| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Apr 17, 2004 1:38 pm Post subject: Fisk: Bush Legitimizes Terrorism |
| Weekend Edition
April 16 / 18, 2004
Sharon's "Courageous" Plan
Bush Legitimizes Terrorism
By ROBERT FISK
The Independent
So President George Bush tears up the Israeli-Palestinian peace plan and that's okay. Israeli settlements for Jews and Jews only on the West Bank. That's okay. Taking land from Palestinians who have owned that land for generations, that's okay. UN Security Council Resolution 242 says that land cannot be acquired by war. Forget it. That's okay.
Does President George Bush actually work for al-Qa'ida? What does this mean? That George Bush cares more about his re-election than he does about the Middle East? Or that George Bush is more frightened of the Israeli lobby than he is of his own electorate. Fear not, it is the latter.
His language, his narrative, his discourse on history, has been such a lie these past three weeks that I wonder why we bother to listen to his boring press conferences. Ariel Sharon, the perpetrator of the Sabra and Shatila massacre (1,700 Palestinian civilians dead) is a "man of peace" - even though the official 1993 Israeli report on the massacre said he was "personally responsible" for it. Now, Mr Bush is praising Mr Sharon's plan to steal yet more Palestinian land as a "historic and courageous act".
Heaven spare us all. Give up the puny illegal Jewish settlements in Gaza and everything's okay: the theft of land by colonial settlers, the denial of any right of return to Israel by those Palestinians who lived there, that's okay. Mr Bush, who claimed he changed the Middle East by invading Iraq, says he is now changing the world by invading Iraq! Okay! Is there no one to cry "Stop! Enough!"?
Two nights ago, this most dangerous man, George Bush, talked about "freedom in Iraq". Not "democracy" in Iraq. No, "democracy" was no longer mentioned. "Democracy" was simply left out of the equation. Now it was just "freedom"--freedom from Saddam rather than freedom to have elections. And what is this "freedom" supposed to involve? One group of American-appointed Iraqis will cede power to another group of American-appointed Iraqis. That will be the "historic handover" of Iraqi "sovereignty". Yes, I can well see why George Bush wants to witness a "handover" of sovereignty. "Our boys" must be out of the firing line--let the Iraqis be the sandbags.
Iraqi history is already being written. In revenge for the brutal killing of four American mercenaries - for that is what they were - US Marines carried out a massacre of hundreds of women and children and guerillas in the Sunni Muslim city of Fallujah. The US military says that the vast majority of the dead were militants. Untrue, say the doctors. But the hundreds of dead, many of whom were indeed civilians, were a shameful reflection on the rabble of American soldiery who conducted these undisciplined attacks on Fallujah. Many Baghdadi Sunnis say that in the "New Iraq"--the Iraqi version, not the Paul Bremer version - Fallujah should be given the status of a new Iraqi capital.
Vast areas of the Palestinian West Bank will now become Israel, courtesy of President Bush. Land which belongs to people other than Israelis must now be stolen by Israelis because it is "unrealistic" to accept otherwise. Is Mr Bush a thief? Is he a criminal? Can he be charged with abetting a criminal act? Can Iraq now claim to Kuwait that it is "unrealistic" that the Ottoman borders can be changed? Palestinian land once included all of what is now Israel. It is not, apparently, "realistic" to change this, even to two per cent?
Is Saddam Hussein to be re-bottled and put back in charge of Iraq on the basis that his 1990 invasion of Kuwait was "realistic"? Or that his invasion of Iran--when we helped him try to destroy Ayatollah Khomeini's revolution--was "realistic" because he initially attacked only the Arabic-speaking (and thus "Iraqi") parts of Iran?
Or, since President Bush now seems to be a history buff, are the Germans to be given back Danzig or the Sudetenland? Or Austria? Or should we perhaps recreate the colonial possessions of the past 100 years? Is it not "realistic" that the French should retake Algeria - or part of Algeria - on the basis that the people all speak French, on the basis that this was once part of the French nation? Or should the British retake Cyprus? Or Aden? Or Egypt? Shouldn't the French be allowed to take back Lebanon and Syria? Why shouldn't the British re-take America and boot out those pesky "terrorists" who oppose the rule of King George's democracy well over 200 years ago?
Because this is what George Bush's lunacy and weakness can lead to. We all have lands that "God" gave us. Didn't Queen Mary die with "Calais" engraved on her heart? Doesn't Spain have a legitimate right to the Netherlands? Or Sweden the right to Norway and Denmark? Every colonial power, including Israel can put forward these preposterous demands.
What Bush has actually done is give way to the crazed world of Christian Zionism. The fundamentalist Christians who support Israel's theft of the West Bank on the grounds that the state of Israel must exist there according to God's law until the second coming, believe that Jesus will return to earth and the Israelis--for this is the Bush "Christian Sundie" belief--will then have to convert to Christianity or die in the battle of Amargeddon.
I kid thee not. This is the Christian fundamentalist belief, which even the Israeli embassy in Washington go along with--without comment, of course--in their weekly Christian Zionist prayer meetings. Every claim by Osama bin Laden, every statement that the United States represents Zionism and supports the theft of Arab lands will now have been proved true to millions of Arabs, even those who had no time for Bin Laden. What better recruiting sergeant could Bin Laden have than George Bush. Doesn't he realise what this means for young American soldiers in Iraq or are Israelis more important than American lives in Mesopotamia?
Everything the US government has done to preserve its name as a "middle-man" in the Middle East has now been thrown away by this gutless, cowardly US President, George W Bush. That it will place his soldiers at greater risk doesn't worry him--anyway, he doesn't do funerals. That it goes against natural justice doesn't worry him. That his statements are against international law is of no consequence.
And still we have to cow-tow to this man. If we are struck by al-Qa'ida it is our fault. And if 90 per cent of the population of Spain point out that they opposed the war, then they are pro-terrorists to complain that 200 of their civilians were killed by al-Qa'ida. First the Spanish complain about the war, then they are made to suffer for it--and then they are condemned as "appeasers" by the Bush regime and its craven journalists when they complain that their husbands and wives and sons did not deserve to die.
If this is to be their fate, excuse me, but I would like to have a Spanish passport so that I can share the Spanish people's "cowardice"! If Mr Sharon is "historic" and "courageous", then the murderers of Hamas and Islamic Jihad will be able to claim the same. Mr Bush legitimised "terrorism" this week--and everyone who loses a limb or a life can thank him for his yellow streak. And, I fear, they can thank Mr Blair for his cowardice too.
http://www.counterpunch.com/fisk04162004.html | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Apr 17, 2004 2:21 pm Post subject: Zionist extremist racist Elliott Abrams |
| It would take an Iran contra criminal (who is a Zionist extremist racist) to hatch a criminal plot.
Backroom bureaucrat played key role in US deal with Israel
By James Harding in Washington
Published: April 16 2004 20:29 | Last Updated: April 16 2004 20:29
When George W. Bush was in Britain last November, one of the president's aides was quietly dispatched to Rome for a discreet meeting.
Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, was in Italy and took the opportunity to relay to Mr Bush his plan for unilateral disengagement from the Palestinians. The official the White House sent was Elliott Abrams.
In shaping the Bush administration's historic and highly controversial decision this week to endorse Mr Sharon's Middle East vision, Mr Abrams, the National Security Council official chiefly responsible for Arab-Israeli relations, has played a central, if largely unseen, role.
This does not overstate his influence. Mr Abrams has worked in a trio on Middle East policy that has included his superior, Stephen Hadley, the deputy national security adviser, and William Burns, the State Department official in charge of Middle East policy.
Israeli and US officials also say that the individuals who forged this week's policy were the protagonists: Mr Sharon and Mr Bush.
Mr Abrams' role, according to a senior administration official, was to "carry out what the president wants". In 10 weeks of consultations before this week's announcement, US officials made three trips to see Mr Sharon and his staff and there were two visits from Israeli delegations to the White House.
Mr Abrams and his colleagms and his colleagues, the official said, were "kept on a short leash. [They] were not dreaming up policy."
The Israeli prime minister was one of the few international figures with whom Mr Bush had a relationship before he became president: Mr Sharon was his guide to Israel in 1998 when he was Texas governor.
"I had the honour of traveling the West Bank with Ariel Sharon by helicopter," Mr Bush told an audience at the Republican Jewish Coalition in 1999. "You can imagine what it was like to be given a history lesson by this great warrior and hero of freedom and democracy."
Mr Sharon also had praise this week for Mr Bush.
"I myself have been fighting terror for many years, and understand the threats and cost from terrorism," he said. "In all these years, I have never met a leader as committed as you are, Mr President, to the struggle for freedom and the need to confront terrorism wherever it exists."
These words, say some Middle East experts, may resonate favourably for Mr Bush among Jewish and conservative Christian voters in an election year. Martin Indyk, the former US ambassador to Israel, says: "The president is in a tight spot and Jewish votes matter, particularly in some key states such as Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio."
The White House insists election year politics did not play a part. "The poll data suggest that there is hardly anything that a Republican president can do to move his support among the Jewish community," the senior administration official says.
But to appreciate the internal intellectual argument within the White House for supporting the Sharon plan, diplomats and officials generally agree with a former US official who says: "Elliott was instrumental."
It was Mr Abrams, a senior White House official says, who reasoned that Mr Bush should not be bound by "myths and taboos". It was not helpful for Arab and Palestinian leaders to continue to perpetuate the "myth" that Palestinian refugees would one day return to their homes in Israel.
It was important to create the precedent of withdrawal from the settlements, the official says, rather than making settlements untouchable. And, the official says, it was important to get things moving when there had been no progress since last August.
Mr Abrams, a Reagan official implicated in the Iran-Contra affair, in 1991 admitted withholding information from Congress. He was sentenced to two years' probation and community service.
In the years after he was pardoned by President George H. W. Bush, Mr Abrams wrote a book calling for Jews to return to their faith to stem assimilation. He also helped found the Project for the New American Century, a neo-conservative think-tank that included Dick Cheney, now vice-president, Donald Rumsfeld, defence secretary, and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz.
Mr Abrams supported Mr Sharon, a leader, he once wrote, who knows "the road to peace lies through strength instead of weakness". He is seen as one of the most effective operators in modern American government.
"Elliott Abrams is one of the best bureaucratic artists in Washington. He has traditionally taken bureaucratic positions and turned them into strong positions, because he reads the president and knows what he wants," says Jon Alterman, who was on the State Department's policy and planning staff.
"Elliott Abrams is the person who got the Middle East to talk about reform. [The US] cannot micromanage the universe, but you can force items on to the agenda. He has done a masterful job of that."
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1079420404675
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Excellent Asia Times article on Zionist extremist racist Elliott Abrams:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/DL19Ak01.html
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
ALL FOR ISRAEL:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/04/17/all-for-israel.php | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Apr 18, 2004 2:11 am Post subject: Report Back from Syria |
| Report Back from Syria (and FYI, the Zionists Are Already Re-Building the Third Temple Offsite and Plan to Destroy the Al Aqsa Mosque)
By Wendy Campbell
I just got back from a fabulous trip to Syria, truly a hidden treasure full of fantastic historical sites going back thousands of years and a delightful place with incredibly friendly and hospitable people, even after finding out that I am an American.
You might be surprised to hear that Syria is a fantastic destination, even for Americans. But think about it. Who has been telling you that Syria is full of terrorists? Of course, it's the Zionist-dominated American media. The very same media that has been embedded as part of our Zionist-dominated war-mongoring government. The very same media that has been beating the drums for war against all the countries that Zionists would like to see the US invade and "democratize". The very same media that when being "risque" may even try to blame the war on "oil". The very same media that goes out of its way to avoid the word "Zionism" or explaining Israel's apartheid regime, or Israel's on-going history of ethnic-cleansing against non-Jewish indigenous Palestinians in Palestine-Israel. The very same media that tries to deny that the war on Iraq has been a war fought on only Israel's behalf.
Yes, THAT U.S. media. That Department of Misinformation.
So, no wonder that I, for one, was not surprised to find out that Syria is actually a friendly, beautiful and fascinating place to visit.
However, I must say, that I was surprised at how incredibly friendly the Syrian people were. We went in with a small group tour, all Christians (mostly Christian Scientists, and a couple Roman Catholics), and one agnostic.
Everywhere we went, even just walking down the street, many of the Syrian people called out "Hello" and "Welcome!" to us, even after they found out we were American, which we were more than a little ashamed to admit since we are all anti-war and detest Bush's policies. We were welcomed into many Syrians' homes for "flower tea" or Syrian or Turkish coffee, into upscale homes, modest city apartments and Bedouin beehive-shaped adobe mud homes sitting on carpets way out in the countryside.
By the way, our tour guide, a Greek Orthodox Christian, said on several occasions to our group that Syrians are not against Jews and Judaism but they are against Zionism. Syrians all know what Zionism is, but Zionist Jews in this country have not gone out of their way to explain to non-Jewish Americans exactly what Zionism is. The typical explanation a Zionist Jew will give to explain to a non-Jew when asked about Zionism is to claim that Zionism is the belief that Jews must have a homeland in Israel, formerly known as Palestine, and that Jews must have self-sovereignty in a Jewish state. They never include the fact that in order for Jews to have a Jewish state, it has always been and continues to be at the expense of the indigenous non-Jewish Palestinian people. Zionists typically put a veil on the ugly way in which Israel was created and Israel’s on-going ethnic cleansing campaign against the indigenous, non-Jewish Palestinian people who are being persecuted and denied equal rights in their own ancestral homeland.
The ethnocentric Jewish state of Israel is also maintained at the expense of the American people with the billions of our tax dollars which our government funnels to Israel every year unconditionally and virtually on demand. On top of that, our government’s political and economic support of the apartheid state of Israel has created anti-American sentiment worldwide and sacrifices our credibility. Palestinians continue to pay the ultimate price for racist Israel with their lives and property, but now Americans are paying not only with their tax dollars and our country’s reputation, but also with American blood in fighting wars for Israel, such as the war on Iraq.
Fortunately not all Jews are Zionists and not all Jews try to hide the truth about Zionism and Zionist Israel. An excellent primer entitled “Origin of the Palestine-Israel Conflict” written by Jews For Justice in the Middle East can be found at the website www.cactus48.com <http://www.cactus48.com/> . For information about how some Jews believe Zionism to be the exact opposite of Judaism, read about the Neturei Karta, a worldwide organization of Ultra Orthodox Jews, at www.nkusa.org <http://www.nkusa.org/> or order my documentary entitled “Neturei Karta: Jews Against Zionism” via my website at www.exposingisraeliapartheid.com <http://www.exposingisraeliapartheid.com/> .
Contrary to what Zionists' would have Americans believe, Syrian women are free to wear whatever they want. In any given street scene or restaurant, the spectrum of clothing that women in Syria wear ranges from Brittany Spears' style skin-tight jeans and teeshirts (but no belly showing) to professional Western-style suits, to wearing a hejab and sometimes a traditional robe to being entirely covered in flowing black, face included (mostly from Iran, I was told). There were no Afghan-style burqas to be found, even in a store, which we had wanted to bring back for a Halloween outfit.
Contrary to what Zionists would have you believe about the Muslim men oppressing their women, we found Muslim men to be very charming, natural and relaxed and even deferential to women. As a woman I felt completely comfortable in communicating with the Syrian men I met. In fact, at one point, my fiance decided to stay with the tour in the museum, and I decided to split to explore the nearby shops on my own. We were in Aleppo, the oldest continuously inhabited by humans city in the entire world. I went into a shop that sold some hookah pipes to photograph them, and a small gathering of men inside the shop kindly invited me to join them in smoking the "hubbly-bubbly" as it is called. I was sincere when I said I would like to but didn't have time. They were most gracious.
By the way, the "hubbly-bubbly" is a recent popular craze at all the Syrian restaurants and cafes. It is just flavored tobacco with apple being the current Syrian favorite, but it is available in other flavors such as mint, cappuccino and more. I tried it twice later, and can attest to the fact that it is very mild tobacco. I did not even get a nicotine buzz! It's just a fun thing to do. It made me think of the hookah-smoking caterpillar in “Alice in Wonderland”. Both men and women smoke it with languid relish. It certainly adds to the exotic mystique of Syrian ambiance.
Another common myth that the Zionist-dominated media puts forth is that the Syrian President Assad is some kind of malevolent dictator. We found that both Assad Jr, and his father are very popular with most Syrians. Many of the homes we visited, including a Kurdish Bedouin adobe beehive-shaped home, had a poster of him prominently displayed on their living room wall. I asked our guide if this was mandatory in Syria, and he replied that it was not and pointed out how he hadn’t put up a poster of Assad in his living room where we had all enjoyed some flower tea and Turkish coffee early in the trip. Not only were the posters of Assad in most public buildings, and a private Christian school, and restaurants, many Syrians had a decal of him on their cars! A Syrian businesswoman who joined us for dinner in Damascus one night spoke very warmly and approvingly of Assad, and she seemed quite sincere. Syrians think their president is doing a great job. This is certainly something Bush cannot boast of! I don’t know anyone who has a poster of him anywhere in the USA unless it’s making fun of him!
Yet another common myth is that Jews were chased out of Syria, and that any Jews who remain in Syria are discriminated against. It should come as no real surprise in this age of Orwellian “news” that quite the opposite is true. First of all, many Jews left Syria voluntarily to be in Israel, which as you know gives favored status to Jews. The Jews who have chosen to stay in Syria are among the wealthiest of Syrian society. On top of that, the Syrian government goes out of its way to make sure that Jews are not discriminated against there, and in fact, apparently Jews get preferential treatment in many cases. Just for an example, Jews may get governmental documents speedier than non-Jews in Syria precisely to avoid any charges of discrimination, we were told. We personally met a Jewish man who was managing his antiques shop in Damascus, where he had non-Jewish shop-owners as neighbors. They all seemed to get along together quite well. Once again, another Zionist myth shattered.
One interesting fact about Syria is that cars are prohibitively expensive there, with huge taxes being imposed on them, sometimes three times as much as the original price of the car! Therefore, Syria is simply awash in taxi-cabs! It’s very cheap to take taxis in Syria, fortunately, and they also have community taxis for those on a very tight budget.
It may not come as a big surprise that the Syrian newspapers have many stories about the evils of Zionism, the neoconservatives, apartheid Israel, Israel's Apartheid Wall, the war crimes of Ariel Sharon, and general wrath about Israel's aggression against the Palestinian people. These kinds of candid stories are not what one typically finds in the US media. By the way, there were no Syrian stories dwelling on that red herring of "oil" as the reason for the US-led war on Iraq. Because the Syrians know, along with the rest of the world, that the war on Iraq was the brainchild of Israel and the Zionists, both Israeli and American.
The following revelation most likely will come as a surprise to you, dear readers, as it was even a surprise to me, an expert on Zionism and Palestine-Israel.
As a matter of fact, it is a fact that is not known by many outside of Israel or the Middle East:
The Zionist Jews are already re-building the Third Temple offsite somewhere in the Jewish state of Israel, which they plan to re-locate to the original site of the first two temples in Jerusalem--- on top of the Temple Mount where the Al Aqsa Mosque currently sits. The Zionists are waiting for the right moment to destroy the Al Aqsa Mosque of the Dome of the Rock, which is the third most holy site of the Muslim world, and then re-locate the temple they are currently building off-site. We were informed about this endeavor by a top-level Syrian businessman during our trip over dinner.
According to him there are many Zionist organizations whose sole purpose is to realize this event. Apparently this is common knowledge in the Middle East, yet Americans are certainly not aware of this. This makes it even clearer why Sharon’s visit to the Al Aqsa Mosque in September 2000 with 1000 troops sparked off the Second Intifada by the Palestinians. Of course, the Palestinians were already pushed to the boiling point by many factors at that point.
However the military visit to Al Aqsa Mosque was a deliberately provocative act by Sharon to show that he was stepping up the timetable to realize the Zionist dream of rebuilding the Temple on the site of the Al Aqsa mosque, heralding a NEW WORLD ORDER with Jerusalem as the capital of the world. The Zionists have already been digging tunnels underneath the Al Aqsa Mosque. For more information about this, please check out http://www.hoffman-info.com/warren.html and also http://www.templemount.org/tempprep.html.
Of course, the Palestinians reacted predictably violently as Sharon was hoping, to give him an excuse to “retaliate” with even greater force and more deadly violence, since Israel has the fourth strongest army in the world, and the Palestinians have NONE.
Unfortunately for Sharon, the WILL OF THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE is stronger than all of his weapons. However, the Palestinian people are being sorely tried. It’s up to the American people who have been enlightened about the evil of Zionism to spread the word of this new Nazism, this neo-Nazism, and to stop it by pressuring our government to end its unconditional support of racist apartheid Israel and becoming the media ourselves. We must spread the word NOW. There is still time for JUSTICE to triumph over evil.
As a lone sign at the recent anti-war rally in NYC on March 20th stated: "Second Most Important World Super-Power: American Public Opinion."
If you believe in justice for all regardless of religion, ethnicity or sex, you and me, we've got our work cut out for us.
At any rate, if you are looking for a fantastic, eye-opening adventure with good value for your money, I highly recommend that you consider taking a trip to Syria. I have been to many places around the world, and my trip to Syria ranks somewhere at the very top.
For more information on travel to Syria, contact author Scott Davis about his upcoming tours to Syria and his book “Road From Damascus” via his website www.cunepress.net <http://www.cunepress.net/> and www.dialoguesyria.org <http://www.dialoguesyria.org/> . If you want to go to Syria on your own, please contact Caravan-Serai. Based in Seattle, they specialize in arranging travel to Middle Eastern countries. Their website is www.caravan-serai.com <http://www.caravan-serai.com/> .
For information on how to get a VHS tape of a travelogue-documentary I am making about my trip to Syria, please contact me via my website at www.exposingisraeliapartheid.com.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yahoo! Groups Links
To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/shamireaders/
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
shamireaders-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon Apr 19, 2004 12:52 am Post subject: Bush's dangerous arrogance |
| Subj: Bush's dangerous arrogance
Date: 4/18/04 4:02:05 PM Pacific Daylight Time
From: jblankfort@earthlink.net
Sent from the Internet (Details)
What is significant about this article, apart from its contents, is that its author is a veteran correspondent who has been unabashedly pro-American.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1194276,00.html
Bush's dangerous arrogance
HenryPorter
Sunday April 18, 2004
The Observer
Somewhere in the mesmerising performance by RobertS.McNamara, the former US Defence Secretary, in the film The Fog of War, he says: 'America has no friends, only allies.'
It's a phrase that should be chiselled into the Cabinet table because each new Prime Minister believes that the special relationship, a phrase that is unrecognised in the States, entails special favours, access and status.
Any such illusion must have disintegrated for Blair last week after Sharon and Bush, operating in the exclusive club of their victimhood, made an announcement about the future of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Naturally, the Palestinians were not consulted; it is merely their land.
More surprising in a way was that Blair remained outside the loop from last Sunday onwards when Sharon's people met two members of the National Security Council and a senior American diplomat in Washington's Hay Adams Hotel to thrash out an agreement before Sharon arrived 48 hours later.
Blair gave no hint of bitterness in the RoseGarden press conference on Friday, but considering the risks he has taken to support America since 9/11, it was astonishingly ungracious of Bush to keep him out of these negotiations. The 'Road Map' and the promise of multilateral action in Palestine and the West Bank were, after all, the only real concession that Blair won in exchange for British help in Iraq. Yet before he had even touched down in America, the deal was done. Bush's undertaking to his 'friend' had been chucked away like a motto in Christmas cracker.
I am one of those who believe that Blair should be relieved of his duties because of the failure to find WMD but, even so, I would not wish the humiliation he has suffered on him or any British Prime Minister. He has been one of America's staunchest allies, biting his lip at the serial crassness of US commanders and arguing the American case tirelessly, as he did last weekend in these pages. Yet, despite the enthusiastic tone at the White House, the reality is that he was cast aside as soon as Bush didn't need him.
American foreign policy consists entirely of self-interest, never more so than in an election year when a first-term President is pursuing an extra couple of per cent of Jewish votes in Florida and Ohio. For this, the President attempts to put the world's most serious problem into storage, leaving the destiny of people hanging in the air and the world open-mouthed at the nakedness of his motives.
The Prime Minister has argued that the Sharon plan is, in effect, stage one of the 'Road Map' and that it may contain an opportunity for progress, but the signs are not hopeful for the simple reason that it dismisses Security Council resolution 242 which demands an Israeli withdrawal to pre-1967 borders. Drafted by the British, 242 is the central pillar of the Palestinian case and to have it dismissed by the Americans and Israelis will add to their rage and sense of injustice.
In his Observer article last week about Iraq, the Prime Minister wrote that a 'significant part of Western opinion is sitting back, if not half-hoping we fail, certainly replete with Schadenfreude at the difficulty we find'. There's a reason for this which he may have appreciated better at the end of last week than he did at the beginning. A vast proportion of intelligent Western opinion is sick of the world's most delicate problems being subsumed to the ambitions of a few American politicians.
We hurried to war last year so that it wouldn't overlap with Bush's election campaign. We are about to hand over to a sovereign authority in Iraq, the nature of which is still unclear, so that he can distance himself from events there during the run-up to 4 November. Now, Bush dispatches the Palestinian problem to the distant rim of the agenda with this shoddy fix in a hotel room.
TonyBlair was wrong to suggest that some wish for failure. The world is too perilous for that; they just pray that the American and British governments understand the reasons for the failures so far. Opponents of the war may have given up worrying about the WMD, mostly because Blair and Bush no longer feel the need to answer for their mistake. But this doesn't allay their fears about the disastrous mishandling of the peace. The mistakes are ongoing and cumulative, chiefly because America is perceived as having a distinct bias against Arabs and Islam. Britain, though more balanced in its attitude, is dragged along in the slipstream and no one inIraq is in the mood to make fine distinctions.
A valuable lesson, which RobertMcNamara has lived long enough to learn and which he expresses with a certain gritty sadness in The Fog of War, is the need to empathise with your foe.
America and Britain have failed to do that at practically every turn. Western troops are not regarded as bearers of the gift of democracy but an invading force that has ripped pride and sovereignty from the Iraqi people. This is not to say that Iraqis don't appreciate the beginnings of a free press and increased civil liberties, but other religious and cultural emotions have come into play. We must recognise them in order to isolate the real troublemakers.
The most worrying trend has been the way so many stories have merged into a single current: Palestine, Iraq, the warnings to US citizens in Saudi Arabia, bin Laden's tape and the 9/11 hearings have all come together to create a sense of general intractability. The clash of civilisations predicted by American neoconservative thinkers seems to be happening before our eyes.
There are solutions to many of these problems, chiefly an increased role for the United Nations, now being wooed by the Prime Minister and Bush. Kofi Annan should use this to his advantage, for the only way to establish peace in Iraq, or Palestine, is with the international community's reinvigorated will.
The UN is the only organisation that can get Britain and America out of the mess they are in. Rather than being polite and diplomatic, the Secretary General should ram that message home, reminding them how America swept aside the reservations of the international community last year.
The UN has suffered greatly from Bush's arrogance. He must now concede that US military might is not everything. Iraq was a mistake of a very large order and that should be entered into the public record so that the American public may consider it on 4 November.
All is not lost. The solutions are there and we can reach for them if only we have the will to push back the American influence and rein in our Prime Minister's ludicrous attempt to strut the world stage.
There were smiles of conviction and staunchness in the RoseGarden on Friday, indicating to some that the special relationship was not dead. But the only foreign leader who has any claim to be America's friend had just left town with the deeds to the West Bank in his back pocket. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon Apr 19, 2004 1:20 am Post subject: Russert Asks, Kerry Avoids |
| Subj: Russert Asks, Kerry Avoids
Date: 4/18/04 4:37:23 PM Pacific Daylight Time
From: jblankfort@earthlink.net
Sent from the Internet (Details)
If anyone still thinks that John Kerry will be a whit better that the Resident on foreign policy, each day seems to bring with it further proof that is a foolish illusion. This man, who is not "a useful idiot" like Bush and is able to string at least several coherent sentences together at a time, has clearly placed himself in the pocket of the pro-Israel lobby. His refusal to give answers to what are straightforward questions by Russert is as inexcusable as Bush's performance on Tuesday night. Moreover, while Bush is trying to get the US out from under what has become a debacle in Iraq and get US troops out of there, Kerry and his supporters are calling for more troops to be sent. Meanwhile, Nader seems to be silent on both issues. (Thanks to Jim Harris for the transcript.)
Jeff
From http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4772030/
EXCERPT:
MR. RUSSERT: Israel assassinated Hamas leader Rantisi. Do you support that assassination?
SEN. KERRY: I believe Israel has every right in the world to respond to any act of terror against it. Hamas is a terrorist, brutal organization. It has had years to make up its mind to take part in a peaceful process. They refuse to. Arafat refuses to. And I support Israel's efforts to try to separate itself and to try to be secure. The moment Hamas says, "We've given up violence, we're prepared to negotiate," I am absolutely confident they will find an Israel that is thirsty to have that negotiation.
MR. RUSSERT: On Thursday, President Bush broke with the tradition and policy of six predecessors when he said that Israel can keep part of the land seized in the 1967 Middle East War and asserted the Palestinian refugees cannot go back to their particular homes. Do you support President Bush?
SEN. KERRY: Yes.
MR. RUSSERT: Completely?
SEN. KERRY: Yes.
MR. RUSSERT: You also said in December that you would consider as presidential ambassadors to the Middle East President Clinton, but also former President Carter and Secretary of State Baker. You then met with Jewish leaders and said, "I will not send Carter or Baker." Why?
SEN. KERRY: I think that what I was trying to talk about, Tim, was a kind of potential for
bipartisanship as to how you might be able to approach putting a special envoy in place. The names obviously need to be acceptable to everybody within the community. You've got to do that as a matter of diplomacy. Subsequent to those names being floated, obviously, some people have different views about it.
MR. RUSSERT: Why do you think Carter and Baker are not acceptable?
SEN. KERRY: Well, that's not important. What's important is how to resolve the crisis, how do you move forward. I believe there's a way to move forward, I'm convinced of that. Now, I think what the president did in the last few days is to recognize a reality that even President Clinton came to. If you're going to have a Jewish state, and that is what we are committed to do and that is what Israel is, you cannot have a right of return that's open-ended or something. You just can't do it. It's always been a non-starter. I personally said that at a speech I gave to the Arab community in New York at the World Economic Forum. I've said that. I've also said that it is realistic because we know that at Taba they negotiated the annexation of certain territory. So it's really stating a reality.
What this administration has not done that it needs to do, what we need is a diplomacy that is ongoing and engaged with the Arab community in order to help to create and help emerge the kind of entity that will provide a peaceful resolution to this. Israel has no partner, no one to be able to negotiate with today. I think the United States and this administration could have done a much more effective job of helping that to emerge, but they were completely disengaged. I will not be disengaged. And I will have somebody involved in that at the highest level that has the respect of the community, the trust of Israel, and we will be able to move forward. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Apr 21, 2004 6:56 am Post subject: Robert Fisk-Live interview: Iraq power handover 'a fraud' |
| Date: Tue Apr 20, 2004 2:20 pm
Subject: Robert Fisk-Live interview
Iraq power handover 'a fraud'
Reporter: Tony Jones
TONY JONES: Back now to the day's developments in Israel and Iraq.
The assassination of Hamas leader Dr Abdel-Aziz Rantissi at the weekend has unleashed rage and fury on the streets of Gaza just days after President George W Bush backed Israel's sovereignty over West Bank settlements in return for a total pull-out of settlers from the Gaza Strip.
In Iraq, meanwhile, troops from Spain are preparing to go home just as America has announced the death of its 700th soldier in fighting there.
Well, joining me now is Robert Fisk.
He's a correspondent for the British newspaper the 'Independent' and is a 25-year veteran of reporting from the Middle East.
Robert Fisk, thanks for joining us.
ROBERT FISK, WRITER & JOURNALIST: Thank you.
TONY JONES: Let's start with Iraq if we can and the immense problems the United States now faces in handing the country back to Iraqis.
Just to start with that, anyway.
The June 30th deadline now looks like it's going to be postponed.
What will be the consequences if it is?
ROBERT FISK: Nothing.
The handover is basically a fraud.
The governing council, which is appointed by the Americans, and which is the Iraqi Government at the moment would merely be handing over to another group of American-picked Iraqis.
They're not democratically elected, the new institution, whatever it is.
We don't even know what it's going to be.
I notice that when President Bush gave his press conference three days ago, he said that Mr Brahimi was working on that, referring to Lakhdar Brahimi, the former Algerian foreign minister who's special envoy to Iraq for the UN's Kofi Annan, but Mr Brahimi found that quite a surprise.
He's not trying to put together a future government - he's trying to arrange elections and that may not be until next year.
Even if there was a democratically elected government to hand over sovereignty to, which is there not, the sovereignty doesn't mean anything because under the laws that Paul Bremer, the US proconsul in Baghdad has already enacted for post June 30, all the Iraqi security forces will be commanded by United States officers, so that's not a handover of sovereignty.
TONY JONES: The Americans obviously were putting a lot of faith in Mr Brahimi performing some kind of miracle.
You think that's not going to happen.
Could, however, the United Nations be under much more pressure now to get seriously involved in perhaps taking over the administration of Iraq?
ROBERT FISK: Well, the poor old UN.
You know, when we wanted to rush into war, we batted the UN donkey around the ear and told them it wasn't standing up enough and now we're trying to drag the old UN donkey to save us in Iraq because after all we realise it's all gone wrong.
I don't think that the UN is going to go into Iraq on June 30.
I cannot see the end, or the depth, to which the current bloodshed is going.
I can't see a way out at the moment.
Ultimately, I think it will have to be - if it's not just going to be an abandoned Iraq with Iraqis trying to run it, I think it would be - it has to be Arab force, an Arab league force.
We're going to have to see Syrians in there, Emirates, the Saudis, Egyptians, but even that will start to fracture and fragment across the Arab world in the Middle East.
I simply can't see a way out, when you build a war on illusions and fantasies and you don't get international mandate to run it, then your occupation will fail.
The British occupation in Iraq took three years to fail between 1917 and 1920.
It took us, the British, three years to unite the Shiites and the Sunnis behind us.
It's quite an achievement - the Americans have managed to unite the Shiites and the Sunnis against them in just one year.
TONY JONES: I'll come specifically to that possibility in a moment.
First, let's look at the immediate crisis faced by the US administrator, Paul Bremer, in Najaf.
The Americans have already said they're going to kill or capture Moqtada al-Sadr.
What will happen if they go into Najaf with guns blazing?
ROBERT FISK: I don't think they will.
I think that there's a kind of discontinuation of serious political relations between Bremer and the US military.
Because what Bremer says and sometimes what Bush says doesn't bear any relation to what people like Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, the deputy chief of US operations in Iraq, or General Sanchez for that matter actually say.
I don't think Bremer ordered anyone to arrest or kill, certainly arrest but not necessarily kill, Moqtada al-Sadr.
But the direct result of what the Americans have said is quite simple.
Shiites, who would never have dreamt of supporting Moqtada al-Sadr, are now prepared to fight the Americans if they come into Najaf.
Of course, the Americans have boxed themselves in.
First of all, they were going to go into Fallujah and capture the men, the terrorists - everyone's a terrorist if you fight the Americans - who had so brutally murdered those four American mercenaries three weeks ago but they're not Fallujah, they realise they've killed so many Iraqis, at least 600, many of them women and children, that they simply can't go on.
Now they're standing around Najaf with what?
2,500 troops.
You can't conquer a city of so many Shiites with 2,500 troops.
It's going to need a massive bombardment.
To do that to the major Shiite shrine in the world, one of the major Shiite shrines, it's unthinkable.
I think the Americans have reached a point where they can't do much more militarily and politically they finished quite a while ago.
It's a terrible, terrible situation but mostly, remember, for the Iraqis.
They're doing more dying than our soldiers are doing.
TONY JONES: What role then do you think the old Ayatollahs, particularly Sistani, are going to play as this situation starts to play itself out around Najaf?
ROBERT FISK: Well, Sistani, you see, still hopes that if there is a future administration the Shiites will basically run it.
They are the majority population.
They are 60 per cent of the population of Iraq.
He doesn't want to do anything which is going to allow the Sunnis to come back and run the country as they did under Kassim, Saddam, the Ba'ath Party and so on.
There's going to come a time and he's beginning to speak much more harshly - when he's not going to be able any longer to hold back an overall Shi'ite resistance against the United States.
He's not going to be able to do it.
If the Americans do try to enter the holy city of Najaf, they're in the suburbs at the moment but they're nowhere near the shrines, if they do try to enter, then I think Sistani will have to call for a war against them.
He'll be finished if he doesn't.
TONY JONES: This is before the war, you predicted on this program, you predicted a likely civil war in Iraq if the invasion went ahead.
The Americans are now saying that the thing they most fear as you started referring to at the beginning of this interview is a temporary alliance between the Shiites and the Sunnis and some of the American analysts are pointing to what happened in Lebanon when the Sunnis and Shia got together to push the Israelis out.
They're saying that's the analogy they most fear, not Vietnam but Lebanon?
ROBERT FISK: The Americans have got it wrong.
As so often happens in the Middle East, the Sunnis played no part in throwing the Israelis out of Lebanon.
That's what the Shiites did and the Sunnis did very little about the resistance.
It was basically a Shi'ite resistance on its own that threw the Israelis out of Lebanon.
I think, although unfortunately my prediction of serious resistance more than a year ago is proving tragically to be correct, I think I was probably wrong in saying there would be a civil war.
The only people who are talking about civil war at the moment in Iraq are the Americans and the British and the Western journalists who suck up their lines and push it back out as their own analysis.
I haven't actually met an Iraqi who wants a civil war or who's talked about a civil war.
There's never been a civil war in Iraq.
I rather suspect that this danger of civil war - and I'm guilty before the war quite rightly predicting there might be --is being pushed out by the Americans and the British in order to frighten the Iraqis into obedience.
"If you don't put your guns, down look what might happen, you'll have civil war."
I think the reason why they're wrong and why I was wrong is that they never appreciated that the Iraqi tribal system covers both communities - many Shiite tribes also are Sunnis, they're in the same tribes.
I went out the other day - and this is an interesting example, to go to the funeral of a doctor, of a Sunni, who had been murdered almost certainly by a Shiite gang of gunmen.
When I said, "What does this make you feel about your neighbours?", they said, "Nothing.
"They're our friends and our comrades and our neighbours."
"Because," he said "our tribes include the Shiites."
The brother of the doctor said, "Look, my wife is a Shiite.
"Want do you want me to do?
"Go and kill her?
"Because my brother was killed by a Shiite?
"No, we will not have a civil war."
So I think possibly there will not a civil war and I think it is becoming highly provocative of the occupying power to constantly talk about it in this way as if they almost want a civil war.
If we journalists started talking it about after the occupation we would have called irresponsible by the occupying power.
So why are they suddenly talking about civil war now?
TONY JONES: Going back to what you said at the beginning of the program and as a summary of what you just told us, are we likely to see a temporary alliance between the Shia and the Sunni to throw the Americans out?
ROBERT FISK: I think it's going that way.
We're not yet at a serious alliance.
After all the British are in Basra, a major Shiite city and compared to the Americans there is some violence but compared to the Americans they're getting off lightly.
This at the moment, remember, is primarily an anti-American resistance.
Although, we know the Italians have been attacked, the Spanish have been attacked and are leaving, the British have been a little bit attacked, it is primarily an anti-American resistance.
But if the Shiites do join in full it will become an anti-Westerner resistance just as the whole hostage-taking fiasco is turning into an anti-Western campaign.
But, again, I stress there have never been a civil war in Iraq and I think that the tribal system there which is everything, unfortunately, that stands against the possibility of democracy, the tribal system might save Iraq from that, if in the end we have to go and leave Iraq with our tail between our legs which of course Mr Bush has no intention of doing because he wants to win an election in November.
TONY JONES: Let's move to the other flash point.
We've just seen the assassination of yet another Hamas leader and only days before that Ariel Sharon was cutting a deal in Washington with the President to allow effectively the cessation of West Bank settlements.
Those two things, how do they fit together and what's the future hold do you think, at least the immediate future, in that part of the Middle East?
ROBERT FISK: Well, let's bring Iraq and the Palestine-Israeli conflict together.
They have one thing in common - they are about occupation.
President Bush in his letter to Sharon, PM Sharon of Israel, has effectively said, he has said in fact, that there is no obligation on Israel withdrawing to the '67 borders which they were behind prior to the '67 Middle East war which means that the whole of UN Security Council resolution 242, the fundamentals of peace has been overruled by the Bush Administration.
Now, it is apparently legitimate for the reality of the statements to be accepted so that land taken from Arabs illegally under international law for Jews and Jews only by the Israelis, that's now OK around Jerusalem.
Well, what we're dealing with here, and with Hamas which is an extremely brutal organisation - let's not get romantic about it - both with the Palestinians and with the Iraqis two groups of people who say, "We will not be occupied by other people, we want to keep our land."
Whether you are talking about the Palestinians who say, "We'll accept the Palestine, 22 per cent of Palestine left as opposed to all of Palestine including what is now Israel, or whether you're talking about the extremists and whether you're talking about Iraqis who don't really want warfare in their streets but hate the occupying power, what we're dealing with in the Middle East is two occupying forces coming up against an unstoppable opposition.
The brutality that that can give way we saw in Fallujah with the murder of the four American mercenaries and their mutilation and we've seen it again with the massive causalities the marines have inflicted on the people if Fallujah.
But if you want to know how bad it can get, go back to the French war in Algeria from 1954 to 1962, it has followed identical patterns - the French put settlements in or the French said, "We will crush any opposition."
It started off low yield - bombs beside the road, a bomb in front of a train then it went on to kidnapping then it went onto bombs in discos, the same as pizza houses or the same as hotels in Baghdad, and then it escalated to mass killings in the cities of Algeria and, of course, it ended with a humiliating French retreat which changed French history forever.
TONY JONES: Robert Fisk on that rather grim note we will have to leave it.
We thank you once again for coming in to talking to us tonight. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Apr 21, 2004 7:45 am Post subject: Seen One Killer, Seen 'em All? |
| http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-shatz15apr15,1,3155260.story
April 15, 2004
COMMENTARY
Seen One Killer, Seen 'em All?
Bush's lumping together of dissimilar militant groups is a dangerous mistake.
COMMENTARY
By Adam Shatz
"The violence we are seeing in Iraq is familiar," President Bush argued, with seductive simplicity, in Tuesday's press conference.
"The terrorist who takes hostages or plants a roadside bomb near Baghdad," he continued, "is serving the same ideology of murder that kills innocent people on trains in Madrid and murders children on buses in Jerusalem and blows up a nightclub in Bali and cuts the throat of a young reporter for being a Jew. We've seen the same ideology of murder in the killing of 241 Marines in Beirut, the first attack on the World Trade Center, in the destruction of two embassies in Africa, in the attack on the U.S.S. Cole and in the merciless horror inflicted upon thousands of innocent men and women and children on Sept. 11, 2001."
Bush's argument boiled down to this: A terrorist is a terrorist, whether he is a member of Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas or of an Iraqi resistance organization fighting American troops — and, whatever their differences, they are all inflamed by the "same ideology of murder." Intended as an expression of "moral clarity," it's likely to convince many Americans. But does it hold up? Are such groups all the same, and are they actually driven by an identical ideology?
Let's start by defining terrorism. It's a notoriously slippery concept: As the cliche goes, one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter. But the most widely accepted and neutral definition is that it is violence against civilians to achieve political aims.
Do all of Bush's examples pass the test? Certainly the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and in Bali and Madrid, do. But what about the bombing of the Marine barracks in 1983 by Lebanese militants belonging to Islamic Jihad (the precursor to Hezbollah), which Bush also referred to? However appalling, this was directed at a military target in the midst of a civil war. The Marines landed in Beirut as peacekeepers, but they came in the aftermath of Israel's invasion and were perceived by the Shiite community as intervening on the side of Israel and its Christian Falangist allies.
Likewise, however much one deplores the roadside bombings of American soldiers by Iraqi fighters, such acts scarcely qualify as "terrorism." The aim is not to kill American civilians but to target soldiers and thereby drive the American army out of Iraq. Whether you support it or oppose it, it's not terrorism; it's resistance to occupation.
As for the horrifying suicide attacks by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade on buses and in restaurants in Israel, they certainly qualify as terrorism — i.e., violence against civilians to achieve political aims. But it is unfair (and misleading) to say that these attacks are motivated by a diffuse "ideology of murder." In fact, they're motivated by long-simmering nationalist rage against a 37-year-old occupation that shows few signs of abating; despite the similarity in methods, they are distinct from Al Qaeda's attacks on trains and resorts. This does not excuse such attacks, but it does distinguish them.
Unlike Al Qaeda, moreover, Palestinian militants are not at war with the U.S. Hamas' arena of operations is limited, and so are its aims: Its struggle is with Israel, not with the West.
Giandomenico Picco, the former U.N. diplomat who helped secure the release of the Western hostages held by Shiite militants in Lebanon in the late 1980s, believes it is important to draw a careful distinction between "tactical" and "strategic" terrorism. Tactical terror, however murderous, is a means of pursuing concrete territorial goals that — whether we agree with them or not — are at least real goals. Strategic terror, by contrast, is an end in itself.
Many nationalist groups have used tactical terrorism, from Algeria's National Liberation Front to South Africa's African National Congress to the Irish Republican Army to the Irgun and Stern Gang in Palestine during the British mandate period. Once they achieved independence, these groups generally abandoned terrorism, and many former "terrorists" have become statesmen, among them Nelson Mandela (the leader of a group long classified as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department) and Menachem Begin (who, as the leader of the Irgun militia, presided over the July 22, 1946, bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem that killed 91 civilians).
Since the end of Israel's 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon four years ago, Hezbollah has largely followed this pattern. The organization now has nine deputies in the Lebanese parliament, where it has focused its efforts on improving the lives of its Shiite constituents. Although the party continues to exchange fire with Israeli soldiers on the border and to offer rhetorical and logistical support for Palestinian militants, it has not been implicated in an attack on Western civilians in more than a decade. The first Islamic cleric to denounce 9/11 was none other than Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, Lebanon's senior Shiite cleric who served as Hezbollah's spiritual guide at the time of the 1983 bombings. Like most Shiites, he loathes the Sunni fundamentalists of Al Qaeda, who in turn revile the Shiites.
Al Qaeda, by contrast, has declared war on the United States and the West, and its terrorism is strategic: not simply a means to an end but an end in itself. Its ideology is fanatical, apocalyptic and expansionist, and its goal — the restoration of an Islamic caliphate and the elimination of "Crusaders and Zionists" — is a recipe for endless war.
Far from being an expression of moral clarity, Bush's promiscuous definition of terrorism blinds us to the distinctions among groups with very different and often-clashing agendas and threatens to drag us into further unnecessary wars.
To insist upon these distinctions is not to excuse the murder of civilians, which must be condemned, or to endorse the agenda of nationalist insurgencies that use "tactical terror." Rather, it is to acknowledge that terror comes in different forms, and that in order to combat it successfully, we need to know which kind we're confronting.
Adam Shatz is literary editor of The Nation. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Apr 21, 2004 7:55 am Post subject: BUSH BLOWS IT AGAIN |
| Sent: Monday, April 19, 2004 9:18 AM
Subject: Good ole Charley Reese
From the web site at:
http://reese.king-online.com/Reese_20040419/index.php
-----------------------------------------------------
BUSH BLOWS IT AGAIN
by Charley Reese
President George W. Bush continues to mislead the American
people as to the cause of terrorism directed against the United
States.
This week he guaranteed that more Americans will die from
terrorist attacks due to his stabbing the Palestinians in the
back. He has from the beginning acted as if he were a
ventriloquist's dummy and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
were the ventriloquist.
He proved it again by buying into Sharon's scheme to steal great
globs of Palestinian land in the West Bank, and by arrogantly
denying the right of Palestinian refugees to return home or be
compensated. Israel has no legal right to the land occupied by
settlements; the whole world recognizes this and has for
decades. The United States used to recognize it until Bush
decided to kiss the most ample part of Sharon's anatomy.
How dare George Bush tell Palestinian refugees, ethnically
cleansed in 1947-48 and again in 1967, that they have no rights?
What unmitigated gall and arrogance he shows, what contempt for
the Palestinians and indeed for the whole Muslim world. When did
God give George Bush the power to abolish the human rights of
other people?
It's no wonder he has to lie through his teeth to try to explain
terrorism. We are not victims of terrorism because terrorists
hate us or democracy or freedom. We are victims of terrorism
because George Bush's policies inflict grievous harm on
Palestinians, on Afghans and on Iraqis.
One hates to say it, but Osama bin Laden makes more sense than
Bush. If you doubt the role of our support for Israel's
brutalizing Palestine in causing terrorism, listen to what bin
Laden says:
"The greatest rule of safety is justice, and stopping injustice
and aggression. It was said: Oppression kills the oppressors,
and the hotbed of injustice is evil. The situation in occupied
Palestine is an example. What happened on 11 September and 11
March (the Madrid bombings) is your commodity returned to you."
In plainer English, the more the Israelis shed Palestinian blood
with our unadulterated support, the more of our blood bin Laden
hopes to shed. He says quite plainly - addressing himself to the
people instead of politicians - why don't you stop shedding our
blood so we can stop shedding yours?
He scoffs at being called a terrorist and says, "Our acts are
reaction to your own acts, which are represented by the
destruction and killing of our kinfolk in Afghanistan, Iraq and
Palestine."
He goes on to say that rational people would not sacrifice their
security, their money and their children "to please the liar of
the White House. Had he been truthful about his claim for peace,
he would not describe the person who ripped open pregnant women
in Sabra and Shatila (a reference to Sharon) and the destroyer
of the capitulation process (a reference to the peace process)
as a man of peace."
Bin Laden says further: "He also would not have lied to people
and said that we hate freedom and kill for the sake of killing.
Reality proves our truthfulness and his lie. The killing of
Russians was after their invasion of Afghanistan and Chechnya;
the killing of Europeans was after their invasion of Iraq and
Afghanistan; and the killing of Americans on the day of New York
was after their support of the Jews in Palestine and their
invasion of the Arabian Peninsula."
As much as you might hate bin Laden, he is telling the truth
about the cause of the conflict, and Bush is lying.
Bush ought to come clean and tell the American people the truth
about why we are in this war instead of spreading the lie that
we were just innocent bystanders picked on by madmen. Even
terrorists have rational reasons for what they do.
Bush is following the Israeli example. Rather than address the
cause of the problem, he just tries to kill his way out of it.
That policy has failed the Israelis, and it will fail us.
----------------------------------------------------------------
© 2004 by King Features Syndicate, Inc.
----------------------------------------------------------------
_______________________________________________________________
o__ I'll tell you the truth about the USS LIBERTY, visit
_.>/)_
(_) \(_) http://home.cfl.rr.com/gidusko/liberty/
_____________________(updated frequently)______________________
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Forwarded:
Subj: ABC News finally said it
Date: 4/20/04 6:19:17 PM Pacific Daylight Time
ABC News with Peter Jennings finally said it:
"The hatred in the world toward the United States is directly related to the United States' and Israel's Policies".
Devastating report on ABC News tonight. It's the first time a major US news organization has said it publicly, linking the US/Israel without backtracking or attempting to discredit it and fully allowing the rest of the world to compound the sentiment in its report. They acknowledged we are not hated for our "freedom" but because of what we and Israel are doing.
It's a small step, but it is showing the party line is faltering. CBS, NBC and CNN will have to follow suit. FOX never will.
Laura | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Apr 21, 2004 8:52 am Post subject: Kerry owned by those "passionately attached" to Is |
| Subj: Kerry owned by those "passionately attached" to Israel too!
Date: 4/20/04 9:46:55 PM Pacific Daylight Time
From: nord@famvid.com
To: bilcar80@aol.com
Sent from the Internet (Details)
How pathetic! A foreign country owns both major American presidential candidates!
It looks like the USS Liberty survivors can forget abut justice under a Kerry administration.
It looks like he - like Bush - will give the Arab/Muslim world fanatics ample insentive to gain more recruits to continue their religious war against the USA.
RN
Kerry appeals for Jewish votes in Florida
By The Associated Press
HAARETZ Tue., April 20, 2004
"I have a 100 percent record ... of supporting the special relationship and friendship that we have with Israel," Kerry said. "I can guarantee you that as president, I understand not just how we do that but also how we end this sweetheart relationship with a bunch of Arab countries that still allows money to move to Hamas, Hezbollah and the Al Aqsa Brigade." | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
