[Peace] News notes 2006-05-14

[Carl Estabrook]

        ==================================================
        Notes from last week's "global war on terrorism,"
        for the May 7, 2006, meeting of AWARE, the
        "Anti-War Anti-Racism Effort" of Champaign-Urbana.
        (Sources provided on request; paragraphs followed
        by a bracketed source are substantially verbatim.)
        ==================================================

	"The regional superpower Israel is threatening to attack [Iran],
	the U.S. is threatening to attack it.  These threats alone are
	outright violations of international law and of the U.N. charter.
	Iran is in difficulty.  Iran has been trying for some years to
	negotiate settlement but the U.S. just refuses." --Noam Chomsky

[1] WAR AND OCCUPATION. The LA Times Baghdad bureau chief writes that more
people "are dying violently now than at any time since the U.S.-led
invasion." [DN]
	Bombs killed 30 people in Baghdad on Sunday and attacks wrecked
six Shi'ite shrines in a rural area ... Two suicide bombers in cars killed
14 Iraqis at the entrance to Baghdad airport ... in southern Iraq two
British soldiers were killed in a roadside bomb attack in Basra ... blasts
destroyed small shrines in a rural area north of Baghdad on Saturday ...
in Wajihiya, a religiously mixed village 30 km (20 miles) east of the
regional capital Baquba, reduced to rubble the one-room building attached
to the shrine dedicated to Abdullah bin Ali al-Hadi, a noted cleric
related to the two Shi'ite imams commemorated at the Golden Mosque in
Samarra ... "This is a quiet place. We live in harmony with each other,"
local man Faez Abbas, 26, said, adding that Sunnis also used the shrines
for worship -- a common practice in Iraq, although shrines are most often
set up by Shi'ites ... Near the southern holy Sh'ite city of Kerbala,
police found the bodies of five people, blindfolded, bound and with gun
shots. Separately, the bodies of four brothers who worked in a
humanitarian organization were found beheaded also in Kerbala. [Is this
more of the Pentagon using the "Salvador option" to encourage
Sunni/Shi'ite strife and prevent the emergence of an Iraqi government that
can oppose the US?]

[2] SUPPORT OUR TROOPS. U.S. military troops with severe psychological
problems have been sent to Iraq or kept in combat, even when superiors
have been aware of signs of mental illness ... The Hartford Courant,
citing records obtained under the federal Freedom of Information Act and
more than 100 interviews of families and military personnel, reported
numerous cases in which the military failed to follow its own regulations
in screening, treating and evacuating mentally unfit troops from Iraq ...
Twenty-two U.S. troops committed suicide in Iraq last year, accounting for
nearly one in five of all non-combat deaths and the highest suicide rate
since the war started, the newspaper said. Some service members who
committed suicide in 2004 and 2005 were kept on duty despite clear signs
of mental distress, sometimes after being prescribed antidepressants with
little or no mental health counseling or monitoring ... The Army's top
mental health expert [said,] "...recruiting has been a challenge, and so
we have to weigh the needs of the Army, the needs of the mission, with the
soldiers' personal needs."

[3] WHO'S CRAZY?  "Days after 9/11, a senior Pentagon official lamented
the lack of good targets in Afghanistan and proposed instead U.S. military
attacks in South America or Southeast Asia as 'a surprise to the
terrorists,' according to a footnote in the recent 9/11 Commission Report.
The unsigned top-secret memo, which the panel's report said appears to
have been written by Defense Under Secretary Douglas Feith, is one of
several Pentagon documents uncovered by the commission which advance
unorthodox ideas for the war on terror. The memo suggested 'hitting
targets outside the Middle East in the initial offensive.'"
Specifically, Feith wanted to bomb the triple border region where
Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil meet. I think one thing's for sure: that
would have been "a surprise." And, not just for Osama bin Laden.
[tinyrevolution.com]
	A group of European lawmakers are in this country as part of their
investigation into the CIAs secret prison facilities and renditions of
suspects throughout their continent. But after a meeting with the State
Department, Carlos Coelho, the delegations Portuguese chair, said US
officials had given very little information. [DN]

[4] THE ENEMY WITHIN.  A peculiar article in the Washington Post this
morning suggests that there aren't enough detention centers for all those
non-Mexican illegal immigrants who are caught. And the Los Angeles Times
says that a shortage of jail beds in Los Angeles County has led to 150,000
inmates being released before serving out their full sentence and then go
out to commit crimes.  These seem to be run-ups to Bush's Monday night
speech on immigration.  It's hard not to see the crying up of illegal
immigration as a rather vicious exercise in distraction, an invocation of
the domestic enemy while the administration desperately gathers support
for its wars in Iraq and Iran.  It's not surprising to hear the Karl Rove,
reported to be on the brink of indictment and resignation in regard to the
Plame matter, is engineering the immigration hysteria as his good-bye
present to the besieged administration.

[5] THE CHENEY ADMINISTRATION.  The NYT says today on the front page that
Vice President Dick Cheney pushed the National Security Agency to tap
domestic phone calls and e-mails without warrants. Lawyers at the NSA
argued against the proposal, saying they could only carry it out if one of
the parties involved was outside the United States.  AF Gen. Michael V.
Hayden, nominee for director of the Central Intelligence Agency, led the
NSA at the time, should face questions about this illegal spying during
Senate hearings this week. [Slate] But the questions will probably be
perfunctory and Hayden will be confirmed despite the obvious illegality.
USA Today last week said the NSA had obtained records from three major
telephone companies, AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc. and BellSouth
Corp to amass a database on tens of millions of domestic calls in an
effort to uncover terrorist activities.
	Vice President Dick Cheney wrote several notes on a copy of the
Op-Ed piece by Joseph C. Wilson IV that questioned the assertions that
Iraq had tried to purchase materials for a nuclear bomb from Africa. The
notes asks questions about Wilson's trip to Africa and whether his wife,
Valerie Plame, arranged the trip. This new piece of evidence comes from a
filing by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who says Cheney gave the
column, with notes, to his chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby,
before Libby talked about the subject with reporters. Besides showing
Cheney's interest in Wilson and what he wrote, Fitzgerald could use this
new evidence to prove that Libby lied when he said he learned about
Wilson's wife from reporters. (Newsweek was the first to report the
story.) [Slate]
	Reuters caught Vice President Dick Cheney sleeping at a meeting
with President Bush, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of
State Condoleeza Rice.  Cheney was also caught napping at a meeting last
month. [Maybe there's a metaphor here.]

[6] GUARDING OUR RIGHTS. Justice Department asks a federal judge to
dismiss a lawsuit against AT&T Inc. for its collaboration in the NSA's
warrantless eavesdropping program. The government says that going through
with the suit could damage national security. [Slate]
	The New York Times reports former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham
(R-CA) is refusing to speak with Pentagon investigators about the bribery
scheme that led to his resignation from office. The Times' Paul von
Zielbauer also has the lead investigator in the case saying he is likely
to "eventually identify several conspirators." Dusty Foggo said through
his lawyer yesterday that he did not have any improper relationship with
Brent Wilkes, a defense contractor at the center of a congressional
bribery scandal. The Los Angeles Times reports that federal prosecutors
have begun an investigation into Appropriations Chairman Rep. Jerry Lewis
(R-CA) and his unusually close relationship with a Washington lobbyist
linked to the Duke Cunningham scandal. [ABC]

[7] THE COMPANY SHE KEEPS. A senior CIA official, meeting with Senate
staff in a secure room of the Capitol last June, promised repeatedly that
the agency did not violate or seek to violate an international treaty that
bars cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment of detainees, during
interrogations it conducted in the Middle East and elsewhere. But another
CIA officer -- the agency's deputy inspector general, who for the previous
year had been probing allegations of criminal mistreatment by the CIA and
its contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan -- was startled to hear what she
considered an outright falsehood, according to people familiar with her
account. It came during the discussion of legislation that would constrain
the CIA's interrogations. That CIA officer was Mary O. McCarthy, 61, who
was fired on April 20 for allegedly sharing classified information with
journalists, including Washington Post journalist Dana Priest. A CIA
employee of two decades, McCarthy became convinced that "CIA people had
lied" in that briefing, as one of her friends said later, not only because
the agency had conducted abusive interrogations but also because its
policies authorized treatment that she considered cruel, inhumane or
degrading.

[8] TWEEDLEDUMB OR TWEEDLEDUMBER? Sen. John McCain defended the Iraq war
during a commencement speech at Rev. Jerry Falwell's Liberty University.
(During the Republican presidential primary in 2000, McCain described
Falwell as an "agent of intolerance") [Slate] But McCain, the probable
Republican nominee for president in two years, thinks he needs Falwell
now, given that his probable opponent is another war supporter, Hillary
Clinton.]
	Presidents swear to "protect and defend the Constitution." The
Constitution says: "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom
of speech." On April 28, on Don Imus's radio program, discussing the
charge that the McCain-Feingold law abridges freedom of speech by
regulating the quantity, content and timing of political speech, John
McCain did not really reject the charge: "I work in Washington and I know
that money corrupts. And I and a lot of other people were trying to stop
that corruption. Obviously, from what we've been seeing lately, we didn't
complete the job. But I would rather have a clean government than one
where quote First Amendment rights are being respected that has become
corrupt. If I had my choice, I'd rather have the clean government." [Will]

[9] THE TERROR BUSINESS. [How little the administration is really doing
about terrorism -- other than using it as a specious excuse for aggression
in the Middle East -- is indicated] in a front-page story [in] the NYT
[that] looks at why it has taken so long for the Department of Homeland
Security to create identification cards for transportation workers. Four
years after the plan was created and two years past a deadline, the cards
have not even started to be produced. Meanwhile, many of the delays, along
with millions of dollars, have benefited the constituents and political
donors of Rep. Harold Rogers, a Republican from Kentucky who chairs the
subcommittee that controls the department's budget.

[10] SPECIAL OPERATIONS. The WP and NYT carry a Reuters dispatch from
Mogadishu, Somalia, where at least 144 people have been killed in the past
seven days as fighting between militias continues. They report that the
country's interim government has asked for foreign intervention to help
stop the violence. [Slate]
	Outrageously enough, what the papers don't say is that the
violence is the result of the US's supplying money and arms to a group of
warlords who are responsible for the killing. Somalia, like Sudan, was one
of the countries proposed for regime change in the neocon plans published
a decade ago (like "A Clean Break," 1996).  All of these countries (like
Serbia) are on the perimeter of the US's prime concern, Middle East energy
resources.

[11] A HECKUVA JOB. In the WP today, Michael Grunwald wonders why
Americans aren't angrier with the Army Corps of Engineers. In 2000,
Grunwald wrote a 50,000-word series on "dysfunction" at the Corps, and
since then, little has changed. After Hurricane Katrina, the Federal
Emergency Management Agency took the brunt of the blame for how it
responded. The Army Corps of Engineers, meanwhile, continues to receive
more money from Congress and has largely escaped scrutiny, even though it
helped create the disaster.

[12] PERSIAN LETTERS.  On Monday, the Iranian president's letter to Bush
-- which SOS Rice rejected without having read it -- was published.
Among a good deal else, it said,
    * "There are prisoners in Guantanamo Bay that have not been tried,
have no legal representation, their families cannot see them and are
obviously kept in a strange land outside their own country. There is no
international monitoring of their conditions and fate. No one knows
whether they are prisoners, POWs, accused or criminals.
    * "European investigators have confirmed the existence of secret
prisons in Europe too. I could not correlate the abduction of a person,
and him or her being kept in secret prisons, with the provisions of any
judicial system. For that matter, I fail to understand how such actions
correspond to the values outlined in the beginning of this letter, i.e.
the teachings of Jesus Christ (PBUH), human rights and liberal values."
[Umansky]
    * "In media charters, correct dissemination of information and honest
reporting of a story are established tenets. I express my deep regret
about the disregard shown by certain Western media for these principles."
	I was unfortunate enough to get my eyes and brain cells dirty
reading the article in USA Today. Since I had to suffer for my art, I'll
spread the pain around by just giving you a few of the phrases that appear
in the article: "Part anti-U.S. diatribe and part religious screed ... a
naive leader whose beliefs stem from resentment and ignorance of the
Western world ... cheeky and presumptuous ... lack of understanding of the
West ... feelings of resentment." My favorite sentence is this one:
"Ahmadinejad criticizes the United States for alleged transgressions at
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in Latin America and the Middle East." Yeah,
"alleged." Man, that Ahmadinejad has a vivid imagination, doesn't he? I
mean, who on earth thinks that the U.S. has committed transgressions at
Guantanamo, and in Latin America and the Middle East? I mean, other than
99% of the world's population? [lefti]

[13] WHAT WE THINK.  Three years into major combat in Vietnam, 28,500 U.S.
service members had perished, millions of families were anxious about the
military draft and antiwar protests had spread to dozens of college
campuses [and elsewhere].  Today, at the same juncture in the Iraq war,
about 2,400 American soldiers have died, the U.S. military consists
entirely of volunteers and public dissent is sporadic. There's one other
difference: The war in Iraq is more unpopular than was the Vietnam
conflict at this stage, polls show. More Americans -- 57 percent -- say
sending troops to Iraq was a mistake than the 48 percent who called
Vietnam an error in April 1968, polls by the Princeton, New Jersey-based
Gallup Organization show. [Bloomberg]
	While a Newsweek poll released this weekend showed Bush's approval
rating at 35 percent, three other surveys last week put it at between 29
and 31 percent ... With congressional mid-term elections less than six
months away, Republicans increasingly fear Bush's unpopularity could drag
them down and allow Democrats to regain control of one or both houses of
Congress ... Bush's latest approval figures are among the lowest measured
for any president in the past 50 years. His father ... saw his approval
drop to similar levels before being defeated in the 1992 presidential
election. Jimmy Carter, at the height of the energy crisis and the Iran
hostage drama in the late 1970s had a rating of 28 percent while Richard
Nixon during the Watergate scandal saw his approval drop to 23 percent.
The all-time low in presidency approval was Harry Truman's 22 percent in
February 1952. [Reuters]
	Pew found that Bush has suffered a 24-point drop in his approval
rating among voters who backed him in 2004: from 92 percent in January
2005 to 68 percent in March." Karl Rove and GOP leaders are "well aware of
the problem and are planning a summer offensive to win back conservatives
with a mix of policy fights and warnings of how a Democratic Congress
would govern. The plan includes votes on tax cuts, a constitutional
amendment outlawing same-sex marriage, new abortion restrictions, and
measures to restrain government spending. [WP]
	A new CNN poll finds that Americans strongly prefer former
President Clinton to President Bush on a wide range of issues. Americans
said Clinton did a better job than Bush:
    * On the economy, 63% to 26%
    * On solving the problems of ordinary Americans, 62% to 25%
    * On foreign affairs, 56% to 32%
    * On taxes, 51% to 35%
    * On handling natural disasters, 51% to 30%
    * On national security, 46% to 42%
    * On honesty, 46% to 41% [sic!].

[14] A PRESIDENT IN HAITI.  Haitian President Rene Preval, a 63-year-old
agronomist, took office on Sunday, giving the poorest nation in the
Americas its first democratically elected leader since Jean-Bertrand
Aristide was ousted more than two years ago ... Canada's governor-general,
Michaelle Jean, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, and actor Danny Glover were among
the guests at the inauguration ... Preval is a one-time ally of Aristide
and, like him, is seen as a champion of the poor. Since Aristide was
forced from power by an armed revolt in February 2004, Haiti has been
ruled by an interim administration backed by a Brazilian-led U.N.
peacekeeping force ... Outside parliament, scores of pro-Aristide
demonstrators chanted "Aristide will return" and brandished pictures of
the ex-president ... Rights groups say the U.S.-backed interim government
appointed after Aristide's departure has locked up hundreds of Aristide
supporters without charges ... American officials have warned Preval not
to bring Aristide back from exile ... President Chavez of Venezuela agreed
to add Haiti to a list of Caribbean countries he supplies with cut-rate
Venezuelan fuel ... Preval first served as president from 1996-2001 and is
the only leader in Haiti's 202-year history to win a democratic election,
serve a full term and peacefully hand power to a successor. [Reuters]

[15] HUGO & RED KEN. Venezuela's president Hugo Chavez arrives in London
today with an extraordinary promise to offer cut-rate heating oil for
needy families in Europe ... a visit where he will be shunned by Downing
Street but welcomed by London Mayor Ken Livingstone. Chavez said in Vienna
yesterday that the 'final hours of the North American empire have arrived
... Now we have to say to the empire: "We're not afraid of you. You're a
paper tiger"' ... Livingstone said that Chavez had been responsible for
significant social reforms and called him 'the best news out of Latin
America in many years ... He's won 10 elections for his party in the last
decade and he's pushed through a whole programme of social reform.
Venezuela was like a lot of those old Latin American countries - a small
elite of super-rich families who basically stole the national resources.
He's now driven a new economic order through, you've got for the first
time healthcare for poor people, illiteracy has been eradicated ... The
reason he [Chavez] wants to come to London is because clearly, as the
Latin American economies really begin to emerge from the American shadow
and grow, they don't want all their eggs in the Washington basket,'
Livingstone contended. 'They're looking for allies in Europe and Asia and
it's very much in London's interests that as Venezuela's companies go,
they should see London as a natural home every bit as much as Madrid.'
[Observer]

[16] DISTRIBUTING THE DOLLAR.  The US dollar suffered a severe sell-off on
Friday, taking it to its weakest level against a trade-weighted basket of
currencies since October 1997, in a tumble that helped to trigger falls
across world equity [stock] markets. [FT]
	The House "easily approved a five-year, $70 billion tax package
last night that would extend President Bush's investor tax cuts, keep
millions of middle-income Americans off the alternative minimum tax and
provide a bevy of other benefits, from a tax write-off for songwriters to
a break for the University of Texas." The Wall Street Journal's Brody
Mullins writes that large U.S. financial-services firms and oil companies
"emerged as winners in the $70 billion tax bill..." [ABC]
	In health news, a new study has found the US has the second-worst
newborn mortality rate in the industrialized world, second only to Latvia.
According to Save The Children, the country's high rate of newborn
mortality disproportionately affects minorities. African American babies
are twice as likely as white babies to be born prematurely, have low-birth
weight and to die at birth. Overall, more than 4 million babies worldwide
die within their first month of birth. [DN]

[17] ETHNIC CLEANSING. Israeli troops have killed seven Palestinians in
two separate raids, in the deadliest single day of violence in the West
Bank in several weeks. [AJ]
	Israel's Supreme Court has upheld a law barring West Bank
Palestinians from living with their spouses and children in Israel itself
... the Israeli state says the recent election victory of the militant
group Hamas strengthened its case that Palestinians were a security risk
and should not be allowed into the country.
	Meanwhile, in this country The Forward has an "excellent piece on
anxieties in the American Jewish community about Bush's attempts to tie
his aggressive comments on Iran to the protection of Israel." [Cole]

[18] I CAN'T HEAR YOU. The White House on Sunday, in the person of
national security adviser Stephen Hadley, dismissed calls for direct talks
with Iran to resolve the stand-off over its nuclear program, saying the
United Nations was the best forum for those discussions ... U.N.
Secretary-General Annan urged the United States on Friday to enter into
direct talks with Tehran.
	Afghanistan has offered to mediate between Washington and
Tehran... [Reuters]

	"It's odd how those who dismiss the peace movement
	as utopian, don't hesitate to proffer
	the most absurdly dreamy reasons for going to war:
	to stamp out terrorism, install democracy, eliminate fascism,
	and most entertainingly, to 'rid the world of evil-doers.'"
	--Arundhati Roy

	===========================================================
	C. G. Estabrook, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
	109 Observatory, 901 South Mathews Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801
	### <www.carlforcongress.org> <www.newsfromneptune.com> ###
	===========================================================