[Peace] News notes for Aug. 4

[C. G. Estabrook]

	NOTES ON THIS WEEK'S "WAR ON TERRORISM"
	FOR THE A.W.A.R.E. MEETING, 20020804

SUMMARY.  A week of continued saber-rattling by the US -- threats to
attack Iraq -- to cover over the facts that (a) It has been another
turbulent week for the world's stock markets, with concerns over the
health of the US economy fueling the chaos, and (b) if the law were
enforced, Bush and Cheney would be in jail.  The Democrats (notably Gore
and Lieberman) attack Bush from the Right for not being decisive enough on
the war.  (Clinton used to attack his father from the Right on Israel and
Cuba.)  "Liberal" Senator Biden, chairing the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, schedules only pro-war speakers.  (Anti-war figures like Scott
Ritter volunteer, but are turned away.)

A bomb attack killed ten people on a rush hour bus in northern Israel,
followed shortly after by a shoot-out in Jerusalem in which three died.
The US and Israel, actively abetted by the US media, want you to
concentrate on how retail Palestinian terrorism can be stopped, rather
than on how the wholesale US/Israel terrorism of occupation can be
stopped, so you probably didn't hear the polls that show a strong majority
of Israelis would be willing to withdraw the settlements in the occupied
territories, and -- perhaps more surprisingly -- a strong majority of the
settlers would be willing to go.

[N.B. These notes are for private use only; most of them come from
copyrighted sources, under the doctrine of "fair use."  --CGE]

SUNDAY, AUGUST 04, 2002

WHY WON'T THOSE ALIENS PAY FOR OUR ECONOMY?  "Direct foreign investment"
in the US is declining.  The amount of money foreigners sank into
acquiring or starting a new company in the US began to fall last year and
is falling even further thus far in 2002.  Foreign investment, which
peaked at $301 billion in 2000 and fell to $124 billion in 2001, continues
to drop. [NYT]

IT EVEN AFFECTS [SOME OF] US. Donations to colleges are expected to drop
this year for the first time since 1974, and endowments are shrinking as
the stock market tanks.  [LAT]

NOW THEY TELL US. Legal battles in the wake of the 9/11-related detentions
are redefining "the delicate balance between individual liberties and
national security": [1] people being held for immigration violations are
being tried in secret; [2] "material witnesses" are being held
indefinitely without charge or trial; [3] those whom the administration
wants to classify as "enemy combatants" -- US citizens or not -- are being
denied any constitutional rights. [NYT]

SATURDAY, AUGUST 03, 2002

BUT IT'S NOT MUCH OF A ROADBLOCK FOR ASHCROFT. A federal judge requiring
the Bush administration to release the names of hundreds of people
detained after Sept 11. The judge rejected the Justice Department's claim
that disclosure of this sort would impede terrorism investigations. Judge
Gladys Kessler, a Clinton appointee, says "the first priority of the
judicial branch must be to ensure that our government always operates
within the statutory and constitutional constraints which distinguish a
democracy from a dictatorship." She has problems with, among other things,
the government's slippery numbers, e.g., she has "no idea whether there
are 40, 400 or possibly more people in detention on material witness
warrants," the WP reports. Roughly 1,200 people are known to have been
rounded up since Sept 11, most (751) on immigration violations. Only 74 of
those remain in custody, none of whom have been charged with terrorism,
according to the Post. [NYT]

WE GOTTA HAVE A WAR. Don Rumsfeld is trying to put the spring back in the
step of the war against terror, the Post reports in its lead. (The paper
actually uses the words "reinvigorate" and "jump-start.") He met with the
head of Special Operations and went over some new tactics, such as having
Navy SEALS board and search vessels on the high seas around the world
without permission. Rumsfeld believes "the war is being prosecuted with
insufficient drive and imagination." (The WP's words.) The NYT fronts a
different Rumsfeld story, this one about his proposed undersecretary of
defense for intelligence. The Times predicts an intelligence turf war if
the new position gets Congressional approval. Richard Haver, Rumsfeld's
special adviser on intelligence policy, is supposedly the top candidate.
[SLATE]

AND HERE'S ONE REASON. The unemployment rate hits 5.9 percent for July, an
eight-year high. Only 6,000 jobs were added to the economy in July.
"Employment needs to expand by about 150,000 a month just to keep pace
with the entrance of new workers, economists estimate. Anything slower,
and either the jobless rate goes up, or employees who have lost jobs give
up looking for new ones and drop out of the labor force." [LAT]

PEOPLE BEGIN TO NOTICE THE COMPETING LEAKS IN THE NYT. "Both the headlines
('U.S. Plan for Iraq Is Said To Include Attack on 3 Sides,' 'U.S.
Exploring Baghdad Strike as Iraq Option') and the sensational opening
paragraphs are designed to make you feel as if you're ringside with the
president in the war room--but you're not. By placing the stories on Page
One, the paper commits the unpardonable sin of commanding reader attention
that's not really warranted. By the Times' own admission in paragraph 15
of yesterday's story, neither of the invasion scenarios so lovingly hyped
is likely to unfold." [SLATE]

FRIDAY, AUGUST 02, 2002

ISRAELIS SUCCESSFULLY FOIL THE POSSIBILITY THAT PEACE MIGHT BREAK OUT.
Over 100 Israeli military vehicles moved into Nablus today in search of
Palestinian militants. The move was said to be in response to Wednesday's
Hamas attack on a Hebrew University cafeteria. Israeli officials said that
Nablus is an operational center for Hamas. Early unconfirmed reports say
that three Palestinians have been killed, one a member of Hamas. [NYT]

BAD APPLES, BUT *THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH THE TREE*. The Los Angeles
Times and USA Today lead with the very public arrests of WorldCom's former
chief financial officer and former controller by federal authorities. The
LAT, NYT and Washington Post front photos of the two men in handcuffs
being led off to face charges of securities fraud, conspiracy, and lying
to the SEC. The papers report that other WorldCom executives may be
arrested for their roles in hiding about $4 billion in expenses. Most
everyone notes the feds were unusually speedy in getting the two WorldCom
executives charged, possibly because the administration wants to
demonstrate it's getting tough on corporate crime. An NYT news analysis
begins: "Two former senior executives at WorldCom became the newest
symbols today in the Bush administration's broadening effort to use
prosecutions to fend off political problems." [SLATE]

NOT 'BIG' BUT 'CO-EQUAL BROTHER.' Many Senate and House intelligence
committee members have refused to take FBI polygraph tests intended to
find out just what they know about the leak of the NSA's Sept. 10
intercepts which warned of the next day's terrorist attacks. The lawmakers
don't want to take the test because they think it is a violation of the
constitutional separation of powers to have one federal branch
polygraphing another and because they think the test is unreliable. [WP]

WE KNOW WHOM THEY'RE WORKING FOR. The Senate voted 64-34 to give President
Bush "trade promotion authority" ["fast-track"] after a Senate-House
conference agreed to give subsidized health insurance and job-training to
workers displaced by foreign competition. That's closer than it seems,
because with less than 60 votes for, a filibuster would be possible.  Now
Bush needs just to sign the bill, then he is free to negotiate trade deals
-- first, most likely, with Chile and Singapore -- that Congress can veto
but not amend.  It's a singularly pusillanimous stance by Congress -- and
unconstitutional, one could argue.  [WSJ]

AND BILL FIRED THOSE MISSILES TO COVER UP MONICA. The WSJ fronts more
goodies from the computer it bought on the streets of Kabul several months
back. The computer files describe a very strained early relationship
between al-Qaida and the Taliban, contrary to U.S. perceptions at the
time. Terrorists made fun of their primitive adopted home, and the Taliban
came close to kicking out bin Laden. Then the two sides gradually made up
after the U.S. fired cruise missiles at Afghanistan in 1998 and later
celebrated their reconciliation by blowing up the country's ancient Buddha
statues. [SLATE]

SEE, THE GUY'S ON OUR SIDE, AND HE MIGHT TALK ABOUT WHAT HE DID IN S.
AFRICA... The papers say that the FBI searched possible anthrax mailer
Steven Hatfill's Maryland apartment for a second time but wouldn't say
what they were looking for. Hatfill is not officially a suspect. [SLATE]

MEANWHILE, LET'S TRANSFER SOME MONEY FORM THE POOR TO THE RICH AT HOME.
Robert Scheer calls a credit card industry-backed bankruptcy bill,
legislators' "latest offering at the temple of the money changers." A
bankruptcy specialist tells TomPaine.com that the proposed bill "has a
thousand paper cuts that are going to bleed debtors just a little here,
and just a little there, until they can't get any relief." The bill will
be taken up in September and is almost certain to be sent to President
Bush, whose top campaign contributor was MBNA, a major purveyor of credit
cards. MBNA was accused of granting a sweetheart loan to Rep. Jim Moran,
who raised his profile in the bankruptcy debate four days after his loan
was final. [CURSOR]

ANOTHER 'BAD APPLE.' The New York Daily News reports that Harken Energy
set up an offshore subsidiary in the Cayman Islands while President Bush
sat on the company's board of directors. It was formed as part of an oil
drilling venture with the government of Bahrain. White House spokesman Ari
Fleischer said the subsidiary wasn't designed to avoid paying U.S. taxes
and Bush told reporters he "opposed" the Bahrain venture while serving on
Harken's board, but offered no explanation why he did so. [CURSOR]

AND ANOTHER. Citizen Works has released a report contending that the
number of Halliburton's offshore subsidiaries went from nine to 44 during
VP Cheney's tenure. A Halliburton spokeswoman said the purpose was not to
save money on taxes. The New York Times examines how diligently
Halliburton under Cheney investigated the 66,000 asbestos liability claims
that it took on when it acquired Dresser Industries in 1998, and whether
Halliburton adequately informed shareholders of the risks. The vice
president has slipped back into the shadows, as the White House attempts
to deflate what some aides are referring to as the "Cheney problem."
[CURSOR]

ACTUALLY, THERE'RE A WHOLE LOT OF THEM. The "Barons of Bankruptcy," a
special report by the Financial Times, investigates the $3.3 billion
fortune made by executives and directors from the 25 largest U.S. public
companies to go bankrupt since January 2001. [FT]

BUT DON'T LOOK AT THEM, LOOK AT THE TERRORISTS! The Fox broadcasting
network and Fox News Channel are going commercial free on September 11 and
airlines are cutting back on their 9/11 flights. [FOX]

	* * *

	Published on Friday, August 2, 2002 by CommonDreams.org
	The Saddam in Rumsfeld's Closet by Jeremy Scahill

	"Man and the turtle are very much alike. Neither makes any
	progress without sticking his neck out." -Donald Rumsfeld

Five years before Saddam Hussein's now infamous 1988 gassing of the Kurds,
a key meeting took place in Baghdad that would play a significant role in
forging close ties between Saddam Hussein and Washington. It happened at a
time when Saddam was first alleged to have used chemical weapons. The
meeting in late December 1983 paved the way for an official restoration of
relations between Iraq and the US, which had been severed since the 1967
Arab-Israeli war.

With the Iran-Iraq war escalating, President Ronald Reagan dispatched his
Middle East envoy, a former secretary of defense, to Baghdad with a
hand-written letter to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and a message that
Washington was willing at any moment to resume diplomatic relations.

That envoy was Donald Rumsfeld.

Rumsfeld's December 19-20, 1983 visit to Baghdad made him the
highest-ranking US official to visit Iraq in 6 years. He met Saddam and
the two discussed "topics of mutual interest," according to the Iraqi
Foreign Ministry. "[Saddam] made it clear that Iraq was not interested in
making mischief in the world," Rumsfeld later told The New York Times. "It
struck us as useful to have a relationship, given that we were interested
in solving the Mideast problems."

Just 12 days after the meeting, on January 1, 1984, The Washington Post
reported that the United States "in a shift in policy, has informed
friendly Persian Gulf nations that the defeat of Iraq in the 3-year-old
war with Iran would be 'contrary to U.S. interests' and has made several
moves to prevent that result."

In March of 1984, with the Iran-Iraq war growing more brutal by the day,
Rumsfeld was back in Baghdad for meetings with then-Iraqi Foreign Minister
Tariq Aziz. On the day of his visit, March 24th, UPI reported from the
United Nations: "Mustard gas laced with a nerve agent has been used on
Iranian soldiers in the 43-month Persian Gulf War between Iran and Iraq, a
team of U.N. experts has concluded... Meanwhile, in the Iraqi capital of
Baghdad, U.S. presidential envoy Donald Rumsfeld held talks with Foreign
Minister Tarek Aziz (sic) on the Gulf war before leaving for an
unspecified destination."

The day before, the Iranian news agency alleged that Iraq launched another
chemical weapons assault on the southern battlefront, injuring 600 Iranian
soldiers. "Chemical weapons in the form of aerial bombs have been used in
the areas inspected in Iran by the specialists," the U.N. report said.
"The types of chemical agents used were bis-(2-chlorethyl)-sulfide, also
known as mustard gas, and ethyl N, N-dimethylphosphoroamidocyanidate, a
nerve agent known as Tabun."

Prior to the release of the UN report, the US State Department on March
5th had issued a statement saying "available evidence indicates that Iraq
has used lethal chemical weapons."

Commenting on the UN report, US Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick was quoted
by The New York Times as saying, "We think that the use of chemical
weapons is a very serious matter. We've made that clear in general and
particular."

Compared with the rhetoric emanating from the current administration,
based on speculations about what Saddam might have, Kirkpatrick's reaction
was hardly a call to action.

Most glaring is that Donald Rumsfeld was in Iraq as the 1984 UN report was
issued and said nothing about the allegations of chemical weapons use,
despite State Department "evidence." On the contrary, The New York Times
reported from Baghdad on March 29, 1984, "American diplomats pronounce
themselves satisfied with relations between Iraq and the United States and
suggest that normal diplomatic ties have been restored in all but name."

A month and a half later, in May 1984, Donald Rumsfeld resigned. In
November of that year, full diplomatic relations between Iraq and the US
were fully restored. Two years later, in an article about Rumsfeld's
aspirations to run for the 1988 Republican Presidential nomination, the
Chicago Tribune Magazine listed among Rumsfeld's achievements helping to
"reopen U.S. relations with Iraq." The Tribune failed to mention that this
help came at a time when, according to the US State Department, Iraq was
actively using chemical weapons.

Throughout the period that Rumsfeld was Reagan's Middle East envoy, Iraq
was frantically purchasing hardware from American firms, empowered by the
White House to sell. The buying frenzy began immediately after Iraq was
removed from the list of alleged sponsors of terrorism in 1982. According
to a February 13, 1991 Los Angeles Times article:

"First on Hussein's shopping list was helicopters -- he bought 60 Hughes
helicopters and trainers with little notice. However, a second order of 10
twin-engine Bell "Huey" helicopters, like those used to carry combat
troops in Vietnam, prompted congressional opposition in August, 1983...
Nonetheless, the sale was approved."

In 1984, according to The LA Times, the State Department-in the name of
"increased American penetration of the extremely competitive civilian
aircraft market"-pushed through the sale of 45 Bell 214ST helicopters to
Iraq. The helicopters, worth some $200 million, were originally designed
for military purposes. The New York Times later reported that Saddam
"transferred many, if not all [of these helicopters] to his military."

In 1988, Saddam's forces attacked Kurdish civilians with poisonous gas
from Iraqi helicopters and planes. U.S. intelligence sources told The LA
Times in 1991, they "believe that the American-built helicopters were
among those dropping the deadly bombs."

In response to the gassing, sweeping sanctions were unanimously passed by
the US Senate that would have denied Iraq access to most US technology.
The measure was killed by the White House.

Senior officials later told reporters they did not press for punishment of
Iraq at the time because they wanted to shore up Iraq's ability to pursue
the war with Iran. Extensive research uncovered no public statements by
Donald Rumsfeld publicly expressing even remote concern about Iraq's use
or possession of chemical weapons until the week Iraq invaded Kuwait in
August 1990, when he appeared on an ABC news special.

Eight years later, Donald Rumsfeld signed on to an "open letter" to
President Clinton, calling on him to eliminate "the threat posed by
Saddam." It urged Clinton to "provide the leadership necessary to save
ourselves and the world from the scourge of Saddam and the weapons of mass
destruction that he refuses to relinquish."

In 1984, Donald Rumsfeld was in a position to draw the world's attention
to Saddam's chemical threat. He was in Baghdad as the UN concluded that
chemical weapons had been used against Iran. He was armed with a fresh
communication from the State Department that it had "available evidence"
Iraq was using chemical weapons. But Rumsfeld said nothing.

Washington now speaks of Saddam's threat and the consequences of a failure
to act. Despite the fact that the administration has failed to provide
even a shred of concrete proof that Iraq has links to Al Qaeda or has
resumed production of chemical or biological agents, Rumsfeld insists that
"the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

But there is evidence of the absence of Donald Rumsfeld's voice at the
very moment when Iraq's alleged threat to international security first
emerged. And in this case, the evidence of absence is indeed evidence.

[Jeremy Scahill is an independent journalist. He reports frequently for
Free Speech Radio News and Democracy Now! In May and June 2002, he
reported from Iraq. He can be reached at <jeremybgd at yahoo.com>.]

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