Peace and Justice Post

June 7, 2008 | GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — It should have been a great day for justice. The alleged perpetrators of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were finally appearing in court. This was their arraignment, at which they were to be formally charged of conspiring to cause the death of 2,973 people in the United States.

But this was no ordinary court at all: It was a military commission, taking place more than six years after the terrorist attacks. And the quality of justice that the defendants were due to receive was in serious doubt.

“This military commission is called to order,” the judge, Marine Col. Ralph Kohlmann, announced on Thursday. Strangely, the movement of his lips and the sound of his voice were out of synch. For the press and human rights observers like me, sitting behind a glass wall in the gallery, there was a 20-second delay between the time something was said and the time we heard it. People in the courtroom would stand up to talk, but we wouldn’t hear them until after they had sat back down. The mismatch was disconcerting.

Judge Kohlmann told the courtroom audience that the purpose of the delay was to protect classified information. He explained that the defendants had been “exposed” to such information, and that any statement any of them made was “presumptively classified.” The 20-second delay was designed to give the security advisor, who was sitting in the courtroom listening intently, enough time to conduct the censorship deemed necessary.

Most of the daylong hearing went uncensored. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed architect of the Sept. 11 attacks, was given free rein to describe his wish for martyrdom, to criticize President Bush, and even to chant Koranic verses in a surprisingly melodic voice.

Mohammed called the security measures “red lines” and said he understood that they were intended to prohibit the audience from hearing what they were not allowed to hear. “They explained them to me,” he announced, without saying who “they” were. “I don’t have to mention about the country names, [and] I don’t have to mention about the torture.”

Continued . . .

Axis of Logic, June 5, 2008

Robert Thompson

Yesterday, in addressing a few words to Democratic Voters in the USA, I was careful to express doubts about the virtues of the candidate whom they appear to have chosen. The said candidate has now made declarations to the AIPAC which follow slavishly in the footsteps of the Clinton clan (identical to those of the Bush régime) in support of the brutal ethnic cleansing which afflicts the Holy Land.

The latest news also informs us that there is agreement in the USA between the Republicans and the Democrats to stay in Iraq for ever and a day, with a new Treaty being drawn up to be imposed on the present Iraqi puppet government to reproduce the ghastly provisions forced on Iraq by the British government in the 1930’s. In other words, imperial rule is to be reimposed, this time to keep Iraq within the fold of Mr Bush’s “moderate” Arab states willing to support his ridiculous “War on Terra”. Voters in the USA are thus left without a choice on some of the most important problems in the world, while their supposed “leaders” continue to propagate the preposterous lie that the USA are currently the only super-power on our planet.

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Antiwar.com, June 7, 2008

By Ivan Eland

President George W. Bush and Democratic and Republican luminaries broke ground recently at the future gleaming home of the United States Institute of Peace on the National Mall. After absorbing the speeches and, on the same day, the rather partisan Senate Intelligence Committee’s report that concluded the Bush administration lied to the United States regarding its ill-fated invasion and occupation of Iraq, one needs to dig just a bit to see what a bipartisan policy of interventionism the United States really has. The existence of bipartisan support for meddling in the business of other countries stands in stark contrast to the President’s remarks, which stated that he feared the U.S. was becoming “isolationist and nervous.”

Despite attending the launch of a government-funded organization ostensibly dedicated to peace, former Republican Secretary of State George P. Shultz praised President Bush’s policy of preventive war, saying, “In your time, I think this is one important idea that has real legs and staying power.” But the international community has long dreaded such wars because threats are often invented or wildly exaggerated to justify questionable “preventive” aggression, as demonstrated by the Senate Intelligence Committee’s findings about the inflated threats during the run up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

At the groundbreaking, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) made an attempt to make us believe the two parties have opposing foreign policies. Quoting Democratic President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 words, “The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war,” was a veiled jab at the President’s Iraq policy. Of course, Pelosi didn’t mention that in 1961, Kennedy himself orchestrated the botched CIA attempt to invade Cuba and overthrow Fidel Castro. Later, in 1962, he nearly initiated a nuclear world war for no strategic reason after the Soviets installed missiles in Cuba, a move intended to counter future U.S. invasions of the island.

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RINF.com, Saturday, June 7th, 2008

Human Rights Watch

A decision by the United States to disengage from the UN Human Rights Council amounts to an abandonment of human rights defenders and victims, Human Rights Watch said today.

The United States announced today at its daily State Department briefing that it will only participate in debates at the council when absolutely necessary and it feels compelled to do so by “matters of deep national interest.” The United States failed to take the floor today in a council discussion on Burma, indicating the broad scope of its withdrawal. Although not a member of the Human Rights Council, the United States had participated as an observer at the council since its inception in 2006. “The US decision to walk away from the Human Rights Council is counter-productive and short-sighted,” said Juliette de Rivero, Geneva advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. “Whatever the council’s problems, this decision is a victory for abusive states and a betrayal of those fighting for their rights worldwide.”

The council remains a critical institution for protecting human rights throughout the world, despite some substantial weaknesses, Human Rights Watch said. The council’s system of human rights monitors, for example, provides crucial reporting on abuses such as torture, violence against women and extrajudicial executions, and on countries with ongoing human rights crises, such as Burma, Somalia and Sudan. In its first two years, however, the Human Rights Council has failed to address more than 20 human rights situations that require its attention, eliminated human rights monitoring in places desperately in need of such scrutiny, and adopted a long stream of one-sided resolutions on Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories which failed to consider the roles and responsibilities of the Palestinian authorities and armed groups.

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NATO, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Pakistan

By FAHEEM HUSSAIN | Counterpunch, June 6, 2008

What is NATO doing in Afghanistan? What are the true aims of NATO intervention in the region? These are the questions that I mean to address in this article. To understand what is happening in Afghanistan one has to go back to the attack on Yugoslavia by NATO forces in February 1999.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, NATO lost its raison d’être given that Western Europe and the United States were no longer threatened by an invasion from Eastern Europe. NATO thus had the choice between disbanding itself or developing a new reason for its existence. This gave the opportunity to the United States to reshape NATO in ways that would serve its imperial interests. It is very important to remember that its founding documents clearly say that NATO was a defensive organisation, which would go into action only when one of its member states was attacked.

The first step in the US strategy of changing the nature of NATO was the attack on Yugoslavia on the pretext of preventing ethnic cleansing. Clearly Yugoslavia had not attacked a NATO member state thus excluding a response from NATO. Whatever one can say about Kosovo, it was internationally recognised as an integral part of Yugoslavia (and is still internationally recognised as part of Serbia) and Yugoslavia did not attack or even threaten a NATO member state.

As was clear right from the beginning of the Kosovo crisis in the 90s, and as was confirmed at the NATO 50th Anniversary Celebrations in Washington in April 1999, one of the aims of the United States in attacking Yugoslavia at that time on the pretext of preventing ethnic cleansing in Kosovo was to present to the European states a fait accompli as an example of the future role of NATO as an offensive organisation whose aim was to act as the world’s policeman, or more rightly thug, in the defence of perceived United States interests. It was clear that the US was intent on provoking a war with Yugoslavia and its subsequent bombardment.

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Ian Black, Middle East editor | The Guardian, Saturday June 7 2008

Israel “will attack” Iran if it continues to develop nuclear weapons, one of prime minister Ehud Olmert’s deputies warned yesterday. Shaul Mofaz, a former defence minister and a contender to replace the scandal-battered Olmert, said military action would be “unavoidable” if Tehran proved able to acquire the technology to manufacture atomic bombs.

Mofaz is Israel’s transport minister, but he is also a former chief of staff, privy to secret defence planning as a member of the security cabinet, and leads regular strategic talks with the US. He implied that any attack on Iran would be coordinated with Washington. “If Iran continues with its programme for developing nuclear weapons, we will attack it,” he told the Hebrew daily Yediot Aharonot. “The UN sanctions are ineffective.”

Mofaz was born in Iran, giving his remarks extra edge after repeated threats against Israel from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has also denied the Nazi Holocaust. Ahmadinejad “would disappear before Israel does”, Mofaz said.

Mofaz’s remarks came at the end of a week of intense US-Israeli talks on Iran. They were also the most explicit threat yet against the Islamic Republic from a member of the Israeli government, which, like the Bush administration, has preferred to hint at force as a last resort should UN sanctions be deemed to have failed.

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The New York Times, June 6, 2008

Editorial

It took just a few months after the United States’ invasion of Iraq for the world to find out that Saddam Hussein had long abandoned his nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs. He was not training terrorists or colluding with Al Qaeda. The only real threat he posed was to his own countrymen.

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It has taken five years to finally come to a reckoning over how much the Bush administration knowingly twisted and hyped intelligence to justify that invasion. On Thursday — after years of Republican stonewalling — a report by the Senate Intelligence Committee gave us as good a set of answers as we’re likely to get.

The report shows clearly that President Bush should have known that important claims he made about Iraq did not conform with intelligence reports. In other cases, he could have learned the truth if he had asked better questions or encouraged more honest answers.

The report confirms one serious intelligence failure: President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other administration officials were told that Iraq still had chemical and biological weapons and did not learn that these reports were wrong until after the invasion. But Mr. Bush and his team made even that intelligence seem more solid, more recent and more dangerous than it was.

The report shows that there was no intelligence to support the two most frightening claims Mr. Bush and his vice president used to sell the war: that Iraq was actively developing nuclear weapons and had longstanding ties to terrorist groups. It seems clear that the president and his team knew that that was not true, or should have known it — if they had not ignored dissenting views and telegraphed what answers they were looking for.

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uruknet.info, June 5, 2008

PCHR (Palestinian Centre for Human Rights)

A number of Palestinian civilians who were arrested by Israeli Occupation Forces during an incursion into the Gaza Strip Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) Continue Attacks against Palestinian Civilians and Property in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT)

· An elderly Palestinian woman was killed by IOF in the Gaza Strip.

· A Palestinian civilian died from previous injuries.

· 12 Palestinians, including 8 civilians, were wounded by IOF in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

· IOF conducted 33 incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank, and 5 ones into the Gaza Strip.

· IOF razed 295 donums[1] of agricultural in the northern and southern Gaza Strip.

· IOF completely demolished one house, and partially demolished five others in the southern Gaza Strip.

· IOF arrested 43 Palestinian civilians, including 2 children, in the West Bank, and detained 11 others in the Gaza Strip.

· IOF have continued to impose a total siege on the OPT.

· IOF have isolated the Gaza Strip from the outside world.

· 2 Palestinian civilians were arrested by IOF at military checkpoints in the West Bank.

· IOF have continued settlement activities in the West Bank and Israeli settlers have continued to attacks Palestinian civilians and property.

· Ehud Olmert gave a green line for the construction of 884 housing units for settlers in Occupied East Jerusalem.

Continued . . .

Seth Colter Walls | The Huffington Post, June 5, 2008

More than five years after the initial invasion of Iraq, the Senate Intelligence Committee has finally gone on the record: the Bush administration misused, and in some cases disregarded, intelligence which led the nation into war. The two final sections of a long-delayed and much anticipated “Phase II” report on the Bush administration’s use of prewar intelligence, released on Thursday morning, accuse senior White House officials of repeatedly misrepresenting the threat posed by Iraq.

In addition, the report on Iraq war intelligence harshly criticizes a Pentagon office for executing “inappropriate, sensitive intelligence activities” without the proper knowledge of the State Department and other agencies.

In addition to judgments that could prove troublesome for the White House and make waves in the presidential race, the report also contains some stinging minority reports from Republican committee members who allege that Democrats turned the intelligence review process into a “partisan exercise.”

However, when the GOP controlled the intelligence committee and steered its “Phase I” reporting on the use of Iraq war intelligence, critics complained that tough questions about the Bush administration’s actions had been kicked down the road, and thus required a second round of fact finding — dubbed “Phase II.” The committee’s delay in producing that full report to the public was seen by Democrats as evidence of a stonewalling campaign executed by President Bush’s Republican Senate allies.

Former Committee Chairman Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) often vacillated over whether or not the report was worth completing, first promising in 2004 that the work would be finished, and then calling it a “monumental waste of time” later in 2005. When Democrats gained control of the Senate after the 2006 midterm elections, they gained a majority of seats on the committee and set the course for the production of the final reports. Whether by partisan design or simple chance, however, the committee managed to save some of the best questions for last.

The “Phase II” report states — in terms clearer than any previous government publication — that there was no operational relationship between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, that Bush officials were not truthful about the difficulties the United States would face in post-war Iraq and that their public statements did not reflect intelligence they had at the time, and, specifically, that the intelligence community would not confirm any meeting between Iraqi officials and Mohamed Atta — a claim that was nevertheless publicly repeated.

“Before taking the country to war, this Administration owed it to the American people to give them a 100 percent accurate picture of the threat we faced. Unfortunately, our Committee has concluded that the Administration made significant claims that were not supported by the intelligence,” Rockefeller said in a statement provided to The Huffington Post.

“In making the case for war, the Administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent. As a result, the American people were led to believe that the threat from Iraq was much greater than actually existed. … There is no question we all relied on flawed intelligence. But, there is a fundamental difference between relying on incorrect intelligence and deliberately painting a picture to the American people that you know is not fully accurate.”

Continued . . .

By Basil Adas | Gulf News June 3, 2008

Baghdad: A proposed Iraqi-American security agreement will include permanent American bases in the country, and the right for the United States to strike, from within Iraqi territory, any country it considers a threat to its national security, Gulf News has learned.

Senior Iraqi military sources have told Gulf News that the long-term controversial agreement is likely to include three major items.

Under the agreement, Iraqi security institutions such as Defence, Interior and National Security ministries, as well as armament contracts, will be under American supervision for ten years.

The agreement is also likely to give American forces permanent military bases in the country, as well as the right to move against any country considered to be a threat against world stability or acting against Iraqi or American interests.

The military source added, “According to this agreement, the American forces will keep permanent military bases on Iraqi territory, and these will include Al Asad Military base in the Baghdadi area close to the Syrian border, Balad military base in northern Baghdad close to Iran, Habbaniyah base close to the town of Fallujah and the Ali Bin Abi Talib military base in the southern province of Nasiriyah close to the Iranian border.”

The sources confirmed that the American army is in the process of completing the building of the military facilities and runways for the permanent bases.

Continued . . .