Peace and Justice Post

Lew Rockwell, August 16, 2007

By Chris Floyd

hI.

Karl Rove has resigned, and for the moment that seems like good news – although given the history and M.O. of the Bush gang, it will probably lead to something worse in one way or another. For example, look how much better things are now that Don Rumsfeld has gone! We’ve progressed from his last-days, panicky memos about curtailing the war (while spinning it as a victory) to a full-bore, wide-open escalation of the conflict which the chief surger, Gen. David Petraeus, tells us could last for 10 more years. Or for another, even more glaring example, look how things improved at the Justice Department after John Ashcroft was replaced by Alberto Gonzales. Colin Powell was a weak and pathetic bagman, whoring his media-inflated prestige to sell a war he didn’t believe in – but aren’t things so much better with Condi Rice in charge at State?

No, if there’s one rule of thumb that consistently applies to the Bush Gang, it’s this: every move they make – whether by choice or forced by events – makes matters worse. So while we all wait for the other shoe to drop on Rove’s resignation – i.e., the real reason behind his sudden bug-out – the Bush Gang will doubtless be putting the boot in somewhere else.

II.

But of course, for all the media oxygen it has consumed – and will continue to consume – Rove’s departure is small potatoes. Despite his vaunted “genius” for political skulduggery, in the end Rove too is a drab factotum, a bagman, a greasy cog in a vast machine that will keep grinding on, killing and corrupting, without him. (Assuming that Rove is actually stepping away from the machine, which is most unlikely.) Stories of far greater significance than the slinking exit of a dirt-smeared toady have appeared in the last two days – items far more revelatory of the hellish world that the porcine minion has helped make on behalf of his masters.

The boiling core of this hell is Iraq. Stories breaking while Rove and Bush were puddling up on the White House lawn revealed a new abyss of criminality in the war crime that the tearful tyrant and his henchman have engendered: the Mafia running guns to Bush’s favored extremist factions in Iraq. As the Guardian reports, Italian anti-Mafia police, tracking down a drug deal, instead came across shipment of 105,000 AK-47s procured by the underworld for their paying client: the Iraqi Interior Ministry. The Ministry said the guns were intended for its security forces – i.e., extremist sectarian militias in government drag. The Pentagon denied knowledge of the Mafia guns, but the middleman for the deal was a Dubai company with “scores of supply and service contracts for the U.S. occupation,” the Guardian reported. The company, “citing the names of ‘friends’ in top U.S. military ranks in Iraq,” said it had written approval from the Pentagon authorizing it “to do all kinds of business.”

On the same day, Newsweek‘s Christopher Dickey wrote of how thousands of American weapons ostensibly intended for Iraqi security forces have been flooding the Middle East, often ending up in the hands of extremist groups – or violent loners. As Dickey notes, this influx of deadly weapons on the streets is tied to last week’s revelations about the vast arsenal of weapons that have disappeared from American training programs for Iraqi forces:

At least three U.S. government agencies are now investigating the massive “disappearance” and diversion of weapons Washington intended for Iraqi government forces that instead have spread to militants and organized gangs across the region. The potential size of the traffic is stunning. A report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office last month showed that since 2004, some 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols, bought with U.S. money for Iraqi security forces, have gone missing.

And looming behind all of these deals and disappearances involving small arms is a far more deadly and far-reaching dereliction of duty: the scarcely-reported failure of the U.S. military to secure the vast dumps of weapons and explosives left behind by Saddam’s army in 2003. As David Gardner reminds us in the Financial Times:

This discovery [the missing 190,000 weapons] might be considered the mother of all known unknowns, were it not that in March this year the GAO published a drily damning report on the coalition’s failure to secure scores upon scores of arms dumps abandoned by the Iraqi army after the 2003 invasion – and that by October last year it had still failed to secure this giant toolbox that keeps the daily slaughter going in Iraq.

All of this sounds like rank incompetence: “Whoa, we didn’t even notice that Interior Ministry deal with the Mob! Goodness me, we just plumb forgot to track those 190,000 AK-47s! Golly gee, we were just too busy to get around to those arms dumps. Been meaning to do it forever, but something always came up.”

But it isn’t incompetence. Certainly, the decision not to find and secure the weapons dumps was a matter of deliberate policy. The decision not to track the vast store of American arms being given to Iraqi security forces was also deliberate policy – perhaps devised by the general in charge of arming and training Iraqi security forces at the time: one David Petraeus. And the arms trafficking with the underworld by factions in the Bush-installed Iraqi government is almost certainly deliberate policy as well, either with the direct connivance of Washington, or else with the usual wink and a nod and a looking-away.

The Mafia arms deal is one of those glimpses we get from time to time into how the world really works, in the finely meshed intertwining between the underworld and the “upperworld” – “respectable” Establishment society, “legitimate” governments led by “honorable” officials. The BCCI affair in the 1980s was another such glimpse. BCCI was an international bank that fronted for what the U.S. Senate later called “one of the largest criminal enterprises in history.” Backed by Establishment grandees and national governments around the world, BCCI “laundered money on a global scale, intimidated witnesses and law officers, engaged in extortion and blackmail. It supplied the financing for illegal arms trafficking and global terrorism. It financed and facilitated income tax evasion, smuggling and prostitution,” as journalist Christopher Bryon, who first exposed the operation, put it.

The George Bushes, father and son, were hip deep in BCCI sleaze. Bush I used the bank to secretly fund Saddam Hussein’s war machine – then intervened to quash federal investigations of the scam. George II was bailed out of one of his many business failures with a $25 million honeypot from a BCCI bank, brokered by the mysterious money-man Jackson Stephens, who in the 1992 presidential election had the signal distinction of being a top contributor to both Bush I and Bill Clinton. Bill has since been “adopted” by the elder George as an honorary son. And why not? When he took office, Clinton killed off the ongoing probes into his predecessor’s entanglements with BCCI, and even killed a lot of Iraqis over an almost certainly bogus attempt on his future “dad’s” life. (For more on the cozy Bush-Clinton connection, see A Tale of Two Houses. For more on the Bushes and BCCI, see Scar Tissue.)

The chaotic nexus where organized crime, terrorism, drug-running, covert ops and government policy churn and thrash together is where the business of the world gets done. It fuels the machine serviced by tools like Rove, the machine that has brought so much death and anguish to Iraq – and is slowly devouring the entrails of America as well.

August 16, 2007

Chris Floyd [send him mail] is the author of Empire Burlesque: The Secret History of the Bush Regime.

Editor and Publisher

Published: August 15, 2007

WASHINGTON Army soldiers committed suicide last year at the highest rate in 26 years, and more than a quarter did so while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a new military report.

The report, obtained by The Associated Press ahead of its scheduled release Thursday, found there were 99 confirmed suicides among active duty soldiers during 2006, up from 88 the previous year and the highest since the 102 suicides in 1991.

”Iraq was the most common deployment location for both (suicides) and attempts,” the report said.

The 99 suicides included 28 soldiers deployed to the two wars and 71 who weren’t. About twice as many women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan committed suicide as did women not sent to war, the report said.

Read the full story

Source: The Turkish Press.com

Published: 8/14/2007

BAGHDAD – Ten more American soldiers were reported killed across Iraq, including five when their helicopter crashed in the western Sunni province of Al-Anbar, the military said Tuesday.

The CH-47 Chinook helicopter crashed near the Al-Taqaddum air base “while conducting a routine post-maintenance check flight,” the military added, saying the incident was under investigation.

Earlier, the military reported the deaths of another five soldiers in insurgent attacks.

Three Task Force Lightning soldiers died and one more was wounded when insurgents set off a bomb near their vehicle on Monday in the restive northern province of Nineveh, the military said.

The military did not give the specific location of the attack but said the blast occurred when the soldiers were conducting security operations.

A soldier was killed and three more wounded during combat operations in western Baghdad on Tuesday, the military said in a separate statement.

Another soldier was also killed similarly in the same area of Baghdad on Monday, the military added.

The latest fatalities brought the military’s losses in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion to 3,694, according to an AFP count based on Pentagon figures.

At least 44 American soldiers have died in August.

08/14/2007 19:34 GMT

Source: WSWS

4 February 2007

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This statement is available for download as a PDF 4-page brochure in both US Letter format and A4 format

The World Socialist Web Site condemns the military and political provocations with which the Bush administration is laying the foundations for an attack on Iran. We call on all working people and student youth to oppose the brutal and insane warmongering of the Washington pyromaniacs. A politically conscious class-based movement—unconnected to and independent of the pro-imperialist parties of big business and the political establishment—must be built if war is to be averted.

This is no time for complacency and illusions. Barely three months after the American people went to the polls and delivered an overwhelming popular repudiation of the war in the Middle East, the Bush administration is not only escalating its military operations in Iraq, but recklessly plunging towards a new war against neighboring Iran.

Continue . . .

Global Research, August 13, 2007

By Prof. Michael Schwartz

While the atlantist media is reporting more than 3 000 GI’s killed in Iraq and many civilian victims of inter-confessional violences, it looks away from the daily slaughter of civilians by US patrols conducting their search operations for suspects. Professor Michael Schwartz estimates that their number reached 10 000 a month in the first 3 years of occupation. And much more since Bush ordered his surge of operations.

A state-of-the-art research study published in October 12, 2006 issue of The Lancet (the most prestigious British medical journal) [1] concluded that — as of a year ago — 600,000 Iraqis had died violently due to the war in Iraq. That is, the Iraqi death rate for the first 39 months of the war was just about 15,000 per month.

That wasn’t the worst of it, because the death rate was increasing precipitously, and during the first half of 2006 the monthly rate was approximately 30,000 per month, a rate that no doubt has increased further during the ferocious fighting associated with the current American surge.

Read the full article

Counterpunch, August 14, 2007

By GARY LEUPP

Hamid Karzai, hand-picked by Washington to pose as president of the broken country of Afghanistan, says his government has “very, very good, very, very close relations [and] will continue to have good relations with Iran.” He declares on CNN, “So far, Iran has been a helper” in fighting terrorism.

Nuri al-Maliki, favored by Washington as the most viable prime minister to pretend to lead the bleeding country of Iraq, says Iran is doing “positive and constructive” work in “providing security and fighting terrorism” in his country.

Both of these puppet regimes in nations bordering Iran seek to maintain close relations with the Islamic Republic. But puppets aren’t supposed to compose their own lines, and the puppeteer George Bush seems somewhat irked at these words.

“I would be very cautious about whether or not the Iranian influence there in Afghanistan is a positive force,” he tells visiting Karzai at Camp David. Bush’s remarks are often unclear and confused, allowing for various interpretations. But here he’s not expressing any openness to the possibility that what the Afghan said might be true. As the Nation reported, he’s telling “the visitor from abroad that he is wrong” and that Iran is most certainly not a positive force.

Of Maliki’s comments, Bush states with undiplomatic condescension, “I will have to have a heart to heart with my friend, the prime minister, because I don’t believe [the Iranians] are constructive. . . . My message to him is, when we catch you playing a non-constructive role, there will be a price to pay.” Here it’s not clear whether he’s warning Iran it will pay a price (which would not be news because it has been longstanding Bush policy to threaten Iran) or threatening his “friend” the embattled Iraqi prime minister.

Responding to images of Maliki appearing cordial with Iran’s president Ahmadinejad, Bush mockingly assumed a pugilistic stance at his White House press conference, fists raised, and said, “You don’t want the picture to show you duking it out,” implying that while making nice for the cameras, Maliki ought (in his heart) to be in an Iran-attack mode.

I can just imagine the sort of “heart to heart” talks Bush has with his puppets. Consider their positions. On the one hand they live comfortably, eat and dress well, enjoy some symbols of authority thanks to their Quisling status. They may retain some sense of self-respect to the extent that they can depart from the occupier’s script on occasion on the grounds of “national interest” and differ on a subject such as bilateral relations with neighboring friendly countries.

On the other hand, neither Karzai nor Maliki has any popular respect or following, because their countrymen see their collaboration as a pact with the devil. Karzai is merely the mayor of Kabul, in a chic karakul hat and green ribboned cloak, looking like a leader for the cameras while the Taliban recapture much of his country and the rest remains under the boot of warlords whose power increases with each bountiful opium harvest. Maliki is not even mayor of Baghdad, but a prisoner of the Green Zone, abandoned by the Sunni politicians, the Muqtada al-Sadr bloc, and the secularists.

So Bush assumes they’ll be inclined to kiss his cowboy boots as they have so far, perhaps trying to conceal some revulsion to what all adheres. But I wonder if they are starting to feel real doubts about the wisdom of their humiliating collaboration to date. Maliki in particular seems a dour, unhappy man. Perhaps they think the invasions of their countries have personally benefited them, but have been far more disastrous for their peoples than they expected when they agreed to take their jobs. Even morally compromised people can get smitten with moral qualms. How can these men regain some modicum of dignity?

I think it likely that they fear the consequences of a U.S. attack on Iran. I’ll bet the drumbeat of anti-Iran propaganda and plethora of anti-Iran disinformation in the U.S. fills them with anxiety. They have now become intimately aware of the Bush-Cheney mindset, the U.S. administration’s contempt for their peoples, the vast ignorance in Washington about Muslim cultures. They do not want missile attacks on Iran, or regime change there; rather, they want to sit their American sponsors down with their Iranian friends for talks, or at minimum resist recruitment into America’s anti-Iran campaign.

Their recalcitrance must be frustrating for Bush. Nothing is going well in his war on evil. His generals paint a Hello Kitty face on the interesting, temporary new alignments in Iraq’s Anbar province. But everywhere hatred for U.S. imperialism mounts. Democratic elections in the Muslim world, most recently in Lebanon, bring his foes into power. It is impossible—particularly for him, given his obvious handicaps—to logically explain or justify through any “heart to heart” conversation the Cheney-neocon plan for a New American Century of empire in Southwest Asia. Instead he needs to take off the gloves and bully.

So there’s a mean glint in his eye and hint of worry as he tells the boys he’s gonna take them out to the woodshed for that talk about Iran—before they pay the price. I’d hope both Karzai and Maliki would realize they have little to lose at this point by saying, “No sir. You gave me this job and thanks for that. But—and only your friends will tell you this—your dukes are up but the Iranians might engage you in a very different contest than you expect. They are wrestlers, not boxers—have been for many centuries—and may wind up pinning a lot of your people down to the mat if you proceed with your apparent plans. My own people, I’m afraid, will cheer the Iranians on, while world opinion might disqualify you for brutality. So please leave me out of your match. If I have to pay a price for my stance, sir, so be it; the price of working with you has become too heavy.”

I’m not suggesting either has the integrity to say something like that. The likelihood is slim, but if the puppets indeed started to talk back (like the pathological liar marionette Pinocchio in Carlo Collodi’s story who ultimately becomes a real person) they might acquire the status of actual human beings—and even help thwart the designs of monsters.

* * *I read last week that “Vice President Dick Cheney several weeks ago proposed launching airstrikes at suspected training camps in Iran run by the Quds force. . . .” The “suspected” camps are of course suspected by Cheney’s neocons who claimed to be SURE about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and Saddam’s al-Qaeda ties. Cheney remains intent on inflicting damage to Iran, that “unconstructive” nation “interfering” in the Iraq (following the American mother of interferences in the next-door country)—and then watching from his undisclosed location all the exciting consequences.

Even puppets are becoming animate in response to the machinations of this sick man, determined to inflict another surge of pain expanding the empire before he checks out. That may be slight cause for optimism. But we the people of the U.S. need to push harder for impeachment. My preference is first Cheney, then Bush, but in rapid succession.

Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch’s merciless chronicle of the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial Crusades.

He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu

Dissident Voice

by Gilad Atzmon / August 14th, 2007

A few reasons help to create the Nasrallah obsession (‘dibuk’), that influenced decision makers along the (Second Lebanon) war. Primarily, Israel always perceived the Arab (leaders) as (private) people rather than representatives of political systems. Even amongst media analysts and politicians the references were pointing at “Assad”, “Arafat” or “Nasrallah” rather than the states and organisations they represent. In the eyes of the (Israeli) decision-makers, as well as the media and public, the Arab world was led by individuals rather than by governmental systems and the best way to influence it was in most cases to drop a bomb in the right place. (“Captives in Lebanon”, Ofer Shelah and Yaov Limor)¹

The Israelis tend to personalize conflicts. Yet, by doing this, they are neither original nor innovative. They in fact follow a Biblical lesson. Within the Judaic worldview, history and ethics are often reduced into a banal single binary opposition principle. For instance, the deadly battle between the ‘righteous’ David and the ‘evil’ Goliath personalises the struggle between the ‘good’ Israelites and the ‘bad’ Philistines. Though the Biblical specific tale could be understood in a mere literary terms, the similarities to the Israelite of our time are rather concerning. In Israel, there is a direct express path that leads from the ‘role of the assassin’ to the Government seat. Time after time our contemporary Israelite supplicate their highly decorated assassins to become their kings, to lead their army and then to integrate into the cabinet. This obviously happened to Sharon, Barak, Mofaz, Halutz, Dichter and many more.

Continue . . .

Information Clearing House

By Uri Avnery

08/13/07 “ICH ” — — ON THESE hot, sticky days of the Israeli summer, it is pleasant to feel the coolness of Oslo, even if the visit is only virtual.

Fourteen years after the signing of the Oslo agreement, it is again the subject of debate: was it a historical mistake?

In the past, only the Right said so. They talked about “Oslo criminals”, as the Nazis used to rail against “November criminals” (those who signed the November 1918 armistice between the defeated Germany and the victorious Allies.)

Now, the debate is also agitating the Left. With the wisdom of hindsight, some leftists argue that the Oslo agreement is to blame for the dismal political situation of the Palestinians, the near collapse of the Palestinian Authority and the split between Gaza and the West Bank. The slogan “Oslo is dead” can be heard on all sides.

What truth is there in this?

ON THE morrow of the agreement, Gush Shalom held a public debate in a large Tel-Aviv hall. Opinions were divided. Some said that it was a bad agreement and should not be supported in any way. Others saw it as a historic breakthrough.

Continue . . .

The Independent, August 14, 2007

To Republicans, he is a brilliant strategist who kept their man in power. To Democrats, he is a ruthless manipulator whose machinations banished them to the sidelines. Now Karl Rove is retiring.

By Leonard Doyle

Published: 14 August 2007

“Karl Rove RESIGNS!!! Karl Rove Resigns – Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead [breaking news – no irony] Short and Sweet: Rove resigns!”

The bloggers were at it early yesterday morning, as the online bush telegraph breathlessly passed on the news that the man the Democrats love to hate, the tousle-haired and bespectacled Andy Warhol lookalike, Karl Rove, had announced his departure from the Bush White House.

For the past seven years, Karl Christian Rove, who holds the titles of deputy chief of staff and senior adviser, has been the unseen hand of American politics, the invisible mender of the Republican Party and the Rasputin of the White House all rolled into one. He steered George Bush to victory after victory. Using every weapon that came to hand, he helped engineer Mr Bush’s re-election, before coming to grief in last year’s midterm elections when the increasingly unpopular Republicans lost their grip on Congress.

The man known as “Bush’s Brain” has been talking about leaving for the past year, and the spin yesterday morning was that he was quitting to spend more time with his family, especially his wife Darby and his 17-year-old son. Soon he will be packing up his beloved books from his elegant three-storey brick home and heading back to Texas.

Read the full article

Information Clearing House

By Henry Siegman

08/13/07 “LRB” — – When Ehud Olmert and George W. Bush met at the White House in June, they concluded that Hamas’s violent ousting of Fatah from Gaza – which brought down the Palestinian national unity government brokered by the Saudis in Mecca in March – had presented the world with a new ‘window of opportunity’.[*] (Never has a failed peace process enjoyed so many windows of opportunity.) Hamas’s isolation in Gaza, Olmert and Bush agreed, would allow them to grant generous concessions to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, giving him the credibility he needed with the Palestinian people in order to prevail over Hamas. Both Bush and Olmert have spoken endlessly of their commitment to a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, but it is their determination to bring down Hamas rather than to build up a Palestinian state that animates their new-found enthusiasm for making Abbas look good. That is why their expectation that Hamas will be defeated is illusory. Palestinian moderates will never prevail over those considered extremists, since what defines moderation for Olmert is Palestinian acquiescence in Israel’s dismemberment of Palestinian territory.

Full article