US used me, says veteran

The New Zealand Herald

"Matt Howard came to Sydney this week to shame his Australian namesake, Prime Minister John Howard, and castigate his own President, George W. Bush.

As Bush flew towards Australia after visiting troops in Iraq, and Prime Minister Howard winced at the latest appalling poll predicting a landslide to Labor in this year's election, the 26-year-old former Marine made a sobering confession.

"In 2003 I illegally invaded the sovereign nation of Iraq with the 1st Tank Battalion, 1st Marine Division," he said. "The man that is still, sadly, my commander-in-chief arrives [last night] unwelcome in Sydney.

"He unleashed the world's fiercest fighting force upon the country and people of Iraq, and now those of us used and betrayed by him are demanding justice."

Former Marine Howard, who survived two tours in Iraq, is at the vanguard of a movement determined to use the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit to strengthen opposition to the continued occupation of Iraq......."

Rep. Bamboozled by Neocons, One Million Iraqis Die as a Result

By Kurt Nimmo

"As the neocons prepare to sell us another lemon—this time a shock and awe mass murder campaign against Iran—it is demonstrative to reflect upon the convoluted lies the neocons passed off as supposedly damning “intelligence” prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. For instance, those with a sharp memory—or sharper than the average American amnesiac—may recall the neocons claiming Saddam Hussein possessed UAV drones, infernal machines he planned to use against American grade schoolers and other such innocents.

“In a town hall meeting in Bloomsburg, Pa. this week, Rep. Paul Kanjorski, a 12-term congressman, said that shortly before Congress was scheduled to vote on authorizing military force against Iraq, top officials of the CIA showed select members of Congress three photographs it alleged were Iraqi Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), better known as drones. Kanjorski said he was told that the drones were capable of carrying nuclear, biological, or chemical agents, and could strike 1,000 miles inland of east coast or west coast cities,” Walter Brasch writes for Counterpunch. “Kanjorski said he and four or five other congressmen in the room were told UAVs could be on freighters headed to the U.S. Both secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and President Bush wandered into and out of the briefing room, Kanjorski said.”......"

Indonesia expresses surprise at aborting resolution to end siege on Palestinians

"JAKARTA, (PIC)-- Indonesian officials expressed their astonishment to MP Mushir Al-Masri that the PA representative at the UN had aborted a draft resolution tabled by Indonesia and Qatar so as to end the siege imposed on the Palestinian people and to open the Rafah crossing.

The officials affirmed, during meetings with Masri the secretary-general of the Hamas-affiliated Change and Reform Bloc, the Indonesian people's support for the Palestinian people until the termination of the Israeli occupation, and underlined that Indonesia will never halt raising the Palestinian cause in international conventions and would exert all efforts possible to alleviate the suffering of the Palestinian people.

In an exclusive statement to the PIC in Jakarta, Masri, who recently concluded a visit to Jakarta, stated: "During this tour, we seek to clarify the truth of what has happened in the Gaza Strip to many officials in the Islamic East Asian countries, especially Malaysia and Indonesia, whose peoples have never hesitated to provide constant support for the Palestinian people and its legitimate resistance."

The MP expressed thanks to Indonesian government and people for their efforts in supporting the Palestinian cause and people and extended an apology for the irresponsible position of the PA representative at the UN who follows orders of PA chief Mahmoud Abbas, considering it a political crime against humanity and a connivance with the IOA over the siege imposed on the Palestinian people.

For his part, Dr. Mohamed Al-Agha, the agriculture minister of the caretaker government, warned on Tuesday of the continued closure of the Mintar crossing (Karni) in the face of exports and imports to and from the Gaza Strip.

In a statement issued by the ministry's information section, Agha highlighted that the government sent several letters to Arab countries, international concerned parties and human rights organizations, urging them to intervene to lift the unjust embargo imposed on the Gaza Strip by the IOA in participation with European, regional and local parties."

Cheney Orders Corporate Media to Sell Iran Attack

By Kurt Nimmo

"Buried in the New Yorker and yet uncovered by Paul Joseph Watson is an item by George Packer about “instructions” handed-down from on-high by Cheney’s office—call it Neocon Central—to sell the attack of Iran to the American people. Packer quotes Barnett Rubin, described as having “connections to someone at a neoconservative institution in Washington,” and this institution, likely the American Enterprise Institute, where Bush gets his criminal “minds,” has instructed the complaisant corporate media to sell the attack.

“They [the source’s institution] have ‘instructions’ (yes, that was the word used) from the Office of the Vice-President to roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day,” Packer quotes Rubin, “it will be coordinated with the American Enterprise Institute, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, Fox, and the usual suspects. It will be heavy sustained assault on the airwaves, designed to knock public sentiment into a position from which a war can be maintained. Evidently they don’t think they’ll ever get majority support for this—they want something like 35-40 percent support, which in their book is ‘plenty.’”....."

Iran warns US over risks of military action

"Iran on Tuesday issued a stark warning to the United States over the danger of launching a military attack, saying Washington could never foresee the size of its response against US troops in the region.

"The US will face three problems if it attacks Iran. Firstly, it does not know the volume of our response," said General Rahim Yahya Safavi, the new special military advisor to supreme leader Ali Khamenei.

"Also, it can not evaluate the vulnerability of its 200,000 troops in the region, since we have accurately identified all of their camps," added Safavi, who stepped down last week as head of the elite Revolutionary Guards.

Safavi also warned over how Iran's reaction to a US attack could affect Israel - Tehran's regional archfoe - and also crude oil supply from the world's fourth-largest producer.

"Secondly, it does not know what will happen to Israel and, thirdly, the United States does not know what will happen to the oil flow," he was quoted by the ISNA news agency as saying......."

Why Bush Can Get Away with Attacking Iran

When Wishful Thinking Replaces Resistance

By JEAN BRICMONT
(Teaches physics in Belgium and is a member of the Brussels Tribunal. His new book, Humanitarian Imperialism, is published by Monthly Review Press)
CounterPunch

"Many people in the antiwar movement try to reassure themselves: Bush cannot possibly attack Iran. He does not have the means to do so, or, perhaps, even he is not foolish enough to engage in such an enterprise. Various particular reasons are put forward, such as: If he attacks, the Shiites in Iraq will cut the US supply lines. If he attacks, the Iranians will block the Straits of Ormuz or will unleash dormant terrorist networks worldwide. Russia won't allow such an attack. China won't allow it -- they will dump the dollar. The Arab world will explode.

All this is doubtful. The Shiites in Iraq are not simply obedient to Iran. If they don't rise against the United States when their own country is occupied (or if don't rise very systematically), they are not likely to rise against the US if a neighboring country is attacked.....

All the ideological signposts for attacking Iran are in place. The country has been thoroughly demonized ......

Israel and its fanatical American supporters want Iran attacked for its political crimes--supporting the rights of the Palestinians, or questioning the Holocaust. Both U.S. political parties are equally under the control of the Israel lobby, and so are the media. The antiwar movement is far too preoccupied with the security of Israel to seriously defend Iran and it won't attack the real architects of this coming war--the Zionists-- for fear of "provoking antisemitism"......

As far as Israel is concerned, the United States is a de facto totalitarian society--no articulate opposition is acceptable. The U.S. Congress passes one pro-Israel or anti-Iran resolution after another with "Stalinist" majorities. The population does not seem to care. But if they did, but what could they do? Vote? The electoral system is extremely biased against the emergence of a third party and the two big parties are equally under Zionist influence.

The only thing that might stop the war would be for Americans themselves to threaten their own government with massive civil disobedience. But that is not going to happen......"

Cake Walk

By Tom Toles

War With Iran Looks More Likely

By Alan Bock

"For months – perhaps even a couple of years – I have been downplaying the likelihood that Bush would be so foolish as to start a war with Iran, especially in light of how much more difficult such a war would be than the war on Iraq and how thinly the military is stretched. It's not that I don't think the neocons want such a war or that Bush isn't just irresponsible enough to do it. I have figured that the military would point out the logistical problems and simply let him know in no uncertain terms that it can't be done. And I still think that's a possibility, perhaps even likelihood.

Over the last few weeks, however, I have to admit I've become a bit less certain. The leaking of a tentative decision to declare Iran's Revolutionary Guard, the country's 125,000-strong elite military branch, as a "specially designated global terrorist" group is an important indicator.......

But superficial military thinkers have been thinking ever since Gen. Billy Mitchell, despite all the experience militating against the notion, that air power alone can bring a nation to its knees. I have little doubt that people are filling Bush's ears even now with scenarios in which aerial bombing and naval bombardment bring the mullahs' regime down and lead to the triumph of democracy and enlightenment, not to mention more oil. I'm afraid he might believe it."

Coalition of the Surreal

By Steve Bell, The Guardian

Skulking Like Rats in the Middle of the Night in the Iraqi Desert
(Reuters photo)

The road from Basra: to some a handover, to many a retreat

Peter Beaumont
Tuesday September 4, 2007
The Guardian

".......Yesterday the British soldiers followed the same route, as they retreated from Basra Palace in the city centre to relocate to the airbase outside the city - several miles and a whole culture away. As they left, Gordon Brown and senior officers denied it was a retreat. But for many it was a defeat all the same. Among them the residents of Basra who tired quickly of the British presence.

"We are pleased that the Iraqi army are now taking over the situation. We as an Iraqi people reject occupation. We reject colonialism. We want our freedom," one resident Rudha Muter told the Associated Press......

With Shia resistance to the occupation gaining pace across Iraq, the political parties and their armed enforcers, starting in the holy cities of Kerbala and Najaf, engaged in a Shia political turf war which gradually transformed the city's politics. As the parties fought, and fractured, the fight for Basra and the south came to resemble a gangland war.

And in that war - as British generals acknowledged last year - British soldiers were caught in a crossfire where killing British troops was the quickest way for a faction to establish its militant credentials as anti-occupation and therefore deserving of political respect and authority. Soldiers based within Basra Palace, or employees of NGOs based nearby, would describe the constant barrage of mortars and rockets into the British positions.......

More than two-thirds of the public think British troops are losing the war in Iraq, and more than half believe the war is already lost, according to the results of a poll released last night. A total of 42% of those questioned said UK forces should be withdrawn as soon as possible, and 33% said their presence in the country was making the security situation worse, according to a survey for the BBC's Newsnight."

Beating the retreat

Leader
Tuesday September 4, 2007
The Guardian

".......British forces left Basra Palace yesterday, where 500 of their men had been living under daily siege, in a more sober mood. The city they liberated four years ago from Saddam's dictatorship was relatively liberal, cosmopolitan and rich. The city they left yesterday is a battleground between three Shia factions and their militias. The Fadhila controls the Oil Protection Force, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council dominates the intelligence service and police commando units, and the Mahdi army has infiltrated local police and the port authority......

....Military commanders argue that as 90% of the attacks are targeted at British troops, their withdrawal to Basra airport will remove the incentive for the militias and Iran to carry on fighting. But if commanders now accept that the occupation is one of the sources of the conflict, not its solution, the troops should be removed altogether......."

Too Bad, The Idiot Did Not Heed This Sign Four Years Ago
(AP photo)

"How will I care for my children?"

Rami Almeghari writing from Deir al-Balah, occupied Gaza Strip, Live from Palestine, Sep 3, 2007

""May God close the eyes of anyone who attempts to shut down the al-Salah charitable society that provides us our living." So said Halima Abu 'Isa, a 45-year-old widow and mother of two in reaction to the decision of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah to close down 103 Palestinian charities. The monthly allowance of 900 shekels (US $230) that Abu 'Isa receives from al-Salah, an Islamic charity with links to Hamas, is the only thing that stands between her and destitution. EI correspondent Rami Almeghari reports on how the decision will affect her and thousands of other charity-dependant Palestinians......."

Qana, Derry

The Dead Lie in Familiar Shapes

By EAMON McCANN
CounterPunch

"It was the sudden eruption at the back of the room upstairs at Sandino's which brought us eventually to the burial ground at Qana.

At the edge of the village, pictures of each of the 28 victims were displayed on a wall around the canopied space where the graves are laid out in precise, neat pattern by the place where the building which they were crushed under once stood.

Qana Mayor Mohammed Atiya made a formal speech of welcome while relatives of the dead stood sentinel by the graves. Shane Cullen, who had designed the memorial plaque we'd brought over, explained that it had been hewn from Irish blue limestone because we wanted "to leave a little bit of Ireland here in Qana, as a sign of our sorrow." I talked of how we'd heard of the massacre and why we'd occupied the Raytheon plant in Derry in response. Goretti Horgan sang a Gaelic lament. Jimmy Kelly played the tin whistle.

Afterwards, we were invited into the homes of some of the victims where we sat around awkwardly and sipped the glasses of sweet tea that were offered to us everywhere in Lebanon.

Our hearts grieve with yours, I told Maryam Shaloub, who had moved into the home of her sister to look after what was left of the family. Five had been among the 28 who'd perished in the basement when a Raytheon bunker-buster brought the house where they'd sought shelter tumbling down. Some were squashed to death, some choked on dirt and debris. Most were children......"

Post-Mortem America

Bush's Year of Triumph

By CHRIS FLOYD
CounterPunch

".......The annus horribilis of 2007 has turned out to be a year of triumph for the Bush Faction -- the hit men who delivered the coup de grâce to the long-moribund Republic. Bush was written off as a lame duck after the Democrat's November 2006 election "triumph" (in fact, the narrowest of victories eked out despite an orgy of cheating and fixing by the losers), and the subsequent salvo of Establishment consensus from the Iraq Study Group, advocating a de-escalation of the war in Iraq. Then came a series of scandals, investigations, high-profile resignations, even the criminal conviction of a top White House official. But despite all this -- and abysmal poll ratings as well -- over the past eight months Bush and his coupsters have seen every single element of their violent tyranny confirmed, countenanced and extended.

The war which we were told the Democrats and ISG consensus would end or wind down has of course been escalated to its greatest level yet -- more troops, more airstrikes, more mercenaries, more Iraqi captives swelling the mammoth prison camps of the occupying power, more instability destroying the very fabric of Iraqi society. The patently illegal surveillance programs of the authoritarian regime have now been codified into law by the Democratic Congress, which has also let stand the evisceration of habeas corpus in the Military Commissions Act, and a raft of other liberty-stripping laws, rules, regulations and executive orders. Bush's self-proclaimed arbitrary power to seize American citizens (and others) without charge and hold them indefinitely -- even kill them -- has likewise been unchallenged by the legislators. Bush has brazenly defied Congressional subpoenas -- and even arbitrarily stripped the Justice Department of the power to enforce them -- to no other reaction than a stern promise from Democratic leaders to "look further into this matter." His spokesmen -- and his "signing statements" -- now openly proclaim his utter disdain for representative government, and assert at every turn his sovereign right to "interpret" -- or ignore -- legislation as he wishes. He retains the right to "interpret" just which interrogation techniques are classified as torture and which are not, while his concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay and his secret CIA prisons -- where those "strenuous" techniques are practiced -- remain open. His increasingly brazen drive to war with Iran has already been endorsed unanimously by the Senate and overwhelmingly by the House, both of which have embraced the specious casus belli concocted by the Bush Regime. And to come full circle, Democratic leaders like Hillary Clinton and Carl Levin are now praising the "military success" of the Iraq escalation -- despite the evident failure of its stated goals by every single measure, including troop deaths, civilian deaths, security, infrastructure, political cohesion and regional stability. This emerging "bipartisan consensus" on the military situation in Iraq (or rather, this utter fantasy concealing a rapidly deteriorating reality) makes it certain that the September "progress report" will be greeted as a justification for continuing the "surge" in one form or another......."

Heritage uprooted

Sonja Karkar, The Electronic Intifada, Sep 3, 2007

"Universally regarded as the symbol of peace, the olive tree has become the object of violence. For more than forty years, Israel has uprooted over one million olive trees and hundreds of thousands of fruit trees in Palestine with terrible economic and ecological consequences for the Palestinian people. Their willful destruction has so threatened Palestinian culture, heritage and identity that the olive tree has now become the symbol of Palestinian steadfastness because of its own rootedness and ability to survive in a land where water is perennially scarce......."

The Next Quagmire

By Chris Hedges

"......But we live in an age where dialogue is dismissed and empathy is suspect. We prefer the illusion that we can dictate events through force. It hasn’t worked well in Iraq. It hasn’t worked well in Afghanistan. And it won’t work in Iran. But those who once tried to reach out and understand, who developed expertise to explain the world to us and ourselves to the world, no longer have a voice in the new imperial project. We are instead governed and informed by moral and intellectual trolls.........

We speak to the rest of the globe in the language of violence. The proposed multibillion-dollar arms supply package for the Persian Gulf countries is the newest form of weapons-systems-as-message. U.S. Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns was rather blunt about the deal. He told the International Herald Tribune that the arms package “says to the Iranians and Syrians that the United States is the major power in the Middle East and will continue to be and is not going away.”......

These kinds of words, pouring out of the administration, send a clear message to any Iranian: You are in trouble.......And the Iranians know that without the bomb, which no intelligence agency thinks they can produce for a few years, they are now probably going to be attacked.......

But then what? We don’t have the troops to invade. And we don’t have anyone minding the helm who knows the slightest thing about Persian culture or the Middle East. There is no one in power in Washington with the empathy to get it. We will lurch blindly into a catastrophe of our own creation......

....Expect massive American casualties, especially in Iraq, where Iranian agents and their Iraqi allies will be able to call in precise coordinates. The Strait of Hormuz, which is the corridor for 20 percent of the world’s oil supply, will be shut down. Chinese-supplied C-801 and C-802 anti-shipping missiles, mines and coastal artillery will target U.S. shipping, along with Saudi oil production and oil export centers. Oil prices will skyrocket to well over $4 a gallon. The dollar will tumble against the euro. Hezbollah forces in southern Lebanon, interpreting the war as an attack on all Shiites, will fire rockets into northern Israel. Israel, already struck by missiles from Tehran, will begin retaliatory raids on Lebanon and Iran.......

We have rendered the nation deaf and dumb. We no longer have the capacity for empathy. We prefer to amuse ourselves with trivia and gossip that pass for news rather than understand. We are blinded by our military prowess. We believe that huge explosions and death are an effective form of communication. And the rest of the world is learning to speak our language. "

Leading Article: The Basra endgame and the trading of blame

"The unseemly blame game over who lost Iraq – so reminiscent of those earlier anguished debates over who "lost" China, or Vietnam – has broken out in full. We must now expect more of the finger- pointing that General Sir Mike Jackson and retired Maj Gen Tim Cross have now begun, and which will no doubt prompt sharp retorts and counter-accusations from the other side of the Atlantic.

Few now seriously question the substance of the two generals' complaints, which is that the failure of the coalition to engage in "nation-building", meaning reconstruction, immediately after the invasion, opened the way for most of the horrors that have since ensued and which have now laid waste to much of the ancient land of Mesopotamia.........

It is a point of some significance that the British have not presided over a level of reconstruction in our patch in the south around Basra that is significantly more impressive to what has gone on further north in the American zone......

The sad reality is that neither we nor the Americans will be leaving Iraq with much credit and attempts by either side to pass the buck are almost pointless. Worse, these futile quarrels are in danger of distracting attention from the real question; what in this terrible situation, mostly of our own making, can we now do for the suffering people of Iraq?

At this stage, with little more than a toehold at Basra airport, possibly not much. We might, however, have the decency to give the Iraqis a firm date for our withdrawal from the south of Iraq instead of slowly vanishing from the scene much like Lewis Carroll's Cheshire Cat. That at least would be a decent ending to an otherwise ignominious episode."

Ignominious end to futile exercise that cost the UK 168 lives

By Patrick Cockburn

"The withdrawal of British forces from Basra Palace, ahead of an expected full withdrawal from the city as early as next month, marks the beginning of the end of one of the most futile campaigns ever fought by the British Army.

Ostensibly, the British will be handing over control of Basra to Iraqi security forces. In reality, British soldiers control very little in Basra, and the Iraqi security forces are largely run by the Shia militias.

The British failure is almost total after four years of effort and the death of 168 personnel. "Basra's residents and militiamen view this not as an orderly withdrawal but rather as an ignominious defeat," says a report by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group. "Today, the city is controlled by militias, seemingly more powerful and unconstrained than before.".......

The pullout will be a jolt for the US because it undermines its claim that it is at last making progress in establishing order in Iraq because Sunni tribes have turned against al-Qa'ida and because of its employment of more sophisticated tactics. In practice, the US controls very little of the nine Shia provinces south of Baghdad........

One militia leader was quoted as saying: "80 per cent of assassinations in 2006 were committed by individuals wearing police uniforms, carrying police guns and using police cars."......."