, though there were a few honorable exceptions, just as you could find rare accounts (usually on the inside pages of newspapers) of those emptied streets of Europe. Probably the single canniest exception I saw came from Tony Karon of Time magazine, who began a piece with the pungent title, Why Europe Ignores Bush, this way:

"Machiavelli`s advice to political leaders was that it`s more important to be feared than to be loved. That`s no help for President Bush on his European tour; in spite of the warm words he`s exchanging with European leaders, the reality is that the Bush administration is neither loved nor feared in growing sectors of the international community -- increasingly, it is simply being ignored."

And he ended the piece with a reminder that the rest of the world is not simply waiting for the last global superpower to do its thing. It`s reorganizing itself and going about its business just beyond our bubblized line of sight:

"All over the world, new bonds of trade and strategic cooperation are being forged around the U.S. China has not only begun to displace the U.S. as the dominant player in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation organization (APEC), it is fast emerging as the major trading partner to some of Latin America`s largest economies… French foreign policy think tanks have long promoted the goal of ‘multipolarity` in a post-Cold War world, i.e. the preference for many different, competing power centers rather than the ‘unipolarity` of the U.S. as a single hyper-power. Multipolarity is no longer simply a strategic goal. It is an emerging reality."

With that, let me turn to those two letters from outside the bubble. Oliver Hass, a 28 year-old chemist and graduate student from Oldenberg, Germany, wrote me recently about what the President`s trip looked like to him. In introducing himself, Hass commented on "how necessary it can be for a chemist to forget about molecules and think about real problems." America as a country, he added, "is still largely admired here in Germany and was also a likely place for me to work and live in. Since my teenage years, I`ve had complaints about American foreign relations, but the core American freedoms -- freedom of speech, tolerance, pursuit of happiness and the will to do better -- shined bright and dissolved the shadows. These days the shadows get ever darker and, like a black hole, they eat up my confidence in our deepest ally and friend (at least in my lifetime)." He then wrote me the following – I`ve added a few links -- under the title:

Green-zoning Germany

I want to describe to you some of the circumstances of President Bush`s recent visit to Germany, because it`s a beautiful example of the divergence of intentions and impact. Reading the headlines in the American newspapers, I see that this visit is being treated as a great opening for the healing process in the transatlantic alliance and your public opinion seems optimistic that your President`s journey will improve our relationship, despite the continuing great divide on major subjects of international policy.

But let me describe to you this visit/experience through the eyes of the average German citizen:

This last week, after all, Maintz, a little town in Germany, was turned into a Potemkin village. General Potemkin first arrived a few weeks ago in the person of Condoleezza Rice, who informed Germans, that the president forgave us, that we were right, and therefore that our disputes are over and our relationship is excellent.

To underline the new era of friendship, the President was to pay a visit to us, a stop-over on his European charm offensive. But to make sure that the President wasn`t appalled by reality, so much was done to create a bubble at Mainz in the heart of Germany. And here`s where the Green Zone comes into play. As in Baghdad, so Mainz too was turned into a maximum-security zone and the citizens of Mainz and the surrounding area learned what exporting democracy really meant.

First and most obvious was the great disproportion between the President`s freedom to travel and the average citizen`s right to move in public places. Last Wednesday for his arrival, all Autobahnen (highways) around Mainz were closed for several hours. A helicopter flight from the airport to the city might have seemed like a more practical way to transport the President than cutting the veins of the most frequented Autobahn-segment in Germany -- and that was just the beginning of our voyage into the absurd.

Many citizens of Mainz weren`t even able to drive their cars. They were forced to park kilometres away from their homes, simply because they lived near one of the maybe-routes the President`s convoy might conceivably have taken. Using the railway system might have seemed a solution, but unfortunately over 100 trains were also cancelled (and a similar number of flights at the airport in Frankfurt during the time that Air Force One arrived).

One could imagine George Bush sitting in a car, but in a train? If you smiled at that, you`ll laugh when I mention the Rhine River. The route of the President crossed the Rhine and so the whole river was closed to shipping. (Estimated losses in profits only for this: 500,000 euros.)

Anyway, most people in Mainz didn`t really have a reason to leave home that day. For example, Opel decided to close its factory on Wednesday, because workers and suppliers wouldn`t make it to work in time. 750 cars weren`t built and the production loss has to be compensated for by the workers on the next two Saturdays. Linde Vacuum asked their employees to take one day off. In addition, most small businesses in Mainz were closed and the inner city had all the charm of a ghost town -- the streets were totally empty.

In Germany you are free to write a letter to your representative, but unfortunately if you wanted to, you would have had to wait a few days, because all letter boxes were taken away too. The costs of this extravaganza can`t yet be tallied. 15,000 additional security forces were out on the streets and the one thing we know is that we, the taxpayers, will be left with the final price tag.

The most disturbing aspects of this visit/nightmare haven`t even been mentioned yet. People were told to stay away from their windows and they were forbidden to step out on their balconies! And the Secret Service that protects your President even had plans to shut down the mobile phone communication system. They didn`t actually go so far, but the public expression of that idea alone tells a story about the direction of Secret-Service thoughts. And I don`t think the intention on this subject was to disrupt "mobile-ignited" explosives, but to further complicate the situation for Germans who wanted to protest the visit. It was hard enough to organize a demonstration in a ghost city, where you couldn`t even get lunch at a cafe. With the communication systems off, the protestors would have been further marginalized and easily scattered.

To complete the Potemkin masquerade, I should just mention the planned meeting between some ordinary citizens of Mainz and your President, like the town-hall meetings in America. But don`t think the assembly actually consisted of ordinary citizens. After the German delegation emphasized that they would not collect the questions beforehand and fake the conversation (as had happened at the meeting Rice had with students in France), the American delegation cancelled that meeting. An emperor shouldn`t be annoyed by tough questions. Instead 20 so-called young leaders were chosen by the [conservative] Aspen Institute and the German Marshall Fund, and so a few hand-picked Germans were talking with the President instead of upset citizens.

The overall feeling that remains is that we got trampled upon by the President`s baggage -- like those beds of roses at Buckingham palace, if you remember that "the-queen-is-not-amused" episode. Mainz was not blessed by this visit, it was doomed. Liberty of action was interrupted and the burden of costs for the visit remains in Germany. Diplomats are trained to accentuate symbolic gestures and the return to a dialogue, but average citizens have been stunned by how much less our freedoms were worth than George Bush`s. The media worked fine for the President`s propaganda and you won`t hear too much about this, especially not outside of Germany. The latest Potemkin village was planned all too well and, as you know, the people have no role in this scenery. Welcome to the world of delusion.

Kind regards,

Oliver

At about the same time as Oliver Hass wrote in, I received a note from Ghazwan Al-Mukhtar who said: "I read with interest your `Engelhardt and Hiro on Iraqi and American fault lines.` Attached is a letter I wrote as an Iraqi living in ‘liberated` Iraq, giving Mr. Bush a few points of concern of ordinary Iraqis. I thought you might want to read it." Indeed, I did; and, in further correspondence, I learned that Ghazwan Al-Mukhtar was a 60 year-old engineer, a 1967 graduate of Marquette University, living in Baghdad, who had criticized Saddam Hussein in his time as a "ruthless dictator" and had no intention of holding his tongue now. He had previously been interviewed from Baghdad by Amy Goodman`s Democracy Now! and wrote to tell me that "I am independent person and never joined any political party and I will never join a party." And when asked about whether he wanted his name used or withheld, he added: "If, after everything we have gone through over the last 22 months makes me scared, then I have news for them, NOW NO ONE CAN STOP ME FROM TALKING. I AM FREE." His letter to George Bush from outside the American bubble follows:

To The Honorable Mr. George W. Bush, The President of the United States of America:

Dear Mr. Bush,

It was regrettable that you were not allowed to see and talk to ordinary Iraqi citizens, during your sneak visit to Baghdad on Thanksgiving Day of 2003. Those Iraqis whom you met during that visit were part of the American-installed client state that came on the back of the American tanks. Naturally they told you what they thought you wanted to hear. Moreover, Mr. President, they lived, like your other advisors in Iraq, in their isolated bubbles in the secured "Green Zone" with very little contact with ordinary Iraqis.

I am sure that, had you talked to ordinary Iraqis, you would have gotten different opinions than those being passed to you by your American or Iraqi advisors. As an ordinary Iraqi citizen, I would like to share my thoughts on the Iraqi dilemma that America has found itself in.

More than a year ago you promised the Iraqi people that "the torture chambers and the secret police are gone forever." Mr. President, I honestly wanted to believe you then. I discovered later that your American solders had been torturing the Iraqi people since May 2003. I discovered also that your army generals knew about it and wrote reports to their higher authorities about such abuses of human rights. I will give you, Mr. President, the benefit of the doubt and say that your advisors did not tell you the facts.

Having known the facts, you did not apologize for the victims of the American torture, but went ahead putting the blame on only the "seven bad apples". That did not STOP the torture or the human rights violations committed by your troops in Iraq. Reports are still coming in to date confirming that torture is being committed against the Iraqis in the American detention camps. I am sure that your advisors will tell you that this is necessary to protect the security of America, several thousands of miles away from Iraq.

Your partners in the "coalition of willing" are not doing any better! The British and Danish armies are both torturing Iraqi detainees. Now we discover through human rights reports that the "new Iraqi army," created and trained by your government, is also torturing Iraqis. It is clear to me, Mr. President, that while we were tortured before the "liberation" by one force of evil, now we are being tortured by at least four evil forces after the "liberation." It looks to me, Mr. President, as if, contrary to your announcement, the "torture chambers" may truly be here forever.

Allow me, Mr. President, to suggest that your blaming of "only seven apples" did set the legal precedent for every dictator in the world to escape the responsibility for torture and human rights violations. Like you, every dictator will pin the blame and the responsibility on the seven, ten, or twenty bad apples in his forces. I am sure that decent American legal scholars would tell you this excuse is very dangerous and would not stand in a proper and impartial court of law.

Actions are judged by the results and not rhetoric. Ordinary Iraqis, like your American soldiers, are faced with threats against their lives. The general lawlessness that still exists, as a result of your occupation of Iraq, makes the life of ordinary Iraqis miserable. We Iraqis are afraid to go out for fear of being kidnapped by criminal gangs roaming the country with an ineffective police force. We are also afraid of going out for fear that we might be killed by a bomb directed at your troops, or killed, or shot at by trigger-happy and nervous American troops.

The innocent Iraqi population is not using armored personal carriers, nor do they use armored cars to help them protect themselves. More innocent Iraqi civilians are killed by your troops shooting at them than those killed by the criminal gangs. You probably know, Mr. President, that your trigger-happy and nervous troops enjoy freedom from prosecution for these unlawful killings. From what I have witnessed those killers do not even stop to say "sorry" for their actions.

Allow me respectfully to remind you, Mr. President, that now more than 60% of the Iraqi work force in your "liberated" Iraq is unemployed as compared to 30% before your liberation. It looks like your action has doubled the number of Iraqis "liberated" from earning a decent pay or a decent work.

The U.S. Congress issued a report on Iraq at the end of June 2004. In that report they say that, in May 2003 (just after the invasion), 7 out of the 18 governorates had more than 16 hours of electricity per day. It also says that this number was reduced to one governorate in May 2004, one year after the invasion. Now, we are very lucky if we get 6 hours of electricity per day in Baghdad, a city of 5 million people.

Health services have continued to deteriorate during the past 22 months of occupation. Hospitals still lack even the simplest things. Drugs are not available. Fewer patients seek medical treatments or examination because of the security situation and the closed streets. Doctors are not safe at hospitals. They have been physically attacked by relatives of patients blaming, or venting their frustration on the poor helpless doctors.

Due to lack of security and poor police force, criminal gangs have kidnapped for ransom a few hundred doctors. Some were threatened. As a result, hundreds of highly qualified doctors have fled the country and it has resulted in a further deterioration of health services. These highly qualified doctors did not run away from the tyranny of the dictator, Mr. President, but because of the chaos and lawlessness in your "liberated Iraq."

Records show, Mr. President, that the Iraqi government smuggled up to a hundred thousand barrels a day of refined diesel fuel through Turkey, with your government`s knowledge. These figures indicate that the Iraqi refineries had an excess refining capacity allowing the country to export refined oil products.

During the "liberation" of Iraq, refineries were not targeted as they had been In 1991, so one assumes that the damage was minimal. I wonder why refineries are not fixed yet after 22 months of "liberation." I still cannot understand why Iraq continues to import refined oil products from Turkey, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia -- and to my amazement from Israel. We Iraqis need to know why our money is being spent, unwisely, to import gasoline now, when we were an exporting nation. I might understand that Halliburton and KBR needed to import gasoline for a few months, but not after 22 months of "liberation."

In 1991, our refineries were severely damaged by the bombing. We the Iraqi people were able, despite the sanctions and without help from the Halliburtons, to fix the refineries in only a few months. We kept them working and going for 13 years and we were exporting products. Similarly the Iraqi people were able to restore the electricity in a few months. The Iraqi people reconstructed every building damaged by the war of 1991 in less than a year. Seeing the lack of any reconstruction efforts after 22 months of "liberation" makes me sad.

Mr. President, in 1991 America promised that Iraq will be returned to the "pre-industrial" age and they nearly did that by bombing and destroying everything. The Iraqi people surprised the world by reconstructing what was bombed. On top of that, new projects were implemented despite the sanctions. As an Iraqi this makes me extremely proud of our achievement in 1991. We the Iraqis set the standards of reconstruction. After 22 months of "liberation" and the lack of honest and visible reconstruction work I feel that America miserably failed to meet that standard.

For 13 years, Iraqis were living on food rations given by the government. We were told that our government was robbing us and providing us with only 2200 Kcal per day. The "liberated" government of Iraq after the liberation is still providing us with about 2200 Kcal per day of food rations.

The government of Iraq used to spend about $150 million a month to import and distribute the food rations. According to your CPA Inspector General, $8.8 billion dollars were unaccounted for in one year. Mr. President, these $8.8 billion are enough to feed all the people of Iraq for nearly 60 months. This fiscal irresponsibility and the lack of transparency in spending our money make me wonder about the aim of the "liberation" of Iraq. I`m sorry to say that the Iraqi people are being robbed blind. We are also being "liberated" from our wealth.

I am sure, Mr. President, that our traumatized kids will never forget what was done to their future by your "liberation." I am sure that your kids will have to deal in the future with our traumatized kids. I am also sure that your kids will have to repay for all the damages and the stolen money. I can see that the price will be very high.

I do not want to be like the rest of your advisors giving you the rosy picture. They have told you about the WMD, the Al-Qaeda link, the 9/11 link, the Iraqis welcoming your troops as "liberators"… and it is proved that they were not telling you the truth. It is about time that you listen to other people.

We do not hate America for its "freedom or democracy." We don`t hate America. We hate the crimes, the destruction, and the devastation committed by America against the innocent people in our country.

Respectfully,

Ghazwan Al-Mukhtar Baghdad, Occupied Iraq

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TERROR IM IRAK

Mehr als hundert Tote bei Selbstmordanschlag

Es ist der blutigste Anschlag seit den Wahlen am 30. Januar: In der irakischen Stadt Hilla hat sich am Morgen ein Selbstmordattentäter in die Luft gesprengt. Die Angaben über Opfer werden ständig nach oben korrigiert. Inzwischen sollen mehr als hundert Menschen ums Leben gekommen sein.
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,343985,00.html
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Iraq`s Worst Suicide Bomb Rips Through Job Line
Mon Feb 28, 2005 07:42 AM ET
http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=77…
By Haidar Abbas

HILLA, Iraq (Reuters) - One minute they were seeking work. The next their bodies were torn apart by shrapnel, cut down in Iraq`s bloodiest single insurgent attack since U.S.-led forces toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003.

A suicide bomber rammed his car into a crowd of people lining up for medical certificates needed for job applications in the town of Hilla, 62 miles south of Baghdad.

At least 115 people were killed and more than 140 wounded, a staggering toll even in Iraq, where suicide bombers strike nearly every day and death has become routine.

Those killed had been hoping to find work in an oil-rich country that has offered little in recent months but violence and uncertainty.

Instead, residents of the poor southern town screamed and wept openly as they stood over a carnage of mangled bodies.

The explosion sprayed hot shards of metal across the street at another crowd that had formed at the town`s vegetable market.

A few tomatoes on boxes were all that was left after the blast. Smoke rose into the air as people clawed through the twisted and incinerated remains, crying and shouting "God is greatest," while others stared in disbelief at the mayhem.

Residents of the Shi`ite town, known before the war for its dates, were overwhelmed by the number of bodies in their streets.

"How can anyone do this to human beings?" asked one man staring dumbly at the destruction.

"Look at these people. Look at these people," said another. One resident gaped at the ground and walked away.

Corpses, some with their bloodied limbs dangling awkwardly, were loaded onto rickety wooden carts and pushed away. Others were piled onto the back of white police pickup trucks.

Iraqi police, who themselves have lost hundreds of their comrades to suicide bombings, stood in shock, occasionally firing their AK-47 assault rifles in the air to impose order.

Firefighters sprayed their hoses at blackened bodies, some missing heads. Body parts remained buried among the rubble.

Hilla has become increasingly dangerous since Saddam`s fall. Insurgents have fired on foreigners traveling through the area and former members of Saddam`s Baath party operate there.

A mass grave for people believed to have been killed by Saddam`s henchmen and buried under cement at a former army base nearby has always been a reminder of past suffering.

Now there are new victims on a scale that Hilla never expected.

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Wead Whacking And Gannon Fodder
- Harley Sorensen, Special to SF Gate
Monday, February 28, 2005
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/200…

A man could get cynical. A recent non-story of national interest involved one Doug Wead, a friend of President George W. Bush. Wead, an author, motivational speaker and former assistant to the first President Bush, created a bit of a stir when he released a dozen audiotapes in which he secretly taped conversations with George W. Bush from 1998 until mid-2000, as Bush sought and won the Republican nomination.

News readers and commentators jumped on the Wead tapes as if they were the missing 18 minutes from the Nixon Oval Office tapes, but a listen to the tapes could put even a non-Bush partisan like myself to sleep.

Instead of being an embarrassment, the tapes actually make Bush look good. In them, he speaks passionately against discrimination, and he shows a parental concern for the safety of America`s children.

He comes across as a good guy. After listening to the tapes, the circling sharks went home hungry.

However ...

If a man had become a cynic over the past four years he might wonder if the whole Wead affair was a setup. What if (just "what if") the tapes were not made when Wead said they were -- before Bush became president -- but instead were made recently.

What if the plan was to make Bush look good? What if the plan was to pretend to throw the naysayers some red meat, then, just before they get to sink their teeth into it, pull back the wrapper and reveal that the meat is only candy floss. Okay, okay, that slips beyond cynicism and into paranoia, but it`s a delicious thought, anyway, don`t you think? And, considering its mountains of Machiavellian manipulations, who would put something like that past the Bush administration?

Shall we discuss the irrepressible "Jeff Gannon"? "Gannon" is the fake reporter who sat in on dozens of White House press briefings and pleased the president`s press person by asking questions that made the administration look good. He got away with it until he crossed the line by asking this question of President Bush: "How are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?" The "people" to whom he referred were Senate Democrats.

Even with that red flag thrown in their direction, the ever-alert White House presslings didn`t give "Gannon" (whose real name is James Guckert) more than a passing smirk, but a battery of bloggers smelled a rat and, long story short, blew the whistle on him. Turns out he represented a red, white and blue Web site called GOPUSA, which might make a normal person suspicious of his loyalties, and he made his living, or supplemented it, by selling his services as a male escort, whose main attribute seems to be something about "8-inches-cut," whatever that means.

The White House claims it just can`t understand how a bozo like Guckert got daily press passes whenever he asked for them, but get them he did. You don`t suppose, do you, that Karl Rove, better known as "Bush`s brain," was behind Guckert, do you? Or vice versa.

How weird do a series of events have to get before they`re truly investigated? In the case of Robert Novak, the columnist who on July 14, 2003, revealed the identity of a CIA operative, the FBI "investigation" into who told Novak is still in progress. So far the primary effect of that investigation has been a judicial effort to get a couple of reporters to tell what they know by threatening them with jail if they don`t.

That kind of abuse didn`t work when tried massively on Susan McDougal, Bill Clinton`s friend, and it`s not likely to work on news reporters who relish martyrdom.

If the Clinton White House had allowed a twerp like James Guckert into its news conferences, using an alias, do you suppose Congress, like Atlas, would have merely shrugged?

Of course not. But in spite of pleas by outraged Democrats, the Republicans in Congress are seeing to it that the Guckert-Gannon outrage is made to disappear from the public consciousness. And the press, of course, is, for the most part, compliant.

Finally, we have the truly frightening case of ChoicePoint, the Georgia-based personal information provider which has learned how to get away with murder, figuratively speaking.

ChoicePoint came to national attention, or inattention, following the 2000 elections, when it was learned that it was the firm hired by Florida to identify convicted felons on its voting rolls.

The firm made approximately 8,000 "mistakes" while carrying out its task. It identified completely innocent people as convicted felons, with the result that those people were denied their right to vote. Most were black or Hispanic. In that election, about 90 percent of black/Hispanic votes voted for Al Gore. So it is safe to conclude that had the rejected voters been allowed to vote, Al Gore would have carried Florida and become our 43rd president.

ChoicePoint made the news again recently when it was belatedly revealed that it had provided confidential personal information on 145,000 U.S. residents to identity thieves posing as legitimate business people. So far, according to an NPR report last week, 750 of those people have been victimized by the thieves.

How did ChoicePoint react to their damaging mistake? Well, at first it did nothing, claiming later that it did not want to interfere with a criminal investigation. The, when pushed, it sent out letters to the 145,000 victims, telling them they were at risk.

That`s it. Letters. Just letters telling the victims that they`d been had and they`d better do something to protect themselves.

Here`s the part that gets me. ChoicePoint is supposed to be the nation`s top expert on personal information, so how is it that it cheerfully provides such information to a bogus company? Isn`t the whole point of a company like ChoicePoint to protect others from being cheated by cheats? If it can`t protect itself, why should others expect it to protect them?

The latest ChoicePoint fiasco cries out for investigation. Are there only 145,000 victims, or are there many more? Do all the victims belong to the same political party by any chance? What price will ChoicePoint be asked to pay for the massive damage its apparent negligence has caused?

A cynic would say there`s more to ChoicePoint than meets the eye. It`s a company that rose from nothing to multibillion-dollar status in a very short time. Its known mistakes are horrendous.

Is ChoicePoint tied in with the Bush administration in some way? Not that I know of. But I`m betting the Bushies have warm, fuzzy feelings about ChoicePoint, and it`s not going to be held accountable.

Harley Sorensen is a longtime journalist. His column appears Mondays. E-mail him at [e-mail].


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

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Monday, February 28, 2005
War News for Monday, 28 February 2005
http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring ‘em on: More than 100 people have been killed in a massive car bomb attack in Hillah 100km south of the capital.

Bring ‘em on: 20 miles north of Hillah in the town of Musayyib, another car bomb exploded at a police checkpoint, killing at least one policeman and wounding several others.

Bring ‘em on: Gunmen have killed four people and wounded two in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

Bring ‘em on: Police Commander kidnapped by insurgents in Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: US soldier killed Sunday evening in attack in Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Iraqi police find the body of a headless woman in Baghdad, with a note attached denouncing her as a spy.

The Police State

UK’s anti-terror law goes rushing through Parliament: The government has said no changes will be made to the plans despite facing pressure to make concessions in order to avoid a backbench rebellion. The measures would enable the home secretary to detain terror suspects under house arrest without trial.

Under the new orders, people suspected of terrorism could be subject to house arrest or other restrictions on movement, such as electronic tagging or curfews. Association and communication with specified people could be restricted, as could telephone and internet use. While the orders would mean an end to detention of suspects, breach of a control order could lead to imprisonment. The new orders could also be applied to British citizens - the law lords ruled the ATCSA powers that could only be used on foreign suspects were discriminatory. It is proposed that the orders would be imposed by the home secretary, rather than the courts.

Digging In

Operation Enduring US Bases? When Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told reporters last December that he expected U.S. troops to remain in Iraq for another four years, he was merely confirming what any visitor to the country could have surmised. The omnipresence of the giant defense contractor KBR (formerly Kellogg, Brown & Root), the shipments of concrete and other construction materials, and the transformation of decrepit Iraqi military bases into fortified American enclaves—complete with Pizza Huts and DVD stores—are just the most obvious signs that the United States has been digging in for the long haul. It`s a far cry from administration assurances after the invasion that the troops could start withdrawing from Iraq as early as the fall of 2003. And it is hardly consistent with a prediction by Richard Perle, the former chairman of the Defense Policy Board, that the troops would be out of Iraq within months, or with Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi`s guess that the U.S. occupation would last two years. Take, for example, Camp Victory North, a sprawling base near Baghdad International Airport, which the U.S. military seized just before the ouster of Saddam Hussein in April 2003.

Over the past year, KBR contractors have built a small American city where about 14,000 troops are living, many hunkered down inside sturdy, wooden, air-conditioned bungalows called SEA (for Southeast Asia) huts, replicas of those used by troops in Vietnam. There`s a Burger King, a gym, the country`s biggest PX—and, of course, a separate compound for KBR workers, who handle both construction and logistical support. Although Camp Victory North remains a work in progress today, when complete, the complex will be twice the size of Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo—currently one of the largest overseas posts built since the Vietnam War.
Such a heavy footprint seems counterproductive, given the growing antipathy felt by most Iraqis toward the U.S. military occupation.

Yet Camp Victory North appears to be a harbinger of America`s future in Iraq. Over the past year, the Pentagon has reportedly been building up to 14 "enduring" bases across the country—long-term encampments that could house as many as 100,000 troops indefinitely. John Pike, a military analyst who runs the research group GlobalSecurity.org, has identified a dozen of these bases, including three large facilities in and around Baghdad: the Green Zone, Camp Victory North, and Camp al-Rasheed, the site of Iraq’s former military airport. Also listed are Camp Cook, just north of Baghdad, a former Republican Guard "military city" that has been converted into a giant U.S. camp; Balad Airbase, north of Baghdad; Camp Anaconda, a 15-square-mile facility near Balad that housed 17,000 soldiers as of May 2004 and was being expanded for an additional 3,000; and Camp Marez, next to Mosul Airport, where, in December, a suicide bomber blew himself up in the base`s dining tent, killing 13 U.S. troops and four KBR contractors eating lunch alongside the soldiers.

At these bases, KBR, a Halliburton subsidiary that works in cooperation with the Army Corps of Engineers, has been extending runways, improving security perimeters, and installing a variety of structures ranging from rigid-wall huts to aircraft hangars. Although the Pentagon considers most of the construction to be "temporary"—designed to last up to three years—similar facilities have remained in place for much longer at other "enduring" American bases, including Kosovo`s Camp Bondsteel, which opened in 1999, and Eagle Base in Tuzla, Bosnia, in place since the mid-1990s.

Al Faux News?

The US plans to begin Arab-language television broadcasts to Europe later this year to try and win the hearts and minds of Arab Muslims there.

Three-and-a-half years after Islamic activists based in Germany allegedly helped mount the 11 September 2001 attacks, US-backed TV channel Al-Hurra expects to transmit 24-hour programming to European Muslim communities seen as potentially hostile to the US. France and Germany, which have Western Europe`s largest Muslim populations, will be a special focus for news and current affairs programmes intended to promote an American ethic of free speech and open debate.

"The 9/11 hijackers came largely from Europe. It`s a significant gap that we were not broadcasting in Arabic to Europe," said Kenneth Tomlinson, chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the US agency in charge of US civilian TV and radio broadcasts overseas. "The reason for being [in Europe] is the same as our reason for being in the Middle East: To provide a different perspective ... of America and the world," said Norman Pattiz, who chairs the broadcasting board`s Middle East committee.

Expect to see adverts for the positions of Abdul O’Reilly and Muhammed Hannity in the Arab press very soon.

Election News

Many consider Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, the prominent cleric who leads the United Iraqi Alliance, to have emerged as the country`s top Shiite power broker after the Jan. 30 elections. In an interview Sunday with The Associated Press, al-Hakim said the new Iraq must be an Islamic state with laws that do not offend the faith. He said Shiite leaders also envision a federal system that would rely on Iraqis to fight insurgents.

AP: In the alliance there are some members who have their own agendas and might try to pressure the entire coalition. It is clear that this was the case during the nomination for the post of prime minister. What is your response?

Al-Hakim: Yes. There were some people who were trying to make use of the media, and as you know our policy is not to let media interfere in all our issues, and not to let the media give an exaggerated picture of issues. The decision (to nominate al-Jaafari) was taken unanimously and this is very important. The brothers who nominated him vowed to stand by the prime minister to help him succeed.

AP: Islamic Sharia and the constitution?

Al-Hakim: There are three points: first, that there must be a respect for the Islamic identity. Second, that Islam is the official religion of the state. Third, that there should not be any law that violates Islam.

AP: What is the position of the alliance toward federalism?

Al-Hakim: We do not oppose the idea, as we said before. ... Our brothers the Kurds believe that federalism will solve their problems, and we see no harm in adopting this system in Iraq. ...
# posted by Friendly Fire : 3:33 AM
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Latest Fatality: Feb 27, 2005

Feb.05: 58

Mehr Meldungen aus dem Irak:
http://icasualties.org/oif/

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Meine Frau, ihre Schwiegereltern und ich
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Heads roll at Veterans Administration
Mushrooming depleted uranium (DU) scandal blamed
http://www.sfbayview.com/012605/headsroll012605.shtml
by Bob Nichols

Project Censored Award Winner
Considering the tons of depleted uranium used by the U.S., the Iraq war can truly be called a nuclear war.

Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter charged Monday that the reason Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi stepped down earlier this month was the growing scandal surrounding the use of uranium munitions in the Iraq War.

Writing in Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter No. 169, Arthur N. Bernklau, executive director of Veterans for Constitutional Law in New York, stated, “The real reason for Mr. Principi’s departure was really never given, however a special report published by eminent scientist Leuren Moret naming depleted uranium as the definitive cause of the ‘Gulf War Syndrome’ has fed a growing scandal about the continued use of uranium munitions by the US Military.”

Bernklau continued, “This malady (from uranium munitions), that thousands of our military have suffered and died from, has finally been identified as the cause of this sickness, eliminating the guessing. The terrible truth is now being revealed.”

He added, “Out of the 580,400 soldiers who served in GW1 (the first Gulf War), of them, 11,000 are now dead! By the year 2000, there were 325,000 on Permanent Medical Disability. This astounding number of ‘Disabled Vets’ means that a decade later, 56% of those soldiers who served have some form of permanent medical problems!” The disability rate for the wars of the last century was 5 percent; it was higher, 10 percent, in Viet Nam.

“The VA Secretary (Principi) was aware of this fact as far back as 2000,” wrote Bernklau. “He, and the Bush administration have been hiding these facts, but now, thanks to Moret’s report, (it) ... is far too big to hide or to cover up!”

“Terry Jamison, Public Affairs Specialist, Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, Department of Veterans Affairs, at the VA Central Office, recently reported that ‘Gulf Era Veterans’ now on medical disability, since 1991, number 518,739 Veterans,” said Berklau.

“The long-term effects have revealed that DU (uranium oxide) is a virtual death sentence,” stated Berklau. “Marion Fulk, a nuclear physical chemist, who retired from the Lawrence Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab, and was also involved with the Manhattan Project, interprets the new and rapid malignancies in the soldiers (from the 2003 Iraq War) as ‘spectacular … and a matter of concern!’”

When asked if the main purpose of using DU was for “destroying things and killing people,” Fulk was more specific: “I would say it is the perfect weapon for killing lots of people!”

Principi could not be reached for comment prior to deadline.

References

1. Depleted uranium: “Dirty bombs, dirty missiles, dirty bullets: A death sentence here and abroad” by Leuren Moret, http://www.sfbayview.com/081804/Depleteduranium081804.shtml.

2. Veterans for Constitutional Law, 112 Jefferson Ave., Port Jefferson NY 11777, Arthur N. Bernklau, executive director, [phone], fax [phone].

3. Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter. Email Gary Kohls, [e-mail], with “Subscribe” in the subject line.

Email Bob Nichols at [e-mail].

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Sunday, Feb. 27, 2005
Revenge of the Kurds
Buoyed by election success, an Iraqi minority aims to expand its influence. Could it fracture the country?
By ANDREW LEE BUTTERS/SULAIMANIYAH
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1032335,00.…


Jalal Talabani knows what it`s like to be a marked man. In 1989, after Saddam Hussein`s army had ravaged the Kurdish population of northern Iraq with chemical weapons, the dictator offered amnesty to all Kurdish soldiers who fought against him--except one. Saddam ordered his minions to hunt down Talabani, a chief of the Kurdish separatist guerrillas known as the peshmerga. If Talabani was caught, Saddam vowed, he would put him to death.

It`s a testament to Talabani`s knack for survival that he not only managed to elude Saddam`s forces but also is now poised to assume the job of his former nemesis. A coalition of Kurdish political parties, which Talabani helped lead, came in a strong second in Iraq`s national elections, winning 75 of the new Assembly`s 275 seats. That gave the Kurds, who make up 17% of Iraq`s population, enough clout to demand top jobs in the new government. While the victorious Shi`ites last week tapped Ibrahim al-Jaafari for Iraq`s most powerful position of Prime Minister, Talabani, 72, has emerged as the most likely successor to Saddam as Iraq`s President. And though the post is intended to be largely symbolic, Talabani plans to use the position of titular head of state to protect Kurdish interests. "I must have the right to participate with the government in ruling the country," he told TIME in an interview at his headquarters in the northern Iraq mountain stronghold of Qala Chwala. "We want to be partners in reshaping Iraq."

The question is, How much of the country do Talabani and the Kurds want to reshape? The Kurds are holding out for at least six Cabinet posts, including head of the crucial Oil Ministry. They also say they are owed money from the U.N.`s oil-for-food program. A U.N. spokesman told TIME that $3.7 billion in Kurdish money was handed to the Coalition Provisional Authority. So far the Kurds have collected about $1.4 billion of that. They also want assurances that the Kurdish-dominated north will retain the autonomy it has enjoyed since the end of the first Gulf War, when the U.S. established a no-fly zone to protect the Kurds, and that the new Iraqi constitution will not impose Islamic law, as some prominent Shi`ite clerics have demanded. But some Kurdish ambitions could trigger ethnic disputes that would reverberate beyond Iraq`s borders. The Kurds` election success has emboldened those who want to expand the southern boundaries of Kurdistan to include Kirkuk, the oil-rich city that is home to Kurds, Arabs and Turkomans. For U.S. officials, the nightmare scenario is that the Kurds break away from Iraq altogether--splintering the nation and inciting restive Kurdish minorities in such neighboring countries as Iran, Syria and especially Turkey, which has threatened to intervene to prevent the establishment of an independent Kurdish state.

In his interview with TIME, Talabani played down the possibility of Kurdish secession. "If you asked the Kurds, `Do you want independence?` of course everyone will say yes," he said. "But if you ask, `Do you want independence now?` the answer would be no." A U.S. official says Talabani, a former lawyer with close ties to Washington, "knows how far he can push, and he`s not likely to push further than that, even if a lot of Kurds want him to."

There`s little dispute that the results of the Jan. 30 election have given Kurdish nationalism fresh momentum. Although they are predominantly Muslim, the Kurds of Iraq have long favored a more secular form of government than most Shi`ites do. The Kurdistan Referendum Movement, a grass-roots organization of intellectuals and junior political officials, says that of the 2 million who took part in an informal Election Day referendum on independence, 99% voted in favor. Kurds control their peshmerga militia soldiers and their own borders and are determined to preserve their sanctuary. Officially, Kurdistan exists only north of the "green line," the area where U.S. forces halted the Iraqi army`s advance when Saddam moved to crush yet another Kurdish uprising in 1991. But since the fall of Saddam in 2003, the size of Kurdish-held territory has expanded 20%, according to coalition officials in northern Iraq.

Kurdish leaders are pushing to gain control of Kirkuk--known as the Jerusalem of Kurdistan--the capital of one of Iraq`s most productive oil regions. Under Saddam, Kirkuk was subjected to a massive demographic reordering, as Saddam moved large numbers of Arabs into the city and tossed many Kurds out. The interim Iraqi government headed by Prime Minister Iyad Allawi agreed that Kirkuk should be normalized--meaning displaced Kurds would be allowed to return while the so-called new Arabs would be moved out and compensated. But though some 100,000 Kurdish refugees returned to Kirkuk in time to vote in the election, the Iraqi government has yet to begin deporting the new Arabs.

For U.S. commanders in Iraq, an even more pressing concern is the status of the 80,000-strong peshmerga. In insurgent hot spots like Mosul, U.S. commanders have praised Kurdish troops for their willingness to stand and fight. But the peshmerga`s continued assaults on insurgents run the risk of exacerbating tribal rivalries and sparking an anti-Kurdish backlash by Iraq`s Arabs. The U.S. hopes to defuse the potential for conflict by folding the peshmerga into a new, unified Iraqi army. But the Kurds have so far refused to place their soldiers under the command of Baghdad. "The peshmerga must remain a force of the regional government," says Talabani, a former peshmerga commander. "The Kurdish people need them as protection against terrorism and to secure the boundaries of Iraqi Kurdistan."

The Kurds may be willing to cede control of their militia in exchange for assurances that they will be given a large role in the new government and a share of oil revenues from the south. "The more they participate in the central government, the less fear they`ll have that they`re going to be attacked," says Phebe Marr, an Iraq expert at the U.S. Institute of Peace. Some Iraqis hope that Talabani`s ascent to the presidency will be seen as an important first step toward Kurds and Arabs living peacefully with each other. "For years, we`ve been told that Kurds are Iraqis and not a separate people," says Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurd who is Iraq`s interim Foreign Minister. "Well, this is a chance to prove that--a chance to show that no position in the new Iraq, not even the presidency, is denied to a Kurd." --With reporting by Aparisim Ghosh/ Baghdad and Timothy J. Burger and Mark Thompson/ Washington

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Published on Monday, February 28, 2005 by Television Week
Independent Press Was a Target in Iraq
by Danny Schechter
http://www.tvweek.com/article.cms?articleId=27366

With CNN`s Eason Jordan silent, or silenced, the right brain of the blogosphere has nailed a new media scalp to its belt. Mr. Jordan, who had been with CNN for 23 years, said during the World Economic Forum in Switzerland that a dozen journalists covering the war "not only [had] been killed by U.S. troops in Iraq but they had in fact been targeted," according to press accounts. Mr. Jordan quickly tried to back off his statement, but the reverberations led to his resignation. Now the issue he raised seems destined to disappear, with many believing that since he didn`t offer backup, there is nothing to the story.

Not true.

Mr. Jordan`s remarks about the targeting and killing of journalists were not invented out of whole cloth, even if he did do what executives often do: attempt to dampen a controversy that turns out to be too hot to handle.

Fox News commentators said that even raising the issue of targeting journalists was "sliming our troops." Like the Pentagon`s efforts, this was a way to dismiss the issue, even though there is evidence to make such a case.

The reality is that Jordan`s concerns have a background and context that were under-reported in our media. Before the war, the Pentagon issued warnings that sounded like threats, saying it would not guarantee the safety of journalists who were not officially "embedded" into assigned U.S. military units.

Pentagon publicist Victoria Clarke, around the time the war began, said that journalists who went out on their own were "putting themselves at risk."

On March 8, 2003, 12 days before the invasion, Kate Aidie, then a war correspondent for the BBC, said on RTE radio in Ireland that she was told by Pentagon officials "that any [satellite] uplinks by journalists would be fired on" by coalition aircraft.

What they were doing was creating an environment of intimidation and threat. This was a ploy to ensure that the reporters who did go to Iraq without Pentagon cooperation would be blamed when anything happened.

This was part of a larger strategy to keep the media in line. It was no secret that an administration that insisted "You are with us or against us" was determined to keep the media "on message" by implementing an intrusive "information dominance" strategy to monitor coverage and "manage perceptions."

The roots of this policy go back to the war in Vietnam, which many in the military felt was lost because of negative news coverage. The Pentagon was determined not to let that happen in Iraq.

In his plan for the Iraq war, according to published reports, Gen. Tommy Franks explicitly referred to the media as the "fourth front." This was an obvious reference to the "fourth estate." The Pentagon intended to win the battle of the media as well as the shooting war. To do so, it set the rules for the media.

Sadly, out of patriotic correctness, the major U.S.-based news networks went along. Jingoism often displaced journalism. Flag-waving replaced objectivity.

It takes courage just to address the issue. Consider CNN`s Christiane Amanpour`s gutsy but controversial condemnation of "disinformation at the highest levels." Or Ashleigh Banfield`s public criticism of "sanitized" coverage that probably cost her her job at MSNBC. They made clear there was an official determination to control the news at all costs.

In this atmosphere, it was inevitable that there were incidents involving journalists. Ask ITN in London what happened to the late Terry Lloyd and his team, who were driving in a clearly marked TV vehicle shot up by U.S. soldiers, who at first denied it. ITN officials said they "got nowhere" with military officials when they tried to investigate the facts surrounding the incident.

How bad was it? Ask BBC veteran John Simpson, who, accompanied by a military liaison, was nearly bombed into the next world by a U.S. jet in the North of Iraq, even when the military knew they were there. Two of his colleagues were killed.

In an article by Tim Gopsill of Britain`s National Union of Journalists, Mr. Simpson is quoted from the book "Tell Me Lies," edited by David Miller: "The independent journalists are upholding a great tradition, but my goodness they are taking a hammering. The system that allows this to happen, even encourages this to happen, is stupid and despicable."

Adds Nik Gowing of BBC World: "The trouble is that a lot of the military-particularly the American military-do not want us there. And they make it very uncomfortable for us to work. And I think that this is leading to security forces in some instances feeling it is legitimate to target us with deadly force and with impunity."

Mr. Gopsill also said that "U.S. forces detained and badly mistreated two journalists, one Portuguese and one Israeli, who they believed were spies." According to the NUJ, they were beaten. The incident was not widely reported. (Yes, Iraqi forces also harassed and mistreated journalists. They killed two foreign embeds with a missile attack.)

After two journalists died April 8, 2003, at Baghdad`s Palestine Hotel when a tank shell was lobbed into a building known by the Pentagon as a site where numerous Western media were based, Reuters called for an independent investigation. The International Federation of Journalists angrily demanded a real probe.

Phillip Knightley, a respected historian on war and media and author of "The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero and Myth-Maker From the Crimea to Kosovo," correctly said, "There will be no investigation." He added, "I believe that the occasional shots fired at media sites are not accidental and that war correspondents will now be targeted."

As a former CNN producer, I find that the Jordan incident chilled debate and diverted us from the real issue of how the U.S. military spun media coverage and why networks went along. A number of journalists covering Iraq-not just Jordan-continue to believe journalists were targeted.

The citizens-initiated World Tribunal on Iraq, which met in Rome in February, asks a question that can`t be deflected: "Are Mr. Jordan`s claims accurate?"

In its report, it joined "the calls by international media groups and the families of dead journalists for a full independent investigation by an international team of journalists who should be given the right to question members of the military."

"If independent journalists can be killed with impunity," said the report, "and executives forced out for asking about it, aren`t we facing something more serious than has been raised so far?" n

Danny Schechter, executive editor of MediaChannel and VP and executive producer of Globalvision, has been a producer at CNN and ABC. He most recently directed the documentary "WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception," about media coverage of the war in Iraq. See www.wmdthefilm.com

© 2005 Crain Communications Inc.

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Bush und die Presse, Putin und die Presse, oder wer im Glaushaus sitzt, sollte nicht mit Steinen werfen.


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Putin to Bush: You Fired Dan Rather
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/politics/administration…

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Monday, February 28, 2005; 11:43 AM

President Bush may try to manipulate, work around and undermine the American press -- but he certainly doesn`t have as much control over the media as Russian President Vladimir Putin apparently thinks he does.

In an odd exchange during the private meeting that preceded their joint news conference on Thursday, a defensive Putin reportedly expressed his belief that Bush fired CBS News anchor Dan Rather.

Richard Wolffe writes in Newsweek: "It was meant to be a heart-to-heart: just the two presidents and their translators, sitting alone inside the historic castle that overlooks the Slovak capital of Bratislava. Four years earlier, in another castle in Central Europe, George W. Bush looked Vladimir Putin in the eye and saw his trustworthy soul. But what he saw inside Putin last week was far less comforting. When Bush confronted his Russian counterpart about the freedom of the press in Russia, Putin shot back with an attack of his own: `We didn`t criticize you when you fired those reporters at CBS.`

"It`s not clear how well Putin understands the controversy that led to the dismissal of four CBS journalists over the discredited report on Bush`s National Guard service. Yet it`s all too clear how Putin sees the relationship between Bush and the American media -- just like his own. Bush`s aides have long feared that former KGB officers in Putin`s inner circle are painting a twisted picture of U.S. policy. So Bush explained how he had no power to fire American journalists. It made little difference. When the two presidents emerged for their joint press conference, one Russian reporter repeated Putin`s language about journalists getting fired. Bush (already hot after an earlier question about his spying on U.S. citizens) asked the reporter if he felt free. `They obviously planted the question,` said one of Bush`s senior aides."

John F. Dickerson writes in Time: "George Bush knew Vladimir Putin would be defensive when Bush brought up the pace of democratic reform in Russia in their private meeting at the end of Bush`s four-day, three-city tour of Europe. But when Bush talked about the Kremlin`s crackdown on the media and explained that democracies require a free press, the Russian leader gave a rebuttal that left the President nonplussed. If the press was so free in the U.S., Putin asked, then why had those reporters at CBS lost their jobs? Bush was openmouthed. `Putin thought we`d fired Dan Rather,` says a senior Administration official. `It was like something out of 1984.` "
Speaking of the Media

Dick Polman writes in the Philadelphia Inquirer that "the Jeff Gannon/James Guckert saga is far from over. It remains unclear how a graduate of a conservative training program, someone with no previous journalism experience, someone whose writings were often lifted directly from White House press releases, still managed to gain access to the White House press room, where he spent two years lobbing gentle questions at the press secretary and the President.

"And some political analysts who monitor President Bush`s relations with the media insist that Gannon (who, referring to Democrats, recently asked Bush, `How are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?`) should not be viewed as an isolated case. Rather, they contend that Gannon is symptomatic of a broader White House strategy to undermine the traditional media by disseminating the Bush message in creative new ways."

Polman quotes Larry Gross, who runs the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California: "Richard Nixon hated the press, Bill Clinton hated the press -- but they accepted the basic rules of the game. Bush has a strategy of discrediting, end-running, and even faking the news. Those prepackaged videos sent to local TV stations `looked` like news, much the way Gannon `looked` like a reporter. We`re seeing something new: Potemkin-village journalism."
Potemkin Watch

That "Potemkin village" metaphor is really on fire among liberals, by the way. (Here`s the definition, for the historically challenged.)

For instance, here`s New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd yesterday: "Mr. Bush pledges to spread democracy while his officials strive to create a Potemkin press village at home. This White House seems to prefer softball questions from a self-advertised male escort with a fake name to hardball questions from journalists with real names. . . .

"Mr. Bush and Condi Rice strut in their speeches -- the secretary of state also strutted in Wiesbaden in her foxy `Matrix`-dominatrix black leather stiletto boots -- but they shy away from taking questions from the public unless they get to vet the questions and audiences in advance."
Bubble Watch

Bush continues to talk about Social Security only where no one can talk back.

Here`s his Saturday radio address: "Now that I`m back home, I`m eager to move ahead with one of my top domestic priorities: strengthening and saving Social Security. I have already met with tens of thousands of you in nine states to discuss this important issue. During the recent congressional recess, many senators and congressmen have held their own town hall meetings to discuss Social Security reform with their constituents. For example, Senator Rick Santorum hosted forums all across Pennsylvania this week. And Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan held nearly three dozen listening sessions in his district. I am pleased with the progress of the national discussion on this issue, and I look forward to hearing everyone`s ideas when the Congress returns."

Santorum and Ryan have come face to face with skeptics and hecklers on their travels; not so Bush who has been speaking to carefully screened audiences.

Bush also announced: "Meanwhile, I`ll be visiting New Jersey and Indiana next week, and I plan to keep traveling across the country to talk about Social Security."

Bush is scheduled to hold two more of his "conversations on strengthening Social Security" on Friday, first at the Westfield Armory in Westfield, N.J., and then at the Joyce Center in Notre Dame, Ind.

It`s not clear yet how or if the audiences will be screened.

Bush is coming to New Jersey on the invitation of one of the state`s Republican congressmen, Rep. Mike Ferguson. Robert Cohen writes in the Newark Star-Ledger: "Ferguson said he did not know the details of who will be invited to the Westfield event, but he added he expected a large crowd. . . .

"Ferguson said it is important for New Jersey residents to have a dialogue with the president. The Republican congressman said he is `open` to setting up private accounts, but he wants to see how such a proposal will fit into an overall package."

In Indiana, James Wensits writes in the South Bend Tribune: "Whether Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., will be asked to take part in the president`s visit could not be confirmed Thursday, although Bayh spokeswoman Meg Keck said that no such invitation has been received.

"U.S. Rep. Chris Chocola, R-Bristol, is viewed as a likely participant, however."
Advance Team

And Bush`s advance team will have some help from an unusual lobbyist.

Glen Justice writes in the New York Times that 9-year-old Noah McCullough "will travel to a handful of states ahead of visits by the president and will go on radio programs, answer trivia questions and say a few words about Social Security. Though he is obviously not an expert (and not really a lobbyist, either), officials say the effort is a lighthearted way to underline Mr. Bush`s message."

McCullough "made a splash with his encyclopedic command of presidential history, earning five appearances on the `Tonight` show and some unusual experiences in the presidential campaign last year."
Chris Rock on Bush at the Oscars

Here`s the full text of comedian Chris Rock`s riff on Bush while hosting the Oscars last night:

"A lot of people like to bash Bush. I`m not going to bash Bush here tonight. I saw `Fahrenheit 9/11.` I think Bush is a genius. I think Bush did some things this year nobody in this room could do -- nobody in this room could pull off.

"Bush basically reapplied for his job this year. Now, can you imagine applying for a job, and while you`re applying for that job, there`s a movie in every theater in the country that shows how much you suck at that job? It`d be hard to get hired, wouldn`t it? Now I watched `Fahrenheit` and I learned some stuff, man. And Bush did some things you could never get away with at your job, man. Never, ever ever. You know, when Bush got into office, they had a surplus of money. Now, there`s like a $70 trillion deficit.

"Now just imagine you worked at the Gap. You closing out your register and it`s $70 trillion short. The average person would get in trouble for something like that, right? Not Bush. No. then -- then, he started a war. That`s cool. Support the troops. He started a war.

"Now, just imagine you worked at the Gap. You`re $70 trillion behind on your register. And then you start a war with Banana Republic, `cause you say they got toxic tank tops over there. You had the war. People are dying. A thousand Gap employees are dead, that`s right, bleeding all over the khakis. You finally take over Banana Republic. And you find out they never made tank tops in the first place."
Social Security Exit Strategy

John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei write in The Washington Post: "President Bush is still in the opening phase of a campaign to sell the public and Congress on his ambitious plans for Social Security, but some Republicans on Capitol Hill have decided it is not too early to begin pondering an exit strategy.

"With polls showing widespread skepticism of Bush`s proposed individual investment accounts and Democratic lawmakers expressing nearly uniform opposition, some allies of the president are focused on possible split-the-difference deals."
What`s an `Ownership Society`?

Jackie Calmes writes in the Wall Street Journal: "President Bush`s campaign to revamp Social Security is just the boldest stroke in a much broader effort: To rewrite the government`s social contract with citizens that was born of Franklin Roosevelt`s New Deal and expanded by Lyndon Johnson`s Great Society.

"In what Mr. Bush calls an `ownership society,` Americans would assume more of the responsibilities -- and risks -- now shouldered by government. In exchange, the theory goes, they would get the real and intangible benefits of owning their own homes, controlling their retirement savings, and using tax credits or vouchers to shop for education, job training and health insurance. . . .

"Critics say Mr. Bush`s vision is blind to economic risks facing Americans, especially lower-income workers. William Gale, a Brookings Institution economist, dismisses the president`s agenda as `the Dismantling-the-Safety-Net Society.` Some applaud his rhetoric, but say the president`s policies -- heavy on tax breaks -- don`t broaden ownership, but favor the well-off."

Carrot Time?

Robin Wright writes in The Washington Post: "The Bush administration is close to a decision to join Europe in offering incentives to Iran -- possibly including eventual membership in the World Trade Organization -- in exchange for Tehran`s formal agreement to surrender any plans to develop a nuclear weapon, according to senior U.S. officials.

"The day after returning from Europe, President Bush met Friday afternoon with the principal members of his foreign policy team to discuss requests made by German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and French President Jacques Chirac in particular."

Wright writes that the White House meeting "reflects an interest in demonstrating to the Europeans that the U.S. effort to heal the transatlantic rift extends beyond tone to substance -- over the issue that most urgently and widely divides the allies."


The Anti-Oscar

Mike Cidoni writes for the Associated Press from the Golden Raspberry awards in Los Angeles: "President Bush won the worst-actor award for his appearance in news and archival footage of Michael Moore`s satiric documentary `Fahrenheit 9/11.` "
Cheney Watch

U.S. News`s Washington Whispers column reports that "insiders" have "revived an old rumor that Vice President Cheney would retire for `health reasons` " -- and be replaced by Condoleezza Rice.

© 2005 washingtonpost.com

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Wie der Herr so sein Gescherr!

March 1, 2005
U.S. Cites Array of Rights Abuses by the Iraqi Government in 2004
By BRIAN KNOWLTON
International Herald Tribune
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/01/politics/01rights.html?hp&…

WASHINGTON, Feb. 28 - The State Department on Monday detailed an array of human rights abuses last year by the Iraqi government, including torture, rape and illegal detentions by police officers and functionaries of the interim administration that took power in June.

In the Bush administration`s bluntest description of human rights transgressions by the American-supported government, the report said the Iraqis "generally respected human rights, but serious problems remained" as the government and American-led foreign forces fought a violent insurgency. It cited "reports of arbitrary deprivation of life, torture, impunity, poor prison conditions - particularly in pretrial detention facilities - and arbitrary arrest and detention."

The lengthy discussion came in a chapter on Iraq in the department`s annual report on human rights, which pointedly criticized not only countries that had been found chronically deficient, like North Korea, Syria and Iran, but also some close American allies, including Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

The allegations of abuses by an Iraqi government installed by the United States and still heavily influenced by it provided an unusual element to the larger report. The report did not address incidents in Iraq in which Americans were involved, like the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, which came to light in 2004.

A senior State Department official said the criticism of Iraq was in keeping with the administration`s approach. "What it shows is that we don`t look the other way," the official said. "There are countries we support and that are friends, and when they have practices that don`t meet international standards, we don`t hesitate to call a spade a spade."

The official said Iraqi officials accepted that there had been problems and were correcting their practices. "The Iraqis are not in denial on this," the official added.

The report emphasized the larger accomplishments of the Iraqi people, as symbolized by the successful elections of Jan. 30. But it gave extensive details about complaints that the government had violated human rights provisions of the transitional law put in place by the United States and the Iraqi Governing Council shortly after the 2003 invasion.

These included reports that police officers in Basra were involved in killing 10 Baath Party members; that the police in Baghdad arrested, interrogated and killed 12 kidnappers of three police officers on Oct. 16, 2004, and that corruption was a problem at every level of government.

The document cited without comment a report by Human Rights Watch, an independent advocacy group, that "torture and ill treatment of detainees by police was commonplace," allegedly including "beatings with cables and hosepipes, electric shocks to their earlobes and genitals, food and water deprivation."

In one case, the report said, enough evidence had been gathered "to prosecute police officers in Baghdad who were systematically raping and torturing female detainees." Two of them received prison sentences, while four were demoted and reassigned.

Prison conditions in Iraq had shown "significant improvement" after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the department said, but many prisons still fell short of international standards.

There were also reports of police officers making false arrests to extort money from the families of detainees, and of an Iraqi ministry having members of a political party arrested in order to occupy their offices. "Reportedly," the document said, "coerced confessions and interrogation continued to be the favored method of investigation by police."

The broader annual report, which is required by Congress and is formally titled the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, described rights abuses in other allied countries in notably tough language.

The report said that the Saudi record of abuses in 2004 "far exceeds the advances," that Egypt`s and Pakistan`s records were poor, and that Jordan had "many problems." It criticized all four countries over allegations of abusing and torturing prisoners.

But the document also struck optimistic notes at times. It cited the success of democratic elections in Afghanistan, Iraq and Ukraine, and suggested that developments in those places, coming as President Bush continued to promote democracy as a counter to terrorism, might be helping to embolden people elsewhere to shed a hopelessness about change.

In much of the broader Middle East, "people are increasingly conscious of the freedom deficit in the region," Under Secretary Paula J. Dobriansky said in introducing the report.

The official attention paid to Egypt and Saudi Arabia is not new, but some of the language in the report was unexpectedly sharp. In Saudi Arabia, for example, it said: "There were credible reports of torture and abuse of prisoners by security forces, arbitrary arrests and incommunicado detentions. The religious police continued to intimidate, abuse and detain citizens and foreigners. Most trials were closed."

Egypt, it said, restricted many basic rights, and its security forces continued to mistreat prisoners, leading to at least 10 deaths in custody.

The report on Iraq also covered the year in which the prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib were uncovered.

An acting assistant secretary of state, Michael G. Kozak, was asked Monday how that scandal had affected the administration`s latest evaluation. "Look," he said, "the events at Abu Ghraib were a stain on the honor of the U.S.; there`s no two ways about it."

What mattered, he said, was whether a government worked to redress the abuses that do occur. "I think you`ve seen the U.S. being very active," he said.

The report, coming days after some critics suggested that President Bush had been insufficiently tough with President Vladimir V. Putin, listed several complaints about Russia. It criticized the central government`s consolidation of power at the expense of the regions, its restriction of news media, and its allowing of political pressure to taint the judiciary.

It said China, which has a growing commercial relationship with the United States, continued to abuse prisoners, harass activists and restrict religious practices.

North Korea was condemned for continued "brutal and repressive" treatment of its people; Iran for allowing citizen`s freedom to "deteriorate;" and Syria for widespread use of torture, poor prison conditions and mass arrests of Kurds.

Sudan`s human rights record was called extremely poor, both for restricting freedoms and for the continuing violence by government-linked militias in Darfur Province.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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March 1, 2005
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Allah and Democracy Can Get Along Fine
By Dilip Hiro
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/01/opinion/01hiro.html

Doha, Qatar

WITH the emergence of the Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance as the majority party in Iraq`s National Assembly, the scene is set for the drafting of a permanent constitution that will specify the Shariah, or Islamic law, as the main source of Iraqi legislation. This prospect is sending a chill down the spines of many Westerners, who see it as a preamble to the rise of a theocratic regime in Baghdad that would be a far cry from the liberal, secular Iraq envisioned by the Bush administration.

But such concerns are unwarranted. Just as in the West there are many constitutions based in varying ways on Christian morality, there are several models of an Islamic state. Instead of fretting, Americans and other Westerners would do better to examine how Iraq`s neighbors have melded religion and government, and how well or badly they have succeeded in joining the modern world.

Obviously, the greatest worry is that Iraq will follow in the footsteps of Iran. Tehran`s theocracy is based on an idea called "the rule of the jurisprudent," a concept that was developed in its modern form by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the 1979 revolution. Under the rule, clerics participate in the day-to-day running of the country, and have the power to ensure that all laws and regulations conform with Islam and the country`s constitution.

It is highly unlikely, however, that Iraq will choose this path. Sunnis do not subscribe to the doctrine of rule of the jurisprudent, which is rooted in Shiite history and ideology. And while Iran is 90 percent Shiite, at least 35 percent of Iraqis are Sunnis, including both Arabs and Kurds. Since the interim constitution gives the Sunni Arabs and Kurds veto power over the permanent constitution when it is put to a public referendum, there is no chance that a Shiite legal concept will become the foundation of the country`s law.

What Westerners tend to forget is that Iran is not the only Persian Gulf state to mix elements of Islam and democracy. Consider, for example, Iraq`s neighbor Saudi Arabia and the small state of Qatar.

Last month Saudi Arabia held elections for seats in local councils for the first time in its 73-year history, a step that Qatar had taken six years earlier. The Saudi government made a great show of heralding the vote as historic, and cleverly sponsored an international antiterrorism conference in Riyadh, the capital, on the eve of the poll to attract foreign journalists who might otherwise not have bothered to cover the local elections.

But this official enthusiasm cannot hide the fact that the Saudi regime first promised political reform - including a written constitution and a largely elected national "consultative council" - in 1962. Thirty years passed before King Fahd issued the country`s Basic Law; and he did so by royal decree rather than through any legislative process. When the long-promised consultative council was created in 1993, its members were chosen by the king rather than elected, and authorized merely to question cabinet ministers` decisions.

This helps explain why Saudis were so distrustful of their government`s promise of taking a first step toward democracy that only a quarter of eligible voters registered, and only two-thirds of those went to the polls. And, of course, women were not allowed to vote, just as they are not allowed to drive and are required to veil themselves from head to toe. The religious police, armed with canes, often hit the ankles of those women who dare to show them in public.

In addition, alcohol, movies and dancing in public are banned. There is strict censorship of the news media and of books, whether published domestically or imported. Only Muslims are allowed to worship. Christians are not even permitted to wear jewelry containing a cross.

Islam is the state religion of Saudi Arabia, and all legislation is derived exclusively from the Shariah. Members of the governing House of Saud belong to the puritanical Wahhabi sect within Sunni Islam, and the religious legitimacy of the royal household is underwritten by the Supreme Religious Council, nominated by the king.

Things are quite different in Qatar. As the Saudi men went to the polls, officials and the news media here watched with a mix of quiet approval at the idea and regret at the disenfranchisement of women. Most of all, it made Qataris feel proud of their own political system. After all, they had their first local elections, based on universal franchise, in March 1999.

As in Saudi Arabia, the ruling family of Qatar is Wahhabi. And, here too, the Islamic Shariah is the main source of legislation - it states in Article 1 of the Qatari Constitution, which was ratified by referendum in 2003, that "Islam is the state`s religion and the Islamic Shariah is the main source of its legislations."

Nonetheless, Qatar has a relatively democratic political system. The Constitution created a 45-member Parliament, called the Advisory Council, with 30 elected members. It may not be a full legislature by Western standards, but it is authorized to approve the state budget and monitor the executive authority, which rests with the ruler, called the emir.

Article 50 of the Constitution, which assures the freedom to worship, applies to all. The Anglican archdeacon for the Persian Gulf region is based in Doha. Christian groups can congregate in halls or private villas, where ministers, priests or pious laymen can conduct worship.

Equally important is Article 48 of the Constitution, assuring freedom of the press. In March 1998 the emir, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani, abolished the Ministry of Information, thus ending censorship of print and broadcast media. The state-owned news media entities became independent public institutions. And, of course, the law widened the horizons of the most prominent Arab news source, Al Jazeera, which was established in 1996.

Women in Qatar are free to drive and wear jeans and blouses; you even see them in bikinis at the beaches and swimming pools. Women have the same political rights as men. In the first local elections more women voted than men; in 2003 a woman won a seat on the 29-member Municipal Council. The minister of education is a woman. Alcohol is served in the guest rooms of all 5-star and 4-star hotels. In my 4-star hotel, there is a bar and a disco. Such an arrangement would be unthinkable in Saudi Arabia.

Not that Qatar is perfect by any means. But if two homogenous Sunni nations, both with rulers belonging to the Wahhabi sect, can be so different, it is unlikely that Iraq, with its unique mix of religious and ethnic groups, will emulate an existing fundamentalist republic or monarchy. Instead of worrying about the mixing of faith and law, let us see how the emergent Islamic Republic of Iraq creates a category by itself among democratic yet religious states of the Persian Gulf.

Dilip Hiro is the author of "The Essential Middle East: A Comprehensive Guide" and the forthcoming "Iranian Labyrinth."

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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February 28, 2005
U.S. Urges Judge to Dismiss Suit on Chemical Use in Vietnam War
By WILLIAM GLABERSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/28/nyregion/28orange.html

The Justice Department is urging a federal judge in Brooklyn to dismiss a lawsuit aimed at forcing a re-examination of one of the most contentious issues of the Vietnam War, the use of the defoliant Agent Orange.

The civil suit, filed last year on behalf of millions of Vietnamese, claimed that American chemical companies committed war crimes by supplying the military with Agent Orange, which contained dioxin, a highly toxic substance.

The suit seeks what could be billions of dollars of damages from the companies and the environmental cleanup of Vietnam.

In preparation for legal arguments scheduled for today in United States District Court in Brooklyn, Justice Department lawyers filed a brief last month that described the suit as a dangerous threat to the president`s power to wage war and an effort at a "breathtaking expansion" of the powers of federal courts.

Though the case drew little attention when it was first filed, it has become an important test of the reach of American courts, drawing worldwide interest and setting off a fierce debate among international-law experts.

"The implications of plaintiffs` claims are astounding," the government`s filing said, "as they would (if accepted) open the courthouse doors of the American legal system for former enemy nationals and soldiers claiming to have been harmed by the United States Armed Forces" during war.

One of the plaintiffs` lawyers, Constantine P. Kokkoris, said in an interview that the Justice Department`s argument was misplaced because the government had not been sued in the case. He said the lawsuit raised questions about the conduct of the corporations that were limited to their supplying what he called contaminated herbicide.

The chemical companies argue that they produced Agent Orange following government specifications and that its use in Vietnam was necessary to protect American soldiers. They have long argued that there is no clear link between exposure to Agent Orange and many of the health problems attributed to it.

The judge, Jack B. Weinstein of Federal District Court in Brooklyn, said last year that the case, a class action on behalf of what could be four million Vietnamese, faced many legal hurdles.

But during a hearing in March he said it raised important issues and "has to go forward seriously," suggesting that it might eventually need to be decided by the United States Supreme Court.

He asked from the bench whether precedents concerning the treatment of makers of Zyklon B, the hydrogen cyanide gas used in Nazi death camps, might be applicable to the claims against the companies that supplied Agent Orange to the military.

After World War II, two manufacturers of Zyklon B were convicted of war crimes and executed.

Agent Orange was widely used in Vietnam, often to clear jungle that American officials said gave the enemy cover. Its use was discontinued in 1971. But it has survived as a confounding legal issue.

In 1984, after years of court battles, seven American chemical companies paid $180 million to settle a class action suit by American Vietnam veterans who claimed that it caused cancer, birth defects and other health problems.

Judge Weinstein, who also presided over those cases, said in a series of controversial rulings at the time that the veterans would have had grave difficulty proving a link between their health problems and Agent Orange. Some scientists say the link would be easier to prove today.

Because of the federal government`s legal immunity, it was not part of the 1984 settlement and was not named as a defendant in the new suit on behalf of the Vietnamese.

Thousands of pages of legal arguments have been filed in preparation for today`s arguments, including experts` opinions and friend-of-the-court briefs.

International law experts have weighed in on both sides on the central issue, whether Agent Orange should be considered a "poison" that was barred during warfare by international law.

George P. Fletcher, an international law professor at Columbia University, wrote on behalf of the Vietnamese that "in warfare it is permissible `to stand and deliver`- to look the enemy squarely in the eye and shoot him - but not to look the other way and then use dioxin" to poison his food, land and water.

But, writing for the chemical companies, W. Michael Reisman, an international law expert at Yale, concluded that no treaty or principle of international law that was accepted by the United States during the Vietnam era declared herbicides to be poisons barred during warfare.

"There was no prohibition on the use of herbicides as a military instrument," he wrote.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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Road map to Damascus
http://www.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,3604,1427418,00.ht…

Leader
Tuesday March 1, 2005

Guardian
It is never a pleasant feeling to be excluded from a party to which nearly everyone you know has been invited. But Syria has more to worry about than not being asked to today`s London meeting on Palestinian reform. This is not a fully fledged peace conference but it could create momentum and will demonstrate the commitment of the international community to helping the newly elected Mahmoud Abbas and restarting negotiations with Israel. Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, will be on hand to underline Washington`s wish to be actively involved in the post-Arafat era. Europe will be well represented, as will other Arab states such as Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The event, chaired by Tony Blair, is a reminder of his wish to make Israel-Palestine a high priority and to hold George Bush to his pledge to "spend political capital" on this most charged of issues during his second term. With an election looming Mr Blair wants to make amends with Labour voters for backing Mr Bush all the way to Baghdad.

Syria`s absence is another illustration of its mounting isolation. In the last two weeks alone the regime of president Bashar al-Assad has been accused of assassinating the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafiq Hariri, as well as being behind the suicide bombing that killed five Israelis in Tel Aviv on Friday. It has denied involvement in both of them. The Tel Aviv incident was the first such attack since Mr Abbas was elected Palestinian president in January. He described it as a "terrorist" act intended to "sabotage" the peace process and pointed the finger at an unnamed "third party". The Israelis, making hay while the sun shines, have openly blamed Damascus. But other governments have their suspicions too. The US and Europe differ in their attitudes to Hizbullah, the Lebanese Shia movement which is both a political party and guerrilla force, and is useful to both Iran and Syria. But there is no tolerance for Syria`s links with the Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Hardly surprising then that Mr Assad warned yesterday that he now feared an armed attack by the US.

The Syrian leader was feeling the heat long before these two incidents. The US has accused him of allowing insurgents - responsible for atrocities such as yesterday`s horrific bombing in Hilla - to cross the border into Iraq. That may explain the handover of Sabawi Ibrahim al-Tikriti, accused of directing the insurgency from Syria. This was welcomed by Jack Straw, with a hint of menace, as a sign that Damascus was "reassessing its strategic position". Mass demonstrations in Beirut, yesterday triggering the resignation of the pro-Syrian prime minister, have added to diplomatic pressure to withdraw the thousands of Syrian troops who have been in Lebanon since 1976. This is no American plot: the UN resolution calling for withdrawal is sponsored jointly by the US and France. Part of Syria`s reasoning is to prevent Lebanon making a separate peace with Israel while the issue of Israel`s occupation of the Golan Heights remains unresolved.

Ominously, Mr Assad says he is reminded of the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. But it seems unlikely that another US-led war for regime change is in the offing. There is no WMD pretext as there was in the Iraqi case. But it is right that Syria leaves Lebanon and refrains from undermining the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. It is right too, that Ariel Sharon be encouraged to exercise restraint, to go ahead with his withdrawal from Gaza and stop grabbing any more West Bank land. People of good will, in the region and beyond, should be doing all they can to help at this crucial time. With luck, today`s efforts in London could bring a return to the stalled "road map" to peace and vindicate those who have dared to be optimistic recently. That would give real content to the much overused phrase "the new Middle East".
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

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

http://www.juancole.com/
Tuesday, March 01, 2005

Lebanon Realignment and Syria

It is often pointed out that presidents get too much praise and blame for the economy, since the domestic economy has its own rhythms. We are now going to see everything that happens in the Middle East attributed to George W. Bush, whether he had much to do with it or not (usually not).

What is now Lebanon consists of relatively hilly territory along the eastern Mediterranean coast. The abrupt rise of the land from the sea to the mountains is what led the French to refer to it as the Levant (i.e., "the rising (land)." The mountains allowed small and often heterodox religious groups to survive, since the mountain inhabitants were relatively isolated and central governments had a difficult time getting hold of them. On the broad plains of Syria, governments could encourage conversion to Islam, then to Shiism, then to Sunnism, and most of the population went along. In the mountains near the coast, the population stuck to its guns. Thus, the Maronite Christians resisted conversion to Islam, as did many Eastern Orthodox Christains. The success the Ismaili government of medieval Egypt had in converting Muslims to Shiite Islam was long-lived, though most of these Shiites went over to the rival "Twelver" branch of Shiism that is now practiced in Iraq and Iran. Likewise, Egyptian Ismailism spun off an esoteric sect, the Druze, who survive in the Shouf Mountains and elsewhere in Lebanon. In the coastal cities and in the Biqaa valley near Syria, the population adopted Sunni Islam with the Sunni revival of Saladin and his successors in the medieval period in Egypt, which continued under the Sunni Ottoman Empire (1516-1918 in Syria). (Egypt has been since the 1100s staunchly Sunni).

In the 1600s and 1700s, the Druze were the most powerful community on the Levantine coast. But in the 1800s the Druze were eclipsed by the Maronite Christians, both because the latter had a population boom and because they grew wealthy off their commercial ties to France and their early adoption of silk growing and modern commerce.

When the French conquered Syria in 1920, they decided to make it easier to rule by dividing it. They carved off what is now Lebanon and gerrymandered it so that it had a Christian majority. In 1920, Maronite Catholics were probably 40 percent of the population, and with Greek Orthodox and others the Christian population came to 51 percent. The Shiites were probably only about 18 percent of the population then. Both under the French Mandate (1920-1946) and in the early years of the Lebanese Republic, the Maronites were the dominant political force. When Lebanon became independent in 1943, the system was set up so that Christians always had a 6 to 5 majority in parliament.

Lebanon had a relatively free parliamentary democracy 1943-1956. In 1957, I have been told by a former US government official, the US CIA intervened covertly in the Lebanese elections to ensure that the Lebanese constitution would be amended to allow far-right Maronite President Camille Chamoun (1952-1958) to have a second term. As the Library of Congress research division ("country studies") notes:


In 1957 the question of the reelection of Shamun [Chamoun] was added to these problems of ideological cleavage. In order to be reelected, the president needed to have the Constitution amended to permit a president to succeed himself. A constitutional amendment required a two-thirds vote by the Chamber of Deputies, so Shamun and his followers had to obtain a majority in the May-June 1957 elections. Shamun`s followers did obtain a solid majority in the elections, which the opposition considered "rigged," with the result that some non-Christian leaders with pan-Arab sympathies were not elected. Deprived of a legal platform from which to voice their political opinions, they sought to express them by extralegal means.


This account agrees with what I was told in every particular except that it does not explicitly mention the CIA engineering of the election. Chamoun was unacceptable to the Druze and to the Sunni nationalists newly under the influence of Gamal Abdul Nasser in Egypt. A small civil war broke out. Chamoun lied to Eisenhower and told him that the Druze goatherds were Communists, and Ike dutifully sent in the Marines to save Chamoun in 1958. Thereafter the Maronites erected a police state, with much power in the Dueuxieme Bureau or secret police. Since Washington had already overthrown the democratically elected government of Iran in 1953, and is said to have helped install the Baath in power in Iraq, it may well be that the Illiberal Age in the Middle East of the second half of the 20th century was in important part the doing of Washington and was for Cold War purposes. (Those namby pamby democracies were just too weak to forestall sly Communists).

The Christian-dominated system of Lebanon fell apart for a number of reasons. The Israelis expelled 100,000 or so Palestinians north to Lebanon in 1948. The Christians of Lebanon refused to give the Palestinians Lebanese citizenship, since the Palestinians were 80 to 85 percent Muslim and their becoming Lebanese would have endangered Christian dominance. Over time the stateless Palestinians living in wretched camps grew to 300,000. (In contrast, the Maronite elite gave the Armenians who immigrated citizenship so fast it would make your head spin.)

In the second half of the 20th century, the Lebanese Shiites grew much faster, being poor tobacco farmers with large families, than did the increasingly urban and middle class Maronites. Maronites emigrated on a large scale (it is said that there are 6 million Lebanese outside Lebanon and only 3 million inside), to North America (think Danny Thomas and Salma Hayek) and to South America (think Carlos Saul Menem of Argentina and Shakira of Columbia).

By 1975 the Maronites were no longer the dominant force in Lebanon. Of a 3 million population, the Shiites had grown to be 35 percent (and may now be 40 percent), and the Maronites had shrunk to a quarter, and are probably now 20 percent. The Shiites were mobilizing both politically and militarily. So, too, were the Palestinians.

The Maronite elite found the newly assertive Muslims of the south intolerable, and a war broke out between the Maronite party-militia, the Phalange (modeled on Franco`s and Mussolini`s Brown Shirts) and the PLO. The war raged through 1975 and into 1976 (I saw some of it with my own eyes). The PLO was supported by the Druze and the Sunnis. They began winning against the Maronites.

The prospect of a PLO-dominated Lebanon scared the Syrians. Yasser Arafat would have been able to provoke battles with Israel at will, into which Syria might be drawn. Hafez al-Asad determined to intervene to stop it. First he sought a green light from the Israelis through Kissinger. He got it.

In spring of 1976 the Syrians sent 40,000 troops into Lebanon and massacred the Palestinian fighters, saving the Maronites, with Israeli and US approval. Since the Baathists in Syria should theoretically have been allies of the Palestinians, it was the damnedest thing. But it was just Realpolitik on al-Asad`s part. Syria felt that its national interests were threatened by developments in Lebanon and that it was in mortal danger if it did not occupy its neighbor.

The Druze never forgave the Syrians for the intervention, or for killing their leader, Kamal Jumblatt. Although the Palestinians were sullen and crushed, they declined as a factor in Lebanese politics once they were largely disarmed, since they still lack citizenship and face employment and other restrictions. The UN statistics show almost 400,000 Palestinians in Lebanon, half of them in squalid camps. But some social scientists believe that because of massive out-migration to Europe, there are actually less than 200,000 in the country now.

In 1982 the Israelis mounted an unprovoked invasion of Lebanon as Ariel Sharon sought to destroy the remnants of the weakened PLO in Beirut. He failed, but the war killed nearly 20,000 persons, about half of them innocent civilians. Ziad Jarrah had a long-term grudge about that. The Israelis militarily occupied southern Lebanon, refusing to relinquish sovereign Lebanese territory.

The Shiites of the south were radicalized by the Israeli occupation and threw up the Hizbullah party-militia, which pioneered suicide bombs and roadside bombs, and forced the Israeli occupiers out in 2000.

One foreign occupation had been ended, but the Syrians retained about 14,000 troops in the Biqa Valley. The Israeli withdrawal weakened the Syrians in Lebanon, since many Lebanese had seen the Syrians as a bulwark against Israeli expansionism, but now Damascus appeared less needed.

Over time the Maronites came to feel that the Syrians had outstayed their welcome. So both they and the Druze wanted a complete Syrian withdrawal by the early zeroes.

In the meantime, Syria gradually had gained a new client in Lebanon, the Shiites, and especially Hizbullah. Likewise many Sunnis supported the Syrians.

The Syrians made a big mistake in growing attached to Gen. Emile Lahoud, their favorite Lebanese president. When his 6-year term was about to expire last fall, the Syrians intervened to have the Lebanese constitution amended to allow him to remain for another 3 years. Across the board, the Lebanese public was angered and appalled at this foreign tinkering with their constitution.

Rafiq al-Hariri resigned over the constitutional change. He was replaced as prime minister by another Sunni, Omar Karami of Tripoli in northern Lebanon.

The assassination of Rafiq al-Hariri, the popular multi-billionnaire Sunni prime minister (1992-1998 and 2000-2004), angered a broad swathe of the Sunni community, convincing them it was time for the Syrians to go. Despite the lack of any real evidence for the identity of the assassin, the Lebanese public fixed on the Syrians as the most likely culprit. The Sunnis, the Druze and the Maronites have seldom agreed in history. The last time they all did, it was about the need to end the French Mandate, which they made happen in 1943. This cross-confessional unity helps explain how the crowds managed to precipitate the downfall of the government of PM Omar Karami.

If Lebanese people power can force a Syrian withdrawal, the public relations implications may be ambiguous for Tel Aviv. After the US withdrawal from Iraq, Israeli dominance of the West Bank and Gaza will be the last military occupation of major territory in the Middle East. People in the region, in Europe, and in the US itself may begin asking why, if Syria had to leave Lebanon, Israel should not have to leave the West Bank and Gaza.

I don`t think Bush had anything much to do with the current Lebanese national movement except at the margins. Walid Jumblatt, the embittered son of Kamal whom the Syrians defeated in 1976 at the American behest, said he was inspired by the fall of Saddam. But this sort of statement from a Druze warlord strikes me as just as manipulative as the news conferences of Ahmad Chalabi, who is also inspired by Saddam`s fall. Jumblatt has a long history of anti-Israeli and anti-American sentiment that makes his sudden conversion to neoconism likely a mirage. He has wanted the Syrians back out since 1976, so it is not plausible that anything changed for him in 2003.

The Lebanese are still not entirely united on a Syrian military withdrawal. Supporters of outgoing PM Omar Karami rioted in Tripoli on Monday. Hizbullah leader Hasan Nasrallah still supports the Syrians and has expressed anxieties about the Hariri assassination and its aftermath leading to renewed civil war (an argument for continued Syrian military presence).

Much of the authoritarianism in the Middle East since 1945 had actually been supported (sometimes imposed) by Washington for Cold War purposes. The good thing about the democratization rhetoric coming out of Washington (which apparently does not apply to Algeria, Tunisia, Jordan, Yemen, Uzbekistan, and other allies against al-Qaeda) is that it encourages the people to believe they have an ally if they take to the streets to end the legacy of authoritarianism.

But Washington will be sorely tested if Islamist crowds gather in Tunis to demand the ouster of Bin Ali. We`ll see then how serious the rhetoric about people power really is.

posted by Juan @ [url3/1/2005 06:27:00 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/03/lebanon-realignment-and-syria-it-is.html[/url]

Negotiations Continue on Formation of Iraqi Government

Al-Hayat: A Fallujah notable, Khalid Fakhri al-Jamili, said Monday that the Americans were engaged in a large-scale set of attacks on cities in Anbar province such as Ramadi, Hit, Hadithah and Aana, which had the prospect of reducing them to Fallujah-like states of destruction. He warned that the US was pursuing a burnt earth policy so as to compell the Sunni Arabs to participate in the new political process.

Rida Jawad Taqi of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq said that any government formed by Ibrahim Jaafari will ask the Americans to speed up the transfer of the security file to a completely Iraqi administration. He added, "The Jaafari government will support any Iraqi-on-Iraqi dialogue to resolve the security crisis in the most tension-filled regions, such as Anbar, Salahuddin and Mosul provinces."

A working group of members of the victorious United Iraqi Alliance said Monday that it was negotiating the apportionment of cabinet positions among member parties of the coalition. It was advised by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani not to yield to the temptation to haggle, but rather to compromise for the sake of unity. Sistani urged on them the principle that "The minority must serve the opinion of the majority" as long as it did not lead to the marginalization of any group. The political coordinator of the "Shiite Political Council," Ali Faisal al-Lami, said that the most pressing issue was calling an opening session of parliament. He complained that the Kurdish Alliance and the "National Democratic" bloc of Iyad Allawi wanted to postpone the seating of parliment.

One UIA official told al-Hayat that the compromises for forming a government so far included giving the presidency and some cabinet posts to the Kurds, and the speaker of the house position to the Sunni Arabs. The identity of the speaker of the house would depend on his popularity with Sunnis and the approval of some Sunni Arab groups that had boycotted the elections.

Al-Lami said that the Association of Muslim Scholars has said it would participate in drafting the constitution, but has not said whether it would accept positions in the new government.

Abdul Karim Mahoud al-Muhammadawi, leader of the Marsh Arab Hizbullah party in the UIA, complained about the Kurds using strong arm tactics to force the other groups to acquiesce in its goals, such as the recognition of their Peshmerga militia as the military power in the north and their possession of the city of Kirkuk. He said he did not rule out that "America will use the Kurdish bloc as a card with which to pressure those parties, with the direction of which Washington does not agree." He also said that Sunni Arabs had to recognize that they were duped into not participating in the elections and that the boycott had not been in their best interests.

Abdul Salam al-Kubaisi of the Association of Muslim Scholars said that whatever negotiations were conducted about their participation in the political process would never imply that they might "give up its nationalist and Islamic principles concerning the withdrawal of the American forces and the establishment of a government through free elections untainted by foreign pressures."

posted by Juan @ [url3/1/2005 06:14:00 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/03/negotiations-continue-on-formation-of.html[/url]

Dawa Party Background

Aaron Glantz gives an overview of the Dawa Party of Ibrahim Jaafari since 1980. One thing I would quibble with is that the dispute in the late 1980s was not over how close to be to the Iranian regime. It was over whether to keep the party autonomous or meld it in to a simple loyalty to Khomeini, the Supreme Jurisprudent. Jaafari and other lay leaders didn`t want to just become Khomeini`s Party of God, but wanted Dawa to keep its own identity as a political party. For this reason a lot of lay Dawa leaders started saying that they followed Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah in Beirut; he was conveniently far away.

A scholarly survey of Dawa and its relationship with the Shiite clergy by Keiko Sakai is now available on the Web.

Things have changed, and I am not at all suggesting that a vindictive attitude is appropriate, but Dawa has a background as a terrorist organization. While in Tehran, it spun off a shadowy set of special ops units generically called "Islamic Jihad," which operated in places like Kuwait and Lebanon. The Dawa`s Islamic Jihad appears to have been at the nexus of splinter groups that later, in 1982, began to coalesce into Hezbollah (the 1983 truck bombing of US Marines is often blamed on "Hezbollah," but that organization barely existed then.) The current al-Dawa leadership repudiates these anti-West actions, and blames them on cells of al-Dawa temporarily taken over by Iranian elements. The arrest lists do not support this excuse. No one seems to want to bring up the following:


U.S. News & World Report

December 26, 1983 / January 2, 1984

The New Face of Mideast Terrorism

A new brand of terrorism confronting the U.S. in the Mideast was demonstrated in the closing days of 1983 when a suicide bomber wrecked the American Embassy in Kuwait.

Actions that once were hallmarks of Mideast radicals -- takeovers of buildings, hijackings of airliners and seizing of hostages -- are waning. In their place: Terrorism sponsored by governments -- notably Iran and Syria -- and carried out by Moslem fanatics fired by hatred of the U.S. and a desire for martyrdom.

Prompted as much by current issues as by ideology, the new terrorism is more lethal, widespread and harder to contain than terrorism of the 1970s.

U.S. officials blamed the December 12 bombing of their embassy in Kuwait on ``Islamic fundamentalists`` of the Shiite sect, backed by Iran and Syria.

The Americans charged that the attack was ``clearly connected`` to three disastrous bombings in Beirut -- one in April that killed more than 60 people at the U.S. Embassy and two suicide attacks in October that killed more than 240 American servicemen at the Marine barracks and 58 soldiers at the French peacekeeping headquarters. Shiites also are blamed for a bomb that killed 61 persons at an Israeli command center in southern Lebanon in November.

Suspicion for the attacks in Lebanon centered on one group -- the Islamic Jihad [Holy War], a secretive Shiite unit based in Syrian-controlled eastern Lebanon. It is closely linked to the Iranian regime of the Ayatollah Khomeini, who calls the U.S. the ``great Satan.``

The terrorist who detonated the truckload of explosives at the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait was identified as a 25-year-old Iraqi belonging to an outlawed Moslem unit, the Iranian Dawa Group.



And this:


The Associated Press

February 11, 1984, Saturday

Trial Of Bomb Blast Defendants Opens

By ALY MAHMOUD (KUWAIT)

Twenty-one defendants accused of bombing the U.S. and French Embassies last December were formally arraigned today, as their trial began under extreme security.

To be tried in absentia are four defendants who are at large, the prosecutor general said.

Five people were killed and 86 injured in the rash of bombings on Dec. 12. Besides the U.S. and French embassies, four Kuwaiti targets were bombed.

The prosecution has demanded the death penalty for 19 of the defendants. The others are believed to have played a lesser role in the bombings in and around the capital of this oil-rich Arab nation . . . Of the other defendants, 17 are Iraqis; two, Lebanese, three, Kuwaitis and two are stateless. Most of them said they belonged to Al-Dawa (Islamic Call) Party, an Iraqi movement of Shiite Moslem fanatics who are pro-Iranian, said court sources who asked not to be identified.



And this:


The Associated Press

September 21, 1986, Sunday

Underground Iraqi Group Threatens French Hostages

BEIRUT, Lebanon

An Iraqi opposition group warned Sunday that French hostages in Lebanon will suffer if two Iraqis deported from France last February are not allowed to return to Paris soon. The statement was issued by the Beirut-based regional office of the Dawa Party, which is made up of Iraqi Shiite Moslems and supports mainly Shiite Iran in its 6-year-old war with Iraq. Iraq`s government is made up mainly of Sunni Moslems. France deported the two students, Fawzi Hamzeh and Hassan Kheireddin, reported to be Dawa members, along with 11 other Middle Easterners after a series of terrorist bombings. The pro-Iranian Islamic Jihad organization, which has close ties with Dawa, said in March that it killed French hostage Michel Seurat in retaliation for the deportation. His body was not found . . .



and this:


The Associated Press

December 27, 1986, Saturday

Five Groups Claim Responsibility; Iraq Accuses Iran

BYLINE: By HAFEZ ABDEL-GHAFFAR

DATELINE: DHAHRAN, Saudi Arabia

BODY:
Five groups in Lebanon claimed responsibility for the attempted hijacking of an Iraqi jet, but conflicting accounts remained of what happened before the jetliner crashed, killing at least 62 people. Iraqi Airways flight 163 was en route to Amman, Jordan, from Baghdad, Iraq, on Christmas Day when it crash landed in northern Saudi Arabia. The death toll was thought to be the highest in a hijacking or attempted hijacking in the history of air piracy . . . Another an anonymous caller to a Western news agency claimed responsibility on behalf of Islamic Jihad, or Islamic Holy War, a fundamentalist Shiite Moslem faction loyal to Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini . . . He told a Western news agency the hijackers acted in cooperation with the Dawa party of pro-Iranian Iraqi Shiites. The caller demanded the release of two hijackers he said were arrested after the crash.



I have no idea if Jaafari was involved in any of this, though he admits to running attacks in the 1980s against the Saddam regime in Iraq. I am just saying that the Dawa Party has a history that must be recognized if we are to assess the meaning of it coming to power in Baghdad today.

Former terrorists often come to power-- Menachem Begin, Nelson Mandela, etc. etc. The successful ones are able to develop a new and inclusive political style and to put away the violence and rashness of their youth. Begin in his memoirs had actually boasted about shooting down innocent Palestinians at Deir Yassin, but then he made peace with Egypt. Mandela reached out to the Afrikaaners. The way Jaafari is talking, of including the Sunni Arabs, is promising. Is he a Mandela?

posted by Juan @ [url3/1/2005 06:02:00 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/03/dawa-party-background-aaron-glantz.html[/url]

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Noch ein Artikel zu den verzwickten Verhältnissen im Libanon.

FPIF Policy Report
February 2005
The Dangerous Implications of the Hariri Assassination and the U.S. Response
http://www.fpif.org/papers/0502hariri.html

By Stephen Zunes
Stephen Zunes is a professor of Politics and chair of the Peace & Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco. He is Middle East editor for Foreign Policy In Focus (www.fpif.org) and the author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (Common Courage Press, 2003).


The broader implications of the February 14 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, who was seen by many as the embodiment of the Lebanese people’s efforts to rebuild their country in the aftermath of its 15-year civil war, are yet to unfold. A Sunni Muslim, Hariri reached out to all of Lebanon’s ethnic and religious communities in an effort to unite the country after decades of violence waged by heavily-armed militias and foreign invaders.

The assassination took place against the backdrop of a growing political crisis in Lebanon. This began in September 2004, when Syria successfully pressured the Lebanese parliament, in an act of dubious constitutionality, to extend the term of the unpopular pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud, a move roundly condemned by the international community. Washington was particularly virulent in its criticism, which can only be considered ironic, given that the United States attempted a similar maneuver back in 1958 to extend the term of the pro-American president Camille Chamoun. The result was a popular uprising suppressed only when President Dwight Eisenhower sent in U.S. Marines.

Hariri had his critics, particularly among the country’s poor majority whose situation deteriorated under the former prime minister’s adoption of a number of controversial neo-liberal economic policies. A multi-billionaire businessman prior to becoming prime minister, there were widespread charges of corruption in the awarding of contracts, many of which went to a company largely owned by Hariri himself. A number of treasured historic buildings relatively undamaged from war were demolished to make room for grandiose construction projects.

The size and sophistication of the explosion which killed Hariri, his bodyguards, and several bystanders have led many to speculate that foreign intelligence units may have been involved. Initial speculation has focused on the Syrians, who had previously worked closely with Hariri as prime minister. That relationship was broken by the Syrians’ successful effort to extend the term of President Lahoud, with whom Hariri had frequently clashed as prime minister. As a result, Hariri was poised to lead an anti-Syrian front in the upcoming parliamentary elections in May.

Hariri made lots of other enemies as well, however, including rival Lebanese groups, the Israeli government, Islamic extremists, and powerful financiers with interests in his multi-billion dollar reconstruction efforts. A previously-unknown group calling itself “Victory and Jihad in Syria and Lebanon” claimed responsibility for the attack, citing Hariri’s close ties to the repressive Saudi monarchy. As of this writing, there is no confirmation that they were responsible for the blast or if such a group even exists.

While Syria remains the primary suspect, no evidence has been presented to support the charge. Damascus has publicly condemned the killings and denied responsibility. Syria’s regime, while certainly ruthless enough to do such a thing, is usually not so brazen. They would have little to gain from uniting the Lebanese opposition against them or for provoking the United States and other Western nations to further isolate their government.

The United States, however, has indirectly implicated Syria in the attack and has withdrawn its ambassador from Damascus.


Syria’s Role in Lebanon

Syrian forces first entered Lebanon in 1976 at the invitation of the Lebanese president as the primary component of an international peacekeeping force authorized by the Arab League to try to end Lebanon’s civil war. The United States quietly supported the Syrian intervention as a means of blocking the likely victory by the leftist Lebanese National Movement and its Palestinian allies. As the civil war continued in varying manifestations in subsequent years, the Syrians would often play one faction off against another in an effort to maintain their influence. Despite this, they were unable to defend the country from the U.S.-backed Israeli invasion in 1982, the installation of the Phalangist leader Amin Gemayel as president, and the U.S. military intervention to help prop up Gemayel’s rightist government against a popular uprising. Finally, in late 1990, Syrian forces helped the Lebanese oust the unpopular interim Prime Minister General Michel Aoun, which proved instrumental in ending the 15-year civil war. (Given that General Aoun’s primary outside supporter was Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, the United States quietly backed this Syrian action as well.)

The end of the civil war did not result in the end of the Syrian role in Lebanon, however. Most Lebanese at this point resent the ongoing presence of Syrian troops and Syria’s overbearing influence on their government.

The Bush administration, Congressional leaders of both parties, and prominent media commentators have increasingly made reference to “the Syrian occupation of Lebanon.” Strictly speaking, however, this is not an occupation in the legal sense of the word, such as in the case of the Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara or Israel’s occupation of Syria’s Golan region and much of the Palestinian Gaza Strip and West Bank (including East Jerusalem), all of which are recognized by the United Nations and international legal authorities as non-self-governing territories. Lebanon has experienced direct foreign military occupation, however: from 1978 to 2000, Israel occupied a large section of southern Lebanon and—from June 1982 through May 1984—much of central Lebanon as well, resulting in the deaths of thousands of Lebanese civilians.

A more accurate analogy to the current Syrian role would be that of the Soviets in the Warsaw Pact countries of Eastern Europe during much of the Cold War, in which these nations were effectively client states. They were allowed to maintain their independence and distinct national institutions yet were denied their right to pursue an autonomous course in their foreign and domestic policies.

Currently, Syria has only 14,000 troops in Lebanon, mostly in the Bekaa Valley in the eastern part of the country, a substantial reduction from the 40,000 Syrian troops present in earlier years. This does not mean that calls for an immediate withdrawal of Syrian forces and an end to Syrian interference in Lebanon’s political affairs are not morally and legally justified. However, the use of the term “occupation” by American political leaders is an exaggeration and may be designed in part to divert attention from the continuing U.S. military, diplomatic, and financial support of the real ongoing military occupations by Israel and Morocco.

In September of last year, the United States—along with France and Great Britain—sponsored a resolution before the UN Security Council which, among other things, called upon “all remaining foreign forces to withdraw from Lebanon.” UN Security Council resolution 1559 was adopted with six abstentions and no negative votes and builds upon UN Security Council resolution 520, adopted in 1982, which similarly calls for the withdrawal of foreign forces.

The Bush administration, with widespread bipartisan Congressional support, has cited Syria’s ongoing violation of these resolutions in placing sanctions upon Syria. Ironically, however, no such pressure was placed upon Israel for violating UNSC resolution 520 and nine other resolutions (the first being adopted in 1978) calling on Israel to withdraw its forces from Lebanon. In fact, during the Clinton administration, the U.S. openly called on Israel to not unilaterally withdraw from Lebanon as required, even as public opinion polls in Israel showed that a sizable majority of Israelis supported an end to the Israeli occupation, during which hundreds of Israeli soldiers were killed.

Today, many of the most outspoken supporters of a strict enforcement of UNSC resolution 1159—such as Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer of California—were also among the most prominent opponents of enforcing similar resolutions when they were directed at Israel. In short, both Republicans and Democrats agree that Lebanese sovereignty and international law must be defended only if the government challenging these principles is not a U.S. ally.

(Israel was finally forced out of Lebanon in May 2000 as a result of attacks by the militant Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah. Four months later, the Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip began. Militant Palestinians claim they were inspired by the fact that Israel ended its 22-year occupation not because of the U.S.-led peace process and not because of the United Nations—which was blocked by the United States from enforcing its resolutions—but because of armed struggle by radical Islamists. Though, for a number of reasons, such tactics are unlikely to succeed in the occupied Palestinian territories, the support of extremist Islamist groups and their use of violence by large sectors of the Palestinian population under Israeli occupation can for the most part be attributed to the United States refusing to support an Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon through diplomatic means.)


What Next?

Whether or not the Syrians played a role in Hariri’s assassination, his death will likely escalate pressure by the Lebanese to challenge Syria’s domination of their government. Once centered primarily in the country’s Maronite Christian community, anti-Syrian sentiment is growing among Lebanese from across the ethnic and ideological spectrum. Ultimately, the country’s fate will be determined by the Lebanese themselves. If the United States presses the issue too strongly, however, it risks hardening Syria’s position and allowing Damascus to defend its ongoing domination of Lebanon behind anti-imperialist rhetoric.

While there are many areas in which the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad should indeed be challenged, such as its overbearing influence in Lebanon and its poor human rights record, there is a genuine fear that increased U.S. efforts to isolate the regime and the concomitant threats of military action against Syria will undermine the efforts of Lebanese and Syrians demanding change.

One major problem is that most charges against the Syrian government by the Bush administration and the Congressional leadership of both parties are rife with hyperbole and double standards.

For example, the United States has demanded that Syria eliminate its long-range and medium-range missiles, while not insisting that pro-Western neighbors like Turkey and Israel—with far more numerous and sophisticated missiles on their territory—similarly disarm. The United States has also insisted that Syria unilaterally eliminate its chemical weapons stockpiles, while not making similar demands on U.S. allies Israel and Egypt—which have far larger chemical weapons stockpiles—to do the same. The United States has demanded an end to political repression and for free and fair elections in Syria while not making similar demands of even more repressive and autocratic regimes in allied countries like Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan.

Contrary to U.S. charges that Syria is a major state supporter of international terrorism, Syria is at most a very minor player. The U.S. State Department has noted how Syria has played a critical role in efforts to combat al-Qaida and that the Syrian government has not been linked to any acts of international terrorism for nearly twenty years. The radical Palestinian Islamist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad have political offices in Damascus, as they do in a number of Arab capitals, but they are not allowed to conduct any military activities. A number of left-wing Palestinian factions also maintain offices in Syria, but these groups are now largely defunct and have not engaged in terrorist operations for many years.

Much has been made of Syrian support for the radical Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah. However, not only has Syrian support for the group been quite minimal in recent years, the group is now a legally recognized Lebanese political party and serves in the Lebanese parliament. During the past decade, its militia have largely restricted their use of violence to Israeli occupation forces in southern Lebanon and in disputed border regions of Israeli-occupied Syria, not against civilians, thereby raising serious questions as to whether it can actually still be legally considered a terrorist group.

Currently, the Bush administration has expressed its dismay at Russia’s decision to sell Syria anti-aircraft missiles, claiming that it raises questions in regard to President Vladimir Putin’s commitment against terrorism. The administration has been unable to explain, however, how selling defensive weapons to an internationally-recognized government aids terrorists.

Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and Congressional leaders have also accused Syria of threatening the Arab-Israeli peace process. However, Syria has pledged to provide Israel with internationally-enforced security guarantees and full diplomatic relations in return for a complete Israeli withdrawal from Syrian territory seized in the 1967 war, in concordance with UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, long recognized as the basis for peace. They have also called for a renewal of peace talks with Israel, which came very close to a permanent peace agreement in early 2000. However, the right-wing U.S.-backed Israeli government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has refused to resume negotiations and pledges it will never withdraw from the Golan, thereby raising questions as to whether it is really Syria that is primarily at fault.

Another questionable anti-Syrian charge is in regard to their alleged support of Saddam Hussein and ongoing support of anti-American insurgents in Iraq. In reality, though both ruled by the Baath Party, Syria had broken diplomatic relations with Baghdad back in the 1970s and was the home of a number of anti-Saddam exile groups. Syria and Iraq backed rival factions in Lebanon’s civil war. Syria was the only country to side with Iran during the Iran-Iraq war and contributed troops to the U.S.-led Operation Desert Shield in reaction to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. Syria, as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council in 2002, supported the U.S.-backed resolution 1441 demanding Iraqi cooperation with UN inspectors or else face “severe consequences.” The Syrian government has substantially beefed up security along its borders with Iraq and U.S. military officials have acknowledged that relatively few foreign fighters have actually entered Iraq via Syria. Most critically, there is no reason that Syria would want the insurgents to succeed, given that the primary insurgent groups are either supporters of the old anti-Syrian regime in Baghdad or are Islamist extremists similar to those who seriously challenged the Syrian government in 1982 before being brutally suppressed. Given that Assad’s regime is dominated by Syria’s Alawite minority, which have much closer ties to Iraq’s Shiites than with Sunnis who dominate the Arab and Islamic world, and that the Shiite-dominated slate which won the recent Iraqi elections share their skepticism about the U.S. role in the Middle East, they would have every reason to want to see the newly-elected Iraqi government succeed so U.S. troops could leave.

Despite the highly-questionable assertions which form the basis of the Bush administration’s antipathy toward Syria, there have essentially been no serious challenges to the Bush administration’s policy on Capitol Hill. Indeed, Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid have strongly defended President George W. Bush’s policies toward Iraq and Lebanon and helped push through strict sanctions against Syria based upon these same exaggerations and double standards. (See my article “The Syria Accountability Act and the Triumph of Hegemony,” October 27, 2003, at http://www.fpif.org/papers/syriaact2003.html) During the 2004 election campaign, Senator John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee, criticized President Bush for not being anti-Syrian enough.

Among the few dissenters is Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who expressed his concern to Secretary of State Rice during recent hearings on Capitol Hill that the tough talk against Syria was remarkably similar to what was heard in regard to Iraq a few years earlier. One of only eight members of Congress to vote against the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act in the fall of 2003, he warned his fellow Senators that the language was broad enough that the administration might later claim it authorized military action against Syria.

As long as the vast majority of Democrats are afraid to appear “soft” toward the Syrian dictatorship and as long as so few progressive voices are willing to challenge the Democrats, President Bush appears to have few obstacles in his way should he once again choose to lead the country to w

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Demokratie ist kein Religionsersatz. Man kann nicht einfach Islam ausschalten und Demokratie einschalten. Und Demokratie mit Hilfe von Kreuzzügen zu verbreiten ist nicht möglich. Vieles was die USA und die Neocons versuchen ist gut gemeint, aber der Versuch Demokratie einfach nur so überzustülpen, und dann hat sich die Sache, ist blauäugig und alleine noch mit dem Gutmenschentum der Sozial-Romantiker zu vergleichen. Wenn ich in der deutschen Geschichte zurückblättere, hat es in D lange gedauert bis wir mit demokratischen Verhältnissen umgehen konnten. Wenn ich die augenblicklichen Diskussionen höre, könnte man meinen, dass das auch heute noch nicht endgültig ist. Demokratie muß erarbeitet werden, und eine Gesellschaft muß für die Demokratie bereit sein. Solange noch andere Werte die Demokratiewerte überlagern, wird eine Einführung von Demokratie ein Fehlschlag sein. Solange die Mullahs im Nahen Osten dem Großteil der Menschen sagen können, was sie tun sollen, werden demokratische Werte sich nicht durchsetzen. Ich kann mich noch an die Zeit in D erinnern, als die Pfarrer und Pastoren an Wahlsonntagen von den Kanzeln verkündigten, wer zu wählen sei, und die Menschen taten es. Die von vielen so verfluchte 68er Bewegung, hat das erst geändert, denn hauptsächlich war diese mehr eine kulturelle Revolution als eine politische. Vieles was heute die, die sich über die 68er Bewegung so erregen, in vollem Umfang ausnutzen, wäre ohne die damaligen Veränderungen garnicht möglich. So wird es auch im Nahen Osten einige Jahrzehnte dauern bis man dort eine offene Gesellschaft gestalten kann, und eins darf man nicht vergessen, das Saddamregime war, bei allen Untaten, die es verbrochen hat, der einzige säkulare Staat im arabischen Raum, und den haben die USA weggebomt, nachdem dieser ihnen nicht mehr nützlich war.

NEWS ANALYSIS
Winds of Change Stir in Mideast, but Their Direction Is Unclear
U.S. officials hope recent developments in Lebanon, Egypt and Syria vindicate policy. Democracy, however, may boost Islamists.
By Tyler Marshall
Times Staff Writer
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-usanalys…

March 1, 2005

WASHINGTON — Over 60 dramatic hours ending Monday, events in the Middle East highlighted both the hopes and risks of change in the region as the Bush administration pursues its agenda of reform.

In Lebanon, an unpopular, Syrian-backed government was brought down by pressure from the streets. In Egypt, the head of a one-party state loosened his decades-old grip on power by announcing plans for multiparty elections. And in Syria, an authoritarian regime handed over Saddam Hussein`s half-brother to Iraqi authorities.

Within the administration, the developments were quietly hailed as signals that the president`s vision to spread democracy in the Middle East was not naïve and misguided, as critics had said, but an idea Arabs genuinely wanted to embrace.

Despite this windfall of good news, however, Middle East specialists inside and outside the administration remained cautious.

"I`ve been working on the Middle East too long to be crowing from the rooftops that we`ve won," a senior State Department official said.

If any proof for that prudence were needed, it appeared early Monday in Iraq, when a suicide car bombing south of Baghdad left at least 115 people dead and about as many wounded in one of the deadliest attacks since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. William Quandt, a White House advisor in the Carter administration during the late 1970s — also a time of hope for the region — said he was heartened by the sight of thousands of Lebanese taking to the streets of Beirut to demand free elections and the withdrawal of Syrian forces from their soil. But he added: "It`s unsure where this will lead."

The largest, best-organized opposition group in the country, he noted, was the Shiite Muslim militant group Hezbollah. The organization is strenuously anti-American, yet an important player in Lebanese politics. As a major supplier of social services to the country`s large Shiite population, Hezbollah would probably poll well in free elections.

In Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak`s decision to allow his country`s first direct, multiparty presidential election this year could also complicate the U.S. agenda in the region, even though a senior administration official Monday called it a "positive and welcome step."

A truly democratic election in Egypt could result in major gains for hard-line groups, including the banned Muslim Brotherhood, also strongly anti-American, some specialists argue. Backers of Bush`s efforts to spread democracy in the region counter that strengthening radical groups is a risk the U.S. must be willing to take.

Support for stable, yet authoritarian regimes in the region — the hallmark of U.S. policy for much of the past generation — has produced a contempt for America that today drives Islamic terrorist groups, these sources argue.

Although Mubarak has frustrated U.S. policymakers in the past by opposing political reform in Egypt, he is believed to have been largely supportive of U.S. policy in the region, especially in the search for a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Quandt recalled how, during his tenure at the White House, President Carter had nudged the shah of Iran to loosen his hold on the country`s political system and how, after the shah`s fall, some of the administration`s most respected experts on Iran had predicted that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini would be a Gandhi-like spiritual advisor to a moderate new Iranian government.

"You get something that looks pretty good at the time, but then it eventually turns out very differently," he said.

U.S. policymakers already have had a hint of what free elections can produce in a region where America`s image is poor and its agenda often viewed as a Zionist-led conspiracy to subjugate Muslim people. January`s election in Iraq produced an Islamic scholar with past ties to Iran as the front-runner to lead a transitional government in Baghdad.

Despite these concerns, U.S. officials were moving quickly Monday to keep up the momentum toward political reform.

"The resignation of the [Omar] Karami government represents an opportunity for the Lebanese people to have a new government that is truly representative of their country`s diversity," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. "We will do everything we can to support the Lebanese people."

State Department officials, who declined to be identified by name, said the street protests in Beirut had provided the administration with important new leverage to force the withdrawal of 14,000 Syrian forces that entered Lebanon in the spring of 1976.

Syria has resisted such a pullout on the grounds that its forces are required to maintain stability in a country torn by civil war.

"Today`s events prove that the status quo is untenable and that the way forward is to implement the Security Council resolution," a senior U.S. official said. A U.N. Security Council resolution, calling for the withdrawal of foreign forces from Lebanon and free and fair elections, was passed in December under the sponsorship of the U.S. and France.

"We`ll be talking with the French and others on how to move this forward," the same official said.

The protests that led to the Karami government`s resignation stemmed from anger that erupted late last month in the wake of the assassination of Lebanon`s popular former premier, Rafik Hariri. Although it remains unclear exactly who carried out the killing, Syria`s involvement is widely suspected.

In the wake of developments in Lebanon and Egypt, administration officials also are taking a harder look at initiatives designed for the region that focus on broadening participation in the political process.

"It makes the message [of democratic reform] sound far less Western in its orientation," a senior administration official said. "It shows there are voices in the region, that there is a popular will for change."

Said a second senior U.S. official: "The theory [behind Bush`s democratization policy] has always been that if this were to work, it wouldn`t be exclusively because we were standing at the top … hectoring people, but because there would be pressure from within and pressure from below in these societies."

Times staff writers Edwin Chen and Sonni Efron in Washington contributed to this report.


Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

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The Force Bush Won`t Use on Iran
Robert Scheer
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-scheer1…
ROBERT SCHEER" target="_blank" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-scheer1…
ROBERT SCHEER

March 1, 2005

U.S. policy toward Iran is now a big, dangerous mess. President Bush again has backed us into a corner with his confrontational framing of every dispute as one of pristine virtue versus stark evil, putting us out of sync with our allies in Europe and probably giving the ayatollahs in Tehran a public relations boost at home.

In his State of the Union address, Bush singled out Iran as "the world`s primary state sponsor of terror … pursuing nuclear weapons while depriving its people of the freedom they seek and deserve." For weeks we heard ominous warnings of war with Iran. Then, last week, Bush scoffed at the idea that we were going to bomb Iran as "ridiculous," even as he menacingly noted that "all options are on the table." Meanwhile, Europe continued to negotiate constructively with Iran to find a peaceful solution and prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

The sad fact, however, is that Bush`s irrational policies and rhetoric have left the mostly fundamentalist leaders of Iran defending a more logical position than that of our own government on three counts.

First, it is our government that has long proclaimed the wonders of something called "the peaceful uses of atomic energy" to counterbalance the horror of having unleashed the power of the atomic bomb on Japanese civilians in World War II. In asserting its right to build nuclear power plants, Tehran is emulating the United States. The pact signed on Sunday in which Russia will supply the fuel for an Iranian nuclear power plant but Tehran will return spent fuel would seem to remove the threat that Iran`s now fully constructed Bushehr plant will be producing nuclear weapons material.

Second, the U.S. has been woefully uncaring about nuclear proliferation except when it proves politically convenient, as with the false prewar claim that Saddam Hussein`s Iraq might be close to acquiring or producing nuclear weapons.

Another example came after 9/11, when Washington dropped anti-proliferation sanctions against Pakistan while Bush focused his wrath on Iraq. Ironically, it was back in 1987, when the U.S. was backing Hussein in his war with Iran, that Pakistan`s top scientist first made overtures to sell nuclear technology to the ayatollahs in Tehran.

Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan`s scandalous campaign to sell nuclear materials and knowledge to unstable countries such as North Korea and Libya, as well as Iran, was overlooked by successive U.S. administrations. Apparently, it was deemed too awkward to irritate our "allies" in Islamabad who helped us arm the mujahedin in Afghanistan against the Soviets, and, after 9/11, were enlisted to bring some of those same mujahedin to justice, including Osama bin Laden.

Even after the appalling extent of Khan`s sales ring was exposed in 2003, little was done. The Pakistan government pardoned Khan and won`t allow him to be interviewed by outsiders. Intelligence reports indicate that his black market mob may be operating again.

Finally, how can the president continue to escalate the rhetoric against Iran given that his invasion of neighboring Iraq has handed control of the country to Shiites trained in Tehran, like Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, as well as Kurds who have enjoyed significant Iranian support over the years?

So, tangled history aside, what should the U.S. do now about a repressive and potentially threatening government in Iran? The one thing Bush strangely has refused to do throughout the world: practice the principles of capitalism.

The model for such a policy, which emphasizes normal trade relations even with regimes that have religious and political obsessions different from our own, was most successfully employed by Richard Nixon in his famous opening to "Red" China, as well as in the detente period that should properly be credited with the ultimate fall of the Soviet empire.

The most powerful liberalizing forces the U.S. wields are not military, but economic and cultural. Though not as macho as trying to spread democracy through the barrel of a gun, normalization offers a better prospect of accomplishing that end, while saving billions of dollars and priceless lives.



Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

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Latest Fatality: Mar 01, 2005
Military Fatalities: Total: 1672 , US: 1499 , Feb.05: 60 März05: 1

Meldungen aus dem Irak:
http://icasualties.org/oif/

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Tuesday, March 01, 2005
http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

War News For Tuesday, March 01, 2005

There are some who, uh, feel like that, you know, the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is: bring `em on. We got the force necessary to deal with the security situation."
- George W. Bush, July 2, 2003

Bring ‘em on: Death toll from the Hillah car bombing now stands at 122 dead, 170 wounded. One police officer was killed and four wounded in a suicide attack on a police patrol in southern Baghdad. One Iraqi civilian was killed and two wounded when they were caught in a firefight between guerillas and police in Baquba. One US soldier was shot to death at a traffic control point in Baghdad. One US soldier died and two were injured in a vehicle accident near Tikrit. Two police officers were killed in heavy fighting with guerillas in Mosul. Gunfire was heard throughout Monday morning in the area of Baghdad around Sadoun Street after police closed several blocks and arrested a number of Sudanese men.

Bring ‘em on: One US soldier killed, four injured in roadside bomb attack on their convoy between Karbala and Ramadi.

Bring ‘em on: Kidnapped French journalist, seized in the Iraqi capital Baghdad more than seven weeks ago, made a desperate appeal for help in a video tape released by insurgents on Tuesday.

Another milestone: As of today, February 28th, 1508 members of the United States military have been killed as a result of their service in Iraq. Additionally, at least 74 American civilians have been killed while performing duties that range from security guard to truck driver.

An issue in question is the Department of Defense`s tally of personnel who were wounded, evacuated from the Iraqi theater, and then succumbed to their wounds. According to John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org, the DoD has reported that over 15,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines have been evacuated yet only 10 died of their wounds. Given the severity of combat wounds, many find this statistic hard to believe.

No, They Don’t Love Us - Even After All We’ve Done For Them

We will fight: "Terrible things were happening to all us Iraqi people under that psychopath Saddam Hussein," Ali Mohammed told me after finding the records of two of his four brothers. "I don`t want to thank America for that because God is the person who pushed America to liberate us from Saddam Hussein. We are thankful to God."

He added: "God alone has liberated us. The Americans are invaders."

I asked Ali Mohammad if he was optimistic about the future. "Only God knows," he replied. "If the Americans stay here, I don`t think the future will be good."

"Why?" I asked.

"We are Muslims," came the answer. "We can`t allow other people who are not Muslims to come here and rule us. No man could just let the invaders rule. We will fight against that. Invasion is not the right thing to do for any people. We don`t hate the American people, but we don`t like invasions, and we will fight."

A victim`s question: Lying in his hospital bed, Mr. Ali looked baffled and enraged. "If they are really the resistance, why don`t they kill Americans?" he said. "This is nothing but an effort to kill Iraqi people and destroy Iraq."

Biding their time: Shiite mosques, politicians and civilians willing to work for the government have been the target of repeated attacks by the Sunni-based insurgents. So far, at least, the Shiite parties have not sent their gunmen to retaliate.

There are no official figures available, but an Associated Press count found that 234 people were killed and 429 people were injured in at least 55 attacks from Jan. 1 until election day on Jan. 30. The death toll increased in February, which saw at least 38 incidents resulting in at least 311 deaths and 433 injuries.

But the Shiites have so far refused to be baited, biding their time until they can deal with the insurgency in a more institutional way when they lead the government.

Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before

It’s a great joke, but this is just the buildup: Relatives of Iraqis tortured by British soldiers revealed last night how they were also arrested and brutally beaten simply for asking questions.

The Independent on Sunday can reveal that the Iraqi civilians were punched and kicked after arriving at Camp Breadbasket to find out why friends and relatives had been detained.

Still building up – trust me, it’s great: Human rights lawyers will file a lawsuit in federal court on Tuesday against Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on behalf of eight men who say they were tortured by U.S. forces in custody in Iraq and Afghanistan, sources familiar with the case said.

The lawsuit charges that officials at the highest levels of the U.S. government shoulder ultimate responsibility for the physical and psychological injuries sustained by the men while in American custody.

"The men represented in the lawsuit were incarcerated in U.S. detention facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan, where they were subjected to torture and other cruel and degrading treatment, including severe and repeated beatings, cutting with knives, sexual humiliation and assault, mock executions, death threats, and restraint in contorted and excruciating positions," the two groups said in a statement.

None of the eight men was charged with a crime, the groups said.

Almost there – you’re going to love it: A federal judge ordered the Bush administration Monday to either charge terrorism suspect Jose Padilla with a crime or release him after more than 2 1/2 years in custody

U.S. District Judge Henry Floyd in Spartanburg, S.C., said the government can not hold Padilla indefinitely as an "enemy combatant," a designation President Bush gave him in 2002.

"The court finds that the president has no power, neither express nor implied, neither constitutional nor statutory, to hold petitioner as an enemy combatant," Floyd wrote in a 23-page opinion that was a stern rebuke to the government. He gave the administration 45 days to take action.

Here it comes - the punch line!: The State Department on Monday detailed an array of human rights abuses last year by the Iraqi government, including torture, rape and illegal detentions by police officers and functionaries of the interim administration that took power in June.

In the Bush administration`s bluntest description of human rights transgressions by the U.S.-supported government, the report said the Iraqis "generally respected human rights, but serious problems remained" as the government and U.S.-led foreign forces fought a violent insurgency. It cited "reports of arbitrary deprivation of life, torture, impunity, poor prison conditions — particularly in pretrial detention facilities — and arbitrary arrest and detention."

The report did not address incidents in Iraq in which Americans were involved, like the abuse at Abu Ghraib, which came to light in 2004,

Damn, that`s a good one.


Idiots and Scallywags

Scallywag: John Negroponte, President Bush`s choice for intelligence chief, is a multimillionaire who promised last year to sell stock in companies that have business stakes in Iraq`s reconstruction, according to his financial disclosure reports.

It is unclear from two April reports, Negroponte`s most recent filings, whether he followed through on sales of General Electric and other companies helping to rebuild Iraq, where he is U.S. ambassador. The White House did not immediately comment Monday.

Because many national security-related contracts are classified, it is impossible to pinpoint all conflicts of interest that might arise should the Senate confirm him as national intelligence director, as expected. Yet some seem apparent.

Idiot: Now we know where Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Texas) thinks the weapons of mass destruction are buried: in Syria, which he said he`d like to nuke to smithereens.

Speaking at a veterans` celebration at Suncreek United Methodist Church in Allen, Texas, on Feb. 19, Johnson told the crowd that he explained his theory to President Bush and Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas) on the porch of the White House one night.

Johnson said he told the president that night, "Syria is the problem. Syria is where those weapons of mass destruction are, in my view. You know, I can fly an F-15, put two nukes on `em and I`ll make one pass. We won`t have to worry about Syria anymore."

The crowd roared with applause.

Take a minute and read the Carpetbagger`s commentary on this little gem. It`s spot on. Link via Eschaton.


Commentary

Opinion: The United States is grinding up its soldiers not just in Iraq and Afghanistan, but here at home as well by improperly interrupting pay, medical care and other benefits due injured and sick Army Reserve and National Guard troops and their families. Despite attempts to fix the problem, the Army can`t "provide reasonable assurance" that it can deliver what it owes those soldiers. This state of affairs cannot be tolerated.

The source of the problems is the Army`s system for dealing with those wounded or otherwise injured in Iraq or Afghanistan. Soldiers due to be released but needing medical care have been dropped from active-duty status when they shouldn`t have been. That has translated into the loss of benefits and pay. The GAO found one case in which an injured soldier was eliminated from the active-duty roster four times and missed almost $12,000 in pay. Eventually, the Army made good on the money, but not before his family suffered financially.

The GAO`s assessment and congressional testimony suggests the Army was simply not prepared to deal with the level of casualties from Iraq, despite ample planning time. Instead, the Army relied on a system designed to deal with peacetime injuries and two weeks of annual training.

Comment: Who would have thought that 13 pages of paper would so come to haunt Tony Blair? Yet the full version of the opinion drawn up by the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, about the legality of a military attack on Iraq will, I suspect, come to rank in recent British history only with the protocol enshrining the Anglo-French-Israeli collusion before the invasion of Suez in 1956. Sir Anthony Eden instructed his cabinet secretary to burn the British copy of that protocol.

Opinion: As a nation, does the United States have a conscience? Or is anything and everything O.K. in post-9/11 America? If torture and the denial of due process are O.K., why not murder? When the government can just make people vanish - which it can, and which it does - where is the line that we, as a nation, dare not cross?

President Bush spent much of last week lecturing other nations about freedom, democracy and the rule of law. It was a breathtaking display of chutzpah. He seemed to me like a judge who starves his children and then sits on the bench to hear child abuse cases. In Brussels Mr. Bush said he planned to remind Russian President Vladimir Putin that democracies are based on, among other things, "the rule of law and the respect for human rights and human dignity."

Someone should tell that to Maher Arar and his family.

Mr. Arar was the victim of an American policy that is known as extraordinary rendition. That`s a euphemism. What it means is that the United States seizes individuals, presumably terror suspects, and sends them off without even a nod in the direction of due process to countries known to practice torture.

Opinion: In a world aflame with war and terrorism, George W. Bush’s second inaugural address was a match flung onto an oil slick. By the time his 17-minute peroration reached midpoint, it was clear that was his intention:

“Because we have acted in the great liberating tradition of this nation, tens of millions have achieved their freedom. And as hope kindles hope, millions more will find it. By our efforts we have lit a fire as well, a fire in the minds of men. It warms those who feel its power; it burns those who fight its progress. And one day this untamed fire of freedom will reach the darkest corners of our world.”

“A fire in the mind”—such a felicitous phrase. It aptly and succinctly describes the feverish mental state of our neoconservative policymakers, who set out to build an empire in the Middle East and now, with this speech, clearly envision much more. It also describes the mental state of some of the characters in Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed (or The Devils), from which the fiery metaphor is taken.

The defining characteristic of what Ryn calls the “imperialistic personality” is a monumental conceit: it is the same will to dominate that drove the Jacobins, the Bolsheviks, and the 19th-century followers of the nihilist Sergei Nechaev, upon whom the author of The Possessed modeled his characters. That American policymakers will likely end up like Dostoyevsky’s revolutionary conspirators —increasingly committed to state terrorism in pursuit of some utopian vision—seems horribly and tragically inevitable.

Casualty Reports

Local story: Peoria, IL, soldier killed in roadside bombing between Karbala and Ramadi. Four other soldiers from Iowa and Illinois wounded in the same attack.

Local story: Four Stryker Brigade soldiers killed in separate incidents in Iraq.

Local story: Wagener, SC, soldier killed in explosion in Taji.

Local story: Two Fort Riley soldiers killed in Taji bombing.

Local story: El Paso, TX, Marine killed in vehicle accident in Al Anbar province.

Awards and Decorations

Local story: Detroit area Marine awarded posthumous Bronze Star.



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Published on Tuesday March 1, 2005 by the Boston Globe
The Grip of War
by James Carroll
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/arti…

Was it Heraclitus who said war is humanity`s natural state? Are those who imagine peace as the ground of a new condition guilty of an irresponsible wishful thinking?

I just wrote two hopeful columns from Jerusalem, a city trying to wrench itself from the grip of war, and though I allowed for the prospect of yet more violence, I was stunned by Friday`s news. A suicide bomber blew himself up outside a nightclub in Tel Aviv, killing four, wounding dozens of others. The killer targeted young people at play, a horror that had become common. In the new climate of hope, such brutality fully horrifies again. And then came news of yesterday`s suicide bombing in Iraq, a staggering new level of carnage with more than 125 dead.

Why do human beings, knowing the costs of war, cling to it nonetheless? It is a question not only for those diehards who dispatched these suicide murderers. News of another kind last week also raised it -- the commissioning by the US Navy of its newest submarine, a Seawolf attack sub, costing $3.2 billion and bearing more firepower than any submarine in history. But this sub, ordered during the Cold War, was designed to fight an enemy that no longer exists.

What makes its commissioning even more anomalous is the name the sub was given -- the USS Jimmy Carter. The former president began as a submarine officer, and it is easy to grasp how an old man is moved by such an affirmation of his youth. But Carter presided at the commissioning ceremonies with the innocent enthusiasm of a man who should know better. ``The most deeply appreciated and emotional honor I`ve ever had," he said, ``is to have this great ship bear my name." Jimmy Carter is a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, but that honor takes second place now to an attack sub.

No man ever came into the presidency more determined to than Carter to contradict Heraclitus by breaking the grip of war. Even before he was inaugurated in January 1977, Carter summoned the Joint Chiefs of Staff to Blair House. Ernest May and other historians recount the story. Carter brushed aside the expected discussion of security needs to stun the chiefs by asking his one question: ``How long would it take to reduce the number of nuclear weapons currently in our arsenal?"

What? The chairman of the Joint Chiefs did not understand what Carter meant. The generals exchanged looks. The president-elect asked again: ``How could we cut the number of missiles? What would it take to get the number down to a few hundred?" Carter was asking a question, but it was clear to everyone in the room that he was putting an agenda item on the table -- his first one. ``When my time as your president has ended," Carter said a few days later, in his inaugural address, ``I would hope that the nations of the world might say that we had built a lasting peace, built not on weapons of war but on international policies which reflect our own most precious values."

It was not to be. As Carter left office four years after his shocking declaration at Blair House, he had not only not reduced America`s nuclear arsenal; by approving the MX missile system, he had expanded it. He had more than doubled the list of targets our missiles were aimed at in the Soviet Union. With his ``Carter Doctrine," he had introduced the claim that the United States could protect its right to Persian Gulf oil by ``any means necessary, including military force." Carter, that is, prepared the ground for America`s wars in Iraq. Given the intentions with which he started, Carter showed how powerful is the tidal pull of war.

But upon leaving the presidency, Jimmy Carter set himself against that tide. He became the character ideal of the man of peace and did not hesitate to denounce his successors for a too ready recourse to violence. That is why his renewed embrace of ``weapons of war" against his self-proclaimed ambition is so disturbing.

It is hard to let go of war. Was Carter guilty of wishful thinking when he wanted to? Is he more fully in synch with his nation now -- a nation waging a brutal war in Iraq without the slightest official qualm? We, too, keep dispatching young people to kill and die. Why does that seem as normal, say, as the launching of a Cold War relic?

Running silent and deep, the USS Jimmy Carter will sail as a symbol of America`s true condition -- alas, apparently and still, our nation`s natural state.

James Carroll`s column appears regularly in the Globe. His most recent book is "Crusade: Chronicles of an Unjust War."

© 2005 Boston Globe

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Published on Tuesday March 1, 2005 by the Daytona Beach News-Journal
Out of Context, Lists of Presumptive Triumphs in Iraq
by Pierre Tristam
http://www.news-journalonline.com/03ColEssays.htm

Most of us get them, those e-mails promising bushels of porn, the end of impotence, permanently flaccid mortgage rates or lucrative friendships with wayward African princes seeking bank accounts to bunk with. It`s harmless clutter. It`s also a reminder that marketing sugared in smut and guile always finds an audience, otherwise its retailers wouldn`t keep at it. So it`s natural for the merchants of Operation Iraqi Freedom to hitch their pipeline to our in-boxes. They sell porn of a different kind -- the pornography of war as a beautiful thing, as an orgy of good news the media just won`t show because, as one incensed e-mail has it, "a Bush-hating media and Democratic Party would rather see the world blow up than lose their power." (If it`s possible for the propagandist to find good news in Iraq it must be equally possible to find a Democrat still in power in the United States.)

The good-news e-mails show little Iraqi kids holding up signs that say "Thank you very much Mr. Bush" or matronly women doing the same with "Iraqi people happy today," pictures of American soldiers cradling olive-skinned kids and showering them with school supplies, and similarly posed presumptions of triumph that reproduce President Bush`s "Mission Accomplished" sketch on the USS Abraham Lincoln almost two years ago, but on location. The pictures are a counterweight to the "isolated" bad news the media obsesses over, those images of torture, bombings, kidnappings, beheadings, maiming and killing of Americans and Iraqis alike. Isolation has its toll: Doubtless, some time this week the 1,500th American soldier will be killed in Iraq -- "Thank you very much Mr. Bush" -- and some time this month the 11,000th American will be wounded, disfigured, mutilated and either returned to duty for another crack at making Iraqis happy or returned home to a lifetime subscription to PTSD.

Still, it must be a good thing. Here`s the latest variant of lists making their way across the Internet since 2003: "Did you know that 47 countries have re-established their embassies in Iraq? Did you know that the Iraqi government employs 1.2 million people? Did you know that 3,100 schools have been renovated, 364 schools are under rehabilitation, 263 schools are now under construction and 38 new schools have been built in Iraq? Did you know that 25 Iraqi students departed for the United States in January 2004 for the re-established Fulbright program?" And so on.

The stuff is written simply and factually, but in that bullying tone of self-evidence that omits the relevance of evidence -- context, proof, explanation, perspective.How many of those embassies are basement annexes to the same obscure countries sharecropping their way to American favors as part of the "Coalition of the Willing"? What`s the use of a government employing 1.2 million people if it can`t pay them? How many of those Band-aided schools were wrecked by American bombs? Twenty-five students from Iraq are studying in American universities on Fulbright scholarships for the first time in 14 years. But American sanctions had something to do with keeping them out so long. And in the spirit of the Fulbright program`s aim to foster "mutual understanding" between nations, it would be newsworthy if American students were lining up to study in Iraq. They`re not.

It`s pointless to get caught up in the game. Entire Web sites are devoted to verifying some claims and, unfortunately, debunking most. Unfortunately, because no one should be cheering against good news. But a war costing $2 billion a week -- or $4,000 per Iraqi per year -- had better yield some results worth cheering about other than the Fallujah-style flattening of cities, the surrender of much of the country to anarchy, or a hemorrhage of American tax-dollars that will eventually make the United Nations` $67 billion oil-for-food scandal look quaint in comparison. True, there`s a lack of honest reporting. But the unreported scandal from this end is that the investment in deficit-digging tax-dollars is yielding so little return except for the contractors and mercenaries in on the loot. The unreported tragedy from the Iraqi perspective is that the investment in lives is yielding still nothing more than finger-paint parodies of democracy. We`d be better off going home and sending every Iraqi man, woman and child a $4,000 annual check.

Tristam is a News-Journal editorial writer. Reach him at [e-mail].

© 2005 News Journal-Corporation

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Torture by Proxy
An interview with Jane Mayer
Issue of 2005-02-14 and 21
Posted 2005-02-08
http://www.newyorker.com/online/content/?050214on_onlineonly…

This week in the magazine and here online, Jane Mayer writes about the use by the United States of "extraordinary rendition," the practice of sending terrorism suspects to other countries, where they may be interrogated and tortured on America`s behalf. Here, she talks about torture and the war on terror with Amy Davidson.

AMY DAVIDSON: You begin your piece with something President Bush said recently—that “torture is never acceptable, nor do we hand over people to countries that do torture.”

JANE MAYER: President Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales all made similar statements last month, asserting that not only does the United States condemn torture, it also does not send U.S.-held suspects to other countries for torture. In reality, the record appears to be quite different. Beginning around 1995, the Central Intelligence Agency inaugurated a form of extradition sometimes referred to as "extraordinary rendition," in which captured foreign terrorism suspects have been transported by the U.S. to third countries for interrogation and prosecution. The former C.I.A. director George Tenet estimated that between the time the program started and 2001 there were some seventy renditions. Most experts suggest that since the Bush Administration launched the global war on terrorism after the attacks of September 11, 2001, that number has grown dramatically. Present and former officials involved in these renditions, including several whom I quote on the record in this week`s New Yorker, suggest that, from the start, it was suspected that many of the rendered persons were tortured abroad. Certainly, in three cases where the suspects have emerged publicly to speak about their treatment—the cases of Maher Arar, Muhammed Zery, and Mamdouh Habib—they have alleged that they were tortured after the United States rendered them to other countries.

What are America`s obligations under international law with regard to rendition? Is there a legal difference between torturing someone ourselves and handing him over to someone who will torture him?

The United Nations Convention Against Torture and U.S. law both have a blanket prohibition against torturing anyone either within the territorial boundaries of the U.S. or abroad. These laws also prohibit the U.S. government from extraditing non-nationals to third countries where there are “substantial grounds for believing” that they would be tortured. The imprecision of this clause, however, appears to have allowed for a fair amount of latitude, according to lawyers whom I interviewed for this piece. For instance, Martin Lederman, a former lawyer with the Justice Department`s Office of Legal Counsel—who did not deal with the cases while he was in office but has studied them since—suggested that what looks at first like a complete prohibition actually is not. The legal standard allows U.S. officials to argue that they didn`t know with any certainty that a suspect would be tortured, and so can`t be held liable. U.S. officials have in fact often sought what is known as "assurances" from countries to which they have rendered suspects that the suspects would not be tortured. Even if these assurances are just a wink and a nod, they may provide legal cover. Finally, some lawyers believe that the U.S. may be finding protection by never formally taking legal custody of suspects it renders abroad—even if, for instance, the U.S. government transports such suspects. Such details are difficult to find out about, however, because the program is secret.

You write about the case of Mamdouh Habib. What is significant about his story?

Habib`s case, if his allegations are true, illustrates a disturbing change in the rendition program. Habib was suspected of training Al Qaeda operatives involved in 9/11. He was, like earlier suspects, a radical Muslim. But, unlike most of the pre-9/11 suspects, there appears to have been no warrant for his arrest when the U.S. government took custody of him in Pakistan, a few months after the World Trade Center attacks. Again, because the program is secret, it is difficult to know this with certainty. But, according to Habib`s attorney, Joe Margulies, Pakistan turned Habib over to Egypt`s custody at the urging of the United States, without any formal charges or arrest warrant against Habib. Once in Egypt, Margulies said, Habib made no appearances that he knew of in court, nor was there any record Margulies knew of showing that the U.S. had sought assurances that Habib would not be tortured.

Some of the allegations in Habib`s case, and in others, seem to go beyond rendering: he says Americans were actually present during some of his interrogations. When we talk about renditions today, are we only talking about what we allow or encourage our allies to do-or also about how Americans treat prisoners outside of our borders?

Many legal and operational variations on the earlier form of renditions seem to have emerged since 9/11. The question of coöperation between foreign security officers and the U.S. comes up a couple of times in the Habib story. Habib said that he was first held for about three weeks in Pakistani custody, during which time he said he was tortured by being made to stand on a metal drum that was electrified, while he was suspended from hooks. During those three weeks, according to Habib, he was questioned by several American-accented English-speaking interrogators, who he said wore no military uniforms. Margulies said that the U.S. Department of Defense seemed to have access to the confessions that Habib made after he was rendered from Pakistan to Egypt, because they accused him of offenses he confessed to while, he claimed, he was being tortured. If this is the case, the lines between the U.S.`s conduct and that of allied intelligence agencies does appear to have been blurred. And, after his interrogation in Egypt, Habib ended up in American custody—as a prisoner in Guantánamo Bay.

You wrote also about the case of six Bosnian men of Algerian descent. What did you learn?

The men were arrested in Bosnia in October of 2001, on a tip from U.S. authorities, who suspected them of a plot to blow up the American and British Embassies in Sarajevo. One of the suspects reportedly placed some seventy phone calls to the Al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah. But several of the other suspects said that they didn`t know the man accused of placing the phone calls, and Bosnian officials could find no evidence that the phone calls were placed at all, according to the men`s American lawyers. The detainees were held at the request of the U.S. government for three months, before the Bosnian Supreme Court ruled that they should be released. But as they left prison they were seized by masked figures and forced into unmarked cars. About a week later, their families learned that they were in detention at Guantánamo Bay. They are still there.

I understand that there have been some developments in that case since your story went to press.

Yes. I wrote in my piece that one of the men alleged that two of his fingers had been broken by U.S. soldiers at Guantánamo. On Friday, just after we went to press, the Pentagon agreed to declassify an account by the detainee, making the details of his story, and his name, Mustafa Ait Idir, public for the first time.

Idir’s allegations were made public in the form of a summary by his lawyer, Rob Kirsch. As Idir told it, he was taken at some point during the more than three years that he has been detained there to a "disciplinary block," where all of the prisoners were stripped of their pants and shoes. Idir said he told the guards that, as a Muslim, he would be unable to pray without his pants on, and so he begged them not to force him to undress. When he resisted giving the guards his pants, he said, they threatened to send in guards from the disciplinary unit known as the Immediate Reaction Force (I.R.F.), to use force. Idir told Kirsch that he then tore off a portion of his pants.

The I.R.F., he said, then sprayed tear gas into his cell, and charged in afterward wearing protective gear, including shields and masks. Idir said that he struck back at the charging soldiers, knocking the plastic face mask off one, and begged them not to take his pants. They then retreated, and sprayed more tear gas. A team leader, he said, then squeezed his testicles so hard that, according to his lawyer`s summary, he "feared he would be crippled." While he was crumpled in a fetal position on the cell floor, he said, the team pinned him down, face first, with their knees, while one team member, he said, "slowly bent his fingers back until one of them broke."

A few days later, Idir said, guards searched his cell, and promised not to use additional tear gas if he sat on the floor. He said that he sat down, but a guard nonetheless sprayed tear gas directly into his face. Other guards, he said, again tackled him, and this time shackled him with plastic handcuffs. He said that they carried him outside, where they pummelled him, pounding his head into a rock, and cutting him near one eye. The guards, he said, "twisted the middle finger and thumb" of his right hand back "almost to the point of breaking." Idir was a karate champion, so his hands were particularly important to him. Now, he said, his middle finger "has almost no strength."

Idir said he received no medical treatment for his injuries, which he also described before the Department of Defense`s Combatant Status Review Tribunal last year. The official transcript of the hearing notes that he held up his hand, and demonstrated that his pinky finger was separated approximately an inch and a half from the rest of his fingers, and he couldn`t move either it or his middle finger on the other hand.

A spokesman on Guantánamo-related matters at the Pentagon, Lieutenant Commander Flex Plexico, declined to respond to the detainee`s allegations. He said that any serious allegations of mistreatment would be investigated by the Pentagon but that he could neither confirm nor deny whether Idir`s case was under review. Plexico also reiterated to me Monday, by e-mail, that the military’s detention operation at Guantánamo was “safe, humane, and professional”—he mentioned that, for example, prisoners were given a chance to worship freely.

Does torture work?

This is a matter of much dispute. Most experts believe that torture will produce confessions—but not necessarily true ones. So the information derived from torture is not necessarily considered reliable by most experts, which is one reason that it is almost always inadmissible in U.S. courts.

Jack Cloonan, a former F.B.I. agent, told you that he advised C.I.A. interrogators to "do yourself a favor" and read prisoners their Miranda rights. Is the F.B.I. just being naïve?

The F.B.I. agents that I interviewed had the advantage of many years of experience in interrogating terrorist suspects, which is not necessarily the case with the C.I.A. The F.B.I. agents viewed torture as counterproductive, unreliable, immoral, and legally indefensible. They were believers in law and order, and believed that the laws protected not just the suspects but the whole society. I don`t think they were naïve; I think their experience had taught them that there are better ways to interrogate suspects and to fight terrorism. The argument for torture is usually one in which there is a so-called "ticking time bomb" forcing law-enforcement officials to get information as quickly as possible, to save lives. Some terrorism experts, such as Rohan Gunaratna, who has written a book about Al Qaeda, argue that rough methods and, even more so, the threat of rough methods are sometimes necessary to extract information quickly that could save lives. Cloonan and Coleman would argue that the information extracted under such circumstances isn`t reliable, so it isn`t worth the cost to the society or the legal system.

You write that one problem with rendition is that it is very difficult to bring someone who has been treated this way to court, either as a defendant or a witness. Why?

U.S. courts and German courts, both of which currently are hearing 9/11-related terrorism cases, generally consider confessions inadmissible if they were coerced. They also usually consider other evidence inadmissible if it was gained through a process of coercion. So these tactics can backfire in the courts. It`s unclear how the proposed military tribunals that the Pentagon intends to set up will handle coerced confessions. But one expert I interviewed for the story, John Radsan, a former lawyer at the C.I.A., suggested that it would be difficult even for a military tribunal to admit such testimony.

If prisoners who may have been tortured on America`s behalf can`t then be returned to the criminal-justice system, what happens to them? Will they be released? Can they just be held forever?

This is another area of concern, and of uncertainty. Last month, Mamdouh Habib was released from Guantánamo, after more than two years, with no charges against him at all. He was let go, according to a legal consultant to the Guantánamo detainees, Eric Freedman, because his account of torture after having been rendered to Egypt was "hopelessly embarrassing" to the United States. American officials gave no explanation for his release. Habib`s case highlighted some of the unintended consequences of such renditions, which include no clear legal process for handling the suspects, if their rights have been violated.

How does the rendition system relate to other abuses that we`ve seen—for instance, the torture at Abu Ghraib? Are they part of a common policy?

Officials in the Bush Administration have argued that there is no connection between their policies and these cases of abuse, which they regard as deviant behavior. Human-rights activists, in contrast, connect the dots between the Bush Administration`s decision not to protect "illegal enemy combatants" with the Geneva Conventions and the instances of mistreatment that have cropped up in Iraq and elsewhere. The Geneva Conventions require humane treatment of all prisoners, and the Bush Administration has essentially exempted the C.I.A. from needing to meet this standard in all cases.

John C. Yoo, one of the Administration lawyers who, with Alberto Gonzales (then the White House Counsel), formulated the prisoner policy, told you that he saw the 2004 election and Gonzales`s relatively easy confirmation as Attorney Generalas “proof that the debate is over.” He said, “The issue is dying out. The public has had its referendum.” Is he right?

He may be. It depends on whether the American public cares about this. Congress, so far, has not held hearings, or legislated much in this area. The courts have thus been forced to fill the void. So far, they have not decided clearly whether the U.S. Constitution applies to the U.S. treatment of non-Americans abroad. It`s an area of law, and of politics, that is in flux.

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[urlOUTSOURCING TORTURE]http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?050214fa_fact6[/url]
by JANE MAYER
Der Artikel zu dem Interview aus #26658 steht in #26087

Die gesamte Chronik des Krieges aus `New Yorker`
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/previous/index.ssf?050307fr…
mit allen Artikel von Hersh.

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March 2, 2005
Saudi Shiites, Long Kept Down, Look to Iraq and Assert Rights
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/02/international/middleeast/0…

QATIF, Saudi Arabia, Feb. 25 - The Shiite Muslim minority in this kingdom once marked their Ashura holy day furtively in darkened, illegal community centers out of fear of stirring the powerful wrath of the religious establishment.

But this year Ashura fell on the eve of the 10-day campaign for municipal council elections, to be held here on Thursday, and a bolder mood was readily apparent. Thousands thronged sprawling, sandy lots for hours to watch warriors on horseback re-enact the battlefield decapitation of Hussein, the Prophet Muhammad`s grandson, in 680.

A few young men even dared perform a gory, controversial ritual no one can remember seeing here in public - beating their scalps with swords until they drew blood to mirror Hussein`s suffering.

"It used to be a story that made us weep only," said Nabih al-Ibrahim, 42, a portly civil engineer running for a city council seat. "We believed we were weak. That this is why we didn`t govern ourselves for a long time."

"Maybe now, after all that has happened in Iraq, we will take something political from the story of Hussein," Mr. Ibrahim added, echoing a common sentiment. "Now the issue will take another route, because Shiites have started the growth of their political culture."

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Children from Saudia Arabia`s Shiite minority joined in the self-flagellation ritual of the Shiite
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Saudi Arabia`s religious establishment, which is dominated by the Wahhabi branch of Sunni Islam, still damns such rites as pagan orgies. But the fact that Shiites, at least in this city, their main center, no longer feel the need to hide reflects a combination of important changes here and elsewhere in the Middle East.

The most important include the emergence of an elected Shiite majority government next door in Iraq, the campaign for municipal elections here in the country`s first nationwide polls and a relaxation in some of the discrimination that Shiites have long faced in the kingdom.

The limited municipal council elections scheduled throughout eastern Saudi Arabia are expected to earn Shiite candidates all five seats up for grabs in Qatif, an urban area of 900,000 on the Persian Gulf.

In a sight startling for Saudi Arabia, Sheik Hassan al-Saffar, a dissident Shiite cleric who has been jailed and spent the 15 years before 1995 in exile, spoke for an hour in one candidate`s campaign tent on the first big night of electioneering. Even limited elections are important, he said, "because they ignited in people`s minds the spark of thinking about their interests and aspirations."

Sheik Saffar also drew parallels to Iraq, saying voting was the least Saudis could do, considering the risks their brethren had taken next door to exercise this new freedom. He took great pains to say it was a question for all Saudis, not Shiites alone.

The kingdom`s two million Shiites, most living in the Eastern Province, constitute about 10 to 15 percent of the native Saudi population.

The minority naturally faces the same problems as other Saudis, utterly lacking freedom of assembly, expression and most other basic civil rights. Activist Shiite women are outraged that all Saudi women are barred from voting.

But the Shiites feel their problems more acutely because they have suffered religious and economic discrimination in Saudi Arabia, particularly in the aftermath of Iran`s Islamic revolution of 1979.

They were viewed as a potential fifth column, not least because Shiite Iran urged the overthrow of the Saudi monarchy and violent riots erupted here in the early 1980`s. The fact that the Shiite minority is concentrated right above the country`s richest oil fields inspired a particularly harsh crackdown.

There has been no Shiite cabinet minister, and only one Shiite ambassador - to Iran. Shiites are kept out of critical jobs in the armed forces and the security services. There are no Shiite mayors or police chiefs, and not one of the 300 Shiite girls` schools in the Eastern Province has a Shiite principal.

Saudi Shiites believed that the government would at least start to regard them as citizens, especially after Crown Prince Abdullah met nearly two years ago with a group that presented a petition for equal rights, titled "Partners in the Nation."

The prince called for a better understanding between Sunnis and Shiites and included prominent Shiites in a couple of sessions of his "national dialogue," virtually the only public forum where Saudis are allowed to discuss ways to combat the religious extremism carried out by Al Qaeda and its followers.

In the last few years some restrictions on Shiites in Qatif were lifted or at least overlooked, including allowing limited construction of community and Shiite mosques, as well as the public celebration of Ashura rituals.

But the little that has changed outside Qatif raises questions in the community about the government`s commitment to tolerance. Ashura celebrations are banned in Dammam, a neighboring city of some 600,000, including 150,000 Shiites.

There is only one officially sanctioned Shiite mosque there, and no functioning Shiite cemetery. The distinctive Shiite call to prayer is banned, and even the small clay pucks that Shiites are supposed to rest their foreheads on during prayer are outlawed.
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Shiites in Dammam wish some of those issues could be discussed in the municipal election campaigns. The elections are being held in three stages in different parts of country, with the second, eastern stage scheduled for Thursday. But candidates and voters said they did not dare raise such topics in the election tents, lest the campaign be shut down.

Saudi Shiites hope that once a few of them are elected to city councils, at least in Qatif, they can discuss their problems more openly.

"Whoever is going to be elected by the people has the legitimacy nobody else has, not even the king, believe it or not," said one Qatif candidate in a flush of excitement. Exactly three minutes later he reconsidered. "It would be wise if you don`t quote the statement about the king," he said, sparking a burst of laughter from his colleagues.

The full-bore hatred that the Wahhabi sect bears for Shiites spills out on Web sites, in the local news media and even in school books.

Saudi textbooks contain passages that describe Shiite beliefs as outside Islam - the original split emerging because Shiites supported the claim of Muhammad`s heirs to control the faith. Wahhabis believe that Shiite veneration of the Prophet`s family, including worshipping at tombs in the Iraqi cities of Karbala and Najaf, incorporates all manner of sins, including polytheism.

Such practices prompt some to revile Shiites as a lower order of infidel than even Christians or Jews.

A recent article in a Saudi magazine suggested that a form of temporary marriage allowed by the Shiites helped spread AIDS. When a Sunni was arrested for trying to set fire to a Shiite community center in Qatif, Sheik Fawzi al-Seif, a local cleric, said one writer on a Web site had asked why the arsonist had acted while the building was empty.

Web sites also urged Sunnis to vote Thursday lest they find the dreaded Shiites on their municipal councils.

Last week a prominent Islamic law professor, Abdel Aziz al-Fawzan, accused anyone who took part in any Ashura celebration of being an infidel, the rough equivalent of a death sentence.

Shiites say they have no recourse to address any manner of discrimination. "Who am I going to complain to, a judge who is a Wahhabi sheik?" said Hassan al-Nimr, a prominent Shiite cleric.

What Saudi Shiites really seek is a clear statement from the government pronouncing Shiite Islam an accepted branch of the faith, believing that all other rights will flow from that. But the Saud dynasty gained its control over much of the Arabian Peninsula via adherents to the Wahhabi teachings, and its legitimacy rests on maintaining their support. The religious establishment considers itself the guardian of Sunni orthodoxy and holds sway over institutions including the courts and the education system.

Shiites say they have learned their lesson that riots only lead to repression, although the Saudi government remains wary that any sectarian violence in Iraq may ignite similar clashes at home. Shiites think a combination of outside pressure and changes like elections will slowly gain them equal rights.

They believe that Osama bin Laden and his ilk created an important opening, with the royal family now casting about for ways to limit the Wahhabi extremism that it has encouraged but which now seeks to overthrow Saudi rule.

More important, the minority puts great stock in what develops in Iraq, although the changes remain too raw and violent to gauge fully.

If the Shiites who dominated the Iraqi elections show that they can work with Sunnis and Kurds, Shiites in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Persian Gulf say, it will strengthen the idea that democracy works and undermine the longstanding prejudice that Shiites are monsters intent on undermining Sunnis everywhere.

The same holds for the Shiite majority in neighboring Bahrain, long ruled by a Sunni minority, and the Shiite minority in Kuwait. There are about 112 million Shiites among the world`s 1.5 billion Muslims.

Fears about a Shiite wave have been expressed by such Sunni rulers as King Abdullah II of Jordan, who described the emergence of a Shiite crescent from Tehran to Baghdad to Damascus to Beirut as a possible threat to regional stability. (The Alawite minority that runs Syria is a Shiite sect, though mainstream Shiites regard it as heretical.)

"What is happening today in Iraq raised the political ambitions of the Shiites," said Muhammad Mahfouz, the editor of a cultural magazine in Qatif, "that democracy and public participation is an instrument capable of defusing internal disputes, so Shiites can attain their rights and aspirations."

Mona el-Naggar contributed reporting for this article.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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March 1, 2005
Q&A: Wisner Urges Caution on Egypt and Lebanon
http://www.cfr.org/

From the Council on Foreign Relations, March 1, 2005

Frank G. Wisner, a veteran U.S. ambassador who served in Cairo from 1986-91, says Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak`s decision to open up presidential elections to competition evolved from a number of factors, including an "international environment which is arguing for greater democratic participation." But he adds that it is important to move cautiously toward political change in Egypt, for years the staunchest U.S. friend in the Arab world, and in Lebanon, which hangs in a fragile ethnic and religious balance. "The last thing any American would want is domestic circumstances in any Arab state to spin out of control and have the very people who have profound differences with the United States on top of the heap," he says. "We certainly don`t want fundamentalist, Islamic-controlled, radical-controlled regimes."

Wisner, who is vice chairman for external affairs at American International Group (AIG), was interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor for cfr.org, on March 1, 2005.

Were you surprised by President Mubarak`s speech over the weekend calling for a constitutional change to open up the presidential election process for the first time?

Yes, I was surprised, as I think many people were. But that doesn`t mean there hasn`t been a very active political debate inside Egypt in recent weeks after the president announced he was going to stand for a fresh term in office. My own personal assumption was that any constitutional changes would occur after, not before, the election. So the timing of this revision of the constitution to provide for multi-candidate presidential polling came as somewhat of a surprise to me, but as I said, the ground was churning. We were headed in new directions for Egyptian politics.

What do you think is behind Mubarak`s decision? Internal unrest over the political system in Egypt? Democracy movements in other Arab countries?

I believe it`s a mixture of factors. Certainly one can`t discount the general move in the region towards freer elections, or the international environment which is arguing for greater democratic participation in Arab countries, or President Bush`s specific call for Egypt to take the lead in democracy in the region. Egypt, after all, has a political past that provided for substantial democratic participation. All of these are factors, plus the fact that this is clearly the last time President Mubarak will stand for re-election. His age is such that [Egypt] is clearly in a transition period, with something else to follow.

Let`s talk a bit about the impact of events in other countries. I would assume the situation in Lebanon is of most interest right now to the Arab states. Would you agree?

Oh, I certainly do. The events in Lebanon are unbelievably important. The assassination of [former Prime Minister] Rafik Hariri is a very consequential event. But it, too, comes within a context. Beginning at about the time of the American intervention in Iraq, there was coalescence in Lebanese politics around the idea that maybe the time was coming to call for, and obtain, an end to the Syrian presence that had dated from the late 1970`s in Lebanon. It was led, in the first instance, by the Druze--Walid Jumblat`s people [the Druze are a religious sect; Jumblat is a Lebanese politician of the Druze faith]--and was increasingly gaining traction among Maronite Christian elements, and picking up support among Sunnis. It now has all come together in a considerable turnout of Lebanese sentiment, not only to respond to the assassination of Hariri, but to carry it forward politically and get the Syrians to withdraw. What we haven`t heard yet, which I personally believe is material, is where the Shiites will come out. They are, after all, the majority in Lebanon, and their political institutions, Hezbollah and [the] Amal [party] are very consequential, and I have not yet heard where they stand.

I thought Hezbollah was supporting the existing government.

It has been. But it hasn`t been strident in its defense of that government and, therefore, of the Syrian presence. Looking at Lebanon, the Arab world, in general, recognizes that there is a time for change, and they`re trying to signal to the Syrians that this is the time to adapt policies to the new circumstances. The Arab consensus is such a fragile commodity, so they`re doing it more by nudges and hints than by strident demand.

Have you been watching the Syrian situation? They`re under attack from all quarters, it seems.

Syrians are under a great deal of pressure on many fronts. Their economy has stalled, the Iraq matter has made the United States Syria`s direct neighbor, the Palestinians and the Israelis are moving toward finding some common ground, and the situation in Lebanon, have all produced a number of pressures. Syria is an important state, but it is not a state of overwhelming power. Therefore, all of these external signals have an effect on Syrian thinking.

Nonetheless, I think we all have to be very careful. When you look at Lebanon, it`s important to think about the Syrian departure--what does that mean? What maintains the balances in Lebanon thereafter? Will Syria cease to be a factor in Lebanese politics, or in what way will it be a factor? It has always been a key player, whether there have been troops on the ground or not. These are all open questions. It`s not simply about the restoration of Lebanese democracy as a cure-all solution for the nation`s problems.

Are you worried about another civil war in Lebanon?

Personally, not at this stage. I don`t see those signs; I believe the Lebanese have had quite enough of civil war. They had an atrocious bloodletting, a particularly destructive civil war that turned Christians against Palestinians; Sunnis against Christians; Shiites, Druze, and Israelis got involved; the Christians turned on one another--it was a horrific decade of unbelievable destructiveness and violence. And I don`t think Lebanese, as I understand them, are particularly keen on walking down that road again. Yet it remains a very, very divided community ethnically and religiously, and a very fragile compromise keeps all of these Lebanese forces in balance.

Did you happen to know Hariri well?

I did not know him well. I admired him--he was a man of considerable business acumen and competence. He led the effort for the reconstruction of Lebanon and overhauled the ruins of Beirut into a functioning city. He maintained a very artful balance between the various Lebanese factions, and for many, many years, was close to the Syrians, who had consequential power. He began to split with them, and the split became open and significant at the time of the Syrian decision to force the re-election last year of Lebanese President [Emile] Lahoud in an extra-constitutional manner. The decision of the United States and France to combine in the U.N. Security Council and produce Resolution 1559, which called for the withdrawal of foreign troops from Lebanon, added more fuel to the fires of Lebanon and was one of the contributing factors in the situation of today.

Going back to Egypt, you know President Mubarak very well. Could you describe his personality and how this may have factored into this discussion of political change?

I believe that the starting point in understanding Egypt under Mubarak for the past quarter of a century has been the extraordinarily important relationship that Mubarak has forged with the United States. He took the base that [former President Anwar] Sadat had built with us and built on it. Egypt has become a major friend of the United States, contributing to the single most important guarantor of peace in the region, peace between Israel and Egypt.

Mubarak has never wavered in that, he`s never wavered in his friendship with the United States, and he`s never wavered, also, on the critical issue of taking no chances with Egypt`s internal stability. This has meant stagnation politically and economically. Mubarak is a man who picks a course and sticks with it. He stuck with the United States despite many moments of disagreement. He has been supported by the United States with a huge assistance program, political gestures, and relationships with successive presidents. He has been a very steady factor in a very troubled region and a major triumph in sustaining American diplomacy.

Therefore, when I hear people talking about, "Well, you know, this day is over, and let`s get beyond the Mubarak period and see Egypt return to democracy," I always want to send a note of caution. The move is right, the direction is right. But be careful, because Egypt`s stability is really important to the United States, and a gradual, careful evolution is in our interest.

What do you think Mubarak`s reaction was to President Bush`s State of the Union call for Egypt to lead the region toward democracy?

The speech, I thought, was valid. There was no finger-pointing at Egypt in those remarks that Egypt was undemocratic and had to change its ways if the American relationship was to be preserved. But rather, it was a positive message, looking to Egypt, her sophistication, her assets, her influence in the Arab world, to take the lead in this, as in other Arab matters, to help the region move towards a more open, participatory political future, and strong institutions that make up a functioning democracy. The press and judiciary have strong foundations in Egypt, but there is a ways to go before they are functioning and able to provide the cadre, if you will, of a democratic society.

Bush has talked about democracy in the Middle East in a very idealistic way now for a couple of years. He`s been ridiculed a bit in the United States about this being sort of an impossible dream. And now, all of a sudden, he`s either on a very lucky streak or has had some impact. What do you think?

I believe that the president took a principled stand. The actions of the United States are consequential in the Middle East, and they have had some serious effects. They have also been clouded in accusations that the Middle East [is] not going to give into American pressure, and democracy can`t be built at the point of a gun. But a debate has been stimulated by a clear American stand; one that all of us should welcome, provided that the pursuit of that objective is very, very carefully pursued. Because these are very fragile societies in a dangerous region, and the last thing any American would want are domestic circumstances in any Arab state to spin out of control and have the very people who have profound differences with the United States on top of the heap. We certainly don`t want fundamentalist, Islamic-controlled, radical-controlled regimes.

I noticed also over the weekend--it didn`t get any real publicity in the United States--that in Saudi Arabia, Foreign Minister Prince Saud [al-Faisal] announced that, for the first time, they`re going to allow women to become political officers in the foreign service.

Yes, I saw that. There was an extremely good interview that Lally Weymouth had with the Saudi foreign minister, in which he pointed to the opening of the doors of the Saudi foreign ministry to women officers who would be arriving shortly. That caught my attention as it did yours. There are changes, very important changes, underway in Saudi Arabia. And the Saudis are in their own race against time: the preservation of stability and order, at the same time evolution, at the same time trying to swat down the radical elements in Saudi society that have resorted to violence and have taken people`s lives.

In Egypt, people have said that there hasn`t been democracy in Egypt in 5,000 years. Wasn`t there a functioning parliament there under the king, or am I mistaken?

If you look at democracy, or modern democratic governments, as systems with a free press, a strong judiciary, a sensible code of law, civil society institutions, parliaments, parties, and oppositions, and elections as a system for changing governments, then yes, that existed in Egypt through the 1920s, the 1930s, and the 1940s. The Egyptian system in those years, however, was locked in a self-destructive battle over politics, the monarchy, and the British presence.

In a rising tide of Arab nationalism, the defeat of Arabs at the hands of the new state of Israel brought matters to an end, and the army moved in 1952 to put an end to the structures of a participatory or democratic system. The king`s ouster was broadly welcomed by Egyptian society at the time, and he left, much unlamented, and the political parties, perceived as being corrupt and oligarchical, were swept aside. But there was a functioning political system, a political life, and varieties of political leaders in Egypt. One has to remember that Mubarak will run in this election after many, many decades of military or quasi-military rule. I can`t imagine today-- and I know few Egyptians who can tell me--who the other candidates will be. There hasn`t been a culture to produce other strong political voices.

I believed, before Mubarak`s announcement, that in a totally open, free, contested presidential election, Mubarak would win by 65 percent of the vote. The political culture of Egypt is to vote for stability.

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washingtonpost.com
The Mystery of Low Interest Rates
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64396-2005Mar…

By Robert J. Samuelson

Wednesday, March 2, 2005; Page A17

Something strange happened on the way to higher interest rates: They declined. We`re talking about rates on long-term mortgages and bonds. These rates truly affect the economy, because they influence housing and business investment. Most economists expected them to rise. But no. Last June rates on 30-year fixed mortgages averaged 6.29 percent; now they`re about 5.7 percent. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan recently called the declines a "conundrum.`` Equally puzzling is whether the declines guarantee a healthy economy -- or suggest a speculative "credit bubble.``

To judge the weirdness, consider all the forces that should have raised rates. For starters, there`s the expanding economy; that should increase credit demands. Next there`s the Fed`s policy of squeezing credit supply. Since last June the Fed has raised the Fed funds rate from 1 percent to 2.5 percent. (This rate, the only one the Fed controls directly, applies to overnight loans among banks. Higher rates imply that the Fed is striving to curb bank credit.) Growing credit demand meets tightening supply -- rates rise. But they haven`t. It`s "highly unusual`` for long-term interest rates to fall "despite a better economy and [Fed] tightening,`` says Mark Zandi of Economy.com.

But wait, there`s more. Exploding federal budget deficits have also bloated credit demands. Since 2001 deficits have totaled $948 billion; and deficits are projected indefinitely. Still, Treasury bond rates have dropped. In January 2001, when George W. Bush became president, the rate on a 10-year Treasury bond was 5.16 percent. Now it`s about 4.25 percent.

Theories abound to explain the mystery. Here are three, courtesy of economist David Wyss of Standard & Poor`s. Each has flaws. Cautious companies, it`s said, aren`t borrowing much for new investment. True. In September the debt of nonfinancial corporations was up only 3.3 percent from a year earlier. But strong household and federal borrowing (up 9.8 percent and 9.7 percent) have offset weak business borrowing. Another theory is that foreigners have rescued us by investing huge sums in U.S. bonds and mortgages. Through September, foreigners had provided 32 percent of the money raised in U.S. credit markets in 2004, up from 14 percent in 2000. But foreign lending was also huge in 1996 (28 percent), when interest rates were higher. Finally, today`s low rates may mainly reflect low inflation; lenders don`t require extra compensation for the erosion of their money. True. But inflation expectations haven`t changed much recently. How could they explain the latest drop in rates?

There are also gloomier theories. Economist John Makin of the American Enterprise Institute says that low long-term rates signal fears of a weakening economy. A weaker economy would presumably mean less inflation and credit demand -- both justifying lower long-term rates.

But why worry about low rates? After all, they help borrowers, and if the economy is unexpectedly weak, they might prevent a recession. However, artificially low rates can also prompt overborrowing, creating inflation or speculative price increases in whatever is being bought on credit -- land, stocks, homes. Sooner or later prices stop rising and (perhaps) start declining or even crash.

Among worriers, the fear is that cheap credit has created a housing "bubble.`` In the year ending in September, average U.S. home prices rose 13 percent, reports one survey. In Nevada they rose 36 percent, in California, 27 percent and in Florida, 20 percent. Higher housing prices have supported consumer spending -- people borrowed against home values -- and free-spending Americans have bolstered the U.S. and global economies. If the cycle reversed, the consequences might be grim. Falling home prices. Sickly consumption. Global slump.

In the critics` story, the Fed plays the villain. It fostered artificially low mortgage and bond rates through cheap short-term credit. Hedge funds and investment banks embraced the "carry trade``: They borrowed short-term funds at 2 percent or 3 percent and invested in longer-term securities with higher rates. Pension funds and insurance companies shifted from short-term to long-term securities, because short-term interest rates were so low. The flood of money depressed rates on most bonds and mortgages. Indeed, the "spreads`` -- the gaps -- between rates on Treasury bonds and rates on "junk`` bonds and bonds of "emerging market`` countries are now at historical lows, says Diane Vazza of Standard & Poor`s.

But the structure of interest rates -- and hence housing -- is vulnerable to a nasty surprise and also to the Fed`s present policy of raising short-term rates. So say critics. Greenspan seems less agitated. A growing economy, he testified recently, can absorb higher rates. Localized drops in home prices might occur, but nothing "resembling a collapsing bubble.``

All this attests to our economic ignorance. There are no simple rules (budget deficits, for instance) to explain interest rates. My view is that low interest rates are mainly a good sign. They reflect not only low inflation but growing confidence that it will stay low. We may be reverting to the 1950s, when this was the norm. In 1959 the rate on the 10-year Treasury bond averaged 4.33 percent. This is a reassuring notion; it could also be wrong.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

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The Independent
Lebanese are united under flag of the ’cedars revolution’
Wednesday, 2nd March 2005, by Robert Fisk
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/story.jsp?story=615…

HEY slept in tents. They slept on the pavements last night. Lebanon is cold in winter. Not as cold as Ukraine but the frost that has lain over Lebanon these past 29 years is without temperature. Never has the red, white and green Lebanese flag been used as so poignant a symbol of unity. Only a few hundred metres from the encampment, Rafik Hariri was killed. And so, the Lebanese are supposed to believe, the murder of the former prime minister has unleashed the "cedars revolution". The cedar tree stands at the centre of the Lebanese flag.

With the resignation of the pro-Syrian Lebanese government, the equally pro-Syrian President, Emile Lahoud, was looking last night for a "caretaker" government ­ without much success. Hariri’s sister, Bahiya, an MP in Sidon, was not interested in being Lebanon’s first woman prime minister, and the elderly Rashid Solh didn’t want the job, despite his Lebanese aristocratic origins. The dearth of contenders showed how tragic the Lebanese body politic has become.

It is still not clear whether the rubric "cedars revolution" started in Beirut or in the mouth of a US State Department spokesman but its implications are still clear enough: the Syrian army must go and ­ more important ­ the Syrian army’s intelligence service must leave Lebanon. Hence everyone is waiting to see if a "caretaker" government will care for Lebanon or for Syria, whose protégé, General Lahoud, is now the lonely man in the Baabda presidential palace in the hills above Beirut.

Today, the "opposition" ­ Christian Maronites, Sunni Muslims and Druze though not, to be frank, many Shia Muslims ­ will gather at the palace of the Jumblatt family in the Chouf mountains at Mukhtara where Walid Jumblatt, the new would-be tiger of Lebanese freedom, has ensconced himself for his own protection. No recent member of the Jumblatt family has died in his bed, indeed, it was Walid’s claim that the Syrian Baathists murdered his father, Kamal, in 1977 that set off this unprecedented revolution in the Arab world. The Lebanese people, according to Walid Jumblatt, have struck down the Syrian-sponsored Lebanese government. The Lebanese people want the truth: Who killed Rafik Hariri?

"One voice ... one flag ..." Mr Jumblatt said yesterday. He wanted "the removal of foreign elements (sic) from Lebanon" and the end of "foreign interference" in Lebanese affairs. But neither Walid Jumblatt nor the Lebanese are naive. They know US support for Lebanese "democracy" is fuelled by Washington’s anger at Syria’s alleged support for the insurgency against US troops in Iraq. Mr Jumblatt showed his feelings about the US involvement in Iraq when he said last year he wished a mortar fired at the hotel in which Paul Wolfowitz, the US assistant defence secretary, was staying in Baghdad had hit Wolfowitz himself. That remark cost Jumblatt a US visa. Mr Bush wants Hizbollah guerrillas to disarm. So do the Israelis. Indeed, the Israelis want the Syrian army and intelligence service to leave Lebanon.

So the Lebanese opposition are demanding the very same goals as the Israelis. But Mr Jumblatt wants to protect Hizbollah, which drove the Israeli army out of Lebanon in 2000. "We’ve got to engage with Hizbollah," he said. "They are Lebanese." And he also sent a message to Damascus: "We should speak frankly to the Syrians. We want them to leave Lebanon. But we want good relations with the Syrians."

Here lies the problem. Syria will always be Lebanon’s larger Arab neighbour. Its Muslims and Christians live together today on the scales of a dark negative. The Christians will not demand control of a country if the Muslims do not claim to be part of an "Arab nation". But if a "liberated" Lebanon declared itself for "the West", then the country could fall apart, as it did in the 1975-1990 civil war.

It is tempting for the Lebanese camping out on Martyrs Square - or ’Liberation Square’ as they now call it, though the original name commemorates the hanging of Lebanese Muslims and Christians demanding independence from the Ottoman empire in 1915 and 1916 - to believe that they are part of a great movement for democracy in the Middle East. Elections in Iraq and the small bit of ’Palestine’ left to the Palestinians, and the elephantine gift of contended presidential elections bestowed upon his Egyptian people by Hosni Mubarak can be moulded into an ideology by the Bush administration. But Lebanon has always been betrayed by its foreign cheerleaders - which is why no one won the Lebanese civil war, except, perhaps the Syrians.

Last night, even Salim Hoss, many times a former prime minister and one of the few truly honest politicians in Lebanon, made it known he did not want to lead a caretaker government. So here’s a question that no one asks too directly in Lebanon: what is the future of Rustum Ghazali? "Amu Rustum" is the head of Syrian military intelligence in Lebanon ­ he lives in the largely Armenian town of Aanjar in the Bekaa Valley and has remained silent these past three weeks. It would be good to hear from "Amu Rustum". Mr Hariri, in the months before his death, received an abusive phone call from General Ghazali. What was said?

©2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.

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`We are living in a state of constant fear`
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1428166,00.html

As the violence in Iraq continues, the number of people traumatised by the conflict grows. Yet little or no psychiatric treatment is available to them - and what there is can be terrifyingly crude. Ghaith Abdul-Ahad investigates
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad
Wednesday March 2, 2005

Guardian
Hafid al-Qadhi is one of the most precarious places in the new Baghdad. Gangs, brothels and piles of rubbish fill its dark, unelectrified alleys, where kids play around lakes of green sewage. It has been known for decades as the crazies` neighbourhood, not only for the eccentricities of its inhabitants, but also because since the late 50s it has been home to the country`s most celebrated psychiatrists.

One of Baghdad`s best-known shrinks has his clinic in a crumbling, two-storey building there. The stairwell leading to his clinic is a dark, sinister space. Lighters in hand, visitors tread carefully on the steps, plaster falling in big lumps on their shoulders as they climb to the upper floors. The letters on the doctor`s nameplate have been lost a long time ago. In the small waiting room, men and women crowd around a small table where a young woman struggles in the darkness to find patients` history in three big volumes of names and details. An old TV sits idle in the corner, and a piece of cloth separates the waiting room from a small, stinking toilet, lit by a candle.

Beneath the doctor`s British diploma hanging on the wall, Fatima Aziz, a thin, tall woman in her 40s, is sitting with her sister on a pair of threadbare green armchairs. Her black scarf is falling back from her head, her hand held firmly by her sister and her eyes fixed on the floor. The doctor, an old man in his 60s, pleasant, soft and reassuring, sits behind a big wooden table. The only light in the room comes from the big window behind him, making his white hair glow and giving him the air of a genie. He glances at the white card passed to him by a male nurse and whispers "ECT".

Iraqis these days like to look back and tell each other stories of the good old days when everyone was happy and people weren`t at each other`s throats over every issue. Clearly the memory is a rosy one, but there is no doubt that depression and psychiatric illness are on the increase in today`s Iraq. The worsening security situation has led to more and more people with serious mental health problems, though the withdrawal of the UN and international aid agencies means information about the scale of the problem is elusive; both the International Red Cross and Médecins Sans Frontières say they have no data on the psychiatric effects of the war and its aftermath on Iraq`s population. (A 1999 report by MSF into psychological damage in Sierra Leone after a period of intense violence found that 99% of respondents showed levels of disturbance equivalent to severe post-traumatic stress in Europe.)

With limited availability of medicines and counselling therapies, some doctors are increasingly relying on electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT, to treat Iraq`s mentally ill. This involves passing an electric current through the brain to induce a fit and in the UK is used, under general anaesthetic, only to treat severe depression and psychiatric illness, and then only after other treatments have failed. The irony is that in Iraqi cities, with their intermittent electricity supplies, even this therapy is not always available.

"So Fatima, tell me what`s wrong?" asks the doctor in a fatherly manner. Her sister answers on her behalf. "She is not sleeping very well. She speaks harshly to everyone. She remembers old quarrels and picks fights with everyone." Fatima is looking at the floor.

"My daughter," asks the doctor, "do you feel that people are talking about you? Every time you go to bed do you hear someone whispering in your ears?"

"Yes," says the sister. "She won`t have any food cooked in the house, she says we are trying to poison her." Fatima is still looking at the floor.

The doctor starts writing something in a white notepad and says: "She is suffering from an acute depression." He looks at Fatima again. "Fatima, my daughter, do you tell yourself that maybe if I die things will get better?"

Still looking at the floor, she speaks for the first time: "Yes, but then I look at my kids and say no."

"Doctor, every time the door is knocked, she starts screaming and fighting," adds her sister

"Why is that my dear?" asks the doctor in his soft voice.

"It is all these things around us," says Fatima. "The Americans, the booby-traps. No security, I can`t let the kids go play outside because of car bombs and fighting." She raises her head for the first time, looks at the doctor and says: "Doctor, you are a learned man. Why can`t you stop these car bombs and explosions?"

The doctor giggles and looks at the ceiling, raising his palms. "But how can I? I am like you, scared of these things."

Ibn al-Rushud is Iraq`s psychiatric hospital, built in the late 70s with oil-boom money. The hospital, a white concrete modernist structure with long slit windows, is squeezed into a cul-de-sac with a Presbyterian church.

Dr Hashim Zaini, the hospital`s director, is bald, spectacled, slightly eccentric, and clearly a little despairing. "We have 74 beds and two doctors," he says. "We receive 250 to 300 patients a day and we are supposed to serve a nation of 25 million people." He is followed by half a dozen people as he walks to inspect the wards - patients looking for more tranquillizers, a contractor who`s here to fix the hospital`s generator, a couple of employees asking for leave. They follow him into his office as he continues to sign papers and write prescriptions pushed under his nose by colleagues.

In a conservative society with strict moral codes, visiting a shrink or having any psychiatric consultation is anathema. Having a mentally disturbed person in a household can mark an entire family as damaged, prompting gossip to spread rapidly through extended family networks. People with psychiatric illnesses such as depression or acute anxieties will often be told to read the Qur`an or pray more, or will be threatened by a husband, father or family members. "Psychiatric consultation is so stigmatised here, it is only when the family cannot tolerate the patient any more that he will be brought here," says Zaini. "This is why it will take a long time to figure out the real impact of violence and war on the people."

But according to Zaini and other experts, it is children who are experiencing most acutely the impact of Iraq`s descent into violence. "We are witnessing a gradual change in the psychology of the children - they are living in a state of constant fear. When the teacher comes every few days and tells the children, `Don`t come to school tomorrow, there is a terrorist threat,` what do you think will happen to those kids? This is why the best business in town is the market for toy guns.

He would love it, he says, to be able to spend more time listening to his patients and forming a proper diagnosis, instead of turning to electric therapies after five minutes` consultation. "But for us Iraqis, tired and impatient, and especially for the families who want to see a direct result, we can`t stop using ECT. For them it is an effective way to calm down the patient, and it is a speedy fix."

And so back in the darkened surgery in Hafid al-Qadhi, the doctor calls to his nurse, "Mustafa, prepare for an ECT." The nurse goes outside, and after a few minutes the muffled roar of a generator comes from the balcony. A faint current of electricity, enough to light only a few bulbs, flickers into life. The nurse comes back and opens a door leading to a small adjacent room smelling of burning plastic. "Doctor, I don`t want to go through this again," says a visibly agitated Fatima. "But you want to get well, right?" he says, leading her to the other room as her sister holds her firmly.

They lay her on the leather bench, and take a metal headset from where it has been soaking in an aluminium bowl filled with water. Two wires lead from the headset to a brown wooden box. The doctor switches a plug on the wooden box. Her eyes close tightly as she starts to fit, shaking and trembling. Her sister holds her feet; the nurse puts his thumb under her chin to stop her from biting her tongue.

Back in the room and behind his desk as Fatima lies unconscious next door, the doctor is inspecting the white card of another patient. "The conditions in the surrounding environment, the fear, the anxieties of war and violence and the deteriorating security situation - all work as a pressure factor, that keep chipping away people`s resistance."

He opens the door to let in the next patient. "Of course, some people are already neurotic and have a low threshold of tolerance. People like Fatima, who break faster than others."
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

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The dark roots of America`s security strategy
By Andrew Bacevich
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/998a1e04-8a86-11d9-9059-00000e2511c…

Financial Times

Published: March 2 2005

George W. Bush has laboured to portray his global war on terror as a principled response to the events of September 11, 2001. In practice, the hallmark of US policy since then has been not principle but opportunism. In this sense, recurring rumours of wider war - whether the buzz about Washington taking aim at Syria or gearing up to attack Iran - capture an essential truth about US strategy in the Bush era.

During his first term, Mr Bush abandoned concepts of prudence and restraint that had long informed American thinking about the use of military power. He devised an alternative strategic tradition, revolutionary in its implications. The new thinking behind the Bush doctrine of preventive war insists that in a post-9/11 world the US has no choice but to go permanently on the offensive. Old notions of using force as a last resort no longer apply. As the world`s sole superpower, the US must act, enforcing order and eliminating evil-doers however it deems appropriate.

The spirit animating this new approach is one of intense urgency. What counts is not deliberation, not the careful weighing of means and ends, and not the evaluation of second-order consequences, but action. Audacity, risk-taking, a willingness to lay all on the line: these have emerged as emblems of Bush`s new approach to strategy.

Lending these precepts an air of plausibility is US military might and the Bush administration`s confidence in the invincibility of the American soldier, the liberator of Afghanistan and Iraq. Granted, events since the fall of Baghdad have not been without disappointment. Efforts to parlay the overthrow of Saddam Hussein into a fully-fledged transformation of the Greater Middle East have encountered obstacles, even as the original rationale for the war has evaporated. That becomes all the more reason, therefore, to act boldly to reclaim the initiative. For the Bush administration, the key is to attack - surely on the other side of such exertions a great harvest awaits.

In fact, little of this is as novel as either the president`s acolytes or his critics imagine. Casting loose from strategic precepts that had served the US well, the administration has embraced a tradition that Americans would have once rejected as utterly alien. Its post-9/11 approach to war-making is instantly recognisable to anyone familiar with the military record of imperial Germany: punch a hole in the enemy`s front and count on something useful to turn up.

As if affirming the adage about history repeating itself, the US seems determined to replicate in its war on terror the errors that Germany committed in its misguided war of 1914-1918. Mr Bush, the warrior president, has come to resemble no one more than Kaiser Wilhelm II, the self-described supreme warlord. Having unleashed a whirlwind beyond his control, Mr Bush, like the Kaiser, seems unable to conceive of an out. Nothing remains but to press on, trusting in the bravery and resourcefulness of the frontline troops to carry the day, no matter what the cost.

As with the Kaiser so too with Mr Bush, as the fighting stretches on, authority passes from his hands to those of others: in the so-called Great War, that power devolved on Field Marshal Hindenburg and General Ludendorf. Together this duo oversaw the destruction of the German army while driving Germany itself on to the rocks. In the global war on terror, the parts of Hindenburg and Ludendorf have gone to Donald Rumsfeld and his cohorts in the defence secretary`s office. In striking contrast to activist commanders-in-chief such as Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt, Mr Bush has increasingly chosen to play a largely ceremonial role. Like the Kaiser by the time things came crashing down in 1918, he has become something of a figurehead, trotted out on occasions of state and touring foreign capitals while seemingly disengaged from the actual direction of events determining his nation`s fate.

Meanwhile, in the manner of their German counterparts who counted on unrestricted submarine warfare to starve Britain but managed only to add the US to the list of the Reich`s enemies, Mr Rumsfeld`s team has made rashness a virtue, certain that beyond the next push final victory lies. Although they have not yet depleted US military strength, opening a new front against Syria or Iran just might do the trick. The word for all this is militarism.

The writer is professor of international relations at Boston University and author of The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War (published this month by OUP)

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Da wird Bush aber traurig sein, denn zu seiner Zeit als Gouverneur von Texas hat er eine Menge Menschen in die Todeszelle geschickt, weit über 100.

THE NATION
Death Penalty Ruling Hits Texas Hard
Some are relieved, others angered, as the execution capital weighs the implications of no longer executing those who killed as youths.
By Scott Gold
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-deat…

Times Staff Writer

March 2, 2005

HOUSTON — When Raymond Cobb`s conscience couldn`t take any more, when he couldn`t shoulder being a member of his high school band and a murderer too, he confessed his crime like a child — not to the police, but to his dad.

According to court documents, he told his father that he had broken into the neighbors` house in Huntsville, Texas, to steal a stereo. Surprised when Margaret Owings came home, he killed her. "I asked him, `What about the little girl?` " Charles Cobb told detectives. "And he just said, `She`s dead.` "

Cobb was 17 at the time. Kori Rae Owings was 16 months. He had buried her alive.

On Tuesday, Cobb became one of 72 death row inmates whose sentences were commuted by the U.S. Supreme Court`s ruling that the Constitution prohibits the execution of people who were under 18 when they committed their crimes.

Across the nation, the court`s decision sparked impassioned debate and prompted difficult questions: What special considerations do children deserve? Who is a child? And — perhaps the toughest of all — are some people beyond rehabilitation?

Nowhere did the debate rage as fiercely as in Texas. Since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976, Texas has been responsible for about a third of the nation`s executions. Since then, of the 22 people who have been executed for crimes they committed when they were under 18, 13 were executed in Texas. Of the 72 inmates affected by Tuesday`s ruling, 29 — about 40% — are from Texas.

"This was the most horrendous thing I have ever seen," said David Weeks, the Walker County, Texas, district attorney who secured a death sentence against Raymond Cobb, who is now 28 and has been on death row since 1997.

Cobb told police that he had been surprised when Margaret Owings lunged at him inside the home. He stabbed her, he said, then dragged her body to a wooded area to bury her.

He discovered the child sleeping inside the house and carried her outside as well, apparently unsure of what to do with her. He said the child "fell in the hole," and once that happened, he said he put the mother`s body on top of the child and buried them together.

"The way he carried out the crime tells you more than what his physical age was," Weeks said. "There are people younger than 18 out there who are as scary as anybody you can come across. They`re just wired differently. If ever there was a crime that the death penalty was designed to punish, that was it."

That would have been the easy way out, said Jim Marcus, executive director of the Texas Defender Service, a nonprofit group that represents death row inmates.

"No one is trying to minimize these tragedies. The question is: Is the person who committed the crime someone who is morally culpable as an adult?" he said. "I don`t think any reasonable person would argue that 7-year-olds or 12-year-olds should be subjected to the death penalty. You don`t have to ask why. It`s just intuitive. Once you accept that premise, what is the cutoff? Today the Supreme Court said that it is 18."

The first time Barbara Acuna`s heart was broken was when her son, Robert, a 17-year-old, was accused of murdering two neighbors who once paid him to mow their lawn. The second time, she said from her home in Baytown, was when she learned that the Harris County district attorney would seek to execute her son.

"He lived here at home," she said. "He wasn`t old enough to vote. He wasn`t old enough to rent a car. He was considered a juvenile in every other legal aspect. And then all of a sudden he was old enough for them to go after the death penalty."

Several death penalty opponents also noted that the 29 people on death row in Texas who were sent there for crimes they committed as juveniles include a disproportionate number of minorities. Nine are African American, 12 are Latino and one is Asian American. Seven — or 24% — are white, though Texas is more than 70% white.

Walter Long, a defense attorney from Austin who has worked on numerous death penalty cases, represented Napoleon Beazley, an African American who was 17 when he shot and killed a man during a carjacking. During Beazley`s trial, prosecutors pointed out that he had watched the film "Boyz N the Hood" before the killing. Beazley was executed in 2002 at age 25.

"They said he felt himself to be a little gangster," Long said. " `Boyz N the Hood` does not take a positive view of gangs. It was just a way to seize on his race and prejudice the jury."

Many law enforcement officers, however, condemned Tuesday`s ruling.

Harris County Dist. Atty. Chuck Rosenthal said the state Legislature had already determined that the appropriate cutoff for the death penalty was 17 — a law that has been on the books for nearly 150 years.

"There is a line in Texas," he said. "What I think the opinion really says is that five Supreme Court justices believe that their moral judgment is superior to that of the Texas Legislature. When the Supreme Court gets into line-drawing, they are overstepping their bounds."

Charley Wilkison, political and legislative director for the Austin-based Combined Law Enforcement Assns. of Texas, the state`s largest law enforcement organization, said the law enforcement community feared that juvenile crime could increase because of the court`s ruling.

"For some individuals in Texas, and elsewhere, there is a great deal of a chance that at some point you are going to wind up in prison," he said.

"At that point, the death penalty is the only real deterrent. It would stand to reason that gangs will recruit underage people to commit murders. The selling point, the spin inside the gang, would be: `You do it. Because you won`t get the death penalty.` "



Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

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Tomdispatch ist eine Seite mit immer guten Artikeln:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml
Diemal ein Artikel über die `Crazies` von einem langjährigem CIA Analysten.

Tomgram: McGovern on the Iranian and Israeli nuclear programs
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2230


Here`s the strange thing. In the decade that followed the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, nuclear weapons more or less disappeared from American sight -- despite a near-nuclear war in South Asia, despite the fact that the U.S. and Soviet nuclear arsenals continued to sit in place without particular justification or obvious "mission." Those potentially world-ending weapons, which had preoccupied two Cold War generations ever since the first of them was exploded over Hiroshima in August 1945, had to queue up at the back of an ever-growing line of global problems to get even their fifteen seconds of attention, no less fame. Suddenly, after 9/11 (when the site where the World Trade Center had once stood was dubbed "ground zero" as if a nuclear explosion had taken place on American soil), nuclear weapons zoomed back to the head of the line. At least in administration rhetoric, mushroom clouds began to go off over American cities and there was a drumbeat of fear about Saddam Hussein`s nuclear program (and the rest of his -- as it turned out, nonexistent -- WMD), leading of course to the invasion of Iraq under the rubric of a "counterproliferation war."

Now, another of those drumbeats, this time about the much-disputed Iranian nuclear bomb that no one yet claims actually exists, has begun. Once again we seem to be heading down a highway marked "counterproliferation war." What makes this bizarre is that the Middle East today, for all its catastrophic problems, is actually a nuclear-free zone except for one country, Israel, which has a staggeringly outsized, semi-secret nuclear arsenal. As Los Angeles Times reporter Douglas Frantz wrote at one point, "Though Israel is a democracy, debating the nuclear program is taboo… A military censor guards Israel`s nuclear secrets." And this "taboo" has largely extended to American reporting on the subject. Imagine, to offer a very partial analogy, if we all had had to consider the Cold War nuclear issue with the Soviet, but almost never the American nuclear arsenal, in the news. Of course, that would have been absurd and yet it`s the case in the Middle East today, making most strategic discussions of the region exercises in absurdity.

I wrote about this subject under the title, Nuclear Israel, back in October 2003, because of a brief break, thanks to Frantz, in the media blackout on the subject. I began then, "Nuclear North Korea, nuclear Iraq, nuclear Iran - of these our media has been full for the last year or more, though they either don`t exist or hardly yet exist. North Korea now probably has a couple of crude nuclear weapons, which it may still be incapable of delivering. But nuclear Israel, little endangered Israel? It`s hard even to get your head around the concept, though that country has either the fifth or sixth largest nuclear arsenal in the world." And not much has changed since. I recommend as well a piece written even earlier by Ira Chernus on a graphic about the Israeli nuclear arsenal tucked away at the MSNBC website (and still viewable).

Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst and one of the founders of the group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, considers the Iranian and Israeli bombs, and Bush administration policy in relation to both below in a piece that, he writes, emerged from "an informal colloquium which has sprung up in the Washington, DC area involving people with experience at senior policy levels of government, others who examine foreign policy and defense issues primarily out of a faith perspective, and still others with a foot in each camp. We are trying to deal directly with the moral -- as well as the practical -- implications of various policy alternatives. One of our group recently was invited to talk with senior staffers in the House of Representatives about Iran, its nuclear plans, its support for terrorists, and U.S. military options. Toward the end of that conversation, a House staffer was emboldened to ask, `What would be a moral solution?` This question gave new energy to our colloquium, generating a number of informal papers, including this one. I am grateful to my colloquium colleagues for their insights and suggestions." Now, read on. Tom

Attacking Iran: I Know It Sounds Crazy, But...
By Ray McGovern

"`This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous.`

"(Short pause)

"`And having said that, all options are on the table.`

"Even the White House stenographers felt obliged to note the result: `(Laughter).`"

(The Washington Post`s Dan Froomkin on George Bush`s February 22 press conference)

For a host of good reasons -- the huge and draining commitment of U.S. forces to Iraq and Iran`s ability to stir the Iraqi pot to boiling, for starters -- the notion that the Bush administration would mount a "preemptive" air attack on Iran seems insane. And still more insane if the objective includes overthrowing Iran`s government again, as in 1953 -- this time under the rubric of "regime change."

But Bush administration policy toward the Middle East is being run by men -- yes, only men -- who were routinely referred to in high circles in Washington during the 1980s as "the crazies." I can attest to that personally, but one need not take my word for it.

According to James Naughtie, author of The Accidental American: Tony Blair and the Presidency, former Secretary of State Colin Powell added an old soldier`s adjective to the "crazies" sobriquet in referring to the same officials. Powell, who was military aide to Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger in the early eighties, was overheard calling them "the f---ing crazies" during a phone call with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw before the war in Iraq. At the time, Powell was reportedly deeply concerned over their determination to attack -- with or without UN approval. Small wonder that they got rid of Powell after the election, as soon as they had no more use for him.

If further proof of insanity were needed, one could simply look at the unnecessary carnage in Iraq since the invasion in March 2003. That unprovoked attack was, in my view, the most fateful foreign policy blunder in our nation`s history...so far.

It Can Get Worse

"The crazies" are not finished. And we do well not to let their ultimate folly obscure their current ambition, and the further trouble that ambition is bound to bring in the four years ahead. In an immediate sense, with U.S. military power unrivaled, they can be seen as "crazy like a fox," with a value system in which "might makes right." Operating out of that value system, and now sporting the more respectable misnomer/moniker "neoconservative," they are convinced that they know exactly what they are doing. They have a clear ideology and a geopolitical strategy, which leap from papers they put out at the Project for the New American Century over recent years.

The very same men who, acting out of that paradigm, brought us the war in Iraq are now focusing on Iran, which they view as the only remaining obstacle to American domination of the entire oil-rich Middle East. They calculate that, with a docile, corporate-owned press, a co-opted mainstream church, and a still-trusting populace, the United States and/or the Israelis can launch a successful air offensive to disrupt any Iranian nuclear weapons programs -- with the added bonus of possibly causing the regime in power in Iran to crumble.

But why now? After all, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency has just told Congress that Iran is not likely to have a nuclear weapon until "early in the next decade?" The answer, according to some defense experts, is that several of the Iranian facilities are still under construction and there is only a narrow "window of opportunity" to destroy them without causing huge environmental problems. That window, they say, will begin to close this year.

Other analysts attribute the sense of urgency to worry in Washington that the Iranians may have secretly gained access to technology that would facilitate a leap forward into the nuclear club much sooner than now anticipated. And it is, of course, neoconservative doctrine that it is best to nip -- the word in current fashion is "preempt" -- any conceivable threats in the bud. One reason the Israelis are pressing hard for early action may simply be out of a desire to ensure that George W. Bush will have a few more years as president after an attack on Iran, so that they will have him to stand with Israel when bedlam breaks out in the Middle East.

What about post-attack "Day Two?" Not to worry. Well-briefed pundits are telling us about a wellspring of Western-oriented moderates in Iran who, with a little help from the U.S., could seize power in Tehran. I find myself thinking: Right; just like all those Iraqis who welcomed invading American and British troops with open arms and cut flowers. For me, this evokes a painful flashback to the early eighties when "intelligence," pointing to "moderates" within the Iranian leadership, was conjured up to help justify the imaginative but illegal arms-for-hostages-and-proceeds-to-Nicaraguan-Contras caper. The fact that the conjurer-in-chief of that spurious "evidence" on Iranian "moderates," former chief CIA analyst, later director Robert Gates, was recently offered the newly created position of director of national intelligence makes the flashback more eerie -- and alarming.

George H. W. Bush Saw Through "The Crazies"

During his term in office, George H. W. Bush, with the practical advice of his national security adviser Gen. Brent Scowcroft and Secretary of State James Baker, was able to keep "the crazies" at arms length, preventing them from getting the country into serious trouble. They were kept well below the level of "principal" -- that is, below the level of secretary of state or defense.

Even so, heady in the afterglow of victory in the Gulf War of 1990, "the crazies" stirred up considerable controversy when they articulated their radical views. Their vision, for instance, became the centerpiece of the draft "Defense Planning Guidance" that Paul Wolfowitz, de facto dean of the neoconservatives, prepared in 1992 for then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney. It dismissed deterrence as an outdated relic of the Cold War and argued that the United States must maintain military strength beyond conceivable challenge -- and use it in preemptive ways in dealing with those who might acquire "weapons of mass destruction." Sound familiar?

Aghast at this radical imperial strategy for the post-Cold War world, someone with access to the draft leaked it to the New York Times, forcing President George H. W. Bush either to endorse or disavow it. Disavow it he did -- and quickly, on the cooler-head recommendations of Scowcroft and Baker, who proved themselves a bulwark against the hubris and megalomania of "the crazies." Unfortunately, their vision did not die. No less unfortunately, there is method to their madness -- even if it threatens to spell eventual disaster for our country. Empires always overreach and fall.

The Return of the Neocons

In 2001, the new President Bush brought the neocons back and put them in top policymaking positions. Even former Assistant Secretary of State Elliot Abrams, convicted in October 1991 of lying to Congress and then pardoned by George H. W. Bush, was called back and put in charge of Middle East policy in the White House. In January, he was promoted to the influential post (once occupied by Robert Gates) of deputy assistant to the president for national security affairs. From that senior position Abrams will once again be dealing closely with John Negroponte, an old colleague from rogue-elephant Contra War days, who has now been picked to be the first director of national intelligence.

Those of us who -- like Colin Powell -- had front-row seats during the 1980s are far too concerned to dismiss the re-emergence of the neocons as a simple case of déjà vu. They are much more dangerous now. Unlike in the eighties, they are the ones crafting the adventurous policies our sons and daughters are being called on to implement.

Why dwell on this? Because it is second in importance only to the portentous reality that the earth is running out of readily accessible oil – something of which they are all too aware. Not surprisingly then, disguised beneath the weapons-of-mass-destruction smokescreen they laid down as they prepared to invade Iraq lay an unspoken but bedrock reason for the war -- oil. In any case, the neocons seem to believe that, in the wake of the November election, they now have a carte-blanche "mandate." And with the president`s new "capital to spend," they appear determined to spend it, sooner rather than later.

Next Stop, Iran

When a Special Forces platoon leader just back from Iraq matter-of-factly tells a close friend of mine, as happened last week, that he and his unit are now training their sights (literally) on Iran, we need to take that seriously. It provides us with a glimpse of reality as seen at ground level. For me, it brought to mind an unsolicited email I received from the father of a young soldier training at Fort Benning in the spring of 2002, soon after I wrote an op-ed discussing the timing of George W. Bush`s decision to make war on Iraq. The father informed me that, during the spring of 2002, his son kept writing home saying his unit was training to go into Iraq. No, said the father; you mean Afghanistan... that`s where the war is, not Iraq. In his next email, the son said, "No, Dad, they keep saying Iraq. I asked them and that`s what they mean."

Now, apparently, they keep saying Iran; and that appears to be what they mean.

Anecdotal evidence like this is hardly conclusive. Put it together with administration rhetoric and a preponderance of other "dots," though, and everything points in the direction of an air attack on Iran, possibly also involving some ground forces. Indeed, from the New Yorker reports of Seymour Hersh to Washington Post articles, accounts of small-scale American intrusions on the ground as well as into Iranian airspace are appearing with increasing frequency. In a speech given on February 18, former UN arms inspector and Marine officer Scott Ritter (who was totally on target before the Iraq War on that country`s lack of weapons of mass destruction) claimed that the president has already "signed off" on plans to bomb Iran in June in order to destroy its alleged nuclear weapons program and eventually bring about "regime change." This does not necessarily mean an automatic green light for a large attack in June, but it may signal the president`s seriousness about this option.

So, again, against the background of what we have witnessed over the past four years, and the troubling fact that the circle of second-term presidential advisers has become even tighter, we do well to inject a strong note of urgency into any discussion of the "Iranian option."

Why Would Iran Want Nukes?

So why would Iran think it has to acquire nuclear weapons? Sen. Richard Lugar, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was asked this on a Sunday talk show a few months ago. Apparently having a senior moment, he failed to give the normal answer. Instead, he replied, "Well, you know, Israel has..." At that point, he caught himself and abruptly stopped.

Recovering quickly and realizing that he could not just leave the word "Israel" hanging there, Lugar began again: "Well, Israel is alleged to have a nuclear capability."

Is alleged to have…? Lugar is chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and yet he doesn`t know that Israel has, by most estimates, a major nuclear arsenal, consisting of several hundred nuclear weapons? (Mainstream newspapers are allergic to dwelling on this topic, but it is mentioned every now and then, usually buried in obscurity on an inside page.)

Just imagine how the Iranians and Syrians would react to Lugar`s disingenuousness. Small wonder our highest officials and lawmakers -- and Lugar, remember, is one of the most decent among them -- are widely seen abroad as hypocritical. Our media, of course, ignore the hypocrisy. This is standard operating procedure when the word "Israel" is spoken in this or other unflattering contexts. And the objections of those appealing for a more balanced approach are quashed.

If the truth be told, Iran fears Israel at least as much as Israel fears the internal security threat posed by the thugs supported by Tehran. Iran`s apprehension is partly fear that Israel (with at least tacit support from the Bush administration) will send its aircraft to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities, just as American-built Israeli bombers destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak in 1981. As part of the current war of nerves, recent statements by the president and vice president can be read as giving a green light to Israel to do just that; while Israeli Air Force commander Major General Eliezer Shakedi told reporters on February 21 that Israel must be prepared for an air strike on Iran "in light of its nuclear activity."

US-Israel Nexus

The Iranians also remember how Israel was able to acquire and keep its nuclear technology. Much of it was stolen from the United States by spies for Israel. As early as the late-1950s, Washington knew Israel was building the bomb and could have aborted the project. Instead, American officials decided to turn a blind eye and let the Israelis go ahead. Now Israel`s nuclear capability is truly formidable. Still, it is a fact of strategic life that a formidable nuclear arsenal can be deterred by a far more modest one, if an adversary has the means to deliver it. (Look at North Korea`s success with, at best, a few nuclear weapons and questionable means of delivery in deterring the "sole remaining superpower in the world.") And Iran already has missiles with the range to hit Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Sharon has for some time appeared eager to enlist Washington`s support for an early "pre-emptive" strike on Iran. Indeed, American defense officials have told reporters that visiting Israeli officials have been pressing the issue for the past year and a half. And the Israelis are now claiming publicly that Iran could have a nuclear weapon within six months -- years earlier than the Defense Intelligence Agency estimate mentioned above.

In the past, President Bush has chosen to dismiss unwelcome intelligence estimates as "guesses" -- especially when they threatened to complicate decisions to implement the neoconservative agenda. It is worth noting that several of the leading neocons – Richard Perle, chair of the Defense Policy Board (2001-03); Douglas Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy; and David Wurmser, Middle East adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney -- actually wrote policy papers for the Israeli government during the 1990s. They have consistently had great difficulty distinguishing between the strategic interests of Israel and those of the US -- at least as they imagine them.

As for President Bush, over the past four years he has amply demonstrated his preference for the counsel of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who, as Gen. Scowcroft said publicly, has the president "wrapped around his little finger." (As Chairman of the President`s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board until he was unceremoniously removed at the turn of the year, Scowcroft was in a position to know.) If Scowcroft is correct in also saying that the president has been "mesmerized" by Sharon, it seems possible that the Israelis already have successfully argued for an attack on Iran.

When "Regime Change" Meant Overthrow For Oil

To remember why the United States is no favorite in Tehran, one needs to go back at least to 1953 when the U.S. and Great Britain overthrew Iran`s democratically elected Premier Mohammad Mossadeq as part of a plan to insure access to Iranian oil. They then emplaced the young Shah in power who, with his notorious secret police, proved second to none in cruelty. The Shah ruled from 1953 to 1979. Much resentment can build up over a whole generation. His regime fell like a house of cards, when supporters of Ayatollah Khomeini rose up to do some regime change of their own.

Iranians also remember Washington`s strong support for Saddam Hussein`s Iraq after it decided to make war on Iran in 1980. U.S. support for Iraq (which included crucial intelligence support for the war and an implicit condoning of Saddam`s use of chemical weapons) was perhaps the crucial factor in staving off an Iranian victory. Imagine then, the threat Iranians see, should the Bush administration succeed in establishing up to 14 permanent military bases in neighboring Iraq. Any Iranian can look at a map of the Middle East (including occupied Iraq) and conclude that this administration might indeed be willing to pay the necessary price in blood and treasure to influence what happens to the black gold under Iranian as well as Iraqi sands. And with four more years to play with, a lot can be done along those lines. The obvious question is: How to deter it? Well, once again, Iran can hardly be blind to the fact that a small nation like North Korea has so far deterred U.S. action by producing, or at least claiming to have produced, nuclear weapons.

Nuclear Is the Nub

The nuclear issue is indeed paramount, and we would do well to imagine and craft fresh approaches to the nub of the problem. As a start, I`ll bet if you made a survey, only 20% of Americans would answer "yes" to the question, "Does Israel have nuclear weapons?" That is key, it seems to me, because at their core Americans are still fair-minded people.

On the other hand, I`ll bet that 95% of the Iranian population would answer, "Of course Israel has nuclear weapons; that`s why we Iranians need them" -- which was, of course, the unmentionable calculation that Senator Lugar almost conceded. "And we also need them," many Iranians would probably say, "in order to deter ‘the crazies` in Washington. It seems to be working for the North Koreans, who, after all, are the other remaining point on President Bush`s ‘axis of evil.`"

The ideal approach would, of course, be to destroy all nuclear weapons in the world and ban them for the future, with a very intrusive global inspection regime to verify compliance. A total ban is worth holding up as an ideal, and I think we must. But this approach seems unlikely to bear fruit over the next four years. So what then?

A Nuclear-Free Middle East

How about a nuclear-free Middle East? Could the US make that happen? We could if we had moral clarity -- the underpinning necessary to bring it about. Each time this proposal is raised, the Syrians, for example, clap their hands in feigned joyful anticipation, saying, "Of course such a pact would include Israel, right?" The issue is then dropped from all discussion by U.S. policymakers. Required: not only moral clarity but also what Thomas Aquinas labeled the precondition for all virtue, courage. In this context, courage would include a refusal to be intimidated by inevitable charges of anti-Semitism.

The reality is that, except for Israel, the Middle East is nuclear free. But the discussion cannot stop there. It is not difficult to understand why the first leaders of Israel, with the Holocaust experience written indelibly on their hearts and minds, and feeling surrounded by perceived threats to the fledgling state`s existence, wanted the bomb. And so, before the Syrians or Iranians, for example, get carried away with self-serving applause for the nuclear-free Middle East proposal, they will have to understand that for any such negotiation to succeed it must have as a concomitant aim the guarantee of an Israel able to live in peace and protect itself behind secure borders. That guarantee has got to be part of the deal.

That the obstacles to any such agreement are formidable is no excuse not trying. But the approach would have to be new and everything would have to be on the table. Persisting in a state of denial about Israel`s nuclear weapons is dangerously shortsighted; it does nothing but aggravate fears among the Arabs and create further incentive for them to acquire nuclear weapons of their own.

A sensible approach would also have to include a willingness to engage the Iranians directly, attempt to understand their perspective, and discern what the United States and Israel could do to alleviate their concerns.

Preaching to Iran and others about not acquiring nuclear weapons is, indeed, like the village drunk preaching sobriety -- the more so as our government keeps developing new genres of nuclear weapons and keeps looking the other way as Israel enhances its own nuclear arsenal. Not a pretty moral picture, that. Indeed, it reminds me of the Scripture passage about taking the plank out of your own eye before insisting that the speck be removed from another`s.

Lessons from the Past...Like Mutual Deterrence

Has everyone forgotten that deterrence worked for some 40 years, while for most of those years the U.S. and the USSR had not by any means lost their lust for ever-enhanced nuclear weapons? The point is simply that, while engaging the Iranians bilaterally and searching for more imaginative nuclear-free proposals, the U.S. might adopt a more patient interim attitude regarding the striving of other nation states to acquire nuclear weapons -- bearing in mind that the Bush administration`s policies of "preemption" and "regime change" themselves create powerful incentives for exactly such striving. As was the case with Iraq two years ago, there is no imminent Iranian strategic threat to Americans -- or, in reality, to anyone. Even if Iran acquired a nuclear capability, there is no reason to believe that it would risk a suicidal first strike on Israel. That, after all, is what mutual deterrence is all about; it works both ways.

It is nonetheless clear that the Israelis` sense of insecurity -- however exaggerated it may seem to those of us thousands of miles away -- is not synthetic but real. The Sharon government appears to regard its nuclear monopoly in the region as the only effective "deterrence insurance" it can buy. It is determined to prevent its neighbors from acquiring the kind of capability that could infringe on the freedom it now enjoys to carry out military and other actions in the area. Government officials have said that Israel will not let Iran acquire a nuclear weapon; it would be folly to dismiss this as bravado. The Israelis have laid down a marker and mean to follow through -- unless the Bush administration assumes the attitude that "preemption" is an acceptable course for the United States but not for Israel. It seems unlikely that the neoconservatives would take that line. Rather…

"Israel Is Our Ally."

Or so said our president before the cameras on February 17, 2005. But I didn`t think we had a treaty of alliance with Israel; I don`t remember the Senate approving one. Did I miss something?

Clearly, the longstanding U.S.-Israeli friendship and the ideals we share dictate continuing support for Israel`s defense and security. It is quite another thing, though, to suggest the existence of formal treaty obligations that our country does not have. To all intents and purposes, our policymakers -- from the president on down -- seem to speak and behave on the assumption that we do have such obligations toward Israel. A former colleague CIA analyst, Michael Scheuer, author of Imperial Hubris, has put it this way: "The Israelis have succeeded in lacing tight the ropes binding the American Gulliver to Israel and its policies."

An earlier American warned:

"A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation facilitates the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, infuses into one the enmities of the other, and betrays the former into participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification.... It also gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens, who devote themselves to the favorite nation, facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country." (George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796)

In my view, our first president`s words apply only too aptly to this administration`s lash-up with the Sharon government. As responsible citizens we need to overcome our timidity about addressing this issue, lest our fellow Americans continue to be denied important information neglected or distorted in our domesticated media.

Ray McGovern served as a CIA analyst for 27 years -- from the administration of John F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush. During the early 1980s, he was one of the writers/editors of the President`s Daily Brief and briefed it one-on-one to the president`s most senior advisers. He also chaired National Intelligence Estimates. In January 2003, he and four former colleagues founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

Copyright 2005 Ray McGovern

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SAN FRANCISCO / [url$5 cable car fare has few fans / Tourists slam plan for rise -- conductors, too]http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/03/02/BAGAJBJ3F61.DTL[/url]

A Powell Street cable car passes another car going the opposite direction in the afternoon, when most passengers are tourists.

A sign on the window of a cable car says the one-way fare is $3, which will go up to $5 on Sept. 1 under the proposed budget.

Eine Frage wird nicht geklärt, ob und um wieviel der Tagespass oder 5-Tages Pass für die Muni teurer wird.

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Positives Denken!

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Wednesday, March 02, 2005
Discussion Topic for Wednesday, March 02, 2005
Son of Islamofascism
http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Thanks to everyone who took part in yesterday`s discussion.

What I took away from it is that ‘Islamofascism’ actually had an academic meaning when it was first coined, but that it has since been turned into a propaganda term.

I submit that in its current usage it is a fine example of ‘framing’, which is a technique mastered by the Busheviks to set the terms of a debate and put their opponents on the defensive. In this case, the word is used to conflate Islam with fascism, and no good American is in favor of fascism, right? If a proponent of the war can set the terms of a debate over the value of the war as one of pro or anti-fascism, the argument is over before it begins. To be anti-war is to be pro-fascism, you peace-Nazi, you.

No, it doesn’t have to make sense. This is aimed at the lizard brain.

Here are a couple excerpts from posts on the blog Hoffmania!.

From March 1, a post by guest blogger Mark Williams:

“I live in a slightly Republican town in rural Massachusetts. We have many friends in our neighborhood and one of them is a card-carrying Republican. But there`s a difference, and I`m hearing this more often. He`s with "us".”

“In a conversation today I learned that my Republican friend is appalled at how the party has been "taken over". "They don`t represent my views on most things now", said my friend. He went on to say how disappointed he was at what`s happening - the war, the economy, and the social issues. Although he didn`t come right out and say so, I got the impression that he held dear the basic teachings in the Christian bible. He made reference to the fact that, when held up in the light of the Basic Truths, just about everything the current administration is doing, and the way they`re doing it, are completely in violation.”

I personally believe that more and more people who identify themselves as Republicans are thinking thoughts very much like this. And here, from the February 28 post, is more evidence that this may be true:

According to the NPR National Poll:

By a count of 51 to 42%, America`s on the wrong track.
People overwhelmingly oppose Bush`s new SocSec plan 53% to 30%.
58% don`t want private accounts. 34% don`t mind it.
Democrats would win the midterm elections if they were held today.
Americans trust Democrats to handle SocSec better than the GOP.
By a 53 to 41% margin, more folks agree with the Dems` plan.

And you know what this means in 2006! Right! A GOP sweep. With so much going for the Democrats, what else can the outcome be?

Because even though America loves our vision of the future, the breakdown of the survey participants is:

19% VERY CONSERVATIVE
22% SOMEWHAT CONSERVATIVE
39% MODERATE
11% SOMEWHAT LIBERAL
5% VERY LIBERAL

Welcome to our bizarro world.

Ok, so what does this have to do with Islamofascism? Or Iraq? Well, in a nutshell, I think that the war is a point of major vulnerability for Bush and all his ilk. I think support for it is wide among Republicans but very shallow. Because it is wrong. And, deep in their hearts they know it.

What the NPR poll shows is that solid majorities of Americans agree with Democratic policies, but the same exact people identify themselves as conservatives. They have been trained that ‘liberal’ is a bad word, even though they support policies that are on the liberal side of the great divide. It’s the power of language and framing that prevents them from calling themselves ‘liberals’.

As much as I might despise their politics, I believe that the majority of Republican voters are well-meaning, sincere, and genuinely decent people. They can only support the war if they a) think we can have a quick and easy victory and then forget about it, or b) are blissfully ignorant of its true costs, or c) can be convinced that we fighting a moral war equivalent to defeating the Nazis.

The first is pretty much hammered. More and more we are hearing that we will have to stay in Iraq for a decade or more. And the dead keep piling up.

The second is eroding. Even the most oblivious suburbanites are gradually becoming aware that this war is costing us dearly, in money, in world credibility, and in blood. Granted, there is a long way to go – ignorance is endemic and our whore corporate media is doing everything it can to focus attention on the trivial. But it’s getting harder and harder to ignore.

So the neoconservatives have only one course open to them if they want to keep public support for Lt. AWOL’s excellent adventure and its many possible sequelae. Convince Americans that they are fighting a war to preserve civilization against the barbarian hordes. Terminology like ‘Islamofascism’ is essential to the project.

So how do we recognize it? Are there other examples of this kind of framing? How do we re-frame the debate? How do we counter the creation of the modern crusade?

Please share your thoughts here, and, as always, news posts to the comments of the news section.

Thanks!
# posted by matt : 5:13 AM
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War News for Wednesday, March 02, 2005

There are some who, uh, feel like that, you know, the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is: bring `em on. We got the force necessary to deal with the security situation."
- George W. Bush, July 2, 2003

Bring ‘em on: Six Iraqis killed and 28 wounded in car bombing in central Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: A judge who sat on the tribunal that will try Saddam Hussein was assassinated in Baghdad. His son died in the same attack. Iraqi police lieutenant killed by gunmen in the Baghdad neighborhood of Doura. More police began searching for the killers and were ambushed. Two were slain. Another patrol responded to that attack and was caught by a roadside bomb that killed three more officers. One more Iraqi policeman was killed by gunmen in a separate attack near Abu Ghraib.

Bring ‘em on: Four Iraqi soldiers killed and three wounded in car bomb attack in southern Baghdad.

Vehicle accident: Two US soldiers killed in a vehicle accident in Beiji.


Iraqis against terrorism: Chanting "No to terrorism!" thousands of Iraqis rallied outside a medical clinic where a suicide car bomber killed 125 people a day earlier, braving the threat of another attack as they waved clenched fists.

However, anxieties over another attack did not prevent more than 2,000 people from gathering outside the clinic Tuesday to protest the attack.


Abizaid says that tunnel light is getting brighter: The top U.S. general in the Middle East said Tuesday that the failure of insurgents to prevent millions of Iraqis from voting in January shows that the violent guerrilla movement is fizzling.

Citing estimates from field commanders, Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, head of the U.S. Central Command, told a Senate committee that approximately 3,500 insurgents were involved in planning and executing the roughly 300 attacks on election day, Jan. 30.

"They threw their whole force at us, we think, and yet they were unable to disrupt the elections because people wanted to vote," Abizaid said before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Some Pentagon officials have speculated that insurgent leaders may have decided to bench the bulk of their forces on Jan. 30 to minimize the risk of capture by thousands of U.S.-led and Iraqi troops walking the streets and manning polling stations. A three-day holiday was declared and the country was under virtual lockdown, with private vehicle traffic prohibited, borders sealed and the Baghdad airport closed.


If we only try harder: The Pentagon is not trying hard enough to defeat the makeshift roadside bombs that are the leading killer of U.S. troops in Iraq, the commander of American forces in the Middle East said yesterday.

Pentagon statistics show that over the past two months, the homemade, easy-to-hide weapons have accounted for a significantly higher share of U.S. battle deaths. In the final 10 days of February, for example, roadside bombs caused at least 15 of the 22 battle deaths.

In Iraq there is a seemingly endless supply of explosives and they can be adapted for use against a wide variety of targets. They have proven to be a low-tech counterpoint to the U.S. military`s high- powered arsenal.


The fading coalition: Ukraine will begin pulling its troops from Iraq March 15, when the first of 150 military personnel will leave, Ukrainian officials said Tuesday. Foreign Minister Borys Tarasyuk will travel to Washington March 10-11 to meet with top U.S. officials. Ukraine has 1,650 troops in Iraq, the sixth largest contingent.


The PR War

Reality TV: The one-hour tapes constitute a sort of reality TV whose aim is to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. Aired twice a day, they serve as a counterpoint to the now-familiar images shot by insurgents of cowering hostages and beheadings. They are also a centerpiece of an intense government campaign designed to convince an edgy population that the fledgling government and its hard-hit security forces are making Iraq safer.

"Terrorism in the Grip of Justice" is the title of the series, which began airing shortly before Iraq`s national election Jan. 30. While it`s not clear just how truthful the videos are, the provocative images seem to bolster skeptical Iraqis` confidence in a government often assailed as ineffective against lawlessness and violence.

"It`s a good thing because it makes me feel there is a working government developing day by day and that the security situation is improving," said Fadwa Khalifa, a 22-year-old college student in Baghdad. "But I also fear that it all may be a lie."


A dissenting view: Fliers threatening staffers of U.S.-backed Al-Iraqiya TV are being distributed in the Iraqi towns of Baiji and Samarra, police and eyewitnesses said.

Baghdad-based, state-run Al-Iraqiya has been airing video of people confessing to being involved in the Iraq insurgency and in acts such as beheadings and suicide bombings.

The fliers say "TV is showing fake stories" of people they call sell-outs.

"The plays that are being showed by Allawi TV are targeting the reputation of mujahedeen who gave lessons to the infidels -- the occupiers," the fliers say.

For weeks the confessions have been aired between ads calling for recruits to join Iraqi security forces.

A group called "Al-Jihad wa Al-Da`wa" signed the fliers, police and eyewitnesses said.


This Is Interesting…

From today’s NY Times: Also on Tuesday, a senior Iraqi official said a half brother of Saddam Hussein who was arrested recently had been captured by Iraqi and allied forces, not by Syria, as Iraqi officials had said over the weekend.

This is just one paragraph from a much bigger story on other subjects, but it caught my eye. I mean, really? The Iraqi’s didn’t know their own guys caught this chump? What, did they look like Syrians from a distance?

The article goes on to say:

At a news conference in Baghdad on Tuesday, Iraq`s defense minister, Hazim al-Shalaan, provided new details about the recent capture of one of Mr. Hussein`s half brothers, Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hassan al-Tikriti, who has been accused of playing a major role in the organizing and financing of the insurgency.

Mr. Hassan was captured by Iraqi and allied soldiers, Mr. Shalaan said, not by Syrian forces, as Iraqi officials had said Sunday. The Syrians provided the information that led to Mr. Hassan`s capture, he added.

He refused to say where Mr. Hassan had been captured or to provide any more information about his arrest, saying simply that it was a "small operation" in which Iraqi special forces and allied forces had cooperated.

But here’s yesterday’s news:

Iraqis and Syrians agree: Iraqi officials said Sunday that Syria had captured and turned over a half-brother of Saddam Hussein who has been accused of playing a leading role in organizing and financing the insurgency that has tormented Iraq since Hussein`s overthrow nearly two years ago.

Syrian officials in Damascus confirmed the transfer, and said that the half-brother, Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hassan al-Tikriti, once the widely feared head of Iraq`s domestic intelligence agency, was one of a group of officials from the former Iraqi government who were arrested in Syria and delivered into Iraqi custody. An Associated Press report, quoting unnamed Iraqi officials, said there were 30 men in the group.

Here’s another:

Goodwill: Iraqi officials said yesterday that Syria captured and handed over Saddam Hussein’s half brother, a most-wanted leader in the Sunni-based insurgency, ending months of Syrian denials that it was harboring fugitives from the ousted Saddam regime. Iraq authorities said Damascus acted in a gesture of goodwill.

Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hassan, who had the same mother as Saddam, was nabbed along with 29 other fugitive members of the former dictator’s Baath Party in Hasakah in northeastern Syria, 30 miles from the Iraqi border, the officials said on condition of anonymity. The U.S. military in Iraq had no immediate comment.

What do you suppose is going on? This wouldn’t have anything to do with the administration’s desire to focus attention on Syria as Iraq part two, would it?


Americans Wake Up

Commemoration: It has almost been two years since the beginning of major combat in Iraq. From all ends of the country, a countless number of fathers, brothers, sisters and mothers have united to fight an ongoing war, a war that is far from over. Although many soldiers have made it back home safely, nearly 1,500 men and women have lost their lives.

To commemorate those 1,500 soldiers and fallen Iraqi civilians, the American Friends Service Committee is sponsoring Eyes Wide Open, a traveling memorial exhibit that features a pair of combat boots for each life lost in the Iraq war.

Marq Anderson, the advance coordinator for the exhibit, spoke of the "sombering impact" the memorial has on the people who come to view it. "Our shoes represent 30,000 to 100,000 civilians that have been killed in Iraq during this war," said Anderson. "Now compare that number with the number of soldiers that have died. It`s astronomical, and it needs to stop."

Since the initial start of the exhibit in January 2004, the number of boots representing the loss of U.S. soldiers has tripled. As the exhibit continues its way throughout the country, more and more families and friends come to pay tribute to their loved ones who served overseas, attaching flowers, identification tags, photographs, notes and American flags to the pairs of boots.


Antiwar: Why pick a military town as the site for an antiwar rally? As a veteran and a resident of Fayetteville, N.C. near Ft. Bragg, I can think of at least 50 reasons. Each of those reasons has a name and each were members of our community prior to their deaths in Iraq.

Some may argue that voicing opposition to war in a military town is somehow disrespectful. Tell that to the military families and veterans from many wars, including the current one, who plan to gather here on March 19, the second anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Like the majority of Americans, we now reject the reasons used to justify the war and many of us feel that the US government failed to successfully plan for what has happened. That lack of planning affects our communities more so than most.


Commentary

Editorial: There`s a seductive theory making the rounds that an expanded "Bush Doctrine" has planted seeds of democracy in the Middle East that are already bearing fruit. Editorial pages and columnists are making the argument that the invasion of Iraq, despite its messy aftermath, and the toppling of Saddam Hussein have led inexorably to elections in Arab lands. All aboard the freedom train!

Not so fast.

The Jan. 30 election for Iraq`s transitional national assembly was certainly an impressive display of courage: Men and women voted in the face of death threats from insurgents who had proved their ability to kill almost at will. But ballots have not yet diminished the carnage. This week a suicide bomber blew up his car in a crowded market south of Baghdad, killing as many as 125 people in the single bloodiest attack in the country since the fall of Hussein nearly two years ago. The grind of violence, directed equally at the Shiite majority and anyone who might aid the U.S.-backed government, may still trigger a civil war or other disintegration of Iraq.


Casualty Reports

Local story: River Vale, NJ, soldier killed by IED in Abertha.

Local story: Indiana, PA, soldier killed by IED in Abertha.

Local story: Tracy, MN, soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: Shreveport, LA, soldier killed in Baghdad.

Local story: West Palm Beach, FL, soldier killed in Ramadi.


Awards and Decorations

Local story: Lansing, KS, soldier receives Purple Heart.
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PART 3: The business of
private security
By Henry C K Liu
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/others/world-order.html

PART 1: The failed-state cancer
PART 2: The privatization wave

The prime function of a sovereign state is the provision of security, national and domestic. National security is concerned with protection from external threats, while domestic security is concerned with maintaining social order. For the United States, protected by two oceans, the line separating external threats and homeland security had been clearly delineated until September 11, 2001, after which direct foreign threats on the US homeland became a reality. Current US policy on the threat of terrorism focuses on preemptive wars on foreign soil and preventive measures within its borders.

Notwithstanding the current high-profile concern with the "war on terrorism", it is useful and necessary to remember that the central political aim of terrorism is not to annihilate its usually overwhelmingly powerful target, but merely to draw the world`s attention to what terrorists consider legitimate grievances imposed and sustained by the targeted polity and hitherto ignored by the world. Terrorism by definition is a limited reactive tactic in that it aims to make its target cease and desist ongoing injurious strategic policies and actions that have become routine and normal. Even state terrorism, also known conventionally as war, does not aim to destroy an opponent country, merely to eliminate its political resolve to resist the invader`s will. The political objective of the US "war on terrorism" is to deny the legitimacy of the grievances to which terrorists aim to draw attention and to present terrorist attacks as common criminal acts. "Terrorists hate us because they hate freedom," proclaimed President George W Bush. It is not a perspective that will reduce threats to US security. The fallback tactic, then, is preemptive strikes abroad and preventive measures at home.

Such an intransigent mindset grows out of the attitude that crime should be fought with increased funding for the police rather than by funding programs to eradicate poverty. Refusal to link terrorism to injustice comes from the same mentality as refusal to link crime with poverty. Increasingly, reflecting the proliferation of such a mentality, the US seeks to meet increased national and domestic security threats from terrorism by exploiting the efficiency that allegedly can be milked from privatizing state functions. It is ironically a march toward failed statehood in its acceptance of the superior effectiveness of the private sector in performing state functions. While security protection is outsourced to market participants, little effort is devoted to promoting policies that can reduce the need for security protection. Moreover, there is clear evidence that the global proliferation of marketization of basic social services, with its effect of denying needed services to the poor, adds to the proliferation of security threats from terrorism.

Social order and social security
Social order is the main component of domestic security. Social security is the foundation of social order. Henry J Aaron of the Brookings Institution calls the US Social Security system "the great monument of 20th-century liberalism". Privatization of social security is not a solution; it is an oxymoron. It merely turns social security into private security. Neo-liberal economics theory promotes as scientific truth an ideology that is irrationally hostile to government responsibility for social programs. Based on that ideology, neo-liberal economists then construct a mechanical system of rationalization to dismantle government and its social programs in the name of efficiency through privatization. Privatization of social security is a road to government abdication, the cause of failed statehood.

In 1935, the US Congress passed the Social Security Act as part of the New Deal, in response to inevitable market failures under finance capitalism. Social Security benefit payments not only helped recipients who were too sick or too old to work, but such payments also contributed to the stabilization of business cycles that regularly wreaked havoc on the market economy. Social security was a government program that helped keep markets operational by providing a baseline level of demand with a social safety net. Starting in 1937, government receipts into the Social Security trust funds have repeatedly contributed to the reduction of the federal deficit in an era when deficit financing was indispensable to demand management, with substantial socio-economic benefits to the whole system.

The Social Security program, by its very name, is not an investment program. It is a protection program. It is not even an insurance program, because all participants receive benefits on retirement. Rates of return on investment in a market economy are direct reflections of risk levels. The concept of risk is inseparable from the prospect of worst-case eventuality. The whole purpose of Social Security is to eliminate market risk for those citizens least able to afford to risk their well-being in retirement.

The fact that Social Security payments have gradually fallen into mere supplemental support for the full financial needs of retirees does not argue for encouraging workers to taking market risks with their retirement. One-third of America`s retired elderly receive 90% of their income from Social Security payments, and two-thirds receive more than 50%. This argues for increasing government contribution to Social Security costs, to be paid for by taxing unearned gains that sprang either from private control of land and other natural resources, or from the exercise of monopoly power in all its subtle forms, including overreaching intellectual property rights.

How work is taxed
Journalist Jonathan Rowe and economist Clifford Cobb conducted a study highlighting the forgotten history of US income tax by pointing out that the payroll tax, which finances Social Security, is in essence a regressive tax on work. It fell exclusively on wages and salaries of working people on the first US$90,000 of annual income in 2004. The payroll tax constitutes more than half of the federal taxes that the average US taxpayer pays. But because of the ceiling on taxable payroll income, those making more than $90,000 in 2004 paid no additional payroll tax.

The Social Security tax rate today is double the top income-tax rate in 1913, when the income tax was first introduced. In payroll taxes alone, low-income workers today are paying twice the rate that millionaires paid in the original version of the tax that Congress first enacted. Obviously, fairness demands that the income ceiling for payroll tax should be removed and the fixed rate reduced correspondingly. According to the Social Security Administration`s chief actuary, if the limit on wages taxed for Social Security, currently $90,000, were lifted altogether, the system would be kept fully solvent until 2077.

In the 1920s, corporate income tax yielded almost a third of US federal revenues. Today, corporations pay just a little over one-ninth despite widespread corporatization of almost every aspect of life. The New Economy, a buzzword describing the effect of new, astronomically high-growth industries that are on the cutting edge of technology and are expected to be the driving force of new economic growth, consists of industries such as the Internet dot-coms and biotech. "New Economy" notwithstanding, a large share of corporate income is still derived from ownership of land and other natural resources, from intellectual-property monopoly and from financial manipulation. As of 1990, these comprised more than 40% of the total assets of almost a third of Fortune 500 companies. So the decline of revenue share from corporate tax has been part of the larger reversal of the basic concept behind the original income tax. It is the key venue for the sharp increase in the number of millionaires and billionaires in the US economy while more and more workers fall below the poverty line to join the rank of the working poor. It is obscene to accuse the poor of not saving enough when they do not receive even a living wage. There is no other way to reduce poverty except to give the chronic poor money and the working poor more income.

Today, the US federal tax system is in essence a tax-on-work system. It falls hardest upon income of workers and penalizes work activities that an economy needs to encourage in order to remain healthy. Capital is merely idle assets without the opportunity to generate wealth through increasing the financial value of work provided by workers. Neo-liberal economics ideology places wealth creation, as manifested in asset appreciation, as the ultimate goal of economic activities. Yet there are internal structural contradictions in the economics of wealth creation through asset appreciation, which is achievable only by causing asset value to rise faster than value of work as expressed through income. When income from work rises faster than asset appreciation, it is perceived by neo-liberal monetarists as inflation, a wealth destroyer. Thus wealth can only be created through ownership of assets the value of which rises faster than the value of work. But in reality, when asset value rises faster than income from work, those who do not own assets will fall behind into relative poverty. Thus wealth creation through asset appreciation actually produces systemic poverty. Real aggregate wealth, or the wealth of nations as Adam Smith coined it, is created only from raising the value of work as expressed through rising income from work done by the working population. Neo-liberals betray Adam Smith, their ideology guru, by usurping government`s power to ensure labor of its fair share of market power, by kicking government out of its regulatory role in maintaining a truly free market, by keeping the value of work on par with the value of assets.

There is no economic logic in reducing the monetary value of work by placing a tax on it. Taxes should be derived exclusively from surplus value, ie profits. When profit is taxed, it creates incentives for management to allow wages to rise to avoid excess profit. Taxing undervalued labor values as expressed in low income from work is similar to taking food from the hungry and the undernourished. Not only is it unjust, it is also uneconomic, since any arrangement that increases poverty is bad economics. Falling value of work, a path to systemic poverty, leads to perverse ways of creating wealth, through finance manipulation to generate financial bubbles camouflaged as economic growth. This ideology of taxing the wholesome (work) to feed the insalubrious (manipulation) is aptly expressed by the chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, when he proclaims that it is better to create wealth by thinking than working, in defense of neo-liberal globalization that ships underpaying US jobs overseas to still more underpaid workers. Such economic growth produces no additional real wealth, and in fact reduces global aggregate wealth by universally reducing the value of work, leading to the unsustainable phenomenon of consumption supported by debt, primarily because work is universally underpaid. This system of tax on work burdens unfairly those already struggling hardest to make ends meet because of a systemic undervaluing of their work. When work is taxed and thinking is not, wealth can only be created with financial bubbles because all who are able will avoid work. Yet ultimately, work is what produces the goods and services that wealth commands. Thinking not backed by adequate work, coupled with overpaying thinking and underpaying work, eventually leads to an erosion of the purchasing power of money.

Yet mainstream economic policy debate rarely acknowledges this fundamental perversity. For all the partisan polemics and chest-thumping about radical tax reform, there is little debate on why the federal tax burden should mainly fall on workers. Conservatives have a point in arguing for letting taxpayers keep more of what they earn, but they adamantly oppose taxation on unearned gains arising from the mere ownership of capital, land and other natural resources and intellectual-property monopolies, the high value of which are all derivatives of dysfunctionally low wages. The US capital-gain tax is a revenue sieve with a hole large enough for truckloads of gold to pass through undetected since much wealth nowadays is created by manipulating debt, involving no capital at all.

Accounting for an ethical society
It is useful to realize that the problem with the US Social Security system is not an economic issue. It is a political/ethical issue with a financial dimension. The economics of Social Security remains structurally sound. The problem is one of irrational and dishonest financial accounting. It is an ethical verity that a civilized society should assume responsibility for providing institutional guarantee for its elderly citizens` financial needs after retirement, particularly if retirement is made mandatory by the socio-economic system. In a sense, Social Security is inseparable from US national security, because social stability is a key component of national security. If Social Security is viewed as part and partial of national security, then privatization becomes as ridiculous a notion as privatizing the Department of Defense - which, incidentally, is also occurring with deliberate speed.

On November 11, 1999, the 80th anniversary of the World War I armistice, Milton Friedman, the leading guru of the Chicago School monetarists, published an op-ed piece in The New York Times titled "Social Security chimeras" in which he pointed out, correctly, that the Social Security trust funds and projected shortfalls and all the sturm und drang noise surrounding them are, in fact, mere accounting issues. He pointed out that, in real economic terms, it doesn`t matter whether Americans save or not, whether there`s a shortfall or not, points that most economists understand and agree. It is merely an accounting problem.

As Fed chairman Greenspan recently and repeatedly told Congress, funding Social Security benefits with cash is not a problem. The problem is maintaining the purchasing power of the cash. But the purchasing power of money is a systemic monetary issue, and not an accounting issue of any particular social program. Money enjoys more purchasing power when more goods and service are produced by work and work is created by strong demand for goods and services. What Greenspan did not say was that such strong demand comes only from high wages and full employment.

Friedman went on to argue that gradual, partial privatization of Social Security is unnecessary, since gradualist solutions are premised on attempts to "preserve" what amount to fictional balances anyway. But then, following his subjective ideology rather than his objective analytical mind, Friedman proposed what is in essence an ideological solution, one that is antisocial, as are most of his ideological positions in essence, crossing over from his respected role as a competent economist to the dubious role of a bungling political philosopher. Why not, he concluded, go all the way? Full, complete privatization right now. Let every citizen swim or sink in the market, where those not thoroughly initiated in its esoteric ways have as much a chance of survival as babes in a forest of dangerous beasts. What about today`s Social Security recipients? Give them a check representing the present value of their promised benefits and wash our hands of them.

But Friedman did not explain why, if the shortfalls are mere accounting problems (which they are), why Social Security has a problem in the first place. Why not drop the whole argument and reaffirm our social commitment to a decent public pension system for all citizens, along with universal health care, the privatization of all of which is ruining many families? This question is particularly pertinent in a situation of underutilized overcapacity due to inadequate aggregate demand.

Faith and inefficiency
There is a fallacy about the magic of privatization. It is based on an unjustified faith in the market`s unerring ability to generate wealth and growth and, more important, in the market`s ability to channel such wealth fairly and to parties most in need for the good of the nation and society. Increasingly, markets are transfer mechanisms of wealth rather than creators of wealth, merely taking wealth from underpaid workers and handing it over to overpaid speculators. The fact is that markets have also been known to be generators of losses and economic contraction, as demonstrated by the crashes of 1901 (45% drop), 1906 (48%), 1916 (40%), 1929 (47%), 1930 (86%), 1937 (49%), 1939 (40%), 1968 (46%), 1973 (46%), 1987 (23%) 1998 (36%) and 2000 (37%). The data suggest that even exempting the big crash of 1929-30 in which the market lost nearly 90% of its peak value, the average crash can routinely lose 40% of its peak value. Such losses are often not borne by speculators, who can profit in both rising and falling markets, but mostly by the general investing public, whose portfolios are usually not hedged against systemwide declines. And even in cycles of growth, the market has a tendency to channel wealth to those who already have substantial wealth and least need more. The average investor seldom benefits fully even from a rising bull market.

In this era of instant electronic transactions and computerized program trading, eliminating market "inefficiencies", more than risk commensuration, produces most of the profits on Wall Street. Theoretically, under free-market principles, it should be unnecessary to have to choose the smart investment because all instruments are "priced" the Hayekian way to make return on investment come out equal in the long run, risk being always fairly compensated for with commensurate returns. When they do not come out equal, the situations are called market inefficiencies, which are in fact disjointed minor market failures. So, by definition, all opportunities for profit reside exclusively on correcting market inefficiencies and reducing risk by socializing it. This is what justifies the existence and proliferation of hedge funds and derivatives. They make the market more efficient and are richly compensated for it.

With increasing sophistication and complexity of new marketable financial instruments, be they securitized debt or equity or derivatives, the astute and legally qualified risk takers have a distinct advantage over the unaware and unqualified general public. This advantage constitutes a massive, systemic transfer of wealth to those who are rich enough to qualify for high-net-worth entrance requirements of hedge funds and private equity markets to a game of taking technical risks that are really not risky because of sophisticated hedging, to reap enviable and often obscene gains of up to 40% on investment. This systemic market transfer of wealth to the rich is greater than any government social-entitlement transfer to the poor. That is how millionaires are made into billionaires in the market, not by luck, not by skill, but by membership in the private club of the rich in what investment bankers call the private-equity sector. It is a blatant institutionalization of the "rich get richer" syndrome. It is the new feudalism.

Yet unlike the old feudal lords who provided order and security, or inventors or captains of industry who actually performed some positive economic function, these groups of the financially astute contribute not at all to economic production, only to financial expansion, a euphemism for finance-induced economic bubbles. The sad part is that in the US, this market is attracting the best and brightest of the nation`s young minds, who are individually moral and ethical, but collectively are pushed by the system into the role of terrifying horsemen of financial apocalypse. They destroy because the name of the game is "creative destruction" and the highest reward goes to the one who destroys the most - jobs, companies, even whole industries. It is as if firemen were to get a handsome bonus several hundredfold of their salary every time they put out a fire, and if it were not illegal to start a controlled fire, all firemen would double as controlled arsonists. Controlled arson can be rationalized as economically expansionist, as it leads to constant rebuilding when it is most profitable, albeit not always where it is most needed by society. But then Margaret Thatcher insisted that there is no such thing as society.

This is the equivalent of what Wall Street traders do, in equity, debts, commodities, currencies, even weather derivatives. Whenever they can, they purposely create market inefficiencies in order to capture profit by removing the very "inefficiencies" they created. Citigroup, the world`s largest financial-services company, is being investigated by German prosecutors and the Financial Services Authority for a manipulative multibillion-euro trade in euro-zone government bonds last August when it sold and then bought billions of euros` worth of debt in quick succession, making millions of euros in profit. According to news reports, a Citibank internal memo dated July 20 explained how the bank could "very profitably" destabilize the market.

The current normal daily volatility of stock prices represents ongoing examples of these manipulated inefficiencies. A whole science of technical analysis of market movements has grown up around the phenomenon. Others are less directly visible, such as the inverted interest-rate curves reflecting abnormal lower rates for longer terms that generally signals recessions ahead. It is a short-term inefficiency in the credit market imposed by Federal Reserve interest-rate policy. The Fed controls the supply of money but the market determines the growth of debt. As yields stay low, investors are pushed to seek higher yields by taking more risk, buying debts with low credit ratings. Since 2003, the Fed has been raising the Fed Funds Rate at a "measured pace", but the debt market has continued to expand, with yields on both sovereign and corporate bonds declining. Low-rated bonds now make up 20% of the outstanding supply of speculative bonds, more than twice the 1998 level when the Asian financial crisis and the Russian default abruptly ended the debt bubble. Consumer spending has been largely supported not by income, but by home-equity loans, particularly cash-out refinancing, at below-inflation interest rates.

The current Social Security proposals in the United States only highlight these pervasive manipulations that have gone on for a decade. Ironically, the Social Security privatization proposals are really sub-optimization measures, because, like the debacle of Long Term Capital Management (LTCM) that almost led to a massive collapse of the market, which required Federal Reserve intervention to prevent, when massive Social Security funds go into the equity market, it will be deemed too big to fail even if the market turns against it. So there is an anticipated implicit guarantee by the US Treasury/Federal Reserve that with Social Security funds in it, the market will not be allowed to crash, which is why Wall Street will embrace privatization proposals with open arms. It is a game where profits are privatized, and losses are socialized. In that sense, the US economy is already half-socialistic: the loss half. The question is: when is it going to socialize the profit half for balance?

The most significant factor of the booming war economy in the US during World War II was that about 10 million able and productive men, 25% of the workforce, were taken out of economically productive work and had to be supported at a high level of military consumption. In fact, another way of looking at it is that these soldiers were assigned the job of consumption. The lesson is that by a deliberate collective effort, an enormous expansion of production was effectuated through a planned war economy of full employment for a reduced pool of workers. Ironically, the new high-tech wars of today of minimizing manpower will reduce even the economic bonus of war on employment and the effectiveness of war as an anti-depression economic measure.

With a policy of full employment and rising wages, there is no reason the US economy cannot support its expanding population of retirees at a decent living level of consumption even with a shrinking pool of workers. Changing demographics, while factual, is not the cause of the problem in Social Security. Faulty ideology is. Young workers should be reminded that it is their parents` retirement consumption that will allow them to keep their own jobs with high pay.

Evolution of taxation
The first permanent US corporate income tax was enacted in 1909, four years before the introduction of the modern version of the personal income tax. The initial rate was 1% of net income. Both revenue and rate increased steadily until 1943, when it peaked at 7.1% of gross domestic product (GDP). But corporate income taxes have contributed a declining portion of federal revenue over the past six decades. This decline has been made up by the increasing share of revenue from social-insurance contributions, primarily the Social Security payroll tax. In 1943, corporate taxes comprised 39.8% of total federal revenues; social-insurance contributions contributed 12.7%. By 1996, the situation was nearly reversed; social-insurance contributions provided 35.1% of federal revenues, while corporate income taxes provided 11.8%. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 reduced corporate income tax from 46% to 34%, well below the 42% average rate of developed countries in the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development. In the US, state corporate tax rates made up most of the difference.

The US economy grew faster than OECD economies, but the income of the lower quartile in the US declined in the past six decades. US prosperity had been paid for by making the poor poorer in the US and around the world. The US corporate tax rate stayed at 34% until the Clinton administration`s first budget raised it to 35%. Meanwhile, with neo-liberal globalization promoted by Third Way politicians such as Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, tax competition among developed economies was driving worldwide corporate tax rates toward a downward spiral in a race toward the bottom, leaving the tax burden mainly on the working poor everywhere. Together with the race-to-the-bottom effect on wages from cross-border wage arbitrage, the global downward spiral of corporate tax rates causes a decline in government revenue and distress in government fiscal budgets, creating temptation for selling off public assets in a massive wave.

By 1994, the United States` 35% corporate tax rate was above the average OECD statutory rate of 29%. That meant that US-based trans-nationals would keep their profits overseas and save 6% in tax liabilities. In 1994, US corporate tax revenues amounted to just 2.5% of US GDP, a sharp drop from its 7.1% peak in 1943. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 eliminated many corporate tax preferences, including the investment tax credit enacted during the administration of president John Kennedy. However, preferential tax treatment is still provided for expenditures on research and development.

But while the creation of intellectual property is financed by tax deductions, the consuming public is not given any break on exorbitant patent royalties. This injustice is most glaring in the US drug sector, where high costs of drugs have driven many elderly patients into financial distress, drugs that their own tax dollars helped create earlier.

The payroll taxes that finance Social Security and Medicare are levied at a flat rate. For Social Security, the tax is 12.4%, half of which is remitted by workers and half by their employers. For Medicare hospital insurance, the tax is 2.9% divided equally between workers and employers. Workers earning more than the $90,000 threshold in 2005 will pay no Social Security tax on amounts over that, but the ceiling does not apply to the Medicare portion of the payroll tax.

The Social Security tax is highly regressive. Those earning $10 million a year pay the same Social Security tax as workers earning up to $90,000, and the rich receive a greater share of their income from investment earnings that are not subject to the payroll tax. And the person with a $10 million retirement nest egg receives the same benefit payment as the person with no nest egg.

Arguments for and against progressive taxation generally focus on income taxes, which can be easily manipulated to shift burdens among households with different levels and types of income. Advocates of progressive schedules argue that families should be taxed according to their ability to pay. The ability-to-pay principle states that each dollar paid in tax is a greater sacrifice for a poor family than a wealthy one, so the wealthy should pay a higher percentage to equalize the sacrifice. Moreover, a progressive income tax is needed to counteract the effects of the other flat federal taxes that weigh more heavily on the poor. The poor pay most of their taxes in payroll taxes, thus income-tax reform has little real meaning to the poor.

Many economists also argue for progressive scheduling as a way to counteract the increasingly structural inequality distribution of income in the US economy. The share of income received by the top quintile increased from 47% to 51% of all income in the US over the 1977-90 period, while the share going to everyone below declined. One-fifth of the working population commanded more than half of the income in the economy. Take-home wages have been declining as a share of total personal income, to a historical low of only 55%, because the cost of benefits, particularly health care, and payroll taxes have taken larger shares of total income of workers. Higher-income families also increased their real incomes substantially over this period, while families in the bottom 40% of the income distribution saw their incomes decline in real terms. In other words, those with the lowest incomes not only received an increasingly small share of the total income relative to the wealthy over this period, but the purchasing power of their incomes declined as well.

According to the "ability-to-pay argument", the dramatic increase in income inequality in the US in recent years indicates a need for more progressive tax scheduling, because the rich have become more able to pay relative to the poor. According to this argument, if "the problem is flat wages, then the solution is not flat taxes". Compliance rates are highest for wage and salary income, because these taxes are withheld by employers and forwarded directly to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). On the other hand, compliance rates for self-employment, partnership, and sub-chapter S corporation income, which are not subject to withholding or reporting requirements, are estimated to be below 50% due to difficulty and complexity of audit. Because companies can deduct interest payments, the US tax code is strongly skewed toward encouraging firms to raise funds through the issuance of debt rather than equity. The tax-paying general public is in effect subsidizing corporate debt.

Another issue related to corporate taxation is the wide variation in tax liability from industry to industry. The effective tax rates in the oil, gas, and mineral-extraction industries, for example, are much lower than the rate for corporate investments generally. The commercial real-estate boom of the mid-1980s and subsequent bust was largely the result of preferential tax treatment. One of the main causes of the 1987 crash as explained by tax economists was a threat by the House Ways and Means Committee to eliminate the tax deduction for interest expenses incurred in leverage buyouts. These tax variations can be inefficient from a societal perspective, even though they were intended to address specific needs, because the resources used to build unneeded office space, drill dry holes in the ground, and merge companies to lay off workers could have been used more productively. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 eliminated some of the provisions that led to these types of distortions, but many still remain.

For the three-year period from 1996-98, Alcoa, the chief executive officer of which, Paul O`Neill, was secretary of the Treasury briefly under President George W Bush, paid an effective tax rate of only 15.9% on $1.7 billion in profits - less than half the statutory rate of 35%. A US worker making up to $58,100 is taxed at 15%, after which the rates rises progressively to 35% for income over $319,100.

The outsourcing question
Despite widespread perception of massive job loss to low-wage economies, there are no official figures on the total number of US jobs that have gone overseas. Domestic plant closures to be relocated overseas are no longer reported in the media as they are no longer news. Last May, the Labor Department made its first-ever report on the portion of "mass layoffs" attributable to "overseas relocation" of factories, which showed that only 2.5% of major layoffs in the first three months of 2004 were a result of outsourcing abroad. That survey only covered companies that laid off 50 or more workers at one time for 30 days or longer, and so admittedly may not be representative of all companies and all job loss.

Veteran Democratic economist Charles Schultze, senior fellow emeritus at the Brookings Institution, former budget director under president Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s, and former chairman of president Jimmy Carter`s Council of Economic Advisers in the late 1970s, noticing that imports relative to the GDP had leveled off since 2000, concluded that "there is nothing in the data to suggest that large increases in ... offshoring could have played a major role in explaining America`s job performance in recent years", and that offshoring has had a relatively modest impact on unemployment when compared with all the other economic factors that create and destroy jobs in the normal cycles in the US economy. But Schultze failed to point out that US GDP growth is caused in no small way by a persistent capital account surplus that is financing the massive US trade deficit. In other words, the US economy is creating new jobs to replace those lost to overseas outsourcing by borrowing from the low-wage workers overseas.

There is clear evidence that the US is trading low-paying jobs that it ships overseas for new higher-paying jobs at home. This explains the widening income disparity in the US economy and in the world economy. Offshore outsourcing has contributed to the stagnant wages and declining benefits in the US labor market.

Ben Bernanke, chairman of the economics department at Princeton University and also a governor of the Federal Reserve, estimated that over the past decade the US economy lost an overall total of about 15 million jobs each year for all kinds of reasons, while creating an average of about 17 million new jobs each year. Of that 15 million annual gross job loss, the portion due to outsourcing is less than 1%. Bernanke cited a 2003 study by the Wall Street firm of Goldman, Sachs & Co that estimated outsourcing abroad had averaged between 100,000 and 167,000 jobs per year since 2000. And he said offshoring would remain a minor factor even if the figure grew larger. Of course the study did not mention that by 2000, most of the manufacturing jobs that could be relocated overseas had been relocated, with the US having lost in essence the entire manufacturing sector.

When companies move some jobs abroad, the savings from low wages stimulate job creation at home. Matthew Slaughter, a Dartmouth economist, looked at foreign and domestic job growth in multinational corporations from 1991 to 2001 and found foreign affiliates of US companies added 2.9 million workers to their payrolls overseas, but at the same time those companies added 5.5 million US employees at home to their payrolls. And a study supervised by Lawrence Klein, a Nobel laureate and professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania`s Wharton School of Business, and released by the private economic consulting firm Global Insight last March, looked at outsourcing in the information-technology (IT) sector and found that outsourcing generated a net gain of 90,000 jobs during 2003, in both IT and non-IT sectors.

Notwithstanding such findings, the question of why US unemployment stays so high remains unanswered. There are few job seekers in the United States who will challenge the general feeling that the job market has become increasingly gloomy, with wages low and benefits meager if offered at all. Still, the Klein study found that the cost savings of IT outsourcing lowered inflation throughout the US economy, increased consumer spending, and "contributed significantly" to the overall growth of US GDP. It claimed that by 2008, "real GDP is expected to be $124 billion higher than it would be in an environment in which offshore IT... outsourcing does not occur". Klein seemed uninterested in which segment of the population would get the projected additional GDP growth - surely not the workers whose jobs had been outsourced.

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry pointed out correctly during his unsuccessful 2004 campaign that the US tax code creates an incentive for US companies to move jobs overseas. He tried unconvincingly to pin the fault on Bush. But tax experts know that the incentive has been there for decades, embedded even in the first version of the corporate income tax. The incentive exists because the US has been taxing corporations at rates higher than most other countries. This was possible before trade and finance globalization, when the huge US market could only be tapped by operations within US borders. Companies that wanted access to the huge US domestic market had no choice but to pay high US corporate taxes. The fault of tax-induced job loss lies with globalization, which the Clinton administration did much to promote. It allows trans-national companies to locate in low-tax regimes around the globe.

The Institute for International Economics reported that the effective rate for US corporations was more than 30% in 2002, while Britain`s corporate rate was 18.2%, Mexico`s 15.1%, China`s 11.3%, and Indonesia`s a minuscule 0.2%. In tax havens such as Hong Kong, the concept of residence has no applicability to Hong Kong tax law. Only Hong Kong source income is subject to Hong Kong tax. For this reason, Hong Kong is a suitable base from which to administer an offshore company without tax consequence provided that the company does not do business with other Hong Kong residents. This is one of the reasons the use of offshore companies by Hong Kong residents has proliferated to such a great extent. Offshore companies can conveniently have Hong Kong-based directors, a Hong Kong bank account and a Hong Kong office address without being brought into the Hong Kong tax net.

Most other countries of the world operate a residency-based tax system, and care therefore needs to be taken to ensure that the offshore company does not establish a permanent place of business within those countries or is managed and controlled from those countries. For example, an offshore company that had UK-based directors or that established a place of business within the United Kingdom might become liable to UK tax on its worldwide income. A Hong Kong company does not have to state its registered office address or place of incorporation on its letterhead. This would give the non-Hong Kong offshore company the added respectability of a Hong Kong persona combined with the added flexibility and ease of administration of an offshore company. There is a capital duty of 0.6% and an annual fee of HK$75 (just under US$10). There are no double tax treaties and no restrictions on dealings in currencies. Bearer shares are not permitted, registration takes three weeks, but shelf corporations are readily available.

The United States taxes US-based company earnings in other countries only when profits are brought back to the US. That means profits that remain overseas, perhaps invested in new factories in low-tax regimes, never get taxed at the higher US rates. And that`s been true through both Democratic and Republican administrations. To fix the tax problem, Kerry came up with a proposal to tax businesses on their foreign income right away. Corporations would still get a credit for any taxes paid to other countries, as they do now, but would no longer be able to defer the US taxes indefinitely. At the same time, Kerry would have cut the corporate tax rate by 1.75 percentage points, to a top corporate rate of 33.25%. He also would have offered a one-year "tax holiday" to businesses that repatriated earnings that had been parked overseas for years, avoiding all US taxes. And he proposed a tax credit to companies when their US hiring exceeded previous levels. But Kerry did not win the election.

The Bush administration proposes giving US-based multinationals a larger tax credit on their overseas income. Democrats argue that this would only increase the incentive to move jobs overseas; the Bush administration argues that it would help US firms compete globally with foreign firms that avoid US taxes altogether. Yet companies argue that the main reasons they locate plants in other countries are lower wages and proximity to foreign markets, not taxes.

High US corporate tax rates discourage US companies from repatriating foreign-earned profits and reinvesting them into the US economy. A study produced by economists at JPMorgan Securities Inc estimates that the promise of a temporary window of a 5.25% corporate tax rate on overseas earnings could prompt US companies to bring home as much as $300 billion in foreign-earned profits, now sitting offshore. Thus a more equitable tax regime domestically, ie making corporations pay their fair share of taxes, harms the US economy as a whole. In other words, globalization forces the US economy to be a less equitable system. To put it another way, domestic income disparity is explained as a necessary condition for national survival in a competitive international arena.

If allowed by the absence of government regulations, trade tends to shift resources to industries where worker productivity relative to wages is greatest and return on investment highest. The same goes for technology. In the past, the limited and temporary dislocation caused by import competition had been outweighed by lasting long-term benefits that competition creates because superior imports forced complacent domestic industries to shape up, as evident by the US auto industry in the 1980s. Also, a substantial majority of US non-farm workers, about 85%, are employed in service industries, construction, and government, sectors where import competition was minimal and restriction on immigration and tradition of unionization foiled effective wage wars among competing workers. To such workers, imports were unambiguous blessings that spurred domestic innovation, expanded consumer choice, and lowered consumer prices.

Even in the more tradable sector of manufacturing, import penetration was low in most industries where domestic assembly was necessary. By 1994, however, 2.2 million US workers worked in manufacturing industries with an import penetration of 30% or more, most in the assembly of imported parts. Even so, workers in trade-sensitive manufacturing industries accounted for only 12% of total manufacturing workers and less than 2% of total non-farm workers. Technological change and other non-trade factors account for most of the workers displaced from their jobs each year. In the three-year period from 1995 through 1997, three-quarters of the 8 million US workers displaced from their jobs were in sectors that by their nature are relatively insulated from import competition. Only 23% were in manufacturing, and 2% in mining and agriculture.

But while the figures seem insignificant in national terms, job loss was significantly concentrated in terms of location to affect economic stability drastically in several regions, such as the rust belt in the Midwest and miracle growth areas such as Silicon Valley. Surging imports created demands in freight transportation, but hourly wages fell 0.8% nationwide. Retail jobs increased but weekly wages in the retail sector ($376), already 30% less than the national average, fell more than 11% in 2004, while corporate profit rose by 20%.

But outsourcing is a new and fast-growing phenomenon and is rapidly changing the dynamics of growth. With instant and low-cost communication, non-import-related service jobs are being lost at alarming rates in the name of a quest for productivity relative to wages. US customers of domestic sales now place their orders with US companies through employees halfway across the world for goods produced in low-wage economies and often shipped directly from foreign soil. In other words, jobs were going to offshore workers only because their wages were lower, not because they were better workers. That is rational only if the economic objective is to increase productivity relative to wage levels. What if the economic objective is to increase wages? The market will never by itself allow wages to increase unless government policy forces it to do so. And each government cannot do so within its own borders under a globalized regime of racing to the bottom with regard to wage competition. Thus a global contagion of failed statehood is in full swing in which governments are forced to abdicate their responsibility to protect the wage level and job security of their citizens, lest jobs would move to another country. Sovereign governments have become comprador governments.

A two-year study by the United Nations` labor organization produced a report that identified globalization as creating a growing divide between rich and poor countries, as well as a growing divide within every country. The report found that the current trading regime, including the World Trade Organization, is failing to speed the growth of global gross national product (GGNP), which is lagging behind the economic performance of previous decades. Titled "A Fair Globalization", the study was commissioned by the International Labor Organization and prepared by 20 officials and experts, including Joseph E Stiglitz, the newly reformed US economist who won the 2001 Nobel Prize in economics (see Globalizing poverty, IMF style, November 16, 2002). The report found that 188 million willing and able workers are unemployed worldwide, or 6.2% of the labor force; that the gap between rich and poor nations has widened, with countries representing 14% of the world`s population accounting for half the world`s trade and foreign investment; and that women have been harmed more than men by globalization in the developing world. The report also said that women`s traditional livelihoods as subsistence farmers or small producers have been undermined by foreign subsidized agriculture or foreign imports but, as women, they face cultural barriers when looking for alternative occupations. These are the economic manifestation of failed statehood.

The gap between rich and poor has grown wider in rich countries as well, such as Britain, Canada and the United States. The United States posted the greatest gap between rich and poor, with the top 1% earning 17% of the gross income, "a level last seen in the 1920s". The report says that globalization has also affected the rate of taxes collected by countries. In the world`s 30 wealthiest nations, the average level of corporate tax fell from 37.6% in 1996 to 30.8% in 2003. These rich nations may be rich but they are nevertheless infested with failed-state syndrome with their widening wealth disparity. The report argues that globalization is at a turning point and international institutions need to address social inequities as well as other consequences of open borders, which render sovereign states powerless to protect their citizens from economic and financial exploitation, both foreign and domestic.

During the seven years from 1995 through 2002, US manufacturing employment fell by 11%. Globally, manufacturing jobs fell by 11%. China lost 15% of its manufacturing jobs, and Brazil lost 20%. Globally, manufacturing output rose by 30% during the same period. Technological progress was the primary cause of the decrease in manufacturing jobs. Yet wages have not risen to reflect the rise in productivity. Most of the saving in wages for the same amount of production went to financing the cost of capital goods and higher return on capital. US workers are targeting the wrong enemy when they complain about Third World workers taking their jobs. The real enemies are their own pension funds, whose quest for high returns has kept global wages low and shipped US jobs overseas, and their government`s failed statehood.

That same principle applies when outsourcing serves as the engine for not-so-creative destruction. Daniel W Drezner, assistant professor of political science at the University of Chicago, defending outsourcing in "The outsourcing bogeyman" (Foreign Affairs, May/June 2004), reports that for every dollar spent on outsourcing to India, the US economy reaps between $1.12 and $1.14 in financial benefits. US firms save money on wages and become more profitable, benefiting shareholders and increasing returns on investment. In the process, some US workers are reallocated to more competitive, mostly better-paying jobs, albeit seldom the same workers who were unfortunate enough to have lost their jobs. They are left as collateral damage of creative destruction concentrated in pockets of poverty in the land of milk and honey.

On February 9, 2004, US presidential chief economic adviser N Gregory Mankiw, who resigned just last month to return to his faculty post at Harvard, released the annual Economic Report of the President, praising offshoring of US service jobs as a "good thing". He told reporters that "outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade". Government may try to protect you from incoming missiles, but don`t expect government to protect your job.

Globalization and instability
In the era of financial globalization, nations are faced with the problem of protecting their economies from financial threats. The recurring financial crises around the world in recent decades clearly demonstrated that most governments have failed in this critical state responsibility. The economic benefits associated with the unregulated transfer of financial assets, such as cash, stocks and bonds, across national borders are frequently not worth the risks, as has been amply demonstrated in many countries whose economies have been ravaged by external financial forces. Cross-border capital flows have become an increasingly significant part of the globalized economy over recent decades. The US depends on it to finance its huge and growing trade deficit. More than $2.5 trillion of capital flowed around the world in 2004, with more than $1 trillion flowing into just the US. Different types of capital flows, such as foreign direct investment, portfolio investment, and bank lending, are driven by different investor motivations and country characteristics, but one objective stands out more than any other: capital seeks highest return through lowest wages. The United States is not only losing jobs to lower-wage economies, the inflow of capital also forces stagnant US wages to fall in relation to rising asset values.

Countries that permit free capital flows must choose between the stability provided by fixed exchange rates and the flexibility afforded by an independent monetary policy to stimulate economic growth. In countries with weak financial and legal institutions, poorly regulated banking systems or high levels of corruption, capital inflows may not be channeled to their most productive uses. One approach to limiting the risks from excessive capital flows when legal and financial institutions are inadequate is to restrict foreign capital inflows. Even in the US, which claims to have a sound banking system, massive capital inflow has caused overinvestment in telecommunication, Internet start-ups and real estate.

Next: Failed statehood, militarism and mercenaries

Henry C K Liu is chairman of the New York-based Liu Investment Group.

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

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[urlText: Greenspan`s Prepared Testimony]http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/testimony/2005/20050302/default.htm[/url]


March 2, 2005
Greenspan Warns Congress That Deficits Are `Unsustainable`
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/02/business/02cnd-deficit.htm…

WASHINGTON, March 2 - Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve chairman, warned today that federal budget deficits are "unsustainable" and urged Congress to consider both spending cuts and tax increases as possible solutions.

In his gloomiest assessment yet about the government`s budget outlook, Mr. Greenspan warned that annual shortfalls were "unlikely to improve substantially in the coming years unless major deficit-reducing actions are taken."

The Fed chairman emphasized that his strong preference was to reduce the deficit through spending cuts rather than tax increases. But he insisted that Congress needed to offset the costs of making Mr. Bush`s tax cuts permanent.

"Addressing the government`s own imbalances will require scrutiny of both spending and taxes," Mr. Greenspan told members of the House Budget Committee.

Though the Fed chairman has made similar pleas in the past, he spoke more urgently today and disagreed more adamantly with Republican lawmakers and President Bush who have steadfastly refused to put restrictions on new tax cuts.

"When you begin to do the arithmetic of what the rising debt level implied by the deficits tells you, and you add interest costs to that ever-rising debt, at ever-higher interest rates, the system becomes fiscally destabilizing," Mr. Greenspan said.

"Unless we do something to ameliorate it in a very significant manner, we will be in a state of stagnation."

Mr. Greenspan`s comments came as House and Senate leaders are trying to craft a budget resolution, a blueprint for spending and tax legislation this year, that they hope to unveil as early as next week.

One major issue in those discussions is whether to include provisions that would make it easier to extend some of Mr. Bush`s tax cuts, one of the White House`s top priorities.

None of Mr. Bush`s big tax cuts are scheduled to expire this year, but the 2003 tax cuts on stock dividends and capital gains are set to expire in 2008 and the other big tax cuts are all set to expire by the end of 2011.

Making all of those tax cuts permanent, as Mr. Bush wants, would add about $1.8 trillion to the federal debt over the next 10 years, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Representative Jim Nussle, Republican of Iowa and chairman of the House Budget Committee, immediately took issue with Mr. Greenspan on the need for restrictions on future tax cuts.

"I would hate to see an arbitrary rule," Mr. Nussle said, noting that Democrats had bitterly opposed Mr. Bush`s proposal to reduce taxes on dividends and capital gains - a tax cut that Mr. Greenspan endorsed in 2003 and said today should be made permanent.

But Mr. Greenspan stood firm, contending that the "overriding" principle was to reduce the deficit and that lawmakers had to be ready to compromise.

"It`s the principle that I think is involved here, namely that you cannot continuously introduce legislation which tends to expand the budget deficit," the Fed chairman said, adding that "compromise is essential" and that this is an issue of "political economy."

As he has in the past, the Fed chairman focused most of his attention on the long-term fiscal problems that are expected to emerge in Social Security after the nation`s baby-boom generation begins to reach retirement age in 2008.

Mr. Greenspan strongly supported President Bush`s plan to let people divert some of their Social Security taxes into private accounts, but he called for much bigger cuts than Mr. Bush has suggested in the government`s full array of old-age entitlement programs, focusing on Medicare as well as Social Security.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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New Poll Finds Bush Priorities Are Out of Step With Americans
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JANET ELDER

Published: March 3, 2005

Americans say President Bush does not share the priorities of most of the country on either domestic or foreign issues, are increasingly resistant to his proposal to revamp Social Security and say they are uneasy with Mr. Bush`s ability to make the right decisions about the retirement program, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/03/politics/03poll.html?hp&ex…


Complete Results: The New York Times Poll

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March 3, 2005
Derelict Plants Are Crippling Iraq`s Petroleum Industry
By JAMES GLANZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/03/international/middleeast/0…

BASRA, Iraq, March 2 - The five spindly towers, each 325 feet tall, were silent, with no flames burning at their collapsed and blackened tips. But Abdul Raof Ibraheem, production manager at this huge propane and butane plant, knew very well what could happen if, say, a military helicopter were to fly over.

"Any spark," Mr. Ibraheem said, motioning with his hands. "Explode."
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In southern Iraq, Greg Althaus, an American engineer, monitors gas burning at an oil line. Iraq lacks a refinery
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The plant spews out invisible, odorless but extremely flammable waste gases because officials do not want to shut down the damaged equipment for repairs. Properly functioning, the plant would burn off those gases in flares at the top of the towers. But if engineers tried lighting the damaged tips now, they could blow up the entire complex.

"Of course," Mr. Ibraheem said sheepishly, "it`s dangerous."

Iraq is facing enormous pressure to convert its rich oil inheritance into a measure of comfort and prosperity. Despite having 100 billion to 200 billion barrels of oil reserves, the third most in the world by some estimates, Iraq still must import half its gasoline and thousands of tons of heating fuel, cooking gas and other refined products.

And with the petroleum sector crumbling, Iraqi officials must soon decide whether to invest in time-consuming repairs and upgrades, or try to extract everything they can from the creaky equipment, as Saddam Hussein did. It is a tricky decision: Because the rebuilding effort is financed from oil revenues, shutting down the system for desperately needed repairs cuts back on the money available for further repairs.

A journey last month to a number of the vital organs in Iraq`s critical but often derelict southern petroleum industry - wells, pipelines, pumping stations, ports and plants for things like heating fuel - underscored how difficult those decisions are likely to be. It showed as well the depths of the industry`s distress after decades of neglect, the looting and sabotage that followed the United States-led invasion in 2003, and continuing attacks by insurgents.

About $3 billion has been set aside for the Ministry of Oil, the minister, Thamir Ghadhban, said in a recent interview. But the final level of financing depends on revenues, which in turn depend almost entirely on the security situation.
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Losses due to sabotage exceeded $6 billion last year, cutting revenues by nearly a third, Mr. Ghadhban said. The pace of attacks has dropped recently in the south but continues unabated in the north. Saboteurs struck again in the north in late February, setting ablaze a pipeline that funnels oil to Kirkuk.

Washington has set aside $1.7 billion for Iraq`s oil industry, although up to 40 percent of that money is projected to go for overhead costs, including security, said Julian O`Connell, a manager at the Project and Contracting Office, which is administering the program.

Given the political pressures and the conflict between the competing needs for repairs and production, it is not surprising that many here are calling for an all-out push to extract as much crude as possible.

"Any extra barrel for this country, I encourage it, providing the interests of the Iraqis are kept," said Jabbar A. H. al-Ueibi, director general of the government-owned South Oil Company. "We should work day and night to increase our production."

The plants and refineries that turn those barrels into usable products will have to ramp up at the same time. Twenty-three months after the American-led invasion and the looting that followed, for example, the damaged heating-fuel plant has still achieved only about a third of the production level of the last days of Mr. Hussein`s rule, when the plant put out 3,000 tons a day of the fuel, liquid petroleum gas.

The postwar destruction at many petroleum installations like that fuel plant went beyond simple looting, said Jim Humphries, a project manager at Kellogg, Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary that won the contract to do the oil work.

"This is sabotage," said Mr. Humphries, pointing to one gutted control-room panel at the plant. "This was somebody trying to do the most damage in the least amount of time."

Shortfalls like the ones caused by such damage force Iraq, in spite of its vast oil reserves, into the irksome position of having to import enormous quantities of refined products.

The shortfalls are compounded by government subsidies that keep prices absurdly low. Gasoline, for example, costs about 5 cents a gallon for people who are willing to wait in lines for hours at gas stations, which like the rest of the petroleum industry are government-owned. The black-market price in Baghdad ranges from 50 cents in normal times to nearly $2 during a nationwide fuel crisis in January.

Those prices encourage both overconsumption and the smuggling of fuel to neighboring countries, Mr. Ghadhban said. The only solution, he said, is to privatize much of the industry and let fuel prices rise to market values. At the same time, he would like to soften the blow to ordinary Iraqis by temporarily giving them ration cards like those they receive for food.

Only the capital generated by market prices will attract foreign investors who can further modernize the industry, Mr. Ghadhban said. As a side benefit, he said, some of the ancient gas stations defacing the Iraqi streetscape may be superceded by new ones built by Iraqi entrepreneurs.

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A Panamanian ship unloading cooking and heating fuel imported by Iraq.
Despite harboring vast oil reserves, Iraq cannot produce enough refined products
and must import them.
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"When I say gas stations," Mr. Ghadhban said, sounding weary of the government-run installations himself, "I mean modern gas stations with a car wash, a small supermarket. It doesn`t need a ministry to run a petrol station."

The plan is likely to be seen as strong medicine by Iraqis, who have become accustomed to gasoline that is cheaper than bottled water. But some think that the influential Mr. Ghadhban, if he remains in the new government - or his successor, if he doesn`t - will be able to pull off the restructuring even as Iraq grapples with all the other problems besetting the oil industry.

"I believe they can do it," said Mr. O`Connell of the contracting office. "They don`t have to take it right up to extreme price right away, but they have to start reducing the subsidy."

But that is a regulatory issue, solvable with the stroke of a pen. A drive though the back roads threading the oil fields around Basra is an eye-opening introduction to other, more daunting challenges. Dotting the landscape are towering flames and black plumes of smoke so thick that they look like oil-well fires. Seen up close, just one of the flames, writhing and billowing and corkscrewing at least 100 feet above a stubby vertical pipe rising from the ground, could be a sentinel at the entrance to hell.

The flames rise from gas-oil separation plants, which are designed to remove gases that are dissolved in freshly extracted crude oil before it is shipped to refineries, power plants and export terminals. In most oil-producing countries those gases are captured and turned into usable products. But in Iraq, where there is still little room for such niceties, most of the gases are simply burned.

"Yeah, it makes you want to cry," said Alton Braudaway, an engineer in plant services with Kellogg, which arranged a tour of some of the southern oil sites for two reporters and a photographer, and which has been repairing and refurbishing many of the sites.

The practice is exorbitantly wasteful and environmentally damaging, but issues like those mean little in Iraq, Mr. Braudaway said. "When it comes down to, `Do they shut down their plants?`, they`re going to put the smoke in the sky," he said, "because they need the oil."

If the gas is not going to be used to create petroleum products, Mr. Braudaway said, it would normally be reinjected to keep the pressure up as oil is extracted, insuring a longer life for the wells.

But Iraq does not do that either. Instead, in the south, which has 80 percent of the country`s oil reserves, it uses an antiquated system of water injection to keep the pressure up. (The problems are even worse in the north, where for reasons known only to themselves, Iraqi engineers pumped things like excess fuel oil, refinery residues and old crude oil into some wells, probably damaging them permanently.)

At one "cluster pump" station with a new computerized control system that the American money had purchased, the water appeared to be flowing normally when a group of visitors arrived, although one major pump had broken down minutes before.
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American engineers rebuilt this Russian water-injection pump in southern Iraq.
Injecting water into aging oil wells can raise productivity, but Iraq
has a serious shortage of functioning installations.
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At another pumping station, which moves crude through one of two critically important pipelines for export from platforms in the Persian Gulf, the equipment was oil-encrusted and generally could have used a coat of paint, but it seemed to be functioning.

The problems with the liquefied gas plant, though, immediately caught the attention of the Kellogg engineers as they drove up in a convoy of sport utility vehicles. "It is very dangerous," Mr. Humphries said of the gas streaming from the broken towers. "You`re just pushing it off into the atmosphere."

Mr. Ibraheem, the production manager, said the British military, which has responsibility for the south of Iraq, had been warned not to fly in the area. And as he began to lead a tour through the plant, he asked a photographer not to use his flash. "Camera makes sparks," Mr. Ibraheem said.

The tour passed without incident, but as the visitors were leaving, they encountered five big metal cylinders lying on the ground next to a road. It turned out they were new tips for the towers that the plant had been storing since before the war.

But the new plant managers had not been able to find the huge cranes that would be needed to put the tips in place. Now the engineers are hoping to install them by May.

Standing next to the replacements was Hassan Monsour Fadher, a retired safety manager at the plant. When asked how the tips would work, Mr. Fadher demurred and said, chuckling: "You are giving me exam."

Then he lighted a cigarette and took a couple of long drags.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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March 3, 2005
EDITORIAL
Looking the Other Way
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/03/opinion/03thu1.html

The Bush administration enthusiastically congratulated itself this week for including abuses by Iraqi authorities in its annual report on human rights violations. One State Department official called it proof that "we don`t look the other way." But the report did look away - from American involvement in the mistreatment it decried. In the end it was another sad reminder of the heavy price the nation has paid for ignoring fundamental human rights in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo; in the secret cells where the C.I.A. holds its unaccounted-for prisoners; and at home, where President Bush continues to claim the power to hold Americans in jail indefinitely without the right to trial.

The administration`s refusal to remedy these abuses - or even acknowledge most of them - leaves the 2004 human rights report heavy with irony and saps its authority. Not only did the report fail to mention that the Iraqi government it criticized was appointed and controlled by the United States, but it also chastised the local security forces for the same kinds of arbitrary detentions, abusive treatment and torture that have been widespread in American military and intelligence prison camps. Indeed, some of the practices the report labeled as torture when employed by foreign governments were approved at one point for American detention centers by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

The horrible abuses at Abu Ghraib and other American prison camps badly damaged the nation`s image as a defender of human rights. The administration then worsened the damage by refusing to deal with the issue openly and forcefully. Just yesterday, Douglas Jehl of The Times reported that the Senate Intelligence Committee`s Republican chairman, Pat Roberts of Kansas, is blocking a serious inquiry into the C.I.A.`s abuse of prisoners.

Meanwhile, on the same day the State Department issued its human rights report, the administration said it would fight a third federal court order to end the illegal detention of Jose Padilla, an American citizen who has been held for nearly three years without charges because Mr. Bush has declared him an "enemy combatant."

A district court judge in South Carolina, Henry Floyd, who was appointed by Mr. Bush in 2003, said the president`s claim that he could order such detentions was "deeply troubling." He said endorsing that view "would totally eviscerate the limits placed on presidential authority to protect the citizenry`s individual liberties." His ruling echoed earlier decisions by federal courts in New York, which were mooted when the Supreme Court said Mr. Padilla`s case should have been heard in South Carolina, where he is held in a Navy brig. Now that has happened, and still Attorney General Alberto Gonzales says the administration will not accept the decision.

Mr. Gonzales continues to cling to the fiction that combating terrorism somehow gives Mr. Bush the power to violate Americans` constitutional rights. The administration`s appeal will needlessly further delay Mr. Padilla`s day in court. But we hope it will finally lead to a Supreme Court ruling against the White House`s abuse of power. That would be a good step toward restoring America`s moral authority on the rule of law and human rights.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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washingtonpost.com
CIA Avoids Scrutiny of Detainee Treatment
Afghan`s Death Took Two Years to Come to Light; Agency Says Abuse Claims Are Probed Fully
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2576-2005Mar2…

By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 3, 2005; Page A01

In November 2002, a newly minted CIA case officer in charge of a secret prison just north of Kabul allegedly ordered guards to strip naked an uncooperative young Afghan detainee, chain him to the concrete floor and leave him there overnight without blankets, according to four U.S. government officials aware of the case.

The Afghan guards -- paid by the CIA and working under CIA supervision in an abandoned warehouse code-named the Salt Pit -- dragged their captive around on the concrete floor, bruising and scraping his skin, before putting him in his cell, two of the officials said.

As night fell, so, predictably, did the temperature.

By morning, the Afghan man had frozen to death.

After a quick autopsy by a CIA medic -- "hypothermia" was listed as the cause of death -- the guards buried the Afghan, who was in his twenties, in an unmarked, unacknowledged cemetery used by Afghan forces, officials said. The captive`s family has never been notified; his remains have never been returned for burial. He is on no one`s registry of captives, not even as a "ghost detainee," the term for CIA captives held in military prisons but not registered on the books, they said.

"He just disappeared from the face of the earth," said one U.S. government official with knowledge of the case.

The CIA case officer, meanwhile, has been promoted, two of the officials said, who like others interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to talk about the matter. The case is under investigation by the CIA inspector general.

The fact that the Salt Pit case has remained secret for more than two years reflects how little is known about the CIA`s treatment of detainees and its handling of allegations of abuse. The public airing of abuse at Abu Ghraib prompted the Pentagon to undertake and release scathing reports about conduct by military personnel, to revise rules for handling prisoners, and to prosecute soldiers accused of wrongdoing. There has been no comparable public scrutiny of the CIA, whose operations and briefings to Congress are kept classified by the administration.

Thirty-three military workers have been court-martialed and an additional 55 received reprimands for their mishandling of detainees, according to the Defense Department. One CIA contractor has been charged with a crime related to allegations of detainee abuse. David A. Passaro is on trial in federal court in North Carolina, facing four assault charges in connection with the death of Abdul Wali, a prisoner who died while at a U.S. military firebase in Afghanistan in June 2003.

The CIA`s inspector general is investigating at least half a dozen allegations of serious abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan, including two previously reported deaths in Iraq, one in Afghanistan and the death at the Salt Pit, U.S. officials said.

A CIA spokesman said yesterday that the agency actively pursues allegations of misconduct. Other U.S. officials said CIA cases can take longer to resolve because, unlike the military, the agency must rely on the Justice Department to conduct its own review and to prosecute when warranted.

"The agency has an aggressive, robust office of the inspector general with the authority to look into any CIA program or operation anywhere," said a CIA representative who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "The inspector general has done so and will continue to do so. We investigate allegations of abuse fully." The spokesman declined to comment on any case.

The Salt Pit was the top-secret name for an abandoned brick factory, a warehouse just north of the Kabul business district that the CIA began using shortly after the United States invaded Afghanistan in October 2001. The 10-acre facility included a three-story building, eventually used by the U.S. military to train the Afghan counterterrorism force, and several smaller buildings, which were off-limits to all but the CIA and a handful of Afghan guards and cooks who ran the prison, said several current and former military and intelligence officers.

The CIA wanted the Salt Pit to be a "host-nation facility," an Afghan prison with Afghan guards. Its designation as an Afghan facility was intended to give U.S. personnel some insulation from actions taken by Afghan guards inside, a tactic used in secret CIA prisons in other countries, former and current CIA officials said.

The CIA, however, paid the entire cost of maintaining the facility, including the electricity, food and salaries for the guards, who were all vetted by agency personnel. The CIA also decided who would be kept inside, including some "high-value targets," senior al Qaeda leaders in transit to other, more secure secret CIA prisons.

"We financed it, but it was an Afghan deal," one U.S. intelligence officer said.

In spring 2004, when the CIA first referred the Salt Pit case to the Justice Department for possible prosecution, the department cited the prison`s status as a foreign facility, outside the jurisdiction of the U.S. government, as one reason for declining to prosecute, U.S. government officials aware of the decision said.

The case officer who was put in charge of the Salt Pit was on his first assignment. Described by colleagues as "bright and eager" and "full of energy," he was the kind of person the agency needed for such a dismal job. The officer was working undercover, and his name could not be learned.

"A first-tour officer was put in charge because there were not enough senior-level volunteers," said one intelligence officer familiar with the case. "It`s not a job just anyone would want. More senior people said, `I don`t want to do that.` There was a real notable absence of high-ranking people" in Afghanistan.

Besides, the intelligence officer said, "the CIA did not have a deep cadre of people who knew how to run prisons. It was a new discipline. There`s a lot of room to get in trouble."

Shortly after the death, the CIA briefed the chairmen and vice chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence committees, the only four people in Congress whom the CIA has decided to routinely brief on detainee and interrogation issues. But, one official said, the briefing was not complete.

The Afghan detainee had been captured in Pakistan along with a group of other Afghans. His connection to al Qaeda or the value of his intelligence was never established before he died. "He was probably associated with people who were associated with al Qaeda," one U.S. government official said.

The brick factory has since been torn down, and the CIA has built a facility somewhere else.

A team of federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia recently convened to handle allegations of detainee abuse is now taking a second look at the case.

The pace of the CIA investigations has tested the patience of some in Congress, as was evident two weeks ago when Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), a member of the Senate intelligence panel, asked CIA Director Porter J. Goss when the inspector general`s inquiry would be complete and available to the oversight committees.

"I haven`t asked him what day he`s going to finish all these cases," Goss replied.

"Or a month?" shot back Levin.

"As soon as they are through," Goss answered. ". . . I know there is still a bunch of other cases."

In recent weeks, the ranking Democrats on the House and Senate intelligence panels have asked their Republican chairmen to investigate the CIA`s detention and interrogations. Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) has declined the request from Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.).

The CIA inspector general, meanwhile, recently completed a review of detention procedures in Afghanistan and Iraq and gave Goss 10 recommendations for improving administrative procedures for holding, moving and interrogating prisoners. The recommendations included more detailed reporting requirements from the field, increased safeguards against abuse and including more CIA officials in decisions affecting interrogation tactics.

Two have been fully adopted, officials said.

Researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

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The Independent
Still Iraq’s civil servants go to work, and still they go on dying
Thursday, 3rd March 2005, by Robert Fisk
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/story.jsp?story=616…

HEY die now so often that their names - even their jobs - escape us. Judge Barwez Mohammed Mahmoud was shot dead on Tuesday along with his son - so often, the sons die with their fathers - a lawyer working on the special tribunal set up to try Saddam Hussein and his henchmen for crimes against humanity.

Today a judge, last week a senior police officer in Mosul, police chiefs, government clerks, economists from the Ministry of Finance, junior civil servants - "collaborators" in the eyes of the ruthless men who are destroying so much of the infrastructure of "new" Iraq - fall almost every day to the insurrection.

What makes them do these jobs? They know, these men and women, that they are going to be called "collaborators" by their enemies. They know, too, that they can be betrayed by those who work with them. Repeatedly in Baghdad, I have visited the location of these ambushes, only to find that the cops and officials who were targeted were taking a new route to their offices, driving a different car, leaving from a different house. And almost always, they are killed.

One government official who survived a car bombing in northern Baghdad told me that the day his convoy was attacked, he had arranged two new routes to his office. The first was the route he took, the second an emergency road on which he would drive if he felt insecure. A suicide bomber blew himself up on the first road as the convoy approached, killing some of the official’s bodyguards. His men later found a bomb hidden on the second road - just in case he changed his mind. There could be only one reason: he was betrayed by those he worked with. We do not yet know - and perhaps never will - how Judge Mahmoud’s killers came to set up their ambush. Most of the lawyers and judges on the tribunal live in the doubtful security of the "Green Zone’’, the vast campus of American and British diplomatic houses and offices belonging to the American-appointed Iraqi administration surrounded by concrete walls and US troops. Suicide bombers even breached this security, blowing themselves up in a "Green Zone" restaurant. Another inside job.

There are, of course, good men and true among the army of government workers, innocent as the two dozen humbler, nameless folk who are brought to the Baghdad mortuary each day.

I’ve travelled the streets of Baghdad with Iraq’s vulnerable police patrols. One cop told me frankly why he did his job: for the money and because - having been a policeman under Saddam - he could for once perform his real role of protecting his own people rather than a regime. Iraqis came on to the streets to offer tea to the policemen. The cops liked being liked. But judges are more valuable targets for the insurgents and - by the nature of their work - must live with the knowledge of constantly impending death.

They want a "new" Iraq. Not perhaps the American version, but certainly an Iraq which is not ruled by Baathists or mullahs or religious perfectionists with guns.

You can see the tension they live under when you meet them at the airport. Government ministers love foreign travel - wouldn’t you if every bullet had your name on it at home - but every official who reaches Baghdad airport alive has a look of relief on his or her face. They smoke 20, 30 cigarettes before their flight takes off - then, after spiralling up to 32,000 feet to avoid anti-aircraft missiles, they burst into conversation and laughter. Travelling back to Baghdad airport with them, there is false bonhomie on board and fear on arrival, a car with a gunman-driver to take them home. And still they work. And still they go on dying.

©2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.

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Dieser Artikel setzt viele Ereignisse in die richtigen Relationen und versucht Propaganda und die Fakten zu trennen.

Cedar revolution

Can the French and the Anglo-Saxons walk the road to Damascus together?
Timothy Garton Ash
Thursday March 3, 2005
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1429001,00.ht…

Guardian
Has Osama bin Laden started a democratic revolution in the Middle East? One of very few universally valid laws of history is the law of unintended consequences. The effects of what men and women do are rarely those they intend, and sometimes they are the exact opposite. If that happens here, it would be hard to imagine a nicer illustration of the law.

Suppose al-Qaida had not destroyed the twin towers in New York. Would the Middle East be in such ferment? Would there be demonstrators for Lebanese independence on what people have already called "liberation square" in Beirut? Would there now be a serious beginning for a Palestinian state, elections (however flawed) in Iraq and even tiny palm shoots of democratic reform in Egypt and Saudi Arabia? And would the democratisation of the wider Middle East be a central preoccupation of American and European policy?

We can never know with certainty "what would have happened if ..." But we do know what George Bush`s foreign policy looked like before September 11 2001: build up US military strength but avoid Clintonian foreign entanglements; concentrate on great power relationships, especially the rivalry with China. There was precious little talk of spreading democracy back then. Democracy-promotion was Clintonspeak, except among a few neocons who did not yet have the president`s ear. And we do know what the Middle East looked like before 9/11: fetid Arab dictatorships, tolerated or even supported by the west because of oil, laziness and fear; political stalemate and constant bloodshed between Israel and the Palestinians.

To say this does not mean that George Bush has been right all along. It doesn`t mean the Iraq war was right. There`s a crowing triumphalist narrative out of Washington which is to be resisted - not because it comes from Washington, but because it`s wrong and counter-productive. Here, for example, is what the undersecretary of state for global affairs, Paula Dobriansky, said on Monday: "As the president noted in Bratislava just last week, there was a rose revolution in Georgia, an orange revolution in Ukraine, and most recently, a purple revolution in Iraq. In Lebanon, we see growing momentum for a `cedar revolution` that is unifying the citizens of that nation to the cause of true democracy and freedom from foreign influence."

Spot the odd one out. "Purple revolution" in Iraq? Purple, as in the colour of blood? There`s a vital difference between a democratic revolution which is peaceful, authentic and generated by people inside a country and one that is imposed, or kick-started, by a military invasion and occupation. To be sure, the former can and should be encouraged from outside. This help may even extend to the branding of the revolution. Vaclav Havel always insisted that the term "velvet revolution" came originally from a foreign journalist in Prague in 1989. I suspect the same may be true of the orange revolution in Ukraine, although these things are almost impossible to establish afterwards. But there`s a problem if the brand name for Lebanese people power - cedar revolution - seems to come from a senior American official, who in the next breath talks about "freedom from foreign influence".

What is happening on the streets of Beirut is not a result of the invasion of Iraq, nor does it retrospectively justify that invasion. But it does, obviously, have something to do with American policy. The truth is that, starting with the shock of September 11 2001, Washington has groped its way, by a process of trial and error, to a strategic position which it is entirely possible for democrats in both Europe and the Arab world to engage with. A key part of that groping was the realisation in Iraq that, while the United States could win any war on its own, it could not win the subsequent peace; and that democracy would not come overnight, out of the barrel of a gun. If we Europeans do not stand for the long haul to democracy, by peaceful means, what do we stand for?

Now a remarkable thing is happening on the road to Damascus: America and France are walking down it arm in arm. At Tony Blair`s London conference about Palestine on Tuesday, the French and American foreign ministers appeared together to demand "the immediate withdrawal of all Syrian military and intelligence forces from Lebanon". Meanwhile, the demonstrators in Beirut held up banners saying "Independance". In case you`re wondering, that`s not bad English but the spelling in another language of liberty. In Lebanon, freedom speaks French.

And the France of Jacques Chirac - that friend of dictators from Baghdad to Beijing - has responded by itself, putting in a word for freedom. At least, the president has allowed his foreign minister to do so. One Lebanese opposition leader, Camille Chamoun of the National Liberation party, commented: "The free world is really helping Lebanon restore its sovereignty". The free world! When was the last time you heard that phrase, not from Washington but from someone on the ground in the Arab world?

Of course we should not fool ourselves that the next steps will be easy. The demonstrators waving those cedar of Lebanon flags were mainly Maronite Christians, Druze and some Sunni Muslims. Members of the country`s largest community, the Shia Muslims, have so far largely stayed away from the anti-Syrian rallies. For them, there is also the problem of Hizbullah, both a political party and a militia, branded by Washington as a terrorist organisation. Politicians such as Camille Chamoun and Walid Jumblatt have their own chequered pasts. They are hardly Havels. Anyway, there is no guarantee at all that the Syrians will swiftly or peacefully withdraw. And this is just one small corner of the Middle Eastern jigsaw.

But whatever happens in Lebanon and Syria, the fact that France and America have lined up together in the cause of freedom is a hopeful sign. Next time, we should be looking for a joint European-American statement rather than just a French-American or British-American one. Triangulate the lessons of Baghdad, Bush in Brussels last week, and the events in Beirut: what you get is an imperative for Europe to come up with its own proposals for enlarging liberty in the Middle East. It`s not enough to say Iraq was the wrong way; we must go on to suggest the right one.

This is an agenda for the whole of the EU. America`s role is unique, but it also has unique disadvantages. Institutionally, this means passing the constitu tional treaty and giving adequate powers to the EU`s prospective foreign minister, Javier Solana. Politically, it makes particular demands on two European countries, Britain and France. These are the two former colonial powers in the region. They have most experience there. Demonstrators hold up banners in their languages and local politicians speak them.

The necessary, though not sufficient, condition for any European foreign policy is that Britain and France, the two poles of a still divided Europe, should agree. Lebanon and Palestine are good places to start thrashing out what should, in time, become a larger historical compromise between London and Paris. That would be another useful unintended consequence of Osama bin Laden.

www.freeworldweb.net
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

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U.S. military dead in Iraq rises to 1,500, Associated Press tally shows
http://www.boston.com/dailynews/062/world/U_S_military_dead_…

By Todd Pitman, Associated Press, 3/3/2005 00:59

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) The number of U.S. military deaths in the Iraq campaign rose to 1,500 on Thursday, an Associated Press count showed, as the military announced the latest death of one of its troops.

The soldier was killed Wednesday in Babil province, just south of Baghdad, part of an area known as the ``Triangle of Death`` because of the frequency of insurgent attacks on U.S.- and Iraqi-led forces there.

The soldier, assigned to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, was killed in action ``while conducting security and stability operations,`` the military said, declining to release more specific information.

As is customary in the military, the name of the soldier was withheld pending notification of next of kin.

U.S. troops are killed nearly every day in Iraq.

The latest death brought to at least 1,500 the number of members of the U.S. military who have died since the U.S.-led war in Iraq began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. At least 1,140 died as a result of hostile action, according to the Defense Department. The figures include four military civilians.

Since May 1, 2003, when President Bush declared that major combat operations in Iraq had ended, 1,362 U.S. military members have died, according to AP`s count. That includes at least 1,030 deaths resulting from hostile action, according to the military`s numbers.

The tally was compiled by The Associated Press based on Pentagon records and AP reporting from Iraq.

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Dieser Beitrag wurde vom System automatisch gesperrt. Bei Fragen wenden Sie sich bitte an [e-mail]

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Thursday, March 03, 2005
War News for Thursday, March 3, 2005

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring ‘em on: Five Iraqi policemen killed, five wounded by two car bombs in central Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Seven ING soldiers wounded in Tikrit firefight.

Bring ‘em on: One US Marine killed in fighting in Babil province.

Bring ‘em on: Two Iraqi policemen killed in separate incidents in Mosul.

Bring ‘em on: Two Iraqi contractors assassinated in Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Two Iraqi contractors assassinated near Kirkuk.

Bring ‘em on: Two Turkish truck drivers killed by insurgents near Tikrit.

Bring ‘em on: One Iraqi killed, 14 wounded by car bomb in Baquba.

Bring ‘em on: Three British civilians wounded in ambush near Basra.

Bring ‘em on: Gas pipeline ablaze near Kirkuk.

Iraq extends state of emergency. “Iraq has extended its state of emergency for another 30 days, the government said today. The state of emergency, first announced nearly four months ago, will remain in place throughout the country, except in northern Kurdish-run areas, interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi’s office said in a statement. The emergency decree includes a night-time curfew and gives the government extra powers to make arrests without warrants and launch police and military operations when it deems necessary.”

Political notes. “Talks aimed at forging a coalition government faltered yesterday over Kurdish demands for more land and concerns that the dominant Shi`ite alliance seeks to establish an Islamic state, delaying the planned first meeting of Iraq`s new parliament. The snag in negotiations between Shi`ite and Kurdish leaders in northern Iraq came as clashes and car bombings in Baghdad killed at least 19 Iraqi soldiers and police officers -- the latest in a wave of violence since elections on Jan. 30.”

Ukraine begins troop withdrawal from Iraq on March 15.

Police strike. “Iraqi police in Tikrit, north of Baghdad, went on strike Wednesday demanding the release of a police chief captured by the US troops and guarantees from the foreign forces to respect the local police, a police officer said. Police stations and streets of Tikrit, some 170 km north of Baghdad, were devoid of police who went on strike in a protest against the capture of Brigadier Hatem al-Juboury, chief of the homicide department in Salahudin provincial headquarters, Lieutenant Colonel Muhamed Ali told Xinhua.”

Mercenary update. “Private security firms contracted with the Pentagon and the State Department are dipping into experienced pools of trained fighters throughout Central and South America for their new recruits. With better pay than what they can earn at home, some 1,000 Latin Americans are working in Iraq today, estimates the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA). These recruits are joined by thousands of others - from the US and Britain, as well as from Fiji, the Philippines, India and beyond. Close to 20,000 armed personnel employed by private contractors are estimated to be operating in Iraq, making up the second largest foreign armed force in the country, after the US.”

1500. “Worryingly, the number of military deaths has shown no sign of falling since President Bush landed on USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003 with a banner saying ‘Mission Accomplished’ and declared an end to major combat operations. A total of 107 US military personnel were killed in Iraq in January, including 31 in a still unexplained helicopter crash in the western desert near Jordan that was the single most costly incident for US forces since the invasion. Ninety per cent of all coalition deaths have come since the US command celebrated the fall of Baghdad.”

Getting drafty. "The Marine Corps for the second straight month in February missed its goal for signing up new recruits, the Marines said on Wednesday, in another sign of the Iraq war`s effect on military recruiting." Thanks to alert reader clap your hands.

Support the troops!

For America`s veterans, plus the thousands of soldiers now returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, the investigation identified three points where cases often go wrong: the selection of a special representative called a veterans service officer, the review by a regional VA office and the filing of an appeal.
Among Knight Ridder`s findings:

_Many of the VA-accredited experts who help veterans with their cases receive minimal training and are rarely tested to ensure their competence. These veterans service officers work for nonprofit organizations such as the American Legion, as well as states and counties, but their quality is uneven, and that often means the difference between a successful claim and a botched one.

_The VA`s network of 57 regional offices produces wildly inconsistent results, which means that a veteran in St. Paul, Minn., for example, is likely to receive different treatment and more generous disability checks than one from Detroit.

_Veterans face lengthy delays if they appeal the VA`s decisions. The average wait is nearly three years, and many veterans wait 10 years for a final ruling. In the past decade, several thousand veterans died before their cases were resolved, according to an analysis of VA data.



Bush family values. “The fact that the Salt Pit case has remained secret for more than two years reflects how little is known about the CIA`s treatment of detainees and its handling of allegations of abuse. The public airing of abuse at Abu Ghraib prompted the Pentagon to undertake and release scathing reports about conduct by military personnel, to revise rules for handling prisoners, and to prosecute soldiers accused of wrongdoing. There has been no comparable public scrutiny of the CIA, whose operations and briefings to Congress are kept classified by the administration.” Public airing of abuse at Abu Ghraib, my ass.

Commentary

Editorial: “The administration`s refusal to remedy these abuses - or even acknowledge most of them - leaves the 2004 human rights report heavy with irony and saps its authority. Not only did the report fail to mention that the Iraqi government it criticized was appointed and controlled by the United States, but it also chastised the local security forces for the same kinds of arbitrary detentions, abusive treatment and torture that have been widespread in American military and intelligence prison camps. Indeed, some of the practices the report labeled as torture when employed by foreign governments were approved at one point for American detention centers by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.”

Analysis: “When a Special Forces platoon leader just back from Iraq matter-of-factly tells a close friend of mine, as happened last week, that he and his unit are now training their sights (literally) on Iran, we need to take that seriously. It provides us with a glimpse of reality as seen at ground level. For me, it brought to mind an unsolicited email I received from the father of a young soldier training at Fort Benning in the spring of 2002, soon after I wrote an op-ed discussing the timing of Bush`s decision to make war on Iraq. The father informed me that, during the spring of 2002, his son kept writing home saying his unit was training to go into Iraq. No, said the father; you mean Afghanistan ... that`s where the war is, not Iraq. In his next email, the son said, ‘No, Dad, they keep saying Iraq. I asked them and that`s what they mean.’ Now, apparently, they keep saying Iran; and that appears to be what they mean. Anecdotal evidence like this is hardly conclusive. Put it together with administration rhetoric and a preponderance of other ‘dots’, though, and everything points in the direction of an air attack on Iran, possibly also involving some ground forces.” Thanks, Friendly Fire.

Casualty Reports

Local story: Florida soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: Florida soldier dies in Iraq.

Local story: Georgia Marine wounded in Iraq.

Local story: Washington State soldier wounded in Iraq.
# posted by yankeedoodle : 4:09 AM
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Latest Fatality: Mar 02, 2005
Military Fatalities: US: 1500

Weitere Meldungen aus dem Irak:
http://icasualties.org/oif/
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Was George Bush Right About Freedom and Democracy?
Maybe. Maybe Not.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Wednesday, March 2, 2005, at 4:41 PM PT
http://slate.msn.com/id/2114260/

A question is haunting the blue states of America: Could George W. Bush be right? Is freedom indeed "on the march"? Did the war in Iraq uncork a white tornado that`s whooshing democracy across the region and beyond?

In just the past two months, free elections were held in Palestine and Iraq; a rigged election was overturned and an honest one re-held in Ukraine; the Egyptian president pledged to hold competitive elections soon, too; and a popular uprising against Syria`s occupation of Lebanon forced Beirut`s puppet government to resign—all this, amid President Bush`s proclamation that the main aim of American foreign policy is to advance the cause of global freedom.

It`s a huge stretch to view these uprisings as a seamless wave of democracy; but it would go too far in the other direction to see them as strictly discrete events, each unrelated to the other. The evidence suggests that we`re seeing at least a stream of wavelets; that the participants in one country have been inspired to take action, at least in part, by the example of participants in other countries. And therefore, the inference can be drawn, still others, elsewhere, might be inspired to take similar actions, or make similar demands, in the weeks and months ahead.

Finally, while it`s absurd to think that Bush set the upheavals of `05 in motion, it`s churlish not to grant him any credit at all. If nothing else, it`s an inspiring thing to see the United States standing on the side of national self-determination. It hasn`t happened very often in the past 60 years, unless anticommunism was at stake. John Kerry would be commended for it if he were president; George W. Bush should be, too.

But Bush`s partisans seem not to realize that we are witnessing, for the most part, the mere beginnings of a long, uncertain process. Elections mark the first step of a fledgling democracy, not its endpoint. Rallies can sire repressions. Freedom itself is a thin reed without the security, laws, and institutions to uphold it.

Where is all this going? What will President Bush do—what can he do—to nudge the process in a direction that`s consistent with our interests?

Take the developments in Lebanon. Syria has long been promising an end to its 30-year occupation. Last fall, when the six-year term of Lebanon`s Quisling president, Gen. Émile Lahoud, was about to expire, the Syrians forced an amendment to the constitution, allowing a three-year extension. That`s what set in motion the broad-based opposition movement and led Rafik Hariri, the popular prime minister, to resign in protest. Hariri`s assassination last month stirred that opposition into outright revolt. Did the election in Iraq, or Ukraine, embolden the protesters? Many of them say it did. But the combustion`s ingredients were already well-packed.

In any case, what happens next? If the Syrians do withdraw (and they`ve reduced their forces from 40,000 to 14,000 the past few years), some abstract concept called "freedom" won`t take over; flesh-and-blood Lebanese people will—and that`s where the troubles began. The terrorist organization Hezbollah represents a substantial portion of Lebanon`s population and will almost certainly play a strong role in any new government. (If it`s somehow kept out, expect civil war.) Will its leaders be interested in integrating Lebanon into some new Middle Eastern order that involves peace with Israel? Is there a package of sticks and carrots that might cajole and lure them into an accord? Will Bush (and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon) be interested in negotiating such a deal? Then there are the ethnic conflicts—Shiite and Sunni Muslims, Maronite Christians, and the Druze. They`re unified now in the cause of pushing out Syria, just as they were unified back in 1943 in the cause of pushing out France. In the intervening 60 years, divisions reigned, at times sparking chaos, which motivates the various occupations. (See Juan Cole`s blog on Tuesday for a succinct summary of this history.)

It`s hard to know how to read Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak`s announcement that he will hold real national elections sometime soon. Will he impose restrictions on who can run against him? Still, it cannot be a mere coincidence that he issued this declaration shortly after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice canceled a trip to Cairo to protest the arrest of Ayman Nour, the country`s opposition leader. The arrest also set off some domestic protest, though nothing as massive as the rallies in Beirut. It is reasonable to infer that even Mubarak—who has ruled Egypt like a modern pharaoh but couldn`t last long without the billions of dollars in American aid—is realizing that Bush might just be serious about this talk of "freedom." And it`s worth wondering if he might be worried about whether the elections in Palestine and Iraq are contagious.

The election of a new Palestinian Authority—and the subsequent appointment of an entirely new Cabinet—was a dramatic, potentially transformative event. The peace talks are back on, and the chance of a settlement is as great as at any time in the past decade. This has been the result of two developments: the death of Yasser Arafat; and the indisputable hawkishness of Sharon, which permits concessions that more moderate leaders could not make.

The ultimate significance of the breakthrough will be determined by whether a peace treaty can be pulled off—which will be shaped, to a large extent, by the Bush administration`s (or any American president`s) willingness to participate in the talks and pressure the parties.

Could a new type of Palestinian leadership have emerged had Saddam Hussein still been ruling Iraq and sending money to terrorists and their families? Probably not. Could it have emerged had Saddam been boxed in by U.N. weapons inspectors and surrounded by U.S. and British armed forces? Maybe, maybe not. This question may serve as the wedge for a new debate over whether the war was justified, given the absence of weapons of mass destruction, the skyrocketing costs of the war (in money and lives), and the Joint Chiefs of Staff`s latest forecast that the insurgency (and, therefore, the U.S. military presence) will probably persist for another decade.

It is ironic, then, that, of all the new and aspiring democracies, Iraq—the alleged prime mover—is in the most desperate condition. The fact that 8 million Iraqis voted, at the threat of gun point, is certain enthralling—and almost certainly had an inspiring impact on the region. But the election does not, by itself, address the fundamental conflicts: the Sunnis` powerlessness (which fuels much of the insurgency), the Kurds` appetite for independence (which could strain the nation`s fissures), or the Shiites` yearning to impose Muslim law (which would alienate the more secular citizens, especially the Kurds). These disputes might be hammered out in the composition of a new government or in the negotiations over a new constitution—or maybe not.

Saddam Hussein locked Iraq in a deep freeze. Political history—as the playing out of social, economic, and tribal interests—was suspended for decades. Now history has resumed, and it`s not a pretty picture. Iraq was a ramshackle contrivance of British imperialists who tried to redraw the map of the Middle East in the aftermath of World War I. The place has been a nightmare to govern ever since.

The elections, at the very least, supplied a thaw, a glimmer of confidence and pride, perhaps a chance at self-rule. But they didn`t eradicate the difficulties.

It`s worth noting that the Bush administration`s original plan for Iraq`s postwar reconstruction was to hold elections after an interim assembly drafted a constitution. It was the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani who insisted that elections be held first, who declared that a constitution would not be valid otherwise. Seeing no alternative, Bush gave in.

So who is—who will be seen as—the real facilitator and emblem of Middle Eastern-style democracy: the president of the United States or the grand ayatollah? That`s the scary question that sums up the challenges ahead and, even more, the ambiguity underlying the concept of "freedom."
Fred Kaplan writes the "War Stories" column for Slate. He can be reached at [e-mail].

Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2114260/

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Schwarzenegger arrives at a Sacramento restaurant in search of
signatures for ballot initiatives on pension funding and legislative
redistricting.
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[urlGov. Softens Pension Stance]http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-me-budget3mar03,1,4149783.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage[/url]

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THE WORLD
Missing Imam`s Trail Said to Lead From Italy to CIA
Prosecutors in Milan are investigating whether an Egyptian-born suspected militant was spirited away by the U.S. using a disputed tactic.
By Tracy Wilkinson and Bob Drogin
Times Staff Writers
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-vanishe…

March 3, 2005

ROME — When Hassan Osama Nasr, a controversial Egyptian-born imam, vanished from the streets of Milan two years ago, his friends and family insisted he`d been kidnapped by American agents. Few people listened. But today it appears Italian judicial authorities may agree with them.

A leading prosecutor in Milan has opened an investigation into the February 2003 disappearance, which has the hallmarks of a so-called extraordinary rendition, in which American counter-terrorism agents seize and transport suspects to third countries without seeking court permission.

The right-wing administration of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has not commented on the case, although it seems unlikely that the U.S. would conduct an extraordinary rendition without at least the tacit approval of the Italian government.

The case has outraged Italian opposition politicians, who want to know whether their government is involved in what one called "the outsourcing of torture." Nasr reportedly resurfaced 15 months later in Egypt and said he had been kidnapped by American and Italian agents and taken to Egypt, where he was tortured. His current whereabouts are unclear.

Extraordinary renditions have apparently been used increasingly since the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington. U.S. agents reportedly grab suspects in one country and then transfer them to another country to be interrogated, sometimes with tactics not allowed on American soil, such as torture.

Most suspects are said to have been nabbed in countries such as Pakistan where the rule of law is tenuous and the actions are easier to conceal. It is extremely rare for an official in a country where a seizure takes place to launch an investigation, as the Italian prosecutor has done.

Nasr, widely known as Abu Omar, was a suspected militant affiliated with a mosque in Milan that U.S. and Italian investigators have long contended was a hotbed of Islamic extremism.

On the Trail

Last week, Italian prosecutor Armando Spataro went to the joint U.S.-Italian Aviano Air Base to demand records on vehicular and airplane traffic in and out of the base, officials familiar with the investigation said. Reports suggest that after Abu Omar was seized, he was bundled off to the air base, then flown to Egypt.

Spataro declined to discuss details of the case and would only say that an inquiry was underway that had led investigators to the base. "I can confirm only that I was in Aviano," he told the Los Angeles Times.

A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Italy confirmed that Spataro had visited the base and had submitted questions to Italian military officers there, who relayed the queries to American officials, following the prescribed protocol.

"We are responding appropriately, in accordance with our [U.S.-Italian] agreements," the spokesman, Benedict Duffy, said.

A CIA spokeswoman declined to comment on the case. But intelligence officials are watching the investigation closely in the event that Spataro threatens to expose clandestine American agents or operations in Italy.

A former senior CIA operations officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the agency`s "routine and practice" was to notify another government before U.S. agents snatched someone off their soil. He said he could not discuss the Abu Omar case because the details were classified.

Simona Howe, a spokeswoman for the Italian Embassy in Washington, said the embassy was aware of the investigation, but had no instructions to discuss it with U.S. officials.

`Not a Banana Republic`

Prime Minister Berlusconi is one of President Bush`s most loyal allies, and Italy was one of the strongest Western European supporters of the war in Iraq, sending troops there despite widespread popular sentiment against it.

But Italy`s judiciary is often at odds with the Berlusconi government. He has frequently criticized judges for what he considers their leftist tendencies, especially when they challenge the prime minister`s policies.

Spataro and other prosecutors in Milan are known as crusaders who have tackled numerous terrorism cases and broken up several cells believed to have had ties to Al Qaeda militants and other networks in Europe.

News of Spataro`s investigation into the Abu Omar case first broke in Italian newspapers, and prompted a protest last week in the Italian parliament by opposition politicians who demanded to know what the government knew about the operation.

Several said that if the reports of a kidnapping on the streets of Milan proved true, the incident would represent a serious breach of international law. "We are not a banana republic," said Marco Minniti of the Democrats of the Left Party.

"I want to know if Italy is involved in the outsourcing of torture," said Sen. Tana de Zulueta.

Italian media have cited a witness who says that on Feb. 17, 2003, Abu Omar was walking to Viale Jenner Mosque in Milan when a group of men surrounded him, bundled him into a minivan and sped away.

The busy mosque, a converted garage on a main street, was once labeled by U.S. officials as the principal Al Qaeda logistics center in Europe. To this day, it is under heavy police surveillance and its members — primarily Middle Easterners and North Africans — are considered hostile to outsiders.

Clues in Disappearance

At the time, Italian authorities suspected Abu Omar of helping to build a terrorist network in Europe, of recruiting jihadist volunteers for Iraq and of possibly plotting a bombing. Prosecutors were seeking evidence to indict him when he vanished.

A U.S. counter-terrorism official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Wednesday that Abu Omar was "considered a veteran jihadist" who had fought in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Afghanistan. After Omar arrived in Italy in 2001, the official said, "he supported other jihadists" by providing training, and "is suspected of involvement in planning terrorist activities."

Fifteen months after disappearing in 2003, Abu Omar, who said he had been released by Egyptian authorities, telephoned his wife and friends in Milan and told them what had happened, Italian newspapers reported, citing prosecutors` wiretaps of the conversations. He said he had been blindfolded, driven to a military base, then flown to Egypt, where he was tortured. He was taken back into custody by Egyptian authorities shortly after the release, the reports said.

Italian newspapers say that up to 15 men, at least some of them CIA agents, are implicated in the alleged kidnapping. Italy`s leading newspaper, Corriere della Sera, reported that the prosecution was focusing on Aviano Air Base after cellphone records showed that one of the suspected captors, allegedly en route with Abu Omar, called the facility.

A U.S. official familiar with Spataro`s inquiry said the prosecutor had asked for records of vehicular and airplane traffic in and out of the base. That presumably would allow him to track the alleged transport of Abu Omar to the base and then his flight onward.

The Aviano base is a main component of the United States` North Atlantic Treaty Organization operations in Europe. It is run jointly by the U.S. and Italian air forces and has an estimated 4,200 troops and 1,000 U.S. and Italian civilians.

The CIA has covertly delivered at least 18 terrorism suspects since 1998 to Egypt, Syria, Jordan and other Middle Eastern nations where prisoners are often tortured, according to news accounts, congressional testimony and independent investigations.

The program intensified after the Sept. 11 attacks. Officials say the CIA`s role has varied, from providing electronic and other covert surveillance before raids to flying blindfolded suspects from one country to another on a Gulfstream jet it uses.

CIA Says It Seeks Assurances

U.S. intelligence officials defend the practice.

Michael Scheuer, a former senior CIA analyst, said each of the renditions that he supervised was approved by lawyers and policy review teams at the agency, at the National Security Council and, in some cases, at the Justice Department.

"Each one had to be built almost as if it`s a court case in the United States," said Scheuer, who from January 1996 to July 1999 ran the agency`s clandestine unit searching for Osama bin Laden.

"I always assumed if I had 15 lawyers` signatures, it was probably fine."

Scheuer said the CIA was required to get an oral or written statement from the country where the suspect was to be taken saying that "they will abide by the strictures of their law."

A CIA spokeswoman said that policy remained in place and that the agency sought "assurances from foreign governments that individuals would not be mistreated."

Although Scheuer said he was not familiar with the Abu Omar case, he said that in his experience, the CIA never snatched a suspect from a foreign country without notifying or seeking approval from the local government.

"The agency just wouldn`t do something like that under the nose of the Europeans, especially in Italy," he said.

"The Italians are among the best in terms of cooperation on terrorism."

German police and prosecutors are separately investigating allegations by Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen who was born in Lebanon.

Masri has told authorities that he was kidnapped in Macedonia in December 2003 and was later flown to a U.S. prison in Afghanistan. He said he was held for five months before he was released without charges.

More recently, U.S. authorities released Mamdouh Habib, an Australian citizen born in Egypt who was held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Habib said he was captured in Pakistan in October 2001, flown to Egypt by U.S. operatives and tortured there for six months before being taken to Cuba.

"The horror story of the post-9/11 world is that any foreign national anywhere in the world can be plucked from the streets of anywhere, whisked off to another country, never be heard from again and be utterly beyond the reach of the law," Joseph Margulies, a Chicago-based lawyer who represented Habib, said Wednesday.

In his first extensive testimony on the subject, CIA Director Porter J. Goss strongly defended the agency`s role in delivering suspects to other countries when he appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Feb. 16.

"As you know, many nations will claim their citizens back," said Goss, who was confirmed in September.

"And we have responsibility of trying to ensure that they are properly treated, and we try and do the best we can to guarantee that. But of course once they`re out of our control, there`s only so much we can do. But we do have an accountability program for those situations."

Wilkinson reported from Rome and Drogin from Washington.



Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

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Im Text sind viele Links.

Tomgram: Jonathan Schell on a Less Super Superpower
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2235
posted March 2, 2005 at 8:32 pm

There is a bleak wondrousness to this American world of ours. The Bush administration, after all, loathes fundamentalists -- those dangerous fanatics in strange lands with bizarre medieval belief systems, who wish us such ill and are more than ready to go to some twisted paradise to prove their fervor -- except, of course, for the fundamentalists here who believe that they`ll soon enough be snatched away and enraptured, while the Middle East and then the world is turned into something like a giant car bomb. Our President proclaims the spread of freedom and won`t let American officials sit down alone with their "axis of evil" counterparts in Iran and North Korea to negotiate nuclear dangers -- as if such contact might literally pollute them -- and yet consorting with Saudi autocrats, Pakistan`s military ruler Musharraf, or the dictators of various Central Asian `stans and their associates is unremarked upon. (Note, by the way, that one result of Bush administration military-to-military tsunami aid in Indonesia has been the official revival of relations between the Pentagon and the well-bloodied Indonesian military.)

The Bush administration calls -- quite rightly -- for the ending of the Syrian military "occupation" of Lebanon and the withdrawal of Syria`s remaining 15,000 troops in that country -- an occupation, I learned only yesterday from Juan Cole (in the single best backgrounder on the Lebanese situation I`ve seen), that was green-lighted by Henry Kissinger himself back in 1976 -- and yet it sticks grimly with its occupation (…oops, liberation) of Iraq and considers the idea of withdrawing our 130,000 occupation troops there, no matter in what phased or timed fashion, cut-and-run heresy. (Why only the other day, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Richard Myers was saying that insurgencies around the world tend to last… hint, hint… 7-12 years. That would, of course, involve Syrian-style staying power.) And we naturally welcome liberty, except when it comes to any of the prisoners we hold under unbelievable conditions and without rights or limit in offshore prisons around the world and even in the United States.

Just Tuesday, in our topsy-turvy world, District Court Judge Henry F. Floyd, appointed to the federal bench in South Carolina by George Bush in 2003, ruled, according to R. Jeffrey Smith of the Washington Post, that the government must charge or free the imprisoned alleged terrorist Jose Padilla because it

"lacks statutory and constitutional authority to indefinitely imprison without criminal charges a U.S. citizen who was designated an `enemy combatant`… Using a phrase often levied by conservatives to denigrate liberal judges, Floyd… accused the administration of engaging in `judicial activism`... Floyd said the government presented no law supporting this contention and that just because Bush and his appointees say Padilla`s detention was consistent with U.S. laws and the president`s war powers, that did not make it so. `Moreover, such a statement is deeply troubling. If such a position were ever adopted by the courts, it would totally eviscerate the limits placed on Presidential authority to protect the citizenry`s individual liberties.`"

Indeed.

What a world when we must rely on right-wing judges appointed by our present President for the protection of our most basic civil liberties! What a world when it`s clear to such a judge that a government claim of "blanket authority under the Constitution to detain Americans on U.S. soil who are suspected of taking or planning actions against the country" is, in fact, nothing of the sort!

There was a time when I believed that, of the two famed dystopian novels of the previous century, Aldous Huxley`s Brave New World and George Orwell`s 1984, Huxley`s was the one that best caught the most frightening tendencies in our American world. But I may be changing my mind. After all, we`re now ruled by radicals who have proclaimed, in the name of freedom, that our fate is eternal war -- a.k.a. World War IV, a.k.a. the Global War on Terror -- and Americans have indeed grown relatively comfortable with a world in which "peace [ours] is war [against them]" -- or, as William Rivers Pitt writes in a thoughtful essay on American empire at the Truthout.org website, "Now, permanent war and rule by fear are accepted without question."

Pitt, like the declinist scholar Immanuel Wallerstein and Kirkpatrick Sale (in a recent essay, Imperial Entropy, at the Counterpunch.com website), believes us an empire in decline, cracking open at the seams, even threatening to collapse. Minimally, there is something remarkable in the fact that our imperial forces, in only their second sortie to war under new management, found themselves stopped in their tracks. Not quite the shock-and-awe vision of Roman legions marching across the known world. There can be little question, as Sidney Blumenthal indicated recently (and I wrote the other day), that the Europeans see us as a dangerous but weakening power and that the recent Bush trip to Europe is evidence of a new policy of "containment" -- the beginnings of a global attempt (European, Russian, Chinese) to contain the Bush administration.

Though Orwell imagined a world in which phrases like "war is peace" were statements of horror and of linguistic degradation, it might be worth asking whether a version of Orwellian language might not also hold some element of hope within it. For instance, what if, as the Bush administration seems to be demonstrating at the moment, "strength is weakness"? What if being armed to the teeth, in the end, turns out to be a brutal form of imperial disarmament? This is, in a way, one question Jonathan Schell asks as he considers our President`s whirlwind tour of Europe in his latest "Letter from Ground Zero" for the Nation magazine (posted here thanks to the kindness of that magazine`s editors).

Those of you who might like to explore further Schell`s thoughts on America as an imperial power might check out the two exchanges he and I had last summer at Tomdispatch, or even better pick up a copy of his book, The Unconquerable World, which offers a remarkable peek inside the imperial war system as, over the last 300 years, it developed and crashed. (It`s a book that, as I`ve said many times before, should be in every personal library.)

Finally, for any of you in or near New York City who might want to experience the live version of this, consider attending the panel discussion sponsored by the Nation Institute that Jonathan will be on this Thursday, March 3 (7-8:30 pm at the Theresa Lang Center, 55 W. 13th Street, 2nd floor). Its title is "The Deepening Shadow: The US at War in the Nuclear Age," and it`s sure to offer, if you`ll excuse a bad pun, more bang for your buck (at $10 a ticket, students free). After all, the other two panelists will be former war reporter Chris Hedges (author of the book I just happen to be reading, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, and a man who knows the attractions that lie deep within the Orwellian idea that "war is peace"), and Frances Fitzgerald (author of the classic Vietnam-era book, Fire in the Lake, and a fine Reagan-era history, Way Out There in the Blue). I don`t usually promote events, but I`m planning on going, why not you? Tom

A Less Super Superpower
By Jonathan Schell

One of the most difficult things to judge in the world today is the extent of American power. On the one hand, there is no doubt that the United States possesses a far larger pile of weapons than any other country, that the American economy is also larger than any other country`s and that America`s movies and television programs are consumed globally. America is widely accorded the title "only superpower," and many of its detractors as well as its supporters describe it as the world`s first truly globe-straddling empire. On the other hand, it is not yet clear what the United States can accomplish with these eye-catching assets. For power, as Thomas Hobbes wrote in one of the most succinct and durable definitions of power ever offered, is a "present means, to obtain some future apparent good." Power, after all, is not just an expenditure of energy. There must be results.

Measured by Hobbes`s test, the superpower looks less super. Its military has been stretched to the breaking point by the occupation of a single weak country, Iraq. Its economy is held hostage by Himalayas of external debt, much of it in the hands of a strategic rival, China, holder of nearly $200 billion in Treasury bills. Its domestic debt, caused in part by the war expenditures, also towers to the skies. The United States has dramatically failed to make progress in its main declared foreign policy objective, the nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction: While searching fruitlessly for nuclear programs in Iraq, where they did not exist, it temporized with North Korea, where they apparently do exist, and now it seems at a loss for a policy that will stop Iran from taking the same path. The President has just announced that the "end of tyranny" is his goal, but in his first term the global democracy movement suffered its greatest setback since the cold war -- Russia`s slide toward authoritarianism.

The shaky foundations of America`s power were on display in the President`s recent travels. Shortly before Bush landed in Brussels, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany quietly but firmly repudiated the President`s militarized, US-centered approach to world affairs. NATO, he heretically announced, should no longer be "the primary venue" of the Atlantic relationship. Did that mean that Europe would continue to take direction from Washington through some other venue? Hardly: He was, he said, formulating German policy "in Europe, for Europe and from Europe." The superpower`s penchant for military action was also rejected. The chancellor said, "Challenges lie today beyond the North Atlantic Alliance`s former zone of mutual assistance. And they do not primarily require military responses."

Schröder was standing on solid ground at home. A poll in the German newspaper Die Welt revealed that "Vladimir Putin is seen as more trustworthy than George W. Bush, France as a more important partner for German foreign and security policy than the United States. Closer harmonization of German foreign policy with America is not wanted, either."

Meanwhile, offstage, in an apparent extension of constitution-building at home, Europe was taking the lead in building cooperative global instruments, including the Kyoto Protocol on global warming and the International Criminal Court. No sooner had the President arrived in Europe than an economic trapdoor seemed briefly to open beneath his feet when the South Korean Central Bank stated that it intended to move some of its holdings from the dollar to other currencies, causing a 174-point drop in the Dow Jones average. The next day, the bank disavowed its report and the dollar recovered, but not before the fragility of America`s economic position in the world had been revealed.

In an atmosphere of programmed smiles and brittle celebrations, the presidential dinners and toasts compensated for local public sentiment rather than reflecting it. The less popular Bush was in a given country, it seemed, the jollier the summit meeting. Even in little Slovakia, where the festivities seemed more spontaneous than elsewhere, an opinion poll showed that a majority believed that the United States, not Russia, was the most worrisome threat to democracy.

In his meeting with Putin, Bush seemed almost obsequious, repeatedly referring chummily to an unresponding, scowling Putin (it`s an expression that settles naturally on his face) as "my friend Vladimir." As for democracy in Russia, the man who would "end tyranny" everywhere in the world could only muster, "I was able to share my concerns about Russia`s commitment in fulfilling these universal principles."

A portrait of a peculiar relationship with Europe emerged. To Bush`s Don Quixote, tilting, at God`s command, against imagined evils, Europe played Sancho Panza, humoring the Knight Errant but mocking him behind his back. Or perhaps it was more like that other great inverted relationship between master and servant, P.G. Wodehouse`s upper-class twit Bertie Wooster and his sagacious, potent butler Jeeves, who contrives to get Wooster out of his ceaseless ridiculous scrapes in high society. The difference is that Europe`s rescue is only feigned. Yes, France will help in Iraq -- with one officer, who will stay at NATO headquarters in Europe.

In history, the rise of imperial pretenders has usually led to military alliances against them. Such was the case, for instance, when a previous imperial republic, Napoleon`s France, conquered most of Europe but then was defeated by an oddly assorted alliance of Britain, Russia and Austria-Hungary. Such is not the case today. Europe seems determined to bypass rather than fight the American challenge. And power? The American kind is poor in "future goods." There is rivalry in the air, but it no longer takes a martial form. Instead, Europe seems bent for now on building itself up economically and knitting itself together politically -- readying, it appears, another kind of power, based more on cooperation, both within its own borders and with the world, and less on military force.

Jonathan Schell, author of The Unconquerable World, is the Nation Institute`s Harold Willens Peace Fellow. The Jonathan Schell Reader was recently published by Nation Books.

Copyright C2005 Jonathan Schell

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Es gibt wohl keinen in der Bush Familie, der keinen Dreck am Stecken hat. Von dem alten Prescott, der sein Geld mit Nazi-Deutschland verdiente bis zu den Enkeln und Urenkeln.
BFEE

March 2, 2005
It`s a Family Affair
Uncle Bucky Makes a Killing
http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair03022005.html

By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

Back in 1991, shortly after the depleted uranium-flaked dust had settled some from the first Gulf War, there was a minor tempest in the press over influence peddling by members of the Presiden George H. W. Bush`s family, including his son Neil and his brother Prescott, Jr. Both Neil and Prescott, neither of whom had proven to be exceptionally talented businessmen, had made millions by flagrantly trading on their relationship to the president.

Seeking to distinguish himself from his more predatory relatives, William Henry Trotter Bush, the younger brother of Bush Sr. and an investment banker in St. Louis, gave an interview to disclaim any profiteering on his own part. Indeed, he sounded downright grumpy, as if his older brother hadn`t done enough to steer juicy government deals his way. "Being the brother of George Bush isn`t a financial windfall by any stretch of the imagination," huffed William H.T. Bush.

Well, perhaps being the brother of the president didn`t generate as much business as he hoped, but having the good fortune to be the uncle of the president certainly appears to have padded the pockets of the man endearingly known to George W. Bush as "Uncle Bucky."

A few months before his selection as president, Bush`s Uncle Bucky quietly joined the board of a small and struggling St. Louis defense company called Engineered Support Systems, Incorporated (ESSI). Since Bush joined the team, ESSI`s fortunes have taken a dramatic turn for the better. This once obscure outfit is now one of the top Pentagon contractors. Next year its revenues will top $1 billion, nearly all of it derived from defense contracts with the Pentagon or with foreign militaries financed by US aid and loan guarantees. Even sweeter, most of these contracts have been awarded in no bid, sole source deals.

True to form, Uncle Bucky claims that ESSI`s amazing transformation has nothing to do with him or his nephew, the president. "I don`t make any calls to the 202 (DC) Area Code," Bush sneered to the Los Angeles Times.

Uncle Buck`s characteristic modesty was swiftly undercut by statements made by top executives at ESSI, who seemed proud that their foresight in inviting Bush on board had paid off so handsomely for all concerned. "Having a Bush certainly doesn`t hurt," chuckled Dan Kreher, ESSI`s vice president for industrial relations.

Uncle Bucky Bush is 16 years younger than his brother, the former president. According to Kitty Kelley`s gripping history of the Bush clan The Family, Bucky was raised "almost as an only child" by his aging parents Dorothy and Prescott Bush, the senator who traded with the Nazis. Bucky was a sensitive and precocious kid with a peculiar devotion to choral music. In fact, the highlight of his career at Yale University was his starring spot with Whiffenpoofs, an elite choir.

While his older brother headed to Texas to make his name in the oil patch, Bucky returned to St. Louis, the Gateway City where the original Bush fortune had been built. He settled into a modest career as an investment banker and corporate consultant. Then, with his nephew poised to seize the White House, Uncle Bucky was offered a seat on the board of ESSI, a military support and defense electronics firm. ESSI`s company prospectus describes it as "a diversified supplier of high-tech, integrated military electronics, support equipment and logistics services for all branches of America`s armed forces and certain foreign militaries."

Shortly after the attacks of 9/11, ESSI positioned itself to win a series of lucrative Pentagon contracts that would catapult the diminutive firm into the top ranks of defense contractors. Within a few short months, the company`s shareholders were given the financial ride of their lives.

By the time of the Iraq war, ESSI was a brawny new player on the defense block. In the spring of 2003, ESSI acquired a military communications company called TAMSCO, whose prime activity was in developing military satellite terminals in the Gulf region and in US bases in Germany in anticipation of a US invasion of Iraq. After the ESSI buy-out, TAMSCO swiftly won contracts from both the Air Force and the Army for more than $90 million for the training of troops in the operation of the system and the installation of radar equipment in Kuwait.

Then Pentagon awarded ESSI a $49 million contract to remodel military trailers for use in Iraq.

In 2003, the Defense Department gave ESSI a huge deal to provide the Army with equipment to search for Iraq`s non-existent chemical and biological weapons. Part of this package included a $19 million contract to provide protective tents for US troops from chemical bombs. The tents didn`t arrive in Iraq until after it was evident to nearly everyone that the Iraqi military didn`t have access to such weapons. This didn`t stop the money from flowing into ESSI`s coffers and it didn`t stop ESSI`s executives from playing along in the grand charade. "The potential threat of our troops facing a chemical or biological attack during the current conflict in Iraq remains very real," huffed Michael Shananan, the company`s former chairman.

As the invasion transformed into a military occupation of Iraq, ESSI continued to pluck off sweet deals. In late 2003, the Coalition Provisional Authority, whose contracts passed across the Pentagon desk of arch neocon Douglas Feith, awarded ESSI an $18 million deal to engineer a communications system for the CPA offices, barricaded inside Baghdad`s Green Zone.

Its executives openly clucked at the likelihood for protracted war. "The increasing likelihood for a prolonged military involvement in Southwest Asia by US forces well into 2006 has created a fertile environment for the type of support products and services we offer," gloated Gerald L. Daniels, the company`s Chief Executive Officer. Rarely has corporate glee over the prospects of war profiteering been expressed so brazenly.

But Daniels had a point. Even as things began to go sour for the US in Iraq, ESSI stood to make lots of money. One of its biggest no-bid contracts came in 2004 in the wake of mounting causalities in light-armored vehicles hit by roadside bombs. ESSI won a deal to upgrade the armor of thousands of vehicles in or bound for Iraq. The company`s annual report for 2005 forecast that ESSI might make as much as $200 million from this bloody windfall alone.

As the flood of new contracts poured in, ESSI`s stock soared. In January of 2005, it reached its all-time high of $60.39 per share. A few days before the stock hit this lofty peak, Uncle Bucky quietly exercised his option to sell 8,438 shares of ESSI stock. He walked away from that transaction with at least $450,000. The stock sale occurred a few days after ESSI announced that the Pentagon had awarded it $77 million in new contracts for the Iraq war and a few days before word leaked to the press that the company was under investigation for its handling of older Pentagon contracts. The timing of the trade was perfect.

In a February 2005 filing with the Securities Exchange Commission, ESSI discreetly disclosed to its shareholders that the inspector general of Pentagon had launched an inquiry into a series of contracts awarded to the company in 2002 for work on the Air Force`s troubled automated cargo loading machine called the Tunner.

While the company`s chief financial dismissed the probe as "routine" and assured investors that it would have "no effect" on ESSI`s fortunes, the Pentagon held to a more restrained assessment of the potential liability. Michael Wynne, acting undersecretary of Defense, said he had referred ESSI contracts valued at $158 million to the Pentagon`s inspector general because the deals "appear to have anomalies in them." Many of the contracts were awarded on a no-bid basis and much of the probe appears to focus on the role Pentagon insiders played in steering the contracts to ESSI.

Much of the thrust behind ESSI`s sudden rise has been fueled by no-bid or source deals with the Pentagon. These no risk deals are part of a corporate strategy cooked up in part by non other than Uncle Bucky himself. In a profitable bit of self-dealing, ESSI hired its board member, Bucky Bush, as a consultant in 2002. Bush, who pulls in about $45,000 a year in director`s fees, was paid an additional $125,000 for his advice on ESSI`s buyout of other military contractors. The acquisition strategy outlined by Bush was to train the company`s appetite on the gobbling up of companies that held no-bid or sole source deals with the Pentagon.

In January, ESSI spent $37.6 million to buy a New York electronics testing firm called Prospective Computer Analysis, Inc. In defending the purchase to shareholders, executives at ESSI emphasized that the company held "a lot of source contracts."

Most recently, ESSI acquired Spacelink, Inc, a Virginia-based defense company, for $150 million. Spacelink, which supplies parts for military satellites, is poised to cash in on the $80 billion missile defense bonanza.

ESSI isn`t the only defense-oriented company to acquire the services of Uncle Bucky. The banker from St. Louis has also been retained as a trustee for the global investment firm Lord Abbott, one of the primary financial underwriters of Halliburton. Lord Abbott is both one of the top 10 shareholders in Dick Cheney`s former company, as well as one of its top mutual fund holders. It`s all in the family.

Uncle Bucky didn`t unload all of his ESSI stock. He still owns 45,000 shares valued at more than $2.5 million. He used the profits from the recent sale to purchase a vacation home in Florida near his other nephew nourishing presidential ambitions, Jeb Bush.

Who knows if the Bucky will finally stop there?

Jeffrey St. Clair is the author of Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature. This essay is excerpted from his forthcoming book Grand Theft Pentagon, to be published in July by Common Courage Press.

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America No. 1?
America by the numbers
http://www.citypages.com/databank/26/1264/article12985.asp

by Michael Ventura

02/03/05 "ICH" - - No concept lies more firmly embedded in our national character than the notion that the USA is "No. 1," "the greatest." Our broadcast media are, in essence, continuous advertisements for the brand name "America Is No. 1." Any office seeker saying otherwise would be committing political suicide. In fact, anyone saying otherwise will be labeled "un-American." We`re an "empire," ain`t we? Sure we are. An empire without a manufacturing base. An empire that must borrow $2 billion a day from its competitors in order to function. Yet the delusion is ineradicable. We`re No. 1. Well...this is the country you really live in:

* The United States is 49th in the world in literacy (the New York Times, Dec. 12, 2004).
* The United States ranked 28th out of 40 countries in mathematical literacy (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).
* Twenty percent of Americans think the sun orbits the earth. Seventeen percent believe the earth revolves around the sun once a day (The Week, Jan. 7, 2005).
* "The International Adult Literacy Survey...found that Americans with less than nine years of education `score worse than virtually all of the other countries`" (Jeremy Rifkin`s superbly documented book The European Dream: How Europe`s Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream, p.78).
* Our workers are so ignorant and lack so many basic skills that American businesses spend $30 billion a year on remedial training (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004). No wonder they relocate elsewhere!
* "The European Union leads the U.S. in...the number of science and engineering graduates; public research and development (R&D) expenditures; and new capital raised" (The European Dream, p.70).
* "Europe surpassed the United States in the mid-1990s as the largest producer of scientific literature" (The European Dream, p.70).
* Nevertheless, Congress cut funds to the National Science Foundation. The agency will issue 1,000 fewer research grants this year (NYT, Dec. 21, 2004).
* Foreign applications to U.S. grad schools declined 28 percent last year. Foreign student enrollment on all levels fell for the first time in three decades, but increased greatly in Europe and China. Last year Chinese grad-school graduates in the U.S. dropped 56 percent, Indians 51 percent, South Koreans 28 percent (NYT, Dec. 21, 2004). We`re not the place to be anymore.
* The World Health Organization "ranked the countries of the world in terms of overall health performance, and the U.S. [was]...37th." In the fairness of health care, we`re 54th. "The irony is that the United States spends more per capita for health care than any other nation in the world" (The European Dream, pp.79-80). Pay more, get lots, lots less.
* "The U.S. and South Africa are the only two developed countries in the world that do not provide health care for all their citizens" (The European Dream, p.80). Excuse me, but since when is South Africa a "developed" country? Anyway, that`s the company we`re keeping.
* Lack of health insurance coverage causes 18,000 unnecessary American deaths a year. (That`s six times the number of people killed on 9/11.) (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005.)
* "U.S. childhood poverty now ranks 22nd, or second to last, among the developed nations. Only Mexico scores lower" (The European Dream, p.81). Been to Mexico lately? Does it look "developed" to you? Yet it`s the only "developed" country to score lower in childhood poverty.
* Twelve million American families--more than 10 percent of all U.S. households--"continue to struggle, and not always successfully, to feed themselves." Families that "had members who actually went hungry at some point last year" numbered 3.9 million (NYT, Nov. 22, 2004).
* The United States is 41st in the world in infant mortality. Cuba scores higher (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005).
* Women are 70 percent more likely to die in childbirth in America than in Europe (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005).
* The leading cause of death of pregnant women in this country is murder (CNN, Dec. 14, 2004).
* "Of the 20 most developed countries in the world, the U.S. was dead last in the growth rate of total compensation to its workforce in the 1980s.... In the 1990s, the U.S. average compensation growth rate grew only slightly, at an annual rate of about 0.1 percent" (The European Dream, p.39). Yet Americans work longer hours per year than any other industrialized country, and get less vacation time.
* "Sixty-one of the 140 biggest companies on the Global Fortune 500 rankings are European, while only 50 are U.S. companies" (The European Dream, p.66). "In a recent survey of the world`s 50 best companies, conducted by Global Finance, all but one were European" (The European Dream, p.69).
* "Fourteen of the 20 largest commercial banks in the world today are European.... In the chemical industry, the European company BASF is the world`s leader, and three of the top six players are European. In engineering and construction, three of the top five companies are European.... The two others are Japanese. Not a single American engineering and construction company is included among the world`s top nine competitors. In food and consumer products, Nestlé and Unilever, two European giants, rank first and second, respectively, in the world. In the food and drugstore retail trade, two European companies...are first and second, and European companies make up five of the top ten. Only four U.S. companies are on the list" (The European Dream, p.68).
* The United States has lost 1.3 million jobs to China in the last decade (CNN, Jan. 12, 2005).
* U.S. employers eliminated 1 million jobs in 2004 (The Week, Jan. 14, 2005).
* Three million six hundred thousand Americans ran out of unemployment insurance last year; 1.8 million--one in five--unemployed workers are jobless for more than six months (NYT, Jan. 9, 2005).
* Japan, China, Taiwan, and South Korea hold 40 percent of our government debt. (That`s why we talk nice to them.) "By helping keep mortgage rates from rising, China has come to play an enormous and little-noticed role in sustaining the American housing boom" (NYT, Dec. 4, 2004). Read that twice. We owe our housing boom to China, because they want us to keep buying all that stuff they manufacture.
* Sometime in the next 10 years Brazil will probably pass the U.S. as the world`s largest agricultural producer. Brazil is now the world`s largest exporter of chickens, orange juice, sugar, coffee, and tobacco. Last year, Brazil passed the U.S. as the world`s largest beef producer. (Hear that, you poor deluded cowboys?) As a result, while we bear record trade deficits, Brazil boasts a $30 billion trade surplus (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).
* As of last June, the U.S. imported more food than it exported (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).
* Bush: 62,027,582 votes. Kerry: 59,026,003 votes. Number of eligible voters who didn`t show up: 79,279,000 (NYT, Dec. 26, 2004). That`s more than a third. Way more. If more than a third of Iraqis don`t show for their election, no country in the world will think that election legitimate.
* One-third of all U.S. children are born out of wedlock. One-half of all U.S. children will live in a one-parent house (CNN, Dec. 10, 2004).
* "Americans are now spending more money on gambling than on movies, videos, DVDs, music, and books combined" (The European Dream, p.28).
* "Nearly one out of four Americans [believe] that using violence to get what they want is acceptable" (The European Dream, p.32).
* Forty-three percent of Americans think torture is sometimes justified, according to a PEW Poll (Associated Press, Aug. 19, 2004).
* "Nearly 900,000 children were abused or neglected in 2002, the last year for which such data are available" (USA Today, Dec. 21, 2004).
* "The International Association of Chiefs of Police said that cuts by the [Bush] administration in federal aid to local police agencies have left the nation more vulnerable than ever" (USA Today, Nov. 17, 2004).

No. 1? In most important categories we`re not even in the Top 10 anymore. Not even close.

The USA is "No. 1" in nothing but weaponry, consumer spending, debt, and delusion.

Reprinted from the Austin Chronicle. www.citypages.com/databank/26/1264/article12985.asp

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March 6, 2005
FRANK RICH
Gonzo Gone, Rather Going, Watergate Still Here
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/06/arts/06rich.html?8hpib

TWO weeks ago Hunter S. Thompson committed suicide. Next week Dan Rather commits ritual suicide, leaving the anchor chair at CBS prematurely as penance for his toxic National Guard story. The two journalists shared little but an abiding distaste - make that hatred in Thompson`s case - for the Great Satan of 20th-century American politics, Richard Nixon. The best work of both was long behind them. Yet memories of that best work - not to mention the coincidental timing of their departures - only accentuate the vacuum in that cultural category we stubbornly insist on calling News.

What`s missing from News is the news. On ABC, Peter Jennings devotes two hours of prime time to playing peek-a-boo with U.F.O. fanatics, a whorish stunt crafted to deliver ratings, not information. On NBC, Brian Williams is busy as all get-out, as every promo reminds us, "Reporting America`s Story." That story just happens to be the relentless branding of Brian Williams as America`s anchorman - a guy just too in love with Folks Like Us to waste his time looking closely at, say, anything happening in Washington.

In this environment, it`s hard to know whom to root for. After the "60 Minutes" fiasco, Mr. Williams`s boss, the NBC president Jeff Zucker, piously derided CBS for its screw-up, bragging of the reforms NBC News instituted after a producer staged a truck explosion for a "Dateline NBC" segment in 1992. "Nothing like that could have gotten through, at any level," Mr. Zucker said of the CBS National Guard story, "because of the safeguards we instituted more than a decade ago." Good for him, but it`s not as if a lot else has gotten through either. When was the last time Stone Phillips delivered a scoop, with real or even fake documents, on "Dateline"? Or that NBC News pulled off an investigative coup as stunning as the "60 Minutes II" report on Abu Ghraib? That, poignantly enough, was Mr. Rather`s last hurrah before he, too, and through every fault of his own, became a neutered newsman.

Hunter Thompson did not do investigative reporting, but he would have had a savage take on our news-free world - not least because it resembles his own during the Nixon era, before he had calcified into the self-parodistic pop culture cartoon immortalized by Garry Trudeau, Bill Murray, Johnny Depp and most of his eulogists. Read "Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail `72" - the chronicle of his Rolling Stone election coverage - and you find that his diagnosis of journalistic dysfunction hasn`t aged a day: "The most consistent and ultimately damaging failure of political journalism in America has its roots in the clubby/cocktail personal relationships that inevitably develop between politicians and journalists." He cites as a classic example the breathless but belated revelations of the mental history of George McGovern`s putative running mate, the Missouri Senator Thomas Eagleton - a story that had long been known by "half of the political journalists in St. Louis and at least a dozen in the Washington press corps." This same clubby pack would be even tardier on Watergate, a distasteful assignment left to a pair of lowly police-beat hacks at The Washington Post.

Thompson was out to break the mainstream media`s rules. His unruly mix of fact, opinion and masturbatory self-regard may have made him a blogger before there was an Internet, but he was a blogger who had the zeal to leave home and report firsthand and who could write great sentences that made you want to savor what he found out rather than just scroll quickly through screen after screen of minutiae and rant. When almost all "the Wizards, Gurus and Gentlemen Journalists in Washington" were predicting an unimpeded victory march for Edmund Muskie to the Democratic presidential nomination, it was Thompson who sniffed out the Muskie campaign`s "smell of death" and made it stick. The purported front-runner, he wrote, "talked like a farmer with terminal cancer trying to borrow money on next year`s crop."

But even Thompson might have been shocked by what`s going on now. "The death of Thompson represents the passing from the Age of Gonzo to the Age of Gannon," wrote Russell Cobb in a column in The Daily Texan at the University of Texas. As he argues, today`s White House press corps is less likely to be invaded by maverick talents like a drug-addled reporter from a renegade start-up magazine than by a paid propagandist like Jeff Gannon, a fake reporter for a fake news organization (Talon News) run by a bona fide Texas Republican operative who was a delegate to the 2000 Bush convention.

Though a few remain on the case - Eric Boehlert of Salon, mediamatters.org, Joe Strupp of Editor and Publisher - the Gannon story is fast receding. In some major news venues, including ABC and CBS, it never surfaced at all. Yet even as Mr. Gannon has quit his "job" as a reporter and his "news organization" has closed up shop, the plot thickens. His own Web site - which only recently shut down with the self-martyring message "The voice goes silent" - has now restarted as a blog with Gonzo pretensions. The title alone of his first entry, "Fear and Loathing in the Press Room," would send Thompson spinning in his grave had he not asked that his remains be shot out of a cannon.

As a blogger, Mr. Gannon`s new tactic is to encourage fellow right-wing bloggers to portray him as the victim of a homophobic left-wing witch hunt that destroyed his privacy. Given that it was Mr. Gannon himself who voluntarily exhibited his own private life by appearing on Web sites advertising his services as a $200-per-hour escort, that`s a hard case to make. But it is a clever way to deflect attention from an actual sexual witch hunt conducted by his own fake news organization in early 2004. It was none other than Talon News that advanced the fictional story that a young woman "taped an interview with one of the major television networks" substantiating a rumor on the Drudge Report that John F. Kerry had had an extramarital affair with an intern. (Mr. Kerry had to publicly deny the story just as his campaign came out of the gate.) This is the kind of dirty trick only G. Gordon Liddy could dream up. Or maybe did. Mr. Gannon`s Texan boss, Bobby Eberle, posted effusive thanks (for "their assistance, guidance and friendship") to both Mr. Liddy and Karl Rove on Talon News`s sister site, GOPUSA, last Christmas.

Mr. Gannon, a self-promoting airhead, may well be a pawn of larger forces as the vainglorious Mr. Liddy once was. But to what end? That Kerry "intern" wasn`t the only "news" Mr. Gannon helped stuff in the pipeline during an election year. A close reading of the transcripts of televised White House press conferences reveals that at uncannily crucial moments he was called on by the White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, to stanch tough questioning on such topics as Abu Ghraib and Mr. Rove`s possible involvement in the outing of the C.I.A. spy Valerie Plame. We still don`t know how this Zelig, using a false name, was given a daily White House pass every day for two years. Last weekend, Jim Pinkerton, a former official in the Reagan and Bush I White Houses, said on "Fox News Watch," no less, that such a feat "takes an incredible amount of intervention from somebody high up in the White House," that it had to be "conscious" and that "some investigation should proceed and they should find that out."

Given an all-Republican government, the only investigation possible will have to come from the press. Which takes us back to 1972, the year of Thompson`s fear and loathing on the campaign trail. That was no golden age for news either. As Thompson`s Rolling Stone colleague, Timothy Crouse, wrote in his own chronicle of that year, "The Boys on the Bus," months of stories by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein failed to "sink in" and only 48 percent of those polled by Gallup had heard of Watergate by Election Day.

Some news organizations had simply ignored The Post`s scoops "out of petty rivalry," wrote Mr. Crouse. Others did so because they "feared the administration or favored Nixon in the presidential race." Others didn`t initially recognize the story`s importance. (The New York Times played the Watergate break-in on page 30.) The White House`s pathological secrecy and penchant for threatening to use the Federal Communications Commission as a battering ram on its broadcast critics took care of the rest. According to a superb new history of the Washington press corps, "Reporting from Washington," by Donald A. Ritchie, even Mr. Rather, then CBS`s combative man in the Nixon White House, "left the Watergate story alone at first, sure that it would fade like `a puff of talcum powder.` "

For similar if not identical reasons, journalistic investigations into the current administration rarely "sink in" either. Early stories in The Boston Globe and Washington Post on what Jeff Gannon himself (on his blog) now calls "Gannongate" faded like that puff of powder. So did Eric Lichtblau`s recent Times report on the White House`s suppression of the 9/11 commission finding that federal aviation officials ignored dozens of advance warnings of Al Qaeda airline hijackings and suicide missions. But we`ve now entered a new twilight zone: in 1972, at least, the press may have been stacked with jokers but not with counterfeit newsmen.

Today you can`t tell the phonies without a scorecard. Besides the six "journalists" we know to have been paid by the administration or its backers, bloggers were on the campaign payrolls of both a Republican office-seeker (South Dakota`s Senator John Thune) and a Democrat (Howard Dean) during last year`s campaign. This week The Los Angeles Times reported that Arnold Schwarzenegger`s administration, "taking a cue from President Bush`s administration," had distributed fake news videos starring a former TV reporter to extol the governor`s slant on a legislative proposal. Back in Washington, the Social Security Administration is refusing to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests for information about its use of public relations firms - such as those that funneled taxpayers` money to the likes of Armstrong Williams. Don`t expect news organizations dedicated to easy-listening news to get to the bottom of it.

"Reporting America`s Story," NBC`s slogan, is what Hunter Thompson actually did before the phrase was downsized into a vacuous marketing strategy. As for Mr. Rather, he gave a valedictory interview to Ken Auletta of The New Yorker in which he said, "The one thing I hope, and I believe, is that even my enemies think that I am authentic." The bar is so low these days that authenticity may well constitute a major journalistic accomplishment in itself.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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WASHINGTON (IWR News Parody) - According to rumors at the State Department, Condoleezza Rice apparently got laid last night. "You can always tell when the dragon lady has had a roll in the hay when she comes into work the next morning with that big shit eating grin on her face. Usually when she comes, she`s got that [urlgod awful scowl]http://www.internetweekly.org/2004/08/cartoon_condi_the_pricess_of_pout.html on her face and she`s all stiff and fidgety like a Kabuki performer in straight jacket. But when she scores, she`s like a real person! She even brought in some day old donuts from Kroger`s," said an anonymous State Department employee.

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Published on Thursday, March 3, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
Between Rock, Iraq and a Hard Place
by Mira Ptacin
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0303-20.htm

I didn`t watch the Oscars, but the following morning the mainstream media vultures quickly suffocated me with post-Oscar gossip. One particular trend was the race to scathe Chris Rock over his `controversial` and `off key` attacks on other celebrities. True, it wasn`t very nice of Rock to draw attention Michael Moore`s pudginess or to place the Jewish controversy over The Passion of Christ at the butt of a joke, but this is Chris Rock we`re talking about, not Emily Post. Rock and a microphone are jeopardous allies.

At one point, Rock dabbled in politics: "Bush did some things you could never get away with at your job, man . . . Just imagine you worked at the Gap. You`re $70 trillion behind on your register and then you start a war with Banana Republic `cause you say they got toxic tank tops over there. You have the war, people are dying, a thousand Gap employees are dead, bleeding all over the khakis, you finally take over Banana Republic, and you find out they never made tank tops in the first place."

Some people were horrified by Rock`s ability to joke about this bloody war we are engaged in, but he is a comedian. And he did have a point. But he left out a major part of his joke: the upcoming attack on Old Navy.

Let`s Get Campy!

The adventure for the Gap coalition doesn`t end after the disastrous invasion of Banana Republic. So maybe Gap`s intelligence was flawed but at least the Banana Republicans were liberated--all they have to do now is refold the messed up T-shirts and bloody khakis that were disheveled in the attack. Now, word in the for-sale racks has it that Old Navy may have stockpiles of Catastrophic Capris pants, according to Gap Intelligence, possibly located in their back storage room. Soon Gap may be sending a fleet of low-wage employees on Rascals for a full scale personal-mobility-scooter strike on Old Navy. How campy. How hollow. How ridiculous.

Think Spring

With the spectacular failures of all their expectations in Iraq (Banana Republic), it would seem that the Bush administration (Gap) would shy away from the accusation of nuclear weapons in Iran (Old Navy), but it doesn`t seem so. On the contrary, the administration is acting as though they`ve had a mandate for this whole program. It`s very plausible that there`s going to be an air attack on the Iranian nuclear facilities. Every sign is there that they`re still on course on the program that some of these people laid out on the Project for the New American Century. Regime change in Iraq was at the head of the list, but also regime change in Syria and Iran as well--in general, a remaking of the Middle East. Scott Ritter, the former weapons instructor in Iraq, is predicting an air strike before June. We all know that the WMDs in Iraq that Rumsfield and Powell were so confident about do not exist, so how could we pursue attacks over suspicions again? To paraphrase George Bush: The idea of nuclear attacks against Iran is ridiculous. But to quote GW: `Having said that, all options are on the table.`

Calling All Fashion Police

With Bush`s open-ended prediction, there`s no telling what could happen now. He`s not actually directly threatening use of nuclear weapons against Iran, but Bush refuses to rule the option out. But do we even want this faux pas on our table? Does the US military really have a mandate to set up shop in every storefront window it lays eyes on? I`m afraid that unless we expose Bush`s outstanding `fashion` failures, he will march us down the path of no return. Unless we really do our best to peel away all support of an attack, Bush may very well go ahead and strike. And that`s no joke.

Mira Ptacin is assistant editor at CommonDreams.org. She can be reached at [e-mail]

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From the March 03, 2005 edition -

Firms tap Latin Americans for Iraq
A history of recent wars makes the region attractive to private companies recruiting for security forces.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0303/p06s02-woam.html

By Danna Harman | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

SAN SALVADOR - Last week, El Salvador President Elias Antonio Saca stood at the country`s international airport, welcoming home a unit of soldiers returning from service in Iraq. He called them "heroes" and passed on President Bush`s personal thanks. School children waiting on the tarmac waved American and Salvadoran flags.

Police Sgt. Roberto Arturo Lopez is heading to Iraq soon, but he expects no such attention - when he leaves or returns. That`s because he, like a growing number of Salvadorans, will play a different sort of role in Iraq: that of a hired US hand.

El Salvador, the only Latin American country to maintain troops in the US-led coalition in Iraq, has 338 soldiers on the ground. But there are about twice as many more Salvadorans there working for private contracting companies, doing everything from the dishes and the driving to guarding oil installations, embassies, and senior personnel.

Private security firms contracted with the Pentagon and the State Department are dipping into experienced pools of trained fighters throughout Central and South America for their new recruits. With better pay than what they can earn at home, some 1,000 Latin Americans are working in Iraq today, estimates the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA). These recruits are joined by thousands of others - from the US and Britain, as well as from Fiji, the Philippines, India and beyond. Close to 20,000 armed personnel employed by private contractors are estimated to be operating in Iraq, making up the second largest foreign armed force in the country, after the US.

"It`s not illegal - but it`s not celebrated either," says Jorge Giammattei, a political adviser at El Salvador`s Interior Ministry, giving voice to the moral ambivalence felt here and elsewhere toward the growing reliance on private citizens to fill roles once held by the US military.

Sergeant Lopez is a shooting instructor at the police academy outside San Salvador. He has been with the police 11 years, and as a senior instructor makes $540 a month, on which he supports his wife, ex-wife, and three young daughters.

He was first approached by a friend six months ago, he says. The friend gave him a cellphone number to call and told him he could make $1,500 a month working as a guard in Iraq. He was tempted, he says, but unsure. He had, over the years, earned respect, if not money, at the academy. And while he had always toyed with idea of traveling to the US to find higher-paying work, going to Iraq had never occurred to him.

"That part of the world had nothing to do with me," he says. A few months later, a different security firm got in touch, he says, this time offering $3,200 a month. He then gave it serious thought.

"I know the contracting companies are having no problem finding recruits," says Dan Broidy, author of "The Halliburton Agenda: The Politics of Oil and Money," who estimates that there is more than one contract worker for every 10 US soldiers in Iraq today.

Throughout Latin America there have been numerous press reports of contracting and subcontracting firms recruiting in Chile, Colombia, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador. Each of the countries has had recent - and in Colombia`s case, ongoing - wars, which make for large pools of experienced military and police.

Joe Mayo, a spokesman for Triple Canopy, a security company based in Lincolnshire, Ill., confirmed that the firm is recruiting in El Salvador but declined to give any detailed information. "Everything we do is legal," he stressed in a phone interview, "but we are a private company. The minute you divulge your numbers of employees and your methods of recruiting, you become less competitive."

But a police sergeant here, speaking on condition of anonymity, says there have been more than 800 requests in the past three months by policemen nationwide asking to leave in order to accept jobs with two different contracting firms, mostly with Triple Canopy. He says 32 people have been given permission by the department and maybe 10 more, he says, have gone without permission.

Pay depends on the recruit`s experience and the job to be performed, but can also be determined by his country of origin. While some firms offer US and European recruits up to $700 a day, companies like Blackwater, based in Moyock, N.C., reportedly pay Latin Americans and others from less developed countries $1,200 to $5,000 a month. Uniforms, housing, transportation, food, and life insurance are all provided. Typical police salaries in El Salvador range from $320 a month for rank-and-file police to $1,500 for a handful of elite officers.

The practice has its critics. "This is all very deeply wrong," says Geoff Thale, a senior associate for Central America at the left-leaning WOLA. He argues that the developing world should not serve as a cheap labor source for life threatening work that the US government has chosen to undertake. "It may be tempting to hire low-wage workers to take risks for us, so that we don`t experience the human cost of casualties or deaths ourselves. But it`s not morally acceptable," he says.

Others, like Paul Forage, a lecturer on military and security issues at Florida Atlantic University, wonder whose law the contracted recruits operate under, what sort of accountability mechanisms are in place, and who would help them if they were kidnapped? "There are a lot of vague areas here," says Forage.

While Pentagon and State Department guidelines governing the operation of contractors in Iraq are loose, Doug Brooks of the International Peace Operations Association, a group of private-sector service companies engaged in overseas operations, says the industry is becoming more regulated, both by itself and the US government.

Firms, for example, are required to obtain standard insurance for all their recruits, and more companies are committed to assisting their workers in cases in injury or kidnapping.

"There used to be more irregularities," he admits, "but the bad [contracting firms] have been weeded out."

Lopez`s best friend at the academy, Max Vaquerano, is already in Iraq, in Basra. The two men communicate weekly by e-mail, and Lopez says he now has good sense of what to expect in Iraq - it`s hot and, despite most news accounts, is often boring.

Lopez has already had an interview with a contracting company, which he refuses to name, and has asked for leave from his current duties. Even if he doesn`t get it, he says, he will be leaving next month.

"It`s time to go to war," he says, smiling, "It`s a good opportunity."

• Ms. Harman is Latin America bureau chief for the Monitor and USA Today.


www.csmonitor.com | Copyright © 2005 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.

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http://www.gunnerpalace.com/content/


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1 hr. 25 min. The United States Army`s 2/3 Field Artillery unit -- a.k.a. the Gunner Battalion -- is based in the late Uday Hussein`s Al Azimiya Palace in Adhamiya, the most volatile area of Baghdad. Filmmakers document the most recent invasion of Iraq to hear the voices of the men and women serving in this war and witness the daily danger and drudgery they must endure.
Release Date: March 4th, 2005
http://movies.yahoo.com/shop?d=hv&cf=info&id=1808628849

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March 4, 2005
American Jails in Iraq Bursting With Detainees
By EDWARD WONG
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/04/international/middleeast/0…

ABU GHRAIB, Iraq, March 2 - The American military`s major detention centers in Iraq have swelled to capacity and are holding more people than ever, senior military officials say.

The growing detainee population reflects recent changes in how the military has been waging the war and in its policies toward detainees, the officials say.

The military swept up many Iraqis before the Jan. 30 elections in an attempt to curb violence and halted all releases before the vote. Other detainees have been captured in ambitious recent offensives across the Sunni Triangle, from Samarra to Falluja to the Euphrates River valley south of Baghdad.

The Abu Ghraib abuse scandal also forced changes in the system, with the military working quickly last summer to try and weed out detainees who obviously did not belong in prison. Many of the ones remaining are more likely to be denied release by review boards, military officials say.

As of this week, the military is holding at least 8,900 detainees in the three major prisons, 1,000 more than in late January. Here in Abu Ghraib, where eight American soldiers were charged last year with abusing detainees, 3,160 people are being kept, well above the 2,500 level considered ideal, said Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a spokesman for the detainee system. The largest center, Camp Bucca in the south, has at least 5,640 detainees.

One hundred so-called high-value detainees, including Saddam Hussein and his closest aides, are being held at Camp Cropper, near the Baghdad airport.

"We`re very close to capacity now," Colonel Johnson said.

The surging numbers of prisoners pose important challenges for the military. The Abu Ghraib scandal revealed that the military was using poorly trained interrogators even as more detainees were swept into prison in the fall of 2003.

The military must hire enough effective interrogators and military intelligence officers to process detainees quickly, said Bruce Hoffman, an analyst at the RAND Corporation who has worked in Iraq with American policy makers. Otherwise, innocent people will languish in the prisons, a fertile recruiting ground for the insurgents, and could take up arms when they are freed.

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Throughout the war, the American military has struggled to construct a detainee system that can handle a widespread and sophisticated insurgency, but never before has the system had to grapple with so many detainees.

On a recent morning here, military policemen marched 50 handcuffed men off a convoy that had just arrived from Tikrit, Mr. Hussein`s hometown. Old and young, the detainees wore thin shirts or robes. Some were barefoot.

A sign on a concrete blast wall read, "No Parking: Detainee Drop Off Zone." Guards stood watch in towers along walls laced with razor wire. The detainees huddled quietly on the ground outside a squat building where they would be processed. Soon they would be asked to put on orange jumpsuits.

At the main gate, minibuses brought in family members for a visit, many of them solemn young children and unsmiling women in black robes.

Some military policemen complain of understaffing and of being overworked. One policeman based in Tikrit said field artillery soldiers were being assigned to policing duties.

While the military has turned to such soldiers to perform police work, Colonel Johnson said they had been trained for the job.

A senior American commander said there was little danger of "serious overcrowding" in the system. At Abu Ghraib, 15 miles west of Baghdad, the military has erected additional quarters for detainees and has increased troop levels. To increase the number of soldiers on guard duty, commanders have sometimes had to make unpopular decisions like temporarily shutting down family visits, Colonel Johnson said.

Since last May, when news reports first emerged of the grim conditions at Abu Ghraib, formerly Mr. Hussein`s main torture center, the military has opened new compounds at the prison that "are much better situated for both the detainees and for custody and control," Colonel Johnson said.

Though this reporter arrived at Abu Ghraib on the military police convoy from Tikrit, soldiers at the prison did not allow him to look inside any of the compounds. The colonel later apologized and said he would eventually arrange a tour.

The military is considering moving the detainees from Abu Ghraib to a more secure location around Baghdad International Airport, the same area where Camp Cropper is situated. The new center would hold about 2,500 people at most, though ideally the inmate population would stay under 2,000, Colonel Johnson said.
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in Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad.
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Last summer, after the Abu Ghraib scandal became public, President Bush promised to raze the prison, but a military judge later ordered that it be preserved as a crime scene.

In the south, the Americans are working to expand Camp Bucca to accommodate a total of 6,000 detainees by the end of March, officials say.

It was an incident at Camp Bucca on Jan. 31 that most recently exposed the potential hazards of the detainee system: Four detainees were killed and six wounded when guards fired shots to quell a well-organized uprising. The guards had replaced their nonlethal weapons with lethal ones after realizing that detainees had armed themselves with slingshots that could hurl stones for long distances. Since then, the military has bought guns that fire "plasticized projectiles" at a greater range, Colonel Johnson said.

Commanders say the uprising at Camp Bucca was not a result of overcrowding, but of skillful organization on the part of imprisoned insurgents. The detainee system has become more efficient at quickly screening people who do not pose a threat, so the prison population is likely more dangerous than before, officials say.

"We`re getting more of the right people in," Colonel Johnson said. "So there is certainly an element of the hard-core population."

A very small percentage of detainees are released shortly after being brought to Abu Ghraib, where all detainees bound for the three major centers are first processed. About 1,300 have been turned over to the Iraqi criminal courts to prosecute. Most, though, wait an average of three to four months - and sometimes six months, the limit set by the Geneva Conventions in cases of prisoners of war - before their files go to a review board, Colonel Johnson said.

Mr. Hoffman, the RAND analyst, said using the six-month limit as a standard was ridiculous, since many of the detainees were not soldiers and should have had their cases reviewed much faster.

"Many of them are innocent civilians swept up," he said. "Prisons are the main incubators for terrorists and insurgents. So you`ve got to have good intelligence in the prisons to process the prisoners quickly and efficiently."

Investigations into the Abu Ghraib scandal last May found that there had been a shortage of professional interrogators to handle the detainee flow, and so units inside Abu Ghraib had turned to untrained military policemen and policewomen to help with interrogations. Colonel Johnson declined to give the number of interrogators now working in the system`s main intelligence gathering center inside Abu Ghraib. But he said "there is sufficient personnel to accomplish" the center`s mission.

Outside of the three major prisons, about 1,300 detainees are being held at the division or brigade level around the country. Of those, about a third - people deemed to be security threats or of high intelligence value - will eventually be brought to Abu Ghraib for processing and sent onward to a major center. Convoys bring an average of 20 to 100 detainees a day to the prison.

On the recent run from Tikrit, some members of the Third Platoon of the 42nd Military Police Company, a National Guard unit, complained of how the company was overworked and its resources stretched too thin.

Of the company`s three platoons, one was guarding the 42nd Infantry Division`s prison in Tikrit, another was assigned to protect the division`s generals, and the third transported detainees.

In the three weeks after company arrived in Iraq on Feb. 1, the Third Platoon made 25 convoy runs all across the hostile Sunni Triangle, with a dozen of those to Abu Ghraib.

"We`ve got just enough people to do this" said Specialist Chris DiModica, 23, the driver of the command Humvee. "If anyone gets sick, that`s it."

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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March 4, 2005
MOVIE REVIEW | `GUNNER PALACE`
With Soldiers in a Palace and Death in the Streets
By A. O. SCOTT
http://movies2.nytimes.com/2005/03/04/movies/04GUNN.html?8dp…

The title of "Gunner Palace," a vivid and hectic documentary directed by Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein, refers to a monstrous pleasure dome in the Baghdad neighborhood of Adhamiya that once belonged to Uday Hussein, one of the rotten princelings of the old regime.

Its opulence somewhat reduced by American bombs, the building now serves as a barracks for American soldiers, who make use of its swimming pool and putting green when they are not patrolling the dangerous streets of the Iraqi capital, raiding the homes of suspected terrorists and trying to juggle the complicated, hazardous duties of occupation.

Mr. Tucker, an American who makes his home in Germany, spent several months in late 2003 and early 2004 unofficially embedded with the United States Army`s 2-3 Field Artillery Division (known as the Gunners) in the palace. The resulting film is an unruly, riveting assemblage of anecdotes and impressions. The larger political and military questions about the war in Iraq are kept deliberately in the background, which some viewers may find frustrating.
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A soldier on patrol in Baghdad in the documentary film "Gunner Palace."

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"Gunner Palace" does not present a clear or coherent point of view of why or how the war has been fought, but this limitation is also a virtue. Clarity and certainty, the movie suggests, are luxuries that come with distance and hindsight. What the soldiers have to deal with from day to day is far more chaotic and changeable, so it makes sense that chaos should be not only the filmmakers` subject but also a crucial aspect of their method.

Early on, Mr. Tucker invokes reality television to emphasize the contrast between such manufactured spectacles as "Survivor" and the real business of surviving, but "Gunner Palace" owes as much of a debt to small-screen vérité as it does to the loftier traditions of nonfiction cinema. It`s hard not to see jerky, breathless hand-held images of armed men in uniform cruising through rough neighborhoods without thinking of "Cops," or to witness young Americans hanging out in their shared quarters, accoutered with headphones, laptops and other high-tech accessories, without being reminded of "The Real World." Perhaps inadvertently, Mr. Tucker and Ms. Epperlein have glimpsed Iraq through the lens of American popular culture, and their film is also a mirror, reflecting back into that culture an image of itself at once utterly alien and entirely familiar.

Mr. Tucker`s occasional voice-over narration is deliberately flat and prosaic. The rough poetry that his video camera captured belongs to the setting - a landscape that is bright, teeming and tense by day, eerie and murky by night - and to the soldiers, several of whom are talented free-style rappers and spoken-word declaimers. Their rhymes and beats punctuate the film and provide it with a dense, dizzying eloquence.

But even soldiers with plainer verbal styles and different modes of expression manage to stamp their experiences with something of their own personalities. The older officers speak in world-weary bureaucratese, their professionalism tinged with both cynicism and pride. The unit`s designated cut-up, a round-faced soldier from Colorado who seems alternately sensitive and sociopathic, strums his electric guitar and cracks jokes. One young man speaks excitedly of the thrill of combat, while another muses that nothing is ever improved by the taking of a life.

In refusing to generalize or to judge, "Gunner Palace" opens itself up to varying interpretations, all of them likely to be colored by the interpreter`s prior opinions about the war. The soldiers` irreverent humor, and the efficient brutality with which they break into Iraqi homes in their hunt for "bad guys," may suggest a prelude to the abuse at Abu Ghraib (which is where, we are told, many of those arrested will go). The scene of an American officer, who speaks no Arabic, trying to moderate a raucous neighborhood council meeting, reveals both the absurd challenge of imposing democracy on Iraq and also the patience, seriousness and goodwill it requires.

The interactions between Iraqis and the Americans suggest a mutual ambivalence - a desire for some kind of constructive relationship that coexists with suspicion, incomprehension and sometimes contempt. Iraq and the United States are both societies full of contradiction, and to watch "Gunner Palace" is to see the contradictions multiply.

And not only on screen. I have now seen it twice - the first time last fall, at the Toronto Film Festival, with the American presidential election on the horizon, and the second time not long after the Iraqi elections this past January - and each time my reaction was colored by events outside the theater. In that sense, the movie, like the war that it partly chronicles, remains unfinished, to be completed - or further complicated - in the public arguments and private reflections of its audience. For every viewer who finds the film`s portrayal of the troops troublingly unsympathetic, there will be another who finds it insufficiently critical. But this says more about the audience than about the film, which respects the humanity of its subjects by regarding them with a mixture of admiration, puzzlement and worry, and mostly by listening to what they have to say, even when they contradict themselves.

The raw inconclusiveness of "Gunner Palace" is the truest measure of its authenticity as an artifact of our time and of its value for future attempts to understand what the United States is doing in Iraq. Over the last few years, we have been subjected to an awful lot of certainty - from proponents of the war, from its critics and even from vacillators and equivocators. "Gunner Palace," in its savage, intelligent, boisterous messiness, is a welcome antidote to the self-convinced rhetoric of pundits and politicians. Each time I have seen it, I have emerged feeling moved, angry, scared, hopeful, frustrated and dispirited - and grateful for this confusion, which is its own form of understanding.

This film is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It has strong language and violent scenes.

`Gunner Palace`

Opens today in Manhattan and Los Angeles.

Produced, directed and edited by Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein; director of photography, Mr. Tucker; released by Palm Pictures. Running time: 86 minutes. This film is rated PG-13.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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March 4, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Deficits and Deceit
By PAUL KRUGMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/04/opinion/04krugman.html

Four years ago, Alan Greenspan urged Congress to cut taxes, asserting that the federal government was in imminent danger of paying off too much debt.

On Wednesday the Fed chairman warned Congress of the opposite fiscal danger: he asserted that there would be large budget deficits for the foreseeable future, leading to an unsustainable rise in federal debt. But he counseled against reversing the tax cuts, calling instead for cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Does anyone still take Mr. Greenspan`s pose as a nonpartisan font of wisdom seriously?

When Mr. Greenspan made his contorted argument for tax cuts back in 2001, his reputation made it hard for many observers to admit the obvious: he was mainly looking for some way to do the Bush administration a political favor. But there`s no reason to be taken in by his equally weak, contorted argument against reversing those cuts today.

To put Mr. Greenspan`s game of fiscal three-card monte in perspective, remember that the push for Social Security privatization is only part of the right`s strategy for dismantling the New Deal and the Great Society. The other big piece of that strategy is the use of tax cuts to "starve the beast."

Until the 1970`s conservatives tended to be open about their disdain for Social Security and Medicare. But honesty was bad politics, because voters value those programs.

So conservative intellectuals proposed a bait-and-switch strategy: First, advocate tax cuts, using whatever tactics you think may work - supply-side economics, inflated budget projections, whatever. Then use the resulting deficits to argue for slashing government spending.

And that`s the story of the last four years. In 2001, President Bush and Mr. Greenspan justified tax cuts with sunny predictions that the budget would remain comfortably in surplus. But Mr. Bush`s advisers knew that the tax cuts would probably cause budget problems, and welcomed the prospect.

In fact, Mr. Bush celebrated the budget`s initial slide into deficit. In the summer of 2001 he called plunging federal revenue "incredibly positive news" because it would "put a straitjacket" on federal spending.

To keep that straitjacket on, however, those who sold tax cuts with the assurance that they were easily affordable must convince the public that the cuts can`t be reversed now that those assurances have proved false. And Mr. Greenspan has once again tried to come to the president`s aid, insisting this week that we should deal with deficits "primarily, if not wholly," by slashing Social Security and Medicare because tax increases would "pose significant risks to economic growth."

Really? America prospered for half a century under a level of federal taxes higher than the one we face today. According to the administration`s own estimates, Mr. Bush`s second term will see the lowest tax take as a percentage of G.D.P. since the Truman administration. And don`t forget that President Clinton`s 1993 tax increase ushered in an economic boom. Why, exactly, are tax increases out of the question?

O.K., enough about Mr. Greenspan. The real news is the growing evidence that the political theory behind the Bush tax cuts was as wrong as the economic theory.

According to starve-the-beast doctrine, right-wing politicians can use the big deficits generated by tax cuts as an excuse to slash social insurance programs. Mr. Bush`s advisers thought that it would prove especially easy to sell benefit cuts in the context of Social Security privatization because the president could pretend that a plan that sharply cut benefits would actually be good for workers.

But the theory isn`t working. As soon as voters heard that privatization would involve benefit cuts, support for Social Security "reform" plunged. Another sign of the theory`s falsity: across the nation, Republican governors, finding that voters really want adequate public services, are talking about tax increases.

The best bet now is that Mr. Bush will manage to make the poor suffer, but fail to make a dent in the great middle-class entitlement programs.

And the consequence of the failure of the starve-the-beast theory is a looming fiscal crisis - Mr. Greenspan isn`t wrong about that. The middle class won`t give up programs that are essential to its financial security; the right won`t give up tax cuts that it sold on false pretenses. The only question now is when foreign investors, who have financed our deficits so far, will decide to pull the plug.

E-mail: [e-mail]

Bob Herbert is on vacation.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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washingtonpost.com
`Nuking` Free Speech

By Robert Byrd
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5692-2005Mar3…

Friday, March 4, 2005; Page A21

A "nuclear option" is targeting the Senate. No, this isn`t some terrorist plot. Rather, some in the Senate are considering dropping a legislative bomb that threatens the rights to dissent, to unlimited debate and to freedom of speech.

President Bush has renominated 20 men and women to the federal bench, seven of whom the Senate rejected last year. To force a vote on these nominees, some senators are hoping to launch a parliamentary weapon aimed at the heart of open and extended debate. By a simple majority vote, a Senate filibuster on judicial appointments would be "nuked" for all time.

It starts with shutting off debate on judges, but it won`t end there. This nuclear option could rob a senator of the right to speak out against an overreaching executive branch or a wrongheaded policy. It could destroy the Senate`s very essence -- the constitutional privilege of free speech and debate.

To understand the danger, one needs to understand the Senate. The Framers created an institution designed not for speed or efficiency but as a place where mature wisdom would reside. They intended the Senate to be the stabilizer, the fence, the check on attempts at tyranny. To carry out that role, an individual senator has the right to speak, perhaps without limit, in order to expose an issue or draw attention to new or differing viewpoints. But this legislative nuclear option would mute dissent and gag opposition voices.

We have heard the president call for an up-or-down vote on his judicial nominees. But nowhere in the Constitution is an up-or-down vote -- or even a vote at all -- guaranteed, and the president cannot reinterpret our nation`s founding document to achieve his political goals. Those who disagree with the president in this matter will be labeled "obstructionists," but nothing could be further from the truth.

A federal judge is selected for a lifetime appointment. Senators must apply their best judgment to each selection. If a senator believes a nominee should not be confirmed, that senator has a duty not to consent to confirmation. Yet, for the temporary goal of confirming a handful of objectionable judicial nominees, those pushing the nuclear option would callously trample on freedom of speech and debate.

If senators are denied their right to free speech on judicial nominations, an attack on extended debate on all other matters cannot be far behind. This would mean no leverage for the minority to effect compromise, and no bargaining power for individual senators as they strive to represent the people of their states.

Yes, Americans believe in majority rule, but we also believe in minority rights. Our liberties can be truly secure only in a forum of open debate where minority views can be freely discussed. Leave it to the House to be the majoritarian body. Let the Senate continue to be the one in which a minority can have the freedom to protect a majority from its own folly.

The writer is a Democratic senator from West Virginia and former majority leader.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

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The shadow of another Iraq
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1430242,00.html

The upheaval in Lebanon and the pressure for Syria to withdraw now threaten the survival of the Assad regime
David Hirst in Damascus
Friday March 4, 2005

Guardian
A velvet revolution, Ukrainian style, that will set an example for the whole Middle East? That is how Lebanon`s so far peaceful "democratic uprising" likes to see itself. Certainly, something new and profound is under way.

Lebanon`s strength - and weakness - was always the multiplicity of religious sects on which its whole political system is based. When the system worked, it did so far better than any of its neighbours`; when it broke down, it did so disastrously. During its 16-year civil war Walid Jumblatt, the same Druze chieftain who now leads the opposition, warned the interfering Arabs: "One day the fire will spread to you." It didn`t. What he leads today has a better chance of doing so.

It is, if anything, a triumph over confessionalism. Not complete, not invulnerable. Thanks in part to Hizbullah, Syrian-backed but domestically popular, it is the country`s Shias who are chiefly reticent. Yet, in impressive measure, the people now stand in one trench, the regime in another. And that, not sectarian antagonism, is the faultline that will principally define the course of events.

If assassinations sometimes accelerate history, Rafiq Hariri`s brutal, spectacular but popularly unifying demise is surely one of those. Many Syrians just don`t believe their government was behind it: it couldn`t be so stupid. But diabolical plot, or massive self-inflicted injury, the outcome is the same. For the Lebanese, their Syrian overlord was instantly guilty until it proved itself innocent.

At a stroke the assassination unleashed, in a great and public torrent, all the anti-Syrian sentiment that had been surreptitiously building down the years. "Our Lebanese brothers have come to hate us," lamented a dissident intellectual. "Our government never consulted us when, 29 years ago, it took the fateful step of going in. It won`t consult us when it leaves. And leave it must."

But leaving is precisely what the Ba`athist regime is likely to resist to the very end. Quite simply, because it fears that to do so would be its own end, too. "Total defeat in Lebanon," said another dissident, "is total defeat at home." First, that is because of Lebanon the strategic asset. For historical, geographical and political reasons Syria instinctively strives to be a regional power greater than its own resources alone can make it.

And today it is in a Syrian-controlled Lebanon that the last major cards lie - such as Hizbullah - in an eroding regional hand, cards by which its current rulers seek to secure their very survival in any new, American-dominated Middle Eastern order. Their ultimate trump is, perhaps, to withdraw. For if they did that, an intelligence chief once explained, Lebanon would become a hotbed of assorted militants, Islamic and Palestinian, in effect a kind of Iraq. And the Americans and Israelis would soon come begging them to return.

Second, there is the potential domino effect inside Syria itself, of Lebanese "people power". After the example of elections, however flawed, in occupied Iraq and Palestine, has come this new, unscheduled outbreak of popular self-assertion in a country where a sister Arab state, not an alien occupier, is in charge. It is a manifestly authentic movement, greatly encouraged, no doubt, by America and the west, but far from being inspired or engineered by it.

It is a fundamental blow to all that historic Syria, as the "beating heart" of Arabism, and all that Ba`athism and its pan-Arab nationalist credo have ever stood for. For the leading Lebanese columnist Samir Qassir, it means that "the Arab nationalist cause has shrunk into the single aim of getting rid of the regimes of terrorism and coups, and regaining the people`s freedom as a prelude to the new Arab renaissance. It buries the lie that despotic systems can be the shield of nationalism. Beirut has become the beating heart of a new Arab nationalism".

The Syrians aren`t going to rise up like the Lebanese - not yet anyway. Long repressed, they don`t have the organised opposition, the strong residue of democratic traditions that the "Syrianisation" of Lebanon was gradually stifling.

What Lebanon has done is to add a whole new dimension to popular discontent with all those long accumulating domestic woes - the fruits of a decadent, outmoded, sclerotic ruling order - which they have endured for the past 40 years. It has added to the pressure for reform and democratisation, reform that is surely the only way the regime can hope to survive. For Syria, indeed, Lebanon is so intimate a neighbour that what happens there is hardly a "foreign" issue at all. And everyone knows that those who block reform in Syria - the so-called "old guard", shadowy centres of power in the army and intelligence services - are the same people who brought the Syrian presence in Lebanon to its current pass.

It is a pass now suddenly made all the more threatening in that the Lebanese "uprising" dovetails so nicely with President Bush`s crusade to bring "freedom and democracy" to the Middle East. This is not to mention the fact that Syria has always loomed large in the long-standing designs of the administration`s pro-Israeli, neoconservative hawks for "regime change" in the Middle East. Hariri`s murder could hardly have rendered them a greater service.

What now for a badly shaken regime? As graceful a retreat from Lebanon as possible? Or more defiance, of both the Lebanese opposition and its international friends? To President Assad it must look like a choice between Scylla and Charybdis. He has hinted at withdrawal in a few months. This is a far cry from the immediate one the opposition demands, and even that would depend, he said, on what happens in Lebanon. But what happens in Lebanon still very much depends on what Syria - or those power centres possibly beyond presidential control - make happen. Their last trump: another Iraq?

· David Hirst reported from the Middle East for the Guardian from 1963 to 2001

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This is about Israel, not anti-semitism

Not to speak out against this injustice would not only be wrong. It would ignore the threat it poses to us all
Ken Livingstone
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1430132,00.ht…
Friday March 4, 2005

Guardian
Racism is a uniquely reactionary ideology, used to justify the greatest crimes in history - the slave trade, the extermination of all original inhabitants of the Caribbean, the elimination of every native inhabitant of Tasmania, apartheid. The Holocaust was the ultimate, "industrialised" expression of racist barbarity.

Racism serves as the cutting edge of the most reactionary movements. An ideology that starts by declaring one human being inferior to another is the slope whose end is at Auschwitz. That is why I detest racism.

No serious commentator has argued that my comments to an Evening Standard reporter outside City Hall last month were anti-semitic. So I am glad that Henry Grunwald, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, accepted on these pages that "Ken is sincere when he states that he regards the Holocaust as the worst crime of the last century".

The contribution of Jewish people to human civilisation and culture is unexcelled and extraordinary. You only have to think of giants such as Einstein, Freud and Marx to realise that human civilisation would be unrecognisably diminished without the achievements of the Jewish people. The same goes for the Jewish contribution to London today.

As mayor, I have pressed for police action over anti-semitic attacks at the highest level, and my administration has backed a series of initiatives of importance to the Jewish community, including hosting the Anne Frank exhibition at City Hall and measures to ensure the go-ahead for the north London eruv.

Throughout the 1970s, I worked happily with the Board of Deputies in campaigns against the National Front. Problems began when, as leader of the Greater London Council, I rejected the board`s request that I should fund only Jewish organisations that it approved of. The Board of Deputies was unhappy that I funded Jewish organisations campaigning for gay rights and others that disagreed with policies of the Israeli governmen.

Relations with the board took a dramatic turn for the worse when I opposed Israel`s illegal invasion of Lebanon, culminating in the massacres at the Palestinian camps of Sabra and Shatila. The board also opposed my involvement in the successful campaign in 1982 to convince the Labour party to recognise the PLO as the legitimate voice of the Palestinian people.

The fundamental issue on which we differ, as Henry Grunwald knows, is not anti-semitism - which my administration has fought tooth and nail - but the policies of successive Israeli governments.

To avoid manufactured misunderstandings, the policies of Israeli governments are not analogous to Nazism. They do not aim at the systematic extermination of the Palestinian people, in the way Nazism sought the annihilation of the Jews.

Israel`s expansion has included ethnic cleansing. Palestinians who had lived in that land for centuries were driven out by systematic violence and terror aimed at ethnically cleansing what became a large part of the Israeli state. The methods of groups like the Irgun and the Stern gang were the same as those of the Bosnian Serb leader Karadzic: to drive out people by terror.

Today the Israeli government continues seizures of Palestinian land for settlements, military incursions into surrounding countries and denial of the right of Palestinians expelled by terror to return. Ariel Sharon, Israel`s prime minister, is a war criminal who should be in prison, not in office. Israel`s own Kahan commission found that Sharon shared responsibility for the Sabra and Shatila massacres.

Sharon continues to organise terror. More than three times as many Palestinians as Israelis have been killed in the present conflict. There are more than 7,000 Palestinians in Israel`s jails.

To obscure these truths, those around Israel`s present government have resorted to demonisation. Initial targets were Palestinians, and have now become Muslims. Take the Middle East Media Research Institute, run by a former colonel in Israeli military intelligence, which poses as a source of objective information but in reality selectively translates material from Arabic and presents Muslims and Arabs in the worst possible light.

Today the Israeli government is helping to promote a wholly distorted picture of racism and religious discrimination in Europe, implying that the most serious upsurge of hatred and discrimination is against Jews.

All racist and anti-semitic attacks must be stamped out. However, the reality is that the great bulk of racist attacks in Europe today are on black people, Asians and Muslims - and they are the primary targets of the extreme right. For 20 years Israeli governments have attempted to portray anyone who forcefully criticises the policies of Israel as anti-semitic. The truth is the opposite: the same universal human values that recognise the Holocaust as the greatest racist crime of the 20th century require condemnation of the policies of successive Israeli governments - not on the absurd grounds that they are Nazi or equivalent to the Holocaust, but because ethnic cleansing, discrimination and terror are immoral.

They are also fuelling anger and violence across the world. For a mayor of London not to speak out against such injustice would not only be wrong - but would also ignore the threat it poses to the security of all Londoners.

· Ken Livingstone is the London mayor
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

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Friday, March 04, 2005
War News for Friday, March 4, 2005
http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring ‘em on: Two US soldiers killed by roadside bomb in Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Iraqi police chief assassinated near Al Budaur.

Bring ‘em on: Iraqi police colonel survives assassination attempt near Kirkuk.

Bring ‘em on: Two US security contractors killed by roadside bomb near Ashraf.

Bring ‘em on: US patrol ambushed by roadside bomb in Ramadi.

Bring ‘em on: One Iraqi policeman, one civilian killed by roadside bomb in Samarra.

Bring ‘em on: One Iraqi policeman killed, six wounded in roadside bomb ambush near Baquba.

Bring `em on: Oregon Guardsmen discover the bodies of two Westerners near Taiji.

Turkey deploys troops in northern Iraq. “Turkey has deployed 1,357 military personnel in northern Iraq to fight against members of the outlawed Kurdish Workers` Party (PKK), said Turkish National Defense Minister Vecdi Gonul on Thursday.”

Detainees. “The American military`s major detention centers in Iraq have swelled to capacity and are holding more people than ever, senior military officials say. The growing detainee population reflects recent changes in how the military has been waging the war and in its policies toward detainees, the officials say. The military swept up many Iraqis before the Jan. 30 elections in an attempt to curb violence and halted all releases before the vote. Other detainees have been captured in ambitious recent offensives across the Sunni Triangle, from Samarra to Falluja to the Euphrates River valley south of Baghdad.”

Rummy’s Army. “The Army is so short of new recruits that for first time in nearly five years it failed in February to fill its monthly quota of volunteers sent to boot camp. Army officials called it the latest ominous sign of the Iraq war`s impact on the military`s ability to enlist fresh troops. ‘We`re very concerned about it,’ Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday when asked about recruiting shortfalls in the active-duty Army and Army Reserve. ‘When people ask you what you worry about the most, I say there`s just two words: people and money.’ In February, the active-duty Army shipped 5,114 recruits to boot camp, 27 percent below its goal of 7,050; it was the first time since May 2000 that the Army missed a monthly goal. For the first five months of the current fiscal year, the Army has met 94 percent of its goal of 29,185 new soldiers in basic training. Over all, the Army plans to bring in 80,000 new recruits this year - 3,000 more than last year - to replace soldiers who retire or do not re-enlist.”

Negroponte’s Army. “After experiencing little success recruiting and retaining soldiers in Iraq’s formal military units and security forces, the US military has resorted to hiring a private, homegrown armed force to track and capture members of the Iraqi resistance, reports Reuters. In a program that resembles rumored plans to implement what has been dubbed ‘the Salvador option’ in Iraq, the establishment of a hardline indigenous paramilitary force may indicate the first step toward a more aggressive counterinsurgency campaign modeled in part after the notorious ‘death squad’ campaign used to suppress a popular revolution in El Salvador during the 1980s.”

Commentary

Opinion: “To understand the danger, one needs to understand the Senate. The Framers created an institution designed not for speed or efficiency but as a place where mature wisdom would reside. They intended the Senate to be the stabilizer, the fence, the check on attempts at tyranny. To carry out that role, an individual senator has the right to speak, perhaps without limit, in order to expose an issue or draw attention to new or differing viewpoints. But this legislative nuclear option would mute dissent and gag opposition voices.”

Opinion: “But catastrophic change is dangerous, even when it`s bringing down a system people detest. This is not a time for U.S. triumphalism, or for gloating and lecturing to the Arabs. That kind of arrogance got us into trouble in Iraq during the first year of occupation. It was only when Iraqis began to take control of their own destinies that this project began to go right. The same rule holds for Lebanon, Egypt and the rest. America can help by keeping on the pressure, but it`s their revolution.”

Casualty Reports

Local story: Mississippi Guardsman killed in Iraq.

Local story: Texas soldier killed in Iraq.

Awards and Decorations

Local story: Oklahoma soldier decorated for valor in Iraq.


Joke of the Day

Alexander the Great, Ghengis Kahn, Louis XV and Napoleon were hanging around the Afterlife Tavern one day, drinking beer, smoking cigarettes, swapping war stories and talking about their campaigns. Suddenly, Louis had an idea.

“Hey,” Louis said, “lets’ go down to Iraq and see what’s happening. I hear there’s a bunch of rank amateurs fighting a war there. Might be good for some laughs.”

So the old warriors went to Baghdad. They were impressed instead of amused.

“Holy shit,” said Alexander. “With this infantry I could have conquered India.”

“With a few of these tanks,” said Ghengis Kahn, “I would have overrun Europe.”

“If I had this logistics system,” said Louis, “I would have wrapped up the Seven Years’ War in two months.”

“Crap,” said Napoleon. “If I would have had Fox News, none of you bastards would have ever heard about my retreat from Moscow.”
# posted by yankeedoodle : 4:22 AM
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Latest Fatality: Mar 02, 2005

Weitere Meldungen aus dem Irak:
http://icasualties.org/oif/

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THE NATION
Credit Card Firms Won as Users Lost
They sought new laws but found ways to make money even on people who went bankrupt.
By Peter G. Gosselin
Times Staff Writer
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-na-bankrup…

March 4, 2005

WASHINGTON — In the eight years since they began pressing for the tough bankruptcy bill being debated in the Senate, America`s big credit card companies have effectively inoculated themselves from many of the problems that sparked their call for the measure.

By charging customers different interest rates depending on how likely they are to repay their debts and by adding substantial fees for an array of items such as late payments and foreign currency transactions, the major card companies have managed to keep their profits rising steadily even as personal bankruptcies have soared, industry figures show.

As a result, while they continue to press for legislation that would make it harder for individuals to declare bankruptcy, the companies have found ways to make money even on cardholders who eventually go broke.

At the same time, under the companies` new systems, many cardholders — especially low-income users — have ended up on a financial treadmill, required to make ever-larger monthly payments to keep their credit card balances from rising and to avoid insolvency.

"Most of the credit cards that end up in bankruptcy proceedings have already made a profit for the companies that issued them," said Robert R. Weed, a Virginia bankruptcy lawyer and onetime aide to former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

"That`s because people are paying so many fees that they`ve already paid more than was originally borrowed," he said.

In addition, some experts say, the changes proposed in the Senate bill would fundamentally alter long-standing American legal policy on debt. Under bankruptcy laws as they have existed for more than a century, creditors can seize almost all of a bankrupt debtor`s assets, but they cannot lay claim to future earnings.

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The proposed law, by preventing many debtors from seeking bankruptcy protection, would compel financially insolvent borrowers to continue trying to pay off the old debts almost indefinitely.

"Until now, the principle in this country has been that people`s future human capital is their own," said David A. Moss, an economic historian at Harvard University. "If a person gets on a financial treadmill, they can declare bankruptcy and have what can`t be paid discharged. But that would change with this bill."

Debate about the bill continued Thursday, with the Republican-controlled Senate refusing to limit consumer interest rates to 30%. The vote was a bipartisan 74 to 24 to kill a proposed amendment by Sen. Mark Dayton (D-Minn.). Senate passage of the bill is expected next week.

The House has not taken up the issue this year, although it passed a version of the bill last year, as did the Senate. Attempts to reconcile the two bills failed.

Industry officials have sought to minimize the role of credit card companies in pushing for bankruptcy legislation since 1998. They have argued that the bill introduced last month by Republican Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley of Iowa and supported by President Bush would affect about 5% of the roughly 1.6 million Americans who file for bankruptcy each year.

They have portrayed the measure`s principal target as high-income individuals who are abusing the law to escape their debts.

"The bottom line is that there are people out there who are able to pay their bills who are not paying," said Tracey Mills, a spokeswoman for the American Bankers Assn., which represents most of the major credit card companies.

But consumer advocates, many academics and some judges and court officials argue that the bill would sharply reduce the number of Americans able to file for bankruptcy, even in instances where doing so would buy them time to repay their debts.

The critics argue that people unable to file would be at the mercy of increasingly aggressive efforts by lenders — especially credit card companies — to raise fees and boost collections.

People like Josephine McCarthy, for instance, a 71-year-old secretary at the Salem Baptist Church, less than a mile from where the Senate bill is being debating.

According to papers in her recent bankruptcy, McCarthy discovered at about the time of her husband`s death in 2003 that the couple had a $4,888 balance on a Providian Financial Corp. Visa card and another $2,020 balance on a Providian Mastercard.

Over the two years from 2002 until early 2004, when she filed for bankruptcy, McCarthy charged an additional $218 on the first card and made more than $3,000 in payments, the court papers show. But instead of her balance going down, finance charges — at what the bankruptcy judge termed a "whopping" 29.99% rate, together with late fees, over-limit fees and phone payments fees — pushed what she owed up to more than $5,350.

In the case of the second card, the papers show that McCarthy charged an extra $203 and made more than $2,000 in payments, but again fees and finance charges pushed the balance up.

McCarthy refused to comment on the case. A spokesman for Providian could not be reached last night.

But court papers show that McCarthy eventually paid all the bills in the case, including back taxes. The way she did it, using provisions of bankruptcy law, illustrates one of the problems with the proposed new law, critics say.

McCarthy had been making mortgage payments on two houses. She wanted to sell one of the houses to pay off her debts, but the house was entangled in legal difficulties. By declaring bankruptcy, she was able to stop the clock on her escalating credit card debts and give her lawyer time to clear up the legal problem, enabling her to sell the house and pay off the bills.

Under the proposed new law, McCarthy, who makes about $55,000 a year, would have had a much harder time qualifying for the bankruptcy protection that allowed her to pay creditors.

"The McCarthy case shows how hard-working people making good incomes can end up in situations that they can`t dig themselves out of unless they file for bankruptcy," said Weed, her lawyer.

Credit card companies have come in for harsh criticism in recent years for their penalty fees and the "risk-based pricing" under which they charge customers different interest rates depending on their credit histories and their likelihood of paying.

Consumer advocates have accused firms of not adequately disclosing such controversial practices as universal default, when a company can jack up a cardholder`s annual percentage rate, often to more than 30%, based on the cardholder`s performance with another creditor, not the card company.

Regulators and law enforcement officials have accused companies of deceptive practices. In 2000, the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the San Francisco district attorney`s office ordered Providian to pay $300 million in restitution after customers complained that the company didn`t credit their payments on time and then imposed late fees.

A stream of court cases involving credit card companies has produced public outrage in various parts of the country.

In Cleveland, a municipal court judge tossed out a case that Discover Bank brought against one of its cardholders after examining the woman`s credit card bill.

According to court papers, Ruth M. Owens, a 53-year-old disabled woman, paid the company $3,492 over six years on a $1,963 debt only to find that late fees and finance charges had more than doubled the size of her remaining balance to $5,564.

When the firm took her to court to collect, she wrote the judge a note saying, "I would like to inform you that I have no money to make payments. I am on Social Security Disability…. If my situation was different I would pay. I just don`t have it. I`m sorry."

Judge Robert Triozzi ruled that Owens didn`t have to pay, saying she had "clearly been the victim of [Discover`s] unreasonable, unconscionable and unjust business practices."

Efforts to reach Owens were unsuccessful. A spokeswoman for Discover said she could not comment on the case.

Analysts said that lost in the uproar over particular practices and cases is the fact that the credit card industry has almost completely remade itself in the years since it began pushing for passage of the bankruptcy bill — a makeover that has left some analysts wondering why the industry needs the changes in bankruptcy law.

"The idea that companies are losing their shirts on bankruptcies is a lot of bull," said Robert B. McKinley, chief executive of CardWeb.com, a Frederick, Md., consulting group that tracks the credit card industry. "With these rates and fees, the card industry is a gravy train right now."

Mills, the bankers association spokeswoman, said bankruptcies affected all American households in the form of higher costs and lower returns on investments.

As recently as the late 1980s, credit card companies offered a one-size-fits-all card with a fixed interest rate and an annual fee. Virtually all cards went to middle-class borrowers with good credit histories; issuing cards to poor or high-risk borrowers was almost unheard of.

But in the early 1990s, companies such as AT&T and General Motors began issuing cards with variable rates and no fees, increasing competition. And by the middle of the decade, card companies were finding their traditional middle-class markets saturated.

Their response: lend to riskier customers and make up for the danger of more defaults by charging higher rates and then new fees.

McKinley, the industry analyst, said the firms were helped by a 1996 Supreme Court case that gave card companies new protections against state regulation of fees.

"That really opened the flood gates. It set off a fee frenzy," he said.


Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

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Sweet Home, Alabama Dildos
Yet another state gets to outlaw "genital stimulating devices," as God just rolls her eyes
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, March 4, 2005
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/200…

I cannot imagine not being able to walk into a nice clean well-lit store staffed by friendly funky well-informed employees with interesting haircuts and walk out with an armful of friendly dildos.

I cannot imagine not being able to walk right in on any given Christian Sunday to Good Vibrations here in the City (or Toys in Babeland in Seattle or the Hustler store in LA or any number of other such clean `n` decent `n` prurient storefronts around the land) and stock up on sex lotions and potions and gadgets and gizmos on a whim, on a second date, on a weekend, before Valentine`s Day, on Easter, on Christmas, just for the hell of it or because the SO winkingly suggested it or the giddy carnal urges demanded it or because I needed to buy sexy birthday gifts or just because my supplies were running low and I have yet to install that in-bedroom three-gallon Astroglide wall pump.

I cannot, in other words, imagine living in Alabama. Or Texas. Or Louisiana. Or Georgia. Or Tennessee. Or in any of the handful of terrified and morally convulsive states where they prohibit such activities, where the selling of "genital stimulating devices" is outright illegal and deeply dreaded.

And stores that sell such nightmare devices are declared a threat to the community and a hazard to the soul and a sure sign of the devil and if you are caught selling a vibrator or using a dildo you could get 10 years in prison and/or be condemned to live in Alabama for the rest of your life.

Alabama. Illegal dildos. In the spotlight recently, as the U.S. Supreme Court just declined to review the constitutionality of the state`s law banning the sale of such naughty and phallically radiant toys. Did you see the story? Did it make you cringe and sigh and reach for the Hitachi Magic Wand? Aren`t we just a proud and deeply misguided nation?

Oh, it is fun to laugh. It is fun to mock and point and say, aww, how cute, those lost and weird and backass Southern states where most people are just trying to live noble upstanding honest lives but where they still insist on putting stickers on biology textbooks to warn of the "dangers" of the theory of evolution.

Places where raw honest sexuality is a foreign language and homosexuality is considered a disease and where they lovingly allow sales of Viagra and Cialis and where they inject vats of Prozac and Xanax into their bodies alongside truckloads of deep-fried obesity-happy everything, but the thought of someone using a sex toy to please herself or her lover and to add to the overall positive orgasmic vibe of the planet is considered on par, legally speaking, with pedophilia, or burglary, or being from France.

And it`s nice to think that, with the exception of a handful of sexless lawmakers and deeply repressed religious leaders who apparently possess genitalia so shriveled and sad not even their favorite Thai prostitutes can revive it, the vast majority of Americans scoff at this sort of law, sigh and shake their heads and move on. Yes, even those who live in Alabama, or in Texas (certainly in Austin, which mostly sort of pretends it`s just visiting Texas and doesn`t actually live there).

And sure, furthermore, you might argue that this is what makes America great, yes? Diversity. Diversity of opinion and diversity of education and diversity of sexual understanding, one educated progressive open-minded sexually open side understanding that sex is the divine nectar that makes the human flower moan and smile and bloom, and the other sneering and scoffing side merely shuddering and convulsing at the very sight of the naked human form, and not in a good way.

Call it dramatic tension, healthy debate, a fascinating slice of human drama. Always good for America, right?

Wrong. This isn`t what makes America great. Alabama`s isn`t the type of tremulous sexual dread and religious puling that makes us a stronger and more unique and exciting and fascinating country in which to live and loathe and pilot our SUVs through the mud puddles and over the playgrounds and into other cars.

This dildo thing, and the mind-set it represents, it is the type of thing that makes us small, keeps us lost, confused, torn; it`s emblematic of what holds us back from true progress and heat and joy. It is, in short, what makes us silly and actually quite pathetic in the eyes of a wild and deeply sensual and body-glittered ambisexual God.

And moreover, as the last deeply disturbing election proved, we on the dildo-happy side of the fence must be very, very wary, on alert, keenly observant of these rigid and dangerous little laws and of these genital-free religious leaders, as Alabama`s is the mind-set that put Bush in office and these are the voting blocs that keep noxious abstinence programs alive in public schools and this is the viewpoint that buys 20 million copies of the Left Behind series of silly apocalyptica, all hoping for the End of the World real soon now so why not abuse the planet as we damn well please and wait for the Rapture, uptight and righteous and dildo free.

I know, I know. Relax. It`s just dildos. It`s just some silly sex toys and some silly laws in some silly small-minded states no one of any salacious awareness or cosmic curiosity really pays any attention to. Let them have their sad little mind-set. After all, it keeps them occupied, keeps them from getting into any serious trouble. The rest of us will merely have to double our orgasmic output to compensate for the black goo they insist on pumping into the universe. Yes. I know this.

But then again, we are still in a world where brutal, undeclared war is considered noble and the human female nipple is considered traumatizing to children, and the pope, mustering one of his last wheezing, homophobic breaths, declares gay marriage to be part of the "ideology of evil," and millions believe him, especially the BushCo Right, especially those evangelicals who, for some sad reason, now hold the reins.

So then. They`re not just dildos, baby. They`re a flag of righteousness. They`re an emblem of all that is right and good and delicious and that must be defended to the death. Dildos are, in short, a beacon of hope. Wave yours high, won`t you? And then point it in the general direction of Alabama, and laugh.


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


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

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The domino theory
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=18651

Geov Parrish - WorkingForChange.com

03.02.05 - Years ago, as Cold Warriors went about justifying America`s war in Southeast Asia, a common train of logic was known as the Domino Theory. This held that the Communists could not be allowed to seize Laos, or Cambodia, or South Vietnam, else they would then go on through the power of ideology, example, and arms to seize Thailand, and the Philippines, and eventually all of Southeast Asia.

It was lunacy, of course -- excepting that Cambodia was so destroyed by war that it became easy pickings for the Khmer Rouge -- but that has not stopped neoconservatives, 40 years later, from espousing a similar sort of domino theory of how the world works. This time it is democracy, not communism, that is to be on the rise, and (according to the Bush Administration and its ideologues) establishing a beachhead of democracy in Iraq will force the rest of the despotic Middle East to mend its authoritarian ways.

The world didn`t work that way 40 years ago, and it doesn`t today. The problem with this theory -- OK, one of many problems with this theory -- is that it ignores the fact that the region in question is comprised of many different nations with distinct histories, cultures, and political processes. Thus, while there is no denying that this has been a very good week for democratic reform in the Middle East, the notion that it is due primarily to the last month`s worth of pro-democratic pressure from Washington, or even that substantial progress has been made, needs a reality check.

Most notable, thus far, is the collapse of the pro-Syrian government in Lebanon, a cataclysm due primarily to the assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri. Hariri`s murder remains unsolved, but it has widely been assumed to be the work of Syria -- although Syria denies it. (And, in fairness, it could as easily be a brilliant ploy by the CIA or Israel`s Mossad.) Regardless, the upshot Monday was a crowd of 25,000 Beirut protesters, in a rally that had been banned by the military, demonstrating for the end of Syria`s military presence in Lebanon. By day`s end, the government had fallen.

Events in Lebanon eclipsed the movement in Syria itself, where on Friday leaders had promised a pullout of Syria`s military from Lebanon by year`s end -- not soon enough for the Lebanese protesters, but a significant concession nonetheless. And later, Syrian authorities handed Saddam Hussein`s half-brother over to American and Iraqi authorities, a rare display of cooperation with occupying American authorities in Iraq.

Meanwhile, in Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, the 24-year dictator who is widely believed to be grooming his son to replace him, announced a request for constitutional amendments to allow presidential elections.

It`s tempting to lump together developments in the three countries, and point to them as evidence that the Arab world is embracing the calls for democracy and freedom President Bush has made a centerpiece of his Inaugural Address and subsequent speeches.

But slow down.

The opposition movements in Lebanon and Egypt long predate George Bush`s calls for Middle East democracy -- and for most of their history, particularly in Egypt, the United States has sided with the government and against opposition critics. Egypt has had both pro-democracy and Islamist movements, objects of political repression, jail, and torture, for over a half-century -- spanning the dictatorships of Mubrak, Anwar el-Sadat, and Nassar. Even today, Egyptian opposition leaders say they don`t want the help of America. For good reasons, they don`t trust us.

Those same opposition leaders also caution that Mubarak`s proposal sounds more sweeping than it is. Unless opposition political parties are free to organize without repression, and have equal access to what is largely state-controlled media, any presidential election there would be a farce. Simply having an election is no evidence of democracy -- as we saw a month ago in Iraq.

In Lebanon, the famously splintered populace, numbering Christians, Druze, and Muslims, fought a vicious civil war from 1975 to 1990, and Syria has dominated the military and political landscape since. The assassination has united the opposition and clarified who it is angry at -- Syria, the supposed backer of the killing of Harari -- but there is no clear idea of what a united opposition would be for. Syria still controls the presidency, the military, and the intelligence services in Lebanon, and forming a new government may be very difficult.

This week`s events represent clear progress in the goal of a more democratic Middle East. But Washington isn`t responsible for everything, and George Bush`s new evangelism for democracy is no more than a minor contributing factor to the new developments. The policy of trying to incubate Middle Eastern democracy is, on its own terms, a worthy one -- but such policies take years to incubate, not weeks. Give credit where credit is due: to the courageous opposition ranks in Lebanon and Egypt, who`ve withstood for years the apparatus of state repression to make a stand for what they believe in. They, not George Bush, have seen their labors bear fruit this week.

(c) Working Assets Online. All rights reserved.

URL: http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=18651

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!

Dieser Beitrag wurde vom System automatisch gesperrt. Bei Fragen wenden Sie sich bitte an [e-mail]

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Es ist schon seit langem bekannt, dass die US-Truppen ohne Vorwarnung auf alles schießen, was ihnen verdächtig erscheint.
Normalerweise treffen und töten sie dabei Iraker.
Diesmal wird wohl eine Untersuchung folgen.
Nicht umsonst sind nach Aussage der Interimsverwaltung doppelt soviele Iraker im letzten Halbjahr 04 durch die Koalitionstruppen als durch Aufständige getötet worden.
Die Zahlen liegen bei ca. 11500 durch die Koalition gegenüber knapp 6000 toten Zivilisten durch die Aufständigen.
Die genauen Zahlen stehen hier im Thread!

March 4, 2005
U.S. Forces Fired on Car Carrying Freed Italian Hostage in Iraq
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 4:51 p.m. ET

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- American forces fired on a car carrying a freed Italian hostage as it approached a checkpoint in Baghdad on Friday, killing an Italian intelligence officer and wounding at least two others, including the just-released journalist.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, an ally of the United States who has kept troops in Iraq despite public opposition at home, demanded an explanation from the U.S. ambassador, Mel Sembler.

``Given that the fire came from an American source I called in the American ambassador,`` Berlusconi told reporters before the U.S. statement acknowledging that coalition forces shot at the vehicle. ``I believe we must have an explanation for such a serious incident, for which someone must take the responsibility.``

The U.S. military said ``at approximately 8:55 p.m. tonight, coalition forces assigned to the multinational force Iraq fired on a vehicle that was approaching a coalition checkpoint in Baghdad at a high rate of speed.``

A U.S. patrol ``attempted to warn the driver to stop by hand and arm signals, flashing white lights, and firing warning shots in front of the car,`` the military said in a statement. ``When the driver didn`t stop, the soldiers shot into the engine block which stopped the vehicle, killing one and wounding two others.``

However, Berlusconi said three, not two, were wounded -- freed hostage Giuliana Sgrena and two intelligence officers. The U.S. military said Army medics treated a wounded man but that ``he refused medical evacuation for further assistance.``

The intelligence agent was killed when he threw himself over Sgrena to protect her from U.S. fire, Italy`s Apcom news agency quoted Gabriele Polo, the editor of Sgrena`s newspaper Il Manifesto, as saying.

Berlusconi identified the dead intelligence officer as Nicola Calipari and said he had been at the forefront of negotiations with the kidnappers. The premier said Calipari had been involved in the release of Italian hostages in the past.

U.S. troops took Sgrena to an American military hospital, where shrapnel was removed from her left shoulder.

Sgrena, 56, who worked for the leftist Il Manifesto, was abducted Feb. 4 by gunmen who blocked her car outside Baghdad University. Last month, she was shown in a video pleading for her life and demanding that all foreign troops -- including Italian forces -- leave Iraq.

Berlusconi said he had been celebrating Sgrena`s release with the editor of Il Manifesto, and with Sgrena`s boyfriend, Pier Scolari, when he took a phone call from an agent who informed them of the shooting.

``It`s a shame that the joy we all felt was turned into tragedy,`` Berlusconi said.

The shooting came as a blow to Berlusconi, who has kept 3,000 troops in Iraq despite strong opposition in Italy. The shooting was likely to set off new protests in Italy, where tens of thousands have regularly turned out on the streets to protest the Iraq war. Sgrena`s newspaper was a loud opponent of the war.

In a 2003 friendly-fire incident involving Italians, American soldiers in northern Iraq shot at a car carrying the Italian official heading up U.S. efforts to recover Iraq`s looted antiquities. Pietro Cordone, the top Italian diplomat in Iraq, was unhurt, but his Iraqi translator was killed.

Cordone, also the senior adviser for cultural affairs of the U.S. provisional authority, was traveling on the road between Mosul and Tikrit when his car was fired on at a U.S. roadblock, according to an Italian Foreign Ministry official.

The circumstances of Sgrena`s release were unclear.

The Italian government announced earlier Friday that Sgrena had been freed, prompting expressions of joy and relief from officials and her family.

Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini expressed ``great joy and enormous satisfaction,`` the ANSA news agency said.

The reporter`s father was so overwhelmed by the news that he needed assistance from a doctor, ANSA said. ``This is an exceptional day,`` Franco Sgrena was quoted as saying.

At Il Manifesto`s offices, reporters toasted the release with champagne.

On Feb. 19, tens of thousands of demonstrators marched through Rome waving rainbow peace flags to press for Sgrena`s release. Il Manifesto and Sgrena`s boyfriend organized the march.

About 200 foreigners have been abducted in Iraq in the past year, and more than 30 of the hostages were killed.

Another European reporter, Florence Aubenas, a veteran war correspondent for France`s leftist daily Liberation, is still being held in Iraq. Aubenas and her interpreter, Hussein Hanoun al-Saadi, disappeared nearly two months ago.

------

Associated Press writer Angela Doland contributed to this report from Rome.

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press |

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Top 10 Reasons Why Paul Wolfowitz Would Make a Good World Bank President
http://www.ips-dc.org/comment/wolfowitz.htm

By John Cavanagh

1. He would follow in the great tradition of World Bank president Robert McNamara, who also helped kill tens of thousands of people in a poor country most Americans couldn’t find on a map before getting the job.
2. It helps to be a good liar when you run an institution with employees who earn over $100,000 a year to pretend to help billions of people who live on less than $1 a day.
3. With all his experience helping U.S. companies grab Iraq ’s oil profits, he`s got just the right experience for doling out lucrative World Bank contracts to U.S. businesses.
4. After predecessor James Wolfensohn blew millions of dollars on "consultations" with citizen groups to give the appearance of openness, Wolfowitz`s tough-guy style is just what’s needed to rid the World Bank of those irritating activists.
5. Unlike former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, another one of the four leading candidates, at least Wolfowitz hasn`t failed at running a Fortune 500 company.
6. Unlike the Treasury Department’s John Taylor, another leading candidate, at least Wolfowitz doesn`t want to get rid of the institution he would head.
7. While earning a University of Chicago Ph.D. , he was exposed to the tenets of market fundamentalism that have reigned at the World Bank for decades.
8. He has experience in constructing echo chambers where only the advice he wants to hear is spoken.
9. He knows some efficient private contractors who build echo chambers for only a few hundred billion dollars (cost plus, of course).
10. He can develop a pre-emptive poverty doctrine where the World Bank could invade countries that fail to make themselves safe for U.S. business, modeled on the U.S. pre-emptive war doctrine he helped craft.

John Cavanagh is the director of Institute for Policy Studies. For more information about contenders for the World Bank’s presidency, visit http://www.worldbankpresident.org

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#2 auf der NYTimes Bestsellerliste!

Published on Friday, March 4, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
Bush`s Brain "Blinks"
by Bob Burnett
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0304-37.htm


New Yorker regular, Malcolm Gladwell, has written a new book about instantaneous decision-making, "Blink." The title would provide an apt characterization for the presidency of George W. Bush, whose actions often are based on little more than his gut-feelings. A classic example of the Bush decision-making process can be seen in his advocacy of the National Missile Defense (NMD) system. On February 15th a NMD test aborted when an interceptor missile failed to get out of its silo, the latest in a series of debacles that stretch back to the inception of the program. (The technical challenge of quickly discriminating between multiple potential targets has proved beyond the capability of modern technology; there have been no successful tests conducted under realistic conditions.) Despite this woeful track record, the Bush Administration continues to move forward with a multi-billion-dollar deployment of a system that doesn`t work now and, most likely, will never meet its objectives.

Bush "logic" propels NMD`s deployment. A dissection of the President`s rationale reveals a pattern, the same process involved in actions such as the war in Iraq or the "reform" of Social Security. The typical Bush decision is one-third pragmatism, another third obstinacy, and a final third "blink." The pragmatic part stems from the political reality that continuing to build NMD is good for major Republican aerospace donors, such as Raytheon and TRW. Similarly, the war in Iraq may be bad for America, but it is good for Halliburton. NMD is a neo-conservative article of faith, and Bush and his advisers are true believers. Despite dramatic evidence to the contrary, they stubbornly hold on to the major Neo-con tenets, such as: Star Wars will make us safe; Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction; cutting taxes is good for everyone; and war is peace. The final ingredient in the Bush rationale is "blink," seat-of-the-pants reasoning. Malcolm Gladwell argues that instantaneous decisions are best formed out of years of experience. In other words, it`s okay to reach quick decisions, but there should be an underlying "seasoned" process. The problem with most of Bush`s "blink" decisions is that there is no evidence of this foundation. What we see, instead, are snap decisions wrapped in authoritarian rigidity. Once Bush locks onto a solution to a problem, he won`t consider any other alternatives. For example, while North Korea has nuclear weapons and a missile-delivery system, the Bush Administration assumes that NMD will protect the American mainland and, therefore, remains closed to all but military solutions to solve the danger of the rogue nation. The US refuses to participate in real diplomacy.

There are two other problems with the Bush "blink" style: Once the President makes a decision, however ill-considered, his administration demands that all Americans support it and labels those who dissent as "unpatriotic." In addition, Bush tends to surround himself with "yea sayers," partisans who will not question his rationale. As a result, there is no "feedback loop" that enables the White House to learn from mistakes. (In most decision environments, there is a simple feedback loop: adopting a policy, trying it out programmatically, evaluating the results, and taking corrective action based upon the lessons learned - for example, modifying or abandoning the policy.) Instead, the primary rule for Bush decision-making seems to be: never admit making a mistake. The Administration places a premium on its image of resolute toughness and, therefore, believes it to be a sign of weakness to acknowledge any policy shortcomings. For this reason it is incapable of learning from its mistakes. NMD is a classic illustration of this weakness.

While inventors and artists often succeed because of "blink" decisions, political leaders typically do not fare as well. History provides many examples of national leaders who let hubris overwhelm their judgment and, as a result, came to disastrous ends: Napoleon refused to listen to wise council that warned him of the perils inherent in an invasion of Russia; a century later, Adolph Hitler, no doubt believing himself the intellectual superior to the French Emperor, engaged in a second disastrous foray into Russia. Now George Bush, ruler of the strongest nation in the world, buoyant from winning the 2004 election, surrounded by advisers who know better than to argue against his impulsive judgement, makes one strategic error after another. The results are as predictable, as they are disheartening: Rather than strengthening the United States, Bush policies systematically weaken it. Rather than forging an intelligent, flexible defense for the homeland, the President proffers an unfeasible, wasteful alternative.

Bush has probably never read about Thomas Andrews, a "blink" thinker best known as the designer of the Titanic. Andrews went along on the maiden voyage of the great ship, knowing that it carried far too few lifeboats, but feeling secure because he supposed that the vessel was indestructible. Sheltered by his unique decision-making style, George Bush sleeps soundly, believing that because of NMD, and the other ill-considered policies of his administration, the United States is impregnable. Meanwhile, the good ship, America, steams unaware into the cold, iceberg-laden sea.

Bob Burnett is a Berkeley, CA writer and activist. He can be reached at [e-mail].

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Published on Friday, March 4, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
The Iraq Election Backfired on Conservatives
by Jim Hightower
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0304-36.htm

Reality can be hard on theorists -- just ask that gaggle of conservative geniuses who designed and pushed the invasion of Iraq.

The theory propounded by Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and President Bush`s other "Big-Thinker" war hawks (none of whom have ever actually been in a war) was that crushing Saddam Hussein would cause the flowering of a pro-American democracy in Iraq. In the glorious vision of these theorists, grateful Iraqis would shower American troops with rose petals, Halliburton would quickly rebuild the country`s infrastructure, U.S. corporations would install a pure capitalist economy, and our troops would be home by summer, having turned over power to a secular government, largely handpicked by us.

Of course, the reality is that our troops are still mired there, showered with bombs and bullets rather than roses. The economy is a wreck, and far from becoming a Mideastern bastion of American empire, Iraq has become an incubator for anti-American terrorists.

But the greatest embarrassment for White House theorists is that the recent elections in Iraq produced the exact opposite of what they assumed. The theory was that secular Iraqi politicians long allied with the CIA would win, giving Bush & Co. an Arab ally to counter the Muslim theocracy in neighboring Iran. In theory, thus Americanized Iraq could then be counted on to side with the United States on everything from Mideast oil prices to Israeli policy.

But -- oops -- the White House candidates got skunked! The election was won by a religious slate handpicked by Iraq`s top Shiite Muslim leader. Moreover, the two parties that now control three-fourths of the new government`s legislative seats have long standing and very close ties not to us -- but to that Islamic republic right next door in Iran.

One of the greatest ironies of Bush`s war is that it has created a new ally for Iran, the very country that the conservative want to attack next.

Jim Hightower is the best-selling author of "Thieves In High Places: They`ve Stolen Our Country And It`s Time To Take It Back," on sale now from Viking Press. www.jimhightower.com Distributed by www.minutemanmedia.org

© 2005 Minute Man Media

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Das sind nicht die Zahlen, die ich in #26748 erwähnt habe.

More Iraqi Civilians Killed by US Forces Than By Insurgents, Data Shows
by Nancy A. Youssef, Knight-Ridder / Common Dreams
September 26th, 2004


BAGHDAD, Iraq - Operations by U.S. and multinational forces and Iraqi police are killing twice as many Iraqis - most of them civilians - as attacks by insurgents, according to statistics compiled by the Iraqi Health Ministry and obtained exclusively by Knight Ridder.

According to the ministry, the interim Iraqi government recorded 3,487 Iraqi deaths in 15 of the country`s 18 provinces from April 5 - when the ministry began compiling the data - until Sept. 19. Of those, 328 were women and children. Another 13,720 Iraqis were injured, the ministry said.

While most of the dead are believed to be civilians, the data include an unknown number of police and Iraqi national guardsmen. Many Iraqi deaths, especially of insurgents, are never reported, so the actual number of Iraqis killed in fighting could be significantly higher.

During the same period, 432 American soldiers were killed.

Iraqi officials said the statistics proved that U.S. airstrikes intended for insurgents also were killing large numbers of innocent civilians. Some say these casualties are undermining popular acceptance of the American-backed interim government.

That suggests that more aggressive U.S. military operations, which the Bush administration has said are being planned to clear the way for nationwide elections scheduled for January, could backfire and strengthen the insurgency.

American military officials said "damage will happen" in their effort to wrest control of some areas from insurgents. They blamed the insurgents for embedding themselves in communities, saying that`s endangering innocent people.

Lt. Col. Steve Boylan, an American military spokesman, said the insurgents were living in residential areas, sometimes in homes filled with munitions.

"As long as they continue to do that, they are putting the residents at risk," Boylan said. "We will go after them."

Boylan said the military conducted intelligence to determine whether a home housed insurgents before striking it. While damage would happen, the airstrikes were "extremely precise," he said. And he said that any attacks by the multinational forces were "in coordination with the interim government."

The Health Ministry statistics indicate that more children have been killed around Ramadi and Fallujah than in Baghdad, though those cities together have only one-fifth of the Iraqi capital`s population.

According to the statistics, 59 children were killed in Anbar province - a hotbed of the Sunni Muslim insurgency that includes the cities of Ramadi and Fallujah - compared with 56 children in Baghdad. The ministry defines children as anyone younger than 12.

"When there are military clashes, we see innocent people die," said Dr. Walid Hamed, a member of the operations section of the Health Ministry, which compiles the statistics.

Juan Cole, a history professor at University of Michigan who specializes in Shiite Islam, said the widespread casualties meant that coalition forces already had lost the political campaign: "I think they lost the hearts and minds a long time ago."

"And they are trying to keep U.S. military casualties to a minimum in the run-up to the U.S. elections" by using airstrikes instead of ground forces, he said.

American military officials say they`re targeting only terrorists and are aggressively working to spare innocent people nearby.

Nearly a third of the Iraqi dead - 1,122 - were killed in August, according to the statistics. May was the second deadliest month, with 749 Iraqis killed, and 319 were killed in June, the least violent month. Most of those killed lived in Baghdad; the ministry found that 1,068 had died in the capital.

Many Iraqis said they thought the numbers showed that the multinational forces disregarded their lives.

"The Americans do not care about the Iraqis. They don`t care if they get killed, because they don`t care about the citizens," said Abu Mohammed, 50, who was a major general in Saddam Hussein`s army in Baghdad. "The Americans keep criticizing Saddam for the mass graves. How many graves are the Americans making in Iraq?"

At his fruit stand in southern Baghdad, Raid Ibraham, 24, theorized: "The Americans keep attacking the cities not to keep the security situation stable, but so they can stay in Iraq and control the oil."

Others blame the multinational forces for allowing security to disintegrate, inviting terrorists from everywhere and threatening the lives of everyday Iraqis.

"Anyone who hates America has come here to fight: Saddam`s supporters, people who don`t have jobs, other Arab fighters. All these people are on our streets," said Hamed, the ministry official. "But everyone is afraid of the Americans, not the fighters. And they should be."

Iraqi officials said about two-thirds of the Iraqi deaths were caused by multinational forces and police; the remaining third died from insurgent attacks. The ministry began separating attacks by multinational and police forces and insurgents June 10.

From that date until Sept. 10, 1,295 Iraqis were killed in clashes with multinational forces and police versus 516 killed in terrorist operations, the ministry said. The ministry defined terrorist operations as explosive devices in residential areas, car bombs or assassinations.

The ministry said it didn`t have any statistics for the three provinces in the north: Arbil, Dohuk and Sulaimaniyah, ethnic Kurdish areas that generally have been more peaceful than the rest of the country.

The Health Ministry is the only organization that attempts to track deaths through government agencies. The U.S. military said it kept estimates, but it refused to release them. Ahmed al Rawi, the communications director of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Baghdad, said the organization didn`t have the staffing to compile such information.

The Health Ministry reports to interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, whom the United States appointed in June.

Iraqi health and hospital officials agreed that the statistics captured only part of the death toll.

To compile the data, the Health Ministry calls the directors general of the 15 provinces and asks how many deaths related to the war were reported at hospitals. The tracking of such information has become decentralized since the fall of Saddam Hussein`s regime because both hospitals and morgues issue death certificates now. And families often bury their dead without telling any government agencies or are treated at facilities that don`t report to the government.

The ministry is convinced that nearly all of those reported dead are civilians, not insurgents. Most often, a family member wouldn`t report it if his or her relative died fighting for rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr`s Mahdi Army militia or another insurgent force, and the relative would be buried immediately, said Dr. Shihab Ahmed Jassim, another member of the ministry`s operations section.

"People who participate in the conflict don`t come to the hospital. Their families are afraid they will be punished," said Dr. Yasin Mustaf, the assistant manager of al Kimdi Hospital near Baghdad`s poor Sadr City neighborhood. "Usually, the innocent people come to the hospital. That is what the numbers show."

The numbers also exclude those whose bodies were too mutilated to be recovered at car bombings or other attacks, the ministry said.

Ministry officials said they didn`t know how big the undercount was. "We have nothing to do with politics," Jassim said.

Other independent organizations have estimated that 7,000 to 12,000 Iraqis have been killed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush declared an end to major combat operations.

Iraqis are aware of the casualties that are due to U.S. forces, and nearly everyone has a story to tell.

At al Kimdi Hospital, Dr. Mumtaz Jaber, a vascular surgeon, said that three months ago, his 3-year-old nephew, his sister and his brother-in-law were driving in Baghdad at about 9 p.m. when they saw an American checkpoint. His nephew was killed.

"They didn`t stop fast enough. The Americans shot them immediately," Jaber said. "This is how so many die."

At the Baghdad morgue, Dr. Quasis Hassan Salem said he saw a family of eight brought in: three women, three men and two children. They were sleeping on their roof last month because it was hot inside. A military helicopter shot at them and killed them: "I don`t know why."

U.S. officials said any allegations that soldiers had recklessly killed Iraqi citizens were investigated at the Iraqi Assistance Center in downtown Baghdad.

"There is no way to refute" such stories, said Robert Callahan, a spokesman at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. "All you can do is tell them the truth and hope it eventually will get through."

Knight Ridder special correspondent Omar Jassim contributed to this report.

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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Der Link zu #756
http://www.occupationwatch.org/article.php?id=6978

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Eine gute Gelegenheit für Italien sich aus dem Irak zurückzuziehen, und Berlusconis Wiederwahlchancen zu erhöhen.

SPIEGEL ONLINE - 05. März 2005, 10:02
URL:
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,344815,00.html
Schüsse auf Sgrena

Bush entschuldigt sich bei Berlusconi

Die Schüsse von US-Soldaten auf das Fahrzeug mit der gerade im Irak freigelassenen Journalistin Giuliana Sgrena sorgen für eine tiefe Verstimmung zwischen Rom und Washington. US-Präsident Bush bedauerte den Vorfall und sagte eine umfassende Untersuchung zu. Die Opposition in Rom rief zu Demonstrationen auf.

Rom - George W. Bush bedauerte in einem Telefonat mit dem italienischen Ministerpräsidenten Silvio Berlusconi den schwersten diplomatische Zwischenfall in den italienisch-amerikanischen Beziehungen seit 1989, als ein US-Militärflugzeug in Norditalien im Tiefflug die Kabel eines Ski-Lifts durchtrennte und 20 Menschen tötete. Er sagte Berlusconi eine umfassende Untersuchung des Zwischenfalls zu, wie ein Sprecher des Weißen Hauses mitteilte.

Auch der in Rom einbestellte US-Botschafter Mel Sembler versicherte, dass die US-Regierung keine Mühe scheuen werde, den Zwischenfall aufzuklären, wie das Büro Berlusconis mitteilte. Die Unterredung des Ministerpräsidenten mit Sembler habe rund eine Stunde gedauert. Der Pressesprecher des Weißen Hauses, Scott McClellan, wünschte Sgrena eine rasche Genesung und sprach der Familie des getöteten Geheimdienstbeamten sein Beileid aus.

Die Freude habe sich in Trauer verwandelt, hatte zuvor Berlusconi im Fernsehen gesagt. "Wir sind wie versteinert. Wir suchen die Verantwortlichen. Für einen so schwerwiegenden Vorfall muss jemand die Verantwortung übernehmen."

Laut "Repubblica" hat die italienische Geheimpolizei Sismi mit zwei Teams gearbeitet. In Bagdad hielt der später erschossene Nicola Calipari Kontakt mit den Entführern. In einem arabischen Nachbarstaat, Kuwait oder Saudiarabien, stand das zweite Team mit Lösegeld bereit. Gestern vormittag kam die Nachricht, dass Giuliana Sgrena aus ihrem Versteck in der Nähe von Ramadi, 200 Kilometer westlich von Bagdad, in die Hauptstadt gebracht worden sei. Nach etlichen Verzögerungen habe der Austausch dann erst nachmittags, gegen 17 Uhr, in der Nähe einer Moschee stattgefunden. Weil es bereits dunkelte, entschied Calipari, sofort zum Flughafen zu fahren.

Es ist bislang nicht bekannt, ob dem Wagen der Geheimdienstleute ein zweites Sicherheitsfahrzeug zur Seite gestellt war. Ebenso ist unklar, ob die Italiener das Centcom-Hauptquartier der Amerikaner von ihrer Ankunft am Flughafen informierten, bzw. ob diese Nachricht von den Amerikanern rechtzeitig an die Posten weitergegeben wurde. Die US-Soldaten am Checkpoint vor dem Flughafen waren erst kurz zuvor im Irak eingetroffen. Es waren Neulinge, denen noch ein Angriff eine Woche zuvor an der gleichen Stelle in den Knochen steckte.

So scheinen drei unglückliche Faktoren zusammengetroffen zu sein: Dunkelheit, Kommunikationsfehler und die Unerfahrenheit der Kontrollposten. Der Checkpoint befand sich etwa einen Kilometer vor dem Flughafengelände, nach einer Kurve, quasi der letzten Kurve vor der Geraden nach Rom.

Der Wagen, mit dem Sgrena im Schutz von italienischen Spezialagenten zum Flughafen gebracht werden sollte, sei mit hoher Geschwindigkeit auf eine Straßensperre zugefahren und habe Aufrufe zum Bremsen mehrfach ignoriert, heißt es in der Erklärung, die die 3. US-Infanteriedivision in Bagdad veröffentlichte. "US-Soldaten haben einen Zivilisten getötet und zwei weitere verletzt, als (der Fahrer) ihres Auto sich bei hoher Geschwindigkeit weigerte, an einem Checkpoint zu stoppen", hieß es darin.

Der Fahrer sei zunächst mit Handzeichen und Blinklicht zum Bremsen aufgefordert worden. Anschließend hätten die Soldaten Warnschüsse abgegeben und erst danach auf den Motorblock des Autos gezielt.

Der Weg zum Flughafen in Bagdad gilt als die gefährlichste Straße im Irak. Fast täglich kommt es hier zu Zwischenfällen und Angriffen durch Heckenschützen, die auf Autofahrer zielen. Die US-Soldaten an den Kontrollpunkten an dieser Straße sind dementsprechend nervös.

Sgrena landete gegen 11 Uhr in Rom. Sie hatte die Nacht in einem amerikanischen Militärkrankenhaus in Bagdad verbracht, wo ihr Munitionssplitter aus der Schulter entfernt wurde. Der Geheimdienstbeamte Nicola Calipari, der sich bei der Schießerei schützend über die Journalistin geworfen hatte, wurde getötet. Er hatte der italienischen Regierung zufolge entscheidend zu den Verhandlungen für die Freilassung Sgrenas beigetragen. Neben der Journalistin wurde noch mindestes ein Geheimdienstbeamter verletzt. Nach italienischen Medienberichten befand er sich nach einem Lungenschuss in kritischem Zustand.

Italiens Opposition demonstriert

Mit scharfer Kritik reagierte die italienische Opposition auf den Zwischenfall. Der kommunistische Senator Gianfranco Pagliarulo rief zu einer Protestkundgebung vor dem US-Konsulat in Mailand auf. Man werde Flugblätter mit der Aufschrift "Schämen Sie sich, Bush" drucken, sagte der Senator der italienischen Nachrichtenagentur Ansa.

"Ein weiteres Opfer eines absurden Kriegs", kommentierte der Grünen-Vorsitzende Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio den Tod des Geheimdienstbeamten. Der Chef der italienischen Linksdemokraten, Piero Fassino, erklärte, es sei unglaublich, dass ein Mann bei der Rettung eines Menschenlebens "von denen getötet wird, die sagen, sie seien im Irak, um das Leben von Zivilisten zu schützen".

Sgrena, die für die linksgerichtete Zeitung "Il Manifesto" sowie für die deutsche Wochenzeitung "Die Zeit" arbeitet, war am 4. Februar in Bagdad verschleppt worden. Am Freitag wurde sie von ihren Entführern schließlich freigelassen. "Il Manifesto", die den Irak-Einsatz Italiens von Anfang an kritisiert hat, titelte heute: "Giuliana Sgrena ist frei. Die Amerikaner schießen. Ihr Befreier wurde ermordet. Er hieß Nicola Calipari."

Unter welchen Umständen Sgrena frei kam, blieb zunächst unklar. In einem am Abend vom arabischen Fernsehsender al-Dschasira ausgestrahlten Video bedankte sich Sgrena bei ihren Entführern für die "gute Behandlung" während ihrer Gefangenschaft. Wer hinter der Entführung steckte, war ebenfalls weiter unklar. Mehrfach hatten sich vermeintliche islamistische Gruppen per Internet zu Wort gemeldet und den Rückzug der italienischen Truppen verlangt. Eine Gruppe behauptete sogar, Sgrena getötet zu haben.

Mitte Februar war ein Video verbreitet worden, auf dem die Journalistin die Regierung in Rom unter Tränen aufrief, den Forderungen der Kidnapper nachzugeben und die 3000 italienischen Soldaten aus dem Irak abzuziehen. Die italienische Regierung lehnte dies stets ab.

Erst am 19. Februar hatten Hunderttausende Menschen in Rom für die Freilassung der Geisel demonstriert. Auch Papst Johannes Paul II. hatte zur Freilassung der Journalistin aufgerufen. Der im Krankenhaus liegende Kirchenführer sei sehr glücklich darüber, dass die Reporterin wieder frei sei, berichtete das italienische Fernsehen.

Das Schicksal der französischen Journalistin Florence Aubenas, die vor über zwei Monaten im Irak verschleppt worden war, war weiter unklar.

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2005

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[urlPage One: Saturday, March 5, 2005]http://www.nytimes.com/video/html/2005/03/04/multimedia/20050305_PAGEONE_VIDEO.html[/url]

Kein Aprilscherz! Sie meinen es ernst.
Die Hysterie fördert weiter herrliche Blüten.
March 5, 2005
Efforts to Hide Sensitive Data Pit 9/11 Concerns Against Safety
By CHRISTOPHER DREW
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/05/national/05secret.html?hp&…

They are just pieces of cardboard, and they cover less than a square foot on the side of railroad tank car. But behind them lies a post-9/11 competition between public safety and national security.
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For decades, emergency-response teams approaching train wrecks have peered at the signs through binoculars to see what dangerous chemicals might be leaking. But federal officials will soon decide on a proposal to remove the placards from all tank cars. Their fear is that terrorists could use them to lock in on targets for highly toxic attacks.

The idea has sparked an outcry from firefighters and rail workers, who say removing the signs could endanger their lives. They say federal officials seem more focused on guarding against a terrorist attack than on the daily threat of accidents.

"There`s this feeling that you have to secure everything possible in every way possible for every possible kind of terrorist attack," Garry L. Briese, executive director of the International Association of Fire Chiefs, said.

The dispute illustrates a growing push to mask sensitive data about the nation`s industrial base from the prying eyes of potential terrorists. In the tug of war over tank cars and other industrial information, critics question whether the move toward secrecy is overwhelming safety concerns and even chilling debates over how to eliminate the vulnerabilities.

People who live near chemical and nuclear plants, dams and oil and gas pipelines complain that it has become harder to find out about disaster plans and environmental hazards, and some have sued for more information. Engineering reports have been stripped from government Web sites, and several agencies are creating new controls on sensitive information that go far beyond the wide-ranging classification system built in the cold war.

Federal officials say although they are trying to strike a reasonable balance, some clashes are inevitable, and more are likely to occur. If delicate information leaks out, "it gives our adversaries too much of a picture of what our vulnerabilities are," Jack L. Johnson Jr., chief security officer at the Department of Homeland Security, said.

Internal government e-mail messages show that months before the train bombings last March in Madrid, transportation officials stopped the Defense Intelligence Agency from releasing a report on rail vulnerabilities in the United States.

The messages, which were obtained by The New York Times from a former federal official, show that the report was intended to spark debate among officials on improving rail security. But after complaints from the industry, one senior transportation official helped block the report by arguing that if it became public "I could foresee this paper being a handout in the next session of Al Qaeda`s rail-attack course."

A similar secrecy question is unfolding in Washington. On Tuesday, the District of Columbia Council extended a ban on shipping hazardous cargo through Washington.

Even as it opposed the ban, the CSX railroad company quietly re-routed some cargo away from Capitol Hill last spring. But citing security, railroad and security officials refused for months to tell the Council about the rerouting. It turns out that the railroad simply shifted the cargoes to tracks in other neighborhoods. Federal and railroad officials said the other tracks seemed less likely to be targets.

A Council member, Kathy Patterson, said, "There was just a total alliance between the homeland security and railroad officials that was very disheartening."

Another hot area of debate over secrecy is the atomic energy industry. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has stashed away an enormous trove of documents about nuclear power plants, suspending access to much of its Web site while weeding out reports that might aid terrorists.

A spokeswoman for the commission, Sue F. Gagner, said that access to 380,000 documents was suspended last October and that 120,000 had been made available again.

"We think it`s very important to be diligent about having information that could potentially be helpful to a terrorist," Ms. Gagner said.

The commission has also issued classified orders on how the plants guard against terror attacks, and citizens` groups have been fighting in court to demand public input.

"You can hide the information, but if the vulnerability still exists, the bad guys will find it," said Gary D. Bass, executive director of OMB Watch, a group in Washington that supports more openness. "So let`s reduce the vulnerability instead."

Mr. Bass said similar debates had prompted some complexes like a sprawling sewage plant in Washington to switch to less-toxic chemicals.

In some instances, new dictates have eclipsed broader health and safety concerns.

Living Rivers, an environmental group in Utah, sued a federal agency after it had refused to release flood maps showing what areas would be inundated if major dams failed. A federal judge ruled for the agency, saying he agreed that releasing the maps "could increase the risk of an attack on the dams."

The shift to greater secrecy began after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Mr. Johnson, of the Homeland Security Department, said a captured training manual showed that Al Qaeda expected to glean 80 percent of what it needed to plan attacks in the United States from open sources.

The government has turned to a smorgasbord of new controls for withholding sensitive - but unclassified - information.

The Homeland Security Department has designations like "Sensitive Homeland Security Information" and "Protected Critical Infrastructure Information." Airport workers use "Sensitive Security Information" to hold back the details of pat-downs. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission stamps "Critical Energy Infrastructure Information" on pipeline maps.

Officials said many companies had long resisted disclosing security flaws to the government out of fear of leaks. Mr. Johnson said that the department was blending what it obtained from the companies with intelligence about terrorist intentions and that it intended to share much of that analysis with local officials who agree to keep it confidential.

Sometimes the battles are more visible. Since chlorine leaking from a derailed tank car killed nine people and injured hundreds last month in South Carolina, the fight over the railroad placards has emerged as the most potent symbol of the debate.

The Homeland Security and Transportation Departments have been considering whether to remove the placards since August.

Firefighters, railroad workers and large chemical companies are adamant about keeping the placards. Statistics show that chemicals leak from dozens of rail cars a year and that deaths occur periodically.

The chlorine placard is black and white. It has a skull and crossbones and the number 1017, the chlorine code. Without placards, "we`d be completely in the dark" at many crashes, said Joe Ashbaker, a supervisor in the San Bernardino County Fire Department in California.

The railroads have their doubts. "We were for the placards, until 9/11, when it became clear they presented a security risk," the industry`s lobbying group, the Association of American Railroads, said in a statement.

The railroads also say they are working to create a system that meets security and safety needs.

But two studies by the Transportation Department have shown that the alternatives, electronic systems that could transmit lists of chemicals on a train by radio or satellite, would be more expensive, cumbersome and less effective on safety. Texas A&M University is finishing another study.

Jamie Conrad, a lawyer for the American Chemistry Council, which lobbies for large chemical makers, said he could see how a placard might "advertise a little bit" the best cars to attack.

"But where we come down is that if you take it off, you know that people will be killed in accidents," Mr. Conrad said. "And you`re basically balancing that against the theoretical prospect that terrorists might be lurking on that corner."

Walt Bogdanich and Jenny Nordberg contributed reporting for this article.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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Relatives in protest over Abu Ghraib overcrowding
By David Enders in Abu Ghraib
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?st…

05 March 2005

Relatives of the thousands of Iraqis in American-run detention centres in Iraq are protesting at overcrowding. Pre-election sweeps have swollen the prison population to breaking point, they say.

At Abu Ghraib prison, where eight Americans were charged last year with abusing detainees, more than 3,100 are interned. US officials admit that their "ideal limit" for the facility is 2,500.

Hundreds of relatives queue for hours outside in the hope of getting news of loved ones, who have been picked up in operations outside the capital.

Iqbal Ali Khadim has been waiting to see her 12-year-old son, Ali. "I just want him to be out," she said. "The last time I visited him, he told me they had beat him because they think he was going to be a suicide bomber."

Ali, along with his father, two older brothers and a pair of uncles, were arrested from Mrs Khadim`s home in Yusefiya, south of Baghdad, two months ago. Tomorrow, she says, she will make the day-long trip to Camp Bucca in Umm Qasr, south of Basra, where Ali`s brothers and uncles are being held, accused of supporting the insurgency.

Many of the families outside Abu Ghraib, which along with the 5,640 prisoners at Bucca accounts for almost all of the detainees the US holds in Iraq, complain of arrests that take all the men from a family and that the prisoners are being split up.

Often, arrests remove the breadwinners from a family, leaving women in dire straits. "I have no sons to work and I cannot collect my husband`s pension because they took his ID when he was arrested," Mrs Khadim said.

One man standing in line said: "If they are not going to charge them, they should let them go." He complained that his brother had been held for more than a year.

US military officials have said they are bringing prisoners before review boards, but it is not happening quickly enough for many families. Iraqi officials also complain that the US military is not devoting enough personnel to the process.

"At the ministry of justice we`ve offered them lawyers, but they`ve refused," said Salim Mendalawi, a lawyer at the ministry. "I talked to the Americans and told them it is for their benefit. The ministry has enough investigators."

The London-based Arabic newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat recently reported that work had started on a new prison, to be the largest facility in the country, near a US military base in the southern city in Nasariyah, but the spokesman said he could not confirm this. "We are constantly building to improve capacity, as well as improve the welfare of the detainees and the abilities of the guards," he said.

Throughout the conflict that followed the US-led invasion of Iraq, the military has struggled to contain an increasingly sophisticated insurgency, and the latest response has pushed the prison system to its limit. Analysts fear that overcrowded prisons will be a fertile breeding ground for grievances against the Americans and could be used as recruitment centres for the insurgency.



5 March 2005 12:09


©2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.

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The Independent
Still Iraq’s civil servants go to work, and still they go on dying
Thursday, 3rd March 2005, by Robert Fisk
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/story.jsp?story=616…

HEY die now so often that their names - even their jobs - escape us. Judge Barwez Mohammed Mahmoud was shot dead on Tuesday along with his son - so often, the sons die with their fathers - a lawyer working on the special tribunal set up to try Saddam Hussein and his henchmen for crimes against humanity.

Today a judge, last week a senior police officer in Mosul, police chiefs, government clerks, economists from the Ministry of Finance, junior civil servants - "collaborators" in the eyes of the ruthless men who are destroying so much of the infrastructure of "new" Iraq - fall almost every day to the insurrection.

What makes them do these jobs? They know, these men and women, that they are going to be called "collaborators" by their enemies. They know, too, that they can be betrayed by those who work with them. Repeatedly in Baghdad, I have visited the location of these ambushes, only to find that the cops and officials who were targeted were taking a new route to their offices, driving a different car, leaving from a different house. And almost always, they are killed.

One government official who survived a car bombing in northern Baghdad told me that the day his convoy was attacked, he had arranged two new routes to his office. The first was the route he took, the second an emergency road on which he would drive if he felt insecure. A suicide bomber blew himself up on the first road as the convoy approached, killing some of the official’s bodyguards. His men later found a bomb hidden on the second road - just in case he changed his mind. There could be only one reason: he was betrayed by those he worked with. We do not yet know - and perhaps never will - how Judge Mahmoud’s killers came to set up their ambush. Most of the lawyers and judges on the tribunal live in the doubtful security of the "Green Zone’’, the vast campus of American and British diplomatic houses and offices belonging to the American-appointed Iraqi administration surrounded by concrete walls and US troops. Suicide bombers even breached this security, blowing themselves up in a "Green Zone" restaurant. Another inside job.

There are, of course, good men and true among the army of government workers, innocent as the two dozen humbler, nameless folk who are brought to the Baghdad mortuary each day.

I’ve travelled the streets of Baghdad with Iraq’s vulnerable police patrols. One cop told me frankly why he did his job: for the money and because - having been a policeman under Saddam - he could for once perform his real role of protecting his own people rather than a regime. Iraqis came on to the streets to offer tea to the policemen. The cops liked being liked. But judges are more valuable targets for the insurgents and - by the nature of their work - must live with the knowledge of constantly impending death.

They want a "new" Iraq. Not perhaps the American version, but certainly an Iraq which is not ruled by Baathists or mullahs or religious perfectionists with guns.

You can see the tension they live under when you meet them at the airport. Government ministers love foreign travel - wouldn’t you if every bullet had your name on it at home - but every official who reaches Baghdad airport alive has a look of relief on his or her face. They smoke 20, 30 cigarettes before their flight takes off - then, after spiralling up to 32,000 feet to avoid anti-aircraft missiles, they burst into conversation and laughter. Travelling back to Baghdad airport with them, there is false bonhomie on board and fear on arrival, a car with a gunman-driver to take them home. And still they work. And still they go on dying.

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Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan

http://www.juancole.com/
Saturday, March 05, 2005

US Wounds Italian Hostage, Kills Intelligence Man
Guerrillas Kill 4 Marines

The US military on Friday fired on the car carrying a just-released Italian journalist who had been taken hostage. AP says that the troops wounded journalist Giuliana Sgrena and killed "the Italian intelligence officer who helped negotiate her release . . ." Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi demanded an explanation. (The car had been rushing toward a checkpoint and did not slow down. US troops have faced so many car bombs that they often shoot first and ask questions later in such a situation.

US military forces have killed innocent Iraqi civilians at such checkpoints on a number of occasions, and, indeed, statistics for spring-summer 2004 show that the US was responsible for killing more Iraqi civilians than did the guerrillas. I cannot remember interim PM Iyad Allawi reacting as stiffly to such incidents as Berlusconi just did.

Guerrillas killed four Marines in Anbar Province west of Baghdad on Friday, as the US military continued its operations there.

posted by Juan @ 3/5/2005 06:37:00 AM

Chalabi seeks Anti-American Coalition
Kurds Demand Kirkuk

Az-Zaman: In a development that many observers considered a surprise, it was announced Friday that Ahmad Chalabi, Shiite secularist and head of the Iraqi National Congress, met a few days ago with members of the Association of Muslim Scholars, who had boycotted the political process. He discussed with them "The possibility of beginning the stage of dialogue among those who desire to fight the Occupation." Chalabi said, "We had several meetings with the rebels, and there is a real desire to work and coordinate in order to end the foreign presence in Iraq, which will convince them that there is no necessity to fight." (For more on the demands of the hard line Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars for a US withdrawal, see Gilbert Achcar`s comments below.)

Chalabi also continued to argue for uprooting of Baathists, and joined in calls by Shiite politicians for a purge of Baathists from the Ministry of the Interior. (Interim PM Iyad Allawi, an ex-Baathist, had appointed Falah al-Naqib, another ex-Baathist, as minister of the interior. Ministries are run on a spoils system, so al-Naqib is accused of bringing into the ministry, which is analogous to Homeland Security in the US, many former associates of Saddam.)

An official from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (headed by Jalal Talabani) told the newspaper that the Kurds will accept nothing less than clear and public commitments with regard to their demands on the implementation of the interim constitiution concerning (loose) federalism, a referendum to determine the political identity of the city of Kirkuk, the melding of the Kurdish paramilitary, the Peshmergas, into the Iraqi army, sharing the Kirkuk petroleum proceeds [between province and center]. At the same time, the Kurds continue to refuse to see Iraq partitioned on a religious basis or an Iraq transformed into a theocracy. He added, "We refuse to postpone the Kirkuk issue until a later stage, and which point promises may be broken." (United Iraqi Alliance prime ministerial candidate has urged that the disposition of Iraq be dealt with by future, more permanent elected governments after a constitution has been drafted.)

posted by Juan @ 3/5/2005 06:30:00 AM

Achcar: Allawi`s Offensive

Gilbert Achcar writes by email:



Allawi`s offensive which I described in my previous email involved a phone talk yesterday with George W. Bush, described as follows by the WH spokesperson:


----------------------------------------------
Press Briefing by Scott McClellan [excerpt]

The White House March 3, 2005

Q When the President talked with Allawi this morning, you said that they talked about Iran possibly influencing the change of government. Is there new information that Iran is trying to intervene or interfere in the process?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, leaders of the interim government in Iraq have expressed concerns that Iran is trying to influence the shape of the transitional government. We take those concerns very seriously. That`s why you`re hearing not only us, but leaders in Iraq saying to Iran, stop trying to influence internal politics in Iraq. It`s for the Iraqi people to decide who their leaders are. They elected their transitional government; they were the ones who showed the determination and courage to defy the terrorists and go to the polls in large numbers and elect representatives to serve as they transition to democracy. And those representatives are the ones that should be choosing the leadership of that national assembly. And that`s the message that we were sending -- this should be an Iraqi process.

Q Scott, can you be more specific on how they`re trying to influence?

MR. McCLELLAN: No. These are concerns that have been expressed by the leaders in Iraq. You might want to ask them for some more details, if they can share those with you. But we know that they are continuing to meddle in Iraq`s internal political process. And Iran made some commitments not to do that; they made a commitment to play a constructive role in helping the Iraqi people build a free and peaceful and democratic future.

--------------------------------------------



Obviously, Allawi`s gambit (I`m borrowing here the title that Juan Cole aptly put on his excerpt from my last dispatch) involves primarily an effort to "convince" the Kurdish Alliance to enter into a bloc with him. His phone talk with Bush dealt also very probably with the exercise of Washington`s "persuasive" power on the Kurds.

The Kurdish Alliance is enjoying greatly this state of affairs, in which its share of the seats in the National Assembly puts it in a strategic position due to Bremer`s rule of 2/3 for key decisions. They are putting forward their own conditions for a deal with either the UIA or Allawi. These are: legalizing their Peshmerga militias to be put on the payroll of the state; including the town and oil-area of Kirkuk in the Kurdish Region (3 provinces) and reverting their Arabization enforced by the Baathist regime; maintaining the Bremer-designed 2/3 rule and veto right for a minimum of 3 provinces. These are quite legitimate conditions from the angle of the right of the Kurdish people to self-determination.

The paradox is that Allawi`s line of recuperating the Baathists apparatuses (a spokesperson of his group stated yesterday that they insisted in their talks with the UIA on "carrying on the policy of reinstating the dissolved Iraqi Army in the ranks of the armed forces") is more conflictuous with these Kurdish demands than the Shia parties are. The UIA has some obvious and great difficulty accepting them, but less than Arab Sunnis (there are some people in the UIA, Chalabi one of them, who advocated a federal Iraq with three autonomous regions -- North, Center and South -- whereby Southern Shias could take full advantage of the resources of their region which includes most of Iraqi oil reserves, after having been deprived for so long).

The main problem for the UIA is that they don`t want to alienate the Sunnis, having been keen until now on preventing any deterioration of the situation in a sectarian direction -- for instance, by refraining from retaliating to the murderous sectarian attacks they have suffered.

It is probably with regard to this consideration that a delegation of the Kurdish Alliance visited yesterday the Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS) -- the most popular religious-political force among Arab Sunnis, believed to have a major influence on the legitimate national armed resistance. The AMS stated at the end of the meeting that they stick to the seven conditions put forward by the February 15 meeting of the "Anti-Occupation Patriotic Forces," involving the AMS with representatives of Moqtada al-Sadr`s Current, and other forces (see my comment on the importance of this Front in "Whither Iraq?," my last article posted on ZNet).

I have translated news about the Feb 15 meeting in a previous dispatch, but since the AMS referred to it again, I searched for its statement and found it in Arabic. Since I am not sure it was ever translated into English, I am enclosing below my translation.

Note that this alliance does not only involve Muslim forces, but also ideologically secular and left-wing forces, and even women groups -- a good sign undoubtedly, though one should not fall into some naive enthusiasm, especially in light of the real balance of forces overwhelmingly in favor of the religious-political forces. Moreover, the heavy Arab nationalist (anti-Kurdish) bias of this statement, signed by several Arab nationalist groups including former Baathists, is worrying. Narrow-minded Arab nationalism has been historically one of the major diseases of Arab anti-imperialism, and the support to the right of the Kurdish people to self-determination was and remains one of the touchstones (another obvious one being the attitude toward women`s rights and their implementation) of truly emancipatory politics in the region. To be sure, any support by the Kurdish Alliance to Washington`s plans could only aggravate this tragic problem.



Gilbert Achcar


-----------------------------------------

STATEMENT OF THE ANTI-OCCUPATION PATRIOTIC FORCES



In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate



The anti-occupation Iraqi patriotic forces met in Um al-Qura Mosque on February 15, 2005 to discuss the present situation and its implications on all levels. The participants discussed proposals aiming at restoring Iraq`s full independence, unity and sovereignty. The participant forces proclaim that they deal with the national reconciliation, which they were the first to call for since the beginning of the occupation, and with the writing of the constitution, on the basis of what follows:

1) A clear, precise, public, and binding under international guarantees, timetable for the withdrawal of the occupation troops from Iraq in all their aspects and forms.

2) Abolition of the principle of repartition according to sectarian, racial or ethnic lines, and adoption of the principle of citizenship and equality in rights and duties in front of the law.

3) Acknowledgement of the principle of the right of the Iraqi people to reject occupation; recognition of the Iraqi resistance and its legitimate right to defend its country and its resources; rejection of terrorism which takes aim at innocent Iraqis, facilities and institutions of public utility, and places of worship -- mosques, husseiniyyat [Shia religious centers], churches and all holy places.

4) Since the elections that took place lacked legitimacy due to the fact that they were based on the Administrative Law [the Bremer-designed TAL, contested by Sistani himself], lacked legal and security conditions, were boycotted by a large number of people and rigged, the administration that will result from these elections does not have the right to conclude any agreement or treaty infringing on Iraq`s sovereignty, the unity of its people, its land and its economy, and the preservation of its riches.

5) Adoption of democracy and election as the only option for the transfer of power, and the preparation of conditions and laws allowing the political process to take place in honest and transparent conditions, under neutral international supervision.

6) Affirmation of the patriotic, Arab and Islamic identity of Iraq, and firm opposition to all positions that might lead to the loss of this identity.

7) Liberation of all prisoners and detainees in the jails of the occupation and the provisional government, in particular the women; cessation of the continuous search operations and violation of human rights in all Iraqi provinces; demanding the reconstruction of destroyed cities and payment of just and fair reparations to their inhabitants.

The participant forces call on the other patriotic forces that agree with them on these principles to sign this statement as a service to our patriotic cause and for the sake of regrouping all Iraqi patriotic forces and unifying their position.



The Anti-Occupation Patriotic Forces

6 Muharram 1426 / 15 February 2005



Signatories: 1-al-Sadr`s Current; 2-The al-Khalesiyya [Shia] School; 3-Association of Muslim Scholars; 4-Patriotic Front for the Liberation of Iraq [umbrella organization of several groups, predominantly Arab nationalists, including former Baathists]; 5-Iraqi Patriotic Founding Congress; 6-Popular Council for Culture and Arts; 7-Nasserite Vanguard Party; 8-Council of Woman`s Will; 9-People`s Unity Party [Communist]; 10-Movement of the Arab Nationalist Current; 11-Party of Reform, Justice and Democracy;12-United Iraq Party; 13-Islamic Bloc; 14-Nationalist Democratic Party; 15-United Patriotic Movement; 16-Regroupment for Iraq; 17-Progressive Union of Iraqi Students; 18-Arab Regroupment in Kirkuk; 19-Popular Nationalist Party; 20-Arab Socialist Movement (Patriotic Command); 21-Union of republic`s Women; + seven individual personalities.



posted by Juan @ 3/5/2005 06:11:00 AM

US-Engineered Lebanese Elections of 1957

Josh Buermann of Flagrancy to Reason has dug up a printed source for the allegation I reported from a former USG official, that the CIA engineered the 1957 Lebanese elections (and so helped to provoke the mini-civil war of 1958). He writes:



From the March 31st, 1997 New York Times:

In Lebanon in 1957, the CIA supported Christian parties with U.S. government money and donations by American oil companies that wanted to insure a friendly government in Lebanon, a pivotal Middle Eastern country.

Wilbur Crane Eveland, a CIA officer, later described driving his gold and white DeSoto onto the grounds of President Camille Chamoun`s residence in Beirut and delivering political payoffs.

"Throughout the elections, I traveled regularly to the presidential palace with a briefcase full of Lebanese pounds, then returned late at night to the embassy with an empty twin case" to be replenished with CIA money, Eveland wrote in "Ropes of Sand" in 1980, a history of American policy failures in the Middle East.

posted by Juan @ [url3/5/2005 06:03:00 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/03/us-engineered-lebanese-elections-of.html[/url]

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Helen Thomas ist in etwa sowas wie die Gräfin Dönhoff der US-Presse.

03/05/2005
Journalist recalls nearly 45 years as White House correspondent
Robert Cristo , The Record
http://www.troyrecord.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=14087628&BRD=…

LOUDONVILLE - For 57 years former White House reporter Helen Thomas had a front row seat to history unfolding before her eyes, but she said the current administration is making her wish she was blind.

Thomas, who spoke at Siena College`s First Woman President symposium Friday, also had plenty to say about serving as a White House correspondent for United Press International. Not all of it was encouraging.
"This president (Bush) doesn`t think he has to answer any questions. ... He even says (during press conferences) this is scripted," bemoaned Thomas, 83, who gave up her reporter job to become a syndicated columnist two years ago and routinely trashes Bush on economic and military policy in her columns.
"He stopped taking questions from me," she added with a laugh.
She dubbed the war in Iraq "spreading democracy at gunpoint," calls Bush "the worst" president in American history, and blames Congress for not standing up to Bush on many issues along with the media for failing to ask the tough questions she never shied away from.
"Since September 11 (2001 terrorist attacks), reporters have been afraid to ask (tough) questions because they were afraid to be called un-American or unpatriotic, but (even when they do) the president doesn`t answer them anyway," said Thomas, who added she believes reporters are beginning to get back to asking more hard-hitting questions.
While Bush might be her least favorite leader, Thomas had the most praise for President John F. Kennedy, the first commander in chief she covered.
It was during Thomas` first White House assignment that she began closing presidential press conferences with, "Thank you, Mr. President," a tradition that lasted up until the current administration`s reign.
"Kennedy was the most inspirational president. ... You always got the feeling with him that he knew he was living on borrowed time," said Thomas. "He gave people hope and that`s something that`s missing today."
Thomas joked a little about a Kennedy press conference she attended where he was talking to astronauts about going to the moon.
"He said to the astronauts `Do you think we could land on the moon?` and they said `sure,` but after he left (they said) they thought he was crazy," said Thomas, who pointed out that only seven years after Kennedy`s assassination the first man did in fact land on the moon.
Thomas also was present at Kennedy`s funeral the moment of his son John F. Kennedy Jr.`s, poignant salute that illustrated the nation`s feelings of pain and loss.
Thomas was also the only female print journalist to travel with then President Richard Nixon to China and has also traveled around the globe several times with presidents Ford, Carter, Reagan, Clinton and both Bushes.
As the longest tenured White House correspondent, she also wanted people to know that there is no truth to the myth that the media is softer on a Democratic president than a Republican.
"I`ve never seen it that way. ... Do you really think the press was easy on (President) Clinton during (the) Monica Lewinsky (scandal)?" asked Thomas, who contends that Clinton "tarnished" the Oval Office but was the complete opposite of Bush when it came to answering questions.
"Clinton would answer any question you asked. ... He never flinched," she said.
She said she was appalled at how it was recently revealed that someone who wasn`t even a real reporter (Jeff Gannon) was allowed a coveted spot in the White House press corps and called upon by the Bush administration to ask "softball" questions.
"He didn`t even have a (Capital) Hill pass or represented a credible, legitimate agency, but he was let in because he was considered friendly (to the Bush) administration," quipped Thomas.
She also called it despicable that the Department of Education paid a radio talk show host $240,000 to promote Bush`s No Child Left Behind Act, and leaders from Bush`s marriage initiative paid a syndicated columnist $10,000 to push their views.
"That`s sad and reprehensible to see an administration pay off outsiders, but at least such practices have a way of getting exposed," she said.
On what makes a good president, Thomas said they should respect the honor and influence that comes with being president, and they use that power to simply "do the right thing."
"Our lives and futures are in the president`s hands," she said. "Great presidents don`t have to be macho, just great human beings."
Thomas is listed in the World Almanac as one of the 25 most influential women in America.

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The Independent
After what I’ve been through, it’s no wonder I have a fear of flying
Saturday, 5th March 2005, by Robert Fisk
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/story.jsp?story=616…


I have to employ my old friend, the suspension of disbelief, to avoid the question about why God never gave us wings

’m writing this in that strange hiatus known to all foreign correspondents. My plane never took off for Paris - en route to Beirut - because snow closed down Charles de Gaulle airport. It happens to all of us. When we should be heading to war or interviewing the participants of velvet, orange or cedar revolutions, we are queuing for the return of our checked baggage and taking the taxi home because that staple of our existence - the sine qua non of all travel, the most technologically sophisticated creature we will ever aspire to touch - can’t land in ice. Or it doesn’t have Cat-3 landing capacity. Or maybe the reverse thrust of the Airbus A-320-400 series can’t cope with the weather.

Yes, we journos fly so much that we pick up huge amounts of highly detailed and utterly useless information about aircraft. Want to know about the torque capability of a Bell Augusta helicopter, the avionics of a Boeing 777, the seat configuration of the MD-111? Well, I’m your man. Along with heaps of appalling knowledge about injuries - I will not entertain you with the details of sucking wounds and emergency tracheotomies - reporters probably know more about aircraft than many of the cabin crews.

I’m sure this applies to the old Afghan Ariana airlines jets when they were flying under the Taliban. Back in 1997, I was on my way to Afghanistan - to see Osama bin Laden, no less - and could only find a flight to Jalalabad from the old Trucial state of Sharjah, a home for pariah aircraft like the old Boeing 727 that was waiting for me on the runway.

On boarding, however, I found that only the first row of seats remained in place. The rest of the aircraft was taken up by large wooden boxes containing "mechanical imports", according to the crew, each heavy box chained to the floor of the plane. Even more trouble was the forward lavatory. For only minutes after take-off, the door opened of its own accord and a dark tide of sewage slowly washed over our shoes and then surged down the cabin.

I didn’t feel like an in-flight meal. I was sitting next to two Afghans, the second of whom - vastly bearded to abide by the Taliban’s tonsorial rules - was dressed only in jeans and open-necked shirt and who kept glaring at me while squeezing and resqueezing a large and very dirty oil rag in his left hand.

Over Kandahar, we flew into heavy turbulence, the plane bucking about, the chains clanking as the wooden boxes tried to move across the cabin, the tide of sewage revisiting us from the forward lavatory. It was at this point that the person arrived at my seat.

"Mr Fisk, you are our only passenger and you have no need to worry about your safety," he said. "You see, you have the honour to be sitting" - and here he pointed at the bearded, hostile figure to my left - "next to our senior flight engineer."

Ah, for the pleasures of Air France. This was the airline which once calculated that - if I included all my transatlantic lecture trips, my aerial treks for The Independent and a host of other appointments around the world - I travel more frequently than every Air France crew member.

This also accounts for the fact that I almost always know some of the crew when I’m flying to Los Angeles or New York - and why, not long ago, one of their flight attendants met me with the sort of greeting that gives journalists a bad name. "Ah, Monsieur Fisk, après le décollage, c’est un gin-tonic, oui?" Oh oui indeed dear reader, for I have to explain at once that I am frightened of flying.

It began when I endured a crash landing at Tehran airport just after the Islamic revolution. The front wheel failed to emerge from its pod before landing - for aerobuffs, it was a Boeing 737, but Iran was now under UN sanctions - and the plane came down on grass with the biggest bang I have ever heard in my life. No lives were lost. But almost immediately afterwards, the fuselage filled with thick clouds of blue smoke, which - I realised after a few seconds - was every terrified passenger lighting cigarettes at the same moment. I returned to Lebanon with about the worst case of flying fear in the history of the world.

Fortunately, I knew every pilot then working for Lebanon’s Middle East Airlines - they were flying the mighty old 707s in those civil war days - and one of them immediately told me to turn up next morning for a series of Boeing test flights out of Beirut airport in stormy weather. He sat me down behind his pilot seat on the flight deck, poured me a huge glass of champagne, strapped earphones on to my head and took off into the kind of turbulence seen only in the movie The Day After Tomorrow.

He flew the empty airliner over the desolate, frothing Mediterranean, turned around, landed on runway 1-18, took off again into the storm, landed and went on and on - each take-off accompanied by another glass of champagne - until, after 14 take-offs and landings, I was giggling like a baby. I never lost my fear of flying - but I no longer believed I would die every time I boarded a plane.

Deep down, of course, like almost everyone I know, I don’t believe in powered flight. I simply do not accept that it is natural to tie oneself to a seat in a metal tube and hurl oneself into the sky at 500 miles per hour for seven hours, with or without gin and tonic. And I have come to realise that I employ my old friend, the willing suspension of disbelief, to avoid the question about why God never gave us wings.

Maybe this is why we prefer to regard airliners as something other than what they are. Thus Germans treat planes as offices; the French see them as a cordon bleu experience, the British as flying pubs.

I reached my cloud nine in an Iranian helicopter gunship during the Iran-Iraq war. It was crammed with 19 mullahs and journalists, and took off through a gun line of flashing 155mm artillery, wrapped in dust and sand, flying at full speed only two feet above the Shatt al-Arab river towards the newly occupied Iraqi-Fao peninsula.

Gerry Labelle of AP was with me on this manic flight and I think that we both gave up the idea of surviving when we saw the shell fire over Fao. We jumped out of the chopper into a heaving sea of mud and body parts, the ground quaking with incoming shells, taking cover beside a headless Iraqi soldier.

Later, waiting amid the mire for the helicopter back to safety, the sight of that little mosquito-like machine returning to rescue us was seventh heaven. We clambered aboard - I remember another colleague booting a mullah off the machine - and shot out across the river and between the palm groves like a scene from Apocalypse Now. Labelle and I sat hunched on the floor, watching the palm branches flick past us, the dappled water speeding beneath our feet, the machine bucking and scything through the sweltering heat.

And that, I think, is the moment I relaxed. If we could get through this, we could live through anything. And so our helicopter became our world, and we believed, just for a few minutes, that we were immortal. And there were no gin and tonics in Iran.

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Saturday, March 05, 2005
War News for Saturday, March 5, 2005
http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring ‘em on: Four US soldiers killed fighting in al Anbar province.

Bring ‘em on: Seven insurgents killed by Iraqi civilians near Wihda.

Bring ‘em on: Bulgarian soldier killed in ambush near Diwaniyah.

Bring ‘em on: Five Iraqi soldiers killed in mortar attack near Duluiyah.

Bring ‘em on: US convoy ambushed by roadside bomb in Mosul.

Bring ‘em on: One Iraqi soldier killed, three wounded by roadside bomb near Tikrit.

Bring ‘em on: Four Iraqis wounded by motorcycle bomb in Baghdad.

Insurgents release Italian journalist in Baghdad; US troops fire on her car, wounding her and killing Italian intelligence officer.

Daytime curfew imposed in Samarra.

Detainees. “Relatives of the thousands of Iraqis in American-run detention centres in Iraq are protesting at overcrowding. Pre-election sweeps have swollen the prison population to breaking point, they say. At Abu Ghraib prison, where eight Americans were charged last year with abusing detainees, more than 3,100 are interned. US officials admit that their ‘ideal limit’ for the facility is 2,500.

Rule of law. “An Army intelligence sergeant who accused fellow soldiers in Samarra, Iraq, of abusing detainees in 2003 was in turn accused by his commander of being delusional and ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation in Germany, despite a military psychiatrist`s initial judgment that the man was stable, according to internal Army records released yesterday. The soldier had angered his commander by urging the unit`s redeployment from the military base to prevent what the soldier feared would be the death of one or more detainees under interrogation, according to the documents. He told his commander three members of the counterintelligence team had hit detainees, pulled their hair, tried to asphyxiate them and staged mock executions with pistols pointed at the detainees` heads….Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, asked about detainee abuse yesterday on CNN`s ‘Wolf Blitzer Reports,’ said he was not surprised. Gonzales said that he presumed the military used lawful interrogation techniques but that ‘sometimes people do things that they shouldn`t do. People are imperfect . . . and so the fact that abuses occur, they`re unfortunate but I`m not sure that they should be viewed as surprising.’” Of course Abu Gonzales wouldn’t be surprised American soldiers are torturing detainees since he provided the legal opinion that torture isn’t torture.

Reconstruction. “Hundreds of new projects have begun in recent weeks and $3.6 billion of $18.4 billion Congress provided in November 2003 has been spent so far - up from $1.7 billion four months ago, the officials said. But much of the money has gone to pay for security. Insurgents have frequently sabotaged the country`s oil pipelines, electric power plants and water facilities. They also have kidnapped and killed contractors working on reconstruction. Consequently, of the $3.6 billion spent, ‘the single largest component’ has gone for "security and law enforcement," said William Taylor, director of the Iraq Reconstruction Management Office. Such costs include ‘personal security details for contractors’ on projects, ‘the cost of hard (armored) cars, of concertina wire around bases’ and other protective measures, he said.”

Calling Jonah Goldberg. “When Ann Swann`s twin sons were deployed to Iraq with the Marine Corps Reserve last year, she fired off a letter to President Bush. Her eldest son already was serving there with the Army Reserve, she explained, and she wanted one of her boys brought home. ‘This letter is from a concerned mother,’ wrote Swann, 53, principal of Gladys Noon Spellman Elementary in Prince George`s County. ‘I request that if at all possible, you conference with me to discuss the reason that all three of my sons (my only family left) are serving in Iraq.’ What Swann discovered since sending her letter in the fall has surprised her. The Department of Defense has no prohibition on sending every child in a family into combat -- even in the same unit at the same location. The only way to get her sons back early would be if one were killed, captured, maimed or missing.”

Calling Ben Shapiro. “The Army’s wartime recruiting challenge is aggravated by a sharp drop in black enlistments over the last four years, which internal Army and Defense Department polls trace to an unpopular war in Iraq and concerns among blacks with Bush administration policies. The Army is straining to meet recruiting goals in part because the number of black volunteers has fallen 41 percent — from 23.5 percent of recruits in fiscal 2000 down steadily to 13.9 percent in the first four months of fiscal 2005.”

Fisher House. As more troops return from war zones needing long-term medical care, the Fisher House Foundation has shifted its focus on where to build houses that accommodate the wounded and their visiting families, officials said. ‘We have made supporting servicemen and women wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan, and their families, our No. 1 priority … which includes building Fisher Houses at medical centers where they’re going to be receiving their long-term care,’ said Jim Weiskopf, foundation spokesman. The nonprofit foundation founded in 1990 by philanthropists Zachary and Elizabeth Fisher originally built houses only at military treatment facilities. Ten years ago, it expanded and built its first Department of Veterans Affairs facility house in Albany, N.Y. There now are six VA Fisher Houses, and a seventh near completion.”

Dead tiger media. “Now enter stage left (or right) the American Society of Newspaper Editors, represented by general counsel Goldberg. Evidently bent out of shape because Judge Quarles cited Fisher`s column three times to illustrate that the Sun was not speaking for all media, Goldberg wrote last Saturday that Fisher had ‘done a disservice to his reporting brethren’ by ‘publicly’ stating his views. Acknowledging Fisher`s right to state his beliefs, Goldberg declared, incredibly, that ‘the responsibility that accompanies that right mitigates against stating them in this situation.’ This from the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Now who`s trying to stifle the free flow of information to the public?”

Commentary

Editorial: “Military veterans are crying foul over President Bush`s budget proposals to cut spending on their health care. The budget must not be balanced ‘on the backs of veterans,’ wrote Stephen P. Condon, the chairman of the Air Force Association, in a recent letter to The Times, a point that was echoed by other veterans at Congressional hearings last month. We agree with the veterans - but for somewhat different reasons than they have put forth. The veterans` goal is to block the president`s attempt to impose new hospital fees, higher prescription co-payments and other spending constraints - all of which would add up to an estimated 16 percent reduction in veterans` benefits in 2010. (The estimate is from the nonprofit Center on Budget and Policy Priorities because the administration, breaking with 16 years of budget tradition, did not provide five-year projections for specific programs.) But if veterans succeed in preserving only their own benefits, they will have been outfoxed by the administration.”

Editorial: “Despite this shocking record, Congress has abdicated its responsibility to oversee the agency and prevent it from violating fundamental American standards of decency. The Republican chairmen of the Senate and House intelligence committees, Sen. Pat Roberts (Kan.) and Rep. Peter Hoekstra (Mich.), have been resisting Democratic requests for an investigation of the CIA`s handling of its secret detainees. Such an investigation need not be a witch hunt or compromise the handling of senior al Qaeda prisoners. On the contrary, it should form the basis for belated action by Congress to set legal standards for the detention of all foreign prisoners by the United States in keeping with international treaties and human rights laws. In the absence of such standards, the Bush administration has allowed abuses that have tarnished the image of the United States around the world and impeded its ability to fight Islamic extremism. The time to correct the CIA`s excesses is long overdue.”

Editorial: “Despite the appalling toll, applicants keep showing up at police stations around the country to apply for duty. And despite the danger, thousands of black-clad Iraqis demonstrated outside the medical clinic in Hillah the day after the bombing, protesting the violence. It`s time Iraq`s government and U.S. forces insisted on better protection for these brave Iraqis willing to serve their country. Concrete barriers used so effectively to safeguard voters in the country`s recent elections need to be used at police headquarters, recruiting stations and wherever large numbers of police or guard units have to gather. Convoys and checkpoints need greater protection. U.S. success is dependent on Iraq training enough of its own citizens to provide security. Their protection must be a top priority.”

Casualty Reports

Local story: Two New York Guardsmen killed in Iraq.

Local story: Iowa Guardsman dies from wounds received in Iraq.
# posted by yankeedoodle : 5:56 AM
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Latest Fatality: Mar 04, 2005
März05: 12

Weitere Meldungen aus dem Irak:
http://icasualties.org/oif/

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Solange die Menschen in den Regionen wie Menschen zweiter Klasse behandelt werden, klingen die Phrasen über Demokratisierung sehr verlogen.

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In Iraq, two forces - modernizing and reactionary - are trying to benefit from the collapse of the old order.
The same dynamic is at work throughout the Middle East.
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March 6, 2005
What`s in It for America?
By ROGER COHEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/06/weekinreview/06roger.html?…

IN the Middle East, an old order is weakening - that of authoritarian, repressive states walled off from modernity. A new order is rising, with democracy stirring in countries from Iraq to Egypt, mass demonstrations pushing out Syrian troops from Lebanon and a Palestinian leader apparently committing himself to an open political system. But will this emergent democratic current, if consolidated, make America safer?

President George W. Bush has argued that America`s ideals are now synonymous with its interests; the spread of freedom will drain the frustration and rage on which terrorism feeds. The argument is beautiful in its simplicity. But it is precisely in democratic Europe that Mohammed Atta, a mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, lived for about a decade, and it is from Britain, scarcely a stranger to liberty, that Richard Reid, the would-be shoe bomber of American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris to Miami, hailed. Democracy can open the way for many things including illiberal opinion.

Turkey, long a pliant ally under military or military-backed rule, has proved more restive under the government of a democratically elected moderate Islamic party, forcing the United States to revise its Iraq invasion plans by denying access to American troops. A fully democratic and independent Lebanon would presumably reflect the fact that many Lebanese think Hezbollah, viewed as a terrorist organization in Washington but not in Paris, is a force for good, helping the needy and resisting Israel.

For a long time, American policy toward the Middle East was guided precisely by such fears: democracy could be, and likely would be, dangerous. A blind eye was turned to authoritarianism because it kept the shop in order, quieted the Arab street and served American interests. But then the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, showed how treacherous the status quo could be.

"The traditional United States approach for the past half-century ignored what went on inside Middle Eastern societies so long as they cooperated on energy, security and diplomacy," said Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations. "The president has now rejected that. The question is: can he deliver an orderly transition?"

That question will likely not be answered for several years. But what is clear already is that a region long marked by inertia is in flux. Events from Saudi Arabia to Syria suggest that the invasion of Iraq and the election there have indeed had a catalytic effect, opening up debate, tearing down walls. Democracy is getting a toehold.

But terrorism remains a mystery. Nobody knows exactly what leads a young Muslim to blow himself up in the name of a holy war against the West. As Walter Laqueur, the historian specializing in political violence, has observed, "There can be no final victory in the fight against terrorism, for terrorism (rather than full-scale war) is the contemporary manifestation of conflict, and conflict will not disappear from earth."

In other words, democracy is no panacea, but nor is anything else. Terrorism will not crumble like Communism or Fascism, defeated by containment or force of arms or economic measures or the ballot box. Indeed, it is possible the greater proximity of Western ideas and practices may only redouble the jihadist urge, which has been driven in part by the desire to re-create an infidel-free caliphate. But it is also possible that a more open system may cool apocalyptic urges in the Middle East as it has elsewhere.

"Democratic governments in the Middle East are going to be much more difficult for the United States to handle because there will be more direct expression of sentiment, much of it hostile," said Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at Columbia University. "But in the end it will be healthier and, yes, democracy could provide an outlet for the frustration that drives people to jihadism."

For many years, Islamism seemed the only such outlet. In varying degrees, the Iranian revolution, jihadist successes in Afghanistan, and the anti-Western teachings of men like the executed Egyptian writer Sayyid Qutb contributed to this vogue. So, too, did the hypocrisy of the West in making it clear that democracy was not for countries like Egypt or Saudi Arabia or Algeria, where a democratic election that seemed about to usher Islamists to power was quashed in 1991.

But in both the West and the Middle East, the currents that produced this drift seem to be ebbing. The Algerian experience was scarcely edifying; it ushered in a period of terrible conflict. Turkey may be harder to handle as a democracy, but it has scarcely ceased to be an ally. The Bush administration has concluded that Middle Eastern democracy is preferable, however uncomfortable it may prove.

Among Muslims, too, the forces prodding a rethinking are significant. The Afghan model for a fundamentalist Islamic society has been demolished. The fervor of the Iranian revolution has faded. The invasion of Iraq has brought into the Arab heartland a model - still fragile and bitterly contested - of a liberal and democratic society. Democracy is no longer an abstraction, a risible plaything selectively dangled by Western powers with interests more compelling than ideals. It is right there, on the doorstep, or on the screen in the living room.

"The discourse is changing in the Arab world," said Patrick Clawson, the deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "If you want to adopt a radical cause, Islamism is no longer the only answer. You can go join those 500 demonstrators for democracy surrounded by 3,000 police in the streets of Cairo."

Of course, if you`re angry enough, you can also blow up kids at a Tel Aviv discothèque, or drive an explosives-laden car into police recruits in Iraq, or kill a judge preparing to conduct the trials of Saddam Hussein`s henchmen. There are plenty of Arabs still ready to do this in the service of plenty of causes: fanatical Islamic fundamentalism, anti-imperial nationalism, anti-Zionism or simply the defense of threatened privilege.

The argument that the American invasion of Iraq has boosted recruitment for Al Qaeda and other jihadist groups, increased Muslim hatred of the West, injected a dangerous instability into a turbulent region, and given suicide bombers new cause for their zeal cannot be ignored. The push for democracy through force or arms and unbending rhetoric may only have increased the danger, at least in the short term.

"The barrier of fear is beginning to break," said Murhaf Jouejati, the director of Middle Eastern studies at George Washington University. "President Bush has shaken the status quo, shaken the apathy." But he added: "I do not think the ideology of Al Qaeda is fading or weakening for the moment. On the contrary, it is reacting to, and in some ways benefiting from, Western penetration. You have two contradictory forces; Islamic fundamentalism is not yet on the retreat."

In Baghdad, the epicenter of the ideological struggle, the theater that now draws every global current of anti-American fanaticism, the clash of the two forces - modernizing and reactionary - that are trying to benefit from the collapse of the old Middle Eastern order is intense.

When electricity is cut again, or when your car pivots at high speed because a hooded gunman has been spotted, or when fires flicker in empty streets inhabited only by skittering trash, or when not even children will look you in the eye, this whole American-led effort to transform a country and a region appears doomed.

But unexpected voices rise from the chaos. "People are beginning to feel their own authority, to feel they can create things for themselves, which is the beginning of democracy," said Humam Hamoudi, a prominent Shiite in Iraq and a leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution.

Such sentiment may be significant: the promise of paradise in another life has surely proved persuasive to the suicide-bomber jihadist in part because closed societies made any change in this life seem out of reach.

The West has tried cold-war containment in the Middle East, living with conflict on a regional scale. It has tried the quiet or sometimes flagrant hypocrisy that characterized the response to the 1991 Algerian election or the decision to let 4,000 Saudi princes do what they like. What has not been tried is the proposition now being tested: that the Middle East is not some strange exception, but will, as Europe and the Americas have, find in democracy a cause for peace.

"I think the United States has shifted the momentum in its favor," said Paul Berman, the author of "Terror and Liberalism." "The jihadists` utopia in Afghanistan has been overthrown. We have given democratic ideas a chance in Iraq, although I think we did it badly. It was never Western liberals who were going to defeat these ideologues. It was the liberals of the Muslim and Arab world, and they are stronger today."

A couple of months ago, I sat in a Gaza office with a beautiful view of the Mediterranean listening to one such liberal, a Palestinian psychologist, Dr. Eyad Serraj, explain the culture of martyrdom; explain how shame is transposed into honor through self-sacrifice and defeat is conquered by assuming "the ultimate power, the power to kill"; explain how martyrs were on the level of prophets and so could not be questioned "although their acts are devastating to us politically."

It was this culture that Yasir Arafat encouraged, a culture of hopelessness, of the victim, of victory only in death. In so doing, he was representative of his region. He was a dictator who, like Saddam Hussein, offered only one escape: another world.

"Arafat was untouchable," said Mr. Serraj. "But Mahmoud Abbas is a human being like the rest of us. He`s bringing us back to reality, beyond rhetoric and slogans. I hope we will now get realism and pragmatism."

Democracy, the kind Mr. Abbas is promoting as the Palestinians` new president, is all about realism and pragmatism. That is what Iraqis are finding now as they try to form a government. Their experience may just be infectious and make America safer. At least it looks that way for now.

Roger Cohen writes the "Globalist" column for The International Herald Tribune.

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EuroNews
Italian hostage describes shooting ordeal
Saturday, 5th March 2005,
http://www.euronews.net/
Teile der Geschichte in deutsch:
http://www.euronews.net/create_html.php?lng=3&page=accueil_i…

Italian hostage describes shooting ordeal

SHE is home at last, after a month in captivity in Iraq.

But it was a weak and injured Giuliana Sgrena that was helped from the plane that brought her back to Italian soil.

This was not how it was supposed to have been.

The award-winning war reporter had been shot by US forces who mistakenly fired at the car taking her to Baghdad Airport.

A secret service agent died, apparently shielding her from the bullets. Nicola Calipari had helped negotiate her release.Two of his colleagues were injured.

It is unclear whether a ransom was paid for the liberation of the journalist who was kidnapped in the Iraqi capital at the start of February.

Such measures are believed to have been sanctioned in the past by Italian leader Silvio Berlusconi.

Sgrena, who works for the Communist daily Il Manifesto, was taken to a military hospital in Rome to be treated for shoulder injuries.

And it is there that she was reached by telephone to give her first reaction to the tragic chain of events.

"I am really tired after everything that has happened in the last 24 hours," she said, describing what she called a "rain of fire" that hit the car.

Now telling her story to investigators, Sgrena said she was talking to the security agent when he was shot dead. "Suddenly he leaned on me," she said, "probably to protect me and then he collapsed."

Shooting puts pressure on US-Italian relations

What happened on the road leading to Baghdad Airport has caused the biggest falling out between the United States and its staunch ally Italy in years. But uncovering the truth of what went wrong may prove difficult with two distinct versions of events.

The Americans say the car carrying Giuliana Sgrena was speeding and that forces fired only after it ignored requests to stop at a checkpoint.

The reporter’s partner however tells a different story.

Pier Scolari believes the shooting was no mistake, describing the actions of US forces as an ambush.

"The car had already passed other American checkpoints," he said.

"Some 300-400 bullets hit the vehicle, killing Nicola Calipari who was trying to protect Giuliana."

He says it all happened while those under fire were talking via satellite phone to the Italian government in Rome.

"The US soldiers surrounded the car and prevented anyone going near it," he added.

"They also turned off the phones"

According to Pier Scolari Giuliana Sgrena had information that meant the Americans did not want her to make it out alive.

Such accusations are far from the official Italian stance on the matter.

Nonetheless the country’s president is among those demanding answers.

"Like all Italians, I am waiting for the United States to clear up this painful and tragic episode," Carlo Azeglio Ciampi told reporters.

The US ambassador in Italy, Mel Sembler, has pledged to shed light on what happened. "We are working with our Italian allies as we fully investigate the circumstances of this tragedy," he said.

Italy’s Foreign Minister meanwhile said he hoped the incident would not see a rise in anti-American feeling.

Italy stunned at Iraq shooting

How could such a positive event turn into a tragedy? That is the question the whole of Italy is asking after a security guard who helped secure the release of a kidnapped journalist was mistakenly fired upon by US forces.

In Giuliana Sgrena’s newspaper Il Manifesto the front-page cartoonist originally drew a man hugging a dove.

This was later replaced with this image of the bird in a pool of blood. Today’s Italian press pays tribute to the security agent shot dead by the US military.

Nicola Calipari is described as a hero who died while acting as a human shield. On the streets of Rome, public opinion reflected feelings of shock, sadness and anger.

."It is a shame. It spoiled the party," said one man.

"I suspect they did it on purpose because she was a left-wing anti-American journalist," said another, talking about the US soldiers who fired.

A woman said that she was already against the war and that the latest incident only makes it worse.

Nicola Calipari’s killing is the most serious diplomatic incident between Rome and Washington since a US Marine jet killed 20 people when it sheared the cables of a ski-lift while on a low-flying exercise in northern Italy in 1998.

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March 6, 2005
Rule Change Lets C.I.A. Freely Send Suspects Abroad to Jails
By DOUGLAS JEHL and DAVID JOHNSTON
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/06/politics/06intel.html

WASHINGTON, March 5 - The Bush administration`s secret program to transfer suspected terrorists to foreign countries for interrogation has been carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency under broad authority that has allowed it to act without case-by-case approval from the White House or the State or Justice Departments, according to current and former government officials.

The unusually expansive authority for the C.I.A. to operate independently was provided by the White House under a still-classified directive signed by President Bush within days of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the officials said.

The process, known as rendition, has been central in the government`s efforts to disrupt terrorism, but has been bitterly criticized by human rights groups on grounds that the practice has violated the Bush administration`s public pledge to provide safeguards against torture.

In providing a detailed description of the program, a senior United States official said that it had been aimed only at those suspected of knowing about terrorist operations, and emphasized that the C.I.A. had gone to great lengths to ensure that they were detained under humane conditions and not tortured.

The official would not discuss any legal directive under which the agency operated, but said that the "C.I.A. has existing authorities to lawfully conduct these operations."

The official declined to be named but agreed to discuss the program to rebut the assertions that the United States used the program to secretly send people to other countries for the purpose of torture. The transfers were portrayed as an alternative to what American officials have said is the costly, manpower-intensive process of housing them in the United States or in American-run facilities in other countries.

In recent weeks, several former detainees have described being subjected to coercive interrogation techniques and brutal treatment during months spent in detention under the program in Egypt and other countries. The official would not discuss specific cases, but did not dispute that there had been instances in which prisoners were mistreated. The official said none had died.

The official said the C.I.A.`s inspector general was reviewing the rendition program as one of at least a half-dozen inquiries within the agency of possible misconduct involving the detention, interrogation and rendition of suspected terrorists.

In public, the Bush administration has refused to confirm that the rendition program exists, saying only in response to questions about it that the United States did not hand over people to face torture. The official refused to say how many prisoners had been transferred as part of the program. But former government officials say that since the Sept. 11 attacks, the C.I.A. has flown 100 to 150 suspected terrorists from one foreign country to another, including to Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Pakistan.

Each of those countries has been identified by the State Department as habitually using torture in its prisons. But the official said that guidelines enforced within the C.I.A. require that no transfer take place before the receiving country provides assurances that the prisoner will be treated humanely, and that United States personnel are assigned to monitor compliance.

"We get assurances, we check on those assurances, and we double-check on these assurances to make sure that people are being handled properly in respect to human rights," the official said. The official said that compliance had been "very high" but added, "Nothing is 100 percent unless we`re sitting there staring at them 24 hours a day."

It has long been known that the C.I.A. has held a small group of high-ranking leaders of Al Qaeda in secret sites overseas, and that the United States military continues to detain hundreds of suspected terrorists at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and in Afghanistan. The rendition program was intended to augment those operations, according to former government officials, by allowing the United States to gain intelligence from the interrogations of the prisoners, most of whom were sent to their countries of birth or citizenship.

Before Sept. 11, the C.I.A. had been authorized by presidential directives to carry out renditions, but under much more restrictive rules. In most instances in the past, the transfers of individual prisoners required review and approval by interagency groups led by the White House, and were usually authorized to bring prisoners to the United States or to other countries to face criminal charges.

As part of its broad new latitude, current and former government officials say, the C.I.A. has been authorized to transfer prisoners to other countries solely for the purpose of detention and interrogation.

The covert transfers by the C.I.A. have faced sharp criticism, in part because of the accounts provided by former prisoners who say they were beaten, shackled, humiliated, subjected to electric shocks, and otherwise mistreated during their long detention in foreign prisons before being released without being charged. Those accounts include cases like the following:

¶Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian, who was detained at Kennedy Airport two weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks and transported to Syria, where he said he was subjected to beatings. A year later he was released without being charged with any crime.

¶Khaled el-Masri, a Lebanese-born German who was pulled from a bus on the Serbia-Macedonia border in December 2003 and flown to Afghanistan, where he said he was beaten and drugged. He was released five months later without being charged with a crime.

¶Mamdouh Habib, an Egyptian-born Australian who was arrested in Pakistan several weeks after the 2001 attacks. He was moved to Egypt, Afghanistan and finally Guantánamo. During his detention, Mr. Habib said he was beaten, humiliated and subjected to electric shocks. He was released after 40 months without being charged.

In the most explicit statement of the administration`s policies, Alberto R. Gonzales, then the White House counsel, said in written Congressional testimony in January that "the policy of the United States is not to transfer individuals to countries where we believe they likely will be tortured, whether those individuals are being transferred from inside or outside the United States." Mr. Gonzales said then that he was "not aware of anyone in the executive branch authorizing any transfer of a detainee in violation of that policy."

Administration officials have said that approach is consistent with American obligations under the Convention Against Torture, the international agreement that bars signatories from engaging in extreme interrogation techniques. But in interviews, a half-dozen current and former government officials said they believed that, in practice, the administration`s approach may have involved turning a blind eye to torture. One former senior government official who was assured that no one was being mistreated said that accumulation of abuse accounts was disturbing. "I really wonder what they were doing, and I am no longer sure what I believe," said the official, who was briefed periodically about the rendition program.

In Congressional testimony last month, the director of central intelligence, Porter J. Goss, acknowledged that the United States had only a limited capacity to enforce promises that detainees would be treated humanely. "We have a responsibility of trying to ensure that they are properly treated, and we try and do the best we can to guarantee that," Mr. Goss said of the prisoners that the United States had transferred to the custody of other countries. "But of course once they`re out of our control, there`s only so much we can do. But we do have an accountability program for those situations."

The practice of transporting a prisoner from one country to another, without formal extradition proceedings, has been used by the government for years. George J. Tenet, the former director of central intelligence, has testified that there were 70 cases before the Sept. 11 attacks, authorized by the White House. About 20 of those cases involved people brought to the United States to stand trial under informal arrangements with the country in which the suspects were captured.

Since Sept. 11, however, it has been used much more widely and has had more expansive guidelines, because of the broad authorizations that the White House has granted to the C.I.A. under legal opinions and a series of amendments to Presidential Decision Directives that remain classified. The officials said that most of the people subject to rendition were regarded by counterterrorism experts as less significant than people held under direct American control, including the estimated three dozen high ranking operatives of Al Qaeda who are confined at secret sites around the world.

The Pentagon has also transferred some prisoners to foreign custody, handing over 62 prisoners to Pakistan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, among other countries, from the American prison in Guantánamo Bay, in actions that it has publicly acknowledged. In some of those cases, a senior Defense Department official said in an interview on Friday, the transfers were for the purpose of prosecution and trials, but others were intended solely for the purpose of detention. Those four countries, as well Egypt, Jordan and Syria, were among those identified in a State Department human rights report released last week as practicing torture in their prisons.

In an interview, the senior official defended renditions as one among several important tools in counterterrorism efforts. "The intelligence obtained by those rendered, detained and interrogated have disrupted terrorist operations," the official said. "It has saved lives in the United States and abroad, and it has resulted in the capture of other terrorists."

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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March 6, 2005
THE PUBLIC EDITOR
The War of the Words: A Dispatch From the Front Lines
By DANIEL OKRENT
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/06/weekinreview/06bott.html?h…

NOTHING provokes as much rage as what many perceive to be The Times`s policy on the use of "terrorist," "terrorism" and "terror." There is no policy, actually, but except in the context of Al Qaeda, or in direct quotations, these words, as explosive as what they describe, show up very rarely.

Among pro-Israeli readers (and nonreaders urged to write to me by media watchdog organizations), the controversy over variants of the T-word has become the stand-in for the Israel-Palestine conflict itself. When Israel`s targeted assassinations of suspected sponsors of terrorism provoke retaliation, some pro-Palestinian readers argue that any armed response against civilians by such groups as Hamas is morally equivalent. Critics on the other side say The Times`s general avoidance of the word "terrorism" is a political decision, and exactly what Hamas wants.

Here`s what I want: A path out of this thicket, which is snarled with far more than "terror" and its derivative tendrils. I packed the preceding paragraph with enough verbal knots to secure the QE2, so I`ll untangle them one by one.

"Pro-Israeli" and "pro-Palestinian": Adem Carroll of the Islamic Circle of North America has pointed out to me that both epithets represent value judgments. Are Ariel Sharon`s policies pro-Israel? Not in the minds of his critics on the Israeli left. Is Mahmoud Abbas`s negotiation policy pro-Palestinian? I doubt that supporters of Islamic jihad believe it is.

"Israel-Palestine conflict": I`ve heard from ardent Zionists who deplore this usage because, they say, "There is no Palestine."

"Targeted assassinations": The Israel Defense Forces use this term; Palestinians believe it implicitly exonerates Israel for the deaths of nearby innocents. The Times tries to avoid it, but an editor`s attempt at a substitute on Jan. 27 - "pinpoint killings" - was even more accepting of the Israeli line.

"Settlers": Are they merely settlers when they carry out armed actions against Palestinians?

"Groups such as Hamas": According to the European Union and the United States government, which are both cited regularly by an army of readers, Hamas is a terrorist organization. According to Times deputy foreign editor Ethan Bronner: "We use `terrorist` sparingly because it is a loaded word. Describing the goals or acts of a group often serves readers better than repeating the term `terrorist.` We make clear that Hamas seeks the destruction of Israel through violence but that it is also a significant political and social force among Palestinians, fielding candidates and running clinics and day care centers." According to many Times critics, that just won`t do.

There was one more bugbear in that overloaded paragraph up top: "Media watchdog organizations." That`s what you call the noble guardians on your side; the other guy`s dishonest advocates are "pressure groups." Both are accurate characterizations, but trying to squeeze them into the same sentence can get awfully clumsy. It`s also clumsy to befog clear prose by worrying over words so obsessively that strong sentences get ground into grits. But closing one`s ears to the complaints of partisans would also entail closing one`s mind to the substance of their arguments.

The Armed Conflict in the Area Between Lebanon and Egypt may yield the most linguistically volatile issues confronting Times editors, but I`ve encountered a ferocious tug-of-war between advocates of each of the following as well: Genital mutilation vs. genital cutting ("would you call ritual male circumcision `genital mutilation`?"). Liberal vs. moderate ("you`re simply trying to make liberalism look reasonable and inoffensive" as in calling Michael Bloomberg a "moderate Republican"). Abuse vs. torture ("if the Abu Ghraib victims had been American soldiers," The Times "would have described it as torture"). Partial birth vs. intact dilation and extraction (the use of the former demonstrates that The Times "has embraced the terminology of anti-abortion forces"). "Iraqi forces" vs. "American-backed forces" ("aren`t the Sunni insurgents Iraqis?"). Don`t get me started on "insurgents," much less homeless vs. vagrant, affirmative action vs. racial preferences, or loophole vs. tax incentive.

Now a rugby scrum has gathered around the Bush Social Security plan. Republicans tout "personal accounts"; Democrats trash "private accounts." In this atmosphere, I don`t think reporters have much choice other than to use "private" and "personal" interchangeably, and to interchange them often. Once one side of an ideological conflict has seized control of a word, it no longer has a meaning of its own; opting for one or the other would be a declaration that doesn`t belong in the news reports.

Hijacking the language proves especially pernicious when government officials deodorize their programs with near-Orwellian euphemism. (If Orwell were writing "Politics and the English Language" today, he`d need a telephone book to contain his "catalog of swindles and perversions. ") The Bush administration has been especially good at this; just count the number of times self-anointing phrases like "Patriot Act," "Clear Skies Act" or "No Child Left Behind Act" appear in The Times, at each appearance sounding as wholesome as a hymn. Even the most committed Republicans must recognize that such phrases could apply to measures guaranteeing the opposite of what they claim to accomplish.

When the next Democratic administration rolls around, Republicans will likely discover how it feels to be on the losing side of a propaganda war. (The Clinton White House wasn`t very good at this: somehow, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 , which remade federal welfare policy, never hit the top of the charts.)

The Times shouldn`t play along. If the sports section calls the Orange Bowl the Orange Bowl, even if its formal name is the Federal Express Orange Bowl, why can`t the news pages refer to the Public Education Act of 2002, or the Industrial Emissions Act of 2005? Similarly, editors could ban the use of "reform" as a description of legislative action. It`s even worse than "moderate," something so benign in tone and banal in substance that it can be used to camouflage any depredations its sponsors propose. Who could oppose health care reform, Social Security reform or welfare reform, and who could tell me what any of them means? You could call the rule barring (or at least radically limiting) the use of these shameless beards the Save the Language Act.

Of course, reform of the use of "reform," or a consistent assault on any of the linguistic cosmetics used by politicians and interest groups to disfigure public debate, could bring on charges of bias (a word which itself has almost come to mean "something I disagree with").

But I think in some instances The Times`s earnest effort to avoid bias can desiccate language and dilute meaning. In a January memo to the foreign desk, former Jerusalem bureau chief James Bennet addressed the paper`s gingerly use of the word "terrorism."

"The calculated bombing of students in a university cafeteria, or of families gathered in an ice cream parlor, cries out to be called what it is," he wrote. "I wanted to avoid the political meaning that comes with `terrorism,` but I couldn`t pretend that the word had no usage at all in plain English." Bennet came to believe that "not to use the term began to seem like a political act in itself."

I agree. While some Israelis and their supporters assert that any Palestinian holding a gun is a terrorist, there can be neither factual nor moral certainty that he is. But if the same man fires into a crowd of civilians, he has committed an act of terror, and he is a terrorist. My own definition is simple: an act of political violence committed against purely civilian targets is terrorism; attacks on military targets are not. The deadly October 2000 assault on the American destroyer Cole or the devastating suicide bomb that killed 18 American soldiers and 4 Iraqis in Mosul last December may have been heinous, but these were acts of war, not terrorism. Beheading construction workers in Iraq and bombing a market in Jerusalem are terrorism pure and simple.

Given the word`s history as a virtual battle flag over the past several years, it would be tendentious for The Times to require constant use of it, as some of the paper`s critics are insisting. But there`s something uncomfortably fearful, and inevitably self-defeating, about struggling so hard to avoid it.

The public editor serves as the readers` representative. His opinions and conclusions are his own. His column appears at least twice monthly in this section.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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washingtonpost.com
Life in the Spin Cycle
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8744-2005Mar4…
By Michael Kinsley

Sunday, March 6, 2005; Page B07

One day last week, four stories on the front page of the Los Angeles Times were about efforts to shape public perceptions.

There was a report about how the worst techniques of modern election campaigns are being adopted by interest groups in legislative battles. For example, a conservative group has been spreading word that the AARP`s opposition to Social Security reform is part of a secret agenda that includes gay marriage.

Another story described how movie studios spend millions trying to influence the Academy Awards.

A third was about the makeover of Harvard University President Lawrence Summers, following his unfortunate remarks about women and science.

And, like every media outlet in the world, the L.A. Times had the story of Martha Stewart`s triumphant positioning of her release from prison: thinner, richer and humbler, too: a walking embodiment of that old joke, "I used to be conceited, but now I`m perfect."

It`s an old story that the news and our understanding of it are affected -- or afflicted -- by "spin," meaning efforts by partisans to make us see things their way. But it may be new that so much of the news is actually about these efforts.

Spin is not just a technique. It is not just a political phenomenon. It permeates our culture and our daily life. And it`s an industry -- almost a sector of the economy. That one day`s stories quoted lobbyists, public relations specialists and professional "damage control" experts. If computers and communications go by the acronym "IT," for information technology, the perceptual industry might be "MT," for misinformation technology.

The business of MT isn`t lying. It`s shaping perceptions irrespective of the truth. Reality is a consideration, of course. But if reality were sufficient, we wouldn`t need spin -- would we?

Of those four front-page stories, only one -- the Social Security piece -- had the slightest tone of disapproval. To disapprove of spin is like disapproving of rain. What`s the point? If anything, there were sympathy and admiration for Summers and Stewart. Good spin is an essential life skill and business technique. Bad spin is worthy of criticism. No spin is un-American.

Reporters, whose job is to describe reality, rightly regard spin as an important part of the reality they are supposed to report. Good reporters describe both the real reality and the alternative reality. But even good ones often show no hint of preference as between the stage set and the real thing. If they did, that might be considered bias, I suppose.

It takes real excess of spin -- such as the president putting a practicing pundit on the payroll or the governor of California sending a fake newscast to real TV stations -- to generate much outrage in the press. Who knows what level of artifice would be needed to offend the general population, many of whom assume that the news is made up anyway.

All this sits oddly with the concurrent fashion for "transparency." The word is everywhere. It means what used to be called "truth" and also openness.

"Transparency" is one of the blessings of democracy that President Bush is proud of having brought to Iraq -- right up there with voting and somewhat less torture than before. Corporate reforms following the accounting scandals are supposed to make the books of public companies "transparent." A San Francisco foundation (the Wall Street Journal reports) has decorated its boardroom with glass because, says its chief administrative officer, "One of our values is transparency."

Transparency is a value? Five years ago, that idea would have been incomprehensible, like saying, "One of our values is suede." The transparency metaphor is inexact. It is not that people should be able to see right through you. It is that they should be able to see through to the real you.

But how do we resolve the apparent contradiction between our desire for transparency everywhere, and our tolerance or even approval of spin? The whole point of spin is opaqueness: a no-see-through skin of your own design between the real you and the outside world.

The solution, of course, is to spin your transparency. Make it look like you`re transparent. And no doubt there are transparency consultants who will, for a fee, advise you about how to create an appearance of transparency so opaque that no one can see through it.

The dazzling sociologist Erving Goffman used to write essays and books with titles like "The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life," arguing that we are all actors in a play of our own devising. All sincerity is calculation, as he saw it, and every statement or gesture is layered with strategy.

Goffman died at age 60 in 1982. He had no idea.

The writer is editorial and opinion editor of the Los Angeles Times.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

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The Independent on Sunday
US rebuffs Assad offer to pull out of Lebanon
Sunday, 6th March 2005, by Robert Fisk
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/story.jsp?story=617…

WHEN he said the words, "We will withdraw," the Lebanese crowd in Martyr’s Square shuffled and their flags moved and there was a hushed little chorus of approval. But that was all.

For the huge screen upon which President Bashar Assad of Syria was speaking from the parliament in Damascus last night contained other, darker messages for the crowd - perhaps for all of Lebanon. If the Syrian army is to withdraw from Lebanon - and to where remained vague - some of Mr Assad’s remarks could have been interpreted as a threat.

He talked of the "shifting sands" in Lebanon and of how some of the "pillars" in Syria’s relationship with the country - and here we obviously thought of the Druze leader, Walid Jumblatt - might have to be "replaced". Replaced? Is that what happened to ex-prime minister Rafik Hariri, killed in a massive bombing on 14 February? Was he replaced?

There were many other criticisms, veiled and unveiled; of the press, of "foreign interference", of UN envoy Terje Roed-Larsen. It was a familiar story: The Plot. Even the demonstrations against Syria in Martyr’s Square - and it was an eerie experience to be among the demonstrators in Beirut at this moment - has been "planned beforehand". Before what, one asked? Before Hariri’s assassination?

After all this, Mr Assad appeared to say the words many Lebanese had been waiting to hear: "We will withdraw our forces ... fully to the Bekaa region and later to the Lebanese-Syrian border areas." But when would they go to the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon, and when to the border - and did "fully" include the Syrian intelligence operatives, whose presence has particularly irked both the Lebanese and President Bush? And which side of the border? Syrian military intelligence headquarters are at Aanjar in the Bekaa - three miles from the border. In other words, will most of them just stay where they are?

President Assad’s speech ran the whole gamut of Syrian policy towards Lebanon. His army had been invited into the country by the Lebanese president in 1976 during the Lebanese civil war - true - and had made many military sacrifices for Lebanon (although the Lebanese would have many qualifications to make).

Syria had always been prepared to withdraw, and had promised to do so under the 1989 Taif agreement to end the war - true, they fell a decade behind on their re-deployment - but this week, the Syrian-Lebanese co-ordinating committee would meet to discuss the date. This, Mr Assad announced, would show Syria was abiding by Taif and by the Franco-American UN Security Council Resolution 1559.

The US State Department replied: "President Assad’s announcement is not enough ... When the US and France say withdraw, we mean complete withdrawal."

But UN Resolution 1559, as Mr Assad correctly pointed out, was passed only after the invasion of Iraq, and also demands the disarmament of the Hizbollah guerrilla movement, which drove the Israelis out of Lebanon in 2000. Israeli troops had been in Lebanon for 22 years. The Syrians have been here for 29 years. And President Assad didn’t want the Hizbollah disarmed.

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Tomgram:
Schwartz on Why the Military Is Failing in Iraq
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2241

"`If you look back over the last year we estimate we have killed or captured about 15,000 people as part of this counter-insurgency,` [Gen. George] Casey, the only four-star American general in Iraq, told reporters." (January 26, 2005)

"[Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Richard] Myers said getting an accurate count of insurgents is difficult. ‘I`d say the insurgents` future is absolutely bleak. So precise numbers in an insurgency where people, some people, come and go is always going to be hard to estimate. And that`s what we`re trying to say,` Myers added." (House Armed Services Committee, February 16, 2005)

"It`s frustrating, because we can`t be everywhere at once," Lt. Col Stephen Dinauer, who commanded the 3rd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion in operations in the Iraqi city of Hit, told Dan Murphy of the Christian Science Monitor. "… These sentiments echo the scaled-back expectations among troops on the ground. Gone is the talk about breaking the back of the insurgency that was floated before the November battle for Fallujah, where hundreds of militants were dug in and ready to fight." [This week. Lt. Col. Dinauer`s unit was part of "River Blitz," the latest major American military operation in Sunni-dominated Anbar province.]

"Sergeant David Phillips, 23, sighed and patted his flak jacket. ‘I just want to stay alive and go home with all my body parts.` He spoke for 150,000 American soldiers in Iraq. Yesterday the number of US military deaths since the March 2003 invasion crept over 1,500. There was no official acknowledgment of the milestone, just curt statements that three soldiers had died in two separate attacks on Wednesday. ‘Names are being withheld pending notification of next of kin.`" [British Guardian reporter Rory Carroll with American troops patrolling Mosul this week.]

In fact, in the week when the American death toll crept over another grim mark almost without notice and, just this Friday, four American soldiers were reported killed in Anbar Province and a fifth in a vehicle accident, oil and gas pipelines also went up in the northern part of Iraq; politicians dithered and negotiated and argued over a future Iraqi government that may have little power and less ability to rule the country; while, as a BBC headline had it, "Iraq insurgents seize initiative"; one of the most devastating car bombs of the war hit a gathering of potential police recruits in Hilla; a judge, his son, and a trade unionist were among the assassinated; suicide bombers hit the Ministry of the Interior; numerous Iraqi policemen and army troops as well as recruits and potential recruits were slaughtered; more roadside bombs killed American soldiers; uncounted civilians died; America`s detention centers in the country, themselves incubators for insurgents, were reported to be bursting with prisoners; the contested oil city of Kirkuk grew yet more combustible, given Kurdish demands, Shiite desires, and Turkish threats ("Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul has said that ‘in case of fighting in Kirkuk, Turkey cannot remain a spectator`); and in a bizarre twist which caught something of the madness of the situation (though it is also a commonplace for Iraqis), as the week ended, a kidnapped Italian journalist, freed by her captors, and in a car driving towards Camp Victory at Baghdad International Airport to return home, was wounded and an Italian intelligence officer with her killed by quick-to-shoot American troops, potentially tossing Italian politics and a close Bush ally in the "coalition of the willing," Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, into turmoil; and finally, an NPR journalist, Deborah Amos, threw up her hands and declared that, between escalating dangers and American military control over reporting, the state of Iraq was essentially an unreportable story for American journalists. "When you read a news report, look at the second line. More and more you will find it reads: ‘according to the U.S. military` or ‘according to officials.`" She added, "You can no longer just rely on your news du jour, whether it`s NPR or the New York Times," and went on to describe NPR`s offices in Iraq in this way: "She said most NPR reporters are holed up in a compound on a hilltop that resembles a base for a Colombian drug lord. The guarded compound has a vault that journalists can step into if ‘they` come to get them."

Under the circumstances, it might be reasonable to ask exactly whose future in Iraq was, in General Myers phrase, "absolutely bleak." Certainly, Iraq`s was. And yet, amid that bleakness, the American military effort barrels on, as Michael Schwartz explains below, based on a strategic theory of the Iraqi insurgency which is only likely to lead to further failure, more chaos, more slaughter, and an ever stronger insurgency. When you`ve read Schwartz, check out the striking collection of quotes that acts as a perfect illustration for his piece at Ari Berman`s Daily Outrage blog at the Nation magazine on-line.
Tom

"Going to War with the Army You Have"
Why the U.S. Cannot Correct Its Military Blunders in Iraq
By Michael Schwartz

The Latest American Theory about the Iraqi Resistance

In early February, a Newsweek team led by Rod Nordland produced a detailed account of current theorizing among American and Iraqi officials about the structure of the Iraqi resistance.

Here, in brief, is what these officials told Newsweek: The initial American assault on Iraq was so successful that Saddam Hussein`s plan for systematic resistance fell apart almost immediately, leaving a dispersed, unruly guerrilla movement with little or no coherent leadership. In the two subsequent years, however, the Saddamists formed a wealthy and savvy leadership group in Syria. In the meantime Abu Massab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian terrorist with ties to Al Qaeda, asserted his domination over the on-the-ground resistance. Pressure from recent American offensives drove the two groupings into an increasingly comfortable alliance. Here is how Newsweek described developments since last summer, based on an interview with Barham Salih, the Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister:

"According to Salih, ‘The Baathists regrouped and, in the last six or seven months, reorganized. Plus they had significant amounts of money, in Iraq and in Syria.` Those contacts and networks that Saddam`s key cronies began developing months before the invasion now paid off. An understanding was found with the Islamic fanatics, and the well-funded Baathists appear to have made Syria a protected base of operations. ‘The Iraqi resistance is a monster with its head in Syria and its body in Iraq` is the colorful description given by a top Iraqi police official…. Zarqawi`s people supply the bombers, the Baathists provide the money and strategy."

The current situation was succinctly summarized for Newsweek by Brig. Gen. Hussein Ali Kamal, the Deputy Minister of the Interior: "Now between the Zarqawi group and the Baathists there is full cooperation and coordination."

This portrait has been further fleshed out in other accounts, including a New York Times report in which U.S. Commanding General George W. Casey declared that the Baath Party in Syria was "providing direction and financing for the insurgency in Iraq."

This new theory about the nature of the Iraqi resistance helps to illuminate the renewed saber-rattling against the Syrians, which began even before the assassination of the former Lebanese Prime Minister. On January 25, for example, former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, writing together for the first time, made the connection explicit in a Washington Post op-ed. They asserted that the Bush administration must have a "strategy for eliminating the sanctuaries in Syria and Iran from which the enemy can be instructed, supplied, and given refuge in time to regroup." The new theory may also help to explain why (according to such diverse sources as Newsweek and former U.S. weapons inspector Scott Ritter) the U.S. is considering using assassination squads to eliminate enemies. One whole category of targets for these squads (if formed) would certainly be the Syrian-based leadership of the resistance.

And then, at the end of February, came news of the first fruits of American operations based on this new insight, the capture in Syria of Sabawi Ibrahim Hassan, a half brother and political lieutenant of Saddam, and one of only 11 of the original "deck of cards" Saddamist leaders who still remained at large. The capture vindicated the saber-rattling as well, since high level Iraqi officials told reporters on February 28 that the "capture was a goodwill gesture by the Syrians to show that they are cooperating" with the new American campaign to decapitate the insurgency by removing its Syrian-based leadership.

The New Theory Is Probably Not Accurate

This new portrait of the Iraqi resistance may be an accurate description of one aspect of the ongoing war; and its key new element -- a working alliance between Saddamist exiles and Zarqawi`s fighters inside Iraq -- may be an important new development. But the foundation upon which these descriptions are built -- that these forces now dominate the resistance, supply its leadership, or provide the bulk of its resources -- is likely to prove profoundly inaccurate.

This is most easily seen by consulting -- of all sources -- the CIA, which issued a contrary report about the time the Newsweek article appeared. According to the CIA, the Zarqawi faction and his Saddamist allies were "lesser elements" in the resistance, which was increasingly dominated by "newly radicalized Sunni Iraqis, nationalists offended by the occupying force, and others disenchanted by the economic turmoil and destruction caused by the fighting." There is, in fact, a vast body of publicly available evidence in support of the CIA`s perspective, including, for example, most first-hand accounts of the resistance in Falluja and other cities in the Sunni triangle.

In the short, dreary history of America`s Iraq war, our leaders have repeatedly acted on gross misconceptions about whom they were fighting -- sometimes based on faulty intelligence, but sometimes in the face of perfectly accurate intelligence. This is, in all likelihood, another instance where they believe their own distortions, and it is worthwhile attempting to understand the underlying pattern that produces this almost predictable error.

One way to characterize this propensity to mis-analyze the resistance is to see that all the portraits thus far generated of the Iraqi resistance have been based on the assumption that it is organized into a familiar hierarchical form in which the leadership exercises strategic and day-to-day control over a pyramid shaped organization. Such a structure is described by both military strategists and organizational sociologists as a "Command and Control" structure. After the battle of Falluja, Air Force Lt. General Lance Smith even used this phrase to characterize Zarqawi`s operation: "Zarqawi… no doubt …is able to maintain some level of command and control over the disparate operations."

This command-and-control image applies well to a large bureaucracy or a conventional army; but invariably provides a poor picture of a guerrilla army, which helps explain American military failures in Iraq. Whether or not Zarqawi maintains command and control over his forces (who are, as far as we can tell, not guerrillas) no one exercises such control over the forces that fought against the Americans in Falluja or Sadr City and those that are currently fighting a guerrilla war in Ramadi and other Sunni cities that boycotted the recent elections.

Guerrilla wars violate the command-and-control portrait in two important ways: local units must, by and large, supply themselves (since an occupation army would be likely to interdict any regular shipments of supplies); and they are likely to have substantial autonomy (since hit-and-melt tactics do not lend themselves well to central decision making).

This lack of command and control is a curse and a blessing. On the negative side, lack of central coordination means that guerrilla armies are normally doomed to small, disconnected actions -- a severe limitation if the goal is to drive an enemy out of your country. On the positive side, they are less vulnerable to attacks on supply lines and to the targeting of commanding officers -- two key strategies of conventional warfare.

The resistance in Iraq reflects this dialectic of guerrilla war. The mujaheddin in Falluja, for example, seem to have been notoriously decentralized; even local clerical leadership reportedly achieved only a tenuous discipline over the troops. This same lack of discipline, however, made it impossible for the U.S. to identify and eliminate key leaders. During the second battle for the city in November, their hit-and-run tactics allowed them to hold out for over a month against a force with overwhelming technological and numerical superiority.

The command and control portrait is not a useful tool when it comes to analyzing a large component of the Iraqi resistance, and it is of little use if it is applied to the movement as a whole.

The Drumbeat of Command and Control

Nevertheless, the U.S. military has assumed such a structure at every juncture in the war.

In the Fall of 2003, when the resistance first began to trouble the occupation, U.S. military strategy was based on the conviction that the resistance was led by Saddam Hussein and the "deck of cards" leadership. Here we see command-and-control logic applied for the first time.

By mid-December 2003, the occupation forces had arrested or killed the vast majority of the men on that deck of cards, while Saddam`s sons Uday and Qusay Hussein had died in a spectacular gun battle, and Saddam himself had just been captured in a dirt dugout. Occupation authorities confidently predicted that the Baathist "bitter enders" were done for and the resistance would subside, since without its leaders, local fighters were expected to be rudderless and ineffective.

Instead the disparate parts of the resistance became stronger, and in April 2004 emerged with a victory in Falluja -- after a siege of the city, the Marines pulled back without taking it -- and a bloody standoff in Najaf. By then, American intelligence had discovered Abu Massab al Zarqawi and declared that he was actually the linchpin of the resistance.

Once again, a command-and-control portrait of the enemy remained dominant, and the second battle of Falluja was fought in good part on the basis of that theory: to disrupt or destroy the Zarqawi leadership group. But despite the expulsion of the guerrillas (and just about the entire population of Fallujans) from the city, the rebellion quickly spread to other cities and intensified, refuting the claim that the decapitation of the movement would be incapacitating.

The command-and-control theory has, in fact, turned out to be as resilient as the resistance itself. American commander Lt. Gen. Thomas F. Metz, for instance, explained the post-Falluja battle of Mosul to the New York Times by saying that Zarqawi and/or his leadership team had moved to that city and fomented the uprising, ignoring the indigenous character of the mujaheddin who were fighting there. Later, it would be announced that Zarqawi had set up a new "nerve center" south of Baghdad and a major new search-and-destroy operation would be mounted there.

Even after these actions failed to quell the fighting, the occupation forces clung to command-and-control logic. General Kamal, for example, told Newsweek, "Even if Zarqawi continues to elude capture, nailing al-Kurdi [one of Zarqawi`s lieutenants] was a critical score. It might -- just might -- -eventually help change the course of this war." Similar statements were made a month later when Saddam`s half-brother, identified as a key leader and funder of the insurgency, was captured in Syria.

Evident in all of this is the faith that American military leaders have in a strategy of identifying and targeting the supposed leaders of the insurgency. Despite the direct evidence of an increasingly ferocious movement, the capture of a key leader, it has repeatedly been claimed, could "change the course of the war."

Why the U.S. Military Can`t Abandon "Command and Control" Logic

So why does the U.S. military relentlessly build its anti-insurgency strategy around the idea of decapitating the leadership of the Iraqi resistance? The answer lies just beneath the surface of Donald Rumsfeld`s now infamous statement, "You go to war with the Army you have."

This is a comment pregnant with meaning for organizational sociologists, because it illustrates a familiar pattern of organizational problem-solving. If a product is not selling well, for example, an engineering organization might conclude that better engineering of the product was in order; a manufacturing firm, that more efficient production technology was needed; and a marketing company, that better advertising would do the trick. This sort of organizational idée fixe has led to some truly horrendous failures in business -- and military -- history. For example, when a flood of automobile buyers began to demand fuel-efficient cars during the first oil crisis in the early 1970s, the American automobile industry did not have the capacity to produce such vehicles. Instead of investing vast resources in developing that capacity, it tried to use its superior marketing skills to win Americans back to luxurious gas guzzlers. That is, the Big Three "went to war with the army they had" and convinced themselves that they were facing a marketing problem. The results: a permanent crisis at General Motors (during which it lost world leadership in the industry), a fundamental restructuring of Ford, and the demise of Chrysler.

Or take the French in World War II. They knew about the new German tanks that had made World War I trench warfare obsolete, but the French army was only equipped to fight in the trenches. So they "went to war with the army they had," devising a trench-war strategy that they managed to convince themselves would contain the German Panzer divisions. They lost the war in three weeks.

The American army is also fighting with the army it has. This army is the best equipped in the world for advanced conventional warfare -- with tanks, artillery, air power, missile power, battlefield surveillance power, and satellite imaging to support highly mobile, well equipped, and superbly trained soldiers. No supply route is safe from its firepower, and no conventional army would be likely to hold its ground long against an American assault. But the most intractable part of the resistance in Iraq is fighting a guerrilla war: they do not have long supply lines and they rarely try to hold their ground.

Guerrilla armies hide by melting into the local population. (Everyone knows this, including, of course, American military men.) To defeat them, an occupying force must have the intelligence to identify guerrillas who can disappear into the civilian world; and it must station troops throughout resistance strongholds in order to pounce upon guerrillas when they emerge from hiding to mount an attack. American military strategists know this, too. But these lessons -- painfully drawn from Vietnam -- can`t be implemented by the army that Donald Rumsfeld sent to war.

The Americans, in fact, have neither of these resources. Anti-guerrilla intelligence, after all, requires the cooperation of the local population, which, at least in the Sunni-dominated areas of Iraq, the U.S. has definitively alienated, largely through its use of blunt-edged conventional army attacks on communities that harbor guerrillas. And it cannot station enough troops in key locations because too small an occupation force is spread far too thinly over contested parts of the country. Estimates for the size of an army needed to pacify Iraq range upward from General Eric Shinseki`s prewar call for "several hundred thousand" troops.

The American military simply lacks the tools it needs to fight the guerrillas, just as in the 1970s the Big Three automakers lacked the production system needed to produced fuel-efficient automobiles, and the French army lacked the technology it needed to defeat German tanks in 1940. In response, military leaders are doing exactly what their organizational forbears did: They continue to develop theories about how to win the war "with the army they have." This backward logic leads inevitably to imagining an enemy that might be far more susceptible to defeat with the tools at hand; that is, an opponent with long supply lines (from Syria, for example) and a command-and-control leadership (Zarqawi and his Saddamist allies, for example) capable of being "decapitated." This portrait of the enemy then justifies a military strategy that seeks, above all, to kill or capture the theorized leaders. Such tactics almost always fail (even when leaders are captured); and in the process of failing, only alienates further the Iraqi population, producing an ever larger, more resourceful enemy.

The newest portrait of the resistance as a Zarqawi-Saddamist led amalgam will sooner or later die a lonely death -- in all likelihood to be replaced by yet another command-and-control portrait of the insurgency whose features are as yet unknown. As long as the U.S. continues to fight "with the army it has," it will also continue to generate -- and act on -- distorted (sometimes ludicrous) descriptions of the nature of the rebellion it faces.

Michael Schwartz, Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, has written extensively on popular protest and insurgency, and on American business and government dynamics. His work on Iraq has appeared on the internet at numerous sites including TomDispatch, Asia Times, MotherJones, and ZNet; and in print at Contexts and Z magazine. His books include Radical Politics and Social Structure, The Power Structure of American Business (with Beth Mintz), and Social Policy and the Conservative Agenda (edited, with Clarence Lo). His email address is [e-mail]@optonline.net

Copyright 2005 Michael Schwartz

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Sunday, March 06, 2005
War News for Sunday, March 6, 2005
http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring ‘em on: Armed group kidnaps foreigners working at army base near Mosul.

Bring ‘em on: Kurdish official killed in Mosul.

Bring ‘em on: A Shiite imam associated with the rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr was shot and killed by gunmen on Friday night as he drove to a mosque in the Baghdad.

Analysis

Life on Haifa Street That incident appears to have prompted the crackdown that drove Jameel underground and resulted in the arrests of two others who he said had close ties to the Haifa Street insurgency. The first was Syed Hashim, an alleged cell leader who was picked up in a brothel in a neighboring district, said Col. Adnan Abdulrahman, an Iraqi police spokesman. The second was Sabah al Baldawi, who police say is an organized-crime boss accused of funneling money and weapons to Haifa Street fighters.

Al Baldawi`s attorney, who said his client was transferred recently from Iraqi to U.S. custody for interrogation, complained that the crackdown was overzealous and would only inflame a street that had been calming down. "The only thing my client has to do with Haifa Street is that he happens to live there," said the attorney, who asked that his name not be published for security reasons. Jameel admitted that the arrests were a setback, but said he hadn`t given up the fight. "The Americans have been here two years now, and what did they do for us?" he asked.

"Haifa Street was quiet before they came. We`re quiet again for now, but we will continue to fight as long as the Americans stay. We are patient, and there`s no escape for them."

Freedom Fighter or Mercenary? On April 9, 2003, Mohammed Faik Raouf aimed his surface-to-air missile launcher at a US Apache helicopter and pulled the trigger. The weapon failed and the chopper was unharmed. The day marked the demise of Saddam Hussein`s regime, but only a temporary end to Raouf`s military career. Now he`s back in action as a general in the new US-trained Iraqi army.

Election News

Iraq is expected to hold the first meeting of its newly elected National Assembly on March 16 and hopes to choose a government before then, the deputy prime minister said on Sunday. "The meeting will be on March 16 and we agreed to continue meetings (on a government) and hope to reach an agreement by then," Barham Salih told Reuters. "If we don`t reach an agreement then the National Assembly will begin its work and discussions will continue inside the assembly."

Iraqi politicians have been struggling to form a government following landmark elections for a national assembly on Jan. 30, which were narrowly won by a Shi`ite alliance. The wrangling over top government posts has delayed the first meeting of the National Assembly for five weeks so far. The Islamist Shi`ite United Iraqi Alliance has named Ibrahim al-Jaafari as its candidate for prime minister but he needs the backing of a Kurdish coalition, which has emerged as potential kingmakers after finishing second in the elections.

Unanswered questions

How many people were wounded? The Americans said two civilians: Sgrena and an intelligence agent. Italian authorities said two agents were wounded besides Sgrena. Italian military officials declined to clear up the discrepancy and Berlusconi`s office did not respond to a request for information.
Were the Americans told by the Italians of Sgrena`s imminent release or that she would be taken straight to the Baghdad airport? Italians will likely be expecting answers early next week when Italian authorities, including Berlusconi, are to brief parliament on the abduction, release and shooting.

Was a ransom paid? An Iraqi lawmaker told Belgian state TV Saturday night that he had "nonofficial" information there was a $1 million payment. Speculation that ransom was paid and confusion about how hostages gained their freedom also surrounded the end of two other abductions of Italians last year. A key Italian lawmaker said in September he believed the Italian government paid $1 million for the release of two women aid workers who were held captive for three weeks, although Italy`s foreign minister denied that. In the other case, the three security workers and the businessman were freed in a raid in June. Berlusconi described their liberators as "coalition forces" but Polish authorities said it was the Americans who carried out the operation.

Terror Alerts

Former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir John Stevens says more than 200 Al-Qaeda "terrorists" are operating in UK and the threat of attacks is real. He has backed proposed anti-terror laws, saying critics were naive about the "brutal" threat posed by fanatics. Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Mark Oaten said: "While Sir John is right to highlight the serious threat that we face we believe that strong principles of justice will not undermine national security. "Of more concern are his comments that the current Belmarsh detainees pose a serious threat. "This conflicts with the home secretary`s opinion that they will not need to be placed under house arrest when they leave Belmarsh.

"These mixed messages are unhelpful in an already complicated situation."

Silence is Golden

Soldier who reported abuse was sent to Psychiatrist. An Army intelligence sergeant who accused fellow soldiers in Samarra, Iraq, of abusing detainees in 2003 was in turn accused by his commander of being delusional and ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation in Germany, despite a military psychiatrist`s initial judgment that the man was stable, according to internal Army records released yesterday.

The soldier had angered his commander by urging the unit`s redeployment from the military base to prevent what the soldier feared would be the death of one or more detainees under interrogation, according to the documents. He told his commander three members of the counterintelligence team had hit detainees, pulled their hair, tried to asphyxiate them and staged mock executions with pistols pointed at the detainees` heads.
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Latest Fatality: Mar 04, 2005

Weitere Meldungen aus dem Irak:
http://icasualties.org/oif/

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PANEL DISCUSSION
No-Fly Zone
By Joel Pett
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/suncommentary/la-op…" target="_blank" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/suncommentary/la-op…


Joel Pett is the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist of the Lexington Herald-Leader. His work also appears in USA Today.

March 6, 2005

Sarge has dismembered Beetle ever since anyone can remember. Some "bastard" kills Kenny on every "South Park" episode, Itchy disembowels Scratchy, Ren abuses Stimpy and the submarine SpongeBob`s plankton pal gets summarily stomped.

From the brick-beanings of Krazy Kat in the early days of newspaper cartoons to the long-running self-destructiveness of the hapless Wile E. Coyote, cartoon characters have proved they can take a licking and keep on schticking.

In the political-cartoon world, nobody`s been hammered as mercilessly as the pathetic Peace Dove. Forgive us if we don`t assume each freshly hatched Middle East cease-fire will fly.

Still, a ray of hope usually peeks through the despair. Remember, Beetle is always redrawn after being quartered, Kenny resurrects and the Coyote survives each boulder-jarring encounter.

And so it is that Toles` banged-up dove takes another curtain call, Conrad`s suicide bomber has both olive branch and explosive belt, and DeOre`s fleshless, featherless skeleton, a ghost from a peace-process past, takes flight nonetheless. As for Christo`s pitiful hostage, well, there`s not much hope there — unless that sword is made by Acme.


Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

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Democratisation or Disintegration?
http://ipsnews.net/new_nota.asp?idnews=27738

Analysis by Jim Lobe

Feeling vindicated by dramatic events in the Middle East since the Iraqi elections Jan. 30, especially the growing international clamour for Syria to withdraw from Lebanon, neo-conservatives are calling on Pres. George W. Bush to seize the moment by pressing for ”regime change” in Damascus and Iran, as well.

WASHINGTON, Mar 4 (IPS) - Despite its own missionary rhetoric, the Bush administration, however, seems inclined to wait until the dust from the latest developments has settled and, to the growing frustration of the neo-cons and other unilateralists, to ensure that it not get too far ahead of its European allies in dealing with the region.

The administration`s relative caution reflects the persistent influence and concerns of so-called policy ”realists” who remain sceptical about whether recent events in the Middle East will lead to a new era of democratisation, rather than a new cycle of destabilisation or worse.

Even if the latest developments indeed represent the Middle East equivalent of the fall of the Berlin Wall, as proponents of Bush`s democracy agenda claim, the realists stress the considerable risks, most notably the empowerment of Islamists across the region, that more democratic governments may well bring.

But Bush`s caution also reflects his administration`s new determination to coordinate more closely with Washington`s traditional allies, particularly in the wake of his European tour last month.

”Bush`s meetings with European leaders were very enlightening, because they convinced him that, `if you don`t work with us, we`re not going to succeed, our initiatives will fail, and you will find yourself isolated again`,” said Geoffrey Kemp, head of Middle East programmes at The Nixon Centre here.

”I see a more cautious administration that is working more closely with allies than ever before,” added Kemp, who served on the National Security Council under former President Ronald Reagan.

As evidence, Kemp, as well as other specialists, point to Bush`s decision after the trip to reassess Washington`s policy on the ongoing negotiations between Germany, France, and Britain (EU-3) and Iran on Teheran`s nuclear programme.

Before the trip, even Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, considered the most Atlanticist of Bush`s top advisers, insisted that Washington was not prepared to offer economic or other incentives to Iran as part of a possible package deal that would include Teheran`s agreement to abandon its alleged quest for nuclear weapons.

But Bush now appears poised to make some of the commitments that the Europeans had sought.

This has dismayed many neo-conservatives and other hawks centred within the administration in the offices of Vice Pres. Dick Cheney and Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld. They believe that now is not the moment to be seen as ”appeasing” or ”engaging” adversaries, least of all in Teheran and Damascus.

In column after column, especially since the anti-Syrian demonstrations in Lebanon broke out in the wake of the mid-February assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, their media mouthpieces have claimed vindication for their long-standing predictions that democratic elections in Iraq would reverberate throughout the region, encouraging democratic forces to stand up to their oppressors.

”Who`s the simpleton now?” crowed Los Angeles Times columnist Max Boot earlier this week. ”Those who dreamed of spreading democracy to the Arabs or those who denied that it could ever happen?” he went on, citing the Iraqi and earlier Palestinian elections, municipal elections in Saudi Arabia, events in Lebanon, and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak`s unexpected pledge last week to permit multi-candidate presidential elections next fall.

Boot, as well as virtually every other hawk writing on the subject, quoted Lebanon`s Druze leader, Walid Jumblatt, as crediting Bush for the chain of events: ”It`s strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq.”

”We are at the dawn of a glorious, delicate, revolutionary moment in the Middle East,” exulted another neo-con, Charles Krauthammer, in Friday`s Washington Post in a column entitled ”The Road to Damascus”.

”It was triggered by the invasion of Iraq, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, and televised images of 8 million Iraqis voting in a free election.”

Like his ideological colleagues, Krauthammer called for the administration to press its advantage by ensuring that that Syria completely withdraw from Lebanon, and confidently predicted that such a withdrawal would fatally weaken President Bashar Assad who ”has succeeded Saddam Hussein as the principal bad actor in the region. Syria, an island of dictatorship in a sea of liberalisation”, according to Krauthammer, ”is desperately trying to destabilise its neighbours”.

But Krauthammer`s main target was as much the ”realists” as Assad, as he railed against a Mar. 3 New York Times column entitled ”Don`t Rush on the Road to Damascus”, that was written by Flynt Leverett, a fellow at the Brooking Institution who headed Middle East affairs in Bush`s National Security Council until 2003.

”The turmoil unleashed in Lebanon by the Hariri assassination,” he noted, ”may indeed represent a strategic opening, but not for the risky maximalist course that some in the administration seem intent on pursuing.”

Leverett went on to argue that any attempt to establish a pro-Western government in Beirut would fail as a result of the resistance of fervently anti-American Hezbollah, the country`s largest and best-organised party. That, in turn, would create ”more instability in the region when the United States can ill afford it.”

As for helping oust Assad, Leverett warned that the ”most likely near-term consequence of (his) departure would be chaos; the most likely political order to emerge from that chaos would be heavily Islamist.”

Clearly sensing that Leverett`s arguments might be making headway within administration councils -- indeed, acting assistant secretary of state for the Near East David Satterfield had warned that Hezbollah stood to gain new power if Syria withdrew -- Krauthammer ridiculed them.

”This is no time to listen to the voices of tremulousness, indecision, compromise and fear,” he wrote. ”These people never learn. Here we are on the threshold of what Arabs in the region are calling the fall of their own Berlin Wall and our `realists` want us to go back to making deals with dictators.”

On Thursday, Bush explicitly called for Syria`s withdrawal from Lebanon, a position that, significantly, had already been taken by France and was echoed by Saudi Arabia, which, in contrast to Krauthammer, reportedly believes it will actually save the Assad regime.

As to ”regime change” in either Syria or Iran, on the other hand, insiders say he remains uncommitted, particularly given his new determination to forge closer cooperation with Europe. (END/2005)


Copyright © 2005 IPS-Inter Press Service. All rights reserved.

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Sunday Herald - 06 March 2005
‘Assad does not mind paying heed to Moscow, but never Washington’
Analysis: By Diplomatic Editor Trevor Royle
http://www.sundayherald.com/48114

Caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place, President Bashar al-Assad finally bowed to international pressure yesterday by announcing a partial withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon. At the back of his mind he will know that those forces can easily be redeployed, but yesterday’s announcement shows every sign that Assad is beginning to feel the heat. In theory, he is implementing the terms of the Taif Accord of 1989 which obliged Syria to redeploy its 14,000-strong army to the eastern Bekaa valley, but in practice he is buying time following a period of sustained pressure. Even before he made his announcement, US President George W Bush got his retaliation in first by demanding “a complete withdrawal – no half-measures”.

Assad’s decision will no doubt be hailed as a triumph for the demonstrators who spent last week campaigning in Beirut. Comparisons have been made with the orange revolution in Ukraine which sounds good but it is not the whole story. The so-called “cedar revolutionaries” are mainly Druze and Maronite Christians prompted into action by the recent assassination of the former prime minister Rafiq Hariri. Without producing any evidence, they blamed the Syrians for the murder and then deployed their anger to demand a withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon. So, in a sense they have a reason to celebrate: the pro-Syrian government has resigned, thereby forcing an election, and now part of the Syrian army will withdraw from their country.

That should be that and everybody should be happy, but the wider picture is more alarming. Hariri’s assassination was not just a spur for the demonstrations in downtown Beirut; it also created a major upset in the regional balance of power. And beyond the Lebanon-Syria nexus there are greater ramifications. Assad did not bow to the young Lebanese demonstrators with their cedar flags. He made the move because he was under pressure from Saudi Arabia, Russia, the US and Israel.

The first point of pressure is obvious. Last week Assad was summoned to Riyadh where Saudi’s Crown Prince Abdullah read him the riot act and told him that he had to pull out of Lebanon or lose face in the Arab world. The outcome of the meeting has been the subject of claim and counter-claim but diplomats have put an acceptable gloss on the meeting by selling it as an Arab solution to an Arab problem. Except, of course, there is more to the compromise than placating ethnic pride. While Syria has found itself isolated in the Arab world as a result of its old-style nationalism and its alleged complicity in Hariri’s death, it is also open to pressure from outside the Middle East.

On Friday, a Syrian delegation was in Moscow where Foreign Ministry officials told them that they had to abide by a UN resolution urging the withdrawal and that Russia would not tolerate any backsliding. Coming from Syria’s oldest ally outside the Middle East this was coercion of a high order and it carried the additional weight that the sale of a sophisticated air defence scheme was hanging on the outcome. Of course, the Russians have their own axe to grind. Having been unable to influence events in Iraq, they are anxious to play a more significant role in the region’s peacemaking and apart from the missile deal they had the trump card that they are not the US. Assad will not mind paying heed to Moscow, but Washington is another matter.

In demanding that the Syrians withdraw completely and immediately from Lebanon, Bush was making it clear that he has no intention of letting Assad off the hook. Nothing would please the US president more than to see a regime change in Damascus and that could still be on the cards. First Hariri is murdered and the people take to the streets. In the aftermath, the pro-Syrian government falls. Assad is then put under pressure from the Arab world and only finds a way out of the impasse by offering what seems to be a compromise.

However that will not be the end of the matter. Syria still has loyalists in Lebanon who believe that the two countries have too many shared interests to separate completely, but if the cedar revolutionaries have their way in the May election their victory at the polls could signal the end of 30 years of economic and political co-dependence. It would also make Assad’s position more shaky. Israel, too, is in a position to influence events as they are keen to close down Syrian-based terror operations once and for all. Should they decide to strike against Hizbollah targets in Damascus, the US would be unlikely to stop them. Once again it seems that the affairs of the Middle East are about to be decided, not by the participants themselves, but by forces outside their control.


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http://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/artikel/803/48755/

Stoiber goes California

Edi, my friend!

Auf seiner Reise nach Mexiko und Kalifornien wird der Bayerische Ministerpräsident Edmund Stoiber auch bei Arnold Schwarzenegger Station machen. sueddeutsche.de hat das Pläuschchen zwischen den beiden Staatsmännern belauscht.

1. Akt


Edmund Stoiber und Arnold Schwarzenegger im privaten Bierzelt des kalifornischen Gouverneurs. Arnie pafft eine dicke Zigarre, Stoiber hält die Luft an und blinzelt mit schmallippigem Lächeln durch die Nebelschwaden. Schwarzenegger trinkt Whisky, Stoiber Kamillentee - ebenfalls im Whiskyglas.

Arnold: California hat mir alles gegeben. Ich seh many things anders now.
Edmund (hustet, schaut über den Rand seiner Brille): Ja, das kenn ich von Italien, das macht mich immer ganz locker, wenn ich in den Süden fahre.
Arnold: Oiso money zum Beispiel, dös is mir mittlerweile total wurscht. Ob ich 50 oder 70 Millionen habe, wo isn da der difference.
Edmund: Mei, Arnie, wenn nur alle so locker drauf wären wie Du! Aber gell, Arnie, wir haben auch unsere Prinzipien. Wenn es um den Schmarrn mit der ... der ... der ... (windet sich) na ... also ... der Schwulenehe geht, da hat, also da hat der Spaß nämlich ein Loch.
Arnold: Edi, my friend, jetzt sag ich Dir mal was: Die Homo-Ehe, dös is was für Männer und Frauen, und damit basta!
Edmund: Mei, des hast jetzt schön gsagt. Wenn ich das schon höre: Diskussion über steuerrechtliche Anerkennung von äh ... äh ... also ... na ... äh ... homosexuellen Paaren - da kann ich gleich über, ja wirklich, also ... über Teufelsaustreibung diskutieren!
Arnold nickt zustimmend.
Und überhaupt, dieser ganze Geschlechterwahn. Wenn das so weiter geht, werden diese militanten Gleichstellungslinienrichter, äh ... also die mit ihrer Gleichstellungsrichtlinie, noch erzwingen, dass der nächste Bundeskanzler eine Frau wird!
Arnie: (Lacht breit und klopft Stoiber gegen den Oberarm, dass dieser ins Wanken gerät. Dann erhebt er sich und geht Richtung Toilette)
I´ll be back!

Stoiber (nippt an seinem Kamillentee, verzieht den Mund, stellt das Glas mit spitzen Fingern zurück und schaut sich dann versonnen im Zelt um): Mei, so ein eigenes Zelt, des hat was. A Hund is er scho, der Arnie...
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I want a Stoiber-Stadion!
2. Akt


Gerd Müller und Sepp Maier betreten das Zelt, schieben ihre Sonnenbrillen nach oben und nähern sich Schwarzenegger und Stoiber, die sich stumm gegenüber sitzen und in ihre Gläser schauen. Zu geblümten Bermudashorts tragen sie Nationaltrikots mit der Aufschrift „WM-Botschafter“.

Arnold (bemerkt die beiden, formt ein Victory-Zeichen): Servus!
Müller und Maier (wie aus einem Mund): Servus!
Maier (hält Arnold die Effenberg-Biografie "Ich hab´s allen gezeigt" unter die Nase): Das ist für mich das größte Arschbuch, würden Sie es für mich mit einem Autogramm aufwerten?
Arnold zieht einen Kugelschreiber aus Edmunds Brusttasche und kritzelt seinen Namen direkt auf den Buchumschlag. Müller und Maier setzen sich dazu und ziehen zwei Dosen Anheuser Busch-Bier aus ihren Sporttaschen, die sie mit lautem Zischen öffnen.
Edmund (verzieht das Gesicht): M...Muss das sein?
(zu Arnold gewandt): Was ich mit dieser Fußball-WM mitmache, das ... also das kann sich kein Mensch vorstellen. Hast du schon gehört, dass auf der äh ... WM nur dieses Ami-, also dieses US-Bier (zeigt verächtlich auf die beiden Dosen) und des greislige Preißnpils ausgeschenkt wird? Die Welt soll Bayern ... äh ... also den Freistaat Bayern doch von seiner äääh ... von seiner besten Seite kennen lernen. (Wie aus dem Nichts erschallt plötzlich die Bayernhymne, Stoiber springt salutierend auf, wird von Müller und Maier aber wieder nach unten gezogen. Die Musik erstirbt jaulend.)
Arnold: My friend, jetzt mal ehrlich: Wo ist das problem? Your Löwenbräu fällt schneller in sich zusammen, als Farah Fawcetts Frisur bei Schnürlregen. Sei doch happy, wenn sich wenigstens keiner über euer beer lustig machen kann.
Edmund (zuckt mit den Schultern, beugt sich vor und senkt die Stimme): Wie hast Du es eigentlich eingefädelt, dass die in Graz das äh ... Fußballstadion nach Dir benannt haben? Obwohl bei uns in München sogar das Eröffnungsspiel stattfindet, heißt der Kasten A ... A ... Allianz-Arena und nicht Stoi... Stoi... Stoiber-Stadion.
Arnie: (Zieht genüsslich an seiner Zigarre, reckt das Kinn hoch und spricht in die aus seinem Mund aufsteigenden Nebelschwaden) .... Waaaßt wooos? Ich verrat Dir ein Geheimnnis. Die Ösis san olle deppert. Dene hob i vazölt, dass mi da Terminator persönlich g´schickt hat. Und wann sie des Grazer Fußballstadion net nach dem Schwarzenegger nennen, hetzma ihnen den Liquid Metal Man auf den throat.
Edmund: Ah geh, und das haben die geglaubt?
Arnold: Mei, Edi. Dös war ein Jux! Waaast eeeh, ich hab früher in einer von den Kabinen meine Muckis trainiert. Dös is jetzt quasi geweihter Boden. Wenn Du Dich in Fröttmaning verewigen willst, spielst halt a bisserl Golf im Stadion. Vielleicht nennen die wenigstens den Rasen nach dir. (Zeichnet mit seiner Hand einen imaginären Schriftzug in die Luft) Der „Stoiber-Stadionrasen“ - dös klingt doch nach wos.
Dann wendet er sich an Müller und Maier: Was haltet´s jetzt ihr vom Kahn als Nationaltorhüter?
Maier (starrer Blick, mit einer Stimme wie ein Sprechroboter): "Ein Torhüter muss Ruhe ausstrahlen. Er muss aber aufpassen, dass er dabei nicht einschläft."
Müller: Mei, wennst denkst, isses eh zu spät.
Arnold schaut betreten zur Seite, Stoiber nippt an seinem erkalteten Tee und summt die Bayernhymne.

Vorhang
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This is a man´s world

3. Akt


Stoiber und Schwarzenegger machen einen Spaziergang über das Schlossgrundstück des Gouverneurs. Gerd Müller und Sepp Maier haben keine Lust und trinken ihr Bier zu Ende.

Arnold: Edi, my friend, wie sieht´s eigentlich mit deinen Kanzlerplänen aus?
Edmund: Wie? Was? Äh ... ach so, ja. Aber nein! Eher wird ich Trainer vom FC Bayern als mich für so einen miesen Job zu bewerben. (Tupft sich die Stirn mit einem blauweiß-karierten Stofftaschentuch) Außerdem zieht es mich ja auch gar nicht nach ... also nach da oben ... äh also Berlin, ja, und überhaupt, meine Frau will da auch gar nicht hin, sie ist ja auch die wichtigste Person ...
Arnold: Ach, dann wird deine Frau Kanzler?
Edmund: Aber nein, wieso?
Arnold: Na, wenn sie so important ist ...
Edmund: Aber nein, für mich! Für mich ist sie wichtig, meine Muschi.
Arnold: Damned, du hast eine was???
Edmund: Wie, was hab ich?
In diesm Augenblick nähert sich ein Golfcaddy. Ein Butler überreicht Schwarzenegger ein schnurloses Telefon.
Arnold: Darling! Aus dem Hörer dringt eine keifende Frauenstimme. Arnold klappt seinen Mund auf und zu, kommt aber nicht zu Wort. Edmund kontrolliert derweil seine Fingernägel.
But ... no …yes … äh … ok!
(Legt auf und gibt dem Butler das Telefon zurück, der sich daraufhin entfernt) Fuck!
Edmund: Bitte was?
Arnold: My wife. Sie hat rausgekriegt, dass ich an einer Wahlveranstaltung der Republikaner teilgenommen habe.
Edmund: Und, weiter?
Arnold: Das heißt wieder mal zwei Wochen no Sex.
Edmund: Aber du bist doch äh ... also ... Republikaner.
Arnold: Sicher, aber my wife nicht. Und als überzeugte Demokratin geht sie nicht mit einem Rep ins Bett.
Edmund: Dann hast du also die Opposition ... äh ... im eigenen Haus. Na, da würd ich mich bedanken, wenn meine Muschi mich im äh ... äh ... Schlafzimmer von der Ökosteuer überzeugen möchte.
Arnold: Du hast ein politisches (räuspert sich) Genital zuhause?
Edmund: Aber nein, weder politisch noch äh ... äh ... genital. Muschi nenn ich meine Frau.
Arnold: Wow! Und deine Frau nennt dich dann ... (prustet)
Edmund (hastig): Edelmann. „Mein Edelmann“ sagt sie immer.
Arnold: Lucky guy!

Aus dem Zelt dringt der lallende Gesang von Sepp Maier und Gerd Müller: Gute Freunde kann niemand trennen, gute Freunde sind nie allein ...
Arnold (lächelt versonnen): Hörst du, sie spielen unser Lied.
Schwarzenegger umarmt, von Rührung gepackt, den ächzenden Stoiber, sie beginnen sich im Takt zu wiegen.

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Die US-Medien sind schier besoffen von `An Arabian Spring`
[urlNewsweek]http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7103517/site/newsweek/[/url] und vom[urlTime Magazin:Springtime for Arab Democracy?]http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1034669,00.html[/url] u.a.
Ich hoffe nur, dass die Ereignisse im Libanon nicht eskalieren. Denn bei allen Vorwürfen gegen Syrien haben die Truppen für über 10 Jahre Ruhe gesorgt. Die Schreckensbilder aus dem Libanon haben über Jahre für die gleiche Abscheu gesorgt wie heute die Bilder aus dem Irak.
Und ich möchte diese Bilder nicht wiedersehen, denn das was aus dem Irak bekannt wird, reicht schon.

March 7, 2005
Hezbollah Backs Syria, Challenging Lebanese Opposition
By HASSAN M. FATTAH
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/07/international/middleeast/0…

BEIRUT, Lebanon, March 6 - The Lebanese faction Hezbollah declared its full support for Syria on Sunday, directly challenging opposition groups a day after Syria promised to gradually withdraw troops from Lebanon.

Hezbollah`s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, spoke to reporters on Sunday in his stronghold in southern Beirut, breaking weeks of relative silence over the crisis concerning Syria`s presence in Lebanon. He called for Lebanese to "express their gratitude" to Syria by joining a demonstration on Tuesday against United Nations Resolution 1559, which calls for Syria`s withdrawal and Hezbollah`s disarmament.
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Supporters of Syria in Beirut drove Sunday by a billboard of Rafik Hariri, the former prime minister of Lebanon,
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"I invite all Lebanese to this meeting to refuse foreign interference," he said.

Although he acknowledged that a Syrian pullout was a reality, he emphasized that Syria must be able to leave with honor - a reaction to repeated statements by the Bush administration and Lebanese opposition groups calling for a quick and complete pullout of Syrian forces.

Sheik Nasrallah`s statements came a day after President Bashar al-Assad of Syria announced an eventual pullout from Lebanon, promising an immediate redeployment of Syrian troops eastward to the Bekaa Valley, followed by a second move to areas "near the Lebanese-Syrian border." Late Saturday evening, Syrian officials clarified Mr. Assad`s statements, insisting that the redeployment would be to the Syrian side of the border.

Mr. Assad and President Emile Lahoud of Lebanon are expected to meet with senior government officials in Damascus on Monday to outline the details of the pullback. Reuters reported that Lebanon`s defense minister, Abdul-Rahim Murad, said Syrian troops would begin moving Monday, though there were no signs on Sunday of any preparatory movement at bases in many Lebanese towns.

For weeks, Hezbollah, which maintains a well-armed, 25,000-man militia in Lebanon and commands the support of hundreds of thousands of Shiite Muslims in the country, has been a political wild card. Throughout the recent crisis, in which public outrage led to the breakup of a strongly pro-Syrian government, the group kept a relatively low profile, never wholeheartedly offering its backing to a Syrian presence and never extending its hand to the opposition, which has sought to get Hezbollah into its camp.

"This was really a warning to the opposition that they were getting a little carried away by all the talk of democracy and all the attention," said Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, a professor at Lebanese-American University in Beirut. "It was Nasrallah`s way of saying, `We are here, we have been quiet long enough, and are now going to have our say.` "

Hezbollah, whose name means Party of God, a guerrilla group started in the early 1980`s with financing from Iran, has built broad support by providing social services and health care. Recently, it has tried to refashion itself as a political party, with 13 members in Lebanon`s Parliament.

In many ways, Hezbollah`s fate has been tied to Syria. The group, branded terrorist by Washington, forged an alliance with the country in the early 1990`s, after the end of Lebanon`s civil war, and the Syrian government has allowed it to continue its battle with Israel on the condition that Syria maintain military and political constraints on its operations. As a result, the group has been able to maintain its armed strength, even though competing Muslim, Druse and Christian factions in Lebanon were formally disarmed.

On Sunday, Sheik Nasrallah reiterated Hezbollah`s traditional stand that it could never give up its arms "because Lebanon needs the resistance to defend it." But he offered a legalistic solution to opposition figures, reminding them to call Hezbollah a "resistance movement" instead of a militia, which would be bound by the call for disarmament in Resolution 1559.

Trying to strike a conciliatory note, he said he agreed with the opposition`s goals, but took issue with its methods. The opposition`s tacit support of the Security Council resolution, he said, served American and Israeli aims to "bring Lebanon back to a state of chaos and find excuses for foreign intervention and push some Lebanese to call for international intervention."

He railed against rumors that opposition figures had been in discussions with Israeli politicians, saying that even if Lebanon accepted peace with Israel, Hezbollah would not.

Hezbollah`s plans for the demonstration on Tuesday are a notable departure from its traditional outpourings, which draw hundreds of thousands of Shiite Lebanese into Beirut`s southern suburbs. For the first time in Hezbollah`s recent history, said Professor Saad-Ghorayeb, the party has planned to hold the demonstration in central Beirut, near Martyrs` Square, where the opposition has recently held rallies. Ostensibly, the location will encourage Lebanese from other factions to join. But ultimately, she said, it would serve to contrast the opposition`s tens of thousands of followers with Hezbollah`s huge support base in the country.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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March 7, 2005
U.S. Checkpoints Raise Ire in Iraq
By JOHN F. BURNS
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/07/international/middleeast/0…

BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 6 - When an Italian journalist was driven up Baghdad`s airport road toward an American military checkpoint on Friday night, she was driving into a situation fraught with hazards thousands of Iraqis face every day.

The journalist, Giuliana Sgrena, 56, ran into fierce American gunfire that left her with a shrapnel wound to her shoulder and killed the Italian intelligence agent sitting beside her in the rear seat. She had been released only 35 minutes earlier by Iraqi kidnappers who had held her hostage for a month, and the car carrying them to the airport was driving in pitch dark.
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But the conditions for the journey, up a road that is considered the most dangerous in Iraq, were broadly the same as those facing all civilian drivers approaching American checkpoints or convoys. American soldiers operate under rules of engagement that give them authority to open fire whenever they have reason to believe that they or others in their unit may be at risk of suicide bombings or other insurgent attacks.

Next to the scandal of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, no other aspect of the American military presence in Iraq has caused such widespread dismay and anger among Iraqis, judging by their frequent outbursts on the subject. Daily reports compiled by Western security companies chronicle many incidents in which Iraqis with no apparent connection to the insurgency are killed or wounded by American troops who have opened fire on suspicion that the Iraqis were engaged in a terrorist attack.

Accounts of the incidents vary widely, as they have in the incident involving Ms. Sgrena, with the American command emphasizing aspects of drivers` behavior that aroused legitimate concerns, and survivors saying, often, that they were doing nothing threatening. Since few of the incidents are ever formally investigated, many families are left with unresolved feelings of bitterness.

American and Iraqi officials say they have no figures on such casualties, just as they say they have no reliable statistics on the far higher number of civilian deaths in the fighting that began with the American-led invasion nearly two years ago. But any Westerner working in Iraq comes across numerous accounts of apparently innocent deaths and injuries among drivers and passengers who drew American fire, often in circumstances that have left the Iraqis puzzled as to what, if anything, they did wrong.

The confusion arises, in most cases, from a clash of perspectives. The American soldiers know that circumstances erupt in which a second`s hesitation can mean death, and say civilian deaths are a regrettable but inevitable consequence of a war in which suicide bombers have been the insurgents` most deadly weapon. But Iraqis say they have no clear idea of American engagement rules, and accuse the American command of failing to disseminate the rules to the public, in newspapers or on radio and television stations.

The military says it takes many precautions to ensure the safety of civilians. But a military spokesman in Baghdad declined in a telephone interview on Sunday to describe the engagement rules in detail, saying the military needed to maintain secrecy over how it responds to the threat of car bombs.

The spokesman, as well as a senior Pentagon official who discussed the issue in Washington on Sunday, said official statements issued after the Friday shooting offered a broad outline of the rules. In those statements, the military said it tried to slow Ms. Sgrena`s vehicle with hand signals, flashing lights and warning shots before firing into the car`s engine block.

But many Iraqis tell of being fired on with little or no warning.

Basman Fadhil, 29, a taxi driver interviewed Sunday in Baghdad, described driving home to the southern Doura neighborhood on Jan. 13. The power was out, as it often is in the capital, and the streets were very dark. He was only a block or so from his house when bullets shattered his windshield. "I thought it was thieves trying to steal my car, so I drove faster," he said.

One bullet struck him in the shoulder, causing him to crash into a concrete barrier. Getting out of the badly damaged vehicle, he staggered a few steps until American and Iraqi soldiers began yelling at him from the darkness not to move. When he asked the soldiers why they had shot at him, Mr. Fadhil said, they told him there had been gunmen in the area shortly before.

The military spokesman in Baghdad said the rules of engagement were written and issued by senior commanders in the 150,000-member American force here, and submitted for higher approval by the United States Central Command, which controls American military activities across the Middle East. The rules are passed down the chain of command, and thoroughly explained to every soldier operating a checkpoint or manning weapons in any vehicles in a convoy, the spokesman said.

Because the rules are intended to protect soldiers coming under immediate attack, no telephone or radio calls to higher command are required before soldiers may put them into effect. "Rules of engagement are standing orders," he said. "These are briefed all the way down to the lowest level."

"Everybody knows what they are," he said. "They are automatic."

In Italy, Ms. Sgrena, recovering in a hospital, has contested several aspects of the military`s account. In a front-page account headlined "My Truth" that appeared Sunday in her newspaper, Il Manifesto, and in interviews with Italian news agencies, she said that the car was traveling at "moderate speed," that she saw no flashing lights, and that the first notice she had was when the car came under "a rain of bullets." The Pentagon and the American command in Baghdad have pledged a thorough investigation of the shooting.

Ms. Sgrena and her companions were not the only Western civilians to have come under American fire, according to a series of unclassified government reports that receive extremely restricted circulation, copies of which have been made available to The Times. The reports outline at least six incidents since December in which American troops have fired on vehicles carrying Westerners in the area around the airport.

The reports chronicled one incident in January at a checkpoint near the airport road when an American soldier fired at a car even though it was moving slowly and the driver was holding his identification card in plain sight out of the window. The soldier finally waved the car away and forced it to drive down the wrong side of a road.

In early February, a private security company carrying Western clients was fired upon by American troops on the airport road itself. "This is the second time in three days," the report on the incident noted. Later that month, a Western contractor approaching a checkpoint at roughly five miles an hour after dropping off a passenger at the airport heard gunfire, assumed he was coming under attack by insurgents and tried to speed away.

But the fire turned out to have been from American troops, who fired warning shots, then hit the passenger side windshield, forcing the driver to stop, climb from the car and put his hands in the air. In statements released by the United States command about suicide bombings that it has foiled, the emphasis is usually on the graduated response. "A gray sedan broke through the stopped traffic and accelerated to about 40 miles per hour as it moved through an intersection," said one of those releases, put out by the First Marine Expeditionary Force on March 2.

"Soldiers first used hand and arm signals, along with verbal commands, in an effort to get the driver of the vehicle to stop," the statement said. "Soldiers fired in front of the vehicle to warn the driver to stop. They then fired into the engine compartment when it was about 25 meters from their position, which disabled the vehicle."

The vehicle caught fire and was rocked by a series of explosions, suggesting that the car had been rigged as a bomb, the release said. "The driver never exited the vehicle," it concluded, indicating that he had been killed.

Many Iraqi drivers complain that they know of no clear rules for dealing with American convoys. Reporters have listened as American officers brief armored-vehicle drivers before leaving United States bases on procedures for keeping civilian vehicles well back. Generally, the machine-gunner in the last Humvee is instructed to raise a clenched fist - a military gesture meaning "stay back" that few Iraqis understand - then to wave both arms, and throw water bottles or anything else available. Only then, the officers say, is the gunner authorized to open fire, first at the engine block, then at the driver.

One of the starkest incidents in recent weeks occurred on the evening of Jan. 18 in the town of Tal Afar, a trouble spot west of the city of Mosul, where a platoon from the 25th Infantry Division was on a foot patrol. Chris Hondros, a photographer for Getty Images, an American photo agency, said that soldiers of the Apache company were walking in near darkness toward an intersection along a deserted commercial street when they saw the headlights of a sedan turning into the street about 100 yards ahead.

An officer ordered the troops over their headsets to halt the vehicle, and all raised weapons. One soldier fired a three-shot burst into the air, but the car kept coming, Mr. Hondros said, and then half a dozen troops fired at least 50 rounds, until the car was peppered with bullets and rolled gently to a stop against a curb.

"I could hear sobbing and crying coming from t he car, children`s voices," Mr. Hondros said.

Next he said, one of the rear doors opened, and six children, four girls and two boys, one only 8 years old, tumbled into the street. They were splattered with blood.

Mr. Hondros, whose photographs of the incident were published around the world, said that the parents of four of the children lay dead in the front seat. Their bodies were riddled with bullets, and the man`s skull had smashed.

Back at a base in Tal Afar, the soldiers and Mr. Hondros filled out forms with their observations on the incident. The company commander told the soldiers that there would be an investigation, but that they had followed the rules of engagement and that they should tell the truth, Mr. Hondros said. "I`ll stick up for you," the captain told the soldiers, Mr. Hondros recalled. He said the platoon involved in the incident had been engaged in an intense firefight with insurgents in Tal Afar two days before the incident. "It was a jangling experience," he said.

Reporting for this article was contributed by Robert F. Worth, James Glanz, Edward Wong and Iraqi staff members of The New York Times bureau in Baghdad and by Thom Shanker from Washington.


Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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Sun, March 6, 2005
Beijing turns up heat
By Eric Margolis
http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/Toronto/Eric_Margol…

This week, a major Chinese Communist Party congress will declare that any further moves by Taiwan to assert independence will be considered "treason" and an act of war.

China has long fulminated against Taiwan, which it considers a "renegade province."

But this latest threat reflects a sharp rise in nationalist feeling among Chinese -- and for the first time, China`s growing military power gives it the capability to seriously threaten Taiwan.

China is deploying a fleet of new landing craft for a cross-strait invasion of Taiwan. It`s surface and submarine forces have been significantly strengthened.

China`s air force is flying potent Russian Sukhoi-27 attack aircraft with air refuelling capability, and introducing new F8 fighters using advanced technology.

Far more worrisome for the U.S., whose attack carriers are the principal deterrent to any Chinese invasion of Taiwan, China now has a large number of deadly Russian-supplied supersonic "Sunburn" SS-N-22 anti-ship missiles that can be fired from ships, submarines and aircraft. A single hit by one of these missiles could cripple a U.S. carrier.

China has more than 600 ballistic missiles pointed at Taiwan. In response, Taiwan is rushing to deploy its own anti-ship missiles and long-range cruise missiles designed to attack Chinese invasion ports, air and missile bases opposite Taiwan.

China`s powerful military appears to have run out of patience with Taiwanese President Chen Shui-ban`s on-again, off-again attempts to assert further independence. Cautious Communist elders are trying to restrain nationalist tensions and pursue negotiations, but the party is under mounting pressure to take military action.

Meanwhile, the European Union seems close to ending an arms embargo of China imposed after the Tiananmen Square massacre. China urgently wants to buy $15 billion US worth of modern electronics, missiles, warplanes and armour from the EU. Huge business is at stake.

The Bush administration and the U.S. Congress are up in arms at this prospect and threaten to curtail military technology transfers to the EU, and even impose trade sanctions. This issue is further aggravating badly damaged U.S.-EU relations just when the White House has been trying to repair them.

As tensions over Taiwan mount, another nasty crisis is brewing in the remote Himalayan kingdom of Nepal.

A bloody, little-noticed Maoist insurgency there has been raging for a decade, killing more than 11,000 people. Much of rural Nepal is in the hands of the insurgents, who draw inspiration from the daftest theories of Mao and Cambodia`s Pol Pot. This week, 68 rebels and soldiers were killed in a new round of clashes.

The ruler of Nepal, King Gyanendra, staged a palace coup in February, ousted a democratic government and assumed dictatorial powers. Nepal is in political and economic chaos.These events have deeply alarmed Nepal`s two powerful neighbours, India and China. India has long considered Hindu Nepal a semi-protectorate.

Nepal`s Maoist insurgents are forging links to Maoist rebels in northern India known as Naxalites.

The two movements are attacking landowners and government officials. India, Britain and the U.S. are getting drawn into the fray in Nepal by supplying its embattled regime with arms, financing, advisers and helicopters.

China is increasingly troubled by India`s intervention in Nepal, the latest dangerous irritant on the long, poorly demarcated, contested Himalayan border over which they fought a sharp war in 1962. Chinese military roads have been driven up to the Nepali border and army units reinforced. If Nepal dissolves further into chaos, the risk of an Indian-Chinese clash there becomes ever more possible.

Growing guerrilla war in India`s extreme eastern hill states, and surging Indian-Chinese rivalry over Burma, are further heightening tensions.

Western powers have no business getting involved in Nepal, and should stay out. But their diplomatic efforts are urgently needed to dampen down the China-Taiwan confrontation and North Korea`s nuclear sabre-rattling.

There`s even an outside chance China might decide to gamble on a quick war to grab Taiwan while severely over-stretched U.S. military forces are bogged down in Iraq.

Sun Media: Calgary Sun / Ottawa Sun / Edmonton Sun / London Free Press / Winnipeg Sun

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Die Texte stammen von der `Swift Boat Veterans for Truth`, die jetzt für die Umgestalltung der Rentenversicherung werben.http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=av31qz5p…

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The Independent
Is Lebanon walking into another nightmare?
Monday, 7th March 2005, by Robert Fisk
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/story.jsp?story=617…

LEBANON confronts a nightmare today. As the Syrian army begins its withdrawal from the country this morning, after mounting pressure from President George Bush - whose anger at the Syrians has been provoked by the insurgency against American troops in Iraq - there are growing signs that the Syrian retreat is reopening the sectarian divisions of the 1975-1990 Lebanese civil war.

The first Syrian units are expected to cross the Lebanese-Syrian border at Masnaa before midday and their military redeployment should be completed by Wednesday.

To the outside world, this may seem a victory devoutly to be wished: just two weeks after the murder of the former prime minister Rafik Hariri - a prominent opponent of the Syrian presence in Lebanon - the army of Damascus is pulling out of the country it has dominated for 29 long years. At last, free elections might be held in Lebanon, further proof that - thanks to Mr Bush - democracy is breaking out across the Arab world. Iraq held elections, Saudi Arabia held local elections, President Hosni Mubarak promises a contended election for the presidency of Egypt. So why shouldn’t Lebanon be happy?

Have we forgotten 150,000 dead? Have we forgotten the Western hostages? Have we forgotten the 241 Americans who died in the suicide bombing of 23 October 1983? This democracy, if it comes, will be drenched with blood - but the blood will be that of the Lebanese who live here, not that of the foreigners who wish to bestow freedom upon them.

Alas, this is a dark corner of the former Ottoman empire - whose First World War defeat allowed the French to create Lebanon out of part of Syria - which rests precariously upon an understanding between its Christian, Sunni, Shia and Druze inhabitants. All factions came together to mourn Hariri. But now, at night, most - though by no means all - of the demonstrators in Martyrs’ Square who have demanded a Syrian withdrawal are Christian Maronites. Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the chairman of the Hizbollah Shia guerrilla movement, a loyal if somewhat unwilling Syrian ally which drove the Israelis out of Lebanon in 2000, called yesterday for a massive demonstration close to Martyrs’ Square tomorrow - to support the "unity and independence" of Lebanon, but also to thank the Syrians for their "protection" of Lebanon. Mr Nasrallah invited Christians and every other religious group to join their demonstration. But most of those present are bound to be Shias - who, like their co-religionists in Iraq - are the largest community in the country.

Thousands of Lebanese now fear that when the Syrians do leave, they may be asked to pay a price for this: that in the absence of these "sisterly" Syrian soldiers, civil conflict might suddenly - mysteriously - return to Lebanon.

On Saturday night, a few dozen members of the Lebanese Baath party turned up in the Christian Sassine Square area of Beirut and two shots were fired in the air. The Lebanese army quickly suppressed this apparently pro-Syrian demonstration (no arrests were made). Was this because their leader happens to be the Lebanese - and equally pro-Syrian - minister of Labour?

How swiftly a Middle Eastern country which had become a bedrock of financial stability and security - even for thousands of new Western tourists - can fall into the abyss. Within 24 hours of Hariri’s murder, hundreds of Saudi landowners were closing their properties in Lebanon - after paying their condolences to Hariri.

The Central Bank has announced that the Lebanese pound is secure; but it has spent almost $2bnsupporting the pound, at 1,500 Lebanese pounds to the US dollar, in the past fortnight - and Lebanon has a $32bn (£17bn) public debt which only Hariri’s international reputation might have salvaged. Then there came Syrian President Bashar Assad’s speech to the parliament in Damascus on Saturday evening in which he referred to those Lebanese who were loyal to Syria and those who were on "shifting sands".

Did the latter include Walid Jumblatt, the Druze leader and erstwhile Syrian ally, who suddenly departed for Kuwait and Saudi Arabia on Saturday, and who personally told me that he was probably next on Syria’s hit list after Hariri?

A UN team is investigating Hariri’s death - Hizbollah’s Nasrallah gave them his full support yesterday - and the Lebanese government insists it has searched every nook and cranny for evidence of the culprits. Problem: three more bodies have been discovered at the scene of the bombing in the two weeks since the attack. Hungry cats and the stench of death revealed two of them; which doesn’t say much for the detective work of the government authorities so keen to solve the murder.

President Assad said that 63 per cent of Syria’s army in Lebanon had been withdrawn since 2000 and that the "international media" had paid no attention to this. He was right. Mr Nasrallah, in his press conference in Beirut yesterday, said the American demands for the withdrawal of the Syrians and the disarmament of the Hizbollah itself were "a photocopy" of Israel’s plans for Lebanon. He, too, was right.

But here is the real problem. The Syrians and Hizbollah say that Syrian forces are withdrawing from Lebanon under the terms of the inter-Arab 1989 Taif agreement which ended the civil war here.

This called for a Syrian withdrawal from Beirut - already accomplished by the Syrian army but not by its intelligence services - to the Mdeirej ridge in the mountains east of Beirut, and then to the Bekaa Valley and, after talks with the Lebanese and Syrian governments, to Syria itself.

UN Security Council resolution 1559 calls for pretty much the same - but also for the disarmament of the Hizbollah guerrilla movement in southern Lebanon, which still attacks the Israelis in the Shebaa farms area, which belonged to Lebanon under French mandate law but which has been occupied by the Israelis since 1967.

Tomorrow, the Hizbollah will be supporting Taif because it called for national unity and arranged for an orderly Syrian withdrawal - but didn’t mention the disarmament of the guerrillas. The Hizbollah will be against their own disarmament. They will be against UN resolution 1559. And they will be only 500 yards from the Hariri demonstrations. The Hariri protesters, who at the least deserve to know who killed a man who wanted to rebuild Lebanon and who never had a militia - in other words, he never had blood on his hands - will stage yet another demonstration tomorrow, from the crater of the bomb which killed him, to his grave before the ugly mosque he built in central Beirut.

But yet again, Lebanon risks becoming a battlefield for the wars of non-Lebanese.

For 30 years, America has tolerated - even supported - Syria’s military presence in Lebanon. In 1976, both the Israelis and the Americans wanted Syrian troops in Lebanon - because they would be able to "control" the 300,000 Palestinian refugees in Lebanon - but now Mr Bush’s real concern is Syria’s supposed support for the insurgency in Iraq.

The irony is extraordinary: 140,000 American troops occupy Iraq - we shall leave the Israeli occupation forces in Palestinian lands out of this equation - while their President demands the withdrawal of 14,000 Syrian troops from Lebanon.

Democracy indeed!

©2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.

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So much for illusions
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1431793,00.html

Despite the election, ordinary Iraqis face a daily struggle to survive attacks, kidnappings and killings
Haifa Zangana
Monday March 7, 2005

Guardian
Behind the facade of post-election political process, despite Tony Blair`s desire to move on and George Bush`s attempt to mend fences with Europe, in Iraq the atrocities continue to mount. Some, like the Hilla attack, are Zarqawi-style, with hundreds dead and wounded. Others are more mundane and sustained, like US warplanes bombing suspect houses in Ramadi, Hit, or Mosul, roadblock killings in Najaff, or post-curfew hunting by snipers in Sammara.

Despite all the rhetoric about "building a new democracy", daily life for most Iraqis is still a struggle for survival, with human rights abuses engulfing them. A typical Iraqi day begins with the struggle to get the basics: petrol, a cylinder of gas, fresh water, food and medication. It ends with a sigh of relief: Alhamdu ilah (thanks, God), for surviving death threats, violent attacks, kidnappings and killings.

For ordinary Iraqis, simply venturing into the streets brings the possibility of attack. Most killings go unreported. With no names, no faces, no identities, they cease to be human beings. They are "the enemy", "collateral damage" or, at best, statistics to argue about.

In March 1989, Iraqi and Arab writers contributed to a book called Halabja, to condemn Saddam Hussein`s regime for using chemical weapons against civilians in the city. At the time of the attack, Saddam was still the darling of the west.

In my introduction to the book, I wrote: "They say 5,000 people died. Others say 10,000 died. We say: in Halabja, within minutes, Rasul, Piroz, Ahmed, Khadija, Sardar, Amina _ have been killed. In Halabja, eyes no longer shine."

Now, we continue to watch life draining out of our country. Almost two years on from the beginning of the occupation, eyes no longer shine in many Iraqi cities. Thousands of civilians have been killed. One of them was Hazim Ahmed al-Obaidi. On January 16, Hazim, 57, left his house to go to work. He had a cash-and-carry shop, for fruit, vegetables and dates, in Mosul.

Before leaving, his wife reminded him to get some paraffin, if possible. He laughed loudly, hugging his four-year-old daughter, Manar, who wanted to go with him. He waved goodbye to his mother and his children: Dalal, 17, Shahad, 12, Maha, 9, and Zayed, 11.

Hazim never came back. He was shot, according to eyewitnesses, by a US patrol. His car was burned and, because of the curfew, his family had to wait until the next morning to start looking for him. Two days later, his charred and barely recognisable body was found. To the bewilderment of his family, US troops stopped them after they had collected the body, uncovered it and took photos.

Hazim was not a "terrorist"or a "Saddamist". He was a cheerful family man who was wounded in the Iran-Iraq war, and survived the harshness of the sanctions years by selling fruit and vegetables. Who is going to investigate his killing, compensate his family, and help his children to make sense of their tragedy? Will it be the Iraqi interim government, or the US-led occupation? Judging by the human rights records of both, the answer is that neither of them will investigate Hazim`s killing, or any other. Human rights under occupation have proved to be a mirage similar to WMD.

In his message broadcast to Iraqis last April, Tony Blair said: "Our aim is to help alleviate immediate humanitarian suffering, and to move as soon as possible to an interim authority run by Iraqis ... which represents human rights and the rule of law and spends Iraq`s wealth not on palaces and WMD, but on you and the services you need."

So much for illusions. Charred bodies, the massacre of children in a wedding party, the killing of detainees, shootings at demonstrations, kidnappings of civilians - these are the features of that "better future".

Occupation troops are responsible for an increasing list of abuses, including the torture and killing of Iraqi prisoners. Seeing a corpse photographed with grinning US soldiers at Abu Ghraib shocked the moral sensibility of people around the world. Taking snaps of Hazim`s charred body has shaken his family`s belief in the humanity of the Americans, as well as the British and the Iraqis working with them.

Following the US and British governments` line on human rights, members of the interim Iraqi government have sought to play down the violations committed by occupation troops - either by recalling that similar abuses were committed under Saddam`s regime or by labelling the victims as terrorists.

Under Iyad Allawi`s regime, the newly trained Iraqi police are torturing detainees. Last week, leaders of the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq accused the police of torturing and killing three of their members because of their political and religious affiliations, and demanded an immediate investigation.

Facing these daily atrocities, what do we expect an oppressed Iraqi to do?

· Haifa Zangana is an Iraqi-born novelist and former prisoner of the Saddam regime

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Extreme prejudice

Events in a small Kansas town reflect the close links between the civil rights struggle and gay liberation
Gary Younge in Topeka
Monday March 7, 2005
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1431795,00.ht…

Guardian
The flat plains and big skies of Kansas serve as a reassuring backdrop to America`s emotional landscape. In the national mythology Kansas (the size of Austria; the population of Latvia) is not just any state but a cultural comfort blanket. Like motherhood, apple pie, little league and homecoming, it represents all that is steady, regular, wholesome and decent in America. The state song is Home on the Range. Kansas, writes Thomas Frank in What`s the Matter With Kansas? is "where Dorothy wants to return [and] where Superman grew up". When Frank`s book came out in Britain its title had been translated to: What`s the Matter with America? Kansas is the state of the nation.

In this mythic terrain Fred Phelps, of Topeka (pop 122,377), Kansas, fits in and stands out. He fits in because he is a homophobe who, like most of the country, including the Bush administration, uses the Bible as the source of his bigotry. He stands out because, unlike most of the country, he pursues his agenda with a vicious zeal and animus that not even the White House could match. When Mr Phelps attended the funeral of Matthew Shephard, a young man beaten to a pulp in a homophobic attack, or those of prominent HIV sufferers, he took his "God hates fags" picket signs with him.

Phelp`s granddaughter, Jael, inherited his intolerance. "The proscribed punishment for homosexuality in the Bible is death," she told the New York Times last week. "They are worthy of death, and those people who condone that action are just as guilty." Last week, Jael Phelps stood for election against the city`s first and only openly gay city councilwoman, Tiffany Muller, in a primary. She also lobbied to defeat a local ordinance making it illegal to discriminate against lesbians and gays who work for the city. She lost on both counts, coming a distant last in the primary while the ordnance was passed 53% to 47%.

The victory was principally due to local factors. With the Phelpses in the frame, the vote became as much a referendum about rejecting flagrant bigotry as embracing equality. A statewide vote calling for a constitutional ban on gay marriage in April is expected to pass easily; Muller came second but enters April`s runoff as the underdog. But the process by which it came about illustrates a national trend that has striking parallels with the civil rights period of the 50s and 60s, when Topeka was in the national spotlight.

Just over 50 years ago, an African American, Oliver Brown, tried to enrol his daughter, Linda, into the white junior school here. The local board of education refused to admit her. Brown, along with other parents facing similar problems across the country, objected in a suit that went all the way to the supreme court. In 1954, in a landmark ruling, the supreme court effectively outlawed segregation, in the now famous Brown v Board of Education.

The ensuing period sparked more than a decade of civil-rights activism that saw the most vicious racism and the most heroic anti-racism. It was an era in which the main political parties attempted to either disown or exploit these tensions, wavering between opportunism and prejudice when issues of principle were at stake, which bears comparison with recent developments in the struggle for gay and lesbian liberation.

Following two key court decisions in 2003 supporting gay rights - the supreme court`s decision to strike down the sodomy laws, followed by the Massachusetts supreme court`s legalisation of same-sex marriage - the religious right has been engaged in a huge anti-gay backlash on a national and local level. While the Democratic party has sat on its hands, the Republican Congress has exploited the issue as a means of galvanising its base and splitting the Democrats` core support. In November, 11 states passed constitutional bans on gay marriage.

Meanwhile, left to fend for themselves, lesbian and gay communities are becoming more confident, organised, sophisticated and vocal in their struggle for equality. Erin Norris led the campaign to back the ordinance in Topeka with a grassroots strategy. Eschewing television and radio advertising, they went door-to-door targeting and mobilising potential support. "If you can put a face on a human rights issue, then it can make a difference," she says. The lesbian and gay community in Topeka is becoming a key broker in local politics, providing crucial volunteers and funds for those who back equality.

`We`re really fighting for our lives," says Norris. "We feel targeted, so we become really savvy really quickly." Norris says a local woman arrived at her house last week and told her she had been beaten up for having a "Vote Tiffany" sign on her lawn. "I felt really responsible," says Norris. "But she came to say she wanted another yard sign. It energised her to get more involved."

A similar mood of resilience and resistance has become evident across the country. In Spokane, Washington, where conservatives are preparing for a showdown over the proposed establishment of a gay business district, a gay businesswoman, Bonnie Aspen, told the Observer: "Bring it on. Spokane won`t change without confrontation." As during the civil rights movement, such defiance is born from a mixture of strength in spirit and adversity in practice. "We`ve only been tolerated because we`ve remained silent," said Stephen Adams of Springfield, Missouri, after the state passed its gay marriage ban last year. "But we just can`t be silent any more."

To compare these two struggles is not to equate them. To say they are the same would be ridiculous. It goes without saying that there are major differences between race and sexual orientation - and therefore homophobia and racism. It also goes without saying that the existence of many black lesbians and gays makes the binary opposition of the two issues redundant. To ignore the parallels would be no less ridiculous. The civil rights movement was not made from whole cloth. Nor were its achievements limited to the interests of African Americans. It was part of a narrative of extending human rights to those who had been denied them that helped remove discriminatory barriers for many, not least white women and Jews. Its roots, like its appeal, were universal. It drew inspiration from Gandhi (among others) and can give inspiration to the likes of Norris and other gay activists.

There are two main reasons why this comparison jars with many. The first is blatant homophobia. It is far easier to marginalise the lesbian and gay agenda if you can sever any association between it and other struggles for equality. The second is latent homophobia, which argues that such comparisons trivialise racism, as though the right to love who you want and still keep your job, your home and sometimes your life is a trifling matter.

Those who insist that one is worse than the other should remember that this is not a competition. Sadly, there is enough misery to go around. People like the Phelpses will make sure it stays that way. They don`t need our help.

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Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan

http://www.juancole.com/
Monday, March 07, 2005

Foreign Occupation has Produced Radical Muslim Terrorism

Fareed Zakariya argues that Bush got one thing right. Zakariya writes:


" Bush never accepted the view that Islamic terrorism had its roots in religion or culture or the Arab-Israeli conflict. Instead he veered toward the analysis that the region was breeding terror because it had developed deep dysfunctions caused by decades of repression and an almost total lack of political, economic and social modernization. The Arab world, in this analysis, was almost unique in that over the past three decades it had become increasingly unfree, even as the rest of the world was opening up. His solution, therefore, was to push for reform in these lands."



I don`t use the phrase "Islamic terrorism" because "Islamic" refers to the essentials of the religion, and it forbids terrorism (hirabah). But if Bush rejected the idea that radical Muslim terrorism came out of religion or culture, he was right.

I disagree with the rest of the paragraph, though. Let`s think about terrorism in the past few decades in a concrete and historical way, and it is obvious that it comes out of a reaction to being occupied militarily by foreigners. The Muslim Brotherhood developed its Secret Apparatus and began committing acts of terror in the 1940s in Egypt, which the British had virtually reoccupied in order to deny it to the Italians and then Germans. The Brotherhood assassinated pro-British judges and pro-British politicians (the British installed the Wafd Party in power). The Brotherhood had grown to some half a million members by 1948. Some Brothers also volunteered to fight in Palestine against the rise of Israel, which they saw as a colonial settler state.

After the Muslim Brotherhood assassinated Prime Minister Nuqrashi in 1948, it was banned and dissolved. It was briefly rehabilitated by Abdul Nasser in 1952-1954, but in 1954 it tried to assassinate him, and he banned it again. There was no major radical Muslim terrorism in Egypt in the period after 1954 and until Sadat again legitimized the Brotherhood in 1971, despite Egypt being a dictatorship in that period.

The intimate connection between foreign military occupation and terrorism can be seen in Palestine in the 1940s, where the Zionist movement threw up a number of terrorist organizations that engaged in bombings and assassinations on a fair scale. That is, frustrated Zionists not getting their way behaved in ways difficult to distinguish from frustrated Muslim nationalists who didn`t get their way.

There was what the French would have called radical Muslim terrorism in Algeria 1954-1962, though the Salafis were junior partners of the largely secular FLN. French colonialists were targeted for heartless bombings and assassinations. This campaign of terror aimed at expelling the French, who had colonized Algeria in 1830 and had kept it ever since, declaring it French soil. The French had usurped the best land and crowded the Algerians into dowdy old medinas or haciendas in the countryside. The nationalists succeeded in gaining Algerian independence in 1962.

Once Sadat let the Muslim Brotherhood out of jail and allowed it to operate freely in the 1970s, to offset the power of the Egyptian Left, it threw up fundamentalist splinter groups like Ayman al-Zawahiri`s al-Gihad al-Islami and Sheikh Omar`s al-Gamaah al-Islamiyah. They were radicalized when Sadat made a separate peace with Israel in 1978-79 that permitted the Israelis to do as they pleased to the Palestinians. In response, the radical Muslims assassinated Sadat and continued to campaign against his successor, Hosni Mubarak. They saw the Egyptian regime as pharaonic and evil because it had allied with the United States and Israel, thus legitimating the occupation of Muslim land (from their point of view).

The south Lebanon Shiite groups, Amal and Hizbullah, turned to radical Muslim terrorism mainly after the 1982 Israeli invasion and subsequent occupation of South Lebanon, which is largely Shiite.

The radical Muslim terrorism of Khomeini`s Revolutionary Guards grew in part out of American hegemony over Iran, which was expressed most forcefully by the 1953 CIA coup that overthrew the last freely elected parliament of that country.

Likewise, Hamas (the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood) turned to terrorism in large part out of desperation at the squalid circumstances and economic and political hopelessness of the Israeli military occupation of Gaza.

The Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s was among the biggest generators of radical Muslim terrorism in modern history. The US abetted this phenomenon, giving billions to the radical Muslim ideologues at the top of Pakistani military intelligence (Inter-Services Intelligence), which in turn doled the money out to men like Gulbuddin Hikmatyar, a member of the Afghanistan Muslim Brotherhood (Jami`at-i Islami) who used to throw vials of acid at the faces of unveiled girls in the Kabul of the 1970s. The US also twisted the arm of the Saudi government to match its contributions to the Mujahidin. Saudi Intelligence Minister Turki al-Faisal was in charge of recruiting Arab volunteers to fight alongside the Mujahidin, and he brought in young Usamah bin Laden as a fundraiser. The CIA training camps that imparted specialized tradecraft to the Mujahidin inevitably also ended up training, at least at second hand, the Arab volunteers, who learned about forming covert cells, practicing how to blow things up, etc. The "Afghan Arabs" fanned back to their homelands, to Algeria, Libya, Yemen, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, carrying with them the ethos that Ronald Reagan had inspired them with, which held that they should take up arms against atheist Westerners who attempted to occupy Muslim lands.

To this litany of Occupations that produce radical Muslim terrorism, Chechnya and Kashmir can be added.

In contrast, authoritarian governments like that of Iraq and Syria, while they might use terror for their own purposes from time to time, did not produce large-scale indepdendent terrorist organizations that struck itnernational targets. Authoritarian governments also proved adept at effectively crushing terrorist groups, as can be seen in Algeria and Egypt. It was only in failed states such as Afghanistan that they could flourish, not in authoritarian ones.

So it is the combination of Western occupation and weak states that produced the conditions for radical Muslim terrorism.

Democratic countries have often produced terrorist movements. This was true of Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States in the late 1960s and through the 1970s. There is no guarantee that a more democratic Iraq, Egypt or Lebanon will produce less terrorism. Certainly, the transition from Baathist dictatorship has introduced terrorism on a large scale into Iraqi society, and it may well spill over from there into neighboring states.

Morocco has been liberalizing for some years, and held fairly above-board parliamentary elections in 2002. Yet liberalizing Morocco produced the al-Salafiyyah al-Jihadiyyah group in Tangiers that committed the 2003 Casablanca bombings and the 2004 Madrid train bombings.

Moreover, if democracy means majority rule and the expression of the general will, then it won`t always work to the advantage of the US. Bush administration spokesmen keep talking about Syrian withdrawal being the demand of the "Lebanese people." But 40% of the Lebanese are Shiites, and 15% are probably Sunnis, and it may well be that a majority of Lebanese want to keep at least some Syrian troops around. Hizbullah has sided with Syria and Shaikh Nasrallah has called for a big pro-Syrian demonstration by Shiites on Tuesday.

For true democracy to flourish in Lebanon, the artificial division of seats in parliament so that half go to the Christian minority would have to be ended. Religious Shiites would have, as in Iraq, a much bigger voice in national affairs. Will a Lebanon left to its own devices to negotiate a social compact between rightwing Christians and Shiite Hizbullah really be an island of stability?

I`m all for democratization in the Middle East, as a good in its own right. But I don`t believe that authoritarian governance produced most episodes of terrorism in the last 60 years in the region. Terrorism was a weapon of the weak wielded against what these radical Muslims saw as a menacing foreign occupation. To erase that fact is to commit a basic error in historical understanding. It is why the US military occupation of Iraq is actually a negative for any "war on terror." Nor do I believe that democratization, even if it is possible, is going to end terrorism in and of itself.

You want to end terrorism? End unjust military occupations. By all means have Syria conduct an orderly withdrawal from Lebanon if that is what the Lebanese public wants. But Israel needs to withdraw from the Golan Heights, which belong to Syria, as well. The Israeli military occupation of Gaza and the West Bank must be ended. The Russian scorched earth policy in Chechnya needs to stop. Some just disposition of the Kashmir issue must be attained, and Indian enormities against Kashmiri Muslims must stop. The US needs to conduct an orderly and complete withdrawal from Iraq. And when all these military occupations end, there is some hope for a vast decrease in terrorism. People need a sense of autonomy and dignity, and occupation produces helplessness and humiliation. Humiliation is what causes terrorism.

posted by Juan @ 3/7/2005 06:30:00 AM

12 Killed, 26 Wounded at Baquba
Roundup: Looting, Kidnapping, and Shortage of Recruits

The Iraqi parliament will meet March 16, whether or not it can form a government at that time, it was announced on Sunday. The hang-up so far has been that the Kurds have insisted on up-front acquiescence in their demands by the religious Shiite parties that want to partner with them in appointing an executive. In contrast, Shiite leaders want to postpone the hard decisions until political life is regularized.

Guerrillas launched coordinated attacks on Baquba early Monday. AP says, " . . . the assaults included a car bomb, three roadside bombs and small arms attacks on one checkpoint in the city and two checkpoints just south of Baqouba in Muradiyah. Baqouba is located about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. The attacks killed seven soldiers and five police, and wounded 26 others including one civilian caught in the crossfire, said Tariq Ibrahim, a medic at Baqouba`s main hospital . . ."

Al-Sharq al-Awsat: One Iraqi soldier was killed and 9 were wounded in two separate attacks on Sunday in northern Baghdad. A police commander was kidnapped in Beiji, 200 km north of Baghdad. The Green Zone in Baghdad took mortar fire.

Al-Zaman: The Iraqi chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Babakr Badarkhan Zibari, announced Sunday that within 6 months the troops of the multinational forces will have withdrawn from the urban areas, leaving security duties to local police and the Iraqi army.

Further demonstrations were held in Hilla against the poor security situation, which allowed last week`s horrific bombing.

Residents of the city of Salman Pak demonstrated outside the Green Zone in the capital demanding better security in their city.

In Kirkuk, 200 Kurds demonstrated against the increasing tensions in the city, demanding its normalization.

There were new attacks by guerrillas in Baghdad, Diyala and other regions.

The situation in Samarra continued to be tense. All the city gates were locked and all vehicle traffic was forbidden. The US military and its Iraqi allies are sweeping the area around Samarra for the next week in pursuit of about 250 guerrillas. Ash-Sharq al-Awsat says the measures have been taken because Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is thought to be in the city. It says that an Iraqi officer admitted that the guerrilla movement in Samarra had grown and become more powerful, and now dominated 7 towns around Samarra.

It seems clear that the most important military operation in Iraq since the Fallujah campaign has begun, though it is hard to find out much about it.

The United Nations is worried that 90 of the sites in Iraq it had identified as having dangerous weapons have been looted. The inattention of the US Department of Defense to arms depots since the fall of Saddam has been breathtaking, and helps explain the success of the guerrilla war, which is fueled in part by easy access to Baath arms depots. The UN is afraid that the dangerous materials might show up outside Iraq. Given that some of the explosives were high-powered and could bring in a good price from terrorist organizations, this fear is entirely reasonable.

The crime wave unleashed on Iraq by the failure of the US to secure the country after the fall of Saddam Hussein has worsened, helping to explain why Iraqis continue to rate security their number one concern. Susannah Nesmith of Knight Ridder writes:


Russul`s kidnapping did not make news here. Against the backdrop of war, the crime went largely unnoticed outside her family. And hundreds of Iraqi families have quietly suffered through similar ordeals in recent months as kidnapping for ransom has become increasingly popular on the country`s lawless streets. "We did not see these kinds of crimes before the war," said Lt. Col. Muayad al-Musawi, a kidnapping investigator. "We would have cases of a husband coming in to say his wife took his kids, but nothing like this." The crime has become so common, the national police recently set up a kidnapping directorate, the first special investigations unit created in Iraq since Saddam Hussein was toppled. Approximately 200 foreigners have been kidnapped across the country since the war began almost two years ago, according to news reports. Meanwhile, police know of 130 Iraqis who have been snatched in the eastern half of Baghdad alone in just the past six months. And they say most families never report the crimes to them, fearing the hostage will be harmed if the police get involved.



Reuters reports that "The regular Army is 6 percent behind its year-to-date recruiting target, the Reserve is 10 percent behind, and the Guard is 26 percent short." A common question from potential recruits is whether they will be deployed. (Almost certainly). Measures such as stop-loss and keeping servicemen and -women in the military 18 months beyond what they signed up for, and recalling discharged soldiers, have proven unpopular with potential recruits, understandably enough. But I think the figures show something more significant, which is that the American public increasingly thinks Mr. Bush`s wars are not worth their lives. When, after September 11, he said "Let`s roll!", the enthusiasm was palpable. But Bush squandered that enthusiasm on a gotten-up war that the public has increasingly decided is not worth it (see Sunday`s entry on recent polling). As the Cato Institute points out, the likely ending to this story, if the Bush administration continues its praetorian ways, is a national draft. And if it happens, I think it will change the dynamics of domestic politics enormously.

posted by Juan @ 3/7/2005 06:17:00 AM

US Intervention in 1957 Lebanese Elections

A reader writes by email concerning the question of whether the United States engineered the parliamentary elections of 1957 in Lebanon in an attempt to give President Camille Chamoun a second (unconstitutional) term:

In regards to the US role in these elections, the remarks of former Ambassador Richard Parker - which can be found in Warfare in Lebanon, published in 1988 by the National Defense University in Washington DC (pg. 35) -add further credence to the claims of US involvement ( Parker was Iraq Desk Officer at State on 14 July 1958); Parker says:


"We reacted because we thought there had been a "Nasserist" coup in Baghdad. In fact we were reacting to the blank check we had given President Chamoun of Lebanon earlier under the Eisenhower Doctrine, through which we were confronting Nasser. President Chamoun cashed the check on the morning of the 14th. We had given him this check because of UAR subversion coming from Syria, which people kept denying but which was factual. This subversion, however,and we had conviently overlooked this, was in part made possible by the fact that we had been up to our ears in buying the 1957 election for Chamoun. We allegedly bought the election of Charles Malik in the Koura and we allegedly bought the defeat of Saib Saalam in the Basta. That`s sort of like getting Tip O`Neill defeated in Massqachusetts. We did this with money, just as the French, British, and the Egyptians had done."

posted by Juan @ [url3/7/2005 06:02:00 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/03/us-intervention-in-1957-lebanese.html[/url]

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Monday, March 07, 2005
War News for Monday, March 7, 2005
http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring ‘em on: 7 Iraqi troops and 5 Iraqi police killed and 26 injured in coordinated attacks by insurgents in Baqouba.

Bring ‘em on: Jordanian businessman kidnapped in Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Gunmen kill two policemen and wound a third in a drive-by shooting in the eastern slum of Sadr City.

Bring ‘em on: Two civilians killed after insurgents launch roadside bomb attack on joint U.S.-Iraqi military convoy in Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Fifteen killed and eighteen wounded in car bomb attack on an Iraqi convoy in Balad.

Bring ‘em on: 212, the number of attacks that there have been on Iraqi oil infrastructure.

Deadly Checkpoints

Italy


Italian hostage Giuliana Sgrena, shot and wounded after being freed in Iraq, said yesterday US forces may have deliberately targeted her because Washington opposed Italy`s policy of dealing with kidnappers.
Speaking from the Rome hospital where she is being treated, Ms Sgrena said the troops may have targeted her because Washington opposes Italy`s reported readiness to pay ransoms to kidnappers. "The United States doesn`t approve of this (ransom) policy and so they try to stop it in any way possible," the veteran war reporter, 57, told Sky Italia TV.

In later comments to Reuters, Ms Sgrena was less strident: "You could characterise as an ambush what happens when you are showered with gunfire. If this happened because of a lack of information or deliberately, I don`t know, but even if it was due to a lack of information it is unacceptable."

Bulgaria

Bulgaria’s minister of defense on Monday demanded explanation from the United States after an investigation showed American troops have killed a Bulgarian soldier in Iraq by mistake. Jr. Sgt. Gardi Gardev died of gunshot wounds in the chest last Friday afternoon after a Bulgarian Army patrol was shot at with light automatic weapons in the Iraqi town of Hamzah. A probe disproved the initial version that the soldier died in a rebel ambush, Defense Minister Nikolay Svinarov said.

Iraq Blogwatch

Raed in the Middle

If you, Italians, had one man (killed by the US army) to pay your respect to, Iraqis are having tens of thousands of civilians that are being killed because of the war Italy is supporting.

The time has come for the Italian people to demand that their government pull out its troops from Iraq. This will be the right step to take now, to avoid further destruction in the relationship between our people.

This doesn`t mean that you will be freed of the responsibility you hold for the damage caused by the illegal war on Iraq, but at least you won`t be directly responsible for the atrocities that are going to happen in the future.

War on Terror

The CIA has transferred an estimated 100 and 150 terrorist suspects to foreign countries for questioning - and, it is widely alleged, torture - since rules governing the American policy of "rendition" were relaxed immediately after the September 2001 terrorist attacks. The disclosure, in The New York Times yesterday, throws new light on a practice fiercely criticised by human rights groups, who claim Washington is ignoring the standards it urges on others. Among the countries to which detainees have been sent are Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan, all named in the State Department`s annual report on human rights worldwide as countries that use torture in their prisons.

The practice of rendition long predates the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, but it was previously applied on a specific case-by-case basis, needing approval by several government departments. According to George Tenet, the former CIA director, 72 suspects were moved in this way, some of them from foreign countries into the US from abroad, before 11 September 2001. But since then the traffic has grown much heavier, under a directive approved by President Bush shortly after 11 September, allowing far greater latitude to the CIA. In recent days, several cases, where individuals were quietly sent back to their countries of birth and then held incommunicado and beaten and tortured before being released with no charges being brought, has brought the controversy to a new pitch.
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Latest Fatality: Mar 04, 2005

Update der neusten Meldungen aus dem Irak:
http://icasualties.org/oif/

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Oh George – You Can’t Be Serious!
http://www.oldamericancentury.org/dave300029.htm

By W. David Jenkins III

"Democracies have certain things in common. They have a rule of law, and protection of minorities, a free press, and a viable political opposition." – George W. Bush

Y’know, you`ve really got to give George credit. There he was standing next to his ol’ pal, “Pootie Poot,” at a press conference during his recent fence-mending trip to Europe and he never even cracked a smirk when he uttered those words. After a private meeting with the man whose soul Bush had looked into years ago, the accidental leader of the not-so-free world gently chided the Russian leader with words so hypocritical – it was truly astounding. And Bush was actually able to keep a straight face.

I, on the other hand, sprayed a mouthful of coffee all over my TV screen. I really hate it when that happens.

Now, I always thought we lived in a democracy, at least that’s what I was always taught in school, but after listening to Bush’s description of democracy that day I may have to reconsider things. Although George is big on platitudes when describing “American values,” he seems to be completely oblivious to fact that he and his administration have made great inroads towards the destruction of those very things he was rubbing Putin’s face in.

I can’t imagine what was going through Vladimir ’s mind — or any other knowledgeable person in that room — as Bush was rambling on about something he knew nothing about. Maybe that little saying about people in glass houses might have come to mind.

Rule of Law?

C’mon, George, give it a rest. You’ve pretty much broken every one of the Ten Commandments you keep going on about.

Your administration has zero respect for any rule of law. The invasion of Iraq was a violation of international law. Somebody in the White House broke a federal law in the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame. The GAO stated the use of taxpayer money to make and distribute fake “news” documentaries to further an agenda was against the law. Torture is against the law. Arresting people without charge and holding them indefinitely is against the law. Shall we go on?

This administration has shown more contempt and fear of the rule of law than it has shown any respect for it at all — and the rule of law is one of the basic building blocks upon which the Constitution stands. From stone-walling the 9/11 investigation to withholding documentation of Cheney’s Energy Commission participants, the Bush administration has flaunted its disregard of the rule of law as something that shouldn’t apply to them.

Its attitude is shamefully in full view when it comes to the horror and bloodshed taking place this very second in Darfur . In early February, members of the Bush administration were sneaking around the UN in an effort to block the prosecution of Sudanese officials responsible for the continuing slaughter of innocent men, women and children in that country.

Why? Because these prosecutions would take place in the International Criminal Court and the Bushies don’t want to legitimize that court.

Why? Because the Bushies are afraid that, because of their actions, they might be dragged in front of that court. Of course, they state that they’re concerned about “Americans being prosecuted,” but let’s get real. The only “Americans” they’re trying to protect are themselves.

Rule of law, indeed!

And what’s all this about the protection of minorities? Didn’t anybody ever tell George that the only reason he is where he is was due to the suppression of the minority vote? Remember the purged voters these last two elections, George? Or the lack of adequate voting machines in predominantly minority districts? How about your pledge to change the Constitution to discriminate against a certain minority group in order to “save” the marriages of your gullible flock?

The one that really got me was the reference to Russia `s lack of “free press.” He shot that one straight into his good pal Vladimir after the whole world had enjoyed a few weeks of reports about your own tax dollars having been used to pay conservative pundits to do what they would’ve done for free anyway. And then – imagine if it were Clinton – a fake journalist moonlighted as a gay hooker (er, “escort”) using a fake name and spending two years in the White House press room lobbing questions as soft as flower petals at Ari, Scott and George. Meanwhile, the Bush “free press” has been running willy-nilly away from this story because the bloggers who did all the work and broke the story have shown the mainstream corporate media to be the lazy, pandering mouthpieces they truly are.

And just how “free” can the press be when the corporations that own them have other interests?

Let’s take, for instance, MSNBC. One of the corporations owning that particular cable news channel is General Electric. GE expects to have approximately $3 billion of contract work in Iraq by the year 2006, much of that being tied to rebuilding the infrastructure in that country. Now, if the success in fulfilling the terms of those contracts is dependent upon the security of Iraq, how tolerant will GE’s shareholders be if a news outlet it owns starts going on about the insecurity in that country? Talk about a quagmire.

This was one of the reasons that the corporate heads got rid of Phil Donahue a few years back. “Donahue” was MSNBC’s highest-rated show at the time and, despite the micro-managing by the stuffed suits, the ratings continued to show a steady improvement. But with the drums of war echoing in their ears and the shills and Kool-Aid drinkers at Fox News beating them in the ratings, MSNBC caved completely and dumped Donahue — using the laughable reason of “low ratings.” Then, in a complete and transparent about-face, they went out and hired the certifiably insane Mike Savage (until his rotten mouth cost him his job) and Joe “what-dead-intern-in-my-office” Scarborough to kind of “balance” their line up. In other words, it was safer to try to outfox Fox than offer a balance against Fox so they sacrificed journalism and open and honest debate for a seat on the bandwagon.

MSNBC isn’t the only culprit.

The alleged “free press” (aka liberal media) is rife with right-wing apologists like Blitzer, Woodruff and that gawd-awful Howie Kurtz from CNN. Then there’s Sinclair’s grip on ABC and their owner Disney, who got all shaky legged when it came time to distribute Fahrenheit 9/11 last year – thus depriving shareholders of some big-time profits. There was also the problem of honoring the war dead on “Nightline” because the Sinclair gang felt it was propaganda.

Then, of course, there’s CBS selling its own down the river over “RatherGate” while ignoring the fact that the information on those notorious documents has been shown to be accurate by those who were familiar with Bush’s AWOL. Then you have CNBC giving neo-newcomer Dennis Miller a job because nobody was paying any attention to him before anyway. I could go on flaying the bones of these dead horses, but I`ll leave sadism for those who are really good at it.

I guess, in some ways, one could say that we have a free press. It’s free from any accuracy, journalistic integrity and investigative talent. Even Bob Woodward had to admit recently that if Watergate had happened today, Nixon would have gotten away with it.

Now, about this “viable political opposition” nonsense – George is really stretching things. Granted, the lack of opposition is not all George’s fault. Let’s face it: the majority of the so-called opposition has been playing “footsie” with Bush and the Republicans for over four years now and any time one dares speak up, the GOP hangs ‘em out to dry and lets the free press beat on ‘em for a week or so.

Of course, it doesn’t help matters when you have a snake like Tom DeLay redrawing voting districts in Texas (one district looks like a 300 mile bar-bell) and you have conservative leaders talking about going “nuclear” on the opposition so they can get even more radical right-wing judges appointed. The opposition Bush espoused to Putin that day has pretty much spent the last four years (in his own back yard) being squashed like a bug any time one of `em slips out from under his faux cowboy boot..

So, in light of the fact that America under King George wildly contradicts his own description of a democracy, I really have to wonder just where I live or what system of government we have now. And I really have to wonder if Bush is so divorced from reality (sorry, I couldn’t resist) that he actually believes his statement resembles America today.

If that’s the case, I better start keeping a towel or something near my TV set. There’s no telling what nonsense will come out of his mouth next.

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POLITICS-US:
Bush Appoints Right-Wing Extremist to UN Post
http://ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=27756

Analysis By Jim Lobe

In a breathtaking victory for right-wing hawks, U.S. President George W. Bush has nominated Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton to become his next ambassador to the United Nations.

WASHINGTON, Mar 7 (IPS) - Bolton, widely considered the most unilateralist and least diplomatic of senior U.S. officials during Bush`s first term, will have to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate where some Democrats, a few of whom were said to be stunned by the nomination, are expected to put up a fight.

One aide called the nomination ”incredible”, particularly in light of recent indications, including his talks with European leaders at the end of last month, that Bush and his new secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, intended to pursue a more multilateralist policy in his second term and was determined to smooth the rougher diplomatic edges of his foreign policy team.

That notion had been bolstered by Rice`s choice of Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, a long-time pragmatist and ”realist”, as her deputy despite Bolton`s efforts, backed by Vice President Dick Cheney, to take the job.

The fact that he failed in his quest was taken as a clear sign that Rice was indeed moving toward a more multilateralist policy in defiance even of Cheney, the undisputed the leader of the coalition of aggressive nationalists, neo-conservatives, and Christian Right activists that dominated foreign policy from the Sep. 11, 2001 al-Qaeda attacks on New York and the Pentagon until after the Iraq invasion.

Rice`s acquiescence, if not agreement, to serve as her representative at the U.N., however, will require foreign policy analysts here to reassess that judgment.

”This is like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse,” said Heather Hamilton, vice president of programmes for Citizens for Global Solutions (CGS), formerly the World Federalist Association, who called Bolton the ”Armageddon nominee”.

The Armageddon allusion was to Bolton`s long-time loyalty to former ultra-right Sen. Jesse Helms who, on retiring from public life, described Bolton as ”the kind of man with whom I would want to stand at Armageddon, if it should be my lot to be on hand for what is forecast to be the final battle between good and evil in this world.”

”His nomination sends the exactly the wrong message to the world about the Bush administration`s willingness to work with other countries and in multilateral institutions. There`s no one who has a greater track record of offending other countries, including our closest allies,” she said.

Despite a round, bespectacled face, ruddy cheeks, and a thick, drooping blonde moustache that give him an avuncular appearance, Bolton is known to be confrontational, combative, and humourless.

He began excoriating evil in the Reagan administration when, despite a lack of experience in developing countries, he held a series of posts in the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) before winding up as one of Attorney-General Edwin Meese`s top aides.

In that capacity, he resisted all efforts by Congress to investigate the Justice Department role in the Iran-Contra affair, as well as efforts by Sen. John Kerry to investigate drug and gun-running by the Nicaraguan contras in the mid-1980s.

His effectiveness gained him a promotion under President H.W. Bush to the position of assistant secretary of state for international organisations, a post he held until 1993 when he joined first the right-wing Manhattan Institute and then the neo-conservative-dominated American Enterprise Institute (AEI), home to such prominent hawks as former UN Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick, former Defence Policy Board Chairman Richard Perle, and Cheney`s spouse, Lynne Cheney.

At a 1994 WFA panel discussion, Bolton asserted that, ”if the U.N. (secretariat) building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn`t make a bit of difference”.

By the time former Secretary of State James Baker tapped him to serve as a senior member of the G.W. Bush legal team in Florida after the 2000 election, Bolton had become senior vice president at AEI, a position he used during the latter half of the 1990s to speak out strongly in favour of fully normalising ties with Taiwan, from which he had received money at the time, according to the Washington Post.

He also advocated withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and railed against ”nation-building”, international arms-control agreements, and threats supposedly posed to U.S. sovereignty by the United Nations and its Secretary-General Kofi Annan. At one point, Bolton suggested simply halting U.S. payments to the world body.

Bolton is also a long-time activist in the Federalist Society, an association of right-wing, nationalistic lawyers who have been particularly opposed to the application of international or foreign law in their decisions, a practice that they say threatens U.S. sovereignty.

The Society is also strongly opposed to non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that seek the adoption of international law and standards in the United States. Along with AEI, the Society sponsors ”NGOWatch” which seeks to expose such efforts, as well as the funding sources of NGOs that take such positions.

Given his history of far-right positions, Secretary of State Colin Powell was reported to have been deeply sceptical of Bolton when Cheney suggested him for the undersecretary position. Cheney, however, insisted.

But within just a few months, it became clear that Bolton was far more in tune with the neo-conservative hawks around Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon hawks than with Powell`s relatively moderate positions and demeanour.

In the summer of 2001, he shocked foreign delegations and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) at the U.N. Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons when he announced that Washington would oppose any attempt to regulate the trade in firearms or non-military rifles or any other effort that would ”abrogat (e) the constitutional right to bear arms.”

He played a similar role several months later when, amid the public shock that followed the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and the anthrax scare, Bolton single-handedly sabotaged a U.N. meeting to forge an international verification protocol designed to put teeth into a treaty on bio-weapons.

When he had finished, he reportedly told his colleagues, ”It`s dead, dead, dead, and I don`t want it coming back from the dead.”

Within State, Bolton led the drive to renounce the U.S. signature on the 1998 Rome Statute that created the new International Criminal Court (ICC), the first permanent tribunal with jurisdiction over war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

When Bush decided to withdraw the U.S. signature to the treaty, Bolton prevailed on Powell to permit him to sign the formal notification to Annan, an act he later described to the Wall Street Journal as ”the happiest moment of my government service”.

At the same time, Bolton was also engaged in a lengthy row with U.S. intelligence agencies over his public charge that Cuba had an offensive biological warfare program. His assertion became an embarrassment after anonymous intelligence officials and retired senior military officers, including the former head of the U.S. Southern Command, told the media that no such evidence existed and charged that Bolton was politicising intelligence.

In July 2003, Bolton was poised to testify to Congress that Syria`s alleged programmes to develop weapons of mass destruction had developed to such an extent that they threatened regional stability, an assertion which reportedly provoked a ”revolt” by U.S.. intelligence analysts, who insisted that the evidence did not warrant such a conclusion.

Powell frequently complained to his closest aides that Bolton was undercutting him and appeared to be taking orders from Cheney and the Pentagon, rather than from his State Department superiors.

In a speech in Seoul that same month, for example, just as Pyongyang agreed to enter multilateral talks on its nuclear programme as the administration had demanded, Bolton described life in North Korea as a ”hellish nightmare”, and accused its leader, Kimg Jong Il, of being a ”dictator” or ”tyrant” running a ”dictatorship” or ”tyranny” no less than a dozen times.

Some U.S. and Asian analysts said the speech appeared designed to provoke Kim to boycott the meeting. Indeed, the North Korean media described Bolton as ”rude human scum” and a ”bloodthirsty vampire” and demanded that he be withdrawn from the delegation that was to take part in the talks.

Bolton did not show up. But, if Bush now gets his way, he will soon find himself at the heart of all U.S. multilateral diplomacy. (END/2005)



Copyright © 2005 IPS-Inter Press Service. All rights reserved.

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This is the truth
by Giulian Sgrena; March 07, 2005
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&Ite…

I`m still in the dark. Friday has been the most dramatic day of my life. It had been many since being kidnapped. I had spoken only a short while ago with my kidnappers that had been saying for many days that they would set me free. And so I was spent many hours waiting. They talked of things whose importance I would realise only later. They talked of problems that "had to do with the transfer".

I came to understand which way the wind was blowing through the attitudes of my two "sentinels", the two figures that had me in custody every day. One, in particular, who showed signs of attention at every whim of mine, was incredibly dashing. In order to understand what really was going on I asked him in a provoking manner if he was happy because I was leaving or because I staying. I was both surprised and happy when he said, "I only know that you will go away, but I don`t know when". Confirming the fact that something new was happening, at a certain point in time both of them entered the room as if to comfort me and to joke. "Congratulations", they said, "you are leaving for Rome". For Rome, they said exactly that.

I experienced a strange sensation. Because that word immediately evoked liberation but also projected an emptiness within me. I understood that it was the most difficult moment of all the kidnapping and that whereas all I had passed through until then was "certain", now a chasm of uncertainties, each bigger than the other, was beginning to open. I changed my clothes. They came back. "We shall accompany you, but don`t give any sign of your presence when you are together with us otherwise the Americans may intervene". It was the confirmation that I would have liked not to hear. It was the happiest and at the same time the most dangerous moment. If we had met someone, that is to say the American troops, there would have been shooting. My kidnappers were prepared for that and would have answered back. I had to be blindfolded. Already I was getting used to a temporary blindness. Of what was happening around me I knew only that it had rained in Baghdad. The car was moving steadily in an area full of mud ponds. There was the driver and the two kidnappers. I soon heard something that I didn`t want to hear. A helicopter that was flying low over the area in which we had stopped. "Stay calm. They will now come to look for you... In about ten minutes they will come looking for you". They had talked all the time in Arabic, and a bit of French and a very poor English. Even this time around, they talked the same way.

Then they got off. I remained in that condition of immobility and blindness. I had my eyes padded with cotton and covered with sunglasses. I was still. I thought... what do I do? Shall I start to count the seconds that pass from now to another condition, that of freedom? I had hardly started counting mentally when I heard a friendly voice, "Giuliana! Giuliana! I am Nicola. Don`t worry. I have talked to Gabriele Polo. Stay calm! You are free!"

He made me take off the "blindfold" of cotton and dark glasses. I experienced relief, not for what was happening and I wasn`t understanding, but for the words of this "Nicola". He was talking and talking. He was unrestrainable. An avalanche of friendly phrases and quips. I finally sensed an almost physical, warm consolation, that I had long forgotten.

The car continued on its course, passing an underpass full of puddles and almost disbanding to avoid them. We all broke out into incredible laughter. It was liberating. Disbanding on a road flooded with water in Baghdad and perhaps ending up in a nasty road accident after all that I had gone through was really not fit to be told. Nicola Calipari then came to sit by my side. The driver had communicated twice to the Embassy and Italy that we were headed towards the airport which I knew to be very heavily controlled by the American troops. It`s less than a kilometre away, they told me, when ... I only remember firing. At that point, a shower of fire and bullets hit us, shutting up for ever the cheered up voices of a few minutes earlier.

The driver started to yell that we were Italians, "We are Italians. We are Italians..." Nicola Calipari threw himself upon me to protect me and immediately, I repeat, immediately, I felt his last breath as he died on me. I must have felt physical pain, I didn`t know why. But I had a flash. My mind went straight to the words my kidnappers had pronounced. They had declared they were committed to letting me free but I had to be wary "because there are the Americans that don`t want your return". Then, when they had told me that, I had judged those words as superfluous and ideological. In that moment they risked giving me the taste of the bitterest of truths.

The rest I still cannot tell.

This has been the most dramatic day. But the month that I have spent kidnapped has probably changed my existence for ever. One month alone, all by myself, prisoner of my most profound convictions. Every hour has been a pitiless check on my work. At times they joked with me. They would go to the length of asking me why I wanted to go away, to remain [with them]. They insisted upon personal relationships. It was they who made me think of that priority that many too often put aside. They hinted at the family. "Ask help from your husband", they would say. And I did say that in the first video that I believe you have all seen. My life has changed. The Iraqi engineer of "Un Ponte per", Ra`ad Ali Abdulaziz, who had been kidnapped together with the two Simona`s, used to tell me, "My life is no longer the same". I didn`t understand then. Now I know what he wanted to say. Because I have gone through all the harshness of truth, the difficulty of its proposal. And the fragility of one who tries to.

In the first days of the kidnapping, I did not shed a single tear. I was simply enraged. I used to tell my kidnappers in the face, "But how! You kidnap me, [the very person] who is against the war?!" And at that point they would open up a fierce dialogue. "Yes. Because you go and talk to the people. We would never kidnap a reporter who stays closed in a hotel. And then the fact that you say you are against the war may well be just a cover". And I would rebut, almost provoking them, "It`s easy to kidnap a defenceless woman like me. Why don`t you go try with the American military?". I insisted upon the fact that they couldn`t ask the Italian government to withdraw its troops. Their "political" interlocutor could not be the government but the Italian people who are against the war.

It has been a month of ups and downs, from strong hopes to moments of great depression. As when during the first Sunday, in the Baghdad house where I was being held and on which a parabolic antenna rose, they made me watch the news on Euronews. There I saw my photo in a gigantic poster hanging from the building of Rome`s municipality. And I was heartened. Then, however, immediately afterwards, the vindication of the Jihad that announced my execution if Italy wouldn`t withdraw its troops arrived. I was terrorised. But they quickly reassured me saying it wasn`t them, that I should not trust those claims. They were only for "provocation". I often used to ask the one who, by the looks of him, seemed to be the most accessible but nevertheless had, together with the other, the looks of a soldier, "Tell me the truth. Are you going to kill me?". And still, many times, there were strange windows of communication right with them. "Come and see a film in the TV," they would tell me while a Wahabite woman, covered up from head to toe, went around the house and took care of me.

The kidnappers seemed to me to be a very religious group, continuously praying with verses from the Quran. But on Friday, at the moment of my release, the one that seemed to be the most religious among them and who used to get up every morning at 5 to pray, said "congratulations" to me, incredibly squeezing my hand tight, a behaviour not at all normal for an Islamic fundamentalist, adding, "If you behave well, you will leave immediately". Then an almost funny episode. One of the two guardians came to me amazed both because the TV was showing my portraits hanging from European cities and because of Totti. Yes, Totti. [The kidnapper] had said he was a fan of the football team of Rome and had remained bewildered that his favourite player had entered the field with the writing "Free Giuliana" on his T-shirt.

I have passed my time in an enclave in which I no longer had any certainty. I found myself extremely weak. I had failed in my very certainties. I had upheld the need to go and tell the story of that dirty war. And I found myself having to choose between staying in the hotel and waiting or ending up kidnapped due to my work. "We don`t want no one any longer," my kidnappers had told me. But I wanted to tell the story of the bloodbath of Falluja in the words of the refugees. And that morning, the very refugees, or some "leader" of theirs, were not listening to me. I had right in front of me the exact verification of the analyses of what the Iraqi society had become due to the war and they were hurling their truth in my face, "We don`t want no one. Why don`t you stay home? What good can this interview do for us?". The worst collateral effect, the war that kills communication, was weighing down upon me. Me, that had risked everything, challenging the Italian government which did not want journalists to get to Iraq and the Americans that don`t want our work to become a testimony of what that country has really become with the war and notwithstanding that what they call elections.

Now I ask myself. Is this, their refusal, a failure?

[Giulian Sgrena, "La mia verità", from il Manifesto of March 6, 2005, translated by Arif Ishaq]

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March 8, 2005
Next Step in Rebuilding Iraq: Bring Power to the People
By JAMES GLANZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/08/international/middleeast/0…

BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 7 - The bloody handprints found Monday all over the shiny equipment at Al Ameen, the newly opened electrical substation in eastern Baghdad, were not a cause for alarm. In fact, by letting Iraqis in the poor neighborhood around the station ritually sacrifice sheep there, the American engineers who financed the project may be showing that they are willing to try just about anything to get electricity flowing reliably in Iraq.

The project also shows that the effort to improve the electrical supply in Iraq is finally concentrating on individual neighborhoods, blocks and streets after nearly two years of focusing, with mixed success, on enormous power plants and the high-tension cables that form the backbone of the nation`s electrical grid.

The project, the first major substation completed since the invasion in 2003, is a distribution center that will siphon energy from the national grid and spread it around districts like Sadr City, where aging and overloaded equipment constantly breaks down. The station, put into operation with $60 million of American money, will also help cushion the effects of sabotage, letting electricity flow through alternative routes to consumers if part of the network fails.

Generally speaking, Baghdad residents receive electricity for only about three hours at a time. But even that rough schedule is punctuated by frequent blackouts.

Officials at the Electricity Ministry, who signed the papers on Monday that gave them official control of Al Ameen, have long complained that reconstruction has been skewed toward the big power plants and transmission lines, at the expense of the humble network that actually brings electricity into Iraqi homes.

"The power plants, the transmission lines without the substations, it means nothing," said Qais Madalla, a director general at the ministry. Thomas Waters, a civilian with the United States Army Corps of Engineers, which managed the project, agreed, saying, "You can`t just keep bumping up the generation without a stable distribution system."

So the reconstruction effort, Mr. Waters said, has turned to the substations in hopes of shoring up the frustratingly unstable network in Baghdad. All the pieces for Al Ameen had actually been delivered to the site by a French and Austrian consortium of companies in 2000 as part of the United Nations oil-for-food program, he said. Much of the construction had also been completed when the Americans and their allies invaded Iraq in April 2003.

But looting of the site followed the invasion. The following year, when the Americans decided to finance the project`s completion, they discovered that the consortium would not send any engineers to oversee the work, citing security concerns. The Corps of Engineers contracted the work to Kellogg, Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary, which hired an Iraqi company, F.C.M., to do much of the work.

And there has been a lot of it. The substation is a sprawling network of towers and huge buildings spread over the equivalent of many city blocks, and it has an immense potential for power distribution - roughly 1,000 megawatts, engineers say.

"This is a huge substation," said Howard Holland, Kellogg`s project manager for Al Ameen. "You might expect to find something like this near New York City, but you wouldn`t expect to find it in Baghdad."

Relying heavily on Iraqis simplified the work and lowered security and other overhead costs, Mr. Waters said.

Khalid Baderkhan, a Kurdish electromechanical engineer who is F.C.M.`s managing director, was careful to hire local residents for much of the labor and explain the importance of the substation to clerics in the local mosques. He was rewarded when the clerics, using the amplified sound systems of their minarets, asked the people of the neighborhood not to disturb the work.

After the station was connected to the grid, Mr. Baderkhan even let local residents kill the sheep, spreading pools of blood at the entrances to important buildings and smearing blood on the big transformers with their hands. The dried blood was still there on Monday.

"Not me," Mr. Baderkhan mumbled, rolling his eyes, when asked if he thought the sacrifices would help. "I don`t believe. I have to pretend."

But the bow to local custom was another way of gaining acceptance in the neighborhood, he said, standing beneath the buzzing, 400,000-volt high-tension lines that bring power into the station.

Over all, said Faris Naum, an engineer with F.C.M., the station as it is operating now can in theory distribute about a quarter of the 4,000 megawatts of electricity now being generated in Iraq.

It should also help keep older stations from failing.

"All of the stations are already heavily overloaded, and they are obsolete," Mr. Naum said. When those stations fail, he said, they can cause a crash of the system that blacks out all of Baghdad.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company |

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March 8, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Debt-Peonage Society
By PAUL KRUGMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/08/opinion/08krugman.html

Today the Senate is expected to vote to limit debate on a bill that toughens the existing bankruptcy law, probably ensuring the bill`s passage. A solid bloc of Republican senators, assisted by some Democrats, has already voted down a series of amendments that would either have closed loopholes for the rich or provided protection for some poor and middle-class families.

The bankruptcy bill was written by and for credit card companies, and the industry`s political muscle is the reason it seems unstoppable. But the bill also fits into the broader context of what Jacob Hacker, a political scientist at Yale, calls "risk privatization": a steady erosion of the protection the government provides against personal misfortune, even as ordinary families face ever-growing economic insecurity.

The bill would make it much harder for families in distress to write off their debts and make a fresh start. Instead, many debtors would find themselves on an endless treadmill of payments.

The credit card companies say this is needed because people have been abusing the bankruptcy law, borrowing irresponsibly and walking away from debts. The facts say otherwise.

A vast majority of personal bankruptcies in the United States are the result of severe misfortune. One recent study found that more than half of bankruptcies are the result of medical emergencies. The rest are overwhelmingly the result either of job loss or of divorce.

To the extent that there is significant abuse of the system, it`s concentrated among the wealthy - including corporate executives found guilty of misleading investors - who can exploit loopholes in the law to protect their wealth, no matter how ill-gotten.

One increasingly popular loophole is the creation of an "asset protection trust," which is worth doing only for the wealthy. Senator Charles Schumer introduced an amendment that would have limited the exemption on such trusts, but apparently it`s O.K. to game the system if you`re rich: 54 Republicans and 2 Democrats voted against the Schumer amendment.

Other amendments were aimed at protecting families and individuals who have clearly been forced into bankruptcy by events, or who would face extreme hardship in repaying debts. Ted Kennedy introduced an exemption for cases of medical bankruptcy. Russ Feingold introduced an amendment protecting the homes of the elderly. Dick Durbin asked for protection for armed services members and veterans. All were rejected.

None of this should come as a surprise: it`s all part of the pattern.

As Mr. Hacker and others have documented, over the past three decades the lives of ordinary Americans have become steadily less secure, and their chances of plunging from the middle class into acute poverty ever larger. Job stability has declined; spells of unemployment, when they happen, last longer; fewer workers receive health insurance from their employers; fewer workers have guaranteed pensions.

Some of these changes are the result of a changing economy. But the underlying economic trends have been reinforced by an ideologically driven effort to strip away the protections the government used to provide. For example, long-term unemployment has become much more common, but unemployment benefits expire sooner. Health insurance coverage is declining, but new initiatives like health savings accounts (introduced in the 2003 Medicare bill), rather than discouraging that trend, further undermine the incentives of employers to provide coverage.

Above all, of course, at a time when ever-fewer workers can count on pensions from their employers, the current administration wants to phase out Social Security.

The bankruptcy bill fits right into this picture. When everything else goes wrong, Americans can still get a measure of relief by filing for bankruptcy - and rising insecurity means that they are forced to do this more often than in the past. But Congress is now poised to make bankruptcy law harsher, too.

Warren Buffett recently made headlines by saying America is more likely to turn into a "sharecroppers` society" than an "ownership society." But I think the right term is a "debt peonage" society - after the system, prevalent in the post-Civil War South, in which debtors were forced to work for their creditors. The bankruptcy bill won`t get us back to those bad old days all by itself, but it`s a significant step in that direction.

And any senator who votes for the bill should be ashamed.

E-mail: [e-mail]

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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washingtonpost.com
Critic of U.N. Named Envoy
Bush`s Choice of Bolton Is a Surprise; Democrats Plan to Contest Nomination
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13790-2005Mar…

By Glenn Kessler and Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, March 8, 2005; Page A01

President Bush named Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton yesterday as the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, a surprise choice that would send an outspoken critic of the world body`s effectiveness to its inner councils.

Bolton`s government experience stretches through three Republican administrations, and his tough language and willingness to eschew diplomatic niceties have earned him both fans and critics overseas and in the bureaucracy. In Bush`s first term, he proved to be highly effective at advancing his strong conservative views within the administration, even when he was at odds with then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and much of the State Department.

The post requires Senate confirmation, and Democrats immediately signaled they would wage a spirited confirmation battle. Forty-three Democrats voted against his nomination as undersecretary for arms control four years ago; even some Republicans privately expressed dismay at Bolton`s elevation yesterday.

Some U.N. diplomats said they were surprised. European officials said they were puzzled at how the appointment meshed with the administration`s recent efforts at consultative diplomacy.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who announced the nomination, alluded to Bolton`s reputation when she noted that "some of our best ambassadors" to the United Nations have been those with "the strongest voices," such as Jeane J. Kirkpatrick and Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

Bolton would replace John C. Danforth, who resigned after barely six months as ambassador. An aide to Rice, calling the appointment a "Nixon goes to China" move, said the secretary recommended Bolton to Bush several weeks ago. Rice told reporters Bolton was selected "because he knows how to get things done."

Bolton acknowledged yesterday that he has written critically of the United Nations, saying one highlight of his career was his role in the successful 1991 repeal of the General Assembly 1975 resolution equating Zionism with racism, "thus removing the greatest stain on the U.N.`s reputation."

He said he has consistently stressed in his writings that "American leadership is critical to the success of the U.N., an effective U.N., one that is true to the original intent of its charter`s framers."

Bolton, 56, served in the administration of George H.W. Bush, father of the current president, as assistant secretary of state for international organizations, and in the Reagan administration as an assistant attorney general. He keeps a mock grenade in his office, labeled "To John Bolton -- World`s Greatest Reaganite."

Throughout the current administration`s first term, Bolton was often at odds with the United Nations and related institutions.

He spearheaded U.S. opposition to the International Criminal Court, declaring that the day he signed the letter withdrawing the U.S. signature on the treaty was "the happiest moment of my government service." He was the force behind Bush`s Proliferation Security Initiative, a coalition designed to halt trade in nuclear materials that bypassed the United Nations. And he pressed the administration`s unsuccessful campaign to deny a third term to Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

On the eve of six-nation talks over North Korea`s nuclear ambitions two years ago, Bolton traveled to Seoul and denounced North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in highly personal terms. He labeled Kim a "tyrannical dictator" who had made North Korea "a hellish nightmare" -- which prompted the North Korean government to call him "human scum and bloodsucker."

Bolton also frequently riled European allies with his uncompromising stands -- and his disdain for their fledging efforts to secure an agreement with Iran to end its nuclear programs.

Bolton often had tense relations with his nominal boss, Powell, though he was viewed by Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld as a loyal supporter of the president. Bolton played a key behind-the-scenes role in the 2000 Florida recount battle that secured Bush`s victory. When Rice bypassed Bolton for deputy secretary of state -- picking instead the pragmatic trade representative, Robert B. Zoellick -- and signaled that a key aide from the National Security Council would take Bolton`s arms-control portfolio, it appeared uncertain whether a sufficiently prominent spot could be found for him in the second term.

Bolton was frequently mentioned as undersecretary of defense for policy, which would have kept him in the center of administration debates, frequently opposing State. In some ways, the U.N. post moves Bolton out of a direct policymaking role, though his allies predicted he would retain a prominent voice.

Kirkpatrick, calling Bolton "one of the smartest people I`ve ever encountered in Washington," said much of his influence would depend on the personal relations Bolton has established in Washington. She noted that she was both a Cabinet member and member of the National Security Council, while Bush downgraded the position so the ambassador reports to the secretary of state.

Asked if the United Nations had concerns about Bolton`s history of sharply criticizing the world body, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the institution would welcome a tough reformer. "We do want to be held accountable," he said.

Security Council members said they expect that Bolton would have to moderate his views on the United Nations. China`s U.N. ambassador, Wang Guangya, said he was not concerned by Bolton`s previous promotion of an independent Taiwan. "It`s mainly the big boss that makes the agenda, not the small ones," he said.

Wang, who once oversaw China`s weapons-proliferation policies, said that Bolton "seemed reasonable" in negotiating sessions. "My feeling is that, of course, his chemistry is different, but I think we can we work together."

Edward Luck, a U.N. expert at Columbia University, said that Bolton has been his favorite debating partner on U.N. matters. "He is very bright, capable and articulate," Luck said. "It just seems that this is an odd place for him to be deployed. He has little patience for the give-and-take of diplomacy."

Democrats acknowledge that Bolton is highly intelligent, but they have questioned his judgment. "My problem with you over the years is that you`ve been too competent," Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) told Bolton four years ago. "I would rather you be stupid and not very effective."

Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) called the nomination "a disappointing choice and one that sends all the wrong signals."

Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, did not issue a statement of support. "Don`t read anything into that," spokesman Andy Fisher said, though he acknowledged that Lugar had urged Rice to submit nominees who would have "wide support" and help build a "consensus on foreign policy."

Lynch reported from the United Nations.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

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Da kommt wieder das wahre Gesicht der Bushregierung zu Tage. Mit Bolton kann es für die USA nur ein Ziel geben, nämlich die Abschaffung der UNO. Aber keinesfalls eine sinnvolle Reform.


washingtonpost.com
Tough Love or Tough Luck?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15521-2005Mar…

By Susan E. Rice

Tuesday, March 8, 2005; Page A15

President Bush has shocked even his most cynical critics by nominating the combative neoconservative John Bolton to one of our most complex and sensitive diplomatic posts: U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Bolton served the past four years as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, though then-Secretary of State Colin Powell initially resisted his appointment.

Powell`s successor, Condoleezza Rice, who passed over Bolton for deputy secretary despite strong support for him from Vice President Cheney, put on a brave face yesterday in announcing his appointment to the United Nations. She stressed the administration`s commitment to U.N. reform and praised Bolton as a friend of the United Nations who helped repeal the noxious General Assembly resolution equating Zionism with racism. But as Rice must know, keeping Bolton off her team at State may prove a Pyrrhic victory, if he takes his notoriously abrasive style to New York.

The job of U.N. ambassador is always important and delicate, but arguably never more so than now. The United Nations is facing unprecedented, justified criticism for its role in the oil-for-food scandal and its failure to prevent peacekeepers from sexually exploiting civilians in Congo. Several Republican members of Congress are gunning for Secretary General Kofi Annan`s head. In response, Annan is shaking up his management team and reminding the United States how badly it needs the United Nations.

Indeed, the United States is relying on the United Nations to carry out a massive tsunami recovery effort and 17 peacekeeping missions, to support the democratization processes in Afghanistan and Iraq, and to pressure Iran to halt its nuclear program. At the 60th anniversary of its founding, the United Nations has rarely been more relevant or in greater need of reform.

President Bush seems to understand this. In December he pledged three international goals for his second term. "The first great commitment," he said "is to defend our security and spread freedom by building effective multinational and multilateral institutions and supporting effective multilateral action."

Is John Bolton the right man to lead this effort? Having served as assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs from 1989 to 1993, Bolton may be deemed qualified, but his record on multilateral issues is alarming. He told the Wall Street Journal that "the happiest moment of his government service" was when the Bush administration renounced the treaty on the International Criminal Court. Bolton led the administration`s withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, scuttled an important biological weapons protocol and weakened an international agreement to limit small-arms trafficking. On these issues, Bolton`s positions at least reflected administration policy.

But Bolton holds many strong views that diverge sharply from current U.S. policy. He described the United Nations as "a great, rusting hulk of a bureaucratic superstructure . . . dealing with issues from the ridiculous to the sublime . . . ." More important, he maintains that the United States has no legal obligation to pay its U.N. dues.

Once a paid consultant to the Taiwanese government, Bolton favors Taiwan`s independence and its full U.N. membership -- a dangerous position in light of cross-straits tensions and our efforts to obtain Chinese pressure on North Korea. Will Bolton set aside his support for a Taiwanese U.N. seat while manning the U.S. seat on the Security Council?

Bolton flatly opposes the use of U.N. peacekeepers in civil conflicts, because he does not deem these "threats to international peace and security." By his logic, the United Nations has no business doing peacekeeping in many places where the Bush administration has supported its deployment of forces.

Bolton has testified against U.N. involvement in Congo, an inter-state conflict that has cost 3 million lives. He blasted the United Nations` concept of operations for its Ethiopia-Eritrea operation and rejected the U.N. civil administration missions in Kosovo and East Timor. Will Bolton undergo such a conversion on the road to First Avenue that he can effectively support U.N. peace operations?

Finally, Bolton criticized any " `right of humanitarian intervention` to justify military operations to prevent ethnic cleansing or potential genocide." One must wonder how forcefully he will work to halt what the administration deems genocide in Darfur.

Rice asserts that Bolton will be an outspoken, effective U.N. ambassador in the vein of Jeane Kirkpatrick and Daniel Patrick Moynihan. If his appointment serves to bring the United Nations` most rabid critics in Congress to heel, it may have some merit. Bolton could yet surprise his skeptics by giving "tough love" a whole new definition. To do so, he will have to be for the United Nations what Richard Nixon was for China: a hard-liner who effectively forged groundbreaking change. Those of us who believe the United States needs an effective, reformed United Nations can only hope he succeeds.

The writer is a senior fellow in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution. She was assistant secretary of state from 1997 to 2001.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

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Den Artikel hatte ich gestern abend in Englisch eingestellt. Nun auch die deutsche Fassung. Von den großen Vorwürfen steht nichts in dem Artikel, außer über den Hinweis der Entführer.
Sonst werden weitere Einzelheiten angekündigt.
Ich kann mir nicht vorstellen, welchen Sinn es für die US-Truppen macht, diese Frau zu töten.
Das einzige wäre, es gäbe Verbindungen, wie schon öfter behauptet zwischen Entführern, Terroristen und offiziellen irakischen Stellen.

Die Wahrheit
von Giuliana Sgrena
http://www.zmag.de/artikel.php?id=1368&PHPSESSID=4df8defe7b5…

Il Manifesto / ZNet 07.03.2005
Ich befinde mich immer noch im Dunkeln. Freitag war der dramatischste Tag meines Lebens - und seit der Entführung gab es viele dramatische Tage. Kurz zuvor hatte ich mit meinen Entführern geredet. Viele Tage versprachen sie mir die Freilassung, also verbrachte ich viele Stunden mit warten. Die wirkliche Bedeutung der Dinge über die sie sprachen, wurde mir erst später klar - Probleme, “im Zusammenhang mit der Übergabe”. Wie steht der Wind? Das Verhalten meiner beiden “Bewacher”, der beiden Figuren, die Tag für Tag auf mich aufpassten, zeigte mir, wie der Wind stand. Besonders einer ging auf jede meiner Launen ein, jetzt strahlte er unglaublich. Was ging hier wirklich vor? Um es herauszufinden, fragte ich provozierend, ob er sich freue, weil ich gehe oder ob er sich freue, weil ich ihm erhalten bliebe. Ich war überrascht und erfreut zu hören: “Ich weiß nur, dass Sie gehen werden, wann, weiß ich nicht”. Etwas ging vor sich. Das zeigte mir auch die Tatsache, dass plötzlich beide zusammen ins Zimmer traten. Sie schienen mich besänftigen zu wollen, rissen Witze: “Gratuliere”, sagten sie, “Sie reisen nach Rom”. Nach Rom - genau das sagten sie. Ich fühlte eine seltsame Spannung. Rom - das Wort löste in mir umgehend ein Gefühl der Befreiung aus aber auch der Leere. Es war der problematischste Moment meiner Entführung. Bei allem, was ich bislang durchgemacht hatte, gab es so etwas wie “Sicherheit”, jetzt tat sich vor mir ein Abgrund an Unsicherheit auf, und jede neue Unsicherheit war größer als die letzte.

Ich zog mich um. Sie kamen wieder. “Wir begleiten Sie, aber, solange Sie bei uns sind, verhalten Sie sich unsichtbar, die Amerikaner könnten intervenieren”. Eine Aussage, die mir bestätigte, was ich nicht bestätigt haben wollte: Der glücklichste Moment war gleichzeitig der gefährlichste. Falls wir auf jemanden trafen - auf amerikanische Soldaten - würde es zu einer Schießerei kommen. Meine Kidnapper bereiteten sich darauf vor. Sie würden zurückschießen. Sie verbanden mir die Augen. Eine Weile blind zu sein - daran war ich inzwischen gewöhnt. Ich bekam nicht mit, was um mich her vor sich ging, außer, dass es in Bagdad geregnet hatte. Mit gleichmäßiger Geschwindigkeit fuhr unser Wagen durch eine Gegend voller Pfützen. Mit im Wagen waren der Fahrer und meine beiden Kidnapper. Dann hörte ich etwas, was mir nicht gefiel - ein Helikopter, der in niedriger Höhe über der Gegend flog, in der wir hielten. “Bleiben Sie ganz ruhig. Sie werden jetzt kommen und nach Ihnen suchen... In ungefähr zehn Minuten werden sie kommen und Sie suchen”. Immer hatten sie in diesem Mix aus Arabisch, ein wenig Französisch und ganz schlechtem Englisch mit mir geredet - auch jetzt.

Dann verschwanden sie. Ich blieb allein zurück - unbeweglich und blind, mit Watte und einer Sonnenbrille auf den Augen. Ich bewegte mich nicht. Ich dachte... was soll ich jetzt tun? Soll ich anfangen, Sekunden zu zählen, während ich darauf warte, dass die Situation endet und eine neue beginnt: Freiheit. Kaum hatte ich in Gedanken zu zählen begonnen, da vernahm ich eine freundliche Stimme: “Giuliana! Giuliana! Ich bin Nicola. Machen Sie sich keine Sorgen. Ich habe mit Gabriele Polo gesprochen. Bleiben Sie ruhig! Sie sind frei!” Er half mir, meine “Augenbinde” aus Watte und Sonnenbrille zu entfernen. Ich fühlte mich so erleichtert - weniger aufgrund dessen, was passierte, das wusste ich ja noch nicht - als über die Worte dieses “Nicola”. Er redete und redete. Er konnte einfach nicht aufhören. Es war wie eine Lawine aus freundlichen Sätze und Witzen. Endlich fühlte ich mich getröstet - warm, fast körperlich. Wie lange hatte ich das entbehrt! Wir setzten die Fahrt fort - durch eine Unterführung voller Pfützen. Beim Versuch, ihnen auszuweichen, wären wir fast aus der Kurve geflogen. Wir lachten und lachten. Es war so befreiend. Auf einer überfluteten Bagdader Straße von der Fahrbahn abzukommen und in einem hässlichen Unfall zu enden, wäre wirklich blamabel gewesen - nach allem, was ich erlebt hatte. Nicola Calipari setzte sich neben mich. Unser Fahrer hatte sich zweimal mit der Botschaft in Verbindung gesetzt bzw. mit Italien, ihnen mitgeteilt, wir seien auf dem Weg zum Flughafen. Ich wusste, der Flughafen steht unter massiver Kontrolle der amerikanischen Soldaten. Nicht einmal mehr 1 Kilometer, sagten meine Begleiter, als plötzlich... Alles, woran ich mich erinnern kann, es wurde gefeuert. Ein Kugelregen und Feuer gingen auf uns nieder. Die Stimmen, die eben noch gelacht hatten, schwiegen für immer. Unser Fahrer brüllte, wir seien doch Italiener. “Wir sind Italiener. Wir sind Italiener...” Nicola Calipari warf sich schützend über mich. Kurz darauf, ich wiederhole, sofort darauf, tat er seinen letzten Atemzug. Er starb auf mir. Ich hatte körperliche Schmerzen, wusste aber nicht warum. Dann hatte ich einen Flashback. Wieder kamen mir die Worte meiner Kidnapper in den Sinn: Sie hätten vor, mich freizulassen, so ihre Worte, aber ich sollte auf der Hut sein: “Da sind die Amerikaner, die wollen nicht, dass Sie zurückkehren”. Damals hatte ich es für müßiges, ideologisches Gerede gehalten. Jetzt wusste ich es besser. Sie hatten riskiert, mir die bittere Wahrheit zu offenbaren - die allerbitterste.

Über den Rest kann ich jetzt noch nicht sprechen.

Es war der dramatischste Tag. Aber auch der Monat davor, den ich als Gekidnappte verbracht hatte, wird mein Leben prägen - vermutlich für immer. Einen Monat lang war ich allein, ganz auf mich gestellt, Gefangene meiner tiefsten Überzeugungen. Stunde um Stunde ging ich in Gedanken meine Arbeit durch - schonungslos prüfend. Manchmal machten sie Späße. Oft fragten sie zum Spaß, warum ich denn nicht hier bleiben wolle, bleiben Sie doch. Persönliche Beziehungen waren ihnen wichtig. Ausgerechnet diese Leute machten mir jene Priorität wieder klar, die viele von uns nur allzu oft beiseiteschieben. Sie sprachen von meiner Familie. “Bitten Sie doch ihren Mann um Hilfe”. In meinem ersten Video, das Sie sicher alle gesehen haben werden, tat ich genau das. Mein Leben hat sich verändert. Was hatte der irakische Ingenieur (der Organisation) ‘Un Ponte Per‘, Ra’ad Ali Abdulaziz, noch gleich gesagt, der gemeinsam mit den beiden Simonas entführt wurde: “Mein Leben ist nicht mehr dasselbe”. Damals hatte ich ihn nicht verstanden. Heute weiß ich, was er mir sagen wollte, ich habe die harte Wahrheit selbst erfahren - erfahren, wie schwer sie sein kann. Ich habe erlebt, wie schwach man sich fühlt, wenn man versucht, sie auf sich zu nehmen.

In den ersten Tagen meiner Entführung vergoss ich keine Träne. Alles, was ich fühlte, war Wut. Ich sagte den Kidnappern mitten ins Gesicht: “Wie könnt ihr es wagen! Mich entführen, mich, (eine Person), die so gegen den Krieg ist?!” An diesem Punkt starteten sie jedes Mal eine hitzige Debatte. “Ja, Sie gehen zu den Leuten und sprechen mit ihnen. Wir würden nie einen Reporter entführen, der sich in seinem Hotel verbarrikadiert. Sie sagen, Sie sind gegen den Krieg. Aber das könnte genauso gut ein Vorwand sein”. Ich schlug zurück, fast provozierend: “Es ist ja so einfach, eine schutzlose Frau wie mich zu entführen. Warum legt ihr euch nicht mit dem amerikanischen Militär an?” Ich bestand darauf, sie sollten von der italienischen Regierung keinen Truppenrückzug fordern, denn nicht die Regierung sei der für sie zuständige “politische” Gesprächspartner vielmehr das italienische Volk - und das ist gegen den Krieg.

Ein Monat der Höhen und Tiefen - großer Hoffnung und großer Depression - liegt hinter mir. An meinem ersten Sonntag in Gefangenschaft - in einem Haus in Bagdad mit Parabolantenne - zwangen sie mich, die Euronews zu schauen. In den Nachrichten sah ich, wie ein riesiges Foto von mir als Poster vor dem römischen Rathaus baumelte. Das gab mir neuen Mut. Gleich darauf hieß es, der Jihad kündige meine Exekution an - für den Fall, dass Italien seine Truppen nicht abzieht. Ich bekam schreckliche Angst. Sie (meine Entführer) versicherten mir sofort, das stamme nicht von ihnen, ich solle der Behauptung keinen Glauben schenken. Denen geht es nur um “Provokation”, sagten sie. Oft fragte ich einen der beiden (der etwas zugänglicher wirkte als der andere, wobei beide wie Soldaten aussahen): “Sagen Sie mir die Wahrheit, werden Sie mich töten?”

Bei vielen Gelegenheiten ergab sich bei beiden ein Fenster der Kommunikation - zu meinem Erstaunen. “Kommen Sie, sehen Sie sich einen Film im Fernsehen an”, sagten sie, während eine Wahabiterin, von Kopf bis Fuß verschleiert, das Haus besorgte und nach mir sah. Ich hatte den Eindruck, bei meinen Entführern handle es sich um eine religiöse Gruppe - sehr religiöse Leute. Sie beteten ständig Verse aus dem Koran. Letzten Freitag, in dem Moment, als sie mich freiließen, drückte mir ausgerechnet der, den ich für den Religiösesten hielt, die Hand - unglaublich fest - und sagte, ”mein Glückwunsch“ - ein Verhalten, das für einen religiösen Fundamentalisten alles andere als normal ist. Er stand jeden Morgen um 5 Uhr früh auf und betete. “Wenn Sie sich richtig verhalten, werden Sie sofort gehen können”, fügte er zum Abschied hinzu. Hier eine beinah lustige Episode. Eines Tages kam einer der beiden Wächter verblüfft auf mich zu - verblüfft, aus zwei Gründen: zum einen hatte er im Fernsehen gesehen, dass Bilder von mir in mehreren europäischen Großstädten hingen. Der zweite Grund war Totti - ja, genau, Totti. Er (der Entführer) sagte, er sei ein Fan der römischen Fußballmannschaft. Es verblüffe ihn, dass ausgerechnet sein Lieblingsspieler Totti mit einem ‘Free-Giuliana‘-Shirt auf dem Spielfeld herumlief.

Ich lebte in einer Enklave. Ich hatte keine Sicherheit mehr und fühlte mich sehr, sehr schwach. Alles, was ich für sicher gehalten hatte, war plötzlich unsicher. War ich mir nicht immer sicher gewesen, ich müsse losziehen und über diesen schmutzigen Krieg berichten? Ich hatte die Wahl: Entweder im Hotel bleiben und abwarten oder meinen Job tun und eventuell gekidnappt werden. “Wir wollen hier keinen mehr”, sagten meine Kidnapper. Ich hatte über die Story des Blutbads von Falludscha berichten wollen - aus der Sicht der Flüchtlinge. Aber an diesem Morgen wollten mir die Flüchtlinge - beziehungsweise einige ihrer “Führer” - kein Gehör schenken. Hier hatte ich die Bestätigung vor Augen - die Bestätigung aller Analysen, die zeigen, was der Krieg aus der irakischen Gesellschaft gemacht hat. Sie schmetterten mir ihre Wahrheit mitten ins Gesicht: “Wir wollen keinen hier. Warum bleibt ihr nicht zu Hause? Was soll uns so ein Interview bringen?” Für mich die schwerste kollaterale Folge dieses Kriegs - der Tod der Kommunikation. Ich hatte alles riskiert. Die italienische Regierung wollte keine Journalisten im Irak. Ich hatte sie herausgefordert - ebenso die Amerikaner, die nicht wollen, dass unsere Arbeit Zeugnis ablegt von dem, was seit dem Krieg aus dem Land geworden ist - unabhängig von dieser (von ihnen) sogenannten Wahl. Angesichts der Verweigerung dieser Menschen frage ich mich, ist es eine Niederlage?

Diesen Artikel veröffentlichte Giuliana Sgrena (unter dem Titel ‘La mia verità’) am 6. März in Il Manifesto. Vom Italienischen ins Englische übersetzt von Arif Ishaq.

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US-News!

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U.S. forces in Iraq face new strains with allies as Bulgaria says they probably
shot dead one of its soldiers, just after they angered Rome by killing an Italian
secret agent who rescued a hostage. Iraqi soldiers pass by a U.S. Marines` heavy
machine gun as they conduct foot patrol in the city of Hit, northwest of Baghdad
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Bulgaria says soldier shot dead by U.S. troops
REUTERS
U.S. shootings strain ties with Iraq allies
Tue Mar 8, 2005 09:03 AM GMT
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&stor…

By Andrew Marshall

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. forces in Iraq face new strains with allies as Bulgaria says they probably shot dead one of its soldiers, just after they angered Rome by killing an Italian secret agent who rescued a hostage.

The shootings confirmed what for many Iraqis is a daily reality -- that U.S. forces are too quick to open fire and often kill innocent civilians in their efforts to crack down on insurgents, who killed at least 23 people in fresh attacks.

The U.S. military says it does all it can to minimise the risk of Iraqis and foreign civilians being killed.

The Bulgarian soldier was killed in southern Iraq on Friday, around the same time that U.S. forces in Baghdad opened fire on a vehicle taking kidnapped Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena to the airport shortly after her captors freed her.

Sgrena was wounded in the shoulder and secret agent Nicola Calipari, who played a key role in her release, was killed. Italy laid on an state funeral in Rome on Monday for Calipari.

Bulgarian Defence Minister Nikolai Svinarov said an investigation into the death of the Bulgarian soldier showed he was probably accidentally killed by American troops.

"Someone started shooting at our patrol from the west, and in the same direction, 150 metres (yards) away, there was a unit from the U.S. army," he told a news conference.

"The result gives us enough grounds to believe the death of rifleman Gurdi Gurdev was caused by friendly fire."

Svinarov said the Bulgarian army`s chief of staff had written to General Richard Myers, chairman of the U.S. joint chiefs of staff, asking for an investigation.

The U.S. military had no immediate comment.

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Die beste Begründung für den Irak-Krieg!

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Da hat Zakaria mit seiner Titelgeschichte in Newsweek eine Diskussion losgetreten.
Seine Behauptung Bush habe nun Recht bekommen durch den sogenannten Frühling in Nahost, nimmt er natürlich Entwicklungen vorweg, die wohl mehr Wunschträume der Neocon-Gutmenschen sind als jetzige oder zukünftige Realität.

Was Bush right after all?
As Syria pulls out of Lebanon, and the winds of change blow through the Middle East, this is the difficult question that opponents of the Iraq war are having to face
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/story.jsp?story=617…

08 March 2005

Trucks carrying Syrian soldiers began to file out of Beirut yesterday. As they departed, Syria`s President, Bashar Assad, under intense pressure from the US, promised to withdraw all 14,000 troops to eastern areas of Lebanon by the end of this month. The White House almost immediately dismissed the plan as failing to set a deadline for total withdrawal from the country.

So this was too little, too slow for Washington. But however circumscribed, the first phase of Syria`s withdrawal from Lebanon is another sign of change across the Middle East. The precise extent and implications of the pull-out (or to be more accurate pull-back) are still unclear, and the same goes for the host of other developments, from Palestine to Iraq, from Egypt to Saudi Arabia. Some may be sincere and lasting, others contrived and short-lived, but all suggest the political straitjacket that has long imprisoned the Arab world is loosening, if not yet coming apart at the seams.

It is barely six weeks since the US President delivered his second inaugural address, a paean to liberty and democracy that espoused the goal of "ending tyranny in our world". Reactions around the world ranged from alarm to amused scorn, from fears of a new round of "regime changes" imposed by an all-powerful American military, to suspicions in the salons of Europe that this time Mr Bush, never celebrated for his grasp of world affairs, had finally lost it. No one imagined that events would so soon cause the President`s opponents around the world to question whether he had got it right.

That debate is now happening, in America and beyond, as the first waves of reform lap at the Arab world. Post-Saddam Iraq has held its first proper election. In their own elections, Palestinians have overwhelmingly chosen a moderate leader. Hosni Mubarak, who for 24 years has permitted no challenge to his rule in Egypt, has announced a multi-candidate presidential election this year. Even Saudi Arabia is not immune, having just held its first municipal elections. Next time around, Saudi spokesmen promise, women too will be permitted to vote.

Most remarkably of all, perhaps, popular demonstrations in Beirut last week brought the downfall of one pro-Syrian government and - with the help of fierce pressure from Washington and the EU - the agreement by Syria to start withdrawing its troops in Lebanon.

How much Mr Bush is responsible for these development is debatable. The peaceful uprising in Lebanon was provoked by outrage at the assassination of the former prime minister Rafik Hariri, in which a Syrian hand is suspected, although not proven. Then the man who insisted on elections in Iraq when the US wanted to postpone or dilute them was Ayatollah Ali al- Sistani, leader of Iraq`s majority Shia community. And the death from old age of Yasser Arafat, not machinations in Washington, led to the election that might break the Israeli-Palestinian deadlock.

Indubitably, however, even his most grudging domestic opponents and his harshest critics in the region admit that Mr Bush is also in part responsible. The 2003 invasion of Iraq may have been justified by a giant fraud, but that, and above all the January election to which it led, transfixing the Arab world, has proved a catalyst.

The mood at the White House, on Capitol Hill and in the punditocracy has been transformed. The weapons of mass destruction fiasco is forgotten, the deaths of US troops have slipped from the front pages. Even Senator Edward Kennedy, bitter Democratic critic of the invasion, admits that Mr Bush deserves credit "for what seemed to be a tentative awakening of democracy in the region".

The neoconservatives are predictably triumphalist. "What changed the climate in the Middle East was not just the US invasion and show of arms," exults the commentator Charles Krauthammer in Time magazine. "It was US determination and staying power, and the refusal of its people last November to turn out a president who rejected an `exit strategy`."

Beyond argument, old certainties in the region are less certain; old equations of power are having to be recalculated. It is, of course, only a start, and things could go dreadfully wrong. Today the pro-Syrian Hizbollah party, regarded as a terrorist group, by Washington, holds a massive demonstration. Some see the spectre of Lebanon`s 1975-1990 civil war and this time, they predict Syria could be thrown into bloody chaos.

Success in Iraq, too, is anything but assured and there is the wild card of Iran, locked in dispute with the European Union and the United States over its suspected nuclear ambitions, and with huge mischief-making potential in both Iraq and Lebanon.

The moves by Saudi Arabia and Egypt may yet be tactical, a controlled release of steam before the lid is screwed down once more. There is no guarantee that the Islamic Brotherhood, the most powerful opposition party, will be allowed to take part in the Egyptian vote.

Then there is the law of unintended consequences. The maddening thing about democracy, from the viewpoints of Mr Bush and Mr Mubarak alike, is that you cannot be sure of what you will get. A Shia-dominated government will emerge in Iraq, but no one knows whether it will be secular or theocratic. What will Washington do if Islamic movements threaten repressive but reliable autocrats such as Mr Mubarak? And for all Mr Bush`s argument that the survival of liberty in the US depends on liberty abroad, there is no guarantee that democracy will end terrorism.

Some US officials compare the situation in the Arab world with that of eastern Europe in 1989, when the people`s discontent with their rulers reached boiling point, and repressive regimes simply lacked the will to repress any longer.

The same happened with the Soviet Union in 1991. But that year offers two other, more depressing parallels. One was the futile insurrection by Iraqi Kurds and Shias against Saddam Hussein. Then in Algeria, the US and the West sat silent as the military regime, faced with the victory of the Islamist FIS movement in elections, simply cancelled them. The result was a brutal civil war in which more than 100,000 died.

When push has come to shove in the Middle East before, the US has invariably sided with the devil it knows, true to the philosophy: "He may be a sonofabitch, but at least he`s our sonofabitch." Will this President Bush be as good as his soaring words on that icy morning in January? Lebanon may provide the first test.


8 March 2005 12:06


©2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.

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Beirut: An historic day in the life of my city
Tuesday, 8th March 2005, by Robert Fisk
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/story.jsp?story=617…

JUST below my local supermarket in Sadat Street - I have been buying my daily cheese croissant - a car pulls up with a man carrying thousands of pictures of President Bashar Assad of Syria. The man marches into the Syrian mukhabarat office, a run-down four-storey building still jewelled with the bullet scars of Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war.

Inside, I can see several heavily armed men, each one a factotum of Brigadier General Rustum Gazale, the head of Syria’s military intelligence in Lebanon. Three glum Lebanese policemen stand round the corner, watching. The pictures - be sure of this - are for today’s Hizbollah-organised rally in the centre of Beirut, a demonstration demanding the fulfilment of the Taif agreement that ended the war and which called - deus ex machina - for the progressive withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon.

I remember Taif in Saudi Arabia. That’s where I first met a large, heavily moustached Lebanese-Saudi businessman called Rafiq Hariri who was smoking a cigar. He was dressed in a long dishdash gown and couldn’t take his eyes off a black and white cowboy film on a television in the corner of the room. He wanted to rebuild Lebanon, he said. Some hope, I muttered to myself. And then he became the prime minister of Lebanon and rebuilt Beirut and mocked me for my lack of confidence in his ability.

Just over three weeks ago, he lay dead in the road, his limbs on fire, scarcely 500 metres from my home where I am writing this. The car bomb exploded directly opposite his SUV.

Gazale had once called him up on the phone and insulted him and Hariri hung up. Gazale was never rude again - though he was to other Lebanese ministers - and Hariri continued to walk a neutral path, neither inviting the Syrians to stay in Lebanon nor demanding their withdrawal. That was until he resigned last year and joined the opposition and - so we are led to believe - earned the undying wrath of Bashar Assad.

When Assad spoke to the Syrian parliament on Saturday night, my mobile phone bleeped for hours like a grasshopper. "I have never felt so insulted," a young woman friend shouted at me. "His voice was so patronising. And what are these ’shifting sands’ he was talking about?"

One of them was obviously Syria’s erstwhile ally, the Druze leader and super-nihilist Walid Jumblatt. After a somewhat rakish life, Jumblatt - whose cynicism should merit a PhD - has seized the moment. He has embraced his civil-war Christian enemies, accused the Syrians of murdering his father Kemal in 1977 and - when I call by to see him in his ancestral home at Mukhtara - I find a man waiting for death.

Huge Alsatians prowl the gardens. Armed men are at the gate. Jumblatt sits in his jeans and brown jacket, hands on his knees, looking at the floor. "Yes, I am a target," he says and looks at me mournfully. "Not long before he died, Hariri said to me, ’So which one of us is it going to be?’ I was in my home in Beirut when the bomb went off. I thought, ’It’s Hariri.’ I called the Hariri people and they said they couldn’t reach him. Then I knew. I was wearing a red tie and I thought, ’I should be wearing something more sober - but if I put on a black tie, it will mean that it is certain he is dead.’ And after 15 minutes, I went upstairs and put on my dark tie and I knew he was dead."

Jumblatt’s glorious wife Nora was in a downtown office and the windows crashed around her from the blast. "I thought, ’My God! It’s Walid!’" I look at both of them and realise they now both live with death. Jumblatt went to the American University Hospital where Hariri had been taken. "We all thought he was in the operating room but the senior security officer took me aside and told me he was in the mortuary.

"I saw Hariri’s son and got in the car with him and I said: ’I am afraid the news is bad.’ I had to tell him."

Jumblatt and I talk about his father - he was shot dead on a road near Mukhtara - and I recalled for him a photographic book about Kamal Jumblatt which Walid had given me in December 2000, long before he accused the Syrians of killing his father. "I could be a nihilist," he had written to me on the first page. "Like my father, in a way, who refused, 25 years ago, Syria’s Anschluss."

I drive to Beirut through Sofar - I note, as always, the delicate French mandate railway station perched on the cliffs - and there in front of me is a beat-up rubbish skip with a sleeping soldier in the back, grinding down to Aley.

It carries a triangular military code above the registration and the words "Jesh Suriya" - Syrian Army - badly painted on the tailboard. Here, then, is the monstrous Syrian army of occupation about who President Bush likes to hold forth, under whose Gestapo heel the people of Lebanon have been lying prostrate for 29 years, always forgetting - and this is an essential part of the narrative - that the Christian Maronites invited the Syrians to come here in the first place, to protect them from Yasser Arafat’s Palestinians.

I remember still the day they entered Beirut. With the very first Syrian commandoes, I crossed the old front line below Martyrs’ Square, treading my way with them through a carpet of unexploded shells and grenades, until we reached the smashed façade of the Beirut municipality building from which emerged a bunch of scrawny, unwashed Palestinian gunmen.

They put their weapons on the ground and their arms round the necks of the Syrians and wept like children. The Syrians had descended on Beirut in their thousands, bayonets fixed, their tanks preceded by a young soldier playing a flute. The Pied Piper of Damascus. There were 40,000 of them then. More than 60 per cent have been withdrawn since 2000. There are only 14,000 left today and they live, for the most part, in dank, vermin-infested bombed-out ruins from the war.

Lebanon, for me, is a place where time has stood still. I am still 29 - my age when I first came to Lebanon - and I still work the same streets, live in the same home on the Corniche. From my balcony, I have watched the Lebanese army and the Syrian army and the UN armies and the invading Israeli army and the American Marines and French paratroopers and even, briefly, in 1983, British troops, staring out across the Mediterranean from this same road.

The Israelis left in ignominy, the Americans and French and British in humiliation. I was standing on my balcony in 1992 when a car hit a garbage truck and dragged it across the road with a terrible grating roar.

A few hours later, my mother called to say my elderly father, a soldier of the First World War - the war which created Lebanon out of Syria - had died. And my landlord, Mustafa, and his niece shook hands with me in the way that Arabs express condolences, so much more dignified than the twee hugs we give the bereaved in Britain.

And now I sit in Mustafa’s little shop downstairs and he tells me things are "very, very bad". He has stocked up on water, checked the emergency electrical line. He tells me to take care in the coming days. Ever since I was badly hurt on the Afghan border, his sister lights candles for my safety when I am away from Lebanon. But in a sense, I am never away.

That night in December of 2001, after my beating at the hands of Afghan refugees enraged at the death of the their loved ones in a US air raid, I was lying in bed in great pain, my face stuck to my pillow with blood, when my phone rang. A familiar voice boomed down the line. "Robert. This is Rafiq Hariri. What happened? Tell me from the start!" And, after I had talked for five minutes, he offered to send his private jet to pick me up in Quetta - his friend, Pervez Musharraf, would give immediate landing permission - and bring me to hospital in Beirut. But of course, I don’t take gifts from prime ministers and I turned him down. And two days ago, I stood at Hariri’s graveside, watching Musharraf mourn his friend.

"There is fire under the ashes - we must all take care," an old friend tells me. He used to work for Middle East Airlines. We are watching Hizbollah’s leader, Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, on television. "Only the Lebanese flag will be flown," Nasrallah says. No Hizbollah flags at the Hizbollah rally downtown. All are welcome. They’ll be supporting the Taif agreement - Taif, which calls for a Syrian withdrawal but, unlike UN Security Council Resolution 1559, does not insist on the disarming of the Hizbollah. "We are a resistance movement," Nasrallah says, "not a militia."

So now Hizbollah is fighting for its life and I remember how Nasrallah described to me the mind of a suicide bomber, how the bomber was like a man who is in a sauna and is very hot but knows that in the next room there is air-conditioning, classical music and a cocktail waiting for him. So he opens the door.

We are all praying no one will open any doors in Beirut in the next few days. The Hizbollah will not turn on the Lebanese. But the men who killed Hariri are still here, I am sure, in Beirut. Were they not the same men who tried to car-bomb Jumblatt’s Druze friend, Marwan Hamade last November. "The Syrians will do nothing for the moment, habibi [my friend]," the old airline executive says.

"We have a saying when we are angry: that ’our eyes are red’. And, at the moment, we are all looking with red eyes at Syria. Maybe later, something will happen."

And then I am driving through Beirut and a woman who works for Hariri’s Solidere company rebuilding the centre of the city calls on my mobile. "Bashar Assad and Lahoud [the Lebanese president] have just met in Damascus and the Syrians are not leaving this week. In April, maybe. And maybe only to our side of the border."

I walk in to the downtown AP bureau. Two Syrian lorries have been seen at the Mdeirej ridge above Beirut carrying furniture. Furniture? Are the tables being withdrawn as well? And there is Bashar on the screen, flanked by his foreign minister, Farouk al-Sharar, and there is Lahoud, sunburn red and next to him, slumped in a chair, is his elderly and uninspiring prime minister, Omar Karami.

It’s only a few days since ex-President Hrawi, an old friend of Hariri, was asked for his feelings and broke down in tears and wept for three minutes, right there live on the television until, choking on his words, he said: "If Hariri had died when I was president, I would have resigned." And the point was not lost on the Lebanese. Lahoud has not resigned.

I am back downtown, taking coffee with old friends beside the oldest mosques in Beirut and there, across the road, is the municipality building, rebuilt by Hariri, and the same doorway through which Palestinian gunmen emerged in front of me 29 years ago. Half my life ago, I had walked through the shells on this very street with the Syrian commandoes. And now they are taking their furniture home.

On Hariri’s grave there are 30 doves stalking around on the wax of a thousand candles. The Lebanese have written messages of love on walls. Hariri was a tough cookie, a ruthless businessman with political enemies and was also a supporter of the death penalty.

But he was a kind man who had no militia and had no blood on his hands and had, I suspect, become over-confident. I am reminded, looking at those fresh flowers on his grave, of another conversation, long ago, in which the unthinkable question came up. What would happen to Lebanon if he died?

Hariri raised his hands in front of me, open either side of his face. "So keep me alive!" he roared. And of course, we did not.

©2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.

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Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan

http://www.juancole.com/
Tuesday, March 08, 2005

Al-Hakim: "US Troops Out!"

Le Monde reported Monday that Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the cleric who leads the United Iraqi Alliance, rejects a long-term presence for US troops in Iraq:


Permanent American bases in Iraq? The question seems so incongruous to His Most Austere "Eminence Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim," (as the leader of the Shiite party which won the January 30 elections identifies himself on his visiting card) that he almost bursts out laughing. "Ha! Ha! No. No one in Iraq desires the establishment of permanent foreign bases on our land. The United Nations Security Council resolutions are clear: it will be up to the elected Iraqi government, when the time comes, to give those forces a specific departure date. As soon as possible."



The article also notes that al-Hakim is an even more vehement proponent of `rooting out` the ex-Baathists from Iraqi society than is Ahmad Chalabi.

It seems to me that the US military long ago blew any chance of remaining in Iraq for the long haul-- Abu Ghraib, Fallujah, Najaf and other actions have been pretty deadly. The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which al-Hakim heads, certainly wants an early end to the US presence.

Iyad Allawi has rebuffed an offer from the United Iraqi Alliance (Shiite religious parties) to join them and accept a position as a vice-president or deputy. Allawi, currently interim prime minister, refuses to join the executive as anything less than prime minister. The UIA plan of establishing a government of national unity has therefore hit an obstacle.

posted by Juan @ 3/8/2005 06:30:00 AM

Guerrillas Kill 33, Wound Dozens

The guerrilla war in Iraq boiled along on Monday. In addition to the operations around Baquba reported yesterday morning, AP describes several further attacks:



` In Balad, southeast of Baqouba, a car bomb killed 12 people. In Baghdad, gunmen killed two police officers and wounded a third. Two civilians also were killed when a roadside bomb targeting a joint U.S.-Iraqi military convoy exploded in the west Baghdad neighborhood of Amiriyah. In Baghdad`s southern Dora district, gunmen killed Mahmood Khudier, a former Iraqi army officer, while a man was killed in a mortar attack in Qaim, near the Syrian border, police said. In the latest in a wave of kidnappings, a Jordanian businessman abducted in Iraq was freed after his family paid a $100,000 ransom, his brother said. Ibrahim Al-Maharmeh, a food importer, was kidnapped in Baghdad on Saturday.`



An apparent "friendly fire" incident in which US troops killed a Bulgarian soldier has strained relations between that country and the US. Some analysts believe the involvement in Iraq will become an issue in Bulgaria`s next elections. A close association with Bush and the unpopular Iraq war hurt Prime Minister Aznar in Spain, contributing to his defeat in 2004.

Questions continue to swirl around the shooting of freed Italian hostage Giuliana Sregna and an Italian intelligence operative. Some are speculating that the Italian government has been paying ransoms, and had attempted to hide the mission from the US for that reason. Ms. Sregna herself suspects that she discovered things about the Fallujah campaign and perhaps other aspects of US military operations in Iraq that the US did not wish revealed.

The Dutch, who are leaving Iraq, handed security duties in Samawah over to the British on Monday.

posted by Juan @ [url3/8/2005 06:03:00 AM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/03/guerrillas-kill-33-wound-dozens.html[/url]

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March 7, 2005
Lebanon and the Avaricious Superpower
The Next Crusades
http://www.counterpunch.org/avnery03072005.html

By URI AVNERY

Many years ago, I read a book called "The Quiet American" by Graham Greene. Its central character is a high-minded, naive young American operative in Vietnam. He has no idea about the complexities of that country but is determined to right its wrongs and create order. The results are disastrous.

I have the feeling that this is happening now in Lebanon. The Americans are not so high-minded and no so naive. Far from it. But they are quite prepared to go into a foreign country, disregard its complexities, and use force to impose on it order, democracy and freedom.

Civil war: Lebanon. Lebanon is a country with a peculiar topography: a small country of high mountain ranges and isolated valleys. As a result, it has attracted throughout the centuries communities of persecuted minorities, who found refuge there. Today there are, side by side and one against the other, four ethno-religious communities: Christians, Sunnis, Shiites and Druse. Within the Christian community, there are several sub-communities, such as Maronites and other ancient sects, mostly hostile to each other. The history of Lebanon abounds in mutual massacres.

Such a situation invites, of course, interference by neighbors and foreign powers, each wanting to stir the pot for its own advantage. Syria, Israel, the United States and France, the former colonial master, are all involved.

Exactly 50 years ago a secret, heated debate took place among the leaders of Israel. David Ben-Gurion (then Minister of Defense) and Moshe Dayan (the army Chief-of-Staff) had a brilliant idea: to invade Lebanon, impose on it a "Christian major" as dictator and turn it into an Israeli protectorate. Moshe Sharett, the then Prime Minister, attacked this idea fervently. In a lengthy, closely argued letter, which has been preserved for history, he ridiculed the total ignorance of the proponents of this idea in face of the incredibly fragile complexity of the Lebanese social structure. Any adventure, he warned, would end in disaster.

At the time, Sharett won. But 27 years later, Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon did exactly what Ben-Gurion and Dayan had proposed. The result was exactly as foreseen by Sharett.

Anyone who follows the American and Israeli (there is no difference) media, gets the impression that the present situation in Lebanon is simple: there are two camps, "the supporters of Syria" on the one side, the "opposition" on the other. There is a "Beirut Spring". The opposition is a twin sister of yesterday`s Ukrainian opposition, and loyally imitates all its methods: demonstrations opposite the government building, a sea of waving flags, colorful shawls, and, most importantly, beautiful girls in the front row.

But between the Ukraine and Lebanon there exists not the slightest similarity. The Ukraine is a "simple" country: the east tends towards Russia, the west towards Europe. With American help, the west won.

In Lebanon, all the diverse communities are in action. Each for its own interest, each plotting to outfox the others, perhaps to attack them at a given opportunity. Some of the leaders are connected with Syria, some with Israel, all are trying to use the Americans for their ends. The jolly pictures of young demonstrators, so prominent in the media, have no meaning if one does not know the community which stands behind them.

Only thirty years ago these communities started a terrible civil war and all of them massacred each other. The Christian Maronites wanted to take over the country with the help of Israel, but were defeated by a coalition of the Sunnis and Druze (the Shiites played no significant role at that time). The Palestinian refugees, led by the PLO, who formed a kind of fifth "community", joined the battle. When the Christians were in danger of being overrun, they called on the Syrians for help. Six years later, Israel invaded, with the aim of evicting both the Syrians and the Palestinians and imposing a Christian strongman (Basheer Jumail).

It took us 18 years to get out of that morass. Our only achievement was to turn the Shiites into a dominant force. When we entered Lebanon, the Shiites received us with showers of rice and candies, hoping that we would throw out the Palestinians, who had been lording it over them. A few months later, when they realized that we did not intend to leave, they started to shoot at us. Sharon is the midwife of Hizbullah.

It is difficult to foresee what will happen if the Syrians accede to the American ultimatum and leave Lebanon. There is no indication that the Americans are concerned with the creation of a new fabric of life for the Lebanese communities. They are satisfied with babbling about "freedom" and "democracy", as if a majority vote could create a regime acceptable to all. They do not understand that "Lebanon" is an abstract notion, since for almost all Lebanese, belonging to their own community is vastly more important than loyalty to the state. In such a situation, even an international force will be of no help.

The re-ignition of the bloody civil war is a distinct possibility.

Civil war: Iraq. If a civil war breaks out in Lebanon, it will not be the only one in the region. In Iraq, such a war ­ if almost secret - is already in full swing.

The only effective military forces in Iraq, apart from the occupation army, are the Kurdish "Peshmerga" ("Those who face death"). The Americans use them whenever they are fighting the Sunnis. They played an important role in the battle of Faluja, a big town that was totally destroyed, its inhabitants killed or driven out.

Now the Kurdish forces are waging a war against the Sunnis and Turkmens in the north of the country, in order to take hold of the oil-rich areas and the town of Kirkuk, and also to drive out the Sunni settlers who were implanted there by Saddam Hussein.

How can such a war be practically ignored by the media? Simple: everything is swept under the carpet of the "war against terrorism".

But this small war is nothing compared to what may happen in Iraq, once the time comes for deciding the future of the country. The Kurds want complete autonomy, or independence by another name. The Sunni would not dream of accepting the rule of the Shiite majority, which they despise, even if came about in the name of "democracy". The outbreak of a full-fledged civil war may only be a question of time.

Civil war: Syria. If the Americans succeed, with Israel`s discreet help, in breaking the ruling Syrian dictatorship, there is no assurance at all that it will be replaced by "freedom" and "democracy".

Syria is almost as splintered as Lebanon. There is a strong Druze community in the south, a rebellious Kurdish community in the north, an Alawite community (to which the Assad family belongs) in the west. The Sunni majority is traditionally divided between Damascus in the south and Aleppo in the north. The people have resigned themselves to the Assad dictatorship out of fear of what may happen if the regime collapses.

It is not likely that a full-scale civil war will break out there. But a prolonged situation of total chaos is quite likely. Sharon would be happy, though I am not sure that it would be good for Israel.

Religious fervor: Iran. The main American objective is, of course, the overthrow of the Ayatollahs in Iran. (It is a little bit ironic that at the same time the Americans are helping to install the Shiites in power in neighboring Iraq, where they insist on introducing Islamic law.)

Iran is a much harder nut to crack. Unlike to Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, this is a homogenous society.

Israel is now openly threatening to bomb the Iranian nuclear installations. Every few days we see on our TV screens the digitally blurred faces of pilots boasting of their readiness to do this at a moment`s notice.

The religious fervor of the Ayatollahs has been flagging lately, as happens with every victorious revolution after some time. But a military attack by the "Big Satan" (the US) or the "Little Satan" (us) may set fire to the whole Shiite crescent: Iran, South Iraq and South Lebanon.

And here, too. Israel, too, has recently witnessed a tiny civil war.

In the Galilean village Marrar, where a Druze and an Arab Christian community have been living side by side for generations, a bloody incident suddenly erupted. It was a full-fledged pogrom: the Druze fell upon the Christians, attacking, burning and destroying. By a miracle, nobody was killed. The Christians say that the Israeli police (many of whose members are Druze) stood aside. The immediate reason for the outbreak: some doctored nude pictures on the Internet.)

It is easy to ignite a civil war, whether out of fanaticism or out of intolerable naivete. George Bush, the (not-so-) Quiet American, runs around the world hawking his patent medicines, "freedom" and "democracy", in total ignorance of hundreds of years of history. Hard to believe, but he draws his inspiration from a book by our own Nathan Sharansky, a very small genius, to say the least.

Every human being and every people has a right to freedom. Many of us have shed their blood for this aim. Democracy is an ideal that every people has to realize for itself. But when the banners of "freedom" and "democracy" are hoisted over a crusade by an avaricious and irresponsible super-power, the results can be catastrophic.

Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is one of the writers featured in The Other Israel: Voices of Dissent and Refusal. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch`s hot new book The Politics of Anti-Semitis

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Badwater, The area, which is mostly salt flats, is several hundred feet below sea level.

Artist Drive has been closed because of flooding.

Für alle die schon mal durch die Hitze von Death Valley marschiert sind, hier ein ganz anderes Bild, sehr seltenes Bild, aus der Dürre und vom Salzsee. Regen, vollgelaufener See und Blumen.

CALIFORNIA
Brief, Beautiful Rebirth
Desert Is Teeming With Wildflowers After Record Rainfall
By Louis Sahagun
Times Staff Writer
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-death8mar08,0,342608…

March 8, 2005

DEATH VALLEY NATIONAL PARK — The wettest year on record here has transformed this forbidding wilderness of scruffy mountains and buckled earth into a vividly unfamiliar world of wildflowers and reflecting pools, triggering ecological cycles not seen before on so large a scale.

Against a background of snowcapped peaks, the region`s contoured badlands and splintery rock towers are festooned with bright yellow, pink, white and deep purple blossoms spreading out in all directions. With the wildflowers have come pollinators, including sphinx moths as big as hummingbirds.

Another surprise: Badwater, usually the site of a salty pond nearly encircled by massive gray cliffs, features a lake five miles wide — and kayakers and wind surfers gliding over its whitecaps.

"It`s not Death Valley at all," visitor Wendy Cutler said. "I`m calling it Full of Life Valley."
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In some places, even the rocks are blooming. Water is forcing mineral salts to the surface, where they erupt in snow-white splotches on sulfur yellow hills.

The dazzling panoramas are drawing huge crowds of tourists, and some scientists, eager to take in the scenery before the millions of desert flowers die in the harsh summer sun. Among the visitors was First Lady Laura Bush, who vacationed here late last week and hiked more than 10 miles with an entourage of friends and Secret Service agents, park authorities said.

"It`s our best bloom in history, and the flowers are getting better by the day," said park naturalist Charlie Callagan, who accompanied Bush on several hikes. "I`m telling folks, `Hey, you may not see it this good again in your lifetime.` "

Rainfall in this 3.3 million-acre expanse averages less than 2 inches a year. In some years, there is no rain at all.

But this rain year, which is measured from July to June, "we`ve already had 6.19 inches of rain — a record — and we`re only eight months into the season," Callagan said.

A destructive storm in August killed two people and washed out some park roads. That was followed by the wettest period since recordkeeping began in 1911. But for the most part, "we`ve had the good kind of rain, the kind that is gentle and tends to soak into the soil," said park ranger Alan Van Valkenburg.

All the rain has dissolved protective waxy coatings off millions of seeds that had lain dormant for years in terrain where ground-level temperatures can soar as high as 200 degrees.

Now, more than 50 varieties of wildflowers — including desert gold, notch-leaf phacelia, gravel ghost, desert star and desert five-spot — are grabbing footholds in this unforgiving desert to sprout and shine wherever water collects: alluvial fans, ravines and alongside park roads.

No one can say with certainty how great the unprecedented rainfall`s ultimate impact will be on Death Valley — the hottest, driest and lowest place in the United States. Long-term ecological shifts are unlikely, given that summer temperatures climb to 130 degrees in the shade. But short-term changes are underway. Though no new species have been spotted so far, the rains are likely to trigger population blips among a variety of species.

Vegetarians of all kinds — stately bighorn sheep, tiny desert shrews and bulky chuckwalla lizards — are eating more fresh greenery than they ever had in their lives. Sphinx moth caterpillars, imposing horned creatures the size of an index finger, are browsing on brown-eyed evening primrose flowers.

Birds such as the Say`s Phoebe, distinguished by its gray throat and cinnamon belly, have been feasting on insects attracted to the flowers. More seeds mean more rodents and the birds of prey, snakes, coyotes and foxes that pursue them.

The bloom is expected to peak within the next week or so, when temperatures are to hit the mid-90s. Naturalists are predicting that swarms of caterpillars and grasshoppers will follow.

"But it is important to remember," Van Valkenburg said, "the plants will disappear once our normal patterns of heat and dryness kick in."

Nonetheless, botanists are flocking to Death Valley and desert regions across the arid Southwest in hopes of finding plants that have taken advantage of the unusually wet weather to extend their ranges.

"It`s an opportunity of a lifetime to fill in distribution gaps and, perhaps, discover new species in locations that had been regarded as botanical black holes," said Ilene Anderson, a botanist with the California Native Plant Society. "Seeds go into hibernation in dry times. But for many species, we don`t know how long that cycle lasts."

In the meantime, Terry Baldino, the park`s assistant chief of interpretation, has hired more employees on an emergency basis to keep up with the thousands of visitors arriving each day with the urgent question: "Where is the best place to see wildflowers?"

Lately, he`s been directing them to a 40-mile stretch of road at the southern end of the national park between Salsberry Pass and Badwater.

A favorite pullout in that area is Ashford Mill, where grass and wildflowers have given a green and yellow tinge to usually barren landscapes. On Sunday, a stream of tourists wandered over the terrain, planting tripods on sandy slopes to photograph the historic bloom.

Steve McKinney knew something special was happening in front of the lens of his vintage cherrywood 4-by-5 camera. But he faced a nagging problem: the delicate device kept wobbling in gusts of up to 20 mph.

"Regardless, I`m going to keep shooting," he said with a laugh. " `Cause you never know. One picture might turn out."

Other visitors included Vernon Crawford, 67, of Bakersfield, who could not help but ponder the novelty of an abundance of flowers in a place he always regarded as "nothing but death and desolation."

"Now, it`s a Garden of Eden," Crawford said. "The thing I marvel at is how long these seeds had to wait for a perfect rain so that they could burst into all these flaming colors."

A few yards away, Anish Desai, 30, and his wife, Kinjal, 27, stood with their arms around each other and tears in their eyes, awestruck by the vista unfolding before them. "This is pure beauty," Kinjal said. "It`s an experience that can never be repeated."

Los Angeles attorney Marnie Lassen, 31, put it another way: "It`s hard not to think of these flowers as so many millions of bright yellow faces smiling back at us."

About 40 miles to the north at Badwater, not far from places with names like Coffin Canyon and Funeral Mountains, adventurous souls enjoyed the enormous shallow lake covering the lowest point in North America.

Nothing lives in this lake. Most kayakers returned to shore encrusted with white salt.

Standing knee-deep in the brackish water, Keri French, 49, shook her head in amazement over "the sound of waves in a miniature ocean in the heart of Death Valley."

Not far away, Dan Morache, 33, attracted attention by kite-boarding over the surface of the lake that seemed to change by the hour from calm and mirror-like to rough and murky.

"I wanted to be the first person to kite-board Death Valley," Morache said, packing up his gear. "It feels pretty good, too. This may not happen again for another 100 years."

Then there was Death Valley business manager Dave Rhinehart, who has found an improbable new use for his river kayaks, 282 feet below sea level.

"Once you get a quarter of a mile from shore, it starts to feel like you`re out on Lake Superior," he said. "Then you stick a paddle in the water and discover it`s only 2 feet deep."

"Tip over? No problem," he said. "You simply walk home."


Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

With the snowcapped Panamint Mountains in the background, Cole Fulwider wades in a lake 282 feet below sea level left by recent storms.

Desert gold

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Ein gutes Beispiel wie sehr die USA Syrien braucht.

Disappearing `terrorists`
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archiv…

Tuesday, March 8, 2005

IMAGINE THE uproar if a former U.S. Marine traveled to Europe and suddenly disappeared.

Weeks, months or years later, it turns out, he had been abducted and spirited away to a hostile country, where he had been held in secret detention and tortured, because of suspicions by his kidnappers that he had committed unspecified crimes during his service in Iraq.

That is the nightmarish scenario the Bush administration is inviting with its use of a secret tool to combat terrorism known as "extraordinary rendition. " Around the world, as many as 100 individuals the Bush administration suspected were involved with terrorism have been apprehended, often in other countries, and then transported to third countries for interrogation. None that we know of has been formally charged with committing a terrorist act.

One "rendered" individual was Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian engineer. As chillingly described by Jane Mayer in the New Yorker magazine, the 34-year- old graduate of McGill University was traveling from Tunisia, where he was visiting his family, to his home in Canada on Sept. 26, 2002. While in transit at John F. Kennedy Airport, he was placed in handcuffs and leg irons, and flown to Washington, Maine, Italy and Jordan. From there he was driven to Syria, where he says he was tortured. He was released a year later, without any charges being filed against him.

"Disappearing" people who face torture in captivity is an activity typically associated with military dictatorships. It has no place in the arsenal of weapons used by the United States in its counter-terrorism war. Anyone suspected of committing a terrorist act should be charged and tried -- not removed to another country to face an unknown fate.

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URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archiv…
©2005 San Francisco Chronicle

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Most Americans oppose the United States taking military action in Iran, Syria, or North Korea. Support for military action is highest in the case of North Korea.
If the U.S. government decides to take military action in the following countries, would you favor or oppose it?
±3 pct. pt. margin of error
Feb. 25-27, 2005
Sample size = 1,008
National adults

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Latest Fatality: Mar 04, 2005

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

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Halliburton operates in Iran despite sanctions
How do U.S. contractors legally do business there?
By Lisa Myers & the NBC investigative unit
Updated: 12:24 a.m. ET March 8, 2005
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7119752/

It`s just another Halliburton oil and gas operation. The company name is emblazoned everywhere: On trucks, equipment, large storage silos and workers` uniforms.

But this isn`t Texas. It`s Iran. U.S. companies aren`t supposed to do business here.

Yet, in January, Halliburton won a contract to drill at a huge Iranian gas field called Pars, which an Iranian government spokesman said "served the interests" of Iran.

"I am baffled that any American company would want to have employees operating in Iran," says Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. "I would think they`d be ashamed."

Halliburton says the operation — videotaped by NBC News — is entirely legal. It`s run by a subsidiary called "Halliburton Products and Services Limited," based outside the U.S. In fact, the law allows foreign subsidiaries of U.S. corporations to do business in Iran under strict conditions.

Other U.S. oil services companies, like Weatherford and Baker Hughes, also are in Iran. And foreign subsidiaries of NBC`s parent company, General Electric, have sold equipment to Iran, though the company says it will make no more sales. (MSNBC is a Microsoft-NBC joint venture.)

Still, Halliburton stands out because its operations in Iran are now under a federal criminal investigation. Government sources say the focus is on whether the company set out to illegally evade the sanctions imposed ten years ago.

"I am formally announcing my intention to cut off all trade and investment with Iran," announced President Bill Clinton in 1995.

Sources close to the Halliburton investigation tell NBC News that after that announcement, Halliburton decided that business with Iran, then conducted through at least five companies, would all be done through a subsidiary incorporated in the Cayman Islands.

"It`s gotten around the sanctions and the very spirit and reasons for the sanctions," says Victor Comras, a former State Department expert on sanctions.

For Halliburton to have done this legally, the foreign subsidiary operating in Iran must be independent of the main operation in Texas. Yet, when an NBC producer approached managers in Iran, he was sent to company officials in Dubai. But they said only Halliburton headquarters in Houston could talk about operations in Iran. Still, Halliburton maintains its Iran subsidiary does make independent business decisions.

Why should Americans even care if U.S. companies circumvent the sanctions?

"The purpose of these sanctions is to dissuade Iran from supporting terrorism and from seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction," says Comras.

There`s a move in Congress to close the loophole.

"We don`t want American companies propping up a government that`s dedicated to our destruction," says Sen. Collins.

Halliburton says it is unfairly targeted because of politics, but recently announced it is pulling out of Iran because the business environment "is not conducive to our overall strategies and objectives."

However, that exit will be slow. Halliburton announced it was leaving Iran only three weeks after Iran announced the lucrative new gas deal, which industry sources say will take three years to complete.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7119752/

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David Corn: `Bush gives the UN the finger`
Posted on Tuesday, March 08 @ 09:59:01 EST By David Corn, The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/capitalgames/index.mhtml?bid=3&pid=…

If you were sitting in the Oval Office and George W. Bush asked, "Hey, tell me, who could we appoint to the UN ambassador job that would most piss off the UN and the rest of the world," your job would be quite easy. You would simply say, "That`s a no-brainer, Mr. President, John Bolton." And on Monday Bush took this no-brain advice and nominated Bolton to the post, which requires Senate confirmation.

Bolton is the rightwing`s leading declaimer of the United Nations. He once said, "If the UN Secretariat building in New York lost ten stories, it wouldn`t make a bit of difference." And when the Bush administration failed to persuade the UN to back its war in Iraq, Bolton observed that was "further evidence to many why nothing should be paid to the UN system."

Bolton has expressed much more vitriol for the UN than those two (representative) remarks, for he has been a UN-basher for years. Sure, the UN has many flaws and deserves reform. But what message does it convey to the UN and the world to send to the UN a fellow who has essentially called for total defunding of the institution?



And this move comes right after Bush went to Europe to mend fences and after he has started working closely with France in an admirable effort to push Syria out of Lebanon. The Bolton appointment is unfathomable--except if viewed as a payback to the neocons. This band of Bush-backers were considered the losers when Bolton, formerly an undersecretary at the State Department, was not appointed to the number-two slot at Foggy Bottom when Condoleezza Rice took over the State Department. But this is some consolation prize. Imagine Jerry Falwell being placed in charge of marriage in Massachusetts.

Bolton`s extremism does not stop at the UN`s front door. A year and a half ago, I described Bolton, who`s widely considered the leading hard-ass of the neocon clan, this way:

Bolton is a hawk`s hawk in the Bush administration. He is the agent conservateurin Colin Powell`s State Department. He has led the administration`s effort against the International Criminal Court. Last year, he single-handedly tried to revise U.S. nuclear policy by asserting that Washington no longer felt bound to state that it would not use nuclear weapons against nations that do not possess nuclear weapons. (A State Department spokesman quickly claimed that Bolton had not said what he had indeed said.) Bolton also claimed that Cuba was developing biological weapons--a charge that was not substantiated by any evidence and that was challenged by experts. In July, he was about to allege in congressional testimony that Syria posed a weapons-of-mass-destruction threat before the CIA and other agencies, which considered his threat assessment to be exaggerated, objected to his statement. When England, France and Germany recently tried to develop a carrot-and-stick approach in negotiating an end to Iran`s suspected nuclear weapons program, Bolton huffed, "I don`t do carrots."

And there are questions about his integrity. Three years ago, Bolton was caught up in a little-covered scandal involving a pro-Taiwan slush fund. Writing about this, I noted,

Some scandals find traction in Washington, others fizzle. The Taiwangate affair--which involves a $100 million secret Taiwan government slush fund that financed intelligence, propaganda, and influence activities within the United States and elsewhere--seems to be in the latter category at the moment. The beneficiaries of the lack of attention include three prominent Bush appointees at the State Department who, before joining the Bush administration, received money from this account. And one of these officials, John Bolton, the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, submitted pro-Taiwan testimony to Congress in the 1990s without revealing he was a paid consultant to Taiwan. His work for Taiwan, it turns out, was financed by this slush fund.

Bolton escaped damage in this scandal that got away, even though he arguably had acted as a foreign agent without having registered as one--a potential violation of US law. When the scandal broke in 2002--with Bolton then a senior official in the Bush State Department--the State Department refused to acknowledge Bolton`s involvement in the scandal. And Republicans on the Hill called for no investigations. (Click here and here for previous columns on Bolton and the slush fund affair. )

On December 2, after John Danforth resigned as Bush`s UN ambassador, I wrote on my blog:

So who is Bush going to name as a replacement? Paul Wolfowitz? John Bolton? (If you don`t know who Bolton is, you`re lucky. He`s the neocon`s sleeper-hawk/madman at the State Department.) How about Bill Safire? Or one of the many conservatives who have recently called for Kofi Annan`s resignation? Or...Alan Keyes?

I was trying to make a joke. But I suppose Bolton--who has ducked scandal and has escaped punishment for his misleading and false hawkish statements--is the one laughing now.


Copyright © 2005 The Nation

Reprinted from The Nation:
http://www.thenation.com/capitalgames/index.mhtml?bid=3&pid=…

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Baghdad Burning

Tuesday, March 08, 2005

You want a rabbit?
http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/2005_03_01_riverbendblog_a…

We are relieved the Italian journalist was set free. I, personally, was very happy. Iraqis are getting abducted these days by the dozen, but it still says something else about the country when foreigners are abducted. Iraqis have a fierce sense of hospitality that can border on the obnoxious sometimes. When people come to our houses, we insist they have something to drink and then we insist they stay for whatever meal is coming- even if its four hours away. We cringe when journalists and aide workers are abducted because it gives us the sense that we’re bad hosts.

People are always wondering why they abduct journalists, and other innocents. I think its because the lines are all blurred right now. It’s difficult to tell who is who. Who is a journalist, for example, and who is foreign intelligence? Who is a mercenary and who is an aide worker? People are somewhat more reluctant to talk to foreigners than they were at the beginning.

The irony of the situation lay in the fact that Sgrena was probably safer with her abductors than she was with American troops. It didn’t come as a surprise to hear her car was fired at. Was it done on purpose? It’s hard to tell. I can’t think why they would want to execute Giuliana Sgrena and her entourage, but then on the other hand, I can’t think how it could have possibly happened that they managed to fire that many rounds at a car carrying Italian intelligence officers and a journalist (usually they save those rounds for Iraqi families in cars).

There really is no good excuse for what happened. I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out what the Pentagon will say short of an admission that it was either on purpose or that the soldiers who fired at the car were drunk or high on something…

I have a feeling it will be the usual excuse, “The soldiers who almost killed the journalist were really, really frightened. They’ve been under lots of pressure.” But see, Iraqis are frightened and under pressure too- we don’t go around accidentally killing people. We’re expected to be very level-headed and sane in the face of chaos.

I wager that this little incident will be shoved aside with one of those silly Pentagon apologies that don’t really sound like apologies, you know: “It was an unfortunate incident, but Sgrena shouldn’t have been in Iraq in the first place. Journalists should stay safely in their own countries and listen for our daily military statements telling them democracy is flourishing and Iraqis are happy.”

I don’t understand why Americans are so shocked with this incident. Where is the shock? That Sgrena’s car was under fire? That Americans killed an Italian security agent? After everything that occurred in Iraq- Abu Ghraib, beatings, torture, people detained for months and months, the stealing, the rape… is this latest so very shocking? Or is it shocking because the victims weren’t Iraqi?

I’m really glad she’s home safe but at the same time, the whole situation is somewhat painful. It hurts because thousands of Iraqis have died at American checkpoints or face to face with a tank or Apache and beyond the occasional subtitle on some obscure news channel, no one knows about it and no one cares. It just hurts a little bit.

The event of the week occurred last Wednesday and I was surprised it wasn’t covered by Western press. It’s not that big a deal, but it enraged people in Baghdad and it can also give a better picture of what has been going on with our *heroic* National Guard. There was an explosion on Wednesday in Baghdad and the wounded were all taken to Yarmuk Hospital, one of the larger hospitals in Baghdad. The number of wounded were around 30- most of them National Guard. In the hospital, it was chaos- patients wounded in this latest explosion, patients from other explosions and various patients from gunshot wounds, etc. The doctors were running around everywhere, trying to be in four different places at once.

Apparently, there weren’t enough beds. Many of the wounded were in the hallways and outside of the rooms. The stories vary. One doctor told me that some of the National Guard began screaming at the doctors, telling them to ignore the civilians and tend to the wounds of the Guard. A nurse said that the National Guard who weren’t wounded began pulling civilians out of the beds and replacing them with wounded National Guard. The gist of it is generally the same; the doctors refused the idea of not treating civilians and preferring the National Guard over them and suddenly a fight broke out. The doctors threatened a strike if the National Guard began pulling the civilians out of beds.

The National Guard decided the solution to the crisis would be the following- they’d gather up some of the doctors and nurses and beat them in front of the patients. So several doctors were rounded up and attacked by several National Guard (someone said there was liberal use of electric batons and the butts of some Klashnikovs).

The doctors decided to go on strike.

It’s difficult to consider National Guardsmen as heroes with the image of them beating doctors in white gowns in ones head. It’s difficult to see them as anything other than expendable Iraqis with their main mission being securing areas and cities for Americans.

It seems that Da’awa Party’s Jaffari is going to be the Prime Minister and Talbani is going to get the decorative position of president. It has been looking like this since the elections. There is talk of giving our token Sunni Ghazi Al Yawir some high-profile position like National Assembly spokesperson. The gesture is meant to appease the Sunni masses but it isn’t going to do that because it’s not about Sunnis and Shia. It’s about occupation and Vichy governments. They all look the same to us.

What it seems policy makers in America don’t get, and what I suspect many Americans themselves *do* get, is that millions of Iraqis feel completely detached from the current people in power. If you don’t have an alliance with one of the political parties (ie under their protection or on their payroll) then it’s difficult to feel any affinity with people like Jaffari, Allawi, Talbani, etc. We watch them on television, tight-lipped and shifty-eyed after a meeting where they quarreled about Kirkuk or Sharia in the constitution and it feels like what I imagine an out-of-body experience should feel like.

In spite of elections, they still feel like puppets. But now, they are high-tech puppets. They were upgraded from your ordinary string puppets to those life-like, battery-powered, talking puppets. It’s almost like we’re doing that whole rotating president thing Bremer did in 2003 all over again. The same faces are getting tedious. The old Iraqi saying sums it up nicely, “Tireed erneb- ukhuth erneb. Tireed ghazal- ukhuth erneb.” The translation for this is, “You want a rabbit? Take a rabbit. You want a deer? Take a rabbit.”

Except we didn’t get any rabbits- we just got an assortment of snakes, weasels and hyenas.

Check out Imad Khadduri`s blog- he has some great links about the Italian journalist.

- posted by river @ 2:34 PM

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Es ist und bleibt ein gefährliches Spiel, was im Libanon abgeht und hoffentlich gut geht.

SPIEGEL ONLINE - 08. März 2005, 19:32

Großdemo in Beirut
Gefährliche Machtdemonstration der Schiiten im Libanon
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,345407,00.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,345407,00.html


Von Yassin Musharbash

Dramatische Wendung in Beirut: Nachdem die Opposition wochenlang für den sofortigen Abzug der syrischen Truppen aus dem Libanon demonstriert hatte, gingen heute Hunderttausende Anhänger der schiitischen Hisbollah-Miliz auf die Straße um lautstark für den Verbleib der Syrer zu demonstrieren.

Berlin - Ein Meer von Menschen, nach offiziellen Angaben der Polizei über 900.000, folgten heute dem Aufruf der Hisbollah-Miliz und strömten in das Stadtzentrum der libanesischen Hauptstadt Beirut. Dort demonstrierten sie gegen einen Abzug der 14.000 syrischen Soldaten, die sich in dem kleinen Land an der Mittelmeerküste aufhalten. Sie protestierten zudem gegen jede Einmischung der USA und der Uno in die libanesischen Angelegenheiten. Beide hatten zuvor die Syrer zum Abzug aufgefordert.

Hisbollah-Chef Hasan Nasrallah warnte die USA zudem vor einem Militärschlag. "Die Flotten sind schon einmal gekommen - und wurden vernichtet", sagte er unter lautstarkem Beifall. Er spielte damit auf den Abzug der US-Armee aus dem bürgerkriegsgeplagten Libanon im Jahr 1984 an. Unmittelbar zuvor hatte die Hisbollah damals bei einem Sprengstoffanschlag 241 US-Marines getötet.

"Amerika raus!" und "Amerika ist an unserer Misere schuld", riefen die Demonstranten heute. Bei den Syrern bedankten sie sich dagegen auf Plakaten und in Sprechchören. Auch Mitglieder der libanesischen Regierung nahmen an der Kundgebung Teil und betonten, sie wollten ihre Solidarität mit dem syrischen Präsidenten Baschar al-Assad bekunden. Die Hisbollah ist eine schiitische Miliz, die aber auch als politische Partei agiert. Sie ist vor allem im Süden des Libanon stark und vertritt die politisch unterprivilegierte schiitische Mehrheit.

Von der Umgruppierung der Syrer ist nichts zu sehen

Die heutige Demonstration erklärt sich auch damit, dass die Hisbollah seit ihrer Gründung von Syrien unterstützt wird. Auf diese Weise gelang es der Miliz bislang, der eigentlich verbindlichen Entwaffnung zu entgehen. Eine entsprechende Klausel findet sich in dem von Syrien vermittelten Friedensabkommen von Taif von 1989, das den libanesischen Bürgerkrieg beendete. Doch weil im Libanon kaum etwas geschieht, was nicht von Damaskus aus gewollt ist, galt die Regel stets nur für die anderen Milizen, nicht aber für die Hisbollah. Der Bürgerkrieg hatte von 1975 bis 1990 gedauert.

Seit drei Wochen befindet sich der Libanon nun schon in einer tiefen politischen Krise. Ausgelöst worden war sie durch die Ermordung des Ex-Premierminister Rafik Hariri bei einem Sprengstoffanschlag am 14. Februar. Vor allem die aus verschiedenen christlichen Gruppen und Drusen, aber auch sunnitischen Muslimen bestehende Opposition vermutet den syrischen Geheimdienst hinter dem Attentat. Hariri hatte sich in den vergangen Jahren zu einem moderaten Syrien-Kritiker entwickelt.

Seit dem Tag seiner Ermordung hatte es immer wieder große Demonstrationen in Beirut gegeben, auf denen die Opposition ein Ende der syrischen de-facto-Besetzung des Libanon forderte. Kommentatoren innerhalb und außerhalb des Landes hatten die Entwicklung bereits mit der friedlichen Revolution in der Ukraine verglichen, das Außenministerium der USA prägte gar die Bezeichnung "Zedern-Revolution". Unter dem Druck der Demonstranten war in der vergangenen Woche die syrien-freundliche Regierung des Libanon zurück getreten. Die syrische Regierung kündigte unterdessen an, ihre Truppen "umgruppieren" zu wollen, eine mögliche Vorstufe zu einem Teilabzug. Heute war allerdings von der angekündigten Umstrukturierung noch nicht viel zu bemerken. Lediglich leere syrische Armee-Lastwagen wurden von Journalisten auf den Straßen gesichtet.

Hisbollah will nicht entwaffnet werden

Mit der heutigen Großkundgebung hat die Hisbollah dagegen gezeigt, dass auch sie eine wichtige Kraft im Land ist und dass längst nicht alle Libanesen für den Abzug der Syrer sind. Die Demonstration der Schiiten war weit größer als alle Kundgebungen, die zuvor von der Opposition zu Wege gebracht wurden. Damit sind zugleich erstmals seit der Regierungskrise im Libanon die politischen Fronten sichtbar geworden. Sie verlaufen demnach vor allem zwischen den Schiiten und dem Rest des Landes, wobei die sunnitischen Muslime sich ungefähr zu gleichen Teilen auf beide Lager verteilen dürften.

Die Christen stellen im Libanon einen Anteil von gut über einem Drittel der Bevölkerung. Als das Land von der Mandatsmacht Frankreich aus dem Nichts geformt wurde, war ihnen die Vormachtstellung zugedacht gewesen, doch verschob sich die demografische Balance recht schnell. 1975 eskalierte der Konflikt zwischen den Gruppen zu einem blutigen Bürgerkrieg. Heute dürften die schiitischen Muslime die größte Gruppe im Land bilden, politisch sind sie aber unterrepräsentiert. Die durch die heutige Demonstration sichtbar gewordene Frontstellung ist deswegen prekär, schließlich war eine ähnliche Konstellation schon einmal der Auslöder eines Bürgerkriegs.

Es gibt allerdings noch einen weiteren Grund dafür, dass die Hisbollah sich heute so massiv gegen die Einmischungen der USA und der Uno verwehrte: Die Uno-Resolution 1559, die einen Abzug der Syrer verlangt, erneuert auch die Forderung der vollständigen Entwaffnung aller Milizen. Das wäre ein schwerer Schlag für die Hisbollah, den sie um jeden Preis vermeiden will.

US-Präsident George W. Bush blieb heute unterdessen bei seiner Forderung nach einem sofortigen und vollständigen syrischen Abzug. Mit Blick auf die arabisch-islamische Welt sprach er davon, dass sich die Demokratie in dieser Weltregion ausbreite und die Demokratisierung des Nahen und Mittleren Ostens ein wichtiger Teil des Kampfes gegen den Terror sei.

Den USA gilt auch die Hisbollah als Terrororganisation, weil sie vom Südlibanon aus und mit syrischer und iranischer Unterstützung immer wieder Katjuscha-Raketen auf israelisches Gebiet abfeuert. Eine entsprechende Klassifizierung der Miliz durch die EU verhindert derweil Frankreich, die traditionelle Schutzmacht des Libanon, mit der Begründung, die Hisbollah sei vor allem als Partei anzusehen.

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2005

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Twisting the Minds of the American People
More War Crimes
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article8214.htm

By Brian Cloughley

Let me paint a word picture. An unarmed, wounded American soldier is lying helpless, bleeding and barely conscious on the floor of a church in a country with which the US is at war. An armed soldier of that country walks up to the wounded American. It so happens that a TV cameraman is present. He films the foreign soldier shouting, "He`s fucking faking he`s dead!" One of his comrades says "And he`s breathing". The first soldier again yells "He`s faking he`s fucking dead!" He then kills the helpless, wounded man with a burst of fire that blows his head off and spatters the room with blood and tiny bits of flesh and bone. One of the foreign soldiers says "He`s dead, now."

Question One: What do you think the reaction of most of the American people would be to the murder of a wounded, unarmed US soldier lying helpless and barely conscious on the floor of a church in a foreign land?

Question Two: What was the reaction of most of the American people to the murder of a wounded, unarmed Iraqi lying helpless and barely conscious on the floor of a mosque in his own country?

First Answer: Shrieking outrage and demands for the foreigner to be tried and executed, whichever came first.

Second Answer: Unconcern.

The dialogue about faking it came from a CBS tape of a US soldier killing an Iraqi prisoner. The whole thing was recorded. It is undeniable that the crime was committed. The clips of the murder were played worldwide on television - except for the actual killing, because that was thought too vile, even for a television audience accustomed to the most explicitly horrible murder scenes. And nobody has dared take a poll as to how many Americans approve of the murder. Most TV reports called it "an incident", and it has dropped out of sight because, to put it bluntly, an American life is considered to be worth more than an Iraqi life. To many millions of Americans, the marine who murdered the helpless man is a hero. If you doubt this, please read on.


Think about another `incident`, when a squad of US soldiers opened fire on a car traveling along the Baghdad-Airport road on March 4, killing an Italian official. The lies began at once, and there is no point in describing what happened because the truth as told by eyewitnesses has already been denied by the military, and the official version will be accepted by much of the US media. It is not surprising that the media will toe the official line, as most of their readers and viewers automatically doubt what they are told by foreign or independent US sources (not that there are many of the latter, these days), and are uncomfortable with anything that smacks of criticism of US soldiers. This is because such criticism is considered unpatriotic and unforgivable, even if it is justified by first-hand evidence of brutality or murder. And if audiences are unhappy about what appears in the media, advertisers will be even more unhappy and will withdraw their business. In short: mainstream news cover in the US is directed by two major factors: advertising revenue and its precursor, audience prejudice. And advertisers get their financial messages from some very unpleasant bigots.

These are people like the beauty who commented on the killing of the Italian official and the wounding of the Italian journalist he was escorting to freedom (that`s Bush freedom: it comes with free shrapnel wounds) as follows:

"Too bad the US troops didn`t shoot her in the head and been done with trouble making people like her . . . Posted by bpb901 March 5."

We only have to look at the deranged outpourings on right wing blogs to realize there are millions of Americans who feel exactly the same way as bpb901. He or she is not in any way unusual. Unhinged and demented, yes ; badly in need of urgent mental treatment, certainly ; but out of the ordinary: no. (Bear in mind that The Economist of March 5-11 noted the uncomfortable statistic that "about one in five Americans now suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder".)
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Think back to the `incident` in January at Tal Afar in which US soldiers killed the mother and father of six kids. Getty Images photographer Chris Hondros was there. He described the shambles like this:

"We have a car coming," someone called out as we entered an intersection. We could see the car about a 100 meters away. The car continued coming; I couldn`t see it anymore from my perch but could hear its engine now, a high whine that sounded more like acceleration than slowing down. It was maybe 50 yards away now. "Stop that car!" someone shouted out, seemingly simultaneously with someone firing what sounded like warning shots -- a staccato, measured burst. The car continued coming. And then, perhaps less than a second later, a cacophony of fire, shots rattling off in a chaotic, overlapping din . . . . From the sidewalk I could see into the bullet-mottled windshield more clearly. The driver of the car, a man, was penetrated by so many bullets that his skull had collapsed, leaving his body grotesquely disfigured. A woman also lay dead in the front . . . the children continued to wail and scream, huddled against a wall, sandwiched between soldiers either binding their wounds or trying to comfort them . . . the teenaged girl kept shouting, "Why did they shoot us? We have no weapons! We were just going home!"

We know about the killing of the father and mother of six kids because a photographer was there and we`ve seen his evidence. Same for the murder of the wounded prisoner. And we know about the killing of the Italian official because there is a high-profile former hostage still alive to tell us what really happened. But if these `incidents` had not involved independent witnesses we would have been told nothing about them. They would have gone unrecorded, as have unknown numbers of similar atrocities in and around many cities. The Washington Post of 7 March says US officials "have declined to estimate how many civilians . . . have been killed accidentally by US forces at checkpoints or elsewhere in Iraq" This is no surprise, because although countless Iraqis have been killed by being sprayed with bullets by delinquent troops, the stories recounted by Iraqi witnesses of these terrible events are ignored. There are many people with the mentality of the moron who wrote "Too bad the US troops didn`t shoot her in the head and been done with trouble making people like her . . .", and none of them would for an instant condemn the murder of a helpless prisoner by a heroic marine. Neither would they be critical of the gallant troops who wiped out the parents of six children. It is a terrible thing to say, but it must be said: there are millions of Americans who would and do applaud these murders. In the case of the Italian murder, however, they seem to be a bit out of step with their hero, the deranged Bush.

Bush and Rumsfeld have grovelled to Italy`s crooked prime minister, Berlusconi, because their troops murdered an Italian citizen and wounded another. There was a phone call of apology from Air Force One to Rome the moment the news broke, and the Bush media machine trotted out the usual garbage about the car being attacked "by coalition forces". (This phrase is used by the Bush people to try to avoid acknowledgement that US troops have been criminally incompetent yet again.) Bush spoke to Berlusconi "to express his regret about the incident that occurred earlier today," and to assure "prime minister Berlusconi that the incident will be fully investigated." But there is never an investigation of the murder of Iraqis. To the US military and to millions of tragically disturbed Americans they are non-persons.

Iraqi lives do not matter. Just as in Hitler`s Germany the Nazis referred to various sections of the population (Jews, gypsies and other `antisocial elements`) as the "untermenschen" -- the sub-humans -- so do US troops and the crazed bigots who bay for blood refer to Iraqis as "ragheads" -- the sub-humans. The Nazi regime was founded and fostered by people who thought along the lines of "Too bad the US troops didn`t shoot her in the head and been done with trouble making people like her . . .". If people are trouble-makers, well, don`t try to live with them ; don`t try to understand them ; don`t try to treat them as human beings: just shoot them. Or torture them. Or both. What the hell? The reasoning is that they are different to the superior people and therefore they should not be allowed to exist.

The attitude of millions of Americans is exactly that of the German supporters of fascism in the 1930s and early 1940s. They were encouraged to think of themselves as the Master Race and there were whole nations whose populations could be treated as inferiors, and they took pride in doing just that. The present wave of hysterical intolerance in the US makes the McCarthy years of persecution look benign, because the idea has been planted by Bush and his people that US citizens are superior in every possible way. There can be no admission of frailty, and no acceptance of equality. International law and treaties are ignored or treated with contempt, and human dignity has become irrelevant. Hysterical ultra-nationalism is thriving and gathering pace.

The director of the slippery slope to totalitarianism has beckoned his citizens, and they are responding with enthusiasm to his encouragement. War crimes are being committed by US troops and spooks on an extraordinary scale all round the world, but the biggest war crime is taking place in Washington: it is the twisting of the minds of the American people.

Brian Cloughley writes on military and political affairs. E-mail: [e-mail]

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Scheinbar hat man dieses Mal bei der Bewertung des Irans gelernt und läßt sich nicht wieder, wie im Irak, durch gefakte Beweise der in-und ausländischen Neocons über`n Tisch ziehen.

March 9, 2005
Data Is Lacking on Iran`s Arms, U.S. Panel Says
By DOUGLAS JEHL and ERIC SCHMITT
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/09/international/09weapons.ht…

WASHINGTON, March 8 - A commission due to report to President Bush this month will describe American intelligence on Iran as inadequate to allow firm judgments about Iran`s weapons programs, according to people who have been briefed on the panel`s work.

The report comes as intelligence agencies prepare a new formal assessment on Iran, and follows a 14-month review by the panel, which Mr. Bush ordered last year to assess the quality of overall intelligence about the proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

The Bush administration has been issuing increasingly sharp warnings about what it says are Iran`s efforts to build nuclear weapons. The warnings have been met with firm denials in Tehran, which says its nuclear program is intended purely for civilian purposes.

The most complete recent statement by American agencies about Iran and its weapons, in an unclassified report sent to Congress in November by Porter J. Goss, director of central intelligence, said Iran continued "to vigorously pursue indigenous programs to produce nuclear, chemical and biological weapons."

The International Atomic Energy Agency, which has been conducting inspections in Iran for two years, has said it has not found evidence of any weapons program. But the agency has also expressed skepticism about Iran`s insistence that its nuclear activities are strictly civilian.

The nine-member bipartisan presidential panel, led by Laurence Silberman, a retired federal judge, and Charles S. Robb, a former governor and senator from Virginia, had unrestricted access to the most senior people and the most sensitive documents of the intelligence agencies.

In its report, the panel is also expected to be sharply critical of American intelligence on North Korea. But in interviews, people who have been briefed on the commission`s deliberations and conclusions said they regarded the record on Iran as particularly worrisome.

One person who described the panel`s deliberations and conclusions characterized American intelligence on Iran as "scandalous," given the importance and relative openness of the country, compared with such an extreme case as North Korea.

That person and others who have been briefed on the panel`s work would not be more specific in describing the inadequacies. But former government officials who are experts on Iran say that while American intelligence agencies have devoted enormous resources to Iran since the Islamic revolution of 1979, they have had little success in the kinds of human spying necessary to understand Iranian decision-making.

Among the major setbacks, former intelligence officials have said, was the successful penetration in the late 1980`s by Iranian authorities of the principal American spy network inside the country, which was being run from a C.I.A. station in Frankfurt. The arrests of reported American spies was known at the time, but the impact on American intelligence reverberated as late as the mid-1990`s.

A spokesman for the commission, Carl Kropf, declined to comment about any conclusions reached.

The last National Intelligence Estimate on Iran was completed in 2001 and is now being reassessed, according to American intelligence officials. As a first step, the National Intelligence Council, which produces the estimates and reports to Mr. Goss, is expected this spring to circulate a classified update that will focus on Iran and its weapons.

In Congress, the Senate Intelligence Committee has recently begun its own review into the quality of intelligence on Iran, in what the Republican and Democratic leaders of the panel have described as an effort to pre-empt any repeat of the experience in Iraq, where prewar American assertions about illicit weapons proved to be mistaken. But Congressional officials say the language of some recent intelligence reports on Iran has included more caveats and qualifications than in the past, in what they described as the agencies` own response to the Iraq experience.

In testimony last month, intelligence officials from several agencies told Congress that they were convinced that Tehran wanted nuclear weapons, but also said the uncertainty played to Iran`s advantage.

"The Iranians don`t necessarily have to have a successful nuclear program in order to have the deterrent value," said Carol A. Rodley, the State Department`s second-ranking top intelligence official. "They merely have to convince us, others and their neighbors that they do."

The commission`s findings will also include recommendations for further structural changes among intelligence agencies, to build on the legislation Mr. Bush signed in December that sets up a new director of national intelligence. Among the proposals discussed but apparently rejected was the idea of consolidating the National Security Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency into a single Defense Department operation that would integrate what are now divided responsibilities for satellite reconnaissance and eavesdropping operations.

The panel is to send a classified report to Mr. Bush by March 31. The panel is expected to issue an unclassified version at about the same time, but it is not clear whether the criticism of intelligence on Iran will be included in that public document, the people familiar with the panel`s deliberations said.

In a television interview in February on Fox News, Vice President Dick Cheney described the work of the commission as "one of the most important things that`s going forward today."

In the case of Iraq, a National Intelligence Estimate completed in October 2002 was among the assessments that expressed certainty that Baghdad possessed chemical and biological weapons and was rebuilding its nuclear program. Those assessments were wrong, and a report last year by the chief American weapons inspector found that Iraq had destroyed what remained of its illicit arsenal nearly a decade before the United States invasion.

A report last summer by the Senate committee concluded that the certainty of prewar assessments on Iraq had not been supported by the intelligence available at the time. At the Central Intelligence Agency, senior officials have defended the assessments, but they have also imposed new guidelines intended to reduce the prospect for failures.

Among those guidelines, an intelligence official said Tuesday, is a requirement that in producing future National Intelligence Estimates, the National Intelligence Council state more explicitly how much confidence it places on each judgment it makes. Those guidelines are being enforced in the updates on the Iranian nuclear program and in the revised National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, which will address issues like political stability as well.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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March 9, 2005
EDITORIAL
The World According to Bolton
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/09/opinion/09wed1.html

On Monday, President Bush nominated John Bolton, an outspoken critic of multinational institutions and a former Jesse Helms protégé, to be the representative to the United Nations. We won`t make the case that this is a terrible choice at a critical time. We can let Mr. Bolton do it for us by examining how things might look if he had his way:

The United States could resolve international disputes after vigorous debate with ... itself. In an interview in 2000 on National Public Radio, Mr. Bolton told Juan Williams, "If I were redoing the Security Council today, I`d have one permanent member because that`s the real reflection of the distribution of power in the world."

"And that one member would be, John Bolton?" Mr. Williams queried.

"The United States," Mr. Bolton replied.

America could stop worrying about China ... In 1999, when he was senior vice president of the American Enterprise Institute, Mr. Bolton wrote a column in The Weekly Standard advocating that the United States just go ahead and give Taiwan diplomatic recognition, despite the fact that this purely symbolic gesture was a point on which China had repeatedly threatened to go to war. He made this argument: "Diplomatic recognition of Taiwan would be just the kind of demonstration of U.S. leadership that the region needs and that many of its people hope for. ... The notion that China would actually respond with force is a fantasy, albeit one the Communist leaders welcome and encourage in the West."

... and North Korea. In 1999, Mr. Bolton told The Los Angeles Times: "A sounder U.S. policy would start by making it clear to the North that we are indifferent to whether we ever have `normal` diplomatic relations with it, and that achieving that goal is entirely in their interests, not ours. We should also make clear that diplomatic normalization with the U.S. is only going to come when North Korea becomes a normal country."

U.N. dues? What U.N. dues? In 1997, Mr. Bolton wrote in a column in The Wall Street Journal that the United States isn`t legally bound to pay its United Nations dues. "Treaties are `law` only for U.S. domestic purposes," he said. "In their international operations, treaties are simply `political` obligations."

And forget about the International Criminal Court. In 2000, Mr. Bolton told the House International Relations Committee: "Support for the International Criminal Court concept is based largely on emotional appeals to an abstract ideal of an international judicial system unsupported by any meaningful evidence and running contrary to sound principles of international crisis resolution."

We certainly look forward to Mr. Bolton`s confirmation hearings, and, after that, his performance at the United Nations, where he will undoubtedly do a fine job continuing the Bush administration`s charm offensive with the rest of the world.

Which leaves us wondering what Mr. Bush`s next nomination will be. Donald Rumsfeld to negotiate a new set of Geneva Conventions? Martha Stewart to run the Securities and Exchange Commission? Kenneth Lay for energy secretary?

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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Nachdem der Ehemann und die Mutter einer Richterin, die Rassisten verurteilt hat, vermutlich durch diese rassistische Gruppe erschossene worden sind, ist in den USA jetzt eine Diskussion über die eigene Terrorszene aufgekommen.

March 9, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Homegrown Osamas
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/09/opinion/09kristof.html

Before the "Rev. Dr." Matt Hale, the white racist leader, was arrested for seeking the murder of a federal judge, and long before the judge returned home last week to find her husband and mother murdered, I had lunch with him.

Mr. Hale, who is smart, articulate and malignant, ranted about "race betrayers" as he picked at his fruit salad: "Interracial marriage is against nature. It`s a form of bestiality."

"Oh?" I replied. "Incidentally, my wife is Chinese-American."

There was an awkward silence.

Mr. Hale was convicted last year of soliciting the murder of Federal District Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow. Now the police are investigating whether there is any link between Mr. Hale or his followers and the murders. Some white supremacists celebrated the killings, but Mr. Hale has strongly denied any involvement.

The possibility that extremists carried out the murders for revenge or intimidation sends a chill through our judicial system, because it would then constitute an assault on our judiciary itself. Throughout U.S. history, only three federal judges have been murdered, but all three murders occurred after 1978 and all at their homes.

Threats to federal judges and prosecutors have increased sharply since they began to be tabulated 25 years ago, but the attack on Judge Lefkow`s family, if it was related to her work, would take such threats to a new level. Who would want to be a judge if that risked the lives of loved ones?

Whatever the circumstances of those murders, Mr. Hale provides a scary window into a niche of America that few of us know much about. Since 9/11, we`ve focused almost exclusively on the risk of terrorism from Muslim foreigners, but we have plenty of potential homegrown Osamas.

I interviewed Mr. Hale in 2002 because I had heard that he was becoming a key figure in America`s hate community, recruiting followers with a savvy high-tech marketing machine. Over lunch in East Peoria, Ill., he described how as a schoolboy he had become a racist after seeing white girls kissing black boys.

"I felt nauseous," he told me earnestly.

Mr. Hale said attacks on race-betrayers and "mud people" were understandable but a waste of time. "Suppose someone goes out and kills 10 blacks tonight," he said, shrugging. "Well, there are millions more."

What troubled me most about Mr. Hale was not his extremist views, but his obvious organizational ability and talent to inspire his followers. When he was denied a law license in 1999 because of his racist views, a follower went on a rampage and shot 11 people - all blacks, Asians or Jews.

After the Oklahoma City bombing, American law enforcement authorities cracked down quite effectively on domestic racists and militia leaders. But Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors 760 hate groups with about 100,000 members, notes that after 9/11, the law enforcement focus switched overwhelmingly to Arabs.

The Feds are right to be especially alarmed about Al Qaeda. But we also need to be more vigilant about the domestic white supremacists, neo-Nazis and militia members. After all, some have more W.M.D. than Saddam.

Two years ago, for example, a Texan in a militia, William Krar, was caught with 25 machine guns and other weapons, a quarter-million rounds of ammunition, 60 pipe bombs and enough sodium cyanide to kill hundreds of people.

We were too complacent about Al Qaeda and foreign terrorists before 9/11. And now we`re too complacent about homegrown threats.

Mr. Hale handed me some of his church`s gospels, including "The White Man`s Bible" - which embarrassed me at the airport when I was selected for a random security screening and the contents of my bag laid out on a table. Then, even though the screeners apparently believed that I was a neo-Nazi with violent, racist tracts, they let me board without any further check.

That "White Man`s Bible" says: "We don`t need the Jews, the [blacks], or any other mud people. ... We have the fighting creed to re-affirm the White Man`s triumph of the will as heroically demonstrated by that greatest of all White leaders - Adolf Hitler. So let us get into the fight today, now! You have no alibi, no other way out, White Man! It`s either Fight or Die!"

So we don`t have to go to Saudi Arabia to find violent religious extremists steeped in hatred for all America stands for. Wake up - they`re here.

E-mail: [e-mail]

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Die Shiiten im Libanon

March 9, 2005
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Can Hezbollah Go Straight?
By MICHAEL YOUNG
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/09/opinion/09young.html

Beirut, Lebanon — AT Syria`s request, Lebanon`s Hezbollah organized a huge demonstration in downtown Beirut yesterday, as a counterweight to weeks of anti-Syrian protests. The numbers notwithstanding, and despite the party`s claim that the rally was not directed against the Lebanese opposition, Hezbollah will come to regret this moment, which has placed the party squarely athwart much of Lebanese society on the question of Syrian hegemony.

As international and Arab pressure mounts on Damascus to withdraw its forces from Lebanon, Hezbollah has become the last rampart of the Syrian order here. This position is not one the party should welcome: while Hezbollah fears that the United Nations will target it once Syria pulls out (a United Nations Security Council resolution passed last summer demanded not just the withdrawal of Syrian forces but the disarmament of militias in Lebanon), it gains nothing by tarnishing its credibility with other Lebanese communities because of Syrian priorities.

The essence of Hezbollah`s problem is its failure to decide on its destiny. Under Syrian rule in Lebanon, the party has been able to play two roles simultaneously: it has worked to integrate itself into the Lebanese body politic, participating successfully in elections; but it has also sought to use its liberation of South Lebanon from Israeli occupation, in May 2000, as a springboard for a seminal regional struggle against the United States and Israel.

This duality is the result of a mutation in the Lebanese Shiite vocation. In the late 1970`s, under a charismatic cleric, Imam Musa al-Sadr, Shiites began organizing to demand their rightful place in the Lebanese state. Though demographically on the rise, Shiites were stifled by several factors: their relative marginalization in the political elite and domination by feudal leaders; the presence in the predominantly Shiite south and southern suburbs of Beirut of Palestinian movements imposing their political diktat; and underdevelopment.

The catalyst for change was Israel`s invasion of Lebanon in 1982. The Palestinians were expelled, allowing a new Shiite leadership to emerge and overthrow, or co-opt, traditional leaders. At the same time, Iran`s Revolutionary Guards entered Lebanon`s Bekaa Valley and began organizing militant Shiite groups. Iran and Syria would later use these groups against the United States, ultimately forcing a withdrawal of American and other Western forces from Lebanon in 1984.

Behind the scenes, a struggle for the future of Lebanon`s Shiites took place. On one side was the Amal movement, headed by the man who is now the speaker in Lebanon`s Parliament, Nabih Berri. On the other were the groups that would in the 1980`s come together with Iran`s help to form Hezbollah. Mr. Berri initially championed the success of Shiite integration into Lebanese political society; Hezbollah came to embody, particularly after the Israeli withdrawal in 2000, a transnational militant ambition. Thanks to Syrian tutelage, but also because of the quality of its leadership, its network of social services, and its military prowess, Hezbollah emerged as the most effective Shiite party, sweeping away the more modest, parochial aims of Amal.

An essential component of Hezbollah`s resistance against Israel was its portrayal of the party as beyond partisan considerations. Since all Lebanese opposed the occupation, the line went, the resistance spoke for a national consensus. This positioning allowed Hezbollah to maintain ties to all groups, even as it became indispensable to Syria, which was happy to use the party`s military operations as leverage in negotiations with Israel over the Golan Heights.

Now, by supporting Syria, Hezbollah can no longer claim to be above the fray. Its desire to pursue resistance will almost certainly hit up against the reluctance of other communities, and indeed many Shiites, to see Lebanon suffer the backlash of Israeli and perhaps American retaliation.

In short, Hezbollah faces a dilemma: to defend its regional ambitions, it must preserve a Syrian-dominated Lebanese order (and Syria is working to impose one before its troops depart), even if doing so alienates the clear majority of Lebanese who believe Syria must go; or it can side with that majority, which means abandoning Syria and its own regional objectives.

The party can undeniably bring out many supporters, as it did yesterday, but it has also discredited itself by so effectively defending Syrian hegemony over Lebanon. Now Hezbollah can straddle the fence no longer. It must decide whether to take its chances as a national party in a Lebanon free of Syrian domination, or risk losing all that it has built up by becoming Syria`s unwelcome enforcer.

Michael Young is the opinion editor of The Daily Star in Lebanon and a contributing editor at Reason magazine.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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Demokratie und Freiheit ist auf dem Weg.

washingtonpost.com
35 Corpses Found Shot, Beheaded in Iraq
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19289-2005Mar…

The Associated Press
Wednesday, March 9, 2005; 4:37 AM

QAIM, Iraq - Police said Wednesday they have found a total of 35 bodies - some shot and some beheaded - in two different places in Iraq.

Twenty corpses were found late Tuesday near Rumana, a village about 12 miles east of the western city of Qaim, near the Syrian border, police Capt. Muzahim al-Karbouli said.

Each of the bodies was riddled with bullets and found wearing civilian clothes, al-Karbouli said. The dead included one woman, but their identities were not known, he said.

Al-Karbouli said the victims appeared to have been killed several days earlier. They had not been died up or beheaded, as other victims have in Iraq.

A separate discovery was made Tuesday south of Baghdad in Latifiya, where 15 headless bodies were found by Iraqi troops.

The decapitated corpses were found inside an abandoned base of the former Iraqi army, Defense Ministry Capt. Sabah Yassin said. The bodies included 10 men, three women and two children.

Yassin said the bodies had no identification on them. But some of the dead men were thought to have been part of a group of Iraqi soldiers who were kidnapped by insurgents in the area two weeks ago, Yassin said.

© 2005 The Associated Press

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The Independent
Half a million gather for pro-Syrian rally to defy vision of US
Wednesday, 9th March 2005, by Robert Fisk
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/story.jsp?story=618…


IT was a warning. They came in their tens of thousands, Lebanese Shia Muslim families with babies in arms and children in front, walking past my Beirut home. They reminded me of the tens of thousands of Iraqi Shia Muslims who walked with their families to the polls in Iraq, despite the gunfire and the suicide bombers.

And now they came from southern Lebanon and the Bekaa to say they rejected America’s plans in Lebanon, and wanted - so they claimed - to know who killed Rafiq Hariri, the former prime minister murdered on 14 February, and to reject UN Security Council Resolution 1559 which demands a Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon and the disarmament of the Hizbollah guerrilla movement, and to express their "thanks" to Syria. This was a tall order in Lebanon.

But only 100 yards from the Lebanese opposition protests, the half-million - for that was an approachable figure, given Hizbollah’s extraordinary organisational abilities - stood for an hour with Lebanese flags, and posed a challenge to President George Bush’s project in the Middle East. "America is the source of terrorism", one poster proclaimed. "All our disasters come from America".

Many of those tens of thousands were Hizbollah families who had fought the Israelis during their occupation of southern Lebanon, been arrested by the Israelis, imprisoned by the Israelis and feared that American support for Lebanon meant not "democracy" but an imposed Israeli-Lebanese peace treaty.

There were Syrians in the crowds - indeed, I saw buses with Syrian registration plates that had brought families from Damascus - but almost all the half million were Lebanese Shias and they wanted to reject 1559 because it called for Hizbollah to be disarmed. They were perfectly happy to see the Syrians leave (who now remembers the Syrian massacre of Hizbollah members in Beirut in 1987?) but, bearing in mind Syria’s transit of weapons from Iran to Lebanon, Hizbollah wanted to be regarded as a resistance movement, not a "militia" to be disarmed. What the Shia were saying was that they were a power, just as they said when they voted in Iraq. In Lebanon, Shia Muslims are the largest religious community.

Syria is run by a clique of Alawis - who are Shia - and Iraq is now dominated by Shia Muslims who voted themselves into power, and Iran is a Shia nation. So when President Bush said "the Lebanese people have the right to determine their future free from domination of a foreign power", the power the Shias were thinking of was not Syria but the United States and Israel.

And 100 yards away, the demonstrators who have bravely protested against the murder of Rafik Hariri have become factionalised, courtesy of the Syrians. At night, the opposition protesters are largely Christian. Yesterday’s Hizbollah rally, while it contained the usual pro-Syrian Christians, was essentially Shia. And their message was not one of thanks to President Bush.

"The fleets came in the past and were defeated; and they will be defeated again," Hizbollah’s leader, Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, said in reference to the Americans. Ironically, President Bush was to refer within hours to the killing of 241 US Marines in Beirut in October 1982, as if their deaths were the responsibility of al-Qa’ida. To the Israelis, Nasrallah said: "Let go of your dreams for Lebanon. To the enemy entrenched on our border, occupying our country and imprisoning our people, ’There is no place for you here and there is no life for you among us: Death to Israel’."

Nasrallah’s take on the 1975-90 Lebanese civil war was predictable. The crowds were meeting on the front lines that had separated the Lebanese during the civil war; indeed, on the very location of the Christian-Muslim trenches of that conflict. "We meet today to remind the world and our partners in the country," Nasrallah said, "that this arena that joins us, or the other one in Martyrs’ Square, was destroyed by Israel and civil war and was united by Syria and the blood of its soldiers and officers."

This was an inventive piece of history. Israel certainly killed many thousands of Lebanese - more than the Syrians, although their soldiers took the lives of many hundreds - but the half million roared their approval.

So what did all this prove? That there was another voice in Lebanon. That if the Lebanese "opposition" - pro-Hariri and increasingly Christian - claim to speak for Lebanon and enjoy the support of President Bush, there is a pro-Syrian, nationalist voice which does not go along with their anti-Syrian demands but which has identified what it believes is the true reason for Washington’s support for Lebanon: Israel’s plans for the Middle East.

The Beirut demonstration yesterday was handled in the usual Hizbollah way: maximum security, lots of young men in black shirts with two-way radios, and frightening discipline. No one was allowed to carry a gun or a Hizbollah flag. There was no violence. When one man brandished a Syrian flag, it was immediately taken from him. Law and order, not "terrorism", was what Hizbollah wished. Syria had spoken. President Bashar Assad’s sarcastic remark about the Hariri protesters needing a "zoom lens" to show their numbers had been answered by a demonstration of Shia power which needed no "zoom".

And in the mountains above Beirut, still frozen under their winter snows, few Syrians moved. There were Syrian military trucks on the international highway to Damascus but no withdrawal, no retreat, no redeployment. The Taif agreement of 1989 stipulated that the Syrians should withdraw to the Mdeirej heights above Beirut, which they have now agreed to do, 14 years later than they should have done.

The official document released by the Lebanese-Syrian military delegation in Damascus suggests this is a new redeployment and that in April the Syrian forces, along with their military intelligence personnel, will withdraw to the Lebanese-Syrian border.

But the question remains: will they retreat to the Syrian side of the frontier, or sit in the Lebanese-Armenian town of Aanjar, on the Lebanese side, where Brigadier General Rustum Gazale, the head of Syrian military intelligence, still maintains his white-painted villa?

Either way, Lebanon can no longer be taken for granted. The "cedar" revolution now has a larger dimension, one that does not necessarily favour America’s plans. If the Shia of Iraq can be painted as defenders of democracy, the Shias of Lebanon cannot be portrayed as the defenders of "terrorism". So what does Washington make of yesterday’s extraordinary events in Beirut?

©2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.

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Calling John Bolton a "diplomat" is bit like calling Jack the Ripper a surgeon
Den Spruch find ich herrlich. Der artikel ist schon etwas älter Feb 19, 2003

The Dogs of War -- Bark before Bite
http://www.gvnews.net/html/Crisis/gvalert045.html

By Ian Williams
GVNews.Net Crisis Capsule
NEW YORK, Feb 19, 2003 -- Anyone who has lived in a city knows what happens when a dog starts barking. All his co-canines in the neighborhood take up the cry and begin concerted baying. It must have been like that when John Bolton, U.S. Under Secretary of State for disarmament affairs, went to Israel this week and met Sharon, Netanyahu and Sharansky.

Bolton barked that after Iraq, come Iran, Syria and North Korea. Luckily he missed France and Germany on this occasion, (Previously he has warned that "the Europeans can be sure that America`s days as a well-bred doormat for EU political and military protections are coming to an end.") So, doubtless their time will come and while Israel is agnostic on Kim Jong Il, there is no doubt that Bolton`s regional dominoes fall exactly in line with the eschatological plans of the Likudnik fundamentalists.

Bolton and Sharon have bayed in two-part harmony before. Bolton fingered Cuba and Libya as potential possessors of missiles and weapons of mass destruction, and although Sharon, was, once again, agnostic on Cuba, he enthusiastically yelped at Lybia. Fidel may have many faults, but he is not Palestinian, Arab or even Muslim, so he does not trigger the Israeli Prime Minister`s bloody reflexes in quite the same way.

But Bolton and Sharon agree on disarmament issues as well. Calling John Bolton a "diplomat" is bit like calling Jack the Ripper a surgeon, but let it pass. The American diplomat was in a country that is in defiance of innumerable U.N. resolutions, but perhaps more significantly is universally acknowledged to be in current possession of one of the world`s more significant nuclear arsenals.

Of course, the Israeli government has never admitted it, because if it did, under U.S. legislation, all aid would have to be cut off -- although that may have gone by the board with the bribery of nuked-up India and Pakistan to join the famous "War on Terror." In short, Bolton and Sharon agree: Disarmament is what you do to others, not what you do to yourselves.

John Bolton is one of the major reasons why few other countries trust the motives, or indeed the rationality of the U.S. Administration. (the list of other reasons keeps growing, but Wolfowitz, Perle, Cheney and Rumsfeld spring to the paranoid mind.) The ostensible reason for attacking Iraq is its defiance of U.N. resolutions. Bolton has defied the United Nations` very existence for most of his political career and has made it plain that the U.S. should not abide by any of its decisions that may prove inconvenient.

Bolton was foisted on a reluctant Powell by other members of the administration with only a tenuous connection to reality, not least for his success in chad counting in Florida when the Supreme Court appointed Bush. He is not always so keen on the judicial approach, however. For the last two years, his single-handed bruisingly brainless campaign to destroy the effectiveness of the International Criminal Court has done much to cement European and Third World united resentment of U.S. "diplomacy" in advance of the Iraq issue.

In 1994 Bolton asserted that "there is no such thing as the United Nations" or that "if the U.N. Secretariat building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn`t make a bit of difference," Taking 10 floors off 38 would have left the 27th floor, which is where the U.N. finance department issued his pay check when he became James Baker`s assistant in the U.S. mission to abrogate Security Council resolutions against the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara.

We know how much he thinks of inspections: He sicced the CIA onto Hans Blix because he thought him unreliable. Worryingly enough, bearing in mind the Middle East venue for the current combat, Jesse Helms endorsed Bolton`s nomination with unconscious irony "John Bolton is the kind of man with whom I would want to stand at Armageddon, if it should be my lot to be on hand for what is forecast to be the final battle between good and evil in this world."

The U.S. media`s ability to ignore the beam in its own cabinet while vituperating about the mote of alleged peeve and pique of old Europeans never ceases to amaze. When a senior member of the administration of the world`s number one Superpower gets up and announces a crusade against Iraq`s neighbors as soon as Baghdad is settled, why were there no headlines? Does this harbinger of war without end not worry the American people, as reservists ship out to the region? Which U.N. resolutions are Iran and Syria supposed to be violating?

Will it turn out that "We have the authority to invade because, `Whoops! In 1441 Iraq was a misprint, it should have read Iran!`"? The traditional American deference to the Presidency really must stop. George W. Bush was derided by American liberals for being stupid. He isn`t. He is a dangerous fundamentalist who has surrounded himself by others of a similar ilk.

And partly out of respect for the office, and partly because media barons are not quite eight bits to the dollar either, the true barking madness of the dogs of war is not conveyed. Can kennel master Powell keep these hounds on a leash? If that Bible Study Group in the White House gets to reading the Book of Revelations with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse going out for a trot, don`t bank on it. Then the question will not be "Are you against the war?" but "which one?" Cuba, Syria, Korea, Iran, Libya, pick a war, any war, but it looks like you`ll get the full suite!

© Globalvision News Network, 2003 (www.gvnews.net). All rights reserved.

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`Ramadi Madness`: Scene by scene
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/content/news/epaper/2…

By Palm Beach Post Staff Reports

Tuesday, March 08, 2005

The 26-minute, 47-second video is a compilation of scenes in Iraq captured by members of the West Palm Beach-based Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 124th Infantry Regiment. The scenes range from routine to poignant to macabre.

Scene 1: Titled `The Truck Incident` Iraq video Watch excerpts of a local National Guard video shot in Iraq and investigated by the Army. Investigators determined there was no abuse. Warning: This footage contains graphic themes and images. Audio has been edited to remove obscenities. • [urlTruck incident]http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/video/haj1.html • [urlNoose]http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/video/haj2.html • [urlSuper special skill]http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/video/haj3.html • [urlHave you seen Haj]http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/video/haj4.html • [urlNewman & Night Vision]http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/video/haj5.html • [urlHaji cat]http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/video/haj7.html • [urlMayor`s cell]http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/video/haj8.html • [urlSee Haj run]http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/video/haj9.html • [urlCrafty little]http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/video/haj10.html • [urlBlood clot]http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/video/haj11.html • [urlAsa Lama Lakim]http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/video/haj12.html • [urlAnother day]http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/video/haj13.html • [urlCopenhagen]http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/video/haj14.html NOTE: Gruesome footage of the aftermath of a suicide bombing has been omitted. Audio has been edited to remove obscenities.

[/url][/url][/url][/url][/url][/url][/url][/url][/url][/url][/url][/url][/url]


Nighttime outdoors. Soldiers shine lights into the driver-side window of a truck. The driver is dead. Soldier moves driver`s hand and says, "Hold on, I`m going to make him say `Hi.` "

Scene 2: Untitled

Two soldiers pretend to choke a third soldier with a plastic handcuff.

Scene 3: Titled `Super Special Skills`

Daytime outdoors. A wristwatch shows that it is Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2003. Off-screen voice makes fun of superior officers on-screen. Soldiers joke about friendly fire.

Scene 4: Untitled

Nighttime outdoors. Soldiers on patrol. Off-screen voice says, "This is me and my team."

Scene 5: Titled `Newman and His Toy`

Nighttime indoors. Soldier shows off his firearm for the camera.

Scene 6: Titled `Haji Cat`

Nighttime indoors. Soldiers pick up a stray kitten they`ve named Anthrax, cuddling it and feeding it rations.

Scene 7: Titled `Our New Lives at the Mayor`s Cell`

Daytime outdoors. Soldiers joke while riding through an Iraqi village, honking the horn as they drive. One soldier yells, "Get out of the way, we`re trying to drive here!"

Scene 8: Untitled

Daytime outdoors. A line of detainees in plastic handcuffs behind their backs. Off-screen voice says, "Bad guy, bad guy, bad guy" as the camera pans across seized explosives.

Scene 9: Titled `See Haji Run, See Haji Shot`

Daytime outdoors. Video shot from a building top. Below, an injured Iraqi man is pulled by Iraqi men from the sidewalk into a building.

Scene 10: Untitled

Daytime outdoors. A prisoner is sitting on the ground with his hands bound behind him. Off-screen voice says, "I don`t know what the (expletive) this guy did, but he is a bad guy." Another detainee is being treated for a head wound. Off-screen voice tells him to "smile for the camera." A small group of soldiers interrogates a detainee. One orders the man to stand. A soldier takes something out of the man`s pocket. The unknown item is wrapped in a plastic bag.

Scene 11: Untitled

Daytime outdoors. Camera pans across a homemade booby trap made with plastic explosives that soldiers found in a rusted oil can.

Scene 12: Titled `Bloodclot`

Nighttime outdoors. Location is described by off-screen voice as a few blocks from the target house. Scene shifts to inside the target building. A detainee who appears to have been shot is moaning. Soldier holding a gun looks at the camera and says, "This (expletive) shot at me." Soldier appears to kick wounded detainee. Another detainee is shirtless, "b2-2" scrawled on his back in black marker. Voice says, "The raid went well." Camera moves back to injured man and shows a gunshot wound. Camera moves through the building to area where women are being detained. Off-screen voice says, "Bad women."

Scene 13: Untitled

Daytime, inside a building where soldiers, joking, kick in doors.

Scene 14: Titled `Friends Don`t Let Friends Play with Explosives`

Nighttime outdoors. Camera pans across burned and dismembered corpses. Off-screen voice says, "There`s the crater," and "That`s what you get, (expletive)." A soldier points to human remains and pokes the remains across the ground with his foot. Voices: "Oh, that`s part of his skull." "That`s where the guy got thrown against the wall." "They were setting the explosive, and it blew up on them." Finally, "That`s your brain on idiocy" is said as the camera focuses on another pile of remains.

Scene 15: Untitled

Daytime outdoors. Soldiers find guns and ammunition.

Scene 16: Titled `Copenhagen`

Daytime outdoors. An Iraqi man mugs for the camera, holding up a tin of chewing tobacco. He smiles and says, "Copenhagen," then stuffs a wad in his cheek.



Find this article at:
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/content/news/epaper/2…

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SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER

`04 election about denial, delusion
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/215040_willliams09.htm…" target="_blank" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/215040_willliams09.htm…


Wednesday, March 9, 2005

By WALTER WILLIAMS
GUEST COLUMNIST

The Center for the Study of the American Electorate in mid-January reported that the 2004 presidential election had the highest turnout rate (60.7 percent) since 1968 and the biggest jump from the previous election (almost 6.5 percentage points) since 1952.

Moreover, as Harvard voting expert Thomas Patterson has noted, "The period from 1960 to 2000 marks the longest ebb in turnout in the nation`s history." The 2004 election is surely a dramatic voter turnaround. Yet, I argue it is not a great victory for democracy.

The election was mainly sound and fury signifying a critical lost chance. Delusion and denial dominated and diminished American democracy more than any recent election.

Elections after a president`s first term should be a plebiscite assessing how well the chief executive did over four years. However, voters failed to hold President Bush accountable for his abysmal policy performance.

The presidential candidates, Congress and the media joined in an "implicit" conspiracy of silence. It is not that there was direct (explicit) secret communication, which is the legal requirement for conspiracy. Rather, each party chose to ignore the 800-pound gorilla of the government`s huge financial burden and individuals` staggering personal debt from their consumption binge.

Reducing this financial indebtedness of both the federal government and the nation`s citizens would end the consumer buying spree and almost certainly necessitate significant sacrifices by the electorate.

Such a dose of reality clearly was too terrible to contemplate. So silence reigned.

No Accountability: Bush`s misguided domestic policies -- particularly the 2001-2003 tax cuts and the 2003 Medicare prescription-drug bill -- have been major contributors to the United States` worst fiscal mess since the end of the Great Depression. The United States went from a healthy budget surplus to record yearly budget and trade deficits in 2004. The prescription-drug legislation added a staggering $8.1 trillion to Medicare`s unfunded liabilities without addressing the program`s major problems.

How bad is Bush`s performance record? The noted presidential historian, Robert Dallek, wrote: "On the basis of his first term, which I and many others see as a failure, Bush will go down as one of the worst presidents in the past 100 years."

The Implicit Conspiracy of Silence: Critical to understanding the 2004 election is that the key actors chose to ignore the obvious dangers of the rapid increases in the budget and trade deficits, Medicare`s unfunded liabilities and the personal debt.

The uncomfortable truth is that the public became addicted to buying the cornucopia of goods and services during the runaway consumption binge that now has lasted roughly two decades.

Neither political party dared suggest major policy corrections, however badly needed, because of the burgeoning personal debt from what New York Times reporter Louis Uchitelle has called the United States` "greatest age of consumer spending."

This marked increase in spending emerged after the percent of national income spent on consumption had stayed in a narrow range around 70 percent from the early 1950s to the 1980s.

Ronald Reagan`s cockeyed optimism fostered unparalleled consumption and the lowest rate of saving by families and individuals ever recorded during a boom economy. By 2001, consumption reached 80 percent and even held up in the early Bush recession. Personal saving plummeted lower yet.

Juxtaposing three points indicates why the president and Congress fiddle, consumers dance and the financial mess grows ever worse. (The Commerce Department reported Feb. 10 that the trade deficit reached its all-time high of $617.7 billion in 2004.)

First, continuing the conspiracy will almost certainly carry the United States and working- and middle-class families into a financial bloodbath. Second, figuring out what must be done hardly requires a rocket scientist. Third, the solution, however, demands big tax rollbacks, sharp trims in the not-yet-started prescription-drug effort and consumer debt reduction that portend great consumer pain.

In the polarized Washington political environment, it is safer for both parties to avoid reality. Better to ignore the potential financial Armageddon because the major corrections required to mitigate Bush`s failed fiscal policies likely will explode the consumption bubble and infuriate voters.

The United States is in the grip of a politics of unreality where hiding the grim truth or wrapping it in more palatable deceptions has become preferred by politicians and the public. Don`t lift up the cover to show unwanted facts lest they reveal serious threats to continued high spending or staying in office.

No cheers for American democracy in 2004. The election dominated by the conspiracy of silence was a signal defeat for responsible democracy. That is the harsh reality no matter how many people voted last November.

Walter Williams is a professor emeritus at the University of Washington`s Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs and the author of "Reaganism and the Death of Representative Democracy."

© 1998-2005 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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Fisk schreibt heute:
Syria is run by a clique of Alawis - who are Shia - and Iraq is now dominated by Shia Muslims who voted themselves into power, and Iran is a Shia nation.
Für mich ist neu, dass auch Syrien von Shiiten regiert wird.
Das läßt vieles in neuem Licht erscheinen. Wenn man bedenkt, dass in Kuweit, im Südosten von Saudi Arabien und auch in anderen Golfstaaten eine große Anzahl von Shiiten leben, würde die Übernahme des Iraks durch die Shiiten zu einer Dominanz der Shiiten in den Ölregionen führen.
Da könnte natürlich ein Machtwechsel in Syrien und dadurch auch die Schwächung der Shiiten im Libanon das Kräfteverhältnis verändern.
Aber das würde auch den Kreis der Verdächtigen bei der Ermordung von Hariri stark erweitern.

Mar 10, 2005

Hezbollah enters the fray
By Ashraf Fahim
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GC10Ak02.html

In typically dramatic fashion, Hezbollah, Lebanon`s most important political faction, ended weeks of silence on the anti- Syrian demonstrations that have gripped the country since the Valentine`s Day assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri with a massive demonstration on Tuesday to show support for Syria and opposition to US interference.

"We are united here to above all thank Syria, the Syrian people and the Syrian army, which has stayed by our side for many long years and is still with us," said Hezbollah`s popular secretary general, Hasan Nasrullah, to a sea of about 500,000 demonstrators, far more than have attended opposition rallies.

The demonstration was organized by the Shi`ite militia-cum-political party that represents Lebanon`s largest denominational community. Held in Riad al-Solh square, it may not have projected quite the elan of the so-called "Cedar Revolution", but the sheer numbers suggest the international community has misjudged the balance of opinion, and power, in Lebanon.

Hezbollah is a crucial link in the ongoing confrontation between the US and Syria that has come to a head since Hariri`s dramatic assassination. By entering the fray so forcefully, Hezbollah has simply acknowledged its own central role in the drama that was spinning out of control around it.

Though the focus of international attention has been on demands for Syria to withdraw its long-standing troop presence from Lebanon, an ancillary demand, pushed by the United States and Israel, has been for the disbandment of Hezbollah`s military wing - the Islamic Resistance. That demand is implicit in United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559, which Hezbollah has rejected as "foreign interference" in Lebanon`s affairs, in favor of the Taif Accord of 1989 that ended Lebanon`s civil war.

America`s and Israel`s insistence on Hezbollah`s disbandment - Europe has been more cautious - would appear to be out of step with the domestic opinion in Lebanon that the administration of US President George W Bush claims to support. While the US State Department has designated Hezbollah a terrorist organization (and is pressuring the European Union to do likewise), the group`s role in successfully driving Israel out of South Lebanon in 2000 has given it enormous prestige in Lebanon and the Arab world. Few Lebanese, even in the opposition, seem eager to see it disarm, especially with Israel still considered a threat.

Why Hezbollah?
Hezbollah is a target for a number of reasons. Its symbolism as an anti-Western and militarily successful resistance organization means it has a negative impact on public opinion in the Middle East vis-a-vis the US, and an inspirational effect on other militant organizations.

And as a prestigious ally and proxy to Syria and Iran, Hezbollah complicates America`s regional goals. President Bush may have had this nexus in mind when he said on Monday, "The time has come for Syria and Iran to stop
using murder as a tool of policy, and to end all support for terrorism." As a symbol of defiance, Hezbollah also has the potential to disrupt Washington`s plans for the region`s political evolution, as well as the Arab-Israeli "peace process", and even US stewardship of Iraq, given Hezbollah`s kinship with Iraq`s new Shi`ite power brokers.

Hariri`s assassination and the quick response from the Lebanese opposition and Washington created the initial impression of a spontaneous crisis between Washington and Syria and, by extension, Hezbollah. But the current confrontation began in the 1980s and has boiled over at various times since the Bush administration came to office.

Likewise, many of the media have portrayed the visit of Syrian Prime Minister Naji al-Otari to Tehran shortly after the assassination as the blossoming of a new, anti-American alliance. In fact, the Syrian-Iranian alliance goes back to the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, and ever since Syria and Iran have nurtured Hezbollah, with Syria offering protection, and Iran arms and training.

So the board was already set when Hariri was assassinated; it`s only the pace of the game that has quickened. And though it only has a minor role in this wider regional confrontation, Hezbollah`s spectacular cameos have drawn ire in the West and infamy in the East.

The Hezbollah `bogeyman`
The ubiquitous description in US press reports about the militant group is that "it has killed more Americans than any other group other than al-Qaeda". Hezbollah became synonymous with terrorism in the US lexicon in October 1983, when a suicide bomber (from a group that the US claims later morphed into Hezbollah) crashed into the US Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, killing 241 US servicemen. Other attacks in Lebanon were also pinned on Hezbollah, and many American analysts would later credit the United States` withdrawal from Lebanon with emboldening al-Qaeda. The US grievance against Hezbollah is, in some ways, an old-fashioned blood feud.

Israel`s vendetta against Hezbollah relates to the fact that the group, as it often states, delivered "the first Arab victory in the history of Arab-Israeli conflict". In addition to the toll in blood - Israel lost 900 soldiers in Lebanon - many Israeli generals blame Hezbollah, and Israeli premier Ehud Barak`s decision to withdraw, for inspiring the al-Aqsa intifada. Hezbollah`s steadfast anti-Zionism is also cloying to the Israeli government, though Hezbollah emphasizes that it will not interfere in the Palestinians` decision to reach a settlement - something Nasrullah calls a "Palestinian matter". The conflict with Israel endures primarily because Hezbollah and Syria claim the Shebaa farms region in South Lebanon as Lebanese territory (the UN does not).

Hezbollah, of course, has a longer list of grievances, and a deeper body count, than its adversaries. The group was founded, with help from revolutionary Iran, as a result of the 1982 Israeli invasion that killed up to 19,000 Lebanese, largely Shi`ites in the south. There are also personal grievances - the US Central Intelligence Agency allegedly attempted to assassinate one of Hezbollah`s spiritual inspirations, Ayatollah Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, in 1985, missing him but killing 80 others. Nasrullah`s 18-year-old son Hadi was also killed fighting the Israeli occupation.

The Bush administration, for its part, has made no secret of its desire to settle accounts. When he was deputy secretary of state, Richard Armitage famously said, "Hezbollah may be the `A` team of terrorists and maybe al-Qaeda is actually the `B` team. And they`re on the list and their time will come." With Hariri`s assassination, the administration evidently believes that the time has indeed come.

Few argue, however, that Hezbollah currently targets Americans. In the 1990s, US intelligence and Israel blamed Hezbollah for attacking Jewish and Israeli targets in South America. Some have also accused it of bombing the Khobar Towers military base in Saudi Arabia in 1996. But Hezbollah was quick to condemn the attacks of September 11, 2001, and Israeli attempts to link it to al-Qaeda have failed.

The focus is instead on capacity. Critics argue that as a conduit for Syria and Iran, and as an anti-American group with "global reach", it has the potential to be supplied with weapons of mass destruction, which it could disseminate or use against US interests. A 2004 study by the influential Rand Corp used precisely that logic to name Hezbollah as one of the three most serious threats faced by the US. Hezbollah thus falls within the Bush administration`s "preemptive" threat doctrine, and it will be a test of the relevance of that doctrine as to whether it is applied to Hezbollah.

A coordinated campaign
It is hardly a secret that the US and Israel have coordinated their campaign against Syria and Hezbollah. Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom told the Knesset (parliament) on February 23, "Giving back Lebanon`s sovereignty to the Lebanese depends on the dismantling of Hezbollah. Israel is acting towards the realization of this vital objective in a worldwide political campaign." Shalom added, "In coordination with the US we are especially pressuring the EU countries into placing Hezbollah on to the list of terrorists."

Israel`s endeavors in this regard have focused on blaming Hezbollah for terrorist acts carried out against Israel by Palestinian groups, such as the February 25 suicide bombing in Tel Aviv. In fact, Sharon has claimed, Hezbollah is responsible for "80% of attacks on Israel". The Bush administration has taken up the charge that Hezbollah is trying to undermine the Palestinian Authority`s new president, Mahmoud Abbas. After looking over Israeli-supplied intelligence, acting assistant secretary of state David Satterfield railed against "Hezbollah`s active engagement in acts of violence and terror directed against Israelis", and said, "They need to stop and to stop immediately."

The US campaign against Hezbollah has been primarily focused on the group`s fundraising and media efforts. The US Justice Department has spent considerable time and resources pursuing Hezbollah "cells" in the US. None have been actively involved in military affairs, but a great deal of attention was given to a group in North Carolina in 2003 convicted of operating a cigarette-smuggling cartel that funneled funds to Hezbollah. A new book on the subject, Lightning out of Lebanon: Terrorist Cells on American Soil, was serendipitously published this month by Barbara Newman of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD).

The FDD is one of a string of right-wing, pro-Israel policy groups that form the backbone of the campaign against Hezbollah. As Adam Shatz wrote in the New York Review of Books, "Dick Cheney`s new adviser on Syrian policy, David Wurmser, a pro-Likud ideologue, is an open advocate of preemptive war against Syria and Hezbollah, a position favored by neo-conservatives in and close to the Bush administration, such as Douglas Feith, John Bolton and Richard Perle."

The White House`s broader strategy has been to try to get the international community to replicate the legal measures the US has taken against Hezbollah. On his first post-election trip to Europe in mid-February, Bush put intense pressure on the EU to list Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. A congressional resolution (H RES 101), introduced on February 15, also urges the EU to ban Hezbollah. Such a move would isolate Hezbollah politically, and prevent it from raising funds in Europe through charities. So far the US hasn`t succeeded, largely because of French resistance - for which France earned the fearful moniker of "pro-Arab" from the displeased Israeli premier, Ariel Sharon.

Efforts to shut down Hezbollah`s highly successful TV station, al-Manar (The Beacon), which claims 10 million to 15 million viewers, have had more success. That campaign has been led in the US by right-wing groups such as the Coalition Against Terrorist Media. The US State Department put al-Manar on the Terrorism Exclusion List on December 17, in effect preventing it from broadcasting in the US, and it was recently banned in France, largely because of the screening of an undeniably anti-Semitic Egyptian miniseries.

Enter Nasrullah
The problem faced by the US and Israel at the moment is one of overreach. With its demonstration on Tuesday, Hezbollah has put paid to the idea that the Lebanese are united in their opposition to Syria or in favor of disarming the Shi`ite militia. And as an integral part of the Lebanese political process, Hezbollah will have considerable pull in the formation of any future government.

Had the US focused exclusively on a Syrian withdrawal, it might be in a more tenable position. Nasrullah has emphasized that Hezbollah supports a Syrian pullout, but only under the Taif Accord - an Arab agreement - rather than Resolution 1559. It is precisely the anti-Hezbollah provisions of 1559 that alienate many Lebanese, who see those provisions as intended to benefit Israel.

While Hezbollah has a surprisingly moderate domestic political platform - one observer called it "almost social democratic" - the rub so far as Washington is concerned lies in its external policy, particularly on the "peace process". Rumors in the press that the Lebanese opposition has been in talks with the Israeli government have been seized on by Nasrullah, who has said that the group would not agree to negotiations, even if the Lebanese government did. Its Syrian patron`s long-standing policy is that Lebanon and Syria must negotiate an agreement with Israel together because of Israel`s strategic superiority.

It will not be easy for the US to sideline Hezbollah. Regionally, the group has close religious ties to Iraq`s new Shi`ite-dominated government, which makes threatening it risky - Nasrullah studied in Najaf with many of the Da`wa Party`s clerics, whose candidate (Ibrahim Jaafari ) may become Iraq`s next prime minister. In addition, popular Arab support makes tackling Hezbollah difficult. And though Syria appears weak at the moment, its support, and the support of Iran, still makes Hezbollah a potent military force.

With deep popular support, and having driven out the US and the Israelis in turn from Lebanon, Hezbollah is understandably defiant. On Tuesday, addressing the possibility of a US intervention, Nasrullah told the half-million supporters gathered in central Beirut, "We have defeated them in the past, and if they come again we will defeat them again."

Ashraf Fahim is a freelance writer on Middle Eastern affairs based in New York and London. His writing can be found at www.storminateacup.org.uk.

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

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In Englisch in #26839

Die nächsten Kreuzzüge
von Uri Avnery
http://www.zmag.de/artikel.php?id=1367&PHPSESSID=32485ab21f1…

uri-avnery.de / ZNet Deutschland 05.03.2005
Vor vielen Jahren las ich das Buch „Der stille Amerikaner“ von Graham Green. Seine Hauptfigur ist ein hochgesinnter, naiver, junger amerikanischer Geheimdienstler in Vietnam. Er hat von der Komplexität dieses Landes keine Ahnung, will aber seine Missstände beseitigen und Ordnung schaffen. Die Folgen sind verheerend.

Ich habe das Gefühl, dass genau dies jetzt im Libanon geschieht. Die Amerikaner sind nicht so hochgesinnt und nicht so naiv. Weit davon entfernt. Aber sie sind sehr bereit, in ein fremdes Land einzudringen, ohne seine Komplexität zu berücksichtigen, und in ihm mit Gewalt Ordnung, Demokratie und Freiheit herzustellen.

Bürgerkrieg: Libanon. Der Libanon ist ein Land mit einer besonderen Topographie: es ist ein kleines Land mit hohen Bergketten und isolierten Tälern. Deshalb zog es Jahrhunderte lang Gemeinschaften verfolgter Minderheiten an, die hier ein Refugium fanden. Heute leben dort neben- und gegeneinander vier ethno-religiöse Gemeinschaften: Christen, Sunniten, Schiiten und Drusen. Innerhalb der christlichen Gemeinschaft gibt es noch verschiedene Denominationen, wie die Maroniten, Griechisch-Orthodoxen u.a., die einander oft feindlich gesinnt sind. Die Geschichte des Libanon ist voll von gegenseitigen Massakern.

Solch eine Situation lädt Nachbarn und ausländische Mächte geradezu ein, sich einzumischen. Jeder wünscht, zum eigenen Vorteil in diesem Topf herumzurühren. Syrien, Israel, die USA und Frankreich, der frühere Kolonialherr – alle sind daran beteiligt.

Genau vor 50 Jahren gab es zwischen den Führern Israels eine geheime, hitzige Debatte. David Ben Gurion (damals Verteidigungsminister) und Moshe Dayan (Generalstabschef) hatten eine brillante Idee: den Libanon zu überfallen, einen „christlichen Major“ als Diktator einzusetzen und den Libanon in ein israelisches Protektorat zu verwandeln. Moshe Sharett, der damalige Ministerpräsident, lehnte diese Idee leidenschaftlich ab. In einem langen, scharf argumentierenden Brief, der für die Geschichte bewahrt wurde, zieht er angesichts der unglaublich zerbrechlichen Komplexität der libanesischen sozialen Struktur die totale Unkenntnis der Befürworter dieser Idee ins Lächerliche. Jedes Abenteuer würde in einer Katastrophe enden, warnte er. Zu jener Zeit siegte Sharett. Aber 27 Jahre später taten Menachim Begin und Ariel Sharon genau das, was Ben Gurion und Dayan vorgeschlagen hatten. Das Ergebnis war genau so, wie Sharett es vorausgesehen hatte.

Jeder, der jetzt den amerikanischen und israelischen Medien folgt – es gibt keinen Unterschied – gewinnt den Eindruck, dass die gegenwärtige Situation im Libanon einfach sei: es gibt zwei Lager, „die Unterstützer Syriens“ auf der einen Seite und die „Opposition“ auf der anderen. Da gibt es einen „Beiruter Frühling“. Die Opposition ist eine Zwillingsschwester der gestrigen ukrainischen Opposition, und loyal imitiert sie ihre Methoden: Demonstrationen gegenüber vom Regierungsgebäude, ein Meer von geschwungenen Fahnen, farbige Schals und am wichtigsten: hübsche Mädchen in der ersten Reihe. Aber zwischen der Ukraine und dem Libanon gibt es nicht die geringste Ähnlichkeit. Die Ukraine ist ein „einfach“ strukturiertes Land: der Osten tendiert zu Russland, der Westen zu Europa. Mit amerikanischer Hilfe, gewann der Westen.

Im Libanon sind alle verschiedenen Gemeinschaften in Aktion. Jede für ihre eigenen Interessen, jede verschwört sich gegen die andere, trickst sie aus oder greift sie bei einer günstigen Gelegenheit an. Einige der Führer sind mit den Syrern verbunden, einige mit Israel, alle versuchen, die Amerikaner für ihre Zwecke auszunützen. Die hübschen Bilder der in den Medien auffallenden jungen Demonstranten haben keine Bedeutung, wenn man nicht weiß, welche Gruppierung hinter ihnen steht.

Es sind erst 30 Jahre her, dass all diese Gruppierungen einen schrecklichen Bürgerkrieg begonnen hatten, und sie sich gegenseitig umbrachten. Die christlichen Maroniten wollten das Land mit Hilfe Israels übernehmen, wurden aber von einer Koalition der Sunniten und Drusen besiegt. (Die Schiiten spielten damals keine Rolle). Die von der PLO geführten palästinensischen Flüchtlinge, die eine fünfte Gemeinschaft bildeten, schlossen sich dem Kampf an. Als die Christen in Gefahr waren, überrannt zu werden, riefen sie die Syrer zu Hilfe. Sechs Jahre später fielen die Israelis mit dem Ziel ein, die Syrer und die Palästinenser gemeinsam zu vertreiben und einen christlichen starken Mann (Basheer Jumal) einzusetzen.

Wir brauchten 18 Jahre, um aus dem Morast wieder herauszukommen. Unsere einzige Errungenschaft war, die Schiiten in eine dominante Macht zu verwandeln. Als wir in den Libanon einmarschierten, empfingen uns die Schiiten mit Reis und Süßigkeiten, da sie hofften, wir würden die sie beherrschenden Palästinenser hinaustreiben. Ein paar Monate später, als ihnen klar wurde, dass wir nicht die Absicht hatten, sie zu verlassen, begannen sie, auf uns zu schießen. Sharon ist der Geburtshelfer der schiitischen Hisbollah.

Es ist schwer vorauszusehen, was geschehen wird, wenn die Syrer in das amerikanische Ultimatum einwilligen und den Libanon verlassen. Es gibt keine Anzeichen, dass die Amerikaner sich mit der Schaffung neuer Lebensstrukturen für die libanesischen Gemeinschaften befassen. Sie geben sich damit zufrieden, über „Freiheit“ und „Demokratie“ zu faseln, als ob ein Mehrheitsvotum ein für alle akzeptables Regime schaffen könnte. Sie verstehen nicht, dass der „Libanon“ ein abstrakter Begriff ist, da für die meisten Libanesen die Zugehörigkeit zu ihrer Gemeinschaft bei weitem wichtiger ist als Loyalität zum Staat. In solch einer Situation bedeutet auch eine internationale Militärtruppe keine Hilfe. Das Wiederaufflammen eines blutigen Bürgerkrieges ist leicht möglich.

Bürgerkrieg: Irak. Wenn im Libanon ein Bürgerkrieg ausbricht, wird er nicht der einzige der Region sein. Im Irak ist solch ein Krieg – wenn auch fast im Geheimen – bereits in vollem Gange. Die einzige effektive Militärtruppe im Irak – abgesehen von der Besatzungsarmee – sind die kurdischen „Peshmargas“, (jene, die dem Tode entgegensehen). Die Amerikaner benutzen sie immer dann, wenn sie gegen die Sunniten kämpfen. Sie spielten in der Schlacht von Falludja eine bedeutende Rolle. Die große Stadt wurde total zerstört, die Bewohner getötet oder vertrieben.

Das kurdische Militär führt jetzt einen Krieg gegen die Sunniten und Turkmenen im Norden des Landes, um die ölreichen Gebiete und die Stadt Kirkuk zu besetzen, und um die Sunniten, die von Saddam Hussein dort angesiedelt worden waren, zu vertreiben.

Wie kann solch ein Krieg von den Medien praktisch ignoriert werden? Ganz einfach: alles wird unter den Teppich „des Krieges gegen den Terrorismus“ gekehrt.

Aber dieser kleine Krieg ist nichts, verglichen mit dem, der im Irak geschehen kann, wenn die Zeit kommt, um die Zukunft des Landes zu entscheiden. Die Kurden fordern völlige Autonomie, praktisch „Unabhängigkeit“ mit einem anderen Namen. Die Sunniten denken nicht im Traume daran, die Herrschaft der von ihnen verachtenden schiitischen Mehrheit, zu akzeptieren – auch dann nicht, wenn es im Namen der „Demokratie“ geschieht. Der Ausbruch eines Bürgerkrieges mag nur eine Frage der Zeit sein.

Bürgerkrieg: Syrien. Wenn es den Amerikanern (mit unserer diskreten Hilfe) gelingt, die regierende syrische Diktatur zu stürzen, gibt es überhaupt keine Sicherheit, dass sie durch „Freiheit“ und „Demokratie“ ersetzt wird. Syrien ist fast so zersplittert wie der Libanon. Es gibt eine starke drusische Gemeinschaft im Süden, eine rebellische kurdische Gemeinschaft im Norden, eine alawitische (zu der die Assadfamilie gehört) im Westen. Die sunnitische Mehrheit ist traditionell zwischen Damaskus im Süden und Aleppo im Norden geteilt. Das Volk hat sich aus Furcht vor dem, was nach einem Regimekollaps geschehen könnte, mit der Assad-Diktatur abgefunden. Es ist unwahrscheinlich, dass ein wirklicher Bürgerkrieg hier ausbrechen wird. Aber eine längere Phase von totalem Chaos ist ziemlich wahrscheinlich. Sharon würde darüber glücklich sein, obgleich ich mir nicht sicher bin, ob dies für Israel gut sein wird.

Religiöser Eifer: Iran. Das Hauptziel der Amerikaner ist natürlich, die Ayatollahs im Iran zu stürzen. (Es ist schon etwas paradox, dass zur selben Zeit die Amerikaner im benachbarten Irak den Schiiten zur Macht verhelfen, wobei diese darauf bestehen, das islamische Recht einzuführen). Der Iran ist eine viel schwerer zu knackende Nuss. Im Gegensatz zum Irak, Syrien und dem Libanon ist hier eine homogene Gesellschaft. Israel droht jetzt offen mit dem Bombardieren der iranischen Atomeinrichtungen. Alle paar Tage sieht man auf unsern Fernsehschirmen die digital vertuschten Gesichter der Piloten, die sich mit ihrer Bereitschaft rühmen, dies jederzeit zu tun. Der religiöse Eifer der Ayatollahs hat in letzter Zeit nachgelassen, wie dies bei jeder siegreichen Revolution nach einiger Zeit geschieht. Aber ein militärischer Angriff durch den „Großen Satan“ (die US) oder den „kleinen Satan“ (wir) kann den Eifer im schiitischen Halbmond, im Iran, Südirak und im Südlibanon neu anfachen.

Ja, auch hier. Sogar Israel wurde kürzlich Zeuge eines winzigen Bürgerkrieges. Im galiläischen Dorf Marrar, wo eine drusische und eine arabisch-christliche Gemeinschaft seit Generationen neben einander leben, brach plötzlich eine blutige Auseinandersetzung aus. Es war ein richtiges Pogrom: die Drusen fielen über die Christen her, griffen sie an, setzten einiges in Brand und zerstörten. Wie durch ein Wunder wurde niemand getötet. Die Christen sagten, dass die israelische Polizei - viel von ihnen sind Drusen - daneben stand. Der Grund für den Ausbruch: einige fabrizierte Nacktfotos im Internet.

Es ist leicht, einen Bürgerkrieg entweder aus Fanatismus oder unerträglicher Naivität zu entfachen. George Bush, der (nicht-so-) stille Amerikaner, rennt in der Welt herum, um mit seinem patentierten Medikament „Freiheit“ und „Demokratie“ hausieren zu gehen und das mit einer totalen Ignoranz über Hunderte von Jahren von Geschichte. Es ist kaum zu glauben, aber er zieht seine Inspiration aus einem Buch unseres Nathan Sharansky, einem – gelinde gesagt - sehr kleinen Geist.

Jedes menschliche Wesen und jedes Volk hat ein Recht auf Freiheit. Viele von uns haben für dieses Ziel ihr Blut vergossen. Demokratie ist ein Ideal, das jedes Volk für sich selbst realisieren muss. Aber wenn die Banner der „Freiheit“ und „Demokratie“ über dem Kreuzzug einer habgierigen und unverantwortlichen Supermacht flattern, können die Folgen katastrophal sein.

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Wednesday, March 09, 2005

War News for Wednesday, March 09, 2005

Bring ‘em on: At least three people killed in addition to the bomber and 30 wounded in suicide bomb attack on Baghdad hotel near Agriculture ministry.

Bring ‘em on: Twenty-six bullet riddled corpses found near Rumana, close to Quaim. Fifteen headless bodies, including three women and two children, found in Latifiya. One US soldier killed, another wounded in roadside bombing in Baghdad. One Iraqi policeman killed and three wounded in roadside bombing in Basra. Car bomb attacks reported against an American checkpoint outside Habaniyah and near US troops close to Abu Ghraib, no injuries reported.

Bring ‘em on: Four Iraqi police officers killed when a booby trapped corpse exploded south of Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Two guards killed and one wounded in unsuccessful assassination attempt directed at Iraq’s interim planning minister.

Bring ‘em on: Four US soldiers killed in bomb attack near Ramadi.

Death by fundamentalists: When the kidnappers came for Zeena al Qushtaini, she was dressed, as one friend put it, "in the latest fashion." She wore a $5,000 watch, her hands were manicured and her hair was highlighted to accent her blue eyes. Many of her friends were women`s rights activists, but few were as conspicuously modern as Qushtaini. She was a divorced, single mother in her late 30s who supported two children with a full-time office job. She also ran a pharmacy with her business partner, Dr. Ziad Baho.

It was evening at the pharmacy, and Qushtaini and Baho were behind the counter when six men in business suits burst in brandishing automatic weapons. The men wrapped duct tape across the mouths of Qushtaini and Baho, then took them away in a pair of SUVs. Relatives of the two captives waited for a ransom demand that never came. When the bodies were found 10 days later, beside a highway just south of Baghdad, Baho had been beheaded. Qushtaini was dressed in the long black gown favored by Islamic fundamentalists. A scarf covered her hair—something she never wore in life. It was bloodied from the single bullet to the side of her head.

Iraqi police: The bombing in Hilla last week that killed more people than any other insurgent attack in Iraq so far underscores what the police and army are up against. The bomber somehow managed to slip the security guards and get inside government-owned compound where new police and army recruits were waiting to take physicals, which led the police to suspect their own. "The real problem is those officers who let the bomber get inside," said Col. Adnan Al-Jabouri, a ministry of interior spokesman.

Jabouri`s office is full of Photoshopped posters promoting the police as a force for good in the "new Iraq." My personal favorite is the burly officer carrying two children, one under each arm, away from a carbombing, the flames rising in the background. But I`ve come to Jabouri`s office to ask about something the police would prefer to sweep under the rug: that the same torture methods they employed before the fall of Saddam Hussein continue unchecked.

"We can`t let you write about that," Jabouri replies.

The Sgrena Affair

Skeptical: An Italian intelligence officer slain by U.S. troops in Iraq after he helped free a kidnapped journalist was buried Monday with full ceremonial honors as angry questions over the shooting threatened to do political harm to Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a fervent ally of the Bush administration.

Berlusconi sent about 3,000 troops to Iraq despite widespread popular opposition to the war. Tragic incidents such as the shooting of Calipari complicate the leader`s ability to defend the decision.

Berlusconi summoned Sembler, the U.S. ambassador, to his office Friday night, and the two held an extended meeting again Monday after the funeral. The Italian news agency ANSA reported that Sembler had given Berlusconi a preliminary reconstruction of the events leading up to the shooting that portrayed a breakdown in communications between U.S. and Italian officials.

Many Italians are skeptical, however, that the Americans will tell the full truth, or that Berlusconi can force them to.

Account rejected: Italy`s foreign minister rejected on Tuesday a U.S. account of how its forces killed an Italian intelligence agent in Iraq and urged Washington to punish any soldiers found guilty of wrongdoing in the shooting.

Fini dismissed speculation that U.S. forces deliberately fired on the Italians, but he said an initial U.S. military statement on the shooting, released hours after the attack, did "not coincide" with what Italy believed had happened.

"It was certainly an accident," Fini said.

"But this doesn`t mean, in fact it makes it necessary, to demand that events are clarified ... to identify those responsible, and if people are to blame then to request and ensure that the guilty parties are punished," he added.

Accident?: The Italian reporter wounded when American troops opened fire on the car carrying her and Italian secret service officers to the Baghdad airport just hours after her release from kidnappers rejected today the United States` version of the incident and refused to rule out that she was intentionally targeted.

"The fact that the Americans don`t want negotiations to free the hostages is known," Ms. Sgrena said in a telephone interview with Sky TG24 television. "The fact that they do everything to prevent the adoption of this practice to save the lives of people held hostages, everybody knows that. So I don`t see why I should rule out that I could have been the target."

The White House called the shooting a "horrific accident" and promised a full investigation.

Operation was authorized: The Italian agent killed by American forces in Iraq had U.S. military authorization for his operation to win the release of a hostage, Premier Silvio Berlusconi said Wednesday.

In his first major address since Friday`s shooting strained relations between Washington and one of its biggest allies, Berlusconi told Italy`s Senate that the car carrying agent Nicola Calipari and hostage Giuliana Sgrena stopped immediately when a light was flashed. The U.S. military has said the Americans used hand and arm signals, flashing white lights, and firing warning shots to try to get the car to stop.

US responsibility: The United States must assume responsibility for the "friendly fire" killing of an Italian intelligence agent in Iraq in order to put the incident behind the two allies, the Italian prime minister said Wednesday.

"Only a frank and reciprocal recognition of eventual responsibility is the condition for closure of the incident which was so irrational to us and that caused us so much sorrow," Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi told the Senate.

This should be good – Inerrant Boy take responsibility for something?


Oh, yes, we’re shooting Bulgarians too: The lack of direct communication between Bulgarian and U.S. troops was the probable cause of last week`s killing of a Bulgarian soldier in Iraq in a suspected ``friendly fire`` incident, a top military official said Wednesday.

Army chief of staff Gen. Nikola Kolev said the two forces had not yet agreed on how to communicate with each other when Pvt. Gardi Gardev was fatally shot near the city of Diwaniya on Friday.

The Bulgarian investigation found that Gardev was killed by U.S. troops guarding a military communications site, who opened fire on his patrol after it fired warning shots to stop an Iraqi civilian car.

Foreign Affairs

Here’s some hearts and minds we won: Hundreds of thousands jammed a central Beirut square Tuesday, chanting support for Syria and anti-U.S. slogans in a thundering show of strength by the militant group Hezbollah — a rally that greatly outnumbered recent demonstrations against Syria`s presence in Lebanon.

"We are demonstrating here against foreign intervention in our internal affairs, and we`re supporting Hezbollah," said Maha Choukair, a 21-year-old Lebanese University student. "Here we are saying thank you to Syria, not asking them to leave."

The Growing Parallels With the Stalinist State

Detention without trial: No other European country has introduced internment without trial in the wake of 9/11. Indeed, the only comparable example in any Western country is the US facility at Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay.

Critics say that by introducing control orders the UK is aligning itself with an approach to security policing previously employed only by some of the world’s most notorious regimes. Britain is currently ranked 10th in the global democracy league table compiled each year by civil rights watchdog WorldAudit.

The article goes on to list the top ten regimes that imprison without trial. They include North Korea, Uganda, Indonesia, Algeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, China, Angola, Libya, and Zimbabwe. How despicable that the US and Britain, once relative exemplars of human rights, are now in such company.


Outsourcing torture: Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales yesterday defended the practice of "extraordinary rendition," the process under which the United States sometimes transfers detainees in the war on terrorism to other nations where they may undergo harsh interrogation, trial or imprisonment.

U.S. officials have privately described the threat of rendition as a powerful tool in prying loose information from suspects who fear torture by foreign countries. But Gonzales, speaking to reporters at the Justice Department yesterday, said that U.S. policy is not to send detainees "to countries where we believe or we know that they`re going to be tortured."

Then why are we doing it at all, Al? Exactly what does Uzbekistan contribute to prisoner interrogations that we can’t do ourselves? The most hilarious response I’ve found to this question so far is that we are doing renditions to save money. This from the trillion dollar deficit administration. Too effing much.


Disappearing the news: The National Security Council (NSC) had an entire chapter on Iraq’s economy deleted from the “Economic Report of the President” simply because it would interfere with the positive tone of the rest of the report. The report is produced annually by the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), a supposedly independent advisory entity. The unprecedented move is yet another example of the Bush administration’s willingness to manipulate expert and scientific information for political reasons.

Economists from both political parties considered the decision to delete an entire completed chapter as extraordinary and a sign of the CEA’s loss of influence. Outgoing CEA Chairman N. Gregory Mankiw has declined to comment.

The missing chapter addresses the development of the Iraqi banking system, financial markets and other economic institutions. Apparently, the chapter portrayed Iraq’s economic emergence positively and it was believed that this would clash with current military difficulties in Iraq, and therefore would undermine the administration’s credibility.

Cheneyburton

Rigged contracts: The U.S. Justice Department has opened a criminal inquiry into possible bid-rigging on foreign contracts by Halliburton, the company revealed Tuesday.

In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the company said "information has been uncovered" that former employees of KBR "may have engaged in coordinated bidding with one or more competitors on certain foreign construction projects and that such coordination possibly began as early as the mid-1980s...."

The SEC filing also revealed that the Justice Department is investigating "whether former employees may have received payments in connection with bidding practices on some foreign projects." In other words, authorities are investigating whether KBR paid bribes to foreign governments for the purpose of rigging the contracting process and whether KBR employees received kickbacks.

What generous fellows: Halliburton issued a press release today congratulating itself for donating 12 laptop computers to the 256th Brigade of the Army National Guard in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. The computers will be used in Iraq by Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion, 156th Infantry (Mechanized).

Halliburton`s delinquent and possibly criminal track record in handling the taxpayers` money, including $2 billion in unverifiable expenses, didn`t stop military officials from fawning all over the 12-computer donation.

Halliburton`s KBR subsidiary lost millions of dollars in U.S. government property in Iraq and Kuwait. The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into the legality of the procurement process that awarded Iraq contracts to the company. And numerous government investigations continue today.

"We are very happy to donate these laptop computers to help the troops who are putting their lives on the line to support freedom for the Iraqi people," Tony Angelle, vice president of Halliburton`s Gulf Coast Region, said.

An Observation

Of course this has nothing to do with Iraq, but I noticed the online poll today at CNN (Contains No News) has to do with how people will respond to the severe price rise in gasoline anticipated for this summer. The responses broke down as follows: Drive less, 41%. Buy a more efficient car, 10%. Close your eyes and pump, 49%.

Wow. Half the country has no intention of changing any habits, not even cutting down on unnecessary trips, if gas goes up over two bucks a gallon. I wonder if there could be any correlation between people who responded that way and their political affiliation. Do ya think?


Commentary

Sentence fragment: … just because virtually everyone in the administration lied with their bare faces hanging out about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, terrorism ties in Iraq, so break out the plastic sheeting and duct tape because we`re all gonna die, just because they did this in no small part to win the 2002 midterms by any means necessary, just because 1,502 American soldiers have been killed looking for the 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 500 tons (which is 1,000,00 lbs.) of sarin and mustard and VX nerve agent, 30,000 munitions to deliver the stuff, mobile biological weapons labs, arial drones to spray the aforementioned stuff, and let`s not forget the uranium from Niger for use in Iraq`s robust nukular program, all of which was described to the letter by Bush in his 2003 State of the Union address, all of which remains on the White House website on a page titled `Disarm Saddam Hussein,` just because the medical journal Lancet estimates that as many as 198,000 Iraqi citizens have been killed as well in the war to get at this stuff, just because none of the stuff was there, and by the way none of the stuff was there, and did I mention that none of the stuff was there…

Editorial: No one can question the benefits oil has brought to global society. Here in America, millions of homes are heated with oil. Millions of cars make it easier for millions of people to get to work and take care of their business. Millions of trucks and ships have delivered billions of tons of produce to all points on the compass; one could argue that the defining truth of the luxury inherent in Western society is the ability to stand in a snowbank in Maine and enjoy a fresh pineapple from Hawaii. Millions of people can get from New York to Los Angeles in a day, thanks to airplanes. The incomes and livelihoods of millions - workers in industry and agriculture and transportation and food services to name a few - depend upon oil.

Yet even as oil gives generously with one hand, it takes grievously with the other. Even if the petroleum industry is correct and there remain trillions of barrels to be plumbed, that oil is located for the most part in some of the most dangerous and unstable places on the planet. That danger and instability has been created, in no small part, by the fact that oil can be found there.

Oil revenues fund global terrorism. Oil resources motivate wars, and more wars, and more wars. This is the sharp other edge of the sword; if the petroleum industry is correct and oil can be found and drilled for generations to come, that means generations to come will be required to share the death and destruction we endure today in the grubbing for oil. There is no escaping this.

Comment: Lately, I’ve been considering whether Bush’s justification for the Iraq War: we are fighting them there so they won’t come here isn’t completely without merit. After all, there have, incredibly, been no attacks in America since 9-11. And creating a theme park for jihadists in Iraq certainly has kept them occupied. It was brought home to me by a friend in Hawaii. “I believe that. Hey, I’m a lifelong Democrat. But there haven’t been any attacks here.” Again and again this is mentioned by US troops as the rationale for their struggle and suffering, and it seems logical.

But it breaks down on closer examination. First, there’s the madness of creating a vicious insurgent war in a place that didn’t have one. No matter how many times Bush and the neocons say so, there were no terrorists directed at America in Iraq before the invasion*, until we invaded and created them. Perhaps Iraq has functioned as a gigantic bug zapper for jihadi mosquitoes- where were the suicide bomber when Saddam reigned?- but most fanatics are home grown. Was it really worth the immense price in lives and treasure? The Arabs who flocked to fight the good fight in Iraq weren’t planning or able to mount attacks on America. Maybe in Iraq, they will get the training to do so: a prison university for criminals, except it’s Al Qaida training terrorists.

Casualty Reports

Local story: Peoria, IL, soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: Garden Hills, NY, soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: Fountain City, WI, soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: Watertown, NY, soldier killed in Ar Amadi.

Local story: Vista, CA, soldier killed in Iraq.

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Mar 05: 16

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Mar 10, 2005


The failings of `the army you have`
By Michael Schwartz
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GC10Ak01.html

The latest US theory about the Iraqi resistance
In early February, a Newsweek team led by Rod Nordland produced a detailed account of current theorizing among US and Iraqi officials about the structure of the Iraqi resistance.

Here, in brief, is what these officials told Newsweek: The initial United States assault on Iraq was so successful that Saddam Hussein`s plan for systematic resistance fell apart almost immediately, leaving a dispersed, unruly guerrilla movement with little or no coherent leadership. In the two subsequent years, however, the Saddamists formed a wealthy and savvy leadership group in Syria. In the meantime Abu Massab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian terrorist with ties to al-Qaeda, asserted his domination over the on-the-ground resistance. Pressure from recent US offensives drove the two groupings into an increasingly comfortable alliance. Here is how Newsweek described developments since last summer, based on an interview with Barham Salih, the Iraqi deputy prime minister:

"According to Salih, `The Ba`athists regrouped and, in the last six or seven months, reorganized. Plus they had significant amounts of money, in Iraq and in Syria.` Those contacts and networks that Saddam`s key cronies began developing months before the invasion now paid off. An understanding was found with the Islamic fanatics, and the well-funded Ba`athists appear to have made Syria a protected base of operations. `The Iraqi resistance is a monster with its head in Syria and its body in Iraq` is the colorful description given by a top Iraqi police official ... Zarqawi`s people supply the bombers, the Ba`athists provide the money and strategy."

The current situation was succinctly summarized for Newsweek by Brigadier-General Hussein Ali Kamal, the deputy minister of the interior: "Now between the Zarqawi group and the Ba`athists there is full cooperation and coordination."

This portrait has been further fleshed out in other accounts, including a New York Times report in which US Commanding General George W Casey declared that the Ba`ath Party in Syria was "providing direction and financing for the insurgency in Iraq".

This new theory about the nature of the Iraqi resistance helps to illuminate the renewed US saber-rattling against the Syrians, which began even before the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister. On January 25, for example, former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, writing together for the first time, made the connection explicit in a Washington Post op-ed. They asserted that the administration of President George W Bush must have a "strategy for eliminating the sanctuaries in Syria and Iran from which the enemy can be instructed, supplied, and given refuge in time to regroup". The new theory may also help to explain why (according to such diverse sources as Newsweek and former US weapons inspector Scott Ritter) the US is considering using assassination squads to eliminate enemies. One whole category of targets for these squads (if formed) would certainly be the Syrian-based leadership of the resistance.

And then, at the end of February, came news of the first fruits of US operations based on this new insight, the capture in Syria of Sabawi Ibrahim Hassan, a half-brother and political lieutenant of Saddam, and one of only 11 of the original "deck of cards" Saddamist leaders who still remained at large. The capture vindicated the saber-rattling as well, since high-level Iraqi officials told reporters on February 28 that the "capture was a goodwill gesture by the Syrians to show that they are cooperating" with the new US campaign to decapitate the insurgency by removing its Syrian-based leadership.

Problems with the new theory
This new portrait of the Iraqi resistance may be an accurate description of one aspect of the ongoing war; and its key new element - a working alliance between Saddamist exiles and Zarqawi`s fighters inside Iraq - may be an important new development. But the foundation upon which these descriptions are built - that these forces now dominate the resistance, supply its leadership, or provide the bulk of its resources - is likely to prove profoundly inaccurate.

This is most easily seen by consulting - of all sources - the US Central Intelligence Agency, which issued a contrary report around the time the Newsweek article appeared. According to the CIA, the Zarqawi faction and his Saddamist allies were "lesser elements" in the resistance, which was increasingly dominated by "newly radicalized Sunni Iraqis, nationalists offended by the occupying force, and others disenchanted by the economic turmoil and destruction caused by the fighting". There is, in fact, a vast body of publicly available evidence in support of the CIA`s perspective, including, for example, most first-hand accounts of the resistance in Fallujah and other cities in the Sunni triangle.

In the short, dreary history of America`s Iraq war, US leaders have repeatedly acted on gross misconceptions about whom they were fighting - sometimes based on faulty intelligence, but sometimes in the face of perfectly accurate intelligence. This is, in all likelihood, another instance where they believe their own distortions, and it is worthwhile attempting to understand the underlying pattern that produces this almost predictable error.

One way to characterize this propensity to mis-analyze the resistance is to see that all the portraits thus far generated of the Iraqi resistance have been based on the assumption that it is organized into a familiar hierarchical form in which the leadership exercises strategic and day-to-day control over a pyramid-shaped organization. Such a structure is described by both military strategists and organizational sociologists as a "command and control" structure. After the battle of Fallujah, US Air Force Lieutenant-General Lance Smith even used this phrase to characterize Zarqawi`s operation: "Zarqawi ... no doubt ... is able to maintain some level of command and control over the disparate operations."

This command-and-control image applies well to a large bureaucracy or a conventional army, but invariably provides a poor picture of a guerrilla army, which helps explain US military failures in Iraq. Whether or not Zarqawi maintains command and control over his forces (who are, as far as we can tell, not guerrillas) no one exercises such control over the forces that fought against the Americans in Fallujah or Sadr City and those that are currently fighting a guerrilla war in Ramadi and other Sunni cities that boycotted the recent elections.

Guerrilla wars violate the command-and-control portrait in two important ways: local units must, by and large, supply themselves (since an occupation army would be likely to interdict any regular shipments of supplies); and they are likely to have substantial autonomy (since hit-and-melt tactics do not lend themselves well to central decision-making).

This lack of command and control is a curse and a blessing. On the negative side, lack of central coordination means that guerrilla armies are normally doomed to small, disconnected actions - a severe limitation if the goal is to drive an enemy out of your country. On the positive side, they are less vulnerable to attacks on supply lines and to the targeting of commanding officers - two key strategies of conventional warfare.

The resistance in Iraq reflects this dialectic of guerrilla war. The mujahideen in Fallujah, for example, seem to have been notoriously decentralized; even local clerical leadership reportedly achieved only a tenuous discipline over the troops. This same lack of discipline, however, made it impossible for the US to identify and eliminate key leaders. During the second battle for the city in November, their hit-and-run tactics allowed them to hold out for more than a month against a force with overwhelming technological and numerical superiority.

The command-and-control portrait is not a useful tool when it comes to analyzing a large component of the Iraqi resistance, and it is of little use if it is applied to the movement as a whole.

The drumbeat of command and control
Nevertheless, the US military has assumed such a structure at every juncture in the war.

In the autumn of 2003, when the resistance first began to trouble the occupation, US military strategy was based on the conviction that the resistance was led by Saddam Hussein and the "deck of cards" leadership. Here we see command-and-control logic applied for the first time.

By mid-December 2003, the occupation forces had arrested or killed the vast majority of the men on that deck of cards, while Saddam`s sons Uday and Qusay Hussein had died in a spectacular gun battle, and Saddam himself had just been captured in a dirt dugout. Occupation authorities confidently predicted that the Ba`athist "bitter enders" were done for and the resistance would subside, since without its leaders, local fighters were expected to be rudderless and ineffective.

Instead the disparate parts of the resistance became stronger, and in April 2004 emerged with a victory in Fallujah - after a siege of the city, the marines pulled back without taking it - and a bloody standoff in Najaf. By then, US intelligence had discovered Abu Massab al-Zarqawi and declared that he was actually the linchpin of the resistance.

Once again, a command-and-control portrait of the enemy remained dominant, and the second battle of Fallujah was fought in good part on the basis of that theory: to disrupt or destroy the Zarqawi leadership group. But despite the expulsion of the guerrillas (and just about the entire population of Fallujans) from the city, the rebellion quickly spread to other cities and intensified, refuting the claim that the decapitation of the movement would be incapacitating.

The command-and-control theory has, in fact, turned out to be as resilient as the resistance itself. US commander Lieutenant-General Thomas F Metz, for instance, explained the post-Fallujah battle of Mosul to the New York Times by saying that Zarqawi and/or his leadership team had moved to that city and fomented the uprising, ignoring the indigenous character of the mujahideen who were fighting there. Later, it would be announced that Zarqawi had set up a new "nerve center" south of Baghdad and a major new search-and-destroy operation would be mounted there.

Even after these actions failed to quell the fighting, the occupation forces clung to command-and-control logic. General Kamal, for example, told Newsweek, "Even if Zarqawi continues to elude capture, nailing al-Kurdi [one of Zarqawi`s lieutenants] was a critical score. It might - just might - eventually help change the course of this war." Similar statements were made a month later when Saddam`s half-brother, identified as a key leader and funder of the insurgency, was captured in Syria.

Evident in all of this is the faith that US military leaders have in a strategy of identifying and targeting the supposed leaders of the insurgency. Despite the direct evidence of an increasingly ferocious movement, the capture of a key leader, it has repeatedly been claimed, could "change the course of the war".

Why the US military can`t abandon `command and control` logic
So why does the US military relentlessly build its anti-insurgency strategy around the idea of decapitating the leadership of the Iraqi resistance? The answer lies just beneath the surface of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld`s now-infamous statement, "You go to war with the army you have."

This is a comment pregnant with meaning for organizational sociologists, because it illustrates a familiar pattern of organizational problem-solving. If a product is not selling well, for example, an engineering organization might conclude that better engineering of the product was in order; a manufacturing firm, that more efficient production technology was needed; and a marketing company, that better advertising would do the trick. This sort of organizational idee fixe has led to some truly horrendous failures in business - and military - history. For example, when a flood of automobile buyers began to demand fuel-efficient cars during the first oil crisis in the early 1970s, the US automobile industry did not have the capacity to produce such vehicles. Instead of investing vast resources in developing that capacity, it tried to use its superior marketing skills to win Americans back to luxurious gas-guzzlers. That is, the Big Three auto makers "went to war with the army they had" and convinced themselves that they were facing a marketing problem. The results: a permanent crisis at General Motors (during which it lost world leadership in the industry), a fundamental restructuring of Ford, and the demise of Chrysler.

Or take the French in World War II. They knew about the new German tanks that had made World War I trench warfare obsolete, but the French army was only equipped to fight in the trenches. So they "went to war with the army they had", devising a trench-war strategy that they managed to convince themselves would contain the German Panzer divisions. They lost the war in three weeks.

The US is also fighting with the army it has. This army is the best equipped in the world for advanced conventional warfare - with tanks, artillery, air power, missile power, battlefield surveillance power, and satellite imaging to support highly mobile, well-equipped and superbly trained soldiers. No supply route is safe from its firepower, and no conventional army would be likely to hold its ground long against a US assault. But the most intractable part of the resistance in Iraq is fighting a guerrilla war: they do not have long supply lines and they rarely try to hold their ground.

Guerrilla armies hide by melting into the local population. (Everyone knows this, including, of course, US military men.) To defeat them, an occupying force must have the intelligence to identify guerrillas who can disappear into the civilian world; and it must station troops throughout resistance strongholds in order to pounce upon guerrillas when they emerge from hiding to mount an attack. US military strategists know this, too. But these lessons - painfully drawn from Vietnam - can`t be implemented by the army that Donald Rumsfeld sent to war.

The Americans, in fact, have neither of these resources. Anti-guerrilla intelligence, after all, requires the cooperation of the local population, which, at least in the Sunni-dominated areas of Iraq, the US has definitively alienated, largely through its use of blunt-edged conventional army attacks on communities that harbor guerrillas. And it cannot station enough troops in key locations because too small an occupation force is spread far too thinly over contested parts of the country. Estimates for the size of an army needed to pacify Iraq range upward from General Eric Shinseki`s prewar call for "several hundred thousand" troops.

The US military simply lacks the tools it needs to fight the guerrillas, just as in the 1970s the Big Three auto makers lacked the production system needed to produced fuel-efficient automobiles, and the French army lacked the technology it needed to defeat German tanks in 1940. In response, military leaders are doing exactly what their organizational forebears did: They continue to develop theories about how to win the war "with the army they have". This backward logic leads inevitably to imagining an enemy that might be far more susceptible to defeat with the tools at hand; that is, an opponent with long supply lines (from Syria, for example) and a command-and-control leadership (Zarqawi and his Saddamist allies, for example) capable of being "decapitated". This portrait of the enemy then justifies a military strategy that seeks, above all, to kill or capture the theorized leaders. Such tactics almost always fail (even when leaders are captured); and in the process of failing, only alienate further the Iraqi population, producing an ever larger, more resourceful enemy.

The newest portrait of the resistance as a Zarqawi-Saddamist led amalgam will sooner or later die a lonely death - in all likelihood to be replaced by yet another command-and-control portrait of the insurgency whose features are as yet unknown. As long as the US continues to fight "with the army it has", it will also continue to generate - and act on - distorted (sometimes ludicrous) descriptions of the nature of the rebellion it faces.

Michael Schwartz, professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, has written extensively on popular protest and insurgency, and on US business and government dynamics. His work on Iraq has appeared on the Internet at numerous sites including TomDispatch, Asia Times Online, MotherJones, and ZNet; and in print at Contexts and Z magazine. His books include Radical Politics and Social Structure, The Power Structure of American Business (with Beth Mintz), and Social Policy and the Conservative Agenda (edited, with Clarence Lo). His e-mail address is [e-mail]. This article first appeared on TomDispatch and is reposted by permission.

(Copyright 2005 Michael Schwartz.)

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Is Bush Ready for Real Democracy?
03/09/2005 @ 11:55am
http://www.thenation.com/thebeat/index.mhtml?bid=1&pid=2249

George Bush seems to want to be the president not of the United States but of the world.

Indeed, since his reelection in November, Bush has made foreign policy – a subject about which he displayed scant interest prior to September 11, 2001 – his primary focus. But, as with anyone who is new to complex subject matter, he has not always been graceful in his embrace of it.

This can lead to embarrassing contradictions, as we saw this week.

The president, appearing at the National Defense University, declared that, "Today I have a message for the people of Lebanon: All the world is witnessing your great movement of conscience. Lebanon`s future belongs in your hands."

Unfortunately for the president, on the "today" when he was speaking, one of the largest crowds ever to gather in the history of Lebanon was protesting against the approach that Bush has counseled for that country. This does not necessarily mean that Bush is wrong. But it does mean that he looked like something of a fool when he suggested that "all the world is witnessing your great movement of conscience" at the same time that the streets of Beirut were filled with 500,000 people chanting anti-US slogans and expressing sympathy with Syria.

Make no mistake, I`m on the side of the Lebanese people who want Syria to end its occupation of Lebanon, just as I am on the side of the Palestinian and Israeli people who want Israel to end its occupation of Palestine and of the Iraqi people who want the United States to end its occupation of their country.

But these are not issues that should be decided by American policy makers. They should be decided by the citizens of the countries themselves, and the way to do that is with a popular referendum.

There is a very good model for such voting: the 1999 referendum in which the voters of East Timor rejected occupation of their territory by Indonesia. That referendum, which was organized by the United Nations Mission in East Timor (Unamet), saw 78.5% of East Timorese vote for independence. Indonesia grudgingly accepted the new reality – under the watchful eyes of United Nations peacekeeping forces – and with 450 years of foreign occupation finally ended, East Timor emerged as a free and democratic nation.

Why not follow the same course in those Middle Eastern countries where the climate seems most ripe for democratic experimentation?

Let the people of Lebanon vote--under the watchful eye of election monitors from the UN, the Carter Center and other international agencies--on whether they want the Syrians to leave on the more-or-less immediate timetable that Bush is promoting. My bet is that the majority of Lebanese voters would tell the occupiers to exit. But as someone who has spent a good deal of time in the region, I suspect that the vote would be closer than many observers from afar imagine. That`s because after the horrific instability and violence of the 1980s, there is a portion of the Lebanese population that sees the Syrian military presence as a stabilizing force in a country that is deeply divided along lines of religion, ethnicity and class. The fact is that pro-Syrian parties have won a lot of votes in Lebanese elections, and it is not unreasonable to think that they will continue to do so in the future.

If President Bush really believes, as he told the Lebanese people on Tuesday, that "Lebanon`s future belongs in your hands," then he should support a popular referendum that could settle the question of what future the Lebanese people want.

The president should not stop there. He should also support similar referendums regarding the occupations of Palestine and Iraq -- where polls suggest there is widespread opposition to the presence of foreign military forces.

If the president wants to lend credibility to the stirring statement he made in his speech at the National Defense University--"(Authoritarian) rule is not the wave of the future. It is the last gasp of a discredited past"--then he should begin by backing popular referendums and then making it the policy of the United States to abide by the will of the people of Lebanon, Palestine AND Iraq.

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Soll jetzt die Hispollah keine Terrorgruppe mehr sein?
Ich kann mir nicht vorstellen, dass diese Truppe, wie auch andere gewaltbereiten Gruppen, von einem Tag zum anderen ihr Handeln und Denken ändern.
Da muß sich erst einmal grundsätzlich in Nahost etwas ändern. Und Änderungen können nur von innen heraus erfolgen und jeder Druck von außen ist kontraproduktiv.

March 10, 2005
U.S. Called Ready to See Hezbollah in Lebanon Role
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/10/politics/10diplo.html?hp&e…

WASHINGTON, March 9 - After years of campaigning against Hezbollah, the radical Shiite Muslim party in Lebanon, as a terrorist pariah, the Bush administration is grudgingly going along with efforts by France and the United Nations to steer the party into the Lebanese political mainstream, administration officials say.

The administration`s shift was described by American, European and United Nations officials as a reluctant recognition that Hezbollah, besides having a militia and sponsoring attacks on Israelis, is an enormous political force in Lebanon that could block Western efforts to get Syria to withdraw its troops.

On Tuesday, Hezbollah showed its clout by sponsoring one of the biggest demonstrations of recent Lebanese history, bringing hundreds of thousands of largely Shiite supporters into central Beirut to support the party`s alliance with Syria and, by extension, the presence in Lebanon of 14,000 Syrian troops.

Lebanon`s political crisis deepened Wednesday when Parliament renominated the pro-Syrian prime minister nine days after he resigned under pressure from street demonstrations. If opposition leaders refuse to join his transitional government, tension over the rules for elections in May and the withdrawal of Syrian troops from the country will be high. [Related Article]

The United States and France sponsored a United Nations Security Council resolution last year calling for Syrian troops to leave Lebanon, and a special United Nations envoy, Terje Roed Larsen, is to press for the troop withdrawal. Officially, Mr. Larsen`s mission is also to demand the disarmament of Hezbollah, but as a practical matter that objective has receded, various officials say.

"The main players are making Hezbollah a lower priority," said a diplomat who is closely tracking the negotiations. "There is a realization by France and the United States that if you tackle Hezbollah now, you array the Shiites against you. With elections coming in Lebanon, you don`t want the entire Shiite community against you."

The new posture of the administration was described by its officials, who asked not to be identified because of longstanding American antipathy toward Hezbollah.

"Hezbollah has American blood on its hands," an administration official said, referring to such events as the truck bombing that killed more than 200 American marines in Beirut in 1983. "They are in the same category as Al Qaeda. The administration has an absolute aversion to admitting that Hezbollah has a role to play in Lebanon, but that is the path we`re going down."

Only a few weeks ago, the United States was tangling with France over Hezbollah`s status, as France blocked an effort by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to have Europe formally label Hezbollah a terrorist group, restricting its fund-raising.

Now the United States has basically accepted the French view, echoed by others in Europe, that with Hezbollah emerging as such a force in very fractured Lebanon, it is dangerous to antagonize it right now and wiser to encourage the party to run candidates in Lebanese elections.

Hezbollah has military and political wings. While it has a militia of 20,000 troops and is also said by American and Western and Israeli intelligence agencies to funnel funds from Iran to anti-Israeli militant groups, it runs an array of social programs for Shiites. It also has 13 seats in Lebanon`s Parliament and is aiming to expand its representation there in the May elections.

European officials say the situation with Hezbollah is analogous to that of the Palestinian group Hamas, which has won local elections in Gaza and the West Bank and has come under pressure to moderate its views and negotiate with Israel. The United States and Europe formally label Hamas a terrorist organization.

Especially since the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in Lebanon on Feb. 14, France has argued that Hezbollah ought to be encouraged to concentrate on politics. At the same time, President Jacques Chirac of France has supported President Bush`s call for a Syrian troop withdrawal.

"Our own language on this has been since Hariri`s death not to go too far beating up on Hezbollah," a French official said. "It might hurt, and it won`t help. We could be a turning point now, with Hezbollah maybe turning to politics and politics alone. The United States is no longer making a case of using this issue to disarm Hezbollah and brutally crush them."

Many European officials and Arab diplomats say there has been a backlash in the region against the recent American attacks on Syria and demands for a Syrian troop withdrawal, particularly the administration`s claim that anti-Syrian protests in Lebanon vindicate Mr. Bush`s call for democracy in the Middle East.

"Why don`t they realize that once America makes a case for something, the Middle East will go in the opposite direction?" said an Arab diplomat, asking not to be identified as criticizing the administration. "Hezbollah is a terrorist organization, but now its hand is strengthened because of American opposition."

The emerging position of Washington on Hezbollah has put it in an unaccustomed position of being at odds with Israel and its supporters, especially those who say Hezbollah is the single biggest threat to the fragile peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

Israeli officials declined to comment on the latest development, noting only that Israel has not changed its belief that Hezbollah is a terrorist organization that must be disarmed.

Under the 1990 accords that ended Lebanon`s civil war, the country`s many militias disarmed, but Hezbollah has remained, gaining nationwide respect because it was widely credited with forcing Israel`s subsequent withdrawal from southern Lebanon

On Tuesday, Hezbollah`s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, played that card at the Beirut rally, declaring that to force Syrian troops out would be to do the bidding of the United States and Israel.

One question the United States must consider is whether keeping up pressure to get Syrian troops out in time for the elections could backfire by enhancing Hezbollah`s appeal. Another is how to work with Europeans and Arabs to ensure that chaos does not follow a Syrian pullout.

Although the Lebanese Army of 72,000 troops might be able to handle any instability after a pullout, the administration is also said to be considering other methods of keeping the lid on potential violence, like a multinational force.

"The goal has to be to get Syrian troops out," said Edward P. Djerejian, a former ambassador to Syria and now director of the James A. Baker III Institute of Public Policy at Rice University in Houston. "But it has to be done in a manner that is not destabilizing to Lebanon. We don`t want any unintended consequences here."

Hezbollah, he said, "is an important political and paramilitary force in Lebanon that cannot be ignored." He said one possibility might be to expand the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, which numbers about 3,000. But diplomats say they have been informed that the United States does not want an expanded force under the United Nations.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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Dieser Satz als Hinweis für die, die immer wieder behaupten, es habe keine Tote in US-Gefangenschaft gegeben.
Investigators reviewed the cases of 68 detainees who died while in American custody, including 63 in Iraq and five in Afghanistan, the summary said. Six of those deaths were related to detainee abuse, investigators determined.


March 10, 2005
New Interrogation Rules Set for Detainees in Iraq
By ERIC SCHMITT
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/10/politics/10abuse.html?hp&e…

WASHINGTON, March 9 - After clashing with Afghan rebels at the village of Miam Do one year ago, American soldiers detained the village`s entire population for four days, and an officer beat and choked several residents while screening them and trying to identify local militants, according to a new Pentagon report that was given to Congress late Monday night.

Although the officer, an Army lieutenant colonel attached to the Defense Intelligence Agency, was disciplined and suspended from further involvement with detainees, he faced no further action beyond a reprimand.

The episode, described only briefly in a summary of the report reviewed by The New York Times, was one example of how little control was exerted over some conduct of interrogations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the subject of an exhaustive review just completed by Vice Adm. Albert T. Church, the naval inspector general.

The report finds that early warning signs of serious abuses did not receive enough high-level attention as the abuses unfolded, and that unit commanders did not get clear instructions that might have halted the abuses.

The findings of this review, the latest in a series of military inquiries conducted in the past year, come as the top American military commander in Iraq has ordered the first major changes to interrogation procedures there in nearly a year, narrowing the set of authorized techniques and adding new safeguards to prevent abuse of Iraqi prisoners, officials said.

The new procedures approved by the officer, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., on Jan. 27, have not been publicly disclosed, but are described in the Church report, a wide-ranging investigation into interrogation techniques used at military detention centers in Cuba, Afghanistan and Iraq.

"This policy approves a more limited set of techniques for use in Iraq, and also provides additional safeguards and prohibitions, rectifies ambiguities and, significantly, requires commanders to conduct training on and verify implementation of the policy, and report compliance to the commander," according to a summary of the inquiry`s classified report.

Three senior defense officials said Wednesday that the new procedures clarified the prohibition against the use of muzzled dogs in interrogations, gave specific guidance to field units as to how long they could hold prisoners before releasing them or sending them to higher headquarters for detention, and made clear command responsibilities for detainee operations. They did not describe the particulars of the changes, which are likely to be a main focus of a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing set for Thursday to review the Church report`s findings. It will be the first Congressional hearing into the prisoner abuse scandal since last September, when senior Army investigators presented their findings.

In a brief interview on Tuesday night on Capitol Hill after briefing senators on operations in Iraq, General Casey, who took over the Iraq command last summer, said the changes were intended to "tighten up" the interrogation procedures American officials have been using since May 13, 2004. A senior military official also said the revised procedures reflected the experience military officials had gained since then.

General Casey declined to discuss any specific changes, but the report summary said the main intent was to resolve ambiguities "which, although they would not permit abuse, could obscure commanders` oversight of techniques being employed."

Admiral Church`s report faults senior American officials for failing to establish clear interrogation policies for Iraq and Afghanistan, leaving commanders there to develop some practices that were unauthorized, according to the report summary. But the inquiry found that Pentagon officials and senior commanders were not directly responsible for the detainee abuses, and that there was no policy that approved mistreatment of detainees at prisons in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

These conclusions track with those in a draft summary of the inquiry`s findings that The New York Times described in an article last December.

But the final report contains new information about the scope of the abuses and specific cases of mistreatment.

These findings are in an unclassified 21-page executive summary of the classified report, which runs 368 pages, according to a Senate Republican aide. A copy of the summary was reviewed by The Times.

The report concludes that American officials failed to react to early indications of prisoner abuse and to deal with them.

"It is clear that such warning signs were present, particularly at Abu Ghraib, in the form of communiqués to local commanders, that should have prompted those commanders to put in place more specific procedures and direct guidance to prevent further abuse," the summary said.

"Instead, these warning signs were not given sufficient attention at the unit level, nor were they relayed to the responsible C.J.T.F. commander in a timely way," the summary said, referring to the commanders in Iraq.

Two senior defense officials said on Wednesday that the most striking warning signs were reports from the International Committee of the Red Cross to American military officials in Iraq of serious mistreatment of the prisoners, especially a briefing to officials at Abu Ghraib prison in October 2003. One of the senior officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the Church report has not yet been publicly released, said that had military officials heeded the Red Cross`s warnings, which were made public months later, "some of the abuses might not have happened."

The report`s disclosure of the abuse at the village in Afghanistan was described in The Boston Globe on Wednesday. According to the inquiry, American ground forces clashed with Afghan rebels at Miam Do on March 18, 2004. After the battle, the American soldiers detained the villagers to interview them and screen for militants. The number of detained is not known.

During this process, the report said, the Army lieutenant colonel, who had accompanied the American combat troops, "punched, kicked, grabbed and choked numerous villagers." The report did not identify the officer, who was nearing retirement and who, until the Miam Do incident, had displayed "exceptional service," including two deployments to Afghanistan, according to Pentagon officials and documents.

At the time of the fighting around Miam Do, in Uruzgan Province in central Afghanistan, a military spokesman said two American soldiers, an Afghan army sergeant and at least eight militants had been killed, as well as a civilian woman. A compound cordoned off by the American and Afghan troops was bombarded by allied aircraft, but when the troops moved in, they were fired upon again from within the compound. Taliban propaganda and a ton of weapons were seized, according to a report by The Associated Press.

The lawless province was viewed as a refuge of dispersed fighters and leaders of the Taliban movement, which was ousted from control in the 2001 war in Afghanistan.

The report also delved into the role that medical personnel might have played in failing to report abuses they witnessed or treated. Investigators reviewed the cases of 68 detainees who died while in American custody, including 63 in Iraq and five in Afghanistan, the summary said. Six of those deaths were related to detainee abuse, investigators determined.

In three cases, two in Afghanistan and one in Iraq, the report concluded that "it appeared that medical personnel may have attempted to misrepresent the circumstances of the death, possibly to disguise detainee abuse." These cases were forwarded to the Army surgeon general for review, the report summary said.

A spokeswoman for the surgeon general said Wednesday that the review was continuing.

Admiral Church`s report is the sixth major inquiry into the abuse and detention operations. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld directed the inquiry 10 months ago to examine the interrogation techniques in Cuba, Afghanistan and Iraq, and to identify any gaps among the various investigations.

The report was based on more than 800 interviews with personnel who served in Iraq, Afghanistan and Cuba as well as thousands of pages of documents and a review of all the other investigations and reviews on detainee abuse and detention operations. Its statistical conclusions derived mainly from 71 completed cases of substantiated detainee abuse as of Sept. 30, 2004, including 20 that involved mistreatment during interrogations.

The Church report contrasted the rigorous review of interrogation techniques at Guantánamo Bay with a much more haphazard process in Afghanistan and Iraq, and it noted the interrogation techniques migrated from one area to another in the absence of adequate oversight from high-level Pentagon officials. "We consider it a missed opportunity that no specific guidance on interrogation techniques was provided to the commanders responsible for Afghanistan and Iraq," the report summary said.

The inquiry found, for instance, that by January 2003, military interrogators in Afghanistan were using techniques similar to those that Mr. Rumsfeld had approved for use only at Guantánamo Bay. Those techniques included stress positions and sleep and light deprivation.

As a result of the military inquiries and individual criminal investigations into detainee abuse, the Army said last week that it had taken 120 actions against 109 soldiers so far. That includes 32 courts-martial, and 88 other forms of punishment, including reprimands and dismissal from the service.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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Friedman ist einer der wenigen US-Konservativen, die versuchen ihre Meinung an der Realität auszurichten, wenn es aus schwerfällt und nicht die Realität so darstellen, nach Neocon Art, dass sie ihren Vorstellungen entspricht.


March 10, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Beirut Tea Party
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/10/opinion/10friedman.html

The massive pro-Syrian demonstration that the Hezbollah militia mounted on the streets of Beirut on Tuesday underscored just how much all the old slogans and sentiments - anti-Israeli, anti-American, pro-Islamist, sectarian - can be exploited by Syria, Iran and their local proxies to still mobilize popular forces against change. It is also another reminder that the Berlin Wall is falling in the Arab world, but Vaclav Havel, Lech Walesa and the Solidarity trade movement are not on the other side, just waiting to jump into the arms of the West. It is a much more divided, complex, confused and, at times, angry group.

Consider the message that the leaders of Iran, Syria and Hezbollah were sending to President Bush through their mass rally in Beirut: "Hey, Bush, you want a piece of us? Well, come and get it. Remember what Stalin said about the pope: how many divisions does he have? When it comes to divisions on the ground, pal, we`ve got `em. You don`t. So nobody is going to remake Lebanon without our permission and without our interests being taken into account."

What is the right response to this? I would begin my answer with an assertion: What we have been seeing in the outbursts of democracy in the streets of Beirut, Baghdad, Cairo and even Riyadh is something real and authentic. It is driven both in response to particular events - like the murder of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri - and in response to a deep longing in this part of the world for a different future, particularly among young people, who know what is going on elsewhere and want their own piece of the freedom pie.

"It was our Boston Tea Party," said the Lebanese political analyst Nawaf Salam, speaking of the recent spontaneous pro-democracy demonstrations in Lebanon, which Hezbollah tried to counter on Tuesday with its own pro-Syrian rally. "People feel empowered for the first time; they are feeling that their voice matters - that they can say things," added Mr. Salam, whose recent book, "Options for Lebanon," is the best road map you will find for thinking through how democracy may emerge there. "It is not yet victory, but for the first time in a very long time, people are feeling, `I can make change.` And there is a real sense of fraternity and unity."

The spreading virus that "things can change and I can make a difference" is the most important thing happening in the Arab world today. It is symbolized by the Egyptian opposition`s motto: "Enough." And everyone is watching everyone else now - and comparing. An Egyptian businesswoman remarked to me, with a real sense of envy, how free and alive and energetic the Lebanese opposition protesters seemed, compared with those in Egypt.

The fact that Hezbollah had to resort to a mass rally, just like the Lebanese democracy movement`s, is itself a victory for the democrats. Hezbollah clearly felt that it must prove it is as popular a force as the democratic opposition. But something tells me that those Hezbollah demonstrators who were waving the picture of Syria`s president, Bashar al-Assad, were uncomfortable. And this is Hezbollah`s weak spot: deep down, it and its supporters know that when they raise the pictures of Syria`s president, they are raising the question of whose interests they have at heart.

If democracy in Lebanon is going to re-emerge in a reasonably stable way, Lebanese democratic forces have to constantly be inviting Hezbollah to join them. After all, Hezbollah represents an important and powerful trend among Lebanon`s Shiites, most of whom are patriots eager to see Lebanon independent and united. At the same time, though, the Lebanese democrats need to constantly and loudly ask Hezbollah - and get the U.N. and the European Union to constantly and loudly ask Hezbollah - "Why are you waving the picture of the Syrian president? Whose side are you on?"

President Bush should stay in the background and keep focused on defusing the Arab-Israeli conflict, which will deprive Hezbollah of all its excuses to remain armed. The impact on Hezbollah will be much more powerful if it`s the Lebanese democrats and the Saudis and the Europeans who ask Hezbollah over and over, "Do you have a real vision for a modern, progressive and pluralistic Lebanon? If so, why are you waving the picture of the Syrian president?"

If Hezbollah puts down Assad`s picture and comes up with an answer to that question, that would be a big deal. If not, it could spell big trouble, which is why Joseph Samaha wrote in Wednesday`s Lebanese daily Al Safir, "Yesterday was the sort of day in which homelands are founded or destroyed."

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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The enemy within

How an Americanist devoted to destroying international alliances became the US envoy to the UN
Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday March 10, 2005
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1434180,00.ht…

Guardian
In the heat of the battle over the Florida vote after the 2000 US presidential election, a burly, mustachioed man burst into the room where the ballots for Miami-Dade County were being tabulated, like John Wayne barging into a saloon for a shoot-out. "I`m with the Bush-Cheney team, and I`m here to stop the count," drawled John Bolton. And those ballots from Miami-Dade were not counted.

Now that same John Bolton has been named by President Bush as the US ambassador to the UN. "If I were redoing the security council today, I`d have one permanent member because that`s the real reflection of the distribution of power in the world," Bolton once said. Lately, as undersecretary of state for arms control, he has wrecked all the nonproliferation diplomacy within his reach. Over the past two decades he has been the person most dedicated to trying to discredit the UN. George Orwell`s clock of 1984 is striking 13.

The euphoria that Bush`s European trip marked a conversion on the road to Brussels is fading. For it was Bush himself who decided to reward Bolton with a position where he could continue his crusade as a "convinced Americanist" against the "globalists," especially those at the UN and the EU.

Bolton made a play to become deputy secretary of state after the 2004 election, but was blocked by Condoleezza Rice, who understood that his love of bureaucratic infighting would have undermined her authority. Dick Cheney privately promised Bolton that if all else failed he would give him a job on his vice presidential staff, but that proved unnecessary when Bush nominated him to the UN post. Rice announced his appointment, symbolically demonstrating that he reports to her. But Bolton has deep support within the White House, and Rice is very much a work-in-progress. With Bolton`s appointment, the empire strikes back.

Bolton is an extraordinary combination of political operator and ideologue. He began his career as a cog in the machine of Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, helping his political action committees evade legal restrictions and federal fines. Helms, the most powerful reactionary in the Senate, sponsored Bolton`s rise to Reagan`s justice department. "John Bolton," Helms said, "is the kind of man with whom I would want to stand at Armageddon, or what the Bible describes as the final battle between good and evil."

Bolton is often called a neoconservative, but he is more their ally, implementer and agent. His roots are in Helms`s Dixiecrat Republicanism, not the neocons` airy Trotskyism or Straussianism.

Bolton is a specimen of the "primitives", as Truman`s secretary of state Dean Acheson called the unilateralists and McCarthyites of the early cold war. Through his political integration into the neocon apparatus, Bolton might be properly classified a neoprimitive.

At the state department, Bolton was Colin Powell`s enemy within. In his first year, he forced the US withdrawal from the anti-ballistic missile treaty, destroyed a protocol on enforcing the biological weapons convention, and ousted the head of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. He scuttled the nuclear test ban treaty and the UN conference on the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons. And he was behind the renunciation of the US signature on the 1998 Rome statute creating the international criminal court. He described sending his letter notifying the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, as "the happiest moment of my government service".

Bolton`s meddling in diplomacy on nonproliferation with North Korea and Iran guaranteed that the allies had no unified position and encouraged the Koreans and Iranians to play the nuclear card. Bolton`s response to these crises has been to lead the charge to remove the UN head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei. In late November, Bolton denounced the Blair government and the Europeans negotiating with the Iranians as "soft" for attempting "diplomatic means".

Bolton might be granted the integrity of his primitivism, a true believer who imagines Fortress America besieged by the UN and Europeans - "Americanists find themselves surrounded by small armies of globalists, each tightly clutching a favourite new treaty or multilateralist proposal". But Bolton`s coarse ideology is advanced by sophisticated campaigns of disinformation - and not only on Iraq and North Korea. His leaks of falsehoods that Syria and Cuba had developed weapons of mass destruction sparked internal revolts by intelligence professionals and the foreign service.

Like his allies the neoconservatives, for Bolton the ends justify the means. But unlike them he has no use for romantic rhetoric about the "march of freedom" and "democracy", as he demonstrated so effectively in Florida. And now he has the job he sought above all from the beginning.

· Sidney Blumenthal is former senior adviser to President Clinton and author of The Clinton Wars

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Alles wieder zurück auf Ausgangstellung.
[urlLebanese Assembly Re-elects Pro-Syria Premier Who Quit]http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/10/international/middleeast/10lebanon.html[/url]

It is not democracy that`s on the march in the Middle East

Managed elections are the latest device to prop up pro-western regimes
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1434183,00.ht…

Seumas Milne
Thursday March 10, 2005

Guardian
For weeks a western chorus has been celebrating a new dawn of Middle Eastern freedom, allegedly triggered by the Iraq war. Tony Blair hailed a "ripple of change", encouraged by the US and Britain, that was bringing democracy to benighted Muslim lands.

First the Palestinians, then the Iraqis have finally had a chance to choose their leaders, it is said, courtesy of western intervention, while dictatorships such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia are democratising under American pressure. And then in Lebanon, as if on cue, last month`s assassination of the former prime minister triggered a wave of street protests against Syria`s military presence that brought down the pro-Damascus government in short order.

At last there was a democratic "cedar revolution" to match the US-backed Ukrainian "orange revolution" and a photogenic display of people power to bolster George Bush`s insistence that the region is with him. "Freedom will prevail in Lebanon", Bush declared this week, promising anti-Syrian protesters that the US is "on your side". The foreign secretary, Jack Straw, is expected to join the cheerleaders for Arab democracy in a speech today and warn the left not to defend the status quo because of anti-Americanism.

The first decisive rebuff to this fairy tale of spin was delivered in Beirut on Tuesday, when at least 500,000 - some reports said it was more like a million - demonstrators took to the streets to show solidarity with embattled Syria and reject US and European interference in Lebanon. Mobilised by Hizbullah, the Shia Islamist movement, their numbers dwarfed the nearby anti-Syrian protesters by perhaps 10 to one; and while the well-heeled Beiruti jeunesse dorée have dominated the "people power" jamboree, most of Tuesday`s demonstrators came from the Shia slums and the impoverished south. Bush`s response was to ignore them completely. Whatever their numbers, they were, it seems, the wrong kind of people.

But the Hizbullah rally did more than demolish the claims of national unity behind the demand for immediate Syrian withdrawal. It also exposed the rottenness at the core of what calls itself a "pro-democracy" movement in Lebanon. The anti-Syrian protests, dominated by the Christian and Druze minorities, are not in fact calling for a genuine democracy at all, but for elections under the long-established corrupt confessional carve-up, which gives the traditionally privileged Christians half the seats in parliament and means no Muslim can ever be president. As if to emphasise the point, one politician championing the anti-Syrian protests, Pierre Gemayel of the rightwing Christian Phalange party (whose militiamen famously massacred 2,000 Palestinian refugees under Israeli floodlights in Sabra and Shatila in 1982), recently complained that voting wasn`t just a matter of majorities, but of the "quality" of the voters. If there were a real democratic election, Gemayel and his friends could expect to be swept aside by a Hizbullah-led government.

The neutralisation of Hizbullah, whose success in driving Israel out of Lebanon in 2000 won it enormous prestige in the Arab world, is certainly one aim of the US campaign to push Syria out of Lebanon.The US brands Hizbullah, the largest party in the Lebanese parliament and leading force among the Shia, Lebanon`s largest religious group, as a terrorist organisation without serious justification. But the pressure on Syria has plenty of other motivations: its withdrawal stands to weaken one of the last independent Arab regimes, however sclerotic, open the way for a return of western and Israeli influence in Lebanon, and reduce Iran`s leverage.

Ironically, Syria`s original intervention in Lebanon was encouraged by the US during the civil war in 1976 partly to prevent the democratisation of the country at the expense of the Christian minority`s power. Syria`s presence and highhandedness has long caused resentment, even if it is not regarded as a foreign occupation by many Lebanese. But withdrawal will create a vacuum with huge potential dangers for the country`s fragile peace.

What the US campaign is clearly not about is the promotion of democracy in either Lebanon or Syria, where the most plausible alternative to the Assad regime are radical Islamists. In a pronouncement which defies satire, Bush insisted on Tuesday that Syria must withdraw from Lebanon before elections due in May "for those elections to be free and fair". Why the same point does not apply to elections held in occupied Iraq - where the US has 140,000 troops patrolling the streets, compared with 14,000 Syrian soldiers in the Lebanon mountains - or in occupied Palestine, for that matter, is unexplained. And why a UN resolution calling for Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon has to be complied with immediately, while those demanding an Israeli pullout from Palestinian and Syrian territory can be safely ignored for 38 years, is apparently unworthy of comment.

The claim that democracy is on the march in the Middle East is a fraud. It is not democracy, but the US military, that is on the march. The Palestinian elections in January took place because of the death of Yasser Arafat - they would have taken place earlier if the US and Israel hadn`t known that Arafat was certain to win them - and followed a 1996 precedent. The Iraqi elections may have looked good on TV and allowed Kurdish and Shia parties to improve their bargaining power, but millions of Iraqis were unable or unwilling to vote, key political forces were excluded, candidates` names were secret, alleged fraud widespread, the entire system designed to maintain US control and Iraqis unable to vote to end the occupation. They have no more brought democracy to Iraq than US-orchestrated elections did to south Vietnam in the 1960s and 70s. As for the cosmetic adjustments by regimes such as Egypt`s and Saudi Arabia`s, there is not the slightest sign that they will lead to free elections, which would be expected to bring anti-western governments to power.

What has actually taken place since 9/11 and the Iraq war is a relentless expansion of US control of the Middle East, of which the threats to Syria are a part. The Americans now have a military presence in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and Qatar - and in not one of those countries did an elected government invite them in. Of course Arabs want an end to tyrannical regimes, most of which have been supported over the years by the US, Britain and France: that is the source of much anti-western Muslim anger. The dictators remain in place by US licence, which can be revoked at any time - and managed elections are being used as another mechanism for maintaining pro-western regimes rather than spreading democracy.

Jack Straw is right about one thing: there`s no happy future in the regional status quo. His government could play a crucial role in helping to promote a real programme for liberty and democracy in the Middle East: it would need to include a commitment to allow independent media such as al-Jazeera to flourish; an end to military and financial support for despots; and a withdrawal of all foreign forces from the region. Now that would herald a real dawn of freedom.

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Is Bush Bringing Democracy to the Middle East? A Debate on U.S. Foreign Policy in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Egypt and More

Wednesday, March 9th, 2005

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/09/1448249
[urlWatch 256k stream]http://play.rbn.com/?url=demnow/demnow/demand/2005/march/video/dnB20050309a.rm&proto=rtsp&start=11:47[/url]
[urlShow mp3]http://www.archive.org/download/dn2005-0309/dn2005-0309-1_64kb.mp3[/url]

We host a debate on the question: Is Bush bringing democracy to the Middle East? We are joined by Steven Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations, Rahul Mahajan, an independent journalist and author and Farid Ghadry, the co-founder and current president of the Reform Party of Syria, a U.S.-based Syrian opposition party. [includes rush transcript]

In a major address yesterday at the National Defense University in Washington DC, President Bush spoke extensively about his vision for the future of the Middle East. But as the president spoke, more than half a million people rallied in Beirut in a massive demonstration called by Hezbollah. That demonstration was pro-Syria, anti-Israel and against US intervention in all countries of the region. In his speech yesterday, Bush renewed his threats against Syria and again indicated that he believes that his policies are leading to an era of sweeping change in the Middle East.

* President Bush, speaking at the National Defense University, March 8, 2005.

President Bush speaking yesterday at the National Defense University in Washington DC. Today, we are going to continue our close look at the Bush administration`s policies in the Middle East and this question of democratizing the region.

* Steven Cook, a Next Generation Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
* Rahul Mahajan, an independent journalist who has traveled twice to occupied Iraq and is the author of "Full Spectrum Dominance: U.S. Power in Iraq and Beyond." He is also publisher of the weblog EmpireNotes.org.
* Farid Ghadry, co-founder and current president of the Reform Party of Syria, a US-based Syrian opposition party.

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

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AMY GOODMAN: In his speech yesterday, President Bush renewed his threats against Syria and again indicated he believes his policies are leading to an era of sweeping change in the Middle East.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: The people of Afghanistan have embraced free government after suffering under one of the most backward tyrannies on earth. The voters in Iraq defied threats of murder, and have set their country on a path to full democracy. The people of the Palestinian territories cast their ballots against violence and corruption of the past. And any who doubt the appeal of freedom in the Middle East can look to Lebanon, where the Lebanese people are demanding a free and independent nation. In the words of one Lebanese observer, democracy is knocking at the door of this country, and if it`s successful in Lebanon, it is going to ring the doors of every Arab regime. Across the Middle East, a critical mass of events is taking that region in a hopeful new direction. Historic changes have many causes, yet these changes have one factor in common. The businessmen in Beirut recently said, we have removed the mask of fear. We`re not afraid anymore. Pervasive fear is the foundation of every dictatorial regime, the prop that holds up all power not based on consent. And when the regime of fear is broken, and the people find their courage and find their voice, democracy is their goal, and tyrants themselves have reason to fear. History is moving quickly, and leaders in the Middle East have important choices to make. The world community, including Russia and Germany and France and Saudi Arabia and the United States, has presented the Syrian government with one of those choices, to end its nearly 30-year occupation of Lebanon or become even more isolated from the world. The Lebanese people have heard the speech by the Syrian president. They have seen these delaying tactics and half measures before. The time has come for Syria to fully implement Security Council Resolution 1559. All Syrian military forces and intelligence personnel must withdraw before the Lebanese elections for those elections to be free and fair.

AMY GOODMAN: President Bush, speaking yesterday at the National Defense University in Washington, DC. Today, a debate. Is President Bush bringing democracy to the Middle East? We are joined by Steven Cook, who is a Next Generation Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations; Rahul Mahajan, an independent journalist who has traveled twice to occupied Iraq, is the author of Full Spectrum Dominance: U.S. Power in Iraq and Beyond, also publisher of the weblog EmpireNotes.org; and in Washington, D.C. we’re joined by Farid Ghadry, co-founder and current president of the Reform Party of Syria, a U.S.-based Syrian opposition party. We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Let`s begin with Steven Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations. Major developments yesterday, massive protest in Lebanon. Can you comment on its significance, also in light of what President Bush had to say?

STEVEN COOK: I think it`s very important to recognize that Hezbollah was able to bring out hundreds of thousands of people as opposed to the tens of thousands that the Lebanese opposition have been able to bring out into the streets. And it shifts the calculus in the region. Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya have been broadcasting the opposition rallies over the course of the last two or three weeks, creating the impression that all of the Lebanese people were opposed to Syria, and turning our public opinion against the Syrians. Now, with pictures of 500,000 or so people in the streets of Lebanon protesting in favor of the Syrian presence in Lebanon, it certainly shifts the calculus both in Washington as well as Damascus. I think that Bashar al-Assad has demonstrated that he has a certain amount of political support in Lebanon, and it`s going to make it more difficult for the United States to ratchet up the political pressure on him.

AMY GOODMAN: Farid Ghadry, what was your response to this demonstration?

FARID GHADRY: I disagree with the notion that most of the people yesterday were Lebanese. I think we have heard and we know for a fact that the Syrian-Lebanese borders were open yesterday. There was a great flow of cars coming in from Syria. We know that they have been -- they have been told -- the Syrian laborers in Lebanon have been told to join that march, and there are up to a million laborers in Lebanon, and many of them have joined that, so there are a lot of Syrians amongst the people that you have seen yesterday on TV. And the other thing that we have to keep in mind is that the Hezbollah ordered its militants to show up with their families. So they had no choice. So all of them, all under military orders, all of them showed up on the streets. So, in reality, what Hezbollah is trying to show is that they are powerful, they`re available, and that they should be considered as a threat. But the reality is that many of them were not Lebanese, and they received orders to show up on the streets. So I would caution people to look at the numbers yesterday and believe that this is a wave against democracy in that part of the world. I think it is just a veneer, and I think you are going to see the Lebanese people -- what this is going to do is that the Lebanese people that really want to see democracy, it’s going to galvanize them and they`re going to even organize themselves better in the days to come.

AMY GOODMAN: Rahul Mahajan.

RAHUL MAHAJAN: Well, it`s absolutely true that Syria has illegitimately interfered with the Lebanese democratic processes, but what`s going on here is primarily not about democracy, it`s about the question of whether you think the Syrian true presence is a bigger threat or Israeli expansionism is a bigger threat. One of the key issues for democracy in Lebanon, not even being touched on by Bush, is the sectarian confessional power-sharing arrangement, which by now dramatically over-represents Christians and under represents the rapidly growing Shia population. This is a clear sign. Everything that Bush has said, all the media --

AMY GOODMAN: Hezbollah being a Shia party.

RAHUL MAHAJAN: Hezbollah being a Shia party. All of the media coverage in what Bush has said is really an indication of the fact that they’re seizing on an opportunity to capitalize on trying to create regime change in Syria.

AMY GOODMAN: We have to break. When we come back, we`ll continue this discussion, and we`ll continue the discussion of U.S. foreign policy, and what it`s doing from Palestine to Iraq, Syria to Egypt to Lebanon. Is democracy breaking out, as much of the media is saying throughout this last week?

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: As we talk about U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, talking about Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Palestine, actually Pakistan, as well, talking about democracy in the Middle East. Our guests, Steven Cook, Council on Foreign Relations; Rahul Mahajan, empirenotes.org; and Farid Ghadry, Reform Party of Syria, he is speaking to us from Washington, D.C. I wanted to quote from Juan Cole, a professor at University of Michigan, saying, “The simplistic master narrative constructed by the partisans of President Bush held that the January 30 elections in Iraq were a huge success and signaled a turn to democracy in the Middle East. Then the anti-Syrian demonstrations were interpreted as a yearning for democracy inspired by the Iraqi elections.” Juan Cole goes on to say, “This interpretation is a gross misunderstanding of the situation in the Middle East. Bush is not pushing with any real force for democratization of Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy, or Pakistan, where the elected parliament demands in vain that General Musharraf take off his uniform if he wants to be president, or Tunisia, where Zine Ben Ali has just won his fourth unopposed term as president. Democratization is being pushed only for regimes that Bush dislikes, such as Syria or Iran.” Steven Cook.

STEVEN COOK: Well, I disagree with some of what Juan Cole says on this issue. I think the president has used the presidential bully pulpit rather effectively in raising the expectations of people in the region about democracy and freedom, which has in turn put pressure on regimes in the region, and that`s why we see some movement there. The leadership in Egypt, the leadership in a variety of other countries in the region have taken steps to try to relieve the political pressure that has been brought to bear from both external, like the United States -- external places like the United States, or the internal pressures for change. Where I agree with Professor Cole is that there is a significant difference between the President`s lofty rhetoric about democracy and freedom and the actual policies and program initiatives that the United States has brought to bear to deal with this issue. Those policies smack of the incrementalism of the past, a minimal kind of economic change, social reform, giving people certain openings, but without really pushing the question of political change. I think it`s very clear that we haven`t pushed in place like Saudi Arabia, we haven`t pushed really in places like Tunisia, even in Egypt, where Hosni Mubarak has recently announced multiparty presidential elections. We haven`t been very serious about pressuring those regimes for more fundamental political openings.

AMY GOODMAN: Rahul Mahajan.

RAHUL MAHAJAN: Actually, to put it frankly, it’s the opponents of the Bush administration that are much more pro-democracy than the Bush administration. If you look globally at their plans, there’s -- they support the military coup in Venezuela as a pro-democracy step. They kidnap Aristide of Haiti. Bolivian mass demonstrations that have unseated two presidents are hailed as anti-democratic, while mass demonstrations in Lebanon, much smaller, are hailed as pro-democratic. And most importantly, the Iraq elections themselves, which are supposed to be the thing that set off all of these things, including, I suppose, the elections held before January 30, were forced on the Bush administration by Ayatollah Sistani. He overturned Paul Bremer`s plan for a U.S.-dominated caucus system. Later in the Security Council, the United States wanted a resolution authorizing an indefinite military occupation of Iraq with no timeline for elections. What it got because of the other members of the Security Council was a one-year authorization, subject to approval of the elected Iraqi government, and a timeline for elections. So it`s -- right now it’s making a virtue of necessity. The only case in which there is a government that it actually supports, that it has imposed -- seems to impose any kind of restrictions on is Egypt, and as Steven said, these changes in Egypt are so minor, and in no way imperil Hosni Mubarak`s re-election, that in fact it`s quite possible they were done primarily to make the United States look good as it launches a new initiative.

AMY GOODMAN: Farid Ghadry, do you share this analysis of the Reform Party of Syria?

FARID GHADRY: Well, I have to admit that this administration is eyeing -- there are two types of regimes in the Middle East. There`s the violent one, and there are the non-violent ones. The violent ones are Iran -- was Iraq -- and Syria. The non-violent ones are Egypt and Saudi Arabia, where they actually do not support terrorism, and they don`t go out of their way to blow up people. And so, what this administration is trying to do is trying to concentrate on the violent regimes today, because they feel that this is -- they represent a clear and present danger not only to the people themselves, not only to terrorism and to the acts of terrorism that takes place from population that have been disenfranchised and oppressed, but also they`re a clear and present danger to this nation. So, if you don`t hear the President speak about Saudi Arabia and Egypt, even though he nudged them once in a while in his speech, and he doesn`t speak about Tunisia and all this, is because he`s trying to wrap his arms around those regimes and kind of pressure them enough to quit on terrorism and quit on those acts of violence, because it affects the nation, affects this country, and after that, you will see that this president will attempt and try and bring democracy, as he said in his speech at the National Defense University, to all of the Middle East. What we have to believe -- what we have to understand here is that this is a president who is on the cutting edge of what needs to be done to stop terrorism. Yet there is a whole machine out there in Washington that is not there yet. You have 46,000 employees at the U.S. State Department, countless other employees in different agencies, that don`t see eye to eye with the President, because they have been in the business of supporting dictatorship over the last 30 and 40 years. So the President is on the avant-garde. He is pressing these buttons, and you’re gonna see in the next few months that all of these organizations are gonna rally around him, and they will support what he is supporting. And you are going to see that this will have a tremendous effect on the Middle East.

AMY GOODMAN: Rahul Mahajan.

RAHUL MAHAJAN: Well, I think that this president particularly seems to identify all of these words you hear -- democracy, security, terrorism -- all of those things -- anti-terrorism, pro democracy, whatever -- he all identifies them very simply with some conception of American hegemony. That`s what`s at work here, plain and simple. What’s happened in the Middle East is very clear on that, because, in fact, he has opposed democracy, and he has opposed numerous democratic initiatives in the countries that he himself is occupying -- Afghanistan and Iraq -- very often only grudgingly allowing elections to be taking place or trying to use them to manipulate to sort of -- as a demonstration. Now that he has been forced into the elections in Iraq, then he has now seized this opportunity to actually, under the guise of democracy promotion, widen the war. The primary thing going on right here is the perception that Syria and Iran are actually supporting the resistance in Iraq. There`s very little indication that this is true, especially of Syria, but just as in Vietnam when they said Laos and Cambodia had to be invaded in order to beat the Vietnamese resistance, a lot of people in the administration think that Syria and even Iran need to be attacked in order to beat the Iraqi resistance.

AMY GOODMAN: Farid Ghadry.

FARID GHADRY: May I interfere here? Yes. I am really amazed at when I hear when people like Rahul talk. I mean, here they are shooting down democracy in Afghanistan, calling it occupation, shooting down democracy in Iraq, when 8 million people showed up. That amazed even European allies, have stood the ground and have said maybe the President is right. And under the cover that these are regimes that are occupied, and the United States is trying to bring hegemony, I don`t understand what is the -- what is so hegemonic about a word such as anti-oppression.

RAHUL MAHAJAN: I`m not shooting down democracy in Iraq. It is a victory of Sistani’s.

FARID GHADRY: No, you are. You are, Rahul. You are, Rahul.

RAHUL MAHAJAN: I am not. Absolutely not. I’m saying it’s a good thing.

FARID GHADRY: Because you are saying – you are saying that pro-democracy is an American --

RAHUL MAHAJAN: It`s a good thing that was forced on the United States.

FARID GHADRY: Excuse me, can I -- can you let me finish? You are saying that pro-democracy is an American notion.

RAHUL MAHAJAN: No, I`m not.

FARID GHADRY: Pro-democracy is not a U.S. notion. But that`s what you said. This is an American notion, it`s an American hegemony. It is not.

RAHUL MAHAJAN: No, I`m saying that the opponents of the Bush administration are more pro-democracy. Don`t mischaracterize me.

FARID GHADRY: The liberties of the people in the Middle East is more important today than it has ever been in the past, and we need to stand by these people and support them in seeking freedom and liberty and democracy the same way we have it in this country. Why is it so wrong to support millions and hundreds of millions of people?

RAHUL MAHAJAN: It would be nice if we were doing that. We are not.

FARID GHADRY: Everything that we have done, all of those elections that you have seen are what? Are they fake elections, Rahul?

RAHUL MAHAJAN: No, absolutely not. The Iraq elections were not fake elections. The reason is that the United States has very little political power in Iraq. It has a lot of military power, but it was forced to accede to Sistani`s mass mobilization to bring the elections. And once it was forced to accede to the elections, it couldn`t manipulate the results because Sistani would have brought people back into the streets. So, in fact, the election results in Iraq are not a sham. The people who are elected are not pro-American, in fact, some of the parties in the primary United Iraqi Alliance, including SCIRI, actually organized mass anti-occupation demonstrations in April of 2003. I`m not at all saying those are a sham.

FARID GHADRY: Rahul, at the level of Iraqi details of what`s going on, the President in his inaugural speech, yesterday and in many speeches, had made it clear that democracy and freedom in the Middle East is the key issues here. There is no way that anybody in the Middle East tomorrow, today or tomorrow, can kidnap a country again and install another regime or another autocracy. So we have to support that notion that people need to be free in the Middle East.

AMY GOODMAN: Steven Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations.

STEVEN COOK: Let me just add a bit to this debate that`s going on here. I think that Rahul is correct in the fact that when Paul Bremer arrived in Baghdad, he believed he was going to stay as pro-counsel for anywhere from five to ten years and, in fact, the United States was outmaneuvered by Ayatollah Ali Sistani who was calling for direct elections, because he knows where the demographic power lies, and that’s with the Shia in Iraq. It was exhilarating to watch the Iraqi election. It was as good as all of the news media outlets suggest it was, but it was only really good for the Shia and the Kurds. You have to remember that the Sunnis basically boycotted this election and had very little representation in writing this constitution. Now there will be some effort to bring them back in. But the United States did not go into Iraq primarily to bring democracy. That was probably third or fourth on the list, behind weapons of mass destruction and some notional connection between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. On the question of Syria, I agree that there is no country that is going to be able to swallow up another country again, but we also have to recognize that a complete Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon is fraught with a certain amount of risk. I agree that Syria`s occupation of Lebanon has been largely illegitimate. But you cannot -- it flies in the face of facts to suggest that Syria has not brought some modicum of stability to Lebanon over the course of the last fifteen years. What I fear now is, with the kind of international pressure that is being brought to bear on Syria, Syria will withdraw but ultimately bite back. Its intelligence agents, its supporters in Syria will try to destabilize that country, justifying a Syrian presence or a reintroduction of Syrian troops into that country. We`re playing a dangerous game here.

AMY GOODMAN: Farid Ghadry, I just wanted to ask about your party, the Reform Party of Syria. The Financial Times did a not very flattering piece on you in September. It was when you were pushing for the re-election of President Bush, and it said your “latest project, trying to bring down the Syrian government, follows the launch of a Home Shopping Network for the Middle East, a venture in Russia aimed at extracting gold from old Russian computers in an attempt to start a coffee company to compete with Starbucks.” But that while you have quickly abandoned your entrepreneurial ventures, that right now, your goal is to bring down the Syrian government. Is this a fair characterization, and how do you think that can be accomplished?

FARID GHADRY: Well, I have not really quit on my entrepreneurial ventures. As a matter of fact, I’m in the midst of starting a new venture today. So, that is my livelihood, and we will continue to do that. However, you reach point in your life --

AMY GOODMAN: What is that venture?

FARID GHADRY: I`m sorry. I cannot discuss it. We`re still in the patent process right now. Forgive me if I don`t do that. What we are trying to do right now in Syria, and you know, you reach a point in your life when you say to yourself, something has to give in to all of the autocracy, the terrorism, and the lack of freedom in the Arab countries. We are the most backward people on earth. If we have a factory that can produce cans, we think we have technology. People do not understand that our backwardness in the Arab countries, all of the Arab countries, is a real reason for -- that economic deprivation is a real reason for all that terrorism that`s taking place. That oppression is taking its toll on its people. So you come to a point in your life and you say that you gotta do something about this. I think having been born in Syria has given me the opportunity to express these things. I believe that a lot of people, other opposition leaders inside Syria and outside Syria have expressed the same thing; and good for them, and we support them, and we hope that we all can reach the point at which we can change the regime of Syria. We are of the belief that unless this violent, pro-terrorist regime changes in Syria, that has stifled the liberties of Syrians for the last 43 years, that have robbed the country of its resources, that have countless prisoners of conscious today, 800 of them, in Syrian prisons, some of them delivered dead to their people, to their families with no excuse. Unless we change that regime, Syria will always be weak.

AMY GOODMAN: How do you think it should be changed?

FARID GHADRY: I think there is a variety of ways to change it. Let me finish the point, Amy. Unless -- as long as Syria is weak, Syria will always be dangerous. We have to come out of that oppression and become a strong nation. Once we become a strong nation, you will see that our self-esteem will rise, and then we will join the international community of nations. How do we change the regime? There are a variety of ways. I think what the President is doing, talking about freedom in Lebanon, is very important. I think he needs to talk about freedom in Syria, and once he does that, you will see the Syrian people encouraged. We have had our uprising, March 12 last year, by the Kurdish. It was not supported by the US, but I think today, if we have another uprising, I think it will be a different story. And I think once we have that, the people will eventually peacefully take over the country, and you will see democracy flourish in that part of the world.

AMY GOODMAN: Are you opposed to a U.S. invasion of Syria?

FARID GHADRY: Yes, we are. We don`t believe that, number one: we have never believed in that notion, because I think when you look at the Iraqi formula, this was really a kind of a one-time historical bizarre act. I don`t think it could be repeated, but at the end of the day, I also believe that the Syrian people, who have been controlled by a minority, 5% minority in the country, 95% of the people are oppressed, that if you tell them that we are behind your freedom, they will rise and they will be able to take control of that country.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you see Achmed Chalabi as a positive role model, what he pushed for here in this country, the invasion of Iraq, a businessman who was very much supported by the United States, and then went back and tried to become Prime Minister of the country?

FARID GHADRY: We see Achmed Chalabi as the springing board from which all of those ideas are coming to bear onto the U.S. government. We see him as someone who has seen that the only way that you can bring democracy to your nation is by doing what he has done. We believe in that democratic notion. Whether we are going to follow on the same path in Syria, that`s not up to us to call the shots.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you see yourself as the Achmed Chalabi of Syria?

FARID GHADRY: No, I don`t. I see myself more as someone who will bring democracy to Syria and let the Syrian people decide what is best for them. I truly believe that there are hundreds of thousands of people inside Syria that, if you give them the chance, they could lead that nation into the peaceful nation that we all want in that part of the world. So, if I’m called upon to serve my country, I will do it, with honor. My native country, I will do it with honor, but if not, I’m a very happy man to have brought democracy to Syria.

AMY GOODMAN: Are you working with the U.S. government now? Does the Reform Party of Syria have U.S. financial backing?

FARID GHADRY: No, we don`t. We are self-financed. We are supported by Syrian businessmen, and we have continued to do that. I don`t think we`ll ever try to get money from the American government. Any money that you get from any government will tie your hands, and you will have shackles around you, so we would rather be free, and we are working independently of any government.

AMY GOODMAN: Steven Cook, final comments?

STEVEN COOK: I think it`s very interesting, this discussion of Syria and the Bush administration`s sudden interests in Syria. In fact, the Syrian Accountability Act was something that emerged from Congress, not the administration. And the President signed it as a matter of course, but not because this was an administration policy. In fact, the administration had been praising Syria for its cooperation on al Qaeda while at the same time quietly pressuring them on issues such as Hezbollah and Arab-Israeli peace process. The administration has only taken up the cause of freedom and democracy in Syria and Lebanon as a result of the assassination of Rafiq Hariri. So, I think that this sudden emphasis and focus on Syria is something that is fortuitous. It`s just a matter of events. The administration had not been focusing on this issue up until now and had been really consumed with the issues regarding Iraq and Iran.

AMY GOODMAN: What about this idea that the U.S. actually used Syria, sent, for example, Maher Arar, the Syrian-Canadian, through extraordinary rendition? The U.S. took him off a plane in Kennedy airport, flew him to Syria where he said, I will be tortured if I’m sent there. Hadn`t lived there in 20 years, was held for a year in a tiny cell, was tortured, and then sent back to Canada with no charges. The US working with Syria in that case, Rahul Mahajan, and then the US says that Syria’s engaged in torture and is one of the reasons that it, you know, uses to say it is a country that has got to change?

RAHUL MAHAJAN: Well, that`s absolutely true. Of course, the United States has cooperated with numerous dictatorships in this kind of torture arrangement, as well as doing it themselves. If you think that that`s hypocritical, though, you have got to read the State Department Report on Human Rights in which it cites the U.S. created Iraqi government from massive human rights violations but says nothing about human rights violations by U.S. military forces in Iraq. The key here in all of this, I think, is what are the intentions of the Bush administration? I think the only place where Steven and I disagree is I don`t think that this most anti-democratic administration in recent U.S. history has any pro-democracy intentions anywhere. And I would say that the main test of any punitive commitment to democracy is this: There`s a new elected government in Iraq, statutorily by Security Council resolutions and by U.S. agreements, it has sovereignty. It has the right to legislate. It has the right to call for U.S. troops to leave. It has the right to put restrictions on U.S. troop behaviors. It has the right to overturn any of Paul Bremer`s laws. It was elected by a populous that polls consistently show is opposed to the occupation. Even the Shiite-Arabs, something like 70% of them, are opposed to the occupation. If the United States is committed to democracy, and if there is a democracy in Iraq, we should be seeing some reflection of the attitudes in the legislation of this new government. If we don`t see that, then we don`t see any commitment to democracy.

AMY GOODMAN: On that note, we have to say goodbye, but the conversation will certainly continue. Rahul Mahajan, empirenotes.org, author of Full Spectrum Dominance, Steven Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Farid Ghadry of the Reform Party of Syria. Thank you for joining us.

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Returning US marines prepare for the battle to retain sanity
By Oliver Poole at Camp Fallujah
(Filed: 08/03/2005)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/03…

It is time to go home for the US marines who stormed Fallujah last year, killing more than 2,000 insurgents in house-to-house fighting that reduced stretches of the city to rubble.

Kit bags are being packed and boxes freighted back to America as the troops count down the days to the 20-hour flight that will take them back to their loved ones.

Brains are being reprogrammed, from kill-without-hesitation mode to one more attuned to hugging wives, paying bills and drinking beers at parties in the back yard.

Thousands of servicemen at Camp Fallujah are being ordered to relive memories many would rather forget. Holding group therapy in confessional sessions is the Marine Corps`s new remedy for the mental scars of battle.

"Dogs eating corpses," recalled a sergeant in one of the intimate gatherings.

"That`s right," said a captain. "I saw a dog coming from the chest cavity of a man, its face dripping in blood. That was pretty bad. I`ve got dogs and I don`t think I`m quite going to look at them the same way again."

Then another marine said: "The smell of it. I am not looking forward to the next barbecue."

A hand went up. "The suffering of the women and children." Then another: "The loss of good comrades."

Across Iraq US troops are being rotated and thousands of battle-hardened veterans are flooding back home. Haunting them all is the spectre of the dysfunctional Vietnam veteran in the 1970s and 80s, abandoned, alienated and alone.

"We did not do a very good job on our soldiers then and we learnt from that," said Capt Steve Pike, Camp Fallujah`s regimental chaplain. "What these marines have seen has changed them and we need to help them deal with it."

The emotional toll is real. Sixteen per cent of army personnel who served in the invasion of Iraq in 2003 report combat related mental illness. There has been a marked rise in the number of broken marriages, car accidents, fights and alcohol and drug abuse.

To try to avoid more of the same, the "Warrior Transition`` therapy sessions, with departing marines gathered in 40-strong groups to share their experiences, are now compulsory.

The troops are mostly receptive, even the outwardly extremely tough ones such as the man with "Devil Dog`` tattooed on his arm. He had a nagging fear that his wife may have been unfaithful while he was away.

They have all seen Rambo, the film in which a traumatised Vietnam soldier runs amok in a sleepy American town, and are aware of the effects warfare can have on the psyche.

"When I lay my head down and go to sleep I can see the images of the city," says Cpl Ivan Getierrez, 21. "There was nothing but rockets and machineguns going everywhere. I lost two good friends. I think about why it was them and not me. I am not who I was before this."

The marines are taught that their wives or girlfriends are unlikely to have been transformed into the "sexual Houdinis" they may have fantasised about while they were apart.

Go slow with reconnecting with your children, comes the advice. Don`t be surprised by the nightmares. Tolerate bad traffic.

"What would you do if you`re in a bar and someone started making disparaging remarks about the war in Iraq?" Capt Pike asked one group.

"Smash him over the head with a beer bottle," came back the answer.

During the coming months America will discover how many can follow the official advice and simply walk away.



© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2005.

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$2500 für eine Menschen, $1500 für eine Verletzung und $500 für eine Kuh.
Das ist richtig billig im Irak. Das ist die verballerte Munition wohl öfter teurer.

THE WORLD
U.S. Addresses Iraqis` Losses With Payments
The monetary handouts for deaths, injuries or damage are goodwill gestures and do not signify culpability, military officials say.
By David Zucchino
Times Staff Writer
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-cond…

March 10, 2005

BAQUBAH, Iraq — Every other Wednesday and Thursday, a long line of the bereft and the aggrieved forms on the dusty roadway outside the fortified U.S. military compound here.

Iraqi men and women, and occasionally children, wait in blinding sunshine or dreary rainfall to present damage claims to the U.S. military. Their cases range from the tragic to the mundane:

A widow says her husband was killed during an American combat operation. A father reports his young son lost an arm in American gunfire. A farmer`s cows were killed, a house was damaged, a car was wrecked, windows were broken.

A determined complainant with enough perseverance might wait several hours to be searched and then escorted inside the barbed wire and blast walls to speak to a military legal officer. In more than half the cases nationwide, legal officers say, a cash payment is made — up to $2,500 for a death, $1,500 for an injury and $500 for property damage.

Under the informal "condolence payments" program launched in mid-2003, the U.S. military does not claim to compensate Iraqis for their losses. It does not admit guilt or acknowledge liability or negligence. It is merely saying, in effect, "We sympathize with your loss," as one judge advocate general officer put it.

Military legal officers say a condolence payment is a gesture that expresses sympathy in concrete terms.

"The program is designed not to make up for anything but to acknowledge that there has been a tragedy or some sort of damage," said Capt. Emily Schiffer, chief of administrative law for the Army`s 1st Cavalry Division. "It`s an expression of sympathy and condolence to a family. Obviously, it`s the right thing to do to kind of bridge the gap between the two parties."

By its very nature, the program is arbitrary and uneven. Many Iraqis are not aware of it, and not all have the means to reach a U.S. claims processing area or to gather the necessary evidence. The burden of proof is on Iraqis, the final decision is made by a U.S. commander, and there is no appeal.

Suffering by civilians has been a sensitive and volatile issue for the U.S. in its operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Pentagon has refused to collect data on civilian casualties, even as some human rights groups estimate the combined number of dead and injured in the two countries to be in the low tens of thousands.

Hundreds of Iraqi civilians have been killed or wounded at military checkpoints or while sharing the road with military convoys. Because of the frequent car bombings and roadside explosions, U.S. soldiers are wary of approaching vehicles. In many cases, civilians are shot after failing to heed shouts and warning shots required by military rules of engagement. In some cases, civilians panicked and sped up at the sound of the shots.

Anti-U.S. resentment runs high among many Iraqis, especially in Sunni Muslim areas. Hafiz Abdullah, 40, complained of "hysterical" American reaction to cars and pedestrians in Muqdadiya, an insurgent stronghold.

"Their treatment is very bad toward us, and it doesn`t seem like those soldiers are from a civilized country," he said.

But Ibrahim Makoter, 43, who said his car flipped over and was badly damaged when it was hit by a U.S. armored vehicle in Baghdad in August, said he was gratified by the American response. He said a U.S. military policeman righted the car, apologized and told him where to file a claim. A month after filing, he was paid in cash.

"This is something we aren`t used to seeing," Makoter said.

The condolence payments reach only a fraction of families who have suffered since the U.S. military invaded Iraq in March 2003. But for all its shortcomings, the program seems to pay tribute to the tribal tradition of "blood money" for loss of life or property.

"It`s intended as a public relations tool — sort of a no-hard-feelings type of payment," said Maj. John Moore, a U.S. Army legal officer in charge of processing claims at Forward Operating Base Warhorse outside Baqubah, about 30 miles north of Baghdad. "It`s not designed to make them whole again, only to alleviate their hardships."

The program is so informal and decentralized that total payout figures are difficult to obtain. An Army spokesman said about $2.2 million was paid from mid-2003 to mid-2004, but he said he could not find current figures — or the number of claims filed or approved. An officer with the Army comptroller`s office in Baghdad said about $450,000 had been paid in greater Baghdad since June.

The program was not initiated by the military, which is wary of setting any precedent that might be perceived as acknowledging responsibility for civilian deaths. The payments began as a response to legislation introduced in April 2003 by Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and passed as part of a $2.5-billion humanitarian aid package for Iraq.

The legislation specifies that the payments are neither compensation nor reparations.

Claims by foreign citizens against the U.S. military are normally processed under the Foreign Claims Act. But that law, which allows for payments in negligence cases, excludes any claim arising from combat.

The condolence payments offer a way around the law, said Capt. Darren Pohlmann, a contract law attorney with the 3rd Infantry Division.

"Liability or negligence does not come into play," he said. "It`s a combat situation, there`s a war going on out there, and unfortunately sometimes people are caught in the crossfire."

Not all disbursements are made for losses arising from U.S. actions. Schiffer said a payment was made to the widow of an Iraqi worker at a U.S. base who was killed by insurgents. And in Muqdadiya in north-central Iraq, Lt. Col. Roger Cloutier said he intended to pay the widow of an assassinated Iraqi army sergeant major.

The payments are approved by local commanders after review by legal officers. The money comes from the Commanders` Emergency Response Program, which officials use to pay for local projects.

Dhia Mohammed, a 24-year-old college student, arrived at Camp Warhorse on Feb. 16 to complain that his 1993 Hyundai sedan had been damaged by a U.S. Humvee on Christmas Day. Mohammed provided an impressive level of detailed evidence — more than most claimants, Moore said, and more than in even some death claims.

Mohammed had an Iraqi police report with sketches. He had six color photos of the dented bumper and smashed rear window. And a damage estimate from a local mechanic for $893 — with copies in Arabic and baroque English lettering.

The documents explained that "we send to your excellency the witness, Ali Mamduah, mechanic, hoping to approve his sayings judicially and issue the proper decision."

Like all claims, Moore said, Mohammed`s would be checked against military records to verify that U.S. troops had conducted operations at the specified time and place. Soldiers are required to report all cases of civilian death, injury or property loss.

The investigation does not approach the rigor of a damages claim in U.S. courts, said Moore, who was a criminal defense lawyer before joining the military.

"These are wartime conditions," he said. "We can`t go down to Abdullah`s garage to make sure his damage estimate isn`t wildly inflated."

Every other Saturday, Moore said, his staff makes the dangerous trip from the base to an office in downtown Baqubah to make payments — a total of $10,000 to $25,000 on a typical day. In a few cases, usually involving deaths, payments are made at a claimant`s home in order to show sympathy and respect, Schiffer said.

In the case of Dhia Mohammed`s wrecked Hyundai, Moore said a payment would probably be approved, if the incident was verified.

"But he won`t be getting his $893," Moore said. "I`d say $200 to $300 is more like it."


Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

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Thursday, March 10, 2005
War News for Thursday, March 10, 2005
http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

Bring ‘em on: Police chief, four Iraqi policemen assassinated in Baghdad ambush.

Bring ‘em on: Two Iraqi policemen killed, two wounded in fighting near Mosul.

Bring ‘em on: Kurdish TV worker assassinated in Kirkuk.

Bring ‘em on: Second Baghdad police chief assassinated in Baghdad.

Iraqi police. “The police official, a member of the force for 15 years, said widespread corruption and lax screening of job applicants had enabled insurgents to carry out numerous inside jobs. The police force had become so murky that it was difficult to determine who was wearing police uniforms, he said.”

Report from Kirkuk. “American diplomats were trying to avert a political crisis in Iraq`s ethnically volatile northern province of Kirkuk this week, amid Sunni and Turkoman claims of being strong-armed out of key government posts by the Kurdish majority in the newly elected provincial council. After a series of meetings between council members from the three mainly ethnic-based blocs, six Sunni Arab members are threatening to boycott the new council unless the Kurds agree to an equitable ethnic power-sharing deal.”

The Sgrena Affair. “The top U.S. commander in Iraq said yesterday that he was unaware Italian agents were securing the release of a journalist from insurgents, and he announced an investigation into why U.S. soldiers fired on the Italians` car, killing an agent and wounding the reporter last week. Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr. said he would have expected to be informed that a car carrying the Italian journalist was headed for the Baghdad airport. The shooting has triggered outrage in Italy, where there is intense opposition to the country`s involvement in Iraq.”

The Sgrena Affair, continued. “U.S. military officials in Iraq had approved an Italian intelligence officer`s mission to free a kidnapped journalist and were expecting their arrival at Baghdad`s airport last Friday when U.S. soldiers opened fire on the Italians at a checkpoint, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said Wednesday.”

Rummy defies Congress. “The Defense Department has missed a deadline for creating a program to reimburse deployed troops, their friends and family members for the purchase of safety and protective gear, prompting complaints from the program’s chief congressional sponsor. Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., said the 2005 Defense Authorization Act, signed into law by President Bush Oct. 28, included a new program under which the Pentagon could provide reimbursement of up to $1,100 for the purchase of protective, health or safety equipment for deployed troops if the government could not or would not provide it. The provision covered items purchased between Sept. 11, 2001, and July 31, 2004, either by or on behalf of service members….The Defense Department opposed Dodd’s reimbursement plan, arguing it was a bad precedent to reimburse troops for personal items. Defense officials dropped their objections only after the proposal was modified to give the Pentagon final say about what items might be covered. Defense officials said rules for reimbursement are still being discussed, and blamed the delay on an internal dispute about who should write the eligibility rules — a task now assigned to the Army — and other questions, such as whether the government should end up owning equipment for which it reimburses purchase costs.”

Support the troops! “Hundreds of disabled veterans booed and jeered Republican House members on Tuesday for their budget proposal for veterans’ health care, which critics call inadequate to deal with the future needs of current troops. Following testimony before a pair of congressional committees by officials from the Disabled American Veterans, or DAV, the crowd of more than 400 wounded and disabled veterans cheered House members who criticized the president’s budget plans and heckled representatives who defended the spending. The loudest heckling was reserved for House Veterans’ Affairs chairman Rep. Steve Buyer, R-Ind., who was criticized by Democrats on the committee and rebuked the crowd at one point by saying ‘where the river is the shallowest, it makes the most noise.’”

Commentary

Editorial: “Although hundreds of private and public employers of these citizen-soldiers pay the difference between the activated soldiers` military pay and the salaries they drew in civilian life, that list doesn`t include the largest employer of reservists, the federal government. Considering this inequity, a bipartisan group of legislators led by Tom Lantos, the California Democrat, has proposed that Washington pay the differential for its more than 100,000 civilian employees who are part-time soldiers, if they are called up. It would also extend tax credits to the private companies that pay the differential - and provide help for soldiers called up from small businesses and for the self-employed.”

Editorial: “What could be worse than being held hostage for a month by terrorists who are only too willing to kill their captives? The answer might be getting hit by ‘friendly fire’ 35 minutes after being released. That is the harrowing situation Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena found herself in Friday night.”

Analysis: “The UIA simply cannot promise anything involving Kirkuk without Sunni approval. The only feasible solution to the current impasse would be a real reaching out move by the UIA, encouraging something like a grand reunion of Kirkuk Arab powerbrokers, plus the AMS, reaching a consensus, and then offering the Kurds the outline of a deal involving Kirkuk. The Shi`ites need the Sunnis more than ever to solve the first immediate crisis of Shi`ite Iraq. A breakthrough will ensure that the Sunni resistance will continue to develop its Sinn Fein alongside the IRA.”

Analysis:

“In the short, dreary history of America`s Iraq war, US leaders have repeatedly acted on gross misconceptions about whom they were fighting - sometimes based on faulty intelligence, but sometimes in the face of perfectly accurate intelligence. This is, in all likelihood, another instance where they believe their own distortions, and it is worthwhile attempting to understand the underlying pattern that produces this almost predictable error.

”One way to characterize this propensity to mis-analyze the resistance is to see that all the portraits thus far generated of the Iraqi resistance have been based on the assumption that it is organized into a familiar hierarchical form in which the leadership exercises strategic and day-to-day control over a pyramid-shaped organization. Such a structure is described by both military strategists and organizational sociologists as a ‘command and control’ structure. After the battle of Fallujah, US Air Force Lieutenant-General Lance Smith even used this phrase to characterize Zarqawi`s operation: ‘Zarqawi ... no doubt ... is able to maintain some level of command and control over the disparate operations.’

”This command-and-control image applies well to a large bureaucracy or a conventional army, but invariably provides a poor picture of a guerrilla army, which helps explain US military failures in Iraq. Whether or not Zarqawi maintains command and control over his forces (who are, as far as we can tell, not guerrillas) no one exercises such control over the forces that fought against the Americans in Fallujah or Sadr City and those that are currently fighting a guerrilla war in Ramadi and other Sunni cities that boycotted the recent elections.

”Guerrilla wars violate the command-and-control portrait in two important ways: local units must, by and large, supply themselves (since an occupation army would be likely to interdict any regular shipments of supplies); and they are likely to have substantial autonomy (since hit-and-melt tactics do not lend themselves well to central decision-making).”



Opinion: “A cancer infects this country, spreading like wildfire, devouring the flesh of our society and threatening to turn what was once the greatest nation on Earth into a rotting corpse of political corruption, greed and abuse of power. This cancer has a name: George W. Bush.”

Casualty Report

Local story: Florida soldier wounded in Iraq.
# posted by yankeedoodle : 4:55 AM
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Regelmäßige Updates von Nachrichten aus dem Irak:
http://icasualties.org/oif/

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Mar 11, 2005

THE ROVING EYE
IRA and Sinn Fein in Iraq
By Pepe Escobar
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GC11Ak03.html

Is this the MPLA?
Is this the UDA?
Is this the IRA?
I thought it was the UK
Or just another country
- The Sex Pistols, Anarchy in the UK, 1977

Sunni guerrilla attacks in Iraq remain as devastating as ever, while 40-odd days after the elections the country remains adrift, in chaos, without a government, with more than 60% of the workforce "liberated" from any hope of finding any jobs.

The election-winning, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani-blessed United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) seems to be paralyzed on two separate fronts by the Kurds and the Sunnis. It still has not decided which Sunnis it wants to participate in governing the new Iraq. The bulk of the Iraqi resistance is secular, not Islamist; it is powered by Iraqi national fervor and will do anything to expel the occupying power. The military kernel of the resistance is composed of disgruntled former Ba`athists and/or Republican Guard officials. And then there are a few hundred Salafist jihadis from neighboring Arab countries - powered by Arab nationalism. The interests of these three strands overlap - not least the fact that Sunnis overall view with extreme suspicion what could be the dawn of Shi`ite Iraq.

The Shi`ite reaching-out operation is in shambles. The UIA at least has made it clear it won`t negotiate anything with the Salafists - but they are an absolute (although deadly) minority anyway. A simplistic caricature of the guerrillas portrays them as nihilists with no viable political agenda. That`s not the case. Sources in Baghdad confirm that influential echelons of the resistance are actively engaged in the political unification of an array of disparate groups and in concentrating their message to solidify their support from the bulk of the Sunni population. These are not the car-bombing, civilian-slaughtering gangs talking: this is more like the Iraqi version of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) polishing up a Mesopotamian Sinn Fein.

Even though the Sunni guerrillas are substantially united against a new Iraqi government monopolized by exiles who lived in luxury in Iran or the West during the Saddam Hussein era - which is the exact profile of the UIA leaders, this Sinn Fein strand of the resistance would be willing to negotiate with the new Shi`ite government. As a common objective is crystal clear - the complete withdrawal of the Americans, with a clear timetable - there should be no beef, at least in theory, with the Shi`ite leadership. Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, told Le Monde this week that no one in Iraq wanted permanent US military bases in the country: "It will be up to the elected Iraqi government, when the time comes, to give those forces a specific departure date. As soon as possible."

Prime minister-in-waiting Ibrahim Jaafari, for the moment, remains a prisoner of his own rhetoric. In his view, the guerrillas are composed of a "minority of Sunnis" (this may be true as far as the military-trained core is concerned; but they may number as many as 40,000). Around them, he sees a larger group of "mostly young people" who support the resistance but "are good people" (they may be hundreds of thousands). Jaafari all but admits the new government won`t convince the hard, militarized resistance core, but it can seduce the "good people" around it by offering "good representation" of Sunnis. It won`t be enough - as it did not work even with Sunni tribal chief Ghazi al-Yawer installed as interim president.

The only way out for the UIA is to reach out and offer the Sunnis something really substantial. But it can`t - for the moment - because it`s paralyzed by the Kurds.

Several key Sunni tribal leaders have been involved in meetings leading them to be engaged in the political process. Many are connected to the powerful Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS), which still has not been approached by the UIA, although the AMS is more the willing to talk. On the other had, the AMS remains in close contact with the Sadrist movement of Shi`ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. They are united on the basics: Americans out, with a fixed timetable. Muqtada is exceptionally well positioned: he is just waiting to publicly call the bluff of the Najaf religious Valhalla - which has propelled the UIA and Jaafari to the limelight - if there is no pressure from the new government for a US withdrawal.

Sources in Baghdad insist on rising, very dangerous popular frustration with the political stalemate. A crucial development is that most Shi`ites - and not a few Sunnis - are blaming the Kurds for it. The Kurds want Kirkuk - their Jerusalem - at all costs. They are bent on stalling the formation of a new Iraqi government until kingdom come - and the Shi`ites deliver them the promised land. It cannot happen. If the Shi`ites agree to give Kirkuk to the Kurds, that`s the end of any possibility of entente cordiale with Sunni Arabs. It would be a certified road to civil war.

The UIA simply cannot promise anything involving Kirkuk without Sunni approval. The only feasible solution to the current impasse would be a real reaching out move by the UIA, encouraging something like a grand reunion of Kirkuk Arab powerbrokers, plus the AMS, reaching a consensus, and then offering the Kurds the outline of a deal involving Kirkuk. The Shi`ites need the Sunnis more than ever to solve the first immediate crisis of Shi`ite Iraq. A breakthrough will ensure that the Sunni resistance will continue to develop its Sinn Fein alongside the IRA.

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

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March 13, 2005
FRANK RICH
The Greatest Dirty Joke Ever Told
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/arts/13Rich.html?8hpib

IT was two and half weeks after 9/11 that I heard the dirtiest joke I`d ever heard in my life. New York was still tossing and turning under its blanket of grief back then. Almost no one was going out at night to have fun, a word that had been banished from the country`s vocabulary. But desperately sad people will do desperate things. That`s my excuse for making my way with my wife to the Hilton on Sixth Avenue, where the Friars Club was roasting Hugh Hefner.

Someone had decided that the show must go on. A crowd materialized out of nowhere to pack a vast ballroom in an otherwise shadowy and deserted Midtown. On the dais were not only the expected clowns old (Alan King) and young (Jimmy Kimmel) but a surreal grab bag of celebrities out of Madame Tussauds: Dr. Joyce Brothers, Ice-T, Patty Hearst, Donald Trump. "God Bless America" was sung by Deborah Harry.

The ensuing avalanche of Viagra jokes did not pull off the miracle of making everyone in the room forget the recent events. Restlessness had long since set in when the last comic on the bill, Gilbert Gottfried, took the stage. Mr. Gottfried, decked out in preposterously ill-fitting formal wear, has a manic voice so shrill he makes Jerry Lewis sound like Morgan Freeman. He grabbed the podium for dear life and started rocking back and forth like a hyperactive teenager trapped onstage in a school assembly. Soon he delivered what may have been the first public 9/11 gag: He couldn`t get a direct flight to California, he said, because "they said they have to stop at the Empire State Building first."

There were boos, but Mr. Gottfried moved right along to his act`s crowning joke. "A talent agent is sitting in is office," he began. "A family walks in - a man, woman, two kids, and their little dog. And the talent agent goes, `What kind of an act do you do?` " What followed was a marathon description of a vaudeville routine featuring incest, bestiality and almost every conceivable bodily function. The agent asks the couple the name of their unusual act, and their answer is the punch line: "The Aristocrats."

As the mass exodus began, some people were laughing, others were appalled, and perhaps a majority of us were in the middle. We knew we had seen something remarkable, not because the joke was so funny but because it had served as shock therapy, harmless shock therapy for an adult audience, that at least temporarily relieved us of our burdens and jolted us back into the land of the living again. Some weeks later Comedy Central would cut the bit entirely from its cable recycling of the roast. But in the more than three years since, I have often reflected upon Mr. Gottfried`s mesmerizing performance. At a terrible time it was an incongruous but welcome gift. He was inviting us to once again let loose.

I bring up that night now because I`ve seen "The Aristocrats," a new documentary inspired in part by Mr. Gottfried`s strange triumph. Unveiled in January at Sundance, it`s coming to a theater near some of you this summer. (It could be the first movie to get an NC-17 rating for sex and nudity not depicted on screen.) But I also bring up that night for the shadow it casts on a culture that is now caught in the vise of the government war against "indecency." The chill cast by that war is taking new casualties each day, and with each one, the commissars of censorship are emboldened to extend their reach. When even the expletives of our soldiers in Iraq are censored on a public television documentary, Mr. Gottfried`s unchecked indecency seems to belong to another age.

The latest scheme for broadening that censorship arrived the week after the Oscar show was reduced to colorless piffle on network television. Ted Stevens, the powerful chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, pronounced himself sick of "four-letter words with participles" on cable and satellite television. "I think we have the same power to deal with cable as over the air," he said, promising to carry the fight all the way to the Supreme Court. Never mind that anyone can keep pay TV at bay by not purchasing it, and that any parent who does subscribe can click on foolproof blocking devices to censor any channel. Senator Stevens`s point is to intimidate MTV, Comedy Central, the satellite radio purveyors of Howard Stern and countless others from this moment on, whether he ultimately succeeds in exerting seemingly unconstitutional power over them or not.

If you can see only one of the shows that he wants to banish or launder, let me recommend the series that probably has more four-letter words, with or without participles, than any in TV history. That would be "Deadwood" on HBO. Its linguistic gait befits its chapter of American history, the story of a gold-rush mining camp in the Dakota Territory of the late 1870`s. "Deadwood" is the back story of a joke like "The Aristocrats" and of everything else that is joyously vulgar in American culture and that our new Puritans want to stamp out. It`s the ur-text of Vegas and hip-hop and pulp fiction. It captures with Boschian relish what freedom, by turns cruel and comic and exhilarating, looked and sounded like at full throttle in frontier America before anyone got around to building churches or a government.

Its creator is David Milch, a former Yale fraternity brother of George W. Bush and the onetime protégé of Robert Penn Warren, whose 1946 novel "All the King`s Men" upends bowdlerized fairy tales about American politics just as "Deadwood" dismantles Hollywood`s old sanitized Westerns. As Mr. Milch says in an interview on the DVD of the first "Deadwood" season: "It`s very well documented that the obscenity of the West was striking, and that the obscenity of mining camps was unbelievable." There was "a tremendous energy to the language," he adds, but the reason this language never surfaced in movie Westerns during the genre`s heyday was the Hays production code. For some 30 years starting in 1934, Hollywood`s self-censorship strictures kept even married couples in separate beds on screen.

Mr. Milch has fought such codes in the past. He was a co-creator, with Steven Bochco, of the network police show, "NYPD Blue," which prompted protests in 1993 for its rude language and exposure of David Caruso`s backside. That battle was won; "NYPD Blue" overcame the howls of the American Family Association and an early blackout by some ABC affiliates to become a huge hit that ended its run only this month. But it`s a measure of what has happened since that now even the backside of a cartoon toddler is being pixilated in the animated series "Family Guy," on Fox. Mr. Bochco told Variety, "I don`t think today we could launch or sell `NYPD Blue` in the form that it launched 12 years ago." He`s right. We`re turning the clock back to the days of Hays.

This is why "Deadwood" could not be better timed. It reminds us of who we are and where we came from, and that even indecency is part of an American`s birthright. It also, if inadvertently, illuminates the most insidious underpinnings of today`s decency police by further reminding us that the same people who want to stamp out entertainment like "Deadwood" also want to rewrite American history (and, when they can, the news) according to their dictates of moral and political correctness. They won`t tolerate an honest account of the real Deadwood in a classroom or museum any more than they will its fictionalized representation on HBO.

Lynne Cheney has taken to writing and promoting triumphalist children`s history books that, as she said on Fox News recently, offer "an uncynical approach to our nation and to our national story." (So much for her own out-of-print "Deadwood"-esque novel of 1981, "Sisters," with its evocation of lesbian passions on the frontier.) That`s her right. But when her taste is enforced as government policy that`s another matter. The vice president`s wife has used her current political clout, as The Los Angeles Times uncovered last fall, to quietly squelch a Department of Education history curriculum pamphlet for parents that didn`t fit her political agenda. It`s no coincidence that Senator Stevens attacked the Smithsonian Institution in the 1990`s when it mounted an exhibit deromanticizing the old West, "Deadwood"-style, by calling attention to the indignities visited on women, Indians and the environment.

At a certain point political correctness on the right becomes indistinguishable from that of the left. On the Oscar telecast, Robin Williams was prohibited by ABC from delivering a satirical comic song by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, the "Hairspray" songwriting team, inspired by James Dobson`s attack on the "pro-homosexual activism" of the cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants. One of the no-no`s: an unflattering reference to Indian casinos in the lyric "Pocahontas is addicted to craps." If the lyric had said Pocahontas was victimized by white guys, the right would have shut the song down just as fast.

"It`s a dangerous world we`re living in when you get to the point that a joke about Jude Law is the most controversial thing in the Oscar show," says the TV star and standup comic Bob Saget. "I`m missing Marlon Brando`s Indian wife, David Niven and the streaker." I had called Mr. Saget because he is one of the hundred or so comedians who appear in the documentary "The Aristocrats," in which another comic, Paul Provenza, and the magician-comedian Penn Jillette interview their peers about the decades-long history and countless improvisational variations on the film`s eponymous joke.

The movie is a multigenerational compendium of comedians, from Phyllis Diller and Don Rickles to George Carlin, Chris Rock, Jon Stewart, Sarah Silverman and Cartman of "South Park." But the raunchiest participants are often those best known for their roles in family-friendly sitcoms on network TV: Drew Carey, Jason Alexander, Paul Reiser. I asked Mr. Saget, who starred as a lovable widower father in the long-running hit "Full House," where his own impulse to tell X-rated standup comes from. Among his reasons: "There`s something about all of us that wants to push the limits of the world we`re in, where you can`t say anything. There`s a time and a place for stuff that is freeing for people."

I`m not a particular enthusiast for dirty jokes, but that freedom is exactly what I, and I suspect others, felt when a comic with a funny voice in a bad suit broke all the rules of propriety at that Friars Roast. But it was just three days earlier at the White House that Ari Fleischer, asked to respond to a politically incorrect remark about 9/11 by another comedian, Bill Maher, warned all Americans "to watch what they say." That last week in September 2001, I`ve come to realize, is as much a marker in our cultural history as two weeks earlier is a marker in the history of our relations with the world. Even as we`re constantly told we`re in a war for "freedom" abroad, freedom in our culture at home has been under attack ever since.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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Thursday, March 10, 2005

Breaking News: Government to Be Formed
Bombing at Shiite Mosque in Mosul Kills 36

It has been announced that the Shiites and the Kurds have reached sufficient agreement to elect a government when the parliament meets on March 16. If true, this is very big news. It wasn`t, however, a headline anywhere I looked on the Web. When I tried to check it at CNN I was informed for about an hour straight that Michael Jackson was late to court. I mean, it is outrageous that our supposed 24 hours a day cable news services baby-sit us this way with pablum.

In other news, a suicide bomber detonated a payload at a Shiite mosque in northeastern Mosul during a funeral, killing at least 36 persons. Elements in the guerrilla movement have been attempting to provoke a civil war between Sunnis and Shiites, but the increasingly powerful Shiites have consistently refused to be provoked in this way.

posted by Juan @ [url3/10/2005 12:33:00 PM]http://www.juancole.com/2005/03/breaking-news-government-to-be-formed.html[/url]

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Mar 11, 2005

Dollar catching Asian flu
By Alan Boyd
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Asian_Economy/GC11Dk01.html

SYDNEY - They may be telling a different story to money markets, but Asian central banks have been quietly switching their dollar holdings to regional currencies for at least three years, confirm global banking data. In a further, and so far the biggest, setback for the greenback`s status as the undisputed reserve currency, Japan on Thursday said it might diversify its holdings, though monetary chiefs later sought to play down the prospect. South Korea rattled currency traders with a similar announcement late last month, followed by a similar backtrack.

China, India, Thailand, Indonesia, Taiwan, the Philippines and Hong Kong have already started a sell-off, despite a diplomatic show of solidarity for the greenback that is prudently designed to prevent a crisis of confidence in exchange systems. The likelihood is that much of this outflow will never return to US dollars as economic interdependence within East Asia and the widening shadow cast by China`s trading conglomerates are slowly transforming the traditional market structure.

The Bank of International Settlements (BIS), which acts as a bank for the world`s central banks, has just released a study showing that the ratio of dollar deposits held in Asian offshore reserves declined to 67% in September, down from 81% in the third quarter of 2001. India was the biggest seller, reducing its dollar assets from 68% of total reserves to just 43%. China, which directly links the yuan to the dollar and is under US pressure to allow a freer movement of its currency, trimmed the dollar share from 83% to 68%.

This shift conforms with global trends as central banks seek a buffer from the burgeoning US trade and budget deficits. A separate survey by European-based Central Banking Publications found that 29 of 65 nations surveyed were cutting back on the dollar and 39 were buying more euros. America`s annual budget deficit of US$500 billion is largely funded by Asian purchases of US government bonds, mostly from China and Japan. The US trade and current account deficits are in a similar plight: it took $530 billion of foreign capital to finance US imports in 2003 and $650 billion last year. Projections for 2005 range up to $800 billion.

Export-led Asian central banks have been accumulating dollars for two decades or more to keep their own currencies competitive. Japan alone has stockpiled $841 billion of reserves to stop the yen from over-valuing as it searches for an economic stimulus. If the central banks pull out, the US may find it hard to borrow the cash it needs to keep the wheels of government turning. The conventional wisdom is that Asia is in too deep to quit, as to do so would invite huge exchange losses.

But some monetary chiefs have already decided there are greater risks in staying in bond markets as rock-bottom US interest rates - still only moderately above the 45-year low reached last year - have dragged yields to unappealing levels. China became a net seller of US government bonds in 2002, shifting much of its reserves to euros, Australian and Canadian dollars. Taiwan left the securities market in the same year and Hong Kong sharply reduced its exposure.

Currency market trading has also had a shift of emphasis, with China`s yuan emerging as a potential regional substitute, albeit in the distant future. While this reflects the changing structure of East Asian trade, it is also an indicator of the increasing maturity of Asian exchange activity. According to the BIS data, turnover of the yuan in Asia has surged by 530% since the third quarter of 2001, compared with more restrained growth of 48% by the dollar, 49% by the euro and 93% by the pound sterling.

Trading in India`s rupee grew by 114% in the same period and the yen registered 35% growth. The big losers were the Hong Kong dollar (21%) and the Singapore dollar (32%), reflecting the declining economic fundamentals of the two trading hubs. It is a similar picture with foreign exchange derivatives. Trading in yuan derivatives has soared by a staggering 272,355% in the past three years; next best was the Thai baht, with a growth of 2,858%. Dollar trading in derivatives rose by a mere 94% in this time, with euro trading up by 95%, pound trading by 126% and the yen trading by 58%.

The yuan data were calculated from a very low base in previous years and the BIS cautioned that the Chinese currency still had a miniscule influence on trade, due to tight domestic curbs on portfolio funds: it comprises only about 1% of the overall ratio of forex turnover to gross trade flows.

Movements in the dollar/yen spot rate remain the prime influence on Asian currencies and more than 90% of all external trade is still conducted directly in dollars. Only about 12% of holdings are believed to be in euros. Nonetheless, the yuan is converging with the yen and the Korean won and already exerts a strong pull on spot rates for the Hong Kong and Taiwan currencies, possibly hinting at a significant unrecorded trade in the Chinese currency.

While Asian currencies were expected to align themselves with US currency after the 1997-98 regional financial crisis in a de facto dollar bloc, the BIS said there is little evidence that this has occurred, despite the dollar links adopted by China and Malaysia. Rather, it appears that Asian currencies have become more elastic and their central bankers increasingly determined to pursue an independent course as financial markets gain greater depth and begin to more accurately mirror the region`s importance to world trade.

However, it remains to be seen how much leash they will be given before being reined in by the nervous US Federal Reserve. The Bank of Korea, which has $200 billion of reserves and $69 billion of US Treasury debt, tentatively announced last month that some might be switched to other currencies, then quickly backtracked when the won surged to a seven-year high in global currency markets. The bank said the proposal, first floated in a parliamentary debate, was not a statement of intent.

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi triggered a similar frenzy after suggesting on Thursday that his country "in general" might need to make an "overall judgment" on diversifying its foreign reserves. The dollar had fallen to a nine-week low against the euro by the time a Finance Ministry official came out with a "clarification". It was merely a topic for discussion, not policy intent, he said. "We are taking a very cautious stance on how to manage foreign reserves, because the impact would be big," Finance Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki told reporters.

Big, indeed, as Japan has the largest dollar reserves in the world. Almost all Asian currencies surged vis-a-vis the dollar following Koizumi`s unexpected statement. The Indian rupee rose to 43.56 in late morning deals, sharply higher than Wednesday`s close of 43.64. The dollar went down against the Indonesian rupiah by 17 points at 12 noon on Thursday from Wednesday`s closing value of 9,375.00, while the South Korean won went up by 0.1% against the dollar, provoking the Ministry of Finance and Economy to say that it was contemplating to intervene in the foreign exchange market.

Alan Boyd, now based in Sydney, has reported on Asia for more than two decades.

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

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Erst wollten es die Kurden sein, die Saddam gefangen haben. Es werden noch viele kommen, die sich den Lorbeer aufsetzen wollen.

Published on Thursday, March 10, 2005 by United Press International
Ex-Marine Says Public Version of Saddam Capture Fiction
http://www.wokr13.tv/news/national/story.aspx?content_id=422…

A former U.S. Marine who participated in capturing ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein said the public version of his capture was fabricated.

Ex-Sgt. Nadim Abou Rabeh, of Lebanese descent, was quoted in the Saudi daily al-Medina Wednesday as saying Saddam was actually captured Friday, Dec. 12, 2003, and not the day after, as announced by the U.S. Army.

"I was among the 20-man unit, including eight of Arab descent, who searched for Saddam for three days in the area of Dour near Tikrit, and we found him in a modest home in a small village and not in a hole as announced," Abou Rabeh said.

"We captured him after fierce resistance during which a Marine of Sudanese origin was killed," he said.

He said Saddam himself fired at them with a gun from the window of a room on the second floor. Then they shouted at him in Arabic: "You have to surrender. ... There is no point in resisting."

"Later on, a military production team fabricated the film of Saddam`s capture in a hole, which was in fact a deserted well," Abou Rabeh said.

Abou Rabeh was interviewed in Lebanon.

Copyright © 2005. United Press International, Inc.

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Einiges zu Churchill zur Erinnerung.
http://www.indybay.org/news/2005/02/1719639.php
Nochmals der umstrittene Artikel.
http://greenanarchy.org/zine/GA08/pushback.php

Wer ist hier der Terrorist?
von Ward Churchill
ZNet Kommentar 10.03.2005
http://www.zmag.de/artikel.php?id=1370

Wieder einmal wurden mir die Worte im Mund rumgedreht.

Es fing damit an, dass Dan Caplis und Craig Silverman (sowie zahlreiche andere rechte Medien-Spinmeister) versicherten, ich hätte die Terroranschläge auf die Vereinigten Staaten “verteidigt” - in meinem Op-Ed-Artikel am 12. September 2001. Wer den Artikel auch nur überfliegt (bzw. mein Buch liest: ‘On the Justice of Roosting Chickens’*, in dem ich meine Argumente auf 300 Seiten ausführlich darlege und belege), stellt fest, dass ich kein Rechtfertiger derartiger Anschläge bin. Vielmehr habe ich darauf hingewiesen, dass solche Anschläge die unausweichliche Folge einer US-Außenpolitik sind, die das Gesetz missachtet und im Ausland viele, viele Tote bzw. massive Zerstörung erzeugt - und dass das auch so bleiben wird. Als Nächstes ging das dynamische Duo (siehe oben) und andere aus ihrer Gilde dazu über, mich zu diskreditieren - indem sie mich wieder und wieder persönlich angriffen, endlos. Der Versuch misslang. Schließlich widerlegt die Faktenlage ihre Behauptungen - auch wenn die Medien über diese Fakten nicht berichten. Daraufhin schalteten Caplis und Silverman eine bezahlte Anzeige bzw. schrieben eine Op-Ed, die an prominenter Stelle erschien (‘News’ vom 5. März: ‘Churchill’s active advocacy of violence demands his firing’). Es ist eine explizite Lüge, wenn beide in ihrer Anzeige bzw. der Op-Ed behaupten, ich wäre aktiv damit beschäftigt, eine “gewaltsame Revolution” anzuzetteln. Nichts davon stimmt. Ganz im Gegenteil, ich setze mich seit vielen Jahren für das Gesetz ein. Meine akademische Arbeit befasst sich zum großen Teil mit dem Nachweis, dass die USA die Gesetze missachten. Dies führe zu Gewalt - einer von Amerika im Innern wie auch international praktizierten Gewalt. Meiner Überzeugung nach muss eine solche Praxis unausweichlich zu reaktiver Gewalt führen. Wer sich dagegen an die Verfassung und an internationales Recht hält (insbesondere an die fundamentalen Menschenrechtsgesetze und die Kriegsregeln), wählt den effektivsten Weg für die Sicherheit aller Völker.

Als Bürger stehen wir in der kollektiven Verantwortung sicherzustellen, dass den Gesetzen Folge geleistet wird. Caplis und Silverman zitieren (in ihrer Anzeige bzw. in der Op-Ed) meine Aussagen über die ‘Araber’ - und zwar falsch. Ich will diese Ausssagen auf dem oben beschriebenen Hintergrund verstanden wissen. Ich habe argumentiert, es sei unser Job, dem kriminellen Handeln der US-Regierung einen Riegel vorzuschieben. Diese Aufgabe sollten wir nicht Leuten aus anderen Ländern überlassen, die die Folgen dieses illegalen Verhaltens zu spüren bekamen. Damit stimmt meine Haltung mit der des Chefanklägers der Nürnberger Prozesse, Richter Robert H. Jackson, überein, wie er sie 1945 formulierte. Wir sind nicht nur berechtigt sondern sogar rechtlich verpflichtet, von einer Regierung, die in unserem Namen handelt, gesetzliches Handeln einzufordern. Ich habe die systemische Gewalt der US-Regierung dargelegt - in der Hoffnung, die Amerikaner nehmen ihre Verpflichtung wahr und machen sich mit politischen Mitteln für eine andere Regierungspolitik stark. Ich würde gewaltlosen Mitteln entschieden den Vorzug geben. Andererseits sind - im Falle von Gewalt durch das System - gewaltlose Mittel nicht die einzig legitime Antwort, so meine Meinung. Das Prinzip der Selbstverteidigung ist keineswegs mysteriös: Im Falle eines Angriffs ist es der Angreifer, der die Regeln diktiert und nicht das Opfer.

Ich bin, offen gesagt, kein Pazifist. Nichtsdestotrotz habe ich nie Terroranschläge auf die Wallstreet, auf Downtown Seattle oder sonst einen Ort propagiert. Um mir diesen Anstrich zu geben, veränderten Caplis und Silverman den Kontext meines Materials, sie stellten meine Aussagen auf den Kopf. Was ich zu einer kleinen Gruppe junger Anarchisten in einem Buchladen in Seattle sagte, ist Folgendes: Sie sollten sich nicht isolieren, sich nicht mit marginalen Sabotageakten am Rande der Gesellschaft beschäftigen, sonst würden sie nichts Sinnvolles bewirken. Ich bezog mich auf den deutschen Theoretiker Rudi Dutschke und seinen “langen Marsch durch die Institutionen” und schlug diesen jungen Leuten als Alternative vor zu versuchen, innerhalb der Institutionen etwas zu bewirken, so wie ich das getan habe. Die “Waffen”, von denen ich in diesem Zusammenhang sprach, sind das Bewusstsein junger Menschen und deren Fähigkeit, dieses Bewusstsein zu vermitteln. Ich sagte, als vergleichsweise privilegierte Euro-Amerikaner wären sie für dieses Projekt ideal geeignet.

Caplis und Silverman handeln aus persönlichen Motiven - wenn sie versuchen, die Öffentlichkeit glauben zu machen, ich sei ein aktiver Rechtfertiger des Terrorismus. Abgesehen davon, dass es nicht stimmt, ist es auch extrem gefährlich. Ein labiles Individuum könnte sich veranlasst sehen - das ist offensichtlich möglich - einen Terroranschlag zu verüben. Schließlich wird ihr Spin ständig gesendet und so einem breiten Publikum zugänglich gemacht - meine angeblichen Aussagen, in der Bearbeitung von Caplis und Silverman. Sollte etwas passieren, wird die Verantwortung bei Caplis und Silverman liegen und nicht bei mir.

Ward Churchill ist Professor für ethnische Studien an der University of Colorado at Boulder.

Anmerkung d. Übersetzerin

* ‘On the Justice of Roosting Chickens: Reflections on the Consequences of U.S. Imperial Arrogance and Criminality’ von Ward Churchill, erschienen bei AK Distribution 2004

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Tomgram: Which War Is This Anyway?

Are We in World War IV?
By Tom Engelhardt
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2251

Throughout much of the Cold War, people feared above all else a global hot war, the third great one in a century of devastating world wars; and we crept up to it more than once -- most desperately, there can be no doubt, at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. For decades, the world was poised for that next world war; the two superpowers with their nuclear arsenals running to thousands of weapons (as they still do), a few hundred of which would have been civilization-busting, many hundreds of which might have been nuclear-winter inducing and life extinguishing; all of them cocked in their silos or loaded in the bomb-bays of Soviet or American planes, or stashed on the submarines that made up the unreachable third leg of the nuclear "tripod" and were primed for almost instantaneous action. World War III, which might have ended it all, could indeed have started, as the U.S. military feared for decades, with those Soviet tanks pouring through the Fulda Gap in Germany, and escalated from there to "theater," and finally intercontinental, ballistic missiles. It would have been a show. The last picture show, you might say. And, let`s face it, it didn`t happen.

Yes, the two superpowers, armed to the teeth and eyeing each other for half a century, oozed aggression, and fought and bled each other in a series of proxy border wars; relatively overtly in Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan; more covertly or indirectly in lands ranging from Tibet to Angola. (Yes, yes, in each of those cases, other powerful forces were at work, but certainly the global Cold War was part of the mix.) Nonetheless, over those fifty-plus years -- despite mutual memories of bloody stalemate in Korea, our memories of grim defeat in Vietnam, and Russian memories of the same in Afghanistan -- the most striking aspect of the Cold War was that the emphasis remained, however barely at times, on the "cold," not the "war." It`s worth saying more than once, given our present moment and the claims being made: World War III never happened -- or I wouldn`t be sitting here on the Internet writing this and you wouldn`t be at your computer reading it. Put another way, "the Cold War" was simply an oxymoron that we got incredibly used to; a small, bleak sigh of linguistic relief at what hadn`t quite (yet) come to be.

I mention this ancient history only because, to listen to the neoconservatives and their various allies now embedded in the top ranks of the Bush administration (or in well-connected think tanks and front groups scattered inside Washington DC`s Beltway), we are in fact enmeshed in nothing less than "World War IV" today. Eliot Cohen, professor of Strategic Studies at Johns Hopkins University, first proclaimed us there as the Afghan War was underway, just a couple of months beyond September 11, 2001. Former CIA Director James Woolsey swore we were there as the invasion of Iraq began in 2003. The grandfather of the neocons, Norman Podhoretz, reaffirmed that World War IV was the only war in town, the only thing that mattered, last September in a gargantuan piece in Commentary magazine. Others regularly say the same. It`s become a commonplace trope of the imperial right. They even have full-scale World War IV conferences (happily attended by Paul Wolfowitz among others) and arguments over the term`s exact nature abound. Woolsey, who seems to be making a profession of roaming the country, preaching World War IV to the unconverted, is already dubbing it "the longest war of the 21st century," or as Steve Clemons, President of the New American Foundation, puts it, the new "Hundred Years` War."

Conceptually, it underlies the slightly toned down, but still distinctly ramped up, description of our present state proclaimed from the planetary rafters by the Bush administration -- that we are, as the White House was already announcing before the end of 2001, "one hundred" days into a multi-generational "global war on terrorism," now more familiarly (and rather fondly) known among the cognoscenti by the awkward acronym GWOT. Since WWIV and GWOT are the allied rubrics under which our world is being reorganized, it`s worth taking a look at them and how well or poorly they describe that world.

Back in November 2001, introducing the term World War IV -- he now says "tongue-in-cheek" -- Eliot Cohen wrote: "Political people often dislike calling things by their names. Truth, particularly in wartime, is so unpleasant that we drape it in a veil of evasions, and the right naming of things is far from a simple task."

The right naming of things. As Cohen says, it`s no small matter. And since he wrote that passage, this administration of lexicographers has spent startling amounts of time, dictionaries in hand, renaming and redefining terms ranging from our country or nation (now "the homeland") to the outsourcing of torture ("extraordinary rendition") -- always, not surprisingly, to their advantage. Either in its baldest form as World War IV, or as the slightly milder GWOT, this particular renaming of our moment -- in a sense, the largest renaming of all -- has many advantages.

At the simplest level, each term provides an umbrella of meaning for what otherwise might be experienced as remarkably disparate events. Both are convenient catch-all terms that implicitly advance political programs and so are remarkably useful. World War IV, in particular, places whatever is happening now in an ancestry that descends from World War II or the "Good War" (World War I is really just an add-on) and what`s now called "the greatest generation." As a name, it`s also instantly alarming, fitting an American sense that something cataclysmic, apocalyptic, and completely singular happened to us on September 11, 2001 and that any response to it should be in a similar cataclysmic, singular, and even apocalyptic vein. (After all, a quarter of Americans in a recent Gallup poll claimed themselves ready and willing over three years later to use nuclear weapons to "attack terrorist facilities.")

With its Cold War overtones of nuclear annihilation, World War IV implies that our very existence as a nation is in immediate danger and will be for years, decades, perhaps a century or more to come; and yet it is also a familiar, even reassuring image -- another global war in the triumphant tradition of the three that preceded it. In this way, it can both scare people and help make instant sense of, and lend instant meaning to, things happening all over the world. After all, if this is a global war, then events in Afghanistan and Spain, or Central Asia and Iraq don`t really have to be explained fully; they can just be subsumed in, and related to, the larger World War, using the familiar war language of "fronts," "battles," and "theaters" in a far vaster struggle. ("But as I will attempt to show," writes Podhoretz typically, "we are only in the very early stages of what promises to be a very long war, and Iraq is only the second front to have been opened in that war: the second scene, so to speak, of the first act of a five-act play.") In fact, you can sweep anything -- Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Syria, North Korea -- into the same war-basket of meaning, just as our President swept two bitter enemy nations (Iraq and Iran) and one completely unrelated state (North Korea) into an "axis of evil" (which drew, obviously, on the memory of World War II`s Axis powers).

"World War IV" does many other useful things as well. It moves the goalposts into the future, way off there in an endless generational struggle. In other words, it conveniently excuses much that might otherwise seem baleful or ridiculous in the present. And of course it disarms critics -- for who wants to stand in the path of a necessary global war against your own annihilation? As an image, it (and GWOT) undergird what, in the Cold War, was called the national security state and now has morphed into an even more all-encompassing homeland security state. The two terms make sense of soaring Pentagon budgets, offshore mini-gulags, and so much else. It becomes possible to write, as Earl Tilford, former director of research at the U.S. Army`s Strategic Studies Institute, did: "This is World War IV. Forget the sleazy sickness of Abu Ghraib. Stop mouthing meaningless slogans like, ‘Bush lied, soldiers died.` Steel yourselves for a long, bloody fight. This is a war we must not lose."

Think of WWIV or GWOT as a kind of "bulking up," a Rambo-esque urge to hype-up the present. If you go back to the 1950s and catch your basic cowboy film, those strong, silent heroes -- it doesn`t matter whether you`re talking about John Wayne, Gary Cooper, or even Alan Ladd -- are, in retrospect, strangely unimpressive looking. They don`t seem either that large or particularly strong. They usually were only modestly armed with a six-gun or two. Most of the time, they didn`t even shoot down that many enemies. And yet, in those post-World War II/early Cold War days, they looked strong enough to us.

After the American defeat in Vietnam, our heroes – from Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) to Arnold Schwarzenegger -- began to bulk up, to wear their muscles on their sleeves, so to speak, so that no one could mistake them for anything but strong, silent types; and should you have made that mistake, they and their slightly shrimpier peers were so completely over-armed that you wouldn`t have made it twice. In the post-Vietnam era, the United States began to muscle up in a similar manner and that process – at first psychologically defensive in nature -- has now, I suspect, neared its zenith in the imagery of World War IV. It`s the good fortune of the Bush administration neocons that they have as an enemy the fanatics of al-Qaeda, filled with their own global-war pretensions and hell-bent on their own version of bulking up. (Let`s not forget, by the way, that, given globalization, both sides have probably seen and been affected by the same bulked-up action and disaster movies with bulked-up special effects.)

But are we really in a multi-generational GWOT? Is this really World War IV? Let`s start with that number IV. For the image to work, you do have to accept that the "Cold War" -- and the marriage of those two words always indicated that as a war it would remain half-frozen because the full-fledged hot version of itself could never be fought -- was indeed World War III, which, as I`ve already indicated, it most distinctly wasn`t. And if you move beyond the phrase World War IV (which most people won`t) into the elaborate writings produced by its proponents, you find that what they really want to do is cherry-pick the "best" of the two actual world wars -- their sense of globalism and mission, the threat of mass death and the apocalyptic (the Holocaust in particular) against which to mobilize, the raw badness of World War II`s enemies – and combine it with the "best" of the Cold War.

After all, World Wars I and II lasted inconveniently short periods of time for our planners` purposes; 4 years in one case, 6 in the other (longer, if in Asia you begin with the Japanese invasion of China). No multi-generational struggle there, unfortunately, and it`s the time they want above all. Time without end and a war that can be put in the company of World War II (but without anything like the equivalent in actual warfare). What they would far prefer is the threat level of the World Wars combined with the localized fighting of the Cold War era.

Of course, they want their enemies not only evil, but imposingly so – and, as a result, scattered groups of terrorists and their supporters in World War IV writings are regularly compared to Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, the monster industrial states of the last century. Despite the constant invocation of the Nazis, Roosevelt, Churchill, and so on, World War IV-ers in the fine print can be almost defensive about the limited nature of World War IV. ("Those parallels [with the Cold War] are: that it will last a very long time -- decades; that it will sporadically involve the use of military force, as did the Cold War in Korea for example; but that an important component would be ideological.") What they are especially enamored with, though, is the idea of a lengthy, life-and-death global struggle to victory, or as James Woolsey puts it, "We helped win World War I, we prevailed, along with Britain, in World War II, and we prevailed in the Cold War."

As people who like having a war on their hands, they have long been in the process of both bulking up and stripping history down to one-size-fits-all, streamlining it for action in support of a program of American global domination that involves the further militarization of our society, remaking the Middle East in their own image, controlling the oil lands (the so-called "arc of instability") of the world, and, oh yes, of "democracy" of a sort. Much of their program, as you`ll notice if you read old documents from the Project for the New American Century website, was already in place before September 11, 2001 (just as the ill-named Patriot Act was brought into existence so quickly because all sorts of already existing right-wing legal hobbyhorses were simply swept into it).

As the names "World War IV" and "the Global War on Terror" imply, modestly is ill-suited to the men who are promoting them. No John Waynes or Gary Coopers in this crowd. From their think-tank or governmental perches, every one of them is a Terminator with the intellectual muscles to show for it. But if we were to put WWIV aside for a moment and, starting with September 11, 2001, took a calmer look at the world we find ourselves in, what would we actually discover?

Re-examining the War We Have

September 11, 2001: On that morning over three years ago, three planes smashed into American buildings (and one went down short of its target over Pennsylvania). Of the three buildings, the Pentagon is in a sense now largely forgotten, despite the memorial being built for it using private funds. As a target, it had obviously been chosen to represent America`s global military power -- as the World Trade Center was to represent financial power, as the downed plane was surely heading for some building representing political power in Washington DC. And yet, as far as I know, the spot where United Flight 93 ploughed into the Pentagon has no special name and no particular mythology attached to it, although people died there too.

In the Hollywood terrorist Kabuki that Osama bin Laden engineered and Mohammed Atta carried out, what`s remembered, of course, is not the smoking Pentagon but the two towers in New York crumbling (and crumbling again and yet again on television for all to see). The spot where they went down, with the slaughter of thousands, was promptly dubbed Ground Zero, previously the designation only for an atomic blast, and it was treated the way it looked on television (and I might add, for those of us who lived in New York, the way its ruins looked in person) -- as if an apocalyptic event worthy of the World War-III-we-hadn`t-had had actually taken place in our midst.

The brilliant aspect of the al-Qaeda assault on America was its ability to combine such modest ingredients into a visual mega-package, a blockbuster of a disaster: money in the range of $400,000-$500,000, flight-school training, box cutters, mace cans, the element of surprise, and the hijacking of a vehicle -- a very large vehicle well supplied with combustible fuel -- all of the above to be directed at three symbolic targets on, as luck would have it, a bright, beautiful, photogenic day, in the knowledge that (as everywhere in our world) the cameras would be there, and on, and prepared to mix-and-match scenes that had already been previewed in so many Hollywood action thrillers in which terrorists attack, the towering inferno burns, the atomic bomb goes off. And then there was just the blind, dumb good luck -- from the attackers` vantage point -- of having both buildings collapse in full camera view in the midst of New York City. Throw in the fact that nothing like this had happened in the continental United States since the British burned down Washington in the War of 1812 and you have a truly combustible mix of elements.

Not surprisingly, most Americans focused on the apocalyptic aspects of what had happened, and not the paltry 19 men in stolen vehicles who carried out the attack. Nothing proved more fortuitous for Bush administration planning than that. (In 1993, after all, when one tower of the World Trade Center was bombed and damaged but didn`t come down, no one thought that we were in World War IV, though the intent was hardly different.) Top officials in Washington seized not the relatively modest scale of the preparations for the attack, but on the apocalyptic look and feel of the event.

And yet -- though no one in the mainstream can say this any more -- as World War IV or even a global "war" on terrorism, this is all absurd (however useful it may have been in forwarding administration desires to sweep Saddam Hussein from power, free the President from the checks and balances of our system, curtail irritating civil liberties, and so on). Imagine, for instance, if after the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand by a Serbian terrorist (or, if you`re a Serbian, nationalist) in August 1914, the European powers had mobilized their vast, lumbering armies not against each other but against anarchists, terrorists, and others threatening the crowned heads and leaders of Europe -- and declared the world at war.

That the Bush administration did this certainly confirmed Osama bin Laden`s wildest dreams of al-Qaeda`s global importance, in this sense, as Robert Jay Lifton suggested in his book Superpower Syndrome, the most extreme American and Islamist apocalyptic visions had soon partnered up and begun to dance together. In reality, the al-Qaeda variety of militant, political Islamism is (or at least then was) a paltry figure to fill the role of a Nazi-style enemy (or to fit the term "Islamo-fascism"). Though in the writings of neocons (like former CIA director Woolsey`s) they are regularly compared to Nazis, Osama bin Laden and his associates in 2001 bore a far greater resemblance to a malign version of the Wizard of Oz behind that curtain. After all, their organization was relatively small in numbers and controlled not a single industrial plant, not a significant army (despite those training camps and the armed fighters they organized for the Taliban), not a weapon of major importance, and only, to some degree, a single state -- one of the most impoverished on this planet, decimated by decades of occupation and civil war: Talibanized Afghanistan.

The Afghan War: That leads us to the first war the Bush administration launched -- against the Taliban (and al-Qaeda in its camps and caves). This was a proxy war, similar to the one fought by the CIA in Laos in the 1960s and early 1970s (or even various proxy wars fought in Central America in the 1980s). CIA agents toting suitcases stuffed with money hired local tribal leaders (the Northern Alliance and various Afghan warlords) as their foot soldiers, then supplied arms, overwhelming air power, some special forces units on the ground, and in short order the ill-prepared, ill-armed Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters were swept from the battlefield, and largely destroyed as a fighting force.

Though presented in typical hyped-up form as a monumental victory and monumental payback for September 11, this was a modest triumph indeed by Cold War standards; a non-war when set against either World Wars I or II. It wasn`t even terribly successful. It didn`t, after all, manage to capture or destroy either the Taliban or al-Qaeda leadership. What it managed to do was dismantle the most rickety, most regressive state on Earth and, as it happened, replace it with one of the poorest and still most regressive states on Earth whose only claim to fame is that it`s fast becoming the globe`s most advanced narco-state. (In our press, Afghanistan is now generally hailed as a "democracy" largely because, as in the period of the Soviet occupation, greater rights are available, especially to women, in Kabul and a few other cities.)

Even as a blow against "global terrorism," the Afghan War may have not been especially effective – and here I`m not referring to the fact that Osama bin Laden escaped capture. The irony is that the Taliban, left alone to fester and implode, would have been one of the great anti-examples on Earth when it came to al-Qaeda`s medieval dream of a revived Islamic Caliphate. It was such a bottom-of-the-barrel theocratic state that there would have been few on this planet, Muslim or otherwise, yearning to emulate it. Swept away in the manner it was, it actually freed al-Qaeda types around the world to dream of glorious futures unimpeded by ugly reality.

The Iraq War: Saddam Hussein`s Iraq, unconnected as we know now (as we could have known back then) to the September 11th assaults or to al-Qaeda, was swept conveniently into World War IV/GWOT in ways now familiar to many. If, however, you think "empire" rather than "global war," our Iraq invasion and occupation makes a lot more sense, falling as it then would into the category of a frontier or colonial war. Like so many imperial wars before it, it is being fought, at least in part, for the control of rich natural resources meant either for the imperial homeland or at least as a way to gain an advantage over other great powers of the moment.

Our now unending Iraq War has all the hallmarks of a nineteenth or early twentieth century colonial war (even, in fact, of Great Britain`s colonial war in Iraq in the 1920s). There was the initial shock-and-awe attack, representing the disparity between the weaponry and industrial organization available to Western imperial states and to the native peoples they conquered. There was the occupation with its glorious civilizational claims and its overweening arrogance; there was the developing resistance, which quickly took the form of a guerrilla war and shocked the occupying great power with its ferocity, tenacity, cruelty, and success against what looked like overwhelming odds; there was the ever more brutal colonial response, the obvious racism, the attempts to create malleable "native" regimes, and so on. None of this had then, or has now, anything to do with the twentieth century`s global wars as we understand them.

Terrorism: In the meantime, since September 11, 2001, in Spain (the Madrid railroad bombings, 191 dead), Turkey (synagogue and bank bombings, 29 dead), Lebanon (the Hariri assassination, at least fifteen dead), Morocco (Jewish community center, Spanish restaurant and social club, hotel, and the Belgian consulate, 40 dead), Afghanistan (recent car bombings, 12 dead), Tunisia (synagogue, 19 people dead),Bali (nightclub bombings, 202 dead), Thailand (car bombing, 5 dead), Saudi Arabia (at least 35 dead in multiple attacks on housing projects and an oil facility), Pakistan (12 dead), Russia (330 dead in Beslan school attack, 89 on two sabotaged jetliners, and 5 more in a bombing near Kizlyar), the Philippines (coordinated bomb attacks, 11 dead), and a relative handful of other places, there have been destructive terrorist attacks, each bloody and horrific in itself, many of them unconnected or barely connected, and none, except the Spanish one briefly, crippling to any aspect of the modern world as we know it. While several hundred people died in Spain and in Bali, overall the casualty figures -- for a purported world or global war on and of terrorism seem modest. Set any of this against the Holocaust, or Hiroshima, or D-Day, or the rape of Nanking, or the siege of Leningrad, or the taking of Berlin, or the battles of Ypres or the Marne in World War I, or any of the grim battles of the Korean War, and you can see how relatively un-warlike all this really is.

Scorecard: One terrifying, massively destructive terrorist attack; one small proxy war (very low-level guerilla attacks still ongoing); one colonial-style war and occupation (ongoing); scattered terror attacks (ongoing). And a steady drumbeat of very heated rhetoric.

Weapons of Mass Destruction: What gives World War IV its very partial sense of reality isn`t what`s happening now (despite the fierceness of the Iraq War) or even what happened on September 11, 2001, but a set of frightening future possibilities, all of which rest on the present existence of vast arsenals of weapons of mass destruction, especially of nuclear weapons. Tens of thousands of them have been built and still reside on this Earth, and more are clearly coming. At least some of them, especially in the former Soviet Union and also in Pakistan are now held, politely put, under less than reliable circumstances. (But let`s remember as well that the anthrax in the unsolved and now largely forgotten anthrax mail attacks of 2001 -- the only weapon of mass destruction ever used on American soil, if you ignore atomic testing -- almost surely dropped out of the American Cold War bio-war labs, not the Soviet ones.)

It`s now clear that, ever since the A-bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there has been a brake of some kind -- one that seems to have preceded the concept of "deterrence" into existence -- on nuclear powers using the nuclear weapons they have. This was the deepest reality of the Cold War and remains so -- as in the Indian-Pakistani nuclear stand-off not so many years back -- in our present world (as it undoubtedly will even if North Korea already has the bomb and Iran gets it). But it`s a brake that works only for states. There is no reason to believe that terrorist groups which might someday get their hands on such weapons would be similarly constrained. In fact, car- and airplane-suicide bombers speak grimly to this reality; as does the fact that the only WMD ever in the hands of terrorists or cult groups (as far as we know) has been used -- in those anthrax mailings of 2001 but also in the Aum Shinrikyo sarin-gassing of the Tokyo subway system back in 1995.

This horrific possibility -- in the future, not the present -- is, I suspect, what actually gives World War IV its punch, what makes it seem faintly plausible and relatively small groups of terrorists so dangerous; or rather, this, plus Bush administration global policies that involve the profligate threat of and use of military force in ways sure to breed further terrorism and terrorists (while offering some of them on-the-spot training in Iraq), and that have reaffirmed nuclear weapons as the global currency of ultimate power. In this sense, World War IV and GWOT may be the policy equivalents of self-fulfilling dreams.

What Could or Should Be Done?

Police Work: It`s worth recalling that another post-9/11 path was suggested in the wake of the suicide attacks on America. When you read the World War IV literature what you quickly notice is that these men, their eyes focused on the crumbling towers (and on a prior policy wish-list), claimed the moment to be transformative and undoubtedly believed themselves (like our initially panicked President) in a World-War-IV-type situation. There was, however, another group which looked at the same situation, considered the horror, but focused, both more modestly and, as it turns out, more realistically, not so much on the crumbling towers as on the small set of men and the obviously audacious yet circumscribed operation that made those towers crumble. What they saw, reasonably enough, was a massive act of terror and murder, both an international crime and an armed act of propaganda, but not an act of war à la, say, Pearl Harbor.

As the Bush administration and its neocon allies called for a global response that rose to the level of apocalyptic battle, small groups of legal types and liberals called for a response keyed to those 19 men and the dangerous but modest-sized organization behind them. They claimed "terrorism" was a method of asymmetric warfare, not an enemy; that our actual enemy, while determined, fanatical, and murderous was not the equivalent of a state and that what was at stake was not "war" at all; so they called, in one fashion or another, for internationally cooperative police work to bring the criminals and murderers to justice and to dismantle their organization or organizations. This approach was instantly and roundly dismissed -- trashed, you might say -- by the administration and its various acolytes and has now largely fled the national mind.

Law professor Anne-Marie Slaughter was not atypical. On September 16, at a time when the Bush administration was already making plans to take out Iraq as well as Afghanistan, she wrote a piece for the Washington Post (A Defining Moment in the Parsing of War) in which she reminded all and sundry, in part, that:

"From a legal perspective, the difference between calling what has happened war and calling it terrorism is considerable. It is the difference between military conflict and criminal justice (of the sort meted out just months ago on the terrorists who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993). It is the difference between bombing a state and punishing an individual or several individuals. And it should mean the difference between acting together with other nations and going it alone.

"International law has a framework for hunting down hijackers and terrorists. More than 150 states have signed treaties designed to prevent terror in the skies. They have pledged to make hijacking a criminal offense and either to prosecute or extradite hijackers found within their territories. The U.N. General Assembly has also condemned terrorism and upheld the obligation to prosecute all terrorists."

Such thoughts were dismissed as typical of liberals, an ill-equipped and unwarlike crowd, scared to flex anyone`s muscles, and obviously incompetent to respond to such an attack on "the homeland." Four years later, however, with Iraq firmly, even catastrophically, ensconced as what the President now likes to call "the central theater in the war on terrorism" -- as, that is, a terrorism-creation machine as well as a bottomless pit for the American military -- things look a bit different. Our military claims to have swept up thousands of low-level al-Qaeda (and Taliban) members in their literal "war" on terrorism and many of them ended up either in Guantanamo or at various secret or semi-secret detention centers around the world; but when it came to significant figures in the terror organization, the actual "war" on terrorists has turned out to be a matter of -- as Anne-Marie Slaughter and others suspected back then -- hard-won law enforcement and police work by various combinations of national police forces around the world.

In fact, as research for this piece by the Center on Law and Security at NYU School of Law suggests, just about all the major captures of significant al-Qaeda figures (or figures claimed to be significant) have been made not by the American military (a blunt instrument indeed when it came to the capture of men like Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, or countless others) but by law enforcement. Here is a listing of a number of the alleged terrorist figures, large and small, who were captured in the post-9/11 years (arranged by name, place and time of apprehension, whom apprehended by [LA stands for "Local Authorities"], and current custody if known):

John Walker Lindh, Afghanistan 12/2001, US, US
Yasser Hamdi, Afghanistan, 12/2001, US, US
Mullah Fazel Mazloom, Afghanistan, Northern Alliance, US
Mullah Abdul Wakil Muttawakil, Afghanistan 2/2002
Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, Afghanistan, US
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Pakistan 3/2003, US, US
Ramzi Binalshibh, Pakistan 9/2002, Local Authorities (LA)
Abu Zubaydah, Pakistan 3/2002, Joint Pakistani police, FBI, and CIA team, US
Yassir al-Jazeeri, Pakistan 3/2003, LA
Ibn Al-Shaykh al-Libi, Pakistan/Afghanistan, LA
James Ujaama, US 7/2002, LA, US
Richard Reid "shoe bomber," US 12/2001, LA, US
Jose Padilla, US 5/2002, LA, US
Zacarias Moussaoui, US 8/2001, LA, US
Enaam M. Arnaout, US 4/2002, LA
Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, Undisclosed, LA, US
Mohammed Haydar Zammar, Morocco, LA, Syria
Abu Zubair al-Haili, Morocco
Ali Abdul Rahman al-Ghamdi, Saudi Arabia 2003, LA (surrendered himself)
Ahmed Ibrahim Bilal, Malaysia, LA
Abu Anas Al-Liby, Sudan 3/2002, LA, Sudan
Mohamedou Ould Slahi, Mauritania, LA, US
Omar al-Faruq, Indonesia 6/2002, LA, US
Imam Samudra, Indonesia 11/2002, LA, Indonesia
Mohsen F, Kuwait 11/2002, LA
Najib Chaib-Mohamed, Spain 1/2002, LA, Spain
Atmane Resali, Spain 1/2002, LA, Spain
Ghasoub al-Abrash al-Ghalyoun, Spain, LA, Spain
Abu Talha, Spain, LA, Spain
Bassan Dalati Satut, Spain, LA, Spain
Mounir al-Motassadek, Germany 11/2002, LA, Germany
Ibrahim Mohammed K, Germany 2005, LA, German
Yasser Abu S, Germany 2005, LA, German
Ahmed Ellattah, Belgium 2002, LA
Tarek Maaroufi, Belgium, LA
Nizar Trabelsi, Belgium
Djamel Beghal, UAE, LA, France
Kamel Daoudi, France, LA, France
Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, Iran 7/2003, LA, Unknown (possibly Iran after Kuwait refused to take him)

As you`ll note, with few exceptions, these men were taken by "local authorities." While the Bush administration has used our military to turn Iraq into a terrorist hot spot in the Middle East, police forces around the world have taken terrorists down. This is one reality that lies behind the "global war on terrorism." Had the post-9/11 focus been on international police work (backed up by military force), we might be in a far different situation today.

Weapons of Mass Destruction and Disarmament: Imagine, in terms of the real dangers of this Earth, if the United States had invested even a fraction of those endless billions of dollars dropped into the Iraqi sinkhole into nailing down the semi-loose WMD and nuclear arsenals of this world. In other words, if we had put our money and energy into the serious, hard-working, less than glorious task of denying future terrorists their most obvious sources of annihilating weaponry (including the various makings for so-called dirty bombs) and into real security measures at ports, chemical plants, nuclear plants, and the like, the possibility for World War IV-style apocalyptic scenarios would have dropped precipitously. What if, instead of proclaiming nuclear weapons bad and undesirable only if states we dislike try to create them, working to expand and improve our own nuclear arsenal while ignoring the arsenals of allies, and finally launching counter-proliferation wars as a means of "disarmament," we had led the way in putting the possession of nuclear, biological, and chemical arsenals, including our own, on the table? What if we had worked at creating a policing system for WMD as fierce as any policing system for terror -- not so illogical since these are the real terror weapons on our planet? Had we really declared a global "war" on terror, we would certainly have had to make the complex and difficult questions of dismantling all such arsenals its centerpiece and so, instead of ensuring that WMD would be the preferred currency of power for the foreseeable future, we might well have begun to hack out new pathways for the world.

Of course, the mind-set that goes with World War IV and GWOT ensures that nothing complex and untelegenic, nothing that smacks of our real, complicated world but doesn`t have the clean, Manichaean feel of a global crusade to it, is possible. If, on our proliferating planet, we end up, one of these days, with an actual apocalyptic scenario on our hands, it will be too late to thank the GWOT intellectuals, who took a terrible situation and are managing to turn it into the Schwarzenegger movie from Hell.

[Special research thanks go to Omer Z. Bekerman of the Center on Law and Security at the NYU School of Law and Nick Turse of Tomdispatch.]

Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute`s Tomdispatch.com ("a regular antidote to the mainstream media"), is the co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of American triumphalism in the Cold War.

Copyright 2005 Tom Engelhardt

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Igor Volsky is the host of the Luske-Volsky Show (with Dr. Bruce Luske) and Political Thought, two public affairs programs airing every Monday and Friday from 4-6 p.m. on WMAR 1630AM. Both shows can be streamed athttp://www.politicalthought.net/.


Published on Thursday, March 10, 2005 by The Circle (the Student Newspaper of Marist College, Poughkeepsie, NY)
All the Good Torture Jobs Are Being Sent Overseas
by Igor Volsky
http://www.maristcircle.com/news/2005/03/10/Opinion/All-The.…

Morality extends beyond the bedroom. Yet Americans are still focused on the mating habits of their fellow citizens. When we have sex, with whom we have sex and what results in the wake of that sex has preoccupied and often outraged the public. On the contrary, America`s direct participation in humiliating, immoral and illegal prisoner abuse has garnered only modest indignation. Popular media and Congressional reactionaries have said relatively little of the moral implications of such behavior.

The ideological (liberal) media and the mainstream news organizations have done their part in bringing allegations of prisoner abuse to the front pages of American newspapers. Most recently, former prisoners in Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay have complained of female interrogators smearing them with menstrual blood and rubbing them sexually. While Joe Ryan might view the practice more favorably, most Muslims are repulsed. As one journalist put it, "the tact reveals the religious heart of the war: the object is to kill the culture not simply the carrier."

But Americans are in denial. Stories of sleep deprivation and electric shock first appeared in April of 2003, and as of this writing, not a single civilian official has been held accountable. The release of torture pictures paved the way for countless Congressional hearings, investigations, and condemnations that resulted in nothing more than a bureaucratic big-bang and a public relations campaign that served as a thin veneer for reform.

In a transparent attempt to obscure his administration`s direct involvement, the President publicly censured prison torture and even prosecuted several low-level participants. All the while he has tacitly authorized and approved their behavior. Former Defense Secretary and the administration`s hand-picked abuse-investigator James Schlessinger, found "both institutional and personal responsibility at higher level" as well as "indirect responsibility [that] extended up the chain of command to Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff."

The Schlessinger Commission stipulated that the contradictory legal opinions of the administration, the inadequate number of detention-facility personnel, and the neglect to provide additional troops once the demand became apparent, (leaving the soldiers on the ground to literally fend for themselves) created confusion and laid the groundwork for the "migration" (this is Schlessinger`s term) of torture from Geneva-unprotected Guantánamo Bay into the Geneva-protected prisons of Iraq.

The author and overseer of these legal opinions was Alberto Gonzales, the current Attorney General and former White House legal council. His nomination and subsequent senate confirmation demonstrates our government`s tacit endorsement of barbarity. Gonzales advised the President to withhold Geneva Convention protections from prisoners in Afghanistan, solicited a memo in August of 2002 that allowed the President to `legally` order torture and narrowly re-define torture as "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." During his senate confirmation, Gonzales did not back away from this assessment.

Taking its legal obligation rather seriously, the Bush administration decided to outsource prison torture to professionals (market capitalism at its best). Shortly after 9/11, in another legal decision, the President abandoned the Clinton practice of transferring suspected terrorists to foreign countries on a case-by-case basis, and authorized the CIA with "expansive authority" to transfer any terrorist suspect to Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordon and Pakistan for interrogation. While the CIA claims that it receives "diplomatic assurances that the prisoner will be treated humanely," the aforementioned countries are all abuse practitioners and their assurance are not worth the paper they`re printed on.

Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan told 60 Minutes that "the CIA definitely knows [of rendered prisoners being tortured in foreign countries]. I asked my deputy to go and speak to the CIA, and she came back and reported to me that she`d me with the CIA head of station, who told her that `Yes, this material probably was obtained under torture, but the CIA didn`t see that a problem.`"

The CIA might not, but the rendered and tortured do. Maher Arar was detained two weeks after 9/11, rendered to Syria, abused, and released a year later without being charged with a crime. In December of 2003, Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, was taken off a bus in south-central Europe, flown on a secret CIA plane to Afghanistan, shackled, repeatedly punched, and questioned about extremists at his mosque in Ulm, Germany. Masri too was released without being charged with a crime.

Speaking on CBS`s 60 Minutes, Michael Scheuer, who created the CIA`s Osama bin Laden unit and helped establish renditions under the Clinton administraiton, conceded that the administration is "finding someone else to do [its] dirty work" and admitted that even though cases of mistaken identity are likely, the practice is still worth pursuing. "You do the best you can. It`s not a science ... if you make a mistake, you make a mistake."

Such `mistakes` are not viewed lightly in the Middle East. The problem with renditon is also one of perception. Asked how he explained his prolonged absense to his son, el-Mari said he "explained to him what happened... And he understood, I said it was the Americans [who did this to me]." Mari was not alone. Of all of the prisoners arrested in mass arrests and taken to Abu Ghraib during the spring of 2003, 80-95 percent (according to the army`s own estimates) were innocent civilians. Masri`s explanation has been duplicated, and its implication will be felt in the coming decades.

Igor Volsky is the host of the Luske-Volsky Show (with Dr. Bruce Luske) and Political Thought, two public affairs programs airing every Monday and Friday from 4-6 p.m. on WMAR 1630AM. Both shows can be streamed at www.politicalthought.net

© 2005 College Publisher, Inc.

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March 11, 2005
Pentagon Seeks to Transfer More Detainees From Base in Cuba
By DOUGLAS JEHL
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/11/politics/11detain.html?hp&…

WASHINGTON, March 10 - The Pentagon is seeking to enlist help from the State Department and other agencies in a plan to cut by more than half the population at its detention facility in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in part by transferring hundreds of suspected terrorists to prisons in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Yemen, according to senior administration officials.

The transfers would be similar to the renditions, or transfers of captives to other countries, carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency, but are subject to stricter approval within the government, and face potential opposition from the C.I.A. as well as the State and Justice Departments, the officials said.

Administration officials say those agencies have resisted some previous handovers, out of concern that transferring the prisoners to foreign governments could harm American security or subject the prisoners to mistreatment.

A Feb. 5 memorandum from Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld calls for broader interagency support for the plan, starting with efforts to work out a significant transfer of prisoners to Afghanistan, the officials said. The proposal is part of a Pentagon effort to cut a Guantánamo population that stands at about 540 detainees by releasing some outright and by transferring others for continued detention elsewhere.

The proposal comes as the Bush administration reviews the future of the naval base at Guantánamo as a detention center, after court decisions and shifts in public opinion have raised legal and political questions about the use of the facility.

The White House first embraced using Guantánamo as a holding place for terrorism suspects taken in Afghanistan, in part because the base was seen as beyond the jurisdiction of United States law. But recent court rulings have held that prisoners there may challenge their detentions in federal court.

Indeed, the Pentagon has halted, for the last six months, the flow of new terrorism suspects into the prison, Defense Department officials said. In January, a senior American official said in an interview that most prisoners at Guantánamo no longer had any intelligence value and were not being regularly interrogated.

The proposed transfers would represent a major acceleration of Pentagon efforts that have transferred 65 prisoners from Guantánamo to foreign countries. The population at Guantánamo includes more than 100 prisoners each from Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, a senior administration official said, and the United States might need to provide money or other logistical support to make possible a large-scale transfer to any of those nations.

Defense Department officials said that the adverse court rulings had contributed to their determination to reduce the population at Guantánamo, in part by persuading other countries to bear some of the burden of detaining terrorism suspects.

Under the administration`s approach, the State Department is responsible for negotiating agreements in which receiving countries agree "to detain, investigate, and/or prosecute" the prisoners and to treat them humanely.

"Our top choice would be to win the war on terrorism and declare an end to it and repatriate everybody," a senior Defense Department official said in an interview. "The next best solution would be to work with the home governments of the detainees in order to get them to take the necessary steps to mitigate the threat these individuals pose."

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that future transfers into Guantánamo remained a "possibility," but made clear that the court decisions and the burdens of detaining prisoners at the American facility had made it seem less attractive to administration policymakers than before.

"It`s fair to say that the calculus now is different than it was before, because the legal landscape has changed and those are factors that might be considered," a senior Defense Department official said.

In addition to working to transfer prisoners to their home countries, either to face charges there or simply to be kept in detention, officials also hope to shed dozens of prisoners whose cases are being studied by special review boards.

Those three-member military boards began working in earnest in January to determine which prisoners are no longer a threat, have no information of value and may be released outright.

At its peak, the population at Guantánamo exceeded 750 prisoners. But the last time prisoners were transferred there was on Sept. 22, 2004, when a group of 10 was transferred from Afghanistan. The United States has already dispatched 211 Guantánamo prisoners, releasing the majority of them. Sixty-five have been transferred to the custody of other counties, including 29 to Pakistan, 5 to Morocco, 7 to France, 7 to Russia, and 4 to Saudi Arabia.

The administration`s policy of detaining suspected terrorists at Guantánamo has relied on declarations that the detainees are unlawful "enemy combatants," based on assertions that they did not serve in a conventional army, and thus did not qualify for the protections listed in the Geneva Conventions.

Administration lawyers argued successfully in lower federal courts that United States laws, including access to the courts, did not apply because Guantánamo is part of Cuba.

But last June, the Supreme Court ruled that United States law applied to Guantánamo and that prisoners there could challenge their detentions in federal courts.

In August, a federal district judge ruled that the Geneva Conventions apply to Guantánamo prisoners and that the special military commissions to try war crimes were unconstitutional. The government`s appeal of that ruling is scheduled to be heard next month.

Even as it moves to reduce the population at Guantánamo, the Pentagon has asked Congress for another $41 million in supplemental financing for construction there, including $36 million for a new, more modern prison and $5 million for a new perimeter fence.

The purpose, Defense Department officials said, was to provide a secure, humane detention facility for a remnant of the current population who are expected to remain there for the foreseeable future.

As many as 200 of those now at Guantánamo will most likely remain there indefinitely, the officials said, on grounds that they are too dangerous to be turned over to other nations or would probably face mistreatment if returned to those nations.

Each of the roughly 540 prisoners at Guantánamo have gone before a three-member military board, to have their status as enemy combatants reviewed. A final review has been completed in 487 cases; of those, all but 22 were found to have been properly classified, a status leaving them subject to possible war crimes charges.

Unlike the Pentagon, the C.I.A. was authorized by President Bush after the Sept. 11 attacks to transfer prisoners from one foreign country to another without case-by-case approval from other government departments. Former intelligence officials said that the C.I.A. has carried out 100 to 150 such transfers, known as renditions, since Sept. 11.

By contrast, the transfers carried out by the Pentagon are subject to strict rules requiring interagency approval. Officials said that the transfers do not constitute renditions under the Pentagon`s definition, because the governments that accept the prisoners are not expected to carry out the will of the United States.

Indeed, officials have been concerned that transfer of some detainees could threaten American security because they might escape from foreign prisons or the foreign governments might free them.

The White House has said its policy prohibits the transfer of prisoners to other nations if it is likely they will be tortured, and administration officials said the interagency review is intended in part to enforce that standard. Transfers have been approved by the State Department to countries including Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, identified in the department`s own human rights reports as nations where the use of torture in prisons is common.

Administration officials said that American diplomats in those countries were responsible for monitoring agreements to make sure prisoners were not mistreated. The senior Defense Department official said that the difficulty of "gaining effective and credible assurances" that prisoners would not be mistreated had been "a cause of some delay in releasing or transferring some detainees we have at Guantánamo."

It is possible that Guantánamo inmates could petition a federal court to stop a transfer to a country where they did not want to be sent. But there is little if any precedent to suggest how the courts would rule.

In November, a lawyer for Mamdouh Habib, a prisoner who claimed he had been tortured in Egypt before being transferred to Guantánamo, asked a federal district court to stop the Bush administration from returning him to Egypt. Before the court ruled, he was sent to Australia in January and freed.

Neil A. Lewis and Tim Golden contributed reporting for this article.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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March 11, 2005
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
A Fine Rendition
By MICHAEL SCHEUER
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/11/opinion/11scheuer.html

Washington

AS Congress and the news media wail about the Central Intelligence Agency`s "rendition" program - its practice of turning suspected terrorists over for detainment and questioning in third countries - it is time to focus on the real issue at hand. A good starting place is Page 127 of the tablets on which are inscribed the scripture handed down by the 9/11 commission.

Here we find a description of a 1998 conversation between National Security Director Samuel Berger and his counterterrorism chief, Richard Clarke, about the capture of Abu Hajer al Iraqi, the "most important bin Laden lieutenant captured thus far." According to the report, Mr. Clarke commented to Mr. Berger "with satisfaction that August and September had brought the `greatest number of terrorist arrests in a short period of time that we have ever arranged or facilitated.` " Part and parcel of this success, the men make clear, were the renditions of captured Qaeda terrorists.

Neither Mr. Clarke nor Mr. Berger were C.I.A. officers. They were senior White House officials who - in consultation with President Bill Clinton - set America`s Al Qaeda policy from 1993 to 2001. They told the C.I.A. what to do, and decided how it should pursue, capture and detain terrorists. They knew that Abu Hajer al Iraqi was being brought to the United States for trial, and they knew - and approved - of the rendition of his compatriots to Egypt and elsewhere. Having failed to find a legal means to keep all the detainees in American custody, they preferred to let other countries do our dirty work.

Why does this matter? Because it makes clear that in dealing with detainees in 1998, and today as well, the C.I.A. is following orders from the president and his National Security Council advisers. Likewise, in 1998 and today, the agency is executing operations under those orders only after they are approved by a vast cohort of lawyers at the security council, the Justice Department and the C.I.A. itself.

I know this because, as head of the C.I.A.`s bin Laden desk, I started the Qaeda detainee/rendition program and ran it for 40 months. And in my 22 years at the agency I never a saw a set of operations that was more closely scrutinized by the director of central intelligence, the National Security Council and the Congressional intelligence committees. Nor did I ever see one that was more blessed (plagued?) by the expert guidance of lawyers.

For now, the beginning of wisdom is to acknowledge that the non-C.I.A. staff members mentioned above knew that taking detainees to Egypt or elsewhere might yield treatment not consonant with United States legal practice. How did they know? Well, several senior C.I.A. officers, myself included, were confident that common sense would elude that bunch, and so we told them - again and again and again. Each time a decision to do a rendition was made, we reminded the lawyers and policy makers that Egypt was Egypt, and that Jimmy Stewart never starred in a movie called "Mr. Smith Goes to Cairo." They usually listened, nodded, and then inserted a legal nicety by insisting that each country to which the agency delivered a detainee would have to pledge it would treat him according to the rules of its own legal system.

So as the hounding of C.I.A. and the calls for its officers` blood continue, a few things must be made clear - all the more so if the government is really considering the renditions of many detainees now held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. First, the agency is peculiarly an instrument of the executive branch. Renditions were called for, authorized and legally vetted not just by the N.S.C. and the Justice Department, but also by the presidents - both Mr. Clinton and George W. Bush. In my mind, these men and women made the right decision - America is better protected because of renditions - but it would have been better if they had not lacked the bureaucratic and moral courage to work with Congress to find ways to bring all detainees to America.

Second, the rendition program has been a tremendous success. Dozens of senior Qaeda fighters are today behind bars, no longer able to plot or participate in attacks. Detainee operations also netted an untold number of computers and documents that increased our knowledge of Al Qaeda`s makeup and plans.

Third, if mistakes were made, like the alleged cases of innocent detainees, they should be corrected, but the C.I.A. officers who followed orders should not be punished. Perfection is never attainable in the fog of war, and any errors should not distract from the overwhelming success of the program.

All Americans owe a debt of gratitude to the men and women of the agency who executed these presidentially requested and approved operations, often at the risk of their lives. Unfortunately, rather than receiving thanks, the C.I.A. officers are again learning the usual lesson: to follow orders, make America safer and prepare to be abandoned and prosecuted when the policy makers refuse to defend their own decisions.

Michael Scheuer is the author of "Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror."

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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The Independent
Syria reasserts power in Lebanon as its ally returns as prime minister
Friday, 11th March 2005, by Robert Fisk
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/story.jsp?story=618…

E’s back. Omar Karami, the Ramsay MacDonald of Lebanese politics, has returned to power as Prime Minister - "power" being a word of limited definition here at the moment - only 10 days after he resigned from office during mass demonstrations against Syria’s presence in Lebanon.

The most pro-Syrian prime minister of Lebanon - his cabinet was dubbed "made in Syria" by the US administration - was reappointed by one of the country’s most pro-Syrian presidents, Emile Lahoud, after 71 of 78 MPs in the 128-member Lebanese parliament put forward his name, more than half of the votes required in the assembly.

MacDonald was perhaps Britain’s most impotent 20th century prime minister - Churchill cruelly described him as "the boneless wonder" - but Mr Karami arrived at parliament yesterday with a threat: unless he could form a cabinet which included the opposition - which had already rejected his premiership - there might be "unforeseen, dangerous results" to the Lebanese economy.

It was the murder of Rafik Hariri, the former prime minister and symbol of Lebanon’s post-civil war regeneration, on 14 February, that endangered the economy, but there was no doubt that Mr Karami understood the dangers. Lebanon is $33bn (£17bn) in debt and with Mr Hariri assassinated, who can safeguard future investment in Lebanon? Certainly not Mr Karami.

The Syrian army yesterday continued its evacuation of bases around Batroun, Tripoli and the mountains above Beirut - their military intelligence offices in the capital still remained open for business - as Lebanese troops took over their positions. But the return of a Karami government, supposing he can form one, put Syria’s fingerprints back on the Lebanese cabinet. Needless to say, Mr Karami said that he would form a "government of national unity and salvation" - something which Lebanese prime ministers have been doing on and off for the past 30 years.

Samir Franjieh, one of the opposition MPs who helped to break the last Karami government, claimed that the reappointment was intended to destroy any hope of a national dialogue. "It is a step that greatly challenges the opposition and the people’s feelings," he said. Mr Karami claimed that he had the support of a parliamentary majority and of the people, adding that the Hizbollah-organised pro-Syrian demonstration on Tuesday, which drew half a million, was "a massive demonstration that asserted our legitimacy in the Lebanese street". That the new prime minister believes he is entitled to his job because of a Hizbollah rally says almost as much about Lebanese politics as his own reappointment.

What is becoming clearer, however, is that after Syria’s military withdrawal, the Hizbollah guerrillas who led the resistance to Israeli occupation are going to be the vanguard of Damascus in Lebanon, the institution whose organising power and discipline will be used to prevent the Syrian retreat turning into the first stage of a Lebanese-Israeli peace treaty until there is an Israeli withdrawal from occupied Palestinian and Syrian lands.

Although it has only seven seats in the Lebanese parliament, Hizbollah refuses to contemplate the disarming of its members - as UN Security Council Resolution 1559 demands, along with the Israeli government - and even Washington appears to have concluded, after Tuesday’s massive rally in Beirut, that the organisation it has vilified for the past three years as another centre of "world terror" will have to be lived with. Walid Jumblatt, the Druze leader and now in effect head of the Lebanese opposition, repeatedly points out that ShiaHizbollah is a Lebanese movement that has a political role to play in its country. Israel and America may dream of a disarmed Hizbollah but the idea that the Lebanese army, whose soldiers include a large number of Shias, will collect its weapons, is a myth.

What is becoming clear is that Syria’s tactic of drawing out its military withdrawal is intended to break the unity of its Lebanese opponents. Yesterday, there were no major demonstrations, in Martyrs’ Square in Beirut, no "cedar" revolution and little real unified response from the opposition to Mr Karami’s reappointment. The best the opposition could do was announce a Saturday rally in Beirut in which 10,800 people would form a massive red, white and green Lebanese flag - shirts distributed free of charge - in the centre of the capital. Pro-Syrian groups have organised another rally in Tripoli, Mr Karami’s home city. "Sister Syria", it seems, still intends to clutch Lebanon in its family embrace.

* Because of an editing error, a sentence in Robert Fisk’s despatch from Beirut on 8 March was transposed, and should have read: "when a car hit a rubbish skip and dragged it across the road with a terrible, grating roar."

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Shias reach deal to form Iraqi government

Mark Oliver and agencies
Thursday March 10, 2005
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1434947,00.html

Guardian Unlimited
The Shia alliance that won the most seats in Iraqi elections in January announced today it had reached a deal with Iraqi Kurds to form a new government.

In the five weeks since elections were held, on January 30, various factions have jostled for influence in Iraq`s first democratic government in modern times.

The United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), backed by the powerful Shia clergy, won 140 out of the 275 seats that will make up the new national assembly, which is to convene on March 16.

Although it has more than half the seats, the alliance needs the 75 seats won by the Kurds to muster the two-third majority required to elect a president and secure its choice for prime minister.

Today, after days of negotiations, the two groups announced a deal after reaching agreement on demands made by the Kurds for their support.

The (UIA) has given an assurance that a new government will begin talks on the return of around 100,000 deported Kurds to the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk. The deal also involves promises to redraw the existing Kurdish regions, where the Kurds already have a large degree of autonomy, to include Kirkuk.

The redrawing of the regions will be incorporated into Iraq`s new constitution, which it is hoped will be written by the end of the year.

Fuad Masoum, a member of the Kurdish coalition, said: "We agreed to solve the issue [of Kirkuk] in two steps. In the first step, the new government is committed to normalising the situation in Kirkuk. The other step, regarding annexing Kirkuk to Kurdistan, is to be left until the writing of the constitution."

Ali al-Dabagh, a member of the Shia Political Council, which is part of the UIA, said: "We told them that the issues will be discussed as soon as the central government is formed."

The support of the Kurds will allow the Shia alliance to install Ibrahim al-Jaafari, 57, a London GP, as prime minister.

The Shia alliance has previously agreed that the Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani can take the presidency, a largely ceremonial role. Mr Talabani leads the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which controls the eastern part of the Kurds` self-rule area.

Mr Jaafari, a conservative Shia with strong religious beliefs, leads the Islamic Dawa party, which is a major player in the United Iraqi Alliance. Some analysts see him as a conciliatory figure who will reach out to Iraq`s various groups including the minority Sunni Muslims, the ruling group in the Saddam era. Many of this group did not vote in the election.

Disaffected Sunnis are also linked with the insurgency that has flared since Saddam was deposed by the US-led coalition that invaded in March 2003. At least 30 people were killed today in a suicide attack at a funeral service in a mosque in the northern city of Mosul.

Iraq`s most senior Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, 76, is considered the architect of the Shia coalition that gathered rival parties under one banner. He will retain influence regardless of who becomes prime minister.

Earlier this week a UIA official said Ayad Allawi, the interim prime minister, whose secular Iraqi List party won 40 seats, had refused an offer of a cabinet post. Mr Allawi has been manoeuvring to stay as prime minister, a role he has held since June 2004 when the US-led coalition handed power to an interim Iraqi authority.

Despite the delay in deciding the shape of the new government, it was announced last week that the national assembly should convene on March 16 to show unity against the insurgency. The date marks the anniversary of the 1988 chemical attack on the northern Kurdish town of Halabja. The attack, ordered by Saddam, killed around 5,000 people.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

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Lebanon is not Ukraine

The upheaval in Beirut is better understood as a power play by entrenched local and international interests than a democratic revolution
Charles Harb
Friday March 11, 2005
http://www.guardian.co.uk/analysis/story/0,3604,1435215,00.h…

Guardian
Do events in Lebanon reflect a population united in rejecting Syrian influence, and is this "independence uprising" part of an inexorable movement towards freedom and democracy? Popular discontent was already apparent last September when a Syrian-orchestrated constitutional amendment extended President Emile Lahoud`s mandate. Druze leader Walid Jumblatt joined the various Christian opposition groups, creating a Christian-Druze alliance in defiance of Syrian hegemony in Lebanon. The powerful Sunni leader and former prime minister, Rafik al-Hariri, was seen as tacitly, if not enthusiastically, supporting the opposition.

Hariri`s assassination last month then became a dramatically polarising event, and the catalyst for a popular upheaval against Syrian forces. Two weeks after the assassination, and at the behest of the financial lobbies of Beirut, the opposition called a rally - and thousands of young Lebanese defied a government ban to take to the streets. The government resigned and the international media had a field day. The wind of change and hope, from Iraq to Palestine, was blowing in Lebanon.

This rosy picture fails to take into account the socio-political structures of Lebanese society. Its governance is built on a sectarian and feudal consensual system. It is an aggregate of religious minority groups that coalesce around local feudal lords in return for services. Each sect is given a clear share of power. For example, the president of the country has to be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim and the head of parliament a Shia Muslim. Governance tends to be built on consensus between the various parties, leaving no room for accountability or programmatic politics. When majordifferences between the factions emerge, the country is thrown into crisis. And when external players get involved, crisis has the potential to turn into civil war. That was the case first in 1952, again in 1958 and 1969, culminating in the 15-year civil war between 1975 and 1990.

It may be that the current situation is no different. With increasing economic problems, friction between the parties was already growing. The geopolitical earthquake triggered by the war on Iraq was tightening the security noose in Lebanon. By endorsing the unifying effect of Hariri`s death on the wider Lebanese population, opposition leaders appeared to represent a drive towards freedom and the US project for "the greater Middle East".

However, four internal factors need to be kept in mind. First, the Shia Muslims, one of the largest segments of the Lebanese population, have not joined the opposition. Although there is antipathy towards Syrian hegemony, "Lebanon" is not united behind current developments.

Second, some of the leaders of this "insurrection" are power players who held no grievance towards Syrian tutelage while they profited from it. Many of those promoting this free and democratic revolution are the same autocratic warlords who tore the country apart 15 years ago and have been undemocratically jousting for power ever since.

Third, the opposition has not offered any programme of reform of corrupt institutions or platform for a new beginning. Fourth, freedom of expression and democratic practices were not suddenly born with Hariri`s assassination. Lebanon`s media is one of the freest in the Middle East, and its consensual democratic system has been in place for decades.

If we assume that elections are held in May, it is likely that most of the new representatives will be the same as the old. The sectarian social and political divisions that characterise the country are not likely to disappear. The same non-transparent, corrupt and clientele governance is likely to endure - with Syria`s monopoly redistributed to include a wider American and French influence. Unless a civil, citizen-based political force emerges to challenge the entrenched sectarian and feudal-based thinking and distribution, Lebanon will only see a shift in power shares.

Hariri`s assassination and current events in Lebanon have breached Syrian hegemony. France is struggling to regain a foothold in the region. Arab states, particularly Saudi Arabia and Egypt, see an opportunity to enhance their regional role at the expense of Syria`s. The US sees the events as an opportunity to further pressure Syria - whose help it needs to pacify Iraq - to toe its line.

Bogged down in Iraq, the US does not yet seem to want regime change in Syria. US interests lie in a docile Syrian regime. Until the time is ripe, Syrian influence must be contained, away from the Arab-Israeli-Palestinian agenda. And if the US neocons harbour designs against Iran, then securing the northern Israeli border by neutralising Hizbullah is a must.

Arab sensitivities are also at play. With an Alawi minority ruling the Sunni majority in Syria, Hariri`s assassination is perceived by many as part of a plot to shrink Sunni influences in the region (from Iraq to Syria and Lebanon), and is fuelling Sunni-centrism in the area.

Syrian mismanagement of the Lebanese portfolio had been building up to a critical mass that only needed a detonator to explode. Neither the Iraqi elections nor Bush`s phenomenal use of the word "freedom" led to the dramatic events in Lebanon. The assassination was not only the spark, but also the main motor behind the demonstrations. Current developments must be seen in the light of opportunistic exploitation by local, regional and international players rather than as a "democratic revolution".

Tuesday`s powerful counter-demonstration by government loyalists, especially Hizbullah, should rein in international euphoria. Beirut had never seen a crowd so large. Hizbullah`s charismatic leader, Hassan Nasrallah, addressed a crowd of a million people, and reminded the world that "Lebanon is not Ukraine". Recent events do spur a glimmer of hope for positive, non-violent change. But if local and regional players want to see a Lebanon enjoying its "sovereignty, freedom and independence", then they need to take the complexity of social reality into account.

Professor Charles Harb teaches social psychology at the American University of Beirut

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Old Rumsfeld gegen New Rumsfeld. Bitte nicht verwechseln.

THE NATION
Iraq War Compels Pentagon to Rethink Big-Picture Strategy
By Mark Mazzetti
Times Staff Writer
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-na-milwar11m…

March 11, 2005

WASHINGTON — The war in Iraq is forcing top Pentagon planners to rethink several key assumptions about the use of military power and has called into question the vision set out nearly four years ago that the armed forces can win wars and keep the peace with small numbers of fast-moving, lightly armed troops.

As the Pentagon begins a comprehensive review that will map the future of America`s armed forces, many Defense Department officials are acknowledging that an intractable Iraqi insurgency they didn`t foresee has undermined the military strategy.

In the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Pentagon unveiled a new agenda that promised to prepare the military to fight smaller wars against terrorist networks and to swiftly defeat rogue states.

With Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld pushing for a "lighter, more lethal and highly mobile fighting force," the Pentagon scrapped as outdated the requirement that the U.S. military be large enough to simultaneously fight two large-scale wars against massed enemy armies. And it spent little time worrying about how to keep the peace after the shooting stopped.

Something happened on the way to the wars of the future: The Pentagon became bogged down in an old-fashioned, costly and drawn-out war of occupation. Though the rapid assault on Baghdad in March 2003 went smoothly, it is the bloody two years since that have diverged from the Pentagon`s blueprint.

"When people were thinking about regime change, they really weren`t thinking about the long-term stabilization and peacekeeping operations. There was a view that in terms of gross numbers, [regime change operations] wouldn`t last as long as Iraq has," said Rand Corp. fellow Andrew Hoehn, who led the Pentagon`s last major review in 2001.

As the Pentagon begins its assessment, it has 145,000 troops stationed in a country they were supposed to have left months ago. And with tensions rising between Washington and the two other countries labeled by President Bush as part of an "axis of evil" — Iran and North Korea — there is a growing belief within the military`s ranks that the White House`s rhetoric about preemptive war is out of sync with the U.S. military`s strained resources.

Some inside the Pentagon criticized senior Bush administration officials for assuming that the war in Iraq would end when U.S. troops toppled Saddam Hussein`s regime — and for assuming the U.S. could reduce its troop presence to 30,000 soldiers within six months of Baghdad`s fall.

"The administration was flat wrong on Iraq because they had blinders on," said a senior Army official who worked on strategic planning at the Pentagon. "There`s now a much greater perception that we need to know what we`re signing up for before we get into it."

As a consequence, the importance of peacekeeping operations and help from allied militaries — ideas that some discounted three years ago as remnants of the President Clinton era — are back in vogue at the Pentagon.

Although born out of a blizzard of complex diagrams and flow charts, the Pentagon assessment, known as the Quadrennial Defense Review, or QDR, is not an academic exercise.

First undertaken after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the QDR is the playbook the Pentagon uses to guide decisions such as how big the military should be and which big-ticket weapons the Defense Department ought to purchase.

The Pentagon`s decision in 2001 to scrap the two-war doctrine freed war planners from requiring enough heavy armor divisions to simultaneously fight two major wars, and allowed the Pentagon to invest in more futuristic weaponry like a missile defense system.

"We`re always going to have a limited budget. So when we`re making decisions about where to spend the next dollar, you want everyone clear about which sheet of music we`re all singing off of," said Michele Flournoy of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Flournoy was one of the lead Pentagon officials on the 1997 review, which embraced the two-war doctrine.

The new review, which is just beginning, will not be completed until early next year. Last fall, a Pentagon advisory board predicted that the protracted stability operations underway in Iraq and Afghanistan were a model for the U.S. military`s future. The Pentagon has focused too little on preparing for what happens after major combat operations end, said the Defense Science Board, which advises Rumsfeld.

"Some have believed, or hoped, that the technological and conceptual advances … can reduce the time and personnel needed for stabilization and reconstruction," the board said. "Unfortunately, we do not find that is the case."

The Defense Science Board report was commissioned to guide the upcoming Quadrennial Defense Review studies, and it is part of a growing body of Pentagon analysis signaling a shift in Defense Department thinking.

Another possible shift has to do with the perception of U.S. allies. With the Army and Marine Corps straining to meet the Pentagon`s troop requirements for Iraq and Afghanistan, the participation of allies has taken on greater importance. Foreign troops would be necessary for any large-scale operation the U.S. military might undertake, planners said, if only to share the post-conflict burdens such as those confronting the U.S. military in Iraq.

"There are smarter, more efficient ways to do regime change and occupation," said one senior civilian official at the Pentagon. "One of those ways is to rely much more on our friends and allies to do the back-end work."

In recent weeks, Bush administration officials have taken a far more conciliatory tone with some of America`s oldest European allies. Whereas Rumsfeld once slighted NATO`s western European members — referring to them as "old Europe" — he poked fun at those comments to win over European ministers during a trip to the continent last month.

"That was old Rumsfeld," he said.

On Thursday, Rumsfeld welcomed French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie to the Pentagon, praising the cooperation between the nations` militaries over the years.

The Iraq war has also shown the weakness in a strategy created by the Pentagon in 2003 to help plan major operations.

The 10-30-30 construct said that the U.S. military should plan military actions to seize the initiative within 10 days of the start of an offensive, achieve limited military objectives within 30 days, and be prepared within another 30 days to shift military resources to another area of the world.

Many Pentagon officials fear that the success Iraqi insurgents have had in preventing a U.S. troop reduction in Iraq could be the new rule, rather than the exception.

As few enemies choose to fight the U.S. military head-on, they might opt instead to fight protracted rear-guard insurgencies.

"I think that the Pentagon realizes by now that 10-30-30 is largely outdated," said Frank Hoffman of the Marine Corps` Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities, a contributor to the Defense Science Board study. "It presumes a model of warfare that we ourselves have made obsolete."

Hoffman said no adversary was likely to present U.S. forces with a conventional threat that can be defeated in 30 days.

"Our enemy`s metric is protracting conflicts to 3,000 days or more," he said. "Prolonged insurgency, death by a thousand cuts, is their answer to `shock and awe.` "



Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

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Mar 11, 2005

PART 4: [urlMilitarism and mercenaries]http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GC11Aa01.html[/url]
By Henry C K Liu

PART 1: The failed-state cancer
PART 2: The privatization wave
PART 3: The business of private security


Beyond social and financial security, a sovereign state is responsible for the military security of the nation. In the US political system, foreign security and domestic security are clearly separated to prevent the emergence of militarism. Protecting the nation from foreign enemies outside of US borders is the responsibility of the US armed forces. Domestic or homeland security is the responsibility of the National Guard, the local police, the Coast Guard and the Border Patrol. The United States Border Patrol (USBP) is now the mobile uniformed law-enforcement arm of the newly formed Department of Homeland Security (DHS). USBP was officially established on May 28, 1924, by an act of Congress passed in response to increasing illegal immigration from south of the border. As mandated by this act, the small border guard in what was then the Bureau of Immigration was reorganized into the Border Patrol. The initial force of 450 officers was given the responsibility of combating illegal entries and the growing business of alien smuggling. Homeland security became a primary concern of the nation after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Domestic security now involves not just internal threats and illegal immigration but foreign terrorist threats within US borders. Border security has become a topic of increased concern with the "war on terrorism".

The United States Coast Guard, one of the country`s five armed services, is also one of the most singular agencies of the federal government. Its history traces back to August 4, 1790, when the first Congress authorized the construction of 10 vessels to enforce tariff and trade laws, prevent smuggling, and protect the collection of federal revenue. Smuggling had been rampant and profitable. In times of peace the Coast Guard operates as part of the DHS, serving as the nation`s front-line agency for enforcing its laws at sea, protecting its coastline and ports, rescuing distressed boats and saving lives at sea. In times of war, or on direction of the president, it serves under the Navy Department.

Foreign intelligence had been the responsibility of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) while intelligence on domestic threats was the responsibility of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The separation had been maintained by law since the Central Intelligence Service (CIS) was created from the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) of World War II. The OSS was established in June 1942 with a mandate to collect and analyze strategic information required by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and to conduct special operations, such as espionage and covert action. During World War II, the OSS supplied policymakers with essential facts and intelligence estimates and often played an important role in directly aiding military campaigns. But the OSS never received complete jurisdiction over all foreign intelligence activities, with all older government and military departments retaining their own intelligence operations. Since the early 1930s, the FBI, in addition to domestic investigation, had been responsible for intelligence work in Latin America, and the military services protected their traditional areas of responsibility. Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, which forced the US to acknowledge the breakdown of the separation of foreign and domestic security, both the armed forces and the intelligence community have been impacted by the fact that the "war on terrorism" needs to be waged both inside and outside US borders simultaneously. A new position of director of national intelligence has just been created, with John D Negroponte, a veteran diplomat, overseeing a staff of more than 500.

September 11 was generally acknowledged as the worst intelligence failure in post-World War II US history, and revealed that US intelligence gathering and analysis needed to be restructured and vastly improved. Many proposals have since been put forward to improve US intelligence capabilities. The pre-September 11 framework for US intelligence had been created in a different time to deal with different geopolitical problems. The National Security Act of 1947 signed by president Harry Truman, which established the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency, envisaged communist states such as the Soviet Union and the People`s Republic of China as primary adversaries. It also recognized the importance of protecting citizen rights domestically. The result was organizations and authority based on clear distinction of domestic versus foreign threats, of law-enforcement versus national-security concerns, and of peacetime versus wartime conditions.

Rooted in the English and early colonial tradition of citizen-soldiers providing local protection and law enforcement, the Revolutionary War veterans and male descendants of their families organized themselves into local militia units. Reflecting the provisions of the US constitution establishing the need for "a well-regulated militia being necessary for the security of a free state", the federal government passed the Militia Act of 1792, which required all able-bodied men aged 18-45 to serve in their local militia units and provide their own weapons and equipment. It further authorized the governor of each state to appoint an adjutant general to enact the orders of the governor and to supervise unit training and organization. Reflecting the founding fathers` distrust of a large standing army, the act strictly limited the ability of the militia to serve outside of their state borders and placed effective control with the governors rather than the federal government.

With war looming, the Selective Service Act of 1917 was enacted, requiring the adjutant general of each state to set up local draft boards to institute military conscription. During peacetime the National Guard in each state answers to the political leadership in the 50 states, three territories and the District of Columbia. During national emergencies, however, the president reserves the right to mobilize the National Guard, putting them on federal duty status. While federalized, the units answer to the combatant commander of the theater in which they are operating and, ultimately, to the president. Even when not federalized, the Army National Guard has a federal obligation to maintain properly trained and equipped units, available for prompt mobilization for war, national emergency, or as otherwise needed. The Army National Guard is a partner with the Active Army and the Army Reserves in fulfilling the country`s military needs. In reality, the regular army holds a low expectation of the combat readiness of national guardsmen.

The separation between the military and the civilian police is as fundamental as the separation of church and state in the US polity. The US constitution puts strict limits on the role of the military. The Third Amendment sets conditions for quartering of soldiers during time of peace or war. The Fourth Amendment protects civilians from "unreasonable search and seizure". These two plus eight other amendments to the constitution encompass the Bill of Rights, created to protect the people from government abuse and from inevitable encroachment on civil liberties. These amendments were written with the intent of protecting the population from government repression, a lesson learned after much suffering under British tyranny, including the forced quartering of British soldiers and military impunity to domestic civilian law. Other limits to the military`s role in domestic activities were later written into law. The earliest and most far-reaching was the Posse Comitatus Act of the late 1800s, which placed strict restrictions on the US military at a time when they were repeatedly being used by incumbents during election campaigns.

Militarism at Little Rock
On May 17, 1954, the US Supreme Court ruled in Brown vs Topeka Board of Education that segregated schools are "inherently unequal" and must be integrated "with deliberate speed". In September 1957, as a result of that ruling, nine black students enrolled at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. As popular opposition threatened violence and social disorder, governor Orval E Faubus ordered the Arkansas National Guard to surround Central High School to keep the nine students from entering the school to defuse social unrest and to maintain law and order. On September 2, 1957, the day before the nine black students were to enter Central High, national guardsmen surrounded the school. In a televised speech that night, Faubus explained that he had called the national guardsmen because he had heard that white supremacists from all over the state were descending on Little Rock. He declared Central off-limits to blacks and Horace Mann, the black high school, off-limits to whites. He also warned that if the black students attempted to enter Central High, "blood would run in the streets".

President Dwight D Eisenhower, after procrastinating for 18 days, federalized the National Guards. But fearing for the dependability of the local militia, the members of which were from the local community and were in sympathy with the segregationist governor, who had the overwhelming support of the local population, Eisenhower ordered 1,000 members of the 101st Airborne Division into Little Rock to ensure the safety of the "Little Rock Nine" and to prevent the breakdown of law and order. Thus the unpopular ruling of the Supreme Court was upheld in a hostile community with military intervention. Eisenhower, a southerner and personally sympathetic to segregation, publicly stated that he found the need for federal troops "repugnant" and he sent them not to support desegregation but to establish law and order and he did so not as president but as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, which incidentally had remained segregated until September 30, 1954. Eisenhower`s entire distinguished military career took place under a segregated military and his years at West Point as a cadet were spent without ever encountering a black classmate. It was not until July 26, 1948, that president Truman signed Executive Order 9981 establishing the Presidents Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services. It was accompanied by Executive Order 9980, which created a Fair Employment Board to eliminate racial discrimination in federal employment. The entire Second World War to defend freedom and democracy was fought under strict segregation in the US government and armed forces.

Little Rock was the first time since the end of the Civil War and Reconstruction that federal troops had been sent to the south over racial issues. It was a classic failed-state syndrome through the exercise of militarism. The crisis was televised for the whole world to see.

Eisenhower said on a television broadcast on September 24, 1957: "At a time when we face grave situations abroad because of the hatred that communism bears towards a system of government based on human rights, it would be difficult to exaggerate the harm that is being done to the prestige and influence and indeed to the safety of our nation and the world. Our enemies are gloating over this incident and using it everywhere to misrepresent our whole nation. We are portrayed as a violator of those standards which the peoples of the world united to proclaim in the Charter of the United Nations." But he took the argument out of his own rhetoric by denying publicly that his actions were to support the moral principle of desegregation. Instead of being a committed leader of moral righteousness, he deferred to how the US might look bad to communists around the world if segregation, for which he publicly professed personal sympathy, were allowed to continue. The southern segregationists had a point: if desegregation was not the issue, then Eisenhower merely exercised the power of a police state by sending federal troops to Arkansas, since governor Orval E Faubus had sent in his National Guard also not to resist desegregation, but only to maintain public order.

Senator Richard B Russell of Georgia likened Eisenhower`s paratroopers to "Hitler`s storm troopers", a charge that could not be summarily dismissed by Eisenhower`s own logic. What Eisenhower unleashed was not high moral principle backed by legitimate force, but militarism to preserve order in a power struggle between a governor who defended state rights under pressure of a pending democratic election and a president who was obliged to preserve the union once again by upholding the authority of the federal government. Eisenhower was revisiting Abraham Lincoln`s dilemma almost a century after the Civil War, to bring the south once again to its knees over an issue of state rights by the pretext of a moral principle with which both he and Lincoln personally did not sympathize. George W Bush, a politician from Texas, that stronghold of state rights in domestic politics, was acting against his own political heritage when he violated sovereign state rights of self-determination in international relations to impose by illegitimate militarism a moral imperialism on an alien culture.

Russell served as governor of Georgia when falling state revenue was causing recurring fiscal deficits, with rampant unemployment, courtesy of the Great Depression, falling cotton prices and falling cotton production as a result of boll-weevil infestation. Between 1931 and 1933, Russell worked on reorganizing the government along New Deal lines, making it more effective and less corrupt, and began a vast program of road building and other public works to create jobs, as well as strong support for public education, albeit segregated, to revive the state`s economy. Russell went to Washington as senator from Georgia in 1933. Over the next four decades, Russell became a major figure in Washington, especially as a powerful committee chairman. In the Senate, he became known as a supporter of a strong military, federal subsidy to agriculture, and state rights on the issue of segregation. He felt that Georgians could deal with race relations in their own ways with more sensitivity and effectiveness without coercive counter-productive federal intervention. Separate but equal was the defense of moderate southerners, and to them the segregated southern institution was more tolerant toward black Americans than the de facto segregation in the north. To support their view, southerners pointed to that fact that Georgia produced many distinguished black Americans in all fields under segregation, such as W E B Du Bois.

As the world prepared to celebrate a century of progress at the 1900 International Exposition in Paris, Du Bois, then a sociology professor at Atlanta University, was approached by Thomas Calloway, a black lawyer who called for black participation in the exposition, to illustrate progress made by black Americans since Emancipation. Du Bois, Calloway and Daniel A P Murray, a son of freed slaves and assistant librarian of Congress, compiled books, manuscripts, artifacts and some 500 photographs of people, homes, churches, businesses and landscapes that defied stereotypes. A Small Nation of People brings together more than 150 of these photographs in a single volume for the first time. The book is about "The Exhibit of American Negroes" shown at the 1900 World`s Fair in Paris. The display included a set of charts, maps and graphs prepared by Du Bois recording the growth of population, economic power and literacy among blacks in Georgia. It also included photographs that exemplified dignity, accomplishment and progress, such as images of blacks attending universities and running businesses.

Segregation, while inherently wrong and unjust, was a complex issue that many northern desegregationists oversimplified as an abstract principle by imposing coercive corrective measures that in reality exacerbated violent resistance, at least over methods. The same oversimplification has infected the self-righteous, simplistic US crusade for universal democracy and human rights as pretext for neo-imperialism. Few in the world are against democracy or human rights, but many will resist to the end the way the US goes about imposing its preferred version through illegitimate militarism.

Russell was appointed to the Senate Appropriations Committee, which he chaired for years. Among the legislation he proposed were federal farm relief, soil conservation, rural electrification, the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the Farm Security Act, and the National School Lunch Act. He was a champion of state rights, and a crusader against government waste and corruption. Although a strong supporter of the military throughout his career he opposed the decision to send troops to Vietnam. He was a member of the Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination of president John Fitzgerald Kennedy. As president pro tem of the US Senate, he was third in line to ascend to the presidency.

In 1952, Russell ran for the Democratic nomination for president, having already won the New Hampshire primary. Over the next two months after New Hampshire, his stand in support of segregation would define this Georgia political icon. Growing up in the racially segregated south, Russell not only defended his conviction that segregation was a workable way of life for Georgia, he voted his conviction and, in the end, paid the price for his way of thinking. Russell actually had a good chance at the nomination, with strong support in the south and many Democrats privately supporting him across the United States. Realizing that segregation would not sell in the north or the west, the Democrats asked Russell to renounce his stand on segregation. Russell refused, stating that he believed ending segregation abruptly would destroy once again the fabric of southern society. The Democrats chose as their candidate Adlai Stevenson, who lost the election to Eisenhower, a war hero and a southerner who publicly declined to support desegregation.

From 1952 on, Russell, embittered by the high price he had paid for his gradualism on racial matters, turned reactionary to fight a hopeless battle, trying to preserve the institution of segregation as it was dismantled piece by piece. After the historic 1954 Supreme Court ruling on Brown vs Topeka Board of Education, Mississippi senator James Eastland stated: "The south will not abide by nor obey this legislative decision by a political court." Senator Russell, by contrast, took a more moderate approach: "Ways must be found to check the tendency of the court to disregard the constitution and the precedents of able and unbiased judges to decide cases solely on the basis of the personal predilections of some of its members as to political, economic and social questions." Texas senator and majority leader Lyndon Baines Johnson, a Russell protege, moved civil-rights legislation through the Senate in 1957. It was the first such legislation passed by Congress in 80 years. Russell and others formed a "southern bloc" of senators opposed to legislation giving equal rights to blacks. This bloc voted against the civil-rights legislation of 1964 and 1965, the programs of Johnson`s Great Society, and many judicial nominations. If Russell had been president instead of Eisenhower, the Little Rock crisis might have been averted and racial integration might have proceeded more smoothly and with less violence and hatred, for the south might have moved voluntarily toward what it knew was moral and right, without rallying behind the shield of defending state rights. As the election of liberal southern governors such as Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton to the presidency demonstrated, southern politicians can deal with racial issues more effectively and with more understanding of southern sentiments. The Little Rock crisis was a manifestation of failed statehood and a triumph for militarism.

The paratroopers stayed in Little Rock until the end of November 1957. The federalized national guardsmen stayed for one year. Eight of the nine black students stayed at Central High School for the whole academic year and one, Ernest Green, graduated to college. Another, Minnijean Brown, on December 17, dumped her lunch tray over the heads of two white boys who had been taunting her. Even though the boys later confessed, as most decent human beings would under calmer conditions, that they "didn`t blame her for getting mad" after all the insults she had endured over the course of the year, Minnijean was suspended for six days. She was "reinstated" on probation on January 13, 1958, with the agreement that she would not retaliate, verbally or physically, to any harassment but would leave the matter to the largely indifferent school authorities to handle. But she was expelled in February after she called a girl who was mercilessly provoking her "white trash", while none of her white tormentors were disciplined for racist insults yelled at her constantly. The whites in the school were jubilant, making up cards that said, "One down ... eight to go!" The nine black students during their year were regularly spat on by their fellow white students. Acid was thrown on the face of one. The school`s principal had his life threatened and threats were made to bomb the school.

A photograph taken by Will Counts, of a subdued but determined Elizabeth Eckford walking to enter Central High, taunted by white students, with Hazel Massery behind her shouting with hostility, circulated all over the world, illustrating the ugliness of the event. Eckford recalled her experience: "I stood looking at the school - it looked so big! Just then the [national] guards let some white students through. The crowd was quiet. I guess they were waiting to see what was going to happen. When I was able to steady my knees, I walked up to the guard who had let the white students in. He too didn`t move. When I tried to squeeze past him, he raised his bayonet and then the other guards moved in and they raised their bayonets. They glared at me with a mean look and I was very frightened and didn`t know what to do. I turned around and the crowd came toward me.

"They moved closer and closer. Somebody started yelling, `Lynch her! Lynch her!`

"I tried to see a friendly face somewhere in the mob - someone who maybe would help. I looked into the face of an old woman and it seemed a kind face, but when I looked at her again, she spat on me. They came closer, shouting, `No nigger bitch is going to get in our school. Get out of here!` I turned back to the guards but their faces told me I wouldn`t get any help from them."

Hazel Massery was one of the white students who attempted to stop Elizabeth Eckford and the other eight blacks from entering Little Rock`s Central High School. She was interviewed by Peter Lennon in The Guardian on December 30, 1998: "I am not sure at that age what I thought, but probably I overheard that my father was opposed to integration. I vividly remember that the National Guard was going to be there. But I don`t think I was old enough to have any convictions of my own yet. I was just mirroring my adult environment. I wasn`t following Elizabeth. She happened to come along, the crowd shifted and I was standing in that spot, so I just went along with the crowd. I`d soon forget about it all. I married as a teenager, right out of school. I was not quite 17. But there were Martin Luther King`s civil-rights activities and gradually you began to think that even though he was a trouble-maker, all the while, deep in your soul, that he was right.

"I think motherhood brings out the protection or care in a person. I had a sense of deep remorse that I had wronged another human being because of the color of her skin. But you are also looking for relief and forgiveness, of course, more for yourself than for the other person. I called her [Elizabeth Eckford]. The first meeting was very awkward. What could I say to her? I thought of something finally and we kind of warmed up.

"The families are not at ease about this relationship. Housing is still strictly segregated in Little Rock. There is some tension regarding our safety. On one side there are blacks who feel Elizabeth has betrayed them by becoming friends with me, and certain whites feel that I have betrayed them by becoming friends with [her], and certain whites feel that I have betrayed our culture. But we have become real friends."

Many southern political leaders were ahead of the general population on the race issue, but the institution of democracy prevented them from voicing their conscience, lest they should be voted out of office. The fact that governor Orval E Faubus was facing a second-term election had much to do with his actions in the Little Rock crisis. In 1954, Faubus had run for governor as a liberal promising to increase spending on schools and roads. In the first few months of his administration, Faubus desegregated state buses and public transportation and began to investigate the possibility of introducing multi-racial schools. This liberal program solicited political attack from Jim Johnson, leader of the ultra-conservative wing of the Democratic Party in Arkansas. This attack caused Faubus to reconsider his political position for the upcoming election and led him to oppose the 1954 Brown vs Board of Education decision by the US Supreme Court that separate schools were unequal and therefore unconstitutional. Democracy is merely a process that reflects majority opinion; it does not always yield good or moral outcomes if the majority hold views that are not moral. President George W Bush`s assertion that democracy brings peace is merely cheap sloganeering.

In a 1991 booklet called The Faubus Years, Orval E Faubus offered this explanation and defense of his actions in the 1957 Central High School integration crisis:

Following my election in 1954, I was inaugurated as governor on January 11, 1955. The US Supreme Court decision nullifying the separate but equal doctrine in the public schools was handed down on May 17, 1954. During my first term some public schools proceeded with integration. These included Fayetteville, Bentonville, Charleston, Hot Springs, Fort Smith and Hoxie. Opposition developed at Hoxie, the federal authorities intervened and the district was torn apart by the conflict. Another district, Sheridan in Grant county, made an early announcement that it would integrate the schools. The opposition was so intense that the decision was rescinded. Still, by 1957 Arkansas had more integrated public schools than 11 other states combined which had a comparable problem with the change from the separate but equal school system ...

In Little Rock a small band of white integrationists began the discussion of a plan to integrate Central High School ... The plan was never clear as to how many students, who they were and from whence they came. Those who sought to gain the information were put off with indefinite answers. The sponsors always claimed the plan would have only a limited number of black students. It was widely discussed day after day for months by radio, television and the print media, and from pulpits, schools and all manner of meetings.

Finally, it began to be widely disseminated that the integration of Central High School would set the pattern and the example for all the state and for all the south. Editorials to that effect appeared in a number of newspapers.

Those who opposed integration of the schools by court order and by compulsion, which was the great majority in Arkansas, became concerned. They thought, "If the Central High School case is to set an example that affects us, then we better be concerned about the outcome."

Thus the anti-integration meetings began. There were rallies with great attendance in various places with prominent people as speakers. Out-of-state speakers were brought in and the interest in Central High School, a local school, spread beyond the state borders.

The small band of white integrationists, who hoped to become overnight celebrities, while denying their integrationist sentiments, saw their hopes and plans jeopardized by the rising tide of opposition. They redoubled their efforts and became more determined.

Thus, Central School in Little Rock became a focal point of contest. It became a key point of conflict, not just for the city, not just for the state, but for a wider field including the nation.

I have always felt, and still firmly believe, that if the school authorities in Little Rock had handled the affair quietly, the intense conflict over integration at Central High would never have developed. If the school authorities had said, "This is our own local problem. We`ll handle it the best we can based on our local conditions. This does not concern any other school. Just us." If they had said that and the media had followed that lead, there would have been no Central High School Crisis as we now know it.

There were other forces at work, other unusual factors in the Central High School situation.

The little band of white integrationists had seen themselves as instant celebrities, their names became household words. They were to receive credit and praise for a plan and an accomplishment that had been achieved by no others. In their impractical dreams and misguided views, they saw their acclaim in the publicity, for which they had already arranged, about to be swept away in the rising tide of opposition. They became more desperate in their demands for help from higher authority.

I could not then, nor could I in the years that have followed, detect any such attitude in the black leaders who were involved in the controversy. I give them full credit for sincerity in their efforts, for the faith that their cause was just, and for honest hope that their goals would be achieved. In later years some black leaders have emerged who might be regarded as extremists, but no such black leaders were apparent then.

Another factor was the oft-expressed thought that Little Rock was deliberately chosen as the place to bring about court-ordered integration in the South. There is now some concrete evidence to bolster that thought.

Osro Cobb, a native of Arkansas, a longtime resident of Little Rock and a prominent Republican leader in the state, was the US attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas. In that position he represented the federal authorities during the so-called Central High School crisis. Since that time, Mr Cobb has written a book entitled Osro Cobb of Arkansas in which he discusses his role in the controversy. In Chapter 21, page 175 of his book, Mr Cobb writes:

"I operated from the eye of the hurricane that enveloped the city, representing the federal government as chief law-enforcement officer with the responsibility of collaborating with the Justice Department to cope with the situation.

"Thurgood Marshall, who later became a justice of the US Supreme Court, participated in some of the court hearings regarding Central High School. During a recess in one of the hearings, he volunteered the information to me that Little Rock Central High School had been picked as a target for testing integration because the Little Rock community had exhibited a remarkable tolerance in race relations."

At the time of the Little Rock crisis, Thurgood Marshall was the chief counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Evidently Little Rock was chosen in the highest circles of some national organizations.

Another major factor, perhaps the most important, was the attitude of the national Republican administration in Washington, which was then quarterbacked by attorney general Herbert Brownell. It is conceded by almost everyone, if not all, that Brownell was calling the plays for the national administration in the Little Rock Central High School Crisis.

On June 6, 1990, at a symposium on civil-rights issues held at the Dwight D Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kansas, in which both Brownell and I participated, the former attorney general in a speech to the symposium made the following statement:

"Over a period of months we in the Justice Department had the growing realization that a clash of historic importance between the president, who was required by the constitution to enforce the law of the land, and political leaders in the south was inevitable. We had engaged in `contingency planning` so we would not be caught unprepared. Thus, by the time the groups from White Citizens Councils from various parts of the south converged on Little Rock, Arkansas, we had completed our studies ..."

At another point in his speech, Brownell, in speaking of sending federal troops to Little Rock, said: "He [the president] ordered the 101st Airborne Division, which he knew had crowd-control experience, to go to Little Rock."

The Brownell statement tends to confirm the reports we had from soldiers in the 101st Division that they had been training for several days at their home base of Fort Campbell, Kentucky, in preparation for their dispatch to Little Rock.

Now it becomes clear why the Central High School Crisis occurred. Because of the widespread publicity of a "plan" to integrate the school and make it an example for all the state and the South, it became a focal point of contest. Even Brownell in his speech at Abilene, and Mr Cobb in his book, speak of gathering forces at Little Rock.

It was now apparent that Little Rock was deliberately chosen for integration and a confrontation if necessary. It is clear that more than the local integration leaders were involved in the decision.

And now it is clear that the federal authorities did not want a quiet, peaceful solution to the Central High problem. Brownell wanted "a clash of historic importance" and he wanted it in Little Rock, the capital of a state that had only eight electoral votes, which were always cast in the Democratic column.

Now it is clear why Brownell did not respond to my phone calls from Little Rock seeking information and a way to avoid violence. Now it is clear why congressman Brooks Hays, a man of infinite goodwill, and I had our efforts for an amicable settlement torpedoed by the attorney general at the Newport conference when we had made genuine progress with the president.

In this situation with the opposing forces gathering at Little Rock, with no assistance available from federal authority to prevent disorder, or restore order if violence occurred, I placed a small force of national guardsmen on duty to preserve the peace. They were to be assisted by the state police.

Although crowds gathered, everything was peaceful with the few guardsmen in control. In the course of events a federal judge, at the request of the Justice Department (Brownell), ordered me to remove the National Guard. I promptly complied with the order. The next school day there was disorder and the president sent 1,100 troops of the 10lst Airborne Division to Little Rock and placed 10,000 federalized national guardsmen on duty. Brownell had what he had planned, "a clash of historic importance".

As the opposing forces were gathering before school began, I conferred with my counsel, W J Smith. He advised me to let violence erupt and then call out the National Guard.

I could not wait for violence because the evidence I had from the state police and others with whom I conferred had convinced me that an incident similar to the one that later occurred at the University of Mississippi would occur at Central High School. I could have been blamed for any blood that was shed because of my failure to take preventive measures. It could have been said that I had blood on my hands, so to speak. I had served with a front-line infantry division in all five major campaigns on the continent of Europe in World War II and participated in the major battles of Normandy [and] Mortain and the Battle of the Bulge and I knew something about bloodshed. This I could not permit when it was in my power to see that it did not happen. I told my counsel that I had a duty to perform and I would not shirk from it, even though my actions would place me at a disadvantage in the controversy.

I am fully convinced that my handling of the situation, and my advice to the people once the school and the city were occupied by the federal troops, helped to prevent violence and disorder.

School was conducted the entire year of 1957-58 with federal soldiers on the school grounds and in the rooms and hallways of the Central building. Then the people of the Little Rock district voted to close the senior high schools rather than submit to another year of classes under the control of federal troops or US marshals. The senior high schools only remained closed for a year. All other schools operated normally ... Classes were resumed in all Little Rock schools in the school year 1959-60.

In all that two-year period, there was no property damage, no one was injured sufficiently to be hospitalized and no one was killed. Contrast that record with the racial riots that followed in more than 200 American cities, none of them in Arkansas, in which many lives were lost, thousands were injured and property damage ranged into the millions of dollars, and Little Rock and Arkansas came out remarkably well.

Faubus was undeniably on the wrong side of the issue. Yet his point that outside forces and federal military intervention created the crisis is not without merit. The issue was not desegregation. The issue was a federal attack on state rights through the problem of desegregation. Faubus was re-elected for another four terms as governor of Arkansas and became a heroic figure of state rights in US politics. After the 1965 Voting Act made it easier for black Americans to vote, the political climate in Arkansas changed. Faubus was defeated in the 1966 Democratic primary by the segregationist Jim Johnson, who was then defeated in the general election by liberal Republican reformer Winthrop Rockefeller. In 1992, Arkansas governor Bill Clinton defeated incumbent George H W Bush for president with the help of the black vote.

In the academic year 1958-59, Little Rock voters voted to close all public schools rather than accept desegregation, and president Dwight Eisenhower did not act to protect the civil rights of Little Rock children to receive public education. In this sense, Faubus lost the battle of Little Rock to federal militarism, but he won the war on state rights. Though there is no doubt that segregated schools are inherently unequal, the all-black Horace Mann School in Little Rock was of relatively high quality. Thus the closing of all public schools in the city hurt all students in the state, particularly blacks and low-income whites who were generally unable to afford private schools. Central High did not open up with a desegregated school population until 1960. As late as 1964, only 3% of black American schoolchildren attended desegregated schools nationwide. The battle then moved on to the issue of busing in blacks to all-white suburbs to combat de facto segregation of education by housing patterns and household income, most contentiously in the north.

On September 25, 1997, the 40th anniversary of the Little Rock crisis, president Bill Clinton, who had come to the White House from his governorship in Arkansas, welcomed the "Little Rock Nine" to Central High School through the same doors from which they had been barred, saying: "If those nine children could walk up those steps 40 years ago, all alone, if their parents could send them into the storm armed only with schoolbooks and the righteousness of their cause, then surely together we can build one America, an America that makes sure no future generation of our children will have to pay for our mistakes with the loss of their innocence." He did not give credit to the militarism imposed by Eisenhower. The issue was not whether desegregation should be implemented, but whether it should be implemented through state militarism.

The real defenders of freedom were the "Little Rock Nine", not the paratroopers nor the national guardsmen nor the politicians of a failed state. The lesson is clear: Let the US send its young men and women into the storm of injustice around the world with schoolbooks to promote real American values of freedom and democracy, instead of with tanks and precision missiles to promote neo-imperialism, paid for with the loss of their innocence. Much injustice remains to be removed inside the US before it earns the right to promote anything outside with state militarism.

Militarism at Wounded Knee
On December 29, 1890, at Wounded Knee Creek, on the Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota, some 500 soldiers of the US 7th Cavalry opened fire on approximately 350 Lakota (Sioux) native Americans of chief Big Foot`s Miniconjou band. At the end of the confrontation, some 300 Sioux men, women and children, including chief Big Foot, were dead. This event marked the end of Lakota national resistance until 1973, eight decades later. Apart from the few minor skirmishes that followed, the Wounded Knee massacre of 1890 ended the "Indian Wars".

The Ghost Dance movement was led by a Paiute named Wovoka who held a vision that the "Old Earth" would be destroyed and a new one created in which native Americans could again live as they had before the coming of the white man. He preached that the only way to survive the impending apocalypse would be to perform faithfully the Ghost Dance and the ceremonies associated with it. Wovoka`s movement began as a peaceful one, which did not exclude other races from participating. Some followers, most notably Kicking Bear, a member of the original Lakota delegation sent to learn of Wovoka`s teachings, radicalized the non-violent message into a call for the repulsion of the white man that resonated with many members of the Lakota tribes of South Dakota. Many of the more traditionalist Lakota, with memories of better times and white people`s treachery still fresh in their minds, took up the Ghost Dance on these militant liberation terms.

In October 1890, the Ghost Dance movement reached Sitting Bull`s Hunkpapa Lakota nation on the Standing Rock Reservation in northern South Dakota. The powerful Lakota chief welcomed the movement that revived the morale and spirit of his people. US government officials became deeply concerned about the popularity of the Ghost Dance movement and its increasingly militant message. Sitting Bull was identified as a major political leader of the movement. On December 12, days after Sitting Bull had asked for permission to leave the Standing Rock Reservation to visit with Ghost Dancers, General Nelson Miles issued an order for his capture.

Sitting Bull, a Sioux, had been a Hunkpapa chief since 1866. He was a warrior, spiritual leader and politician. He refused to attend the treaty at Fort Laramie in 1868 and fought surveyors over the route of the Northern Pacific Railroad in 1872. On June 25, 1876, Sitting Bull fought Colonel George Custer at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. The victory of that battle created much hatred in US official circles for Sitting Bull. In May 1877, he retreated to Canada and stayed with his tribe until 1881, when he was detained as a prisoner of war at Fort Randall from 1881-83 under harsh treatment. In 1885, Sitting Bull was forced to travel around the world as a performer with Buffalo Bill Cody and his Wild West Show as "the slayer of General Custer". He supposedly first shot with a rifle the Cheyenne chief Yellow Hair, then stabbed him in the heart and finally scalped him "in about five seconds", according to his own account. Cody characteristically had the event embroidered into a melodrama - Buffalo Bill`s First Scalp for Custer - for the autumn theater season. Hearing of the warrant for Sitting Bull`s arrest, Cody volunteered to facilitate the arrest, presumably to assure Sitting Bull`s safety. He was rebuffed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) agent at Standing Rock, James McLauglin. Then on December 15, a scuffle erupted outside of Sitting Bull`s home between Ghost Dancers and BIA agents sent to arrest the Lakota chief. During the fight Sitting Bull was shot and killed by BIA officer Red Tomahawk. When the shooting ended, eight Lakota and six BIA officers lay dead.

Sitting Bull`s death created confusion and anger among many Lakota bands. Big Foot, leader of one of the most fervent bands of Ghost Dance practitioners, feared that the US Army was ready to retaliate forcefully against the movement. To avoid capture, he and his followers wandered through the South Dakota Badlands for several days. Once his people`s supplies became scarce, he began a trek toward the Pine Ridge agency. His ultimate goal was to reach the protection of chief Red Cloud, who had a reputation for negotiating effectively with the US government. On December 28, during what would have been the last leg of their journey to Pine Ridge, Big Foot and his followers were intercepted by cavalry troops under Major Samuel Whitside and escorted to the Wounded Knee army camp. There the Lakota camped under a flag of truce, surrounded by 7th Cavalry troops under the command of Colonel James W Forsyth.

On the morning of December 29, Forsyth ordered the disarmament of Big Foot`s band. The disarmament proceeded slowly as the Miniconjou were reluctant to give up their only means of protection. The slow progress of disarmament frustrated the cavalry officers, increasing the already heightened tension. The conflict came to a head when a young deaf Sioux named Black Coyote resisted the seizure of his brand-new rifle. In the ensuing struggle the rifle discharged into the air. Almost immediately after this first shot, the cavalrymen returned fire with an opening volley that struck and killed Big Foot. Hearing the firings in the Sioux camp, soldiers posted on the ridges overlooking the camp unleashed a barrage of light artillery. US soldiers fired indiscriminately on unarmed men, women and children fleeing the battle scene. The Lakota suffered hundreds of casualties; 25 soldiers perished, mostly from their own crossfire. One Lakota survivor was an infant who was found at her dead mother`s side. Named Lost Bird, she was adopted by Brigadier-General Leonard W Colby, commander of the Nebraska National Guard.

More than 80 years later, on February 27, 1973, a group called the American Indian Movement (AIM) seized control of Wounded Knee. Led by AIM leader Russell Means, the liberation/occupation began as a protest against the reservation`s officially sanctioned puppet government under the leadership of Dickie Wilson. Two people were killed during the 71-day occupation, 12 were wounded, including two US marshals, and nearly 1,200 were arrested. Inspired by the civil-rights movement of the 1960s, AIM put the issue of native American rights into the national spotlight. The siege at Wounded Knee began as Native Americans stood up against century-long US atrocities, and ended in an armed battle with US armed forces.

Corruption within the BIA and Tribal Council having been at an all-time high, tension on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation was white-hot and quickly got out of control. In despair and faced with no options, elders of the Lakota Nation turned to AIM for assistance, bringing to a head more than a hundred years of racial tension and government corruption. On that winter day in February 1973, a large group of armed Native Americans reclaimed Wounded Knee in the name of the Lakota Nation. For the first time in almost a century, Oglala Sioux regained self-rule, free from foreign intervention, in their ancient tradition. This would become the basis for a TV movie, Lakota Woman, the true story of Mary Moore Crowdog and her experiences at the Wounded Knee liberation.

During the months preceding the Wounded Knee liberation, civil war brewed among the Oglala people. A division emerged between traditionalists and collaborationists. The traditionalists wanted more independence from the United States, as well as forcing the US to honor the 1868 Sioux treaty, which is still valid, according to which the Black Hills of South Dakota belong to the Sioux nation, and return of the sacred hills to the Sioux people. Another severe problem on the Pine Ridge Reservation was the strip-mining of the land. The chemicals used by the mining operations were poisoning the land and the water. People were getting sick, and children were being born with birth defects. The puppet tribal government had encouraged strip-mining and the sale of the Black Hills to the US government to lease to private mining companies.

For decades, the tribal government had been not much more than puppets of the BIA. The sacred Black Hills, along with many other problems, had become a wedge that would tear apart the Lakota nation. Violent confrontations between traditionalists and the US puppet agents, or GOONs (Guardians of Our Oglala Nation), became everyday occurrences. The young AIM warriors, idealistic and defiant, were like a breath of fresh air to most Native Americans, and their ideas quickly caught on. When AIM took control of Wounded Knee, more than 75 different native nations were represented, with more supporters arriving daily from all over the continent.

Soon US armed forces in the form of federal marshals and national guardsmen surrounded the large group. All roads to Wounded Knee were cut off, but still people slipped through the lines, pouring into the liberated area. The liberation forces inside Wounded Knee demanded an investigation into misuse of tribal funds and the GOON squad`s violent aggression against people who dared speak out against the puppet tribal council. In addition, they wanted a Senate committee to launch an investigation into the BIA and the Department of the Interior regarding their handling of the affairs of the Oglala Sioux tribe. The liberation warriors also demanded an investigation into the 371 treaties between the native nations and the United States, all of which had been broken by the US.

The liberation warriors that occupied Wounded Knee held fast to these demands and refused to lay down arms until they were met. The US cut off electricity to Wounded Knee and kept all food and supplies from entering the liberated area. For the rest of that winter, the men and women inside Wounded Knee survived on minimal rations while they fought the armed aggression of US forces. Daily, heavy gunfire was issued back and forth between the two sides, but the native freedom fighters refused to give up.

During the Wounded Knee liberation, the warriors lived in their traditional manner, celebrating a birth and a marriage, as well as mourning the death of two of their fellow warriors inside Wounded Knee. AIM member Buddy Lamont was hit by M16 fire and bled to death inside Wounded Knee from lack of medical care, in clear violation of the Geneva Conventions. AIM member Frank Clearwater was killed by heavy-machine-gun fire inside Wounded Knee. Twelve other individuals were intercepted by the GOON squad while backpacking supplies into Wounded Knee; they disappeared and were never heard from again. Though the US government investigated by looking for a mass grave in the area, when none was found the investigation was soon abandoned.

Wounded Knee was a great victory for the Oglala Sioux as well as all other native nations. For a short period of time in 1973, the Oglala Sioux were a free people once more. After 71 days, the siege at Wounded Knee had come to an end, with the US government making nearly 1,200 arrests of participants as common criminals, not as prisoners of war. But this would only mark the beginning of what had come to be known as the "reign of terror" instigated by the FBI and the BIA. During the three years following Wounded Knee, 64 tribal members became victims of unsolved murder, 300 were harassed and beaten, and 562 illegal arrests were made, with 15 convicted of criminal offenses. None were treated as prisoners of war, let alone freedom fighters.

A persecuted people regained their freedom for a brief 71 days on the land of their ancestors at a heavy price after being victims for 80 years of systematic ethnic cleansing. British and US atrocities committed against Native Americans over a period of four centuries remain unmatched in scale and duration by anything in history, including the despicable decade-long Nazi atrocity against the European Jews.

Next: Militarism and the war on drugs

Henry C K Liu is chairman of the New York-based Liu Investment Group.

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

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Mar 12, 2005

China, Greenspan rub salt
in dollar wound
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/GC12Dj01.html

The US dollar was struggling near a two-month low against the euro on Friday as the market braced for fresh trade data that were likely to show a further widening of the trade gap. As if this weren`t trouble enough for the besieged greenback, US Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan stirred up the market Thursday night saying foreign investors would reduce their US asset holdings at some point, while new findings came to light that China is indeed doing so.

Saying he is not "overly" concerned about the record US trade gap or heavy consumer debt, Greenspan said the budget deficit gives him the shivers. The US current account deficit widened to a record US$164.7 billion from July through September, the most recent figures available, equivalent to 5.6% of gross domestic product (GDP). "Our current account deficit and household debt burdens do not strike me as overly worrisome, but that is certainly not the case for our fiscal deficit," Greenspan told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. "Our fiscal prospects are, in my judgment, a significant obstacle to long-term stability, because the budget deficit is not readily subject to correction by market forces that stabilize other imbalances."

According to the high priest of finance, international investors have only modestly shifted their portfolios away from dollar assets so far. But he warned that they might at some point decide their portfolios are too dollar-centric, ominously adding that if the dollar keeps dropping, foreign exporters may start looking elsewhere.

Greenspan`s comments came close on the heels of Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi`s startling remark on Thursday that Japan needs to diversify its foreign-exchange reserves, reviving fears of Asian central banks cutting their giant dollar reserves. Any move by Japan, which has the largest foreign-exchange reserve in the world ($840 billion), to reduce its dollar holdings could be disastrous for the greenback. The dollar has already been dropping against the yen for four straight weeks now. Koizumi`s statement, though later qualified by his finance minister, will only prolong the agony.

US dollars accounted for 63.8% of the world`s currency reserves at the end of 2003, down from 66.9% two years earlier, according to International Monetary Fund (IMF) figures released last April. A survey this January commissioned by the Royal Bank of Scotland Plc and conducted by London-based Central Banking Publications Ltd showed that central banks across the world were boosting euro holdings. Almost 70% of the 56 central banks surveyed said they had increased exposure to the euro.

Citing a more recent finding, Asia Times Online reported on Thursday (Dollar catching Asian flu) that Asian central banks have been quietly switching their dollar holdings to regional currencies for at least three years now. A study by the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), which acts as a bank for the world`s central banks, shows that the ratio of dollar deposits held in Asian offshore reserves declined to 67% in September, down from 81% in the third quarter of 2001. India was the biggest seller, reducing its dollar assets from 68% of total reserves to just 43%. China, which directly links the yuan to the dollar and is under US pressure to allow a freer movement of its currency, trimmed the dollar share from 83% to 68% over the same period.

Bloomberg reported on Friday that according to an estimate by Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc, China`s central bank has been cutting the share of its currency reserves held in dollars and replenishing them with euros. Some 76% of China`s reserves were in dollars last year, down from 82% in 2003, said Lehman, the fifth-largest US securities firm.

There has been debate in China on whether it at all needs such a huge foreign-exchange reserve. China`s forex chief, Guo Shuqing, a member of the National Committee of the China Political Consultative Conference (CPCC) and director general of the State Administration for Foreign Exchange Management (SAFEM), said that as an item of international payments, the growth of the foreign-exchange reserve is the result of the macroeconomic operation, but not the objective China is particularly pursuing. An adequate foreign-exchange reserve is favorable for payment abilities, comprehensive national power and creditworthiness, reducing risks of reform and safeguarding financial security, he said.

Guo pointed out, however, that excessive growth could be detrimental. In a rare and stern warning against the inflow of speculative funds, or "hot money", in the name of investment, he told local governments not to lure foreign investment "haphazardly". Regulators have been playing down the amount and impact of hot money over the past year, but Guo said China might see "no end of trouble in the future" unless local governments are acutely aware of risk mitigation in soaking in foreign funds.

"China pays great attention to speculative funds," Guo said in an interview with Xinhua on the sidelines of the annual session of the National Committee of the Chinese People`s Political Consultative Conference, China`s top advisory body. "Foreign-exchange administration departments and other macroeconomic departments are investigating the issue and will punish illegal activities severely."

China`s foreign-exchange reserve added as much as $206.7 billion last year alone. Guo said the overall inflow of capital is "normal and legal" and reflects the "market scenario", but there are also some "worrisome" problems. "Fake foreign investment" is actually being used to purchase yuan-denominated assets and commercial housing on speculative purpose, he noted. Hot money has pushed housing prices to a very high level, making cities look "prosperous" but doing no good to the investment climate, as it leads to higher living and business costs. Typically, this means great risks for local financial institutions, enterprises and even individuals. When the real-estate bubble bursts, they will suffer from huge losses, Guo said. Hot money has also sneaked into China under capital accounts or based on no real trade, he claimed.

Guo said China`s foreign-exchange reserve, second only to Japan`s, is quite enough to pay the country`s debts. But its debts in foreign currency may snowball to an amount that engenders "systematic risks". He revealed that newly added foreign-exchange reserves last year include $60.6 billion in foreign direct investment, $32 billion in trade surplus, $30 billion from foreign-exchange clearing under the account of imports and exports by enterprises, $35 billion in foreign debts, more than $10 billion in service trade surplus, $30 billion in individual asset transfer and earnings being brought about, and more than $10 billion in securities investment, among others.

Mountains of foreign-exchange reserves have long been an excuse used by some countries, especially the United States, to demand appreciation of the yuan, which now floats against the US dollar within a narrow band. But Premier Wen Jiabao reiterated in his government work report last week that China would keep the yuan "basically stable".

(Asia Pulse/XIC)

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US army held eight-year-old in Iraq prison
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=3&art_id=vn…

Children held by the United States army at Iraq`s Abu Ghraib prison included one boy who appeared to be only about eight years old, the former commander of the prison has told investigators, according to a transcript.

"He told me he was almost 12," Brigadier General Janis Karpinski told officials investigating prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. "He told me his brother was there with him, but he really wanted to see his mother, could he please call his mother. He was crying."

Karpinski`s statement is among hundreds of pages of army records about Abu Ghraib released by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on Thursday.

The ACLU got the documents under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking records about abuse of detainees in Iraq.

Karpinski did not say what had happened to the boy in her interview with Major General George Fay.

Military officials have previously acknowledged that some juvenile prisoners had been held at Abu Ghraib, a massive prison built by Saddam Hussein`s government outside Baghdad.

The ACLU sued Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld earlier this month on behalf of four Iraqis and four Afghans who say they were tortured at US military facilities.

Rumsfeld and his spokesmen have repeatedly said that the defence secretary and his aides had never authorised or condoned the abuse of prisoners. - Sapa-AP

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MONTGOMERY, AL (IWR News Parody) - President Bush today revealed his secret plan to save Social Security and fund private savings accounts. In short, the Bush plan would cut costs by outsourcing senior citizens to third world countries like India or Mississippi where medical and housing costs would be provided by the lowest bidder. "The idea came to us when Karl Rove and me were brainstorming. Well, Karl was anyway. I just listened to [urlJohn Ashcroft]http://www.whitehouse.org/media/ashcroft-bacon/index.asp kick out the jams on my [urliPod.]http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000730026462 Anyway, I after a while I said to Karl: `It`s too bad we just can`t outsource all those old codgers to India like our business buddies do with all those high tech jobs that Kerry was always wining about.` The next think you know Karl is on the horn to John Snow, and we got us a hum dinger of plan. Here`s how it would work. When a senior reaches retirement age, we will still guarantee that person`s check, but instead of 2,000 dollars, for example, it will be [url2,000 rupees.]http://www.ratesfx.com/rates/rate-converter.html The government will send retirees via an empty oil tanker or shipping container free of charge to Calcutta, where the old fogies will be provided best accommodations that their rupees can buy," said Mr. Bush.

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Das Original am 09.03.

Die andere Zeder
von Robert Fisk
ZNet 10.03.2005
http://www.zmag.de/artikel.php?id=1372&PHPSESSID=725400a838f…

Es war eine Warnung. Viele Zehntausende waren gekommen - Schiiten-Familien aus dem Libanon mit ihren Kindern vorneweg, die Babys auf dem Arm. So marschierten sie an meiner Beiruter Wohnung vorbei. Die Menschen erinnerten mich an die vielen Schiiten im Irak, die mit ihren Familien zur Wahl gingen - trotz Schüssen und Selbstmordbombern. Die Schiiten hier kamen aus dem Südlibanon und dem Bekaa-Tal -um deutlich zu machen, wir sind gegen die amerikanischen Pläne im Libanon, und wir wollen wissen - das behaupten sie wenigstens - wer am 14. Februar Ex-Premier Rafik Hariri ermordet hat. Sie sind gegen UN-Sicherheitsratsresolution 1559, die den Rückzug der Syrer aus dem Libanon und die Entwaffnung der Guerillabewegung Hisbollah fordert. Und sie sind gekommen, um Syrien zu danken. Für den Libanon war es ein großer Aufmarsch. Nur 100 Yards von dem Ort entfernt, an dem die libanesische Opposition protestiert, standen jetzt eine halbe Million Menschen (diese Schätzung dürfte - angesichts der außerordentlichen Mobilisierungsfähigkeit der Hisbollah - annähernd korrekt sein). Sie standen eine Stunde und schwenkten libanesische Fahnen. Diese Menschen sind eine Herausforderung für Präsident George Bushs Nahost-Projekt. Auf einem der Poster stand: ‘Amerika ist die Quelle des Terrorismus’, ‘All unsere Katastrophen kommen von Amerika’. Unter den vielen Tausenden waren etliche Hisbollah-Familien, deren Mitglieder während der israelischen Besatzung im Südlibanon gegen die Israelis gekämpft hatten. Israel hatte viele von ihnen verhaftet und inhaftiert. Diese Menschen fürchten, Amerikas Unterstützung für den Libanon könnte in Wirklichkeit nicht “Demokratie” sondern einen erzwungenen israelisch-libanesischen Friedensvertrag bedeuten.

Stimmt, in der Menge waren auch Syrer - ich habe Busse mit syrischen Nummernschildern gesehen, die Familien aus Damaskus brachten. Das ändert allerdings nichts daran, dass die halbe Million fast ausschließlich aus libanesischen Schiiten bestand. Sie sind gegen Resolution 1559, da diese die Entwaffnung der Hisbollah fordert. Dass die Syrer abziehen, ist ihnen mehr als recht (können Sie sich noch an das syrische Massaker an Hisbollah-Leuten 1987 in Beirut erinnern?). Andererseits existiert ein syrischer Waffentransfer von Iran in den Libanon. Die Hisbollah will als Widerstandsbewegung wahrgenommen werden - nicht als “Miliz”, die es zu entwaffnen gilt. Die Botschaft der Schiiten lautet: Wir sind eine Macht. Es ist dieselbe Botschaft wie neulich bei den Wahlen im Irak. Im Libanon bilden die Schiiten die größte religiöse Gemeinschaft. Syrien wird von einer Alawiten-Clique regiert - auch die Alawiten sind Schiiten. Im Irak haben sich die Schiiten durch die Wahl an die Macht gebracht, und auch der Iran ist eine schiitische Nation. Wenn Präsident Bush erklärt, “das libanesische Volk hat das Recht, seine Zukunft frei von der Dominanz einer fremden Macht zu bestimmen”, werden die Schiiten nicht an Syrien denken sondern an die USA und Israel.

Das Lager der Demonstranten, die 100 Yards entfernt so mutig gegen die Ermordung Hariris protestierten, ist mittlerweile gespalten - der Grund: Syrien. Nachts demonstrieren jetzt vor allem Mitglieder der christlichen Opposition. Die Hisbollah-Demonstration am gestrigen Tag war überwiegend schiitisch - auch wenn, wie immer, pro-syrische Christen mitdemonstrierten. Die Botschaft der Hisbollah-Demonstranten war keine Dankesbotschaft an Präsident Bush. “Früher kamen sie mit Schiffen und wurden besiegt; und sie werden wieder besiegt”, so Hisbollah-Führer Sayed Hassan Nasrallah mit Blick auf die Amerikaner. Ironischerweise sprach Präsident Bush seinerseits einige Stunden später genau jene 241 US-Marines an, die im Oktober 1982 in Beirut starben. Bush tat so, als habe Al Kaida hinter der Ermordung der Soldaten gesteckt. An die Adresse der Israelis gerichtet, sagte Nasrallah: “Gebt eure Libanon-Träume auf. Dem Feind, der sich an unserer Grenze eingegraben hat, unser Land besetzt hält und unsere Menschen einsperrt, sagen wir: “Hier ist kein Platz für euch, ihr könnt nicht unter uns leben. Tod Israel!” Dass Nasrallah auf den libanesischen Bürgerkrieg zwischen 1975 und 1990 anspielen würde, war vorhersehbar. Die Demonstrationen finden genau an der Frontlinie statt, die auch während des Bürgerkriegs Libanesen von Libanesen trennte. Man kann sagen, sie standen genau über den christlich-muslimischen Schützengräben jenes Konflikts. “Wir sind hier zusammengekommen”, so Nasrallah, “um die Welt und unsere Partner im Land daran zu erinnern, dass diese Arena hier, die uns zusammenbringt oder jene am Platz der Märtyrer, im Bürgerkrieg durch Israel zerstört wurde. Syrien und das Blut seiner Soldaten und Offiziere hat sie wiedervereint”. Ein etwas kreativer Umgang mit der Geschichte. Stimmt, die Israelis haben sicher viele tausend Libanesen getötet - mehr als die Syrer jedenfalls - aber die syrischen Soldaten sind doch für den Tod etlicher hundert Libanesen verantwortlich. Nichtsdestotrotz, die halbe Million brüllte Zustimmung.

Was zeigt das alles? Es zeigt, dass es noch eine andere Stimme im Libanon gibt. Die libanesische “Opposition” (pro-Hariri und zunehmend christlich), die von Bush unterstützt wird, nimmt für sich in Anspruch, für den Libanon zu sprechen. Gleichzeitig existiert aber eine zweite nationale Stimme - eine pro-syrische, die sich den anti-syrischen Forderungen verweigert. Diese sieht in den israelischen Plänen für den Nahen Osten den wahren Grund für die Hilfe aus Washington. Die gestrige Demonstration in Beirut verlief in gewohnter Hisbollah-Manier. Es gab ein Maximum an Sicherheit - in Form eines Großaufgebots erschreckend disziplinierter junger Männer mit schwarzen Shirts und umgebauten Radios. Niemand durfte eine Waffe oder eine Hisbollah-Flagge tragen. Es kam zu keiner Gewalt. Einmal schwenkte einer eine syrische Flagge. Sie wurde ihm umgehend abgenommen. Hisbollah ging es um Recht und Gesetz - bloß kein “Terrorismus”. Dazu der syrische Kommentar. Präsident Bashar Assad hatte die sarkastische Bemerkung gemacht, die Hariri-Demonstranten benötigten eine “Zoom-Linse“, um die ihren zu zählen. Schia-Power gab die Antwort: Für ihre gestrige Demonstration brauchte es jedenfalls keinen “Zoom”.

In den Bergen über Beirut, die noch gefroren unterm Winterschnee liegen, tut sich derweil wenig. Nur einige Syrer sind bislang abgezogen. Auf dem internationalen Highway nach Damaskus fuhren zwar syrische Militärlastwagen - aber es gab keinen Rückzug, keinen Abzug, keine Verlegung. Laut dem Taif-Abkommen von 1989 sollten die Syrer sich auf die Mdeirej-Höhen, über Beirut, zurückziehen. Darin willigen sie nun ein - 14 Jahre nach dem eigentlichen Termin. Das offizielle Dokument wurde in Damaskus veröffentlicht - von der syrisch-libanesischen Militärdelegation. Es suggeriert, dass es sich um eine neue Verlegung handle. Bis April würden sich die syrischen Streitkräfte und deren militärischer Geheimdienst bis an die syrisch-libanesischen Grenze zurückziehen. Bleibt die Frage: Werden sie sich auf die syrische Seite der Grenze zurückziehen, oder werden sie sich in der libanesisch-armenischen Stadt Aanjar festsetzen, also auf libanesischer Seite? In Aanjar besitzt Brigadegeneral Rustum Gazale, Chef des syrischen Militärgeheimdienstes, noch eine weißgetünchte Villa.

Wie dem auch sei, das Thema Libanon hat seine Eindeutigkeit verloren. Die “Zedern”-Revolution hat eine neue Dimension erreicht - und die Pläne Amerikas sind nicht mehr so eindeutig willkommen. Aber wenn man die Schiiten im Irak als Verteidiger der Demokratie darstellt, kann man die Schiiten im Libanon nicht gleichzeitig zu Verteidigern des “Terrorismus” erklären. Wie wird Washington die außerordentlichen Ereignisse in Beirut am gestrigen Tag bewerten?

Robert Fisk arbeitet als Reporter für The Independent. Er ist Verfasser des Buchs: ‘Pity the Nation’. Ein Beitrag von Fisk findet sich - ganz heißer Tipp - in ‘The Politics of Anti-Semitism’, ein Buch, das soeben bei CounterPunch erschienen ist.

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Annan attacks erosion of rights in war on terror

US and Britain in UN secretary general`s sights
Jonathan Steele
Friday March 11, 2005
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1435235…

Guardian
The UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, launched a fierce attack on Britain and the US yesterday for weakening human rights in the name of the war on terror.

"We cannot compromise on core values," he said in Madrid on the first anniversary of the train bombings that killed 191 people in the Spanish capital. "Human rights and the rule of law must always be respected."

Addressing a three-day conference which included about 20 heads of state and government as well as terrorism experts, lawyers and journalists, Mr Annan laid out five elements in what he called a "principled, comprehensive strategy" to fight terrorism.

He proposed a UN special envoy to monitor whether governments` counter-terrorism measures conformed to international human rights law.

"Compromising human rights cannot serve the struggle against terrorism," he said. "On the contrary, it facilitates the achievement of the terrorists` objectives by provoking tension, hatred, and mistrust of governments among precisely those parts of the population where he is most likely to find recruits."

Although he did not mention Britain`s detention of suspects without trial, the use of torture, or the practices of sexual humiliation and other abuses uncovered at US-run prisons for foreigners, western governments` treatment of terrorist suspects was unmistakably one of Mr Annan`s targets.

Human rights law already made ample provision for strong counter-terrorist action, "even in the most exceptional circumstances", he said.

Mr Annan appealed to the world`s political, religious, and civic leaders to state unequivocally that "terrorism is unacceptable under any circumstances and in any culture".

Rounding on the argument that oppressed people had a right to resist occupation, he said this could not include the right to deliberately kill or maim civilians.

He said the root cause of terrorism was the belief by certain groups that such tactics were effective and had the support of people in whose name they were used. "Our job is to show they are wrong," he said.

Spain`s Socialist party prime minister, José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, speaking at the closing session, called for an international fund to give poorer countries financial help to fight terrorism. He also recommended that a second international fund be set up to compensate victims of attacks.

Since 2001 the UN has been under pressure to do a better job of coordinating and leading the fight against terrorism.

Instead of the 12 treaties that now cover the issue, the secretary general called for a single convention to outlaw terrorism in all its forms. Victims of terrorism should be compensated using the assets seized from terrorists, he said.

The secretary general set out what he called the five Ds: dissuading disaffected groups from terrorism; denying terrorists the means to carry out their attacks; deterring states from supporting terrorists; developing states` capacity to prevent terrorism; and defending human rights.

Calling for a universally accepted definition of terrorism, he endorsed the wording contained in the recent report from the UN High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, which he asked to develop broader thinking on the threats to security other than war. The panel defined terrorism as any action intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants with the purpose of intimidating a population or compelling a government or an international organisation to do, or abstain from, any act.

Mr Annan drew an alarming picture of potential catastrophe in the fields of nuclear and biological terrorism. There would soon be "tens of thousands of laboratories around the world capable of producing designer bugs with awesome, lethal potential", he said. Health systems in poor countries equipped to deal with infectious disease barely existed.

Governments must do more to secure and eliminate hazardous material and set up effective export controls, Mr Annan said. Stronger measures were also needed to uncover and stop money laundering by terrorists. Travel and financial sanctions against groups such as al-Qaida were vital.

Nuclear terrorism was still often treated as science fiction, he said. "I wish it were. But unfortunately we live in a world of excess hazardous materials and abundant technological knowhow, in which some terrorists clearly state their intention to inflict catastrophic casualties."
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

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Torture FOIA

March 7, 2005

Government Documents on Torture
Freedom of Information Act
http://www.aclu.org/International/International.cfm?ID=13962…

The ACLU filed a request on Oct. 7, 2003 under the Freedom of Information Act demanding the release of information about detainees held overseas by the United States. A lawsuit was filed in June 2004 demanding that the government comply with the October 2003 FOIA request.

Below are documents the government did not want the general public to read -- including an FBI memo (pdf) stating that Defense Department interrogators impersonated FBI agents and used "torture techniques" against a detainee at Guantanamo.

The public has a right to know.

(These documents can be viewed using Acrobat Reader)
> Department of Defense, agencies agree on "ghost" detainees (3/9/05) | Press
> Army and Navy records, investigations of detainee abuse in Iraq (3/7/05) | Press
> Defense Department Documents (2/18/05) | Press
> Army records (1/24/05) | Press
> FBI, e-mails of McCraw inquiry into detainee abuse in Guantanamo (1/5/05) | Press
> Army, investigations of detainee abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan (12/21/04) | Press
> FBI, e-mails of FBI agents witnessing the use of "torture techniques" in Guantanamo (12/20/04) | Press
> Navy, investigations of detainee abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan (12/14/04) | Press
> Defense Intelligence Agency, State Department and FBI, detainee abuse by Task Force 626 in Iraq is reported, e-mails express concern about interrogation methods. (12/7/04) | Press
> Defense Department, Taguba report (10/19/04) | Press
> Office of Information and Privacy, Defense Department, Army and FBI, the Ryder Report (10/15/04) | Press

Einige Presseartikel:

[urlDocuments Describe U.S. Pact on Iraq Ghost Detainees]http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=7870955[/url]
[urlPrisoners at Abu Ghraib included children, commander says]http://www.journalstar.com/articles/2005/03/10/nation/doc4230d8186b9d8265969234.txt[/url]
[urlThe Resort to Torture]http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/[/url]
[url14 Defining Characteristics Of Fascism: Flash Presentation]http://bushflash.com/14.html[/url]

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The Beirut Wall Isn`t Falling
Why Berlin 1989 isn`t the right analogy for today`s Middle East.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Thursday, March 10, 2005, at 2:22 PM PT
http://slate.msn.com/id/2114659/fr/ifr/nav/ais/

Walid Jumblatt, a longtime leader of Lebanon`s intifada, caused something of a stir last week when he said of the election in Iraq and the subsequent uprisings in his own country, "Something is happening, the Berlin Wall is falling, we can see it." Something definitely is happening. It`s riveting, breathtaking, teeming with hope and possibility. But contrary to the news reports that have eagerly adopted Jumblatt`s rhetoric, the events sparking excitement in the Middle East today don`t bear the slightest resemblance to those that swept through Eastern Europe in 1989.

This is not historical nitpicking. The differences between the two phenomena explain why the current tumult may not evolve the same merry way, or toward the same peaceful end, as the democratic rebellions of 16 years ago. Maybe things will end up fine; I certainly hope so. But it will take more than dreamy rhetoric and stern pulpit warnings for the march to wend its way to freedom.

The tumbling of the Berlin Wall was the product of a peculiar convergence of events. The Soviet empire was collapsing. The Soviet president was a singular man, Mikhail Gorbachev, who actively pushed for reform and Westernization (which he hoped would avert collapse but in fact accelerated it). Meanwhile, indigenous democratic movements were fomenting within the empire (Lech Walesa`s Solidarity in Poland, Václav Havel`s Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia, the perpetual secessionists in the Baltics). Detente, black markets, and jam-free broadcasts had whetted an appetite for Western ways. The nations suffering a generation of Soviet rule—especially the Baltics, East Germany, Poland, and Czechoslovakia—had longer traditions of democracy, capitalism, and European cosmopolitanism. Finally, their anti-Soviet sentiments were blooming in a bipolar world; repulsion toward Moscow translated very easily into attraction toward America. When the wall came down in `89 and the Soviet Union itself imploded two years later, the adoption (or resumption) of Western-style democracy was natural; emissaries from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the CIA, McDonald`s, and all the rest were, at least initially, most welcome.

Now let`s look at the aspiring democracies of the Middle East. The nations in question—mainly Iraq, Lebanon, and Egypt (with noises rustling in Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia)—are not joined by a common empire or target of revolt. There is no Gorbachev among them, in any case. Nor are there signs of Walesas or Havels. These countries never experienced a Reformation and thus have no Western traditions. And their rebellions are festering in a world that offers many models beyond communism or capitalism, some of them notably hostile to both.

So, three questions arise from the stirrings of 2005. First, are they real movements or brief flashes? The election in Iraq, however inspiring, has not yet produced a government; violence persists; a democratic regime may yet emerge, but a civil war isn`t out of the question either. The anti-Syrian street demonstrations in Lebanon were very impressive; but so was the pro-Syrian rally that followed. Hosni Mubarak`s pledge of free elections in Egypt is intriguing, but the fine print is still to come.

Second, if these movements are successful, what will they do next? Will an Islamic Republic of Iraq seek alliance with Iran? What effect will that have on Iraq`s Sunnis and Kurds, to say nothing of Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Israel? If Syrian troops do pull out of Lebanon, what role will Hezbollah play in an independent Lebanese government? What effect might that have on Israeli-Palestinian peace talks? If Egyptians really do choose their own leaders, what`s the chance that they`ll elect the Muslim Brotherhood to power?

Third, what does President Bush plan to do about these developments in the meantime? It`s a tricky situation. If he cheers the rebels on too openly, they will be denounced—and potentially discredited—as American agents (which, tellingly, is still a pejorative in that part of the world). The Syrians are clearly trying to play this card in Lebanon now. Yet at the same time, Bush shouldn`t back away and let nature take its course. There`s talk of a "Beirut Spring," but it`s worth recalling that the first Prague Spring, in `68, ended with Soviet tanks in Wenceslas Square and five armored divisions occupying the countryside. Democracy finally triumphed in the "velvet revolution" of `89, but the Soviet collapse, which abetted it, also unleashed the savage ethnic cleansings in Yugoslavia. Freedom was on the march in Afghanistan when the mujahideen beat back the Soviet army; but the United States withdrew its assets too, thinking the contest was over, and the Taliban rose to power in the vacuum—leading to the sanctuary for Osama Bin Laden and our most serious troubles now.

Bush may have grasped a larger picture than many of us realized when he spoke about the appeal of freedom and the imperative to promote it. But he has only vaguely defined the term. He sees it as not merely a political right but a God-given trait, humanity`s default mode, which gushes forth like a geyser once a tyrant is blown from his throne. History shows us there`s hot lava in this geyser, a volcano of energy, which can be creative, destructive, or both. Which way it flows is a matter of gravity, chance, the contours of landscape, or human engineering. To translate the metaphor to today`s political geyser, it`s a matter of indigenous culture, sheer luck, shrewd diplomacy, or brute force. Which way it goes will depend on some mix of all four. No outcome is inevitable. History is molded, not fated. Euphoria, for the moment, is beside the point.
Fred Kaplan writes the "War Stories" column for Slate. He can be reached at [e-mail].

Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2114659/

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Juan Cole and Osama Siblani on Middle East Politics, U.S. Media Coverage of the Region, and the Arab American Landscape

Friday, March 11th, 2005
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/11/1449249

[urlDownload Show mp3]http://www.archive.org/download/dn2005-0311/dn2005-0311-1_64kb.mp3[/url]
[urlWatch 256k stream]http://play.rbn.com/?url=demnow/demnow/demand/2005/march/video/dnB20050311a.rm&proto=rtsp&start=24:49[/url]

We broadcast from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor - home to the first antiwar teach-in forty years ago this month. Also, the region surrounded by Detroit and Dearborn is home to one of the largest Arab communities in this country.

We spend the rest of the hour looking at issues surrounding the Middle East, both in terms of U.S. foreign policy as well as here at home and how Arab Americans and Arab immigrants have been affected by the Bush administration`s so-called war on terror. We speak with University of Michigan professor, Juan Cole and Osama Siblani, publisher and editor-in-chief of "The Arab American" newspaper. [includes rush transcript]

Juan Cole is a Professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History at the History Department of the University of Michigan. He runs an analytical website called "Informed Comment" in which he provides a daily round-up of news and events in Iraq and elsewhere in the Arab world. Juan Cole speaks fluent Arabic and Farsi and has lived all over the Muslim world for extended periods of time.

We are also joined by Osama Siblani, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of the Dearborn-based weekly bilingual newspaper, "The Arab American." He helped found the Arab American Political Action Committee in Dearborn and the Congress of Arab American Organizations. Osama Siblani`s influence extends abroad and he has met with several Middle East leaders, including Syrian President Bashar Assad and Lebanese President Emile Lahoud.
RUSH TRANSCRIPT

This transcript is available free of charge, however donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.
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AMY GOODMAN: We`re joined by two guests here in our Ann Arbor studios. Juan Cole, Professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History at the University of Michigan, runs an analytical website called Informed Comment in which he provides a daily roundup of news and events in Iraq and elsewhere in the Arab world. Juan Cole speaks fluent Arabic and Farsi. He has lived all over the Muslim world for extended periods of time. We are also joined by Osama Siblani, he’s the Publisher and Editor-In-Chief of The Arab American, a Dearborn-based, weekly bi-lingual newspaper. He helped found the Arab American Political Action Committee in Dearborn and the Congress of Arab American Organizations. Also affiliated with the Arab American and Chaldean Council, one of the major Arab American human service organizations in the country. Osama Siblani’s influence extends abroad. He has met several Middle East leaders, including the Syrian President, Bashar Assad and the Lebanese President, Emil Lahoud. We welcome you both to Democracy Now!. It`s a pleasure to see you, Juan Cole, in person -- as you know, we have often had him on Democracy Now!, but on the telephone -- and to meet Osama Siblani for the first time. I wanted to start with Professor Cole. We just got a report from Madrid. Can you talk about who it is believed is responsible for the March 11 bombings?

JUAN COLE: Well, the group is as-Salafiya al-Jihadiya. It’s a small group that was founded initially in Tangier at a mosque around a man named Sheikh Fizazi, which gathered steam and then was responsible for a bombing – a set of bombings in Casablanca the year before the Madrid bombings. It established itself also in Europe, made contacts outside the Moroccan community with some Egyptian and other activists who had shadowy links with al Qaeda, and undertook the Madrid bombing. It`s a very disturbing development because this is really a local group. It has its roots in Tangier. It morphed into a kind of franchise of al Qaeda. We`re not sure exactly how closely it came into contact with that organization. And it is in this regard typical of the new situation that we now face with regard to some of these terrorist groups.

AMY GOODMAN: What about the Muslim clerics issuing this fatwa, this edict, against Osama bin Laden?

JUAN COLE: Well, the Muslim clerics in the Muslim world have long stood against bin Laden. This is not actually a new development. The Sheikh al-Azhar, the foremost authority in the Sunni Muslim world in Cairo, Egypt, has issued condemnations of September 11 and of acts of aggression of that sort. The Sheikh Yusof al-Qaradawi, whose Muslim – old style Muslim brotherhood in Qatar, a very influential -- has denounced bin Laden. So, in fact this is in line with the general opinion in most of the Muslim world that bin Laden has departed from Islamic norms by attacking innocent civilians in this way.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, turning to Iraq, the latest bombing in Mosul. The significance of this and what happened?

JUAN COLE: Well, it`s one of a series of bombings that has targeted the Shiite-Muslims of Iraq. The Shiites are the majority. They have now come to power in the recent elections. The Sunni-Arab minority has not reconciled itself on the whole to the new situation, and there are elements within it who are attempting to foment civil war, civil disturbance between Shiites and Sunnis as a way of destabilizing the country. And they hope that if they can destabilize the country, expel the U.S. troops, they can then kill the new political class, assassinate it, and make a coup. So, probably the people behind this are either radical Muslim groups or old-style Baath military intelligence.

AMY GOODMAN: And the latest news about what`s happening around the formation of the new government, what is being decided on March 16?

JUAN COLE: Well, the elections brought the Shiites to power in Iraq pretty decisively. They have probably about 54% of the seats in parliament, the religious Shiite parties. And however, you need two-thirds to form a government, according to the interim constitution. So, they needed to get 66%, and the easy place to get that extra number of seats was from the Kurdish alliance, which did very well in the elections, as well, much beyond their proportion of the population. And so, this is a natural kind of alliance within the rules of Parliament, as they`re now set in Iraq. And it`s actually a good sign, because only if the Shiite political parties and the Kurdish ones can come to a set of compromises and agreements about the future of the country with regard to federalism, the place of religious law, the disposition of the oil city of Kirkuk and else – and other such issues, can we hope for a peaceful united Iraq in the future.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Juan Cole, you wrote in “Informed Comment” on Wednesday, “The simplistic master narrative constructed by the partisans of President George W. Bush held that the January 30 elections were a huge success and signaled a turn to democracy in the Middle East. Then the anti-Syrian demonstrations were interpreted as a yearning for democracy inspired by the Iraqi elections. This interpretation is a gross misunderstanding of the situation in the Middle East.” I`d like, first, you to explain this and then I`d like a comment from Osama Siblani.

JUAN COLE: The whole narrative is a little bizarre. The Lebanese have been having parliamentary elections for decades and were among the few to have fairly upright such elections at some points in the 20th century in the Arab world. So, they haven`t learned anything from the Iraqi elections. In fact, the elections in Iraq were a mixture of the sublime and the ridiculous. I mean, it was a wonderful thing, people came out and risked their lives to vote, but they didn`t know the names of the candidates that they were voting for because of the poor security conditions, and the country had to be locked down for three days. No vehicular traffic at all in the entire country in order to prevent car bombings, so that the elections could be held. So I think most urbane, sophisticated Beirutis would have looked upon this process in Iraq with a little bit of pity, and there`s nothing inspiring there for them. They already had the elections in their country scheduled for May. What happened in Lebanon was local. I think we`re going to see a lot of this -- everything that happens in the Middle East from now on is going to be pegged to the Bush administration regardless of whether the Bush administration had anything to do with it, but there`s now, I think, a political struggle inside Lebanon, between those groups, especially the Christian Maronites, the Drews, and a section of the Sunnis who want an early end to the Syrian military occupation and an end to over-weaning Syrian influence in Lebanese politics on the one hand, and then Hezbollah and the generality of the Shiite community, I think, as well as another section of the Sunni community that actually wants the Syrians to continue to play a role.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Juan Cole is here at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Also joining us, having driven in from Dearborn, about a 45-minute drive, we`re joined by Osama Siblani, who is the publisher and editor-in-chief of The Arab American. I want to welcome you, as well.

OSAMA SIBLANI: Thank you, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: You are a Lebanese American.

OSAMA SIBLANI: That’s correct.

AMY GOODMAN: When did you come here?

OSAMA SIBLANI: I came here in 1976. Actually I was there about a couple of weeks ago. When Hariri was assassinated, I was like about 300 meters away from him.

AMY GOODMAN: What did you do then? What happened? You heard the explosion?

OSAMA SIBLANI: Oh yeah. Not I heard the explosion -- actually, we had glass where I was. You know, the whole glass just shattered all over the people who were sitting, and I was away from the windows, you know. My chair just jumped like a couple feet. And I saw him just maybe 10-15 minutes earlier. I was supposed to meet with him the next day. Yes, I was in Lebanon. And, you know, Amy, I just rest my case. I think the professor made a very good presentation reflective of the situation in Lebanon and in the Arab world. Yes, he is right that Lebanese have had elections since 1948 and the 1950s, and every your years they had them. After the civil war in 1992, and then in 1996 and then in 2000, and now they`re having them again. It`s a parliamentary election, and it`s not, you know, democratic 100%, but it`s much better than what happened in Iraq, for example. Also, in Palestine, you know, that Mr. Bush is trying to claim credit for the election. There was an election in Palestine, in the occupied territory seven years ago. They elected the council of Palestine, the National Council, and also they elected a president at that time, who was Yasser Arafat. So, nothing really new is happening in the Middle East that the Bush administration could take credit for. And I think the situation in Iraq, the election in Iraq, was something made for television for an American audience, so Mr. Bush can claim credit for something that he really does not deserve. Yes, you can`t fight, you know, back and say, you know, what is happening in Iraq is not a step forward in democracy. It`s much better, you know, to have people have the right to vote under these circumstances, rather than having a dictatorship run by a brutal dictator like Saddam Hussein, but again, the situation in Iraq is not about democracy. I met with the President, and he wanted to go to Iraq to search for weapons of mass destruction, and he considered the regime an imminent and gathering threat against the United States.

AMY GOODMAN: You met with the President of the United States?

OSAMA SIBLANI: Yes, when he was running for election in May of 2000 when he was a governor. He told me just straight to my face, among 12 or maybe 13 republicans at that time here in Michigan at the hotel. I think it was on May 17, 2000, even before he became the nominee for the Republicans. He told me that he was going to take him out, when we talked about Saddam Hussein in Iraq. And I said, ‘Well, you know, I totally disagree with you. You just can’t go around taking leaders out of their countries, you know. Let the Iraqi people do it. They can`t do it on empty stomachs. Lift sanctions. Keep the pressure on Saddam Hussein, but lift the sanctions on the Iraqi people. People can`t make moves on an empty stomach. Once they start establishing, you know, a connection with the United States and helping democracy inside, they will overthrow him.’ And then he said, ‘We have to talk about it later.’ But at that time he was not privy to any intelligence, and the democrats had occupied the White House for the previous eight years. So, he was not privy to any intelligence whatsoever. He was not the official nominee of the Republican Party, so he didn`t know what kind of situation the weapons of mass destruction was at that time. But what I am saying now is the President is trying to claim credit for something that really had nothing to do with him. The Palestinians had elections seven years ago. They have had an election last month, and also the Lebanese, what the professor said that this is a situation that is happening in Lebanon because there is a -- there is a formula in Lebanon that always, always Lebanon -- part of the Lebanese communities try to get help from the outside in order to gain more power and bring more cards to the table for bargaining.

AMY GOODMAN: What about the situation right now in Lebanon with the president, who you have met with, the Lebanese President Lahoud, reappointing the Syrian-backed Prime Minister?

OSAMA SIBLANI: Well, there is no doubt that Syrian influence is all over Lebanon. But the Syrians have been there to work out with the Lebanese the details of the Taif Accord that was signed back in 1989 and that ended the civil war in Lebanon. Definitely, the Syrians have made mistakes. Definitely, the Syrians are interfering into the Lebanese situation and little details. The President, Bashar Assad, who I have met also, admits to the mistakes that the Syrians have made in Lebanon. And the Syrians should get out of Lebanon and pull their security forces. Most of the Lebanese would agree now. Some of the Lebanese, I would say the minority, would like to see the Syrians humiliated on their way out. Others, which is the majority in Lebanon, would like to see them out, leaving with dignity, and keeping the relationship between Lebanon and Syria. If you look at the geography, where Lebanon is, it`s between Israel and Syria, and the Mediterranean. So, the only really breathing space that Lebanon has to the world is through Syria. So, we cannot really have a bad situation and bad relationship and bad blood between the Syrians and the Lebanese. That will create more trouble, especially that we have already a bad situation with the Israelis.

AMY GOODMAN: We are talking to Osama Siblani. He is the publisher and editor-in-chief of The Arab American, which is a weekly bilingual newspaper in the United States here in the heart of Arab America. We`re also joined by Juan Cole, Professor at the University of Michigan here in Ann Arbor. This is Democracy Now! We`ll come back with them in a minute.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: We are having a conversation about the Middle East, and I also want to talk about the Arab American community here in the United States, so we`re joined by Professor Juan Cole. You have heard him on the telephone. Now we`re in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan where he is a Professor of Modern Middle East History. We`re also joined by Osama Siblani, who is publisher and editor-in-chief of The Arab American based in Dearborn, Michigan. He is a Lebanese American, has been here for several decades. I wanted to ask, why did you come to the United States? Why did you move here from Lebanon?

OSAMA SIBLANI: I came here at the beginning of the civil war to get an education, because of -- the universities were just actually closed, because of the civil war. So I came here in 1976, and my brother was here, and I stayed here. My brother went back, though, and I stayed here.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, you were vice president of a --

OSAMA SIBLANI: An international company, yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Of an international company, but you gave it all up to go into journalism here --

OSAMA SIBLANI: That is correct.

AMY GOODMAN: And start this newspaper, The Arab American. Why?

OSAMA SIBLANI: Well, I started The Arab American news back in 1984, but I started really thinking about doing something in the media, you know, and paying back, you know, the world, and my country, the United States, that -- at that time, and also my homeland, because of the Israeli invasion into Lebanon in 1982, and the silence and the propaganda and the spin, you know, that was put on this war. It was personal because my own house in Beirut that I built for my mother -- God rest her soul, she died two years ago, and I was the youngest in the family, so I had to build her a house. And the Israelis destroyed it and burned -- all of my youth went up in flames. I don`t have anything from when I was young, because our house was totally destroyed. And everything was burned. I took it personally, and also I thought that maybe America deserved a little bit of the truth, or at least the other side of the story, and that was not told. And I took it upon myself to start the process of putting some, you know, of our opinion in the media, and that happened in 1984 on September 7. We started The Arab American, and we have been published weekly since then, in both languages.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you describe Arab America to us?

OSAMA SIBLANI: Well, Arab Americans are really not one of the thick society. They are from 22 Arab nations. Most of the Arab American communities in here are from, you know, a few countries. I would say, number one, probably Lebanon. They`re still the top of the Arab American community are from Lebanon. Then Iraq, most of the people here are from the Christian community. There are, of course, Palestinians, from Jordanians and Syrians and Yemeni, a community. Very few Egyptians in Michigan, but in New York probably we have a little more Egyptians than we have here. But basically this is the very few families from the Gulf region.

AMY GOODMAN: Why did Arab immigrants come to Michigan?

OSAMA SIBLANI: Basically, the reason that they came in at the turn of the 20th century is -- 19th century, beginning of the 20th century -- is because of the auto industry. It gathered a lot of Arabs from Lebanon, in particular, and the Syrians at that time -- there was not a Lebanon; there was a greater Syria -- came and emigrated to the United States, particularly to Detroit to work in the auto industry. And then, later they started going to Dearborn, because Dearborn had a huge Ford plant. And they’ve situated themselves in Dearborn and around the Dearborn area. The family bonds, you know, that brought more families. And, you know, brothers brought sisters and brothers and cousins, and they started -- now they don`t work in the auto industry. They have their own businesses, and they are professionals. But that`s why they came to Detroit, to the United States, and then to Detroit, in particular, and Dearborn, most particularly.

AMY GOODMAN: Talking about the media, you have a newspaper, a weekly newspaper. Juan Cole, you do your blog on a regular basis every day, really collating Arab news from around the world. Before blogging was in style, how do you develop this approach to media and communications? Why did you get involved with it?

JUAN COLE: Well, I actually worked for a newspaper in Beirut in the late 1970s. And I stuck it out longer than Osama did. I was there until 1979, and I finally gave up and decided to come to the United States for my education. So --

OSAMA SIBLANI: Which --

JUAN COLE: Well, it was for the Monday Morning Company.

OSAMA SIBLANI: Oh, Monday Morning.

JUAN COLE: And which had an English language newspaper at the time.

OSAMA SIBLANI: Now, it`s The Daily Star, isn`t it?

JUAN COLE: It`s now The Daily Star. One of my jobs at the newspaper in Beirut in the late 1970s was to read the Arabic wire services, put them in inverted pyramid form with the most important news first as the Americans do it, and translate them into English. So, I did that --

AMY GOODMAN: Who, what, when, where, why?

JUAN COLE: Yes, that sort of thing. Well, they don`t come that way. The Arabic wire service is like the French. You know, you might have a little meditation on the nature of human existence before you get to the news. And so, I did that for about a year and for many hours a day, and I learned to read Arabic news and skim it pretty quickly and also to think about how you would paraphrase it in English.

AMY GOODMAN: Where are you from originally?

JUAN COLE: I`m from a service family. I guess my family has roots in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. But I grew up all over the world in bases, France, Ethiopia and so forth. So, I`m rootless cosmopolitan in that way.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, how did you turn that experience in Lebanon into blogging here in the United States?

JUAN COLE: After September 11, I had a similar experience to that of Osama after the Lebanese civil war, in that I felt a great many ignorant opinions were being expressed in our mass media by people who really couldn`t even pronounce the names correctly and had no idea what they were talking about. And it annoyed me, having spent a long time in the region and having studied it professionally. And in the old days before the rise of the internet, it was hard to get one`s voice out for -- people think, well, an academic has some sort of special access, but no. I think a lot of journalists were convinced that academics can’t write straight, and you should keep them away from the public if at all possible. So, I couldn`t get my op-eds published. And my credentials really meant nothing in the journalistic world. It was only once I started keeping the weblog and commenting on al Qaeda and the development of the war on terror and then especially the Iraq war that the journalists started reading me for information, and I often could get access through Arabic sources on the internet or in the media to a texture and detail of information that wasn`t available on the west.

AMY GOODMAN: And how did you come up with the title of your weblog, “Informed Comment?”

JUAN COLE: Well, it was a little bit of a joke at first, because there were all of these very informed comments coming out of the mass media and the mainstream media, which are somewhat laughable. If you go back to the transcripts and read what people were sayings, it`s amazing the ignorance that was presented to the American public. So I was kind of joking around, saying this is the informed comment. But, unfortunately, now it`s become popular and sounds maybe a little bit pompous, but that`s alright.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask about the crackdown here at home. When it comes to Arab Americans, Arab immigrants, but also on campus. You have been targeted, for example, and we`re seeing this increasingly in universities around the country. Can you talk about that?

JUAN COLE: Sure. Well, there is – obviously, there has been for some time in the United States a lively set of culture wars, and I think there are people who are very disturbed by the way in which universities have resisted being taken over for ideological purposes. You know, most opinion in the United States that`s presented on the media now, and you can -- this can be proven statistically -- is coming out of think tanks. And what are think tanks? Some wealthy group of people endows these institutions and hires people to be in them, academic scholars, often, but to present a particular ideological point of view, and of 17 major think tanks, 15 are pretty far right. So, the universities really have had an end run pulled on them. Their voices are much less heard in the mainstream. And I think that there`s frustration that they`re still there at all, that there are professors who speak, who don`t tow the party line, so to speak. And so there are various forces that are working to try to use Congressional funding as a carrot to move universities in a particular ideological direction. There are campaigns of harassment. I, for instance, at one point was targeted to get 1,500 emails a day in order to cripple my activities on the internet. And people are blacklisted. They`re libeled. I have been accused of being an anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist, because I objected to the Likud Party policies of military occupation and colonization of the West Bank. So, this is an ongoing campaign. And it`s nothing new in American history. We have seen these things before, but it is very worrisome.

AMY GOODMAN: Osama Siblani, how does the U.S.A. PATRIOT Act, but not only that act, affect activism in the Arab and Arab American community? How was your newspaper affected, how were you?

OSAMA SIBLANI: My newspaper is not affected, frankly speaking, because I really don`t care what they`re going to do. And I will continue to voice my opinion the same way I voiced them, even harder and more straightforward because the situation calls for it. But I think in the general public and the Arab American community, that have really destroyed our activism. Now we`re trying to put it back together. And it’s not easy at all. It`s ironic, you know, and shameful that we are -- that this administration that claims it`s spreading democracy thousands of miles away from our country while we are losing democracy here at home, and being -- harassing people because we disagree with them, you know, politically. That`s happening in our community. I get every day complaints about crackdown and about people who have been harassed. We have doctors that have – you know, a couple of doctors have talked about how much they have been harassed directly because of the -- because of their opinions, because they have been associated with people like in Florida with Dr. Mazen Al-Najjar or with Dr. al-Arian, who is right now in court – his case in court just because guilt by association. And how many people have been put in jail and/or turned away from the United States, and they broke families apart because of -- because of just guilt by association. And this have really almost put our community out of business as far as activism, because people are afraid. They could come and, you know, pick on you and say, you know, you are from Hezbollah or you are from -- support Hamas or you donated -- in your past donated $10 to the charity that supported that. Now, we cannot even bring any help to the needy in our community because of the crackdown on charities. People don`t know where to donate. When the tsunami disaster happened, you know, we wanted to raise money, and we couldn`t even get our community to donate to anybody, because they would say, you know, who are we going to donate to? And this is really a real, real problem in our community.

AMY GOODMAN: How hard-hit is Dearborn? How many Arab Americans, how many Arabs are in Dearborn?

OSAMA SIBLANI: There are about -- close to about 35% of the town, which is about 35-36,000, in Dearborn. Most of them are from Lebanon. Iraqis are now being, you know, considered a good portion of the community, but still the majority, the 90% of the population of Dearborn and the Arab community is Lebanese, from the south of Lebanon.

AMY GOODMAN: Mayor in Dearborn?

OSAMA SIBLANI: The mayor of Dearborn, unfortunately, is a person that was elected in 1985, with an anti-Arab platform. And he continues to be the mayor of the city until now, and he has never apologized for his nasty and racist remarks against this community.

AMY GOODMAN: Have many people been arrested in Dearborn, and is there a large F.B.I. presence there?

OSAMA SIBLANI: There have been people arrested. And we really can’t get you – I mean, I don`t know. We still are trying to figure out how many people have been arrested, but recent -- most recently a person was charged and convicted with -- you know, he had to make a settlement on associated with Hezbollah. You know, when you look at the charges that have been mounted against several people, and they haven`t been able to make it stick on one single individual in court, that after terrorism and stuff like this. The community is, of course, scared, but I can tell you from my experience, and I do this every day, and I have -- this is my full time job, that our community is a loyal community, and they never wanted to see anything happen to the United States, because they ran away from trouble and from war and conflict. They want to live in peace. And they want to raise their children and give them education, and they don`t want to see anything -- or harm to the United States, but they`re definitely scared.

AMY GOODMAN: Have you had any trouble with your first name?

OSAMA SIBLANI: Yes. You know, with Orrin Hatch, maybe, but you know, with a few people, you know, but I have always maintained that I am older than Osama bin Laden. He is younger than me, so I couldn`t be named after him. He`s probably named after me. And I will make good on my name. Actually, it`s good name. Osama means the lion, right? It`s one of the names of the lion. It`s a very famous name, and a very proud name in the history, and Osama bin Laden is not going to make it bad. I won`t let him.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Osama Siblani, I want to thank you for being with us. Your website for listeners and viewers around the world?

OSAMA SIBLANI: .Www.ArabAmericanNews.com

AMY GOODMAN: And Juan Cole, Professor at University of Michigan here, Ann Arbor, your website.

JUAN COLE: www.Juancole.com, “Informed Comment.”

AMY GOODMAN: Juancole.com. Thank you both very much for joining us here in Ann Arbor.

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An Iraqi watching a Jazeera broadcast about the shooting in a Falluja mosque last November.
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March 6, 2005
`Al-Jazeera`: And Now, the Other News
By ISABEL HILTON
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/06/books/review/006HILTON.htm…

AL-JAZEERA The Inside Story of the Arab News Channel That Is Challenging the West. By Hugh Miles. 438 pp. Grove Press. $24.

In one sense the story of Al Jazeera began in 1995, when Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani overthrew his father and became the emir of Qatar, a tiny Persian Gulf state that sits on one trillion cubic feet of natural gas. As Hugh Miles puts it in ``Al-Jazeera,`` his fascinating account of the world`s most notorious television station, the new emir wanted Qatar to be like Switzerland, ``rich, neutral and secure.`` A television channel was part of the plan.

The emir was helped by the failure of another experiment: in 1994 the BBC had agreed with a Saudi-financed station to supply a news service in Arabic; the partnership collapsed in 1996 over Saudi objections to the content. It left 250 BBC-trained journalists and auxiliary staff members out of a job; 120 of the newly unemployed signed on with the emir of Qatar and Al Jazeera was born.

Today Al Jazeera is the bete noire of the Bush administration. Back then, it was a beacon of light in an Arab media world that was dark indeed. The station`s bold reporting and provocative talk shows outraged repressive governments across the region. The State Department Human Rights Report on Qatar in 2000 commented favorably on Al Jazeera`s willingness to carry criticism of Qatar`s own government.

There was a long list of offended powers: Yasir Arafat`s Palestinian Authority; the Jordanian government, which closed the Amman bureau and recalled its ambassador from Doha; the Algerian, the Moroccan, the Kuwaiti and the Israeli governments, all separately offended. The Saudi government to this day operates a crippling advertising ban against the station; a Saudi sheik started the independent, Dubai-based satellite news channel Al Arabiya in 2003 as an alternative. Al Jazeera shocked the Arab world by putting Israelis on the air, something no Arab station had done before. In Egypt, a Jazeera correspondent was denounced as an agent of Mossad and of British interests, and by 2002 Al Jazeera had had bureaus closed in six countries and had accumulated 400 official letters of complaint. In short, Al Jazeera was a welcome force in a region where governments were accustomed to think of their press as little more than dictating machines for government propaganda. Even today, of the hundreds of channels the average Arab citizen with a $100 satellite setup can tune in to, most are official government outlets.

The story of the troubled relationship between Al Jazeera and the Bush administration makes up much of Hugh Miles`s narrative. Miles is a young, Arabic-speaking British journalist, the son of a diplomat, who has spent much of his life in the Middle East. His account is both detailed and compelling, though his undisguised sympathy for Al Jazeera will doubtless annoy some readers. According to Miles, the tensions with the United States began with the war in Afghanistan when Al Jazeera, with its bureau in Kabul and its cultivated contacts with bin Laden, was well placed to monopolize coverage and to receive the exclusive bin Laden tapes.

Back in the United States, Condoleezza Rice was asking American networks to censor the Qaeda material they bought from Al Jazeera on the grounds that bin Laden`s utterances might contain hidden messages. (Why any Qaeda operative wouldn`t read the full text on the Internet or watch Al Jazeera was not clear.) The networks complied. But when Colin Powell asked the emir of Qatar to influence Al Jazeera to tone down its reporting, the emir declined. ``Parliamentary life requires you have free and credible media,`` he said, ``and that is what we are trying to do.`` The exchange played poorly for the United States in a region often criticized for its democratic failings.

As well as putting bin Laden on the air, Al Jazeera reported from the receiving end of the Afghan war: the civilian casualties, the houses and lives destroyed. Finally, as the Northern Alliance forces advanced, the Jazeera offices in Kabul were obliterated by an American 500-pound bomb. After initial denials, a Pentagon spokesman admitted that Al Jazeera had been targeted as an alleged locus of Qaeda activity. General Tommy Franks said that a bin Laden deputy, Muhammad Atef, was among the casualties in the attack. (He was killed again a few weeks later, in a completely separate incident.)

When the war in Iraq came, Al Jazeera was again well placed: its widely distributed correspondents all spoke Arabic and the station adopted a stance of skepticism toward all sides. It is a position that is unacceptable only if you assume that one side in a war has a monopoly on truth. Miles, who spent several weeks during the invasion of Iraq watching Al Jazeera on behalf of Sky News, argues that Al Jazeera favored neither side. ``Like most Arabs,`` he writes, ``it opposed Saddam`s regime and opposed the invasion.``

Washington has spent millions of dollars on Madison Avenue-style public diplomacy in the Middle East, selling the United States as though, as one former American ambassador put it, ``we were a brand of toothpaste.`` It has been a failure. The problem, Miles argues cogently, is not one of public relations but of policy. Rami Khouri, executive editor of The Daily Star of Beirut, agrees. Promoting American values, he observed, might merely highlight the gap between those values and the nation`s policy in the Middle East.

Shutting the station down will do nothing to change this. Today Al Jazeera commands an audience of some 40 million and, Miles argues, has ``reversed the flow of information, so that now, for the first time in hundreds of years, it passes from east to west.`` If in some Arab countries Al Jazeera is now seen as an American device for sowing dissent, it is still the biggest game in the Arab hearts-and-minds business and with a projected English language station, will extend its reach into non-Arabic-speaking Muslim countries like Pakistan and Indonesia. Washington, meanwhile, has so stepped up pressure on its ally Qatar that the Qatari government is said to be accelerating plans to put Al Jazeera, which runs at a loss, on the market. The station says it keeps its door open to views and news from all quarters. The democratic response would be to go through that door and join in the argument.

Isabel Hilton is a London-based writer and broadcaster and the author of ``The Search for the Panchen Lama.``


Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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[urlThe Tonight Show / Leno]http://www.nbc.com/The_Tonight_Show_with_Jay_Leno/[/url]

washingtonpost.com
Judge Lifts Jokes Gag Order on Jay Leno

By TIM MOLLOY
The Associated Press
Friday, March 11, 2005; 2:36 PM

SANTA MARIA, Calif. - The judge in the Michael Jackson trial delivered the punch line Friday that Jay Leno has been wanting to hear: The comedian is allowed to crack jokes at Jackson`s expense.

Judge Rodney S. Melville made his ruling about Leno as he clarified a gag order preventing everyone involved in the case from discussing it. Leno has been subpoenaed to testify at the trial, and the comedian feared that the order would apply to his monologues on "The Tonight Show."

"I am not attempting to prevent anybody from making a living in the normal way that they make their living," the judge ruled, adding that Leno may not talk about the specific things to which he is a witness.

Leno has been finding creative ways to make jokes about Jackson without opening his mouth.

After arriving "late" for the taping of Thursday`s "Tonight Show," Leno stepped out of a black limousine wearing SpongeBob SquarePants pajamas and accompanied by several bodyguards. One of the bodyguards held an open umbrella over Leno`s head as the comedian remained silent when asked why he was late.

Earlier in the day, Jackson had arrived late to court wearing pajama bottoms and a T-shirt under a coat. His lawyers explained the pop star had come straight from a hospital where he had been treated for a back injury caused by a fall.

"They`re ruling on my gag order tomorrow to see if I`m allowed to tell Jackson jokes," he told his audience Thursday. "I`m not legally allowed to tell Michael Jackson jokes, but I can still write them."

Then, as he has in recent days, he called on another comedian, Drew Carey, to handle that night`s Jackson duty.

"Michael Jackson showed up to court late today wearing his pajama bottoms," Carey told the audience. "You know what? You find the kid wearing the pajama top and we have another court case on our hands."

Leno may be called to testify about having contact with Jackson`s accuser or his mother. The defense contends the family tried to bilk Leno and others out of money.

Jackson attorney Robert Sanger said Leno has made "very cruel jokes" about the pop star that could affect how he might testify, and he urged the judge to restrict Leno further.

"We`re not putting him out of his business if he can`t talk about Michael Jackson for a few weeks," Sanger said.

Media attorney Theodore Boutrous Jr. argued for the clarification on the gag order on grounds Leno`s First Amendment rights were violated.

The judge also joked about Leno on Friday, saying "I`d like him to tell good jokes ... but I guess I can`t control that."

© 2005 The Associated Press

Ausschnitte aus US-Late-Night-Shows und anderes:
http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/

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NETWORKS REFUSE TO AIR BIN LADEN TAPE AFTER FINDING NO NEW INFORMATION ABOUT JACKSON CASE
http://www.borowitzreport.com/default.asp

Madman Frustrated By Lack of Airtime, Sources Say

The twenty-four-hour news networks today announced that they decided not to broadcast the latest video by al-Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden after determining that the tape contained no new information about the Michael Jackson case.

Moments after the video was delivered to all of the networks late Wednesday night, news executives examined it thoroughly for tidbits about the self-styled King of Pop’s trial before being giving it a unanimous thumbs-down.

According to one source, “We have an obligation as news people to give our audience the latest information about Michael Jackson’s case, and Mr. bin Laden’s latest effort falls well below those standards.”

Those who viewed the tape said that while it contained some interesting information, including specific details about future terror plots and Mr. bin Laden’s precise location, it did not even touch on the trial currently underway in Santa Maria, California.

It was the second setback in as many weeks for Mr. bin Laden, who last week saw one of his terror tapes preempted by wall-to-wall coverage of Martha Stewart’s release from prison.

According to a source close to Mr. bin Laden, the news media’s fascination with celebrity trials has done more to disrupt the al-Qaeda leader’s attempts to communicate with his followers than the combined efforts of the FBI and the CIA.

“The only good news Osama’s gotten lately was when Kobe settled out of court,” the source said.

Elsewhere, small cars fare worse than big ones in side-impact crashes, according to a new study published in “Duh” magazine.

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Girlieman trifft Guvernator!


Schwarzenegger trades gifts, German quips with Bavarian prime minister
The Associated Press
Published 5:30 pm PST Thursday, March 10, 2005
SACRAMENTO (AP) - Most of the conversation was in German and there was much laughing and nodding that made little sense to American reporters. But Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appeared pleased with his visit Thursday from Bavarian Prime Minister Edmund Stoiber - if nothing more than for the gifts that were exchanged.

Stoiber, an avid hiker, got a walking stick from Schwarzenegger and a blue wind-breaker. Schwarzenegger received a porcelain Bavarian lion and a box of German cigars.

Several local reporters and about 30 members of the German press attended a brief media availability between the two leaders. Stoiber`s remarks were in German and mostly lost on the Sacramento crew. Schwarzenegger quipped that he was pleased to have press from both nations gathered "because this way I can get misquoted in two languages."

A native of neighboring Austria, Schwarzenegger recalled his days living in Bavaria and its capital, Munich, where he won a world bodybuilding championship that became "my springboard to come to America and to the rest of my career."

The governor called Stoiber a great leader of a state facing many of the same challenges as California. "We also are facing the same problems," Schwarzenegger said including budget deficits and "suffocating" regulations. "We both want to turn our state into a powerful job-creating machine."

Stoiber, considered one of Germany`s leading conservatives, lost a bid to become chancellor in 2002 but continues to lead Bavaria, the largest state of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Go to: Sacbee / Back to story

This article is protected by copyright and should not be printed or distributed for anything except personal use.
The Sacramento Bee, 2100 Q St., P.O. Box 15779, Sacramento, CA 95852
Phone: [phone]

Copyright © The Sacramento Bee

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Zu #58
Gouvernator oder Governator

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March 12, 2005
Army Details Scale of Abuse of Prisoners in an Afghan Jail
By DOUGLAS JEHL
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/12/politics/12detain.html?hp&…

WASHINGTON, March 11 - Two Afghan prisoners who died in American custody in Afghanistan in December 2002 were chained to the ceiling, kicked and beaten by American soldiers in sustained assaults that caused their deaths, according to Army criminal investigative reports that have not yet been made public.

One soldier, Pfc. Willie V. Brand, was charged with manslaughter in a closed hearing last month in Texas in connection with one of the deaths, another Army document shows. Private Brand, who acknowledged striking a detainee named Dilawar 37 times, was accused of having maimed and killed him over a five-day period by "destroying his leg muscle tissue with repeated unlawful knee strikes."

The attacks on Mr. Dilawar were so severe that "even if he had survived, both legs would have had to be amputated," the Army report said, citing a medical examiner.

The reports, obtained by Human Rights Watch, provide the first official account of events that led to the deaths of the detainees, Mullah Habibullah and Mr. Dilawar, at the Bagram Control Point, about 40 miles north of Kabul. The deaths took place nearly a year before the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Among those implicated in the killings at Bagram were members of Company A of the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, from Fort Bragg, N.C. The battalion went on to Iraq, where some members established the interrogation unit at Abu Ghraib and have been implicated in some abuses there.

The reports, from the Army Criminal Investigation Command, also make clear that the abuse at Bagram went far beyond the two killings. Among those recommended for prosecution is an Army military interrogator from the 519th Battalion who is said to have "placed his penis along the face" of one Afghan detainee and later to have "simulated anally sodomizing him (over his clothes)."

The Army reports cited "credible information" that four military interrogators assaulted Mr. Dilawar and another Afghan prisoner with "kicks to the groin and leg, shoving or slamming him into walls/table, forcing the detainee to maintain painful, contorted body positions during interview and forcing water into his mouth until he could not breathe."

American military officials in Afghanistan initially said the deaths of Mr. Habibullah, in an isolation cell on Dec. 4, 2002, and Mr. Dilawar, in another such cell six days later, were from natural causes. Lt. Gen. Daniel K. McNeill, the American commander of allied forces in Afghanistan at the time, denied then that prisoners had been chained to the ceiling or that conditions at Bagram endangered the lives of prisoners.

But after an investigation by The New York Times, the Army acknowledged that the deaths were homicides. Last fall, Army investigators implicated 28 soldiers and reservists and recommended that they face criminal charges, including negligent homicide.

But so far only Private Brand, a military policeman from the 377th Military Police Company, an Army Reserve unit based in Cincinnati, and Sgt. James P. Boland, from the same unit, have been charged.

The charges against Sergeant Boland for assault and other crimes were announced last summer, and those against Private Brand are spelled out in Army charge sheets from hearings on Jan. 4 and Feb. 3 in Fort Bliss, Tex.

The names of other officers and soldiers liable to criminal charges had not previously been made public.

But among those mentioned in the new reports is Capt. Carolyn A. Wood, the chief military intelligence officer at Bagram. The reports conclude that Captain Wood lied to investigators by saying that shackling prisoners in standing positions was intended to protect interrogators from harm. In fact, the report says, the technique was used to inflict pain and sleep deprivation.

An Army report dated June 1, 2004, about Mr. Habibullah`s death identifies Capt. Christopher Beiring of the 377th Military Police Company as having been "culpably inefficient in the performance of his duties, which allowed a number of his soldiers to mistreat detainees, ultimately leading to Habibullah`s death, thus constituting negligent homicide."

Captain Wood, who commanded Company A in Afghanistan, later helped to establish the interrogation and debriefing center at Abu Ghraib. Two Defense Department reports have said that a list of interrogation procedures she drew up there, which went beyond those approved by Army commanders, may have contributed to abuses at Abu Ghraib.

Past efforts to contact Captain Wood, Captain Beiring and Sergeant Boland, who were mentioned in passing in earlier reports, and to learn the identity of their lawyers, have been unsuccessful. All have been named in previous Pentagon reports and news accounts about the incidents in Afghanistan; none have commented publicly. The name of Private Brand`s lawyer did not appear on the Army charge sheet, and military officials said neither the soldier nor the lawyer would likely comment.

John Sifton, a researcher on Afghanistan for Human Rights Watch, said the documents substantiated the group`s own investigations showing that beatings and stress positions were widely used, and that "far from a few isolated cases, abuse at sites in Afghanistan was common in 2002, the rule more than the exception."

"Human Rights Watch has previously documented, through interviews with former detainees, that scores of other detainees were beaten at Bagram and Kandahar bases from early 2002 on," Mr. Sifton said in an e-mail message.

In his own report, made public this week, Vice Adm. Albert T. Church III cited the deaths of Mr. Habibullah and Mr. Dilawar as examples of abuse that had occurred during interrogations. Admiral Church said his review of the Army investigation had found that the abuse "was unrelated to approved interrogation techniques."

But Admiral Church also said there were indications in both cases "that medical personnel may have attempted to misrepresent the circumstances of the death, possibly in an effort to disguise detainee abuse," and noted that the Army`s surgeon general was reviewing "the specific medical handling" of those cases and one other.

The most specific previous description of the cause of deaths of the two men had come from Pentagon officials, who said last fall that both had suffered "blunt force trauma to the legs," and that investigators had determined that they had been beaten by "multiple soldiers" who, for the most part, had used their knees. Pentagon officials said at the time that it was likely that the beatings had been confined to the legs of the detainees so the injuries would be less visible.

Both men had been chained to the ceiling, one at the waist and one by the wrists, although their feet remained on the ground. Both men had been captured by Afghan forces and turned over to the American military for interrogation.

Mr. Habibullah, a brother of a former Taliban commander, died of a pulmonary embolism apparently caused by blood clots formed in his legs from the beatings, according to the report of June 1, 2004. Mr. Dilawar, who suffered from a heart condition, is described in an Army report dated July 6, 2004, as having died from "blunt force trauma to the lower extremities complicating coronary artery disease."

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Weil Botschafter Negroponte auf der Straße zum Camp Victory in der Nähe des Baghdader Flughafens zum Dinner fahren mußte, durften die US-Soldaten ohne Vorwarnung alle anderen Fahrzeuge auf der Straße zum Flughafen beschießen.
Das nennt man Demokratie in Nahost einführen.

March 12, 2005
Italian Was Killed at Iraq Checkpoint Set Up for U.S. Ambassador`s Trip
By JAMES GLANZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/12/international/middleeast/1…

BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 11 - A storm forced Ambassador John D. Negroponte to travel in a convoy instead of flying to a dinner appointment with the top American commander in Iraq last week, leading to the creation of a temporary security checkpoint involved in the shooting death of an Italian intelligence officer, an embassy official said Friday.

Mr. Negroponte, the American ambassador to Iraq, was traveling last Friday to a dinner appointment in Baghdad with Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the commander, said the official, Robert Callahan.

The killing of the intelligence officer, who was with an Italian journalist who had just been released after being held hostage by insurgents, has roiled relations between the United States and Italy. American commanders, including General Casey, have so far declined to clarify what took place that night, citing a continuing investigation.

That stance by the commanders has left the American Embassy in the position of being the prime source of information from the United States about the incident.

Mr. Negroponte, who has been nominated as America`s first director for national intelligence, would ordinarily have taken a helicopter to the appointment, set for 7:30 p.m. But Mr. Callahan said the ambassador had been forced by the storm to travel in a convoy over the dangerous roads from downtown Baghdad to Camp Victory, a base near the airport.

To provide security for the trip, American soldiers set up what they call mobile checkpoints - usually clusters of Humvees armed with .50-caliber machine guns on top - and one such detail opened fire on the vehicle carrying the agent, Nicola Calipari, killing him and slightly wounding the journalist, Giuliana Sgrena.

The detail had apparently remained in place after Mr. Negroponte`s convoy passed; Mr. Calipari was shot about 8:55.

The term mobile checkpoint "means a checkpoint that has been set up temporarily," another American official said. "It doesn`t mean it`s floating up and down the road."

The makeup of the checkpoint has been one of the issues at the center of the dispute between the Italians and Americans over the incident. American soldiers say the Italian vehicles were traveling at a fast speed and did not heed hand signals, flashing lights and warning shots telling them to stop. The Italians say that they were traveling slowly and that it was unclear what was happening before the Americans opened fire.

The confusing nature of such mobile checkpoints was brought home to a reporter and two American officials on Friday after a meeting in the heavily fortified Green Zone in central Baghdad. In a moment of inattention, one of the officials drove his vehicle past a line of stopped cars and emerged into the open, only to find a .50-caliber machine gun atop a Humvee pointed straight at him.

The soldier had his right hand raised in a fist, the gesture that the American military uses to mean "stop." The official hit the brakes and nervously watched a convoy pass behind the Humvee.

The convoy appeared to belong to Mr. Negroponte, the official said.

Also on Friday, Iraqi political factions continued jockeying in advance of a final agreement to form a government in the new 275-member National Assembly. A focus of negotiations has been Article 58 of the transitional law, which refers to the restoration of property stripped from tens of thousands of Kurds in the northern city of Kirkuk by Saddam Hussein`s government.

The Kurds are expected to join with a Shiite coalition to produce the two-thirds majority in the assembly that is required to form a government. "There is primary agreement, and a draft has been written," said Adnan al-Kadhemi, an aide to Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a member of the Shiite coalition who is expected to be named prime minister.

Masoud Barzani, a Kurdish leader, said the outlines of an agreement on how Article 58 might be enforced were in place. Still, some Iraqis have expressed impatience with the slow pace of the talks, nearly six weeks after the elections that put the assembly in place.

The American military said a soldier assigned to the First Marine Expeditionary Force died in a "nonhostile accident" on Friday in Anbar Province, which contains the restive cities of Ramadi and Falluja.

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The Independent
In the Middle East, those who are about to die believe profoundly in the afterlife
Saturday, 12th March 2005, by Robert Fisk
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/story.jsp?story=619…

In a part of the world where a person’s religion is part of their life, the end of life does not appear so terrible or so final

AFIK Hariri’s table in the Etoile coffee shop in Beirut is on the right of the door, far back against the wall. Here it was that Mr Lebanon dropped by for his last coffee on 14 February, only three minutes before his convoy was bombed.

I sat in the Etoile this week and looked at Hariri’s chair - the waiters routinely point it out to the pilgrims who now follow his last journey, walking from the parliament building across the square to the Etoile and then the last mournful trip to the site of the bombing. And perhaps because I knew Hariri - and had once asked him if he believed in life after death - I find myself much moved by his passing.

I remember the lunches and dinners he invited me to attend which I was too tired or bored to go to, the conversations I ended abruptly because I had deadlines to meet. In his death, he has become more real than in life, which is, I suppose, the only way in which we can be certain that the dead live on.

I suppose we Brits - or at least, the British press - have always been fascinated by life beyond the grave. Our fear of death, our hesitation to confront it while we are alive, our constant, unspoken hope that it remains many years away, seems - out here in the Middle East - a peculiarly Western phenomenon. For in a part of the world where a person’s religion is part of their life - as opposed to the cultural bubble in which we have confined it - the end of life does not appear so terrible or so final.

This does not mean that life is cheap in the Middle East - though I suspect that death is - but that this is a continent of believers. In Europe, we close our churches or use them for concerts or turn up for marriages - yes, and death - but mosques in the Middle East grow larger, their congregations ever bigger. Men and women can face death in the Middle East with the same sangfroid as those European divines we condemned to burn at the stake.

I once asked a young Hizbollah fighter how he knew there was a life after death. "I can prove it to you," he replied. "Do you believe that justice exists? Yes? Well, since there is no justice in this life, it must mean there is justice in the next life - so there is life after death!"

I was still pondering the logic of this when I visited the Iranian battlefront in the Iran-Iraq war. Under shellfire, I found myself in trenches during the battle of the Dusallok Heights, a system of earthworks that looked uncannily like the battlefields in which my father once fought in France in 1918. The dugout in which I sought shelter was small and a thick dust hung in the air. The light from the sandbagged doorway forced its way into the little bunker, defining the features of the boys inside in two dimensional perspective, an Orpen sketch of impending death at the front.

There, however, the parallels ended. For the youngest soldier - who welcomed us, like an excited schoolboy, at the entrance - was only 14, his voice unbroken by either fear or manhood. The oldest among them was 21. I still have my mud-stained notes of our conversation which I realise, now, carried more meaning than I realised at the time.

Yes, said the 14-year-old, two of his friends from Kerman had died in the battle for Dezful - one his own age and one only a year older. He had cried, he said, when the authorities delayed his own journey to the battlefront. Cried, I asked? A child cries because he cannot die yet?

His comments were incredible and genuine and terrifying at one and the same time. But it was an older boy to whom the child soldiers deferred, a young man sitting on a rug by the door, bearded and - how I hate this cliché - intense. His name was Hassan Qasqari and I do not know if he survived - I suspect not - but he wanted to tell me how I lacked faith.

"It is impossible for you in the West to understand," he said. "Martyrdom brings us closer to God. We do not seek death - but we regard death as a journey from one form of life to another. There are two phases in martyrdom: we approach God and we also remove the obstacles that exist between God and the people. Those who create obstacles for God in this world are the enemies of God."

I could not imagine this speech on a Western warfront. Perhaps a British or American military padre might talk of religion with this odd imagination. And then I realised that these Iranian boy soldiers were all "padres"; they were all priests, all preachers, all believers. "Our first duty," Qasqari said, "is to kill the enemy forces so that God’s order will be everywhere. Becoming a martyr is not a passive thing..."

If I did not understand this, he said, it was because the European Renaissance had done away with religion, no longer paying attention to morality or ethics, concentrating only upon materialism. I tried - in vain - to staunch this monologue, to transfuse this fixed belief with arguments about humanity or love. But no.

"Europe and the West have confined these issues to the cover of churches," he said. "Western people are like fish in the water: they can only understand their immediate surroundings. They don’t care about spirituality." I looked at all these doomed youths. "Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes," wrote Owen, "Shall shine the holy glimmer of goodbyes."

Of course, I tried my own arguments: that the Renaissance was not about the death of faith but about the triumph of humanity; that it remained a tragedy that the Islamic world - with its enemies at the gates - failed to pass through a renaissance of similar proportions; that perhaps Muslims would be less dogmatic in following every line of the Koran so literally if Da Vinci and Michelangelo and Shakespeare - and, yes, Machiavelli - had lived in Baghdad or Cairo. It was to no purpose. Faith ruled.

And then this week, I looked up my notes of a radio programme on Islam that I produced for the BBC in 1996 and, sure enough, every Muslim man and woman stated with total conviction that their souls would live on - not in rivers of honey or surrounded by virgins - but that there really did exist a continuing life. The only Christian I interviewed for the programme was Professor Kamal Salibi, who used to run Jordanian Prince Hassan’s Centre for Interfaith Studies. What happened after death, I asked him? "Nothing," he said. "We are dust. It is the end."

And I became a little frightened by this and much preferred a Muslim Egyptian woman who told me that not only would there be another life but also that she had some hard questions to ask God when she got there.

I have no wish to change my religion - if, indeed, I have one, for I notice that that we always make a distinction these days between the "Muslim world" and the "Western world" rather than the "Christian world" - but sometimes, after all the deaths I have witnessed, all the piles of corpses, all the innocents taken from this world, I have asked myself why we cannot believe in an afterlife.

Alas, it may be that the Renaissance which gave us our freedom also provided us with our eternal fear of death. And yes, Hariri told me he did believe in the afterlife. I am not so sure. But when I left the Etoile coffee shop, I did glance across at his table, just in case I saw him sitting there.


©2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.

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

http://www.juancole.com/
Saturday, March 12, 2005

Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani called Friday "unity and solidarity among all Iraqis despite the attacks targeting the innocent." He was referring to the horrific bombing of a Shiite funeral in Mosul. Weeping relatives held small family wakes for the dead, avoiding a large mass funeral that might again be targeted by a suicide bomber. The Shiite mosque, near which the original attack occured, took mortar fire on Friday, according to al-Hayat. The same source says that Sistani`s statement called on the security apparatus in Iraq "to shoulder their responsibilities with regard to safeguarding the innocent in all Iraq`s cities."

The Sunni preacher at the Abu Hanifa Mosque in Baghdad, Shaikh Ahmad Hasan Taha, condemned the suicide bombing. He said, "Last week, we were deploring the massacre in the city of Hilla of our Iraqi brethren, and today terrorists undertook this attack, which is even a worse crime and a more awful scandal." He blamed the attacks in part on a hidden foreign hand.

Likewise, the Association of Muslim Scholars denounced the bombing, but tried to use it to discredit the Americans and interim prime minister Iyad Allawi, whom the AMS considers responsible for the lack of security in the country: ` "We strongly denounce the bombings and assassinations that killed innocent people,” Sheik Mahmoud al-Sumaidei, a member of the influential Association of Muslim Scholars, told worshippers. “Both the occupation and the Iraqi government shoulder the responsibility of this blood." ` Al-Hayat says that al-Sumaidei said the Mosul bombing was part of a conspiracy that began with the American occupation to marginalize one religious community at the expense of another." He condemned the suicide bombing, along with the practice of some Muslims declaring the others infidels, or purging other Muslims, or assassinating them."

Al-Hayat reports that two Friday prayers preachers from the Sadr movement called for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq "immediately and unconditionally," just as American calls for Syria to depart Lebanon.

Michael Schwartz`s analysis of the guerrilla resistance in Iraq is well worth reading. He concludes that by now it is primarily made up of loose cells consisting of local Arab nationalists who object to the US military presence, and that the Baath and foreign jihadi elements are less important than the local irregulars. I think he underestimates the continued role of Baath military intelligence, but his picture is generally plausible, and certainly closer to reality than the things we hear from the Department of Defense.

posted by Juan @ 3/12/2005 06:20:00 AM

What do you Do if Democracies Defy You?

The US and British support for democratization in the Middle East is a deeply contradictory policy, since Washington and London also want friendly regimes that agree with their policies and crack down on radicals.

The contradiction was pitched ironically by Lebanese Speaker of the House Nabih Berri, a Shiite leader of the Amal Party, on Friday. UK Foreign Minister Jack Straw expressed dismay that the president of Lebanon, Emile Lahoud, had reappointed Omar Karami as prime minister. Berri sent a telegram to Straw informing him that the president cannot unilaterally appoint a prime minister in Lebanon, but must consult with parliament (to ensure that the PM has enough votes to survive a vote of no confindence).

Berri ironically suggested that since Straw disliked parliament`s choice, he should please appoint a prime minister for Lebanon.

Berri went on to make other suggestions, saying he spoke out because "the appointment of the prime minister in Lebanon is in the hands of Parliament, not the president, and second because we hope we would be able to express our opinion in naming the British prime minister."

The Daily Star notes, ` Berri concluded his telegram by expressing his "thanks for the planned democracy for our region," in reference to U.S., British and European efforts to establish democracy throughout the Middle East. ` I suppose we now know what some experienced parliamentarians in the region think of Bush`s `democratization.`

Newshounds report that democracy is only allowed in Lebanon if it comes to the right decisions. Otherwise, can you spell J-DAM-ocracy?

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11/2005

»Das zerreißt mich«
http://www.zeit.de/2005/11/01__sgrena

Die italienische Journalistin und ZEIT-Mitarbeiterin Giuliana Sgrena spricht über ihren getöteten Befreier, ihre Kidnapper und die Vorwürfe gegen US-Soldaten

DIE ZEIT: Können Sie, wollen Sie sprechen?

Giuliana Sgrena: Körperlich geht es mir schon besser. Wegen der Umstände meiner Befreiung bin ich allerdings sehr deprimiert. Es ist tragisch. In dem Moment, in dem ich mich frei fühle, stirbt der Mensch, der mich befreit hat. Er stirbt in meinen Armen, weil er sich schützend über mich wirft. Der Schmerz darüber zerreißt mich. Das werde ich nie vergessen. Der Schmerz über den Tod Nicola Caliparis überschattet alles. Auch alles, was ich während meiner Entführung erlitten habe.

ZEIT: Nicola Calipari hatte Sie eben erst in Bagdad am vereinbarten Übergabeort in Empfang genommen…

Sgrena: Ich habe ihn praktisch nur eine halbe Stunde lang gekannt. Als mich meine Entführer kurz vor der Übergabe mit verbundenen Augen in dem Auto sitzen ließen, empfand ich schreckliche Angst. Sie haben mich mit den Worten ausgesetzt: »Zehn Minuten. Dann kommen sie dich holen.« Dann waren sie weg. Ich begann die Sekunden zu zählen. Es schien mir eine Ewigkeit zu dauern. Ich wusste ja, dass der Moment der Übergabe der gefährlichste war. Ich saß da. Ich sah nichts. Ich hörte Autos. Ich hörte einen Hubschrauber. Ich hörte Sirenen. Alles, was man normalerweise in Bagdad hört. Aber ich konnte nichts sehen.

Ich war in Panik. Plötzlich hörte ich, wie die Tür aufging, und dann eine Stimme: »Giuliana! Giuliana! Ich bin es, Nicola! Du bist frei! Mach dir keine Sorgen, du bist frei! Komm mit mir. Mach dir keine Sorgen! Du bist sicher! Wir können gehen, komm, komm.« Er half mir aus dem Wagen und brachte mich in ein anderes Auto.

Nicola war so direkt, so schlicht, so einfach. Ich habe ihn nie vorher getroffen. Und da war er – wie ein Freund, ein langjähriger Freund, der dir Sicherheit vermittelt, auch noch in den schlimmsten Momenten deines Lebens. Es war ein wunderschönes Gefühl.

»Ich setze mich neben dich, da fühlst du dich sicherer!«, sagte er. Er hat mir von meiner Familie erzählt, von meiner Zeitung, von meinem Mann. Er hatte mit ihnen allen Kontakt. Er hat mir alle Angst genommen. Er war so herzlich! Danach ist er gestorben, um mir das Leben zu retten.

ZEIT: Die US-Armee spricht von einem Unfall. Wie sehen Sie das?

Sgrena: Ich bin empört darüber, dass man das einen Unfall nennt. Wenn sie uns Zeichen gegeben und wir sie nicht verstanden hätten, dann könnte man von Unfall sprechen. Aber wenn einfach drauflosgeschossen wird, dann kann man doch nicht von Unfall sprechen – oder?

ZEIT: Es kann durchaus sein, dass die Soldaten des Panzerwagens nicht Bescheid wussten…

Sgrena: Das kann sein. Aber dann bleibt immer noch die Frage, wer sie hätte informieren müssen. Irgendjemand ist verantwortlich. Unsere Ankunft war doch nicht irgendeine Sache. Um ein Beispiel zu nennen: Nach dem Ende des Beschusses hat sich unser Fahrer direkt mit Palazzo Chigi (Sitz des italienischen Ministerpräsidenten; Anm. d. Red.) in Verbindung gesetzt, dort saßen Berlusconi und der verantwortliche Minister. Also, ich meine, wenn selbst Palazzo Chigi informiert war, wenn es dauernden Kontakt zu den höchsten Stellen unseres Staates gab, dann soll ich glauben, dass die US-Armee nicht wusste, dass wir am Bagdader Flughafen ankommen? Die Soldaten haben dem Fahrer übrigens das Telefon abgenommen, während er mit Palazzo Chigi telefonierte.

ZEIT: Meinen Sie damit, dass es Vorsatz gewesen sein könnte?

Sgrena: Das kann ich nicht sagen. Es geht mir darum, die Wahrheit zu erfahren. Wenn man einfach nur von einer fatalen Verkettung von Umständen spricht, von einem Unfall also, dann trägt am Ende keiner die Verantwortung. Das kann und darf nicht sein. Man ist es auch Nicola schuldig, dass man diesen Vorfall aufklärt.

ZEIT: Ihr Mann soll gesagt haben, dass Sie über bestimmte Informationen verfügten. Das klang sehr nach Verschwörungstheorie.

Sgrena: Da ist er falsch verstanden worden. Ich habe keine besonderen Informationen. Das Einzige, was ich gesagt habe, ist, dass meine Entführer sich mit den Worten verabschiedeten: »Nimm dich vor den Amerikanern auf dem Flughafen in Acht!« Klar, dass mir das im Nachhinein anders erscheinen konnte als in dem Moment, als ich es gehört habe.

ZEIT: Sie halten die Warnungen von Terroristen für glaubwürdiger als die Auskünfte der Amerikaner?

Sgrena: Ich hatte nicht deswegen vor den Amerikanern Angst, weil ich dachte, dass sie mir persönlich nachstellen würden. Ich hatte Angst, weil die Amerikaner im Irak gefährlich sind. Wir wissen, dass jeden Tag Iraker so umkommen, wie Nicola umgekommen ist. Wir wissen auch, dass die USA die Politik der Italiener oder Franzosen bei Entführungen ablehnen. Sie sind gegen jede Verhandlung mit Geiselnehmern. Und schließlich wissen wir auch, dass die USA im Irak alles zu verhindern suchen, was nicht in ihrem Sinne ist. Wenn ich das alles zusammennehme, bekommt der Satz meiner Entführer doch einen etwas sinistren Beigeschmack. Ich denke nicht, dass der Beschuss unseres Wagens gegen mich persönlich gerichtet war.

ZEIT: Was Sie über die Amerikaner sagen, klingt arg antiamerikanisch...

Sgrena: Ich weiß. Aber ich fordere alle, die mich des Antiamerikanismus bezichtigen, auf, selbst in den Irak zu fahren. Sie sollen mit eigenen Augen sehen, was dort geschieht. Es ist zu einfach, mich des Antiamerikanismus zu bezichtigen. Wenn ich heute nicht einmal mehr in den Irak fahren kann, um meiner Arbeit nachzugehen, wenn ich es nur in Begleitung von Soldaten tun kann, lässt sich das nicht als Beispiel von Pressefreiheit bezeichnen und auch nicht als Zeichen von Freiheit. Schließlich haben Amerikaner auf mich geschossen. Sie haben Nicola getötet, und er war bestimmt kein Antiamerikaner.

ZEIT: War Ihnen klar, wer Sie entführt hat?

Sgrena: Nein. Sie nannten sich Mudschahedin. Ich habe mehrmals versucht, mit ihnen zu sprechen, um zu verstehen, wer sie sind. Bevor sie das Video aufzeichneten, nannten sie sich einfach Irakischer Widerstand. Sie sagten zu mir: »Wir wollen unser Land von den Besatzern befreien, wie die Vietnamesen, wie die Algerier.«

Ich antwortete: »Das sagt ihr gerade zu mir, die ich das vertreten habe, bevor ihr überhaupt auf der Welt wart!«

ZEIT: Haben Sie mit Ihren Entführern über Politik diskutiert?

Sgrena: Nein, darum ging es nicht. Wie hätte ich das auch tun können? Ich habe einen Monat lang wirklich nicht gewusst, ob sie mich umbringen würden oder nicht. Ich habe damit gerechnet, jeden Tag. Da kann man keine politischen Diskussionen führen.

Ich habe mit ihnen geredet, weil ich eine Verbindung herstellen wollte. Ich musste begreifen, welchen Spielraum ich hatte. Wenn ich einen hatte, wollte ich ihn erweitern.

ZEIT: Wussten die Entführer, wen sie entführt hatten?

Sgrena: Nein, das wussten sie nicht. Ich war für sie am Anfang eine ausländische Journalistin. Sie haben erst mit der Zeit mitbekommen, wer ich bin. Wenn ich Kraft hatte und wütend wurde, habe ich versucht, sie herauszufordern. »Warum habt ihr gerade mich entführt? Ich bin doch gegen diesen Krieg!« Darauf sagten sie: »Das wissen wir! Aber wir sind im Krieg, und im Krieg ist jedes Mittel recht. Auch Entführung.« Sie haben mich nie mit dem Tod bedroht. Angst hatte ich trotzdem.

ZEIT: Wen meinen Sie mit »sie«?

Sgrena: Zwei Männer waren immer bei mir, immer dieselben. Andere sind gekommen und gegangen. Die beiden haben mir auch mehrmals gesagt: »Wir gehören nicht zu den Kopfabschneidern!«

ZEIT: Wenn sie Ihren Tod also nicht wollten, wollten sie dann nur Geld?

Sgrena: Am Anfang sagten sie mir: »Du musst in dem Video den Rückzug der Truppen fordern!« Ich antwortete ihnen: »Da könnt ihr mich gleich umbringen, meinetwegen werden die Truppen nicht abgezogen. Wenn ihr wirklich etwas erreichen wollt, dann müsst ihr euch nicht an die Regierung wenden, sondern an das Volk. Denn das italienische Volk will diese Besatzung nicht.« Ich glaube, dass sie dieses Argument verstanden haben. Tatsächlich habe ich mich dann in dem ausgestrahlten Video auch an das italienische Volk wenden können.

ZEIT: Haben die Entführer von der Solidaritätswelle in Italien erfahren?

Sgrena: Das haben sie. Sie haben die Demonstrationen in Italien gesehen und sich gefreut – sie waren darüber fast begeistert. Sie sagten mir: »Wir wollen dich nicht umbringen, wir wollen dich benutzen!« Erstaunlicherweise wollten sie, dass ich mich im Video auf meine Familie beziehe. Sie fragten mich, ob ich verheiratet sei. Als ich ja sagte, wollten sie, dass ich mich direkt an meinen Mann wende. Dann fragten sie, ob ich Kinder habe. Als ich verneinte, schüttelten sie erstaunt den Kopf und fragten: »Was? Und er hat dich nicht verstoßen?«

Das scheint verrückt, aber so kamen wir ins Gespräch. »Was macht dein Mann?«, wollten sie wissen. Als ich antwortete, er arbeite in der Werbung, waren sie hoch erfreut. »Ja, dann kann er uns doch helfen, unser Anliegen darzustellen!« Und ich: »Das sagt ihr mir? Ich habe auf meinem Buchcover ein von Amerikanern verletztes Kind in Falludscha abbilden lassen!« Sie meinten: »Das ist eine gute Idee! Du musst über die Kinder von Falludscha reden, die Kinder, die von den Cluster-Bomben verletzt wurden.«

ZEIT: Was hat die große Solidarität bei Ihnen und den Entführern ausgelöst?

Sgrena: Ich habe wenig mitbekommen. Ich habe am zweiten Tag meiner Entführung eine kurze Nachricht im Fernsehen sehen dürfen. Ein Foto von mir hing am Kapitol. Das hat mir sehr, sehr geholfen. Danach allerdings kam gleich die Ankündigung des Islamischen Dschihad, dass ich hingerichtet werden würde. Das hat mich wieder zu Boden geworfen.

Die Entführer haben mir ab und zu etwas erzählt. Sie haben darüber gescherzt. Aber es war klar, dass sie diese Solidarität zu meinen Gunsten beeinflusst hat. Einer von ihnen war ein Fan des Fußballklubs AC Roma. Die Tatsache, dass er im Fernsehen sah, wie der Spieler Francesco Totti ein Trikot mit der Aufschrift »Befreit Giuliana!« trug, beeindruckte ihn. Ich denke, dass dies alles zu meiner Befreiung beigetragen hat. Meine Entführer haben sich am Ende bei mir mit den Worten entschuldigt: »Wir haben verstanden, wie sehr du in Italien geschätzt wirst!«

ZEIT: Kann man von einer Beziehung persönlicher Art zwischen Ihnen und den Entführern sprechen?

Sgrena: Nein, Beziehung nicht. Wir haben geredet. Ich habe versucht, sie kennen zu lernen, weil ich begreifen wollte, in wessen Hände ich geraten war. Meine Entführer waren hauptsächlich politisch motiviert, sie dachten politisch. Sie waren keine »Wilden«. Sie waren gebildet und hatten einen Sinn für Politik.

Auf persönlicher Ebene gab es viel härtere Auseinandersetzungen. Sie sagten mir Dinge wie: »Eine Frau muss still sein. Sie darf nicht in die Zimmer von Männern schauen. Sie darf sich nicht in den Hausfluren aufhalten. Sie muss mehr beten.«

Manchmal konnte ich meine Wäsche waschen. Sie kamen dann, um zu kontrollieren, ob ich es auch richtig gemacht hatte. Lauter solche Dinge. Ich habe versucht, die Rolle der schwachen Frau zu spielen. Es war ein tägliches Tauziehen.

Einer meiner Entführer gab immer den griesgrämigen Islamisten. Er sagte mir, dass ich zum Islam konvertieren solle. Er scherzte mit mir darüber: »Dein Mann wird dich schon verlassen haben, nach all der Zeit! Du musst hier bleiben und dir hier einen Mann suchen!« Ich merkte einfach, dass ich sie als westliche Frau neugierig machte. Sie waren sehr neugierig.

ZEIT: Noch einmal zur Motivation der Entführer: Ging es vor allem um Geld?

Sgrena: Sie haben mir gegenüber immer von politischen Motiven gesprochen. Aber ich denke, dass Geld auch eine Rolle gespielt haben muss. In meinem Fall wahrscheinlich beides. Meine Entführer gaben sich sehr religiös. Aber am Ende hat mir einer die Hand zum Abschied geschüttelt. Das würde ein Islamist nicht tun. Sie gehörten sicher nicht zur Gruppe al-Sarqawis.

ZEIT: Wie sehen Sie heute Ihre Arbeit angesichts dieser Erfahrung?

Sgrena: Ich muss einsehen, dass es heute im Irak nicht mehr möglich ist, meine Arbeit so zu machen, wie ich es will. Diese Leute wollen keine Ausländer mehr im Irak. Niemanden, keine Franzosen, keine Italiener, niemanden. Alle Ausländer sind für sie Feinde.

ZEIT: Stimmt es, dass Sie sich vor der Entführung besser geschützt fühlten als andere, weil Sie von Anfang an gegen den Krieg waren und sich immer bemüht haben, die Leiden der Iraker im Krieg darzustellen?

Sgrena: Ja, vielleicht. Das ist meine größte Niederlage, eine persönliche Niederlage. Ich habe immer versucht, den Menschen eine Stimme zu geben, die nicht für die Gewalt sind, die andere Wege suchen. Und das kann ich heute nicht mehr tun.

Ich bin entführt worden, weil ich das Hotel verlassen habe, eben weil ich verstehen wollte, was die Iraker denken. Die Menschen können nicht mehr frei mit mir sprechen. Das sagt ja auch vieles über die Besatzung aus. Man geht davon aus, dass die Besatzungsmacht die Lage kontrolliert. Das Gegenteil ist der Fall. Die Soldaten der Besatzungsmächte kontrollieren gar nichts. Kein Journalist geht mehr aus dem Hotel.

ZEIT: Das bedeutet, dass keine Kommunikation mehr möglich ist zwischen dem Westen und den Irakern?

Sgrena: Es ist im Augenblick nicht möglich, im Irak als Journalist zu arbeiten und über die Situation zu berichten. Ich habe zu meinen Entführern gesagt: »Ihr verachtet unser Volk, dabei ist es gegen die Besatzung.« Ihre Antwort war: »Wir wissen das, aber wir müssen zuerst die Ausländer aus dem Land jagen.«

ZEIT: Entnehme ich Ihren Schilderungen eine gewisse Sympathie für die politischen Positionen Ihrer Entführer?

Sgrena: Nein, auf gar keinen Fall. Ich empfinde keinerlei Sympathie gegenüber meinen Entführern, sondern großen Zorn. Ja, ich bin gegen die Besatzung des Landes, aber ich bin dagegen, dass man Mittel wie die Entführung anwendet.

Ich war einen Monat lang in einem Zimmer gefangen. Das Licht war immer an, wenn es Strom gab. Ich konnte nicht schlafen. Ich musste meine Entführer um alles bitten, wirklich um alles. Ich empfinde Wut darüber.

ZEIT: Was bewegt Sie in diesen Stunden am meisten?

Sgrena: Der Tod von Nicola Calipari. Er war ja derjenige, der meiner Familie und meinen Kollegen in all den Wochen versichert hat, dass alles gut ausgehen würde. Er hat immer allen Mut gemacht. Jeder hat mir erzählt, welch ein außerordentlicher Mensch er gewesen war. Seinetwegen haben meine Angehörigen nie das Vertrauen verloren.

Die Fragen stellte Ulrich Ladurner