[Peace] News notes 2005-07-17

[Carl Estabrook]

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	Notes from last week's "global war on terrorism,"
	for the AWARE meeting, Sunday, July 17, 2005.
	(Sources provided on request; a paragraph followed
	by a bracketed source is substantially verbatim.)
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	...the Prime Minister was sitting alone in his office, ... waiting
	for a call from the President of a far distant country, ...
	wondering when the wretched man would telephone, and trying to
	suppress unpleasant memories of what had been a very long, tiring,
	and difficult week ... The more he attempted to focus on the print
	on the page before him, the more clearly the Prime Minister could
	see the gloating face of one of his political opponents. This
	particular opponent had appeared on the news that very day, not
	only to enumerate all the terrible things that had happened in the
	last week (as though anyone needed reminding), but also to explain
	why each and every one of them was the government's fault...

	--from the beginning of the new Harry Potter novel, with thanks to
	David Green for the reference; had J.K. Rowling clairvoyantly
	discerned George Galloway?  It's clear who the wretched man is.

[1. TERRORISM] The UK House of Commons rose up as one to proclaim that the
the London bombings had nothing to do with the invasion of Iraq but only
the evil scourge of Islamic terrorism, and therefore everybody should be
very afraid, and hate people like MP George Galloway, who shockingly said
that the bombings, tho' inexcusable, were not inexplicable. Right-thinking
people rejected that, of course.  Repeat: the bombings in London had
nothing to do with the war in Iraq, just as the war in Iraq has nothing to
do with oil...

[2. OCCUPATIONS] Suicide bombings killed at least 22 people in the Baghdad
area on Sunday [and a] suicide attack near a Shiite mosque in Musayyib
[south of Baghdad] on Saturday killed more than 90 people. [The latter
was] the second deadliest single [insurgent] bombing since the overthrow
of Saddam Hussein in April 2003. More than 150 people were wounded ... two
American soldiers died in separate attacks over the weekend. At least
1,767 members of the U.S. military have died since the Iraq war started in
March 2003, according to an Associated Press count ... Iraqi President
Jalal Talabani [said,] "After running out of their pretexts of resisting
the occupation, the terrorists have been targeting religious places,
children, oil and water facilities and Iraqi soldiers." [AP]
	Iraqi police [i.e., our police] detailed twelve suspected
militants inside a metal box under the Iraqi sun; nine died from the heat,
and one of the survivors complained that he had been given electric shocks
by the police. [Harpers]
	Total number of suicide bombings in Iraq since the U.S. invasion:
about 400. [Slate] Total number of suicide bombings in Iraq in recorded
history before the U.S. invasion: 0.
	U.S., Afghan and Pakistani forces have killed more than 60 people
... in restive tribal lands in the North-West Frontier region ... The
fighting follows a warning by a senior U.S. official last week that forces
on both sides of the border needed to squeeze the frontier region where
al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden might be hiding ...Early on Sunday,
Pakistani troops killed 17 people, some believed to be from Central Asia,
along with women and children ...The Pakistan army offensive in North
Waziristan coincides with President Pervez Musharraf's order for a
countrywide crackdown on Islamist militants in the wake of revelations of
Pakistani connections to the bomb blasts in London on July 7. [Reuters]
	Israel, threatening a major ground offensive into Gaza, gave a
free hand to its army in the occupied territories on Sunday. Troops and
tanks massed in preparation for an attack, but Israeli political sources
said they were unlikely to move before Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
visits ... Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said he had instructed the army "to
act without limitation to stop the strikes on Israeli communities" after
rocket and mortar salvoes continued despite an appeal by Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas ... a commander of the Hamas group that is behind
much of the rocket fire, was killed with a single bullet fired from a
nearby settlement. His father said he had been going to water the garden.
The army said it had killed him as part of a revived assassination policy
... Sharon, who ordered the army to step up action against militants after
a suicide bombing and rocket attack killed six Israelis last week, has
vowed not to quit Gaza under fire. [Reuters]

[3. FACTIONS] The affair of the administration's outing of an undercover
CIA agent continues to ruffle the feathers of the cognoscenti in the
American permanent government.  FAIR's Norman Solomon got it right I think
in a brilliant put-down of the Clintonoid Sidney Blumenthal, who as
Christopher Hitches pointed out, was once a secret leaker for his bubba
buddy bully Bill. Solomon said, "It would be a big mistake for social
movements to pin their hopes and their futures on what a court or
prosecutor does. I think it's also important for us to remember that the
news media themselves, as major institutions, are framing this. They are
themselves participating in the spin, and a lot of what we are getting now
is this notion that there's nothing more crucial for U.S. national
security than protecting the identity of a C.I.A. agent."
	But suppose one of Valerie Plame's covert CIA missions, until
outed by Karl Rove, had been to liaise with Venezuelan right-wingers
planning to assassinate president Hugo Chavez, possibly masquerading as a
journalist and using her attractions to secure an audience with the
populist president and then poison him, just as the CIA tried to poison
Castro ... The CIA's covert wing is not in the business of advancing world
peace and general prosperity. The record of almost 60 years is one of
uninterrupted evil. So we should drop all this nonsense about treason and
clap Rove warmly on the back for his courageous onslaughts on the cult of
secrecy. By all means delight in the White House's discomfiture, but spare
us the claptrap about national security and treason ... as a prime
propagandist of the war faction, Judith Miller [of the NYT, now in jail]
had every reason to be as keen to discredit Wilson as was Rove. Suppose it
was she who relayed from her pal and prime disinformant, Ahmad Chalabi,
the news that it was CIA employee Plame who assigned her husband the Niger
mission to assay the veracity of charges that Iraq had bought uranium
yellowcake there. Relayed to whom? Maybe to one of the State Department's
neocon warmongers, like John Bolton or Eliott Abrams, who duly passed the
news on to Scooter Libby and Rove in the White House. Remember, Rove told
the prosecutor that he learned about Plame from two journalists. [A.
COCKBURN]
	Vice President Dick Cheney's top aide was among the sources for a
Time magazine reporter's story about the identity of a CIA officer, the
reporter said Sunday ... Cooper said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that he
spoke to Lawrence Scooter Libby after first learning about Wilson's wife
from Rove. According to Cooper, Libby and Rove were among the government
officials referred to in Cooper's subsequent Time story that said Wilson's
wife was a CIA official and that she was involved in sending her husband
on a trip to Africa ... Cooper also said there may have been other sources
for that information. He declined to elaborate. [AP]
	So Rove could be telling the truth, and the affair may represent a
further diminution of the influence of the neocons, a faction to which the
the Bush-Rove-Bush axis of evil never quite belonged.  But it won't make
much difference to administration war policy if Rove is forced to resign.
The matter becomes important only if disarray in the permanent government
discredits the war policy, leading to the end of the current war and
prevention of future ones.
	This case is about Iraq, not Niger. The real victims are the
American people, not the Wilsons. The real culprit ... is not Mr. Rove but
the gang that sent American sons and daughters to war on trumped-up
grounds ... this scandal is about the unmasking of an ill-conceived war,
not the unmasking of a C.I.A. operative who posed for Vanity Fair. So put
aside Mr. Wilson's February 2002 trip to Africa. The plot that matters
starts a month later, in March, and its omniscient author is Dick Cheney.
It was Mr. Cheney (on CNN) who planted the idea that Saddam was "actively
pursuing nuclear weapons at this time." The vice president went on to
repeat this charge in May on "Meet the Press," in three speeches in August
and on "Meet the Press" yet again in September. Along the way the
frightening word "uranium" was thrown into the mix. [F. RICH]

[4. MILITARY] A military investigation into FBI reports of prisoner abuse
at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, recommended that the base's former commander,
Army Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, be reprimanded, but a top general rejected
the recommendation.
	The dangers faced by American troops in Iraq have been
exaggerated, adding to the difficulty of recruiting soldiers at home, the
Army general in charge of National Guard forces said Tuesday.
	The Bush administration Monday came under more pressure to outline
the number of American forces that may need to stay in Iraq over the next
two years after the Pentagon failed to meet a 60-day deadline set by
Congress to provide a detailed plan for training Iraqis and for likely US
troop levels.  The report to Congress, due July 11, was required under the
$80 billion war spending legislation approved in May. It is intended to
help answer one of the most pressing questions hanging over the
American-led occupation: when the United States might be able to begin
drawing down the estimated 140,000 forces in Iraq.
	Senate Democrats on Wednesday called for an investigation into
allegations that Halliburton Co. served food that had passed its
expiration date by as much as a year to U.S. troops in Iraq.
	Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) led a team of Senate and
House Democrats who introduced legislation Wednesday significantly to
increase the size of the U.S. Army.

[5. NUCLEAR] The "Trinity" test, the first test of a nuclear weapon,
occurred 60 years ago yesterday, in the New Mexico desert. A plutonium
bomb was tested, the type of weapon later dropped on Nagasaki, Japan (the
weapon used against Hiroshima was powered by uranium, a type not tested
prior to its use in World War II).
	To celebrate the occasion, a Chinese general said on Thursday that
China is prepared to use nuclear weapons against the US if it is attacked
by Washington during a confrontation over Taiwan. The US won't want to
trade Taipei for LA, he said.

[6. POLLS] The NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll on Wednesday showed the
percentage of Americans who believe Bush is "honest and straightforward"
fell to 41 percent from 50 percent in January, while those who say they
doubt his veracity climbed to 45 percent from 36 percent ... 40 percent
see Iraq as the top priority for the United States, against 34 percent who
view jobs as their main concern. In January, jobs ranked highest among 46
percent to 39 percent for Iraq. The new poll also showed Bush's overall
job approval rating slipping to 46 percent from 47 percent in May, while
his disapproval rating crept upward to 49 percent from 47 percent.
[Reuters]

[7. GME] Kyrgyzstan's newly elected president on Monday sent a troubling
message to Washington that the presence of a U.S. base in his Central
Asian nation should be reconsidered. Neighboring Uzbekistan has also
placed in doubt the future of the U.S. base on its territory -- a
strategic reverse for the United States which established a military
foothold in this energy-rich region neighboring Afghanistan after the
Sept. 11 attacks. [AP]

[8. HAITI] One of Haiti's best-known journalists and poets, Jacques Roche,
has been found murdered ... His handcuffed and mutilated body was found in
a slum district of the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince.

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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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