| Antiwar.com, July 14, 2008 |
| by Justin Raimondo |
|
In spite of reassurances from the Washington talking heads and policy wonks that the U.S. is not about to launch an attack on Iran, or countenance an Israeli strike, the Sunday Times has the real scoop: “President George W. Bush has told the Israeli government that he may be prepared to approve a future military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities if negotiations with Tehran break down, according to a senior Pentagon official. “Despite the opposition of his own generals and widespread skepticism that America is ready to risk the military, political, and economic consequences of an airborne strike on Iran, the president has given an ‘amber light’ to an Israeli plan to attack Iran’s main nuclear sites with long-range bombing sorties, the official told The Sunday Times. “‘Amber means get on with your preparations, stand by for immediate attack, and tell us when you’re ready,’ the official said. But the Israelis have also been told that they can expect no help from American forces and will not be able to use U.S. military bases in Iraq for logistical support.” It seems, however, that the Israelis have already been using U.S. bases in Iraq to train for the coming attack. There have been denials all around – from the Iraqis, the Americans, and the Israelis – but both the Iraqi media and the Israeli media have reported, as the New York Post put it, that “Israeli warplanes have been flying over Iraq and landing at U.S. bases there in preparation for an attack on Iran.” The Iraqi Web site Nahrainet reported Israeli fighter jets have been in rehearsals, so to speak, for their much-anticipated strike at Iran, flying at night over Jordanian airspace and arriving at U.S. air bases in Nasiriyah in southern Iraq and near Haditha in western Anbar province. The Israelis, in concert with their amen corner in the U.S., have been engaged in a propaganda blitz targeting Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program, the whole point of which is not to pressure the Iranians into backing down, but to force the U.S. to take action in lieu of the Israelis going it alone. Why fight if your big brother is willing to wage the battle? To that end, the Israelis are taking aim at Washington, rather than Tehran, in a full-scale political assault that shows every sign of succeeding where it counts – in the Oval Office. The Times cites a top Pentagon official: |
Archive for July, 2008
Amber Alert! Get ready for war
July 15, 2008Iraqis demand end to ‘occupation’
July 15, 2008Phil Sands, Foreign Correspondent | The National, July 14, 2008
Iraqi delegates attend a conference in Damascus. Phil Sands / The National
DAMASCUS // Iraqi opposition and resistance groups have renewed their demands for an end to all negotiations with the United States while US troops remain on Iraqi soil.
“We reject any kind of agreement that prolongs the occupation for so much as a day,” said Shamil Rassam, chairman of the Iraqi Popular Forces, an anti-occupation group with offices in Syria. “The occupation must be ended immediately and there can be no compromises until the last American soldier has left the country.”
Talks continue between the government in Baghdad and the Bush administration over a controversial status of forces agreement, a treaty that would lay out US military legal rights to remain in Iraq.
Discussions appear to have stalled over the Iraqi government’s insistence the agreement include a timetable for US troop withdrawal, something Washington has insisted would aid insurgents.
The United States has been pushing for a long-term deal to be concluded by the end of the month, and certainly before the next US president takes over the White House in January.
That now seems unlikely and, instead, a temporary one-year agreement between Iraq and the United States is being considered. It would allow basic US military operations to continue after the year-end expiration of the UN mandate that currently gives them legal cover.
Despite the Iraqi government’s taking a harder negotiating line than many expected, Iraqi tribes and political organisations with representatives in Damascus have demanded a zero tolerance strategy: no deals until all US troops are pulled out.
“The security agreement is just a plan to turn Iraq into an American colony forever,” Mr Rassam said. “The only deal that is acceptable to us is one that calls for complete unconditional withdrawal.”
Sheikh Ra’ad Kadhamyi, the head of the Sadrist offices outside of Iraq, said the proposed Iraqi-US deal must include a clear timetable for a rapid US withdrawal.
“Everything we have seen of these agreements so far bring shame to the Iraqi people and will hand control of our country and its resources to the Americans,” he said.
Inside the Bush White House’s Nonstop Propaganda War
July 15, 2008RINF.COM, Monday, July 14th, 2008
By Mark Dery
Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan exposes the culture of deception that sold an unnecessary war to the public
Scott McClellan is having a “Matrix” moment — the moment when you wake up, with a jolt, from the reassuring fictions of the media dreamworld to the face-slapping reality of unspun fact. Remember that scene in “The Matrix” where Laurence Fishburne parts the veil of illusion — the computer-generated simulation humanity experiences as everyday reality — to reveal the movie’s post-apocalyptic world for the irradiated slag heap it really is? Like that. “Welcome to the Desert of the Real,” he tells Keanu Reeves, a riff on the postmodern philosopher Jean Baudrillard’s pronouncement, in his book Simulations, that we live in a “desert of the real” — an ever-more-virtual reality where firsthand experience and empirical truth are being displaced by media fictions. He offers an example tailor-made for the Bush presidency: “Propaganda and advertising fuse in the same marketing and merchandising of objects and ideologies.”
This, in a word, is life inside the Bush administration’s Ministry of Truth, as described by McClellan in What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception. In his frag ‘em-and-run memoir, the former White House press secretary — whose Secret Service code name, I kid you not, was “Matrix” — recounts how he and the rest of Team Dubya got caught up in the “permanent campaign,” a nonstop propaganda war whose tactical weapons were “the manipulation of shades of truth, partial truths, twisting of the truth, and spin,” and whose goal was to stage-manage the media narrative and thus public opinion.
Now that McClellan has broken free from what he calls the “Washington bubble,” he can see the “massive marketing campaign” (his words, my italics) to sell the war in Iraq for the steaming heap of dookie it was: a PR operation characterized by a, er, “lack of candor and honesty,” as the author so masterfully understates it, having just told us that the administration dropped the trap on chief economic adviser Larry Lindsey for telling the Wall Street Journal that Bush’s war would likely cost between $100 billion and $200 billion — a fatal misspeak at a moment when “talking about the projected cost of a potential war wasn’t part of the script.” Neither was talking about “possible unpleasant consequences” (the choice of adjective is sheer virtuosity, like a grace note in a Paganini caprice); “casualties, economic effects, geopolitical risks, diplomatic repercussions,” and other buzz-killers might jeopardize what advertisers call the “supportive atmosphere” that puts consumers in that impulse-buying mood — in this instance, buying the dubious case for war from a president who famously prefers faith to facts, a president who listens to his gut. Unfortunately, the trustworthy gurglings of the Bush gut were indistinguishable, in this case, from the offstage urgings of the neocons Colin Powell derided as “fucking crazies.”
Enabling Tyranny
July 15, 2008By Paul Craig Roberts | Information Clearing House, July 14, 2008
I recently read that Brigette Bardot, now in her 70s, has been arrested as a hate criminal for complaining that Muslims in France slaughter sheep without first stunning them. The famous actress is known for her sympathy with animals, but the French government preferred to interpret her remarks as hatred for Muslims. Prosecutor Anne de Fontetts promised to throw the book at Bardot.
There are many incongruities here. The French are persecuting one of their own for taking exception to the practices of an alien culture. But then, perhaps this is just being broad-minded. What really jumps out is: if Bardot’s animal rights position makes her a hate criminal, what does French President Nicholas Sarkozy’s foreign policy position make him?
According to Information Clearing House’s running tally as of July 12, 1,236,604 Iraqis have been slaughtered as a result of the Sarkozy-supported US invasion and occupation of Iraq. If Bardot is a hate criminal under French law for complaining about how Muslims prepare their mutton, why isn’t President Sarkozy a hate criminal for supporting an American policy that has resulted in the deaths of 1,236,604 Muslims and the displacement of 4 million Iraqis?
Such incongruities are everywhere. It is as if people are no longer capable of thought.
Last week the US Congress passed an ex post facto law that legalized the illegal behavior of telecommunication companies that enabled the Bush Regime to violate US law and to spy on Americans without warrants. Retroactive laws are unconstitutional. But, alas, the US Constitution does not make campaign contributions, and telecommunication companies do.
The Bush Regime claimed that its illegal behavior, which requires an unconstitutional retroactive law to protect telecommunication companies and President Bush from being held accountable, is necessary to protect us. But as our Founding Fathers and every intelligent patriotic person since has patiently explained to the American public, it is the Constitution that protects us. No safety can be found by fleeing the Constitution.
Without the Constitution we have no protection. We simply stand naked before unbridled government power.
That’s pretty much how we stand now after 7.5 years of the Bush Regime. Electing a Democratic Congress in 2006 did not make any difference. Indeed, it was a Democratic majority Congress that last week gave Bush his unconstitutional ex post facto law.
RIGHTS: Ten Years On, Some Step Towards Justice
July 15, 2008By Irene de Vette
ROTTERDAM, Jul 15 (IPS) – Human rights organisations all over the world will celebrate the tenth anniversary Jul. 17 of the adoption of the Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court (ICC). The ICC is the first and only permanent international criminal tribunal to prosecute individuals accused of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
“Our hope is that, by punishing the guilty, the International Criminal Court will bring some comfort to the surviving victims and to the communities that have been targeted,” then Secretary General of the United Nations Kofi Annan said on the historic day in 1998. “More important, we hope it will deter future war criminals, and bring nearer the day when no ruler, no state, no junta and no army anywhere will be able to abuse human rights with impunity.”
After the Berlin Wall had fallen in 1989, the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago put the establishment of a permanent criminal tribunal, a wish that had long existed among the international community, back on the agenda. While ad-hoc tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda were established, a Statute was drafted in 1994 and then adopted in 1998 as the Statute of Rome. It went into effect Jul. 1, 2002, when the required 60 states had ratified it. To date, there are 106 ratifications. Some countries have not signed, among them the United States, China, India and Israel.
Early July of this year, former Congolese rebel leader Jean-Pierre Bemba was transferred from Belgium to the ICC in The Hague, the Netherlands, to face multiple counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Central African Republic. On Jul. 14, ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo requested the arrest of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in connection with the ongoing violence in the Darfur region.
Anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews Condemn Zionist Pogroms in West Bank and Strangulation of Gaza
July 14, 2008
NETUREI KARTA of THE ORTHODOX JEWRY – JERUSALEM, PALESTINE
P.O.Box 5053 Jerusalem
@neto.bezeqint.net
uruknet, Jul. 10. 2008
Anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews Condemn Zionist Pogroms in West Bank and Strangulation of Gaza
Anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews worldwide condemn the savage pogroms unleashed against the Palestinian people in the West Bank by the Zionist terrorist gang known as the “IDF.”
The Zionist terrorists are currently on a rampage throughout the West Bank to terrorize Palestinian civil society as they strengthen their hold on the prison known as Gaza.
We implore the world community not to stand idly by and allow the Palestinian people to be terrorized and sacrificed solely in order to make life comfortable for the Zionist regime. Where are the peacekeeping troops? Where are the UN declarations? Where are the world summits of the major powers? Where are the declarations and condemnations? Where are the arms boycotts against the Zionists?
What is the reason for the constant silence in the face of the Zionist miscreants? Is it intimidation and threats to use the term “anti-Semite” against any person or government who dares to criticize their brutality?!
HOW LONG WILL THIS ENDURE? HOW LONG WILL THE ZIONIST REGIME HAVE A FREE HAND AND A BLANK CHECK TO TERRORIZE AND HUMILIATE THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE?
We also condemn the silence of Jewish leaders and rabbis who call themselves Orthodox and who have either been bribed or intimidated by the Zionists.
How long shall you remain silent at the total desecration of the name of G-d and our holy Torah by the vicious Zionist heretics? You are silent and the word “Jew” is seen among the nations to mean murderer and terrorist!
No person remaining silent shall escape the Day of Judgment because everything is recorded in Heaven!! If you believe in the Torah and follow our Sages then you must not ignore the state-sponsored terrorism committed by the heretical Zionist regime in violation of all international laws and the entire Torah!! We pray for the immediate dismantlement of the rogue Zionist regime and for the immediate restoration of the inherent rights of the Palestinians throughout historic Palestine!
Rabbi Meir Hirsh
Neturei Karta
Jerusalem, Palestine
Mukasey: Bush’s New ‘Mr. Cover-up’
July 14, 2008Robert Parry | Consortiumnews.com, July 10, 2008
Even Sen. Charles Schumer, whose vote last year ensured Michael Mukasey’s confirmation as Attorney General, was left sputtering as Mukasey returned the favor by rebuffing Schumer’s concerns about the Bush administration’s political prosecutions.
At the end of his round of Senate Judiciary Committee questions, Schumer referred to allegations that White House political adviser Karl Rove had pressed for the selective prosecution of Alabama’s Democratic Gov. Don Siegelman, who was viewed as a threat to Republican dominance of the South.
“Do you think that someone in the Justice Department should ask Karl Rove whether he was involved, whether he did the things that are alleged – someone somewhere – or is there a possibility that no one should ever ask him?” the New York Democrat said, his voice rising.
Mukasey responded coolly that he would not endorse the questioning of Rove. In disgust, Schumer said, “I find these answers very disappointing.”
But Schumer was not alone. At the oversight hearings on July 9, the committee’s Democrats and the ranking Republican, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, voiced varying levels of disappointment at Mukasey’s refusal to look back at the misconduct – including criminal acts – that had occurred earlier in the Bush administration.
Indeed, Mukasey’s evasive answers recalled the stonewalling of his predecessor, Alberto Gonzales. Mukasey’s vague and meandering responses made two things clear, however: George W. Bush’s hubris about what he sees as his unlimited presidential powers continues and Mukasey will serve as Bush’s rearguard protector during his final six months in office.
In a separate confrontation with two House committees, Mukasey has promulgated a novel legal theory justifying his refusal to release FBI reports on interviews with President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney about their roles in exposing the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame.
Even though Bush has not asserted executive privilege regarding the FBI reports, Mukasey has refused to honor subpoenas from the House committees on the grounds that to do so would threaten “core Executive Branch confidentiality interests and fundamental separation of powers principles.”
Mukasey’s theory ignores a variety of precedents, including the public release of criminal-case testimony by Bush’s three predecessors (Bill Clinton on the Monica Lewinsky case, George H.W. Bush on the Passportgate affair and the Iran-Contra scandal, and Ronald Reagan on Iran-Contra.)
Nuremberg Defense
In his Senate testimony, Mukasey also left no doubt that the Justice Department would take no action against anyone in the administration who violated criminal statutes in the “war on terror” if they were following legal advice from superiors, a modern version of the so-called Nuremberg defense.
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, urged Mukasey to “follow what I think is the clear standard of the law within your own department and initiate those investigations” into the Bush administration’s abuse of detainees, including the use of “waterboarding,” a form of simulated drowning.
Durbin noted that retired Major General Antonio Taguba, who was in charge of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse probe, stated recently that “the Commander in Chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture” and that “there is no longer any doubt about whether the current administration committed war crimes, the only question that remains is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held accountable.”
Mukasey, however, responded that anyone who acted in “good faith” and relied on the Justice Department’s legal advice “cannot and should not be prosecuted.” The same protection should cover government lawyers who gave the advice, he said.
Red Cross finds Bush administration guilty of war crimes
July 14, 2008In a secret report last year, the Red Cross found evidence of the CIA using torture on prisoners that would make the Bush administration guilty of war crimes, The New York Times reported Friday.
The Red Cross determined the culpability of the Bush administration after interviewing prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, according to the article.
Prisoner Abu Zubaydahwho said he had been waterboarded, “slammed against the walls” and confined in boxes “so small he said he had to double up his limbs in the fetal position.”
The information comes from a new book written by Jane Meyer, who has frequently published articles concerning counter-terrorism in The New Yorker.
The book is titled “The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals,” and will be released next week.
Mayer cited “sources familiar with the report” to explain the confidential document as a warning “that the abuse constituted war crimes, placing the highest officials in the U.S. government in jeopardy of being prosecuted.”
The report was submitted to CIA last year and concluded that American interrogation methods are “categorically” torture that violates both domestic and international law, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow reported Friday.
Although the CIA had already admitted to the use of waterboarding, Meyer says in the book that several CIA officers confirm the findings of the Red Cross, including the other forms of torture mentioned.
Maddow called George W. Bush a “torture-approver-in-chief who has yet to be held to account for anything” and said that congressman Dennis Kucinich had reintroduced his articles of impeachment against the president.
Maddow questioned constitutional law expert Johnathan Turley about the development.
“The problem for the bush admin is that they perfected plausible deniability techniques,” Turley said. “They bring out one or two people that are willing to debate on cable shows whether waterboarding is torture and it leaves the impression that its a closed question.
“It’s not. It’s just like the domestic surveillance program that the federal court said just a week ago was also not just a closed question.”
When asked by Maddow if the chances are now greater that Bush will be prosecuted now or after leaving office by the international community, Turley compared the situation to Serbia in the early 90s.
“I’d never thought I would say this, but I think it might in fact be time for the United States to be held internationally to a tribunal. I never thought in my lifetime I would say that.”
U.S. visit feeds Pakistani worry over U.S. attack
July 14, 2008Robert Birsel
Reuters North American News Service ,July 13, 2008 02:22 EST
ISLAMABAD, July 13 (Reuters) – The Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, visited Pakistan on the weekend, fueling speculation that the United States was about to take action against militants in northwest Pakistan.
Pakistan has been a close U.S. ally in the global campaign against terrorism but the United States has become increasingly frustrated at what it sees as insufficient effort by Islamabad to fight militants on the Afghan border.
A U.S. embassy spokeswoman confirmed that Mullen had made a one-day trip to Pakistan on Saturday, but said she had no details about his meetings. Pakistani military and government spokesmen were not available for comment.
Pakistani newspapers said Mullen, in talks with Pakistani military commanders and leaders of a new government, had expressed deep frustration with growing cross-border militant attacks and had called for decisive action to stop it.
“Sources quoted Mullen as complaining that militants were moving across the border with greater liberty now than during the previous government,” the Dawn newspaper said.
Pakistan’s semi-autonomous ethnic Pashtun tribal belt on the border has became a sanctuary for al Qaeda and Taliban militants fighting Western soldiers in Afghanistan and against security forces in Pakistan where 15 soldiers were killed on Saturday.
The U.S. Pentagon said last month insurgent havens in Pakistan were the biggest threat to Afghan security.
Pakistan has ruled out allowing foreign troops onto its soil although U.S. pilotless drones have been increasing their flights, and attacks, over the Pakistani side of the border.
Bush to hasten Iraq troop withdrawal in bid to help McCain win White House
July 14, 2008By Leonard Doyle in Washington | The Independent, Monday, 14 July 2008
AFP/GETTY
John McCain with George Bush, who hopes to reassure US voters
President George Bush wants to speed up the withdrawal of American combat troops from Iraq, a move that could help to quell the anti-war anxieties of voters before November’s presidential election.
Drawing down large numbers of troops would enable the Republican candidate, John McCain, to say that his forceful military strategy for Iraq was correct. Alone among Republican and Democratic politicians, he consistently urged Mr Bush to take on the insurgents with extra forces. He is now attacking his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, for preaching policies of defeat by calling for a withdrawal in 16 months.
American commanders want to reduce their deployment in Iraq to ease the strain on the military and free up troops for Afghanistan where they are taking a beating from the Taliban and other militants.
Nine American soldiers were killed and 15 wounded yesterday in the bloodiest day in three years for US forces in Afghanistan. In a multi-pronged attack, revealing sophistication and daring, militants overran a remote US base near the Pakistan border on the front lines of the hunt for Osama bin Laden. It was the deadliest on US forces in the country since 16 combat troops were killed when their helicopter was shot down by a rocket-propelled grenade in the same area in 2005.
Concerns are also growing that Mr Bush wants to release fighting forces before he leaves office in January, in the event of conflict with Iran.
By the times of Mr Bush’s departure, three of the 15 combat brigades now in Iraq could have left the country, say government and military officials. That would still leave up to 130,000 frontline troops in the field – a reduction from the 170,000 deployed in the “surge” last year.
A rapid US withdrawal would mark a sharp turnaround in the fortunes of the Bush administration from only two years ago, amid the bloody slaughter of growing numbers of Iraqis and American soldiers. Anti-war feeling is at fever pitch in the US and the military is said to be near breaking point from its extended combat deployments.
Peace and Justice Post 