Meet the U.S.

Armo77 · December 11, 2003

LMAO.. Someone has nothing better to do and spends alllll day long finding, reading, cutting and pasting anti-USA articles like its an obsession.. I bet you have articles plastered all over your room and pictures of Americans with their eyes poked out.

Just curious.. But what one earth are you trying to accomplish? <_<

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Armo Jan the Parskhye pimp

Edited December 11, 2003 by Armo77

Stormig · December 11, 2003

Piggy-Wiggy-wannabe,

Someone Armenian we know from this forum (no need for names), from Canada, was denied entry to the U.S. quite recently due to this crap called "racial profiling," and precisely because it was written in his passport that he was born in Iran - like you or like your parents. Now it could have very well been him who would've been transported to Iran for torture, like Arar was to Syria. Or, had you been Canadian, it could have been you. And I suppose someone penning news about you, telling your story, telling about the injustice done to you, would've been dismissed "anti-American" by some lame-arse loser. Call me anti-American for being revolted - for something like that, I am proudly so! Rather that than an Amerikanski zombie.

These were articles that go a way back - I had them elsewhere and realized I had neglected this thread. And I don't have to look around for my news - they come to my mailbox - political, environmental - you name it! Nice try, try again, or just cry.

Armo77 · December 11, 2003

Going to ask you one more time.. What are you trying to accomplish? Do you want youths to strap bombs on themselves and attack the USA?? Do you want the USA blown to pieces?? WHAT?!?!?!?! Just tell us what you are trying to accomplish with your activism and extremism on an Armenian website? I really cant see why you bother us here with 150,000,000 articles.. Its a waste of time.

Dan · December 11, 2003

Someone Armenian we know from this forum (no need for names), from Canada, was denied entry to the U.S. quite recently due to this crap called "racial profiling," and precisely because it was written in his passport that he was born in Iran - like you or like your parents. Now it could have very well been him who would've been transported to Iran for torture, like Arar was to Syria. Or, had you been Canadian, it could have been you. And I suppose someone penning news about you, telling your story, telling about the injustice done to you, would've been dismissed "anti-American" by some lame-arse loser. Call me anti-American for being revolted - for something like that, I am proudly so! Rather that than an Amerikanski zombie.

Well said, Stormy. I agree with you on this one 100%. And I'm sorry for the person who was denied entry.

Armo77 · December 11, 2003

maybe join some international organization where you can put your good article finding skills to good use.

oppss forgot...

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Armo Jan the Parskhye pimp

Dan · December 11, 2003

Going to ask you one more time.. What are you trying to accomplish? Do you want youths to strap bombs on themselves and attack the USA?? Do you want the USA blown to pieces?? WHAT?!?!?!?! Just tell us what you are trying to accomplish with your activism and extremism on an Armenian website? I really cant see why you bother us here with 150,000,000 articles.. Its a waste of time.

Armo77, they say that it hurts most when it hits closest. But that need not be so. We can all choose to put an end to our ignorance and realize that certain things need not happen to us in order for us to wake up. We can try to look around us and SEE things (not just look) for what they really are, and have our say in it, instead of being cast into the mainstream opinion automatically. Armo77, you probably have heard of the famous quote "don't do onto others what you don't want others to do onto you"... how do you expect others to respect U.S.A. and not attack it when U.S.A itself does not respect others and the lives of the thousands of children its bombs kill daily and have killed throughout the history of its rise? You want your children safe, but you can't just yell "i want safety" when you're advocating the same violence you are so scared of being subjected to.

Edited December 11, 2003 by Dan

Armo77 · December 11, 2003

FOR THE THIRD DAMN TIME!!! WHAT DO YOU PEOPLE WANT?? Is it Death to the USA.. LET US KNOW because I cant see the point in any of it.. I dont have hatred like you all have.. Thats why I cant understand it and I dont understand what you people want.

Stormig · December 11, 2003

Going to ask you one more time.. What are you trying to accomplish? Do you want youths to strap bombs on themselves and attack the USA?? Do you want the USA blown to pieces?? WHAT?!?!?!?! Just tell us what you are trying to accomplish with your activism and extremism on an Armenian website? I really cant see why you bother us here with 150,000,000 articles.. Its a waste of time.

Problems, problems, problems. You just don't get it, do you? Criticism does not mean advocating terrorism!! The mullahs sure got to you, mission accomplished!

I am not the sole poster on this thread - others have as well, including THOTH, Azat, Sasun, etc. It is no less Armenian a topic than is 50 reasons to be a woman, musicians, and if you could change one thing about yourself... Ask them if they advocate the same thing you accused me/us of.

And butt off - this is all I have to say if you can't come up with anything intelligent - I'm not going to let you get this topic closed.

THOTH · December 12, 2003

Armo77 - I would really like to see you prove that any "hatred" is involved in these postings by Stormy.

Let me just say - I love my country dearly (USA) and it is the nation of my family, my children, my friends...all that I basically know...and to me that is all the more reason to strive to make it a better place - and to hope for more in regards to our foreign policy and actions - as I know we can do better then we have been. Do you really think that all that is done by the US is purely good - that there is no room for improvemetn? That mistakes haven't been and aren't being made? etc etc Please don't be so naive OK....

I don't know about you - but I find many of our actions and many of our policies (interanl and external) to be down right embarrasing...and I know that we can do much better...much like George Lucas latest Star Wars films...I watch them - in awe of the special effects....but the scripts and plot lines make me cringe - and I always think - If i had that kind of money I could certainly do better...

bellthecat · December 12, 2003

Let me just say - I love my country dearly (USA) and it is the nation of my family, my children, my friends...all that I basically know...and to me that is all the more reason to strive to make it a better place - and to hope for more in regards to our foreign policy and actions - as I know we can do better then we have been. Do you really think that all that is done by the US is purely good - that there is no room for improvemetn? That mistakes haven't been and aren't being made? etc etc Please don't be so naive OK....

I don't know about you - but I find many of our actions and many of our policies (interanl and external) to be down right embarrasing...and I know that we can do much better

And in what way do you think you personally "make it a better place" while continuing to take Uncle Sam's paycheck in return for doing whatever deeds are asked of you?

joseph parikian · December 13, 2003

http://static.jpost.com/images/2002/site/jplogo.gif

New war, old dilemmas

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Nachman Shai Dec. 13, 2003

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An Israeli reading the headlines regarding the slow drumbeat of American casualties in Iraq could be excused for saying to himself "been there, done that." The daily situations America encounters and its long-term planning considerations in Iraq are very similar to Israel's dilemmas at this time.

Every day the US wakes up to new bad news from Iraq. It loses an average of a soldier a day, which has an important impact on public opinion. America finds itself stuck deep in a war whose end is not in sight, seeking and finding tactical military solutions to deal with the large military challenge it faces.

The Iraqi army, easily defeated during the war, is reappearing now in the form of incessant terrorist attacks.

Despite their extensive military experience, the Americans are surprised. Iraqi resistance comes in a variety of forms of attacks, from suicide terrorism to handheld land-to-air missiles to ambushes to mortar attacks. But the main US dilemma has to do with its treatment of the civilian population. It is having trouble drawing a line between the passive civilian population that is not cooperating with terrorism and those who harbor the Iraqi terrorists.

The US has had no choice but to opt for an "iron fist" policy. It wants to defend its soldiers at all costs, and the civilian population is paying the price. Sometimes it is a long curfew in urban areas, sometimes exhausting roadblocks, and somewhere else suspects are arrested and detained for long periods. CBS's 60 Minutes program last week carried the story of an Iraqi civilian kept in detention for months without trial, and nobody knows what, if anything, he will be charged with.

The Americans are compelled to employ methods of combat that are very similar to Israel's. They destroy houses, for instance, where Iraqi rebels are hiding. That is just what Israel does out of a justified fear for its soldiers, who might get hurt entering buildings in which terrorists are hiding. And the same is true for other cases when the Americans choose to reduce the risk to their soldiers.

An American military periodical reported that senior US military commanders visited Israel and consulted it on how to fight terror. There are no Israeli consultants in Iraq per se, but the Americans are interested in learning from us first-hand how to deal with terrorism.

Junior American commanders suddenly sound like Israeli commanders in previous wars. One said: "The Arabs understand force, nothing but force." The commander of US forces in Iraq, General Ricardo Sanchez, is more cautious in his statements, but he too stresses that only vigorous action bears results, reporting that the number of hostile Iraqi actions has dropped from 20-40 a day to only two.

America has to deal with human, moral dilemmas, just like Israel, just like any Western society that finds itself in confrontation with extremist Islam. Moreover, the iron-fist tactics in everyday life harm the strategic goal of restoring normal Iraqi life and withdrawing the American military forces as soon as is prudent and possible.

BETWEEN THE tactics and the strategy another similarity between the US and Israel emerges. President George W. Bush's initial goal was, as is well known, exposing and neutralizing the weapons of mass destruction. Now there is a new goal: democratization.

Columnist Tom Friedman writes in the New York Times that Bush is not exceptional in that respect, and past American presidents behaved in the same way. It is not unusual, he says, that in the course of a war objectives are revised and new objectives presented.

That, too, rings familiar here. Israel went to war in Lebanon to move the threat of terrorism 40 kilometers away from our border. But in the course of the war new objectives were born, such as changing the regime in Lebanon and making peace with the northern neighbor and even with Syria.

All of those tactical and strategic comparisons teach us very realistic and tangible lessons.

For instance, when you set out on a journey, whether political or military, you do not know where you will end up. Another lesson is that the criticism Israel takes in its war against Palestinian terrorism will from now on be viewed in a new light considering the American-British war against Iraqi terrorism. And the third and most important lesson is that terrorism both here and there endangers world peace and has to be eradicated.

The writer is director-general of the United Jewish Communities-Israel and was IDF spokesman during the 1991 Gulf War.

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This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pag...d=1071300407361

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Stormig · December 16, 2003

Today is the anniversary in 1773 of the 'Boston Tea Party', when about 50 members of the Sons of Liberty organised by Samuel Adams boarded ships in Boston Harbor and threw thousands of pounds worth of tea overboard in protest at British tax policies in the colonies. Read more on the wonderful world of tea here: http://www.scotlandonsunday.com/spectrum.cfm?id=1203252003

Stormig · December 18, 2003

Just to make it easier - - -

--> IN THE IRAQI NEWS LOG

* Senator says Bush administration told Senate that Saddam could hit East Coast with WMD.

* Israeli intelligence tip sheet says Hussein was being held captive for ransom.

* Celebrate "National Victory Over the Guy Who Isn't Osama Bin Laden Day"

* And more juicy bits you won't find on CNN.

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/

HUSSEIN'S CAPTURE IS YESTERDAY'S NEWS

Christopher Scheer, AlterNet

The capture and public humiliation of our super-creepy ex-ally answers none of the intractable questions facing Iraq and the United States about the occupation.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17387

BUSH'S IRAQ POLICY: A QUAGMIRE OF CONFUSION

Jim Lobe, AlterNet

The administration's move to blacklist the very same countries it is asking to forgive Iraq's debt is not a sign of arrogance but hopelessly muddled decision-making.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17374

'FIVE LIES' EXCERPT: BAIT AND SWITCH

Christopher Scheer, Robert Scheer and Lakshmi Chaudhry, AlterNet

Exploiting 9/11 and five key lies about Iraq, the White House convinced Americans that Baghdad posed both an imminent threat and a moral imperative.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17376

WE CAUGHT THE WRONG GUY

William Rivers Pitt, TruthOut.com

For all the pomp and circumstance that has surrounded the extraction of the former Iraqi dictator from a hole in the ground, the reality is that the United States is not safer now that the man is in chains.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17391

IRAQ: WHAT'S NEXT

David Sirota, Christy Harvey and Judd Legum, The Progress Report

While the White House basks in Saddam's arrest, there is little evidence that it will affect either the ongoing battle against terrorism or Bush's own credibility gap.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17399

WINNING OVER ARABS USING ISRAELI TACTICS?

Ivan Eland, AlterNet

The Bush administration’s recent “get tough” approach to the chaos in Iraq is predictable and will likely make things worse there in the long-term.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17365

FUTURE UNCERTAIN AS SADDAM UNEARTHED

Jim Lobe, Inter Press Service

Iraq experts differ on whether Hussein's capture will embolden the Shiites, dampen the insurgency, or have little effect at all.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17388

WE GOT HIM ... NOW WHAT?

Robert Scheer, AlterNet

The capture of Saddam Hussein is being treated as a celebratory occasion, but it is one that the Bush administration might come to regret.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17403

SADDAM SIDESHOW OBSCURES REALITY

David B. Livingstone, AlterNet

The capture of Saddam Hussein marks a great victory for American forces and for President Bush -- or so the TV news will have us believe.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17386

WE FINALLY GOT OUR FRANKENSTEIN

Michael Moore, MichaelMoore.com

We might not be in the situation we're in if Rumsfeld, Bush Sr., and company hadn't been so excited back in the 80s about their friendly monster in the desert.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17389

U.S. ARRESTS IRAQI UNION LEADERS

David Bacon, Pacific News Service

There's another kind of battle being waged in Iraq -- the fight for worker's rights. Many Iraqi union organizers are finding that the U.S. authority isn't much kinder to them than was Saddam.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17364

THOTH · December 18, 2003

Thanks for the links Stormy...we can always count on you....

Stormig · December 18, 2003

Ah, that was just a newletter I copy-pasted. I didn't want to read all, so anyone who is interested can read up.

Stormig · December 21, 2003

Bush Decision to Invade Iraq a Full Year Before War Brings Claims of Military Power as "Last Choice" into Question

During his press conference on Tuesday, President Bush insisted, "I'm reluctant to use military power. It's the last choice, it's not our first choice."1 But the president's claim clearly does not withstand scrutiny when applied to Iraq, where the president's senior team decided, in the weekend after the September 11th attacks to depose Saddam Hussein one way or another.

Vice President Dick Cheney admitted the weekend after the September 11th terrorist attacks that there was no evidence of Iraq's involvement in September 2001.2 Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said in a May, 2003 interview, however, that despite having no immediate reason for overthrowing Iraq's government, "the disagreement [in the weekend after 9/11] was whether [invading Iraq] should be in the immediate response or whether you should concentrate simply on Afghanistan first."3

The president also claimed on Tuesday that, "in Iraq, there was a lot of diplomacy that took place before there was any military action."4 But in fact, Time reported a meeting from March 2002, a full year before the war began, in which Bush "showed little interest in debating what to do about Hussein," and told a group of Senators, "[expletive] Saddam. We're taking him out."5 Weeks later, Vice President Cheney separately told a group of Senators that, "The question was no longer if the U.S. would attack Iraq, he said. The only question was when."6 But months later, the president was still telling the public, "I hope this will not require military action."7

Key staff at the State Department, normally responsible for diplomacy, were finally told of the administration's plans to go to war in July 2002, at least four months after the administration started prepping members of Congress.8

Sources:

Presidential Press Conference, 12/16/03.

Meet the Press, 9/16/01.

Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz Interview with Vanity Fair's Sam Tannenhaus, DefenseLink, 5/9/03.

Presidential Press Conference, 12/16/03.

"'We're Taking Him Out'",Time.com, 5/5/02.

Ibid.

Presidential Speech, 10/7/03.

"How it Came to War; When Did Bush Decide that He Had to Fight Saddam?", New Yorker, 3/31/03.

http://www.misleader.com/daily_mislead/Rea...df12192003.html

Shahumyan · December 28, 2003

i dont think anyone is bashing the American people per ce, rather the barbarious American Ruling class, which is responsible for the deaths of millions in the last century

edward demian · December 28, 2003

Come on now. The American government is the most responsive government yet devised. All you have to do is study the Jewish Lobby influence in the US and you will agree. So if you want more, than you have to invest more. When the Armenians start electing their own or financing politicians, than they will have a place at the table like the Jews. So, run for office if you want to change things. We have a good thing going. Just get with the program.

joseph parikian · December 30, 2003

i dont think anyone is bashing the American people per ce, rather the barbarious American Ruling class, which is responsible for the deaths of millions in the last century

We never bash the Rusian people per ce eather,rather the barbarious Rusian Ruling class,which is responsible for the death of millions in the last century

Do you agree with me ?

Sasun · January 1, 2004

Britain: U.S. Planned '73 Arab Invasion

By BETH GARDINER, Associated Press Writer

LONDON - British spy chiefs warned after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war that they believed the United States might invade Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi to seize their oil fields, according to records released Thursday.

A British intelligence committee report from December 1973 said America was so angry over Arab nations' earlier decision to cut oil production and impose an embargo on the United States that seizing oil-producing areas in the region was "the possibility uppermost in American thinking."

Details of the Joint Intelligence Committee report were released under rules requiring that some secret documents be made public after 30 years. The report suggested that then-President Nixon might risk such a drastic move if Arab-Israeli fighting reignited and the oil-producing nations imposed new restrictions.

The 1973 embargo and production cuts, used by oil-rich Arab nations as a means to pressure the United States and Western Europe, caused a major global energy crisis and sent oil prices skyrocketing.

The committee of intelligence service directors calculated that the United States could guarantee sufficient oil supplies for themselves and their allies by taking oil fields in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi, with total reserves of more than 28 billion tons.

It warned however that the American occupation would need to last 10 years, as western nations developed alternative energy sources, and would lead to the "total alienation" of Arab states and many developing countries, as well as "domestic dissension" in the United States.

Other records released Thursday showed that Prime Minister Edward Heath was furious at Nixon over the American president's failure to tell him he was putting U.S. forces on a worldwide alert during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.

Heath learned of the alert — considered a high point in Cold War tensions — from news reports while he waited in the House of Commons for Foreign Secretary Alec Douglas-Home to make a statement on the Middle East crisis.

Britain's intelligence listening post, Government Communications Headquarters, had learned of the alert but did not tell Heath's office or the Foreign Office because officials assumed Heath and Douglas-Home already knew about it, the papers showed.

Nixon said he put U.S. troops on high alert for just under a week, starting on Oct. 25, 1973, to show the Soviet Union that America would not allow it to send military forces to aid Arab states fighting Israel.

The alert covered U.S. forces stationed in Britain, and Heath wrote in a memo that he thought Nixon's move, which came in the midst of the Watergate scandal, had been deeply damaging.

"Personally I fail to see how any initiative, threatened or real, by the Soviet leadership required such a world wide nuclear alert," the prime minister wrote. "We have to face the fact that the American action has done immense harm, I believe, both in this country and worldwide."

Stormig · January 8, 2004

I agree especially about the Jessica Lynch bit!

2003 Media Follies!

Geov Parrish, WorkingForChange.com

January 1, 2004

Viewed on January 8, 2004

The year 2004 will be a particularly critical one in the modern history of our nation and our world. The chain of events set in motion by the U.S. invasion of Iraq is likely to take a definitive turn; beyond that, the American public will be asked to pass judgment on four years' performance of one of the most radical regimes in our country's history. Understanding what's actually happening has never been more important -- and spinmeisters' efforts to obscure what's actually happening will be stronger and more technologically savvy than ever. It's time to get smart.

To that end, enter 2004 with our annual list of the past year's most overhyped and underreported -- and misreported -- stories. Remember, they told us they'd lie to us. They were telling the truth.

Most Overrated Stories of the Year:

Saving Jessica Lynch. On the basis of its subsequent media saturation -- books and TV instamovie included -- the bogus story of Jessica Lynch's "rescue" narrowly outpolls the toppling of Saddam's statue as the most sickening episode of government lying for political gain in recent memory. (The "official" story of Saddam's capture may yet prove to join this elite company.)

Both the statue and Lynch stories were easily and quickly discredited in foreign media -- and, eventually, in U.S. media as well -- but remain iconic markers of the "heroic" Iraq invasion in the minds of many Americans. In the case of the statue, what was presented as the joyous, spontaneous post-victory celebration of a huge Baghdad crowd was quickly revealed by non-network witnesses and wide-angle lenses to be a group of at most 150 Iraqis -- probably paid by the Americans -- who with the help of U.S. troops on site pulled down a statue of Saddam for waiting TV cameras in an otherwise nearly empty plaza.

The Lynch episode was even more cynical, particularly for its crass exploitation of a young soldier who had gone through the undeniably harrowing ordeal of being a POW. But she was captured after being injured in a vehicular accident -- not, as the first Pentagon claimed, after a heroic firefight. And the videotape of her "rescue" from an unguarded hospital that she could freely walk away from involved the filming of an elaborate Hollywood-style commando raid against an off-camera foe that turned out to be completely fictitious. Both episodes were important reminders that sometimes the camera does lie -- depending on who's holding it.

Arnold Schwarzenegger runs for governor. Never before has a political neophyte gained high political office by waging a campaign through appearances on E! and Jay Leno. Let's hope it never happens again. (But it probably will.)

Michael Jackson and Kobe Bryant. Which is worse -- a sports superstar, on trial for felony rape, who gets huge ovations in arenas across the country because of the charges against him, or the dare-you-not-to-look spectacle of a trial examining the alleged perversions of an over-the-hill music superstar who is now barely recognizably human, let alone black or male?

The economic recovery. Also on the 2002 list. This year it moved from the realm of projecting a fictitious recovery from a highly selective (and dubious) reading of economic tea leaves, to projecting a fictitious permanent recovery from a highly selective (and dubious) reading of the tea leaves of what is at best a temporary respite from misery. And what the hell is the point of a "jobless recovery," anyway?

Most Important Underreported Stories of the Year

The Bush tax cuts have flopped. The flip side of the "recovery" stories. This has also been on the list the last two years. But it's worth a return engagement because most of the administration's economic claims -- and assumptions for future planning -- are grossly fictional. Never has an administration been so greedy for its own economic interests, or lied so much about it. We'll be stuck with the bill for decades.

Corporate corruption continues to run amok. Bush's 2002 "reforms" were a farce. The problem isn't just the lack of regulatory enforcement -- it's the entire system.

Health care in America in crisis. Bush's Medicare bill largely served to make wealthy drug companies richer still; the so-called "Patient's Bill of Rights" was a meaningless farce. Meanwhile, even a relatively minor health problem can destroy the life savings of the nearly 50 million uninsured, and the far larger numbers whose insurance works great so long as we don't get sick. The real story here is the countless parasites unnecessarily making money in our health care system, and how politicians would rather cater to them than help solve a crisis that, sooner or later, affects each of us.

Dennis Kucinich and Al Sharpton. Neither man has a chance for the Democratic nomination. Yet both Kucinich and Sharpton have generated fiercely loyal followings as the only two candidates in a crowded field with the clarity and guts to challenge fundamental assumptions of the Bush domestic and foreign policy agendas. Howard Dean's successful candidacy wouldn't be possible without this pair on his flank, making him look "more reasonable" even as corporate media ignore or ridicule their campaigns.

The Taliban making a comeback. Bush's pledges to not abandon Afghanistan turned out to be a cruel joke. Sure, our troops are still there -- they're the only thing keeping CIA man Hamid Karzai in "power," albeit only in the capital city of Kabul and only during daylight hours. Elsewhere, the same old brutal warlords are running the show, stealing, murdering and getting rich from record poppy harvests. The Americans have so little influence they've resorted to quietly working with "moderate" elements of the Taliban -- who, with the patience of any society that has a history of several thousand years, are getting stronger again in the mountains.

The peace movement was right about Iraq. The fact that the Bush Administration was lying about virtually every justification for invading Iraq was something any inquiring reporter could have exposed months before the invasion began. No ties to Al-Qaeda. No weapons of mass destruction. No danger to U.S. security. Dated, wildly exaggerated, or simply forged "intelligence." An invasion that was illegal under any and every conceivable legal authority.

The catastrophe that has been the U.S. administration of Iraq. Iraq's guerrilla resistance is not the work of Saddam Hussein, or foreign fighters recruited by Al-Qaeda and the like. It's the work of the Americans -- specifically, it wouldn't exist except for the widespread and steadily rising popular anger over the Americans' ongoing, utter failure to provide any of the services normally associated with government. Eight months into U.S. rule, looting is so bad most Iraqis won't leave home after dark. Usually there's no electricity to see by, anyway, especially outside Baghdad. The U.S. occupiers have been censoring Arab media, repressing the political parties they don't like -- especially Shi'a fundamentalists -- making widespread mass arrests with no semblance of a judicial system or due process (and widespread torture allegations), and murdering civilians seemingly at will and with no fear of consequence. Far from instilling democratic values, Washington has done everything possible to avoid them -- from canceling promised free elections to blocking the use of U.N. and other technocrats with experience in building and nurturing civil society to not doing that work itself.

Privatization and corporate looting of Iraq. Iraq is literally being auctioned off, mostly to well-connected American companies like Halliburton and Bechtel. Few Iraqis have any of the new currency, let alone jobs -- those are all going to Americans or to Kuwaitis, Saudis, or Southeast Asian nationals. By the time Iraq is given the chance (albeit heavily rigged in D.C.'s favor) to "rule itself," the country will look a lot like those houses the Grinch visited before Christmas -- except that these Grinches will never, ever get bigger hearts and give the stuff back.

Israel's apartheid wall. Longer and taller than Berlin's, it's a flagrantly illegal gambit to reduce Palestine to Bantustans; meanwhile, the routine brutalization and humiliation of ordinary Palestinians continues to grow. This, not Iraq, is the conflict upon which future world peace depends, and Washington's role in worsening it has been critical. Why so little attention?

Africa, Africa, Africa. So much is flying under U.S. media radar, it's hard to know where to start -- from Mugabe's terrorizing of Zimbabwe to AIDS to the renewed national and regional depredations of Nigeria, a country effectively run by the likes of Shell and Chevron, and whichever local generals have the franchise this week. But as always the place to start is Central Africa -- where a brutal, decade-long war has now killed a staggering four million or more people, replete with atrocities, civilian massacres, torture, sexual slavery, and lots and lots of U.S.-made weaponry. The war's raison d'etre? The mineral wealth of the eastern Congo, which includes several rare minerals used in the production of computer screens, keyboards, and chips. Prominent among the numerous American companies getting rich by paying "rebel" armies to take over mining regions are Halliburton and Bechtel.

The collapse of the 'Washington consensus.' U.S. media have given a bit of attention to the hypocrisy of the Bush Administration pushing a free trade agenda while blithely continuing its price supports for domestic steel and agribusiness. (Somehow, the arms trade never makes this list.) But the bigger story is that despite Washington's enormous fiscal and military clout, and the sobering example of Iraq for any who dare step out of line, fewer and fewer countries are buying that "free trade" bullshit. Since 2000, popular movements in nearly every country in South America have determined who governs the country; this year, protesters forced Bolivia's president into exile over a natural gas export scheme. Lula, Brazil's newly elected, left-leaning president, has formed (along with India and, increasingly, China) a caucus that is standing up to Bush demands for the right to loot the global South. Both the WTO talks in Cancun and FTAA talks in Miami broke down this fall. Popular outrage over decades of destroyed economies isn't letting the elites who run these countries acquiesce to Washington. Now that's democracy in action.

Bush v. Constitution. There have been no publicly revealed terror attacks foiled on U.S. soil since 9/11 -- only the trumped-up cases of a few homegrown Muslim fantasy warriors. But state power and erosion of civil liberties and the Bill of Rights continues to expand, in the name of 9/11 and "terrorism." A leaked draft of a proposed "PATRIOT II" bill caused a public uproar early in the year. A major provision was then snuck through Congress anyway -- the right to seize and examine any business's records, no warrant, judge or jury needed. Guantanamo's prisons continue to expand, allegations of torture and border brutalizations keep cropping up in foreign media, and John Ashcroft still has a job. The good news: Increasingly, courts are telling Bush to back off. The bad news: If reelected, Bush will likely get to pick two or three new Supreme Court judges.

U.S. remains biggest terrorist nation in the world. We're the largest arms exporter. We're funding the next generation of Saddams in places like Pakistan and Uzbekistan. We ignore international treaties and laws whenever we like. No combination of world powers has been able or willing to hold this rogue state accountable for its transgressions. The only force that can is the American public itself. In 2004, we'll have the chance. The essential first steps: Educating ourselves, seeking out multiple alternative news sources, and making up our own minds. The essential next steps: Use that knowledge, spread that knowledge, and get busy!

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Stormig · January 11, 2004

US withdraws Iraq weapon-hunters as WMD lies crumble

By Bill Vann

10 January 2004

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The Pentagon has carried out the furtive withdrawal from Iraq of a 400-member military unit assigned to hunt for stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) just as a series of reports have surfaced definitively exposing the Bush administration’s claims about alleged Iraqi WMD.

A 107-page report issued Thursday by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington-based establishment think tank, presented a documented case that “Administration officials systematically misrepresented the threat from Iraq’s nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and ballistic missile programs.

The Washington Post, meanwhile, published a January 7 article resulting from an exhaustive investigation by its reporter Barton Gellman concluding that “investigators have found no support for the two main fears expressed in London and Washington before the war: that Iraq had a hidden arsenal of old weapons and built advanced programs for new ones.”

Finally, questioned at a news conference on Thursday about whether he regretted making his fraudulent claims about WMD and Baghdad-terrorist ties before the United Nations Security Council last February, Secretary of State Colin Powell acknowledged: “I have not seen a smoking gun, concrete evidence about the connection,” between Al-Qaeda and the Saddam Hussein regime that he and others in the administration claimed in the run-up to the war.

Taken together, these developments constitute a damning indictment of the administration’s claims that the invasion and US occupation of the Middle Eastern country was necessary to “disarm” the regime of Saddam Hussein and defend the US from attack. They confirm once again that the Bush White House lied in order to drag the American people into an illegal war whose real aim was to impose US hegemony over the strategic oil-producing region.

News of the withdrawal of the military’s Joint Captured Materiel Exploitation Group was leaked to the New York Times and only later confirmed by the White House. The Times reported: “The step was described by some military officials as a sign that the administration might have lowered its sights and no longer expected to uncover the caches of chemical and biological weapons that the White House cited as a principal reason for going to war last March.”

The article quoted Pentagon officials as saying that the unit was withdrawn “because its work was essentially done.”

It added that, while another 1,400-member unit, the Iraq Survey Group, remained in Iraq with the mission of disposing of chemical and biological weapons, a member of the group had confirmed that it is “still waiting for something to dispose of.”

Having spent over nine months and hundreds of millions of dollars in a farcical search for non-existent weapons, the unit is increasingly turning its attention to intelligence operations against the growing Iraqi resistance to the US occupation. Moreover, the official tapped by the Bush administration to head the survey group, David Kay, revealed last month that he is preparing to quit his position and return to the private sector.

Kay, a right-wing Republican and former Reagan-era Pentagon official, was a veteran of CIA provocations against Iraq and one of the most enthusiastic proponents of the Bush administration’s program of “regime change.” If there existed any possibility whatsoever that weapons caches were to be found, he would not be quitting his post.

Former deputy chairman of the UN weapons inspection agency Charles Duelfer told NBC news Thursday: “I think Mr. Kay and his team have looked very hard. I think the reason they haven’t found it is it’s probably not there.”

Significantly, the Times buried its article on the withdrawal of the weapons-hunting unit on the bottom of page 14, while it virtually ignored the Carnegie report. The disinterest in these developments stood in sharp contrast to the newspaper’s sensationalizing of false claims of existing weapons in Iraq in the months leading up to the invasion as well as phony stories about alleged discovery of weapons materials in its immediate aftermath.

The newspaper’s senior reporter, Judith Miller, was herself “embedded” with one of the Pentagon’s weapons-hunting teams, both serving as a conduit for administration propaganda over alleged WMD and, according to published reports, even manipulating the operations of the unit itself to promote a pro-war political agenda.

The Times treatment of these exposures was typical of the media as a whole. With tens of thousands of Iraqis killed and maimed and nearly 500 US military personnel having lost their lives in the Bush administration’s criminal enterprise, the collective reaction of the US political establishment and the major news outlets was the equivalent of a bored shrug.

The fact that the Bush administration lied to the American public and manufactured a non-existent threat in a bid to suppress mass opposition to war is certainly not a surprise to anyone who has followed political developments over the past year. Before the war, Washington’s WMD claims were rejected by most governments as well as the tens of millions of people who demonstrated in cities across the globe against the impending US invasion.

Yet, the information that is now emerging is so conclusive that it ends any debate on the administration’s phony WMD claims.

Investigators found nothing

Based on extensive interviews with both US investigators and Iraqi scientists, the Washington Post, which pursued an editorial policy in clear support of the war, found that Iraq not only did not possess any of the claimed weapons, but also lacked the material conditions to even create them. Its scientific institutions and factories had been “thoroughly beaten down by 12 years of conflict, arms embargo and strangling economic sanctions,” the Post found.

“nvestigators said they have discovered no work on former germ-warfare agents...that led US scientists on a highly classified hunt for several months... And they found the former nuclear weapons program, described as a ‘grave and gathering danger’ by President Bush and a ‘mortal threat’ by Vice President Cheney, in much the same shattered state left by UN inspectors in the 1990s,” the Post reported.

The article further described US occupation officials rounding up and interrogating Iraqi scientists engaged in civilian research without turning up any new evidence of weapons programs.

The Post also cited an internal Iraqi government memo establishing that Iraq had destroyed all of its biological weapons in 1991, in the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War.

Finally, putting to rest the false claims made by the CIA and other government agencies last May that two trucks found by US troops in northern Iraq were “mobile germ-weapon factories,” the article included an interview with an engineer who managed the government contract for maintaining the vehicles. He confirmed that they were used to manufacture hydrogen used in weather balloons, an explanation US officials had dismissed as a “cover story.” A former senior manager at the firm that held the contract—now the US-appointed director of the same company—gave the same account.

The Carnegie Endowment report (http://www.ceip.org/files/Publications/IraqReport3.asp?from=pubdate) consists of an exhaustive examination of the administration’s claims and intelligence reports about alleged Iraqi weapons capabilities in the period preceding the war.

It establishes that beginning in mid-2002, US government “statements of the [iraqi] threat shifted dramatically toward greater alarm regarding certainty of the threat and greater certainty as to the evidence. This shift does not appear to have been supported by new, concrete evidence from intelligence community reports... These statements were picked up and amplified by congressional leaders, major media and some experts.”

The report also confirms that Vice President Richard Cheney and other administration officials exerted “unusually intense” pressure on intelligence agencies to include “evidence” to justify a war in the production of the US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) in October 2002.

“This is indicated by the Vice President’s repeated visits to CIA headquarters and demands for access to the raw intelligence from which analysts were working,” the report states. “Also notable is the unusual speed with which the NIE was written and the high number of dissents in what is designed to be a consensus document. Finally, there is the fact that the political appointees in the Department of Defense set up their own intelligence operation reportedly out of dissatisfaction with the caveated judgments being reached by intelligence professionals.”

Reviewing the administration’s claims—that Iraq was building a nuclear weapon, had large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, missiles capable of delivering them against Israel or even the US itself, and was linked to the Al-Qaeda terrorist network—the report concludes that every one of them was demonstrably false.

The conclusion of the Carnegie report poses the question: “Did administration officials misrepresent what was known and not known based on intelligence? If so, what were the sources and reasons for these misrepresentations?”

It answers the first question in the affirmative: “Administration officials systematically misrepresented the threat from Iraq’s nuclear, chemical and biological weapon programs and ballistic missile programs.”

Yet, the report delicately describes this wholesale lying to the American people as a “source of misunderstanding” and leaves its second question as to the reasons for these lies unanswered.

In the end, the Carnegie document reflects misgivings within the US establishment over some of the tactics and methods used by the Bush administration—the public embrace of preventive war as an international policy, contempt for multilateral institutions like the UN, etc.—rather than any fundamental difference with the pursuit of a foreign policy aimed at asserting US hegemony over the world’s vital resources. Significantly, the word “oil” does not appear once in the document.

No section of the political establishment—including all of the candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination—is prepared to draw the stark political conclusions that flow from these recent exposures: top government officials deliberately lied to the American people about the reasons for war and launched an unjustified and unprovoked act of aggression that continues to claim the lives of both Iraqis and Americans on a daily basis.

These are not “misunderstandings,” but war crimes in which not only Bush, but every major institution of the US ruling elite—Congress, the corporations, the media and both major political parties—are implicated.

The demand for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all US troops from Iraq must be joined with the call for a genuinely independent inquiry into the official deception that preceded the war, leading to the impeachment and criminal prosecution of those responsible.

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World Socialist Web Site

Stormig · January 12, 2004

More of the same...

Pilger punctures “war on terror” lies

Breaking the Silence, written and directed by John Pilger

By Richard Phillips

12 January 2004

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Breaking the Silence, the latest documentary by veteran journalist John Pilger, is an important exposure of the lies and falsifications used to justify the Bush administration’s global “war against terror” and its illegal attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq. The one-hour documentary was screened on December 9 by Australia’s Special Broadcasting Services network and given a four-day release in a Sydney cinema.

Using archival footage and interviews with former intelligence analysts, historians, human rights activists and some White House officials, the documentary explains how the Bush administration seized on the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the World Trade Center to activate long-held plans to seize control of valuable oil resources in the Middle East and elsewhere.

The documentary opens with a series of black and white photographs showing the carnage inflicted on Iraqis by US and British military forces over the past year. A voiceover from US President George W. Bush declares that America will bring “food, medicine, supplies and freedom” to the people of Iraq. Likewise, British Prime Minister Tony Blair claims the war in Iraq is a “fight for freedom”.

Against these chilling images, Pilger explains that US actions have nothing to do with fighting terrorism but are part of an opened-ended war for American global dominance. The real danger facing humanity, he says, is the increasingly aggressive military action of US imperialism and the state terrorism orchestrated by the White House.

Breaking the Silence also includes firsthand reportage from Afghanistan. Pilger, who has written and directed more than 50 documentaries during his 30-year career, describes Afghanistan as a country “more devastated than anything I have seen since Pol Pot’s Cambodia”.

Among those interviewed is Orifa, an Afghan woman who lost eight members of her family including six children, when the US airforce dropped a 500-pound bomb on her mud-brick home in 2001. She describes the massacre and declares: “What has America done for us? My day and night is full of sorrow.”

Pilger speaks with New Yorker Rita Lasar, whose brother, Avraham Zelmanowitz, was killed in the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center (WTC). Lasar notes the remarkable similarity between the fundamentalist rhetoric of Al Qaeda and that of the Bush administration. She states that the US government used the death of her brother and other WTC victims “to justify killing innocent people in Afghanistan”.

Angered and concerned, she decides to visit Afghanistan to help the victims of US attacks. She meets Orifa and visits the US embassy with her to try to secure compensation for the Afghan woman. Senior US officials, however, refuse to see Orifa and denounce her as a beggar.

The documentary cuts to Bush telling the Congress that America was “a friend of the Afghan people”. But as Pilger points out, few countries in the world have been helped less by the US. Only 3 percent of all aid given to Afghanistan is used for reconstruction. Kabul, the capital, is a maze of destroyed buildings and infrastructure, with US cluster bombs still not cleared from parts of the city and hundreds of families living in ruined and abandoned buildings.

At the same time, the US government provides military hardware and finance to a select group of Afghan warlords who have restored opium production to record levels and maintained a reign of terror over the population. While ordinary people in “liberated” Afghanistan live in dire poverty, the US has a major military base and plans are underway for a US-controlled oil pipeline from Central Asia.

Breaking the Silence highlights the role played by Project for the New American Century (PNAC), the Washington think-tank established by Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and other extreme-right Republicans in the 1990s.

The PNAC developed detailed plans for the invasion of Iraq and helped formulate the Bush administration’s “war against terror” to justify the placement of American military forces in key oil and natural gas locations around the world. Its Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century forms the foundation of the US government’s “National Security Strategy”.

Pilger also points to Washington’s long history of supporting Islamic fundamentalist and other terror groups in the Middle East, Latin America and elsewhere.

In mid-1979, six months before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Carter administration authorised $500 million to help establish the mujahedin. For many years Osama bin Laden was regarded as an ally by London and Washington, both of which provided finance and political backing.

In 1996, the Clinton administration established friendly relations with the Taliban government in order to secure its backing for a US oil pipeline from Central Asia through Afghanistan. Taliban officials were flown to the US, where they were given red carpet treatment.

Iraqi casualties

Two brief but revealing interviews expose the Bush administration’s criminal indifference to the human consequences of its actions and highlight its sensitivity to any criticism.

Defence Undersecretary Douglas Feith, an extreme-right ideologue and former member of the Reagan administration, denies that the US supplied weapons of mass destruction to Saddam Hussein during the early 1980s. His claims, however, are contradicted by archival footage of Donald Rumsfeld warmly greeting Hussein in Baghdad in 1983 during the Iran-Iraq war. The US encouraged the former Iraqi dictator to wage war against Iran and provided him with material and logistical support. This included chemical and biological weapons and advice on how to use them.

Pilger points out that an estimated 10,000 Iraqis were killed in last year’s invasion. Feith denies this figure but then declares that it is “inevitable” that innocent people are killed in war. When Pilger attempts to press the point about Iraqi casualties, an off-camera US military official intervenes and orders an end to the interview.

Undersecretary of State John Bolton cynically tells Pilger that the US has done “more to create the conditions for individual freedom than any other country in the world”. Pilger answers this with an on-the-spot report from Afghanistan about America’s Bagram Air Base and the arrest of Wazir Mohamad, an Afghan taxi driver.

Mohamad, who is officially recognised as a political opponent of the former Taliban regime, was seized by the US military in April 2002, jailed in Bagram and then shipped to Guantanamo Bay after he asked why one of his taxi-driver friends had been jailed by the US. While his friend has since been released, Mohamad is still held incommunicado and without charge in Guantanamo Bay.

Pilger asks Bolton about Iraq casualties. His answer: “I think Americans, like most people, are mostly concerned about their own country. I don’t know how many Iraqi civilians were killed. But I can assure you that the number is the absolute minimum that is possible in modern warfare... One of the stunning things about the quick coalition victory was... how low Iraqi casualties were.”

Among other things, this chilling reply is aimed at denying the real character of the unprovoked and illegal US military assault, which led to the death of thousands of innocent Iraqis. Bolton, as it happens, was centrally involved in the Bush administration’s campaign against the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has a mandate to conduct war crime hearings. He claims that the court, which the US refuses to support, is “contrary to US principles”. Washington has demanded and obtained agreements with up to 70 countries exempting Americans from war crime trials.

As the interview ends, Bolton asks Pilger if he is a member of the British Labour Party, suggesting this had something to do with the journalist’s line of questioning. When Pilger explains that he is not, and that British Labour consisted of “the conservatives”, Bolton retorts, “You’re a Communist Party member then?”

Bolton’s reaction reveals the relations White House officials have come to expect from the mass media, which slavishly parrots every government lie. When confronted with a few probing questions, Bolton treats the journalist as an outright political opponent, resorting immediately to his stock-in-trade—provocative red-baiting.

WMD lies

Another significant interview in the film takes place with Andrew Wilkie, the former Australian intelligence officer who resigned from the Office of National Assessments in protest over Australia’s participation in the US-led invasion of Iraq. Wilkie was the only serving intelligence analyst to break ranks, quit his position and publicly challenge the government lies about “weapons of mass destruction” before the Iraq invasion.

In measured language, Wilkie tells Pilger that the Bush, Blair and Howard governments were guilty of “serious dishonesty”. Iraq possessed no secret stockpiles of weapons and there were no links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. Wesley Clark and others interviewed by Pilger back up Wilkie’s statement.

Ray McGovern, a former senior CIA officer and friend of former president George Bush senior, tells Pilger that Bush senior regarded figures such as Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle as dangerous “crazies”. McGovern bluntly states that the weapons of mass destruction claims used by Bush and Blair against Iraq were “95 percent charade”.

Denis Halliday, a former UN assistant secretary-general, explains that the Bush administration’s “axis of evil” and its preemptive strike doctrine represents an “outrageous flaunting of international law”. Halliday, who resigned from his position in 1998, has recently attacked the UN as “an aggressive arm of US foreign policy”.

Pilger touches on the media’s pernicious role in circulating White House lies about WMDs and amplifying paranoia about supposed impending terrorist attacks on the US from Iraq. He also briefly interviews Kings College Professor Richard Overy, an acclaimed expert on Nazi war crimes. Overy makes clear that the unprovoked US-led attack on Iraq constitutes a war crime as defined at the Nuremberg trials and in the Geneva Conventions.

Powell admits Iraq has no WMDs

Perhaps the most damning footage in the documentary concerns speeches by US Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice in 2001, a few months before the September 11 attacks.

Few will forget Powell’s lengthy address to the UN Security Council on February 5, 2003, in which he solemnly declared that Iraq had vast stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and was involved in an elaborate campaign to conceal weapons materials and manufacturing facilities. But as Pilger’s documentary reveals, two years earlier Powell and Condoleeza Rice claimed the opposite.

Speaking in Cairo on February 24, 2001, seven months before 9/11, Powell categorically declared: “He [saddam Hussein] has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbours.” Rice repeated this in July 2001 when she told US television that the Iraqi military had not been rebuilt since 1991 war.

The Bush administration at that time, for its own tactical reasons, was proclaiming the effectiveness of sanctions against Iraq. But in the aftermath of 9/11, the White House seized on the terrorist attacks to unleash its military assault on Afghanistan and prepare for a full-scale invasion of Iraq. The mass media dutifully ignored Powell and Rice’s previous statements. Pilger’s use of this archival footage is powerful and constitutes a damning exposure of the White House.

Pilger concludes his documentary with a direct appeal for people to challenge Washington and London. What is required, he says, is for people around the world to remember the lies and the ongoing military aggression.

“We need not accept any of this if we recognise that there are now two superpowers. One is the regime in Washington the other is public opinion now stirring all over the world. Make no mistake it is an epic struggle. The alternative is not just conquest of far away countries; it is the conquest of us, of our minds, our humanity and our self-respect. If we remain silent, victory over us is assured.”

Pilger is one of a handful of serious journalists prepared to openly challenge the Bush administration and its international allies and point to the terrible human consequences of their policies. But Pilger’s political perspective, which is aimed at pressuring rival imperialist powers to oppose the US or making appeals to the UN, weakens the documentary.

In his concluding remarks, Pilger states that the United Nations was founded “so that we would never forget the crimes of the great powers”.

This comment is false and highlights the political flaws in Pilger’s outlook. The United Nations was not established to highlight the “crimes of the great powers” but was formed in 1945 by the victors of World War II and from the outset operated as an imperialist institution.

While the UN mediated conflicts between US and the Soviet Union during the Cold War period, its central function for almost 60 years has been as a clearinghouse for imperialist intrigue and oppression against the backward countries. The most obvious recent examples were the UN backing for the 1991 Gulf War and the harsh economic sanctions and invasive weapons inspection regime imposed on Iraq over the ensuing decade.

Pilger’s inability to confront this reality means that he cannot explain why the UN failed to challenge the latest US invasion of Iraq or why it endorsed the illegal war after the fact. The viewer is left to draw the conclusion that the replacement of the US occupation of Iraq with a UN force would represent a positive alternative.

Notwithstanding this significant weakness, Pilger’s documentary is a valuable work. It delivers an important blow against the mountain of lies used to justify the US-led military aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq, and therefore deserves the widest possible audience.

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World Socialist Web Site

Stormig · January 12, 2004

And Momma Empire:

Mon 12 Jan 2004 show images

Tony Blair admitted on the BBC's Breakfast With Frost programme that he did not know whether Iraq had any WMDs

Blair: I do not know if Iraq had WMDs

FRASER NELSON

POLITICAL EDITOR

Key points

• Tony Blair was unsure when asked whether he accepted his statement that Iraq had WMD capable of being fired within 45 minutes was wrong

• The PM's position has been shifting since July last year; he is now looking for "clandestine operations" in Iraq - rather than weapons themselves

• Claims that the Iraqi Survey Group had found "clandestine laboratories" were recently dismissed as a "red herring" by US administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer

Key quote

"In the 23 months I was there, I never saw anything that I would characterise as evidence of weapons of mass destruction," he told Time magazine. Paul O’Neill, former US treasury secretary.

Story in full: TONY Blair has admitted that he does not know whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction at the time of the Iraq war, and is no longer confident of finding any.

The Prime Minister has also said he was looking for evidence of "clandestine operations" in Iraq - backing down from his earlier pledge that weapons programmes would be found rather then weapons themselves.

He also left doubt hanging over whether he will lead the Commons debate on the forthcoming Hutton Report or whether one of his ministers will be sent to do battle with Michael Howard, the Conservative leader.

Speaking on BBC1’s Breakfast with Frost programme yesterday, Mr Blair made no attempt to defend the central claim in his Iraq dossier - that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction that could be fired within 45 minutes.

When challenged if he now accepts this to be wrong, he said: "You can’t say that at this point in time. What you can say is that we received that intelligence about Saddam’s programmes and about his weapons that we acted on that; it’s the case throughout the whole of the conflict.

"I remember having conversations with the chief of defence staff and other people [who] were saying, ‘Well, we think we might have potential WMD [weapons of mass destruction] finds here or there.’ Now these things didn’t actually come to anything in the end. But ‘I don’t know’ is the answer."

"He should come clean" Shadow Foreign Secretary Michael Ancram on Tony Blair

Michael Ancram, the shadow foreign secretary, said Mr Blair did not admit to such doubts when making the case for war last year. "Once again, Tony Blair is hedging his bets. He should come clean, and explain whether his previous claim to have evidence of WMD was yet another fabrication, and if not, what that evidence was," Mr Ancram said. "You have a right to trust the Prime Minister if he tells you he has information. If he hasn’t, that raises very serious questions about the way he was conducting himself in the run-up to this war."

Mr Blair also refused to say whether he would lead the debate in the Commons on Lord Hutton’s forthcoming report into the death of Dr David Kelly, the government scientist who killed himself after being named as the source for a BBC story which No 10 sought to disprove. It was too early to decide who would speak in the debate, said the Prime Minister.

Mr Howard said it would be "inconceivable" for Mr Blair to duck out of the debate, expected next month.

The Prime Minister’s position on weapons of mass destruction has been shifting since July last year, when he said he was confident evidence of "weapons programmes" would be found in Iraq as opposed to the actual weapons detailed in the dossier he used to justify war.

Yesterday, he also appeared to drop his claims that the Iraqi Survey Group, which is still scouring Iraq for Saddam’s hidden arsenal, had found "clandestine laboratories".

This was recently dismissed as a "red herring" by Paul Bremer, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq.

Mr Blair yesterday toned down his language, claiming the discovery of "clandestine operations that should have been disclosed to the United Nations".

Paul O’Neill, a former United States treasury secretary, has added his voice to the growing level of doubt over the weapons of mass destruction evidence by saying that he had seen nothing during his time in government to support claims later made.

"In the 23 months I was there, I never saw anything that I would characterise as evidence of weapons of mass destruction," he told Time magazine.

"There were allegations and assertions by people. But I’ve been around a hell of a long time, and I know the difference between evidence and assertions and conclusions that one could draw from a set of assumptions."

On Saturday, the Danish military said its engineering troops found artillery shells north of Basra which may contain chemical blister agents.

They were wrapped in plastic, it added, and appeared to have been buried for at least ten years.

• British troops in riot gear yesterday faced Iraqi protesters in Amarah, near Basra, the day after earlier clashes killed six Iraqi civilians and wounded at least 11 others.

This article:

http://www.thescotsman.co.uk/index.cfm?id=37132004

Stormig · January 13, 2004

Enola Gay, Just War, and Mass Murder

by Scott McPherson, January 12, 2004

On December 15, 2003, the new Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles International Airport, part of the National Air and Space Museum, was opened to the public. The Center boasts a number of high-profile attractions. The SR-71 Blackbird, the Air France Concorde, Russian MIGs, and even the Spaceshuttle Enterprise can all be found in this 294,000-square-foot, 10-story hangar on the outskirts of Washington, D.C. In all, a total of 82 racers, gliders, helicopters, warplanes, and airliners are on display.

But the most historical aircraft to be found there — and certainly the most controversial — is the Enola Gay, the massive B-29 Superfortress that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945. Piloted by Major Paul Tibbets, Enola Gay’s nuclear payload left more than 40,000 Japanese civilians dead, most of them women, children, and senior citizens, and mutilated or irradiated many thousands more, as it exploded 1,890 feet above the ground. Three days later, another atomic bomb was dropped from the B-29 Bockscar, on the Japanese city of Nagasaki, killing another 40,000 civilians or more.

Japan surrendered unconditionally in less than a week. The Second World War was finally over.

More than 230,000 people would lose their lives, both directly and indirectly, as a result of the two bomb attacks, and emotions run high when discussing those two days in August almost 60 years ago.

Some question the wisdom of an act which left so many innocent people dead. When the new wing of the Air and Space Museum opened its doors, protesters, including survivors of the two bombings, were waiting to highlight this fact. “If they want to show these planes, that’s fine, but we can’t help but also demand that they show the damage and the stories that take place behind these weapons,” said Terumi Tanaka, a 71- year-old Nagasaki survivor. Minoru Nishino, a 71-year-old Hiroshima survivor, told in vivid detail his own experience: “I was 13 when I saw this airplane crossing the sky, just before I was blown to the ground with my skin peeling off,” he said.

Yet apologists for the bombings remain unfazed by any criticism. For them, the war against Japan was a “good war.” Japan had initiated hostilities against the United States, and drastic measures were essential to defend the United States from possible annihilation.

Furthermore, claim the supporters of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, the U.S. government was actually acting in the interests of the Japanese people by bringing the war to a close using nuclear weapons, as many more civilians would probably have been killed in an invasion of the Japanese mainland than were killed in the atomic bombings. Hundreds of thousands of U.S. soldiers could also have been killed in that invasion.

The trouble is, these positions don’t stand up to moral scrutiny. There is no excuse for attacking innocent people.

Governments exist solely to defend the individual rights of citizens within a determined political boundary — they serve no other rightful purpose. On the domestic front, this entails the employment of police to respond to emergency calls from crime victims and the establishment of courts of law to determine the possible guilt and punishment of those who have been accused of violating the rights of fellow citizens. Civil courts are needed to settle private disputes that arise from honest misunderstandings and disagreements, such as breach of contract.

The duty of government to protect individual rights also extends to protecting citizens from foreign governments. Should one nation-state decide to attack another, the government of the defending nation has an equally important moral responsibility to shield its citizens from the aggressor, by deploying its military in their defense.

Repelling immediate attack may prove sufficient to put an end to any such threat, as happened when the Continental Army forced the British to surrender their hold over the 13 American colonies or as could have happened if the Confederacy had succeeded in driving back Union forces in the War Between the States in 1861. No further action was or would have been needed to end those conflicts. Still, greater measures may be required to protect a populace from a foreign menace, such as the total destruction of the rival nation’s ability to make war. Consequently, in the interests of national or collective self-defense, the theory of “just war” arises. (See Patrick Stephens’s commentary, “The Justice of War.”)

The just-war theory holds, among other things, that if one nation attacks another, and nothing less than complete destruction of the foreign war machine — total war — will suffice to restrain future acts of violence, then moral responsibility for casualties — military and civilian — must lie at the feet of the attacking, not the defending, nation. After all, the defending government has a duty to protect the rights of its citizen.

An analogy provides the perfect example: If a gunman began shooting at you from the cover of a crowd of people and, with nowhere to escape, you respond by firing back to kill your attacker, then any damage you may inflict on the bystanders is the fault of the gunman.

“Just war” or not, there are immutable moral restraints placed on all participants in any conflict. “War,” wrote Herbert Spencer, “is a great evil,” visiting carnage, ruin, and loss of life on untold numbers of human beings. For centuries, it has been understood that noncombatants should be spared the hell of war, as they are its innocent bystanders. Warfare is meant to be conducted only against those who are actively participating in the conflict. “Old-fashioned international law had two excellent devices to accomplish this goal,” says Murray Rothbard: “the ‘laws of war,’ and the ‘laws of neutrality.’ ... The laws of neutrality were designed to keep any war confined to the warring States themselves, without attacks on nonwarring States.... The ‘laws of war,’ for their part, were designed to limit as much as possible the invasion by warring States of the rights of civilians.” [Emphasis added]

To continue with the analogy: The victim of the gunman’s attack in the crowded place nonetheless retains a moral responsibility to avoid killing innocent people if possible. For instance, he should not be allowed to fire indiscriminately into the crowd. To be considered within the realm of justifiable defensive action required for self-preservation, his efforts should be concentrated solely on defeating his attacker. (Of course, if feasible, he should retreat, which is consistent with self-preservation while totally eliminating any possibility of “collateral damage.”)

In other words, it has long been considered the moral responsibility of warring governments to avoid, wherever possible, inflicting harm on civilians who are not directly part of the war effort. They are as much the victims of war as the defenders. To deliberately attack a civilian, non-combat-related target, such as a city, is considered outside the scope of legitimate defensive action in wartime. It is a violation of the laws of war.

It should be emphasized that not every civilian death that resulted from U.S. attacks on Japanese targets during the war is morally condemnable. On the contrary, taking those actions necessary to prevent further possible attacks on the United States, e.g., destruction of Japan’s military capabilities, were not only legitimate but essential if the U.S. government was to fulfill its responsibility to the American people. Nations do not have the privilege of fleeing from an invader to safer ground. Moral responsibility for any civilians who were accidentally killed during counterattacks on justifiable military targets rests rightly with the Japanese government.

Aside from dropping nuclear bombs on large civilian populations, other options were available to America’s military planners to finish the war. By August 1945, Japan was completely on the ropes. Japanese forces had been successfully repelled, by conventional means, from Iwo Jimo, Okinawa, the Philippines, and the Solomon Islands. Japan was so beaten that in the last months of the war thousands of kamikaze pilots were actually flying suicide missions against American navy ships, and little effort was made to defend against regular U.S. air raids on Tokyo and elsewhere. U.S. forces were poised to invade Japan itself, and there was little the Japanese could have done to prevent this eventuality.

Can the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima be justified on the grounds that many thousands of U.S. troops would have been killed in an invasion?

Certainly not. A soldier is, like it or not, a tool of the government whose army he serves in. Soldiers are aware, when they put on a uniform, that the ultimate sacrifice may be asked of them. They are in the service to kill enemy soldiers. If they have to give up their lives in order that a noncombatant — even if he is a citizen of the very nation the soldier is fighting — should live, then that is the price that they may have to pay. (Conscription, as a coercive act, makes a victim of the individual forced into service, but does not justify making victims of noncombatants.)

Of course, defenders of the bombings find final refuge in their claim that an invasion of Japan would probably have killed more civilians than the nukes did. That is pure speculation. It also sounds a lot like an Orwellian “we had to kill innocent people in order to possibly save other innocent people” argument. There is no way of knowing for sure what would have happened under those circumstances.

It is highly improbable that the Japanese emperor would have fought to the last man. Most likely, the government would have surrendered when the cost or probable cost became “too high” (as it did after Hiroshima and Nagasaki). How do we know that, with an armada of troop ships entering their ports, or following a successful beachhead, the Japanese government would not have surrendered in the face of inevitable defeat, saving many thousands of lives?

And here “just war” advocates who support the bombings will find that they are entertaining an inconsistency. On the one hand, they want to blame Japan, or at least absolve the U.S. government, for the civilian deaths caused by the U.S. atomic bombs, because Japan had started the war. At the same time, they do not see that all innocent people killed in an invasion would have been the fault of the Japanese government, and so cannot exonerate, in moral terms, the U.S. government’s blatant attack on civilians.

Another possible solution could have been military containment. Given Japan’s desperate measures at the end of the war, it is highly likely that U.S. armed forces could have prevented Japan from posing any further threat to the United States by sealing off the Japanese military to prevent further strikes.

No amount of patriotic fervor, excuse-making, or rationalization can change this simple truth: the cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima were targeted specifically because of their large civilian populations, and precisely to maximize the number of civilian casualties and force a Japanese surrender without invasion. Adding insult to injury, this was done at the very time that Japan’s military might was in total decline. There was no military advantage to leveling those two cities. Dropping massive nuclear bombs on those locations can only be considered a violation of the laws of war, and a war crime. It is the deliberate pursuit of civilian deaths in the A-bomb attacks that rightly deserves condemnation. Those 230,000 deaths did not constitute an unfortunate consequence of “just war” — it was mass murder.

It is important to note that none of the foregoing should be construed as a criticism of the “just war” theory. Actually, this theory is a sound libertarian solution to what is essentially a nonlibertarian predicament. In the modern age of warfare, avoiding civilian deaths is very difficult, if not impossible. Libertarians hold as their highest principle that individual rights should be paramount above all else. The “just war” position on noncombat casualties is meant to bolster this principle, not provide an exception to the rule. Every government has the duty of protecting the rights of the citizens it was formed to defend — even if this requires killing people.

The point here is that the Enola Gay’s mission was not consistent with a “just war” policy. It was meant to cause massive destruction and loss of life, not wipe out any legitimate military targets that posed a danger to the people of the United States. In this sense, the U.S. government is responsible for the largest act of terrorism in the history of the world.

War is indeed hell, and all attempts should be made to prevent it. When the United States is engaged in a defensive war, however, all lawful means should be used to protect American lives — but it does not allow for an open season on innocent civilians. Even in wartime, governments have a moral responsibility to avoid unnecessary civilian deaths, as prescribed in the laws of war that have guided military conduct for centuries. Enola Gay played a major part in the two darkest days of the U.S. government’s history — a tool of mass murder in an otherwise just war.

Scott McPherson is a policy advisor at The Future of Freedom Foundation. Send him email.

http://www.fff.org/comment/com0401d.asp

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