War Without End

Alpha · Last edited by Alpha on Tue Jun 21, 2005 8:41 am; edited 9 times in total

Alpha · Last edited by Alpha on Wed Mar 30, 2005 9:15 am; edited 2 times in total

Alpha

Fisk Cancels his Visit (escalating tension in Lebanon)

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2005/03/29/fisk-has-cancelled-his-visit-escalating-tension-in-lebanon.php

Alpha

59 Ex-Diplomats Oppose JINSA Nominee John Bolton to UN

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2005/03/30/59-ex-diplomats-oppose-jinsa-nominee-john-bolton.php

Alpha

Scott Ritter Says US Plans June Attack on Iran

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2005/02/21/scott-ritter-says-u-s-plans-june-attack-on-iran.php

Alpha

JINSA/PNAC hack Cheney said that 'diplomatic' negotiations would not 'work':

http://www.robert-fisk.com/articles114.htm

Men from JINSA and CSP:

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020902&s=vest

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/033005Y.shtml

Powell Says U.S. Was 'Too Loud' over Iraq - Magazine
Reuters

Wednesday 30 March 2005

Berlin - The United States made errors in presenting its case for war against Iraq, but Saddam Hussein had to be removed, former Secretary of State Colin Powell told a German magazine.

"We were sometimes too loud, too direct, perhaps we made too much noise," Powell told Stern magazine in an interview released on Wednesday. "That certainly shocked the Europeans sometimes."

He said terms like "Old Europe," the expression coined by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to describe countries such as France and Germany which opposed the war, had not helped ease European concerns about Washington's policies.

But he said that despite the problems facing U.S. troops in Iraq, it was better that Saddam Hussein was no longer in power.

"Yes, the insurgency is much bigger than we anticipated. But I'm glad that Saddam is in jail," he said in the German article.

Powell said he had argued for a diplomatic solution against cabinet colleagues such as Vice President Dick Cheney, who did not believe that diplomacy would work.

"The situation with Saddam Hussein had to be resolved, either by taming him or by removing him by military means," he said. "I'm sure that the Vice President's view from the very beginning was: we'll never solve this through diplomatic means."

Powell said he was "furious and angry" that he had been misinformed about Iraq's stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction when he laid out the case for war before the United Nations Security Council in February, 2003.

"It was information from our security services and from some Europeans, including Germans. Some of this information was wrong. I did not know this at the time," he told the magazine.

"Hundreds of millions followed it on television. I will always be the one who presented it. I have to live with that."

But he said he had never considered resigning and rejected suggestions that his relationship with President Bush was a cool one.

"Anyone who says that has no idea. We are friends," he said.

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Alpha · Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 9:12 pm Post subject: More on PNAC

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2005/03/08/excellent-replies-on-pnac-israel-nukes-by-dr-helen-caldicott.php

Alpha · Posted: Thu Mar 31, 2005 8:40 am Post subject: Re: More on PNAC

Alpha

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-shatz28mar28,1,5121345.story

COMMENTARY
U.S. Embrace Can Be Fatal to Arabs
The opposition in Lebanon owes no thanks to Washington.
By Adam Shatz
Adam Shatz is literary editor of the Nation.

March 28, 2005

Only a year ago, American supporters of the Iraq war were in despair. The spread of the Iraqi insurgency — and of anti-American sentiment throughout the Arab and Muslim world — had undercut the claim of Paul Wolfowitz and others that Saddam Hussein's downfall would spark a wave of democratization in the region. If democracy meant burning cities, suicide attacks, life-threatening checkpoints and Abu Ghraib-style torture, Arabs and Muslims wanted nothing of it, something deeply reassuring to their autocratic rulers.

Today, the mood of the pro-war camp has changed to euphoria. The Iraqi and Palestinian elections, the mass demonstrations by Lebanese seeking an end to the Syrian presence, signs of a thaw in Hosni Mubarak's Egypt — all these developments have breathed new life into the Wolfowitz Doctrine. The Iraqis may not have thrown rice and flowers our way, but, so the story goes, their liberation has prompted Arabs to challenge their own regimes, and the United States stands poised to reap the benefits of "democratization." (Even sensible observers like historian David Fromkin have likened the changes to the fall of the Berlin Wall, although the only thing resembling that wall in the region is the "separation barrier" Israel has built on Palestinian land.)

It's an appealing story but, unfortunately, it isn't true. If anything, the war was a gift to the jihadists. And to the extent that the Middle East has moved toward democracy, it's as much in spite of American pressure as because of it.

The current neoconservative object of desire is Lebanon, and it's a good case study of what's really happening in the region. When the anti-Syrian opposition gathered in Beirut's Martyrs Square to demand the withdrawal of Syrian troops, everyone from Thomas Friedman of the New York Times to Reuel Marc Gerecht of the American Enterprise Institute was quick to credit the Bush administration for inspiring the Lebanese. Never mind that the mobilization of Lebanon's opposition to Syrian rule was detonated by the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, not the Iraqi elections; that the cry was for independence, not democracy; and that Shiites, who at 40% of the population make up the country's largest religious group, were conspicuously absent from the demonstrations. Never mind that Lebanon already has elections (although they are held, as in Iraq and the Palestinian territories, under the watchful eye of an occupying power).

For President Bush, the "Cedar Revolution" marked the beginning of an Arab spring. But in reality, despite their genuine yearnings for independence, the Martyrs Square demonstrators represented only a portion of the country's fractured polity — the more educated, secular members of the Christian, Druze and Sunni elites — which is why unsympathetic observers preferred the term "BMW Revolution." And its leaders, notably Walid Jumblatt, a Druze chieftain, and the exiled Maronite Christian leader Michel Aoun, who in 1990 staged a failed coup backed by Hussein, are not exactly liberal democrats.

Not for the first time, the romantic port city of Beirut had seduced Western intellectuals who saw in it only what they wanted to see: an educated middle class, a large Christian population and the stirrings of a pro-Western, pro-democracy movement.

Then came the enormous, largely Shiite pro-Syria rally organized by Hezbollah and its leader, Hassan Nasrallah. It was the equivalent of a bucket of ice water poured over the cedar revolutionaries.

These demonstrators, who also raised the Lebanese flag, came to the protests not out of love for Syria but out of suspicion of the motives of the opposition and of the White House, which had given the Cedar Revolution not only its blessing but its very name. Having suffered under the domination of the Christian minority before the civil war, many Lebanese Shiites feared the anti-Syrian opposition was a proxy of American, Israeli and Christian interests seeking to humiliate Lebanon's neighbor, to dismantle Hezbollah (which is widely admired for ending the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon) and to force Lebanon to sign a separate peace with Israel, on terms favorable to Israel.

Among Shiites who lived through Israel's 22-year occupation in the south, it did not go unnoticed that the U.S. was demanding a full and immediate Syrian withdrawal before Lebanon's next elections, even as it hailed the elections in occupied Palestine and Iraq as models of Middle Eastern democracy.

Washington's praise for "democracy," in other words, had precious little credibility with a huge portion of Lebanon's citizens. It didn't have to be this way. If the U.S. hadn't invaded Iraq, endorsed Israeli land grabs in the West Bank and threatened both Iran and Syria, Lebanese Shiites might have trusted our word and even joined the Martyrs Square protests in greater numbers. Instead, they lined up behind Hezbollah, which depends on Syrian support to continue the fight with Israel on Lebanon's southern border.

That outpouring of support has left Jumblatt and other opposition leaders scrambling to woo Hezbollah — something that hardly pleases the American government, which views the guerrilla movement and political party as a terrorist organization. The counterdemonstration also backed the Americans into a corner and led the Bush administration recently to signal that it would not oppose Hezbollah's continued participation in Lebanese parliamentary politics, even as it unconvincingly insisted that its position hadn't changed. As with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani in Iraq, the American government was forced to soften its opposition to Islamist participation — to bend to Arab reality.

In the days after the Hezbollah demonstration, yet another rally was held — a counter-counterdemonstration of sorts, organized by the opposition — in which the Lebanese people bravely restated their desire for full sovereignty. It drew even more people than the Hezbollah rally had, and even some Shiites participated.

But what the Lebanese example reveals is not, as Wolfowitz would have you think, the influence of American hard power, but rather its destructive effect on American soft power. It was Rafik Hariri's assassination, not the Iraq war, that gave the Lebanese the courage to say "enough is enough" to the Syrians. The excessive use of American military force has not only eroded our tarnished reputation in the Arab and Muslim world, it has made our support even more of a liability for groups like the Lebanese opposition seeking an end to Syrian domination.

As a result, the groups most likely to benefit from democratization, especially if it is pursued precipitously, are those that are the best organized and with the strongest claims to "authenticity." In a world where the only relatively free spaces have been mosques, these will invariably be the Islamist groups like Hezbollah and the Shiite bloc in postwar Iraq.

It's not that we shouldn't encourage democracy in the Arab world. Of course we should. But if we continue to be seen as dishonest brokers of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and as occupiers of countries that have not made war on us, Washington's embrace is likely to be a fatal one for Arab and Muslim democrats.

Alpha

Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 18:56:31 -0700
From: "Jeff Blankfort" <jblankfort@earthlink.net>
Subject: AJC Mideast Briefing: the Crawford Summit and More

This briefing from Israel by the American Jewish Committee's Eran Lerman, formerly a member of Israeli intelligence is well worth reading, particularly the analysis he offers at the end of the article. And, of course, there is the question of Iran.

Jeff

The Crawford Summit and
The Question of Construction in the E-1 Zone:
A New Round in the Battle of Jerusalem?
A Weekly Briefing on Israeli and Middle Eastern Affairs
April 11, 2005

Dr. Eran Lerman
Director Israel/Middle East Office

There was a dramatic tone to some of the media reports this week, on the eve of the "Crawford Summit," about the question of settlement expansion; a conflict was brewing, it was argued, over the Bush administration's displeasure with Israeli plans to build 3,500 housing units in an area known as E-1. This would constitute an extension westward of the town of Ma'aleh Adumim and would create an urban link to Jerusalem. The differences over this plan are real enough (and long-standing), but it is not at all certain that they merit the attention given at this time. At least some of attention may have been generated by those who are eager—for various reasons—to see a rift emerge between Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and President George W. Bush. (For certain elements of the Israeli right wing, it has become almost essential to prove that Sharon is not telling the truth, and the U.S. is not "really" committed to support the Israeli position on the future of the settlement blocs.) The real agenda of this crucial meeting at the president's ranch concerned, above all, the urgent need for action on the Iranian nuclear effort, which is fast approaching the point of no return; as well as other aspects of the broader regional agenda, launched by the administration, and the profound ways in which they have transformed Israel's strategic environment; and the more immediate questions related to the implementation within the next three months of the Disengagement Plan. But all these items seemed to be overshadowed by the "E-1 question," and by the forceful Palestinian complaint that this project, if carried out, would slice the West Bank into two and would render it impossible to create a contiguous Palestinian state. However, a closer look at the map, and at the timetables, would indicate that what is at stake is not the possibility of implementing Stage II of the Road Map, but rather the decisive, though not necessarily immediate, battle for the future of Jerusalem, which is perhaps the most delicate and explosive of all Stage III (permanent status) issues. Ma'aleh Adumim, whether linked to Jerusalem by a narrow road or by a broad built-up zone, does not cut in half the West Bank; it is quite conceivable to construct a good road that will carry people and goods from Ramallah to Bethlehem—either under Ma'aleh Adumim or aroumd it to the east—so that the Palestinians do not have to go through Israeli checkpoints. On the other hand, the construction at E-1 would indeed tighten Israeli control over the eastern approaches of Jerusalem, thus making it more difficult to redivide the city (which is, indeed, Sharon's intent; he begins every meeting with foreign dignitaries with a reference to the unity of Israel's capital, and claims, with some reason, to be upholding Yitzhak Rabin's own legacy on this question). The battle for Jerusalem, which has always been at the core of the conflict, is thus reemerging, well in advance of the actual resumption of negotiations. Sunday's clashes with far-right Jewish elements who wanted (but failed) to use the Temple Mount to trigger a crisis that would derail the disengagement; the equally ugly responses by some Muslims, who do not want the feet of Jews to "defile" the Haram al-Sharif; the E-1 controversy; and the attempt by the PA leadership to move directly to Permanent Status negotiations, including Jerusalem—all are opening shots in this new round of political warfare (which, for now at least, have not been translated into actual fighting, beyond the unrelated deterioration in Gaza). The tensions over the city will not go away, even if the deft handling by the police prevented a conflagration on the first day of Nisan 5765 (April 10), the occasion chosen by the radicals to attempt their provocative ascent. Was it wise, however, for the Israeli government to add fuel to the crisis by reviving the debate over the E-1 plans? After all, the construction itself will not start for some years, and the present timing, apparently harmful to Mahmoud Abbas in his internal struggle with Hamas, could not have been worse. Explanations based on sheer folly or inattention to detail are indeed, very often, the most plausible. Yet there is another way of looking at this "crisis," which may have been somewhat more orchestrated than meets the eye. If timing is at the root of the trouble here, timing—i.e., an agreement to delay—could easily be part of the solution. Meanwhile, the overt pressure on Israel could be used by the U.S. to show Abbas that there is some degree of even-handedness at work; and thus it would make it easier for Bush to require him:

To help coordinate disengagement plans with Israel, particularly on the security framework;
To break the present mold of inaction and take effective measures against the terrorists (who are even now raining mortar shells on Gush Katif);
To abandon the unworkable push for "Stage III Now!" and prepare the ground for an acceptable interim agreement, once the preconditions (an end to terror) are met.
This is reminiscent, one might say, of the Jewish folktale about a poor man who comes to his rabbi to cry over the incredible crush he and his large family are enduring in a small one-room hovel; the rabbi's advice, much to the man's surprise, is to add a goat to the household! Two weeks later, when told they may now send the goat out, the family suddenly feels so much better, breathing fresh air in their very tiny but comfortable home. The E-1 plan, in other words, may not mean much on the ground for years to come—but it has proven a useful device in demonstrating to the Palestinians, and their leaders, that Israel is ready to struggle for Jerusalem, while, at the same time, showing that the U.S. is not automatically allied with Israel on all issues. If taken off the agenda (for the time being) under U.S. pressure, E-1 could become the Palestinians' "rabbi's goat"—i.e., the extra element whose removal makes it easier to adjust to other demands.

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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.

Scott Ritter: Sleepwalking to disaster in Iran