| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Jan 28, 2003 8:10 am Post subject: TOO MANY SMOKING GUNS TO IGNORE: ISRAEL, US JEWS, IRAQ |
| Too Many Smoking Guns to Ignore:
Israel, American Jews, and the War on Iraq
by BILL and KATHLEEN CHRISTISON
former CIA political analysts
Most of the vociferously pro-Israeli neo-conservative policymakers in the Bush administration make no effort to hide the fact that at least part of their intention in promoting war against Iraq (and later perhaps against Syria, Iran, Hezbollah, and the Palestinians) is to guarantee Israel's security by eliminating its greatest military threats, forging a regional balance of power overwhelmingly in Israel's favor, and in general creating a more friendly atmosphere for Israel in the Middle East. Yet, despite the neo-cons' own openness, a great many of those on the left who oppose going to war with Iraq and oppose the neo-conservative doctrines of the Bush administration nonetheless utterly reject any suggestion that Israel is pushing the United States into war, or is cooperating with the U.S., or even hopes to benefit by such a war. Anyone who has the temerity to suggest any Israeli instigation of, or even involvement in, Bush administration war planning is inevitably labeled somewhere along the way as an anti-Semite. Just whisper the word "domination" anywhere in the vicinity of the word "Israel," as in "U.S.-Israeli domination of the Middle East" or "the U.S. drive to assure global domination and guarantee security for Israel," and some leftist who otherwise opposes going to war against Iraq will trot out charges of promoting the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the old czarist forgery that asserted a Jewish plan for world domination......................................................click URL below for the rest
http://www.counterpunch.com/christison01252003.html
JINSA Zionist (Extremist) Perle/Wolfowitz/Cheney Cabal in Bush Regime Pushing Hard for Iraq Invasion:
http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=332011
Bush is intent on painting allies and enemies in the Middle East as evil
By Robert Fisk
10 September 2002
Just as Americans are recovering from the harrowing television re-runs of the 11 September attacks, their President is going to launch the biggest reshaping of the Middle East since the British and French parcelled out the Arab lands after the 1914-18 war. When he addresses the United Nations on Thursday, George Bush will be threatening not only Iraq which had absolutely nothing to do with the crimes against humanity in New York and Washington but Syria, Iran and, by extension, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.The Syrian Accountability Act, which accuses Damascus of supporting "terrorism", will come into force as President Bush is speaking and will follow only days after the State Department branded the Lebanese Hizbollah as the "A-team of terrorism", more dangerous even than Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'ida. Like Iraq, the Hizbollah had nothing to do with the 11 September attacks indeed, they were among the first to condemn them but the White House now seems set on painting allies and enemies alike in the Middle East as a focus of evil.Only The Nation among all of America's newspapers and magazines has dared to point out that a large number of former Israeli lobbyists are now working within the American administration and the Bush plans for the Middle East which could cause a massive political upheaval in the Arab world fit perfectly into Israel's own dreams for the region. The magazine listed Vice-President Dick Cheney the arch-hawk in the US administration and John Bolton, now under-secretary of state for Arms Control, with Douglas Feith, the third most senior executive at the Pentagon, as members of the advisory board of the pro-Israeli Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (Jinsa) before joining the Bush government. Richard Perle, chairman of the Pentagon's Defence Policy Board, is still an adviser on the institute, as is the former CIA director James Woolsey.Michael Ledeen, described by The Nation as "one of the most influential 'Jinsans' in Washington" has been calling for "total war" against "terror" with "regime change" for Syria, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority. Mr Perle advises the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld who refers to the West Bank and Gaza as "the so-called occupied territories" and arranged the anti-Saudi "kernel of evil" briefing by Laurent Murawiec that so outraged the Saudi royal family last month. The Saudi regime may itself be in great danger as the princes of the House of Saud attempt to seize more power for themselves in advance of the depart-ure of the dying King Fahd.Jinsa's website says it exists to "inform the American defence and foreign affairs community about the important role Israel can and does play in bolstering democratic interests in the Mediterranean and the Middle East". Next month, Michael Rubin of the right-wing and pro-Israeli American Enterprise Institute who referred to the outgoing UN human rights commissioner Mary Robinson as an abettor of "terrorism" joins the US Defence Department as an Iran-Iraq "expert".According to The Nation, Irving Moskovitz, the California bingo magnate who has funded settlements in the Israeli-occupied territories, is a donor as well as a director of Jinsa.President Bush, of course, will not be talking about the influence of these pro-Israeli lobbyists when he presents his vision of the Middle East at the United Nations on Thursday.Nor will he give the slightest indication that the region is, in the words of its own kings and dictators, a powder keg of resentment and anger. The tectonic plates of the Arab world are now grinding with increasing violence. Into this political earthquake zone, Mr Bush now seems intent on leading his country, with his loyal British ally.Most of today's Arab nations were fashioned out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire by Britain and France in the aftermath of the First World War and Palestinians still blame Britain today for supporting the formation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.Both European nations stationed tens of thousands of troops across the region, suppressing Arab revolts in Palestine, Syria and Lebanon itself created by the French at the request of its Christian Maronite community. The whole colonial framework led to the loss of tens of thousands of lives before both the British and French retreated from the Middle East.Now President Bush seems set on following the colonial powers into the region for another military and political adventure ostensibly to spread "democracy" among those nations it most despises (Iraq, Palestine and Iran) but in fact more likely to increase American control of an increasingly anti-Western Arab world.The Arabs themselves warn that this will lead to massive instability and widespread violence. The Israelis and their allies in the US administration are hell bent on the whole shebang.
Here is that "Men from JINSA and CSP" article which Fisk mentions in the above referenced article:
This article can be found on the web at:
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020902&s=vest&c=1
The Men From JINSA and CSP
by JASON VEST
[from the September 2, 2002 issue of "The Nation" magazine in the USA]
JINSA Zionist planned Iraq 'regime change' before Bush Presidency:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2002/12/31/bush-planned-iraq-regime-change-before-becoming-president.php
In Iraqi War Scenario, Oil Is Key Issue:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2002/09/15/in-iraqi-war-scenario-oil-is-key-issue.php
Oil is obvious motive for war in Iraq:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2002/11/17/oil-is-the-obvious-motive-for-us-interest-in-iraq.php | |  | | Guest-98a3 | | Posted: Tue Jan 28, 2003 8:14 am Post subject: We're Going to War for Oil (and Radical Zionism) |
| We're Going to War for Oil (and Radical Zionism):
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/uk-and-europe/2003/01/24/we-re-going-for-oil-and-radical-zionism.php
What's behind the relentless drive to war with Iraq:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2003/01/25/what-s-behind-the-relentless-drive-to-war-with-iraq.php
Robert Fisk: The wartime deceptions: Saddam is Hitler and it's not about oil:
http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=373102
Robert Fisk: The wartime deceptions: Saddam is Hitler and it's not about oil
27 January 2003
The Israeli writer Uri Avnery once delivered a wickedly sharp open letter to Menachem Begin, the Israeli prime minister who sent his army to defeat in Lebanon. Enraged by Begin's constant evocation of the Second World War likening Yasser Arafat in Beirut to Hitler in his Berlin bunker in 1945 Avnery entitled his letter: "Mr Prime Minister, Hitler is Dead."
How often I have wanted to repeat his advice to Bush and Blair. Obsessed with their own demonisation of Saddam Hussein, both are now reminding us of the price of appeasement. Bush thinks that he is the Churchill of America, refusing the appeasement of Saddam. Now the US ambassador to the European Union, Rockwell Schnabel, has compared Saddam to Hitler. "You had Hitler in Europe and no one really did anything about him," Schnabel lectured the Europeans in Brussels a week ago: "We knew he could be dangerous but nothing was done. The same type of person [is in Baghdad] and it's there that our concern lies." Mr Schnabel ended this infantile parallel by adding unconvincingly that "this has nothing to do with oil".
How can the sane human being react to this pitiful stuff? One of the principal nations which "did nothing about Hitler" was the US, which enjoyed a profitable period of neutrality in 1939 and 1940 and most of 1941 until it was attacked by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor. And when the Churchill-Roosevelt alliance decided that it would only accept Germany's unconditional surrender a demand that shocked even Churchill when Roosevelt suddenly announced the terms at Casablanca Hitler was doomed.
Not so Saddam it seems. For last week Donald Rumsfeld offered the Hitler of Baghdad a way out: exile, with a suitcase full of cash and an armful of family members if that is what he wished. Funny, but I don't recall Churchill or Roosevelt ever suggesting that the Nazi fόhrer should be allowed to escape. Saddam is Hitler but then suddenly, he's not Hitler after all. He is said TheNew York Times to be put before a war crimes tribunal. But then he's not. He can scoot off to Saudi Arabia or Latin America. In other words, he's not Hitler.
But even if he were, are we prepared to pay the price of so promiscuous a war? Arabs who admire Saddam and there are plenty in Jordan believe Iraq cannot hold out for more than a week. Some are convinced the US 3rd Infantry Division will be in Baghdad in three days, the British with them. It's a fair bet that hundreds, if not thousands, of Iraqis will die. But in the civil unrest that follows, what are we going to do? Are American and British troops to defend the homes of Baath party officials whom the mobs want to hang?
Far more seriously, what happens after that? What do we do when Iraqis not ex-Baathists but anti-Saddam Iraqis demand our withdrawal? For be sure this will happen. In the Shia mosques of Kerbala and An Najaf, they are not going to welcome Anglo-American forces. The Kurds will want a price for their co-operation. A state perhaps? A federation? The Sunnis will need our protection. They will also, in due time, demand our withdrawal. Iraq is a tough, violent state and General Tommy Franks is no General MacArthur.
For we will be in occupation of a foreign land. We will be in occupation of Iraq as surely as Israel is in occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. And with Saddam gone, the way is open for Osama bin Laden to demand the liberation of Iraq as another of his objectives. How easily he will be able to slot Iraq into the fabric of American occupation across the Gulf. Are we then ready to fight al-Qa'ida in Iraq as well as in Afghanistan and Pakistan and countless other countries? It seems that the peoples of the Middle East and the West realise these dangers, but that their leaders do not, or do not want to.
Travelling to the US more than once a month, visiting Britain at the weekend, moving around the Middle East, I have never been so struck by the absolute, unwavering determination of so many Arabs and Europeans and Americans to oppose a war. Did Tony Blair really need that gloriously pertinacious student at the Labour Party meeting on Friday to prove to him what so many Britons feel: that this proposed Iraqi war is a lie, that the reasons for this conflict have nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction, that Blair has no business following Bush into the America-Israeli war? Never before have I received so many readers' letters expressing exactly the same sentiment: that somehow because of Labour's huge majority, because of the Tory party's effective disappearance as an opposition, because of parliamentary cynicism British democracy is not permitting British people to stop a war for which most of them have nothing but contempt. From Washington's pathetic attempt to link Saddam to al-Qa'ida, to Blair's childish "dossier" on weapons of mass destruction, to the whole tragic farce of UN inspections, people are just no longer fooled.
The denials that this war has anything to do with oil are as unconvincing as Colin Powell's claim last week that Iraq's oil would be held in trusteeship for the Iraqi people. Trusteeship was exactly what the League of Nations offered the Levant when it allowed Britain and France to adopt mandates in Palestine and Transjordan and Syria and Lebanon after the First World War. Who will run the oil wells and explore Iraqi oil reserves during this generous period of trusteeship? American companies, perhaps? No, people are not fooled.
Take the inspectors. George Bush and Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and now, alas, Colin Powell don't want to give the inspectors more time. Why not, for God's sake? Let's just go back to 12 September last year when Bush, wallowing in the nostalgia of the 11 September 2001 crimes against humanity, demanded that the UN act. It must send its inspectors back to Iraq. They must resume their work. They must complete their work. Bush, of course, was hoping that Iraq would refuse to let the inspectors return. Horrifically, Iraq welcomed the UN. Bush was waiting for the inspectors to find hidden weapons. Terrifyingly, they found none. They are still looking. And that is the last thing Bush wants. Bush said he was "sick and tired" of Saddam's trickery when what he meant was that he was sick and tired of waiting for the UN inspectors to find the weapons that will allow America to go to war. He who wanted so much to get the inspectors back to work now doesn't want them to work. "Time is running out," Bush said last week. He was talking about Saddam but he was actually referring to the UN inspectors, in fact to the whole UN institution so laboriously established after the Second World War by his own country.
The only other nation pushing for war save for the ever-grateful Kuwait is Israel. Listen to the words of Zalman Shoval, Israeli Prime Minster Ariel Sharon's foreign affairs adviser, last week. Israel, he said, would "pay dearly" for a "long deferral" of an American strike on Iraq. "If the attack were to be postponed on political rather than military grounds," he said, "we will have every reason in Israel to fear that Saddam Hussein uses this delay to develop non-conventional weapons." As long as Saddam was not sidelined, it would be difficult to convince the Palestinian leadership that violence didn't pay and that it should be replaced by a new administration; Arafat would use such a delay "to intensify terrorist attacks".
Note how the savage Israeli-Palestinian war can only according to the Shoval thesis be resolved if America invades Iraq; how terrorism cannot be ended in Israel until the US destroys Saddam. There can be no regime change for the Palestinians until there is regime change in Baghdad. By going along with the Bush drive to war, Blair is, indirectly, supporting Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza (since Israel still claims to be fighting America's "war on terror" against Arafat). Does Blair believe Britons haven't grasped this? Does he think Britons are stupid? A quarter of the British Army is sent to fight in a war that 80 per cent of Britons oppose. How soon before we see real people power 500,000 protesters or more in London, Manchester and other cities to oppose this folly?
Yes an essential part of any such argument Saddam is a cruel, ruthless dictator, not unlike the Dear Leader of North Korea, the nuclear megalomaniac with whom the Americans have been having "excellent" discussions but who doesn't have oil. How typical of Saddam to send Ali "Chemical" Majid the war criminal who gassed the Kurds of Halabja to tour Arab capitals last week, to sit with President Bashar Assad of Syria and President Emile Lahoud of Lebanon as if he never ordered the slaughter of women and children. But Bush and Blair said nothing about Majid's tour either so as not to offend the Arab leaders who met him or because the link between gas, war crimes and Washington's original support for Saddam is a sensitive issue.
Instead, we are deluged with more threats from Washington about "states that sponsor terror". Western journalists play a leading role in this propaganda. Take Eric Schmitt in TheNew York Times a week ago. He wrote a story about America's decision to "confront countries that sponsor terrorism". And his sources? "Senior defence officials", "administration officials", "some American intelligence officials", "the officials", "officials", "military officials", "terrorist experts" and "defence officials". Why not just let the Pentagon write its own reports in TheNew York Times?
But that is what is changing. More and more Americans aware that their President declined to serve his country in Vietnam realise that their newspapers are lying to them and acting as a conduit for the US government alone. More and more Britons are tired of being told to go to war by their newspapers and television stations and politicians. Indeed, I'd guess that far more Britons are represented today by the policies of President Chirac of France than Prime Minister Blair of Britain.
WORLD REBELS AGAINST AMERICA:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2003/01/27/world-rebels-against-america.php
U.S. WARNS OF WAR AS WORLD AWAITS INSPECTORS' REPORT:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2003/01/27/u-s-warns-of-war-as-world-awaits-inspectors-report.php
We're Going to War for Oil (and Radical JINSA Zionism):
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/uk-and-europe/2003/01/24/we-re-going-for-oil-and-radical-zionism.php
U.S. Weighs Tactical Nuclear Strike on Iraq:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2003/01/26/u-s-weighs-tactical-nuclear-strike-on-iraq.php
We're Going to War for Oil (and Radical Zionism):
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/uk-and-europe/2003/01/24/we-re-going-for-oil-and-radical-zionism.php
What's behind the relentless drive to war with Iraq:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2003/01/25/what-s-behind-the-relentless-drive-to-war-with-iraq.php
Robert Fisk: Tony Blair...Any Idea What Flies are Like that Feed off Dead?:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2003/01/26/tony-blair-any-idea-what-flies-are-like-that-feed-off-dead.php
Zionist Paul Wolfowitz in Bush Regime is the Enemy Within..:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2002/12/17/zionist-paul-wolfowitz-in-bush-regime-is-the-enemy-within.php
Washington's Zionist hawks to reshape Mid-East for Israel:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2002/10/25/washington-s-zionist-hawks-to-reshape-mid-east-for-israel.php
Zionists Influencing US/Britain to Invade Iraq for Israel:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/uk-and-europe/2002/12/30/zionists-influencing-us-britain-to-invade-iraq-for-israel.php
Zionist Richard Perle : 'Inspections Or Not, We'll Attack Iraq':
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2002/11/24/zionist-richard-perle-inspections-or-not-we-ll-attack-iraq.php
JINSA ZIONIST RICHARD PERLE (AT PENTAGON) DRIVING US TO WAR:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2002/11/22/jinsa-zionist-richard-perle-at-pentagon-driving-us-to-war.php
Bush's Trusty New Mideast Point Man (JINSA Zionists Perle & Wolfowitz Mentioned):
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2002/12/19/bush-s-trusty-new-mideast-point-man-wolfowitz-mentioned.php
BRITS PULL SUPPORT FOR IRAQ INVASION TO THWART ZIONISTS
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2002/12/23/brits-pull-support-for-iraq-invasion-to-thwart-zionists.php
The Bush Administration's Dual Loyalties:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2002/12/19/the-bush-administration-s-dual-loyalties.php
More on Zionist extremist Elliott Abrams:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2002/12/10/abrams/index_np.html
Beyond Regime Change, New 'Old' Sykes-Picot Agreement:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2003/01/20/beyond-regime-change-new-old-sykes-picot-agreement.php
US/UN Double Standard When It Comes to Israel:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2002/09/15/us-un-double-standard-when-it-comes-to-israel.php
Support at UN Ebbs for US War Plans:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2002/07/26/urge-gao-investigation-of-israeli-violation-of-arms-export-c.php
Breaking the Silence on the Israel Lobby:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2002/12/31/breaking-the-silence-on-the-israel-lobby.php | | | | Guest-98a3 | | Posted: Tue Jan 28, 2003 8:48 am Post subject: Chickenhawk Bush on dodgy ground |
| http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/archive/27-1-19103-0-20-52.html
Chickenhawk Bush on dodgy ground
Those who served and suffered find strange bedfellows in Iraq protest,
writes AARON HICKLIN
January 27, 2003
AMERICANS have a word for men like George W Bush and Dick Cheney.
In the parlance of Vietnam veterans Mr Bush and his vice-president are "chickenhawks", men who dodged the draft and now cheerfully dispatch young Americans to war. Not without irony they note that the most hawkish and bellicose government in living memory is filled with men who never saw battle themselves. Of the senior members of the US administration, Colin Powell, the secretary of state, is the single exception.
For many military men and women in America, the discrepancy has become a rallying call all the more potent because those who avoided the draft were invariably the sons of the wealthy and well-connected. Bush himself managed to stay home during Vietnam by getting a coveted slot with the Texas National Guard, only to go awol after completing his training as a fighter pilot, effectively making him a deserter.
This is just one of the reasons why an impending war on Iraq is creating strange bedfellows, and why staunch anti-war activists, such as Todd Gitlin, a professor of journalism and sociology, find themselves in the same camp as a Gulf war hero like "Stormin" Norman Schwarzkopf. Across the country, a belated anti-war movement is finally finding its voice and feet.
Mr Gitlin said: "The administration must be aware that this is not just a New York or San Francisco hurdle, but that it's a heartland problem. It's Missouri, it's suburban soccer moms, and, despite the president's petulant demeanour, it must be plain to his advisers that it's not going over very well."
When Stewart Nusbaumer, a former Vietnam vet, set up Veterans Against the War in Iraq, he said he was overwhelmed by the response of career soldiers.
He said: "Those who have been in war look at conflict a different way. They believe the military should be used only as a last resort, whereas Bush is treating it as the first resort. He hasn't made his case with veterans who say, 'Look, I've been there, I've done that and there has to be a very clear reason to put your life on the line.'"
On Mr Nusbaumer's website that seems to apply equally to Republicans as to Democrats.
"I want my country to be a republic, not an empire," writes Steven McNallen, a self-described right-of-centre guy.
Larry G Hammer, another correspondent and a member of the US Air Force for 23 years, writes: "I'm a firm believer in the judicious use of military force when the welfare and safety of the United States is in peril, but President Bush's misguided policy on Iraq is a big mistake. As a Republican and a Texan, I am appalled by his lack of judgment and vision."
Contrary to the prevalent view in Europe, Americans are not all dumbly following their leader into war. In fact public opposition to unilateral action is on a par with public misgivings in Europe. When Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, a Democratic contender for the presidency next year, accused Mr Bush last Friday of "blustering unilateralism" he was not saying anything with which the majority of Americans did not already agree. A poll in the Wall Street Journal showed support for war without a second security council resolution slipping to only 29%. Almost half of all Americans do not support the war at all.
Michael Tomasky, a political columnist for New York magazine, said: "Polls indicated that big majorities of Americans have lots of reservations about Bush's plans for war, and to the extent that they agree they certainly want the UN to act within a multilateral context."
For many Americans, the Bush administration is rapidly losing its way, unable to articulate precisely why the war in Iraq is so essential. In the past year, it has become an article of faith that Mr Bush would sweep to a second election victory; such assessments now sound less like a foregone conclusion and more like wishful thinking. A year after his famous axis of evil speech, Mr Bush might be wise to soften the rhetoric when he gives his third State of the Union address tomorrow night.
"Most Americans want to hear a real solid justification for why we're doing this, which the administration in all this time still hasn't made," Mr Tomasky said. "If you get Americans to think about something, they usually have a very good instinct about what their country's principles are, and pre-emptive war on the basis of some future theoretical threat strikes a lot of people as basically un-American."
The situation has been exacerbated by Mr Bush's glaring inconsistencies. He was the first to trumpet the fact that it was his resolve that got weapon inspectors back in Iraq, but then immediately scoffed at the likelihood of their finding anything. His own administration, meanwhile, refuses to produce any evidence of its own that Saddam Hussein is in breach of the resolutions, while insisting that such evidence exists.
To many Americans, the administration's willingness to softball North Korea has made the urgency on Iraq seem increasingly suspect.
Just as importantly, perhaps, Americans are listening to European criticism. The relationship with Europe has always been fraught with mutual suspicion, but a relationship once built on necessity has turned uglier than anyone could have anticipated. Not since the end of the second world war has Germany refused to support the US on a major foreign policy issue.
It is arguable that, had Mr Bush gone the distance on issues close to Europe's heart - the Kyoto accords, an international court - he might now enjoy a less chilly reception in Europe. The example of Bill Clinton when he sent bombers into Serbia should have been instructive. Again that time, America received unwavering support from Tony Blair, while Germany furiously resisted. In contrast to Mr Bush, however, Mr Clinton worked tirelessly to bring Nato allies on board.
Mr Tomasky believes that Mr Blair alone of leaders in Europe has the power to make a difference. Without his support, he said, American support would fall away even more precipitously. "I think he could certainly influence American public opinion. His co-operation with Bush seems strange to a lot of American liberals, who saw how close he was to Clinton, and what soul brothers they were in many respects."
But few believe that war can be avoided at this stage. Mr Gitlin points out that the Gulf war was hugely unpopular, but that once forces are deployed, the public rallies round. "Even the Tet offensive, which famously discredited the Vietnam war, was immediately greeted with support from American public opinion. If this war is a matter of weeks long, it won't be long enough for the rally-around-the-flag effect to wear off." | | | | Guest-98a3 | | Posted: Tue Jan 28, 2003 8:53 am Post subject: Double Standards, Dubious Morality, Duplicity of Fight Fight |
| Published on Saturday, January 4, 2003 by the Independent/UK
The Double Standards, Dubious Morality and Duplicity of This Fight Against Terror
Meanwhile, we are ploughing on to war in Iraq, which has oil, but avoiding war in Korea, which does not have oil
by Robert Fisk
I think I'm getting the picture. North Korea breaks all its nuclear agreements with the United States, throws out UN inspectors and sets off to make a bomb a year, and President Bush says it's "a diplomatic issue". Iraq hands over a 12,000-page account of its weapons production and allows UN inspectors to roam all over the country, and after they've found not a jam-jar of dangerous chemicals in 230 raids President Bush announces that Iraq is a threat to America, has not disarmed and may have to be invaded. So that's it, then.
How, readers keep asking me in the most eloquent of letters, does he get away with it? Indeed, how does Tony Blair get away with it? Not long ago in the House of Commons, our dear Prime Minister was announcing in his usual schoolmasterly tones the ones used on particularly inattentive or dim boys in class that Saddam's factories of mass destruction were "up [pause] and running [pause] now." But the Dear Leader in Pyongyang does have factories that are "up [pause] and running [pause] now". And Tony Blair is silent.
Why do we tolerate this? Why do Americans? Over the past few days, there has been just the smallest of hints that the American media the biggest and most culpable backer of the White House's campaign of mendacity has been, ever so timidly, asking a few questions. Months after The Independent first began to draw its readers' attention to Donald Rumsfeld's chummy personal visits to Saddam in Baghdad at the height of Iraq's use of poison gas against Iran in 1983, The Washington Post has at last decided to tell its own readers a bit of what was going on. The reporter Michael Dobbs includes the usual weasel clauses ("opinions differ among Middle East experts... whether Washington could have done more to stop the flow to Baghdad of technology for building weapons of mass destruction"), but the thrust is there: we created the monster and Mr Rumsfeld played his part in doing so.
But no American or British newspaper has dared to investigate another, almost equally dangerous, relationship that the present US administration is forging behind our backs: with the military-supported regime in Algeria. For 10 years now, one of the world's dirtiest wars has been fought out in this country, supposedly between "Islamists" and "security forces", in which almost 200,000 people mostly civilians have been killed. But over the past five years there has been growing evidence that elements of those same security forces were involved in some of the bloodiest massacres, including the throat-cutting of babies. The Independent has published the most detailed reports of Algerian police torture and of the extrajudicial executions of women as well as men. Yet the US, as part of its obscene "war on terror", has cozied up to the Algerian regime. It is helping to re-arm Algeria's army and promised more assistance. William Burns, the US Assistant Secretary of State for the Middle East, announced that Washington "has much to learn from Algeria on ways to fight terrorism".
And of course, he's right. The Algerian security forces can instruct the Americans on how to make a male or female prisoner believe that they are going to suffocate. The method US personnel can find the experts in this particular torture technique working in the basement of the Chβteau Neuf police station in central Algiers is to cover the trussed-up victim's mouth with a rag and then soak it with cleaning fluid. The prisoner slowly suffocates. There's also, of course, the usual nail-pulling and the usual wires attached to penises and vaginas and I'll always remember the eye-witness description the rape of an old woman in a police station, from which she emerged, covered in blood, urging other prisoners to resist.
Some of the witnesses to these abominations were Algerian police officers who had sought sanctuary in London. But rest assured, Mr Burns is right, America has much to learn from the Algerians. Already, for example don't ask why this never reached the newspapers the Algerian army chief of staff has been warmly welcomed at Nato's southern command headquarters at Naples.
And the Americans are learning. A national security official attached to the CIA divulged last month that when it came to prisoners, "our guys may kick them around a little in the adrenaline of the immediate aftermath (sic)." Another US "national security" official announced that "pain control in wounded patients is a very subjective thing". But let's be fair. The Americans may have learnt this wickedness from the Algerians. They could just as well have learned it from the Taliban.
Meanwhile, inside the US, the profiling of Muslims goes on apace. On 17 November, thousands of Iranians, Iraqis, Syrians, Libyans, Afghans, Bahrainis, Eritreans, Lebanese, Moroccans, Omanis, Qataris, Somalis, Tunisians, Yemenis and Emiratis turned up at federal offices to be finger-printed. The New York Times the most chicken of all the American papers in covering the post-9/11 story revealed (only in paragraph five of its report, of course) that "over the past week, agency officials... have handcuffed and detained hundreds of men who showed up to be finger-printed. In some cases the men had expired student or work visas; in other cases, the men could not provide adequate documentation of their immigration status."
In Los Angeles, the cops ran out of plastic handcuffs as they herded men off to the lockup. Of the 1,000 men arrested without trial or charges after 11 September, many were native-born Americans.
Indeed, many Americans don't even know what the chilling acronym of the "US Patriot Act" even stands for. "Patriot" is not a reference to patriotism. The name stands for the "United and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act". America's $200m (£125m) "Total Awareness Program" will permit the US government to monitor citizens' e-mail and internet activity and collect data on the movement of all Americans. And although we have not been told about this by our journalists, the US administration is now pestering European governments for the contents of their own citizens' data files. The most recent and most preposterous of these claims came in a US demand for access to the computer records of the French national airline, Air France, so that it could "profile" thousands of its passengers. All this is beyond the wildest dreams of Saddam and the Dear Leader Kim.
The new rules even worm their way into academia. Take the friendly little university of Purdue in Indiana, where I lectured a few weeks ago. With federal funds, it's now setting up an "Institute for Homeland Security", whose 18 "experts" will include executives from Boeing and Hewlett-Packard and US Defense and State Department officials, to organize"research programs" around "critical mission areas". What, I wonder, are these areas to be? Surely nothing to do with injustice in the Middle East, the Arab-Israeli conflict or the presence of thousands of US troops on Arab lands. After all, it was Richard Perle, the most sinister of George Bush's pro-Israeli advisers, who stated last year that "terrorism must be decontextualized".
Meanwhile, we are on that very basis ploughing on to war in Iraq, which has oil, but avoiding war in Korea, which does not have oil. And our leaders are getting away with it. In doing so, we are threatening the innocent, torturing our prisoners and "learning" from men who should be in the dock for war crimes. This, then, is our true memorial to the men and women so cruelly murdered in the crimes against humanity of 11 September 2001.
© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
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Uzbekistan Alliance Highlights US Human Rights Hypocrisy
by Matthew Riemer
January 7, 2003
The United States often cites human rights as its primary motive for action and policy, while always being sure to pay great lip service to the concept whenever it can be used as a secondary justification. After all, human rights are the cornerstone of democratic society, which the U.S. and U.K. claim to be the apotheosis, so its rhetorical inclusion is virtually obligatory in the vacuous canons of the Ari Fleischers of the world.
When the bombing of Afghanistan began, U.S. officials tugged at the heart strings by mentioning the horrible human rights abuses of the Taliban: women forced to live horribly as second class citizens, a destitute to non-existent education system, weekly public executions, and the list went on.
Now, similar songs are being sung of one time ally Saudi Arabia as the merits of "open societies" are expounded upon at great length by editorialists and public officials alike. Amidst the noise, human rights are always conveniently employed as the icing on any argument for "regime change" or "pre-emption." ("Saddam gassed his own people" or "They don't even let women drive.")
However, when a given regime is needed by the U.S. as a dutiful client, human rights are the last thing on the mind of anyone in Washington. Such is the case with Uzbekistan following September 11, 2001.
Almost one year ago, soon after the U.S. opportunistically embraced Uzbek President Islam Karimov for the purpose of securing military facilities in his country, Karimov held a highly suspect referendum installing himself as president for six more years. It should be noted that he had already been the autocratic leader for the previous ten.
Human Rights Watch reported that "On January 27, President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan will hold a referendum to amend the constitution to extend his term of office to 2007. Conditions for the vote fall below basic international standards. The Karimov government allows no free press or independent political opposition to operate in the country. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the United States government have declined to send observers to Uzbekistan for the referendum."
This means that, unless the power structure shifts suddenly in Uzbekistan, Karimov will reign for at least 16 years.
Author Ahmed Rashid in his book Jihad: Militant Islam in Central Asia describes the situation in Uzbekistan: "In a series of crackdowns in 1992, 1993, and after 1997, Karimov arrested hundreds of ordinary pious Muslims for alleged links with Islamic fundamentalists, accusing them of being Wahabis, closing down mosques and madrassahs, and forcing mullahs into jail or exile. In 1998, the government passed the infamous Law on Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organization, which established new modes of repression against Muslims. (Other religious organizations were unaffected by the law.) The Independent Human Rights Organization of Uzbekistan has published the most authoritative figures for political prisoners, which shows that there were 7,600 political prisoners in the summer 2001."
Rashid then includes several extended quotes from testimonials to a U.S. congressional panel from September 2000 in which witnesses expand upon the various methods of repression employed by Karimov's secret services: indiscriminate arrest, beatings, and torture; denial of medical treatment and legal counsel; extended incarceration in inhospitable conditions; and coerced confessions followed by extrajudicial executions.
Much of this is reflected in a recent United Nations inquiry into the matter. U.N. Special Rapporteur Theo van Boven traveled to Uzbekistan in early December to investigate incidences of torture carried out by the Karimov regime, following a visit by Kofi Annan several weeks previous. His conclusion after two weeks of fairly fettered investigations and interviews was that the Karimov regime is engaging in systematic torture that is resulting in considerable death.
Yet, despite all this, while visiting Uzbekistan in July of 2002, U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill praised Karimov: "I expressed to the President [Karimov] our admiration for the leadership that he has provided during the economic transition giving a very high priority to education and the important human needs of the people of Uzbekistan. It's a great pleasure to have an opportunity to spend time with someone with both a very keen intellect and a deep passion about the improvement of the life of the people of this country."
One might wonder if O'Neill was speaking of the same Karimov. However, should we really be surprised?
To understand why the U.S. chooses whom it does as allies, one must consider the actual intentions of Washington's foreign policy. If intentions are preventing the deaths of innocents, respecting human rights for all no matter what race or religion, and working towards a sustainable global community where peace is more than an expression of one's naivetι, then an alliance with Uzbekistan is hypocritical and regressive. If slowly exerting a savage global dominance both militarily and economically is one's goal, then the repressive Karimov regime makes one of the coziest bedfellows around.
And we wonder, why do they hate us! Our officials and the culprit media behind them want us to believe that they envy the standards of our living, the freedom we "cherish" in ... our hearts, and not because our government values money, business, and natural resources more than their "worthless" lives!
I truly believe now that the former Soviet Union was the lesser of the two Evils. | | | | Guest-98a3 | | | | Guest-98a3 | | | | Guest-98a3 | | | | Guest-98a3 | | | | Guest-98a3 | | Posted: Tue Jan 28, 2003 9:35 am Post subject: Report: Death, disease await Iraqi children during War |
| Report: Death, disease await Iraqi children in the event of war
HAMZA HENDAWI, Associated Press Writer
Monday, January 27, 2003
©2003 Associated Press
URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2003/01/27/international0803EST0510.DTL
(01-27) 05:03 PST BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) --
Death, disease and starvation await Iraq's children should war break out, and casualties in the thousands or even in the hundreds of thousands cannot be ruled out, according to a report released by an independent team of European and American experts.
The team forecasts a "grave humanitarian disaster" in its report prepared by 10 experts from the International Study Team, an independent group of academics, researchers, physicians and child psychologists founded in 1991 to examine the effect of military conflicts on civilians.
The report released Sunday, titled "The Impact of a New War on Iraqi Children," expressed concern not only about casualties among children as a direct result of combat, but more importantly as a result of the results of war -- including disruptions of food supplies, lack of medicines, the flight of refugees.
Some 500,000 children are already malnourished or underweight, and Iraq currently only has a month's supply of food and three months' supply of medicines. If a war -- especially a lengthy one -- cuts off supplies or damages Iraq's already decrepit medical infrastructure, then children would see the most suffering, said the report.
"While it is impossible to predict both the nature of any war and the number of expected deaths and injuries ... casualties among children will be in the thousands, probably in the tens of thousands and possibly in the hundreds of thousands," team leader Eric Hoskins said.
The report's findings, read out at a news conference, were based on data collected in three Iraqi cities -- Baghdad, Basra and Karbala -- and interviews with 200 families. The team did not receive any help from the Iraqi government and hired its own interpreters, said Hoskins, a Canadian.
The United States and Britain are assembling the biggest ground, air and naval force in the Persian Gulf region since the 1991 Gulf War, threatening war against Iraq to disarm it of weapons of mass destruction. On Monday, the chief arms inspectors are to deliver to the U.N. Security Council a crucial report on the progress of two months of searching for biological, chemical or nuclear weapons in Iraq.
"Iraq's 13 million children are at a grave risk of starvation, disease, death and psychological trauma," Hoskins told reporters, summing up the findings of the survey, conducted Jan. 20-26. "Iraqi children are more vulnerable than ever," he said. Iraq's under-18 population was worse off than on the eve of the 1991 war, when a U.S. led coalition drove Iraq's army out of Kuwait.
Twelve years of economic sanctions, imposed by the United Nations after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, have left Iraq's economy shattered, although expansion of the oil for food program in recent years have improved conditions somewhat.
Under the oil for food program, Iraq is allowed to sell unlimited amounts of oil to buy humanitarian goods and pay war reparations.
Figures published in September 2000 by the United Nations and the World Food Program said malnutrition among children in Iraq was very serious outside Baghdad and in rural areas, reflecting the effects of drought and poverty.
But it found the nutritional situation in the north "significantly improved." In the north, the oil-for-food program is implemented by the U.N. Inter-Agency Humanitarian Program on behalf of the government of Iraq, the report said.
"No one is ready for this war. Not the national government not the United Nations," said Hoskins, a medical doctor, referring to preparations for any humanitarian crisis that may result from a military conflict.
The report said that interviews with Iraqi children showed they had great fear of a new war.
It said researchers were shocked to learn that children as young as four and five had clear concepts of the horrors of war, speaking of the threats posed by bombs, guns, destruction of houses and the killing of people.
"Iraqi children already are psychologically and mentally exhausted," said Hoskins, alluding to the U.N. sanctions.
The International Study Team's backers include World Vision Canada, Oxfam Canada, United Church of Canada and the University of Bergen. Its report on the humanitarian situation in Iraq following the 1991 war was considered the most comprehensive of such reports. It was based on more than 9,000 household interviews in 300 locations across Iraq. | | | | Guest-400c | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
