Monday, June 21, 2004
"He has led this country with moral clarity," McCain said of Bush in praising his stewardship of the war on terror as commander-in-chief.
"There have been ups and downs as there have been in any war, but like you, he has not wavered in his determination to protect this country, and to make the world a better, safer and freer place. You will not yield, nor will he.” –McCain on Bush
Well, he is a conservative Republican…
9/11 The Narrative Struggle:
Faced with the embarrassments that occurred, the Administration (with Bob Woodward’s help) has tried to spin tales of the heroic Bush. The toughest period to explain is Bush’s frozen, impassive 7 or more minutes after being informed of both attacks on the Trade Towers. Fahrenheit 9/11 rams home the presidential inaction- Bush continued to read with the kids until, as widely reported, “at the suggestion of an aide, Bush got up and went to a holding room.” So, there is a new line coming from the White House: The Washington Post (Joel Achenbach) provides this overly generous account.
The President told us his instinct was to project calm, not to have the country see an excited reaction at a moment of crisis . . . The President felt he should project strength and calm until he could better understand what was happening."…
But even the harshest critics concede that the nation's spiritual leader rallied in the days thereafter. His bullhorn performance on the rubble of the World Trade Center is considered a bravura moment. He made compelling appearances at the National Cathedral, before Congress, and in a news conference in the East Room of the White House. When professional baseball resumed play, he courageously walked to the mound in a crowded stadium and threw out the first pitch.
Some of these images will reappear in the months ahead as the election nears and the commercials begin to saturate the airwaves. The president has surely had some excellent moments.
And seven excruciating minutes. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53548-2004Jun18.html
Meanwhile, the conservatives keep up the pressure to accuse some 9/11 Commission members of “distorting” the conclusions. William Safire leads the charge today.
Blame the commission's leaders for ducking responsibility for its interim findings. Kean and Hamilton have allowed themselves to be jerked around by a manipulative staff.
Yesterday, Governor Kean passed along this stunner about "no collaborative relationship" to ABC's George Stephanopoulos: "Members do not get involved in staff reports." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/21/opinion/21SAFI.html
Moderate Republican Kean clarifies that the Commission’s conclusions are “not inconsistent” with Administration claims of “contacts” between Saddam and al-Qaeda. I look forward to the re-statement of American “contacts” (and much more) with the Taliban, both two months before 9/11 and since.
Meanwhile, the criticisms continue. This from the Financial Times:
"The Bush administration has misled the American people. It has isolated the US, as American diplomats and commanders pointed out this week. And its bungling in Iraq has given new and terrifying life to the cult of death sponsored by Osama bin Laden. Above all, it inspires little confidence it is capable of defeating the spreading al-Qaeda franchise, which always was the clear and present danger."
Back in the U.S.A.: Costs of Higher Eduction (Public)
Arianna Huffington, former conservative, former “candidate” for Governor…
The cost of a college education at a four-year public university has risen a devastating 35 percent since George W. Bush took office. He promised to be "the education president," but in what we now know to be the classic Bush bait and switch, he then did just the opposite, delivering a tax-slashing economic agenda that forced public colleges and universities in all but one state to raise tuition in 2003.
As an added little gift for the new grads, the Bush administration's latest budget-cutting guidelines will lead to a $550 million reduction in federal assistance to those college students in need of financial aid.
Happy graduation, kids! Enjoy your decades of indebtedness -- at least those of you who are not forced to forego college altogether.
How did we get to the point as a society where low taxes are more important than providing the opportunity for as many of our children as possible to get a higher education? Where we'd rather shut students out of college classrooms than shut down the tax shelters that are costing states billions in revenue each year?
Nowhere are these perverted priorities on greater display than in California, where Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is steadfastly refusing even to consider closing corporate tax loopholes or raising taxes on the top 1 percent -- even in the face of a multibillion-dollar budget deficit. Instead, he is looking to balance the budget on the backs of the most vulnerable -- including the state's college students.
He has put forth a budget proposal that would, among other things, slash $660 million from the state's public colleges and universities, increase undergraduate tuition over the next three years by more than 30 percent (this on top of a 40 percent tuition increase since 2002), deny admission to 25,000 qualified students, cut financial aid, lead to larger class sizes and fewer course offerings, and eliminate state support for outreach programs that help prepare disadvantaged students for college. http://www.salon.com/opinion/huffington/2004/06/18/college_costs/print.html
Voting Irregularities: Race
Greg Palast has been on this issue since November, 2000. From the San Francisco Chronicle:
In the 2000 presidential election, 1.9 million Americans cast ballots that no one counted. "Spoiled votes" is the technical term. The pile of ballots left to rot has a distinctly dark hue: About 1 million of them -- half of the rejected ballots -- were cast by African Americans although black voters make up only 12 percent of the electorate.
This year, it could get worse.
These ugly racial statistics are hidden away in the mathematical thickets of the appendices to official reports coming out of the investigation of ballot-box monkey business in Florida from the last go-'round.
How do you spoil 2 million ballots? Not by leaving them out of the fridge too long. A stray mark, a jammed machine, a punch card punched twice will do it. It's easy to lose your vote, especially when some politicians want your vote lost.
While investigating the 2000 ballot count in Florida for BBC Television, I saw firsthand how the spoilage game was played -- with black voters the predetermined losers. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/06/20/ING2976LG61.DTL&type=printable
What’s Happening, Iraq:
The Daily Headline: Guantanamo claims challenged
Each day brings a re-confirming story as to one of the Administration’s long-known-to-be absurd claims. This one from the NY Times’ Tim Golden and Don Van Nattan, Jr.
For nearly two and a half years, American officials have maintained that locked within the steel-mesh cells of the military prison here are some of the world's most dangerous terrorists — "the worst of a very bad lot," Vice President Dick Cheney has called them.
The officials say information gleaned from the detainees has exposed terrorist cells, thwarted planned attacks and revealed vital intelligence about Al Qaeda. The secrets they hold and the threats they pose justify holding them indefinitely without charge, Bush administration officials have said.
But as the Supreme Court prepares to rule on the legal status of the 595 men imprisoned here, an examination by The New York Times has found that government and military officials have repeatedly exaggerated both the danger the detainees posed and the intelligence they have provided. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/21/politics/21GITM.html?hp
Falluja:
First we laid siege, then withdrew. Now, having lost Falluja, all we can do is bomb it. So we had this weekend's bombing, killing somewhere between 22 and 40 residents. Not a good strategy to win the “hearts and minds.”
The US occupation force also acknowledged the Saturday air strike.
At a press conference in Baghdad, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt said he did not dispute Iraqi accounts that over 20 people were killed in the strike.
He said there was "significant intelligence" that members of Abu Mussab Zarqawi's network were in the house, but there was no evidence Zarqawi himself was there.
Witnesses had confirmed earlier that US warplanes carried out the strike around 10 in the morning.
They said the victims were crushed under the rubble after two missile strikes demolished the house. Relatives brought 22 bodies for burial at a cemetery after the blast.
Aljazeera's correspondent in Baghdad, Abd Al-Adhim Muhamad, said several Falluja residents told him by phone that US warplanes had hovered over the city and eventually fired two missiles.
Today's air raid is the first attack on the town 50km west of Baghdad after US marines withdrew at the beginning of May after a month of fierce clashes.
Twenty-two people have been killed and 20 injured in a US raid on a house in Falluja, according to medical sources and witnesses. http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/10BAF2F2-8DAA-48C5-8F39-7A58080F0B32.htm
Actually, it is, again, “their” city: U.S. dollars are being doled out to Saddam’s guys to maintain order in the city. The New York Times magazine (Jeffrey Gettleman)
Three Iraqi officers with big, Saddam-style mustaches and constellations of stars on their shoulders sat along one side of a table in a stuffy little office in the back of the station, counting out stacks of cash: $150 for sergeants, $250 for majors, $300 for colonels; all in crisp U.S. bills, all provided by the U.S. government. The line of soldiers waiting for their pay snaked out the door, through the railway station and into the heat. Many were dressed in faded combat fatigues with a jaunty eagle insignia on their shoulders, signifying high rank in Hussein's army; some had red triangles just below their shoulders, the mark of the Republican Guard. In just a few weeks, Falluja had gone from de-Baathification to re-Baathification. The problem, it seemed, had become the solution.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/20/magazine/20FALLUJA.html
Arafat Shift?
Underreported and underemphasized in the media was this reputed change from Arafat:
In what appears to be a significant departure from the erstwhile Palestinian position, Yasir Arafat has voiced his willingness to recognise Israel as a "Jewish state."
The remarks were made in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz on Friday. http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/099302D3-6D30-487D-BD86-B796CC3E6A71.htm
Next Expose / Critique on the Way
Reports from the Guardian’s Julian Borger and a few other independent journalists note the coming publication of a new condemnation of the Bush policy. This one- Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror-from a anonymous, veteran intelligence official who’s followed radical Islamism since the early 1980’s. Here’s an interesting aside as to bin Laden’s popularity, from an interview at www.talkingpointsmemo.org :
But within Saudi Arabia I think they're kind of the society's Robin Hood. It's an oppressed society, the Saudi government is a tyranny, and I think they have a tremendous audience in Saudi Arabia. I remember reading in The National Interest in 2002 that a poll taken by the Saudi government showed 95 percent of Saudis between 18 and 40 supported Osama bin Laden. Domestic support is not an issue for bin Laden. He's always wanted to protect the oil industry in the sense of its infrastructure, its natural production of oil. He's found a way through this type of murder to affect the American economy, probably, without destroying the future potential of the energy industry in Saudi Arabia.
Borger’s piece:
A senior US intelligence official is about to publish a bitter condemnation of America's counter-terrorism policy, arguing that the west is losing the war against al-Qaida and that an "avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked" war in Iraq has played into Osama bin Laden's hands.
Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror, due out next month, dismisses two of the most frequent boasts of the Bush administration: that Bin Laden and al-Qaida are "on the run" and that the Iraq invasion has made America safer.
In an interview with the Guardian the official, who writes as "Anonymous", described al-Qaida as a much more proficient and focused organisation than it was in 2001, and predicted that it would "inevitably" acquire weapons of mass destruction and try to use them.
He said Bin Laden was probably "comfortable" commanding his organisation from the mountainous tribal lands along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4951524-111026,00.html
The Failed Occupation: The Washington Post’s Rajiv Chandrasekaran offers his summary [Part I] of our failure.
The American occupation of Iraq will formally end this month having failed to fulfill many of its goals and stated promises intended to transform the country into a stable democracy, according to a detailed examination drawing upon interviews with senior U.S. and Iraqi officials and internal documents of the occupation authority…
The Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S. entity that has administered Iraq, cites many successes of its tenure. Nearly 2,500 schools have been repaired, 3 million children have been immunized, $5 million in loans has been distributed to small businesses and 8 million textbooks have been printed, according to the CPA. New banknotes have replaced currency with ousted president Saddam Hussein's picture. Local councils have been formed in every city and province. An interim national government promises to hold general elections next January.
But in many key quantifiable areas, the occupation has fallen far short of its goals.
The Iraqi army is one-third the size U.S. officials promised it would be by now. Seventy percent of police officers have not received training. When violence flared across the country this spring, many soldiers and policemen refused to perform their duties because U.S. forces had failed to equip them, designate competent leaders and win trust among the ranks.
About 15,000 Iraqis have been hired to work on projects funded by $18.6 billion in U.S. aid, despite promises to use the money to employ at least 250,000 Iraqis by this month. At of the beginning of June, 80 percent of the aid package, approved by Congress last fall, remained unspent.
Electricity generation remains stuck at around 4,000 megawatts, resulting in less than nine hours of power a day to most Baghdad homes, despite pledges from U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer to increase production to 6,000 megawatts by June 1.
Iraq's emerging political system is also at odds with original U.S. goals… http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54294-2004Jun19.html
Kurds Act Out: This is the stuff that can lead to a civil war. The Kurds push the Arabs out, saying it always was their land; the Arabs fight back. NY Times’ Dexter Filkins:
Thousands of ethnic Kurds are pushing into lands formerly held by Iraqi Arabs, forcing tens of thousands of them to flee to ramshackle refugee camps and transforming the demographic and political map of northern Iraq.
The Kurds are returning to lands from which they were expelled by the armies of Saddam Hussein and his predecessors in the Baath Party, who ordered thousands of Kurdish villages destroyed and sent waves of Iraqi Arabs north to fill the area with supporters.
The new movement, which began with the fall of Mr. Hussein, appears to have quickened this spring amid confusion about American policy, along with political pressure by Kurdish leaders to resettle the areas formerly held by Arabs. It is happening at a moment when Kurds are threatening to withdraw from the national government if they are not confident of having sufficient autonomy.
Arabs will not react passively if they perceive the Kurds expelling Arabs from the north. Already, in heavily-armed Falluja, anti-Kurdish sentiment pervades. The Washington Post recently quoted one Iraqi who blamed the U.S. and the Kurds--participants in the April attack by the U.S. on the city--for the death of his daughter. "I will send my brothers north to kill the Kurds," he said . The displacement of Arabs from the (oil-drenched) north might be all the spark that the (resource-light) Sunni areas require to lead to an all-out civil war.
And in that situation, what will the U.S. do? The Kurds are our allies in every significant sense: One of the most betrayed people in the history of the world, they fought with us to overthrow Saddam. We may well find ourselves having to deploy forces to separate Iraq's different ethnicities, a very dangerous situation for our troops. How this will play out in practice in a place like Kirkuk--multiethnic, resource-rich and claimed by Arabs and Kurds alike--is incredibly difficult to determine. And it puts the U.S. in something close to a worst-case scenario. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/20/international/middleeast/20KURD.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=
Juan Cole: Israel, The Kurds, Iran
Sy Hersh is reporting [in Haaretz] that hundreds of Israeli intelligence agents are operating in and from Iraqi Kurdistan, gathering information on Iran's nuclear program and stirring up Syrian Kurds to make trouble for Bashar al-Asad in Syria. I have talked about the likelihood of such a presence here in the past. The nexus of disinformation about the Saddam government and about terrorist activity in Iraq may lie in tales fed to Mossad by the Kurds, who in turn passed it to Washington. The Kurds have steadily and implausibly alleged a Saddam/al-Qaeda connection. www.juancole.com , http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/441208.html
Australian Bishop Withdraws Support of War This is notable, as PM Howard has been a zealous supporter of Bush, is up for re-election, and this fellow has been a notable supporter.
As the only Anglican bishop to have publicly endorsed the Australian Government's case for war, I now concede that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction. It did not pose a threat to either its nearer neighbours or the United States and its allies. It did not host or give material support to al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups.
But did the Australian Government and the Australian Defence Force really believe that Iraq possessed WMD and would employ them in support of its national interests? Definitely. Were intelligence assessments of Iraq's WMD arsenal and its ability to mount military operations exaggerated and inaccurate? Certainly. But in the absence of any clear mitigation, there is no alternative to concluding that the March 2003 invasion was neither just nor necessary. http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/06/17/1087245036392.html?oneclick=true
Redeploying U.S. Troops: The Administration / Military is trying to cope with the troop shortage. There are no easy answers. Jim Lobe from Asia Times:
The planned redeployments, the most sweeping since the onset of the Cold War more than 50 years ago, are all part of a global strategy to build, in Rumsfeld's words, a "capability to impose lethal power, where needed, when needed, with the greatest flexibility and with the greatest agility".
As for where the "need" is, Pentagon officials state publicly that would be defined by threats to "stability". But a closer look at where Washington is most interested in acquiring access to military facilities suggests the determining factor may be proximity to oil and gas-producing areas, pipelines and shipping routes through which vital energy supplies pass.
To most analysts, the proposed redeployments make a lot of sense. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the need for big US military bases that housed conventional forces in Germany and elsewhere in Western Europe evaporated from a strategic point of view, while the steady build-up of well-equipped and well-trained forces in South Korea, where Washington has stationed nearly 40,000 troops for the past 25 years, made it more than a match for North Korea.
In addition, the presence and behavior of US forces in both Western Europe and Northeast Asia, particularly in South Korea and Okinawa, have become increasingly unpopular and a lightning rod for growing anti-Americanism and resentment. Reducing their "footprint" might have the opposite effect.
Indeed, Washington withdrew its troops altogether from Saudi Arabia over the past year in large part because their presence there had become politically untenable.
Nonetheless, both the plans - and the ways they are being developed and implemented - are provoking growing criticism at home, as well as abroad. The reasons for this are not difficult to understand, particularly in light of the Iraq war.
In the first place, the planned redeployments appear designed to ensure that the US could indeed enforce a "Pax Americana", based on its ability to exert unilateral military control over the production and flow of energy resources from Central Asia, the Gulf region and the Gulf of Guinea off the coast of West Africa in the face of potential rivals.
In that respect, the strategy is an update of the controversial 1992 draft Defense Planning Guidance written under the auspices of current Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff and national security adviser, I Lewis "Scooter" Libby - both of whom played key roles in driving the Bush administration to war in Iraq. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FF17Aa03.html
Phliadelphia Inquirer Editorial: Harsh…deservingly so…
What matters is that Americans grasp a central point: The multipronged rationale behind this rushed invasion has been revealed as a house of cards.
(Deposing Hussein always was a legitimate strategic goal, given his history as an aggressor and butcher - but not in this reckless way, with these wrongful justifications.)
Consider the house of cards, and two other glaring facts.
First, preparation for the invasion's aftermath was tragically inept. That easily predictable failure has cost many Iraqis, Americans and others their lives.
Second, the prison abuses, which stem from poor planning for occupation and a bid to place U.S. behavior above international law, have lost America the moral high ground it rightfully occupied on Sept. 12, 2001.
Now, ask yourself, along with those 27 American diplomats and warriors: Have the last two years made America more secure, more respected?
The answer is obvious and appalling. The answer is no. http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/8964906.htm?ERIGHTS=-8229334262747501747philly::rcsherman@rcn.com&KRD_RM=5prsmqnntpolnrttllllllllnl|Richard|N
-R
"There have been ups and downs as there have been in any war, but like you, he has not wavered in his determination to protect this country, and to make the world a better, safer and freer place. You will not yield, nor will he.” –McCain on Bush
Well, he is a conservative Republican…
9/11 The Narrative Struggle:
Faced with the embarrassments that occurred, the Administration (with Bob Woodward’s help) has tried to spin tales of the heroic Bush. The toughest period to explain is Bush’s frozen, impassive 7 or more minutes after being informed of both attacks on the Trade Towers. Fahrenheit 9/11 rams home the presidential inaction- Bush continued to read with the kids until, as widely reported, “at the suggestion of an aide, Bush got up and went to a holding room.” So, there is a new line coming from the White House: The Washington Post (Joel Achenbach) provides this overly generous account.
The President told us his instinct was to project calm, not to have the country see an excited reaction at a moment of crisis . . . The President felt he should project strength and calm until he could better understand what was happening."…
But even the harshest critics concede that the nation's spiritual leader rallied in the days thereafter. His bullhorn performance on the rubble of the World Trade Center is considered a bravura moment. He made compelling appearances at the National Cathedral, before Congress, and in a news conference in the East Room of the White House. When professional baseball resumed play, he courageously walked to the mound in a crowded stadium and threw out the first pitch.
Some of these images will reappear in the months ahead as the election nears and the commercials begin to saturate the airwaves. The president has surely had some excellent moments.
And seven excruciating minutes. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53548-2004Jun18.html
Meanwhile, the conservatives keep up the pressure to accuse some 9/11 Commission members of “distorting” the conclusions. William Safire leads the charge today.
Blame the commission's leaders for ducking responsibility for its interim findings. Kean and Hamilton have allowed themselves to be jerked around by a manipulative staff.
Yesterday, Governor Kean passed along this stunner about "no collaborative relationship" to ABC's George Stephanopoulos: "Members do not get involved in staff reports." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/21/opinion/21SAFI.html
Moderate Republican Kean clarifies that the Commission’s conclusions are “not inconsistent” with Administration claims of “contacts” between Saddam and al-Qaeda. I look forward to the re-statement of American “contacts” (and much more) with the Taliban, both two months before 9/11 and since.
Meanwhile, the criticisms continue. This from the Financial Times:
"The Bush administration has misled the American people. It has isolated the US, as American diplomats and commanders pointed out this week. And its bungling in Iraq has given new and terrifying life to the cult of death sponsored by Osama bin Laden. Above all, it inspires little confidence it is capable of defeating the spreading al-Qaeda franchise, which always was the clear and present danger."
Back in the U.S.A.: Costs of Higher Eduction (Public)
Arianna Huffington, former conservative, former “candidate” for Governor…
The cost of a college education at a four-year public university has risen a devastating 35 percent since George W. Bush took office. He promised to be "the education president," but in what we now know to be the classic Bush bait and switch, he then did just the opposite, delivering a tax-slashing economic agenda that forced public colleges and universities in all but one state to raise tuition in 2003.
As an added little gift for the new grads, the Bush administration's latest budget-cutting guidelines will lead to a $550 million reduction in federal assistance to those college students in need of financial aid.
Happy graduation, kids! Enjoy your decades of indebtedness -- at least those of you who are not forced to forego college altogether.
How did we get to the point as a society where low taxes are more important than providing the opportunity for as many of our children as possible to get a higher education? Where we'd rather shut students out of college classrooms than shut down the tax shelters that are costing states billions in revenue each year?
Nowhere are these perverted priorities on greater display than in California, where Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is steadfastly refusing even to consider closing corporate tax loopholes or raising taxes on the top 1 percent -- even in the face of a multibillion-dollar budget deficit. Instead, he is looking to balance the budget on the backs of the most vulnerable -- including the state's college students.
He has put forth a budget proposal that would, among other things, slash $660 million from the state's public colleges and universities, increase undergraduate tuition over the next three years by more than 30 percent (this on top of a 40 percent tuition increase since 2002), deny admission to 25,000 qualified students, cut financial aid, lead to larger class sizes and fewer course offerings, and eliminate state support for outreach programs that help prepare disadvantaged students for college. http://www.salon.com/opinion/huffington/2004/06/18/college_costs/print.html
Voting Irregularities: Race
Greg Palast has been on this issue since November, 2000. From the San Francisco Chronicle:
In the 2000 presidential election, 1.9 million Americans cast ballots that no one counted. "Spoiled votes" is the technical term. The pile of ballots left to rot has a distinctly dark hue: About 1 million of them -- half of the rejected ballots -- were cast by African Americans although black voters make up only 12 percent of the electorate.
This year, it could get worse.
These ugly racial statistics are hidden away in the mathematical thickets of the appendices to official reports coming out of the investigation of ballot-box monkey business in Florida from the last go-'round.
How do you spoil 2 million ballots? Not by leaving them out of the fridge too long. A stray mark, a jammed machine, a punch card punched twice will do it. It's easy to lose your vote, especially when some politicians want your vote lost.
While investigating the 2000 ballot count in Florida for BBC Television, I saw firsthand how the spoilage game was played -- with black voters the predetermined losers. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/06/20/ING2976LG61.DTL&type=printable
What’s Happening, Iraq:
The Daily Headline: Guantanamo claims challenged
Each day brings a re-confirming story as to one of the Administration’s long-known-to-be absurd claims. This one from the NY Times’ Tim Golden and Don Van Nattan, Jr.
For nearly two and a half years, American officials have maintained that locked within the steel-mesh cells of the military prison here are some of the world's most dangerous terrorists — "the worst of a very bad lot," Vice President Dick Cheney has called them.
The officials say information gleaned from the detainees has exposed terrorist cells, thwarted planned attacks and revealed vital intelligence about Al Qaeda. The secrets they hold and the threats they pose justify holding them indefinitely without charge, Bush administration officials have said.
But as the Supreme Court prepares to rule on the legal status of the 595 men imprisoned here, an examination by The New York Times has found that government and military officials have repeatedly exaggerated both the danger the detainees posed and the intelligence they have provided. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/21/politics/21GITM.html?hp
Falluja:
First we laid siege, then withdrew. Now, having lost Falluja, all we can do is bomb it. So we had this weekend's bombing, killing somewhere between 22 and 40 residents. Not a good strategy to win the “hearts and minds.”
The US occupation force also acknowledged the Saturday air strike.
At a press conference in Baghdad, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt said he did not dispute Iraqi accounts that over 20 people were killed in the strike.
He said there was "significant intelligence" that members of Abu Mussab Zarqawi's network were in the house, but there was no evidence Zarqawi himself was there.
Witnesses had confirmed earlier that US warplanes carried out the strike around 10 in the morning.
They said the victims were crushed under the rubble after two missile strikes demolished the house. Relatives brought 22 bodies for burial at a cemetery after the blast.
Aljazeera's correspondent in Baghdad, Abd Al-Adhim Muhamad, said several Falluja residents told him by phone that US warplanes had hovered over the city and eventually fired two missiles.
Today's air raid is the first attack on the town 50km west of Baghdad after US marines withdrew at the beginning of May after a month of fierce clashes.
Twenty-two people have been killed and 20 injured in a US raid on a house in Falluja, according to medical sources and witnesses. http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/10BAF2F2-8DAA-48C5-8F39-7A58080F0B32.htm
Actually, it is, again, “their” city: U.S. dollars are being doled out to Saddam’s guys to maintain order in the city. The New York Times magazine (Jeffrey Gettleman)
Three Iraqi officers with big, Saddam-style mustaches and constellations of stars on their shoulders sat along one side of a table in a stuffy little office in the back of the station, counting out stacks of cash: $150 for sergeants, $250 for majors, $300 for colonels; all in crisp U.S. bills, all provided by the U.S. government. The line of soldiers waiting for their pay snaked out the door, through the railway station and into the heat. Many were dressed in faded combat fatigues with a jaunty eagle insignia on their shoulders, signifying high rank in Hussein's army; some had red triangles just below their shoulders, the mark of the Republican Guard. In just a few weeks, Falluja had gone from de-Baathification to re-Baathification. The problem, it seemed, had become the solution.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/20/magazine/20FALLUJA.html
Arafat Shift?
Underreported and underemphasized in the media was this reputed change from Arafat:
In what appears to be a significant departure from the erstwhile Palestinian position, Yasir Arafat has voiced his willingness to recognise Israel as a "Jewish state."
The remarks were made in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz on Friday. http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/099302D3-6D30-487D-BD86-B796CC3E6A71.htm
Next Expose / Critique on the Way
Reports from the Guardian’s Julian Borger and a few other independent journalists note the coming publication of a new condemnation of the Bush policy. This one- Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror-from a anonymous, veteran intelligence official who’s followed radical Islamism since the early 1980’s. Here’s an interesting aside as to bin Laden’s popularity, from an interview at www.talkingpointsmemo.org :
But within Saudi Arabia I think they're kind of the society's Robin Hood. It's an oppressed society, the Saudi government is a tyranny, and I think they have a tremendous audience in Saudi Arabia. I remember reading in The National Interest in 2002 that a poll taken by the Saudi government showed 95 percent of Saudis between 18 and 40 supported Osama bin Laden. Domestic support is not an issue for bin Laden. He's always wanted to protect the oil industry in the sense of its infrastructure, its natural production of oil. He's found a way through this type of murder to affect the American economy, probably, without destroying the future potential of the energy industry in Saudi Arabia.
Borger’s piece:
A senior US intelligence official is about to publish a bitter condemnation of America's counter-terrorism policy, arguing that the west is losing the war against al-Qaida and that an "avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked" war in Iraq has played into Osama bin Laden's hands.
Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror, due out next month, dismisses two of the most frequent boasts of the Bush administration: that Bin Laden and al-Qaida are "on the run" and that the Iraq invasion has made America safer.
In an interview with the Guardian the official, who writes as "Anonymous", described al-Qaida as a much more proficient and focused organisation than it was in 2001, and predicted that it would "inevitably" acquire weapons of mass destruction and try to use them.
He said Bin Laden was probably "comfortable" commanding his organisation from the mountainous tribal lands along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4951524-111026,00.html
The Failed Occupation: The Washington Post’s Rajiv Chandrasekaran offers his summary [Part I] of our failure.
The American occupation of Iraq will formally end this month having failed to fulfill many of its goals and stated promises intended to transform the country into a stable democracy, according to a detailed examination drawing upon interviews with senior U.S. and Iraqi officials and internal documents of the occupation authority…
The Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S. entity that has administered Iraq, cites many successes of its tenure. Nearly 2,500 schools have been repaired, 3 million children have been immunized, $5 million in loans has been distributed to small businesses and 8 million textbooks have been printed, according to the CPA. New banknotes have replaced currency with ousted president Saddam Hussein's picture. Local councils have been formed in every city and province. An interim national government promises to hold general elections next January.
But in many key quantifiable areas, the occupation has fallen far short of its goals.
The Iraqi army is one-third the size U.S. officials promised it would be by now. Seventy percent of police officers have not received training. When violence flared across the country this spring, many soldiers and policemen refused to perform their duties because U.S. forces had failed to equip them, designate competent leaders and win trust among the ranks.
About 15,000 Iraqis have been hired to work on projects funded by $18.6 billion in U.S. aid, despite promises to use the money to employ at least 250,000 Iraqis by this month. At of the beginning of June, 80 percent of the aid package, approved by Congress last fall, remained unspent.
Electricity generation remains stuck at around 4,000 megawatts, resulting in less than nine hours of power a day to most Baghdad homes, despite pledges from U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer to increase production to 6,000 megawatts by June 1.
Iraq's emerging political system is also at odds with original U.S. goals… http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54294-2004Jun19.html
Kurds Act Out: This is the stuff that can lead to a civil war. The Kurds push the Arabs out, saying it always was their land; the Arabs fight back. NY Times’ Dexter Filkins:
Thousands of ethnic Kurds are pushing into lands formerly held by Iraqi Arabs, forcing tens of thousands of them to flee to ramshackle refugee camps and transforming the demographic and political map of northern Iraq.
The Kurds are returning to lands from which they were expelled by the armies of Saddam Hussein and his predecessors in the Baath Party, who ordered thousands of Kurdish villages destroyed and sent waves of Iraqi Arabs north to fill the area with supporters.
The new movement, which began with the fall of Mr. Hussein, appears to have quickened this spring amid confusion about American policy, along with political pressure by Kurdish leaders to resettle the areas formerly held by Arabs. It is happening at a moment when Kurds are threatening to withdraw from the national government if they are not confident of having sufficient autonomy.
Arabs will not react passively if they perceive the Kurds expelling Arabs from the north. Already, in heavily-armed Falluja, anti-Kurdish sentiment pervades. The Washington Post recently quoted one Iraqi who blamed the U.S. and the Kurds--participants in the April attack by the U.S. on the city--for the death of his daughter. "I will send my brothers north to kill the Kurds," he said . The displacement of Arabs from the (oil-drenched) north might be all the spark that the (resource-light) Sunni areas require to lead to an all-out civil war.
And in that situation, what will the U.S. do? The Kurds are our allies in every significant sense: One of the most betrayed people in the history of the world, they fought with us to overthrow Saddam. We may well find ourselves having to deploy forces to separate Iraq's different ethnicities, a very dangerous situation for our troops. How this will play out in practice in a place like Kirkuk--multiethnic, resource-rich and claimed by Arabs and Kurds alike--is incredibly difficult to determine. And it puts the U.S. in something close to a worst-case scenario. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/20/international/middleeast/20KURD.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=
Juan Cole: Israel, The Kurds, Iran
Sy Hersh is reporting [in Haaretz] that hundreds of Israeli intelligence agents are operating in and from Iraqi Kurdistan, gathering information on Iran's nuclear program and stirring up Syrian Kurds to make trouble for Bashar al-Asad in Syria. I have talked about the likelihood of such a presence here in the past. The nexus of disinformation about the Saddam government and about terrorist activity in Iraq may lie in tales fed to Mossad by the Kurds, who in turn passed it to Washington. The Kurds have steadily and implausibly alleged a Saddam/al-Qaeda connection. www.juancole.com , http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/441208.html
Australian Bishop Withdraws Support of War This is notable, as PM Howard has been a zealous supporter of Bush, is up for re-election, and this fellow has been a notable supporter.
As the only Anglican bishop to have publicly endorsed the Australian Government's case for war, I now concede that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction. It did not pose a threat to either its nearer neighbours or the United States and its allies. It did not host or give material support to al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups.
But did the Australian Government and the Australian Defence Force really believe that Iraq possessed WMD and would employ them in support of its national interests? Definitely. Were intelligence assessments of Iraq's WMD arsenal and its ability to mount military operations exaggerated and inaccurate? Certainly. But in the absence of any clear mitigation, there is no alternative to concluding that the March 2003 invasion was neither just nor necessary. http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/06/17/1087245036392.html?oneclick=true
Redeploying U.S. Troops: The Administration / Military is trying to cope with the troop shortage. There are no easy answers. Jim Lobe from Asia Times:
The planned redeployments, the most sweeping since the onset of the Cold War more than 50 years ago, are all part of a global strategy to build, in Rumsfeld's words, a "capability to impose lethal power, where needed, when needed, with the greatest flexibility and with the greatest agility".
As for where the "need" is, Pentagon officials state publicly that would be defined by threats to "stability". But a closer look at where Washington is most interested in acquiring access to military facilities suggests the determining factor may be proximity to oil and gas-producing areas, pipelines and shipping routes through which vital energy supplies pass.
To most analysts, the proposed redeployments make a lot of sense. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the need for big US military bases that housed conventional forces in Germany and elsewhere in Western Europe evaporated from a strategic point of view, while the steady build-up of well-equipped and well-trained forces in South Korea, where Washington has stationed nearly 40,000 troops for the past 25 years, made it more than a match for North Korea.
In addition, the presence and behavior of US forces in both Western Europe and Northeast Asia, particularly in South Korea and Okinawa, have become increasingly unpopular and a lightning rod for growing anti-Americanism and resentment. Reducing their "footprint" might have the opposite effect.
Indeed, Washington withdrew its troops altogether from Saudi Arabia over the past year in large part because their presence there had become politically untenable.
Nonetheless, both the plans - and the ways they are being developed and implemented - are provoking growing criticism at home, as well as abroad. The reasons for this are not difficult to understand, particularly in light of the Iraq war.
In the first place, the planned redeployments appear designed to ensure that the US could indeed enforce a "Pax Americana", based on its ability to exert unilateral military control over the production and flow of energy resources from Central Asia, the Gulf region and the Gulf of Guinea off the coast of West Africa in the face of potential rivals.
In that respect, the strategy is an update of the controversial 1992 draft Defense Planning Guidance written under the auspices of current Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff and national security adviser, I Lewis "Scooter" Libby - both of whom played key roles in driving the Bush administration to war in Iraq. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FF17Aa03.html
Phliadelphia Inquirer Editorial: Harsh…deservingly so…
What matters is that Americans grasp a central point: The multipronged rationale behind this rushed invasion has been revealed as a house of cards.
(Deposing Hussein always was a legitimate strategic goal, given his history as an aggressor and butcher - but not in this reckless way, with these wrongful justifications.)
Consider the house of cards, and two other glaring facts.
First, preparation for the invasion's aftermath was tragically inept. That easily predictable failure has cost many Iraqis, Americans and others their lives.
Second, the prison abuses, which stem from poor planning for occupation and a bid to place U.S. behavior above international law, have lost America the moral high ground it rightfully occupied on Sept. 12, 2001.
Now, ask yourself, along with those 27 American diplomats and warriors: Have the last two years made America more secure, more respected?
The answer is obvious and appalling. The answer is no. http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/8964906.htm?ERIGHTS=-8229334262747501747philly::rcsherman@rcn.com&KRD_RM=5prsmqnntpolnrttllllllllnl|Richard|N
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