Tuesday, December 23, 2003
"Saddam had chemical weapons in the 1980's, and it didn't make any difference to U.S. policy. The embrace of Saddam in the 1980's and what it emboldened him to do should caution us as Americans that we have to look closely at all our murky alliances. Shaking hands with dictators today can turn them into Saddams tomorrow."-Tom Blanton, National Security Archive
The Capture, Re-visited,: Listening to the celebratory oratory about The Capture of Saddam, followed by ‘it’s yielded documents, leading to hundreds of arrests’, (suggesting great progress w/ The Occupation), I found myself thinking of the writings of Victor Klemperer. He was the author of I Will Bear Witness…, a diary of a Jewish man living in Dresden, from 1933 to 1945. [He survived because he had an Aryan spouse.] However dramatic such an association is, my connection was to U.S. propaganda which was relatively subtle but is considerably less so now, and seemingly ‘24/7’.
In the last blog I referred to the emerging claims- via foreign sources- that the Kurds had found Saddam, that they informed the U.S. of their discovery and the U.S. military took the credit. Two days ago I noted, ‘…not sure how much this matters, in the scheme of things’. Well, I think it does…if we consider this narrative to be part of the chronic distortion of ‘the truth’, part of a perpetual propaganda campaign, the ongoing polarizing of ‘you’re either with us or…’
And, now Libya’s change is supposed to be a bi-product of ‘being firm’, attacking Iraq. Factually, one can pretty much deride the claim. Libya yielded to economic pressure, as Libya has had strangling UN sanctions for a decade. And, again, it was European diplomacy, not the U.S. invasion that did the trick.
The Guardian (Leader) makes a contribution
“If back-slapping is in order, congratulations should also go to Robin Cook, the man who relaunched British relations with Libya in 1999 and on whose policy of critical engagement this success is founded. http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foreignaffairs/comment/0,11538,1111575,00.html
But, regardless, we know that the drumbeat of lies convinces many.
Pepe Escobar of The Asia Times (online) adds his characteristic note:
An Arabic copy of Crime and Punishment was found in a shack near the "spider hole" where he was captured.
...
Holes big enough to accommodate armies of spiders remain in the carefully-choreographed Pentagon screenplay. Suppose Saddam - well versed in the treachery levels in the Arab world and well aware that a close family friend had denounced his sons Uday and Qusay - had indeed chosen to hide in a hole in the ground only a few hours before his capture. It's still remarkable how the "rat" managed to elude capture when thousands of American soldiers were combing every inch of the Sunni triangle for months. And if he really had US$750,000 with him in $100 bills, it wouldn't take a lot of human intelligence to just follow the money.
...
Not only one of his daughters, but local villagers, are absolutely convinced that he was drugged before the capture, a vital element in the Pentagon choreography to show to the world - especially the Arab world - the picture of a disoriented bum.... www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EL19Ak01.html
Speaking of Propaganda… Let’s have more ‘good news’ from Iraq! The Pentagon’s next effort, via the Toronto Star (Antonia Zerbisias)
"As if anybody wants to relive 2003 and its almost relentlessly depressing headlines. Not that good news is ever real news, no matter how much the White House wishes it were so.
"That's why the Pentagon is currently building what I call its own GNN — for Good News Network — to do an end run around the networks and beam directly from its press centre in Iraq. Just in time for election year 2004, the satellite service will counteract all those terrible stories of bombings, shootings, killings and maiming from the, you know, war.
"Instead, TV stations stateside that pick up its feeds will be able to telecast happy tales of school or clinic reopenings. (Not that journalists are allowed unfettered access to Iraqi hospitals but that's another matter.)
"As Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Joe Yoswa told the New York Times yesterday: "It's to provide the full news story." http://www.torontostar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1071660248202&call_pageid=970599109774&col=Columnist969907624636
The Terror Alerts: Reason for Concern?
The LA Times (Josh Meyer and Greg Krikorian) has the angle that this time Washington is nervous. Aren’t you thrilled that the Bush administration has starved “homeland security” and pulled resources out of Afghanistan in order to fight the needless, expensive, destructive war in Iraq?
Al Qaeda operatives may be plotting several unrelated attacks in the United States, targeting not only major cities but also remote bulwarks of the "critical infrastructure" in an effort to cause mass casualties and major economic damage throughout the nation, U.S. officials said Monday.
Senior U.S. counter-terrorism officials said they have been unable to nail down specifics about a time or place for any potential attacks, despite a mad scramble to do so since receiving an alarming cache of corroborated intelligence beginning Thursday and Friday I have never seen the national security leadership as tense and anxious as they are right now," said a second senior federal law enforcement official. He said that even the timing of the raising of the threat level was moved up a day because of rapidly developing concerns over the weekend. Bush administration officials were so concerned, he said, that they sent a plane to Missouri on Saturday to bring Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft back to Washington from vacation.
"In the past, there were disagreements over whether [the elevated alert] was needed," that official said. "This time, everyone said, 'Yeah, let's do it.' It is the most specific and credible information we've had, period." http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-alert23dec23,1,173997,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines
The Problem that is Pakistan:
Finally, no longer consigned to blogs and Bill Moyers, Pakistan makes the front pages of both the Washington Post and New York Times and is a leading story on NPR.
The Post’s Joby Warrick’s headline, “Nuclear Program in Iran Tied To Pakistan; Complex Network Acquired Technology and Blueprints
Evidence discovered in a probe of Iran's secret nuclear program points overwhelmingly to Pakistan as the source of crucial technology that put Iran on a fast track toward becoming a nuclear weapons power, according to U.S. and European officials familiar with the investigation. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18170-2003Dec20.html
The Times (William J. Broad, David Rohde, David E. Sanger) focused on nukes. We’ve know, of course, that Pakistan provided nuclear technology to North Korea, Iran and Libya (and not Iraq!) Even the Pakistanis are beginning to drop their denials.
A lengthy investigation of the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan, by American and European intelligence agencies and international nuclear inspectors has forced Pakistani officials to question his aides and openly confront evidence that the country was the source of crucial technology to enrich uranium for Iran, North Korea and possibly other nations.
Until the past few weeks, Pakistani officials had denied evidence that the A. Q. Khan Research Laboratories, named for the man considered a national hero, had ever been a source of weapons technology to countries aspiring to acquire fissile material. Now they are backing away from those denials, while insisting that there has been no transfer of nuclear technology since President Pervez Musharraf took power four years ago. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/22/international/asia/22STAN.html
Ideology over Competence It’s breath-taking. Josh Marshall, Laura Rosen and Colin Soloway give a vivid illustration how conservative loyalists get rewarded regardless of their competence/experience.
By making partisan loyalty their primary criteria, the administration ruled out most of the people with experience in the field and restricted themselves to politically trustworthy Republicans, many of whom, though often well-meaning and admirably willing to serve their country in a very dangerous place, had little to no experience to prepare them for the challenges they'd encounter in Iraq.
A typical example is Dan Senor. Before attending Harvard Business School from 1999 to 2001, Senor was a staffer for then-Sen. Spencer Abraham of Michigan. After receiving his MBA, he went to the Carlyle Group, where he was a venture capitalist from 2001 to 2003. Senor left Carlyle in 2003 for a brief stint as White House Press Secretary Scott McLellan's deputy before shipping off to Iraq. Though he showed up in Iraq as a junior press handler, Senor is now Bremer's senior advisor and for most of last summer he was in charge of organizing Iraq's post-Saddam media, an effort which most have rated as little short of a disaster. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0312.whoswho.html
Vietnam Massacre:
Incredible that the Toledo Blade has driven this story. (Michael D. Sallah, Mitch Weiss)
The Army is unable to find crucial records of some of the worst atrocities by an elite platoon in Vietnam, casting doubts on whether the American public will ever know the extent of the unit’s actions 36 years ago.
Officials have searched U.S. record centers for documents about Tiger Force’s killing of women and children in a remote farming valley in June and July, 1967. But officials can’t explain why the documents are missing. http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20031221/SRTIGERFORCE/112210103
US security personnel are victimizing journalists:
“A Repressive Embarrassment” is what the Toledo Blade called it. Quite a paper that Blade! This is their editorial:
Anyone who thinks the administration and its law enforcement chief, Attorney General John Ashcroft, aren’t out to impede a free press need only hear how the federal government is treating foreign journalists coming to this country on assignment.
Without notification to foreign media outlets, the immigration and customs people are arresting, detaining, and deporting journalists arriving here without special visas. This is so even when they come from nations whose citizens can stay for up to 90 days without a visa if they are arriving as tourists or on business.
If that threatening form of registration is not enough, members of the press arriving without the visas, which no one told them they needed, are treated like criminals, handcuffed as they’re marched through airports, photographed, fingerprinted, and their DNA taken.
Peter Krobath, chief editor for the Austrian movie magazine Skip, was held overnight in a cold room with 45 others who arrived without the visa. The room had two open toilets, a metal bench, and a concrete bench. He was here to interview movie star Ben Affleck and see the movie Paycheck. http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/artikkel?SearchID=7315676733687&Avis=TO&Dato=20031213&Kategori=OPINION02&Lopenr=112130159&Ref=AR
Noam Chomsky: Selective memory and a dishonest doctrine
At least the Toronto Star prints him.
All people who have any concern for human rights, justice and integrity should be overjoyed by the capture of Saddam Hussein, and should be awaiting a fair trial for him by an international tribunal.
An indictment of Saddam's atrocities would include not only his slaughter and gassing of Kurds in 1988 but also, rather crucially, his massacre of the Shiite rebels who might have overthrown him in 1991.
At the time, Washington and its allies held the "strikingly unanimous view (that) whatever the sins of the Iraqi leader, he offered the West and the region a better hope for his country's stability than did those who have suffered his repression," reported Alan Cowell in the New York Times.
Last December, Jack Straw, Britain's foreign secretary, released a dossier of Saddam's crimes drawn almost entirely from the period of firm U.S.-British support of Saddam.
With the usual display of moral integrity, Straw's report and Washington's reaction overlooked that support.
Such practices reflect a trap deeply rooted in the intellectual culture generally — a trap sometimes called the doctrine of change of course, invoked in the United States every two or three years. http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_PrintFriendly&c=Article&cid=1071961807419&call_pageid=968332188854
Voter Rights: Trial ordered in Florida felon voting lawsuit
Florida papers are on this. From the AP/Bradenton.com (Adrian Sainz).
A federal appeals court Friday ordered a trial in a lawsuit which claims that Florida's law barring felons from voting is unconstitutional because it discriminates against blacks.
The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta decided there are enough relevant facts to allow lawyers on both sides of the issue to present evidence at a hearing. A three-judge panel voted 2-1 to send the case back to a trial judge to hear arguments that the law violates equal protection and voting rights claims.
The court's ruling reversed U.S. District Judge James Lawrence King's July ruling dismissing the case.
"Our clients are going to get a full hearing on the evidence in court," said attorney Jessie Allen, who represented the plaintiffs. "We're just thrilled."
Alia Faraj, a spokeswoman for Gov. Jeb Bush, said the governor's lawyers were reviewing the decision. She pointed out that the decision doesn't issue a finding on the merits of the case, but that it simply orders a trial.
Roughly 600,000 Floridians are banned from voting for the rest of their lives because of felony convictions, according to the Florida Equal Rights Voting Project. More than a third of those are black, according to American Civil Liberties Union estimates.
Florida's law denies ex-felons the right to vote unless they take steps to have their civil rights restored by the state. Six other states have similar laws. http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/7534037.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
-R
The Capture, Re-visited,: Listening to the celebratory oratory about The Capture of Saddam, followed by ‘it’s yielded documents, leading to hundreds of arrests’, (suggesting great progress w/ The Occupation), I found myself thinking of the writings of Victor Klemperer. He was the author of I Will Bear Witness…, a diary of a Jewish man living in Dresden, from 1933 to 1945. [He survived because he had an Aryan spouse.] However dramatic such an association is, my connection was to U.S. propaganda which was relatively subtle but is considerably less so now, and seemingly ‘24/7’.
In the last blog I referred to the emerging claims- via foreign sources- that the Kurds had found Saddam, that they informed the U.S. of their discovery and the U.S. military took the credit. Two days ago I noted, ‘…not sure how much this matters, in the scheme of things’. Well, I think it does…if we consider this narrative to be part of the chronic distortion of ‘the truth’, part of a perpetual propaganda campaign, the ongoing polarizing of ‘you’re either with us or…’
And, now Libya’s change is supposed to be a bi-product of ‘being firm’, attacking Iraq. Factually, one can pretty much deride the claim. Libya yielded to economic pressure, as Libya has had strangling UN sanctions for a decade. And, again, it was European diplomacy, not the U.S. invasion that did the trick.
The Guardian (Leader) makes a contribution
“If back-slapping is in order, congratulations should also go to Robin Cook, the man who relaunched British relations with Libya in 1999 and on whose policy of critical engagement this success is founded. http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foreignaffairs/comment/0,11538,1111575,00.html
But, regardless, we know that the drumbeat of lies convinces many.
Pepe Escobar of The Asia Times (online) adds his characteristic note:
An Arabic copy of Crime and Punishment was found in a shack near the "spider hole" where he was captured.
...
Holes big enough to accommodate armies of spiders remain in the carefully-choreographed Pentagon screenplay. Suppose Saddam - well versed in the treachery levels in the Arab world and well aware that a close family friend had denounced his sons Uday and Qusay - had indeed chosen to hide in a hole in the ground only a few hours before his capture. It's still remarkable how the "rat" managed to elude capture when thousands of American soldiers were combing every inch of the Sunni triangle for months. And if he really had US$750,000 with him in $100 bills, it wouldn't take a lot of human intelligence to just follow the money.
...
Not only one of his daughters, but local villagers, are absolutely convinced that he was drugged before the capture, a vital element in the Pentagon choreography to show to the world - especially the Arab world - the picture of a disoriented bum.... www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EL19Ak01.html
Speaking of Propaganda… Let’s have more ‘good news’ from Iraq! The Pentagon’s next effort, via the Toronto Star (Antonia Zerbisias)
"As if anybody wants to relive 2003 and its almost relentlessly depressing headlines. Not that good news is ever real news, no matter how much the White House wishes it were so.
"That's why the Pentagon is currently building what I call its own GNN — for Good News Network — to do an end run around the networks and beam directly from its press centre in Iraq. Just in time for election year 2004, the satellite service will counteract all those terrible stories of bombings, shootings, killings and maiming from the, you know, war.
"Instead, TV stations stateside that pick up its feeds will be able to telecast happy tales of school or clinic reopenings. (Not that journalists are allowed unfettered access to Iraqi hospitals but that's another matter.)
"As Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Joe Yoswa told the New York Times yesterday: "It's to provide the full news story." http://www.torontostar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1071660248202&call_pageid=970599109774&col=Columnist969907624636
The Terror Alerts: Reason for Concern?
The LA Times (Josh Meyer and Greg Krikorian) has the angle that this time Washington is nervous. Aren’t you thrilled that the Bush administration has starved “homeland security” and pulled resources out of Afghanistan in order to fight the needless, expensive, destructive war in Iraq?
Al Qaeda operatives may be plotting several unrelated attacks in the United States, targeting not only major cities but also remote bulwarks of the "critical infrastructure" in an effort to cause mass casualties and major economic damage throughout the nation, U.S. officials said Monday.
Senior U.S. counter-terrorism officials said they have been unable to nail down specifics about a time or place for any potential attacks, despite a mad scramble to do so since receiving an alarming cache of corroborated intelligence beginning Thursday and Friday I have never seen the national security leadership as tense and anxious as they are right now," said a second senior federal law enforcement official. He said that even the timing of the raising of the threat level was moved up a day because of rapidly developing concerns over the weekend. Bush administration officials were so concerned, he said, that they sent a plane to Missouri on Saturday to bring Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft back to Washington from vacation.
"In the past, there were disagreements over whether [the elevated alert] was needed," that official said. "This time, everyone said, 'Yeah, let's do it.' It is the most specific and credible information we've had, period." http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-alert23dec23,1,173997,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines
The Problem that is Pakistan:
Finally, no longer consigned to blogs and Bill Moyers, Pakistan makes the front pages of both the Washington Post and New York Times and is a leading story on NPR.
The Post’s Joby Warrick’s headline, “Nuclear Program in Iran Tied To Pakistan; Complex Network Acquired Technology and Blueprints
Evidence discovered in a probe of Iran's secret nuclear program points overwhelmingly to Pakistan as the source of crucial technology that put Iran on a fast track toward becoming a nuclear weapons power, according to U.S. and European officials familiar with the investigation. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18170-2003Dec20.html
The Times (William J. Broad, David Rohde, David E. Sanger) focused on nukes. We’ve know, of course, that Pakistan provided nuclear technology to North Korea, Iran and Libya (and not Iraq!) Even the Pakistanis are beginning to drop their denials.
A lengthy investigation of the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan, by American and European intelligence agencies and international nuclear inspectors has forced Pakistani officials to question his aides and openly confront evidence that the country was the source of crucial technology to enrich uranium for Iran, North Korea and possibly other nations.
Until the past few weeks, Pakistani officials had denied evidence that the A. Q. Khan Research Laboratories, named for the man considered a national hero, had ever been a source of weapons technology to countries aspiring to acquire fissile material. Now they are backing away from those denials, while insisting that there has been no transfer of nuclear technology since President Pervez Musharraf took power four years ago. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/22/international/asia/22STAN.html
Ideology over Competence It’s breath-taking. Josh Marshall, Laura Rosen and Colin Soloway give a vivid illustration how conservative loyalists get rewarded regardless of their competence/experience.
By making partisan loyalty their primary criteria, the administration ruled out most of the people with experience in the field and restricted themselves to politically trustworthy Republicans, many of whom, though often well-meaning and admirably willing to serve their country in a very dangerous place, had little to no experience to prepare them for the challenges they'd encounter in Iraq.
A typical example is Dan Senor. Before attending Harvard Business School from 1999 to 2001, Senor was a staffer for then-Sen. Spencer Abraham of Michigan. After receiving his MBA, he went to the Carlyle Group, where he was a venture capitalist from 2001 to 2003. Senor left Carlyle in 2003 for a brief stint as White House Press Secretary Scott McLellan's deputy before shipping off to Iraq. Though he showed up in Iraq as a junior press handler, Senor is now Bremer's senior advisor and for most of last summer he was in charge of organizing Iraq's post-Saddam media, an effort which most have rated as little short of a disaster. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0312.whoswho.html
Vietnam Massacre:
Incredible that the Toledo Blade has driven this story. (Michael D. Sallah, Mitch Weiss)
The Army is unable to find crucial records of some of the worst atrocities by an elite platoon in Vietnam, casting doubts on whether the American public will ever know the extent of the unit’s actions 36 years ago.
Officials have searched U.S. record centers for documents about Tiger Force’s killing of women and children in a remote farming valley in June and July, 1967. But officials can’t explain why the documents are missing. http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20031221/SRTIGERFORCE/112210103
US security personnel are victimizing journalists:
“A Repressive Embarrassment” is what the Toledo Blade called it. Quite a paper that Blade! This is their editorial:
Anyone who thinks the administration and its law enforcement chief, Attorney General John Ashcroft, aren’t out to impede a free press need only hear how the federal government is treating foreign journalists coming to this country on assignment.
Without notification to foreign media outlets, the immigration and customs people are arresting, detaining, and deporting journalists arriving here without special visas. This is so even when they come from nations whose citizens can stay for up to 90 days without a visa if they are arriving as tourists or on business.
If that threatening form of registration is not enough, members of the press arriving without the visas, which no one told them they needed, are treated like criminals, handcuffed as they’re marched through airports, photographed, fingerprinted, and their DNA taken.
Peter Krobath, chief editor for the Austrian movie magazine Skip, was held overnight in a cold room with 45 others who arrived without the visa. The room had two open toilets, a metal bench, and a concrete bench. He was here to interview movie star Ben Affleck and see the movie Paycheck. http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/artikkel?SearchID=7315676733687&Avis=TO&Dato=20031213&Kategori=OPINION02&Lopenr=112130159&Ref=AR
Noam Chomsky: Selective memory and a dishonest doctrine
At least the Toronto Star prints him.
All people who have any concern for human rights, justice and integrity should be overjoyed by the capture of Saddam Hussein, and should be awaiting a fair trial for him by an international tribunal.
An indictment of Saddam's atrocities would include not only his slaughter and gassing of Kurds in 1988 but also, rather crucially, his massacre of the Shiite rebels who might have overthrown him in 1991.
At the time, Washington and its allies held the "strikingly unanimous view (that) whatever the sins of the Iraqi leader, he offered the West and the region a better hope for his country's stability than did those who have suffered his repression," reported Alan Cowell in the New York Times.
Last December, Jack Straw, Britain's foreign secretary, released a dossier of Saddam's crimes drawn almost entirely from the period of firm U.S.-British support of Saddam.
With the usual display of moral integrity, Straw's report and Washington's reaction overlooked that support.
Such practices reflect a trap deeply rooted in the intellectual culture generally — a trap sometimes called the doctrine of change of course, invoked in the United States every two or three years. http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_PrintFriendly&c=Article&cid=1071961807419&call_pageid=968332188854
Voter Rights: Trial ordered in Florida felon voting lawsuit
Florida papers are on this. From the AP/Bradenton.com (Adrian Sainz).
A federal appeals court Friday ordered a trial in a lawsuit which claims that Florida's law barring felons from voting is unconstitutional because it discriminates against blacks.
The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta decided there are enough relevant facts to allow lawyers on both sides of the issue to present evidence at a hearing. A three-judge panel voted 2-1 to send the case back to a trial judge to hear arguments that the law violates equal protection and voting rights claims.
The court's ruling reversed U.S. District Judge James Lawrence King's July ruling dismissing the case.
"Our clients are going to get a full hearing on the evidence in court," said attorney Jessie Allen, who represented the plaintiffs. "We're just thrilled."
Alia Faraj, a spokeswoman for Gov. Jeb Bush, said the governor's lawyers were reviewing the decision. She pointed out that the decision doesn't issue a finding on the merits of the case, but that it simply orders a trial.
Roughly 600,000 Floridians are banned from voting for the rest of their lives because of felony convictions, according to the Florida Equal Rights Voting Project. More than a third of those are black, according to American Civil Liberties Union estimates.
Florida's law denies ex-felons the right to vote unless they take steps to have their civil rights restored by the state. Six other states have similar laws. http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/7534037.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
-R
