| Al Jazeera, Oct 20, 2008 | |||
Israel’s defence minister has said the country’s leaders are considering a dormant Saudi plan offering comprehensive peace with the Arab world. Ehud Barak said it was time to pursue an overall peace deal because there was very little progress in individual negotiations with Syria and the Palestinians. The peace plan – first mooted by Saudi Arabia in 2002 – offers Israel recognition by its Arab neighbours in return for its withdrawal from lands in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights captured during the 1967 Middle East war. Barak said he had discussed the plan with Tzipi Livni, the leader of Israel’s Kadima party trying to form a coalition government, and that they were considering a response. “There is definitely room to introduce a comprehensive Israeli plan to counter the Saudi plan that would be the basis for a discussion on overall regional peace,” he told Israel’s Army Radio. Barak’s announcement came as Livni sought a two-week extension to form political alliances in a new government, having failed to attract the ultra-orthodox Shas party to join Kadima and Barak’s Labour party in the administration. Coalition deadline Livni was elected leader of Kadima last month, taking over from Ehud Olmert who resigned as prime minister in the wake of a corruption scandal but remains in office in a caretaker capacity until a new government is formed. Livni has already won an initial agreement from Barak, the leader of the Labour party, to join a coalition under her leadership. But her efforts to attract Shas, which is making a number of demands, have so far proved fruitless. Al Jazeera’s Sherine Tadros, reporting from Jerusalem, said the Shas party had a strong bargaining position. The Shas party knows that Livni really needs it in order to become prime minister and form a strong government acceptable to the Israeli public, our correspondent said. The religious Shas party, which has long billed itself as a party that represents Israel’s poor, has been demanding increased government spending of about $270m on social welfare as a price for joining a Livni-led coalition. Scramble for numbers “She could go to the Knesset [to ratify a government] with the seats she already has, but she believes she can do it in the end,” Gil Messing, a Livni spokesman, said. Without Shas, she could form a minority government relying on precarious support from outside the coalition of left-wing and Arab parties wary of a national election that opinion polls show Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud would win. Shas’s membership would boost that number to 60, a wafer-thin coalition but enough to stop the opposition from toppling her government in no-confidence votes. Winning the support of smaller factions, such as the Pensioners party, with seven Knesset members, and the left-wing Meretz, with five, would give Livni a stronger mandate to pursue policies that include peacemaking with the Palestinians. Meanwhile, some 80 truckloads of food and medical supplies were delayed from reaching the Gaza Strip after dozens of Israelis blocked a crossing on Sunday, demanding their government seal an agreement with Hamas to release Gilad Shalit. Hamas is demanding the release of 1,400 prisoners in exchange for Shalit, the Israeli soldier captured by Palestinian fighters more than two years ago. |
Archive for October, 2008
SPAIN: Only Banks Get Aid, Anti-Poverty Protesters Complain
October 20, 2008By José Antonio Gurriarán | Inter-Press Service
MADRID, Oct 17 (IPS) – “We think it’s disgraceful that billions of dollars are available to bail out banks, and there is no money to eradicate poverty in the world,” said Marina Navarro, the spokeswoman for some 1,000 social organisations in Spain taking part in demonstrations against poverty between Friday and Sunday.
“We can understand the need for certain measures to address the economic crisis triggered by financial institutions in the United States, but we are completely opposed to that happening at the cost of an increase in hunger, poverty and inequality around the world,” the representative of the Spanish Alliance Against Poverty told IPS in Madrid.
The Alliance Against Poverty, made up of civil society organisations, trade unions, community associations, religious institutions and other groups, held demonstrations Friday to mark the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty and will continue mobilising over the weekend in response to the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP), whose campaign slogan this year is “Stand Up and Take Action”.
From Oct. 17-19, millions of people around the world will literally stand up in protests and other events to demand that their governments make the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) top priority in budget allocation.
Taking 1990 levels as a baseline, the MDGs include a 50 percent reduction in extreme poverty and hunger; universal primary education; promotion of gender equality; reduction of child mortality by two-thirds; cutbacks in maternal mortality by three-quarters; combating the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; ensuring environmental sustainability; and developing a North-South global partnership for development.
“Far from meeting the MDGs, the number of poor people around the world has grown by 50 million, bringing the total to over 900 million,” said Navarro, referring to the first of the eight goals assumed by the international community in 2000, which have a 2015 deadline.
“I know it is a very harsh term, but I can’t find a better one: isn’t it disgraceful that it cost 700 billion dollars to bail out the banks in the United States, five times more than what the United Nations approved for reaching the MDGs?” asked Navarro.
In practically every large city and provincial capital in Spain, people have been mobilising over the last few days and will continue to do so through the weekend as part of the Alliance Against Poverty campaign, whose main aim is to call for compliance with the first MDG, against extreme poverty and hunger.
Developing regions, especially parts of Asia, have achieved steady economic growth and have seen the overall poverty rate shrink from 80 to 20 percent in the last 25 years. In addition, the proportion of children under five suffering from malnutrition dropped from 33 percent in 1996 to 26 percent in 2006.
“That’s true, and it should be highlighted as extraordinary progress,” said Navarro. “The case of Mozambique is also exemplary — one of the countries in the world with the greatest economic difficulties, which managed to reduce poverty to 10 percent of the population, thanks to active social policies and to donor countries like Germany, Spain, Britain and the Netherlands.”
But, she added, “half of the population of sub-Saharan Africa, and 1.4 billion people in poor regions around the world, still live on less than 1.25 dollars a day, according to the World Bank.”
In Spain’s large cities, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators are expected to stand up against poverty from Friday to Sunday.
In Friday’s enormous march in Madrid, signs carried by protesters also expressed concern about the unequal distribution of wealth, both between and within countries.
Another prominent activist who has been working hard over the last few days for the success of the campaign to sensitise Spanish society on the questions of poverty and hunger is Alliance Against Poverty spokesman David Ortiz, the only civil society representative to accompany Spain’s socialist Prime Minister José Luís Rodríguez Zapatero to the U.N. General Assembly in New York in late September.
“It is outrageous that as wealth grows around the world, so does inequality, and far from meeting the MDGs, we are getting farther and farther away from them in many cases,” Ortiz told IPS.
“In Latin America, the average income has gone up considerably in the last few years, but poverty has grown too, and there are intolerable problems of inequality that must be addressed,” he said.
“And in Africa, the number of people living in extreme poverty grows day by day, while a small elite becomes extremely wealthy. These are situations that are intolerable from a human standpoint,” he said.
The demonstrators taking part in the march in Madrid reminded the Zapatero administration of its pledge to increase official development aid to 0.7 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2012.
Ortiz said things have changed since the socialist party (PSOE) came to power in Spain in 2004, but argued that a much greater improvement is needed.
Under the previous government, of the centre-right Popular Party, “aid stood at 0.2 percent of GDP, and it has now grown to 0.4 percent and will apparently expand to 0.5 percent in the budget to be approved in the next few days,” he said.
“But we have to reach 0.7 percent of GDP as soon as possible, in Spain as well as in other countries, because the situation is critical, with millions of children and adults having their basic needs unmet or dying of hunger,” said Ortiz. (END/2008)
Tens of Thousands of Iraqis Mass for Anti-SOFA Protest
October 18, 2008At least 50,000 Iraqis joined a protest in the streets of Baghdad today, organized by followers of Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, chanting anti-US and anti-occupation slogans and waving banners opposing the controversial Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) which would keep US troops in Iraq through 2011.
Though Sadr was not personally present at the rally, he did address the crowd in a message directed at Iraqi lawmakers, read by Sheik Abdul-Hadi al-Mohammadawi. In the statement he urged Iraq’s parliament to “champion the will of the people over that of the occupier” and oppose the pact. He also cautioned that passing the deal “will stigmatize Iraq and its government for years to come.”
Sadr is just one of many influential religious leaders, both Sunni and Shi’ite, speaking out against the SOFA. The high attendance for the rally underscores a growing popular hostility for the deal, which faces a long battle for approval in the Iraqi government.
Though it is unclear at this point whether the terms of the deal are finalized, officials reported this was the case earlier in the week though White House Press Secretary Dana Perino denied it yesterday, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari says it would be “difficult to reopen the text” and that it was time for parliament to either ratify or reject the deal. He added that “the next few days are very crucial for Iraqi leaders to decide.”
Popular and religious opposition to the deal as well as a splintering coalition government will make it extremely difficult for Iraq’s parliament to pass the deal. And even though a simple majority is all that is required for passage, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki reportedly intends to submit it for consideration only if he is confident it will receive a two-thirds majority, fearing criticism if the vote is close.
Related Stories
U.S., Iraqi Officials Question Terms of Draft Security Deal
October 18, 2008At Issue: Legal Authority Over Troops
By Mary Beth Sheridan and Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writers, Saturday, October 18, 2008
BAGHDAD, Oct. 17 — A number of senior Iraqi and U.S. politicians expressed strong reservations Friday about the terms of a draft agreement that gives Iraq the “primary right” — subject to U.S. acquiescence — to try American soldiers accused of serious crimes committed during off-duty hours outside U.S. military bases here.
Some political leaders in Baghdad, who got their first look at the controversial agreement to extend the U.S. military presence in Iraq beyond 2008, said it did not go far enough in guaranteeing Iraqi sovereignty. The bilateral accord was presented Friday to the Political Council for National Security, an advisory body including political, legislative and judicial leaders, whose support is necessary before it can be submitted to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki‘s cabinet and then to parliament for final approval. After an initial review, the council said it would continue discussions next week.
In Washington, congressional Democrats questioned ceding any authority over U.S. troops to Iraq. “I am very concerned about reports that U.S. service personnel may not have full immunity under Iraqi law,” said Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), the House Armed Services Committee chairman. The Bush administration allowed a small group of senior congressional aides to read the document at a White House briefing this morning but did not allow copies to be made.
A provision in the draft would give the United States “primary” jurisdiction over military personnel and Defense Department employees who are on bases or engaged in authorized military operations.
Iraq, it says, would have the “primary right to exercise judicial jurisdiction” over “premeditated and gross felonies . . . committed outside the agreed facilities and areas and when not on a mission.” Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said Friday that any disagreement would be resolved by a joint committee. “If the crime is very grave or serious, the U.S. may waive its jurisdiction,” he said.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told reporters at a Pentagon briefing that “there is not a reason to be concerned.” He said top U.S. military officials “are all satisfied that our men and women in uniform serving in Iraq are well protected.” U.S. officials have emphasized that off-duty American troops in Iraq rarely, if ever, venture outside their bases, and said that they consider language in the document vague enough to ensure absolute U.S. control in all circumstances.
Administration officials also said they are confident that withdrawal dates in the document — June 30, 2009, for U.S. forces in Iraqi cities and Dec. 31, 2011, from all of Iraq — contain sufficient caveats to address any future downturn in the security situation. Before the final deadline, the draft says, “on the basis of Iraq’s assessment of conditions on the ground,” the Iraqi government could ask for U.S. troops to remain for “training purposes” or to “support Iraqi security forces.”
The accord also would prohibit U.S. forces from detaining any Iraqi citizen without an Iraqi warrant, and says any detainee would have to be handed over to government custody within 24 hours. All Iraqis in U.S. custody as of Jan. 1 — when the agreement would go into effect upon expiration of the current U.N. mandate authorizing foreign troops here — would have to be turned over to the Iraqi government. Home and property searches also would require an Iraqi warrant, except during certain combat situations.
U.S. and Iraqi officials confirmed the wording of the document, portions of which were widely circulated in both capitals Friday.
The sensitivity of the draft agreement, which has been under negotiation since March, was illustrated when Maliki lashed out at the top American commander here for saying that U.S. intelligence indicated Iran was trying to bribe Iraqi lawmakers to reject the pact.
“The American commander has risked his position when he spoke in this tone and has complicated relations in a deplorable way,” Maliki told a group of Kuwaiti journalists in an interview broadcast by Iraqi state television Friday. Maliki expressed astonishment at the remarks from U.S. Gen. Ray Odierno, whom he described as a “kind and good man.” Iraqi members of parliament, he said, had not accepted any bribes.
Maliki was reacting to a Monday article in The Washington Post in which Odierno said Iran was conducting a “full-court press” with its Iraqi contacts to sabotage the pact, including “coming in to pay off people to vote against it.” A U.S. military spokesman later said there was no confirmation that bribes had been accepted by lawmakers.
A number of Iraq’s leading political leaders spent years in exile in Iran during the presidency of Saddam Hussein and maintain warm relations with the Tehran government. Several expressed sharp offense at Odierno’s comments.
Jalal al-Deen al-Saghir, a top lawmaker from the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, Maliki’s main political partner, said in an interview that he saw “serious problems” in the proposed accord, “especially after Odierno’s statements.”
Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said Friday that there was a misunderstanding about Odierno’s comments. “I don’t think General Odierno was implying that there are crooked Iraqi politicians, but rather that there are Iranian agents who, in their attempt to derail the [agreement], are trying to bribe Iraqi politicians,” he said.
In Najaf, the religious capital of Iraq’s Shiite majority, a leading cleric blasted the idea of giving U.S. forces any immunity from Iraqi law. “We consider this a basic point because it represents sovereignty,” Sadir Addin al-Qobanchi said in a sermon at the city’s grand mosque. “If someone commits a hostile act against your house and family, and you say it is fine and don’t hold him responsible, it means that you don’t have dignity or sovereignty.”
U.S. military and political officials have expressed concern that the agreement may not make it through Iraq’s slow-moving political process by year’s end. An extension of the U.N. mandate, the most likely option if a final agreement is not reached, poses political and legal complications for both sides.
Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish lawmaker, said the agreement could gain the approval of the political council and the cabinet. But in parliament, supporters of the agreement “will face opposition,” he said. The accord, which must win a majority in the 275-seat parliament, is strongly supported by the Kurdish bloc, the second-biggest with 54 seats. Various Sunni and independent parties representing scores of seats have also indicated their approval.
But Othman said the backing of some politicians was not solid.
“They tell the Americans, ‘We are okay, we’ll sign it.’ Then they tell their people in parliament not to vote for it,” he said.
The U.S. Congress does not have similar veto power over the agreement, which requires only a presidential signature. But senior Democrats, and a number of Republicans, have questioned its terms. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) said in a statement Friday that complete American jurisdiction over U.S. service members was “critical” and that they could not be “subject to criminal prosecution in an Iraqi judicial system that does not meet due process standards.” Levin said he would “reserve judgment” on the draft until he was given an opportunity for a “complete review” of its terms.
DeYoung reported from Washington. Staff writer Ann Scott Tyson in Washington and special correspondent Qais Mizher in Baghdad contributed to this report.
Government of Thieves
October 18, 2008When Greed is Rewarded
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS | Counterpunch, Oct 17 / 20, 2008
Just as the Bush regime’s wars have been used to pour billions of dollars into the pockets of its military-security donor base, the Paulson bailout looks like a Bush regime scheme to incur $700 billion in new public debt in order to transfer the money into the coffers of its financial donor base. The US taxpayers will be left with the interest payments in perpetuity (or inflation if the Fed monetizes the debt), and the number of Wall Street billionaires will grow. As for the US and European governments’ purchases of bank shares, that is just a cover for funneling public money into private hands.
The explanations that have been given for the crisis and its bailout are opaque. The US Treasury estimates that as few as 7% of the mortgages are bad. Why then do the US, UK, Germany, and France need to pour more than $2.1 trillion of public money into private financial institutions?
If, as the government tells us, the crisis stems from subprime mortgage defaults reducing the interest payments to the holders of mortgage backed securities, thus driving down their values and threatening the solvency of the institutions that hold them, why isn’t the bailout money used to address the problem at its source? If the bailout money was used to refinance troubled mortgages and to pay off foreclosed mortgages, the mortgage backed securities would be made whole, and it would be unnecessary to pour huge sums of public money into banks. Instead, the bailout money is being used to inject capital into financial institutions and to purchase from them troubled financial instruments.
It is a strange solution that does not address the problem. As the US economy sinks deeper into recession, the mortgage defaults will rise. Thus, the problem will intensify, necessitating the purchase of yet more troubled instruments.
If credit card debt has also been securitized and sold as investments, as the economy worsens defaults on credit card debt will be a replay of the mortgage defaults. How much debt can the Treasury bail out before its own credit rating sinks?
The contribution of credit default swaps to the financial crisis has not been made clear. These swaps are bets that a designated financial instrument will fail. In exchange for “premium” payments, the seller of a swap protects the buyer of the swap from default by, for example, a company’s bond that the swap buyer might not even own. If these swaps are also securitized and sold as investments, more nebulous assets appear on balance sheets.
Normally, if you and I make a bet, and I welsh on the bet, it doesn’t threaten your solvency. If we place bets with a bookie and the odds go against the bookie, the bookie will fail, as apparently happened to AIG, necessitating an $85 billion bailout of the insurance company, and to Bear Stearns resulting in the demise of the investment bank.
Credit default swaps are a form of unregulated insurance. One danger of the swaps is that they allow speculators to purchase protection against a company defaulting on its bonds, without the speculators having to own the company’s bonds. Speculators can then short the company’s stock, driving down its price and raising questions about the viability of the company’s bonds. This raises the value of the speculators’ swaps which can be sold to holders of the company’s bonds. By ruining a company’s prospects, the speculators make money.
Another danger is that swaps encourage investors to purchase riskier, higher-yielding instruments in the belief that the instruments are insured, but the sellers of swaps have not reserved against them.
Double-counting of assets is also possible if a bank purchases a company’s bonds, for example, then purchases credit default swaps on the bonds, and lists both as assets on its balance sheet.
The $85 billion Treasury bailout of AIG is small compared to the $700 billion for the banks, and the emphasis has been on banks, not insurance companies. According to news reports, the sums associated with credit default swaps are far larger than the subprime mortgage derivatives. Have the swaps yet to become major players in the crisis?
The behavior of the stock market does not necessarily tell us anything about the bailout. The financial crisis disrupted lending and thus comprised a threat to non-financial firms. This threat would reflect in the stock market. However, the stock market is also predicting a recession and declining earnings. Thus, people sell stocks hoping to get out before share prices adjust to the new lower earnings.
The bailout package is a result of panic and threats, not of analysis and understanding. Neither Congress nor the public knows the full story. If the problem is the mortgages, why does the bailout leave the mortgages unaddressed and focus instead on pouring vast amount of public money into private financial institutions?
The purpose of regulation is to restrain greed and to prevent leveraged speculation from threatening the wider society. Congress needs to restore financial regulation, not reward those who caused the crisis.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
Tony Benn: What went wrong in the capitalist casino?
October 18, 2008By Tony Benn | rinf.com, Oct 17, 2008
These words are from the 1945 Labour manifesto Let Us Face The Future which brilliantly identified the very same crisis which is now described as a “credit crunch” as if it were a mere hiccup in an otherwise wonderful neo-liberal globalised world which could be corrected with a vast subsidy from the taxpayers to put the Wall Street casino and its partners worldwide back into profit. It reminded me of the fact that when slavery was abolished it was the slave owners, and not the slaves, who received compensation from the government of the day.
Perhaps more important – and never mentioned in the media – is that all the news we get every day and every hour is all about the bankers while presidents, prime ministers and other elected leaders of the world have been reduced to the role of mere commentators who are expected to supply taxpayers’ money whenever it is needed to bail out the wealthy.
Indeed, what we are watching is nothing less than the steady transfer of real political power from the polling station to the market and from the ballot to the wallet – reversing the democratic gains we have made over the last century when we were able, increasingly, to use our votes to shape our economic future.
Our 1945 manifesto made that clear in the very next passage following the quote above. This is what it said: “The nation wants food, work and homes. It wants more than that. It wants good food in plenty, useful work for all and comfortable labour-saving homes that take full advantage of the resources of modern science and productive industry.”
That was the policy that swept Labour MPs into power in 1945 and gave this country the National Health Service, the welfare state and a massive house building programme, made possible by elected local authorities who had the resources made available to them by the Treasury.
Now, 63 years later, we are back facing a similar situation and we need to understand why it has happened if we are to see our way forward.
We have been told every day by the media that we should put our faith in the market and that elected governments are the problem and not the answer and, for that reason, should not interfere.
These ideas began to emerge in the political mainstream when Margaret Thatcher came to power and in 1994 “new” Labour adopted them as the basis of its own approach which explains why she once described “new” Labour as her “greatest achievement”.
Trade union rights are now more restricted than they were in 1906, wages have been held down and people have been advised to borrow and spend as an alternative – which explains why the stock market has fallen and locked more and more people into debt, which is a subtle form of slavery itself.
This is why so many people are frightened and frightened people can sometimes be persuaded to seek an answer by identifying an enemy who can be made a scapegoat for failure – as Hitler did when he blamed the Jews, the Communists and the trade unions for the mass unemployment in Germany and set up a fascist dictatorship which led to the Holocaust and war.
Hitler dealt with the unemployed by giving them jobs in the arms factories and the armed forces which led to the Second World War and the massive human cost it caused.
Whatever the left does it must never respond by splintering into a mass of tiny ideological sects forever fighting each other – for that way leads to failure, frustration and defeat.
This is the time for co-operation across the left to tackle the problems that face us on a non-sectarian basis as we have seen in the Stop the War Coalition, the campaigns for trade union rights, civil liberties, pensions, nuclear disarmament, council house building and a fair tax system – all of which require full trade union backing if they are to succeed.
If the economic situation gets worse, as it very well may, we have also to be on the look out for the “coalition” solution which could well be presented to us as the only way that these problems can be tackled, an argument that is being put forward now in America when George Bush, John McCain and Barack Obama rallied round to back the $700 billion bail-out that Wall Street demanded.
That same argument was used by Ramsay MacDonald in 1931 when he formed a National Government which nearly destroyed the Labour Party in the general election when only 51 Labour MPs survived and, without the courage of Ernie Bevin and the TUC, it might never have recovered, as it did in 1945.
I hope that the re-appointment of Peter Mandelson to the Cabinet in the latest reshuffle does not lead to that idea being re-floated as the best way to see us through the crisis for that could be the end of democracy – allowing the European Commission to prevent the re-emergence of public ownership and control of the banks which many will now see as the best way forward.
For the first time in my life, the public are to the left of a Labour government and common sense points us in a direction quite different from the one we have been following since 1979 when Thatcher set out to destroy the trade unions, cripple local authorities and privatise our public assets which we need now more than ever.
In 1945, the nation realised that the problems of peace required the same intensity of commitment as the problems of war.
And with the disastrous experience of Iraq and Afghanistan that argument, too, is beginning to register again and people are asking why we waste so much money on those illegal, brutal and unwinnable wars and on new nuclear weapons when people are losing their jobs and facing repossession of their homes.
The case for peace and socialism is intensely practical and, put like that, will command wide public and electoral support as it did then, in 1945, and could again do now.
The torture time bomb
October 18, 2008The Bush administration’s approval of the abuse of detainees is a toxic legacy for the next US president
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- Philippe Sands The Guardian, Saturday October 18 2008
As the US presidential election reaches a climax against the background of the financial crisis, another silent, dark, time bomb of an issue hangs over the two candidates: torture. For now, there seems to be a shared desire not to delve too deeply into the circumstances in which the Bush administration allowed the US military and the CIA to embrace abusive techniques of interrogation – including waterboarding, in the case of the CIA – which violate the Geneva conventions and the 1984 UN torture convention.
The torture issue’s cancerous consequences go deep, and will cause headaches for the next president. New evidence has emerged in Congressional inquiries that throw more light on the extent to which early knowledge and approval of the abuse went to the highest levels. What does a country do when compelling evidence shows its leaders have authorised international crimes?
For three years I have followed a trail which leads unambiguously to the conclusion that the real bad eggs were not Lyndie England or others on the ground in Abu Ghraib, but the most senior officials in the White House, the Pentagon and the department of justice. Over recent months, Congress has been looking into the role of senior officials involved in the development of interrogation rules. These have attracted relatively scant attention; little by little, however, senators and congressmen have uncovered the outlines of a potentially far-reaching criminal conspiracy.
The first hearings were convened before the judiciary committee of the House of Representatives, at the instance of its chairman, Congressman John Conyers, apparently off the back of my book Torture Team. Parallel hearings have been held before the Senate armed services committee.
The evidence that has emerged is potentially devastating. It confirms, for instance, that the search for new interrogation techniques for use at Guantánamo began not with the local military but in the offices of Donald Rumsfeld and his chief lawyer, Jim Haynes. It shows that when the career military expressed objections on legal grounds, Haynes intervened to stop the normal process of review. And it shows a previously unknown interplay between the department of defence and the CIA: a visit to Guantánamo in September 2002 by the administration’s most senior lawyers was followed days later by a senior CIA lawyer, to brief on the new techniques. “If someone dies while aggressive techniques are being used,” he explained, “the backlash of attention would be severely detrimental.”
Last month the Senate armed services committee received new material from Condoleezza Rice, the first cabinet-level official to confirm high-level involvement in discussions on interrogation techniques. “I participated in a number of meetings in 2002 and 2003 … at which issues relating to detainees in US custody, including interrogation issues, were discussed,” she said. Those present at such meetings included Rumsfeld, attorney general John Ashcroft, Colin Powell, Paul Wolfowitz and CIA director George Tenet. The meetings, which concerned the CIA programme, “occurred inside the White House”. Rice confirmed she was aware of the existence of, but did not read, the justice department legal advice of August 1 2002 that abandoned the international definition of torture and replaced it with a definition drawn from a US Medicare statute.
Buried away in this testimony lies the most dangerous material of all: evidence which may establish that abuses on detainees in Iraq in September 2003, in the period perhaps including the events at Abu Ghraib, were the result of decisions taken at the highest levels of the administration. The administration has long proclaimed it did not allow aggressive interrogations in Iraq, since the Geneva conventions applied. Last month we learned this was false: not everyone had protection under Geneva. If you were considered to be a terrorist, you had no protection at all. A senior US intelligence officer visited Iraq in September 2003. He witnessed abusive interrogation techniques that violated Geneva and complained. The response? He was told the techniques “were pre-approved by DoD GC or higher”. DoD GC is the general counsel at the department of defence, Jim Haynes. Who could be higher? His boss: Rumsfeld.
I have testified before Congress on these issues, and have been asked if there should be criminal investigations and prosecutions. At the very least, the next US president must ensure the full facts are established. It will then be for others to decide what follows. But if the US doesn’t get its own house in order and restore its reputation for the rule of law, others will surely step in.
• Philippe Sands QC is professor of law at UCL, a barrister at Matrix Chambers and author of Torture Team p.sands@ucl.ac.uk
Peace and Justice Post 
The Failed Presidency of George W. Bush: A Dismal Legacy
October 20, 2008[PART I]
Whoever is elected president in the coming November 4 American election will inherit a most miserable situation on nearly all fronts. This is because George W. Bush has been one of the worst presidents the U.S. has ever had, if not the worst. It is widely recognized that he was a below average politician who led his country on the wrong track, both domestically and internationally. Today, only a meager 9 percent of Americans dare to say that their country is moving in the right direction.
As a matter of fact, a very large majority of Americans— both Democrats and Republicans, men and women, residents of cities and of rural areas, high school graduates and college-educated— all say that the United States has been headed in the wrong direction under George W. Bush’s stewardship. Bush’s approval rating reflects the lack of confidence that Americans have in him and his administration. In fact, George W. Bush has recorded the lowest approval rating of any president in the 70-year history of the Gallup Poll. And, around the world, the United States has never had a leader who commands so little respect and confidence. Most people in the U.S. and abroad will find satisfaction in seeing his term come to an end.
This is a terrible indictment of the Bush Administration that has presided over America’s destinies for the last eight years. What is more disconcerting, this all came after George W. Bush won the presidential election in 2000, with fewer popular votes than Democratic candidate Al Gore, after a one-judge-majority decision of the Supreme Court, in effect, gave him the presidency. Therefore, this is an administration that had no widespread democratic mandate to do what it has done. And it has done a lot of things wrong. In fact, many people think this has been a morally bankrupt administration.
International disaster: An Illegal and Immoral War of Aggression
At the center of this fiasco, is the fact that the Bush-Cheney administration and its neocon cohort rushed to exploit the 9/11 terrorist attacks and used this as a pretext to implement a preconceived pro-Israel and pro-oil plan in the Middle East. This led them to adopt a simplistic response to Islamist terrorism, barging into complex Middle East societies on elephant feet. But in the process, they have only succeeded in making matters worse and in encouraging more hatred against the U.S. and more terrorism.
Indeed, George W. Bush will be remembered above all as the man who launched an illegal and immoral war of aggression against another sovereign nation, on false pretenses and forged documents, destroying in so doing the entire country of Iraq, and damaging perhaps irreparably the U.S. reputation in the world. As Scott McClellan, Bush’s former Press Secretary during seven long years, stated, Bush and his advisers [in launching the Iraq War] “confused the propaganda campaign with the high level of candour and honesty so fundamentally needed to build and then sustain public support during a time of war”.
Bush’s deception and lies about Iraq in order to initiate a war of aggression, an aggression that is a war crime under the Nuremberg standard established by the U.S., are well documented. Thus, historians will have no difficulty in establishing the fact that the United States, under Bush, acted as a lawless international aggressor.
In initiating a war of aggression, Bush did violate the United Nations Charter, which “prohibits the use of military force” against any nation without the specific approval of the United Nations Security Council. The Security Council never approved the American-led military invasion of Iraq. Therefore, Bush and his crew had no international legal basis to invade Iraq. And they cannot pretend that Congress gave them such an authorization, since it is well known in law that no domestic law can override a signed international treaty in good standing.
In a domestic parallel, George W. Bush and his administration have set up what is probably the most widespread war profiteering system in modern history, through which billions and billions of dollars were misappropriated and wasted. At the same time as they were adopting a permanent war posture abroad, they were irresponsibly calling at home for a 674 billion dollar tax cut for their rich supporters and pushing up the deficits, of which a large proportion was financed by borrowing abroad.
Illegality and Immorality
On the legal front, this is an administration that has shamed the United States with its illegal actions, with its deliberate and dishonest lies, with its war crimes, its disregard for international treaties, and with its overt disregard of constitutional government.
On the question of lawlessness, the list of missteps the Bush-Cheney administration took outside of the law is too long for a short article as this one. But there are numerous documents to be consulted and it is possible to attempt a short summary.
From the very beginning, the Bush-Cheney administration has dismissed international law and disregarded domestic law. They began by either repudiating or refusing to honor the United States’ international commitments and obligations, thus showing indifference, if not outright hostility, toward international law. They opted out of five important international treaties and commitments: the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty and the International Criminal Court. In so doing, the United States, under the Bush-Cheney administration, has betrayed its international commitments and has moved away from being a moral state, and more and more toward the status of an international rogue state.
This was all confirmed when the Bush-Cheney administration adopted, in September 2002, the Bush Doctrine of preventive war, an internationally illegal and immoral program. Indeed, under existing international law, no country may attack another under false pretenses, nor use military force unilaterally.
This was followed by the even more dangerous and hairy Cheney Doctrine (or the One Percent Doctrine) which is anti-human rights, anti-rule of law and anti-Constitution, because it posits that if there is even a 1% chance American interests are in jeopardy somewhere in the world, unilateral American military interventions are justified, and this without conclusive evidence or extensive analysis. Such hubristic and shoot-from-the-hip foreign policies are a true recipe for international anarchy and thus render a great disservice to humanity.
Domestically, President George W. Bush has introduced the unconstitutional practice of adding signing statements to new laws, stating that he has the right, as President, to violate any section of a law, should he deem it in the national interest to do so. For example, on January 28, 2008, Bush signed into law the repeal of the “Insurrection Act Rider” in the 2006 defense appropriations bill. That rider had given the President sweeping power to use military troops in ways contrary to the Insurrection Act and Posse Comitatus Act and authorized the president to have troops patrol American streets in response to disasters, epidemics, and any “condition” he might cite. But in signing this repeal, Bush attached a signing statement that he did not feel bound by the repeal, thus opening the possibility he could ignore the law any time he saw fit to do so.
Disrespect for Liberty and the U.S. Constitution
As if this were not enough, there was the attempt by the Bush-Cheney regime to suspend and even permanently abolish the more than eight centuries old right of Habeas Corpus. And when the Supreme Court, in a far-reaching decision on June 12, 2008, rebuked the B-C administration’s argument that it had a right to establish concentration camps on U.S.-run properties around the world and hold prisoners indefinitely with no legal recourse, especially at the Guantánamo Bay detention center, President George W. Bush had the gall to criticize the Supreme Court’s decision while on a trip to Europe.
Then Bush embarked upon a program of domestic spying on Americans never before seen in a democracy. He, indeed, removed most of the safeguards that had been erected to protect citizens from illegal and warrantless spying activities by government, thus making a mockery of the U.S. Constitution. In particular, the Bush-Cheney administration did not respect key parts of the U.S. Constitution, especially the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures. It must said, however, that some Bush Democrats, such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Democratic House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D – MD) have also willfully and enthusiastically collaborated with George W. Bush in enlarging the government’s spying powers over citizens. On his own, however, George W. Bush did his utmost to make permanent the President’s War Powers, thus making sure that the United States could remain on a permanent war path and be in a position to suspend at will basic constitutional rights.
On top of everything, George W. Bush will be remembered as a politician who authorized torture and indefinite detention of prisoners. Indeed, after Bush willfully suspended the rights accorded prisoners of war by the Geneva Conventions, he was, in fact, officially turning the United States into an immoral nation that openly and unashamedly resorts to torture, thus violating basic rules of morality, international law and a host of international treaties adhered to by the United States. In fact, the Geneva Conventions in its article 3 does not only prohibit torture, but also any cruel, inhuman, degrading, and humiliating treatment of a detainee “in all circumstances.” However, it is not only on the issue of torture that the United States under Bush has become an international pariah.
The Bush-Cheney administration has also operated concentration camps in many countries, holding captive tens of thousands of detainees and hiding them from the Red Cross, the body empowered to monitor compliance with the Geneva Conventions. The Bush-Cheney administration has placed itself outside the civilized world and was nearly alone, last May (2008), in trying to undermine a treaty banning cluster bombs, a type of bombs which have killed so many civilians, when 111 countries signed a treaty outlawing these inhuman weapons. On this occasion, the United States, under Bush-Cheney, sided with a handful of weapons makers and users, none of them known as great defenders of human rights and democracy: Russia, China, Israel, India and Pakistan. The Bush-Cheney administration has truly been a shamelessly immoral administration.
(PART II on Global Research next week)
Rodrigue Tremblay is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Montreal and can be reached at: rodrigue.tremblay@ yahoo.com.
He is the author of the book ‘The New American Empire’.
Visit his blog site at www.thenewamericanempire.com/blog.
Author’s Website: www.thenewamericanempire.com/
Check Dr. Tremblay’s coming book “The Code for Global Ethics” at: www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com/
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