Peace and Justice Post

Antiwar, April 11, 2008

By Patrick J. Buchanan

The neocons may yet get their war on Iran.

Ever since President Nouri al-Maliki ordered the attacks in Basra on the Mahdi Army, Gen. David Petraeus has been laying the predicate for U.S. air strikes on Iran and a wider war in the Middle East.

Iran, Petraeus told the Senate Armed Services Committee, has “fueled the recent violence in a particularly damaging way through its lethal support of the special groups.”

These “special groups” are “funded, trained, armed and directed by Iran’s Quds Force with help from Lebanese Hezbollah. It was these groups that launched Iranian rockets and mortar rounds at Iraq’s seat of government (the Green Zone) … causing loss of innocent life and fear in the capital.”

Is the Iranian government aware of this – and behind it?

“President Ahmadinejad and other Iranian leaders” promised to end their “support for the special groups,” said the general, but the “nefarious activities of the Quds force have continued.”

Are Iranians then murdering Americans, asked Joe Lieberman:

“Is it fair to say that the Iranian-backed special groups in Iraq are responsible for the murder of hundreds of American soldiers and thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians?”

“It certainly is. … That is correct,” said Petraeus.

The following day, Petraeus told the House Armed Services Committee, “Unchecked, the ‘special groups’ pose the greatest long-term threat to the viability of a democratic Iraq.”

Translation: The United States is now fighting the proxies of Iran for the future of Iraq.

Continued . . .

Republican Sen. John McCain refused Wednesday to rule out a pre-emptive war against another country, although he said one would be very unlikely.

The likely Republican presidential nominee was asked Wednesday at a town-hall style meeting if he would reject “the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war,” a reference to Bush’s decision to invade Iraq without it having attacked the United States.

“I don’t think you could make a blanket statement about pre-emptive war, because obviously, it depends on the threat that the United States of America faces,” McCain told his audience at Bridgewater Associates Inc., a global investment firm.

“If someone is about to launch a weapon that would devastate America, or have the capability to do so, obviously, you would have to act immediately in defense of this nation’s national security interests.”

McCain said he would consult more closely and more carefully “not with every member of Congress, but certainly the leaders of Congress.”

The Iraq war was in the spotlight this week as Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander there, gave Congress a status report on the war. McCain argues for keeping troops in Iraq to capitalize on security gains, despite a recent outbreak of violence. His Democratic rivals, Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton argue for withdrawing troops.

The Guardian, April 9. 2008

Wahid Khan, 72, blinded by the gas which spread over Bhopal from a pesticide plant owned by an Indian subsidiary of Union Carbide Corporation on December 2 1984. Photo: Corbis

At the end of January I was dining with an old friend, now one of India’s top policemen. Intelligence, counter-terrorism, external threats, internal security, he’d done it all. He knew of my work with the Bhopal gas survivors, whom I’d accused successive Indian governments of betraying.

“Betrayal? Isn’t that rather a strong word?”

“Well, what would you call selling out the Bhopalis for a pittance? Canning all medical studies into the effects of the gas? Letting Union Carbide leave Bhopal without cleaning its factory? Turning a blind eye while toxic waste leaks and poisons the local water supply? Ignoring a supreme court of India order to provide clean water? Beating up women and children who dared to ask why nothing had been done? Doing business with Dow Chemical while its wholly-owned subsidiary Carbide refuses to appear in court to face criminal charges? Conspiring to get Dow off the Bhopal hook in return for $1bn? All this while people are still sick, while hundreds of children are being born deformed? What part of this cannot be called betrayal?”

Continued . . .

By Aziz Huq |The Nation, April 7, 2008

Feared, condemned sight-unseen and praised as a celebration of free speech, Fitna, a seventeen-minute film by Dutch politician Geert Wilders, appeared on the Internet in late March. Fitna is a bombastic, bloody montage linking terrorist violence to Koranic texts. It resembles the videos Iraqi insurgents use to fete and cultivate suicide bombers. This convergence of visual vocabularies is no accident. Like insurgent propaganda, Fitna aims to embolden the extremes to the detriment of the moderate middle. It seeks to affirm Samuel Huntington’s pernicious vision of clashing civilizations by inviting violent responses from radicals, by forcing moderate Muslims into unpleasant choices between national loyalties and religious beliefs, and by reinforcing prejudicial views of Islam as unfit for civilized living.

Continued . . .

Los Angeles Times, April 8, 2008

Johanna Neuman

About half of the 15,000 items either stolen or otherwise unaccounted for have been recovered, but the gaping hole in history remains on the fifth anniversary of the looting of Iraq’s National Museum.

Five years ago, looters ransacked the Iraqi National Museum, stealing centuries-old artifacts that celebrated Iraq’s role as the cradle of civilization. Some headlines at the time exaggerated the size of the damage — erroneously reporting 170,000 items missing. Investigators later discovered that some important artifacts — including gold jewelry from Nimrud — had been hidden at Iraq’s Central Bank since the Persian Gulf War in 1990.

Today, investigators say that about 15,000 pieces were either stolen in the wake of war or went unaccounted for in the months and years before the conflict began. About half have been recovered. But the impact of the thefts — amulets, Assyrian ivories, sculpture heads, ritual vessels and cylinder seals — is still being felt in art circles and black markets throughout the world.

“The numbers can’t tell the whole story,” said U.S. Marine Reserve Col. Matthew Bogdanos, a New York assistant district attorney who has made the hunt for antiquities his specialty. “These things remind us of our common beginnings.”

Interpol has been on the case, as has the FBI, where a new top 10 art crimes list has reported some early successes, including recovery of eight cylinder seals.

Continued . . .

By Alan Hart

09/04/08 “ICH” — -How can criticism of Israel be stopped? By labeling it as anti-Semitism, or so supporters of Israel right or wrong believe. This has always been Zionism’s game but now the U.S. State Department, no doubt under immense pressure from the Zionist lobby and its Christian fundamentalist allies, is playing it, too. In my view the State Department’s 94-page study, Contemporary Global Anti-Semitism, is a disengenuous and dangerous document which might well make all Jews everywhere more not less vulnerable.

In his report of the study, Ron Kampeas of the JTA (“The Global News Service of the Jewish People”) says: “U.S. diplomats and other officials will be expected to take their cues from this forceful language in how they deal with political groups and individuals overseas.”

The “forceful” language of the State Department study includes the following two paragraphs (my emphasis added for comment below)

“Anti-Semitism has proven to be an adaptive phenomenon. New forms of anti-Semitism have evolved. They often incorporate elements of traditional anti-Semitism. However, the distinguishing feature of the new anti-Semitism is criticism of Zionism or Israeli policy – whether intentionally or unintentionally – has the effect of promoting prejudice against all Jews by demonizing Israel and Israelis and attributing Israel’s perceived faults to its Jewish character.

“Regardless of the intent, disproportionate criticism of Israel as barbaric and unprincipled, and correspondingly discriminatory measures adopted by the UN against Israel, have the effect of causing audiences to associate negative attributes with Jews in general, thus fuelling anti-Semitism.”

Continued . . .

Truthdig, April 8, 2008

AP photo / Charles Dharapak

Another day at the office: Gen. David Petraeus prepares to give his Iraq war update on Capitol Hill Tuesday.

By Robert Scheer

General Betray Us? Of course he has. MoveOn.org can hardly be expected to recycle its slogan from last September, when Gen. David Petraeus testified in support of escalating the U.S. war in Iraq, given the hysterical denunciations that worthy group received at the time. But it was right then—as it would be to repeat the charge now.

By undercutting the widespread support for getting out of Iraq, Petraeus did indeed betray the American public, siding with an enormously unpopular president who wants to stay the course in Iraq for personal and political reasons that run contrary to genuine national security interests. Once again, the president is passing the buck to the uniformed military to justify continuing a ludicrous imperial adventure, and the good general has dutifully performed.

So why are we surprised? Why do we expect the generals to lead us on the path to peace when that is the professional task of statesmen and not warriors? It is an abdication of civilian control of the military, the basic principle of American constitutional governance, to assign a central role to an active-duty general to make the decision to end the war. It betrays the legacy warnings of our two most famous wartime generals, George Washington and Dwight D. Eisenhower.

American history offers no greater heroes, not because of their considerable success in battle but because they gained the wisdom to sound the alarm against unbridled militarism so passionately and effectively. The farewell addresses of both those departing generals-turned-presidents still stand as the essential bookends for what has been written about the limits on military adventure required for democracy’s survival. Washington’s plea to the nation “to moderate the fury of party spirit, to warn against the mischiefs of foreign intrigue, to guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism” sets the standard for enlightened political discourse. A close second is Eisenhower’s warning, “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”

Continued . . .

CounterPunch, April 9, 2008

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the US economy lost 98,000 private sector jobs in March, half of which were in manufacturing. Today 13,643,000 Americans are employed in manufacturing, of which 9,849,000 are production workers.

Government employs 22,387,000 Americans, 8,744,000 more than manufacturing. Even the category leisure and hospitality employs 13,682,000 Americans, slightly more than manufacturing. There are as many waitresses and bartenders as production workers.

Wholesale and retail trade employ 21,467,000 Americans. Professional and business services employ 18,036,000 Americans of which 8,368,000 are in administrative and waste services. Education and health services employ 18,699,000 Americans.

Financial activities employ 8,228,000 Americans. The information sector employs 3,010,000. Transportation and warehousing employ 4,532,000. Construction employs 7,338,000, and natural resources, mining and logging employ 751,000. Other services such as repair, laundry, and membership associations employ 5,516,000 Americans.

Continued . . .

Socialist Worker, April 11, 2008

NICOLE COLSON reports on the aftermath of the Iraqi government’s offensive against Moktada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army.

SECURITY FORCES of the U.S.-backed Iraqi government may have carried out summary executions of members of rebel cleric Moktada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army, according to media revelations that have once again exposed the scale of brutality in “liberated” Iraq.

At the end of March, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki ordered a halt to the government’s assault on Mahdi fighters, following days of intense combat in which at least 500 people in Basra and in the Sadr City section of Baghdad are said to have been killed. The offensive was an attempt to crack down on the Mahdi Army and force it to disarm.

According to a report by National Public Radio, audiotape of police radio transmissions reveal what appears to be the execution of detained Shiite militia members. On the tape, intercepted from an Iraqi police radio channel in the city of Karbala, an Iraqi policeman reportedly asked his commander what to do with a wounded militia fighter.

Continued . . .

By Abid Aslam | Inter Press Service, April 8, 2008

WASHINGTON – U.S. lawmakers have a financial interest in military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, a review of their accounts has revealed.

Members of Congress invested nearly 196 million dollars of their own money in companies that receive hundreds of millions of dollars a day from Pentagon contracts to provide goods and services to U.S. armed forces, say nonpartisan watchdog groups.

David Petraeus, the top U.S. general in Iraq, is to brief the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees on Tuesday and Wednesday. The latest findings are unlikely to have a significant impact on this week’s proceedings but could stoke anti-incumbent sentiment in this year of presidential and legislative elections.

Lawmakers charged with overseeing Pentagon contractors hold stock in those very firms, as do vocal critics of the war in Iraq, says the Centre for Responsive Politics (CRP).

Senator John Kerry, the Democrat from Massachusetts who staked his 2004 presidential bid in part on his opposition to the war, tops the list of investors. His holdings in firms with Pentagon contracts of at least five million dollars stood at between 28.9 million dollars and 38.2 million dollars as of Dec. 31, 2006. Kerry sits on the Senate foreign relations panel.

Members of Congress are required to report their personal finances every year but only need to state their assets in broad ranges.

Other top investors include Representative Rodney Frelinghuysen, a New Jersey Republican with holdings of 12.1 million – 49.1 million dollars; Rep. Robin Hayes, a North Carolina Republican (9.2 million – 37.1 million dollars); Republican Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr. of Wisconsin (5.2 million – 7.6 million dollars); and Rep. Jane Harman, a California Democrat (2.7 million – 6.3 million dollars).

Continued . . .