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Was 9/11 an Inside Job?

August 17, 2008

By Mark H. Gaffney | Information Clearing House, August 15, 2008

The following is an excerpt from Mark H. Gaffney’s forthcoming book, THE 911 MYSTERY PLANE AND THE VANISHING OF AMERICA, to be released in September 2008.

Regrettably, there is considerable evidence that elements of the Bush administration were complicit in the 9/11 attack, and may even have helped stage it. Let us now examine some of what I regard as the most compelling evidence. However, the following discussion makes no claim to be comprehensive.

We know that within minutes of the “worst terrorist attack” in US history, even before the collapse of WTC-2 at 9:59 am, US officials knew the names of several of the alleged hijackers. CBS reported that a flight attendant on AA Flight 11, Amy Sweeney, had the presence of mind to call her office and reveal the seat numbers of the hijackers who had seized the plane.[1] FBI Director Robert Mueller later said, “This was the first piece of hard evidence.”[2] In his memoirs CIA Director George Tenet emphasizes the importance of the passenger manifests, as does counter-terrorism czar Richard A. Clarke.[3] All of which is very strange because the manifests later released by the airlines do not include the names of any of the alleged hijackers. Nor has this discrepancy ever been explained.

According to MSNBC, the plan to invade Afghanistan and “remove Al Qaeda from the face of he earth” was already sitting on G.W. Bush’s desk on the morning of 9/11 awaiting his signature.[4] The plan, in the form of a presidential directive, had been developed by the CIA and according to Richard Clarke called for “arming the Northern Alliance…to go on the offensive against the Taliban [and] pressing the CIA to…go after bin Laden and the Al Qaeda leadership.”[5]

A former Pakistani diplomat, Niaz Naik, tells virtually the same story. During a BBC interview, three days after 9/11, Niak claimed that senior American officials had informed him in mid-July 2001 that the US would attack the Taliban “before the snows start falling in Afghanistan, by the middle of October at the latest.”[6] Niak said he received this information in Berlin at a UN-sponsored international contact group on Afghanistan. He also predicted, correctly, that the US attack would be launched from bases in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. But how could US officials know in mid-July that American forces would invade Afghanistan in October unless they had foreknowledge of the attack?

Foreknowledge probably also explains why General Richard Myers, the acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs on 9/11, announced at the first post-9/11 meeting of Bush’s National Security Council, held on video-conference the afternoon of the attack, that “there are forty-two major Taliban bombing targets.”[7] But how did Myers come to have such detailed information about military targets in Afghanistan, so soon after the 9/11 attack? This important detail belies oft-repeated claims that the US military was not prepared to attack Afghanistan, and points to extensive war planning before 9/11. Journalist Steve Coll arrived at a similar conclusion while researching his 2004 book, Ghost Wars, an excellent history of the period leading up to the 9/11 attack. Coll interviewed two Clinton administration officials who informed him that ”the Pentagon had been studying possible targets in the same spring [i.e., 1998] that the CIA had been drawing up its secret plan to raid Tarnack Farm,” located near Kandahar, Afghanistan, where bin Laden had taken up quarters at the invitation of Taliban leader Mullah Omar.[8]

According to Clarke, at the same meeting on the afternoon of 9/11, CIA Director George Tenet informed the president that “Al Qaeda had committed these atrocities.”[9] But, again, how did Tenet know this so soon after the attack, especially given that “security failures” had occurred, unless he had foreknowledge?

Continued . . .

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Geopolitical Chess: Background to a Mini-war in the Caucasus

August 16, 2008

Immanuel Wallerstein, Commentary No. 239, Aug. 15, 2009

The world has been witness this month to a mini-war in the Caucasus, and the rhetoric has been passionate, if largely irrelevant. Geopolitics is a gigantic series of two-player chess games, in which the players seek positional advantage. In these games, it is crucial to know the current rules that govern the moves. Knights are not allowed to move diagonally.

From 1945 to 1989, the principal chess game was that between the United States and the Soviet Union. It was called the Cold War, and the basic rules were called metaphorically “Yalta.” The most important rule concerned a line that divided Europe into two zones of influence. It was called by Winston Churchill the “Iron Curtain” and ran from Stettin to Trieste. The rule was that, no matter how much turmoil was instigated in Europe by the pawns, there was to be no actual warfare between the United States and the Soviet Union. And at the end of each instance of turmoil, the pieces were to be returned to where they were at the outset. This rule was observed meticulously right up to the collapse of the Communisms in 1989, which was most notably marked by the destruction of the Berlin wall.

It is perfectly true, as everyone observed at the time, that the Yalta rules were abrogated in 1989 and that the game between the United States and (as of 1991) Russia had changed radically. The major problem since then is that the United States misunderstood the new rules of the game. It proclaimed itself, and was proclaimed by many others, the lone superpower. In terms of chess rules, this was interpreted to mean that the United States was free to move about the chessboard as it saw fit, and in particular to transfer former Soviet pawns to its sphere of influence. Under Clinton, and even more spectacularly under George W. Bush, the United States proceeded to play the game this way.

There was only one problem with this: The United States was not the lone superpower; it was no longer even a superpower at all. The end of the Cold War meant that the United States had been demoted from being one of two superpowers to being one strong state in a truly multilateral distribution of real power in the interstate system. Many large countries were now able to play their own chess games without clearing their moves with one of the two erstwhile superpowers. And they began to do so.

Two major geopolitical decisions were made in the Clinton years. First, the United States pushed hard, and more or less successfully, for the incorporation of erstwhile Soviet satellites into NATO membership. These countries were themselves anxious to join, even though the key western European countries – Germany and France – were somewhat reluctant to go down this path. They saw the U.S. maneuver as one aimed in part at them, seeking to limit their newly-acquired freedom of geopolitical action.

The second key U.S. decision was to become an active player in the boundary realignments within the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. This culminated in a decision to sanction, and enforce with their troops, the de facto secession of Kosovo from Serbia.

Russia, even under Yeltsin, was quite unhappy about both these U.S. actions. However, the political and economic disarray of Russia during the Yeltsin years was such that the most it could do was complain, somewhat feebly it should be added.

The coming to power of George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin was more or less simultaneous. Bush decided to push the lone superpower tactics (the United States can move its pieces as it alone decides) much further than had Clinton. First, Bush in 2001 withdrew from the 1972 U.S.-Soviet Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Then he announced that the United States would not move to ratify two new treaties signed in the Clinton years: the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the agreed changes in the SALT II nuclear disarmament treaty. Then Bush announced that the United States would move forward with its National Missile Defense system.

And of course, Bush invaded Iraq in 2003. As part of this engagement, the United States sought and obtained rights to military bases and overflight rights in the Central Asian republics that formerly were part of the Soviet Union. In addition, the United States promoted the construction of pipelines for Central Asian and Caucasian oil and natural gas that would bypass Russia. And finally, the United States entered into an agreement with Poland and the Czech Republic to establish missile defense sites, ostensibly to guard against Iranian missiles. Russia, however, regarded them as aimed at her.

Putin decided to push back much more effectually than Yeltsin. As a prudent player, however, he moved first to strengthen his home base – restoring effective central authority and reinvigorating the Russian military. At this point, the tides in the world-economy changed, and Russia suddenly became a wealthy and powerful controller not only of oil production but of the natural gas so needed by western European countries.

Putin thereupon began to act. He entered into treaty relationships with China. He maintained close relations with Iran. He began to push the United States out of its Central Asian bases. And he took a very firm stand on the further extension of NATO to two key zones – Ukraine and Georgia.

The breakup of the Soviet Union had led to ethnic secessionist movements in many former republics, including Georgia. When Georgia in 1990 sought to end the autonomous status of its non-Georgian ethnic zones, they promptly proclaimed themselves independent states. They were recognized by no one but Russia guaranteed their de facto autonomy.

The immediate spurs to the current mini-war were twofold. In February, Kosovo formally transformed its de facto autonomy to de jure independence. Its move was supported by and recognized by the United States and many western European countries. Russia warned at the time that the logic of this move applied equally to the de facto secessions in the former Soviet republics. In Georgia, Russia moved immediately, for the first time, to recognize South Ossetian de jure independence in direct response to that of Kosovo.

And in April this year, the United States proposed at the NATO meeting that Georgia and Ukraine be welcomed into a so-called Membership Action Plan. Germany, France, and the United Kingdom all opposed this action, saying it would provoke Russia.

Georgia’s neoliberal and strongly pro-American president, Mikhail Saakashvili, was now desperate. He saw the reassertion of Georgian authority in South Ossetia (and Abkhazia) receding forever. So, he chose a moment of Russian inattention (Putin at the Olympics, Medvedev on vacation) to invade South Ossetia. Of course, the puny South Ossetian military collapsed completely. Saakashvili expected that he would be forcing the hand of the United States (and indeed of Germany and France as well).

Instead, he got an immediate Russian military response, overwhelming the small Georgian army. What he got from George W. Bush was rhetoric. What, after all, could Bush do? The United States was not a superpower. Its armed forces were tied down in two losing wars in the Middle East. And, most important of all, the United States needed Russia far more than Russia needed the United States. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, pointedly noted in an op-ed in the Financial Times that Russia was a “partner with the west on…the Middle East, Iran and North Korea.”

As for western Europe, Russia essentially controls its gas supplies. It is no accident that it was President Sarkozy of France, not Condoleezza Rice, who negotiated the truce between Georgia and Russia. The truce contained two essential concessions by Georgia. Georgia committed itself to no further use of force in South Ossetia, and the agreement contained no reference to Georgian territorial integrity.

So, Russia emerged far stronger than before. Saakashvili had bet everything he has and was now geopolitically bankrupt. And, as an ironic footnote, Georgia, one of the last U.S. allies in the coalition in Iraq, withdrew all its 2000 troops from Iraq. These troops had been playing a crucial role in Shi’a areas, and would now have to be replaced by U.S. troops, which will have to be withdrawn from other areas.

If one plays geopolitical chess, it is best to know the rules, or one gets out-maneuvered.

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Farewell Mahmoud Darwish

August 16, 2008

Farewell Mahmoud Darwish

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Sinan Antoon recalls the voice of a nation

Uruknet.info, August 14, 2008

Very few poets become the voice of their nation and even fewer succeed in transcending that to become much more. Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008) was that rare bird who crossed many skies and horizons. His death last week, following complications from open-heart surgery in Houston, Texas, ended an epic life and interrupted a stunningly creative and prolific output, especially in his later years. It is difficult to underestimate Darwish’s symbolic capital and his cultural and political significance. With his departure Palestine loses one of its most precious cultural icons, a poetic voice of universal echoes. The larger Arab world and its diaspora bid farewell to one of its best modern poets and the most popular and successful one in the last three decades. His poems were set to music, discussed in the Israeli Knesset, and his recitals could fill sport stadiums. Darwish’s absence will further enhance his near-mythical status in the collective memory of Palestinians and Arabs.

Darwish was born on 13 March 1941 in Al-Birweh in Palestine’s Galilee. At the age of seven he and his family were forced by Israeli forces to flee their village to Lebanon. Al-Birweh was destroyed by the Israelis and a settlement has taken its place. When Darwish’s family returned a year later they settled in Deir Al-Assad, near the traces of their destroyed village. The harrowing experience of losing his home and being an internal exile in his land at such a young age would haunt Darwish’s poetry and become a central theme with rich and complex variations running throughout his oeuvre. “I will never forget that wound,” he said. In one of his last books Darwish wrote of still hearing “the wailing of a village under a settlement”.

He was extremely precocious and discovered the power of words and poetry at a young age. At 12 he recited a poem at school on the anniversary of the Nakba about a child who returns to find his home taken by others. He was summoned by the Israeli military officer and threatened. His early fierce poetry registered his resistance to existential and cultural erasure practised by an apartheid colonial state. This is exemplified in Identity Card, which became an iconic poem of that phase and of what came to be known as “resistance poetry” with its famous refrain “Record, I am an Arab!” Darwish joined the Israeli Communist Party in 1961 and worked as a journalist in Al-Ittihad. He was imprisoned five times between 1961 and 1967 and was put under house arrest for three years.

He took the monumental decision not to return to Israel while on a scholarship to Moscow in 1971 and went to Cairo where his fame had already preceded him. Two years later he moved to Beirut and joined the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and remained there until 1982. In Beirut he was the editor of Shu’un Filastiniyya (Palestinian Affairs) and established Al-Karmil in 1981, one of the best cultural reviews to appear in the Arab world.

In Beirut, Darwish honed his poetic project and distinguished himself by continuous experimentation and engagement with developments in modern Arabic poetry, and by resisting the temptations and pressures of being pigeonholed as a “resistance poet”. Palestine and its concerns were always a central axis, but it was to be enriched through explorations of mythology and embedded in a more complex poetic narrative. Darwish witnessed and monumentalised key moments in the Palestinian saga in poems such as Ahmed Al-Zaatar (1977) on the 1976 siege and massacre of Tal Al-Zaatar and Madih Al-Zill Al-Aali (Praise for the Lofty Shadow), and Qasidat Beirut (The Beirut Poem) both written in 1983. Darwish was also a prose writer of exceptional beauty. Memory of Forgetfulness, a beautiful and haunting memoir about war, represented the daily horrors of the Israeli invasion and siege of Beirut in 1982.

The Palestinian exodus from Beirut took Darwish to Tunis where the PLO found refuge until its return after Oslo in 1993. Darwish settled in Paris where he would have a most productive phase and transform his poetry to new heights in works such as I See What I Want (1990) and Eleven Planets (1992). His work enacted a poetic conversation with world epics and the Palestinian saga was rearticulated within a larger historical and cultural prism of the colonial moment of 1492 and its ramifications. Darwish reread Andalus and the genocide of the native Americans in mesmerising and epic poems simultaneously addressing the Palestinian question and universal postcolonial concerns. His poems were prophetic as to the fate of Palestinians. Darwish was elected to the executive committee of the PLO but resigned in 1993 over his objections to the Oslo Accords and his disagreement with Arafat. He correctly foresaw that they amounted to political suicide.

Why Have you Left the Horse Alone (1995) was a response of sorts to the challenges and threats of Oslo. It was an individual and collective poetic biography and an excavation of the memory of place. It also marked a shift in Darwish’s work towards the more personal and subjective. He continued to surprise and challenge his readers with A Bed for the Stranger (1999), a collection devoted to love. In 1998 Darwish had heart surgery for the second time and his heart stopped for two minutes. This encounter with death produced another epic poem, Mural (2000), about the triumph of art over death. Darwish decided to return and live in Ramallah as a citizen in 1996 and divided his time between the West Bank and Amman. A State of Siege (2002) was concerned with the horrors of Israeli occupation during the second Intifada, but also spoke of hope and resilience. Darwish was prolific and vibrant in his last years, stunning readers and critics with his ability to reinvent himself. In addition to three collections, ( Do not Apologise for What You Have Done (2004), Like Almond Blossoms or Beyond (2005), and The Butterfly Effect (2008), he left us one of the most powerful books of prose to be written in Arabic in modern times. In the Presence of Absence (2006) was a self-eulogy written in masterful poetic prose.

In the latter phase of his work Darwish was free to roam all themes no matter how mundane or metaphysical. The anchored and fixed I of his early years was now scattered in pronouns as the self became a site severed by time and space and open to all its others, in the widest sense. Darwish and his work contained multitudes and vast horizons, at the heart of which was Palestine in and of itself, but also Palestine as a metaphor for love, exile, and the injustice and pain of our contemporary moment.

Knowing surgery might not succeed, Darwish was keen on bidding farewell to his homeland and loved ones. He returned to Haifa for the first time since 1971 in July of last year for a historic poetry reading and a short visit. Permission had to be obtained from Israeli authorities. His family and friends had hoped he would be buried in the Galilee he loved but the Israelis refused and so he was buried in Ramallah.

“What can a poet do when confronted by the bulldozers of history?” asked Darwish once. To stand before them and preserve the memory and celebrate life as he did. “Every beautiful poem is an act of resistance,” he wrote in his last collection. And he left a treasure trove scattered in his 23 collections of poetry and four prose books. He lived in permanent exile and died in a strange land, but his poems are at home in the indestructible archive of our collective memory.

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The Daily Show Live From The White House

August 16, 2008

By Dr Paul Craig Roberts | Information Clearing House, August 15, 2008

The Bush Regime imbeciles don’t know when to stop. With the world still rolling in laughter from John McCain’s claim that “in the 21st century nations don’t invade other nations,” the moronic US secretary of state declared: “This is not 1968 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia, where Russia can threaten a neighbor, occupy a capital, overthrow a government and get away with it. Things have changed.”

This from Condi Rice who is “proud” of the Bush Regime’s invasion of Iraq.

This is not 1968. It is 40 years later, and roles have reversed. In the 21st century it is the United States that invades countries, occupies capitals, overthrows governments, and gets away with it.

The criminal Bush Regime has sent out its flunkies to huff and puff because Russia put its foot down against American hegemony on its border. Take your aggression elsewhere, the Russians said. We did not free constituent parts of our empire in order for them to become constituent parts of an American empire.

For years the Bush Regime has been fodder for the Daily Show. Condi Rice’s inane statement will keep the laughter rolling.

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Hope for audacity: Unless something happens, John McCain will win.

August 15, 2008

by Ted Rall | Smirking Chimp, August 15, 2008

NEW YORK–Unless something happens, John McCain will win.

Of course, “unless something happens” is the biggest qualifier in the world, more than adequate to CYA me should Obama prevail. It’s politics. There are almost three months. Odds are something will happen.

Still, it wasn’t supposed to be this way. Obama’s electoral handicaps–his racial identification and short resume–should have easily been eclipsed by Bush’s–er, McCain’s well-stocked aviary of albatrosses. McCain was and remains short of money. His campaign organization is a mess. Republican bosses are unenthusiastic, both about his prospects and about the direction he would take his party should he win. He has aligned himself with the most unpopular aspect of the wildly unpopular outgoing administration, the Iraq War. At a time when economically insecure voters are staring down the barrel of a recession-cum-depression, McCain promises more of the same–no help is on the way. And he’s old. Sooo painfully I-don’t-use-the-Internet old.

What is it that has the politerati betting on a McCain Administration? Historical precedent. During most presidential election years, Republicans tend to surge in the last few months of the campaign. For a Democrat to win in November, he must have a comfortable lead in the polls at this stage in the game.

The classic example is 1976, Jimmy Carter led incumbent Gerald Ford by 33 percentage points. Ford was hobbled by Watergate, a recession, and his pardon of Nixon, as well as his dismal performance in the debates, where he claimed that the Soviet Union wasn’t dominating eastern Europe. Nevertheless, Ford closed the lead, losing to Carter by just two points. This follows the pattern, albeit by a wider margin than in most elections.

In recent years, the countervailing example is the 1992 contest between Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, the incumbent. After the Democratic National Convention in August, Clinton was only ahead of Bush by a few points. Clinton won, but only because independent Ross Perot, a businessman with libertarian leanings, attracted so many votes from registered Republicans.

Perot ran again in 1996, but was less of a factor. So the old pattern reasserted itself. Clinton led Bob Dole by roughly 20 percent in mid-August, but won by eight. Republicans always close the gap.

It happened again in 2000. In mid-August, Al Gore had an eight-point lead ahead of George W. Bush. Gore won the popular vote by 0.6 percent.

If you’re a Democrat, being ahead isn’t enough. In 2004 John Kerry was ahead in mid-August–but by just two points. Bush was an incumbent with potentially grave weaknesses–he hadn’t found Osama or Iraq’s supposed WMDs, and he was already losing the war–yet the pattern reasserted itself. Bush gained four points, prevailing in the popular vote by 2.4 percent. (I won’t comment on the electoral vote, aside from mentioning that it was stolen in the key state of Ohio.)

If Barack Obama ends up beating John McCain, he will have done so with the smallest August lead for a Democrat in memory–three points, within the statistical margin of error for tracking polls. A columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times argues that’s good news: “Out of the gate,” writes Carol Marin, “the thoroughbred who leads too early and by too great a margin is more often than not the vulnerable one, the one in danger of losing it all to the horse who strategically holds back, waits, and then thunders in the final furlongs to finish first.” Nice metaphor, but presidential campaigns aren’t horse races. They’re boxing matches. The last man standing wins.

Unless Obama starts swinging soon, he’s done for. Insiders are tut-tutting over Ohio, an important swing state this year. Given the decade-long recession and voter anger there–not to mention a significant African-American population–Obama ought to be kicking McCain six ways to Sunday. But the two candidates are neck and neck in fundraising. “For McCain to even be competitive is surprising to me,” says Chris Duncan, chairman of the political science department at the University of Dayton. “I don’t think it’s that he’s doing better than expected. I think it’s that Obama is doing worse than he would expect.”

Vincent Hutchings of the University of Michigan wonders if the Obama campaign is counting too much on young voters. “Is he generating enough enthusiasm to excite people who lack a formal education and are disproportionately young, and not likely to vote?” he asks.

As I argued in my 2004 polemic “Wake Up! You’re Liberal: How We Can Take America Back From the Right,” American voters feel besieged. At home, they see prices rising while their salaries get gnawed away by inflation. From a foreign affairs standpoint, they see a world full of terrorists and hostile rivals–Iran, North Korea, Russia, China–out to get them. As a psychologist would say, the fact that there isn’t much truth to this perception doesn’t make it less real.

Americans want their presidents to be a National Daddy–an ornery cuss willing to err on the side of kicking some innocent schlub’s ass to protect them.

Last time around, in 2004, John Kerry repeatedly turned the other jowl as Bush and his proxies pounded him with the now-notorious Swift Boat ads. Of course, whether Kerry’s Vietnam service rose to the level of heroism was debatable. What wasn’t was that Bush weaseled out of going at all. But Kerry never responded. If the guy won’t fight for himself, voters asked themselves, how will he fight for me?

Obama has already traveled too far down the Path of the Kerry, repeatedly voting for funding a war his entire candidacy is predicated upon opposing, not to mention government spying on U.S. citizens and, most recently, the embarrassingly cheesy spectacle of endorsing offshore oil drilling. I mean, really: Do any right-wing conservatives believe he really means any of this stuff?

If he is to make history by salvaging his campaign from its current neck-and-neck status with McCain, Obama will have to rally the Democrats’ liberal base by throwing them some red meat: immediate withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, socialized medicine and a sweeping credit crisis bailout plan (all interest rates legally reset to prime) would be a start. He’ll also need to beat up McCain (fairly) for agreeing with Bush about just about everything–and pledge to hold the Bushies responsible for their crimes.
_______

About author:
Ted Rall is the author of the new book “Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?,” an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis of America’s next big foreign policy challenge.

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Busting the Anthrax Myth

August 15, 2008

RINF.COM. August 13, 2008

By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart

| Dr. Jeffrey W. Runge, chief medical officer at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, told a congressional subcommittee on July 22 that the risk of a large-scale biological attack on the nation is significant and that the U.S. government knows its terrorist enemies have sought to use biological agents as instruments of warfare. Runge also said that the United States believes that capability is within the terrorists’ reach.

Runge gave his testimony before a subcommittee on Emerging Threats, Cybersecurity, and Science and Technology that was holding a field hearing in Providence, R.I., to discuss the topic of “Emerging Biological Threats and Public Health Preparedness.”

During his testimony, Runge specifically pointed to al Qaeda as the most significant threat and testified that the United States had determined that the terrorist organization is seeking to develop and use a biological weapon to cause mass casualties in an attack. According to Runge, U.S. analysis indicates that anthrax is the most likely choice, and a successful single-city attack on an unprepared population could kill hundreds of thousands of citizens.

Later in his testimony, Runge remarked that many do not perceive the threat of bioterrorism to be as significant as that of a nuclear or conventional strike, even though such an attack could kill as many people as a nuclear detonation and have its own long-term environmental effects.

We must admit to being among those who do not perceive the threat of bioterrorism to be as significant as that posed by a nuclear strike. To be fair, it must be noted that we also do not see strikes using chemical or radiological weapons rising to the threshold of a true weapon of mass destruction either. The successful detonation of a nuclear weapon in an American city would be far more devastating than any of these other forms of attack.

In fact, based on the past history of nonstate actors conducting attacks using biological weapons, we remain skeptical that a nonstate actor could conduct a biological weapons strike capable of creating as many casualties as a large strike using conventional explosives — such as the October 2002 Bali bombings that resulted in 202 deaths or the March 2004 train bombings in Madrid that killed 191.

We do not disagree with Runge’s statements that actors such as al Qaeda have demonstrated an interest in biological weapons. There is ample evidence that al Qaeda has a rudimentary biological weapons capability. However, there is a huge chasm of capability that separates intent and a rudimentary biological weapons program from a biological weapons program that is capable of killing hundreds of thousands of people.

Misconceptions About Biological Weapons

There are many misconceptions involving biological weapons. The three most common are that they are easy to obtain, that they are easy to deploy effectively, and that, when used, they always cause massive casualties.

Continued . . .

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Putin’s war enablers: Bush and Cheney

August 15, 2008

Russia’s escalating war on Georgia reveals the consequences of the Bush administration’s long assault on the international rule of law.

By Juan Cole | Salon.com, August 14, 2008

Pages 1 2

George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin

Reuters/Kevin Lamarque

Vladimir Putin (right) of Russia and George W. Bush arrive at a summit on the Black Sea, April 5, 2008.

The run-up to the current chaos in the Caucasus should look quite familiar: Russia acted unilaterally rather than going through the U.N. Security Council. It used massive force against a small, weak adversary. It called for regime change in a country that had defied Moscow. It championed a separatist movement as a way of asserting dominance in a region it coveted.

Indeed, despite George W. Bush and Dick Cheney’s howls of outrage at Russian aggression in Georgia and the disputed province of South Ossetia, the Bush administration set a deep precedent for Moscow’s actions — with its own systematic assault on international law over the past seven years. Now, the administration’s condemnations of Russia ring hollow.

Bush said on Monday, responding to reports that Russia might attack the Georgian capital, “It now appears that an effort may be under way to depose [Georgia’s] duly elected government. Russia has invaded a sovereign neighboring state and threatens a democratic government elected by its people. Such an action is unacceptable in the 21st century.” By Wednesday, with more Russian troops on the move and a negotiated cease-fire quickly unraveling, Bush stepped up the rhetoric, announcing a sizable humanitarian-aid mission to Georgia and dispatching Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the region.

While U.S. leaders have tended to back Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, there are two sides to every dispute, and in the ethnically diverse Caucasus it may be more like a hundred sides. Abkhazia and Ossetia are claimed by Georgia, but they have their own distinctive languages, cultures and national aspirations. Both fought for independence in the early 1990s, without success, though neither was Georgia able to assert its full sovereignty over them, accepting Russian mediation and peacekeeping troops.

The separatist leaders of South Ossetia and Abkhazia now speak of Saakashvili in terms reminiscent of the way separatists in Darfur speak of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. Sergei Bagapsh of Abkhazia and Eduard Kokoity of South Ossetia have come out against conducting any further talks with Georgia, calling instead for Saakashvili to be tried for war crimes. Kokoity told Interfax, “There can be no talks with the organizers of genocide.” The Russian press is full of talk of putting Saakashvili on trial for ordering attacks on Ossetian civilians.

Continued . . .

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Can Obama Bridge America’s Wall of Ignominy?

August 14, 2008

Robert Weitzel | August 14, 2008

“The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.”
–Barack Obama

When Barack Obama visited Germany in July, he stood at the site where a wall once separated East and West Berlin. With his usual eloquence he praised the crowd of 200,000 for having had the courage to tear that wall down. He reminded them that the “greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us one from the other.”

The day before his Berlin speech Obama was in Israel standing less than two miles from the 400-mile-long apartheid wall that separates Israel from the West Bank. He did not call on Israeli courage to tear their wall down, nor did he mention that wall to his Berlin audience.

I recently wrote about Obama’s Berlin speech and his politically “prudent” silence regarding Israel’s apartheid wall. I challenged him to walk his talk should he be elected president and work to tear down the world’s most unconscionable wall.

Responding to that piece in an email, Eric Murillo, an activist from El Paso, Texas, reminded me that “there is another wall that exists on the US/Mexican border . . . this wall is still under construction . . .THIS wall is HERE! . . . Must we ignore it?”

Mr. Murillo was referring to the 700-mile-long, $2.2 billion wall along the US/Mexico border that will, in Obama’s Kingesque prose, “separate us one from the other.”

I should mention that Senator Obama voted for the 2006 Secure Fence Act, which authorized the construction of the five segments of the new wall along the 1,952-mile border between the United States and Mexico.

I should mention also that Kollsman Inc., an American-based subsidiary of the Israeli company, Elbit Systems Ltd., which supplies the surveillance and security technology for its apartheid wall, was awarded a contract from the Department of Homeland Security to supply “technology . . . to deter and prevent crossings . . . along the US borders with Canada and Mexico.”

It seems American taxpayers, who are bankrolling Israel’s million-dollar-a-mile apartheid wall with an annual contribution of $3 billion in economic and military aide (one-sixth of U.S. foreign aid budget), will be paying an Israeli company to help build our border wall using the experience and expertise the American nickel has already paid for—such is the way of boondoggles.

Mr. Murillo wishes America’s million-dollar-a-mile border wall was a mere boondoggle. For him it is a “wall of ignominy,” a phrase coined by Mexico’s former president Vicente Fox. It is “concrete” evidence that the economic globalization policies championed by the Clinton and Bush administrations open borders for the “migration” of multinational corporate profits and natural resources to “countries with the most” from “those with the least,” but closes borders to migration of those whose livelihoods have been diminished or destroyed by globalization’s cynical reality.

Predictably then, the numbers of illegal immigrants from Mexico increased exponentially after the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement in the early 1990s.

Raising a family’s economic status ten-fold by illegally entering the United States—and that’s assuming only minimum wage or less—is a powerful incentive to attempt the arduous, if not deadly, desert border crossing. Consider for a moment why swarms of Canucks are not illegally crossing our pine-forested northern borders each year.

Just as Israel’s American financed apartheid wall separates lives and livelihoods and imprisons dreams, so goes America’s Israeli built “wall of ignominy.”

Calexico, California, a community of 27,000, has a mutual aid agreement with Mexicali, just across the border. These two communities not only support each other with police and fire protection, but their economies are interdependent as well. Calexico’s stores depend on Mexican shoppers. “If we don’t have Mexico, we don’t have Calexico,” said former Calexico Mayor Alex Perrone.

This is not an isolated border relationship. It is one that occurs along the entire 1952-mile border. Mike Allen, an executive vice president with the Economic Development Corporation of McAllen, Texas, a community of 131,000 along the US/Mexico border, said, “Every single mayor from Brownsville to El Paso is against it [border wall].” He went on to say, “This will be a tremendous waste of money, and it will not stop [illegal] immigration. People will just go around it.”

Jeff Passel, a demographer with the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington D.C., estimated that as many as one-third of the eleven million illegal immigrants in the United States in 2005 did not hop over or tunnel under or walk around a border wall. They entered the country legally on visitor, student, or work visas and stayed after their visas had expired. All nineteen of the 9/11 hijackers entered the country this way.

It is not “Israel-lite” walls we should be constructing between “[ourselves] with the most and those with the least.” We should be constructing bridges to economic parity that will allow “those with the least” to cross over to a more secure, fulfilling future for themselves and their families without having to illegally cross a national border.

Obama’s good looks and charisma and cadenced speechifying cannot help but remind one of John Kennedy. Hopefully, before he makes another speech about tearing down walls he will read Kennedy’s “Alliance for Progress” and begin building bridges so that its vision of a “hemisphere where all men can hope for a suitable standard of living and all can live out their lives in dignity and in freedom” has a chance to finally be realized.

In such a hemisphere, people will be content to remain in the country where their roots are secured by the generations buried there.

Biography: Robert Weitzel is a contributing editor to Media With a Conscience. His essays regularly appear in The Capital Times in Madison, WI. He can be contacted at: robertweitzel@mac.com

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Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Press

August 14, 2008

Credit and Credibility

By BRIAN CLOUGHLEY | Counterpunch, Aug. 13, 2008

So attacks in Afghanistan must be the work of Pakistan’s dastardly Directorate of Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), yet again, because the New York Times told us the other day that “American intelligence agencies have concluded that members of Pakistan’s powerful spy service helped plan the deadly July 7 bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, according to United States government officials.” The New York Times went on to claim that “The conclusion was based on intercepted communications between Pakistani intelligence officers and militants who carried out the attack, the officials said, providing the clearest evidence to date that Pakistani intelligence officers are actively undermining American efforts to combat militants in the region. The American officials also said there was new information showing that members of the Pakistani intelligence service were increasingly providing militants with details about the American campaign against them, in some cases allowing militants to avoid American missile strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas.”

There are plenty of clichés (“powerful spy service” and “actively undermining” are splendid examples), but not a shred of hard evidence in this important story. There is not one bit of material that can be verified or even checked for accuracy. No names are named. There are declarations by anonymous “American officials” concerning supposed electronic intercepts of which no details are provided. But the New York Times and other US newspapers chose to blare to the world the unsupported conclusion that Pakistan is guilty of treason against itself.

It might be thought that the New York Times would have learned a lesson after being manipulated by the infamously incompetent and gullible reporter Judith Miller who made such a fool of the paper at the time of the US invasion of Iraq. She swallowed nonsense purveyed to her by un-named “government officials” and other anonymous and indeed malevolent sources, but the newspaper’s editors just followed along and published the rubbish. Garbage in; Garbage out. As one of her colleagues said of her in the context of a combined story : “She has turned in a draft of a story of a collective enterprise that is little more than dictation from government sources over several days, filled with unproven assertions and factual inaccuracies.”

To believe the sort of drivel that comes from “officials” of any nationality who refuse to be identified takes particular energy and dedication. But even those who are required to speak on the record are liars when it suits official purposes and policies. Take the VOA report in early July that “The Pentagon says no civilians were killed in an air strike Sunday in a remote area of eastern Afghanistan, which local officials say killed 27 people who were walking to a wedding . . . US military officials in Kabul say they believe the air strike hit its intended target, a group of militants. Pentagon Spokesman Bryan Whitman confirmed that view. “I can only tell you I talked to Afghanistan this morning, and they are very clear with that particular strike that they believe they struck the intended target and that there were not innocent civilians involved in that particular strike”.”

The claim, the flat statement, that there were no civilian casualties was first made by unidentified “US military officials,” then by a spokesman who had “talked to Afghanistan.” To whom did he talk? To any Afghans? To anyone in the Afghan government? To an Afghan who had lost a wife or husband or children in the blitzed village of Deh Bala where so many civilians were killed? Of course not : he spoke with “Afghanistan” as represented by a bunch of unnamed US officials in Kabul. He then retailed the same rubbish, that “there were not [sic] innocent civilians involved,” which was a lie, because the province governor stated with hard evidence – like bodies of children – that there had indeed been many civilian deaths.

Then the President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, left his fortress in Kabul and flew to the stricken village to speak with the tribes, saying he had “come to share your grief.” Now : is it likely that Karzai, beholden to Bush as he is, would have taken the trouble to do that if the US claim of no civilian deaths had been even remotely believable?

One has to give Karzai recognition for venturing into the region where the US bombing took place, because there is no doubt that by doing so his life was in extreme danger (possibly from a US airstrike like the one for which he went to offer condolences). We must give credit where it’s due. But there is no credit, or credibility for that matter, due to the liars who try, with increasing success, to mislead the media and thereby the outside world, about the slaughter of civilians through incompetence. And when they kill so many scores of civilians by reason of technical or human ineptitude and then lie about the crimes, how can we believe mysterious unidentified “officials” who allege without evidence that Pakistan’s intelligence agency was responsible for the bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul?

Stories change ; usually when the lie has become too obvious for all the “officials” and other sources to continue spreading it. As happened with the killing of a bank manager and two of his staff by American troops on Baghdad’s Airport Road on 25 June, for example. It was stated officially that “The attack left bullet holes in two of the convoy vehicles, and a weapon was found in the car;” but these were lies. Deliberate, unvarnished, straightforward, downright lies. Iraqi outrage was such that there had to be an investigation, and eventually a US spokesman had to say that the official description of the incident was poppycock from beginning to end. (Nobody was punished for telling lies or slaughtering civilians, of course : that would be too much to expect.)

There are dozens of stories like this. Most of the killings of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan are ignored because US military media releases are published unquestioningly by the world’s newspapers. The words of US “officials” go straight into print without question and are presented as incontrovertible fact.

The evidence that US “officials” have lied to the depth of their bootstraps is, however, irrefutable. So why believe the unsupported word of nameless US officials that Pakistan plotted the Kabul bombing?

As a result of worldwide parade of a media report based on unverifiable declarations by anonymous “US government officials” there has been a dramatic dive, a terrible crash in relations between Pakistan and India. At the exact time when, for the first time in almost five years, there were exchanges of fire between soldiers of India and Pakistan along the Line of Control in Kashmir, the sadly disputed territory between the two countries, there suddenly appeared a US-sourced report that gravely endangers ongoing but fragile India-Pakistan confidence-building discussions.

Why?

The tale from unidentified US “officials” that Pakistan was involved in an attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul was published in a period when the governments of India and Pakistan are extremely vulnerable to religious and nationalist pressures. In Delhi the shaky coalition is apprehensive about elections next year and trying to be all things to all people; it is under enormous strain. In Islamabad there is a barely-functioning coalition of mutual distrust, and the country is desperately in need of external support that could promote domestic calm. Domestic and bilateral stability in the region, one would think, should be encouraged by foreign powers.

Yet “American intelligence agencies” and “United States government officials” tell newspaper reporters that Pakistan was involved in attacking the Indian embassy in Kabul, thus immeasurably increasing tension between Islamabad and Delhi (and Islamabad and Kabul, of course) and almost destroying their faltering but sincere approaches to rapprochement.

The extremely serious implications of such statements to reporters of a large US newspaper, and consequent international results, must have been understood by whoever made them. So why did they make them? What was the purpose? It certainly wasn’t to encourage dialogue between two neighbours who distrust each other.

We will never know the motive, of course, because there is no means of finding out; just as there is no means of verifying the story. So once again some unaccountable US officials have sown even more distrust and created much more resentment in a region in which there is singular lack of trust and a marked inclination to believe the worst of neighbours. Whoever had the bright idea of spreading this malevolent tale must now have the satisfaction that it had the result of stirring up hatred and suspicion. Give credit where it’s due. But credibility is quite another matter.

Brian Cloughley lives in France. His website is www.briancloughley.com

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Charging the Victim: Who Should Pay to Rebuild Iraq?

August 14, 2008
By Ed Kinane | CommonDreams.Org, August 12, 2008

Our Congressional Representative James Walsh (R-NY) recently “lashed out at Iraq.” Walsh, now in his tenth term, said Iraq should use its oil windfall sales to repay some of the $48 billion the United States has spent “rebuilding” there.

“We have delivered democracy for them….The least they could do is step up to the plate and help out,” Walsh opined.

Let’s not look too closely at that “democracy” we’ve “delivered.” Let’s not ask to what extent bombed-out medical facilities have been restored. Nor to what extent Iraqis, after five years of beneficent occupation, now have electricity and potable water. Nor how many Iraqi jobs any U.S. reconstruction has generated. Nor how much of that $48 billion lined the capacious pockets of Halliburton et al. Nor how much of the “re-building” fund goes to building permanent U.S. military bases.

Nor need we ask who’s going to pay to clean up Iraq’s soil, air and water after their protracted exposure to depleted uranium — the toxic and radioactive substance used in the U.S. shells rained down on that liberated land. And let’s not open that other can of worms: How will we compensate Iraqi families for the unnumbered kin we have killed?

Instead let’s take a more legalistic approach. Let’s look at precedent. In 1990 when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, no one thought to hold that victim responsible for the damage. Nor did anyone claim that, because it had oil assets, Kuwait owed Iraq money.

No one – especially the UN Security Council — questioned that it was Iraq that had to reimburse losses and finance the rebuilding. Indeed, since its Gulf War defeat, Iraq keeps paying billions in reparations. But those billions are only a fraction of what Kuwait and the corporations doing business there still keep demanding.

Fast forward to the new century. Now it’s Iraq that’s been (illegally) invaded; it’s Iraq that’s been laid low. In a classic case of “charging the victim,” Mr. Walsh and some of his Congressional colleagues,* both Democrat and Republican, argue that Iraq must help pay for its own rebuilding. Both common sense and common decency wince.

It is the invader, not the invaded, who is both morally and legally obligated to pay to restore a war-torn land. And note: those billions Iraq has been paying Kuwait go to Kuwaitis and not to any Iraqi war profiteer. Given adequate reparations, Iraq — a land of builders and engineers — is quite capable of repairing itself. It needs no assist from the invader’s avid corporations.

Those who perpetrated the U.S. invasion, besides being tried in a Nurnberg-like tribunal, should make financial amends. Their shills — much of the U.S. mainstream media — also share responsibility. But sorting out who should pay what would take the wisdom of Solomon.

In the case of Kuwait, a UN commission plays Solomon. The case seemed simple enough: only Iraq invaded; it was then vanquished. Ergo, the Iraqi people — via their oil reserves — must be perpetually taxed to repair Saddam Hussein’s folly. Never mind that it was his western allies who helped militarize Saddam’s regime.

Yes, some Iraqis also collaborated with Saddam. But most were Saddam’s victims. Saddam frowned on dissent. Many of his soldiers were conscripts. Thousands of these — slaughtered from the air as they fled homeward — remain interred in desert sands.

Now, the U.S./Iraq case isn’t quite parallel. All too many U.S. people and our Congressional representatives enthusiastically supported “Shock and Awe” and the ensuing occupation.

Does it let us off the hook — at least a little — that Cheney/Bush and their shills persistently lied to us? Many U.S. Americans believed that our “pre-emptive” war had nothing to do with certain corporations cornering the world’s oil supply. Nor did it even occur to us that Saddam’s move to switch from dollars to euros for oil payments helped trigger the wrath. Wasn’t the war about WMD and about somehow — never mind how — defending our borders against “terror”?

Should U.S. wage earners be forced to pay for a war many might not have supported had they known the truth? Should they then also pay for what that war wrought? Maybe yes, maybe no. One thing is certain: it was the Pentagon that maniacally demolished Iraq.

No, Mr. Walsh, it isn’t the Iraqi people who should devote their national wealth to rebuilding their desolated country. Nor should the U.S. people, also variously victims and dupes of this war, be further taxed. By all rights, the rebuilding fund should come out of our own oiligarchy’s windfall profits and out of the Pentagon’s obscenely bloated budget.

* “Iraq Told to Pick Up the Tab: Congress Wants to Cut Reconstruction Aid,” by Anne Flaherty, Associated Press in the Syracuse Post-Standard, 15 Apr. 2008.

The author spent five months in Iraq in 2003 with the human rights group, Voices in the Wilderness. Reach him at edkinane@verizon.net.

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