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| Bush Misleads About Transfer of Power in Iraq |
| 06.30.04 (7:19 am) [edit] |
Speaking at the NATO conference in Turkey yesterday, President Bush said, "15 months after the liberation of Iraq...the world witnessed the arrival of a free and sovereign Iraqi government."1 The reality, however, is much different.
The same day that U.S. administrator Paul Bremer officially ended the occupation, U.S. prosecutors refused to abide by an Iraqi judge's order acquitting Iraqi citizen Iyad Akmush Kanum of attempted murder of coalition troops.2 Instead, the prosecutors returned Kanum to the infamous Abu Ghraib prison, claiming that "they were not bound by Iraqi law."
In the days leading up to his departure, Bremer "issued a raft of edicts" in an effort to "exert U.S. control over the country after the transfer of political authority."3 Specifically, Bremer empowered a seven-member appointed commission "to disqualify political parties and any of the candidates they support." Bremer also "appointed Iraqis handpicked by his aides to influential positions in the interim government" with multi-year terms to "promote his concepts of governance" after the handover.
Iraq remains plagued by violence and "the primary military responsibility for fighting the insurgency remains as much in American hands as it did yesterday."4 As a result, the [i]New York Times [/i]concludes it is "ludicrous for administration officials to suggest that America's occupation of Iraq has now somehow ended."
[b]Sources:[/b] - http://www.misleader.org/dail...
1. Remarks by President Bush and Prime Minister Blair, Whitehouse.gov, 6/28/04
2. "Prisoner 27075 learns limits of sovereignty," Financial Times, 6/29/04
3. "U.S. Edicts Curb Power Of Iraq's Leadership," Washington Post, 6/27/04
4. "A Secretive Transfer in Iraq," New York Times, 6/29/04
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| Bush Misleads About Transfer of Power in Iraq |
| 06.30.04 (7:17 am) [edit] |
Speaking at the NATO conference in Turkey yesterday, President Bush said, "15 months after the liberation of Iraq...the world witnessed the arrival of a free and sovereign Iraqi government."1 The reality, however, is much different.
The same day that U.S. administrator Paul Bremer officially ended the occupation, U.S. prosecutors refused to abide by an Iraqi judge's order acquitting Iraqi citizen Iyad Akmush Kanum of attempted murder of coalition troops.2 Instead, the prosecutors returned Kanum to the infamous Abu Ghraib prison, claiming that "they were not bound by Iraqi law."
In the days leading up to his departure, Bremer "issued a raft of edicts" in an effort to "exert U.S. control over the country after the transfer of political authority."3 Specifically, Bremer empowered a seven-member appointed commission "to disqualify political parties and any of the candidates they support." Bremer also "appointed Iraqis handpicked by his aides to influential positions in the interim government" with multi-year terms to "promote his concepts of governance" after the handover.
Iraq remains plagued by violence and "the primary military responsibility for fighting the insurgency remains as much in American hands as it did yesterday."4 As a result, the [i]New York Times [/i]concludes it is "ludicrous for administration officials to suggest that America's occupation of Iraq has now somehow ended."
[b]Sources:[/b] - http://www.misleader.org/dail...
1. Remarks by President Bush and Prime Minister Blair, Whitehouse.gov, 6/28/04
2. "Prisoner 27075 learns limits of sovereignty," Financial Times, 6/29/04
3. "U.S. Edicts Curb Power Of Iraq's Leadership," Washington Post, 6/27/04
4. "A Secretive Transfer in Iraq," New York Times, 6/29/04
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| Republicans Beware: 'Fahrenheit 9/11' Boosting Public Interest In Iraq War |
| 06.29.04 (9:10 am) [edit] |
WASHINGTON - Michael Moore's record-breaking documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" http://www.fahrenheit911.com/... is a pop culture phenomenon that is raising public interest in the Iraq war just as the United States is attempting a crucial handoff of power to Iraqis.
The movie, an indictment of President Bush's leadership and his decision to go to war in Iraq after the 2001 terrorist attacks, took in $23.9 million to become the first documentary to debut as Hollywood's top weekend film. Theater owners in cities large and small reported sellout crowds.
The heightened public interest generated by the film and the controversy surrounding it is likely to increase the reaction to what happens in Iraq - good and bad, analysts say.
"We haven't seen anything like this before," said political scientist Thad Beyle of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "I can't recall anything this large" coming out during an election year.
Political analysts are watching to see whether the movie attracts undecided or politically inattentive voters, but say it's too soon to say how it will influence the presidential campaign.
"What will matter most is what's happening on the ground in Iraq," said Robert Shapiro, a Columbia University political science professor who specializes in public opinion.
Most people who don't already oppose the Iraq war as Moore does are unlikely to see the movie, said Kathleen Jamieson, a specialist in political communication and director of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center. "But if they are undecided, this type of extended communication is the form most likely to persuade."
Other analysts said they'll be interested to see whether the huge crowds continue beyond opening weekend.
Karlyn Bowman, a public opinion specialist at the American Enterprise Institute, said she doubted the film's "extraordinarily impressive" weekend box office numbers will influence the campaign between Bush and John Kerry.
"The election is still four months off," she said.
Recent polls suggest public sentiment is souring on Iraq with a majority saying last week for the first time that the war was a mistake. By a 2-to-1 margin, those surveyed said the transfer of limited power to Iraqis was not a sign of the success of U.S. policy because it was on schedule, but a sign of failure because Iraq is not stable.
The United States on Monday turned over limited sovereignty to Iraqis, two days ahead of schedule.
The heavy interest in the movie is more likely an indication of growing opposition to the war, said Thomas Mann, a political analyst at the Brookings Institution.
The liberal political group MoveOn.org hoped to mobilize potential voters interested in the movie at house parties around the country Monday night, with an online discussion featuring Moore as the main attraction.
But it was far from clear whether the movie will mobilize young voters to take an anti-war view, or stir up old feelings from middle-aged liberals.
"From the lines that I've seen outside the movie, it looked like the same group that was celebrating Earth Day in the 1970s," said Tom Rosenstiel, who studies media influence on public opinion.
People in Little Rock, Ark., flocked to the movie, but Art English, a political science professor at the University of Arkansas-Little Rock, said "it seems to be a reinforcement film."
English said because some of the movie's claims are "over the top," some people are likely to think it lacks credibility. "But it's definitely getting more attention than I thought it would get," he said.
The controversy surrounding the film has helped stir interest, with some Republican-leaning groups attempting to block its distribution. The White House has dismissed the film as "outrageously false." - http://www.commondreams.org/h...
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| Republicans Beware: 'Fahrenheit 9/11' Boosting Public Interest In Iraq War |
| 06.29.04 (9:09 am) [edit] |
WASHINGTON - Michael Moore's record-breaking documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" http://www.fahrenheit911.com/... is a pop culture phenomenon that is raising public interest in the Iraq war just as the United States is attempting a crucial handoff of power to Iraqis.
The movie, an indictment of President Bush's leadership and his decision to go to war in Iraq after the 2001 terrorist attacks, took in $23.9 million to become the first documentary to debut as Hollywood's top weekend film. Theater owners in cities large and small reported sellout crowds.
The heightened public interest generated by the film and the controversy surrounding it is likely to increase the reaction to what happens in Iraq - good and bad, analysts say.
"We haven't seen anything like this before," said political scientist Thad Beyle of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "I can't recall anything this large" coming out during an election year.
Political analysts are watching to see whether the movie attracts undecided or politically inattentive voters, but say it's too soon to say how it will influence the presidential campaign.
"What will matter most is what's happening on the ground in Iraq," said Robert Shapiro, a Columbia University political science professor who specializes in public opinion.
Most people who don't already oppose the Iraq war as Moore does are unlikely to see the movie, said Kathleen Jamieson, a specialist in political communication and director of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center. "But if they are undecided, this type of extended communication is the form most likely to persuade."
Other analysts said they'll be interested to see whether the huge crowds continue beyond opening weekend.
Karlyn Bowman, a public opinion specialist at the American Enterprise Institute, said she doubted the film's "extraordinarily impressive" weekend box office numbers will influence the campaign between Bush and John Kerry.
"The election is still four months off," she said.
Recent polls suggest public sentiment is souring on Iraq with a majority saying last week for the first time that the war was a mistake. By a 2-to-1 margin, those surveyed said the transfer of limited power to Iraqis was not a sign of the success of U.S. policy because it was on schedule, but a sign of failure because Iraq is not stable.
The United States on Monday turned over limited sovereignty to Iraqis, two days ahead of schedule.
The heavy interest in the movie is more likely an indication of growing opposition to the war, said Thomas Mann, a political analyst at the Brookings Institution.
The liberal political group MoveOn.org hoped to mobilize potential voters interested in the movie at house parties around the country Monday night, with an online discussion featuring Moore as the main attraction.
But it was far from clear whether the movie will mobilize young voters to take an anti-war view, or stir up old feelings from middle-aged liberals.
"From the lines that I've seen outside the movie, it looked like the same group that was celebrating Earth Day in the 1970s," said Tom Rosenstiel, who studies media influence on public opinion.
People in Little Rock, Ark., flocked to the movie, but Art English, a political science professor at the University of Arkansas-Little Rock, said "it seems to be a reinforcement film."
English said because some of the movie's claims are "over the top," some people are likely to think it lacks credibility. "But it's definitely getting more attention than I thought it would get," he said.
The controversy surrounding the film has helped stir interest, with some Republican-leaning groups attempting to block its distribution. The White House has dismissed the film as "outrageously false." - http://www.commondreams.org/h...
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| Republicans Beware: 'Fahrenheit 9/11' Boosting Public Interest In Iraq War |
| 06.29.04 (9:07 am) [edit] |
WASHINGTON - Michael Moore's record-breaking documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" http://www.fahrenheit911.com/... is a pop culture phenomenon that is raising public interest in the Iraq war just as the United States is attempting a crucial handoff of power to Iraqis.
The movie, an indictment of President Bush's leadership and his decision to go to war in Iraq after the 2001 terrorist attacks, took in $23.9 million to become the first documentary to debut as Hollywood's top weekend film. Theater owners in cities large and small reported sellout crowds.
The heightened public interest generated by the film and the controversy surrounding it is likely to increase the reaction to what happens in Iraq - good and bad, analysts say.
"We haven't seen anything like this before," said political scientist Thad Beyle of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "I can't recall anything this large" coming out during an election year.
Political analysts are watching to see whether the movie attracts undecided or politically inattentive voters, but say it's too soon to say how it will influence the presidential campaign.
"What will matter most is what's happening on the ground in Iraq," said Robert Shapiro, a Columbia University political science professor who specializes in public opinion.
Most people who don't already oppose the Iraq war as Moore does are unlikely to see the movie, said Kathleen Jamieson, a specialist in political communication and director of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center. "But if they are undecided, this type of extended communication is the form most likely to persuade."
Other analysts said they'll be interested to see whether the huge crowds continue beyond opening weekend.
Karlyn Bowman, a public opinion specialist at the American Enterprise Institute, said she doubted the film's "extraordinarily impressive" weekend box office numbers will influence the campaign between Bush and John Kerry.
"The election is still four months off," she said.
Recent polls suggest public sentiment is souring on Iraq with a majority saying last week for the first time that the war was a mistake. By a 2-to-1 margin, those surveyed said the transfer of limited power to Iraqis was not a sign of the success of U.S. policy because it was on schedule, but a sign of failure because Iraq is not stable.
The United States on Monday turned over limited sovereignty to Iraqis, two days ahead of schedule.
The heavy interest in the movie is more likely an indication of growing opposition to the war, said Thomas Mann, a political analyst at the Brookings Institution.
The liberal political group MoveOn.org hoped to mobilize potential voters interested in the movie at house parties around the country Monday night, with an online discussion featuring Moore as the main attraction.
But it was far from clear whether the movie will mobilize young voters to take an anti-war view, or stir up old feelings from middle-aged liberals.
"From the lines that I've seen outside the movie, it looked like the same group that was celebrating Earth Day in the 1970s," said Tom Rosenstiel, who studies media influence on public opinion.
People in Little Rock, Ark., flocked to the movie, but Art English, a political science professor at the University of Arkansas-Little Rock, said "it seems to be a reinforcement film."
English said because some of the movie's claims are "over the top," some people are likely to think it lacks credibility. "But it's definitely getting more attention than I thought it would get," he said.
The controversy surrounding the film has helped stir interest, with some Republican-leaning groups attempting to block its distribution. The White House has dismissed the film as "outrageously false." - http://www.commondreams.org/h...
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| 80% of Iraqis Want US to Stop Patrolling Cities |
| 06.29.04 (9:05 am) [edit] |
Over 80% of Iraqis want US and other foreign forces to stop patrolling their cities and make their presence less visible by withdrawing to bases, according to the latest survey by Iraq's best-known polling organization.
Forty-one per cent would feel safer if the forces left Iraq altogether, and only 32% would feel less safe.
In interviews in Baghdad and six other cities, which were completed last Tuesday, the Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies also found that pressure is likely to mount on the US and Britain to pull out of Iraq as soon as the country has an elected government in January.
This would be almost a year earlier than the end of the mandate which Washington and London got from the United Nations security council recently. That named December 2005 as the mandate's limit.
The survey looked ahead to the election campaign which will start this autumn and found that parties that promised to demand the immediate departure of foreign forces would have a huge head start.
Forty-three per cent of those polled said they would be most likely to vote for a party which called for foreign forces to leave.
Asked if they would support a party which wanted foreign forces to stay until Iraq's army and police were adequately trained and equipped to face threats of violence, only 16% said yes.
Although the collapse of security is the population's top concern, most of those surveyed felt that the problem would be best handled by Iraqi forces and that the presence of foreign armies attracted more violence.
Almost 70% said that if foreign armies remained in Iraq after an elected government took office in January attacks against Iraqi police and government officials would increase.
The Iraq Center for Research conducts monthly polls and is approved by the now defunct Coalition Provisional Authority. Its latest results were handed to CPA officials on Sunday, the eve of their departure.
The finding that 41% would feel safer without any foreign forces in Iraq is similar to the results for April, but lower than the 55% who felt that way last month. The change may be due to the shock of recent car bombings and assassinations.
Dr Sadoun al Duleimi, who has a PhD in social psychology from Keele University and directs the polling Center, said yesterday: "It's probably because of the large number of recent explosions and attacks on the police.
"Another reason may be that at first Iraqis felt the new government was really going to be an Iraqi government of technocrats and experts who would handle the country's problems with an iron hand.
"When they see it's an extension of the previous governing council, some people go back to accepting coalition forces on the basis that the devil you know is better than the devil you don't." - http://www.commondreams.org/h...
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| 80% of Iraqis Want US to Stop Patrolling Cities |
| 06.29.04 (9:03 am) [edit] |
Over 80% of Iraqis want US and other foreign forces to stop patrolling their cities and make their presence less visible by withdrawing to bases, according to the latest survey by Iraq's best-known polling organization.
Forty-one per cent would feel safer if the forces left Iraq altogether, and only 32% would feel less safe.
In interviews in Baghdad and six other cities, which were completed last Tuesday, the Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies also found that pressure is likely to mount on the US and Britain to pull out of Iraq as soon as the country has an elected government in January.
This would be almost a year earlier than the end of the mandate which Washington and London got from the United Nations security council recently. That named December 2005 as the mandate's limit.
The survey looked ahead to the election campaign which will start this autumn and found that parties that promised to demand the immediate departure of foreign forces would have a huge head start.
Forty-three per cent of those polled said they would be most likely to vote for a party which called for foreign forces to leave.
Asked if they would support a party which wanted foreign forces to stay until Iraq's army and police were adequately trained and equipped to face threats of violence, only 16% said yes.
Although the collapse of security is the population's top concern, most of those surveyed felt that the problem would be best handled by Iraqi forces and that the presence of foreign armies attracted more violence.
Almost 70% said that if foreign armies remained in Iraq after an elected government took office in January attacks against Iraqi police and government officials would increase.
The Iraq Center for Research conducts monthly polls and is approved by the now defunct Coalition Provisional Authority. Its latest results were handed to CPA officials on Sunday, the eve of their departure.
The finding that 41% would feel safer without any foreign forces in Iraq is similar to the results for April, but lower than the 55% who felt that way last month. The change may be due to the shock of recent car bombings and assassinations.
Dr Sadoun al Duleimi, who has a PhD in social psychology from Keele University and directs the polling Center, said yesterday: "It's probably because of the large number of recent explosions and attacks on the police.
"Another reason may be that at first Iraqis felt the new government was really going to be an Iraqi government of technocrats and experts who would handle the country's problems with an iron hand.
"When they see it's an extension of the previous governing council, some people go back to accepting coalition forces on the basis that the devil you know is better than the devil you don't." - http://www.commondreams.org/h...
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| Sovereignty Without Substance ... |
| 06.28.04 (5:48 pm) [edit] |
Paul Bremer suddenly left Iraq on Monday, having "transferred sovereignty" to the caretaker Iraqi government two days early.
It is hard to interpret this move as anything but a precipitous flight. It is just speculation on my part, but I suspect that the Americans must have developed intelligence that there might be a major strike on the Coalition Provisional Headquarters on Wednesday if a formal ceremony were held to mark a transfer of sovereignty. Since the U.S. military is so weak in Iraq and appears to have poor intelligence on the guerrilla insurgency, the Bush administration could not take the chance that a major bombing or other attack would mar the ceremony.
The surprise move will throw off all the major news organizations, which were planning intensive coverage of the ceremonies originally planned for Wednesday.
This entire exercise is a publicity stunt and has almost no substance to it. Gwen Ifill said on U.S. television on Sunday that she had talked to Condoleezza Rice, and that her hope was that when something went wrong in Iraq, the journalists would now grill Allawi about it rather than the Bush administration. (Or words to that effect). Ifill seems to me to have given away the whole Bush show. That's what this whole thing is about. It is public relations and manipulation of journalists. Let's see if they fall for it.
Allawi is not popular and was not elected by anyone in Iraq. The Kurds were sullen today. There were no public celebrations in Baghdad. When people in the Arab world are really happy, there is celebratory fire. They are willing to give Allawi a chance, but that is different from wholehearted support.
What has changed? The big change is that Allawi now controls the Iraqi government's $20 billion a year in income. About $10 billion of that is oil revenues, and those may be hurt this year by extensive sabotage. To tell you the truth, I can't imagine where the other $10 billion comes from. The government can't collect much in taxes. Some of it may be foreign aid, but not much of that has come in. The problem is that the Iraqi government probably needs $30 billion to run the government properly, and with only two-thirds of that or less, the government will be weak and somewhat ineffective.
Since Bremer was a congenital screw-up, just getting him and his CPA out of the country and out of control may be a good step forward. Allawi won't care about Polish style shock therapy for the economy. Allawi does not have any investment in keeping Iraq weak or preventing it from having a proper army. But how the Iraqi military, if brought back, can operate in a security environment where there are 160,000 foreign troops under U.S. command is unclear.
So that some group of Iraqis now control the budget and can set key policy in some regards may be significant. But the caretaker government is hedged by American power. Negroponte (the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad who has just arrived in the country) will control $18 billion in U.S. aid to Iraq. Rumsfeld will go on controlling the U.S. and coalition military. There isn't much space left for real Iraqi sovereignty in all that.
Another danger is that Allawi will overshoot and provide too much security. He is infatuated with reviving the Ba'ath secret police or Mukhabarat, and bringing back Saddam's domestic spies. Unlike the regular army, which had dirty and clean elements, all of the secret police are dirty, and if they are restored, civil liberties are a dead letter.
The guerrilla insurgency will continue, perhaps become more active. My wife Shahin, always a keen and canny observer, thinks the guerrillas will make their priority number one the assassination of Allawi. - http://www.antiwar.com/cole/?...
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| Bush Administration Lied About Secret Saudi Flight |
| 06.28.04 (8:01 am) [edit] |
The Bush administration and its right-wing allies are launching an all-out assault on Michael Moore and his new movie, attempting to discredit the film before it is even public. Last month, White House communications director Dan Bartlett said the movie is "so outrageously false, it's not even worth comment" 1 - a comment made despite the fact that the movie was not yet public and Bartlett had not seen the film. Now the smear campaign is focused on creating the public illusion that Moore lied about a secret Saudi flight that was permitted after 9/11 when most U.S. airspace was closed. But, according to one new report, the Tampa International Airport "confirmed that the flight did take place" -- despite three years of Bush administration denials.
According to the [i]St. Petersburg Times[/i], "two days after the Sept. 11 attacks, with most of the nation's air traffic still grounded, a small jet landed at Tampa International Airport, picked up three young Saudi men (including one thought to be a member of the Saudi royal family) and flew to Lexington, Kentucky. From Kentucky "the Saudis then took another flight out of the country." As the newspaper reported, "for nearly three years, White House, aviation and law enforcement officials have insisted the flight never took place and have denied published reports" about the flight. But now, at the request of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks (9/11 Commission), the Tampa International Airport acknowledged the flights happened. For its part, the Bush administration "is still not talking about the flights."2
According to the [i]St. Petersburg Times[/i], the Commission has now sent a formal letter to the Tampa International Airport asking for more information about "a chartered flight with six people, including a Saudi prince, that flew from Tampa, Florida on or about Sept. 13, 2001" The commission "appears concerned with the handling of the Tampa flight." Meanwhile, former FBI agent Manuel Perez, who accompanied the formerly-secret flight, said the order to allow the flights "must have come from the highest levels of government."3
In all, the[i] New York Times [/i]notes it is "safe to say that central assertions of fact in 'Fahrenheit 9/11' are supported by the public record."4
[b]Sources:[/b] - http://www.misleader.org/dail...
1. "Michael Moore's Candid Camera," New York Times, 5/23/04. (Republished online in Common Dreams).
2. "TIA now verifies flight of Saudis," St. Petersburg Times, 6/9/04.
3. Ibid.
4. "Moore's assertions supported by record; But '9/11' director may have to defend rapid-fire statistics," San Francisco Chronicle, 6/24/04.
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| Bush Administration Lied About Secret Saudi Flight |
| 06.28.04 (8:00 am) [edit] |
The Bush administration and its right-wing allies are launching an all-out assault on Michael Moore and his new movie, attempting to discredit the film before it is even public. Last month, White House communications director Dan Bartlett said the movie is "so outrageously false, it's not even worth comment" 1 - a comment made despite the fact that the movie was not yet public and Bartlett had not seen the film. Now the smear campaign is focused on creating the public illusion that Moore lied about a secret Saudi flight that was permitted after 9/11 when most U.S. airspace was closed. But, according to one new report, the Tampa International Airport "confirmed that the flight did take place" -- despite three years of Bush administration denials.
According to the [i]St. Petersburg Times[/i], "two days after the Sept. 11 attacks, with most of the nation's air traffic still grounded, a small jet landed at Tampa International Airport, picked up three young Saudi men (including one thought to be a member of the Saudi royal family) and flew to Lexington, Kentucky. From Kentucky "the Saudis then took another flight out of the country." As the newspaper reported, "for nearly three years, White House, aviation and law enforcement officials have insisted the flight never took place and have denied published reports" about the flight. But now, at the request of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks (9/11 Commission), the Tampa International Airport acknowledged the flights happened. For its part, the Bush administration "is still not talking about the flights."2
According to the [i]St. Petersburg Times[/i], the Commission has now sent a formal letter to the Tampa International Airport asking for more information about "a chartered flight with six people, including a Saudi prince, that flew from Tampa, Florida on or about Sept. 13, 2001" The commission "appears concerned with the handling of the Tampa flight." Meanwhile, former FBI agent Manuel Perez, who accompanied the formerly-secret flight, said the order to allow the flights "must have come from the highest levels of government."3
In all, the[i] New York Times [/i]notes it is "safe to say that central assertions of fact in 'Fahrenheit 9/11' are supported by the public record."4
[b]Sources:[/b] - http://www.misleader.org/dail...
1. "Michael Moore's Candid Camera," New York Times, 5/23/04. (Republished online in Common Dreams).
2. "TIA now verifies flight of Saudis," St. Petersburg Times, 6/9/04.
3. Ibid.
4. "Moore's assertions supported by record; But '9/11' director may have to defend rapid-fire statistics," San Francisco Chronicle, 6/24/04.
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| US Coalition Fails to Account for Billions of Oil Revenues |
| 06.28.04 (7:12 am) [edit] |
[b]Billions of Revenue from Oil 'Missing' [/b]
A Christian charity has accused the coalition authority in Iraq of failing to account for up to $20bn (nearly £11bn) of oil revenues which should have been spent on relief and reconstruction projects.
At the same time, the Liberal Democrats are demanding an investigation into the way the US-led administration in Baghdad has handled Iraq's oil revenues. The coalition is obliged to pay all oil revenues into the Development Fund for Iraq, but according to Liberal Democrat figures, the fund could be short by as much as $3.7bn.
Sir Menzies Campbell, Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesman, said yesterday: "This apparent discrepancy requires full investigation".
Christian Aid http://www.christian-aid.org.... , in a report http://www.christian-aid.org.... today, claims that the US-controlled Coalition Provisional Authority, which hands over power to an interim administration in Iraq this week, is in flagrant breach of the UN security council resolution which gave it control of the country's oil revenues.
Resolution 1483, passed in May 2003, stated that the money should be spent in the interests of the Iraqi people and independently audited, but an auditor was appointed only in April.
The charity quoted an unnamed UN diplomat as saying: "We only have the total amounts and movements in and out of the development fund. We have absolutely no knowledge of what purposes they are for and if these are consistent with the security council resolution."
Last October, Christian Aid revealed that $4bn of oil revenues were unaccounted for, but although procedures have been tightened up, the charity said, "we still do not know exactly how Iraq's money has been earned, which companies have won the contracts that it has been spent on, or whether this spending was in the interests of the Iraqi people."
According to the coalition's latest figures, the development fund has received $10.7bn. Yet it also admits that $12.5bn has been generated since June 2003.
When 5% is taken away to pay for Kuwaiti compensation, $1.2bn is still missing, say the Liberal Democrats.
Their own research, published today, also suggests that $12.5bn is anyway toward the low end of estimated revenue from oil sales.
The British government told Sir Menzies earlier this year that "information on the amount paid for Iraqi oil is not publicly available" to protect commercial confidentiality.
Christian Aid says billions of dollars are now being hastily allocated to projects which have not been properly planned and fears the authority will be wound up this week without ever having to account for the expenditure. - http://www.commondreams.org/h...
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| Bush CrimeWatch: U.S. Coalition Fails to Account for Billions of Oil Missing |
| 06.28.04 (7:07 am) [edit] |
[b]Billions of Revenue from Oil 'Missing' [/b]
A Christian charity has accused the coalition authority in Iraq of failing to account for up to $20bn (nearly £11bn) of oil revenues which should have been spent on relief and reconstruction projects.
At the same time, the Liberal Democrats are demanding an investigation into the way the US-led administration in Baghdad has handled Iraq's oil revenues. The coalition is obliged to pay all oil revenues into the Development Fund for Iraq, but according to Liberal Democrat figures, the fund could be short by as much as $3.7bn.
Sir Menzies Campbell, Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesman, said yesterday: "This apparent discrepancy requires full investigation".
Christian Aid http://www.christian-aid.org.... , in a report http://www.christian-aid.org.... today, claims that the US-controlled Coalition Provisional Authority, which hands over power to an interim administration in Iraq this week, is in flagrant breach of the UN security council resolution which gave it control of the country's oil revenues.
Resolution 1483, passed in May 2003, stated that the money should be spent in the interests of the Iraqi people and independently audited, but an auditor was appointed only in April.
The charity quoted an unnamed UN diplomat as saying: "We only have the total amounts and movements in and out of the development fund. We have absolutely no knowledge of what purposes they are for and if these are consistent with the security council resolution."
Last October, Christian Aid revealed that $4bn of oil revenues were unaccounted for, but although procedures have been tightened up, the charity said, "we still do not know exactly how Iraq's money has been earned, which companies have won the contracts that it has been spent on, or whether this spending was in the interests of the Iraqi people."
According to the coalition's latest figures, the development fund has received $10.7bn. Yet it also admits that $12.5bn has been generated since June 2003.
When 5% is taken away to pay for Kuwaiti compensation, $1.2bn is still missing, say the Liberal Democrats.
Their own research, published today, also suggests that $12.5bn is anyway toward the low end of estimated revenue from oil sales.
The British government told Sir Menzies earlier this year that "information on the amount paid for Iraqi oil is not publicly available" to protect commercial confidentiality.
Christian Aid says billions of dollars are now being hastily allocated to projects which have not been properly planned and fears the authority will be wound up this week without ever having to account for the expenditure. - http://www.commondreams.org/h...
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| Bush Administration Lied About Secret Saudi Flight |
| 06.27.04 (6:34 am) [edit] |
The Bush administration and its right-wing allies are launching an all-out assault on Michael Moore and his new movie, attempting to discredit the film before it is even public. Last month, White House communications director Dan Bartlett said the movie is "so outrageously false, it's not even worth comment" 1 - a comment made despite the fact that the movie was not yet public and Bartlett had not seen the film. Now the smear campaign is focused on creating the public illusion that Moore lied about a secret Saudi flight that was permitted after 9/11 when most U.S. airspace was closed. But, according to one new report, the Tampa International Airport "confirmed that the flight did take place" -- despite three years of Bush administration denials.
According to the [i]St. Petersburg Times[/i], "two days after the Sept. 11 attacks, with most of the nation's air traffic still grounded, a small jet landed at Tampa International Airport, picked up three young Saudi men (including one thought to be a member of the Saudi royal family) and flew to Lexington, Kentucky. From Kentucky "the Saudis then took another flight out of the country." As the newspaper reported, "for nearly three years, White House, aviation and law enforcement officials have insisted the flight never took place and have denied published reports" about the flight. But now, at the request of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks (9/11 Commission), the Tampa International Airport acknowledged the flights happened. For its part, the Bush administration "is still not talking about the flights."2
According to the [i]St. Petersburg Times[/i], the Commission has now sent a formal letter to the Tampa International Airport asking for more information about "a chartered flight with six people, including a Saudi prince, that flew from Tampa, Florida on or about Sept. 13, 2001" The commission "appears concerned with the handling of the Tampa flight." Meanwhile, former FBI agent Manuel Perez, who accompanied the formerly-secret flight, said the order to allow the flights "must have come from the highest levels of government."3
In all, the[i] New York Times [/i]notes it is "safe to say that central assertions of fact in 'Fahrenheit 9/11' are supported by the public record."4
[b]Sources:[/b] - http://www.misleader.org/dail...
1. "Michael Moore's Candid Camera," New York Times, 5/23/04. (Republished online in Common Dreams).
2. "TIA now verifies flight of Saudis," St. Petersburg Times, 6/9/04.
3. Ibid.
4. "Moore's assertions supported by record; But '9/11' director may have to defend rapid-fire statistics," San Francisco Chronicle, 6/24/04.
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| Bush Administration Lied About Secret Saudi Flight |
| 06.27.04 (6:30 am) [edit] |
The Bush administration and its right-wing allies are launching an all-out assault on Michael Moore and his new movie, attempting to discredit the film before it is even public. Last month, White House communications director Dan Bartlett said the movie is "so outrageously false, it's not even worth comment" 1 - a comment made despite the fact that the movie was not yet public and Bartlett had not seen the film. Now the smear campaign is focused on creating the public illusion that Moore lied about a secret Saudi flight that was permitted after 9/11 when most U.S. airspace was closed. But, according to one new report, the Tampa International Airport "confirmed that the flight did take place" -- despite three years of Bush administration denials.
According to the [i]St. Petersburg Times[/i], "two days after the Sept. 11 attacks, with most of the nation's air traffic still grounded, a small jet landed at Tampa International Airport, picked up three young Saudi men (including one thought to be a member of the Saudi royal family) and flew to Lexington, Kentucky. From Kentucky "the Saudis then took another flight out of the country." As the newspaper reported, "for nearly three years, White House, aviation and law enforcement officials have insisted the flight never took place and have denied published reports" about the flight. But now, at the request of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks (9/11 Commission), the Tampa International Airport acknowledged the flights happened. For its part, the Bush administration "is still not talking about the flights."2
According to the [i]St. Petersburg Times[/i], the Commission has now sent a formal letter to the Tampa International Airport asking for more information about "a chartered flight with six people, including a Saudi prince, that flew from Tampa, Florida on or about Sept. 13, 2001" The commission "appears concerned with the handling of the Tampa flight." Meanwhile, former FBI agent Manuel Perez, who accompanied the formerly-secret flight, said the order to allow the flights "must have come from the highest levels of government."3
In all, the[i] New York Times [/i]notes it is "safe to say that central assertions of fact in 'Fahrenheit 9/11' are supported by the public record."4
[b]Sources:[/b] - http://www.misleader.org/dail...
1. "Michael Moore's Candid Camera," New York Times, 5/23/04. (Republished online in Common Dreams).
2. "TIA now verifies flight of Saudis," St. Petersburg Times, 6/9/04.
3. Ibid.
4. "Moore's assertions supported by record; But '9/11' director may have to defend rapid-fire statistics," San Francisco Chronicle, 6/24/04.
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| Irish Stage MacBush: "There's the smell of blood still ..." |
| 06.26.04 (2:14 pm) [edit] |
[i]Bush's visit has contrasted sharply with those of previous U.S. presidents who were warmly welcomed in Ireland -- particularly those with Irish roots.
John F. Kennedy was greeted with almost religious fervour in 1963, Ronald Reagan had a pub named after him in his ancestral village in Tipperary when he came in 1994 and thousands of wellwishers greeted Bill Clinton when he came to Dublin[/i].
[u][b]Protesters invoke Shakespeare to blitz Bush[/b][/u]
CLARECASTLE (Reuters) - Irish protesters have used Shakespeare to blitz George W. Bush, invoking Macbeth, a ghost and a witch to cast a spell on the U.S. president and drive him, symbolically at least, from Irish soil.
Some 500 demonstrators marched on Dromoland Castle, the 16th century turreted mansion in western Ireland where Bush was meeting European Union leaders for a summit.
When they were stopped at a police road block, they staged their own version of Shakespeare's bloody Scottish tragedy.
First, a ghost with a whited-out face read the names of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq. Then a woman dressed as Lady Macbeth read a list of Iraqi victims.
Finally, a woman dressed as a witch with a black pointy hat and a flowing cape cast a spell on a man wearing a Bush face mask. The man crumpled to the floor as the witch ordered him to leave Ireland and end the occupation of Iraq.
The protesters held up a banner adorned with a quote from Macbeth, Shakespeare's powerful drama of death, destruction and ambition in feudal Scotland.
"There's the smell of blood still," read the banner, on which was painted a gory hand. "All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand."
Some 50 police officers watched the drama unfold from behind their roadblock, just half a mile from the castle where Bush was staying for the EU-U.S. summit. The protest passed peacefully and the crowd dispersed after around 90 minutes.
The staging of "MacBush" was one of several events organised by demonstrators to show their anger with the president's visit.
Some 10,000 people marched through Dublin on Friday night in opposition to both U.S. policy in Iraq and Ireland's decision to host Bush and allow U.S. jets to refuel at one of its airports en route to the Gulf.
Further protests were expected later on Saturday before Bush leaves for Istanbul, where he will attend a NATO summit.
The Irish have mounted a huge security operation to protect the president, with 6,000 police and troops on the ground backed by planes, helicopters, surface-to-air missiles and tanks.
"One can only assume that if (Irish Prime Minister) Bertie Ahern is prepared to deploy tanks, he is also prepared to use them on the Irish people," said Roger Cole, chairman of the Peace & Neutrality Alliance protest group. "That is a disgrace."
Bush's visit has contrasted sharply with those of previous U.S. presidents who were warmly welcomed in Ireland -- particularly those with Irish roots.
John F. Kennedy was greeted with almost religious fervour in 1963, Ronald Reagan had a pub named after him in his ancestral village in Tipperary when he came in 1994 and thousands of wellwishers greeted Bill Clinton when he came to Dublin. - http://uk.news.yahoo.com/0406...
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| Bush's "Christian" Blood Cult |
| 06.26.04 (8:36 am) [edit] |
George W. Bush proclaims himself a born-again Christian. However, Bush and fellow self-anointed neo-Christians like House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, John Ashcroft, and sports arena Book of Revelations carnival hawker Franklin Graham appear to wallow in a "Christian" blood lust cult when it comes to practicing the teachings of the founder of Christianity. This cultist form of Christianity, with its emphasis on death rather than life, is also worrying the leaders of mainstream Christian religions, particularly the Pope.
One only has to check out Bush's record as Governor of Texas to see his own preference for death over life. During his tenure as Governor, Bush presided over a record setting 152 executions, including the 1998 execution of fellow born-again Christian Karla Faye Tucker, a convicted murderer who later led a prison ministry. Forty of Bush's executions were carried out in 2000, the year the Bush presidential campaign was spotlighting their candidate's strong law enforcement record. The Washington Post's Richard Cohen reported in October 2000 that one of the execution chamber's "tie-down team" members, Fred Allen, had to prepare so many people for lethal injections during 2000, he quit his job in disgust.
Bush mocked Tucker's appeal for clemency. In an interview with Talk magazine, Bush imitated Tucker's appeal for him to spare her life - pursing his lips, squinting his eyes, and in a squeaky voice saying, "Please don't kill me." That went too far for former GOP presidential candidate Gary Bauer, himself an evangelical Christian. "I think it is nothing short of unbelievable that the governor of a major state running for president thought it was acceptable to mock a woman he decided to put to death," said Bauer.
A former Texas Department of Public Safety officer, a devout Roman Catholic, told this reporter that evidence to the contrary, Bush was more than happy to ignore DNA data and documented cases of prosecutorial misconduct to send innocent people to the Huntsville, Texas lethal injection chamber. He said the number of executed mentally retarded, African Americans, and those who committed capital crimes as minors was proof that Bush was insensitive and a "phony Christian." When faced with similar problems in Illinois, Governor George Ryan, a Republican, commuted the death sentences of his state's death row inmates and released others after discovering they were wrongfully convicted. Yet the Republican Party is pillorying Ryan and John Ashcroft's Justice Department continues to investigate the former Governor for political malfeasance as if Bush and Ashcroft are without sin in such matters. Hypocrisy certainly rules in the Republican Party.
Bush's blood lust has been extended across the globe. He has given the CIA authority to assassinate those deemed a threat to U.S. national interests. Bush has virtually suspended Executive Orders 11905 (Gerald Ford), 12306 (Jimmy Carter), and 12333 (Ronald Reagan) which prohibit the assassination of foreign leaders. Bush's determination to kill Saddam Hussein, his family, and his top leaders with precision-guided missiles and tactical nuclear weapon-like Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) bombs is yet another indication of Bush's disregard for his Republican and Democratic predecessors. It now appears that in his zeal to kill Hussein, innocent civilian patrons of a Baghdad restaurant were killed by one of Bush's precision Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs). Like it or not, Saddam Hussein was recognized by over 100 nations as the leader of Iraq -- a member state of the United Nations. Hussein, like North Korea' Kim Jong Il, Syria's Bashir Assad, and Iran's Mohammed Khatami, are covered by Executive Order 12333, which the Bush mouthpieces claim is still in effect. Bush's "Christian" blood cult sees no other option than death for those who become his enemies. This doctrine is found no place in Christian theology.
Bush has not once prayed for the innocent civilians who died as a result of the U.S. attack on Iraq. He constantly "embeds" himself with the military at Goebbels-like speech fests and makes constant references to God when he refers to America's "victory" in Iraq, as if God endorses his sordid killing spree. He makes no mention of the children, women, and old men killed by America's "precision-guided" missiles and bombs and trigger-happy U.S. troops. In fact, Bush revels in indiscriminate blood letting. Since he never experienced such killing in Southeast Asia, when he was AWOL from his Texas Air National Guard unit, Bush just does not seem to understand the horror of a parent watching one's children having their heads and limbs blown off in a sudden blast of shrapnel or children witnessing their parents burning to death with their own body fat nurturing the flames.
Bush and his advisers, previously warned that Iraq's ancient artifacts and collection of historical documents and books were in danger of being looted or destroyed, instead, sat back while the Baghdad and Mosul museums and Baghdad Library were ransacked and destroyed. Cult leaders have historically attempted to destroy history in order to invent their own. The Soviets tried to obliterate Russia's Orthodox traditions, turning a number of churches into warehouses and animal barns. Cambodia's Pol Pot tried to wipe out Buddhism's famed Angkor Wat shrine in an attempt to stamp out his country's Buddhist history. In March 2001, while they were negotiating with the Bush administration on a natural gas pipeline, Afghanistan's Taliban blew up two massive 1600-year old Buddhas in Bamiyan. The Bush administration, itself run by fanatic religious cultists, barely made a fuss about the loss of the relics. It would not be the first time the cultists within the Bush administration ignored the pillaging of history's treasures.
The ransacking of Iraq's historical treasures is explainable when one considers what the blood cult Christians really think about Islam. Franklin Graham, the heir to the empire built up by his anti-Semitic father, Billy Graham, has decided being anti-Muslim is far more financially rewarding than being anti-Jewish. Billy Graham, history notes from the Nixon tapes, complained about the Jewish stranglehold on the media and Jews being responsible for pornography.
Franklin Graham continues to enjoy his father's unfettered and questionable access to the White House. But in the case of Bush, the younger Graham has a fanatic adherent. Graham has called Islam a "very evil and wicked" religion. He then announces he wants to go to Iraq. Graham obviously sees an opportunity to convert Muslims and unrepentant Eastern Christians, who owe their allegiance to Roman and Greek prelates, to his perverted form of blood cult Christianity. Graham says he is ready to send his Samaritan's Purse missionaries into Iraq to provide assistance. Muslims and mainstream Christians are wary that Graham wants to exchange food, water, and medicine for the baptism of Iraqis into his intolerant brand of Christianity. In the last Gulf War, Graham could not get away with his chicanery. The Desert Storm Commander, General Norman Schwarzkopf, stopped dead in the tracks Graham's plan to send 30,000 Arabic language Bibles to U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia. Today's Pentagon shows no such compunction to put a rein on Graham. It invited him to give a Good Friday sermon at the Pentagon to the consternation of the Defense Department's Muslim employees. To make matters worse, under Bush's "Faith Based Initiative," Graham's Samaritan's Purse stands to receive U.S. government funds for its proselytizing efforts in Iraq, something that should be an affront to every American taxpayer.
Bush's self-proclaimed adherence to Christianity (during one of the presidential debates he said Jesus Christ was his favorite "philosopher") and his constant reference to a new international structure bypassing the United Nations system and long-standing international treaties are worrying the top leadership of the Roman Catholic Church. Well-informed sources close to the Vatican report that Pope John Paul II is growing increasingly concerned about Bush's ultimate intentions. The Pope has had experience with Bush's death fetish. Bush ignored the Pope's plea to spare the life of Karla Faye Tucker. To show that he was similarly ignorant of the world's mainstream religions, Bush also rejected an appeal to spare Tucker from the World Council of Churches - an organization that represents over 350 of the world's Protestant and Orthodox Churches. It did not matter that Bush's own Methodist Church and his parents' Episcopal Church are members of the World Council.
Bush's blood lust, his repeated commitment to Christian beliefs, and his constant references to "evil doers," in the eyes of many devout Catholic leaders, bear all the hallmarks of the one warned about in the Book of Revelations - the anti-Christ. People close to the Pope claim that amid these concerns, the Pontiff wishes he was younger and in better health to confront the possibility that Bush may represent the person prophesized in Revelations. John Paul II has always believed the world was on the precipice of the final confrontation between Good and Evil as foretold in the New Testament. Before he became Pope, Karol Cardinal Wojtyla said, "We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has gone through. I do not think that wide circles of the American society or wide circles of the Christian community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-Church, of the Gospel versus the anti-Gospel." The Pope, who grew up facing the evils of Hitler and Stalin, knows evil when he sees it. Although we can all endlessly argue over the Pope's effectiveness in curtailing abuses within his Church, his accomplishments external to Catholicism are impressive.
According to journalists close to the Vatican, the Pope and his closest advisers are also concerned that the ultimate acts of evil - the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon - were known in advance by senior Bush administration officials. By permitting the attacks to take their course, there is a perception within the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy that a coup d'etat was implemented, one that gave Bush and his leadership near-dictatorial powers to carry out their agenda.
The Pope worked tirelessly to convince leaders of nations on the UN Security Council to oppose Bush's war resolution on Iraq. Vatican sources claim they had not seen the Pope more animated and determined since he fell ill to Parkinson's Disease. In the end, the Pope did convince the leaders of Mexico, Chile, Cameroon, and Guinea to oppose the U.S. resolution. If one were to believe in the Book of Revelations, as the Pope fervently does, he can seek solace in scoring a symbolic victory against the Bush administration. Whether Bush represents a dangerous right-wing ideologue who couples his political fanaticism with a neo-Christian blood cult (as I believe) or he is either the anti-Christ or heralds one, the Pope should know he has fought the good battle and has gained the respect and admiration of many non-Catholics around the world. - http://www.counterpunch.org/m...
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| Bush's "Christian" Blood Cult: Concerns Raised by the Vatican |
| 06.26.04 (8:33 am) [edit] |
George W. Bush proclaims himself a born-again Christian. However, Bush and fellow self-anointed neo-Christians like House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, John Ashcroft, and sports arena Book of Revelations carnival hawker Franklin Graham appear to wallow in a "Christian" blood lust cult when it comes to practicing the teachings of the founder of Christianity. This cultist form of Christianity, with its emphasis on death rather than life, is also worrying the leaders of mainstream Christian religions, particularly the Pope.
One only has to check out Bush's record as Governor of Texas to see his own preference for death over life. During his tenure as Governor, Bush presided over a record setting 152 executions, including the 1998 execution of fellow born-again Christian Karla Faye Tucker, a convicted murderer who later led a prison ministry. Forty of Bush's executions were carried out in 2000, the year the Bush presidential campaign was spotlighting their candidate's strong law enforcement record. The Washington Post's Richard Cohen reported in October 2000 that one of the execution chamber's "tie-down team" members, Fred Allen, had to prepare so many people for lethal injections during 2000, he quit his job in disgust.
Bush mocked Tucker's appeal for clemency. In an interview with Talk magazine, Bush imitated Tucker's appeal for him to spare her life - pursing his lips, squinting his eyes, and in a squeaky voice saying, "Please don't kill me." That went too far for former GOP presidential candidate Gary Bauer, himself an evangelical Christian. "I think it is nothing short of unbelievable that the governor of a major state running for president thought it was acceptable to mock a woman he decided to put to death," said Bauer.
A former Texas Department of Public Safety officer, a devout Roman Catholic, told this reporter that evidence to the contrary, Bush was more than happy to ignore DNA data and documented cases of prosecutorial misconduct to send innocent people to the Huntsville, Texas lethal injection chamber. He said the number of executed mentally retarded, African Americans, and those who committed capital crimes as minors was proof that Bush was insensitive and a "phony Christian." When faced with similar problems in Illinois, Governor George Ryan, a Republican, commuted the death sentences of his state's death row inmates and released others after discovering they were wrongfully convicted. Yet the Republican Party is pillorying Ryan and John Ashcroft's Justice Department continues to investigate the former Governor for political malfeasance as if Bush and Ashcroft are without sin in such matters. Hypocrisy certainly rules in the Republican Party.
Bush's blood lust has been extended across the globe. He has given the CIA authority to assassinate those deemed a threat to U.S. national interests. Bush has virtually suspended Executive Orders 11905 (Gerald Ford), 12306 (Jimmy Carter), and 12333 (Ronald Reagan) which prohibit the assassination of foreign leaders. Bush's determination to kill Saddam Hussein, his family, and his top leaders with precision-guided missiles and tactical nuclear weapon-like Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) bombs is yet another indication of Bush's disregard for his Republican and Democratic predecessors. It now appears that in his zeal to kill Hussein, innocent civilian patrons of a Baghdad restaurant were killed by one of Bush's precision Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs). Like it or not, Saddam Hussein was recognized by over 100 nations as the leader of Iraq -- a member state of the United Nations. Hussein, like North Korea' Kim Jong Il, Syria's Bashir Assad, and Iran's Mohammed Khatami, are covered by Executive Order 12333, which the Bush mouthpieces claim is still in effect. Bush's "Christian" blood cult sees no other option than death for those who become his enemies. This doctrine is found no place in Christian theology.
Bush has not once prayed for the innocent civilians who died as a result of the U.S. attack on Iraq. He constantly "embeds" himself with the military at Goebbels-like speech fests and makes constant references to God when he refers to America's "victory" in Iraq, as if God endorses his sordid killing spree. He makes no mention of the children, women, and old men killed by America's "precision-guided" missiles and bombs and trigger-happy U.S. troops. In fact, Bush revels in indiscriminate blood letting. Since he never experienced such killing in Southeast Asia, when he was AWOL from his Texas Air National Guard unit, Bush just does not seem to understand the horror of a parent watching one's children having their heads and limbs blown off in a sudden blast of shrapnel or children witnessing their parents burning to death with their own body fat nurturing the flames.
Bush and his advisers, previously warned that Iraq's ancient artifacts and collection of historical documents and books were in danger of being looted or destroyed, instead, sat back while the Baghdad and Mosul museums and Baghdad Library were ransacked and destroyed. Cult leaders have historically attempted to destroy history in order to invent their own. The Soviets tried to obliterate Russia's Orthodox traditions, turning a number of churches into warehouses and animal barns. Cambodia's Pol Pot tried to wipe out Buddhism's famed Angkor Wat shrine in an attempt to stamp out his country's Buddhist history. In March 2001, while they were negotiating with the Bush administration on a natural gas pipeline, Afghanistan's Taliban blew up two massive 1600-year old Buddhas in Bamiyan. The Bush administration, itself run by fanatic religious cultists, barely made a fuss about the loss of the relics. It would not be the first time the cultists within the Bush administration ignored the pillaging of history's treasures.
The ransacking of Iraq's historical treasures is explainable when one considers what the blood cult Christians really think about Islam. Franklin Graham, the heir to the empire built up by his anti-Semitic father, Billy Graham, has decided being anti-Muslim is far more financially rewarding than being anti-Jewish. Billy Graham, history notes from the Nixon tapes, complained about the Jewish stranglehold on the media and Jews being responsible for pornography.
Franklin Graham continues to enjoy his father's unfettered and questionable access to the White House. But in the case of Bush, the younger Graham has a fanatic adherent. Graham has called Islam a "very evil and wicked" religion. He then announces he wants to go to Iraq. Graham obviously sees an opportunity to convert Muslims and unrepentant Eastern Christians, who owe their allegiance to Roman and Greek prelates, to his perverted form of blood cult Christianity. Graham says he is ready to send his Samaritan's Purse missionaries into Iraq to provide assistance. Muslims and mainstream Christians are wary that Graham wants to exchange food, water, and medicine for the baptism of Iraqis into his intolerant brand of Christianity. In the last Gulf War, Graham could not get away with his chicanery. The Desert Storm Commander, General Norman Schwarzkopf, stopped dead in the tracks Graham's plan to send 30,000 Arabic language Bibles to U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia. Today's Pentagon shows no such compunction to put a rein on Graham. It invited him to give a Good Friday sermon at the Pentagon to the consternation of the Defense Department's Muslim employees. To make matters worse, under Bush's "Faith Based Initiative," Graham's Samaritan's Purse stands to receive U.S. government funds for its proselytizing efforts in Iraq, something that should be an affront to every American taxpayer.
Bush's self-proclaimed adherence to Christianity (during one of the presidential debates he said Jesus Christ was his favorite "philosopher") and his constant reference to a new international structure bypassing the United Nations system and long-standing international treaties are worrying the top leadership of the Roman Catholic Church. Well-informed sources close to the Vatican report that Pope John Paul II is growing increasingly concerned about Bush's ultimate intentions. The Pope has had experience with Bush's death fetish. Bush ignored the Pope's plea to spare the life of Karla Faye Tucker. To show that he was similarly ignorant of the world's mainstream religions, Bush also rejected an appeal to spare Tucker from the World Council of Churches - an organization that represents over 350 of the world's Protestant and Orthodox Churches. It did not matter that Bush's own Methodist Church and his parents' Episcopal Church are members of the World Council.
Bush's blood lust, his repeated commitment to Christian beliefs, and his constant references to "evil doers," in the eyes of many devout Catholic leaders, bear all the hallmarks of the one warned about in the Book of Revelations - the anti-Christ. People close to the Pope claim that amid these concerns, the Pontiff wishes he was younger and in better health to confront the possibility that Bush may represent the person prophesized in Revelations. John Paul II has always believed the world was on the precipice of the final confrontation between Good and Evil as foretold in the New Testament. Before he became Pope, Karol Cardinal Wojtyla said, "We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has gone through. I do not think that wide circles of the American society or wide circles of the Christian community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-Church, of the Gospel versus the anti-Gospel." The Pope, who grew up facing the evils of Hitler and Stalin, knows evil when he sees it. Although we can all endlessly argue over the Pope's effectiveness in curtailing abuses within his Church, his accomplishments external to Catholicism are impressive.
According to journalists close to the Vatican, the Pope and his closest advisers are also concerned that the ultimate acts of evil - the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon - were known in advance by senior Bush administration officials. By permitting the attacks to take their course, there is a perception within the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy that a coup d'etat was implemented, one that gave Bush and his leadership near-dictatorial powers to carry out their agenda.
The Pope worked tirelessly to convince leaders of nations on the UN Security Council to oppose Bush's war resolution on Iraq. Vatican sources claim they had not seen the Pope more animated and determined since he fell ill to Parkinson's Disease. In the end, the Pope did convince the leaders of Mexico, Chile, Cameroon, and Guinea to oppose the U.S. resolution. If one were to believe in the Book of Revelations, as the Pope fervently does, he can seek solace in scoring a symbolic victory against the Bush administration. Whether Bush represents a dangerous right-wing ideologue who couples his political fanaticism with a neo-Christian blood cult (as I believe) or he is either the anti-Christ or heralds one, the Pope should know he has fought the good battle and has gained the respect and admiration of many non-Catholics around the world. - http://www.counterpunch.org/m...
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| Liberation will only come when the Americans leave |
| 06.26.04 (8:30 am) [edit] |
[b]Liberation will only come when the Americans leave
[i]Let's hope Moqtada al-Sadr stands in the elections [/i][/b]
With less than two weeks until the much-vaunted transfer of power from the Americans to an Iraqi government, a few hints of independence have emerged from the men Washington approved.
Sheikh Ghazi Ajil al-Yawer, the civil engineer and tribal leader who is to be the new president, contradicted George Bush's suggestion that the notorious prison of Abu Ghraib be torn down. It is not that the sheikh has any affection for the place, but he probably foresaw another fat new contract looming for some foreign building company. Anyway, the damage done to the American image in Iraq cannot be undone by removing the scene of the crime.
More importantly, the sheikh came out against last week's American order banning the radical cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr, from taking part in Iraq's first democratic elections in January. It was an odd decision for a country which claims to be bringing democracy to Iraq. It appeared to have the support of the new prime minister, Ayad Allawi, who issued a statement welcoming the tough US line on illegal militias. The larger Shia parties in the government also went along with it. The cleric is their political rival, and to have him off the ballot would no doubt be in their short-term interest.
The sheikh, by contrast, argued that it is far better to get radicals to join the political process than leave them outside the tent, a sentiment that al-Sadr seems to share. His officials say he is planning to start a political party.
On one key issue even Allawi, a long-time US favourite, has dared to defy Washington. He wants Saddam Hussein and all other Iraqi detainees transferred to Iraqi custody by June 30, a plea which George Bush is furiously resisting. Almost no Iraqis want to see the dictator back in power, but it is a matter of national pride that they should be the ones to hold him and run his trial. He is not a trophy in Bush's election campaign, but a man they wish to punish themselves.
Welcome though this ministerial dissent is, most Iraqis treat it as minor murmuring. The prevailing view is that the Americans will continue to run the show after June 30 and that the new government will not want or be able to resist them on the big issue of security.
Outsiders will also control most spending, since Iraq's only source of revenue - oil - will continue to be deposited in a development fund set up by the UN during the sanctions era. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia still have billions of dollars in compensation claims. Other countries demand debt repayments, and none of the multi-million-dollar contracts signed by the occupation authorities with US companies can be reviewed.
"We can't trust anyone from the new government, or from the United States," Baida Muhsen, a young MA student in a white hijab, told me this week. "After the so-called liberation all Iraqis were hopeful, but I really regret to say that after what happened in Abu Ghraib, I would rather be protected by inefficient Iraqis than by the Americans."
Working near her in Baghdad University's internet room, Ahmed Nuri, another MA student, was equally gloomy. "The Americans will force the new government to do what they want. They have no choice. Many of the ministers have western passports. How can they say no?"
As car bombs tear away at Iraqi society, the issue of the new government's powers has become secondary. The stuff of every conversation nowadays is the daily carnage, and the kidnappings and assassinations that go with it. People are asking the "will and would" questions. Will violence abate in July after the handover of sovereignty? Would violence abate if the Americans pulled out altogether?
The first question is the easier one to answer. If two months ago there was a vague hope that the violence which is motivated by nationalist resentment over occupation would diminish once an Iraqi government took over, people now are almost universally pessimistic.
US troops will remain at a level of 140,000 at least until October, according to US officials, and there are no plans to reduce their visibility. Even if the formal occupation is over, Iraqis expect to see little change on July 1. Resistance to the Americans will continue as before. Those who work with the occupation will remain targets, just as they are today.
Whether violence would lessen if the Americans began to pull out is the harder question. Bush and Blair promise they will not "cut and run" or leave Iraqis in the lurch. A poll taken at the end of April found 42% of Iraqis saying they would feel safer if the Americans left their country immediately. Only 29% said they would be less safe. Another poll in mid May found the trend increasing: 55% felt life would be more secure if the Americans withdrew.
As the climate of fear increases and more Iraqis fall victim to violence, people's attitudes become volatile. A conversation that starts as a long litany of complaints about American mistakes and crimes, sometimes ends with the argument that the Americans should clear up their own mess before they go. Others are panicked by uncertainty, and want everything - the resurrection of the Iraqi army, the old police force back on the streets, and the Americans to stay in the background as an insurance policy just in case.
Only real politics can begin to resolve the issue. The fact that Moqtada al-Sadr may decide to stand in the forthcoming elections is a valuable development. He is the only well-known politician who has dared to call for an early American withdrawal. By throwing the issue into the arena - provided the Americans are forced to let him take part in the polls - he will oblige other politicians to take a stand. It will become increasingly hard for senior Iraqis to avoid the issue, and they will have to respond to the public mood.
An open debate over the future of the US presence will also put pressure on the Americans to hasten the reinstatement and re-equipping of Iraqi forces, and begin to plan for a parallel cutback in their deployments as Iraqis take over. The old Bush/Blair mantra of "not staying one day longer than necessary" has to be fleshed out with a serious and publicly announced programme of phased withdrawal.
Dreams of keeping long-term American bases in Iraq need to be abandoned, and a real test of whether John Kerry is any different from the incumbent has to be whether the Democratic party candidate will give the no-bases pledge.
Iraq is going through very dark days, and the importing of foreign terrorism, which was unknown to Iraqis until the American invasion brought it on, is spooking everyone. Liberation will only come when the Americans leave. - http://www.guardian.co.uk/com...,3604,1241612,00.html
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| Iraqi Liberation Will Only Come When the Americans Leave Iraq ... |
| 06.26.04 (8:27 am) [edit] |
[b]Liberation will only come when the Americans leave
[i]Let's hope Moqtada al-Sadr stands in the elections [/i][/b]
With less than two weeks until the much-vaunted transfer of power from the Americans to an Iraqi government, a few hints of independence have emerged from the men Washington approved.
Sheikh Ghazi Ajil al-Yawer, the civil engineer and tribal leader who is to be the new president, contradicted George Bush's suggestion that the notorious prison of Abu Ghraib be torn down. It is not that the sheikh has any affection for the place, but he probably foresaw another fat new contract looming for some foreign building company. Anyway, the damage done to the American image in Iraq cannot be undone by removing the scene of the crime.
More importantly, the sheikh came out against last week's American order banning the radical cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr, from taking part in Iraq's first democratic elections in January. It was an odd decision for a country which claims to be bringing democracy to Iraq. It appeared to have the support of the new prime minister, Ayad Allawi, who issued a statement welcoming the tough US line on illegal militias. The larger Shia parties in the government also went along with it. The cleric is their political rival, and to have him off the ballot would no doubt be in their short-term interest.
The sheikh, by contrast, argued that it is far better to get radicals to join the political process than leave them outside the tent, a sentiment that al-Sadr seems to share. His officials say he is planning to start a political party.
On one key issue even Allawi, a long-time US favourite, has dared to defy Washington. He wants Saddam Hussein and all other Iraqi detainees transferred to Iraqi custody by June 30, a plea which George Bush is furiously resisting. Almost no Iraqis want to see the dictator back in power, but it is a matter of national pride that they should be the ones to hold him and run his trial. He is not a trophy in Bush's election campaign, but a man they wish to punish themselves.
Welcome though this ministerial dissent is, most Iraqis treat it as minor murmuring. The prevailing view is that the Americans will continue to run the show after June 30 and that the new government will not want or be able to resist them on the big issue of security.
Outsiders will also control most spending, since Iraq's only source of revenue - oil - will continue to be deposited in a development fund set up by the UN during the sanctions era. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia still have billions of dollars in compensation claims. Other countries demand debt repayments, and none of the multi-million-dollar contracts signed by the occupation authorities with US companies can be reviewed.
"We can't trust anyone from the new government, or from the United States," Baida Muhsen, a young MA student in a white hijab, told me this week. "After the so-called liberation all Iraqis were hopeful, but I really regret to say that after what happened in Abu Ghraib, I would rather be protected by inefficient Iraqis than by the Americans."
Working near her in Baghdad University's internet room, Ahmed Nuri, another MA student, was equally gloomy. "The Americans will force the new government to do what they want. They have no choice. Many of the ministers have western passports. How can they say no?"
As car bombs tear away at Iraqi society, the issue of the new government's powers has become secondary. The stuff of every conversation nowadays is the daily carnage, and the kidnappings and assassinations that go with it. People are asking the "will and would" questions. Will violence abate in July after the handover of sovereignty? Would violence abate if the Americans pulled out altogether?
The first question is the easier one to answer. If two months ago there was a vague hope that the violence which is motivated by nationalist resentment over occupation would diminish once an Iraqi government took over, people now are almost universally pessimistic.
US troops will remain at a level of 140,000 at least until October, according to US officials, and there are no plans to reduce their visibility. Even if the formal occupation is over, Iraqis expect to see little change on July 1. Resistance to the Americans will continue as before. Those who work with the occupation will remain targets, just as they are today.
Whether violence would lessen if the Americans began to pull out is the harder question. Bush and Blair promise they will not "cut and run" or leave Iraqis in the lurch. A poll taken at the end of April found 42% of Iraqis saying they would feel safer if the Americans left their country immediately. Only 29% said they would be less safe. Another poll in mid May found the trend increasing: 55% felt life would be more secure if the Americans withdrew.
As the climate of fear increases and more Iraqis fall victim to violence, people's attitudes become volatile. A conversation that starts as a long litany of complaints about American mistakes and crimes, sometimes ends with the argument that the Americans should clear up their own mess before they go. Others are panicked by uncertainty, and want everything - the resurrection of the Iraqi army, the old police force back on the streets, and the Americans to stay in the background as an insurance policy just in case.
Only real politics can begin to resolve the issue. The fact that Moqtada al-Sadr may decide to stand in the forthcoming elections is a valuable development. He is the only well-known politician who has dared to call for an early American withdrawal. By throwing the issue into the arena - provided the Americans are forced to let him take part in the polls - he will oblige other politicians to take a stand. It will become increasingly hard for senior Iraqis to avoid the issue, and they will have to respond to the public mood.
An open debate over the future of the US presence will also put pressure on the Americans to hasten the reinstatement and re-equipping of Iraqi forces, and begin to plan for a parallel cutback in their deployments as Iraqis take over. The old Bush/Blair mantra of "not staying one day longer than necessary" has to be fleshed out with a serious and publicly announced programme of phased withdrawal.
Dreams of keeping long-term American bases in Iraq need to be abandoned, and a real test of whether John Kerry is any different from the incumbent has to be whether the Democratic party candidate will give the no-bases pledge.
Iraq is going through very dark days, and the importing of foreign terrorism, which was unknown to Iraqis until the American invasion brought it on, is spooking everyone. Liberation will only come when the Americans leave. - http://www.guardian.co.uk/com...,3604,1241612,00.html
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| White House Counting on Public Apathy |
| 06.26.04 (8:22 am) [edit] |
You know, of course, that the alleged handover of Iraqi sovereignty on June 30 is a phony-baloney public-relations stunt. The armed forces will remain in the country. A U.S. embassy with 1,000 employees will open. In other words, it will be a continued occupation with an Iraqi face.
What the White House hopes will happen is that the American media, once Iraqis are allegedly in charge, will lose interest in Iraq, and American casualties, which shall surely continue, will be relegated to the inside pages of the newspapers and barely mentioned by the television talk-show crowd.
This might work, because the American media are notoriously xenophobic and show little interest whatsoever in any country other than our own. That's why Americans as a whole are notoriously ignorant of the world. It's simply impossible to develop knowledge about what's going on in most countries of the world from reading American newspapers and watching television.
It's ironic that as communications technology has exploded, intelligent content has shrunk. That's because most corporate moguls simply don't want to go to the expense of stationing permanent foreign correspondents in most parts of the world. If some disaster occurs, they can always buy footage from a local unit or, on rare occasions, fly their pretty faces over for a quickie report.
The information age produces largely static. We can all find out more than we want to know about Hollywood and its actors and actresses (I refuse to allow feminists to dictate my language), but information about the rest of the world is hard to come by. Even the nuts and bolts of our government are not well-reported these days. Ask yourself if you know exactly what your own congressional official is doing based on reading your local newspaper. I'll bet you don't.
It's sad to say, but the American media are undermining the foundation of self-government. The Founding Fathers believed that the common people could govern themselves – provided they were given the facts on which to make their judgments. You are lucky if you live somewhere with a newspaper that makes an honest attempt to give you those facts. In my opinion, the best newspapers in America today are in the small to medium-size cities where editors and reporters haven't succumbed to sensationalism and celebrity worship.
Unfortunately, most of the day-to-day business of America, whether government or private, is not sensational, sexy or scandal-ridden. A lot of it is downright dull. Yet people need to know what is going on. They need to know when their government is doing things right as well as when their government does things wrong. I share the Founding Fathers' faith that if the people are given the facts, they will, in the long run, make the right decisions.
Unfortunately, television seems intent on turning Americans into adrenaline junkies. The world is, in fact, a whole lot less dangerous and violent than you would think from watching television and movies. It's still true, for example, that most police officers graduate from the academy and retire with their gold watch without ever once firing their gun at another human being.
Let's hope the White House scheme to take Iraq off the front pages won't work and that the American press, such as we are, will continue to report on Iraq as long as American troops remain there.
I've even hoping that the Iraqis themselves will rebel against their American controllers and tell us to get out of their country altogether. That would save us a lot of lives and treasure. - http://www.antiwar.com/reese/...
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| In Your Ear, Bolton |
| 06.26.04 (8:20 am) [edit] |
[b]In Your Ear, Bolton [/b]
It hasn't been a good week for Undersecretary of State Bolton. Some of the eggs he's laid in the past year or so hatched as turkeys and have come home to roost.
Back in October of 2002, one of Bolton's munchkins claimed he had accosted a Democratic People's Republic of Korea "diplomat" at a cocktail party, had accused the DPRK of having a clandestine uranium-enrichment program, and the Korean had admitted the accusation was true.
The next day – and practically every day since – the DPRK has officially and emphatically denied that it has any such program.
Now, if DPRK has such a program, no one – not even the CIA – has the foggiest notion where it might be sited.
Nevertheless, within weeks we cut off the quarterly supply of fuel oil guaranteed DPRK in return for a "freeze" of its nuclear power reactors and associated facilities, kept since 1994 under lock and seal by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
In so doing, we effectively abrogated the U.S.-DPRK Agreed Framework, negotiated for President Clinton by Ambassador Gallucci, that was supposed to keep the DPRK a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The DPRK continued to deny that it had a uranium-enrichment program, and announced that if the Agreed Framework oil shipments weren't resumed it would withdraw from the NPT after all.
They weren't resumed, so in December the DPRK announced it was withdrawing, kicked out the IAEA inspectors, ripped off the IAEA seals, restarted its plutonium-producing reactor, and in February, began recovering weapons-grade plutonium from its "unfrozen" spent fuel.
About the same time, Bolton met with Israeli officials in Tel Aviv. According to the Israeli independent newspaper, Ha'aretz, Bolton told the Israelis he had "no doubt" that "America will attack Iraq," and soon, to disarm Saddam Hussein. The Israelis said "okay," but said they were much more worried about Iran having nukes, than Iraq. Bolton told them that Iraq had to come first, so "it will be necessary to deal with threats from Syria, Iran and North Korea, afterwards."
Well, you know how the invasion of Iraq turned out.
Disaster!
There were no Iraqi nukes. There weren't even any chemical or biological weapons. Worse, the insurrection, coupled with the paucity of "willing" partners, means that we don't have the necessary means for dealing from a position of strength with what the neocrazies perceive to be the nuke threats from Syria, Iran and the DPRK for a long time.
Worse, still, the neo-crazies had deliberately gut-shot the IAEA because it stood in the way of justifying the invasion to Joe Sixpack. The IAEA had re-certified on the eve of the invasion that there were no nuke programs in Iraq. Hence the IAEA Board of Governors was hardly in the mood to "deal with the threats from Syria, Iran and North Korea" for Bolton and the Israelis.
So, last week Bolton attempted to get the heads of state of the eight 'industrialized' nations – the G8 – to end-run the IAEA Board of Governors. The G8 issued an Action Plan on Non-Proliferation – which has all the import of a pledge by the G8 heads to give up smoking. But it got the Iranian mullahs attention. And DPRK's Kim Jong-il.
Here is what the G8 said – in part – about DPRK:
"The DPRK's (a) announced withdrawal from the NPT – which is unprecedented – its (b) continued pursuit of nuclear weapons – including through both its plutonium reprocessing and its uranium enrichment programs – in violation of its international obligations; and its (c) established history of missile proliferation, are serious concerns to us all."
And here's what the G8 said – in part – about Iran:
"Iran must be in full compliance with its NPT obligations and safeguards agreement.
"We deplore Iran's delays, deficiencies in cooperation, and inadequate disclosures, as detailed in IAEA Director General reports.
"We therefore urge Iran promptly and fully to comply with its commitments and all IAEA Board requirements, including ratification and full implementation of the Additional Protocol, leading to resolution of all outstanding issues related to its nuclear program."
So, this week, the DPRK delegate to the 6-Party talks reportedly told a Bolton munchkin that because of what Bolton had the G8 do, they might just test a nuke or two.
And the Iranian mullahs informed France-Germany-UK – all G8 members – that they were resuming gas-centrifuge construction because France-Germany-UK had reneged on their promise to deal with IAEA issues within the IAEA.
All in all, not a good week for Bolton.
[b]Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy implementing official for national security-related technical matters in the Federal Energy Agency, the Energy Research and Development Administration, the Department of Energy, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of the Army. Dr. Prather also served as legislative assistant for national security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. -- ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and member of the Senate Energy Committee and Appropriations Committee. Dr. Prather had earlier worked as a nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico. [/b] - http://www.antiwar.com/orig/p...
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| In You Ear, Bolton (Ah, come on, Cheney would have said: "Fuck-Yourself!") |
| 06.26.04 (8:18 am) [edit] |
[b]In Your Ear, Bolton [/b]
It hasn't been a good week for Undersecretary of State Bolton. Some of the eggs he's laid in the past year or so hatched as turkeys and have come home to roost.
Back in October of 2002, one of Bolton's munchkins claimed he had accosted a Democratic People's Republic of Korea "diplomat" at a cocktail party, had accused the DPRK of having a clandestine uranium-enrichment program, and the Korean had admitted the accusation was true.
The next day – and practically every day since – the DPRK has officially and emphatically denied that it has any such program.
Now, if DPRK has such a program, no one – not even the CIA – has the foggiest notion where it might be sited.
Nevertheless, within weeks we cut off the quarterly supply of fuel oil guaranteed DPRK in return for a "freeze" of its nuclear power reactors and associated facilities, kept since 1994 under lock and seal by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
In so doing, we effectively abrogated the U.S.-DPRK Agreed Framework, negotiated for President Clinton by Ambassador Gallucci, that was supposed to keep the DPRK a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The DPRK continued to deny that it had a uranium-enrichment program, and announced that if the Agreed Framework oil shipments weren't resumed it would withdraw from the NPT after all.
They weren't resumed, so in December the DPRK announced it was withdrawing, kicked out the IAEA inspectors, ripped off the IAEA seals, restarted its plutonium-producing reactor, and in February, began recovering weapons-grade plutonium from its "unfrozen" spent fuel.
About the same time, Bolton met with Israeli officials in Tel Aviv. According to the Israeli independent newspaper, Ha'aretz, Bolton told the Israelis he had "no doubt" that "America will attack Iraq," and soon, to disarm Saddam Hussein. The Israelis said "okay," but said they were much more worried about Iran having nukes, than Iraq. Bolton told them that Iraq had to come first, so "it will be necessary to deal with threats from Syria, Iran and North Korea, afterwards."
Well, you know how the invasion of Iraq turned out.
Disaster!
There were no Iraqi nukes. There weren't even any chemical or biological weapons. Worse, the insurrection, coupled with the paucity of "willing" partners, means that we don't have the necessary means for dealing from a position of strength with what the neocrazies perceive to be the nuke threats from Syria, Iran and the DPRK for a long time.
Worse, still, the neo-crazies had deliberately gut-shot the IAEA because it stood in the way of justifying the invasion to Joe Sixpack. The IAEA had re-certified on the eve of the invasion that there were no nuke programs in Iraq. Hence the IAEA Board of Governors was hardly in the mood to "deal with the threats from Syria, Iran and North Korea" for Bolton and the Israelis.
So, last week Bolton attempted to get the heads of state of the eight 'industrialized' nations – the G8 – to end-run the IAEA Board of Governors. The G8 issued an Action Plan on Non-Proliferation – which has all the import of a pledge by the G8 heads to give up smoking. But it got the Iranian mullahs attention. And DPRK's Kim Jong-il.
Here is what the G8 said – in part – about DPRK:
"The DPRK's (a) announced withdrawal from the NPT – which is unprecedented – its (b) continued pursuit of nuclear weapons – including through both its plutonium reprocessing and its uranium enrichment programs – in violation of its international obligations; and its (c) established history of missile proliferation, are serious concerns to us all."
And here's what the G8 said – in part – about Iran:
"Iran must be in full compliance with its NPT obligations and safeguards agreement.
"We deplore Iran's delays, deficiencies in cooperation, and inadequate disclosures, as detailed in IAEA Director General reports.
"We therefore urge Iran promptly and fully to comply with its commitments and all IAEA Board requirements, including ratification and full implementation of the Additional Protocol, leading to resolution of all outstanding issues related to its nuclear program."
So, this week, the DPRK delegate to the 6-Party talks reportedly told a Bolton munchkin that because of what Bolton had the G8 do, they might just test a nuke or two.
And the Iranian mullahs informed France-Germany-UK – all G8 members – that they were resuming gas-centrifuge construction because France-Germany-UK had reneged on their promise to deal with IAEA issues within the IAEA.
All in all, not a good week for Bolton.
[b]Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy implementing official for national security-related technical matters in the Federal Energy Agency, the Energy Research and Development Administration, the Department of Energy, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of the Army. Dr. Prather also served as legislative assistant for national security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. -- ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and member of the Senate Energy Committee and Appropriations Committee. Dr. Prather had earlier worked as a nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico. [/b] - http://www.antiwar.com/orig/p...
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| The Irish Can't Stand Bush Anymore Than High-IQ Americans Can ... |
| 06.25.04 (6:27 pm) [edit] |
[b]Stepping out to a cold Irish welcome [/b]
Smiling and waving, George Bush glided down the steps of Air Force One at Shannon airport last night, seemingly unfazed by his tag as the most unwelcome American ever to set foot on Irish soil.
The president and his wife, Laura, were spared the sight of thousands of Irish protesters at the airport entrance and whisked off in an armoured Cadillac to the 16th century Dromoland castle in County Clare. Mr Bush enjoyed a rather military-looking walk around the expansive grounds with the Irish prime minister, Bertie Ahern, but was expected to retire early to his £900-a night presidential suite, which the castle promotes as the authentic "landed gentry" experience.
The president will use today's US-EU summit to try to heal the transatlantic rifts over Iraq before the Nato summit in Turkey.
Pretzels are off the menu at his working lunch with European statesmen. Only the finest Irish seafood and lamb will grace the table as the conversation turns to the Middle East and famine in Sudan. The French wine-list will serve as a reminder of the difficult task at hand.
But what Mr Bush has been choking on recently is the gristle of the Irish media. Expecting nothing more than a gentle probing from a friendly state which America "helped" to prosper, he gave the first White House interview to an Irish journalist for 20 years. But the state broadcaster RTE subjected him to a grilling which left him fuming and had media commentators and licence-payers debating the Irish style of journalism.
The interview was intended as a cordial start to the president's first visit to the Irish Republic. Some claim the summit was tailored to give Mr Bush a pre-election media-opportunity for the 50 million or so Irish folk back home.
But RTE's Washington correspondent, Carole Coleman, was not about to let Mr Bush off the hook. In an interview broadcast on television and a radio breakfast show she persisted with questions about dead US soldiers, torture, the issue of making the world a more dangerous place, and being disliked.
"I don't really try to chase popularity polls," the president said.
After Irish churchmen queried the president's morals this week, there was also an inevitable question about his devotion to the Lord.
"I get great substance from my personal relationship [with God]," he said. "That doesn't make me think I'm a better person than you are, by the way, because one of the great admonitions in the good book is, 'Don't try to take a speck out of your eye if I got a log in my own'."
Mr Ahern's fashion sense will ensure that he gets the coverage he requires. Once known as anorak-man, the prime minister hogged much media time by his recent appearance in a garish pair of canary-yellow trousers at the G8 summit that the issue was raised in the Irish parliament.
The visit was accompanied by the inevitable anti-Bush demonstrations in Shannon, Dublin and several other cities. Three protesters, including Edward Horgan, a leading peace activist and former officer in the Irish army, were arrested on board a boat on the River Shannon yesterday afternoon.
Radio phone-in shows - the barometer of Irish life - have been flooded with anti-Bush callers. One of the loudest pro-Bush voices was that of a former US diplomat, George Dempsey, who said Ireland should be welcoming Mr Bush by waving American flags but instead had been poisoned by media bias.
He said the foreign policy debate in Ireland was "dominated by a self-justifying leftist fixation on the US". He had written a book dissecting the "vicious misrepresentation" in the Irish media.
The one person who did not seem to need advice on dealing with Irish resentment was the US national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, who travelled with the president and Colin Powell.
She said she was aware the president would be greeted by protesters but the Irish should remember that the right to protest was a part of democracy once denied to Iraqis.
Irish demonstrators were resolute. "No red carpet for killer Bush," said a placard in a hedgerow. - http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa...,12271,1247902,00.html
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| Persuasive and passionate. 'Fahrenheit 9/11' is both ... |
| 06.25.04 (9:01 am) [edit] |
[b]Persuasive and passionate. 'Fahrenheit 9/11' is both. It's also Michael Moore's best film. [/b]
The big moment in Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" comes midway through the documentary, and there's no mistaking it: It's the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, and the president of the United States is sitting in a little chair in a Florida classroom. His chief of staff enters and whispers in his ear that the country is under attack. And President George W. Bush just sits there for seven long minutes.
In a forceful documentary devoted to puncturing the image of the president as a take-charge leader, this will be, for many, the tipping point. At the very least, it will be the scene that everyone talks about. Moore doesn't show the whole seven minutes. Instead he lingers on the scene just long enough for the audience to daydream of Eisenhower, Reagan, Truman, Bush senior, Clinton, Nixon or Kennedy in that situation, and to imagine any one of them standing immediately, excusing himself and demanding to be put in touch with his national security team.
Assessing the merits of a political film is a tricky business. Obviously, its quality is partly a function of its power to persuade, but its persuasiveness is in the eye of the beholder. Yet there are other things to consider: The movie's passion. Its serious purpose. Its tone. Its mix of words and images, and the way both linger in the mind. There's the way the movie fashions its arguments, and the cumulative effect the experience provides -- what you feel walking out, what you think about the next day. By all these measures, "Fahrenheit 9/11" is Michael Moore's best film.
Certainly, it's a career landmark, the film that signals his transition from political entertainer to political thinker, from propagandist to idiosyncratic journalist, from colorful gadfly to patriot. If "Bowling for Columbine" was a step, this is a leap, in which Moore vaults past Will Rogers into some territory all his own. In the 90-year history of the American feature film, there has never been a popular election-year documentary like this one.
The film, which won the Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival, has a single unifying idea that brings together its various elements. The idea is an emotional one, namely that America has been living in a kind of nightmare for the last few years, one that began not with the events of Sept. 11, 2001, but from the moment that the networks took Florida out of the Gore column on election night 2000. Moore posits that the main source of America's nightmare has been the presidency of George W. Bush. There's anger at the core of Moore's position, but he never shows it. And while he sprinkles the film with his deadpan humor, for the most part he plays it straight, laying down facts methodically, trusting in the audience's interest and attention. The connection between the Bush family and the bin Laden family's oil interests dominates the first section of the film. Although Moore doesn't uncover anything sinister, the sheer extent of this personal and financial connection comes as a surprise, and it fuels Moore's outrage that the bin Laden family was allowed to leave the United States without interrogation following Sept. 11.
That Moore is becoming an artist is evident in the way he depicts the World Trade Center attacks. Instead of going to stock news footage, he blacks out the screen and makes us listen to the sounds of Lower Manhattan on the horrible day. It brings it all back. From there, Moore challenges the president's handling of the war on terror by bringing in experts to say that the Afghanistan war was "botched," that too few troops were sent. He details lapses in homeland security. To bolster his case that the administration has fostered a culture of fear, he goes to a tiny town in Virginia and talks to citizens on the lookout for terrorists. When asked what the terrorists might want to bomb, several locals say, "The Wal-Mart."
Moore had a camera on the ground in Iraq, and the footage he got is like nothing seen on American television. A woman sobs and screams that her family's house has been destroyed. American soldiers clown around near hooded detainees, while other soldiers express doubt about the mission. Moore's effects are manipulative in the best sense -- even though the audience knows what he's up to, the moments still have power. As the president talks about the need for war, Moore shows kids playing in Baghdad. Later, he shows a boy lying in the street with his forearm barely attached to his body. On the home front, Moore shows a mother whose son was killed in Iraq, reading her son's final letter -- in which he says that he hopes the president isn't re- elected.
Moore is playing for keeps. The somber tone notwithstanding, this film is on fire. It's an exhausting, shattering thing to watch, and the mood it casts lasts for days. What both exalts the experience and grounds the picture is Moore's essentially patriotic faith that a sincere, invested argument can get a hearing in America. To see "Fahrenheit 9/11" and experience its passion is to wonder why there haven't been popular political films like this since movies began, and from all points of view. It seems like such a reasonable use of cinema, and an inexpressibly worthy one.
-- Advisory: This film contains strong language, gun violence and scenes of carnage. - http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/art...
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| Persuasive and passionate. 'Fahrenheit 9/11' is both ... |
| 06.25.04 (8:58 am) [edit] |
[b]Persuasive and passionate. 'Fahrenheit 9/11' is both. It's also Michael Moore's best film. [/b]
The big moment in Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" comes midway through the documentary, and there's no mistaking it: It's the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, and the president of the United States is sitting in a little chair in a Florida classroom. His chief of staff enters and whispers in his ear that the country is under attack. And President George W. Bush just sits there for seven long minutes.
In a forceful documentary devoted to puncturing the image of the president as a take-charge leader, this will be, for many, the tipping point. At the very least, it will be the scene that everyone talks about. Moore doesn't show the whole seven minutes. Instead he lingers on the scene just long enough for the audience to daydream of Eisenhower, Reagan, Truman, Bush senior, Clinton, Nixon or Kennedy in that situation, and to imagine any one of them standing immediately, excusing himself and demanding to be put in touch with his national security team.
Assessing the merits of a political film is a tricky business. Obviously, its quality is partly a function of its power to persuade, but its persuasiveness is in the eye of the beholder. Yet there are other things to consider: The movie's passion. Its serious purpose. Its tone. Its mix of words and images, and the way both linger in the mind. There's the way the movie fashions its arguments, and the cumulative effect the experience provides -- what you feel walking out, what you think about the next day. By all these measures, "Fahrenheit 9/11" is Michael Moore's best film.
Certainly, it's a career landmark, the film that signals his transition from political entertainer to political thinker, from propagandist to idiosyncratic journalist, from colorful gadfly to patriot. If "Bowling for Columbine" was a step, this is a leap, in which Moore vaults past Will Rogers into some territory all his own. In the 90-year history of the American feature film, there has never been a popular election-year documentary like this one.
The film, which won the Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival, has a single unifying idea that brings together its various elements. The idea is an emotional one, namely that America has been living in a kind of nightmare for the last few years, one that began not with the events of Sept. 11, 2001, but from the moment that | |
