[Peace] News notes 2005-08-28

[Carl Estabrook]

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        Notes from last week's "global war on terrorism,"
        for the Sunday, 28 August 2005, meeting of AWARE,
        "Anti-War Anti-Racism Effort" of Champaign-Urbana.
        (Sources provided on request; some are indicated.)
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[1.] It's not yet September, and 2005 is already the deadliest year for US
personnel in Afghanistan since we attacked that country, with 65 Americans
dead.  No one of course is keeping count of Afghani people killed by
US-supported activities since October 2001, when the US refused the Afghan
government's offer to negotiate over Osama bin Laden and began bombing the
country -- much less since the 1970s, when the Carter administration
directed the CIA, in its most expensive operation in history, to hire the
most fanatic Islamicists it could find and loose them on Afghanistan.

[2.] This week saw a serious attempt by the US government and their
subservient media to control the debate on the war, in part because Cindy
Sheehan has almost single-handedly posed the question of continuing the
slaughter or ending it.  But Americans are getting a non-debate on the
war, argues a columnist in the conservative Washington Times, because
mainstream media "allow the Bush administration and 'opposition'
congressional Democrats to engage in Amish-style shunning of those who
advocate immediately ending the war." [E.g., this week on MSNBC (not Fox),
the regular anchor asked Colleen Rowley, the former FBI agent and now
congressional candidate, how she liked being supported by "antiwar
extremists."]
	This has been of course the typical form of American politics
since the advent of modern communications -- to present two apparent but
not real alternatives, both of which, in somewhat different ways, serve
the interests of dominant social groups, and thereby to insist that any
position that actually challenges the interests of those groups is not
part of the real debate, or of real politics.  (What do you think the
Republicans and Democrats are for?)  That's what we see now, as supporters
of the war, like President Bush and Senator Clinton, are "confronted" by
"critics," such as Senators Feingold and Hagel. There's little if any
substantive difference in their positions, and what there is, often finds
the Democrats the more belligerent, in order to show that they're not
"soft on foreign policy."

[3.] One of the reasons the US withdrew troops from Vietnam in 1973 was
the revolt of the American expeditionary force there, then a conscript
army.  (That's the reason the draft ended, and why the Pentagon doesn't
want it back.)  A similar thing may be happening now -- but then it was
grunts, now it's brass. The Financial Times reports,
	"The US is expected to pull significant numbers of troops out of
Iraq in the next 12 months in spite of the continuing violence, according
to the general responsible for near-term planning in the country. Maj Gen
Douglas Lute [sic], director of operations at US Central Command,
yesterday said the reductions were part of a push by Gen John Abizaid,
commander of all US troops in the region, to put the burden of defending
Iraq on Iraqi forces ... Gen George Casey, commander of allied forces in
Iraq, made similar comments last month on reductions that could come by
early next year but they were quickly played down by the White House ...
'I think they were rumours. I think they're speculation,' Bush said at his
ranch in Crawford, Texas, this month after meeting his national security
team.  Yesterday, the president again insisted: 'We will stay, we will
fight and we will win the war on terror. An immediate withdrawal from Iraq
or the greater Middle East would only embolden the terrorists.' Scott
McClellan, the White House spokesman, insisted that Mr Bush and his top
generals remained united on the issue.  'Any suggestion that there is
disagreement between the President and our military commanders in Iraq is
absurd,' he said."
	[The adage, "Believe nothing until it's officially denied," has
been ascribed to many people.]

[4.] But the state of political opinion in the US scares the
administration to such an extent that President Bush was declared no
longer on vacation and launched on a "defensive," justifying the war
before carefully-screened audiences by constant reference to the September
11 attacks (a half dozen in each brief speech).

[5.] They have reason to be concerned. The polls show that the real
questions about the war are disturbing Americans, who give Bush an
approval rating lower that President Nixon had during Watergate.
	The new CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll shows Bush's approval rating
down another five points -- and his disapproval rating up another five --
from two weeks ago: they now stand at 40% for, 56% against. The rolling
average has been steadily declining throughout the year.
	The new American Research Group poll has Bush below the 40% mark
-- approval rating 36% (down 6% from July), disapproval 58% (up 6% from
July).
	During the Watergate scandal, Nixon's approval rating stood at
39%. At this point in their second terms, Clinton and Reagan were around
60%.
	"On the domestic front, Bush has had a pretty good last couple of
weeks, with passage of the energy and highway bills and CAFTA. So what's
causing the meltdown? First, his Republican support is starting to crack
(down to 77% approval, the lowest in his administration). His favorability
on the economy is only 33% despite the administration's economic
triumphalism in the past few weeks (down from 38 percent in July)."
[dailykos] But the real reason is of course Iraq, which Americans have
recently begun telling pollsters is the most important issue facing the
country.  (They used to say it was jobs.)
	And now anti-war demonstrations around the country, from Salt Lake
City, to Boise to Pittsburgh, are being rather strongly suppressed by the
police -- although we're not quite where the US was in 1968 (as some
suggest), when the Pentagon told President Johnson that it could not send
more troops to Vietnam because they might be needed to control the
population at home.

[6.] We should thank right-wing minster Pat Robertson urging the USG to
assassinate the president of Venezuela, says a Counterpunch.org
correspondent, "because it gives us such clear insight into how things
really work in this world. First of all, his proposal confirms that this
precise thing has been done in the past: Allende, Mossadegh, ... [you can
see a long list of US assassinations at
<counterpunch.org/cockburn08272005.html>] -- despite Don Rumsfeld's pious
denials. Secondly, he confirms our (the United States') implicit right to
petroleum resources wherever they may be found, as shown by his comment
about how offing Chavez probably wouldn't disrupt oil deliveries."

[7.] "Remember back when the media portrayed Howard Dean as the 'antiwar'
Democrat? It was a joke then, and the Democrats as 'opposition' party are
a joke now, as this press release shows: 'Today DNC Chairman Howard Dean,
echoing the concerns of Democrats and Republicans across the country,
called on President Bush to lay out - and stick to - a clear military plan
for success in Iraq that includes heeding the advice of military
commanders. When President Bush speaks later this week to members of the
military and veterans, he should lay out a clear plan for future success
in Iraq based on the informed advice of his military command.'"
[lefti.blogspot.com]

[8.] "In Iraq, Thousands marched in adoring praise of Iraq's deposed
leader Saddam Hussein on Friday, offering a stark display of the loss of
power and leadership felt by some of Iraq's Sunni Arabs. Drawing
inspiration from the Baath party strongman, who now languishes in jail
awaiting trial, marchers in Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) northeast of Baghdad,
danced and chanted his name and condemned plans by the Shi'ite and
Kurdish-led government to push through draft constitution to create a
federal Iraq.  They accused the Shi'ite Islamists in government of
kowtowing to Iran, Iraq's non-Arab neighbor where many Shi'ites sought
refuge during Saddam's rule, and the United States, which backs the
government with some 140,000 troops.  'Bush, Bush, listen well; We all
love Saddam Hussein!' crowds chanted. 'We reject the American and Iranian
constitution' and 'No to a constitution that breaks up Iraq,' their
placards read. ... One man said he had been laid off from the Ministry of
Health after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam because he had
fought in Iraq's 1980-88 war with Iran ... 'Shame on the backwardness of
Arab princes and agents who have let foreign dogs run all over them,'
another man shouted. 'If words don't work, we know how to deal with the
occupiers and cowardly agents,' he said, meaning the United States and
Iran ... Unlike Shi'ites, who display often cult-like loyalty to clerics
with huge influence in government, Sunnis have no secular or religious
figure to champion their cause. But they have found a powerful ally in
charismatic Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who has come out against the
federal option as long as the country remains under U.S. occupation. Tens
of thousands of Sadr supporters protested on Friday in cities across Iraq,
from Basra in the Shi'ite south to Kirkuk, an ethnically mixed city in the
north that Kurds want to wrest from Arab control to include in their
autonomous region. In Diwaniya in the south, 3,000 of them walked in
silence bearing images of Iraq sliced up by a bloody knife of federalism."
[Reuters]

[9.] "...the hagglers in the backroom bazaar in Baghdad either did or did
not submit a draft constitution to Iraq's provisional parliament on
Monday, which either met or did not meet the deadline specified in the
existing U.S.-imposed temporary constitution. Most likely they didn't,
which means, by rights, parliament should have been dissolved and new
elections called. But, to no one's surprise, it wasn't and they weren't.
It seems constitutional law in Iraq is already proving extremely
responsive to changing social needs. So much for the doctrine of original
intent ... This one brief passage from the Washington Post kind of
illustrates everything problematic about such a neocolonial exercise:
'U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad shuttled among Iraqi leaders, pushing
late Monday for the inclusion of Sunnis in talks, negotiators said. U.S.
Embassy staff members worked from a Kurdish party headquarters to help
type up the draft and *translate changes from English to Arabic for Iraqi
lawmakers*, negotiators said' (emphasis added)." [billmon.org]

[10.] "Former Abu Ghraib commander Janice Karpinski has alleged that US
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld personally signed a memorandum
authorizing extreme interrogation techniques used at Iraq's Abu Ghraib
prison. In an interview [with Thomas Jefferson School of Law Professor
Marjorie Cohn] published Wednesday, Karpinski said [that the memo
contained] a handwritten message over to the side that appeared to be the
same handwriting as the signature, and that signature was Secretary
Rumsfeld's. And it said, 'Make sure this happens,' with two exclamation
points ... Karpinski, the only high-ranking military officer to be
punished in connection with the abuse scandal, has previously alleged that
the interrogation techniques were approved by top US officials."
[jurist.law.pitt.edu]

[11.] "A grass-roots coalition of Massachusetts peace activists is trying
to force top state officials to press for a recall of all state National
Guard troops from Iraq and to keep them from being sent there in the
future.  If the state attorney general next month approves the wording of
the ballot initiative, its backers will have to collect nearly 66,000
signatures in the process to put it on the November 2006 general election
ballot. The effort may also serve to open debate on how governors should
handle National Guard mobilizations. Under the initiative, governors of
Massachusetts would be required to 'take all necessary steps' under the
law to bring home state Guard units deployed in Iraq. While only the US
president can order such a recall, the initiative would compel the
governor to argue against deployments to Iraq or risk being sued by a
state resident, its supporters said. The initiative would not grant any
new powers, but rather would force the governor to use powers that already
exist, they said." [NYT]

[12.] The writer Fran Liebowitz said, "It's not whether you win or lose,
it's how you lay the blame."  With that undoubtedly being the motive, "A
long-awaited CIA inspector general's report on the agency's performance
before the September 11, 2001, attacks includes detailed criticism of more
than a dozen former and current agency officials, the New York Times
reported on Friday." [Reuters]

[13.] "The U.S. negotiator in talks on dismantling North Korea's suspected
atomic arms program [Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill]
predicted on Tuesday the sides can overcome a key difference over
Pyongyang's right to develop peaceful nuclear power ... The United States
has differed with South Korea and Russia at six-party talks, which also
include Japan and China, over North Korea's demand that it can have the
right to eventually develop civilian nuclear programs for power
generation." [Reuters]

[14.] "Last weekend, in the Diamond Fork area of Spanish Fork canyon,
outside of Salt Lake City, Utah, 'police' (actually Utah National Guard)
garbed as paramilitary goons (with faces covered, not unlike death squads
in Latin America), descended on a rave with assault rifles, attack dogs,
and at least one helicopter." [Kurtnimmo.com]

[15.] "Uzbekistan's Senate has approved the government's decision to evict
US forces from a key base which Washington uses for operations in
Afghanistan." [BBC]

[16.] "The Bush administration is replacing the director of a small but
critical branch of the Justice Department, months after he complained that
senior political officials at the department were seeking to play down
newly compiled data on the aggressive police treatment of black and
Hispanic drivers. The demotion of the official, Lawrence A. Greenfeld,
whom President Bush named in 2001 to lead the Bureau of Justice
Statistics, caps more than three years of simmering tensions over charges
of political interference at the agency. And it has stirred anger and
tumult among many Justice Department statisticians, who say their
independence in analyzing important law enforcement data has been
compromised." [NYT]

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  C. G. Estabrook, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  109 Observatory, 901 South Mathews Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801
  ### <www.carlforcongress.org> <www.newsfromneptune.com> ###
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