[Peace-discuss] News notes for the AWARE meeting 2007-06-27

[C. G. Estabrook]

[1] THE WASHINGTON POST has often been close to the CIA since the 
formation of the "national security state" in the years after World War 
II.  In a 1988 speech to senior CIA employees, publisher Katherine 
Graham (succeeded as publisher by her son, Donnie) said, "There are some 
things the general public does not need to know and shouldn't. I believe 
democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to 
keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it 
knows."
	In the present administration the CIA has shown some opposition to more 
extreme neocon policies and consequently has been blamed by the 
Rumsfeld-Cheney war party for the "mistakes" of recent years ("faulty 
intelligence").  Perhaps in retaliation, the Post begins today a four 
part series on VP Cheney.  Excerpts:
	Cheney declines to disclose the names or even the size of his staff, 
generally releases no public calendar and ordered the Secret Service to 
destroy his visitor logs. His general counsel has asserted that "the 
vice presidency is a unique office that is neither a part of the 
executive branch nor a part of the legislative branch," and is therefore 
exempt from rules governing either. Cheney is refusing to observe an 
executive order on the handling of national security secrets, and he 
proposed to abolish a federal office that insisted on auditing his 
compliance ... More than any one man in the months [after 9-11], Cheney 
freed Bush to fight the "war on terror" as he saw fit, animated by their 
shared belief that al-Qaeda's destruction would require what the vice 
president called "robust interrogation" to extract intelligence from 
captured suspects. With a small coterie of allies, Cheney supplied the 
rationale and political muscle to drive far-reaching legal changes 
through the White House, the Justice Department and the Pentagon ... By 
late last year, the Supreme Court had dealt three consecutive rebuffs to 
his claim of nearly unchecked authority for the commander in chief [but] 
most of his operational agenda, in practice if not in principle, remains 
in place.

[2] THE CIA has attempted to assassinate foreign leaders, spied 
domestically, kidnapped people, subjected unwitting Americans to tests 
involving drugs and infiltrated leftist opposition groups, according to 
documents the CIA will soon declassify on abuses from the 1950s to the 
1970s. The announcement has evoked more recent criticism of the 
intelligence community, which has recently been accused of illegal 
wiretapping, infiltration of antiwar groups, and kidnapping and 
torturing of terrorism suspects. [Could the publication of this material 
at this time be another round of internal fighting between the CIA and 
the administration's war party?]

[3] THE NYT reports today that "starting around April [of 2008] the 
military will simply run out of troops to maintain the current effort. 
By then, officials said, Mr. Bush would either have to withdraw roughly 
one brigade a month, or extend the tours of troops now in Iraq and 
shorten their time back home before redeployment."

[4] THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES voted to revive the 10-member Iraq 
Study Group. A bipartisan group of legislators is seeking an alternative 
source of funding so the group can report in the fall about a month 
before assessments are due from the military and the ambassador to Iraq.

[5] IN IRAQ, after two days of an assault on insurgents in Baquba, 
American troops are trying to reintroduce the Iraqi military, which is 
seen as a Shiite sectarian force by Sunni residents.  14 American 
soldiers have been killed in combat over the last two days, most in 
Baghdad. Many more Iraqis were also killed ... the outgoing chairman of 
the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the defense secretary said yesterday that 
the recent rise in U.S. troop deaths is the “wrong metric” to use in 
assessing the effectiveness of the new security strategy for Baghdad.

[6] REGARDING IRAN, the administration's disarray and the infighting 
between those who want to widen the war and the uniformed military 
presently conducting it were on display this week.  A State Department 
official publicly accused Iran for the first time of arming the Taliban 
forces, but the U.S. commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan rejected 
that charge for the second time in less than two weeks.

[7] IRAN AND SAUDI ARABIA are both currently cracking downs on public 
morals.  The situation in the former was frequently described in the US 
media this week, that in the latter, rarely.  The US war party wants to 
attack Iran and Saudi Arabai is a principal ally, as shown by the recent 
amazing scandal involving the Saudi ambassador to the US (and Bush 
family friend), Prince Bandar.  British arms manufacturer BAE has given 
Bandar more than $2 billion in bribes, but the matter has been covered 
up by outgoing UK PM Blair (as a favor to Bush's friend?)

[8] THE PALESTINIAN PARTY FATAH [the US-Israeli stalking horse] has 
rejected an offer from Hamas to hold talks on re-forming the 
[legally-elected] government.  To support Fatah and Palestinian 
president Mahmoud Abbas, the Egyptian government has organized a summit 
meeting for Monday between Abbas and the leaders of Jordan, Egypt and 
Israel, in what is apparently a further effort by U.S. allies to isolate 
Hamas.
	The fight in Gaza was a showdown between the paid militia of a highly 
unpopular Fatah commander and the forces of Hamas, a popular movement 
that had defeated Fatah in an open election.  Even in the West Bank, 
there were deep disagreements over President Abbas'  decision to arm a 
separate Fatah-led militia and to support its face-off with Hamas. 
Hamas' military victory in Gaza was  not an Islamic revolution but an 
attempt by a a political party to defend itself against the militia of 
an unelected warlord backed by Israel and the US.

[9] A HIGH SCHOOL DRAMA CLASS in Connecticut was barred from presenting 
a play depicting the words of veterans and soldiers in the war in Iraq. 
Outraged by the censorship, theater directors invited the group to 
perform off-Broadway in New York. Despite continuing pressure from the 
school administration, the class performed the play to a standing ovation.

[10] COLOMBIAN PARAMILITARY GROUPS who murdered three local union 
leaders had close links to the Drummond Coal Co. according to witnesses 
in a US lawsuit.
	Meanwhile, there is a report from Venezuela of "a US-Colombian plot to 
infiltrate Colombian paramilitaries, including snipers, into Venezuela 
... to create a national emergency: government members and leaders of 
the opposition would be assassinated and each side would blame the 
other."  Such death squads were first used extensively by the Kennedy 
administration in Latin America, then of course in SE Asia (the Phoenix 
program) and elsewhere.  I think this time-honored US technique has been 
used extensively in Iraq, and has fueled the communal killings there.
	 The House of Representatives approved almost $46 million for so-called 
democracy programs in Cuba for 2008 this week, a five-fold jump from the 
2007 funding level

[11] THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES approved an amendment that would allot 
$10 million tot he Voice of America for its Venezuela operations. The 
sponsor of the amendment asserted that “freedom of the press [has] died 
in Venezuela.”
	Noam Chomsky comments, "I think it was both wrong in principle, and a 
mistake in practice, [for the Venezuelan government] to shut down RCTV. 
And I agree with Western critics who say 'it could never happen in our 
free and democratic societies.' There's a good reason for that. Suppose 
that a military coup backed by, say, China, overthrew the government of 
the US, eliminated the presidency, dispersed Congress, threw out the 
Supreme Court, and dismantled every other democratic institution. 
Suppose that CBS helped prepare the ground for the coup and 
enthusiastically supported it all the way through. Suppose the coup was 
overturned by a popular uprising. It's correct that CBS's license would 
not have been revoked five years later (technically, fail to be 
renewed). The reason is the owners and managers would have been lined up 
before firing squads right away ... for those who really do believe in 
freedom, the state repression is both wrong in principle and a tactical 
mistake, in my opinion."

[12] IN THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE this week, Seymour Hersh, relying 
largely on interviews with Abu Ghraib scandal investigator Major General 
Antonio Taguba, reconstructs the cover-up of what Taguba clearly 
believes was responsibility for the abuses up the chain of command for 
the administration's torture policy.  Which brings us back to Cheney, 
where we started.