[Peace-discuss] News notes 041114

[Carl Estabrook]

[I posted these earlier, but they did not show up on this list.  --CGE]

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	Notes from last week's "global war on terrorism" [GWOT],
	for the AWARE meeting, Sunday, November 14, 2004.
	(Sources provided on request; a paragraph followed by a
	bracketed source is substantially verbatim.)
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	"We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the
obvious is the first duty of intelligent [people]...
	"Political language ... is designed to make lies sound truthful
and murder respectable...
	"The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities
committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even
hearing about them." --George Orwell

Patrick Cockburn of the Independent (UK) captures the present situation:
"The French failed to hold Algeria against a nationalist revolt despite
fielding an army of half a million. With similar numbers the United States
failed in Vietnam. With a much smaller army in Iraq, it will fail again.
As in Algeria and Vietnam, the war in Iraq will cease only when an end to
the occupation is in sight."  But the end is not in sight, because Iraq is
far more important to the US than Vietnam ever was (or Algeria was to the
France).  As a result of Bush's wars, the US has permanent military bases
in the world's second largest oil producer -- and we're not about to give
them up (nor would we, had Kerry been elected).  So the war will continue,
unless we do something about it.

[1. IRAQ EXPLODES] This week alone, 61 US soldiers were killed in Iraq --
at least 40 in Fallujah -- and many hundreds seriously wounded. Perhaps
1200 "insurgents" are dead. The US military and the administration are
understandably chary about revealing these numbers.  In "Iraq: the
unthinkable becomes normal" [NS] John Pilger points out that mainstream
media speak as if Fallujah were populated only by foreign "insurgents": a
BBC reporter says, "I want them to know about conditions inside this city
-- there are dead women and children lying on the streets."  Democracy Now
reports that the resistance claims that the US is using chemical weapons.
	"The bombs being dropped on Fallujah don't contain explosives,
depleted uranium or anything harmful -- they contain laughing gas -- that
would, of course, explain [Pentagon chief Donald] Rumsfeld's misplaced
optimism about not killing civilians in Fallujah. Also, being a 'civilian'
is a relative thing in a country occupied by Americans. You're only a
civilian if you're on their side." [Asia Times]
	A growing insurgency is likely to spread to previously peaceful
cities. Over twenty of the deaths occurred in Baghdad, Mosul, Abu Ghraib,
and Babli province (just south of Baghdad). Although the military concedes
that "winning" in Fallujah won't quell the insurgency, they continue to
pursue policies that suppose there exists a static number of Iraqis
willing to fight the occupation: if they could only kill them all,
democracy and calm would flourish. [anti-war.com]
	In Fallujah, the Washington Post reports that the remaining
insurgents look more like an organized army, wearing blue camouflage
uniforms, mounting coordinated attacks, and moving through reinforced
bunkers and tunnels.  There is no sign in Fallujah of Abu Musab Zarqawi,
and the WP's lead says that the American cordon around the city is more
porous than advertised, with Iraqi reporters able to slip in from the
south as insurgents filtered out on land and along the Euphrates.
Meanwhile, as American Humvees broadcast messages yesterday guaranteeing
that insurgents who surrender will not be harmed, a mosque blared a
caustic reply: "We ask the American soldiers to surrender and we guarantee
that we will kill and torture them." [SLATE]
	"We've got chunks of territory," a lieutenant told the Los Angeles
Times. "But these guys are all over the place. They just keep coming at
us."  At least three helicopter gunships were brought down by enemy fire.
Insurgents launched major attacks elsewhere, especially in the northern
city of Mosul, where they overran about a half-dozen police stations and
other government buildings. The NYT says "carloads of guerrillas roamed
the streets freely." The LAT calls the once-quiet city "now mostly
controlled by insurgents." The U.S. is apparently launching a
counter-offensive, and a third of the forces that had been cordoning off
Fallujah are now on their way to Mosul. [SLATE]
	The NYT describes "the paradoxical necessity of assaulting a Sunni
stronghold to win over its residents" with a headline reminiscent of the
US in Vietnam, "destroying a village in order to save it": "BREAKING A
CITY IN ORDER TO FIX IT."
	On Saturday the NY Times published a piece by Michael Janofsky
with the title "Rights Lawyers See Possibility of a War Crime."  US troops
seized residents fleeing Fallujah and turned back all the men -- forcing
them to return to the city the US is attacking with a force unimaginable
to the drafters of the Geneva Conventions when they required that
civilians fleeing a war zone must be protected by the military, and must
NOT be forced back into the war zone. Of course this is but one of the war
crimes involved in using such indiscriminate force against civilian
populations in an occupied country. What is of note is that the NY Times
decided to run the story at all, in the face of the deafening silence on
the torture/war crimes issue from the Democrats.
	U.S.-led troops have stormed a Sunni Muslim mosque in Baghdad and
arrested its radical preacher who has urged Iraqi forces not to fight
alongside Americans attacking Fallujah.  American troops raided the homes
and offices of two prominent Sunni Muslim clerics Thursday after both men
made fiery public speeches condemning the U.S.-led offensive in Fallujah
and voicing their support for insurgents. [REUTERS] Iraq's media regulator
has warned news organisations to stick to the government line on the
US-led attack in Fallujah or face legal action. [ALJAZEERA]
	Dutch news agency ANP cited Defense Minister Henk Kamp on Friday
as saying that the country's 1,350-contingent will leave the US-led
multinational contingent.  The father of two Black Watch soldiers
re-deployed in Iraq to free Americans to assault Fallujah, threatened to
kill the British defence secretary, Geoff Hoon, because he was a
"two-faced lying git".
	Lateline on Australian ABC television carried a report from
Fallujah (needles to say, not shown in the US). The story showed a marine
saying, "I've just injured one, he's between the two buildings". At that
moment another marine walks over to the gap between the two houses, he
then climbs on a forty four gallon drum aims his gun at the injured Iraqi
and fires one shot. The marine then climbs back down saying, "He's done".
Another proud moment in US military history. US marines execute an Iraqi
to the cheers of fellow marines.

[2. ELECTION POLLS] Pew Research Center says that when voters in this poll
were given a list of items to pick from, "moral values" was the most
popular choice at 27 percent, followed by Iraq at 22 percent and the
economy at 21 percent. But when they were simply asked to name their top
issue without the assistance of a list to influence their choices, Iraq
was picked by 27 percent, the economy by 14 percent and moral values tied
with terrorism at only 9 percent.

[3. ARAFAT DIES] BBC World interviewed the Israeli ambassador to Britain.
No counterbalance to his absurd statements about how Israel had been
continually trying to negotiate with the Palestinians, and how they were
withdrawing from Gaza and "some settlements" in the West Bank. The fact
that they haven't even managed to remove unoccupied outposts successfully
seems to have escaped his attention.  Not to leave the field to the
Israeli ambassador alone, a BBC correspondent then appeared and referred
to Arafat as a man who had "killed thousands of Israelis."

[4. ASHCROFT RESIGNS] The president is putting his own counsel, Alberto
Gonzales, who wrote the famous memo defending torture, in charge of our
civil liberties. Torture Guy, who blithely threw off 75 years of
international law and set the stage for the grotesque abuses at Abu Ghraib
and dubious detentions at Guantánamo, seems to have a good grasp of
what's just. No doubt we'll soon learn what other protections, besides the
Geneva Conventions and the Constitution, Mr. Gonzales finds "quaint'' and
"obsolete.'' [M. Dowd]
	Last year, in his capacity of White House legal counsel, Alberto
Gonzales authored memos which basically argued that we should declare that
the Geneva Conventions do not apply to our actions because this
"substantially reduced the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under
the War Crimes Act (18 U.S.C. 2441)." -- because violating the Geneva
Conventions is illegal under that act.
	* As White House Counsel, Mr. Gonzales advised the President that
the United States need not be bound by its obligations under the Geneva
Conventions in the conflict in Afghanistan -- a position vigorously
disputed by Secretary of State Colin Powell and others.
	*Mr. Gonzales was also a proponent of the Administration's policy
of detaining "enemy combatants" in the United States without access to
counsel or an opportunity to challenge the allegations against them in
court.  In defense of this approach, he said that after September 11, the
President is constrained not so much by the rule of law but by "prudence
and policy."
	*Mr. Gonzales also was centrally involved in the preparation of a
series of highly controversial legal memos justifying the use of torture
during interrogations of al-Qaeda suspects. The legal arguments set forth
in these memos helped lay the groundwork for the widespread incidents of
torture and abuse from Iraq to Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay.
	But wait, it gets better. Gonzales had opined in 1997 that the
State of Texas was not bound by international treaties signed by the
United States -- when Texas executed a Mexican-national who was
interrogated and tried without letting him contact his embassy and made to
sign a confession in English, which he thought was an immigration document
-- clearly a violation of international treaties in this matter.

[5. COURTS OBSTRUCT] The Los Angeles Times reports the Bush
administration's indefinite suspension of the military trials in
Guantanamo Bay, which were ruled unlawful this week by a U.S. District
Court. From the article: "Administration officials are said to be
considering moving all 550 detainees -- to a military prison on American
soil." [SLATE]
	Federal judges are jeopardizing national security by issuing
rulings contradictory to President Bush's decisions on America's
obligations under international treaties and agreements, Attorney General
John Ashcroft said Friday. In his first remarks since his resignation was
announced Tuesday, Ashcroft forcefully denounced what he called "a
profoundly disturbing trend" among some judges to interfere in the
president's constitutional authority to make decisions during war. "The
danger I see here is that intrusive judicial oversight and second-guessing
of presidential determinations in these critical areas can put at risk the
very security of our nation in a time of war," Ashcroft said in a speech
to the Federalist Society, a conservative lawyers' group. [AP]
	The Justice Department announced this week it would seek to
overturn a ruling by U.S. District Judge James Robertson in the case of
Salim Ahmed Hamdan, who the government contends was Osama bin Laden's
driver. Robertson halted Hamdan's trial by military commission in
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, rejecting the Bush administration's position that
the Geneva Conventions governing prisoners of war do not apply to al-Qaida
members because they are not soldiers of a true state and do not fight by
international norms. [AP]

[6. PROFITEERS WIN] Blackwater USA, one of the government's top private
contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, leads its "Blackwater Tactical
Weekly" e-mail newsletter this week with an all-caps, all-bold exultation:
"Bush Wins, Four More Years!! Hooyah!!"
	North Carolina-based Blackwater is a major player in the
burgeoning private military contracting industry. It won a $21 million
contract with the Pentagon in the earlier stages of the war in Iraq to
provide security to Coalition Provisional Authority head Paul Bremer and
other high-level officials. Peter Singer of the Brookings Institution, who
has studied extensively Blackwater and similar companies, said that it has
"multiple" other contracts for other work, and that it has grown 600
percent in the past 18 months.

[7. CIA WARNINGS] Mike Scheuer, a 22-year veteran who works in the CIA's
Counterterrorist Center and is a former head of its Osama bin Laden unit,
is criticizing the Bush administration for going to war in Iraq and for
the way it has conducted the war on terror in general. And he's doing it
very publicly. [CSMonitor]
	Osama bin Laden now has religious approval to use a nuclear device
against Americans, says the former head of the CIA unit charged with
tracking down the Saudi terrorist. The former agent, Michael Scheuer,
speaks to Steve Kroft in his first television interview without disguise
to be broadcast on 60 MINUTES Sunday, Nov. 1 on CBS.
	Scheuer was until recently known as the "anonymous" author of two
books critical of the West's response to bin Laden and al Qaeda, the most
recent of which is titled Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War
on Terror.
	Even if bin Laden had a nuclear weapon, he probably wouldn't have
used it for a lack of proper religious authority -- authority he has now.
"[Bin Laden] secured from a Saudi sheik ... a rather long treatise on the
possibility of using nuclear weapons against the Americans," says Scheuer.
"[The treatise] found that he was perfectly within his rights to use them.
Muslims argue that the United States is responsible for millions of dead
Muslims around the world, so reciprocity would mean you could kill
millions of Americans," Scheuer tells Kroft.

[8. FALLING DOLLAR] The fate of the US economy is now in the hands of the
central bank of the People's Republic of China, who could pull the plug
any time by selling their massive reserves of US dollars. [GUARDIAN]

[9. ISRAELI NUKES] Israel has rearrested Mordechai Vanunu, who revealed
the Israeli nuclear program and was jailed for 18 years by Israel, much of
it in solitary confinement.

[10. HANDLING PROTEST] Military tanks appear at an anti-war protest in Los
Angeles.  Earlier this week, the Washington Post reported that as many as
4,000 combat troops may be deployed to the streets of Washington during
the inauguration of President Bush in January.

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  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>
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