[Peace] News notes 2005-07-03

[Carl Estabrook]

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   Notes from last week's "global war on terrorism,"
   for the AWARE meeting, Sunday, July 3, 2005.
   (Sources provided on request; a paragraph followed
   by a bracketed source is substantially verbatim.)
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	"There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense
	of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights." --Gen. S. D.
	Butler (1881-1940), at the time of his death the most decorated
	marine in U.S. history and the author of "War is a Racket" (1935)

Things were looking very bad for the administration this week, until it
was saved at the last minute by the gift of a major distraction from its
troubles.  But the troubles were real.
	[1] As Ricky pointed out on our peace-discuss list, a poll this
week showed that 42% of Americans think that Bush should be impeached if
he lied to the public about the Iraq war.  (When Clinton actually was
impeached, only 35% were in favor of it.)  Even 25% of Republicans think
Bush should be impeached if he lied.  [Zogby] And most Americans now
believe that Bush's administration "intentionally misled" the public in
going to war in Iraq, according to the ABC News/Washington Post poll. A
record 57 percent say the Bush administration "intentionally exaggerated
its evidence that pre-war Iraq possessed nuclear, chemical or biological
weapons." The ABC News/Washington Post poll also showed that 51 percent of
Americans disapprove of the Bush's overall performance, with 40 percent
strongly disapproving.  (Comparatively, former president Bill Clinton's
highest strong disapproval rating peaked at 33 percent in 1994, while the
strong disapproval rating for Bush's father George H.W. Bush reached 34
percent in 1992.) [AFP]
	I think these are the numbers that Karl Rove was reading when he
went public and made his demagogic attack on liberals last week.  But Karl
has his own problems: he is now reported to be the source for outing the
CIA agent, Valerie Plame, in a stupid act of retribution by this
administration.
	[2] Bush's speech on Tuesday was a bomb, after a fashion.
Speaking to his usual audience of the people -- military people -- he
never mentioned weapons of mass destruction but did manage to mention 9/11
five times.  Trying to make the case as he had stated it the previous week
-- that we are at war because we were attacked -- he quoted in support no
less an authority that Osama bin Laden. And, while he insisted that the
war would continue, he made magnanimous concessions to the right and left:
he would not set a date for withdrawal, he said, as Iraqis in general
want, nor would he increase the number of US troops in the country as the
Democratic party wants. The speech failed to gather support for the war or
for the administration as it sank deeper into the Iraqi quagmire. E.g., as
the numbers of U.S. war injured in Iraq and Afghanistan soared, the Bush
administration admitted to lawmakers on Tuesday it had underestimated
funds to cover health care costs for veterans and Congress would have to
plug a $2.6 billion hole.
	[3] And finally, the war itself is going badly, and more Americans
are coming to realize it. In Iraq 11 student unions approved the call made
on al-Jaafari's government to set a timetable for the withdrawal of
multinational forces and considered that the request made by the Iraqi
government at the UN for the extension of their presence is an
infringement on Parliament's prerogatives. British and American aid
intended for Iraq's hard-pressed police service is being diverted to
paramilitary commando units accused of widespread human rights abuses,
including torture and extra-judicial killings. Secret torture chambers,
the brutal interrogation of prisoners, murders by paramilitaries with
links to powerful ministries... The Foreign affairs editor of the Observer
(UK) in Baghdad described abuse carried out by forces loyal to the new
Iraqi government.
	There was therefore perhaps one new thing in Bush's speech: he
spoke carefully throughout of the resistance in Iraq being composed of
insurgents and terrorists -- always the two -- probably because it was
confirmed last week that the US military was negotiating with insurgents
but as SOD Rumsfeld insists, "We don't negotiate with terrorists."
	Such negotiations will undoubtedly continue as the US seeks to
divide and conquer or at least pacify the occupied territory.  It's a Fort
Apache strategy:
	[a] hold strong points (permanent bases);
	[b] control the resources (notably oil), at least to the extent of
denying them to anyone else;
	[c] use death squads of Americans and Iraqis to terrorize the
population (aka the Salvador option), in order to
	[d] prevent the coalescence of a unified opposition.
Negotiations with and bribes to insurgent groups aid the last point.
	This way the US can hold out indefinitely at least for the 12
years Rumsfeld mentioned last week regardless of how miserable the Iraqis
become. But the situation is so bad that John Kerry actually said this
week that The president must also announce immediately that the United
States will not have a permanent military presence in Iraq. [NYT]

The major distraction -- for which I think Rove is on his knees in
thanksgiving was the resignation of Justice O'Connor from the Supreme
Court. Now the media and what passes for public debate can be monopolized
by the largely pro forma dispute on a successor. As Counterpunch.org
writes, "Will a single member of the political elites dare to leave the
Homeland over the summer? It's red alert for the politicians,
opinion-formers, judicial lobbies, law school experts, public interest
groups. People for the American Way are on 24/7 fedex duty, sending out
bulletins and fundraisers ... Construction crews are throwing back up
emergency broadcasting and relay stations in Martha's Vineyard, Sag
Harbor, the Poconos, Jackson Hole and other favored pundit summer spots."
	But the outcome is hardly in doubt, and it will not make much
difference, since the wildly undemocratic setting of social policy by the
courts in fact over time follows the national consensus anyway, regardless
of who the justices are, as can be seen in matters from segregation to
free speech.  But in the meantime, largely pointless and theoretical
disputes about the court can distract attention from the practical matter
of killing people in SW Asia (and elsewhere), which the administration
intends to continue to do.  With the chief justice's death or resignation
perhaps soon to follow, any mentions of the world-wide US policies of
torture and illegal imprisonment can be buried by court chat as easily as
Sen. Durbin's timid mentions of such matters were interred.

[PROPAGANDA] Elsewhere yesterday, there were concerts in ten countries
under the name Live 8, organized it was said to raise not funds, but
awareness about African poverty, in the run-up to the G8 meeting in
Scotland next week.  Since 1975, the heads of state or government of the
major industrialized countries have been meeting annually on major
economic and political issues. Eight government are now involved (hence)
the name -- the United States, Britain, Canada, France Germany, Japan,
Italy, and Russia. Even the WP argues that there's not much connection
between G-8 debt relief and aid goals and the actual needs of poor
Africans. As the GuardiAn put it, NGOs from the global south, meanwhile,
are horrified by a campaign that makes demands on the G8: it is
responsible for most of the problems of the developing world, they say;
protests should be directed against the G8, not through it.

[SPIES] The WP has a story today about a spy center in Paris run by the
CIA and French intelligence; largely funded by the CIA Counterterrorist
Center, its working language is French in order downplay American
involvement.  They claim credit for the capture of a supposed European al
Qaeda figure. The WP claims that covert, often informal, alliances between
spies have resulted in the majority of captures and killings of "committed
jihadists" outside of Iraq and Afghanistan since the 9/11 attacks. AS
usual with stories like this, one should ask who leaked it and why.  I
presume this was from Langley part of their covert war with the Pentagon
for the control of covert war...

[TORTURE] Washington has for the first time acknowledged to the United
Nations that prisoners have been tortured at US detention centres in
Guantanamo Bay, as well as Afghanistan and Iraq, a UN source said. The
acknowledgement was made in a report submitted to the UN Committee against
Torture, said a member of the ten-person panel, speaking on on condition
of anonymity. "They are no longer trying to duck this, and have respected
their obligation to inform the UN," the Committee member told AFP. "They
they will have to explain themselves (to the Committee). Nothing should be
kept in the dark." UN sources said it was the first time the world body
has received such a frank statement on torture from US authorities. The
Committee, which monitors respect for the Convention against Torture and
Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, is gathering
information from the US ahead of hearings in May 2006. Signatories of the
convention are expected to submit to scrutiny of their implementation of
the 1984 convention and to provide information to the Committee. The
document from Washington will not be formally made public until the
hearings. "They haven't avoided anything in their answers, whether
concerning prisoners in Iraq, in Afghanistan or Guantanamo, and other
accusations of mistreatment and of torture," the Committee member said.
"They said it was a question of isolated cases, that there was nothing
systematic and that the guilty were in the process of being punished." The
US report said that those involved were low-ranking members of the
military and that their acts were not approved by their superiors, the
member added. The US has faced criticism from UN human rights experts and
international groups for mistreatment of detainees -- some of whom died in
custody -- in Afghanistan and Iraq, particularly during last year's
prisoner abuse scandal surrounding the Abu Ghraib facility there. Scores
of US military personnel have been investigated, and several tried and
convicted, for abuse of people detained during the US-led campaign against
Islamic terrorist groups. At the Guantanamo Bay naval base, a US toehold
in Cuba where around 520 suspects of some 40 nationalities are held,
allegations of torture have combined with other claims of human rights
breaches. The US has faced widespread criticism for keeping the Guantanamo
detainees in a "legal black hole," notably for its refusal to grant them
prisoner of war status and allegedly sluggish moves to charge or try them.
Washington's report to the Committee reaffirms the US position that the
Guantanamo detainees are classed as "enemy combatants," and therefore do
not benefit from the POW status set out in the Geneva Conventions, the
Committee member said. Four UN human rights experts on Thursday slammed
the United States for stalling on a request to allow visits to terrorism
suspects held at the Guantanamo Bay naval base, and said they planned to
carry out an indirect probe of conditions there. [AFP]
	The UN has learned of "very, very serious" allegations that the
United States is secretly detaining terrorism suspects in various
locations around the world, notably aboard prison ships, the UN's special
rapporteur on terrorism, Manfred Nowak, said ... Last Thursday Nowak and
three other UN human rights experts said they were opening an inquiry into
the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where Washington has been
holding more than 500 people without trial, and into other such locations
... The use of prison ships would allow investigators to interrogate
people secretly and in international waters out of the reach of US law,
British security expert Francis Tusa said. "This opens the door to very
tough interrogations on key prisoners before it even has been revealed
that they have been captured," said Tusa, an editor for the British
magazine Jane's Intelligence Review ... Tusa said the Americans may also
be using their island base of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean as a site
for prisoners. Some 520 people suspected of terrorism are currently being
held without trial at Guantanamo and others are in camps the United States
has refused to acknowledge, the human rights organization Amnesty
International has said. The United States has said that prisoners
considered foreign combattants in its "war on terrorism" are not covered
by the Geneva Conventions. [AFP]

[MILITARY] The Pentagon has promoted or nominated for promotion two senior
Army officers who oversaw or advised detention and interrogation
operations in Iraq during the height of the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse
scandal. The Army promoted Maj. Gen. Walter Wodjakowski, the former deputy
commander of American forces in Iraq, earlier this month to be the head
the Army's infantry training school at Fort Benning, Ga. It has also
nominated Col. Marc Warren, the top military lawyer for the American
command in Baghdad at the time, to be a one-star, or brigadier, general.
A third officer, Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast, the former top intelligence
officer in Iraq, took command earlier this year of the Army's intelligence
center at Fort Huachuca, Ariz.
	It was revealed that the Defense Department, in violation of the
federal Privacy Act, has been building a database of thirty million
sixteen- to twenty-five-year-olds. "If you don't want conscription," said
the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, you have to
give the Department of Defense, the military services, an avenue to
contact young people." [NYT] The U.S. Navy sent a letter to Fola Coats, an
eighty-year-old Arkansas woman, asking her to join the Seabees.

[OCCUPATION] In Afghanistan U.S. military continue to search for missing
soldiers in Kunar Province. U.S. aircraft bombed a suspected insurgent
compound where U.S. soldiers have been missing since Tuesday. A Taliban
spokesman claimed that 25 civilians had died in the airstrikes. A
transport helicopter sent to search for the missing troopers was shot
down, killing all 16 aboard.

[WAR] Dozens of activists holding an unofficial tribunal to put the US-led
war in Iraq on trial have recommended that US President George Bush and
British Prime Minister Tony Blair be investigated for crimes against
humanity. The World Tribunal on Iraq, meeting in an old Ottoman minting
house in Istanbul on Monday, held three days of speeches, discussions and
testimony from witnesses, including soldiers who served in Iraq. It
recommended "an exhaustive investigation of those responsible for crimes
of aggression and crimes against humanity in Iraq, beginning with ... Bush
... Tony Blair ... and other government officials from the coalition of
the willing," said prize-winning Indian author Arundhati Roy, spokeswoman
for the panel. Participants also asked for the immediate withdrawal of
forces from Iraq; that governments prosecuting the war in Iraq pay war
reparations; and that US military prisons such as Camp Delta at Guantanamo
Bay be shut down. They also urged action against companies that allegedly
profited from the war. The informal tribunal also accused the United
Nations Security Council of failing to protect Iraq against a crime of
aggression. The session was the third and final session of the group,
featuring dozens of intellectuals, scholars and authors, as well as
activists. The first two sessions took place in Brussels and New York.
The World Tribunal on Iraq is modelled on the Russell Tribunal, which was
convened by philosopher Bertrand Russell in 1967 to investigate the
Vietnam war. [AP]
	On this July 4 weekend, we Americans might find some resemblances
in their summary statement: "Recognising the right of the Iraqi people to
resist the illegal occupation of their country and to develop independent
institutions, and affirming that the right to resist the occupation is the
right to wage a struggle for self-determination, freedom, and independence
as derived from the Charter of the United Nations, we the Jury of
Conscience declare our solidarity with the people of Iraq."

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  C. G. Estabrook, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  109 Observatory, 901 South Mathews Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801
  office 217.244.4105; mobile 217.369.5471; home 217.359.9466
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