Saturday, May 07, 2005
Individual Responsibility
Stuff Happens and We're Not Responsible
by Tony Norman
Published on Friday, May 6, 2005 by the Post-Gazette (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)
'No official intent to deceive" has become the official mantra of the United States military. It is stamped on every report of alleged military wrongdoing, no matter how egregious.
"No official intent to deceive" may have become as ubiquitous as products emblazoned with "Made in China" stickers at the local Wal-Mart but so what? There is no duplicity in the hearts of those who conduct our wars, either in the field or behind bunkers of bureaucratic insulation at the Pentagon. War may be hell, but only the enemy is ever guilty of lying. If it were otherwise, the U.S. military would've told us so...
A tale of reckless heroism is always more compelling than "whoops!" And so it goes. Nothing is more contagious in the military than a presumption of perpetual innocence. If American soldiers shoot and kill an Italian agent escorting a former hostage to an Iraqi checkpoint, well, these things happen. Somebody -- and we're not pointing fingers -- shouldn't have been speeding.
If a Marine shoots three wounded and unarmed Iraqis in a Fallujah mosque, with one of the killings captured on video by an embedded NBC cameraman, there's no reason to assume it was anything other than self-defense. War can be tough on the nerves. You can't blame a Marine for getting jittery according to the tribunal that cleared him. Besides, war crimes are committed by the other side. Our side makes mistakes.
Even in the rare case when a soldier is willing to take responsibility for a heinous act, the military code of justice won't necessarily allow it...
Published on Friday, May 6, 2005 by the Post-Gazette (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)
'No official intent to deceive" has become the official mantra of the United States military. It is stamped on every report of alleged military wrongdoing, no matter how egregious.
"No official intent to deceive" may have become as ubiquitous as products emblazoned with "Made in China" stickers at the local Wal-Mart but so what? There is no duplicity in the hearts of those who conduct our wars, either in the field or behind bunkers of bureaucratic insulation at the Pentagon. War may be hell, but only the enemy is ever guilty of lying. If it were otherwise, the U.S. military would've told us so...
A tale of reckless heroism is always more compelling than "whoops!" And so it goes. Nothing is more contagious in the military than a presumption of perpetual innocence. If American soldiers shoot and kill an Italian agent escorting a former hostage to an Iraqi checkpoint, well, these things happen. Somebody -- and we're not pointing fingers -- shouldn't have been speeding.
If a Marine shoots three wounded and unarmed Iraqis in a Fallujah mosque, with one of the killings captured on video by an embedded NBC cameraman, there's no reason to assume it was anything other than self-defense. War can be tough on the nerves. You can't blame a Marine for getting jittery according to the tribunal that cleared him. Besides, war crimes are committed by the other side. Our side makes mistakes.
Even in the rare case when a soldier is willing to take responsibility for a heinous act, the military code of justice won't necessarily allow it...
Other than the actions of a few lone wolves like Pvt. Charles Graner Jr., what happened at Abu Ghraib was an aberration. The higher ups in the Pentagon have been absolved. Nobody in power suspected anything bad was happening. And whatever torture may have happened at Gitmo along those lines is strictly coincidental...
© 2005 PG Publishing Co.
God's Warrior Charges On
How Long Can Bush Spin Big Lies into Truth on Iraq War?
by Andrew Greeley
Published on Friday, May 6, 2005 by the Chicago Sun Times
by Andrew Greeley
Published on Friday, May 6, 2005 by the Chicago Sun Times
As the criminal, sinful war in Iraq enters its third year, the president is in Europe to heal the wounds between the United States and its former allies, on his own terms, of course. The White House propaganda mill hails it as another victory for the president and ignores the fact that most Europeans still consider the war dangerous folly and the president a dangerous fool...
Finally, we are told that the Iraqi election confirms the Bush administration policy in Iraq. The president's supporters must be in deep trouble to reach so far for that one. All the election proves is that the Iraqis want to run their own country. It also raises the possibility that Shia clerics will deliver Iraq into the hands of the Iranians. Some kind of victory!
...Note the three most important Cabinet positions. Rice said that it was better to find the weapons of mass destruction than to see a mushroom cloud.
"Judge" Gonzales said the Geneva Convention was "quaint" and in effect legitimated the de facto policy of torture.
Rumsfeld repealed the "Powell Doctrine" -- only go to war when you have the massive force necessary to win decisively and quickly. Brilliant businessman that he is (like Robert McNamara of the Vietnam era), he thought he could win with 130,000 troops (unlike the at least 200,000 that the Army chief of staff insisted) and hence made the current "insurgency" inevitable.
The presence of these three towering giants in the administration certainly confirms that the president is confident that he is "right" on Iraq and that he has mandates from the American people and from God which confirm that he is "right."
Nothing, in other words, has changed in the last two years. The war is still the "right thing to do," it is still part of the "war against terrorism," it is still essential to keep Arabs from blowing up our skyscrapers...
© 2005 Sun-Times Co.
Friday, May 06, 2005
Seven Reasons for Muslims to hate the US
[Sadly I have lost the source for this. Can anyone help?]
I distinguish among seven sources of hatred:
1 - America is an imperial power: As part of the Western hemisphere, America is at best suspected by certain segments of the Muslim and the Arab world as embodying the imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, and the rest of the “-isms” long associated with the West. Seen in this light, the United States offers nothing to them except to become the object of their resistance and discontent. America’s ascendancy to superpower status has added fuel to the already charged anti-imperialist atmosphere. America’s supremacy has led it to assume the self-appointed roles of prosecutor, judge, and jury regarding events that affect the welfare and well-being of other members of the international community and in the process grants itself the licence to act at whim without considering the interests of other nations. America is unilateralist, readily intervening in the internal affairs of other nations, seeking only to protect its narrow interests and ignoring the hardship it inflicts on the people and nations involved. The two Gulf Wars, and the hard-core policies toward states like Iran, North Korea, and Syria, are recent examples that continue to provoke anti-imperialist instincts in the region.
2 - Arrogance: The United States is an arrogant and morally decadent state that takes other nations for granted while paying no heed to their real problems. Arab and Muslim extremists accuse the United States of demeaning, humiliating and inconsiderate policies that negatively affect their lives. America is motivated by narrowly defined national security concerns. For example, although many Arab states supported the first Bush administration in 1991 in its effort to oust Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, they also believe that the United States is exploitive and that it was (and still is) motivated by its oil interests rather than concern for Kuwaiti or Iraqi freedom. Recently, this view was strongly echoed by Nabil Abu Shakra, the president of the Lebanese Cultural Summit in Paris. And in a recent conversation I had with him, he insisted that “American arrogance glaringly manifests itself by the pervasiveness of its economic outreach and how America flaunts its wealth and manipulates the economic and financial affairs of other nations.”
3 - Corrupting culture: More than anything else, Muslim religious radicals fear the pervasiveness of American culture and what they perceive as its disastrous influence on Arab and Muslim youth. Shiek Yousef el-Hassan, a Hamas leader in the West Bank, sees American culture, however it manifests itself — in music, clothing, literature, the arts, and the like — as implicitly and explicitly overshadowing, corrupting, and devaluing indigenous cultures and their way of life. This concern over the American cultural invasion has been brought into sharp focus primarily because of the Internet and the technological revolution. Arab states like Saudi Arabia and many Muslim countries like Iran are trying only with limited success to combat what they view as American apostasy and abandonment of basic moral tenants and so shield their “innocents” from corruption. The awareness that this cultural battle may be lost because of the younger generation’s attraction to Western “modernity” adds to the frustration and thus the vehemence of anti-American sentiments.
4 - Self-indulgence: The United States is also self-indulgent, operating from the vantage point of America as the centre of the universe. Uncaring, it neither understands nor shows any interest in understanding other people’s needs, culture, aspirations, or the problems that affect their lives so profoundly. “America acts only when American interests are at stake,” observes Samir Ahmed, former director general of the Union of Palestinian Writers. As proof, he points to “Washington’s consistent support of corrupt Arab regimes such as the Gulf States, and Egypt.” Arab critics also charge the United States with being indifferent to the evils occurring elsewhere — the genocide in the Sudan and earlier in Rwanda — as well as indifference to disease and starvation in other African nations. America is for Americans while the rest of the world gets the crumbs. For the past five decades, America has garnered other negative appellations — the exploiter of Arab lands and peoples.
5 - Lack of evenhandedness: The United States often fails to be evenhanded in its foreign policy. America favours Israel over the Arab States, specifically the Palestinians, and will not discharging its responsibilities impartially in the region. The perpetuation of the Palestinians’ homelessness is largely due to American indifference to the plight of the Palestinian people. The US also insisted on maintaining sanctions against Iraq up to the ouster of Saddam Hussein, which caused tremendous hardship to the Iraqi people who continue to suffer today after more than two years of occupation. In a recent discussion I had with Abd el-Halim Mohammed, assistant director of the al-Ahram Centre for Strategic and Political Studies, he cites American pressure on Syria for its noncompliance with UN resolutions as another glaring example of the lack of evenhandedness. “Israel,” he insists, “has never been forced to comply with any UN resolutions against its policies, such as the return of the occupied territories.”
6 - America is a “rogue” state: Whereas the United States has over time accused several Arab or Muslim nations like Syria and Iran of being rogue states, most Arab and Muslims feel that America is one itself. Both Gulf wars, which have resulted in the deaths of thousands of Iraqis, are criminal acts. The United States sanctions the Israeli occupation and Israel’s hard-line policy that includes targeted killing as a way of dealing with Palestinian resistance. The abuses of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib and the indefinite detention without trial of hundreds at Guantánamo are clear evidence of America’s consistent violation of human rights and crimes against humanity. The Palestinian poet Taha el-Motawakel is emphatic in his condemnation: “America should be the last country in the world to advocate human rights,” he told me as we argued the problem, “when in fact it is the greatest violator.”
7 – “Blind” envy: Finally, the United States is envied because of its wealth, freedom, outreach, and immense human and material resources. Envy of America extends to its economic and military power and ability to wield them almost at will. American visitors to Arab and Muslim countries are easily visible, immediately recognized by their deep pockets. Too often, they make no effort to show modesty. When both the reality and the myth of America are juxtaposed against the immediate reality of deprivation and hardship in the Middle East, the result is a combustible stew of envy, deep resentment, and hate. Paradoxically, America is embraced because of its riches and power and envied because of its wide appeal.
1 - America is an imperial power: As part of the Western hemisphere, America is at best suspected by certain segments of the Muslim and the Arab world as embodying the imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, and the rest of the “-isms” long associated with the West. Seen in this light, the United States offers nothing to them except to become the object of their resistance and discontent. America’s ascendancy to superpower status has added fuel to the already charged anti-imperialist atmosphere. America’s supremacy has led it to assume the self-appointed roles of prosecutor, judge, and jury regarding events that affect the welfare and well-being of other members of the international community and in the process grants itself the licence to act at whim without considering the interests of other nations. America is unilateralist, readily intervening in the internal affairs of other nations, seeking only to protect its narrow interests and ignoring the hardship it inflicts on the people and nations involved. The two Gulf Wars, and the hard-core policies toward states like Iran, North Korea, and Syria, are recent examples that continue to provoke anti-imperialist instincts in the region.
2 - Arrogance: The United States is an arrogant and morally decadent state that takes other nations for granted while paying no heed to their real problems. Arab and Muslim extremists accuse the United States of demeaning, humiliating and inconsiderate policies that negatively affect their lives. America is motivated by narrowly defined national security concerns. For example, although many Arab states supported the first Bush administration in 1991 in its effort to oust Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, they also believe that the United States is exploitive and that it was (and still is) motivated by its oil interests rather than concern for Kuwaiti or Iraqi freedom. Recently, this view was strongly echoed by Nabil Abu Shakra, the president of the Lebanese Cultural Summit in Paris. And in a recent conversation I had with him, he insisted that “American arrogance glaringly manifests itself by the pervasiveness of its economic outreach and how America flaunts its wealth and manipulates the economic and financial affairs of other nations.”
3 - Corrupting culture: More than anything else, Muslim religious radicals fear the pervasiveness of American culture and what they perceive as its disastrous influence on Arab and Muslim youth. Shiek Yousef el-Hassan, a Hamas leader in the West Bank, sees American culture, however it manifests itself — in music, clothing, literature, the arts, and the like — as implicitly and explicitly overshadowing, corrupting, and devaluing indigenous cultures and their way of life. This concern over the American cultural invasion has been brought into sharp focus primarily because of the Internet and the technological revolution. Arab states like Saudi Arabia and many Muslim countries like Iran are trying only with limited success to combat what they view as American apostasy and abandonment of basic moral tenants and so shield their “innocents” from corruption. The awareness that this cultural battle may be lost because of the younger generation’s attraction to Western “modernity” adds to the frustration and thus the vehemence of anti-American sentiments.
4 - Self-indulgence: The United States is also self-indulgent, operating from the vantage point of America as the centre of the universe. Uncaring, it neither understands nor shows any interest in understanding other people’s needs, culture, aspirations, or the problems that affect their lives so profoundly. “America acts only when American interests are at stake,” observes Samir Ahmed, former director general of the Union of Palestinian Writers. As proof, he points to “Washington’s consistent support of corrupt Arab regimes such as the Gulf States, and Egypt.” Arab critics also charge the United States with being indifferent to the evils occurring elsewhere — the genocide in the Sudan and earlier in Rwanda — as well as indifference to disease and starvation in other African nations. America is for Americans while the rest of the world gets the crumbs. For the past five decades, America has garnered other negative appellations — the exploiter of Arab lands and peoples.
5 - Lack of evenhandedness: The United States often fails to be evenhanded in its foreign policy. America favours Israel over the Arab States, specifically the Palestinians, and will not discharging its responsibilities impartially in the region. The perpetuation of the Palestinians’ homelessness is largely due to American indifference to the plight of the Palestinian people. The US also insisted on maintaining sanctions against Iraq up to the ouster of Saddam Hussein, which caused tremendous hardship to the Iraqi people who continue to suffer today after more than two years of occupation. In a recent discussion I had with Abd el-Halim Mohammed, assistant director of the al-Ahram Centre for Strategic and Political Studies, he cites American pressure on Syria for its noncompliance with UN resolutions as another glaring example of the lack of evenhandedness. “Israel,” he insists, “has never been forced to comply with any UN resolutions against its policies, such as the return of the occupied territories.”
6 - America is a “rogue” state: Whereas the United States has over time accused several Arab or Muslim nations like Syria and Iran of being rogue states, most Arab and Muslims feel that America is one itself. Both Gulf wars, which have resulted in the deaths of thousands of Iraqis, are criminal acts. The United States sanctions the Israeli occupation and Israel’s hard-line policy that includes targeted killing as a way of dealing with Palestinian resistance. The abuses of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib and the indefinite detention without trial of hundreds at Guantánamo are clear evidence of America’s consistent violation of human rights and crimes against humanity. The Palestinian poet Taha el-Motawakel is emphatic in his condemnation: “America should be the last country in the world to advocate human rights,” he told me as we argued the problem, “when in fact it is the greatest violator.”
7 – “Blind” envy: Finally, the United States is envied because of its wealth, freedom, outreach, and immense human and material resources. Envy of America extends to its economic and military power and ability to wield them almost at will. American visitors to Arab and Muslim countries are easily visible, immediately recognized by their deep pockets. Too often, they make no effort to show modesty. When both the reality and the myth of America are juxtaposed against the immediate reality of deprivation and hardship in the Middle East, the result is a combustible stew of envy, deep resentment, and hate. Paradoxically, America is embraced because of its riches and power and envied because of its wide appeal.
To End The War, Learn Why They Started It
EDITORS' NOTE: The following essay is adapted from remarks made at the National Teach-in on Iraq sponsored by the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. The teach-in was held on March 24, the 40th anniversary of the first teach-in on the Vietnam War, which was held at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
The central question we need to answer is this: What were the real reasons for the Bush administration’s invasion and occupation of Iraq?
When we identify why we really went to war—not the cover reasons or the rebranded reasons, freedom and democracy, but the real reasons—then we can become more effective anti-war activists. The most effective and strategic way to stop this occupation and prevent future wars is to deny the people who wage these wars their spoils—to make war unprofitable. And we can’t do that unless we effectively identify the goals of war...
If we want to know what the goals of the war are, we have to look at what Paul Bremer did when he first arrived in Iraq. He laid off 500,000 people, 400,000 of whom were soldiers. And he shredded Iraq’s constitution and wrote a series of economic laws that the The Economist described as “the wish list of foreign investors.”
Basically, Iraq has been turned into a laboratory for the radical free-market policies that the American Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute dream about in Washington, D.C., but are only able to impose in relative slow motion here at home.
So we just have to examine the Bush administration’s policies and actions. We don’t have to wield secret documents or massive conspiracy theories. We have to look at the fact that they built enduring military bases and didn’t rebuild the country. Their very first act was to protect the oil ministry leaving the the rest of the country to burn—to which Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld responded: “Stuff happens.” Theirs was an almost apocalyptic glee in allowing Iraq to burn. They let the country be erased, leaving a blank slate that they could rebuild in their image This was the goal of the war. The big lie
The administration says the war was about fighting for democracy. That was the big lie they resorted to when they were caught in the other lies...
© 2005 In These Times
Thursday, May 05, 2005
The Most Frightening Thing You'll EVER Read!
New US Plan for Nuclear Intimidation
by Ira Chernus
Published on Wednesday, May 4, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
by Ira Chernus
Published on Wednesday, May 4, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
“The U.S. military is considering allowing regional combatant commanders to request presidential approval for pre-emptive nuclear strikes against possible attacks with weapons of mass destruction on the United States or its allies, according to a draft nuclear operations paper.”
That’s the opening paragraph of a report from Japan’s Kyodo News Service. Yes, you read it right: pre-emptive nuclear strikes. “The paper identifies nuclear, biological and chemical weapons as requiring pre-emptive strikes to prevent their use.”
But that’s not the most horrifying part of this draft paper. (Remember, this isn’t policy yet. It’s just what the Pentagon is considering.) There is a lot more that the Kyodo News Service didn’t mention. The document wants regional commanders to be able to “request Presidential approval for use of nuclear weapons for a variety of conditions.”
For example, we wouldn’t have to know for sure that someone is threatening us with a WMD attack. In fact, the paper admits that “the United States may not know with confidence what threats a state, combinations of states, or nonstate actors pose to US interests.”
But a good soldier assumes the worst, as the paper quite explicitly points out. So, according to the plan, it should be just fine to use nukes “to demonstrate US intent and capability to use nuclear weapons to deter adversary use of WMD.” If we even suspect that they might threaten us, we’d nuke ‘em first, to show them we mean business. How can they know we’ll use the weapons unless we actually use the weapons?
There is more. Under this plan, we could use nukes even against an enemy that has no WMD. Once war starts, commanders can ask permission to use their nukes “for rapid and favorable war termination on US terms,” or just “to ensure success of US and multinational operations.” We could nuke any “critical war-making and war-supporting assets and capabilities that a potential adversary leadership values most.” In other words, nuke ‘em anytime, anywhere. Winning is the only thing.
The DOD draft paper talks a lot about integrating nuclear and conventional weapons into a single battle plan. What they used to call the “firebreak” -- the huge step from conventional to nuclear weapons -- is gone now. We’d go back to the days when President Eisenhower said that he planned to use nuclear weapons “exactly as you would use a bullet or anything else” on the battlefield.
But this plan might take us beyond anything Eisenhower or the other cold war presidents imagined. Now, even against an enemy with no WMD, we might use nukes before war starts. The document calls for regional commanders to ask for permission to use nukes “to counter potentially overwhelming adversary conventional forces, including mobile and area targets (troop concentration).” With all this talk of pre-emptive attacks, what does “potentially overwhelming” mean? Who knows? It sounds like, if the “bad guys” have a very big troop concentration, we just might nuke ‘em even before the fighting starts, to make sure we win.
Or at least they are supposed to think we might. “The US does not make positive statements defining the circumstances under which it would use nuclear weapons,” the document explains. “Maintaining US ambiguity about when it would use nuclear weapons helps create doubt in the minds of potential adversaries, deterring them from taking hostile action.” So all options have to be open.
Could we nuke not just their troops and military bases, but the power plants or water supplies that civilians also depend on? What about their factories in densely populated cities? Commanders do have “the responsibility to attempt to minimize collateral damage to the greatest extent practicable,” the document says. But we are talking about hydrogen bombs here. How much damage limitation is really “practicable”?
Not to worry. Apparently they’ve run this past the Pentagon lawyers, who decided that “such damage is not unlawful so long as the anticipated loss of life and damage to property incidental to the use of force is not excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage expected to be gained by the attack.” Of course, it’s the people dropping the bombs who get to decide what’s “not excessive.” With language that loose, anything could be justified.
If you are a military strategist, you might see the next big problems. If we nuke ‘em, how can we fight ‘em? How can we be sure friendly troops would be safe from the effects of the bomb? The battlefield would be a hotbed of nuclear radiation. How can we invade and conquer an irradiated nation?
Well, those smart Pentagon planners are already one step ahead of you: “Careful consideration [must] be given to the potential impact of nuclear effects on friendly forces,” they say. And “the US must be prepared to fight and win on a contaminated battlefield following a US nuclear strike.” Of course, they don’t explain just how these tricks can be pulled off.
But they do add a sentence that sounds like the key to the whole document: “The demonstrated ability of US forces to survive and to sustain successful combat operations in WMD environments presents a stronger deterrent force to potential US adversaries.” The basic idea has not changed since the cold war days. It’s still all about sending a message: “Executing a nuclear option, or even a portion of an option, should send a clear signal of United States’ resolve. Hence, options must be selected very carefully and deliberately so that the attack can help ensure the adversary recognizes the ‘signal.’”
So here’s the plan. We spread the word that we might use nukes any time, against anyone we don’t like. To make the threat believable, we drop one or two, we equip our troops to survive in a radioactive environment, and we let the world know that we think nuclear annihilation is perfectly OK. That ought to send a signal loud and clear.
The Pentagon planners want the world to get another message, too: the U.S. arsenal will be “so numerous, advanced, and reliable that the US retains an unassailable edge for the foreseeable future.”
All in all, as the paper says, the goal is to use the U.S. nuclear arsenal to “deter potential adversary use of WMD and dissuade against a potential adversary’s development of an overwhelming conventional threat.” For those who need to hear the message more poetically, the document is decorated with this nice quote from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War: “It is a doctrine of war not to assume the enemy will not come, but rather to rely on one’s readiness to meet him; not to presume that he will not attack, but rather to make one’s self invincible.”
The U.S. as The Borg. Resistance is futile. Don’t even think about messing with us. Just fall in line and take orders. That’s what it’s all about.
It may be a coincidence that the Japanese news report about this Pentagon paper came out the same day that the North Koreans fired a missile into the Sea of Japan. White House chief of staff Andrew Card complained that the North Koreans are “looking to kind of be bullies in the world." Of course, Card knows this is laughable. He knows who the real bullies in the world are. He works with them every day.
It’s no coincidence, though, that Japanese journalists are alerting us to the continuing dangers of nuclear weapons, just as it’s no coincidence that the Japanese are taking the lead in the struggle to strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Japan, the first victim of the bomb, has always been uniquely sensitive to its horrors. Meanwhile, the president of the United States wants to weaken the NPT, so that he can be even more free to build up the U.S. nuclear advantage.
The plot thickens when you consider that only one U.S. newspaper immediately picked up the Japanese press story -- the conservative Washington Times. It’s hard to resist the suspicion that this story got out because someone in the Pentagon wanted it out. With North Korea so close to Japan, the signal would surely be transmitted to Pyongyang.
But the signal is surely meant to be heard at the UN too, where the NPT is under review. If anyone is expecting the U.S. to begin really living up to its NPT commitment to move toward a nuclear-free world, forget about it. The Borg can’t disarm. Intimidation is its very lifeblood.
That, of course, is just how the neocons in the Bush administration want it. They want the U.S. to rule the world for a long time to come, and they aren’t ashamed to say it. On the contrary, they figure that you have to say it, loud and clear. The Borg method (some call it the Al Capone method) is the most efficient (and cheapest) way to stay on top of the heap. The more you intimidate and bully, the less likely you are ever to have to fight. That’s the theory.
Of course there was that guy Hitler who apparently believed the same theory. So maybe, in the long run, it doesn’t work so well in practice.
For now, though, the neocon Borg may very well get its way. Nuclear intimidation may become an even bigger part of U.S. foreign policy. Unless, that is, we raise our voices in protest. You know how to do that, right?
God Helps Those Who Help Themselves!
"Intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy."
Never in our wildest dreams did we think we would see those words in black and white—and beneath a SECRET stamp, no less. For three years now, we in Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) have been saying that the CIA and its British counterpart, MI-6, were ordered by their countries' leaders to "fix facts" to "justify" an unprovoked war on Iraq. More often than not, we have been greeted with stares of incredulity.
It has been a hard learning—that folks tend to believe what they want to believe. As long as our evidence, however abundant and persuasive, remained circumstantial, it could not compel belief. It simply is much easier on the psyche to assent to the White House spin machine blaming the Iraq fiasco on bad intelligence than to entertain the notion that we were sold a bill of goods.
Well, you can forget circumstantial...
The intelligence was not simply mistaken; it was manufactured, with the president of the United States awarding foreman George Tenet the Medal of Freedom for his role in helping supervise the deceit... Tenet's malleable managers told their minions, "Let's face it. The president wants us to go to war, and our job is to give him a reason to do it."...
© 2005 TomPaine.com
Wednesday, May 04, 2005
Hitting Back
America's Mortal Secret
by James Carroll
Published on Tuesday, May 3, 2005 by the Boston Globe
The holiest acreage in America was consecrated in an act of revenge. Beating a retreat back to Washington from their defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run, Union soldiers crossed into the property of ''Arlington House," Robert E. Lee's home on the Potomac River. They buried the remains of their dead comrades in Mrs. Lee's rose garden. From then on, the Confederate leader's estate was used as a Union graveyard -- a vindictive payback. The place is now known as Arlington National Cemetery.
The blind impulse to respond to hurt by striking back is part of human make-up, yet the urge, opening into the forbidden irrational, is a deep source of shame, too. Humans clothe the act of vengeance in all sorts of other justifications. When we go to war, or then behave savagely in combat, we hardly ever explain the act by saying we simply must settle the score. But once, we did. When Harry S. Truman announced the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima in an Aug. 9 radio address, he offered three justifications: the second was to shorten the war, and the third was to save American lives. But the first thing he said was that the atom bomb was used ''against those who have starved and beaten American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare."
Hiroshima was yet more punishment for the brutalities of die-hard island combat across the Pacific, and for Pearl Harbor. Never mind that the 900,000 killed by American bombing of nearly all Japanese cities, from the Tokyo raid in March to the Nagasaki bombing in August, were almost all civilians. In the American memory, they were justifiably killed to shorten the war, to save American lives, not for the unworthy motive of revenge.
Sept. 11, 2001, left the United States in the grip of an unarticulated need for payback. No one takes a blow like that without wanting to strike out. Stated justifications aside, that need fueled the subsequent American attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq, which is why it meant so little when those justifications (bin Laden dead-or-alive, WMD, etc.) evaporated. And why it meant so little when the brutalities of American methods were made plain, from torture to hair-trigger checkpoints to ruined cities...
The blind impulse to respond to hurt by striking back is part of human make-up, yet the urge, opening into the forbidden irrational, is a deep source of shame, too. Humans clothe the act of vengeance in all sorts of other justifications. When we go to war, or then behave savagely in combat, we hardly ever explain the act by saying we simply must settle the score. But once, we did. When Harry S. Truman announced the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima in an Aug. 9 radio address, he offered three justifications: the second was to shorten the war, and the third was to save American lives. But the first thing he said was that the atom bomb was used ''against those who have starved and beaten American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare."
Hiroshima was yet more punishment for the brutalities of die-hard island combat across the Pacific, and for Pearl Harbor. Never mind that the 900,000 killed by American bombing of nearly all Japanese cities, from the Tokyo raid in March to the Nagasaki bombing in August, were almost all civilians. In the American memory, they were justifiably killed to shorten the war, to save American lives, not for the unworthy motive of revenge.
Sept. 11, 2001, left the United States in the grip of an unarticulated need for payback. No one takes a blow like that without wanting to strike out. Stated justifications aside, that need fueled the subsequent American attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq, which is why it meant so little when those justifications (bin Laden dead-or-alive, WMD, etc.) evaporated. And why it meant so little when the brutalities of American methods were made plain, from torture to hair-trigger checkpoints to ruined cities...
"Down With The Welfare State!"
Rooseveltian Government
by John R. MacArthur
by John R. MacArthur
...[I]t is just this kindness -- even more than his monumental legislative record -- that is now under siege by the Bush administration. Yes, FDR's New Deal is threatened in very concrete terms. Following Ronald Reagan's vicious example, Karl Rove and Tom DeLay would dearly love to cripple FDR's patrimony: massive public spending to protect the poor, the unemployed, and the aged; the Wagner Act, designed to encourage the formation of unions and collective bargaining; creation of the United Nations and a strenghthened commitment to international law; and strict regulation of an out-of-control and arrogant Wall Street finance system...
[T]he Bush brothers, George W. and Florida Gov. Jeb, have a more pernicious ambition than mere civil devolution. They aim to wipe out the very idea of government as a positive, benevolent, and peacemaking force -- the idea that formed the heart of the New Deal.
In a real sense, they want to kill off the humanness embodied by Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and their leftish entourage.
This is no exaggeration. "President George W. Bush has been a consistent advocate of Hardness," writes Michael Barone, in the book Hard America, Soft America, his recent tribute to Bushian steeliness. Though the current president was reared, like Roosevelt, in the "Soft" world of patrician privilege, "what is consistent about Bush's major programs is that they have promoted competition and accountability: Hardness."
[T]he Bush brothers, George W. and Florida Gov. Jeb, have a more pernicious ambition than mere civil devolution. They aim to wipe out the very idea of government as a positive, benevolent, and peacemaking force -- the idea that formed the heart of the New Deal.
In a real sense, they want to kill off the humanness embodied by Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and their leftish entourage.
This is no exaggeration. "President George W. Bush has been a consistent advocate of Hardness," writes Michael Barone, in the book Hard America, Soft America, his recent tribute to Bushian steeliness. Though the current president was reared, like Roosevelt, in the "Soft" world of patrician privilege, "what is consistent about Bush's major programs is that they have promoted competition and accountability: Hardness."
Laugh at your peril. This is the Bush party line, and it now presents itself as mainstream journalism.
The Bush brothers are not madmen, of course; they hew to a pragmatic agenda, which has taken them far. They don't dare try to dismantle all of the New Deal (or Lyndon Johnson's Great Society), because liberal government and international law provide the indespensable enemies that fuel the resentments forming the Bush political base. Reagan courted the racist vote, by holding up the caricature of the indolent "welfare queen" to public scorn (despite his family's having been on the dole during the Great Depression); the Bushes court Christian fanatics by attacking "activist" judges for having prevented government intervention in the Terri Schiavo case.
The contradictions and hypocrisy don't matter, so long as the "base" gets the angry "hardness" it craves.
Contrast the Bush politics of moralistic hardness with FDR's politics of common-sense tolerance, and it almost makes you nostalgic for the Depression and World War II...
The Bush brothers are not madmen, of course; they hew to a pragmatic agenda, which has taken them far. They don't dare try to dismantle all of the New Deal (or Lyndon Johnson's Great Society), because liberal government and international law provide the indespensable enemies that fuel the resentments forming the Bush political base. Reagan courted the racist vote, by holding up the caricature of the indolent "welfare queen" to public scorn (despite his family's having been on the dole during the Great Depression); the Bushes court Christian fanatics by attacking "activist" judges for having prevented government intervention in the Terri Schiavo case.
The contradictions and hypocrisy don't matter, so long as the "base" gets the angry "hardness" it craves.
Contrast the Bush politics of moralistic hardness with FDR's politics of common-sense tolerance, and it almost makes you nostalgic for the Depression and World War II...
© 2005 Projo.com
Con-DO-leee-zza, the Hopeless Vampire
Cinderella finds few are prepared to dance to the US tune
Condoleezza Rice's term is coinciding with a decline in American influence, says BOB ELLIS
Monday, May 2, 2005
WHO DOES Condoleezza Rice scare? Not Putin. Not Sharon. Not Musharraf. Not Mubarak. Not Koizumi. Not Kim Il-Sung. Not Castro. Not Chavez. Not Kofl Annan.
What then is the good of her? On her watch as US Secretary of State, Vladimir Putin has muscled into the Middle East, Ahmad Chalabi has made a comeback, Robert Mugabe has "won" an election, the Saudis have jibbed on the oil price, world depression has neared.
Venezuelan president Hugo Ghavez has defied her. Italy, the Netherlands and Poland have left, or are leaving Iraq.
And yet the legend is being printed. Her nervy self-important high-school graduation fustian has been heard out, her stupidity in South America praised, her failure to stave off a new Cold War with Russia ignored. The fact that she is black, female and beautiful, a sort of Foggy Bottom Cinderella, has concealed from the world a larger truth.
This is that George Bush and his confederates no longer have much power.
Their threats to Iran ring hollow. No nation but Australia would join a war on Syria or North Korea. No South American nation would join a war on Cuba. They can't get their chosen crazed bully into the UN. They can't convince two Florida doctors to not kill Terri Schiavo. And even Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said of Iraq last week, "It's not about winning."
Power is a curious thing. It exists only if it's not used. When America used its power and bombed, bunker-busted and killed 50,000 Iraqis and pulled down a statue, but still couldn't guarantee a safe street, a day's electricity or a justly administered prison, it showed itself so impotent as to be kind of big, bellowing, murderous joke.
And though it isn't headlines yet, this impotence is the new reality. Bush's popularity is the lowest it's been. The John Bolton appointment and the looming oil price depression on top of his record half-trillion deficit will show him to be the most economically incompetent US leader since Herbert Hoover.
And his friendship with Condoleezza won't do her much good at all. Condi's predecessor as Secretary of State, Colin Powell, who had run and won a war and had been wounded in battle, had clout, charisma, visible conscience and shrewdness. She has none of these things.
She poses as Bush's Million Dollar Baby, but she can't throw a punch.
It may be years before this is realised. But the fact is that Condoleezza's tenure has coincided with, or caused, the end for a while of American power. You see if I am right.
Condoleezza Rice's term is coinciding with a decline in American influence, says BOB ELLIS
Monday, May 2, 2005
WHO DOES Condoleezza Rice scare? Not Putin. Not Sharon. Not Musharraf. Not Mubarak. Not Koizumi. Not Kim Il-Sung. Not Castro. Not Chavez. Not Kofl Annan.
What then is the good of her? On her watch as US Secretary of State, Vladimir Putin has muscled into the Middle East, Ahmad Chalabi has made a comeback, Robert Mugabe has "won" an election, the Saudis have jibbed on the oil price, world depression has neared.
Venezuelan president Hugo Ghavez has defied her. Italy, the Netherlands and Poland have left, or are leaving Iraq.
And yet the legend is being printed. Her nervy self-important high-school graduation fustian has been heard out, her stupidity in South America praised, her failure to stave off a new Cold War with Russia ignored. The fact that she is black, female and beautiful, a sort of Foggy Bottom Cinderella, has concealed from the world a larger truth.
This is that George Bush and his confederates no longer have much power.
Their threats to Iran ring hollow. No nation but Australia would join a war on Syria or North Korea. No South American nation would join a war on Cuba. They can't get their chosen crazed bully into the UN. They can't convince two Florida doctors to not kill Terri Schiavo. And even Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said of Iraq last week, "It's not about winning."
Power is a curious thing. It exists only if it's not used. When America used its power and bombed, bunker-busted and killed 50,000 Iraqis and pulled down a statue, but still couldn't guarantee a safe street, a day's electricity or a justly administered prison, it showed itself so impotent as to be kind of big, bellowing, murderous joke.
And though it isn't headlines yet, this impotence is the new reality. Bush's popularity is the lowest it's been. The John Bolton appointment and the looming oil price depression on top of his record half-trillion deficit will show him to be the most economically incompetent US leader since Herbert Hoover.
And his friendship with Condoleezza won't do her much good at all. Condi's predecessor as Secretary of State, Colin Powell, who had run and won a war and had been wounded in battle, had clout, charisma, visible conscience and shrewdness. She has none of these things.
She poses as Bush's Million Dollar Baby, but she can't throw a punch.
It may be years before this is realised. But the fact is that Condoleezza's tenure has coincided with, or caused, the end for a while of American power. You see if I am right.
Bob Ellis is a Sydney writer
Tuesday, May 03, 2005
NON-Proliferation? Not for Us, Mate!
Erosion of the Nonproliferation Treaty
by Jimmy Carter
by Jimmy Carter
Published on Monday, May 2, 2005 by the International Herald Tribune
As the review conference of the Nonproliferation Treaty convenes in New York this month, we can only be appalled at the indifference of the United States and the other nuclear powers. This indifference is remarkable, considering the addition of Iran and North Korea as states that either possess or seek nuclear weapons programs.
In the run-up to the conference, a group of "Middle States" had a simple goal: "To exert leverage on the nuclear powers to take some minimum steps to save the nonproliferation treaty in 2005." Last year this coalition of nuclear-capable states - including Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden and eight NATO members - voted for a new agenda resolution calling for implementing NPT commitments already made. Tragically, the United States, Britain and France voted against this resolution...
In the run-up to the conference, a group of "Middle States" had a simple goal: "To exert leverage on the nuclear powers to take some minimum steps to save the nonproliferation treaty in 2005." Last year this coalition of nuclear-capable states - including Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden and eight NATO members - voted for a new agenda resolution calling for implementing NPT commitments already made. Tragically, the United States, Britain and France voted against this resolution...
© 2005 IHT
Slippery Tony
Blair a liar but will win again
Monday, 2 May 2005
THE BRITISH Prime Minister, Tony Blair, is a dreadful liar who does not deserve to win a fresh vote of confidence from the British electorate on Thursday. But it is almost inevitable that he will get that vote of confidence, and not necessarily because the electorate does not realise that he is a liar, or because it does not care about it.
Indeed it may well care quite a bit, and the fallout after yet another proof of the chronic mendacity may well hasten the succession of the leader in waiting, Gordon Brown, who is generally thought to have managed British domestic affairs and the economy well.
The reason why Mr Blair may seem to get away with it, albeit after a record period in office for a Labour prime minister is that the British Conservative Party, under Michael Howard, is popularly regarded as unready or unfit for government, and is itself in any event compromised by some of the sorts of compromises with honesty and the truth that have progressively ensnared Mr Blair.
Mr Blair is also assisted by the fact that some of his most obvious conscious manipulation of the facts is over Iraq, which, these days is seen by most voters as no longer of an election issue.
Why should it? Britain's participation in the war was deeply unpopular in Britain, particularly among Labour voters, but the Conservatives, and Michael Howard personally, strongly supported it. Though the Tories are now trying hard to capitalise on the latest revelations about Mr Blair's straightforwardness, they are raising it only on the character aspect: they do not have an alternative policy on Iraq.
Iraq is still, of course, a problem, but it is one of an entirely different order from that which was splitting Labour in 2003: the invasion has happened and Saddam Hussein has been deposed, indeed an interim transitional Iraqi Government has been elected. Mr Blair, like Prime Minister John Howard and President George W Bush, make light of the fact that their various presentations of the case for an invasion have been proven quite wrong; indeed they suggest that those who harp on the fact secretly wish that Saddam was still the murderous dictator of Iraq.
As John Howard has urged and Mr Blair wants, the British, like the Australians last year, have "moved on". So far as there must be lingering recollections, they would prefer them to be of lonely leaders, prepared to be unpopular and to ignore the public opinion polls, even the nervous nellies in their own party, because they were convinced that they were right and that doing what they did was the ethical and moral decision which was required. That is they are leaders who do not shrink from the tough decisions.
John Howard has his own methods of dealing with inconvenient facts. He builds up layers of deniability and claims that he did not know, or that he relied on what his officials, at the relevant time, told him. He is careful with words and is a master of hedging words so that he can claim, later, that he meant some different from the clear impression he was conveying earlier.
And he uses phrases of moral imperative rather than statements of fact, because one cannot be caught out there. As facts have sometimes proven inconvenient, his credibility has suffered, but he is a master of switching the debate.
Mr Blair is a different animal. It sometimes seems that he will say anything which suits him at the time, confident that his minders can fix it up in arrears. He dresses his utterances with a frightful sanctimony, appearance of sincerity and appeals to understanding of the purity of his heart and his intentions.
Little that emerges from his office or his mouth involves the disinterested presentation of the truth. Rather it has all become all advocacy, all marketing and all spin — stressing the positive, glossing over or ignoring the negative, and suppression of the inconvenient fact and sometimes the inconvenient truth teller.
He has subverted the institutions, and the honour of some of its officials to the point where others will also lie for him, or at least deny anything which cannot be proven. When the truth outs anyway, even beyond the bluster of appealing to appreciation of his honour, the blackguarding of the messengers by his spin doctors, and the buying of time by referring matters to inquiries by timid judges, he will, as often as not, simply brazen it out as his apparatchiks seek to redefine what it was all about. The process is, of course, much assisted by his duchessing of the media.
Anyone who read the evidence to (as opposed to the findings of) the inquiry by Lord Hutton into the preparation of the intelligence case "proving" that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction knows that his office put pressure on public servants to "sex up" the case. They know also that those public servants buckled.
In due course, it emerges that no such weapons existed. But Mr Blair, having "moved on" insists that he thought they did, so that it does not matter. He insisted all along that his Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith, had given him unequivocal advice that Britain was within international law in attacking Iraq.
It has now emerged, from leaks, that the advice was very heavily qualified and that the only let-outs were, in effect, that Mr Blair could do certain things if he believed in the existence of certain facts — many in dispute. Lord Goldsmith explicitly rejected, as bad law, much of the American case for intervention.
This is not a problem for Mr Blair who says he came to believe in the contentious facts (even if, as it turns out, they were not true) and that, thus, his decision had integrity.
Did he mislead the people? Yes, and directly. But his spin now is that worrying about this sort of thing is pettifogging nitpicking by people who were against the war anyway.
"I will never ever convince some people who have been opposed to this war," he said in his most engaging manner. "People can continue to frame this in terms of my integrity, but it was about a decision. I took it. I have to live with the consequences of it. I don't regret it. I cannot apologise. I tried very hard to find a middle way through, but I could not get it".
Got that? It must be all right then.
Monday, 2 May 2005
THE BRITISH Prime Minister, Tony Blair, is a dreadful liar who does not deserve to win a fresh vote of confidence from the British electorate on Thursday. But it is almost inevitable that he will get that vote of confidence, and not necessarily because the electorate does not realise that he is a liar, or because it does not care about it.
Indeed it may well care quite a bit, and the fallout after yet another proof of the chronic mendacity may well hasten the succession of the leader in waiting, Gordon Brown, who is generally thought to have managed British domestic affairs and the economy well.
The reason why Mr Blair may seem to get away with it, albeit after a record period in office for a Labour prime minister is that the British Conservative Party, under Michael Howard, is popularly regarded as unready or unfit for government, and is itself in any event compromised by some of the sorts of compromises with honesty and the truth that have progressively ensnared Mr Blair.
Mr Blair is also assisted by the fact that some of his most obvious conscious manipulation of the facts is over Iraq, which, these days is seen by most voters as no longer of an election issue.
Why should it? Britain's participation in the war was deeply unpopular in Britain, particularly among Labour voters, but the Conservatives, and Michael Howard personally, strongly supported it. Though the Tories are now trying hard to capitalise on the latest revelations about Mr Blair's straightforwardness, they are raising it only on the character aspect: they do not have an alternative policy on Iraq.
Iraq is still, of course, a problem, but it is one of an entirely different order from that which was splitting Labour in 2003: the invasion has happened and Saddam Hussein has been deposed, indeed an interim transitional Iraqi Government has been elected. Mr Blair, like Prime Minister John Howard and President George W Bush, make light of the fact that their various presentations of the case for an invasion have been proven quite wrong; indeed they suggest that those who harp on the fact secretly wish that Saddam was still the murderous dictator of Iraq.
As John Howard has urged and Mr Blair wants, the British, like the Australians last year, have "moved on". So far as there must be lingering recollections, they would prefer them to be of lonely leaders, prepared to be unpopular and to ignore the public opinion polls, even the nervous nellies in their own party, because they were convinced that they were right and that doing what they did was the ethical and moral decision which was required. That is they are leaders who do not shrink from the tough decisions.
John Howard has his own methods of dealing with inconvenient facts. He builds up layers of deniability and claims that he did not know, or that he relied on what his officials, at the relevant time, told him. He is careful with words and is a master of hedging words so that he can claim, later, that he meant some different from the clear impression he was conveying earlier.
And he uses phrases of moral imperative rather than statements of fact, because one cannot be caught out there. As facts have sometimes proven inconvenient, his credibility has suffered, but he is a master of switching the debate.
Mr Blair is a different animal. It sometimes seems that he will say anything which suits him at the time, confident that his minders can fix it up in arrears. He dresses his utterances with a frightful sanctimony, appearance of sincerity and appeals to understanding of the purity of his heart and his intentions.
Little that emerges from his office or his mouth involves the disinterested presentation of the truth. Rather it has all become all advocacy, all marketing and all spin — stressing the positive, glossing over or ignoring the negative, and suppression of the inconvenient fact and sometimes the inconvenient truth teller.
He has subverted the institutions, and the honour of some of its officials to the point where others will also lie for him, or at least deny anything which cannot be proven. When the truth outs anyway, even beyond the bluster of appealing to appreciation of his honour, the blackguarding of the messengers by his spin doctors, and the buying of time by referring matters to inquiries by timid judges, he will, as often as not, simply brazen it out as his apparatchiks seek to redefine what it was all about. The process is, of course, much assisted by his duchessing of the media.
Anyone who read the evidence to (as opposed to the findings of) the inquiry by Lord Hutton into the preparation of the intelligence case "proving" that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction knows that his office put pressure on public servants to "sex up" the case. They know also that those public servants buckled.
In due course, it emerges that no such weapons existed. But Mr Blair, having "moved on" insists that he thought they did, so that it does not matter. He insisted all along that his Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith, had given him unequivocal advice that Britain was within international law in attacking Iraq.
It has now emerged, from leaks, that the advice was very heavily qualified and that the only let-outs were, in effect, that Mr Blair could do certain things if he believed in the existence of certain facts — many in dispute. Lord Goldsmith explicitly rejected, as bad law, much of the American case for intervention.
This is not a problem for Mr Blair who says he came to believe in the contentious facts (even if, as it turns out, they were not true) and that, thus, his decision had integrity.
Did he mislead the people? Yes, and directly. But his spin now is that worrying about this sort of thing is pettifogging nitpicking by people who were against the war anyway.
"I will never ever convince some people who have been opposed to this war," he said in his most engaging manner. "People can continue to frame this in terms of my integrity, but it was about a decision. I took it. I have to live with the consequences of it. I don't regret it. I cannot apologise. I tried very hard to find a middle way through, but I could not get it".
Got that? It must be all right then.
© Canberra Times
Learning from History
Yesterday and Today: Nazis and the Righteous Right
by Donna Glee Williams
by Donna Glee Williams
Published on Monday, May 2, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
History is tapping us on the shoulder and pointing. The sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz followed so closely by the popification of an ex-member of the Hitler Youth combine to force our attention back to the Nazi catastrophe. We study World War II and the Holocaust and ask ourselves “How could it happen? How could civilized people let it come to this? How could they consent to let their flag become the registered trademark for collective evil and let their country walk into history with the blood of millions on its conscience?” We shake our heads and turn away from the questions because our historical gaze is dazzled by the enormity of what happened in the 1940’s. “Never again!” we say with tears in our eyes...
"Mission Accomplished"?
Iraq: 'Mission Accomplished'? That depends on what the mission was...
by Justin Raimondo
May 2, 2005
Two years ago Sunday, in a splashy display of his role as commander-in-chief, George W. Bush landed on board the USS Lincoln in the co-pilot's seat of a Navy S-3B Viking. Standing amid a sea of his Praetorians – against the backdrop of a huge banner proclaiming "Mission Accomplished" – our president had a distinctly Napoleonic air about him as he exuberantly proclaimed:
"Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country."
As violence surges in "liberated" Iraq, auguring all-out civil war, the memory of this breast-beating moment – not to mention that unfortunate banner – mocks us across the years, haunting the families and friends of the fallen, Iraqis as well as Americans. Bush blithered on: "The tyrant," he intoned, "has fallen" – yes, and as a government of Shi'ite fundamentalists takes the helm, a new tyranny arises to take his place, put there by US force of arms. With the liar, embezzler, and Iranian double agent Ahmed Chalabi installed as Iraq's oil minister, it is fair to ask: what is the nature of this "mission" we are supposed to have "accomplished"?...
by Justin Raimondo
May 2, 2005
Two years ago Sunday, in a splashy display of his role as commander-in-chief, George W. Bush landed on board the USS Lincoln in the co-pilot's seat of a Navy S-3B Viking. Standing amid a sea of his Praetorians – against the backdrop of a huge banner proclaiming "Mission Accomplished" – our president had a distinctly Napoleonic air about him as he exuberantly proclaimed:
"Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country."
As violence surges in "liberated" Iraq, auguring all-out civil war, the memory of this breast-beating moment – not to mention that unfortunate banner – mocks us across the years, haunting the families and friends of the fallen, Iraqis as well as Americans. Bush blithered on: "The tyrant," he intoned, "has fallen" – yes, and as a government of Shi'ite fundamentalists takes the helm, a new tyranny arises to take his place, put there by US force of arms. With the liar, embezzler, and Iranian double agent Ahmed Chalabi installed as Iraq's oil minister, it is fair to ask: what is the nature of this "mission" we are supposed to have "accomplished"?...
Monday, May 02, 2005
Vietnam Deja-vu
The Unreported Vietnam-Iraq Parallel
by Danny Schechter
Published on Sunday, May 1, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
There is a word missing in most of the coverage of Iraq. It's a ghost-laden word that conjures up distressing memories that Washington and most of our media prefer to keep in that proverbial "lock box," hidden away in dusty archives and footage libraries,
The word is Vietnam.
Its absence was never more noticeable than in the coverage this past weekend of the 30th anniversary of the Vietnam war, marked in Vietnam with celebrations, but largely ignored in America where CNN led with the story of a bride who went missing when she had second thoughts.
Is this denial or is it deliberate? Just this past month, the national Smithsonian Museum of American History installed a new patriotically correct permanent war-positive exhibition, "The Price of Freedom: Americans at War."
If you want to know about the pain of the war offical America wants you to forget, you have to head a few blocks south on the mall in Washington to the Vietnam memorial with its nearly 60,000 names engraved in black marble. That's where you will see the tears of visitors every day and their lingering memories three decades later...
The word is Vietnam.
Its absence was never more noticeable than in the coverage this past weekend of the 30th anniversary of the Vietnam war, marked in Vietnam with celebrations, but largely ignored in America where CNN led with the story of a bride who went missing when she had second thoughts.
Is this denial or is it deliberate? Just this past month, the national Smithsonian Museum of American History installed a new patriotically correct permanent war-positive exhibition, "The Price of Freedom: Americans at War."
If you want to know about the pain of the war offical America wants you to forget, you have to head a few blocks south on the mall in Washington to the Vietnam memorial with its nearly 60,000 names engraved in black marble. That's where you will see the tears of visitors every day and their lingering memories three decades later...
