[Peace] News notes 2005-12-04

[Carl Estabrook]

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        Notes from last week's "global war on terrorism,"
        for the Sunday, 4 December 2005, meeting of AWARE,
        "Anti-War Anti-Racism Effort" of Champaign-Urbana.
        (Sources provided on request; paragraphs followed
	by a bracketed source are substantially verbatim.)
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	"From 1945 to 2003, the United States attempted to overthrow more
	than 40 foreign governments, and to crush more than 30
	populist-nationalist movements fighting against intolerable
	regimes. In the process, the US bombed some 25 countries, caused
	the end of life for several million people, and condemned many
	millions more to a life of agony and despair." --William Blum

[TRUTH] In the televised Monday night football game, the commentator
congratulated Ted Koppel,the retiring anchor of the Nightline news
program, for "25 years of unbelievable ... work."  Exactly.

[IRAQ] From Wednesday to Friday, guerrillas in Iraq killed 18 US troops.
The most tragic single incident came on Friday, when guerrillas used old
Baath rocket parts to make an enormous bomb that killed 10 Marines near
Fallujah and wounded 11. CNN points out that Marine convoys tend to spread
out to limit such casualties, so the death of 10 GIs in one incident
suggests just a horrific explosion. There were said to be 600,000 tons of
munitions stored in Iraq, one of the more militarized societies in the
world, and over 200,000 tons are probably still unaccounted for. On
Wednesday, four GIs had been killed in separate incidents. On Friday, as
well, over a thousand Shiites and Sunnis held joint Friday prayers
services and then mounted demonstrations downtown. The prayers were held
at the mosque of Abu Hanifah in Adhamiyah. They demonstrated against the
continued US military sweeps [of places like Ramadi]. Al-Zaman says that
they were demanding the trial of the official in charge of the Jadiriyah
Prison where 150 largely Sunni detainees had been tortured and starved.
They said that Abu Karim Alwandi, the head of intelligence for the Badr
Corps paramilitary, who presided over Jadiriyah, had to be held to the
rule of law. Some placards angrily charged that Iraqis had been tortured
on Iranian orders. This allegation comes about because the prison was in
the charge of the Ministry of Interior, controlled by Bayan Jabr Sulagh, a
prominent member of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq,
which had been based in Iran 1982-2003.  Some placards accused the
minister of being an American puppet. The crowds also demanded the release
of detainees held by the US in Iraq. The Shiites involved were likely
followers of Muqtada al-Sadr, who have a rivalry with SCIRI and who have
sometimes engaged in a politics of pan-Islam, hooking up with Sunni
fundamentalists for anti-imperial purposes. [Cole]
	In Ramadi, Anbar's regional capital to the west of Falluja, about
500 U.S. and Iraqi troops launched an operation they said was designed to
disrupt guerrilla activity before the election.  Insurgents staged a show
of force in the city on Thursday, firing mortar rounds near a U.S. base
and official buildings. Letting themselves be filmed by news cameramen,
masked men wielding rifles and grenade launchers distributed leaflets
saying al Qaeda was in charge of the town. [Reuters]
	The US military is not in control of any major city in the Sunni
Arab heartland, including Baghdad, and that behind the scenes and under
the cover of darkness, guerrillas do plan and carry out attacks and
exercise authority. Moreover, most of the guerrillas are not the foreign
jihadis of the Zarqawi strike, but rather local ex-Baathists, tribal
groups, Salafi fundamentalists, etc. The US military is beginning a sweep
in Ramadi. So much for Anbar's participation in the Dec. 15 elections.
[Cole]
	There was fighting in Ramadi, but it's not clear what happened.
Ramadi is only 60 miles west of Baghdad, but there are no stories filed
from the town today, presumably because it was too dangerous to drive
over. One local official told the WP by phone that about 200 insurgents
briefly took over part of the city center. [Slate]
	There were 50 suicide bombings in Iraq in October and 19 in
November, he said. Over the same period, the number of bombs that either
exploded or were discovered and cleared fell to 1,329, from 1,869. [NYT]
-- though it's still higher than it was six months ago.
	But November saw 87 US troops killed, among the highest death
tolls for a 30-day period since the war began, and one wonders about the
rate of severely wounded. Moreover, in one two-week period in November,
bombers (suiciders or not) killed hundreds of Iraqis, spreading
insecurity, fear and anger. It raises the question of whether the
guerrillas are depending more heavily on roadside bombs and remotely
detonated bombs rather than on kamikazes. Whatever the case, the mere
decline in the latter seems to have little or nothing to do with the level
of security in the country, which is generally poor, and, indeed, among
the worst of any country in the world. {Cole]
	The recent surge of attacks in Iraq continued Saturday. A joint
patrol of U.S. and Iraqi forces was ambushed in Udhaim, 80 miles north of
Baghdad, resulting in the death of 19 Iraqi soldiers. Two Iraqi policemen
were also killed in the northern cities of Samarra and Kirkuk. The Post
says, unsurprisingly, that the increase in violence threatens the tenuous
political truce between the Shiites and Sunnis. "Private security
contractors" -- guns-for-hire -- have been involved in scores of shootings
in Iraq but have faced no accountability. The LAT reports that not one
private security contractor in Iraq has faced prosecution ... the
contractors function ... under the oversight of no particular agency and
with immunity from Iraqi courts. The paper [describes] "chaos on Iraq's
roads," where private guards often fire recklessly at civilian vehicles.
[Slate]

[AFGHANISTAN] The US claimed that an attacker blew himself up in a failed
assault on coalition forces Sunday in volatile southern Afghanistan, while
two U.S. helicopters made emergency landings ... U.S. and Afghan officials
called the attacker a suicide bomber, but a police officer at the scene
said the man was apparently trying to throw a grenade ... Some 20,000
coalition troops are fighting Taliban and [other] insurgents in southern
and eastern Afghanistan. Increased violence has left nearly 1,500 people
dead this year -- the bloodiest since U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban
from power in 2001. [AP]

[GWOT] Bush gave two speeches this week, one at the naval academy, on the
"new strategy" for Iraq, and the other in the Rose Garden on Friday,
saying the economy is doing well, in spite of most people's experience.
The NYT buried a story on Saturday arguing that Bush ignored the Marine
deaths during Friday's Rose Garden speech in an attempt to shift attention
to the economy.  The Times also reports that National Security Council
staffer Peter D. Feaver is the reason why the president's new favorite
word when it comes to Iraq is victory -- Bush said it 15 times in his
speech on Wednesday. In research he conducted while at Duke University,
Feaver concluded that Americans would support a war with mounting
casualties if they believed it would be successful. [Slate]
	American Enterprise Institute's [necon thinktank] Tom Donnelly was
a big fan of Bush's "victory strategy" and also notes: "There's no
separating conditions inside Iraq from conditions in the region. Victory
means that "regional meddling and infiltrations can be contained and/or
neutralized" ... The president has stated -- over and over again for years
-- that one of the goals of the war is to, in the medium-term, topple the
governments of Syria and Iran. [prospect.org]
	[From the BBC, evidence that Bush wasn't joking when he told Blair
that he wanted to bomb the TV station Al Jazeera in US-allied Qatar:
neocon nut-job Frank Gaffney] ...called Al Jazeera an "instrument of enemy
propaganda" that was "actively aiding our foes." It was, he insisted,
"appropriate to talk about what you do to neutralize it." Al Jazeera was
"squarely in the target" and "fair game." Gaffney, it turns out, has been
urging this course for a while now. In 2003 he published a piece on the
Fox News website urging that they be "taken off the air, one way or
another," that it was "imperative that enemy media be taken down."
[thenation.com] (I once "debated" Gaffney and others in the crazy-rightist
mag Frontpage: <www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16200>.)
	Pakistani intelligence sources say U.S. operatives killed Hamza
Rabia, a "senior al_Qaida leader," and four others with a rocket fired by
an unmanned Predator aircraft, but the papers aren't sure it was the work
of the U.S.  American intelligence officials claim that the Egyptian-born
Rabia may have ranked as high as No. 3 in al-Qaida's hierarchy and would
have been responsible for planning large-scale attacks in the United
States and Europe ... But the LAT [says] that "the killing probably would
have a limited impact because al-Qaida has become less a hierarchical
organization" since 9/11. [slate]
	Last summer four prisoners from an American military prison in
Afghanistan. It turns out that two of the escapees are major terrorists,
something the military concealed when announcing the event in July.
According to the NYT, one of the suspects, Omar al-Faruq, had been labeled
by the military as "Al Qaeda's highest-ranking operative in Southeast
Asia." [slate]
	The U.S. is at great risk for more terrorist attacks because
Congress and the White House have failed to enact several strong security
measures, members of the former Sept. 11 commission said Sunday ... The
five Republicans and five Democrats on the commission, whose
recommendations are now promoted through a privately funded group known as
the 9/11 Public Discourse Project, conclude that the government deserves
"more Fs than As" in responding to their 41 suggested changes ...
"Obviously, as we've said all along, we are safer, but not yet safe..."
[National Security Adviser] Hadley said on "Fox News Sunday."
Ex-commissioners contended the government has been remiss by failing to
act more quickly. Lee Hamilton, the former Democratic vice chairman of the
commission said, "We know what terrorists want to do: they want to kill as
many Americans as possible. That means you protect the Washington monument
and United States Capitol, and not other places" [sic]. The country [is]
"less safe than we were 18 months ago," former Democratic commissioner
Jamie Gorelick said [in what seemed to be one of the few intelligent
comments]. She cited the failure to ensure that foreign nations are
upgrading security measures to stop proliferation of nuclear, biological
and chemical materials, as well as the FBI's resistance to overhauling its
anti-terror programs. [AP]

[TORTURE] The White House is seeking a compromise [sic] with a leading
Senate Republican over its efforts to exempt the CIA from a proposed ban
on torture ... Bush's national security adviser said on Sunday ...
national security adviser Stephen Hadley [also] said Bush was troubled by
revelations last week that the U.S. military secretly paid Iraqi
newspapers to print pro-American articles ..."*To the extent that kind of
behavior is inconsistent with our policy*, it will be stopped," Hadley
said. [Reuters]
	The WP today describes the case of Khaled Masri, a German citizen,
was abducted in Macedonia and held for five months in a Afghan prison
because the head of the CIA's al-Qaida unit "had a hunch" he was someone
else. The story of Masri is not new -- he appeared on 60 Minutes back in
March [Slate] he United States admitted to German officials last year that
the CIA had mistakenly imprisoned one of its citizens for five months but
asked the German government to remain quiet ... "Masri was held for five
months largely because the head of the CIA's Counterterrorist Center's al
Qaeda unit 'believed he was someone else,' one former CIA official said.
'She didn't really know. She just had a hunch,"' the Post report said.
[Reuters]
	The German government has a list of at least 437 flights suspected
of being operated by the CIA in German airspace, according to a German
magazine. The weekly Der Spiegel said two planes alone accounted for 137
and 146 uses of airspace or landings in 2002 and 2003. "Such planes could
be used to transfer presumed terrorists and place them in secret
locations," Der Spiegel said. [Reuters]
	Rice is expected to give allies in Europe a response next week to
their pressure over Washington's treatment of terrorism suspects: back
off. For almost a month, the United States has been on the defensive,
refusing to deny or confirm media reports the United States has held
prisoners in secret in Eastern Europe and transported detainees
incommunicado across the continent. [Reuters]
	The ACLU this week will file suit against extraordinary rendition
(& Gitmo).  LAT on Saturday had an exclusive report that the FBI is
reopening an investigation into the uses and abuses of pre-war
intelligence.
	Officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigation mishandled a
Florida terror investigation, falsified documents in the case in an effort
to cover repeated missteps and retaliated against an agent who first
complained about the problems, Justice Department investigators have
concluded. [NYT]

[IRAN] American and European diplomats say they have new evidenceincluding
thousands of pages found on a laptop computer obtained by the U.S. last
yearthat proves Iran intends to build nuclear weapons.

[DEMOCRATS] Hillary Clinton continues to oppose the Bush administration
from the *right* on the war.  This week she called for a plan for
finishing this war ... I reject a rigid timetable ... I reject an open
timetable ... we need a plan for winning.  A puff piece in Newsweek this
week describes Clinton's hawkish stance as Hillary's Military Offensive.
	Continued effective Democratic support for the war is excoriated
in the journal The Black Commentator, in a cover story entitled, "Obama
Mouths Mush on War."
	Kerry has called for the withdrawal of 20,000 U.S. troops after
the Dec. 15 Iraqi parliamentary elections.  Yep. And, that would get the
troop level down to 140,000.... a mere 2000 MORE than before the increase
in advance of the elections!
	The United States needs to set "milestones for progress," not a
firm withdrawal date, before it can leave Iraq, Virginia governor and
prospective Democratic presidential candidate Mark Warner said on Monday.
[Reuters]

[CRAZINESS] British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, who chaired
the London meeting of the G7 (finance leaders from the United States,
Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan), said of retiring US
central banker Alan Greenspan at the closing news conference,
"...yesterday he also became a freeman of the City of London and he has
signed an oath of allegiance to Her Majesty the Queen to do so --
something as you know Americans have been reluctant to do for the last 250
years." Brown said he convinced Greenspan to do so by telling him that
former U.S. Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Theodore Roosevelt also had
taken similar oaths. Earlier in the day, Greenspan stopped before a knot
of reporters as he left a breakfast meeting and spent about 10 minutes
autographing notebooks and whatever was placed in front of him. [REUTERS]
Greenspan is probably the world's best-known fan of Ayn Rand.
	The Army National Guard, still faced with recruiting shortfalls,
is starting a pilot program to offer soldiers $2,000 finder's fee for
every recruit they bring in. [USAT]

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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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