War Without End

Guest-c651 · Posted: Tue Feb 04, 2003 12:09 pm Post subject: America: Wake Up!

America: Wake Up!

by William Hughes

John Podhoretz is at it again! The Tel Aviv-friendly pundit, crowed in
his column, (NY Post, 01/29/03), about the landslide victory of Ariel
Sharons Likud gang in the recent Israeli election. This was bad enough,
but, there was more torture to come.

Podhoretz roared on, Israel has been forced by historical circumstances
to lead the way for America, especially when it comes to militant
Islamic terror and the kinds of hard choices a democracy has to make in
combatting it. This is where I wanted to throw up.

What a sad state we are in, when an Israeli shill, like Podhoretz, can
prophesy that America will follow the lead of Zionist Israel. For a
translation to the politically challenged, this will mean that America
will be deferring to the oppressive policies of Sharon, whose name will
forever be linked to the deaths of the innocent at Deir Yassin; in
Lebanon, as a result of Israels 1982 invasion; at Sabra and Shatila;
and, finally, at Jenin.

The notion that America will be minicking Sharon, a man who exists just
one step ahead of the War Crimes prosecutors in Belgiums Justice
Ministry, fills me with outrage. Now, I wonder: Was our Revolutionary
War and other battles, too, fought and won to bring us to this point of
national humiliation? Where are our true patriots? God knows, there are
only a handful in the complicit Congress or the Establishment-controlled
media.

As for Israel being a democracy, dont believe it! It stands in
violation of over 66 Resolutions of the United Nations, including
Resolution 242, unanimously adopted on Nov. 22, 1967, which mandated it
to vacate the Occupied Territories that belong to the Palestinians.

But, Podhoretz, wasnt finished yet. Without showing any mercy, he
forecasted that, Israel may be leading the way politically as well. He
added, Yesterday, the Israeli electorate delivered its verdict on its
leaders in the first parliamentary election since the beginning of the
suicide-bomb war launched by the Palestinians. He further insisted,
The tough tactics (read gross human rights violations) adopted by
right-wing Premier Ariel Sharon to fight the terror war, were almost
universally accepted. What universe does this guy live in? In Star Treks?

Podhoretz, ranting on under a Jerusalem dateline, bragged how the
Israeli electorate had decimated the Left. Looking into his crystal
ball, he predicted the loser fate of the Labor Party in Israel, will be
the destiny, too, of the Democrats, unless they glue themselves to
George W. Bushs side on matters of war and terror. What a frightening
thought! The only thing that could have been worse is if Podhoretz had
also announced that his beloved Sharon had been cloned!

Sometimes, you can see yourself better through the eyes of others.
Podhoretz may have, unintentionally, done us a huge favor by holding up
a mirror that reads: America will follow Israel! This could be a wake
up call for those that love our country more than any dubious
relationship with a so-called ally, that viciously attacked the USS
Liberty, on June 8, 1967, murdering 34 of our finest sons (Ken Ringle,
Attack on the Liberty, Washington Post, 02/01/03). If U.S. foreign
policy patterns itself after Sharons, it will be a sure prescription
for national suicide.

Thankfully, we can learn important lessons from our history, especially
during the founding of this nation. By December, 1776, General George
Washingtons demoralized Continental Army had been pushed off Long
Island and Manhattan, too, out of the state of New Jersey, across the
Delaware River, and into Pennsylvania, by the seasoned military British
forces under Lord William Howe. In a moment of deep despair, Washington,
writing to his brother, had said: The game is pretty near up.

On the brink of defeat, the immortal Washington could have called it
quits. Instead, putting his duty to his countrymen first, he
courageously led his army to stunning victories over the British, at
Trenton, (12/25/1776), and Princeton, (01/03/1777), that were hailed as
a turning point in that eight and one half year conflict (see, Richard
M. Ketchums compelling The Winter Soldiers).

Americans, today, need to remember who they are, where they have come
from, and that they live in a Republic that depends on their fully
participating in it, in order to reach the common good. An attachment
to Israels ideals is asking for endless, costly wars, including the
phony one looming ahead with Iraq, and also for more terrorist attacks
on this country. The people must demand that our national interest come
first, instead of following Sharons lead into Armageddon. If they dont
do so, the game may, indeed, be pretty near up.

America: Wake Up!

© William Hughes 2003

William Hughes is the author of Andrew Jackson vs. New World Order
(Authors Choice Press) and Baltimore Iconoclast (Writers Showcase),
which are available online. He can be reached at liamhughes@mindspring.com.

Published, The Palestine Chronicle, Feb. 4, 2003, at:
http://palestinechronicle.com/article.php?story=20030204100555699

Guest-98a3

"What America Needs Is a New Pearl Harbor"
Date: 2/5/03 12:22:22 AM Pacific Standard Time

Two years ago a project set up by the men who now surround George W Bush said what America needed was "a new Pearl Harbor". Its published aims have, alarmingly, come true. : John Pilger :12 Dec 2002

http://pilger.carlton.com/print/124759

PR Watch

War Is Sell

by Laura Miller

http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/2002Q4/war.html

------

Two years ago a project set up by the men who now surround George W Bush said what America needed was "a new Pearl Harbor". Its published aims have, alarmingly, come true. : John Pilger :12 Dec 2002

The threat posed by US terrorism to the security of nations and individuals was outlined in prophetic detail in a document written more than two years ago and disclosed only recently. What was needed for America to dominate much of humanity and the world's resources, it said, was "some catastrophic and catalysing event - like a new Pearl Harbor". The attacks of 11 September 2001 provided the "new Pearl Harbor", described as "the opportunity of ages". The extremists who have since exploited 11 September come from the era of Ronald Reagan, when far-right groups and "think-tanks" were established to avenge the American "defeat" in Vietnam. In the 1990s, there was an added agenda: to justify the denial of a "peace dividend" following the cold war. The Project for the New American Century was formed, along with the American Enterprise Institute, the Hudson Institute and others that have since merged the ambitions of the Reagan administration with those of the current Bush regime.

One of George W Bush's "thinkers" is Richard Perle. I interviewed Perle when he was advising Reagan; and when he spoke about "total war", I mistakenly dismissed him as mad. He recently used the term again in describing America's "war on terror". "No stages," he said. "This is total war. We are fighting a variety of enemies. There are lots of them out there. All this talk about first we are going to do Afghanistan, then we will do Iraq... this is entirely the wrong way to go about it. If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely and we don't try to piece together clever diplomacy, but just wage a total war... our children will sing great songs about us years from now."

Perle is one of the founders of the Project for the New American Century, the PNAC. Other founders include Dick Cheney, now vice-president, Donald Rumsfeld, defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, deputy defence secretary, I Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, William J Bennett, Reagan's education secretary, and Zalmay Khalilzad, Bush's ambassador to Afghanistan. These are the modern chartists of American terrorism. The PNAC's seminal report, Rebuilding America's Defences: strategy, forces and resources for a new century, was a blueprint of American aims in all but name. Two years ago it recommended an increase in arms-spending by $48bn so that Washington could "fight and win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars". This has happened. It said the United States should develop "bunker-buster" nuclear weapons and make "star wars" a national priority. This is happening. It said that, in the event of Bush taking power, Iraq should be a target. And so it is.

As for Iraq's alleged "weapons of mass destruction", these were dismissed, in so many words, as a convenient excuse, which it is. "While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification," it says, "the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein." How has this grand strategy been implemented? A series of articles in the Washington Post, co-authored by Bob Woodward of Watergate fame and based on long interviews with senior members of the Bush administration, reveals how 11 September was manipulated.

On the morning of 12 September 2001, without any evidence of who the hijackers were, Rumsfeld demanded that the US attack Iraq. According to Woodward, Rumsfeld told a cabinet meeting that Iraq should be "a principal target of the first round in the war against terrorism". Iraq was temporarily spared only because Colin Powell, the secretary of state, persuaded Bush that "public opinion has to be prepared before a move against Iraq is possible". Afghanistan was chosen as the softer option. If Jonathan Steele's estimate in the Guardian is correct, some 20,000 people in Afghanistan paid the price of this debate with their lives.

Time and again, 11 September is described as an "opportunity". In last April's New Yorker, the investigative reporter Nicholas Lemann wrote that Bush's most senior adviser, Condoleezza Rice, told him she had called together senior members of the National Security Council and asked them "to think about 'how do you capitalise on these opportunities'", which she compared with those of "1945 to 1947": the start of the cold war. Since 11 September, America has established bases at the gateways to all the major sources of fossil fuels, especially central Asia. The Unocal oil company is to build a pipeline across Afghanistan. Bush has scrapped the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions, the war crimes provisions of the International Criminal Court and the anti-ballistic missile treaty. He has said he will use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states "if necessary". Under cover of propaganda about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, the Bush regime is developing new weapons of mass destruction that undermine international treaties on biological and chemical warfare.

In the Los Angeles Times, the military analyst William Arkin describes a secret army set up by Donald Rumsfeld, similar to those run by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger and which Congress outlawed. This "super-intelligence support activity" will bring together the "CIA and military covert action, information warfare, and deception". According to a classified document prepared for Rumsfeld, the new organisation, known by its Orwellian moniker as the Proactive Pre-emptive Operations Group, or P2OG, will provoke terrorist attacks which would then require "counter-attack" by the United States on countries "harbouring the terrorists".

In other words, innocent people will be killed by the United States. This is reminiscent of Operation Northwoods, the plan put to President Kennedy by his military chiefs for a phoney terrorist campaign - complete with bombings, hijackings, plane crashes and dead Americans - as justification for an invasion of Cuba. Kennedy rejected it. He was assassinated a few months later. Now Rumsfeld has resurrected Northwoods, but with resources undreamt of in 1963 and with no global rival to invite caution. You have to keep reminding yourself this is not fantasy: that truly dangerous men, such as Perle and Rumsfeld and Cheney, have power. The thread running through their ruminations is the importance of the media: "the prioritised task of bringing on board journalists of repute to accept our position".

"Our position" is code for lying. Certainly, as a journalist, I have never known official lying to be more pervasive than today. We may laugh at the vacuities in Tony Blair's "Iraq dossier" and Jack Straw's inept lie that Iraq has developed a nuclear bomb (which his minions rushed to "explain"). But the more insidious lies, justifying an unprovoked attack on Iraq and linking it to would-be terrorists who are said to lurk in every Tube station, are routinely channelled as news. They are not news; they are black propaganda.

This corruption makes journalists and broadcasters mere ventriloquists' dummies. An attack on a nation of 22 million suffering people is discussed by liberal commentators as if it were a subject at an academic seminar, at which pieces can be pushed around a map, as the old imperialists used to do.

The issue for these humanitarians is not primarily the brutality of modern imperial domination, but how "bad" Saddam Hussein is. There is no admission that their decision to join the war party further seals the fate of perhaps thousands of innocent Iraqis condemned to wait on America's international death row. Their doublethink will not work. You cannot support murderous piracy in the name of humanitarianism. Moreover, the extremes of American fundamentalism that we now face have been staring at us for too long for those of good heart and sense not to recognise them.

With thanks to Norm Dixon and Chris Floyd

----------------

War Is Sell

by Laura Miller

"From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August," White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. told the New York Times in September. Card was explaining what the Times characterized as a "meticulously planned strategy to persuade the public, the Congress, and the allies of the need to confront the threat from Saddam Hussein."

Officially, President George W. Bush is claiming that he sees war as an option of last resort, and many members of the American public seem to have taken him at his word. In reality, say journalists and others who have closely observed the key players in decision-making positions at the White House, they have already decided on war.

In November, key Pentagon advisor Richard Perle stunned British members of parliament when he told them that even a "clean bill of health" from UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix would not stop a US attack on Iraq. "Evidence from one witness on Saddam Hussein's weapons program will be enough to trigger a fresh military onslaught," reported the Mirror of London, paraphrasing Perle's comments at an all-party meeting on global security.

"America is duping the world into believing it supports these inspections," said Peter Kilfoyle, a member of the British Labour party and a former British defense minister. "President Bush intends to go to war even if inspectors find nothing. This makes a mockery of the whole process and exposes America's real determination to bomb Iraq."

Even the US Central Intelligence Agency, hardly a pacifist organization, has come under pressure from White House and Pentagon hawks unhappy with the CIA's reluctance to offer intelligence assessments that would justify an invasion.

"The Pentagon is bringing relentless pressure to bear on the agency to produce intelligence reports more supportive of war with Iraq," reported Robert Dreyfuss in the American Prospect in December. "Morale inside the US national-security apparatus is said to be low, with career staffers feeling intimidated and pressured to justify the push for war."

Much of the pro-war information cited by the White House comes from the Iraqi National Congress (INC), a front group established in the early 1990s by the Rendon Group. (PR Watch's Fourth Quarter 2001 issue detailed the Rendon Group's role in creating the INC.)

"Most Iraq hands with long experience in dealing with that country's tumultuous politics consider the INC's intelligence-gathering abilities to be nearly nil," Dreyfuss stated. "The Pentagon's critics are appalled that intelligence provided by the INC might shape US decisions about going to war against Baghdad. At the CIA and at the State Department, Ahmed Chalabi, the INC's leader, is viewed as the ineffectual head of a self-inflated and corrupt organization skilled at lobbying and public relations, but not much else."

Focus, People, Focus

The techniques being used to sell a war in Iraq are familiar PR strategies. The message is developed to resonate with the targeted audiences through the use of focus groups and other types of market research and media monitoring. The delivery of the message is tightly controlled. Relevant information flows to the media and the public through a limited number of well-trained messengers, including seemingly independent third parties.

A seamless blend of private and public money and organizations are executing their war campaign in the face of a sinking US economy and increasing public opposition to attacking Iraq. But with a Republican-controlled Congress and a largely pliant corporate media, there is little to challenge the White House agenda. Its diplomatic and political maneuvers have been tightly choreographed in concert with a handful of right-wing think tanks, the newly concocted Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, and well connected PR and lobby firms that now dominate media coverage of US foreign policy in the Middle East.

According to the New York Times, intensive planning for the "Iraq rollout" began in July. Bush advisers checked the Congressional calendar for the best time to launch a "full-scale lobbying campaign." The effort started the day after Labor Day as Congress reconvened and Congressional leaders received invitations to the White House and the Pentagon for Iraq briefings with Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and CIA director George Tenet. White House communications aides scouted locations for the President's September 11 address, which served as a prelude to his militaristic speech to the United Nations Security Council.

The Washington Post reported in July that the White House had created an Office of Global Communications (OGC) to "coordinate the administration's foreign policy message and supervise America's image abroad." In September, the Times of London reported that the OGC would spend $200 million for a "PR blitz against Saddam Hussein" aimed "at American and foreign audiences, particularly in Arab nations skeptical of US policy in the region." The campaign would use "advertising techniques to persuade crucial target groups that the Iraqi leader must be ousted."

The Bush administration has not hesitated to use outright disinformation to bolster the case for war. In December, CBS 60 Minutes interviewed a former CIA agent who investigated and debunked the oft-mentioned report that September 11 airplane hijacker Mohammed Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence official in Prague several months before the deadly attacks on September 11. "Despite a lack of evidence that the meeting took place," the CBS report noted, "the item was cited by administration officials as high as Vice President Dick Cheney and ended up being reported so widely that two-thirds of Americans polled by the Council on Foreign Relations believe Iraq was behind the terrorist attacks of 9/11."

The Battle of the Band

"We're getting the band together," said White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett in September. The "band," explained Newsweek's Martha Brant, refers to "the people who brought you the war in Afghanistan--or at least the accompanying public-relations campaign. ... Now they're back for a reunion tour on Iraq."

A group of young White House up-and-comers, the "band" was meeting daily on a morning conference call to plan media strategy with the aim of controlling "the message within the administration so no one--not even Vice President Dick Cheney--freelances on Iraq," Brant wrote. Its main players are Bartlett, Office of Global Communications director Tucker Eskew, and James Wilkinson, former Deputy Communications director who has now been reassigned to serve as spokesperson to Gen. Tommy Franks at US Central Command in Qatar. Other frequent participants in the planning sessions have included top Pentagon spokesperson Victoria Clarke, Cheney advisor Mary Matalin, and Secretary of State Colin Powell's mouthpiece, Richard Boucher.

Meanwhile, the State Department is providing media training to Iraqi dissidents to "help make the Bush administration's argument for the removal of Saddam Hussein," reported PR Week on September 2. Muhammed Eshaiker, who serves on the board of the Iraqi Forum for Democracy, was one of the State Department trainees. "Iraqis in exile were not really taking advantage of the media opportunities," he said during an interview on National Public Radio. "We probably stumble and wait and say well, I mean what's the use--everybody knows [Hussein's] a criminal, so what's the use if we just add another story or another crime? But everything counts! ... If we keep hammering on the same nail, the nail is going to find its way through."

US Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld has used an informal "strategic communications" group of Beltway lobbyists, PR people and Republican insiders to hone the Pentagon's message. Pentagon public affairs head Victoria Clarke, who used to run Hill & Knowlton's DC office, is reported to have assembled the Rumsfeld group. Participants "intermittently offer messaging advice to the Pentagon," reported PR Week on August 26. One of the Rumsfeld group's projects is linking the anti-terrorism cause with efforts to convince the public "of the need to engage 'rogue states'--including Iraq--that are likely to harbor terrorists."

According to military analyst William Arkin, Rumsfeld's group is doing more than merely spinning rationales for attacking Iraq. Writing for the November 24 Los Angeles Times, Arkin called Rumsfeld's communication strategy "a policy shift that reaches across all the armed services," as "Rumsfeld and his senior aides are revising missions and creating new agencies to make 'information warfare' a central element of any US war."

"Information warfare" blurs the line between distributing factual information and psychological warfare. During the current buildup against Iraq, for example, the Bush administration's statements have been calculated to create confusion about whether an actual US invasion is imminent. Such confusion can be a useful weapon against an enemy, forcing Saddam Hussein to divide his efforts between diplomatic initiatives and military preparations. The confusion is so complete, however, that even the American people have little idea what their leaders are actually planning.

The Committee for the Invasion of Iraq

The anti-Hussein public relations work is also being done by a number of front groups and pundits with close ties to the Pentagon and White House. These private-sector war boosters are making the rounds of TV news programs and newspaper editorial pages. What won't be apparent to the average US media consumer are the many tangled connections that exist between them.

The newly-formed Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (CLI) sits at the center of the PR campaign, which is coordinated closely with other groups that are actively promoting an attack on Iraq, including the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Middle East Forum, Project for a New American Century, the American Enterprise Institute, Hudson Institute, Hoover Institute, and the clients of media relations firm Benador Associations.

CLI sends its message to American citizens through meetings with newspaper editorial boards and journalists, framing the debate and providing background materials written by a close-knit web of supporters. CLI also works closely with Condoleezza Rice and other administration officials to sponsor foreign policy briefings and dinners.

"It is also encouraging its members to hold lectures around the US, creating opportunities to penetrate local media markets," reported PR Week on November 25. "Members have already been interviewed on MSNBC and Fox News Channel, and articles have appeared in the Washington Post and the New York Times."

The CLI's mission statement says the group "was formed to promote regional peace, political freedom and international security by replacing the Saddam Hussein regime with a democratic government that respects the rights of the Iraqi people and ceases to threaten the community of nations." CLI representatives have made it clear that they plan to focus the debate on regime change, regardless of what weapons inspectors find or don't find inside Iraq. Although CLI uses humanitarian buzzwords on its web site and strives for a bipartisan look, its leadership and affiliations are decidedly right-wing, militaristic and very much in step with the Bush administration.

CLI president Randy Scheunemann is a well-connected Republican military and foreign policy advisor who has worked as National Security Advisor for Senators Trent Lott and Bob Dole. He also owns Orion Strategies, a small government-relations PR firm.

CLI is ostensibly "an independent entity," although it is expected to "work closely with the administration," the Washington Post's Peter Slevin reported on November 4. "At a time when polls suggest declining enthusiasm for a US-led military assault on Hussein, top officials will be urging opinion makers to focus on Hussein's actions in response to the United Nations resolution on weapons inspections--and on his past and present failings. They aim to regain momentum and prepare the political ground for his forcible ouster, if necessary."

According to former Secretary of State George Schultz, who chairs CLI's advisory board, the committee "gets a lot of impetus from the White House," essentially serving as a public outlet for some of the Bush administration's more hawkish thinking.

CLI also has a number of direct connections with the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and other conservative think tanks that focus on the Middle East. According to reporter Jim Lobe, it "appears to be a spin-off of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), a front group consisting mainly of neo-conservative Jews and heavy-hitters from the Christian Right, whose public recommendations on fighting the 'war against terrorism' and US backing for Israel in the conflict in the occupied territories have anticipated to a remarkable degree the administration's own policy course."

PNAC was founded by William Kristol and Robert Kagan, both of whom sit on PNAC's board of directors. Kristol edits the conservative Weekly Standard and is also a CLI advisory board member. Kagan was George Shultz's speechwriter during his tenure as President Reagan's Secretary of State. CLI is chaired by another PNAC director--Bruce P. Jackson, a former vice president at Lockheed Martin who also served as an aide to former Secretaries of Defense Frank Carlucci and Dick Cheney.

Other CLI advisory board members include:

a.. former House Speaker Newt Gingrich

b.. former Senator Bob Kerrey

c.. Teamster President James Hoffa, Jr.

d.. retired Generals Barry McCaffrey, Wayne Downing and Buster Glosson

e.. Jeane Kirkpatrick, a White House and Pentagon advisor under former presidents Reagan and Bush who is currently an AEI senior fellow

f.. Danielle Pletka, AEI vice president for Foreign and Defense Policy

g.. former CIA director James Woolsey

h.. top Pentagon advisor and AEI fellow Richard Perle, who helped sell the 1991 war in the Persian Gulf as co-chair of the Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf (CPSG). According to journalist Jim Lobe, CPSG "worked closely with both the Bush Sr. administration in mobilizing support of the war, particularly in Congress, and with a second group financed by the Kuwaiti monarchy called Citizens for a Free Kuwait. CPSG also received a sizable grant from the Wisconsin-based Lynde & Harry Bradley Foundation, a major funder of both PNAC and AEI."

i.. former New York Democratic Representative Stephen Solarz, who was Perle's former co-chair at CPSG

Trust Us, We're Experts

A number of Iraq hawks, including Perle and Woolsey, are clients of Eleana Benador, whose PR firm, Benador Associates, doubles as an "international speakers bureau." Other Benador clients, many of whom have a prior history of advancing aggressive military policies and promoting dirty wars, include:

a.. conservative Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, who criticized the New York Times in August for reporting that prominent Republicans were dissenting from Bush's Iraq war plans

b.. dissident Iraqi nuclear scientist Dr. Khidir Hamza

c.. Alexander Haig, former US Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan

d.. Michael Ledeen, another AEI fellow and a prominent figure in the Reagan administration's Iran/Contra scandal who helped broker the covert arms deal between the US and Iran

In an October 14 article for WorkingForChange.com, Bill Berkowitz reported that Benador's "high-powered media relations" company gets her clients "maximum exposure on cable's talking-head television programs and [places] their op-ed pieces in a number of the nation's major newspapers." Benador and her clients have assumed a prominent role in shaping the public debate over US Middle East policy.

Benador Associates lists 34 speakers on its web site, at least nine of whom are connected with the American Enterprise Institute, the Washington Institute and the Middle East Forum. "Although these three privately-funded organizations promote views from only one

The Washington Institute publishes books, places newspaper articles, holds luncheons and seminars, and testifies before Congress. Whitaker calls it "the most influential of the Middle East think tanks." Its board of advisors include Alexander Haig, along with CLI advisory board members Richard Perle, George Shultz, and Jeane Kirkpatrick.

The Washington Institute "takes credit for placing up to 90 articles written by its members--mainly 'op-ed' pieces--in newspapers during the last year," Whitaker writes. "Fourteen of those appeared in the Los Angeles Times, nine in New Republic, eight in the Wall Street Journal, eight in the Jerusalem Post, seven in the National Review Online, six in the Daily Telegraph, six in the Washington Post, four in the New York Times and four in the Baltimore Sun."

The Middle East Forum (MEF) is headed by Daniel Pipes, a frequent guest on TV public affairs shows. It publishes Middle East Quarterly and Middle East Intelligence Bulletin, an email newsletter sent free to journalists, academics, and other interested groups.

MEF also sponsors Campus Watch, a project that "monitors and critiques Middle East studies in North America, with an aim to improving them." What this means in practice is that Campus Watch attacks university professors and departments that are perceived as harboring pro-Arab sympathies, "working for the mullahs" or encouraging "militant Islam." Its web site provides a form to report on "Middle East-related scholarship, lectures, classes, demonstrations, and other activities relevant to Middle East studies" and lists academics that "Campus Watch has identified as apologists for Palestinian and Islamist violence."

Like Benador, MEF provides its own "list of experts . . . to guide television and radio bookers" and to speak in other venues. Three of MEF's experts, in fact, are also listed on Benador's list: Khalid Durán, director of the Council on Middle Eastern Affairs; Michael Rubin, a AEI visiting fellow and Pentagon advisor, and Meyrav Wurmser, director of the Center for Middle East Policy at the conservative Hudson Institute and the former executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute. MEF's list of experts also includes two staff members from the Washington Institute as well as PNAC/CLI's William Kristol.

Guest-a443

Guest-400c

JINSA Behind Drive To Cover-Up Israel Spy Scandal:

JINSA (Jewish Institute of National Security Affairs) is the same cabal of Israel Firsters (of whom chicken hawks Dick Cheney, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz are associated) which has hijacked the Bush regime and is driving us to the coming war on Islam (beginning with the invasion of Iraq) for Israel and oil (as the JINSA Israel First agenda is going to increase the risk of US experiencing further terror attacks in the UK and USA as well as in Europe):

JINSA Behind Drive To
Cover-Up Israeli Spy Scandal

http://www.rense.com/general18/JINSA.htm

JINSA Behind Drive To
Cover-Up Israeli Spy Scandal
Executive Intelligence Review News Service
1-6-2

(EIRNS) - One of the "Mega" agencies that mobilized to quash the Fox TV pick-up of our Israeli spy scandal was JINSA, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. JINSA President and CEO David Steinmann is also a director of CAMERA (Committee for Accurate Middle East Reporting in America), the group that actually staged the e-mail, fax, letter, and phone call mobilization that squeezed Fox TV, to the point that they removed the transcripts of the four Carl Cameron segments from their own web site. While CAMERA lists Tom Lantos among its advisors, along with Sharon cabinet minister Natan Sharansky, it is JINSA that is the real hotbed of "Mega" and "X Committee" clout, particular inside the Pentagon. On its own website, JINSA boasts that "Only one think tank puts the U.S.-Israel strategic relationship {first} -- JINSA!" JINSA lists among its directors: Richard Perle, Steven Bryen (whose wife, Shoshana Bryen is still one of the few full-time JINSA employees), Max Kampelman, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Jack Kemp, Michael Ledeen, Joshua Muravchik, Kenneth Timmermann, and James Woolsey. Beyond these hardcore "X Committee" operatives, JINSA's board also includes a dozen or more retired flag grade U.S. military officers, including Lt. Gen. Anthony Burshnick (USAF), Gen. Crosbie Saint (USA), Maj. Gen. Lee Downer (USAF), Adm. Leon Edney (USN), Gen. John Foss (USA), Adm. David Jeremiah (USN), Adm. Jerome Johnson (USN), Maj. Gen. Jarvis Lynch (USMC), Rear Adm. Sumner Shapiro (USN). JINSA makes no bones about the fact that it is recruiting an Israeli fifth column inside the U.S. military command. They sponsor frequent all-expense-paid junkets to Israel for retired officers, which are co-sponsored by the Israeli Defense Force; they run an exchange program for military academy cadets at West Point, Annapolis and the Air Force Academy with military institutes in Israel; and they host lecture programs at all the military institutions in the U.S. where they bring in top IDF and Israeli intelligence officials. One of the top figures on the JINSA lecture circuit is Dore Gold, who is a top aide to Sharon and is about to come to Washington as the Israeli ambassador. JINSA's output of policy papers and press releases also makes clear that they are leading proponents of the "Clash of Civilizations," and the drive to lure the U.S. into a suicidal military alliance with an Israeli marcher lord state. Typical of JINSA's operations of late are their sponsorship of a series of lectures by Iraqi National Congress honcho Chulabi, and their Sept. 13 press statement, calling for the U.S. to "go beyond bin Laden" to launch military attacks against Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Syria, Sudan, the Palestinian Authority, Libya, Algeria, "and even our presumed friends Saudi Arabia and Egypt." The release demanded that the U.S. bomb Beirut and Damascus, cut military aid to Egypt, and revoke the Presidential ban on assassinations.

Alpha

http://books.guardian.co.uk/lrb/articles/0,6109,811747,00.html

Guest-98a3 · Posted: Wed Feb 12, 2003 7:04 am Post subject: Pre 911 strategy began 1996

----------------

Forwarded Message:
Subj: Pre 911 strategy began 1996
Date: 2/11/03 8:57:32 PM Pacific Standard Time
From: CThomas807
To: Mikaeel9, rlcordry1, Tinker3x3, CThomas807

Pre 911 strategy began 1996

-Unbeknownst to most of the American public, the 'Get Saddam' crowd has been calling on Bush to topple the Ba'ath regime since the very beginning of his administration - well before the terrorist attacks of 9-11.

(I feel like I found the MOTHER LOAD) CThom
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Table of Contents

1 Think tanks, geopolitical strategists, etc.

2 Republican Party

3 Media reports and opinion pieces suggesting that there were sentiments prior to 9-11 to invade Iraq.

1 Think tanks, geopolitical strategists, etc.
a Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies.

i A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, July 8 1996.

(A) Summary.

(1) The report was authored by a study group commissioned by the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies with the purpose of providing policy recommendations to the incoming government of Likud Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Several individuals who now have key positions in the Bush administration contributed to the project, including Douglas Feith, now undersecretary of defense for policy; David Wurmser, now a special assistant to State Department arms-control chief John R. Bolton; and Richard Perle, the current chairman of the civilian Defense Policy Board [profile]. On July 10, two days after the Israeli Prime Minister received the report from Richard Perle, he gave a speech before a joint session of the U.S. Congress [US Congress 7/10/96], which reflected the policy recommendations outlined in the document. Also that day, the Wall Street Journal published excerpts of the report and then endorsed the recommendations in the following day’s editorial pages. (Larouche 9-8-2002; Sands 10-7-2002)

(B) Text. [The Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies 6/8/2002]

(C) Policy recommendations

(1) Specific actions.

(a) Abandon the Oslo Accords. (Larouche 9-8-2002)

(b) Reserve the right to invade the West Bank and Gaza Strip when Israel believes it is appropriate to do so.

(c) Remove Saddam Hussein from power. (Larouche 9-8-2002; Sands 10-7-2002)

(d) Overthrow or destabilize the governments of Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. (Larouche 9-8-2002; Sands 10-7-2002)

(2) General policy changes.

(a) Reestablish a policy of preemptive strikes.

(i) The Washington Times, quoting the report, stated, “Israel would ‘transcend its foes’ by ‘re-establishing the principle of pre-emption, rather than retaliation alone, and by ceasing to absorb blows to the nation without response,’ according to a summary of the panel's deliberations prepared by the think tank.” (Sands 10-7-2002)

b 10 former government officials

i 9-point strategy to remove Saddam Hussein.

(A) Summary.

(1) On February 1998, a 9-point strategy for “bringing down Saddam and his regime,” was endorsed by 10 former government officials and was published as an open letter. (cited in Everest 2001; Larouche 9-8-2002) Read Letter

(B) Signatories.

(1) Richard Perle, current chairman of the Defense Policy Board. [profile]

(2) Stephen Solarz, former Congressman

(3) Elliott Abrams, current senior director for democracy, human rights and international operations at the National Security Council. [more info]

(4) Richard Armitage, current deputy secretary of state.

(5) John Bolton, current undersecretary of arms control and international security.

(6) Doug Feith, current undersecretary of Defense for Policy

(7) Fred Ikle, former undersecretary of defense for policy

(8) Zalmay Khalilzad, current special assistant to the President and senior director for Gulf, southwest Asia and other regional issues, National Security Council.

(9) Peter Rodman, current assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs

(10) Donald Rumsfeld, current secretary of defense

(11) Paul Wolfowitz, current deputy secretary of defense.

(12) David Wurmser, current director of Middle East studies at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute

(13) Dov Zakheim, current under secretary of defense
(Comptroller) and chief financial officer for the Department of Defense

c Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

i Building America's Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century, September 2000

(A) Written For:

(a) Dick Cheney, vice president.

(b) Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of defense.

(c) Paul Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense.

(d) Jeb Bush, governor of Florida.

(e) Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff.

(B) People who attended meetings or contributed papers in preparation of the report.

(1) Roger Barnett

(a) U.S. Naval War College

(2) Alvin Bernstein

(a) National Defense University

(3) Stephen Cambone

(a) National Defense University

(b) Currently heads the Office of Program, Analysis and Evaluation at the Defense Department

(4) Eliot Cohen

(a) Nitze School of Advanced International

(b) Studies, Johns Hopkins University.

(c) Currently on the Defense Policy Board [profile]

(5) Devon Gaffney Cross

(a) Donors' Forum for International Affairs

(6) Thomas Donnelly

(a) Project for the New American Century

(7) David Epstein

(a) Office of Secretary of Defense,

(b) Net Assessment

(8) David Fautua

(a) Lt. Col., U.S. Army

(9) Dan Goure

(a) Center for Strategic and International Studies

(10) Donald Kagan

(a) Yale University

(11) Fred Kagan

(a) U. S. Military Academy at West Point

(12) Robert Kagan

(a) Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

(13) Robert Killebrew

(a) Col., USA (Ret.)

(14) William Kristol

(a) The Weekly Standard

(15) Mark Lagon

(a) Senate Foreign Relations Committee

(16) James Lasswell

(a) GAMA Corporation

(17) Lewis Libby

(a) Dechert Price & Rhoads

(b) Currently on the vice president's chief of staff.

(18) Robert Martinage

(a) Center for Strategic and Budgetary

(b) Assessment

(19) Phil Meilinger

(a) U.S. Naval War College

(20) Mackubin Owens

(a) U.S. Naval War College

(21) Steve Rosen

(a) Harvard University

(22) Gary Schmitt

(a) Project for the New American Century

(23) Abram Shulsky

(a) The RAND Corporation

(24) Michael Vickers

(a) Center for Strategic and Budgetary

(b) Assessment

(25) Barry Watts

(a) Northrop Grumman Corporation

(26) Paul Wolfowitz

(a) Nitze School of Advanced International

(b) Studies, Johns Hopkins University

(c) Current Deputy Secretary of Defense.

(27) Dov Zakheim

(a) System Planning Corporation

(b) Current undersecretary of defense (comptroller) and chief financial officer for the Pentagon

(C) The Text. [Rebuilding America's Defenses]

(D) Excerpts.

(a) The report’s plan for US global domination included “a premeditated attack on Iraq to secure ‘regime change’ even before” George Bush “took power in January 2001.” (Mackay 9-15-2002)

c James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy of Rice University and the Council on Foreign Relations

i Strategic Energy Policy Challenges For The 21st Century, April 2001

(A) Summary.

(1) The report summarized an impending U.S. energy crisis and concluded that Saddam Hussein was a threat to “American interests” because of his control of Iraq’s enormous and high quality oil reserves. The report recommended a policy of using military force in order ensure US control of Middle Eastern oil. (Mackay 10-4-2002a; 10-4-2002b)

(B) People who were ‘behind’ the document.

(1) James Baker, who was advised by Kenneth Lay, former CEO of Enron; Luis Giusti, a Shell non-executive director; John Manzoni, regional president of BP David O'Reilly, chief executive of ChevronTexaco; and Sheikh Saud Al Nasser Al Sabah, the former Kuwaiti oil minister and a fellow of the Baker Institute. (Mackay 10-4-2002a)

(C) Submitted to:

(1) Vice-President Dick Cheney in April 2001.

(D) The report. [Strategic Energy Policy Challenges For The 21st Century]

(E) Excerpts.

(1) “[T]he United States remains a prisoner of its energy dilemma, suffering on a recurring basis from the negative consequences of sporadic energy shortages. These consequences can include recession, social dislocation of the poorest Americans, and at the extremes, a need for military intervention.” (pg. 34)

(2) “Iraq remains a destabilising influence to ... the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East. Saddam Hussein has also demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon and to use his own export programme to manipulate oil markets. This would display his personal power, enhance his image as a pan-Arab leader and pressure others for a lifting of economic sanctions against his regime. The United States should conduct an immediate policy review toward Iraq including military, energy, economic and political/diplomatic assessments. The United States should then develop an integrated strategy with key allies in Europe and Asia, and with key countries in the Middle East, to restate goals with respect to Iraqi policy and to restore a cohesive coalition of key allies…” (Pg. 42)

(3) “Iraqi [oil] reserves represent a major asset that can quickly add capacity to world oil markets and inject a more competitive tenor to oil trade.” (Pg. 43)

2 Republican Party
a Platform

i Summary.

(A) During George W. Bush's campaign, the Republican Party called for “a comprehensive plan for the removal of Saddam Hussein.” (cited Everest 2001)

3 Media reports and opinion pieces suggesting that there were sentiments prior to 9-11 to invade Iraq.
a January 22, 2001. New York Times.

i The New York Times reported that according to unnamed U.S. officials, “Iraq has rebuilt a series of factories that the United States has long suspected of producing chemical and biological weapons.” The newspaper also quoted one soon-to-be member of the administration saying, “'The Iraq problem has changed a lot since the last Bush administration left office. It's become a lot more complex. That's beginning to dawn on them.” The Times noted, “Throughout the campaign and transition, Mr. Bush and his national security advisers pledged to confront Mr. Hussein more aggressively than Mr. Clinton had,” and “The new intelligence estimate could confront President Bush with an early test of his pledge to take a tougher stance against President Saddam Hussein than the Clinton administration did.” (Schmitt and Myers 1-22-2001)

b January 23, 2001. The Times.

i The Times of London quoted an unnamed U.S. official saying that if Bush were to attack Iraq, “It will not be a pinprick, it will be strong and decisive…..Bush may have no option but to act if he wants to contain Saddam.” (cited in Mirak-Weissbach 2-16-2001)

c January 23, 2001. Richard Butler, former head of the U.N. special commission. Daily Telegraph.

i In an op-ed piece titled, “Bush should start where his father left off: With Saddam,” Butler expressed his concern about France and Russia’s increasingly friendly relations towards Iraq. He criticized these countries for skirting the UN sanctions and suggested that the two countries’ actions were intended to diminish U.S. power. The implication was that if Russia and France continued this course, it would be harder for the U.S. to justify a war against Iraq, therefore according to Butler, Bush would have to act quickly. (cited in Mirak-Weissbach 2-16-2001)

Hunnibee

ANSWERS sectarianism:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2003/02/12/answers-double-standards.php

Guest-98a3

"The War on Iraq: Conceived in Israel":

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2003/02/10/the-war-on-iraq-conceived-in-israel.php

Radical JINSA Zionists at Pentagon to Control Iraq:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2003/02/04/radical-jinsa-zionists-at-pentagon-to-control-iraq.php

JINSA Zionist (David Frum) Wrote "Axis of Evil" Mention for President Bush, so the JINSA Zionists have been behind the problems with North Korea as well):

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2003/02/08/jinsa-jewish-zionist-wrote-axis-of-evil-speech.php

Freedom of Speech

The Great Denial In America and In Israel
Wall Street Meltdown...America Prepares for War a Year After Sept 11...Israel Without Hope

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Michael Lerner

We live in a society whose bottom line is money and power. What is "real" in our society is only that which can be verified (or at least falsified) through some set of sense experience. All the rest is dismissed as "non-sense."

Living out this worldview, we've created a society filled with people who are rational maximizers of self-interest. They've learned that "common sense" means "looking out for number one." They've learned that we can only trust each other to do those things that we each see as being in our own short-term self-interest, measured in terms of maximizing the bottom line of money and power. In return for this way of thinking, Americans are rewarded with more money, more material goods. By creating a globalized system of capital, our society has been able to temporarily increase the wealth of people in our society at the expense of people in other parts of the world.

This selfish and materialistic way of thinking, however, doesn't come easily to most Americans. The American people are as decent as any on the planet, and have often shown their generosity and goodness to others (not least in the way that they've treated Jews). Generosity and goodness don't belong to a particular people, but to all people, passed down through the millennia of human evolution. Our natural tendency is to care for others, to feel connected to a community, and to find meaning in something of higher value. When we live as we do in a world based on a narrow conception of self-interest, when we find ourselves surrounded by people who are doing their best to teach themselves to be "realistic" and "mature" by these standards, we often end up in a great deal of pain, alienation, frustration, loneliness, and anger.

That pain is always in danger of bursting out in all kinds of ways—some of them very destructive, some of them constructive—that might lead us to challenge the whole nature of the world we live in. In response, the society established on the principles of maximizing self-interest does its best to contain, criminalize, pathologize, or otherwise repress all behaviors that express that pain, and to provide a system of material rewards for everyone who is doing their best to be out of touch with what they are really feeling.

Spiritual leaders and traditions teach us that a world cannot be based on this kind of thinking. They have taught that it is love and kindness, generosity and caring for others, justice and peace, open-heartedness and repentance that are the keys to keeping the world sane and functional. Yet there have been counter-tendencies, moments of cruelty and hurt, and when those counter-tendencies became institutionalized in social systems based on oppression, more and more people lost confidence in the underlying truths of the spiritual tradition. So, for a very short period in human history, people in the West have thought they could ignore this spiritual wisdom and build a society based on an ethos of selfishness and materialism.

We are now at the beginning of the breakdown of that delusion. There are signs all around us that are overwhelming. And yet, both in the United States and in Israel, the forces of denial still have a huge amount of power to shape public discourse and to force everyone to deny the evidence that is right in front of them—that the old ways are not working.

American Denial
We are about to commemorate the first anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center. Instead of using the occasion to rethink the fundamentals of our system and the world crisis that it is generating, instead of using the occasion to reclaim the best in American patriotism and to let it speak for the revolutionary values of every human being endowed by the Creator with inalienable rights, we are likely to hear more claptrap, including justifications for a war against Iraq and whatever other military maneuvers the Bush administration thinks it can get away with.

Moments drenched in self-deception will fill the airwaves and then pass, and we will still be left to face the reality that a world based on selfishness and materialism just doesn't work.

The Wall Street Meltdown
The heart of the system of self-interest beats on Wall Street, where the stock market depends on the assumption that corporations will be run to maximize the advantage of investors. But this assumption leaves out the impact of the ethos of selfishness on everyone who works in the system, and who have learned to "be realistic" and use the opportunities we have to maximize our own advantage without regard to the consequences for others. The society provides no incentive to look at our own long-term self-interest and to see how we are all interconnected and our fates tied to the well being of the planet and each other. Corporations are rewarded for maximizing profits, even if the way they do so leads to depletion of the planet's life support systems and global warming. Americans are in denial of what is facing us directly: A system built on narrow conceptions of self-interest is necessarily self-destructive.

Corporate executives are not bad people—they share the same values as almost everyone else in our society, only in different circumstances. They know that they have a short period of opportunity to maximize their own advantage. If they were not smart maximizers of self-interest, they would not have figured out how to get to the top in the first place. And the people who picked them did so because they saw those qualities and figured they'd work well for advancing the interests of the corporation. But for most top corporate executives in most (not all) fields, the corporation is primarily an opportunity to make money.

The Communists had a joke which captures a deep truth: "When the next to last capitalist is being hanged," their story goes, "the last capitalist will be selling the rope for the occasion." The reality is that selfishness blinds everyone to their own long-term best interests. Millions of people have lost their life savings and their retirement because of this dynamic. A system of wild self-interest consumes itself.

In a world in which each corporation seeks to maximize its own advantage, measured in terms of money and power, there is no incentive to develop a program for the rational use of our resources. Ecological reform movements find themselves in a struggle that they cannot win, and so become "realistic" by redefining their goals so narrowly that even when they win specific battles the overall degradation of the planet nevertheless accelerates with devastating consequences. We are just beginning to experience the reality of global warming, and that's only one of the hundreds of ways in which the ethos of selfishness is now destroying the entire life support system of the planet.

If we took the imperative to be realistic seriously, we would realize that the only realistic thing to do is to fundamentally change the bottom line of our current economic system so that people would be rewarded for being caring rather than for being selfish. Try for anything short of that, and soon you'll be left with the same old system, because the logic that leads people to compromise for minor reforms leads them to compromise on their compromises. Partial reforms are not going to work. Nor will achieving partial reforms be easier than going for larger social change, because the current political system is dominated by people in both major parties who are subservient to the interests of big capital, and because the powerful will fight against minor reforms with the same intensity they'd use if the challenge were against the whole system. Partial reforms have the additional problem of having less popular appeal than a fundamental change in the bottom line because they are so complicated and because it's so much harder to communicate their underlying ethical foundations.

That's why progressives and spiritually oriented people should stop trying to compromise and instead make the central point of what we have called Emancipatory Spirituality or a Politics of Meaning the center of their entire program:

America needs a New Bottom Line so that institutions, economic practices, and individual decisions are judged rational not only to the extent that they maximize money and power, but also to the extent that they maximize our capacities to be caring about others, ecologically and ethically coherent, and capable of responding to the world not only in narrow utilitarian ways but with awe and wonder at the grandeur of creation.

People raised in such a society will not think it rational to pillage the economy to benefit themselves.

In Spirit Matters: Global Healing and the Wisdom of the Soul (Hampton Roads, 2000) I show what the specific programmatic consequences would be of taking this new definition seriously. If we demanded this new bottom line for every economic, political, and social institution, we'd have the basis for a major transformation of American society and a simple and understandable first principle that would appeal to many people who do not necessarily respond to the current vision of liberal and progressive politics.

Here's how to get this conversation going: join the Tikkun Community's national campaign for The Social Responsibility Amendment (SRA) to the U.S. Constitution. It would require corporations with incomes of $20 million or more to get a new corporate charter every ten years, which would only be granted to corporations that could prove to a jury of ordinary Americans that they had a satisfactory record of Social Responsibility as measured by an Ethical Impact Report (for the full text of the SRA see click here or check out our July/August 1997 issue at your local library).

If corporations knew that they stood to lose their corporate charter, they would have a powerful incentive to encourage different behavior than that which is bringing down the global economy.

As a first step in this campaign, local cities, counties ,and state governments should require that any corporation competing for a state contract of more than a million dollars file an Ethical Impact Report and that the contract be awarded to that corporation among the three low bidders who had the best history of social responsibility.

In their guts, most investors know that the problems caused by Enron, Global Crossing, WorldCom and all the rest are endemic to the system of which they are a part. That's why, when forced to confront the rash of greed that is destroying our corporations, investors don't feel reassured by halfway measures.

No "reform" will put a permanent end to this kind of corruption as long as people accept that "looking out for number one" is the only rational approach to their life situation. That's why a progressive politics must be firmly focused on changing the bottom line. Spirit Matters very very much. Those of us who have been talking about spiritual transformation are far more practical than those who think that they can run an economy based on the ethos that has caused the Wall Street meltdown.

The Global Struggle Against Fundamentalism
Ever since September 11 our society has deluded itself into thinking that the primary problem it faces is a bunch of Muslim fundamentalists who are irrationally committed to destroying America because of the freedom, democracy, human rights, and women's liberation that our society embodies.

Unquestionably, there are such people. But this is a picture that only makes sense through a lens of denial about our actual role in the world.

The Left enters here with an important reminder: The globalization of capital has not been good for much of the world. It is not generosity and kindness that mobilized American corporations behind a program of global expansion that was championed by the Clinton/Gore forces as much as by the Bush/Cheney team. Through a series of international agreements promoted by the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, etc., Western capital has been able to penetrate third world countries even more effectively than they could using the old-fashioned methods of colonialism and military adventurism. The impact has been an increase of wealth in advanced industrial countries and a decrease in wealth among the poorest sectors of third world countries.

But if the Left has been right about the globalization of capital, it has missed an even more important dimension: the global struggle among religious systems. The corporate penetration of the world brings with it the corporate religion of materialism and selfishness, the common sense of looking out for number one, the bottom line of money and power, the relegation of any spiritual or moral values to the sidelines as purely inner and personal pursuits that should not be allowed to define public space. True enough, these ideas are often tied to political ideas about democracy and individual rights that have been won in the West and which are in fact worth fighting for. But the reality of most people's lives outside the West is that American corporate power does not actually increase their democracy or their individual rights. When push comes to shove, as it almost always does in these countries, the United States has been far more vigilant in fighting for corporate freedom than individual freedom, and has often sponsored governments that impose undemocratic elites who repress their own populations.

It is in response to this reality that Islamic, Hindu, Jewish, and Christian fundamentalisms have made a comeback in the past hundred years. What each of these systems offers is very similar to what ultra-nationalist and fascistic ideologies offer: a way for people to feel that they are valued and important even if they are not successful in the competitive marketplace. Faced with a world that tells them that what really counts is how much they can be of use to generate money and power, most people know that they will not be very successful. No wonder that they feel validated by a spiritual system that tells them that they are fundamentally valuable regardless of how successful they will be—valuable because they are part of "the faith community" or part of "the nation."

This is a logic that works even in advanced industrial societies. The recent surge of energy around the Pledge of Allegiance (after a panel of judges had declared it unconstitutional on First Amendment grounds because of the inclusion of "under God" in its phraseology) was only the most recent stage of a battle by people desperate for some sense of meaning higher than that which can be achieved through the marketplace (albeit articulated by right wing opportunistic leaders who attempt to channel this hunger for meaning into ultra-nationalist forms, plus a bunch of pathetic elected liberals who follow them). We don't want the Pledge in schools at all, in any form, because we don't want coerced loyalty, and we don't want God's name used to legitimate any particular national entity (which is why we don't support Jewish chauvinism either). At the same time, it's important to understand why people respond to this issue so viscerally. It's not because they are stupid or reactionary, it's because they want to affirm a community which may only live in their fantasy world, but which provides them with some comfort from the realities of market-driven individualism.

The same is true globally. When people worldwide cheer attacks on the United States, it is not because, as our leaders pretend, they hate democracy, civil liberties, or human rights. The truth is that the governments the United States has attempted to impose on the world (e.g. in Iran under the Shah, Vietnam under Ky and Thieu, Chile under Pinochet, Israel's West Bank Occupation) have not been known for their democracy, civil liberties, or human rights. What most people experience of the United States comes from repressive regimes, or from the penetration of U.S. capitalism with its inevitable religion of money and power and selfishness. This capitalist religion demeans non-market values; undermines the traditional family structures that provide some degree of support for people that the market won't supply (even women in these cultures often feel more supported by these family structures than by the free market, which is one reason many women end up backing fundamentalist regimes); destroys village economies, which in turn leads villagers to move into the slums surrounding large cities; and does much else that people can legitimately detest. Faced with this choice, many people reject the religion of the market and choose the only alternative being presented to them—fundamentalist religious communities.

It would be foolish to think that Bin Laden and his trained murderers were motivated solely by the actual suffering our global system has generated. The fundamentalist forms of religion that become popular have their own distortions that subordinate women, demean those who are not part of the community of the elect, and discourage critical thinking. So although people often get attracted to these communities for decent reasons, they end up adopting worldviews that have racist, sexist, and xenophobic elements that can lead to hateful sects like that created by Al Qaeda.

Yet Americans are in deep denial when they think that the solution to these problems will be achieved by overthrowing the (non-fundamentalist, secular) government of Iraq, or any other act of war. Of course, we'd like to see different regimes in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. But why stop there? We'd also like to see a genuinely democratic process in China, Russia, and even in the United States presidential elections (direct democratic election of the president, not an electoral system). But we do not want to see any of this achieved by force and violence, which will only lead to more force and violence. The way to peace is a way of peace.

In every act we do, we either affirm and strengthen the sanctity of human beings and bring God's presence in our lives more fully into focus, or we contribute to the desanctification of human life and the distancing of ourselves from God. America had a choice after September 11: to see the world through the lens of the firemen, policemen, and ordinary civilians who risked their lives to save others, or to see the world through the frame of Bin Laden and terror.

Unfortunately, following opportunistic and misguided leaders in both parties, most Americans rallied around the latter vision, using our resources to escalate military spending, reduce civil liberties, and increase the general level of fear and paranoia in almost every aspect of American life.

Yet the United States will only achieve security when it is perceived by the world as a society using its vast resources to eliminate global poverty, hunger, homelessness, and all forms of economic inequalities in the world; as the major power using its resources to combat global warming and to make all global investments and finances in accord with the best interests of preserving the ecological sustainability of the planet; and as the society that in its actual practice embodies an ethos of mutual caring and open-hearted generosity to the peoples of the world. Had the United States used September 11 to follow those paths, we would all be far more secure today.

Israeli Denial
I sit here in tears. Seven students at Hebrew University were just killed by a bomb while sitting in the cafeteria. A former member of Beyt Tikkun, now studying in Jerusalem, was sitting in the cafeteria moments before the bomb exploded and was nearly killed himself. Nothing can ever justify these morally outrageous murders. I am deeply angry and mournful, as I am whenever my Jewish brothers and sisters are harmed.

And I mourn also for the Palestinians killed by Israel in the past months. The UN reports that in the months of April and May, 497 Palestinians have been killed by Israel. I mourn for each and every one of them. And there is no "moral equivalence" in mourning for both peoples—every life is unique and no murder of any one person justifies the murder of another. We must fight against the denial that goes on on both sides—the denial of the humanity of the Other.

This insanity has to stop. Since the invasion of Jenin and the escalation of oppression of Palestinians by the Israeli army in the Spring of 2002, the violent attacks and counter-attacks have spiraled out of control. Here's a brief overview:

Palestinian groups responded to the murder of Palestinian civilians in Jenin by escalating violent strikes and sickening acts of terror against Israeli civilians.
In return, instead of responding to the specific groups that attacked them, Israel once again has declared war on the entire Palestinian people. Israel has reinvaded Palestine, occupied all the major cities and most of the small towns, and imposed martial law. Most of the population is living under conditions of twenty-four hour curfews—anyone leaving their apartments for any reason is being shot and killed. As I write, Israel is allowing people to go out to restock their food only once a week, for a few hours.
The UN and other groups are reporting widespread hunger and malnutrition caused by the denial of food that is caused by the Occupation.
The Palestinians were about to break this impasse. Yet, just a few hours after Hamas, the Tanzim, and other violent Palestinian groups put forward an offer for a cease fire with Israel, and indicated a willingness to suspend all acts of violence inside the Green Lines. Israel responded by sending a U.S.-supplied B16 to bomb a leader of Hamas who was inside an apartment building in Gaza, in the process killing fourteen civilians (including seven children) and injuring over 140 other civilians. This act was condemned by every major government in the world, including the United States, which had known about the process for ending the violence and was dismayed when that process was intentionally destroyed by Ariel Sharon's government. In this one move, Ariel Sharon made it clear that, despite his protestations against Palestinian violence, it is precisely this violence that his policies seek to encourage, because it is those acts that provide him with the legitimation to avoid negotiations and to expand the West Bank settlements in defiance of the world's insistence that Israel give up the West Bank and Gaza.
Nor was this only clear to outsiders, Westerners, or people previously opposed to the current coalition government between Likud and Labor. In a dramatic move the day after Israel had torpedoed this effort for peace, the Assistant Minister of Defense of the Israeli government, the daughter of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, resigned from the government which she said was "destroying the last vestiges of the good accomplished by my father's legacy," and threatened to quit the Labor Party if it remained attached to the morally compromised direction of Shimon Peres. As the assistant Minister of Defense, no one has been in a better position than she to see what the Israeli government has been doing and why its actions are morally unacceptable.

nHamas responded to Sharon's Gaza bombing with a terror assault of its own on students eating lunch at the Hebrew University cafeteria, killing and wounding many. Predictably, and stupidly, the Palestinians did not continue to offer peace, but returned to acts of violence. Their failure to see that their own interests lie in the path of nonviolence is equal in moral blindness to that of the Israelis who cannot see that their interests lie in a whole new approach based on generosity, open-heartedness, and repentance (a repentance which we call for from both sides, since both Israel and Palestine have engaged in acts of evil and cruelty for which the appropriate response is atonement and a genuine seeking of forgiveness from the other side).

nWhile all this has been happening in Israel/Palestine, a group of people who think of themselves as "pro-Palestinian" have launched a boycott of Israeli academics. The boycott recently led a European journal to fire from their editorial board two Israeli academics who actually oppose current Israeli policy. We protest this act of moral blindness and stupidity. Similarly, we oppose any blanket boycott of Israel. We do support narrowly targeted acts to oppose the Occupation—for example, the boycott of Caterpillar which has been selling to the Israeli army tractors specifically designed for use in destroying Palestinian homes.

Time for Repentance and Atonement
This year's commemoration of September 11 offers Americans a perfect time to rethink our society's priorities, to stop and think before engaging in another war, and to change our country's policies so that it becomes the force for ecological sanity, generosity, and sharing the wealth with everyone on the planet—a force for building a world of peace and justice. Please invite people to your home, synagogue, church, mosque, or community center—and have this discussion be the focus of September 11. If you are Jewish, let this be the focus of the Days of Repentance and Atonement (September 6–16). We approach this moment with deep compassion for the pain that leads so many people into denial, but also with a strong intention to make this period of repentance more than an empty ritual: We want to end the cycles of pain and violence, and that requires fundamental changes to which we must give our energies in the coming year. May we all be inscribed for a New Year, 5763, in which the whole planet experiences a rebirth of generosity and kindness, social justice, peace, love and compassion, and ecological sensitivity.

Guest-98a3 · Posted: Fri Feb 14, 2003 6:41 am Post subject: The secret world of Dick Cheney

The secret world of Dick Cheney

by David Batstone

Consider it a sign of the times, the news that is deemed
fit to print. In the very last page of the front section of
Saturday's "The New York Times" (2/8/03) was squeezed a
short story on the betrayal of democracy. The General
Accounting Office (GAO) announced that it was abandoning
its efforts to get records of Vice President Dick Cheney's
energy task force. Kenneth Walker, the comptroller general,
suggests that congressional leaders had urged him to
give up the case. Why this story would not lead the news
(instead of tailing it) is beyond my comprehension.

Cheney, if you recall, had held extensive meetings with
executives among the corporate energy titans during his
early days at the White House. Then-Enron chairman
Kenneth Lay was present and active in these discussions
to retool U.S. energy policy. In my new book, "Saving the
Corporate Soul," I provide firsthand evidence that Lay and
other Enron executives clearly were aware (and even
condoned) as early as 1995 the misrepresentation of
Enron's business operations in order to boost the value
of its stock. By the time 2001 had rolled around - and
Cheney was choosing his trusted energy advisers - the
Enron corruption was operating at mammoth proportions.

Once Enron was exposed, the Cheney team ran for cover.
Investigations into the role of Lay and other private
energy chiefs met a wall of silence at the White House.
Fulfilling its dutiful role as an organ of accountability
in a democratic system, the GAO made a formal request
for the records of the Cheney summits. The vice president
of the United States refused to comply. To this day,
we still do not know how much influence the private
energy sector had in shaping the current administration's
national energy policy, and to benefit whose interests.

The fact that the Bush-Cheney administration today
prepares to launch a pre-emptive attack on Iraq, and
the fact that a key objective in that military strategy is
to have a greater control over the world energy market,
makes a public disclosure of the record of the energy
summits all the more important.

My declarations should not be tarnished as a wacko
conspiracy theory. If Vice President Cheney has nothing to
hide, then why doesn't he share these records with the
American people? If he is hiding something, on the other
hand, and is not forced to reveal what it is, then
conspiracy is the least of our worries. It marks a new
era in secret governance.

War Without End

The global war against terror, news about the illegal invasion of Iraq, the corporate puppet presidents, the war criminal Tony Blair, September 11th 2001, the USS Liberty and New World Order crimes against humanity.

PNAC Group....the List of players - page 2