[Peace] News notes 2005-02-27

[C. G. Estabrook]

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	Notes from last week's "global war on terrorism,"
	for the AWARE meeting, Sunday, February 27, 2005.
	(Sources provided on request; a paragraph followed
	by a bracketed source is substantially verbatim.)
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[1. BUSH] Curious George went to Europe this week, but French President
Jacques Chirac seems to have been the Man with the Yellow Hat.  
(Americans say it's the continuation of the stripe down his back.)  It's
been said that Americans don't understand insult and can therefore only
answer with abuse -- a different thing -- if they notice it at all.  In
Europe, Bush seemed not to notice.  Chirac (who speaks good English) spoke
French to Bush at a formal dinner (perhaps understandably), but, much more
pointedly, when Bush announced that all 26 "NATO allies" would contribute
to a $5m program to train and equip Iraqi security staff, it emerged that
the French contribution was precisely one officer -- who would be a
liaison in Brussels!
	Bush again called on Iran Monday to stop its suspected nuclear
weapons program. He also refused to rule out using force in Iran but said
"Iran is ... different from Iraq. We're in the early stages of diplomacy."
Bush called "simply ridiculous" the notion that the US is preparing to
attack Iran, but he added, "Having said that, all options are on the
table." The remark "elicited laughter" [LAT], which was cut in American TV
broadcasts.
	Bush suggested Congress might retaliate for Europe's lifting its
arms ban on China by limiting arm sales to Europe (which sounds good).
	The British tabloid The Sun (the flagship publication of Rupert
Murdoch's News Corporation in Britain) said, "IRAQ war wobbler Jacques
Chirac scuttled George Bush's fence-mending trip to Europe yesterday -- by
cranking up a row over the future of Nato. He embraced a German-led plot
to ditch the alliance as the backbone of transatlantic relations, in
favour of the European Union ... France and Germany, led by Chancellor
Gerhard Schroeder, want defence enshrined in the EU constitution.  Mr Bush
said Nato was the 'cornerstone' of US-Europe relations. Tony Blair agreed
it was of 'fundamental importance.'"
	In Bratislava, Bush instructed Russian president Putin on
democracy and called for government changes in Belarus and Moldova like
those the US has engineered in Georgia and Ukraine. (Putin refrained form
calling for democracy in Texas and Florida.) In response to a question
from a reporter who observed (in Russian) that both presidents are
authoritarians, Bush said, "People do get fired in the American press.
They don't get fired by government, however. They get fired by their
editors or they get fired by their producers or they get fired by the
owners of a particular outlet or network."

[2. IRAN] The latest administration media plant on Iran takes the
yellowcake: The Washington Post today publishes government allegations
that Iran bought nuclear designs and materials from associates of A.Q.
Khan of Pakistan almost 20 years ago. An administration flack is quoted as
calling it "the strongest indication to date that Iran had a nuclear
weapons program."
	The Israeli paper Ha'aretz reports that the Commander-in-Chief of
the Israeli Air Force (Major General Eliezer Shakedi) said last Monday
that Israel must be prepared to carry out an air strike on Iran in light
of its alleged nuclear activity. Bush was asked how concerned he was that
Israel might attack Iran's nuclear sites. "Israel is our ally, and in that
we've made a very strong commitment to support Israel, we will support
Israel if their security is threatened," Bush said.
	The main [US] threat is against Iran, but that's been going on for
years. Its most important component has been the dispatch of over 100
advanced jet bombers to Israel over the past few years, unreported (as far
as I know) here, but very publicly announced internationally, with loud
proclamations for Iranian ears that they are capable of bombing Iran, and
equipped with (unspecified) advanced weaponry. The goal, presumably, is to
scare off the real enemies -- Europe and Northeast Asia -- and also to
provoke Iranian leaders into repressive acts that might contribute to
ongoing subversion operations internally ... And it's having success.
Increasingly, the world had been undercutting US efforts to isolate Iran
and somehow break it up from within. But that's recently been slowing, and
to an extent, reversing. Major European corporations, like Thyssen-Krupp,
BP, and others are beginning to back off from investments and joint
enterprises. It also appears that Japan may be backing away from a huge
contract to develop new Iranian oil fields. They are concerned about
irritating [the US ... But] if the US intended to attack Iran it's
unlikely that it would have been advertising it so loudly for several
years, giving Iranians plenty of time to disperse targets and take
defensive measures. And it seems ... unlikely that they would attack
anyone capable of defending themselves, though ... it is conceivable that
they might authorize Israel -- pretty much a US air force with Israeli
pilots -- to carry out some missions. So far, it looks ... more like what
has been going on for years: a policy aimed at increasing repression,
hence opposition and a chance for subversion, within Iran, and
intimidating rivals. [Noam Chomsky]

[3. IRAQ] During the past year the US has been compelled to back down step
by step from its plans for Iraq. It has been compelled to accept
elections, to accept the defeat of its chosen favorite, to allow Iraqis to
write a constitution. The state of the outrageous and illegal economic
conditions imposed by the CPA is uncertain. A leading plank of the winning
Shi'ite alliance was a timetable for withdrawal of the US-UK forces. Both
Washington and London flatly refuse, and the US has already announced that
its forces will stay into 2007. The elected leadership is under plenty of
pressure to accept what the Wall St Journal calls "vague promises" of
eventual withdrawal. But it's uncertain whether the US can sustain its
long-term plan to keep Iraq under US military control, by means of a
dependable client state.
	The main factor that has caused the US to back down is mass
non-violent resistance, including huge demonstrations, Sistani fatwas,
etc. It should be regarded as a triumph of non-violence, I think. The
"insurgents" are not a major problem for US planners. The US has such
overwhelming reserves of violence that in that arena it will never have
much trouble. But nonviolent resistance is a different matter.
	What can we do here? Anything we like: educational programs,
protests, demonstrations, etc. [There are no situations] exactly like
this, though there are others that have some similarity, and they have
shown that an organized activist public can impose conditions that power
simply cannot ignore. The Vietnam war, though a radically different
situation, did once again support that conclusion. [Noam Chomsky]

[4. POLLS] The Harris Poll asked more than a thousand Americans in the
second week in February, "Do you favor keeping a large number of U.S.
troops in Iraq until there is a stable government there OR bringing most
of our troops home in the next year?"  By 59% to 39%, Americans said to
bring the troops home -- up from a majority (50%/47%) in the other
direction in the week after the US election.
	This is a big change, and it's all the more remarkably because the
public continues to believe important elements of USG and media propaganda
about the war, e.g.:
   76% believe that the Iraqis are better off now than they were under
Saddam Hussein;
   64% believe that history will give the U.S. credit for bringing freedom
and democracy to Iraq;
   64% believe that Saddam Hussein had strong links to Al Qaeda;
   61% believe that Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, was a serious threat to
U.S. security;
   47% believe that Saddam Hussein helped plan and support the hijackers
who attacked the U.S. on September 11, 2001;
   44% believe that several of the hijackers who attacked the U.S. on
September 11 were Iraqis;
   36% believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the U.S.
invaded.

[5. BUREAUWARS] The battle between the CIA and the Neocons in the DOD
continues with competitive leaks to their favorite organs this weekend.
	The CIA is fretting about the possible prosecution of officers
involved in the interrogation and detention of terror suspects, reports
the NYT. So far, just one CIA contract employee has been slapped with
criminal charges, but the agency's inspector general is said to be
reviewing several other cases of alleged misconduct. Legal implications
could be particularly tricky, too, since officers used as their guideline
a 2002 legal opinion that has since been repudiated by the Justice
Department. [Slate]
	Meanwhile, the Washington Post offers a swansong for the glory
days of the CIA. With John Negroponte gearing up to become national
director of intelligence, the Post predicts that the special relationship
between the Oval Office and Langley will wither. Additionally, the FBI and
the Pentagon may take over some of the CIA's traditional duties. One
wistful former agent calls the CIA "a wounded gazelle on the African
plain." [Slate]

[6. TORTURE] On the occasion of Bush's visit to Europe, Victoria Brittain,
who with Gillian Slovo compiled the play Guantanamo, writes in the
Guardian:
	Why are we welcoming this torturer? Europe is tacitly condoning
the Bush regime's appalling practices. George Bush is this week having an
extravagantly orchestrated series of meetings with Europe's leaders,
designed to show a united front for the creation of democracy around the
world. Tony Blair talks of our "shared values". No one mentions the word
that makes this show a mockery: torture.
	It is now undeniable that the US administration, at the highest
levels, is responsible for the torture that has been routine not only, as
seen round the world in iconic photographs, at Abu Ghraib, but at
Guantánamo Bay and Bagram. Meanwhile, in prisons in Egypt, Jordan and
Syria (and no doubt others we do not know about), Muslim men have been
tortured by electric shocks to the genitals, by being kept in water, by
being threatened with death - after being flown to those countries by the
CIA for that very purpose.
	How can it be that not one mainstream public figure in Europe has
denounced these appalling practices and declared that, in view of all we
now know of cells, cages, underground bunkers, solitary confinement,
sodomy and threatened sodomy, beatings, sleep deprivation, sexual
humiliation, mock executions and kidnapping, President Bush and his
officials are not welcome? Perhaps it's not surprising given the British
army's own dismal record in southern Iraq. Why has no public figure had
the honesty to admit that the democracy and freedom promised for the
Middle East are fake and mask US plans to leave Washington dominant in the
area? And why does no one say publicly that what is really happening in
the "war on terror" is a war on Muslims that is creating a far more
dangerous world for all?
	From the flood of declassified material from Guantánamo, from
recent reports by the military that reveal evidence of abuse and even
deaths at Bagram being destroyed, from the war between the FBI and the CIA
about who is responsible for the interrogations, from the utter confusion
about who is to be responsible for the prisoners who will never be
released, one thing is clear: even in its own terms, the torture strategy
is a failure.
	As far back as September 2002, a secret CIA study into the
Guantánamo detainees suggested that many were innocent or such low-level
recruits to the Taliban forces that they had no intelligence value
whatever. You do not have to be a specialist in torture to know that after
a short period anyone will confess to anything to stop the pain. Men in
Guantánamo have been interrogated more than 100 times - always shackled,
always the same questions. No wonder prisoners simply stop answering. No
wonder there are so many unconvincing confessions.
	Now The Torture Papers - 1,249 pages of government memos and
reports, edited by Karen Greenberg, the executive director of the centre
on law and security at the New York University School of Law - shows the
American government to be guilty of a "systematic decision to alter the
use of methods of coercion and torture that lay outside of accepted and
legal norms".
	The young women interrogators in Guantánamo who put red ink in
their pants, then smeared what appeared to be menstrual blood on devout
Muslim men, and mocked them by turning off the water so they could not
wash before prayers, did not dream up such an idea and send home for red
ink. It was policy. Like the wearing of lacy underwear - only - for work
sessions, it was designed to humiliate and break men. These reports have
come from an army translator, Eric Saar, as well as from prisoners. Lawyer
Michael Ratner of the New York Centre for Constitutional Rights, which
represents over 100 prisoners, said it reminded him of "a pornographic
website -- it's like the fantasy of these S and M clubs".
	The lack of moral courage that prevents our leaders, religious as
well as political, from speaking out against all this is deeply
disturbing. Either they choose not to know or, by not speaking out, they
tacitly condone it.
	Whichever it is, their behaviour is in stark contrast to the
dignity of the relatives of the prisoners, or of the returned prisoners in
many countries. The care and concern that many of them display to the
isolated, the sick, the frightened and the traumatised among the families
are a testimony to the very best of the human spirit. If only these were
the shared values that Tony Blair liked to highlight. These men are driven
by a feeling of responsibility for trying to end the ordeal of those 540
men still at Guantánamo, including six UK residents. Among these are a
Palestinian refugee, Jamil el Banna, and an Iraqi, Bisher al Rawi, men who
have lived here for 10 and 20 years respectively, have families here, and
who the foreign secretary shamefully refuses to bring home from hell.

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   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
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