| Author | Message | | Guest | | Posted: Tue Dec 31, 2002 11:45 pm Post subject: US Foreign Policy Loses Its Logic |
| http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-scheer31dec31,0,7488667.column?coll=la%2Dnews%2Dcomment%2Dopinions
COMMENTARY
Foreign Policy Loses Its Logic
It doesn't make sense to target Iraq when N. Korea poses a greater threat.
Robert Scheer
December 31 2002
Darn, but those weapons of mass destruction keep turning up in the wrong places.
Forward air bases, Army infantry units, a hospital ship and docile yet combat-trained reporters are all being readied for a "regime change" war against Iraq promoted as a way to rid the world of an arsenal Saddam Hussein doesn't seem to have.
That United Nations inspectors, even after American intelligence briefings, are coming up empty-handed is embarrassing enough, but then North Korea had to steal the show by taking the wraps off its far more advanced nuclear weapons program.
That's pretty scary because American intelligence agencies believe that bizarre, unpredictable North Korea already has enough plutonium and tested bomb technology for one or two functioning nuclear warheads that can easily be lobbed at our ally South Korea, home base of 37,000 U.S. soldiers. Pyongyang in 1998 fired one of its long-range Taepodong missiles over Japanese territory. American intelligence officials believe that the regime is working on missiles capable of reaching Hawaii and beyond.
Yet we have made it clear we are not planning to go to war with North Korea.
"We have no hostile intent toward North Korea, and we hope they will come to their senses," Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday. He later added that "nobody is mobilizing armies, nobody is threatening each other yet."
Powell went on to say: "Let's take this patiently. Let's take it with deliberation. Let's work with our friends and allies."
Perhaps not surprisingly, it's the one proven warrior in the Bush White House who seems to understand that peace is worth fighting for and that diplomatic finesse is not a sign of weakness; war is.
Were it not for Powell, the chicken hawks in the administration -- warmongers who have not themselves experienced battle -- already would have us invading Iraq without giving U.N. inspectors a chance.
Led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, these strident cheerleaders for so-called preemptive action are obviously disappointed that the Iraq inspections have turned up nothing more then the rusting remnants of a deadly weapons programs originated -- and used -- with the full knowledge of the U.S. government to punish fundamentalist Iran.
Now, however, Iran, still in Bush's putative "axis of evil" along with Iraq and North Korea, may have a much more advanced nuclear weapons program than Iraq.
In fact, the Shiite fundamentalists must be high-fiving in Tehran over the costly American makeover of Central Asia. These fundamentalists would be the biggest benefactors of any takedown of neighboring Iraq, as they were when the U.S. installed Iran's longtime puppets, the Northern Alliance, as top dogs in Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, the nuclear nonproliferation regime is a shambles, with President Bush publicly derisive about existing arms control pacts. Bush insists that we will be just fine relying on a cockamamie missile defense fantasy that is arguably the biggest defense contractor boondoggle in the nation's long history of such deals.
Feeling safe yet? You shouldn't be.
Washington's foreign policy is now less logical than Pyongyang's. A starving dictatorship's clumsy blackmail attempts at least make some twisted sense in that the Bush administration has refused, from its very first days, to even discuss North Korea's persistent request for a nonaggression pact with the United States.
The administration plan is to isolate this paranoid excuse for a nation, as if it isn't already the most isolated place on Earth.
If we can't make peace with an utterly defeated nation like North Korea, we're in trouble. From Columbine to Weimar Germany, humiliating those with nothing to lose is always a recipe for disaster.
South Korea and Japan understand this, and both countries are making major moves in an attempt to bring the North Koreans back into the world community.
The United States, which unleashed the nuclear monster and is still the only nation to have used this deadliest weapon of mass destruction against innocent civilians, should also understand why other nations want one.
It's a sick and ultimately suicidal obsession, but who are we to talk when we are designing ever more efficient nuclear weapons for preemptive use, underground "bunker busting" and God knows what else?
We are the ones who continue to give legitimacy to the weapons of mass destruction, threatening devastating preemptive strikes, including possible use of nuclear weapons, against those who defiantly refuse to bend to the will of Washington.
Meanwhile, the Bush administration remains detached from the destabilizing Israeli-Palestinian nightmare, is struggling to gain footing against Al Qaeda and is apparently indifferent to the successes of Muslim fundamentalism in Chechnya, Lebanon, Yemen, Palestine and Pakistan.
Instead, we are mobilizing our massive forces against a weakened secular dictator 6,000 miles away who doesn't seem to have had anything to do with a series of devastating terrorist attacks.
What is happening here? Certainly not the construction of a coherent foreign policy aimed at increasing the security of the United States or our allies.
This is an administration that in two years has so mucked up our approach to the world that merely applying the demands of logic is made to appear unpatriotic. | |  | | Guest | | | | Guest | | Posted: Tue Dec 31, 2002 11:57 pm Post subject: N. Korea Accuses U.S. of Plotting War |
| World - AP Asia
N. Korea Accuses U.S. of Plotting War
Tue Dec 31, 9:00 AM ET
By PAUL SHIN, Associated Press Writer
SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea (news - web sites) accused the United States on Tuesday of planning an invasion and vowed to fight "to the last man," hours after it expelled two U.N. monitors, leaving its feared nuclear program shrouded in secrecy.
Meanwhile, both South Korea (news - web sites)'s president and president-elect urged negotiations to end the standoff over their communist neighbor's nuclear ambitions, and warned that pressure from Washington for economic sanctions might not work.
The U.N. inspectors — a Lebanese man and a Chinese woman — arrived in Beijing Tuesday after leaving North Korea, which is preparing to reactivate its suspected nuclear weapons program in defiance of world opinion.
"We cannot comment on anything at this stage," the man said, mobbed by reporters at Beijing's Capital Airport.
An official with the International Atomic Energy Agency, speaking on condition of anonymity, said one inspector would stay on in Beijing for a few days but the other was expected to return to IAEA headquarters in Vienna on Wednesday.
North Korea ordered the expulsion of the two U.N. monitors on Friday, depriving the U.N. atomic agency of its final means of monitoring a nuclear program Washington fears will be used to produce atomic weapons.
In Vienna, an IAEA spokeswoman said the expulsion of the two U.N. inspectors had blinded the "eyes of the world" and crippled international efforts to monitor North Korea's nuclear facilities.
"We were the eyes of the world," said Melissa Fleming on Tuesday. "Now we virtually have no possibility to monitor North Korea's nuclear activities nor to provide any assurances to the international community that they are not producing a nuclear weapon."
Fleming said the expulsions left the agency reliant on satellite imagery.
"It's a position this agency does not like to be in," she said. "We need to be on the ground at the facilities directly, in order to be in a position to verify a given country's nuclear declaration."
Escalating the crisis, North Korea's ambassador to Moscow was cited by Russian news agencies as saying that — because of U.S. pressure — Pyongyang could not make good on its commitments under the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, which is designed to halt the spread of nuclear weapons.
Ambassador Pak Ui Chun said that Washington had threatened North Korea "with a pre-emptive nuclear strike," the Interfax news agency reported.
"These conditions also make it impossible for us to abide by the treaty, whose main provision bans nuclear powers from using nuclear weapons against countries that do not have them."
Meanwhile, U.S. officials said they were considering using heavy economic pressure on the communist North to give up its nuclear ambitions.
North Korea blamed Washington for raising tensions over its nuclear issue.
"The U.S. is stepping up preparations for a war against (North Korea), persistently turning aside the latter's constructive proposal for concluding a nonaggression treaty," said the North's official newspaper, Rodong Sinmun.
"If the enemy invades even an inch of the inviolable territory of (North Korea), the people's army and people of will wipe out the aggressors to the last man," the report said.
South Korea's President-elect Roh Moo-hyun raised doubts about a possible U.S. strategy to contain North Korea. He worries that pressure could backfire and trigger armed conflicts on the world's last Cold War frontier. More than two million troops are massed on both sides of the Korean border.
"I am skeptical whether so-called `tailored containment' reportedly being considered by the United States is an effective means to control or impose a surrender on North Korea," Roh told reporters.
Roh, who begins a five-year term in February, supports outgoing President Kim Dae-jung (news - web sites)'s "sunshine" policy of engaging North Korea. They believe that dialogue is the only viable way to resolve the North's nuclear issue peacefully.
Roh requested that the United States consult South Korea, a close ally, before formulating a new approach in its policy toward North Korea.
The outgoing president, Kim, stressed the importance of a strong alliance between South Korea and the United States in dealing with the nuclear issue, said his spokeswoman, Park Sun-sook.
"The United States is by far the most important ally for us," the spokesman quoted Kim as saying at a dinner meeting with Cabinet members Monday night. He also told the Cabinet members that economic pressure would not necessarily work against the reclusive North Korea.
South Korean officials are alarmed at signs that North Korea may withdraw from the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, a move that would drastically escalate the nuclear crisis.
On Tuesday, Fleming said the Vienna-based nuclear agency had heard of such concerns but that as of noon Tuesday, North Korea had not declared to the IAEA that it was abandoning the treaty.
In recent weeks, North Korea removed monitoring seals and cameras from its nuclear facilities at Yongbyon that were frozen under a deal with the United States in 1994.
North Korea says that it is willing resolve concerns over its nuclear program if the United States signs a nonaggression treaty. Washington rules out any talks before the North changes course.
The Koreas were divided in 1945. The 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice agreement, not in a peace treaty. | | | | Guest | | Posted: Wed Jan 01, 2003 1:18 am Post subject: Re: Bush planned Iraq 'regime change' before becoming Presid |
| | Anonymous wrote: | | http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2002/12/31/bush-planned-iraq-regime-change-before-becoming-president.php |
After reviewing the message threads at the URL included below, keep in mind that these same JINSA (Jewish Instititute of National Security Affairs) Zionist extremists (of the Wolfowitz cabal which is also mentioned via the URL included below) have wanted to attack North Korea for quite some time as mentioned in the "Men from JINSA and CSP" article by Jason Vest for "The Nation" magazine (it is my opinion that these "Israel-firsters" in the US government want to have the US military take out North Korea's nuclear and missile technology installations in order to prevent such technology from being sent to the Arab/Moslem world to potentially pose a threat to their beloved Israel which they care about most before America):
Bush planned Iraq 'regime change' before becoming President
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http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2002/12/31/bush-planned-iraq-regime-change-before-becoming-president.php | | | | Guest | | Posted: Wed Jan 01, 2003 1:22 am Post subject: Liberating America From Israel |
| Liberating America From Israel
by Paul Findley
Nine-eleven would not have occurred if the U.S. government had refused to help Israel humiliate and destroy Palestinian society. Few express this conclusion publicly, but many believe it is the truth. I believe the catastrophe could have been prevented if any U.S. president during the past 35 years had had the courage and wisdom to suspend all U.S. aid until Israel withdrew from the Arab land seized in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
The U.S. lobby for Israel is powerful and intimidating, but any determined president-even President Bush this very day-could prevail and win overwhelming public support for the suspension of aid by laying these facts before the American people:
Israel's present government, like its predecessors, is determined to annex the West Bank-biblical Judea and Samaria - so Israel will become Greater Israel. Ultra-Orthodox Jews, who maintain a powerful role in Israeli politics, believe the Jewish Messiah will not come until Greater Israel is a reality. Although a minority in Israel, they are committed, aggressive, and influential. Because of deep religious conviction, they are determined to prevent Palestinians from gaining statehood on any part of the West Bank.
In its violent assaults on Palestinians, Israel uses the pretext of eradicating terrorism, but its forces are actually engaged advancing the territorial expansion just cited. Under the guise of anti-terrorism, Israeli forces treat Palestinians worse than cattle. With due process nowhere to be found, hundreds are detained for long periods and most are tortured. Some are assassinated. Homes, orchards, and business places are destroyed. Entire cities are kept under intermittent curfew, some confinements lasting for weeks. Injured or ill Palestinians needing emergency medical care are routinely held at checkpoints for an hour or more. Many children are undernourished. The West Bank and Gaza have become giant concentration camps. None of this could have occurred without U.S. support. Perhaps Israeli officials believe life will become so unbearable that most Palestinians will eventually leave their ancestral homes.
Once beloved worldwide, the U.S. government finds itself reviled in most countries because it provides unconditional support of Israeli violations of the United Nations Charter, international law, and the precepts of all major religious faiths.
How did the American people get into this fix?
Nine-eleven had its principal origin 35 years ago when Israel's U.S. lobby began its unbroken success in stifling debate about the proper U.S. role in the Arab-Israeli conflict and effectively concealed from public awareness the fact that the U.S. government gives massive uncritical support to Israel.
Thanks to the suffocating influence of Israel's U.S. lobby, open discussion of the Arab-Israeli conflict has been non-existent in our government all these years. I have firsthand knowledge, because I was a member of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee in June 1967 when Israeli military forces took control of the Golan Heights, a part of Syria, as well as the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza. I continued as a member for 16 years and to this day maintain a close watch on Congress.
For 35 years, not a word has been expressed in that committee or in either chamber of Congress that deserves to be called debate on Middle East policy. No restrictive or limiting amendments on aid to Israel have been offered for 20 years, and none of the few offered in previous years received more than a handful of votes. On Capitol Hill, criticism of Israel, even in private conversation, is all but forbidden, treated as downright unpatriotic, if not anti-Semitic. The continued absence of free speech was assured when those few who spoke out-Senators Adlai Stevenson and Charles Percy, and Reps. Paul "Pete" McCloskey, Cynthia McKinney, Earl Hilliard, and myself-were defeated at the polls by candidates heavily financed by pro-Israel forces.
As a result, legislation dealing with the Middle East has been heavily biased in favor of Israel and against Palestinians and other Arabs year after year. Home constituencies, misled by news coverage equally lop-sided in Israel's favor, remain largely unaware that Congress behaves as if it were a subcommittee of the Israeli parliament.
However, the bias is widely noted beyond America, where most news media candidly cover Israel's conquest and generally excoriate America's complicity and complacency. When President Bush welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, sometimes called the Butcher of Beirut, as "my dear friend" and "a man of peace" after Israeli forces, using U.S.-donated arms, completed their devastation of the West Bank last spring, worldwide anger against American policy reached the boiling point.
The fury should surprise no one who reads foreign newspapers or listens to BBC. In several televised statements long before 9/11, Osama bin Laden, believed by U.S. authorities to have masterminded 9/11, cited U.S. complicity in Israel's destruction of Palestinian society as a principal complaint. Prominent foreigners, in and out of government, express their opposition to U.S. policies with unprecedented frequency and severity, especially since Bush announced his determination to make war against Iraq.
The lobby's intimidation remains pervasive. It seems to reach every government center and even houses of worship and revered institutions of higher learning. It is highly effective in silencing the many U.S. Jews who object to the lobby's tactics and Israel's brutality.
Nothing can justify 9/11. Those guilty deserve maximum punishment, but it makes sense for America to examine motivations promptly and as carefully as possible. Terrorism almost always arises from deeply-felt grievances. If they can be eradicated or eased, terrorist passions are certain to subside.
Today, a year after 9/11, President Bush has made no attempt to redress grievances, or even to identify them. In fact, he has made the scene far worse by supporting Israel's religious war against Palestinians, an alliance that has intensified anti-American anger. He seems oblivious to the fact that nearly two billion people worldwide regard the plight of Palestinians as today's most important foreign-policy challenge. No one in authority will admit a calamitous reality that is skillfully shielded from the American people but clearly recognized by most of the world: America suffered 9/11 and its aftermath and may soon be at war with Iraq, mainly because U.S. policy in the Middle East is made in Israel, not in Washington.
Israel is a scofflaw nation and should be treated as such. Instead of helping Sharon intensify Palestinian misery, our president should suspend all aid until Israel ends its occupation of Arab land Israel seized in 1967. The suspension would force Sharon's compliance or lead to his removal from office, as the Israeli electorate will not tolerate a prime minister who is at odds with the White House.
If Bush needs an additional reason for doing the right thing, he can justify the suspension as a matter of military necessity, an essential step in winning international support for his war on terrorism. He can cite a worthy precedent. When President Abraham Lincoln issued the proclamation that freed only the slaves in states that were then in rebellion, he make the restriction because of "military necessity."
If Bush suspends U.S. aid, he will liberate all Americans from long years of bondage to Israel's misdeeds.
Mr. Paul Findley, who served as a Republican congressman from Illinois for 22 years, is the author of 'They Dare to Speak Out' and a member of the American Educational Trust's Foreign Relations Committee. | | | | Guest | | | | Guest | | | | Guest | | | | Guest | | | | Guest | | Posted: Thu Jan 02, 2003 12:13 pm Post subject: The List of US Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)? |
| December 25 - 31, 2002
The List
by Geov Parrish
I WANT a list.
I want a full accounting of every weapon in the country. Not Iraq. I could give a fig about Iraq. It's dirt-poor, halfway around the world, almost completely disarmed, has no way to attack us, and knows that any move to threaten anyone would be instantly suicidal. America faces many threats. Iraq is not one. Among all the American-trained dictators plaguing the planet, Saddam is the least of our problems.
I want a list of our weapons.
After all, we pay for them--and pay and pay. And that was even before 9/11 and the giant sucking wound where the federal surplus once was. That money, yours and mine, went almost entirely for yet more weapons and the capacity to use them. I want an accounting.
It's the United States, after all, that poses a threat, not just to its neighbors but countries anywhere in the world. Ask Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Serbia, Pakistan, Sudan, Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia, Panama, Libya, or Grenada--all countries we've bombed or bullied in the past 20 years. It's the United States whose foreign policy now officially reserves the right to invade any place in the world for any reason or none at all. It's the United States that sells weapons to one or more sides of virtually every one of the five dozen or so wars now raging. It's America, with the oldest and biggest nuclear weapons program in the world, the U.S. alone, that has proudly used them. It's the United States that has shredded the world's arms-control structure, the U.S. that breaks international treaties the way other countries fund health care. Routinely.
OURS ARE THE WEAPONS of choice for everyone from psychotic serial killers to jungle guerrillas to kleptocratic dictators the world round. Every American embassy makes it a priority to pay for the marketing, credit underwriting, and purchase of those weapons, and closes the deal. It's the U.S. that underwrites and trains intelligence agencies and secret police the world over, including any number of countries where state torture and murder are the norm. We pay for it all. I want a list.
I want it in three weeks.
I want to know every single weapon or potential weapon possessed by the United States. Not just the Pentagon. Every single agency, down to the Mint and the Library of Congress. If the Library of Congress' assistant medical archivist carries mace in her purse when she goes to the parking garage, I want to know. I also want every potential weapon government employees possess. Every firearm John Ashcroft and his NRA- loving appointees own, and everyone else down to the grade C-3 summer interns. That includes dual-use weapons, like nail files, or certain kitchen spices which, when mixed with a nasal decongestant, can produce a splotchy red rash. I want the list. All of it. No typos, please.
But that's not all. It's not just our government that poses a threat to the world; corporate America does, too. If Coca-Cola doesn't constitute an invading army, I don't know what does. Therefore, I also want all of the weapons or potential weapons possessed by any entity that does business in the United States. Whether or not Americans own it. Air Botswana, this means you. That includes all employees and all subcontracting employees and agencies. Like Coke's Ouagadougou bottling plant. Can't be too careful.
You've got three weeks. And it had better be complete. And indexed.
OF COURSE, I DOUBT you'll cooperate. The Pentagon alone doesn't know what happened to billions of dollars. Accounting individually for every paper clip--after all, they're pointy--seems unlikely. I expect many companies won't fully cooperate, either.
They'll claim proprietary information or some other lame excuse.
Weasels.
We'll have to do inspections, of course. Unannounced, accompanied by a battalion or two. When they object, we'll call it part of their sustained pattern of noncooperation.
Have I mentioned that I retain the right to shoot down any aircraft that appear over the skies of Kentucky, Ohio, or Indiana? They'll probably pitch a fit about that, too.
But then, that's what you'd expect from people whose love of power is so fierce that they'd willingly endanger their own people, right?
After all, by inspiring billions of people to loathe America, it's you and I who are put at risk. We're the ones who'll walk past exploding hotels or work in collapsing office towers. We're the collateral damage.
And we're paying for it, out of every paycheck. We pay for the carnage. Now and later.
The least we can get is a list.
Three weeks.
gparrish@seattleweekly.com | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
