[Peace] News notes 2005-04-24

[C. G. Estabrook]

	==================================================
	Notes from last week's "global war on terrorism,"
	for the AWARE meeting, Sunday, April 24, 2005.
	(Sources provided on request; a paragraph followed
	by a bracketed source is substantially verbatim.)
	==================================================

[1. TORTURE] The media are once again straining at a gnat and swallowing a
camel (so that you begin to think that it's not an accident): preoccupied
with the peculations of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, they all but
ignore a major scandal -- the exculpation of Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the
theater commander at the outset of the Iraq invasion and three other
senior officers (a woman and two men). The Army declared on Friday that
they had not committed dereliction of duty in regard to the Abu Ghraib
prison scandal and so will not face criminal or administrative punishment.
But the investigation found that "allegations of dereliction of duty were
substantiated" in the case of Army Reserve Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who
had commanded the 800th Military Police Brigade at Abu Ghraib.
	This, in spite of the fact that the ACLU has shown that Sanchez
perjured himself.  A memo from him 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.
	In a Village Voice editorial Nat Hentoff juxtaposes recent
statements by George W. Bush and Porter Goss regarding the US's use of
extraordinary rendition with information about interrogations in Uzbek
prisons -- according to Hentoff the CIA's "torture express" jets made ten
documented trips to Uzbekistan and according to former British ambassador
to Uzbekistan Craig Murray, "Uzbek officials are torturing prisoners to
extract information, which is supplied to the U.S. and passed through its
Central Intelligence Agency to the U.K." Prime Minister Tony Blair quickly
reacted to this undiplomatic whistle-blowing. Craig Murray was removed as
ambassador to Uzbekistan. [VV]
	The Washington Post is reporting that in August 2003 Army
intelligence officials in Iraq began discussing different types of harsh
interrogation techniques that they wished could be permitted in US-run
Iraqi jails. In one email Capt. William Ponce asked interrogators to
submit wish lists of different types of interrogation techniques that
could be used. In the email Ponce wrote "the gloves are coming off." [DN]
	Responding to Sen. Jay Rockefeller's call to investigate the
detention and interrogation practices of U.S. intelligence agencies, Sen.
Pat Roberts said: "I am fast losing patience with what appears to me to be
almost a pathological obsession with calling into question the brave men
and women on the front lines of the war on terror." [Cursor]

[2. OCCUPATION] Bombs in Tikrit and Baghdad today have left 22 Iraqis dead
and another 80 wounded, amid reports of progress by political leaders
towards forming a government. [AJ] May 7 is Al Jaafari's deadline to form
a government. After that, he loses the appointment.
	The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times both lead today with
the escalating insurgent attacks in Iraq ... U.S. officials confirm that
insurgent attacks are on the rise, with roadside bombings and assaults on
military targets up by as much as 40 percent in some areas since the end
of March ... The Post reports that "hundreds of Iraqis and foreigners have
died in the last week" as "insurgents run relatively free."
	Patrick Cockburn writes in the Independent that terrified US
soldiers are still killing civilians with impunity, while the dead go
uncounted: "It is very easy to be accidentally killed in Iraq. US soldiers
treat everybody as a potential suicide bomber. If they are right they have
saved their lives and if they are wrong they face no penalty ... Every
Iraqi has stories of friends or relatives killed by US troops for no
adequate reason. Often they do not know if they were shot by regular
soldiers or by members of western security companies whose burly
employees, usually ex-soldiers, are everywhere in Iraq ... The secrecy
surrounding the numbers of civilians killed reveals another important
facet of the war. The White House was always more interested in the impact
of events in Iraq on the American voter than it was in the effect on
Iraqis ... Marla Ruzicka, the American humanitarian worker who was buried
yesterday in California, had established in her last weeks in Iraq that
figures were kept based on after-action reports. Officially, she found, 29
civilians were killed in fire fights between US forces and insurgents
between 28 February and 5 April. But these figures are likely to be gross
underestimates ... But most Iraqis die obscurely; it is dangerous for
reporters, Iraqi or foreign, to try to find out who is being killed. Much
of Iraq is a bandit-ridden no-man's land. Even in Baghdad it is evident
from the hundreds of bodies arriving at the mortuary that this has become
one of the most violent societies on earth." [Independent/UK]
	Gen. John Keane, a retired US Army general just back from a
fact-finding trip to Iraq, told The Hill newspaper this week "The
insurgency is viable and resilient and has the capacity to achieve
significant surprise." [DN]
	Bob Harris writes that a unanimous Iraqi National Assembly vote to
demand an apology for an assault on one of its members by a U.S. soldier
is being ignored by Washington but is getting media attention "across the
Arab world."
	A helicopter crash survivor is shot dead on video as the Pentagon
acknowledges "an uptick" in violence in Iraq, while the Los Angeles Times
reports that a "flow of corpses" in the Tigris dates back almost two
months.
	The Senate on Thursday overwhelmingly [99-0] approved $81 billion
for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in a spending bill that would push the
total cost of combat and reconstruction past $300 billion ... The latest
money is to last through Sept. 30, the end of the current budget year.
Pentagon officials have said they will have to ask for more money for
2006. [AP]
	The Brookings Institution's Michael O'Hanlon, who compiles the
Iraq Index, which is "based primarily on U.S. government information,"
estimates that between 500 and 1000 Iraqis per month are still being
killed. Debating whether U.S. troops should withdraw now from Iraq, Naomi
Klein said that the U.S. is already "abandoning Iraq ... to violence, to
daily humiliation, and checkpoint killings." [Cursor]

[3. TERRORISM] The Senate confirmed John Negroponte as the country's first
director of national intelligence, giving him power over the nation's 15
spy agencies. The vote was 98-to-2. The only no votes came from two
Democratic senators, Tom Harkin of Iowa and Ron Wyden of Oregon. [DN]
	National Counterterrorism Center statistics for an annual State
Department report entitled "Patterns of Global Terrorism" suggest that
terrorism is booming -- reported attacks in 2004 were higher than in any
other year over the last two decades, and that's not counting attacks on
American troops in Iraq. In response, the State Department has acted
boldly and swiftly: It's going to stop publishing the report.
[Wonkette.com]
	The Transportation Security Administration allowed lavish spending
on a $19 million building for its crisis management center, including
$3,000 refrigerators and about $500,000 to acquire artwork, silk plants
and other items, an inspector general's report said. A review of the
project's expenditures uncovered evidence of suspicious purchases,
improper use of government purchase cards, and unethical and possibly
illegal activities by federal employees, according to the report released
Tuesday by the Homeland Security Department.
	Separate government investigations described Tuesday found that
airport screeners employed by private companies do a better job detecting
dangerous objects than government screeners and that the screeners'
performance apparently had not improved since before the 2001 terrorist
attacks.

[4. LOOTING] The House passed an energy bill 249-183: it will cost the
government $8 billion and is expected to save oil companies billions of
dollars by shielding them from costly lawsuits. The legislation has a
provision that would immediately protect oil companies from lawsuits over
the water-polluting gasoline additive MTBE. Major MTBE producers include
Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips. California alone has more than 15,000
sites contaminated with MTBE.  The Energy Bill would also allow oil
drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Our Rep. Johnson,
who's dined out on voting against Alaska drilling in the past, voted for
this bill (but against MTBE liability protection).
	The WSJ reported an analysis by McKinsey and Co pointing out that
if one counts exports of US corporations operating overseas as part of US
exports (which makes sense, if we take the country to be the private
economy that runs it), then the trade deficit declines significantly.  US
companies make a mint exporting from China, just as Walmart is enriched by
importing from slave labor producers in the brutally repressive state
(they are a big player in the US economy, and are not going to want a
protective tariff any more than corporations exporting from the Chinese
platform will).  Even what's called "trade" is to a large extent a
doctrinal fiction.  Why is it "export" and "import" when GM sends parts to
Mexico for assembly and then brings them back to New York to sell, all
transactions internal to a totalitarian command economy, but not when it
does the same from Indiana to Illinois to New York?  No one seriously
called what was happening internal to the Soviet system "trade," though it
crossed national boundaries. [Chomsky]

[5. DUOPOLY] The chair of the Democratic National Committee Howard Dean
has come out in support of President Bush's current Iraq policy. In a
speech earlier this week in Minnesota, Dean said, "The president has
created an enormous security problem for the United States where none
existed before. But I hope the president is incredibly successful with his
policy now that he's there." Dean said a US pullout could endanger the
United States in three ways: By leaving a Shiite theocracy worse than that
in Iran; by creating an independent Kurdistan in the north, with
destabilizing effects on neighboring Kurdish regions of Turkey, Iran and
Syria, and by making the so-called Sunni Triangle a magnet for what Dean
called Islamic terrorists similar to the former Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.
[DN]

	================

[6. LAW] The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of the National
Capital Area filed an emergency motion Wednesday to open the D.C. Circuit
Court of Appeals to the public during oral arguments tomorrow in a hearing
over the termination of FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds. Several media
outlets filed a separate emergency motion. The move comes in response to
an announcement from the court clerk this morning that the argument would
be closed to everyone except attorneys involved in the case and Edmonds.
Ann Beeson, associate legal director of the ACLU National Office, will
argue on behalf of Edmonds tomorrow ... In its motion, the ACLU noted that
appellate arguments are historically open to the public as a matter of
law, and that federal circuits have rejected efforts to close them, even
in cases involving national security. When the United States asked the
Supreme Court to close part of the oral argument in the Pentagon Papers
case -- a case that involved classified information of the greatest
sensitivity -- that motion was denied. Likewise, in an appeal in the
ongoing prosecution of Zacarias Moussaoui, an alleged conspirator in the
9/11 terrorist plot, the court rejected the government's move to close the
entire hearing. The ACLU said that the court's decision does not appear to
be based on state secrets because individuals allowed in the courtroom,
including Edmonds' lead attorney, do not have security clearance in this
case to be present during discussions involving classified information.
The ACLU also said that, in this case, the government has not even moved
for a closed oral argument ... Edmonds, a Middle Eastern language
specialist who was hired by the FBI shortly after 9/11, was fired in 2002
after repeatedly reporting serious security breaches and misconduct.
Edmonds challenged her retaliatory dismissal by filing a lawsuit in
federal court, but her case was dismissed last July after then-Attorney
General John Ashcroft invoked the so-called "state secrets privilege" and
retroactively classified briefings to Congress related to her case. The
government has argued that every aspect of Edmonds' case involves state
secrets -- including where she was born and what languages she speaks.
Edmonds is appealing to the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C.
Circuit to reinstate her case.  [ACLU]
	Judicial Watch, the public interest group that fights government
corruption, announced today that it has obtained documents through the
Freedom of Information Act ("FOIA") in which the Federal Bureau of
Investigation ("FBI") has invoked privacy right protections on behalf of
al Qaeda terror leader Osama bin Laden.  In a September 24, 2003
declassified "Secret" FBI report obtained by Judicial Watch, the FBI
invoked Exemption 6 under FOIA law on behalf of bin Laden, which permits
the government to withhold all information about U.S. persons in
"personnel and medical files and similar files" when the disclosure of
such information "would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of
personal privacy." [JW]

[7. MEDIA] In this Sunday's New York Times Magazine, Ken Ferree, the new
president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, says he wants PBS,
long considered a liberal bastion, to attract more conservative viewers.
"Does public television belong to the Democrats?" he asks.

[8. NEOCONS] USNews rumor: Rumsfeld will quit in late summer. His rumored
replacement: former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.
	Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said the nation's policy on preventing
illegal immigration is too lax, telling a group of newspaper publishers
the United States needs to "close the borders." [AP]
	Just hours after Senator George Voinovich (R-OH) asked the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee to "take a little bit more time" before voting
on John Bolton, Move America Forward had an attack ad ready to go. "WIFE:
Did you hear how disloyal Senator Voinovich was to Republicans and
President Bush? Voinovich stood with the Democrats and refused to vote for
John Bolton, the man President Bush has chosen to fight for the United
States at the UN ... he missed most of the Bolton confirmation hearings,
but then shows up at the last minute and stabs the President and
Republicans right in the back ... Shame on Senator Voinovich." HUBBY: "It
seems like Senator Voinovich has become a traitor to the Republican
Party." [Wonkette.com]

[9. POLLS] a new Gallup poll, released Wednesday, found that only 45% of
all Americans now feel the Iraq invasion was "worth it," with 53% saying
it wasn't ... Whites say it was worth it by a 50%-to-48% margin, while
non-whites rate it 26% OK and 72% not. The youngest segment polled, and
the oldest, were most opposed. A majority of 18- to 29-year-olds, and a
majority of Americans aged 65 and older, think it was not worth going to
war. Americans between the ages of 30 and 64 are more evenly split. [E&P]
	Arguing that "What is considered 'terrorism' by the Bush
administration is perceived as something completely different around the
world," Pepe Escobar cites a Jordanian poll showing that in four Middle
Eastern countries, 85 percent said that "the U.S. war on Iraq was an act
of terrorism." [ATimes]

	======================

[10. CATHOLICISM] Justin Raimondo writes on 'Benedict XVI: A Champion of
Peace': The ascension of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI is
good news for the peace camp: he will carry on the legacy of John Paul II,
whose stance against the invasion of Iraq enraged the War Party -- and
inspired millions with the hope that God had not abandoned the world to
the Devil. The new Pope, as head of the Congregation of the Faith, openly
disdained the Bush Doctrine when it was invoked by the U.S. government as
a rationale for war: "The "concept of a 'preventive war,'" he noted, "does
not appear in the Catechism of the Catholic Church." You bet it doesn't,
and if I were the White House I would be expecting much more along these
lines. Even as the War Party was reveling in its purported triumph, the
Cardinal averred that "it was right to resist the war and its threats of
destruction," declaring: "It should never be the responsibility of just
one nation to make decisions for the world." [Antiwar.com]

[11. EU] In Belgium police have arrested some 500 activists taking part in
a citizens nuclear weapons inspection at a NATO airbase. Organized by
Greenpeace and the group Bombspotting, the protest called on NATO to
become a nuclear free alliance and for the US to pull its nuclear weapons
from all NATO countries. Greenpeace estimates 480 nuclear weapons are now
housed in six European nations: Italy, Germany, Belgium, Britain, Turkey
and the Netherlands. Activists from all six countries took part in the
so-called citizen inspections. [DN]
	John Pilger writes that the British electorate is feeling "a
familiar, if desperate media push" to "put aside considerations of basic
morality" and "walk over the corpses of at least 100,000 people" to vote
in what he calls 'Britain's Absurd Election.'

[12. HAITI] Ousted Haitian president Jean Bertrand Aristide held a rare
press conference Tuesday in South Africa where he is living in exile. He
maintained that he is still the elected president of Haiti despite being
ousted 13 months ago in what he calls a modern-day kidnapping in the
service of a coup d'etat backed by the United States. [DN]

[13. IRAN] The government of Iran has temporarily banned Al Jazeera from
operating inside the country. The satellite tv station has been accused of
inflaming protests by the country's Arab minority in southwestern Iran.
The network was the first media outlet to report on the demonstrations
that have left at least three people dead. [DN]
	In a gossip column in the NYPost, Henry Kissinger is quoted as
saying, "It's a foregone conclusion that we will also go to war in Iran."

[14. ISRAEL] The Israeli government announced that former nuclear
whistleblower Mortecai Vanunu will be barred for another year from leaving
the country ... Israel's Interior Minister said the govt fears Vanunu will
continue to speak about Israel's nuclear program.
	Two senior employees of the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee, one of Washington's most influential lobbying organizations,
have left their jobs amid an FBI investigation into whether they passed
classified U.S. information to the government of Israel, a source close to
the organization said yesterday.

[15. RUSSIA] Finally, in a stunning development, SOS Rice condemned
government centralization and suppression of the media in Washington:
"There should not be so much concentration of power just in the
presidency, there needs to be an independent media ... Everyone will be
watching to see what the [big energy company] case says about the rule of
law in [this country]. I know that there will soon be a verdict and we and
investors and the rest of the international community will hope that it is
a process that inspires confidence, that the rule of law obtains [here]."
-- Oh, wait: Rice was talking about Russia; her remarks obviously don't
apply in the US.

	=================================================
	    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
	=================================================