Peace and Justice Post

Times, Washington Post let Bill Clinton’s dishonesty slide

Fair.com, November 29, 2007

The New York Times and Washington Post (11/28/07) both failed to adequately challenge the dishonesty of former President Bill Clinton’s declaration that he had been opposed to the Iraq War “from the beginning.” Clinton, in fact, was a supporter of the war, both before the invasion and in the first year or so of the fighting.

In the Times‘ words, though, Clinton’s new stance was just “more absolute than his comments before the invasion in March 2003.” The Times went on to claim that around the time of the invasion, “Clinton did not precisely declare that he opposed the war,” though he “has said several times since the war began that he would not have attacked Iraq in the manner that President Bush had done.”

The Post‘s account was similarly muddled, with the paper noting that Clinton was “glossing over the more nuanced views of the war he has expressed over time,” though “past remarks made by the former president do leave open a question about how fervently Clinton opposed the war at the outset.” The Post returned to the story the next day (11/29/07), repeating that Clinton “went far beyond more nuanced remarks he made about the conflict in 2003.” The Post did try to challenge Clinton’s position by noting that he had participated in briefings with key Bush administration officials, and had allegedly expressed support for the invasion plan.

Continued . . .

· Architect of Iraq surge draws up takeover options
· US fears army’s Islamists might grab weapons

Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark
Saturday December 1, 2007
The Guardian

Pakistani paramilitary forces holds an alleged suspect during a crackdown operation against militants near Mingora in northern Pakistan, Friday, November 30, 2007. Photograph: Mohammad Zubair

The man who devised the Bush administration’s Iraq troop surge has urged the US to consider sending elite troops to Pakistan to seize its nuclear weapons if the country descends into chaos.In a series of scenarios drawn up for Pakistan, Frederick Kagan, a former West Point military historian, has called for the White House to consider various options for an unstable Pakistan.

These include: sending elite British or US troops to secure nuclear weapons capable of being transported out of the country and take them to a secret storage depot in New Mexico or a “remote redoubt” inside Pakistan; sending US troops to Pakistan’s north-western border to fight the Taliban and al-Qaida; and a US military occupation of the capital Islamabad, and the provinces of Punjab, Sindh and Baluchistan if asked for assistance by a fractured Pakistan military, so that the US could shore up President Pervez Musharraf and General Ashfaq Kayani, who became army chief this week.

Continued . . . 

uruknet.info, November 29, 2007

Various authors, IMEU

On the 60th anniversary of the passage of United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181, the below signatories have issued the “One State Declaration.” The statement is the result of two conferences held this year in Madrid and London on the one-state solution.

For decades, efforts to bring about a two-state solution in historic Palestine have failed to provide justice and peace for the Palestinian and Israeli Jewish peoples, or to offer a genuine process leading towards them.

The two-state solution ignores the physical and political realities on the ground, and presumes a false parity in power and moral claims between a colonized and occupied people on the one hand and a colonizing state and military occupier on the other. It is predicated on the unjust premise that peace can be achieved by granting limited national rights to Palestinians living in the areas occupied in 1967, while denying the rights of Palestinians inside the 1948 borders and in the Diaspora. Thus, the two-state solution condemns Palestinian citizens of Israel to permanent second-class status within their homeland, in a racist state that denies their rights by enacting laws that privilege Jews constitutionally, legally, politically, socially and culturally. Moreover, the two-state solution denies Palestinian refugees their internationally recognized right of return.

Keep reading . . .

By Adrian Hamilton
The Independent | Published: November 29, 2007

There can have been few more excruciating sights than President Bush parading the Israeli and Palestinian leaders before the cameras at the Annapolis summit on Tuesday, clasping their hands, squeezing their shoulders, pushing them together for a handshake and then leaving them to return to their seats like awkward boys summoned to the podium to be congratulated for their efforts at a school prizegiving.

But then that was only right for the occasion. Why were President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert there in the first place, if not because the White House had propelled them there with not an iota of prior agreement between them? And why did their joint statement of intent single out the end of 2008 as the time by which they hoped to reach a peace settlement? Because that is when President Bush will be leaving office.

Keep reading . . .

Counterpunch, November 29, 2007

By Dave Lindorff

The New York Times had a news article about Venezuela in Thursday’s edition, but it was about Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez saying he would cut diplomatic ties with neighboring Colombia. There wasn’t a word about a memo from a CIA operative in Caracas to CIA Director General Michael Hayden, uncovered yesterday, outlining a plan for interfering with a Venezuelan referendum set for Dec. 2, and laying out the steps for instigating and backing a coup.

The plot, called “Operation Pliers,” and laid out in the letter to Hayden by an undercover operative named Michael Steele, who reportedly works in the US Embassy as a “regional affairs officer,” was intercepted by Venezuelan intelligence and released publicly on state TV yesterday.

Keep reading . . .

The Nation, November 29, 2007

It is too bad that Chuck Hagel decided against running for the Republican nomination for president. While it is true that Texas Congressman Ron Paul is saying much of what the Republican senator from Nebraska would have said about the madness of the war in Iraq, Paul is actually too polite about the madness of the president and the vice president.

Hagel minces no words.

In an address to the Council on Foreign Relations this week, Hagel told the crowd of foreign-policy wonks that he would give the Bush-Cheney administration “the lowest grade of any I’ve known.”

“I have to say this is one of the most arrogant, incompetent administrations I’ve ever seen or ever read about,” said Hagel, according to a report on the meeting that appeared in the Washington Post.

Speaking of Bush, Cheney and those around them, Hagel said: “They have failed the country.”

There is much talk about the prospect that Paul might exit the GOP to mount an independent or Libertarian Party bid for the presidency in 2008. But Hagel’s willingness to express his fierce disdain for Bush and Cheney in the bluntest of terms offers a reminder that an outsider bid by the Nebraska senator — either at the top of an independent or Unity Party ticket, or running alongside New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg, with whom Hagel again met this week — remains the more intriguing possibility.

The News International, November 29, 2007

Khaleej Times, November 29, 2007

LONDON – A Saudi gang rape victim who was sentenced to six months in jail and 200 lashes was scolded by judges while police repeatedly dismissed her claims, she said in testimony published on Thursday.

The 19-year-old girl described the rape itself — including the fact that one of her attackers photographed her — and her struggle to eat or sleep in its immediate aftermath to the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW).

She was attacked at knifepoint by seven men after she was found in a car with a male companion who was not a relative, in breach of strict Saudi law, and was initially sentenced last year to 90 lashes for being with the man.

Following her appeal, the court ordered her punishment should be increased to the current sentence, a decision which has attracted wide international condemnation from human rights groups to the White House.

According to the testimony published in Britain’s The Independent newspaper, once the girl’s husband found out about the gang rape, he told the police and appealed for the rapists to be arrested, to which a police officer said: “You go find them and investigate.”

Keep reading . . .

Toronto Star | November 24, 2007

The paintings by Colombian artist Fernando Botero show Americans torturing Iraqis at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison.

Tim Harper
Washington Bureau

The man doing the waterboarding is a strangely disengaged torturer, representing either cool professionalism or emotionless evil.

The abusers are portrayed as army boots on the back of the abused, latex gloves on a naked body.

They are represented by a stream of urine that starts off canvas or invisible hands holding snarling dogs with their teeth bared.

The abused are hooded or blindfolded, naked or in women’s underwear, bloody, anguished, their bodies bloated and overdrawn in almost iconic Christian poses.

This is the work of 75-year-old Colombian artist Fernando Botero, who has taken oils, charcoal, watercolours and his anger at the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and produced a series of 79 works that evoke the brutality and inhumanity of the torture that was revealed to the world in 2004.

The works first shocked audiences in Europe.

Now they are hanging in a museum in the U.S. capital, a handful of subway stops from the White House.

A visit to the exhibit is a punch to the stomach.

Keep reading . . .

by Susan Abulhawa / Dissident Voice, November 28th, 2007

In the 80s, we gave up 78% of our homeland to try to pick up the pieces of our lives on the remaining 22% of Palestine. This was, and remains, the only true (brave or otherwise) concession ever made in the so-called ‘Middle East Conflict.” Next came Camp David, then Madrid, then Oslo, then another Camp David, Taba, Wye, (deep breath) Sharm el Sheikh, the Disengagement, the Road Map. Through it all, Israel continued to divide, carve out, confiscate and settle that 22%. They scattered us into a diaspora, shut down our schools, bombed damn near every inch of the West Bank and Gaza, herded us into ghettos, set up checkpoints all around us and employed every tool of imperialism, times ten, to get rid of or subjugate us as a cheap labor force.

Keep reading . . .