Wednesday, September 10, 2003
What’s Happening, Iraq:
Status quo on the ground. Casualties continue, pressure on / pleading with foreign governments to pitch in; behind-the-scenes negotiations on a new UN resolution- thus far the U.S. hasn’t acceded to enough UN/foreign involvement and control.
Vietnam Parallel: All parallels are inexact, but Pepe Escobar of Asia Times online (atimes.com) draws the Vietnam parallel. He seizes on General Giap, the master architect of the Vietnamese strategy that defeated the U.S., that Giap's efforts have been carefully studied by the Iraqis.
Just as it took a few years for the Americans to lose the hearts and minds of the South Vietnamese, it took them only a few weeks to lose the hearts and minds of the majority of Iraqis - which ultimately means losing the war, whatever the strategic final result. Topographic denials - this is the Mesopotamian desert, not the Indochinese jungle - don't work, nor do denials saying that the Iraqis are not as politicized as the Vietnamese were by communism. These totally miss the point: as happened in Vietnam, what is happening now in Iraq has everything to do with patriotism and nationalism.
Former Iraqi vice premier Tariq Aziz used to say, before the US invasion, "Let our cities be our swamps and our buildings our jungles." Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, aka "Comical Ali", the unforgettable former minister of information, used to say Iraq would be "another Indochina". The guerrilla war strategy against what was considered an inevitable US invasion has been perfected in Iraq for years. And the master strategist was neither an Assyrian nor a Mesopotamian general, but the legendary Vo Nguyen Giap, the Vietnamese general who coordinated the victories against French colonialism and US meddling.
Iraqi strategists - from army officials to Ba'ath Party officials - have always been thorough students of the Vietnam War, or American War, as it is referred to in Vietnam.
Verbiage: Recall Vietnamization? Get used to seeing ‘the U.S. is Iraqicizing its operations, or the process of Iraqinization.
Incompetence: More admissions as to lack of planning, anticipation. The Administration is telling Congress that they hadn’t anticipated the damage to the Iraqi infrastructure (Saddam’s fault), the lack of help / ratting from the Iraqis (Iraqis’ fault), etc. The Independent's Robert Fisk. reported on the Senate hearings:
Assistant Under Secretary Douglas Feith, one of Rumsfeld's "neo-cons", revealed that an office for "post-war planning" had only been opened three weeks earlier. He and Under Secretary of State Marc Grossman conceded that the Pentagon had been "thinking" about post-war Iraq for 10 months. "There are enormous uncertainties," Feith said. "The most you can do in planning is develop concepts."
Concepts?????
The $87 Billion (and more): The LA Times has been doing yoeperson’s (sic) work, …some fine reporting. Warren Vieth and Esther Schrader took apart the numbers behind the Administration’s request for an additional $87 billion, emphasizing that "even the additional $87 billion it was seeking from a wary Congress would fall far short of what is needed for postwar reconstruction."
If you follow the numbers, there is a reconstruction funding gap" of approximately $55 billion. Add that to the original outlay of $79 billion and we’re up to $221 billion.
What does that mean? A deficit approaching / reaching $600 billion. Time to again calculate how much this was the customary deception or customary incompetence. I keep concluding that it’s a ‘blend’. Whichever, for perspective, the requested $87 billion is merely 10 times the EPA budget or twice what’s spent on unemployment benefits.
Al-Qaeda and Iraq: The LA Times (Greg Miller) doesn’t pussy-foot around with the Al-Qaeda~Iraq connection or lack thereof.
But evidence of ties to Al Qaeda were flimsy at best. And the Al Qaeda allegations were never as prominent in the White House's case for war as Iraq's alleged stocks of weapons of mass destruction, its flouting of U.N. sanctions, and the argument that installing a democratic regime could transform the Middle East.
Some experts and U.S. officials believe that the war against Iraq has weakened the war on terrorism, distracting attention and sapping military and intelligence resources that had been trained against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere.
WTO / Cancun:
Remember the hot issue pre-9/11? Globalization. It’s still out there. Two good entries on the meetings that began today.
(1) George Monbiot in the Guardian:
Outside the world trade talks beginning in Cancun in Mexico tomorrow, two battles will be fought. The first will be the battle between the campaigners demanding fair trade and the rich-nation delegates demanding unfair trade. The second will be the dispute now brewing within the ranks of those who claim to be helping the poor.
The problem all those who want a fairer deal face is that there has seldom, if ever, been a trade treaty struck between rich and poor which does not amount to legalized theft. The draft agreement the members of the World Trade Organization will discuss this week is no exception. While it permits the rich nations to continue protecting their markets, it seeks to force the poor nations to open their economies to several novel forms of institutional piracy.
(2) Tom Hayden for Alternet, a companion piece for Bill Moyers’ NOW last week which addressed ‘globalization and women’, which could have been subtitled, The Horrors of Privatization. See the NOW web site for more (pbs.org/NOW)
Cancun's water supply was privatized by an Enron subsidiary in the mid-Nineties. The water, according to environmental specialists, is dirtier than before but costs consumers four times as much.
There is also a push to open rich genetic diversity and forests surrounding Cancun to corporate prospectors under privatization provisions of the Agreement on Trade-Related Intellectual Property (TRIPS).
In hopes of salvaging a victory in Cancun, the U.S. recently ended its opposition to a plan for poor countries to obtain generic medicines to treat HIV and a handful of other life-threatening diseases. But that deal, in response to global grassroots pressure, is far from nailed down, and will be overshadowed by other conflicts this week.
Venezuela:
Let’s not forget this one. The Administration is still seeking a "recall" of Hugo Chavez; many papers picked up the AP/Reuters item in which Chavez accused the US of "meddling"... again. Since Venezuela produces more oil than Iraq, our ambassador, Charles Shapiro, is reportedly ‘working the streets’ and long-time troublemaker Otto Reich is still around, it’s time to review the Chile coup we orchestrated in the early ‘70’s and to remind our representatives that they should speak out on this issue, as well.
Overtime pay victory
A victory in the Senate! Senate Democrats succeeded in getting an amendment passed to block the White House proposal that sought to restrict overtime pay. The 54-45 vote meant that some Republicans broke from their usually disciplined block
The House has already approved the Bush proposal, so the conference committee will seek to reconcile.
The Republican deserters: Campbell (CO), Chaffee (RI), Murkowski (AK), Snowe (ME), Spectre (PA), and Stevens (AK).
Bustamante as Leftist! He has stood out for his advocating for taxing the rich. And, he leads in the polls! The LA Times' Matea Gold notes a solidifying of his drift.
In his quest for the governor's office, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante is increasingly veering left with appeals to immigrants and working-class voters, shucking off the label of moderate Democrat that he has worn for years.
By pairing his personal biography with a campaign platform aimed at blue-collar workers, Bustamante has positioned himself as a staunch liberal — and is depicting himself as the antithesis of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The move reflects the dynamics of a multi-candidate recall election in which the winner need only get the most votes, not the majority. That has allowed Bustamante, whose political career began in a conservative Central Valley district, to run a campaign aimed directly at liberal Democratic partisans.
State of the media:
CNN has had virtually zero coverage of the WTO meetings in Cancun, yet booked Britney Spears for Crossfire, where she "weighed in" as to the need to be unquestioning in support of Junior. Of course, the foreign press is ‘front-paging’ the conference.
A (lengthy) comment on Bush Administration: A reader (John Shaw of Seattle) of Eric Alterman’s column at msnbc.com, wrote in a beaut, which I’m happy to re-produce.
Is it possible that what we think of as Bush failures, he thinks of as successes? Certainly the enormous budget deficit is deliberate, having been a central Republican tenet since Reaganomics, with the long-term goal being the fiscally forced elimination of Social Security, since the R’s have conceded political-ideological defeat on this issue. Given that they count this apparent failure as a success (and I don’t see how anybody could argue that the deficit is inadvertant), what other obvious failures could be seen as successes by completely unscrupulous villains?
High unemployment: Forces long term wage and benefit concessions, puts unions on their heels. Success.
Increase in homelessness: Increases economic insecurity for the lower classes, making them more likely to docilely accept terrible work situations. Success.
Defeat in the drug war: Gives an excuse to lock up huge percentages of poor people, especially poor people of color, especially poor men of color. Given the historically inarguable "conservative" animus against people of color, especially men of color, I think they’d chalk this up as success too. The addicts not in prison are destroying their lives and severely damaging the lives of people around them. Success.
War on terror and insufficient homeland security: Since the Bush administration OFFICIALLY stated that an invasion of Iraq would likely result in INCREASED terrorism against Americans, I can only imagine that they count the lack of a terrorist sequel of the September 11 Atrocity as a failure. Karl Rove saw Bush’s numbers skyrocket when foreigners murdered thousands of Americans. Given their completely unscrupulous villainy, why should we trust that they don’t deliberately want that to happen again, especially since their actions seem to show it?
Americans have a tremendous capacity for denial. We simply don’t want to believe that our leaders really, really mean to do most of us serious, serious harm.
-R
Status quo on the ground. Casualties continue, pressure on / pleading with foreign governments to pitch in; behind-the-scenes negotiations on a new UN resolution- thus far the U.S. hasn’t acceded to enough UN/foreign involvement and control.
Vietnam Parallel: All parallels are inexact, but Pepe Escobar of Asia Times online (atimes.com) draws the Vietnam parallel. He seizes on General Giap, the master architect of the Vietnamese strategy that defeated the U.S., that Giap's efforts have been carefully studied by the Iraqis.
Just as it took a few years for the Americans to lose the hearts and minds of the South Vietnamese, it took them only a few weeks to lose the hearts and minds of the majority of Iraqis - which ultimately means losing the war, whatever the strategic final result. Topographic denials - this is the Mesopotamian desert, not the Indochinese jungle - don't work, nor do denials saying that the Iraqis are not as politicized as the Vietnamese were by communism. These totally miss the point: as happened in Vietnam, what is happening now in Iraq has everything to do with patriotism and nationalism.
Former Iraqi vice premier Tariq Aziz used to say, before the US invasion, "Let our cities be our swamps and our buildings our jungles." Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, aka "Comical Ali", the unforgettable former minister of information, used to say Iraq would be "another Indochina". The guerrilla war strategy against what was considered an inevitable US invasion has been perfected in Iraq for years. And the master strategist was neither an Assyrian nor a Mesopotamian general, but the legendary Vo Nguyen Giap, the Vietnamese general who coordinated the victories against French colonialism and US meddling.
Iraqi strategists - from army officials to Ba'ath Party officials - have always been thorough students of the Vietnam War, or American War, as it is referred to in Vietnam.
Verbiage: Recall Vietnamization? Get used to seeing ‘the U.S. is Iraqicizing its operations, or the process of Iraqinization.
Incompetence: More admissions as to lack of planning, anticipation. The Administration is telling Congress that they hadn’t anticipated the damage to the Iraqi infrastructure (Saddam’s fault), the lack of help / ratting from the Iraqis (Iraqis’ fault), etc. The Independent's Robert Fisk. reported on the Senate hearings:
Assistant Under Secretary Douglas Feith, one of Rumsfeld's "neo-cons", revealed that an office for "post-war planning" had only been opened three weeks earlier. He and Under Secretary of State Marc Grossman conceded that the Pentagon had been "thinking" about post-war Iraq for 10 months. "There are enormous uncertainties," Feith said. "The most you can do in planning is develop concepts."
Concepts?????
The $87 Billion (and more): The LA Times has been doing yoeperson’s (sic) work, …some fine reporting. Warren Vieth and Esther Schrader took apart the numbers behind the Administration’s request for an additional $87 billion, emphasizing that "even the additional $87 billion it was seeking from a wary Congress would fall far short of what is needed for postwar reconstruction."
If you follow the numbers, there is a reconstruction funding gap" of approximately $55 billion. Add that to the original outlay of $79 billion and we’re up to $221 billion.
What does that mean? A deficit approaching / reaching $600 billion. Time to again calculate how much this was the customary deception or customary incompetence. I keep concluding that it’s a ‘blend’. Whichever, for perspective, the requested $87 billion is merely 10 times the EPA budget or twice what’s spent on unemployment benefits.
Al-Qaeda and Iraq: The LA Times (Greg Miller) doesn’t pussy-foot around with the Al-Qaeda~Iraq connection or lack thereof.
But evidence of ties to Al Qaeda were flimsy at best. And the Al Qaeda allegations were never as prominent in the White House's case for war as Iraq's alleged stocks of weapons of mass destruction, its flouting of U.N. sanctions, and the argument that installing a democratic regime could transform the Middle East.
Some experts and U.S. officials believe that the war against Iraq has weakened the war on terrorism, distracting attention and sapping military and intelligence resources that had been trained against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere.
WTO / Cancun:
Remember the hot issue pre-9/11? Globalization. It’s still out there. Two good entries on the meetings that began today.
(1) George Monbiot in the Guardian:
Outside the world trade talks beginning in Cancun in Mexico tomorrow, two battles will be fought. The first will be the battle between the campaigners demanding fair trade and the rich-nation delegates demanding unfair trade. The second will be the dispute now brewing within the ranks of those who claim to be helping the poor.
The problem all those who want a fairer deal face is that there has seldom, if ever, been a trade treaty struck between rich and poor which does not amount to legalized theft. The draft agreement the members of the World Trade Organization will discuss this week is no exception. While it permits the rich nations to continue protecting their markets, it seeks to force the poor nations to open their economies to several novel forms of institutional piracy.
(2) Tom Hayden for Alternet, a companion piece for Bill Moyers’ NOW last week which addressed ‘globalization and women’, which could have been subtitled, The Horrors of Privatization. See the NOW web site for more (pbs.org/NOW)
Cancun's water supply was privatized by an Enron subsidiary in the mid-Nineties. The water, according to environmental specialists, is dirtier than before but costs consumers four times as much.
There is also a push to open rich genetic diversity and forests surrounding Cancun to corporate prospectors under privatization provisions of the Agreement on Trade-Related Intellectual Property (TRIPS).
In hopes of salvaging a victory in Cancun, the U.S. recently ended its opposition to a plan for poor countries to obtain generic medicines to treat HIV and a handful of other life-threatening diseases. But that deal, in response to global grassroots pressure, is far from nailed down, and will be overshadowed by other conflicts this week.
Venezuela:
Let’s not forget this one. The Administration is still seeking a "recall" of Hugo Chavez; many papers picked up the AP/Reuters item in which Chavez accused the US of "meddling"... again. Since Venezuela produces more oil than Iraq, our ambassador, Charles Shapiro, is reportedly ‘working the streets’ and long-time troublemaker Otto Reich is still around, it’s time to review the Chile coup we orchestrated in the early ‘70’s and to remind our representatives that they should speak out on this issue, as well.
Overtime pay victory
A victory in the Senate! Senate Democrats succeeded in getting an amendment passed to block the White House proposal that sought to restrict overtime pay. The 54-45 vote meant that some Republicans broke from their usually disciplined block
The House has already approved the Bush proposal, so the conference committee will seek to reconcile.
The Republican deserters: Campbell (CO), Chaffee (RI), Murkowski (AK), Snowe (ME), Spectre (PA), and Stevens (AK).
Bustamante as Leftist! He has stood out for his advocating for taxing the rich. And, he leads in the polls! The LA Times' Matea Gold notes a solidifying of his drift.
In his quest for the governor's office, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante is increasingly veering left with appeals to immigrants and working-class voters, shucking off the label of moderate Democrat that he has worn for years.
By pairing his personal biography with a campaign platform aimed at blue-collar workers, Bustamante has positioned himself as a staunch liberal — and is depicting himself as the antithesis of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The move reflects the dynamics of a multi-candidate recall election in which the winner need only get the most votes, not the majority. That has allowed Bustamante, whose political career began in a conservative Central Valley district, to run a campaign aimed directly at liberal Democratic partisans.
State of the media:
CNN has had virtually zero coverage of the WTO meetings in Cancun, yet booked Britney Spears for Crossfire, where she "weighed in" as to the need to be unquestioning in support of Junior. Of course, the foreign press is ‘front-paging’ the conference.
A (lengthy) comment on Bush Administration: A reader (John Shaw of Seattle) of Eric Alterman’s column at msnbc.com, wrote in a beaut, which I’m happy to re-produce.
Is it possible that what we think of as Bush failures, he thinks of as successes? Certainly the enormous budget deficit is deliberate, having been a central Republican tenet since Reaganomics, with the long-term goal being the fiscally forced elimination of Social Security, since the R’s have conceded political-ideological defeat on this issue. Given that they count this apparent failure as a success (and I don’t see how anybody could argue that the deficit is inadvertant), what other obvious failures could be seen as successes by completely unscrupulous villains?
High unemployment: Forces long term wage and benefit concessions, puts unions on their heels. Success.
Increase in homelessness: Increases economic insecurity for the lower classes, making them more likely to docilely accept terrible work situations. Success.
Defeat in the drug war: Gives an excuse to lock up huge percentages of poor people, especially poor people of color, especially poor men of color. Given the historically inarguable "conservative" animus against people of color, especially men of color, I think they’d chalk this up as success too. The addicts not in prison are destroying their lives and severely damaging the lives of people around them. Success.
War on terror and insufficient homeland security: Since the Bush administration OFFICIALLY stated that an invasion of Iraq would likely result in INCREASED terrorism against Americans, I can only imagine that they count the lack of a terrorist sequel of the September 11 Atrocity as a failure. Karl Rove saw Bush’s numbers skyrocket when foreigners murdered thousands of Americans. Given their completely unscrupulous villainy, why should we trust that they don’t deliberately want that to happen again, especially since their actions seem to show it?
Americans have a tremendous capacity for denial. We simply don’t want to believe that our leaders really, really mean to do most of us serious, serious harm.
-R
