[Peace-discuss] News notes 030615

[C. G. Estabrook]

	Notes on the week's news from the "War on Terrorism"
	-- for the AWARE meeting, Sunday, June 15, 2003

[It's the middle of June, and what is so rare as a day in June?  The
answer is a new job in America.  We're in the 32nd consecutive month of
job loss -- i.e., each month the absolute number of jobs in the US economy
is lower than the month before, for more than 2 1/2 years -- roughly the 2
1/2 years of the Bush administration.]

[1] THEY DON'T UNDERSTAND THAT WE'RE LIBERATING THEM. Early today
thousands of American troops carried out extensive raids with tanks,
planes and helicopters in at least three Iraqi cities - and maybe many
more - in the Sunni-dominated areas north and west of Baghdad. [NYT 0615]
On Friday, a US tank from the 7th Cavalry (Custer's outfit) fired into a
crowd in Balad, killing seven people. [WP 0615] A US attack on a guerrilla
camp in Iraq near the Syrian border early Thursday killed at least 68
people; officials are unsure of exactly who was killed: "I will just
simply tell you that it was a camp area that was confirmed with bad guys,
and specifically who the bad guys are will be determined as we exploit the
site," said Lt. Gen. David D. McKiernan, commander of the occupation
forces.  [WP 0614] Notice in the foregoing the similarity to Israeli
tactics in their Occupied Territories.  And soon more US military will
have died since the invasion than died during it. The Pentagon has
"declined a request this week to produce figures totaling the number of
attacks on Americans forces over the last six weeks." [NYT 0612] But
people notice: even in the bad job situation, the National Guard and other
reserve units are falling a short of their recruitment goals, probably
because potential recruits are noticing that many reservists are being
called up on long tours of duty nowadays. [USAT 0610]

[2] AT LEAST WE KNOW WHY IT'S HAPPENING. Saddam Hussein may be behind
Iraq's continuing unrest even if he is dead, Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld said ... Rumsfeld and US President George W. Bush also defended
the administration's decision to invade and occupy Iraq against those who
say it was based on a lie ... "To the extent it's not proven that he is
not alive, there are people who might fear he could come back. If they
fear he could come back they might be somewhat slower in an interrogation
to say what they know,"  said. [AFP 0610]

[3] "THE ISSUE IS TERRORISTS." On Tuesday, the Israelis attacked Gaza from
the air twice; between the attacks, there was a suicide bombing in
Jerusalem.  In the week, more than 60 people died in the areas, the
majority by far Palestinian. Rep. Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the House
Democratic leadership wrote President Bush on Friday criticizing him for
saying he was "troubled" by Israel's failed attempt to kill a leader of
the radical Palestinian Hamas group. The Democrats' letter was similar to
those they have sent Bush in previous instances when they felt he was too
critical of Israel.  "We were deeply dismayed to hear your criticism of
Israel for fighting acts of terror," said the letter signed by 34 members.
"The attack on Hamas leader Abdel Rantisi was clearly justified as an
application of Israel's right to self-defense. Indeed, just as the United
States has the right to prosecute the war on terrorism, Israel has the
same right to fight terrorism in its own neighborhood and its own
capital," the Democrats added. [SFC 0614] On Friday, Israel launched
another helicopter strike in Gaza, this time killing a Hamas militant,
along with his wife and their 3-year-old daughter. Four bystanders were
also killed and about 30 injured ... The administration Thursday moved
away from any criticism of Israel: "The issue is not Israel," said
spokesman Ari Fleischer. The issue is "terrorists." [SLATE 0613]
Meanwhile, a new poll supported what has been true for a while, that
perhaps 2/3 of Israelis would agree to withdrawing the settlements if it
would bring peace. [LAT 0610]

[4] WHO'S REALLY CONCERNED ABOUT ISRAEL'S SECURITY. "[In the Occupied
Territories] the U.S. conquest of Iraq has hardened the situation, as was
easy to predict So we are at an absolute political stalemate. And fairly
soon, everyone will admit it. What then? What follows is scarcely good
news for anyone. The Israelis will use more and more force, and may start
a process of expulsions. Since they have the power at the moment, they
will prevail, in the sense that they will continue to occupy the entire
area, and control it more or less under martial law. The Palestinians will
continue to respond as they have been responding. In the short run, the
intifada will change nothing. For such violence to change anything, there
must be a responsive world out there, and there really isn't. But then the
Israel/Palestine struggle will blend into a pan-Arab or pan-Muslim series
of disorders, from Morocco to Indonesia, and most pertinently and most
immediately in Iraq, Lebanon, and Egypt. And when this happens, then the
survival of the State of Israel will be in peril, truly in peril, for the
first time since 1948." [I. WALLERSTEIN] IDF troops on Saturday afternoon
prevented a convoy of Israeli members of the Ta'ayush Arab Jewish
partnership from traveling to the West Bank to help Palestinians with
their harvest, Israel Radio reported. The Israelis were stopped en route
to an area south of the Hebron Hills following threats from settlers
living in the vicinity. As a result, the harvest did not take place.
[HAARETZ 0514]

[5] "FOLLOW THE MONEY." The federal deficit will exceed $400B this year,
according to congressional budget analysts. In January, they projected
that it would be half that. Military spending and tax cuts are the primary
causes of the ballooning. Meanwhile. the comedy team of Bush & Cheney is
expected to raise $20 million for the 2004 election in the next two weeks.
They may surpass the total ($26 million) of all nine Dem candidates
combined thus far. In 2000, Bush raised $100 million total; they plan to
do twice that this time. [NYT 0615] Corporations are not only buying
candidates, they're picking up the slack in underfunded schools. In order
to win cash prizes for their schools, kids are asked to come up with, say,
the most creative use of SweeTarts or the best song in celebration of
Oscar Mayer Lunchables. Kids in Maryland dressed up as dancing pieces of
bologna, ham, and cheese, and received $10,000. Even schools that aren't
given money are eligible for other "benefits"-such as a visit from the
Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. [WP 0615]

[6] CYA AT THE CIA. The CIA has "reassigned" two officials who were
involved with analysis on Iraq's alleged banned WMD. [LAT 0615] "The Bush
and Blair administrations are trying to silence critics - many of them
current or former intelligence analysts - who say that they exaggerated
the threat from Iraq. Last week a Blair official accused Britain's
intelligence agencies of plotting against the government. (Tony Blair's
government has since apologized for January's "dodgy dossier.") In this
country, Colin Powell has declared that questions about the justification
for war are "outrageous." [But] the administration continues to link
Saddam to Sept. 11 ... according to The New York Times, captured leaders
of Al Qaeda explicitly told the C.I.A. that they had not been working with
Saddam. Or look at the affair of the infamous "germ warfare" trailers ...
President Bush had no business declaring "we have found the weapons of
mass destruction." ... Last fall former U.S. intelligence officials began
warning that official pronouncements were being based on "cooked
intelligence." ... "Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field
commanders to use chemical weapons - the very weapons the dictator tells
us he does not have," Mr. Bush said on Feb. 8. On March 16 Dick Cheney
declared, "We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons."
It's now two months since Baghdad fell - and according to The A.P.,
military units searching for W.M.D.'s have run out of places to look ...
I'll tell you what's outrageous. It's not the fact that people are
criticizing the administration; it's the fact that nobody is being held
accountable for misleading the nation into war." [KRUGMAN NYT 0610]

[7] WHAT DID THE PRESIDENT KNOW? White House officials contend that
President Bush only offered bogus intel in his State of the Union-about
Iraq trying to buy uranium from Niger-because the CIA hadn't told the
White House that it was bunk. But "It was well-known throughout the
intelligence community that it was a forgery," one named former CIA
official told Nicholas Kristof at the NYT. An Associated Press story
reiterates that point. "It was a foregone conclusion that every photo of a
trailer truck would be a 'mobile bioweapons lab' and every tanker truck
would be 'filled with weaponized anthrax,' " one former military intel
officer said to Kristof. [SLATE 0613]

[] SCARIEST STORY OF THE WEEK. On June 5, the United States and South
Korea announced an agreement to shift US troops from the demilitarised
zone, separating South Korea and North Korea, and establish hub bases
south of Seoul ... The United States should be ready to smash North
Korea's Yongbyon reactor if necessary to keep Pyongyang from trafficking
in nuclear weapons, said Richard Perle, an architect of the U.S. invasion
of Iraq ..."I don't think anyone can exclude the kind of surgical strike
we saw in 1981," he said, citing Israel's surprise air attack that
destroyed Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor near Baghdad on June 7, 1981. "We
should always be prepared to go it alone, if necessary," he said. [DAILY
TIMES PAKISTAN 0616]

[Concluding comment.  As the economy continues to threaten to implode and
a major deflation - a secular depression like those of the 1870s and 1930s
- looks ever more possible, the Bush administration is looking desperately
for the war that will cover over that situation long enough to get them
reelected in 2004.  Right now the leading candidates are Iran and North
Korea, but I favor a dark horse, the Andean region of South America.  Get
ready, no later than a year from now, constant calls in the press for a
coordinated war against international terrorism in our own backyard --
Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, and even Brazil.]

  ==============================================================
  C. G. Estabrook
  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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