[Peace] News notes for AWARE meeting 2007-05-20

[C. G. Estabrook]

[1] Congress's Democratic leaders and the White House are sniping at 
each other (only verbally so far) this weekend, as they move jointly 
towards a funding bill for a war opposed by the US public. The 
Democrats,in the words of Speaker Pelosi, want to be sure that Bush is 
seen as having "accountability or responsibility" for events in Iraq -- 
when of course they do, too.  Senate majority leader Reid and Pelosi are 
drawing up the joint bill.
	The House had offered to fund the war for two months with benchmarks 
for the Iraqi government, the chief being an Iraqi law giving the US 
control of Iraqi oil.  Bush said he liked that benchmark, because that's 
of course what the war's been about.  The House passed the 2008 defense 
authorization bill, including $142 billion for combat operations in Iraq 
and Afghanistan, without requiring troop withdrawals or placing 
restrictions on the Iraq war.
	Meanwhile  Sen. Feingold offered a falsely named withdrawal bill, which 
was in fact a charter for the continuation of the current policy, but 
even that didn't pass in the Senate, because of the withdrawal language. 
  Just how little Feingold's bill is about withdrawal is shown by its 
support for the world's largest embassy, which the US is building in 
Baghdad on a chunk of prime real estate two-thirds the size of 
Washington’s National Mall, with desk space for about 1,000 people 
behind blast-resistant walls.  The 21-building complex on the Tigris 
River is one of the few construction projects the administration has 
undertaken in Iraq that is on schedule.  It doesn't look like withdrawal.

[2] A prominent British think tank warned this week that Iraq is close 
to becoming a “failed state.”  Surveying his handiwork and bidding a 
sentimental farewell to British troops, retiring British PM Blair came 
under mortar attack in Iraq and verbal attack in the US, where former 
President Carter called Blair's support for Bush and for the Iraq war 
"abominable ... blind ... subservient ... [and] a major tragedy for the 
world." Carter also called the Bush administration's foreign relations 
"the worst in history."  Carter thereby graciously renounced a title to 
which he himself has a claim, given that, among other enormities, his 
administration produced al-Qaida.
	Blair will be succeeded by his finance minister, Gordon Brown.  With 
the inauguration this week of Nicholas Sarkozy as president of France, 
both France and the UK have leaders with left oppositions as feckless as 
the Democrats in the US.

[3] The New York Times leads today with news that the U.S. pays Pakistan 
roughly a billion dollars every year to fight jihadists along the Afghan 
border.  The Los Angeles Times describes al Qaeda's expanding presence 
in Pakistan.  The Pakistani military is said to look the other way when 
Taliban fighters take refuge inside their country, but Washington 
continues to pony up the cash for fear of destabilizing Pakistani 
President Musharraf.

[4] At a Republican presidential debate in South Carolina, Ron Paul -- 
one of six House Republicans who  in 2002 voted against the invasion of 
Iraq and is therefore always called a "fringe candidate" by the media in 
charge of assigning these positions -- made the obvious observation that 
the 911 attacks were the result of US Middle East Policy, including 
"bombing Iraq for 10 years."  (Of course the Clinton-era sanctions 
killed many more Iraqis.)
	Michael Scheuer, former head of CIA’s Osama Unit said Paul was “exactly 
correct,” but half-mad Rudy Giuliani immediately reminded everyone that 
he had been mayor of New York on 911 (it's his principal qualification 
for president) and called on Paul to "withdraw that comment."  After 
all, some things are unsayable in American politics, and 911 has been 
very, very good to Rudy: the year before 911 he "told a divorce court he 
had only $7,000 in assets under his control [but now]  has amassed a net 
worth of more than $30 million, much of it from paid speeches." He's 
literally dined out on 911.
	The Washington Post notes that "at least 10 of the major party 
candidates are millionaires and, collectively, the field of contenders 
is worth at least a quarter-billion dollars."  The anointed republican 
front-runner, Mitt Romney, has a fortune of more than $350 million.
	But in the Fox News call-in poll after the debate, while Romney had 
29%, it was Paul who was in second place, with 25%, 6% ahead of Giuliani.

[5] The NYT features an account today of Hillary Clinton's six-year term 
as the only woman director of Wal-Mart in the 1980s, and what it calls 
her currently complex relationship with a company famous for its health 
care policies, anti-unionism, and treatment of its workers.

[6] Last week's revelations of that hospital room drama involving a 
seriously ill former Attorney General John Ashcroft and extraordinary 
bedside efforts by then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzalez to get 
Ashcroft's approval for an eavesdropping program he opposed, inspired 
the Post to claim "something of a reappraisal of Ashcroft by some on the 
left." Despite the assertion that Ashcroft privately stood up to Cheney 
and Rumsfeld over the treatment of detainees at Gitmo, we should 
remember his pushing for the USA Patriot Act, authorizing detentions 
without charges after Sept. 11th, and defending "coercive" interrogation 
techniques.

[7] In the US' other occupation, the Israeli government today gave the 
army the green light for increased attacks on Gaza, but stopped short of 
ordering a ground assault.  The orders came to prevent the outbreak of 
peace after the rival Hamas and Fatah movements implemented their latest 
ceasefire, in an attempt  to halt street battles that killed at least 50 
people in the past week.  But the cabinet warned in a statement that 
even more "drastic measures" would be considered. The last Israeli 
ground incursion in Gaza last year lasted five months, killed some 400 
Palestinians, and wreaked massive infrastructure damage. During Sunday's 
security cabinet meeting, Foreign Minister (and PM in waiting) Tzipi 
Livni proposed the deployment of an international force along the border 
between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. The cabinet meeting came as Israeli 
air strikes pounded Gaza for a fifth straight day. More than 100 rockets 
have crashed inside Israel over the past week, wounding 16 civilians, 
most of them lightly.
	Israel this week allowed the Fatah to bring into the Gaza Strip as many 
as 500 fresh troops trained under a U.S.-coordinated program to counter 
Hamas.

[8] The Bush administration is urging Ethiopia not to withdraw its 
forces from Somalia, nearly six months after U.S.-backed troops invaded 
Somalia and toppled the Union of Islamic Court. Over 1,400 Somalis have 
died in the country's worst fighting since the early 1990s. The fighting 
has also displaced up to 400,000 Somalis.
	The United Nations top humanitarian chief is saying the refugee 
situation in Somalia is now worse than Darfur. John Holmes said "In 
terms of the numbers of people displaced, and our access to them, 
Somalia is a worse crisis than Darfur or Chad or anywhere else this 
year." In December U.S.-backed Ethiopian troops invaded Somalia to 
topple the Islamic Courts Union. Since then over 400,000 people have 
fled their homes. Unlike in Sudan, Holmes said no emergency camps have 
been set up to help the refugees. Most of those who have fled, including 
women, children and the elderly, are camping in fields without access to 
food, shelter, clean water or medicines.

[9] An academic boycott of Iran is being organized on behalf of American 
scholar Haleh Esfandiari, who was jailed in Tehran on May 8 after more 
than four months under house arrest.  Esfandiari, 67, is director of 
Middle East programs at the Smithsonian's Woodrow Wilson International 
Center and was visiting Iran to help her ailing mother, 93.  Among 
others, MIT professor Noam Chomsky issued a statement yesterday calling 
Esfandiari's detention "deplorable" and warned that the action by Iran's 
intelligence ministry was "a gift" to American policymakers trying to 
organize support for military action against Iran. "Now is a time for 
diplomacy, negotiations, and relaxation of tensions, in accordance with 
the will of the overwhelming majority of Americans and Iranians, as 
recent polls reveal," Chomsky said. "The intolerable treatment of this 
highly respected scholar and human rights activist severely undermines 
the efforts of those who are seeking peace, justice and freedom in the 
region and the world."  Iran's judiciary said last week that she was 
being investigated for "crimes against national security."

	###