[Previous entry: "GopBias.Org Blog record and database for March and April, 2008, plus May and June 2008, culminating with the July fourth two hundred and thirty second anniversary of our Declaration of Independence and continuing on to November 4th and beyond to 2009 and 2010 - This web blog holds the key to the great November, 2008 Presidential Election, as the following letters and columns regarding John Sidney McCain III illustrate, and the resurrection of the "strategic framework agreement" by Admiral Mike Mullen (now Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), an agreement that will continue to be troublesome, along with the "Status of Forces"."]
09/18/2010: "...continued..."
To the Editor:
William Kristol expresses it most succinctly: "Character, judgment and the ability to learn seem to matter more to success as president than the number of years one's been in Washington."
By these standards, Senator Barack Obama has proved himself to be most eminently qualified to be our next president. - Nada Westerman 9/8/08 New York
To the Editor: Re "Framing Goals, Obama Takes the Fight to McCain" (front page, Aug. 29):
The Democratic National Convention in Denver was not only a spectacular and colorful sea of humanity but also a vast confluence of the American diversity that epitomized the ideals for which America stands.
Senator Barack Obama's acceptance speech was eloquent and covered the core areas of our domestic and international challenges. It was a resolute assurance to all hard-working Americans who believe in the American dream.
Watching the convention on television in the comfort of my bedroom, I could feel the draft of the winds of change that have started blowing across America. - Atul M. Karnik, Woodside, Queens, 8/29/08
To the Editor: Re "A Speech to the Delegates," by David Brooks (column, Aug. 29):
Mr. Brooks claims that Barack Obama loves the future because that's where all his accomplishments lie.
Mr. Obama's accomplishments include overcoming the challenges of growing up with a single mother on a small income, heading The Harvard Law Review, doing community organizing instead of taking a lucrative job, writing two best sellers at a young age (before running for president) and inspiring an apathetic, disaffected generation not only to vote but also to truly feel part of the democratic process.
Putting aside these very real achievements, I would agree that Mr. Obama has many accomplishments to come, whereas John McCain's are all in the past. - Oriane Stender, Brooklyn, 8/29/08
Amy Goodman 9/2/08: "Meanwhile, a series of new revelations about McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin, has raised questions about how well the McCain campaign vetted the Alaskan governor. The Washington Post revealed that Palin once ran a 527 group for Republican Senator Ted Stevens designed to raise unlimited funds from corporate donors. Stevens was recently indicted on corruption charges. Palin served as a director of Stevens' 527 from 2003 and 2005. It was also announced that a private lawyer had recently been hired to represent Palin in a state investigation into her firing of the state's public safety commissioner. And Palin disclosed on Monday that her unmarried seventeen-year-old daughter was five months pregnant. McCain aides said the announcement about the pregnancy of Palin's daughter, Bristol, was aimed at rebutting internet rumors that Palin's own youngest son, born in April, was actually the daughter's. Both McCain and Palin have opposed funding sexual education programs in schools. In 2006, McCain voted against a Senate Democratic proposal to send $100 million to communities for teen-pregnancy prevention programs that would have included sex education about contraceptives."
And then puts Sarah Palin a heartbeat away from...
The Presidency of the United States!
But the actual theme of this proposed McCain/Palin presidency was stated by Mr. McCain on Thursday night 9/4/08, but dates back to the 2000 Republican convention.
Senator McCain: I know that when I vote for George Bush I serve my country!
Senator McCain 9/4/08: Iran remains the chief state sponsor of terrorism and is on the path to acquiring nuclear weapons. Russia...invaded a small democratic neighbor...and the brave people of Georgia need our solidarity (plus $1 billion?) and our prayers...we can't turn a blind eye to aggression and international lawlessness (Israel has yet to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty, is an occupying power in Arab East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza - and the trouble in Georgia began when McCain's chief strategist Randy Scheunemann was paid $200,000 by Georgian President Saakashvili)." Here's Amy Goodman 9/3/08 with Scott Ritter on this extremely provocative bald-faced lie by McCain on Iran, McCain/Lieberman being the chief sponsors of Israeli terrorism to occupy ALL of Palestine, and render Iran subject to Israeli designs for the Middle East.
Re "Bush Says McCain Is Choice to Lead in Time of Danger" (front page, Sept. 3):
Seeing President Bush (at a safe distance) and Senator Joseph I. Lieberman speaking to the Republican convention dispels any doubt that Senator John McCain, the prospective nominee for president on the Republican ticket, is running for President Bush's third term.
Katrina, the economy, windfall profits for the oil industry as gas prices spiral out of control and eavesdropping on Americans -- but it is the war in Iraq that is Mr. Bush's albatross and everlasting legacy, which Mr. McCain supports at our peril and which the electorate will be voting on in November. - Morris Roth, Fort Lee, N.J., 9/3/08
**September 21, 2008 - Review Six Weeks Prior To Our Most Critical Presidential Election Since 1932 -
Again, Bill Moyers' Journal, this time on his 9/19/08 broadcast, reveals what is the actuality of this latest national crisis generated by Republican-bound George Walker Bush, now joined by Republican-bound John Sidney McCain III, no matter his fervent denials (He's fighting for his "legacy"!), this time the near-financial collapse caused by the deregulation mantra of the Republican Party. Mr. Moyers' guests are Gretchen Morgenson of The New York Times and Floyd Norris the chief financial correspondent of the paper.
Ms. Morgenson: There was a lack of accountability where a banker didn't care whether the loan was repaid. And the Wall Street firm that sold the securitization trust didn't care if it ever got paid back, because they were happy with their commission. The broker making the loan didn't care, because he got, all the way up the ladder to the CEOs of these companies, who are allowed to walk away from these financial cataclysms with huge payments!
Mr. Norris: I can only envision what the right-wing (i.e. Republicans) would be saying if a liberal Democrat had decided to nationalize the biggest insurance company in America (Mr. Norris failed to mention that if Albert Gore were President NONE OF THIS WOULD HAVE HAPPENED!)-
Ms. Morgenson summarizes: The ugly thing about this is this is privatizing gains and socializing losses. So when things are going well, the managements make out, the shareholders make out, the counterparties are fine. All the private sector people do well. But when something goes wrong, when decisions are made that turn out to be bad decisions, the U.S. taxpayer has to take on the problem (Iraq & Afghanistan? And McCain endorses tax breaks for Big Oil...which is gouging unprecedented profits?).
[One must remember that in the beginning George Walker Bush committed the United States to attack Iraq, which posed no threat, and ignored the real threat posed by the terrorism of Al Qaeda originating in Afghanistan, and now in neighboring Pakistan THE SYMBOL OF THE WEST IN THAT COUNTRY, the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, the worst, single attack on Pakistan in these first God-awful years of the 21st century, thanks to the US Presidency of George W. Bush - and in danger of being followed by the US presidency of John Sidney McCain III.]
Mr. Norris: There's another aspect of that, which is the biggest risks were taken in the derivatives markets, and in the markets, what I call the shadow financial system. This is a completely unregulated financial system that grew up aside our fairly heavily regulated financial system. And the government decided it would not pay any attention to it, there was no need for regulation. Alan Greenspan was very adamant on that. He believed that the derivatives they were trading would shift the risk away from the banks he was supervising, and to institutions which could better withstand it.
Mr. Norris continues: But he had no facts to prove that. And it turns out a lot of it ended up at the banks, which is why the banks are in trouble. And a lot of it ended up other places. And the ability to shift the risk meant that more risk was taken.
This brings up another issue, but much like the issue of George W. Bush's unprovoked attack on Iraq. As James Bamford documents in his A Pretext For War the invasion of Iraq was under the pressure of the Israeli and Jewish American lobby AIPAC, Anti-Defamation League, et cetera. That United States misadventure has an unpaid bill of TWO TRILLION DOLLAR$, and now a financial collapse primarily because of the stewardship of Alan Greenspan, who few remember as an acolyte of author Ayn Rand (actually Alisa Rosenbaum) who wrote the prequel of Mr. Greenspan's (husband of Andrea Mitchell of NBC) current financial accomplishment.
To the Editor:
America is facing one of its most important presidential elections ever ("Life of Her Party," by Maureen Dowd, column, Sept. 3). John McCain's selection of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate has turned his campaign into a tear-jerking soap opera. He realized that he needed to do something to add some excitement to his dull, unexciting campaign, so he picked Ms. Palin.
Did Mr. McCain put the country first by selecting someone so unqualified to be president? In pandering to the religious right, he shows that he is not his own man, the person he was in the 2000 presidential campaign. John McCain's judgment is declining; he is no longer a maverick. - Paul L. Whiteley Sr., Louisville, Ky., 9/3/08
ELISABETH BUMILLER
WASHINGTON -- Gov. Sarah Palin will meet with former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger and President Álvaro Uribe of Colombia as the United Nations General Assembly opens on Tuesday, an aide to Senator John McCain's presidential campaign said.
Ms. Palin is to meet on the same day with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan. She will also meet Wednesday with President Jalal Talabani of Iraq, President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan and President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia.
The McCain campaign provided no details about the time or place of the meetings or the issues to be discussed.
But it is likely that Mr. Kissinger, a close outside adviser to Mr. McCain's campaign, will give Ms. Palin a broad overview of international affairs, focusing particularly on Russia, China and the Middle East. Mr. Kissinger, who was national security adviser and secretary of state in the Nixon and Ford administrations, is regularly called on by Mr. McCain for advice on foreign affairs.
Ms. Palin, who is expected to echo Mr. McCain's foreign policy positions, is being prepared for her meetings by Randy Scheunemann, Mr. McCain's top foreign policy aide, and other advisers.
Anne E. Kornblut & Juliet Eilperin
LA Times-Washington Post
Washington - When Gov. Sarah Palin flew home to Alaska for the first time since being named the Republican vice presidential nominee, she brought along at least half a dozen new advisers to conduct briefings, stage-manage her first television interview and help her prepare for a critical debate next month.
And virtually every member of the team shared a common credential: years of service to President Bush.
From Mark Wallace, a Bush appointee to the United Nations, to Tucker Eskew, who ran strategic communications for the Bush White House, to Greg Jenkins, who served as the deputy assistant to Bush in his first term and was executive director of the 2004 inauguration, Palin was surrounded on the trip home by operatives deeply rooted in the Bush administration.
The clutch of Bush veterans helping to coach Palin reflects a larger reality about Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign: Far from being a group of outsiders to the Republican Party power structure, it is now run largely by skilled operatives who learned their crafts in successive Bush campaigns and various jobs across the Bush government over the past eight years.
The team has been assembled and led by Steve Schmidt, a sharp-witted, low-key strategist who has emerged as the campaign's day-to-day operations chief after the ouster of a group of sometimes undisciplined McCain loyalists. Schmidt's operation is tightly run and hard-nosed -- made up of policy advisers, communications experts, advance people and lower-level aides, many of them old friends who have worked together for the last eight years, and whose presence lends a familiar vibe to the Palin operation.
Republicans have been heartened by the effectiveness of the new McCain organization, which has helped put McCain back in serious contention for the White House, causing restlessness among Democrats who believed the race was Sen. Barack Obama's to lose. Dana Perino, the White House spokeswoman, expressed pride at what her former colleagues have been able to accomplish.
"We had a great team -- they're the best in the business, and I'm sure the campaign feels fortunate to have them," Perino said.
Yet others, including some sympathetic Republicans, have begun to quietly question whether McCain and Palin are well served by strategists so firmly anchored in the Bush establishment when the candidates are presenting themselves as a "team of mavericks" and agents of change. One Republican with long-standing ties to the Bush administration described the situation as a paradox in which Palin is especially vulnerable.
"If the McCain campaign is trying to prop up Palin as its change agent, and its inoculation against the 'third Bush term' rap, then why on earth is she surrounded by a cast of Bush advisers?" said the Republican loyalist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "Since she's been selected, every single one of the senior aides that she's brought on board had prominent roles in Bush's White House or on his campaigns, or both."
While Schmidt has imposed a degree of discipline on the campaign that did not exist during McCain's dark hours in the primary season -- and Palin seems to have taken to that structure -- other strategists with reputations for independent thinking who once surrounded McCain have been sidelined. John Weaver, who used to serve as McCain's top political adviser, is among them. He said McCain's reliance on Bush vets is logical.
"If you're going to fill a campaign out with experienced people, the last two general elections were won by someone named Bush," Weaver said. "Where else would they have come from?"
The ranks of the McCain-Palin team are now full of those veterans. Nicolle Wallace, Mark Wallace's wife, was communications director at the White House and is now offering senior-level communications expertise to both McCain and Palin (and joined Palin on her Alaska trip). Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who served as chief economist for Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, is now McCain's domestic policy adviser (and accompanied Palin to Alaska as well). Bush confidant Mark McKinnon stopped formally advising McCain once Obama became the Democratic nominee -- but he, too, is continuing to advise the group and crafted Cindy McCain's convention speech. A former Bush speechwriter, Matthew Scully, wrote Palin's convention speech.
Some of those now working for McCain-Palin have overcome past political conflicts to join the team. Eskew was once reviled by McCain loyalists for his role running Bush's 2000 primary campaign in South Carolina; he not only joined Palin on her trip home to Alaska but also is serving as one of her closest aides. Stephen E. Biegun, a former member of Bush's National Security Council, was on the trip, too; he is helping give Palin foreign policy briefings.
Palin spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt worked on the Bush campaigns and, more recently, at the Republican National Committee. Two other Palin press officers, Maria Comella and Ben Porritt, worked on Bush's 2004 reelection campaign. W. Taylor Griffin, who worked on the 2004 campaign, is helping manage Palin's communications effort in Alaska. Another Bush advance pro, Chris Edwards, is helping to stage-manage Palin's appearances around the country.
It is not clear whether Palin will bring much of an outside apparatus with her at all, apart from an aide or two from Alaska. Comella did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
While a handful of McCain's longtime allies -- including his closest aide, Mark Salter, and two former lobbyists, Rick Davis and Charlie Black -- continue to hold senior posts in his campaign, many of his advisers from his first presidential bid now play tangential roles at best. In addition to Weaver, McCain's 2000 campaign manager, Michael Murphy, and press adviser Todd Harris are largely out of the McCain circle. The housecleaning, aides said, has been conducted largely by Schmidt, whose own Bush credentials run deep: He helped run the communications shop in the 2004 campaign and went on to work for Vice President Cheney and to shepherd the president's controversial nomination of Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court. Schmidt then ran California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's successful reelection campaign before withdrawing from national politics -- until he joined the McCain campaign in December 2006.
The personnel shift has become a cause of distress for some Republicans, who had hoped for a new brand of Republicanism to take hold, fueled by players who had experience outside Washington. "It's insane to me that at the same time that it's running saying it's not going to be the Bush administration, this campaign looks like the Bush campaign on steroids," said one Republican strategist.
No parallel exists on the Democratic side -- where the last White House team dissolved with President Bill Clinton's departure in 2001. And in a Democratic Party that has long been divided between Clinton people and non-Clinton people -- with most of the old Clinton hands working on Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential bid until three months ago -- Obama has wound up with an inner circle whose members have never worked in the West Wing.
To the Editor:
Re "What the Palin Pick Says" (column, Sept. 2):
Thanks to David Brooks for his description of the myriad complexities a president must confront, and for pointing out the possible shortcomings of Senator John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin when it comes to dealing with complex problems.
But I disagree with his portrayal of Mr. McCain and Ms. Palin as tending to "lead life as a string of virtuous crusades."
Better schools, universal health care, the right to a fair trial, the death penalty, and narrowing the gap between the rich and the poor are among the most crucial moral issues the country faces today, yet they have received scant attention from the Republican candidates.
At this stage of the campaign, it is Barack Obama, with his message of community service, inclusiveness and compassion, who seems best able to provide the moral leadership that the Bush administration, for all its religiosity, failed to provide. - Rachelle Marshall, Stanford, Calif., 9/2/08
Lives of the Party - ST. PAUL
Across the interstate highway, in a hilltop mansion overlooking John McCain's convention, survivors of a nearly extinct political species -- moderate Republicans -- gathered for cocktails and succor. Gamely identifying themselves as pro-choice dissidents at the fiercely anti-abortion convention, the few hundred attendees paid $250 to tastefully invoke an old dream, "Big Tent" Republicanism.
The well-dressed crowd, their small talk reasoned, their outlook untinged by venomous riffs on Democrats, seemed a warp-speed return to the days of Nelson Rockefeller before he was fatefully booed at a long ago G.O.P. convention.
"We've got to be tolerant and be ... nice," declared Sally Pillsbury, a revered matriarch. The tone seem epitomized by former Gov. Christie Whitman of New Jersey and others intent on defending choice. Odd phrases from the past surfaced: "no litmus tests on social issues" and "fiscal responsibility."
Representative Jim Ramstad was nostalgic. "It's been 28 years since I've been in a room with this many moderate Republicans," he said. He referred to the ascendancy of Ronald Reagan, a time of the party's victory mantra: "Government is not a solution to our problem. Government is the problem."
For all the party's electoral success since then in regularly castigating government, the Big Tent gathering nobly demurred. They held out hope that a President McCain would be more open to hear them, more ... moderate. The true Republican majority, speakers said, existed out there in the nation.
In contrast, a roaring hotel celebration was under way down the hill for anti-abortion conventioneers. It made the Big Tenters seem a stylish band of outcasts, however resolute.
Phyllis Schlafly, the anti-abortion movement's doyenne, led the "Life of the Party" party in exulting at their undisputed dominance of the convention. Celebrants were comforted that not only had Senator McCain fully retreated from his more moderate past, he dropped his first choice for vice president to accept their favorite, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska.
Governor Palin was not present, yet still mesmerized the celebration. She was hailed as a pro-lifer who fully "walks the talk" of reproduction, the founder of "a new feminism," and, not incidentally, John McCain's running mate.
One young woman approached the stage uninvited and unfurled a sign that read: "Be Pro-life -- Stop the war." Ms. Schlafly grabbed the microphone from the intruder. She was escorted to an exit. - FRANCIS X. CLINES 9/4/08
To the Editor:
John McCain's speech was tired, platitudinous and short on specifics. The exploitation of his P.O.W. experiences for political purposes was embarrassing.
Of course, his service to his country was honorable and is appreciated by Americans -- that is a given. But his chest-beating on the subject made me think of my brother-in-law, who was a hero in World War II.
His aircraft carrier was hit by a kamikaze that killed more than 300 fellow sailors. After the war, he was reticent and hardly ever talked about it. I learned from him that the sincerest form of patriotism is the quiet kind and that the noblest form of heroism is unspoken. - Chase Webb 9/5/08 Gresham, Oregon.
To the Editor:
Re "The Party in Power, Running as if It Weren't" (news analysis, front page, Sept. 5): The Republican Party seems unified only in its desire to win the election. In every other way, it's at war with itself.
The party platform is out of sync with its nominee. John McCain himself can't figure out which position to campaign on -- the maverick, down-the-line Bush supporter, right-wing conservative -- so he focuses on his compelling "hero" story.
He and his vice-presidential running mate agree only that she adds vigor, energy and youth to the ticket (and let's not forget that she's a woman).
He's opposed to the special interests and lobbyists that have financed his campaign and the party. He's against Washington, conveniently forgetting that his party has been in power for the last eight years.
All that may be a basis for running, but should they win, it's a recipe for a gridlocked government. - Michael J. Meshenberg 9/5/08 Chicago, Illinois.
NBC Universal's Brian Williams and his crew (9/5/08) Kelley O'Donnell with McCain and Palin (and fanfare) in Cedarburg, Wisconsin, preceded by Williams: "Last night's speech by John McCain drew the biggest one-night television audience of any political convention ever, almost thirty nine million people, that's half a million more than Barack Obama got" - Yes! But Obama got his millions despite the PRO-McCain slant of the Media/Press. Ms. O'Donnell: "John McCain will lean on the appeal of his runningmate's roots and argue that together they each had a history...." Palin: "Just last night Senator Obama finally broke and brought himself to admit what all the rest of us have known for quite some time (these phrases molded by Lieberman/Giuliani)." Then the badgering-selected audio, finely-cropped, from 9/4/08 FOX provided by Murdoch, Chris/Jay Wallace, Bill Kristol, Roger Ailes. Barack Obama: "What I've said is, I've already said it, (the surge) it succeeded beyond our wildest dreams."
But what the General Electric subsidiary (attempting to diminish Barack Obama) did not mention, following the lead of Murdoch/Ailes/Wallace FOX, is that the success was NOT the result of the heroics of the additional military men and women, i.e. the surge, which heroics are a given, but of (1) the preceding Sunni Great Awakening Council in Anbar Province to fight Al Qaeda (2) the ordered standdown of his militia by cleric Moktada al-Sadr and (3) the revelation in Bob Woodward's The War Within: A Secret White House History, 2006-2008 of a CIA Special OPS-spy operation against Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. But the prospective VICE-PRESIDENT of the United States is a mere mouthpiece for the Republican-Right, as John McCain has also become, and the uninformed Ms. Palin finished her dictated slam against Barack Obama thusly: "I guess when you turn out to be profoundly wrong on a vital national security issue, maybe it's comfortable to pretend that everybody was wrong today, but I remember it a little differently." We would question this statement by the prospective Vice President. McCain's selection of her had little to do with anything, other than her parochial appeal to the "The World Is Flat" group of powerful (thanks to Rush Limbaugh) right-wing Republican GOP which gave us George W. Bush.
Regarding this incestuous relationship between the Media/Press and The Republican Party it must be said that Bob Schieffer, whose younger brother Tom (from organized baseball?) was chosen by George W. Bush to be the Ambassador to Japan, Schieffer is the poster boy, along with the Chief of CBS Leslie Moonves, for Republican Bias in the Media (gopbias.org) whose "guests" after Barack Obama's unprecedented issue-oriented, yet remarkable address from Denver's Invesco Field, Schieffer's guests, obviously selected to counter Obama's success, were Joe Lieberman, Rudolf Giuliani and McCain spokesperson Carly Fiorina formerly of Hewlett-Packard, and the "unbiased" commentator/analyst David Brooks. For the Face the Nation broadcast 9/7/08 Schieffer devotes the program to John McCain! Interestingly, Tom Brokaw had Senator-Vice-President Joseph Biden for Meet the Press 9/7/08, and Biden hit a home run. Mr. Brokaw also had the awakened Thomas L. Friedman whose two columns "Eight Strikes and You're Out" 8/13/08 and "And Then There Was One" 9/3/08, are strong indicators that Mr. Friedman recognizes the fortuitous appearance on the national political scene of Senator Barack Obama. This may well be the most important presidential election since that of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1932 and, God-willing, the American people will so recognize.
The G.O.P.'s New (Old) Sales Tactics
To the Editor:
In "A Glimpse of the New" (column, Sept. 5), David Brooks writes that "John McCain is trying to reform the Republican Party before a presidential defeat." But one must do more than redesign the soapbox by adding "New and Improved" to the label. The box's contents must change.
Unfortunately, Mr. McCain's soap is the same soap the Republican old guard has sold for decades -- tax cuts for the wealthy, reduced government regulation and drilling out of an energy crisis. He'd have us forget that we used this G.O.P. soap for eight years and it doesn't clean.
Gov. Sarah Palin may be a new package for the Republican brand, but the McCain-Palin ticket is the same old product in a new wrapper. - Joel Peskoff, Baldwin, N.Y., 9/5/08
To the Editor:
After Barack Obama gave his inspiring speech to the Democratic National Convention, David Brooks commented on the Greek columns. Yet now he assesses Gov. Sarah Palin's address as "smart and assertive" and "a tough vice-presidential speech."
I can't help but feel that Mr. Brooks is grading on a curve here. Perhaps he should use an Olympic-type system, where performers are judged not only on their performance, but also on the level of difficulty.
Barack Obama's speech was an attempt to bring all Americans together under a vision of a better country. Ms. Palin's speech was an attempt to test out her comic timing and inject partisan rancor into the political discourse. - David Zweig, Los Angeles, 9/5/08
To the Editor:
David Brooks writes that John McCain and Sarah Palin have orchestrated a triumph for "the forces of reform Republicanism," but adds that Mr. McCain did not delineate a policy shift. What is a reform without a policy? - Tom Yager, New York, 9/5/08
AMY GOODMAN 9/3/08: President Bush praised Arizona Senator John McCain Tuesday for his commitment to the surge in Iraq and described him as a man who "would rather lose an election than see his country lose a war."
In these last few months of the Bush administration, as we continue to discuss the war in Iraq and the possibility of an attack on Iran, we turn to a man who was a UN weapons inspector inside Iraq in the '90s. I'm talking about Scott Ritter. He resigned as chief weapons inspector for the United Nations in 1998 and became an outspoken critic of sanctions in Iraq and US interference in weapons inspection programs.
Scott Ritter's recent articles have focused on Iran. His latest piece on Iran, published earlier this summer on Truthdig.com, is called "Acts of War." It begins with the lines: "The war between the United States and Iran is on. American taxpayer dollars are being used, with the permission of Congress, to fund activities that result in Iranians being killed and wounded, and Iranian property destroyed. This wanton violation of a nation's sovereignty would not be tolerated if the tables were turned and Americans were being subjected to Iranian-funded covert actions that took the lives of Americans, on American soil, and destroyed American property and livelihood." Those are his words.
Scott Ritter is also a registered Republican and is here in St. Paul during the Republican National Convention.
Welcome to Democracy Now!
SCOTT RITTER: Not as a delegate.
AMY GOODMAN: Not as a delegate. You're outside the convention.
SCOTT RITTER: So to speak.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, why are you here?
SCOTT RITTER: Well, first of all, I've been invited. I've been invited by various groups, concerned citizens who want to talk about the issues of war, the issues of, you know, the future, the military. One of the first groups that I spoke with were Veterans for Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War. They had a--they had their annual gathering here. It was a thrill and a privilege to--and you were there, as well--to be with these men and women who have served their country so proudly and who have expressed their dismay over the policies of the United States of America. And I was honored to be in their company.
AMY GOODMAN: And what about in the company of, well, thousands of Republican delegates who are here in St. Paul? You are a Republican. How have you seen your party change?
SCOTT RITTER: Well, I'm a registered Republican, but like most Americans, if we're honest, I can't claim to have been born into, you know, being a political person. You turn eighteen, you register to vote, you pick a party. My father was career military. I picked the Republican Party, because of the reputation that it had for being the party of national defense. This was the time of the Cold War. We were stationed overseas, and the military was an all-consuming reality.
I've retained my Republican registration, but what I've found as I've grown politically is that rather than identify myself as a Republican or an anti-Democrat, I've come to identify myself as an American. An American, first and foremost. And I've warned the Republicans--I've done this in Congress, I've done this when I speak to them--that this war in Iraq--and I said this before we invaded--will destroy the Republican Party. And it has.
Here in Minnesota, watching the Republican National Convention convene, watching what occurred yesterday, wasn't a celebration of patriotism. Yesterday was a celebration of a unilateralist vision of an America that has lost track, that has deviated from the course of ideals and values that are set forth in the Constitution, a Constitution, by the way, these men and women who served in the military took an oath to uphold and defend with their lives, a constitution that our political leadership has done the same. How can one claim to be a proud American and watch what occurred in St. Paul yesterday, this wanton abuse of the term "patriotism"?
AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean?
SCOTT RITTER: Again, they hijack it. If you're not in support of the war, you're not patriotic. If you're not in support of holding Iran to account in accordance with the terms set forth by the Republican Party, you're not a patriot. If you're not in support of defining America along the terms that the Republican Party, in its very narrow-minded manner, seeks to define America, you're not a patriot.
You know, America is bigger than the Republican Party, and I think the Republicans might find this out this coming election, that there are people out there that aren't going to automatically vote Republican on the ballot, not only because they believe in something else, but because it's hard to see what the Republicans believe in today that can be legitimately aligned with the values and ideals of this great nation.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to our two leading presidential candidates and their recent statements on Iran. This is Senator Obama talking about Iran at a rally in Iowa last week.
SEN. BARACK OBAMA: My job as president would be to try to make sure that we are tightening the screws diplomatically on Iran, that we mobilize the world community to go after Iran's nuclear program in a serious way, to get sanctions in place so that Iran starts making a different calculation. And we've got to do that before Israel feels like its back is to the wall.
AMY GOODMAN: And this is Senator McCain discussing Iran while on the campaign trail in July.
SEN. JOHN McCAIN: It's time for action, and it's time to make the Iranians understand that this kind of violation of international treaties, this kind of threatening of their neighbors, this kind of continued military activity is not without cost.
AMY GOODMAN: Scott Ritter, "not without cost"? John McCain, Barack Obama--are their policies different?
SCOTT RITTER: Well, on the issue of Iran, I guess we can see clearly that there isn't much that separates the two. And this is disturbing, because what we have in this time of, you know, national dialogue--because that's what a presidential election should really be about. It's about national dialogue. It's about 300 million people making a decision on what kind of leadership they want for the next four years. And there are many critical issues. We don't need to enunciate all of the domestic issues that are being ignored while we're focused on issues like Iran. But when we speak of executive leadership, one of the main tasks given our president is national security. And so, it's very good that we have these two candidates focused on the national security of the United States, but the way that they have couched Iran is a way that only points towards confrontation.
AMY GOODMAN: Tell us what you mean when you say the war is already on, this isn't a matter of whether or not we go to war with Iran.
SCOTT RITTER: Well, again, war is defined as--in a number of ways. As a former Marine, I can tell you that an act of war would be, for instance, if I locked on a target acquisition radar onto to another airplane. Just by locking on a radar, which indicates my willingness to target them, is an act of war, even though I don't fire on them. If a nation violates the sovereign airspace, one is allowed to assume the intent is nefarious and allow for the self defense to shoot down that aircraft. If somebody violates your territory with weaponry, with explosives, and carries out acts which manifest themselves in death and destruction, it's an act of war.
The United States has authorized this kind of activity in Iran, either directly through American-controlled assets or by proxy, using assets which are managed by either the Department of Defense or the Central Intelligence Agency. The United States Congress has passed resolutions using taxpayer money for the purpose of removing the regime in Iran from power.
I don't know how other people want to stack all this up, but when I take a look--again, if you erase "Iran" and put "the United States," and this was happening to us, at this convention, there would be screaming that America is under attack, that we are being subjected to war, and we have every right to defend ourselves. So I would say that it's only fair that if America is subjecting another nation to this, that we are committing acts of war against that nation. It may not be the conventional war that people are accustomed to, where troops in identified uniforms are moving forward, but it's definitely a precursor to conventional war. We are preparing the battlefield for the kind of decisive confrontation that both Barack Obama and John McCain are speaking about.
I mean, I don't know who they think they're fooling. But when Barack Obama says that we need to confront Iran, what does he mean by this? Sanctions? Sanctions is not a policy. The history of sanctions shows that sanctions is the antithesis of policy. You employ sanctions when you don't have sound policy. And sanctions hardly ever reverse trends. Sanctions are a holding action designed to contain and destabilize until which time you can align the forces necessary to complete the task. And the task is regime change.
AMY GOODMAN: Barack Obama has also said he would unilaterally attack Pakistan, and one of the top headlines today is that the US is being accused of leading a ground assault that killed at least fifteen people. If confirmed, it would mark the first time that the US has used ground troops inside Pakistan. The raid is said to have involved US helicopters based in Afghanistan. The governor of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province called the attack an "outrageous" assault on Pakistan's sovereignty. How would you link Pakistan and Iran in our policy with them?
SCOTT RITTER: Pakistan is a problem set that's derived from the events of September 11th. We have an individual, Osama bin Laden, and an organization, al-Qaeda, which continues to operate out of Pakistani soil. And there's--
AMY GOODMAN: By the way, one of the T-shirts being sold at the Republican convention says "Obama bin Biden."
SCOTT RITTER: It's just the kind of ignorance that just disturbs me, and I don't understand why people even think that's funny. You can have differences with Barack Obama. I have extreme differences with Barack Obama on a number of issues, but I will never discredit his American citizenship or his right to his views. And just because he comes from a lineage that is diverse, which is wonderful in these United States of America, to have a diverse, you know, background representing--being the potential to be this leader--it's just disturbing that people who call themselves patriots, people who call themselves Americans, would even sink to that level. But a separate issue.
Pakistan is basically a byproduct of the global war on terror and basically the fact that the Bush administration has not been able to complete the mission that they set out when they invaded and occupied Afghanistan. The purpose wasn't to invade and occupy Afghanistan. The purpose was to bring to grips, to bring into custody, to eliminate, Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. We have not been able to do so. And so, now we see, in our frustration, we're violating the sovereignty of yet another nation. So, in the global war on terror, which is supposed to be about defending the rule of law, we are violating international law on a regular basis.
Iran is a different problem set. Iran is about global hegemony. Iran is about the United States implementing a strategic vision that was first defined in the September 2002 National Security Strategy, dividing the world into spheres of special interests, imposing our will on them, etc.
So there's two different policies wrapped into one, though, unifying concept, which is exploiting the ignorance of the American people about the Islamic world. You see, even though Pakistan and Iran are two separate nations, for the majority of Americans, the way the Republicans sell this, they're just Muslims. And as you saw--as I saw you in your lead-up with the Al-Arian story, America's ignorance about the Islamic faith, about people who practice the Islamic faith, is continuously exploited by people who have ulterior motives.
And I think we need to get to the bottom of both, what's really going on in Afganistan, Pakistan and Iran, but we can't do that unless we have a respect for the people who populate that nation. If we dismiss them simply by saying they're all Muslims, that means that we're not really trying to define the problem. And if you don't define the problem, how can you ever come up with a solution to the problem? And Barack Obama is as guilty of this as is John McCain.
AMY GOODMAN: Steve Ritter, I interviewed pro-war veteran Lieutenant Colonel Steve Russell on Monday on Democracy Now! He founded the group Vets for Victory. He's also on the board of Vets for Freedom. This is what he said about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
STEVE RUSSELL: If you look at the testimony of Dr. Ahmed Obeidi, who was Saddam's nuclear physicist, he had a Zippe centrifuge in hand. This was a Western-manufactured centrifuge. Centrifuge, it refines uranium, in simple terms. Only a handful of nations have acquired this Western-made technology. Let me name a few of them: Israel, Pakistan, North Korea. You look at these nations, they have one thing in common: they all developed the bomb. They had this technology in hand. Now, what they didn't have was the complete oversight or lack of oversight to develop their nuclear weapons program. We found yellowcake. We have a Zippe centrifuge there. No other nation left to themselves was not able to develop the bomb with the Zippe centrifuge in hand.
AMY GOODMAN: Retired Lieutenant Colonel Steve Russell.
SCOTT RITTER: Well, I respect Colonel Russell's service to his country. What I don't understand is why Steve Russell feels that he's empowered to talk about weapons inspections in Iraq. I sort of was deeply involved in that program from '91 to '98. His name never appeared on any of the inspector rosters. He wasn't there as an inspector, and because he wasn't, he has gotten some of the issues wrong. I wouldn't quote Mahdi Obeidi in a positive way. And anyway, that just shows how ideologically motivated this guy is.
The Zippe centrifuge, it's Dutch-designed. So there's another nation that has it that doesn't have a nuclear weapons program. The same technology has been used by Germany to enrich uranium. They don't have a nuclear weapons program. The Japanese use it; they don't have a nuclear weapons program. The Canadian--my point is, many nations use centrifuges to enrich uranium. It is one of the most cost-effective means of enriching uranium for nuclear energy. Nations have used this technology in an illicit fashion: Israel, Pakistan, maybe North Korea--we're not quite sure about that, because we don't know if they have a uranium enrichment program or not. But we do know that Iraq acquired this technology. They never perfected it. The Iranians are using a derivative--the P1 centrifuge is a Zippe derivative--to enrich uranium.
But he misses the point, because he speaks of international law, operating outside the framework of international law. To say Israel and Pakistan, he's right. North Korea is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and they only went forward on their nuclear program after they withdrew from it. Iran is a signatory. And the key aspect of Steve Russell's comment is outside the framework of international monitoring. Iran is 100 percent monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency, and they have a complete understanding of the scale and scope of Iran's centrifuge program, a complete accounting of the totality of Iran's nuclear material. So I don't know what Steve Russell is trying to do, to link Iraq, which he does so inaccurately, with the situation in Iran, but he's off base.
AMY GOODMAN: Scott Ritter, you were in Naval intelligence. You served under--
SCOTT RITTER: Marine intelligence.
AMY GOODMAN: Marine intelligence. You served under General Schwarzkopf?
SCOTT RITTER: Yes, ma'am.
AMY GOODMAN: What's the last fifteen seconds you want to leave our listeners and viewers with? What do you think is the most important thing to understand today on this eve if the 2008 election?
SCOTT RITTER: Fifteen seconds? Iran poses no threat to the United States of America worthy of military intervention, and we should ensure that our political leadership, before they send our troops to war, as Barack Obama says he may do, or take care of them when they come home, that we exhaust all means short of war before we go to war, that we make sure war is the last option. Right now we hear too much warlike rhetoric about standing tall. Don't stand tall; stand safe.
AMY GOODMAN: Former UN weapons inspector, Scott Ritter, here in St. Paul.
> Here an extreme example of what this media permits! <
Amy Goodman 8/8/08: "Iraqi officials say they've reached a tentative agreement on the withdrawal of US troops. Iraqi and US negotiators are said to have agreed on a plan that would remove US troops from Iraqi cities by next July and combat troops by 2011. US troops would still remain on the hundreds of American military bases around Iraq after leaving the cities and would remain immune from prosecution. The deal would face approval from the Iraqi cabinet and parliament. The Bush administration refused to discuss a timetable for withdrawal until last month. But it appears the deal could provide vague language that sees the timetables as "goals" and "horizons" rather than firm commitments."
The Bush/McCain move toward continuing US control of Iraq would seem to depend (1) on October provincial elections in Iraq, now postponed to next year according to some sources, (2) on Defense Secretary Gates' ability to secure $20 billion more for Afghanistan without reducing our $15+ billion monthly commitment to Iraq and (3), according to Stephen Farrell 8/9/08 NY Times, whether Iraq's Moktada al-Sadr is satisfied that "negotiations between Iraq and the United States over the terms and timing of a withdrawal of American troops" has "a sense that the Iraqi government has become serious about a deadline for foreign forces in the country," all of the above immersed in the petty, greedy political interests of a Big Oil/pro-Israel Bush/McCain cabal [and did you know that the pristine John Sidney McCain III sabotaged his first marriage (as George Herbert Walker Bush had undermined his marriage to Barbara) by cheating on his first wife?] coupled with a chaotic leadership skein in Iraq dominated by selfish pursuit of its abundant national natural resources. However this is resolved, the only way that the interests of the American people will be recognized in the coming decade is the transformative Barack Obama in the White House January 20, 2009!
Bill Moyers 8/8/08: Welcome to the Journal. In Afghanistan, 500 American military have now died. And in Iraq, the number of American troops killed rose this week to 4,134. That alone is cause for grief. Who remembers any longer why they're dying, or what the war is all about? Ask your neighbors: what are we still doing in Iraq? See what they say. But there was some other news about Iraq this week that also has people shaking their heads in disbelief. The White House projects next year's federal budget deficit will be a record $482 billion, and that's not counting the projected $25 billion bailout of the mortgage banks, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac or the total costs of fighting in the Middle East. Try to get your mind around those numbers and then hear this: Our own government's independent accountants issued a report concluding that, by year's end, the Iraqi government may have a budget surplus as high as $79 billion. That's because of the high price of oil is filling Iraq's coffers. That's "war torn" Iraq, a surplus of $79 billion after we've poured $100 billion a year into that country and all those American lives. $79 billion and they're not spending it on rebuilding, on getting their electrical systems back on the grid, constructing schools and hospitals and housing, or making sure everyone has food and clean water. Between 2005 and 2007, the GAO report says, only 10% of the Iraqi budget went toward reconstruction of their own country. Once again, you and I, American taxpayers, are picking up the slack -- $48 billion dollars allocated for reconstruction costs since the shock and awe of Baghdad more than five years ago. By the way, that includes $33 million for a new hotel, office complex and shopping mall at the Baghdad airport. Remember what former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told Congress back in 2003, before the war.
PAUL WOLFOWITZ: We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.
BILL MOYERS: Remember, too, what Colin Powell told President Bush before we invaded Iraq: You break it, you buy it. Julius Caesar came, saw and conquered. George W. Bush broke and bought, and we just keep paying, in money and blood, while billions of oil profits pile up in Iraq as "surplus."
We have been warned repeatedly. On 6/24/08 Katy Couric on CBS National News "A blunt message over Iran's nuclear program. The Israelis tell Washington: If you don't destroy their nukes, we will." On 7/1/08 Brian Williams and Richard Engel collaborated on NBC Universal Nightly News to be less alarming as Engel quoted an Israeli that Iran would have a nuclear weapon within months. And on Bob Schieffer's 7/13/08 Face the Nation Mr. Schieffer welcomes, without challenge, Senate Armed Services committee chairman Carl Levin's unfounded charge that Iran is a threat to the entire Middle East. But the pesky facts! The Iranians ended what nuclear weapon program they had in 2003 when, with the rest of the world (The Israelis already knew it. They had, along with their agents Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowitz in the Pentagon, created and used the canard of Saddam's WMD's to eliminate Hussein's Iraq, an obstacle to Israeli plans for the Middle East.) they learned that Saddam had no WMDs. And neither does Iran. Their goal is nuclear power generation for electricity. THEY...ARE...NO...THREAT!
Fast forward to today. The Israeli regime insists now that Iran be "neutralized", not because it poses a threat, but because the over-reaching Israelis, much as they can't abide sharing Palestine with the Palestinians, they now can't stand the thought of sharing the Middle East with the Iranians. Thing about it. The Jewish invasion of Palestine in 1948. The June '67 occupation of Arab East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. Manipulating United States foreign policy to occupy Iraq. And now the insistence on "neutralization" of Iran. And for the next four years they have an eager agent in John McCain. McCain 7/9/08 highlighting his approach to dealing with Iran: "It's time for action. And it's time to make the Iranians understand this kind of violation of international treaties (Whoa! When will Israel sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty?), this kind of threat to their neighbors (Israel has just completed a full-dress rehearsal of a blanket aerial bombardment of Iran, and the avidly pro-Israel Leslie Moonves-dominated CBS 60 Minutes 8/10/08 featured Bob Simon's repeat of the infamous Israeli Air Force segment drooling to attack Palestinians or Iranians!), this kind of continued military activity (Israeli invasion of Lebanon, extrajudicial killings of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza) is not without cost." Hear! Hear! It's time and appropriate for the United States to cease and desist the annual gifts to Israel which, in just the last ten years have exceeded $50 billion$ of our dollars! On that same 7/13/08 notable Face the Nation Schieffer has a Roger Simon saying that whatever troop withdrawal there is coming, it's part of a John McCain plan! Since when? Clearly, the "news" media is an extension of the McCain campaign, except for Amy Goodman!
"While the news about Edwards' affair has become front-page news, little attention has been paid to a recent report in the Los Angeles Times that exposed new details about how John McCain's first marriage ended after he started an affair with his current wife. The paper revealed that McCain obtained an Arizona marriage license on March 6, 1980 to marry Cindy Hensley, even though at the time he was still legally married to his first wife, Carol." - Amy Goodman 8/11/08
Senator John Kerry was on the phone and the words were coming in a rush. "It's a completely fraudulent argument," he said. "It's misleading. It's snake oil salesmanship of the worst order." He was talking about the latest smoke screen in the presidential election, the bogus contention that lifting restrictions on offshore oil drilling would somehow, in the foreseeable future, bring down the price of gasoline for American motorists.
This absurd contention is now one of the main issues of the campaign. It's the latest example of a very real fear (that sky-high energy prices will undermine the average family's standard of living) being exploited shamelessly for political purposes. Senator John McCain told cheering bikers at a giant motorcycle rally in South Dakota: "We're gonna drill offshore! We're gonna drill here, and we're gonna drill now!" He told an audience in Lafayette Hill, Pa.: "We have to drill here and drill now. ... Drill here and drill now."
With Senator McCain and the Republicans painting a false portrait of drilling as a method of relief for today's high prices, and with polls showing the G.O.P. gaining traction on this issue, Senator Barack Obama has eased off his previous opposition to new offshore leases. And so dies the possibility of the presidential campaign offering any real clarification of this important issue.
As Senator Kerry and many others have pointed out, it would be nearly 10 years before any oil at all would be realized from new offshore leases. So your adorable 7- or 8-year-old would be just about 17 and clamoring for a license when this new oil started coming online. Maximum capacity from these new leases wouldn't be reached until 2030, when that 7- or 8-year-old is approaching 30, finished with college and graduate school, and very likely married with children.
And even then -- after more than two decades and who knows how many graduations, weddings, funerals and family cars -- even then, the amount of oil expected to come from these leases would have little or no effect on the price of gasoline at the pump. Assuming that everything over all those years goes all right, it is estimated that an additional 200,000 barrels of oil a day would come from the additional offshore drilling. That's a tiny share of the world's daily output of 85 million or so barrels.
Here's what the Energy Information Administration, the statistical agency that provides official data for the federal government, had to say about the anticipated additional output from offshore drilling: "Because oil prices are determined on the international market ... any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to be insignificant."
Did anyone mention that to the bikers who were so fired up by John McCain's "drill here and drill now" mantra? Or to the 63 percent of respondents to an ABC News poll who want the embargo on new offshore drilling to be lifted by the federal government? I wonder how they would have responded if they had been told that lifting the offshore restrictions would risk serious environmental damage to the U.S. coastline over the next several decades while having no significant effect on the price of gasoline at the pump.
Public officials should be disabusing the electorate of its delusions, not encouraging them. The widespread mistaken notions about the potential impact of offshore drilling on gasoline prices reminds me of the large percentages of Americans who were encouraged to believe, and did believe -- erroneously -- that Iraq and Saddam Hussein had something to do with the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. I wonder if the electorate will ever wise up. We've known, or should have known, since the 1970s that the day of reckoning on energy would come. The U.S., blessed with so many resources, is no longer blessed with an abundance of oil.
Jimmy Carter, for all his faults, was on the case when it came to energy. He saw the challenge as "the moral equivalent of war," and dared to ask the public to make sacrifices as part of a coordinated national effort. Senator Kerry, in accepting the Democratic nomination for president in 2004, said: "Our energy plan will invest in new technologies and alternative fuels and the cars of the future so that no young American in uniform will ever be held hostage to our dependence on oil from the Middle East."
Former Vice President Al Gore has tried, more than any other public figure in recent years, to raise the consciousness of Americans by dramatically illustrating, not just the enormity of the energy challenge, but creative and practical ways of dealing with it. How pathetic that in the midst of a presidential campaign the loudest voices we are hearing on this subject are crying: "Drill! Drill! Drill!" - Bob Herbert 8/12/08
Piecing together info from Georgia vs. Russia we find that Georgia sent 2000 combat troops to Iraq (second only to Great Britain!) in return for "reequipping its forces with Israeli and American firearms, reconnaissance drones, communication and battlefield equipment, new convoys of vehicles and stockpiles of ammunition (firepower to be used by close friend of John McCain, hot-head Georgian President Saakashvili, to force, against their will, the Russian-preferring citizens of South Ossetia and Abkhazia to join the Georgian population)." - The New York Times
Adviser Briefed McCain on Georgia After Inking Lobbying Deal!
"Meanwhile, Senator John McCain is coming under increasing criticism over his top foreign policy adviser's business ties to the Georgian government. The adviser, Randy Scheunemann, is a part owner of the lobbying firm Orion Strategies. The Washington Post has revealed Scheunemann briefed McCain before an April phone call with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili the same day Orion signed a $200,000 contract to advise Saakashvili's government. Scheunemann then helped McCain draft a strong statement of support for Georgia."
[Saakashvili used this McCain backing to, on the fateful August 7, 2008, begin hostilities against Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, with a tank barrage on civilians in the middle of the night, killing hundreds. Now John McCain with his sponsor, the Bush administration, is promoting further actions against Russia. Wake up, America. The...man...is...a...warmonger! He knows no other way! And Paul Krugman had it right, and so did General Wesley Clark!]
Amy Goodman 9/8/08: The Financial Times reports the US military provided combat training to eighty Georgian special forces commandos only months prior to Georgia's army assault in South Ossetia in August. The training was provided by senior US soldiers and two private military contractors--MPRI and American Systems, both based in Virginia. The revelation could add fuel to accusations by Russia that the US had orchestrated the war in the Georgian enclave.
The much-belated ("past dozen years"!) finally - from McCain's chief sponsor, The New York Times 8/12/08 - a FRONT PAGE correction -
"An article on Sunday about Senator John McCain's campaign management style described his role as a Navy pilot in Vietnam incorrectly. He flew bombing missions as an attack aircraft pilot, but he was not a 'fighter pilot.' (The error has appeared in numerous other Times articles the past dozen years, most recently on April 9 and on December 15, 2007.)"
Plus still another FRONT PAGE correction, in same issue -
"An article on Sunday about the management style of Senator John McCain misstated the background of one of Mr. McCain's senior advisers, Steve Schmidt, in some editions. Mr. Schmidt is not a former marine, and has never served in the military."
AND Thomas L. Friedman - McCain Questioned? - Has The Times Seen the Light?
Eight Strikes and You're Out
"John McCain recently tried to underscore his seriousness about pushing through a new energy policy, with a strong focus on more drilling for oil, by telling a motorcycle convention that Congress needed to come back from vacation immediately and do something about America's energy crisis. 'Tell them to come back and get to work!' McCain bellowed.
Sorry, but I can't let that one go by. McCain knows why.
It was only five days earlier, on July 30, that the Senate was voting for the eighth time in the past year on a broad, vitally important bill -- S. 3335 -- that would have extended the investment tax credits for installing solar energy and the production tax credits for building wind turbines and other energy-efficiency systems.
Both the wind and solar industries depend on these credits -- which expire in December -- to scale their businesses and become competitive with coal, oil and natural gas. Unlike offshore drilling, these credits could have an immediate impact on America's energy profile.
Senator McCain did not show up for the crucial vote on July 30, and the renewable energy bill was defeated for the eighth time. In fact, John McCain has a perfect record on this renewable energy legislation. He has missed all eight votes over the last year -- which effectively counts as a no vote each time. Once, he was even in the Senate and wouldn't leave his office to vote.
'McCain did not show up on any votes,' said Scott Sklar, president of The Stella Group, which tracks clean-technology legislation. Despite that, McCain's campaign commercial running during the Olympics shows a bunch of spinning wind turbines -- the very wind turbines that he would not cast a vote to subsidize, even though he supports big subsidies for nuclear power.
Barack Obama did not vote on July 30 either -- which is equally inexcusable in my book -- but he did vote on three previous occasions in favor of the solar and wind credits.
The fact that Congress has failed eight times to renew them is largely because of a hard core of Republican senators who either don't want to give Democrats such a victory in an election year or simply don't believe in renewable energy.
What impact does this have? In the solar industry today there is a rush to finish any project that would be up and running by Dec. 31 -- when the credits expire -- and most everything beyond that is now on hold. Consider the Solana concentrated solar power plant, 70 miles southwest of Phoenix in McCain's home state. It is the biggest proposed concentrating solar energy project ever. The farsighted local utility is ready to buy its power.
But because of the Senate's refusal to extend the solar tax credits, 'we cannot get our bank financing,' said Fred Morse, a senior adviser for the American operations of Abengoa Solar, which is building the project. 'Without the credits, the numbers don't work.' Some 2,000 construction jobs are on hold.
Roger Efird is president of Suntech America -- a major Chinese-owned solar panel maker that actually wants to build a new factory in America. They've been scouting the country for sites, and several governors have been courting them. But Efird told me that when the solar credits failed to pass the Senate, his boss told him: 'Don't set up any more meetings with governors. It makes absolutely no sense to do this if we don't have stability in the incentive programs.'
One of the biggest canards peddled by Big Oil is that, 'Sure, we'll need wind and solar energy, but it's just not cost effective yet.' They've been saying that for 30 years. What these tax credits are designed to do is to stimulate investments by many players in solar and wind so these technologies can quickly move down the learning curve and become competitive with coal and oil -- which is why some people are trying to block them.
As Richard K. Lester, an energy-innovation expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, notes, 'The best chance we have -- perhaps the only chance' of addressing the combined challenges of energy supply and demand, climate change and energy security 'is to accelerate the introduction of new technologies for energy supply and use and deploy them on a very large scale.'
This, he argues, will take more than a Manhattan Project. It will require a fundamental reshaping by government of the prices and regulations and research-and-development budgets that shape the energy market. Without taxing fossil fuels so they become more expensive and giving subsidies to renewable fuels so they become more competitive -- and changing regulations so more people and companies have an interest in energy efficiency -- we will not get innovation in clean power at the scale we need.
That is what this election should be focusing on. Everything else is just bogus rhetoric designed by cynical candidates who think Americans are so stupid -- so bloody stupid -- that if you just show them wind turbines in your Olympics ad they'll actually think you showed up and voted for such renewable power -- when you didn't." - By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN 8/13/08
And Then There Was One
As we emerge from Labor Day, college students are gathering back on campuses not only to start the fall semester, but also, in some cases, to vote for the first time in a presidential election. There is no bigger issue on campuses these days than environment/energy. Going into this election, I thought that -- for the first time -- we would have a choice between two "green" candidates. That view is no longer operative -- and college students (and everyone else) need to understand that.
With his choice of Sarah Palin -- the Alaska governor who has advocated drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and does not believe mankind is playing any role in climate change -- for vice president, John McCain has completed his makeover from the greenest Republican to run for president to just another representative of big oil.
Given the fact that Senator McCain deliberately avoided voting on all eight attempts to pass a bill extending the vital tax credits and production subsidies to expand our wind and solar industries, and given his support for lowering the gasoline tax in a reckless giveaway that would only promote more gasoline consumption and intensify our addiction to oil, and given his desire to make more oil-drilling, not innovation around renewable energy, the centerpiece of his energy policy -- in an effort to mislead voters that support for drilling today would translate into lower prices at the pump today -- McCain has forfeited any claim to be a green candidate.
So please, students, when McCain comes to your campus and flashes a few posters of wind turbines and solar panels, ask him why he has been AWOL when it came to Congress supporting these new technologies.
"Back in June, the Republican Party had a round-up," said Carl Pope, the executive director of the Sierra Club. "One of the unbranded cattle -- a wizened old maverick name John McCain -- finally got roped. Then they branded him with a big 'Lazy O' -- George Bush's brand, where the O stands for oil. No more maverick.
"One of McCain's last independent policies putting him at odds with Bush was his opposition to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge," added Pope, "yet he has now picked a running mate who has opposed holding big oil accountable and been dismissive of alternative energy while focusing her work on more oil drilling in a wildlife refuge and off of our coasts. While the northern edge of her state literally falls into the rising Arctic Ocean, Sarah Palin says, 'The jury is still out on global warming.' She's the one hanging the jury -- and John McCain is going to let her."
Indeed, Palin's much ballyhooed confrontations with the oil industry have all been about who should get more of the windfall profits, not how to end our addiction.
Barack Obama should be doing more to promote his green agenda, but at least he had the courage, in the heat of a Democratic primary, not to pander to voters by calling for a lifting of the gasoline tax. And while he has come out for a limited expansion of offshore drilling, he has refrained from misleading voters that this is in any way a solution to our energy problems.
I am not against a limited expansion of off-shore drilling now. But it is a complete sideshow. By constantly pounding into voters that his energy focus is to "drill, drill, drill," McCain is diverting attention from what should be one of the central issues in this election: who has the better plan to promote massive innovation around clean power technologies and energy efficiency.
Why? Because renewable energy technologies -- what I call "E.T." -- are going to constitute the next great global industry. They will rival and probably surpass "I.T." -- information technology. The country that spawns the most E.T. companies will enjoy more economic power, strategic advantage and rising standards of living. We need to make sure that is America. Big oil and OPEC want to make sure it is not.
Palin's nomination for vice president and her desire to allow drilling in the Alaskan wilderness "reminded me of a lunch I had three and half years ago with one of the Russian trade attachés," global trade consultant Edward Goldberg said to me. "After much wine, this gentleman told me that his country was very pleased that the Bush administration wanted to drill in the Alaskan wilderness. In his opinion, the amount of product one could actually derive from there was negligible in terms of needs. However, it signified that the Bush administration was not planning to do anything to create alternative energy, which of course would threaten the economic growth of Russia."
So, college students, don't let anyone tell you that on the issue of green, this election is not important. It is vitally important, and the alternatives could not be more black and white. - By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN 9/3/08
Amy Goodman 8/15/08: In Israel and the Occupied Territories, Palestinian journalists and Israeli human rights groups are joining to condemn an Israeli decision not to prosecute soldiers involved in the death of Reuters cameraman Fadel Shana and eight Palestinian youths. The twenty-four-year-old Shana died on April 16th in Gaza when an Israeli tank shelled his vehicle clearly marked "press." Shana's final piece of footage shows the tank firing a shell just before the camera went black. The other eight victims were aged between twelve and twenty years old. Reuters correspondent Nidal al-Mughrabi said the decision is being feared as an endorsement of future attacks.
Nidal al-Mughrabi: "The Israeli report on the killing of Fadel has grown fears among Palestinian journalists covering the conflict with Israel in the Gaza...between the Palestinians and the Israelis in the Gaza Strip, about the mission, you know, the mission to cover and to film. And we have been hearing from all other colleagues that they are not certain, they are not sure, about their lives anymore after such a report, which makes clear that the mere raising of a camera in the street, in a refugee camp or near the border can put someone's life in danger."
Amy Goodman: Meanwhile, in Israel, Jessica Montell, director of the Israeli human rights group B'tselem, said Israel had used illegal weapons in the attack.
Jessica Montell: "In this incident on April 16th, six civilians were killed by flechette darts, a weapon that is illegal, that should not be being used in these conditions in the Gaza Strip, and one of the six was a journalist. For all of these reasons, I would have expected the army to have opened and conducted a very thorough investigation into this case, and they chose not to do so. The lack of accountability in this case is reflected in the lack of accountability for thousands of Palestinians who have been killed in the Occupied Territories."
Amy Goodman 8/15/08: Bush's trip comes amidst news the Israeli government is trying to block the publication of a key report detailing its expanding settlement activity in the West Bank. According to the Israeli group Peace Now, the confidential 2006 report provides the Israeli government's most comprehensive analysis to date of settlement activity beyond its internationally-recognized borders. The report is said to detail widespread expansion in dozens of settlements, which Israel vowed to stop under the U.S.-backed Road Map.
August 27, 2008
Rice, in Israel, Criticizes Surge in Settlement Construction
"JERUSALEM -- Peace Now, the Israeli advocacy group, said in a report released Tuesday that in the last year Israel had nearly doubled its settlement construction in the occupied West Bank, in violation of its obligations under an American-backed peace plan.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in Jerusalem on a short visit to help Israeli and Palestinian leaders in their negotiations, said when asked about the report that she had told Israeli officials that such building did not advance the cause of peace.
'What we need now are steps that enhance confidence between the parties, and anything that undermines confidence between the parties ought to be avoided,' she said with the Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, at her side.
Ms. Livni said that settlement building should not influence the negotiations because the goal should be 'not to let any kind of noises that relate to the situation on the ground these days enter the negotiation room.'
The Peace Now report on settlements, based on aerial photos, visits and government data, says that more than 1,000 buildings are going up in the West Bank, including 2,600 housing units. It says that for the first five months of 2008, construction in the settlements was 1.8 times greater than in the same period of 2007.
Peace Now opposes Israeli construction on land captured in the 1967 war, like the West Bank, and favors furthering the creation of a Palestinian state there. Yet it is considered a reliable source of settlement information.
Its report says more than half of the building is beyond the separation barrier that Israel has built in recent years on the border of and inside the West Bank. This is significant, if true, because Israeli leaders have argued that ultimately a deal with the Palestinians will allow it to keep several settlement blocs and neighborhoods in East Jerusalem in exchange for land swaps. Therefore, they say, their building in East Jerusalem and close-in settlements on their side of the barrier should cause no concern.
The Peace Now report shows that the building in East Jerusalem is intensive, with the number of tenders for houses there up to 1,761 this year from 46 in 2007." - ETHAN BRONNER, The New York Times
for These Bush/McCain "Adventures"
Amy Goodman (con't): In campaign news, a new analysis shows a large majority of US troops abroad are donating to presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama over Republican rival John McCain. The Center for Responsive Politics says among US servicemembers, Obama has out-raised McCain by a nearly six-to-one margin. The ratio marks a stark reversal from the last two presidential elections, where President Bush out-raised both Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004.
Items from -
- Juan Gonzales DemocracyNow 7/30/08: The Wall Street Journal reports one of the most prominent advocates of the invasion of Iraq is now exploring investing in Iraq oil fields. Former pentagon adviser Richard Perle [an individual who is fully exposed, as are his fellow conspirators Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowitz, in Jim Bamford's groundbreaking A Pretext for War (several of their more bloodthirsty colleagues had suggested years earlier blowing up the Dome of the Rock, the third most sacred site in all of Islam)], Perle is reportedly forming a team discussing a possible oil deal with officials of the Kurdistan regional government. Perle was chair of the US "Defense" Policy Board in the leadup to the Iraq war. He's a "scholar" at the American "Enterprise" Institute (AEI) think tank.
- Helene Cooper NY Times 8/1/08: 'It's (the Annapolis Israel/Palestinian peace effort) over', said David Makovsky (quite pleased with himself), an analyst (Margaret Warner's of Lehrer NewsHour favorite "analyst" on the Middle East) with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. 'Rice was counting on the fact that Olmert's dwindling political fortunes would lead him to turn to a diplomatic victory as a springboard toward a political comeback. But if he's leaving office, that doesn't happen.'
- Katharine Q. Seelye NY Times 8/1/08 - Political Memo: Senator John McCain ushered "the media" back to the stage early this year. Mr. McCain, a Republican, seems to be newly amazed, and annoyed, at each turn by how deeply in the tank he says the news media are for his Democratic opponent, Senator Barack Obama. And yet Mr. McCain himself has enjoyed one of the coziest relationships with the news media for years. When the broadcasters expressed opinions about Mr. Obama, 72% of the comments were negative and 28% were positive. By contrast, when they expressed opinions about Mr. McCain, 57% were negative while 43% were positive.
- Editor's note on above: We would be amazed to see a broadcast in which 57% of the comments or video about Mr. McCain were negative. Wall Street has a prohibition against such heresy, and, also, John McCain is now a virtual fixture on Jon Stewart's The Daily Show, which has become a Wall Street favorite. McCain's "Straight Talk" has descended to the classic Republican mantra - "Say anything to gain our (Republican) White House."
Amy Goodman 8/5/08: In campaign news, Senator Barack Obama visited Lansing, Michigan, Monday where he unveiled a new energy plan.
Sen. Barack Obama: "If I am president, I will immediately direct the full resources of the federal government and the full energy of the private sector, working with state and local governments, to achieve a single, overarching goal: in ten years, we will eliminate the need for oil from the entire Middle East and Venezuela."
Amy Goodman 8/5/08 (cont'): Obama called on the government to tap the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve and sell 70 million barrels of oil from its stockpiles in an attempt to lower gas prices. The Illinois senator also proposed investing $150 billion over the next decade in clean energy and renewable sources, a move he said would create five million jobs. During his speech, Obama admitted he is no longer opposed to expanding offshore oil drilling if it is part of a broader energy plan.
Sen. Barack Obama: "Like all compromises, this one has its drawbacks. It does include a limited amount of new offshore drilling, and while I still don't believe that's a particularly meaningful short-term or long-term solution, what I've said is I'm willing to consider it if it's necessary to actually pass a comprehensive plan."
Amy Goodman (cont'): Meanwhile, Senator John McCain continues to slam Obama's energy policies. The McCain campaign has begun distributing tire gauges to mock Obama's call for drivers to save gas by keeping their tires inflated (Interestingly, the AAA has also emphasized the importance of properly inflated tires to reduce gas consumption.). McCain also called for Congress to come back into session to pass an energy bill.
Amy Goodman 8/5/08: Ever since John McCain made a call to expand offshore drilling, oil and gas companies have poured money into his campaign. Over the past two months, the Arizona senator has received at least $1.2 million in contributions in Texas alone from oil- and gas-related donors. That is nearly more money than McCain raised from the oil and gas sectors over the past two decades. The website Talking Points Memo reports that ten senior executives of the oil company Hess and members of the Hess family each gave over $28,000 to the joint RNC-McCain fundraising committee, just days after McCain reversed himself in favor of offshore drilling.
Planning the Disaster -
The Hidden Links? Roger Ailes, Joe Lieberman, Sheldon G. Adelson, Judith Miller, Mort Zuckerman, Abe Foxman ET CETERA!
All of the above are surely the most deceitful and mendacious pack of scoundrels this nation has had to endure since our Civil War [and here we have the individual whose leadership we have been denied, by the above and their co-conspirators in the Media/Press]. Details at the end of the following "Mideast Peace Conference" segment. And secondly it's amusing to hear NPR and its various programs attempt to blunt the rapier-like thrust to the heart of Bush/Cheney, their ingrained defeat exposed, reluctantly, by The New York Times' leading front page story 12/4/07 as stated by Steven Lee Myers: "Rarely, if ever, has a single intelligence report so completely, so suddenly, and so surprisingly altered a foreign policy debate." The headline "U.S. Finding says Iran Halted Nuclear Arms Effort In 2003" directly contradicts the various Bush statements over the years claiming the threat posed by Iran - Iran an "Axis of Evil", and threatening "World War III". Near the very end of an accompanying story by Mark Mazzetti (paragraph #24 of a 26 paragraph story) we read the understatement of the decade: "Israel intelligence officials for years have put forward more urgent warnings about Iran's nuclear abilities than their American counterparts, positing that Iran could get a nuclear bomb this decade."
To the Editor:
Re "McCain's Conservative Model? Roosevelt (Theodore, That Is)" (front page, July 13 The New York Times):
Is John McCain aware that Theodore Roosevelt was not a conservative? On virtually every domestic issue -- race relations, the environment, the role of government in the economy -- T.R. was what today would be labeled a robust liberal, and the leading conservatives of his day, like Mark Hanna, hated and feared him.
When Roosevelt created his own political party, he called it the Progressive Party, and he is generally considered the first president of the Progressive Era.
If Mr. McCain is having a difficult time crafting a coherent campaign message, perhaps that is because his two political heroes -- Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan -- were complete philosophical opposites. - DAVID S. FRANKEL, South Dennis, Mass., July 14, 2008
To the Editor:
Senator John McCain says his model for a conservative president is Theodore Roosevelt. Funny, President Bush claimed T.R. as his model as well. Look what he has done with that -- an irresponsible war and a collapsing United States economy.
The Republicans like to claim T.R. as one of their own but refuse to understand that T.R., like F.D.R., was a progressive who sought to save business from its worst instincts through government action. There is little evidence in Mr. McCain's record that as a maverick senator he understands T.R. any better than Mr. Bush does. - William Sonnenstuhl, Ithaca, N.Y., July 13, 2008
Margaret Warner, now a regular on the PBS Lehrer NewsHour began her 7/21/08 segment by quoting Barack Obama on the 7/20/08 Bob Schieffer Face the Nation - "the situation in Afghanistan is precarious and urgent." Absolutamente'! But Ms. Warner was using that quote (which, incidentally, is accurate and obvious) as a leadin to the focus she wanted - Warner: McCain took issue with that today on ABC's Good Morning America. McCain: "You don't have to choose to lose in Iraq to win in Afghanistan (Huh?)!" What is McCain talking about? Ms. Warner continues: McCain's stand seemed to draw support from Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman on Fox News (with Chris Wallace). Did Ms. Warner expect Admiral Mullen to take issue with John Sidney McCain III, son and grandson of heralded admirals of the past?
Margaret Warner has reverted to her past biases!
RAY McGOVERN (27-year CIA analyst on 6/6/05 Lehrer NewsHour): "I would go back to an earlier conversation, and this happened on the 20th of September 2001, and this happened nine days after 9/11. This involved Tony Blair, who was in Washington having dinner with the President. How do we know about this? We know this because Christopher Meyer, the UK ambassador was there at that dinner. What does he say? The conversation went like this. President Bush: 'Uh, Tony. Uh, we're going into Afghanistan in a week or two, but that won't take long and we get out of there and we're going right into Iraq. Are you with me, Tony? Are you with me?' And Christopher Meyer says 'My goodness, it was really, and Tony was really sort of nonplussed, but he said 'Yes sir, I'm with you Mr. President.' (Margaret Warner tries to interrupt, but Mr. McGovern continues) So that goes back (a flustered Ms. Margaret Warner) "Mr. McGovern, speed up!" (Mr. McGovern) "so that goes back to 2001" (Ms. Warner) "We're almost out of time. Get to the next part!" (Mr. McGovern) "Okay, that's it." (Ms. Warner, almost shouting) "So, it's not about Iraq, it's about Afghanistan!" (Mr. McGovern) "Well, no. This has to do with Iraq. What the President said to Tony Blair, on the 20th of September (2001) according to the UK ambassador who was there, is 'We're going into Afghanistan in a couple of weeks. It won't take us long there, and we're going right into Iraq right after that. Are you with me?' And Tony Blair said 'Yes!'"
In April of 1775 Paul Revere and other Sons of Liberty warned our fellow colonists in Concord, Massachusetts that the British were coming to capture our cache of gunpowder. Today, over two hundred and thirty three years later we need an equally timely and momentous alert that the Israelis, AIPAC and their subversive infiltrators...are already here, and in the process of eliminating the core values of American democracy that made us a beacon of hope in a troubled world - freedom from tyranny, respect for individual liberty and human rights, and government based on the rule of law. These recent excerpts regarding the Middle East from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (7/10/08) and chief McCain strategist Randy Scheunemann (7/9/08) should alert all Americans to the threat posed to these United States by the prospective White House reign of John Sidney McCain III:
Condoleezza Rice: We are also sending a message to Iran that we will defend American interests and defend the interests of our allies (ISRAEL!). We've done that both by...in the gulf area...the United States has enhanced its security capacity, its security presence, and we are working closely with all of our allies (ISRAEL!) to make certain that they are capable of defending themselves (ISRAEL!).
Randy Scheunemann: Senator McCain has been very clear. The danger caused by the Iranian regime having nuclear weapons would be catastrophic for our interests (ISRAEL!) in the region and would trigger a nuclear arms race (Randy, will Israel even reduce its 200+ nuclear stockpile?), it would pose an existential threat to the State of Israel (In that Iran hasn't attacked anyone in centuries, by being a living and vibrant and peaceful national existence in the Middle East?).
PAST BREAKING NEWS - Amy Goodman 4/10/08: Former President Jimmy Carter is planning on meeting Hamas' exiled political leader Khalid Mashaal in Syria next week. Last week Mashaal reiterated his previous statement that Hamas would accept a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders with Israel. Carter's plans immediately came under criticism from all three leading presidential candidates. Senator John McCain called on Senator Barrack Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton to condemn the meeting. In statements both Clinton and Obama said they disagreed with Carter's plan (as are we all, Obama too, is victimized by the power of AIPAC). The meeting comes as Israeli public support is growing for talks with Hamas. A poll in February found sixty four percent of Israelis support Hamas' call for a cease fire. By June the Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas were uniting in Senegal to force Israel to honor its pledge to recognize the seven hundred year history of Arab East Jerusalem as the site of the future capital of the Palestinian state.
The obsession of a pair of draft dodgers - George Walker Bush and Richard Bruce Cheney - to mandate for the Middle East their own shallow, uninformed and heedless, yet arrogant, personal views for the future of that complex ancient land requires Americans (we are responsible for their holding our highest offices), all Americans, to monitor and mitigate the damage they have inflicted and continue to pursue on our own United States, and the rest of the world. Our immediate responsibility now is to monitor the ongoing negotiations with the Iraqi government to ensure that the agreement does not maintain a permanent presence of American combat troops and American bases in Iraq beyond the presidency of George Bush. The Republican candidacy of John Sidney McCain III has as its primary purpose precisely that - the long-term interminable total control of Iraq, which, incidentally, has been the objective of Israel and Jewish interests since the election of George Walker Bush.
GOPBias.org is in homage to Presidents George Washington 2/22/1732
and Abraham Lincoln 2/12/1809, as the American people attempt to regain their promise and vision.
Writers Almanac, Tuesday, 4 March, 2008
Garrison Keiler: "Today is March 4, the original date for the inauguration of presidents in the United States. And so, on this day in 1865, Abraham Lincoln delivered his second inaugural address. Lincoln easily won his re-election in 1864, and by the time of his inauguration the Civil War was nearly at an end.
The day of the inauguration, Pennsylvania Avenue was little more than mud and standing water, due to weeks of wet weather. Still, the turnout was unprecedented. Trains carrying spectators arrived to the sound of bands playing 'The Battle Cry of Freedom.' The inaugural ceremonies included a battalion of African-American troops in the escort party, accompanying Lincoln to his address. Lincoln took the executive oath on the East Portico, with the newly completed Capitol dome in clear view. In his brief address, Lincoln talked about reconciliation between the Union and the ailing Confederacy.
The address, just four paragraphs and 26 lines, concludes: 'With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.'
One of the spectators in the crowd was an actor named John Wilkes Booth. Six weeks later, on April 14, 1865, Booth shot and killed Abraham Lincoln."
In November of this year it will have been forty five years since the murder of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. In all that time there have been, and continue to be, enumerable books, articles and films - purportedly, on the significance and impact of the assassination, painstaking and thorough examinations by every network, every expert, every official analysis imaginable - and yet, none of these efforts were authentic, even to their authors, directors, producers and funders, and all of whom knew that to be the case. Now, finally, there is a book (just as there was in 2004 with James Bamford's A Pretext For War exposing the origin and mechanics of the AIPAC/Israeli connection to our present crisis in Afghanistan and dilemma in Iraq) a book now by James W. Douglass entitled JFK and the UNSPEAKABLE which uncovers in detail that President Kennedy was assassinated to prevent the peace and freedom for which he dedicated his life. The following interview of author Douglass by Linda Olson Osterlund establishes the validity of this book, timely for our celebration of the two hundred and thirty second anniversary of our Declaration of Independence, and having just passed the ninety first anniversary of the May 29, 1917 birth of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
There continues to be a vast and deadly Republican right-wing conspiracy in this country, as there was, most recently, during the Clinton administration [Elizabeth Brackett on the Lehrer NewsHour broke one major story (while Jim Lehrer was away) after the 1994 election in which the Honorable Tom Foley the Democratic Speaker of the House was defeated by George Nethercutt and the budding Republican radio talk show armada in Spokane, Washington (Lehrer limited her appearances on the NewsHour in retaliation) - Sidney Blumenthaul's excellent The Clinton Wars details the endless and meticulous effort to undermine the Clinton presidency]. This deadly conspiracy has now reached its zenith and evolved into a formidable pro-Israel/anti-American phenomenon with the involvement of, such as, Sheldon G. Adelson and his ill-gotten billions from Las Vegas, and the radical-right Jewish Americans Dennis Prager and Dennis Miller, just a portion of the pro-Israel/anti-American network which Adelson funds. His power is such that even the iconic Amy Goodman, along with Seymour Hersch, is being forced to curtail the use of major blocs of her daily DemocracyNow which particularize the bellicose actions of Israel against Iran, now the one country after the elimination of Iraq, the one country which stands in the way of Israeli determination to rule the Middle East.
There are, of course, numerous examples of that determination evident here in the United States, many represented by support for the McCain campaign. One unusual effort is by the Si Newhouse clan and its editor David Remnick of the flagship The New Yorker. On its cover several months ago (3/17/08) Remnick's magazine had Obama and Hillary grappling in bed to reach the "red phone (Barry Blitt)". In its latest issue (7/21/08) it has Barack in Muslim garb, his wife in an afro holding a Kalashnikov (Russian firearm) wearing several bands of ammo, there's a portrait of Bin Laden on the wall, an American flag burning in the fire place and both of them portrayed as sly and smug (again, "cartoonist" Blitt).
[The combined pro-Republican bias of the networks and the radio talk shows, as Elizabeth Brackett demonstrated in 1994, is not new, but it has proved to have no boundaries, even in the aftermath of 9/11, which George W. Bush's arrogance (he refused to consider or credit the numerous warnings from out-going Clinton/Gore aides) had facilitated. In fact, incredibly, in the last month of 2001 Tim Russert had guests Laura Bush, Rudy Giulliani and Roman Catholic Bishop-now Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick promoting Bush's stolen 2000 presidential election as "Divine Intervention". Although Laura Bush demurred, the other three approved, and a week or so later Jewish American John Donald Imus Jr. and his sidekick Charles touted the "special" Meet the Press as the finest television ever!]
On the front page of The New York Times 7/15/08 former Don Imus promoter Bill Carter has a story about the character of the cartoon with the sentence "the response from both Democrats and Republicans was 'explosive' (John McCain's mild rebuke said the cover was 'inappropriate' and he could understand why the Obamas were 'offended'). That's an 'explosion', from this man who is well known for frequently losing it because of his short fuse! On the inside (A-15) of the Carter story it ends with a photo of Imus protege Bill Maher: "If you can't do irony on the cover of The New Yorker, where can you do it (Irony? More like political savagery. This is, as Republican honcho James A. Baker III coined it "a street fight for the American presidency.")?
That Focussed The Last Stolen Election
Head GOP Cheerleader Rudy Giuliani:
"I do think...that there was some Divine Guidance in the President being elected (Elected in 2000? Stolen by five GOP-appointed Supreme Court Judges!). I remember saying it on the street. 'Thank God he's there!'"
The Church then sanctifies Russert...Giuliani...and "W". Cardinal Theodore McCarrick:
"I think that the President really...that the President was where he is when we really needed him...and he's still there when we need him now."
Don Imus [...he who has yet to learn that if you talk about it all the time...on national commercial radio (editor's note: Today...is there any other kind?)...it's not charity...it's commerce!], now probably (was in 2000, and still is in 2008) the most prominent of radio/television Republicans in the Boston-New York-Washington news corridor (Mr. Imus is also the lifeline for the equally-disgraced Mike Barnacle), was, in his first radio/MSNBC appearance of the new year, rapturous in his praise of Mr. Russert's program: "It's about the best hour I've ever seen on television."...and the backbone of this fragile-psyched (deservedly so!) GOP flack, his partner Charles McCord: "It was just terrific. It was the perfect television hour."
The following is self explanatory:
Here...a common example (4/17/00) of Imus programming: "There are actually people out there who want to continue this? Who think that Al Gore is the answer? Here's the question. Is there a flip-flopping...lying...dissembling. . .two-faced...fork-tongued...campaign cash-chiseling...half-bald pothead...recovering tobacco addict - - with a piano-legged...bottle-blonded ditzy wife...and a pair of dead-eyed Depro daughters available...who would like to run for the presidency? All he needs is Haldeman, Erlichman, Liddy and Maurice Stans...and Gore 2000 could start knocking over banks. The only real difference between Gore and John Gotti (imprisoned mafia don)...is Gotti never had to have Naomi Wolfe pick out his suits." -Don Imus 2000
>>Editor's observation: With this kind of blatant pro-Bush2 effort being made by national journalists...of course his poll numbers would be high. American corporations do not spend BILLION$ in television advertising...expecting no increase in sales...and/or image (and national journalists are making the same effort for McCain in 2008).<<
- - Excepting, among a few others, the great NY Times' columnist Bob Herbert -
Bob Herbert July 26, 2008 - "Getting To Know You" subhead "It's time we were introduced to the real John McCain."
The conventional wisdom in this radically unconventional presidential race is that the voters have to get to know Barack Obama better. That's what this week's overseas trip was about: to showcase the senator as a potential commander in chief and leader of U.S. foreign policy.
According to this way of thinking, as voters see more of Mr. Obama and become more comfortable with him (assuming no major foul-ups along the way), his chances of getting elected will be enhanced.
Maybe so. But what about the other guy? How much do voters really know about John McCain?
Senator McCain crossed a line that he shouldn't have this week when he said that Mr. Obama "would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign." It was a lousy comment, tantamount to calling Mr. Obama a traitor, and Senator McCain should apologize for it.
But what we've learned over the years is that Mr. McCain is one of those guys who never has to pay much of a price for his missteps and foul-ups and bad behavior. Can you imagine the firestorm of outrage and criticism that would have descended on Senator Obama if he had made the kind of factual mistakes that John McCain has repeatedly made in this campaign?
(Or if Senator Obama had had the temerity to even remotely suggest that John McCain would consider being disloyal to his country for political reasons?)
We have a monumental double standard here. Mr. McCain has had trouble in his public comments distinguishing Sunnis from Shiites and had to be corrected in one stunningly embarrassing moment by his good friend Joe Lieberman. He has referred to a Iraq-Pakistan border when the two countries do not share a border.
He declared on CBS that Iraq was the first major conflict after 9/11, apparently forgetting -- at least for the moment -- about the war in Afghanistan. In that same interview, he credited the so-called surge of U.S. forces in Iraq with bringing about the Anbar Awakening, a movement in which thousands of Sunnis turned on insurgents. He was wrong. The awakening preceded the surge.
More important than these endless gaffes are matters that give us glimpses of the fundamental makeup of the man. A celebrated warrior as a young man, he has always believed that the war in Iraq can (and must) be won. As the author Elizabeth Drew has written: "He didn't seem to seriously consider the huge costs of the war: financial, personal, diplomatic and to the reputation of the United States around the world."
He also felt we could have, and should have, won the war in Vietnam. "We lost in Vietnam," said Mr. McCain in 2003, "because we lost the will to fight, because we did not understand the nature of the war we were fighting and because we limited the tools at our disposal."
The spirit of the warrior was on display in the famous incident in which Mr. McCain, with the insouciance of a veteran bomber pilot, sang "Bomb-bomb Iran" to the tune of "Barbara Ann" by the Beach Boys.
No big deal. Just John being John.
But then, we are already bogged down in two wars. And John is running for president. It's hardly crazy to wonder.
Part of the makeup of the man -- apparently a significant part, according to many close observers -- is his outsized temper. Mr. McCain's temperament has long been a subject of fascination in Washington, and for some a matter of concern. He can be a nasty piece of work. (Truly nasty. He once told an extremely cruel joke about Chelsea Clinton -- too cruel to repeat here.)
If the McCain gaffes seem endless, so do the tales about his angry, profanity-laced eruptions. Senator Thad Cochran, a Mississippi Republican, said of Mr. McCain: "The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine."
Senator Pete Domenici, a New Mexico Republican, told Newsweek in 2000: "I decided I didn't want this guy anywhere near a trigger."
Both senators have since endorsed Senator McCain's presidential bid, but their initial complaints were part of a much larger constellation of concerns about the way Mr. McCain tends to treat people with whom he disagrees, and his frequently belligerent my-way-or-the-highway attitude.
Senator McCain has acknowledged on various occasions that he has a short fuse and has at times made jokes about it. He told Larry King in 2006: "My anger did not help my campaign ... People don't like angry candidates very much."
My guess is that most voters don't see John McCain as an angry candidate, despite several very public lapses. The mythical John McCain is an affable, straight-talking, moderately conservative war hero who is an expert on foreign policy.
Barack Obama is not the only candidate the voters need to know more about. - Bob Herbert 7/26/08
James W. Douglass, author of JFK and the UNSPEAKABLE - GET'S IT (he may not have the complete "how", but he surely has the "why")! "A remarkable book: devastating in its documented indictment of the dark forces that have long deformed the public life of this country...This book should be required reading for every American citizen." - Richard Falk, Milbank Professor of International Law Emeritus, Princeton University. "Far from being ancient history, the story of Kennedy's turn toward peace [e.g. NSAMs 55 and 57 (National Security Action Memoranda), cancellation of assassination of Fidel Castro, June 10, 1963 speech at American University, detente with Khrushchev, September 1963 Test Ban Treaty], and the price this exacted, bears crucial lessons for today. Those who plotted his death were determined not simply to eliminate one man but to kill a vision. Only by unmasking these forces of the 'Unspeakable,' Douglass argues, can we free ourselves and our country to pursue that vision of peace."
Note: Near end of GOPBias.org blog
explosive The Commission by Philip Shenon
Lourdes Garcia-Navarro: All Things Considered, June 8, 2008 - Iraq and Iran have not always been good neighbors. They fought an eight-year war in the 1980s. And Iraq is investigating U.S. allegations that Iran is backing Shiite militias in Iraq.
But the Iranians have their own concerns: They fear that Iraq might agree to allow long-term U.S. bases on its soil. All this provided the backdrop for Sunday's visit to Iran by Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
Al-Maliki visited Iran, in part, to assuage some of its fears. As Iraq and the U.S. negotiate the terms of a security deal that will determine the status of U.S. troops potentially for years to come, Iran opposes the so-called "status of forces" agreement. The Iranians fear that Iraq could be used as a launching pad for a U.S. attack against their country.
Iran has consistently spoken out against any agreement that would allow for large numbers of U.S. troops to remain in neighboring Iraq. Most recently, a powerful Iranian politician said that such a deal would "enslave Iraqis."
Al-Maliki is also discussing other issues during his visit to Iran. The prime minister reportedly plans to raise U.S. allegations that Iran is arming, funding and training Shiite militia in Iraq. Iran, which like Iraq has a Shiite government, has repeatedly denied those charges. The U.S. military has provided often conflicting evidence to support its claims.
Meanwhile, the deaths of two American soldiers were announced Sunday. One died when a suicide car bomber targeted a U.S. base in northern Iraq. Eighteen other soldiers were wounded and two Iraqi contractors were also hurt. Another soldier died last night when his vehicle hit a roadside bomb in eastern Baghdad.
Michele Kelemen: All Things Considered, June 8, 2008 - At the end of the year, a United Nations mandate expires that gives the U.S. a legal right to have troops in Iraq. The U.S. is negotiating a pact with Iraq that will extend their right to stay beyond 2008. But Iraqi politicians are concerned the U.S. is seeking too much, and some U.S. Congress members don't want to see the Bush administration tie the hands of the next U.S. president.
Amy Goodman 6/6/08: In other Iraq news, a newly released Senate report has concluded President George Bush and his top policymakers (John Sidney McCain III) deliberately distorted Saddam Hussein's links to al-Qaeda and ignored doubts among intelligence agencies about Iraq's arms programs as they made a case for war. Sen. John Rockefeller, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee said the report shows the administration purposely "led the nation to war on false premises."
Amy Goodman 7/23/08: From Jordan, Obama flew to Israel and the Occupied Territories for meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders. Obama is visiting Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank. In some of his most even-handed comments on the Israel-Palestine issue to date, Obama said the US government should recognize what he called the Palestinians' "legitimate difficulties."
Sen. Barack Obama: "What I think can change is the ability of the United States government and a United States president to be actively engaged with the peace process and to be concerned and recognize the legitimate difficulties that the Palestinian people are experiencing right now. And recognize that it is not only in the interest of the Palestinian people that their situation improves, I believe it's also in the interest of the Israeli people, because it is going to be very difficult for Israel ever to feel secure if you don't have some sense of opportunity and prosperity and stability with its--its neighbors." [Again, such positions are heretical to Bush/McCain and, for example, on John McCain's noted trip to Israel he refused to meet with Palestinians. McCain, the warmonger, knows only conflict and is dedicated to it. Referencing Ms. Goodman's next statement, Mr. Obama has made it clear that the continued status of Arab East Jerusalem is to be negotiated by Israel and the Palestinians.]
Amy Goodman: Obama has previously supported the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip and called for undivided Israeli control of Jerusalem. In Ramallah, Palestinian lawmaker Hanan Ashrawi said Obama is nonetheless raising hopes for a change in US policy. -
Ms. Hanan Ashrawi: "It's the credibility of the U.S., the interest of the U.S. has been adversely all affected by the last three years of American policy that has reeked havoc in the region. We need reengagement, but we need positive re-engagement in ways that would curb Israeli violations and would help produce a just and genuine peace."
Amy Goodman cont': Obama's visit came hours after a Palestinian man drove a construction vehicle into Israeli pedestrians in Jerusalem, injuring twenty people. It was the second such attack this month. In other news, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports the Bush administration is debating whether to silence a forthcoming high-level report critical of Israel's conduct in the Occupied Territories. The report is written by the top US official there, retired general James Jones. According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Jones has written a "scathing" report criticizing both the Israeli government and the White House. Israeli officials who met with Jones said they expect the report to be "very harsh, and make Israel look very bad." Jones is said to be particularly critical of Israel's claim to have security interests to justify its large settlement blocs on Palestinian land. Top administration officials (and John Sidney McCain III) are said to be so upset by the report they are debating blocking its release.
The two major national/international stories which opened the week of 7/28/08 dominated, or should have, the presidential campaigns which will end 11/4/08. The refusal of the Israeli regime to address the status of Arab East Jerusalem, captured by the Levi Eshkol government in Israel in June of 1967 (he died in office in 1969) - and the killing of over 50 Iraqis (and the serious injury of five times that number) in a series of suicide bombings in just that one day, 7/28/08, are tragically and indelibly intertwined - the first, the direct cause of the second. And American military firepower in Iraq CAN... NOT... CHANGE... OR... ALTER... THE... SEQUENCE! Unless and until American foreign policy forces (And we can FORCE a change in Israeli policy - We... are... their... patron!), forces Israel to deal forthrightly and justly with the Palestinians and Iran, the chaos and bloodshed in the Middle East will continue and may well worsen there, and across the globe - and the American taxpayer ultimately will continue to be held accountable. Clearly, there must be a new paradigm for the United States in the Middle East! And that must be accompanied by a surge of responsible journalism in our Media/Press to challenge the blanket of fervent right-wing Republican pro-Israel FoxNews and talk radio and, for example, the nonchalance of the 8/2/08 week-ending NPR Scott Simon/Daniel Schorr summary and analysis of the news from the United States and the Israeli-threatened Middle East!
But right-wing Republican influential Jewish Americans (along with key Jewish American Democrats) on this side of the Atlantic are in overdrive, joined by our Media/Press, to secure a McCain victory in November, so as to fulfill the Zionist vision of a Jewish-controlled Middle East. And their next move is to assure a Barack Obama defeat, by whatever means necessary.
To the Editor:
Re "Be Afraid. Please," by William Kristol (column, July 28):
Mr. Kristol exhorts readers ever so politely to "be afraid" of Barack Obama because of his use of the term "change" and his political friends in Congress.
Fear abounds. Is Mr. Kristol afraid that Mr. Obama might evolve into another John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton or even Franklin D. Roosevelt? Oh my!
Well, I am afraid, too. Some Republicans like to say that "America is a republic, not a democracy." Ronald Reagan spent years opposing the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
But now that conservatives have discovered the charm of democracy, this has given them some new opportunities. George W. Bush is even talking about founding an institute to promote democracy in the world. Now that is really something to be afraid of. - William W. Goetz 7/28/08 Bedminster, N.J.
To the Editor:
William Kristol tells us that Barack Obama lacks substance, is scarily popular, and if elected will be -- heaven help us -- a Democrat.
Republicans have failed to stop Mr. Obama's steady march to the White House by simply ignoring his detailed descriptions of the policies he would put in place -- including, during his speech in Berlin, his promise to abandon a failed policy of American unilateralism in favor of cooperation with our European allies.
So they are reduced to arguing that Americans should vote for John McCain to ensure bipartisanship in Washington in the likely event that Democrats continue to control Congress.
Bipartisanship is merely another word for "cooperation," and there is no evidence that Senator McCain, who has embraced the platform of the Republican right, will cooperate with a Democratic Congress on enacting health care legislation, repealing tax cuts, fixing Social Security or ending the war in Iraq. Indeed, the last thing we need in Washington is more obstruction by a Republican White House.
Moreover, the crowds that have enthusiastically embraced Senator Obama, both here and abroad, have sent a clear message that people have had enough of neoconservatives, right-wing fundamentalists and old warriors with worn-out policies and welcome a candidate with a global perspective and constructive ideas.
When Mr. Kristol wakes up the day after the election, he will find that not only has he awakened from his dream of a McCain victory, but that America has awakened from the long nightmare of Republican leadership. - Rita C. Tobin 7/28/08 Chappaqua, N.Y.
To the Editor:
Thank you to William Kristol. No one could have boiled down the 2008 Republican message better. As the headline for his column said: "Be Afraid. Please."
This is the same fear as in 2002, 2004 and 2006, only now with the surface sheen of manners. I hope no one will buy it. - Rob Shapiro 7/28/08 Los Angeles.
To the Editor:
William Kristol is fearful that Barack Obama, as president, will get a Democratically controlled Congress with a rubber stamp.
Did Mr. Kristol feel the same way just a few short years ago when a Republican-controlled Congress was falling all over itself to give President Bush whatever he asked for? - Robert M. Prowler 7/28/08 Pompano Beach, Fla.
In Mr. Kristol's 8/4/08 How To Pick A V.P. column he ends with "This opens up several unconventional V.P. possibilities. They include some who would reinforce the notion of a WAR PRESIDENCY above politics, like Senator Joe Lieberman...
Amy Goodman 8/5/08: The Independent of London reports a leading candidate to be Israel's next prime minister once called for Israeli troops to kill seventy Palestinians a day when he was head of the military during the Second Intifada. In May 2001, Shaul Mofaz reportedly gave a briefing to senior West Bank army commanders and said he wanted ten slain Palestinians a day in each of the seven territorial brigade areas. Mofaz recently emerged as the chief rival to Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni to take over the Kadima party following Ehud Olmert's resignation.
Amy Goodman 8/6/08: In Israel and the Occupied Territories, a leading cabinet member and former Israeli army commander who once called for the mass killing of Palestinians has launched his candidacy for prime minister. Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz enters the race to replace Prime Minister Ehud Olmert just days after reports emerged he once instructed Israeli troops to kill seventy Palestinians a day during the Second Intifada. In May 2001, Mofaz reportedly gave a briefing to senior West Bank army commanders and said he wanted ten slain Palestinians a day in each of the seven territorial brigade areas. On Tuesday, Mofaz emphasized he is running on a platform of "security."
Israeli Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz: "Everything interfaces with security, influences it and is influenced by it. We must remember that it will all be meaningless if Israel should be weak, vulnerable and surrounded by enemies."
Amy Goodman 8/6/08: Mofaz recently emerged as the chief rival to Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni to take over the Kadima party following Olmert's resignation.
The lengthy and meticulous 8/5/08 OP-ED NY Times' piece by Stephen Biddle, senior fellow at the CFR (Council on Foreign Relations) and still dominated by Henry Kissinger - Michael E. O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution - and Kenneth M. Pollack, a senior fellow at the Saban Center at Brookings, the Center created and endowed by Haim Saban, another Sheldon G. Adelson-like strong supporter of Israel - an OP-ED piece with a theme designed for still another blind supporter of an Israeli-controlled Middle East. Biddle, O'Hanlon and Pollack make clear their article is the argument for "President" John Sidney McCain III, i.e. wanting "to keep troops in Iraq until conditions on the ground signal the time is ripe (for withdrawal)." Nonsense. Based as it is on a rotten premise, that the United States, the Middle East and the world will benefit from our war against, occupation of and continued presence in Iraq (which on the surface may indicate progress, but actually is more fragile than when we invaded) is false on its face; if there is a beneficiary from this felony and "high crimes and misdemeanor"-riddled enterprise, it is clearly Israel (while Iraq is more volatile than at any time in its history, precisely because of the Jewish takeover of Palestine, to establish the Jewish theocracy by brutal force in 1948).
[Amy Goodman on 8/5/08 covers Ron Suskind's The Way of the World, an apt follow-up to Jim Bamford's A Pretext for War -
Amy Goodman 8/5/08: The White House ordered the CIA in 2003 to forge a letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein in an attempt to portray a false link between Iraq and al-Qaeda. The fake letter was backdated July 1, 2001, and it stated that 9/11 ringleader Mohammad Atta was trained for his mission in Iraq. Those are the claims of the explosive new book, The Way of the World, by journalist Ron Suskind. He reports the Bush administration then used the forged letter to show there was an operational link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, something the Vice President's Office had been pressing the CIA to prove since 9/11 as a justification to invade Iraq. On NBC's The Today Show, Suskind said then-CIA Director George Tenet received orders directly from the White House to forge the letter.
Ron Suskind: "Well, the CIA folks involved in the book and others talk about George coming back--Tenet--coming back from the White House with the assignment on White House stationary and turning to the CIA operatives, who are professionals, saying, 'You may not like this, but here is our next mission.' And they carried it through, step by step, all the way to the finish. Ultimately, people even talked about it after the fact. It was a dark day for the CIA. It was the kind of thing where they said, 'Look, this is not our charge. We're not here to carry forward a political mandate,' which is clearly what this was, to solve a political problem in America. And it was a cause of great grievance inside of the agency."
Amy Goodman (cont'): According to Ron Suskind, the CIA's forged letter was passed on to Con Coughlin, a reporter from the London Sunday Telegraph, who wrote a front-page article titled "Terrorist Behind September 11 Strike Was Trained by Saddam." The story was published on Dec. 14, 2003, the same day Saddam Hussein was captured. Coughlin's article was picked up in the US media, and he was interviewed on NBC's Meet the Press. Suskind reports the CIA forgery was likely produced in violation of statutes that bar the agency from conducting covert operations intended to influence US public opinion or the media. The White House described Suskind's report as absurd and accused Suskind of engaging in "gutter journalism."]
The Biddle/O'Hanlon/Pollack pitch to keep us there to support Israel is so obviously loaded:
"Wary former combatants are constantly on the lookout for signs - real or imagined - that rivals mean to take advantage of them. The cease-fires, moreover, are extremely decentralized: more than 200 tribal and regional groups have reached individual agreements with the United States to stand down from fighting; in time, some will inevitably test the waters to see what they can get away with, or will misinterpret innocent behavior from neighbors as threatening and retaliate."
When John Sidney McCain III, essentially a key to the Israeli "outreach" to expand its power in the Middle East, not unlike his cohort, divorced Orthodox Jew Joe Lieberman; when McCain said "one hundred years" in Iraq, he meant it.
"A dean at Harvard University and a professor at the University of Chicago are coming under intense criticism for publishing an academic critique of the pro-Israeli lobby in Washington. THE PAPER CHARGES THAT THE UNITED STATES HAS WILLINGLY SET ASIDE ITS OWN SECURITY AND THAT OF MANY OF ITS ALLIES IN ORDER TO ADVANCE THE INTERESTS OF ISRAEL.
In addition the study accuses the pro-Israeli lobby, particularly AIPAC - the American Israel Public Affairs Committee - of manipulating the U.S. media, policing academia and silencing critics of Israel by labelling them as anti-Semitic. The study also examines the role played by pro-Israeli neo-conservatives in the lead-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
The authors of the study, Stephen Walt, a dean at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and John Mearsheimer of University of Chicago are now themselves being accused of anti-Semitism. In Washington, Democratic Congressman Eliot Engel of New York described the professors as 'dishonest so-called intellectuals' and 'anti-Semites.' Harvard professor, Ruth Wisse, called for the paper to be withdrawn. Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz described the study as trash that could have been written by Neo-Nazi David Duke. The New York Sun reported Harvard has received several calls from 'pro-Israel donors' expressing concern about the paper.
Harvard has already taken steps to distance itself from the report. Earlier this week it removed the logo of the Kennedy School of Government from the paper and added a new disclaimer to the study. The 81-page report was originally published on Harvard's website and an edited version appeared in the London Review of Books. The controversy comes less than a year after Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz attempted to block the publication of Norman Finkelstein's book 'Beyond Chutzpah: On The Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History.'" - DemocracyNow 3/31/06
Planning the Disaster -
The Hidden Links? Roger Ailes, Joe Lieberman, Sheldon G. Adelson, Judith Miller, Mort Zuckerman, Abe Foxman ET CETERA!
All of the above are surely the most deceitful and mendacious pack of scoundrels this nation has had to endure since our Civil War [and here we have the individual whose leadership we have been denied, by the above and their co-conspirators in the Media/Press]. Details at the end of the following "Mideast Peace Conference" segment. And secondly it's amusing to hear NPR and its various programs attempt to blunt the rapier-like thrust to the heart of Bush/Cheney, their ingrained defeat exposed, reluctantly, by The New York Times' leading front page story 12/4/07 as stated by Steven Lee Myers: "Rarely, if ever, has a single intelligence report so completely, so suddenly, and so surprisingly altered a foreign policy debate." The headline "U.S. Finding says Iran Halted Nuclear Arms Effort In 2003" directly contradicts the various Bush statements over the years claiming the threat posed by Iran - Iran an "Axis of Evil", and threatening "World War III". Near the very end of an accompanying story by Mark Mazzetti (paragraph #24 of a 26 paragraph story) we read the understatement of the decade: "Israel intelligence officials for years have put forward more urgent warnings about Iran's nuclear abilities than their American counterparts, positing that Iran could get a nuclear bomb this decade."
Also, we should not forget the bombshell which Scott McClellan dropped in November -
WASHINGTON NOV 21 - "Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan blames President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for efforts to mislead the public about the role of White House aides in leaking the identity of a CIA operative.
In an excerpt from his forthcoming book, McClellan recounts the 2003 news conference in which he told reporters that aides Karl Rove and I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby were 'not involved' in the leak involving operative Valerie Plame.
'There was one problem. It was not true,' McClellan writes, according to a brief excerpt released Tuesday. 'I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest-ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice president, the president's chief of staff and the president himself.'
Bush's chief of staff at the time was Andrew Card." Matt Apuzzo Associated Press
This referred to the bogus charge which was the Bush/Israeli explanation for the invasion of Iraq, Saddam's WMDs. They did not exist. Cruel hoax extraordinaire.
Referencing the prior paragraphs - In our next edit we hope to have the quotes from Ray McGovern and Robert Parry exposing the bogus explanation which Carl Levin has exploited in the past (discrediting Abraham Lincoln) to conceal his alliance with fellow Jewish Americans Norman Podhoretz and Joseph Lieberman, to continue blocking the efforts in the United States Senate dedicated to trimming future funding for the American troops ordered to Iraq and, possibly, to attack Iran. The last paragraph of GOPBias.org brings to full circle the "high crimes and misdemeanors" of the persons pictured above.
The core of this recent debasement of American policy (other notables - Guatemala and Iran under Eisenhower, Vietnam under Johnson) is more deadly in that, like South Carolina Confederates firing on Fort Sumter in April of 1861, George Walker Bush disdains the Constitution of the United States. This costly misadventure will not abate until the policy is terminated, as the following 11/21/07 DemocracyNow segment makes clear.
The Bush administration has announced it will hold a long awaited Mideast peace conference next week. The White House says its invited more than fifty countries and institutions to convene in Annapolis, Maryland. State Department Spokesperson Sean McCormack says the U.S. expects the one-day gathering to kick-start final-status talks to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict.
State Dept. spokesperson Sean McCormack: "This conference will signal international support for the courageous efforts of Prime Minister Olmert and President Abbas and will serve as a launching point for negotiations with an eye towards establishing an Israeli and Palestinian state."
The White House is indicating its top concern ahead of the conference will be to convince Arab nations to attend. A senior administration official told the New York Times: "We're trying to rally the Arab world for support of this process, and they are master fence-sitters." But the Bush administration has refused to endorse a five-year-old Arab League-Palestinian plan offering Israel full peace in return for a complete withdrawal from the Occupied Territories. Israel has essentially rejected the deal, claiming it would only agree to unspecified elements. Israeli leaders have long vowed to hold on to the West Bank's major settlement blocs and water resources.
True to form, within three days of "President" Bush's 11/28/07 expansive statement to the White House Press Corps in the Rose Garden, no less, "America will do everything in its power" to secure a just Israeli-Palestinian peace, Bush, out of the public eye, reverses course. Amy Goodman's DemocracyNow.org keeps us informed 12/3/07.
"Meanwhile at the UN, the Bush administration has pulled a diplomatic about-face on a resolution endorsing last week's Israeli-Palestinian agreement in Annapolis. On Friday, the U.S. withdrew the measure just one day after introducing it to the Security Council. Israeli officials say they had privately objected to the White House over concerns it could have granted the United Nations a role in future negotiations. The Annapolis agreement effectively removed the involvement of the UN, European Union and Russia. It foresees the U.S. as the 'sole judge' and arbiter of implementing the road map."
"The Washington Post is reporting the CIA has used the headquarters of Jordan's spy agency as a secret holding cell for prisoners captured abroad. At least a dozen non-Jordanian nationals have been held and interrogated at the General Intelligence Department over the past seven years. The Jordanian spy center was used to hide prisoners before they were sent to Guantanamo Bay or secret prisons around the world. Jordanian officials are said to have carried out the interrogations despite widespread allegations of torture. A report from a U.N. special investigator recently concluded torture is 'routine' at the center amidst "total impunity for torture and ill-treatment" country-wide (Israel has very close ties to today's Jordanian King Hussein.)."
"In 1948 the Jewish army expelled three-quarter of a million Palestinians from what then became the State of Israel. Ilan Pappe, the Israeli historian, said he still felt haunted by the story, and then, in 1998, the Israelis opened the military archives, and it became clear that the Zionist's movement had planned to expel the Palestinians long before 1948. In 2006 Ilan Pappe published his most recent book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. He spoke about his work at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands in January/February of 2007." - Maria Gilardin June 2007
Ilan Pappe: "(a synopsis) David Ben Gurion, who led an ideological movement ever since the 19th century, wanted to turn Palestine into a Jewish state with as few Palestinians in it as possible (when he was out of office this first Prime Minister of Israel was annoyed by the presence of so many Palestinians remaining in Israel, particularly in the Galilee). It shows that the leader of the Zionist movement, the 1st Prime Minister of Israel, someone at the heart of the Zionist movement, so annoyed by so many Palestinians in the Galilee, he is committed to a vision that sees historic Palestine as empty of Palestinians. Most of the Israeli Jews in the 1950's thought the same way, and nothing has changed in Israel in 2006. How to get there, how to de-Arabize Palestine. How to make Palestine a Jewish state, (i.e.) get rid of the people who live there (except, of course, for that number of Jewish settlers who in the 1930s had grown to one-third of the population in Palestine as they left the turmoil in Europe). How to deal with the majority in Palestine, the Palestinians. In February of 1947 the Zionists were very focused under Ben Gurion and the advisory committee he organized around him (only hardliners) and it took them a year, to February of 1948 to develop the plan to rid Palestine of the Palestinians, that as many as possible of the one million Palestinians should be expelled. How to do it? The experiment? The Jewish/Zionist army expelled about eight to nine villages. They wanted to see how the world would react. Nothing. So, you come with buses, lorrys - you go into someone's house, there are children, women, men, people have lived in these houses for hundreds of years: 'You have twenty minutes' to get on the bus and out you go. And half an hour after you leave on the bus someone detonates the house and blows it up. So Ben Gurion and others were not sure how the world and the young soldiers would react. Nothing. So, the master plan. They divided Palestine into twelve areas, the Haganah had twelve brigades, each brigade was given a list of villages, neighborhoods in mixed towns and systematically, in seven months, they expelled three-quarter of a million Palestinians, 531 villages were destroyed, eleven towns were demolished."
[Editor's note: This year 2008 is a trying one, not only because of our quadrennial elections which includes our presidency. The year is also the 60th anniversary of the problematic founding of the Jewish State of Israel (For the May '08 celebration George W. Bush will be a feted and honored guest. He's earned it, so to speak, with OUR money!) and, not surprisingly, the year will begin January 9th with a major series on the Public Broadcasting System, PBS, and a "companion landmark book (which) chronicles three hundred years of Jewish American history".]
An additional Jewish American factor is AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the lobby extraordinaire, the subject of an obscure Philip Shenon piece, on a formerly untouchable subject, in the 11/3/07 NY Times (A-14) which relates the efforts of Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman (US vs Steven Rosen & Keith Weissman case #1:05CR225 Federal District Court Alexandria, Va.) to call Condoleezza Rice and others, including Paul Wolfowitz, to substantiate Rosen/Weissman claims that their secret contacts with the State of Israel, relating classified information, were the norm this last ten years. Fortunately for the American public the National Archives has finally released documents from the Nixon Library, papers which should have been made public in 1994, records which document that Israeli deception of the United States has been long-standing and persistent. On July 19th of 1969 Richard Nixon's national security adviser Henry Kissinger informed the president that "fissionable material available for Israel's weapons development was 'illegally' obtained from the United States about 1965" and "This is one program on which the Israelis have persistently deceived us and may even have stolen from us." Flaunting its sub rosa relationship with the United States, to this day Israel has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
We can begin by revisiting James Bamford's A Pretext for War, pp. 270-350, which details the elaborate Israeli-Jewish American hoax (Saddam with nuclear WMDs) used to justify the invasion and generate public support. From Michiko Kakutani's 6/18/04 review:
"What he does focus on is the role that Israel has played in shaping American policy. Mr. Bamford contends that 'the blueprint for the new Bush policy' on the Middle East 'had actually been drawn up five years earlier by three of his top national security advisors' (Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser) for the Israeli prime minister at the time, Benjamin Netanyahu (who rejected the plan), and that when they entered office in January 2001, all these hawks needed was 'a pretext' for war against Iraq. Citing a report from the British newspaper The Guardian, Mr. Bamford adds that the Office of Special Plans, a Pentagon unit set up by Mr. Feith, 'forged close ties to a parallel, ad hoc intelligence unit within Ariel Sharon's office in Israel,' which 'was designed to go around the country's own intelligence organization, Mossad.'"
RAY McGOVERN (27-year CIA analyst on 6/6/05 Lehrer NewsHour): "I would go back to an earlier conversation, and this happened on the 20th of September 2001, and this happened nine days after 9/11. This involved Tony Blair, who was in Washington having dinner with the President. How do we know about this? We know this because Christopher Meyer, the UK ambassador was there at that dinner. What does he say? The conversation went like this. President Bush: 'Uh, Tony. Uh, we're going into Afghanistan in a week or two, but that won't take long and we get out of there and we're going right into Iraq. Are you with me, Tony? Are you with me?' And Christopher Meyer says 'My goodness, it was really, and Tony was really sort of nonplussed, but he said 'Yes sir, I'm with you Mr. President.' (Margaret Warner tries to interrupt, but Mr. McGovern continues) So that goes back (a flustered Ms. Margaret Warner) "Mr. McGovern, speed up!" (Mr. McGovern) "so that goes back to 2001" (Ms. Warner) "We're almost out of time. Get to the next part!" (Mr. McGovern) "Okay, that's it." (Ms. Warner, almost shouting) "So, it's not about Iraq, it's about Afghanistan!" (Mr. McGovern) "Well, no. This has to do with Iraq. What the President said to Tony Blair, on the 20th of September (2001) according to the UK ambassador who was there, is 'We're going into Afghanistan in a couple of weeks. It won't take us long there, and we're going right into Iraq right after that. Are you with me?' And Tony Blair said 'Yes!'"
All of the above was put in play on day one of this Bush administration, following the theft 12/12/00 of the American presidency by the five rabid Republican members of the United States Supreme Court: Anthony Kennedy, Sandra Day O'Connor, William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia & Clarence Thomas. These individuals are particularly accountable for the "high crimes and misdemeanors" of George Walker Bush, which "high crimes" have been reintroduced by the bombshell remarks of former press secretary to Mr. Bush, Scott McClellan in his forthcoming memoir to be published in April. They are at the center of the initial Bush presidential conspiracy; to risk the blood, treasure and international goodwill of the United States to benefit a foreign power, the state of Israel. Here are corroborating excerpts from James Bamford's 2004 publication A Pretext For War, pages 261 & 399.
"Then Bush addressed the sole items on the agenda for his first high-level national security meeting. The topics were not terrorism - a subject he barely mentioned during the campaign - or nervousness over China or Russia, but Israel and Iraq. From the very first moment, the Bush foreign policy would focus on three key objectives: Get rid of Saddam Hussein, end American involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and rearrange the dominoes in the Middle East. A key to the policy shift would be the concept of 'preemption'"..."A key part of the plan was to get the United States to pull out of peace negotiations and simply let Israel take care of the Palestinians as it saw fit."
GOPBias.org will highlight our key focus - the Jewish American/Right-Wing Republican/Evangelical monopoly of Congress, news and commentary regarding United States foreign policy...and, as our name implies, how our Media/Press, particularly with the impending return (to secure the Republican nomination for John McCain) to the airwaves December 3rd of the media darling Jewish American John Donald Imus Jr., how the American Media/Press will report the Israeli maneuver to deny the Palestinians an equitable and viable state in that land, precious to both, between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River valley. The much-heralded US sponsored Annapolis, Maryland peace conference to be held this month, November, has yet to have a date certain (now 11/26-27/07), a list of participants or even an agenda. To bring us up to date (12/8/07), regarding Imus there is this Jacques Steinberg quote noting the returning Imus to radio in the 12/4/07 The New York Times: "Senators John McCain and Christopher Dodd traipsed right back behind him. Both were favorite guests of Mr. Imus for years." No, Jacques. You know better than most that a Senator from Connecticut was an Imus "favorite for years", but it wasn't Chris Dodd. It was Joe Lieberman. You are correct with John McCain. Senator McCain has had and continues to have Imus support. "'You're still my choice,' Imus assured Mr. McCain."
Elsewhere on this site is a link to the Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech which Albert Gore delivered in Oslo, one day short of the seventh anniversary of the Republican theft of the United States Presidency which Mr. Gore had won in 2000. Mr. John Donald Imus Jr. was instrumental in obfuscating the monstrous political crime which had taken place. Here a characteristic slander of Mr. Gore, one of many which Mr. Imus used before and after the election of 2000, to protect George Walker Bush.
"(4/17/00 Imus programming) There are actually people out there who want to continue this? Who think that Al Gore is the answer? Here's the question. Is there a flip-flopping...lying...dissembling. . .two-faced...fork-tongued...campaign cash-chiseling...half-bald pothead...recovering tobacco addict - - with a piano-legged...bottle-blonded ditzy wife...and a pair of dead-eyed Depro daughters available...who would like to run for the presidency? All he needs is Haldeman, Erlichman, Liddy and Maurice Stans...and Gore 2000 could start knocking over banks. The only real difference between Gore and John Gotti (imprisoned mafia don)...is Gotti never had to have Naomi Wolfe pick out his suits." More in following two paragraphs.
The "I-man", emphasis on "I" is THE most influential media individual regarding national politics, and he proved it again even though he's only been back on the air for two weeks (12/17/07). John McCain received the Des Moines Register endorsement (even though he's been a no-show in Iowa), the Boston Globe, some newspaper in Rhode Island and THE newspaper in New Hampshire...and predictably (no, Margaret, it's not "unusual", "unpredictable", "unexpected" or "surprising"), the endorsement of Joe Lieberman I-Conn (the "I" stands for Israel). Imus has been championing Lieberman for years, ever since Bill Buckley got him in the Senate in 1988. Lieberman replaced the honorable Republican Lowell Weicker, who "offended" the petty William F. Buckley Jr. years earlier by thrashing Bill in a fabled debate on Vietnam, much as Gore Vidal embarrassed Buckley when PBS had hired Bill to defend Republicans in the Public Broadcast coverage of Presidential elections.
The divorced, Orthodox Lieberman is characteristic of the rot in Washington. He, Imus and the Tisch family sabotaged the Honorable Albert Arnold Gore Jr., but that's another story.
And here a Bill Moyers' 12/14/07 guest Keith Olbermann, perhaps surprisingly, taking issue with the benefactor, George Walker Bush, of Mr. Imus' radio/TV program this last ten years.
December 14, 2007 - "'I don't care if you're a Democrat or a Republican,' said Keith Olbermann in a recent interview with NPR.
'You're not doing what you said you were going to do. You have not restored habeas corpus fully. We're still in Gitmo. We're still in Iraq. We're not out fast enough. These are still going to be issues. They don't go away with George Bush.'
The launch of COUNTDOWN on MSNBC in March 2003 coincided with the American invasion of Iraq, yet Olbermann did not begin delivering the types of extended commentaries for which he is most known until August 2006. According to ROLLING STONE, Olbermann:
'...was stuck in a plane on a runway and happened to read that Donald Rumsfeld had compared war critics to Nazi appeasers. That night he ended COUNTDOWN with a furious six-and-a-half-minute attack that began, 'The man who sees absolutes where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning is either a prophet or a quack. Donald H. Rumsfeld is not a prophet.''
In his interview with Bill Moyers, Olbermann discusses the 'organic' nature of these commentaries, which have helped to significantly boost the program's ratings:
'When I get angry on the air, it's because I'm angry about that particular subject and because of the revision of this country that has been done under our noses for the last seven years against the will of the people. And when something happens that touches into that general anger, combined with the specific anger for the actual event that we're talking about, it swells up and I feel like, all right, here comes another one.'"
A recognition. This George Bush Jr. government has mastered the pomp and circumstance, the ceremonial aspect of governing (as he and his supporters bankrupt the country) that in the past was so integral...so necessary in regimes in which the people had no voice - which is why to our Founding Fathers, particularly to Washington and Jefferson, ceremony without substance was anathema. The Israeli-Palestinian peace conference gatherings at the U.S. Naval Academy 11/27 and at the White House 11/26 & 11/28/07 gave the appearance of significance to the media and its viewers and listeners [and, incidentally, afforded an opportunity for Brian Williams and Mike Taibbi on NBC Universal Nightly News 11/28 to grant Karl Rove TV facetime to interject "The congress rushed the country into war against Iraq, not the president (Bush)". Nonsense (read the Ray McGovern paragraph near the end of GOPBias.org)].
The conference and its coverage sidestepped a key factor. George Walker Bush and the Jewish American leadership in our Congress could facilitate a forthright and responsible Israeli attitude overnight, the one ingredient missing this past forty years. We the people of the United States GIVE ISRAEL OVER THREE BILLION DOLLAR$ EVERY YEAR! We can stipulate that the Israelis adopt forthright, equitable and honest negotiations with their fellow human beings, the Arabs, with whom they share a reverence for that land that both inhabit. God knows that this George W. Bush will have a legacy steeped in infamy. This is his one opportunity to salvage a portion of his reputation.
An anecdotal note is Bob Simon's 11/4/07 faux-sensational 60 Minutes segment entitled "Curve Ball", purportedly a central part in the bogus-charge array of Saddam Hussein's WMDs (editor's note: EVERYONE ON THE PLANET KNEW SADDAM HAD NO WMDs!), and is a recent example of Jewish American use of its power and placement (and Leslie Moonves heads CBS) to mislead the American people regarding the actual background, conspiratorial procedure and ultimate purpose of the United States invasion and occupation of Iraq. Mr. Simon's own leadin hyperbolic delivery informs his audience: "...fantastically, the most compelling part came from one obscure Iraqi defector who came in and out of history like a comet. His code name, ironically, was 'Curve Ball'. We spent two years and traveled to nine countries trying to solve the mystery. We talked to intelligence sources, to people who knew (him) and to people who worked with him. 'Curve Ball's' real name has never been made public, nor has any video of him (pause for emphasis), until now!" Hm-m-m. Mr. Simon knows, surely better than most, that United States action against Iraq was a "fantastically" successful result of the organized infiltration of Jewish Americans into positions of influence and direct power (Paul Wolfowitz as Deputy Secretary of Defense)...with the "Curve Ball" broadcast an example of diversions from the actual conspiracy taking place, one of a panoply of diversionary tactics used by the Jewish American element to shroud the actual conspiracy taking place (Philip Roth's The Plot Against America had a similar intention), all to conceal from the American people the ultimate purpose of removing Saddam, which was the elimination of one (the other being Iran) of two obstacles to Israeli plans for the Middle East.
Is part of this an ongoing effort to assure Israel's control of the Levant? These are some of the questions that need to be asked. Is there anyone in the national media/press who will ask them?
For Iran we paraphrase 10/2/07 Seymour Hersh appearance on Amy Goodman's DemocracyNow.org.
"It just so happens that in the White House they've come to terms...that Iran is a minimum of five years from the bomb. Iran has been five years away for fifteen or twenty years...there's no near threat at all (2nd Hersh quote)."
Amy Goodman: "Sy Hersh, let me play a clip of David Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq, his report last month to Congress accusing Iran of fighting a proxy war inside Iraq.
Gen. David Petraeus: "In the past six months we have captured senior Shia leaders and fighters and the deputy commander of Lebanese Hezbollah Department 2800 which supports the Iranian Republican Guard Corp Quds Force, which have assassinated and kidnapped Iraqi leaders and killed and wounded our soldiers."
Seymour Hersch: "Well, that's way over the top. He made a lot of assertions that are really seriously questioned by the intelligence community. Prime Minister Maliki lived in exile for many years in Iran (6th Hersh quote)."
"There's no incentive for Syria, for Iran, for Jordan, Kuwait (to generate more Iraqi violence), all of whom (are) flooded with refugees coming out of Iraq, we now have a refugee crisis that's going to be worse than the Palestinian crisis. If you remember, after the Israelis invaded Palestine in '48, we generated a million or so refugees in Syria, in Lebanon, elsewhere in the world. It's a mess that nobody wants to talk about in this country (7th Hersh quote, 6th paragraph)."
"Cheney is very powerful. He picked Elliott Abrams as PRESIDENT'S (editor's caps) National Security Advisor, the refugee from Iran-Contra (and) son-in-law to Norman Podhoretz, and very pro-Israel and determined to use American policy to benefit Israel. Abrams is a key player (9th Hersh quote)."
Juan Gonzalez: "And, Sy Hersh, the role of our commercial media and the whole furor
over Ahmadinejad and his speech at Columbia?"
"I wish the American press would have published his speech to the UN, because it was pretty interesting, what he actually said (is) of great interest, and not at all irrational. And the line about homosexuality?
In Farsi he said 'Homosexuality is not a problem in Iraq.' In other words, it's just not a problem (10th Hersh quote)."
Amy Goodman: "This has to do with Democrats who on 9/26/07 approved a Senate resolution designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp a terrorist organization (editor's note: It took a revolution to rid Iran of the brutal Shah which we imposed in 1954). The vote occurred on the date of the Tim Russert-conducted Democratic debate.
Mike Gravel: 'This is fantasyland. We're talking about ending the war in Iraq. My God, we're starting another war right today. Joe Lieberman, who authored the Iraq Resolution, offered this one to let George Bush go to war against Iran.'"
Seymour Hersh (explaining Hillary's yes vote): "Money. A lot of Jewish money from New York. Come on let's not kid about it. Many leading American Jews support the Israeli position that Iran is an existential (?) threat."
An additional Jewish American factor is AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the lobby extraordinaire, the subject of an obscure Philip Shenon piece, on a formerly untouchable subject, in the 11/3/07 NY Times (A-14) which relates the efforts of Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman (US vs Steven Rosen & Keith Weissman case #1:05CR225 Federal District Court Alexandria, Va.) to call Condoleezza Rice and others, including Paul Wolfowitz, to substantiate Rosen/Weissman claims that their secret contacts with the State of Israel, relating classified information, were the norm this last ten years. Fortunately for the American public the National Archives has finally released documents from the Nixon Library, papers which should have been made public in 1994, records which document that Israeli deception of the United States has been long-standing and persistent. On July 19th of 1969 Richard Nixon's national security adviser Henry Kissinger informed the president that "fissionable material available for Israel's weapons development was 'illegally' obtained from the United States about 1965" and "This is one program on which the Israelis have persistently deceived us and may even have stolen from us." Flaunting its sub rosa relationship with the United States, to this day Israel has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The Bob Simon/60 Minutes and Rosen & Weissman/AIPAC stories (see above paragraphs) should be enough to finally expose the Jewish American component of this outrageous conspiracy, to misuse for the benefit of a foreign power, the Congress, the Treasury and most important, the people of the United States. But the intransigence of the Jewish Americans is not universal, as the following paragraph demonstrates.
On July 30th (2005) this paragraph appeared in The New York Times under the byline of Steven Weisman: "The State Department has admitted that, as Mr. Biden charged, Mr. Bolton had been interviewed in a previous inquiry into one particular intelligence failure on Iraq, the finding that Iraq had tried to buy raw uranium from Niger for a nuclear arms program. That finding turned out to be based on FORGED DOCUMENTS (editors caps)." This forged documents term may be its first use in the mainstream media associated with the Bush Administration since our media/press trumpeted the term in an attempt to discredit Dan Rather's accurate, publicly acknowledged spotty National Guard record of the junior George Bush during the war against Vietnam, even though, with respect to Iraq, it has such a prominent role (pp. 402-403) in James Bamford's A Pretext for War, published in early 2004 by Doubleday.
The Right-Wing Republican/Evangelical legs of this formidable triumvirate are exemplified primarily by Rush Limbaugh and his facsimiles and, secondarily, by these quotes supplied by Bill Moyers on his 10/5/07 Journal which covered the 7/17/07 power convention in Washington DC in which "Over 4,500 people from every state in the union and ten countries celebrate their solidarity with Israel. They call their organization Christians United for Israel or CUFI. The man behind it is Pastor John Hagee who from the 18,000 people who belong to his church in San Antonio, Texas to the 99 million homes he says tune into his weekly radio and television broadcasts has an empire sharing the gospel of Israel with evangelicals around the world."
John Hagee: "I would like to read you the greeting from the President of the United States.
'I appreciate CUFI members and all event participants for your passion and dedication to enhancing the relationship between the United States and Israel. Your efforts set a shining example for others and help lay the foundation of peace for generations to come. Laura and I send our best wishes for a memorable event. May God bless you. George W. Bush, president of the United States.'
Bill Moyers: "Many of Washington's political elites came to them. Presidential contender Senator John McCain.
John McCain: "It's very hard trying to do the Lord's work in the city of Satan and I'm very grateful to have all of you here.
Bill Moyers: "And Senator Joe Lieberman.
Joseph Lieberman: "Of describing Pastor Hagee in the words that the Torah uses to describe Moses, he is an 'Ish Elokim,' a man of god and those words really do fit him; and I'd add something else, like Moses he's become the leader of a mighty multitude, even greater than the multitude that Moses led from Egypt to the promised land."
To refresh our memories, in June Senator Lieberman had told a sympathetic Bob Schieffer on Schieffer's Face the Nation "I think we've got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against these Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq."
On July 1st the Senator told a sympathetic George Stephanopoulos on his This Week "I had an Arab diplomat say to me two weeks ago that what is happening in the Middle East today reminds him of what happened in Europe during the 1930s when Nazi Germany began to make moves and the rest of Europe and the United States did not act quick enough to stop the Second World War. He was talking about Iran. Iran is on the move in Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine and Afghanistan. And if we pull out of Iraq, Iran and al-Qaeda are the victors. And so, my answer is, as long as we have a reasonable chance of success in Iraq, then I am going to say it's worth it for us to stay, because if Iran and al-Qaeda take over Iraq, they will destabilize the entire Middle East, and they will strike us here at home with more frequency and ferocity."
The unbridled arrogance of this man, like Philip Roth's The Plot Against America, to evoke the suffering of millions to further his narrow vision for the Middle East. *Regarding Roth's "The Plot": The title is significant. Like all well-connected nationally-prominent Jewish Americans Mr. Roth knew, particularly with his ethnic fellows Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith in their key Pentagon positions, that there was a "Plot" to use American blood, treasure and military might to eliminate one of Israel's two major obstacles to its plans for a Greater Israel (the detailing of which is why Bamford's Pretext for War is such a threat to the Jewish Lobby worldwide).
Note: Headline! ElBaradei: No Evidence That Iran is Building Nuclear Weapons.
UN atomic watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei said Sunday (10/28/07) the International Atomic Energy Agency has no evidence that Iran is building nuclear weapons. During an interview on CNN, ElBaradei urged the Bush administration to back away from its bellicose statements about Iran.
* Mohamed ElBaradei: "I very much have concern about confrontation, building confrontation, Wolf, because that would lead absolutely to a disaster. I see no military solution. The only durable solution is through negotiations and inspections. My fear if that we continue to escalate from both sides that we would end up into a precipice, we would end up into an abyss. As I said, the Middle East is in a total mess, to say the least. And we cannot add fuel to the fire."
Earlier this month (October) President Bush warned that World War III could begin if Iran obtains the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon. But on Sunday Mohamed ElBaradei said the UN has no evidence that Iran is running a nuclear weapons program.
* Mohamed ElBaradei: "But have we seen having the nuclear material that can be readily used into a weapon? No. Have we seen an active weaponization program? No. So there is a concern, but there is also time to clarify these concerns."
The Bush/Cheney response to Mr. ElBaradei - "U.S. Interrogators in Iraq Pressured to Find Evidence About Iran (11/12/07 DemocracyNow)
The Observer newspaper of London reports the Pentagon is putting huge pressure on U.S. interrogators in Iraq to find incriminating evidence about Iran. Micah Brose, a privately contracted interrogator working for American forces in Iraq, told The Observer that information on Iran is 'gold'. Brose said: 'They push a lot for us to establish a link with Iran. They have pre-categories for us to go through, and .... of all the recent requests I've had, I'd say 60 to 70 percent are about Iran.' Brose went on to say: 'If nothing changes in the current course, I'd say military action is inevitable.' Last week the Inter Press Service reported that a National Intelligence Estimate on Iran has been held up for more than a year. It is reportedly part of an effort by Vice President Dick Cheney to pressure intelligence analysts to remove any dissenting judgments about Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program."
A brief history of what has brought us to this point.
We can begin by revisiting James Bamford's A Pretext for War, pp. 270-350, which details the elaborate Israeli-Jewish American hoax (Saddam with nuclear WMDs) used to justify the invasion and generate public support. From Michiko Kakutani's 6/18/04 review:
"What he does focus on is the role that Israel has played in shaping American policy. Mr. Bamford contends that 'the blueprint for the new Bush policy' on the Middle East 'had actually been drawn up five years earlier by three of his top national security advisors' (Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser) for the Israeli prime minister at the time, Benjamin Netanyahu (who rejected the plan), and that when they entered office in January 2001, all these hawks needed was 'a pretext' for war against Iraq. Citing a report from the British newspaper The Guardian, Mr. Bamford adds that the Office of Special Plans, a Pentagon unit set up by Mr. Feith, 'forged close ties to a parallel, ad hoc intelligence unit within Ariel Sharon's office in Israel,' which 'was designed to go around the country's own intelligence organization, Mossad.'"
*(From GOPBias.com 9/13/06) Further, Jim Bamford, recognized for twenty years as THE expert on United States intelligence agencies and with unparalleled access to CIA insiders, has made available for all to read, in his recent A Pretext for War PUBLISHED TWO AND A HALF YEARS AGO by Doubleday, a detailed expose' of the convoluted flimsy scam (pages 299-309) charging that Saddam Hussein had WMDs - which Bush/Cheney, in conjunction with Tony Blair and Israel, knowingly and unconscionably used that fraudulent information to manipulate the American public and the Congress of the United States into supporting the invasion of Iraq.
Last night, 9/11/06, Mr. Bush invoked 9/11/01 shamelessly in an effort to convince Americans that the reelection of Republican Party candidates was required in order to protect the United States of America: "The outcome of the battle on the streets of Baghdad" will determine the security of these United States. Mr. Bush was then followed by the Republican Party's House majority leader John Boehner who charged that Democrats were more interested in protecting terrorists than they are in protecting the American people. What we see clearly is that the Republicans are more interested in their own political security than that of the nation!
Jim Bamford: "(page 301) With little analysis, the (American and British) intelligence experts should surely have seen the trapdoors hidden in the documents."
"(page 302) The letters were obviously a blend of several genuine older documents, possibly obtained during the earlier break-in (of the Niger embassy in Rome), which were used to masquerade the counterfeit newer ones...in fact, al-Zahawiah's trip had nothing to do with uranium...nevertheless, the SISMI (Italian intelligence, in the pocket of Silvio Berlusconi)...with their British MI-6 liaison...'The British bought it (page 304)'...At CIA...not solid enough to include in the President's Daily Brief...(but) the CIA began giving the questionable Niger item more prominence...(and page 305) as it moved to the Bush inner circle, it made a herculean leap in credibility."
"(page 308)...the OSP (Pentagon Office of Special Plans manned by Douglas Feith at the direction of Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz) forged close ties to a parallel unit (in) Ariel Sharon's office in Israel (end of 9-13-06 segment)."*
ITEM - In Sept. '01 Italian intelligence SISMI (details pp. 297-303 Bamford's A Pretext for War) forwards known-bogus Saddam-WMD "documents" to MI6 and CIA, both of which "legitimize" Saddam threat.
- In Sept. '02 Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League informs Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi that the League will present its Distinguished Statesman Award to him in Sept. '03.
- On Tuesday, 9/23/03 (article in 9/19/03 N. Y. Times) Mr. Foxman and Jacob Isaacson, director of the American Jewish Committee make the presentation at a gala Plaza Hotel dinner co-hosted by Henry Kissinger, Rupert Murdoch and Mort Zuckerman (Here, a few phrases from The New Yorker 7/23/07, Nick Paumgarten's interview The Tycoon with Mr. Zuckerman: "Then he began to speak about Israel: 'I met all the major players...I have been involved with these people for years and years and years.'").
The New York Report 8/23/08 - Even as he publicly remains coy about his political future, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has quietly approached some of the city's most powerful media figures to assess whether their publications would endorse a bid to overturn New York City's term limits, which could clear a path for him to run for re-election next year.
"Over the last several weeks, Mr. Bloomberg has held confidential conversations with Rupert Murdoch, chairman of the News Corporation, which owns The New York Post; Mortimer B. Zuckerman, owner of The Daily News; and Arthur Sulzberger Jr., chairman of The New York Times Company, to gauge their views on the issue, according to people familiar with the talks."
"Even if the city's big newspapers backed a third term, supporters of term limits are unlikely to back down easily. Ronald S. Lauder, the billionaire cosmetics heir who in 1993 spent millions of dollars in a successful campaign to limit all elected city officials to two terms, will fight to keep them in place, said a spokesman, Nelson Warfield."
GOPBIAS.Com is the acronym for Republican Bias in the Media - and our dual mission is to report the impact of Jewish Americans on our United States and its policies, both foreign and domestic.
ITEM - A N. Y. Times 7/13/06 article datelined London by a Sarah Lyall: "like the so-called Downing Street memo, which showed that the decision to go to war had already been made in July 2002." In fact, former CIA agent/analyst Ray McGovern details a 9/20/01 (But nine days after 9/11!) a private dinner conversation between Tony Blair and George Bush in which Blair and Bush agree to invade Iraq.
The once great (? But, remember it was The Times that was willing to give Nixon-Kissinger a pass on Watergate.) The New York Times has gradually become, in the last seven years, the most self-serving major newspaper in these United States. We desperately need another national newspaper NOW, which is not compromised by its ethnicity. Answering our prayers the 1/6/08 Washington Post publishes an article by former Senator George McGovern (defeated by Richard Nixon in 1972 even as the national media was concealing the Republican Party's involvement in Watergate), an article which details the seven years of "high crimes and misdemeanors" of Bush/Cheney even as former "Democratic" senators David Boren and Sam Nunn, along with Repub/Demo/Inde New York mayor Mike Bloomberg (fellow notable Joe Lieberman also calls himself an Independent as he campaigns with John McCain in New Hampshire), these former patricians are pressuring the present Presidential candidates to "renounce partisan gridlock", i.e. give Bush/Cheney and their Republican Party a pass on the major political crime of the twenty-first century, the shredding from within of the Constitution of the United States.
We also need to consider, even though it's never mentioned, that a majority of Jewish Americans feel deeply indebted to Mr. Bush, as do powerful members of Jewish communities all over the world. These potent groups, both here and abroad, are why the once-great BBC has the temerity to not only bar the subject of why we and the Brits went into Iraq, but also promotes its daily World Have Your Say with the duplicitous "Where You Set The Agenda", a slogan possibly inspired by NPR's present-day Talk Of The Nation, the agenda of which, like everything else on NPR, is also restricted, as are its guests and callers, since National Public Radio fired Morning Edition's Bob Edwards. Like the BBC, the "Progressives" of Talk Of The Nation are most averse to discussing the murderous fashion in which Israelis "discourage" any hope for a Palestinian State.
Mr. Bush has removed one of the two major threats to Israel's design for the Levant, and, in lockstep, the overwhelmingly-leading, Jewish supported John ("I'm Don Imus' candidate") McCain has stated a willingness to keep American troops and bases in Iraq for one hundred years (and we've spent one trillion dollar$ to establish that "beachhead"). John Edwards, in contrast, has pledged to have the US out of Iraq within ten months of his inauguration. Regarding the second threat, Iran, that Israel expects Bush to nullify, picture American warships steaming in the narrow Strait of Hormuz, the total northeast coast of which IS Iran. Bush says Iran is "provocative" as he travels to Israel to support Israelis as they plan to finally eliminate Palestine, and with OUR money. The American people will decide next November which policy prevails, but in the meantime we must assess the mounting cost to ourselves, our country and the world, the cost of the Bush/Cheney administration and another Republican regime waiting in the wings. Here a statement which appeared in the West Coast outreach (The Oregonian 1/6/08) of the vast Newhouse publication giant (Newhouse also owns the Sunday "magazine", the increasingly advertising-laden Parade):
"Are we serious about stopping terrorism? Shouldn't we recognize what most drives the anger behind it? King Abdullah II of Jordan says the main reason for Muslim terrorism is the Israel-Palestine situation. That is the core issue, he says, from which all the other troubles flow.
'The root cause of terrorism is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,' says Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who is increasingly dealing with spreading extremism.
'The West will not know peace until the Palestinians have peace,' Osama bin Laden has sworn. And you can take that to the bank.
Hunting down and destroying individual terrorists makes us feel better but does little to end the problem. There's an unending pipeline of new terrorists coming, until we deal decisively with the cause of the trouble.
Attacking Muslim countries is like pouring gasoline on a fire. It increases our difficulties around the world. It also meets the definition of insanity." John Goodwin Lebanon, Oregon
It's so basic that despite the embargo by the Media/Press, the public gets it, and is not deceived by George Bush's remark 1/7/08: "I said we're always going to have a timetable (except for Iraq) and one timetable is the departure of President George W. Bush from the White House. Not that I'm the great heroic figure, but they know me (Yes. The radical right-wing government of Israel, from Sharon through Olmert, they know our billion$!) and they're comfortable with me (Yes. Our billion$ have made them not only comfortable but recklessly so. That's the problem.) and I'm a known quantity!" And So Is John Sidney McCain III!
Known quantity? Even moreso. On the 1/10/08 Lehrer NewsHour Judy Woodruff played an audio of George W. Bush: "The establishment of the 'State' of Palestine is long overdue. The Palestinian people deserve it. There should be an end to the occupation that began in 1967." Ms. Woodruff: "The president's trip began yesterday when he met with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and urged Israelis to put an end to UNAUTHORIZED OUTPOSTS in the West Bank (Huh? That's the proverbial aperture through which you could drive a column of Israeli tanks and bulldozers FOUR ABREAST, i.e. the Israelis, as the whole world knows, have been constantly enlarging settlement blocs in Arab East Jerusalem and the West Bank. And can you imagine the Israelis giving up the beachfront of the Gaza Strip, or the aquifer under Ariel?). These items from DemocracyNow's 1/11/08 broadcast are illustrative.
"President Bush has concluded a three-day visit to Israel and the Occupied Territories. The President has left Israel one day after meeting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank.
President Bush: 'Some day, I hope that as a result of the formation of a Palestinian state, there won't be walls and checkpoints and people will be able to move freely in a democratic state and that's the vision.'
Bush later joked about the Israeli checkpoints, saying his motorcade had no problems passing through.
President Bush: 'You'll be happy to know, my whole motorcade of a mere 45 cars was able to make it through without being stopped but I am not sure if that happens to the average person.'"
"Bush called for an end to the Israeli occupation and the establishment of a viable Palestinian state. But he did not back down from his endorsement of Israel's intent to retain large Jewish-only settlement blocs that Palestinians say will make peace impossible. Bush called on Israel to dismantle unauthorized settlement outposts scattered across the West Bank. But he did not criticize Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's declaration that Israel's pledge to freeze settlement expansion only applies to those settlements that Israel doesn't intend on keeping. Israel agreed to freeze settlement activity under the U.S.-backed road map but has continued to build in East Jerusalem and its large West Bank settlements. For the first time President Bush called for a compensation fund for Palestinian refugees who lost their homes in 1948. He did not offer details. The value of lost Palestinian land is estimated in the hundreds of billions of dollars. President Bush's visit to the West Bank came after a day of talks in Israel. The Independent of London reports Bush's meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert 'had the flavor of a love-in on a grand scale which transcended mere diplomacy.' In Gaza, Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri dismissed Bush's visit.
Sami Abu Zuhri: 'Bush reiterated empty promises, upon which we, the Palestinians, hold no hopes, because we had many promises before and he never fulfilled, and he will never do, now during his last days in the White House. We condemn the Palestinian president statements when he spoke about fulfilling all the consequences to the Palestinian people.'"
And this much-focused media extravaganza on the "attack" by the Iranian speed boats? Whatever an article in the 1/11/08 The New York Times might state in a subhead - "Two nation's versions of an event may not be contradictory." - regarding the U.S. Navy and Iranian patrol speed boats in the Strait of Hormuz 1/6/08, the blanket coverage by the American Media/Press to alarm the American people regarding the "imminent threat" of Iran reminds of Saddam's "WMDs" in 2001, as the Ray McGovern experience with Jim Lehrer's Margaret Warner on 6/6/05 (a few paragraphs back), uncovered. Our Media/Press knows well how to misinform the public. There is no other plausible explanation for George Walker Bush and Richard Bruce Cheney being able to complete their infamous terms of office in this fashion.
The Pulitzer-deserving Amy Goodman had this on the 1/11/08 DemocracyNow.
AMY GOODMAN: "Gareth Porter is a historian and national security policy analyst. His latest article for IPS News analyzes how the official US version of the naval incident has begun to unravel. He joins us now from Washington, D.C. Gareth Porter, welcome."
GARETH PORTER: "Good morning, Amy."
AMY GOODMAN: "Can you talk about everything that happened from Sunday, what President Bush said, what the Pentagon was alleging, and now what we understand?"
GARETH PORTER: "Well, this alleged crisis or confrontation on the high seas is really much less than what met the eyes of the American public as it was reported by news media. And the story really began from leaks from the Pentagon. I mean, there were Pentagon officials apparently calling reporters and telling them that something had happened in the Strait of Hormuz, which represented a threat to American ships and that there was a near battle on the high seas. The way it was described to reporters, it was made to appear to be a major threat to the ships and a major threat of war. And that's the way it was covered by CNN, by CBS and other networks, as well as by print media.
Then I think the next major thing that happened was a briefing by the commander of the Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, the Vice Admiral Kevin Cosgriff, which is very interesting. If you look carefully at the transcript, which was not reported accurately by the media, or not reported at all practically, the commander, or rather Vice Admiral Cosgriff actually makes it clear that the ships were never in danger, that they never believed they were in danger, and that they were never close to firing on the Iranian boats. And this is the heart of what actually happened, which was never reported by the US media.
So I think that the major thing to really keep in mind about this is that it was blown up into a semi-crisis by the Pentagon and that the media followed along very supinely. And I must say this is perhaps the worst?--the most egregious case of sensationalist journalism in the service of the interests of the Pentagon, the Bush administration, that I have seen so far."
Postscript. To buttress his charge that Iran is an "imminent threat", from the world's most-ornate, three billion dollar hotel in the United Arab Emirates George Walker Bush states 1/13/08 that Iran is now "The Face of Terror" in the world. Words fail us.
But not Amy Goodman 1/16/08 as she described events in the region about which Mr. Bush spoke, according to Judy Woodruff, on 1/10/08: "The establishment of the State of Palestine is long overdue. The Palestinian People deserve it."
Here the response of the Israelis:
"In Israel and the Occupied Territories, the Palestinian death toll from Israel's latest attack on the Gaza Strip has hit nineteen. It was the highest single-day Palestinian toll in more than a year. Another fifty Palestinians were reportedly injured. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas described the assault as a 'massacre.'
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas: 'Today there was a massacre and butchery against our people, and we say to the world, to Israel and to all the people, crimes such as these, one can not remain silent over, and in no way whatsoever can it bring peace.'
The fighting came just days after President Bush visited both Israel and the West Bank to promote U.S.-brokered negotiations. At least 115 Palestinians have now been killed in Israeli attacks since the Bush administration launched the latest phase of talks in Annapolis two months ago. Dismissed Palestinian Prime Minister and Hamas leader Ismael Haniyeh said the Palestinian Authority was partly responsible for the ongoing attacks.
Ismael Haniyeh: 'These attacks are the gifts from Bush, the gifts for whom we clapped for Bush, and the gifts for the people who sold their nation just for Bush. But we tell them, Bush is leaving, and you are leaving, but this case, this nation, this power, and this dignity will stay forever.'
Meanwhile, several Israelis have been wounded in Palestinian rocket fire on nearby Israeli towns. Hamas said it took part in the rocket-firing for the first time since seizing power in Gaza last year. An Ecuadorian national working on an Israeli farm was also killed by Palestinian sniper fire. Israeli President Shimon Peres said Israel was acting to prevent Palestinian attacks.
Israeli President Shimon Peres: 'We left Gaza completely. We took out our army, we took out our settlements. There is no single Israeli in the Gaza Strip. It's totally in the hands of the Palestinians, and we don't understand exactly why they are the shooting, what do they want to achieve. But as long as they are shooting, we are left without a choice but to answer and stop it.'
Israel has continued attacks on Gaza after rejecting a truce offer from Hamas last month. Israel has also cut fuel, water and electricity supplies, barred almost all Palestinians from leaving, including those needing medical care, and cut off staples, including food and bottled water."
The Israelis have been targeting Gaza with airstrikes continuously this last week, but page three of the 1/18/08 The New York Times has but one story, by Isabel Kershner, datelined Sderot, Israel (her stories usually originate in Jerusalem). The Israelis killed over thirty Gazans last week including civilians. Here, Amy Goodman's 1/18/07 DemocracyNow.
"In Israel and the Occupied Territories, Israel has ordered the closure of all crossings into the Gaza Strip. The border had already been heavily restricted, but now all goods have been blocked, including humanitarian supplies from the UN. The UN agency for Palestinian refugees condemned the move, saying it will only worsen an already dire situation. Israel says its trying to thwart rocket attacks on the nearby Israeli town of Sderot. Palestinians have fired some 150 rockets since Tuesday, causing several injuries. Israeli defense ministry spokesperson Shlomo Dror said: 'It's unacceptable that people in Sderot are living in fear every day and people in the Gaza Strip are living life as usual.' The closure comes as Israel continues daily attacks on Gaza that have killed more than thirty-two Palestinians in the past week, including nineteen on Tuesday alone. In the latest Israeli attack, one Palestinian was killed and four others were wounded today in an airstrike in north Gaza. A Gaza resident said the situation there is catastrophic.
Resident: 'The situation in Gaza is dire with the Israeli escalation on the Strip and the incursions that take place. As well as the situation near the crossing, the closing of the crossings, and the humanitarian situation is catastrophic on the residents and the people.'
Hamas has taken part in the rocket attacks for the first time since seizing control of Gaza last June. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports today Hamas appears to have settled on a policy of launching the rockets to force Israel into a ceasefire. Israel rejected a truce offer from Hamas last month. On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert promised a continued 'war' on Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert: 'A war is going on in the south, every day, every night. The most daring and boldest of our soldiers and members of the security services are taking part in it. This war will not stop. The moment will come when the scales will tip in this war and cause the firing in the south to be different from what it is today.'"
However, Ms. Kershner's 1/18/08 article focused a rocket which "crashed through an outside wall into the Cohen family's kitchen, sending the refrigerator flying across the room and blasting off its door, which lodged in the ceiling. The ground floor was covered with broken glass and debris, and the aroma of sweet Sabbath wine from a shattered bottle hung in the air." Ms. Kershner made no mention, nor did The Times, of the "Jericho-3" missile launched 1/17/08 by Israel, suitable for delivering nuclear warheads with a range which could pulverize the capitals of every country in the Middle East, none of whom have such a weapon. Ah, yes. The Bush ally in the region is "definitely", as Dustin Hoffman might say, pursuing a path to peace.
Needless to say, the socalled premiere Saturday Morning Edition News weekly wrap-up report by Scott Simon and Dan Schorr on NPR made no mention of that missile launch by Israel, embargoed any and all items from the Middle East, even as Simon was engaging in speculation regarding French President Sarkozy's romantic specifics with his paramour. Mr. Simon married a French woman a few years back and regaled his audience with his French family. Simon & Schorr? Anything but hard news, and the Israelis are off limits.
And all of this is taking place within the purview of the notorious Zionist Norman Podhoretz, the featured speaker 1/10/08 at the 92nd Street Y in New York city, as his son-in-law William Kristol joins the Op-Ed columnists of The New York Times and the slippery Jewish Frenchman Bernard-Henri Levy, an early and clamorous, like Richard Perle, supporter of the war against Iraq, schedules his Y appearance for 3/5/08 and Dennis Prager readies his The Case for Judaism for 3/11/08. Mr. Prager, along with Natan Sharansky, a former member of the Israeli cabinet and now chairman of the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies (Israel's strategy?) is also funded by the Las Vegas billionaire whose allegiance demands inquiry. The evidence is overwhelming.
And the ethnicity of those who direct, relate and report (i.e. select and filter) local, national, and international news and information is not an issue, particularly in this critical Presidential election year?
To compound the bias, the media, most notably Jim Lehrer and his people and General Electric's Brian Williams and Tim Russert, has been working overtime to advertise the Clinton/Obama rift, primarily to ease the path of Republican John McCain to the White House, endorsed 1/25/08 by The New York Times. The Sunday before the New Hampshire primary Russert had McCain on Meet The Press and McCain won. Russert repeated the favor the Sunday before the critical Florida primary and, again, McCain won. Corporate Media tilts the electoral process, has eliminated what little political balance existed on national airwaves (the third wealthiest American billionaire, a Sheldon G. Adelson, Las Vegas mogul worth 28 billion$, funds both Freedom's Watch AND the dynamic Jewish duo Dennis Miller & Dennis Prager on AM radio) while their protected/favored Republicans, past/present/future have virtually bankrupted the United States Treasury (The last time the Fed had to bail out a president George H.W. Bush was in the White House.).
Can you remember 2000, and how "likable" George Bush was and how "suspect" was Albert Gore, former United States Senator AND the most able Vice President in a century? We've seen this media tilt to the Republican candidate FOR YEARS. And now from George Walker Bush to John Sidney McCain III, and the Media/Press calls Bill and Hillary a "DYNASTY"? Had enough?
Let us face facts. The 2000 "election" of George Walker Bush and Richard Bruce Cheney, made possible by Wall Street and radical Jewish American influence on the scheming Republican five members of the United States Supreme Court (named in an earlier paragraph) had a conspiratorial purpose. From the beginning Bush/Cheney pursued double targeting - to secure a substantial source of oil for US energy companies and, also, underwrite Israel's effort to finalize, essentially, a theocracy, the State of Israel (Why else the Star of David flag?) in control of the Levant without the interference of the Palestinians or Saddam Hussein. Hence the United States invasion and occupation of Iraq. Everything else is an illusion. It's why Jewish Americans in their gut are reluctant to recognize the collateral damage done to the United States and its Constitution by this arguably worst administration since South Carolinians fired on Fort Sumter. On the 1/24/08 Terri Gross' Fresh Air Jacob Weisberg, author of The Bush Tragedy (note it's not the United States tragedy) said: "I don't think he's guilty of 'high crimes and misdemeanors'"..."Give him a little sympathetic room" "I had a positive relationship with him." We suspect that Walter Isaacson's Aspen Institute (he's the former head of CNN) will be similarly generous toward Mr. Bush, even though his disregard for the people of the United States and their Constitution exceeds that of Richard Nixon and his mentor Henry Kissinger.
Here the 1/24/08 work of a courageous Jewish American, Amy Goodman and DemocracyNow.org, and her conversation with an equally informed and responsible Arab American in Chicago.
"AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to Chicago to Ali Abunimah, the co-founder of the online publication The Electronic Intifada, author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Ali Abunimah. Your response to what's happening now in Gaza, from here in the United States?
ALI ABUNIMAH: Well, I'd like to say that the suffering in Gaza has been so unremitting and so horrible and will continue. But I think we have to recognize and celebrate the resistance and the people power of the people in Gaza. And we have to recognize that there has been a deliberate siege on them by Israel, a decision taken by the leaders of Israel to starve and inflict suffering on a million-and-a-half people.
The government of Egypt has been complicit in this. They could have opened the borders months ago. Israel has been besieging Gaza for almost two years in this way. Egypt didn't have to wait until Palestinians took matters into their own hands to free themselves from this barbaric siege.
The United States is complicit. And, by the way, Amy, this is another setback for the Bush Doctrine. The people of Gaza have been the victims of an experiment by the Bush administration and Israel, where, first of all, they had a democratic election. The US and Israel didn't like that result, so they tried to overthrow Hamas using Contra-style militias and using a starvation siege. Hamas turned the tables on them and got rid of those militias. So they decided to tighten the siege on the people of Gaza, and the people of Gaza decided to break out of it themselves.
But the thing we have to absolutely focus on is the responsibility here. Israel, as the occupying power in the Gaza Strip, remains fully responsible for everything that happens there. Under Article 55 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, passed, by the way, after the horrors of World War II, Israel is legally required to provide as much food, water, medicine and fuel as the civilian population needs.
And the excuse that the Israelis are using, that they're doing this in response to rocket fire, we know for a fact that Israel has rejected ceasefire after ceasefire put forward by Hamas and other Palestinian factions. We know for a fact that there are no rockets coming out of the West Bank. And yet Israel continues to carry out extrajudicial executions in the West Bank and military attacks on Nablus, on Balata refugee camp and all the other places in the West Bank.
[In a 1/6/08 article by AP's Terence Hunt, preceding Bush's 1/9/08 arrival in Israel, his first trip there since becoming President (he visited in 1998 to assure Sharon and Netanyahu that if he won the American election they could count on his hands-off policy vis-a-vis Israel vs Palestinians, and that he would eliminate the threat to Israel's design for the region posed by Iraq), Mr. Hunt, exhibiting the lack of information or a subservience to the Israeli Lobby, stated: "He (Bush) also will stop in the Palestinian-governed West Bank". Mr. Abunimah takes exception to that Palestinian-governed term of Mr. Hunt.]
We have to be clear that what Israel is trying to do is a massive experiment in ethnic cleansing to get rid of a million-and-a-half people who do not fit its demographic desires and the desire to remain a state where one ethnic group has special and better rights by virtue of its religion. That's what's going on."
Ali Abunimah: "And we've seen that time and again. John Edwards, the same, staunchly pro-Israel. On the Republican side, you have John McCain, who talks like a maverick on other issues, but on this one he has gone out of his way to offer full support for Israel. You have Huckabee, who is on the Christian evangelical right, that is historically not very friendly towards Jewish people, but is very strongly pro-Israel for reasons of biblical prophecy. And Huckabee, who is--according to a report in the Jerusalem Post, talked about a Palestinian state in Egypt or Saudi Arabia, so really talking about the forced transfer or ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians as a solution. That, unfortunately, is the level of discourse.
And maybe it's because there's such a consensus in the mainstream on unconditional support for Israel, no matter how illegal its actions or how harmful they are to the United States, perhaps because there's such a consensus, that's why there's no debate."
"Bush Asserts Right to Ignore Law Barring Funds for Permanent U.S. Bases in Iraq
The news comes as President Bush has declared he has the right to bypass a new law that prohibits the use of taxpayer money to establish permanent U.S. bases in Iraq. The ban was passed as part of the new National Defense Authorization Act. Hours after signing the bill Monday, Bush issued a signing statement asserting his right to ignore the restriction that bars federal funding 'to establish any military installation or base for the purpose of providing for the permanent stationing' of U.S. forces or 'to exercise United States control of the oil resources of Iraq.' Bush's signing statement also asserted his right to ignore a measure that boosts protection for whistleblowers employed by companies with government contracts. And the statement also objects to the creation of an independent commission on contracting fraud and waste in Iraq and Afghanistan.
UN Security Council Drops Gaza Resolution After U.S. Opposition
And at the UN, the Security Council has ended efforts to adopt a statement on the crisis in the Gaza Strip after the Bush administration said it wouldn't support it. The U.S. was the lone country on the fifteen-member council to oppose the measure. The resolution condemned both Israeli and Palestinian attacks as well as Israel's blockade of food, fuel and medical supplies. But the U.S. says the measure didn't go far enough in focusing on Palestinian rocket fire."
"A new report from New Yorker correspondent Seymour Hersh says there is no evidence that the Syrian facility bombed by Israel last September was involved in nuclear weapons. Israel says it launched the attack based on intelligence of nuclear activity. But citing American, Israeli and Syrian sources, Hersh says Israel did not know what it was targeting. Hersh says Israel's main objective was to send a message to Iran."
For some reason, not all of Amy Goodman's 2/5/08 conversation with Philip Shenon has been available on transcript. Here are key segments.
"New Book Alleges 9/11 Commissioner Philip Zelikow Minimized Scrutiny of Bush Admin Failure to Prevent al-Qaeda Attack
New York Times reporter Philip Shenon joins us to talk about his new book, The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation. Shenon says 9/11 Commission executive director Philip Zelikow had close ties to both Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Bush political adviser Karl Rove. He suggests that Zelikow sought to minimize the Bush administration's responsibility for failing to prevent the September 11th attacks.
AMY GOODMAN: The executive director of the federal 9/11 Commission, Philip Zelikow, had much closer ties to the Bush administration than publicly disclosed. This is according to an explosive new book by New York Times investigative reporter Philip Shenon. It's called The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation.
PHILIP SHENON: Good morning.
AMY GOODMAN: Let's talk about Philip Zelikow, the executive director of the 9/11 Commission. First, tell us how it was formed and then his control of the commission.
PHILIP SHENON: The commission was formed by a law passed in Congress in 2002 after a long and very tortured debate. It was a ten-member panel: five Democrats, five Republicans. The only person for the commission chosen by the White House was the chairman, initially Henry Kissinger. Kissinger stepped down, and he was replaced by Tom Kean, the governor of New Jersey. Democratic leaders in the House and Senate chose their five representatives.
Early on, after Governor Kean came on board, there was a search for an executive director, somebody to run the investigation on a day-to-day basis. There's a polite fiction in Washington that the reports of blue ribbon commissions are written by the blue ribbon commissioners. Well, that's not usually the case. They're usually written by a professional staff led by a congressional researcher or a scholar. In this case, Kean and Hamilton came across the resume quite early on of Philip Zelikow, a very well respected historian at the University of Virginia. They contact him, and Zelikow agrees to come on board.
[Philip Zelikow: "Members of the Commission, with your help your staff has developed initial findings to present to the public on the coordination of national policy in dealing with the danger posed by Islamic extremist terrorism before the September 11th attacks on the United States."]
AMY GOODMAN: And he had served on the blue ribbon commission investigating the 2000 vote that got Bush elected.
PHILIP SHENON: Exactly. And he had earned the praise of both Republicans and Democrats on that commission. It's one of the commissioners from the Electoral Reform Commission who joins the 9/11 Commission and forwards Zelikow's name to Kean and Hamilton. And as I say, Zelikow comes on board quite early.
AMY GOODMAN: You talk about, in your book, the commission, that's just being released this week, just being released today, Zelikow's secret relationship with Karl Rove. He's this week becoming a commentator on Fox News, but much more relevant was his top status within the White House, top adviser to President Bush.
PHILIP SHENON: Well, what I can tell you is that in 2003, Karl Rove called Zelikow a number of times at the commission. We know this because there are phone logs recording Rove's calls in. Now, Zelikow had a lot of ties to the Bush administration, and that was known to some degree when he signed onto the investigation. And he had assured the commission that he would do his best to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest and would cut off most of these ties with his friends in the White House and elsewhere.
It becomes known on the commission staff in 2003 that despite these promises, Zelikow is having conversations with, of all people, Karl Rove, and this creates, as you might imagine, a huge amount of alarm and suspicion on the commission staff. You know, what is the executive director of the 9/11 Commission doing talking to Karl Rove? Now, Rove's people at the White House, you know, his friends and allies there, and Zelikow insist that there was--that this was completely innocent and that this involved Zelikow's work at the University of Virginia. And indeed Zelikow's work at the University of Virginia centered around presidential histories, so Karl Rove is somebody he would have normally at the university had some sort of contact with, I assume.
And there's an odd development thereafter, which is Zelikow calls in his secretary, shuts the door and informs her that she is no longer to keep phone logs of his contacts with the White House. The secretary is alarmed by this, worries that she's being asked to do something improper and then contacts the chief lawyer for the commission to alert him to what's happened. As I say, this whole sequence creates a great alarm and a great suspicion about what Zelikow was up to.
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Philip Shenon. His book has just come out. It's called The Commission. His relationship, Philip Zelikow's relationship with Condoleezza Rice, how far back does it go, and what does it mean for the ultimate report that comes out?
PHILIP SHENON: Well, they have a relationship that goes way back. They were both members of the National Security Council staff in the first Bush administration, Bush 41. They formed a close relationship at that point. After that presidency, Zelikow goes off to Harvard, and Rice returns to Stanford, yet they stay in touch, and they write a book together about German reunification. After President Bush 43 enters the White House, he sets up a transition team for the National Security Council at Rice's recommendation, and Rice tasks Zelikow to join the transition team, specifically with the responsibility for reviewing counterterrorism operations at the White House.
Now, some of this was known at the time of Zelikow's hiring. I think the question is, how much of that was known? And, of course, Rice was at the heart of the 9/11 Commission investigation. You know, it was her actions in the spring and summer of 2001 that were among the most important subjects for investigation by the 9/11 Commission, yet the commission was being run on a day-to-day basis by somebody who was undeniably a very close friend of hers.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice publicly testifying before the 9/11 Commission. It was April 8, 2004, an exchange between Rice and Commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste.
RICHARD BEN-VENISTE: You acknowledged to us in your interview of February 7, 2004, that Richard Clarke told you that al-Qaeda cells were in the United States. Did you tell the President at any time prior to August 6 of the existence of al-Qaeda cells in the United States?
CONDOLEEZZA RICE: First, let me just make certain--
RICHARD BEN-VENISTE: If you could just answer that question--
CONDOLEEZZA RICE: Well, first--
RICHARD BEN-VENISTE: --because I only have a very limited -
CONDOLEEZZA RICE: I understand, Commissioner, but it's important--
RICHARD BEN-VENISTE: Did you tell the President?
CONDOLEEZZA RICE: --that I also address--it's also important, Commissioner, that I address the other issues that you have raised. So I will do it quickly, but if you'll just give me a moment.
RICHARD BEN-VENISTE: Well, my only question to you is whether you--
CONDOLEEZZA RICE: I understand, Commissioner, but I will--
RICHARD BEN-VENISTE: --told the President.
CONDOLEEZZA RICE: If you will just give me a moment, I will address fully the questions that you've asked. First of all, yes, the August 6 PDB was in response to questions of the President. In that sense, he asked that this be done. It was not a particular threat report. And there was historical information in there about various aspects of al-Qaeda's operations. Dick Clarke had told me, I think in a memorandum--I remember it as being only a line or two (it was a 20-page report)--that there were al-Qaeda cells in the United States.
Now, the question is, what did we need to do about that? And I also understood that that was what the FBI was doing, that the FBI was pursuing these al-Qaeda cells. I believe in the August 6 memorandum it says that there were seventy full field investigations under way of these cells. And so, there was no recommendation that we do something about this. The FBI was pursuing it. I really don't remember, Commissioner, whether I discussed this with the President. I--
RICHARD BEN-VENISTE: Thank you.
CONDOLEEZZA RICE: I remember very well that the President was aware that there were issues inside the United States. He talked to people about this. But I don't remember the al-Qaeda cells as being something that we were told we needed to do something about.
RICHARD BEN-VENISTE: Isn't it a fact, Dr. Rice, that the August 6 PDB warned against possible attacks in this country? And I ask you whether you recall the title that PDB?
CONDOLEEZZA RICE: I believe the title was 'Bin Laden determined to attack inside the United States.'
AMY GOODMAN: Condoleezza Rice being questioned by Richard Ben-Veniste of the 9/11 Commission. The significance of this interchange, Philip Shenon?
PHILIP SHENON: Those were probably the five most dramatic moments in the two years I covered the commission. Well, there was a rather remarkable document that was handed to President Bush in August 2001 titled 'Bin Laden determined to strike in US.' It was his--it's the daily brief. He--the President receives sort of a super-secret newspaper every morning that has the most important news the CIA wants to get across to him, and that was the headline on the PDB on August 6, 2001, just, you know, a month before 9/11. And the question is why, after the President and Rice got this document, they didn't do much more to try to prepare for the possibility of a domestic terrorist strike?
Now, I will tell you, the August 6 PDB, you can make too much of it, and you can make too little of it. A lot of the information in the PDB was wrong. A lot of it was historical that dated back several years. But there were some fairly specific current warnings, current intelligence suggesting that something was going on. And it actually refers to concerns that terrorists might be conducting surveillance of the skyline of New York City and that hijacked planes might somehow be involved in whatever threat was underway.
AMY GOODMAN: And what ultimately got reported in the commission report of Condoleezza Rice, what she knew, when she knew it? What effect did Philip Zelikow have on that?
PHILIP SHENON: Well, Zelikow apparently used the term 'Clarke-centric.' He kept telling the staff that he thought the report that they were writing was too Clarke-centric, too much drawn from and defending the position of Richard Clarke, who had argued, you know, rather explosively in 2004 that President Bush and Condi Rice had ignored his warnings that something terrible was about to happen.
AMY GOODMAN: How did the Bush administration tried to destroy Richard Clarke's credibility?
PHILIP SHENON: They had quite a campaign going, both publicly and behind the scenes, to lead the public to believe that Richard Clarke was making these damning allegations either because he was a very partisan Democrat who wanted to see President Bush ousted from the White House in the elections that November, and they also engaged in a behind-the-scenes attack to feed questions to the 9/11 Commission that they thought would undermine Clarke's credibility."
AMY GOODMAN: "Phillip, I wanted to play for you the vice-chair of the 9/11 Commission Lee Hamilton denying claims that Zelikow worked to minimize the Bush administration's responsibility for failing to prevent the 9/11 attack.
LEE HAMILTON: We found him (Zelikow) to be very fair-minded, quite impartial, very rigorous in his searching out of the facts, and he certainly did not try to protect the Bush administration or to protect anybody else.
AMY GOODMAN: That was the 9/11 commission vice-chair Lee Hamilton interviewed on NBC's Nightly News.
PHILIP SHENON: Well, Congressman Hamilton has always, throughout the investigation, was always a big champion of Dr. Zelikow's. Mr Hamilton was very much involved in the decision to hire Dr. Zelikow in the first place, I will tell you that I think there are a large number of people on the commission staff at least, who would certainly disagree with Congressman Hamilton."
As more of the transcript becomes available and we are able to put it into context, you will see it here.
In the meantime, this 2/11/08 headline "Israeli Officials Seek Tougher Military Action in Gaza After Rockets Kill 2 in Sderot" (A/11) in the National Edition of The New York Times, printed in Seattle, reports two brothers, 8 and 19, were wounded the night before in Sderot, but those named as having been killed were Hussam Zahar, 21, and Khalad Zahar in 2003, sons of Mahmoud Zahar, a leader of Hamas. The Times has trouble distinguishing between the occupier and the Occupied.
(a late item from Amy Goodman 2/12/08 for this commemoration of Abraham Lincoln)
"In Israel and the Occupied Territories the Israeli government has announced plans to build one thousand new Jewish-only homes in Arab East Jerusalem. Israel has previously agreed to halt settlement activity under the US-backed 'Road Map (to nowhere?)', but it now claims the freeze only applies to 'those settlements it doesn't want to keep'! The announcement comes two months after Israel said it would build new homes in the Jewish settlement of Har Homa near Jerusalem (and one month after Olmert, to show good faith, assured Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas he would not build any new homes in areas of the West Bank and East Jerusalem that were being considered for the Palestinian State)."
And this from the incomparable Amy Goodman 2/14/08 -
"Activists Call for Boycott of Diamond Giant Leviev for Support of Israeli Settlements and Links to Human Rights Abuses in Africa
Leviev, the world's largest cutter and polisher of diamonds, has been linked to expanding Jewish-only settlements in the Palestinian West Bank and a sketchy human rights record in Angola, where it controls the diamond supply. We speak to two Palestinian and Jewish members of Adalah-New York, a group that's held weekly protests outside Leviev's Madison Avenue store.
Guests:
Lubna Mikkel, Palestinian lawyer and member of Adalah-New York.
Katie Unger, Member of Adalah-New York and Jews Against the Occupation.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Diamonds might be a girl's best friend in Tinseltown, but in the real world, the massive profits they rake in have fueled some of the worst conflicts in recent years. Today, we take a look at the world's largest cutter and polisher of diamonds, Leviev, owned by the Ukrainian-born Israeli billionaire, Lev Leviev. Forbes magazine described him as 'the man who cracked the DeBeers cartel.'
Leviev's new Madison Avenue store in New York has been the target of almost weekly protests since it opened last November. On Saturday, protesters in New York and London urged people not to shop at Leviev for Valentine's Day.
Those protesting Leviev allege that two of his companies and his former business partner, Brooklyn developer Shaya Boymelgreen, expanded at least five illegal Jewish-only settlements in the Palestinian West Bank. They also point to his sketchy human rights record in the African country of Angola, where Leviev controls the diamond supply.
AMY GOODMAN: We invited a Leviev representative to join us on today's broadcast, but they declined. They did send us a statement, however, saying: 'Protests against LEVIEV and the Lev Leviev Group of Companies are politically motivated. Those who personally attack the companies or its founder deliberately neglect their extensive humanitarian and philanthropic work, which includes building schools, orphanages, and fostering economic development in communities around the world.
'These protests are also inaccurate in their charges against LEVIEV diamonds. LEVIEV is a rigorous supporter of the UN mandated Kimberley Process concerning conflict-free diamonds and ensures that all gemstones-of all colors-are sourced through internationally recognized legal and ethical guidelines.' That, again, the statement of Leviev.
Adalah-New York, or the Coalition for Justice in the Middle East, is the group that's been organizing the protests against Leviev in New York. We're joined right here in the firehouse now by two members of Adalah. Lubna Mikkel is a Palestinian lawyer, and Katie Unger is with Jews Against the Occupation.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Explain, Katie, these protests, why you're focusing on Leviev.
KATIE UNGER: Well, Lev Leviev is an Israeli billionaire who just recently opened his first New York retail establishment, and after Palestinians, who have been struggling nonviolently against the wall and against the seizure of their land in places like Jayyous and Bil'in, pointed Lev Leviev and Shaya Boymelgreen out, as they had become aware that these two individuals were people who were responsible for the destruction of their communities, the seizure of their land, the impoverishment of their people. And when we learned that Lev Leviev was opening a jewelry store on Madison Avenue, we decided to let him know that New Yorkers, who are committed to human rights, don't accept his participation in our city, don't accept him making more money off of us.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And, Lubna Mikkel, in terms of the work that he has done in the Occupied Territories, can you talk about that?
LUBNA MIKKEL: Well, he is engaged in real estate development, which means, for Palestinians, more settlements, more illegal Jewish-only settlements, especially in Mattiyahu East on the lands of Bil'in, which is a village that has been doing nonviolent demonstrations for the last three years against the wall, the apartheid wall built on its land, confiscating 50 percent of its farming land. And he's also involved in-I mean, he's-most of the Zufim settlement on the lands of Jayyous was constructed by Leviev. The same-more units are being built now in Har Homa, in Jabal Abu Ghneim, are built by Leviev. He's also involved in Maale Adumim in Arab East Jerusalem. These blocks, these settlements, basically divide Palestinian communities into bantustans. So we're not connected anymore.
More, he is also involved-he owns about a quarter of the shares of Dor Energy, or Dor alone, which is the monopoly supplier or provider of fuel to the Gaza Strip. And just a few weeks back in December, or a few months back, in December, they cut fuel supply by 75 percent, although the Israeli army called for a 12 percent-five to 12 percent cut.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Now, Leviev has also been involved in Angola early on in diamond production there. Could you talk about that, as well?
KATIE UNGER: Lev Leviev, through a very close relationship with the Dos Santos regime in Angola, has a monopoly on Angolan diamonds. And so, one of the things that's so disingenuous about pointing to the Kimberley Process is that the Kimberley Process only refers to conflict diamonds defined as those diamonds that are involved in rebellions against recognized governments. It has nothing to say about recognized regimes, like repressive dictatorships like the Angolan regime. It has nothing to say about the conditions that diamonds are being mined under and processed under and delivered under, under any form of regime. And Leviev has profited immensely off of this relationship with the dictator and off of the oppression of the Angolan people. And human rights activists and journalists in Angola have pointed to the humiliation, whipping and other terrible conditions by the security companies that Lev Leviev's interests in Angola are paying.
AMY GOODMAN: So what are you calling for right now, Lubna Mikkel?
LUBNA MIKKEL: Well, we're basically calling for a boycott of Leviev and his jewelry store and his businesses in New York City. We're basically aiming at educating and raising the awareness of New Yorkers of the human rights violations, of the wide spectrum of human rights violations that Leviev and Shaya Boymelgreen are involved in. And we're calling for their-we're calling on Leviev and Shaya Boymelgreen to end their construction of the settlements immediately.
AMY GOODMAN: I'm looking at New York Magazine. They did a profile on Lev Leviev. He just bought the old New York Times building--right?--massive structure in midtown Manhattan, owns Africa-Israel--that's what his company is called, which owns 1,700 Fina gas stations, describes itself as the country's largest 7-Eleven franchisee. Also, in talking about the issue of Angola and the diamonds, New York Magazine said that Leviev's alliance with the government led to his gaining primary control of the country's rough diamond supply since 2000. A security company contracted by Leviev was accused this year by a local human rights monitor of participating in practices of humiliation, whipping, torture, sexual abuse and, in some cases, assassinations. Leviev's formal response to the report did not directly address the abuses but touted his charitable activities in Angola.
Finally, Katie Unger, on that issue of diamonds in Angola and what you are demanding of Leviev there?
KATIE UNGER: One of the things about Leviev and one of the reasons why these protests outside Leviev have caught such international attention is that they bring together atrocities around the world. And so, in addition to calling on Leviev to end his settlement construction and end his problematic building practices in New York, we are calling on Leviev to ensure human rights in his diamond [inaudible], and we're supporting Angolan human rights activists who are calling for free elections and improved conditions in diamond mines there.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we want to thank you both very much for being with us. Katie Unger is part of the coalition of groups that are having protests outside Leviev. She's a member of Adalah-New York and Jews Against the Occupation. Lubna Mikkel, Palestinian lawyer, a member of Adalah-New York, as well. Thank you for joining us."
More from Amy Goodman of DemocracyNow on February 18th the day that we celebrate two of our greatest Presidents, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. My God! How did we ever put in office George Walker Bush or his father George Herbert Walker Bush who today begins an effort to convince the American people that John Sidney McCain III is suitable for the American presidential office. Had enough?
"In Israel and the Occupied Territories, more than ninety Palestinians were seized and brought back into Israel Sunday in an Israeli raid. One Palestinian civilian and three Hamas militants were killed, and twenty people were wounded before Israeli forces withdrew. The raids came as Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced Israel has the right to 'attack everyone' if Palestinians fire rockets.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert: 'We have completely a free hand to respond, to reach out and to attack everyone, which is having any kind of responsibility on behalf of Hamas in the southern part of our country.'
Olmert went on to say he doesn't expect to reach a peace deal with the Palestinian Authority this year, only a set of 'basic principles.' He said Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has agreed to delay talks on the status of Jerusalem until the very last stages, but Palestinian officials are denying the claim. Israel has announced two major settlement expansion projects in Arab East Jerusalem since the U.S.-brokered Annapolis summit last November. Olmert's comments came as Hamas spokesperson Sami Abu Zuhri said Hamas remains open to talks on a ceasefire with Israel.
Sami Abu Zuhri: 'Hamas has confirmed that is has no objection to studying the matter if the Israeli occupation commits to stopping all forms of aggression against our Palestinian people and lifts the siege that is imposed on our people.'
Meanwhile, the UN's top humanitarian official has renewed calls for an end to the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip. Emergency Relief Coordinator John Holmes spoke after touring Gaza on Friday.
UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, John Holmes: 'All this makes for a grim human and humanitarian situation here in Gaza, which means that people are not able to live with the basic dignity to which they are entitled. So what is essentially needed is an opening of the crossings, a lot more goods coming in, humanitarian goods, but other goods as well, so that people can start to live more normal and more dignified lives.'"
On 2/21/08 the front page NY Times gave John McCain a boost, as have other leading members of our Media/Press, publishing a lengthy article in which the second sentence introduced "a female lobbyist", that attracted the attention of his staff to the regular appearance of a 40-year old woman (stunning in a photo) with McCain during his 2000 campaign. As could be expected, The Times' piece generated "his best-ever 24-hour period of online fund-raising" and "rallied to his defense" the full nationwide armada of "conservative" talk show hosts "who had long reviled Mr. McCain". "Mission Accomplished." This country will be hard-pressed to survive the love fest which our national commercial media will generate for this former chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, a man who Ralph Nader aptly described on the 2/24/08 Meet the Press as "pro-war John McCain, who gives the indication that he's the candidate for perpetual war, perpetual intervention overseas, who allies himself with the criminal, recidivistic regime of George Bush and Dick Cheney, the most multiple-impeachable presidency in American history."
Mr. Nader detailed another historic truth, which neither Mr. Russert nor his assembled talking heads - NPR's Michele Norris, NY Times' David Brooks, Doris Kearns Goodwin historian, and NBC Universal's Chuck Todd - dared to touch.
Mr. Nader: "You go from Iraq to Palestine/Israel...Senator Obama's better instincts and his knowledge have been censored by himself. I give you the Palestinian/Israeli issue which is a real off-the-table issue. Don't touch that even tho it's central to our security and the situation in the Middle East. He was pro-Palestinian when he was in Illinois. Now he's supporting the destruction of the tiny Gaza, a million and a half people. He doesn't have any sympathy for a civilian death ratio of 300 Palestinians to one Israeli. He's not taking a leadership position in supporting the Israeli Peace movement which represents former cabinet ministers, people in the Knesset, former generals, former security officials, mayors and leading intellectuals. He could at least say 'Let's have a hearing for this peace movement in the Congress, so we don't just have a monotone support of the Israeli government's attitude toward the Palestinians, and the Israeli illegal occupation of Palestine.'"
The 2/26/08 DemocracyNow.org broadcast of Amy Goodman added to Mr. Nader's position on the Middle East, as did Ms. Goodman's 2/27/08 broadcast.
Amy Goodman 2/26/08: "In Israel and the Occupied Territories thousands of Palestinians formed a human chain 2/25 to protest the ongoing Israeli blockade of the Gaza strip. Gaza's already dire humanitarian crisis has worsened since Israel imposed a new aid-and-fuel embargo last month. Hamas lawmaker Mushir Al-masri said Israel is leaving Gaza's population to 'a slow death. This sanction will fail. We will not surrender, we will not kneel'".
Amy Goodman 2/27/08: "In Israel and the Occupied Territories at least seven Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks on the Gaza strip. Several others were wounded. Israel has killed more than two hundred Palestinians in Gaza since peace negotiations resumed in November. Meanwhile the Israeli military has announced there will be no prosecutions over a November 2006 attack that killed twenty one Palestinian civilians in a Gaza residential building. Sixteen of the dead were members of the same family. Seven of them were children, including an eighteen-month old girl. Six other victims were woman."
The ever-voluble all-knowing Thomas L. Friedman has dismissed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as mere cats in a tree. Whoa! One of these cats has two hundred nuclear missiles which threaten every other constituency in the Middle East, and Israel's refusal to recognize the fundamental humanity of Palestinians is the ultimate source of ALL the controversies in that volatile region.
Mr. Friedman may also have an impact on the laughable BBC program which advertises "Where You Set The Agenda!" Oh, yes. The program is titled "World Have Your Say", but while the Israelis are murdering scores of Palestinians in Gaza, the subjects of this BBC fraud NEVER cover Gaza, and seldom the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The BBC was world renowned and respected prior to the submission of Tony Blair to the wanton obsession of George Walker Bush to invade and occupy Iraq. The BBC at that time recognized and partially publicized the deceitful argument that first the Bush/Cheney and then the capitulating Blair governments used to justify the action. In response the top two British Broadcasting executives were forced out and, like our Media/Press, today's BBC is a cruel joke on its audience.
This present BBC is an embarrassment to the Fourth Estate here and in Great Britain and also to the principles of journalism. [The Ray McGovern paragraph and the following Associated Press item are key to exposing what can only described now as the mindless venality, ferality of the Bush/Cheney/Blair and, now, John McCain-endorsed decision.] Interestingly, we are publishing this edition of GOPBias.org on the one hundred and fourteenth birthday of the American dramatist Ben Hecht, author of "Front Page".
UK Cabinet ordered to release Iraq notes by D'Arcy Doran, Associated Press Writer 2/26/08
"LONDON -- Britain's information commissioner on Tuesday ordered the government to release minutes documenting the discussions former Prime Minister Tony Blair had with his Cabinet in the days before the invasion of Iraq.
Information Commissioner Richard Thomas ruled the government should release the minutes of two meetings held in the days leading up to the March 2003 invasion.
The minutes document Blair's discussions with ministers on advice about the war's legality from the attorney general at that time, Lord Goldsmith, the government's chief legal adviser.
Thomas said he made the decision in response to a request made under the Freedom of Information Act.
'The gravity and controversial nature of the subject matter' made it in the public interest to release the documents, Thomas' office said in a statement.
He rejected the Cabinet Office's arguments that the documents should not be published because they revealed ministerial communications and how the government formed policy.
The commissioner said the documents will allow the public to understand fully the Cabinet's decisions to enter the unpopular war in Iraq.
Thomas said, however, he accepted the Cabinet's argument that specific references in the minutes could hurt international relations if released. These references would not be published.
The Cabinet Office said it was considering the commissioner's ruling. The government has five weeks to lodge an appeal against the ruling to the Information Tribunal.
In the meetings, the Cabinet discussed the advice Goldsmith gave to Blair as Britain decided whether to join the U.S.-led invasion. Goldsmith raised doubts about the legality of the war in a 13-page memorandum dated March 7, 2003.
The legal adviser told Blair it would be safer to go to war with a second U.N. Security Council resolution specifically authorizing military action. He also warned that British troops taking part in the conflict could be open to legal action.
But in a final, single-page statement discussed at a second meeting 10 days later, Goldsmith gave an unequivocal view that military action was justified under existing United Nations resolutions.
It led to accusations from anti-war campaigners and opposition legislators that Goldsmith had come under political pressure -- a charge both he and Blair denied.
Blair blocked the release of Goldsmith's advice to the public until 2006, when the two legal opinions were published under freedom of information laws. The meeting minutes will show how the Cabinet responded to that advice."
DemocracyNow.org 2/29/2008
"The Three TRILLION Dollar War: Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard Economist Linda Bilmes on the True Cost of the US Invasion and Occupation of Iraq
One week after President Bush rejected charges the war in Iraq has hurt the US economy, a new book puts a conservative estimate of the war's cost at $3 trillion so far. In their first national broadcast interview upon their book's publication, Nobel laureate and former chief World Bank economist, Joseph Stiglitz, and co-author Linda Bilmes of Harvard University say the Bush administration has repeatedly low-balled the cost of the war--and even kept a second set of records hidden from the American public.
Israeli Minister Threatens Gaza 'Holocaust'
In Israel and the Occupied Territories, at least eighteen Palestinians have been killed in continued Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip. Thursday's Palestinian toll includes four young boys, killed by bombs as they were playing soccer. The youngest was eight years old. Another Palestinian child was killed along with two adult civilians. Palestinian officials say at least nine Palestinian militants also died. At least thirty-one Palestinians, including nine children, have died in the past two days of Israeli attacks. Israel says it's responding to Palestinian rocket fire, with forty-five rockets launched from Gaza on Thursday. One Israeli was killed this week in the town of Sderot, the thirteenth Israeli killed by Palestinian rockets in the last seven years. A seventeen-year-old girl was lightly injured Thursday when Palestinian rockets struck the Israeli town of Ashkelon. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak is warning of a full-scale Israeli invasion of Gaza. In what could be a first for an Israeli official, Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai has threatened a 'holocaust' in Gaza if rocket fire continues. Vilnai said, 'The more Qassam fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, [the Palestinians] will bring upon themselves a bigger holocaust, because we will use all our might to defend ourselves.' An opinion poll taken this week shows 64 percent of Israelis favor a ceasefire with Hamas, the highest majority to date. Hamas has made several proposals for a truce, but the Israeli government has rejected its overtures.
Iraqis Protest US Raids
In Iraq, hundreds of protesters took to the streets of Baghdad Thursday to protest a US raid on a Sunni neighborhood. Two women were arrested when US troops entered their homes.
Baghdad resident: 'We condemn the US forces' acts. They raided houses at midnight, exploding doors of houses and roofs, houses of peaceful families. They raided them for the sake of nothing, arresting women. They are believers in democracy, as they say, so why did they do this?'
Funeral Held for Slain Iraqi Journalist
Elsewhere in Baghdad, a funeral was held Thursday for the head of Iraq's largest journalism organization slain in an apparent targeted attack. Seventy-four-year-old Shihab al-Tamimi died this week from gunshot wounds. He was an independent journalist, known as an outspoken opponent of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. An Iraqi journalist attending the funeral said Iraq's journalists are increasingly being targeted.
Hussein Al-Miah: 'We send our condolences to all the Iraqi journalists with this serious event that journalists have been inflicted with. Shihab al-Tamimi will not be the last martyr, as the Iraqi journalist became target for (unintelligible).'
More than 170 journalists and support workers have been killed in Iraq since the US invasion of 2003.
US Deploys Warships Off Lebanon Coast
In other news from the Middle East, the US has deployed three warships, including the USS Cole, off the coast of Lebanon. US officials say the ships were sent to support 'regional stability' amidst Lebanon's ongoing internal political deadlock."
Note: The mechanized slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, by Israeli Special Forces, tanks and airstrikes continues unabated - and as the Palestinian death count rises the coverage by the American media diminishes. It's our money. Shameful.
"112 Palestinians Killed in Five-Day Israel Attack
Israel has reportedly pulled most of its ground troops out of Gaza following a five-day attack that left at least 112 Palestinians dead. But Israeli aircraft continue to carry out bombing raids, and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has warned that Israel's military operation in Gaza is not over. On Saturday, sixty Palestinians died in what officials said was the deadliest day in Gaza since the first intifada of the 1980s. Al Jazeera reports at least a third of the Palestinians killed over the past five days have been children. Since last week, three Israelis have died - one civilian and two soldiers. Sami Abu Zuhri of Hamas accused Israel of carrying out a war of elimination.
Sami Abu Zuhri: 'What happens in Gaza is not an aggression of bombardments by planes, but it is a war of elimination by its full meaning. Babies are being killed, civilians are being killed, and buildings are being destroyed.'
Mahmoud Abbas Suspends Contacts with Israel
On Sunday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas formally suspended contacts with Israel to protest what he called Israel's criminal war on the Palestinian people. The international community widely condemned Israel's attack on Gaza. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on Palestinians to stop launching rocket attacks, while criticizing Israel's actions.
Ban Ki-moon: 'While recognizing Israel's right to defend itself, I condemn the disproportionate and excessive use of force that has killed and injured so many civilians, including children. I call on Israel to cease such attacks. Israel must fully comply with international humanitarian law and exercise the utmost restraint.'
Israeli Peace Activists Protest Gaza Offensive
On Sunday, hundreds of Israeli peace activists protested outside the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv.
Omri Evron: 'I am demonstrating here against the war that Israel started in Gaza, against the ongoing siege of Gaza and the continuing occupation, and we are here to say that this war does not serve the interest of either the Israeli or the Palestinian people. It's a criminal war that hurts innocent people, and we want to end it. We want to have negotiations and peace and a two-state solution immediately.'
Israel: 'No Moral Equation' Between Palestinians and Israelis
Meanwhile, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livini called on the international community to support Israel's actions.
Tzipi Livini: 'The world should respect any action taken by Israel in order to defend its citizens. I would like to say that I cannot accept condolences saying that there are victims, both sides. Well, yes, there are victims both sides, but there is no moral equation between these terrorists who are looking for civilians to kill and between the Israeli soldiers who are looking for the terrorists.'
the 1953 CIA Coup in Iran
and the Roots of Middle East Terror
More!
March 3, 2008 Lehrer NewsHour
DemocracyNow Friday 3/7/08
"Palestinian Gunman Kills Eight Israeli Seminary Students
Thousands of mourners have gathered in Jerusalem for the funeral of eight Israeli seminary students gunned down last night in an attack on the Mercaz Harav yeshiva, which is considered the birthplace of religious Zionism. Police say a Palestinian gunman from East Jerusalem opened fire in the seminary's library and began shooting students while they were studying. Seven of the students were teenagers ranging in age from fifteen to nineteen. One student was twenty-six years old. Nine other people were wounded in the attack, the deadliest in Jerusalem in over four years. Israeli Foreign Spokesman Aviv Shiron condemned the shooting.
Aviv Shiron: 'Once again, we experienced deadly terror in the center of Jerusalem by extremists who were trying to kill as many Jews as possible. This is connected with the attacks of Qassam rockets on Sderot, Grad missiles on Ashkelon, and now a massacre in a school in the center of Jerusalem.'
Libya Blocks UN Resolution for Not Citing Gaza Deaths
The shooting occurred following one of the bloodiest weeks in Gaza in years. Israeli troops killed at least 120 Palestinians over the past week. At the United Nations, Libya blocked the Security Council from condemning the attack. Libya's deputy ambassador Ibrahim Al-Dabbashi insisted the statement should be 'balanced' by including condemnation of Israeli actions in Gaza.
Ibrahim Al-Dabbashi: 'For us, the human lives are the same. We don't judge the incident in itself. We judge--we talk about the killing. We think there is no superhuman and human from second grade or something like that. We think that the lives of the Palestinians are the same as those of the Israelis.'
Dan Gillerman, Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, decried Libya's stance.
Dan Gillerman: 'The Security Council was unable to reach a decision, a unanimous decision on condemning the massacre that happened in Jerusalem tonight. Unfortunately, this is what happens when the Security Council is infiltrated by terrorists.'
Hamas Describes Jerusalem Shooting as 'Heroic'
In the West Bank, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the shooting, but Hamas spokesperson Sami Abu Zuhri described the shooting as heroic.
Sami Abu Zuhri: 'The heroic operation that took place in Jerusalem is a natural reaction to the Israeli massacres they committed in the Gaza Strip and the general crimes committed against the Palestinians. This heroic martyrdom operation comes to reassure the failure of defeating the resistance.'
In Gaza, thousands of Palestinians reportedly celebrated upon hearing the news. Meanwhile, hundreds of Israelis gathered outside the yeshiva last night chanting, 'Death to Arabs.'
68 Die in Twin Bombing in Baghdad
In other news from the Middle East, at least sixty-eight Iraqis died Thursday in a coordinated twin bomb attack at a shopping area in Baghdad. Another 120 people were wounded. It was the single bloodiest incident in Iraq's capital since last June.
Bush: Congress Has No Say in Long-Term Security Deal with Iraq
The Bush administration is claiming congressional approval is not needed to strike a long-term security agreement with Iraq.
The Washington Post reports the Bush administration is arguing that the 2002 vote in Congress authorizing the use of force permits indefinite combat operations in Iraq.
Congress has been demanding a role in any long-term agreement signed. Democratic Congressman Gary Ackerman accused the White House of trying to claim the authority to be at war in Iraq forever with no limitations."
BILL MOYERS: Welcome to the Journal. When John McCain cinched the Republican nomination Tuesday night, mainstream journalists sounded as if he had walked across the waters:
KEITH OLBERMANN: The parallel here between the career of John McCain and perhaps the career of Winston Churchill...
BRIAN WILLIAMS: I heard you make that comparison earlier and I loved it, because it's such great reading and people should go back now and see [...]
BILL MOYERS: It's a fact: McCain has long been a favorite of the establishment press, mainly as one journalist puts it, because of his ingenious strategy of talking ad infinitum to the reporters covering him. But it's also because he sometimes stood against the grain of his own party, including what he called 'agents of intolerance' who had turned Republicans into the party of God. Here is John McCain back in the year 2000, when he was running against George W. Bush:
JOHN MCCAIN: Neither party should be defined by pandering to the outer reaches of American politics and the agents of intolerance, whether they be Louis Farrakhan or Al Sharpton on the left, or Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell on the right.
BILL MOYERS: That denunciation of religious extremism cost McCain the bible belt eight years ago; the fundamentalist forces of Robertson and Falwell threw their support to Bush and McCain was finished. But this time around McCain knows he can't win in November without Bush's born-again base, so he's been singing a different tune -- one that sounds a lot like that old militant hymn, 'Onward Christian Soldiers'. McCain started reaching out to the religious right when he threw himself at the feet of his old nemesis, Jerry Falwell. But Falwell has since gone to his heavenly reward. Pat Robertson is aging out, and James Dobson of Christian radio fame still regards McCain as suspect. But new stars are rising in the religious firmament, and one of them is shining brightly on McCain.
PASTOR JOHN HAGEE: John McCain will be a strong courageous and effective leader from the first day...
BILL MOYERS: That's John Hagee, pastor of a conservative mega church in Texas and one of television's most powerful prophets of the end times, anointing John McCain for the White House (cont').
The (new?) New York Times - March 12, 2008
Iraq Conflict Seen as Deadlock - Newly declassified statistics on the frequency of insurgent attacks in Iraq suggests that after major security gains last fall in the wake of an American troop increase, the conflict has drifted into stalemate, with levels of violence remaining stubbornly constant from November 2007 through early 2008.
American commanders in Iraq have been warning for months that the security gains were far from irreversible, particularly since progress in Iraqi political reconciliation, which would presumably address the tensions underlying the violence, has been halting. Based on reports from February, violence may already be increasing. An independent tally by The Associated Press recorded a jump last month in the average number of Iraqis killed per day compared with January's figures.
But the night before (3/11/08) Jim Lehrer interviewed a Frederick Kagan, former professor at West Point from the notorious AEI (American Enterprise Institute) who, in answer to a question as to whether or not he agreed with President Bush that the "surge" has been successful replied: "Absolutely. The main purpose of the surge was to get the sectarian violence in and around Baghdad under control so that it would be possible for the Iraqis to start making political progress."
But to introduce this segment Lehrer's own Kwami Holman had this to say: "The news out of Iraq in recent days has been grim. Eight US soldiers killed in bombings yesterday in Baghdad and Diyala Province. A Sunni Arab tribal sheik murdered yesterday by a female suicide bomber. More than fifty Iraqis massacred in a Baghdad market attack last week and today at least sixteen Iraqis died in this roadside bombing, target a bus in southern Iraq."
The same day CBS's David Martin, well known as an unofficial spokesman for the cream of the informed and capable segment of military leadership, had this: "The commander of US forces in the Middle East who, by his own account, 'was in hot water with the White House' quit today. In the middle of a visit to Iraq Admiral William "Fox" Fallon (popular with the troops) called Defense Secretary Gates and submitted his resignation. Citing a recent magazine article which portrayed him (properly) as the lone voice of reason in an administration 'hell-bent on a war with Iran'. Secretary Gates insisted Fallon had not been pressured to resign".
[DemocracyNow 3/12/08: "Next week will mark the fifth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq. In the first of several speeches timed to coincide with the 5 year mark President Bush said his decision to invade 'will forever be the right one.'"
President Bush: "The decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision early in MY PRESIDENCY (And the ultimate destruction of Iraq? This man, like Cheney, is slippery, but hires clever speech writers!). It is the right decision at this point IN MY PRESIDENCY, and it will forever be the right decision (thunderous applause!)".
Amy Goodman: "Bush was speaking before a conference of the National Religious Broadcasters (the NBR) in Nashville Tennessee."]
David Martin (cont'): "He (Gates) also insisted Fallon was not 'the odd-man-out'. (Gates) 'We've all talked about all options being on the table, but we've also focussed on...pursuing economic and diplomatic pressure'... Gates has made no secret that he, too, is opposed to war with Iran but, Fallon all but ruled it out...Virtually every senior military officer is opposed to war with Iran, but from now on they might be more cautious about how they say it."
More from David Martin 3/12/08: "A prop plane in a jet age, and an ungainly one at that. But the AC-130 gunship (huge, basic 130) may be the single most over-worked piece of equipment in the American arsenal. When it takes on a full load of ammunition it becomes a flying tank. Every time special operations forces conduct a mission in Iraq or Afghanistan, an AC-130 covers them from the air. The war is making the gunship old before its time (its been flying at a rate four times that for which it was designed). When the plane is filled with crew members, instruments, computers, guns and ammo, so full it's at maximum gross weight (Pilot) 'and that basically means, for max gross weight, max throttles full time and max wear and tear on the aircraft'. You rarely see an AC-130 gunship in action because they operate at night and in secret. But they're seeing so much action in Iraq and Afghanistan that it's getting harder and harder to keep them flying (and because their missions are secret, their losses are obscured)". Captain James May: "We're flying the wings off them literally."
"Israel-Hamas Truce Collapses with Israeli Attack in West Bank
In Israel and the Occupied Territories, a five-day tacit truce between Israel and Hamas has collapsed. Five Palestinians "militants" were killed in the West Bank on Wednesday after coming under attack from undercover Israeli forces. Earlier today, Israeli fighter jets bombed northern Gaza after Palestinians fired rockets at Israeli towns. The shooting came hours after Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh publicly outlined his terms for a permanent ceasefire with Israel.
Ismail Haniyeh: 'There must be a commitment, in return (from the Israelis), to end its comprehensive aggression against our people, end assassinations and killings and raids, ending all forms of aggression, lifting the siege and reopening the crossings (Israel's immediate response was to send it's jet fighters to bomb northern Gaza). That's the decision that was taken by the unity government in its political program.'
Israel rejected the conditions and said it reserves the right to launch attacks."
"Protesters Call Rice 'War Criminal' at House Hearing
Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has offered a mild criticism of ongoing Israeli settlement construction. Speaking before a House Appropriations subcommittee, Rice said Israel's recent announcement to build hundreds of new homes in the Occupied Territories is inconsistent and unhelpful.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice: 'The United States considers the expansion of settlement activity to be not consistent with Israeli obligations under the road map, and we've made that very clear. And I've also said that it's certainly not helpful to the peace process. I can assure you that we are following very closely to assure that US dollars are not being used to support the settlement activity.'
The Bush administration has refused to link billions of dollars in US aid to Israel's halting of settlement construction. Israel has announced three different settlement expansions since resuming US-brokered peace talks with Palestinians last November. During her testimony, a row of protesters sitting behind Rice raised their hands, painted red to signify blood. As Rice left the chamber, several demonstrators called her a war criminal."
"Palestinians Unite in Anger Against Israeli Attack
By ISABEL KERSHNER
BETHLEHEM, West Bank -- It was a display of Palestinian unity rarely seen since the militant Islamic group Hamas seized power in Gaza last summer and left the rival pro-Fatah Palestinian Authority struggling to hold on to the West Bank.
As thousands of men and women crowded into Manger Square on Thursday to attend prayers and the funerals for four local militants killed by Israeli undercover forces in a raid the day before, a general strike was observed throughout this Muslim-Christian city of 30,000 people.
In the square, youths held flags representing the mainstream Fatah, Hamas, the smaller, more extreme Islamic Jihad and the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The body of one of the victims, a local Islamic Jihad leader, Muhammad Shehada, was draped with the increasingly popular emblem of the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah.
More than creating a temporary fusion of political and ideological divisions, though, the killings enraged Fatah advocates of negotiations with Israel, who posed questions about its commitment to peacemaking.
'The crime committed by Israel against our people aims to blow up the peace process,' said Muhammad Khalil al-Laham, a Fatah legislator who came to the square, and whose voice rose in fury as row upon row of Muslim mourners bowed down on the paving stones in silent prayer.
'Bethlehem was the calmest and most committed city,' Mr. Laham said, noting that Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian Authority prime minister, had planned an international investors' conference to be held in the city in May under the slogan, 'You can do business in Palestine.'
Israel strongly defended the killings on Thursday as a legitimate response to terrorist acts. 'Yesterday, in Bethlehem, we again proved that the state of Israel will continue to hunt and to strike any murderer who has Jewish blood on his hands, and those who send him,' said the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak. 'It is unimportant how much time has elapsed. Israel's long arm will reach him.'
The Israeli raid came at a delicate time for the authority and its president, Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah. Egyptian mediators are trying to broker a truce that would calm the hostilities between Israel and Hamas in and around Gaza, a truce that Mr. Abbas called for after violence spiraled there earlier this month.
Mr. Abbas's office issued an unusually strong statement after the Bethlehem raid. 'These barbaric crimes reveal the true face of Israel, which speaks loudly about peace and security all the while committing murders and executions against our people,' it said.
In a response, Islamic Jihad fired more than 20 rockets from Gaza at Israel on Thursday, after refraining from launching any for nearly a week. Only a small number of them fell inside Israel and they caused no casualties, the Israeli military said. Before dawn the Israeli Air Force carried out a strike in Gaza, also the first in nearly a week, hitting a rocket launcher, the military said."
As we've reported, presenting irrefutable evidence, the Bush/Cheney-now McCain purpose of invading and occupying Iraq five long years ago was two-fold. Big Oil and securing Israeli designs for the Middle East, a formidable, yet unmentionable, section of our annual federal budget for SIXTY YEARS. As Jim Bamford has written in his groundbreaking A Pretext For War (2004), the latter conspiracy, now having obligated our national treasurer (THAT'S US!) to TWO TRILLION DOLLAR$, began in 1996, but a few months after the peacemaker Prime Minister Itzhak Rabin was assassinated by an extreme right-wing Israeli. It was documented by a plan entitled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm (Israel)", a major initial objective of which was the elimination of Saddam Hussein (Syria and Iran would come later). The plan's authors were the gadfly Richard Perle, the subversive Douglas Feith and a David Wurmser who, having organized an "off-line" intelligence unit, later moved to Dick Cheney's office as Middle East advisor. All of the above, plus Paul Wolfowitz, were made key senior members of the Bush administration and as the conspiracy proceeded Feith and Wolfowitz arranged a clandestine back-door liaison with the right-wing Ariel Sharon's office in Jerusalem [Sharon had been demoted the last time Israel invaded Lebanon (which generated Hezbollah) for overseeing the massacre of Palestinians in refugee camps in Lebanon.].
Our invasion of Iraq five years ago (3/18/03) was a disaster, in part because Mr. Bush HAD ALREADY BY 9/20/01 DECIDED TO DESERT THE EFFORT IN AFGHANISTAN from which the horrendous 9/11/01 attack on New York originated! Now, over five years later, here's Bush, thanks to Amy Goodman 3/17/08: "President Bush told US troops in Afghanistan he was 'a little envious' of them. In a video conference last week Bush said 'If I were slightly younger and not employed here I think it would a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed.' Bush went on to say 'It must be exciting for you, in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks'." Words fail us.
As one listens and watches the various news sources, from NPR through PBS to BBC, as attempts are made to grapple now with the worldwide financial crisis, virtually no mention is made of the Alisa Rosenbaum (aka Ayn Rand & Atlas Shrugged) who inspired Alan Greenspan, the father of, e.g., "derivitives" - OR the Bush/Cheney/McCain Iraq war now responsible for a long-term two trillion dollar$ price tag. THAT'S OUR MONEY! Whether we're bailing out Bear Stearns or J P Morgan Chase or backing John McCain's one hundred years in Iraq or Ehud Olmert's frenzied settlement building in Arab East Jerusalem, the United States population is left with the bill. We pick up the check! For how much longer!
Both Exxon/Mobil and Chevron/Texaco are two of the major American oil companies who are beneficiaries of this war against Iraq and the oil law which the Bush/Cheney/McCain regime is attempting to force on Iraq. In the 1920s Iraq's oil was owned by Big Oil at that time, Standard Oil, from which these present giant oil firms came forth. Today, that oil is as it should be, owned by Iraq. Beyond the ownership of the oil, Bush/Cheney/McCain is also insisting on an odd phrasing in American legislation which speaks of the US "underwriting" the process by which these companies find, develop and extract the oil - meaning that the US taxpayer will be obligated to provide the additional security for EXXON and CHEVRON to market and transport their product world wide. Somehow, additional multi-billion$ for this TWO TRILLION DOLLAR$ God-awful, murderous extravaganza seems transparently NON-DEMOCRATIC, in total - from the very beginning. WAKE UP!!!
This is an indication of the first move (the Israelis love chess) of the conspiracy, which began with a break-in and trashing of the Niger Embassy in Rome over the long 2000-2001 New Year's holiday. The trashing was meant to portray a robbery, but nothing of value was missing. There was not notice of missing, inconsequential documents (all of this is in Bamford's A Pretext For War) which later were used to "record" an effort by Saddam Hussein to purchase, from Niger, "yellowcake", an ingredient necessary for the production of nuclear weapons. Yes! The WMD's. Silvio Berlusconi's SISMI, his special police, was all over the "incident" and that's the beginning, except for the 1996 "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm (Israel). The conspiracy continues.
- In Sept. '02 Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League informs Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi that the League will present its Distinguished Statesman Award to him in Sept. '03.
- On Tuesday, 9/23/03 (article in 9/19/03 N. Y. Times) Mr. Foxman and Jacob Isaacson, director of the American Jewish Committee make the presentation at a gala Plaza Hotel dinner co-hosted by Henry Kissinger, Rupert Murdoch and Mort Zuckerman.
March 19, 2008: "Five years ago tonight, on March 19, 2003, the US began bombing Baghdad. The invasion was on. Six weeks later President Bush (on the flight deck of the Abraham Lincoln) stood under a banner reading "Mission Accomplished", and declared an end to major military combat operations in Iraq. Now, half a decade later the war continues with no end in sight. By most accounts the war has been an unmitigated disaster. Up to one million Iraqis have been killed, with no estimate on the number of those wounded. Up to 2.5 million people are estimated to be displaced inside Iraq.
"On the campaign trail Senator John McCain was caught in a major blunder Tuesday (3/18/08) when he falsely insisted Iran is training and supplying Al Qaeda in Iraq. McCain corrected himself only after his colleague Independent Senator Joseph Lieberman stepped in and whispered into his ear: 'Well, it's common knowledge and has been reported in the media that Al Qaeda is going back into Iran and is receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran. That is well known and it is unfortunate. Umm. So, I believe that we are succeeding in Iraq, the situation is dramatically improved, but I also want to emphasize time and again that Al Qaeda is on the run but they are not defeated'. (Lieberman whispers in his ear.) 'Oh, I'm sorry. The Iranians are training extremists, not Al Qaeda.' McCain made the comments in Jordan which he visited on route to Israel from a brief trip in Iraq."
Ms. Kelly O'Donnell NBC: "John McCain's visit to one of Judaism's most revered and, usually, solemn sites, the "Wailing Wall (Actually a perpetuated myth. It's only significance is that it is old.)", set off a commotion, a sign of intense interest in his visit, and the Iraq War was a focus during our interview."
Ms. O'Donnell: "Defense and national security are central to McCain's campaign. So a mistake that he repeated this week has stood out. At least three times McCain incorrectly asserted that Iran is aiding Al Qaeda. (McCain) "That Al Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran, that's well known (then we hear Senator Joseph Lieberman whispering to McCain)." Ms. O'Donnell: "Then, after Senator Lieberman whispered in his ear..." McCain: "I'm sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not Al Qaeda." Ms. O'Donnell: "The mistake? Al Qaeda is a Sunni group, while Iran is a Shia nation." O'Donnell to McCain: "People did notice that you made this comment and wondered was it simply a..." McCain interrupts: "I corrected it immediately. I corrected my comment immediately. But to think that I would have some lack of knowledge about Sunni and Shia, after my eighth visit and my deep involvement in this issue, is a bit ludicrous." (Case closed?)
Senator McCain may not be that thoughtful, careful leader he seeks to portray, as many of his Senate colleagues know. Excuses are made for him because of his unyielding support for Israel, evidenced by his constant companion "independent" Senator Joseph Lieberman.
Ex-Diplomat Says US Pressured, Spied on Allies Ahead of 2003 War
"The former Chilean ambassador to the United Nations has revealed new details on how the Bush administration pressured its allies to support the 2003 invasion of Iraq. According to Heraldo Munoz, the United States threatened trade reprisals against friendly countries who withheld their support, spied on its allies and pressed for the recall of UN envoys that resisted US pressure to endorse the war. Munoz says the diplomatic strategy has generated lasting 'bitterness' and 'deep mistrust' in Washington's relations with allies in Latin America and Europe. Munoz says Bush personally prodded the leaders of six nations in the UN Security Council: Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea, Mexico and Pakistan. When Chile tried to broker a compromise to delay military action, then-US Ambassador John Negroponte and then-Secretary of State Colin Powell moved quickly to quash the initiative."
Bush Accused of Lying Over Iran's Nuclear Program
"President Bush has been accused of directly lying to the Iranian people about Iran's nuclear ambitions. In an interview on Thursday, Bush said, 'They've declared they want to have a nuclear weapon to destroy people, some in the Middle East.' The interview aired on the US government-funded Radio Farda, which broadcasts into Iran in Farsi. Bush's comment directly contradicts the judgments of the National Intelligence Estimate. Several foreign policy analysts accused Bush of distorting the truth. Joseph Cirincione, of the Ploughshares Fund said, 'Iran has never said it wanted a nuclear weapon for any reason. It's just not true.' Former State Department official Suzanne Maloney said, 'The Iranian government is on the record across the board as saying it does not want a nuclear weapon.' Meanwhile, the US Treasury Department has called on international financial institutions to steer clear of doing business with almost all Iranian banks. The Financial Times describes the move as the Bush administration's most wide-ranging attempt yet to isolate Tehran financially."
Amy Goodman: "Greg Mitchell joins us now in the Firehouse Studio.
Welcome to Democracy Now!.
GREG MITCHELL: Thank you. Happy to be here.
AMY GOODMAN: We're moving into the sixth year of this war. What's so interesting about your book is that you start from the beginning, and it's almost like a diary, a journal, of how the foundation was built, the justifications were built, for war.
GREG MITCHELL: Right. Well, it's really the first five-year history that anyone's written, I think, and it goes from the run-up to the surge debate last fall. So it really is a chronology. It's not in calendar form, of course, but it really does cover the whole period, so you do get all the arguments and the debate and the failures before the invasion was launched and then the five years of deceit and shortcomings ever since.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the pre-invasion period and what you felt was most--how the media was most successful in laying the false foundation.
GREG MITCHELL: Right, right. Well, as you said, it really was the mainstream media that, starting early on, relayed the false information that came from the administration--as we know, the New York Times and the Washington Post, among the worst in that--and it not only was putting forth the false information, but also the placement of it, putting it on the front page. So it wasn't just a matter of carrying the information. So it had tremendous impact on everyone, including Democrats in Congress, who were afraid to speak out.
AMY GOODMAN: Were you getting response at the time? I mean, you were writing about this at Editor & Publisher and online.
GREG MITCHELL: Right, right. Well, I mean, that's the thing. We were among the few who were really deeply questioning in the mainstream what was being put out. So it was not a secret to us, people have said, about the Knight Ridder Washington office and others who were covering this, within the mainstream. So there were people who were covering the actual facts and raising the questions about the need for war, about the WMD, about the links to al-Qaeda, and so forth. So it was not information that was really impossible to get.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the 'Iraq Follies,' and you've summarized this in a recent piece you did, the eighteen things we've already forgotten about the media's flawed coverage of Iraq.
GREG MITCHELL: Right. Well, it's really going back to the run-up and past the run-up, all the various commentators, like Chris Matthews or Bill O'Reilly or David Brooks and Tom Friedman--people like to poke fun at Tom Friedman for the so-called 'Friedman Unit,' where he continually every six months would say, 'Let's give the war another six months,' and that went on for four years. But that was actually--"
Amy Goodman 3/25/08: "Arab leaders are headed to Damascus Saturday (3/29/08) for a summit organized by the Arab League. Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa says US-led peace efforts had faltered seriously since the Middle East Peace Summit in Annapolis, Maryland in November. Mr. Moussa also said the Arab League would continue to push for the entire Middle East to become a zone free from nuclear weapons.
Mr. Amr Moussa: The regional security requires a lot of work and requires, in particular, the establishment of a zone free from nuclear weapons. This should apply to Israel, to Iran, to any other country in the region. This is the basic point in our policy. If the situation remains as it is I believe that a viable security system, a reliable security scheme for the region will be very difficult to achieve."
Amy Goodman: Israel remains the only country in the Middle East with nuclear weapons.
Amy Goodman 3/26/08: "Lebanon has announced it's boycotting the upcoming Arab League summit in Syria. Information Minister Ghazi Aridi says Lebanon is protesting Syrian interference in its internal politics.
Lebanese Information Minister Ghazi Aridi: 'The Council of Ministers has decided that Lebanon will not take part in the Arab summit in Damascus that is scheduled for March 29 and 30 and will also not participate in the preparatory meetings before the summit. This is a regrettable precedent that has been imposed on us, and Lebanon did it for the first time since the date when Arab Summits started.'
Saudi Arabia and Egypt are also expected to boycott the Arab Summit."
We, the American people, have no idea how much of our national treasury has been obligated to Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Egypt to sabotage this summit, the principal aim of which was to begin the process of mandating a nuclear weapon-free Middle East. This is just an additional sum, already in the billion$, to mollify the congressional Israeli lobby and, of course, the insatiable right-wing Israeli regime. And this issue, the Jewish American-Israeli dictate of US policy in the Middle East was systematically eliminated from PBS's FOUR-HOUR (3/24-25/08) vaunted FRONTLINE Bush's War, an intense review of the run-up and "progress" of this ill-conceived disaster.
Amy Goodman 3/26/08: While the media focussed on the gaffe (that the Sunni Al Qaeda is trained in Shia Iran) there has been little serious analysis of McCain's foreign policy. In fact, when it comes to the Middle East and establishing US power in the world, McCain might even be more inline with neo-conservative thinking than President Bush. That's the argument in investigative reporter Robert Dreyfuss' latest article in The Nation magazine. It's called HotHead McCain. It outlines the Republican presidential candidates' foreign policy vision. Robert Dreyfuss joins us now from Washington, D.C. Welcome to DemocracyNow.
ROBERT DREYFUSS: Thank you so much, Amy. It's really great to be here.
AMY GOODMAN: It's good to have you with us. You cite Brookings Institution analyst Ivo Daalder as saying, quote, 'If you thought George Bush was bad when it comes to the use of military force, wait 'til you see John McCain.' Can you explain?
ROBERT DREYFUSS: Well, what I did in putting this piece together was look at McCain's own writing and speeches, his article in Foreign Affairs, and I spoke to a number of his advisers, including Randy Scheunemann, who is his chief foreign policy strategist. I spoke to John Bolton. I spoke to Jim Woolsey. I spoke to a number of people who are neoconservative in thought who have now clustered around the McCain campaign and see his effort to become president as a way for them--that is, for the neoconservatives--to return to the position of power they had in the first Bush administration from 2001 to 2005.
McCain has an instinctive preference for using military power to solve problems overseas. And when you couple that with a kind of hotheaded temperament, with a kind of arrogance and really a tendency to fly off the handle, I think we have a lot to fear, if he were ever to have his finger on the button, because he's a man who I think would try to solve a lot of the very delicate foreign policy problems that we have around the world by a show of force. And, of course, you start with Iran in that context, but I think you could include many other problems, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: You talk about--or John McCain talks about 'rogue state rollback.' Explain.
ROBERT DREYFUSS: Well, this is a theory that he developed way back in the 1990s, and he began speaking about it probably around '96 or '97, but it crystallized in 1999 in a famous speech that he gave, where he talked about the need to look around the world and figure out these states, and you can make up the list as easily as I. At that time, it would have been Iraq, Iran, Syria, Cuba, various countries in Asia and Africa that were under various kinds of rebellion, whether it was Somalia or perhaps Burma, perhaps Zimbabwe. I mean, a lot of countries were being put in the category of rogue states. Some of them were on the State Department list of countries that supported terrorism.
McCain looked around the world, and he said, OK, our job is basically to force regime change in all of these countries. And he signed on early to the issue of going into Iraq and forcing a regime change there, long before anybody really had any kind of concerns about al-Qaeda, long before Iraq's connection to terrorism seemed important. It was simply a principle that any state that didn't conform to an American view of democracy was liable to be rolled over or rolled back, in McCain's view.
Many of his advisers, including Randy Scheunemann, who's now running his foreign policy task force, were engaged in that. Randy was then a chief staffer for Trent Lott. He wrote the Iraq Liberation Act that the neoconservatives and Ahmed Chalabi championed and pushed through Congress. He, Scheunemann, founded the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq in 2002 with White House support. He was also a founder of the Project for a New American Century, which was the sort of ad hoc think tank that the neocons put together. All of this is a sign of--and the fact that McCain would name him as his chief adviser--that McCain, in a way that Bush never did, is a true neocon.
He is someone who in his soul believes in the use of American military power, and as he said in his rollback speech, not just to deal with emergent threats to the United States, but even to enforce the prevalence of what he called American values--that's a codeword for democracy--so that countries whose internal functioning--let's say Russia today, under Putin and Medvedev--that countries like Russia that don't seem as democratic as we like would then become ostracized or sanctioned or subject to various kinds of hostile, both political and military, sanctions. So this is what I find extremely troubling about McCain.
And if you look at his broad policies that he's outlined, he has suggested point blank that we're in a long-term, almost unending struggle with al-Qaeda and various other forms of Islamism. And as a result, he wants to create a whole new set of institutions to deal with those. One of those institutions would be what he calls the League of Democracies, which is basically a way of short-circuiting the UN, where Russia and China, in particular, but also various non-aligned countries often stand up to the United States.
Also, he wants to create a new much more aggressive covert operations team. He says he wants to model it on the old Office of Strategic Services, the World War II era OSS, and to create this out of the CIA but include into it psychological warfare specialists, covert operations people, people who specialize in advertising and propaganda, and a whole bunch of other kind of--a wide range of these kind of covert operators, who would then form a new agency that would be designed to fight the war on terrorism overseas and to deal with rogue states and other troubling actors that we--or McCain decides he happens not to like at that moment.
AMY GOODMAN: And kick Russia out of the G8?
ROBERT DREYFUSS: Yeah. And that's a really important issue. I mean, his attitude toward Russia seems not to be based on any explicit Russian threat to the United States, but simply the fact that he doesn't like the way Russia operates internally. So he's said we're going to expand NATO to include a number of former states in the Russian space--that is, former Soviet republics, notably including Georgia--and he wants to include not only Georgia in NATO, but some of Georgia's rebellious provinces, which is a direct affront to Russia. He's a hardliner on Kosovo. He says he doesn't care what Putin thinks about us putting air defense system missiles in Eastern Europe. He wants to kick Russia out of the G8. And all of this would obviously create much more hostile relations between Washington and Moscow, and that makes it impossible to solve the biggest problem that we face: namely, how to deal with Iran's nuclear program.
If we're ever going to get a deal with Iran, if we're ever going to have some sort of diplomatic solution to Iran, which McCain says he wants, it's literally impossible if you don't get the Russians on board. If you can't get a deal with Russia to approach Iran and try to negotiate a peaceful resolution to their nuclear program, then the Russians will simply stand back and say, OK, it's your problem. And that would almost guarantee that McCain would face the choice of having to either attack Iran or to accept Iran having a nuclear bomb at some point in the period in his eight-year term as president. So the idea that you can isolate Russia in that way and take this aggressive anti-Moscow strategy means that you're not going to get Russian cooperation on key problems like Iran and like other problems in the Middle East and Afghanistan that we're going to need their help on.
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Robert Dreyfuss, investigative reporter, contributing editor to The Nation magazine. His latest piece is called 'Hothead McCain.' I want to talk more about McCain's advisers in a minute.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Robert Dreyfuss, investigative reporter, contributing editor at The Nation magazine. His latest piece is called "Hothead McCain." McCain famously said that US forces might end up staying in Iraq for 100 years. What role did John McCain play in the surge and in shaping, if he did, any part of President Bush's policy in Iraq, the war?
ROBERT DREYFUSS: Oh, I would say that of all the politicians in the United States, McCain was number one in a crucial moment, when the President, President Bush, had to decide whether to accept the Baker-Hamilton report, which called for phasing out US combat forces over a period of sixteen months or alternatively escalating the war. And at that time, McCain was the number one voice in calling for an escalation. He had traveled to Iraq. He had said we need more troops. I believe he was calling for at least 50,000 troops. He worked closely along with Senator Lieberman, who's now his traveling companion. McCain and Lieberman spoke at the American Enterprise Institute and worked closely with Robert and Frederick Kagan, who--Frederick Kagan, in particular, who is at AEI and was the author of the report that led to the surge and was brought into the administration by Vice President Cheney, who went over to AEI (American Enterprise Institute) and consulted with them. It was that team--Kagan, McCain, Lieberman and Cheney--who convinced the President to go with the escalation a year ago in January.
And McCain was not only advocating the surge, but really pushing, and is today pushing, for a long-term presence by the United States in Iraq, using Iraq as an aircraft carrier to support American power throughout the Persian Gulf and the Middle East and Central Asia. And his advisers told me so. When I spoke to Randy Scheunemann at length, he said, in fact, yes, we want to stay in Iraq for a long time, not just to stabilize Iraq, but because we may have to deal with many threats from the region. And of course you have to include Iran as among the possible threats that we'd have to deal with, according to McCain.
So I would say that McCain and the surge are almost identical, and it's McCain who we have to thank for the fact that two years ago we didn't start withdrawing from Iraq, but in fact escalated to the point where the next president will have probably 130,000 troops on the ground when he or she takes office.
AMY GOODMAN: And the others in the neocon circle, the advisers, like, for example, Bill Kristol, like Max Boot, tell us about their involvement.
ROBERT DREYFUSS: You know, it's very interesting, Amy. If you look at the list of people who say they're advising the McCain camp, you find a broad range of people. You find people like Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, Larry Eagleburger. These are the traditional kind of Nixon-era realists, many of whom certainly wouldn't be considered liberals, but who certainly are realists. But when you look at McCain's positions, his views on things, you don't find any of the influence of people like Eagleburger and Scowcroft.
What you see instead is that the rest of McCain's advisers, and you named several of them--James Woolsey, the former CIA director, who has been traveling and campaigning with McCain and who I interviewed for this piece; Bill Kristol, who's very close to McCain for probably a decade and has been kind of an angel sitting on his shoulder and whispering in his ear all that time; people like Scheunemann; people like Max Boot; Ralph Peters; there's a long list of people who have joined the McCain advisory team--and it's these people whom McCain listens to when it comes to foreign policy. He certainly hasn't expressed anything in any foreign policy area that you would identify with the Republican realist camp. He's much closer to the neocons.
And he seems to be, as I said earlier, the true neocon himself, someone who, after early in his career in the '80s being kind of suspicious about some foreign interventions that happened at that time, at the end of the Cold War, when the Soviet Union collapsed, McCain seemed to have felt unburdened, like now American power can express itself. And that's when he attached himself to the neoconservative vision that America, as the sole superpower, could throw its weight around, could remake the world in its own image and that there would be no effective opposition to it.
When I look at McCain, though, I have to say, I go back to Vietnam. This is a man whose father and grandfather were extremely conservative, even rightwing admirals, who served in Vietnam until he was shot down and held as a POW, conducting air raid missions, dropping napalm on Hanoi and other cities in North Vietnam, who learned from that and became convinced that American military power, if it's constrained by politics, was unable to win that war. And so, he took out of Vietnam not the lesson that we shouldn't get into land wars in Asia or that fighting guerrilla counterinsurgency efforts might not be the task that America's military is most suited for; what he learned in Vietnam is that we need to take the gloves off, that the politicians need to get out of the way and let the military do its job.
And that's precisely the message that he's adopted in approaching Iraq. I think to this day, McCain thinks that the Vietnam War could have been won if we had just stayed another five or ten or fifteen years, and he seems exactly prepared to do that in Iraq, despite all evidence to the contrary that we can't do anything in Iraq other than sit on a very ugly stalemate that, you know, continues to blow up and flare into violence.
AMY GOODMAN: Robert Dreyfuss, you got your title, 'Hothead McCain,' from a Republican senator. You're quoting Republican Senator Thad Cochran, who said, 'The thought of his being President sends a cold chill down my spine. He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper, and he worries me.'
ROBERT DREYFUSS: Yes, I use that quote, and it says immediately after that that shortly after saying that, Thad Cochran endorsed McCain. So it's clear that the Republicans are gathering around their leader, despite the fact that many senators, not just Cochran, but many Republican senators view McCain with alarm and not because he's some sort of closet liberal--it's true that on some domestic issues he lined up with some Senate liberals--but on foreign policy, they're are scared of him. And on a personal level, McCain has had a tendency over the years--this is so well known on Capitol Hill--to erupt, to explode, to scream and yell at his colleagues in the Republican caucus, in closed-door meetings behind the scenes, and sometimes even in public. So he has scared a lot of his colleagues, who I'm sure are supporting him, like Cochran did, out of party loyalty, but who've said, as Cochran did, that they're extremely concerned about his temper and his apparent willingness to explode.
And I've met McCain up close. I rode around the bus with him nine years ago when he was campaigning in New Hampshire. I found him scary up close. I think when you see him two feet away, he looks like somebody whose head could explode. He's got a very barely controlled anger underneath his sort of calm demeanor that he seems to almost grit his teeth to keep inside. And I found him very scary personally. And I'm always shocked, I'm always stunned, when media who cover McCain don't bring that across. He's not a jolly fellow. He's not somebody who you want to sit down and have beers with, where I could see people think that about President Bush--he's kind of an amiable dunce, as someone said about an earlier president. McCain is not somebody I want to have a beer with. I think he's a really scary guy.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we'll leave it there, Robert Dreyfuss, investigative reporter, contributing editor at The Nation magazine. His book is called Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam.
Amy Goodman 3/27/08: In Israel and the Occupied Territories Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has rejected calls to ease the stranglehold on the Gaza strip and negotiate with Hamas. On Wednesday Olmert said he's prepared to allow a limited number of humanitarian shipments but nothing more. Israel has been accused of practicing collective punishment in Gaza. Meanwhile, Olmert also suggested a renewed military confrontation with Hamas could lie ahead.
Ehud Olmert: Hamas is a obstacle. It is not a unsurmountable obstacle. It can be overcome. When and how is a different question. I don't think I want to go into details here, but I say, and want to repeat what I say before. We are not talking to Hamas and we are not going to compromise with someone that is consistently shooting rockets on the heads of Israelis. We will deal with Hamas in other ways and these ways will be very painful.
Amy Goodman: Israel has rejected Hamas offers for a ceasefire based on a Israeli withdrawal to its 1967 borders.
As we have learned from painful experience, appearance is the hallmark of this George Walker Bush regime (the substance is ghastly!) and its latest outrage is the 3/31/08 trip of Bush's Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Israel to move the so-called Annapolis "peace process" along. Ms. Rice asked for the easing of travel restrictions by Israelis imposed on Palestinians surviving somehow in the West Bank. FOR SIXTY YEARS THE UNITED STATES HAS PROVIDED THE FINANCIAL BASE AND THE EXISTENTIAL SUPPORT FOR THE THEOCRATIC STATE OF ISRAEL! We could demand the end of all punitive restrictions against Palestinians. Instead, Ms. Rice "requested" its sister regime, the Olmert government, to remove fifty of these obstacles. THERE ARE FIVE HUNDRED! Even the 3/28/08 The New York Times front page lends support to the Palestinian plight.
By Ethan Bronner BEIT SIRA, WEST BANK - "Ali Abu Safia, mayor of this Palestinian village, steers his car up one potholed road, then another, finding each exit blocked by huge concrete chunks placed there by the Israeli Army. On a sleek highway 100 yards away, Israeli cars whiz by.
'They took our land to build this road, and now we can't even use it,' Mr. Abu Safia says bitterly, pointing to the highway with one hand as he drives with the other. 'Israel says it's because of security. But it's politics.'
The object of Mr. Abu Safia's contempt - Highway 443, a major access road to Jerusalem - has taken on special significance in the grinding Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For the first time, the Supreme Court, albeit in an interim decision, has accepted the idea of separate roads for Palestinians in the occupied areas.
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel told the Supreme Court that what was happening on the highway could be the onset of legal apartheid in the West Bank - a charge that makes many Israelis recoil.
Built largely on private Palestinian land, the road was first challenged in the Supreme Court in the early 1980s when the justices, in a landmark ruling, permitted it to be built because the army said its primary function was to serve the local Palestinians, not Israeli commuters. In recent years, in the wake of stone-throwing and several drive-by shootings, Israel has blocked Palestinians' access to the road.
This month, as some 40,000 Israeli cars - and almost no Palestinians - use it daily, the court handed down its decision, one that has engendered much legal and political hand-wringing."
Amy Goodman 3/31/08: Arab leaders meeting in Damascus re-endorsed the 2002 Arab Initiative for Peace with Israel. The plan offers Israel peace and normal relations with all Arab countries in return for withdrawal from all territory captured in the 1967 war (Israel began their war of acquisition by air, attacking Egyptian airfields). This is Arab League chief Amr Moussa.
Amr Moussa: We reiterate that the continuation by the Arab side to present the Arab Peace Initiative is tied to Israel executing its commitments in the framework of international resolutions to achieve peace in the region.
Amy Goodman: Successive Israeli governments have either ignored or rejected the offer which would require Israel to dismantle settlements in the occupied West Bank. Meanwhile, Israel has agreed to remove about nine percent of its roadblocks in the West Bank. The announcement came during a visit by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Israel currently maintains more than 580 checkpoints and roadblocks in the West Bank (clearly Occupied Territory) including thirty that have gone up since the Annapolis peace talks.
Amy Goodman 4/1/08: Israel has announced plans to build 1400 new homes in the Occupied West Bank, and in Arab East Jerusalem. The plans were announced just hours after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called on Israel to stop "expanding" settlements.
Ms. Rice: Settlement activity is...should stop...that its expansion should stop...that it is, indeed, not consistent with "Road Map" obligations...
Amy Goodman: Palestinians charge that the ongoing construction is sabotaging peace efforts. The Israeli group Peace Now also criticized the settlement expansion.
Hagit Ofran: Since the Annapolis summit the government of Israel did not freeze any of the settlements. To see what the construction going on west of the fence and east of the fence as if nothing (has) happened, and especially in (Arab) East Jerusalem we saw an increase in the construction. The meaning of the ongoing construction, when we are going (toward) a peace agreement and we are in a peace process and negotiating, is devastating for the peace process.
Amy Goodman: Hagit Ofran is with the Israeli group, Peace Now.
Significantly, The New York Times wavers on issues key its majority owners, the Sulzberger family, and has a major story by Steven Erlanger on the 4/1/08 front page above the fold entitled In Gaza, Hamas's Fiery Insults to Jews Complicate "Peace Effort" (editor's "s). The 1400 Jewish-only settlement homes in the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem report, along with Condoleezza Rice's tepid response, is relegated to the bottom story on A-12, and the number of controversial homes discussed is reduced in number from 1400 in Arab East Jerusalem and the West Bank, to 600 in the Jewish-only settlement of Pisgat Zeez. And the article fails to include pertinent information which a Joel Greenburg, for the Chicago Tribune News Service, included in his 4/1/08 piece:
"The Shas Party said that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had promised to build 800 more homes in Betar Illit, a town of strictly Orthodox Jews near Jerusalem that is one of the West Bank's fastest growing settlements (It is the ultra-Zionist Shas Party that enables the ultra-deceptive Olmert to stay in power.)."
The interminable continuum of this ongoing disaster in Iraq, the latest episode in Basra with American military providing logistics, belated planning and ground and air fire power for disorganized and reluctant Iraqi military, has compelled responsible military leadership - outspoken if retired and unidentified if on active duty in Iraq; responsible military leadership personally compelled to oppose this thoughtless "Commander in Chief?" and his heir apparent John McCain. March 31 to April 2, 2008, these men expressed opposition in their strongest language yet, to Bush/McCain insistence on keeping tens of thousands of American troops in Iraq - FOR IRAQI OIL and ZIONIST ISRAELI PROTECTION. Our Republican biased media has given us George W. Bush over Albert Gore, George H. W. Bush, who placed Dan Quayle a heartbeat away from the presidency and gave us Clarence Thomas for a LIFETIME on the Supreme Court (And can you remember 60 Minutes Steve Kroft badgering the Clintons about Gennifer Flowers, without ever mentioning the senior George Bush's long time affair with his "assistant" Jennifer?), over Michael Dukakis; the slickster Ronald Reagan with his huge Federal Deficit, the movie star whose years of reading commercials for major corporations transformed him into a huckster who bedazzled this nation and planted the seeds of thoughtless and careless intervention in the Middle East. Remember the 270 United States Marines blown up at the Beruit Airport via the sanity-challenged Bill Casey, HIS CAMPAIGN MANAGER and head of CIA. Reagan over Jimmy Carter? And today the Republican candidate will overwhelm whoever the Democratic candidate may be, by amassing whatever it takes in money, threats to assure a McCain victory and a continuation of the war against Iraq, all with the blessing of our national media. Had enough?
Amy Goodman 4/3/08: The exiled leader of Hamas has announced Hamas will agree to a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders with Israel. In an interview with a Palestinian newspaper Khaled Mashaal said Hamas has accepted the 2006 prisoners document drafted by members of different Palestinian factions. The agreement calls for a Palestinian state on the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Arab East Jerusalem. Earlier this week the Arab League renewed a six year old peace proposal based on similar terms. Successive Israeli governments have either ignored or rejected the offer which would require the dismantling of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
Ms. Goodman: Meanwhile the World Health Organization is reporting dozens of Palestinians have died while waiting for Israeli permission to receive medical care in Israel. The WHO says thirty two Gaza residents have died awaiting treatment since October. The victims range from a one year old child to a seventy seven year old man. Six of the dead were waiting for the permit.
Doctor Ambrogio Manenti, the director of the World Health Organization office for the West Bank and Gaza Strip, focussed on the effects of the Israeli border closing in presenting the report and said that the cases it described were illustrations of "nonsense, inhumanity and, at the end, tragedies" that "could have and should have been avoided."
To the Editor: Lt. Col. John A. Nagl says, "Based on American experiences in Korea, Vietnam, El Salvador and now in Iraq and Afghanistan, an advisory strategy can help the Iraqi Army and security forces beat Al Qaeda."
Has the United States Army not yet recognized that one of these adventures (Vietnam) was an absolute disaster, another (El Salvador) was a brutal intervention in a third-world country, and a third (Iraq) is seen as a total failure by many Americans? The lessons of these failures are not "doing it better" but "not doing it at all."
I cannot believe that we continue to waste our tax dollars studying how wars that should never have been started in the first place were fought. Our responsibility, instead, is to learn why we made such terrible blunders in both intelligence and policy so that they can be avoided in the future. Edward W. Wood Jr., Denver, 4/2/08
To the Editor: In an otherwise astute analysis of the deficiencies in our training of Iraqi and Afghan security forces, John A. Nagl states that "the American people must continue to be patient." But why must we?
What Colonel Nagl failed to offer was a persuasive case for invading Iraq in the first place. With no weapons of mass destruction, no connection to the attacks of 9/11, and no shining beacon of democracy for the Middle East, all we're left with now is the forlorn hope that Iraq might someday be "stable." For this paltry goal, 4,000 Americans and many more Iraqis have died.
Patience with this administration's cavalier squandering of lives and treasure? No, thank you. We've had enough. Peter R. Obermark, Cincinnati, 4/2/08
Even readers of The New York Times realize it's over.
BREAKING NEWS - Amy Goodman 4/10/08: Former President Jimmy Carter is planning on meeting Hamas' exiled political leader Khalid Mashaal in Syria next week. Last week Mashaal reiterated his previous statement that Hamas would accept a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders with Israel. Carter's plans immediately came under criticism from all three leading presidential candidates. Senator John McCain called on Senator Barrack Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton to condemn the meeting. In statements both Clinton and Obama said they disagreed with Carter's plan. The meeting comes as Israeli public support is growing for talks with Hamas. A poll in February found sixty four percent of Israelis support Hamas' call for a cease fire.
Surely the time has come for an American public uprising to challenge the stranglehold with which Jewish Americans and the Israeli Lobby direct, in the most audacious and self-absorbed fashion, the Congress of the United States of America! Not of Israel! Israel is not a state of ours, and whether their "celebration" of sixty years is held 5/7-9/08 or 5/14-16/08, its actual beginning was much earlier and most infamous! Perhaps, that not since Joe McCarthy has there been such an urgent need for a public uproar.
And None Too Soon -
We already know that the 19 U.S. troopers killed last week (4/6-12/08) was the deadliest seven days for U.S. forces so far this year. With the report as well that three million Iraqis are packed into squalid refugee camps in Iraq without proper living quarters, food, water and sanitation it is clear that the fabled George Bush "surge" is a dismal failure as political cartoonist Tom Toles foresaw last year. Even the National War College in Washington, D.C., the federal government's own university (somehow, up to now, immune to the threats from Bush/Cheney/McCain), a school which has the responsibility for preparing future leaders of our nation for the challenges which the Bush/Cheney/McCain regime has generated throughout the world, the National War College itself, has classified the war against Iraq "a debacle of major proportions."
Further, just today (4/15/08) multiple car bombs and suicide bombers killed over one hundred Iraqi civilians and police in Baqubah, Ramadi, Baghdad and Mosul, and a day later in Kirkuk, all of this the result of Bush/Cheney/McCain thoughtless-reckless squandering of other people's lives and treasure to pursue their singular warped vision, for their own rewards, the control of Iraq's oil for Exxon/Mobil and Chevron/Texaco etc. and the granting to the radical, right-wing Israeli regime's defiant insistence, in the face of all civilized norms, that it control the sacred land, treasure and destiny of another people, the Palestinians. But two courageous Americans are making themselves known, the first the latest of many encore appearances, the second for the first time.
Amy Goodman 4/15/08: Former President Carter has announced his decision to go ahead with his plans to meet with the top leader of Hamas, Khalid Mashaal in Damascus despite protests from the Israeli government. Carter says he wants to get Hamas to agree to a peaceful resolution of differences both with the Israelis and the rival Palestinian faction Fatah. Carter is meeting with Palestinian officials today in the West Bank but Israel's refused to allow him to enter Gaza.
President Carter (able & robust): Well, I haven't been able to get permission to go into Gaza. I would like to. I asked for permission, but I was turned down. But maybe we can find a way to circumvent that. I was in Sderot yesterday, and I don't approve of rockets being fired that might very well hit civilians, and I don't approve of the killing of innocent people in Gaza either, by Israeli bombs and missiles. The Carter Center purpose is to bring peace to people in conflict.
Amy Goodman: Israel's Shin Bet security service also refused to offer security for Carter's visit to the Occupied West Bank as is customary during such visits by former US Presidents.
Renee Montagne: Today a new lobbying and political action committee is launched with the aim of changing the dialog in Washington to encourage more diplomacy on the Arab-Israeli question and on Iran. NPR's Michel Kelemen has more.
Michel Kelemen: K Street is a well known street in Washington, a base for many lobbying groups. There is no J Street, until now.
Jeremy Ben-Ami executive director of J Street (www.jstreet.org): J Street is a non-existent street in Washington, so we look at J Street as filling a gap in the political map in Washington, D.C. For too long a small number of large donors (Sheldon G. Adelson?) from the right wing of the American Jewish community have actually high-jacked the debate and have actually taken control of what it means to be pro-Israel, and we think we can reclaim that with an on-line movement bringing large numbers of small donors together to give voice to their political views in a way that hasn't been possible before. Is this what it means to be pro Israel?
John Hagee of Christians United For Israel (CUFI): If America does not stop pressuring Israel to give up land, I believe that God will bring this nation into Judgment!
Amy Goodman 4/16/08: Former President Jimmy Carter has said Syria and Hamas must be involved in any future peace deal in the Middle East. Carter made the statement in a stop in the West Bank.
President Jimmy Carter: I don't think it is possible to have an ultimate peace agreement here without the involvement of Syria. The Golan Heights issue has to be resolved. Syria has to be friendly towards Israel, not an enemy. And I don't think it's possible without including Hamas. I don't care if Hamas represents 10% of the Palestinian people, or 42%, 44%. It doesn't matter to me. But to have them completely excluded from conversations or consultations, I think is counter-productive.
Amy Goodman: On Tuesday (4/15/08) Jimmy Carter laid a wreath at the grave of Yassir Arafat and met with a leading figure in Hamas. Carter's hoping to meet with Hamas leader Khalid Mashaal soon in Damascus. Carter wanted to visit Gaza but Israel officials denied him entree. Carter's trip has been widely criticized in Israel and Washington. Democratic Congressmember Howard Berman, the new chair of the House Foreign Relations Committee accused Carter of undermining U.S. policy. Hamas officials have welcomed Carters trip. "The former American president Mr. Carter sent us an invitation for a meeting in Cairo. We and Hamas welcome this invitation since we see it as a platform to reach the highest number of well-known people in the world, in order to inform them about this catastrophic situation the Palestinian people are faced with." Meanwhile in Gaza at least three Israeli soldiers and four Palestinians died in fighting earlier today.
Amy Goodman 4/16/08 (cont*): Meanwhile in lobbying news a group of prominent Jewish liberals have formed a new group and Political Action Committee that they hope will be a counterpoint to AIPAC. The new initiative will be called JStreet. Part of its mission will be to push for an Arab-Israeli peace settlement. Democrat fundraiser Alan Solomont said "We've heard the voices of neocons and right-of-center Jewish leaders and Christian Evangelicals, and the mainstream views of the American Jewish community have not been heard." The Washington Post reports "JStreet will be hard pressed to match AIPAC's influence in Washington." AIPAC HAS MORE THAN ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND MEMBERS, EIGHTEEN OFFICES AROUND THE COUNTRY, AND AN ENDOWMENT OF MORE THAN ONE HUNDRED MILLION$ OF DOLLAR$ (and we the American taxpayer are giving Israel over FOUR BILLION$ OF DOLLAR$ EVERY YEAR! WHAT IS GOING ON?). The first year budget of JStreet will be about $1.5 million dollars.
Amy Goodman 4/8/08: An Israeli energy newsletter has revealed Israel's secretly buying oil from Iran despite an official boycott. The newsletter, EnergiaNews, reports Israeli companies get around the boycott by having the oil delivered to European ports where it's then bought by Israelis. The oil is then imported into Israel by the Eilat-Ashikelon Pipeline Company, which keeps its oil sources secret. Meanwhile, police in Israel have shut down a Jerusalem radio station whose stated mission is to bring Israelis and Palestinians together. During the raid on Monday (4/7/08) police confiscated the station's equipment and detained eight workers. Israeli officials accused the station, RAM FM, of broadcasting without a permit. The station broadcasts in Jerusalem and Ramallah. It was started a year ago by a South African Jewish businessman who modeled it after a South African station which was setup in apartheid South Africa in the 1980's.
All of the last items need comment, i.e. Ms. Goodman's exposure of the power of AIPAC (its San Francisco #415-989-4140, Seattle #206-624-5152), her piece on Israeli oil purchases (clearly, a primary goal of our occupation of Iraq is supply Israel with an ample oil resource to eliminate the Jewish state's dependence on Iran, thereby clearing the way for "Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran!") and her item on former president Jimmy Carter's bold trip to Syria (completed!) to meet Gaza/Hamas leader Khalid Mashaal, caused one of the Sheldon Adelson boys, Dennis Prager, to call on Condoleezza Rice to revoke Mr. Carter's passport for criminal acts against the United States. Mr. Prager, as is common among the AIPAC radical right, refuses to recognize that the theocratic state of Israel, IS NOT A MEMBER OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA! On 4/18/08 Mr. Carter, in the Middle East, made a statement that is clear to every government in the world, certainly Israel, criticizing the Israeli blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip: "It's an atrocity, what is being perpetuated as punishment of the people in Gaza. It's a crime." He said Palestinians are starving to death because of the blockade.
Lastly, two major subjects. The LA Times-Washington Post writer Robin Wright (4/18/08): Suicide bombers conducted 658 attacks around the world last year, including 542 in the US-occupied Afghanistan and Iraq, according to data compiled by US government experts. The large number of attacks - more than double the number in any of the past 25 years - reflects a trend that has surprised and worried US intelligence and military analysts.
US intelligence and military analysts are surprised when, for example, rabid activists in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, etc., react to facing occupying forces with tanks, airborne missiles and C-130 gunships? They resort to all they have. Their own bodies and adaptabilities. They have no choice.
Finally, Amy Goodman's stellar 4/18/08 interview with Glenn Greenwald. Seldom, has such an informed and well-spoken piece been presented on the subject, Republican Bias in the Media.
And - That so called 4/16/08 Democratic "debate" which ABC staged in Philadelphia's National Constitution Hall was an apostasy. There is no other word more appropriate. That venue symbolizes the gathering of thirty-nine delegates who framed the miraculous document, the Constitution of these United States, which until 1/21/2001, was a beacon of light to the world. Those men, risking their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor, journeyed to Philadelphia to assemble and sign that framing document on September 17, 1787. The Constitution was ratified in 1789.
Douglas Feith was on 60 Minutes 4/6/08, with Steve Innskeep on NPR on successive days 4/7-8/08, and on The New York Times OP-ED (who knows where else) all because the Media is ignoring his record, which is presented in detail, and fully listed in the index of Jim Bamford's A Pretext For War on page 413. Today's 4/22/08 story on DemocracyNow reminds of 2001-2004 when Feith and Paul Wolfowitz directed the Pentagon.
Amy Goodman 4/22/08: The media advocacy group FreePress is calling on Congress to investigate the Pentagon's propaganda program that recruited dozens of retired military officers to appear on TV to help sell the Iraq war. The corporate media's reliance on retired military officers for on-air commentary is well known. From the lead-up to the Iraq war to the present day, dozens of pro-war former military officials have appeared on major news networks billed as impartial experts. Media critics have long pointed out the discrepancy between the overwhelming number of pro-war military voices versus the almost complete absence of anti-war voices. It turns out the pro-war slant of military analysts was, in fact, part of a carefully orchestrated propaganda effort from the Pentagon.
"U.S. Army records show the number of felons recruited by the Army more than doubled last year. Between September in 2006 and 2007 the Army granted so-called 'conduct waivers' for felonies and misdemeanors to 18% of its new recruits. Congress member Henry Waxman chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released the statistics yesterday. Waxman said 'the significant increase in the recruiting of persons with criminal records is a result of the strain put on the military by the Iraq war.' Meanwhile USA Today reports the Army has accelerated its policy of involuntary extensions of duty to bolster its troop levels, despite Defense Secretary Robert Gates' order last year to limit it. Since last May the number of soldiers forced to remain in the Army through STOP-LOSS has increased by 43%. The reliance on STOP-LOSS has soared as the military has sent more troops to Iraq and extended tours to fifteen months to support the so-called 'surge'".
Amy Goodman 4/24/08: The Israeli government is claiming the Bush administration has secretly endorsed Israel's long-standing policy of expanding its West Bank settlements it, ultimately, intends to keep. This week Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said President Bush agreed to let Israel expand settlements even tho his so-called "peace" plan officially calls for a "freeze". Ariel Sharon's former chief of staff Doug Weisglass (?) also said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice secretly reaffirmed White House approval of West Bank settlement expansion in the Spring of 2005, right before Israel "dismantled" (the Israelis BULLDOZED perfectly good housing and extended greenhouses and plant nurseries and watering pipes) its settlements in the Gaza Strip. Israel's so-called withdrawal from Gaza was widely seen as an attempt to solidify its hold over the West Bank (and later reclaim the Gaza beach front after the Palestinians disappeared). U.S. officials are denying the account of a secret agreement.
"Meanwhile the UN is warning it could be forced to suspend humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip today because of the Israeli blockade. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency is responsible for feeding two-thirds of Gaza's nearly 1.4 million people. Agency officials say they expect the trucks to run out of fuel this afternoon. Israel's intensified military attacks and economic isolation of the Gaza Strip since Hamas took control last June (via a fair and free election overseen and supervised by international experts). Hamas meanwhile said it's awaiting an Israeli response to its latest offer of a ceasefire in the Occupied Territories."
Amy Goodman 4/25/08: In Israel and the Occupied Territories the UN has been forced to suspend aid deliveries to the Gaza Strip. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency known as UNRWA says it's run out of fuel because of Israel's blockade. The UN delivers aid to two-thirds of Gaza's 1.4 million people. The top UN official in Gaza, John Ging (UN.org/UNRWA), said Israel has ignored the agency's warnings. "There is a crisis here and it will not be solved with one truck. We need over nine million liters of diesel for Gaza per month. There's been no diesel supplied to Gaza at all, not one drop of diesel since the ninth of April." Israel's intensified its stranglehold over the Gaza Strip since Hamas took control last June. Gaza resident Abu Mohammed appealed for international intervention. "This is the world's responsibility, the civilized and free world. This UN aid is our only source to stop starvation. If they stop the aid it means we will die." The aid halt comes as Israel's rejected Hamas' offer for a six month truce on the Gaza Strip. On Thursday Hamas' Foreign Minister says the deal could also extend to the West Bank. "We declare that the movement agrees to the truce in the Gaza Strip in the framework of a national consensus, such that it later extends to the West Bank in the space of six months, during which Egypt will work to extend the truce to the West Bank." Egyptian officials helped broker the offer. The Israeli government called it a ruse to allow Hamas to recover from recent military losses. Israel's previously rejected similar Hamas overtures.
"The Washington Post reported the Bush administration may have secretly authorized expansion of Jewish-only settlements in occupied Palestinian lands. This week Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said President Bush had okayed settlement expansion even though his so called "peace" plan officially calls for a freeze. Ariel Sharon's former chief of staff Doug Weisglass (?) also said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had secretly reaffirmed the deal in 2005. On Thursday (4/24/08) the State Department denied reaching a secret agreement with Israel.
"An Israeli official has leveled Israel's harshest criticism to date of former President Jimmy Carter's peace efforts in the Middle East. On Thursday Israel's UN ambassador Dan Gilerman said Carter has 'turned into what I believe to be a bigot.' Gilerman's comments followed Carter's meeting with exiled Hamas leader Khalid Mashaal in Syria earlier this week. Carter has accused Israel of 'undermining any hopes for a viable peace, through its expansion of settlements and ongoing occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip!'"
To the Editor: Re "Pariah Diplomacy," by Jimmy Carter (OP-ED, April 28):
Thank you for giving Jimmy Carter a chance to share his reasons for visiting with leaders of Hamas and Syria - and some of the positive results of those visits. I was surprised that he didn't mention as a major motivation for his controversial visits the urgent need to relieve the ghastly humanitarian crisis of 1.5 million people whom Israel is blockading in the Gaza Strip - and frequently bombing and raiding with heavy civilian casualties.
Mr. Carter's preference not to emphasize Israel's large-scale continuing crimes against the Palestinians is another clear sign of his unshakable determination to always "seek peace and pursue it," as the Psalmist instructed ancient Israel. How sad and revealing it is for our country that Mr. Carter's noble resolve is reviled and ridiculed by so many pundits and politicians (and Israelis). Steve France Cabin John, Md. April 29, 2008
[ Every Jewish American in broadcasting, regardless of the mode used, knows what is happening to one million Palestinians in Gaza, but, with the exception of Amy Goodman, they say not one word. And some blame the UN. Today, 4/25/08, is the one hundredth birthday of Edward R. Murrow. What has happened to our Media/Press? Again, the American people must be alert to the ethnicity of reporters (notably excepting Amy Goodman), political directors and editors of ALL Media/Press, in order to determine the quality, timeliness, i.e. the urgency gauge vis-a-vis the dubious continuation of the war against Iraq, the prospective war against Iran and their interlocking with the candidacy of Republican Senator John McCain. ]
As Norman Finkelstein (4/25/08) put it so succinctly and directly: The Israeli's have this notion that they're a potential superpower and, of course, the "Chosen People", and they should be in charge of the Middle East...Israel has a wonderful Public Relations industry, Cecil B. DeMille pales by comparison, in terms of being able to sell itself as a commodity, so you could say there was a reservoir of sympathy around the world for Israel, no matter how egregious its actions were, and no matter how belligerent and bellicose its leadership.
Amy Goodman 4/25/08: On the campaign trail Republican candidate John McCain was in New Orleans Thursday where he criticized the Bush administration's handling of Hurricane Katrina. Speaking in the Lower Ninth Ward, McCain called the government's response "terrible and disgraceful" and vowed "never again." McCain, in fact, spent the first hours of Hurricane Katrina with President Bush. On August 29th, 2005, hours after Katrina struck, Bush presented McCain with a cake to honor his 69th birthday (after which, Bush continued on to California for a Republican fundraiser).
What McCain did then is lost in the Media. He may have had a beer, in that his second wife Cindy is known in Arizona as "The Beer Heiress", thanks to her parents who founded the Anheuser-Busch franchise years ago. (The Katrina details we may retrieve from gopbias.com soon).
"The top US oversight official in Iraq is questioning the Pentagon's information on the readiness of Iraqi troops. In a new report Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, Stewart Bowen states the Pentagon's figure of around 530,000 Iraqi forces is unreliable. Bowen says the Pentagon may be including Iraqi soldiers who've been killed, wounded or have deserted the Iraqi army.
Amy Goodman 4/28/08: The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mike Mullen, released intelligence Friday that he said proves North Korea and Syria colluded on a nuclear facility that Israel bombed in September '06. "This facility was being built secretly and against international conventions, and that it was destroyed before it became operational, are the key points to remember. It should serve as a reminder to us all of the very real dangers of proliferation, and our need to rededicate ourselves to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction, particularly into the hands of a state or a group with terrorist connections."
Amy Goodman 4/28/08 cont': On Thursday (4/24/08) top US intelligence officials presented lawmakers evidence they said proves that Syria was building a nuclear reactor with North Korean assistance. Among the evidence they displayed were pictures said to be obtained by Israel, allegedly taken inside the facility showing the reactor core being built. Officials said the US believed the site was nearing operational capability, but they declared low confidence the site played a role in a Syrian nuclear weapons program. For more I'm joined on the telephone by Scott Ritter. He's the former UN weapons inspector in Iraq, author of Target Iran: The Truth About the White House's Plans for Regime Change. Scott Ritter. Your evaluation of this whole situation, the information that has been presented to Congress?
Amy Goodman 4/28/08 with Scott Ritter: (Mr. Ritter) First of all we have to be concerned about the evidence. We have interior photographs, and exterior shots, and nothing that links the two. I have to take exception to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when he says that 'The alleged activities are against international conventions.' Actually, they're not. If Syria had, in fact, been constructing the reactor they've been accused of, they were in total conformity with international law. The nuclear non-proliferation treaty (which Israel has refused to sign) to which Syria is a signatory, requires that facilities be declared to the IAEA (the International Atomic Energy Agency) ONLY when nuclear materials are to be introduced to these facilities. A facility under construction is not a declarable item. It's absurd to sit there and say that just because Syria and North Korea were pouring concrete, that they are somehow breaking...this notion that the reactor is on the verge of becoming operational...is absurd. There would have to be literally thousands of pounds of pure graphite that would have to be introduced to this facility, and there's no evidence in the destruction. There were a number of reporters after it was blown up. It had been bombed, and if there was graphite that had been introduced, you would have a signature all over the area of destroyed graphite blocks...there would be graphite lying around. This was not the case. This shows that the United States and Israel have a wanton disregard for the rule of law. And this is especially critical when the United States is holding up the non-proliferation treaty as a standard to which we hold Iran and North Korea accountable.
Much has transpired regarding the Middle East since mid-March of 2007 when the Quartette of the UN/European Union/Russia/United States were pressured by the Bush administration to withdraw from supporting an equitable two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. From the beginning George W. Bush had no intention to support the two-state solution, made clear on pages 261 & 262 of James Bamford's A Pretext for War. In addition, in GOPBias.org, under U.S. Withdraws Annapolis Endorsement At UN there is confirmation. Now the Quartette, with the leadership of Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, has reasserted its responsibility because of the onerous step-by-step decision by Israel/Bush/Cheney/McCain to occupy the lands which Palestinians have inhabited for centuries! To complement the Quartette, the BBC and some NPR reporters and editors have reassumed some of their responsibilities as journalists, and reported this change for the better. It's about time. But they have yet to reverse the overwhelming Media/Press Republican bias in this country. We've just experienced arguably the worst presidency in our history because Cokie Roberts said George W. Bush was "so likable." On the golf programs in past years the same thing was said about Rush Limbaugh. "He's so charming!" Our media works overtime to fabricate positive personal traits for Republicans, and these Republicans have just about done us in. No more! But there are exceptions to this long-standing rule in the Press - Support Republicans, furtively if you must, but all the time. Charlie Gibson, George Stephanopolis, Tim Russert, Bob Schieffer ("W" made his younger brother Tom Ambassador to Japan), Thomas L. Friedman - leader of the pack supporting Israel. BUT NOT BILL MOYERS, whose weekly Journal may be the best program on TV today.
Bill Moyers on his May 2nd Journal on PBS: Every year at this time for five years now, we're reminded of the armistice that never happened. On May first, 2003, the White House staged a spectacular photo opportunity for the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces to announce the end of major combat operations in Iraq.
BILL MOYERS: You've been seeing these images all week...our president landing on the USS Lincoln, announcing peace was at hand.
REPORTER: President made history today. It was a historic day.
REPORTER II: This one could be called historic.
REPORTER III: The first sitting president to land on a carrier.
REPORTER IV: Congratulating them on a mission accomplished.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed!
BILL MOYERS: Unfortunately, that was not true. The war had just begun...Once again the official version of reality was false. The experts, remember, had all agreed: there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq!
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH ...of uranium from Africa
BILL MOYERS: ....Saddam Hussein had ties to the terrorists...
DONALD RUMSFELD: ...Al Qaeda members.
BILL MOYERS: The war would be a slam dunk...and quickly over.
DONALD RUMSFELD: It could last, you know, six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.
BILL MOYERS: No one had pushed the war more than vigorously than Vice President Cheney. He said..."I think it'll go relatively quickly...weeks rather than months."
BILL MOYERS: And, said the experts, it won't take many troops or require much sacrifice...Rumsfeld's deputy Paul Wolfowitz...
PAUL WOLFOWITZ: ...we can say with reasonable confidence that the notion of hundreds of thousands of American troops is way off the mark...
BILL MOYERS: And the cost to the taxpayer, the experts assured us -- practically nothing.
PAUL WOLFOWITZ: ...we are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon.
BILL MOYERS: Ted Koppel put the question to America's top aid official on Nightline:
TED KOPPEL: ...you're not suggesting that the rebuilding of Iraq is gonna be done for $1.7 billion?
ANDREW NATSIOS: Well, in terms of the American taxpayers' contribution, I do; this is it for the U.S. The rest of the rebuilding of Iraq will be done by other countries who have already made pledges...
BILL MOYERS: And now, Mission Accomplished, experts savored the triumph. The editor of The Weekly Standard William Kristol, "The first two battles of this new era are now over. The battles of Afghanistan and Iraq have been won decisively and honorably."
BILL MOYERS: The neo-conservative warrior Richard Perle told doubters to get over it. The war, he said "...ended quickly with few civilian casualties and with little damage to Iraq's cities, towns or infrastructure...it ended... without the quagmire [the war's critics] predicted...relax and enjoy it."
BILL MOYERS: Said columnist Mona Charen of the Commander in Chief, "the man who slept through many classes at Yale and partied the nights away stands revealed as a profound and great leader who will reshape the world for the better. The United States is lucky once again."
BILL MOYERS: And columnist Charles Krauthammer said, "The only people who think this wasn't a victory are Upper West Side liberals and a few people here in Washington."
BILL MOYERS: The Iraqis, said the experts, were sure to rally 'round...
WILLIAM KRISTOL: "I think there's been a certain amount of frankly, Terry, pop sociology in America...that...the Shia can't get along with the Sunni and the Shia in Iraq just want to establish some kind of Islamic fundamentalist regime. **There's almost no evidence of that at all. Iraq's always been very secular."**
Amy Goodman 5/5/08: The UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees is set to suspend its food and distribution in Gaza today because of a lack of fuel caused by the Israeli blockade. UNRWA spokesperson said 'we've exhausted our stocks of fuel and are, therefore, forced to stop our food distribution to one and a half million inhabitants in the Gaza Strip'. On Sunday the Israeli military shut down two key border crossings through which Gaza receives most of its food, medical supplies, humanitarian aid and fuel.
Amy Goodman 5/5/08: The website Counterpunch is reporting that President Bush has signed a secret finding authorizing covert offensive against the Iranian regime. Bush's secret directive covers actions from Lebanon to Afghanistan. Journalist Andrew Cockburn reports the directive 'is unprecedented in its scope and permits the assassination of targeted officials!'
When George W. Bush took office, the world price for oil was $32.00 per barrel. Now? $120 per barrel!
Amy Goodman 5/6/08: The New York Times is coming under criticism for publishing an article based solely on unnamed sources suggesting that the Lebanese group Hezbollah is training Iraqi militants inside Iran. The article by Michael Gordon was published on Monday, one day after Iraqi government spokesperson Ali al-Dabbagh said Iraq has no hard evidence of Iranian support of insurgents in Iraq. John Stauber of PR Watch said Gordon's article is "reminiscent of the horrendous errors of judgment and bad journalism committed by Michael Gordon, Judith Miller and others at the New York Times who turned the paper into a conduit for phony stories that sold the war in Iraq." Retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner said he feels the article in Monday's Times is "part of a strategic communications plan." Hours after the Times article was published, former UN Ambassador John Bolton appeared on Fox News and called for US strikes against Iran. He was interviewed by Jaime Colby of Fox News. John Bolton: "I think this is a case where the use of military force against a training camp to show the Iranians we're simply not going to tolerate this is really the most prudent thing to do. And then the ball would be in Iran's court to draw the appropriate lesson to stop harming our troops." Jaime Colby: "Ambassador John Bolton, a good message to end on. Thank you very much." (Bolton) "Thank you!"
The major news items for May 8, 2008 - In Israel the right-wing Israelis are in a state of denial as they "celebrate" their 60th anniversary aided by the BBC's World Have Your Say - In Iraq the U.S. military continues to wall-off segments of Baghdad and attack with tanks and air power other sectors - In Lebanon, Afghanistan and Iran Israel/Bush/McCain proxies and special forces attack targets (recently a key mosque in Iran) as George Bush's secret authorization finding, revealed by Andrew Cockburn, approved provocation and clandestine actions against Iran.
Secret Bush "Finding" Widens War on Iran
By ANDREW COCKBURN
Six weeks ago, President Bush signed a secret finding authorizing a covert offensive against the Iranian regime that, according to those familiar with its contents, "unprecedented in its scope."
Bush's secret directive covers actions across a huge geographic area - from Lebanon to Afghanistan - but is also far more sweeping in the type of actions permitted under its guidelines - up to and including the assassination of targeted officials. This widened scope clears the way, for example, for full support for the military arm of Mujahedin-e Khalq, the cultish Iranian opposition group, despite its enduring position on the State Department's list of terrorist groups.
Similarly, covert funds can now flow without restriction to Jundullah, or "army of god," the militant Sunni group in Iranian Baluchistan -- just across the Afghan border -- whose leader was featured not long ago on Dan Rather Reports cutting his brother in law's throat.
Other elements that will benefit from U.S. largesse and advice include Iranian Kurdish nationalists, as well the Ahwazi arabs of south west Iran. Further afield, operations against Iran's Hezbollah allies in Lebanon will be stepped up, along with efforts to destabilize the Syrian regime.
All this costs money, which in turn must be authorized by Congress, or at least a by few witting members of the intelligence committees. That has not proved a problem. An initial outlay of $300 million to finance implementation of the finding has been swiftly approved with bipartisan support, apparently regardless of the unpopularity of the current war and the perilous condition of the U.S. economy.
Until recently, the administration faced a serious obstacle to action against Iran in the form of Centcom commander Admiral William Fallon, who made no secret of his contempt for official determination to take us to war. In a widely publicized incident last January, Iranian patrol boats approached a U.S. ship in what the Pentagon described as a "taunting" manner. According to Centcom staff officers, the American commander on the spot was about to open fire. At that point, the U.S. was close to war. He desisted only when Fallon personally and explicitly ordered him not to shoot. The White House, according to the staff officers, was "absolutely furious" with Fallon for defusing the incident.
Fallon has since departed. His abrupt resignation in early March followed the publication of his unvarnished views on our policy of confrontation with Iran, something that is unlikely to happen to his replacement, George Bush's favorite general, David Petraeus.
Though Petraeus is not due to take formal command at Centcom until late summer, there are abundant signs that something may happen before then. A Marine amphibious force, originally due to leave San Diego for the Persian Gulf in mid June, has had its sailing date abruptly moved up to May 4. A scheduled meeting in Europe between French diplomats acting as intermediaries for the U.S. and Iranian representatives has been abruptly cancelled in the last two weeks. Petraeus is said to be at work on a master briefing for congress to demonstrate conclusively that the Iranians are the source of our current troubles in Iraq, thanks to their support for the Shia militia currently under attack by U.S. forces in Baghdad.
Interestingly, despite the bellicose complaints, Petraeus has made little effort to seal the Iran-Iraq border, and in any case two thirds of U.S. casualties still come from Sunni insurgents. "The Shia account for less than one third," a recently returned member of the command staff in Baghdad familiar with the relevant intelligence told me, "but if you want a war you have to sell it."
Even without the covert initiatives described above, the huge and growing armada currently on station in the Gulf is an "impressive" symbol of American power.
Yes, there is an horrific natural disaster in Myanmar-Burma in which perhaps an additional hundreds of thousands of Southeast Asian human beings are at risk beyond the initial death toll, and international journalism is focussed condemning the militaristic leadership of that country which has closed it off to critically needed aid. The self-righteous Dan Schorr said Saturday, 5/10/08, that the UN should mobilize the force required to provide the survivors with the necessary aid.
To the west of that Asian peninsula lies the Middle East which, for the last sixty years, has been the site of the steadily-encroaching military-headed regime of the theocratic State of Israel perpetuating a relentless man-made disaster, which today virtually imprisons one and a half million human beings, the Palestinians in Gaza, incarcerated in their own lands, about which the world public and the suspect world journalism entity has little to say beyond the partisan pro-Israel dicta and reporting that is replete with omission, half-truths and propaganda. The outrage is off-limits to US journalists even though we give more money to Israel every year than to any other country.
And this leads us to the omissions and half-truths of John McCain. There have been several reports concerning the resignation of one Doug Goodyear, who John McCain placed in a key Republican Party position. But it took the 5/12/08 coverage of Amy Goodman to cover the significance.
Amy Goodman: The Burmese cyclone has also impacted the US presidential race. Doug Goodyear has resigned as the coordinator of the 2008 Republican National Convention after it was disclosed that his lobbying firm used to represent the military regime in Burma. Goodyear had been picked to run the convention by Sen. John McCain. Goodyear is the chief executive of the lobbying firm DCI Group. Newsweek reported on Saturday that Burma's military had paid DCI $348,000 in 2002 and 2003. Other clients of the DCI Group include ExxonMobil and General Motors.
On that same broadcast the ominous developments in Lebanon resulting from the Andrew Cockburn article above.
81-Dead in Lebanon as Hezbollah Clashes with US-backed Pro-Government Forces
AMY GOODMAN: In Lebanon, armed clashes since last Wednesday between Hezbollah-led opposition groups and US-backed pro-government forces have left at least eighty-one people dead, many more wounded. Opposition forces overpowered pro-government militias and took over large parts of the capital city of Beirut late last week before handing over control to the Lebanese army.
The fighting shifted to the north and east of the country over the weekend, and fresh clashes were reported in Beirut this morning. Meanwhile, the Arab League has agreed to send a high-level political delegation to Lebanon to dialogue with leaders from all sides.
The violence, which has been described as the worst since the civil war, erupted last week during a general strike called by the General Federation of Labor Unions to protest the high cost of living.
On Thursday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah held a news conference in Beirut to mark what he called the beginning of a "new era" in Lebanese politics. He condemned a decision by the Lebanese cabinet to outlaw Hezbollah's telecommunications network and dismiss the head of airport security for his alleged ties to the party. Nasrallah said their private communication network was a vital tool in combat and critical to their success during the July 2006 war with Israel. He described the government crackdown as "tantamount to a declaration of war."
HASSAN NASRALLAH: [translated] If we want to get off of this crisis, to get out of this standoff, of this confrontation, they need to revoke the decisions of the illegitimate government, and they need to go to the dialogue. That's all. If they want to be stubborn, they will go elsewhere. The game is very dangerous. If they are truly keen about preserving the country, they have only these two solutions.
AMY GOODMAN: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice criticized Hezbollah and declared US support for the Lebanese government led by Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. But after four days of fighting, Siniora capitulated and announced Saturday the decision regarding Hezbollah's demands now lay in the hands of the Lebanese army. The army commander, General Michel Suleiman, is slated to be the new president of the country.
For analysis of the situation in Lebanon, I'm now joined on the phone from California by As'ad AbuKhalil, professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus, and the creator of the Angry Arab News Service blog at angryarab.blogspot.com. We welcome you to Democracy Now!
AS'AD ABUKHALIL: Thank you very much, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain what's happening in Lebanon right now?
AS'AD ABUKHALIL: Well, yes. I think that people may remember, back in the 1980s, the United States government, for two years in the administration of Ronald Reagan, deployed troops from '82 to '84. And there was a civil war, and the United States was supporting the rightwing militias of Israel in Lebanon, and they used the discourse of supporting the central government of Lebanon.
Something similar is taking place right now in Lebanon, and this is very much similar to what's happening in Sudan, in Palestine, in Iraq, in Afghanistan and Somalia. The United States is basically instigating, funding and arming civil wars in all those places. We hear a lot about this inability of the international community to tolerate armed militias. Of course, Hezbollah is an armed militia, but so are the pro-militias of the government. There's a Los Angeles Times article today detailing the efforts by the United States and allies to create militias throughout the country. And the Washington Post indicated that this government of the United States spent $1.4 billion to prop up the administration of Siniora in Lebanon.
And basically, what happened in Lebanon in the last few days is a partial coup d'etat that was in response to a full coup d'etat that was engineered by the United States and Saudi Arabia and Israel from behind the scene back in 2005, capitalizing on the assassination of Rafik Hariri.
And things have gotten to this point because America basically is responsible, more than their clients in Lebanon. I mean, there were ideas of dialogue in Lebanon, and things were moving in that direction, and then, suddenly, lo and behold, the Assistant Secretary of State of the United States for the Near East, David Welch, shows up in Lebanon, and he basically wanted to stiffen the resolve of the clients and to basically prevent the possibility of dialogue. And then, Walid Jumblatt, one of the clients of the United States and Saudi Arabia and Lebanon today, escalated by deciding on taking the issue of disarming Hezbollah, which is supported at least by half of the Lebanese, and Lebanese parties, including clients of the United States, agreed that the issues of disarming Hezbollah should be left for internal dialogue of the Lebanese themselves.
But it seems the Bush administration, while it's sailing into the sunset, wanted to achieve a victory that has long eluded it in Iraq and elsewhere. They were getting too excited about Lebanese affairs in the Washington Post, who were celebrating the so-called Cedar Revolution. Well, they tried to push them further, and look what happened. This is something that experts have warned the United Nations about. If you push things to that point, the other side is going to lash out, and they did lash out, even if one, like me, does not like the scenes of these militias and armed thugs running into the streets of Beirut and so on. But basically, we have to say that this is the doing of US foreign policy, and this is the true face of the Bush Doctrine in the Middle East.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk overall about the United States - what you feel the US role should be right now?
AS'AD ABUKHALIL: Well, I mean, just to get out, just to not be as heavily involved. We have to see that US policy is not only in funding and arming the militias in the Anbar province in Iraq or places in Iraq--I mean, Afghanistan, the warlords, or in Lebanon, the various militias. But we have to say that this level of intense tensions and conflict and animosity is the product of a deliberate American-Saudi policy of instigating a Sunni-Shiite conflict, the likes of which Lebanon has never seen. I mean, even somebody like myself who come from a split background - my mother is Sunni, and my father is Shiite - I mean, we've never seen anything like this. Saudi media, with the full cooperation of the United States, have been for three years mobilizing the Lebanese opposition, because that's the only thing they have. I mean, if patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, sectarianism in Lebanon is the last refuge of scoundrels of the United States and Israel. They have been for serious propagandizing to splitting Sunnis from Shiites in order that they create a militia that can stand up to Hezbollah.
Well, this militia of Hariri's, as supported by the United States, trained in Jordan, funded by Saudi Arabia, basically didn't last. It's very much like the Dahlan gangs in Palestine in Gaza. They do not have a cause. The United States can provide them with weapons and with money; it cannot provide them with a doctrine or an ideology. And that's why, when push comes to shove, they flee. They flee for their life, just as militias of Israel fled across the border when Israel attacked and left, humiliatingly, South Lebanon in 2000.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor AbuKhalil, we have thirty seconds. What's next? What do you make of Hassan Nasrallah's comment that this is a new era in Lebanese politics?
AS'AD ABUKHALIL: Basically, he is saying that they will no more allow this heavy-handed role by the Saudis in Lebanon, and they want to change the balance of forces on the ground. Now, that in itself does not bode well for the future in Lebanon. I fear that Hezbollah may get too intoxicated with their so-called victories on the streets of Lebanon, and they may assert a sectarian agenda that is going to provoke the other side. I worry about a [inaudible] syndrome among the Sunnis of Lebanon.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you very much for being with us. Professor As'ad AbuKhalil teaches political science at California State University at Stanislaus, visiting professor at UC Berkeley.
Breaking News - The BBC reported late 5/12/08 that George W. Bush has ordered US military forces to support the hapless pro-Israel Siniora government in Lebanon, which has been virtually nonexistent for over a year because of its insistence on coordinating behind the scenes with the corrupt and weak scandal-laden Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Again, just as Andrew Cockburn predicted the week earlier (noted above).
Amy Goodman 5/13/08: Bush Vows to Help Arm Lebanese Army
President Bush is vowing to help arm Lebanon's army so it can fight Hezbollah. In an interview with the BBC on the eve of his trip to the Middle East, Bush said the US must support the Lebanese government in the ongoing sectarian violence.
President Bush: "So our position, my government's position, is to support the Siniora government, is to beef up his army, so that he can have a chance to respond to the people who are acting outside the confines of government. And, you know, Hezbollah would be nothing without Iranian support, and Iranians are the crux of many of the problems in the Middle East, whether it be funding of Hezbollah, funding of Hamas, or obviously actions within the young democracy of Iraq. So a lot of my trip is going to be to get people to focus not only on Lebanon, remember Lebanon, but also remember that Iran causes a lot of the problems."
President Bush arrives in Israel on Wednesday and will then visit Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
"Bush Accuses Iran of Arming Militias in Iraq
Bush also repeated his criticism of Iran over its alleged role in arming Shiite militias in Iraq.
President Bush: "They know that the Iraqi government, along with the US government, wants them to stop sending their weapons from Iran into Iraq, all aiming to kill innocent people. That's what they're doing. They're being very--you know, they're not being constructive at all. But they absolutely know our position, and when we catch them doing it, they'll be brought to justice, and we are catching them doing it right now."
"US Admits Some "Iranian-Supplied" Arms Aren't from Iran
While Bush accused Iran of sending arms to Iraq, new questions have been raised over the claims. The Los Angeles Times reports the US military scheduled a press conference last week in Iraq to show journalists alleged Iranian-supplied explosives that were found in the Iraqi city of Karbala. But the military had to cancel the presentation when it realized that none of the weapons were from Iran. A US military spokesperson blamed the confusion on an Iraqi army general in Karbala who erroneously reported the items were of Iranian origin"
"Iran to Sue US and UK for Backing Group Behind Mosque Bombing
Meanwhile, Iran is accusing the United States of meddling in Iranian affairs. On Monday, the Iranian judiciary announced it would file international lawsuits against the United States and Britain, accusing them of providing financial support to a group that bombed a mosque in the Iranian city of Shiraz, killing fourteen people."
Iraq saw overnight clashes between US-led forces and Shia fighters in Sadr City. The fighting threatened the tenuous deal to end weeks of fighting and deaths, including civilians, in Baghdad. Scores of civilians have been killed in intensified US strikes by tanks and air power. Relief efforts have also been hampered after US missiles struck Sadr City's main hospital earlier this month. Additionally, the Maliki government, aided by US tanks and helicopters, has also attacked Mosul.
Amy Goodman 5/14/08: President Bush has landed in Israel to take part in celebrations marking the sixtieth anniversary of Israel's founding in 1948. The trip has been criticized because Bush has no plans to mark what Palestinians call the Nakba, or catastrophe, for the more than 700,000 Palestinians driven from their homes that same year. As Bush arrived, at least five Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip. The dead included a teenage boy riding his bicycle and another civilian.
Before his departure, Bush singled out Iran, calling it the "biggest threat to peace in the Middle East."
President Bush: "The message to Iran is that, you know, your desire to have a nuclear weapon, coupled with your statements about the destruction of our close ally, has made it abundantly clear to everybody that we have got to work together to stop you from having a nuclear weapon. I mean, to me it's the single biggest threat to peace in the Middle East is the Iranian regime."
Meanwhile, President Bush is claiming he has given up golfing as a gesture to the sacrifice of US troops and their families. In an interview with the Politico, Bush said, "I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the families... to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal." Presidential historian Robert Dallek said, "That's his idea of sacrifice, to give up golf?"
A rather remarkable coordination of the over-arching Zionist plan for control of all of Palestine meshed with "W's" vision of his messianic evolution and John McCain's drive to somehow evade his personal responsibility for the catastrophe which has resulted from the last almost eight years of a Republican Party dedicated to supporting THE MOST DESTRUCTIVE PRESIDENCY IN OUR HISTORY! And McCain believes HE now deserves a presidency for himself?
The Media/Press may not realize that its coverage of Bush and McCain characterizing Senator Obama as another Neville Chamberlain appeasing Hitler at Munich (the Zionist Knesset audience roared their approval - Thomas L. Friedman writes that Iran is "ruthless" to change the subject - McCain's agreement with Bush shows him, McCain, to be another Joe McCarthy, willing to say anything, like Hillary, to further his personal ambition), the news "business" has lost whatever credibility it might have regained after recognizing, finally, the crimes of Richard Nixon and John Mitchell.
In any event, the 18-hour NAKBA international broadcast (Midnight 5/14 to Noon EDT 5/15/08 - IMEMC.ORG) should satisfy the majority of the American public that the joint Bush/McCain/Israeli cabal of the last eight years has immersed our United States of America in its most costly blunder, our policy in the Middle East, in our history.
And more. BBC reported 5/15/08 the American presidential contender Barack Obama has reacted angrily after President Bush appeared to attack his Middle East policy during a speech in the Israeli Knesset in Jerusalem. Mr. Bush said people willing to negotiate with terrorists and radicals were as deluded as Nazi appeasers in the run-up to the second World War. Republicans have clearly identified Senator Obama's Middle East policy and his perceived weakness among Jewish voters (and Jewish American members of the Congress?) as a key point of attack (Is that why the speculation that Michael Bloomberg will be John McCain's running mate, and why Charles Black, founder of the Washington lobbying firm Black & Associates, is McCain's top political adviser?).
While Bush/McCain/Israel continued to treat American military personnel as their personal legions in their ill-begotten ventures (not for over a century has such a criminal "Commander in Chief" escaped impeachment and conviction) others have paid dearly. There are one hundred THOUSAND US military personnel, who have served in Afghanistan and Iraq, suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, but because of the strains on the US military budget (pursuing the Bush/McCain war policies around the world) the funds available for Veterans affairs are inadequate to provide the proper care for these men and women who are making the actual sacrifice. The US government's top psychiatric researcher estimates the number of suicides among veterans of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will surely exceed the combat death toll of these ongoing wars, because of inadequate mental health care. And the massive national debt which these Bush/McCain/Israel policies have accumulated will beggar our children and grandchildren for decades. These present government upbeat prognoses of our economy would be laughable, except for the dire circumstances we face.
While our national political scene remains dismal, the one European leader with whom we have partnered since our War of Independence has opposed the Bush/McCain/Israel policy, using the conscience and world responsibility our leaders (with the exceptions of Democrat Lyndon Baines Johnson, and Republicans Dwight David Eisenhower and Richard Milhouse Nixon) have previously shown. The French Minister of Foreign & European Affairs, Bernard Kouchner, has been in contact with the elected government of Gaza and verified that Hamas agrees to a long-term accommodation with Israel based on the internationally recognized 1967 borders, which had also been verified by Jimmy Carter.
NPR's 5/16/08 report: To add to George W. Bush's statement from the Israeli Knesset 5/15/08, that somehow Obama's attitude toward ending the warfare that Bush has created in the Middle East and pursues against Iran was dangerous - American special forces in Iraq upped the ante and fired on and wounded several Iranian functionaries in Baghdad yesterday and continue to "detain" in Iraq since early last year five members of an Iranian diplomatic mission.
Amy Goodman 5/20/08: Feith Admits "Terrible Mistakes" Made Ahead of Iraq War
Former Pentagon official Douglas Feith admitted Monday the Bush administration made mistakes in the lead-up to the war in Iraq, but he said the decision to invade was justified. Feith, who served as undersecretary of defense for policy, claimed Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the region even though he had no weapons of mass destruction.
Douglas Feith: "And so, while it was a terrible mistake for the administration to rely on the erroneous intelligence about WMD, and, I mean, it was catastrophic to our credibility, first of all, it was an honest error and not a lie... But even if you corrected for that error, what we found in Iraq was a serious WMD threat, even though Saddam had chosen to not maintain the stockpiles. He had put himself in a position where he could have regenerated those stockpiles, as I said, in three to five weeks." Mr. Feith, both in Jim Bamford's A Pretext For War, page 413, and Amy Goodman's searching 5/21/08 interview with Chief UN Weapons Inspector Hans Blix, which follows, Feith is exposed as the extremist prevaricator/provocateur that he is.
Amy Goodman 5/21/08: The Bush administration's claims of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq formed the key justification for the war to Congress, the American people and the international community. One of the people at the center of the storm was Hans Blix, the former chief United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq. He joins us today from Stockholm, Sweden.
From March 2000 to June 2003, Hans Blix was executive chairman of the UN Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission, which carried out over 700 inspections at 500 sites in the run-up to the invasion. Hans Blix is currently the chair of the Swedish government's Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission. His latest book is Why Nuclear Disarmament Matters.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Hans Blix.
HANS BLIX: Thank you very much.
AMY GOODMAN: It's good to have you with us. Your response to Douglas Feith?
HANS BLIX: Well, I think there was no way that Saddam Hussein in Iraq could have reconstituted his nuclear program within years after 2003. David Kay went in, and he came out and said, "Well, there are no weapons, but there are [inaudible] programs." And then he went out, and in went his successor, and he came out after a year and says there are no programs, but there were intentions. In fact, Iraq was prostrate after so many years of sanctions, and it would have taken them many years to recover and to contemplate any nuclear weapons.
AMY GOODMAN: What did you understand at the time? What were you saying at the time?
HANS BLIX: Well, at the time, we were saying that we had carried out a great many inspections and that we did not find any weapons of mass destruction, and we also voiced some criticism of the same cases that the US Secretary of State Colin Powell had demonstrated in the Security Council. My colleague, Mr. ElBaradei, who was the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, had revealed that the alleged contract between Iraq and the state of Niger in Africa for the import of uranium oxide was a forgery and that the--also the tubes of aluminum, which had been alleged to be for making of centrifuges to enrich uranium, they most likely were not for that purpose.
So while the evidence that had been advanced from the US side and the UK side had been very weakened, we had carried out some 700 inspections without finding any evidence at all, and we had actually been to something like three dozen sites, which were given to us by intelligence, and had been able to tell them that, no, there was nothing in them, so that all allegations had been weakened very much, but not to the point of saying that there is nothing, because to prove that there is nothing is really impossible.
Cuba Accuses US Diplomat of Passing Funds to Opposition Groups
"Meanwhile, Cuba is a accusing the top US diplomat in Havana of ferrying funds from an anti-Castro exile group in Miami to opposition figures on the island. The cash is said to come from Santiago Alvarez, who was once convicted in the US of conspiring to collect military-style weapons to overthrow Cuba's government. Alvarez is currently serving a ten-month prison term for refusing to testify against airline bomber Luis Posada Carriles." Mr. Carriles is the US-protected Cuban exile who masterminded the 10/6/76 bombing of the Cuban commercial airliner which killed all seventy-three innocent passengers and crew on board. "Cuban Foreign Ministry official Josefina Vidal Ferreira said the cash payments reveals a direct connection between dissidents in Cuba and terrorists in Miami."
Josefina Vidal Ferreira: "The Cuban government has always condemned as illegal the use of federal funds to promote internal subversion in Cuba, as is the case with the direct implication of the department of US interests. But what is doubly scandalous and infuriating is that US diplomats in Havana serve as emissaries and go-betweens for terrorists and Cuban mercenaries."
It would seem that in many ways we are an appendage to Israel this last twelve-thirteen years. And now, it's almost as if Israel has moved ahead, no matter that we've spent a trillion dollars or more securing the path for its control of the eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East. And the cost mounts. The inevitable presidency of John McCain (John Sidney McCain III), irrespective of his history of trading sweet heart deals with the current Arizona super-developer Donald R. Diamond (twenty years ago it was McCain and Arizona super-developer Charles Keating) at the expense of public properties Saguaro National Park and a "virgin California coastline", formerly known as Fort Ord, trading these public properties for campaign funds (McCain needs nothing personally, his second wife is worth over one hundred million). Half way around the world we have Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert who should be indicted for his past history of corruption in several prior Israeli regimes and currently is enmeshed in his over-a-decade-long relationship with the shady Long Island rabbi/investor Morris Talansky who gave Olmert envelopes of US currency totaling over half a million dollars. But while Olmert may be indicted (it's just as well in that his efforts towards peace with the Palestinians "is less than meets the eye", McCain's beneficiary leads the elite group of fundraisers known as "The Innovators", so named because their role is not only to raise money, but to distinguish McCain's proposed policies from those of the disastrous George W. Bush, even though they are identical - continue the interminable war against Iraq...
"In Iraq, cleric Moktada al Sadr 5/28/08 urged his followers to stage huge protests every Friday after prayers (the Grand Ayatollah, head of the Islamic Supreme Council Iraq has also registered his opposition to this security arrangement that would keep American military bases in Iraq), to press Iraq's government to reject any deal that would permit the American military to have a permanent presence in the country. The United States and Iraqi governments are negotiating a security arrangement that could allow long-term American military bases."
...further initiate war against Iran, make permanent the Bush tax cuts for the super rich, oppose an Iraq/Afghanistan G.I. Bill to provide educational opportunities for the men and women who fought and continue to fight and die; McCain plans to continue, and perhaps even accelerate, George W. Bush's conservative counter-revolution at the Supreme Court, and so on. But while Olmert may be indicted, the Media/Press continues its love affair with John McCain. Both Bush and McCain have similar backgrounds. Family histories which propelled them to the positions they now hold. And that's the rub. Looking back eight years, the Republican Media/Press described Albert Gore as tainted by his family history, even though he found his own employment, worked every day of his life, and continues to do so. Not so with either George Bush or John McCain, whose family histories have provided them the positions they now hold. Surely we have learned that this Republican Media/Press is not reliable, particularly as this critical presidential election approaches.
Almost completely overlooked is the balance of the Supreme Court. Although Justices Rehnquist and O'Connor, of infamous Bush vs Gore, are no longer there they have been replaced by the even more alarming Roberts and Alito, courtesy of George W. Bush. And Bill Moyers and Jeffrey Toobin detail the danger for us.
BARACK OBAMA: I think actually Justice Breyer and Justice Ginsburg are very sensible judges...I think that Justice Souter who was a Republican appointee, is a sensible judge. What you're looking for is somebody who's going to apply the law where it's clear.
BILL MOYERS: In this week's article for The New Yorker 5/26/08 Magazine, Senior Staff writer Jeffrey Toobin makes a case that, with both Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg approaching retirement, the future of the Supreme Court will be at stake in the 2008 election.
One of the country's most provocative legal journalists, Toobin has just won the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize from the Journalism School at Columbia University. It's for his 2007 book, THE NINE: INSIDE THE SECRET WORLD OF THE SUPREME COURT. It's the most recent in a string of books on politics and the law that Toobin has written.
Three of them were best-sellers. In addition to writing for THE NEW YORKER, Jeffrey Toobin won an Emmy for his reporting at ABC News. He is a Senior Analyst for CNN. Full disclosure: I've known him since he was knee-high to a grasshopper. Jeffrey Toobin, welcome to the JOURNAL.
JEFFREY TOOBIN: Great to be here, Bill.
BILL MOYERS: Is there any evidence in Washington, on the campaign trail, among legal circles, that the big fight involving the Supreme Court in resolving the 2000 election Gore versus Bush is playing out in this election? People still thinking, talking about it?
JEFFREY TOOBIN: Democrats are. Democrats are furious about Bush v. Gore. It remains the wounds that won't heal. This weekend HBO is doing a really terrifically entertaining movie version of that whole Florida struggle called Recount, based in part on my book, Too Close to Call. And in watching Democrats respond to that movie, you see the frustration, the anger, the lingering of bitterness about it. Republicans, like Antonin Scalia on 60 Minutes the other day, say, "Get over it."
BILL MOYERS: Have you seen the Court do many things to try to protect itself against political accusations this fall?
JEFFREY TOOBIN: Well, I think they are going to do their best to stay out of the election, per se. They are not going to have many cases that deal directly with elections. But, you know, I think, for better or worse, the Justices are who they are. There are four very conservative Justices there. They decided a case about Indiana election law.
BILL MOYERS: Upholding the state's voter identification.
JEFFREY TOOBIN: Correct. Which will-
BILL MOYERS: What did you think about that?
JEFFREY TOOBIN: Well, I thought it was a bad decision but a predictable one because it was a very clear attempt by Republicans to stop Democrats from voting. I don't think there's any doubt about what the motivation was of that law. It didn't say that in the text of the law. And the aim of stopping fraud was one that we all can embrace. But the fact is electoral fraud scarcely exists in this country. The real agenda was to help Republicans.
The dissenting Justices said you need to look deeper. You need to look at the effect of the law, not just the text of the law. The Justices in the majority said, "We're not gonna look more closely." That's how they came out the way they did.
BILL MOYERS: But that's what conservatives say they most object to about the liberal argument that in the penumbras, in the shadows, in the nuances liberals find what legislators didn't intend.
JEFFREY TOOBIN: Well, the phrase that President Bush uses all the time is legislating from the bench. He doesn't like judges who legislate from the bench.
BILL MOYERS: Ronald Reagan said much the same -
JEFFREY TOOBIN: -much the same thing. Judicial activism. But, you know, judicial activism is in the eye of the beholder. One of the biggest decisions by this current Court, is the end of last term, Louisville and Seattle.
BILL MOYERS: School-
JEFFREY TOOBIN: School boards.
BILL MOYERS: Right.
JEFFREY TOOBIN: Said, "You know what? We care about diversity in our schools. We want siblings to go to school together. We want kids to go to school in their neighborhoods. But we also wanna make sure that there is some measure of racial diversity in the schools." No Court forced them to do that. They just decided on their own. The conservatives on the Court said, "Well, We know better. You can't do that. That's a violation of the Equal Protection Clause." Now, isn't that judicial activism? That's overruling the legislature just like Roe v. Wade was. So, you know, there is conservative judicial activism as well as liberal.
BILL MOYERS: I was somewhat surprised when I read your piece in the New Yorker because none of this seems new. I mean, for a long time conservatives have wanted to appoint judges and follow the election return. And liberals have wanted to appoint judges and follow the election returns. They just wanted different election returns.
JEFFREY TOOBIN: You know, we talk about Supreme Court Justices often as if they exist in some sort of world apart from politics. And the theme of my book, and I think a rational view of the Court, is that it is part of politics. It is not separate from. And the presidential election I think will determine the future of the Court for decades.
BILL MOYERS: But voters seem to be more concerned with everything except the Supreme Court in this election and election coverage.
JEFFREY TOOBIN: Well, presidential elections are often decided on issues that vanish quickly after the President is inaugurated. Look at the 2000 campaign. Remember all the discussion about the Social Security lockbox? Whatever that is. I can barely remember what it is.
But if you look at George Bush's presidency, particularly his second term, what matters, the legacy he'll leave is the war in Iraq and John Roberts and Samuel Alito. And I think that's likely the case for the next President as well, that the war and the Supreme Court will be a big part of what the next President does.
BILL MOYERS: So what surprised you about McCain's speech enough for you to want to write about it this week?
JEFFREY TOOBIN: Well, what surprised me was the degree to which he embraced, in its entirety, the really strong conservative agenda that President Bush has reflected in his appointments to the Court, that this was not the maverick John McCain. This was the John McCain who needs to ingratiate himself with the base. And he did in a big way.
BILL MOYERS: But it didn't surprise me because, as you know, he's been against Roe versus Wade for a long time. He voted for every one of George W. Bush's nominations to the judiciary. I mean, this man is not surprising on the Court.
JEFFREY TOOBIN: Well, he- it's not surprising, but also he is in the midst of a general election campaign now where it is the custom to move towards the center. And he didn't move towards the center here. He-
BILL MOYERS: On the Court?
JEFFREY TOOBIN: When it comes to the Court. His rhetoric particularly when it comes to the most divisive issues like abortion, like affirmative action, like the death penalty, was very much in the vein of appealing to the hard right.
BILL MOYERS: Why then did he speak in such a circumlocution? Because he doesn't mention abortion-
JEFFREY TOOBIN: No.
BILL MOYERS: -he doesn't mention gun control. He doesn't mention any of these hot button issues that the religious right and the conservative right really think are hallowed.
JEFFREY TOOBIN: Well, McCain has a problem. His problem is on those issues the public, by and large, is against them. The public doesn't want to see Roe versus Wade overturned, doesn't want to see abortion abandoned, doesn't want to see affirmative action ended, doesn't want to see the death penalty expanded. So what he did was he spoke in code. There were dog whistles in there, words that can be heard and understood by people who are on the inside of the conservative movement - but the way he dealt with the issue was to speak in code but to speak very clearly in code. And that's what I tried to do in my New Yorker story, which was to unravel the code to make it clear what he was saying.
BILL MOYERS: The only concrete nouns he utilized in his speech were Alito and Roberts. Now, when his conservative constituency hears those words, Alito and Roberts, what are they hearing?
JEFFREY TOOBIN: Well, they're hearing that these appointments have been a homerun for the conservative movement. That Alito and Roberts have now been on the Court about three years. There is not one vote that you can point to by either one of them that could be called a surprise, that could be called evidence of moderation either in the present or possibly in the future.
They are part of the conservative movement. They have joined Scalia and Thomas to be four of the most conservative Justices this court has seen since the 1930s. And that's why they were put on the Court. And that's what John McCain wants to do with his appointment.
BILL MOYERS: So what have Roberts and Alito, Scalia, and Thomas done specifically that you say, both in The Nine and in your New Yorker piece this week, have moved the Court much closer to the right-wing agenda, to fulfilling the right-wing agenda? What have they done?
JEFFREY TOOBIN: Last term they upheld the federal abortion restrictions, the so-called late-term abortion ban. First time in history the Court has ever upheld a ban on a specific kind of abortion. And certainly laid the groundwork for overturning Roe versus Wade. That decision in Seattle in the school district in Seattle and Louisville certainly limited school districts specifically in what they could do but also was a dagger aimed at the heart of all affirmative action, any consideration of race, period.
They limited the rights to sue for employment discrimination in the Ledbetter case. They made it harder to challenge the - mingling of church and state. That's just a sampling of what they did.
BILL MOYERS: Some people criticize your book, National Review for one, as saying as going overboard on this conservative revolution, saying the Court has not moved that far to the right, as far to the right as you have described it.
JEFFREY TOOBIN: Well, I think it is important to recognize that the conservative the base of the party doesn't have total control. They have four Justices. Anthony Kennedy sides with them on certain issues but not others. He has been with the conservatives on racial issues. He has not been with them on Roe v. Wade.
So it is true that the conservatives don't have total control. But they're very close.
BILL MOYERS: That's what the election's about, right?
JEFFREY TOOBIN: That's what the elect- especially when you have John Paul Stevens just celebrating his 88th birthday. Ruth Ginsburg, her 75th birthday. David Souter, 68 and not really wanting to stay on the Court much longer. That's why it's very significant-
BILL MOYERS: What was the dog whistle Obama was blowing on the campaign trail when he mentioned the late Chief Justice Earl Warren?
JEFFREY TOOBIN: Oh, that's very clear. It is saving Roe versus Wade. It is allowing the consideration of race in college admissions. It is strict limits on the death penalty. It is special regard for the separation of church and state. You know, Obama is a former Constitutional Law Professor. And I've had the opportunity to talk to him about the Constitution. He still follows the Court very, very closely. He mentioned Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer as Justices he admired. So I don't think there's any doubt what kind of Justices he'll appoint to-
BILL MOYERS: Liberal Justices?
JEFFREY TOOBIN: Liberal Justices but also I think Justices with some real-world experience. You know, this is the first Court in history where all nine Justices are former Federal Appeals Court Judges. I think the Court's missing something. And I think Obama feels that way, too.
BILL MOYERS: Earl Warren had been Governor of California. He was a Republican appointed by Dwight Eisenhower. He became the poster boy, to use that cliché, for the right wing's efforts to impeach him.
JEFFREY TOOBIN: You remember the bumper sticker-
BILL MOYERS: I remember, "Impeach Earl Warren." And that's when this all began because they saw him as a very liberal and activist judge. And I was curious when I saw that speech by Obama as to why he wants to rile the forces against him even further by mentioning perhaps the most hated name in the judiciary as far as conservatives are concerned.
JEFFREY TOOBIN: Well, I think this is something Obama feels strongly about. He has devoted years of his life to studying the Supreme Court. He really knows the subject. And I think the fact that Warren both was a progressive Justice and came from outside the monastery of judges is something that a President Obama, if there is one might well look to in making appointments.
BILL MOYERS: Do you think his strategy would be to keep the balance and instead of trying to tip the Court, the way McCain would like to tip the Court?
JEFFREY TOOBIN: No, I think he'll try to tip it his way.
JEFFREY TOOBIN: I'll say yeah, I mean, you know-
BILL MOYERS: Well, let's be very candid that you-both sides want activist judges.
JEFFREY TOOBIN: This is a big plum of being President of the United States, to have Justices who reflect your ideology. Now, if he only gets one appointment he won't have a chance much to tip the balance. But if he has two, if he has four, you bet he'll try to extend his influence. This is they don't want balance. They want victory.
BILL MOYERS: Help us understand how we watch this issue during the campaign. What will you be watching for to see how the campaign, the candidates tip their hands as far as what they will do? Of course, not just the Supreme Court but all the way down the judiciary?
JEFFREY TOOBIN: Well, the polling data I've seen suggests that the people who care strongly about the Supreme Court are the partisans on both sides. The people who are going to vote for their candidate anyway. The challenge for candidates when it comes to the Supreme Court is to make the issue real for the people in the middle. And I think Obama might well risk raising the issue of abortion at this point because it is something that candidates have generally stayed away from, but it is so close now to a court that will overthrow Roe versus Wade that that is an issue where the public is on a side. The question is can he turn it into a voting issue?
BILL MOYERS: Is this issue of the Supreme Court so important to Clinton supporters that it could be the issue that brings them to Obama in the general election?
JEFFREY TOOBIN: I think it is a very good issue for Obama to reach out to Clinton supporters, to say, "Look, I may not be your first choice, but look at the stakes of this election. If you care about choice, if you care about diversity, you need to be with me."
JEFFREY TOOBIN: So I do think it could be a powerful vehicle for reuniting the party.
BILL MOYERS: Jeffrey Toobin, I hope people will read your piece in the New Yorker and The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court. Thanks for joining me on The Journal.
JEFFREY TOOBIN: Thanks, Bill.
Amy Goodman 5/27/08: Meanwhile, former President Jimmy Carter has revealed he believes Israel has at least 150 nuclear weapons in its arsenal. The Israeli government has never acknowledged its nuclear weapons program. But its existence has been widely known since the scientist Mordechai Vanunu leaked government documents in the 1980s. Carter's comments mark the first time a former US president has spoken on the number of Israel's atomic weapons. Carter also called Israel's occupation of Palestinians "one of the greatest human rights crimes on earth."
Amy Goodman: The US Marine Corps has announced it won't bring criminal charges against two officers commanding a unit that massacred Afghan civilians last year. On March 4, 2007, several Marines opened fire on a busy highway near Jalalabad killing up to nineteen people and wounding fifty others. The Marines shot indiscriminately at civilian cars and pedestrians after an ambush on a US convoy. In a statement, the Marine Corps says an inquiry had cleared the officers of wrongdoing. The Marine probe's 12,000-page findings won't be publicly released.
Amy Goodman 5/28/08: Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan has accused the Bush administration of deliberately manipulating the public to wage the war on Iraq. In a new memoir, McClellan writes, "Over that summer of 2002, top Bush aides had outlined a strategy for carefully orchestrating the coming campaign to aggressively sell the war... In the permanent campaign era, it was all about manipulating sources of public opinion to the president's advantage." He continues, "What I do know is that war should only be waged when necessary, and the Iraq war was not necessary." McClellan also faults the White House press corps for its conduct before the Iraq invasion, saying it was too easy on the Bush administration. He also criticizes Bush for his handling of Hurricane Katrina. McClellan says the White House spent the first week following Katrina "in a state of denial." He also says White House deputy Karl Rove staged an Air Force One flyover of New Orleans as a photo-op to counter public criticism of the White House response. McClellan resigned in April 2006 after nearly three years as Bush's press secretary.
The 5/30/08 Lehrer NewsHour hosted by Ray Suarez included an interesting offering by Jeffrey Brown as he quizzed Mr. McClellan and attempted to misrepresent Ron Suskind's view on Mr. McClellan's book. On the day before Mr. Suskind (prominent on page 261 of Bamford's book A Pretext for War, and annotated on page 399) stated "But the fact is McClellan has essentially stepped up to establish some basic rules of the game that we used to use, which is you don't go to war under false pretenses." But a day later Brown was telling McClellan that Suskind's emphasis was 'how could McClellan write such a book when he was in the midst of misleading journalists a few years earlier (Martha Raddatz used the same tactic the same night on Gwen Ifill's Washington Week in Review)'. Scott McClellan had an answer. The point of the book was that the national press corps, the national security correspondents and additional news sources that knew better (READ BAMFORD'S BOOK!) were acting as extensions, echo chambers for the White House's rationale, knowing it was false.
The unscrupulous, unprincipled demagogue that John McCain has become is a national tragedy with his rabblerousing speech Monday (6/2/08) to the sinister scheming AIPAC, criticizing Obama for his willingness to talk to Iran's Ahmadinejad or any other Iranian leader.
John Smug & Snide McCain: We hear talk of a meeting with Iranian leadership offered up as if it were some sudden inspiration, a bold new idea that somehow nobody has ever thought of before (Well. Neither Bush nor McCain has suggested it, preferring some US aerial bombing attack, rather than diplomacy.). Yet it's hard to see what such a summit with President Ahmadinejad would actually gain, except an earful of anti-semitic rants and a world wide audience for a man who denies one holocaust, and talks before frenzied crowds about starting another (Huge, frenzied applause from the bellicose AIPAC.).
McCain is, indeed, another Joe McCarthy willing to say anything to further his personal cause, to be President, regardless of the cost to this country. He is, to be sure, another George W. Bush, and now has squandered the honored place he held for having survived five years as a POW. Senator McCain would do well to focus Thomas Young's future as a result of George W. Bush's and John Sidney McCain III's war of choice. Bill Moyers Journal's Memorial Day 5/30/08 repeat of this earlier program might be the place to start for Senator McCain.
Or, he could begin with the Brzezinski-Odom OP-ED in 5/27/08 The Washington Post:
A Sensible Path on Iran
By Zbigniew Brzezinski and William Odom
Tuesday, May 27, 2008 A 13
"Current U.S. policy toward the regime in Tehran will almost certainly result in an Iran with nuclear weapons. The seemingly clever combination of the use of "sticks" and "carrots," including the frequent official hints of an American military option "remaining on the table," simply intensifies Iran's desire to have its own nuclear arsenal. Alas, such a heavy-handed "sticks" and "carrots" policy may work with donkeys but not with serious countries. The United States would have a better chance of success if the White House abandoned its threats of military action and its calls for regime change.
Consider countries that could have quickly become nuclear weapon states had they been treated similarly. Brazil, Argentina and South Africa had nuclear weapons programs but gave them up, each for different reasons. Had the United States threatened to change their regimes if they would not, probably none would have complied. But when "sticks" and "carrots" failed to prevent India and Pakistan from acquiring nuclear weapons, the United States rapidly accommodated both, preferring good relations with them to hostile ones. What does this suggest to leaders in Iran?
To look at the issue another way, imagine if China, a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a country that has deliberately not engaged in a nuclear arms race with Russia or the United States, threatened to change the American regime if it did not begin a steady destruction of its nuclear arsenal. The threat would have an arguable legal basis, because all treaty signatories promised long ago to reduce their arsenals, eventually to zero. The American reaction, of course, would be explosive public opposition to such a demand. U.S. leaders might even mimic the fantasy rhetoric of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad regarding the use of nuclear weapons.
A successful approach to Iran has to accommodate its security interests and ours. Neither a U.S. air attack on Iranian nuclear facilities nor a less effective Israeli one could do more than merely set back Iran's nuclear program. In either case, the United States would be held accountable and would have to pay the price resulting from likely Iranian reactions. These would almost certainly involve destabilizing the Middle East, as well as Afghanistan, and serious efforts to disrupt the flow of oil, at the very least generating a massive increase in its already high cost. The turmoil in the Middle East resulting from a preemptive attack on Iran would hurt America and eventually Israel, too."
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Amy Goodman 6/2/08: In Iraq, popular outcry is growing over a looming agreement that would help cement the US occupation of Iraq. On Friday, tens of thousands of Iraqis took to the streets to protest ongoing talks between the US and Iraqi government. The pact is expected by July. It would cover the future of US military bases, the powers of occupying US forces, immunity for US personnel, and control of Iraqi airspace. Over the weekend Iraqi government officials expressed reservations with some US proposals. A government spokesperson said the two sides have different "visions" so far. Iraq's Foreign Minister says the Iraqi government will study agreements in Germany, Japan and Turkey that have kept US military bases there. As the talks advance, the Bush administration continues to award lucrative long-term contracts for US companies in Iraq. The Washington Post reports the US has recently advertised several deals. One includes a call for "mentors" that would work alongside officials in Iraq's Defense and Interior Ministries. A State Department deal would hire contractors to create a marshals service for the US-overseen Iraqi court system. And another deal indicates there will be a new US-run prison opening in September. Prospective contractors would be responsible for providing food for up to 5,000 prisoners and 150 employees.
[As United States and Iraqis are negotiating a long term Bush/McCain US military presence in Iraq, even the Lehrer NewsHour's Gwen Ifill was forced to comment 6/3/08 on the stalemate? There is none! Bush/McCain will find the money to buy off the Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal Al-Maliki though the largest Sunni block in Al-Maliki's fragile coalition is against it. American troops and air power will remain in Iraq to subdue any Iraqis who don't like it. Ah, yes. We spread Democracy around the world.]
"Meanwhile, the Australian government has begun to withdraw its troops from Iraq. On Sunday, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said Australian troops have ended combat operations. Rudd took office last year after promising to withdraw troops. Australia was one of the key early backers of the US-led invasion of Iraq.
The Israeli government has announced another new round of settlement construction in the Occupied Territories. Israel says it will build more than 800 new homes in Har Homa, a settlement outside East Jerusalem. Israel has previously agreed to halt settlement expansion under the US-backed Road Map. But it now claims the pledge only applies to those settlements it doesn't ultimately want to keep. Israeli Interior Minister Meir Shitreet defended the new settlement expansion by citing biblical claims.
Israeli Interior Minister Meir Shitreet: "Har Homa is part of Jerusalem. It's not a settlement. And one sometimes people are regularly forget Jerusalem is our capital, not since King David-Camp David, but since King David, so that claims that they cannot build in Jerusalem is totally nonsense. No one in the government of Israel ever stop building in Jerusalem."
Israel has expanded settlements around Jerusalem since occupying it in 1967. Palestinian senior negotiator Saeb Erekat said Israel should choose between settlement expansion or peace.
Saeb Erekat: "We condemn the Israeli government decision to build 820 settlement housing units. This is a flagrant violation of the Annapolis process. This undermines our effort to continue with the peace process. And President Abbas today personally contacted all the members of the Quartet, and he launched a very strong protest, and he intends to put this issue tomorrow when he meets with [Israeli Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert. This cannot stand. The government of Israel has the choice either to continue the settlement activity or to continue the peace process. It cannot have both."
It's at least the fourth time Israel has announced a major construction project in Occupied Territory since the US-brokered Annapolis summit late last year."
Amy Goodman 6/3/08: The International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA, has announced plans to send a team of inspectors to Syria later this month. The move comes as the Bush administration is under criticism for delaying its sharing of the intelligence it says could prove Syria is pursuing a secret weapons program. The US backed an Israeli air strike on Syria in September but only handed over intelligence to UN atomic inspectors last month. On Monday, IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei criticized the US for the time gap. US Ambassador Gregory Schulte said the US had stalled because it didn't want to stoke further conflict in the Middle East. Earlier this year, New Yorker correspondent Seymour Hersh reported Israel did not know what it was targeting and was mainly hoping to send a message to Iran. ElBaradei also criticized Iran on Monday, saying it had withheld information on its nuclear plans. US Ambassador Schulte said Iran should face further sanctions.
US Ambassador Gregory Schulte: "In many ways, the choice is up to Iran. Are they ready to stay isolated? Are they ready to subject themselves to further sanction and isolation from the world economic system and financial system? Or are they ready to take that offer that's on the table? We hope they make that decision to take the offer."
Iran has offered talks with the US on its nuclear program and Middle East peace. But the Bush administration has preconditioned any negotiations on Iran's abandonment of its nuclear activities.
Patrick Cockburn 6/5/08 The Independent: "A secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the US presidential election in November." Read the full story: Revealed: Secret plan to keep Iraq under US control.
Patrick Cockburn 6/6/08 The Independent: "The US is holding hostage some $50bn (GBP25bn) of Iraq's money in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to pressure the Iraqi government into signing an agreement seen by many Iraqis as prolonging the US occupation indefinitely, according to information leaked to The Independent." US issues threat to Iraq's $50bn foreign reserves in military deal.
A long-delayed (FIVE YEARS!) report from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was finally released 6/5/08 as Republicans Olympia Snowe of Maine and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska joined all eight Democrats to definitively record that George W. Bush and Richard Bruce Cheney and Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell knowingly falsely reported that Saddam Hussein had close ties to Al Qaeda (in fact, they were enemies) and had WMDs (in fact, he had none, no programs to obtain same, and the story of the "yellowcake" from Niger, was known to have been fabricated as established by Ambassador Joseph Wilson's trip to Niger, and also by James Bamford's 2004 A Pretext For War). Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller, the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said the report shows the administration knowingly 'led the nation to war on false premises.'
HOST: This is Linda Olson-Osterlund for K-BOO Radio. Joining me today in the studio is James Douglass. He's the author of a powerful and meticulously documented new book titled JFK and the Unspeakable: Why he Died and Why it Matters. Jim is a Catholic theologian and a lifetime activist for peace. He worked with Dorothy Day in Rome to persuade the bishops at the Second Vatican Council to issue a statement condemning war and supporting conscientious objection. The result was a document that declares nuclear war unthinkable. He and his wife, Shelley, are best known here in the northwest for confounding the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action in Poulsbo, Washington. It became the headquarters for stopping the white train shipments of nuclear missile parts. JFK and the Unspeakable is his fifth book. Thanks for joining us today, James.
JAMES DOUGLASS: Thank you, Linda.
HOST: There are literally thousands of books written about the Kennedy assassination. What motivated you to write this one?
DOUGLASS: It was initially Martin Luther King's assassination. That murder, that martyrdom, that gift of life changed my life. Because as a professor or religion at the University of Hawaii, my students, in response to King's commitment against war and for a transformation of our society, burned their draft cards, formed the Hawaii Resistance and I joined their group - the beginning of the end of my academic career. And by learning more about King's assassination, the 'why' behind it, the 'why' that changed my life, their lives, many other people's lives in both negative and positive ways, I had to go finally by analogy to John Kennedy's assassination and also to Malcolm X and Robert Kennedy. So in the 1990s I began researching all four together. And I went to the King assassination trial in Memphis, learned through a government verdict, through a jury's verdict, that the government was directly involved in his assassination. And I went on from there to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. And that was, for the last 12 years especially, the focus of my - special focus of my research.
HOST: So you titled the book, The Unspeakable. Can you talk about the title and plausible deniability.
DOUGLASS: The unspeakable comes from Thomas Merton who is the spiritual guide for this experiment in truth. Merton wrote a great book called Raids on the Unspeakable. When, of course, as a Trappist monk at the Abbey of Gethsemane in the mid-1960's, he began from a contemplative standpoint to explore the systemic evil that was visible in the Vietnam war, in the the nuclear arms race and in the assassinations of JFK and Malcolm X. And he was looking forward and seeing more possibilities. And after that would become, would be the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. The unspeakable is where we don't want to go. The unspeakable is a kind of evil that we are in denial of and that is so overwhelming that we simply cannot speak it and are in denial of it and don't want to go there. But Merton suggests we need to go there, and unless we go there, we will be overwhelmed by it in more profound ways than has already happened.
HOST: In your writing of this book you called it - not a journey into truth, but an experiment of truth. Is that your way of going into the unspeakable?
DOUGLASS: It's Ghandi's way. It's a way that involves going into darkness, in this particular instance especially, and trying to do so without regard to the consequences in the sense that we need to move as far as we can into that and to seek the truth in such a way that we can speak as clearly as possible what we are in denial of. Plausible deniability is a national security term for the deliberate effort to - after assassinating foreign leaders, after overturning governments, after violating international law in all kinds of ways, to cut out to avoid any trace of connection to leaders in our own government. And it is sanctioned by national security doctrines, memoranda, that are the guidelines for revolutions that the CIA used in Guatemala, in Iran, in various parts of the world and that form the background for the assassination of John F. Kennedy. We seem to feel in this country that we can allow our government to do such things abroad and then think we get a free pass in this country from assassinations, from election fraud, from coup detas. That is not the case. What we do abroad, we get at home. And it all came home on November 22, 1963.
HOST: As a central part of this book, you painstakingly reveal how Kennedy and Khrushchev came to the brink of committing the greatest unspeakable. And then what you talk about is a turning. Can you briefly describe that?
DOUGLASS: At the height of the Cuban missile crisis, the worst moment in history in terms of what could have happened and almost did happen, John F. Kennedy appealed to his enemy, Nikita Khrushchev, for help. Kennedy felt he was losing control, that he would be - we would be - the forces in the United States governments would be impelled to attack Cuba to destroy the Soviet missile sites and perhaps even to launch a first strike against the Soviet Union, which is what his military chiefs were pushing him very hard to do. And at that point he sent Robert Kennedy to Soviet ambassador Anatoli Dobrynin in Washington with that appeal to Nikita Khrushchev, I need your help. When Khrushchev received such a message from Dobrynin, he turned to his foreign minister, André Gromyko and said we have to let Kennedy know that we want to help him.
HOST: Help him you say. Khrushchev wanted to help Kennedy?
DOUGLASS: It was a word that even he could hardly believe that he was using. And he repeated it to a man who couldn't believe that his superior was saying such a thing. Yes, we have to let Kennedy know that we want to help him. We now have a common cause - to save the world from those pushing us toward war.
HOST: I was surprised to see in this book how many times and how much pressure was put on President Kennedy to start a nuclear war. Not just in Cuba, but in Berlin and Vietnam, over and over again. He was almost completely isolated in his refusal to either put ground troops in different locations and his refusal to consider nuclear war. What do you think gave him that strength to stand alone against all those forces?
DOUGLASS: John F. Kennedy, from his childhood, had the Angel of Death sitting on his shoulder. And especially in World War II that angel was close to him - in the Pacific Ocean when his PT boat was smashed into two by the Japanese destroyed that hit it, when he was on the verge of dying in those waters, when he was saving his crew members. And at point by point, from that point into his presidency, he was willing to face death and it became a kind of companion to him. Even his favorite poem, I Have a Rendezvous With Death, was a way of contemplating what was going to happen to him. When he began to get into these conflicts with the CIA, with his military joint chiefs of staff, and with his entire national security state becoming more and more and more isolated, he had certain guidelines. One was a prayer that he repeated frequently that came from Abraham Lincoln: I know there is a god and I see a storm coming. If he has a place for me, I believe that I am ready. Kennedy became accustomed not only to death, but to walking a path that would result in that consequence specifically from the actions he was taking. He accepted that consequence, if necessary. If he has a place for me, John F. Kennedy believed that he was ready. And as he reflected more and more on that in the final days of his life, speaking especially on the eve of his going to Dallas of his death there, it became clear that he was in fact ready.
continued...
Amy Goodman 6/9/08: Iraq is trying to assure Iran it would not be used as a staging ground for a military attack under a long-term agreement with the United States. On Sunday, visiting Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told Iranian officials that Iraq would not become a "platform" for harming Iran and its neighbors. The agreement would cover the status of US forces in Iraq following the expiration of its UN mandate in July. The Independent of London reported last week US officials are leveraging tens of billions of dollars in seized Iraqi assets to push through its demands. The Bush administration is seeking to permanently keep more than fifty military bases in Iraq. It's also insisting on continuing military campaigns without consultation with the Iraqi government and immunity for American soldiers and contractors.
A group of Iraqi lawmakers have released a letter showing a majority would oppose the deal if it lacked a commitment for a US withdrawal. The letter says, "The majority of Iraqi representatives strongly reject any military-security, economic, commercial, agricultural, investment or political agreement with the United States that is not linked to clear mechanisms that obligate the occupying American military forces to fully withdraw from Iraq."
In Israel and the Occupied Territories, Israel is threatening a new full-scale military attack on the Gaza Strip. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told reporters last week an Israeli attack is more likely than a ceasefire after Palestinian rocket fire killed an Israeli civilian. It was the eighth Israeli to die from Gaza rocket fire since Israel abandoned its Gaza settlements years ago. Israel has killed hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza and intensified the humanitarian crisis with a crippling blockade. In Gaza, Hamas spokesperson Sami Abu Zuhri called Olmert's comments a US-backed threat.
Sami Abu Zuhri: "These threats are proof that there is a new American green light to launch a new round of Zionist war against Gaza. We take these threats seriously, but these threats will not frighten us or the Palestinian people, and we will confront it with all strength."
Meanwhile, Israel is also escalating threats against Iran. Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz has drawn criticism for saying last week an Israeli attack would be inevitable. Mofaz said, "If Iran continues with its program for developing nuclear weapons, we will attack it. The sanctions are ineffective. Attacking Iran, in order to stop its nuclear plans, will be unavoidable." It was the most direct threat against Iran from an Israeli official to date. In a letter to the Security Council, Iran protested Mofaz's remarks, calling his statement a violation of the UN Charter barring the threat of force. Iran lodged the same complaint over comments by Senator Hillary Clinton last month that Iran would be "destroyed" if it attacked Israel.
Meanwhile, Senator Barack Obama has appeared to backtrack on controversial comments on the future status of Jerusalem. Speaking last week before AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Obama said Jerusalem must remain undivided and under Israeli control. Israel has occupied (Arab) East Jerusalem since 1967, and Palestinians see it as part of any future state. In a follow-up interview with CNN, Obama said it will be up to Israelis and Palestinians to negotiate.
[On 2/15/08 NBC Universal's Nightly News celebrated its 60th birthday by previewing and promoting George H.W. Bush's 2/18/08 endorsement of John McCain on "Presidents' Day". That's news-worthy? You mean there was someone on the planet who expected the senior Bush to endorse a Democrat? To make clear to its audience where NBC Universal stood in this presidential election (as if it had not been a mantra for months by Tim Russert), on 6/9/08 Brian Williams gave the "folksy" McCain a full five minutes - actually a commercial - uninterrupted by any challenges on NBC Nightly News. Williams: Part of our conversation earlier this afternoon with John McCain. We have placed the full interview on our website, that's nightly.msnbc.com. Obama talked with CNBC's John Harwood - ONE MINUTE!]
Amy Goodman 6/10/08: Iraqi lawmakers have released new details of Bush administration demands in talks over a long-term compact between Iraq and the United States. The negotiations are being held before the UN mandate authorizing the US occupation expires next month. According to the McClatchy Newspapers, Iraqi parliamentarians say the US has demanded control of at least fifty-eight military bases, as well as Iraqi airspace up to 30,000 feet. The fifty-eight US bases would nearly double the current total of around thirty bases. In what could be seen as a threat to Iran, the lawmakers also say the US has demanded rights that would effectively allow it to decide if another country is committing aggression against Iraq. The Bush administration does not consider its invasion and occupation an act of aggression against Iraq. But it's repeatedly accused Iran of intervening in Iraq's affairs. Iraqi lawmakers say they've rejected these proposals. The Independent of London reported last week US officials are leveraging tens of billions of dollars in seized Iraqi assets to push through its demands, which also include complete immunity for American soldiers and contractors. A leading lawmaker from the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq called the US proposals "more abominable than the occupation." The lawmaker, Jalal al-Din al-Saghir, said, "Now we are being asked to sign for our own occupation. That is why we have absolutely refused all that we have seen so far."
Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan has agreed to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on the Bush administration's role in the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame. McClellan was asked to appear over his assertion in a new book that top White House aides deliberately misled him about their role in the leak of Plame's identity. McClellan is expected to testify next week.
Speaking at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia Republican Senator John McCain criticized Democrat Barack Obama for wanting to increase the capital gains tax (cut virtually in half over the years by preceeding Republican administrations). McCain: My friends, why would we want to take more of the "people's money" (i.e. Wall Street investors plus Hedge Fund managers) and send it to Washington to spend on a bridge in Alaska to an island with fifty people on it (McCain did not mention that this was a boondoggle approved by Republican Senator Ted Stevens, who virtually runs Alaska).
Another Republican liar, George Bush is also noted on Gwen Ifill's 6/11/08 Lehrer NewsHour. George W. Bush: Removing Saddam Hussein made the world a safer place. Number one, we tried to use exhaustive diplomacy in Iraq. Two, I don't like war (He loves it, as long as he doesn't have to fight in it.).
Amy Goodman 6/11/08: Iraqi lawmakers continue to speak out over what they call unfair demands in talks with the Bush administration (with John McCain and Joe Lieberman near at hand) over a long-term compact with the United States. US officials have been silent on the negotiations. But Iraqis have leaked details of the US demands, which include immunity for American troops and contractors, a free hand to conduct military operations without Iraqi approval, control of Iraqi airspace, and maintaining fifty-eight permanent military bases in Iraq. On Tuesday, Democracy Now! spoke to visiting Iraqi lawmakers here in New York. Iraqi parliament member Khalaf Al-Ulayyan criticized the US proposals.
Iraqi parliament member Khalaf Al-Ulayyan: "I believe the parliament will not ratify the treaty in its current form, because it harms Iraqi sovereignty. Based on the details that have been leaked to the media, it seems that the deal will make Iraq not just an occupied country but an actual part of the US."
Iraqi officials interviewed by the Washington Post say the US initially demanded control of more than 200 military bases. US officials also demanded the right to refuel the planes while in flight, stoking fears the US would use Iraq as a staging ground for an attack on Iran. The Independent of London reported last week the US is leveraging tens of billions of dollars in seized Iraqi assets to push through its demands. The Bush administration has angered Iraqi officials by refusing to lift support for Iraq's UN designation as a threat to international security. The designation was imposed following Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and has been used to impose sanctions and restrict Iraq's economy.
Bush: "All Options on the Table" with Iran
Meanwhile, President Bush continues to threaten Iran with military attack. Speaking today in Germany, Bush again repeated his threat that "all options are on the table" to halt Iran's nuclear program. Bush's comments come one day after he won European backing for threatening Iran with new sanctions unless it stops nuclear enrichment. Iran has offered to negotiate on its nuclear program and a broader peace agreement, but the US insists Iran must suspend nuclear activities as a precondition. Speaking Tuesday in Slovenia, Bush said the US will not waver from its demands.
President Bush: "You know, the fundamental question is not ours to make, it's theirs to make. And that is, are they going to continue on their path of obstruction? Will they continue to isolate their people? Are they going to continue to deny the people of Iran a bright future by basically saying 'we don't care what the world says'? And that's the position they're in. I'll leave behind a multilateral framework to work this issue (for John McCain)."
Amy Goodman 6/12/08: The Bush administration looks to finalize the deal in Iraq that would extend the US occupation indefinitely. We'll speak with the reporter who broke the story, Patrick Cockburn.
"President Bush is dismissing opposition to a proposed agreement on keeping US troops in Iraq. Criticism has mounted from Iraqi and US lawmakers as details have emerged over the past week. The Bush administration is seeking to permanently keep more than fifty military bases in Iraq. It's also insisting on continuing military campaigns without consultation with the Iraqi government and immunity for American soldiers and contractors. Speaking in Germany Wednesday, President Bush called criticism from Iraqi and US lawmakers mere 'noise in their system and our system.' Bush said the terms have been misunderstood and that he's confident a deal will be reached."
President Bush: "And one of the lessons of Iraq is, is that in order for, you know, a democracy development or in order for an economy to develop, there has to be a measure of security, which is now happening. So I think we'll get the agreement done."
Meanwhile, Republican presidential candidate John McCain is also dismissing criticism of plans for a long-term occupation of Iraq. Speaking on NBC's Today Show Wednesday, McCain was asked when he thinks US troops will return from Iraq. McCain replied, "That's not too important. What's important is the casualties in Iraq. Americans are in South Korea (but the Koreans pay for it), Americans are in Japan (and the Japanese pay for it), American troops are in Germany. That's all fine."
JUAN GONZALEZ 6/12/08: Welcome to all our listeners and viewers around the country and around the world. Following outcry by Iraqi lawmakers, the Bush administration is now offering limited concessions in its demands for a long-term "status of forces" agreement between Iraq and the United States.
The deal sought by the Bush administration, details of which were leaked to the press, were seen as a way of extending the US occupation of Iraq indefinitely. The demands included maintaining fifty-eight permanent military bases in Iraq, immunity for American troops and contractors, a free hand to conduct military operations without Iraqi approval, and control of Iraqi airspace. According to the London Independent, the US is now lowering the number of bases it wants from fifty-eight to "the low dozens" and says it is willing to compromise on legal immunity for foreign contractors.
The negotiations are being held before the UN mandate authorizing the US occupation expires at the end of the year. The Independent of London reported last week the US is leveraging tens of billions of dollars in seized Iraqi assets to push through its demands.
AMY GOODMAN: British journalist Patrick Cockburn broke this story last week. He is the Middle East correspondent for the London Independent and has reported from Iraq for many years now. He is the author of several books, including The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq. His latest is called Muqtada: Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia Revival and the Struggle for Iraq. Patrick Cockburn joins us now from Washington, D.C.
Welcome to this country, Patrick.
PATRICK COCKBURN: Thank you very much.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you lay out for us exactly what the deal is and how you uncovered it?
PATRICK COCKBURN: Well, this is an extraordinary, important development in Iraq. It really will determine whether Iraq is an independent country or not. Or will it be a client state of the US?
As you reported, the US negotiators were demanding initially fifty-eight bases. They're not calling them permanent bases, though that's exactly what they are. The bases might have, let's say, an Iraqi soldier outside and a single strand of barbed wire, in which case the Iraqis will supposedly be in charge of their defense, so it won't be an American base. But everybody knows that it is.
Then there's the question of immunity for American soldiers and Iraqi contractors, i.e. they won't come under Iraqi law. And the US will also control airspace and have various other rights.
Now, although Ryan Crocker and President Bush are saying Iraq under this new agreement will once again be a sovereign nation, most of the rights we associate with a sovereign nation will be in the possession of the US.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And in terms of the reaction in Iraq among the various forces there, as news of this has begun to dribble out?
PATRICK COCKBURN: There's been an explosive reaction, because this is a deeply divisive demand by the US. There will be some Iraqis who will be willing to accept it, mainly maybe the Kurds. There will be others in the government who will do it. But there will be many other Iraqis, almost certainly a majority, who will see this agreement as showing that the Iraqi government is a puppet of the US. It will delegitimize it. It will lay the basis for a further deepening of the war in Iraq. So it's an extraordinary--you know, Iraq is full of spurious invented turning points, but this really is a turning point for Iraq.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Now, your article suggests that Prime Minister al-Maliki himself is opposed to major parts of this proposal?
PATRICK COCKBURN: Yes, I mean, he's--mostly can see the downside for himself, that this is going to go down real badly with a lot of Iraqis, including people in his own majority Shia community and including people in the coalition of parties which make up his own government. And one of the senior members of his own party was saying the Americans have asked for immunity for everybody and everything, apart from the dogs they bring to Iraq. So this is not very good news for him.
But on the same time, he and his government feel at the end of the day they depend on the US, and they're under very intense personal pressure from President Bush and Dick Cheney's office, according to Iraqi officials I've spoken to, and it will be difficult for them to stop this happening. And they've been given a deadline of the 31st of July.
AMY GOODMAN: Patrick Cockburn, how is the US leveraging billions of dollars to try to force through this agreement?
PATRICK COCKBURN: Well, the Iraqi reserves, the Iraqi money, is in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The reason it's there is historical and rather surprising. It dates from 1990, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, and there are still really sanctions against Iraq as a danger to the rest of the world. That money, about $50 billion, is in the bank. But there have been many court cases brought against it. It's protected currently by a presidential immunity. And what US negotiators in Baghdad have been implying to their Iraqi counterparts is that if they don't cut a deal on American terms, then that presidential immunity might lapse at the end of the year, and the Iraqis wouldn't be able to get their hands on these massive reserves, which they need very badly.
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Patrick Cockburn. He broke the story of the US proposal to Iraq that the US is pushing through right now, which includes more than fifty military bases. Now, can you explain that? And also comment on John McCain, the once again controversial comment he made about war. This time it was on NBC. He was talking about--when asked when he thinks US troops will return from Iraq, "That's not too important. What's important is the casualties in Iraq. Americans are in South Korea...Japan...in Germany. That's all fine." But talk about that and these bases.
PATRICK COCKBURN: You know, I've been going to Iraq since 1977. I spend much of my time there. I think it's frankly a fantasy world, because Iraq--most Iraqis don't like the occupation. There's nothing surprising about this. Most--few countries do. So long as there is a US army there, there's going to be resistance to it. And this current agreement will probably increase the level of violence. Now, the number of American soldiers being killed has dropped from maybe three a day to one a day, but it could go right up again at any moment.
I think Senator McCain's idea that somehow with the end of the road, with a pacified Iraq, where you can have a United States Army sitting there, wholly accepted by the local population, and that there will be no armed attacks on it is a complete misunderstanding of the situation, you know, and it's part and parcel of what he's been saying for a year, that the situation in Baghdad is better than has been reported. I mean, honestly, I wish it was. I wish I could go out and report this, but--and he has the advantage--but he's wrong. And it's so dangerous. It's still very difficult for reporters to really get around Baghdad and stay in one piece.
continued...
On 6/10/08, John McCain proposed a Reduction in Estate Taxes, this man of the people (My Friends!!)? Yes, he's a Republican, his second wife is worth over $100million (from a beer franchise), among his major backers are lobbyists for investment bankers, hedgefund operators and the super wealthy like Sheldon G. Adelson! That's the Republican mantra - Cut taxes, even though our unfounded (and unfunded) national debt is skyrocketing this last eight years.
On 6/13/08 John McCain called Boumediene v. Bush, the long-overdue 5-4 Supreme Court decision, "one of the worst decisions in the history of the country." Leaving aside the worst decision in recent memory, the 2000 Bush vs Gore 5-4 Court debacle which awarded the United States presidency to George W. Bush, what did this last week's Court decision restore? The writ of habeas corpus, the pillar of the Magna Carta "the great charter of English liberties, forced from King John and sealed at Runnymede, June 15, 1215." Senator Barrack Obama praised the decision as "an important step toward re-establishing our credibility as a nation committed to the rule of law."
As if to emphasize the failure of the Bush/McCain policies...
...the core of which was the insidious shift (stealthily treacherous) of the military target from Afghanistan, which had spawned 9/11, to Saddam Hussein's Iraq which had been used, not ironically, but pointedly by prior US Republican administrations in deference to Israel, to weaken both Iraq and Iran, which right-wing Zionist Israelis rightly viewed as obstacles to the creation of a Greater Israel...
...on 6/13/08, this last Friday night, the Afghani Taliban assaulted the main prison in Kandahar and freed twelve hundred of "the most experienced killers held in Afghanistan", this according to Ahmed Wali Karzai, head of Kandahar's provincial council and brother of President Hamid Karzai.
This 6/16/08 item is one of the more bizarre recent war and peace N Y Times reports of the last eight years, headlined "Rice Slams Israel's Settlements", story by Ethan Bronner, a reversal of the Condoleezza Rice record, about which she has never been asked by any of the many national news correspondents on the networks, on cable or on any of the major newspapers of this nation. This is a puzzle in that a book published in 2004 explicitly describes Ms. Rice's inaugural responsibility in what has become the most damaging series of policies, foreign and/or domestic, since the Civil War. Those who have read the last paragraph on page 260, the first paragraph on page 261 and the last paragraph on page 261 in Jim Bamford's 2004 breathtaking A Pretext For War, particularly these phrases - "Condi will run these meetings" said Bush & "simply let Israel take care of the Palestinians as it saw fit" - it was pathetic to hear the many news reports over the weekend of 6/14-15/08 of Condoleezza Rice in Israel and the West Bank berating the Israelis for the infamous, nefarious Middle East policy which the Bush/McCain cabal began on January 30, 2001 with Bush's first high-level national security meeting, and continue to this day.
One of the many Jewish American activists in this policy, the Chief Judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Laurence H. Silberman, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom 6/19/08 by George W. Bush, joining former Bush/Jewish American activist awardees William Safir of The New York Times (aka Safire) and Natan Sharansky, former member of the Israeli cabinet and presently director of one of Sheldon Adelson's many pro-Israel Zionist cells.
Amy Goodman DemocracyNow 6/23/08
AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to news from the Middle East. The New York Times reported Friday that Israel recently carried out a major military exercise that Pentagon officials say appeared to be a rehearsal for potential bombing attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. More than 100 Israeli F-16 and F-15 fighter planes took part in the maneuvers over the eastern Mediterranean and Greece. Helicopters and refueling tankers flew more than 900 miles, which is about the same distance between Israel and Iran's uranium enrichment plant at Natanz.
An Israeli military spokesperson said the country's air force "regularly trains for various missions in order to confront and meet the challenges posed by the threats facing Israel." An Israeli politician told the London Times, meanwhile, that this was "a dress rehearsal" and Iran should "read the writing on the wall." Iran said it considers such an attack "impossible" but warned of a "devastating" response in the event of such an attack.
Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the IAEA, during an Al Arabiya television interview, said he would resign if a military strike were carried out on Iran.
MOHAMED ELBARADEI: [translated] If there ended up being a military action against Iran at this time, then I will be unable to continue my work.
AMY GOODMAN: ElBaradei added that "I don't believe that what I see in Iran today is a current, grave and urgent danger. A military strike, in my opinion, would be worse than anything possible. It would turn the region into a fireball. If you do a military strike, it will mean that Iran, if it is not already making nuclear weapons, will launch a crash course to build nuclear weapons with the blessing of all Iranians, even those in the West."
Well, we're joined right now by blogger, Quaker activist and veteran journalist Helena Cobban from Washington, D.C. She is a contributing editor for the Boston Review and writes regularly on the Middle East for the Christian Science Monitor and the London-based Arabic daily Al-Hayat. Her blog is justworldnews.org. Her latest book is called Re-Engage: America and the World After Bush.
We welcome you to Democracy Now!, Helena. Can you talk abut the Israeli military exercise and what this means?
HELENA COBBAN: Hi, Amy. Hi, everybody out there. Yeah, I was fascinated by the report for a number of reasons. One was the name of Michael R. Gordon, New York Times reporter, at the top on the byline, one of the two names on the byline. Michael Gordon was one of the people who during the whole Judith Miller event, series of events leading up to the invasion of Iraq, was in a sense working with Judy Miller, just taking these unnamed Pentagon sources and presenting them unexamined as the truth on the front page of the New York Times. And here he was doing exactly the same thing. The whole story was sourced to unnamed Pentagon officials. And clearly, the Pentagon wanted this, or these people in the Pentagon wanted this news to get out onto the front page of the New York Times.
So, I put on my thinking cap, and I was thinking, like, what is going on here? It's not exactly what it seems to be. I wish obviously that Michael Gordon and Eric Schmitt, his co-byline writer there, had asked some of the more interesting questions. For example, these exercises were held at the end of May and the beginning of June; why didn't we learn about them then? Why was it leaked now? That's one good question. Another good question is, what is the involvement actually of some portions of the US military in all this? Because the exercises took place in a portion of the East Mediterranean that is certainly NATO air space. So, you can't say that nobody in the US military knew about this. There has to have been some degree of complicity.
Then, if they are indeed preparing--Israel is really preparing for an attack on Iran--and this is where it gets extremely scary--we, as Americans, need to understand that that has major and very, very catastrophic consequences for us, because there is no way that any kind of an Israeli bombing raid against Iran could reach the targets that they seek there without going through US-controlled airspace either in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, NATO air space in Turkey or whatever. So, the US would be complicit in that attack, would be seen as that, and would therefore be subject to reprisals, because, you know, launching a military attack on another country is an act of war. Maybe we've forgotten that. I guess, no, we haven't forgotten that, because that's what we did in Iraq in 2003.
So, if we are complicit in Israel's act of war against Iran, then the 160,000 US military service people in Iraq are sitting ducks for Iranian reprisal. This is very scary stuff. And, you know, obviously the supply lines that support them in Iraq are long and vulnerable and mainly go through the waters of the Gulf. They could be cut off by the Iranians, but, you know, if the Iranians just did a couple of small things in the Straits of Hormuz and shut the Gulf, and that obviously also majorly affects the international oil market. So, one thing we did see when the report came out Friday was that oil prices spiked again, just with this kind of very sketchy report that the Israelis were upping the ante, upping the tension level against Iran. The oil prices spiked again.
So, this has major consequences for us as Americans. And I have a whole bunch of questions as to what was really going on. I mean, I cannot believe that anybody in the Pentagon would seriously be complicit in allowing Israel to use US planes that were given to Israel for defensive purposes only, to allow Israel to go ahead and bomb Iran, knowing that there would be, as the Iranians have promised and threatened--and we have every reason to believe them--major reprisals against everybody complicit in that attack afterwards. You know, so this is really the Israelis being very reckless in matters where it is the US that is primarily vulnerable.
And, you know, it's strange to me that people in the Pentagon--and there still are a few neocons dug deep into the Pentagon, though I think the Secretary of Defense Bob Gates is much more sensible and realistic than people like Rumsfeld, Doug Feith, Wolfowitz, when they were there, but there still are a few neocons dug deep into the Pentagon. There are some neocons, lots of neocons still lined up in Vice President Cheney's office. So, are these people, you know, actually conniving with Israel and doing something that is risky, extremely risky, extremely grave, regarding our interests as the US citizenry? So, you know, I've been blogging about that a bit.
AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you about a comment made by Bill Kristol, the Weekly Standard editor and op-ed columnist for the New York Times. On Fox News Sunday, he said President Bush is more likely to attack Iran if he believes Senator Barack Obama is going to be elected. He said if the President thought John McCain was going to be the next president, he would think it more appropriate to let the next president make that decision than do it on his way out, said Kristol. Your response, Helena Cobban?
HELENA COBBAN: Well, I don't know whether Bill Kristol is channeling the President, whether he's accurately representing the way the President thinks. He may be accurately representing the way Vice President Cheney thinks. You know, Cheney is a very powerful and nefarious figure in the administration, evidently.
But, you know, I think we all need to take about three steps back and just look at this based on the facts. What do we know about Iran's nuclear program? We do not know that they have a nuclear weapons program. You know, we had the NIE back last November that told us they had actually suspended important aspects of the nuclear weapons program back in 2003. And nobody has said that they have reconstituted those aspects of the weapons program since then. So the basis for any kind of attack, either by the US or by Israel or by anybody, just doesn't exist under international law, just as it didn't exist back in 2003 against Iraq.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to another issue, the truce between Israel and Hamas. This is the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert just describing the truce or calm that was announced last week.
PRIME MINISTER EHUD OLMERT: [translated] It should be clear, we did not and will not conduct negotiations with any terror organizations. We have no illusions. What they are calling a "calm" is fragile and likely to be short-lived. I want to make clear that the Hamas is the aggressor in Gaza, and it is the one responsible for any violations of the calm. Should the shooting and the terror attacks continue, Israel will be forced to act in order to remove the threat off its citizens.
AMY GOODMAN: And this is a reaction from the Hamas spokesperson Sami Abu Zuhri.
SAMI ABU ZUHRI: We call upon the international community to quit the policy of isolation with Hamas and adopt the policy of dialog. Adopting the policy of calm by the occupation meant that isolation and boycott had failed.
AMY GOODMAN: Helena Cobban, what is happening in this truce?
HELENA COBBAN: Well, it's fascinating. I've been following this issue for a long time. And back in January, I actually was in Damascus, and I interviewed Khaled Meshal, who's the head of Hamas. Now, you know, the Bush administration has been working for a long time to either crush or completely isolate and marginalize both Hamas and Hezbollah. But Hamas and Hezbollah, you know, they are Islamist political movements that have real roots in their society, that have proven themselves in elections, free elections, in their societies. They're very different from al-Qaeda. And I think we as Americans need to understand that and need to understand that you cannot crush these organizations.
So, actually, the Israelis, an important section of the Israeli political elite, including Prime Minister Olmert, recognized that there is no military action that they can take in Gaza that can crush Hamas, that the only way to get Hamas to stop rocketing Israel is to engage in a ceasefire, a reciprocal ceasefire with Hamas. So, Israel is not going to be launching its big military operations into Gaza that have killed so many people over the past years. Israel is not going to be launching those assassinations, those extrajudicial execution operations against Hamas leaders that they've been doing--180 of them, I believe, in the last few years, including historic leaders of Hamas. So, they're not going to be attacking Hamas, and Hamas is not going to be attacking Israel. I think it's a real breakthrough.
It was mediated by Egypt, and that's significant, too, because Egypt, of course, is a big US ally. And what we see right now is all these US allies in the region, in the Middle East, completely going off the reservation, if you like, beyond what the Bush White House wants them to do. In fact, the Bush White House is kind of left running along behind, trying to explain, like, how did Israel do this indirect deal with Hamas? Why did Egypt get involved in it? How did Qatar, our ally down in the Gulf, why did they broker this deal that allowed Hezbollah to, you know, actually make some significant gains in Lebanon? And what is Turkey doing, rushing around making peace between Israel and Syria at a time that Elliott Abrams and Dick Cheney want us to continue isolating and marginalizing and crushing the Syrian regime?
So, a lot is happening in the region, where the regional powers are dealing with each other, mediating ceasefires and de-escalatory moves with each other, that the US is just absent from, and that's interesting and significant, because for the last thirty years the US has sought to monopolize all peacemaking diplomacy in the Middle East. And now the parties themselves are treating Washington as irrelevant.
AMY GOODMAN: We have to leave it there. I want to thank you very much, Helena Cobban, of justworldnews.org, latest book, Re-Engage: America and the World After Bush.
We have great respect for both Amy Goodman and her guest Helena Cobban, but we cannot overlook the power of AIPAC, the billions of dollars we give (not loan) to Israel, nor the influence of John McCain and his fervent supporters, such as John Hagee.
What has happened to OUR Declaration of Independence. We did not declare our freedom from the British to be subservient to Israel some two hundred years later. We can no longer ignore such warnings as Katy Couric and David Martin presented on the 6/24/08 CBS Evening News...and that given by Amy Goodman and Seymour Hersh on 6/30/08 -
CBS NATIONAL NEWS
6/24/2008 18:30:00
NEWSCASTER KATIE COURIC: A blunt message over Iran's nuclear program. The Israelis tell Washington: If you don't destroy their nukes, we will.
More tough talk from Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He vows to continue full speed ahead on his nuclear program in spite of new economic sanctions imposed today by the European Union. This as the U.S. and Israel discuss what could be the next step against Iran - a military attack. From the Pentagon, here's David Martin.
REPORTER: Joint Chiefs Chairman, Admiral Mike Mullen, leaves tonight on an overseas trip that will take him to Israel. The trip has been scheduled for some time, but U.S. officials say it comes just as the Israelis are mounting a full-court-press to get the Bush administration to strike Iran's nuclear complex. CBS consultant Michael Oren says Israel doesn't want to wait for a new administration.
MICHAEL OREN, CBS NEWS MIDDLE EAST ANALYST: The Israelis have been assured by the Bush administration, the Bush administration will not allow Iran to nuclearize [sic]. Israelis are uncertain about what would be the policy of the next administration vis-a-vis Iran.
REPORTER: Israel's message is simple: If you don't, we will. Israel held a dress rehearsal for a strike earlier this month, but military analysts say Israel cannot do it alone.
OREN: Keep in mind that Israel does not have strategic bombers. The Israeli Air Force is not the American Air Force. Israel cannot eliminate Iran's nuclear program.
REPORTER: The U.S., with its stealth bombers and cruise missiles, has a much greater capability. Vice President Cheney is said to favor a strike, but both Mullen and Defense Secretary Gates are opposed to an attack which could touch off a third war in the region. U.S. intelligence estimates Iran won't be able to build a weapon until sometime early in the next decade. But Israel is operating on a much shorter timetable.
OREN: The Iranians, according to Israeli security sources, will have an operable nuclear weapon by 2009. That's not a very long time.
REPORTER: For now, the Bush administration is counting on new economic sanctions, which took effect today, to persuade Iran to give up its nuclear program. But nobody's counting on it. David Martin, CBS News, the Pentagon.
Amy Goodman 6/30/08 (we apologize for a new Amy-anti-Demo slant - she needs it to stay on the air): Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker magazine has revealed the Democratic-led Congress agreed to a request last year from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran. Congress approved $400 million in spending for covert activities ranging from spying on Iran's nuclear program to supporting rebel groups in a bid to overthrow the Iranian government.
Amy Goodman 6/30/08: We turn now to our first segment. Congressional leaders agreed to a request from President Bush last year to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, aimed at destabilizing Iran's leadership. This according to a new article by veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker magazine. The operations were set out in a highly classified presidential finding signed by Bush, which by law, must be made known to Democratic and Republican House and Senate leaders and ranking members of the intelligence committees. The plan allowed up to $400 million dollars in covert spending for activities ranging from supporting dissident groups to spying on Iran's nuclear program. According to Hersh, U.S. special forces of been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq since last year. These have included seizing members of the Iranian revolutionary guard and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, in the pursuit of so-called "high value targets" who may be captured or killed. All covert operations against Iran are not new; Hersh writes the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which involve the C.I.A. and the joint special operations command, have now been significantly expanded. He is a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist. He joins me now on the telephone from Washington, D.C. Welcome to Democracy Now!
SEYMOUR HERSH: And a very good early morning to you.
AMY GOODMAN: Start off by talking about how you learned this information.
SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, that stops me for a second, Amy. Here's the problem with that question: this is all very classified. Let's just say that in general, there are a lot of people who are very loyal to the U.S.--military people, people in special operations, people elsewhere in the Congress obviously, people in the Executive--who are increasingly being made anxious,--and I think "frightened" is a fairly good word, too--about what this President and the Vice President may do in Iran. And so it was from that quarter I was able to learn that.... the problem with the finding, and the problem with the whole story, the complication is that, almost the last people, it seems to me, that know exactly what our special forces are doing-- particularly the joint special operations command, which is a very elite unit, whose mission essentially is, this is a separate unit of the special operations command called JSOT... Their unit to go find and kill and capture, if possible, high-value targets anywhere in the world. The whole world is a free fire zone for them. When they get into a place like Iran, where they are, the Congress isn't told. So Congress did approve-- and the words were very careful-- "up to"--because the president wanted as much as that; we just don't know how much he's taken at this point... $400 million dollars for operations. And then they discovered the operations they approved may go way beyond what they think they were approving. So it's sort of like the end of democracy, in a way. We don't know what the government is doing. People inside the government don't know what the government is doing. So it was from this sort of collective angst that people began to talk to me about the operations.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the Democratic controlled Congress, and what exactly it approved late last year?
SEYMOUR HERSH: Late last year, at the time of the--as many in the audience will remember--at the time of the National Intelligence Estimate was made public in late November or early December. And that was a document that--I do not know why it has been totally devalued by everybody, including by all the candidates. The two Democratic candidates during the primary and McCain kept on talking about Iran as if it was on the edge of being nuclear. What the N.I.E. said--and it was a really carefully done document--was since 2003, the evidence is clear that Iran has not pushed a weapons program. There's no evidence they are actually seeking weapons, as they have been saying. That's what the N.I.E. said. At the same time, as we all know this President and the Vice President and the Secretary of Defense and the National Security Adviser and the Secretary of State--they've all disavowed it. It's as if it didn't exist. At that time, Bush went to Congress with the finding that said "I need this huge chunk of money to continue operations." He has the right as President to ask that only a few members of Congress -- it's known in the law informally as the Gang of Eight -- and that would be the House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi; her counterpart, the leading Republican in the House; the Majority Leader in the Senate, Harry Reid of Nevada and his counterpart; and all the Democratic and Republican chairmans of the House and Senate Intelligence Committee--in the case of the Democrats, it's Rockefeller in the Senate and Reyes from Texas in the House. Those four Democrats got a chop at this. The finding was given to them, particularly in the intelligence committees; lawyers looked at it--and did nothing. The money was eventually appropriated by both the House and Senate Defense Appropriation Subcommittees, just as a line item. The rest of the Congress knows nothing about these kind of operations. When it gets to highly classified operations, the money is promulgated through a highly classified defense appropriations subcommittee. The rest of the people in the business--on the floor, in various committees--it could be on the other side of the moon as far as they're concerned. But those eight people, the four Democrats--Reid, Pelosi, Rockefeller and Reyes--did nothing. It's complicated because I can't tell you officially, the answer everybody gives is "we can't talk about this kind of stuff." It's amazing, it's sort of the catch-22. I did learn--
AMY GOODMAN: But again, a key point here is that the N.I.E. of the 16 spy agencies, had come out saying Iran did not have nuclear weapons, they had abandoned the program years ago.
SEYMOUR HERSH: Yes. I wouldn't say the word "abandoned," but they said there was no evidence they had done anything since 2003. It might have been "on pause," whatever you want to say. The N.I.E. was very clear, very devastating for an administration that was trying to rally public support. So what you have is at the same time, within the same few weeks, and of course the White House knew about the N.I.E. since August or probably earlier, that it was going to be hurtful in terms of their campaign against Iran. And so at the same time, these Democrats approved the money, and the best guess I can tell you--what I heard from one, two aides actually, who knew the process--is that the Democratic position was very sort of cynical. Which is that "We're going to do well next year in the election. We're gonna certainly increase our plurality in the House and Senate, and we're probably gonna win the presidency. Let's not give Bush an issue, right now. Let him have his money so he cannot accuse us"--you know, the old traditional fear of the Democrats of being soft on national security. I did hear that from a couple of people as the reason. But none of the members can speak about it, because if they do, they are violating the law. And so that's what I meant by catch- 22. For a democracy, is a very strange situation.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and what he had to say about the situation, about the Bush administration attacking Iran?
SEYMOUR HERSH: The leadership of the caucus, the Democratic Caucus in the Senate, has off-the-record lunches. Not every week, but on Thursdays usually. They're pretty sacrosanct in the sense when you go in they're pretty secure, and in this case, Gates went to one of the lunches. He knew many of the senators for many years, he's been around Washington forever. During the colloquy, [he] said very flatly, that if we bomb Iran, our grandchildren will be fighting jihadists. The senator with whom I talked about this said the other senators are stunned, a million questions about it. He eventually said he was speaking for himself. But you know, Amy, let me say something. I write in the article also that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, [Admiral Mike] Mullen, is known to be pushing back on the idea of bombing, and also that these ten combatant commanders--you know, these are the guys who run the commanders in chief in the Far East, or the CENTCOM [Central Command], or what you will. And members of some of the junior members of the joint chiefs have all signed or gotten together collectively--at least 10 of them--to say "no bombing." But here's the problem with that kind of thinking: We're ready to go. This has been an issue for this president for three years. As you know, I have been writing in The New Yorker constantly about this stuff, and it doesn't go away. After three years, our submarines are there, they have the targets, our cruise missiles, our destroyers are there, the cruise missiles are loaded on them, and all targeted. Our air force and navy--not so much the marine--will have a big role in particular in it. They have their target selection, they've gone through the practice. We have ground troops. One of the problems with hitting Iran is if you hit 'em big, is a lot of their anti-aircraft and anti-missile batteries are dug-in underground so marines and other units have to go in and basically blast them out. So before you bomb Iran, you have to take out their radar and their defensive systems. You can't do it in any other way than a big package, unless you want a lot of your planes shot down. This has been practiced, it's been exercised, they've done it, they're ready to go. I can tell you that no matter what Gates thinks and no matter what Mullen thinks, if the president says "go," on January the 13th, 2009, a week before the inauguration, they will go. Because that's just the way the system is. He's got the----
AMY GOODMAN: What about Admiral [William] Fallon, who was forced out over this?
SEYMOUR HERSH: Yeah, well that's a complicated story. He was forced out, as everybody knows. Bill Fallon was the commander-in-chief for the central command, which gave him responsibility for Afghanistan and Iraq and presumably the covert war inside Iran. What Fallon did, of course, we know that he was publicly against the bombing of Iran, he just did not think it made sense. What I discovered was that was a factor in getting him in a lot of trouble, particularly with Mr. Cheney. But another major issue for Fallon in terms of--Cheney, I should say, his attitude toward him is Fallon discovered all of the special operations inside Iraq, he knew about it, and certainly knew about some of the cross-border stuff into Iraq, and about the big stuff going on. There's been a new task force set up in Afghanistan under the Joint Special Operations Command, under the rubric of the $400 million dollars that we discussed earlier. And he couldn't get into it. He wasn't cleared. He wasn't on what they call a "bigot list." I have actually been told, here's some lieutenant commander telling a four-star admiral, "Sir, I cannot discuss this with you, because you're not cleared." He pushed. He wanted to know. This is what they call an "AO," his area of operation. He wanted to know what the hell was going on in his area of responsibility, and he did not like special forces teams operating--I don't think he was against what they were doing necessarily, but he wanted to know. He wanted the responsibility to know, and that caused him a lot of trouble. What is amazing to me for this story, is Fallon did talk about some of this in an indirect but enough of a way, and one of his former commanders when he was a two-star general--a very bright marine general named Jack Sheehan who last year was asked to be the czar for the war by the White House. If you want guys with integrity running your military, he is one of them. Sheehan talked to me on the record about it, and said Fallon's problem is with a certain group in the White House, and we all know who that is, that's the Vice President's office. I still personally think, and I do not know, because one can't know---and I have some access to the vice president's office, but I do not know what the president thinks. We all hear a lot of stories that he's not, but I still think Cheney is the top dog on a lot of issues in this government.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to Iran's reaction to the threats of a possible attack from Israel. This is what the Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki had to say at a conference on Sunday in Pakistan.
MOTTAKI: We do not see the Zionist regime in a situation in which they would engage in such adventurism. They know full well what the consequences of such an act would be in the region.
AMY GOODMAN: Seymour Hersh, your response?
SEYMOUR HERSH: Well of course. Look, Israel can't do it, because I just described earlier the kind of anti-missile defense they would run into. This is a country, Iran, that has been spending hundreds of millions if not billions on improving its defenses, at $140 a barrel. The idea of a sanction regime card hurting them seriously is comical. They're making a lot of money and buying a lot of weapons and have never improved their security to the point where the idea of is your which has submitted aircraft and limited missile, cruise missile capability, it will not be able to do much. I can tell you that inside the White House, Cheney has said more than once that Israel is not gonna go. If Israel wants to go, we will have to go because if they went, we would be blamed anyway. The whole--how much of this is posturing from Israel and how much of this is posturing by us--I don't know. I would love to have at the end of this regime be proven to be dead wrong on all this stuff, that it never was going to happen. But I do think the idea of Israel going is not realistic because they simply do not have the firepower. We're the ones that can do it. This is the Presidency--you have to listen to what these guys say. They're pretty consistent. If you listen to what they said before the invasion of Iraq, in '03 when many thought it was just crazy, including me, that it would not do it. It has been pretty clear. They could not care less with the N.I.E. said. They believe Iran either has or will have a weapon and will be stabilize Israel, and would use it against Israel, even if it meant suicide, ignoring the fact that Iran has never attacked anyone outside of its borders for 280 years, or something like that as a major power. They have never done an offensive operation, that is just a simple fact. That is just ignored by this White House. They talk about Iran--internally, their position is, we're not leave the Presidency with Iran capable of blowing up the world, and they believe they are capable. They want to stop it. It cannot stop with negotiations, I do not know what they will do. Particularly if Obama is elected. Obama looks like he's gonna win, that a definite increase the chances of the president doing something. If McCain wins, I've been told by people who listen to conversations there, it will be easier for them because they think McCain is on the same wavelength, which he is, on all of these issues, and that McCain could possibly do it in the middle of next year or whenever he chose. But if Obama is the winner, that will put pressure on Bush. Bush says all the time, he just said it a few weeks ago-- "I don't care what people think about me. I gonna do the right thing." You know, we have the most radical president we have ever had, leading our country right now, and he is completely uneducable. If that does not scare the hell out of you, it scares the hell out of me, I'll tell ya.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Seymour Hersh, what are the groups the U.S. is running right now in Iran, the opposition groups?
SEYMOUR HERSH: You know -- the enemy of my enemy is your enemy. Certainly, we have been doing a lot of stuff with the MEK [People's Mujahedin of Iran], the whackos that we have been doing stuff with inside Iran from their little base in Iraq for years, doing cross-border kind of stuff. They are still doing a lot of stuff. They're a pretty corrupt organization. They're banking a lot of money that we're giving them. As you know, Iran is a Shiite-dominated country but you have a number of Sunni groups, who live on the borders with the Sunni Kurds, who do not like the government, many elements of them do not, and they're getting funded. Another group of Shias, who are 50% of the population--there is some dissidence there. So we're dumping a lot of money into various groups. ..... You can always pay them money to kill people. Many of their young people have gone to the same madrassas and the Taliban--in the Taliban. There's a lot of other stuff going on in the name of al Qaeda. Their number of course we probably would not look at it all. We are funding the because they're against the central government. You know what it's like? Someone once said to meif the Iranians are coming in there and looking around for grabs, it is as if the Iranians came to America and wanted to cause trouble. Here's is critical the sons of the revolution in the south and have this flag and it cannot even fly the rebel flag anymore. Wow obviously this would be a great group to go up to and get them to go against the government, not knowing the sons of the revolution are totally loyal to America in every sense. We are flying blind. We do not know who we're giving money to. The idea that Iran is not a tribal country, not an Arab country, it is a Persian country, a country with a solid in terms of its national identity as France, Germany. The idea you will cause significant trouble internally is a smoke dream. What this White House wants to do with these new operations, yes, continuing the old command collecting intelligence and causing trouble. The real thing I think they want from JSOC, which are the junta killer teams of America, I think Cheney would love to get a scientist, nuclear scientists and bring them back to America and have them publicly testify to the fact that yes, indeed, Iran has 36 bomb factories, just like Vice President Cheney goes to bed with in his dreams. They would like to have that. They would also like to create enough chaos in the country, bombings, sabotage, which is going up since this operation began. There's always the connection but I do not have any empirical evidence for it. In the last four months, the latest incidents in terms of domestic violence, bombings, in attacks have gone up exponentially. We would like to the Iranian central government crackdown but in some vigorous weighed against these groups include a situation where there is sort of open dissidents, open warfare, then perhaps begin come in. The problem America has with the Bush/Cheney administration, is the American public overwhelmingly is not very interested in the bombing of Iran, despite all of the biblical talk.
AMY GOODMAN: Seymour Hersh, we will leave it there.
...And there is the Media/Press. As the month of June '08 is ending with still more American casualties in Iraq and the on going Iraqi deaths, Neil Conan and his deadly diversionary Talk Of The Nation and Judith Millers' former partner Michael Gordan (resuscitated by The Times to join Thomas L. Friedman, David Brooks, the newly acquired William Kristol and John McCain's top foreign policy and national security adviser Randy Scheunemann) Conan and Gordan join forces on the 6/26/08 TOTN to convince Joseph Christoff, and the audience, that the situation in Iraq is improving, even though as Bob Herbert in The Times 6/24/08 OP-ED repeated "for the first time in history, a sizable and growing number of US combat troops are taking daily doses of anti-depressants to calm nerves strained by repeated and lengthy tours in Iraq and Afghanistan."
Bob Herbert: Soldiers and marines are being sent into the war zones again and again because the pool of young people willing to join up and fight is so small. In addition to the obvious physical danger, repeated tours in combat are blueprints for psychological disaster.
"A study by the RAND Corporation found that the psychological toll of deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan may in fact be 'disproportionately high compared to the physical injuries of combat.'"
On an Amy Goodman 6/11/08 transcript we have the quote of George W. Bush leaving for John McCain a "multi-lateral framework" for the interminable continued US occupation of Iraq, regardless of the sentiments of a proud Iraqi people or the representatives of the people of the United States, our Congress, particularly the United States Senate. Mr. Bush and, now, Mr. McCain are joined at the hip with Big Oil and have personal histories of great personal benefits from that close relationship, but NOT SO FOR THE AMERICAN PUBLIC NOR THE POPULATION OF IRAQ! This is the election in which both the American people and the population of the Middle East can finally recover from the abominable political power of both Big Oil and Israel. Recall the CIA/Big Oil overthrow of the fairly elected Iranian Premier Mohammed Mossadegh by President Eisenhower in 1953. The Iranian people certainly remember, and the American people finally have the opportunity for an administration in Washington that can right the once-admired United States Ship of State. United States Senators Barack Obama (D-Ill.), Joseph Biden Jr. (D-Del.) and James Webb (D-Va.), of course all Democrats, are beginning the turnaround by Senator Obama's campaign and Senator Webb's expertise, as evidenced by his grilling 4/8/08 of Ryan C. Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq -
First the statement on the 7/22/08 Lehrer NewsHour, to Mr. Lehrer, by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen - - Then the expose' of this "strategic framework agreement" conspiracy by the George W. Bush/John Sidney McCain III regime -
Admiral Mike Mullen: We're in the midst of negotiations right now, very important negotiations for a, our strategic framework agreement. We've got United Nations authority which run out at the end of the year, and, actually, I think the discussions about these negotiations...I'm confident that we'll reach the agreements that we need to continue to operate.
Petraeus, Crocker testify at Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Iraq (washingtonpost.com)
BIDEN: Senator Webb? (4/8/08)
WEBB: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Gentlemen, I've been at it almost as long as you have today, I think. I would first like to say that, obviously, from the questions that you received on this committee, we've got a pretty strong consensus on this committee that this country has put itself in two distinct strategic disadvantages with the situation that we've been in Iraq.
The first is that we've had the greatest maneuver forces in the world, the United States Army, United States Marine Corps, tied down block by block, city by city, talking about sectarian strife, et cetera, in one country while the forces of international terrorism have remained mobile and, in many cases, have recentered themselves elsewhere.
And the second is, as Senator Voinovich was so adamantly talking about, our national strategic posture when you look at the economy, our ability to focus on larger strategic interests, particularly, in my view, what has been happening with the evolution of China during this process have also been falling by the wayside.
And, Ambassador, I know when you and I were visiting before your confirmation hearing, we had, I think -- we were pretty much in agreement as to what robust diplomacy really would mean and how it would impact the future of the region.
Robust diplomacy can only happen from the very top -- I mean the very top. You all are at the very top. I'm not at the very top. We know what we're talking about, and it hasn't happened in many reasons as a conscious decision.
And with respect to the ability to address Al Qaida wherever it would reform itself, I have a pretty strong faith in the Iraqis. If you look at what they did in Al Anbar, they finally got sick enough of it that it was the Iraqis developing the will to fight. I'm not that concerned long term if we reposition our forces.
Now, that being said, and I said it fast, Ambassador Crocker, I want to get back into this diplomatic arrangement that I was talking to you about earlier.
If one reads your testimony, page five of your testimony, you speak about that we have -- and I'm going to quote you here -- "We have begun negotiating a bilateral relationship between Iraq and the United States."
I've been having several meetings for several months on this, trying to understand exactly what that means, and from what I can understand, there are actually two documents that go into this. Is that not correct?
CROCKER: That is correct.
CROCKER: There is a...
WEBB: Will it be a strategic framework agreement? And then, pursuant to the strategic framework agreement, there would be a status of forces agreement. Right.
CROCKER: Status of forces agreement. That is correct.
WEBB: That was not clear from your testimony, and it hasn't been completely clear from your oral testimony today, either. I think we need to understand that.
And, Mr. Chairman, I think we need to pay very close attention in the next couple of months to the first agreement, the strategic framework agreement.
We've asked to actually be able to see what that document looks like. And I would -- I'll give you the same question I had earlier in terms of that document -- what would have to be in that document before, in the view of this administration, it would require congressional approval?
CROCKER: Senator, with respect to the status of forces agreement, as I had said earlier, we -- that will -- we expect that will have a number of elements in common with...
WEBB: Well, I understand status of forces agreement. But a status of forces agreement in my experience -- and I've been doing this pretty well as long as you have -- is that it -- a status of forces agreement is pursuant to an agreement that gives two countries some sort of a relationship. It could be the United States-Japan bilateral security arrangement, or it could be the collective situation like we have in NATO.
So the real question is the strategic framework.
CROCKER: Right. I was -- the point I was going to make on the SOFA, and I know you know this, but I just -- I think it needs to be out there where it's clear to everyone -- our intention is to negotiate that as we have done all of our other SOFAs, except the NATO SOFA, as an executive agreement.
The strategic framework agreement, which we and the Iraqis conceive as setting out a vision for our ongoing relationship in a variety of fields -- political, economic, cultural, scientific...
WEBB: And security.
CROCKER: And security, that is correct, we do not see that strategic framework agreement as rising to the level of an executive agreement.
WEBB: I'm looking at an article that came from the Guardian today which at least ostensibly quotes from the working draft of that agreement. And there's some very, very careful language in there in terms of how external threats would be dealt with.
But it really seems to me very clearly to be tiptoeing to the edge of what would require overt congressional approval. And I'm not going to take anymore time, you know, from the day on this.
WEBB: But I would hope that we could do some, you know, some follow-on examination of this, Mr. Chairman.
And also, you are, Ambassador Crocker, from what we were told when we met with people from the administration, you are the lead negotiator on both of those agreements. Is that not correct?
CROCKER: I'm overseeing the process from Baghdad, yes. In terms of the SOFA, we've got someone out to head that effort, who is a specialist in the field.
But it is true that I am overseeing the overall effort. And it is certainly our intention to be fully transparent with this. I believe the committee has had briefings, or the staff has had briefings on where we are, and...
WEBB: We've had briefings, but, to my knowledge, at least from the perspective of our office, the administration has declined to show us the document, so we really don't know what we're dealing with.
CROCKER: Well, it's obviously important that we do have a relationship of some confidence on this. And I will talk to my colleagues to see that we do.
WEBB: And I thank you for your testimony, and I wish you luck tomorrow.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
BIDEN: Senator, let me say, with the witnesses here, that we're having a hearing on this, with the administration, on Thursday, on this very thing.
I guarantee you, as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow, this committee will know exactly what is in that agreement, number one.
Number two, we've been told thus far, it doesn't settle it, that there is no -- there will not be any, as was just stated, will not be any executive agreements.
So it does not rise to any enforceable agreement. The danger, in my view, I think we're going to find, is the Iraqis are going to think it means something, and we're going to be acknowledging it doesn't mean anything other than a wish, an aspiration.
Because it says, I've been told by the administration, they would consult with the Iraqis if the following things were to occur -- consult, not binding anyone.
BIDEN: If it's anything short of that, then it rises to a different level. But I promise you, we will know exactly -- exactly what this strategic framework agreement entails.
In Iraq, Timetables or Horizons or...? (The New York Times 7/23/08)
To the Editor:
In his Op-Ed article, Adm. William J. Fallon (7/20/08) expressed support for a "strategic framework agreement" with Iraq negotiated by the Bush administration that would "define our future commitments" on the use of military force. There is just one problem: the president has no constitutional authority to conclude such a sweeping agreement without the consent of Congress.
Despite repeated demands at Congressional hearings, the Bush administration has refused to submit its proposed agreement for legislative approval. The president continues to insist that he can act alone despite clear requirements of the Constitution. Without explaining why, Admiral Fallon supports presidential unilateralism in the name of "the general good."
But there is no greater good than fidelity to the Constitution. Admiral Fallon's cavalier treatment of fundamental principles should not serve as a precedent for other prominent military officers. Their public disparagement of the Constitution would threaten the very foundations of civilian control. - Bruce Ackerman - New Haven, July 21, 2008 - The writer is a professor of law and political science at Yale University.
We can assume that if there is one Senator in Washington who will not press Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan C. Crocker on negotiations to withdraw US combat forces from Iraq or to relinquish Commander in Chief George W. Bush's fanatical hold on Iraq, it is John Sidney McCain III. Paul Krugman's Independence Day OP-ED piece in The New York Times explains in part why McCain's psychological bent can be and would be so dangerous were he to, somehow, occupy our White House.
Rove's Third Term
By PAUL KRUGMAN, New York Times 7/4/2008
Al Gore never claimed that he invented the Internet. Howard Dean didn't scream. Hillary Clinton didn't say she was staying in the race because Barack Obama might be assassinated. And Wesley Clark didn't impugn John McCain's military service.
Scott McClellan, the former White House press secretary, titled his tell-all memoir "What Happened." But a true account of modern American politics should be titled "What Didn't Happen." Again and again we've had media firestorms over supposedly revealing incidents that never actually took place.
The latest fake scandal fit the usual pattern as an awkwardly phrased remark, lifted out of context and willfully misinterpreted, exploded across the airwaves.
What General Clark actually said was that Mr. McCain's war service, though heroic, didn't necessarily constitute a qualification for the presidency. It was a blunt but truthful remark, and not at all outrageous -- especially given the fact that General Clark is himself a bona fide war hero.
Yet the Clark affair did reveal something important -- not about General Clark, but about Mr. McCain. Now we know what a McCain administration would represent: namely, a third term for Karl Rove.
It was predictable that the McCain campaign would go wild over the Clark remarks. Mr. McCain's run for the White House has always been based on persona rather than policy: he doesn't have ideas that voters agree with, but he does have an inspiring life story -- which, contrary to the myth of the modest maverick, he talks about all the time. The suggestion that this life story isn't relevant to his quest for office was bound to provoke a violent reaction.
But the McCain campaign went beyond condemning General Clark's remarks; it went out of its way to distort them. "This backhanded slap against John as not being a worthy warrior because he just got shot down is one of the more surprising insults in my military history," said retired Col. Bud Day, who participated in a conference call organized by the campaign. In fact, General Clark had said no such thing.
The irony, not lost on Democrats, is that Col. Day himself has done what he falsely accused Wesley Clark of doing: he appeared in the 2004 Swift boat ads that impugned John Kerry's wartime service.
The willingness of the McCain campaign to engage in these tactics, employing such tainted spokesmen, tells us that the campaign has decided to go negative -- specifically, to apply the strategy Karl Rove used so effectively in 2002 and 2004 (but not so effectively in 2006), that of portraying Democrats as unpatriotic.
And sure enough, Adam Nagourney of The New York Times reports signs of the "increasing influence of veterans of Mr. Rove's shop in the McCain operation."
Will Rovian tactics work this year?
In 2002 and 2004, Republicans were so successful at playing the patriotism card thanks to a combination of compliant media and cowering Democrats. At first, the Clark affair suggested that nothing has changed. News organizations reported as fact the false assertion that General Clark criticized Mr. McCain's military service, and the Obama campaign rushed to "reject" his remarks.
"Two days into the Wesley Clark fallout," wrote the Columbia Journalism Review on Tuesday morning, "the press, the G.O.P., and the Obama campaign all seem to have agreed that Clark's recent remarks on John McCain's service record were at best impolitic and at worst despicable."
Since then, however, both the press and the Obama campaign seem to have recovered some of their balance. Opinion pieces have started to appear pointing out that General Clark didn't say what he's accused of saying. Mr. Obama has also declared that General Clark doesn't owe Mr. McCain an apology for his "inartful" remarks and denies that his own condemnation, in a speech given on Monday, of those who "devalue" military service was aimed at the general.
In the end, the Clark affair may have strengthened the Obama campaign. Last week, with his cave-in on wiretapping, Mr. Obama was showing disturbing signs of falling into the usual Democratic cringe on national security. This may have been the week he rediscovered the virtues of standing tall.
Furthermore, my sense, though it's hard to prove, is that the press is feeling a bit ashamed about the way it piled on General Clark. If so, news organizations may think twice before buying into the next fake scandal.
If so, the campaign has just taken a major turn in Mr. Obama's favor. After all, if this campaign isn't dominated by faux outrage over fake scandals, it will have to be about things that really did happen, like a failed economic policy and a disastrous war -- both of which Mr. McCain promises will continue if he wins.
AMY GOODMAN: Today is the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel, what Palestinians call the Nakba, or catastrophe, that resulted in the expulsion and dispossession of over 750,000 Palestinians from cities and villages.
Tomorrow, a discussion with Israeli historian Benny Morris. Today, I talk to Palestinian writer and doctor Ghada Karmi, one of the hundreds of thousands forced to flee in 1948. Ghada Karmi is a well known Palestinian writer and medical doctor from Jerusalem who lives in Britain now. She is currently a research fellow at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter. She has written several books about Palestinian history and her own experience, including In Search of Fatima: A Palestinian Story and, most recently, Married to Another Man: Israel's Dilemma in Palestine.
I began by asking Ghada Karmi what happened to her family in 1948.
GHADA KARMI: I was in a house in West Jerusalem. I had been born in that part of Jerusalem. And I was a child. I was eight, and I didn't understand actually what was happening. Nobody talked to us really or told us what was really happening. But what I do remember is that everybody was very scared. And I wrote about this in my memoir, In Search of Fatima.
It was a very bad period in my life, because as a child, the things that mattered to me were what was familiar: my home, my dog. I had a lovely--well, a dog, which I loved dearly. We all loved him. He was called Rexy. And the thing that is very vivid in my mind is a scene of the morning that we left the house. It was in April 1948. And I knew that we had to leave the dog behind. And for me, that was the most painful thing I could imagine. I knew I couldn't talk to him. I couldn't make him understand that we wouldn't be away for long, because my mother said, "We're not going to be away for long. Don't worry. It's only because it's very, very bad now, and we're going to be back, not to worry." And they believed that, of course.
But the situation around us was so dangerous. You could hardly go out of the front door, because there were Jewish militias, armed men who roamed the streets, who were in empty buildings, who took shots at people. And it was absolutely terrifying. So my parents thought, "Right, we'll evacuate. We have a young family. We can't leave them in this danger. It'll be a couple of weeks, the whole thing will settle down."
But for me, as a child, two weeks is an eternity. And as I embraced the dog, I hugged him, and I said to him, "Don't worry. It's OK. We will be back. We will. It won't be long." But I had a feeling somehow, a terrible feeling, that there was something wrong, and we--maybe we wouldn't be back. And so it turned out to be.
We left in a taxi, very hurriedly, because the neighborhood was so dangerous. No taxi would come near it, but somehow we got a taxi. It was pretty old. It was very decrepit. And we got into it, and it drove us as fast as possible down to the old city, where there was a big bus depot where you could take transport out of Palestine. So we had a car from there, and we drove over to Damascus to my grandparents' house, with the feeling--my mother constantly saying, "Look, don't worry. We're going to be back in a couple of weeks." And that's what we thought. But my memories were--some kind of dread. I don't know what it was, some kind of child's intuition--who knows?--that it was--we wouldn't be--there was something wrong that was very, very serious. And we went to my grand---
AMY GOODMAN: And who is "we"?
GHADA KARMI: There was my mother, my father; there were three children. I was the youngest.
But the worst part, of course, was that Fatima--was a woman who used to come and clean the house. She was a village woman. She used to look after my--she looked after me. She looked after our house. She used to help my mother cook. And I loved her dearly. She really was my mother, actually. I loved her. And leaving that morning, I left the dog, I left Fatima, in that order, and it was the most terrible thing. I can't even think about it, it was so painful. And then we went, and we never returned. Israel never allowed us to go back.
Many years later, in the 1970s, just for the heck of it, I wrote a letter to the Israeli embassy in London, where of course we were living. I said I lived in Jerusalem, my house was there, I would like to go back to live there. And he wrote back--they wrote back, and they said, "No, that is not possible for you. You can come in as a--on a tourist visa as a visitor." And that was it.
AMY GOODMAN: Did you ever?
GHADA KARMI: Yeah, I did. I wanted to find the house. I looked for it desperately in the early 1990s, couldn't find it, because I didn't remember. My brother and my sister, who did remember, weren't with me.
But then I tried again, and I did find it. And we went in. There was a Canadian Jewish family living in it, Orthodox, and they didn't speak Hebrew. I didn't speak Hebrew either, but I had an Israeli friend in case I couldn't make myself understood. So, however, we needn't have bothered, because they spoke English. And they went--they were very uncomfortable. They didn't want me to look around. I said, "Can I look around? This was my home." And they said, "It's nothing to do with us. It's nothing to do with us." In fact, they were tenants. And I went around, but they hurried me out. I didn't have much time to look around, to relive the memories, to get the feelings, the feelings back, because as a child, you know, it's the feeling that comes back. You don't really remember where that chair was, where that wall was, where that--you know. I had to leave, and it was terribly--as you can imagine, it was extremely upsetting.
But then a very strange thing happened. I returned to Palestine in 2005, where I worked in Ramallah for the Palestinian Authority. I wanted to live in Palestine for a while, and I had a visa, and I went in there to do work. I was working for the United Nations. And one day, I got a message from a man called Steven Erlanger, whom I had never met. I didn't really know who he was, but of course I realized he was the bureau chief for the New York Times, saying "I have read your marvelous memoir, and, do you know, I think I'm living above your old house." And it was amazing. He said, "From the description in your book, it must be the same place." Anyway, we arranged to meet. I went over to Jerusalem, and I met him. And indeed, it was my house.
And what had happened was somebody at some point had built a story above the old house, which was of course a one-story place, a villa, typical of that kind of architecture. But somebody had built a floor above it, and that belonged to the New York Times. And the incumbent at the time was Steven Erlanger, who had been moved by the memoir and said, "This is your house?" And I said, "Yes, it is." And he took me--I remember he took me--he had made friends with the people downstairs, who were not the Canadian Jewish family. They were somebody else. They were really quite nice people, Jewish, and--Israelis, in fact. And they--he told them, "Look, this lady used to live here." And they said, "Please, come in." And I had all the time in the world. I went around. I felt terribly sad. He took loads of photographs of me.
And actually, we talked, he and I. I said, "Look. Look at what's happened. You've seen this--you've seen me. You know what happened here. How do you feel about Israel now?" And I couldn't get him to say that what happened in 1948 was an iniquity and an injustice. He didn't say anything like that. He remained diplomatic, I suppose you would say, noncommittal, very pleasant to me, but it was a very strange episode.
AMY GOODMAN: The narrative in this country of that period when you left was that the Arab governments called on the Palestinians to leave, not that you were forced out by the Israeli government or, before that it wasn't Israel, by Jewish settlers.
GHADA KARMI: I can't believe that anybody still believes this narrative. Is that so? I grew up with this nonsense, and I always used to wonder how sane human beings could actually believe that people would get up, leave their belongings, leave their home, their land, their livelihood and just walk away because somebody told them to. Now, of course, later--first of all, this was completely untrue. There was no such instruction. It was not--on the contrary, the leaders told the Palestinians to stay put, not to leave, but then they said, look, get the women and children out, evacuate them temporarily, but the men were not allowed to leave.
And, in fact, when we left in that April of 1948, they stopped our taxi. They stopped it. These were militia, Arab militias. And they said, "Where are you going?" And he said, "Look, this is my wife. These are children. I am returning," which was perfectly true. He said, "I'm returning the next--tomorrow morning. I just have to take them to my in-laws' house just for safety, and I will be back." And they took his name and so on.
So, of course, this was all nonsense. But the thing, you know, that used to get me is that you'd say to friends of Israel and devoted friends of Israel--you'd say to them, "OK, supposing--alright, supposing we, the Palestinians, left either because we were told to or because we just felt like it, why were we never allowed back? Why? People go on holiday. They do. They leave their houses, and they go away for a bit. They go and visit somebody. So, does it mean they can't be allowed back to their homes?" And, of course, they never had an answer for this.
AMY GOODMAN: Palestinian author and physician Ghada Karmi. She has written the book Married to Another Man: Israel's Dilemma in Palestine. We'll come back to this conversation in a minute.
AMY GOODMAN: We return now to my conversation with the Palestinian author and physician Ghada Karmi. I asked her how long her family stayed in Damascus, Syria, after they were forced to leave their home in Jerusalem in 1948.
GHADA KARMI: We stayed for just over a year. My father was looking for work desperately, because, of course, by then he was not, of course, allowed to return. He couldn't come back the next day. That had all gone out of the window. And he was looking for work, because we had no money. He did find work, but he found it in London in the BBC Arabic service, which at that time was developing that service and wanted native Arabic speakers, and--who knows, I always like to think that the British had a kind of attack of conscience about the Palestinians, whom they had sold down the river, and that maybe--
AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean?
GHADA KARMI: Well, you know, it was but for the British authorities in Palestine, there never would have been an Israel. It's as simple as that. They gave--they allowed the Zionists to come into our country. They allowed them to establish themselves. Without Britain, there would be no Israel, quite simply. And so, I used to think maybe they had had an attack of conscience, and they wanted to help.
No matter what the reason, my father ended up in London, and he preceded us, and then he made plans for us to join him. So in 1949, we left again, and for me, a new wrench from my grandparents, and then we ended up in London. And what an irony. Not just any old London, but in the most Jewish part of London. It was an area called Golders Green. My father didn't know anything about London. He didn't know it was Jewish. He just asked for a house for a family, and they told him, "Look, try this area," which he did. And we turned up. And, lo and behold, we're surrounded by German Jewish refugees from the Second World War. And my mother used to say, in her more humorous moments, "Well, we might as well never have bothered to move out of Jerusalem." It's the same people. Anyway, I mean, one laughs, but of course it was all pretty devastating, all this stuff.
AMY GOODMAN: And what was your relationship with your neighbors, with these German Jewish refugees who had not actually gone to Palestine, but had gone to Britain?
GHADA KARMI: Well, it was very good. Partly, my parents--really, it was quite interesting--never brought us up with the idea that we hated Jews. It was not about Jews. They always said it was the people over there. They meant in Palestine, and they meant the Zionists. They meant the Jews who came over to Palestine determined to take the Palestinians' place. Therefore, we had no problem with these Jews, whom they considered as just neighbors.
So, not only did the next-door neighbor, who was a German Jewish doctor, became our--he became our doctor, and we were used to that, because in Palestine, actually, the best doctors were German, and they were usually Jewish, but, of course, in my school, many of the girls were Jewish, and I made lots and lots of Jewish friends. And I went into their homes, and I became particularly close to one family, and they had a daughter called Patricia, who has remained my friend 'til today, and she lives in New York, and I'm staying with her now, and she's been looking after me. It was a very long friendship.
Now, but more seriously, although we got on and we were friendly--and I have described all this in the memoir--there was an important side to this, which I only realized later. I really began to understand about the Jewish imperative to create a Jewish state in my country. Now, I don't want anybody to misunderstand me. I understood it. It did not justify it. It did not excuse it. But I understood the kind of emotions, the psychology, which was behind the devotion to Israel that I found as I was growing up in London. And that, of course, was amongst the very community--these are European Jews--the very same type of Jew that had started the Zionist movement that had gone to Palestine and had created this settler colonialist state in my country. At least I really--and from the inside, I began to understand the mentality of the Eastern European persecution, the pogroms, the Schtetl, all this stuff, which as a Palestinian, I never ever would have understood. But living there, I did.
AMY GOODMAN: But in addition to that, I mean, these German refugees, these Jewish refugees were refugees from the Holocaust, were the survivors--
GHADA KARMI: That's right.
AMY GOODMAN: --in--right after World War II--
GHADA KARMI: That's right.
AMY GOODMAN: --so often used as the justification for the establishment of Israel, that Jews would have a safe place to go, although the movement started well beyond that, but that was the final impetus, the moral sort of justification.
GHADA KARMI: Yes, that's true, although it may surprise your audience to know that, paradoxically, the Holocaust was not such an issue shortly after it had happened as it is today. It's amazing. I don't know--well, we have no time to explain or to analyze why that should be--
AMY GOODMAN: Well, actually, Norman Finkelstein has written extensively about that, how it grew in importance as opposed to faded in importance, in his book The Holocaust Industry.
GHADA KARMI: That's absolutely right. And that, believe me, is my own personal experience, that it didn't feature as much in those postwar years, because I remember all my Jewish friends didn't talk that much about the Holocaust. But there was--there was--but, of course, underlying it, I knew there was this feeling that Israel was a refuge, a place of refuge from persecution, wherever that might be.
AMY GOODMAN: Tell us about your memoir, In Search of Fatima. Why did you call it that?
GHADA KARMI: You know, Fatima had been, as a real person--Fatima was a real person and also a metaphor. The real Fatima was the village woman who looked after us when we were small, and particularly me, and she helped my mother. She came and cooked and cleaned and such. She didn't live with us, but she looked after me, and I was very, very attached to her. So for me, leaving Palestine in 1948, I left Fatima, really, who came to represent my childhood, Palestine, whatever that place was, that place of imagination after awhile. Because one's memories were not very good as a child, it became a place, a country of the mind, and it became Fatima.
And so, in writing the book, I was trying to explain or ask the reader to share with me an experience of seeking for belonging, the search for my identity, who I was, having been wrenched from my roots so brutally in childhood and living in a--as it happened, moving to a society totally different from the one I was born into and, I should tell you, antipathetic to me. British society was pro-Israel. It believed in the Jewish state. It believed in the right of the Jews to establish a state in Palestine. So, for me, this was a double shock, and it led into a whole internal search, and a painful one, for where I belonged. Did I really belong with these English people I had lived amongst for so long? Did I belong in the West? Or did I belong to that place, that place which had become a place of the mind, the Arab world, the Fatima, and so on? So that's why the book was called that.
AMY GOODMAN: You left Fatima there. And what happened to her?
GHADA KARMI: Well, this is the saddest thing of all for me. We don't know. Now, we don't know, because when we left, that was one of the terrible, terrible effects of the Nakba, that it not only took people away from their land and their belongings, it took them away from other people, and you never caught up with the other people. It was a complete rupture. Now, of course, that's not true in every case. People did eventually find each other. Fatima disappeared into a black hole. We tried to find out what had happened to her. She was a peasant woman. There was no way of getting our letters to her.
AMY GOODMAN: Where did she live?
GHADA KARMI: She lived in a village called al-Maliha, which is just outside Jerusalem. And do you know, when I went back to Palestine-Israel in the early 1990s, I asked to see al-Maliha, and there it was, entirely Israeli, entirely Jewish Israeli. This wonderful little Palestinian village, which had had white houses, fields, a water well, all the charm of a Palestinian village, had now become totally Israeli. But they hadn't managed to demolish the mosque, because I could see the minaret, which remained a kind of a solitary reminder that this was not a Jewish place. So there we are.
However, Fatima disappeared for years and years and years, and I knew nothing about her. And then in 2005, when I went to Palestine to work, I was determined to find her. I looked, and I looked. I went to the refugee camps, because of course she had gone--we knew she had gone into a camp. In August of 1948, the Israelis destroyed her village. And I knew--we knew she would have gone into a camp. That's what happened to people. And I tried to find her.
Eventually, I found her grandson. I did. And I found him living in Bethlehem. And he retraced for me her footsteps from when we left her, how she stayed in our house waiting for us to come back, but of course we never could come back, and she was eventually thrown out. And then she and her family had to move, and they kept going on the move, being moved from one place to the other, eventually ending up in caves outside Bethlehem. They lived in a cave. And then they finally got out, and she lived in a house.
And until the 1980s, she kept telling her relatives, "Please look for the Karmis. Please. I want to see them again." And my father, by then, was a well-known broadcaster on the BBC, so she used to hear his voice, and she used to say, "Surely, we can find him. Surely, we can." And it was--believe me, it broke my heart when her grandson told me the story. But I never saw her again. And the thought that maddened me was there she was. In the 1980s, for God's sake, I was an adult, I could have found her, if only I had known, if only she could have got them to look for us. What did they know? You know, how could they look us up on Google? And so, that--there we are. So I did know that she died, roughly when she died.
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Palestinian writer, author, Ghada Karmi. Her book after In Search of Fatima is called Married to Another Man: Israel's Dilemma in Palestine. Why "Married to Another Man"?
GHADA KARMI: Well, you may well ask, and I know this has mystified a lot of people, the title, and it's been misunderstood. People have thought it was about matrimonial infidelity. It's not, of course. It's a quite--it's a very serious book. The reason it's called that is that I've taken that out of an anecdote, that at the end of the nineteenth century, when the Zionists in Europe, Jews, group of Jews who formed the Zionist movement, held a very big congress, a conference in Basel in Switzerland, at which they decided that the only way to solve the Jewish question in Europe, the question of persecution, was for the Jews to have a state of their own. So they said, we have to create a Jewish state that can be a refuge for us, where we can be normal people, where we don't have to be hounded, persecuted, etc. And they decided that that state was to be in Palestine.
Now, they didn't know what Palestine was like. They were sitting in Europe. They didn't know about it, so they sent a couple of rabbis to this place called Palestine, and they said, "Let us know if this is a suitable place." The rabbis went, they had a look, and they sent back this message to Vienna: they said, "The bride is beautiful, but she is married to another man." Now, of course, it's clear what they were saying is, yes, the land is very suitable, it's wonderful, but it's full of other people, it's already taken. And, of course, it was taken by my ancestors. I mean, that's who it was. That's who the other man was.
And if you think about it, that has been the basis of the conflict ever since, that the Zionists wanted a territory free of non-Jews in a territory full of non-Jews, and therefore, they had to get rid of the non-Jews in order to make it a territory for Jews. Now, those non-Jews, i.e. the Palestinians, of course didn't want to be dispossessed, they resisted being dispossessed, and hence, you have a conflict.
So, in summary, Married to Another Man, had the Zionists said, "This is indeed married to another man. We can't go here, because the land is already married. We can't be bigamists. We're going to move on. We're going to look for somewhere else"--they didn't. They were determined to do it, and they did it at the most enormous cost to us as Palestinians, because we were dispossessed and displaced in order to make room for the Jewish state, and of course it had a tremendous effect on the whole Arab region.
AMY GOODMAN: You advocate a one-state solution. Can you talk about that and why?
GHADA KARMI: Yes. Look, I wrote the book Married to Another Man, because I felt very strongly that, yes, as Palestinians, we will always mourn what happened to us--we mourn what is happening to us now--but we really have to try and see how this can be solved. And that has to come from us, because we are the people the most effected by this conflict. We are the people with the greatest stake in a solution which lasts. And I want to emphasize this. It is entirely possible to think up solutions for this conflict that are temporary, that might work for a short while. There's no point in that. We want a solution that will be permanent and that will be durable.
And it seemed to me--and in the book, I tried to do it by taking the reader along with me to explain the conflict, to see how so many attempts had failed in the past, to explain why they had failed and to show, therefore, that there is in fact only one way forward, and that is, not to partition the land of Palestine, not to fight over percentages, not to have Israel say, "I'm going to keep my colonies on the West Bank, the hell with the rest of you, and I'm going to keep Jerusalem, and you people can't come back to your homes." No, don't partition the land. We have already got a Jewish--Israeli Jewish community living in the land. We have already Palestinians who live in the same land. But most of their relatives don't live in their homeland, because Israel doesn't allow it. And those people have the right to return. Therefore, how are you going to do it? There's only one way you can do it. That is, if it is one state for all its citizens, not a Jewish state, not an Islamic state, not a Christian state--a secular democratic state. That's the answer.
AMY GOODMAN: We'll continue with our conversation with Dr. Ghada Karmi after the break. Tomorrow on our broadcast, a discussion on 1948 with Israeli historian Benny Morris. We'll also be joined by Tikva Honig-Parnass. She fought for Israel in the 1948 war. But first, to break with the Palestinian hip-hop group DAM.
AMY GOODMAN: We go to the conclusion of my interview with the Palestinian author and physician Ghada Karmi. I asked her if she thinks proposing a one-state solution hurts the chances of Palestinians, because it's less attainable than a two-state solution.
GHADA KARMI: The one-state solution is the only just solution for the Palestinians, so if we want to look at solving this problem from a point of view of justice, we have no alternative except the one state. Justice means that the dispossessed shall no longer be dispossessed. That's justice.
If what you're saying to me is, will it will hurt the chances of the Palestinians getting something out of the present situation, that's a different question. I would have said to you that I can understand that position, if there were any evidence that they are going to get something.
Now, I'm looking around me, and I'm imagining that our intelligent audience is also looking at things like maps and is looking at what Israel does and how Israel behaves and can only come to the conclusion that the creation of a Palestinian state is totally out of reach. And I'm sorry to be blunt, but I think we have to be quite open about this. We mustn't go on playing this game of the emperor's new clothes, you know, everybody pretending they're seeing something which isn't there. There is no territorial basis on which a Palestinian state can now be set up.
Although I fully understand that there is an international consensus that the two-state solution is the way forward, I fully understand that a lot of work has gone into this, and in proposing the one-state solution I'm not being flippant, and I am not saying that all the work and all the good will and all the effort that's gone into the two-state solution are trivial and idiotic and we have to forget about them, the problem is we've given the two-state solution quite a long time to see if it will work. It hasn't happened. In decades of talking about the two-state solution, it has not come about. On the contrary, it's less attainable now than it was in 1967, because Israel has taken so much Palestinian land, so much Palestinian resources, there's no possibility of it happening logistically. So why would I, as an intelligent human being, continue to back a solution which has been shown not to be working?
AMY GOODMAN: And yet, a one-state solution would mean that Palestinians would outnumber Israeli Jews, which is why the Israeli government would fight it.
GHADA KARMI: Indeed. Of course, that might--it might mean that. But, you see, the whole point of this solution is we don't have a Jewish state and we don't have an Islamic state, we have a democracy. If you were to look at the Western liberal democracies today, they have various communities that live together. They don't go around saying, "Wait a minute, this has to be a white state," or "this has to be a black state," or "this has to be a Belgian state." They're saying, "We are here, we are citizens." The moment you get rid of the idea that there has to be an exclusive something for somebody, then you can see your way to having a proper democracy. That's the essence of democracy.
So what I'm preaching and calling for--and by the way, many others along with me--is not at all bizarre, it's not outlandish, it is in line with the Western democratic tradition, which has tried to free itself from fascist states, from states which insist on racial exclusivity, to ideas of tolerance, of rights, of democracy, and so on. What is wrong with that? And it's amazing to me that whenever I propose the solution, people do object immediately by saying, well, that means it's the end of the Jewish state, or the Israelis won't have it, or it's a declaration of war on Israel. This is a peaceable solution. It's actually about ending the conflict, because if you no longer are--if you don't have parties fighting over bits of territory, then you end the fight. But if you continue to say, "I have a right, a God-given right," or whatever it is, "to take this, this, this amount of territory, and you will not have this, this and this," here's a recipe for conflict, and that's what we've had all along.
It seems to me that the issue of Zionism, the issue of the insistence on the part of a group to say, "We have a right to a place where only we shall live, and we will exclude others," seems to me this notion has to be challenged head-on. We must stop accepting the idea of an exclusive state in the Arab region or indeed anywhere else. And I imagine, you know, the Western world would be the first to be up in arms if Hamas managed to establish an Islamic state from which Jews were thrown out. They'd be the first to object. They'd go mad. Well, why on earth are we tolerating a situation which we have now, in which Jews are saying, "We, as Jews, have a right to this territory." The more so when you remember it's not their territory. It's somebody else's.
AMY GOODMAN: Ghada Karmi, explain what the word "Nakba" means.
GHADA KARMI: The "nakba," in Arabic, is--it means literally "catastrophe." Over time, it has acquired what you might call a capital N, which of course we don't have capital letters in Arabic. But it's acquired a capital N in a sense that it had become, as you might say, the grand catastrophe or the great catastrophe. That's what it actually means, because, of course, for the Palestinians, nothing more catastrophic could have been imagined than to be expelled from their home, their homeland, lose everything and never be allowed back. And all that has happened from that time to this has been due to that initial event in 1948.
Today, the Palestinians are divided. They are fragmented. They live in different places. I live in London. Many Palestinians live in other different countries. We have Palestinian refugees in camps. We have people living under occupation in what remains of Palestine. We have people who are citizens of Israel. All these were once upon a time a homogeneous, cohesive society living in a land called Palestine. Now, when I call for a one-state solution, what I'm saying is I want that situation back again, where in that Palestine, where we were one cohesive society, we had Jews, we had Druzes, we had Armenians, we had Circassians, we were Christians, we were Muslims, and we lived together. And what I'm saying is, we want that again. And it can happen again if enough people with enough good will and enough sense of morality and justice help us.
AMY GOODMAN: And your feeling about the big sixtieth anniversary celebration in Israel, everyone from President Bush to Google cofounder Sergey Brin?
GHADA KARMI: Well, I have to tell you, if I were Israel, I would be celebrating. It's not bad in sixty years to arrive at a point where you have not only taken somebody else's country, you've thrown them out, you've kept them out, and you've succeeded in it, but you've succeeded in becoming rich, heavily armed, powerfully armed, you have nuclear weapons, you enjoy the unstinting support of the world's single super state of the United States. You enjoy that support in terms of funding, in terms of arms, in political and diplomatic support. There's not a UN resolution can be passed without the big brother in the United States vetoing it. Fantastic! If I were Israel, I'd be celebrating.
What is shameful, I think, is that the rest of the world that knows what has happened, knows what Israel has done and is doing and is doing to the people of Gaza--is that really something to celebrate? Dispossessing people, tormenting them, humiliating them, occupying them, starving them, as they are in Gaza--is that really something to celebrate? I would say not.
AMY GOODMAN: Palestinian author and doctor Ghada Karmi. Her latest book is Married to Another Man: Israel's Dilemma in Palestine. Tomorrow on Democracy Now!, we'll be joined by the well-known Israeli historian Benny Morris for a discussion about 1948, the founding of the Israeli state. We'll also be joined by Tikva Honig-Parnass. She fought for Israel in 1948.
Is Also Part of "A Street Fight for the
Presidency of These United States."
All of this (from GOPBIAS.COM), and the Israeli connection details which follow, are what The New York Times Company (Boston Globe), The Washington Post Company (Newsweek),
[EXPOSURE OF FLAWED REPORT ON DAN RATHER IS NEXT SEGMENT]
Newhouse Advance Publications (The New Yorker, Parade, Vanity Fair, which now has a puff piece on John Donald Imus Jr., of Jewish heritage, the man who deserted his first wife and four daughters and, with a chokehold on that Washington/New York/Boston media corridor is THE ONE PERSON most responsible for that derelict duo IN OUR WHITE HOUSE!), General Electric (NBC), Disney (ABC), Viacom (CBS), CNN/PBS/NPR should be talking/writing about, but are not because of their mandatory pro-Israel, agenda-driven news management:
"I strongly disagree with those who say his thirty-year-old military service record doesn't matter any more. It has been a long time. But if President Bush's service doesn't matter, then the suffering John McCain endured doesn't matter. The service of Chuck Hagel, John Kerry, Bob Kerry, Sam Johnson, Daniel Inouye, Bob Dole, George H. W. Bush, and hundreds of thousands of others doesn't matter, either. The lost lives honored on the Vietnam War Memorial doesn't matter. The on going loss suffered by Max Cleland - the former senator from Georgia who lost three limbs in Vietnam - doesn't matter.
If military service doesn't matter, then the brave men and women who lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan don't matter.
I am old-fashioned enough to believe it all matters. The way individuals conduct themselves when serving their nation is an insight into their character, their commitment to the country, and their courage. Sometimes that means having the courage to refuse to fight; sometimes it means fighting a war against the war. Sometimes it means just showing up. All those choices are reflections of what's inside people, what they think is important, who they are at their core. And I can't imagine that there is anything more important for us to know about the person we elect as president.
And if George W. Bush did not serve out his time according to the agreement that he signed, did not offer this country the service intended by the training that he took advantage of, then he has been dissembling, covering up, and just plain lying throughout his public life. And that matters." - Mary Mapes Truth and Duty - The Press, The President, and the Privilege of Power, page 40.
"There is nothing harder than doing the right thing." - Mary Mapes page 271.
The Flawed Report on Dan Rather
By James C. Goodale (Adjunct Professor at Fordham Law School, is the former Vice Chairman and General Counsel of The New York Times and represented the newspaper in the Pentagon Papers case. He is Host/Producer of the TV program The Digital Age. An earlier version of the article in this issue appeared in the New York Law Journal. (April 2005)
Report of the Independent Review Panel on the September 8, 2004 60 Minutes Wednesday Segment "For the Record" Concerning President Bush's Texas Air National Guard Service - by Dick Thornburgh and Louis D. Boccardi - January 5, 2005, 224 pp.
James C. Goodale responds -
"A few weeks ago former Attorney General Richard Thornburgh and Louis Boccardi, former head of the Associated Press, released their report on Dan Rather's use of allegedly forged Texas Air National Guard (ANG) documents covering President George W. Bush's military service. The report, as is well known, excoriated CBS for the use of these documents on its 60 Minutes Wednesday program on September 8, 2004. It is, however, a flawed report. It should not be uncritically accepted, as it has been by the press and by television commentators.
The report concluded that CBS failed to hire appropriate experts to clearly verify its statements and did not establish a "chain of custody" for the documents. CBS, according to the report, rushed to judgment on the basis of inadequate evidence, did not promptly acknowledge flaws in its program, and broadcast a false and misleading report.
CBS did rush to make inadequately verified allegations public and it was slow in responding to criticism. The report's conclusions on the other points are not, however, persuasive. Surprisingly, the panel was unable to conclude whether the documents are forgeries or not. If the documents are not forgeries, what is the reason for the report? The answer is: to criticize the newsgathering practices of CBS, whether the documents are authentic or not. As such, the report is less than fully credible.
Lost in the commotion over the authenticity of the documents is that the underlying facts of Rather's 60 Minutes report are substantially true. Bush did not take the physical exam required of all pilots; his superiors gave him the benefit of any doubt; he did receive special treatment and Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Killian, Bush's commanding officer, was unhappy with the loss of ANG's investment in him when Bush informed Killian he was leaving for Alabama. Before the broadcast, Mary Mapes, the CBS producer of the program, confirmed the facts in the documents with retired Major General Bobby Hodges, who had been Killian's superior in the ANG. Later Hodges told the panel he did not think the documents were authentic, but did not disagree that the facts were substantially correct.
Following the broadcast, Marian Carr Knox, who was Killian's secretary at the time, confirmed the facts of the broadcast, saying, "There's no doubt in my mind that [the] information is correct." When the panel cross-examined Knox she seemed less certain of what she had told Rather but she did not contradict any of the broadcast. Since the broadcast, no one has come forward to say the program was untruthful.
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The panel attacks the four experts CBS hired to authenticate the documents. One of the four, James Pierce, concluded that the signatures on the documents were authentic and that there was no reason to believe the documents were not genuine. Such conclusions are common for document examiners. A second, Marcel Matley, also concluded that the signatures were genuine.
The other two experts had reser-vations about the documents. One, Emily Will, said that from the documents made available to her, she did not think the signatures matched; the other, Linda James, stated that she could not authenticate the documents without the originals. The report asserts that CBS should not have relied on Matley and Pierce. It should have known, according to the panel, that copies of documents, which these were, can rarely be authenticated. A copied document can only be authenticated when compared to the original. There were no originals. Matley, for his part, continues to disagree with the panel's view and has demanded that it correct the eighteen places in the report where he believes he has been libeled.
Mr. Pierce had said that the signatures were authentic and he has never modified his conclusion. The panel never interviewed him. If the panel never talked to the one expert upon whom CBS principally relied, how could it determine whether he was credible?
Moreover, if lawyers know how to hire appropriate experts even if journalists don't, why didn't the panel, which was backed by a huge law firm, hire its own experts to determine the authenticity of the documents? One suspects that if the panel had done so, it would have ended up with some experts saying the documents were reliable, others not sure. And that would have put the panel back where CBS was.
The report criticizes CBS for not being able to present evidence of a "chain of custody" for the documents. Since the CBS source, Lieutenant Colonel Bill Burkett, only had a copy of the documents, CBS, the panel said, should have known where this copy came from, or, indeed, the source of the originals. Burkett later confessed he had lied about his alleged source, George Conn, whom CBS clearly should have taken more pains to reach. After the program had been broadcast, Burkett said he received the documents from a woman named Lucy Ramirez.
For seized drugs to be introduced into evidence, a lawyer must prove who had the drugs from the time they were seized--that is the "chain of custody." While such proof is relevant in the courtroom, it is often irrelevant for journalists. Few stories based on documents would ever be written if that were the standard.
One of the greatest concerns facing The New York Times in publishing the Pentagon Papers was their authenticity. A major fear was that the papers had been forged by an antiwar group. If a strict standard of "chain of custody" had been applied to the Times's possession of the Pentagon Papers, this standard would have made the story unpublishable. It would have required a call to the Department of Defense or the Rand Corporation, known to have custody of the originals. Such a call would have brought the FBI to the Times's door in a second.
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Apart from consulting forensic experts when it is appropriate, what journalists do when they receive copies of documents is to make judgments about the source and the contents of what they have. Are they consistent with known facts? Is it logical to assume such documents exist?
Dan Rather apparently asked few such questions. According to the panel, he knew little about the background of the charges he broadcast and depended on the reporting and research of the program's producer, Mary Mapes. To determine the documents' authenticity, she made what the panel described as a "meshing" analysis.
Mapes submitted to the panel a forty-page statement setting out this analysis. It showed how the events described in the documents corresponded with known facts about the President's Air National Guard service. The panel said it agreed with some of this meshing analysis but not all. The panel did not attach this meshing analysis to the report. It did, however, attach over seven hundred pages of other exhibits to it.
I have seen Mary Mapes's statement, and it is persuasive within the limits she set. She established a chronology of events drawn from eight official Bush documents she obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request she had made in 1999 and 2000, when she first became interested in the story. She then tried to match the six Killian documents with that chronology and concluded that they "fit like a glove."
Three of the six documents did fit well, the panel conceded. Two of them covered Killian's refusal to rate Bush's performance. The third reflected Killian's conversation with Bush in which he reminded him of the ANG's investment in him. Of the other three, the panel thought one "may not mesh," and another did "not mesh well." Another, not used by Mapes, did not mesh "at all."
The panel's approach to the document in which Killian ordered Bush to take the physical exam illustrates how it dealt with Mapes's submis-sion. Mapes believed this document was authentic for two reasons. First, it "meshed": the dates in it matched the dates of earlier physicals taken by Bush, the addresses on the document were correct, and the Air Force regulations were correctly cited. Second, Matley said the signature on the document was Killian's, and Hodges and Knox confirmed the document's contents.
The panel challenged Mapes's claim on the basis of its talks with three officers who had served in the ANG at the same time as the President. They said it was not customary to "order" an officer to take a physical. For this reason the panel concluded the document "does not mesh well."
The officers' statements, of course, do not disprove the claim that Killian ordered Bush to take a physical; nor do they exclude the possibility that there was a custom of which they had no knowledge. The panel's reasoning on this document is not particularly persuasive, nor is its reasoning persuasive about why the other documents did not perfectly mesh. In the end, even the panel, without saying so explicitly, has to concede the accuracy of Mapes's statement that "there is nothing in the official Bush records that would rule out the authenticity of the Killian documents."
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A major weakness of the report is that neither Mapes nor Rather was offered a chance to cross-examine the people the panel interviewed. In fact, the panel never even told them whom it was talking to. The panel did not tell Mapes or Rather, for example, that it was talking to the three officers I have mentioned; nor did it give them an opportunity to show that the officers were Bush supporters or even friends of Bush-which Mapes believes to be the case.
Nor is the panel convincing when it says that telephone contact between Mapes and a member of the Kerry campaign was "highly inappropriate." Mapes made a call to the Kerry campaign office after Burkett told her that he wanted to speak to the campaign about strategy to counter the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth." At that point, Mapes had only some of the documents and she needed the rest. She telephoned Kerry campaign headquarters to get the phone number of Joe Lockhart, a senior adviser to the campaign. By the time she talked to Lockhart, she said, she had received all the documents. Lockhart eventually telephoned Burkett but testified to the panel that he had "said very little during the call and the subject of documents never came up." In effect, Mapes traded access to the campaign for access to the documents. She did not turn over the documents to the campaign before the broadcast. Investigative reporters must be wily in getting their stories and what Mapes did does not seem reprehensible.
Perhaps the least credible part of the report is its decision to label parts of Dan Rather's program false and misleading, even though those parts were not directly related to the documents. For example, it concluded that one interview, which implied that "President Bush was in the TexANG to avoid service in Vietnam," was inaccurate and misleading because there were other sources who would say the President wanted to serve in Vietnam.
The panel said a flight instructor had told Mapes that Bush "did want to go to Vietnam but others went first." Mapes may not have believed this statement, and she would have had good grounds for being skeptical about it. It was well known at the time that joining a National Guard unit such as the ANG was one of the best ways to avoid going to Vietnam. And no one has disputed why Bush joined. It is hard to believe he changed his mind afterward. But even if he did, it has no bearing on his initial decision to join the Guard.
The panel also labeled as "misleading" Dan Rather's interview with the then speaker of the Texas House, Ben Barnes, who made a call to get George Bush in the Guard. Why is this misleading? Because, the panel said, CBS has no proof that the person who received the call was influenced by it. Can the panel be serious about this? Should CBS not have reported this call?
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The CBS report reads as if it were written by lawyers for lawyers, notwithstanding the fact that Mr. Boccardi is a journalist. The report, it may be noted, is signed not only by Boccardi and Thornburgh but by seven other lawyers in Mr. Thornburgh's law firm. The report might well have been better if it had been written by journalists for journalists and the public. The report convincingly points out that CBS moved too quickly in airing the broadcast and too slowly in discovering that its source would change his story about how and from whom he got the documents. Those are fair and telling comments. But they take up little more than 25 percent of the report.
The rest of the report, which is directed to the newsgathering process of CBS, is flawed. The panel was unable to decide whether the documents were authentic or not. It didn't hire its own experts. It didn't interview the principal expert for CBS. It all but ignored an important argument for authenticating the documents-"meshing." It did not allow cross-examination. It introduced a standard for document authentication very difficult for news organizations to meet-"chain of custody"-and, lastly, it characterized parts of the broadcast as false, misleading, or both, in a way that is close to nonsensical. One is tempted to say that the report has as many flaws as the flaws it believes it has found in Dan Rather's CBS broadcast."
March 10, 2005 The New York Review of Books