[Peace-discuss] News notes 030309

[C. G. Estabrook]

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

"Seeking to unite the republic with fear, the government has cranked up
the scare tactics -- orange alerts, anti-aircraft missiles on the Mall,
talk of Iraqi drone planes dropping biochemical weapons on American
cities.  Meanwhile, in an infuriatingly circular bit of reasoning, Vice
President Dick Cheney has argued (and war criminal Kissinger concurred)
that we must use our troops precisely because we've committed them -- if
not, we'll seem weak."  --John Powers, LA Weekly

[1] US WAR.  The USG seems to have picked St. Patrick's Day (3/17) as its
D-day to substantially increase the killing of Iraqis, regardless of law
or international opinion.  Meanwhile, the Iraqi government issued a
statement saying that the latest UN weapons inspectors' report deemed the
country sufficiently free of weapons of mass destruction ... to end
sanctions imposed on Iraq after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.  [NYT 3/9]

The U.S. and Britain are already making air strikes, attacking mobile
radar systems in Iraq 
 U.S. aircraft struck Iraqi targets 230 miles west
of Baghdad, along the Iraq-Jordan border 
 aircraft are attacking southern
Iraq 
 U.S. and British special forces units are operating "deep" inside
Iraq.  Despite public opposition, Jordan's King Abdullah II has quietly
assented to allowing these troops to base themselves in Jordan's eastern
desert 
 [LAT, NYT, WP] Iraqi soldiers started to surrender to British
troops on a practice range in Kuwait.  [MIRROR UK 3/9]

The U.S. government will divide Iraq into three sectors for civil
administration when security is established after a war 
 The plan calls
for a northern and southern sector to be administered by two retired U.S.
Army generals 
 A central sector, including Baghdad, will be administered
by Barbara Bodine, a former U.S. ambassador to Yemen, the sources said 

The Pentagon's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, led
by retired U.S. Army Gen. Jay Garner, is developing the plan.  Garner is
slated to lead a team of more than 150 Bush administration officials and
hundreds of private-sector personnel to Baghdad to establish a new
structure for Iraq's government when the U.S. military can ensure security
after a war 
 The Bush administration has selected a U.S. government
official to oversee each Iraqi ministry that the U.S. plans to keep
running after the war 
 The Iraqi Ministry of Information, which controls
the state-run media, will be disbanded and restructured with free
television, radio and print elements Sensitive ministries such as those
overseeing justice and intelligence will be overhauled 
 The plan also
calls for the U.S. administration team to run a Ministry of Religious
Affairs that will oversee mosques and other religious activities, the
sources said. [CNN 3/7] A company tied to Vice President Dick Cheney has
won a Pentagon contract for advice on rebuilding Iraq's oil fields after a
possible war.  The contract was disclosed in the last paragraph of a
Defense Department statement on preparations for Saddam Hussein's possible
destruction of Iraq's oil fields in the event of a U.S.-led invasion.
[SFC]

More godawful nonsense from the Sunday NYT Magazine, to the effect that
"Americans are not very good at imperialism, or much interested in it: too
innocent, impatient or high on moral purpose."  Then, surprisingly enough,
an editorial in this morning's NYT comes out against the war.  [ALD 2/3]

[2] UN OPPOSITION.  "We cannot accept an ultimatum as long as inspectors
are reporting cooperation," French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin
told the Security Council.  [LAT]

Foreign ministers from France, Russia and Germany agreed on Wednesday not
to allow a resolution authorizing war in Iraq to be passed in the United
Nations Security Council. [REUTERS] But -can you believe it - the
Associated press article by John Leicester carries the headline, "Three
Nations Won't Back UN [sic] on Iraq"!

A new resolution submitted by the British gives Iraq until March 17 to
disarm.  A vote on the resolution could come as early as Tuesday, though
even if it fails - and it may well - UN Ambassador (and Reagan-era war
criminal in Honduras) John Negroponte argues in the NYT that the U.S. has
legal authority to go to war under previous resolutions.  [3/8]

The United States is conducting a secret 'dirty tricks' campaign against
UN Security Council delegations in New York as part of its battle to win
votes in favour of war against Iraq.  Details of the aggressive
surveillance operation, which involves interception of the home and office
telephones and the emails of UN delegates in New York, are revealed in a
document leaked to The Observer (UK). [Martin Bright, Ed Vulliamy and
Peter Beaumont 3/2]

IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei says that some of the evidence presented by
the U.S. and Britain against Iraq had been faked. [Now, who could have
done that?] "There is no indication of resumed nuclear activities,"
ElBaradei says [WP 3/8].  Hans Blix says Iraq has made real efforts -
"initiatives," he calls them in the NYT - to reduce its arsenal, including
the destruction of 34 Al-Samoud 2 missiles. [3/8]

"To our mind the most significant story of the season was the one by John
Barry in a recent Newsweek. On February 24, Newsweek's issue dated March 3
reported that the Iraqi weapons chief who defected from the regime in 1995
told UN inspectors that Iraq had destroyed its entire stockpile of
chemical and biological weapons and banned missiles, exactly as Iraq
claims. Gen. Hussein Kamel, Saddam Hussein's former son in law who
defected and who was killed shortly after returning to Iraq in 1996, was
debriefed by officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
and the U.N. inspections team, UNSCOM.  Barry got hold of the transcript
of that debriefing. Kemal told the inspectors, in Barry's words in
Newsweek, "that after the Gulf War, Iraq destroyed all its chemical and
biological weapons stocks and the missiles to deliver them. "All that
remained were "hidden blueprints, computer disks, microfiches" and
production molds. The weapons were destroyed secretly, in order to hide
their existence from inspectors, in the hopes of someday resuming
production after inspections had finished. The CIA and MI6 were told the
same story, Barry reported, and "a military aide who defected with
Kamel... backed Kamel's assertions about the destruction of WMD stocks."
But these statements were "hushed up by the UN inspectors" in order to
"bluff Saddam into disclosing still more." On February 26, FAIR reports, a
complete copy of the Kamel transcript- an internal UNSCOM/IAEA document
stamped "sensitive"-- was obtained by Glen Rangwala, the Cambridge
University analyst who in early February revealed Tony Blair's
"intelligence dossier" was plagiarized from a student thesis. Rangwala has
posted the Kamel transcript on the Web:
http://casi.org.uk/info/unscom950822.pdf.  In other words Bush, Blair and
rest have them have known perfectly well all along that there are no
chemical and biological war stocks to be found. No one seriously maintains
that Iraq has any nuclear capability.  Barry's tremendous scoop in
Newsweek was ignored by the mainstream press. Why let facts get in the way
of a good war?" [COUNTERPUNCH]

[3] DEMOCRATS' ACQUIESCENCE. The LAT, in an article headlined "ON IRAQ,
CONGRESS CEDES ALL THE AUTHORITY TO BUSH," points out that the U.S. Senate
spent most of last week mired in a partisan brawl over a single federal
judge. The House, meanwhile, squabbled over a tax bill laden with
special-interest goodies and passed a resolution mourning the death of
Mister Rogers. [3/9]

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton "fully supports" President Bush's Iraq policy,
her office said last night - on the eve of her visit today to an upstate
arsenal that makes military hardware like mortars and howitzers for U.S.
troops. That puts Clinton (D-N.Y.) squarely at odds with a majority in her
own party, where one recent poll found an Iraq attack is opposed by 66
percent of "core Democrats."  [3/3]

The group called CODE PINK runs and imaginative demonstration against
Senator Clinton on Capitol Hill. The next day, 23 women, including
nationally recognized award-winning authors Alice Walker and Maxine Hong
Kingston, Pacifica Radio's Amy Goodman, were arrested in front of the
White House on International Women's Day, protesting against the Bush
Administration's proposed war on Iraq. They had marched from Malcolm X
Park in Washington, DC, leading more than 5,000 peace activists associated
with Code Pink, Women for Peace, to the White House. [PACIFICA 3/9]

A self-procalimed liberal journal [THE AMERICAN PROSPECT] calls anti-war
candidates 'pesky;' says they shouldn't run for president

[4] BUSH "PRESS CONFERENCE" ON WEDNESDAY. Russell Mokhiber, editor of
Corporate Crime Reporter and author of a regular Commondreams.org feature
"Ari & I: White House Briefings," was at George W. Bush's first primetime
news conference in over a year and a half. He says, "Last night's [press
conference] might have been the most controlled Presidential news
conference in recent memory. Even the President admitted during the press
conference that 'this is a scripted' press conference. The President had a
list of 17 reporters who he was going to call on. He didn't take any
questions from reporters raising their hands. And he refused to call on
Helen Thomas, the dean of the White House press corps, who traditionally
asks the first question." According to White House communications director
Dan Bartlett, the Bush administration rarely uses news conferences,
because "if you have a message you're trying to deliver, a news conference
can go in a different direction." However, "In this case, we know what the
questions are going to be, and those are the ones we want to answer."
[Institute for Public Accuracy and Democracy Now! 3/7]

George Bush pulled out of a speech to the European Parliament when MEPs
wouldn't guarantee a standing ovation.  Senior White House officials said
the President would only go to Strasbourg to talk about Iraq if he had a
stage-managed welcome.  A source close to negotiations said last night:
"President Bush agreed to a speech but insisted he get a standing ovation
like at the State of the Union address.  "His people also insisted there
were no protests, or heckling.  "I believe it would be a crucial speech
for Mr Bush to make in light of the opposition here to war. But unless he
only gets adulation and praise, then it will never happen."  Mr Bush's
every appearance in the US is stage-managed, with audiences full of
supporters.  It was hoped he would speak after he welcomed Warsaw pact
nations to Nato in Prague last November. But his refusal to speak to EU
leaders face-to-face is seen as a key factor in the split between the
US-UK coalition and Europe.  The source added: "Relations between the EU
and the US are worsening fast - this won't help." [MIRROR UK 3/8]

[5] THE ECONOMY [about which there were NO questions at the 'press
conference']. Friday morning, after Bush's speech, NPR led, quite
properly, with unemployment statistics.  The number of workers on U.S.
payrolls plunged in February at the sharpest rate since November 2001 and
the jobless rate rose to 5.8 percent, the government said on Friday in a
shockingly gloomy economic report. The Labor Department said payroll jobs
outside the farm sector declined by 308,000 last month -- in contrast to
expectations in a Reuters poll that they would rise by 8,000. [REUTERS
3/7]

There is a widespread view that economic growth has been stalled by
business uncertainty about Iraq, but a Financial Times report suggests the
slowdown is more than temporary. Alan Greenspan and other central bankers
are citing the short-term effect of corporate war fears to argue against
additional pump priming through interest rate and tax cuts and increased
government spending. But capital investment has been stagnant since the
stock market crashed three years ago - well before the Bush administration
mobilized for war in Iraq - and the Times report finds that business
leaders are mostly indifferent about the war, and traditional market
measures of war fears are largely absent. The Times notes this could
change if the war goes badly, and the economy sinks back into recession.
But the current slowdown seems related to the structural crisis of
overproduction and overcapacity produced by the 90's investment boom, and
so likely to continue after the geopolitical crisis has been resolved.
[SUPPORTING FACTS]

Leading US economists warned today that a unilateral US-led war against
Iraq would have adverse economic consequences and increase the risk of
"future instability and terrorism".  Signatories of the statement,
released by Economists Allied for Arms Reduction, a New York-based
research group, voiced concern about "the immediate human tragedy and
devastation of war" and warned that it might "increase the risk of future
instability and terrorism".  "War could drive up interest rates and energy
prices and unleash major consumer retrenchment," they said.  "Given the
precarious state of our own economy, America requires the attention and
focus of leadership and resources to address economic problems at home."
They also noted that the priority given to the military sector would hurt
the recovery of the ailing technology sector.  The statement was signed by
seven Nobel laureates - Kenneth Arrow, Lawrence Klein, Daniel McFadden,
Douglass North, William Sharpe, Robert Solow and Joseph Stiglitz - and by
several other prominent US economists.  "The Bush administration is not
playing it straight with the American public as to the potential economic
consequences of this war," said Professor James Galbraith, of the School
of Public Affairs at the University of Texas in Austin.  "With its rush to
war, the administration is diverting the public's attention away from dire
economic problems that we are not working to solve."  The United States
has massed more than 225,000 troops around Iraq ahead a threatened
invasion to oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and rid the Middle Eastern
country of banned weapons of mass destruction. [AFP 3/6]

[6] TORTURE. A secret prison at the heart of US military operations in
Afghanistan with a reportedly formidable track record for harsh treatment
of inmates was to become the temporary home of alleged al-Qaeda kingpin
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.  Bagram air base, a sprawling, windswept,
Soviet-era complex 50 kilometres (31 miles) north of Kabul, was named by
Pakistani officials as the destination for Mohammed and one other al-Qaeda
suspect following their arrest in Pakistan.

ON THURSDAY, US ADMITS IT TORTURED TWO MEN TO DEATH AT BAGRAM. America
admits suspects died in interrogations By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles 07
March 2003 American military officials acknowledged yesterday that two
prisoners captured in Afghanistan in December had been killed while under
interrogation at Bagram air base north of Kabul - reviving concerns that
the US is resorting to torture in its treatment of Taliban fighters and
suspected al-Qa'ida operatives.  A spokesman for the air base confirmed
that the official cause of death of the two men was "homicide",
contradicting earlier accounts that one had died of a heart attack and the
other from a pulmonary embolism.  The men's death certificates, made
public earlier this week, showed that one captive, known only as Dilawar,
22, from the Khost region, died from "blunt force injuries to lower
extremities complicating coronary artery disease" while another captive,
Mullah Habibullah, 30, suffered from blood clot in the lung that was
exacerbated by a "blunt force injury".  US officials previously admitted
using "stress and duress" on prisoners including sleep deprivation, denial
of medication for battle injuries, forcing them to stand or kneel for
hours on end with hoods on, subjecting them to loud noises and sudden
flashes of light and engaging in culturally humiliating practices such as
having them kicked by female officers.  While the US claims this still
constitutes "humane" treatment, human rights groups including Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch have denounced it as torture as
defined by international treaty. The US has also come under heavy
criticism for its reported policy of handing suspects over to countries
such as Jordan, Egypt or Morocco, where torture techniques are an
established part of the security apparatus. Legally, Human Rights Watch
says, there is no distinction between using torture directly and
subcontracting it out.  Some American politicians have argued that torture
could be justified in this case if it helped prevent terror attacks on US
citizens. Jonathan Turley, a prominent law professor at George Washington
University, countered that embracing torture would be "suicide for a
nation once viewed as the very embodiment of human rights".  Torture is
part of a long list of concerns about the Bush administration's respect
for international law, after the extrajudicial killing of al-Qa'ida
suspects by an unmanned drone in Yemen and the the indefinite detention of
"enemy combatants" at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a number of whom have
committed or attempted to commit suicide.  President Bush appeared to
encourage extra-judicial solutions in his State of the Union address in
January when he talked of al-Qa'ida members being arrested or meeting "a
different fate". "Let's put it this way," he said in a tone that appalled
many, "they are no longer a problem to the United States and our friends
and allies."

OUR COUNTRY IS IMPRISONING CHILDREN. The CIA has had the 7- and 9-year-
old sons of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in custody since September, and plans
to use them as leverage to get the No. 3 man in al Qaeda to talk.
Mohammed, arrested Saturday in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, has undergone three
days of questioning by the same team of CIA and FBI agents who have
handled other high-profile detainees. Sources said the English-speaking
Mohammed has refused to cooperate with interrogators - and instead has
spent hours in a trance-like state, chanting passages from the Koran. But
law-enforcement officials are convinced that he will eventually talk -
just as diehard al Qaeda kingpins Abu Zubaydah and Ramzi Binalshibh did
under interrogation. The United States has made it a practice to take some
high-profile terror detainees from Pakistan and Afghanistan to Arab
countries like Jordan, Egypt and Morocco for interrogation. "We don't kick
the shit out of them. Some of our friends do
" said one former
counterterrorism official. "These guys are unbelievably cocky. They
believe God is on their side. So they believe even though they've been
captured, ultimately, they're going to prevail," he said. The CIA and FBI
interrogation teams will also try to get him to open up with sleep
deprivation. "You bring him in a room and start asking questions. You keep
him standing. Then you start building rewards. If you cooperate, if you
start talking to us, you get to lie down, you get to take a nap," said
former CIA counterterrorism officer Larry Johnson. [NYP ¾]

[7] ISRAEL. Israel assassinated a top leader of Hamas. Ibrahim al-Makadmah
and his three bodyguards were hit by missile fire by two Israeli
helicopters. Hamas has vowed revenge for the killings. The paper also
reports that Yasser Arafat has nominated Mahmoud Abbas, a critic of the
Palestinians' armed uprising, to the new post of prime minister. Abbas,
who does not have much of a popular following, signed the Oslo Accords and
has often clashed with Arafat. [NYT 3/9]

WOULD THE KILLING OF 36 JEWS BE CALLED "RELATIVE CALM"? On Wednesday, NPR
reports the bombing of a bus in Haifa "after weeks of relatively calm."
She then mentions that in the last two weeks, 36 Palestinians had been
killed by the Israeli military.

Israel rejected US criticism of its killing of Palestinian civilians
during increasingly deadly raids into built-up Palestinian areas. "We are
active everywhere because there cannot be even the smallest sanctuary of
immunity for the terrorists," said a senior Israeli official who asked not
to be named. He said Israel's raids were "legitimate self-defence
operations" .In the latest raid into the Gaza Strip early Monday, eight
people were killed, including a pregnant woman and a 13-year-old boy [AFP]

AN ISRAELI VIEW.  "The Israel Defense Forces operations in the refugee
camps of the Gaza Strip in recent weeks appear to have been carried out
with reckless abandon. Care not to harm innocent bystanders - oft recited
mechanically by military commanders and ministers - has disappeared The
operations are leaving dozens of dead civilians in their wake. Of the 72
Palestinians killed in the Gaza Strip and West Bank in February, 25 were
civilians, including three children under the age of 10. In demolishing
the homes of terror activists, the IDF has also destroyed the property of
neighbors who had nothing to do with anti-Israel activity before falling
victim to terror attacks, reprisals and counterterrorism operations. The
declared intentions of adopting a selective approach - heavy-handed
against the terror, and merciful toward unfortunate Palestinians who only
want to live and make a living - have gone up in the smoke of the tanks
and the dust of the bulldozers. Responsibility for the occurrences in Gaza
can be divided between the operational ranks and the upper echelon,
comprising Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon on the part of the army, and above
him, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz. Because
the general staff and political leaders are not treating the results of
the operations as problematic, one can only assume that in their opinions,
the forces in Gaza are operating as required. The finger must thus be
pointed, for the most part, at the formulators of the policies, and Sharon
and Mofaz in particular." [HA'ARETZ 3/6]

Jewish settlers are offering special "terror tours" of the West Bank and
Gaza, in which tourists will be trained to fire weapons and participate in
mock fights with Arab militants. The four-day excursion will include
aerial tours of "terrorist" enclaves and a chance to sit in the cockpit of
a fighter-plane capable of delivering nuclear bombs. [BBC 3/8]

Published on Thursday, March 6, 2003 by the Los Angeles Times Rights on
the Rack Alleged Torture in Terror War Imperils U.S. Standards of Humanity
by Jonathan Turley
  
In Afghanistan, it is hardly surprising to find two dead bodies with signs
of torture. This week, however, a shocking U.S. military coroner's report
also suggested that the most likely suspect in the homicides was the U.S.
government. Even more disturbing is emerging evidence that the United
States may be operating something that would have seemed unimaginable only
two years ago: an American torture facility. Credible reports now indicate
that the government, with the approval of high-ranking officials, is
engaging in systematic techniques considered by many to be torture.

U.S. officials have admitted using techniques that this nation previously
denounced as violations of international law. One official involved in the
"interrogation center" in Afghanistan said "if you don't violate someone's
human rights, you probably aren't doing your job."

For months, international human rights groups have been protesting
activities at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. In a closed-off part of
the base, the CIA has constructed an "interrogation center" out of metal
shipping containers. Last year, reports began to surface that the CIA was
getting information the old-fashioned way -- by breaking suspects
physically, except when they inconveniently die.

There is a striking consistency to these accounts, including those from
unnamed U.S. officials. Following the arrest of terrorist suspect Abu
Zubeida last year after he was shot in the chest, groin and thigh, U.S.
officials admitted withholding painkillers as an inducement to force
information from him. For part of his interrogation, John Walker Lindh was
held naked in an unheated metal container in the dead of winter and
duct-taped to a stretcher with a bullet in his leg.

The latest allegation concerns two men who died while guests of the CIA.
According to the military coroner, both men show "blunt force trauma" that
contributed to their deaths. They died within a week of each other at the
base, one of a pulmonary embolism and one of a heart attack. Both cases
are now officially listed as homicides.

One U.S. official is quoted as predicting that "this investigation will
not go well for us."

U.S. Special Forces troops have been accused of beating suspects before
turning them over for exposure to other techniques, such as being kept
awake for days or forced to stand or kneel for long periods in painful
positions. Witnesses also reported the use of bright lights and loud
noises to reduce suspects to blithering idiots through sleep deprivation.

To the amazement of the international community, the U.S. government has
openly admitted that it is now using such "stress and duress techniques."
These practices would be unconstitutional -- if not criminal -- if
committed in the United States.

However, the government insists that it can use the techniques abroad and
that they fall just short of a technical definition of torture.

Respected international organizations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty
International and other groups disagree and have condemned the techniques
as flagrant violations of international law. Though not declaring them to
be torture, the European Court of Human Rights found in 1978 that
identical practices used by the British in Ireland were "inhuman" and in
violation of various international agreements.

Among the violations is the denial of rights under the Geneva Convention,
which states in Article 17 that "no physical or mental torture, nor any
other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure
from them information of any kind whatsoever."

There is no retroactive clause: The U.S. cannot round up suspects, torture
them and, if they die, retroactively label them enemy combatants outside
of the Geneva Convention.

The Bush administration position is also dangerously shortsighted: Its
alleged use of torture puts every service member in any Iraq war at risk.
Saddam Hussein can now cite the U.S. in support of his taste for torture.

Hussein missed his opportunity to market his services. When U.S.
techniques have proved unavailing, officials have transferred suspects to
countries that we have previously denounced for grotesque violations of
human rights. Suspects are simply shipped to Pakistan, Saudi Arabia or
Morocco with a list of questions for more crude torture techniques.

One official involved in these interrogations explained that "we don't
kick the [expletive] out of them. We send them to other countries so they
can kick the [expletive] out of them."

This week, West Virginia Sen. John D. Rockefeller actually encouraged the
U.S. to hand over the recently arrested Al Qaeda suspect Khalid Shaikh
Mohammed to another country for torture. Whatever legal distinction
Rockefeller sees in using surrogates to do our torturing, it is hardly a
moral distinction. As a result, we are now driving the new market for
torture-derived information. We have gone from a nation that once
condemned torture to one that contracts out for torture services.

Instead of continuing our long fight against torture, we now seek to adopt
more narrow definitions to satisfy our own acquired appetite for coercive
interrogations. If the U.S. is responsible for the deaths of the two men
in Afghanistan, it is more than homicide. It would be suicide for a nation
once viewed as the very embodiment of human rights.

Jonathan Turley is a law professor at George Washington University.

Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

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  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign [MC-190]
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