Peace and Justice Post

Haaretz, March 19, 2008

By Robert, Sam and Nat Parry | Consortiumnews.com,March 18, 2008

Editor’s Note: The Iraq War – now ending its fifth bloody year – represents not only a human tragedy of enormous consequence and possibly the greatest strategic blunder in U.S. history but also a systemic failure of American political and journalistic institutions.

Instead of checking George W. Bush’s imperial impulse for the good of the Republic, the Congress – including Sen. Hillary Clinton and other prominent Democrats – and the national press corps tended to their careers and their political viability.

In recognition of this tragedy – and in honor of the thousands of American dead and the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead – we are publishing the first of two excerpts from Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush:

Iraq’s “Day of Liberation” – as George W. Bush called it – was supposed to begin with a bombardment consisting of 3,000 U.S. missiles delivered over 48 hours, 10 times the number of bombs dropped during the first two days of the Persian Gulf War in 1991.

Officials, who were briefed on the plans, said the goal was to so stun the Iraqis that they would simply submit to the overwhelming force demonstrated by the U.S. military. Administration officials dubbed the strategy “shock and awe.”

In his 2003 State of the Union speech, Bush had addressed the “brave and oppressed people of Iraq” with the reassuring message that “your enemy is not surrounding your country – your enemy is ruling your country.”

Bush promised that the day that Saddam Hussein and his regime “are removed from power will be the day of your liberation.”

But never before in history had a dominant world power planned to strike a much weaker nation in a preemptive war with such ferocity. It would be liberation through devastation.

Continued . . .

Khaleej Times, March 19, 2008
(AFP)

ISLAMABAD – Pakistan’s parliament Wednesday convened a special session to elect its first female speaker, a loyalist from the party of slain former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

Fahmida Mirza, 52, is all but certain to win the top post in the 342-seat lower house of parliament, or national assembly.

‘This is my third tenure in the national assembly and I believe it is time that we all work together to address the challenges facing the country,’ Mirza told reporters before the session.

‘I am sure that we will be able to face these challenges with the support of parliamentarians, our people and Pakistani media.’

Mirza, a veteran politician from Bhutto’s home province of Sindh, would be the first female speaker in the 60-year history of this deeply conservative Islamic nation of 160 million people.

Bhutto was killed in a gun and suicide attack at an election rally on December 27. Her Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) won the most seats in elections last month and is set to lead a coalition government.

‘The election of Fahmida Mirza as speaker will be a big step towards the empowerment of women in Pakistan,’ Shah Mahmood Qureshi, a central PPP leader, told reporters.

The party supporting key US ally President Pervez Musharraf, which suffered a crushing defeat in the elections last month, has also put forth a candidate for the speaker’s post.

The speaker conducts the business of the house, deciding which debates or motions are allowed and will play a key role in a parliament that looks set for a major showdown with Musharraf.

Musharraf, whose popularity has slumped amid rising Islamic militancy and economic problems, is desperate to find a political ally after his backers were trounced in the elections on February 18.

The Independent, UK, March 19, 2008

Patrick Cockburn

It has been a war of lies from the start. All governments lie in wartime but American and British propaganda in Iraq over the past five years has been more untruthful than in any conflict since the First World War.

The outcome has been an official picture of Iraq akin to fantasy and an inability to learn from mistakes because of a refusal to admit that any occurred. Yet the war began with just such a mistake. Five years ago, on the evening of 19 March 2003, President George Bush appeared on American television to say that military action had started against Iraq.

This was a veiled reference to an attempt to kill Saddam Hussein by dropping four 2,000lb bombs and firing 40 cruise missiles at a place called al-Dura farm in south Baghdad, where the Iraqi leader was supposedly hiding in a bunker. There was no bunker. The only casualties were one civilian killed and 14 wounded, including nine women and a child.

On 7 April, the US Ai r Force dropped four more massive bombs on a house where Saddam was said to have been sighted in Baghdad. “I think we did get Saddam Hussein,” said the US Vice President, Dick Cheney. “He was seen being dug out of the rubble and wasn’t able to breathe.”

Saddam was unharmed, probably because he had never been there, but 18 Iraqi civilians were dead. One US military leader defended the attacks, claiming they showed “US resolve and capabilities”.

Continued . . .

The Raw Story, March 17, 2008

Nick Juliano

Photographer wanted to expose ‘what the military was allowing to happen’

Some of the most iconic images of the Iraq war came not from photojournalists on the front lines, but US soldiers carrying point-and-shoot digital cameras. In its latest issue, the New Yorker profiles the woman who snapped many of the photos depicting abuse at Abu Ghraib prison that the same magazine revealed nearly four years ago.

Like many of the soldiers in charge of the detained Iraqis at Abu Ghraib, Sabrina Harman had little experience running a prison. As Philip Gourevitch and Errol Morris report, she and others in her Army Reserve unit didn’t stick out at the prison, “where almost nothing was run according to military doctrine.”

The low-ranking reservist soldiers who took and appeared in the infamous images were singled out for opprobrium and punishment; they were represented, in government reports, in the press, and before courts-martial, as rogues who acted out of depravity. Yet the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib was de facto United States policy. The authorization of torture and the decriminalization of cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of captives in wartime have been among the defining legacies of the current Administration; and the rules of interrogation that produced the abuses documented on the M.I. [Military Intelligence] block in the fall of 2003 were the direct expression of the hostility toward international law and military doctrine that was found in the White House, the Vice-President’s office, and at the highest levels of the Justice and Defense Departments.

The article, which appears in the March 24 issue of the New Yorker, has not been posted online, but the magazine has posted additional photos and videos to augment the report.

Continued . . .

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert delivers his speech during a seminar at a Tokyo hotel, 26 Feb 2008

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says Israel will continue to build in occupied east Jerusalem despite international concern that such action may harm the Mideast peace process.Israel plans to build hundreds of new apartments in Har Homa, a Jewish neighborhood in a part of Jerusalem claimed by the Palestinians as the capital of a future Palestinian state.

Mr. Olmert said Monday there is, in his words, “no chance” Israel will give up a neighborhood like Har Homa.

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and chief Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qureia resumed peace talks Monday in Jerusalem despite disagreements about Israel’s construction plans.

It was their first publicly-acknowledged meeting since Israel began a military offensive against Gaza militants last month.

Palestinians carry the body of 21-month-old baby girl Salsabeel Abu Jalhoum, killed in an Israeli airstrike, during her funeral in Jebaliya refugee camp, 02 Mar 2008

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas briefly suspended the talks to protest the Israeli offensive, which killed at least 120 Palestinians, including civilians.Israel launched the offensive in response to increased rocket fire by Gaza-based militants on towns in southern Israel.

Livni said Monday that Israel will not use terrorism as an excuse to avoid negotiations with Mr. Abbas’ government.

Mr. Olmert also said that Israel will keep building in places that it plans to keep in the future, especially in Jerusalem. Israel has said it expects to retain major settlement blocs in the occupied West Bank under any peace deal with the Palestinians.

The international “road map” peace plan calls for Israel to halt all settlement activity and for the Palestinians to disarm militants. The United States has called on both sides to do more to honor their road map commitments.

Some information for this report was provided by AFP, AP and Reuters.

When Henry Kissinger opines in an op-ed in the Washington Post, it behooves us all to pay attention. There is a message there. Kissinger has always presented himself as the supreme “realist” proponent on U.S. imperial policy. But he has also always taken care not to distance himself too far from the conservative political Establishment.

Hence, when he opines, he is both telling us where policy is moving and pushing it slightly in a “realist” path, in conjunction with allies inside the administration. He is thus preparing us for a shift in policy. He has now written about Pakistan. What is he telling us?

First of all, he notes the stakes for the United States in Pakistan. It is a nuclear power that is incapable of maintaining control at home and therefore one that could “turn into the wildcard of international diplomacy.” Everyone knows this, he says, but “the remedy has proved elusive.” Recent U.S. policy has been to favor a coalition of Musharraf and the civilian parties – a “laudable goal” but not a “practical” one. Elections in a country that does not have a civil society “sharpen” rather than solve crises. Elections, it seems, too often result in electing the wrong people.

Continued . . .

AfterDowningStreet.Org, March 17, 2008

By Sherwood Ross

Muslim prisoners held in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison were submerged in water-filled garbage cans with ice or put naked under cold showers in near-freezing rooms until they went into shock, Sgt. Javal Davis, who served with the 372nd Military Police Company there, has told a national magazine.

Davis, from the Roselle, N.J., area, said while stationed at the prison he also saw an incinerator with “bones in it” that he believed to be a crematorium and said some prisoners were starved prior to their interrogation.

Another soldier that had been stationed at Abu Ghraib, M.P. Sabrina Harman—who gained dubious fame for making a thumbs-up sign posing over the body of a prisoner she believed tortured to death—said the U.S. had imprisoned “women and children” on Tier 1B, including one child was as young as ten.

“Like a number of the other kids and of the women there, he was being held as a pawn in the military’s effort to capture or break his father,” write co-authors Philip Gourevitch and Errol Morris in the March 24th issue of The New Yorker magazine, which describes Abu Ghraib in a 14-page article titled “Exposure.”

Continued . . .

The Miami Herald, March 15, 2008

By DENNIS JETT In his final months in office, President Bush is desperately trying to improve his place in history. Yet last Saturday, he vetoed a bill that would have banned the CIA’s use of interrogation techniques that are not in the Army Field Manual. Ensuring his title as torturer in chief is not as inconsistent with his hopes for history as it might seem, however.

The quest for a positive legacy dictates what the president does these days. His Middle East peace conference in Annapolis in November and his follow up trip in January were designed to showcase his interest in peace. After all, not only did he spend several hours at his one-day conference, but he dedicated a whole week to visiting the region.

The goal isn’t peace

His approach to achieving peace, however, is not based on diplomacy but his experience as a cheerleader in college. With a few shouts of encouragement, he left the parties to work things out. They haven’t been able to do that for about 60 years, but and have made the most progress when the United States was actively engaged. But then, the goal is not to actually achieve peace, which is beyond the reach of a lame duck with a short attention span. It is to establish Bush’s claim of responsibility in the event anything good happens after he leaves office.

Continued . . .