Peace and Justice Post

The Huffington Post

Posted December 26, 2007

PHILIP GIRALGI

Personal accountability has all but disappeared from the American political system. Bill Clinton lied to his entire cabinet about Monica Lewinsky and not a single cabinet member resigned in protest after he was forced to recant. When Alberto Gonzales lied repeatedly during testimony before Congress everyone knew exactly what he was doing but no leading Democrat was willing to impeach him. The hopelessly incompetent Michael Brown was able to resign from FEMA without sanction to “avoid further distraction from the ongoing mission” and later even blamed everyone else for his shortcomings. Condoleezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, Tommy Franks, George Tenet, and Paul Bremer were all rewarded for their incompetence, some with medals and some with promotions. Recent resignations from the Bush administration stemming from the massive policy failures of the past seven years have frequently been couched in terms of “wanting to spend more time with my family” though sometimes a bit of candor creeps in a la Trent Lott, who believes it is time to step down and follow the money as a lobbyist. Public Diplomacy Tsarina Karen Hughes arguably plans to do both, returning to Texas to rejoin her family while also cashing in through lucrative speaking engagements. During her two and a half years of Texas-style soccer mom diplomacy at State Department and in spite of a large budget, Hughes only succeeded in increasing the number of foreigners who actively dislike the United States. Never is a resignation from government service framed in terms of “Hey, I screwed up.”

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Almost all of the time, the Washington I know and live in is utterly unrelated to the Washington you see in the movies. The government is far more incompetent and amateur than the masterminds of Hollywood darkness.

There are no rogue CIA agents engaging in illegal black ops and destroying evidence to protect their political bosses. The kinds of scenario cooked up in Matt Damon’s riveting Bourne series are fantasy compared with the mundane, bureaucratic torpor of the Brussels on the Potomac.

And then you read about the case of Abu Zubaydah. He is a seriously bad guy – someone we should all be glad is in custody. A man deeply involved in Al-Qaeda, he was captured in a raid in Pakistan in March 2002 and whisked off to a secret interrogation, allegedly in Thailand.

President George Bush claimed Zubaydah was critical in identifying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as the mastermind behind 9/11. The president also conceded that at some point the CIA, believing Zubaydah was withholding information, “used an alternative set of procedures”, which were “safe and lawful and necessary”.

Zubaydah was waterboarded. That much we know – it was confirmed recently by a former CIA agent, John Kiriakou, who even used the plain English word “torture” to describe what was done. But we know little else for sure. We do know there was deep division within the American government about Zubaydah’s interrogation, and considerable debate about his reliability.

Ron Suskind’s masterful 2006 book The One Percent Doctrine recorded FBI sources as saying that Zubaydah was in fact mentally unstable and tangential to Al-Qaeda’s plots, and that he gave reams of unfounded information under torture – information that led law-enforcement bodies in the US to raise terror alert levels, rushing marshals and police to shopping malls, bridges and other alleged targets as Zubaydah tried to get the torture to stop. No one disputes that Zubaydah wrote a diary – and that it was written in the words of three personalities, none of them his own.

A former FBI agent who was involved in the interrogation, Daniel Coleman, said last week that the CIA knew Al-Qaeda’s leaders all believed Zubaydah “was crazy, and they knew he was always on the damn phone. You think they’re going to tell him anything?” Even though preliminary, legal interrogation gave the US good – though not unique – information, the CIA still asked for and received permission to torture him in pursuit of more data and leads.

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Havana — Fidel Castro remains on the mend, gaining weight, exercising twice a day and continuing to help make the Cuban government’s top decisions, his brother Raul Castro says.

The island’s acting president gave the first clues about his brother’s health in weeks, saying during a Monday speech that he has a “healthier mentality, full use of his mental faculties with some small physical limitations.”

At 76, Raul is five years younger than his ailing brother, who has not been seen in public since announcing he had undergone emergency intestinal surgery and was stepping down in favour of a provisional government in July 2006.

But the younger Castro said his brother remains a key voice in government and that Communist Party leaders support his re-election to Cuba’s parliament, the National Assembly — a move that could allow Fidel Castro to keep his post as president of the Council of State.

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Free and Fair Elections Impossible With Dismantled Judiciary

Source: Human Rights News

(New York, December 19, 2007) – Scores of lawyers, judges and other government critics remain detained in Pakistan despite the lifting of the state of emergency on December 15, Human Rights Watch said today in a new report. President Pervez Musharraf’s dismantling of an independent judiciary and the crackdown on the vocal lawyers’ movement mean free and fair elections, scheduled for January 8, 2008, will be impossible.

The lawyers’ movement had done more in eight months to challenge the pillars of military rule than the political opposition had done in eight years. Ali Dayan Hasan, South Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch

The 84-page report, “Destroying Legality: Pakistan’s Crackdown on Lawyers and Judges,” presents eyewitness accounts of police violence, arbitrary arrests, and mistreatment of detained lawyers across Pakistan since November 3, 2007. The report details police beatings of lawyers peacefully protesting government policies from within the grounds of Pakistan’s high courts. It is the most detailed account to date of the November crackdown, showing how Musharraf used the emergency as an excuse to disempower the judiciary, the legal profession and civil society in the name of fighting terrorism and Islamic extremists.

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China View, December 25, 2007

JERUSALEM, Dec. 24 (Xinhua) — Israel’s use of cluster bombs during the Second Lebanon War was in accordance with international law, Israeli army’s Advocate General Avichai Mendelblit said in a ruling published on Monday.

Accordingly, army officers who ordered the use of the cluster bombs will not face disciplinary or legal action, local Ha’aretz reported on its website.

Israeli artillery corps reportedly fired some 2,400 cluster bombs at Lebanon during the fighting with Hezbollah gunmen. Several months after the war, Israeli army launched an investigation aimed at examining whether cluster bombs were used against procedure.

In a statement, the army said that its chief investigator Maj. Gen. Gershon HaCohen determined it was clear that the majority of the cluster munitions were fired at open and uninhabited areas, where Hezbollah forces operated and no civilians were present.

It also said that cluster bombs were fired at residential areas only as an immediate defense response to rocket attacks by Hezbollah and that Israeli troops did everything possible to minimize civilian casualties.

The conclusions were passed on to Mendelblit, who accepted the recommendation and decided not to press charges.

A cluster bomb is a bomb that ejects a number of smaller bomblets during explosion. Theses bomblets usually go off shortly after the launch.

The United Nations and human rights groups accused Israel of dropping about four million cluster bomblets during the war. Up to one million failed to explode and now endanger civilians in the area.

More than 30 people have been killed by cluster bomb and landmine explosions in Lebanon since the summer war of 2006 between Hezbollah and Israel, the report said.

uruknet.info, December 24, 2007

Saed Bannoura – IMEMC

Days after U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice criticized Israel for approving the expansion of settlements on stolen Palestinian land in the West Bank, she abruptly changed her position when Israel refused to back down. Now, as Israeli authorities announce further expansion of settlements than what was originally criticized, Rice compliantly responded that ‘she understands’ Israel’s position now, adding that Israeli officials have shown her that they are serious about their responsibilities in the so-called ‘peace process’.

The Israeli government has approved the proposed Housing Ministry’s budget for the year 2008, which includes 500 new units in the ‘Har Homa’ settlement built on Palestinian land near Bethlehem, and 240 new units in the ‘Ma’ale Adumim’ settlement east of Jerusalem.

Israeli forces have occupied all Palestinian land since 1967, and have transferred over 500,000 civilians to live in that land, in direct violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a signatory.

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AlterNet.org

By Amy Goodman, King Features Syndicate. Posted December 19, 2007.

One victim shares his experience with the CIA’s torture tactics.

The kidnap and torture program of the Bush administration, with its secret CIA “black site” prisons and “torture taxi” flights on private jets, saw a little light of day this week. I spoke to Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah in his first broadcast interview. Bashmilah was a victim of the CIA’s so-called extraordinary rendition program, in which people are grabbed from their homes, out of airports, off the streets, and are whisked away, far from the prying eyes of the U.S. Congress, the press, far from the reach of the courts, to countries where cruelty and torture are routine.

Bashmilah is being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and by the New York University School of Law International Human Rights Clinic in a lawsuit with four other victims of CIA rendition. They are suing not the U.S. government, not the CIA, but a company called Jeppesen Dataplan Inc., a subsidiary of Boeing Corp. A former Jeppesen employee, Sean Belcher, entered an affidavit in support of Bashmilah, reporting that Jeppesen executive Bob Overby bragged, “We do all of the extraordinary rendition flights,” further explaining to staff that he was speaking of “the torture flights,” and that they paid very well.

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American Free Press

By Mark Glenn

Some 200 Christian Zionist leaders, representing churches spread throughout America, Europe, Africa and Asia, gathered in Israelís Knesset to “beg forgiveness” for 2,000 years of “Christian persecution” of Jews.

The well publicized ceremony took place under the auspices of the “Knesset Christian Allies Caucus,” just one of a growing number of partnerships springing up in recent years between organized Jewish and Christian Zionist groups for the purpose of funneling Christian money and political support toward Israel. Part of the statement reads as follows:

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