[Peace-discuss] News notes 11/18

[C. G. Estabrook]

NOTES ON THE WEEK'S NEWS, FOR AWARE MEETING, 11/18

[NB: This week's notes are divided into nine sections: 1. SOURCES, 2.
COVERAGE OF THE WAR, 3. US PROPAGANDA, 4. ECONOMY, 5. BOMB STORIES, 6.
MILITARY OPERATIONS, 7. CIVIL LIBERTIES, 8. "WAR ON TERRORISM" ELSEWHERE,
and 9. SUMMARIES.]

1. SOURCES

[AFP] Agence France-Presse; [ALL] major papers; [AP] Associated Press;
[AW] Antiwar.com; [BBC] British Broadcasting Corporation; [BG] Boston
Globe, [CHE] Chronicle of Higher Education; [CMW] CBS Market Watch; [CNN]
Cable News Network; [CP] CounterPunch; [DPA] Deutsche Presse-Agentur; [EC]
The Economist; [FR] French papers; [FR] French papers; [FR2] France 2
(TV); [FT] Financial Times (London); [GL] Guardian (London); [GM] Globe
and Mail (Toronto); [GR] German papers; [HI] Hindu (India); [HT] Hindustan
Times; [IHT] International Herald Tribune; [IL] The Independent (London);
[IPS] Inter Press Service; [LAT] Los Angeles Times; [LM] Le Monde; [MI]
Mirror (UK); [MSN] MSNBC.com; [NA] Nation; [NBC] NBC Network News; [NI]
News International (Pakistan); [NJ] National Journal; [NR] New Republic;
[NST] New Scientist; [NWK] Newsweek; [NY] New Yorker; [NYT] New York
Times; [OL] Observer (London); [OS] Orlando Sentinel; [PG] The
Progressive; [PR] Progressive Review; [PV] Pravda; [RT] Reuters; [SC] The
Scotsman; [SJM] San Jose Mercury News; [TEL] Telegraph (London); [TI]
Times of India; [TL] Times (London); [UK] British papers; [UPI] United
Press International; [UST] USA Today; [WP] Washington Post; [WSJ] Wall
Street Journal; [WT] Washington Times

2. COVERAGE OF THE WAR

[AFP 11/17SA] Qatar's Al-Jazeera satellite channel said one of its
correspondents in the United States was detained by police while covering
the US-Russian summit in Texas

[AP 11/11S] About 200 people rallied in Atlanta against CNN's coverage of
the war in Afghanistan, leading to three arrests, two for violating
Georgia's anti-mask law.  "CNN, half the story, all the time," they
chanted Saturday at CNN Center.  The protesters said millions of refugees
and residents in Afghanistan face starvation but CNN isn't telling the
story.

[RT 11/15TH] Yahoo to cut 400 jobs; Tribune Co. (CT, LAT) to cut jobs;
AOLtimewarner hints at further cuts...

[IPS] JULIO GODOY: In the book "Bin Laden, la verite interdite" ("Bin
Laden, the forbidden truth"), the authors, Jean-Charles Brisard and
Guillaume Dasquie, reveal that the Federal Bureau of Investigation's
deputy director John O'Neill resigned in July in protest over obstruction.
Brisard claim O'Neill told them that "the main obstacles to investigate
Islamic terrorism were U.S. oil corporate interests and the role played by
Saudi Arabia in it".  The two claim the U.S. government's main objective
in Afghanistan was to consolidate the position of the Taliban regime to
obtain access to the oil and gas reserves in Central Asia. They affirm
that until August, the U.S. government saw the Taliban regime "as a source
of stability in Central Asia that would enable the construction of an oil
pipeline across Central Asia", from the rich oilfields in Turkmenistan,
Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the
Indian Ocean . . . Confronted with Taliban's refusal to accept U.S.
conditions, "this rationale of energy security changed into a military
one", the authors claim. "At one moment during the negotiations, the U.S.
representatives told the Taliban, 'either you accept our offer of a carpet
of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs'," Brisard said in an
interview in Paris.  According to the book, the government of Bush began
to negotiate with the Taliban immediately after coming into power in
February. U.S. and Taliban diplomatic representatives met several times in
Washington, Berlin and Islamabad. To polish their image in the United
States, the Taliban even employed a U.S. expert on public relations, Laila
Helms. The authors claim that Helms is also an expert in the works of U.S.
secret services, for her uncle, Richard Helms, is a former director of the
Central Intelligence Agency. The last meeting between U.S. and Taliban
representatives took place in August, five weeks before the attacks on New
York and Washington, the analysts maintain

3. US PROPAGANDA

[MI 11/16F] JOHN PILGER: According to Tony Blair, it was impossible to
secure Osama bin Laden's extradition from Afghanistan by means other than
bombing. Yet in late September and early October, leaders of Pakistan's
two Islamic parties negotiated bin Laden's extradition to Pakistan to
stand trial for the September 11 attacks. The deal was that he would be
held under house arrest in Peshawar. According to reports in Pakistan (and
the Daily Telegraph), this had both bin Laden's approval and that of
Mullah Omah, the Taliban leader.  The offer was that he would face an
international tribunal, which would decide whether to try him or hand him
over to America. Either way, he would have been out of Afghanistan, and a
tentative justice would be seen to be in progress. It was vetoed by
Pakistan's president Musharraf who said he "could not guarantee bin
Laden's safety" ... a US official said that "casting our objectives too
narrowly" risked "a premature collapse of the international effort if by
some lucky chance Mr. bin Laden was captured". And yet the US and British
governments insisted there was no alternative to bombing Afghanistan
because the Taliban had "refused" to hand over Osama bin Laden. What the
Afghani people got instead was "American justice" - imposed by a president
who, as well as denouncing international agreements on nuclear weapons,
biological weapons, torture, and global warming, has refused to sign up
for an international court to try war criminals: the one place where bin
Laden might be put on trial ... [The aim of the war] was to satisfy a
domestic audience then to accelerate American influence in a vital region
where there has been a power vacuum since the collapse of the Soviet Union
and the emergence of China, whose oil needs are expected eventually to
surpass even those of the US. That is why control of Central Asia and the
Caspian basin oilfields is important as exploration gets under way.

[BG 11/13T] A conservative academic group founded by Lynne Cheney, the
wife of Vice President, condemned by name 40 college professors as well as
the president of Wesleyan University and others for not showing enough
patriotism in the aftermath of Sept. 11.  ''College and university faculty
have been the weak link in America's response to the attack,'' says the
American Council of Trustees and Alumni in a report being issued today.
Anne Neal, an author of the report and council official, said that while
she is sure many professors and students support the US government, they
are afraid that if they speak out, liberal colleagues might shout them
down.

[NYT 11/17SA] Many papers reported the finding of plans for nuclear
weapons in a supposed al-Quaida office in Kabul.  Few papers reported (NYT
way inside) that the documents displayed came from a joke paper (like the
Onion) called the Journal of Irreproducible Results. Jason Scott, a
reporter for a Web newsletter, rotten.com, searched the Web for phrases
visible in a film of The (London) Times's document broadcast by the BBC
and discovered its source, a spoof published in 1979. The BBC showed a
paragraph that described the implosion principle by which a nuclear
fission weapon is triggered. But the next paragraph in the parody reads,
"In next month's column, we will learn how to clone your neighbor's wife
in six easy steps."

4. ECONOMY

[RT 11/15TH] The IMF on Thursday forecast what amounts to a global
recession for this year and next. At a briefing ahead of this weekend's
International Monetary Fund meeting in Ottawa, Managing Director Horst
Koehler forecast world economic growth of just 2.4 percent for both this
year and 2002, about half the 4.7 percent growth enjoyed in 2000.

[NYT 11/16F] There was a vote this month in Portland on whether Maine
should become the first state with universal health care. The state's
primary health insurer spent hundreds of thousands of dollars - more than
some Congressional candidates here spend - to try to defeat the
referendum, even though it was purely advisory.  And now that the
referendum has passed, albeit by 52 percent to 48 percent, both sides are
bracing for more bruising battles, with the issue likely to come before
the Maine Legislature next session. But passage of the proposal - to set
up a health care system in which the state government would insure
everyone - indicates a reawakened interest in universal health care and,
more important, the amount spent to defeat it shows how seriously the
health care industry is taking the new movement. Supporters of Canada's
government-administered health service say that a single-payer system
would not only cover everyone, it would cost less, be more efficient, and
eliminate so much paperwork that thousands of paper pushers would need to
be retrained for new jobs. In their vision, the system would be financed
by taxes, but would cost less than most people are now paying for health
insurance

5. BOMB STORIES

[WP 11/14W] The WP reported on page A13 (most other papers didn't report
it at all) that US bombs struck al-Jazeera's offices in Kabul before dawn
yesterday, heavily damaging the Qatar-based satellite television network's
offices before Northern Alliance forces entered the Afghan capital.
Mohammed Jassim al-Ali, al-Jazeera's managing editor, said in an interview
with the Associated Press that the strike could have been deliberate.
"They know where we are located and they know what we have in our office
and we also did not get any warning," al-Ali said.  [In the Kosovo War,
the US destroyed Belgrade Radio-TV, apparently after CNN, which knew of
the coming raid, tried to lure Serbian officials there for an interview;
the US also attacked the Chinese embassy and killed several journalists,
perhaps because it was an independent source of information - the US said
its maps were bad. SOS Colin Powell tried to get Qatar to curb al-Jazeera
before the US launched the current war.]

[GL 11/16F] The Qatar-based satellite television channel, al-Jazeera,
claimed yesterday that its Kabul office had been targeted by United States
bombers. Ibrahim Hilal, the chief editor of the Arabic language network,
said it had given the location of its office in Kabul to the authorities
in Washington ... he said he believed that al-Jazeera's office in Kabul
had been on the Pentagon's list of targets since the beginning of the
conflict but the US did not want to bomb it while the broadcaster was the
only one based in Kabul. By this week, however, the BBC had reopened its
Kabul office under Taliban supervision ... Mr. Hilal said he believed the
attack was deliberate and long-planned.

[RT 11/16F] US Air Force warplanes bombed a mosque in eastern Afghanistan
as the Muslim holy month of Ramadan began.  The 500-pound bomb was one of
three dropped on a building complex in Khowst, close to the eastern border
with Pakistan, said the Tampa, Florida-based Central Command.

6. MILITARY OPERATIONS

[RT 11/17SA] Leaders of the Northern Alliance said on Saturday most of the
British forces who arrived at an airbase north of Kabul this week must
leave.  Afghanistan would not allow its soil to be used as a base for
foreign forces and such action would be a very serious problem, Engineer
Arif, deputy chief of intelligence, told Reuters.  "There are 85 of them
who have come without any prior coordination in the name of humanitarian
aid led by the United Nations ... Our decision is that 15 of them can stay
and the others go ... If they accept 15 people then they can stay,
otherwise all of them need to go."

[MI 11/16F] JOHN PILGER: There is no victory in Afghanistan's tribal war,
only the exchange of one group of killers for another. The difference is
that President Bush calls the latest occupiers of Kabul "our friends".
However welcome the scenes of people playing music and shaving off their
beards, the so-called Northern Alliance are no bringers of freedom. They
are the same people welcomed by similar scenes of jubilation in 1992, who
then killed an estimated 50,000 in four years of internecine feuding. The
new heroes so far have tortured and executed at least 100 prisoners of war
... the latest crop of criminals to "liberate" Kabul have been given a
second chance by the most powerful country on earth pounding into dust one
of the poorest ... It is perfectly understandable that those in the West
who supported this latest American terror from the air, or hedged their
bets, should now seek to cover the blood on their reputations with absurd
claims that "bombing works". Tell that to grieving parents at fresh graves
in impoverished places of whom the sofa bomb-aimers know nothing.

[MSN 11/16F] This morning, US officials told MSNBC.com that they expected
the Taliban to collapse within 48 hours.

[NPR 11/11S] SOD Rumsfeld says the US doesn't want its proxies, the
"northern Alliance," to take Kabul because "whoever holds Kabul has to
feed it."

[BBC 11/13T] Kabul falls to NA, supported by US bombing.  As looting broke
out in the city some Arab volunteers serving with the Taleban were
summarily shot and a BBC camera crew was attacked. The Kabul office of
Qatar-based al-Jazeera television took a direct hit from a US bomb.  The
building was destroyed, but the staff had already left building.

[NYT 11/13T] David Rohde reports with pictures NA killing a prisoner,
other executions, and "widespread" looting.

[IL 11/16F] NA soldiers admitted yesterday they had killed hundreds of
pro-Taliban fighters holed up in a school, providing the first direct
evidence of massacres by the victorious opposition forces. An ITN
journalist went to the school in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif where
the bodies of 520 mostly Pakistani fighters were still being brought out
from the rubble yesterday - three days after the massacre.  The stand-off
between the forces of the veteran Uzbek commander Abdul Rashid Dostum and
more than 700 fighters lasted all weekend, after the Alliance forces
captured the strategic city on Friday.  General Dostum's forces, reputed
for their brutality from their previous spells in power in Mazar, crushed
the resistance.  Human Rights Watch pointed out yesterday that it had to
be established whether the Pakistani fighters were killed after
surrendering or not.

[AP 11/16F] Two American women held captive for months by the Taliban
spoke at a news conference Friday, offering thanks to government and aid
officials who helped free them and details about their time inside
Afghanistan ... Taliban Supreme Court judges had indefinitely postponed
the aid workers' trial since they were charged Aug. 3. The judges said
they feared their anger over U.S. airstrikes could hamper their ability to
make a fair ruling.  (See next story.)

7. CIVIL LIBERTIES

[AP 11/13T] President Bush approved the use of a special military tribunal
Tuesday.  The United States has not convened such a tribunal since World
War II.  Bush's order does not require approval from Congress. Detention
and trial by a military tribunal is necessary "to protect the United
States and its citizens, and for the effective conduct of military
operations and prevention of terrorist attacks," the five-page order said.
A senior Justice Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity
said only noncitizens would be tried before the military commission.
President Franklin Roosevelt had suspected World War II saboteurs secretly
tried by military commission, and six were executed. The Supreme Court
upheld the proceeding.  Military tribunals were also used during and after
the Civil War.  Michael Ratner, an international law and war crimes expert
at Columbia University, said the government would lose all credibility
with the Muslim world if it tries terrorists by a military commission.  
"I am flabbergasted," Ratner said. "Military courts don't have the same
kind of protections, you don't get the same rights as you do in a federal
court. The judges aren't appointed for life, there is no civilian jury."
White House counsel Gonzales said, "This does not identify by name who
should be exposed to military justice.  It just provides the framework
that, should the president have findings in the future, he could" order
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld to establish such a commission.

[PG 11/15] Amnesty International says this new order "violates fundamental
principles of justice in any circumstances, including in times of war,"
and is contrary to the Geneva Convention.

[WT 11/16F] The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday
challenged President Bush's call for special U.S. military tribunals to
try foreigners accused of terrorist attacks, saying the trials could give
the world the impression that the United States is looking for "victor's
justice." Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-VT): "We need to understand the
international implications of the president's order, which sends a message
to the world that it is acceptable to hold secret trials and summary
executions, without the possibility of judicial review."

[NYT 11/15W] William Safire, right-wing columnist, wrote, "Misadvised by a
frustrated and panic-stricken attorney general, a president of the United
States has just assumed what amounts to dictatorial power to jail or
execute aliens. Intimidated by terrorists and inflamed by a passion for
rough justice, we are letting George W. Bush get away with the replacement
of the American rule of law with military kangaroo courts.  In his
infamous emergency order, Bush admits to dismissing 'the principles of law
and the rules of evidence' that undergird America's system of justice. He
seizes the power to circumvent the courts and set up his own drumhead
tribunals - panels of officers who will sit in judgment of non-citizens
who the president need only claim "reason to believe" are members of
terrorist organizations ... Bush now strips the alien accused of even the
limited rights afforded by a court-martial ... His kangaroo court can
execute the alien with no review by any civilian court."  In spite of this
analysis, Safire holds on to his conservative credentials by suggesting
that to give ObL "A proper trial like that Israel afforded Adolf Eichmann
... would give the terrorist a global propaganda platform," and therefore
he should be killed in Afghanistan...

[LAT 11/16F] Federal authorities said Thursday that they have found no
evidence indicating that any of the roughly 1,200 people arrested in the
United States played a role in the 911 attacks ... In particular, said one
senior law enforcement official, "no links have been established" between
the hijackers and the four men believed to be the strongest terrorism
suspects: two men from India arrested Sept. 12 on a train in Texas, a
former Boston cabdriver arrested outside Chicago and a former flight
school student who was arrested in Minnesota in August ... Moussaoui, the
fourth prime suspect, first aroused suspicion when he reportedly told
flight instructors in Minnesota that he only wanted to learn how to fly a
plane, not to take off or land. They called authorities and he was
detained in August on immigration charges ... But on Wednesday, FBI
Director Robert Mueller said Moussaoui actually told flight school
officials just the opposite of what had been reported -- that he only
wanted to learn to take off and land commercial jets, not fly them.
Mueller said the FBI no longer considered Moussaoui to be the 20th
hijacker.

[CP] During the Vietnam War, under the CIA's Phoenix Program - which is
the model for the Homeland Security Office - a terrorist suspect was
anyone accused by one anonymous source. Just one. The suspect was then
arrested, indefinitely detained in a CIA interrogation center, and
tortured until he or she (or in some cases children as young as twelve)
confessed, informed on others, died, or was brought before a military
tribunal (such as Bush is proposing) for disposition. In thousands of
cases, innocent people were imprisoned and tortured based on the word of
an anonymous informer who had a personal grudge, or was actually a Viet
Cong double agent

[BG] The Justice Department, which has arrested or detained more than
1,000 people under unusual secrecy, says it has compiled a list of at
least 5,000 men who it believes might have information about the attacks
at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon . . . The people sought for
questioning are men, ages 18 to 33, who have entered the United States
legally on non-immigrant visas after Jan. 1, 2000, from a list of
countries from which known operatives of Osama bin Laden have entered the
United States. A person's refusal to answer questions will be noted and
may prompt a return visit from federal investigators...

[Newspoetry] "We've Got Our Flag: Who The Hell Needs The Constitution?"
(Mike Lehman)

[GL 11/14W] The British government's new anti-terrorist bill was last
night attacked as a cover to smuggle into law draconian new police powers
that have little direct connection to the war against terrorism.  [The
same thing was done with the "USA Patriot Act."] Publication of the bill
yesterday revealed it contains drastic measures such as making it a
criminal offence to publish details of the movement of nuclear waste
trains, and the power to jail for up to a month an animal rights extremist
who refuses to remove a disguise such as a mask or face paint.  Details of
the 125-clause bill, which is expected to become law by Christmas, confirm
that suspected terrorists who could be interned for up to six months will
not hear evidence from intelligence services that led to their detention
as they and their lawyers will be excluded from parts of their hearings
held in camera. Their interests instead will be represented by an advocate
appointed by the attorney general.  The bill will allow confidential
information about an individual held by any government department or local
authority to be disclosed to the police and intelligence services for any
criminal investigation - not just an investigation into terrorist
offences. During the eight weeks it has taken to draft the bill it has
grown from just 40 clauses to 125 as other measures have been added. Some,
including clauses relating to internet surveillance and disclosure, are
powers that have failed to win parliamentary approval in the past.  It was
suggested that the new offence of incitement to religious hatred would
prevent reasoned debate, humour or criticism of religions or religious
practices.

8. "WAR ON TERRORISM" ELSEWHERE

[GL 11/16F] The US vice-president, Dick Cheney, warned yesterday that
after the Afghanistan campaign is over, America could use military action
in a second wave of attacks directed against states which harbour
terrorists.  Mr. Cheney said that up to 50 states could be targeted for a
range of action, from financial and diplomatic to military, on the grounds
that they had al-Qaida networks operating there.  Somalia, the east
African country which is a haven for al-Qaida supporters, would be high on
any US list of targets, alongside Iraq.  [Recall that the US may have
killed as many as 10,000 people in Somalia at the outset of the Clinton
administration.]

[AW 11/13T] "Things in Israel may have never been worse. Economically, the
country is in the worst recession since 1953. Two major economic sectors -
hi-tech and tourism - have suffered fatal blows, the one from the global
collapse of the "new economy," the other from the Intifada boosted by the
September attacks ... As part of an overall campaign to de-legitimize the
Arab-Israeli population, this week the Israeli Parliament lifted the
immunity of its (Arab) member Azmi Bishara: not for corruption or criminal
deeds (a commonplace in Israeli politics), but, for the first time, for
things he had said. And even this decision, a dangerous blow to Israeli
democracy, threatening the freedom of speech of an elected Parliament
member, has been editorially applauded by Israel's "liberal" newspaper
Ha'aretz, which cynically blamed the victim: "If anyone is responsible for
the situation having reached this point, it is MK Bishara himself." At the
same time, Israeli state terrorism in the Occupied Territories is reaching
unprecedented peaks. Israeli death-squads now kill a Palestinian freedom
fighter almost every day. On the other hand, police claim to have "no
clue" as to the identity of a Jewish terrorist group that has murdered at
least six Palestinians during the past months. Prime Minister Sharon has
not yet reached the death toll of his murderous predecessor Ehud Barak -
during whose term, in October and November 2000, more than 110
Palestinians were killed every month - but he is making a good progress:
October 2001 was the bloodiest month this year, with more than 90
Palestinian casualties."  [Ran HaCohen]

[NR 11/26] A beneficiary of anti-Arab sentiment: Sen. Bob Smith, R-N.H.,
once the GOP's most endangered incumbent. Since Sept. 11, Smith has
ratcheted up the pro-Israel rhetoric and blasted his primary opponent,
John Sununu, an ethnic Palestinian. He now leads by six points in one
poll.

[CP 11/16F] Green Party (US) candidate for US House of Representatives,
Nevada 1st district (Lane Startin), rejects party's position and supports
the war in Afghanistan.

[EC 11/17] "In the issues of December 16th 2000 to November 10th 2001, we
may have given the impression that George Bush had been legally and duly
elected president of the United States. We now understand that this may
have been incorrect, and that the election result is still too close to
call. The Economist apologises for any inconvenience."

9. SUMMARIES

[SC] "The retreat of the terrorist Taleban from Kabul is a positive
development," said a statement from the Revolutionary Association of the
Women of Afghanistan. "But the entering of the rapist and looter Northern
Alliance into the city is nothing but dreadful and shocking news."

[SC 11/12M] I left Afghanistan just after the Taleban came to power in
1996 because it was impossible to live there as a woman.  But installing
the Northern Alliance is hardly going to repair everything at a stroke. I
remember the day that Northern Alliance - called mujahideen at the
beginning - came to Kabul. Everybody was frightened. The mujahideen had
just defeated Najibullah, the former president of Afghanistan. They took
over Kabul in 1992 ... as soon as they took over, they began raping women,
looting houses and killing people. They are no freedom-fighters.  I am
very sure that no Afghan wants these Northern Alliance rebels to take
control of Kabul. They were the people that brought the bloodshed to
Kabul, killing people who they thought were communists or Pushtun and so
on. The Taleban were awful as well. Many of them were foreigners, but at
least they were not raping women. I always wondered how I would kill
myself if these wild people came to our house. Should I use my father's
gun? A knife? Or should I throw myself from the third floor? People are
angry about the World Trade Centre, but they must not allow the Northern
Alliance to come to Kabul in the same way as they did in 1992 bringing all
those horrors.  [Bija Masafer]

[From Sam Smith's Progressive Review] HOW TO TELL WHEN YOU'VE WON

THERE seems to be some confusion in Washington these days as to the nature
of victory. To help the Beltway discourse, the Review provides some handy
hints to determine whether you've won or lost:
	- If, in the course of battle, you not only destroy your enemy but
greatly harm yourself, as well as the people whom you are purportedly
rescuing, that is not a victory but a disaster.
	- If you are content to cause great damage to your opponent
without regard to its effect on yourself, that is not a victory but a
pathology typical, for example, of suicide bombers.
	- If the instruments of your struggle, upon achieving capturing a
city, proceeds to summarily execute almost as many people as were killed
in the initial cause of your anger, that is not a victory but reason for
shame and a hint that you should do better in selecting your allies.
	- If you attack a country without obeying the rules of the United
Nations, that is not a victory but an international crime.
	- If you leave the place you are liberating filled with dead
bodies, unexploded bomblets, and depleted uranium, that is not victory but
brutality.
	- If you destroy your own liberty for the sake of revenge, that is
not victory but masochism and should be treated rather than applauded.
	- If you don't see ordinary citizens walking around your Capitol
because they are too scared someone is going to blow it up even after
"defeating" the enemy, that is not a victory but a shame.
	- If the country you're bombing has a gross national product equal
to less than what it would cost us to fight there for two years, you
didn't win much and might have done better using the money in some other
way.
	- If, thanks to new security measures, you can now get to Boston
from Washington faster on a train than on a plane, that is not victory but
cultural collapse.
	- If, despite the fall of Kabul, you are still worried about
suitcase nukes, stinger missiles, plane hijackings, anthrax attacks, mass
smallpox, and one billion Muslims, that is not victory, but approximately
the same problem you had before Kabul fell.
	- If you have to rely on the honor of John Ashcroft and Richard
Cheney rather than on the integrity of the Constitution, that is not
victory, but a catastrophe.
	- If you don't decide who the enemy is until after you've start
fighting, that's a sign you might have thought about it all a bit more
first.
	- If both your final and penultimate enemies were creations of
your intelligence agencies and foreign policy experts, getting rid of them
is not a victory but a salvage operation that could have been avoided by
being right the first time.
	- If you are still scared to visit a big city, fly in a plane, sit
in a crowded stadium, or open your mail, you have not won regardless of
what happened in Kabul.
	- If, thanks to the policies of your government and the enemies it
has created, you can longer travel, act, or speak in the manner of free
Americans over the past two centuries, that is not a victory but the
deepest of tragedies.

[From Bill Blum's "Rogue State"]

Everyone knows the Taliban were not nice to women. Less well known is that
in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Afghanistan's then government gave
women equal rights. The U.S. spent billions to get rid of this government
because it was supported by the Soviet Union.
 - Instead, the U.S. backed a fundamentalist opposition which, in the end,
won. The status of women plummeted.
 - The war also killed over a million people, disabled three million, and
left five million refugees.
 - Among those who survived were Osama bin Laden and 16,000 Muslim
guerrillas trained in Afghanistan including:
	* Mir Aimal Kansi who killed two CIA employees and wounded three
others.
	* Most of those involved in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade
Center.
	* The leader and at least one other involved in a plot to bomb the
UN building and the Lincoln and Holland tunnels.
	* The mastermind of a plot to bomb 12 U.S. jumbo jets carrying
4,000 passengers.
	* Ramzi Ahmed Yousef who bombed a Philippine Airlines jet in 1994.
	* Those responsible for the deaths of two U.S. diplomats in
Karachi in 1995
	* Those responsible for the deaths of seven in the bombing of a
U.S. Army building in Saudi Arabia in 1995.
	* Those responsible for killing 19 U.S. airmen in Saudi Arabia the
same year.
	* Those responsible for eight bomb attacks in France in 1995 that
killed eight and wounded 160.
	* Key members of the Chechnyan guerrillas in Russia.
	* An estimated 4,000-5,000 Muslim militants in Tajikistan.
	
Said a U.S. diplomat in Pakistan in 1996: "This is an insane instance of
the chickens coming home to root. You can't plug billions of dollars into
an anti-Communist jihad, accept participation from all over the world and
ignore the consequences."

	*	*	*

AND, FINALLY, Abigail Anne Estabrook-Johnson was born 11/14W at 3:30AM.  
I hope she grows up in an America where the government behaves less
wretchedly than it is currently.  Regards, Carl

	==============================================================
	C. G. Estabrook
	Visiting Professor of Sociology
	University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign [MC-190]
	109 Observatory, 901 South Mathews Avenue, Urbana IL 61801 USA
	office 217.244.4105 / mobile 217.369.5471 / home 217.359.9466