[Peace-discuss] News notes 040822

Sun Aug 22 23:44:55 CDT 2004

        Notes from last week's "war on terrorism" --
        for the AWARE meeting, Sunday, August 22, 2004.
        New format! Ten points in ten minutes.
        (Sources supplied on request.)

[1] For the most part, the American press is not reporting the ongoing
American attack on Iraqi Shi'ites, altho' ending Shi'ite suffering under
Saddam was at one time offered by the Bush administration as justification
for invading Iraq. At midweek, the NYT claimed that the assault on the
central shrine of Shi'ism in Najaf was a decision by the Marines on the
ground alone, altho' that doesn't explain US attacks in six other cities.
It looks much more like a Neocon job (an end-run around their enemies in
Washington) working thru their Latin American mass-murderer John
Negroponte, US ambassador to Iraq, with the goal being war with Iran -- as
the Neocons and their ally, the PM of Israel, have clearly said.

[2] The Iranian foreign minister points out that the Bush Doctrine of
preemptive war can't be the policy of just one state: Iran threatens to
attack the US and Israel preemptively, if they threaten Iran's nuclear
plant. The Israeli papers speculate that Sharon will attack Iran with his
new American planes before the US election -- that has to be now the
leading October Surprise candidate

[3] Meanwhile Israel is revealed by the British press (but not the US) as
training troops for Apache helicopter assassination strikes, etc., after
the Israeli fashion, in occupied Iraq. Israel announces 1,000 new settler
houses, contrary to the laughable Peace Plan, and the US is OK with that;
but the 115-country Non-Aligned Movement, meeting in Durban SA, urged all
of its members to act "individually or collectively" to impose sanctions
both against Israeli settlements and against international companies that
participate in settlement activity. Meanwhile, some of Israel's 8,000
Palestinian prisoners went on hunger strike.

[4] Speaking of prisons, the British medical journal Lancet reports US
military doctors aided the tortures at Abu Ghraib. And a new leaked army
report admits what no one doubts, that the US command structure knew about
the tortures there and elsewhere.

[5] It was said of the Merovingian dynasty in medieval Europe that their
rule was "despotism, tempered by assassination."  It seems the that the US
rule of Iraq is murderous arrogance tempered by incompetence: at least
$8.8 billion is missing from the accounts of the Coalition Provisional
Authority, and nobody seems to know where it went.

[6] The presidential campaign is mired in double irrelevancy: first,
because the outcome will perhaps make little difference in foreign policy
(altho' it may make some difference in domestic policy); second, because
-- amazingly -- our controlled media have turned the discussion away from
the polices of the wholesale killer who is now our chief magistrate to the
question of how good a retail killer his challenger was, 35 years ago.
Meanwhile, Kerry puts a leading member of the Israeli lobby in charge of
his Mideast policy, once again trying to outflank Bush from the Right.

[7] As the FBI harasses potential protesters at the Republican National
Convention and armed state cops intimidate black voters in Florida, Mayor
Michael Bloomberg of New York, where the Republicans will meet, suggested
that the First Amendment rights of free speech and free assembly are
"privileges" that could be lost if abused. "People who avail themselves of
the opportunity to express themselves ... they will not abuse that
privilege. Because if we start to abuse our privileges, then we lose them,
and nobody wants that." This position is of course consistent with the
police suspension of the Bill of Rights at recent political
demonstrations.

[8] "More than half of Americans, 54 percent, continue to believe Iraq had
weapons of mass destruction or a program to develop them before the United
States invaded last year, according to a poll released Friday ... Half
believe Iraq was either closely linked with al-Qaida before the war (35
percent) or was directly involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks
on this country (15 percent). But the poll by the Program on International
Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland found the numbers on both
questions have dropped ... Seven in 10 in the poll say they believe the
United States went to war in Iraq based on false assumptions. A similar
number say the war in Iraq has given the United States a worse image in
the world. A majority, 55 percent, say they don't think the war in Iraq
will result in greater peace and stability in the Mideast. In various
polls, people have been evenly split on whether the war in Iraq was the
right or wrong thing to do - a sharp drop from last winter." [AP 8/20]

[9] While the Democrats don't oppose the war, some Republicans do.  A
Republican Congressman from Nebraska, Doug Bereuter, vice chairman of the
House Intelligence Committee, condemns the US invasion as he retires from
Congress after 26 years, and Rep. Jim Leach (R-IA), who has been in
Congress for 28 years, insisted this week on the need for the US to
withdraw from Iraq as soon as possible. (Leach voted against the 2002 war
resolution.)  Meanwhile, Patrick Buchanan has published a new book, "Where
the Right Went Wrong," which calls the invasion "the greatest strategic
blunder in 40 years, a mistake more costly than Vietnam." He notes that
American conservatives have traditionally opposed foreign interventions,
and that Mr. Bush campaigned against "nation building," but after Sept. 11
Mr. Bush embraced the views of a group of neoconservative thinkers who had
been looking to justify a march on Baghdad since the end of the gulf war.

[10] Finally, in the crepuscular world of administration politics, Bush
calls for removing troops from Europe, which might be interpreted (but
probably shouldn't be) as suggesting the end of NATO, and now the Senate
Republicans want to dismantle the CIA and remove the NSA from the
Pentagon.  On the Sunday morning talk shows, the Dems, naturally, come to
the defense of NATO, the NSA and the CIA.

  ============================================================
  C. G. Estabrook
  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign [MC-190]
  109 Observatory, 901 South Mathews Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801
  office: 217.244.4105 mobile: 217.369.5471 home: 217.359.9466
  <www.newsfromneptune.com>
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  People who work hard to keep food on the table
  and are deluged with propaganda from infancy
  trying to get them to max out half a dozen credit cards
  to satisfy "wants" that are largely constructed
  by huge industries devoted to that purpose,
  cannot be expected to carry out individual research projects
  on every topic, or any topic. If people don't know the facts,
  that's our fault: we've failed as organizers and activists.
  So let's do more about it, instead of blaming people
  for what they do not do on their own --
  which would not be easy, by any means.  --Noam Chomsky
  ============================================================