Peace and Justice Post

Global Research, July 5, 2007 by Stephen Lendman

Britain’s most despised and discredited man ended his 10 year reign June 27 when he stepped down from office transferring his ruling Labor Party’s leadership to successor Gordon Brown. He had no choice because of seething public displeasure over his allying with George Bush’s illegal wars on Iraq and Afghanistan. Most Brits oppose them, yet the vast majority of Labor and Conservative MPs, including new prime minister Gordon Brown, supported them early on, now may have second thoughts, but are constrained by close relations with Washington making them reluctant to back down from what they once disingenuously trumpeted as a noble cause. That’s an open question, however, the London Guardian’s Jonathan Steele posed and answered June 29 if Mr. Brown was listening. Steele’s message to “The new man in No 10” is “seize the day….break with Bush now….signal a fresh start by taking Britain out of Iraq.” Don’t bet on it. Steele says Brown is a committed “Atlanticist.” He’s likely weighing the proper way to begin engaging his US ally. Steele tells him how, pointing to other loyal NATO members as examples. France and Germany sent no forces to Iraq, and Italy, Spain and the Netherlands withdrew theirs. It caused no rupture in relations with Washington for any of them after some name calling at first. Why not Britain now? Steele stresses how refreshing a policy change at “No 10” would be “after the subservient Blair years.” Tony Blair began his tenure May 2, 1997 with a formidable approval rating as high at times as 90% but ended it in the mid-20% range or lower. The same is likely for George Bush already at 26% in the latest Newsweek poll suggesting it’s even lower than that. Immediately post-9/11, he was compared to Lincoln, FDR and Churchill combined. It was laughable then and seems ludicrous now for a hated man barely hanging on and trying to avoid what growing numbers in the country demand – his removal from office by impeachment along with Vice-President Cheney. The feeling of many in Britain is that by allying with George Bush, Mr. Blair left a legacy of “dashed hopes and big disappointments, of so much promised and so little delivered.” That’s in spite of helping advance the Northern Ireland peace process, begun before he took office, and that leaders in Ireland had lots more to do with than him. Just hours after standing down, the announcement everyone knew in advance came, surprising no one but angering most. Referring to the so-called Quartet, the BBC reported June 27: “Tony Blair is to become a Middle East envoy working on behalf of the US, Russia, the UN and the EU.” The London Guardian called him “the Quartet’s fifth horseman,” an appointment that “beggars belief.” In his new capacity, he’ll replace former World Bank president James Wolfensohn who resigned last year for lack of progress he never had a chance to achieve in the first place. Neither will Mr. Blair, nor will he try to, as Alvaro de Soto, former UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process and envoy to the Quartet, explained in his leaked End of Mission Report. It noted Wolfensohn was originally to cover the entire peace process, but what emerged for him was a narrowly constricted role. De Soto said he was “highjacked….by US envoys and (Secretary Condoleezza) Rice.” As a result, Wolfensohn stepped down from his job in April, 2006 with “a more jaundiced view of Israel (and US) policies than he had upon entering.” Based on his sordid war criminal record post-9/11, Tony Blair won’t likely have the qualms that got James Wolfensohn to resign his job. He’s taking it to reinvent himself, but that’s no more likely than convincing carnivores to become vegetarians. He’ll first visit Ramallah in the West Bank, showing up as a Trojan horse fooling no one about what’s behind his slick-tongued hypocrisy.   Full article

CounterPunch, July 6, 2007

Scooter Libby and Mordechai Vanunu

By Daniel Ellsberg

On the day that Scooter Libby’s prison sentence was lifted by President Bush, Mordechai Vanunu was sentenced to prison, again, in Israel. In both cases, the underlying offense was the same: speaking to journalists. In each case, the nominal charges were otherwise. For Libby, lying under oath about the circumstances, thereby obstructing justice. For Vanunu, it was breaking a restriction laid upon him when he emerged from prison three years ago, after serving an earlier full sentence of eighteen years, also for speaking to journalists: he was ordered not to speak, at all, to journalists or foreigners. Like a free man, he did both, openly and repeatedly.

But whereas Libby had passed classified information, and Vanunu had served his earlier sentence for doing the same, in this instance Vanunu was not charged with revealing any secrets. The transcripts or published accounts of his conversations being available, it was open knowledge that what he had mainly talked about was the truth of his personal convictions about nuclear weapons: that they should universally be abolished, Israel’s among them.

Perjury, with the intent and effect of obstructing justice (successfully, as it happens, in Libby’s case) is an ancient, established crime under virtually any system of justice. Vanunu’s act of speaking his mind freely is not, under existing international human rights law. Nor is it a domestic crime in other democratic societies. These were not conditions of parole, as frequently misstated. Vanunu was not paroled from prison for his earlier conviction, but served his full sentence of eighteen years, eleven and a half of them in solitary confinement. Therefore, under most systems of criminal justice, he should have been subject to no further restrictions or requirements.

What, then, was the legal status of the restrictions which he has now been sentenced for violating? The answer is that the Israeli law under which his speech and movement are restricted is an unmodified relic of the British Mandate period in Palestine, i.e. a colonial regulation. Nothing like it exists in any other democracy in the world. It is as if the young United States had re-enacted the British oppressions and restrictions that lead to the revolution, and that were condemned in the Declaration of Independence and banned in the Bill of Rights. Vanunu mordantly reflected on hearing his new sentence that perhaps his appeal should be to the Queen of England.

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CounterPunch.org, July 5, 2006

Media Silent About the Carnage in Iraq

Killing 10,000 Iraqis Every Month

BY Michael Schwartz
A state-of-the-art research study published in October 12, 2006 issue of The Lancet (the most prestigious British medical journal) concluded that–as of a year ago–600,000 Iraqis had died violently due to the war in Iraq. That is, the Iraqi death rate for the first 39 months of the war was just about 15,000 per month.

That wasn’t the worst of it, because the death rate was increasing precipitously, and during the first half of 2006 the monthly rate was approximately 30,000 per month, a rate that no doubt has increased further during the ferocious fighting associated with the current American surge.

The U.S. and British governments quickly dismissed these results as “methodologically flawed,” even though the researchers used standard procedures for measuring mortality in war and disaster zones. (They visited a random set of homes and asked the residents if anyone in their household had died in the last few years, recording the details, and inspecting death certificates in the vast majority of cases.) The two belligerent governments offered no concrete reasons for rejecting the study’s findings, and they ignored the fact that they had sponsored identical studies (conducted by some of the same researchers) in other disaster areas, including Darfur and Kosovo. The reasons for this rejection were, however, clear enough: the results were simply too devastating for the culpable governments to acknowledge. (Secretly the British government later admitted that it was “a tried and tested way to measuring mortality in conflict zones”; but it has never publicly admitted its validity).

Reputable researchers have accepted the Lancet study’s results as valid with virtually no dissent. Juan Cole, the most visible American Middle East scholar, summarized it in a particularly vivid comment: “the US misadventure in Iraq is responsible [in a little over three years] for setting off the killing of twice as many civilians as Saddam managed to polish off in 25 years.”

…Full article

Al-Ahram Weekly, 5-11 July 2007

Sukant Chandan argues that the recent botched terrorist attacks in London and Glasgow are the result of Britain’s botched imperial designs against the Muslim world

 

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Following unsuccessful car-bomb attacks in London and Glasgow on the first day in office of the new British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, debate in Britain revolves around two main issues: are Muslims justified in arguing that Islam and Islamic countries are victims of a Western plot of domination and aggression, and is the invasion and occupation of Iraq the cause of the radicalisation of Muslim youth and the growth of militant Jihadi networks planning attacks in Britain?What is at stake is the very relationship between the Muslim communities, the white community and the British state.

The process of mutual understanding and dialogue will escape us so long as the British government, the mainstream media and the public are in denial over the fact that strained relations between the Muslim community and the British state must be seen primarily within the context of British government policy vis-à-vis Muslims and Islam across the world, especially in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan. Further violence and conflict will continue both in Britain and the Middle East if this state of denial and lack of mutual respect continue.

In the post-WWII period, it was the war in Vietnam which epitomised the relationship between not only East and West, but also North and South. Since the collapse of the Socialist Bloc this relationship has been symbolised by the wars and occupations of Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon and Afghanistan. Indeed the 1990 US-led aggression against Iraq was the US’s signal to the rest of the world that it was establishing its world hegemony, or New World Order in the words of Bush Senior. The Middle East continues to be the epicentre of this battle between the poor and rich nations, the North and South. The attacks in London and Glasgow took place against a stark backdrop of occupation and resistance in the Middle East and the ludicrous appointment of Tony Blair as a Middle East peace envoy by the Quartet. Al-Quds Al-Arabi ‘s Editor-in-Chief Abdul-Bari Atwan suggested that “the only reception befitting of Blair is with rotten eggs and tomatoes.”

Instead of a reasoned public debate about the root causes of Arab and Muslim anger against Western foreign policy, Blair set the boundaries of the public debate in blaming the victims. In what was probably the most vicious of a long line of attacks on Muslims and their identity and beliefs, Blair insists: “it’s not just your methods that are wrong, your ideas are absurd. Nobody is oppressing you. Your sense of grievance isn’t justified.” This is typical of Blair, the ideological spokesperson of the West’s “civilising mission” against Muslims and Arabs, but it is given further credence when Muslim voices echo Blair. One Hassan Butt has obliged and been prominent in the print and TV media.

Butt, a former member of the now disbanded militant British pro-Jihadi group Al-Muhajiroun, said in The Observer on 1 July that Muslims in Britain have been allowed to assert their identity through their dress, construction of mosques and equal rights before the law. Butt, the spokesperson for the model Western civilised Muslim, helps to confirm The Observer ‘s editorial on the same day which assures us that “the West does not want to dominate the lands of Islam.” Meanwhile, he helps to confirm the misplaced fears of many that Islam is blindly violent to non-Muslims, referring casually to “those passages of the Quran which instruct on killing unbelievers”.

The underlying cause of the growth of political Islam is Western policy in the Middle East. Instead of recognising this simple fact, the terrorist activities of a handful of frustrated militants are used to trivialise any notion that Muslims may have a convincing case for their concerns. The attacks in London and Glasgow are being used by some to argue that the widespread solidarity for those resisting occupation in the Middle East in the Muslim community is really support for Al-Qaeda-type armed attacks against civilians in this country.

The subtext is that Western tolerance towards Muslims and Islam requires that they confine themselves to praying quietly, dressing as they like, and respecting the law, but in no way should Muslims or anyone else support the rights of Arab and Middle Eastern people to end occupation. If they do, they are branded terrorist sympathisers. Rather, Muslims and the public in general are told time and time again that there is no project to dominate the Middle East, whilst every season sees a new campaign against a Middle Eastern country. Attacks in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia, regime- change threats against Sudan, Syria and Iran, a secret international network of US prisons for Muslim men, women and children, the obscenity that is Camp X-Ray, and the sadistic humiliation and torture at Abu Ghraib prison… What else is necessary to prove that Arabs and Muslims who stand up for the independence of their countries and their identity are being victimised?

The Middle East was the last region of the world to be conquered by the colonial powers. It continues to be the most difficult to subdue, but is a crucial region for the West to control due to its geographical proximity and oil. It is so important, and acquiescence to control it is so important, the very act of resisting US, British and Israeli aggression and occupation is therefore in effect a crime in the eyes of the West.

In this context and due to the related terrorism laws here, most of the Muslim community is afraid to get involved in legitimate democratic political activity. Those who are involved, even the most mainstream organisations, have to constantly defend themselves from attempts at criminalisation from the more hawkish sections of the British state. Rather than victimising dissenters, true believers in British democracy should be trying to show that democracy can work; they should involve them in consultation with the authorities and in light of this apply a wiser policy in the interests of all parties.

What is taking place instead is polarisation between the British authorities and the Muslim community. A small section of Muslim youth here see that, on the one hand, democratic methods such as lobbying and marching in the millions does not shift British policies one iota, and that mainstream Muslim organisations are ignored and even attacked despite all their meetings with panels and committees with the British authorities. It is no wonder then that in the face of the unabated suffering of their brothers and sisters in the Middle East, some sympathise and a few even take up the strategy espoused by Al-Qaeda of refusing the West security as long as Muslims are denied security through occupation and aggression. This emergence of the more extreme and violent methods of protest when legal protests fail was infamously explained by Mohamed Siddiq Khan in his video before the bomb attacks that he led on 7 July 2005: “our words have no impact upon you, therefore I’m going to talk to you in a language that you understand. Our words are dead until we give them life with our blood.”

This Al-Qaeda political strategy of treating violence with violence is not unique to militant Islam: it was most recently employed in England by the Irish Republican Army and by secular Palestinian nationalists in the 1970s amongst others. It is the “shock and awe” of the weak. When peaceful and democratic means to resolve conflicts and grievances are allowed to fail by those who have the power to resolve conflicts, it is inevitable that some will try other means.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is clearly setting a markedly different tone to that of the comparatively hawkish and offensive former PM Tony Blair. Unlike Blair, Brown has not so far opportunistically encouraged the media and authorities to take advantage of this situation to immediately justify the strengthening of the terrorism laws and encourage an atmosphere where Islamophobia flourishes. However, on all the most important issues of foreign policy in the Middle East there is no sign that Brown will be moving away from the policies of his predecessor. Whether or not the attacks in London and Glasgow are Al-Qaeda-inspired, Brown should understand that these attacks are inevitable when one nation occupies and creates calamities in another nation.

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Source: RINF.com

Thursday, July 5th, 2007

Australia has admitted for the first time that securing the supply of oil is a key motive for its involvement in the US-led war in Iraq.

Brendan Nelson, the defence minister, said “energy security” was one of the main priorities behind his country’s support for the war, which is unpopular among Australians.

His remarks add weight to war protesters’ arguments that the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 was aimed at grabbing the country’s oil supplies rather than a bid to counter the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, which later proved to be non-existent.

Nelson told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that Australia’s priorities were set out in a defence and security review being released on Thursday ”and resource security is one of them”.

US ‘prestige’

He said: “Obviously the Middle East itself, not only Iraq, but the entire region is an important supplier of energy, oil in particular, to the rest of the world.

”… it’s extremely important that Australia take the view that it’s in our interests, our security interests, to make sure that we leave the Middle East, and leave Iraq in particular, in a position of sustainable security.”

Nelson also said it was important to support the “prestige” of the US and UK.

“We’re also there to support our key ally – that’s the United States of America – and we’re there to ensure that we don’t have terrorism driven from Iraq which would destabilise our own region,” he said.

Howard criticised

His comments contrast with those made by John Howard, the Australian prime minister, on the eve of the Iraq invasion in February 2003 when he denied the war was linked to oil.

He said at the time: “It [the war] is about the danger to Australia if countries like Iraq continue to have chemical and biological weapons, and those weapons get into the hands of international terrorists – that fundamentally is what this is about.”

The opposition Labor Party, which wants to withdraw Australia’s troops from Iraq, said the government’s admission contradicted its statements before the invasion.

Kevin Rudd, the opposition leader, said on Thursday: “When Mr Howard was asked back in 2003 whether this war had anything to do with oil, Mr Howard said in no way did it have anything to do with oil.

“This government simply makes it up as it goes along on Iraq.”

China ‘threat’

Meanwhile, John Howard said on Thursday that China’s rapid military expansion risked causing greater instability in the region.

“The pace and scope of its military modernisation, particularly the development of new and disruptive capabilities such as the anti-satellite missile, could create misunderstandings and instability in the region,” he said at the launch of the new defence paper.

Beijing has overtaken Japan as Australia’s top trading partner and Canberra has been reticent to comment on China’s military and economic development.

But with Washington viewing Canberra’s close relationship with Beijing with some concern, the document launched by Howard brings his government into closer step with Japan and the US – both partners with Australia in security pacts.

Howard, who has committed Australia’s military to a $43bn build-up, said Canberra had buried the “self-defeating” idea that Australia’s military should be based on home defence.

“It needs to be able to defend our mainland and approaches in the unlikely event these ever come under direct military threat.

“But it must also be capable of conducting substantial operations in our immediate region, whether alone or as the leader of a coalition, and of making meaningful military contributions as a member of coalitions further abroad.”

Source: War In Iraq

“Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the ‘wall of separation between church and state,’ therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society.” – Former US President Thomas Jefferson

President George W. Bush has become dangerously steeped in ideas of Armageddon, the Apocalypse, an imminent war with Satanic forces in the Middle East, and an urgency to construct an American theocracy to fulfill God’s end-of-days plan, according to close observers.
Historians and investigative journalists following the “end-time Christian” movement have grown alarmed at the impact it may be having on Bush’s Middle East policies, including the current war in Iraq, the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian crisis, the strife in Lebanon and the administration’s repeated attempts to find a cause for war against Iran.

Many people are aware that Bush is “the most aggressively religious president in American History,” as eminent historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. described him, (Schlesinger, “War and the Presidency,” 143) but most remain without a clue to what this actually means.

One piece of evidence is Bush’s funneling billions of dollars to “faith-based” organizations. Faith offices making grants are now so widespread inside government agencies that federal watchdog officials have serious difficulties accounting for how much money has actually been spent. (Goldberg, “Kingdom Coming” 121). Marvin Olasky, a devotee of end-time theology, designed Bush’s faith-based welfare concept. See also Goldberg, “Kingdom Coming,” 110.

Further evidence is the Bush administration’s transformation of the military. Until complaints forced its removal, a religious recruitment video made by a group called the Christian Embassy appeared on the Department of Defense web site. The video included interviews made inside the Pentagon with seven high-ranking military officers, congressmen, other federal officials and even the Christian Ethiopian ambassador to the US about their personal relationship with Christ. Army Lt. General William “Jerry” Boykin made headlines in 2003 when he said he believed America was engaged in a holy war as a “Christian nation” battling Satan. Adversaries can be defeated, he said, “only if we come against them in the name of Jesus.” Despite his highly publicized rhetoric, Boykin remains Bush’s deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence.

Beneath Bush’s benign-sounding words, “faith” and “Christian,” lies the deeper reality of the authoritarian, doomsday religious beliefs of the ministers and spiritual counselors that surround him, say experts. Officially he has been at pains to show an openness traditionally expected of an American president. Typical is his assertion in a speech at a National Prayer Breakfast found on the White House website: “There’s another part of our heritage we are showing in Iraq, and that is the great American tradition of religious tolerance. The Iraqi people are mostly Muslims, and we respect the faith they practice.” However, experts point out the particular brand of Christianity that permeates Bush’s environment is anything but tolerant. For example, Bush’s own personal minister, Franklin Graham, has called Islam “evil and very wicked.” He has said, “Let’s use the weapons we have, the weapons of mass destruction if need be, and destroy the enemy.”

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‘Imploding’ presidency in no mood for celebration on Independence Day

 

 

 

 

The Independent, July 4, 2007

By Rupert Cornwell in Washington

For Americans, the 4th of July is a time for celebration. For George Bush however, today’s Independence Day holiday is another date in the calendar of an imploding presidency without parallel in recent history.

The latest, albeit probably relatively minor, blow to Mr Bush’s standing was his move on Monday to commute the 30-month jail sentence imposed on Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice-President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, for perjury in the CIA leak case.

The decision has been greeted with predictable outrage by Democrats, who accuse Mr Bush of cronyism and contempt for the law. But although polls have shown that some 70 per cent of Americans opposed any idea of a pardon for Libby, so weak has Mr Bush become that the decision could actually strengthen him – by shoring up support among the conservative faithful, Mr Bush’s core constituency, who believe the real outrage was Libby’s conviction in the first place.

“I am very happy for Scooter Libby. This will allow a good American, who has done a lot for his country, to resume his life,” said Fred Thompson, unabashed conservative and soon-to-be-declared Republican presidential candidate, who helped organise a Libby defence fund.

At his daily briefing yesterday, the White House spokesman Tony Snow not only defended the decision to commute the prison term, but even held the door open to a full pardon.

Although Libby has been spared jail, he still faces a $250,000 (£124,000) fine, two years’ probation, and the lasting blot on his reputation of a felony conviction’s – not to mention an estimated $5m in legal costs that friends are scrambling to cover. “This is hardly a slap on the wrist, it’s a very severe penalty,” said Mr Snow, denying that the commutation was to prevent Libby from revealing embarrassing secrets as he continued his appeal efforts from behind bars.

But the Libby affair may be quickly supplanted by new pressures on Mr Bush. The Democrat-controlled Congress is raining subpoenas on White House and Justice Department officials over scandals involving warrantless domestic wiretapping and the dismissal of eight federal attorneys last year.

As a court clash with the legislature looms, the President is under continuous pressure to sack the Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, an old Texas friend, and much of that pressure is coming from Mr Bush’s Republicans on Capitol Hill, a sign of how he is losing control of his own party.

Thus far, the most vivid evidence of his crumbling authority was the Republican rebellion that led to defeat of immigration reform, a measure vigorously championed by the President. Its demise ended Mr Bush’s last hope of a significant second term legisative achievement, and sealed his status as the lamest of lame ducks.

But a more ominous challenge looms in September when – barring clear evidence that his troop surge is working – Republicans could join with Democrats to force a change in strategy on Iraq, the issue that above all is destroying his presidency. Thus far, his own party has kept ranks behind him. But with the 2008 elections less than 18 months away, the cracks are growing, and last week saw the most important defection yet, of Richard Lugar, the senior Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Mr Bush’s unpopularity is now challenging long established records. Some presidents briefly have been more disliked: Jimmy Carter slipped to a 21 per cent approval rating in July 1980, four months before he was trounced by Ronald Reagan in that year’s election. But even at the height of opposition to the Vietnam War, Lyndon Johnson’s approval ratings averaged above 40 per cent in 1967-68.

Not since Harry Truman in the early 1950s has a president been as unloved for as long as Mr Bush. He slipped below the 50 per cent mark in spring 2005, and for the past year and a half, he has been stuck in the mid-30s. In one poll he fell to 28 per cent, worse even than his father at his lowest before he lost to Bill Clinton in November 1992.

With public dissatisfaction over Iraq continuing to grow, and the “right track, wrong track” barometer showing an unprecedented 74 per cent of Americans convinced the country is heading in the wrong direction, Mr Bush will probably remain deeply unpopular for the 18 months remaining until he leaves office in January 2009.

the Guardian/UK

 

Published on Wednesday, July 4, 2007

 

 

By Simon Tisdall

Opponents frequently accuse George Bush of being in denial over Iraq. But in recent weeks the dire urgency of the situation, in both Baghdad and Washington, appears to have penetrated even the insulating layers normally enveloping the Oval Office.

The White House is increasingly alarmed at the widely shared belief that the progress report to Congress in September by the Iraq commander, General David Petraeus, and the US ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, will mark the beginning of the end of the occupation.

The 29,000-strong military surge, ordered by Mr Bush in February, has already been written off as a failure, or not nearly successful enough, by many in Congress and beyond. With US casualties running at roughly double last year’s level, pressure for withdrawal may become irresistible almost whatever Gen Petraeus says.

“The real debate is not about whether the US should pull out troops. That is now inevitable,” said columnist EJ Dionne. “The real challenge is to figure out the right timetable, whether a residual force should be left there, and which American objectives can be salvaged.”

According to foreign policy analysts Steven Simon and Ray Takeyh in the Washington Post, “what the US needs now is a guide to how to lose – how to start thinking about minimising the damage to American interests, saving lives, and ultimately wresting some good from this fiasco”.

Nor is this defeatism (or realism) confined to Democrats and liberals. Richard Lugar led a charge against Mr Bush’s policy last week by Republican senators who, like many of their House colleagues, believe the war is seriously harming both the country and their party’s 2008 electoral prospects. Mr Lugar said, in sum, that domestic divisions had already fatally undermined the surge. “The strident, polarised nature of this debate increases the risk that our involvement in Iraq will end in a poorly planned withdrawal that undercuts our vital interests.”

Democrats, spurred on by polls showing that most Americans want out of Iraq and are impatient for Congress to act, are doing their best to exploit doubts. Senate majority leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will call a series of Iraq votes this month, on pullout timetables, funding, and length of combat tours, to force Republicans to show where they stand.

Meanwhile, members of both parties are calling for a revival of the independent Iraq Study Group, whose findings last autumn were initially spurned by Mr Bush. At the same time, the anti-war movement is targeting electorally vulnerable Republicans in 15 states.

Mr Lugar’s broadside sent national security adviser Stephen Hadley scurrying up to Capitol Hill to rally the troops. Mr Bush’s dawning realisation that he is on the brink of losing control of Iraq policy has prompted steps to regain the initiative.

Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, has started playing down the importance of the September reports, suggesting they will just be a snapshot of a work in progress. Gen Petraeus’s deputy, General Raymond Odierno, suggested that the surge may continue until next spring or even longer.

US benchmarks for progress by Iraq’s government have largely not been met, although a draft oil law was reportedly agreed yesterday. Mr Bush has taken to stressing instead that local and provincial advances are more important.

“We need to look at Iraq from the bottom up,” he said at the Naval War College in Rhode Island last week. “This is where political reconciliation matters most, because it is where ordinary Iraqis are deciding whether to support the new Iraq.” This looked like an attempt to pre-empt political failure in Baghdad.

Yet still trying to avoid a train wreck – and showing unaccustomed energy – the president is cajoling and pressurising Iraq’s leaders, holding frequent teleconferences with the prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki. A stream of senior officials has been sent to Baghdad. Discarding its usual secretiveness, the White House wants these contacts to gain publicity, to show it is trying.

A “desperate” Mr Bush is “running out of time” at home and in Iraq, said veteran commentator David Broder. The president’s attempt to avoid a September showdown with Congress looks likely to fail. What the upshot of that showdown will be is still in doubt.

Source: Progressive (7-4-06)

On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed.

Is not nationalism — that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder — one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred?

These ways of thinking — cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on — have been useful to those in power, and deadly for those out of power.

National spirit can be benign in a country that is small and lacking both in military power and a hunger for expansion (Switzerland, Norway, Costa Rica and many more). But in a nation like ours — huge, possessing thousands of weapons of mass destruction — what might have been harmless pride becomes an arrogant nationalism dangerous to others and to ourselves.

Our citizenry has been brought up to see our nation as different from others, an exception in the world, uniquely moral, expanding into other lands in order to bring civilization, liberty, democracy.

That self-deception started early.

When the first English settlers moved into Indian land in Massachusetts Bay and were resisted, the violence escalated into war with the Pequot Indians. The killing of Indians was seen as approved by God, the taking of land as commanded by the Bible. The Puritans cited one of the Psalms, which says: “Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the Earth for thy possession.”

When the English set fire to a Pequot village and massacred men, women and children, the Puritan theologian Cotton Mather said: “It was supposed that no less than 600 Pequot souls were brought down to hell that day.”

On the eve of the Mexican War, an American journalist declared it our “Manifest Destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence.” After the invasion of Mexico began, The New York Herald announced: “We believe it is a part of our destiny to civilize that beautiful country.”

It was always supposedly for benign purposes that our country went to war.

We invaded Cuba in 1898 to liberate the Cubans, and went to war in the Philippines shortly after, as President McKinley put it, “to civilize and Christianize” the Filipino people.

As our armies were committing massacres in the Philippines (at least 600,000 Filipinos died in a few years of conflict), Elihu Root, our secretary of war, was saying: “The American soldier is different from all other soldiers of all other countries since the war began. He is the advance guard of liberty and justice, of law and order, and of peace and happiness.”

We see in Iraq that our soldiers are not different. They have, perhaps against their better nature, killed thousands of Iraq civilians. And some soldiers have shown themselves capable of brutality, of torture.

Yet they are victims, too, of our government’s lies.

How many times have we heard President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld tell the troops that if they die, if they return without arms or legs, or blinded, it is for “liberty,” for “democracy”?

One of the effects of nationalist thinking is a loss of a sense of proportion. The killing of 2,300 people at Pearl Harbor becomes the justification for killing 240,000 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The killing of 3,000 people on Sept. 11 becomes the justification for killing tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan and Iraq.

And nationalism is given a special virulence when it is said to be blessed by Providence. Today we have a president, invading two countries in four years, who announced on the campaign trail last year that God speaks through him.

We need to refute the idea that our nation is different from, morally superior to, the other imperial powers of world history.

We need to assert our allegiance to the human race, and not to any one nation.

By: Iran Daily on: 02.07.2007

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Arabs, Mossad Plan Nasrallah’s Assassination

Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah

DOHA, Qatar, July 1–Lebanese informed sources on Sunday revealed Arab officials are cooperating with Israel’s intelligence services Mossad to assassinate Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary-General of Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

Ali Al-Jefal, the Damascus-based Iraqi reporter, wrote in Almedar weekly, “Arab intelligence officials, including Mohammad Dahlan, the former head of security organization and current advisor of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, is aware of Mossad’s plans to assassinate Nasrallah.”

Prince Bandar bin Sultan, former Saudi ambassador to Washington (1983 to 2005), has also allegedly cooperated with Mossad over the issue, Mehr News Agency reported. Al-Jefal adds in his report that Dahlan and Prince Bandar also made efforts to capture Hezbollah’s headquarters in southern Lebanon.

According to the weekly, the two officials have been in constant touch with Mossad.
Following the recent control of Hamas forces over Fatah offices, confidential documents revealing Fatah leaders’ relations with Mossad and the US officials were released to the media. These documents reveal Mohammad Dahlan’s close cooperation with Mossad.

A few months ago, Prince Bandar’s involvement in the US arms sale to terrorist groups was headlined in many newspapers in the West.

http://www.iran-daily.com/1386/2881/html/