[Peace] News notes, 1st week in August 2008

[C. G. Estabrook]

TUESDAY 5 AUGUST 2008: LIES ABOUT WAR

	"If there is one thing on earth
	More important than God,
	It's that nobody should cough up blood
	So that somebody else can live better."

--a translation from a lyric by Argentine folk musician Atahualpa Yupanqui 
(1908-92), the epigraph to "Fragmented Lives, Assembled Parts: Culture, 
Capitalism, and Conquest at the U.S.-Mexico Border" (University of Texas Press, 
2008), by Alejandro Lugo


[1. WAR] Both Republican and Democrat war plans received criticism from peculiar 
places this week.

	[A] A study by the Rand Corp (a USG-funded think-tank) says the Bush 
administration's "global war on terrorism" (GWOT) has created rather than 
defeated terrorists, and calls for a strategy that includes a greater reliance 
on law enforcement and intelligence agencies. In Muslim countries, there should 
be a "light U.S. military footprint or none at all," the report contends, since 
U.S. involvement in combat operations is "likely to increase terrorist 
recruitment."
	The report essentially repeats a proposal, put forth by the Vatican among 
others after 9/11, and spelled out at the time by conservative military 
historian Michael Howard, for "a police operation conducted under the auspices 
of the United Nations ... against a criminal conspiracy whose members should be 
hunted down and brought before an international court, where they would receive 
a fair trial and, if found guilty, be awarded an appropriate sentence." {Foreign 
Affairs, Jan/Feb 2002}
	The report should probably be seen, like last December's National Intelligence 
Estimate (which said Iran was not developing a nuclear weapon) as a 
counter-attack by the "foreign policy establishment" (FPE) against the remaining 
Neocon influence in the White House -- because it's clear that the primary 
purpose of the GWOT was to be a cover for the extreme war-making policy of the 
Bush WH in pursuit of traditional American goals, primarily the control of 
Mideast energy resources. The BA needed the threat of terrorism -- and so didn't 
take effective steps to lessen it -- to justify to the American electorate its 
immensely expensive war-making. (The Congressional Research Service reported 
this week that US spending for military operations after 9/11 has now exceeded 
the entire cost of the Vietnam War.)

"The American establishment itself [now once again in the ascendant in the last 
year of the BA] was always afraid of Bush. Bush came under unprecedented 
criticism even from officials of the Reagan administration, and from the [elite] 
mainstream generally. For example, when his national security strategy was 
announced in September 2002, calling for preventive war, virtually announcing a 
war in Iraq, immediately, within weeks, there was a major article in Foreign 
Affairs (the main establishment journal) condemning what they called the New 
Imperial Grand Strategy -- not on principle, but because it would be harmful to 
the United States.  And there has been a lot of criticism of the Bush 
administration as [at the extreme end of traditional American foreign policy 
spectrum, in its] radical nationalism; McCain is probably in the same territory. 
Obama very likely would move back to the center-right, where the Clinton 
administration was.
	"The Bush doctrine itself, the doctrine of preventive war, with its brazen 
contempt even for allies ... was not new. Clinton's doctrine was even worse, 
taken literally. Clinton's doctrine officially was that the United States has 
the right to use force to protect access to markets and resources, and that's 
more extreme than the Bush doctrine. But the Clinton administration presented it 
politely, quietly,  not in a way that would alienate our allies ... But the 
arrogance, brazenness, extremism, and ultra-nationalism of the Bush 
administration did offend the mainstream center in the United States and Europe. 
So, there's a more polite way of following the same policies." [Noam Chomsky]

That's where Barack Obama comes in.

	[B] Now in fact this week VA Sen. James Webb, who many people thought was the 
most logical choice for Obama's VP -- a veteran, a Reagan Democrat, and popular 
senator from an important swing state -- until he took himself out of it, said 
in an interview that "The US should avoid suggesting that the withdrawal of 
troops from Iraq will be followed by a surge of troops in Afghanistan ... Webb's 
comments come as an implied criticism of the Democratic party's orthodoxy on 
Iraq and Afghanistan -- including Obama's own stance" [Financial Times].

The right-wing Washington Times asseverates that "Several military and 
Afghanistan analysts say a surge in Afghanistan -- advocated by both 
Presidential candidates -- will not solve and could even worsen the problems of 
a country famous for resisting foreign interference."

[2. TORTURE] Jane Mayer's book on US torture, THE DARK SIDE, is reviewed 
respectfully by an establishment historian on the front page of Sunday's NYT 
Book Review. The review admits that "No one knows how many detainees have died" 
under the US torture program -- which suggests that the FPE, while it's more 
belligerent than the Neocons on AfPak, has decided to cut its losses on the 
torture scandal, and perhaps throw some Neocons to the wolves if they can.  This 
is not unexpected. The book and the review point out that "by late 2205, those 
defending the regime of torture feared prosecution should the program be disclosed."
	"Even releasing detainees whom they knew to be entirely innocent was dangerous, 
since once released they could talk. “People will ask where they’ve been and 
‘What have you been doing with them?’” Cheney said in a White House meeting. 
“They’ll all get lawyers.”
	"...Despite growing political pressure, despite Supreme Court decisions 
challenging the detainment policy, despite increasing revelations of the 
once-hidden program that have shocked the conscience of the world, there is 
little evidence that the secret camps and the torture programs have been 
abandoned or even much diminished. New heads of the Defense and Justice 
Departments have resisted addressing the torture issue, aware that dozens of 
their colleagues would face legal jeopardy should they do so. And the 
presidential candidates of both parties have so far shown little interest in 
confronting the use of torture or recommitting the country to the Geneva 
Conventions and to America’s own laws and traditions.
	The review concludes that "...Jane Mayer’s extraordinary and invaluable book 
suggests that it would be difficult to find any precedent in American history 
for the scale, brutality and illegality of the torture and degradation inflicted 
on detainees over the last six years..."  But then it echoes the FPE in Foreign 
Affairs that "it would be ... harder to imagine a set of policies more likely to 
increase the dangers facing the United States and the world."

[3. THEATRES] With Israel as its "local cop on the beat," as the Nixon 
administration put it, the USG has conducted a generation-long war for the 
control of energy resources in a 1500-mile radius around the Persian Gulf -- 
from the Mediterranean to the Indus valley, from the Horn of Africa to Central 
Asia. That war will continue in the coming administration, whoever is president. 
  Whether we call the resistance to US control “Al-Qaeda,” “Taliban,” 
“insurgents,” “militants” or “terrorists” -- they are people who wants us out of 
their countries and off of their resources.  From the US POV, the war has 
several theatres:

	[A. AFPAK] "American intelligence agencies have concluded that members of 
Pakistan's powerful spy service helped plan the deadly July 7 bombing of India's 
embassy in Kabul ... The conclusion was based on intercepted communications [!] 
between Pakistani intelligence officers and militants who carried out the 
attack..." [NYT] Pakistan's Prime Minister said the best way to combat the 
Taliban and al-Qaeda is through extensive education and economic aid. "The root 
cause of the problem in the tribal areas and Afghanistan is poverty."

Daily airstrikes by U.S. and allied fighter-bombers in Afghanistan have almost 
doubled since last summer, the Baltimore Sun reports. A report by the 
International Crisis Group says arbitrary detentions and civilian casualties 
from aerial bombing by Afghan and NATO forces are fueling Taliban propaganda. 
The Taliban are not going to be defeated militarily, the ICG says.

Meanwhile Adm. Wm. J. Fallon, commander of CENTCOM, called Bagram AFB in 
Afghanistan "the centerpiece for the CENTCOM Master Plan for future access to 
and operations in Central Asia."

	[B. IRAN] Seymour Hersh says Bush administration officials held a meeting 
recently in the Vice President's office to discuss ways to provoke a war with 
Iran. During the meeting, an idea was considered to dress up Navy Seals as 
Iranians, put them on fake Iranian speedboats, and shoot at them, Hersh says. 
As my radio partner, Paul Mueth, points out, this story was in the article 
Seymour Hersh submitted to the new Yorker, but the New Yorker editors cut it -- 
they said, because the plan hadn't actually been put into practice.
	But the fact that the VPUS was planning such a thing is the story!  Esp. when 
we have Mayer's book about how the VP has taken over the torture program and 
much of the running of the war.
	"The fact that they're even talking about stuff like this is news. If Hersh's 
editors thought his sourcing was no good, then his piece shouldn't have 
mentioned the meeting at all. But if the sourcing was good enough to report the 
meeting in the first place, it was good enough to report what they talked about. 
What were the New Yorker's editors thinking?
	"In one of David Manning's famous memos describing a prewar meeting between 
George Bush and Tony Blair, he says that Bush admitted that WMD was unlikely to 
be found in Iraq and then mused on some possible options for justifying a war 
anyway:  'The U.S. was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with 
fighter cover over Iraq, painted in U.N. colours,' the memo says, attributing 
the idea to Mr. Bush. 'If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach.'  In the 
end, of course, we didn't do this. We just didn't bother with any pretext at 
all." [Kevin Drum]

	[C. IRAQ] Bush knew Iraq had no WMD: journalist Ron Suskind also says that Bush 
ordered a forgery linking Saddam and al-Qaeda. [The following account is from 
MSNBC.]
	President Bush committed an impeachable offense by ordering the CIA to to 
manufacture a false pretense for the Iraq war in the form of a backdated, 
handwritten document linking Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, an explosive new book 
claims.  The charge is made in THE WAY OF THE WORLD: A STORY OF TRUTH AND HOPE 
IN THE AGE OF EXTREMISM by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind, 
released this week.  Suskind says he spoke on the record with U.S. intelligence 
officials who stated that Bush was informed unequivocally in January 2003 that 
Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction. Nonetheless, his book relates, Bush 
decided to invade Iraq three months later — with the forged letter from the head 
of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam bolstering the U.S. rationale to go into war.
	“It was a dark day for the CIA,” Suskind told TODAY co-host Meredith Vieira on 
Tuesday. “It was the kind of thing where [the CIA] said, ‘Look, this is not our 
charge. We’re not here to carry forth a political mandate — which is clearly 
what this was — to solve a political problem in America.’ And it was a cause of 
great grievance inside of the agency.”
	The author writes that Bush’s action is “one of the greatest lies in modern 
American political history” and suggests it is a crime of greater impact than 
Watergate. But the White House is denying the allegations, calling the book 
“absurd” and charging that Suskind practices “gutter journalism.”
	Former CIA director George Tenet also released a statement in which he 
ridicules the credibility of Suskind’s sources and calls the White House’s 
supposed directive to forge the document as “a complete fabrication.”
	But Suskind stands by his work. “It’s not off the record,” he says. “It’s on 
the record. It’s in the book and people can read it for themselves.” Suskind 
reports that the head of Iraqi intelligence, Tahir Jalil Habbush, met secretly 
with British intelligence in Jordan in the early days of 2003. In weekly 
meetings with Michael Shipster, the British director of Iraqi operations, 
Habbush conveyed that Iraq had no active nuclear, chemical or biological weapons 
programs and no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.
	When Tenet was informed of the findings in early February, he said, “They’re 
not going to like this downtown,” Suskind wrote, meaning the White House. 
Suskind says that Bush’s reaction to the report was: “Why don’t they ask him to 
give us something we can use to help make our case?”
	Suskind quotes Rob Richer, the CIA’s Near East division head, as saying that 
the White House simply ignored the Habbush report and informed British 
intelligence that they no longer wanted Habbush as an informant.
	“Bush wanted to go to war in Iraq from the very first days he was in office. 
Nothing was going to stop that,” Richer is quoted in the book.
	Suskind also writes that Habbush was “resettled” in Jordan with help from the 
CIA and was paid $5 million in hush money.

On page 371 of “The Way of the World,” Suskind describes the White House’s 
concoction of a forged letter purportedly from the hand of Habbush to Saddam 
Hussein to justify the United States’ decision to go to war.  Suskind writes: 
“The White House had concocted a fake letter from Habbush to Saddam, backdated 
to July 1, 2001. It said that 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta had actually trained 
for his mission in Iraq — thus showing, finally, that there was an operation 
link between Saddam and al-Qaeda, something the Vice President's office had been 
pressing CIA to prove since 9/11 as a justification to invade.”
	He continues: “A handwritten letter, with Habbush's name on it, would be 
fashioned by CIA and then hand-carried by a CIA agent to Baghdad for dissemination.”
	CIA officers Richer and John Maguire, who oversaw the Iraq Operations Group, 
are both on the record in Suskind’s book confirming the existence of the fake 
Habbush letter.
	When asked by Vieira for further proof of the letter, Suskind said: “Well, the 
CIA folks involved in the book and others talk about George Tenet coming back 
from the White House with the assignment on White House stationery, and turning 
to the CIA operatives, who are professionals, and saying, ‘You may not like 
this, but here is our next mission.’ “And they carried it through step by step, 
all the way to the finish.”

The London Sunday Telegraph first published a story about the letter in December 
2003, on the same day that Saddam Hussein was captured in Iraq. Reported as 
genuine, the letter made an immediate impact upon the media in terms of 
justifying the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Suskind relates how NBC reported the 
letter, with journalist Con Coughlin telling Tom Brokaw that the letter “is 
really concrete proof that al-Qaeda was working with Saddam.”
	Suskind also quotes Alan Foley, head of WMD analysis for the CIA, as saying, 
“It is, in my opinion, true that the administration, for whatever reason, was 
determined to have a showdown with Iraq that predated this whole WMD stuff.”
	In support of that theory, Foley says that Naji Sabri, Saddam’s foreign 
minister, passed along information that Iraq had no WMD to a Lebanese journalist 
who served as an intermediary on behalf of the CIA in 2002.
	That intelligence, Suskind writes, was dismissed as “disinformation.”
	So why, Vieira asked, are Suskind’s sources finally speaking out now, more than 
five years after the war began?
	“Well, you know, a lot of them have been walking around with this lump in their 
chest for a couple of years — five years now,” Suskind replied. “And because 
they’re essentially free — they’re not the original source — they said, ‘Look, 
why hide now? Let’s trust the truth.’ ”
	Suskind, who reported for The Wall Street Journal from 1993 to 2000, won a 
Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 1995 for stories of inner-city honors 
students in Washington, D.C. His reports spawned book-club favorite “A Hope in 
the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League” in 1998.
	Two stories Suskind wrote for Esquire in 2002 gave readers an inside account of 
the Bush White House. The second, which ran in the December 2002 issue, raised 
eyebrows as John DiIulio, the former head of the White House Office of 
Faith-based and Community Initiatives, described a presidency driven by politics 
over policy — “the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis.”
	“The Price of Loyalty,” Suskind’s 2004 book on former U.S. Secretary of the 
Treasury Paul O’Neill, said that the U.S. occupation of Iraq and subsequent 
overthrow of Saddam Hussein were planned in January 2001 — nine months before 
the Sept. 11 attacks.
	His most recent book, 2006’s “The One Percent Doctrine,” also described the 
Bush administration’s willingness to let its post-Sept. 11 foreign policy be 
driven by suspicion over proof of weapons of mass destruction. It also claimed 
al-Qaeda leaders were plotting to attack the New York City subway system in 
2003.  [MSNBC]

The Program on International Policy Attitudes published testimony of its 
director on Iraqi public opinion on the presence of US troops. Iraqis continue 
to tell pollsters they want to see a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops. 
They are skeptical of claims that the "surge" has improved security, and think 
security would improve or stay the same if US forces withdrew.

Former Pentagon official Richard Perle, a major promoter of the Iraq war, has 
been exploring going into the oil business in Iraq, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The US military admitted a platoon of soldiers raked a car of innocent Iraqi 
civilians with hundreds of rounds of gunfire last month and that the military 
issued a news release falsely asserting the victims were criminals who had fired 
on the troops, the New York Times reports. The attack on June 25 killed three 
people as they drove to work.

	[D. ISRAEL] FM Tzipi Livni has cemented her position as the favourite to 
succeed Ehud Olmert as Israeli prime minister, with a raft of new opinion polls 
showing the foreign minister pulling ahead of her main rivals. Ms Livni will 
square off against Shaul Mofaz, transport minister, in an internal party primary 
for the leadership of the Kadima party on September 17.

The Israeli human rights group Yesh Din says only 6% of probes into offenses 
allegedly committed by Israeli soldiers against Palestinians in the West Bank 
yield indictments, AFP reports. "The figures on the low number of investigations 
and the minute number of indictments filed reveal that the army is shirking its 
duty to protect the civilian Palestinian population from offenses committed by 
its soldiers," Yesh Din said.

Olmert says he does not believe a peace accord with the Palestinians can be 
reached by the end of the year.  I wonder if Obama's supposed gaffe about 
"undivided Jerusalem" in his AIPAC speech was in fact designed to have this 
effect -- i.e., to signal Olmert & Co. that they could get a better deal from 
him than the one the Bush administration Realists were pressing for before the 
end of their term.  The US presidential system makes the move obvious when it 
looks like the executive is going to change party: Nixon did it re S. Vietnam in 
1968, Reagan re Iran in 1980.

Israel Proceeds with New Settlement Construction in OT: 20 homes @ "Maskiyot," 
near Jordan border.

Gen. Jms. Jones, US security coordinator for Israel-Palestine, is preparing a 
critical report of Israel's policies in the Palestinian territories [Ha'aretz].

[4. LATIN AMERICA] Chevron is pushing the Bush administration to yank trade 
preferences for Ecuador if the country's government doesn't quash a lawsuit by 
indigenous peasants for the dumping of toxic oil wastes in the Amazon, Newsweek 
reports. A spokesman for USTR Schwab confirmed that her office is considering 
the request. "We can't let little countries screw around with big companies like 
this -- companies that have made big investments around the world," said a 
Chevron lobbyist.

[5. ECONOMY] US jobless rate hits four-year high. Wealthiest 1%  of Americans 
received 22% of the national income in 2006, the highest percentage since 1929...

"Chinese own about half a trillion dollars in Fannie and Freddie securities ... 
Paulson and other Treasury officials fear that if Fannie and Freddie debt isn't 
repaid at 100% par, the Chinese may start dumping their hundreds of billions of 
dollars of Treasury securities" [WSJ] -- no doubt he told Bush he had to sign 
the legislation regardless of any objections coming from the right [LBO].

Even a World Bank analysis conceded that the so-called Doha "Development" Round 
would do little to increase income in developing countries. In exchange for 
these purported gains, developing countries were expected to forfeit tools for 
promoting industrialization.

[6. CONGRESS]  Cindy Sheehan -- who's running against Pelosi for Congress -- 
says in a foreign TV interview that the US leadership (notably Pelosi) has been 
corrupted by not opposing Bush's polices on the Iraq war and torture.

[7. COURTS] USG claims that they’re allowed to detain Hamdan for the duration of 
the global war on terrorism. AG Michael Mukasey wants a declaration of war vs. 
al-Qaeda to reaffirm the right of the President to indefinitely detain enemy 
combatants.

[8. POLLS]  The US officer corps is disproportionately conservative and 
Republican – but enlisted service members (half million overseas) are no more 
conservative, and no more apt to be Republicans, than the U.S. population as a 
whole.

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