Saturday, October 28, 2006
Israel Bombed Lebanon with Uranium
By Kurt Nimmo
"Meanwhile, as the corporate media attempts to scare us into believing Iran will have nukes by the time I finish typing this sentence, the possibility Israel used uranium in Lebanon receives next to no coverage.
The Independent is reporting “that scientists were studying samples of Lebanese soil after Israeli bombing during the July-August war showed high radiation levels, suggesting that uranium-based munitions had been used. Samples taken from two Israeli bomb craters in the Lebanese villages of Khiam and aL-Tiri have been sent to the Harwell laboratory in Oxfordshire, southern England, for further analysis.”
According to the International Middle East Media Center, the “damage caused by such weapons inflict vicious wounds, which will burst into flames when exposed to air, even after the initial infliction. The threat does not end there as the particles of uranium released from the weapon remain in the land and air causing cancer for years to come.” In addition, notes IMEMC, there is “suspicion that Israel is also using illegal weapons in Gaza, during its ‘Summer Rains Operation’; the injuries that are being sustained by the weapons being used, according to the Rafah hospitals’ Director, are injuries that must be inflicted by a new weapon as he has not seen injuries like this before. They leave the victims torn apart and covered in burns, he stated.” A recent Italian “television report aired last week made a similar claim, raising the possibility that Israel had used a weapon in the Gaza Strip in recent months, causing especially serious physical injuries, such as amputated limbs and severe burns,” reports WAFA, the Palestinian News Agency.
Regardless, Israel’s use of a possible new uranium bomb in Lebanon, and its use of mysterious weapons in the Occupied Territories, indicate the small outlaw state will go to new and frightening lengths to kill its enemies, who are mostly women, children, and non-combatant men."
Israel may allow PLO's Badr Brigade into Gaza
"Israeli officials on Saturday were deliberating over Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas' request to grant Jordan-based Palestine Liberation Organization troops entry into the Gaza Strip.
Abbas made his request two weeks ago, in hopes of beefing up his loyalist forces, as rival Palestinian factions bolstered their ranks in anticipation of a feared civil war.
Israel has objected in the past to letting members of the Jordan-based Badr Brigade enter Palestinian areas. But with clashes intensifying between Abbas' Fatah Party and forces loyal to the Palestinians' militant Hamas government, Israeli officials said they would consider allowing them in.
The Badr Brigades are composed of several thousand Palestinians, mostly long-time PLO activists.
Defense Minister Amir Peretz's office said in a statement on Saturday that Abbas' request is under consideration, but Israel has not yet come to a decision on the matter.
Abbas, elected separately last year, is nominally the supreme commander of all seven Palestinian security branches, and most security personnel were hired by Fatah, which controlled the Palestinian Authority for more than a decade. But after Hamas swept Fatah out of office in January elections, it set up a militia of its own, which now numbers 5,700 armed men, and has announced plans to recruit an additional 1,500 forces in the West Bank, Fatah's stronghold.
The rival security forces have clashed frequently in the Gaza Strip in recent weeks as political tensions between the two sides grow. The violence has left more than a dozen dead and stoked fears of a bloody showdown.
The threat of heightened unrest led Palestinian officials from both sides to increase police presence on Saturday.
In Gaza, police in blue-and-white camouflage uniforms deployed around the parliament building, and in the West Bank town of Ramallah, security personnel were posted outside parliament, the Prime Minister's office and the Education Ministry.
In an attempt to ease tensions, a coordinating committee for all Palestinian factions, including Fatah and Hamas, met on Friday night in Gaza, and agreed to remove all their non-uniformed gunmen from the streets.
The confrontations have heated up amid Abbas' efforts to ease crippling international sanctions by persuading Hamas to moderate its anti-Israel stance and ally with Fatah in a coalition government."
***
Is this not sweet and touching? Jordan and Israel working together to help an American puppet in trouble.
The Palestinians are looking more and more like the rest of the Arab world, with puppet dictators protected by "security forces" whose job is not the security of the people, but suppressing them instead.
Report:Inside Egypt
By Chris Hedges
Editor’s note: In this article, the former New York Times Middle East bureau chief spends 10 days living with a lower-middle-class Egyptian family to expose the side of Egypt off-limits to most tourists—one made desperate by poverty and kept fearful by the omnipresent threat of state security officials.
"There are two Egypts. One is crushed by poverty and groaning under the weight of an autocratic regime that has been in place for nearly three decades. This Egypt is increasingly desperate, as the country’s population growth soars, and its economy, burdened by corruption and a stifling state bureaucracy, stagnates. Out of the bowels of this Egypt have come mounting anti-government street demonstrations, anger, frustration and renewed acts of terrorist violence by Islamic militants. The second Egypt, the one on view to foreign visitors, bears little in common with the first Egypt. It is a manicured and heavily guarded Egypt of air-conditioned hotels, Nile cruises, majestic archeological sites, afternoons by swimming pools, evenings in disco clubs, posh restaurants and shops crammed with copies of statues of Horus and Nefertiti and glass jewelry cases filled with silver and gold hieroglyphic pendants.
But the clash between these two Egypts is mounting. It has left tourists, confined to these islands of privilege, caught in the middle, seen as symbols of all that is denied to most Egyptians. And once again, as they were a decade ago, foreigners are being targeted and killed by armed militants as the government of President Hosni Mubarak promises reforms, including presidential and parliamentary election reform that Mubarak’s critics dismiss as cosmetic.
My van, after about 20 minutes, pulls off the road at a police checkpoint. An arrow on the sign in front of us points left to the city of Qus. The police, who check the passports, match the names to the list they hold in front of them. The convoy, speeding along the road, disappears ahead of us. All foreigners are required by Egyptian authorities to travel on the roads in the south with armed escorts. They are banned from wandering into the impoverished villages outside of Luxor or Aswan. I am permitted to depart from the city only with the convoy and have been required to pick up a policeman to travel to Qus.
“This gentleman is from the general police,” Ahmed says, turning to the uniformed officer. “This gentleman is from state security,” he says, turning to the man with the shirt. “And this gentleman ...” and here Ahmed stumbles, not sure what to say, until he hastily adds “...is also from the police.”
So my first foray into this Egypt is to buy phone cards so my host can report on my movements, my conversations and my plans for the day. He has been told to relay this information to a variety of state security officials from Qus to Cairo. His confrontation with the layers of state security that we, and probably he as well, did not know existed in President Mubarak’s Egypt is leaving him nervous and jumpy.
The third-class train is how most of the country’s 2.8 million train passengers travel, moving from city to city and village to village along the 4,900 kilometers of track that run like a ribbon along the Nile. President Mubarak, when he boards a train, takes the opulent carriages that once made up the personal train of the deposed King Farouk. Tourists are required to travel in special tourist trains that have no third-class carriages attached. Reza and I, although we entered Qus in a van with an armed escort, have asked to depart on the third-class train to Cairo, although the safety record of the third-class trains is dismal. Dozens of Egyptians over the past decade have died on the rails in head-on collisions, as well as in accidents with vehicles at railroad crossings. But for most Egyptians, who do not own cars, this is the only way to travel. And it is most Egyptians who interest us.
The dearth of jobs thrusts young Egyptians back onto their families, who will at least make sure they remain housed and fed. Those that head to the teaming slums that have made Cairo one of the most densely populated and impoverished cities in the world leave behind this safety net. It is the disintegration of these kinship ties—a disintegration directly related to the faltering economy—which has proved to be the powerful wedge used by militant Islam to reach young, dislocated Egyptians. No longer able to depend on family for support, they find in militant Islam a kind of traditional, cultural and emotional reassurance that holds out the promise of something better and a replacement community. Traditional Islam, a powerful force in village life, mutates in the slums into something deadly.
“I searched for a job,” he says, “but there are no jobs. I am angry. A job is very important.” He tells me he has never been to Cairo, but he may have to go there to seek work. He began to attend the mosque and do his five daily prayers about six years ago. And then he lays out a new vision for Egypt, one that lurks not far beneath the surface of the secular Mubarak regime. “When there are Islamic laws governing our lives, things will be better,” he says. “There will be more work. Everyone will fear Allah. This will make a change. If you fear Allah there is no corruption. This will make it better for us.” He watches as I write down his words. “Please omit my name,” he says softly, glancing at Ahmed, who stands a few feet away with his back to us. I cross his name out in my notebook. He looks at the black lines through his name and asks me to continue to blot out his name.
On the way home we are told that our request to visit the elementary school where Ahmed’s small daughter is a student has been denied. We decide to visit the offices of the Ministry of Education in Qus to get them to reconsider the request. When we arrive we find the director, Rushdi Abu el-Safa’, behind a large desk. He is smoking, flicking the ash on the floor. He oversees the 180 schools in the district, which has 87,000 students. He promises to pass on our request. Ahmed, who receives a call later that day, is told we will not be allowed in any schools, nor can we visit the local factories. When we get home we find Ahmed’s wife nervous and silent. The constant phone calls, the long reports Ahmed has to fax each day on our activities, have cast a pall over the house. The strains of our visit show in the darting looks, whispers and uncomfortable gaps in conversation where we had once laughed and joked.
A young man had let us into his home during the previous visit and his father begins to yell and curse him and us. “Why did you let them into the house?” he shouts at his son. “They will report about the whole temple to the government and all the houses will be destroyed.” Curse words begin to fly. We back away. Three uniformed police swiftly arrive and hustle us to the van, shouting at the small mob to get back.
It is only at midnight on our last day that we are told we will not be allowed on the third-class train. We will be put, we are told, into a first-class car to Cairo. We will not be allowed to speak to anyone on the train. We enter the train with escorts, including uniformed police with assault rifles. When we attempt to walk into the second-class car we are abruptly pushed back by a policeman between the two cars. “No foreigners,” we are told. When the train pulls into the Shohaj station security men enter our car. They check the documents of the few Egyptians seated in our car and frisk them. The Egyptians are asked to leave our compartment. We become, in a matter of minutes, as hermetically sealed off from the Egypt we sought to reach as the tourists in the lumbering buses whose convoy we had joined a few days before. We sit on the long ride to Cairo and watch the other Egypt glide past us."
***
A long and revealing report that peers into the police state of Husni Mubarak who is strongly supported by Washington.
A NEW AL-JAZEERA (ARABIC) ONLINE POLL
Do you think that the Maliki government in Iraq is capable of keeping its security commitments?
With 1,100 people responding so far, here are the results:
Yes---------5.5%
No--------94.5%
The point of departure
Leader
Saturday October 28, 2006
The Guardian
"Close to its end, just as at its beginning and all through its execution, the occupation of Iraq has been shaped by miscalculation, haste and deceit. An ill-judged invasion fought on a misleading premise gave way to a chaotic aftermath that placed theory ahead of reality, with consequences that the world will have to endure for decades. For a time, however, even for those who opposed the war, including this paper, real hope lay in the promise of recovery, a slow imposition of order underpinned by a form of democracy that could have allowed western forces to leave Iraq gradually, and without disgrace. The case for running away was never strong while that hope remained.
Now, although they dare not say it, even the war's architects in Washington and London know that there will be no honourable departure. They are preparing to scuttle. Military reality and political expediency are blowing away all talk of patience, reconstruction, "staying the course" and "getting the job done" - the desperate expectation that somehow, despite all the violence and disorder, a better destination would be found for Iraq. The language is still heard, more now from Tony Blair than President Bush. But it has become nothing more than passing cover for a retreat from western engagement that is already under way, a thin disguise draped over defeat.
The years ahead will provide many chances to rake over what went wrong and to challenge those responsible. This has already begun in the US, where the midterm elections are forcing the pace. But the need is not for retribution at home, but a truthful account of how things stand and an assessment of how best the country can be pulled up from the black depths into which it is plunging. There is no cure for wounds that will bleed for many years. What can be hoped for is a salvage operation.
Yet it is happening already - and since withdrawal is inevitable, the question is how best chaos can be restricted when it is completed. Total collapse of the elected government can only be averted if order is brought to Baghdad, something the US has failed to achieve. It will require less contentious outside forces to achieve that. Money now spent on the war - the economist Joseph Stiglitz, estimates that staying on another four years would take the total cost to the US of the war to $1trillion - should pay for an international force, of limited duration, made up of troops from largely Muslim states such as Indonesia. American and British money and material must also be used to sustain Iraqi forces during the transition. But western disengagement must not be followed by an expansion of the 25,000 mercenary force.
That may not work, just as other well-meaning ideas for reconstruction funds and the restoration of heritage sites may be nothing more than sedatives to calm British and American consciences over the demon that has been created. Whatever happens now, there will be continuing violence, widespread human rights abuses, and an Iraqi government that will be focused primarily on survival. The country is in ruins, its economy shattered and its population terrified and fleeing. But Britain staying on much longer is not going to stop that."
Saturday October 28, 2006
The Guardian
"Close to its end, just as at its beginning and all through its execution, the occupation of Iraq has been shaped by miscalculation, haste and deceit. An ill-judged invasion fought on a misleading premise gave way to a chaotic aftermath that placed theory ahead of reality, with consequences that the world will have to endure for decades. For a time, however, even for those who opposed the war, including this paper, real hope lay in the promise of recovery, a slow imposition of order underpinned by a form of democracy that could have allowed western forces to leave Iraq gradually, and without disgrace. The case for running away was never strong while that hope remained.
Now, although they dare not say it, even the war's architects in Washington and London know that there will be no honourable departure. They are preparing to scuttle. Military reality and political expediency are blowing away all talk of patience, reconstruction, "staying the course" and "getting the job done" - the desperate expectation that somehow, despite all the violence and disorder, a better destination would be found for Iraq. The language is still heard, more now from Tony Blair than President Bush. But it has become nothing more than passing cover for a retreat from western engagement that is already under way, a thin disguise draped over defeat.
The years ahead will provide many chances to rake over what went wrong and to challenge those responsible. This has already begun in the US, where the midterm elections are forcing the pace. But the need is not for retribution at home, but a truthful account of how things stand and an assessment of how best the country can be pulled up from the black depths into which it is plunging. There is no cure for wounds that will bleed for many years. What can be hoped for is a salvage operation.
Yet it is happening already - and since withdrawal is inevitable, the question is how best chaos can be restricted when it is completed. Total collapse of the elected government can only be averted if order is brought to Baghdad, something the US has failed to achieve. It will require less contentious outside forces to achieve that. Money now spent on the war - the economist Joseph Stiglitz, estimates that staying on another four years would take the total cost to the US of the war to $1trillion - should pay for an international force, of limited duration, made up of troops from largely Muslim states such as Indonesia. American and British money and material must also be used to sustain Iraqi forces during the transition. But western disengagement must not be followed by an expansion of the 25,000 mercenary force.
That may not work, just as other well-meaning ideas for reconstruction funds and the restoration of heritage sites may be nothing more than sedatives to calm British and American consciences over the demon that has been created. Whatever happens now, there will be continuing violence, widespread human rights abuses, and an Iraqi government that will be focused primarily on survival. The country is in ruins, its economy shattered and its population terrified and fleeing. But Britain staying on much longer is not going to stop that."
All must play their roles
Europe cannot pick and choose who it is willing to talk to in the quest for peace in the Middle East
Azzam Tamimi
Saturday October 28, 2006
The Guardian
"During his recent visit to the Middle East, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana met Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the Yisroel Beitenu party, which advocates the forced expulsion of the Palestinians from their land. Solana told reporters after the meeting that he disagreed with everything Lieberman said but that "we have to talk to everybody".
But this "everybody" clearly does not strictly mean everybody, because it continues to exclude the elected Hamas-led government of the Palestinian people. Although Solana disagreed with Lieberman, he nevertheless met him without preconditions. He did not find it necessary, for instance, to insist that Lieberman should first recognise the right of the Palestinian people to exist in their homeland or that he should abandon his racist anti-Arab position.
The Quartet, which consists of the US, the EU, Russia and the UN, is adamant that sanctions imposed on the Palestinian people should not be lifted until Hamas fulfils three conditions. It has first to recognise Israel's right to exist on land from which the Palestinians were driven by force and to which their right to return continues to be denied. Secondly, the Hamas government must renounce "violence", or the right to resist occupation and struggle for the liberation of the Palestinian people's stolen land and homes. Thirdly, they would have to consent to all the agreements signed between the Palestinian Liberation Organisation and Israel since the peace process started more than a decade ago, despite the fact that most of these agreements have only added to the suffering and deprivation of the Palestinians.
But should Hamas remain in government and refuse to accept these conditions then the embargo will go on and the Palestinians will continue to be collectively punished. It would be naive to expect the Quartet to play the role of an honest broker in a bid to resolve the conflict between the Palestinian and the Israelis. As long as the Israelis, irrespective of their policies and ideological positions, are accorded preferential treatment by western governments or international bodies it is doubtful that any peacemaking will succeed.
The Palestinians have not forgotten that it was European powers a century ago that opened this deep wound in the Arab and Muslim psyche, a wound that continues to bleed since it was decided that the European "Jewish problem" be resolved by espousing the cause of Zionism to establish a Jewish home in Palestine. However, the Palestinians have always been willing to forgive on the day that later generations of European policymakers admit their historical responsibility and embark on an effort to repair the damage. Unfortunately there seems to be no sign of this happening yet.
What Solana did, and not what he said, is what really matters on this occasion. The willingness on the part of such a senior EU official to meet an Israeli leader who wishes to see no more Arabs in Palestine, along with those who are generally considered by the European Union to be"mainstream", plays into the widespread belief among Palestinians that all Israeli politicians are the same."
Azzam Tamimi
Saturday October 28, 2006
The Guardian
"During his recent visit to the Middle East, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana met Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the Yisroel Beitenu party, which advocates the forced expulsion of the Palestinians from their land. Solana told reporters after the meeting that he disagreed with everything Lieberman said but that "we have to talk to everybody".
But this "everybody" clearly does not strictly mean everybody, because it continues to exclude the elected Hamas-led government of the Palestinian people. Although Solana disagreed with Lieberman, he nevertheless met him without preconditions. He did not find it necessary, for instance, to insist that Lieberman should first recognise the right of the Palestinian people to exist in their homeland or that he should abandon his racist anti-Arab position.
The Quartet, which consists of the US, the EU, Russia and the UN, is adamant that sanctions imposed on the Palestinian people should not be lifted until Hamas fulfils three conditions. It has first to recognise Israel's right to exist on land from which the Palestinians were driven by force and to which their right to return continues to be denied. Secondly, the Hamas government must renounce "violence", or the right to resist occupation and struggle for the liberation of the Palestinian people's stolen land and homes. Thirdly, they would have to consent to all the agreements signed between the Palestinian Liberation Organisation and Israel since the peace process started more than a decade ago, despite the fact that most of these agreements have only added to the suffering and deprivation of the Palestinians.
But should Hamas remain in government and refuse to accept these conditions then the embargo will go on and the Palestinians will continue to be collectively punished. It would be naive to expect the Quartet to play the role of an honest broker in a bid to resolve the conflict between the Palestinian and the Israelis. As long as the Israelis, irrespective of their policies and ideological positions, are accorded preferential treatment by western governments or international bodies it is doubtful that any peacemaking will succeed.
The Palestinians have not forgotten that it was European powers a century ago that opened this deep wound in the Arab and Muslim psyche, a wound that continues to bleed since it was decided that the European "Jewish problem" be resolved by espousing the cause of Zionism to establish a Jewish home in Palestine. However, the Palestinians have always been willing to forgive on the day that later generations of European policymakers admit their historical responsibility and embark on an effort to repair the damage. Unfortunately there seems to be no sign of this happening yet.
What Solana did, and not what he said, is what really matters on this occasion. The willingness on the part of such a senior EU official to meet an Israeli leader who wishes to see no more Arabs in Palestine, along with those who are generally considered by the European Union to be"mainstream", plays into the widespread belief among Palestinians that all Israeli politicians are the same."
Mystery of Israel's secret uranium bomb
Alarm over radioactive legacy left by attack on Lebanon
By Robert Fisk
The Independent
"Did Israel use a secret new uranium-based weapon in southern Lebanon this summer in the 34-day assault that cost more than 1,300 Lebanese lives, most of them civilians?
We know that the Israelis used American "bunker-buster" bombs on Hizbollah's Beirut headquarters. We know that they drenched southern Lebanon with cluster bombs in the last 72 hours of the war, leaving tens of thousands of bomblets which are still killing Lebanese civilians every week. And we now know - after it first categorically denied using such munitions - that the Israeli army also used phosphorous bombs, weapons which are supposed to be restricted under the third protocol of the Geneva Conventions, which neither Israel nor the United States have signed.
But scientific evidence gathered from at least two bomb craters in Khiam and At-Tiri, the scene of fierce fighting between Hizbollah guerrillas and Israeli troops last July and August, suggests that uranium-based munitions may now also be included in Israel's weapons inventory - and were used against targets in Lebanon. According to Dr Chris Busby, the British Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk, two soil samples thrown up by Israeli heavy or guided bombs showed "elevated radiation signatures". Both have been forwarded for further examination to the Harwell laboratory in Oxfordshire for mass spectrometry - used by the Ministry of Defence - which has confirmed the concentration of uranium isotopes in the samples.
Dr Busby's initial report states that there are two possible reasons for the contamination. "The first is that the weapon was some novel small experimental nuclear fission device or other experimental weapon (eg, a thermobaric weapon) based on the high temperature of a uranium oxidation flash ... The second is that the weapon was a bunker-busting conventional uranium penetrator weapon employing enriched uranium rather than depleted uranium." A photograph of the explosion of the first bomb shows large clouds of black smoke that might result from burning uranium.
Enriched uranium is produced from natural uranium ore and is used as fuel for nuclear reactors. A waste productof the enrichment process is depleted uranium, it is an extremely hard metal used in anti-tank missiles for penetrating armour. Depleted uranium is less radioactive than natural uranium, which is less radioactive than enriched uranium.
Israel has a poor reputation for telling the truth about its use of weapons in Lebanon. In 1982, it denied using phosphorous munitions on civilian areas - until journalists discovered dying and dead civilians whose wounds caught fire when exposed to air.
American and British forces used hundreds of tons of depleted uranium (DU) shells in Iraq in 1991 - their hardened penetrator warheads manufactured from the waste products of the nuclear industry - and five years later, a plague of cancers emerged across the south of Iraq.
Initial US military assessments warned of grave consequences for public health if such weapons were used against armoured vehicles. But the US administration and the British government later went out of their way to belittle these claims. Yet the cancers continued to spread amid reports that civilians in Bosnia - where DU was also used by Nato aircraft - were suffering new forms of cancer. DU shells were again used in the 2003 Anglo-American invasion of Iraq but it is too early to register any health effects.
Chris Bellamy, the professor of military science and doctrine at Cranfield University, who has reviewed the Busby report, said: "At worst it's some sort of experimental weapon with an enriched uranium component the purpose of which we don't yet know. At best - if you can say that - it shows a remarkably cavalier attitude to the use of nuclear waste products.""
Hamad: Solana proves his bias by meeting Lieberman, avoiding PA government officials
Gaza - Spokesman of the PA government Dr. Ghazi Hamad has accused Javier Solana, the coordinator of EU foreign policy, of displaying the EU bias against the Palestinian people by meeting "extremist" Israeli MP Avigdor Lieberman, and avoiding PA cabinet members.
In a statement he issued Saturday, Hamad said, "Lieberman is an Israeli fanatic leader known for his extremist stands against Arabs, and calls for exterminating Palestinians in the 1948-occupied Palestinian lands. Such a terrorist mentality should have prompted Solana to deal with him as a terrorist according to the international laws".
Yet, Hamad added, Solana has proven beyond reasonable doubt that the EU is biased against the Palestinian people for agreeing to meet with "terrorist" Lieberman, and refusing to meet with PA government officials.
"Solana's act displays the non-seriousness of the EU stands against the cruel IOF troops' crimes against the Palestinian people on daily basis that reaped many Palestinian lives and still is", Hamad charged.
He further underlined that Solana should have paid attention to the suffering of the Palestinian people spurred by the unjust sanctions imposed by the EU on the PA government and the Palestinian people it rules.
"He (Solana) had previously hailed the Palestinian democracy that brought Hamas to power through transparent and honest elections, and hence, he should have started to correct the big mistake of the EU of imposing an embargo on a democratically elected government", Hamad further underscored.
The PA spokesman, moreover, urged the EU to rethink its "hostile" stand against the PA government, stressing, "The EU insistence to ignore the PA elected government would not achieve stability and peace in the region, but will rather complicate matters".
"The EU must take the initiative in demanding an end to the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian lands", Hamad emphasized.
Friday, October 27, 2006
Breaking the Silence: Fmr. Israeli Soldier Tours U.S. to Expose Abuse of Palestinians by Israeli Military
DemocracyNow!
With Amy Goodman
"A leading Israeli human rights organization accused Israel on Thursday of breaking international humanitarian law by holding thousands of Palestinian prisoners in Israel.
According to B'Tselem, international law prohibits the transfer of civilians, including prisoners, from the occupied territories to Israel.
On Thursday B'Tselem issued a 53-page report outlining how Israel's prison policies has made it nearly impossible for Palestinians to regularly visit relatives in jail.
Meanwhile, a former Israeli soldier named Yehuda Shaul has just begun a tour of the United States to give an inside look at how the Israeli military treats Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
Shaul is a co-founder of Breaking the Silence - a group of former Israeli soldiers committed to exposing human rights abuses by the Israeli military.
Last year the group revealed that Israel soldiers had been ordered to open fire on unarmed Palestinians. The group has also gathered photographic evidence that proved Israeli soldiers have abused Palestinian corpses.
AMY GOODMAN: Could you talk to us a little bit about what you're hoping to accomplish on your tour?
YEHUDA SHAUL: I’m here in the United States, because, I would say, we in Breaking the Silence see the act of breaking the silence as an act of taking responsibility. As ex-Israeli soldiers, who’ve served as combat soldiers in the Occupied Territories and were there and committed all what we’re talking about, we're part of the occupation. After we were discharged and realized what we were doing and what was going on around us, there was only two options, as I see it. There’s or to lock ourselves in the room, cry and ask forgiveness, or to stand up and take responsibility and demand from others to take responsibility.
So, in my eyes, breaking the silence, standing up and telling the stories and trying to bring people to know and to realize and to understand what it means, occupation, on a daily basis, through these testimonies that we publish and the pictures that we had in the exhibition, is demanding from Israeli society to take responsibility for it, for what is being done in their behalf.
And in my eyes, in our eyes, responsibility doesn't end with ex-soldiers who served there or with Israelis, or the idea if our army as Israelis is doing all these things. Responsibility is to every human being in the world, and for sure for Americans, because in the end of the day for all what Israel does, there is only one country in the world that, you know, the chief of staff and the prime minister of Israel has to report in the end of the day, and that's the United States of America. For that reason, I think that people of America must know what's going on there and must break their own silence and take civil responsibility, human responsibility, to what is being done there.
JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to ask you about all of these thousands of Palestinian prisoners. From your perspective, as someone who's obviously had to participate in the capturing and imprisonment of some of these Palestinian civilians, what is this doing to Palestinian society, to have so many people locked up for such a long period of time under Israeli control?
YEHUDA SHAUL: I have no idea. I’m not a Palestinian. Just, you know, looking from the outside, seems like breaking all the family structure. I don't know, just trying to think of, you know, all the people that we arrested, bumping in the middle of the night through the windows, through the doors, through the roofs, waking up the family, taking people. No one knows when they're going to get back, why they were taken. You know, this is -- just, you know, almost every night in the Occupied Territories, you do an arrest operation. Every night you come back with what we saw in the pictures before, or you see now, of handcuffed, blindfolded Palestinians, who are just, you know, were now arrested, waiting to be taken to interrogations at the secret services.
But also, there's another kind of Palestinians, as you see now in the picture, and that's kind of what we call in Hebrew, or I will translate it, what we called “dry outs,” or if I would professionally translate it, “detainees.” And these are Palestinians, you know, when you stand in the checkpoint and you ask from all the Palestinians to stand in a very nice one line, and suddenly one of them starts screaming or leaves the line, so you must educate him, right? They must know who’s the boss. So you detain the man aside. You took him, handcuff, blindfold -- five, six, seven hours, it could be more, it could be less. Or you call a Palestinian in the checkpoint, you ask from him his ID. He smiles too much. You must educate them.
And all the system is built on fear. It's built of just oppressing, I don't know, of not being able to treat Palestinians as equal human beings to you, because the job is to do things that you don't do to equal human beings, you know, to bump in the middle of the night to a family from the roof and wake up all the family, separate men from women and just search all the house. It's something that you don't do to an equal human being to you. It's something that I never done in Israel, but in the Occupied Territories, as a combat soldier, as an occupier, that's my daily job, 24/7, house after house."
Read The Rest of The Transcript of Today's Interview
With Amy Goodman
"A leading Israeli human rights organization accused Israel on Thursday of breaking international humanitarian law by holding thousands of Palestinian prisoners in Israel.
According to B'Tselem, international law prohibits the transfer of civilians, including prisoners, from the occupied territories to Israel.
On Thursday B'Tselem issued a 53-page report outlining how Israel's prison policies has made it nearly impossible for Palestinians to regularly visit relatives in jail.
Meanwhile, a former Israeli soldier named Yehuda Shaul has just begun a tour of the United States to give an inside look at how the Israeli military treats Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
Shaul is a co-founder of Breaking the Silence - a group of former Israeli soldiers committed to exposing human rights abuses by the Israeli military.
Last year the group revealed that Israel soldiers had been ordered to open fire on unarmed Palestinians. The group has also gathered photographic evidence that proved Israeli soldiers have abused Palestinian corpses.
AMY GOODMAN: Could you talk to us a little bit about what you're hoping to accomplish on your tour?
YEHUDA SHAUL: I’m here in the United States, because, I would say, we in Breaking the Silence see the act of breaking the silence as an act of taking responsibility. As ex-Israeli soldiers, who’ve served as combat soldiers in the Occupied Territories and were there and committed all what we’re talking about, we're part of the occupation. After we were discharged and realized what we were doing and what was going on around us, there was only two options, as I see it. There’s or to lock ourselves in the room, cry and ask forgiveness, or to stand up and take responsibility and demand from others to take responsibility.
So, in my eyes, breaking the silence, standing up and telling the stories and trying to bring people to know and to realize and to understand what it means, occupation, on a daily basis, through these testimonies that we publish and the pictures that we had in the exhibition, is demanding from Israeli society to take responsibility for it, for what is being done in their behalf.
And in my eyes, in our eyes, responsibility doesn't end with ex-soldiers who served there or with Israelis, or the idea if our army as Israelis is doing all these things. Responsibility is to every human being in the world, and for sure for Americans, because in the end of the day for all what Israel does, there is only one country in the world that, you know, the chief of staff and the prime minister of Israel has to report in the end of the day, and that's the United States of America. For that reason, I think that people of America must know what's going on there and must break their own silence and take civil responsibility, human responsibility, to what is being done there.
JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to ask you about all of these thousands of Palestinian prisoners. From your perspective, as someone who's obviously had to participate in the capturing and imprisonment of some of these Palestinian civilians, what is this doing to Palestinian society, to have so many people locked up for such a long period of time under Israeli control?
YEHUDA SHAUL: I have no idea. I’m not a Palestinian. Just, you know, looking from the outside, seems like breaking all the family structure. I don't know, just trying to think of, you know, all the people that we arrested, bumping in the middle of the night through the windows, through the doors, through the roofs, waking up the family, taking people. No one knows when they're going to get back, why they were taken. You know, this is -- just, you know, almost every night in the Occupied Territories, you do an arrest operation. Every night you come back with what we saw in the pictures before, or you see now, of handcuffed, blindfolded Palestinians, who are just, you know, were now arrested, waiting to be taken to interrogations at the secret services.
But also, there's another kind of Palestinians, as you see now in the picture, and that's kind of what we call in Hebrew, or I will translate it, what we called “dry outs,” or if I would professionally translate it, “detainees.” And these are Palestinians, you know, when you stand in the checkpoint and you ask from all the Palestinians to stand in a very nice one line, and suddenly one of them starts screaming or leaves the line, so you must educate him, right? They must know who’s the boss. So you detain the man aside. You took him, handcuff, blindfold -- five, six, seven hours, it could be more, it could be less. Or you call a Palestinian in the checkpoint, you ask from him his ID. He smiles too much. You must educate them.
And all the system is built on fear. It's built of just oppressing, I don't know, of not being able to treat Palestinians as equal human beings to you, because the job is to do things that you don't do to equal human beings, you know, to bump in the middle of the night to a family from the roof and wake up all the family, separate men from women and just search all the house. It's something that you don't do to an equal human being to you. It's something that I never done in Israel, but in the Occupied Territories, as a combat soldier, as an occupier, that's my daily job, 24/7, house after house."
Read The Rest of The Transcript of Today's Interview
Bush's Mea Culpa Speech, First Draft
A Modest Proposal
By SAUL LANDAU and FARRAH HASSEN
CounterPunch
""Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan," President John F. Kennedy said as he accepted blame for the Bay of Pigs fiasco. I, too, accept blame, for invading Iraq and compounding that error by not formulating a coherent Middle East policy aimed at stabilizing the region. I selected advisers I felt comfortable with, but not those who gave me sound counsel.
They told me to say in my 2002 State of the Union Address that Iraq, Iran and North Korea were an "axis of evil." This phrase now haunts me. My policies have not defeated evil. I could say 'give 'em time.' But I understand that I have built a dangerous "axis of uncertainty." North Korea has probably tested a nuclear weapon. I must ask myself: did my hard line policy lead to that dreaded event?
In my arrogant mode, I would have dismissed those good for nothing Ba'athist stooges! (giggles) But upon reflection and a series of consultations with the Lord, I see it did not make sense to threaten Syria with more sanctions, order it like a naughty child to stop supporting Hamas and Hezbollah. Darn, we even sent that Canadian-Syrian fella, Maher Arrar, to get tortured there in Damascus just as I was criticizing Syria for violating human rights. I offer my apologies to Mr. Arrar.
I want to say I'm sorry for what Condi said when she referred to the war in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah as part of the 'birth pangs of a new Middle East.' Even some of my old drinking buddies got uncomfortable with that one.
Admitting mistakes is one thing; making peace is another. After we withdraw our forces and bases from Iraq, which we must do before more American blood gets spilled, I will face the Syria-Israel, Israel-Palestine issue. American and Iraqi epidemiologists reported on October 11 that 655,000 Iraqis have died since March 2003. Add to that almost 3,000 Americans and maybe 20,000 wounded and some walking wounded. I made a terrible mistake. May God forgive me.
I know I said repeatedly we won't cut and run. But you men out there understand that kind of macho talk. The facts are clear. Iraq is a dead end for us. I only hope Iraqis can put Humpty Dumpty together again after I pushed him off the wall. I ask for their forgiveness as well.
I have not forgotten the plight of the Palestinians. I admit Iraq has distracted me from focusing on my promise of U.S. support for a viable, contiguous, independent Palestinian state based on the pre-1967 war borders. Palestinians and Israelis living side by side with Israel! Hey, that sounds good. Jerusalem's status, the return of Palestinian refugees, who gets how much water heck, these big problems will get negotiated as well, not swept under the table like the 1993 Oslo Accords did.
In fact, I'm sending Condi back to the Middle East next week to talk to all the affected parties -- not just our reliable guys in Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia like the last time (what good that did!), but to the leader of Hamas and the Syrians. Hamas must recognize Israel, as I've said all along. But the U.S. must also recognize Hamas, since those guys did win a free and fair election -- exactly what I've been calling for in the Middle East. It doesn't mean we have to agree with them, though."
Read Bush's Greatest Speech Ever, Here
War Support Among Evangelicals Collapses
Bush Incompetence Said to Delay Second Coming
By Juan Cole
"In the past 30 days, support for the Iraq War among white evangelicals has fallen from 70 percent to 58 percent.
These numbers matter because evangelicals are a quarter of the people who actually bother to vote, and 78 percent of them voted Republican 2 years ago. Only 58 percent say they are satisfied with the party now, and Iraq and the Foley scandal are driving the discontent.
A more colorful manifestation of the evangelicals disillusionment than the poll is the sermons of Houston-based evangelical preacher K.A. Paul. Here are some of the things he is running around the country saying about Iraq:
' The Houston-based preacher said he believes that the Bush administration has delayed the second coming because U.S. foreign policy has blocked Christian missionaries from working in Iraq, Iran and Syria. . . "Somebody needs to say enough is enough," he said to worshippers who stood, waved and called out in support. . . Paul, who claimed to support conservative political leaders in the past, is launching "a crusade to save America from the wrath of God and Republicans abusing their power," according to his press materials. . . "God is mad at this country," Paul told the congregation. He described the war in Iraq as "unnecessary genocide."
Can you say, "amen!" and "halleluja!"?
The only explanation of which I can think for the general collapse of this pillar of War party is that the political contests in mid-Atlantic and Southern states are generating television ads, candidate appearances and debates that highlight the catastrophe that is Iraq--and it is getting through to the church-goers at long last."
By Juan Cole
"In the past 30 days, support for the Iraq War among white evangelicals has fallen from 70 percent to 58 percent.
These numbers matter because evangelicals are a quarter of the people who actually bother to vote, and 78 percent of them voted Republican 2 years ago. Only 58 percent say they are satisfied with the party now, and Iraq and the Foley scandal are driving the discontent.
A more colorful manifestation of the evangelicals disillusionment than the poll is the sermons of Houston-based evangelical preacher K.A. Paul. Here are some of the things he is running around the country saying about Iraq:
' The Houston-based preacher said he believes that the Bush administration has delayed the second coming because U.S. foreign policy has blocked Christian missionaries from working in Iraq, Iran and Syria. . . "Somebody needs to say enough is enough," he said to worshippers who stood, waved and called out in support. . . Paul, who claimed to support conservative political leaders in the past, is launching "a crusade to save America from the wrath of God and Republicans abusing their power," according to his press materials. . . "God is mad at this country," Paul told the congregation. He described the war in Iraq as "unnecessary genocide."
Can you say, "amen!" and "halleluja!"?
The only explanation of which I can think for the general collapse of this pillar of War party is that the political contests in mid-Atlantic and Southern states are generating television ads, candidate appearances and debates that highlight the catastrophe that is Iraq--and it is getting through to the church-goers at long last."
Rumsfeld tells war critics to 'back off'
ON THURSDAY, RUMSFELD TOLD REPORTERS NOT TO ASK TOO MANY QUESTIONS AND TO BACK OFF!
Ascendancy of Avigdor Lieberman Is Not an Israeli Internal Affair
A PALESTINIAN PERSPECTIVE
By Nicola Nasser
(Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist in Kuwait, Jordan, UAE and Palestine. He is based in Ramallah, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories)
"The absence of a proportionate Palestinian reaction to the ascendancy of Israel’s far right leader, Avigdor Lieberman, into the mainstream strategic decision-making in Tel Aviv has indicated of how dangerously the inter-Palestinian divide is overshadowing the Israeli threats and encouraged the visiting European Union's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, to legitimize with a public meeting the only man who could abort not only the mission of his visit but all prospects of regional peace.
According to Israeli media on the eve and in the wake of the ominous deal, that has yet to be endorsed by the Knesset, Israeli politicians and commentators described Lieberman as a “strategic threat,” “the most dangerous politician in our political history,” “the most unrestrained and irresponsible man around,” a hawk, a hardliner, Israel's far right leader, extreme and ultra right-winger, a “fascist” and a leader of a “fascist party,” a “detestable racist,” “unguided missile” and a “loose cannon,” etc.
Hebrew University political science professor Zeev Sternhell, said Lieberman may be “the most dangerous politician in our political history” because of his “cocktail of nationalism, authoritarianism and dictatorial mentality” and because, unlike previous extreme-right figures he was not “marginalized.” Professor Sternhell added: “I cannot forget that Mussolini came to power with only 30 members of parliament.”
In 2004 he published his book “My Truth,” a call to draw Israel's borders to exclude Arab citizens and include illegal Israeli colonial settlements Israel built on occupied Palestinian West Bank territory; he himself lives with his family in the colony of Nokdim. Earlier he spoke of “transfer” of Arab citizens, Gershom Gorenberg wrote in the Jewish daily Forward on October 20, 2006. “The problem with the Arabs inside Israel must come before the Palestinian problem,” he said.
When he served as minister of transport in a previous government, Lieberman called for all Palestinian prisoners, now more than ten thousand, held by the Israeli occupation authorities to be drowned in the Dead Sea and offered to provide the buses, Ha'aretz reported on July 11, 2002.
However, instead of mobilizing its media and diplomatic corps to alert the world on the looming threat, the PLO kept absorbed by the internal divide and obsessed with plans on how to bring the elected Hamas to accept the U.S.-adopted Israeli dictates or squeeze it out of power, except for a rare statement that offhandedly shrugged Lieberman’s ascendancy as an Israeli “internal affair”!
“At the end of the day, what we hoped for is to have a partner in Israel who is willing to revive a meaningful peace process that will end this miserable situation between our two peoples,” said Saeb Erekat, who heads the PLO’s negotiations department, whose mission has been confined recently to educating Hamas and the Palestinian people on how to better understand the “realpolitics” of the US and EU-backed Israeli dictates.
Lieberman’s ascendancy could in no way be dealt with by whoever Palestinian is in the driving seat neither as an internal Israeli affair nor as a threat that could be frivolously shrugged off with levity; this would take irresponsibility too far to be justified, regardless of whatever pretexts might be cited.
This lenient PLO reaction would only weaken its already fragile internal status and encourage Israelis to deal with the matter similarly; if the Palestinians don’t care why should Israelis and if the PLO doesn’t set on the alarm why should the world care too! May be the PLO should be reminded of Israel’s reaction to the electoral victory of Austria's far right leader Jörg Haider in 1999 to entice it into action?
Lieberman’s inclusion into Israel’s mainstream decision-making is -- by premeditation or by coincidence -- pre-empting Palestinian, regional and international efforts to capitalize on the indecisive Lebanon war to either revive the old peace process or to initiate a new one, or in the best of optimistic scenarios to initiate a fundamental change in the regional peace-making from conflict management to conflict resolution.
Solana did meet Lieberman without at least balancing his move with a similar encounter with Hamas, thus legitimizing him and empowering his agenda with an EU engagement and bolstering his credentials with EU prestige. Solana also bypassed the democratically elected representative government of the Palestinian people. In both cases he was indirectly encouraged by PLO’s leniency vis-à-vis Lieberman and militancy vis-à-vis Hamas."
By Nicola Nasser
(Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist in Kuwait, Jordan, UAE and Palestine. He is based in Ramallah, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories)
"The absence of a proportionate Palestinian reaction to the ascendancy of Israel’s far right leader, Avigdor Lieberman, into the mainstream strategic decision-making in Tel Aviv has indicated of how dangerously the inter-Palestinian divide is overshadowing the Israeli threats and encouraged the visiting European Union's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, to legitimize with a public meeting the only man who could abort not only the mission of his visit but all prospects of regional peace.
According to Israeli media on the eve and in the wake of the ominous deal, that has yet to be endorsed by the Knesset, Israeli politicians and commentators described Lieberman as a “strategic threat,” “the most dangerous politician in our political history,” “the most unrestrained and irresponsible man around,” a hawk, a hardliner, Israel's far right leader, extreme and ultra right-winger, a “fascist” and a leader of a “fascist party,” a “detestable racist,” “unguided missile” and a “loose cannon,” etc.
Hebrew University political science professor Zeev Sternhell, said Lieberman may be “the most dangerous politician in our political history” because of his “cocktail of nationalism, authoritarianism and dictatorial mentality” and because, unlike previous extreme-right figures he was not “marginalized.” Professor Sternhell added: “I cannot forget that Mussolini came to power with only 30 members of parliament.”
In 2004 he published his book “My Truth,” a call to draw Israel's borders to exclude Arab citizens and include illegal Israeli colonial settlements Israel built on occupied Palestinian West Bank territory; he himself lives with his family in the colony of Nokdim. Earlier he spoke of “transfer” of Arab citizens, Gershom Gorenberg wrote in the Jewish daily Forward on October 20, 2006. “The problem with the Arabs inside Israel must come before the Palestinian problem,” he said.
When he served as minister of transport in a previous government, Lieberman called for all Palestinian prisoners, now more than ten thousand, held by the Israeli occupation authorities to be drowned in the Dead Sea and offered to provide the buses, Ha'aretz reported on July 11, 2002.
However, instead of mobilizing its media and diplomatic corps to alert the world on the looming threat, the PLO kept absorbed by the internal divide and obsessed with plans on how to bring the elected Hamas to accept the U.S.-adopted Israeli dictates or squeeze it out of power, except for a rare statement that offhandedly shrugged Lieberman’s ascendancy as an Israeli “internal affair”!
“At the end of the day, what we hoped for is to have a partner in Israel who is willing to revive a meaningful peace process that will end this miserable situation between our two peoples,” said Saeb Erekat, who heads the PLO’s negotiations department, whose mission has been confined recently to educating Hamas and the Palestinian people on how to better understand the “realpolitics” of the US and EU-backed Israeli dictates.
Lieberman’s ascendancy could in no way be dealt with by whoever Palestinian is in the driving seat neither as an internal Israeli affair nor as a threat that could be frivolously shrugged off with levity; this would take irresponsibility too far to be justified, regardless of whatever pretexts might be cited.
This lenient PLO reaction would only weaken its already fragile internal status and encourage Israelis to deal with the matter similarly; if the Palestinians don’t care why should Israelis and if the PLO doesn’t set on the alarm why should the world care too! May be the PLO should be reminded of Israel’s reaction to the electoral victory of Austria's far right leader Jörg Haider in 1999 to entice it into action?
Lieberman’s inclusion into Israel’s mainstream decision-making is -- by premeditation or by coincidence -- pre-empting Palestinian, regional and international efforts to capitalize on the indecisive Lebanon war to either revive the old peace process or to initiate a new one, or in the best of optimistic scenarios to initiate a fundamental change in the regional peace-making from conflict management to conflict resolution.
Solana did meet Lieberman without at least balancing his move with a similar encounter with Hamas, thus legitimizing him and empowering his agenda with an EU engagement and bolstering his credentials with EU prestige. Solana also bypassed the democratically elected representative government of the Palestinian people. In both cases he was indirectly encouraged by PLO’s leniency vis-à-vis Lieberman and militancy vis-à-vis Hamas."
WALL ALONG US-MEXICO BORDER
By Carlos Latuff.
(Click on cartoon to enlarge)
On Thursday, Bush Signed a Bill Authorizing the Construction of a Separation Wall Between the U.S. and Mexico.
Fiasco Then, Fiasco Now
A GOOD HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
by Tom Engelhardt
"So think of Tuesday's dog-and-pony show as "the light at the end of the tunnel" news conference. And think of Prime Minister Maliki as a poor stand-in for the recalcitrant-to-American-wishes South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem, assassinated in a U.S.-backed military coup in 1963, after which it was all downhill.
No longer was he the plodding, "stay the course" George Bush; now, he was the maestro of "change," a darting, dashing Wile E. Coyote of a president, zipping off a cliff while saying things like: "We're constantly changing. The enemy changes, and we change. The enemy adapts to our strategies and tactics, and we adapt to theirs. We're constantly changing to defeat this enemy."
Unlike the president, Ambassador Khalilzad and Gen. Casey undoubtedly know that they are putting on an act for the TV screens back home, that this is a moment to say whatever a desperate administration considers necessary to bring voters back into the fold. This is policy as vaudeville, a farce for everyone except those "martyrs," the Americans dying in Iraq, and, of course, millions of Iraqi civilians who are unlikely to feel mollified by Gen. Casey's lame reassurance.
Think of it this way: With the help of the Vietnam experience, our top generals are already beginning to create their own exit-strategies from this war. Along Vietnam lines, their tale will be simple enough: We won. They (still to be defined but leading candidates include Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon civilian bosses, the media, and the American public) lost. We wuz betrayed! Talk about incipient "martyrs."
Let me suggest to the non-generals among us two Vietnam analogies that have yet to arise but couldn't be more relevant. Think of them as "the bloodbath" and "the non-withdrawal withdrawal" analogies.
The Iraqi future bloodbath happens to go by the name of "civil war." Of course, an actual civil war is underway there, but the claim has long been that, whatever blood is now being spilled, it will be nothing compared to what might happen if the U.S. military, the last bulwark between bloody-minded Sunni, Shi'ite, and Kurdish enemies, were withdrawn.
As the pressure for timetables and some form of phased withdrawal ratchets up in Iraq, you will certainly see the same sort of thing – "withdrawal" plans, like the one former State Department official Richard Armitage recently suggested, that will take endless (reversible) years to complete. A five-year withdrawal plan is not a withdrawal plan. It's a pacification plan for the "home front," a way to keep on keeping on.
These are among the possible endgame Vietnam analogies that are likely to arise. Unfortunately, that endgame could take a while. After all, if the Tet Offensive was the "turning point" in the Vietnam War, the war itself lasted almost as long after Tet as before, with almost as many American casualties."
50 Years After Suez, US Hegemony Ebbing Fast
By Jim Lobe
"As the Middle East prepares to mark the 50th anniversary on Oct. 29 of the Suez Crisis that effectively ended European colonialism, a half century of U.S. hegemony in the region also appears to be coming to an end, according to a growing number of analysts.
"American foreign policy in the Middle East is approaching a very serious crisis," noted Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser under former President Jimmy Carter, at a dinner this week in which he noted the imminence of the 1956 crisis that he said marked "the beginning of [Washington's] domination of the region." "We are facing the possibility of literally being pushed out of the Middle East," he warned.
"The age of U.S. dominance in the Middle East has ended and a new era in the modern history of the region has begun," wrote Richard Haass, president of the influential Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and a top Middle East adviser to the George H.W. Bush administration, in a remarkably downbeat article in the latest edition of Foreign Affairs journal.
That this "New Middle East," as Haass titled his article, should be dawning 50 years after the Suez Crisis is particularly poignant, according to longtime observers of the region who note that, more than any other event, it was Washington's role in the crisis that boosted its image as a force for liberation and positioned it as an honest broker between Arabs and Israel.
To most historians, the crisis – and the humiliation inflicted on the invading powers – spelled the effective end of western European colonialism in the region and the advent of U.S. preeminence, a preeminence that was successively enhanced by the aftermath of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, the 1978 Camp David accords, and the end of the Cold War a decade later.
Fifty years later, however, both U.S. soft power and its status as an honest broker – the two greatest achievements of the Suez crisis – are at their lowest ebb and, in Toensing's words, "sinking ever lower."
"The U.S. has come to be seen as the quintessential colonial power, and, if anything, worse than the old [European] ones, because they were viewed as having an economic agenda – resource extraction – while the U.S. is seen as having both a resource-extraction and an ideological agenda," according to Toensing."
"As the Middle East prepares to mark the 50th anniversary on Oct. 29 of the Suez Crisis that effectively ended European colonialism, a half century of U.S. hegemony in the region also appears to be coming to an end, according to a growing number of analysts.
"American foreign policy in the Middle East is approaching a very serious crisis," noted Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser under former President Jimmy Carter, at a dinner this week in which he noted the imminence of the 1956 crisis that he said marked "the beginning of [Washington's] domination of the region." "We are facing the possibility of literally being pushed out of the Middle East," he warned.
"The age of U.S. dominance in the Middle East has ended and a new era in the modern history of the region has begun," wrote Richard Haass, president of the influential Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and a top Middle East adviser to the George H.W. Bush administration, in a remarkably downbeat article in the latest edition of Foreign Affairs journal.
That this "New Middle East," as Haass titled his article, should be dawning 50 years after the Suez Crisis is particularly poignant, according to longtime observers of the region who note that, more than any other event, it was Washington's role in the crisis that boosted its image as a force for liberation and positioned it as an honest broker between Arabs and Israel.
To most historians, the crisis – and the humiliation inflicted on the invading powers – spelled the effective end of western European colonialism in the region and the advent of U.S. preeminence, a preeminence that was successively enhanced by the aftermath of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, the 1978 Camp David accords, and the end of the Cold War a decade later.
Fifty years later, however, both U.S. soft power and its status as an honest broker – the two greatest achievements of the Suez crisis – are at their lowest ebb and, in Toensing's words, "sinking ever lower."
"The U.S. has come to be seen as the quintessential colonial power, and, if anything, worse than the old [European] ones, because they were viewed as having an economic agenda – resource extraction – while the U.S. is seen as having both a resource-extraction and an ideological agenda," according to Toensing."
A Jewish Hitler?
The rise of Avigdor Lieberman
By Justin Raimondo
"With the entry of Avigdor Lieberman into the government as deputy minister for "strategic threats" – essentially in charge of preparing for war with Iran – Israel makes a qualitative step toward a regime that increasingly resembles, in all its essentials, a rogue state, and, I might add, potentially a very dangerous one.
Lieberman's portfolio as minister in charge of strategic threats allowed the editors of Ha'aretz to quip "Lieberman is a strategic threat!" Here, after all, is a man who has threatened to bomb Tehran, the Aswan Dam, and Beirut. His entry into the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, in coalition with Kadima and Labor, marks an ominous shift in the stance of the Jewish state.
Yet the line that separated Lieberman, the Jewish equivalent of David Duke, from the Israeli "mainstream" has been increasingly hard to discern for quite some time. As Arthur Neslen put it in the Guardian recently: "The most worrying thing about Lieberman is not that his ideas exist on a plane outside Israel's political continuum but that, in many ways, they are close to its dead center. The proposal to transfer 'the triangle,' an area around Um al-Fahm where 250,000 Palestinian citizens of Israel currently live, was first brought into the press spotlight at the end of 2000 at Israel's most prestigious annual policy-making forum, the Herzliya conference."
Yet here we are, confronted with the specter of Avigdor Lieberman, the would-be Hitler, currently the second most popular politician in the running for prime minister, right behind Benjamin Netanyahu. That a gangster of Lieberman's ilk is now a serious contender for the post of prime minister and his fascist party is rising in popularity are measures of how the Israeli settler colony, originally designed along left-wing Zionist-utopian lines, has hardened into a national socialist Sparta.
In any case, the War Party in the U.S. is likely to find him very useful: Lieberman's fiery rhetoric is sure to set off sparks in a very volatile region of the world, one that is just waiting to explode.
Finally, it must be remembered that Israel is a member of the nuclear club, with at least 400 nukes and perhaps more at its disposal. The chilling question is this: do we really want to see Israel's nukes fall into the hands of a madman like Lieberman?
If the Israeli government is going extremist, the moral and strategic implications of our continued assistance are grave: will we be complicit as Israel "transfers" hundreds of thousands of Arabs, many of them Israeli citizens? As hard-right ideologues embark on a campaign of aggression aimed at creating a "Greater Israel," will U.S. tax dollars continue to fuel the Israeli war machine?
Yet his entry into the government is quite significant, for Israel and for the world, in that it marks the end of the honeymoon era in relations between Israel and the West, particularly the United States. Israel and its Western amen corner have always insisted that the Jewish state is part of the West, yet the rise of Lieberman tells us something quite different."
STRATEGY FOR VICTORY
By Steve Bell, The Guardian
(Click on cartoon to enlarge)
Thursday, October 26, 2006
Is Mahmoud Abbas planning a coup?
Jerusalem Post
"Hamas has instructed its followers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to be on high alert following unconfirmed reports that Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party are planning a coup against the Hamas government on Saturday.
Sources close to Hamas told The Jerusalem Post that the Islamic movement was taking these reports seriously and that hundreds of Hamas militiamen would be deployed in strategic areas in the Gaza Strip to foil any attempt to overthrow the Hamas government.
Hamas's "Executive Force" in the Gaza Strip has also been placed on high alert and security around top Hamas officials has been beefed up, the sources revealed.
According to the sources, Hamas leaders have expressed fear that Fatah gunmen and PA policemen loyal to Abbas would try to occupy a number of PA ministries and institutions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip on Saturday. "Hamas is convinced that Abbas is planning a coup," the sources added. "It could happen as early as this weekend."
On Thursday afternoon, Abbas summoned four Hamas ministers to his office in Ramallah and assured them that he was not planning a coup against the Hamas government. Abbas also phoned PA Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh to deny the reports.
"President Ababs strongly denied the rumors about a coup and said they were completely untrue," said PA Deputy Prime Minister Nasser Eddin Shaer, one of the ministers who attended the meeting. "He reiterated his keenness on the sovereignty of the law and his respect for the results of the parliamentary elections."
Earlier this week, Abbas reportedly ordered the deployment of thousands of Fatah gunmen and PA policemen in the streets of the Gaza Strip in anticipation of a major confrontation with Hamas.
Senior PA officials told the Post they were unaware of immediate plans to topple the Hamas government, but pointed out that thousands of policemen protesting unpaid salaries were planning to escalate their campaign on Saturday.
"It's possible that Hamas is afraid of these protests," said one official. "The policemen are planning a series of protests throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip and we don't rule out the possibility that they might try to occupy a number of government buildings as they have done before."
On Thursday, a group of PA policemen in Ramallah and Gaza City said they were planning to torch the offices of the PA Finance Ministry if they did not receive their full salaries within the next 48 hours.
The reports about a purported coup coincide with increased efforts by some Arab countries, including Qatar, Egypt, Syria and Jordan to resolve the Hamas-Fatah crisis. Representatives of the two parties are expected to meet in Cairo soon for urgent talks aimed at avoiding an all-out confrontation that could spill over into civil war.
However, some Fatah leaders said they were not enthusiastic about the planned meeting "because Hamas has not changed its position regarding the political platform of the proposed national unity government."
They said Abbas was expected to deliver an "important" speech to the Palestinians in the coming days about the crisis with Hamas, adding that he may renew his call for a referendum on the unity government idea."
"Hamas has instructed its followers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to be on high alert following unconfirmed reports that Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party are planning a coup against the Hamas government on Saturday.
Sources close to Hamas told The Jerusalem Post that the Islamic movement was taking these reports seriously and that hundreds of Hamas militiamen would be deployed in strategic areas in the Gaza Strip to foil any attempt to overthrow the Hamas government.
Hamas's "Executive Force" in the Gaza Strip has also been placed on high alert and security around top Hamas officials has been beefed up, the sources revealed.
According to the sources, Hamas leaders have expressed fear that Fatah gunmen and PA policemen loyal to Abbas would try to occupy a number of PA ministries and institutions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip on Saturday. "Hamas is convinced that Abbas is planning a coup," the sources added. "It could happen as early as this weekend."
On Thursday afternoon, Abbas summoned four Hamas ministers to his office in Ramallah and assured them that he was not planning a coup against the Hamas government. Abbas also phoned PA Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh to deny the reports.
"President Ababs strongly denied the rumors about a coup and said they were completely untrue," said PA Deputy Prime Minister Nasser Eddin Shaer, one of the ministers who attended the meeting. "He reiterated his keenness on the sovereignty of the law and his respect for the results of the parliamentary elections."
Earlier this week, Abbas reportedly ordered the deployment of thousands of Fatah gunmen and PA policemen in the streets of the Gaza Strip in anticipation of a major confrontation with Hamas.
Senior PA officials told the Post they were unaware of immediate plans to topple the Hamas government, but pointed out that thousands of policemen protesting unpaid salaries were planning to escalate their campaign on Saturday.
"It's possible that Hamas is afraid of these protests," said one official. "The policemen are planning a series of protests throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip and we don't rule out the possibility that they might try to occupy a number of government buildings as they have done before."
On Thursday, a group of PA policemen in Ramallah and Gaza City said they were planning to torch the offices of the PA Finance Ministry if they did not receive their full salaries within the next 48 hours.
The reports about a purported coup coincide with increased efforts by some Arab countries, including Qatar, Egypt, Syria and Jordan to resolve the Hamas-Fatah crisis. Representatives of the two parties are expected to meet in Cairo soon for urgent talks aimed at avoiding an all-out confrontation that could spill over into civil war.
However, some Fatah leaders said they were not enthusiastic about the planned meeting "because Hamas has not changed its position regarding the political platform of the proposed national unity government."
They said Abbas was expected to deliver an "important" speech to the Palestinians in the coming days about the crisis with Hamas, adding that he may renew his call for a referendum on the unity government idea."
Book Review: The Persistence of the Palestinian Question
Sally Bland, The Electronic Intifada, 26 October 2006
Joseph A. Massad: THE PERSISTENCE OF THE PALESTINIAN QUESTION: Essays on Zionism and the Palestinians (Routledge, London/New York, 2006 - ISBN 0415770106)
"Comprising essays published in various scholarly journals between 1993 and 2005, "The Persistence of the Palestinian Question" is a painfully honest book.
The author, who grew up in Amman and is now associate professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University, does not mince words or cut corners. He addresses the question of Palestine from a number of new angles, covering a broad spectrum of fields in which history is made -- official politics, sexual politics, popular resistance, national and social struggle, demography, ideology and state repression.
The book is extremely timely since Massad's incisive critique of the false premises on which the "peace process" was conducted helps explain the dismal situation in which Palestinians find themselves today. It serves to remind that the problem didn't begin with the cut-off of international aid to the Hamas government.
Throughout the 1990s, the Palestinians were urged to be realistic and pragmatic, to learn how to speak to the West -- all the while Israel's colonialism and insistence on maintaining Jewish racial supremacy went unchallenged.
Taking stock over a decade later, it is obvious that the pragmatic approach was not at all pragmatic, for it failed miserably. Far from ushering in peace, the Oslo accords paved the way for Israel to grab more land and tighten its control over Palestinian lives.
Massad doesn't waste time bemoaning this outcome, but rather seeks the roots of the problem, delving into awkward corners that most prefer to ignore.
At the heart of Massad's analysis are Israel's colonial nature, its aim of transforming the weak diaspora Jew into the new, invincible Israeli and its violent switching of places with the Palestinians.
In a bizarre reversal of roles, the Palestinian has been transformed into "the disappearing European Jew", against whom Zionist Israel practises anti-Semitism.
In the face of Zionism's rewriting of Palestinian and Jewish history, Massad's book stands as an important contribution to revisiting history in order to learn from it, pointing to the role intellectuals should play in society."
Barred from Contact: Violation of the Right to Visit Palestinians Held in Israeli Prisons
Four-year-old boy travels alone to visit his father imprisoned in Israel. (B'Tselem)
Report, B'Tselem, 26 October 2006
"Israel holds in prison more than 9,000 Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The vast majority are held in prisons situated inside Israel's sovereign territory, and not in the Occupied Territories.
Holding these prisoners and detainees in Israel flagrantly breaches international humanitarian law, which prohibits the transfer of civilians, including detainees and prisoners, from the occupied territory to the territory of the occupying state. Israel's disregard for this prohibition is one of the main reasons that the prisoners and their families are unable to exercise their right to visits in a reasonable manner.
This report sheds light on the many difficulties and the suffering faced by the prisoners' families, residents of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, in their efforts to visit their relatives imprisoned in Israel.
Although Israel has the obligation to enable residents of the Occupied Territories to exercise their right to visit their relatives imprisoned in Israel, the task has been performed, since 1969, by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Relatives from the Occupied Territories who want to visit can do so only on the designated visiting days and on the transportation that the ICRC organizes, provided they received the relevant permit from the Israeli military authorities.
Because of the obstacles entailed in obtaining a permit to enter Israel, many Palestinians are able to visit their imprisoned relatives only once every few months. Many others are denied a permit and are thus unable to visit at all. In addition, the visit itself entails a grueling journey that can take almost 24 hours because of the checks and delays.
Israel's arbitrary and disproportionate policy not only infringes the right to family visits, it also results in violation of other rights and principles of international humanitarian and human rights law, as well as domestic Israeli law. Another consequence of the policy is the large number of minors, some of them only four or five years old, who make the visit alone, without an adult accompanying them. The visit, usually held behind a reinforced glass wall that does not allow any physical contact between the visitors and their imprisoned relatives, is a difficult experience in itself. The prohibition on physical contact also applies to all minors, age six and above, that are visiting their parents or siblings.
In light of the report's findings, B'Tselem urges the government of Israel to transfer all Palestinian prisoners to detention facilities inside the Occupied Territories. If the transfer requires the building of new facilities, Israel must ensure that it constructs the facilities while respecting the rights of the residents of the Occupied Territories, in particular their property rights.
Also, so long as Palestinians are held inside Israel, B'Tselem calls on the government of Israel to:
* ease the granting of permits to enter Israel for family visits;
* increase the speed and efficiency of issuing permits;
* take measures to shorten the travel time to and from the prison, and ease the hardships entailed in the visits;
* refrain from imposing a sweeping restriction on all minor children from making physical contact with the prisoners, and improve the conditions in which the prisoners and their relatives communicate with each other during the visits."
Islamic Fascisms?
Inflammatory Ironies
By ISMAEL HOSSEIN-ZADEH
(professor of economics at Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa. He is the author of the newly published book, The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism)
CounterPunch
"President George W. Bush and the neoconservative handlers of his administration have added a new bogeyman to their long and evolving list of enemies: "Islamic fascism," also called "Islamofascism." This wonton flinging of the word "fascism" in reference to radical movements and leaders of the Muslim world, however, is not only inaccurate and oxymoronic, but it is, indeed, also ironic. Of course, it is also offensive and inflammatory and, therefore, detrimental to international understanding and stability.
Fascism is a specific category or concept of statecraft that is based on specific social and historical developments or phenomena. It cannot be conjured up by magic or portrayed by capricious definitions. It arises under conditions of an advanced industrialized economy, that is, under particular historical circumstances. It is a product of big business that is brought about by market or profitability imperatives. It is, in a sense, an "emergency" instrument (a metaphorical fire fighter, if your will) in the arsenal of powerful economic interests that is employed during crisis or critical times in order to remove or extinguish "obstacles" to unhindered operations of big business.
When profitability expectations of giant corporations are threatened or not met under ordinary economic conditions, powerful corporate interests resort to extraordinary measures to meet those expectations. To this end, they mobilize state power in order to remove what they perceive as threats to unrestricted business operations. Therefore, as the 1928 Encyclopedia Italiana puts it, "Fascism should more appropriately be called 'corporatism' because it is a merger of state and corporate power."
While some researchers have attributed this classic definition of fascism to the Italian philosopher Giovanni Gentile[1], others believe that it came directly from the horse's mouth, Bonito Mussolini, the prototypical fascist.[2]
While it is important to identify and to warn against the signs of latent or embryonic fascism in and around the Bush administration, it is also necessary to point to the emergence or proliferation of a number of hopeful signs and forces that are evolving to counter the fascistic tendencies of neoconservatism. What are those counteracting forces?"
Afghan skull abuse rocks Germany
"PHOTOGRAPHS of German soldiers holding up a bleached skull, apparently of an Afghan fighter, sparked outrage across Berlin yesterday as the Government debated the scope of future deployments overseas.
Reaction to the pictures, published in the mass-circulation newspaper Bild, could tip the public mood against further German military missions abroad.
The cabinet was due to hold a special session to discuss the evolving role of the German army in an attempt to strike a balance between defence of the homeland, NATO membership and overseas missions. But the meeting was overshadowed by the images of the German soldiers desecrating human remains.
One picture shows the skull balanced on the headlight of an armoured car.
In another, two soldiers are sitting on the bonnet of a Mercedes jeep with the skull jammed on to a cable-cutting device.
Most shocking is the image of a soldier holding his penis next to the mouth of the skull.
"We are investigating this as a matter of urgency," said Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung.
"It is obvious that this kind of behaviour cannot be tolerated from a German soldier."
The photographs appear to have been taken three years ago. The fact that they were leaked now - at a moment when the Afghan mandate is to be renewed by a parliamentary vote - suggests a political motive.
The skull is assumed to be that of an Afghan, perhaps retrieved from a mass grave.
"This is something that could be used by the Taliban or other groups as a hate device to stir up sentiment against our troops."
There are 2730 German soldiers in Afghanistan. Their mission is to protect the reconstruction of wells, roads and schools and to guard public buildings.
The Germans have, however, been under pressure to do more. But there is a growing resistance in parliament even to renewing the current Afghan mission.
Germans are worried that the missions abroad are brutalising the army. There are about 9000 troops overseas in Afghanistan, Kosovo and Congo - although there are none in Iraq.
For the past 60 years, German soldiers - wanting to underline the difference with the Nazi years - have been regarded as the least warrior-like in NATO. Now there is a new toughness and Germans are not really sure they approve."
U.S. Death Toll in Iraq Worst in a Year
"BAGHDAD, Iraq Oct 26, 2006 (AP)— The number of American troops killed in Iraq in October reached the highest monthly total in a year Thursday after four Marines and a sailor died of wounds suffered while fighting in the same Sunni insurgent stronghold.
The U.S. military said 96 U.S. troops have died so far in October, the most in one month since October 2005, when the same number was killed. The spike in deaths has been a major factor behind rising anti-war sentiment in the United States, fueling calls for President Bush to change tactics.
The deadliest month for U.S. forces in Iraq was November 2004, when military offenses primarily in the then-insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, left 137 troops dead, 126 of them in combat. In January 2005, 107 U.S. troops were killed.
Polls show a majority of Americans are opposed to Bush's handling of Iraq, and at a news conference in Washington on Wednesday, Bush indicated he shared the public's frustration even as he pushed back against calls for troop withdrawals. "
NOW WE KNOW THAT NATO IS VERY EFFECTIVE IN KILLING SHEEP AND AFGHAN CIVILIANS
Villagers walk next to their livestock killed during a NATO warplanes attack late Tuesday in Panjwayi district of Kandahar Province, south Afghanistan, Thursday, Oct 26, 2006. NATO warplanes killed more than 60 civilians, mainly women and children, in bombing earlier in the week in southern Afghanistan, Afghan officials and witnesses said Thursday. (AP Photo/Allauddin Khan)
The Charnel House of Baghdad
The War is Lost, But the Killing Continues
By MIKE WHITNEY
CounterPunch
"There are three things wrong with the current policy in Iraq.
Occupation, occupation and occupation.
More important, we must recognize where we are now in a conflict that is progressively intensifying and will not let up until the occupation ends.
Will we destroy the city to liberate it? How many doors will be kicked in? How many buildings will be reduced to rubble? How many innocent people will be dragged off to interrogation-centers and filthy prisons? How many tens of thousands of people will be killed?
There is no "government" under occupation, just foreign-military rule. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has no power and he governs nothing beyond the walls of America's the Green Zone.
If we are serious about concluding the war in Iraq, we must deal directly with the leaders of the Iraqi resistance, many of whom were part of the former Ba'athist regime. There are rumors that talks are currently taking place in Amman, Jordan between representatives of the resistance and American officials, but there is no solid confirmation of this.
This is what really concerns western elites who, up until a few months ago, fully supported the Bush agenda. The attention devoted to Iraq is loosening America's grip on the rest of the empire, and our influence around the world is in sharp decline. As we become further mired in an unwinnable war; there is growing sense that we may have already turned the corner and are headed for an impending tragedy.
As the criticism continues to mount, the administration gets more embattled and mistrustful. Bush equates pigheadedness with steely-resolve, and remains impervious to reason. He is still in the clutches of his key advisors, Cheney and Rumsfeld who refuse to entertain the notion of early withdrawal. They have already indicated that the recommendations of the James Baker "Iraq Survey Group" will be ignored. There stubbornness paves the way for an even greater tragedy in the very near future.
What happens when the war is lost but the fighting continues?
We are about to find out."
No Winners in This Factional Conflict
No one can predict the security, political and social consequences if the elected Palestinian government was overthrown by a US backed junta.
By Dr. Daud Abdullah
(senior researcher a the Palestinian Return Centre, London)
"Without the excessive foreign interference and meddling in their internal affairs Palestinians would not have got to this stage. Unfortunately for them the age-old tactic of ‘divide and rule’ is having its effect here. A mere five months after the Palestinian parliamentary elections Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert confirmed that he approved the transfer of arms and ammunition to Mahmud Abbas’ Presidential Guard in the West Bank in order to strengthen him against Hamas (Ha'aretz, 6/14/06). Additional arms shipments were received from Europe, Egypt, and Jordan, during the past months (Reuters, 10/4/06). Meanwhile, the US, on its part, sent forces to train Abbas’ Presidential Guard. Some reports suggest that Abbas expanded his Presidential Guard by roughly 70% since the elections and established new training camps for them in Gaza and the West Bank. (Reuters, 10/4/06).
Given his staunch opposition to the ‘militarization’ of the Intifada it is strange that Abbas is now the recipient of foreign arms shipments. More absurd is the fact that the generous suppliers of these weapons are the same governments that imposed crippling economic sanctions against the elected government in Palestine because it refuses to dismantle its military infrastructure. How cynical that western democracies should prefer to supply guns to a starving people instead of food. On the streets many deprived Palestinians argue that if the president really wants to bring money into the territories he is capable of doing it. He apparently has his own reasons and calculations for not to do so.
Not surprisingly a growing number of Palestinians are becoming increasingly mistrustful of their president and his Fateh movement. Instead of displaying the impartiality that goes with his office he has become a partisan to the extent of opposing his own government. Needless to say that it is quite unusual for a president to go against his government. After the events of recent weeks and his poor handling of the crisis with his government many are now viewing Abbas himself as an obstacle and would rather see him resign.
In the absence of any clear political or constitutional means to depose the Hamas-led government the only option left, it seems, is military force. This is dangerous. As a resistance movement Hamas has paid a heavy price for its ideology and practice. A movement that withstood the military wrath of Israel for almost two decades and which sacrificed its most accomplished leaders for its cause would not walk away in the face of agent provocateurs or putschists.
Despite strong denials from Fateh of any collusion with the US and Israel many in the OT believe where there is smoke there is fire. Though, as a movement which dominated the Palestinian political scene for decades Fateh is not seriously regarded as an alternative to Hamas. Not only is its record of governance poor but more importantly it is today paralyzed by internal divisions and disputes.
In military terms, it is very unlikely that either faction, Fateh or Hamas, would be able to defeat the other. Even if Fatah does prevail militarily, it is highly unlikely that this would lead to a political breakthrough. Inevitably the Palestinian people would themselves question the legitimacy of such a government because it would be seen as a puppet of the Occupying Power. This is a charge the movement has always had to fend off since the signing of the Oslo accords. At the same time it would lack the constitutional authority to govern.
Crippling the Hamas government is one thing. Toppling it is another. No one can predict the security, political and social consequences if the elected Palestinian government was overthrown by a US backed junta. Wherever such coups occurred they turned out to be costly affairs that resulted in brutal dictatorships."
CARTOON BY MR. FISH
ONWARD TO VICTORY
Rogue President
by Michael Carmichael
"The president seems confused. After making a curious remark observing that the war in Iraq was placing a strain on the psyche of America, President Bush has become the primary focus of concerns about a strained psyche.
Later in another interview – President Bush stunned America with his pronouncement that he had never said that the US would, “Stay the course,” in Iraq. After recovering several verbatim transcripts of the president’s use of the exact phraseology that he now believes he never uttered, American pundits are puzzled by this expanding enigma enveloping the president’s personal discourse. What will he say next?
From that point in his White House talk, the President veered off into a rambling statement that quite simply defies definition. President Bush said that he would stay in Iraq until the, “job is done,” and, “we cannot allow our dissatisfaction to turn into disillusionment about our purpose in this war,” followed by an order aimed at the American people to disbelieve what he described as, “enemy propaganda.” From that mystifying turn of phrase, President Bush assured his audience in the White House, “I know the American people understand the stakes in Iraq. They want to win. They will support the war as long as they see a clear path to victory.”
America is a young nation, but an aging democracy. While America has suffered through rogue presidencies in its past: Pierce; Polk; Buchanan; Grant; McKinley; Harding; Coolidge; Hoover; Nixon and Reagan – it has never suffered quite as horribly; quite as tragically; quite as fatefully or quite as expensively as it is now suffering under the presidency of George W. Bush.
This conundrum affects President Bush most of all. From the president’s perspective, the world appears to be distorted as if he is witnessing events through a macabre prism twisting and contorting reality into a nightmarish illusion that defies his admittedly meagre powers to discern the true state of things.
That this story was leaked when it was – ie. two weeks before a crucial election - reveals the deep concerns of the Republican seniority over what appeared to be nothing less than a Bush-Cheney plan to launch World War W – by attacking Iran in the final days prior to the dreaded midterm elections in America.
When Kim Jong-Il hit the streets of Dodge City to face off against George W. Bush, George W. Bush and his backers decided it was time to get out of Dodge.
The walls are closing in on the presidency of George Walker Bush. His old enemy, Gerhard Schroder, has just launched his book decrying the Bush presidency. Schroder reported that meetings with President Bush bordered on the impossible as his sanctimonious staff repeatedly assured his guests that the president was a, “god-fearing” man. Needless to say, Shroder records that it was difficult to do business, to meet or to negotiate with such a head of state, one that clearly fancied himself to be a divine right monarch straight out of the pages of medieval history rather than the head of the world’s sole superpower."
'Stability First': Newspeak for rape of Iraq
A GREAT PIECE
By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times
"Iraq is not simply a US electoral issue. It's a human tragedy of biblical proportions. Hence the urge at this point to situate the tragedy in a historical context.
Baghdad had been under siege by the Assyrians and later by Cyrus the Great from Persia. But it was only in 1258 that Baghdad was sacked for the first time by what was then the equivalent of Desert Storm - the Mongols riding their lightning-quick horses under the command of Hulagu, Genghis Khan's grandson. Legend has it that he erected a pyramid of 700,000 skulls out of his victims.
In 1401, another foreign invader, the Turco-Mongol Tamerlan ("Timur the Lame"), devastated Baghdad yet again. In 2003, after the devastation of "shock and awe", came the Christian armies of President George W Bush. From the beginning the comparisons with Hulagu and Tamerlan were vivid in the popular imagination. Over time, Baghdadis - Sunni or Shi'ite - were saying, we will dictate our rhythm and impose ourselves over the occupiers. This is already happening.
This logic of extermination of a society and culture was inbuilt in the process since March 2003. In fact, the systematic annihilation of 2-3% of the entire Iraqi population, according to a study by The Lancet, not to mention the 1 million people displaced since March 2003, follow the more than 500,000 children who died during the 1990s as victims of United Nations sanctions. Iraq has been systematically destroyed for more than 15 years, non-stop. And it gets worse, because for the Bush administration all this death and destruction is just a minor detail in the "big picture".
World public opinion must switch to red alert. The real, not virtual, future of Iraq will be decided in December. The whole point is a new oil law - which is in fact a debt-for-oil program concocted and imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This is the point of the US invasion - a return on investment on the hundreds of billions of dollars of US taxpayers' money spent. It's not war as politics by other means; it's war as free-market opening by other means - full US access to the epicenter of the energy wars and the perfect geostrategic location for "taming", in the near future, both Russia and China.
No wonder: the Green Zone US Embassy colossus has always made sure that the US controls - via well-paid Iraqi servants - the Petroleum Ministry, as well as all key management posts in key Iraqi ministries. The draft hydrocarbon law was reviewed by the IMF, reviewed by Bodman and reviewed by Big Oil executives. It was not and it will not be reviewed by Iraqi civil society: that was left to the fractious Iraqi parliament - which can be largely bought for a fistful of dinars.
No matter what happens in the US mid-term elections next month, this is the post-December scenario: Iraq enslaved by the IMF; Big Oil signing mega-lucrative production sharing agreements (PSAs); "partial" troop withdrawal; relentless guerrilla warfare; further disintegration; open road to partition.Surrealism in international relations would reach new highs (or lows) with the US ordering by decree that a sovereign nation must dismember itself.
Another reading is more ominous. It spells the Bush administration and its attached elites losing control - of everything. And that's how they can become even more dangerous. On October 19, Vice President Dick Cheney once again stated that the only way out in Iraq was "total victory". A recent historical parallel is nothing but gloomy. When the US was confronted with defeat in Vietnam, it did not "Redeploy and Contain": on the contrary, death and destruction were extended to Laos and Cambodia. Baker's "Stability First" might contain undisclosed subtexts.
In sum: a "Coalition of the Drilling" secured by the Pentagon's Long War apparatus. It's up to ancient and proud Baghdad to spoil the party. Baghdad survived and buried Hulagu. Baghdad survived and buried Tamerlan. Baghdad may as well survive and bury George W Bush. "
Abu Khosa’s bodyguard one of the Kidnappers
Gaza - The bodyguard of Tawfik Abu Khosa, the Fatah spokesman in the Gaza Strip, is one of the kidnappers of the AP photographer who was released one day after his abduction at the hands of armed men in front of his residence in Gaza city on Tuesday, well informed Palestinian sources revealed.
They identified the kidnappers as Salman Abu Amra, Abu Khosa’s bodyguard, and Sa’eed Abu Amra, the bodyguard of Mohammed Joda one of the senior officials in the PA chief’s office in Gaza and Mohammed Filfil, affiliated with the PA police force, which is under the direct command of the PA chief.
A source close to the PA government expressed surprise at the news, questioning whether those elements were acting on their own.
Observers did not rule out that the kidnap was an attempt to foil the expected meeting between Fatah and Hamas leaders in Damascus under Syrian-Qatari-Spanish auspices.
The meeting aims at finding a way out of the current political impasse in the Palestinian arena after the PA chief, Mahmoud Abbas, refused the formation of a unity government based on the national document and insisted on his idea of forming a government of technocrats.
They identified the kidnappers as Salman Abu Amra, Abu Khosa’s bodyguard, and Sa’eed Abu Amra, the bodyguard of Mohammed Joda one of the senior officials in the PA chief’s office in Gaza and Mohammed Filfil, affiliated with the PA police force, which is under the direct command of the PA chief.
A source close to the PA government expressed surprise at the news, questioning whether those elements were acting on their own.
Observers did not rule out that the kidnap was an attempt to foil the expected meeting between Fatah and Hamas leaders in Damascus under Syrian-Qatari-Spanish auspices.
The meeting aims at finding a way out of the current political impasse in the Palestinian arena after the PA chief, Mahmoud Abbas, refused the formation of a unity government based on the national document and insisted on his idea of forming a government of technocrats.
If we miss this last chance, then our soldiers will have died in vain
The intervention in Iraq that was intended to make the world safer for democracy has only made it more dangerous
Timothy Garton Ash
Thursday October 26, 2006
The Guardian
"'They died in vain." Four words that are unbearable for the mother of a dead soldier and shaming for the politicians who sent them to their deaths. So our leaders say "they did not die in vain". But who now believes them?
Contemplating the scale of the American-British failure in Iraq, I have been struggling to see if there are any future circumstances, any lines of long-term strategic action, which would one day enable us honestly and credibly to say to the mother of a soldier who died in Iraq: "Your son did not die in vain." At the moment, that seems nearly impossible.
Oh yes, and there's the cost. The Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has estimated that the total, eventual costs of the Iraq war, "including the budgetary, social and macroeconomic costs, are likely to exceed $2 trillion" - that's $2,000,000,000,000. That would be $2,000 a head for each of the world's poorest billion people, who live (and die) on less than $1 a day.
It's not too soon to suggest that the American-British invasion and occupation of Iraq has proved to be the greatest strategic blunder of our time. So what can we honestly say to that grieving mother or father? "Your son (or daughter) died in vain"? Brooding on this, my thoughts have strayed to the Hungarian revolution of 1956, the 50th anniversary of which we mark this week. Both stories started with joyous crowds celebrating round the toppled statue of a tyrant (Stalin in Budapest, Saddam in Baghdad). In both places, celebration had turned within weeks to bloodshed and misery.
Of course the cases of Hungary and Iraq are quite different in all sorts of ways. Unlike British and American soldiers in Iraq, the Hungarians were fighting directly for the freedom of their own country. But the point of the comparison is simply that our judgment of such dramatic events will change over decades, depending on their long-term consequences - but also on our own policies. Given a fortunate turn of history, and if democracies can learn from their mistakes, committing themselves more intelligently to a long-term struggle, even a defeat can be a milestone on the path to victory."
***
I disagree with the basic premise of this comment. The Iraq invasion was never intended to "make the world safe for democracy." The writer tries to discredit the Lancet estimate of 655,000 Iraqis killed. There was no wide-spread rejoicing by the Iraqis initially as he claims. The toppling of Saddam's statue was a staged affair by the US army.
The comparison to Hungary in 1956 is ridiculous. And look at this: "if democracies can learn from their mistakes, committing themselves more intelligently to a long-term struggle, even a defeat can be a milestone on the path to victory." So, the whole thing was just an honest mistake from which the benevolent Anglo-American hegemon will hopefully learn and ultimately achieve "victory!"
This comment is an example of the mendacious nature of some of the apologists for this horrendous rape of a nation; in the Guardian none the less.
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
"I will only leave this house in a coffin"
Palestinian father-of-four Ahmed Salim fears for his family's lives after his father, brother, sister and two nephews were killed.
Report, IRIN, 25 October 2006
(UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs)
"BAGHDAD - Palestinians living in Iraq have increasingly come under threat since the US-led occupation of the country began in 2003, according to a recent report by the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR.
The report said that Palestinians, who are predominantly Sunni Muslims, have become targets of Shi'ite death squads because of resentment towards them for their perceived support of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's government, which was also Sunni and which sympathised with their cause. This targeting has forced thousands of Palestinians to flee their homes, UNHCR says.
In the popular Palestinian neighbourhood of al-Baladiya in the capital, Baghdad, the Palestinian population has dropped from 8,000 before 2003 to fewer than 4,000 now. IRIN spoke to two Palestinian residents there.
Ahmed Salim (42)
"Iraqis want us to leave their country. Militias started to target us and force us out from our houses accusing us of being Saddam's followers. Sometimes I work as a vegetable seller to get some money since I lost my job and my family needs to eat.
"I am desperate and do not have a choice and don't know where to go. We urge the government to look after us. We are Muslims, Arabs and not animals to be left to be killed like that.
"They [militias] killed my father, brother, sister and two nephews because they refused to leave their home and I am sure that soon they will come after me. What will I do having four children to look after, without a job and without money? God bless us, the landless Palestinians."
Umm Muhammad (56)
"They [militias] are monsters, they killed my two sons in front of my house and later shouted saying that we Palestinians are like pigs [because] we rely on what people can give us. This is not human; they [her sons] were the only good thing I had in my life and now they have gone leaving behind their seven children to their unemployed widows to look after.
"I saw the head of my son being blown apart with bullets and in the eyes of those cowards I could see just happiness and excitement from doing that. Justice should be done and we have to be protected.
"We are human and every human being has the right to live. We have been warned to leave our house in a week but I think it will be my last day in life because I will only leave this house in a coffin.""
Stealing the Midterms and the Power of Myth
By Mike Whitney
"“The masses have never thirsted after truth. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim”. Gustave Le Bon;”The Crowd”
In researching the Bush administration’s manipulation of public perceptions, I came across an interesting summary of the State Department’s Philip Zelikow, who was Executive Director on the 9-11 Commission, that greatest of all charades. According to Wikipedia:
“Prof. Zelikow’s area of academic expertise is the creation and maintenance of, in his words, ‘public myths’ or ‘public presumptions’ which he defines as ‘beliefs (1) thought to be true ( although not necessarily known with certainty) and (2) shared in common within the relevant political community.’ In his academic work and elsewhere he has taken a special interest in what he has called ‘searing’ or ‘molding’ events (that) take on transcendent’ importance and therefore retain their power even as the experiencing generation passes from the scene….He has noted that ‘a history’s narrative power is typically linked to how readers relate to the actions of individuals in the history; if readers cannot make the connection to their own lives, then a history may fail to engage them at all.” (“Thinking about Political History” Miller center Report, winter 1999, p 5-7)
Isn’t that the same as saying there is neither history nor truth; that what is really important is the manipulation of epochal events so they serve the interests of society’s managers? Thus, it follows that if the government can create their own “galvanizing events”, then they can write history any way they choose.
If that’s the case, then perhaps the entire war on terror is cut from whole cloth; a garish public relations maneuver devoid of meaning.
Wikipedia adds this about Zelikow which may help to clarify this point:
“In the Nov-Dec 1998 issue of Foreign Affairs he (Zelikow) co-authored (with the former head of the CIA) an article entitled “Catastrophic Terrorism” in which he speculated that if the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center had succeeded ‘the resulting horror and chaos would have exceeded our ability to describe it. Such an act of catastrophic terrorism would be a watershed event in American history. It could involve loss of life and property unprecedented in peacetime and undermine America’s fundamental sense of security, as did the Soviet atomic bomb test in 1949. Like Pearl Harbor, the event would divide our past and future into a before and after. The United States might respond with draconian measures scaling back civil liberties, allowing wider surveillance of citizens, detention of suspects and use of deadly force.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_D._Zelikow)
That was written in 1998!?!
As Zelikow presciently implies, the post 9-11 world depends entirely on “public myths”; fairy tales invented by society’s supervisors which perpetuate the illusion of democracy, freedom and the rule of law.
So, how does this apply to Karl Rove?
There are only two weapons in the imperial tool-chest; force and deception. I expect that the anticipated Democratic landslide will be preempted by massive voter fraud accompanied by some type of “searing event”; that way the fantastical outcome of a GOP victory can be neatly folded into a larger and all-pervasive “myth”.
As we have been reminded many times: Reality no longer matters; only the perception of reality. The power of myth reigns supreme. "
"“The masses have never thirsted after truth. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim”. Gustave Le Bon;”The Crowd”
In researching the Bush administration’s manipulation of public perceptions, I came across an interesting summary of the State Department’s Philip Zelikow, who was Executive Director on the 9-11 Commission, that greatest of all charades. According to Wikipedia:
“Prof. Zelikow’s area of academic expertise is the creation and maintenance of, in his words, ‘public myths’ or ‘public presumptions’ which he defines as ‘beliefs (1) thought to be true ( although not necessarily known with certainty) and (2) shared in common within the relevant political community.’ In his academic work and elsewhere he has taken a special interest in what he has called ‘searing’ or ‘molding’ events (that) take on transcendent’ importance and therefore retain their power even as the experiencing generation passes from the scene….He has noted that ‘a history’s narrative power is typically linked to how readers relate to the actions of individuals in the history; if readers cannot make the connection to their own lives, then a history may fail to engage them at all.” (“Thinking about Political History” Miller center Report, winter 1999, p 5-7)
Isn’t that the same as saying there is neither history nor truth; that what is really important is the manipulation of epochal events so they serve the interests of society’s managers? Thus, it follows that if the government can create their own “galvanizing events”, then they can write history any way they choose.
If that’s the case, then perhaps the entire war on terror is cut from whole cloth; a garish public relations maneuver devoid of meaning.
Wikipedia adds this about Zelikow which may help to clarify this point:
“In the Nov-Dec 1998 issue of Foreign Affairs he (Zelikow) co-authored (with the former head of the CIA) an article entitled “Catastrophic Terrorism” in which he speculated that if the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center had succeeded ‘the resulting horror and chaos would have exceeded our ability to describe it. Such an act of catastrophic terrorism would be a watershed event in American history. It could involve loss of life and property unprecedented in peacetime and undermine America’s fundamental sense of security, as did the Soviet atomic bomb test in 1949. Like Pearl Harbor, the event would divide our past and future into a before and after. The United States might respond with draconian measures scaling back civil liberties, allowing wider surveillance of citizens, detention of suspects and use of deadly force.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_D._Zelikow)
That was written in 1998!?!
As Zelikow presciently implies, the post 9-11 world depends entirely on “public myths”; fairy tales invented by society’s supervisors which perpetuate the illusion of democracy, freedom and the rule of law.
So, how does this apply to Karl Rove?
There are only two weapons in the imperial tool-chest; force and deception. I expect that the anticipated Democratic landslide will be preempted by massive voter fraud accompanied by some type of “searing event”; that way the fantastical outcome of a GOP victory can be neatly folded into a larger and all-pervasive “myth”.
As we have been reminded many times: Reality no longer matters; only the perception of reality. The power of myth reigns supreme. "
أزمة حماس.. وأزمة فتح
An Excellent Analysis (in Arabic) of the Strengths and Weaknesses of Both Hamas and Fatah, and What This Implies During This Period.
Al-Jazeera Online (Arabic)
محسن صالح
"غير أن المدقق في أزمة حماس هذه سيجد أنها من النوع المرتبط بإدارة المرحلة وأجوائها، ولا علاقة له ببنية حماس.
ورغم أنه من السابق لأوانه الحكم على حكومة لا يزيد عمرها على بضعة أشهر، فإن شتى الضغوط لم تفلح في إجبارها على التنازل عن أيٍّ من ثوابتها، فضلاً عن أنها في ممارستها للحكم ظلت تقدم نماذج شفافة بعيدة عن الفساد المالي والسياسي والإداري.
إن جوهر الأزمة التي تواجهها حماس ليس له علاقة بشرعيتها أو كفاءة حكومتها (من بين 22 وزيراً هناك 14 من حملة الدكتوراه) ولا نظافتها، ولكنه يعود إلى عدم الاستجابة لمجموعة شروط وإملاءات إسرائيلية أميركية.
كما يعود إلى وجود طرف فلسطيني منافس وقوي، لا يزال يملك رئاسة السلطة وقيادة منظمة التحرير الفلسطينية وتدين له بالولاء الأجهزة الأمنية، ومعظم موظفي السلطة يتبعون خطه، ويمارس سلوكاً على الأرض يسعى من خلاله إلى إسقاط حكومة حماس والحلول مكانها بالسرعة الممكنة.
وهو يستطيع بسهولة، من خلال استخدام صلاحيات رئاسة السلطة، أو عدم تنفيذ الأوامر الإدارية في الوزارات والمؤسسات، أو السلوك الأمني المشاكس، أن يعطل أو يعوّق عمل الحكومة."
تخوف فلسطيني من مخطط لإنهاء قضية اللاجئين
عوض الرجوب-الضفة الغربية
حذرت مصادر سياسية فلسطينية مما وصفته بمخطط عربي أممي لإنهاء قضية اللاجئين الفلسطينيين في البلدان العربية، معربة عن استغرابها لرفض العديد من الدول العربية والإسلامية استقبال 280 لاجئا فلسطينيا غادروا العراق وعلقوا منذ سنوات في مخيم الرويشد على الحدود الأردنية العراقية.
وأكدت مصادر بالحكومة الفلسطينية صحة الأنباء التي تحدثت الأسبوع الماضي عن وجود اتفاق بين المفوضية العامة للاجئين والأردن لترحيل لاجئي مخيم الرويشد إلى كندا، معربة عن قلقها من تحول هذه الصفقة إلى سابقة يُحتذى بها في ملف اللاجئين.
بدون إجابة
وزير شؤون اللاجئين بالحكومة الفلسطينية أكد في حديث للجزيرة نت فشل كل النداءات والاتصالات لإفشال صفقة الترحيل، معربا عن أسفه لتجاهل كل النداءات وعدم إبداء أي من الدول العربية استعدادها لاستقبال هؤلاء اللاجئين.
خطورة هذه الصفقة المؤكدة، كما يقول الدكتور عاطف عدوان، تكمن في تجاهل الجميع لنداءات إفشالها، محذرا من وجود مخطط موسع لتصفية قضية اللاجئين برمتها وإيجاد بدائل مغرية لهم.
ودعا عدوان إلى إعادة الحسابات مع القضية الفلسطينية وقضية اللاجئين "لأن اتفاق ترحيل لاجئي مخيم الرويشد يهدد بشكل مباشر مستقبل وحقوق الإنسان الفلسطيني في الخارج بعد أن كان على أبواب العودة" معربا عن استغرابه من "ضيق البلاد العربية بهؤلاء اللاجئين وهي تتشدق بدفاعها عن حقوق الشعب الفلسطيني".
وكان الوزير قد أعرب في تصريحات سابقة عن استغرابه لعجز الأردن عن استيعاب 280 لاجئا فلسطينيا رغم أنه استوعب نحو 600 ألف عراقي، مشيرا إلى أن هؤلاء يعيشون منذ سنوات حياة بائسة وصعبة جدا لرفض الحكومة الأردنية دخولهم إلى أراضيها.
كما اتهم حكومة المملكة بأنها لم تأبه بدعوة الحكومة الفلسطينية لها باستيعابهم على أرضها ضمن مخيمات اللاجئين الموجودة فيها، معلنا أن حكومته لم تستطع الاتصال بنظيرتها الأردنية التي تقاطعها منذ تشكيلها.
من جهته تساءل عماد صلاح الدين، الكاتب والباحث في الشؤون السياسية والقانونية بمؤسسة التضامن الدولي، عن سر استيعاب الأردن لمئات الآلاف من العراقيين وعجزه عن استيعاب عشرات اللاجئين الفلسطينيين أو السماح لهم بالمرور إلى سوريا التي أبدت استعدادها لاستقبالهم.
وقال الباحث إن خطورة صفقة الترحيل تكمن في سن سابقة في توطين اللاجئين الفلسطينيين وشطب حقهم في العودة، مشيرا إلى مسؤولية رئيس السلطة والحكومة الفلسطينية والمنظمات المعنية بحقوق الإنسان في التحرك لإفشال هذه الصفقة.
حل إنساني
ورغم الرفض الواسع لمبدأ الترحيل للاجئين، رأى البعض أن ترحيل لاجئي مخيم الرويشد بالذات، يعتبر حلا لكنه غير مفضل لوضعهم الإنساني والظروف التي يعيشونها منذ سنوات دون أن يجدوا الاهتمام المناسب حتى من المنظمات الدولية.
ويرى نهـاد بقـاعي، الباحث والناشط بالمركـز الفلسطيني لمصـادر حقـوق المواطنـة واللاجئـيـن، أن ما حدث للاجئي الرويشد لا يشكل خطرا كبيرا على قضية اللاجئين مشيرا إلى أن حماية ورعاية اللاجئين الفلسطينيين بالعراق هي من مسؤولية مفوضية شؤون اللاجئين.
ومع رفضه لمسألة الإبعاد وما قد يعنيه من محاذير تضُر بقضية اللاجئين، شدد بقاعي على أن معاناة لاجئي مخيم الرويشد منذ سنوات أصبحت لا تطاق وينبغي ألا تخلق مبررا لطي ملف اللاجئين.
ويستبعد الناشط الفلسطيني أن يكون المقصود بقبول اللاجئين بجنسيات بعض الدول التي يقيمون فيها، وهو ما تخطط وتسعى له جهات إسرائيلية وغربية، هو إسقاط لحقهم في العودة. ومع ذلك طالب بقاعي اللاجئين بالتعامل بحذر مع هذه القضية.
CARTOON OF THE DAY
Iraqis Were Better Off Under Saddam, Says Former Weapons Inspector
COPENHAGEN, Denmark - Former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix on Wednesday described the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq as a "pure failure" that had left the country worse off than under the dictatorial rule of Saddam Hussein.
In unusually harsh comments to Danish newspaper Politiken, the diplomatic Swede said the U.S. government had ended up in a situation in which neither staying nor leaving Iraq were good options.
"Iraq is a pure failure," Blix was quoted as saying. "If the Americans pull out, there is a risk that they will leave a country in civil war. At the same time it doesn't seem that the United States can help to stabilize the situation by staying there."
War-related violence in Iraq has grown worse with dozens of civilians, government officials and police and security forces being killed every day. At least 83 American soldiers have been killed in October - the highest monthly toll this year.
Blix said the situation would have been better if the war had not taken place.
"Saddam would still have been sitting in office. OK, that is negative and it would not have been joyful for the Iraqi people. But what we have gotten is undoubtedly worse," he was quoted as saying.
Blix led the UN inspectors that searched for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. He came under heavy fire from Washington when he urged U.S. President George W. Bush to allow the weapons inspectors and the IAEA to continue their work as a way to stave off a war.
Ultimately a U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq and no weapons of mass destruction were found.
The Bush Administration's War of the Images
by Tom Engelhardt
"If this is, in any sense, a turning-point moment, then it's important to take another look at aspects of the war on the home front that this administration has fought so relentlessly these last years and is now losing – the first being its image wars in regard to Iraq and the second, the numbers games it's played when it came to deaths in that country.
So we're now at the make-or-break moment. Here's Kenneth Pollack, former CIA official and a leading proponent of toppling Saddam: "My real fear is that we've already passed the make-or-break point and just don't realize it. Historians in five or 10 years may look back and say 2006 was the year we lost Iraq. That's my nightmare." Another right-winger, John Hawkins, in urging conservatives not to desert the president on foreign policy, writes: "2007 will be the make-or-break year in Iraq."
Given that we've been breaking things in Iraq for some years now, this isn't the first time the image of breaking has arisen. Most famously, even before the 2003 invasion, there was Colin Powell's warning to the president that came to be known as "the Pottery Barn rule": "If you break it, you own it." As it turned out, it wasn't true – neither of the Pottery Barn, nor of Iraq.
In fact, there's no evidence whatsoever that Iraqis "tolerate" levels of violence that would horrify any society. For most Iraqis, life under such conditions is obviously hell on Earth. It's our president who "tolerates" such levels of violence in the pursuit of his policies, so perhaps he should simply applaud himself.
The fact is that the Lancet figures have largely been avoided because most Americans, including most reporters, can't entertain the possibility that our country might actually be responsible for a situation in which almost 400,000, or around 655,000, or possibly 900,000+ "excess" Iraqis have died.
The Vietnam analogy, never far from American consciousness, has been back in the press recently, but here's an apt Vietnam quote that seldom seems to rise to memory any more. Gen. William Westmoreland, commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, offered the following explanation for similarly staggering Vietnamese body counts (an estimated 3 million Vietnamese died in that country's French and American wars): "The Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does a Westerner. Life is plentiful. Life is cheap in the Orient."
It's hard to avoid the thought that a similar attitude toward Iraqi lives and deaths is at work in our government and in the media."
Drinking Tea with Hizbullah
By JOHNNY BARBER
CounterPunch
"In the village of Silaa in southern Lebanon, on the forty-day memorial of the killing of 8 residents by Israeli aerial bombardment, a lunch in commemoration of the dead was provided to the villagers by the Campaign for Civil Resistance. After we completed our visit to the grieving families, we are invited to the muktar's home, to share tea, fruit and conversation. The local representative from Hizbullah joins us. Upon learning that I am from America, he smiles and he entreats me to sit next to him. He asks me what I think and how I feel about the destruction I have seen. The nargillah is brought out and we leisurely smoke and drink tea, enjoying the shaded veranda and an afternoon breeze. We discuss the war, and the role of Hizbullah in civil society. I am told that Hizbullah is not a state within a state, but a state where none exists, for the south of Lebanon has been neglected for decades by the Lebanese government. As for the fighters, he says, who won't fight to protect their families, their homes, and their communities? How, he wonders, are we different from Americans?
This gentleman, his graciousness, kindness, his intellectual curiosity, and his intention of imparting a more compassionate view of Hizbullah to the American public strike me. His young boy sits in his lap, and he convinces him to eat, and ruffles his hair like I do my own boy's. I recognize him as my brother.
This is the enemy my government has warned me about--the people Dan Gillerman (the Israeli ambassador to the UN) called, "a ruthless, cynical, cruel enemy, one of the most monstrous terror organizations this world has known". I am not naïve and I recognize the loss of life "The party of God" has caused occupation forces in Lebanon, including the US military in the 80's, but the denunciations, the casting of Hizbullah as representatives of the devil himself, evil personified, just did not make sense to me as I sat smoking with Hajj and sharing fruit with his family. He was not interested in destroying freedom or stealing liberty; his was not the ideological struggle of the 21st century; he was not part of a calling (his or anyone else's). He was interested in protecting his family and his community from an aggressor who had attacked and occupied his country. He was interested in my views as an American, whom he did not call enemy, terrorist, or evil. He called me friend and welcomed me to his home. He is a human being, and he encounters me as a fellow human being- the result being a discussion and an opportunity to learn of each other- our common hopes, dreams, and desires. We speak of security, and education for our children, we speak of respect and dignity and self-determination. We respect each others opinions, as well as our differences.
In Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, and other countries the United States is viewed as sponsors of state terrorism (yes, the very same accusation our President hurls at Iran and Syria). Each speech by our President, each bomb that drops on Gaza, each checkpoint killing in Iraq, each cluster bomb death in Lebanon, each water-boarding incident at Guantanamo, and each beating death at Abu Ghraib confirm this viewpoint. And we have no moral high ground to fall back on. We are a country that lives by the warped idea that violence leads to peace, a country that lives by the sword. These policies will never ensure our security.
We in America have lost our way; we have surrendered our ideals and lost our freedoms. We have been lied to and misguided. Our president has no use for diplomacy, no idea of the middle way, no idea of reconciliation, no idea of truth, forgiveness, or Love. His sole solution is my way or the highway. I'm ready for the highway. Recently the President has said, "Nobody has accused me of having a real sophisticated vocabulary. And maybe their words are more sophisticated than mine." Perhaps someone could explain to him the difference between truth and lies, freedom and oppression, and peace and fear. "
Israel's Minister of Strategic Threats
Solana and Lieberman: Smiles All Around.
Lieberman Steps Out of the Shadows
A LONG BUT INFORMATIVE ARTICLE
By JONATHAN COOK
CounterPunch
"Lieberman, a Russian immigrant, is every bit the populist and racist politician he is portrayed as being. Like many of his fellow politicians, he harbours a strong desire to see the Palestinians of the occupied territories expelled, ideally to neighbouring Arab states or Europe. Lieberman, however, is more outspoken than most in publicly advocating for this position.
And, as a coup de grace, he has recently demanded the execution for treason of any Arab parliamentarian who talks to the Palestinian leadership in the occupied territories or commemorates Nakba Day, which marks the expulsion and permanent dispossession of the Palestinian people in 1948. That would include every elected representative of Israel's Arab population.
These are Lieberman's official positions. Apparently unofficially he wants even worse measures taken against Palestinians, both inside Israel and in the occupied territories. In May 2004, for example, he told a crowd of his supporters, in Russian, that 90 per cent of the country's Arab citizens should be expelled. "They have no place here. They can take their bundles and get lost." His speech could have had second billing with one by Adolf Hitler at a Nuremberg Rally.
According to reports in the Israeli media, Lieberman has not joined the coalition until now because he has been playing hard to get, making increasing demands of Olmert before agreeing to sign up for the government. His hand has grown stronger too: according to opinion polls, he is now the most popular politician in Israel after Binyamin Netanyahu, leader of the Likud party.
In the newly established post of Minister for Strategic Threats, Lieberman -- the avowed Arab hater -- will shape Israel's response to Iran, leading the chorus threats being made by Israel that the country is only a hair's breadth from dropping bombs, possibly nuclear warheads, on Tehran. After that, he will presumably help the government decide what other "strategic threats" it faces.
So why are Israel's politicians, of the left and right, so comfortable sitting with Lieberman, the leader of Israel's only unquestionably fascist party? Because, in truth, Lieberman is not the maverick politician of popular imagination, even if he is every bit the racist -- a Jewish Jorg Haider or Jean Marie Le Pen.
In reality, Lieberman is entirely a creature of the Israeli political establishment, his policies sinister reflections of the principles and ideas he learnt in the inner sanctums of the Likud party, a young hopeful immigrant rubbing shoulders with the likes of Ariel Sharon, Binyamin Netanyahu and, of course, Ehud Olmert.
But Lieberman, who arrived in Israel as a 21-year-old, was not around for those lessons. He imbibed nothing of the principles of "hasbara", the "advocacy for Israel" industry that has its unpaid battalions of propagandists regularly assaulting the phone lines and email inboxes of the Western media. He tells it exactly as he sees it, even if mostly in Russian.
Yisrael Beiteinu's openly racist agenda spoke to the darkest instincts of the one million newly arrived Russian speakers. They feel little affinity for the Jewish state -- apart from a loathing for everything Arab.
When they return home, they find it hard to make sense of Israeli officialdom's lip service in distinguishing between Arab citizens, who have some rights in the Jewish state, and the "Arabs" of the occupied territories, who have none. Many Russian speakers wonder why Israel does not simply kill or expel the lot of them.
Instead of using words like "disengagement", "convergence" or "realignment", Israel's politicians of the near future may simply call for the expulsion of Arabs, all Arabs.
Lieberman wants a president who has the authority to make major legislative changes, even constitutional ones, without having to make the backroom compromises to keep together the coalition governments that characterise Israel's current political system. The president Lieberman has in mind would be more on the lines of an autocratic ruler."
Not only the right to worship is sacred
A VERY GOOD PIECE
By Amira Hass
"On Fridays of the month of Ramadan, the Palestinians once again proved the extent to which they are prepared to endanger themselves, collectively, for the sake of a shared aim they consider sublime: worship at Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. They walked for hours in order to circumvent roadblocks, they climbed the separation wall in all kinds of daring ways and absorbed tear gas and rubber-coated metal bullets.
Most of them did not make it to the prayer site sacred to Islam. But their collective action reminded the world and some Israelis that Israel restricts Palestinian Muslims' right to worship by limiting their freedom of movement.
The collective daring of the last few Fridays illustrates the characteristic lack evident in the Palestinian struggle for liberation today: a collective defiance of the Israeli policy on restrictions of movement.
This is not just a system: This is a policy no less destructive than the bombings and the bombardments, and it preceded the current intifada and developed under the aegis of the Oslo process. Every Palestinian is injured by this policy, and many Palestinians dare to look for individual ways to defy and challenge it.
The Hamas leadership is better at relying on the Koran when it makes its incendiary promises for a distant future in which Israel will not exist, and on the Palestinian ability to suffer and the potential for an explosion - than at seeking new and focused ways to act against the tactics of the occupation.
During the past two weeks, there has been fresh proof of the importance of collective struggle: The U.S. State Department has complained about the ethnic discrimination Israel practices at border crossings when it restricts the entry of American citizens of Palestinian and Arab origin into the occupied territories. It would not have been obtained had it not been for a stubborn fight being conducted for a few months already by an expanding group of Palestinians and non-Palestinians, among them those who hold various foreign citizenships, whom Israel wants to expel from their homes under the cover of "entry procedures into Israel and the granting of tourist visas." The group, which is called My Right to Entry, came into being at the initiative of one of the people who has been affected by the Israeli policy: Adel Samara, whose wife Enaya, a native of a village west of Ramallah, lost her residency rights in her homeland because she happened to be in the United States in June 1967.
Adel Samara published a notice in a newspaper in which he appealed to people who find themselves in a similar situation. They met and became a group that is continuing to develop modes of action - among the Palestinian public, vis-a-vis the PA leadership (which is not taking any initiative and is devoid of daring and caring), and among the international community (which finds it difficult to understand all the nuances of Israeli control policies).
But for the members of the My Right to Entry group, this is yet another reason to persist and continue a general, not just an individual or one-time, struggle. The sanctity of the right to freedom of movement should be recognized no less than the right to religious worship. "
US naval war games off the Iranian coastline: A provocation which could lead to War?
USS Boxer
by Michel Chossudovsky
"There is a massive concentration of US naval power in the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea. Three US naval strike groups off the Iranian coastline are deployed: USS Enterprise, USS Eisenhower and USS Iwo Jima Expeditionary Strike Group.
The naval strike groups have been assigned to fighting the "global war on terrorism."
Tehran considers the US war games to be conducted in the Persian Gulf, off the Iranian coastline as a provocation, which is intended to trigger a potential crisis and a situation of direct confrontation between US and Iranian naval forces in the Persian Gulf:
"Reports say the US-led naval exercises based near Bahrain will practise intercepting and searching ships carrying weapons of mass destruction and missiles.
Iran's official news agency IRNA quoted an unnamed foreign ministry official as describing the military manoeuvres as dangerous and suspicious.
Reports say the US-led naval exercises based near Bahrain will practise intercepting and searching ships carrying weapons of mass destruction and missiles.
The Iranian foreign ministry official said the US-led exercises were not in line with the security and stability of the region. Instead, they are aimed at fomenting crises, he said." (quoted in BBC, 23 October 2006)
Canada is formally participating in this military deployment under the disguise of the "war on terrorism". The Canadian Navy has dispatched Frigate HMCS Ottawa, which is now an integral part of ESG 5, under US Command. It is worth noting that particular emphasis has been given to medical evacuations and combat medical support suggesting that a combat scenario could be envisaged.
Dangerous Crossroads: Tonkin II?
"An incident" in the Persian Gulf could be used by the US as a pretext for war against Iran.
A war pretext incident, similar to "the Gulf of Tonkin Incident", which triggered the Vietnam war, could be used by US forces, with a view to justifying retaliatory military action against Iran. In August 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson claimed that North Vietnamese forces had attacked US destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin. The Tonkin incident, which had been manipulated, contributed to unleashing a full-fledged war against Vietnam:
"A phantom attack on two U.S. destroyers cruising the Gulf of Tonkin was staged by the Pentagon and the C.I.A. The bogus attack occurred early in August, 1964. That evening President Lyndon Johnson went on television giving the grim details of the non-attack. Later, however, it was revealed that navy commander James Stockdale flew cover over the Gulf of Tonkin that night. Stockdale disclosed that U.S. ships were firing at phantom targets—targets that didn’t exist. The Gulf of Tonkin Incident that drew the U.S. into the quagmire of Viet Nam simply didn’t happen. Johnson, as presidents so often do, lied to the American people. The result was the rapid passage of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which was the sole legal basis for the Viet Nam War. As a result of Johnson’s lie, three million Vietnamese people and fifty eight thousand U.S. soldiers died." (Charles Sullivan, Global Research, January 2006)"
No Excuses
There's no wriggling out of responsibility for the Iraq disaster
By Justin Raimondo
"In the veritable tsunami of recantations and recriminations pouring out of former supporters of the war, from Francis Fukuyama to various Republican members of Congress, there is one constant theme: Don't blame us! Who knew that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction? No one could have known about the rise of the insurgency. Nobody told us!
The only proper answer to this is: Poppycock!
For example, Jonah Goldberg is now claiming that he just didn't have a clue, and that "if I had known then what I know now" he would never have signed on as one of the war's loudest cheerleaders. But of course I personally warned Jonah that he had his head up his ass in a March 24, 2003 column, written as "Operation Iraqi Freedom" was being hailed in the media as a Great Victory:
"Up until Saturday our 'embedded' media was projecting images of Iraqis dancing in the desert, delirious with joy at the arrival of their 'liberators,' but by Sunday morning the edges were already beginning to fray around the official story of a near-seamless 'Operation Iraqi Freedom.'
"The U.S. media kept showing feel-good agit-prop as long as they could. We were treated to endless repetitions of that rather corny image of a portly Iraqi and a bunch of kids bouncing up and down with glee as a U.S. soldier ripped down a portrait of Saddam in the border town of Safwan. National Review's Jonah Goldberg was quick to jump on it as evidence that he and his fellow laptop bombardiers had been right all along:
"'There's every reason to assume that such stories will be multiplied a hundred, if not a thousand times over as U.S. forces approach the capital of the Republic of Fear.'
"Not so fast. By Sunday, reality was breaking through the obscuring mist of war propaganda, and Reuters was reporting the 'liberation' of Safwan somewhat differently."
"For the first few days, we saw only sanitized images of a clean, hassle-free war, amid hints of a winged victory beckoning in the near future. But that is fast giving way to the gritty reality of the quagmire we are falling into. The 'cakewalk' that Richard Perle and his fellow chickenhawks confidently predicted is turning into a forced march into Hell."
America's looming defeat in Iraq was easily predictable: after all, the British, the Turks, the Ottomans, and, further back, the Romans, the Persians, the Mongols, and the Macedonians under Alexander the Great had all been driven out of Mesopotamia, some quicker than others. Why did anyone think the Americans would be the exception?
"If only we knew then what we know now" – that's the mantra we're hearing from the excuse-makers, Democrats as well as Republicans and repentant neocons, now that the truth about this rotten war is out there in the open, plain enough for even the willfully blind to see. Well, I'm not buying it. There were plenty of indications that the "intelligence" cooked up by the neocons was faked, but nobody in Washington wanted to hear it.
Now these same people are ginning up another trumped-up WMD charge, this time against Iran – and one can only shake one's head in wonder at the sheer gall of it. American officials recently accused Iran and Syria of being the main obstacles to peace in the Middle East and, as foreseen here, are not so subtly threatening to extend the war throughout the region. It was all so predictable – which is why you read it here first."
Enter Adolph Lieberman
By Khalid Amayreh
In the West Bank
"Al-Khalil - Have you ever wondered why almost everybody in Israel and north America is silent about the imminent inclusion of the Nazi-like figure of Avigdor Lieberman into the Israeli government of Ehud Olmert?
Just imagine how Jews and their supporters and apologists would react if George W. Bush were to include to into his cabinet figures such as David Duke or Lewis Farrakhan.
Well, we all remember how Zionist circles around the world reacted rabidly to the brief inclusion of Jorge Haider’s Freedom Party into the Austrian government in 2000. Then Jewish and Zionist circles from Sydney to California waged a virulent campaign of vilification against everything Austrian to the extent that neutral and peaceable European country was made to look as if it were a modern-day reincarnation of the Third Reich.
Now, in Israel, we have the rising star of a Judeo-Nazi figure, a vile Moldovan, a little Stalin that combines characteristic Zionist racism with Stalinist brutality, who is about to join the government of Israel, the so-called only “true democracy in the Middle East.”
For those who still don’t know Lieberman, a thuggish figure by every shred of imagination, we are talking about the head of the fourth largest political party in Israel, Yisrael Beitenu, or Israel is our Home. Lieberman is more than just “controversial” as the Jewish and Jewish-controlled media would portray him, mainly in order to evade facing the reality of his fascist-mindset.
He is actually a dangerous demagogic politician and warmonger who advocates ethnic cleansing, genocide and nuclear wars. In fact, the man can be viewed as a Hitler-in-the-making with very little exaggeration.
Lieberman’s thuggish behavior is very well known even among Jews in Israel. In 1999, the former Moldovan immigrant attacked and savagely beat, some say bit, a neighbor’s child for allegedly beating his own son. The affair was publicized in Israel but eventually died down when Lieberman’s star rose, first as a lawmaker representing Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union and second as cabinet minister in Ariel Sharon’s government 2001-2003.
As a cabinet minister Lieberman espoused Nazi-like ideas so brazenly that then Foreign Minister Shimon Peres had to warn him that he might be summoned to The Hague to stand trial for crimes against humanity if he decided to turn his racist ideology into effect.
On 8 March, 2002, the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot quoted him as saying the following during a cabinet meeting:
“At eight o’clock, we bomb all commercial centers, at 12 o’clock we bomb all fuel stations, and at two o’clock in the afternoon, we bomb all the banks, and we keep the border crossings open.”
More to the point, Lieberman’s election platform spoke of disenfranchising non-Jews in Israel, expelling Palestinians from the Galilee, and ethnically cleansing Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza by way of expanding Jewish settlements and confining Palestinians to Bantustans and townships as was the case in apartheid South Africa.
Lieberman also suggested on several occasions that Israel bomb Tehran as well as the Aswan Dam in Egypt.
Now this Lieberman is apparently slated to become Israel’s deputy-prime minister and, more significantly, Minister for handling Strategic Threats facing Israel. Well, would that include giving him at least a partial authority over Israel’s estimated 300-400 nuclear bombs and missiles? Everything is possible in this strange state that is yet to wake up from a nearly congenital collective psychosis that makes her murder children on their way to school and drop 1.5 million cluster bombs in Lebanon, all under the rubric of ensuring security.
It is true that Lieberman is not the only Nazi-like political figure in Israel’s long criminal history. After all, it is really difficult to locate an Israeli leader whose hands are not stained with the blood of Arab civilians and whose mind is not infested with criminal racism. Indeed, murder, terror and racism are as Israeli and Zionist as apple pie is American and boomerangs are Australian.
Nonetheless, Lieberman can be especially dangerous because his Zio-Nazi ideology is given democratic legitimacy. Well, do we have to remind ourselves that Adolph Hitler was also elected by the people in a free and fair election?
Indeed, Lieberman, whose party controls 11 seats of the 120-seats making up the Israeli Knesset, draws support from wide sectors of the Israeli Jewish public beyond his immediate constituency which more or less support his fascist ideas about disenfranchising and even expelling non-Jewish citizens of Israel who make up nearly one forth of the population.
Hence, it is misleading to dismiss this man and his manifestly racist party as a marginal phenomenon in Israel. In fact, one would exaggerate little by saying that Lieberman effectively reflects and represents the feelings of a majority of Jews in Israel. Yes, maybe other politicians, like Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and opposition leader Benyamin Netanyahu, who boasted repeatedly about having succeeded in reducing the Israeli Arab birth rate, don’t speak as brazenly as he does, especially in public. However, it is amply clear that most of these politicians and leaders from the Zionist and religious-Zionist camps as well as the so-called center-left more or less hold the same ideas held by Lieberman, as evidenced from the policies and practices of successive Israeli governments throughout the years.
And now a few words to the Europeans.
It is really difficult to understand, let alone justify, European silence on the inclusion of this Nazi-like figure into the Israeli government.
Doesn’t Europe, which wasted no time in imposing draconian sanctions on the Palestinian people for electing Hamas, realize that this man is a million light years more extremist and more racist than anything advocated by Hamas?
How could Europe continue to have business as usual with a government one of whose ministers calls openly for disenfranchising and de-legitimizing nearly one forth of the population on no other ground than them being adherents of different religions?
Or is Europe emulating the American administration of George Bush by walking in the path of hypocrisy and moral duplicity and playing blind, deaf and dumb when Israel displays her own fascism before the whole world?
Europe should remember that fascism doesn’t become benign when espoused by Jews."
IOF troops arrest 1,500 Palestinians since the capture of Shalit
Ramallah - A statistics report issued by the PA ministry of prisoners and ex-prisoners' affairs revealed that the IOF troops have rounded up more than 1,500 Palestinian citizens, including children and women, since Palestinian resistance captured IOF corporal Gilad Shalit last June.
Palestinian sources, however, expressed fears that the IOA will turn around demands set forth by the Palestinian resistance for Shalit's freedom, and could swap the newly kidnapped Palestinians with Shalit.
Palestinian resistance was clear in its human demands for Shalit's release as it demanded the simultaneous release of Palestinian children, women, sick persons, and those spending more than 20 years in Israeli jails.
The report further unveiled that the IOF troops had so far arrested more than 5,000 Palestinian children and 500 women since the outbreak of the Aqsa intifada in the year 2000.
It also confirmed that at least 183 Palestinian inmates passed away while in captivity due to torture or deliberate medical neglect.
According to the report, Palestinian detainees were confined in cells not fit for human beings under harsh incarceration conditions in clear violation of all international laws and conventions.
IOF troops, the report pointed out, used Palestinian citizens, mostly children, as human shields during their military operations in the West Bank cities in a further flagrant violation of international statutes.
In a related matter, the Vienna-based "Friends of Humanity" organization expressed grave concern over the continued Israeli refusal to allow Palestinian families to visit their beloved ones in Israeli jails.
The organization was striving to present the issue as a human issue, revealing to the PIC correspondent that it was carrying out a campaign to acquaint the world's people with the ordeal of the Palestinian families who were restricted from seeing their relatives for long times.
Chavez bans Israelis from entering Venezuela
"Nazareth - Israelis will no longer be able to enter the South American country of Venezuela after its president Hugo Chavez ordered banning Israelis from entering his country.
Responsible sources in the Israeli foreign ministry considered Chavez's decision as "very serious" as Chavez refused to send back his ambassador to Tel Aviv after recalling him over the IOF troops' brutality in Gaza Strip and Lebanon a couple of months ago.
The Hebrew daily Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported that Chavez's decision will deprive Israeli settlers from visiting their relatives in Venezuela, adding that Israel's decision to send back its ambassador to Caracas was out of the Hebrew state's concern over the Jewish community in that Latin country.
Chavez refused to send his ambassador back to Tel Aviv despite repeated appeals from the Hebrew state to do so, thus denying Israeli settlers from getting the necessary visa to enter Venezuela.
As an alternative, the Israeli occupation government urged its settlers to get the needed visas from one of the Venezuelan consulates in Latin America; yet, strictly following Chavez's orders, no Venezuelan consulate granted the Israelis such visas.
Chavez criticized the IOF massacres against Palestinian and Lebanese civilians, and translated that criticism into action after ordering his country's envoy to Tel Aviv back home indefinitely. The three Arab countries with diplomatic ties with the Hebrew state namely Egypt, Jordan, and Mauritania failed to follow Chavez's step and maintained ties with Israel."
US in Iraq: We're out of here
America signals dramatic shift in strategy, saying Iraq will assume responsibility for security in '12 to 18 months'
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington and Colin Brown
Published: 25 October 2006
"In the firmest indication yet of a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, America's most senior general there and its top civilian official have drawn the outlines of a political and military plan that could see a substantial pullout of US troops within 12 to 18 months.
Yesterday's announcement looked like a strategy change carrying implications for British troops in Iraq, although President Bush's aides deny any "dramatic shifts" in policy. It came after Mr Bush's spokesman acknowledged on Monday that the President had cut and run from his signature promise that America would "stay the course" in Iraq.
In a joint press conference in Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador, laid out a series of political steps that he claimed had been agreed by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, including a crackdown on militias, a peace offer to insurgents and a plan for sharing oil revenues.
The rare joint press conference took place amid deepening political turmoil in Washington, where leading members of Mr Bush's own Republican party are demanding a radical rethink of US strategy in Iraq. They argue that current policies have all but failed, as sectarian and anti-American violence threaten to overwhelm the country.
Coming after the White House formally abandoned Mr Bush's previous "stay the course" formulation for US policy, the appearance by Mr Khalilzad and General Casey seemed part of a carefully choreographed exercise to signal, without explicitly saying so, that a timetable for pull-out - long rejected by the President - was in fact taking shape.
The clear purpose was twofold: to reassure voters a fortnight before mid-term elections that the administration had a workable policy for Iraq and that, all appearances to the contrary, that policy was achieving some success.
But even he acknowledged the timetable was at the mercy of events on the ground, which Washington was largely powerless to shape. Tony Blair, in step with US policy, reassured the Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister, Barham Salih, on Monday that the UK would not "cut and run" from Iraq.
John Pike, the director of the Washington-based studies group Global Security.Org, said: "I think they are saying that Americans are going to be there for 18 more months, but we can start to draw that number down before the next presidential election."
But pressures for a significant pull-out much sooner are intensifying. Iraq threatens to drag Republicans to humiliating defeat at the 7 November elections, while Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina has become the latest senior Republican to turn on the White House. He said yesterday: "We're on the verge of chaos."
A poll shows more than two-thirds of Americans think the war was a mistake. A mere 20 per cent believe the US is winning, compared to 40 per cent 12 months ago. In an editorial yesterday, The New York Times said Iraq could become "the worst foreign policy debacle in American history". Stressing what was at stake, Mr Khalilzad called Iraq "the defining challenge of our era" which would "profoundly shape... the future of the world.""
From 'mission accomplished' to mission impossible for the Iraqis
By Patrick Cockburn
The Independent
"It sounds like a face-saving way of announcing a withdrawal," commented an Iraqi political leader yesterday on hearing that the US military commander in Iraq and the chief American envoy in Baghdad had said that Iraqi police and army should be able to take charge of security in a year or 18 months.
Yet the only real strength of the Iraqi government is the US army. In theory, it has 264,000 soldiers and police under its command. In practice they obey the orders of their communal leaders in so far as they obey anybody.
There is still a hopeless lack of realism in statements from senior American officials. It is as if the taste of defeat is too bitter. It is all so different from that moment of exuberant imperial hubris in May 2003 when President George Bush announced mission accomplished in Iraq.
The greatest American mistake was to turn what could have been presented as liberation into an occupation. The US effectively dissolved the Iraqi state. The five million Sunni Arabs were always going to fight the occupation. The only Iraqi community to support it were the five million Kurds. The Shia wanted to use it to gain the power their 60 per cent of the Iraqi population warranted but they never liked it.
One theme has been constant throughout the past three-and-a-half years - the Iraqi government has always been weak. For this, the US and Britain were largely responsible. They wanted an Iraqi government which was strong towards the insurgents but otherwise compliant to what the White House and Downing Street wanted.
The problem for the US and British is that many Iraqi leaders outside the government think the British and Americans are on the run. Wait, they say, and they will become even weaker. The US is talking to senior Baath party military officials in Saudi Arabia and Jordan who control the insurgency if anybody does. But it is unlikely that they would call a ceasefire except on terms wholly unacceptable to other Iraqis.
Can the US extract itself from Iraq? Probably it could but only with great loss of face which the present administration could not endure after its boasts of victory three-and-a-half years ago."
We have turned Iraq into the most hellish place on Earth
Armies claiming to bring prosperity have instead brought a misery worse than under the cruellest of modern dictators
Simon Jenkins
Wednesday October 25, 2006
The Guardian
"Iraq's deputy prime minister, Barham Salih, was welcomed to London by the BBC on Monday with two documentaries recalling past British humiliations at the hands of Arabs, in Aden and Suez. It was not a message Salih wanted to hear. His government is retreating from its position in May, when it said that foreign forces should withdraw from 16 out of 18 provinces, including the south, by the end of this year. Tony Blair rejected this invitation to go and said he would "stay until the job is done". Salih would do well to remember what western governments do, not what they say.
Despite Suez and Aden, British foreign policy still lurches into imperial mode by default. An inherited belief in Britain's duty to order the world is triggered by some upstart ruler who must be suppressed, based on a vague desire to seek "regional stability" or protect a British interest.
As for Iraq, the swelling chorus of born-again critics are likewise taking refuge not in denouncing the mission but in complaining about the mendacity that underpinned it and its incompetence. As always, turncoats attribute the failure of a once-favoured policy to another's inept handling of it. The truth is that the English-speaking world still cannot kick the habit of imposing its own values on the rest, and must pay the price for its arrogance.
US and UK policy in Iraq is now entering its retreat phrase. Where there is no hope of victory, the necessity for victory must be asserted ever more strongly. Every day some general or diplomat hints at ultimatums, timelines and even failure - as did the British foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, on Monday. But officially denial is all. For retreat to be tolerable it must be called victory.
Over Iraq the spin doctors are already at work. They are telling the world that the occupation will have failed only through the ingratitude and uselessness of the Iraqis themselves. Maliki is only as strong as the militias he can control, which is precious few. He does not rule Baghdad, let alone Iraq. As for the militias, they are the natural outcome of the lawlessness caused by foreign occupation.
This country has been turned by two of the most powerful and civilised nations on Earth into the most hellish place on Earth. Armies claiming to bring democracy and prosperity have brought bloodshed and a misery worse than under the most ruthless modern dictator. This must be the stupidest paradox in modern history. Neither America nor Britain has the guts to rule Iraq properly, yet they lack the guts to leave.
Blair speaks of staying until the job is finished. What job? The only job he can mean is his own."
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
الهزيمة والمأزق
الياس خوري
امريكا هزمت في العراق
فالحرب التي بدأت كذبة موصوفة، تترنح اليوم باحثة عن نهايتها عبر هزيمة مدوية. الصلافة والعجرفة والحمق التي قادت جورج دبليو بوش الي الحرب، تقوده اليوم الي الهزيمة. امريكا تشرشحت والخطاب العصابي الذي صنعه امراء الظلام في البيت الأبيض، فقد كل معانيه. الديموقراطية وحقوق الانسان وتحرير العراق من الديكتاتورية، تهاوت امام العهر اللاأخلاقي الذي صنعه برنارد لويس وتلامذته الصغار. كنعان مكية توقف عن الرقص علي ايقاع القذائف وفؤاد عجمي لم يعد يجد ما يقوله، والي آخره. سفهاء الخطاب الحربجي الذين اتوا من وراء حجاب الكلام المكرر والتافه، لن يجدوا امامهم اليوم سوي التذكير بأن المشكلة كامنة في عدم قدرة العرب علي التأقلم مع قيم الحداثة. كأن الحداثة ليست سوي النهب والفظاظة والاستعلاء واهانة الروح.
امريكا هزمت في العراق. المحافظون الجدد الذين استولوا علي عاصمة الامبراطورية الامريكية لم يكونوا سوي مجموعة من الحمقي. غرور رامسفيلد وجنون تشيني لا يوازيهما سوي الحمق وقلة الذكاء والغرغرة الدينية الكابوسية عند الرئيس الامريكي الذي بدا كالمعتوه وهو يحط بطائرته الحربية علي حاملة الطائرات معلنا نهاية حرب لم تكن قد بدأت بعد. هزمت امريكا واشتغلت عند عدوها الايراني من دون ان تدري، وحولت القاعدة الي تنظيم دولي مهاب، وفرطت عظام العراق.
لم يكن من الممكن للغباء والادعاء حين يجتمعان سوي ان يقودا الي هذه البهدلة والبلبلة. واذا افترضنا جدلا ان امراء الظلام صنعوا اجتياح العراق من اجل خدمة اسرائيل، فان الغباء يكون قد وصل بهم الي مستويات لا سابق لها. اذ لم يسبق لاسرائيل ان سكرت بالقوة مثلما فعلت بعد اجتياح العراق، مما قادها الي حماقة حرب تموز في لبنان، حيث تلقت ضربة عميقة في معنوياتها العسكرية، والتحقت بالبهدلة التي يتعرض لها حليفها الامريكي.
لم يعد يفصلنا عن اعلان الهزيمة سوي الهزيع الأخير من هذا الليل الامريكي الدموي. لم يعد امام الولايات المتحدة من مخرج سوي الخروج من العراق. مهما قالوا او فعلوا، فإنهم ذاهبون من هنا اليوم قبل الغد وغدا قبل بعده. فلقد انتهت اللعبة الدموية بالدم، وفقدت امريكا هيبتها وسطوتها، وثبت ان التفوق التكنولوجي لا يصنع نصرا.
ولكن هل تعني هزيمة امريكا انتصار العرب او انتصار العراق؟
هذا هو السؤال الذي نخشي الاجابة عليه، لا لأننا لا نعرف الجواب بل لأننا نعرفه. هزيمة المحتل قد لا تعني انتصارا عربيا، بل قد تعني هزيمة عربية. وهنا تكمن المفارقة الاستراتيجية التي تجد المنطقة نفسها اسيرة لها.
ان قراءة الوضع الداخلي العراقي، رغم ندرة المعلومات تشير الي احد احتمالين:
الحرب الأهلية او/ والتقسيم. والواقع ان الحرب الأهلية والتقسيم هما احتمال واحد. اذ يصعب تخيل تقسيم سلمي علي الطريقة التشيكوسلوفاكية. بل اغلب الظن اننا امام احتمال يوغوسلافي في وحشيته وضراوته. بل ان الاحتمال اليوغوسلافي قد يكون اشد رحمة من حرب اهلية عراقية قد تكون مقدمة لانفجار الوضع برمته في المشرق العربي.
والسؤال هو عن احتمال ثالث لا يزال غائبا ولا نعثر علي علاماته. لماذا لا يوجد احتمال ثالث، كأن يخرج العراق من نكبة الاحتلال موحدا وديموقراطيا؟
هل ترتبط المسألة بالتيارات الاصولية التي ورثت الحركة الوطنية؟ هل يقود عبور التجربة الاسلامية الي حرب اهلية حتمية؟
قد تضيء التجربة الجزائرية المريرة جزءا من الجواب. نجاح الاسلاميين في الانتخابات الجزائرية قاد الي حرب طاحنة. غير ان المقارنة بالعراق ليست دقيقة، فالحرب خيضت بين الجيش الجزائري والاسلاميين، وفي داخل اجهزة السلطة. اما في العراق فلا وجود لجيش نظامي، كما ان عامل الانقسامات الطائفية والقومية قد يفضي الي كارثة اجتماعية لا يعلم احد كيفية الخروج منها.
الحرب سوف تكون اهلية بالمعني الحقيقي، ومثلما علمتنا التجربة اللبنانية، فانها لن تقتصر علي الصراع بين الطوائف، بل سيمتد الصراع الي داخل كل طائفة، وسوف يكون المشهد كناية عن مسلسل وحشي من الفوضي.
هل هذا ما سعت اليه الادارة الامريكية؟ ام جاء الأمر علي هذا الشكل نتيجة الحمق؟
اذا كان الجواب علي هذا السؤال غير واضح، فإن الواضح الوحيد هو ان التفكك الاجتماعي كان مشروع الديكتاتورية. الأنظمة الديكتاتورية الوراثية في المشرق العربي لا تقدم لشعوبها سوي الخيار بين الديكتاتورية والحرب الأهلية. وهذا سر بقائها الي الأبد . تجلس علي قمة هرم اجتماعي محطم، لا يجد لحمته الا في آلة القمع العسكرية. سقوط هذه الآلة سوف يعني انفلات الغرائز، لأن جميع مؤسسات المجتمع الاهلي تمت تصفيتها علي ايدي النظام.
هذه المعادلة الكارثية تهيمن علي حياتنا منذ عقود، واتي الغزو الامريكي ليزيد الامور تعقيدا وتعاسة. بحيث يجد العراق نفسه عاجزا عن استثمار هزيمة المحتل، لأن المحتل ورث معادلة الديكتاتور ولكن من دون قبضته الداخلية الحديدية.
العراق اليوم في المأزق، ولا سبيل الي خروجه من الكارثة الا عبر اعجوبة وطنية.
هل ولّي زمن الاعاجيب؟
واذا كان الامر كذلك، فهل انتهي العقل؟
العودة الي العقلانية ليست سهلة، لكنها قد تكون الطريق الوحيد كي لا تكون هزيمة امريكا في العراق الوجه الآخر لهزيمة العراق.
امريكا هزمت في العراق
فالحرب التي بدأت كذبة موصوفة، تترنح اليوم باحثة عن نهايتها عبر هزيمة مدوية. الصلافة والعجرفة والحمق التي قادت جورج دبليو بوش الي الحرب، تقوده اليوم الي الهزيمة. امريكا تشرشحت والخطاب العصابي الذي صنعه امراء الظلام في البيت الأبيض، فقد كل معانيه. الديموقراطية وحقوق الانسان وتحرير العراق من الديكتاتورية، تهاوت امام العهر اللاأخلاقي الذي صنعه برنارد لويس وتلامذته الصغار. كنعان مكية توقف عن الرقص علي ايقاع القذائف وفؤاد عجمي لم يعد يجد ما يقوله، والي آخره. سفهاء الخطاب الحربجي الذين اتوا من وراء حجاب الكلام المكرر والتافه، لن يجدوا امامهم اليوم سوي التذكير بأن المشكلة كامنة في عدم قدرة العرب علي التأقلم مع قيم الحداثة. كأن الحداثة ليست سوي النهب والفظاظة والاستعلاء واهانة الروح.
امريكا هزمت في العراق. المحافظون الجدد الذين استولوا علي عاصمة الامبراطورية الامريكية لم يكونوا سوي مجموعة من الحمقي. غرور رامسفيلد وجنون تشيني لا يوازيهما سوي الحمق وقلة الذكاء والغرغرة الدينية الكابوسية عند الرئيس الامريكي الذي بدا كالمعتوه وهو يحط بطائرته الحربية علي حاملة الطائرات معلنا نهاية حرب لم تكن قد بدأت بعد. هزمت امريكا واشتغلت عند عدوها الايراني من دون ان تدري، وحولت القاعدة الي تنظيم دولي مهاب، وفرطت عظام العراق.
لم يكن من الممكن للغباء والادعاء حين يجتمعان سوي ان يقودا الي هذه البهدلة والبلبلة. واذا افترضنا جدلا ان امراء الظلام صنعوا اجتياح العراق من اجل خدمة اسرائيل، فان الغباء يكون قد وصل بهم الي مستويات لا سابق لها. اذ لم يسبق لاسرائيل ان سكرت بالقوة مثلما فعلت بعد اجتياح العراق، مما قادها الي حماقة حرب تموز في لبنان، حيث تلقت ضربة عميقة في معنوياتها العسكرية، والتحقت بالبهدلة التي يتعرض لها حليفها الامريكي.
لم يعد يفصلنا عن اعلان الهزيمة سوي الهزيع الأخير من هذا الليل الامريكي الدموي. لم يعد امام الولايات المتحدة من مخرج سوي الخروج من العراق. مهما قالوا او فعلوا، فإنهم ذاهبون من هنا اليوم قبل الغد وغدا قبل بعده. فلقد انتهت اللعبة الدموية بالدم، وفقدت امريكا هيبتها وسطوتها، وثبت ان التفوق التكنولوجي لا يصنع نصرا.
ولكن هل تعني هزيمة امريكا انتصار العرب او انتصار العراق؟
هذا هو السؤال الذي نخشي الاجابة عليه، لا لأننا لا نعرف الجواب بل لأننا نعرفه. هزيمة المحتل قد لا تعني انتصارا عربيا، بل قد تعني هزيمة عربية. وهنا تكمن المفارقة الاستراتيجية التي تجد المنطقة نفسها اسيرة لها.
ان قراءة الوضع الداخلي العراقي، رغم ندرة المعلومات تشير الي احد احتمالين:
الحرب الأهلية او/ والتقسيم. والواقع ان الحرب الأهلية والتقسيم هما احتمال واحد. اذ يصعب تخيل تقسيم سلمي علي الطريقة التشيكوسلوفاكية. بل اغلب الظن اننا امام احتمال يوغوسلافي في وحشيته وضراوته. بل ان الاحتمال اليوغوسلافي قد يكون اشد رحمة من حرب اهلية عراقية قد تكون مقدمة لانفجار الوضع برمته في المشرق العربي.
والسؤال هو عن احتمال ثالث لا يزال غائبا ولا نعثر علي علاماته. لماذا لا يوجد احتمال ثالث، كأن يخرج العراق من نكبة الاحتلال موحدا وديموقراطيا؟
هل ترتبط المسألة بالتيارات الاصولية التي ورثت الحركة الوطنية؟ هل يقود عبور التجربة الاسلامية الي حرب اهلية حتمية؟
قد تضيء التجربة الجزائرية المريرة جزءا من الجواب. نجاح الاسلاميين في الانتخابات الجزائرية قاد الي حرب طاحنة. غير ان المقارنة بالعراق ليست دقيقة، فالحرب خيضت بين الجيش الجزائري والاسلاميين، وفي داخل اجهزة السلطة. اما في العراق فلا وجود لجيش نظامي، كما ان عامل الانقسامات الطائفية والقومية قد يفضي الي كارثة اجتماعية لا يعلم احد كيفية الخروج منها.
الحرب سوف تكون اهلية بالمعني الحقيقي، ومثلما علمتنا التجربة اللبنانية، فانها لن تقتصر علي الصراع بين الطوائف، بل سيمتد الصراع الي داخل كل طائفة، وسوف يكون المشهد كناية عن مسلسل وحشي من الفوضي.
هل هذا ما سعت اليه الادارة الامريكية؟ ام جاء الأمر علي هذا الشكل نتيجة الحمق؟
اذا كان الجواب علي هذا السؤال غير واضح، فإن الواضح الوحيد هو ان التفكك الاجتماعي كان مشروع الديكتاتورية. الأنظمة الديكتاتورية الوراثية في المشرق العربي لا تقدم لشعوبها سوي الخيار بين الديكتاتورية والحرب الأهلية. وهذا سر بقائها الي الأبد . تجلس علي قمة هرم اجتماعي محطم، لا يجد لحمته الا في آلة القمع العسكرية. سقوط هذه الآلة سوف يعني انفلات الغرائز، لأن جميع مؤسسات المجتمع الاهلي تمت تصفيتها علي ايدي النظام.
هذه المعادلة الكارثية تهيمن علي حياتنا منذ عقود، واتي الغزو الامريكي ليزيد الامور تعقيدا وتعاسة. بحيث يجد العراق نفسه عاجزا عن استثمار هزيمة المحتل، لأن المحتل ورث معادلة الديكتاتور ولكن من دون قبضته الداخلية الحديدية.
العراق اليوم في المأزق، ولا سبيل الي خروجه من الكارثة الا عبر اعجوبة وطنية.
هل ولّي زمن الاعاجيب؟
واذا كان الامر كذلك، فهل انتهي العقل؟
العودة الي العقلانية ليست سهلة، لكنها قد تكون الطريق الوحيد كي لا تكون هزيمة امريكا في العراق الوجه الآخر لهزيمة العراق.
AMERICAN PUPPETS NEED EACH OTHER; IS THIS NOT SWEET?
Abbas walking with Jordan's boy King Abdullah during a visit in Amman on Tuesday.
(AP Photo)
The face behind Abbas is that of his son. Is he grooming him, in the Hariri and Mubarak traditions, for a political career? Is he laying down the foundation of a new Abbasid dynasty?
Ehud von Olmert
By Uri Avnery
"No, the name of von Papen is remembered only because he paved the way for the Nazis to take over Germany. It was he who advised the President of the Reich, an almost senile Field Marshal, to appoint Hitler as Reichskanzler. Von Papen told him that Hitler was just another demagogue with a big mouth, who, once in power, was sure to moderate his views. And anyhow, for safety's sake, all the important positions - War Minister, Foreign Minister etc. - would be given to non-Nazis. Hitler would be Kanzler in name only, unable to move.
Now there is a danger of Ehud Olmert becoming the Israeli von Papen.
AVIGDOR LIBERMAN is a clever person. It is not easy to nail down his views. They are always formulated in a slick and elusive way. But the rule applies to him: When you see him, you will know.
When he came to Israel from the Soviet Union, he already brought with him a racist outlook. He wants a purely Jewish state, with no Arabs. For this, he is prepared, so he says, even to give up Israeli territory in which a dense Arab population is living. He proposes to get these citizens out of Israel, together with the land they are living on. Not a second Naqba, God forbid: the Arabs will not be driven from their lands, as then, but will be expelled together with their land. In return, Israel will annex the territories on which the settlers, one of whom is Liberman himself, are living.
What's wrong with that? The basic idea is wrong: the turning of Israel into a state "cleansed" of Arabs. In German that would be called "Araber-rein". (Actually, it's an inversion of the Nazi phrase: not Juden-rein, but Rein-für-Juden. That is clearly a racist slogan, which appeals to the most primitive instincts of the masses.
The chances of this actually happening are, of course, nil. But the very voicing of this idea prepares the way for something even worse: the simple expulsion of the masses of Arabs from Israel proper and the occupied territories. Without euphemisms, without exchanges of territory, without any kind of spin. Once the fascist genie gets out of the bottle, no power can stop it before it leads to disaster.
The annexation of the settlements will, of course, put an end to any chance of peace.
But the menace of Liberman lies not only in his acknowledged or unacknowledged views. It is imprinted in his character. Witness: he is the sole leader of his party, which is almost entirely composed of new immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Like previous waves of immigration, this is a group of people who did not grow up in a democratic society, and tend to have an oversimplified view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In the past he has demanded the post of Minister of Defense, or at least Minister of Police (officially "Minister of Interior Defense"). Now he talks about a nebulous title: "Minister in Charge of Long-Range Strategy" (translation: the bombing of Iran). But he does not insist even on that. He is prepared to be a minister without portfolio, not even demanding that two or three of his colleagues also become ministers, as the size of his party would justify.
An offer that cannot be refused. Liberman knows that the title is unimportant. What is important is to get his foot in the door and gain legitimacy as a minister. The rest will come in due course.
When Rome was in danger from the approaching Carthaginian army, the cry went up: "Hannibal ante portas!" We should now raise the cry: "Liberman at the gate!"
Ehud Olmert will be a passing episode in the annals of Israel. In a few years, nobody will remember him. Unless he acquires the status of the Israeli von Papen."
"No, the name of von Papen is remembered only because he paved the way for the Nazis to take over Germany. It was he who advised the President of the Reich, an almost senile Field Marshal, to appoint Hitler as Reichskanzler. Von Papen told him that Hitler was just another demagogue with a big mouth, who, once in power, was sure to moderate his views. And anyhow, for safety's sake, all the important positions - War Minister, Foreign Minister etc. - would be given to non-Nazis. Hitler would be Kanzler in name only, unable to move.
Now there is a danger of Ehud Olmert becoming the Israeli von Papen.
AVIGDOR LIBERMAN is a clever person. It is not easy to nail down his views. They are always formulated in a slick and elusive way. But the rule applies to him: When you see him, you will know.
When he came to Israel from the Soviet Union, he already brought with him a racist outlook. He wants a purely Jewish state, with no Arabs. For this, he is prepared, so he says, even to give up Israeli territory in which a dense Arab population is living. He proposes to get these citizens out of Israel, together with the land they are living on. Not a second Naqba, God forbid: the Arabs will not be driven from their lands, as then, but will be expelled together with their land. In return, Israel will annex the territories on which the settlers, one of whom is Liberman himself, are living.
What's wrong with that? The basic idea is wrong: the turning of Israel into a state "cleansed" of Arabs. In German that would be called "Araber-rein". (Actually, it's an inversion of the Nazi phrase: not Juden-rein, but Rein-für-Juden. That is clearly a racist slogan, which appeals to the most primitive instincts of the masses.
The chances of this actually happening are, of course, nil. But the very voicing of this idea prepares the way for something even worse: the simple expulsion of the masses of Arabs from Israel proper and the occupied territories. Without euphemisms, without exchanges of territory, without any kind of spin. Once the fascist genie gets out of the bottle, no power can stop it before it leads to disaster.
The annexation of the settlements will, of course, put an end to any chance of peace.
But the menace of Liberman lies not only in his acknowledged or unacknowledged views. It is imprinted in his character. Witness: he is the sole leader of his party, which is almost entirely composed of new immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Like previous waves of immigration, this is a group of people who did not grow up in a democratic society, and tend to have an oversimplified view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In the past he has demanded the post of Minister of Defense, or at least Minister of Police (officially "Minister of Interior Defense"). Now he talks about a nebulous title: "Minister in Charge of Long-Range Strategy" (translation: the bombing of Iran). But he does not insist even on that. He is prepared to be a minister without portfolio, not even demanding that two or three of his colleagues also become ministers, as the size of his party would justify.
An offer that cannot be refused. Liberman knows that the title is unimportant. What is important is to get his foot in the door and gain legitimacy as a minister. The rest will come in due course.
When Rome was in danger from the approaching Carthaginian army, the cry went up: "Hannibal ante portas!" We should now raise the cry: "Liberman at the gate!"
Ehud Olmert will be a passing episode in the annals of Israel. In a few years, nobody will remember him. Unless he acquires the status of the Israeli von Papen."
World silent as fascists join Israel government
Avigdor Lieberman
By Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 24 October 2006
"In a frightening but long expected move, Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert has brought the Yisrael Beitenu party into his coalition government. The party's leader, Avigdor Lieberman, is to be vice prime minister and, as "Minister for Strategic Threats," a key member of Israel's "security cabinet" in charge of the Iran portfolio.
Yisrael Beitenu is a dangerous extremist party with fascist tendencies that has openly advocated the "transfer" of Palestinians, including the transfer of Arab towns within Israel to a Bantustan-like future Palestinian entity. It has made clear that a Jewish supremacist state is more important than a democratic one. The party, whose strongest base is among Russian immigrants brought to Israel in the 1990s, surged at the Israeli election earlier this year, taking eleven seats in Israel's 120 seat Knesset.
It is dismaying that the European Union, a key international actor, seems set to maintain warm, normal relations with this extremist government, thus giving it encouragement and legitimacy.
"You will understand that we cannot interfere with the setting up of a foreign government. This is a matter for which the concerned State alone is responsible," wrote Cristina Gallach, the official spokesperson for Javier Solana, the EU High Representative for foreign policy, in an email responding to a query about whether the EU would impose sanctions on Israel if Yisrael Beitenu joined the government.
In an interview with an Israeli newspaper in September, Yisrael Beitenu leader Lieberman said: "The vision I would like to see here is the entrenching of the Jewish and the Zionist state...I very much favour democracy, but when there is a contradiction between democratic and Jewish values, the Jewish and Zionist values are more important." (Scotsman, October 23, 2006)
In addition to espousing ethnic cleansing, Lieberman has a long history of inciting discrimination, hatred and violence against Palestinians within the Jewish state and living under Israeli military occupation in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. When he served as minister of transport in a previous government, Lieberman called for all Palestinian prisoners held by the Israeli occupation authorities to be drowned in the Dead Sea and offered to provide the buses ("Lieberman blasted for suggesting drowning Palestinian prisoners," Ha'aretz, July 11, 2002). He has proposed to strip the citizenship of, and expel any Palestinian citizen of Israel who refuses to sign a loyalty oath to the Jewish Zionist state ("A Jewish demographic state," Ha'aretz, June 28, 2002).
In 2002, Lieberman declared, "I would not hesitate to send the Israeli army into all of Area A [the area of the West Bank ostensibly under Palestinian Authority control] for 48 hours. Destroy the foundation of all the authority's military infrastructure, all of the police buildings, the arsenals, all the posts of the security forces... not leave one stone on another. Destroy everything." He also suggested to the Israeli cabinet that the air force systematically bomb all the commercial centers, gas stations and banks in the occupied territories (The Independent, March 7, 2002). And, he has proposed bombing Egypt's Aswan Dam, despite that country's peace treaty with Israel since 1979. What will he propose to do to Iran?
Most glaringly, since Palestinians under occupation elected Hamas to lead the Palestinian Authority last January, in the Arab world's most free election ever, the EU has interfered in their affairs in the most irresponsible manner, imposing a total siege and cut off of aid that has directly penalized the Palestinian population, causing widespread hunger and deprivation. This siege is explicitly intended to force the Hamas-led authority to abandon the platform on which it was elected, or to force it out of office completely. The European Union, under Solana's personal stewardship, orchestrated this gross interference in the development of Palestinian democracy and punishment of those who tried to practice it."
Bending with the wind
By Ehsan Ahrari
Asia Times
"Now, the new operative phrase is "flexibility", which sounds as though all options are being considered, including withdrawal. In other words, defeat by any other name is anything but defeat. This is how the ultimate truth is being spun from Washington.
But the moment of truth has finally arrived. The American people now know, first, that the Iraq war has entered a phase of no return. In other words, they have no trouble admitting that it is not winnable. Second, they also know that the old explanation that US troops would "stand down" from Iraq when the Iraqi security forces "stood up" is a hollow and unachievable slogan. Third, the American people also know that their men and women in uniform are not only being targeted by insurgents (the former "dead-enders" of Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and General Tommy Franks, the predecessor of Central Command's General John Abizaid), but also by other militias.
And fourth, voters are becoming aware that the long-evolving sectarian war has developed a new wrinkle. Now inter-Shi'ite violence is taking its toll in the previously relatively quiet sections of southern Iraq. Finally, the so-called national-unity government in Iraq might be on its last days, since Bush officials are already giving Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki ultimatums from behind the scenes.
Even that highly pragmatic dealmaker, James Baker - who served as secretary of state under president George H W Bush - is hard-pressed to suggest alternatives to a straightforward withdrawal of US troops, which the president continues to reject.
Iraqi insurgents knew all along about America's points of vulnerability and its Achilles' heel. And they, along with the Shi'ite militias, seem to be intensifying their pressure on those points. The word is out in their midst: the United States is looking to get out of Iraq."
Talking To The Resistance
AN IMPORTANT ARTICLE
By Robert Dreyfuss
"In an exclusive interview , a prominent Iraqi Baathist says that the Baathist resistance in Iraq is preparing a major offensive for January 2007, and that as long as the United States refuses to open an unconditional dialogue with the Baathists, the armed resistance and its allies, there will be no respite from the withering attacks that have left more than 85 U.S. troops dead this month alone.
Salah Mukhtar, a former top Iraqi diplomat, says the resistance movement has secured control of most of Baghdad in anticipation of an American withdrawal from Iraq. Many members of the Iraqi national assembly are sympathetic to the Baath Party and the resistance, he says, and many of the tribal leaders of Iraq—both in the western province of Anbar and in parts of the mostly Shiite south—now support the Baathists.
As a leading member of the now-deposed Iraqi government, Mukhtar carries a pronounced anti-Iranian bias as well as a bias against the Shiite-dominated government in power. But much of what he says rings true, and he brings a perspective that is rarely heard in the debate about Iraq within the United States. Too often, the media limits its coverage to spokesmen for the ruling Shiite-Kurdish alliance and spokesman for the moderate, often pro-American Sunnis who have been elected to the national assembly. The views of the resistance are not included.
We expect the first month of next year [January 2007] will be decisive. The Americans are exhausted, and the resistance is preparing simultaneous attacks on American forces everywhere. The increase in U.S. casualties are rising sharply as part of a decision by the resistance to increase these attacks.
The recent mortar attack on a large U.S. facility near Baghdad, which set off a prolonged series of explosions after an ammunition dump was struck, is the kind of attack that can be expected in the future. “The attack on the American base was part of a new strategy to inflict heavy casualties on American troops in Iraq,” says Mukhtar.
Mukhtar asserts that the resistance can easily seize control if the United States withdraws from Iraq. “The armed resistance has finished all the preparations to control power in Iraq,” says Mukhtar, who is in close contact with Baath Party officials inside and outside Iraq and with leaders of the Iraqi resistance.
The middle class collaborators with the United States have started to leave Iraq already. Most of them are outside Iraq: Ahmed Chalabi, Iyad Allawi and others. A second wave of agents are preparing to leave, and some have already left, to Jordan, to Syria, to Britain, and some other places, because the strategic conflict, practically speaking, has reached the point of putting an end to the occupation. The resistance is controlling Baghdad now.
He adds that if and when the United States begins to leave Iraq, the principal threat to the country’s security will come not from civil war, but from Iraq’s neighbor, Iran, which has close ties to many of the Iraqi clergy, political parties, militias and paramilitary forces.
The resistance, says Mukhtar, is led primarily by highly trained officers of the former Iraqi army, and its leaders include both Sunnis and Shiites, Arabs and Kurds, Muslims and Christians. And although it is strongest in Baghdad and in Anbar, it has support throughout the southern half of Iraq, where many Shiites are turning against the Iran-backed forces such as the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr and the Badr Brigade of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), he says.
Mukhtar revealed, for the first time, that both Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have met with Saddam Hussein in prison during recent visits to Iraq, seeking his help.
They both tried to convince him to make statements calling on the resistance to lay down its arms and to cooperate in the so-called political process. He rejected that. But they told him, ‘You can choose between the fate of Mussolini and the fate of Napoleon Bonaparte.’ Later, they alluded to something else, involving the return of the Baath party … And now some Arab governments are pressuring the United States to accept the return of the Baath Party to guarantee the stability of Iraq. Saudi Arabia, Yemen and some other Gulf states have contacted the United States to convince the United States to reinstate the Baath Party as the only solution to minimize Iranian influence in the region."
Coveting the Holocaust
The former Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times and author of the bestseller “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning” takes a hard look at the political capital of suffering.
By Chris Hedges
Truthdig
"A woman of Armenian descent came back with an article about how Armenians she had interviewed were covetous of the Jewish Holocaust. The idea that one people who suffered near decimation could be covetous of another that also suffered near decimation was, to say the least, different.
She was not writing about the Holocaust itself—no one covets the suffering of another—but how it has become a potent political and ideological weapon in the hands of the Israeli government and many in the American Jewish community. While Armenians are still fighting to have the genocide of some 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks accepted as historical fact, many Jews have found in the Nazi Holocaust a useful instrument to deflect criticism of Israel and the dubious actions of the pro-Israeli lobby as well as many Jewish groups in the United States.
Norman Finkelstein, who for his writings has been virtually blacklisted, noted in “The Holocaust Industry” that the Jewish Holocaust has allowed Israel to cast itself and “the most successful ethnic group in the United States” as eternal victims. Finkelstein, the son of Jewish survivors of the Nazi Holocaust, goes on to argue that this status has enabled Israel, which has “a horrendous human rights record,” to play the victim as it oppresses Palestinians or destroys Lebanon. This victim status has permitted U.S. Jewish organizations (the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress and others) to get their hands on billions of dollars in reparations, much of which never finds its way to the dwindling number of Holocaust survivors.Finkelstein correctly writes that the fictitious notion of unique suffering leads to feelings of unique entitlement.
And so what this student, and those she had interviewed, coveted was not the actual experience of the Holocaust, not the suffering of Jews in the death camps, but the political capital that Israel and many of its supporters have successfully gleaned from the Holocaust. And while I sympathize with the Armenians, while I understand their rage toward Turkey, I do not wish to see them, or anyone else, wield their own genocide as a political weapon.
Historical black holes also empower those who insist that the Nazi Holocaust is unique, that it is somehow beyond human comprehension and stands apart from other human activity. These silences make it easier to minimize, misunderstand and ignore the reality of other genocides, how they work and how they are carried out. They make it easier to turn tragedy into myth. They make it easier to misread the real lesson of the Holocaust, which, as Christopher Browning illustrated in his book “Ordinary Men,” is that the line between the victim and the victimizer is razor-thin. Most of us, as Browning correctly argues, can be seduced and manipulated into killing our neighbors. Few are immune.
When I visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington I looked in vain for these other victims. I did not see explained in detail the awful reality that Jewish officials in the ghettos—Judenrat—worked closely with the Nazis to herd their own off to the death camps. And was the happy resolution of the Holocaust, as we saw in images at the end of the exhibits, the disembarking of European Jews on the shores of Palestine? What about the Palestinians who lived in Palestine and were soon to be pushed off their land? And, as importantly, what about African-Americans and Native Americans? Why is the Nazi genocide, which we did not perpetrate, displayed on the Mall in Washington and the brutal extermination of Native Americans ignored? Why should billions in reparations be paid to Jewish slave laborers and not a dime to those enslaved by our own country? "
By Chris Hedges
Truthdig
"A woman of Armenian descent came back with an article about how Armenians she had interviewed were covetous of the Jewish Holocaust. The idea that one people who suffered near decimation could be covetous of another that also suffered near decimation was, to say the least, different.
She was not writing about the Holocaust itself—no one covets the suffering of another—but how it has become a potent political and ideological weapon in the hands of the Israeli government and many in the American Jewish community. While Armenians are still fighting to have the genocide of some 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks accepted as historical fact, many Jews have found in the Nazi Holocaust a useful instrument to deflect criticism of Israel and the dubious actions of the pro-Israeli lobby as well as many Jewish groups in the United States.
Norman Finkelstein, who for his writings has been virtually blacklisted, noted in “The Holocaust Industry” that the Jewish Holocaust has allowed Israel to cast itself and “the most successful ethnic group in the United States” as eternal victims. Finkelstein, the son of Jewish survivors of the Nazi Holocaust, goes on to argue that this status has enabled Israel, which has “a horrendous human rights record,” to play the victim as it oppresses Palestinians or destroys Lebanon. This victim status has permitted U.S. Jewish organizations (the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress and others) to get their hands on billions of dollars in reparations, much of which never finds its way to the dwindling number of Holocaust survivors.Finkelstein correctly writes that the fictitious notion of unique suffering leads to feelings of unique entitlement.
And so what this student, and those she had interviewed, coveted was not the actual experience of the Holocaust, not the suffering of Jews in the death camps, but the political capital that Israel and many of its supporters have successfully gleaned from the Holocaust. And while I sympathize with the Armenians, while I understand their rage toward Turkey, I do not wish to see them, or anyone else, wield their own genocide as a political weapon.
Historical black holes also empower those who insist that the Nazi Holocaust is unique, that it is somehow beyond human comprehension and stands apart from other human activity. These silences make it easier to minimize, misunderstand and ignore the reality of other genocides, how they work and how they are carried out. They make it easier to turn tragedy into myth. They make it easier to misread the real lesson of the Holocaust, which, as Christopher Browning illustrated in his book “Ordinary Men,” is that the line between the victim and the victimizer is razor-thin. Most of us, as Browning correctly argues, can be seduced and manipulated into killing our neighbors. Few are immune.
When I visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington I looked in vain for these other victims. I did not see explained in detail the awful reality that Jewish officials in the ghettos—Judenrat—worked closely with the Nazis to herd their own off to the death camps. And was the happy resolution of the Holocaust, as we saw in images at the end of the exhibits, the disembarking of European Jews on the shores of Palestine? What about the Palestinians who lived in Palestine and were soon to be pushed off their land? And, as importantly, what about African-Americans and Native Americans? Why is the Nazi genocide, which we did not perpetrate, displayed on the Mall in Washington and the brutal extermination of Native Americans ignored? Why should billions in reparations be paid to Jewish slave laborers and not a dime to those enslaved by our own country? "
THE LATEST FROM THE BRAZILIAN CARTOONIST LATUFF
Despair of Baghdad turns into a life of shame in Damascus
Young women fleeing war and poverty fall prey to sex traffickers
Hugh Macleod in Damascus
Tuesday October 24, 2006
The Guardian
"As pressure mounts on President George Bush to announce a significant change of direction to the disastrous military occupation of Iraq, the stories of Mona and others like her are a sobering reminder of the consequences of the other Iraq that war has created: a place away from bombs and beheadings, but where the daily struggle for existence is still desperate, and where young lives continue to be torn apart.
Mona had become another victim of the growing sex trade among an Iraqi refugee community in Syria that local NGOs now estimate at 800,000 people, and to whose plight aid agencies say the international community continues to turn a blind eye.
Laurens Jolles, acting representative for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Damascus, told the Guardian that international donor funds for the agency's Iraq programme have been drastically reduced for 2007, roughly halving an office budget he said was already "totally insufficient to provide tangible results".
UNHCR Damascus had requested an overall 2006 budget of $1.3m but got only $700,000, said Mr Jolles - amounting to less than $1 per Iraqi refugee per year, not including the agency's operating costs and its expenditure on non-Iraqi refugees.
The UNHCR report found that prostitution among young Iraqi women in Syria, some just 12 years old, "may become a more widespread problem since the economic situation of Iraqi families is increasingly deteriorating".
Overall, the UNHCR estimates more than 1.5 million Iraqis are internally displaced in Iraq, including some 800,000 who fled their homes prior to 2003, as well as 754,000 who have fled since. A further 1.6 million Iraqis are refugees residing in neighbouring countries, with the majority in Syria and Jordan.
"Iraq has seen the largest and most recent displacement of any UNHCR project in the world, yet even as more Iraqis are displaced and as their needs increase the funds to help them are decreasing," said Mr Harper. "This growing humanitarian crisis has simply gone under the radar screen of most donors.""
The Disneyfication of war allows us to ignore its real savagery
Statues of canine 'heroes' from the second world war are still being unveiled while the deaths of Iraqi civilians go unrecorded
George Monbiot
Tuesday October 24, 2006
The Guardian
"Most of our memorials sentimentalise war. Few commemorate the horror. But now we have a new category whose purpose seems to be to trivialise it.
Last week a vast bronze sculpture was unveiled in Montrose, on the east coast of Scotland, by Prince Andrew. It depicts a hero of the second world war, wearing a seaman's cap, who was decorated with "the equivalent of the George Cross". It's a bit late, perhaps, but otherwise unsurprising - until I tell you that the hero was a dog. The statue depicts a St Bernard called Bamse, which reputedly rescued two Norwegian sailors. It is the latest manifestation of the new Cult of the Heroic Animal.
The Imperial War Museum in London is currently running an exhibition called The Animals' War. It features stuffed mascots, tales of the "desperate plight" of 200 animals trapped by the fighting in Iraq, and photos of dogs wearing gas masks. It tells us about the "PDSA Dickin medal - the animals' Victoria Cross", which has been awarded to 23 dogs, 32 pigeons, three horses and one cat for "acts of conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty in wartime". The museum resounds with cries of "aaah!" and "how sweet!". War is now cute.
But the emphasis given to animals' suffering in war highlights a failure to acknowledge the suffering of human beings. The tableau in Park Lane carries the justifying motto: "They had no choice." Nor did the civilians killed in Iraq, the millions of women raped over the centuries by soldiers, or the colonial subjects who died of famine or disease in British concentration camps. You would scour this country in vain for a monument to any of them.
So what is going on? What is so appealing about these memorials to the members of the royal family who agreed to unveil them, to the crowds who have packed the new exhibition, and to the rightwing multimillionaires who financed the giant tableau? Why, when the war we started in Iraq appears to have killed hundreds of thousands of human beings, have we become obsessed by the non-human victims of conflict?
I'm not sure, but the last panel in the Imperial War Museum's exhibition offers a possible explanation. It reproduces the inscription on a monument erected by the British in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, raised to commemorate "the animals that died in the Anglo-Boer War, 1899-1902". This was a war of almost unprecedented brutality in which the British beat the Boers by burning down their homes and herding them into the world's first large-scale concentration camps, where more than 40,000 people died. "The greatness of a nation," the inscription says, "consists not so much in the number of its people or the extent of its territory, as in the extent and justice of its compassion."
This is a worthy index, on which Britain would have been placed close to the bottom, unless we were judged by our compassion - or sentiment - for animals. These monuments, perhaps, permit us to see ourselves as kind people, even as unspeakable acts are committed on our behalf."
A negotiated withdrawal
There can be no victory in Iraq. The only choice is between an honourable exit - and a scuttle
Patrick Seale
Tuesday October 24, 2006
The Guardian
"The choice for the US and Britain in Iraq is no longer between staying or leaving. It is a choice between an honourable exit and a scuttle - an undignified withdrawal, probably under fire, as occurred in Vietnam a generation ago. Few policy makers in Washington and London are yet prepared to accept this gloomy conclusion. Some still believe that some form of "victory" can be salvaged. But the facts on the ground are unforgiving. So far the war has killed 3,000 US soldiers and cost the US tax-payer at least $400bn. Iraqi casualties are so horrifying as to suggest genocide.
The US and the UK should announce a firm date for a full military withdrawal from Iraq, including the closure of all bases. Such an announcement would go a long way to meeting the principal demand of the various strands of the insurgency and focus Iraqi minds on national reconciliation.
Iraq's neighbours - Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Kuwait, as well as Turkey and Iran - must all be involved in the search for an Iraqi settlement.
Implementation will, of course, be difficult. It can probably not be achieved without some form of armed force, which has to be Iraqi and free, as far as possible, from political, ethnic or religious affiliations. From the creation of the Iraqi state in 1921, the Iraqi army was the most important single institution holding the country together. It was purged several times - in 1936, 1958, 1963, 1968, and during the Iraq-Iran war of 1980-88, but it remained the backbone of the state throughout. One suggestion would be to form a neutral army council of six respected generals and give them the task of rebuilding a truly Iraqi army from all the trained men at present available, whatever their past.
The US should commit itself to contributing $10bn a year for five years to an Iraqi reconstruction fund, to be disbursed under UN control, and should encourage others (the Gulf states, China, Japan, the European Union, Russia, etc) to contribute too. The vast embassy that the United States is now completing in Baghdad - far too big for America's future diplomatic needs in Iraq - could be donated to the Iraqi people as a university campus."
Iraq: voters want British troops home by end of year
Fresh pressure on Blair as public back calls for early withdrawal
Julian Glover, Richard Norton-Taylor and Patrick Wintour
Tuesday October 24, 2006
The Guardian
"A clear majority of voters want British troops to be pulled out of Iraq by the end of this year, regardless of the consequences for the country, according to a Guardian/ICM poll published today.
In a sign that public opinion is hardening against Britain's military presence in Iraq, 61% of voters say they want British troops to leave this year, even if they have not completed their mission and Washington wants them to stay.
Only 30% now back the prime minister's commitment to keep troops in Iraq as long as is considered necessary.
Almost half of those questioned - 45% - want British forces pulled out immediately and a further 16% want them to leave by the end of the year, whether or not the US asks the British government to keep them on. When the Guardian last questioned voters on the issue in September 2005, 51% backed troop withdrawal with 41% arguing that British forces should stay in Iraq until the security situation in the country had improved.
The ICM poll carried out last weekend, suggests particularly strong support for early troop withdrawal among women and young voters, with 51% of women voters wanting troops pulled out now and only 24% backing them staying beyond Christmas.
Senior defence officials say the total number of British troops in Iraq could be cut by as much as half by next summer.
That timetable, however, may still depend on the reaction of US commanders concerned about the impact at home and abroad of a significant British pullout."
ARROGANT AND STUPID
By Steve Bell, The Guardian
(Click on cartoon to enlarge)
Monday, October 23, 2006
Eid Mubarak Muslims....
Seven Palestinians killed in Beit Hanoun, at least thirty injured: Palestinian medical sources reported on Monday afternoon that seven Palestinians were killed and at least thirty were injured by military fire of the Israeli under-cover forces that infiltrated into the town.
44 Killed in Attacks Across Iraq: Militants targeted police recruits and shoppers rounding up last-minute sweets and delicacies for a feast to mark the end of the Ramadan holy month, the highlight of the Muslim year. At least 44 Iraqis were reported killed across the country.
A Palestinian relative of senior commander Ata Shinbari with his blood on her face mourns next his body after he was killed by Israeli forces in Beet Hanon, north of Gaza Strip, October 23, 2006. Israeli forces killed seven Palestinians, including at least three gunmen, and wounded about 20 people in fighting in the Gaza Strip on Monday, Palestinian officials said. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem (GAZA)
An Iraqi woman holds up the shoes of her relative who was killed in a car bomb blast that targeted a police patrol at al-Nahdha intersection in central Baghdad on Monday. Three people died and 10 were wounded in the blast. Associated Press photo by Hadi Mizban.
44 Killed in Attacks Across Iraq: Militants targeted police recruits and shoppers rounding up last-minute sweets and delicacies for a feast to mark the end of the Ramadan holy month, the highlight of the Muslim year. At least 44 Iraqis were reported killed across the country.
A Palestinian relative of senior commander Ata Shinbari with his blood on her face mourns next his body after he was killed by Israeli forces in Beet Hanon, north of Gaza Strip, October 23, 2006. Israeli forces killed seven Palestinians, including at least three gunmen, and wounded about 20 people in fighting in the Gaza Strip on Monday, Palestinian officials said. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem (GAZA)
An Iraqi woman holds up the shoes of her relative who was killed in a car bomb blast that targeted a police patrol at al-Nahdha intersection in central Baghdad on Monday. Three people died and 10 were wounded in the blast. Associated Press photo by Hadi Mizban.EI's Ali Abunimah discusses "One Country" on Flashpoints
Audio, Flashpoints Radio, 23 October 2006
On October 20, EI co-founder Ali Abunimah appeared on Flashpoints Radio to discuss his new book: One Country, a Bold Proposal to the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. The program also features excerpts from his recent speech in Oakland, California. Listen to Ali discuss the need to break through the current impasse of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and hear his proposal for a better future for all concerned parties.
"Flashpoints" is KPFA's newsmagazine, regularly featuring voices of resistance, education and information from around the world. It airs every weekday at 5 PM PST on KPFK.
Listen now [MP3 Format, 10.3 MB]
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"Flashpoints" is KPFA's newsmagazine, regularly featuring voices of resistance, education and information from around the world. It airs every weekday at 5 PM PST on KPFK.
Meanwhile in Palestine
Israeli troops kill seven Palestinians, wound 14 in northern Gaza: Israeli troops shot and killed seven Palestinians, including three brothers and two of their cousins, in the northern Gaza Strip on Monday
Abbas says Gaza deaths are massacre: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday condemned the IDF's killing of six Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip, describing the incident as a "criminal massacre."
Extreme right-winger to join Israeli government: A FAR-RIGHT politician dubbed "the most dangerous politician in the history of Israel" because of his anti-Arab and authoritarian views last night looked set to join the Israeli government.
Israel Downplays Russia’s Comments on Hamas: Israel’s prime minister on Sunday downplayed the Russian foreign minister’s comments that it was “unrealistic” to demand that Hamas immediately recognize Israel and disarm, the Associated Press news agency reports.
Michael Phillips: Under Occupation: An American who was kidnapped in West Bank shares his experiance
Peace, Propaganda & The Promised Land: This video carefully analyzes and explains how--through the use of language, framing and context--the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza remains hidden in the news media, and Israeli colonization of the occupied terrorities appears to be a defensive move rather than an offensive one.
Mossad angry over British espionage series? : British daily 'The Sunday Express' reports senior Israeli agents arrived in London to view episode of BBC drama 'Spooks' where Mossad agents are depicted shooting bound prisoners in the back
Eight more doctors suspected of illegal human experiments : Eight more doctors from the Kaplan Hospital in Rehovot and the Hartzfeld Geriatric Hospital in Gedera are suspected of involvement in experiments on human beings, Chief Superintendent Meir Cohen, told the Knesset Labor and Welfare Committee on Monday.
Olmert: Our soldiers will be trained to face Iranian "threat:" . Our soldiers will be trained to face all the threats against Israel, topped by the Iranian threat. We have already begun the work."
Palestinian Fatah official shot dead: A member of the Palestinian security services has been killed in Gaza during clashes with forces loyal to the Hamas-led government.Palestinian Prime Minister unscathed after militants open fire on his convoy in Gaza : Haniyeh had just finished making a speech at a Gaza mosque, where he said that his movement would reject any moves by Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas to call fresh elections or sack the Islamist government as a way to break a political deadlock.
Why Israel should grab Hamas' truce offer: Hamas is the only party now in Palestine that has the legitimacy and the capacity to enforce a truce with Israel. Such a truce would likely generate strong pressures from its Palestinian constituency to keep moving in the direction of a permanent peace agreement.
Peace Now: 43% of illegal squatter camps are built on stolen Palestinian land : According to a survey by Peace Now, some parts of 75 of the 102 outposts in the West Bank are on private Palestinian land. The survey, carried out by the organization's settlement monitoring team, found that the total area of the outposts is 16,196 dunams, out of which about 43 percent are on private Palestinian land (6,986 dunams);
Talks Could Lead to Israeli Approval of Illegal West Bank Squatter Outposts: Illegal squatter outposts in the West Bank would get official government approval under a deal Israel's defense minister is working out, government officials and squatters said Thursday.
Furor Over Carter’s South Africa Analogy : Use of the word — apartheid — and some of the book’s content are quickly leaking out, and Jewish Democrats were scrambling this week to limit the impact on closely fought congressional races only weeks away.
Jewish political partisans in U.S.: In their campaigns for the Jewish vote on Nov. 7, Republicans are pitching support for Israel and anti-terrorism, as they have for years. Democrats are reminding voters of the party’s traditional support for Israel but are emphasizing health care, keeping church separate from state and supporting reproductive rights, as they have for years.
Carter Book Slaps Israel With ‘Apartheid’ Tag, Provides Ammo to GOP : As Republicans step up their efforts to paint Democrats as increasingly hostile toward Israel, former President Jimmy Carter is releasing a book on the Middle East, titled “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.”
Meanwhile in Iraq
Iraq: At least 30 kiled as bloody U.S. occupation continues: The U.S. military said its forces killed five suspected insurgents, including four who were in a building that was destroyed in an airstrike south of Balad.
11 US troops killed in Iraq: Iraq's most violent Ramadan ends in bloodshed as 86 US troops killed in first three weeks of October
US offers amnesty in secret talks: AMERICAN forces are negotiating an amnesty with Sunni insurgents in Iraq to try to defuse the nascent civil war and pave the way for disarmament of Shia militias
US 'cannot stay course' in Iraq : The US is not winning in Iraq and will not be able to stay the course in the long-term, a US state department insider has said.
Ike Skelton, who backed Iraq war, now wants U.S. to withdraw: The spiraling violence is "deeply disturbing," Skelton said in a conference call with reporters, during which he called for the redeployment of U.S. troops out of Iraq.
Active-Duty Troops Launch Campaign to End U.S. Occupation of Iraq: For the first time since the U.S. invasion of Iraq, active- duty members of the military are asking Members of Congress to end the U.S. occupation of Iraq and bring American soldiers home.
Iraqi Forced To Drink Urine By British Occupation Forces: An Iraqi civilian detained by British troops in Iraq told a military court Monday that he was beaten and forced to drink urine by his captors.
The Exodus: 1.6m Iraqis have fled their country since the war : Iraq is in flight. Everywhere inside and outside the country, Iraqis who once lived in their own houses cower for safety six or seven to a room in hovels.
UK warned against invasion : On the day after the September 11 terrorist attacks, senior British intelligence officials told their American counterparts that they would not support retaliatory action against Iraq, a new book claims.
Alleged corrupt arms deals cost Iraq US$800M: Iraq's former finance minister alleged in a U.S. television report aired Sunday that up to US$800 million meant to equip the Iraqi army had been stolen from the government by former officials through fraudulent arms deals.
Many military families rely on donated goods: They were waiting for day-old bread and frozen dinners packaged in slightly damaged boxes. These families are among a growing number of military households in San Diego County that regularly rely on donated food.
Iraq: At Least 41 Killed As U.S Occupation Grinds On: Sunni and Shi'ite tribes clashed between Madaen and Suwayra, south of Baghdad, on Saturday, police said. On the Shi'ite side, six people were killed and three wounded, and three Sunnis were also killed
Bloody battle for Amarah a glimpse of future : The militia headed by the radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr yesterday took over the southern Iraqi city of Amarah, recently vacated by British forces, after a day of heavy fighting which left dozens killed, almost 100 injured and widespread damage to buildings
Three million uprooted Iraqis face "bleak future", UNHCR says: UNHCR estimates that more than 1.5 million Iraqis are internally displaced in Iraq, including some 800,000 who fled their homes prior to 2003 and 750,000 who have fled since. A further 1.6 million Iraqis are refugees in neighbouring countries, the majority in Syria and Jordan.
U.S. official admits "arrogance" in Iraq: The United States has shown "arrogance" and "stupidity" in Iraq, a senior U.S. diplomat said in an interview aired on Sunday, after U.S. President George W. Bush said he was flexible on tactics, if not strategy.
Iraqi youth want U.S. troops to withdraw : Majorities of Iraqi youth in Arab regions of the country believe security would improve and violence decrease if the U.S.-led forces left immediately, according to a State Department poll that provides a window into the grim warnings provided to policymakers.
Andrew Sullivan: Iraq is no Vietnam – it's far worse than that: A political solution, the only secure way to achieve peace in Iraq, has slipped across the horizon, as Sunni Arabs, Shi’ite Arabs and Sunni Kurds recoil into the protection of the clan, the tribe and the ethnic or religious family. After each round of violence a cycle of revenge follows.
Iraq mayhem triggers hunt for exit strategy in US and UK : Foreign Office urges talks with Syria and Iran, as militia seize city left by British.
At Least 15 Killed As Shiite Militia Seizes Control of Iraqi City : The takeover of Amara by the militia, the Mahdi Army, was a broad act of defiance against the authority of the central government, which has been trying to impose order and curb sectarian violence. The incident also raised questions about whether Iraq’s militias can be reined in.
Three U.S. occupation force soldiers killed in Iraq : Three U.S. soldiers killed in separate incidents in occupied Iraq during the past 48 hours, the U.S. military said in statements on Friday
Iraq 'hiding true casualty figures': THE Iraqi Government has told medical authorities not to reveal to the UN the true extent of civilian casualties in the country's conflict, French newspaper Le Monde said today.
Patrick Cockburn: Hospitals now a battleground in the bloody civil war : Iraqi hospitals are dangerous places. Policemen and soldiers carry their wounded comrades into operating theatres and demand immediate treatment, forcing doctors at gunpoint to abandon operations on civilians before they are completed.
The End of Maliki?: Will a Coup Unravel Iraq
Former Top Bush Administration Official Calls For Withdrawal of U.S. Troops From Iraq: Richard L. Armitage — who served as deputy secretary of state from 2001-2005 — is advocating a phased withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. From the New Jersey Express-Times.
Are You Afraid?: Watch his haunting observational film that explodes the myth around the claims that the Iraqis are preparing to take control of their own country. Contains some strong language. Flash presentation
White House Resists Major Course Change in Iraq: President Bush will resist election-year pressure for a major shift in strategy in Iraq, the White House said on Friday, despite growing doubts among Americans and anxiety over the war among Republican lawmakers.
Iraq: At least 81 killed as U.S. occupation grinds on: Six suicide bombers in vehicles, including one in a fuel truck, attacked Iraqi police and U.S. patrols, and insurgents fired mortars and clashed with police, U.S. officials and police said. The violence killed at least 20 people in the city 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad. Another 18 killed in Bomb Attacks: Eight people have died in a attack on an Iraqi bank in Kirkuk, while earlier in Mosul an explosive-laden truck was blown up near a police station killing at least 10 people. Shiite militias battle in southern Iraq: The family of the murdered chief of police intelligence in the southern Maysan province struck back today against his suspected killers, kidnapping the teenage brother of a local militia commander and vowing not to free him unless the culprits are turned over, police said. US army concedes failure in Baghdad: American and Iraqi efforts to improve security in Baghdad have failed to reduce bloodshed in the increasingly violent Iraqi capital, the senior US military spokesman in Iraq acknowledged on Thursday. Cynicism on Iraq: A Marine friend just back from Ramadi said to me, "It didn't get any better while I was there, and it's not going to get better." Virtually everyone in Washington, except the people in the White House, knows that is true for all of Iraq. Troops will be out of Iraq in 16 months, Blair tells Commons: Tony Blair set a 16-month limit for keeping British troops in Iraq yesterday as he admitted for the first time that they would be a "provocation" if they stayed too long. Iraq a 'catastrophic blunder': The war in Iraq has been a "catastrophic blunder" that has substantially increased the terrorist threat to Australia, one of the nation's most distinguished former diplomats said today. Paul McGeough: Civil war reveals bankrupt Iraq policy: DEMOCRACY in Iraq is meaningless until an end is brought to the civil war now tearing the country apart. Diplomat lashes out at pro-US stance: A PROMINENT former diplomat has labelled the war in Iraq a "disaster" and flayed the Howard Government for undermining Australian democracy. Iraq: What Does "Job Done" Mean?: The mantra, since the bloody and illegal war in Iraq started, has been: “we will leave Iraq when the job is done.” What exactly does this mean? Why doesn’t anyone ask Mr Bush/Blair what ‘job done’ means? U.S. building huge military airfield in Iraq: Following hints U.S. troops may remain in Iraq for years, the United States is reportedly building a massive military base at Arbil, in Kurdish northern Iraq. Riverbend is back: Iraqi girl blog: The Lancet Study...: This has been the longest time I have been away from blogging. There were several reasons for my disappearance the major one being the fact that every time I felt the urge to write about Iraq, about the situation, I'd be filled with a certain hopelessness that can't be put into words and that I suspect other Iraqis feel also. U.S. Embassy in Baghdad Built by Trafficked Workers in Squalid Working Conditions: One longtime supervisor claims that 50 to 60 percent of the laborers regularly complain that First Kuwaiti “treats them like animals,” and routinely reduces their promised pay with confusing and unexplained deductions. |
A documentary film by John Pilger
Paying The Price: Killing The Children Of Iraq: Sanctions enforced by the UN on Iraq since the Gulf War have killed more people than the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945, including over half a million children - many of whom weren't even born when the Gulf War began. Click to watch
Former CIA Insider Blasts Bush
Tells People at Church Conference that Lies Led to War in Iraq
by Michael Yoder
"Ray McGovern has seen the inner workings of the intelligence world and believes the United States is in desperate need of rediscovering its morality.
The former CIA intelligence officer and Iraq War critic addressed the audience at Lancaster Church of the Brethren Sunday afternoon as the feature speaker at the Lancaster Interchurch Peace Witness Fall Forum.
His speech, "Prospects for a Moral U.S. Policy in the Middle East," focused on the ethical dilemmas facing the American public and lawmakers and ways to use faith to point the country's moral compass back in the right direction.
McGovern's group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, has spent the last three years lobbying the Bush administration to admit to what it calls the "lies" that led to the Iraq War.
He said the current presidential administration is in need of a "sanity check," a term he said goes back to his days at the CIA, when analysts consulted with each other to find the truth.
"Prevarication, disingenuousness, untruthfulness -- they won't do anymore," McGovern said. "We need to call lies 'lies.'"
McGovern spent 27 years as an analyst in the CIA, preparing the daily security briefs for the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations in the 1980s.
He said he was drawn to the CIA as a group that gave "straight talk with honest answers" to policy-makers. He said the quote enshrined on the floor of the CIA's entrance, "You shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free," is a motto he tried to live.
But now the intelligence community has taken a "faith-based approach" to data about threats, McGovern said.
McGovern said the cowardice of Congress has brought it to passing the Military Commission Act, describing it as the "enabling act," ending habeas corpus for people deemed "enemy combatants" and permitting the use of torture methods.
He said now is the time to go out of the way to do something to bring back morality and that most Americans have been reluctant to go out and risk something to make a difference.
"If there's nothing for which you'd risk that neck, then it has become your idol," McGovern said. "And necks are not worthy of idol worship." "
لقاء مرتقب بين عباس وبيرتس وإشارات إلى تحضيرات انقلابية
الناصرة - المركز الفلسطيني للإعلام
قالت مصادر إعلامية عبرية إنّ محمود عباس، رئيس السلطة الفلسطينية، اتفق مع عامير بيرتس، وزير الحرب الصهيوني، على عقد لقاء رسمي بينهما في الفترة القريبة المقبلة، لبحث الأوضاع في الأراضي الفلسطينية.
وبحسب ما أوردته الإذاعة العبرية؛ فإنّ هذا الاتفاق توصل إليه الجانبان خلال اتصال هاتفي أجراه بيرتس الاثنين (23/10) مع محمود عباس، حيث أكد بيرتس ضرورة بذل كل جهد مستطاع من أجل الخروج من ما سماه "المأزق السياسي"، مشيراً إلى أنّ إعادة الجندي الصهيوني جلعاد شاليط من شأنها أن تفسح المجال أمام تحقيق تقدم سياسي.
وكانت مصادر مقربة من حركة "فتح" بالضفة الغربية، قد تحدثت عن أنّ الأوامر قد صدرت إلى قادة ومنتسبي الأجهزة الأمنية الفلسطينية، للشروع بتنفيذ مخطط للانقلاب بالقوة على الحكومة الفلسطينية الحالية، والتي تقودها حركة حماس"، بدءاً من يوم السبت القادم.
وذكرت المصادر أنّ محمود عباس سيلتقي بعد 48 ساعة من السيطرة على المؤسسات التابعة للحكومة الفلسطينية في الضفة الغربية بالقوة، مع رئيس الوزراء الصهيوني أيهود أولمرت، وسيتم خلال اللقاء الإعلان عن إفراج الاحتلال عن الأموال الفلسطينية المحتجزة، من أجل محاولة امتصاص غضب الشعب الفلسطيني، وتبرير ما جرى من انقلاب، وإقناع الرأي العام الفلسطيني بـ "أهمية" هذه الخطوة الانقلابية "لإنهاء معاناتهم"، حسب ما ورد.
CARTOON OF THE DAY
By Mike Keefe, The Denver Post
(Click on cartoon to enlarge)
The End of Maliki? Will a Coup Unravel Iraq? Robert Dreyfuss and Raed Jarrar Discuss the War in Iraq
DemocracyNow!
With Amy Goodman
"On Saturday, President Bush met with Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and top U.S. commanders including General John Abizaid and General George Casey to discuss Iraq. The meeting came amid reports the US is losing confidence in Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki"s ability or willingness to stem the violence.
President Bush said his weekly radio address the US strategy in Iraq remained unchanged. He said "We will not pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete." But the New York Times reported on Sunday the Bush administration is for the first time drafting a timetable for the Iraqi government to address violence and assume a larger role in securing the country. According to the Times, officials said that Iraq would likely be asked to agree to a schedule of specific milestones, like disarming militias, or face political "penalties."
Some analysts say the plan is also an attempt to pre-empt the findings of the independent commission on Iraq led by former secretary of state James Baker. In an interview with President Bush this weekend, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked about Baker’s plan to develop a strategy for Iraq that is “between ’stay the course’ and ‘cut and run.’” Bush responded, "We’ve never been stay the course, George."
Robert Dreyfuss joins me now from Washington DC. He has written extensively about Iraq for numerous publications and is author of the book, "Devil”s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam." I am also joined by Iraqi blogger and architect Raed Jarrar. He is the Iraq Project Director for Global Exchange and runs a blog called "Raed in the Middle."
AMY GOODMAN: You have written a very interesting piece about the possibility that Maliki could be forced out and that there could be a coup that would unravel Iraq. Can you lay out the evidence and what is supporting your argument?
ROBERT DREYFUSS: Well, you know, last week we saw the extraordinary development where Prime Minister Maliki called President Bush on the phone and asked him for reassurances that he was not going to be ousted. This is the same Iraqi prime minister who came to office just a few months ago, again, after months of wrangling, following last December's elections. He came to office with great acclaim that he was going to be the salvation force who would bring order and stability and political reconciliation to Iraq, and of course, he has totally and utterly failed.
I think everybody across the political spectrum knows that the Iraqi government has no power outside the Green Zone. It’s really a coalition of militias and paramilitary gangs that supports the current government in Baghdad. And asking Maliki to crack down on the militias is truly asking the fox to guard the henhouse, because it’s those exact militias that support his government and make up the main force of his police and paramilitary units. Even the Iraqi army is made up, to a certain extent, lesser than the police and Interior Ministry forces, of those same militias: the peshmurga Kurds and many of the Shiite forces. So, of course, it’s a nonstarter to even think that Maliki could crack down on these militia forces.
So that asks the question, what does it mean when we hear all these warnings that Maliki has only two or three months -- and these are warnings coming from everybody, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and generals in Iraq and leading senators and so forth -- that he has only two months or so to right the ship in Iraq? It can’t be righted. It’s virtually a hopeless situation. And so, now there are rumors all over the place, in Washington, in Baghdad, in other places, that there are forces trying to come up with a non-democratic solution, some sort of coup d'etat, some sort of military takeover that would oust the elected government. It could be done under a constitutional fig leaf, let's say, if Maliki were to resign in favor of some junta of national salvation. It could be done in the middle of the night by some enterprising colonel or general, where the United States would look the other way.
I don’t think any of this could happen without American support, but I do know that there are a number of people inside the Baker commission, within the U.S. government, in the CIA and elsewhere, who are thinking about this. And just the other day, I spoke to Salah al-Mukhtar, who is a Baathist and former Iraqi official, who said that there are rumors all over Jordan that the CIA has been going around looking -- the military going around looking for a general or two, who could take over in the event of a coup d'etat in Baghdad.
I think the idea that the reason this makes it tempting -- and, you know, desperate times sometimes can call for desperate measures -- it’s tempting because it seems like a cut-the-Gordian-knot-type of solution, where you sweep in with some strongman army guy, who could then use, I guess, the main force of the Iraqi army to crack down on some of these Shiite death squads and others.
It raises, though, far more questions than it would answer. I don’t think it would be a good solution, by any means, tempting though it is for, I’m sure, many people in the U.S. military and in the CIA, especially in the realist camp, the people who are frustrated and angry at the way Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and Ambassador Khalilzad have handled the war in Iraq over the past couple of years. They’re looking for some sort of solution that would work, and I think they’re at least considering this as maybe the least bad one of the many horrible options that they have for Iraq, short of leaving, just, you know, so-called “cutting and running,” which is increasingly, I think, really the only logical choice that’s facing the United States."
Read the Transcript of the Rest of Today's interview
Israel's Cluster Bomb War
"What We Did Was Insane and Monstrous"
By SAREE MAKDISI
CounterPunch
(Saree Makdisi, a professor of English at UCLA, is the author of Romantic Imperialism: Universal Empire and the Culture of Modernity (Cambridge University Press, 1998) and William Blake and the Impossible History of the 1790s (University of Chicago Press, 2003))
"Of all the statistics to emerge from Israel's recent war on Lebanon, the most shocking concerns the number of cluster bombs that Israel dropped on or fired into Lebanon.
About 40 percent of the bomblets dropped by Israel (many of which were American-made) did not explode in the air or on impact with the ground. They now detonate when someone disturbs them--a soldier, a farmer, a shepherd, a child attracted by the lure of a shiny metal object.
Cluster bombs are, by definition, inaccurate weapons that are designed to affect a very wide area unpredictably. If they do not discriminate between civilian and military targets when they are dropped, they certainly do not discriminate in the months and years after the end of hostilities, when they go on killing and maiming anyone who happens upon them.
Since then, the true dimensions of the problem have become even clearer: 770 cluster-bomb sites have now been identified. And the current U.N. estimate is that Israel dropped between 2 million and 3 million bomblets on Lebanon, of which up to a million have yet to explode.
Israeli officials said this was a war against Hezbollah, that Hezbollah was hiding in the midst of the population. But this wasn't a war against Hezbollah. It was a war to punish the entire population for its support of the guerrillas.
Not only was Hezbollah not hiding behind civilians, it ought to be obvious that the violence was directed in the first instance at the civilians themselves. To direct such violence at one community, one religious group, one minority--and to deny them the ability to return safely home--was what this war was all about.
To drop two or three bomblets for every man, woman and child in southern Lebanon--after having wiped out their homes, smashed their communities, destroyed their livelihoods--is to wage war against them all."
AND THEN THEY BECAME 2,800
Body bag number 2,800 will be arriving home soon. Here are the numbers; but the Decider was not thinking of these when he roared, "bring it on!" Well, the Iraqi resistance has obliged. It will continue to bring it on and on and on until the US occupation ends.
US troops killed in Iraq------2,800
"Coalition" troops killed-----3,038
US troops wounded---------21,086
So far this month, 87 US soldiers have been killed.
The End of Maliki?
Will a Coup Unravel Iraq?
By Robert Dreyfuss
By Robert Dreyfuss
The clock is ticking for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the hapless, feckless leader of the Shi'ite fundamentalist party al-Dawa. From Washington, London, Baghdad, and other capitals come rumors that Maliki's government will soon be overthrown by a nationalist general or colonel or that he will resign in favor of an emergency "government of national salvation."
A coup d'état in Iraq would put a period – or rather an exclamation point – at the end of the Bush administration's bungled experiment with democracy there. And it would open an entirely new phase in that country's post-2003 national nightmare. Would it result in the creation of a Saddam-like strongman to rule Iraq with a heavy hand? Or would it force the warring parties (Sunni insurgents, Iranian-backed Shi'ite militias, and Kurdish warlords) to intensify the bloody civil war that is tearing Iraq apart? No one knows.
As the carnage in Iraq reaches new heights of barbarism, what's clear is the utter uselessness of Maliki's government. It is simply incapable of staunching the bloodletting. Despite weeks of blunt warnings from U.S. officials that time was running out for him, on Sunday the prime minister announced yet again that efforts to disarm Iraq's militias would be postponed. "The initial date we've set for disbanding the militias is the end of this year or the beginning of next year," he said, according to USA Today. Still, whatever form it might take, a coup d'état stands an excellent chance of making a horrible situation worse. Rather than toy with yet another misstep, the capstone in a seemingly endless series of errors in Iraq, the Bush administration – including the increasingly powerful "realist," anti-neoconservative policy types now emerging in Washington – would do far better to start planning for a quick exit.
Despite the bloodbath fears that are constantly raised about an Iraq without American troops, a U.S. exit need not consign that country to years of Rwanda-style ethnic slaughter or a Congo-style civil war. Even as it leaves, there are plenty of things the United States could do to ameliorate the state of post-occupation Iraq, including beginning real negotiations with the Iraqi resistance and launching diplomatic efforts to get neighboring countries, especially Iran and Syria, to stay out of the conflict.
Even though a military coup might seem to some desperate policymakers a tempting option, it's one of those quicksand ideas. In a paper just written for the Middle East Institute, the sagacious Wayne White – who headed the State Department's intelligence effort on Iraq until last year – specifically warns that it's time for the United States to "back off" in Iraq:
"A series of apparent U.S. ultimatums and veiled political threats aimed at the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in recent weeks – especially Maliki himself – is but the latest example of excessive U.S. involvement in the Iraqi political process.
"[But] it is time that setting the overall direction of Iraqi politics must be left to Iraqis, for better or worse. Washington must recognize that it cannot orchestrate political success in that tortured land through still more heavy-handed political tampering. And stepping back from the Iraqi political fray is a prerequisite for any overall exit strategy."
Is a Coup in the Cards?
I first raised the possibility of a coup d'etat in an October 6 column, "Coup in Iraq?" for TomPaine.com. It followed a drumbeat of comments and statements from Bush administration officials, U.S. military officers, Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner, and former Rep. Lee Hamilton – co-chairman with James A. Baker III of the Iraq Study Group – all of whom warned Maliki ominously that he had only a matter or weeks or months to get a handle on Iraq's paramilitary armies, militias, and death squads. The consequences for the prime minister of failing to do so were left unsaid, but the warnings were so explicit that Maliki spoke to George W. Bush this week about how he should interpret the barrage of deadline-like statements, and the president replied, according to spokesman Tony Snow, "Don't worry, you have our full support." (Think: Heck of a job, Maliki!) In fact, whatever consoling words the president might have had for him, the Iraqi Prime Minister has almost no reservoir of support left either in Washington or among U.S. military commanders in Iraq.
Over the weekend, rumors began to fly thick and fast. In a piece headlined "Iraqis Call for Five-Man Junta to End the Anarchy," Marie Colvin wrote in the Sunday Times of London:
"Iraq's fragile democracy, weakened by mounting chaos and a rapidly rising death toll, is being challenged by calls for the formation of a hard-line 'government of national salvation.'
"The proposal, which is being widely discussed in political and intelligence circles in Baghdad, is to replace the Shi'ite-led government of Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, with a regime capable of imposing order and confronting the sectarian militias leading the country to the brink of civil war. Dr. Saleh al-Mutlaq, a prominent Sunni politician, traveled to Arab capitals last week seeking support for the replacement of the present government with a group of five strongmen who would impose martial law and either dissolve parliament or halt its participation in day-to-day government."
Mutlaq, who is sympathetic to, if not affiliated with, the Iraqi resistance and its former Ba'athist leaders, explicitly called for Maliki to step down.
Colvin quoted Anthony Cordesman, an uber-realist, conservative U.S. military analyst, claiming that there is a "very real possibility" Maliki will be toppled. "There could be a change in government, done in a backroom, which could see a general brought in to run the ministry of defense or the interior."
David Ignatius – an exceedingly well-connected reporter at the Washington Post – wrote a column on October 13 citing Mutlaq as well, and suggesting that Iraq's own intelligence service (created, funded, and run by the CIA) is involved:
"The coup rumors come from several directions. U.S. officials have received reports that a prominent Sunni politician, Saleh al-Mutlaq, visited Arab capitals over the summer and promoted the idea of a national salvation government, suggesting, erroneously, that it would have American support. Meanwhile, top officials of the Iraqi intelligence service have discussed a plan in which Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki would step aside in favor of a five-man ruling commission that would suspend parliament, declare martial law and call back some officers of the old Iraqi army.
"Frustration with Maliki's Shi'ite-led government is strongest among Iraq's Sunni minority, which dominated the old regime of Saddam Hussein. But as sectarian violence has increased, the disillusionment has spread to some prominent Shi'ite and Kurdish politicians as well. Some are said to support the junta-like commission, which would represent the country's main factions and include former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi – still seen by some Iraqis as a potential 'strongman' who could pull the country back from the brink."
To be sure, Allawi – in London – denied any reports in an interview with Newsweek that he is involved in plotting a coup d'état. "Total nonsense. To plot a coup, I don't sit in London," huffed Allawi, a long-time asset of the CIA and British intelligence. "I would be sitting in Baghdad trying to make a coup."
Allawi's denials aside, when I spoke to a former CIA officer with wide experience in the Middle East, far from pooh-poohing the idea he had this to say:
"It's being talked about in Washington. One scenario is, the Iraqis do it themselves, some Iraqi colonel who's fed up with the whole thing, who takes over the country. And it would take the United States forty-eight hours to figure out how to respond, and meanwhile he's taken over everything. The other side of the coin is, we do it ourselves. Find some general up in Ramadi or somewhere, and help him take over. And he'd declare a state of emergency and crack down. And he'd ask us to leave – that would be our exit strategy. It's a distinct possibility. I've raised this with a number of foreign service and intelligence people, and most of them – remembering the days of the coups d'état in the Middle East – say, 'Hear, hear!'
"And you know what? I think Rumsfeld would jump on this idea in five minutes."
Of course, no coup will happen at all – no general or colonel would dare try -– without, at the very least, a wink and a nod from the CIA, the U.S. military, or Ambassador Khalilzad. And most likely, it would take significantly more than a wink, something like explicit support and promises of assistance.
But, according to my reporting, that is precisely what is being discussed in Washington, even among the inner councils of James Baker's Iraq Study Group, the realist (that is, anti-neoconservative) commission set up last spring to figure out what to do about Iraq.
Salah Mukhtar, a former top Iraqi official who served as Iraq's ambassador to India and then Vietnam in the period just before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, is not a spokesman for the Iraqi resistance. But he is very well plugged in to the thinking of that country's insurgent leaders. When I spoke to him this week by telephone, he assured me the resistance is well aware that elements in the Bush administration might be planning a coup. According to him, the main focus of such a coup – even one fostered by the United States – would be to mobilize the Iraqi Army against the Shi'ite militias:
"The increase in the volume of mass killing in Iraq is creating a willingness among the people to accept a military coup. I would say that 80% of Iraqis are willing to accept it, to accept anything that would help to crush the Iranian gangs [i.e., the militias of the Shi'ite religious parties, such as the Badr Brigade and the Mahdi Army].
"The United States is making contacts with some old Iraqi generals in Jordan. They are former Baathists. The United States is looking for people to topple the government of Maliki. Some of them are in Iraq, and some of them are based in Jordan. Some of them turned down the U.S. offers, but some of them accepted.
"If there is a military coup in Iraq, that coup will be [sympathetic to] the Baathists. If its leader is not pro-Baathist, there will be a second coup against that leader. So either way, it will result in a pro-Baathist government… It would be a crazy move by the United States. It shows that they don't understand Iraq."
The Unraveling of Iraq?
What does all this mean? As a start, it probably represents a belated Washington wish-list that contains quite a disparate, if not conflicting, set of ideas about the American future in Iraq. Some top officials are surely eyeing the possibility of a last-ditch effort to establish a government that would stabilize the country, put down the resistance, and create a secure environment for President Bush's "victory" strategy in Iraq – even though that victory would have nothing to do with democracy. Others in or around the administration are undoubtedly drawn to the idea of a coup, or at least of the forced removal of Prime Minister Maliki in some fashion because it would present a fig leaf for an American "redeployment" (read: withdrawal from Iraq). Under this scenario, the United States could exit as gracefully as circumstances allow, leaving behind a strong Iraqi central government that might still be an ally of some sort.
Indeed, as early as mid-August, a New York Times piece suggested that at least some officials in the White House had given up on the idea of democracy in Iraq and were ready to look at "alternatives":
"Some outside experts who have recently visited the White House said Bush administration officials were beginning to plan for the possibility that Iraq's democratically elected government might not survive.
"'Senior administration officials have acknowledged to me that they are considering alternatives other than democracy,' said one military affairs expert who received an Iraq briefing at the White House last month and agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity."
Whatever fantasies officials in Washington or Iraq may harbor, however, a coup d'état in Baghdad would by no means be a silver bullet to end Iraq's anarchy. Quite the opposite, it might just add to the bloody unraveling of the country. The problem is, as one experienced Middle East hand told me, "In order to mount a coup, you have to have a state. And there is no state in Iraq."
Iraq is utterly anarchic, a Mad Max world of clashing paramilitaries, gangs, warlords, sectarian fighters, death squads, criminal enterprises, government-backed mafias, and several hundred thousand Army men, police, Interior Ministry commandos, and special units like the Facilities Protection Service that are only loosely under the control of the central government. So how would a prospective coup-maker, even with Washington's fervent backing, impose his will on all that?
The answer is: He couldn't. If a coup happens, it will likely signal that the center of gravity inside Baghdad's Green Zone has shifted from the Shi'ite majority (and its religious parties, such as al-Dawa and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq) to a more centrist, more pro-Sunni, less sectarian, less religious, and less ideological bloc. It might be seen as an attempt by the CIA and the U.S. military to re-install a more Saddam-like regime in Baghdad, perhaps with the intent of undoing the damage that has been done to Iraq's unity and stability by the neoconservatives. But like all too-clever-by-half strategies, this one would probably make things not better but a lot worse in a country that has already been torn to shreds by the U.S. invasion and occupation.
Robert Dreyfuss is the author of Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam. He covers national security for Rolling Stone and writes frequently for The American Prospect, Mother Jones, and the Nation. He is also a regular contributor to TomPaine.com, the Huffington Post, Tomdispatch, and other sites, and writes the blog, The Dreyfuss Report, at his website.
Copyright 2006 Robert Dreyfuss
Robert Dreyfuss and Raed Jarrar also discussed this issue this morning on democracy now http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/23/1425227
Siyam: We don’t need American training camps
Cairo - PA interior minister Sa’eed Siyam has underlined that the Palestinian people were not in need of American training camps but rather wanted Palestinian security apparatuses with Palestinian agenda to serve the Palestinian citizens.
He told the PIC in an interview that Palestinians view with suspicion any camp supervised by the USA because the American administration wishes to incite strife in the Palestinian arena and fight Hamas.
The minister was commenting on news of a secret American training camp being built for security elements loyal to PA chief Mahmoud Abbas in Jericho.
He urged the PA presidency to say its word on reports of the secret camp and the arms shipments that entered the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Fatah sources: Abbas leading plot to topple government
Ramallah - Fatah Movement sources in the West Bank have revealed that PA chief Mahmoud Abbas had given the green light to a plot masterminded by loyal heads of his PA security apparatuses to stage a coup against the legitimate PA government.
The sources said that the scheme, to start next Saturday after the Eid holidays, envisages occupying premises of PA ministries by force and launching a media campaign against the Hamas-formed government.
They said that the coup would progress with Israeli and American blessing along with the approval of two neighbouring Arab countries and the EU.
Abbas would then declare an emergency government after announcing that the current government was not capable of running the affairs of the people, the sources elaborated, adding that Abbas would then meet with Olmert and announce that all PA frozen funds in Israel were released.
The sources said that the scheme, to start next Saturday after the Eid holidays, envisages occupying premises of PA ministries by force and launching a media campaign against the Hamas-formed government.
They said that the coup would progress with Israeli and American blessing along with the approval of two neighbouring Arab countries and the EU.
Abbas would then declare an emergency government after announcing that the current government was not capable of running the affairs of the people, the sources elaborated, adding that Abbas would then meet with Olmert and announce that all PA frozen funds in Israel were released.
Countdown for the Hamas government
By Danny Rubinstein
Haaretz
"The chairman of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), has already made up his mind. The general direction of his decision is clear: to disperse - or, to state it more bluntly - to put an end to, the Hamas government.
The details of his decision are not yet clear, perhaps not even to Abu Mazen or his aides. But we shall all be better informed about it within a short time, maybe even a few short days. This is what can be understood from a long series of statements made over the past few weeks by the chairman and his advisors. Ever since he returned from the United Nations General Assembly last month, he has repeatedly intimated that there are new revelations and clarifications taking place every day. In the middle of last week, for example, Abu Mazen declared: "Bread is more important than democracy."
This sentence was quoted in all the Palestinian media. The significance of this statement is clear to all: True, the Hamas government rose to power through democratic elections, but it is not able to function, it does not pay salaries, it does not provide bread, and it cannot continue to rule. By the end of the week, Abu Mazen was already speaking explicitly: "There is a responsibility on our shoulders," he said, "and we have to take decisions about setting up a loyal Palestinian government that will enjoy international recognition, will enable the embargo against our people to be lifted and will concentrate on the central objective, which is an end to the occupation and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, a state that will live in peace and security alongside Israel." Nothing could be more clear than that. And he even turned to the public with his quandary over how to succeed in this.
Hamas rejects all these options. Its extremist spokesmen, such as Interior Minister Said Sayam, have announced that Abu Mazen intends to depose of the Hamas leaders in a way that is tantamount to an anti-democratic coup, and that they plan to fight against this.
The more moderate elements, such as Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, still speak of the possibility of a unity government. However, Abu Mazen is behaving like someone who has given up on that possibility. Until yesterday, the eve of the four-day Id al-Fitr holiday that marks the end of the month of Ramadan, Abu Mazen had not fixed any meeting with Haniyeh to discuss a unity government.
The two sides, Abu Mazen and his advisors, and the Hamas leaders, are not satisfied with mere talk and are also taking action. Abu Mazen has invited the members of the central elections committee to meet with him and he is preparing them for the possibility that there will be elections or a referendum. In addition, he has put the senior military commander, General Haj Ismail, back on active service. The Hamas spokesmen, for their part, have announced the organization of the operational force of the Palestinian Interior Ministry in the West Bank as well.
What is pushing the Palestinians into a violent conflict and a civil war is not merely the gap between the positions of the two sides and the fact that Hamas is not capable of adopting more moderate positions, but also external forces. The United States and many other countries, certainly Israel, are pressing Abu Mazen to act forcefully and to crush Hamas. Even more interested in this are the Arab states. Almost all these regimes are afraid of a Muslim opposition in their countries. It is clearly in their interest to bring about the failure of a Muslim-oriented government such as that of Hamas, and they are acting like heroes at Abu Mazen's expense.
From the point of view of the Arab states, even a Palestinian unity government with Hamas at its center, is something to be avoided. The price for the dispersal of the Hamas government will be paid, first and foremost by the Palestinians who will kill their own brothers. But we Israelis may also have to pay a heavy price. Violent expressions of frustration and anger on the part of a large Palestinian public, and obviously also of a large Arab public in the neighboring countries, will be turned against Israel. The chance of renewing the peace process, which has diminished more and more over the past few years, will now become even more remote."
Hillary Clinton Changes Tune on Iraq
By Kurt Nimmo
"In other words, Clinton expects us to believe, if she simply had the right mix of information, she would have voted against Bush’s invasion and occupation resolution that streaked through Congress in September, 2002. Of course, as a puppet of the Israeli lobby, this would not have cut the mustard, as Hillary, above all else, wants to remain in Congress and covets the Oval Office, with Bill as the First Husband, dread the thought. In fact, Clinton apparently counts on the persistent severity of public amnesia, for it was less than a year ago she said, “I believe that standing up against someone as dangerous as Saddam was a good goal,” never mind he posed absolutely no threat to the United States and the easily bamboozled people of the state of New York.
In regard to Iran, Hillary went straight to her masters, the Jabotinsky maniacs who influence Congress and indeed the White House, thanks to the neocon cabal. “I held a series of meetings with Israeli officials [last summer], including the prime minister and the foreign minister and the head of the [Israeli Defense Force] to discuss such challenges we confront,” Clinton declared in a Hanukkah dinner speech delivered last December. “In each of these meetings, we talked at length about the dire threat posed by the potential of a nuclear-armed Iran, not only to Israel, but also to Europe and Russia. Just this week, the new president of Iran made further outrageous comments that attacked Israel’s right to exist that are simply beyond the pale of international discourse and acceptability. During my meeting with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, I was reminded vividly of the threats that Israel faces every hour of every day … It became even more clear how important it is for the United States to stand with Israel” (see Joshua Frank, Hillary Clinton, AIPAC and Iran).
But never mind, the problem is Ahmadinejad bad-mouthed Israel, mostly over the nation’s treatment of the Palestinians, and suggested a future when the state of Israel has exited the stage of world history for something more equitable for the people of Palestine and the region. As we know, Ahmadinejad never demanded Israel be “wiped off the map” and this was in fact a deliberate mistranslation on the part of the Middle East Media Research Institute, a vile racket founded by the Israeli Meyrav Wurmser (wife of scurrilous neocon David Wurmser, who replaced Eric Edelman as Principal Deputy Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs in the Office of Vice President Dick Cheney) and Yigal Carmon, who “served” in IDF intelligence and is a former terrorism (or anti-Palestinian nationalism) adviser to Rabin and former prime minister Yitzhak Shamir. In short, the mistranslation of Ahmadinejad is another neocon dirty trick, but then, as with Iraq, this should be considered wholly predictable behavior.
If New Yorkers re-elect Clinton, they will be getting an ever increasing dose of neocon lite politics, the only viable stance in Washington these days, as most Democrats are neocon lite, minus the dour if mildly comical born-again rapture Christians who back Israel, no matter what the little renegade state, run by racist settlers and Jabotinskyite nut cases, do to the Palestinians, or for that matter the Lebanese and, if they have their way, millions of Iranians.
Of course, Clinton and the “progressive” Democrats, that is to say they throw in a few toaster bottom crumbs on social issues, such as abortion, are also beholden to Israel, not through blissed out rapture Christians, but the “liberal” Jewish constituency, as exemplified by AIPAC and other pro-Israel organizations."
The Exodus: 1.6m Iraqis have fled their country since the war
By Patrick Cockburn
The Independent
"Iraq is in flight. Everywhere inside and outside the country, Iraqis who once lived in their own houses cower for safety six or seven to a room in hovels.
Many go after they have been threatened. Often they leave after receiving an envelope with a bullet inside and a scrawled note telling them to get out immediately. Others flee after a relative has been killed, believing they will be next.
Out of the population of 26 million, 1.6 million Iraqis have fled the country and a further 1.5 million are displaced within Iraq, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. In Jordan alone there are 500,000 Iraqi refugees and a further 450,000 in Syria. In Syria alone they are arriving at the rate of 40,000 a month.
It is one of the largest long-term population movements in the Middle East since Israel expelled Palestinians in the 1940s. Few of the Iraqis taking flight now show any desire to return to their homes. The numbers compelled to take to the roads have risen dramatically this year with 365,000 new refugees since the bombing of the Shia shrine in Samara in February.
Baghdad is breaking up into a dozen different cities, each under the control of its own militia. In Shia areas this usually means the Mehdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr. In Sunni districts it means that the insurgents, who are also at war with the Americans, are taking over. The Sunnis control the south and south-west; the Shias the north and east."
Scuttling to victory
Leader
Monday October 23, 2006
The Guardian
"Mr Bush's nonsensical message, a variant of his stock line about "staying the course", is likely to be quickly forgotten. The phrase that will be long remembered is that of Alberto Fernandez, head of public diplomacy at the state department: he told al-Jazeera that US policy in Iraq had suffered from "arrogance" and "stupidity".
Recent days have seen policy-makers in Washington scuttling to catch up with ordinary voters, and with some leading Republicans, who have had enough of this misconceived and incompetent war, their interest galvanised by leaks from James Baker's blue-ribbon, bipartisan Iraq study group. Mr Bush and Condoleezza Rice both say there is no fundamental shift of strategy in the offing, merely a review of "tactics" in pursuit of a stable democracy. But talk of milestones, yardsticks and benchmarks attests to an increasingly urgent desire to quit before the going gets very much worse.
There is something profoundly selfish - arrogant even - about America's Iraq debate, though it is about 2,700 dead and many thousands of wounded as well as the prestige of the world's only superpower. But this is not just about geopolitics. Whether or not this war is America's Vietnam for the 21st century, Iraq is first and foremost about Iraqis. The Americans will be gone, sooner or later - and we will hear more about that after November 7. It is the Iraqis who will be left to pick up the pieces."
Two-Thirds of Americans Pessimistic About Iraq
"- Few adults in the United States are satisfied with the progress of the coalition effort, according to a poll by Hart/McInturff released by the Wall Street Journal and NBC News. 68 per cent of respondents feel more pessimistic about the way things are going in Iraq, while 20 per cent feel more optimistic.
Polling Data
Based on what you have seen happening in Iraq over the course of the past month, do you feel more optimistic or more pessimistic about the way things are going in Iraq?
More optimistic
20%
More pessimistic
68%
No difference
9%
Not sure
3%
Do you think that U.S. president George W. Bush has or has not given good reasons for why the United States must keep troops in Iraq?
Oct. 2006
Jan. 2006
Has given good reasons
39%
43%
Has not given good reasons
57%
52%
Not sure
4%
5%
Polling Data
Based on what you have seen happening in Iraq over the course of the past month, do you feel more optimistic or more pessimistic about the way things are going in Iraq?
More optimistic
20%
More pessimistic
68%
No difference
9%
Not sure
3%
Do you think that U.S. president George W. Bush has or has not given good reasons for why the United States must keep troops in Iraq?
Oct. 2006
Jan. 2006
Has given good reasons
39%
43%
Has not given good reasons
57%
52%
Not sure
4%
5%
The Lobby, Unmasked
By Justin Raimondo
"The "good" ship Neocon is a pirate vessel, one that brazenly hoists the Jolly Roger and takes no prisoners: it patrols the sea-lanes in search of victims and, when it finds them, pounces without mercy or hesitation. Up until now, it has evaded all attempts to corner and sink it, and its success is due, in no small part, to its many allies and well-wishers onshore. Yet for those of us who see this crew as a prime candidate for sinking, the neocons' comeuppance on account of the collapse of the Iraq campaign is hardly enough. Their disgrace, properly conceived, has barely begun.
The potential dimensions of the Iraq disaster were not altogether unknowable before the launching of the war, and my own view is that that they were known and utterly disregarded. Ideology induces a kind of blindness, and this is an ailment neoconservatives are especially prone to; it goes with the characteristic arrogance and undue self-regard that invariably colors their actions. However, there's more to neoconservatism than a callous disregard for facts and a persistence that borders on mania.
The complete disregard for American interests – which can be measured in the rising U.S. casualty rate and the worldwide diplomatic and political "blowback" emanating from the decision to invade – goes beyond mere recklessness. It's not as if they made an honest mistake: American interests did not enter into the calculations of key policymakers. Other interests were paramount in the decision to go to war, and since we're talking about the neoconservatives, Israel was surely a major factor, if not the determining factor, pushing us into Iraq.
As I wrote in a piece for The American Conservative, the AIPAC case is the dorsal fin of something much larger lurking just below the surface. This was indicated by hints of Israeli involvement in the faux "intelligence" that was funneled to the White House, Congress, and the American people by the secretive Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon. According to former Pentagon analyst Karen Kwiatkowski, Israelis enjoyed rights of unrestricted access and didn't bother to go through the process of signing in at high-level Pentagon meetings with U.S. officials.
Now we learn that none other than Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), a Democratic hawk who is the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, is under investigation as part of the AIPAC spy probe. One of her aides has already been suspended by the head of the House committee for reportedly leaking the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq to the New York Times just in time for the election. However, the question raised by the Harmon-AIPAC story is, who else did her office leak classified information to, and for what purpose?
Yet if AIPAC is seen as an instrument of Israel's covert activities in the U.S., including gathering classified information, then it isn't hard to imagine under what circumstances someone in Harman's office managed to persuade AIPAC to go to bat for the congresswoman. A simple trade: classified intelligence for political support.
The Lobby isn't just in the business of peddling a glorified, largely fictional portrait of Israel as America's valiant little "democratic" ally, which deserves unconditional support as it tyrannizes its Palestinian helots and rampages through Lebanon and occupied Palestine. It is clearly also performing another service for the state of Israel, namely espionage. Before the AIPAC investigation is through, it could cut a wide swath through the world of Washington politics, ensnaring members of both parties and exposing the true extent of Israel's fifth column in America."
"The "good" ship Neocon is a pirate vessel, one that brazenly hoists the Jolly Roger and takes no prisoners: it patrols the sea-lanes in search of victims and, when it finds them, pounces without mercy or hesitation. Up until now, it has evaded all attempts to corner and sink it, and its success is due, in no small part, to its many allies and well-wishers onshore. Yet for those of us who see this crew as a prime candidate for sinking, the neocons' comeuppance on account of the collapse of the Iraq campaign is hardly enough. Their disgrace, properly conceived, has barely begun.
The potential dimensions of the Iraq disaster were not altogether unknowable before the launching of the war, and my own view is that that they were known and utterly disregarded. Ideology induces a kind of blindness, and this is an ailment neoconservatives are especially prone to; it goes with the characteristic arrogance and undue self-regard that invariably colors their actions. However, there's more to neoconservatism than a callous disregard for facts and a persistence that borders on mania.
The complete disregard for American interests – which can be measured in the rising U.S. casualty rate and the worldwide diplomatic and political "blowback" emanating from the decision to invade – goes beyond mere recklessness. It's not as if they made an honest mistake: American interests did not enter into the calculations of key policymakers. Other interests were paramount in the decision to go to war, and since we're talking about the neoconservatives, Israel was surely a major factor, if not the determining factor, pushing us into Iraq.
As I wrote in a piece for The American Conservative, the AIPAC case is the dorsal fin of something much larger lurking just below the surface. This was indicated by hints of Israeli involvement in the faux "intelligence" that was funneled to the White House, Congress, and the American people by the secretive Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon. According to former Pentagon analyst Karen Kwiatkowski, Israelis enjoyed rights of unrestricted access and didn't bother to go through the process of signing in at high-level Pentagon meetings with U.S. officials.
Now we learn that none other than Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), a Democratic hawk who is the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, is under investigation as part of the AIPAC spy probe. One of her aides has already been suspended by the head of the House committee for reportedly leaking the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq to the New York Times just in time for the election. However, the question raised by the Harmon-AIPAC story is, who else did her office leak classified information to, and for what purpose?
Yet if AIPAC is seen as an instrument of Israel's covert activities in the U.S., including gathering classified information, then it isn't hard to imagine under what circumstances someone in Harman's office managed to persuade AIPAC to go to bat for the congresswoman. A simple trade: classified intelligence for political support.
The Lobby isn't just in the business of peddling a glorified, largely fictional portrait of Israel as America's valiant little "democratic" ally, which deserves unconditional support as it tyrannizes its Palestinian helots and rampages through Lebanon and occupied Palestine. It is clearly also performing another service for the state of Israel, namely espionage. Before the AIPAC investigation is through, it could cut a wide swath through the world of Washington politics, ensnaring members of both parties and exposing the true extent of Israel's fifth column in America."
Sunday, October 22, 2006
مخطط برعاية عباس لانقلاب عسكري على الحكومة بدءاً من السبت
AN IMPORTANT ARTICLE:
THE USRAELI DICTATED ABBAS COUP WILL START SATURDAY 10/28
(I will translate as soon as I have time)
بدعم صهيوني وأمريكي وأوروبي ومن أطراف عربية
مصادر في "فتح": مخطط برعاية عباس لانقلاب عسكري على الحكومة بدءاً من السبت
رام الله – المركز الفلسطيني للإعلام
كشفت مصادر مقربة من حركة " فتح " بالضفة الغربية ، عن أنّ الأوامر قد صدرت إلى قادة ومنتسبي الأجهزة الأمنية الفلسطينية، للشروع بتنفيذ مخطط للانقلاب بالقوة على الحكومة الفلسطينية الحالية ، التي انتخبها الشعب والتي تقودها حركة المقاومة الإسلامية "حماس"،مشيرة إلى أنّ هذا المخطط أُعدّ ليكون على هيئة "التحرك الأخير والحاسم" لإسقاط الحكومة والانقلاب عليها، وتشكيل حكومة طوارئبمباركة أمريكية صهيونية، وبتوافق دولتين عربيتين مجاورتين، فضلاً عن إقرار الجانب الأوربي، كما قالت.
وزعمتالمصادر أنّ هذا المخطط،اتُفق عليه خلال اجتماع سري ضم قادة الأجهزة الأمنيةالفلسطينية، والتي تخضع لإمرة رئيس السلطة الفلسطينية محمود عباس،وقادة من حركة "فتح"في الضفة الغربية،قبل يومين، وذلك بمباركة عباس ذاته.
ويتمثل هذا المخطط، بحسب المصادر،في تنفيذ عدة خطوات تصعيدية ابتداء من يوم السبت (28/10)،بعد عطلة عيد الفطر مباشرة، من خلال قيام منتسبي الأجهزة الأمنية المحسوبين على التيار الانقلابي في حركة فتح بالسيطرة على كافة مقرات الوزارات والمؤسسات الحكومية بالقوة وبشكل كامل، وطرد كبار المسؤولين المحسوبين على حركة "حماس"في الوزارات أو احتجازهم.
وذهبت المصادر إلى حد التأكيد بأنّالسيطرة على الوزارات والمؤسسات المختلفة بقوة السلاح سيترافق معها تجييش الإعلاميين والكتاب التابعين لحركة "فتح"،ومعهم بعض الفصائل الصغيرة التي تدور في فلك فتح،للتحرك إعلامياً بموازاة التحرك العسكري الميداني على الأرض،من أجل تبرير هذا الانقلاب وتأييدفكرة حكومة الطوارئ، والتي تعد مخالفة للدستور الفلسطيني.
وأضافت المصادرالمقربة من "فتح"، أنّ قادة الأجهزة الأمنية وقادة الحركة في الضفة الغربية،أبلغوا من محمود عباس بأنه سيلتقي بعد 48 ساعة من السيطرة على المؤسسات،مع رئيس الوزراء الصهيوني أيهود أولمرت،وسيتم خلال اللقاء الإعلان عن إفراج الاحتلال الصهيونيعن الأموال الفلسطينية المحتجزة،من أجل محاولة امتصاص غضب الشعب الفلسطيني،وتبرير ما جرى من انقلاب، وإقناع الرأي العام الفلسطيني بـ "أهمية" هذه الخطوة الانقلابية "لإنهاء معاناتهم".
وذكرت المصادر أنّ رئيس السلطةسيعلن في أعقاب هذه الخطوة عن تشكيل حكومة الطوارئ،بذريعة أنّ الحكومة الحالية "غير قادرة على القيام بمهامها"،موضحة أنّ ذلك "سيكون بمباركة أردنيةمصرية أوربية وأمريكية"، حسب تعبير المصادر.
وأعلنت تلك المصادر أيضاً أنه سيكون هناك تحرك متزامن من قبل نقابة العاملين التي توجهها أطراف في حركة فتح،بالتزامن مع التحرك العسكري،والسيطرة على الوزارات،بحيث تأخذ التحركات طابع التمرد والعصيان المدني في المؤسسات الحكومية، مع مشاركة العسكريين في السيطرة على الوزارات،خاصة وأنّ نقابة العاملين أعلنت أمس أنالإضراب سيدخل "مرحلة قاسية وسيتم فيها وضع النقاط على الحروف وحسم الأزمة" وإنهاءما وصفته بمعاناة الموظفين التي استمرت طويلاً، وهو ما رأى فيه المراقبون مؤشرات انقلابية تم الإعداد لها.
وتأتي هذه الأنباء في ظل أسوأ حالة انقسام داخلي تعيشها حركة فتح، جراء الخط الذي يقوده رئيس السلطة محمود عباس المتهم بالتحالف مع الإدارة الأمريكية، في ظل محاولة ما يُعرف بالتيار الانقلابي للهيمنة على حركة فتح بعد الإمساك بعدد من مفاصلها في السنوات الأخيرة.
We've all been veiled from the truth
A great piece by Robert Fisk
The Independent
"But it's not this routine bestialisation of Arabs and Muslims that concerns me. You only have to watch the Arab slave-trader film Ashanti, again filmed in Israel and starring Roger Moore and (of all people) Omar Sharif, to see Arabs portrayed, Nazi-style, as murderers, thieves and child molesters. Anti-Semitism against Arabs - who are, of course, also Semites - is par for the course in movies.
No, what I object to is the deliberate distortion of history, the twisting of the narrative of events to present Jews as the victims of the Israeli war of independence (6,000 dead) when in fact they were the victors, and the Arabs of Palestine - or at least that part of Palestine that became Israel in 1948 - as the cause of this war and the apparent victors (because the Jews of East Jerusalem were forced from their homes after the ceasefire) rather than the principal victims. Take, for example, the 1948 massacre at Deir Yassin, where the Stern gang murdered the Arab villagers of what is now the Jerusalem suburb of Givat Shaul, disembowelled women and threw grenades into rooms full of civilians. In O Jerusalem, the Stern gang is represented as a gang of wicked men, a kind of Jewish al-Qa'ida, hopelessly out of touch with the mainstream Israeli army of young, high-minded guerrilla fighters.
In the movie, you see the bodies of the dead Arabs - and a wounded woman later being treated by an Israeli - but at no point is it made clear that Deir Yassin was just one among many villages in which the inhabitants were butchered - this was particularly the case in Galilee - and the women raped by Jewish fighters. Israel's "new" historians have already bravely disclosed these facts, along with the irrefutable evidence that they served Israel's purpose of dispossessing 750,000 Palestinian Arabs from their homes in what was to become Israel. Israeli historian Avi Shlaim has courageously referred to this period as one of "ethnic cleansing". But no such suggestion sullies the scene of slaughter at Deir Yassin in O Jerusalem.
Reality has to be separated from us. Thus a massacre that became part of a policy has been turned in the movie into an aberration by a few armed extremists. Indeed, after the film ends, a series of paragraphs on the screen bleakly record the dispossession of the Palestinians as a result of "Arab propaganda". This itself is a myth. Yet again, Israeli historians have already disproved the lie that the Arab regimes told Palestinian Arabs over the radio that they should leave their homes "until the Jews have been thrown into the sea". No such broadcasts were made. Most Palestinians fled because they were frightened of ending up like the people of Deir Yassin. The propaganda about radio broadcasts was Israeli, not Arab.
It's as if a blanket, a curtain, a veil has been thrown over history - so that the shadow of real events is just visible, but their meaning so distorted as to be incomprehensible. "So this is why you wanted guns," Bobby Goldman shouts at the Stern leader amid the dead of Deir Yassin. And he's wrong. The guns enabled the Stern gang to murder the Arabs of Deir Yassin to produce the panic that sent three quarters of a million Palestinians on the road to permanent exile.
But isn't this the world in which we live? Aren't we all veiled from the truth? I'm not talking about the remarks of Jack "the Veil" Straw but of his political master, Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara. For only a day after I watched O Jerusalem, I opened my newspaper to find that our Prime Minister was calling the Muslim women's niqab "a mark of separation"."
The Independent
"But it's not this routine bestialisation of Arabs and Muslims that concerns me. You only have to watch the Arab slave-trader film Ashanti, again filmed in Israel and starring Roger Moore and (of all people) Omar Sharif, to see Arabs portrayed, Nazi-style, as murderers, thieves and child molesters. Anti-Semitism against Arabs - who are, of course, also Semites - is par for the course in movies.
No, what I object to is the deliberate distortion of history, the twisting of the narrative of events to present Jews as the victims of the Israeli war of independence (6,000 dead) when in fact they were the victors, and the Arabs of Palestine - or at least that part of Palestine that became Israel in 1948 - as the cause of this war and the apparent victors (because the Jews of East Jerusalem were forced from their homes after the ceasefire) rather than the principal victims. Take, for example, the 1948 massacre at Deir Yassin, where the Stern gang murdered the Arab villagers of what is now the Jerusalem suburb of Givat Shaul, disembowelled women and threw grenades into rooms full of civilians. In O Jerusalem, the Stern gang is represented as a gang of wicked men, a kind of Jewish al-Qa'ida, hopelessly out of touch with the mainstream Israeli army of young, high-minded guerrilla fighters.
In the movie, you see the bodies of the dead Arabs - and a wounded woman later being treated by an Israeli - but at no point is it made clear that Deir Yassin was just one among many villages in which the inhabitants were butchered - this was particularly the case in Galilee - and the women raped by Jewish fighters. Israel's "new" historians have already bravely disclosed these facts, along with the irrefutable evidence that they served Israel's purpose of dispossessing 750,000 Palestinian Arabs from their homes in what was to become Israel. Israeli historian Avi Shlaim has courageously referred to this period as one of "ethnic cleansing". But no such suggestion sullies the scene of slaughter at Deir Yassin in O Jerusalem.
Reality has to be separated from us. Thus a massacre that became part of a policy has been turned in the movie into an aberration by a few armed extremists. Indeed, after the film ends, a series of paragraphs on the screen bleakly record the dispossession of the Palestinians as a result of "Arab propaganda". This itself is a myth. Yet again, Israeli historians have already disproved the lie that the Arab regimes told Palestinian Arabs over the radio that they should leave their homes "until the Jews have been thrown into the sea". No such broadcasts were made. Most Palestinians fled because they were frightened of ending up like the people of Deir Yassin. The propaganda about radio broadcasts was Israeli, not Arab.
It's as if a blanket, a curtain, a veil has been thrown over history - so that the shadow of real events is just visible, but their meaning so distorted as to be incomprehensible. "So this is why you wanted guns," Bobby Goldman shouts at the Stern leader amid the dead of Deir Yassin. And he's wrong. The guns enabled the Stern gang to murder the Arabs of Deir Yassin to produce the panic that sent three quarters of a million Palestinians on the road to permanent exile.
But isn't this the world in which we live? Aren't we all veiled from the truth? I'm not talking about the remarks of Jack "the Veil" Straw but of his political master, Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara. For only a day after I watched O Jerusalem, I opened my newspaper to find that our Prime Minister was calling the Muslim women's niqab "a mark of separation"."
Neocon Democrat Jane Harman in Hot Water
By Kurt Nimmo
"It is said, come the midterm elections, Democrats will likely take possession of the House and, less likely, the Senate. It is said this will tip the balance of power in Washington and, whizo-bango, we will get more representative government, corruption will be on the run, and the neocon cabal will be on the skids. If you believe this, you may as well wish for a pony.
In fact, there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans, they both represent the property party, as Gore Vidal deems the gang in control of the government. If you vote for Democrats on November 7, you are voting for more of the same.
As an example, take House Congress critter Jane Harman. “The Department of Justice is investigating whether Rep. Jane Harman and the pro-Israel group [AIPAC] worked together to get her reappointed as the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee,” reports Time. “[S]ources tell TIME that the investigation by Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which has simmered out of sight since about the middle of last year, is examining whether Harman and AIPAC arranged for wealthy supporters to lobby House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi on Harman’s behalf.”
As we know, the “people not entitled to receive classified information” work for the Israeli government, and there is no “widely believed” about it. For Democrats, the fact AIPAC is a criminal organization matters not, for they understand well what side of the bread gets the butter. “Despite the fact that AIPAC was recently busted for spying on the United States, Pelosi, along with many other top bureaucrats from Washington, gushed effusions of praise on the foreign power” last year at the annual AIPAC confab, according to Joshua Frank. Pelosi made sure to mention her AIPAC sponsored walking tour in Israel, a common enough occurrence, usually reducing American politicos to pathetic Stepford zombies, espousing support for the continued murder of the Palestinians.
But it is not strictly Jabotinsky fanatics in Israel who are interested in making sure Harman is reappointed to the House Intelligence Committee—the ghoulish perpetual war industry and war profiteers have a large stake in the reappointment as well. Not surprisingly, Harman’s top contributors include Raytheon and Northrop Grumman.
Consider the fact major Democratic party contributor Haim Saban called up Nancy Pelosi’s office, urging Harman’s reappointment. “Saban has donated at least $3,000 to Harman’s campaign, according to Federal Election Commission records, and the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, which he sponsors at the prestigious Brookings Institution, boasts Harman among its biggest fans.” Saban has proudly stated: “I’m a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel.” "
***
WE POSTED THE TIME STORY YESTERDAY.
Break-Up of Iraq Threatens Mideast Stability
By Juan Cole
"Liz Sly reports on how the prospect of an ethnic and religious partition of Iraq terrifies local Middle Eastern elites, who fear the consequences for other Middle Eastern countries. Ethnically diverse Syria could go in the same direction. Or south Lebanon could become a Shiite mini-state. Sly quotes Syrian President Bashar al-Asad:
' "Imagine a necklace that breaks and all the pearls fall to the ground," he told the German magazine. "Almost all countries have breaking points, and when the ethnic-religious break occurs in one country it will not fail to occur elsewhere too. It would be as it was at the end of the Soviet Union, only much worse. Large wars, small wars: No one will be able to get a grip on the consequences." '
She also quotes International Crisis Group project director Joost Hiltermann,
"there is also a risk that neighboring states will seek to pursue their own agendas and turn the country into a regional battleground, said Joost Hiltermann . . . "We'll have a replay of the Iran-Iraq War between the Iranians and the Arab states over what's left of Iraq," he said. And for a part of the world whose borders were drawn less than a century ago by British and French administrators, the consequences could indeed be dire, Hiltermann warned. "Everything here is new, a century old. The system has endured, but once it comes unstuck, anything can be challenged," he said. "It's madness, but if Iraq falls apart madness will rule the day." '
If Americans think that these sorts of big changes in the Middle East will leave them unaffected, they have another think coming."
"Liz Sly reports on how the prospect of an ethnic and religious partition of Iraq terrifies local Middle Eastern elites, who fear the consequences for other Middle Eastern countries. Ethnically diverse Syria could go in the same direction. Or south Lebanon could become a Shiite mini-state. Sly quotes Syrian President Bashar al-Asad:
' "Imagine a necklace that breaks and all the pearls fall to the ground," he told the German magazine. "Almost all countries have breaking points, and when the ethnic-religious break occurs in one country it will not fail to occur elsewhere too. It would be as it was at the end of the Soviet Union, only much worse. Large wars, small wars: No one will be able to get a grip on the consequences." '
She also quotes International Crisis Group project director Joost Hiltermann,
"there is also a risk that neighboring states will seek to pursue their own agendas and turn the country into a regional battleground, said Joost Hiltermann . . . "We'll have a replay of the Iran-Iraq War between the Iranians and the Arab states over what's left of Iraq," he said. And for a part of the world whose borders were drawn less than a century ago by British and French administrators, the consequences could indeed be dire, Hiltermann warned. "Everything here is new, a century old. The system has endured, but once it comes unstuck, anything can be challenged," he said. "It's madness, but if Iraq falls apart madness will rule the day." '
If Americans think that these sorts of big changes in the Middle East will leave them unaffected, they have another think coming."
No reported casualties at Camp Falcon, eh?
HERE IS A COMPELLING EXPLANATION FOR THE SPIKE IN US CASUALTIES IN IRAQ DURING OCTOBER:
THE FATALITIES IN CAMP FALCON WERE COVERED UP!
By Imad Khadduri
""US occupation forces are accusing Iraqi translators of leaking information on the location of arms and ammunition depots in the Falcon military base (Al-Rashid military base) to the resistance.
“We are sure that two Iraqi translators working with US forces leaked information and gave the base altitudes to the resistance. There are also doubts that a third interpreter had left the base one day before the bombing only and did not join again”.
The Iraqi source, who refused to reveal his identity, said that dozens of American soldiers were killed in those explosions. The source pointed out that six Iraqi translators were killed in those explosions. American forces refused to hand over the bodies of the dead Iraqis to their families without giving reasons."
Ammo Dump Explosions Investigation Ocotber 16, 2006
Who needs translators when there are Google Maps?
There are emailed reports, yet to be confirmed, that the number of dead American soldiers at Al-Rashid military base (camp Falcon) has reached 300. See below pictures on the extent of some of the devastation there as a result of just a few Grad and Katyusha rockets (cost: no more than $300 - Effect: estimated at $billions of munitions, structures and American lives wasted)."
Falcon Ammo Dump Destruction Photos 10-17-6
THE FATALITIES IN CAMP FALCON WERE COVERED UP!
By Imad Khadduri
""US occupation forces are accusing Iraqi translators of leaking information on the location of arms and ammunition depots in the Falcon military base (Al-Rashid military base) to the resistance.
“We are sure that two Iraqi translators working with US forces leaked information and gave the base altitudes to the resistance. There are also doubts that a third interpreter had left the base one day before the bombing only and did not join again”.
The Iraqi source, who refused to reveal his identity, said that dozens of American soldiers were killed in those explosions. The source pointed out that six Iraqi translators were killed in those explosions. American forces refused to hand over the bodies of the dead Iraqis to their families without giving reasons."
Ammo Dump Explosions Investigation Ocotber 16, 2006
Who needs translators when there are Google Maps?
There are emailed reports, yet to be confirmed, that the number of dead American soldiers at Al-Rashid military base (camp Falcon) has reached 300. See below pictures on the extent of some of the devastation there as a result of just a few Grad and Katyusha rockets (cost: no more than $300 - Effect: estimated at $billions of munitions, structures and American lives wasted)."
Falcon Ammo Dump Destruction Photos 10-17-6
Casualties of war: For the US forces, October is the cruellest month
The Independent
"For US troops in Iraq, October 2006 is on course to become one of the deadliest months of the war. With a week to go, at least 78 US troops have been killed - bringing the total US death toll to 2,791. The latest to die were three US Marines who were killed yesterday during combat in Anbar province.
But this figure tells only part of the story. Because of advances in battlefield medicine and protective armourworn by soldiers, many more troops who suffer severe injuries are actually surviving - albeit often with the loss of limbs or being handicapped in another way. Indeed, the ratio of the wounded to killed stands at around eight to one, compared to a mere three to one during the Vietnam War.
Recently released figures showed that with more US troops being switched to Baghdad to try and secure the city, September saw 776 US soldiers wounded - the highest number since November 2004 when US forces battled to retake the insurgent-held city of Fallujah. It is estimated 44,779 US troops have been wounded, injured or taken ill in Iraqsince the 2003 invasion. Of those, 20,691 were wounded by hostile fire or roadside bombs. Yesterday, with US troops trying to do what they can to contain the insurgency and growing sectarian violence, that figure is likely to have increased."
How Iraq came home to haunt America
A GOOD, LONG ARTICLE
For months doubts over Iraq have risen along with the death toll. Last week a tipping point was reached as political leaders in Washington and London began openly to think the unthinkable: that the war was lost
Peter Beaumont, Edward Helmore and Gaby Hinsliff
Sunday October 22, 2006
The Observer
"For when Vail and his soldiers return, it will be in the knowledge that the United States that they are going home to is not the one that they left. That in their year-long absence a seismic shift has occurred in support for the war in Iraq. And that the deaths that Colonel Vail must carry back with him to grieving families - deaths that once seemed to Americans to be a necessary cost - now seem to the majority a dreadful and pointless waste.
It will also be in the knowledge that the battle that they began with such confidence barely four months ago, to secure and then rebuild some of the most dangerous areas of the Iraqi capital, like the campaigns before, has failed.
With that failure the entire future of Iraq and the US and British-led occupation has been brought to a tipping point of enormous consequence not simply for Iraq and the region, but for the Bush and Blair administrations.
In a few short weeks, the US and British policy over Iraq has dramatically unravelled. In the US that policy has been summed up in the phrase 'stay the course', the message designed months ago by Republican strategist Karl Rove, as a stick with which to beat the Democrats in the critical midterm elections on 7 November. It was a simple formula intended to suggest that it was President Bush, and not those calling for a rethinking of the war, who was the patriot.
It has been driven, too, by the criticisms voiced by senior military figures - both American and British - of the conduct of the war, and it has been accelerated by the most potent catalyst of all, the collapse in popular support for the handling of events in Iraq, most notably in the US. Recent polls have suggested that disapproval of Bush's handling of the war in Iraq is now hovering around 63-64 per cent.
Most damning of all, however, were the comments of Richard Haass, a former Bush administration foreign policy official