[Peace-discuss] News notes 030727

[C. G. Estabrook]

	Notes on the week's news from the "War on Terrorism"
	-- for the AWARE meeting, Sunday, July 27, 2003

	"Somebody deliberately forged a document and, despite warnings
	from the head of the CIA, it ended up as a key piece of evidence
	supporting the president's case for war. Who did the forgery? Was
	forgery part of the bag of tricks adopted by the ideologues in the
	shadow intelligence unit, in their zeal to deliver the more
	'forward-leaningâ' interpretation of Saddam's intentions that the
	vice-president so clearly wanted? Let's not forget that this
	administration was hell-bent on invading Iraq, even after U.N.
	inspectors had scoured the country for months, unable to find
	evidence of a weapons program.  Brushing aside the inspectors, the
	United Nations and most of the world, the White House insisted the
	danger Saddam posed was so great that immediate action was
	required, and it launched a full military attack on what turned
	out to be an unarmed country. Thousands died; more are still dying
	over there.  What we've seen is a lie of staggering import. Or to
	put it another way: Sixteen little words, my eye."
	--Linda McQuaig, Toronto Star 0720

WHO'S LYING?  New Yorker reporter Seymour Hersh: "Probably the most honest
document we've had made public about Iraq was the much maligned
12,000-page statement by none other than Saddam Hussein ... It's probably
more accurate than anything this government put out." [DN 0724

WHO WILL CARRY THE CAN? The WP runs an article on the role of National
Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, whether she overlooked crucial
information or lied. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., worries about "a
frightful level of incompetence." According to the Nelson Report
newsletter, "The Iraq/Niger debacle is but one of 'a whole series of
stories which are ready to break', a source told us today, adding, "I've
never seen such hostility and disdain as now being expressed between the
White House and the CIA. Never..." As one Administration source put it,
privately, today: "Between Tenet and Hadley, Condi now has the choice of
saying she's a fool, or a liar -- if not both. Bottom line is she failed
to protect the President -- look at all this lame stuff about him not
being a 'fact checker'. It's just incredible." [TALKING POINTS MEMO 0723]

WHO WILL MAKE THE EXCUSE?  Bill Clinton defends President Bush and says
"It's time to move on." (The phrase come easily to him.)

WHO WILL TAKE THE HEAT? Three Roman Catholic nuns who defaced a Colorado
nuclear missile silo with their own blood as part of a peace protest last
year were sentenced on Friday to prison terms ranging from 30 to 41 months
by a judge who called them "dangerously irresponsible." [REUTERS 0726]

WHO WILL BE KILLED?  [A US assassination squad called] Task Force 20
raided a villa in the belief, it is reported, that perhaps Saddam's
youngest son Ali or even the former president himself was sheltering
there. They found nothing and made no arrests, but troops guarding the
scene shot and killed five people ... When I walked around the villa,
owned by a relative of Saddam, I went through the door that the task force
blew up to enter and was shown smashed windows and ransacked rooms ... One
witness told me: "My neighbours were getting out of their car when they
started shooting," he said.  "A woman was hit and a man got out of the car
to say they were doing nothing wrong. So the soldiers fired at him, and at
his brother in the car." At a central Baghdad hospital a US guard
confirmed "several deaths", all of them as a result of gunshot and
shrapnel wounds. [BBC NEWS 0728] The military said one U.S. soldier
attached to the Marines was killed and one was wounded in the grenade
attack just south of Baghdad. The death was the first of the week after
one of the bloodiest seven-day periods in the guerrilla war against
American forces since President Bush declared major combat in Iraq was
over on May 1.  Since then 48 Americans have been killed. [WP 0727] One
U.S. soldier is quoted in the LAT as saying, "When people die is the only
time when the American media and the public pays attention."

WHO WILL BE KILLED (II)? Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) on Friday shot
dead a Palestinian child at a military checkpoint, near the northern West
Bank town of Jenin, one day after Israeli border police soldiers killed a
Palestinian-Israeli Bedouin man in southern Israel. Palestinian medical
sources said that 6-year-old Mohaammad Kabha was killed after IOF soldiers
shot him at a checkpoint to the west of Jenin and close to the segregation
wall, which is being built by the Israel east of the 1967 Green Line,
which separates the Jewish state from the West Bank. Mohammad's sisters
were also wounded in Friday's shooting. IOF claimed the incident was
caused by an accidental discharge of a machine-gun manned by a soldier who
was on top of an armored vehicle. [PALESTINE MEDIA CENTER 0726]

WHO WILL BENEFIT? More than 5,000 Jewish settlers moved into the Occupied
Territories in the first half of 2003, despite US-backed peace moves
requiring an end to construction, Israel's Interior Ministry said. The FT
published a poll showing that 3 out of 4 settlers would leve the Occupied
Territories if compensated.  The WSJ runs a a story on the growth of
interest in a single-state solution with full civil rights for
Palestinians, like the end of apartheid in South Africa.
 
WHO WILL JUSTIFY IT? "I'm sure there are some in the administration who
are smarter than me, but I can't imagine in the very near future that a
Palestinian state could ever happen," [House Majority Leader Tom DeLay]
said in an interview today, as he prepared to leave for a week long
official tour.  "I can't imagine this president supporting a state of
terrorists, a sovereign state of terrorists," he said. "You'd have to
change almost an entire generation's culture." "In the Arab world before
9/11, they thought the United States was a paper tiger," said Mr. DeLay,
who will also make a brief visit to military commanders in Baghdad next
week. "We had a president at the time whose retaliation at terrorism was
throwing a few bombs in the desert. They laughed at that. And now they see
this is real stuff and real power. And they respect power. If the
experiment going on in Iraq comes off, it will have a huge, huge impact in
the Arab world, showing people who want freedom and self-government and
education that they can have it."[NYT 0725]

WHO WILL AID IN THE KILLING? For the first time since the end of World War
II, Japanese troops will be taking part in a combat operation, reports the
NYT. The country's Parliament voted to send 1,000 troops to Iraq later
this year, joining the 148,000 American forces and 13,000 other allied
troops. [SLATE 0727]

WHO WILL BE PUNISHED? The WP buries a brief Reuters report on the first
U.S. soldiers known to face charges of abusing prisoners of war during the
Iraq conflict. The alleged incident took place in mid-May at Camp Bucca.
The Associated Press has a more detailed report on the charges, naming the
four soldiers who will be tried and quoting some of their family members.
In addition to assault and mistreating prisoners, three are charged with
making false statements and two are charged with obstruction of justice.
The soldiers claim their actions were in self-defense. [SLATE 0727]

WHO SHOULD BE PUNISHED? On Wednesday Amnesty International released a
report on torture and degrading treatment by US troops in Iraq, who are
also reported to have shot prisoners.  Amnesty said the US repetedly
denied it access to detention centers. The report was not mentioned in any
US papers I saw.  Even the Reuters report led, "Iraqis detained by U.S.
troops accused their captors of torture and degrading treatment, rights
group Amnesty International reported..." [REUTERS 0723]

SAY GOOD-BYE, GEORGE.  The congressional report into 9/11-related intel
failures was released.  It singles out CIA Director George Tenet for being
"either unwilling or unable to marshal the full range of Intelligence
Community resources."  27-redacted pages detailed the hijackers'
"associations" with Saudi Arabian officials. [NYT 0725] The CIA, in its
annual report to Congress, changed its tune on Iraq once Bush became
president, going from not mentioning a nuclear weapons program in its 1997
report, to last year"s warning that "all intelligence experts agree that
Iraq is seeking nuclear weapons" and that the country could produce a bomb
"within a year" if it got its hands on weapons-grade material. [ND 0717]

MORE CASUAL KILLING.  In a brutal summary of the American assault on Iraq,
the US military surrounded a house containing Saddam Hussei's sons,
another man, and a 14-year-old. No attempt was made to arrest them. They
were simply killed by helicopters and anti-tank weapons, including the
14-year-old.  Bush, celebrating the killings at the White House, said SH's
sons were responsible for "torture, maiming, and murder of countless
Iraqis": he had better hope that all whom that description fits are not
similarly treated.  The papers report that upon hearing the news of the
deaths, "celebratory gunfire" erupted in the streets of Baghdad. (USAT
notes that "in the confusion of gunfire" in the city, a unit of the
Florida Army National Guard, believing it was coming under fire, shot a
man twice in the chest and shot a girl who looked between 6 and 8 years
old once in the head.) In Mosul, the mood was less celebratory, the LAT
says. "Even if Saddam Hussein is dead, half of Iraqis will be Saddam
Husseins," one Iraqi tells the paper.  The photographs of the
reconstructed bodies seem to be widely disbelieved in Iraq.

HEY, WE DID THE SAME THING WITH THE NAZIS. The United States has moved to
resurrect parts of Iraq's once-feared intelligence service, with the
branch that monitors Iran among the top priorities. The Iraqi National
Congress, which is led by Ahmad Chalabi, the longtime exile who is now a
member of the Iraqi Governing Council, says its senior officials have met
with senior members of the so-called Iran and Turkey branch of the
Mukhabarat, or Iraqi intelligence, over the past several weeks. [NYT 0722]

CUI BONO?  There's a struggle amongst the world's biggest investment banks
over who will control the soon-to-be-created Trade Bank of Iraq. The bank
will handle credit for Iraq's oil industry, and whoever wins the contract
stands to cash in substantially. [WSJ 0722]

GET THE LIES STRAIGHT, GEORGE.  Though the White House released portions
of the National Intelligence Estimate Friday to bolster their claim that
they did not twist prewar intelligence on Iraq's weapons program, already
the move appears to be backfiring. While the administration was warning of
an unprovoked move by Saddam Hussein to give weapons to terrorists in the
fall, the NIE shows that the intelligence community found that prospect
unlikely. In fact, intelligence services were actually more worried about
Hussein doling out biological or chemical weapons if he were facing death
or capture by the U.S. [WP 0721] CIA Director George Tenet told the Senate
Intelligence Committee that the Office of Special Plans rewrote the CIA's
intelligence information on Iraq gave it to White House officials to help
Bush build a case for war. [ANTIWAR.COM 0719]

WE DON'T NEED NO STINKIN' CONSTITUTION.  Internal investigators at the
Justice Department have received 34 credible complaints in recent months
that employees enforcing the USA Patriot Act have violated civil rights.
The accused include a federal prison doctor who reportedly told an inmate
during an exam that "if I was in charge, I would execute every one of
you." Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., the ranking Democrat on the House
Judiciary Committee, provided the report to the NYT, saying in a
statement, "We have only begun to scratch the surface with respect to the
Justice Department's disregard of constitutional rights." [NYT 0721]

LESE MAJESTE TRUMPS AMENDMENT 1.  The Secret Service is studying a
pro-Bush cartoon in the Los Angeles Times, showing the president with a
gun to his head, as a possible threat, U.S. officials said on Monday.
[REUTERS 0721]

THEY'RE NOT REALLY PEOPLE, JUST COLLATERAL DAMAGE.  Last Sunday the NYT
gave an account of the US air attacks on Iraq, long before the US
invasion, from mid-2002 into the first few months of 2003. Lt. Gen. T.
Michael Moseley, the chief allied war commander, at an internal briefing
for American and allied military officers the previous Thursday. Among the
disclosures provided in the internal briefings and in a later interview
the General Moseley was that air attack commanders were required to obtain
the approval of Defense Secretary Donald L. Rumsfeld if any planned
airstrike was thought likely to result in deaths of more than 30
civilians. More than 50 such strikes were proposed, and all of them were
approved. [NYT 0720]

WE CAN'T PRETEND THEY HAVEN'T TOLD US WHAT THEY'RE PLANNING.  “Pentagon
officials said they are studying the lessons of Iraq closely — to ensure
that the next U.S. takeover of a foreign country goes more smoothly.
'We're going to get better over time,' promised Lawrence Di Rita, a
special assistant to Rumsfeld ... 'This is the future for the world we're
in at the moment,' he said. 'We'll get better as we do it more often.'
[LAT 0718]

THEY'RE NOT REALLY PEOPLE (II). "Reckoning Gulf War I casualties at the
low-end consensus figure of 30,000 (12,500 military plus 17,500
civilian)," writes Jack Miles, "it would then seem conservative to
estimate that 60,000 Iraqis may die as a result of the current conflict."
[COMMONWEAL 0620]

THE ANDEAN WAR. "The House voted on the McGovern-Skelton amendment on
Colombia at 1:15 Thursday morning, after along, heated debate. The debate
was incredibly strong; 9 members spoke on the floor (Reps. McGovern
(D-MA), Skelton (D-MO), Blumenauer (D-OR), Barbara Lee (D-CA), Schakowsky
(D-IL), Obey (D-WI), Kucinich (D-OH), Lowey (D-NY), and DeLauro
(D-CT)).Reps. Pelosi (D-CA) and Doggett (D-TX) also worked hard leading up
to the vote to rally support for the amendment. The speakers offered a
VERY strong argument in favor of reducing military aid to Colombia. They
spoke about the ties between the armed forces and the paramilitaries; the
inhumane and ineffective nature of fumigation; attacks on union leaders,
and other human rights concerns; and the quagmire of the US mission in
Colombia. They sent a clear message that was reprinted in Colombia's major
newspaper today: US military aid rewards a brutal military that refuses to
reform, worsening the human rights situation in Colombia. Members we spoke
with before the vote said that the Congress had been flooded with
grassroots calls and letters -- your hard work helped make this one of the
most passionate debates on the foreign aid bill last night. 5 members
spoke against the amendment: Rep. Kolbe (R-AZ), Mica (R-FL), Ballenger
(R-NC), Souder (R-IN), and Delahunt (D-MA). In the end, after a day of
lobbying by Colin Powell and Speaker Dennis Hastert, the amendment lost by
a vote of 195-226. While this wasn't as close as the vote on Colombia aid
in the Iraq war bill last April, it was the best vote ever on an amendment
to cut military aid to Colombia in the foreign aid bill. Your hard work
helped make this progress happen. Special thanks should go to
thetwelveRepublicanswho voted in support: Ehlers (R-MI), Flake (R-AZ),
Hoekstra (R-MI), Hulshof (R-MO), Kelly (R-NY), Leach (R-IA), Paul (R-TX),
Petri (R-WI), Ramstad (R-MN), Rohrabacher (R-CA), Sensenbrenner (R-WI),
and Toomey (R-PA).These members withstood anintense lobbying effort by
RepublicanHouse leadership and Colin Powell.If they hear positively from
constituents now, they will be more likely to vote well next time. If your
member of Congress voted against the amendment, please contact them
immediately to express your concerns. This is especially important if you
live in the district of one of the seventeen Democratswho voted against
the amendment: Berry (D-AR), Cardoza (D-CA), Cramer (D-AL), Davis (D-FL),
Delahunt (D-MA), Dooley (D-CA), Edwards (D-TX), Frank (D-MA), Holden
(D-PA), Lipinski (D-IL), Marshall (D-GA), Menendez (D-NJ), Peterson
(D-MN), Rothman (D-NJ), Stenholm (D- X), Tauscher (D-CA), Taylor (D-MS).
-To see how your member voted,please go tohttp://clerkweb.house.gov/cgi-
bin/vote.exe?year=2003&rollnumber=426.The "ayes" supported the amendment,
and the "noes" opposed. -If you do not know who your member of Congress
is, please see www.house.gov/writerep. -To call your member of Congress'
office, dial the US Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121 and ask to be
connected with the office. -A state-by-state breakdown of the vote will be
sent out later today over the list and will be available on our website,
www.lawg.org."

WHO'S COUNTING? A BBC reporter says the claim that Iraq could launch WMD
in 45 minutes, came from a senior Iraqi officer who said that 45 minutes
was how long the Iraqis would need to communicate with each other about
WMD, not to the time it would take to deploy them. The White House used
the 45-minute claim three times last September. President Bush attributed
it to the British government during a Rose Garden appearance and in his
weekly radio address, but a White House 'Global Message' issued on Sept.
26, made the claim without attribution. [IND UK 0720]

SHUT UP. A U.S. military officer says that after soldiers aired their
complaints on "Good Morning America" last week, "It was the end of the
world. It went all the way up to President Bush and back down again on top
of us. At least six of us here will lose our careers." [SFC 0718]

SHUT UP (II). Republican attorneys claim that it isn't the Bush
administration who is guilty of misleading the country but the Democrats
for running an anti-Bush TV spot. Only one station has refused to run the
ad, a Fox station. Attorneys for the Republican Party are warning TV
stations not to air a new commercial by the Democratic National Committee
that charges President Bush misled the country in the lead-up to the
invasion of Iraq. The video shows Bush saying, "Saddam Hussein recently
sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Republicans said
the ad is "deliberately false and misleading" because the ad omits the
portion of Bush's statement where he points out that the disputed
information came from the British government. A letter from Republican
counsel to TV stations in Wisconsin reads in part, "The Democratic
National Committee certainly has a legitimate First Amendment right to
participate in political debate, but it has no right to willfully spread
false information in a deliberate attempt to mislead the American people
-- as an FCC licensee you have the responsibility to exercise independent
editorial judgment to not only oversee and protect the American
marketplace of ideas, essential for the health of our democracy, but also
to avoid deliberate misrepresentations of the facts."  The letter
concludes: "Such obligations must be taken seriously. This letter puts you
on notice that the information contained in the above-cited advertisement
is false and misleading; therefore, you are obligated to refrain from
airing this advertisement."  A message on the DNC website now reads: "This
is the ad President Bush doesn't want you to see."  [DN 0723]

HOW OTHERS SEE US. A former Canadian military officer-turned-analyst who
says the U.S. had no grounds to base the invasion of Iraq on disarmament,
tells of a January 2001 conference, at which current and former weapons
inspectors and senior members of U.S. government agencies, said that Iraq
has dismantled its nuclear weapons program and that any chemical and
biological weapons there were "negligible in quantity and militarily
meaningless." [GM 0718]

ANTITERRORISM IS THE NEW ANTICOMMUNISM.  [I'm no fan of Eric Alterman, but
he has a good illustration of how the crusade qaagainst terrorism is
playing the domestic political role that the crusade against communism
once died.] "It cannot possibly be a coincidence that William Kristol
[neocon editor of the Weekly Standard] has chosen to defend President Bush
and his slacker war against terrorism by impugning Richard Gephardt with
the same phraseology that his father used half a century ago to defend Joe
McCarthy. In this morning's Washington Post, Kristol writes, 'But the
American people, whatever their doubts about aspects of Bush's foreign
policy, know that Bush is serious about fighting terrorists and terrorist
states that mean America harm. About Bush's Democratic critics, they know
no such thing.' In the journal Commentary in 1952, during the McCarthy
era, Irving Kristol wrote, 'For there is one thing that the American
people know about Senator McCarthy; he, like them, is unequivocally
anti-Communist. About the spokesman for American liberalism, they feel
they know no such thing.' [ALTERMAN 0724]

BUSHIES TAKES CARE OF BIG BUSINESS FRIENDS. The House passed a bill
allowing Americans to import cheaper versions of prescription pills from
Canada and Europe, despite FDA officials' "intense effort" to convince
legislators to oppose the bill. According to the Times, such lobbying is
"widely interpreted" as illegal. [NYT 0725] The Bush adminsitration and
their friends in the drug industry have lined up 53 senators to oppose it.

MINOR VICTORY. The House voted 400-21 to roll back one of the FCC's new
rules easing media ownership restrictions. The White House had threatened
to veto such a vote, but backed off yesterday in what the NYT says is the
hope that the returned restrictions will be stripped during a House-Senate
conference committee. The Senate is expected to vote on a similar measure
in September.  [NYT 0724] In what the Los Angeles Times calls "a stinging
rebuke for expansion-minded conglomerates and for FCC Chairman Michael K.
Powell," the House voted to pass a spending bill that contains an
amendment restoring the ownership cap [35% of viewers, not 45%] on TV
stations.

GREENS GET IT RIGHT. At the Green Party's national meeting, state
delegates endorse resolutions calling for impeachment and an end to the
U.S. occupation of Iraq. On the final day of the 2003 national meeting of
the Green Party of the United States, delegates from state Green Parties
represented in the national party's Coordinating Committee approved two
major proposals: (1) The Green Party endorsed a call to Congress to
initiate impeachment proceedings and resolved to take political leadership
in the growing movement for impeachment. The resolution cites President
George W. Bush's and Vice President Dick Cheney's "pattern of making false
statements to Congress, the American people, and the world to win support
for actions by the American government and military forces" in violation
of the U.S. Constitution, Charter of the United Nations, and other
international laws; "[s]quandering the resources of the American people to
serve the interests of transnational corporations"; and war crimes,
including the use of depleted uranium and cluster bombs in the preemptive
invasion of Iraq. According to the resolution, "Evidence has emerged that
the intelligence agencies of the United States had repeatedly informed the
President that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction nor means to
threaten the United States, and that alleged evidence produced by the
administration was fraudulent." The resolution also authorizes the Green
Party's Peace Action Committee (GPax) to coordinate party activities with
other organizations that have called for impeachment. "The problem isn't
16 erroneous words in the President's January 28 State of the Union
address, but dozens of false statements on dozens of issues," said
Elizabeth Shanklin, chair of the Bronx County Green Party and a New York
delegate at the national meeting.(2) Greens endorsed a "Home by the
Holidays" campaign calling for the U.S. to begin withdrawing troops from
Iraq, Afghanistan, Colombia, and the Philippines, with this year's winter
holidays as a deadline for total return of military personnel. The
resolution demands the removal of U.S. troops from harm's way, citing the
rising number of combat deaths (over 340) and injuries and numerous
noncombat fatalities and the damage to health and the environment from the
deployment of chemical, nuclear, and ecological weapons. According to the
resolution, the White House's policy of invading other countries "is
hostile to the democratic traditions of the American Revolution, and must
be actively resisted by all patriotic Americans."The texts of both
resolutions will be posted at the Green Party's web site shortly. The
meeting took place from Friday, July 18 through Sunday, July 20 at the
Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. During the meeting, the Green Party of
Alabama was admitted to the national party, bringing the number of
accredited state parties to 43.

  ==============================================================
  C. G. Estabrook, Ph.D., Visiting Scholar
  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
  <www.carlforcongress.org>
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