[Peace] News notes 2005-04-03

[C. G. Estabrook]

	==================================================
	Notes from last week's "global war on terrorism,"
	for the AWARE meeting, Sunday, April 3, 2005.
	(Sources provided on request; a paragraph followed
	by a bracketed source is substantially verbatim.)
	==================================================

	"A people living under the perpetual menace of war and invasion is
	very easy to govern. It demands no social reforms. It does not
	haggle over expenditures for armaments and military equipment. It
	pays without discussion, it ruins itself, and that is an excellent
	thing for the syndicates of financiers and manufacturers for whom
	patriotic terrors are an abundant source of gain."
	--Anatole France (1844-1924)

[1. OCCUPATION] In Iraq, forty-four US troops were wounded in an attack by
a group of between 40 and 60 insurgents on Abu Ghraib prison after dark
Saturday; at least 12 detainees were hurt, one seriously. The US military
said at least one insurgent was killed.
	The US holds more than 3,000 Iraqi men and women at Abu Ghraib. An
army reservist who left Iraq a year ago after being stationed at the
prison, has given a interview in which he says he observed mutilation of
the dead, trophy photos of dead Iraqis, mass roundups of innocent
noncombatants, positioning of prisoners in the line of fire -- all
violations of the Geneva conventions. His own buddies -- decent, Christian
men, as he describes them -- shot unarmed prisoners.
	The number of Iraqi prisoners being held by the United States has
more than doubled in the past five months. Over 10,000 people are now in
the US run jails in Iraq.
	The ACLU says that Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the theater commander
at the outset of the Iraq invasion, perjured himself.  A memo from Gen.
Sanchez laid out specific interrogation techniques, modeled on those used
against detainees at Guantanamo Bay, for use by coalition forces in Iraq.
During sworn testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gen.
Sanchez flatly denied approving any such techniques in Iraq.
	US forces in Afghanistan Saturday confirmed the increasing number
and severity of attacks against them in Afghanistan. A series of violent
attacks conducted by suspected Taliban operatives on Afghan and US troops
killed more than ten people, including four US soldiers. [Xinhuanet]

[2. MILITARY] The Pentagon announced Wednesday that the active-duty Army
achieved only about two-thirds of its recruiting goal for March, and the
Army Reserve reached slightly more than halfway to its target.
	A US army tank company commander convicted of shooting dead a
wounded Iraqi walked free from court on Friday -- his only punishment was
dismissal form the army; his defense was that it was a "mercy killing."
Meanwhile a soldier who would like to be dismissed from the army because
of his objections to what he saw done to civilians in Iraq, was sentenced
to seven months in jail for refusing orders.
	And the Army whitewashes the deaths of Iraq prisoners: the
Pentagon is refusing to prosecute any of the 17 US soldiers who
contributed to the deaths of three prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan in
2003 and 2004. The decision is against the recommendations of the Army's
own investigators.

[3. IRAQ] Shiite clergy are warning that they may support mass protests if
the naming of a new Iraqi government keeps getting delayed. The NYT says
several Iraqi politicians are now blaming flaws in the US-imposed
constitution -- the transitional administrative law (TAL) --for the
current impasse.
	Iraq's Association of Muslim Scholars denied Saturday issuing a
religious decree allowing Iraqis to join of the Iraqi police forces and
army. The country's only Sunni religious authority said in a statement
that reports of 64 clerics issuing a fatwa, or edict, allowing or urging
Iraqis to join national security and military forces to protect Iraqis and
their property were not linked to the association.
	The number of Iraqi children suffering from malnutrition has
almost doubled since the US invasion two years. Worldwide the UN estimates
some 17,000 children die every day from hunger-related diseases. The
United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food has strongly
condemned the invasion of Iraq and the global anti-terror drive, accusing
the US-led coalition of using food deprivation as a military tactic and of
sapping efforts to fight hunger in the world. [DN]

[4. NEOCONS] The Presidential Commission investigating the justification
for the invasion of Iraq has said that US intelligence on Iraq was "dead
wrong in almost all of its prewar judgments about Iraq's weapons of mass
destruction" ... A key chapter in the report -- on US intelligence on
alleged nuclear weapons programs in Iran and North Korea -- was classified
and not released publicly. But sources familiar with that section said it
was among the most critical, finding US intelligence on Iran's nuclear
program in particular to be inadequate. The report is very critical of
former CIA Director George Tenet but avoids any criticism of Bush and
Cheney.
	The case for war against Iraq was dealt another embarrassing blow
this week due to claims by the LAT that the first-hand intelligence source
on Saddam Hussein's alleged mobile bioweapons labs was a politically
motivated Iraqi defector now dismissed as an "out-and-out fabricator".
	Former US Secretary of State Colin Powell has secured his place in
history, not as a great American military leader ... but rather the dupe
who peddled false intelligence data to the Security Council of the United
Nations ... sealing the US case for war with Iraq. [Ritter]

[5. LAW] The U.N. Security Council decided to send cases of war crimes
suspects in Sudan's Darfur region to the new International Criminal Court
after agreeing to exemptions for US citizens. The United States then
abstained from the vote late on Thursday, withdrawing its threat of a veto
after insisting for weeks it would reject any move that would give the
Hague-based court legitimacy. The resolution marked the first time the
council referred a case to the ICC ... the first permanent global criminal
court, set up try individuals accused of genocide, war crimes and mass
human rights abuses. The vote was 11 in favor and four abstentions. In
addition to the United States, abstentions came from China and Algeria,
which opposed any international trials, and Brazil, a supporter of the
court, which objected to the exemptions the United States demanded ...The
Clinton administration had signed the 1998 Rome Treaty creating the court
but the Bush administration rescinded the signature through a letter
signed by John Bolton, the new US nominee for U.N. ambassador ... The
exemption would bar the ICC or courts from any other country from
prosecuting a US citizen. [Reuters]
	Secret US court approved record number of secret wiretaps and
searches last year ... 75 per cent more than in 2000, the administration
disclosed Friday ... under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Since passage of the Patriot Act, the FBI can use such warrants in
investigations that aren't mostly focused on foreign intelligence.
Operating with permission from a secretive US court that meets regularly
at the US Justice Department headquarters, the FBI has used such warrants
to break into homes, offices, hotel rooms and automobiles, install hidden
cameras, search luggage and eavesdrop on telephone conversations. Agents
also have pried into safe-deposit boxes, watched from afar with video
cameras and binoculars and intercepted e-mails ... But only a fraction of
such warrants each year result in any kind of public disclosure, so little
is known outside classified circles about how they work. [AP]
	Europeans will need visas for travel to US: Most Europeans,
including almost all British citizens, will need a visa to visit America
later this year.

[6. ECONOMY] A poor US jobs report again at the first of the month:
factories lost jobs, as did temp firms, not a good sign. (Temp employment
frequently leads broad employment trends.) With an actual loss of private
sector jobs since March 2001, the growth in employment during the Bush
regime is largely due to the expansion of government jobs -- the
Republican version of the WPA, the New Deal's jobs program?

[7. IRAN] Scott Ritter, who was right about Iraqi WMD altho' now
Washington says no one was, has suggested "The President has signed off on
military preparation that will have the U.S. ready to attack Iran via
massive aerial bombardment in June 2005."
	Iran has deployed a network of anti-aircraft batteries around its
declared uranium enrichment plant. At least 10 surface-to-air missile
batteries were seen around the uranium enrichment plant at Natanz, located
about 250 kilometers south of Teheran. The batteries were seen during a
tour by journalists of Natanz, the first conducted by Iran's government.
Officials said the Soviet-origin anti-aircraft batteries were meant to
protect Natanz from an Israeli or U.S. air attack. The Bushehr nuclear
reactor complex has also been ringed by surface-to-air missiles. [MENL]
	Meanwhile there is fighting in Yemen where the Yemen government
claims that an armed group is allied to Iran and is trying to overthrow
the government, install a Shia religious rule, and is preaching violence
against the United States and Israel at mosques. The group is not linked
to al-Qaida. [AJ]
	Syria has promised to withdraw all its forces from Lebanon by 30
April and will let a United Nations team verify the pullout. [AJ]

[8. LATIN AMERICA] Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero
announced on Wednesday that his country would sell more than $1.3 billion
worth of military equipment to Venezuela ... Zapatero made the decision
during a visit to Venezuela earlier this week, where he joined a summit of
Latin American leaders, including the presidents of Colombia and Brazil,
Alvaro Uribe and Inacio Lula da Silva, who also supported Venezuela
against the US.
	US DoD and DoS are preparing to intensify and expand drug
interdiction and aerial crop-eradication efforts in South America, Central
America and the Caribbean ... the US government is actively soliciting the
help of mercenaries whose sole function will be to locate and rescue
missing or captured Drug War personnel .. The DoD will rely on hired guns
to set up posts throughout the region in order to carry out reconnaissance
missions for the Pentagon ... [by] May 2005. "The countries identified for
immediate contractor support are Peru and Bolivia ... Future support may
be required in other Central and South American countries and is likely in
the countries of Colombia, Panama, Ecuador and Venezuela."

	=================================================
	    C. G. Estabrook <www.newsfromneptune.com>
	   "News from Neptune" (Saturdays 10-11AM), and
	"From Bard to Verse: A Program of the Spoken Arts"
	 (Saturdays noon-1PM) on WEFT, Champaign, 90.1 FM,
	    Community Radio for East Central Illinois
	=================================================

	"There is no reason to accept the doctrines crafted to sustain
power and privilege, or to believe that we are constrained by mysterious
and unknown social laws. These are simply decisions made within
institutions that are subject to human will and that must face the test of
legitimacy. And if they do not meet the test, they can be replaced by
other institutions that are more free and more just, as has happened often
in the past."  -- Noam Chomsky