No Simple Matter

New address

2006-06-21T23:50:00.000-05:00

The address of No Simple Matter has changed, new address is

http://nosimplematter.livejournal.com

or preferably

http://nosimplematter.org

The latter always points to the right site.

Thanks, please continue reading, and spread information !

-Editors

War Porn

2006-06-21T14:21:00.000-05:00

War Porn
by Tom Engelhardt
TomDispatch
June 14, 2006

The history of war-atrocity snapshots did not start with the Abu Ghraib
screen-savers from hell. After all, photography itself came into being
as the industrializing West was imposing its rule on much of the
planet. That imposition meant wars of conquest; and such colonial wars,
in turn, meant slaughter.

From the moment the wooden sailing ship mounted with canons took to the
high seas and Europeans began to seize the coasts of the planet,
technological advantage lay with them. When others resisted, as they
regularly did, the result was almost invariably an unbalanced slaughter
that passed for war. Even in the relatively rare instances when
European powers, as at Adowa in Ethiopia in 1896, lost a battle, the
casualty figures still tended to run staggeringly in the other
direction. In 1898, at the victorious battle of Omdurman, the British,
using Maxim machines guns and artillery, famously slaughtered perhaps
11,000 Dervishes, wounding many more, at a cost of 48 British
casualties. ("It was not a battle," wrote one observer, "but an
execution.")

With the one-sided slaughter their technological advantage in arms (and
in the industrial organization of warfare)offered came the presumption
by the Europeans, the Americans when they joined the imperial game, and
the Japanese when they too leaped in, that there was some deeper kind
of superiority -- racial, religious, or civilizational -- at work
determining events. And so, above the repetitious fact of slaughter was
invariably unfurled a banner with glorious slogans about delivering the
benefits of "civilization" (in the French case, literally, the mission
civilatrice; in the American case, "democracy") to the ignorant or
benighted heathen and barbarians of the backward parts of the planet.

When against such obvious superiority and the benefits that went with
it, native peoples "irrationally" resisted their own subjugation, when,
against great odds and suffering terrible casualties, they refused to
give in and were not wiped away, this naturally confounded
expectations. It engendered an incomprehension, sometimes a fury in the
troops sent to subject them, who had been assured that their task was
an expression of manifest destiny itself. Then, of course, came
frustration, resentment, rage, the urge for revenge, in short, the
atrocity -- and against such inferior, irrational, inhuman types, it
was increasingly something not just to be committed, but to be
recorded.

How convenient that the camera was there and ever easier for any common
marauding soldier to use. There is, unfortunately, no historian of the
trophy war photo (as far as I know), but from the later nineteenth
century on, these certainly begin to appear -- Europeans holding
Chinese heads aloft after the Boxer Rebellion was crushed by a
European-American-Japanese expeditionary force; the photo albums
Japanese soldiers brought back from their imperial (and disastrous)
expeditionary campaigns on the Chinese mainland in the 1930s -- those
"burn all, kill all, loot all" campaigns against resistant peasants --
with snapshots again of Chinese heads being removed, private records of
moments not to be forgotten.

The principle was: Do the barbaric to those already labeled barbarians
or "bandits," or "rebels," a principle extended, not surprisingly, to
America's imperial wars. When Vietnam descended into the famed
"quagmire," for instance, it also descended into an orgy of atrocities.
By the accounts of soldiers, the taking of ears, fingers, even heads
was not out of the ordinary. As one soldier described the matter to
author Wallace Terry in Bloods, An Oral History of the Vietnam War by
Black Veterans, "Well, those white guys would sometimes take the
dog-tag chain and fill that up with ears... They would take the ear off
to make sure the VC was dead... And to put some notches on they guns.
If we were movin' through the jungle, they'd just put the bloody ear on
the chain and stick the ear in their pocket and keep going. Wouldn't
take time to dry it off. Then when we get back, they would nail 'em up
on the walls of our hootch." Another told Terry that the fourteen ears
and fingers "strung on a piece of leather around my neck... symbolized
that I'm a killer. And it was, so to speak, a symbol of combat-type
manhood."

And the camera, which anyone could use by now, was never far behind.
Many of these scenes were snapped and undoubtedly kept, including, as
journalist Michael Herr recounted in his classic account of the war
Dispatches, shots of severed heads. Some of these photos were
disseminated. I remember one of them appearing in the late 1960s in an
alternative (or, as they were called then, "underground") paper, of a
grinning American soldier holding up a severed Vietnamese head in what
could only be called a trophy-hunting pose.

But the digital camera, the cell-phone camera, and the capacities of
the computer as well as the Internet -- that technological superiority
still at work -- has lent the trophy photo new power in our latest war
of frustration, making it so much more available to the non-war-making
public and the world at large. As Susan Sontag commented after some of
the Abu Ghraib photos were finally published, these reflected "a shift
in the use made of [trophy] pictures -- less objects to be saved than
messages to be disseminated, circulated. A digital camera is a common
possession among soldiers. Where once photographing war was the
province of photojournalists, now the soldiers themselves are all
photographers -- recording their war, their fun, their observations of
what they find picturesque, their atrocities -- and swapping images
among themselves and e-mailing them around the globe."

If the enemy are barbarian beheaders (as some of them indeed are), when
you consider the photos that have emerged from our latest imperial
expeditionary campaign in Iraq, you need to ask, what exactly are we?
Just what is it that we are actually spreading to the world on the tips
of our Cruise missiles or via Hellfire-missile armed Predator drones,
as well as up close and personal from Abu Ghraib to Haditha? What kind
of screen-savers are we really creating for posterity?

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-Jim Leftwich & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen

----

2006-06-21T12:37:00.000-05:00

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-Peter K. Niven

Nobel Laureate flays Bush

2006-06-20T14:59:00.000-05:00

Nobel Laureate flays Bush
by Haroon Siddiqui
Asheville Global Report
June 14, 2006

Jun. 1- Gunter Grass, celebrated German novelist, playwright, poet,
essayist, sculptor and commentator, is a living legend. When this Nobel
Laureate speaks, people listen.

His address in Berlin to the annual Congress of International PEN, the
worldwide organization of writers, had been much anticipated,
especially given his long admonition to intellectuals to speak up on
the political and moral issues of the day.

He himself has done so all his life, most famously against the Nazi
past and contemporary neo-Nazism and xenophobia.

Grass, at 78 still spry and energetic, quickly gets into his topic,
"The hubris of the world's only superpower," and proceeds to offer a
sweeping critique.

His words find resonance among the writers gathered, including another
Nobel Laureate, South African novelist Nadine Gordimer.

"Armed force is used by this superpower to defeat the terrorism it is
itself responsible for," Grass says, citing Osama bin Laden, the
by-product of US support for Afghan jihadists in the 1980s. "The war
[on Iraq], deliberately started in blatant disdain of the laws of
civilized societies, produces still more terror."

Yet George W. Bush is searching for new enemies and targets.

"Dictatorships, and there are plenty to choose from, are referred to as
rogue states and threatened vociferously with military strikes,
including the deployment of nuclear weapons. But it only further
stabilizes the fundamentalist power systems in those countries.

"Whether the term 'axis of evil' is used to refer to Iran or North
Korea or Syria, politics could not be more stupid and hence more
dangerous. Yet the entire world is watching and pretending to be
powerless."

Grass quotes liberally from the blistering speech given last year by
British playwright Harold Pinter in accepting the Nobel Prize for
Literature: "The United States supported and, in many cases, engendered
every right-wing military dictatorship in the world after World War II
- Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the
Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador and, of course, Chile...

"Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place in those countries... but
you wouldn't know it. The crimes of the US have been systematic,
constant, vicious, and remorseless but very few people have actually
talked about them.

"You have to hand it to America. It has exercised quite a clinical
manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for
universal good. It's brilliant, even witty, a highly successful act of
hypnosis. How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be
described as a mass murderer and a war criminal?"

Having cited Pinter, Grass adds his own condemnation of "the
hypocritical method of keeping the body count" in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Although we meticulously keep count of the victims of terror attacks -
terrible though their number is - nobody bothers to count the dead
caused by American bombs or rocket attacks."

The death toll from America's "three Gulf Wars," as he called it - "the
first one having been fought by Saddam Hussein against Iran, with
support from the United States" - runs into hundreds of thousands.

"In Western evaluation, not only are there first-, second- or third
class citizens among the living, but also among the dead."

As for Bush and Tony Blair, he says, "whenever their lies lack
persuasive power, they put God into harness. Hypocrisy is written all
over their faces. They are like the priests and missionaries of old who
used to bless weapons and carry death with their Bibles into distant
countries."

The enormity of US-initiated death, destruction and torture, places a
burden on the citizens of democracy to be more vigilant: "Who wanted
this war? What are the lies that have disguised its true purpose? Who
profits from it? Whose shares go up because of it?"

In a post-speech interview, I ask Grass about governments ignoring the
electorate between elections, as those did in Britain, Italy and Spain,
which joined the war on Iraq despite overwhelming public opposition.

"In the last 10 years, lobbies have become stronger than the
government, in the US and other democracies," Grass responds. "They
cannot change policy, for example, on health without the pharmaceutical
industry, or farming policy without the farm groups. Lobbies are too
powerful," the most powerful being the ones wanting war.

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2006-06-20T12:07:00.001-05:00

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-Jim Leftwich & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen

----

2006-06-20T12:07:00.000-05:00

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-Peter K. Niven

The Tripolar Chessboard

2006-06-19T15:15:00.000-05:00

The Tripolar Chessboard
Putting Iran in Great Power Context
by Michael T. Klare; TomDispatch
June 15, 2006

For months, the American press and policy-making elite have portrayed
the crisis with Iran as a two-sided struggle between Washington and
Tehran, with the European powers as well as Russia and China playing
supporting roles. It is certainly true that George Bush and Iranian
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are the leading protagonists in this
drama, with each making inflammatory statements about the other in
order to whip up public support at home. But an informed reading of
recent international diplomacy surrounding the Iranian crisis suggests
that another equally fierce -- and undoubtedly more important --
struggle is also taking place: a tripolar contest between the United
States, Russia, and China for domination of the greater Persian
Gulf/Caspian Sea region and its mammoth energy reserves.

When it comes to grand strategy, top Bush administration officials have
long attempted to maintain American dominance of the "global
chessboard" (as they see it) by diminishing the influence of the only
other significant players, Russia and China. This classic geopolitical
contest began with a flourish in early 2001, when the White House
signaled the provocative course it planned to follow by unilaterally
repudiating the U.S.-Russian Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and
announcing new high-tech arms sales to Taiwan, which China still
considers a breakaway province. After 9/11, these initial signals of
antagonism were toned down in order to secure Russian and Chinese
assistance in fighting the war on terror, but in recent months the
classic chessboard version of great-power politics has again come to
dominate strategic thinking in Washington.

Advancing the Strategic Pawns

This resurgence was perhaps first signaled on May 4, when Vice
President Dick Cheney went to Lithuana, the former Soviet Socialist
Republic (SSR), to lambaste the Russian government at a pro-democracy
confab. He accused Kremlin officials of "unfairly and improperly"
restricting the rights of Russian citizens and of using the country's
abundant oil and gas supplies as "tools of intimidation [and]
blackmail" against its neighbors. He also condemned Moscow for
attempting to "monopolize the transportation" of oil and gas supplies
in Eurasia -- a direct challenge to U.S. interests in the Caspian
region.

The next day, Cheney flew to the former SSR of Kazakhstan in oil and
natural gas rich Central Asia, where he urged that country's leaders to
ship their plentiful oil through a U.S.-sponsored pipeline to Turkey
and the Mediterranean rather than through Russian-controlled pipelines
to Europe.

Then, on June 3, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld weighed in on
China, telling an audience of Asian security officials that Beijing's
"lack of transparency" with respect to its military spending
"understandably causes concerns for some of its neighbors." These
comments were accompanied by publicly announced plans for increased
U.S. spending on sophisticated weapons systems liked the F-22A
Air-superiority Fighter and Virginia-class nuclear attack submarines
that could only be useful in a big-power war for which there were just
two candidates, Russia and China.

Like Russia, China has also aroused Washington's ire over its
aggressive energy policies -- but in China's case over its increasing
attempts to nail down oil and gas supplies for its burgeoning,
energy-poor economy. In Military Power of the People's Republic of
China, its most recent report on Chinese military capabilities issued
on May 23, the Pentagon decried China's use of arms transfers and other
military aid as inducements to countries like Iran and Sudan to gain
access to energy reserves in the Middle East and Africa, and for
acquiring warships "that could serve as the basis for a force capable
of power projection" into the oil-producing regions of the planet.

There's nothing new about the Bush administration's urge to rollback
Russia and "contain" China. Such thinking was famously articulated in
the "Defense Planning Guidance for 1994-99," written by then
Undersecretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz and leaked to the press in
early 1992. "Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a
new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or
elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by
the Soviet Union," the document famously declared. This remains the
principal aim of U.S. strategy today, but it has now been joined by
another key objective: to ensure that the United States -- and no one
else -- controls the energy supplies of the Persian Gulf and adjacent
areas of Asia.

When first articulated in the "Carter Doctrine" of 1980, this precept
was directed exclusively at the Gulf; now, under President Bush, it has
been extended to the Caspian Sea basin as well -- a consequence of
rising oil prices, fears of diminishing supplies, and the vast oil and
natural gas deposits believed to be housed there. To assert U.S.
influence in this region, once part of the Soviet Union, the White
House has been setting up military bases, supplying arms, and
conducting a sub-rosa war of influence with both Moscow and Beijing.

Knight's moves in the Gulf

It is in this context that the current struggle over Iran must be
viewed. Iran occupies a pivotal position on the tripolar chessboard.
Geographically, it is the only nation that abuts both the Persian Gulf
and the Caspian Sea, positioning Tehran to play a significant role in
the two areas of greatest energy concern to the United States, Russia,
and China. Iran also abuts the strategic Strait of Hormuz -- the narrow
waterway from the Gulf to the Indian Ocean through which about
one-quarter of the world's oil moves every day. As a result, if
Washington ever lifted its trade embargo on Iran, its territory could
be used as the most obvious transit route for the delivery of oil and
natural gas from the Caspian countries to global markets, especially in
Europe and Japan.

As the most populous and industrialized nation in the Persian Gulf
basin, Iran has always played a significant role in that region's
affairs -- a situation that has often troubled neighbors like Saddam
Hussein's Iraq (which invaded Iran in 1980, beginning a bloody
eight-year war that ended in an exhausted stalemate). In recent years,
Iran has also gained regional clout as the center of the Shia branch of
Islam. Long despised and abused by Sunnis, the Shia are now in the
ascendancy in neighboring Iraq and are gaining greater visibility in
Bahrain, Kuwait, Lebanon, and the Shia-populated areas of Saudi Arabia
nearest to Kuwait (where crucial Saudi oil fields lie) in what is
starting to be thought of as the "Shia crescent."

At present, Iran's military capabilities are not impressive -- a
result, in part, of the U.S. embargo on sales of spare parts to the
Iranian air force (largely equipped with American aircraft during the
reign of the former Shah). But Iran has acquired submarines and other
modern weapons from Russia and has developed a ballistic missile
capability -- probably with help from North Korea and China. Were it
ever to succeed in acquiring nuclear weapons, it would indeed become a
formidable regional power, possibly calling into question America's
projected military domination of the Gulf. It is for this reason more
than any other that Washington is so determined to block its
acquisition of nuclear arms.

While both Russia and China claim to be opposed to such a development,
they certainly wouldn't view it with the same degree of dread and fury
as does the Bush administration -- a consideration that has no doubt
given added impetus to its drive to block Iran's nuclear efforts.

Above all, of course, Iran possesses the world's second largest
reserves of petroleum -- an estimated 132 billion barrels (11.1% of the
world's known reservoirs); and also the second largest reserves of
natural gas -- 971 trillion cubic feet (15.3% of known reservoirs). The
Iranians may possess less oil than the Saudis and less gas than the
Russians, but no other country controls so much of both of these vital
resources. Many states including China, India, Japan, and the European
Union countries already depend on Iran for significant shares of their
petroleum supplies; and China and the others have been busy negotiating
deals to develop, and then draw on, its mammoth natural gas reserves.
Iran will not only remain a major energy supplier, but also one of the
few that has the capacity - with the right kind of investment -- to
substantially boost its output in the years ahead when many other
sources of oil and gas will have gone into decline.

In 1953, after the CIA helped oust Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh,
who had nationalized the Iranian oil industry, American energy firms
came to play a commanding role in Iran's oil industry with the blessing
of the Shah. This remained true until he fell in the Khomeini
revolution of 1979. They would no doubt love to return to Iran, if
given the opportunity; but Washington's hostility to the Islamic regime
in Tehran now precludes their reentry. Under Executive Order 12959,
signed by President Clinton in 1995 and renewed by President Bush, all
U.S. companies are barred from operating in Iran. But should "regime
change" ever occur there -- the implied objective of U.S. policy --
this Executive Order would be lifted and U.S. firms would be able to do
what Chinese, Japanese, Indian, and other firms are now doing,
exploiting Iranian energy supplies. Just how much energy figures into
the administration's desire for political change in Iran cannot be
fully judged from the outside, but given the close ties Bush, Cheney,
and other key administration officials have with the U.S. energy
industry, it is hard to believe that it doesn't play a highly
significant one.

For China's energy plans, Iran's "pariah" status has certainly been a
boon. Because U.S. firms are barred from investing and European
companies face American economic penalties if they do so (under the
congressionally mandated Iran-Libya Sanctions Act of 1996), Chinese
companies have had a relatively open playing field as they shop for
promising energy deals like the $50 billion one signed in 2004 to
develop the massive Yadavaran gas field and to buy 10 million tons of
Iranian liquefied natural gas (LNG) annually for 25 years.

Russia, unlike energy-desperate China, is practically drowning in oil
and natural gas, but has an abiding interest in not seeing energy-rich
neighboring Iran fall under the sway of the U.S. and, as a major
supplier of nuclear equipment and technology, also has a special
interest in lending a profitable hand to Iran's energy establishment.
The Russians are completing the construction of a civilian nuclear
reactor at Bushehr in southwest Iran, a $1 billion project, and are
eager to sell more reactors and other nuclear energy systems to the
Iranians. This, of course, is a source of considerable frustration to
Washington, which seeks to isolate Tehran and prevent it from receiving
any nuclear technology. (Although an entirely civilian project, Bushehr
would no doubt be on the target list for any American air attack
intended to cripple Iran's nuclear capacity.) Nevertheless, the head of
the Russian nuclear energy agency, Sergei Kiriyenko, announced in
February, "We don't see any political obstacles to completing Bushehr"
and bringing it on line "in the swiftest possible period."

Given what is at stake, it is easy to see why the United States,
Russia, and China all have such an abiding interest in the outcome of
the Iranian crisis. For Washington, the replacement of the clerical
government in Tehran with a U.S.-friendly regime would represent a
colossal, threefold accomplishment: It would eliminate a major threat
to America's continued dominance of the Persian Gulf, open up the
world's number two oil-and-gas supplier to American energy firms, and
greatly diminish Chinese and Russian influence in the greater Gulf
region.

From a geopolitical perspective, there could be no greater win on the
global chessboard today. Even if Washington failed to achieve regime
change but, using its military might, crippled Iran's nuclear
establishment without sustaining major damage itself in Iraq or
elsewhere, this would still be a significant geopolitical win, exposing
the inability of either Russia or China to counter American moves of
this sort. (This would only work, of course, if the Bush administration
was able to contain the inevitable fallout from such action, whether
increased ethnic strife in Iraq or a sharp spike in oil prices.)

Not surprisingly, Moscow and Beijing are doing everything in their
power to prevent any American geopolitical triumph in Iran or Central
Asia from occurring, though without provoking an outright breach in
relations with Washington -- and so endangering complex economic ties
with the United States.

As this grand geopolitical "Great Game" unfolds, with the potential
economic well-being of the planet at stake, all sides are trying to
line up allies wherever possible, using whatever diplomatic levers are
available. Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the U.S. position in
both the Persian Gulf and Central Asia has noticeably deteriorated. At
present, the Bush administration's greatest weakness remains the schism
in U.S.-European relations created by the unilateral U.S. invasion
itself. Because the Europeans felt betrayed by that action, they have
largely refrained from helping out either in the counterinsurgency
effort in Iraq or in funding the reconstruction of the country. This
has imposed a ghastly and mounting cost on the United States. Fearing a
repetition of this fiasco in Iran, the White House has clearly decided
to let the diplomatic process play out on the Iranian crisis in a way
they refused to do when it came to Saddam's Iraq. So, within limits,
they are letting the Europeans set the diplomatic game plan for
"resolving" the nuclear dispute.

This, in turn, has given Moscow and Beijing their one obvious option
for averting what could be a geopolitical disaster for them in Iran:
the potential use of a Security Council veto to block the imposition of
U.S.-threatened sanctions on Iran under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter,
which could legitimize not only such sanctions but also the use of
force against any state deemed to pose a threat to international peace.
The Europeans want to prevent such a vote from occurring -- knowing
that any "failure" at the UN might only strengthen the arguments of the
hawks in Washington who want to move unilaterally and by force against
Iran. As a result, they are listening to the Russians and Chinese who
insist on relying on diplomacy -- and nothing else -- to resolve the
crisis, however long that takes.

"Russia believes that the sole solution for this problem will be based
on the work of the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency],"said the
Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, in March. Very similar
statements have been issued by Chinese officials, who have expressly
ruled out force as an acceptable solution to the crisis. In February,
for instance, the Chinese Ambassador to the IAEA, Wu Hailongon, called
on "all relevant parties to exercise restraint and patience" and
"refrain from any action that might further complicate or deteriorate
the situation."

Checkmate for Whom?

That all key parties see this unfolding crisis as part of a larger
geopolitical struggle is beyond doubt. For example, the Russians and
Chinese have begun to create something of a counter-bloc to the United
States in Central Asia, using the Shanghai Cooperation Organization
(SCO) as a vehicle. Originally established by Moscow and Beijing to
combat ethnic separatism in Central Asia, the SCO -- now including
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan -- has become more
like a regional security organization, a sort of mini-NATO (but also an
anti-NATO). Clearly, the Russians and the Chinese hope that it will
help them turn back U.S. influence in the energy-rich former Islamic
territories of the old Soviet Union, and in this it has shown -- in
Uzbekistan, at least -- some signs of realpolitik success. At a recent
meeting of the organization, the current members went so far as to
invite Iran to join as an observer -- to the obvious displeasure of
Washington. "It strikes me as passing strange," Secretary Rumsfeld
opined recently in Singapore, "that one would want to bring into an
organization that says it's against terrorism... the leading terrorist
nation in the world: Iran."

At the same time, the United States has sought to line up its own
allies -- including south Asian wildcard, India -- for a possible
military confrontation with Iran. Even though Bush insists that he's
prepared to rely on diplomacy to resolve the crisis, Pentagon officials
have sought the assistance of NATO in planning air strikes against
Iranian nuclear facilities. In March, for example, the head of NATO's
Airborne Early Warning and Control Force, General Axel Tuttelmann,
indicated that his force was ready to assist American forces at the
very onset of a U.S. attack on Iran. The German press has also reported
that former CIA director Peter Goss visited Turkey late last year to
request that country's assistance in conducting air strikes against
Iran.

Despite continuing calls for diplomacy to prevail, all sides in this
wider struggle recognize that the current situation cannot last
forever. For one thing, the shaky position of the Bush administration
-- politically at home, in its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, in its
attempts to secure geopolitical advantage in Central Asia, and
economically at a global level -- continues to develop fissures and to
embolden those countries, Iran included, which might frustrate its
desires. To top Bush officials, still dreaming of global energy
hegemony, the situation may seem increasingly perilous, but the window
to act may also appear in danger of closing. Their appetite for
European, Chinese, or Russian stalling tactics, no less Iranian
intransigence, may not be great; and, however much Moscow and Beijing
try to persuade the Iranians to back down on nuclear matters, thereby
averting American military action, their influence in Tehran may not
prove strong enough.

If, in the coming few months, Iran rejects U.S. demands for the
complete and permanent termination of its nuclear enrichment
activities, the United States will certainly insist on the imposition
of sanctions at the UN. If, in turn, the Security Council (with the
acquiescence of Russia and China) adopts purely symbolic gestures to no
visible effect, Washington will then demand tougher sanctions under
Chapter 7; and if either Russia or China vetoes such measures, the Bush
administration will almost certainly choose to use military means
against Iran, playing out Moscow's and Beijing's worst fears.

Russia and China can thus be expected to stretch out the diplomatic
process for as long as possible, hoping thereby to make military action
by the United States appear illegitimate to the Europeans and others.
By the same token, the hawks in Washington will undoubtedly become
increasingly impatient with the delays -- viewing them as rear-guard
strategic moves by Russia and China -- and so will push for military
action by the end of this year if nothing has been accomplished by then
on the diplomatic front.

As the crisis over Iran unfolds, most of the news commentary will
continue to focus on the war of words between Washington and Tehran.
Political insiders understand, however, that the most significant
struggle is the one that remains just out of sight, pitting Washington
against Moscow and Beijing in the battle for global influence and
energy domination. From this perspective, Iran is just one battlefield
-- however significant -- in a far larger, more long-lasting, and
momentous contest.

Michael T. Klare is the Professor of Peace and World Security Studies
at Hampshire College and the author, most recently, of Blood and Oil:
The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependence on
Imported Petroleum (Owl Books) as well as Resource Wars, The New
Landscape of Global Conflict.

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2006-06-19T12:03:00.000-05:00

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-Jim Leftwich & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen

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-Jim Leftwich & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen

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2006-06-19T11:51:00.000-05:00

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-Jim Leftwich & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen

----

2006-06-19T11:14:00.000-05:00

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----

2006-06-19T11:12:00.000-05:00

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-Peter K. Niven

Laos: Secret War Still Killing Thousands Of People

2006-06-18T14:58:00.000-05:00

Laos: Secret War Still Killing Thousands Of People
June 16, 2006
By Andre Vltchek

Plain of Jars, Laos. "It is terrible when the bomb kills the cow," says
my guide and translator, Mr. Van Lorn, as we are leaving Phonsavan in
Plain of Jars, driving east, towards Vietnam. "Cows like to chew on
stones. Very often they dig out some old bombie and then it goes off in
their mouth, tearing off the entire head of the animal."

Mr. Van Lorn belongs to the Hmong minority, and he is too young to
remember the war. He seems to be indifferent to the fact that his tribe
used to support the US Secret War in this country. His allegiances lie
entirely with Laos and he is talking with great compassion about those
who lost their lives in the most savage bombing campaigns in the
history of mankind.

Our van is slowly driving along the dirt road, bypassing Ban Khai
village, finally stopping in the middle of waste meadow. Enormous
craters dot the entire countryside, plains and hills. "We can't drive
any further," says Mr. Van Lorn. "There are bombs buried in the ground
and our van could explode on one of them. We have to walk."

He leads me to one of the craters and then back to the van, helping me
to climb to the roof for a better view. When I finish taking
photographs, he points to the village: "Pick out any house in this
town. I will translate for you. There is not one family in this area
which did not suffer during the war. Each family lost relatives and had
to leave this part of the country."

I ask the driver to stop at a humble looking compound. We enter the
courtyard and are greeted by an old man. His name is Mr. Nai Phommar
and he is 81 years old. He invites us to his clean and simple house;
his children bring "Lao whiskey" and fruits.

"People are dying in this area," explains Mr. Phommar. "We lost 2
people six years ago, but this is just a small village and we are lucky
we have had no more casualties since then."

I first feel hesitant to ask him about the war, but the old man is
happy to share his memories. "We used to hide by the side of the road,
in the ditch. Bombs kept falling and once our entire family was buried
and we had to dig ourselves out. People were dying all around us. They
used to bomb us with enormous airplanes which flew so high that we
couldn't see or hear them approaching. And they used to send small
planes which were looking for people on the ground: those flew so low
that we were able to see faces in the cockpits."

"But the carpet bombing was the scariest. There was no warning. Bombs
began to explode all around this area and we had no idea where they
were coming from. On average, they bombed us 5 times a day. They bombed
us almost every day, for more than ten years. Laos had only 2 million
people then. And we were later told that the US and its allies dropped
3 million tons of bombs on us."

"Eventually, nobody could survive here, anymore. Our houses were
destroyed and our fields were full of unexploded substances. People
were dying and so were the animals. We had to leave and so we decided
to go to Vietnam, to search for refuge. But the journey was
tremendously arduous. We were moving at night, carrying few
possessions. During the day we were hiding from the enemy planes."

"During the war I was very angry at Americans. I couldn't understand
how can somebody be so brutal - how can somebody kill fellow human
beings in such cold blood. But now my government tells me that
everything is ok, that it is past and we should forget. But how can we
forget? I don't feel angry anymore, but I would like the world to know
what happened to us."

John Bacher, a Ph.D. in history and a Metro Toronto archivist once
wrote about The Secret War in Laos: "More bombs were dropped on Laos
between 1965 and 1973 than the US dropped on Japan and Germany during
WWII. More than 350 thousand people were killed. The war in Laos was a
secret only from the American people and Congress. It anticipated the
sordid ties between drug trafficking and repressive regimes that have
been seen later in the Noriega affair."

In reality, it is hard to call this twisted campaign of terror "a war".
There were hardly any serious strategic merits of indiscriminately
bombing one of the poorest countrysides in the world, scarcely
inhabited by subsistence farmers and their domestic animals.

In this biggest covert operation in US history, the main goal was to
"prevent" pro-Vietnamese forces from gaining control over the area. But
the entire operation seemed more like a game, overgrown boys allowed to
play, unopposed, their war games, bombing an entire nation into the
stone age for more than a decade. The result of that "game" was one of
the most brutal genocides in the history of the 20th century.

Some of the most brutal bombing raids were done out of spite, with no
planning. When US bombers couldn't find their targets in Vietnam due to
bad weather, they just dumped their load on the Laos countryside, as
the airplanes couldn't land with the bombs on board. After the end of
the bombing campaign against North Vietnam, the US military decided to
simply use its old bomb arsenal (by dropping it on Laos) accumulated in
Southeast Asia, instead of carrying it back home. The value of human
lives, of the Lao people, was never taken into consideration.

I ask Mr. Van Lorn to take me to an isolated Hmong village, and after a
half hour journey we park in front of the school in ancient and
extremely poor Ban Tajock. We walk through traditional houses, followed
by the silent stares of local inhabitants. Some of them walk around
barefoot. Most of the houses have no electricity. Fences are mainly
made out of rusty bombs.

I ask where they got the bombs. After all, the Hmong tribe was
supporting the US during the war. Mr. Van Lorn replied laconically: "Do
you think they really cared? They were just bombing everything that
moved. Bombing was their main obsession."

I ask whether anyone lost his or her life in this village due to
unexploded ordnance. "3 children," we were told by the school teacher.
"On February 26. They were playing behind their house and found an
unexploded bombie. They took it behind their hut and it exploded. All
three died on the spot."

We walk towards the area where the tragedy took place. Three girls
follow us. They are unwashed, some of them barefoot. Mr Van Lorn asks
them whether they knew the boys.

"They were our friends," says Kalia, a 10 year old girl. "We used to
play together. They were good friends. Now I am so afraid. We all have
to work here, even at our age. Our families don't have money. The boys
found the bomb and they probably tried to take it apart - to open it so
it could be sold for scrap. Then it exploded and all three of them
died. I cried for two weeks."

I ask her whether she knows how this bomb got here. I asked her whether
she ever heard about the war, about the foreign pilots dropping
millions of tons of explosives on her country. She listens to my
questions translated by Mr. Van Lorn, while drawing long line in the
dirt with her little toe. Then she looks at me, confused: "I don't
know," she said. "I never heard about it. The bombs are here. They were
always here. I am sorry, I don't know
"

Further east, there is Tham Piu Cave, the biggest of the caves
penetrated by American missiles. 473 people died there. Most of them
are still buried under stones and debris. There is no light inside the
cave, except that which comes from the entrance. Mr. Van Lorn insists
that we go inside. The cave is one huge mass grave and one of the
symbols of the "Secret War".

The Lao government claims that the cave was full of civilians hiding
here from the carpet bombing of the area. Others say that there were
some pro-Vietnamese fighters inside when the missile struck. I find
this dispute absolutely irrelevant and to a large extent insulting.

What does it matter? A foreign country comes to Laos, bombs it to the
ground; bombs everybody to the ground, from those it considers its
enemies to those it designates as its friends. It penetrates other
caves full of civilians. Those boys on a rampage probably saw it as
their highest achievement, real bravado to identify the cave and send
their missile to finish the hundreds of those they didn't even consider
to be human beings. Would they bomb Tham Piu Cave if it were full of
pro-Vietnamese fighters? Definitely! Would they bomb it if they knew
there were only women and children hiding inside? No doubt they would,
as they bombed other caves and villages full of civilians.

On the way back to Phonsavan we are passing a truck full of rusty
bombs. "They will take it to the outskirts and try to open them," says
Mr. Van Lorn. "If they are made of aluminum, chances are they will make
some decent money. That is, if they survive. Many people die trying to
open old bombs. But they are very poor; they have to eat. They will try
again and again, risking their lives."

The next day in Phonsavan I meet David Davenport, Technical Field
Manager of Mines Advisory Group (MAG). David is a former member of the
Australian military, married to a Vietnamese woman, helping to de-mine
some of the worst contaminated areas of the world: Iraq, Afghanistan,
Congo. I ask him how many people have died since the end of the war in
Laos.

"It's very hard to give exact figures," explains David. "Estimates are
based only on the number of people who reached hospitals, so the
numbers which we have say that since the end of the war some 20
thousand people were killed or maimed. Now, as I said to you, in many
villages that we go to, if someone dies he is simply buried and it may
never get recorded."

"About statistics on ordinance: we say that it's about 10 tons per
sq/kilometer but that's dealing with the whole country - the whole
country was not bombed. This is one of the most contaminated provinces
in Laos and Laos is the most heavily bombed country on the face of the
planet. During the conflict, Americans could do anything they wanted,
because they never declared war on Laos. There were never any defined
rules of engagement. That's why temples were hit, hospitals were hit
And no Geneva Convention would apply, because officially nothing
happened here; there was no war in Laos
"

I know what David is referring to. 20 miles away, the ancient capital
of the province - Xiengkhouang or Ban Phiawat - had been leveled with
the ground. Now only a statue of Buddha is sitting erect in defiance,
his body partially burned, surrounded by the ruins of a once
magnificent temple. The nearby French Hospital is nothing more than a
mountain of rubble. No wonder, the local Xieng Khouang airport used to
be, during the conflict, the second busiest in the world, with 13
thousand sorties recorded every month. All these bombs had to fall on
something and so they did: on farmers, children, hospitals, rice
fields, water buffaloes.

Between what is left of the ancient capital and Phonsavan (the new
dusty capital city built by the refugees) is the world famous Plain of
Jars, a UNESCO tentative world heritage site. It contains hundreds of
mysterious and beautiful ancient jars scattered around green and gently
rolling hills. But the entire site is also surrounded by craters and
some of the jars are broken, the result of aerial bombardment. Bombs
and bombies are scattered all around the site. A large MAG sign
welcomes sporadic visitors: "Colored concrete markers at ground level
indicate the area that has been cleared."

Those who pay can enter and feel relatively safe. While those outside
can still have a taste of what the US stands for, all over the world,
so passionately, determinedly and consistently: freedom, democracy,
respect for others and justice for all.

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-Jim Leftwich & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen

----

2006-06-18T13:08:00.000-05:00

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-Peter K. Niven

Access of Evil

2006-06-17T02:06:00.002-05:00

Access of Evil

by AMY GOODMAN

July 3, 2006

If President Bush had stood on the steps of the White House with a
megaphone when he set out to sell the Iraq War, he might have convinced
a few people about the imminent threat posed by Saddam Hussein. But he
had something far more powerful that convinced far more people: He had
a compliant press corps ready to amplify his lies. This was the same
press corps that investigated and reported for years on President
Clinton's lying about an extramarital affair. The difference here was
that President Bush's lies take lives.

In order to be able to get that all-important leak from a named or,
better yet, unnamed "senior official," reporters trade truth for
access. This is the "access of evil," when reporters forgo the tough
questions out of fear of being passed over.

And then there is the embedding process. Journalists embedded with US
troops in Iraq bring us only one perspective. How about balancing the
troops' perspective with reporters embedded in Iraqi hospitals, or in
the peace movement around the world? Former Pentagon spokesperson
Victoria Clarke proclaimed the embedding process a spectacular success.
For the Pentagon, it was. More powerful than any bomb or missile, the
Pentagon deployed the media.

During the Persian Gulf War, General Electric owned NBC (it still
does). A major nuclear weapons manufacturer--which made parts for many
of the weapons in the Gulf War--owned a major television network. Is it
any surprise that what we saw on television looked like a military
hardware show? According to the New York Times, CBS executives "offered
advertisers assurances that the war specials could be tailored to
provide better lead-ins to commercials. One way would be to insert the
commercials after segments that were specially produced with upbeat
images or messages about the war."

After the Gulf War, Pentagon spokesperson Pete Williams jumped ship,
but he was hardly crossing enemy lines. He became a correspondent for
NBC. Just over a decade later, another Pentagon spokesperson, Victoria
Clarke, gave up her position to work as a CNN commentator.

During the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, MSNBC, NBC and CNN--not only
Fox--called their coverage Operation Iraqi Freedom. We expect the
Pentagon to research the most effective propagandistic name to call its
operation. But the media's adoption of Pentagon nomenclature raises the
question: If this were state media, how would it be any different?

While the big players in the National Entertainment State deserve much
of the blame, other major news outlets have truly outdone themselves in
their total affront to the role that an independent media should play
in a democracy. The New York Times and its former national security
reporter Judith Miller were critical to the successful promulgation of
the WMD lie, with repeated front-page, above-the-fold articles pumping
the false stories about aluminum tubes and buried weapons caches, to
name a few, all reliant on unnamed sources.

Sinclair Broadcast Group, which controls close to sixty TV stations,
acts like a junior version of Fox News, with right-wing biases in its
lackluster coverage. Sinclair refused to broadcast an ABC Nightline
segment on which the names of killed US servicemen and -women were
read, continuing the Bush Administration campaign to deny to the
American public bad news about the War on Terror. Sinclair also
broadcast with much fanfare a Swift Boat Veterans-inspired smear piece
against John Kerry at a critical moment in the 2004 presidential race.

And then there's the Clear Channeling of America. Enabled by the
Clinton/Gore-backed 1996 Telecommunications Act, the Bush-connected
Clear Channel Communications, which began with a dozen radio stations,
ballooned into a 1,200-plus-station radio network. According to South
Carolina's 2002 Radio Personality of the Year, who believes she was
fired for her antiwar beliefs, Clear Channel led prowar rallies,
forbade certain songs from being played and silenced critics.

In 1997 the late George Gerbner, former dean of the University of
Pennsylvania Annenberg School of Communication, described the media as
being "driven not by the creative people who have something to tell,
but by global conglomerates that have something to sell." And almost
ten years later, it still rings true. We need an independent media.
Democracy Now!

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2006-06-17T02:06:00.001-05:00

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-Jim Leftwich & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen

----

2006-06-17T02:06:00.000-05:00

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-Peter K. Niven

----

2006-06-17T01:54:00.000-05:00

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-Peter K. Niven

Why Leftists Mistrust Liberals

2006-06-16T16:09:00.000-05:00

Why Leftists Mistrust Liberals
by Robert Jensen
April 29, 2006

Some of my best friends are liberals. Really. But I have found it is
best not to rely on them politically.

Bashing the left to burnish credibility in mainstream circles is a
time-honored liberal move, a way of saying Im critical of the
excesses of the powerful, but not like those crazy lefties. For
example, during a discussion of post-9/11 politics, I once heard
then-New York University professor (he has since moved to Columbia
University) Todd Gitlin position himself between the hard right (such
as people associated with the Bush administration) and the hard left
(such as Noam Chomsky and other radical critics), implying an
equivalence in the coherence or value of analysis of each side. The
only conclusion I could reach was that Gitlin -- who is both a prolific
scholar and a former president of Students for a Democratic Society --
either believed such a claim about equivalence or said it for
self-interested political purposes. Neither interpretation is terribly
flattering for Gitlin.

Perhaps more important than such cases are the ways in which liberals
can undermine the left even when claiming to be supportive in a common
cause.

The most recent example in my life came when a faculty colleague at the
University of Texas wrote about the controversy sparked by the
publication of David Horowitzs tract about the alleged threat radicals
pose to universities, The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics
in America. The thesis of UT classics professor Tom Palaimas op/ed
piece in the Austin daily paper was that people typically dont give
students enough credit for their ability to evaluate critically the
statements of faculty members. Palaima discussed me by name in his
piece, believing he was coming to the defense of faculty with dissident
views who are being attacked by Horowitz.

I saw it differently. My concern about this isnt personal; Palaimas
piece and Horowitzs book have had no effect on my professional life.
But these attacks and our responses to them have serious political and
intellectual consequences more generally.

First, some definitional work: In the contemporary United States, I use
the term left or radical to identify a political position that is
anti-capitalist and anti-empire. Leftists fight attempts to naturalize
capitalism, rejecting the assertion that such a brutal way to organize
an economy is inevitable. Leftists also reject the idea that the United
States has the right to dominate the world, refuting the assertion that
we are uniquely benevolent in our imperial project. Liberals typically
decry the worst excesses of capitalism and empire, but dont critique
the system at a more basic level.

Palaimas op/ed piece started by stating, Jensens classes have a
political content and that this led to a conservative student group
putting me on a watch list of professors who inappropriately
politicize the classroom. I teach about journalism and politics; of
course my courses have political content, as does every course that
deals with human affairs. The political views of professors -- left,
right or center -- shape their courses in some ways. But by marking me
as political, Palaimas essay implies others are not, or at least not
political as my class (and, by extension, the classes of other leftist
professors).

Palaima goes on to refer to my radical opinions, suggesting students
are free to accept or reject them, and are capable of doing so. I agree
that students have, and exercise, that capacity. But by labeling my
teaching as the expression of opinions, he adds to the perception that
I, or any leftist, turn the classroom into a political pulpit. While my
opinions shape my teaching -- just as Palaimas and all professors
opinions do, of course -- I dont simply teach my opinions. I teach a
mix of facts, analysis, and interpretation. When I offer students my
own analysis and interpretation, I support it with evidence and logic.

Remember that Horowitzs claim is not just that some of us have
left-wing political views but that we inappropriately politicize the
classroom. Though Palaima doesnt explicitly endorse that charge, his
defense of me seems to concede that point, as he goes on to defend my
teaching on the basis that there is a diversity of views on campus. Yet
no one -- the conservative student group that targeted leftist
professors, Horowitz, or Palaima -- has ever offered evidence for the
claim that I am inappropriate in the classroom. I have always invited
anyone who wants to make such a claim to come watch me teach; I am
confident I can defend my teaching methods.

Finally, near the end of his column, Palaima refers to political
extremists, on the left and the right in a way that could easily lead
readers to assume that he believes that extremist is an appropriate
description of me. Given that is a term typically used in public
discourse for violent factions (such as terrorists) or groups with
ideas outside acceptable discourse (such as neo-Nazis), such casual use
of it is irresponsible, further marking me as someone who need not be
taken seriously.

When I raised these issues with Palaima, I made it clear I didnt feel
personally aggrieved but thought our disagreements mattered if faculty
members are to make a principled defense of the university as a place
where independent critical inquiry is valued. He contested my reading
and said he hadnt intended people to read the column the way I
suggested they might.

Readers can judge for themselves (the op/ed is online at
http://www.statesman.com/opinion/content/editorial/stories/04/
6palaima_edit.html ), but I think the most likely reading of the piece
-- given that many peoples existing ideas about leftists and
universities are negative -- is something like this: Jensen is a
radical who injects his politics into the classroom, but we shouldnt
worry too much about it because students can manage to see through it,
and besides other professors are teaching from a different perspective.
And oh, by the way, there are lots of sensible professors with less
extreme ideas, such as

My response here could be seen as taking on the wrong target. Should I
not be critiquing Horowitz before Palaima? Well, I have written such a
critique and debated Horowitz on radio and TV (
http://www.alternet.org/rights/31986/ and
http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0324-05.htm). But just as
important: In a political moment in which virtually every major
institution in the country is dominated not just by conservatives but
by reactionary right-wing ideologues, its easy to assume that liberals
and leftists should find common cause. Those of us committed to left
politics need to evaluate such cooperation on a case-by-case basis
rather than assume it is always the best path, for several reasons.

First, in the short-term in this country it is difficult to see
possibilities for serious progressive political change. Thats not
defeatist but merely realistic. In such a period, when no mass movement
is likely to emerge, one important political task is to consolidate a
base of activists with common values and deeper commitments. In such a
process, making the distinctions between liberal and left is crucial to
the project of building a core radical contingent that can be
politically effective in the future.

Second, when leftists and liberals form least-common-denominator
coalitions, liberal positions dominate. Theres no history of liberals
moving to include left political ideas when right-wing forces are
chased from power. Think Bill Clinton, here.

That said, we in left/radical movements have made more than our share
of mistakes. Its time for a period of serious critical self-reflection
about our analysis and organizing strategies. That process is not going
to be advanced by ignoring the differences we have with liberals. We
need to be clearer than ever about those differences in thinking about
the long term.

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-Jim Leftwich & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen

----

2006-06-16T13:06:00.000-05:00

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-Peter K. Niven

Technobarons of the 21st Century

2006-06-15T15:14:00.001-05:00

Technobarons of the 21st Century
From The Independent Weekly, May 17, 2006
By Fiona Morgan

John D. Rockefeller realized that the way to control the oil market was
to control the transport of oil. So in 1871, he colluded with the
railroad industry to form a cartel called the South Improvement
Company. The rate to ship oil doubled, but Rockefellers Standard Oil
Company would get rebates for every gallon of oil shipped, even those
shipped by his competitors. South would also collect information on the
destinations, costs and dates of competitors oil shipments.

Once word leaked, independent oil producers revolted and managed to
stop South before it shipped a single gallon. But to a great extent,
the damage had been done. Rockefeller offered to buy out his
competitors, showing them his books so theyd know what they were up
against. They had a choice: Sell out now, or be run into the ground.
Standard Oil went on to control the production of oil throughout the
United States until the Supreme Court broke it up in 1911.

What does a 19th-century oil monopolist have to do with the modern-day
world of ones and zeroes? Well, we all know how nicely things work out
when oil men are in charge. But the real key is the railroadthe
transport route, the superhighway. Its more than a stale metaphor for
talking about the abstract technicalities of the Internet. The way
valuable goods are deliveredbe they gallons of oil or binary
packetshasnt changed much. When the invention of radio and telephones
spurred Congress to regulate communications, legislators used
transportation law as a model. Now, as Congress is working on its first
major telecommunications bill since 1996, telecom and cable companies
are floating the idea of a preferred status for content providers who
are willing to pay for fast downloads, with slower service for everyone
elsean Information Super-Tollway.

By now, youve probably gotten an e-mail or read a blog post about the
issue of network neutrality. The term doesnt tell you much. (As
Arianna Huffington recently observed on her blog, HuffingtonPost.com,
Why are the bad guys so much better at naming things? Especially
legislation.) Its a term created by geeks, and it refers to the
concept of keeping content separate from the operation of networks.
Internet equality might be more evocative in the political arena. In
any case, the concept has been essential to the Internet since it was
created.

The Telecom Act of 1996 deregulated the communications industry,
bringing about widespread media consolidation. It opened the door for
Clear Channels acquisition of hundreds of radio stations. It allowed
phone and cable companies to consume one another ravenously, undoing
many decades worth of anti-trust measures. From a public interest
point of view, the law has been a disaster. Its also out of date: The
Internet is mentioned fewer than a dozen times.

Now the U.S. House of Representatives is preparing to vote on the
Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act of 2006. The
COPE Act covers a lot of ground. It overturns state laws that prevent
cities from setting up their own community Internet services, which is
good. It also establishes a national video franchise system to allow
telephone and cable companies to offer broadband TV service without
having to make the local agreements the cable companies currently have;
thanks to public outcry, the bill also ensures funding for public
access programming.

Most significantly, the COPE Act and its Senate equivalent would
deregulate the Internet in exactly the way telephone and cable
companies want it to. COPE would allow the telcos to control the
ongoing shift to broadband Internet television by allowing th¸
telephone companies to enter the TV business, and would allow both
telephone and cable companies to offer service only where they want
toi.e., where they can make the most moneywith no obligation to build
out into lower-income neighborhoods, which wont do anything to help
the digital divide.

Neither the House nor the Senate bill includes net neutrality
protections, which is why so many public interest groups oppose the
bills. In the midst of all of this deregulation, Congress needs to make
a clear stand against letting Internet service providers filter
content. Net neutrality would ensure that every Web-based businesses
and every site, be it personal, political or commercial, would be
treated the same by the systems that power the Internet itself. Rep. Ed
Markey (D-Mass.) introduced those protections into the COPE Act, but
two separate committees voted them down. Last week he introduced the
protections as a freestanding bill, the Net Neutrality Act of 2006.

Verizon, BellSouth, Time Warner, SBC, Comcast and AT&Tthe main
supporters of the COPE Act and virtually the only opponents of net
neutralityare using Congress to help them gain a competitive
advantage. Collectively they claim 98 percent of the nations Internet
customers, but they fear that theyre losing ground in their other
businesses. Internet phone services like Vonage and Skype offer
free-to-incredibly-cheap local and long distance calling online, and
once Internet TV gains a mass audience, cable TV will be outmoded.
Suddenly theres real competition in voice and video services, and
thats bad news for companies like Verizon and Time Warner.

So in order to get their cut from all this newfangled content, the
telcos and cable companies have come up with a tiered system for the
Internet similar to that of cable TV (the one that makes you pay
through the nose to watch The Sopranos). They would charge not only
their subscribers but also the content providers themselvesGoogle,
Yahoo!, iTunes, and every other site that could afford itfor
super-fast service. A news content site like The New York Times would
sign a high-dollar agreement with an ISP for that fast service, making
its competitors less appealing to the 80 percent of Americans who get
their news online. How slow will rank-and-file Web sites be in that
system? How easy will it be to read the liberal blogs or download the
indie podcasts? That would be up to the ISPs.

The industry says it needs a tiered system because all those little
video clips people send to each to other are hogging bandwidth. The
next time you see an ad for Time Warners Road Runner broadband
service, notice that streaming video is part of the lure of paying
$44.95 a month. An Associated Press story earlier this week quoted
Verizon and BellSouth spokesmen warning that as the video trend
continues, the Net could chokelike an overbooked flight, an ISP would
be overcapacity if all of its subscribers downloaded high-quality video
at the same time. But as the story points out, Internet traffic doesnt
work that way. It grows along with the capacity, not ahead of it. We
wouldnt be watching YouTube videos over a 64K modem, because it
wouldnt be worth the aggravation. The industry says all that
innovation will cost money, and that they will have no choice but to
pass that cost on to consumers. Oh, we consumers would suffer, they
warn us, even those of us who just want to check e-mail. The fact is,
ISPs have been whining about multimedia content since RealAudio first
launched its streaming sounds in 1995. Not only has the Net survived,
but ISPs have raked in billions in profits as a result. The COPE Acts
video franchising piece, remember, would let phone companies set their
own terms for launching nationwide video services.

Public interest groups are afraid that telcos would use their
gatekeeping power to block access to the sites of their competitors and
critics. Poppycock, the telcos say. We would never do anything like
that. The FCC wouldnt let us get away with it! And anyway, we wouldnt
want to. We believe in all this net neutrality stuff. Cross our hearts.
Pinky swear. No need to make it part of the law, now is there?

And we should believe them why? Remember, AT&T, BellSouth and Verizon
willingly sold the private phone records of American citizens to the
Bush administrations illegal domestic spying operation.

At the very least, its no stretch to think they would give
preferential access to their own content. When AOL bought Time Warner
in 2001, it was a delivery system merging with a content company. Time
Warner owns CNN, HBO and a huge movie library. The ongoing convergence
of content and telecom companies would reach its logical conclusion in
offering faster Road Runner downloads for those sites and channels. Why
wouldnt the industry go there? Theyll do anything the law allows to
make money. Thats why we need a law.

Not surprisingly, Amazon, Google and every other major content site
dont want to pay a toll. Theyve joined a coalition of groups urging
Congress to enshrine net neutrality into law. Like the successful
alliance that pushed back on media ownership deregulation two years
ago, the net neutrality coalition spans the political spectrum. It
includes not only lefty groups such as MoveOn and Common Cause, and
mainstream groups such as the American Library Association and
Consumers Union, but also Gun Owners of America, the Parents Television
Council (crusaders for decency laws) and Prof. Glenn Reynolds, better
known as the right-wing blogger Instapundit.

Its not hard to understand why this issue reaches across the political
spectrum. The Internet has made possible a democratic discourse that is
truly stunning, transforming political organizing and communication
while the mainstream tries harder and harder to suffocate ideas that
dont follow the standard party lines. Consider Stephen Colberts
blistering address at the White House Correspondents Dinner. Broadcast
on CSPAN on a Saturday night, completely left out of official newspaper
accounts of the event the next morning, it was watched by millions of
people online, thanks to the kind of video streaming that the telcos
say is cramping their style.

Money, of course, trumps ideology, and the growing concern of the
banking industry could ultimately be decisive. The financial services
companies, as theyre called, are beginning to wake up to the fact that
they, too, would be expected to pay tolls for the secure high-speed
transactions that have made them loads of money. In a memo leaked to
the press last week, Verizon urged its consultants to talk the banking
industry out of supporting net neutrality. They are being fed a lot of
cock-and-bull, Chicken Little stories about how the future of their
industry is at stake because another network industry might have the
freedom to price broadband services according to market demand,
Verizons chief congressional lobbyist, Peter Davidson, said in the
memo.

In case the dismissive approach didnt work, Davidson also included the
hard sell. He warned that the financial services industry better not
start moaning in the future about a lack of sophisticated data links
they need if net neutrality becomes law.

U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick, a Republican from Charlotte, has been a target of
the net neutrality movement since she voted down a net neutrality
provision in the House Energy and Commerce Committee on April 26 and
signed on to cosponsor the COPE Act. Myricks phone number is listed on
SavetheInternet.com, which urges people to call and express their
displeasure.

Andy Polk, Myricks legislative aide, says her office has been flooded
with calls from people who think Congress is passing laws that will
keep them from being able to look at the Web sites they want to see. He
says these people have been misinformed.

Exactly what people are concerned about, the FCC has already drafted
principles to deal with, he says, which ensure that people have
access to any Internet site that they would like, that they cant be
blocked by their Internet provider. We fully support the principles
that the FCC has laid out.

The FCCs connectivity principles are: 1) Consumers are entitled to
access the lawful Internet content of their choice; 2) consumers are
entitled to run applications and services of their choice, subject to
the needs of law enforcement; 3) consumers are entitled to connect
their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network; and 4)
consumers are entitled to competition among network providers,
application and service providers, and content providers. Like the
airwaves, the broadband lines are regulated by the FCC because they run
along the public rights of waythose wires and cables are run along
public streets and buried under peoples backyards. ISPs charge us for
the privilege of connecting, but nobody owns the Internet.

But Polk calls net neutrality a dicey concept. The problem with the
current debate is, no one knows what net neutrality actually means.
In committee hearings, he says, its proponents all defined it
differently. But in arguing against it, he gives a pretty good working
definition. It would require Internet providers to treat all content
exactly the same regardless of how much bandwidth its taking up. If we
define net neutrality in this bill, it would be seen by the industry as
saying you have to allow people to see everything they want and take up
as much bandwidth as they want. When industry people see that, they
would raise the cost of providing the Internet service because they
would have to allow everybody to have equal access to the bandwidth.

Read the information telcos publish for their investors and youll
learn of unlimited bandwidth, a future without limits created by their
technological prowess. But when theyre discussing net neutrality,
suddenly their broadband systems are packed tighter than sardine cans.

At this point in time were not sure we need to further regulate the
Internet, Polk says. We want to make sure its as free as possible
and allow as much creativity and ingenuity as possible.

Incidentally, Myrick received $27,500 in campaign contributions from
telecom PACs in 2004, including $10,000 from SBC, $8,500 from BellSouth
and $7,000 from Verizon.

Polks point about the FCC has some basis. There has been only one case
in the United States in which an Internet service provider blocked
access to a specific Web site or service. It happened to be the Mebane,
N.C.-based Madison River, which was fined $15,000 last year by the FCC
for blocking traffic to Vonage, the online phone service. Madison River
had approximately 121,000 residential phone subscribers and nearly
40,000 broadband Internet subscribers at the time. Vonage had more than
a million. About a month after Vonage complained to the FCC that
Madison River was port blocking, or preventing certain types of
Internet traffic from traveling through its networks, the agency took
action.

But the FCCs principles dont address the kind of tiered system the
telcos want to create. Nor do they establish clear methods of
enforcement. Vonage was already hugely successful when it took on
Madison River. What happens to the startups?

To Paul Jones, the Vonage v. Madison River case is evidence of what
telcos can and will do if given the chance. That really tells the tale
of what net neutrality is about, Jones says. Its about stopping
providers from using their near monopoly of network connections to
invisibly prevent you from connecting to a site, or to strong-arm
content providers into paying fees.
In 1992, Jones launched one of the first Web sites in North America. He
and a team of techies at UNC-Chapel Hill launched SunSITE, a public
archive and information sharing project funded by grants from Sun
Microsystems. As it collaborated on more academic, corporate and
high-tech startup projects, it changed its name. In 2000, it became
ibiblio, a digital archive and online public library. Ibiblio also
nurtures open-source software projects, many of which are created by
UNC students.

Like other online pioneers, Jones feels strongly that making neutrality
law is necessary to preserve everything we love about the Internet.
The great beauty of the Internet is that its dynamic, its constantly
in beta, people are constantly taking risks, he says, and the market
behaves like a true market, in which you have many, many choices. There
are only a few players in the home connectivity market and the variety
is out there beyond them.

Its absurd for the telcos to complain that content providers are
making their money off the backs of Internet service providers, Jones
says. Its kind of like the paving company getting mad when a truck
drives on their work. Theyd like to have a limited monopoly with not
much competition and no responsibility. I want that job, too, he
jokes.

What were talking about is preserving the ability of the Internet to
continue to be an engine for economic growth by keeping a diversity of
access, Jones says. North Carolina is the home of lots of small
businesses and those small businesses need net neutrality so they can
compete fairly.

In 1880, a company named for Alexander Graham Bell undertook the first
nationwide long-distance telephone network. American Bells project
spun off into the American Telephone and Telegraph Company in 1885. It
was a regulated monopoly for almost a centuryeverybody needed a
telephone, and AT&T had the ear of nearly every customer in the nation.
The government set the rates, and AT&T enjoyed guaranteed profits. But
new technologies changed the arrangement. In 1982, the Department of
Justice ordered AT&T broken up into regional baby Bells in exchange
for allowing the company to enterwhat else?the computer business.
Then came massive deregulation with the Telecom Act of 96, and the
monopoly reemerged. One of those baby Bells, Southwestern Bell Corp.,
acquired three others in the 1990s, and in 2005 SBC moved to buy AT&T
(getting full control of Cingular Wireless in the process). That merged
company, called AT&T, will be the largest provider of both local and
long distance telephone services, wireless service and DSL Internet
access in the United States.
Today, were facing another massive deregulation of the telecom
industry, the first one to give century-old monopolists unfair
advantage on the Internet. Industry spin at the moment is that Congress
needs a cooling-off period to study the issue of net neutrality.
Industry money is funding a heavy-duty advertising and PR blitz, some
of which is conducted by Astroturfphony grassrootsorganizations such
as Hands Off the Internet (Say no to government regulation of the
Internet) and Freedom Works (Lower Taxes, Less Government, More
Freedom), which are funded by the telecom companies. They say net
neutrality legislation will infringe on the free market. The situation
is deeply ironic, because techies are notoriously libertarian,
especially the core group of Net founders now urging Congress to pass
net neutrality legislation.

The fact is, the Internet supports the freest market in existence, and
the tiered system would destroy it. Above all, it is this contradiction
the net neutrality movement must get across to Congressand the public.
Otherwise, well be signing over American democracys greatest asset to
modern-day John D. Rockefellers.

Meet the Shock Troops of the Christian Youth

2006-06-15T15:14:00.000-05:00

Meet the Shock Troops of the Christian Youth
Battle Cry for Theocracy!
by Sunsara Taylor ; May 16, 2006

If you've been waiting until the Christian fascist movement started
filling stadiums with young people and hyping them up to do battle in
"God's army" to get alarmed, wait no longer.

In recent weeks, Battle Cry, a Christian fundamentalist youth movement,
has attracted more than 25,000 to mega-rally rock concerts in San
Francisco and Detroit and this weekend they plan to fill Wachovia
Stadium in Philadelphia.

They claim their religion and values are under attack but, amidst
spectacular lightshows, hummers, Navy Seals, and military imagery on
stage, it is Battle Cry that has declared war on everyone else! Their
leader, Ron Luce, insists: "This is war. And Jesus invites us to get
into the action, telling us that the violent--the 'forceful' ones--will
lay hold of the kingdom."

A glimpse at Battle Cry's Honor Academy, which trains 500 youth each
year and preaches that homosexuality and masturbation are sins, reveals
a lot about what kind of society they are fighting for. Interns are
forbidden to listen to secular music, watch R-rated movies or date. Men
can't use the internet unsupervised and the length of women's skirts is
regulated. The logic behind this, that men must be protected from the
sin of sexual temptation, is what drives Islamic fundamentalists to
shroud women in burkhas!

Behind their multi-million dollar operation that sends more than 5,000
missionaries to more than thirty-four countries each year, are some of
the most powerful and extreme religious lunatics in the country. Their
partners include Pat Robertson (who got a call from Karl Rove to
discuss Alito before the nomination was made public), Ted Haggard (who
brags that his concerns will be responded to by the White House within
24 hours), Jerry Falwell (who blamed September 11th on homosexuals,
feminists, pagans, and abortionists), and others. Their events have
been addressed by Barbara Bush (via video) as well as former President
Gerry Ford. This weekend's event will include Franklyn Graham who has
ministered to George Bush and publicly proclaimed that Islam is an
"evil religion."

What most of these figures have in common is their insistence that the
Bible be read literally and obeyed as the inerrant word of God. And, as
Ron Luce leads youth to pray, "I will keep my eyes on the battle,
submitting to Your code even when I don't understand.outside my comfort
zone in the battle zone," it would be foolish to expect that there is
any part of the Bible's literal horrors this movement would be
unwilling to enforce. That includes stoning disobedient children and
non-virgin brides (Deuteronomy 21:18-21 and 22:13-21), executing gays
(Leviticus 20:13), and keeping slaves (Peter 2:18).

Already they staged a protest on the steps of San Francisco's City Hall
precisely because they were "the very city hall steps where several
months ago 'gay marriages' were celebrated." Their answer to the
scourge of rape and violence against women is to end divorce, spread
ignorance, insist on virginity--the very things that will more entrap
women in these nightmares. And this Friday, they are planning rallies
at fifty City Halls nation-wide.

Of course, like the President who gave Ron Luce an appointment to the
White House Advisory Commission on Drug-Free Communities, Battle Cry
tells its share of bald-faced lies. For one, they claim that "a society
fortified by biblical principals and a strong moral code...is the
heritage our forefathers fought and died to secure for us." But the
word "God" never appears in the Constitution. After three-and-a-half
months of debate about what should go into the document that would
govern the land, the framers drafted a constitution that is secular.
Battle Cry also claims America has been "set aside for God's
purposes--a country established for good and fruitfully blessed so that
we might take God's message to the ends of the earth." It is revealing
that for all their talk about the value of life and the evils of
violent imagery, Battle Cry never speaks against the real violence and
loss of life being inflicted by U.S. troops in Iraq.

Still, there is one thing that Battle Cry gets right: this country is
in the midst of a deep moral crisis. We are indeed living through times
when business-as-usual is unconscionable.

As the Bush regime wages unjust wars and conducts torture in our names,
as they leave New Orleans to rot, and drag us closer each day to a
theocracy where abortion and birth control are banned, science is
pulled under, and gays are persecuted, it is no wonder that young
people are searching for meaning and morality.

The truth is, however, youth will not find the morality they need in a
stadium listening to Ron Luce preach about religious war and
intolerance. And they won't find it while buying Battle Cry's keepsake
dog-tags.

These young people need to be challenged to look around them and think
for themselves. I am confident that if they do, many of them may find
that the truly moral way to live is to throw their tremendous energies
and dreams of a better world into stopping this madness and driving out
the Bush regime.

This generation--and their counterparts all around the world--will have
to live with the consequences of this culture war, one way or another.

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----

2006-06-15T13:05:00.000-05:00

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Still Soft on (Corporate) Crime

2006-06-14T16:26:00.000-05:00

Still Soft on (Corporate) Crime
June 09, 2006
By Michael Parenti

A half century ago, Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black reminded us in
Griffin v. Illinois (1956) that there "can be no equal justice where
the kind of trial a man gets depends on the amount of money he has."
The corporate executive with a team of high powered attorneys has a
different legal experience than the poor person with an underpaid court
appointed lawyer. And it's not just a few indigents who need
court-appointed lawyers; some 80 percent of defendants nationwide rely
on public defenders.

The recent convictions of Enron's billionaire swindlers Kenneth Lay and
Jeffrey Skilling lend hope to those of us who dream of a more equitable
legal system. But before we put Justice Black's dictum to rest, keep in
mind that Lay and Skilling are out on bail, and that they still might
end up with a light sentence or skip free on some technicality.

In recent years prominent firms such as Enron, Adelphia, R. J.
Reynolds, WorldCom, Time Warner, Tyco, Arthur Andersen, Refco, Bristol
Meyers, ImClone, Global Crossing, and HealthSouth have been
investigated for accounting and tax fraud, manipulating stock values,
insider trading, and obstructing justice, criminal acts that have
delivered economic ruin upon shareholders and employees. As of June
2006 only a handful of executives from these companies have seen the
inside of a prison.

Think of the magnitude of their crimes, the heartless damage wreaked
upon many thousands of employees who saw their jobs, retirement funds,
and financial security stolen from them. So much misery for the many so
that the favored few might gleefully romp and frolic in increasingly
obscene wealth.

What kind of punishment awaits most corporate brigands? Martha Stewart
did a grueling five months in a federal women's camp. Dennis Koziowski,
former Tyco CEO, looted some $600 million to fund his lavish lifestyle,
for that he got 8 to 25 years in a minimum security prison, and is
eligible for parole in about six years, unless he wins an earlier
reversal or sentence reduction.

After getting a 15-year sentence for looting $100 million from
Adelphia, John Rigas is free pending his appeal. So is Bernard Ebbers,
former CEO of WorldCom (on a 25-year sentence), who wiped out a company
worth $115 billion at its peak.

Corporate crime is not a rarity but a regularity. The Justice
Department found that most giant companies have committed felonies.
Many are repeat offenders. Over the years, General Electric has been
convicted of 282 counts of contract fraud and fined $20 million. But
nobody at GE is doing time. (Imagine a street criminal with 282 felony
convictions who is allowed to walk free.)

Charged with 216 violations involving toxic substances, WorldCom was
fined $625,000. Over a sixteen year period major oil firms cheated the
government of nearly $856 million in royalties by understating the
value of the oil they pumped from public lands, but nobody went to
prison in any of these cases.

Honeywell ignored defects in gas heaters resulting in twenty two deaths
and seventy seven crippling injuries, for which it was fined $800,000.
Johns Manville suppressed information about the asbestos poisoning of
its workers; when ordered to pay damages in civil court it declared
bankruptcy to avoid payment. Nobody ended up behind bars in either of
these cases.

An executive of Eli Lilly failed to inform the government about the
effects of a drug suspected of causing forty nine deaths in the United
States and several hundred abroad. He was fined $15,000. For dumping
toxic chemicals into well water that was subsequently linked to eight
leukemia deaths, W. R. Grace was fined $10,000. Charged with unlawfully
burning toxic wastes into the atmosphere for twenty years, Potomac
Electric Power Co. of Washington, D.C. was fined the crushing sum of
$500. In none of these cases did anyone see the inside of a slammer.

In 2005 the Bank of New York agreed to pay $38 million in penalties and
victim compensation arising from a case of money laundering and fraud,
but nobody ended up having to share a conjugal cell with Big Spike.

That same year Halliburton executives failed to make payments to
pension participants as legally required; instead they used some of the
funds for executive pensions and bonuses. Halliburton was required to
pay almost $9 million and an undisclosed tax penalty, but none of the
company suits went to prison.

In 2006, Custer Battles was found guilty of defrauding the United
States of millions of dollars in government contracts in Iraq. The
company was slated to pay triple damages but again nobody went to
prison.

That creepy fellow James Watt, Interior Secretary under the Reagan
administration, helped rich clients illegally pocket millions in
federal low-income housing funds. Watt was able to sidestep eighteen
felony charges of perjury and plead guilty to a misdemeanor, for which
he got five years probation and a $5,000 fine.

As of 2006 there was an estimated $450 billion shortfall in retirement
and disability funds, as numerous companies have defaulted on their
pension payments. Federal law requires companies to honor their
obligations to these funds but there is no real enforcement mechanism.

When Firestone pled guilty to filing false tax returns concealing $12.6
million in income, it was fined $10,000, and no one went to jail. Over
seven hundred people a year are imprisoned for tax evasion, almost all
of them for sums far smaller than the amount Firestone concealed.

Even when the fine is more substantial, it usually represents a mere
fraction of company profits and fails to compensate for the damage
wreaked. Over several years Food Lion cheated its employees of at least
$200 million by forcing them to work "off the clock," but in a court
settlement the company paid back only $13 million. Who says crime
doesn't pay?

In 2004 Halliburton paid a $7.5 million fine for false earnings
reports. Halliburton was also accused of grossly overcharging the
government for gasoline intended for U.S. armed forces in Iraq.
Meanwhile, for work done on a government nuclear plant, Bechtel
inflated its bill for labor, materials, travel, entertainment, and
supplies--then gave itself a $250,000 bonus.

Nobody at Halliburton or Bechtel went to prison for these huge thefts.
And as we all know, both companies are still gorging themselves on fat
government contracts.

Someone who robs a liquor store is far more likely to do time than
people who steal hundreds of millions of dollars from shareholders,
employees, consumers, and taxpayers.

Penalties often are uncollected or suspended. Over one hundred savings
and loan (S&L) plea bargainers, who escaped long prison terms by
promising to make penalty repayments of $133.8 million, repaid less
than 1 percent of that amount.

Claiming it did not have enough lawyers and investigators, the
government failed to pursue more than one thousand S&L fraud and
embezzlement conspiracies, amounting to hundreds of billions in losses
for U.S. taxpayers.

The Bush Jr. administration decreased major fines for mining safety
violations and in nearly half the cases did not bother to collect the
fines. No wonder miners continue to perish in preventable accidents.

Frequently corporate criminals continue to live in luxury but claim
they do not have the money to make restitution to their victims. They
are able to hide many assets before penalties are established.

When corporate felons actually are given prison terms, the sentence is
usually light and sometimes not even served. S&L defendants, convicted
of having stolen hundreds of millions of dollars, spent fewer months
behind bars on average than car thieves and at relatively comfortable
minimum security prisons.

The two ringleaders of Archer Daniels Midland Co. who stole millions
from their customers were sentenced to only three years. The average
sentence for corporate criminals who do time is about eleven months.

Let's go back some years to Wall Street investor Michael Milken who
pled guilty to securities violations and was sentenced to ten years
reduced to twenty two months, most of which was spent doing community
service. Corporate criminals sentenced to community service seldom do
but a small portion of it, if any. Milken had to pay back $1.1 billion
to settle criminal and civil charges but retained a vast fortune of
$1.2 billion from his dealings.

Likewise, Ivan Boesky walked off with $25 million after paying his fine
for insider trading and doing a brief spell behind bars. Every major
participant in these late 1980s Wall Street investment crimes emerged
from the experience as a wealthy man. Again, who says crime doesn't
pay?

Opinion surveys find that a majority of the public believes that
wrongdoing is widespread in the business world. Some 90 percent think
that big corporations have too much influence over government. Only 2
percent consider company bosses "very trustworthy." You've got to hand
it to the American people. Buried alive under an avalanche of media
disinformation and puffery, they still sometimes get it right.

Sure it does us good to see some corporate predators get their asses
kicked in court. And we should demand that it happen more often.

But keep in mind that corporate crime is endemic to a system bound by
limitless greed and pitiless theft, a system whose operational
imperative is "accumulate, accumulate, accumulate," a system faithfully
serviced by reactionary plutocrats in the White House who themselves
partake of the plunder.

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-Jim Leftwich & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen

----

2006-06-14T11:43:00.000-05:00

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-Peter K. Niven

U.S. Willing to Talk, With Conditions, and the Media Bites Once Again

2006-06-13T14:23:00.000-05:00

ZNet Commentary
U.S. Willing to Talk, With Conditions, and the Media Bites Once Again
June 10, 2006
By Edward Herman

The mainstream media have long had a high gullibility quotient when it
comes to dealing with demonized external threats, which makes it easy
to manage them and guide them into propaganda service. In the case of
the ludicrous Guatemalan security threat of 1953-54, the publisher of
the New York Times was persuaded by a United Fruit agent to send a
reporter to Guatemala who "dutifully wrote a series of alarming reports
about 'Reds' in the country" (Kinzer and Schlesinger, Bitter Fruit).
Another United Fruit public relations man commented sardonically on the
media's gullibility in that case: "It is difficult to make a convincing
case for manipulation of the press when the victims proved so eager for
the experience."

Given their regular eagerness-- or at a minimum, willingness--to
support the government party line in dealing with a targeted enemy, the
media never learn from experience. The forces that shape their
news-making and editorial biases allow them to start anew with a fresh
round of gullible propaganda service with little or no time lag. In the
1950s into the 1980s there was a series of alleged "gaps" which we
allegedly suffered in relation to Soviet missile numbers and
"throw-weight," each of them fraudulent, but each of them exposed only
with a time lag that didn't interfere with a responsive U.S. buildup.
Each exposure had no observable effect on the media's gullible
acceptance of the next round of gap production. More recently, and
currently, we see the media getting on the Iran threat bandwagon only
months after some of the media had issued semi-apologies for swallowing
propaganda disinformation on Iraq's menacing weapons of mass
destruction (WMD). The forces integrating the media into the
war-makers' propaganda operations overwhelm their capacity to learn
from experience.

The Vietnam War Phony Peace Offers

The new U.S. offer of direct talks with Iran, with conditions, is a
throwback to an earlier round of offers of talks with conditions in
which the media served state war propaganda very effectively, and at an
immense cost in resources and human life. The U.S. bombing of Vietnam,
which became open and earnest in February 1965, led to widespread
protests and resistance. In April 1965 the Johnson administration
therefore began a series of offers to "discuss" and "pauses" in the
bombing during which it allegedly awaited a response from North Vietnam
that could lead to peace.
It was very obvious at the time, and has been established by solid
documentary evidence since, that these pauses were for public relations
purposes only, and that only a North Vietnamese agreement to surrender
and meet the full U.S. political agenda, would have ended the bombing
and war. Those hidden surrender conditions were secretly conveyed to
the North Vietnamese.

But the U.S. mainstream media simply refused to recognize the
not-very-hidden Johnson administration agenda and the PR purpose of
these phony peace moves. They took the Johnson offers of supposedly
"unrestricted talks" at face value, captured in James Reston's
statement in the New York Times, after an early bombing lull, that "The
problem of peace lies now not in Washington but in Hanoi
"
Allowing these PR ploys to be genuine and putting the onus of their
failure on the North Vietnamese was deeply dishonest but extremely
serviceable to the war-makers, making it easier for them to escalate
their violence in response to these North Vietnamese refusals to
"negotiate" (i.e., surrender). (This PR fraud was discussed at length
at the time in Edward S. Herman and Richard DuBoff's America's Vietnam
Policy: The Strategy of Deception [Public Affairs: 1966] and Franz
Schurmann et al., The Politics of Escalation [Fawcett: 1966]).

The Phony Bush Peace Offer to Iran

The analogy with the Bush administration's current offer to talk
directly with Iran is close. The Bush administration has openly
acknowledged that its aim is Iranian "regime change," and it has
engaged in a series of aggressive and provocative moves designed to
achieve that outcome, including subsidizing internal dissidents within
Iran, encouraging cross-border attacks from Iraq by Iranian expatriate
terrorists, collecting data on Iranian targets by spy drones and
on-the-ground incursions, and threatening to attack its latest target.
It sabotaged the EU effort to negotiate a deal with Iran by refusing to
agree to security guarantees to Iran as a part of the settlement. Why
would it do that if its worry was only about Iran's possible
development of a nuclear weapons capability? But just as the media
didn't suggest a Johnson hidden agenda of surrender, so the media today
refuse to focus on the agenda of regime change in interpreting the new
offer even as it stares them in the face.

Given the objective of regime change, and the fact that the United
States has been subject to criticism for its long unwillingness to
negotiate with Iran, an obvious hypothesis is that, like the Johnson
peace offers of the 1960s, the new U.S. offer is intended to be
rejected while giving the cooperative media and "international
community" a public relations bone to chew on. If the latter are
sufficiently gullible they will congratulate the Bush administration
for its new openness and allow the onus to be put on Iran if it rejects
an offer intended to be rejected.

The Bush administration is only prepared to "negotiate" after Iran
terminates its nuclear activities, the termination to be established by
intensive inspections. Why should any conditions for negotiations be
imposed on Iran? Why not just negotiate? Wouldn't the condition
demanded by the Bush administration open the door to further U.S.
insistence on endlessly intrusive inspections that never satisfied the
Bushies in Iraq and could well stall "negotiations" with Iran
indefinitely?
Why should Iran have to make serious concessions in advance as a
condition of negotiations and the United States make none? Ms. Rice has
insisted on Iraq's suspension of nuclear activities on the ground that
the administration doesn't want a gun pointed at its head, but as Selig
Harrison points out, "then she points a gun at their head by saying
that 'all options are on the table.'"

("It is time to put security issues on the table with Iran," Financial
Times, January 18, 2006, as posted to the website of the Center for
International Policy).

But a good propaganda system will not ask such questions and will not
find the new "offer" a cynical PR move intended to be rejected. On the
contrary, it will credit Rice and Bush with "smart diplomacy" and a
"rare victory" on the road to achieving the "only successful resolution
worth talking about-a verifiable commitment by Iran not to develop the
capacity to build nuclear weapons" ("What Counts on Iran," NYT ed.,
June 3, 2006). If Iran rejects the propaganda ploy, "spurns that
conciliatory approach, Washington is sure to put sanctions back on the
international agenda."
This is same collection of editors who supported the Bush manipulation
of facts and the inspection system on WMD to clear the ground for a
military attack on Iraq; and here the editors follow closely in the
footsteps of their predecessors during the Vietnam War who found the PR
moves of that time genuine and helpfully putting the onus on the target
for refusing to surrender. They are at it again.

Let me give a short list of the facts and considerations that the
propaganda system must bypass and evade to laud the new "talks with
conditions" propaganda ploy:

--First, as noted, its members must ignore the real agenda, and pretend
that the supposedly grave threat of Iranian nuclear weapons is the main
issue, just as they swallowed the Bush claim that Iraq's WMD and
security threat to the United States was the main issue-and after this
was found to be a fraud, the media very kindly allowed that the goal
was Iraqi liberty . The media have accepted the nominal agenda as real
and their premise across the board.

--Second, they must ignore the fact that their government is already
engaged in an aggression and preparing for its intensification against
the supposedly threatening target (see Herman and Peterson, "The Fourth
'Supreme International Crime' in Seven Years Is Already Underway,"
ElectricPolitics.com, May 16, 2006). They did this in the Iraq case,
where the year-long bombing campaign against Iraq prior to March 19,
2003, in violation of the UN Charter, was barely noticed and never
condemned in the mainstream media. It is an absolute mainstream media
rule that international law does not apply to their country, only to
others-it has been pointed out, for example, that not a single New York
Times editorial dealing with the invasion-occupation of Iraq ever
mentioned international law or the UN Charter (Howard Friel and Richard
Falk, The Record of the Paper: How the New York Times Misreports US
Foreign Policy, London: Verso, 2004).

--Third, given the low level U.S. attacks already underway and very
real threat of larger-scale aggression, it is important that the media
always implicitly deny a U.S. target like Iran any right of self
defense. Phony security threats to the United States are taken
seriously; the real threats posed by the United States to its targets
do not exist. The media will not quote the conservative Israeli
historian Martin van Creveld,, who, after noting what the Americans had
done to a nuclear-weaponless Iraq in 2003, wrote "Had the Iranians not
tried to build nuclear weapons, they would be crazy." ("Sharon on the
warpath: Is Israel planning to attack Iran?" International Herald
Tribune, August 21, 2004).

--Fourth, the media must demonize the target as background for making
its threat real and denying it any right to self-defense. Back in the
good old days a tiny victim like Guatemala could be made a "tool of
Soviet aggression," and more recently it could be stressed that Saddam
Hussein was a murderous killer (suppressing the fact that his worst
abuses took place with U.S. support and under U.S. protection in the
1980s). Iran is now made into the world's leading supporter of
international terrorism, controlled by fanatical theocrats and with a
leader who threatens to "wipe out" Israel.

But Iran hasn't engaged in any border-crossing attacks on other
countries, as the United States and Israel do regularly, in violation
of the UN Charter. Nor can Iran compete with these two countries in
support of terrorist states, armies, and individual and small group
terrorists. [1] Furthermore, both the United States and Israel are
heavily influenced by theocrats and fanatics; and the claim of a threat
to "wipe out" Israel is based on a mistranslation. [2] Beyond this,
Iran is in no position to wipe out Israel and wouldn't be even with a
small stock of nuclear weapons-whereas both the United States and
Israel pose plausible threats to wipe out Iran. But answers to the
demonization charge and the notion (and evidence) that this is a case
of "demonization transference" is inadmissible in a propaganda system.

--Fifth, the media must play down the fact that the United States
abused the inspection process and UN in the run-up to the Iraq
invasion, using them only as a cover for an already planned attack,
smearing them as ineffectual and irrelevant insofar as they didn't help
clear the ground for the attack. The media cooperated fully in this
manipulation-denigration process as regards Iraq (the classic article
in the NYT illustrating this treatment of inspections and UN as a
threat is Martin Indyk and Kenneth Pollack, "How the United States Can
Avoid the Inspections Trap," Jan. 27, 2003). Recalling that history
would suggest questions about the integrity of the current U.S. use of
the IAEA and the potential for its similar abuse in inspections that
would obligate Iran to prove a negative. A patriotic media avoids this.

--Sixth, the media must play down the fact that the United States
itself is in violation of the NPT, in signing which this country
pledged to work for the elimination of nuclear weapons. It is not only
not doing this, it is developing new and "practicable" nuclear arms. As
the United States stands alone in having used nuclear weapons on
civilian populations, threatens to use them now, and is the only
country in the world that can conceivably use them without deadly
retaliation, common sense tells us that this is the really serious
global nuclear threat-a direct threat and also an indirect one as the
U.S. capability and threats compel all other countries to try to
acquire nuclear weapons as a matter of self-defense.

Weapons of Terror, the report issued by a commission chaired by Hans
Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq at the time the United
States launched its war in 2003, is of course highly relevant to the
issues at stake in the Iran case, but because the report's message is
largely hostile to the frame of the U.S.-stoked "crisis," the
mainstream U.S. media have given it short shrift.
Aside from a guest appearance on NBC-TV's Meet the Press, during which
the program's host, Tim Russert, pressed Blix on his departure from the
party line, featuring questions like, "Why blame the Americans?" (June
4), the Blix report received minimal coverage in the U.S. media, and
even less in the U.K.[3] This is striking, because the report stresses
that the "first barrier" to all weapons of mass destruction-related
issues is a "political one," namely, the "development and maintenance
of regional and global peaceful relations.
Promoting peace is the prime means of avoiding both the acquisition and
the retention of WMD (as well as other weapons)" (pp. 43-44). Of its 60
recommendations, the greatest emphasis falls on the world's most
destructive weapons, with the most urgent recommendations directed at
nuclear disarmament-a world free of nuclear weapons (see Annex 1, pp.
188-198). Toward this end, the report advocates one policy option after
another designed to reduce the incentives to the non-nuclear-weapon
states to acquire such weapons, including the resolution adopted in
1995 calling for the creation of a nuclear-weapon-free-zone in the
Middle East.
But as the United States and Israel reject these options, a good
propaganda system will give such a report short shrift, and we have in
the United States a very good propaganda system.

Endnotes:

1. See Noam Chomsky, Pirates and Emperors, Old and New: International
terrorism in the Real World (Boston: South End Press, 2002); William
Blum, Rogue State (Monroe, Me.: Common Courage Press, 2005); Edward
Herman, "Antiterrorism as a Cover for Terrorism":
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2001-10\05herman.cfm

2. See "Does Iran's President Want Israel Wiped Off the Map?" Anneliese
Fikentscher and Andreas Neumann (Trans. Erik Appleby, Information
Clearinghouse, April 20, 2006); Jonathan Steele, "If Iran is ready to
talk, the US must do so unconditionally," The Guardian, June 2, 2006;
David Peterson, "'Weapons of Terror'," ZNet, June 2, 2006.

3. In the major U.S. print media, coverage of the Blix commission's
report has been limited to the New York Times (Warren Hoge, June 2),
New York Sun (Benny Avni, June 2), Philadelphia Inquirer (an op-ed that
appeared under Blix's byline, June 4), Christian Science Monitor (Peter
Grier, June 5) and the Washington Times (John Zarocostas, June 5). In
the major U.K. print media, there has been only a single report in The
Guardian (David Batty, June 2)!

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2006-06-13T11:32:00.000-05:00

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-Jim Leftwich & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen

----

2006-06-13T11:31:00.000-05:00

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-Peter K. Niven

Who was Abu Musab al Zarqawi?

2006-06-12T15:21:00.000-05:00

Who was Abu Musab al Zarqawi?

By Michel Chossudovsky

June 8, 2006

Mythical figure and terror mastermind Abu Musab Al Zarqawi was killed
in an air raid, according to a statement of the Iraqi government.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki announced at a press conference . "We
have eliminated Zarqawi." The head of US-led forces in Iraq, General
George Casey, said the strike against an "isolated safe house" took
place at 1815 (1415 GMT) on Wednesday. (BBC, 7 June 2006)

"Jordanian-born Zarqawi was said to have been in a meeting with
associates at the time. Several other people were reported to have been
killed in the raid. General Casey said Zarqawi's body was identified
through fingerprints, facial recognition and known scars." (Ibid)

Zarqawi has been upheld both in official statements and the media as
head of "the Sunni insurgency", leader of "al-Qaeda in Iraq",
allegedly responsible for the the killings of thousands of civilians.

Intelligence Asset

The evidence suggests, however, that Zarqawi was part of a Pentagon
disinformation campaign launched in 2003, which was initially intended
to justify the US led invasion of Iraq. This central role of Zarqawi as
an instrument of war propaganda was recently confirmed by leaked
military documents revealed by the Washington Post.

The Pentagon had set up a "Zarqawi program". Military documents confirm
that the role of Zarqawi had been deliberately "magnified" with a view
to galvanizing public support for the US-UK led "war on terrorism":

"The Zarqawi campaign is discussed in several of the internal military
documents. "Villainize Zarqawi/leverage xenophobia response," one U.S.
military briefing from 2004 stated. It listed three methods: "Media
operations," "Special Ops (626)" (a reference to Task Force 626, an
elite U.S. military unit assigned primarily to hunt in Iraq for senior
officials in Hussein's government) and "PSYOP," the U.S. military term
for propaganda work..." (WP. 10 April 2006)

An internal document produced by U.S. military headquarters in Iraq,
states that "the Zarqawi PSYOP program is the most successful
information campaign to date." (WP, op cit). (For further details see:
Who is behind "Al Qaeda in Iraq"? Pentagon acknowledges fabricating a
"Zarqawi Legend" - by Michel Chossudovsky - 2006-04-18)

Is Zarqawi's Death part of Pentagon PSYOP?

If indeed Zarqawi was fabricated to deliberately mislead public
opinion, what are the implications of his death in the process of media
disinformation? Is the killing of Zarqawi part of the Pentagon PSYOP
program?

The Bush adminstration is already announcing "a post-Zarqawi era",
suggesting that with the death of its presumed leader, the "insurgency"
is in the process of being defeated. Zarqawi's death was an opportunity
for the new government to "turn the tide", President Bush said. "The
ideology of terror has lost one of its most visible and aggressive
leaders."

The killing of Zarqawi has occurred at a time when Bush's public
support is at an all time low, as confirmed by the opinion polls. In a
press conference at the White House, Bush underscored the role of
Zarqawi. as "commnders of the terrorist movement in Iraq. He led a
campaign of car bombings, assassinations and suicide attacks that has
taken the lives of many American forces and thousands of innocent
Iraqis. Osama bin Laden called this Jordanian terrorist the prince of
Al Qaida in Iraq. He called on the terrorists around the world to
listen to him and obey him."

"Now Zarqawi has met his end and this violent man will never murder
again." suggesting that the US has from now on the upper hand in Iraq.
"Zarqawi's death is a severe blow to Al Qaida. It's a victory in the
global war on terror, and it is an opportunity for Iraq's new
government to turn the tide of this struggle."

Zarqawi's death has also served as a convenient coverup of the
extensive war crimes committed by coalition forces in Iraq. The news
coverage suggests that Zarqawi rather than coaltion forces are
responsible for countless atrocities and civilian deaths. In the words
of Don Rumsfeld, the man who led the criminal invasion and occupation
of Iraq: "I think arguably, over the last several years no single
person on this planet has had the blood of more innocent man, women and
children on his hands than Zarqawi."

Historical Background: Who was Musab Abu al Zarqawi

The following text first publish in June 2004, provides details on the
origin of the Zarqawi Legend and how this mythical figure was used by
Us intelligence to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Who is Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi?

by Michel Chossudovsky

June 11, 2004

The US intelligence apparatus has created its own terrorist
organizations. And at the same time, it creates its own terrorist
warnings concerning the terrorist organizations which it has itself
created. In turn, it has developed a cohesive multibillion dollar
counterterrorism program "to go after" these terrorist organizations.

Counterterrorism and war propaganda are intertwined. The propaganda
apparatus feeds disinformation into the news chain. The terror warnings
must appear to be "genuine". The objective is to present the terror
groups as "enemies of America."

The underlying objective is to galvanize public opinion in support of
America's war agenda.

The "war on terrorism" requires a humanitarian mandate. The war on
terrorism is presented as a "Just War", which is to be fought on moral
grounds "to redress a wrong suffered."

The Just War theory defines "good" and "evil." It concretely portrays
and personifies the terrorist leaders as "evil individuals".

Several prominent American intellectuals and antiwar activists, who
stand firmly opposed to the Bush administration, are nonetheless
supporters of the Just War theory: "We are against war in all its forms
but we support the campaign against international terrorism."

To reach its foreign policy objectives, the images of terrorism must
remain vivid in the minds of the citizens, who are constantly reminded
of the terrorist threat.

The propaganda campaign presents the portraits of the leaders behind
the terror network. In other words, at the level of what constitutes
an "advertising" campaign, "it gives a face to terror." The "war on
terrorism" rests on the creation of one or more evil bogeymen, the
terror leaders, Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, et al, whose
names and photos are presented ad nauseam in daily news reports.

Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi is presented to World public opinion, as the
upcoming terrorist mastermind, overshadowing "Enemy Number One", Osama
bin Laden. The U.S. State Department has increased the reward for his
arrest from $10 million to $25 million, which puts his "market value"
at par with that of Osama. Ironically, Al Zarqawi is not on the FBI
most wanted fugitives list.
(http://www.fbi.gov/mostwant/topten/fugitives/fugitives.htm )

Al Zarqawi's Links to Al Qaeda

Al Zarqawi is often described as an "Osama associate", the bogeyman,
allegedly responsible for numerous terrorist attacks in several
countries. In other reports, often emanating from the same sources, it
is stated that he has no links to Al Qaeda and operates quite
independently. He is often presented as an individual who is
challenging the leadership of bin Laden.

His name crops up on numerous occasions in press reports and official
statements. Since early 2004, he is in the news almost on a daily
basis.

Osama belongs to the powerful bin Laden family, which historically had
business ties to the Bushes and prominent members of the Texas oil
establishment. Bin Laden was recruited by the CIA during the
Soviet-Afghan war and fought as a Mujahideen. In other words, there is
a longstanding documented history of bin Laden-CIA and bin Laden-Bush
family links, which are an obvious source of embarrassment to the US
government.

In contrast to bin Laden, Al-Zarqawi has no family history. He comes
from an impoverished Palestinian family in Jordan. His parents are
dead. He emerges out of the blue.

He is described by CNN as "a lone wolf" who is said to act quite
independently of the Al Qaeda network. Yet surprisingly, this lone wolf
is present in several countries, in Iraq, which is now his base, but
also in Western Europe. He is also suspected of preparing a terrorist
attack on American soil.

He seems to be in several places at the same time. He is described as
"the chief U.S. enemy", "a master of disguise and bogus identification
papers". We are led to believe that this "lone wolf" manages to outwit
the most astute US intelligence operatives.

According to The Weekly Standard --which is known to have a close
relationship to the Neocons in the Bush administration:

"Abu Musab al Zarqawi is hot right now. He masterminded not only Berg's
murder but also the Madrid carnage on March 11, the bombardment of Shia
worshippers in Iraq the same month, and the April 24 suicide attack on
the port of Basra. But he is far from a newcomer to slaughter. Well
before 9/11, he had already concocted a plot to kill Israeli and
American tourists in Jordan. His label is on terrorist groups and
attacks on four continents." (Weekly Standard, 24 May 2004)

Al-Zarqawi's profile "is mounting a challenge to bin Laden's leadership
of the global jihad."

In Iraq, he is said to be determined to "ignite a civil war between
Sunnis and Shiites". But is that not precisely what US intelligence is
aiming at ( "divide and rule") as confirmed by several analysts of the
US led war? Pitting one group against the other with a view to
weakening the resistance movement. (See Michel Collon,
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/COL312A.html , See also
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/RAD308A.html

The CIA, with its $30 billion plus budget, pleads ignorance: they say
they know nothing about him, they have a photograph, but, according to
the Weekly Standard (24 May 2004), they apparently do not know his
weight or height.

There is an aura of mystery surrounding this individual which is part
of the propaganda ploy. Zarqawi is described as "so secretive even some
operatives who work with him do not know his identity."

Consistent Pattern

What is the role of this new mastermind in the Pentagon's
disinformation campaign, in which CNN seems to be playing a central
role?

In previous propaganda ploys, the CIA hired PR firms to organize core
disinformation campaigns, including the Rendon Group. The latter worked
closely with its British partner Hill and Knowlton, which was
responsible for the 1990 Kuwaiti incubator media scam, where Kuwaiti
babies were allegedly removed from incubators in a totally fabricated
news story, which was then used to get Congressional approval for the
1991 Gulf War.

What is the pattern? Almost immediately in the wake of a terrorist
event or warning, CNN announces (in substance): we think this
mysterious individual Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi is behind it, invariably
without supporting evidence and prior to the conduct of an
investigation by the relevant police and intelligence authorities.

In some cases, upon the immediate occurrence of the terrorist event,
there is an initial report which mentions Al-Zarqawi as the possible
mastermind. The report will often say (in substance): yes we think he
did it, but it is not yet confirmed and there is some doubt on the
identity of those behind the attack. One or two days later, CNN may
come up with a definitive statement, quoting official police, military
and/or intelligence sources.

Often the CNN report is based on information published on an Islamic
website or a mysterious Video or Audio tape. The authenticity of the
website and/or the tapes is not the object of discussion or detailed
investigation.

Bear in mind that the news reports never mention that Al Qaeda is a
creation of the CIA and that Al Zarqawi had been recruited to fight in
the Soviet-Afghan war (This is in fact confirmed by Sec. Colin Powell
in his presentation to the UN Security Council on 5 February 2003) (see
details below). Both Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi are
creations of the US intelligence apparatus. The recruitment of foreign
fighters was under the auspices of the CIA.

The press usually present the terrorist warnings emanating from the CIA
as genuine, without acknowledging the fact that US intelligence, has
provided covert support to the Islamic militant network consistently
for more than 20 years.

Amply documented, the training camps in Afghanistan established during
the Reagan Administration had been set up with the support of the CIA.
In fact, several members of the current Bush administration including
Richard Armitage and Colin Powell were directly involved in channeling
support to Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, where bin Laden and Al Zarqawi
received specialized training. (See Michel Chossudovsky,
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO109C.html and
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO303D.html )

History of Al Zarqawi

The first time Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi's name is mentioned was in relation
to the thwarted attack on the Radisson SAS Hotel in Amman, Jordan,
during the millennium celebrations (December 1999). According to press
reports, he had previously gone under another name: Ahmed Fadil
Al-Khalayleh, (apparently among other aliases).

According to the New York Times, Al Zarqawi fled Afghanistan to Iran in
late 2001, following the entry of US troops. Official US reports
suggest that he was protected at the highest levels of the Tehran
government.

"United States intelligence officials say they are increasingly
concerned by the mounting evidence of Tehran's renewed interest in
terrorism [and support to Al Zarqawi], including covert surveillance by
Iranian agents of possible American targets abroad. American officials
said Iran appeared to view terrorism as deterrent against possible
attack by the United States.

Since the surprise election of reformer Mohammad Khatami as president
of Iran in 1997 and his wide public support, Washington has been
counting on a new moderate political majority to emerge. But the
hard-line faction has maintained its grip on Iran's security apparatus,
frustrating American efforts to ease tensions with Tehran.

Now, Iranian actions to destabilize the new interim government in
Afghanistan, its willingness to assist Al Qaeda members and its fueling
of the Palestinian uprising are prompting a reassessment in Washington,
officials say." (NYT, 24 March 2002)

In 2002, his presence in Tehran, allegedly "collaborating with
hardliners" in the Iranian military and intelligence apparatus, is part
of an evolving disinformation campaign which consists in presenting
Iran as a sponsor of the "Islamic terror network"

In February 2002, he was allegedly involved in planning terror attacks
inside Israel.

Colin Powell's Address to the UN Security Council

In the months leading up to the war on Iraq, Al Zarqawi's name
reemerges, this time almost on daily basis, with reports focusing on
his sinister relationship to Saddam Hussein.

A major turning point in the propaganda campaign occurs on February 5,
2003. Al-Zarqawi was in the spot light following Colin Powell's flopped
WMD report to the UN Security Council. Powell's speech presented
"documentation" on the ties between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, while
focusing on the central role of Al-Zarqawi: (emphasis added):

Our concern is not just about these illicit weapons; it's the way that
these illicit weapons can be connected to terrorists and terrorist
organizations...

But what I want to bring to your attention today is the potentially
much more sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist
network, a nexus that combines classic terrorist organizations and
modern methods of murder. Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist
network, headed by Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi, an associate and collaborator
of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda lieutenants.

Zarqawi, a Palestinian born in Jordan, fought in the Afghan War more
than a decade ago. Returning to Afghanistan in 2000, he oversaw a
terrorist training camp. One of his specialties and one of the
specialties of this camp is poisons.

When our coalition ousted the Taliban, the Zarqawi network helped
establish another poison and explosive training center camp, and this
camp is located in Northeastern Iraq. You see a picture of this camp.
Graphic, above. [there were no WMDS at this camp according to ABC
report, see below]

The network is teaching its operative how to produce ricin and other
poisons. Let me remind you how ricin works. Less than a pinch --
imagine a pinch of salt -- less than a pinch of ricin, eating just this
amount in your food would cause shock, followed by circulatory failure.
Death comes within 72 hours and there is no antidote. There is no cure.
It is fatal.

Those helping to run this camp are Zarqawi lieutenants operating in
northern Kurdish areas outside Saddam Hussein's controlled Iraq, but
Baghdad has an agent in the most senior levels of the radical
organization Ansar al-Islam, that controls this corner of Iraq. In
2000, this agent offered Al Qaeda safe haven in the region. After we
swept Al Qaeda from Afghanistan, some of its members accepted this safe
haven. They remain there today.

....

We know these affiliates are connected to Zarqawi because they remain,
even today, in regular contact with his direct subordinates, including
the poison cell plotters. And they are involved in moving more than
money and materiel. Last year, two suspected Al Qaeda operatives were
arrested crossing from Iraq into Saudi Arabia. They were linked to
associates of the Baghdad cell, and one of them received training in
Afghanistan on how to use cyanide.

From his terrorist network in Iraq, Zarqawi can direct his network in
the Middle East and beyond. [Note he is present in several countries at
the same time]

....

According to detainees, Abu Atiya, who graduated from Zarqawi's
terrorist camp in Afghanistan, tasked at least nine North African
extremists in 2001 to travel to Europe to conduct poison and explosive
attacks. Since last year, members of this network have been apprehended
in France, Britain, Spain and Italy. By our last count, 116 operatives
connected to this global web have been arrested. The chart you are
seeing shows the network in Europe.

We know about this European network, and we know about its links to
Zarqawi, because the detainee who provided the information about the
targets also provided the names of members of the network.

...

We also know that Zarqawi's colleagues have been active in the Pankisi
Gorge, Georgia, and in Chechnya, Russia. The plotting to which they are
linked is not mere chatter. Members of Zarqawi's network say their goal
was to kill Russians with toxins.

We are not surprised that Iraq is harboring Zarqawi and his
subordinates. This understanding builds on decades-long experience with
respect to ties between Iraq and al Qaeda.

....

As I said at the outset, none of this should come as a surprise to any
of us. Terrorism has been a tool used by Saddam for decades. Saddam was
a supporter of terrorism long before these terrorist networks had a
name, and this support continues. The nexus of poisons and terror is
new; the nexus of Iraq and terror is old. The combination is lethal.

With this track record, Iraqi denials of supporting terrorism take
their place alongside the other Iraqi denials of weapons of mass
destruction. It is all a web of lies. When we confront a regime that
harbors ambitions for regional domination, hides weapons of mass
destruction, and provides haven and active support for terrorists, we
are not confronting the past, we are confronting the present. And
unless we act, we are confronting an even more frightening future."

US Secretary of State Colin Powell to the UN Security Council,
Excerpts, 5 February 2003) The statement of Secretary Powell regarding
Al-Zarqawi consisted in linking the secular Baathist regime to the
"Islamic terror network," with a view to justifying the invasion and
occupation of Iraq.

The Alleged Al-Zarqawi Sponsored Chemical and Biological Attacks

Powell's UN statement with regard to Al Zarqawi rested on the existence
of a chemical-biological weapons plant in Northern Iraq producing
ricin, sarin and other biological weapons, allegedly to be used in
terror attacks on the US and Western Europe.

With reference to the North Iraqi facility where the ricin was
allegedly produced, The London Observer's correspondent in Northern
Iraq (9 February 2003) blatantly refutes Colin Powell's statement:

" There is no sign of chemical weapons anywhere - only the smell of
paraffin and vegetable butter used for cooking. In the kitchen, I
discovered some chopped up tomatoes but not much else. The cook had
left his Kalashnikov propped neatly against the wall. Ansar al-Islam -
the Islamic group that uses the compound identified as a military HQ by
Powell - yesterday invited me and several other foreign journalists
into their territory for the first time. 'We are just a group of
Muslims trying to do our duty,' Mohammad Hasan, spokes-man for Ansar
al-Islam, explained. 'We don't have any drugs for our fighters. We
don't even have any aspirin. How can we produce any chemicals or
weapons of mass destruction?'"

Barely a few weeks later, at the height of the military campaign, US
Special Forces, together with their "embedded" journalists, entered the
alleged chemical biological weapons facility in Northern Iraq:

"What they found was a camp devastated by cruise missile strikes during
the first days of the war. A specialized biochemical team scoured the
rubble for samples. They wore protective masks as they entered a
building they suspected was a weapons lab. Inside they found mortar
shells, medical supplies, and grim prison cells, but no immediate proof
of chemical or biological agents. For this unit, such evidence would
have been a so-called smoking gun, proof that it has banned weapons.
But instead, this was a disappointing day for these troops on the front
line of the hunt for weapons of mass destruction here. Jim Sciutto, ABC
News, with US Special Forces in Northern Iraq " (ABC News, 29 March
2003)

The Ricin Threat

On February 8th 2003, three days after Colin Powell's UN speech, the
ricin threat remerges this time in the US. Al Zaqwari was said to be
responsible for "the suspicious white powder found in a letter sent to
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist which contained the [same] deadly
poison ricin."

In a CIA report which was apparently "leaked" to Newsweek, a group of
CIA analysts predicted that there was

"a 59 percent probability that an attack on the U.S. homeland involving
WMD would occur before 31 March 2003"... It all seems so precise and
frightening: a better than 90 percent chance that Saddam will succeed
in hitting America with a weapon spewing radiation, germs or poison.
But it is important to remember that the odds are determined by
averaging a bunch of guesses, informed perhaps, but from experts whose
careers can only be ruined by underestimating the threat." (Newsweek,
24 February 2003,
http://newsmine.org/archive/propoganda/terror-threats/2003/terror-
alert-assumptions-hints.txt )

The picture of Al Zarqawi, the mastermind is featured prominently in
the Newsweek feature article.

In the National Review (February 18, 2003), Al Zarqawi was described as
Al Qaeda's "chief biochemical engineer":

"It is widely known [from where, what evidence] that Zarqawi, al
Qaeda's chief biochemical engineer, was at the safe house in
Afghanistan where traces of Ricin and other poisons were originally
found. What is not widely known-but was briefly alluded to in Sec.
Powell's U.N. address-is that starting in the mid-1990s, Iraq's embassy
in Islamabad routinely played host to Saddam's biochemical scientists,
some of whom interacted with al Qaeda operatives, including Zarqawi and
his lab technicians, under the diplomatic cover of the Taliban embassy
nearby to teach them the art of mixing poisons from home grown and
readily available raw materials."

Radioactive Dirty Bombs

There were rumors of attacks within the US also using ricin, sarin and
other poisonous gases. In the immediate aftermath of Powell's speech,
there was an orange code alert. Official statements also pointed to the
dangers of a dirty radioactive bomb attack in the US.

Again Al Zarqawi was identified as the number one suspect.

The various ricin and dirty bomb terror alerts proved to be fabricated.
A fabricated story emanating from the CIA on so-called radioactive
dirty bombs had been planted in the news chain (ABC News, 13 Feb
2003). A few days following his address to the UN, Sec. Powell warned
that:

"it would be easy for terrorists to cook up radioactive dirty bombs
to explode inside the U.S. How likely it is, I can't say... But I
think it is wise for us to at least let the American people know of
this possibility."(ABC This Week quoted in Daily News (New York), 10
Feb. 2003).

Meanwhile, network TV had warned that "American hotels, shopping malls
or apartment buildings could be al Qaeda's targets as soon as next
week". Following the announcement, tens of thousands of Americans
rushed to purchase duct tape, plastic sheets and gas-masks.

It later transpired that the terrorist alert was fabricated by the CIA,
in all likelihood in consultation with the State Department (ABC News,
13 Feb. 2003). The FBI, for the first time had pointed its finger at
the CIA. While tacitly acknowledging that the alert was a fake,
Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge decided to maintain the Orange
Code alert:

"Despite the fabricated report, there are no plans to change the threat
level. Officials said other intelligence has been validated and that
the high level of precautions is fully warranted." ( ABC News, 13 Feb.
2003 ).

A few days later, in another failed propaganda initiative, a mysterious
Osama bin Laden audio tape was presented by Sec. Colin Powell to the US
Congress as evidence that the Islamic terrorists "are making common
cause with a brutal dictator". (US official quoted in The Toronto Star,
12 Feb. 2003). Curiously, the audio tape was in Colin Powell's
possession prior to its broadcast by the Al Jazeera TV Network. (Ibid.)

Meanwhile, Al Zarqawi had been identified as the mastermind behind the
(thwarted) ricin attacks in several European countries including
Britain and Spain.

In London, in January 2003, there was a ricin terror alert, which had
apparently also been ordered by Al Zarqawi. The ricin had allegedly
been discovered in a London apartment. It was to be used in a terror
attack in the London subway.

British press reports, quoting official statements claimed that the
terrorists had learnt to produce the ricin at the camp in Northern
Iraq. Yet when US Special Forces in March 2003 raided the camp in
Northern Iraq, nothing resembling biological or chemical weapons was
found (see ABC report quoted above).

It is worth mentioning, in this regard, that news stories on the
chemical weapons plant in Northern Iraq, have continued to be churned
out, despite the fact that US Forces said that it did not exist. In a
recent story in the Washington Times:

Zarqawi stands as stark evidence of a link between Saddam Hussein's
autocratic regime and bin Laden's al Qaeda terror network. Zarqawi, 38,
operated a terrorist camp in northern Iraq that specialized in
developing poisons and chemical weapons.(Washington Times, 8 June 2004)

The Spanish Connection

Meanwhile in Spain, Bush's coalition partner, Prime Minister Jose Maria
Aznar had initiated his own disinformation campaign, no doubt in
liaison with US officials.

Perfect timing! While Colin Powell was presenting the Al-Zarqawi
dossier to the UN, on the very same day, February 5, 2003, Prime
Minister Jose Maria Aznar was busy briefing the Spanish parliament on
an alleged chemical terror attack in Spain.

According to Aznar, Al Zarqawi was apparently linked to a number of
European Islamic "collaborators" including Merouane Ben Ahmed, "an
expert in chemistry and explosives who visited Barcelona" (reported in
El Pais, February 6 2003).

Prime Minister Aznar's speech to the Chamber of Deputies (Camera de
diputados) intimated that the 16 alleged Al Qaeda suspects, who
apparently were in possession of explosives and lethal chemicals, had
been working hand in glove with Al Zarqawi.The information had been
fabricated. The Spanish Ministry of Defense report confirmed that the
"lethal chemicals" turned out to be "harmless and some were household
detergent... " (quoted in Irish News, 27 February 2003, emphasis
added):

A defence ministry lab outside Madrid tested the substances - a bag
containing more than half a pound of powder and several bottles or
containers with liquids or residues- for the easy-to-make biological
poison ricin...The Spanish defence ministry, which carried out the
tests, and the lab itself declined to comment " (Ibid)

The Link to Ansar al-Islam

Following Powell's February 2003 presentation to the UNSC, Al-Zarqawi
immediately gained in public notoriety. Since early 2004, his name
appears almost daily in CNN reports. All in all, his name is linked to
some 25 "terrorist attacks" in Iraq, not to mention numerous terrorist
warnings, threats or alerts. Already before the war in Iraq, he was
presented in media reports as an ally of Saddam Hussein.

The press reports, which quoted Colin Powell's UNSC 5 Feb 2003 speech,
confirmed that Al Zarqawi was back in Iraq, working hand in glove with
Ansar Al-Islam, which was held responsible for the attack on the UN in
Baghdad. In August 2003, Zarqawi was identified, without supporting
evidence, as having played a role in the attack on the UN, which led to
the death of the UN head of mission and 24 other people. Bear in mind
Ansar was also said to be behind the alleged ricin plant in Northern
Iraq, which was confirmed to be a fake.

It is useful to recall that Ansar al-Islam, which constituted a
pre-existing Islamist group, developed into a paramilitary
organisation, only after the 9/11 attacks. Ironically, it was allowed
to develop in a region of Iraq, which was already under US military
control, namely Kurdish held Northern Iraq.

Ansar was largely involved in terrorist attacks directed against the
secular institutions of the Kurdish regional governments. It was also
involved in assassinations of members of the Kurdish PUK. And the US
military and intelligence were present in the region.

In other words, prior to the war, Northern Iraq -which was in "the no
fly zone"-- was already a US protectorate. According to one report «Al
Qaida affiliates coordinating the movement of people, money and
supplies for Ansar al-Islam have been operating freely in the
[regional] capital." (Midland Independent, 6 February 2003).

Responding to Colin Powell's February 2003 UN address, an Iraqi foreign
ministry spokesman had stated at the time that:

"the Iraqi government helped the [PUK] Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani
against the Ansar al-Islam group. He [the spokesman] accused Ansar
al-Islam of carrying out acts of sabotage inside Iraq[and] that the
United States had turned down an Iraqi offer to cooperate on the issue
of terrorism." (News Conference by Lieutenant-General Amir al-Sa'di,
adviser at the Iraqi Presidency; Dr Sa'id al-Musawi, head of the
Organizations' Department at the Iraqi Foreign Ministry; and
Major-General Husam Muhammad Amin, head of the Iraqi National
Monitoring Directorate. BBC Monitoring Service, 6 February 2003).

The Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal

Was it a coincidence? At the very outset of the Abu Ghraib prison
scandal, there were rumors of an Al Zarqawi terrorist attack on
American Soil, in Jordan as well as in Iraq.

Al Zarqawi identified by CNN as "the lone wolf" was, according to
these reports, planning terrorist attacks simultaneously in several
countries. Then there was the mysterious video on the Nicholas Berg
execution.

The Attacks in Jordan

A mysterious tape released by CNN pointed to Al Zarqawi's plan to
attack the Jordanian intelligence headquarters in an attack using
chemical weapons which could have been more deadly than 9/11. Again the
evidence is based on a mysterious tape.

CNN 27 APRIL 2004

JOHN VAUSE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Jordanian special forces
raiding an apartment house in Amman in the hunt for an al Qaeda cell.
Some of the suspects are killed, others arrested, ending what Jordanian
intelligence says was a bold plan to use chemical weapons and truck
bombs in their capital; targets including Jordanian intelligence
headquarters, the prime minister's office and the U.S. embassy. The
Jordanian government fears the death toll could have run into the
thousands, more deadly even than 9/11.

For the first time the alleged plotters were interviewed on videotape,
aired on Jordanian TV. CNN obtained copies of the tapes from the
Jordanians. This man revealing his orders came from a man named Azme
Jayoussi, the cell's alleged ringleader.

HUSSEIN SHARIF (through translator): The aim of this operation was to
strike Jordan and the Hashemite royal family, a war against the
crusaders and infidels. Azme told me that this would be the first
chemical suicide attack that al Qaeda would execute.

VAUSE: Also appearing on the tape, Azme Jayoussi, who says his orders
came from this man, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the same man the U.S. says is
behind many of the violent attacks in Iraq.

AZME JAYOUSSI, ACCUSED PLOTTER (through translator): I took advanced
explosives course, poisons, high level, then I pledged allegiance to
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, to obey him without any questioning, to be on his
side. After this Afghanistan fell. I met Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq.

VAUSE: Al Jayoussi was only shown in profile. He had marks on his hand,
neck and face. The Jordanians who taped the confessions say the suspect
suffered the injuries during the arrest. CNN was not allowed access to
any of those arrested. The Jordanian government says this plot is only
the latest attempt by al Qaeda to destabilize this country.

ASMA KHADER, JORDANIAN MINISTER OF STATE: Jordan was fighting this type
of plans years now, and the security forces were able to confront them.

VAUSE (on camera): The Jordanians say the alleged terrorist plot was
just days away from execution. If successful, Jordan's King Abdullah
told a U.S. newspaper it could have decapitated his government.

John Vause, CNN, Amman, Jordan.

The press reports which followed the original CNN report, often quote
CNN as the sole source for their information.

Al-Zarqawi's plans for Amman scale the heights of horror.

CNN quoted Jordanian authorities as saying that the attack involved a
combination of 71 lethal chemicals, including blistering agents to
cause third-degree burns, nerve gas and choking agents, which would
have formed a lethal toxic cloud over a square mile of the capital,
Amman. Many thousands would have died in what would have been
al-Qaida's deadliest terrorist attack.

The Associated Press reported Monday that four of the men arrested said
on Jordanian television that they had been recruited by al-Zarqawi to
carry out "the first suicide attack to be launched by al-Qaida using
chemicals ... striking at Jordan, its Hashemite (royal family) and
launching war on the Crusaders and nonbelievers." One of the
conspirators, Azmi al-Jayousi, said he received about $170,000 from
al-Zarqawi to finance the plot and used part of it to buy 20 tons of
chemicals. Images of vans packed with chemicals and explosives were
shown on television. (Charleston Post Courier, 28 April 2004)

Alleged Al Zarqawi "Attack on America"

Two days later, following the alleged terrorist threat on Jordanian
intelligence, the State Department announced that Al Zarqawi was
planning an attack on America (29 April 2003, CNN Report).

Note that the rumours of an attack on America and the attack in Jordan
took place virtually at the same time:

The State Department today said the number of terrorists attacks around
the world declined last year, but the government's annual report on
terrorism includes a chilling warning about the year ahead.

Kitty Pilgrim reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KITTY PILGRIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The State Department
says terrorists are planning an attack on U.S. soil. High on their
anxiety list, terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

AMB. COFER BLACK, COORDINATOR FOR COUNTERTERRORISM: He is
representative of a very real and credible threat. His operatives are
planning and attempting now to attack American targets, and we are
after them with a vengeance.

Bear in mind that the Attack on America report, focusing on "We are
after them with a vengeance", was published on day following the CBS 60
minutes program on torture at the Abu Ghraib prison. (Complete
transcript at http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CBS405A.html ).

The Nicholas Berg Video

Barely a couple of weeks later (11 May 2004), Al Zarqawi is reported as
being the mastermind behind the execution of Nicholas Berg on May 11,
2004.

Again perfect timing! The report coincided with calls by US Senators
for Defense Sec Donald Rumsfeld to resign over the Abu Ghraib prison
scandal. It occurs a few days after President Bush's "apology" for the
Abu Ghraib prison "abuses" on May 6.

The Nicholas Berg video served to create "a useful wave of
indignation" which served to distract and soften up public opinion,
following the release of the pictures of torture of Iraqi prisoners.
(See the intelligence assumptions underlying Operation Northwoods, a
secret Joint Chiefs of Staff plan to kill civilians in the Cuban
community in Florida, and blame it on Fidel Castro.
(http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/NOR111A.html ) .

CNN coverage of the Nicholas Berg execution was based on a mysterious
report on an Islamic website, which CNN upholds as providing "evidence"
of Al-Zarqawi's involvement:

ENSOR: The Web site claims that the killing was done by Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian terrorist whose al Qaeda affiliated group is
held responsible by U.S. intelligence for a string of bombings in Iraq
and for the killing of an American diplomat in Amman. CNN Arab
linguists say, however, that the voice on the tape has the wrong
accent. They do not believe it is Zarqawi. U.S. officials said the
killers tried to take advantage of the prison abuse controversy to gain
attention.

...

BROWN: So, the administration said today we'll track these people down.
We will get them beyond, I guess, this belief that Zarqawi somehow was
involved. Are there any clues out there that we heard about?

ENSOR: This is going to be very, very difficult. They've been looking
for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi for several years now. There's a large price
on his head. He's been blowing up a lot of things in Iraq according to
him and according to U.S. intelligence. They don't know where he is, so
it's -- I don't think they have any clues right now, at least none that
I know of -- Aaron.

A subsequent more definitive report by CNN was aired 2 days later on 13
May 2004

The CIA confirms that Nicholas Berg's killer was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi;
The CIA acknowledges sticking to strict rules in tough interrogations
of top al Qaeda prisoners." (CNN)

BLITZER Because originally our own linguists here at CNN suspected that
-- they listened to this audiotape and they didn't think the it
sounded, the sounded like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. But now definitively,
the experts at the CIA say it almost certainly is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi?

ENSOR: They say it almost certainly is. There's just a disagreement
between the CNN linguists and the CIA linguists. The U.S. Government
now believes that the person speaking on that tape and killing Nick
Berg on that tape is the actual man, Abu Musab al- Zarqawi.

Did the US officials check the mysterious website or was it CNN?

The video footage published on the website was called «Abu Musab
Al-Zarqawi shows killing of an American». " Then the CIA experts
released a statement saying that Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi was the man in
the mask who beheaded the US citizen Nick Berg in front of a camera."
(See http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/SAT405A.html ). Yet several
reports question the authenticity of the video.
(http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CAR405A.html ).

Al Zarqawi is Jordanian. Yet the man in the video "posing as Jordanian
native Zarqawi does not speak the Jordanian dialect. Zarqawi has an
artificial leg, but none of these murderers did. The man presented as
Zarqawi had a yellow ring, presumably a golden one, which Muslim men
are banned from wearing, especially so-called fundamentalists." (See
Was Nick Berg killed by US intelligence? by Sirajin Sattayev,
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/SAT405A.html

Another report states that Zarqawi was dead.

Immediately when the issue of his artificial leg was mentioned in
relation to the video, US officials revised their story, stating they
were not sure whether he actually lost a leg: "U.S. intelligence
officials, who used to believe that Zarqawi had lost a leg in
Afghanistan, recently revised that assessment, concluding that he still
has both legs." (News and World Report, 24 May 2004).

There were a number of other aspects of the video, which suggest that
it was a fraud: there was no blood when Nicholas Berg was beheaded. The
audio was not in synchrony with the video, indicating that the film
might have been manipulated.

3/11 The Madrid 11 March 2004 Train Bombing

While the press dispatches provide no evidence of of Al Zarqawi's
involvement in the Madrid 3/11 bombing, several of the reports implied,
without supporting evidence, that he was involved. According to the
CIA, the Moroccan group which allegedly "supervised the bombings in
Madrid, [were] acting as a link between al- Zarqawi and a cell of
mostly Moroccan al-Qaeda members." (The Australian, 27 May 2004)

A CNN statement two days after the 3/11 Madrid bombing states that Al
Zarqawi may be planning attacks on "soft targets" in Western Europe:

LISOVICZ: And Jonathan, specifically, Abu Musaab al Zarqawi is someone
you have described as al Qaeda 2.0, which is pretty scary.

SCHANZER: Yes. Abu Musaab al Zarqawi is the man we caught; we
intercepted his memo last month. U.S. intelligence officials found this
memo. It indicated that he was trying to continue to carry out attacks
against the United States. He was seeking help from the larger al Qaeda
network and was seeking to foment internecine violence inside Iraq.
This is a man dangerous; he's been linked to attacks in Riyadh,
Istanbul and Morocco. This is essentially a freelancer. This is a lone
wolf, someone that's acting alone in the name of al Qaeda.

CAFFERTY: Where do we stand in your opinion on this war on terrorism?
We have got this terrible situation in Madrid. We've got this fellow,
Zarqawi, you are talking about, the lone Wolf that is active, some
think inside Iraq. We have got terrorist attacks happening there. There
is discussion all over Western Europe of fear of terrorism, possibly
being about to increase there. Are we winning this war or are we losing
it? What is your read?

SCHANZER: I think we're winning it. We've certainly -- I mean
counterterrorism at its core is just restricting the terrorist
environment. So we've cut down on the amount of finances moving around
in the terrorist world. We have arrested a number of key figures. So we
are doing a good job.(CNN,13 March 2004)

For details on the Madrid bombing see, Madrid 'blueprint': a dodgy
document by Brendan O'Neill at
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/ONE404A.html

Extending the War on Terrorism

Are "we winning or loosing" the war on terrorism. These statements
are used to justify enhanced military operations against this illusive
individual, who is confronting US military might, all over the World.
Al Zarqawi is used profusely in Bush's press conferences and speeches
in an obvious public relations ploy.

You know, I hate to predict violence, but I just understand the nature
of the killers. This guy, Zarqawi, an al Qaeda associate -- who was in
Baghdad, by the way, prior to the removal of Saddam Hussein -- is still
at large in Iraq. And as you might remember, part of his operational
plan was to sow violence and discord amongst the various groups in Iraq
by cold- blooded killing. And we need to help find Zarqawi so that the
people of Iraq can have a more bright -- bright future. (Press
Conference, 1 June 2004, emphasis added)

And with a new interim Iraqi government, US and British troops would be
in Iraq at "the request" of the interim government, in an agreement
sanctioned by the UN. "The terrorists are still at large": The tasks of
the so-called "multinational force" would include "preventing and
deterring terrorism", namely going after Al Zarqawi, as a means to
"establishing democracy" under G-8's "political and economic reform in
the Middle East and North Africa."

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of
Ottawa and Director of the Center for Research on Globalization, at
www.globalresearch.ca. His most recent book entitled: Americas "War
on Terrorism", Global Research, 2005, contains a detailed analysis of
the role of Zarqawi in the Adminstration's disinformation campaign.

For details on Chossudovsky's book America's "War on Terrorism", click
here

Selected References
Pentagon PSYOP: "Terror Mastermind" Abu Musab Al Zarqawi is
"Incompetent" - by Michel Chossudovsky - 2006-05-15
Rumsfeld accuses bin Laden and Zarqawi of Manipulating the U.S. Media -
2006-04-20
Who is behind "Al Qaeda in Iraq"? Pentagon acknowledges fabricating a
"Zarqawi Legend" - by Michel Chossudovsky - 2006-04-18
Did Al-Zarqawi Really Bomb Amman? - by Dr. Elias Akleh - 2005-11-15
Who profited from Amman bombings?- Israelis were evacuated hours before
the attack - 2005-11-15
The Al-Zarqawi 11/9 Amman Bombings: More Holes in the Official Story -
by Michel Chossudovsky - 2005-11-15
Zarqawi Black Op Hits Amman - by Kurt Nimmo - 2005-11-13
British Terrorism in Iraq - by Dr. Elias Akleh - 2005-09-30
Fabricating an Enemy: "Al Qaeda in Iraq". Who is Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi?:
- by Michel Chossudovsky - 2005-09-30
Al Qaeda and the Iraqi Resistance Movement - by Michel Chossudovsky -
2005-09-18
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Syria: - by Kurt Nimmo - 2005-05-19
Zarqawi's Mysterious Pre-Election Audiotape - by Michel Chossudovsky -
2005-01-29
Who is Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi? - by Michel Chossudovsky - 2004-06-11

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Restoring the Draft: The Universal National Service Act of 2006

2006-06-11T15:02:00.000-05:00

Restoring the Draft: The Universal National Service Act of 2006

By Michel Chossudovsky

May 30, 2006

Congressman Charles Rangel, a Democrat (NY), introduced on 14 February
2006 a bill in the US Congress which requires:

"all persons in the United States, including women, between the ages of
18 and 42 to perform a [two year] period of military service or a
period of civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and
homeland security, and for other purposes."

The bill applies to both US citizens and non-citizens, to men and
women. There does not appear to be a provision which would exempt women
who are pregnant and/or caring for infants/children in a young age.

While there was some media coverage of Rangel's initiative prior to the
formal introduction of the bill, the matter has not been mentioned by
the US media since it was introduced in February. There has been a
deafening silence: since February 2006, not a single article or
editorial has appeared in print on the Universal National Service Act
of 2006.

Neither has it been the object of public debate. The bill has been
referred to the House Armed Services Committee and the Subcommittee on
Military Personnel. Ironically, in previous discussion leading up the
bill, Rangel's initiative to restore the draft was described as "an
anti-war tactic".

"Rangel opposes war with Iraq and seeks to make the point that many
soldiers are volunteers from low-income and minority families.
Political leaders, his reasoning goes, would think twice about sending
into war the sons and daughters of a more complete cross-section of
America. But whether or not one agrees with Rangel's rationale, many
Americans would agree that universal service can be a great leveler and
a unifying force in society."

Despite Rangel's antiwar resolve, the bill supports Washington's stated
objective to extend the war into new frontiers and to ultmately send an
entire generation of young Americans to fight an illegal, and unjust
war. It is worth noting in this regard that the Neoconservative Project
for a New American Century calls for increasing active duty strength
from 1.4 to 1.6 million.

The bill also supports Big Brother. Those who are not sent overseas to
the war theater would, according to the clauses of the bill, be
inducted into the civilian homeland defense corps and other civilian
duties, including the Citizens Corps, the "Neighborhood Watch Teams"
and the "Volunteer Police Service" established in partnership with
local law enforcement. (see http://www.citizencorps.gov/pdf/council.pdf
)

While there is at present significant opposition to the bill on both
sides of the House, the US military is overextended and lacks the
manpower to carry out its global war agenda. This shortage of military
personnel is blatantly obvious in Iraq, where the occupation forces are
meeting fierce resistance.

The situation regarding the draft could also change if the war were to
be extended into Iran. In which case, the substance of this bill could
indeed be adopted to meet the manpower requirements of the US military.

History of the Bill

This is the second time Rep. Charles Rangel introduces his
controversial bill.

In January 2003, HR 163 was submitted in the House.

It was voted upon and defeated in the House in October 2003, on the
grounds that it had not been sent for committee hearings. However, it
was suggested at the time that the Republican-controlled House wanted
to defeat the bill, to squash rumors that Bush would reintroduce the
draft if reelected.

"In spite of adamant denial of draft rumors, Internet and campus
campaigners had trumpeted the bill as evidence of a "secret plan" to
reinstate the draft in case President Bush is re-elected."

TEXT OF BILL: UNIVERSAL NATIONAL SERVICE ACT OF 2006 (HR 4752)

Link to official Congressional Document:
Universal National Service Act of 2006 (Introduced in House)

HR 4752 IH

109th CONGRESS

2d Session

H. R. 4752

To provide for the common defense by requiring all persons in the
United States, including women, between the ages of 18 and 42 to
perform a period of military service or a period of civilian service in
furtherance of the national defense and homeland security, and for
other purposes.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

February 14, 2006

Mr. RANGEL introduced the following bill; which was referred to the
Committee on Armed Services

A BILL

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United
States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE; TABLE OF CONTENTS.

(a) Short Title- This Act may be cited as the `Universal National
Service Act of 2006'.

(b) Table of Contents- The table of contents for this Act is as follows:

Sec. 1. Short title; table of contents.

Sec. 2. National service obligation.

Sec. 3. Two-year period of national service.

Sec. 4. Implementation by the President.

Sec. 5. Induction.

Sec. 6. Deferments and postponements.

Sec. 7. Induction exemptions.

Sec. 8. Conscientious objection.

Sec. 9. Discharge following national service.

Sec. 10. Registration of females under the Military Selective Service
Act.

Sec. 11. Relation of Act to registration and induction authority of
military selective service Act.

Sec. 12. Definitions.

SEC. 2. NATIONAL SERVICE OBLIGATION.

(a) Obligation for Service- It is the obligation of every citizen of
the United States, and every other person residing in the United
States, who is between the ages of 18 and 42 to perform a period of
national service as prescribed in this Act unless exempted under the
provisions of this Act.

(b) Form of National Service- National service under this Act shall be
performed either--

(1) as a member of an active or reserve component of the uniformed
services; or

(2) in a civilian capacity that, as determined by the President,
promotes the national defense, including national or community service
and homeland security.

(c) Induction Requirements- The President shall provide for the
induction of persons covered by subsection (a) to perform national
service under this Act.

(d) Selection for Military Service- Based upon the needs of the
uniformed services, the President shall--

(1) determine the number of persons covered by subsection (a) whose
service is to be performed as a member of an active or reserve
component of the uniformed services; and

(2) select the individuals among those persons who are to be inducted
for military service under this Act.

(e) Civilian Service- Persons covered by subsection (a) who are not
selected for military service under subsection (d) shall perform their
national service obligation under this Act in a civilian capacity
pursuant to subsection (b)(2).

SEC. 3. TWO-YEAR PERIOD OF NATIONAL SERVICE.

(a) General Rule- Except as otherwise provided in this section, the
period of national service performed by a person under this Act shall
be two years.

(b) Grounds for Extension- At the discretion of the President, the
period of military service for a member of the uniformed services under
this Act may be extended--

(1) with the consent of the member, for the purpose of furnishing
hospitalization, medical, or surgical care for injury or illness
incurred in line of duty; or

(2) for the purpose of requiring the member to compensate for any time
lost to training for any cause.

(c) Early Termination- The period of national service for a person
under this Act shall be terminated before the end of such period under
the following circumstances:

(1) The voluntary enlistment and active service of the person in an
active or reserve component of the uniformed services for a period of
at least two years, in which case the period of basic military training
and education actually served by the person shall be counted toward the
term of enlistment.

(2) The admission and service of the person as a cadet or midshipman at
the United States Military Academy, the United States Naval Academy,
the United States Air Force Academy, the Coast Guard Academy, or the
United States Merchant Marine Academy.

(3) The enrollment and service of the person in an officer candidate
program, if the person has signed an agreement to accept a Reserve
commission in the appropriate service with an obligation to serve on
active duty if such a commission is offered upon completion of the
program.

(4) Such other grounds as the President may establish.

SEC. 4. IMPLEMENTATION BY THE PRESIDENT.

(a) In General- The President shall prescribe such regulations as are
necessary to carry out this Act.

(b) Matter to Be Covered by Regulations- Such regulations shall include
specification of the following:

(1) The types of civilian service that may be performed for a person's
national service obligation under this Act.

(2) Standards for satisfactory performance of civilian service and of
penalties for failure to perform civilian service satisfactorily.

(3) The manner in which persons shall be selected for induction under
this Act, including the manner in which those selected will be notified
of such selection.

(4) All other administrative matters in connection with the induction
of persons under this Act and the registration, examination, and
classification of such persons.

(5) A means to determine questions or claims with respect to inclusion
for, or exemption or deferment from induction under this Act, including
questions of conscientious objection.

(6) Standards for compensation and benefits for persons performing
their national service obligation under this Act through civilian
service.

(7) Such other matters as the President determines necessary to carry
out this Act.

(c) Use of Prior Act- To the extent determined appropriate by the
President, the President may use for purposes of this Act the
procedures provided in the Military Selective Service Act (50 U.S.C.
App. 451 et seq.), including procedures for registration, selection,
and induction.

SEC. 5. INDUCTION.

(a) In General- Every person subject to induction for national service
under this Act, except those whose training is deferred or postponed in
accordance with this Act, shall be called and inducted by the President
for such service at the time and place specified by the President.

(b) Age Limits- A person may be inducted under this Act only if the
person has attained the age of 18 and has not attained the age of 42.

(c) Voluntary Induction- A person subject to induction under this Act
may volunteer for induction at a time other than the time at which the
person is otherwise called for induction.

(d) Examination; Classification- Every person subject to induction
under this Act shall, before induction, be physically and mentally
examined and shall be classified as to fitness to perform national
service. The President may apply different classification standards for
fitness for military service and fitness for civilian service.

SEC. 6. DEFERMENTS AND POSTPONEMENTS.

(a) High School Students- A person who is pursuing a standard course of
study, on a full-time basis, in a secondary school or similar
institution of learning shall be entitled to have induction under this
Act postponed until the person--

(1) obtains a high school diploma;

(2) ceases to pursue satisfactorily such course of study; or

(3) attains the age of 20.

(b) Hardship and Disability- Deferments from national service under
this Act may be made for--

(1) extreme hardship; or

(2) physical or mental disability.

(c) Training Capacity- The President may postpone or suspend the
induction of persons for military service under this Act as necessary
to limit the number of persons receiving basic military training and
education to the maximum number that can be adequately trained.

(d) Termination- No deferment or postponement of induction under this
Act shall continue after the cause of such deferment or postponement
ceases.

SEC. 7. INDUCTION EXEMPTIONS.

(a) Qualifications- No person may be inducted for military service
under this Act unless the person is acceptable to the Secretary
concerned for training and meets the same health and physical
qualifications applicable under section 505 of title 10, United States
Code, to persons seeking original enlistment in a regular component of
the Armed Forces.

(b) Other Military Service- No person shall be liable for induction
under this Act who--

(1) is serving, or has served honorably for at least six months, in any
component of the uniformed services on active duty; or

(2) is or becomes a cadet or midshipman at the United States Military
Academy, the United States Naval Academy, the United States Air Force
Academy, the Coast Guard Academy, the United States Merchant Marine
Academy, a midshipman of a Navy accredited State maritime academy, a
member of the Senior Reserve Officers' Training Corps, or the naval
aviation college program, so long as that person satisfactorily
continues in and completes at least two years training therein.

SEC. 8. CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTION.

(a) Claims as Conscientious Objector- Nothing in this Act shall be
construed to require a person to be subject to combatant training and
service in the uniformed services, if that person, by reason of
sincerely held moral, ethical, or religious beliefs, is conscientiously
opposed to participation in war in any form.

(b) Alternative Noncombatant or Civilian Service- A person who claims
exemption from combatant training and service under subsection (a) and
whose claim is sustained by the local board shall--

(1) be assigned to noncombatant service (as defined by the President),
if the person is inducted into the uniformed services; or

(2) be ordered by the local board, if found to be conscientiously
opposed to participation in such noncombatant service, to perform
national civilian service for the period specified in section 3(a) and
subject to such regulations as the President may prescribe.

SEC. 9. DISCHARGE FOLLOWING NATIONAL SERVICE.

(a) Discharge- Upon completion or termination of the obligation to
perform national service under this Act, a person shall be discharged
from the uniformed services or from civilian service, as the case may
be, and shall not be subject to any further service under this Act.

(b) Coordination With Other Authorities- Nothing in this section shall
limit or prohibit the call to active service in the uniformed services
of any person who is a member of a regular or reserve component of the
uniformed services.

SEC. 10. REGISTRATION OF FEMALES UNDER THE MILITARY SELECTIVE SERVICE
ACT.

(a) Registration Required- Section 3(a) of the Military Selective
Service Act (50 U.S.C. 453(a)) is amended--

(1) by striking `male' both places it appears;

(2) by inserting `or herself' after `himself'; and

(3) by striking `he' and inserting `the person'.

(b) Conforming Amendment- Section 16(a) of the Military Selective
Service Act (50 U.S.C. App. 466(a)) is amended by striking `men' and
inserting `persons'.

SEC. 11. RELATION OF ACT TO REGISTRATION AND INDUCTION AUTHORITY OF
MILITARY SELECTIVE SERVICE ACT.

(a) Registration- Section 4 of the Military Selective Service Act (50
U.S.C. App. 454) is amended by inserting after subsection (g) the
following new subsection:

`(h) This section does not apply with respect to the induction of
persons into the Armed Forces pursuant to the Universal National
Service Act of 2006.'.

(b) Induction- Section 17(c) of the Military Selective Service Act (50
U.S.C. App. 467(c)) is amended by striking `now or hereafter' and all
that follows through the period at the end and inserting `inducted
pursuant to the Universal National Service Act of 2006.'.

SEC. 12. DEFINITIONS.

In this Act:

(1) The term `military service' means service performed as a member of
an active or reserve component of the uniformed services.

(2) The term `Secretary concerned' means the Secretary of Defense with
respect to the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps, the Secretary
of Homeland Security with respect to the Coast Guard, the Secretary of
Commerce, with respect to matters concerning the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration, and the Secretary of Health and Human
Services, with respect to matters concerning the Public Health Service.

(3) The term `United States', when used in a geographical sense, means
the several States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin
Islands, and Guam.

(4) The term `uniformed services' means the Army, Navy, Air Force,
Marine Corps, Coast Guard, commissioned corps of the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration, and commissioned corps of the Public
Health Service.

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----

2006-06-11T12:52:00.000-05:00

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Collateral Damage

2006-06-11T12:51:00.000-05:00

Collateral Damage
The 'Incident' at Haditha
by Tom Engelhardt; TomDispatch
June 07, 2006

First news stories about the My Lai massacre (picked up from an army
publicity release), March 1968: The New York Times labeled the
operation a significant success: "American troops caught a North
Vietnamese force in a pincer movement on the central coastal plain
yesterday, killing 128 enemy soldiers in day-long fighting." United
Press International called it an "impressive victory," and added a bit
of patriotic color: "The Vietcong broke and ran for their hide-out
tunnels. Six-and-a-half hours later, 'Pink Village' had become 'Red,
White and Blue Village.'"

The New York Times, November 21, 2005: "The Marine Corps said Sunday
that 15 Iraqi civilians and a Marine were killed Saturday when a
roadside bomb exploded in Haditha, 140 miles northwest of Baghdad. The
bombing on Saturday in Haditha, on the Euphrates in the Sunni-dominated
province of Anbar, was aimed at a convoy of American Marines and Iraqi
Army soldiers, said Capt. Jeffrey S. Pool, a Marine spokesman. After
the explosion, gunmen opened fire on the convoy. At least eight
insurgents were killed in the firefight, the captain said."

Knight Ridder, March 21, 2006: "Questions about the incident [at
Ishaqi] focus on diverging U.S. military and Iraqi police accounts of
the raid, which happened around 2:30 a.m. on March 15 on a house about
60 miles north of Baghdad. Both sides and neighbors agree that U.S.
troops were involved in a firefight with a suspected member of al-Qaida
in Iraq. But the U.S. account gave the death toll as four and said the
house collapsed from the heavy fire it took during the fighting. The
al-Qaida suspect was found alive in the rubble and arrested, the U.S
report on the incident said. Iraqi police, however, contend that U.S.
troops gathered 11 people in the house into a single room and executed
them, before destroying the house as they left the area."

Charlie Company, which had suffered 28 casualties in its first months
in the area without ever seeing the Vietnamese enemy, was bent on
revenge when, on March 16, 1968, it entered the sub-hamlet of My Lai 4,
known to the soldiers as "Pinkville," on the Battambang Peninsula in
Quangnai Province. Looking for the reputed "headquarters" of the 48th
Vietcong Battalion, they found only women, children, infants, and old
men, none resistant, many finishing breakfast. Almost all were
slaughtered, upwards of 500 human beings.

At Haditha, we know that, in the phrase of the soldier who first
reported the My Lai massacre, "something rather dark and bloody" -
and, it seems, criminal -- happened. It started with Kilo Company, 3rd
Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, a "feral" unit,
living in a "Lord of the Flies" encampment (as described by British
journalist Oliver Poole who paid it a frightening visit), on its third
tour of duty in Iraq. It had already been in some of the darkest,
bloodiest, most feral fighting of the counterinsurgency war -- the
destruction of much of the city of Fallujah in November 2004. After
watching a company member die from a roadside bomb that November day a
year later, some of the unit's soldiers evidently massacred 24 Iraqi
civilians who happened to be living nearby in the town of 90,000 in the
heartland of the Sunni insurgency. A My Lai-style cover-up followed.

Other than revealing just how overstretched the American military is in
Iraq, such an "incident" (as American officials liked to call such
horrors back in the Vietnam era and still do today) is also a kind of
confession -- of failure. If, as a soldier, you feel you are protecting
anyone in an area, you do not simply slaughter random civilians, no
matter how you may "snap." To commit such acts, these Marines must have
concluded in the most visceral way that there simply were no Iraqis to
protect in Haditha, perhaps in the Sunni provinces of Iraq altogether,
perhaps in the whole country. You only slaughter the helpless
face-to-face when even small children have become aliens, the enemy, so
tainted by evil, by the killing of your people, that there's no hope
for them. Think of it as on-the-ground military democracy, the grimmest
sort of popular vote on whether you or the insurgents are winning the
war.

It's a small enough step in such circumstances from the knowledge that
the enemy might be anywhere to the thought that the enemy is
everywhere, and then to the feeling that every Vietnamese/Iraqi is an
enemy -- or, as the slaughtered were termed in the initial military
indictment of My Lai's Lieutenant William Calley, every "Oriental human
being" a "VC." Even a baby sucking at its mother's breast might, as one
My Lai defendant claimed, be helping to conceal a hidden grenade.

The process by which all human beings in a region transmogrify into the
hated and feared enemy works in reverse as well. As in the case of My
Lai, the dead by some strange process can change back into aunts,
grandfathers, children, babies. It can happen on the spot. As Ryan
Briones, the first Marine from Kilo Company to speak out (though
evidently not one of the killers), described the scene: "They ranged
from little babies to adult males and females. I'll never be able to
get that out of my head. I can still smell the blood. This left
something in my head and heart."

Such "incidents" were far more common than we care to imagine in
Vietnam and are undoubtedly more common in Iraq as well. Think of this
as an endless feedback loop, the ultimate self-fulfilling prophesy.
Scholar Juan Cole at his Informed Comment blog speculates "that the
number of Iraqis in Anbar Province who said it was all right to attack
US troops doubled to 80 percent in 2006 from 40-odd percent in January
of 2004. Doubled. And Ishaqi and Haditha and lots of similar such
incidents are the reason for this doubling."

Just this week, the U.S. military concluded a rather hurried
investigation of the "rather dark and bloody" events in the town of
Ishaqi, also in the Sunni heartland -- and despite protests from the
Iraqi government that this represented an unreasonable "rush to
judgment" -- described the "incident" in the following way: "The
[American] forces, upon arrival, began taking direct fire from the
building. As the enemy fire persisted, the ground force commander
appropriately reacted by incrementally escalating the use of force from
small arms fire to rotary wing aviation, and then to close air support,
ultimately eliminating the threat... The investigating officer
concluded that possibly up to nine collateral deaths resulted from this
engagement but could not determine the precise number due to collapsed
walls and heavy debris. Allegations that the troops executed a family
living in this safe house, and then hid the alleged crimes by directing
an air strike, are absolutely false."

Note that, under challenge, the al-Qaeda member and three "terrorist"
associates in the initial Ishaqi report multiplied. There are now nine
extra "collateral deaths," just as those "insurgents" in the initial
military report from Haditha, according to the Time Magazine piece that
broke the story, had already turned into civilian "collateral damage"
in the first Marine probe of what happened there. ("[T]he deaths were
the result of 'collateral damage' rather than malicious intent by the
Marines...") The Iraqi police, who identified the deaths in Ishaqi as
execution-style murders beg to disagree with the American conclusions,
but let's leave aside the issue of criminal intent. What else do the
"incidents" at Ishaqi, Haditha, and My Lai have in common?

"A Big Public Relations Problem"

As a start, you would never have learned about them from the U.S.
military. My Lai took almost a year to make its way out of elaborate
layers of cover-up via a then-unknown journalist named Seymour Hersh,
and into major newspapers as well as -- in full photographic horror --
Life Magazine. Abu Ghraib took months to make it into full
digital-photo horror on Sixty Minutes II and into the New Yorker
magazine, thanks again to Seymour Hersh. Haditha took almost four
months to make it into Time. (Knight Ridder -- a rarity -- reported the
Iraqi and American versions of Ishaqi at once.) Imagine what realities
may lie behind all the other news reports taken from military press
releases or press conferences of "insurgent" or "terrorist" deaths in
places no western journalist can venture in Iraq (or Afghanistan).

The American military's mode of response to any "incident" almost
invariably turns out to be a long journey from the truth. The dead are
always initially "insurgents" or "terrorists" (or "Vietcong" in the
Vietnam era). When, for instance, you see reports of the deaths of
"insurgents" in bombing attacks, whether on urban neighborhoods in Iraq
or villages in southern Afghanistan -- "Airstrike kills up to 80
Taliban, U.S. officials say" -- there is every reason simply not to
believe them, not without knowing who counted and how they identified
the dead as the enemy.

Carnage is always portrayed by the military as justified and the death
of civilians, if finally admitted, invariably as "accidental" in
pursuit of the enemy; hence, "collateral damage." When Iraqis or
Afghans (or once upon a time, Vietnamese) claim otherwise, such claims
are invariably rejected on the spot by Pentagon spokesmen. On the face
of it, the natives are never reliable or objective witnesses to
killings in their own country -- the police in Ishaqi, to give but one
example, might be infiltrated by or working with the insurgents.
American reporters, once they cross certain lines, are no less
unreliable. "Time Magazine, which first began making inquiries about
the [Haditha] incident in January, reported that when one of its staff
members asked [Marine spokesman Jeffrey S.] Pool about the allegations,
he accused the journalist of being duped by terrorists. 'I cannot
believe you're buying any of this,' the magazine said the officer wrote
in an e-mail. 'This falls into the same category of any aqi [al-Qaeda
in Iraq] propaganda.'" Pool was the Marine spokesman who made the
initial, fraudulent announcement about Haditha in November 2005.

In fact, to the Pentagon, there is only one objective, reliable
investigator of potential U.S. military crimes to be called upon -- and
that's the military itself. No genuine outside investigators can ever
be brought into such a case. (Recently, the Iraqi prime minister
demanded that the U.S. turn over its "investigative files" on the
Marines in Haditha, so that his people could pursue their own
investigation. Small piece of advice, Mr. Maliki: Don't hold your
breath.)

Having rejected on-the-spot claims by locals and asserted that nothing
out of the ordinary has happened, should challenges nonetheless
persist, official military spokesmen fall back to secondary positions,
conforming, at least minimally, to whatever embarrassing information is
emerging. If the problem threatens to settle in, an "investigation"
will be announced and then allowed to fade into the woodwork. Who, for
instance, remembers the results of the investigation into the bombing
of a wedding party in the village of Mukaradeeb near the Syrian border
back in May 2004 which resulted in 42 deaths, including (according to
those who were there) 27 in one extended family, 14 children in all?
The U.S. military claimed initially that a "suspected foreign fighter
safe house" had been hit. Later, Major General James Mathis asked: "How
many people go to the middle of the desert ... to hold a wedding 80
miles from the nearest civilization?" Baghdad military spokesman Brig.
Gen. Mark Kimmit finally admitted festivities were ongoing in this
fashion: "There may have been some kind of celebration. Bad people have
celebrations, too."

If the "incident" or "incidents" won't go away, then not one, but
multiple military investigations ensue; the fatter their findings, the
better. There have already been three on Haditha, two still underway;
perhaps twelve on Abu Ghraib. The affair then drags out, growing ever
more detailed and murkier until, once again, attention fades or the
spotlight shifts elsewhere. Already on Haditha, we are being told by
all and sundry in official positions not to "prejudge," but to wait
until the Naval Criminal Investigative Service finishes its
investigation sometime this summer. This is American fairness in action
-- though nobody mentions that the whole investigatory process is the
equivalent of a corrupt police department being empowered to
investigate, charge, and try itself.

If an incident simply won't go away, as at Abu Ghraib, then small fry
are generally indicted and, under pressure, prosecuted. (Indictments
for My Lai only made it up to First Lieutenant Calley; at Abu Ghraib, a
single Lieutenant Colonel is finally to be charged in military court.)
These are, of course, the "few bad apples," as President Bush termed
them.

Another similarity between the My Lai moment and today is the degree to
which language is policed by those in authority in order to separate
whatever atrocity is under investigation from the war-fighting around
it. So President Nixon was quick to call My Lai an "isolated incident,"
particularly when compared to the "250,000 churches, pagodas, and
temples" he claimed the Marines alone had built "for the people of
Vietnam" (just as the Bush administration cites those schools we've
constructed or repainted, and other kinds of "good news" the media
supposedly refuses to report). When, back in My Lai days, General
William R. Peers, heading the official Army investigation of the
killings, had a press conference to present his findings, the Pentagon
ordered him not to use the word "massacre"; only on threat of walking
out was he allowed to refer to a "tragedy of major proportions." After
that, the common term, as with Haditha today, would simply be
"incident."

Back then, Army Secretary Resor claimed My Lai was "wholly
unrepresentative of the manner in which our forces conduct military
operations in Vietnam," sentiments regularly seconded by the media. In
the case of Haditha, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Peter Pace commented:
"Clearly the individuals involved -- if they are responsible for the
things they are being accused of -- have not performed their duty the
way that 99.9% of their fellow marines have." And that figure of 99.9%
has been repeated across the spectrum of the American high command,
civilian and military.

Another then-and-now similarity: Responsibility never goes far up the
chain of command, since all investigators are functionally sent down
from that same chain of command. In fact, we know from My Lai that
trials, if necessary, are well-planned out with media impact in mind.
After all, cases like these are, as the Washington Post recently quoted
a congressional aide saying, "a big public relations problem."

In the My Lai case, the military command, with many potential
defendants, made every effort to avoid the spectacle of "two dozen or
more American soldiers, including generals, lined up in the dock like a
little Nuremberg." In discussions with the Justice Department, Pentagon
officials emphasized that a "mass trial" was not an option. Instead,
the accused were assigned to bases across the country where trial
decisions would be made locally by each base commandant. A similar
approach seems to have been taken for the scattered Abu Ghraib
prosecutions. Above all, in the damage-control phase of such
"incidents," what is being avoided is the phrase "war crimes."

The Language of Noncombatant Death

Perhaps, however, what the "incidents" have in common -- and what they
really tell us about the war in Iraq (as in Vietnam long ago) -- is
this: In both Haditha and Ishaqi, the dead were largely or all civilian
noncombatants: an aged amputee in a wheelchair holding a Koran, small
children, grandparents, students, women, and a random taxi driver all
died. These were the "collateral deaths" and what they held in common
was simply their civilian-ness, and how civilian -- and so criminal --
war itself has become.

We need a new language for this. "Collateral damage" is, of course, a
Pentagon euphemism for unintentional or incidental destruction of
property, facilities, or noncombatants that crept into our language in
the Vietnam years and never left. Collateral means "of a secondary
nature" or "subordinate," and "damage" is a description you would apply
to wrecked or destroyed property, but not normally to the human body.
Who, after all, would say, as a woman lay on the ground, shot through
the head, that she had been "damaged."

But there's a far deeper problem with the term. Since March 2003,
almost 2,500 American soldiers, just over 200 troops from allied
forces, and several hundred private contractors or mercenaries have
died in Iraq. We have no idea how many insurgents, Iraqi soldiers, or
militia members have died in that same period, though the number must
be large indeed. But we do know one thing. In modern wars, especially
those conducted in part from the air (as both Iraq and Afghanistan have
been), there's nothing "collateral" about civilian deaths. If anything,
the "collateral deaths" are those of the combatants on any side.
Civilian deaths are now the central fact, the very essence of war. Not
seeing that means not seeing war.

The lack of decent media coverage of the use of air power in Iraq and
Afghanistan -- as in South Vietnam -- as well as artillery, tanks,
cluster bombs, and the like, helps obscure both the widespread nature
and the centrality of indiscriminate civilian death. At least we do see
something of the odd brutal Haditha or My Lai or Ishaqi, when, sooner
or later, it rises to the level of media attention. Killing civilians
from the air, which automatically seems to fall into the category of
"collateral" or "accidental," and never the criminal (no matter how
often civilians die from it), is actually far more destructive and so
far worse. It should, of course, be obvious that, if you are going to
destroy what you believe to be a "terrorist safe house" in the middle
of an urban neighborhood, noncombatants who just happen to be living in
the environs will be "damaged."

The massacre at Haditha, which just made the covers of Time and
Newsweek, is one of those singular stories of our 24/7 moment that
briefly fills the frame of the screen (and the cover), sucking up all
attention. In this way, the needs of our media, as presently organized,
fit with the damage-control efforts of the Pentagon (although Donald
Rumsfeld and his associates would surely be a good deal happier if the
"incidents" at Haditha and Ishaqi had never surfaced in the first
place).

If those horrific murders in Haditha become the mother of all
"incidents," however, Iraq may not make more sense, but less. So let's
widen the Iraq frame and take another look. Those 24 dead noncombatants
are not, in fact, an "incident" at all, nor "isolated," nor -- another
of those then-and-now terms -- an "aberration." Make no mistake, they
are the essence of this war. From the beginning, the continual
slaughter of civilians, as well as the destruction of civilian property
and livelihoods, has been the modus operandi of the American invasion
and occupation of Iraq. That most of it didn't happen
eyeball-to-eyeball with revenge on the brain certainly made little
difference to the many victims, nor should it make too much difference
to us.

In the Line of Fire

To be even more accurate, Iraqi civilians were dying long before the
invasion of Iraq. Though exact numbers have been much argued about,
there can be no question that the unsuccessful American (and British)
strategy of strangling Saddam Hussein's regime via severely imposed UN
sanctions caused the death rates of Iraqi children to soar before 2003.

On March 20th of that year, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld chose to
begin the invasion of Iraq with a "shock and awe" campaign of American
missile and air wizardry over Baghdad. He meant to shock and awe a
waiting world of potential enemies with the news that we were to be the
dominatrix of all history. At the same time -- all things for all men
-- in one fell swoop the U.S. would also "decapitate" Saddam's regime
in downtown Baghdad (and elsewhere). The results: Of fifty
"decapitation attacks," as the slaughter that passed for war began, not
a single one killed an Iraqi leader of even the most minor sort, but
scores of Baghdadi civilians died. In just four of these attacks that
Human Rights Watch was able to investigate, 42 noncombatants were
killed and many more wounded. One early missile attack was on "a
civilian Baghdad restaurant where faulty U.S. intelligence suggested
that Hussein might be having dinner," reports journalist Robert Parry.
"As it turned out, Hussein was not there, but the attack killed 14
civilians, including seven children." Not quite Haditha numbers, but
close enough; and this would set the tone in "accidental" death for the
"liberation" of Iraq that was to follow. It simply never ended.

The invasion itself was largely a military slaughter (as, for anyone
who remembers the Highway of Death out of Kuwait, Gulf War I was too).
Cluster bombs and depleted-uranium weaponry were left in our wake. We
took Baghdad and then let Iraqis loot the city's infrastructure without
raising a finger except to guard the Oil Ministry. American troops
stood idly by while, at the National Museum and Baghdad's grand
libraries and archives, untold national treasures burned to a crisp and
art work of every sort from the origins of humankind was stolen or
destroyed. (This represented, of course, cultural death.)

Before the invasion was over, civilian journalists started dying from
coalition "accidents." From early on, checkpoints were set up, manned
by jumpy, ill-trained American troops, convinced that Iraq was indeed a
land of al-Qaeda terrorists -- talk about self-fulfilling prophesies --
and Iraqi civilians started dying at them. Just last week at a
checkpoint in Samarra, Nahiba Husayif Jassim, pregnant, in labor, and
being rushed to a hospital by her brother, as well as her cousin Faliha
Mohammed Hassan were shot and killed at such a checkpoint. "The U.S.
military is investigating..." Each "incident," another "accident."

As the President prepared to land on the deck of an aircraft carrier
off San Diego and declare "major combat operations ended," American
soldiers occupying a school in Fallujah, fired into an angry crowd,
killing 10 to 13 people and wounding perhaps 75. Another "incident."
(The Americans claimed they had been fired upon.) Just last week,
American troops in our other war in the capital of Afghanistan fired
into a similarly angry crowd after an out-of-control American vehicle
ploughed into cars and killed at least one Afghan. (Typically, American
spokesmen first claimed that the Americans had fired over, not into,
the crowd in Kabul; then, under the press of evidence, reversed
themselves.) From 2003 to now, it's been all accidents all the time.

Soon enough, American troops launched extensive urban raids to root out
a growing insurgency in which doors were busted in and civilians
killed. All of them unfortunate "incidents." Tens of thousands of
liberated Iraqis were soon arrested, put into squalid jails, some
tortured and humiliated in especially gruesome ways; a few were
murdered -- by oversight or accident. We destroyed three-quarters of
the city of Fallujah and regularly loosed our air force on the
downtowns and neighborhoods of largely Sunni cities from Ramadi to
Samarra as well as the Shiite city of Najaf and Sadr City, the vast
Shiite slum in Baghdad. Sometimes these were proclaimed "targeted"
strikes, with smart bombs being used on "terrorist safe houses."
Civilians who nonetheless insisted on dying did so accidentally.

We reconstructed the country by deconstructing it. We were unable to
deliver potable water, or significant electricity, or repair sewage
systems already badly damaged by Gulf War I and the sanctions that
followed. More civilians got sick, more died. We couldn't deliver jobs
and tried to cut down on Saddam-era state-delivered rations. More
childhood malnutrition, more deaths. Unemployment remained sky-high.
Less money, less ability to care for families, more deaths.

In the process, a raging insurgency as well as a jihadi car-bombing
campaign of Zarqawi-style terrorism grew in Sunni areas, while
death-squad-style torture-and-execution murders of vast numbers of
Sunnis and Shiites signaled a growing civil war.

This finally brings us to the 24 dead noncombatants in Haditha (and any
of the other Hadithas that haven't made it into the news). Yet more
"incidents," yet more death.

Civilian Casualty Counts

The upshot of all of this is the central fact of the war: a staggering
civilian death toll impossible to calculate. Early on, a group of Iraqi
academics and political activists tried to study the question of
civilian casualties, consulting with hospitals, gravediggers, and
morgues, and came up with the figure of 37,000 civilian deaths just
between March 2003 and October 2003.

A careful study published in the British medical journal the Lancet in
October 2004 suggested a figure of 100,000 or more civilian "excess
deaths." Iraq Body Count, an organization which relies largely on
Western media reports of civilian casualties for its count, now offers
38,000-42,000 as a conservative but confirmed range of noncombatant
deaths ("civilians reported killed by military intervention in Iraq"
including in "insurgent and terrorist attacks").

But what does any of this mean when most of Iraq is beyond the view of
the media, when many deaths may never be reported at all. Louise Roug
of the Los Angeles Times, for instance, reports that this May, "1,398
bodies were brought to the central morgue [in Baghdad], according to
Ministry of Health statistics, 243 more than April." In other words,
the two-month total for Baghdad's central morgue alone was 2,553
victims of "shootings, stabbings and other violence." And note that
this doesn't include either dead Iraqi soldiers or dead civilians who
were victims of explosions (including suicide bombings)! Put another
way, "since 2003, at least 30,240 bodies have been brought to the
morgue, the vast majority of them shot by gunmen who are seldom caught
or prosecuted." And remember, that's just certain categories of death
in Baghdad.

Though there is no way to know the real figures on invasion and
occupation-related civilian deaths in Iraq, they are the essence of
what's happened. They are both modern war and a crime. Given the
history of war (and of American warfare) in the last half of the last
century, they were largely predictable. They represent neither a set of
isolated incidents, nor collateral damage, nor -- over three years
later -- can they be ascribed to accident. Neither can Haditha.

Under the pressure of a strengthening Sunni insurgency which has gained
some control over large parts of al-Anbar province, the Bush
administration, instead of drawing down American forces, has just
called in reinforcements -- the 1,500 troops of the 1st Armored
Division, kept in reserve in Kuwait. Let me suggest that, if these
troops garrison Ramadi or move on Haditha or Ishaqi or Tal Afar or any
other rebellious community, certain things are predictable -- and there
will be nothing accidental about them: More IEDs will go off under
American vehicles; more Americans will die without eyeballing the
enemy; more angry, frustrated, increasingly feral troops on their
third, fourth, or fifth tours of duty, with a sense that every Iraqi
anywhere in sight is an enemy, will act accordingly. We already know
what will happen. More civilian bodies, more atrocities, more horrors,
and Ramadi, Haditha, Ishaqi and other such communities will not be
subdued in the process.

The only thing that can possibly alter this course of events isn't to
send our soldiers back to morals school for Intro 101B in "core warrior
values" -- at the next Haditha, maybe they'll just send in the planes
-- but to begin to end the hapless American occupation of Iraq, to
ratchet the war down, not up.

Our President, in March 2003, just couldn't resist opening the
Pandora's Box of Iraq. Since then, from that box has emerged every
horror with which we are now familiar. Unlike in Greek myth, however,
at the bottom of the box wasn't Hope, but another H-word: Haditha.

__________________________________________________________________

Sidebar: Talking about Haditha Talking Points

Post-Haditha Math

The Bush administration ran its numbers quickly after the Haditha story
broke big-time in the media -- and word of those numbers went around
fast. In fact, in the last week, was there a major military or civilian
Pentagon figure who didn't manage to use them? Here's a sampling:

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld: "We know that 99.9 percent of our
forces conduct themselves in an exemplary manner. We also know that in
conflicts things that shouldn't happen, do happen."

Army Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, commander of multinational forces in
Iraq: "The allegations of Haditha are troubling to all of us... [but]
out of those 150,000 soldiers, I'd dare to say that 99.9 percent of
them are doing the right thing."

Army Brig Gen. Donald Campbell, chief of staff for Multi-National
Corps-Iraq: "While the bulk of our forces, 99.9 percent, serve with
honor, there are a small number of individuals who sometimes choose the
wrong path."

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen Peter Pace: "Clearly the
individuals involved -- if they are responsible for the things they are
being accused of -- have not performed their duty the way that 99.9% of
their fellow marines have."

Marine Commandant Gen. Michael Hagee: "Praised the '99.9%' of Marines
who follow their training not to fire on civilians."

MNFI (Multinational Forces) spokesman in Iraq: "Defended the record of
the US-led troops in Iraq, saying that '99.9 per cent of all men and
women' in the forces adhere to the highest standards and any violations
will be punished."

Okay, but that's where they all stop. Now, let's do the rest of the
math for them. If Rumsfeld and others are right, then only .1% of
American forces in Iraq have not conducted themselves in "an exemplary
manner," did not do "the right thing," serve "with honor," or "adhere
to the highest standards." Let's assume, despite Lt. Gen. Chiarelli's
figure above, that there are actually about 135,000 American troops in
Iraq at the moment. That means that only 135 of them are not doing "the
right thing," etc. If it's only the Marines, who make up less than
one-quarter of our troops in Iraq, the figure is obviously far lower.
It seems the military won't need to invest in many teachers for that
"core warrior values" retraining of theirs, given such numbers.

Prejudgment at Haditha

"[T]he Marine Corps issued a directive to its generals telling them not
to discuss details of the Haditha case because such comments could
compromise 'the integrity of the investigative and legal processes...'"

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Peter Pace: "I understand
it's going to be a couple of more weeks before those investigations are
complete and we should not prejudge the outcome."

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld: "We don't know what -- quite what
happened there [at Haditha] yet, and it strikes me that it's
appropriate to get the facts and see what took place. We in the United
States hold our forces to a very, very high standard, and it's proper
that we should. And General Hagee is out meeting with the Marines and
talking to them about this subject. And I don't know that I could add
anything else. Furthermore, it's not proper for me to discuss these
types of things since I'm in the chain of command, and there is a legal
phrase called 'command influence,' which if I say something by mistake,
it could adversely affect the outcome of a trial, for example, in one
way or another, either favorably to a defendant or unfavorably to a
defendant. And I wouldn't want to be involved in anything like that, so
I am not going to get beyond what I've suggested."

White House spokesman Tony Snow: "Because the Marines are actually
conducting an inquiry and it's a very vigorous one. I would ask you to
suspend any judgment about what happens. I mentioned this morning that
there are two tracks. Number one is what happened with the reporting of
the incident, and what happened. And the Marines are taking both of
those very seriously and they're proceeding very aggressively. So I
think rather than trying to prejudge it -- the second thing, and this
is equally important, is that when you have an ongoing criminal
proceeding, to try to characterize it on my part or anybody within the
chain of command within the Department of Defense could very well
prejudice and injure any attempts to engage in a prosecution should it
be necessary. So you've got to be very careful about how you do this."

Baker Spring, a military expert at the Heritage Foundation. "If
soldiers [or Marines] are acting inconsistently with these
requirements, there's no doubt the military will take disciplinary
action.... It's always wrong to prejudge the outcome of this
procedure."

This sampling of restatements of essential American fairness in the
face of a judicial process should actually be amended for the sake of
accuracy to read in the following way: When any "incident" is first
reported, American military spokespeople should always immediately
prejudge the outcome by denying in the strongest possible terms that
any account other than the military one is in any way accurate. The
fallback position, once that "incident" won't go away, is that judgment
should be suspended and no prejudging should go on until, hopefully, it
fades from sight.

The Commander-in-Chief Presidency Takes a Walk

George Bush wanted to be "commander-in-chief" and, with the help of his
Vice President and fervent followers, to create a commander-in-chief
presidency. Now he has something approaching that and, it seems, he
wants out of the mix.

"Q Have you gotten updates on the [Haditha] situation?

"THE PRESIDENT: Well, I'm not involved with the investigation, and you
shouldn't expect me to be. I expect this investigation to be conducted
independent of the White House, with a full and thorough
investigation."

Collateral Damage

2006-06-10T16:44:00.000-05:00

Collateral Damage
The 'Incident' at Haditha
by Tom Engelhardt; TomDispatch
June 07, 2006

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-Jim Leftwich & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen

----

2006-06-10T12:57:00.000-05:00

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-Peter K. Niven

Stop the Beast

2006-06-09T17:07:00.000-05:00

    Stop the Beast
    By Marjorie Cohn
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Monday 05 June 2006
To date, the Iraq War represents the fullest and most relentless
application of the Bush Agenda. The "freer and safer world" envisioned
by Bush and his administration is ultimately one of an ever-expanding
American empire driven forward by the growing powers of the nation's
largest multinational corporations and unrivaled military.
-Antonia Juhasz, The Bu$h Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a
Time

In an annual security conference on Saturday, Donald Rumsfeld
assured the audience, "We don't intend to occupy [Iraq] for any period
of time. Our troops would like to go home and they will go home."

Why, then, would the United States be building an enormous embassy
in Baghdad and a base so large it eclipses Kosovo's Camp Bondsteel,
which had been the largest foreign US military base built since
Vietnam?

The new embassy, which occupies a space two-thirds the area of the
national mall in Washington DC, comprises 21 buildings that will house
over 8,000 government officials. It has a huge pool, gym, theater,
beauty salon, school, and six apartment buildings.

The gargantuan military base, Camp Anaconda, occupies 15 square
miles of Iraqi soil near Balad. The base is home to 20,000 soldiers and
thousands of "contractors," or mercenaries. The aircraft runway at
Anaconda is the second busiest in the world, behind only Chicago's
O'Hare airport. And, depending on which report you read, between six
and fourteen more US military bases are under construction in Iraq. It
doesn't appear we'll be leaving anytime soon - or anytime, really.

Bush's trumped-up war on Iraq has claimed nearly 2,500 US military
lives and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives. Thousands of US soldiers
suffer in military hospitals, most with head injuries, many missing
limbs. Thousands more have PTSD. Our economy is in shambles from the
war and Bush's tax-cuts-for-the-rich. And America's moral standing in
the world continues to plummet.

So, with all the construction activity in Iraq, and with an
overextended military and an under funded budget, how could the Bush
administration possibly consider expanding the fight and attacking
Iran? Logic and reason say it couldn't happen and shouldn't happen. But
this administration has rarely paid much heed to logic and reason.

The plan to attack Iran has long been in the works. Bush gave us a
preview in January 2002 when he inaugurated it into his "axis of evil."
His 2006 National Military Strategy says, "We may face no greater
challenge from a single country than from Iran." On Saturday, Donald
Rumsfeld called Iran the world's leading terrorist nation. Does any of
this have a familiar ring to it?

To understand why the US may attack Iran, one must consider the
underlying motive of US militarism. The recent US strategy is
calculated to maintain economic, political and military hegemony over
oil-rich areas of the world. A 1992 draft of the Pentagon Defense
Planning Guidance on post Cold War Strategy that was leaked to the New
York Times said, "Our overall objective is to remain the predominant
outside power in [the Middle East and Southwest Asia to] preserve US
and Western access to the region's oil."

Truthout writer Dahr Jamail, an independent journalist who spent
eight months in occupied Iraq, told a gathering at Thomas Jefferson
School of Law on Friday that the US has been conducting ongoing special
operations inside Iran. He cited unmanned surveillance drones flying
over Iran. Jamail predicts Bush will invade Iran before the November
election.

Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern agrees with Jamail's prediction,
but thinks it will happen in June or July. "There is already one
carrier task force there in the Gulf, two are steaming toward it at the
last report I have at least - they will be there in another week or
so," McGovern said on the Alex Jones Show.

Team Bush is following the same game plan used in the run-up to
Iraq - hyping a threat that doesn't exist and going through the motions
of diplomacy.

Bush & Co. are not motivated by rationality. They act in the
interests of the huge corporations, at the expense of humanity. During
the Bush years, oil companies have earned record profits. Dick Cheney's
Halliburton has landed many of the juiciest contracts in Iraq. New
Iraqi laws that US ambassador Paul Bremer put in place lock in
significant advantages for US corporations in Iraq, including corporate
control of Iraq's oil.

Neoconservative Thomas Friedman, in a March 1999 New York Times
article illustrated by an American flag on a fist, accurately summed up
US foreign policy:
For globalism to work, America can't be afraid to act like the almighty
superpower that it is ... The hidden hand of the market will never work
without a hidden fist - McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell
Douglas, the designer of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the
world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies is called the United
States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.

As long as we allow our government to pursue this strategy, Abu
Ghraibs and Hadithas will continue to emerge, our soldiers and
thousands of people in other countries will continue to die, and our
economy will continue toward bankruptcy. It is up to us to stop the
beast - now!

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-Jim Leftwich & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen

----

2006-06-09T10:36:00.000-05:00

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Markey Introduces the Network Neutrality Act of 2006

2006-06-08T15:10:00.000-05:00

Markey Introduces the Network Neutrality Act of 2006
From Office of Rep. Ed Markey, May 2, 2006

Free Press editors note: The following is the text of Rep. Ed Markeys
statement on the floor of the House introducing the Network Neutrality
Act of 2006. To read the full text of the bill, click here.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to introduce the Network Neutrality Act of
2006.

Broadband networks, Mr. Speaker, are the lifeblood of our emerging
digital economy. These broadband networks also hold the promise of
promoting innovation in various markets and technologies, creating
jobs, and furthering education. The world-wide leadership that the U.S.
provides in high technology is directly related to the
government-driven policies over decades which have ensured that
telecommunications networks are open to all lawful uses and all users.
The Internet, which is accessible to more and more Americans with every
day that goes by on such broadband networks, was also founded upon an
open architecture protocol and as a result it has provided low barriers
to entry for web-based content, applications, and services.

Recent decisions by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and
court interpretations, however, put these aspects of broadband networks
and the Internet in jeopardy. The corrosion of historic policies of
nondiscrimination by the imposition of bottlenecks by broadband network
owners endanger economic growth, innovation, job creation, and First
Amendment freedom of expression on such networks. Broadband network
owners should not be able to determine who can and who cannot offer
services over broadband networks or over the Internet. The detrimental
effect to the digital economy would be quite severe if such conduct
were permitted and became widespread.

This network neutrality bill has essentially three parts. The first
part articulates overall broadband policy and network neutrality goals
for the country, and spells out exactly what network neutrality means
and puts it into the statute so that it will possess the force of law.
The second part embodies reasonable exceptions to the general rules,
such as to route emergency communications or offer consumer protection
features, such as spam blocking technology. And the final part of the
bill features an expedited complaint process to deal with grievances
and violations within thirty days.

The legislation states that a broadband network provider may not block,
impair, degrade or discriminate against the ability of any person to
use a broadband connection to access the content, applications, and
services available on broadband networks, including the Internet. It
ensures that broadband network providers operate their networks in a
non-discriminatory manner. The bill also ensures that consumers can
attach any device to the broadband operators network, such as an
Internet phone, or wi-fi router, or settop box, or any other innovative
gadget invented in the coming years. Moreover, in order to prevent the
warping of the World Wide Web into a system of tiered service, the
legislation will prevent broadband providers from charging new
bottleneck fees for enhanced quality of service or the prioritization
of bits.

Finally, if a broadband provider chooses to prioritize data of any
type, it requires that it do so for all data of that type and not
charge a fee for such prioritization. For instance, if a broadband
provider wants to prioritize the transmission of bits representing a
VOIP phone call for its own VOIP service, it must do so for all VOIP
services so as not to put its competitors at an arbitrary disadvantage.

Mr. Speaker, from the beginning of Internet time until August of 2005,
the Internets nondiscriminatory nature was safeguarded from being
compromised by Federal Communications Commission rules that required
nondiscriminatory treatment by telecommunications carriers. In other
words, no commercial telecommunications carrier could engage in
discriminatory conduct regarding Internet traffic and Internet access
because it was prohibited by law.

In August of 2005, however, the Federal Communications Commission
re-classified broadband access to the Internet in a way which removed
such legal protections. And how did the industry respond to this
change? Just a few weeks after the FCC removed the Internets
protections, the Chairman of then-SBC Communications made the following
statement in a November 7th Business Week interview: Now what they
[Google, Yahoo, MSN] would like to do is use my pipes free, but I aint
going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we
have to have a return on it. So theres going to have to be some
mechanism for these people who use these pipes to pay for the portion
theyre using .

In a December 1, 2005 Washington Post article, a BellSouth executive
indicated that his company wanted to strike deals to give certain Web
sites priority treatment in reaching computer users. The article noted
this would significantly change how the Internet operates and that
the BellSouth executive said his company should be allowed to charge a
rival voice-over-Internet firm so that its service can operate with the
same quality as BellSouths offering. Meaning, that if the rival firm
did not pay, or was not permitted to pay for competitive reasons, its
service presumably would not operate with the same quality as
BellSouths own product.

Finally, on January 6, 2006, the CEO of Verizon, in an address to the
Consumer Electronics Show also indicated that Verizon would now be the
corporate arbiter of how traffic would be treated when he said the
following: We have to make sure [content providers] dont sit on our
network and chew up our capacity.

I think these statements should give pause to those who might argue
that we shouldnt do anything to enact strong network neutrality
provisions because currently no harm is being done.

Do we really have to wait till these corporate giants divide and
conquer the open architecture of the Internet to make that against the
law? These telephone company executives are telling us that they intend
to discriminate in the prioritization of bits and to discriminate in
the offering of quality of service functions ñ for a new fee, a new
broadband bottleneck toll ñ to access high bandwidth customers, we
cannot afford to wait until they actually start doing that before we
step in to stop it.

Once they start making money by leveraging that bottleneck position in
the marketplace, will a future Congress really stare them down and take
that revenue stream away?

Mr. Speaker, if we dont protect the openness of the Internet for
entrepreneurial activity, were ruining a wonderful model for low
barrier entry, innovation, and job creation. Broadband network owners
should not be able to determine who can and who cannot offer services
over broadband networks or over the Internet. The detrimental effect to
the digital economy would be quite severe if such conduct were
permitted and became widespread. The deterioration of significant
policies of nondiscrimination by the imposition of artificial
bottlenecks by broadband network owners imperil economic growth,
innovation, job creation, and First Amendment freedom of expression on
such networks.

The Network Neutrality Act of 2006 offers Members a clear choice. It is
a choice between favoring the broadband designs of a small handful of
very large companies, and safeguarding the dreams of thousands of
inventors, entrepreneurs, and small businesses. This legislation is
designed to save the Internet and thwart those who seek to
fundamentally and detrimentally alter the Internet as we know it. Mr.
Speaker, I urge Members to support this bill and urge the House to take
a decisive stand in favor of network neutrality.

The Abominations of War From My Lai to Haditha

2006-06-08T12:29:00.000-05:00

The Abominations of War From My Lai to Haditha
By Cindy Sheehan
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Monday 05 June 2006

This is the most difficult article that I have ever had to write,
but I have to write it anyway, unfortunately.

I and just about anyone and everyone who criticizes George Bush and
this war are accused of "not supporting the troops." Since my son,
Casey, was killed in Iraq because of lies and to actually make that
country safe for our corporate interests, I have been saying the only
way we can support our troops at this point is to get them the hell out
of this illegal and immoral war.

The massacre in Haditha on November 19, 2005, is just another way
to underscore the fact that our troops are being turned into war
criminals in what one article called: "The Worst War Crime of the Iraq
War." (Sydney Morning Herald; May 28, 2006). In a stunning display of
shameless hypocrisy George Bush said of the (not uncommon) butchering
of innocent civilians in Haditha:
Our troops have been trained on core values throughout their training,
but obviously there was an incident that took place in Iraq ...

Bush also said this following a meeting of his cabinet: The world
will see a "full and complete" investigation.

Another false piece of propaganda that we are fed is that we need
to support the president, especially when we are "at war." I say, "No,
way!" Our kids know the difference between right and wrong before they
are sucked into a military system that dehumanizes our soldiers and
forces them to dehumanize the "enemy" to the point where it is
apparently acceptable behavior to kill children and to cover up the
murders. Can we all assume that little Georgie was never told that
cold-blooded murder is wrong, seeing that his family has supported wars
and their inherent crimes for at least three generations?

The double standard that our leaders have set for themselves and
the troops is amoral and corrupt. I have not seen - anywhere in the
discussion of this topic - acknowledgement that not only is Haditha not
the worst war crime committed by American or coalition troops but that
the entire war is a war crime.

The following list of illegal, immoral, and atrocious behavior is
obvious and not all inclusive by any means:
12 years of devastating sanctions that were responsible for
killing over 500,000 Iraqi children.

Destroying antiquities and culture is a war crime and prohibited
under Geneva Conventions.

The invasion of Iraq is a preventive war of aggression against a
country that was no threat to the USA or the world and was expressly
prohibited by the Geneva Conventions.

The invasion was not sanctioned or approved of by the United
Nations.

"Shock and Awe" targeted civilian centers and killed many innocent
people.

Abu Ghraib.

Guantanamo.

"Extreme rendition.

Use of chemical weapons, especially white phosphorous enhanced
with napalm, particularly in the second siege of Fallujah.

Targeting hospitals, clinics, and threatening medical doctors
with execution if they treat "insurgents" (which can apparently include
babies and pregnant women).

Using highly compensated mercenaries to carry out executions and
torture.

Forcing a style of government on the citizens and manipulating the
outcome of the elections.

Dishonoring the Constitution of the United States by invading Iraq
without a declaration of war by Congress and by breaking our treaties
with the United Nations and the ratified Geneva Conventions.

George Bush is correct. A "full and complete" investigation needs
to be made into the crimes against humanity in Iraq, and if justice
prevails, this would in turn lead to the trial and conviction of George
and the rest of the neo-con purveyors of torture and murder, for which
the maximum penalties should be applied.

The level of accountability needs to rise higher than Specialist or
Private and should reach up and down the very blackest bowels of an
administration that lied through its teeth to get our country into a
war of aggression and occupation. The commander in chief needs to be
prosecuted: NOW!

The most difficult part of this writing is in trying to reconcile
the fact that our soldiers, for one example, in Haditha, could not show
conscience and restraint, qualities which may have prevented a
murderous rampage. When one sees the pictures of bodies burned beyond
human recognition, hears of 2 year old children being killed out of
revenge, women being shot for failing to stop at a checkpoint that is
in the middle of THEIR country, prisoners being tortured in despicably
inhumane ways, ad immoral infinitum, one should be appalled and ashamed
to call oneself an American. That some of our soldiers would stoop to
the level of their leaders to commit such atrocities is unspeakable.
Bush says our troops have been trained in "core values," when he as a
so-called born again Christian can claim that God told him to invade
Iraq and it's okay to spy on American citizens like he is some kind of
sick voyeur with a penchant for death and destruction.

War, under any circumstance, is not a "core value" of humanity; in
fact, it is the ultimate failure of humanity. War turns our mostly
normal American youth into wanton murderers who have lost their own
humanity and love of others. Haditha in this war and My Lai in another
disgusting war were unfortunately not aberrations. War is the
abominable aberration.

Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, our troops are
forbidden from obeying unlawful orders, and Iraq was unlawful before it
ever began. Our soldiers need to start disobeying the unlawful order to
even be deployed to Iraq, and not raise their weapons in appeasement to
the Bush Regime, and say: "This war is the criminal, I am not. Threaten
me if you will, but I am not going to be an accomplice in your crimes
against humanity."

We as people working for peace have long held that the people of
Iraq did not deserve the treatment that they are getting from BushCo,
but it is our troops who are pulling the triggers and pushing the
buttons or flushing the Koran or sexually abusing prisoners, and we
know about it, so that makes us accessories to the crimes, unless we
are actively trying to end the severe breach of compassion and mercy
that is being carried out in the Middle East.

Yes, we have to work to end the war and to hold everyone who
commits atrocities accountable, from private to president, but we also
have to support our soldiers who do not want to kill. It is a tragic
dichotomy in this society that one can be executed for killing someone,
but also be executed or imprisoned for disobeying an order to go and
take the life of another human being in war.

There are several ways that our young men and women can be
supported in resisting the evil of BushCo and Iraq. The GI Rights
Hotline is there to help soldiers get out of going to an illegal and
immoral war, and the War Resister's League in Canada needs support to
help our soldiers find sanctuary and safety. Counter-recruitmentis
also a powerful tool to use to prevent our children from being sucked
into the evil war machine and being used as cannon fodder/weapons of
mass destruction for profit.

Where can the people of Iraq go to find sanctuary and safety? They
have no place to run to and they have no voice to end this war of
terror that is being waged on them by the USA.

It is up to us to be the voice of the babies of Iraq and of the
other people whose only crime was to be born in the wrong place at the
wrong time with the additional bad luck of living on top of rich oil
reserves.

Support the troops? I support only those who are NOT supporting the
exploitation of the Iraqi people, and those who do not allow the war
profiteers to carry on with their death and destruction all for the
sake of an opulent lifestyle. I do not support those who are supporting
a criminally insane and treacherous foreign policy. However I, as the
mother of a slain soldier, will do anything I can to support all of
them by working to shorten their stay in an unwelcoming country, and
bring them home from the quagmire that their so-called commander in
chief forced them into.

Also, when our troops do come home from the war, they need all of
the counseling, job training and help they require to transition back
to a life where most people don't even recognize that there is a war
being waged.

BushCo and the war machine killed my baby. They have killed tens of
thousands more.

BushCo need to be prosecuted and punished like the common criminals
that they are.

We owe this to the people of Iraq, the world, and our own soldiers.

We owe it to ourselves.

The Abominations of War From My Lai to Haditha

2006-06-08T11:09:00.000-05:00