[Peace-discuss] News notes 03/10 [part 1 of 2]

[Carl Estabrook]

NOTES ON THIS WEEK'S "WAR ON TERRORISM" FOR AWARE MEETING 2002.03.10

"So it pretty much comes down to us. Just as in every great moment of
moral crisis, the fatal flaw of power is to prefer position to principle
and to assume that position is an outward and visible sign of inner,
invisible grace. Just as in every great moment of moral crisis, it is left
to the weak to speak the truth, the outsider to find resolution, and the
unannointed to carry out responsibilities that our elected representatives
swore to fulfill but have so carelessly jettisoned.

"There is a great coalition of conscience waiting to be formed, but at the
moment it consists of millions who, thanks to the effectiveness of
government and media propaganda, have yet to realize that they are not
alone. Once that discovery has been made and oh how the apostles of
violence seek to prevent it then the way to sanity will start to open. If,
say, those opposed to the present course represent just twenty percent of
the country that's bigger than any lobbying group in America. If that
twenty percent were to demand a few basic policies such as Palestinian
statehood, an end to the Iraqi embargo, and the commitment to non-violent
resolution, the illusionary national unanimity so heavily based merely on
fear of offending or looking foolish would start to unravel.

"Any community could help to get this rolling by bringing together
concerned citizens willing to stand with others and to say in a group what
they have been reluctant to express singly. Religious leaders, writers,
teachers, and others not a part of the machinery of power could play a
major part as could those whose reputations are not dependent on the
blessing of the political and media structure. What started as a few
people setting an example could spread until it becomes a national and
international movement."
	--Sam Smith, PROGRESSIVE REVIEW <http://prorev.com/mar6.htm>

[Note: this weeks's notes are followed by some comments of the growing
support for the things AWARE stands for; as usual, titles and remarks in
caps are mine. --Carl]

**MONDAY, MARCH 04, 2002

FIGHTING TWO-WHEEL TERRORISM. The California Supreme Court on Monday
upheld the arrest of a bicyclist for not having identification when he was
pulled over for pedaling in the wrong direction on a one-way street. The
ruling upheld a state law allowing officers to arrest and search
vehicle-code offenders who do not have identification. The infraction is
punishable by a $100 fine. The decision "is probably the price we're
paying for 9-11," said Richard Fitzer, attorney for defendant Conrad McKay
... The high court followed a U.S. Supreme Court decision in April that
validated a Texas motorist's arrest for not being buckled up, a 5-4 ruling
that said police can arrest and handcuff people for minor traffic
offenses. "We conclude, in accordance with the United States Supreme Court
precedent, that custodial arrests for fine-only offenses do not violate
the Fourth Amendment," Justice Marvin R. Baxter wrote for the majority.
[AP]

SO MUCH FOR THE POWELL DOCTRINE. The bloodiest day of combat for American
forces in Afghanistan resulted in seven US soldiers killed and 11 wounded
... The latest American casualties in the five-month-old war came Monday
... as two twin-rotor troop-carrying helicopters came under attack.
Military officials said the opposition force used machine guns and
rocket-propelled grenades. [AP]

HE'S PROBABLY USE THE WAR FOR POLITICAL PURPOSES. Conservatives are
running an ad in South Dakota aimed at Tom Daschle which was launched with
a news release in which Richard Lessner of the Family Research Center
asked, "What do Saddam Hussein and Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle have
in common?" Answer: "Neither man wants America to drill for oil in
Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge."

**TUESDAY, MARCH 05, 2002

1857 U.S. Supreme Court issues its Dred Scott decision, ruling that blacks
are not US citizens and not entitled to protection under the law. The
"unhappy Black Race," wrote Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney in his
opinion, had never possessed "rights which the white man was bound to
respect."

1965 Civil rights demonstrators begin a march from Selma to Montgomery to
protest the murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson and to demand voting rights for
blacks. They are brutally beaten by police officers while crossing the
Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. 67 are injured. The attack becomes known as
"Bloody Sunday."

WITH FRIENDS LIKE THIS... US authorities have broken a network of Israeli
spies living in the United States who were trying to burrow into the
justice and defense departments, a French website specializing in
intelligence matters reported. The site, Intelligence Online, said it had
exclusive access to a US justice department report that showed that "a
huge Israeli spy ring operating in the United States was rolled up by the
Justice Department's counter-espionage service." Around 120 Israelis were
arrested or deported as a result of the operation, which it said had been
kept top-secret up to now. The website said the ring was active in the
states of Arkansas, California, Florida and Texas. It was arranged in
around 20 cells of between four and eight members, who were aged between
22 and 30 and had recently completed Israeli military service in an
intelligence division [AFP]

I KNOW NOTHING, NOTHING. Le Monde said the secret study said the Israelis
posed as graphic arts students and tried to enter buildings belonging to
the Drug Enforcement Administration and other U.S. agencies . . . Asked by
Reuters about the Intelligence Online report, an FBI spokesman flatly
called it a "bogus story." The spokesman said: "There wasn't a spy ring."
In Washington, U.S. Justice Department spokeswoman Susan Dryden said of
the Le Monde report, "At this time, we have no information to support
this." U.S. officials said some Israeli students had been sent out of the
country for immigration violations, not for spying.  In Israel, a
spokesman said the prime minister had no comment on the matter.  Le Monde
reported Intelligence Online's findings and added elements it said its
reporters had uncovered.  "A vast Israeli espionage network operating on
American territory has been broken up," it wrote. [REUTERS]

EVEN IN FLORIDA. The president likes to use self-defense as a
rationalization. Well, I believe in self-defense, but self-defense does
not extend to killing people who some think might be a threat in the
future. How do you think you would fare if you killed somebody and told
the police: "Well, he wasn't attacking me, but I know he doesn't like me,
and so probably some day, he would have attacked me. I just decided to
take him out as a precaution"? You'd be charged with murder one. This
so-called war on terrorism is entirely too ambiguous. It amounts to a
license for the Bush administration to attack anybody it decides to
attack, and it gives a green light to every repressive government on Earth
to kill off its opposition under the guise of fighting terrorism . . . It
seems that when our leaders get drunk on power, a lot of Americans get
drunk, too. "We're the most powerful nation on Earth," some guy says.
Well, how many B-52s or F-16s do you have parked in your back yard? What
is this "we" nonsense? You and I aren't powerful. People who control power
are using us as pawns. The only things in my back yard are a hammock, a
birdbath and a miniature windmill. We need to rebel. We need to send a
message to Washington that without a formal declaration of war by
Congress, we aren't serving in the armed forces. We need to teach our
children that one takes a precious human life only in defense of other
human life or our liberty but never just to achieve a political or
corporate objective that has nothing to do with the defense of our country
or our liberty. Are we living in a democratic republic, or are we living
under a system of corporate fascism? [CHARLEY REESE, ORLANDO SENTINEL]

WHAT, ME WORRY? Three quarters of the public think the Bush Administration
is either hiding something or lying when it comes to its dealings with
Enron executives, up from 67% just a month ago. The number of people who
say the Administration is lying has more than doubled, to one in five now.
Only 13% think members of the Bush Administration are telling the entire
truth. [CBS]

MORGAN WANTS THEIR, UH, RAKE-OFF. JP Morgan Chase, the battered Wall
Street investment bank, was delivered another blow when it lost an attempt
to force 11 insurance companies to honor $965m (678m) in bonds related to
failed firm Enron. US district judge Jed Rakoff [THAT'S HIS NAME - YOU
CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP] sided with the insurance firms, some of which
have launched a counter suit against JP Morgan alleging fraud. The
insurers claim the oil and gas contracts against which they issued the
surety bonds masked straightforward loans. The contracts were between
Enron and Mahonia, a JP Morgan affiliate. Judge Rakoff said the insurers
had provided enough evidence that the bonds "were the product" of fraud by
the second-largest bank in the US, to deny JP Morgan immediate payment.
"These arrangements now appear to be nothing but a disguised loan - or at
least have sufficient [indications] thereof that the court could not
possibly grant summary judgment to the plaintiff." [GUARDIAN UK]

"THE LORD REPENTED THAT HE HAD MADE SAUL KING" [1 SAM 15:35]. Each time he
has been sworn in to political office, he is anointed with cooking oil (in
the manner of King David, as he points out in his memoirs Lessons from a
Father to His Son). When Mr Ashcroft was in the Senate, the duty was
performed by his father, a senior minister in a church specializing in
speaking in tongues, the Pentecostal Assemblies of God. When he became
attorney general, Clarence Thomas, a supreme court justice, did the honors
. . . Perhaps the most bizarre wrinkle in the Ashcroft enigma emerged in
November when Andrew Tobias, the Democratic Party treasurer and a
financial writer, published an article on his website accusing the
attorney general of harboring superstitions about tabby cats. According to
the Tobias article, advance teams for an Ashcroft visit to the US embassy
in the Hague asked anxiously if there were tabby cats (or calico cats as
they are known in the US) on the premises. "Their boss, they explained,
believes calico cats are signs of the devil," Mr Tobias reported. When
asked about the veracity of the report, the justice department said that
it had made Mr Ashcroft laugh. [ASHCROFT SINGS:
cnn.com/video/us/2002/02/25/ashcroft.sings.wbtv.med.html]

"THE GINGHAM DOG WENT 'BOW-WOW-WOW!'/AND THE CALICO CAT REPLIED 'MEE-OW!'
News that John Ashcroft believes that calico cats are a sign of the devil
has inspired the folks at Fallout Shelter to kick off a campaign in which
you can terrorize the Attorney General by sending him a postcard of a
calico cat. Or come up with your own photo and send it to Mullah John, c/o
U.S. Department of Justice 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC
20530-0001.

WHO'S RUNNING THIS COUNTRY? Rep. Mike Ross (D-Ark.) at the Little Rock
airport tried to board a flight back to D.C.  An airline employee said she
would first need to see his ticket and some form of I.D. Eager to comply
with all security regulations, the freshman lawmaker proudly pulled his
official Member I.D. out of his pocket to show off to the employee. "We
don't take that," the airline worker replied. Thinking quickly on his
feet, Ross then dug into his pocket for his Sam's Club card, revealing his
membership in Sam Walton's discount wholesale chain. The employee smiled
and said, "Have a nice flight!" [ROLL CALL]

HMM; COULD BE TRUE. Police arrested two protesters who threw pretzels into
the air as they demonstrated against a Minneapolis appearance by George
Bush. A police official, asked what charges would be filed, replied, "It's
got to be a felony. You could have called it attempted murder."

PROBABLY KEPT A CALICO CAT. The original pledge [of allegiance] was
written in 1892 by a Baptist socialist minister, Francis Bellamy, and was
first published in a magazine called the Youth's Companion. The magazine's
editor had hired Bellamy after the latter had been sacked by his church
for delivering controversial socialist statements from the pulpit. Bellamy
had even considered including the word "equality" in the pledge but knew
that the state superintendents of education would be unwilling to endorse
something that hinted at equal rights for women and blacks. It was more
than 60 years later, in 1954, that Congress, at the height of the
anticommunist McCarthy period, added the words "under God" ... Bellamy's
grand-daughter later said that Bellamy would have resented the words being
added, not least because at the end of his life he had become disenchanted
with organized religion and had stopped attending church in Florida
because of racial bigotry. [GUARDIAN UK]

GIVE P'LICE A CHANCE... An international coalition of more than 100
student and social activist organizations plan to convene in Washington
next month with thousands of supporters expected to protest America's war
against terrorism. Operation Enduring Freedom, called "Bush's War" by
organizers of the National Youth and Student Peace Coalition, is diverting
funds from vital social programs, harming the country's working people and
fostering a climate of censorship and civil-rights abuse, it said
(www.corporations.org/democracy/april20.html). [UPI]

**WEDNESDAY, MARCH 06, 2002

CUSTER'S ARMY. U.S. and Afghan forces met far stiffer resistance than
expected in the mission to wipe out Taliban and al-Qaida troops holed up
the mountains and caves in the Gardez region about 75 miles south of
Kabul, commanders and soldiers said.  "I don't think we knew what we were
getting into this time, but I think were beginning to adjust," said Sgt.
Maj. Mark Nielsen, 48, from Indianapolis.  Roberts and at least seven
other Americans have died in the fighting since Saturday and about 40 have
been wounded. Six others died in the operation after they were being put
down for battle by CH-47 Chinook helicopters.  The operation, code-named
Anaconda, had originally called for a small detachment of U.S. Special
Forces to work with Zia Lodin, a local Afghan commander, to enter the town
of Sirkankel to flush out suspected al-Qaida and foreign Taliban forces.
Sirkankel is about 25 miles south of Gardez. [AP]

FIGHTING TERRORISM. The war between Israel and the Palestinians spun
further out of control yesterday, claiming at least 10 more lives as the
international community watched, unable or unwilling to intervene.  In a
day of fast-moving attacks and counter-attacks, Palestinian militants
struck against civilians inside Israel, killing three in a Tel Aviv
restaurant and one more with a suicide bombing on a bus.  Israeli
warplanes and helicopters launched missile strikes against the West Bank
and Gaza, killing three Palestinian militants in a helicopter strike on a
car in Ramallah.  Last night, Israeli officials said an Israeli baby was
hurt when Palestinian militants fired a Kassam rocket from the Gaza Strip
that landed next to a house in Sderot, the first time the makeshift
missile has hit a residential area.  In little more than a week, 61
Palestinians and 31 Israelis have been killed, including children on both
sides, in one of the deadliest phases of the 17-month conflict, which
spread despair among the international diplomats charged with keeping the
region calm.  The Palestinians are pleading for intervention by the
international community, especially Washington. But the diplomats are
digesting remarks yesterday by Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister,
that made clear he intended to try to defeat the Palestinians before
negotiating with them, confirming suspicions that he believes the conflict
can be solved with force.  [INDEPENDENT UK]

THESE ARE OUR PEOPLE. Local political rivalries in Afghanistan's eastern
Pakhtia province appear to have contributed to the initial defeat of the
US-led attack on al-Qaeda forces on Saturday and the worst US casualties
since the war started last October. [FT]

NO, THEY ABOLISHED THE DEPT. OF LYING. Osama bin Laden's Al Qaida network,
in an Arabic-language Internet posting, asserts that the United States is
concealing the extent of casualties from Operation Anaconda in eastern
Afghanistan. "About the casualties that the Pentagon has admitted, it's
really much more than they ever confessed to," al Qaida said in a
statement on the al Neda Web site, translated late Tuesday by United Press
International. The statement, posted Tuesday, claimed that al Qaida
fighters attacked about 70 U.S. and Canadian troops on Monday in Khost in
eastern Afghanistan and that "many were killed." ... The al Neda Web site,
which has been active since Dec. 21, says it carries statements from
senior al Qaida and Taliban leaders, including bin Laden and Mullah
Mohammad Omar, the Taliban supreme commander. Al Neda means "voice" in
Arabic ... "In our estimate, America's admittance to some of the
casualties (in the Afghan war) is only because of the internal pressure
the Pentagon is facing from some congressional members," al Qaida said in
its Tuesday posting. [UPI]

WHAT TERROR IS GOOD FOR. The Russian former media mogul Boris Berezovsky
launched his strongest attack yesterday on his one-time friend and now
president, Vladimir Putin, accusing him of being linked to the terrorist
bombings of apartment buildings that killed about 300 Russians in
September 1999. Mr Berezovsky, now living in London, called a press
conference to produce a British explosives expert, a French
documentary-maker, a former Russian agent of the FSB (successor to the
KGB), and a woman who lost her mother in the blasts, to accuse the
security service and demand an official inquiry. "I am sure the bombings
were organised by the FSB. It's not just speculation. It's a clear
conclusion", Mr Berezovsky said yesterday. "I'm not saying Mr Putin gave
an order to blow up those buildings. I'm saying that at the least he knew
the FSB was involved." Mr Putin, who was named prime minister shortly
before the bombings after heading the FSB, blamed the attacks on Chechens
and used public outrage to justify sending Russian forces into the rebel
republic. Presenting himself as a tough war leader, he won the
presidential election in 2000. Mr Berezovsky, who has lost his share in
several Russian TV companies since 2000, based his case on the
professional nature of the bombings and the large amount of explosives
used. He also cited official discrepancies after a foiled blast at a block
of flats in Ryazan.

EVERYBODY'S DOIN' IT. The other corporate meltdown in the headlines is
Global Crossing, a would-be telecommunications giant. Global Crossing
spent lavishly to curry favor with politicians of both parties. It gave
$100,000 in stock to Democratic Party chairman Terry McAuliffe, which
McAuliffe quickly parlayed into an $18 million profit. Former President
George H.W. Bush got an $80,000 fee for addressing a Global Crossing
company event. None of this passes the smell test. In 1999, Congress
repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, a landmark New Deal reform that separated
the underwriting of securities from the practice of commercial banking. In
the 1920s, large banks had engaged in both businesses - a flagrant
conflict of interest - in which banks like Morgan often sold their
commercial customers risky stocks that the banks themselves had floated.
The promotion of such stock schemes was blamed in part for the Great
Crash. After the Roaring Twenties, such practices were deemed unethical as
well as risky. By the roaring '90s, however, conflicts of interest were
again deemed normal, even clever. [R. KUTTNER, BOSTON GLOBE]

MAKING MONEY THE OLD WAY. In a new report, "We Are Not Machines," Oxfam
condemns conditions at dozens of factories in Indonesia that supply Nike
and Adidas. [BBC]

OOPS. A severe earthquake which struck northern Afghanistan and was felt
as far away as India, may have been caused by the powerful bombs used in
US air strikes, ITAR-TASS reported quoting an unnamed expert.  The tremors
which originated in the Hindu Kush mountains were unusually long and
powerful, the geophysicist quoted by the agency said, adding that the
disaster was unprecedented in Afghanistan.  "It is not unlikely that the
massive use of powerful bombs by US troops led to the quake," the expert
said, adding that some bombs were known to provoke landslides.  The quake,
which measured 7.2 on the open-ended Richter scale according to the US
Geological Survey, triggered landslides in Dahani Zoa in northern
Afghanistan, burying houses and damming up the river, which then flooded
other houses.  Afghan state television said late on Monday that 150 people
had been killed and a hotel and about 100 houses destroyed, while another
400 homes were flooded. Meanwhile, the Afghan interim leader Hamid
Karzai's visit to Turkmenistan had been put off by two days after the
quake had hit. [AFP]

**THURSDAY, MARCH 07, 2002

1906 In a forerunner to Afghanistan, U.S. troops occupying the Philippines
attack the stronghold of an "unruly" band of hill Moros, mowing the
stubborn tribes people down with a combination of artillery fire and
infantry assaults. All these Moros - men, women and children - were
slaughtered, whereupon President Theodore Roosevelt, congratulated the
Americans for "a brilliant feat of arms wherein you . . . upheld the honor
of the American flag." The major [accused of killing 11 defenseless
Filipinos] said that General Smith instructed him to kill & burn, and said
that the more he killed and burned the better pleased he would be; that it
was no time to take prisoners, and that he was to make Samar a howling
wilderness. Major Waller asked General Smith to define the age limit for
killing, and he replied "Everything over ten."

CLINTONS STILL AT LARGE. President Clinton cut a deal on his last day in
office to surrender his law license and avoid perjury charges on which
federal prosecutors believed they could obtain a criminal conviction,
according to a final report on the Monica Lewinsky investigation.
Independent counsel Robert W. Ray, in a report released by a three-judge
panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, said prosecutors
had concluded that "sufficient evidence existed to prosecute and that such
evidence would probably be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction"
on criminal charges that Mr. Clinton falsely denied having sex with Miss
Lewinsky. The report said the evidence included admissions by Mr. Clinton,
who was impeached over the Lewinsky accusations but acquitted during a
Senate trial, that he gave false answers under oath concerning his
relationship with Miss Lewinsky . . .  The report said Mr. Clinton lied in
a deposition presided over by U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright in a
sexual-misconduct lawsuit filed by former Arkansas state employee Paula
Jones. [WASH TIMES]

MAYBE YOU CAN MAKE THIS STUFF UP. A CNN internal memo warns staffers to
hold off reporting on a new book which presents a damning portrait of
former CNN host and civil rights activist Rev. Jesse Jackson. The CNN memo
obtained by the Drudge Report, penned from the network's Chicago bureau,
points out how the author of Shakedown: The Life Of The Revered Jesse
Jackson - may not be trustworthy. "Kenneth Timmerman is a long time writer
and investigator touting conservative causes," the CNN memo notes. "He is
recently a failed political candidate [ran for US Senate in Maryland]
whose own bio points out he studied creative writing at Brown." [DRUDGE]

GUESS ANOTHER AMENDMENT'S GOTTA GO. A federal judge in Boston has ruled
that that nonprofessional news gatherers have the same rights as
professionals in a case involving public access television. Said Bill
Newman, director of the western Massachusetts chapter of the ACLU.
"Citizen producers of shows are entitled to the same First Amendment
protections as producers of shows for large media outlets."

POWELL TENDS TO CORRUPT? FCC chairman M. Powell (son of C. Powell) appears
before a congressional committee: "All you need to do is take care of the
laws we pass. Instead, you seem to abandon that responsibility and assign
it to the market," Sen. Hollings said. "You don't care about the law...to
you, the law is an empty vessel." Referring to press quotes in USA Today
where Powell had been attributed as stating that the free market was his
religion Hollings asked Powell, "Are you happy with your job?" When Powell
applied in the affirmative, Hollings said that the market as religion
statement he made suggested that he might be better "as an executive vice
president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce." "You always go with the
market," Hollings said, "You think that is the law?" In response, Powell
said, "I think the law recognizes market interests. The public interests
and market forces can [be the same]." Hollings replied, "That is a
wonderful statement for an executive Vice President of the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce." [POLITECH]

HOW TO THINK ABOUT TERRORISM IN THE MIDEAST. When the Israeli army goes on
a shooting spree in the refugee camps and kills 16 Palestinians, among
them two children, the US calls for "restraint". When a Palestinian
suicide bomber murders a crowd of Israelis in Jerusalem, including two
babies and a 10-year old, the US boldly blames Yasser Arafat for not
"stopping terrorism" by locking up the bad guys. And Ariel Sharon? Why,
he's busy destroying the police stations and prisons to make sure Mr
Arafat can't do what he's been ordered to do. And when Mr Sharon actually
announces that Israel must "inflict greater losses" - in other words, kill
more Palestinians - Washington is silent. Maybe it's not indolence. Maybe
the Bush administration actually believes that the man held "personally
responsible" by an Israeli commission of inquiry for the murder of 1,700
Palestinian civilians in Beirut in 1982 really is fighting America's "war
on terror". Maybe America's moral compass has become so skewed by the
crimes against humanity on 11 September that President Bush simply no
longer cares what Mr Sharon does. It's as if all the lessons of history -
in Afghanistan as well as the Middle East - have been tossed into a bin.
Take ex-President Clinton. He arrives in Israel and what does he do? He
blames Mr Arafat. And what does his preposterous wife say when she does
the same thing? "Yasser Arafat bears the responsibility for the violence
that has occurred; it rests on his shoulders ..." She says that her role
as a US Senator is "to support the Israeli people". Really? What's wrong
with supporting innocent Palestinians as well? Wrong religion?
Back-to-front writing? Wrong eye colour? So a war against colonial
occupation has been transformed into an offshoot of the "war on terror",
the language of this war ever more infantile. We now have to learn by rote
the following words: tit-for-tat, cycle-of-violence, axis of evil,
bunker-buster, daisy-cutter ... Is there no end to this childishness? No,
there is not. For the latest little killer is the word "transfer" or
"resettlement". As in "the simple answer... would be to create a vast
separation from Israel, resettling the Palestinians in Jordan, where 80
per cent of the population is Palestinian." This comes from an article
published in USA Today. In Israel itself, an opinion poll asks Israelis
how many of them would support "transfer" - of Arabs out of their homes,
of course, not Jewish settlers off Arab land - as a solution to the war.
This is incredible. "Transfer" is ethnic cleansing and ethnic cleansing is
a war crime. If American newspapers are prepared to print such an option
and if Israelis are asked to give their opinion on it, what is Mr
Milosevic doing in The Hague? The moral collapse is already underway. Take
the watering down of the US government's latest report on human rights. In
2000, it said that Egypt's hopelessly unfair military courts "do not
ensure civilian defendants due process before an independent tribunal". In
the 2001 report, however, that sentence has been censored out. It has to
be, of course, because Mr Bush is now setting up his own military courts
to try his prisoners at Guantanamo Bay without due process. And while the
Americans are distorting the nature of the war between Israel and the
Palestinians, they are lying about Afghanistan. General Tommy Franks, the
head of the US Central Command, refers in the following words to the
mistaken killing of 16 innocent Afghans at Hazar Qadam: "I will not
characterise it as a failure of any type." Sorry? Either General Franks -
who on Tuesday managed to refer to his newly killed soldiers as dying "in
Vietnam" - didn't read the facts or he is a very disreputable man. His
boss, Donald Rumsfeld, refuses to use the word "mistake" or even
"investigation" after thousands of innocent Afghans died under US bombs
because the word "sometimes has the implication of more formality or a
disciplinary action". When Washington's top military men are so dishonest,
is it any surprise that Israeli tanks can open fire on refugee camps
without any serious response from the US or blast cars carrying children
because they want to kill their father? [R. FISK, INDEPENDENT UK]

[continued in part 2]