Death toll 208 as three more patients die in the Gaza Strip due to
the Israeli siege
by Rula Shahwan
IMEMC News
http://www.imemc.org/article/56009

http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=27968


Medical sources reported that the number of patients who died due to
the Israeli siege on the Gaza strip reached 208 as three patients
were announced dead on Monday morning. Medical sources reported that
Latifa Kafina died on Monday morning of leukemia. She couldn't get
the permission to leave the Gaza Strip and get treatment.

The patient`s family reported that they tried for over ten days to
get permission, but they got it only after she was dead. Moreover
sources in Gaza reported that 36 year old Suhaila Abu Hweshel died
of cancer on Monday after being banned to leave the Gaza strip to
outer hospitals for medical treatment. In addition Ahmad Abu Ajwa,
an old man with diabetes, was pronounced dead on Monday for being
unable to get life saving medical treatment out of The Gaza strip
because the army banned him from getting the permission.

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UK Officialdom Sides with Israeli Apartheid: A Palestinian response
to the new Israeli-British academic partnership

http://www.pacbi.org/press_releases_more.php?id=788_0_4_0_C


Occupied Ramallah – The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and
Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) deplores the unabashed pro-Israel
bias of UK officialdom displayed during Prime Minister Gordon
Brown's visit to occupied Jerusalem. Brown's pro-forma criticism of
Israeli colonizing activities notwithstanding, the visit became an
occasion to underline the UK government's prejudice in favor of
Israeli policies of apartheid, dispossession, and colonial
expansionism. Instead of pressuring Israel to fulfill its
obligations under international law, Brown bent over backwards to
reward Israel in an arena in which it prides itself, that of
academic and scientific research, despite ample evidence indicating
the Israeli academy's complicity in the state's occupation and
apartheid policies.

Media reports have made it abundantly clear that the July 20 Israeli-
British announcement of the establishment of the Britain-Israel
Research and Academic Exchange Partnership (BIRAX) is politically
motivated. The project, described by the Independent as "a major new
academic exchange programme, which will help to undermine attempts
to boycott Israeli universities," is meant specifically to undercut
UK, Palestinian, and international academics' calls for a boycott of
Israeli academic institutions. It lends political and material
support to the Israeli effort to maintain a veneer of respectability
in the world academic community, a community increasingly unwilling
to do business as usual with the Israeli academy. Not only have
Israeli universities built organic partnerships with the state's
military-security establishment responsible for maintaining the
occupation and other forms of Israeli oppression, they have also
failed for decades, as have all Israeli academic unions and
professional associations, to take a public stand against the most
profound Israeli military violations of the Palestinian right to
education.

Far from being at the forefront of the struggle for human rights and
against occupation and racism, as often deceptively depicted,
Israeli academic institutions have never condemned the occupation,
the denial of Palestinian refugee rights, or the system of racial
discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel. They have all
failed to condemn even the policy of prolonged military closure of
Palestinian universities back in the 1980s, in one case extending
for 4 consecutive years; the ongoing refusal to grant permits for
Palestinian students and academics to travel abroad, or between Gaza
and the West Bank, to pursue their studies or academic development
programs; and the severe curtailment of access to education by
hundreds of thousands of Palestinian school and college students
through an elaborate network of military checkpoints and roadblocks.
Furthermore, the Israeli academy is complicit in encouraging its
academics to serve in the Israeli reserve army, making most of them
part-time occupation soldiers in every academic year.

Revealing another explicitly political -- not to mention cynical --
objective of this new Israeli-British initiative, an anti-boycott
Israeli source is quoted in a recent media report as saying
that, "By [BIRAX] choosing starting academics, when the unions start
discussing a boycott there will be more people who have had some
contact with Israel and will have some knowledge. We've discovered
that 80 percent of those who attend the union meetings don't know
anything about Israel or the issue. So it's sort of a value added
element to the program."

What is particularly offensive about the Israeli-UK declaration is
the active sponsorship of BIRAX by the British Council, a UK agency
with a long history of work in the occupied Palestinian territory.
Now, the British Council has declared its blatant bias in assuming a
leadership role in this politically motivated project. Its purpose
to "build mutually beneficial relationships between people in the UK
and other countries" will ring hollow to Palestinians. So will its
claim that it operates "at arm's length from the UK government."

While this will not be the first British experience in "constructive
engagement" with an apartheid state, as British support for
apartheid South Africa stands out in the history of that country,
its timing attests to British betrayal of any semblance of
commitment to human rights and the rule of law. This generous
British award comes at a time when Israel is continuing apace the
construction of its colonial Wall and settlements in defiance of the
International Court of Justice's advisory opinion of July 2004;
committing unprecedented war crimes in its brutal siege on 1.5
million Palestinians in occupied Gaza, severely curtailing their
access to health and educational services and condemning them to
abject poverty and, in thousands of cases, slow death; intensifying
its extra-judicial killings and indiscriminate attacks on civilians;
uprooting hundreds of thousands of fruitful trees and destroying the
environment; demolishing homes; and cutting up the OPT into isolated
Bantustans, slowly destroying the economy as well as social
institutions, all in a systematic fashion aimed at forcing more
Palestinians to leave their lands.

Nevertheless, what is heartening about this recent development is
the fact that the academic boycott of Israel is becoming a reality,
a force to be recognized and reckoned with. It is becoming
increasingly clear that the sustained efforts of conscientious
academics in the UK and the world at large to hold the Israeli
academy accountable for its complicity in Israeli colonial and
racist policies are bearing fruit. This should encourage us to press
with our call for an institutional boycott of the Israeli academy.


The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of
Israel (PACBI)
www.PACBI.org
info @ BoycottIsrael.ps

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Fisking Feith's Faulty Case for War
David R. Henderson
http://www.antiwar.com/henderson/?articleid=13109


Douglas Feith, an undersecretary of defense in the Bush
administration from 2001 to 2005 and an early supporter of the U.S.
invasion of Iraq, recently wrote a remarkable defense of the war.
His article, "Why We Went to War in Iraq," was published on the July
3 opinion page of the Wall Street Journal. I will highlight and
examine some of his claims. The modern term for this is "fisking."
Feith writes:

"As a participant in the confidential, top-level administration
meetings about Iraq, it was clear to me at the time that, had there
been a realistic alternative to war to counter the threat from
Saddam, Mr. Bush would have chosen it."

Notice how he stacks the deck by assuming that there was a threat
and that the threat had to be countered. There were many realistic
alternatives to war, but Feith insists that each alternative be one
that counters "the threat from Saddam." What was this threat?

"Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld worried particularly about the
U.S. and British pilots enforcing the no-fly zones over northern and
southern Iraq. Iraqi forces were shooting at the U.S. and British
aircraft virtually every day; if a plane went down, the pilot would
likely be killed or captured."

In other words, part of the threat came from Saddam Hussein having
his military shoot at U.S. and British planes flying over Iraq. But
there was an easy way to avoid this threat and one that Rumsfeld
contemplated: stop flying planes over Iraq.
Feith tells his readers that on July 27, 2001, Mr. Rumsfeld sent a
memo to Secretary of State Colin Powell, National Security Adviser
Condoleezza Rice, and Vice President Dick Cheney that stated that if
the U.S. ended the no-fly zones:

"[W]e know he [Saddam] has crawled a good distance out of the box
and is currently doing the things that will ultimately be harmful to
his neighbors in the region and to U.S. interests – namely
developing WMD and the means to deliver them and increasing his
strength at home and in the region month-by-month. Within a few
years the U.S. will undoubtedly have to confront a Saddam armed with
nuclear weapons."

Notice that the threat is not to the U.S. but to Saddam's neighbors
and to "U.S. interests." But, then, wasn't it up to the neighbors to
deal with that threat? And, by the way, what are U.S. interests?
Feith, and apparently Rumsfeld, did not say. Finally, take the worst
case: that Saddam would have, in a few years, armed himself with
nuclear weapons. Why would the U.S. government have had to confront
him? The U.S. government has dealt with far more brutal – and far
more armed – regimes during the nuclear era – think China – without
going to war with them. Why would a Saddam Hussein with only a few
nuclear weapons be sui generis?

Ultimately, writes Feith, President Bush decided to oust Saddam by
force based on five factors.

"1. Saddam was a threat to U.S. interests before 9/11. The Iraqi
dictator had started wars against Iran and Kuwait, and had fired
missiles at Saudi Arabia and Israel."

That Feith (and, if Feith is accurate, Bush) saw this as an
important reason is stunning. Yes, Saddam had started a war against
Iran, and the U.S. government under President Reagan supported him.
Now, I happen to agree with Feith if he's saying that Reagan
shouldn't have done so. But isn't it strange to turn on an ally
because he was once an ally? It's also true that Saddam had started
a war against Kuwait. But during the first Gulf War, the United
States pushed Saddam out of Kuwait. The U.S. won that one, remember?
What's the point in fighting someone (and, more important, millions
of innocent people in his country) over something where you have
already won? Next, Saddam had fired missiles at Saudi Arabia and
Israel. That was during the first Gulf War. The missiles fired at
Israel were not a threat to the United States. The ones fired at
Saudi Arabia were fired at a U.S. ally in the war. Countries at war
with each other often fire missiles at each other. It's not nice,
and I wish both sides would stop. But to put the missiles fired at
Saudi Arabia in a separate category is unconscionable on Feith's
part. Surely, he knew that these missiles were part of Saddam's war
effort. More of Feith's, and allegedly Bush's, reason #1:

"Unrepentant about the rape of Kuwait, he remained intensely hostile
to the U.S."

Saddam was unrepentant about a previous action. And the point is?
Does it really make sense to invade a country, putting millions of
people at risk, because the dictator of that country
is "unrepentant?" And funny, isn't it, how losing a war to the U.S.
made him "hostile to the U.S.?" Again, so what? If I attacked
everyone who was hostile to me, I would never get anything else
done. Still more of Feith's, and allegedly Bush's, reason #1:

"He provided training, funds, safe haven and political support to
various types of terrorists. He had developed WMD and used chemical
weapons fatally against Iran and Iraqi Kurds. Iraq's official press
issued statements praising the 9/11 attacks on the U.S."

Notice that Feith doesn't claim that the terrorists Saddam supported
were threats to the U.S. Also, Feith neglects to mention one
particular country that supplied Saddam with chemical weapons. Of
course, it was the United States. Gives a bit of a different
picture, doesn't it? I hadn't known that Iraq's official press had
praised the 9/11 attacks. That's horrible, but, really, does it
justify an invasion? What if the Voice of America, which is the U.S.
official press, praised a terrorist attack on, say, Iran? Would that
justify the Iranian government invading the U.S.?

"2. The threat of renewed aggression by Saddam was more troubling
and urgent after 9/11. Though Saddam's regime was not implicated in
the 9/11 operation, it was an important state supporter of
terrorism. And President Bush's strategy was not simply retaliation
against the group responsible for 9/11. Rather it was to prevent the
next major attack. This focused U.S. officials not just on al-Qaeda,
but on all the terrorist groups and state supporters of terrorism
who might be inspired by 9/11 – especially on those with the
potential to use weapons of mass destruction."

Notice that Feith admits that Saddam was not implicated in the 9/11
operation. That didn't seem to matter much, though. For Feith and,
apparently, for Bush, a government that supported terrorism against
any country needed to be stopped. But that's poor reasoning. A
government's main legitimate function is to protect its people, not
other countries' people.

Feith's point #3 is that to contain the threat from Saddam, all
reasonable means short of war had been tried unsuccessfully. But
notice that Feith hasn't yet established that Saddam was a threat.

"4. While there were large risks involved in a war, the risks of
leaving Saddam in power were even larger. The U.S. and British
pilots patrolling the no-fly zones were routinely under enemy fire,
and a larger confrontation – over Kuwait again or some other issue –
appeared virtually certain to arise once Saddam succeeded in getting
out from under the UN's crumbling economic sanctions."

Here, Feith makes the point that if the U.S. government wanted to
have a lot of influence and power in the Middle East, it would have
to deal with a stronger Saddam. This might have been true, but it
ignores a cleaner and safer option: have the U.S. government stop
intervening in the Middle East.

"5. America after 9/11 had a lower tolerance for such dangers. It
was reasonable – one might say obligatory – for the president to
worry about a renewed confrontation with Saddam. Like many others,
he feared Saddam might then use weapons of mass destruction again,
perhaps deployed against us through a proxy such as one of the many
terrorist groups Iraq supported."

But what was this fear based on? Let's say that Saddam Hussein had
been able to get nuclear weapons. If he had given them to a
terrorist group, then that terrorist group would have been able to
threaten him. Was Saddam Hussein, a man who had survived in a
dangerous job for over two decades, that stupid?

Feith does throw a parting bone to those of us who opposed the war
before it began. He writes:

"Thoughtful, patriotic Americans differed then and now on whether
the risk of leaving Saddam in power outweighed the risk of war."

Somehow, I don't remember the pro-war side saying that we were
thoughtful and patriotic. What I remember is people calling
us "appeasers." Now, maybe Douglas Feith wasn't one of these. I
would like to think that he was sitting in the Pentagon chiding his
fellow neoconservatives for questioning our patriotism. Was he?

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The Plight of the Family of Umm Hamdi


Cold Shoulders
By KATHY KELLY
http://www.counterpunch.org/


Amman, Jordan.

Over the past two years, here in Amman, Jordan, I've regularly
visited the family of Umm Hamdi, an Iraqi woman forced out of her
native Iraq four years ago by terrifying death threats after her
husband, very likely prey to that same threatened violence,
disappeared. Although often met with the proverbial "cold shoulder"
when trying to improve conditions for her family, she persists,--in
the daytime she does child care for another family and, in the
evening, she knits, sews, and makes handicrafts to sell in a local
market.

Umm Hamdi is tough, strong and fiercely determined to provide for
her children. Nevertheless, she's wretchedly insecure as a single
mother and one more refugee among thousands in a country where
resources to cope with her anxious needs are very slim.  And she is
worried for her son who is still in Iraq.

Two nights ago, I turned up to her small bare apartment during an
evening when her young daughters were out in the care of a local
charity and she was home alone.  I saw how worn out she was from
working to support them - but more telling on her is the frustration
and remorse she feels for Hamdi, her teenage son, who is barred from
entering Jordan because he is a young man over 15 years of age, and
whether for fear of spillover violence or from a wish to concentrate
its taxed charitable resources among women and children, Jordan's
policy strictly bars him entry. In Iraq, Hamdi lives with a family
that resents him for his unemployed status, (there are no jobs), and
can barely spare the little support they offer him.

Umm Hamdi is stricken with remorse over separation from her son.
In regular phone calls, he learns that his sisters are going to
school, that one has completed a vocational training program, and
that when the oldest daughter was recently married the family did
everything they could to give her a traditional wedding.

The anguish overwhelms her as she recounts their latest
conversation: "You do everything for your daughters," he had
shouted, over the phone: "everything for them, but what about me?
What about me?  I am your son!"  She clutches her hands over her
eyes.  Between sobs, she repeats, "My son, my son."

Her son is one of many thousands in Iraq who are out of luck, out of
work, undereducated, and lonely for parents and siblings lucky
enough to escape to neighboring countries.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) says that poverty
is driving Iraq's boys and young men, out of desperation, into the
militias. A 2007 IOM report noted that "militant fighters sometimes
buy the loyalty of displaced persons by providing them some of the
things they need, such as food and shelter. More and more children
are joining these armed groups, the militias and the insurgents,"
said IOM officer Dana Graber Ladeck. "Sometimes they do it for money
and sometimes for revenge, but we're finding more and more child
soldiers, so to speak." (January 30, Voice of America interview)

Some youngsters agree to carry guns and to man checkpoints for the
strongest and most heavily armed militia in their country, the U.S.
military. Reporting for Reuters, Adrian Croft recently wrote about
a "ragtag band of men toting AK-47s at a checkpoint in Baghdad's
Sadr City," some of 500 youngsters the US had recruited as part of a
new plan to "strengthen the Iraqi army's hold" in the backyard of
U.S. rival Moqtada Sadr. (Jordan Times, June 27).   New recruits
risk their lives to earn $300 a month, guarding these checkpoints.
It's undoubtedly one of the best jobs in town. Will this option,
will one like it, attract Umm Hamdi's son?

Other Iraqi youngsters have been swept up by the U.S. military and
sent to prisons, without charge, as a measure to prevent them from
joining an Iraqi militia.  On May 19, 2008, Fox News reported that
the U.S. military is holding about 500 juveniles suspected of
being "unlawful enemy combatants" in detention centers in Iraq. In
August of 2007, in anticipation of the "troop surge," CNN reported
that the US had imprisoned, without charge, 800 Iraqi youngsters
(or "security risks") between the ages of 11 and 17, in a "prison
school," to prevent them from lending their bodies to militias as
decoys or snipers.   The CNN reporter said that, within the school,
textbooks and classrooms were another "weapon" against terror.
Commanding officer Lt. Glenn expressed his goal:  "We ensure that
when they are released that they don't – they pick up a book instead
of an AK-47 or laying an IED. And that's what this really gets back
to."  And when it gets back to young men like Hamdi, the message is
perfectly clear: the U.S. will supply plenty of guns and explosives
as long as the attacks are done in the name of protecting
U.S. "security."

Umm Hamdi doesn't want her son to pick up a gun or lay an explosive
device, for Iraq or for anyone.  She would rather see him pick up a
book.  She cries herself to sleep at night wishing she could just
see him.  But she can't bring her daughters back to the maelstrom of
violence her native country has become with the U.S. invasion.  And
with Jordan straining to contain the refugees it has absorbed, she
can't bring her son out of Iraq.

Would it reassure her to think that Hamdi might find more secure
shelter and achieve some educational goals if U.S. military jailers
could imprison him for a year or so?  Would it help if I told her
that millions of impoverished parents in the U.S. worry that their
sons might land in jail, and that many see the military as a better
option?

I talked with her for a while longer. Her daughters returned from
the event the charity had hosted for them, their faces sparkling
with glitter and their arms colorful with painted designs.  Umm
Hamdi wiped away tears from a suddenly, forcedly, cheerful
expression.  She fetched a small ball of yarn - royal blue - and
started rapid work to knit me a sweater, a parting gift I will take
with me when I leave here.

"It's cold in Chicago, very cold!" she said, laying down the needles
and yarn.  She grabbed her shoulders to help me understand that she
didn't want me to have cold shoulders.   "No, we don't want you to
be cold."


Kathy Kelly is a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence.
She has refused to pay all forms of federal income tax since 1980.
She is the author of Other Lands Have Dreams, published by AK /
CounterPunch Press. She can be reached at kathy @ vcnv.org

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AIPAC's Hirelings Rush to Resolution
By William A. Cook
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20250.htm


08/07/08 "ICH" --- Perception is often the stepchild of ignorance,
especially when controlled by those with the most to gain. It is
especially difficult for our Congress to perceive clearly when it
grovels at the feet of its master, AIPAC. America's Knesset, servile
hirelings of Israel's lobby, rush to pass yet another resolution
conceived by AIPAC and authored and co-signed by its most slavish
puppets, Ackerman and Ros-Lehtinen in the House and Lieberman and
Bayh in the Senate, Resolutions H. Con. 362 and S. 580, the "Iran
War Resolution." Virtually all Congressmen with the exception of Ron
Paul and Dennis Kucinich and all Senators, including McCain and
Obama, will vote to support this resolution. Passage provides Bush
with power to impose a unilateral blockade on Iran, an act, if done
without UN sanction, is an act of war. This resolution, a virtual
carbon copy of the resolution that has mired us in Iraq, does
nothing for the security of the United States, indeed it does the
opposite, but it does secure continued funding of Republicans and
Democrats by AIPAC and Israel.

The wise man seeks to see through the eyes of his perceived enemy;
only then will he know his perceived failures and the rationale that
gives purpose to those arraigned against him. Our Congress is
driven, like the horse carriage of old, with blinders that prevent
vision beyond that dictated by Israel's interests, not America's.
Consider the "Iran War Resolution" from the perspective of the
nations that compose the United Nations General Assembly, not the
Security Council that is controlled by the U.S. veto.

  Let's rewrite the legislation so that it expresses the sense of the
United Nations General Assembly regarding "the threat posed to
international peace, stability in the Middle East, and the vital
security interests of the United Nations by Israel's possession of
nuclear weapons and regional hegemony."

             Whereas Israel is NOT a party to the Treaty on the Non-
Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), has NOT foresworn the
acquisition of nuclear weapons by ratification of the NPT, and is
therefore able to avoid declaration of all its nuclear activity and
defy constant monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA);

             Whereas for nearly 50 years, in clear contravention of
the explicit obligations of the NPT, Israel operated a covert
nuclear program until it was revealed by Mr. Mordechai  Vanunu, who
served 18 years in solitary confinement for providing the world
information on this deceit, and, recently, by Prime Minister Olmert
and former  President Jimmy Carter;

             Whereas Israel continues to expand the number of illegal
nuclear weapons available to its military forces, as has become
evident in its most recent invasion of a neighbor in 2006, Lebanon,
and continues in defiance of binding UNSC resolutions demanding
suspension of all such illegal activities;

Whereas the Israeli nuclear weapons capability poses a grave threat
to international peace and security by fundamentally altering and
destabilizing the strategic balance in the Middle East, and severely
undermining the global nonproliferation regime;

Whereas Israel's overt sponsorship of several terrorist groups,
especially those aligned with the Settlers occupation in Palestine,
and its close ties to the United States, demonstrates that Israel
and the U.S. share their nuclear materials and technology with
others;

Whereas Israel continues to develop ballistic missile technology and
pursues its capability to field intercontinental ballistic missiles,
a delivery system suited almost exclusively to nuclear weapons
payloads;

Whereas Israeli leaders have repeatedly called for the destruction
of Palestine and Lebanon, respected members of the United Nations;

Whereas Israel's support for its rogue terrorist group, the IDF, has
enabled that group to wage war against the government and people of
Lebanon and Palestine leading to the invasion of Lebanon in 2006 and
its political and physical domination of Palestine;

Whereas Israel's support for its Settlers and IDF has enabled it to
illegally seize control of the West Bank and Gaza and to
continuously bombard and devastate Palestinian civilians with F-16s,
bulldozers, tanks, and missiles;

Whereas through these efforts, Israel seeks to establish regional
hegemony, threatens longstanding friends and allies of all nations
in the mid-east, and endangers vital United Nations security
interests; and

Whereas nothing in this resolution shall be construed as an
authorization of the use of force against Israel: Now, therefore, be
it Resolved by the United Nations General Assembly that the world's
international body

1.      Declare that Israel disband all nuclear weapons capability;

2.      Join the nations of the mid-east in signing the NPT;

3.      Remove its troops from the occupied territory of Palestine;

4.      Tear down the illegal wall that it has used to imprison the
Palestinians;

5.      Return all natural resources to the people of Palestine;

6.      Pay reparation for its destruction of Lebanon;

7.      Return occupied land to Lebanon and Syria;

8.      Provide for the refugees illegally prevented from returning
to their legitimate homes;

The above document modifies the wording of the House and Senate
resolutions to indicate a totally different perspective on world
affairs, one built on Justice, the requisite foundation for a
lasting peace, not those of Israel alone.  Considering the magnitude
of the reality that exists in Israel versus Iran relative to nuclear
capability alone, the absurdity, the hypocrisy, the sheer arrogance
of these resolutions boggles the mind. How can the world respect a
nation whose representatives avoid seeing the world from the eyes of
those most impacted by the threat that Israel poses in the mid-east?
How can the world understand that a nation rejects the testimony of
its own CIA National Intelligence Estimate that Iran has not
actively pursued nuclear weapon capability since 2003 and the
evidence brought to the United Nations by the IAEA's Director, El
Baradei, after nine unannounced investigations of Iran's nuclear
facilities in this past year all revealing no evidence of weapon
development? How can the world respect a Democracy that is led to
such acts of vengeance by a small nation more invested in its own
interests than those of America as Mearsheimer and Walt's report
testifies.

             The most evil deceit resides in the conceit of those who
pretend to be a friend and achieve their end by flattery, bribery,
or coercion; those who fall victim to such evil remain forever the
bondslave of their Overseer. They have, in effect, surrendered their
principles, their conscience, and their personal freedom to a
ruthless, merciless, amoral force, willingly sacrificing in the
process the people they represent. Such is the state of affairs in
our spineless Congress.


William Cook is a professor of English at the University of La Verne
in southern California

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The US is inventing wars aplenty these days. Will it be Iran or
Ossetia this month? asks Eric Walberg


War à la carte
Eric Walberg
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/shamireaders/message/1153


Last week, Georgia launched a major military offensive against the
rebel province South Ossetia, just hours after President Mikheil
Saakashvili had announced a unilateral ceasefire. Close to 1,500
have been killed, Russian officials say. Thirty thousand refugees,
mostly women and children, streamed across the border into the North
Ossetian capital Vladikavkaz in Russia.

The timing - and subterfuge - suggest the unscrupulous Saakashvili
was counting on surprise. "Most decision makers have gone for the
holidays," he said in an interview with CNN. "Brilliant moment to
attack a small country." Apparently he was referring to Russia
invading Georgia, despite the fact that it was Georgia which had
just
launched a full-scale invasion of the "small country" South Ossetia,
while Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was in Beijing for the
Olympics. Twenty-seven Russian peacekeepers and troops have been
killed and 150 wounded so far, many when their barracks were shelled
by Georgian forces at the start of the invasion. Georgian State
Minister for Reintegration Temur Yakobashvili rushed to announce
that their mini-blitzkreig had destroyed ten Russian combat planes
(Russia says two) and that Georgian troops were in full control of
the capital Tskhinvali.

Russia's Defense Ministry denounced the Georgian attack as a "dirty
adventure." From Beijing, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin
said, "It is regrettable that on the day before the opening of the
Olympic Games, the Georgian authorities have undertaken aggressive
actions in South Ossetia." He later added, "War has started."

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev vowed that Moscow will protect
Russian citizens - most South Ossetians hold Russian passports. The
offensive prompted Moscow to send in 150 tanks, to launch air
strikes on nearby Gori and military sites, and to order warships to
Georgia's Black Sea coast.

Georgia's national security council declared a state of war with
Russia and a full military mobilisation. US military planes are
already flying Georgia's 2,000 troops in Iraq - the third-largest
force after the United States and Britain - back to confront the
Russians. By Sunday, despite early claims of victory, Georgian
troops had retreated from South Ossetia, leaving diplomatic rubble
behind which will be very hard to clear. Truth is stranger than
fiction in Georgia.

The writing has been on the wall for months. Georgian President
Saakashvili's fawning over Western leaders at the "emergency" NATO
meeting in April and his pre-election anti-Russian bluster in May
made it clear to all that Georgia is the more-than-willing canary in
the Eastern mine shaft. The Georgian attack on South Ossetia's
capital Tskhinvali - I repeat - just hours after Saakashvili
declared a cease-fire, looks very much like an attempt to
reincorporate the rebel province into Georgia unilaterally. But
whoever is advising the brash young president ignores the
postscript - no pasaran! South Ossetia has been independent for 16
years and is not likely to drape flowers on invading Georgia tanks.
It also just happens to have Russia as patron.

The aftershocks of this wild gamble by Saakashvili are just
beginning. This is Russia's most serious altercation with a foreign
country since the collapse of the Soviet Union and could escalate
into an all-out war engulfing much of the Caucasus region. Russian
warships are not planning to block shipments of oil from Georgia's
Black Sea port of Poti, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory
Karasin said on Sunday, but reserve the right to search ships coming
to and from it. Another source naval source said, "The crews are
assigned the task to not allow arms and military hardware supplies
to reach Georgia by sea." The Russians have already sunk a Georgian
missile boat that was trying to attack Russian ships. Upping the
ante, Ukraine said it reserved the right to bar Russian warships
from returning to their nominally Ukrainian - formerly Russian -
base of Sevastopol , on the Crimean peninsula. On Saturday, Russia
accused Ukraine of "arming the Georgians to the teeth."

Georgia's other separatist region, Abkhazia, was mobilising its
forces for a push into the Kodori Gorge, the only part of Abkhazia
controlled by Georgia. "No dialogue is possible with the current
Georgian leadership," said Abkhazia's President Sergei Bagapsh.

"They are state criminals who must be tried for the crimes committed
in South Ossetia, the genocide of the Ossetian people." Britain has
ordered its nationals to leave Georgia. British charity worker Sian
Davis said, "It's really, really quiet, eerily quiet. Everyone was
either at home or had packed up and moved out of the city. People
are really, really scared. People are panicking." So far the more
than 2,000 US nationals in this tiny but strategic country are
mostly staying put.

This is yet another made-in-the-USA war. US President George W Bush
loudly supported Georgia's request to join NATO in April, much to
the consternation of European leaders. NATO promised to send
advisers in December. Not losing any time, the US sent more than
1,000 US Marines and soldiers to the Vaziani military base on the
South Ossetian border in July "to teach combat skills to Georgian
troops." The UN Security Council failed to reach an agreement on the
current crisis after three emergency meetings. A Russian-drafted
statement that called on Georgia and the separatists to "renounce
the use of force" was vetoed by the US, UK and France. To dispel any
conceivable doubt, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday:

"We call on Russia to cease attacks on Georgia by aircraft and
missiles, respect Georgia's territorial integrity, and withdraw its
ground combat forces from Georgian soil."

But it's also yet another made-in-Israel war. A thousand military
advisers from Israeli security firms have been training the
country's armed forces and were deeply involved in the Georgian
army's preparations to attack and capture the capital of South
Ossetia, according to the Israeli web site Debkafiles which has
close links with the regime's intelligence and military sources.
Haaretz reported that Yakobashvili told Army Radio - in Hebrew, "
Israel should be proud of its military which trained Georgian
soldiers."

"We killed 60 Russian soldiers just yesterday," he boasted on
Monday.

"The Russians have lost more than 50 tanks, and we have shot down 11
of their planes. They have enormous damage in terms of manpower."

He warned that the Russians would try and open another battlefront
in Abkhazia and denied reports that the Georgian army was
retreating.

"The Georgian forces are not retreating. We move our military
according to security needs."

Israelis are active in real estate, tourism, gaming, military
manufacturing and security consulting in Georgia, including former
Tel Aviv mayor Roni Milo and Likudite and gambling operator Reuven
Gavrieli.

"The Russians don't look kindly on the military cooperation
of Israeli firms with the Georgian army, and as far as I know,
Israelis doing security consulting left Georgia in the past few days
because of the events there," the former Israeli ambassador to
Georgia and Armenia, Baruch Ben Neria, said yesterday. Since his
posting, Ben Neria has represented Rafael Advanced Defense Systems
in Georgia .

By Sunday, Putin was in Vladikavkaz and said it is unlikely South
Ossetia will ever be reintegrated into Georgia. There are really
only two possible scenarios to end the conflict: a long-term
stalemate or Russian annexation of South Ossetia. The former is
beginning to look pretty good, and Saakashvili is probably already
ruing his rash move.

The Georgian president is clearly hoping he can suck the US into the
conflict. Alexander Lomaya, secretary of Georgia's National Security
Council, said only Western intervention could prevent all-out war.
But it is very unlikely Bush will risk WWIII over this scrap of
craggy mountain.

When US puppets get out of line, like a certain Saddam Hussein, they
are easily abandoned. Saakashvili would be wise to recall the fate
of the first post-Soviet Georgian president, Zviad Gamsakhurdia,
also a darling of the US (in 1978 US Congress nominated him for the
Nobel Peace Prize). He rode to victory on a wave of nationalism in
1990, declaring independence for Georgia and officially recognising
the "Chechen Republic of Ichkeria". But South Ossetia wanted no part
of the fiery Gamsakhurdia's chauvinistic vision and declared its
own "independence".

Engulfed by a wave of disgust a short two years later, abandoned by
his US friends, he fled to his beloved Ichkeria. He snuck back into
western Georgia, looking for support in restive Abkhazia, but his
uprising collapsed, prompting Abkhazia to secede.

Gamsakhurdia died in 1993, leaving the two secessionist provinces as
a legacy, and was buried in Chechnya. Saakashvili rehabilitated him
in 2004 and had his remains interred in Mtatsminda Pantheon with
other Georgian "heroes". Truth really is stranger than fiction in
Georgia. Now the burning question is: will history repeat itself?

***

Eric Walberg writes for Al-Ahram Weekly. You can reach him at
www.geocities.com/walberg2002/

===

Caucasus: whose aggression?


The Western media keeps pounding us with a Russian aggression
against tiny helpless Georgia. The very facts speak, however, a
different language.

The Western media keeps pounding us with a Russian aggression
against tiny helpless Georgia. Georgian propaganda to mobilise its
population like the story of an imminent attack on the capital
Tbilisi as well as comparisons with the invasion of Afghanistan or
Czechoslovakia simply were reproduced by the cooperate media.

The very facts speak, however, a different language. It was the
extremely pro-imperialist Georgian president Shaakashvili to order
the attack on South Ossetia. The invasion of the Georgian troops
into the province's capital Tzinvali left at least several hundreds
if not thousands civilian dead and caused a mass flight of Ossetians.

Shaakashvili's adventurist assault could not other than prompt the
Russian response.

See full declaration:
www.antiimperialista.org/index.php?
option=com_content&task=view&id=5777&Itemid=55

***

"Saakashvili bears full responsibility"
Declaration of the Georgian Peace Committee


Once more Georgia was launched into a situation of chaos and
bloodshed. A new fratricidal war exploded with renewed strength on
Georgian soil.

To our great disappointment, the alerts of the Georgian Peace
Committee and of progressive personalities of Georgia on the
pernicious character of the militarization of the country and on the
danger of a pro-fascist and nationalist policy had no effect.

The authorities of Georgia once again organized a bloody war,feeling
the support of some western countries and of regional and
international organizations. It will take decades to cleanse the
shame poured by the current holders of the power over the Georgian
people.

The Georgian army--armed and trained by U.S. instructors and using
also U.S. armaments--subjected the city of Tskhinvali to a barbaric
destruction. The bombings killed Ossetian civilians, our brothers
and sisters, children, women and elderly people. Over 2,000
inhabitants of Tskhinvali and of its surroundings died.

See entire declaration:
www.antiimperialista.org/index.php?
option=com_content&task=view&id=5774&Itemid=55

===

War in the Caucasus: Towards a Broader Russia-US Military
Confrontation?
by Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research
August 10, 2008
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9788


During the night of August 7, coinciding with the opening ceremony
of the Beijing Olympics, Georgia's president Saakashvili ordered an
all-out military attack on Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia.

The aerial bombardments and ground attacks were largely directed
against civilian targets including residential areas, hospitals and
the university. The provincial capital Tskhinvali was destroyed. The
attacks resulted in some 1500 civilian deaths, according to both
Russian and Western sources.  "The air and artillery bombardment
left the provincial capital without water, food, electricity and
gas. Horrified civilians crawled out of the basements into the
streets as fighting eased, looking for supplies." (AP, August 9,
2008). According to reports, some 34,000 people from South Ossetia
have fled to Russia. (Deseret Morning News, Salt Lake City, August
10, 2008)

The importance and timing of this military operation must be
carefully analyzed. It has far-reaching implications.
Georgia is an outpost of US and NATO forces, on the immediate border
of the Russian Federation and within proximity of the Middle East
Central Asian war theater. South Ossetia is also at the crossroads
of strategic oil and gas pipeline routes.

Georgia does not act militarily without the assent of Washington.
The Georgian head of State is a US proxy and Georgia is a de facto
US protectorate.

Who is behind this military agenda? What interests are being served?
What is the purpose of the military operation.

There is evidence that the attacks were carefully coordinated by the
US military and NATO.

Moscow has accused NATO of "encouraging Georgia". Russia's Foreign
Minister Sergey Lavrov underscored the destabilizing impacts
of "foreign" military aid to Georgia: .

"It all confirms our numerous warnings addressed to the
international community that it is necessary to pay attention to
massive arms purchasing by Georgia during several years. Now we see
how these arms and Georgian special troops who had been trained by
foreign specialists are used," he said.(Moscow accuses NATO of
having "encouraged Georgia" to attack South Ossetia, Russia Today,
August 9, 2008).

Moscow's envoy to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, sent an official note to the
representatives of all NATO member countries:

"Russia has already begun consultations with the ambassadors of the
NATO countries and consultations with NATO military representatives
will be held tomorrow," Rogozin said. "We will caution them against
continuing to further support of Saakashvili."

"It is an undisguised aggression accompanied by a mass propaganda
war," he said.

(See Moscow accuses NATO of having "encouraged Georgia" to attack
South Ossetia, Russia Today, August 9, 2008)

According to Rogozin, Georgia had initially planned to:

"start military action against Abkhazia, however, 'the Abkhaz
fortified region turned out to be unassailable for Georgian armed
formations, therefore a different tactic was chosen aimed against
South Ossetia', which is more accessible territorially. The envoy
has no doubts that Mikheil Saakashvili had agreed his actions
with "sponsors", "those with whom he is negotiating Georgia's
accession to NATO ". (RIA Novosti, August 8, 2008)

Contrary to what was conveyed by Western media reports, the attacks
were anticipated by Moscow. The attacks were timed to coincide with
the opening of the Olympics, largely with a view to avoiding
frontpage media coverage of the Georgian military operation.

On August 7, Russian forces were in an advanced state readiness. The
counterattack was swiftly carried out.

Russian paratroopers were sent in from Russia's Ivanovo, Moscow and
Pskov airborne divisions. Tanks, armored vehicles and several
thousand ground troops have been deployed. Russian air strikes have
largely targeted military facilities inside Georgia including the
Gori military base.

The Georgian military attack was repelled with a massive show of
strength on the part of the Russian military.

Act of Provocation?

US-NATO military and intelligence planners invariably examine
various "scenarios" of a proposed military operation-- i.e. in this
case, a limited Georgian attack largely directed against civilian
targets, with a view to inflicting civilian casualties.

The examination of scenarios is a routine practice. With limited
military capabilities, a Georgian victory and occupation of
Tskhinvali, was an impossibility from the outset. And this was known
and understood to US-NATO military planners.

A humanitarian disaster rather than a military victory was an
integral part of the scenario. The objective was to destroy the
provincial capital, while also inflicting a significant loss of
human life.

If the objective were to restore Georgian political control over the
provincial government, the operation would have been undertaken in a
very different fashion, with Special Forces occupying key public
buildings, communications networks and provincial institutions,
rather than waging an all out bombing raid on residential areas,
hospitals, not to mention Tskhinvali's University.


Tskhinvali's University before the bombing

The Russian response was entirely predictable.

Georgia was "encouraged" by NATO and the US. Both Washington and
NATO headquarters in Brussels were acutely aware of what would
happen in the case of a Russian counterattack.

The question is: was this a deliberate provocation intended to
trigger a Russian military response and suck the Russians into a
broader military confrontation with Georgia (and allied forces)
which could potentially escalate into an all out war?

Georgia has the third largest contingent of coalition forces in Iraq
after the US and the UK, with some 2000 troops.  According to
reports, Georgian troops in Iraq are now being repatriated in US
military planes, to fight Russian forces. (See Debka.com, August 10,
2008)

This US decision to repatriate Georgian servicemen suggests that
Washington is intent upon an escalation of the conflict, where
Georgian troops are to be used as cannon fodder against a massive
deployment of Russian forces.

US-NATO and Israel Involved in the Planning of the Attacks
In mid-July, Georgian and U.S. troops held a joint military exercise
entitled "Immediate Response" involving respectively 1,200 US and
800 Georgian troops.

The announcement by the Georgian Ministry of Defense on July 12
stated that they US and Georgian troops were to "train for three
weeks at the Vaziani military base" near the Georgian capital,
Tbilisi. (AP, July 15, 2008). These exercises, which were completed
barely a week before the August 7 attacks, were an obvious dress
rehearsal of a military operation, which, in all likelihood, had
been planned in close cooperation with the Pentagon.

The war on Southern Ossetia was not meant to be won, leading to the
restoration of Georgian sovereignty over South Ossetia. It was
intended to destabilize the region while also triggering a US-NATO
confrontation with Russia.

On July 12, coinciding with the outset of the Georgia-US war games,
the Russian Defense Ministry started its own military maneuvers in
the North Caucasus region. The usual disclaimer by both Tblisi and
Moscow: the military exercises have "nothing to do" with the
situation in South Ossetia. (Ibid)

Let us be under no illusions. This is not a civil war. The attacks
are an integral part of the broader Middle East Central Asian war,
including US-NATO-Israeli war preparations in relation to Iran.

The Role of Israeli Military Advisers

While NATO and US military advisers did not partake in the military
operation per se, they were actively involved in the planning and
logistics of the attacks. According to Israeli sources (Debka.com,
August 8, 2008), the ground assault on August 7-8, using tanks and
artillery was "aided by Israeli military advisers". Israel also
supplied Georgia with Hermes-450 and Skylark unmanned aerial
vehicles, which were used in the weeks leading up to the August 7
attacks.

Georgia has also acquired, according to a report in Rezonansi
(August 6, in Georgian, BBC translation) "some powerful weapons
through the upgrade of Su-25 planes and artillery systems in
Israel". According to Haaretz (August 10, 2008), Israelis are active
in military manufacturing and security consulting in Georgia.

Russian forces are now directly fighting a NATO-US trained Georgian
army integrated by US and Israeli advisers. And Russian warplanes
have attacked the military jet factory on the outskirts of Tbilisi,
which produces the upgraded Su-25 fighter jet, with technical
support from Israel. (CTV.ca, August 10, 2008)

When viewed in the broader context of the Middle East war, the
crisis in Southern Ossetia could lead to escalation, including a
direct confrontation between Russian and NATO forces. If this were
to occur, we would be facing the most serious crisis in US-Russian
relations since the Cuban Missile crisis in October 1962.

===

Georgia: NATO-US Outpost


Georgia is part of a NATO military alliance (GUAM) signed in April
1999 at the very outset of the war on Yugoslavia. It also has a
bilateral military cooperation agreement with the US. These
underlying military agreements have served to protect Anglo-American
oil interests in the Caspian sea basin as well as pipeline routes.

Both the US and NATO have a military presence in Georgia and are
working closely with the Georgian Armed Forces. Since the signing of
the 1999 GUAM agreement, Georgia has been the recipient of extensive
US military aid.

Barely a few months ago, in early May, the Russian Ministry of
Defense accused Washington, "claiming that [US as well as NATO and
Israeli] military assistance to Georgia is destabilizing the
region." (Russia Claims Georgia in Arms Buildup, Wired News, May 19,
2008). According to the Russian Defense Ministry

"Georgia has received 206 tanks, of which 175 units were supplied by
NATO states, 186 armored vehicles (126 - from NATO) , 79 guns (67 -
from NATO) , 25 helicopters (12 - from NATO) , 70 mortars, ten
surface-to-air missile systems, eight Israeli-made unmanned
aircraft, and other weapons. In addition, NATO countries have
supplied four combat aircraft to Georgia. The Russian Defense
Ministry said there were plans to deliver to Georgia 145 armored
vehicles, 262 guns and mortars, 14 combat aircraft including four
Mirazh-2000 destroyers, 25 combat helicopters, 15 American Black
Hawk aircraft, six surface-to-air missile systems and other arms."
(Interfax News Agency, Moscow, in Russian, Aug 7, 2008)

NATO-US-Israeli assistance under formal military cooperation
agreements involves a steady flow of advanced military equipment as
well as training and consulting services.

According to US military sources (spokesman for US European
Command), the US has more than 100 "military trainers" in Georgia. A
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman "said there were no plans to
redeploy the estimated 130 US troops and civilian contractors, who
he said were stationed in the area around Tblisi" (AFP, 9 August
2008). In fact, US-NATO military presence in Georgia is on a larger
scale to that acknowledged in official statements. The number of
NATO personnel in Georgia acting as trainers and military advisers
has not been confirmed.

Although not officially a member of NATO, Georgia's military is full
integrated into NATO procedures.  In 2005, Georgian president
proudly announced the inauguration of the first military base,
which "fully meets NATO standards". Immediately following the
inauguration of the Senakskaya base in west Georgia, Tblisi
announced the opening of a second military base at Gori which would
also "comply with NATO regulations in terms of military requirements
as well as social conditions." (Ria Novosti, 26 May 2006).

The Gori base has been used to train Georgian troops dispatched to
fight under US command in the Iraq war theater.

It is worth noting that under a March 31, 2006, agreement between
Tblisi and Moscow, Russia's two Soviet-era military bases in
Georgia - Akhalkalaki and Batumi have been closed down. (Ibid)  The
pullout at Batumi commenced in May of last year, 2007. The last
remaining Russian troops left the Batumi military facility in early
July 2008, barely a week before the commencement of the US-Georgia
war games and barely a month prior to the attacks on South
Ossetia.

The Israel Connection

Israel is now part of the Anglo-American military axis, which serves
the interests of the Western oil giants in the Middle East and
Central Asia.

Israel is a partner in the Baku-Tblisi- Ceyhan pipeline which brings
oil and gas to the Eastern Mediterranean. More than 20 percent of
Israeli oil is imported from Azerbaijan, of which a large share
transits through the BTC pipeline. Controlled by British Petroleum,
the BTC pipeline has dramatically changed the geopolitics of the
Eastern Mediterranean and the Caucusus:

"[The BTC pipeline] considerably changes the status of the region's
countries and cements a new pro-West alliance. Having taken the
pipeline to the Mediterranean, Washington has practically set up a
new bloc with Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey and Israel, " (Komerzant,
Moscow, 14 July 2006)

While the official reports state that the BTC pipeline will "channel
oil to Western markets", what is rarely acknowledged is that part of
the oil from the Caspian sea would be directly channeled towards
Israel, via Georgia. In this regard, a Israeli-Turkish pipeline
project has also been envisaged which would link Ceyhan to the
Israeli port of Ashkelon and from there through Israel's main
pipeline system, to the Red Sea.

The objective of Israel is not only to acquire Caspian sea oil for
its own consumption needs but also to play a key role in re-
exporting Caspian sea oil back to the Asian markets through the Red
Sea port of Eilat. The strategic implications of this re-routing of
Caspian sea oil are far-reaching. (For further details see Michel
Chossudovsky, The War on Lebanon and the Battle for Oil, Global
Research, July 2006)

What is envisaged is to link the BTC pipeline to the Trans-Israel
Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline, also known as Israel's Tipline, from Ceyhan
to the Israeli port of Ashkelon.

"Turkey and Israel are negotiating the construction of a multi-
million-dollar energy and water project that will transport water,
electricity, natural gas and oil by pipelines to Israel, with the
oil to be sent onward from Israel to the Far East,
The new Turkish-Israeli proposal under discussion would see the
transfer of water, electricity, natural gas and oil to Israel via
four underwater pipelines.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?
cid=1145961328841&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
"Baku oil can be transported to Ashkelon via this new pipeline and
to India and the Far East.[via the Red sea]"

"Ceyhan and the Mediterranean port of Ashkelon are situated only 400
km apart. Oil can be transported to the city in tankers or via
specially constructed under-water pipeline. From Ashkelon the oil
can be pumped through already existing pipeline to the port of Eilat
at the Red Sea; and from there it can be transported to India and
other Asian countries in tankers. (REGNUM)

In this regard, Israel is slated to play a major strategic role
in "protecting" the Eastern Mediterranean transport and pipeline
corridors out of Ceyhan. Concurrently, it also involved in
channeling military aid and training to both Georgia and
Azerbaijan.

A far-reaching 1999 bilateral military cooperation agreement between
Tblisi and Tel Aviv was reached barely a month before the NATO
sponsored GUUAM agreement. It was signed in Tbilisi by President
Shevardnadze and Israel's Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyu. These
various military cooperation arrangements are ultimately intended to
undermine Russia's presence and influence in the Caucasus and
Central Asia.

In a pro forma declaration, Tel Aviv committed itself, following
bilateral discussions with Moscow, on August 5, 2008, to cut back
military assistance to Georgia.

Russia's Response

In response to the attacks, Russian forces intervened with
conventional ground troops. Tanks and armored vehicles were sent in.
The Russian air force was also involved in aerial counter-attacks on
Georgian military positions including the military base of Gori.
The Western media has portrayed the Russian as solely responsible
for the deaths of civilians, yet at the same time the Western media
has acknowledged (confirmed by the BBC) that most of the civilian
casualties at the outset were the result of the Georgian ground and
air attacks.

Based on Russian and Western sources, the initial death toll in
South Ossetia was at least 1,400 (BBC) mostly civilians.  "Georgian
casualty figures ranged from 82 dead, including 37 civilians, to a
figure of around 130 dead.... A Russian air strike on Gori, a
Georgian town near South Ossetia, left 60 people dead, many of them
civilians, Georgia says." (BBC, August 9, 2008). Russian sources
place the number of civilian deaths on South Ossetia at 2000.
A process of escalation and confrontation between Russia and America
is unfolding, reminiscent of the Cold War era.

Are we dealing with an act of provocation, with a view to triggering
a broader conflict?  Supported by media propaganda, the Western
military alliance is intent on using this incident to confront
Russia, as evidenced by recent NATO statements.

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Mohammed Omer: A Palestinian journalist's life and work shed light
on the violence in Israel's "dual" society.


Truth and Consequences Under the Israeli Occupation
By Mohammed Omer
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080818/omer


I am a Palestinian journalist from Gaza. At the age of 17, I armed
myself with a camera and a pen, committed to report accurately on
events in Gaza. I have filed reports as Israeli fighter jets bombed
Gaza City. I have interviewed mothers as they watched their children
die in hospitals unequipped to serve them because of Israel's
embargo. I have been recognized for my reporting, even in the United
States and United Kingdom, where I have won two international
awards. I have also been beaten and tortured by Israeli soldiers.

This summer, at age 24, I was honored to learn that I had become the
youngest journalist to receive the Martha Gellhorn Prize for
Journalism, named for the famed American war reporter and awarded to
journalists who counter propaganda with the truth. Although Israel
has sealed Gaza's 1.5 million Palestinians in what many now call the
world's largest open-air prison, Dutch MP Hans Van Baalen lobbied
the Israeli government to let me leave Gaza to receive my award in
person. Upon my return from London, I was surrounded by Israeli
security officers. I was stripped naked at gunpoint, interrogated,
kicked and beaten for more than four hours. At one point I fainted
and then awakened to fingernails gouging at the flesh beneath my
eyes. An officer crushed my neck beneath his boot and pressed my
chest into the floor. Others took turns kicking and pinching me,
laughing all the while. They dragged me by my feet, sweeping my head
through my own vomit. I lost consciousness. I was told later that
they transferred me to a hospital only when they thought I might
die.

Today, I have difficulty breathing. I have abrasions and scratches
on my chest and neck. My hands don't function well; typing is
difficult. My doctor informed me that due to nerve damage from one
kick, I may be unable to father children and will need to have an
operation.

Israeli attacks on journalists are not new; nor are they rare. In
April, Reuters cameraman Fadel Shana was killed by fire from an
Israeli tank. He was in a car, clearly marked as press. According to
Amnesty International, "Fadel Shana appears to have been killed
deliberately although he was a civilian taking no part in attacks on
Israel's forces."

Reporters Without Borders has condemned the Israeli military's
widespread "abusive behavior" of Palestinian journalists. And the
Committee to Protect Journalists reports that journalists covering
Israeli military actions in the West Bank and Gaza "contend with
perennial abuses at the hands of Israeli forces." In 2007 alone,
Israeli soldiers shot photographers from Agence France-Presse, Al-
Ayyam newspaper and Al-Aqsa TV. The television cameraman, Imad
Ghanem, fell to the ground when wounded. Israeli forces then shot
him twice more in the legs. Both of his legs have been amputated.
Could it be that despite their tanks, fighter planes and nuclear
arsenal, Israel is threatened by our cameras and computers, which
give the world access to images and information about their military
occupation of Palestinians? Indeed, this month a Palestinian girl
filmed an Israeli soldier shooting a blindfolded Palestinian at
point blank range with a rubber bullet. The video aired widely, on
CNN, NBC News and the BBC, among other media outlets.

Although Palestinians face this violence daily, the images and our
stories rarely travel beyond our borders. Israel seems intent on
hiding its oppression of Palestinians under its rule--including its
dual system of laws, one giving civil, political and social rights
to Israelis, and the other denying those rights to Palestinians
living under occupation. This system allows Jewish settlers in the
West Bank to enjoy freedom of movement and access to healthcare and
education, while Palestinian children in Gaza die of curable
illnesses because hospitals have run out of medicine.

Martha Gellhorn brought to light atrocities committed in World War
II and in the Vietnam War. In her tradition, I remain committed to
accurate reporting from Gaza today. For this I may suffer lifelong
consequences. But I hold on to the hope that Americans--as well as
journalists worldwide--will impress upon Israel the need to respect
the rights of reporters. Freedom of speech and a free press are
hallmarks of any democracy. I am proud to call myself a Palestinian
and a journalist. The might of the Israeli military will not silence
my pen or darken my camera lens.


Mohammed Omer is an award-winning photographer and journalist based
in Rafah Refugee Camp in the southern Gaza Strip.

For more on this story, see John Pilger in the Guardian and Alison
Weir in CounterPunch.

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Beijing Olympic Games - Zheng He - the Chinese Muslim Admiral
August 11th, 2008
http://yusufmasjid.com/archives/75

See above website for essential photos.


The Beijing Olympic Games started on Friday 8 August 2008 with a
dramatic opening ceremony featuring a cast of thousands performers
that celebrated the arts and achievements of China's long history.
Among the tremendous events narrated by the ceremony was the
evocation of Zheng He, the Chinese Muslim admiral of the 15th
century. Blue-robed oarsman enacted seafarers travelling between
Southeast Asia and the coast of Fujian, in southern China. Their
oars became sails, painted with the "treasure ships" of Zheng He who
reached Africa in the Ming Dynasty.

  On this occasion, we republish the following short outline of Zhen
He's life and achievement.

Little did the famous Muslim geographer, Ibn Battuta know, that
about 22 years after his historic visit to China, the Mongol Dynasty
(called the Yuan Dynasty in China) would be overthrown. The Ming
Dynasty (1368 - 1644) would begin. A Muslim boy would help a Chinese
prince. That prince would become emperor and the boy would grow up
to be the "Admiral of the Chinese Fleet."

His name… Zheng He. The ships that he would sail throughout the
Indian Ocean would retrace some of the same routes taken by Ibn
Battuta, but he would be in huge boats called "junks". He would go
to East Africa, Makkah, Persian Gulf, and throughout the Indian
Ocean.

Speak of the world's first navigators and the names Christopher
Columbus or Vasco da Gama flash through a Western mind. Little known
are the remarkable feats that a Chinese Muslim Zheng He (1371-1433)
had accomplished decades before the two European adventurers.

The Foundation for Science Technology and Civilisation
(info@...) retraces the route of China's 15th century
admiral, Zheng He, who ranks as perhaps the country's foremost
adventurer. A Muslim and a warrior, Zheng He helped transform China
into the region's, and perhaps the world's, superpower of his time.
In 1405, Zheng was chosen to lead the biggest naval expedition in
history up to that time. Over the next 28 years (1405-1433), he
commanded seven fleets that visited 37 countries, through Southeast
Asia to faraway Africa and Arabia. In those years, China had by far
the biggest ships of the time. In 1420 the Ming navy dwarfed the
combined navies of Europe.

Ma He, as he was originally known, was born in 1371 to a poor ethnic
Hui (Chinese Muslims) family inYunnan Province, Southwest China. The
boy's grandfather and father once made an overland pilgrimage to
Makkah. Their travels contributed much to young Ma's education. He
grew up speaking Arabic and Chinese, leaming much about the world to
the west and its geography and customs.

Recruited as a promising servant for the Imperial household at the
age of ten, Ma was assigned two years later to the retinue of the
then Duke Yan, who would later usurp the throne as the emperor Yong
Le. Ma accompanied the Duke on a series of successful military
campaigns and played a crucial role in the capture of Nanjing, then
the capital. Ma was thus awarded the supreme command of the Imperial
Household Agency and was given the surname Zheng.

Emperor Yong Le tried to boost his damaged prestige as a usurper by
a display of China's might abroad, sending spectacular fleets on
great voyages and by bringing foreign ambassadors to his court. He
also put foreign trade under a strict Imperial monopoly by taking
control from overseas Chinese merchants. Command of the fleet was
given to his favorite Zheng He, an impressive figure said to be over
eight feet tall.

A great fleet of big ships, with nine masts and manned by 500 men,
each set sail in July 1405, half a century before Columbus's voyage
to America. There were great treasure ships over 300-feet long and
150-feet wide, the biggest being 440-feet long and 186-across,
capable of carrying 1,000 passengers. Most of the ships were built
at the Dragon Bay shipyard near Nanjing, the remains of which can
still be seen today.

Zheng He's first fleet included 27,870 men on 317 ships, including
sailors, clerks, interpreters, soldiers, artisans, medical men and
meteorologists. On board were large quantities of cargo including
silk goods, porcelain, gold and silverware, copper utensils, iron
implements and cotton goods. The fleet sailed along China's coast to
Champa close to Vietnam and, after crossing the South China Sea,
visited Java, Sumatra and reached Sri Lanka by passing through the
Strait of Malacca. On the way back it sailed along the west coast of
India and returned home in 1407. Envoys from Calicut in India and
several countries in Asia and the Middle East also boarded the ships
to pay visits to China. Zheng He's second and third voyages taken
shortly after, followed roughly the same route.

In the fall of 1413, Zheng He set out with 30,000 men to Arabia on
his fourth and most ambitious voyage. From Hormuz he coasted around
the Arabian boot to Aden at the mouth of the Red Sea. The arrival of
the fleet caused a sensation in the region, and 19 countries sent
ambassadors to board Zheng He's ships with gifts for Emperor Yong Le.
In 1417, after two years in Nanjing and touring other cities, the
foreign envoys were escorted home by Zheng He. On this trip, he
sailed down the east coast of Africa, stopping at Mogadishu,
Matindi, Mombassa and Zanzibar and may have reached Mozambique. The
sixth voyage in 1421 also went to the African coast.

Emperor Yong Le died in 1424 shortly after Zheng He's return. Yet,
in 1430 the admiral was sent on a final seventh voyage. Now 60 years
old, Zheng He revisited the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and Africa and
died on his way back in 1433 in India.

Zheng He's Junks (ships)

Zheng He's flag "treasure ship" was four hundred feet long - much
larger than Columbus's. In this drawing, the two flagships are
superimposed to give a clear idea of the relative size of these two
ships. Columbus's ship St. Maria was only 85 feet long whilst Zheng
He's flag ship was an astonishing 400 feet.

Imagine six centuries ago, a mighty armada of Zheng He's ships
crossing the China Sea, then venturing west to Ceylon, Arabia, and
East Africa. The fleet consisting of giant nine-masted junks,
escorted by dozens of supply ships, water tankers, transports for
cavalry horses, and patrol boats. The armada's crew totaling more
than 27,000 sailors and soldiers.

Loaded with Chinese silk and porcelain, the junks visited ports
around the Indian Ocean. Here, Arab and African merchants exchanged
the spices, ivory, medicines, rare woods, and pearls so eagerly
sought by the Chinese imperial court.

Seven times, from 1405 to 1433, the treasure fleets set off for the
unknown. These seven great expeditions brought a vast web of trading
links — from Taiwan to the Persian Gulf — under Zheng He's imperial
control. This took place half a century before the first Europeans,
rounding the tip of Africa in frail Portuguese
caravels, `discovered' the Indian Ocean.

His humble tomb

Zheng He (1371-1433), or Cheng Ho, is arguably China's most famous
navigator. Starting from the beginning of the 15th Century, he
traveled to the West seven times. For 28 years, he traveled more
than 50,000 km and visited over 37 countries. Zheng He died in the
tenth year of the reign of the Ming emperor Xuande (1433) and was
buried in the southern outskirts of Bull's Head Hill (Niushou) in
Nanjing.

In 1983, during the 580th anniversary of Zheng He's voyage, his tomb
was restored. The new tomb was built on the site of the original
tomb and reconstructed according to the customs of Islamic teachings.

At the entrance to the tomb is a Ming-style structure, which houses
the memorial hall. Inside are paintings of the man himself and his
navigation maps. To get to the tomb, there are newly laid stone
platforms and steps. The stairway consists of 28 stone steps divided
into four sections with each section having seven steps. This
represents Zheng He's seven journeys to the West. Inscribed on top
of the tomb are the Arabic words "Allahu Akbar (God is Great)".
source:

http://www.muslimheritage.com

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Court filings shed light on the role Islamabad and U. S. agents
played in five-month delay of al-Qaeda suspect's return flight to
Toronto


Pakistan frustrated plan to bring Khadr home
COLIN FREEZE
http://freedetainees.org/812


Canadian officials privately complained they were sandbagged by the
Pakistani government's last-minute reneging on a deal to place al-
Qaeda suspect Abdullah Khadr on a June, 2005, flight back to Canada -
five crucial months before he was allowed to return to Toronto, only
to be rearrested on a U. S. warrant.

Court filings in the extradition matter reviewed by The Globe and
Mail show consular officials were mystified when a deal between
Ottawa and Islamabad to repatriate Mr. Khadr broke down without
explanation. Diplomats who arranged the suspect's release had
secured a place for him on a specific British Airways flight, hired
agents to guard him, cleared him from being on any no-fly lists, and
arranged an emergency passport.

By that point, Mr. Khadr had been held for eight months by the
Pakistani government, which was seemingly content to release him
from a secret intelligence safe house and back to Canada. On the
heels of a Globe and Mail legal battle for disclosure, a Canadian
judge revealed this week that the United States had issued a
$500,000 bounty for the Canadian citizen's capture in Pakistan.

Yet for undisclosed reasons, the Pakistanis kept Mr. Khadr in the
secret safe house for five more months after his scheduled
repatriation flight, allowing FBI agents - sometimes referred to as
a "clean team" - to reinterview him. In the process, they garnered a
key, and relatively untainted, interview that now forms the basis
for the ongoing U. S. extradition claim.

It's unclear who or what led the Pakistanis to delay the release of
Mr. Khadr. But the development occurred as the Mounties slowly
resigned themselves to the fact they would likely be unable to
launch any prosecution against him in Canada, given that courts
might not countenance statements made in a Pakistani quasi-prison.
It was at that point that the FBI stepped up its own, independent
efforts to get a U. S. case in gear.

Mr. Khadr, the most senior living male member of Canada's Khadr
clan, was eventually released by Pakistan, returning to Canada in
November, 2005. He was arrested just two weeks later on a U. S.
warrant alleging involvement in al-Qaeda. Lawyers are fighting
removal, arguing that all of the now 28- year-old's confessions -
which involved admissions he ran guns to al-Qaeda insurgents in
Afghanistan - are tainted by mistreatment he suffered in Pakistan.

Court filings in the extradition matter reveal internal Foreign
Affairs records that show Mr. Khadr was supposed to have been placed
aboard a British Airways flight, leaving Islamabad on June 15, 2005,
and arriving in Toronto at 6 p. m. Four seats were booked, for two
Pakistani intelligence agents, one Canadian security chief and for
Mr. Khadr, travelling under a newly issued emergency Canadian
passport, No. EC016094.

Yet the day of the flight, Mr. Khadr was a no-show, which confused
Canadian consular officials. "Given subj is now not returning to
Cda, grateful mission wld ask Pakistani authorities what happened,
where he is, which authority is holding him, etc. etc, and a new
consular visit asap," reads a same-day note sent within Canada's
Foreign Affairs Department.

"This is a big issue for us," said Khadr defence lawyer Nathan
Whitling in an interview yesterday. He says that if officials stuck
with the original flight plan, the FBI would never have gotten the
statements they are now relying upon to extradite Mr. Khadr.

The case of the missing passenger, never before reported from the
voluminous filings in the case, provides a seeming glimpse into the
invisible realpolitik and horse-trading practised by
counterterrorism agencies when they converge around a common suspect.
Visits from U. S. agents appear to have bookended Mr. Khadr's stay
in the Pakistani safe house. In the middle there were some
interactions with Canadian agents who tried - and failed - to get an
incriminating statement that would hold water in Canadian courts.

The Federal Court decision released this week sheds some light on
the chain of events. In the fall of 2004, "agents of the United
States began to interview Mr. Khadr some four days after his arrest,
described as `debriefings,' which continued for 17 days while he was
within custody of Pakistani authorities," Mr. Justice Richard Mosley
wrote. "A member of the FBI was part of the team that conducted
those briefings."

The Mounties went to Pakistan in the spring of 2005, with an eye to
laying charges in Canada.

Court filings show the Mounties felt the $10,000 flight to Pakistan
was worth the cost - and a real opportunity to put the RCMP on the
map as a self- sufficient intelligence agency. But it was conceded
from the outset that interviews garnered from a detainee in Pakistan
posed some obvious problems.

Canada has never successfully prosecuted a terrorism case.

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Bush Distorted Prewar Intel, Report Says
By Randall Mikkelsen,
Reuters
http://news.aol.com/story/_a/bush-distorted-prewar-intel-report-
says/20080605181509990001


WASHINGTON - President George W. Bush and his top policymakers
misstated Saddam Hussein's links to terrorism and ignored doubts
among intelligence agencies about Iraq's arms programs as they made
a case for war, the Senate intelligence committee reported on
Thursday.


Getty Images
Bush's claims that Saddam Hussein was prepared to arm terrorists
with weapons of mass destruction contradicted intelligence, a report
says.


The report shows an administration that "led the nation to war on
false premises," said the committee's Democratic Chairman, Sen. John
Rockefeller of West Virginia. Several Republicans on the committee
protested its findings as a "partisan exercise."

The committee studied major speeches by Bush, Vice President Dick
Cheney and other officials in advance of the U.S.-led invasion of
Iraq in March 2003, and compared key assertions with intelligence
available at the time.

Statements that Iraq had a partnership with al Qaeda were wrong and
unsupported by intelligence, the report said.

It said that Bush's and Cheney's assertions that Saddam was prepared
to arm terrorist groups with weapons of mass destruction for attacks
on the United States contradicted available intelligence.

Such assertions had a strong resonance with a U.S. public, still
reeling after al Qaeda's September 11, 2001, attacks on the United
States. Polls showed that many Americans believed Iraq played a role
in the attacks, even long after Bush acknowledged in September 2003
that there was no evidence Saddam was involved.

The report also said administration prewar statements on Iraq's
weapons programs were backed up in most cases by available U.S.
intelligence, but officials failed to reflect internal debate over
those findings, which proved wrong.

PUBLIC CAMPAIGN

The long-delayed Senate study supported previous reports and
findings that the administration's main cases for war -- that Iraq
had weapons of mass destruction and was spreading them to
terrorists -- were inaccurate and deeply flawed.

"The president and his advisors undertook a relentless public
campaign in the aftermath of the (September 11) attacks to use the
war against al Qaeda as a justification for overthrowing Saddam
Hussein," Rockefeller said in written commentary on the report.

"Representing to the American people that the two had an operational
partnership and posed a single, indistinguishable threat was
fundamentally misleading and led the nation to war on false
premises."

A statement to Congress by then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
that the Iraqi government hid weapons of mass destruction in
facilities underground was not backed up by intelligence
information, the report said. Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon
said Rumsfeld's comments should be investigated further, but he
stopped short of urging a criminal probe.

The committee voted 10-5 to approve the report, with two Republican
lawmakers supporting it. Sen. Christopher Bond of Missouri and three
other Republican panel members denounced the study in an attached
dissent.

"The committee finds itself once again consumed with political
gamesmanship," the Republicans said. The effort to produce the
report "has indeed resulted in a partisan exercise." They said,
however, that the report demonstrated that Bush administration
statements were backed by intelligence and "it was the intelligence
that was faulty."

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said: "We had the intelligence
that we had, fully vetted, but it was wrong. We certainly regret
that and we've taken measures to fix it."

PUBLIC SUPPORT

U.S. public opinion on the war, supportive at first, has soured,
contributing to a dive in Bush's popularity.

The conflict is likely to be a key issue in the November
presidential election between Republican John McCain, who supports
the war, and Democrat Barack Obama, who opposed the war from the
start and says he would aim to pull U.S. troops out within 16 months
of taking office in January 2009.

Rockefeller has announced his support for Obama.

The administration's record in making its case for Iraq has also
been cited by critics of Bush's get-tough policy on Iran. They
accuse Bush of overstating the potential threat of Iran's nuclear
program in order to justify the possible use of force.

A second report by the committee faulted the administration's
handling of December 2001 Rome meetings between defense officials
and Iranian informants, which dealt with the Iran issue. It said
department officials failed to share intelligence from the meeting,
which Rockefeller said demonstrated a "fundamental disdain" for
other intelligence agencies.


Additional reporting by Andy Sullivan, Donna Smith; editing by
Frances Kerry

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U.S. Imposes Sanctions on 5 Iranian Companies
The Washington Post
By MARTIN CRUTSINGER
The Associated Press
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2008/08/12/AR2008081201382.html


WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration has imposed economic sanctions
on five Iranian companies that it has accused of helping the country
pursue its ambitions to develop a nuclear weapon.

The Treasury Department announced Tuesday that it was freezing any
assets the five companies might have in the United States and
prohibiting American individuals and companies from having dealings
with the firms.

The five companies are the Nuclear Research Center for Agriculture
and Medicine, the Esfahan Nuclear Fuel Research and Production
Center, Jabber Ibn Hayan, the Safety Procurement Company and Joza
Industrial Company.

"These five nuclear and missile entities have been used by Iran to
hide its illicit conduct and further its dangerous nuclear
ambitions," Stuart Levey, Treasury's under secretary for terrorism
and financial intelligence, said in a statement announcing the
action.

The new sanctions represent the latest effort by the administration
and its allies to increase pressure on Iran to halt its nuclear
program.

The European Union on Friday tightened trade restrictions on Iran
and the West has threatened a fourth round of sanctions over
Tehran's refusal to halt uranium enrichment, a process that can
either produce fuel for a nuclear reactor or a weapon.

Tehran insists its nuclear program is aimed only at generating
electricity. [although Iran has the right to defend itself. -WVNS]

The actions taken by the administration on Tuesday were under an
executive order President Bush signed to target entities accused of
aiding in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

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Israel warns Russia: We'll neutralize S-300 if sold to Iran
Jerusalem Post
http://www.jpost. com/servlet/ Satellite? cid=121810423954
1&pagename=JPArticle% 2FShowFull


If Russia goes through with the sale of its most advanced anti-
aircraft missile system to Iran, Israel will use an electronic
warfare device now under development to neutralize it and as a
result present Russia as vulnerable to air infiltrations, a top
defense official has told The Jerusalem Post.


Russian S-300 missiles.
Photo: AP


The Russian system, called the S-300, is one of the most advanced
multi-target anti-aircraft- missile systems in the world today and
has a reported ability to track up to 100 targets simultaneously
while engaging up to 12 at the same time. It has a range of about
200 kilometers and can hit targets at altitudes of 27,000 meters.
While Russia has denied that it sold the system to Iran, Teheran
claimed last year that Moscow was preparing to equip the Islamic
Republic with S-300 systems. Iran already has TOR-M1 surface-to-air
missiles from Russia.

Mixed media reports have emerged recently regarding the possible
delivery of the system to Iran. Two weeks ago Reuters quoted a
senior Israeli official who said the system would be delivered to
Iran by the end of the year. In response, the Pentagon released a
statement rejecting the assessment and saying that the US did not
believe Iran would get it in 2008.

According to the Israeli defense official who spoke to the Post, "no
one really knows yet if and when Iran will get the system."

A top IAF officer also said this week that Israel needed to
do "everything possible" to prevent the S-300 from reaching the
region.

"Russia will have to think real hard before delivering this system
to Iran, which is possibly on the brink of conflict with either
Israel or the US, since if the system is delivered, an EW
[electronic warfare] system will likely be developed to neutralize
it, and if that happens it would be catastrophic not only for Iran
but also for Russia," the defense official said.

Neutralization of one of the main components of Russian air defense
would be a blow to Russian national security as well as to defense
exports. "No country will want to buy the system if it is proven to
be ineffective, " the official said. "For these reasons, Russia may
not deliver it in the end to Iran."

Also on Thursday, Defense Minister Ehud Barak told an Italian paper
that a nuclear Iran would be "dangerous to world order."

Barak emphasized that all options for dealing with threat of a
nuclear Teheran were "open and ready," and stressed the importance
of "strengthening and accelerating economic sanctions against Iran."

"Either way, we need to keep every option open. If they provoke us,
or they attack us, our army is prepared to attack and to succeed
uncompromisingly, " he asserted in an interview with the daily
Corriere della Sera . "It's up to us to find the best way to get the
best result with minimum damage," Barak added.

"Iran confirmed its message when it stood against the whole world:
to deceive and to reject. Their aim is to obtain an atomic bomb," he
continued.

The defense minister also spoke of the results of the Second Lebanon
War, telling the Italian paper, "Two years ago, we saw the price
that's paid for a lack of an experienced leadership. Nevertheless,
today we're equipped with a good understanding to prevent this from
happening again."

He added that UN Security Council Resolution 1701 that brought an
end to the war was inefficient since Hizbullah, Syria and Iran were
doing what they wanted in Lebanon.


NOTE: Russia should assume that Israel is already engaged in
Electronic Warfare against them as well as everyone else. -WVNS

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"A Crime Against Our Nation"


The Iraq War Becomes Suicidal
By SAUL LANDAU
http://www.counterpunch.org/landau06122008.html


I gave a dollar to a shabbily dressed young man holding a "help me"
sign on a Market Street in San Francisco. Most Saturday shoppers,
many of them foreign tourists taking advantage of the cheap dollar,
ignored him and the scores of homeless people hoping to score some
spare change. Dave thanked me.

I asked him why he wasn't working.

"My back hurts," he explained. The pain began "outside of Baghdad."
He pointed to the base of his spine. "A mortar shell exploded. A
couple pieces of metal lodged somewhere here." He pointed to the
base of his spine. "One of my buddies got hit in the eye. He's worse
off than me." Dave said he was about to turn 26 and had lived on the
streets for almost two years.

Heroin? I guessed.

He smiled.

"Some had it worse. Arms, legs, brains."

I asked where he slept.

"Parks, under freeways, sometimes in homeless shelters if I have
nothing that can get stolen," he laughed.

I shook his hand and wished him luck. "Hey," he called. "I haven't
killed myself yet like some of my buddies did."

Dave was referring to the average of 18 veterans who kill themselves
every day in the United States. "In California alone in 2006, 666
veterans committed suicide," reported John Koopman. (SF Chronicle,
May 12, 2008)

Dave might have been referring to Tim Chapman, also of San
Francisco. Like Dave, he could not readapt to civilian life after
his experience with war in the Middle East. Tim got on drugs. He
joined a gang. His wife left him and he began to focus on ending his
life, he told Koopman.

Throughout the country, communities cope with tens of thousands of
U.S. troops returned from Afghanistan and Iraq with blighted bodies
and brains.  As long as Bush's wars continue – no candidate has
pledged to withdraw all the troops – the country faces a growing
collection of veterans, many of whom cannot function in family or
work settings. They suffer from war wounds – physical and mental --
that require expensive treatment.

Even though the overall number of veterans has begun to decline as
World War II and Korea participants expire, "the government expects
to be spending $59 billion a year to compensate injured warriors in
25 years, up from today's $29 billion." And reporter Jennifer C.
Kerr cites the Veterans Affairs Department, which "concedes the bill
could be much higher." (Associated Press, May 11, 2008)
Those who don't show injuries or don't come in for or respond to
treatment have become the highest risks. In 2005, CBS News began
investigating suicides in the U.S. military.

"120 people each week who had served in the military committed
suicide. That's an average twice that of non-veterans," concluded a
report from CBS' Armen Keteyian (Nov. 13, 2007).

CBS asked Dr. Steve Rathbun, acting head of the Epidemiology and
Biostatistics Department at the University of Georgia, for a
detailed analysis of suicide statistics obtained from government
authorities for 2004 and 2005. From the figures, Rathbun found that
veterans "were more than twice as likely to commit suicide as non-
vets."

Iraq and Afghan War veterans aged 20 through 24 had the highest
suicide rate among all veterans -- between 22.9 and 31.9 per
100,000. The general population has 8.9 per 100,000.
In early April, a group of lawyers representing veterans' rights
sued in a San Francisco federal court. The suit claimed the VA had
deliberately concealed the risk of suicide among veterans. Attorney
Gordon Erspamer put it generously.

"Unfortunately the VA is in denial," said the Veterans' Rights
Attorney.

Erspramer was referring to emails written by Dr. Ira Katz, the VA's
head of Mental Health. Katz had insisted that the suicide risk for
returning Afghanistan and Iraq veterans was in normal range.

"There is no epidemic in suicide in VA," Katz told CBS' Keteyian
last November.

But in one 2007 email Katz wrote: "Our suicide prevention
coordinators are identifying about 1,000 suicide attempts per month
[12,000 a year] among veterans we see in our medical facilities."

That contradicted the number the VA gave CBS News (790 attempted
suicides in 2007).

The e-mail, "Not for the CBS News Interview Request," began
with "Shh!" Katz finished his email with: "Is this something we
should (carefully) address ... before someone stumbles on it?"

Rep. Bob Filner (D-Ca), chair of the House Committee on Veterans
Affairs called this "a crime against our nation, our nation's
veterans." (CBS News)

Katz later regretted his statement. "It was an error and I apologize
[to the House Committee] for that." (CBS news interactive, April 23,
2008).

Katz confessed he knew some 12,000 veterans a year had attempted
suicide while being treated by the VA. That figure doesn't cover
those not under VA treatment. Katz wondered if "this is something we
should (carefully) address ourselves in some sort of release before
someone stumbles on it?"

Bush Administration officials are replete with sick jokes. Remember
FEMA's Michael Brown after Hurricane Katrina? The right wing
bureaucrats saved their cruelest joke for those deployed and
returning from the Middle East, almost 1.7 million men and women.
Veterans suffering from wounds or traumas often observe their
conditions worsening, leading to greater disabilities. The new vets
know more than the ones from previous wars about getting their
rightful benefits; thus, rising costs.

Because battlefield and emergency medical care have improved
dramatically since World War II and Korea, and even since Vietnam,
wounds that would have previously killed have become treatable. The
number of vets collecting after Afghanistan and Iraq duty has grown
to almost 200,000.

When Bush's routine "special" request to continue the war appears
before Congress, however, most Members -- and certainly not the
President -- don't focus on the disabled veterans. Since 2001, when
Bush initiated his two wars, the number of partially destroyed vets
has leaped 25 percent. 2.9 million Daves – or far worse cases – now
populate the country. They join older vets from older wars as part
of those who fit Franz Fanon's description: the wretched of the
earth.

Rick used booze, a habit he acquired in Vietnam where he served two
tours of duty doing "search and rescue." Within a decade after his
return to the United States he became convinced that he saw
malevolent shadows. These illusive entities manufactured parasites
and directed them to burrow under his skin and have now followed him
to the gas station near his Oakland street lodgings.

He has spent two decades battling that fear – with the help of booze
and other substances, of course. "The war was the most exciting time
in my life," he concluded as he scratched the spots where the
imaginary entities had crawled under his skin. "You wonder why they
would do it all over again."

Tens of millions of Americans ask why Bush and his supposedly
conservative advisors would again dispatch young men and women to
fight a war that had no just cause and threatens to drag on
endlessly. Millions ask: Why can't the United States withdraw? Why
doesn't Congress just cut the funds? They shake their heads at the
answers.

Civil war might break out. We can't desert those poor Iraqis. Al
Qaeda could claim victory. Our reputation, our prestige, our
national conscience, blah blah blah….

Steve Smithson, a deputy director at the American Legion, told AP
reporter Jennifer Kerr that suicide "is a cost of war" as if
patriotic – sheeplike? -- Americans simply had to accept that war
brings awful things, but when the President calls the patriots
respond.

Almost 24 millions veterans - disabled or not – watch their numbers
dwindle as World War II and Korean War vets die. The VA projects
that by 2033 only 15 million will remain, but it will cost more to
deal with them. Compensation for disabled veterans, agency economic
predict, will increase from today's $29 billion to $33 billion – at
least. The disabilities mount, the injuries become more acute.

A RAND corporation study claimed some 300,000 ex soldiers suffered
from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. More than 320,000 had probably
experienced traumatic brain injuries in combat. The nature of Bush's
wars means "in Iraq and Afghanistan all service members, not just
combat infantry, are exposed to roadside bombs and civilian deaths.
That distinction subjects a much wider swath of military personnel
to the stresses of war." (Julian Barnes, LA Times April 18, 2008).

ENOUGH ALREADY!


Saul Landau received the Bernardo O'Higgins award from Chile. He is
a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies and author of A Bush
and Botox World

http://www.easycartsecure.com/CounterPunch/CounterPunch_Books.html

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America's Communist movement owed a lot to Jewish support.


Radicalized Jews
By Howard Sachar


Reprinted with permission from A History of Jews in America
published by Vintage Books

http://www.myjewishlearning.com/redirect/redir.php?
U=http://www.randomhouse.com/vintage/catalog/results.pperl?
imprint=Vintage&sortfield=author_last&keyword=sachar&image.x=13&image
.y=12 .


The Depression accelerated a process of radicalization that had
begun in the immediate aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution of
1917. In the early post-revolutionary years, a left wing sprang up
with the American Socialist party, favoring affiliation with the
Comintern [the international Communist movement]. When the radicals
were defeated at the Socialist convention in 1919, they bolted and
attached themselves to the Communists.

Among Jews, this element was always a minority, even within the
extensive Jewish Socialist movement. But they were a hair-shirt
minority. It happened that the early postwar immigration of East
European Jews included many veterans of the Bolshevik Revolution and
the Russian civil wars.

In the early 1920s, it was these militant newcomers who dramatically
augmented the radicals' leadership. Their first and principal target
was the large reservoir of Jews still laboring in the garment
industry. Among the needle workers, the old flaming Socialist
idealism had been fading steadily during the 1920s. At the same
time, unwilling to risk union treasuries or their own salaries,
officials of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union and the
Amalgamated Clothing Workers had become perfunctory in their
negotiations' with management. Their flaccidity in turn proved raw
meat for the Communists. Dogmatic and fiery, the latter now hurled
themselves into the effort to capture the ILGWU's and Amalgamated's
central offices and committees....

Jewish Leadership

Yet, if the Communists evoked little support from American Jewry at
large, the party leadership continued to include a disproportionate
number of Jews. Among these were Jay Lovestone, Benjamin Gitlow,
William Weinstone, Bertram D. Wolfe, and Israel Amster. Well before
the Depression, too, Jews contributed a significant share of the
Communist party's votes (although, again, this represented a
distinct minority of all Jewish ballots cast). In the presidential
elections of 1924 and 1928, about one-quarter of the 50,000 votes
cast on both occasions for William Z. Foster, the Communist party's
nominee, came from New York, and almost certainly most were cast by
Jews.

In 1925, the 22,000 circulation of Freiheit, the journal of the
Jewish Socialist (Communist) Federation, actually exceeded the Daily
Worker's 17,000. The tight Jewish nucleus re­mained in place
throughout the 1920s, despite the party's relentless opposition both
to Judaism and to Zionism as "reactionary" influences. It was this
group, too, that saw its best opportunity following the Wall Street
crash.

Depression &  the Jewish Radical Left

In the Great Depression of the 1930s, radicalism flowered for one of
the few times in American history. Although the actual membership of
the various leftist parties remained small, their impact far ex­
ceeded their size. Norman Thomas, the Socialist presidential candi­
date, polled almost 900,000 votes in the 1932 election; William Z.
Foster, the Communist presidential candidate, polled some 100,000
votes. A General Electric engineer in Sche­nectedy could run for
secretary of state of New York on the Communist ticket without
losing his job. Distinguished American intellectuals such as Max
Eastman, Rockwell Kent, John Dos Passos, and Edmund Wilson could
flaunt their leftist credentials and their admiration for Soviet
collectivism.

One after another, major American industries that had long resisted
union organization capitulated to the CIO--the mili­tant Congress of
Industrial Organizations--whose organizers included an important
minority of Socialists, Communists, even Trotskyites. Jews were
prominent among these radical elements. It was significant, however,
that few of them were themselves workers. In the garment industry,
earlier, Jews had learned through bitter experience how little the
Communists were concerned with actual laboring and living
conditions. Although Jewish unions would remain distinctly left-of-
center well into the late 1920s and early I930s, it was no longer
from them that the Communist party would draw its most
impressionable Jewish sympathizers when the Great Depression struck.

Rather, the response came from a younger, white-collar generation,
Jews in their late teens and early 20s who were caught in suspended
animation on the threshold of economic security. Most were recent
college graduates. Many had just entered the white-collar ranks as
teachers, government employees, and social workers. Now their hopes
of economic security and "respectability" lay blasted, ap­parently by
an incorrigibly ruthless economic system.

Opposition to Fascism & Anti-Semitism

Even had so­cialism not been their family's and their people's
tradition, it did not escape these embittered young Jews, blocked in
mid-passage by de­pression and discrimination, that the Soviet
leadership evidently had taken the lead in mobilizing resistance to
fascism and anti-Semitism abroad and that the Communist party in the
United States positioned itself in the forefront of every campaign
for racial and economic jus­tice.

From 1934 on, too--reflecting Moscow's new Popular Front ap­proach--
the Communists abandoned the former anti-Judaist and anti-Zionist
propaganda of earlier years and appealed directly to Jews on issues
of major Jewish concern. In 1937, the Yiddish Cultural Alli­ance, a
Communist-front group established in New York, began issu­ing a
monthly literary journal, Yidishe Kultur, that dutifully parroted
Communist appeals for unity against anti-Semitism and "world reac­
tion." The Communists even could say a kind word now for Jewish
workers in Palestine, while the American Jewish Communist leader
Moses Olgin informed his bewildered Jewish comrades that "we must
learn not to scoff at religion."

Jewish Influence

So it was, during these years of communism's resurgence, that the
Jewish component surfaced even more vividly than it had a decade
earlier, in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution. By now, New
York accounted for about one-fifth of the party's national member­
ship, and that one-fifth was predominantly Jewish. All the senior
edi­tors of the Daily Worker were Jews. If the party failed to make
headway in the ILGWU or the Amalgamated (well immunized by the
events of the 1920s), it successfully infiltrated white-collar
unions, with their extensive Jewish membership of teachers, social
workers, office workers, government employees, and retail clerks. It
organized a spe­cial section to penetrate Jewish community centers,
Jewish federa­tions, national Jewish organizations.

The West Coast office of the American Jewish Congress was almost
entirely compromised by fel­low travelers. At the annual conference
of the Federation of Jewish Social Welfare Agencies in 1932, the
much-respected chairman, Jacob Billikopf, was nearly unseated in
favor of a hard-core Communist. In 1934, radicals in the Jewish
Social Workers Association defected to form the Association of
Practitioners in Jewish Social Agencies--a Communist front.

Altogether, tens of thousands of Jews throughout the country were
drawn to Communist-front organizations, particularly to the
various "anti-Fascist" groups. One of the most popular of these,
founded in 1937, was the American League against War and Fascism,
later to be renamed the American League for Peace and Democracy. The
Jew­ish People's Committee against Fascism and Anti-Semitism was
formed in 1939, when the American Jewish Congress rejected
applicants from the leftist International Workers Organization.

Impres­sionable and idealistic, students were uniquely susceptible to
these leagues and alliances. In 1936, the American Student Union--
later the American Youth Congress--listed 200,000 members, of whom
possibly a fourth were Jews. For these young people, witnessing the
rise of anti-Semitism in Europe and experiencing raw discrimina­tion
at home, almost any "progressive" movement would have claimed their
loyalty. But with their own strong Jewish cultural traditions, they
were particularly impressed by the intellectualism of the Left, by a
movement that included so many admired thinkers, writers, and other
individuals of cultivated tastes.

Few of them joined the Communist party outright but large numbers
were drawn to front organizations, oblivious to the hard-edged
Stalinism that lurked behind the façade. There was nothing cynical
about their commitments. When civil war broke out in Spain, possibly
1,000 of the 3,000 volunteers in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade who
departed to fight for the Loyalist cause were Jews. A third of them
never returned.

Howard M. Sachar is the author of numerous books, including A
History of Israel, A History of the Jews in America, Farewell
Espana, Israel and Europe, and A History of Jews in the Modern
World, which will be published in August 2005. He is also the editor
of the 39-volume The Rise of Israel: A Documentary History. He
serves as Professor of Modern History at George Washington
University, is a consultant and lecturer on Middle Eastern affairs
for numerous governmental bodies, and lectures widely in the United
States and abroad. He lives in Kensington, Maryland.

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U.S. Mega-Bases in Iraq Make the News
by Tom Engelhardt
Tom Dispatch
http://www.mathaba.net/rss/?x=595445&abs2


The Pentagon built a series of fortified American towns, each some
15 to 20 miles around, with many of the amenities of home, including
big name fast-food franchises, PXes, and the like, in a hostile land
in the midst of war and occupation.

It's just a $5,812,353 contract -- chump change for the Pentagon --
and not even one of those notorious "no-bid" contracts either.
Ninety-eight bids were solicited by the Army Corps of Engineers and
12 were received before the contract was awarded this May 28th to
Wintara, Inc. of Fort Washington, Maryland, for "replacement
facilities for Forward Operating Base Speicher, Iraq." According to
a Department of Defense press release, the work on
those "facilities" to be replaced at the base near Saddam Hussein's
hometown, Tikrit, is expected to be completed by January 31, 2009, a
mere 11 days after a new president enters the Oval Office. It is but
one modest reminder that, when the next administration hits
Washington, American bases in Iraq, large and small, will still be
undergoing the sort of repair and upgrading that has been ongoing
for years.

In fact, in the last five-plus years, untold billions of taxpayer
dollars have been spent on the construction and upgrading of those
bases. When asked back in the fall of 2003, only months after
Baghdad fell to U.S. troops, Lt. Col. David Holt, the Army engineer
then "tasked with facilities development" in Iraq, proudly indicated
that "several billion dollars" had already been invested in those
fast-rising bases. Even then, he was suitably amazed, commenting
that "the numbers are staggering." Imagine what he might have said,
barely two and a half years later, when the U.S. reportedly had 106
bases, mega to micro, all across the country.

By now, billions have evidently gone into single massive mega-bases
like the U.S. air base at Balad, about 60 miles north of Baghdad.
It's a "16-square-mile fortress," housing perhaps 40,000 U.S.
troops, contractors, special ops types, and Defense Department
employees. As the Washington Post's Tom Ricks, who visited Balad
back in 2006, pointed out -- in a rare piece on one of our mega-
bases -- it's essentially "a small American town smack in the middle
of the most hostile part of Iraq." Back then, air traffic at the
base was already being compared to Chicago's O'Hare International or
London's Heathrow -- and keep in mind that Balad has been steadily
upgraded ever since to support an "air surge" that, unlike the
President's 2007 "surge" of 30,000 ground troops, has yet to end.

Building Ziggurats

While American reporters seldom think these bases -- the most
essential U.S. facts on the ground in Iraq -- are important to
report on, the military press regularly writes about them with
pride. Such pieces offer a tiny window into just how busily the
Pentagon is working to upgrade and improve what are already state-of-
the-art garrisons. Here's just a taste of what's been going on
recently at Balad, one of the largest bases on foreign soil on the
planet, and but one of perhaps five mega-bases in that country:

Consider, for instance, this description of an air-field upgrade
from official U.S. Air Force news coverage, headlined: "'Dirt Boyz'
pave way for aircraft, Airmen":

"In less than four months, Balad Air Base Dirt Boyz have placed and
finished more than 12,460 feet of concrete and added approximately
90,000 square feet of pavement to the airfield… Without the extra
pavement courtesy of the Dirt Boyz, fewer aircraft would be able to
be positioned and maintained at Balad AB. Having fewer aircraft at
the base would directly affect the Air Force's ability to place
surveillance assets in the air and to drop munitions on targets...
The ongoing flightline projects at Balad AB consist of concrete pad
extensions that will provide occupation surfaces for multiple
aircraft of various types."

Or here's a proud description of what Detachment 6 of the 732nd
Expeditionary Civil Engineer Squadron did on its recent tour in
Balad:

"'We constructed more than 25,000 square feet of living, dining and
operations buildings from the ground up,' said Staff Sgt. John
Wernegreen… 'This project gave the [U.S.] Army's [3rd Squadron, 2nd
Stryker Cavalry Regiment] and Iraqi army [soldiers] a place to carry
out their mission of controlling the battlespace around the Eastern
Diyala Province.'"

And here's a caption, accompanying an Air Force photo of work at
Balad: "Airmen of the 407th Expeditionary Civil Engineer Squadron
pavement and equipment team repair utility cuts here June 11. The
team replaced approximately 30 cubic meters of concrete over newly
installed power line cables." And another: "Expeditionary Civil
Engineer Squadron heavy equipment operator, contours a new sidewalk
here, June 10. Sidewalk repair is being accomplished throughout the
base housing area to eliminate tripping hazards." (The sidewalks on
such bases go with bus routes, traffic lights, and speeding tickets -
- in a country parts of which the U.S. has helped turn into little
more than a giant pothole.)

Or how about this caption for a photo of military men on upgrade
duty working on copper cable as "part of the new tents to trailers
project." It's little wonder that, in another rare piece, NPR's
defense correspondent Guy Raz reported, in October 2007, that Balad
was "one giant construction project, with new roads, sidewalks, and
structures going up… all with an eye toward the next few decades."

Think of this as the greatest American story of these years never
told -- or more accurately, since there have been a few reports on a
couple of these mega-bases -- never shown. After all, what an epic
of construction this has been, as the Pentagon built a series of
fortified American towns, each some 15 to 20 miles around, with many
of the amenities of home, including big name fast-food franchises,
PXes, and the like, in a hostile land in the midst of war and
occupation. In terms of troops, the President may only have put
his "surge" strategy into play in January 2007, but his Pentagon has
been "surging" on base construction since April 2003.

Now, imagine as well that hundreds of thousands of Americans have
passed through these mega-bases, including the enormous al-Asad Air
Base (sardonically nicknamed "Camp Cupcake" for its amenities) in
the Western desert of Iraq, and the ill-named (or never renamed)
Camp Victory on the edge of Baghdad. Troops have surged through
these bases, of course. Private contractors galore. Hired guns.
Pentagon officials. Military commanders. Top administration figures.
Visiting Congressional delegations. Presidential candidates. And, of
course, the journalists.

It has been, for instance, a commonplace of these years to see a TV
correspondent reporting on the situation in Iraq, or what the
American military had to say about Iraq, from Baghdad's enormous
Camp Victory. And yet, if you think about it, that camera,
photographing ABC's fine reporter Martha Raddatz or other reporters
on similar stop-overs, never pans across the base itself. You don't
even get a glimpse, unless you have access to homemade G.I. videos
or Pentagon-produced propaganda.

Similarly, last year, the President landed at Camp Cupcake for a
meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki with reporters in
tow. You could see shots of him getting off the plane (just as he
does everywhere), goofing around with troops, or shaking hands with
the Iraqi prime minister but, as far as I know, none of the
reporters with him stayed on to give us a view of the base itself.

Imagine if just about no one knew that the pyramids had been built.
Ditto the Great Wall of China. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The
Coliseum. The Eiffel Tower. The Statue of Liberty. Or any other
architectural wonder of the world you'd care to mention.

After all, these giant bases, rising from the smashed birthplace of
Western civilization, were not only built on (and sometimes out of
bits of) the ancient ruins of that land, but are functionally modern
ziggurats. They are the cherished monuments of the Bush
administration. Even though its spokespeople have regularly refused
to use the word "permanent" in relation to them -- in fact, in
relation to any U.S. base on the planet -- they have been built to
long outlast the Bush administration itself. They were, in fact,
clearly meant to be key garrisons of a Pax Americana in the Middle
East for generations to come. And, not surprisingly, they reek of
permanency. They are the unavoidable essence -- unless, like most
Americans, you don't know they're there -- of Bush administration
planning in Iraq. Without them, no discussion of Iraq policy in this
country really makes sense.

And that, of course, is what makes their missing-in-action quality
on the American landscape so striking. Yes, a couple of good
American reporters have written pieces about one or two of them, but
most Americans, as we know, get their news from television and --
though no one can watch all the news that flows, 24/7, into American
living rooms, it's a reasonable bet that a staggering percentage of
Americans have never had the opportunity to see the remarkable
structures their tax dollars have paid for, and continue to pay for,
in occupied Iraq.

This is the sort of thing you might expect of Bush-style offshore
prisons, or gulags, or concentration camps. And yet Americans have
regularly and repeatedly seen what Guantanamo looks like. They have
seen something of what Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq looks like. But not
the bases. Perhaps one explanation lies in this: On rare occasions
when Americans are asked by pollsters whether they want "permanent
bases" in Iraq, significant majorities answer in the negative. You
can only assume that, as on many other subjects, the Bush
administration preferred to fly under the radar screen on this one --
  and the media generally concurred.

And let's remember one more base, though it's never called that: the
massive imperial embassy, perhaps the biggest on the planet, being
built, for nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars, on a nearly
Vatican-sized 104-acre plot of land inside the Green Zone in
Baghdad. It will be home to 1,000 "diplomats." It will cost an
estimated $1.2 billion a year just to operate. With its own
electricity and water systems, its anti-missile defenses,
recreation, "retail and shopping" areas, and "blast-resistant" work
spaces, it is essentially a fortified citadel, a base inside the
fortified American heart of the Iraq capital. Like the mega-bases,
it emits an aura of American, not Iraqi, "sovereignty." It, too, is
being built "for the ages."

A Land Grab, American-style

The issue of the mega-bases in Iraq first surfaced barely days after
Baghdad had fallen. It was on April 20, 2003, to be exact, and on
the front-page of the New York Times in a piece headlined, "Pentagon
Expects Long-Term Access to Key Iraq Bases." Thom Shanker and Eric
Schmitt wrote: "American military officials, in interviews this
week, spoke of maintaining perhaps four bases in Iraq that could be
used in the future," including what became Camp Victory. The story,
and the very idea of "permanent" bases, was promptly denied by
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld -- then essentially disappeared
from the news for years. (To this day, again as far as I know, the
New York Times has never written another significant front-page
story on the subject.)

Now, however, the bases are, suddenly and startlingly, in the news
(and, of course, being written about and discussed on TV as if they
had long been part of everyday media analysis). This week, in fact,
they hit the front page of the Washington Post, due to protests by
Iraqi leaders close to the Bush administration. They were angered
by, and leaking like mad about, American strong-arm tactics in
negotiations for a long-term Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) that
would officially embed American-controlled bases in Iraq for the
long-term, potentially tie the hands of a future American president
on Iraq policy, and represent a sovereignty grab of the first order.
(A typical comment from a pro-Maliki Iraqi politician in that Post
piece: "The Americans are making demands that would lead to the
colonization of Iraq…")

The growing Iraqi protests -- in the streets, in parliament, and
among the negotiators -- certainly helped spark coverage in this
country. A persistent and intrepid British reporter, Patrick
Cockburn of The Independent, helpfully broke the story of Bush
administration demands days before it became significant news here.

But most of the credit should really go to the Bush administration
itself, which, despite the long-term flow of events in Iraq, still
wanted it all. Greed, coupled with desperation, seems to have done
the trick. In all the years of the occupation, the officials of this
administration have had a tin ear for the post-colonial era they
inhabit. It's never penetrated their consciousness that the greatest
story of the twentieth century was the way previously subjected and
colonized peoples had gained (or regained) their sovereignty.

The administration indicated this, back in 2003, with its very dream
of garrisoning a major, potentially hostile, intensely nationalistic
Arab nation in the heart of the oil lands of the planet. That the
building of enormous American bases and the basing of troops in
relatively peaceful Saudi Arabia after the First Gulf War led to
disaster -- think: Osama bin Laden -- mattered not a whit to top
administration officials.

It couldn't have been clearer just how little they cared for Iraqi
sovereignty or pride when L. Paul Bremer III, George W. Bush's
personal representative and viceroy in Baghdad, before
officially "returning sovereignty" to the Iraqis in June 2004,
signed the infamous (though, in this country, little noted) Order
17. As the law of the land in Iraq, among other things, it ensured
that all foreigners involved in the occupation project would be
granted "freedom of movement without delay throughout Iraq," and
neither their vessels, nor their vehicles, nor their aircraft would
be "subject to registration, licensing or inspection by the [Iraqi]
Government." Nor in traveling would foreign diplomats, soldiers,
consultants, security guards, or any of their vehicles, vessels, or
planes be subject to "dues, tolls, or charges, including landing and
parking fees," and so on.

When it came to imports, including "controlled substances," there
were to be no customs fees or inspections, taxes, or much of
anything else; nor was there to be the slightest charge for the use
of Iraqi "headquarters, camps, and other premises" occupied, nor for
the use of electricity, water, or other utilities. And all private
contractors were to have total immunity from prosecution anywhere in
the country. This was, of course, freedom as theft. Order 17 would
have seemed familiar to any nineteenth century European colonialist.
It granted what used to be termed "extraterritoriality" to
Americans. Think of it as a giant get-out-of-jail-free card for an
occupying nation.

Now, imagine, that, even after years of disaster, even in a state of
discontrol, with unsecured global oil supplies surging toward $140 a
barrel, the Bush administration remained in the same Order 17 frame
of mind. They began their negotiations with the Iraqis accordingly.
Cockburn (and other journalists subsequently) would report that they
were asking for Order 17-style immunity for the U.S. military and
all private contractors in the country, as well as the use of up to
58 bases, even though they evidently "only" had 30 major ones in the
country. (A leading politician of the Badr Organization claimed that
American negotiators were actually pushing for the use of a
startling 200 facilities across the country.)

They also evidently insisted on control over Iraqi air space up to
29,000 feet, the right to bring troops in and out of the country
without informing the Iraqis, and the right to "conduct military
operations in Iraq and to detain individuals when necessary for
imperative reasons of security," again without notification to the
Iraqis, no less approval of any sort. They may even have insisted on
the freedom to strike other countries from their Iraqi bases, again
without consultation or approval. In addition, reported Cockburn,
they were attempting to force their Iraqi counterparts to agree to
such a deal by threatening to deny them at least $20 billion in
Iraqi oil funds on deposit in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Gulf News reported as well that, under the American version of the
agreement, "Iraqi security institutions such as Defense, Interior
and National Security ministries, as well as armament contracts,
will be under American supervision for ten years." This was
partially confirmed by the Washington Post's Walter Pincus, who
reported on a multi-year contract just awarded to a private
contractor by the Pentagon to supply "mentors to officials with
Iraq's Defense and Interior ministries… [ who] would 'advise, train
[and] assist... particular Iraqi officials.'"

Had the Bush administration exhibited the slightest constraint, they
might have constructed a far more cosmetic version of the permanent
garrisoning of Iraq. They might have officially turned the mega-
bases over to the Iraqis and leased them back for next to nothing.
They could have let the stunning facts they had built on the ground
speak for themselves. They could have offered "joint commands" and
other palliative remedies (as they are now evidently considering
doing) that would have made their long-term sovereignty grab look
far less significant -- without necessarily being so. But their
ability to strategize outside the (Bush) box has long been limited.

Think of them as "the me generation" on steroids, going global and
imperial. Or give them credit for consistency. They're mad dreamers
who still can't wake up, even when they find themselves in a roomful
of smelling salts.

Instead, with their secret SOFA negotiations, they've attempted to
fly under the radar screens of both the U.S. Congress and the Iraqi
people. They wanted to embed permanent bases and a long-term policy
of occupation in Iraq in perpetuity without letting the matter rise
to the level of a treaty. (Hence, no advice and consent from the
U.S. Senate.)

Not surprisingly, this episode, too, is threatening to end in
debacle. The Iraqi leadership is in virtual revolt. Across the
political spectrum, as Tony Karon of the Rootless Cosmopolitan blog
has written, the negotiations have forced upon the Iraqis "a kind of
snap survey or straw poll… on the long-term U.S. presence, and goals
for Iraq" from which the Americans are likely to emerge the losers.

The idea of timetables for American departure is again being floated
in Iraq. According to Reuters, "A majority of the Iraqi parliament
has written to Congress rejecting a long-term security deal with
Washington if it is not linked to a requirement that U.S. forces
leave," and unnamed American officials are now beginning to mutter
about no SOFA deal being achieved before the Bush administration
leaves office.

The administration's man in Baghdad, Prime Minister Maliki, has
declared the initial U.S. proposal at a "dead end" and has even
begun threatening to ask American forces to leave when their UN
mandate expires at year's end. (Though much of this may be bluff on
his part, what choice does he have? Given Iraqi attitudes toward
being garrisoned forever by the U.S. military, no Iraqi leader could
remain in a position of even passing power and agree to such terms.
It would be like stamping and sealing your own execution order.)

The Sadrists are in the streets protesting the American presence and
their leader has just called for a "new militia offensive" against
U.S. forces. The pro-Iranian, but American-backed, Badrists are
outraged. ("Is there sovereignty for Iraq -- or isn't there? If it
is left to [the Bush administration], they would ask for immunity
even for the American dogs.") The Iranians are vehemently voting no.
Opinion in the region, whether Shiite or Sunni, seems to be
following suit. The U.S. Congress is up in arms, demanding more
information and possibly heading for hearings on the SOFA agreement
and the bases. Presidential candidate Barack Obama has insisted that
any deal be submitted to Congress, the very thing the Bush
administration has organized for more than a year to avoid.

And miracle of all miracles, the mainstream media is finally writing
about the bases as if they mattered. Someday, before this is over,
all of us may actually see what was built in our names with our
dollars. That will be a shock, especially when you consider what the
Bush administration has proved incapable of building, or rebuilding,
in New Orleans and elsewhere in this country. In the meantime, the
President appears headed for yet another self-inflicted defeat.

Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the
Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. The World According to
TomDispatch: America in the New Age of Empire (Verso, 2008), a
collection of some of the best pieces from his site, has just been
published. Focusing on what the mainstream media hasn't covered, it
is an alternative history of the mad Bush years. A brief video in
which Engelhardt discusses the American mega-bases in Iraq can be
viewed by clicking here.


[Sources for this piece and further reading: In his recent articles,
as in his past unembedded reporting, Patrick Cockburn has shown what
a good journalist can still do for the rest of us. Special thanks go
to Nick Turse for his superb and speedy research on this piece and
to Christopher Holmes for superb proofreading on demand. In
gathering material, I've also relied on a number of sites, including
Juan Cole's invaluable Informed Comment blog (which I visit daily
without fail), those splendid hunter-gatherers of the news at
Antiwar.com and Cursor.org's daily Media Patrol, Dan Froomkin's
superb White House Watch blog in the Washington Post, and sharp-eyed
Paul Woodward at his War in Context blog. For those of you who want
to get a little more sense of the endless base-building activities
of the Bush administration, check out the chatty newsletter (PDF
file) of the Redhorse Association, "a group of past and present
members of the U.S. Air Force Prime Beef and Red Horse combat
engineer units."]


Tom Engelhardt
http://www.tomdispatch.com

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If you are planning on travelling to the United States, your
picture, visa, finger prints and retina scans are no longer enough.
US immigration officers can now also scan your private parts in
detail for Weapons of Mass Destruction of course!  If you are a
person with some sense of privacy... there is no problem:  your face
won't show, only your bottom will.


Scanners that see through clothing installed in US airports
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5g2FtU5NbFoqCYHY2j5RB4Mi2xUnQ


NEW YORK (AFP) — Security scanners which can see through passengers'
clothing and reveal details of their body underneath are being
installed in 10 US airports, the US Transportation Security
Administration said Tuesday.

A random selection of travellers getting ready to board airplanes in
Washington, New York's Kennedy, Los Angeles and other key hubs will
be shut in the glass booths while a three-dimensional image is made
of their body beneath their clothes.

The booths close around the passenger and emit "millimeter waves"
that go through cloth to identify metal, plastics, ceramics,
chemical materials and explosives, according to the TSA.

While it allows the security screeners -- looking at the images in a
separate room -- to clearly see the passenger's sexual organs as
well as other details of their bodies, the passenger's face is
blurred, TSA said in a statement on its website.

The scan only takes seconds and is to replace the physical pat-downs
of people that is currently widespread in airports.

TSA began introducing the body scanners in airports in April, first
in the Phoenix, Arizona terminal.

The installation is picking up this month, with machines in place or
planned for airports in Washington (Reagan National and Baltimore-
Washington International), Dallas, Las Vegas, Albuquerque, Miami and
Detroit.

But the new machines have provoked worries among passengers and
rights activists.

"People have no idea how graphic the images are," Barry Steinhardt,
director of the technology and liberty program at the American Civil
Liberties Union, told AFP.

The ACLU said in a statement that passengers expecting privacy
underneath their clothing "should not be required to display highly
personal details of their bodies such as evidence of mastectomies,
colostomy appliances, penile implants, catheter tubes and the size
of their breasts or genitals as a pre-requisite to boarding a plane."

Besides masking their faces, the TSA says on its website, the images
made "will not be printed stored or transmitted."

"Once the transportation security officer has viewed the image and
resolved anomalies, the image is erased from the screen permanently.
The officer is unable to print, export, store or transmit the image."

Lara Uselding, a TSA spokeswoman, added that passengers are not
obliged to accept the new machines.

"The passengers can choose between the body imaging and the pat-
down," she told AFP.

TSA foresees 30 of the machines installed across the country by the
end of 2008. In Europe, Amsterdam's Schipol airport is already using
the scanners.

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Russian nuclear-capable bombers returning to Cuba
23.07.2008
http://english. pravda.ru/ russia/politics/ 23-07-2008/ 105854-
russian- bombers-0


Washington is deeply concerned about an opportunity for Russia to
use Cuban air bases to deploy its strategic bombers there in
response to US missile defense plans in Europe. Gen. Norton Schwartz
stated that Russia would be crossing a red line with such an
intention.

"I certainly would offer best military advice that we should engage
the Russians not to pursue that approach," Schwartz told the Senate
Armed Services Committee.

"And if they did, I think we should stand strong and indicate that
that is something that crosses a threshold, crosses a red line for
the United States of America."

Russia's Izvestia newspaper reported this week that Moscow was
considering an opportunity for strategic bombers to fly to Cuba in
response to USA's intentions to deploy the missile defense system in
Poland and the Czech Republic.

Russian strategic aircraft Tu-160 (known as the White Swan) and Tu-
95MS can technically reach Cuba. It was even said that they had
already landed on the Island of Freedom.

It goes without saying that the USA has its own eyes and ears on the
island – the Guantanamo base. Therefore, if Russian bombers had
landed in Cuba, the international scandal would have happened
already.

Lieutenant-General Leonid Ivashov, the former chairman of the
International Cooperation Department of the Russian Defense
Ministry, stated that Cuba did not need Russian bombers for constant
deployment, although Russia could still use Cuba as a refueling base
for nuclear-capable bombers.

Ivashov believes that Cuba would not mind Russia deploying its
electronic surveillance posts on the Lourdes radar base, which was
closed in 2001. The official reminded that the facility was
previously used for the prevention of nuclear attacks during the
Soviet era.

Russia 's military and transport aircraft perform frequent
commercial flights to Cuba nowadays.

"The possible deployment of the Russian strategic aviation in Cuba
could be a very good response to USA's plans to deploy NATO bases
near Russia's borders," Russia's former Air Force Commander, Pyotr
Deinekin said.

"I do not see anything biased about it, because the USA treats
Russia as nobody when it decides to station its air bases and radar
posts in close proximity to Russian borders," the general said.

"Russian strategic bombers can patrol the US coastline for about 1.5
hours, refuel and return back to Russia," the official said.

Deinekin reminded that Russia, as the successor of the USSR, already
has the experience of performing long-distance flights and deploying
Soviet troops in Cuba.

The long-distance aviation of the Soviet Union performed patrolling
flights near USA's shores in the beginning of the 1980s, when US
deployed ground-launched cruise missiles in the south of Britain, in
the north of Italy and in Western Germany. In addition, Soviet
strategic bombers regularly patrolled geographically remote areas.

All those flights were ceased in 1992 due to the lack of
fuel<http://english.pravda.ru/world/americas/15-11-2007/100953-
oil_prices-0>, the withdrawal of Russian troops from former allied
republics and the destruction of the national long-distance aviation
system.

The US Department of State has not commented on a possibility for
Russian strategic bombers to return to Cuba yet. The Department
needs first to find out the position of the US government on the
matter.

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At Last, Some Truth About Iraq and Afghanistan
by Eric Margolis
http://www.lewrockwell.com/margolis/margolis114.html


PARIS – After a sea of lies and a tsunami of propaganda, the ugly
truth behind the Iraq and Afghanistan wars finally emerged into full
view this week.

Four major western oil companies, Exxon, Mobil, Shell, BP and Total,
are about to sign US-brokered no-bid contracts with the US-installed
Baghdad regime to begin exploiting Iraq's oil fields. Saddam Hussein
had kicked these firms out three decades ago when he nationalized
Iraq's foreign-owned oil industry for the benefit of Iraq's national
development. The Baghdad regime is turning back the clock.

This agreement comes as talks are continuing between the Washington
and its Baghdad client regime over future US basing rights in Iraq.
After some face-saving Iraqi objections, it is expected that Baghdad
will sign a compact with Washington giving US forces control of Iraq
and its air space in a manner very similar to Great Britain's
colonial arrangement with Iraq.

Interestingly, the same oil companies that used to exploit Iraq when
it was a British colony are now returning. As former US Federal
Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan recently admitted, the Iraq war was
all about oil. VP Dick Cheney stated in 2003 that the invasion of
Iraq was about oil, and for the sake of Israel.

Meanwhile, according to Pakistani and Indian sources, Afghanistan
just signed a major deal to launch a long-planned, 1680 km long
pipeline project expected to cost $ 8 billion. If completed, the
Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline (TAPI) will export
gas and, later, oil from the Caspian Basin to Pakistan's coast where
tankers will transport it to the west.

The Caspian Basin located under the Central Asian states of
Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakkstan, holds an estimated 300
trillion cubic feet of gas and 100–200 billion barrels of oil.
Securing the world's last remaining known energy Eldorado is
strategic priority for the western powers. China can only look on
with envy.

But there are only two practical ways to get gas and oil out of
landlocked Central Asia to the sea: through Iran, or through
Afghanistan to Pakistan. For Washington, Iran is tabu. That leaves
Pakistan, but to get there, the planned pipeline must cross western
Afghanistan, including the cities of Herat and Kandahar.

In 1998, the Afghan anti-Communist movement Taliban and a western
oil consortium led by the US firm UNOCAL signed a major pipeline
deal. UNOCAL lavished money and attention on Taliban, flew a senior
delegation to Texas, and also hired an minor Afghan official, one
Hamid Karzai.

Enter Osama bin Laden. He advised the unworldly Taliban leaders to
reject the US deal and got them to accept a better offer from an
Argentine consortium, Bridas. Washington was furious and, according
to some accounts, threatened Taliban with war.

In early 2001, six or seven months before 9/11, Washington made the
decision to invade Afghanistan, overthrow Taliban, and install a
client regime that would build the energy pipelines. But Washington
still kept up sending money to Taliban until four months before 9/11
in an effort to keep it "on side" for possible use in a war or
strikes against Iran.

The 9/11 attacks, about which Taliban knew nothing, supplied the
pretext to invade Afghanistan. The initial US operation had the
legitimate objective of wiping out Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida. But
after its 300 members fled to Pakistan, the US stayed on, built
bases – which just happened to be adjacent to the planned pipeline
route – and installed former UNOCAL"consultant" Hamid Karzai as
leader.

Washington disguised its energy geopolitics by claiming the Afghan
occupation was to fight "Islamic terrorism," liberate women, build
schools, and promote democracy. Ironically, the Soviets made exactly
the same claims when they occupied Afghanistan from 1979-1989. The
cover story for Iraq was weapons of mass destruction, Saddam's
supposed links to 9/11, and promoting democracy.

Work will begin on the TAPI once Taliban forces are cleared from the
pipeline route by US, Canadian and NATO forces. As American analyst
Kevin Phillips writes, the US military and its allies have become
an "energy protection force."

From Washington's viewpoint, the TAPI deal has the added benefit of
scuttling another proposed pipeline project that would have
delivered Iranian gas and oil to Pakistan and India.

India's energy needs are expected to triple over the next decade to
8 billion barrels of oil and 80 million cubic meters of gas daily.
Delhi, which has its own designs on Afghanistan and has been
stirring the pot there, is cock-a-hoop over the new pipeline plan.
Russia, by contrast, is grumpy, having hoped to monopolize Central
Asian energy exports.

Energy is more important than blood in our modern world. The US is a
great power with massive energy needs. Domination of oil is a pillar
of America's world power. Afghanistan and Iraq are all about control
of oil.


Eric Margolis, contributing foreign editor for Sun National Media
Canada, is the author of War at the Top of the World.

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Sir Salman Rushdie's fatwa against freedom of expression
BY SHAJAHAN MADAMPAT
Khaleej Times, UAE
11/08/2008


SIR Salman Rushdie, that beloved symbol of freedom of expression,
has now turned Khomeini, so to speak, exposing, in an ironic twist
of tale, the hypocrisy and double standards that marked the entire
liberal case for unqualified and unrestrained freedom of
representation.

The man, in whose defence the world's intelligentsia mounted an
intellectual blitzkrieg against the alleged medievalism of the
Muslim masses, has threatened to sue the publishers of a book about
him by a former police officer, Ron Evans. In his forthcoming book,
On Her Majesty's Service: My Incredible Life in the World's Most
Dangerous Close Protection Squad, Evans dares to paint a rather
unflattering portrait of the writer, whose unflattering ways stirred
up controversies ever since he began to write. Rushdie alleges that
the book "destroys his character" and "presents wholly made up
incidents as facts."

Echoing his Muslim critics, Rushdie says in an interview with The
Guardian: "This is not a free speech issue, this is libel — there is
a difference between those two things. I can defend the truth, I
will not have my character destroyed and presented to the world as
something that it is not. I am not trying to prevent him from
publishing his stupid book but if they publish it as it is there
will be consequences and there will be a libel action." Contrast
this indignation with the Satanic Verses which describes a brothel
in which all the sex workers take the names of the Prophet's wives,
who are revered by Muslims as the mothers of the believers.

"He is portraying me as mean, nasty, tight-fisted, arrogant and
extremely unpleasant. In my humble opinion I am none of those
things," says the writer, who used the derogatory name Mahound for
the prophet, a term that smacked of the crusades.

"It is an obscenity to suggest that I asked people to leave the room
so that I could have sex with my girlfriend. I will not have that
said about me," avers Rushdie. This prudish protestation comes from
the man who described Margaret Thatcher as "Maggie the Bitch" in his
novel. He had this to write about white women: "Never mind fat,
Jewish, non-deferential, white women were for ******* and throwing
over."

Ironically, Evans, the victim of the novelist's ire, was a member of
the Scotland Yard team which protected Sir Salman when he faced
death threats. Compared to Rushdie's favourite epithets to describe
many eminent historical figures, Evan's description of Rushdie as
nasty and arrogant is rather mild. After all, not even Rushdie's
supporters consider him a paragon of good personal conduct and
refinement. What Rushdie's critics told then is exactly what he now
parrots in his defence. "The simple fact of the matter is that
nothing of this sort happened."

The last two decades have seen many interesting debates,
occasionally spilling over to the streets, on the holy subject of
freedom of expression. Almost always, with few exceptions, Islam and
Muslims were at the receiving end. The tone and tenor of the raging
controversies seemed to suggest that the medieval mindset of the
Muslims made them extra-sensitive to even well intentioned and mild
criticisms. Many a writer, ranging from the quotidian pen-pusher to
exalted names from world literature, lamented the intolerance of the
Muslim community.

There was indeed a grain of truth in the charges levelled against
the community. One always felt there were better ways of handling
criticisms and vilifications. Thoughtless reaction to criticisms on
the part of Muslim leadership has done enormous disservice not only
to the reputation of the community, but also to literature! For
example, the hue and cry over the writings of Taslima Nasrin, a
third-rate writer by any reckoning, has elevated her to the level of
an international celebrity. At least those who never read her books
seem to think she is a great writer!

However, one point repeatedly made by defenders of the Muslim view
point seemed to have always fallen on deaf years. The point was that
each society had its own inviolable sanctities and sacred
imaginations which define, to a large extent, the collective
subconscious of people identified as a single bloc by virtue of
nationhood, religion, culture or whatever. Muslims have their
notions of the sacred and inviolable just as other societies have
theirs; counter-narratives on the Holocaust are still a punishable
offence in several Western countries. Though in varying degrees, all
peoples, both on individual and collective levels, are sensitive to
certain modes of representation. That is precisely why all cultures
sought to distinguish between free speech and libel in one way or
another.

The debates around Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses showed the
appalling selectivity with which arguments were deployed in his
defence, marshalling an array of liberal concepts to justify his
distortion of a very crucial part of Islamic history. Many objective
observers who tried to dispassionately understand the issue pointed
out the double standards and chicanery that marked the debate. But
Western intelligentsia and their supporters elsewhere largely
ignored the arguments that called for a balanced approach to the
whole issue, instead of looking at the issue of freedom of
expression in absolute terms.

Now, that Rushdie himself has called his bluff and betrayed his own
cause, true to his consistent pattern, it is perhaps pertinent to
parody those statements made ad nauseam over the last few decades:
Banning of books is a reactionary way of handling differences; the
solution is to intellectually fight the contents of the book. A
writer of Rushdie's stature must not try to stop the publishing of a
book. He must let the people judge the book and the opinions
expressed therein about him, just as he wanted the people to judge
the contents of The Satanic Verses. Courts of law are not the best
places to judge the merits and demerits of books and films, but the
wise republic of the readers and the viewers!

Shajahan Madampat is a cultural critic and commentator. He can be
reached at shajahan98@yahoo. com





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Michael Scheuer is a 22-year veteran of the CIA


Turning the Tables on the Israel-Firsters
by Michael Scheuer
http://www.antiwar.com/scheuer/?articleid=13139


Now that the dust has settled in the spat between journalist Joe
Klein and the ideologues at Commentary <http://www.time-
blog.com/swampland/2008/06/neocons_gone_wild.html>, it is time to
regret the ink spilled over the non-issue of "dual loyalties."

The idea that there are U.S. citizens who have equal loyalties to
the United States and Israel is passé. American Israel-firsters have
long since dropped any pretense of loyalty to the United States and
its genuine national interests. They have moved brazenly into the
Israel first, last, and always camp.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, Norman Podhoretz, Victor Davis Hanson, the
Rev. Franklin Graham, Alan Dershowitz, Rudy Giuliani, Douglas Feith,
the Rev. Rod Parsley, Paul Wolfowitz, James Woolsey, Bill Kristol,
the Rev. John Hagee, and the thousands of wealthy supporters of the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) appear to care
about the United States only so far as Washington is willing to
provide immense, unending funding and the lives of young U.S.
service personnel to protect Israel. These individuals and their all-
for-Israel journals – Commentary, National Review, the Weekly
Standard, and the Wall Street Journal – amount to nothing less than
a fifth column intent on involving 300 million Americans in other
peoples' religious wars, making them pay and bleed to protect a
nation in which the United States has no genuine national security
interest at stake.

The Israel-firsters' success is, of course, the stuff of which
legends are made. Most recently, for example, we heard President
Bush echo Sen. Lieberman's insane and subversive contention that the
United States has a "duty" to ensure the fulfilling of God's
millennia-old promise to Abraham regarding the creation and survival
of Israel. Bush told the Knesset all Americans are ready to
endlessly bleed and pay to ensure Israel's security. And where does
the president derive authority to make such a commitment in the name
of his countrymen? From the Constitution? On the basis of America's
dominant religion? From – heaven forbid – a thoughtful, hardheaded
analysis of U.S. interests?

No, Bush's pledge was based on none of these. Bush's decision to
more deeply involve America in the eternal Arab-Israeli war was
based on nothing less than the corruption wrought on the American
political system by the Israel-firsters, AIPAC's enormous treasury,
and the lamentable but growing influence of America's leading
evangelical Protestant preachers.

The Israel-firsters started the Iraq war and now have the United
States locked into an occupation of that country that may not end in
any of our lifetimes. Unless Americans ignore the likes of Hanson,
Podhoretz, Lieberman, Woolsey, and Wolfowitz, the cost in blood and
treasure will ultimately bankrupt America.

AIPAC is a perfectly legal organization, and the wealth of its
members is channeled into reliable campaign contributions for any
candidate from either party who will put Israel's interests above
America's. From McCain to Obama, from Pelosi to Giuliani, from
Hillary Clinton to Vice President Cheney, AIPAC pumps money to any
and every American politician who is willing to adopt an Israel-
first policy.

Leading American Protestant evangelical preachers – men like Hagee,
Parsley, and Graham – are the newest and perhaps most anti-American
members of this fifth column. They serve two purposes:

(1) to reinforce in the minds of their flocks the Bush-Lieberman
absurdity that the United States has a "duty" to ensure Israel's
survival; and

(2) to use religious rhetoric to steadily convince the Muslim world
that U.S. leaders are interested only in taming – and if need be,
destroying – Islam.

The reality and power of this anti-American, pro-Israel triangle –
Israel-first politicians, civil servants, and pundits; AIPAC's
corrupting influence; and the warmongering of major evangelical
Protestant preachers – is so obvious and palpable that the only way
its members can blur reality is to deny the triangle's existence and
identify their critics as anti-Semites. Well, the time has come to
simply ignore these folks' knee-jerk hurling of that epithet.
Indeed, the slur ought to understood for what it is: a sure sign
that the Israel-firsters know that their fifth column would be
destroyed in a minute if their fellow Americans come to recognize
that their sons and daughters are dying in Iraq and soon elsewhere
to protect an Israeli state whose existence is just as important to
U.S. interests as the creation of a Palestinian state – that is, of
no importance whatsoever.

American voters must start using the democratic process to begin
removing themselves from the religious war known as the Arab-Israeli
conflict. Disengagement will take time, hard work, and a steadfast
commitment to the rule of law. Three actions are well within the
voters' capability, and their use would bring pressure on federal
officials to stop killing America's children in wars between Arabs
and Israelis.

1.  Voters should press federal representatives to end taxpayer
funding for the National Endowment for Democracy and other such
organizations. These organizations' main function is to promote the
fallacy that U.S. interests are served by making sure that Israel –
  "the embattled island of democracy in the Middle East" – is
protected, and that the lives of American children should be
joyfully spent to bring democracy to foreigners in Iraq, Iran,
Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

2.  Voters should not vote for any candidate for federal office who
accepts contributions from AIPAC or any other Israel-first
organization. This decision would be an important step in beginning
to sweep clean the Augean stable that is American politics.

3.  Voters of all faiths must press their religious leaders to
regularly, publicly, and specifically denounce the evangelical
Protestant preachers whose fire-and-brimstone support for Israel
involves Americans in religious wars in which U.S. interests are not
threatened.

Neutralizing the Israel-first fifth column must be done, but it must
be accomplished using legitimate democratic tools: voting, lobbying,
free speech, and support for candidates pledged to keep America out
of other peoples' religious wars. The invocation of the anti-Semite
epithet by the Israel-firsters should be ignored. To be silenced by
the slurs of the Israel-firsters is to ignominiously invite the end
of American independence by subordinating U.S. interests to those of
a foreign nation, as well as to forget the warning of the greatest
American.

"If men are precluded from offering their sentiments on a matter
which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences that
can invite the consideration of mankind," George Washington said in
March 1783, "reason is of no use to us; the freedom of speech may be
taken away, and, dumb and silent, we may be led, like sheep, to the
slaughter."

As long as the Israel-firsters can define the limits of acceptable
public discourse, Americans are on their way to the slaughter.

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Israel 'has a hand in S. Ossetia war':

The report added the Israeli advisers were deeply involved in the
Georgian army's preparations to attack and capture the capital of
South Ossetia on Friday.
http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=66203&sectionid=351020202

===

Jewish Georgian minister: Thanks to Israeli training, we're fending
off Russia:

Jewish Georgian Minister Temur Yakobshvili on Sunday praised the
Israel Defense Forces for its role in training Georgian troops and
said Israel should be proud of its military might, in an interview
with Army Radio.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1010187.html

===

Georgian fighting drives out Israeli security consultants:

"The Russians don't look kindly on the military cooperation of
Israeli firms with the Georgian army, and as far as I know, Israelis
doing security consulting left Georgia in the past few days because
of the events there," the former Israeli ambassador to Georgia and
Armenia, Baruch Ben Neria, said yesterday
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1009940.html

===

'Bodies Are Lying Everywhere. It's Hell'

By Mark Franchetti, Moscow

A wave of shock and apprehension gripped the region as survivors
asked themselves whether Georgia was about to follow Chechnya into
another Caucasian war.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20474.htm

===

Petraeus: US is flying Georgian troops into battle zone
Exclusive: Deborah Haynes, Baghdad
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20475.htm


10/08/08 "The Times"---- -  'US aircraft have started to fly some of
Georgia's 2,000 troops in Iraq back home to join the fight in the
breakaway province of South Ossetia, General David Petraeus, the top
US commander in Iraq said toda

"The flights are ongoing to redeploy the elements of the Georgian
contingent so that they can deal with the security issues in their
country," General Petraeus told The Times in an interview at his
office inside Baghdad's Green Zone.

He said measures were already in place to mitigate the impact on
operations in Iraq of the sudden departure of the soldiers.

"We can accommodate that. Obviously it was not expected but it is
something, the effects of which we can certainly mitigate."

The Georgian contingent has been taking part in an operation with US
and Iraqi forces to clear the south-eastern corner of Diyala
province, north of Baghdad, a known al-Qaeda stronghold.

Some 150 Georgian soldiers also guard the Iraqi Parliament building
as well as other key structures inside Baghdad's fortified Green
Zone.

In addition, one battalion is helping to support the Iraqi security
forces in Wasit province, south of the capital, near the Iranian
border.


===

The Pipeline War: Russian Bear Goes for West's Jugular

By Svetlana Skarbo and Jonathan Petre

The war in Georgia escalated dangerously last night after Russian
jets reportedly bombed a vital pipeline that supplies oil to the
West.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20476.htm

===

Russia steps up attacks and blockade as Georgians offer ceasefire:

The Russian army claims that Georgian forces were still active in
South Ossetia, despite receiving a Georgian note declaring an end to
military activities.
http://tinyurl.com/6dpyxp

===

Russia Prepares for Naval Blockade of Georgia:

Ships are grouping in the Black Sea near the Georgian aquatic
border. A unnamed naval source has said that the move is necessary
to prevent arms deliveries to Georgia by sea. He added that the
naval blockade of Georgia will help avoid escalation of military
actions in Abkhazia
http://www.kommersant.com/p-13063/r_500/South_Ossetia/

===

Ukraine threatens to bar Russian warships:

Ukraine said on Sunday it reserved the right to temporarily bar
Russian warships dispatched to the Georgian coast from returning to
their Ukrainian base of Sevastopol.
http://www.reuters.com/article/asiaCrisis/idUSLA480092

===

Georgia Wants U.S. to Restrain Russia:

Five days after Georgian troops stormed into South Ossetia to
reclaim control of the tiny breakaway territory, they were in
retreat on Sunday after being battered by Russian forces. But the
Russians have not confined themselves to pushing Georgian forces out
of South Ossetia, and ongoing Russian attacks have hit close to the
Georgian capital and along its coastline
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1831244,00.html?
xid=rss-world

===

US condemns 'dangerous' Russian response in South Ossetia:

American official calls Moscow's military action against
Georgia 'disproportionate' and warns of lasting damage to relations
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/10/georgia.russia2

===

U.S. suggests Russia wants "regime change" in Georgia:

The United States suggested on Sunday that Russia was interested
in "regime change" in Georgia after Moscow rejected Tbilisi's offer
of a cease-fire in the separatist enclave of South Ossetia.
http://tinyurl.com/6zs4sz

===

Georgia: Vladimir Putin leads from front to send US a bullish
message:

The fighting in Georgia has answered the question that world leaders
have been asking since Vladimir Putin stepped down as President this
year: who runs Russia?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article4499726.ece

===

U.S. has few options to deter Russia:

Most of the key cards, including the power to veto any United
Nations, were held by Russia, which appeared to be using the crisis
to ram home to the United State and its allies that it will not
accept further expansion of NATO. Both Georgia and the former Soviet
republic of Ukraine are seeking to join the alliance.
http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/254/story/398835.html

===

Did the U.S. Prep Georgia for War with Russia?:

One of the U.S. military trainers put it to me a bit more
bluntly. "We're giving them the knife," he said. "Will they use it?"
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/08/did-us-military.html

===

'US incited Georgia offensive in S. Ossetia':
Sun, 10 Aug 2008
http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=66208&sectionid=351020602


A Georgian tank-division during a training exercise in February
The White House has orchestrated the current conflict between Russia
and Georgia in South Ossetia, a high-ranking Russian official says.

In a Friday press conference, Chairman of Russia's State Duma
Security Committee Vladimir Vasilyev said without US aid, Tbilisi
would have been unable to start military operation in South Ossetia.

Georgian military forces launched a large-scale military offensive
against South Ossetia on Thursday evening. Russia, in response,
moved its forces to the region.

The battles between Georgian and Russian forces have left at least
1500 people dead.

Vasilyev said the situation in South Ossetia draws parallels to the
wars in Iraq and Kosovo.

"The further the situation unfolds, the more the world will
understand that Georgia would never be able to do all this without
America," the Russian official added.

According to Vasilyev, the US State Department refused to comment on
reports by South Ossetian defense officials that Georgia was
planning an imminent aggression.

"In essence, the Americans have prepared the force, which destroys
everything in South Ossetia, attacks civilians and hospitals," he
expounded.

South Ossetia is officially a Georgian province but a large number
of its population of 70,000 possess Russian passports and have
strong links with North Ossetia, a Russian territory.

===

In Pictures: War Victims:

Warning - This item should only be viewed by a mature audience
http://osinform.ru/foto/7343-zhertvy-obstrela-juzhnojj-osetii.html

===

Abkhazia declares 'state of war':

The separatist region of Abkhazia has declared a 10-day 'state of
war' in its territories close to the de facto borders with Georgia
http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=66172&sectionid=351020606

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Omar al-Bashir of Sudan's prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo should resign
By Joshua Rozenberg
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/lawreports/joshuarozenberg
/2446064/Omar-al-Bashir-of-Sudans-prosecutor-Luis-Moreno-Ocampo-
should-resign.html


The world's most powerful prosecutor called on Monday for the arrest
of President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, accusing him of orchestrating
a campaign of killings, rape and deportation in Darfur.

Luis Moreno-Ocampo, prosecutor at the International Criminal Court,
produced evidence to show that the Sudanese dictator was guilty of
genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Mr Moreno-Ocampo's announcement is to be welcomed, even if the
prospect of bringing Mr Bashir to trial may be remote. But this was
not the case that people have been talking about at the court's
offices in The Hague over the past week. Nor was it the decision of
the court's trial chamber to halt Mr Moreno-Ocampo's first
prosecution and free the Congolese defendant Thomas Lubanga, a
ruling I discussed here two weeks ago and which is now under appeal.

No, the case that has electrified staff at the International
Criminal Court involved allegations put to an internal panel of
judges that Mr Moreno-Ocampo himself was guilty of sexual
misconduct. I should say immediately that the prosecutor has firmly
denied the allegations and that there is no proof that any such
misconduct ever took place. But what did happen, according to an
external tribunal, was a "breach of due process" for which that
tribunal held Mr Moreno-Ocampo personally responsible.

The matter was so serious that a member of staff who "blew the
whistle" by making an internal complaint against Mr Moreno-Ocampo —
and who was then sacked by him — is to receive nearly £20,000
in "moral damages", as well as compensatory damages approaching
£100,000. Damages and costs are to be paid not by the prosecutor but
by the International Criminal Court itself.

There can be no appeal from the ruling, which was made by the
Administrative Tribunal of the International Labour Organisation in
Geneva. Many international organisations have accepted the
tribunal's jurisdiction over employment disputes.

"The International Criminal Court respects the decision of the
tribunal and will implement it accordingly," a spokesman said on
Wednesday.

The story began nearly two years ago when Christian Palme, 56, a
media spokesman in the prosecutor's office, submitted an internal
staff complaint alleging that Mr Moreno-Ocampo had engaged
in "improper conduct" with a female journalist from South Africa
while on an official mission to the country. Mr Palme claimed that
the prosecutor "had taken that journalist's car keys and would not
return them to her unless she agreed to sexual intercourse".

According to the whistle-blower, Mr Moreno-Ocampo had "committed
serious misconduct … by committing the crime of rape, or sexual
assault, or sexual coercion, or sexual abuse".

This misconduct had caused serious harm to the standing of the
court, Mr Palme maintained, and for this reason he submitted that
the prosecutor should be removed from office by the court's member
states, which include Britain.

Mr Palme's internal complaint was accompanied by an audio recording
of a telephone conversation between the alleged victim and one of Mr
Palme's colleagues, the Geneva tribunal noted in its ruling last
week.

"The alleged victim sounded distressed and denied that she had been
forced to have sexual intercourse but did not deny that she had
consented in order to regain possession of her keys," the ruling
said. "She indicated unambiguously that the prosecutor `took [her]
keys' and that she had consented to sexual intercourse `to get out
of [the situation]'"

Mr Palme's complaint was considered by a panel of three judges from
the court. They interviewed the alleged victim. She firmly denied
the allegations — as did Mr Moreno-Ocampo. Given the lack of
evidence, Mr Palme's complaint was dismissed as "manifestly
unfounded" in December 2006. But the judges made no finding that the
press officer had acted in bad faith or with malicious intent.

The journalist's initial allegations against the prosecutor have not
been substantiated. There may be many reasons why someone would tell
a friend one thing and a court quite another. If matters had ended
there, Mr Moreno-Ocampo would have emerged without a stain on his
character.

But they did not. A month or so after Mr Palme's complaint was
dismissed by the panel of judges, he was suspended for three months.
That was in January 2007. In April, he heard that the prosecutor had
decided to dismiss him, summarily and immediately, for "serious
misconduct".

By way of explanation, Mr Palme was told he had "falsely alleged,
with obvious malicious intent to damage the professional and
personal reputation of the prosecutor, that … he `committed the
crime of rape'".

Mr Palme appealed to the court's internal disciplinary advisory
board. In its report last summer, the board concluded that the
decision to sack Mr Palme had been procedurally flawed on the
grounds that the prosecutor should not have participated personally
in the decision-making process. The board also found that the
prosecutor had not established that Mr Palme had acted "with obvious
malicious intent". For these reasons, it recommended that Mr Palme
should have his job back.

But Mr Moreno-Ocampo decided not to follow this recommendation.
Instead, he confirmed Mr Palme's dismissal.

The former press officer then filed a complaint at the Geneva
tribunal. Ruling last week, the tribunal said the evidence available
to Mr Palme had come primarily from a colleague who knew the alleged
victim and to whom she had apparently turned for support. "The
colleague's evidence was secondary evidence but, depending on the
circumstances, it may have been probative in criminal proceedings."

There was nothing to suggest that this colleague was unreliable or
untrustworthy, the tribunal continued. "In these circumstances,
there is no basis for concluding that [Mr Palme] did not believe on
reasonable grounds the truth of what he put in his internal
complaint."

Dismissing the prosecutor's detailed justification for his decision
to sack Mr Palme, the tribunal found that "the material on which the
International Criminal Court relies does not justify a finding that
the complainant acted with malicious intent." It therefore set aside
the spokesman's dismissal.

And there was more to come. Remember who decided that Mr Palme
should be sacked.

"It is a fundamental aspect of due process that a person should not
take a decision in a matter in which he or she has a personal
interest," the tribunal said. "The prosecutor had a direct personal
interest in establishing that the internal complaint against him had
been made falsely and maliciously."

But tribunal said there had been no need for Mr Moreno-Ocampo to
take the decision himself. "He could have delegated the power in the
present case."

This "breach of due process" was a "serious infringement" of Mr
Palme's rights, the tribunal concluded. "It was compounded by the
prosecutor's action in maintaining his decision in the face of the
internal memorandum from the presidency [of the court] indicating
that there had been no finding of bad faith or malice and contrary
to the recommendation of the disciplinary advisory board."

The role of a prosecutor is to assess accurately the available
evidence. The duty of a decision-maker is to withdraw from a case in
which he has a personal interest. On the tribunal's findings, Mr
Moreno-Ocampo has failed to meet these two fundamental
responsibilities.

A prosecutor who seeks to bring a president to justice must have
judgment of the highest order. On the strength of these findings, Mr
Moreno-Ocampo does not.

I repeat what I said here two weeks ago: he should resign
immediately.

===

The Prosecutor Damages the Hague Court
Mark Klamberg
29 Juli 2008
http://www.svd.se/opinion/brannpunkt/artikel_1489853.svd


The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Luis
Moreno-Ocampo has earlier this week applied for an arrest warrant
against the President of Sudan Omar al-Bashir for genocide, crimes
against humanity and war crimes. Even though the application of the
Prosecutor is to be welcomed, there has appeared doubts during the
last days concerning the credibility of Moreno-Ocampo and thus also
the Court.

We must first agree that the establishment of the ICC is the most
important and encouraging event in international law since the
establishment of the UN in 1945. Therefore it is important that the
Court's credibility is safeguarded by its friends. It is with great
sorrow I can observe that the Prosecutor is not meeting up to the
expectations. Three issues that appear to be independent question
the appropriateness of Luis Moreno-Ocampo to his function.

The ICC has never issued an arrest warrant against a President in
office, even less for the most serious international crime,
genocide. The Prosecutor's application for an arrest warrant is very
controversial and may have a significant impact on the peace
negotiations concerning Darfur. It is encouraging that political
leaders no longer are protected by immunities. A trial concerning al-
Bashir's responsibility for the situation in Darfur is beneficial.

I have on other occasions voiced the opinion that the situation in
Darfur amounts to genocide, ultimately under the control of al-
Bashir. However, the time and mode of Prosecutor's application for
an arrest warrant is strange. The application has become public
before it has been reviewed by the Court's pre-trial chamber, in
contrast to the normal procedure. Furthermore, it appears that the
coordination between the Prosecutor and the UN who has personnel on
the ground in Darfur is non-existing, which creates genuine problems
concerning the security of UN personnel and aid to the civilian
population.

Early July this year, the ICC Trial Chamber decided to release
Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, a Congolese party/militia leader allegedly
responsible for the war crime of enlisting children. He is the first
to be charged before the Court and his trial was supposed to start
in June. The reasons for the decision of the trial chamber was that
the Prosecutor denied disclosure of evidence originating from the UN
vis-à-vis the defence at the same time as he intends to use thereto
associated evidence against the accused. The Trial Chamber made an
accurate ruling that a fair trial is impossible under such
circumstances. The same problem may also appear in the Court's
second case against Katanga and Chui. The decision to release
Lubanga is under appeal, the Prosecutor has succumbed to the
pressure and through media declared that the evidence will be
disclosed.

Even more serious is the Prosecutor's lack of proper leadership and
conduct. On the 9th July 2008 a judgement was delivered by the
labour court of the UN and international organisations (ILOAT) where
the Prosecutor lost a case against his former public information
adviser Christian Palme, ex-journalist at Dagens Nyheter. The
background to the dispute at ILOAT is very serious for the
Prosecutor and thus also for the ICC. In accordance with rules
concerning complaints, Christian Palme filed to the presidency of
the ICC a confidential complaint and evidence against the Prosecutor
concerning rape or in alternative other sexual crimes.

As a result the Prosecutor summarily dismissed Christian Palme. The
disciplinary advisory board of the Court determined that the
dismissal was incorrect due to the bias of the Prosecutor. The
Prosecutor ignored this finding and maintained his decision. It is
important to stress that the guilt or innocence of the Prosecutor
has not yet been settled, but an official at such position should
avoid coming even close to such allegations. The ILOAT established
that the evidence submitted by Christian Palme could be probative in
a criminal proceeding, that there was reasonable grounds for his
complaint and that the Prosecutor was biased when he dismissed
Christian Palme. Accordingly, the ILOAT set the decision of
dismissal aside and awarded Christian Palme approximately 180 000
Euro in damages. There is no appeal against the decision. In other
words, it is a full rehabilitation for Christian Palme and a massive
indication of lack of confidence towards the Prosecutor.

Even more serious is that the Prosecutor's actions damage the
credibility of the entire Court. Is it a coincidence that the world
top news item on the Prosecutor's application for an arrest warrant
against the Sudanese President appeared only a few days after the
ILOAT judgment? Is there a connection between the fact that senior
and experienced employees used to think for themselves have left the
Prosecutor's office and the unfortunate administration of the
Court's first case? According to the ICC Statute the Prosecutor may
be removed if it is found that he has committed serious misconduct
or a serious breach of his duties. It is time consider this option
in order to save the credibility of the Court.


Mark Klamberg is a Doctoral candidate in international law at
Stockholm University, previously law clerk at the ICC trial division
in the Hague

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FBI counter-terrorism top O'Neill's biggest problem was not Al Qaeda
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/Baffles.htm


The one individual who stands tall among those intelligence and law
enforcement officers who was aggressively pursuing the criminal
network that would carry out 911 was FBI counter-terrorism top man
John O'Neill. Ever since the first World Trade Center bombing in
1993, O'Neill's pursuit of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda had been
dogged. After further terrorist attacks at the Khobar Towers
barracks in Dharan, Saudi Arabia; the U.S. embassies in Kenya and
Tanzania; and the USS Cole in Aden harbor, O'Neill's biggest problem
was not Al Qaeda, it was resistance from top officials inside the
U.S. government.

According to classified documents from French intelligence, Al Qaeda
and Bin Laden had still been under the operational control of U.S.
and British "security services" until 1995, fully two years after
the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. As of 1996, the U.S. State
Department continued to refuse to list Al Qaeda as a terrorist
organization. After the 1996 bombings of the Khobar Towers that
killed nineteen U.S. military personnel, the State Department under
Secretary of State Warren Christopher, FBI Director Louis Freeh, and
the Saudi government did everything they could to obstruct O'Neill's
investigation.

In his aggressive pursuit of Al Qaeda, O'Neill, according to people
who worked closely with him, began to have serious concerns over
complicity by those inside the Clinton and Bush administrations.
There was the mysterious theft in the summer of 2000 of his
briefcase at a Tampa hotel during a retirement seminar where the
only other participants were 150 other FBI agents. In the briefcase
were a few classified emails and a classified document called the
Annual Field Office Report, a summary of the New York FBI's office
counter-terrorist and counter-intelligence operations, including one
very sensitive investigation being conducted by another New York
counter-intelligence FBI special agent, Michael Dick. Although a
lighter, cigar cutter, and expensive pen were stolen, the papers
were all accounted for when the briefcase turned up 90 minutes later
at another nearby hotel. Ninety minutes, of course, was sufficient
time to photocopy the documents and discover what O'Neill knew about
both Al Qaeda and their Israeli shadows.

Special Agent Dick, who worked closely with O'Neill, had discovered
a troubling ring of Israeli movers operating in the New York and New
Jersey areas. Furthermore, some of these Israelis not only had
connections with Mossad and other Israeli intelligence agencies but
were also shadowing Arab and Muslims that had been under
investigation as potential terrorist cells. But the Israelis were
acting independently and there was no effort made to inform the FBI
or local police of any intelligence they were obtaining on their
targets.

Further frustrating Dick's counter-espionage activities against the
Israelis was the fact that they were using communications methods
that made it almost impossible to conduct communications
surveillance: they used Verizon pre-paid cell phones, two-way Nextel
walkie-talkies, and Internet cafes.

At the same time, the DEA had discovered a nationwide ring of
Israeli "art students," many of whom had past connections to Israeli
intelligence and military demolition units, were operating in and
around New York and New Jersey. What the DEA did not realize was
that the art students were also shadowing the very same Arab cells
that would later carry out the 911 attacks.

And the DEA had become aware of a drug connection between the
Russian-Israeli Mafia in Colombia and the globe trotting Saudi
Prince Nayif al Saud. The DEA's Operation Millennium was directed
against this network, which largely took down most of the network in
June 1999, when 808 kilograms of cocaine were seized in Paris. Later
the DEA, in June 2000, the DEA declassified a "SECRET DEA-6" report
from the DEA's BCO (Bogota Country Office) so that the PCO (Paris
Country Office) could share the intelligence on Saudi cocaine
smuggling operations with the Paris police. The DEA and French law
enforcement had compiled tons of evidence that Prince Nayif was
transporting cocaine to support some major event.

The DEA report stated that Nayif stated that Allah had authorized
him to sell drugs and that later his reason for selling the drugs
would become known. It is significant that Nayif did not use
alcohol, tobacco or drugs. Nayif claimed diplomatic immunity and the
Saudi government threatened France and the Clinton administration
with withholding lucrative contracts if they pursued their prince.
Because of O'Neill's close contacts with DEA, this intelligence
would have been made known to him as well. The Saudi cocaine
smuggling network involved organized crime elements tied to the
Russian-Israeli Mafia in Miami; Medellin, Colombia; Marbella and
Barcelona, Spain; Venezuela; Geneva; and the Netherlands. According
to the DEA report, Nayif fathered a child with a woman named Doris
Salazar, a Colombian national residing in Miami. The report also
states that an organized crime figure only identified as "Pepe," a
Cuban American who ran a "large section of the Miami Port" and who
came to Florida during the 1978 Mariel boat lift, was involved with
Nayif in "protecting narcotic shipments upon arrival in the Miami
port."

The declassified SECRET

DEA-6 report contains the names of a number of cooperating witnesses
in the investigation of Nayif and the cocaine smuggling network and
the author takes seriously the statement in the document: "Protect
identities of the cooperating defendants."

The DEA originally became interested in the Israelis because they
suspected they were involved in an Israeli Mafia Ecstasy smuggling
ring.  However, it soon became clear that the DEA had stumbled
across something much larger – not only were DEA offices and homes
of DEA agents around the country being cased by the Israelis, but
they were also targeting Federal judges, U.S. Marshals,
Environmental Protection Agency law enforcement officers, and FBI
agents for surveillance.

It also became clear to the DEA that the Israeli art students were
also involved with certain Colombians. On March 22, 2002, at the Oak
Hills Apartment Complex in Irving, Texas, DEA agents arrested
Israeli art student Dahan Eldad, along with Elsa Beatriz Africano-
Leon, a Colombian national. On March 27, DEA agents arrested four
other Israelis in the same apartment complex, including Aran Ofek,
who said his father was a retired Israeli army two-star general. A
$10,000 bond for another arrested Israeli, Michal Gal, was placed by
Ophir Baer, an employee of Israeli telecommunications firm AMDOCS,
Inc., a firm with operational access to the telephones being used by
FBI agents John O'Neill, Michael Dick, and the DEA agents involved
in tracking the Saudi/Mafia cocaine shipments being used to support
various terrorist and intelligence cells in the United States and
abroad.

On April 11, 2001, a DEA agent and a Fredericksburg, Virginia
policeman questioned two female Israeli "art student" nationals at
the shopping center in Fredericksburg. The passport for Yael Gavish
contained some interesting entry/exit visas: 13 December 2000, entry
into Bogota, Colombia and 5 February 2001, exit visa from Bogota. In
addition, on 5 February there was a possible entry visa for Panama,
which was followed by a 9 March 2001 entry visa in New York City.
Gavish's colleague Meirav Balhams had a New York State identity card
listing her address as 354 Paterson Plank Rd., Jersey City, New
Jersey.

An FBI 9-11 suspect list dated February 22, 2002 lists Dominik
Suter, along with an Ornit Levinson, a.k.a., Omit Suter, with an
address of 312 Pavonia Avenue, Jersey City. Dominik Suter was the
head of Urban Moving Systems of nearby Weehawken, the base of
operations for two white vans with the same rear license plate that
were seen parked at the Doric Apartments (near Patterson Plank Road)
and at Liberty State Park at the same time the first plane struck
the North Tower of the World Trade Center. The occupants of both
vans, all Israelis, were seen celebrating the attack while dressed
in Arab garb. Five Israelis in one of the vans were later arrested
by the local police and FBI near Giant Stadium in East Rutherford,
New Jersey in the late afternoon of September 11.

O'Neill's FBI colleague, Mike Dick, aggressively investigated this
Israeli ring before and after 911. But like O'Neill, he soon found
himself removed from his duties on the orders of the then-head of
the Justice Department's Criminal Division Michael Chertoff. Dick
was very suspicious when Israeli movers quickly moved Zim American
Israeli Shipping Company out of its 10,000 square feet of office
space on the 17th Floor of the North Tower of the World Trade
Center. The partially Israeli state-owned firm forfeited a $50,000
security deposit when it terminated its lease and vacated the
building one week prior to 911. According to a non official cover
(NOC) CIA source who worked withDick, Israeli movers moved
explosives into the 17th Floor office space after Zim moved out.

After 911, Dick as well as the CIA NOC were harassed by their
superiors on orders "from above." Those orders came from Chertoff.
Dick was first relieved of his primary counter-espionage duties,
eventually sent to Pakistan to investigate the kidnapping of <>Wall
Street Journal<> reporter Daniel Pearl, and eventually buried in a
desk job at FBI headquarters in Washington, DC. According to the CIA
source, Pearl was murdered because he was getting too close to the
money trail that financed 911. The CIA source said, "the same group
that beheaded Pearl in Pakistan did the beheadings in Iraq." The
source added that the beheadings were "not Al Qaeda."

The CIA source, who emphasized his past Republican credentials,
emphasized that Al Qaeda was merely a "list" of arms dealers,
mercenaries, drug dealers, financiers, and terrorists used by the
CIA and Saudis during the Afghan Mujaheddin War against the Soviets.
The source also iterated that all the 911 hijackers had fake IDs.
During a joint CIA-FBI operation against lead hijacker Mohammed Atta
in Fort Lee, New Jersey in 2000, the CIA and FBI team leaders
complained to their superiors that their operation was being
photographed by Israeli agents, thus compromising the operation. The
CIA source affirmed that the Israelis in New Jersey were providing
cover for the future hijacker teams.

It was not the first run-in by the CIA operative with the Israelis.
He once caught a senior U.S. diplomat with close ties to Israel
taking bribes from Moroccan government officials to write favorable
reports on Morocco's continued control over disputed and oil and
mineral rich Western Sahara. Attempts to follow the diplomat's
laundered money were rebuffed by Madeleine Albright's State
Department.

The problems at the top of the CIA and FBI, said the source, existed
since the Russian/Soviet spies Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen were
able to penetrate the top levels of both agencies. "They got there
with help," said the source.

O'Neill decided that because his own agency was stymieing his own
investigative leads, he relied on DEA to handle his most sensitive
inquiries and communications. Although DEA memos later suggested
that Israeli telecommunications companies, under contract to the
Justice Department, may have penetrated sensitive DEA communications
as part of an intelligence operation, O'Neill was sure that his
communications at the FBI were totally compromised and forced to
rely on the DEA because of both internal political pressure from the
FBI and Justice Department leadership and his fear that his
communications were being wiretapped.

O'Neill also relied on French intelligence to obtain wiretap
information on Al Qaeda cells. O'Neill was certain that the Saudi
government and oil industry-centric members of the Bush
administration were behind the Al Qaeda network. He was also aware
of repeated negotiations between U.S. oil companies like UNOCAL and
Halliburton and Taliban representatives dating back to 1996, the
same year the Khobar Towers were bombed by the Taliban's Al Qaeda
wards. Although those negotiations ceased after the 1998 embassy
bombings in Africa, they began again in earnest after George W. Bush
became president.

O'Neill had discovered that some of his Al Qaeda targets were
involved in some very un-Islamic fundamentalist activities,
including drug smuggling, teenage prostitution, and blood diamond
dealing. The financial trail led O'Neill to a network of bank
accounts in London, Dubai, the Isle of Man, Guernsey, and Jersey.
The network investigated coincided exactly with the activities being
carried out by the Russian-Israeli Mafia and its links to diamond,
drug, and weapons dealers that was especially active in New York and
Florida. The future 911 hijackers and their Israeli "shadows" had
more than living in the same neighborhoods and frequenting the same
bars, video rental stores, and rental mailbox stores in common.

***
On October 12, 2000, the USS Cole, docked in Aden harbor after the
U.S. Navy deemed the port safe and certified it as a Defense Fuel
Support Point, was reportedly blown up by two men who approached the
warship in a small boat. The men were said to be Al Qaeda members
from the bin Laden family homeland in Hadhramaut, a remote region in
the east of Yemen straddling the Yemeni-Saudi border. Later, groups
called the Army of Mohammed and the Army of Aden-Abyan claimed
responsibility for the attack but these claims were reported through
obscure sources in London.

O'Neill and his FBI soon arrived in Yemen to investigate the crime.
From the outset, O'Neill received a cold shoulder from the U.S.
ambassador to Yemen Barbara Bodine (the Deputy Chief of Mission in
Kuwait before Desert Storm and the U.S. viceroy for central Iraq
after the U.S. occupation). Bodine's orders to limit the scope of
O'Neill's investigation came from Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright, whose father Dr. Joseph Korbel, a neo-con anti-Soviet
professor, was the mentor for one of his students at the University
of Denver – Condoleeezza Rice. O'Neill was not permitted to
interview Yemenis who witnessed the Cole explosion. O'Neill was not
permitted to examine the hat worn by one of the bombers in the boat
nor was he allowed to examine the harbor sludge for evidence.

  team permission to re-enter the country. O'Neill was getting too
close to something. In February, 2001, after Yemen's Interior
Minister Hussein Mohammed Arab made a statement that there was no
evidence linking the Cole bombing to Al Qaeda ("Investigations have
not so far proved, either to us or to the Americans, any link
between Osama bin Laden and the Cole bombing."), the Bush
administration showed no desire to find out who actually bombed the
ship. They were too busy clearing the baffles for the Iraq invasion
and their other agendas.

In early 2001, rumors began circulating that O'Neill would take over
White House Counter-terrorism coordinator Richard Clarke's job at
the National Security Council. Clarke had been one of the few
holdovers from the Clinton to Bush administrations. Suddenly, the
story about the 90 minute theft of O'Neill's brief case was leaked
to the New York Times, even though the Justice Department had long
before dropped its own investigation of the incident. Although the
FBI continued its own investigation of the brief case incident, it
prevented an investigation of the leak of the O'Neill incident to
the media.

On August 22, O'Neill retired from 30 years' service with the FBI.
The next day, he began his job as Security Director for the World
Trade Center. His office was on the 34th Floor of the North Tower of
the Trade Center. O'Neill's building was the first one hit on
September 11. He died while trying to save people in the South
Tower, the second building hit by the hijackers.

***
A joint CIA-FBI computer system, code named "Alex," was entirely
focused on Bin Laden's network. A unit at Langley, called "Station
Alex," was established in 1995. It began to detect that "Al Qaeda"
was actually a diversified financial, drug smuggling, arms
smuggling, and diamond smuggling network with tentacles in over 60
countries around the world. And, as with any large criminal
syndicate, it had ties with legitimate companies such as banks,
hawalahs, and religious charities, but also with criminal
enterprises, including the Russian-Israeli, Latin American, and
Balkans Mafias. This first step at coordinating the efforts of the
CIA and FBI in combating Al Qaeda was successful. The FBI lead Alex
agent was John O'Neill. His CIA counterpart was Michael Scheuer, who
would later abruptly leave Langley upset that the threat posed by Al
Qaeda was not being taken more seriously by the Bush administration.
Scheuer's worries mirrored those of O'Neill in the months before he
was killed at the World Trade Center. As O'Neill got closer to those
who would be behind 911, he found himself locked out of the Alex
computer system. His access authorization had been pulled by higher
authority. Eventually, Alex, like its counterpart, Able Danger,
would be shut down by the Bush administration.

Foreign intelligence agencies would prove more useful than either
the CIA or FBI in tracking leads on Al Qaeda and other terrorist
threats against the West. The French, who had a long history of
problems with Islamist terrorists dating from its Algerian War, had
tremendous assets who had penetrated both the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
A Confidential "French Eyes Only" DGSE intelligence document dated
January 9, 2001, which was written about terrorist activities at the
Al Qaeda training camp at Darounta, Afghanistan, bolsters what a CIA
source reported about the October 2000 attack on the <>USS Cole<>.
O'Neill was particularly interested in doing a DNA analysis of the
hat worn by one of the so-called suicide bombers in the small boat
that pulled alongside the Cole. He also wanted to conduct an
explosives analysis of the mud beneath the ship.

The Cole was at THREATCON (threat condition) BRAVO, which means that
its crew was on alert for suspicious approaching craft. One of the
security detail aboard the Cole said he was under the impression
that the small boat was a harbor services craft used to assist in
garbage disposal and other routine operations.

The classified French intelligence report concludes that there was
never a link between Al Qaeda units trained in Afghanistan for
amphibious operations against ships and the attack on the Cole. This
begs the question: if Al Qaeda did not bomb the Cole (as affirmed by
the Yemeni prime minister), who did?

The following is from the French intelligence report:

"A group of Arab nationals, whose nationality is undetermined, were
trained in amphibious operations at Darounta at the end of 1999
under the command of a Yemeni. In addition, in January 2000, a
project to attack an American destroyer in Aden failed due to a lack
of preparation. Finally, in February 2000, a group comprising 10
Yemenis had arrived in Darounta. Until May 2000, they were trained
in using explosives supplied by Abou Khabab before they were sent to
Jordan and Yemen.

No proof exists to connect these elements to the attack on the
destroyer USS Cole perpetrated on October 12, 2000, but the American
intelligence service has rapidly attempted information on Abou
Khebab after the attack.

Finally, for what concerns France, it has been established that
several French Islamists implicated in the attacks of 1995 and 1996
traveled to Afghan camps. Among them appear former Bosnian
combatants like Joseph Jaime and David Vallat, and especially Farid
Mellouk, who, in 1995, attended a training course in explosives at
Darounta. Investigated by French police, he was arrested on 5 March
1998 in Belgium. A search resulted in the seizure of explosives,
various types of detonators, potassium cyanide, and different
written notes similar to the information in the course run at
Darounta.

Excepting the Maghrebian enclave, the training given at Darounta,
for a duration of about 2 months, principally concerned the making
of explosives for the use by terrorists. This instruction,
originally provided at Khalden camp in Paktia, was transferred
during 1995, on the order of Ibu Cheikh, to Darounta after their
break from the control of the special services of certain countries,
notably the United States and United Kingdom."

The classified report also gives some background on Abou
Khebab: "Abou Khebab – Egyptian. He is identified in March 1999 by
the CIA as the person in charge of training the Islamists associated
with Osama bin Laden in the manufacture and use of chemicals and
biological weapons. According to Egyptian intelligence, he was in
Yemen in June 1999 and makes frequent trips to Pakistan."

Given O'Neill's close ties to French intelligence, he would have
been aware of the cold trail the French had linking Al Qaeda to the
Cole bombing. He would have also been aware of the CIA's bird
dogging of Abou Khebab between Yemen and Pakistan. So, if the Yemeni
prime minister and the French are correct, who bombed the Cole?

The former CIA agent who worked with the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task
Force in New York and New Jersey stated that the USS Cole was hit by
a specially-configured Popeye cruise missile launched from an
Israeli Dolphin-class submarine. Israeli tests of the missile in May
2000 in the waters off Sri Lanka demonstrated it could hit a target
930 miles away.  The ex-CIA agent also stated that Ambassador Bodine
threw John O'Neill and his team out of Yemen lest their
investigation began uncovering evidence that the Cole was not blown
up by an explosive-laden boat but by an Israeli cruise missile.

The former CIA agent said the reason for the Israeli attack was to
further galvanize U.S. public opinion against both Al Qaeda and the
Democrats in the weeks prior to the 2000 presidential elections. The
Bush-Cheney team could blame the Democrats for not taking the Al
Qaeda threat seriously. However, this is exactly the tact the Bush
administration took after taking office: failure to support the CIA-
FBI's Alex Station, pressuring John O'Neill and other agents like
Minneapolis agent Coleen Rowley and others across the nation who
detected activity involving Arab flight students, and pulling the
plug on a major data mining operation directed against Al Qaeda code
named Able Danger, which was being jointly run by the DIA and the
Special Operations Command.

***
The French discovery of a Bosnian connection to two of its nationals
at Darounta is noteworthy. The Muslim operation in the Balkans was
largely supported by official (CIA, DIA, and Special Operations)
U.S. assistance but also by unofficial help. This was mainly carried
out by private military contractors like MPRI and financial support
networks like the Bosnia Defense Fund, established in the mid-1990s
at a Riggs Bank account in Washington, DC. The principal movers
behind the Bosnian Defense Fund were Richard Perle and Douglas
Feith. In fact, Feith's law firm, Feith and Zell (FANZ) set up the
Bosnia Defense Fund.  According to a former Riggs legal adviser,
when objections were raised about the hundreds of millions of
dollars collected from such countries as Saudi Arabia, Brunei,
Malaysia, the UAE, Iran, Jordan, and Egypt that were being detected
by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FINCEN) being sent from
Washington to Sarajevo, Bosnia, and reports that there
was "spillage" of these funds into the hands of Al Qaeda units in
the country, Perle's response at one contentious meeting was, "just
make it fucking happen."

After 911, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill attempted to pressure
banks and other financial institutions in Dubai and Saudi Arabia to
provide records of past and ongoing Al Qaeda financial transactions.
According to a former auditor with the Central Bank of the United
Arab Emirates, during a trip by O'Neill in March 2002, the UAE and
Saudi officials shook O'Neill's hand, smiled at him, and offered to
assist. However, they soon put pressure on the Bush administration,
including several leading neo-cons who knew the stakes of such
disclosures, to force Paul O'Neill out. Later that year, in
December, Bush forced O'Neill to resign. A November 29, 2001 letter
from Treasury Department General Counsel David D. Aufhauser to Swiss
Procurator General Claude Nicati described the measures the Treasury
Department was taking against a major Al Qaeda financier named
Yassin A. Kadi. However, that particular thread intersected with
activities by Islamist guerrillas in Bosnia, and that was a threat
to certain neocon elements who had established a Bosnian support
fund in the 1990s that involved the same financial support networks
that supported Al Qaeda. In fact, Al Qaeda units were active in
Bosnia during the civil war. And those units were partly supported
by the Bosnia Defense Fund established by Perle and Feith.

According to the Aufhauser letter to his Swiss counterpart, "Mr.
Kadi has acknowledged in a number of press accounts that he is the
founder of the Muwafaq, or "Blessed Relief" Foundation. He is
identified in legal records as `Chairman' of the foundation. The
leader of the terrorist organization Al-Gama'at Al-Islamiya, Tala
Fuad Kassem, has said that the Muwafaq Foundation provided
logistical and financial support for a mujahadin battalion in
Bosnia. The foundation also operated in Sudan, Somalia, and
Pakistan, among other places." The letter continued, "Muhammad Ali
Harrath, main activist of the Tunisian Islamic Front (TIF) in the
United Kingdom, was associated with Muwafaq personnel in Bosnia and
other TIF members worked at the Muwafaq Foundation."

The Treasury Department, in its efforts to track down past money
flows to Al Qaeda, had undoubtedly come across those Riggs Bank
transfers to Sarajevo and hence to Al Qaeda in the 1990s. And the
2.5 terabytes of data collected by the Able Danger team on Al Qaeda
also undoubtedly included FINCEN, SWIFT, and other banking and wire
transfer data. And that pointed not only to people like Yassin Kadi
but also to the Bosnia Defense Fund of Perle and Feith. More the
reason to obstruct Paul O'Neill's earnest money tracking efforts.
Soon, O'Neill and Aufhauser would be bounced out of Treasury and
replaced with more "agreeable" people to fight the "global war on
terrorism."

Aufhauser's letter ends with a troubling conclusion about Albania
and Bosnia, the two countries that received support from the neo-
cons in the Clinton and Bush administrations and which have surfaced
in recent disclosures in Italy about ties between the Pentagon's own
intelligence unit and Al Qaeda-affiliated operatives in Italy who
had been liaisons between the Americans and Islamist fighters in the
Balkans: "When a region becomes more settled, such as Bosnia or
Albania today, seemingly legitimate businesses replace charitable
foundations as cover for continuing terrorist organizational
activity. Mr. Kadi's actions and those of his Muwafiq Foundation and
businesses fit this pattern and give rise to a reasonable basis to
believe that they have facilitated terrorist activities."

***
By the end of 2000, DIA, CIA, and NSA had compiled quite a dossier
on Al Qaeda and its activities. Yet, the political leadership of the
outgoing Clinton administration was more interested in not rocking
the boat before leaving for the private sector and the incoming Bush
administration officials were already making it known that they
wanted to see intelligence that conformed with its political dogma.
After the neo-cons nested in the Pentagon, the use of DIA and NSA to
produce cooked intelligence became policy. Similar pressure would
soon be brought to bear on the CIA, State Department, FBI, and
National Security Council.

Post-911, the FBI insisted that Mohammed Atta did not arrive in the
United States for the first time until 2000. However, Able Danger
placed him in the United States as early as 1999. In addition, FBI
Farsi, Azeri, and Turkish translator Sibel Edmonds discovered
further evidence that "Al Qaeda" was tied up with drug dealers
operating from Afghanistan to Turkey and into the Balkans, including
Albania and Kosovo, the nexus for Al Qaeda activity. The drug
connection to Al Qaeda was never investigated by the 911 Commission.

Past U.S. official and unofficial support for the Albanian and
Bosnian Al Qaeda and other terror cells would become highlighted.
The neo-con connection to those elements was also problematic.
Edmonds was fired by the FBI and faced the same recriminations as
John O'Neill, Coleen Rowley, and dozens of other intelligence and
law enforcement agents who did detect that something on the scale of
911 was about to occur. Allegations by the CIA director Porter Goss,
his successor as House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
Chairman Peter Hoekstra, the 911 Commission, and others that the
U.S. Intelligence Community failed the nation on 911 are convenient
charges designed to draw attention away from the involvement of
senior Bush and Clinton administration officials in laying the
groundwork for the attack: the closing down of various intelligence
operations, the firing of key officials, and allowing classified
information to leak to countries like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan,
Israel, and Turkey.

In the course of its data trawling, which commenced in 1999, Able
Danger grabbed some astounding data. According to DIA source,
evidence was uncovered of secret deals between then-Stanford
University Provost and Chevron director Condoleezza Rice and the
government of China. After former DIA analyst Russ Tice reported the
possible presence of a Chinese agent inside DIA, he was abruptly
fired from his highly classified position at his next agency, the
NSA. At the same time, a top Chinese analyst at DIA, who was
responsible for taking care of his elderly parents, strangely
committed suicide. Almost simultaneously, a highly-cleared Chinese-
American Air Force officer stationed at Offutt Air Force Base
outside of Omaha, Nebraska, also committed suicide, however, no
suicide note or body were ever recovered. In November 2003, similar
strange suicides plagued the State Department, NSA, and CIA
communities as intelligence was being cooked to support the war
against Iraq. Tice, a veteran like John O'Neill of operations in
Yemen following the USS Cole bombing, was reassigned to the NSA
motor pool and later run through a series of humiliating and
demoralizing Kafkaesque hearings and panels run by a combination of
NSA's draconian Security Directorate and NSA's subservient
psychological assessment unit.

Suicide has now become commonplace in the US Intelligence community.

After the U.S. Army's Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA) and
its contractor Orion Scientific pulled out of Able Danger, most of
the work was conducted between DIA's TWI-2 (Trans World Information
Warfare) support (Computer Technologies) division, code named
Stratus Ivy, and Raytheon, a company with close links to the U.S.
intelligence community. TWI-1 is DIA's Special Activities Trans
World Information Warfare support group, which liaised with the Able
Danger group. It was during Phase II of Able Danger, the phase that
primarily relied on Raytheon support, that the Chinese connection to
Rice was uncovered. It is uncertain what Able Danger and another DIA
program code named Doorhawk Galley may have uncovered on the
Mohammed Atta cells around the country, their affiliation with
Israeli movers and art students, and other terrorist plans, but the
revelations of Able Danger have resulted in the revocation of the
security clearance, based on trumped up charges, of Lt. Col. Anthony
Shaffer, the key person involved in the programs to track Al Qaeda
prior to 911. The revelations have also likely spelled the end of
any further DIA data mining programs that could embarrass the Bush
administration and its Israeli and Saudi allies. These include Able
Danger's proposed successor Able Provenance and its data base
Kimberlite Magic.

Another group that was getting close to Russian-Israeli Mafia
involvement with the so-called Al Qaeda network was the CIA's
Counter Proliferation Division. Working through Operations
Directorate and clandestine case officers and non-official cover
personnel, the CIA began to discover links between Al Qaeda,
Pakistan's Inter Service Intelligence (ISI), Pakistani nuclear
weapons smuggler and top nuclear physicist A. Q. Khan, and a Russian-
Israeli-Turkish nuclear component smuggling ring that involved
illegal exports from the former Soviet states, the United States,
South Africa, and Malaysia to Pakistan, Iran, Libya, Saudi Arabia,
and North Korea.

The secret deals to traffic in weapons of mass destruction, if
revealed, would expose certain key figures in the Bush
administration. Therefore, it had to be cut off at the knees. The
White House revelations about a CIA NOC front company, Brewster
Jennings and Associates and one of its under cover agents, not only
served to attack anti-Iraq war opponents but also effectively rolled
up the covert operation and took the heat off of certain political
and financial middlemen who worked for or were close to the
administration, especially within Dick Cheney's office and Donald
Rumsfeld's Pentagon. Chief among these were I. Lewis "Scooter"
Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, and Douglas Feith.

It was not the first time that a CIA NOC company had been exposed as
a result of the penetration of the U.S. intelligence by a foreign
government. According to a former CIA officer, Synergistics
Technologies, Inc., described as a CIA front, had been exposed after
Israeli intelligence had broken U.S. and NATO encryption codes
during Desert Storm. The firm's covert activities with post-Soviet
Russian television networks, the European Broadcasting Union, and
the Regional Security Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow were
laid wide open. That compromise of U.S. intelligence with the
Israelis would not be the first. Air Force Colonel Larry Franklin
was indicted for passing classified information to the pro-Israeli
organization, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
Since Franklin agreed to a plea bargain with the government, it is
expected that the case may target additional officials and
consultants of the Bush administration.

***
The clearing of the baffles by senior officials of the Bush and
Clinton administrations in preparation for their defining moment of
a "new Pearl Harbor" has resulted in the virtual destruction of
America's ability to adequately collect intelligence and honestly
analyze its importance. The corridors of the FBI, NSA, DIA, CIA,
State  Department, Treasury, and other agencies are littered with
the broken careers and dead bodies of dedicated intelligence and law
enforcement officers. There are a number of cases in which career
and conscientious intelligence and law enforcement officials have
abruptly lost their jobs -- some for showing undesirable
independence and free thinking, others for merely knowing too much
about who knew what and when about 911.

The neo-cons have done to the U.S. Intelligence Community what
Hurricane Katrina did to the Gulf Coast and New Orleans. America has
never been weaker. Rather than creating a "New American Century,"
the neo-cons have created a new global "Dark Age" of fear and
constant war.

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U.N. Investigator Blasts U.S. Justice System
By Thalif Deen
Inter Press Service
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43018


After a two-week fact-finding tour of U.S. prison and detention
facilities, a U.N. human rights investigator has blasted the
administration of President George W. Bush for a rash of
shortcomings in the country's flawed justice system and continued
violations of the rule of law. Unleashing a stinging barrage of
attacks, Professor Philip Alston, the U.N. special rapporteur on
extra-judicial, summary and arbitrary executions, singles out the
existence of racism in the application of the death penalty in the
United States, and the lack of transparency in the deaths of
prisoners in the Guantanamo Bay detention facility housing suspected
terrorists.

Alston, a professor at the New York University School of Law and an
outspoken critic of human rights abuses worldwide, also complains
about the non-availability of information on civilian casualties in
Iraq and Afghanistan, and the refusal of the U.S. Justice Department
to prosecute private security contractors who commit unlawful
killings.  During his 14-day tour of the United States at the
invitation of the administration, he met with federal and state
officials, judges and civil society groups in New York, Washington
DC, Alabama and Texas.

Alston was particularly critical of the state of Texas which has
refused to review the cases of foreign nationals on death row, most
of whom had been deprived of the right to consular assistance from
their home countries.

He specifically chose to visit Alabama "because it has the highest
per capita rate of executions in the United States, and Texas
because it has the largest number of executions and prisoners on
death row."

Still, 129 individuals waiting on death row have been exonerated
across the United States, since 1973, and the number continues to
grow.

"Indeed, while I was in Texas, the conviction of yet another person
on death row was overturned by the Court of Criminal Appeals,"
Alston said.

While in this case DNA testing ultimately prevented the execution of
an innocent man, Alston said, others may have been less fortunate.

"In Texas, I met a range of officials and others who acknowledged
that innocent people might have been executed," he said, adding the
problem is that a criminal justice system with recognised flaws that
the government refuses to address will always be capable of
mistakes.

In his report, Alston points out that studies across the United
States also suggest racial disparities in the application of the
death penalty. In particular, many studies suggest that a defendant
is more likely to receive the death penalty when the victim is
white, and some studies also suggest that a defendant is more likely
to receive the death penalty if he is African American.

"When I raised this issue with federal and state government
officials, I was met with indifference or flat denial," said Alston,
who noted that many officials wrote off the results of studies
showing racial disparity as being biased because they were written
by researchers with anti-death penalty views.

"Given what is at stake, there is a need for governments at both the
state and federal levels to revisit systematically the concerns
about continuing racial disparities," he said.

Meanwhile, to date, just six of the "enemy combatants" detained at
the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba have been
charged with capital offences under the Military Commissions Act
(MCA). They are being tried before military commissions on war
crimes charges, and if convicted, face the death penalty.

According to Alston, the United States has an obligation to provide
fair trials which afford all essential judicial guarantees.

"The fundamental principles of a fair trial may never be derogated
from. But the text of the MCA, which provides the rules which govern
the trials, and the experiences of those with whom I met during my
mission involved in the trial process to date, indicate clearly that
these trials utterly fail to meet the basic due process standards
required for a fair trial under international humanitarian and human
rights law," he added.

There have been five reported deaths of detainees at Guantanamo Bay
in 2006-07. Four were classified as suicides, and one was attributed
to cancer.  In the custodial environment, Alston said, a state has a
heightened duty and capacity to ensure and respect the right to
life. As a result, there is a rebuttable presumption of state
responsibility whether through acts of commission or omission in
cases of custodial death.

The state has an obligation to investigate the deaths, and publicly
report on the findings and the evidence upon which the findings are
based. "But the Department of Defence has provided little public
information about the causes or circumstance of any of these
deaths," he said.

While it has been reported that autopsies were conducted in each
case, the results have not been made public or even provided to the
families of the deceased men, he added.

It was also reported that the Naval Criminal Investigative Services
is conducting investigations into each of the deaths. But over two
years since the first deaths, no results of investigations have been
released.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, where the U.S. military is considered an
occupying power, Alston points to a string of human rights abuses
and violations of the rule of law. He said the "troublingly opaque
character of the U.S. military justice system is well illustrated by
a case described to me by witnesses and investigators when I visited
Afghanistan."

On Mar. 4, 2007, U.S. Marines responded to a suicide attack on their
convoy, in which one soldier was wounded, by killing 19 people and
wounding many others in the space of a 10-mile retreat.

"I asked the regional commander in Afghanistan what follow-up had
occurred. He could not tell me and explained that his unit had just
arrived in Afghanistan and that accountability for incidents
involving the previous unit was its responsibility and that it had
taken all the relevant files when it left the country," Alston
said.  In fact, a Court of Inquiry into the incident proceeded in
North Carolina.

"Shortly after I returned from Afghanistan, the U.S. military
released a short statement on this incident indicating that the
commander of U.S. Marine Corps Forces Central Command had conducted
a thorough review of the report of a Court of Inquiry and had
determined that the soldiers had acted appropriately and in
accordance with the rules of engagement and tactics, techniques and
procedures in place at the time in response to a complex attack."
Unsurprisingly, he said, this conclusive and unsubstantiated
response to such a serious incident was met with dismay in
Afghanistan.

"Afghans and Americans have a right to ask on what basis this
conclusion was reached," Alston said.

"But all of the documents produced by the Court of Inquiry have
remained classified. The record of proceedings has not been
released. The 12,000 page report of the Court of Inquiry including
recommendations and factual findings has not been released."

The U.S. government has even disregarded the existing regulation
stating that the convening authority should ensure that an executive
summary of the report be made public in order to inform government
officials, the legislative branch, the media, and the next of kin of
the victims of the investigations findings and recommendations.

"Whether or not the decision not to initiate courts-martial was
justified, the manner in which the military justice system has
operated in this case is entirely inconsistent with principles of
public accountability and transparency," he declared.

Regarding killings by private security contractors, Alston said:

"It's the (U.S.) Department of Justice's job to prosecute private
security contractors who commit unlawful killings, but it has done
next to nothing."

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Revealing a Massacre, or Stating the Obvious
By Ramzy Baroud
21/07/08
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20331.htm


"ICH" -- - For some folks interested in genealogy, tracing one's
roots is a stimulating activity. It's immensely interesting and
meaningful to learn where one's life started. DNA testing has made
it possible to trace one's roots back many generations and there are
even free web sites that can help users trace their family history
based on a few simple clues. Recent findings in my own personal
history have been interesting indeed. The present task of tracing my
family roots was inspired by a book project with Pluto Press,
narrating the story of my father, as once a fighter from Gaza who
died recently under tragic circumstances in the same refugee camp to
which he was expelled, along with his family sixty years ago.

Just weeks into my research, I found myself stumbling into the
details of a massacre, one that is conveniently overshadowed by the
dust of the battle, the rigidity of academic research and the lack
of media access of those who have survived.

And now, what started as a mere phase of my father's torn childhood
in Palestine has morphed into being the core of my book's
narrative.  My family came from the village of Beit Daras, one of
the hundreds of villages destroyed by Zionist Jewish militias prior
to the establishment of the state of Israel. Growing up in a refugee
camp in the Gaza Strip, decades after the destruction of Beit Daras,
I heard many stories of our village that now only exist in memory.
The objective behind the story was hardly a calculated intent to
ensure that we don't forget what has befallen us. It was a daily
narrative that simply defined our internal relationship as a
community.

The "Bedrasawis" - the collective name of those originated from Beit
Daras - were often stereotyped as "large headed" - literally - and
stubborn. Although we Bedrasawis protested the recurring accusation,
we also shared unspoken pride in it. But that reputation of zeal and
prowess was fostered by the dramatic events of 1948, during the
Zionist drive to evacuate Palestine from its inhabitants.

Israeli historian Benny Morris, in his volume, The Birth of the
Palestinian Refugee Problem, makes a couple of references to Beit
Daras. Nothing notable, aside from the fact that a Haganah's unit,
Givati, had shelled the village on May 10, 1948 "promoting the
flight of its inhabitants." But there is more to what took place in
Beit Daras than Morris's footnote. Arab historians, Walid Khalidi,
Salman Abu Sitta, among others, provided the story within a greater
context. Still, documenting the history of anywhere between 400 to
500 destroyed Palestinian villages in one volume is not a simple
feat, thus much of Beit Daras' history is lumped as one of many: the
Zionists attacked on day such and such, the Arabs resisted, then
fled, then the village was blown up to ensure that the inhabitants
would not return.  As sinister as the above summation is, much is
left untold. Peoples, faces, stories and families were torn apart,
often never to meet again, along with the decimated village's 401
homes, two mosques and lone elementary school.

Those killed in the 'massacre of Beit Daras', according to
Palestinian accounts, were 265, largely women, children and elders.
The gender and age groups of the victims were not selective nor
coincidental, but related to the nature of the battle, where the
fighters of Beit Daras were engaged in fighting against successive
Zionist army units, first involving militants from a nearby
settlement, then Haganah forces and finally Givati units. The battle
for Beit Daras was long and arduous, and duly mentioned in the
writings of Jamal Abd Al-Nasser, the first president of Egypt,
during his military service in southern Palestine, and of David Ben
Gurion's War Diaries (1947-1949).

Morris's chronological research methods discounted the fact that
although Beit Daras was located in southern Palestine -
approximately 30 kilometers north of Gaza - the Zionist aggression
to conquer the once peaceful village began earlier than the
Givati's "Operation Lighting" (Mivtza Barak) of early May 1948, and
that the village didn't fall for at least another month after the
date he sketchily provides. Indeed, Beit Daras' strategic location,
near important Zionist military hubs - located inside settlements
bordering the village - and near the supply routes to the Negev,
made it a target as early as March 16, and several times more in the
same month; then, again, in April, and twice in May, and finally in
June. Zionist losses were high and their attempts failed, time after
time. There was much fury that a small village of roughly 2000
people would not surrender under intense bombardment. A single day
of fighting resulted in the death of 50 Arabs, according to Ben
Gurion's own account.

Um 'Adel is an 80-year-old woman who now lives in Gaza. Today she
sells foodstuffs at a tiny and humble stand to help her family as
they struggle to survive the siege on Gaza. She vividly recalls the
events that lead to the massacre in 1948. It struck me how
apolitical she was, and how, until this day, she is dumbfounded, not
able to comprehend the dramatic events of those short months between
March and June of 1948.

Until now, she views the fight for Beit Daras based on a simple
equation: They tried to take our land, and we fought them off until
the end.

"They (The Zionist militias) knew well that we, Bedrasawis would not
go down easily. They knew that their fight for that whole area was
one battle, but to take over Beit Daras was another."

As simple as the equation was, her confusion about the whole event
haunts her until this day, and even now decades later, she is still
baffled as to what happened and why the people of her village were
betrayed. Beit Daras, lived up to its reputation of hard-headedness
and tenacity, but many details remain murky, yet incredibly
revealing and deserve more than a footnote.

One can only hope that the memory of the village survives without
having to wait the authentication of an Israeli historian, which may
or may not ever arrive. I know that I will do my part to make that
happen. After all, I owe Beit Daras my (relatively) large head, and
the tenacious spirit of my children, who carry the names of those
who lived in Beit Daras, and died there.


-Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of
PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many
newspapers and journals worldwide. His latest book is The Second
Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle (Pluto
Press, London).

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Georgia: In 'state of war' over South Ossetia
By MUSA SADULAYEV, Associated Press
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080810/ap_on_re_eu/georgia_south_ossetia


OUTSIDE TSKHINVALI, Georgia - Russia and small, U.S.-allied Georgia
headed toward a wider war Saturday as Russian tanks rumbled into the
contested province of South Ossetia and Russian aircraft bombed a
Georgian town, escalating a conflict that already has left hundreds
dead.

Georgia's Foreign Ministry said the country was "in a state of war"
and accused Russia of beginning a "massive military aggression." The
Georgian parliament approved a state of martial law, mobilizing
reservists and ordering government authorities to work round-the-
clock.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said that Moscow sent troops into
South Ossetia to force Georgia into a cease-fire and prevent Georgia
from retaking control of its breakaway region after it launched a
major offensive there overnight Friday.

In a meeting with refugees, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin
characterized Georgia's actions as "complete genocide," according to
his office's Web site. Putin also said Georgia had effectively lost
the right to rule the breakaway province — an indication Moscow
could be preparing to fulfill South Ossetians' wish to be absorbed
into Russia.

The risk of the conflict setting off a wider war also increased
Saturday when Russian-supported separatists in another breakaway
region, Abkhazia, also targeted Georgian troops by launching air and
artillery strikes to drive them out.

President Bush called for an end to the Russian bombings and an
immediate halt to the violence.

"The attacks are occurring in regions of Georgia far from the zone
of conflict in South Ossetia. They mark a dangerous escalation in
the crisis," Bush said in a statement to reporters while attending
the Olympic Games in Beijing.

Georgia President Mikhail Saakashvili called it an "unprovoked
brutal Russian invasion."

"This is about annihilation of a democracy on their borders,"
Saakashvili told the British Broadcasting Corp. "We on our own
cannot fight with Russia. We want immediate cease-fire, immediate
cessation of hostilities, separation of Russia and Georgia and
international mediation."

At a meeting of the U.N. Security Council Saturday, the third in
three days on the issue, Russia refused to agree to a cease-fire or
a diplomatic agreement. The move ensured that the fighting with
Georgia would keep spilling into other regions such as Abkhazia's
Kodori Ridge, where 15 U.N. military observers were told to evacuate.

"A ceasefire would not be a solution. The fighting is still going
on. The Georgian forces are continuing to be on the South Ossetian
territory," Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said.

Georgia, a U.S. ally whose troops have been trained by American
soldiers, launched the major offensive overnight Friday. Heavy
rocket and artillery fire pounded the provincial capital,
Tskhinvali, leaving much of the city in ruins.

It was the worst outbreak of hostilities since South Ossetia won de
facto independence in a war against Georgia that ended in 1992.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters Saturday in
Moscow that some 1,500 people had been killed in South Ossetia since
Friday, with the death toll rising. The figures could not be
independently confirmed.

But Tskhinvali residents who survived the bombardment by hiding in
basements and later fled the city estimated that hundreds of
civilians had died. They said bodies were lying everywhere.

Georgia, a country about the size of South Carolina that borders the
Black Sea between Turkey and Russia, was ruled by Moscow for most of
the two centuries preceding the breakup of the Soviet Union. Today,
Russia has approximately 30 times more people than Georgia and 240
times the area.

Both South Ossetia and Abkhazia have run their own affairs without
international recognition since splitting from Georgia in the early
1990s and have built up ties with Moscow. Russia has granted its
passports to most of their residents.

Putin arrived late Saturday in the Russian city of Vladikavkaz to
talk to South Ossetian refugees who have fled the fighting. He said
there were at least 34,000 refugees.

"The actions of the Georgian powers in South Ossetia are, of course,
a crime — first of all against their own people," Putin said. "The
territorial integrity of Georgia has suffered a fatal blow."

Russia also laid much of the responsibility for ending the fighting
on Washington, which has trained Georgian troops. Washington, in
turned, blamed Russia.

"We have urged an immediate halt to the violence and a stand-down by
all troops. We call for an end to the Russian bombings, and a return
by the parties to the status quo," Bush said in the statement.

White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said Bush had spoken with both
Medvedev and Saakashvili. But it was unclear what might persuade
either side to stop shooting — both claim the other violated a cease-
fire declared Thursday.

Alexander Lomaia, secretary of Georgia's Security Council, estimated
that Russia sent 2,500 troops into Georgia. The Russian military
would not comment on the number of troops. By late Saturday, Russian
military commanders claimed they had driven Georgian forces out of
Tskhinvali, a claim that Saakashvili denied.

Russia's ambassador to NATO Dmitry Rogozin said "98 percent of
Tskhinvali" was in ruins. "Our troops have re-established control
over the city," he said.

Smoke rose from the city, and intermittent artillery shelling and
sporadic gunfire could still be heard.

Georgian forces knocked out about 40 Russian tanks around
Tskhinvali, said Georgia's Deputy Interior Minister Eka
Sguladze. "Our units are well-equipped with anti-tank rockets, and
they thwarted a Russian tank attack," she told reporters.

Georgia, meanwhile, accused Russia of bombing its air bases and the
town of Gori, just outside South Ossetia.

An Associated Press reporter who visited Gori shortly after the
Russian airstrikes Saturday saw several apartment buildings in
ruins, some still on fire, and scores of dead bodies and bloodied
civilians. The elderly, women and children were among the victims.

The Russian warplanes appeared to have been targeting a military
base in Gori's outskirts that also was bombed.

The Interior Ministry said Russian warplanes also bombed the Vaziani
military base on the outskirts of the Georgian capital of Tbilisi
and struck near the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline. The ministry
said two other military bases were hit, and that Russian warplanes
also bombed the Black Sea port city of Poti, which has a sizable oil
shipment facility.

Georgia said it has shot down 10 Russian planes, including four
brought down Saturday, according to Lomaia. It also claimed to have
captured two Russian pilots, who were shown on Georgian television.

Russian Col. Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy chief of the General
Staff, confirmed Saturday that two Russian planes had been shot
down, but did not say where or when.

Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said Georgia brought the
airstrikes upon itself by bombing civilians and Russian
peacekeepers. He warned that the small Caucasus country should
expect more attacks.

"Whatever side is used to bomb civilians and the positions of
peacekeepers, this side is not safe and they should know this,"
Lavrov said.

Russian military commanders said 15 peacekeepers have been killed
and about 150 wounded in South Ossetia, accusing Georgian troops of
killing and wounding Russian peacekeepers when they seized Russian
checkpoints. The allegations couldn't be independently confirmed.

In Abkhazia, the separatist government said it intended to push
Georgian forces out of the Kodori Gorge. The northern part of the
gorge is the only area of Abkhazia that has remained under Georgian
government control. Lomaia confirmed that Georgian administrative
buildings in the Kodori Gorge were bombed, but he blamed the attack
on Russia.


Associated Press writers Misha Dzhindzhikhashvili in Tbilisi,
Georgia; Douglas Birch on the Russian-Georgian border; George
Abdaladze in Gori, Georgia; and Jim Heintz, Vladimir Isachenkov and
Lynn Berry in Moscow contributed to this report.

===

Georgia, Russia battle over breakaway province
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-08-08-georgia-
southossetia_N.htm?csp=34<javascript:void('Recommend')>


Georgian troops fire rockets at South Ossetian troops from an
unnamed location on Friday.


GEOGRAPHY: South Ossetia is a mountainous province located in
northern Georgia that shares its northern border with the Russian
republic of North Ossetia. Provincial capital is Tskhinvali.
POPULATION: Estimated at 70,000 people, who are overwhelmingly
ethnic Ossetians. An estimated 14,000 ethnic Georgians live in
several villages in the region. Ossetians and Georgians are Orthodox
Christians, as are the majority of Russians. Many have Russian
citizenship.
ECONOMY: Primarily agricultural, though just a small percentage of
its land is cultivated; some industrial facilities exist around
Tskhinvali, but most have been idle since the 1991-1992 war.
POLITICS: South Ossetia enjoyed broad autonomy within Soviet Georgia
and first claimed independence in 1989. It has run its own affairs
without international recognition since breaking away from the
Tbilisi-based Georgian government during a bloody 1991-1992 conflict
that killed more than 1,000 people and displaced tens of
thousands.Authorities held a referendum in 1992 proclaiming the
province's independence, but it went unnoticed by the international
community, leaving the region in limbo. South Ossetians voted
overwhelmingly for independence in a second referendum in November
2006.Russia has peacekeepers in South Ossetia, but Tbilisi accuses
them of siding with the separatists. Since coming to power in 2004,
Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili has vowed to bring South
Ossetia and another breakaway region, Abkhazia, back under Georgian
control. Russia formally recognizes South Ossetia and Abkhazia as
parts of Georgia, but it sides with their separatist leaders in
disputes with the Georgian government and has granted many of their
residents Russian citizenship.
Source: Associated Press


















[http://images.usatoday.com/_common/_images/clear.gif] GEORGIA,
RUSSIA RELATIONS





July 11, 2008: Georgia threatens to shoot down Russian planes if
they intrude on Georgian airspace again, after Russia confirms that
four of its planes circled over South Ossetia.
April 3, 2008: Georgia fails to secure a roadmap to NATO membership
at an alliance summit in Romania when NATO leaders delay a decision
under Russian pressure.
March 18, 2008: Moscow agrees to restore air travel between Russia
and Georgia. In October 2006, Russia banned flights, stopped mail
service and cracked down on Georgian migrants after Georgia briefly
detained four Russian military officers it accused of spying.
Nov. 15, 2007: Russia completes withdrawal of troops based in
Georgia since the 1991 Soviet collapse, although several thousand
remain as peacekeepers in the breakaway provinces of South Ossetia
and in Abkhazia, despite protests from the Georgian government.
Nov. 7, 2007: Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili uses force to
crack down on anti-government protesters. He also expels three
Russian diplomats and accuses Moscow of fomenting the unrest. Russia
responds by expelling three Georgian diplomats.
July 2006: Saakashvili passes up a Moscow summit of the Commonwealth
of Independent States, an alliance of former Soviet nations, after
the Kremlin tells him that Russian President Vladimir Putin will not
have time for a one-on-one meeting.
March 2006: Russia bans imports of Georgian wine, a major export,
citing health concerns.
January 2006: A pipeline explosion in southern Russia leaves Georgia
without natural gas supplies for a week during a harsh winter;
Saakashvili blames Moscow. Russian officials deny involvement.
Source: Associated Press















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TSKHINVALI, Georgia (AP) — Russia sent columns of tanks and
reportedly bombed Georgian air bases Friday after Georgia launched a
major military offensive Friday to retake the breakaway province of
South Ossetia, threatening to ignite a broader conflict.


Hundreds of civilians were reported dead in the worst outbreak of
hostilities since the province won defacto independence in a war
against Georgia that ended in 1992. Witnesses said the South
Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali was devastated.


"I saw bodies lying on the streets, around ruined buildings, in
cars," said Lyudmila Ostayeva, 50, who had fled with her family to
Dzhava, a village near the border with Russia. "It's impossible to
count them now. There is hardly a single building left undamaged."


The fighting broke out as much of the world's attention was focused
on the start of the Olympic Games and many leaders, including
Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Bush, were in
Beijing.


CONFLICT: Questions answered on Russia, Georgia
<http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-08-08-question-answer_N.htm>



The timing suggests Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili may have
been counting on surprise to fulfill his longtime pledge to wrest
back control of South Ossetia — a key to his hold on power.


Saakashvili agreed the timing was not coincidental, but accused
Russia of being the aggressor. "Most decision makers have gone for
the holidays," he said in an interview with CNN. "Brilliant moment
to attack a small country."


Diplomats called for another emergency session of the United Nations
Security Council, its second since early Friday morning seeking to
prevent an all-out war.


The United States was sending an envoy to the region Friday to meet
with the parties involved. "We support Georgia's territorial
integrity," State Department spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos told
reporters. "We are working on mediation efforts to secure a cease-
fire."


U.S. CANDIDATES: McCain, Obama urge halt to fighting in Georgia
<http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-08-08-
georgia-campaign_N.htm>



Georgia, a staunch U.S. ally, has about 2,000 troops in Iraq, making
it the third-largest contributor to coalition forces after the U.S.
and Britain. But Saakashvili told CNN that the troops would be
called home Saturday in the face of the South Ossetia fighting.


Georgia, which borders the Black Sea between Turkey and Russia, was
ruled by Moscow for most of the two centuries preceding the breakup
of the Soviet Union. Georgia has angered Russia by seeking NATO
membership — a bid Moscow regards as part of a Western effort to
weaken its influence in the region.


Ten Russian peacekeepers were killed and 30 wounded when their
barracks were hit in Georgian shelling, said Russian Ground Forces
spokesman Col. Igor Konashenkov. Russia has soldiers in South
Ossetia as peacekeeping forces but Georgia alleges they back the
separatists.


Georgia's Foreign Ministry accused Russian aircraft of bombing two
military air bases inside Georgia, inflicting some casualties and
destroying several military aircraft. Rustavi 2 television said four
people were killed and five wounded at the Marneuli air base.


Russia's Defense Ministry said it was sending reinforcements for its
peacekeepers, and Russian state television and Georgian officials
reported a convoy of tanks had crossed the border. The convoy was
expected to reach the provincial capital, Tskhinvali, by evening,
Channel One television said.


Georgian State Minister for Reintegration Temur Yakobashvili said
government troops were now in full control of Tskhinvali, but the
RIA-Novosti news agency quoted Konashenkov as saying late Friday
that Russian tanks were firing on Georgian positions in the city.


"We are facing Russian aggression," said Georgia's Security Council
chief Kakha Lomaya. "They have sent in their troops and weapons and
they are bombing our towns."


Putin has warned that the Georgian attack will draw retaliation and
the Defense Ministry pledged to protect South Ossetians, most of
whom have Russian citizenship.


PLEA FOR PEACE: White House urges an end to
fighting<http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-08-08-bush-
georgia_N.htm>



Chairing a session of his Security Council in the Kremlin, Russian
President Dmitry Medvedev also vowed that Moscow will protect
Russian citizens.


"In accordance with the constitution and federal law, I, as
president of Russia, am obliged to protect lives and dignity of
Russian citizens wherever they are located," Medvedev said,
according to Russian news reports. "We won't allow the death of our
compatriots go unpunished."


An AP reporter saw tanks and other heavy weapons concentrating on
the Russian side of the border with South Ossetia — supporting the
reports of an incursion. Some villagers were fleeing into Russia.


"I saw them (the Georgians) shelling my village," said Maria, who
gave only her first name. She said she and other villagers spent the
night in a field and then fled toward the Russian border as the
fighting escalated.


Yakobashvili said Georgian forces had shot down four Russian combat
planes over Georgian territory but gave no details. Russia's Defense
Ministry denied an earlier Georgia report about one Russian plane
downed and had no immediate comment on the latest claim.


Yakobashvili said that one Russian plane had dropped a bomb on the
Vaziani military base near the Georgian capital, but no one was hurt.


More than 1,000 U.S. Marines and soldiers were at the base last
month to teach combat skills to Georgian troops. Georgia has about
2,000 troops in Iraq, making it the third-largest contributor to
coalition forces after the U.S. and Britain.


South Ossetia officials said Georgia attacked with aircraft, armor
and heavy artillery. Georgian troops fired missiles at Tskhinvali,
an official said, and many buildings were on fire.


Georgia's president said Russian aircraft bombed several Georgian
villages and other civilian facilities.


A senior Russian diplomat in charge of the South Ossetian conflict,
Yuri Popov, dismissed the Georgian claims of Russian bombings as
misinformation, the RIA-Novosti news agency reported.


Russia's Defense Ministry denounced the Georgian attack as a "dirty
adventure." "Blood shed in South Ossetia will weigh on their
conscience," the ministry said in a statement posted on its website.


Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev later chaired a session of his
Security Council in the Kremlin, vowing that Moscow will protect
Russian citizens.


"In accordance with the constitution and federal law, I, as
president of Russia, am obliged to protect lives and dignity of
Russian citizens wherever they are located," Medvedev said,
according to Russian news reports. "We won't allow the death of our
compatriots go unpunished."


Saakashvili long has pledged to restore Tbilisi's rule over South
Ossetia and another breakaway province, Abkhazia. Both regions have
run their own affairs without international recognition since
splitting from Georgia in the early 1990s and built up ties with
Moscow.


Relations between Georgia and Russia worsened notably this year as
Georgia pushed to join NATO and Russia dispatched additional
peacekeeper forces to Abkhazia.


The Georgian attack came just hours after Saakashvili announced a
unilateral cease-fire in a television broadcast late Thursday in
which he also urged South Ossetian separatist leaders to enter talks
on resolving the conflict.


Georgian officials later blamed South Ossetian separatists for
thwarting the cease-fire by shelling Georgian villages in the area.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press



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Bush's top general quashed torture dissent
By Mark Benjamin
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/06/30/richard_myers/index.html
?source=newsletter


Reuters/Ahmad Masood:
U.S. Air Force Gen. Richard Myers listens to questions during a news
conference March 16, 2005, in Kabul, Afghanistan.


June 30, 2008 | WASHINGTON -- The former Air Force general and
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Richard Myers, helped quash
dissent from across the U.S. military as the Bush administration
first set up a brutal interrogation regime for terrorism suspects,
according to newly public documents and testimony from an ongoing
Senate probe.

In late 2002, documents show, officials from the Army, Navy, Air
Force and Marine Corps all complained that harsh interrogation
tactics under consideration for use at the prison in Guantánamo Bay
might be against the law. Those military officials called for
further legal scrutiny of the tactics. The chief of the Army's
international law division, for example, said in a memo that some of
the tactics, such as stress positions and sensory
deprivation, "cross the line of 'humane treatment'" and "may violate
the torture statute."

Myers, however, agreed to scuttle a plan for further legal review of
the tactics, in response to pressure from a top Pentagon attorney
helping to set up the interrogation program for then-Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

The documents unearthed by the Senate Armed Services Committee,
along with testimony from a recent hearing, shed new light on the
role played by the man who was the nation's highest-ranking military
officer and who acted, by law, as the top military advisor to
President Bush. Until now, it was unclear how Myers handled those
duties during the genesis of the military's harsh-interrogation
program.

"He is rarely referenced as one of the usual suspects," noted
Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington Law School who is
following the continuing Senate investigation. "He did play a much
more central role" than previously known, Turley said. "The minute
the military lawyers expressed concern, they were shut down."

The chain of events involving Myers began in late 2002. Rumsfeld was
considering the approval of three categories of interrogation
techniques for use at Guantánamo. The list included some brutal
tactics, including stress positions, exploitation of phobias, forced
nudity, hooding, isolation, sensory deprivation, exposure to cold
and waterboarding, or simulated drowning.

According to written correspondence that came to light during a
Senate Armed Services Committee hearing June 17, various military
leaders balked at the plans in a series of memos produced during the
first week of November 2002. In addition to the criticisms raised by
the Army, the Air Force leadership cited "serious concerns regarding
the legality" of the list of proposed techniques. The Navy also
called for further legal review, and the Marine Corps stated that
the techniques "arguably violate federal law."

Because of these concerns, Myers' legal counsel, Rear Adm. Jane
Dalton, began a fresh evaluation of the legality of the
interrogation tactics. "My recollection is that all four of the
[military services] suggested that there needed to be further legal
and policy review," Dalton testified. The legal review, she told the
committee, would have included further input from the military
services and provided for a full airing of their concerns.

But such an analysis threatened to undermine Rumsfeld's agenda --
and that's when Myers stepped in. Dalton testified that Myers
ordered her to stop that review because of a request from Pentagon
general counsel William Haynes. Haynes was spearheading Rumsfeld's
efforts to set up a harsh-interrogation program at the
Pentagon. "The best of my recollection as to how this occurred is
that the chairman called me aside and indicated to me that Mr.
Haynes did not want this broad-based review to take place," Dalton
testified. "When I learned that Mr. Haynes did not want that broad-
based legal and policy review to take place, then I stood down from
the plans."

Dalton said Myers was aware that the military services believed the
interrogation techniques might be against the law. "It is my
recollection that he was aware of these concerns and that I made him
aware of those concerns," she said.

Rumsfeld signed off on almost all of the techniques on Dec. 2, 2002.
At the time, the military's interrogation of the so-called 20th
hijacker, Mohammed al-Khatani, had recently begun at Guantánamo --
an interrogation in which Rumsfeld was personally involved. Al-
Khatani was stripped naked, isolated, given intravenous fluids and
forced to urinate on himself, exercised to exhaustion, called a
homosexual, forced to wear a mask and dance, leashed and made to
perform dog tricks. His interrogations lasted 18 to 20 hours a day
for 48 of 54 days.

Myers has never been forced to answer many questions about his role
in the interrogation program. When a reporter gathering information
for a May 2008 Vanity Fair article showed him a copy of the December
2002 memo signed by Rumsfeld, Myers responded, "You don't see my
initials on this."

In a telephone call, Salon provided Myers' office with a detailed
description of this Salon article. He declined an interview request.
A source close to Myers said he expects to be called in front of the
Senate committee to answer questions about his role in the
interrogation program.

In addition to Myers' role, the testimony and documents from the
Senate investigation show that in 2002 Rumsfeld raced to start the
interrogation program -- duplicating harsh tactics already being
used by the CIA -- in part because of a bureaucratic turf war
between the Pentagon and the intelligence agency. "You actually have
agencies trying to outrun each other to create a torture program,"
Turley said, noting the odd nature of that battle. "It was like
there was a debate over who would have jurisdiction over interstate
highways."

As Bush's Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld was known across Washington
for jealously guarding and seeking to expand his control over U.S.
national security policy and operations, particularly when it came
to intelligence activities. He often duplicated CIA capabilities by
setting up separate operations at the Pentagon.

Rumsfeld's decision to create an undersecretary of defense for
military intelligence in late 2002, for example, was widely seen as
a snub at the CIA. He reportedly sought to end the Pentagon's "near
total dependence on the CIA," as he put it, by creating a new
espionage arm, the Strategic Support Branch, specifically to bring
some activities traditionally carried out by the CIA under his own
control. Interrogations became a key part of that fight.

Richard Shiffren, a former deputy counsel in the Department of
Defense, told the Senate committee that Rumsfeld was adamant about
expanding the Defense Department's reach. "The secretary was very
jealous of other agencies," Shiffren said, "specifically, with
respect to DOD's inherent capabilities." He said that because of
Rumsfeld's competitive spirit, when it came to interrogations, the
defense secretary "ended up, sort of, building a capability that
mirrored the CIA."

In March 2002, the CIA asked the Department of Justice about the
legal limits for interrogating suspected al-Qaida member Abu
Zubaydah, who had been captured by American and Pakistani agents on
March 28, 2002. After that request, the Justice Department produced
on Aug. 1, 2002, the infamous "Bybee memo," which defined torture as
treatment "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious
physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily
function, or even death." This was the start of the CIA's brutal
interrogations at so-called black sites, or secret overseas prisons.
Zubaydah's interrogation included waterboarding.


John Yoo, one of the Justice Department attorneys who helped draft
that memo, told the House Judiciary Committee last Thursday that
after the CIA had asked for a memo on the limits of interrogation, a
similar request soon arrived from the Pentagon. Yoo said in written
testimony that the Justice Department "gave substantially the same
advice to both agencies." All the wheels were now in motion to
implement the interrogation plan.

To develop the CIA interrogation program, the agency turned to two
psychologists, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, hired as
contractors. The two were formerly involved with the military's
secretive Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape program, which
trains U.S. soldiers to resist torture if they're captured, by
exposing them to brutal treatment. The psychologists helped the
agency to "reverse-engineer" the techniques -- originally meant to
help protect U.S. soldiers from enemies who disregarded the Geneva
Conventions -- for use in prisoner interrogations by the United
States.

The Senate Armed Services Committee hearing earlier this month
further elucidated Pentagon efforts to do the same thing. Top
Pentagon attorneys were requesting information from the military's
SERE school in July 2002. Officials there supplied information on a
range of harsh tactics. In September 2002, military interrogators
from Guantánamo Bay traveled to SERE school for training.

In the preface of a recent report on U.S. abuse of detainees by
Physicians for Human Rights, retired Maj. Gen. Tony Taguba, the man
the Army enlisted to conduct an initial investigation into the abuse
at Abu Ghraib, railed against the Bush administration. "The
Commander-in-Chief and those under him authorized a systematic
regime of torture," Taguba wrote. "After years of disclosures by
government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human
rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the
current administration has committed war crimes. The only question
is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to
account."

For a variety of complicated political and legal reasons, few in
Washington think any high-level Bush administration officials will
ever face a judge because of their actions. "It is not likely there
are going to be prosecutions," said Tom Malinowski, Washington
advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. But he hopes that one day
there will be a fact-finding commission that will expose the full
truth. "There is definitely a story that needs to be told," he said.


Richard Myers retired from service on Oct. 1, 2005. Bush awarded
Myers with the Presidential Medal of Freedom the following month.
Myers was elected to the boards of two major U.S. defense
contractors, United Technologies and Northrop Grumman, in 2006.

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State-Sponsored Terror: British and American Black Ops in Iraq
by Andrew G. Marshall
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9447


In January of 2002, the Washington Post ran a story detailing a CIA
plan put forward to President Bush shortly after 9/11 by CIA
Director George Tenet titled, "Worldwide Attack Matrix," which
was "outlining a clandestine anti-terror campaign in 80 countries
around the world. What he was ready to propose represented a
striking and risky departure for U.S. policy and would give the CIA
the broadest and most lethal authority in its history." The plan
entailed CIA and Special Forces "covert operations across the
globe," and at "the heart of the proposal was a recommendation that
the president give the CIA what Tenet labeled "exceptional
authorities" to attack and destroy al Qaeda in Afghanistan and the
rest of the world." Tenet cited the need for such authority "to
allow the agency to operate without restraint -- and he wanted
encouragement from the president to take risks." Among the many
authorities recommended was the use of "deadly force."

Further, "Another proposal was that the CIA increase liaison work
with key foreign intelligence services," as "Using such intelligence
services as surrogates could triple or quadruple the CIA's
effectiveness." The Worldwide Attack Matrix "described covert
operations in 80 countries that were either underway or that he was
now recommending. The actions ranged from routine propaganda to
lethal covert action in preparation for military attacks," as well
as "In some countries, CIA teams would break into facilities to
obtain information."[1]

P2OG: "Commit terror, to incite terror… in order to react to terror"

In 2002, the Pentagon's Defense Science Board (DSB) conducted
a "Summer Study on Special Operations and Joint Forces in Support of
Countering Terrorism," portions of which were leaked to the
Federation of American Scientists. According to the document,
the "War on Terror" constitutes a "committed, resourceful and
globally dispersed adversary with strategic reach," which will
require the US to engage in a "long, at times violent, and
borderless war." As the Asia Times described it, this document lays
out a blueprint for the US to "fight fire with fire." Many of
the "proposals appear to push the military into territory that
traditionally has been the domain of the CIA, raising questions
about whether such missions would be subject to the same legal
restraints imposed on CIA activities." According to the Chairman of
the DSB, "The CIA executes the plans but they use Department of
Defense assets."

Specifically, the plan "recommends the creation of a super-
Intelligence Support Activity, an organization it dubs the
Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG), to bring together CIA
and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence and
cover and deception. For example, the Pentagon and CIA would work
together to increase human intelligence (HUMINT) forward/operational
presence and to deploy new clandestine technical capabilities." The
purpose of P2OG would be in "`stimulating reactions' among
terrorists and states possessing weapons of mass destruction,
meaning it would prod terrorist cells into action, thus exposing
them to `quick-response' attacks by US forces."[2] In other words,
commit terror to incite terror, in order to react to terror.

The Los Angeles Times reported in 2002 that, "The Defense Department
is building up an elite secret army with resources stretching across
the full spectrum of covert capabilities. New organizations are
being created. The missions of existing units are being revised,"
and quoted then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as
saying, "Prevention and preemption are ... the only defense against
terrorism."[3] Chris Floyd bluntly described P2OG in CounterPunch,
saying, "the United States government is planning to use "cover and
deception" and secret military operations to provoke murderous
terrorist attacks on innocent people. Let's say it again: Donald
Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush and the other members of the
unelected regime in Washington plan to deliberately foment the
murder of innocent people--your family, your friends, your lovers,
you--in order to further their geopolitical ambitions."[4]


"The Troubles" with Iraq

On February 5, 2007, the Telegraph reported that, "Deep inside the
heart of the "Green Zone" [in Iraq], the heavily fortified
administrative compound in Baghdad, lies one of the most carefully
guarded secrets of the war in Iraq. It is a cell from a small and
anonymous British Army unit that goes by the deliberately
meaningless name of the Joint Support Group (JSG)." The members of
the JSG "are trained to turn hardened terrorists into coalition
spies using methods developed on the mean streets of Ulster during
the Troubles, when the Army managed to infiltrate the IRA at almost
every level. Since war broke out in Iraq in 2003, they have been
responsible for running dozens of Iraqi double agents." They have
been "[w]orking alongside the Special Air Service [SAS] and the
American Delta Force as part of the Baghdad-based counter-terrorist
unit known as Task Force Black."

It was reported that, "During the Troubles [in Northern Ireland],
the JSG operated under the cover name of the Force Research Unit
(FRU), which between the early 1980s and the late 1990s managed to
penetrate the very heart of the IRA. By targeting and then "turning"
members of the paramilitary organisation with a variety
of "inducements" ranging from blackmail to bribes, the FRU operators
developed agents at virtually every command level within the IRA."
Further, "The unit was renamed following the Stevens Inquiry into
allegations of collusion between the security forces and protestant
paramilitary groups, and, until relatively recently continued to
work exclusively in Northern Ireland."[5]

Considering that this group had been renamed after revelations of
collusion with terrorists, perhaps it is important to take a look at
what exactly this "collusion" consisted of. The Stevens Inquiry's
report "contains devastating confirmation that intelligence officers
of the British police and the military actively helped Protestant
guerillas to identify and kill Catholic activists in Northern
Ireland during the 1980s." It was, "a state policy sanctioned at the
highest level." The Inquiry, "highlighted collusion, the willful
failure to keep records, the absence of accountability, the
withholding of intelligence, and the extreme of agents being
involved in murder," and acknowledged "that innocent people had died
because of the collusion." These particular "charges relate to
activities of a British Army intelligence outfit known as the Force
Research Unit (FRU) and former Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC)
police officers."[6]

In 2002, the Sunday Herald reported on the allegations made by a
former British intelligence agent, Kevin Fulton, who stated
that, "he was told by his military handlers that his collusion with
paramilitaries was sanctioned by Margaret Thatcher herself." Fulton
worked for the Force Research Unit (FRU), and had infiltrated the
IRA, always while on the pay roll of the military. Fulton tells of
how in 1992, he told his FRU and MI5 intelligence handlers that his
IRA superior was planning to launch a mortar attack on the police,
yet his handlers did nothing and the attack went forward, killing a
policewoman. Fulton stated, "I broke the law seven days a week and
my handlers knew that. They knew that I was making bombs and giving
them to other members of the IRA and they did nothing about it. If
everything I touched turned to shit then I would have been dead. The
idea was that the only way to beat the enemy was to penetrate the
enemy and be the enemy."[7]

In 1998, Northern Ireland experienced its "worst single terrorist
atrocity," as described by the BBC, in which a car bomb went off,
killing 29 people and injuring 300.[8] According to a Sunday Herald
piece in 2001, "Security forces didn't intercept the Real IRA's
Omagh bombing team because one of the terrorists was a British
double-agent whose cover would have been blown as an informer if the
operation was uncovered." Kevin Fulton had even "phoned a warning to
his RUC handlers 48 hours before the Omagh bombing that the Real IRA
was planning an attack and gave details of one of the bombing team
and his car registration." Further, "The man thought to be the agent
is a senior member of the [IRA] organization."[9]

In 2002, it was revealed that, "one of the most feared men inside
the Provisional IRA," John Joe Magee, head of the IRA's "internal
security unit," commonly known as the IRA's "torturer- in-chief,"
was actually "one of the UK's most elite soldiers," who "was trained
as a member of Britain's special forces." The Sunday Herald stated
that, "Magee led the IRA's internal security unit for more than a
decade up to the mid-90s - most of those he investigated were
usually executed," and that, "Magee's unit was tasked to hunt down,
interrogate and execute suspected British agents within the IRA."[10]

In 2006, the Guardian reported that, "two British agents were
central to the bombings of three army border installations in 1990."
The claims included tactics known as the `human bomb',
which "involved forcing civilians to drive vehicles laden with
explosives into army checkpoints." This tactic "was the brainchild
of British intelligence."[11]

In 2006, it was also revealed that, "A former British Army mole in
the IRA has claimed that MI5 arranged a weapons-buying trip to
America in which he obtained detonators, later used by terrorists to
murder soldiers and police officers," and "British intelligence co-
operated with the FBI to ensure his trip to New York in the 1990s
went ahead without incident so that his cover would not be blown."
Further, "the technology he obtained has been used in Northern
Ireland and copied by terrorists in Iraq in roadside bombs that have
killed British troops."[12]

Considering all these revelations of British collusion with IRA
terrorists and complicity in terrorist acts in Northern Ireland
through the FRU, what evidence is there that these same tactics are
not being deployed in Iraq under the renamed Joint Support Group
(JSG)? The recruits to the JSG in Iraq are trained extensively and
those "who eventually pass the course can expect to be posted to
Baghdad, Basra and Afghanistan."[13]

P2OG in Action

In September of 2003, months after the initial invasion of Iraq in
March 2003, Iraq's most sacred Shiite mosque was blown up, killing
between 80 and 120 people, including a popular Shiite cleric, and
the event was blamed by Iraqis on the American forces.[14]

On April 20, 2004, American journalist in Iraq, Dahr Jamail,
reported in the New Standard that, "The word on the street in
Baghdad is that the cessation of suicide car bombings is proof that
the CIA was behind them." Jamail interviewed a doctor who stated
that, "The U.S. induces aggression. If you don't attack me, I will
never attack you. The U.S. is stimulating the aggression of the
Iraqi people!" This description goes very much in line with the aims
outlined in the Pentagon's P2OG document about "inciting terror,"
or "preempting terror attacks."[15]

Weeks after the initial incident involving the British SAS soldiers
in Basra, in October of 2005, it was reported that Americans
were "captured in the act of setting off a car bomb in Baghdad,"
as, "A number of Iraqis apprehended two Americans disguised in Arab
dress as they tried to blow up a booby-trapped car in the middle of
a residential area in western Baghdad on Tuesday. … Residents of
western Baghdad's al-Ghazaliyah district [said] the people had
apprehended the Americans as they left their Caprice car near a
residential neighborhood in al-Ghazaliyah on Tuesday afternoon.
Local people found they looked suspicious so they detained the men
before they could get away. That was when they discovered that they
were Americans and called the … police." However, "the Iraq police
arrived at approximately the same time as allied military forces -
and the two men were removed from Iraq custody and whisked away
before any questioning could take place."[16]

It was reported that in May of 2005, an Iraqi man was arrested after
witnessing a car bombing that took place in front of his home, as it
was said he shot an Iraqi National Guardsman. However, "People from
the area claim that the man was taken away not because he shot
anyone, but because he knew too much about the bomb. Rumor has it
that he saw an American patrol passing through the area and pausing
at the bomb site minutes before the explosion. Soon after they drove
away, the bomb went off and chaos ensued. He ran out of his house
screaming to the neighbors and bystanders that the Americans had
either planted the bomb or seen the bomb and done nothing about it.
He was promptly taken away."

Further, another story was reported in the same month that took
place in Baghdad when an Iraqi driver had his license and car
confiscated at a checkpoint, after which he was instructed "to
report to an American military camp near Baghdad airport for
interrogation and in order to retrieve his license." After being
questioned for a short while, he was told to drive his car to an
Iraqi police station, where his license had been forwarded, and that
he should go quickly. "The driver did leave in a hurry, but was soon
alarmed with a feeling that his car was driving as if carrying a
heavy load, and he also became suspicious of a low flying helicopter
that kept hovering overhead, as if trailing him. He stopped the car
and inspected it carefully. He found nearly 100 kilograms of
explosives hidden in the back seat and along the two back doors. The
only feasible explanation for this incident is that the car was
indeed booby trapped by the Americans and intended for the al-
Khadimiya Shiite district of Baghdad. The helicopter was monitoring
his movement and witnessing the anticipated `hideous attack by
foreign elements."[17]

On October 4, 2005, it was reported by the Sydney Morning Herald
that, "The FBI's counterterrorism unit has launched a broad
investigation of US-based theft rings after discovering some
vehicles used in deadly car bombings in Iraq, including attacks that
killed US troops and Iraqi civilians, were probably stolen in the
United States, according to senior US Government officials."
Further, "The inquiry began after coalition troops raided a Falluja
bomb factory last November and found a Texas-registered four-wheel-
drive being prepared for a bombing mission. Investigators said there
were several other cases where vehicles evidently stolen in the US
wound up in Syria or other Middle Eastern countries and ultimately
in the hands of Iraqi insurgent groups, including al-Qaeda in
Iraq."[18]

In 2006, the Al-Askariya mosque in the city of Samarra was bombed
and destroyed. It was built in 944, was over 1,000 years old, and
was one of the most important Shi'ite mosques in the world. The
great golden dome that covered it, which was built in 1904, was
destroyed in the 2006 bombing, which was set off by men dressed as
Iraqi Special Forces.[19] Former 27-year CIA analyst who gave
several presidents their daily CIA briefings, Ray McGovern, stated
that he "does not rule out Western involvement in this week's
Askariya mosque bombing." He was quoted as saying, "The main
question is Qui Bono? Who benefits from this kind of thing? You
don't have to be very conspiratorial or even paranoid to suggest
that there are a whole bunch of likely suspects out there and not
only the Sunnis. You know, the British officers were arrested,
dressed up in Arab garb, riding around in a car, so this stuff goes
on."[20]

Death Squads for "Freedom"

In January of 2005, Newsweek reported on a Pentagon program termed
the "Salvador Option" being discussed to be deployed in Iraq. This
strategy "dates back to a still-secret strategy in the Reagan
administration's battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in
El Salvador in the early 1980s. Then, faced with a losing war
against Salvadoran rebels, the U.S. government funded or
supported "nationalist" forces that allegedly included so-called
death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and
sympathizers." Updating the strategy to Iraq, "one Pentagon proposal
would send Special Forces teams to advise, support and possibly
train Iraqi squads, most likely hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga
fighters and Shiite militiamen, to target Sunni insurgents and their
sympathizers, even across the border into Syria, according to
military insiders familiar with the discussions."[21]

The Times reported that, "the Pentagon is considering forming hit
squads of Kurdish and Shia fighters to target leaders of the Iraqi
insurgency in a strategic shift borrowed from the American struggle
against left-wing guerrillas in Central America 20 years ago. Under
the so-called `El Salvador option', Iraqi and American forces would
be sent to kill or kidnap insurgency leaders." It further
stated, "Hit squads would be controversial and would probably be
kept secret," as "The experience of the so-called "death squads" in
Central America remains raw for many even now and helped to sully
the image of the United States in the region." Further, "John
Negroponte, the US Ambassador in Baghdad, had a front-row seat at
the time as Ambassador to Honduras from 1981-85."[22]

By June of 2005, mass executions were taking place in Iraq in the
six months since January, and, "What is particularly striking is
that many of those killings have taken place since the Police
Commandos became operationally active and often correspond with
areas where they have been deployed."[23]

In May of 2007, an Iraqi who formerly collaborated with US forces in
Iraq for two and a half years stated that, "I was a soldier in the
Iraqi army in the war of 1991 and during the withdrawal from Kuwait
I decided to seek asylum in Saudi Arabia along with dozens of others
like me. That was how began the process whereby I was recruited into
the American forces, for there were US military committees that
chose a number of Iraqis who were willing to volunteer to join them
and be transported to America. I was one of those." He spoke out
about how after the 2003 invasion, he was returned to Iraq to "carry
out specific tasks assigned him by the US agencies." Among those
tasks, he was put "in charge of a group of a unit that carried out
assassinations in the streets of Baghdad."

He was quoted as saying, "Our task was to carry out assassinations
of individuals. The US occupation army would supply us with their
names, pictures, and maps of their daily movements to and from their
place of residence and we were supposed to kill the Shi'i, for
example, in the al-A'zamiyah, and kill the Sunni in the of 'Madinat
as-Sadr', and so on." Further, "Anyone in the unit who made a
mistake was killed. Three members of my team were killed by US
occupation forces after they failed to assassinate Sunni political
figures in Baghdad." He revealed that this "dirty jobs" unit of
Iraqis, Americans and other foreigners, "doesn't only carry out
assassinations, but some of them specialize in planting bombs and
car bombs in neighborhoods and markets."

He elaborated in saying that "operations of planting car bombs and
blowing up explosives in markets are carried out in various ways,
the best-known and most famous among the US troops is placing a bomb
inside cars as they are being searched at checkpoints. Another way
is to put bombs in the cars during interrogations. After the desired
person is summoned to one of the US bases, a bomb is place in his
car and he is asked to drive to a police station or a market for
some purpose and there his car blows up."[24]

Divide and Conquer?

Craig Murray, former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, wrote in
October of 2006, that, "The evidence that the US directly
contributed to the creation of the current civil war in Iraq by its
own secretive security strategy is compelling. Historically of
course this is nothing new - divide and rule is a strategy for
colonial powers that has stood the test of time. Indeed, it was used
in the previous British occupation of Iraq around 85 years ago.
However, maybe in the current scenario the US just over did it a
bit, creating an unstoppable momentum that, while stalling the
insurgency, has actually led to new problems of control and
sustainability for Washington and London."[25]

Andrew G. Marshall contributed to breaking the Climate Change
consensus in a celebrated 2006 article entitled Global Warming A
Convenient Lie, in which he challenged the findings underlying Al
Gore's documentary.  According to Marshall, 'as soon as people start
to state that "the debate is over", beware, because the fundamental
basis of all sciences is that debate is never over'. Andrew Marshall
has also written on the militarization of Central Africa, national
security issues and the process of integration of North America. He
is also a contributor to  GeopoliticalMonitor.com He is currently a
researcher at the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) in
Montreal and is studying political science and history at Simon
Fraser University, British Columbia.

NOTES

[1] Bob Woodward and Dan Balz, At Camp David, Advise and Dissent.
The Washington Post: January 31, 2002:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2006/07/18/AR2006071800702.html
[2] David Isenberg, `P2OG' Allows the Pentagon to Fight Dirty. Asia
Times Online: November 5, 2002:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/DK05Ak02.html
[3] William M. Arkin, The Secret War. The Los Angeles Times: October
27, 2002:
http://web.archive.org/web/20021031092436/http://www.latimes.com/la-
op-arkin27oct27001451,0,7355676.story
[4] Chris Floyd, Into the Dark: The Pentagon Plan to Provoke
Terrorist Attacks. Counter Punch: November 1, 2002:
http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd1101.html
[5] Sean Rayment, Top Secret Army Cell Breaks Terrorists. The
Telegraph: February 5, 2007:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1541542/Top-secret-army-cell-
breaks-terrorists.html
[6] Michael S. Rose, Britain's "Dirty War" with the IRA. Catholic
World News: July 2003: http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?
recnum=23828
[7] Home Affairs, The army asked me to make bombs for the IRA, told
me I had the Prime Minister's Blessing. The Sunday Herald: June 23,
2002:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4156/is_20020623/ai_n12576952
/pg_2
[8] BBC, UK: Northern Ireland Bravery awards for bomb helpers. BBC
News: November 17, 1999:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/524462.stm
[9] Neil Mackay, British double-agent was in Real IRA's Omagh bomb
team. The Sunday Herald: August 19, 2001:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4156/is_20010819/ai_n13961517
[10] Neil Mackay, IRA torturer was in the Royal Marines; Top
republican terrorist. The Sunday Herald: December 15, 2002:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4156/is_20021215/ai_n12579493
[11] Henry McDonald, UK agents 'did have role in IRA bomb
atrocities'. The Guardian: September 10, 2006:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2006/sep/10/uk.northernireland1
[12] Enda Leahy, MI5 'helped IRA buy bomb parts in US'. Sunday
Times: March 19, 2006:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article742783.ece

[13] Sean Rayment, Top Secret Army Cell Breaks Terrorists. The
Telegraph: February 5, 2007:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1541542/Top-secret-army-cell-
breaks-terrorists.html
[14] AP, U.S. Blamed For Mosque Attack. CBS News: September 2, 2003:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/09/02/iraq/main571279.shtml
[15] Dahr Jamail, Dahr Jamail Blog From Baghdad. The New Standard:
April 20, 2004: http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-jamail200404.htm
[16] FMNN, UNITED STATES CAUGHT IN IRAQ CAR-BOMBING. Free Market
News Network: October 14, 2005:
http://www.freemarketnews.com/WorldNews.asp?nid=1326
[17] Michael Keefer, Were British Special Forces Soldiers Planting
Bombs in Basra? Global Research: September 25, 2005:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?
context=viewArticle&code=KEE20050925&articleId=994
[18] Bryan Bender, Cars stolen in US used in suicide attacks. The
Sydney Morning Herald: October 4, 2005:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/cars-stolen-in-us-used-in-suicide-
attacks/2005/10/03/1128191658703.html
[19] Sam Knight, Bombing of Shia shrine sparks wave of retaliation.
The Times Online: February 22, 2006:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article733559.ece
[20] Prison Planet, Former CIA Analyst: Western Intelligence May Be
Behind Mosque Bombing. Prison Planet: February 26, 2006:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/february2006/260206mosquebombing
.htm
[21] Michael Hirsh and John Barry, "The Salvador Option". Newsweek:
January 14, 2005:
http://www.pagecache.info/pagecache/page13480/cached.html
[22] Roland Watson, El Salvador-style 'death squads' to be deployed
by US against Iraq militants. The Times Online: January 10, 2005:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article410491.ece
[23] Max Fuller, For Iraq, "The Salvador Option" Becomes Reality.
Global Research: June 2, 2005:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/FUL506A.html
[24] AMSII, Ordered Assassinations, Sectarian Bomb Attacks Targeting
Iraqi Civilians. Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq: May 12,
2007: http://heyetnet.org/en/content/view/490/27
[25] Craig Murray, Civil War in Iraq: The Salvador Option and US/UK
Policy. CraigMurray.org: October 18, 2006:
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2006/10/civil_war_in_ir.html

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Who's Planning Our Next War?
by PATRICK J. BUCHANAN
The American Conservative
http://www.lewrockwell.com/buchanan/buchanan89.html


Of the Axis-of-Evil nations named in his State of the Union in 2002,
President Bush has often said, "The United States will not permit the
world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most
destructive weapons."

He failed with North Korea. Will he accept failure in Iran, though
there is no hard evidence Iran has an active nuclear weapons program?
William Kristol of The Weekly Standard said Sunday a US attack
on Iran after the election is more likely should Barack Obama win.
Presumably, Bush would trust John McCain to keep Iran nuclear free.
Yet, to start a third war in the Middle East against a nation three
times as large as Iraq, and leave it to a new president to fight,
would be a daylight hijacking of the congressional war power and a
criminally irresponsible act. For Congress alone has the power to
authorize war.

Was recent Israeli exercise a dress rehearsal?

Yet Israel is even today pushing Bush into a pre-emptive war with
a naked threat to attack Iran itself should Bush refuse the cup.
In April, Israel held a five-day civil defense drill. In June,
Israel sent 100 F-15s and F-16s, with refueling tankers and
helicopters to pick up downed pilots, toward Greece in a simulated
attack, a dress rehearsal for war. The planes flew 1,400 kilometers,
the distance to Iran's uranium enrichment facility at Natanz.
Ehud Olmert came home from a June meeting with Bush to tell Israelis:
"We reached agreement on the need to take care of the Iranian threat.

I left with a lot less question marks regarding the means, the
timetable restrictions and American resoluteness.

"George Bush understands the severity of the Iranian threat and the
need to vanquish it, and intends to act on the matter before the end
of his term. ... The Iranian problem requires urgent attention, and
I see no reason to delay this just because there will be a new
president in the White House seven and a half months from now."
Why is Bush discussing war with Israelis, but not Congress?

If Bush is discussing war on Iran with Ehud Olmert, why is he not
discussing it with Congress or the nation?

On June 6, Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz threatened, "If Iran
continues its nuclear weapons program, we will attack it." The price
of oil shot up 9 percent.

Is Israel bluffing — or planning to attack Iran if America balks?
Previous air strikes on the PLO command in Tunis, on the Osirak
reactor in Iraq and on the presumed nuclear reactor site in Syria
last September give Israel a high degree of credibility.

Still, attacking Iran would be no piece of cake.

Israel lacks the stealth and cruise-missile capacity to degrade
Iran's air defenses systematically and no longer has the element of
surprise. Israeli planes and pilots would likely be lost.

Iran attack requires US complicity

Israel also lacks the ability to stay over the target or conduct
follow-up strikes. The US Air Force bombed Iraq for five weeks with
hundreds of daily runs in 1991 before Gen. Schwarzkopf moved.
Moreover, if Iran has achieved the capacity to enrich uranium, she
has surely moved centrifuges to parts of the country that Israel
cannot reach — and can probably replicate anything lost.

Israel would also have to over-fly Turkey, or Syria and US-occupied
Iraq, or Saudi Arabia to reach Natanz. Turks, Syrians and Saudis
would deny Israel permission and might resist. For the US military
to let Israel over-fly Iraq would make us an accomplice. How would
that sit with the Europeans who are supporting our sanctions on Iran
and want the nuclear issue settled diplomatically?

Israeli strike would sink the world economy
And who can predict with certitude how Iran would respond?

Would Iran attack Israel with rockets, inviting retaliation with
Jericho and cruise missiles from Israeli submarines? Would she close
the Gulf with suicide-boat attacks on tankers and US warships?
With oil at $135 a barrel, Israeli air strikes on Iran would seem to
ensure a 2,000-point drop in the Dow and a world recession.

What would Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria do? All three are now in
indirect negotiations with Israel. US forces in Afghanistan and Iraq
could be made by Iran to pay a high price in blood that could force
the United States to initiate its own air war in retaliation, and to
finish a war Israel had begun. But a US war on Iran is not a
decision Bush can outsource to Ehud Olmert.

Time for the American people to be consulted

Tuesday, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Michael Mullins left for
Israel. CBS News cited US officials as conceding the trip
comes "just as the Israelis are mounting a full court press to get
the Bush administration to strike Iran's nuclear complex."

Vice President Cheney is said to favor US strikes. Secretary of
Defense Robert Gates and Mullins are said to be opposed.

Moving through Congress, powered by the Israeli lobby, is House
Resolution 362, which demands that President Bush impose a US
blockade of Iran, an act of war. Is it not time the American people
were consulted on the next war that is being planned for us?

===

Israel Prodding US to Attack Iran
White House Weighs Striking Iran's Nuclear Complex,
Which Could Trigger 3rd War in Region
CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com


WASHINGTON — Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen leaves
Tuesday night on an overseas trip that will take him to Israel,
reports CBS News national security correspondent David Martin.

The trip has been scheduled for some time but US officials say it
comes just as the Israelis are mounting a full court press to get
the Bush administration to strike Iran's nuclear complex.

CBS consultant Michael Oren says Israel doesn't want to wait
for a new administration.

"The Israelis have been assured by the Bush administration that
the Bush administration will not allow Iran to nuclearize," Oren
said. "Israelis are uncertain about what would be the policies of
the next administration vis-à-vis Iran."

Rogue state threatens unilateral action

Israel's message is simple: If you don't, we will. Israel held a
dress rehearsal for a strike earlier this month, but military
analysts say Israel cannot do it alone.

"Keep in mind that Israel does not have strategic bombers," Oren
said. "The Israeli Air Force is not the American Air Force. Israel
cannot eliminate Iran's nuclear program."

The US with its stealth bombers and cruise missiles has a much
greater capability. Vice President Cheney is said to favor a strike,
but both Mullen and Defense Secretary Gates are opposed to an
attack which could touch off a third war in the region.

Iran threatened over weapons Israel already has

US intelligence estimates Iran won't be able to build a weapon
until sometime early in the next decade. But Israel is operating
on a much shorter timetable.

"The Iranians, according to Israeli security sources, will have an
operable nuclear weapon by 2009. That's not a very long time,"
Oren said.

For now, the Bush administration is counting on new economic
sanctions which took effect Tuesday to persuade Iran to give up
its nuclear program. But nobody's counting on it.

===

U.S.- Israeli Attack on Iran Imminent?
by Ardeshir Ommani
http://www.mathaba.net/rss/?x=596748&abs2


  It goes without saying that what is called the international
community, i.e., the U.S., its allies in Western Europe and Israel
follow the same foreign policy in relation to Iran. All this is part
of the plan of action of the United States to remain in Iraq and
Afghanistan indefinitely and be in control of the Middle East oil
reserves.

During the last twenty-nine years, since the popular revolution
toppled the Shah's puppet regime, Iran has been a permanent target
of military threats and economic and technological sanctions of the
United States.

For the application of this foreign policy, the U.S. has also
utilized the power and influence of its long-time Western European
allies who are also the members of the United Nations Security
Council, namely Britain and France.  In their long-term drive to
subordinate Iran and effectively remove the government of the
Islamic Republic, a significantly credible obstacle in the way of
shoring up and consolidating their geopolitical hegemony and
monopoly control over the vast oil and gas reserves of the Middle
East, the U.S. and its allies have put into motion such belligerent
proxies as Iraq's Saddam Hussein and the Zionist state of Israel.

Ironically the countries that have exhibited their open aggression
towards the Iranian people, at the same time have framed their
wicked undertakings as defensive measures and in response to
Iran's "intransigence".  In this cohort, the gladiatorial service of
the Israelites is not confined to the grandest of all imperial
powers – the United States.  It has also served the lesser
imperialist powers for a price.

"Last week," writes the Financial Times of London on June 24,
2008, "a senior European diplomat told journalists in Washington…
that while Europe was opposed to Israeli military action against
Iran, the threat of such a strike was one of the most significant
sources of pressure on Tehran."  In this expression, the objectives
of our European diplomat whose likes are lauded for their leanings
toward dialogue, civility and diplomacy in the international and
regional conflicts, except when they are marshalling and expanding
the NATO troops, are crystal clear: 1) the use of force as a vehicle
of intimidation, and 2) the use of the Zionist state as a pit-bull
in the oil-rich region.

It is important to ask why Israel, who by any standard for a long
time has been engaged in the on-going conflict with the peoples of
Palestine, Syria and Lebanon, tries constantly to keep the issue of
Iran's uranium enrichment on the front-burner and has raised it to
the level of Israel's existential motto: to be or not to be.  This
garrison state goes as far as declaring itself ready to attack
Iran's nuclear and military facilities, should the U.S. hesitate to
do so.  In the last month, the likes of Israel's Deputy Prime
Minister Shaul Mofaz, the former U.S. Ambassador to the United
Nations, John Bolton, and a crew of opinion-makers in the U.S. and
European media, not to mention some diplomats, have been bellowing
about Israel's readiness to carry out a military assault on Iran.

Should the Iranian government and people take these declarations
seriously?  In response to the alleged `imminent' military attack,
on Monday, June 23, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali
Hosseini told a news conference:  Israel "does not have the capacity
to threaten the Islamic Republic of Iran; they have a number of
domestic crises and they want to extrapolate it to cover others.
Sometimes they come up with these empty slogans."  Then, on June
25th, Reuters reported that Iran's Revolutionary Guards warned the
United States against any attack on Iran: "We advise U.S. officials
to be careful not to face another tragedy," Mohammad Hejazi, a
senior commander of the elite Guards, was quoted by the official
IRNA news agency. "Our last word is that if you want to move towards
Iran make sure you bring walking sticks and artificial legs because
if you came you will not have any legs to return on," he said.

In the last two decades Israel has stubbornly called for imposing
stiffer economic sanctions and blockades on Iran, as if Israeli
starvation and besiege of the Palestinian people is not enough.
Israel ceaselessly whines to the heads of the imperialist countries
that Iran is getting ready, perhaps in the next six months or a year
to produce an atomic bomb, if not two or three.  But it never
answers why Israel is not a signatory to the nuclear Non-
Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and how it came to have between 200 and
420 nuclear weapons in its arsenal.

The question remains to be answered why Israel, who is in the
everyday business of massacring unarmed Palestinians, finds it
necessary to march into another conflict?  The answer is that in
this case it is trying to help out its patron – the U.S.- by
deflecting world public attention from the murderous acts of the
U.S.-Nato troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and bolster its goal of
establishing a permanent military presence in the region.

It goes without saying that what is called the international
community, i.e., the U.S., its allies in Western Europe and Israel
follow the same foreign policy in relation to Iran.  They all
continue to raise the issue of Iran's nuclear enrichment, call for
stiffer economic, financial and trade sanctions, perform military
exercises as a tool of psychological warfare, undermine Iran's
international relations, weaken the country economically to pressure
Iran to give up its support for the resistance forces in Iraq,
Palestine and Lebanon, wear down the resistance of the Iranian
people and try to drive a wedge between the masses of people and the
country's leadership.  All this is part of the plan of action of the
United States to remain in Iraq and Afghanistan indefinitely and be
in control of the Middle East oil reserves.  If these imperial
powers can achieve such an outcome, Iran's sovereignty and its
revolutionary gains over the past 25 years will be seriously
threatened.

What really would threaten the Iranian revolution and its long-term
stability and progress is not the short-run threat of attack by the
U.S. and/or Israel, but the increasing disparity in income and
wealth between Iran's social classes, the rich and the poor, and the
political weights that they are loaded with.

One of the many plans of the U.S. Defense Department for shaping
U.S. public opinion about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has been
to justify its military presence and war operations in the M.E.
region and against the peoples of Iraq and Iran, two of the three
countries which were labeled as members of the "axis of evil" by
President George W. Bush.  By framing Iran as a non-complier with
the rules of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and a
supporter of terrorists groups (read the national liberation
movements), the U.S. government has hoped to justify its aggressive
undertakings so much so that allows itself to take pride at openly
declaring support for Israeli plans for military strikes against
Iran's strategic facilities.

Unfortunately, whenever Washington and Tel Aviv in collusion
demonstrate their show of military strength to serve as an
expression of their powerful presence and potentiality and by
implication hope to induce fright and stir instability and perhaps
paralysis in the hearts and minds of the Iranian body politic and
society as well, the Pavlovian automatic response of the liberal and
even some progressive pundits in the U.S. political circles is
whether and even when the U.S. and Israel are intending to make the
Iranian people and their nuclear and defense establishments the
targets of their missiles.

Some go as far as setting the month and even the day such attacks
could occur and in that capacity, they assume the role of fortune-
tellers.  Some even go further and set the time of attack by
following the past seasonal pattern in which the U.S. has launched
wars on other countries.  This method of foretelling is a replica of
the claims that are often made by the market gurus who try to
establish causal relations between the Democratic and Republican
presidential candidates and the behavior of the stock market.  Such
an approach could involuntarily give credence to the U.S.-Israeli
psychological war propaganda.

There is absolutely no doubt that a great majority in the peace and
progressive movements are well-intentioned and their concern about
the U.S.-Israel menace stems out of their desire to prevent ever-
greater Iranian casualties by preparing to oppose such an onslaught
before it begins.

However, whenever the question of an Israeli-U.S. attack is the
subject of conversation among Iranian leaders, and even among the
Iranian people, the answer has been: "They cannot do a damn thing!"
One may say that before the war on Iraq, President Saddam Hussein
also downgraded the degree of danger, but the U.S. went on to invade
that country.

The parallel drawn here is too simplistic because Iraq was acutely
isolated, its relations with other Arab countries was at its worst
level ever, it had been weakened by the eight-year war with Iran,
its economy and people had suffered 12 long years of punitive
sanctions imposed by former Democratic President Bill Clinton, and
its air defense system was under constant over-flights and bombings
by the U.S. Navy forces in the North and the South of the country.
Perhaps the more important factor is that Iran, unlike Iraq, has a
very strong domestic support among the population and in the region
is considered a vital political force.


--Mathaba author Ardeshir Ommani is a writer and an activist in the
anti-war and anti-imperialist struggle for many years, including
against the Vietnam War.  Ardeshir is a co-founder of the American-
Iranian Friendship Committee (AIFC) which strives to build a
movement promoting peace and preventing a U.S.-led war on Iran.

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Bush Fulfills His Grandfather's Dream
David Swanson
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/66505


It's remarkably common for a grandson to take up his grandfather's
major project. This occurred to me when I read recently of Thor
Heyerdahl's grandson taking up his mission to cross the Pacific on a
raft. But what really struck me was the BBC story aired on July
23rd, 2007, documenting President George W. Bush's grandfather's
involvement in a 1933 plot to overthrow the U.S. government and
install a fascist dictatorship. I knew the story, but had not
considered the possibility that the grandson was trying to
accomplish what his grandfather had failed to achieve.

Prescott Sheldon Bush (1895 to 1972) attended Yale University and
joined the secret society known as Skull and Bones. Prescott is
widely reported to have stolen the skull of Native American leader
Geronimo. As far as I know, this has not actually been confirmed. In
fact, Prescott seems to have had a habit of making things up. He
sent letters home from World War I claiming he'd received medals for
heroism. After the letters were printed in newspapers, he had to
retract his claims.

If this does not yet sound like the life of a George W. Bush
ancestor, try this on for size: Prescott Bush's early business
efforts tended to fail. He married the daughter of a very rich man
named George Herbert Walker (the guy with the compound at
Kennebunkport, Maine, that now belongs to the Bush family, and the
origin of Dubya's middle initial). Walker installed Prescott Bush as
an executive in Thyssen and Flick. From then on, Prescott's business
dealings went better, and he entered politics.

Now, the name Thyssen comes from a German named Fritz Thyssen, major
financial backer of the rise of Adolph Hitler. Thyssen was referred
to in the New York Herald-Tribune as "Hitler's Angel." During the
1930s and early 1940s, and even as late as 1951, Prescott Bush was
involved in business dealings with Thyssen, and was inevitably aware
of both Thyssen's political activities and the fact that the
companies involved were financially benefiting the nation of
Germany. In addition, the companies Prescott Bush profited from
included one engaged in mining operations in Poland using slave
labor from Auschwitz. Two former slave laborers have sued the U.S.
government and the heirs of Prescott Bush for $40 billion.

Until the United States entered World War II it was legal for
Americans to do business with Germany, but in late 1942 Prescott
Bush's businesses interests were seized under the Trading with the
Enemy Act. Among those businesses involved was the Hamburg America
Lines, for which Prescott Bush served as a manager. A Congressional
committee, in a report called the McCormack-Dickstein Report, found
that Hamburg America Lines had offered free passage to Germany for
journalists willing to write favorably about the Nazis, and had
brought Nazi sympathizers to America. (Is this starting to remind
anyone of our current president's relationship to the freedom of the
press?)

The McCormack-Dickstein Committee was established to investigate a
homegrown American fascist plot hatched in 1933. Here's how the BBC
promoted its recent story:

"Document uncovers details of a planned coup in the USA in 1933 by
right-wing American businessmen. The coup was aimed at toppling
President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war
veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most
famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea,
Maxwell Hse & George Bush´s Grandfather, Prescott) believed that
their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to
beat the great depression. Mike Thomson investigates why so little
is known about this biggest ever peacetime threat to American
democracy."

Actually, if you listen to the 30-minute BBC story, there is not one
word of so much as speculation as to why this story is so little
known. I think a clue to the answer can be found by looking into why
this BBC report has not led to any U.S. media outlets picking up the
story this week.

The BBC report provides a good account of the basic story. Some of
the wealthiest men in America approached Marine Corps Major General
Smedley Butler, beloved of many World War I veterans, many of them
embittered by the government's treatment of them. Prescott Bush's
group asked Butler to lead 500,000 veterans in a take-over of
Washington and the White House. Butler refused and recounted the
affair to the congressional committee. His account was corroborated
in part by a number of witnesses, and the committee concluded that
the plot was real. But the names of wealthy backers of the plot were
blacked out in the committee's records, and nobody was prosecuted.
According to the BBC, President Roosevelt cut a deal. He refrained
from prosecuting some of the wealthiest men in America for treason.
They agreed to end Wall Street's opposition to the New Deal.

Clearly the lack of accountability in Washington, D.C., did not
begin with Nancy Pelosi taking Dubya's impeachment off the table, or
with Congress' decision to avoid impeachment for President Ronald
Reagan (a decision that arguably played a large role in installing
Prescott Bush's son George H.W. Bush as president), or with the
failure to investigate the apparent deal that George H.W. Bush and
others made with Iran to not release American hostages until Reagan
was made president, or with the failure to prosecute Richard Nixon
after he resigned. Lack of accountability is a proud tradition in
our nation's capital. Or maybe I should say our former nation's
capital. I don't recognize the place anymore, and I credit that to
George W. Bush's efforts to fulfill his grandfather's dream using
far subtler and more effective means than a military coup.

Bush the grandson took office through a highly fraudulent election
that he nonetheless lost. The Supreme Court blocked a recount of the
vote and installed Dubya.

Prescott's grandson proceeded to weaken or eliminate most of the
Bill of Rights in the name of protection from a dark foreign enemy.
He even tossed out habeas corpus. The grandson of Prescott, that
dreamer of the 1930s, established with very little resistance that
the U.S. government can kidnap, detain indefinitely on no charge,
torture, and murder. The United States under Prescott Bush's
grandson adopted policies that heretofore had been considered only
Nazi policies, most strikingly the willingness to openly plan and
engage in aggressive wars on other nations.

At the same time, Dubya has accomplished a huge transfer of wealth
within the United States from the rest of us to the extremely
wealthy. He's also effected a major privatization of public
operations, including the military. And he's kept tight control over
the media.

Dubya has given himself the power to rewrite all laws with signing
statements. He's established that intentionally misleading the
Congress about the need for a war is not a crime that carries any
penalty. He's given himself the right (just as Hitler did) to open
anyone's mail. He's created illegal spying programs and then
proposed to legalize them. Prescott would be so proud!

The current President Bush has accomplished much more smoothly than
his grandfather could have imagined a feat that was one of the goals
of Prescott's gang, namely the elimination of Congress.


David Swanson is the creator of ImpeachCheney.org

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