[Peace-discuss] News notes 041106

[C. G. Estabrook]

   ========================================================
   Notes from last week's "global war on terrorism" [GWOT],
   for the AWARE meeting, Sunday, October 31, 2004.
   (Sources provided on request; a paragraph followed by a
   bracketed source is substantially verbatim.)
   ========================================================

[1] Iraq's interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi declared martial law on
Sunday and said a U.S.-led military offensive against the rebel-held city
of Falluja could not be delayed much longer. (Heavy air strikes have now
begun.) The resistance killed 23 Iraqi policemen and set off blasts in
Baghdad; more than 50 people have been killed in the past two days in a
coordinated series of bloody attacks in the Sunni region.  Samarra, under
tenuous U.S. control since early last month, was in turmoil. In Ramadi, a
suicide bomber rammed his car into a convoy of Marines, injuring 16. The
attacks are thought to be the beginning of a widespread campaign of
retaliation against the upcoming offensive in Fallujah, outside of which
the US has massed 10,000 troops to do battle with between 1,000 and 6,000
insurgents of various allegiances. The forecast is grim: the WP predicts
that both sides will suffer "heavy casualties," in the battle, while the
LAT quotes an unnamed senior U.S. diplomat who says, "There will be
horrific events outside Fallujah...  The Knight Ridder news agency is
reporting Marines are now expecting the attack on Fallujah will result in
the heaviest casualty levels for the US military since the Vietnam War.
	Meanwhile, Iraq's two established Shiite parties -- Dawa and Sciri
-- have formed an uneasy coalition in hopes that the revered Ayatollah Ali
al-Sistani will anoint it the chosen Shiite party. Their major competition
is the new alliance between fallen US favorite Ahmad Chalabi and radical
insurgency leader Moqtada Sadr.  The minority Sunnis have threatened to
boycott the elections if Fallujah is invaded. Without Sunni support, the
elections could not be considered legitimate.
	An Iraqi military commander has deserted US forces hours after he
received a full briefing on US military plans to storm Fallujah, CNN has
reported. The BBC says that 100 of the 400 Iraqi troops to be used as
cover by the Americans have deserted this week.
	Three British soldiers were killed Thursday by a suicide bomber in
the deadliest attack on British forces in over a year. The dead troops
were members of the Black Watch, a group of British soldiers who had been
moved at the request of the US from the relatively safe Basra to Baghdad,
in order to free up more US troops to take part in the forthcoming battle
for Fallujah.
	In other Iraq news, the humanitarian group Doctors Without
Borders, announced Thursday it was pulling its staff out of Iraq due to
the worsening security situation. [DN] Seymour Hersh in an interview
asserts that the military is afraid to tell the Bush administration how
bad the situation is.
	For the first time U.S. soldiers have admitted that they witnessed
Iraqi looters taking deadly explosives from the Al Qaqaa ammunition site
18 months ago.
	The LAT details an incident in which GIs mistakenly shot some
innocent teenagers, and then killed one of the wounded boys, as one
soldier said, "to put him out of his misery." The GIs are being tried for
murder; a total of seven Iraqis were killed in the attack.
	The Pentagon has increased the number of troops to the highest
levels since major combat operations ended. Home leave for tens of
thousands of troops have been delayed and 3,500 new soldiers have arrived
-- bringing the total to 142,000.

[2] Democratic Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada will replace the ousted Tom
Daschle as minority leader of the Senate.  Reid voted for Bush's tax cuts
and the Iraq War, and against several environmental measures. The new
Democratic whip (2nd in command) will be Richard Durbin of Illinois, a
more liberal lawmaker who Reid favors for his "ability to communicate"
Reid don't talk real good.

[3] The LAT offers a look at the flawed military tribunals in Guantanamo
Bay, where three months ago prisoners were first given the right to a
hearing (by then, some of the 550 enemy combatants there had been
imprisoned for nearly three years). The picture painted is outrageous: of
the 104 verdicts handed down by the tribunal, only one resulted in a
prisoner's release. Prisoners are in almost every case accused of having
close ties to al-Qaida, but the charges are so old, and exculpatory
evidence so hard for the accused to access, that prisoners have no real
chance to build a successful defense. In addition, the panels appear to
give "little or no credence" to detainees' claims of abuse. [SLATE]

[4] The Justice Department has announced that more than 700 people were
arrested on immigration violations in recent months as part of a
pre-election crackdown. The Justice Department has defended the crackdown
claiming it was needed to avert a terrorist attack from disrupting the
election. None of the 700 arrested were tied to any terror plot. [DN]

[5] The dollar fell to a record low against the euro on Friday, with
analysts forecasting more declines to come. Bush's policy in the Middle
East may force oil prices higher. Analysts believe the US will try to keep
the dollar weak to boost exports, because of America's giant trade
deficit.

[6] We have a new president as of Wednesday -- Hamid Karzai is officially
declared president of Afghanistan after a UN panel says voting
irregularities did not affect the outcome. [BBC 11/3] Foreign observers
were not so complimentary about the US election, but the brain-dead BBC
said, "John Kerry didn't seem to have enough votes"!  They did point out
that Kerry was "a weak candidate."  Ballot initiatives to raise state
minimum wages won in Florida and Nevada by large margins -- but the states
went for Bush.  On the day of the US election, guerrillas blew up the
north's main oil pipeline, dealing what the NYT calls "a severe blow to
the national economy." [SLATE]
	Britain's most famous scientist, Stephen Hawking, condemned the
U.S. led invasion of Iraq as a "war crime" and said Tuesday it was based
on lies. The physicist spoke at an anti-war demonstration in London's
Trafalgar Square timed to coincide with the U.S. election. "The war was
based on two lies," said Hawking. "The first was we were in danger of
weapons of mass destruction and the second was that Iraq was somehow to
blame for Sept. 11."
	Also on election day, Hungary announced it would pull its 300
troops out of Iraq by April.
	US President Bush, elected to a second term, announces that his
focus will be on domestic policy (e.g., social security and the tax code)
-- that is, on transferring wealth from the poor to the rich -- rather
than on foreign policy, where there was little difference between the
Republicans and the Democrats.  This is a clear pay-back: the higher their
incomes, the more likely voters were to vote for Bush.  Rightists are
worried and are trying to call in their markers: neocon whackjob Frank
Gaffney demands further military adventures and conservative fruitcake
Richard Vigurie pleads for the Bush administration actually to do
something about the much-advertised values.

[7] Iran says it has reached a preliminary agreement with Britain, France
and Germany to address concerns about its nuclear programme.  UK Foreign
Secretary Jack Straw says it is "inconceivable" that the US would try to
bomb Iran. [BBC]

[8] A message claiming to come from a group led by the Islamic militant
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has called for the release of charity worker Margaret
Hassan. Her kidnappers had been threatening to hand her to Jordanian-born
Zarqawi's group unless British troops quit Iraq. The message promises to
free Mrs Hassan if she falls into their hands.

[9] PA president Arafat is dying in a French hospital, amid unlikely
rumors that he was poisoned by the Israeli secret police. He's visited by
the French PM.  Haaretz is reporting that a total of 165 Palestinians were
killed in the West Bank and Gaza in October making it the deadliest month
for Palestinians since April 2002. [DN]

[10] And the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi is suing the US
government in an attempt to overturn a law that is barring the Iranian
attorney from publishing her memoirs here. This according to a report in
the Wall Street Journal. Under a trade embargo, the U.S government bars
the publication of new works by authors from Iran, Cuba and Sudan. [DN]

[11] The Bush Administration reversed itself and declared that non-Iraqis
captured fighting in Iraq are not protected by the Geneva Conventions;
such prisoners, it was reported, have already been transferred out of Iraq
in recent months and could be taken to Egypt or Saudi Arabia where torture
is more common than it is in the United States.

[12] In Uruguay, voters have elected a left-wing president for the first
time in the country's 170 year history. Tabare Vazquez, a doctor, won in
the first round of voting with just over 50 percent of the vote. Vazquez
heads the Broad Front Progressive Encounter, a coalition of former
leftwing guerrillas, socialists, communists and social democrats. Vazquez'
victory in Uruguay follows similar moves to the left in Brazil, Argentina,
Chile, Venezuela, Paraguay and Ecuador.

[13] In the West Bank city of Nablus, Israeli troops have destroyed the
home of the teenage Palestinian suicide bomber a day after he carried out
an attack that killed three Israelis in Tel Aviv. And undercover Israeli
forces killed three Palestinian members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades.

[14] Four British citizens who were held without charges in Guantánamo
Bay, Cuba, filed suit against Donald Rumsfeld and other senior
administration officials, and claimed that they were tortured while in
custody. The Pentagon responded that the men were "enemy combatants" and
thus had no right to sue.

[15] A newly released document revealed that F.B.I. agents witnessed Iraqi
prisoners being abused at Abu Ghraib but failed to report it because they
saw nothing unusual about the abuse. One agent said that what he saw at
Abu Ghraib was similar to what goes on in prisons in the United States.

[16]The AP reports that in South Carolina a letter purporting to be from
the NAACP claimed that voters will be arrested at the polls if they have
outstanding parking tickets or child support payments and said that voters
must provide a credit report, two forms of photo ID, a Social Security
card, a voter registration card, and a handwriting sample.

  ==============================================================
  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.newsfromneptune.com> <www.carlforcongress.org>
  ==============================================================