Peace and Justice Post

The Independent, July 22, 2007

By Andrew Buncombe, Asia Correspondent

Pakistan’s supreme court dealt President Pervez Musharraf a damaging and embarrassing blow yesterday, ruling that his decision to fire the chief justice was illegal and ordering that he be reinstated.

In what may be the most direct challenge to the military dictator’s authority since he came to power by means of a coup in 1999, the court voted 10-3 to quash a case of alleged misconduct against Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry. Justice Khalil-ur-Rehman Ramday said that General Musharraf’s order suspending Mr Chaudhry was “set aside as being illegal”.

In a move that backfired, General Musharraf sacked Mr Chaudhry in March after accusing him of corruption. The move was widely seen as politically motivated, given the judge’s investigations into alleged human rights abuses by forces in Baluchistan province.

While General Musharraf might have assumed his decision to force out Mr Chaudhry would have had little impact beyond the legal community, in the months since his ousting the 59-year-old has become a rallying point for the disparate elements of Pakistan’s political opposition.

Everywhere the judge has gone to deliver lectures to lawyers’ groups, he has been mobbed by people who want to catch a glimpse of the man who dared to stand up to General Musharraf.

Yesterday’s decision triggered celebrations not only outside the Supreme Court in the capital Islamabad, but elsewhere across the country. Mr Chaudhry’s lawyer, Aitzaz Ahsan, said: “He has been restored and it is a victory for the entire nation.”

General Musharraf said last month he would accept whatever decision the court made, something repeated by Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, who called for unity as the country heads to elections this year. “I would like to emphasise that we must all accept the verdict with the grace and dignity reflective of a mature nation,” he said. “This is not the time to claim victory or defeat. The constitution … must prevail at all times.”

Some of General Musharraf’s opponents believe his decision to remove Mr Chaudhry was an attempt to pre-empt any legal challenges to his plan to ask the country’s regional and national assemblies to give him another five-year term.

Since the operation to clear the Red Mosque this month, which left more than 100 people dead, and the subsequent violent backlash, Pakistan’s deteriorating security situation has overshadowed the judicial crisis.

The Guardian, July 21, 2007

Blood and guts

by Declan Walsh

Lunchtime yesterday, and a gaggle of lawyers in black suits crammed into a small room in the sweaty bowels of Pakistan’s Supreme Court. Balancing cigarettes and cups of tea, they savoured the moment. An epic struggle was nearing its climax. The court was about to deliver its verdict on a battle that has captivated Pakistan since March, between the President, General Pervez Musharraf, and the chief justice, Muhammad Iftikhar Chaudhry. The country had never seen it before: a civilian openly challenging a military leader. After months of raucous protest, the lawyers smelled victory. But one was not sure.

Asma

Jahangir, an eagle-eyed lawyer on the frontline of the chief justice’s campaign, was apprehensive. “I don’t know, I just don’t know,” she says, her voice trailing away. “I could be surprised, but it looks like there’s going to be a compromise.” We sat down to lunch, a few discs of unleavened bread and a scoop of dhal.

At five feet tall, Jahangir, 55, is not an imposing figure, but for almost four decades she has towered over Pakistan’s human rights war. She has championed battered wives, rescued teenagers from death row, defended people accused of blasphemy, and sought justice for the victims of honour killings. These battles have won her admirers and enemies in great number. But she doesn’t care, mocking the mullahs and poking a finger in the face of the barrel-chested generals. In conversations with friends, one word constantly recurs: guts. “Asma is the gutsiest woman that Pakistan has,” says Abbas Nasir, editor of Dawn newspaper and a friend. “Whatever she believes in, she has the conviction to say it publicly in a sea of complete intolerance and ignorance. In a country like this, that is fantastic.”

Full article

Source: news.yahoo.com

By KATHERINE SHRADER, Associated Press Writer Fri July 20, 2007

WASHINGTON – President Bush breathed new life into the CIA‘s terror interrogation program Friday in an executive order that would allow harsh questioning of suspects, limited in public only by a vaguely worded ban on cruel and inhuman treatment.

The order bars some practices such as sexual abuse, part of an effort to quell international criticism of some of the CIA’s most sensitive and debated work. It does not say what practices would be allowed.

The executive order is the White House’s first public effort to reach into the CIA’s five-year-old terror detention program, which has been in limbo since a Supreme Court decision last year called its legal foundation into question.

Officials would not provide any details on specific interrogation techniques that the CIA may use under the new order. In the past, its methods are believed to have included sleep deprivation and disorientation, exposing prisoners to uncomfortable cold or heat for long periods, stress positions and — most controversially — the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding.

The Bush administration has portrayed the interrogation operation as one of one of its most successful tools in the war on terror, while opponents have said the agency’s techniques have left a black mark on the United States‘ reputation around the world.

Bush’s order requires that CIA detainees “receive the basic necessities of life, including adequate food and water, shelter from the elements, necessary clothing, protection from extremes of heat and cold, and essential medical care.”

A senior intelligence official would not comment directly when asked if waterboarding would be allowed under the new order and under related — but classified — legal documents drafted by the Justice Department.

However, the official said, “It would be wrong to assume the program of the past transfers to the future.”

A second senior administration official acknowledged sleep is not among the basic necessities outlined in the order.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the order more freely.

Skeptical human rights groups did not embrace Bush’s effort.

Tom Malinowski, Washington director for Human Rights Watch, said the broad outlines in the public order don’t matter. The key is in the still-classified guidance distributed to CIA officers.

As a result, the executive order requires the public to trust the president to provide adequate protection to detainees. “Given the experience of the last few years, they have to be naive if they think that is going to reassure too many people,” he said.

The order specifically refers to captured al-Qaida suspects who may have information on attack plans or the whereabouts of the group’s senior leaders. White House press secretary Tony Snow said the CIA’s program has saved lives and must continue on a sound legal footing.

“The president has insisted on clear legal standards so that CIA officers involved in this essential work are not placed in jeopardy for doing their job — and keeping America safe from attacks,” he said.

The five-page order reiterated many protections already granted under U.S. and international law. It said that any conditions of confinement and interrogation cannot include:

• Torture or other acts of violence serious enough to be considered comparable to murder, torture, mutilation or cruel or inhuman treatment.

• Willful or outrageous acts of personal abuse done to humiliate or degrade someone in a way so serious that any reasonable person would “deem the acts to be beyond the bounds of human decency.” That includes sexually indecent acts.

• Acts intended to denigrate the religion of an individual.

The order does not permit detainees to contact family members or have access to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

In a decision last year aimed at the military’s tribunal system, the Supreme Court required the U.S. government to apply Geneva Convention protections to the conflict with al-Qaida, shaking the legal footing of the CIA’s program.

Last fall, Congress instructed the White House to draft an executive order as part of the Military Commissions Act, which outlined the rules for trying terrorism suspects. The bill barred torture, rape and other war crimes that clearly would have violated the Geneva Conventions, but allowed Bush to determine — through executive order — whether less harsh interrogation methods can be used.

The administration and the CIA have maintained that the agency’s program has been lawful all along.

In a message to CIA employees on Friday, Director Michael Hayden tried to stress the importance and narrow scope of the program. He noted that fewer than half of the less than 100 detainees have experienced the agency’s “enhanced interrogation measures.”

“Simply put, the information developed by our program has been irreplaceable,” he said. “If the CIA, with all its expertise in counterterrorism, had not stepped forward to hold and interrogate people like (senior al-Qaida operatives) Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the American people would be right to ask why.”

For decades, the United States had two paths for questioning suspects: the U.S. justice system and the military’s Army Field Manual.

However, after the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration decided more needed to be done. With Zubaydah’s capture in 2002, the CIA program was quietly created.

Since then, 97 terror suspects are believed to have been held by the agency at locations around the world, often referred to as “black sites.”

The program sparked international controversy as details slowly emerged, with human rights groups saying the agency’s work was a violation of international law, including the Third Geneva Convention’s Common Article 3 protections, which set a baseline standard for the treatment of prisoners of war.

In September, Bush announced the U.S. had transferred the last 14 high-value CIA detainees to the military’s detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where they would stand trial. The CIA has held one detainee since then — an Iraqi who the U.S. considered one of al-Qaida’s most senior operatives. He was also eventually transferred to Guantanamo.

___

Associated Press writers Deb Riechmann and Lara Jakes Jordan contributed to this report.

Workers World

By Deirdre Griswold

Published Jul 19, 2007

The debate over the war in Iraq has finally made it onto the agenda of the Senate! But not at a time when funding for the war is up for a vote. A majority of Congress, including most Democrats, already voted to approve those hundreds of billions of dollars.

The current debate is over an amendment, put forward by Democratic Senators Carl Levin of Michigan and Jack Reed of Rhode Island, to a new appropriations bill. The amendment would begin to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq within 180 days (six months) of enactment and complete a reduction of troop strength—but not a total withdrawal—by April 30, 2008.

This debate is finally happening after the electorate has in many, many ways expressed its utter disgust with the war, the occupation and both political parties for letting the carnage drag on despite the immense pain and suffering it has meant for the Iraqi people and many in the U.S. Especially hit here is the working class, which pays for wars in blood and taxes while the rich generally do quite well as war spending oozes through the upper layers of the economy.

The senators also must know that calls are heard more and more frequently to impeach George W. Bush and Dick Cheney because these two lied to the world about Iraq’s mythical weapons of mass destruction. Every online discussion having to do with the war or the White House—except those on bizarrely ultra-right Web sites—rings with colorful denunciations of these political figures.

Full article

RINF.com, July 19, 2007

Why did IntelCenter, the middleman between “Al-Qaeda” and the media, a group that has government and Pentagon ties, re-release old footage and why did the media report it as new when it had already aired twice before? Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet

A videotape that was heralded as “new” footage of Osama bin Laden by many quarters of the press has been conclusively proven to be more than 5 year old re-released footage, leading to questions about why the government and the media continue to act as willing propagandists for the terrorists while striking fear into Americans by claiming an attack is inevitable.

Though some reports included the proviso that the tape could contain old footage, the importance and ceremony attached to the re-release of the Bin Laden tape over the weekend left the distinct impression that the footage was new and that it correlated with the alleged increase of “chatter” amongst terrorist organizations indicating that a new attack is imminent, a message that was again pushed by the U.S. government following the release of the National Intelligence Estimate yesterday.

In reality, the tape was being released for the third consecutive time , having first popped up in 2002 before re-airing again in 2003. The footage of Bin Laden was filmed six years ago in October 2001.

The Associated Press ran the tape as a top story on Saturday under the headline “Bin Laden Appears in New al-Qaida Video”.

Euro News, the propaganda arm of the European Union broadcast in dozens of countries around Europe, described the footage as “apparently new” .

“Possible New Message From Osama Bin Laden,” reported ABC News , noting that “a brief clip of an older-looking Osama bin Laden is contained in a new al Qaeda videotape,” when in reality the graying in Bin Laden’s beard was exactly the same as when he appeared in a 2001 videotape , while also wearing the exact same jacket.

The footage was not new and any small amount of cursory research would have verified that fact, and yet the media went full board with the story, creating the illusion that it was new, while rabid Neo-Cons lauded the tape as another reason for keeping U.S. troops in Iraq while fearmongering about upcoming terror attacks at home.

The footage first appeared in May 2002, having been released by a Pakistani security official to the Al-Ansaar Islamic news agency, based in Birmingham, England. This CBS video clip clearly shows the same footage as the apparent “new” tape.

Here is a screenshot from the 2002 tape (right) compared to the new tape (left). Notice the sloping mountain in the left background.

Sources indicate that the footage was shot in either October 2001 or March 2002, with the earlier date being the favorite as Bin Laden’s appearance matches with the footage from a different tape that was released in October 2001.

Al-Jazeera said they had the footage as far back as October 2001, but chose not to air it as they saw it as “not newsworthy” and “nothing more than a PR stunt.” Six years later, and with the footage having been released on two separate occasions already, the western media insinuated that the tape was new and splashed it everywhere as a top headline.

In our previous groundbreaking investigation , we exposed IntelCenter, the middleman between “Al-Qaeda’s media arm” and the press, and the organization that routinely obtains the tapes, as little more than a Pentagon front group staffed by individuals with close connections to the military-industrial complex.

IntelCenter were also behind the release of the “new” Osama tape – having previously released the same footage (the second time it had appeared) in October 2003!

IntelCenter issued a tacit warning that the footage may be re-hashed when they released the “new” tape to the media, but they failed to mention the fact that they released portions of the exact same clips in October 2003. The screenshots of Bin Laden which clearly correlate with the “new” tape were on their website all along, and yet they still labeled the footage as “significant”. IntelCenter knew the tape was definitely old, yet their meandering uncertainty left doubts that the media exploited to the full in claiming the footage may be new.

The screenshot from IntelCenter’s website from a tape released in October 2003 clearly match with screenshots from the “new” tape, a fact completely ignored by both IntelCenter themselves and the mass media.

Even a senior Bush administration official admitted to Newsbuster , “Intelligence agencies have determined the video was previously aired as a portion of a longer show first on MBC TV (Middle East broadcast station) on April 17, 2002,” and yet retractions to the supposition that the footage was new are nowhere to be seen in the media.

“What’s the result of the MSM’s sloppy “air-first-verify-later” approach? The world’s most evil and despicable terrorists are given tons of free air time and print exposure,” adds Newsbuster.

Even if you believe that Al-Qaeda itself is deciding to re-package old footage and constantly re-release it, and that this isn’t a crude propaganda ploy on behalf of IntelCenter in collusion with the Neo-Cons, why are the government and the media consistently affording lavish attention and giving prominence to such activity, aiding the terrorists to spread their propaganda ad infinitum?

It would be foolishly naive to think that the re-release of this tape – for the third time running – has little to do with the fact that the Bush administration has been ramping up the fearmongering and hinting at the inevitability of another attack over the past two weeks – ostensibly for political purposes to mute dissent.

Six months after the failed “surge” in Iraq and with Bush’s approval ratings sliding to all time lows while calls for impeachment reach a crescendo, a slew of information threatening a new Al-Qaeda attack gets released and up pops Osama – in a tape that is re-hashed for a third time – to validate the Neo-Cons insistence that to leave Iraq is to hand the terrorists a victory. That tape is released by an organization with clear links to the military-industrial complex who had knowingly released the same footage years earlier.

Is all this a coincidence, or does such chicanery and crass manipulation of the electorate and the political process demand an immediate Congressional investigation as to why the U.S. government and its lapdog media fronts are working with the terrorists to artificially boost their profile while scaring the holy crap out of the American people at the most politically opportune moments?

Canadian Dimension

By John Wright

Counterpunch 2007

The U.S. occupation of Iraq has spawned the re-emergence of the word imperialism into the lexicon of everyday language, after an absence of five decades stretching back to the end of Second World War. U.S. military adventures since then–particularly in Korea, Vietnam and Central America–were dressed up as defensive operations against the spread and threat posed by Communism and all its evil manifestations, namely, national liberation, self determination, and social and economic justice.

The truth is, however, that imperialism has remained as constant and ever present as the changing of the seasons. The only thing which has changed is its packaging, which could be described, to paraphrase James Connolly, as old wine in a new bottle.

The U.S. ruling class emerged from the Second World War as the new imperial masters of the world. As such, they quickly recognized that the plethora of national liberation movements which had sprung up across the globe after the war, determined to shake off the yoke of colonialism, demanded new methods of control than the ones which had been utilized previously by the European powers.

The World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s stated aim, when formed by a small coterie of international financiers and bankers (mainly British and American, with the British by now accepting their role as junior partners in the new order of things) at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire in 1944, was to rebuild Europe and stabilize the world’s financial markets after the turmoil of the Second World War.

In line with those aims, the newly independent former colonies in the Third World, which had gradually won their freedom, had to be brought to heel and controlled–for they possessed the natural and human resources necessary for expansion under this new global empire.

After suffering the ravages of colonialism, and after the hard struggle for liberation, nations of the African continent in particular were left with devastated and moribund economies which placed them at the mercy of vultures in the shape of the big international banks and financial institutions.

These banks and institutions loaned enormous sums at predatory interest rates, making it impossible for the Third World to rebuild, develop and repay their loans at the same time.

It had to be one or the other.

Things reached a crisis in the mid 1980s when, to stave off the prospect of a world depression due to the bad debts incurred by Third World countries, the IMF and WB stepped in and took over responsibility for those debts from the big private banks like Barclays, Credit Lyons, Chase Manhattan, etc., which were threatened with collapse.

It was a move which put the IMF and WB into an unassailable position of power which they have never relinquished since.

Since that time nearly 70 countries in the world have been forced to adopt Structural Adjustment Programs (SAP’s) designed and developed by the IMF and WB. These SAPs are intended to restructure the economies of said nations in order to best meet the repayment needs of aid or loans provided by the First World, represented by the IMF and WB.

This requires them to impose severe austerity programs on their already beleaguered economies, which translates into the eradication of much needed public spending on social programs in health, education, transport, agriculture, and so on.

These austerity programs pave the way for transnational corporations, always looking to reduce costs and access cheap sources of raw materials, to come in and set up their manufacturing operations, driving people, including children in many cases, from the land into factories, where they are forced to labour long hours under horrendous conditions for starvation wages.

This serves two purposes: it destroys the agro-economies of the Third World, which are now required to import their food from the First World, and ensures the outward flow of wealth to First World transnational corporations and their international investors.

The case of Nigeria is typical. Today, life expectancy in this oil-rich, aid-dependent nation is 47 years for males and 52 years for females. Of a population of 120 million, 89 million people live on less than a dollar a day, this despite the fact that the Niger Delta region contains large deposits of oil.

One IMF loan of $12 billion has become a continuous unpaid debt of $27 billion.

The people of Nigeria do not see a dollar of the wealth produced by their oil, which flows unchecked out of their country into the pockets of a consortium of British, Dutch and U.S. oil companies. Theirs are lives reduced to a daily struggle for survival.

Six million children under the age of 5 die each year in the Third World as a whole due to hunger and preventable disease.

This year by year genocide against the children of the poor is the net result of the IMF and World Bank’s rape and theft of the Third World’s natural and human resources on behalf of the ruling classes in the First World.

It is imperialism by any other name, soft imperialism which arrives disguised as aid but with its real aim indistinguishable to that of the hard imperialism we see now in Iraq with military occupation.

Both are embarked upon in order to feed the insatiable appetite of the free market capitalist powers.

Both spell misery and death for millions.

Both constitute an evil which is inimical to human progress.

John Wright lives in Edinburgh, Scotland. He can be reached at: Jscotlive@aol.com

Source: Al Bawaba

Hamas official: Abbas can’t serve as Palestinian president

A Hamas official vowed on Thursday to foil early general elections favored by Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas in his standoff with the Islamic movement. “Early elections are an attempt to bypass the will of the Palestinian people and this attempt is bound to failure. It will fail. We, the Palestinian people, will scupper it,” Mahmud Zahar told a press conference in Gaza, according to AFP. The former foreign minister in a Hamas cabinet lashed out against Abbas, accusing him of conspiring with Israel against his people and saying he was not worthy of being president. “He conspires with the enemy to assassinate Hamas chiefs by affirming that they have dug their own grave,” Zahar said. “There is an Israeli plan for a Gaza incursion with the agreement of Abu Mazen (Abbas),” he said. “Can a man who allies with the enemy against his people remain the president of these people,” Zahar asked. He also accused Abbas of being directly responsible for the closure of the Rafah border crossing and the suffering of the estimated 6,000 Palestinians stuck there. © 2007 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)

Green Left, July14, 2007

By Doug Lorimer

“Nearly five months into a security strategy that involves thousands of additional US and Iraqi troops patrolling Baghdad, the number of unidentified bodies found on the streets of the capital was 41% higher in June than in January, according to unofficial health ministry statistics”, the July 4 Washington Post reported.

During June, “453 unidentified corpses, some bound, blindfolded, and bearing signs of torture, were found in Baghdad, according to morgue data provided by a health ministry official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information”, the Post reported.

June also capped the deadliest three-month period for the US armed forces since they invaded Iraq in March 2003. In the first quarter of this year, 244 US troops were killed — an average of 2.7 per day. But in the second quarter, 331 US soldiers were killed — an average rate of 3.6 per day.

By the end of June, the Pentagon had reported that a total of 3578 US troops had been killed in Iraq since the start of the war. In addition, the May 18 New York Times reported, based on examination of insurance claims recorded by the US Labor Department, almost 1000 US civilians employed on contracts for the US government had been killed in Iraq between March 2003 and the end of March this year.

Full article

Overcoming the conspiracy against Palestine
Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 18 July 2007

Mohammed Dahlan’s 13 July 2003 letter to then Israeli defense minister Shaul Mofaz.

“Be certain that Yasser Arafat’s final days are numbered, but allow us to finish him off our way, not yours. And be sure as well that … the promises I made in front of President Bush, I will give my life to keep.” Those words were written by the Fatah warlord Mohammed Dahlan, whose US- and Israeli-backed forces were routed by Hamas in the Gaza Strip last month, in a 13 July 2003 letter to then Israeli defense minister Shaul Mofaz and published on Hamas’ website on 4 July this year.

Dahlan, who despite his failure to hold Gaza, remains a senior advisor to Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas, outlines his conspiracy to overthrow Arafat, destroy Palestinian institutions and replace them with a quisling leadership subservient to Israel. Dahlan writes of his fear that Arafat would convene the Palestinian legislative council and ask it to withdraw confidence from then prime minister Mahmoud Abbas, who had been appointed earlier in 2003 at Bush’s insistence in order to curb Arafat’s influence. Dahlan wrote that “complete coordination and cooperation by all” was needed to prevent this, as well as “subjecting [Arafat] to pressure so that he cannot carry out this step.” Dahlan reveals that “we have already begun attempts to polarize the views of many legislative council members by intimidation and temptation so that they will be on our side and not his [Arafat’s].”

Dahlan closes his letter to Mofaz saying, “it remains only for me to convey my gratitude to you and the prime minister [Ariel Sharon] for your continued confidence in us, and to you all respect.”

This letter is a small but vivid piece of evidence to add to the existing mountain, of the conspiracy in which the Abbas leadership is involved. In the month since Abbas’ appointment of a Vichy-style “emergency government” headed by Salam Fayad, historic Fatah leaders, such as Farouq Qaddumi and Hani al-Hassan have signalled their opposition to Abbas’ actions, specifically rejecting his order that Palestinian resistance fighters disarm while Israeli occupation continues unchallenged.

Full article

LewRockwell.com , July 17, 2007

By Eric Margolis

As Americans turn increasingly against President George Bush’s calamitous war in Iraq, and revolt spreads through Republican ranks, the White House is again resorting to its tried-and-true ploy of fanning grossly inflated fears of terrorism.

The president just made two preposterous claims last week that insult the intelligence of his listeners. First, Bush insisted US forces in Iraq are fighting “the same people who staged 9/11.”

Second, withdrawing US forces from Iraq, as the Democratic-controlled Congress is urging, means “surrendering Iraq to al-Qaida.”

These canards mark the latest steps in the Bush administration’s evolving efforts to mislead Americans into believing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are all part of a global fight against al-Qaida.

When marketers want to change the name of an existing product, they first place a new name in small type below the existing one. They gradually shrink the old name, and enlarge the new one until the original name vanishes.

That’s what’s been happening in Iraq. When the US invaded, Iraqis who resisted were initially branded “Saddam loyalists,” “die-hard Ba’athists,” or, in Don Rumsfeld’s colorful terminology, “dead-enders.” Next, the Pentagon and US media called the Iraqi resistance, “terrorists” or “insurgents.” The reason for invading Iraq, the White House insisted, was all about removing the tyrant Saddam, seizing weapons of mass destruction, defending humans rights and implanting democracy.

Then, a tiny, previously unknown Iraqi group that had nothing to do with Osama bin Laden appropriated the name, “al-Qaida in Mesopotamia.”

This was such a breathtakingly convenient gift to the Bush Administration, many cynics suspected a false-flag operation created by CIA and Britain’s wily MI6. Soon after, the White House and Pentagon began calling most of Iraq’s 22 plus resistance groups, “al-Qaida.”

The US media eagerly joined this deception, even though 95% of Iraq’s resistance groups had no sympathy for bin Laden’s movement. Watch any US network TV news report on Iraq and you will inevitably hear reporters parroting Pentagon handouts about US forces “launching a new offensive against al-Qaida.”

Al-Qaida in Mesopotamia didn’t even exist before 9/11, but that didn’t stop President Bush from trying to gull credulous voters. He simply ignored the 2006 National Intelligence Estimate that found US-occupied Iraq had become an “incubator” for violent anti-American groups.

If the US were to withdraw from Iraq tomorrow, the nation would be split between warring Shia, Sunni and Kurdish parties. The fake Al-Qaida in Iraq would end up at the bottom of the totem pole, or be wiped out by other Iraqis. Even Osama bin Laden and his number two, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, have blasted the phony al-Qaida in Iraq and called for an end to its attacks on Iraqi civilians.

Polls show that in spite of a mountain of evidence to the contrary, White House disinformation strategy has worked. Today, an amazing 60% of Americans still believe Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attacks.

At least that’s down from the 80% who originally believed this Orwellian big lie in 2003. The White House continues to blur the facts and make Americans believe Iraq and Afghanistan are “central fronts in the global war on terror.”

The fact recent polls found 60% of Americans – and 90% of US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan – still believe Saddam and bin Laden had colluded to launch 9/11 is shocking, but not surprising. Ignorance of foreign affairs and mindless flag waving are as American as apple pie.

Tens of millions of Americans are fed a steady diet of political or religious ideology disguised as news from the administration’s house organ, Fox News; from evangelical Christian TV and radio; or from the neoconservative’s version of Pravda, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial pages. The rest are too busy watching brain-deadening TV pap to pay the least attention to events overseas.

They remain unaware the faux “war against global terror” is now costing a mind-boggling US $12 billion monthly, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. That’s the cost of 3 nuclear-powered “Nimitz” class 97,000-ton aircraft carriers every month.

The Bush Administration has spent $610 billion dollars since 2001 on its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, making them the second most expensive conflict in US history after World War II.

Last week, US Homeland Security Czar Michael Chertoff allowed he had a “gut feeling” that an al-Qaida attack on America was imminent this summer. At the same time, Washington was abuzz with a leaked US intelligence report that al-Qaida – the objective of the so-called war on terror – had reconstituted and was as strong as prior to 9/11, 2001.

America’s sixteen intelligence agencies spend $40 billion annually, with another $15–20 billion in their hidden “black budgets.” Homeland Security spends $44.6 billion. In spite of these gargantuan expenditures of a trillion dollars – that’s $1,000,000,000,000 – the best intelligence Czar Chertoff can come up with is “gut feeling?”

One suspects Chertoff’s worried stomach has far more to do with the growing Republican Party revolt against the president’s Iraq war than nebulous threats from Osama bin Laden’s loud but tiny group.

Polls show the only area where Republicans still command popular support is the “war on terror.”

So Bush/Cheney & Co. are trying to use al-Qaida to scare Americans to vote Republican, just as they did prior to 2004 elections. It worked well last time and got Bush reelected.

But Americans are increasingly leery of the White House’s crying wolf. Many are also asking how Bush could claim “steady progress” was being made in his wars when it appears the al-Qaida movement is back to pre-2001 strength, anti-American groups are popping up across Asia and Africa, and Iraq is a bloody mess.

After six years of conflict, 3,600 dead and 25,000 wounded American soldiers, expenditure of $610 billion, tens of thousands of dead Iraqis and Afghans, collapse of Mideast peace efforts, and a Muslim World enraged against the US, nothing positive seems to have been accomplished by a leader who likes to style himself, “the war president.”

As the White House now ponders an attack on Iran, we would do well to recall the famed words of King Pyrrhus of Epirus, “one more such victory and we are ruined.”

Eric Margolis [send him mail], contributing foreign editor for Sun National Media Canada, is the author of War at the Top of the World. See his website.