[Peace-discuss] News notes 040725

[C. G. Estabrook]

        Notes from last week's "war on terrorism" --
        for the AWARE meeting, Sunday, July 25, 2004.
        (Sources indicated at the ends of paragraphs;
        unsourced text and titles are mine.)

[1.] THE JORDAN TIMES EDITORIALIZED THIS WEEK AS FOLLOWS:

"The flagrant illegality of the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq,
and the flint-hearted brutality with which it was executed should offend
every intelligent human being's sense of decency. The imposition of a
pro-American client regime in Baghdad through direct foreign aggression
was an act as illegitimate as the Soviet take-over of Afghanistan in
1979."

AND THE WAR CONTINUES. "...more American soldiers were killed in the first
three weeks of July than in all of June, even though ... the U.S. military
has stopped patrolling in much of Anbar Province, the heart of the
insurgency. And while the U.S. has yet to disburse any significant amount
of aid, the Government Accountability Office says that war costs for this
fiscal year alone will run $12.3 billion above Pentagon projections."
[Krugman 7/23] Knight Ridder reports that U.S. troops have stopped
patrolling large swaths of Iraq's Anbar province. The article quotes a
U.S. Army Major as saying, "The only way to stomp out the insurgency of
the mind would be to kill the entire population," and that the insurgency
"cannot militarily overwhelm us, but we cannot deliver a knockout blow,
either. It creates a form of stalemate." A Newsweek profile of Prime
Minister Allawi, 'Iraq's New S. O. B.,' touches on the allegations [that
he shot six prisoners in cold blood just before the "transfer of
sovereignty"] carrying a denial from Allawi that he has "killed anyone
since taking office." [cursor.org]

A Baghdad University study finds Iraq unemployment at 70%
[english.aljazeera.net 7/21]

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan denies that the world is safer than it
was two years ago. [ap]

Robert Fisk finds that, like the Karzai government in Afghanistan, the new
Allawi government only controls the capital. [independent 7/22]

Robert Dreyfuss says "cities all over Iraq are totally outside the control
of either the U.S. forces or the government of Iraqistan." [tompaine.com
7/22]

The U.S. bounty hunter on trial for running a private "war on terror" in
Afghanistan, claims that he and his associates "were in contact directly
by fax, and e-mail and phone with Donald Rumsfeld's office [and] with the
Deputy Secretary of Defense for Intelligence," who is Stephen Cambone [who
ran US "Gray Fox" death squads]. [afp 7/21]

A powerful warlord in northern Afghanistan announced yesterday that he
intends to stand for president in the election scheduled for October,
presenting a new challenge to incumbent Hamid Karzai -- General Rashid
Dostum, US ally responsible for war crimes [globeandmail.com 7/23]

[2.] THE 911 COMMISSION FINAL REPORT APPEARED THURSDAY AND IS BEING
DIGESTED. It "revealed in new detail how the Bush administration set its
eyes on Iraq within hours of the 9/11 attacks and commission raised
questions about how successful Bush's so-called war on terrorism has been
... just six hours after the first tower was hit -- Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld told Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairmanâ... that he wanted to
attack Saddam Hussein at the same time as Osama bin Laden ... the
commission found Iraq and Al Qaeda had no 'collaborative operational
relationship.' The report doesn't outright criticize the Bush
administration for attacking Iraq last year but it warned that Iraq could
now become a 'breeding grounds for attacks against Americans at home.'" On
the war on terror, the committee questioned whether Bush should have ever
declared a war on terrorism and warned that the battle can not be fought
just militarily. Bur it does not discuss Israel. It nevertheless offers a
broad critique of a central tenet of the Bush administration's foreign
policy _ that the attacks have required a 'war on terrorism'... The report
argues that the notion of fighting an enemy called "terrorism" is too
diffuse and vague to be effective. Strikingly, the report also makes no
reference to the invasion of Iraq as being part of the war on terrorism.
[drudge 7/22]

Three of the hijackers were on terrorist watch lists, four more listed the
same address as those on the watch list, three more had made frequent
telephone calls to those addresses, and two more had used Mohammed Atta's
frequent-flier number. [guardian 7/22]

An online chatter asks a Washington Post editor: "Since we know President
Bush does not like to read should we expect him to read the entire
report?"

THE REPORT SUPPORTS THE LEADING OCTOBER SURPRISE CANDIDATE. "Iran will go
nuclear during the next presidential term. If nothing is done, a fanatical
terrorist regime openly dedicated to the destruction of the "Great Satan"
will have both nuclear weapons and the terrorists and missiles to deliver
them. All that stands between us and that is either revolution or
preemptive strike. Both of which, by the way, are far more likely to
succeed with 146,000 American troops and highly sophisticated aircraft
standing by just a few miles away - in Iraq." [C. Krauthammer 7/23]

The 9/11 report was not the only major report issued in Washington
yesterday. At a hastily arranged meeting of the Senate Armed Services
Committee, the Army released a 300-page report detailing prison abuse in
Iraq and Afghanistan that attempted to absolve the military of most
wrongdoing in Iraqi and Afghan prisons. The Army Inspector General's
report revealed that the U.S. has detained 50,000 prisoners in Iraq and
Afghanistan. The report cited 94 cases of confirmed or possible detainee
abuse or torture -- include 20 incidents that led to the prisoner's death.
But the report concluded the cases of abuse at Abu Ghraib and other
prisons were "aberrations" and not "systemic" problems, altho' the report
faulted interrogators for embracing Guantanamo techniques. Critics of the
report noted that many of the report's findings directly contradicted
early reports by the International Committee of the Red Cross as well Army
Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba. The Army also failed to investigation several
key findings of Taguba's including reports that "ghost detainees" were
shuttled from prison to prison in Iraq to avoid oversight by the Red Cross
and that interrogators used dogs. Several Senators openly questioned the
Army's Inspector General about how he could fail to examine the ghost
detainees or the use of unmuzzled dogs in the jails. Senator John McCain
asked, "What else didn't you investigate? If we didn't investigate a gross
and egregious violation such as that... I'm curious what else you didn't
investigate." The Army's report was issued during a poorly attended
hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee that was announced only the
night before and was held while most Senators were receiving a briefing on
the 9/11 Commission's findings. Even the New York Times wrote that, "it
appeared to contradict its central conclusion at various points." [dn,
etc.]

Both the release of the Army report and testimony by Halliburton
executives and whistleblowers, occurred on the same day the 9/11
commission released its final report. Halliburton now being investigated
by a grand jury for possibly violating federal sanctions for doing
business in Iran, when Cheney was its CEO. [latimes.com 7/22]

[3.] THE OTHER OCCUPATION. Palestinian diplomats have announced they plan
to press the United Nations Security Council to force Israel to tear down
the 450-mile wall it is constructing in the West Bank. This comes just
days after the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly in favor of a
resolution demanding that Israel obey a World Court ruling that it abandon
and dismantle its West Bank separation barrier.. The vote was 150 to 6.
The only countries voting with Israel were the U.S., Australia and tiny
Pacific island states of Micronesia, Palau and the Marshall Islands.

A Ha'aretz commentator details how killings of Palestinians are given
short shrift in the Israeli media, and an Israeli newspaper publishes
military statistics showing that suicide was the leading cause of death
among Israeli troops last year. [electronicintifada.net]

[4.] THE DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION. Protesters will be allowed to march
directly past the site of the Democratic National Convention, but a
federal judge refused to change a nearby protest zone, despite calling the
fenced-in area "an affront to free expression." Judge Douglas P. Woodlock
ruled Thursday on two separate lawsuits filed earlier in the week by
protest groups that challenged the city's denial of their request to march
past the FleetCenter on the eve of the convention as well as the
conditions of the designated demonstration zone ... he rejected arguments
over the conditions of the official demonstration zone -- a
28,000-square-foot area that features overhead netting, chain link fencing
and razor wire -- saying a post-9/11 era and increasingly violent protests
required certain precautions to prevent violence. Woodlock described the
area as a "festering boil," but refused to make any of the changes
protesters sought. "I at first thought, before taking a view (of the
protest zone), that the characterization of the space being like an
internment camp was litigation hyperbole," he said. "Now I believe it’s
an understatement." "One cannot conceive of other elements put in place to
create a space that is more of an affront to the idea of free expression
than the designated demonstration zone." ...  Jonathan Shapiro, an
attorney for the National Lawyers Guild, called the decision on the
protest zone "outrageous." "In the same breath, the judge calls this a
festering boil that is an affront to first amendment values and then at
the same time said it's OK ... based upon what's happened in other times
and other places," he said. [ap 7/23[

The NYPD considered turning the Staten Island Ferry into a prison barge
during the Republican Convention, reports the New York Observer: "That the
ferry plan was even considered attests to the sheer volume of arrests
anticipated during the four days of the convention..." [observer.com 7/27]

Congressman Dennis Kucinich officially endorsed John Kerry for president
yesterday and called on backers of Ralph Nader to vote for Kerry. Kucinich
said ''If there's room for me in the party and the Kerry-Edwards campaign,
there's certainly room for Ralph and his supporters." [Nader was then
denied admission to the convention.] [dn 7/23]

Kerry: I can do better than Bush on fighting terrorism : "I'll do a better
job of reducing the threat to Israel and the rest of the world." [haaretz]

Sens. Joe Lieberman and Jon Kyl announce the relaunching of the Committee
on the Present Danger (CPD), drawing members from Washington's
neoconservative network. Busy, Busy, Busy says the effort is designed "to
prove that the terrorists under your bed are just as scary as communists
used to be." [cursor 7/24]

[5.] "SOCIAL ISSUES" REPLACE CLASS ISSUES. As you watch the conventions of
the official political parties in the next weeks, and contemplate the two
ridiculous killers that out political system has thrown up for the office
of chief magistrate, insight into our politics I think is to be found in
Tom Frank's new book, What's the Matter with Kansas?  It begins as
follows:

"The poorest county in America isn't in Appalachia or the Deep South. It
is on the Great Plains, a region of struggling ranchers and dying farm
towns, and in the election of 2000 the Republican candidate for president,
George W. Bush, carried it by a majority of greater than 80 percent."

The House yesterday approved a bill that would bar federal courts from
overturning parts of the federal Defense of Marriage Act. The 1996 law
says states do not have to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other
jurisdictions. If enacted, the bill approved yesterday would represent the
first time Congress has ever barred a federal court, including the Supreme
Court from considering the constitutionality of federal legislation. The
House vote comes a week after the Senate rejected an amendment to the
Constitution that would define marriage as solely between a man and a
woman. [dn 7/23]

[6.] WAR ELSEWHERE Citing the Butler report's conclusion that Prime
Minister Blair changed Iraq policy to "regime change" when there was no
new intelligence, former Foreign Minister Robin Cook told the House of
Commons, "The change that precipitated the movement away from containment
to invasion was not a change in Iraq, it was the regime change in
Washington..." Cook also said, "In the gaps between defending an
unnecessary, unpopular, and possibly illegal war, Tony Blair found time
this week to announce 'the end of the 1960s.' At least he deserves marks
for consistency. All that talk about the peace and love of the Sixties
sounds so over in the Blair/Bush era of global war." [independent 7/24]

In support of George Monbiot's call for newspapers to be "held to account
for the decision to invade Iraq," A MediaLensâeditor writes in a letter to
the Guardian that "UN inspectors... were perfectly clear in declaring Iraq
'fundamentally disarmed' of '90%-95%' of its WMD by December 1998. This
assertion was simply ignored by the media ahead of the war." [cursor.org
7/25]

During a speech in Florida last week, Bush said of Fidel Castro: "The
dictator welcomes sex tourism. Here's how he bragged about the industry.
This is his quote: 'Cuba has the cleanest and most educated prostitutes in
the world.'" The source for the quote was a paper written by a college
student, who said he paraphrased it and that Bush took it out of context.
Cubans blasted Bush, with writer Marta Rojas telling the Dallas Morning
News, "I've never heard anything as pig-filthy as that. The nose of
Pinocchio" - as some Cubans call Bush - "is so long, it can't get any
longer." [cursor.org 7/25]

In an interview with the Denver Post, Bill Clinton questioned the timing
of the leak that led his National Security Adviser, Sandy Berger, to
resign from the Kerry campaign. A 9/11 commissioner told the Boston Globe
that the missing document had no affect on the panel's work: "We have many
copies of it. He did not have access to anything that wasn't in
duplicate." [cursor.org 7/25]

As Senate Democrats successfully filibuster one of President Bush's
nominees to the federal judiciary, who had served as a longtime lobbyist
for large ranchers and mining interests, Majority Leader Bill Frist moves
forward with a plan to change Senate rules to prohibit lawmakers from
filibustering judicial nominees. [cursor.org 7/25]

The Wall Street Journal reports on a complaint filed with the FTC by
MoveOn.org and Common Cause, claiming that Fox News Channel's slogan "fair
and balanced" violates the commission's prohibition against deceptive
advertising. [cursor.org 7/25]

Republicans beat back an attempt by House Democrats to have the U.N.
monitor U.S. Elections. [cursor.org 7/25]

David Kay says President Bush and Prime Minister Blair ''should have been
able to tell before the war that the evidence did not exist for drawing
the conclusion that Iraq presented a clear, present and imminent threat on
the basis of existing weapons of mass destruction. That was not something
that required a war." [cursor.org 7/25]

The Independent reports that Blair's government withheld information from
the Hutton inquiry, which showed that he relied on intelligence
discredited by his own intelligence services to claim that Iraq posed a
"serious and current" threat, and a Telegraph article says Blair "secured
vital changes to the Butler Report before its publication, watering down
an explicit criticism" of Blair and how he made a case for war.
[cursor.org 7/25]

The Observer reports that the British government has admitted Blair's
claim that '400,000 bodies had been found in Iraqi mass graves' is untrue,
and that "only about 5,000 corpses have so far been uncovered." U.S. Rep.
Chris Cox aped the bogus claim on Sunday, when he said "we've discovered
over 400,000 people in mass graves," during a "Meet the Press" appearance
with Stephen Flynn, author of "America the Vulnerable." [cursor 7/25]

the Republican chair of the House Administration Committee tries to run
out the clock on a bill that would mandate a voter-verified paper record
for electronic voting. [cursor 7/25]

WSJ FRONT PAGE:
    With the U.S. economy expanding and the labor market improving, it
isn't clear how well the Democrats' message of a divided America will
resonate with voters this fall. But many economists believe the economic
recovery has indeed taken two tracks...
    Upper-income families, who pay the most in taxes and reaped the
largest gains from the tax cuts President Bush championed, drove a surge
of consumer spending a year ago that helped to rev up the recovery.
Wealthier households also have been big beneficiaries of the stronger
stock market, higher corporate profits, bigger dividend payments and the
boom in housing.
    Lower and middle-income households have benefited from some of these
trends, but not nearly as much. For them paychecks and day-to-day living
expenses have a much bigger effect. Many have been squeezed, with wages
under pressure and with gasoline and food prices higher. The resulting
two-tier recovery is showing up in vivid detail in the way Americans are
spending their money.

The story goes on to describe the disparity between sales of high-end
designer jewelry, luxury cars and lakeside hotel suites (booming) and the
kind of stuff that most of us buy at Wal-Mart or Target (stagnant). And it
quotes an economist from J.P. Morgan Chase -- another notoriously
left-leaning, Bush-hating institution -- in support of its "Two Americas"
thesis:
    "To date, the [recovery's] primary beneficiaries have been
upper-income households," concludes Dean Maki, a J.P. Morgan Chase (and
former Federal Reserve) economist who has studied the ways that changes in
wealth affect spending. In research he sent to clients this month, Mr.
Maki said, "Two of the main factors supporting spending over the past
year, tax cuts and increases in [stock] wealth, have sharply benefited
upper income households relative to others." [billmon.org 7/25]

According to the Economic Policy Institute, real hourly and real weekly
wages have both fallen in six of the last seven months, and are now lower
than they were in November 2001, at the tail end of the last recession.
While it's not uncommon for real wages to decline in the early stages of a
recovery (in part because hiring tends to lag the upturn in production),
for workers to be this far behind this far along in an economic expansion
is unprecedented, at least by modern post-World War II standards.
[billmon.org 7/25]

The US military budget is almost as much as the rest of the world's.
[globalissues.org]

  ==============================================================
  C. G. Estabrook
  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign [MC-190]
  109 Observatory, 901 South Mathews Avenue, Urbana IL 61801 USA
  <www.newsfromneptune.com>
  ==============================================
  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
  ======================================================