Peace and Justice Post

Counterpunch, September 6, 2007

Nuclear Hypocrisy in the Middle East

By KATHLEEN and BILL CHRISTISON

Former CIA Analysts

The internet is loaded these days with reports of the inevitability of a U.S., or a U.S.-Israeli, attack on Iran. Some writers allege that the attack is imminent. Others, including the writers of this article, argue only that the attack will happen sometime before January 2009, when the Bush administration leaves office. Many of these stories have by now been picked up by the mainstream media. In fact, it is probably safe to say that today a majority of the traditionally cautious and so-called respectable foreign policy experts in the U.S. think it is at least possible that Bush will attack Iran before he leaves office.

Such is the power of recollection with respect to how Bush bulled his way into invading Iraq in 2003 that many people simply accept that he might gamble on doing it again. He has made it clear that in this “War on Terror,” victory means everything to him. He might also believe that a win in Iran could reverse current setbacks in Iraq and also bring victory closer for the U.S. and Israel in Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. And he has already shown that he is willing to accept the killings of hundreds of thousands or even a million people in the hope of going down in history as a great commander-in-chief.

The people of the United States are the only ones with a chance of stopping him, and it can only happen if a powerful majority of voters will join in a maximum effort to impeach both Bush and Cheney right now. This has to happen before the U.S. and/or Israel undertake any expanded military efforts against Iran.

Continued . . .

Mathaba.Net

Big opposition march announced for Saturday. Special forces deployed to monitor APEC Summit

CANBERRA, Australia, Sept. 5.— Protests against the presence of George W. Bush in Australia continued in Sydney and are expected to continue to grow, leading up to the start of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Forum in that city at the end of the week.

For the second straight day, Australians marched against Bush in Sydney. Photo: AP

The environmental organization Greenpeace participated in Wednesday’s demonstrations by erecting two ice sculptures of Bush and Australian Prime Minister John Howard, with the idea that they will melt in protest against the lack of action to counter global warming on the part of Australia and the United States, the AFP reported. 

Environmentalists are criticizing the excessive utilization of fossil fuels by the industrialized countries, while Sydney and Washington refuse to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on the reduction of greenhouse gases.

Another creative protest is expected on Friday, when some 2,000 people plan to gather in a Sydney park near where APEC leaders will meet, to send a message to Bush about what they really think about his visit.

The culmination of these demonstrations of opposition to the presence of the White House chief on Australian territory will be a big march on Saturday, in which tens of thousands of people are expected to participate.

Translated by Granma International

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet.Posted September 6, 2007.

The majority party is preparing to roll over, again, on Iraq.

Next week, Ryan Crocker, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, and General David Petraeus, the army’s counter-insurgency guru, will brief Congress on the Bush administration’s claims of progress in Iraq. At stake is not only the upper hand in the political debate over the continuing occupation, but an enormous amount of money — $147 billion — that was supposedly conditioned on tangible measures of progress, specifically 18 “benchmarks” attached to the 2007 supplemental spending bill.

According to a report by the non-partisan Government Accountability Office (GAO), only three of those benchmarks have been met, and those were among the minor ones (The White House has promised to “water down” the GAO’s findings). In addition to rampant insecurity throughout much of the country, Iraq’s political situation is, objectively, a disaster, and most Iraqis agree that U.S. troops cause more violence than they prevent.

But despite the reality on the ground, the administration last week threw a Hail-Mary pass, announcing that it would ask for another $50 billion for war-fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan through next Spring. That’s in addition to $147 billion already requested for the two countries.

Continued . . .

Truthdig, September 6, 2007

By Scott Ritter

AP Photo / Charles Dharapak

What I did on my summer vacation: Katie Couric poses with Marines while awaiting a presidential visit in Anbar province.

It should come as no surprise that administration’s newest military-man-of-substance-turned- political lapdog, General Petraeus, maintains that the situation in Iraq is not only salvageable, but actually improving, due to the “surge” of U.S. combat troops into Iraq over the past year. All the president and his collection of GI Joe hand-puppets ask for is more time, more money and more troops.

There is no reason to believe that the compliant war facilitators who comprise the “anti-war” Democratic majority in Congress will do anything other than give the president what he is asking for. No one seems to want to debate, in any meaningful fashion, what is really going on in Iraq.

Why would they? The Democrats, like their Republican counterparts, have invested too much political capital into fictionalizing the problem with slogans like “support the troops,” “we’re fighting the enemy there so we don’t have to fight them here,” and my all-time favorite, “leaving Iraq would hand victory to al-Qaida.”

Continued . . . 

vdare.com, September 05, 2007

Who Are The Fanatics?

By Paul Craig Roberts

President Jimmy Carter was demonized for pointing out in his book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, that there are actually two sides to the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Distinguished American scholars, such as John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt have suffered the same fate for documenting the excessive influence the Israel Lobby has on US foreign policy.

Americans would be astonished at the criticisms in the Israeli press of the Israeli government’s policies toward the Palestinians and Arabs generally. In Israel facts are still part of the discussion. If the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, could replace Fox “News,” CNN, New York Times and Washington Post, Americans would know the truth about US and Israeli policies in the Middle East and their likely consequences.

On September 1, Haaretz reported that Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism, which represents 900 Congregations and 1.5 million Jews, “accused American media, politicians and religious groups of demonizing Islam” and turning Muslims into “satanic figures.” [Jewish leader urges US Muslims to condemn violence, Reuters, September 1, 2007]

Continued . . .

Salon.com, September 6, 2007

By Sydney Blumenthal

On Sept. 18, 2002, CIA director George Tenet briefed President Bush in the Oval Office on top-secret intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, according to two former senior CIA officers. Bush dismissed as worthless this information from the Iraqi foreign minister, a member of Saddam’s inner circle, although it turned out to be accurate in every detail. Tenet never brought it up again.

Nor was the intelligence included in the National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002, which stated categorically that Iraq possessed WMD. No one in Congress was aware of the secret intelligence that Saddam had no WMD as the House of Representatives and the Senate voted, a week after the submission of the NIE, on the Authorization for Use of Military Force in Iraq. The information, moreover, was not circulated within the CIA among those agents involved in operations to prove whether Saddam had WMD.

On April 23, 2006, CBS’s “60 Minutes” interviewed Tyler Drumheller, the former CIA chief of clandestine operations for Europe, who disclosed that the agency had received documentary intelligence from Naji Sabri, Saddam’s foreign minister, that Saddam did not have WMD. “We continued to validate him the whole way through,” said Drumheller. “The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming, and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy, to justify the policy.”

Continued . . .

Independent, September 7, 2007

By Mark Lavie in Jerusalem

In its strongest condemnation of Israel since last summer’s war, Human Rights Watch said yesterday that most Lebanese civilian casualties were caused by “indiscriminate Israeli air strikes”.

The international human rights organisation said there was no basis to the Israeli claim that civilian casualties resulted from Hizbollah guerrillas using civilians for cover. Israel has said that it attacked civilian areas because Hizbollah set up rocket launchers in villages and towns. More than 1,000 Lebanese were killed in the 34-day conflict, which began after Hizbollah staged a cross-border raid, killing three Israeli soldiers and capturing two others.

Israeli aircraft targeted Lebanese infrastructure, including bridges and Beirut airport, and heavily damaged a district of Beirut known as a Hizbollah stronghold, as well as attacking Hizbollah centres in villages near the border. Hizbollah fired nearly 4,000 rockets at northern Israel, killing 119 soldiers. In the fighting, 40 Israeli civilians were killed.

Kenneth Roth, Human Rights Watch executive director, said there were only “rare” cases of Hizbollah operating in civilian villages.

“To the contrary, once the war started, most Hizbollah military officials and even many political officials left the villages,” he said. “Most Hizbollah military activity was conducted from prepared positions outside Lebanese villages in the hills and valleys around.”

The Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mark Regev, rejected the findings. “Hizbollah adopted a deliberate strategy of shielding itself behind the civilian population and turning the civilians in Lebanon into a human shield,” he said.

Dave Lindorff’s blog

By Dave Lindorff | September 5, 2007

The Iraq War has been lost.

The British are acknowledging this fact by pulling out their troops from Basra, Iraq’s second largest city, handing over the city to the control of Shia militias. For all intents and purposes, the “Coalition of the Willing” is now dead. America is now going it alone.

Bush is not acknowledging defeat, but has indirectly admitted it by saying that some troops can start being brought home soon, even though clearly nothing has been accomplished with the addition of 30,000 troops for the last six months.

He acknowledged defeat too, by flying into Iraq stealthily in the dead of night this week, landing at a remote desert outpost in western Iraq, instead of going to Baghdad, and meeting with American military officials, instead of with the Iraqi government. (So much for Iraq’s being a “sovereign nation”! Can you imaging a head of state of some foreign government, together with his war secretary and his secretary of state, flying in unannounced to some remote American state, and not even meeting with American government officials?) Clearly the US military could not guarantee the president’s safety in Baghdad and the Green Zone, so he had to go to a remote outpost where he was safe behind razor wire, mines and an obscene arsenal of soldiers, tanks and gunships.

article continues…

Chicago Sun Times, September 5, 2007

BY ANDREW GREELEY

Is President Bush able to distinguish truth from falsehood? Is he too caught up in the double-talk generated by his spin masters to grasp the difference? After reading his talk to the VFW last week, I think that at this stage of his presidency he is utterly incapable of honest communication with the rest of the country. Objectively, his claim that the United States can win in Iraq, his comment that the Iraqi prime minister is a good guy and his history of the Vietnam War go far beyond the boundaries of truth. Granted, the speech was ground out by one of the spin masters (perhaps trained in dishonesty by Karl Rove), the president ultimately is responsible for it. It follows logically from all the falsehoods going back to weapons of mass destruction. It is contradicted by the intelligence estimate released the same day by the director of National Intelligence. The killing continues, the Iraq government is not improving, the war continues.

And, one would add, Americans continue to die.

Why does the president continue to deny the obvious, even when his own intelligence agency affirms it? Because some conservatives insist the United States could have won the Vietnam War if it hadn’t ”lost its nerve”? There is no serious support for this folklore. The only similarity is both wars were foolish wars for which there was no good reason, the United States was doomed to defeat from the beginning, and if someone had not pulled the plug, we’d still be fighting in Vietnam, just as we are still fighting — perhaps forever — in Iraq.

The Iraq Study Group gave the president a way out. He didn’t take it because he wanted victory. He can’t have victory. But he is not quitting during his administration, no matter how many more senseless deaths occur. His VFW speech is part of a campaign to elect a president who will continue the war. Whether Bush is deliberately deceiving his potential supporters or whether he no longer knows truth from falsehood because of his personality traits must remain a question only God can answer.

However, it is not wrong to question his credibility — and the suffering it causes to the families of those who die because of his stubborn insistence on ”staying the course” until a democratic Iraq becomes a reality. Must we not say, Mr. President, you have spoken so often against the truth, that we no longer believe anything you say.

Some writers tell me I am driven by hatred of the president, and as a priest I ought not to hate anyone. (These are people who generally did not think it was wrong to hate President Clinton or President Kennedy). I don’t hate the president, but I hate this stupid, unjust and evil war. To be a priest and not condemn evil would be sinful.

The war will end only when it ends, when someone in power says, “already, all right, enough,” and announces that the war is over. Lyndon Johnson tried to do that when he withdrew from the 1968 election. The Iraq Study Group tried to do the same thing. Johnson’s plan was frustrated when Richard M. Nixon won the election and continued the war for six more years (during which time more people died than had in the previous six years). The Iraq Study Group, basically conservative men, ran afoul of the president’s stubbornness and the reluctant loyalty of his congress- ional allies.

The long-awaited reports of Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker will provide another escape hatch. They will have to report in some way the Iraq government is not able to end the raging civil war. Does anyone want to bet the president will say, ”Then, let’s get out of there”?

The CounterPunch, September 4, 2007

When Wishful Thinking Replaces Resistance

By JEAN BRICMONT

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

All this is doubtful. The Shiites in Iraq are not simply obedient to Iran. If they don’t rise against the United States when their own country is occupied (or if don’t rise very systematically), they are not likely to rise against the US if a neighboring country is attacked. As for blocking the Straits or unleashing terrorism, this will just be another justification for more bombing of Iran. After all, a main casus belli against Iran is, incredibly, that it supposedly helps the resistance against U.S. troops in Iraq, as if those troops were at home there. If that can work as an argument for bombing Iran, then any counter-measure that Iran might take will simply “justify” more bombing, possibly nuclear. Iran is strong in the sense that it cannot be invaded, but there is little it can do against long range bombing, accompanied by nuclear threats.

Continued . . .