[Peace-discuss] News notes 030209

[C. G. Estabrook]

	Notes on the week's news
	from the "War on Terrorism"
	for the AWARE meeting,
	Sunday, February 9, 2003

SUMMARY. THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION IS BUSILY TRANSFERRING WEALTH FROM THE
POOR TO THE RICH -- AND COVERING IT UP WITH WAR.  Yesterday the United
States announced the closure of its Interests Section in the Polish
Embassy in Baghdad and urged all US citizens to get out of the country,
severing its final diplomatic link with Iraq in a move that normally
precedes war.  [AFP 2/8]

[1] WE DON'T NEED NO STINKIN' BADGES. Speaking to Republicans in the
mountains of West Virginia today, G. Bush said: "The United Nations gets
to decide shortly whether or not it is going to be relevant in terms of
keeping the peace [i.e., in double-speak, whether the Security Council
will go along with the US war] whether or not its words mean anything"
[i.e., whether other states will agree that the resolution cajoled and
extorted by the US can be interpreted as the US wishes]. "But one thing is
certain [Bush concluded] the United States and our friends and allies, we
will disarm Saddam Hussein if he will not disarm himself."  The
administration brushed aside a Franco-German proposal to expand weapons
inspections and arguing Saddam Hussein must face imminent military action
for failing to disarm. Condoleeza Rice told CNN, "Yes, there are some
isolated powers who don't seem to understand the urgency of defending the
credibility of the Security Council ... but is not the majority in
Europe." [She means governments, not people, who are overwhelmingly
opposed to a US war]. Secretary of state Colin Powell warned that the
Franco-German effort first outlined by French Foreign Minister de Villepin
after Powell's presentation last week ... could result in the United
States pursuing military action without any further U.N. backing. "If the
U.N. does not face up to its responsibilities as clearly laid out in
resolution 1441, then it would be necessary for the United States to act
with a willing coalition," he said. [REUTERS 2/9]

[2] IS THAT ALL THERE IS? Powell, gave a multi-media presentation to the
UN on Wednesday purporting to show the evidence on which the US can justly
go to war, included imaginative artists' renderings ("cartoons"). The
chief UN weapons inspector dismissed a central claim of the speech. Hans
Blix said there was no evidence of mobile biological weapons laboratories
or of Iraq trying to foil inspectors by moving equipment before his teams
arrived. [GUARDIAN UK 2/5] Powell spoke of 'decades' of contact between
Saddam and al-Qa'ida ... Al-Qa'ida only came into existence five years
ago, since Bin Laden -- 'decades' ago -- was working ... for the CIA." [R.
FISK 2/6]. A typical reaction to the whole speech was that of the American
columnist Jimmy Breslin: "That is hardly enough reason to blow up the city
of Baghdad with its civilians, with its women and its children in school."

[3] BAD CRAZINESS [WITH APOLOGIES TO HUNTER THOMPSON]. Richard Perle, a
former assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration and now
chairman of the Pentagon's Policy Advisory Board, condemned French and
German policy on Iraq in the strongest terms at a public seminar organized
by a New York-based PR firm and attended by Iraqi exiles and American
Middle East and security officials. But while dismissing Germany's refusal
to support military action against Iraq as an aberration by "a discredited
chancellor," Perle warned that France's attitude was both more dangerous
and more serious. "France is no longer the ally it once was," Perle said.
And he went on to accuse French President Jacques Chirac of believing
"deep in his soul that Saddam Hussein is preferable to any likely
successor." [UPI 2/4] More bad craziness then from Donald Rumsfeld,
Secretary of War, assessing support for the coming US attack, said, "Three
countries are no help at all: Cuba, Libya, Germany..." [NPR 2/5]

[4] DON'T LOOK AT WHAT WE'RE DOING. The United Nations on Wednesday
concealed behind a blue cloth and a row of flags the world body's
treasured tapestry of "Guernica," the celebrated Picasso anti-war
masterpiece. The tapestry hangs outside the U.N. Security Council, where
Secretary of State Colin Powell was presenting the U.S. case ... The White
House raises the terror alert level to "High." (There is a very serious
danger that people aren't believing Colin Powell.) More than 50 years ago,
President Truman's administration launched a post-WWII program of military
confrontation and intervention, which they didn't think a war-weary
American public would support. Senator Arthur Vandenberg told Truman
privately that "unless we dramatize this thing in every possible way," the
public would never understand; it would be necessary to "scare hell out of
the American people," he advised. [FOX 2/7]

[5] WHAT IS ACTUALLY BEING HIDDEN [BY US, NOT IRAQ].  U.S. stocks have
lost almost $5 trillion of value since Bush took office two years ago ...
The market has fallen more (in percentage terms) in Bush's first two years
than in the first two years of any modern president, including Herbert
Hoover, who was in charge when the Great Depression began. And you can't
blame the Bush market on the trauma of 9/11: Stocks fell at a much faster
rate from Bush's inauguration through Sept. 10, 2001, than they have
since. Unemployment is up more than 40 percent (to 6 percent, from 4.2)
since Bush took office, gigantic projected federal-budget surpluses have
turned into deficits, and the dollar has fallen sharply against the euro.
[WP 2/4] The American economy has fallen into its worst hiring slump in
almost 20 years, and many business executives say they remain unsure when
it will end.  With economic growth having slowed to less than 1 percent in
recent months, about one million people appear to have dropped out of the
labor force, neither working nor looking for a job, according to
government figures. [NYT 2/5] The national debt, once predicted to be paid
off by 2008, will under the Bush plan reach an amount in that year greater
in real dollars than when the debt was run up in Reagan's time (altho'
less as a per cent of GDP) -- the standard way to defeat social programs,
such as the Conyers-McDermott universal health insurance bill, introduced
in Congress on Tuesday.  Sponsors of the bill include Rep. Dennis J.
Kucinich, D-Ohio, and about 20 others.

[6] ONE FOR YOU TWO FOR ME. While demanding that the federal government
restrain its spending to a 4.1 percent increase in 2004, the Bush White
House has assigned itself a more lenient standard: It has proposed a 9.3
percent increase in funding for the ongoing operations of the White House.
[WP 2/7] PROBABLY PAYS FOR SECURITY. The Rev. Richard "Rich" Weaver,
nicknamed "Handshake Man" because of his knack for getting up close and
personal with the high and mighty, struck again yesterday morning. The
Post's David Montgomery reports that the 57-year-old Weaver, a
nondenominational Christian minister from Sacramento, crashed the National
Prayer Breakfast at the Washington Hilton, breezing through the ballroom
entrance without a ticket and handed President Bush what he later
described as an eight-page typed "message from God" about Iraq. [WP 2/7]

[7] NO HONOR AMONG THIEVES. Large parts of the British government's latest
dossier on Iraq -- allegedly based on "intelligence material" -- were
taken from published academic articles, some of them several years old.
Amid charges of "scandalous" plagiarism on the night when Tony Blair
attempted to rally support for the US-led campaign against Saddam Hussein,
[the British government's] dismay was compounded by the knowledge that the
disputed document was singled out for praise by the US secretary of state,
Colin Powell, in his speech to the UN security council on Wednesday.
Citing the British dossier, entitled "Iraq - its infrastructure of
concealment, deception and intimidation," in front of a worldwide
television audience Mr Powell said: "I would call my colleagues' attention
to the fine paper that the United Kingdom distributed... which describes
in exquisite detail Iraqi deception activities." But on Channel 4 News
last night it was revealed that four of the report's 19 pages had been
copied -- with only minor editing and a few insertions -- from the
internet version of an article by Ibrahim al-Marashi which appeared in the
Middle East Review of International Affairs last September ... [British]
officials insisted it in no way undermines the underlying truth of the
dossier, whose contents had been re-checked with British intelligence
sources. "The important thing is that it is accurate," said one source.
[In fact, it's based on documents captured in the first Gulf War, and
therefore describes Iraqi activities from more than a dozen years ago.]
But Glen Rangwala, a lecturer in politics at Cambridge University, told
Channel 4: "I found it quite startling when I realized that I'd read most
of it before." The content of six more pages relies heavily on articles by
Sean Boyne and Ken Gause that appeared in Jane's Intelligence Review in
1997 and last November. None of these sources is acknowledged. The
document, as posted on Downing Street's website at the end of January,
also accidentally named four Whitehall officials who had worked on it: P
Hamill, J Pratt, A Blackshaw and M Khan. It was reposted on February 3
with the first three names deleted. "Apart from passing this off as the
work of its intelligence services," Dr Rangwala said, "it indicates that
the UK really does not have any independent sources of information on
Iraq's internal policies. It just draws upon publicly available data."
Evidence of an electronic cut-and-paste operation by Whitehall officials
can be found in the way the dossier preserves textual quirks from its
original sources. [GUARDIAN UK 2/7]

[8] MORE SAUCINESS FROM THE GOOSE. North Korea is entitled to launch a
pre-emptive strike against the US rather than wait until the American
military have finished with Iraq, the North's foreign ministry told the
Guardian yesterday. Warning that the current nuclear crisis is worse than
that in 1994, when the peninsula stood on the brink of oblivion, a
ministry spokesman called on Britain to use its influence with Washington
to avert war. "The United States says that after Iraq, we are next", said
the deputy director Ri Pyong-gap, "but we have our own countermeasures.
Pre-emptive attacks are not the exclusive right of the US." [GUARDIAN UK
2/6]

[9] LOVE AMERICAN STYLE.  On Valentine's Day, America's poodle, Tony
Blair, is set to introduce an attack resolution to the UN Security
Council. (In a TV show this week, the British PM was addressed "the
honorable member from North Texas," "Mr. Vice-President.")  George Bush
has announced that the US will "lead a coalition of the willing" (i.e.,
attack Iraq) whether the resolution passes or not.  Meanwhile, Attorney
General John Ashcroft has directed federal prosecutors in New York and
Connecticut to seek the death penalty in a dozen cases in which they had
recommended lesser sentences ... In 10 current cases in New York and 2 in
Connecticut, United States attorneys decided not to seek the death
penalty. One involved a defendant who pleaded guilty in exchange for
testifying against other members of a drug ring. Another involved a
defendant who according to his lawyers is mentally retarded and thus
ineligible for the death penalty. [NYT 2/7].

[10] A SECOND HELPING? The Justice Department is preparing to attempt to
expand the 2001 Patriot Act to increase surveillance within the United
States while restricting access to information and limiting judicial
review ... The Center for Public Integrity said it obtained a copy of the
draft legislation from a government source. The document, labeled
"confidential," was posted on the organization's Internet site along with
an analysis ... [It] would be called the Domestic Security Enhancement Act
of 2003. Among other things, it would prohibit disclosure of information
regarding people detained as terrorist suspects and prevent the
Environmental Protection Agency from distributing "worst-case scenario"
information to the public about a nearby private company's use of
chemicals. In addition, the measure would create a DNA database of
"suspected terrorists"; force suspects to prove why they should be
released on bail, rather than have the prosecution prove why they should
be held; and allow the deportation of U.S. citizens who become members of
or help terrorist groups. [CBS 2/8]

	=======
	LETTERS
	=======

(1) ADMINISTRATION WAR-POLICY IS A SET-UP: A LETTER FROM AN INSIGHTFUL
FRIEND.

I fear Bush is now setting up his mainstream opposition (powerful
moderates and liberals) just as he did last summer/fall. He insists on the
principle of unilateralism, provoking the easy -- and unprincipled --
criticism that war on Iraq must be multilateral. Then he shakes down
foreign leaders with a combination of bribes and threats, produces a
multilateral fig leaf (maybe a Security Council resolution, maybe not),
and the mainstream opposition evaporates. And a fawning punditry intones:
"This plain-spoken Heartland president continues to surprise his
sophisticated Beltway opponents." Of course, the principled opposition is
still out there, but who worries about them?

This nonsense about how we shouldn't "go it alone" is complete tripe, and
you hear it everywhere. This sort of talk concedes the principled high
ground to the War Machine: If the cause is just, we must be prepared to
"go it alone." I actually agree with the War Machine on that point!

I'm reminded of the trenchant analysis of last November's elections
provided by David Brooks (Shields' Republican sidekick on the Lehrer
hour). Brooks said, "Now Democrats must wake up every morning, look in the
mirror, and say to themselves: 'I am dumber than George Bush.'" Touche'.


(2) A LETTER ON THE FIRST AMENDMENT AND ON INTERNATIONAL LAW

In order to secure the ratification of the constitution of the second
republic of the United States, currently in force, the property party had
to concede that the document as written gave too much power to a central
government, and that limitations on that power had to be made by
amendment.  The very first such amendment stated, "Congress shall make no
law ... abridging ... the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and
to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Those "peaceable assemblies," it was thought, would normally be state and
local councils and legislatures.  The Urbana City Council, like scores of
other local governments, is to be praised for exercising that right, and
condemning the "Government's" aggressive war -- a war personally dangerous
to Urbana citizens and residents in the military, and truly a grievance to
all in the city, in that huge resources are being diverted into a criminal
activity that serves the interests only of the very rich and powerful.

There is some danger to them, of course.  According to the judges at the
Nuremberg international tribunal after World War II, the great crime of
the political leaders of Germany in the 1940's was to launch an unprovoked
attack on a sovereign country offering no threat.  Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld,
Rice et al. must hope that they can remain above the law in a rogue state,
not subject to a new Nuremberg tribunal, for that is precisely what they
have done and propose to do.


(3) A LETTER ON HOW TO STOP TERRORISM -- UNFORTUNATELY

The events of this winter have made it clear to countries who want to
avoid being attacked by the world's only superpower, how they should
proceed: be like North Korea, not like Iraq.  That is, have a few weapons
of mass destruction, preferably nuclear, sufficient to deter the United
States.

The evidence is clear: the US is about to kill many Iraqis and destroy
their cities (and has threatened to use nuclear weapons to do so), but --
according to the new president of South Korea -- the US quickly shelved
plans to launch a nuclear attack on North Korea.  North Korea probably has
a few nuclear weapons, while Iraq does not.  Although the superpower could
obliterate either, it cannot take the chance that, in its death-throes,
North Korea could use such a weapon against US personnel or its allies.
The vast US arsenal is unusable, if the price is Seoul.

The US army defines terrorism as "the calculated use of violence or threat
of violence to attain goals that are political, religious, or ideological
... through intimidation, coercion, or instilling fear."  That is
precisely the policy followed by the United States around the world, in
both Republican and Democrat administrations.  In just over a decade since
the check on US policy provided by the USSR was removed, the US has
attacked or supported attacks on Panama, Somalia, East Timor, Colombia,
Serbia, Angola, Afghanistan, Turkey, Iraq, and occupied Palestine.  
Unfortunately for the world, the way to avoid attack is obvious.


(4) A LETTER ON HOW TO DISARM IRAQ

The Bush administration says that it is going to launch a war against Iraq
because Iraq has weapons that make it a threat to the US (or at least to
neighboring countries).  The administration claims that it intends to
overthrow the government that might use those weapons and establish a
government that will not be threatening, and then withdraw.

Much of the rest of the world on the contrary suspects that the US
government is planning to kill a large number of people because it wants
(a) to control Iraqi oil and confirm US control of the Middle East; (b) to
punish Saddam Hussein, a former CIA client, as a demonstration to
governments who do not follow US orders; and (c) to distract Americans
from the Bush administration's support for the rich while the US economy
declines.

In order to refute those suspicions and convince the world that it is
acting for the reasons it claims, why doesn't the US ask the UN to call
upon some other country to move into Iraq, destroy weapons, and oust
Saddam?  The Security Council could authorize Iran, say, or Russia (or
perhaps both), who could do the job without the problems the US has in
moving an army into the region.  And the members of the Security Council
could pay the costs, as they paid for the first Gulf War.

Of course the Bush administration wouldn't consider such a suggestion,
because they're lying about what their goals are.

	***