[Peace] News notes 2005-06-26

[Carl Estabrook]

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   Notes from last week's "global war on terrorism,"
   for the AWARE meeting, Sunday, June 26, 2005.
   (Sources provided on request; a paragraph followed
   by a bracketed source is substantially verbatim.)
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[1. OCCUPATION] A Reuters' headline set the tone for the week: "Iraqi car
bombs kill 17, Rumsfeld stands firm." Amazing, the courage he displays...
	A suicide bomber with explosives hidden beneath watermelons in a
pickup truck slammed into a police station near a market Sunday in Mosul,
the first of three bombings that killed at least 33 people and wounded 19
in the northwestern city. Attacks elsewhere killed at least five other
people in Iraq, including a roadside bomb that killed a U.S. soldier and
wounded two others in central Baghdad.
	A large suicide car bombing in Fallujah killed six American
troops, including at least four women, on their way to checkpoint duty.
A car swerved into their seven-ton transport truck and exploded, "sending
metal shards and body parts in all directions, and a huge cloud of black
smoke and swirling dust climbing into the evening sky." (That's from Glanz
and Burns in the NYT...) It was the second attack in a week within
Fallujah, which was reduced by the US last November. The attacks came only
hours before a joint news conference with Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister
Jaafari, who gave the upbeat assessment that was expected.
	The Los Angeles Times, which printed an important commentary by
the reporter who published the Downing St. memo, leads with an analysis
that argues a credibility gap may be opening on Iraq. The paper focuses on
the vice president's remark that the insurgency is in its "last throes,"
which appears to have been a political blunder ... The LAT pairs its lead
with a report on the growing prison population in Iraq. The campaign
against Iraqi insurgents has produced more prisoners than the current
system can handle. U.S. plans now call for an expansion of current prisons
and a delay in the schedule for transferring control of the notorious Abu
Ghraib back to Iraqis.
	That "Support Our Troops" is purely a propaganda phrase is shown
by a NYT examination today of the military vehicles in Iraq. The article
blames an outdated, slow-moving procurement process as the reason many
soldiers have poorly armored vehicles.
	Insurgents may have been fighting each other in along the
Euphrates to the Syrian border. American commanders suggest that there has
been a split between Islamic militants and local rebels. One UN official
says, "I'm certain that the nationalist Iraqi part of the insurgency is
very much fed up with the Jihadists grabbing the headlines and carrying
out the sort of violence that they don't want against innocent civilians."
He also says that "The nationalist insurgent groups, 'are giving a lot of
signals implying that there should be a settlement with the Americans'"
[NYT]
	U.S. officials held secret talks in Iraq with the commanders of
several Iraqi insurgent groups on June 3 and 13, according to The Sunday
Times (UK). The story said those at the first meeting included Ansar
al-Sunnah Army, which has claimed responsibility for suicide bombings in
Iraq and an attack that killed 22 people in the dining hall of a U.S. base
at Mosul last Christmas. Two others were Jaish Mohammed, or Mohammed's
Army, and the Islamic Army in Iraq, which in August reportedly killed
Italian journalist Enzo Baldoni, the newspaper said. One of the Americans
at the talks introduced himself as a Pentagon representative and declared
himself ready to "find ways of stopping the bloodshed on both sides and to
listen to demands and grievances," The Sunday Times said ... The newspaper
report follows accounts of indirect talks with the insurgents using Iraqi
intermediaries.
	Rumsfeld acknowledged in American TV interviews on Sunday that US
officials have met fighters in Iraq [many more times than that but of
course], Rumsfeld says, "the US is not negotiating with 'terrorists'."
[AJ]
	Bush insisted on Saturday he had a strategy for defeating the
deadly insurgency in Iraq but Democrats said the war was threatening to
descend into a quagmire ... Bush said he would describe his Iraq strategy
in a speech on Tuesday night at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.
	SOD Rumsfeld said on Sunday that American forces would not defeat
Iraq's rebels but would make way for Iraqis to put down an insurgency that
could go on for a decade or more. [Reuters]

[2. TERRORISM] The NYT discusses today Italy's striking decision to issue
arrest warrants for 13 American spies who kidnapped a suspected Muslim
radical in Milan and sent him to Egypt for torture. The NYT says the
decision reflects a growing division between Europe, which is using law
enforcement to fight terrorism, and the United States -- which of course
is using terrorism as an excuse for imperial war (altho' the Times of
course doesn't put it that way).  Incidentally the high-living and
arrogantly careless US spies are being referred to generally as CIA: they
were much more likely from the Pentagon, special forces run by Rumsfeld's
creature, Stephen Cambone.
	Even more striking on the level of policy is the case of Ramzi bin
al-Shibh, a young man from Yemen who was arrested by the Pakistanis,
turned over to the Americans, and disappeared into one of the (said to be)
39 prisons of the CIA's worldwide gulag. The administration has refused to
allow Spanish authorities to interview him even thought he's accused of
being an operative of Al Qaeda whose testimony could be crucial to the
prosecution of two men on trial in Spain for helping to plan the Sept. 11,
2001, attacks ... In March 2004, the refusal of the United States to allow
German lawyers to interview a Qaeda suspect, widely believed to be Mr. bin
al-Shibh, led a German court to overturn the conviction of Mounir
el-Motassadeq, a Moroccan who had been found guilty of involvement in the
Sept. 11 attacks. [NYT] A revelation of what the US stance is don't really
prosecute terrorism because we need it as an excuse for war.

[3. TORTURE] "They're very well treated down there. They're living in the
tropics. They're well fed. They've got everything they could possibly
want," Cheney said in a CNN interview. "There isn't any other nation in
the world that would treat people who were determined to kill Americans
the way we're treating these people." The approximately 520 remaining
detainees are "terrorists. They're bomb-makers. They're facilitators of
terror. They're members of al-Qaida and the Taliban," Cheney said. "If you
let them out, they'll go back to trying to kill Americans."
	Meanwhile, investigators from the United Nations have accused the
US of stalling over their repeated requests to visit detainees at
Guantanamo Bay. The UN said for over a year there had been no response to
its requests to check on the condition of detainees.
	"United States Senator Richard Durbin (D-Illinois) should resign
for backing down to ignorant and authoritarian militarists like Richard M.
Daley, the longtime Democratic Mayor of Chicago. Durbin ... recently faced
a barrage of criticism from the White House, Fox News, and other
hyper-militarist outposts of the in-power American right [because] he
dared to tell a small part of the terrible truth about how [the US] is
conducting its terrorist war on terror. The passage for which Durbin has
been vilified is quite mild." [P. Street, ZNET]
	Meanwhile, administration Svengali Karl Rove emerged from the
shadows to say at a Manhattan fund-raiser, "Conservatives saw the savagery
of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of
the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and
understanding for our attackers," Mr. Rove, the senior political adviser
to President Bush, said at a fund-raiser in Midtown for the Conservative
Party of New York State.
	This I think is a sign that the administration is panicking,
particularly because of the polls. "They're losing ground on everything -
even the previous strong points, like Iraq and "terrorism." This tough-guy
talk must be an attempt to revive the old magic, but it ain't working.
It's kind of beautiful to watch." [D. Henwood]
	Meanwhile, a group of 50 progressive Congressmembers has formed a
new group called The Out of Iraq Congressional Caucus. [DN]

[4. WAR] Vice President Dick Cheney was asked on CNN about the 'Downing
Street memo' which said the Bush Administration had decided to go to war
with Iraq and the intelligence would be fixed around that policy. Asked if
he disputes the memo's claim, Cheney said, "Of course. The memo was
written sometime prior to when we actually got involved in Iraq ... The
memo is just wrong. In fact, the president of the United States took
advantage of every possibility to try to resolve this without having to
use military force.
	Michael Smith, the British reporter who was given the "Downing
Street memos," commented this week:  Blair [and Bush] agreed at Crawford
[Texas in April 2002] that "the UK would support military action to bring
about regime change." Because this was illegal, the [UK] officials noted,
it was "necessary to create the conditions in which we could legally
support military action." [The 7/23/2002 memo] quotes British Defense
Secretary Geoff Hoon as saying that "the U.S. had already begun 'spikes of
activity' to put pressure on the regime." Put simply, U.S. aircraft
patrolling the southern no-fly zone were dropping a lot more bombs in the
hope of provoking a reaction that would give the allies an excuse to carry
out a full-scale bombing campaign, an air war, the first stage of the
conflict ... But these initial "spikes of activity" didn't have the
desired effect. The Iraqis didn't retaliate. They didn't provide the
excuse Bush and Blair needed. So at the end of August, the allies
dramatically intensified the bombing into what was effectively the initial
air war ... In other words, Bush and Blair began their war not in March
2003, as everyone believed, but at the end of August 2002, six weeks
before Congress approved military action against Iraq ... The real news is
the shady April 2002 deal to go to war, the cynical use of the U.N. to
provide an excuse, and the secret, illegal air war... [LAT]

[5. LOOTING] The NYT today discusses a Chinese company's bid for the
UNOCAL oil company, that was thought to be being acquired by Chevron.
Seventy-three percent of Unocal's natural gas reserves are in Asia; its
pipelines run through the GME.
	Even as it proceeds with layoffs of up to 13,000 workers in Europe
and the United States, I.B.M. plans to increase its payroll in India this
year by more than 14,000 workers, according to an internal company
document. [NYT]
	In Switzerland, anti-globalisation protestors dressed as monks
fell to their knees in mock prayer to the gods of money as the world's
most powerful central bankers gathered for their annual summit on
Saturday. Chanting dirges before fake gold ingots and tossing packets of
fake money into the air, the group held a mock funeral for alleged victims
of globalisation outside the Bank for International Settlements (BIS),
central banker to the world where monetary officials from over 55
countries are holding their annual meetings this weekend.

[6. AFGHANISTAN] The Afghan government claimed that a total of 178 Taliban
fighters were killed and 56 captured in three days of fighting in south
Afghanistan, mostly by US airstrikes. But senior Taliban commanders
thought to have been in the area of the U.S.-backed operation escaped.

[7. BRAZIL] Brazil threatens to break the patent on an anti-Aids drug in
order to make a cheaper generic version.

[8. IRAN] The election of Tehran mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president of
Iran is being variously spun by USG and media.  It seems that his sweeping
victory (with a 60% turn-out, like the US) represents a protest by the
lower classes against the Iranian establishment; even the NYT says it was
driven largely by economic issues. The NYT also tells why the election may
please the USG, noting that a confrontation over Iran's nuclear program
now may be more likely -- and that, the US clearly wants.
	Apparently drawing from his most immediate experience of
presidents, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Sunday that the
Iranian president-elect is "no friend of democracy" and will prove himself
unacceptable to young Iranians and women.

[9. ISRAEL] Israeli officials have announced they have reinstated a policy
of assassinating wanted members of the Palestinian group Islamic Jihad. In
February Israel agreed to stop the assassinations as part of a ceasefire
deal. On Tuesday Israeli forces fired a missile into Gaza in an
unsuccessful assassination attempt. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports
the attack came just ten minutes after the start of a summit between
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian President Mahmoud
Abbas.
	Israel has bowed to U.S. pressure to cancel an arms deal with
China and will impose tighter controls on its weapons exports in general,
Israel's Haaretz newspaper reported on Sunday.
	A top Anglican Church body urges action against companies
supporting Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories.

[10. LA] Responding recently to a question about the insurgency in
Bolivia, Noam Chomsky wrote, "The US may try to interfere, but ... it's
unlikely to be successful My own guess at the time of the invasion of Iraq
was that it would be a walkover, and the US would then turn to military
intervention and subversion in the Andes.  I didn't count on the
extraordinary incompetence of Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz-etc in Iraq.  The
catastrophe they've created in what should have been one of the easiest
military occupations in history has significantly clipped their wings, I
think."

[11. VIETNAM] U.S. military specialists will return to Vietnam to help
train Vietnamese soldiers under a new agreement with the Pentagon, a
senior Vietnamese official said in an interview published on Thursday. It
should be clear to all now who actually won that war.

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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
  ### <www.carlforcongress.org> <www.newsfromneptune.com> ###
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