[Peace] News notes 2005-05-01

[C. G. Estabrook]

	==================================================
	Notes from last week's "global war on terrorism,"
	for the AWARE meeting, Sunday, May 1, 2005.
	(Sources provided on request; a paragraph followed
	by a bracketed source is substantially verbatim.)
	==================================================

[1. OCCUPATION] It was a terrible weekend in Iraq, just after the
announcement of the formation of a government.  In three days more than
100 people have been killed, include five American soldiers, and hundreds
have been injured as the guerrilla movement pulled off a spectacular set
of bombings, as though responding decisively to President Bush's news
conference Thursday night in which he said, "I believe we're making really
good progress in Iraq..." [J. Cole] The attacks came in and around Baghdad
and Madain, south of the city.  The attacks came a day after parliament
voted in the new government of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jafari, which
left several jobs vacant, including the powerful oil and defence
ministries. [AJ] Iraq's great political survivor Ahmad Chalabi -- first
the darling and then the scapegoat of the Bush Administration -- will take
the hotly-contested post of Oil Minister on an interim basis. Chalabi, a
Shia Muslim, is also one of the four deputy Prime Ministers. [Times Online
UK]
	The LAT and the NYT both feature obviously planted stories about
how well the US is doing in promoting death squads in Iraq (they don't
call them that.) The NYT, in a bluff, straight from the shoulder style,
boasts, "It isn't pretty"...
	The WP discusses Iraq's constantly failing electrical grid, where
after investing at least $1.2 billion over the past two years, the average
daily output is still lower than prewar levels. A recent poll found that
Iraqis ranked the lack of electricity as their biggest problem, ahead of
crime. Now that the new Iraqi government has taken over, U.S. officials
insist they are not responsible for fixing the electricity.
	"In the 1930s the Spanish city of Guernica became a symbol of
wanton murder and destruction. In the 1990s Grozny was cruelly flattened
by the Russians; it still lies in ruins. This decade"s unforgettable
monument to brutality and overkill is Falluja, a text-book case of how not
to handle an insurgency, and a reminder that unpopular occupations will
always degenerate into desperation and atrocity." [DahrJamailIraq.com]
	A Columbia Journalism Review article says that, "if the death rate
has stayed the same," there have been "roughly 25,000" more 'Dead Iraqis'
since an estimate published in The Lancet was "missed or dismissed by the
American press."
	Some 142 non-citizen US troops have died in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Non-citizen casualty rates represent 8 percent of the total, despite being
less than 3 percent of the active duty military personnel.

[2. TORTURE] The NYT fronts increasing evidence that the United States is
sending terror suspects to Uzbekistan, a country that has been
persistently criticized by the State Department and human rights groups
for torturing prisoners. An intelligence official told the NYT dozens of
terrorism suspects have been sent to Uzbekistan. The US has used a
military base inside Uzbekistan since it attacked Afghanistan.
	The NYT discusses -- on page 23 -- an investigation that has
concluded prisoners in Guantánamo Bay were often mistreated and
humiliated as part of an interrogation strategy. The report will not be
released for another few weeks. It will examine memorandums written by FBI
agents about particular tactics they witnessed at the prison. A separate
report to be released today by a group called Physicians for Human Rights
will claim that the United States has been involved in "systematic
psychological torture" of prisoners at Guantánamo.
	On the anniversary of the revelation of the Abu Ghraib pix, the
WSJ editorializes "...information gleaned from dozens of courts martial
and criminal investigations have cleared most senior civilian and military
leaders of wrongdoing in the Abu Ghraib scandal and other Iraq prisoner
abuses."  In other words, it's time to put the matter behind us and move
on. the Administration certainly has. Donald Rumsfeld, who prevailed over
the torture camps at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and Afghanistan, was one of
the few Bush cabinet secretaries retained through the second term. Lt.
Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the former top commander in Iraq, has faced no
discipline. Alberto Gonzales, who crafted a memo designed to help
interrogators torture without legal restraint, has been promoted to the
post of attorney general, and is now going around the country trying to
impress on teenagers the great evil of downloading movies and music. Maj.
Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who visited Abu Ghraib to put pressure on
interrogators to extract information has gone unpunished and
unaccountable. And on and on.
	A former Arabic translator at Guantanamo, whose forthcoming book,
"Inside the Wire," was rushed to print after an AP report on the draft
manuscript, tells "60 Minutes" that prisoner interrogations were staged to
give visiting politicians and generals the impression that valuable
intelligence was being gleaned. [Cursor]

[3. POLLS] This weekend is the anniversary of the re-unification of
Vietnam, 30 years ago, after a century of colonial rule, French, Japanese,
and American. (It's also the anniversary of the US invasion of Cambodia,
35 years ago).  To celebrate, the New-Gazette runs a long and
self-indulgent piece by Ron Yates, dean of the College of Communications
at UIUC, about his experiences in Vietnam. It's a parody of journalism and
a disgusting bit of propaganda. Yates assumes but never argues for a
wildly unhistorical account of the Vietnam war with clear implications for
today: if Americans don't stop criticizing the administration, we risk
another "lost Crusade" (the title of the article) in Iraq...
	Administration toadies like Yates have reason to worry. The top
piece of advice Americans would give President Bush is to pull out of the
war in Iraq, a poll released Thursday indicated. Nearly a quarter of
respondents to a Gallup Poll said that if they had 15 minutes to talk to
the president they would tell him to end the war in Iraq, making it the
No.1 response. The second most popular response -- telling Bush to control
the prices of fuel and oil and improve energy -- got 8 percent of
respondents, while 6 percent said they would tell him to leave Social
Security alone. Praise tied for third -- 6 percent of respondents said
they would tell Bush he was doing a good job.[UPI]
	Half of all Americans, exactly 50%, now say the Bush
administration *deliberately* misled Americans about whether Iraq had
weapons of mass destruction, the Gallup Organization reported this week
(4/26)."This is the highest percentage that Gallup has found on this
measure since the question was first asked in late May 2003. At that time,
31% said the administration deliberately misled Americans. This sentiment
has gradually increased over time..."
	At the time of the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003, 70% of
Americans told pollsters they believed Saddam Hussein's government was
partly responsible for the 9/11 attacks
	More than half of Americans, 54%, disapprove of the way President
Bush is handling the situation in Iraq, while 43% approve. Three months
ago, Americans were more evenly divided on the way Bush was handling the
situation in Iraq, with 50% approving and 48% disapproving.  Last week
Gallup reported that 53% now believe that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was
"not worth it." But Frank Newport, editor in chief at Gallup, recalled
today that although a majority of the public began to think the Vietnam
war was a mistake in the summer of 1968, the United States did not pull
out of Vietnam for more than five years, after thousands of more American
lives were lost. [E&P]

[4. LOOTING] Congress passes a $2.6 trillion budget and agrees on a $14
trillion, five-year (nonbinding) budget that includes $106 billion in tax
cuts and some $40 billion sliced off planned growth in entitlements ($10
billion from Medicaid), the first such cuts in years. The bill also opens
the way for drilling in ANWR. [Slate]

[5. MEDIA] So it turns out that Don't Count Us Out, a "grassroots"
organization which objected to a change in Nielsen's audience measurement
techniques because of its potential for undercounting minority viewers,
was actually masterminded by the Glover Park Group, former Clinton
spokesperson Joe Lockhart's lobbying firm. [The Clintonoid firm] was
always acting to advance the corporate interests of [the owner of Fox
News] News Corp. and its TV stations, which experienced lower ratings
after Nielsen replaced papers diaries with more accurate electronic Local
People Meters in major television markets. [Cynopsis]
	Qatar draws up plan to sell off al-Jazeera ... because of pressure
from the US and a de facto advertising boycott by Arab countries offended
by its critical coverage ...

[6. NEOCONS] Jack Straw, himself a descendant of Jewish immigrants, said
of Lewis Libby, Vice-President Dick Cheney's chief of staff: "It's a
toss-up whether Libby is working for the Israelis or the Americans on any
given day." [NS]
	The so-called global war on terrorism does not exist, a high
ranking Australian army officer has declared in a speech this week. [SMH]

[7. AFGHANISTAN] Cherif Bassiouni, a top human rights investigator in
Afghanistan, was recently forced out of the United Nations under pressure
from the U.S. just days after he released a report criticizing the US for
committing human rights abuses. [DN]

[8. HAITI] Police fired on protesters demanding the release of detainees
loyal to Haiti's ousted president Wednesday, killing at least five
demonstrators, U.N. officials and witnesses said. [USAT]

[9. IRAN] Iran announced on Saturday that the meetings with the European
Union have been a failure and it might consider restarting its uranium
enrichment program.  A conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
is due to begin tomorrow. The United States and Iran are actually on the
same side in disagreeing with a proposal by the head of the International
Atomic Energy Agency that would prohibit the enriching of uranium and re
processing of plutonium for five years. Some experts say that while the
Bush administration wants to use the conference to focus on North Korea
and Iran, other countries want to point out how the United States is not
following its own responsibilities under the treaty.
	United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan on Thursday cautioned
against military action to punish Iran and said the Islamic republic was
"cooperating" with the West on talks about incentives to limit its nuclear
program.
	Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld charged yesterday that Iran
is fueling the insurgency in Iraq with money and fighters. [UPI]

[10. NK] North Korea said it would not deal with President Bush after he
called North Korean President Kim Jong Il a "tyrant" at Thursday's news
conference. This announcement came one day after U.S. intelligence
officials expressed concern that North Korea may be preparing a test to
prove they can develop nuclear weapons.
	The U.S. Defense Department says a statement Thursday by its
intelligence chief was not a new assessment indicating an increased
nuclear weapons capability by North Korea.  The spokesman was attempting
to clarify comments made Thursday by the head of the Defense Intelligence
Agency in testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee ... [Bush being
self-referential at his news conference:] "Look, Kim Jong-il is a
dangerous person,” said Mr. Bush.  “He's a man who starves his people.
He's got huge concentration camps. And there is concern about his capacity
to deliver a nuclear weapon. We don't know if he can or not, but I think
it's best when you're dealing with a tyrant like Kim Jong-il to assume he
can." [VOA]

[11. RUSSIA] The WP, in its insane editorial, quotes Putin as saying that
the collapse of the USSR was the greatest geopolitical disaster of the
20th century (i.e. worse than WWII etc.).  That's not what he said: "It
follows that it must be admitted that the collapse of the Soviet Union was
a very great catastrophe of the century."  Putin is in agreement with 75%
of his electorate (going by the last opinion poll I saw, about a month or
so ago). [C. Doss]

[12. UK] In an about-face, Prime Minister Tony Blair on Thursday published
the full text of the advice he received on the legitimacy of the Iraq war,
as he tried to defuse a dispute that has derailed his re-election strategy
just one week before British elections.  "There are a number of ways in
which the opponents of military action might seek to bring a legal case,
internationally or domestically, against the United Kingdom, members of
the Government or U.K. military personnel," the document said, as it laid
out the legal landscape ... "But regime change cannot be the objective of
military action," it concluded.
	But Britain discussed supporting the United States to bring about
a change of government in Iraq eight months before the March 2003
invasion, Tony Blair said on Sunday. His comments came in response to a
leaked memo in a newspaper that said Blair and President Bush were
determined to oust Iraq's former leader as early as July 2002.

[13. US] An Army and Marines recruitment center in Colorado was shot at
eight times this morning, an incident police believe is related to the
airing of a television news report Thursday night that raised questions
about recruitment practices.

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