Syria Likely Not Responsible for Beirut Assassinations

Terror in Beirut - The Washington Times

Intelligence sources believe the technology used to kill the former head of the Lebanese Communist Party and a prominent anti-Syrian journalist in Beirut were so sophisticated that only a handful of countries or special services could have carried out the assassinations.


Fred Burton, vice president of counter-terrorism with Stratfor, an Austin, Texas-based outfit specializing in intelligence and counter-terrorism analysis, issued a report on June 22 describing the remotely detonated charge that killed George Hawi, the former Lebanese Communist Part chief, as "so sophisticated that few in the world could have done it." The counter-terrorism expert believes that the "complex nature of the Hawi attack narrows down the list of culprits to a few." Among the countries possessing that level of expertise are the United States, Britain, France, [Iran,] Israel and Russia. "This type of technology is only available to government agencies," Burton told United Press International.

The mystery of all the assassinations in Beirut has deepened today. Syria doesn't have the technology to do the damage says the expert. Speculation now varies from Iran, to enemies of Bashar, the president of Syria. But a Syrian would still need a connection to a major nation.
The question is who benefits from a destabilized Syria. There are only two countries I can think of on that very short list. Israel and the US. Israel has been actively manipulating the Bush Administration's foreign policy. While I wouldn't put anything over on Bush, he has too many real enemies to kill off. Israel has been associated with manipulating events with assassinations in the past, many times. It is their style to overlook collateral casualties as well. By acting, Israel shores up the Bush Administration Middle East foreign policy in a way the US would likely never do.
The fact is, Israeli and Iranian spies were active in the pre-invasion administration specifically Chalabi, now an assistant prime minister in the pro-Iranian Iraqi government and Franklin, a aid to former Assistant Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith, now under indictment for spying for the Israelis. Both men are known to have been actively influencing US policy with false intelligence. That very intelligence may have given Bush and Blair the cover they needed to invade Iraq.

CIA abduction in Italy shows U.S. bungling experts say

World News Article | Reuters.co.uk

CIA agents charged with kidnapping a Muslim cleric in Milan appear to have bungled their way into an international incident by ignoring the most basic rules of the spy trade, experts say.


Far from the suave discretion of James Bond, experts say the operatives who snatched radical Muslim cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr on February 17, 2003, sound more like the bumbling secret agent Austin Powers of movie fame. "Instead of super-sleuths, they were like elephants stampeding through Milan. They left huge footprints," said former CIA clandestine officer Melissa Boyle Mahle.


Media reports say the agents placed phone calls to CIA headquarters on unsecured lines, ran up $145,000 (80,320 pounds) in bills at luxury hotels and operated far enough in the open for Italian authorities to learn their operational identities. "Everybody knows that telephones can be traced. It's not exactly an emerging technology," said one former spy.


In fact, current and former intelligence officials, who had no actual knowledge of Nasr's abduction, said Italian accounts depict an amateur operation. Several other intelligence sources spoke on condition of anonymity because the case involves a covert U.S. operation.


"The trade craft was beyond appalling," said an intelligence official with long experience in clandestine affairs. "I'd have to wonder if these were CIA officers trained in the clandestine arts." Some suggested the operation could have been carried out by intelligence officials from the FBI or the U.S. military.

Some of our not so "best and brightest" have ended up in jail in Italy charged with kidnapping a Egyptian Mullah right off the streets and shipped him off to Egypt where he very likely is being tortured at this moment. They may spend many years in jail while Bush, Rice and Rumsfeld who belong in jail will live comfortably on their government pensions. We are so worried about human rights in the Middle East and Central Asia, but that doesn't include anyone we think might be a terrorist. Who do you suppose those in the Middle East, Central Asia and even Israel are mistreating the most?
Certainly many are terrorists, many more are political prisoners. In the US our political prisoners are held as "material witnesses" in secret, without counsel, without due process for as long the government wants them. The Bush Administration seem to practice doublethink not only for political expediency, they seem to be equally bamboozled by their own rhetoric! Doublethink Dubya and his cronies are cornfused!

Stop Human Pesticide Testing!

Stop Human Pesticide Testing!
Dear Fellow Americans:
After more than four years of fighting the Bush Administration's efforts to pollute good science with politics, I thought I'd heard it all. Then I learned how they were deciding to test new pesticides.
In violation of routine ethical standards, the Bush Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is using studies that deliberately expose humans to dangerous pesticides to decide whether those pesticides should be legal.
This decision flies in the face of scientific practice and the sound policies of past Republican and Democratic EPA Administrators including Carol Browner and Christie Todd Whitman.
A recent Congressional report commissioned by Rep. Henry Waxman and me found "serious and widespread deficiencies" in these studies.  Moreover, it concluded that the "experiments appear to have inflicted harm on human subjects, failed to obtain informed consent, dismissed adverse outcomes, and lacked scientific validity."
In just one example of the inexcusable conduct of these studies, subjects were instructed to swallow capsules of toxic pesticides with orange juice or water at breakfast. We need to put a stop to this kind of Frankenscience -- now.
On Tuesday, I introduced a bipartisan amendment co-sponsored by Senators Clinton, Collins (R-ME), and Snowe (R-ME) that reinstates the moratorium on all human pesticide testing put in place by Republican and Democratic EPA Administrators until the EPA develops strict ethical rules consistent with the standards laid out by the National Academy of Sciences.  Now, I need your help to pass this amendment when it comes up for a vote Wednesday at noon EDT in the Senate.
Please take a moment right now to email and phone your Senators, urging support of my bipartisan amendment to put a moratorium on human pesticide testing back in place -- before the Senate vote at noon EDT Wednesday!
In Friendship,


Barbara Boxer

The Unwinding of Iraq

Juan Cole has the scoop:

SCIRI Rejects Negotiations with Baathists


Against the backdrop of the London Times report that the Americans are negotiating with Iraqi guerrillas, confirmed recently by US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Gilbert Achcar writes:


Excerpt from the lead article on Iraq in Al-Hayat, June 28:

The Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq (led by Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim) [the main Shia fundamentalist pro-Iranian force in Iraq and the main component of the Parliament's majority United Iraqi Alliance] warned the Americans against concluding a settlement with the Baathists and supporters of the previous regime.


Ali al-Aadhad, a member of the leadership of the SCIRI, told Al-Hayat that "the terrorist attack that hit the Shia-inhabited al-Karada area in Baghdad represented a turning point in the strategy of the alliance between the Takfiri forces [fanatical Sunni fundamentalists] and Saddam Hussein' bunch. This turn meant basically a shift from attacks aimed at the US and [Iraqi] army and police men to attacks aimed at Shias as was the case in al-Karada."


He considered that "such terrorist attacks constitute a means of pressure on the Americans to speed up the conclusion of a settlement with Saddam's bunch, allowing them to return to political life." He maintained that "the Americans use sometimes labels like 'Sunni Arabs' in order to justify the talks, but the SCIRI knows that the talks are held with Saddam's bunch."


He accused the Americans of attempting "to by-pass Shia religious forces" [the SCIRI leader specified "religious" because "secular" former US-designated Prime Minister, Iyad al-Allawi, is the main architect of the strategy of a US deal with the Baathists], maintaining that "the timing of the US settlement with Saddam's bunch means that the Americans want to involve this bunch in the drafting of the constitution and the forthcoming elections." He added that one of the most important goals of the al-Barq [Lightning] operation was "to accelerate the weakening of Saddam's bunch in a way that contradicts the ongoing attempts to conclude an American settlement with this bunch."

The religious Shia leadership that dominates the new Iraqi government is committed to "De-Baathification". The problem is that they have disenfranchised anyone who ever worked for the Baaths. The majority of Sunni's have at one time or another served in the army or civil service. The government was the largest employer during Saddam's administration. Iraq is headed towards civil war should the Shia religious leadership continue this tact. Have you ever known a fundamentalist to be flexible?
Worse yet, the relationship between the Shias and the US is deteriorating. Do you suppose someone has finally figured out Iran is the main winner of the war in Iraq? Now, is the US intent to build a relationship between the Sunnis, Kurds and secular Shias to stand up against the religious Shias? You bet. Could the relationship between the US and Shias deteriorate to the point the US could shift sides? I've been thinking at way for awhile.

What Has Happened to Justice in America?

Two Groups Charge Abuse of Witness Law - New York Times

Two leading civil rights groups charge in a new study that the Bush administration has twisted the American system of due process "beyond recognition" in jailing at least 70 terror suspects as "material witnesses" since the Sept. 11 attacks, and the groups are calling on Congress to impose tougher safeguards.


The report, which is to be released on Monday by the groups, Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union, found that the 70 suspects, about a quarter of them American citizens and all but one Muslim men, were jailed - often for weeks or months - in American facilities without being charged with a crime. Ultimately, only seven men were formally accused of supporting terrorism, the report said.


The report, paid for in part by the Open Society Institute, founded by the financier George Soros, charges that many of the men held as material witnesses were "thrust into a Kafkaesque world of indefinite detention without charges, secret evidence and baseless accusations."


With Congress locked in a dispute over the government's powers under the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act, the report reflects an effort by civil rights groups to expand the debate to other legal tools the Bush administration is using against terrorism. The groups recommended a number of new restrictions on the law's use, and aides to Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said he would introduce legislation to limit the government's ability to detain a material witness indefinitely.


The material witness law, enacted in 1984, allows federal authorities to hold a person indefinitely if they suspect that the person has information about a crime and might flee or be unwilling to cooperate.


The law has been used for many years to compel the testimony of thousands of illegal immigrants in smuggling investigations and other cases. But since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has significantly expanded the use of the law in terrorism inquiries.

The Executive branch has usurped dictatorial power from the courts. The so-called "Patriot Act" has been the primary instrument of this action. Doublethink Dubya promises not to abuse the powers he's given, when he is already abuse the powers that have been in place without significant abuse. The material witness law has been used with discretion, but Bush knows only doubletalk and power.

British Newspapers Say Bush Administration is Worried about Iraq and Afghanistan

Scotsman.com News - Bush warns Blair he must boost UK forces

BRITAIN is coming under sustained pressure from American military chiefs to keep thousands of troops in Iraq - while going ahead with plans to boost the front line against a return to "civil war" in Afghanistan.


Tony Blair was warned that war-torn Iraq remains on the brink of disaster - more than two years after the removal of Saddam Hussein - during his summit with President Bush in Washington earlier this month.


Scotland on Sunday revealed last month that Blair is preparing to rush thousands more British troops to Afghanistan in a bid to stop the country sliding towards civil war, amid warnings the coalition faces a "complete strategic failure" in the effort to rebuild the nation.


The grim prognosis was underlined last night by Afghanistan's defense minister, who warned that Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network was regrouping and planned to bring Iraq-style bloodshed to the country.

It would appear that the Bush Administration has begun to drop the false pretext of "winning in Iraq", perhaps even sacrificing political considerations by risking quiet changes in strategy. He's taken a beating in the polls, Congress has already asserted itself as independent of the President. Now all he has left is to save his legacy for history. I don't believe history will be kind to Doublethink Dubya.
One can't help but wonder is that some of the rumors of a reassessment of the US fortunes in Iraq were in fact true. Initiatives to stop the hemorrhage by redoubling the effort to train Iraqi forces haven't worked, now the Administration is getting desperate, talking to terrorists and begging Blair for help.

More Turmoil in Central Asia: Azerbaijan

The oil pipeline slated for Azerbaijan was one of Bush's in the pocket investments. Now it's looking tenuous indeed.
Caspian Sea Pipeline Has Its Origins in Turbulent Waters

Opposition leaders complain that the U.S., which has made forceful statements in recent months for democratic transition in the former Soviet republic of Belarus, has not done so on Azerbaijan because of pipeline politics.


"Western countries fear that if they change the power in Azerbaijan, they will forfeit stability and risk losing their economic interests here," said Rauf Mirkadyrov, editor-in-chief of the independent Zerkalo newspaper.

US Talking to Sunni Insurgents?

US 'in talks with Iraq with Iraq rebels' - Sunday Times

After weeks of delicate negotiation involving a former Iraqi minister and senior tribal leaders, a small group of insurgent commanders apparently came face to face with four American officials seeking to establish a dialogue with the men they regard as their enemies.


The talks on June 3 were followed by a second encounter 10 days later, according to an Iraqi who said that he had attended both meetings. Details provided to The Sunday Times by two Iraqi sources whose groups were involved indicate that further talks are planned in the hope of negotiating an eventual breakthrough that might reduce the violence in Iraq.

[...]
On the rebel side were representatives of insurgent groups including Ansar al-Sunna, which has carried out numerous suicide bombings and killed 22 people in the dining hall of an American base at Mosul last Christmas. Also represented was the so-called Islamic Army in Iraq, which murdered Enzo Baldoni, an Italian journalist, last August; the Iraqi Liberation Army; Jaish Mohammed and other smaller factions. According to an Iraqi commander, one of the Americans introduced himself as “a representative of the Pentagon” and declared himself ready to “find ways of stopping the bloodshed on both sides and to listen to demands and grievances”.

[...]
The Iraqis had agreed beforehand to focus on their main demand, “a guaranteed timetable of American withdrawal from Iraq”, the source said. “We told them it did not matter whether we are talking about one year or a five-year plan but that we insisted on having a timetable nonetheless.”


The demand did not meet with a favourable response from the American team, perhaps because a timetable is the one thing that President George W Bush has declared he will not agree to.

[...]
This meeting did not go well. “The tone of the Americans was different,” the Iraqi insider said. “They were talking with a tone of more superiority, arrogance and provocation.”


After a discussion about Al-Qaeda activities, the Americans bluntly advised the Iraqis to “cease all support, logistics and cover for Zarqawi’s group”. Only if links to Al-Qaeda were severed would the Americans be ready to discuss Iraqi demands.


“Our response was that we will never abandon any Muslim who has come to our country to help us defend it,” the commander said.

[...]
“It looks like the Americans are in big trouble in Iraq and are desperate to find a way out,” the commander said. “Why else would they have rounds of negotiations with people they label as terrorists?”

This story has yet to be confirmed, but it's from a source that has been reliable in the past. From the commentary of the source in the article, he is probably from one of the Sunni tribal leaders who are mediating the effort at talks. The Bush Administration has been pretty stupid about Iraq, they'd have to be completely out of touch with reality if they really believed the BS that spouts from them for consumption of the American people. According to recent polls, the American people are beginning to disbelieve their words.

The Hidden Consequences to the Invasion of Fallugah

Certainly, Iraq was already a wreck before we arrived. One may argue that was largely because of the sanctions imposed against Saddam for the invasion of Kuwait. Saddam was fascist of the highest order, is said to have admired Hitler and Stalin and was certainly of the same ilk.
However, given the disaster the Iraqi invasion has been, the US has major responsibility in the further deterioration in Iraq. After reading this disturbing article, you may agree with me that much of it looks like defilement of Iraq.
SyriaComment.com: "Unveiling Iraq's Teenage Prostitutes in Syria," by Phillips

The story of a Sunni girl from Fallujah selling herself in a Damascus nightclub represents startling new fallout from the Iraq war, one human rights organizations and experts are only beginning to address. An increasing number of young Iraqi women and girls who fled Iraq during the turmoil are turning to prostitution in Syria, although there are no reliable statistics on how many girls are involved.


That might partly explain why so little reporting has been done on the topic. For journalists and human rights workers, securing contact with Iraqi sex workers in Syria is difficult and dangerous because the topic is taboo.


"It's a serious problem because there are young girls doing this -- 11, 12, 13 years old," says Abdelhamid El Ouali, the representative for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees who's based in Damascus. "It's amazing at first. But when you fight for your life, what are you going to do?"


The Syrian government and UNHCR put the number of Iraqi refugees in Syria at roughly 700,000. Syrian police either lack data or won't release any figures on prostitution, which isn't surprising considering the closed government. The U.S. State Department's 2005 "Trafficking in Persons Report" acknowledges the problem, but officials have no clear sense of its magnitude. According to the report, "There have been some reports that indicate Iraqi women may be subjected to sexual exploitation in prostitution in Syria at the hands of Iraqi criminal networks, but those reports have not been confirmed."


Of course, nearly every conflict breeds prostitution. Despair leads to desperation, which can often lead to sex work. Whether Iraqi girls have actually been "trafficked" is hard to determine for myriad reasons, not the least of which is that coercion is difficult to gauge. "You could say this situation isn't triggered by trafficking -- trafficking just takes advantage of the situation," El Ouali says.


That Iraqi girls and women are selling sex may not seem shocking, but prostitution is especially taboo for Arab women. "In this culture, to allow your daughter to become a prostitute means you've hit dirt bottom," says Joshua Landis, an American professor from the University of Oklahoma, presently living in Syria. "None of your sisters can get married if it's known that one of them is a prostitute. If there's any public knowledge of this, it's a shame on the whole family." The shame can even lead to "honor killings," in which women are slain by their husbands or relatives for tainting the family name.


Hustling has a particularly violent legacy in Iraq. In 2000, Saddam Hussein publicly executed 200 women convicted of prostitution. Prostitution would be especially shameful in Farah's hometown, as Fallujah is considered one of Iraq's more tribal, religiously conservative cities. "Yes, even Sunnis from Fallujah are doing this kind of work, and it reflects the drama of the situation," El Ouali says. "It's provoked by misery and precariousness."

President of Iran Much Like President Bush

While Bush will be openly rejecting of the new President Mahmud Ahmadinejad of Iran, Juan Cole points out that the two are politicians of the same stripes.

Ahmadinejad Uses Bush's Tactics


Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei gloated Saturday that the Iranian public had "humiliated" Bush by electing hard liner Mahmud Ahmadinejad as president. But in fact, the campaigning style of the two men suggests that in some ways they are soul mates.


Newly elected Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad won in some part by using the same electoral tools as George W. Bush and Karl Rove.

1. Smear Tactics


Ahmadinejad's supporters smeared his chief rival, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani by spreading all sorts of false rumors about him. Negative campaigning is illegal in Iran, but complaints to the rightwing judges went nowhere because they support Ahmadinejad. (See below).


Bush supporters in South Carolina in the 2000 elections smeared his Republican rival for the nomination John McCain by falsely suggesting (via a phony telephone poll) that he had had an interracial affair that produced an illegitimate child. In the 2004 campaign, the White House directed the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth to smear John Kerry as a liar and coward with regard to his distinguished military record, while chicken hawk Bush, who did not even properly serve out his time as a reservist back in the US, was depicted as some sort of war hero.


2. False Consciousness


Ahmadinejad, a rightwinger, poses as a champion of the common people, and once dressed up as a street sweeper. He thus got a lot of working class people to vote for him, even though he will do the bidding of billionaire clerical hardliners who have done little for ordinary folks.


Likewise, George W. Bush affects a southern drawl (he is from Connecticut) and makes himself out to be a friend of the common man, with his "tax cuts" and program to "save" social security. In fact, everything Bush does primarily benefits the rich and actually hurts the interests of workers and farmers. Nevertheless, as with Ahmadinejad, he gets many in the working classes to vote for him.


3. Posing as a Critic of the Government You Run


Ahmadinejad is allowed to attack the Iranian government because he has impeccable credentials as a rightwinger and loyalist to Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei. He can therefore complain about state corruption without being pilloried or punished. His anti-government rhetoric struck a chord with many Iranians and helped him get elected. If a liberal reformer had spoken that way about the Iranian government, he would have been accused of disloyalty and lack of patriotism.


Likewise, George W. Bush affects a rhetoric of "cleaning up Washington" and breaking the gridlock and overcoming partisanship. In reality, corruption has flourished in his regime, with severe questions constantly being raised about lobbyists essentially bribing Delay, Duke and others. The grandson of a senator and son of a president who calls the white-tie corporate crowd his "base" represents himself as an outsider to Washington and a critic of the government! Yet liberals like Dick Durbin who criticize the government are pilloried as traitors.


4. Benefitting from Dominance of the Judiciary


Ahmadinejad was supported by the clerical rightwing judiciary and Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei. When other candidates complained about ballot stuffing, the rightwing judges backed Ahmadinejad.


Bush: Five words: Florida and the Supreme Court.


5. Religious Congregations and the Military


Ahmadinejad was supported by many mosque preachers all over the country, as well as by religious volunteers for a paramilitary called basij. Some 300,000 basij all over Iran essentially acted as a political party to support Ahmadinejad.


Bush depends heavily on the support of evangelical and fundamentalist churches in the United States, which abuse their tax-exempt, non-partisan status by actually becoming foot soldiers for the Republican Party. The US military is also disproportionately Republican and supports Bush. Air Force cadets are apparently put under enormous pressure to become evangelicals, under the Bush regime.

Iran Takes a Swing to the Fundementalist Right

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (left), Tehran's mayor, greeted supporters yesterday. Ali Akhbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president, in white (right), after he cast his vote Friday in Tehran.

Winner in Iran Calls for Unity; Reformists Reel - New York Times

Iran's newly elected president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said Saturday that he wanted to create a strong Islamic nation and issued a call for unity in his first comments after a landslide victory that left the country's reformist movement virtually powerless and threatened to further complicate relations with the United States.


In an address on state radio, Mr. Ahmadinejad, a religious conservative, said he would work toward building "an Islamic, exemplary, advanced and powerful nation," and urged Iranians to "forget all our rivalries and turn them into friendships."


But his rival in the race, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, was anything but conciliatory, lashing out in a statement that accused his opponents of smearing him during the campaign. "I am sure that those who spent billions from the public funds to ruin the reputation of me and my family in a vicious way, and those who took advantage of the regime's tools and intervened in the elections in an organized way will pay back in life and after death," he said in the statement.


Mr. Ahmadinejad's rise to the presidency - the most important elected post in the country - reflected a desire to change the economy and rid the nation of corruption.

[...]
The White House, responding to Mr. Ahmadinejad's victory, repeated views expressed by President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice over the legitimacy of the vote, noting that "over 1,000 candidates were disqualified from running and there were many allegations of election fraud and interference."

Outgoing vice-president Mohammad Ali Abtahi writes about the election on his blog.

Mr. Ahmadinejad was lucky in this election because:

• In the firs round, the three reformist candidates i.e. Karoubi, Moeen and Mehralizadeh and to some extent Hashemi each won part of the votes, so the votes were distributed among the candidates.


• Many of those addressed by reformists, without paying attention to what may happen, boycotted the election.


• Some reformist candidates gave false promises and sounded as if they were going to cheat ordinary or elite walks of life. The slogans which were attempting to cheat elites lead many people think that there are internal wars on the way.


• In the political atmosphere of the advertisements, little was said about the economic issues. We focused our attention on elites and forgot the ordinary people who are trying to get their daily bread.


• Other candidates, including those who cared a lot about the religion, forgot this issue in their advertisements. Even Mr. Rafsanjani failed to mention religious matters in his advertisement. This is while those who are in charge of the religious centers and mosques have access to people who are the service of their emotions and thoughts.

Judging from the comments of Abtahi, there appear to be some very good reasons the reformers did poorly in this election. Unlike how the Bush Administration is trying to allege the election was fixed, the reformers made several mistakes that certainly sound major enough to turn the election. It would appear that regardless of attempts to influence the election by fraud and predictions by the reformers of a small turnout in the election, a large turnout of voters voted pocket book issues in a country where unemployment is common and people want a safety net promised by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president elect.

Funds for Health Care of Veterans $1 Billion Short

Doublethink Dubya is strong on defense. But it's a soldier's "personal responsibility" to take care of his injuries after he's served. That's what Bush means by an ownership society. Everyone owns their own fate, no one else has to pay for it, regardless of the justice in that.
Funds for Health Care of Veterans $1 Billion Short

The Bush administration, already accused by veterans groups of seeking inadequate funds for health care next year, acknowledged yesterday that it is short $1 billion for covering current needs at the Department of Veterans Affairs this year.

The Bush Administration Has No Credibility On Iraq

Even Paul Krugman is become impatient with mainstream media's lack of truth sharing about Iraq. While I don't agree with his assumption we must get out of Iraq. I still hold to the view of Colin Powell, "We broke it, we own it." When the Iraqi government asks us to leave, or establish a time table, we should start packing. Until then, we have a job to finish, as best we can.
It appears that many people in this country, some of whom are quite influential, have lost faith in our Democracy. Our way of self-governing requires an informed and actively participating electorate to make sure our leaders truly represent us. Some editorial boards and sponsors of major media do not want to inform or allow debate. They wish to encourage government to operate secretly under policies that only the leaders know about. The don't trust the electorate to understand enough about the realities of the world to give appropriate consent to govern. Too many of our countrymen are content to blindly follow our leaders, allow no debate or discussion or even adequate information to be aired. One such voter emailed me today. Bill says:

keep up the good work. the terrorists need all the support you can give them.

Apparently Bill feels that providing an alternative source of information about Iraq is tantamount to comforting the enemy. Karl Rove similarly ridicules the left for wishing to use our penal system as it's conceived and developed under law and then proceeds to make a prejudicial statement of mental illness.
Our country is at great risk. Bigoted people run our government today. They seek to undermine our rule of law, our freedom of speech, our right to privacy, the checks and balances of our system including our right to be informed and give consent to be governed. Too many voters are willing to blindly follow them right into a new fascist state.
Yes, and we liberals will be happy to discuss our beliefs openly, educate the people and point out the risk to our way of life. Meanwhile, the FBI and Homeland Security is free to search our mail, our houses, imprison some of us based on information that would not hold up in court, deny us access to an attorney, or even a trial before our peers, all without due process in the form of consent of a judge.
It can't be long before the law is amended to allow imprisonment for sedition, a word not heard in this land since the Red Coats ruled and taxed us without our consent. Just who are the patriots?
Paul Krugman - The War President - New York Times

The United States will soon have to start reducing force levels in Iraq, or risk seeing the volunteer Army collapse. Yet the administration and its supporters have effectively prevented any adult discussion of the need to get out.


On one side, the people who sold this war, unable to face up to the fact that their fantasies of a splendid little war have led to disaster, are still peddling illusions: the insurgency is in its "last throes," says Dick Cheney. On the other, they still have moderates and even liberals intimidated: anyone who suggests that the United States will have to settle for something that falls far short of victory is accused of being unpatriotic.


We need to deprive these people of their ability to mislead and intimidate. And the best way to do that is to make it clear that the people who led us to war on false pretenses have no credibility, and no right to lecture the rest of us about patriotism.

What is On The Table In Iraq

Here is a very interesting and provocative article about what realistic scenarios maybe available for the future of Iraq. At this point, the American people don't even understand what is at stake. The full article is well worth the read. Here are the conclusions.
The Agonist | What is On The Table In Iraq

Realism is selecting from what is on the table, not what one would like to be on the table. In the current debate over what to do on Iraq, there are many people who are looking at options which aren't reasonably, on the table.


Specifically those agitating for immediate withdrawal and those seeking some form of continued presence. This is a delicate subject, what I am about to write is 100% contrarian to the two forming poles of opinion on Iraq. One is the "immediate withdrawal" crowd, the other is the "continued foreign presence" option. Neither are on the table, neither are going to work.

[...]
The only road to a stable solution set is to partition Iraq formally, and embroil directly the regional powers so that they cannot promote their interests destructively without cost. This is an unpalatable direction for policy, it will strengthen Iran, end Iraq as a bulwark against Farsi expansionism, and create three states all of which are dependent on the outside for their continued existence. However, Iraq in any other scenario becomes a giant Lebanon with oil, and Iran is already uncontained.


This last point bears repeating: Iran is already uncontained, and a near deterrent nation. It has already created a sphere of influence in Afghanistan in the wake of the US failure to stabilize that nation and the de facto partition of Afghanistan. The desire to contain Iran is one of the reasons for continued light occupation, the hope that Iraq's political and military situation can be stabilized with the eye to being able to remain a bulwark against Iran. It is a vain hope.

Iran clearly is the winner in this war, regardless of most outcomes. The only one that really puts Iran at risk is a Sunni-Shiite regional war, the card that Al Qaeda is playing for. I'm not sure that the author's analysis is really complete. There is a reply at the end of the article that points at some of the problems with the analysis. Outcomes are always a moving target. Staying the course certainly seems the only course for the short term. Pulling out seems to lead to world recession because Iraqi oil comes offline oil price heads for $100 a barrel. Increasing occupation forces simply just isn't going to happen. The US electorate won't tolerate a draft at this point and the only other country in the world who could provide enough forces is China. Bush will never agree to that.
But the shaky Shiite-Kurdish alliance may strengthen and by bringing on board the various militias, a minimally destructive low-intensity conflict may stabilize the situation. If the Shiite-Kurdish alliance stays the same or fractures, Iraq is headed for partition. Then the risk of regional conflict heightens. Turkey, Iran and Syria all have a strong interest in the outcome. The Sunni world may rally to the cause of the Iraqi Sunnis. An alliance between Iran and Turkey over preventing a Kurdistan could provide enough impetus to keep the status quo. So there are many variables that will have to play out before an outcome can be foreseen.
All in all, the discussion leads to one very clear conclusion. Bush made a mess of Iraq that we will be paying for for the next generation.

The Most Sense on Iraq I've Ever Heard

Juan Cole, clearly a man passionate about his beliefs, shows a depth of understanding about the Middle East in general and the War on Terrorism well beyond the mainstream Op-Ed columnists and certainly the current administration. Here is a concise commentary about Iraq that puts to shame anything else I've read.
Informed Comment

Just because I chose the rule of law over justice, however, does not mean that justice as a consideration had evaporated. The US troops who gave their lives to depose Saddam and free Iraqis from his yoke were helping achieve justice, which any Kurd or Shiite in Iraq will tell you. I stand by that, and I assure every grieving parent who has lost a child in the Iraq war that it was a meaningful sacrifice, because the Baath system was monstrous. But this achievement was deeply flawed (and may yet be undone) because it was done illegally.


Bush's turn to illegal aggression contained the seeds of the failure of his Iraq policy. If he had remained within international law, he would have either had to give up the invasion or he would have gone in with the full support the international community, which would have given him the kind of troop strength and administrative expertise that might have made a success of it all.


The Neocons cannot for the most part imagine such a thing as a fraught internal debate over ethics on the part of the individual. This because they are mostly, quite frankly, sleazeballs.

Cowboy Dubya Has Destabilized the Entire Middle East

Informed Comment

So, first the Afghan security services broke up what they said was a plot by three armed Pakistanis to assassinate Zalmay Khalilzad, who had been the US ambassador to Afghanistan and is now in Baghdad as the new envoy to Iraq.


Pakistani government officials were absolutely furious that the Afghans had implicated their nationals. Anwar Iqbal says that they demanded that Afghanistan produce proof "or stop making false claims."


So now the Afghans are angry, and they charge that Pakistan has been supporting insurgents in the southern Pushtun areas. The spokesman for President Karzai, Javed Ludin, said that Pakistan was not doing enought to stop the infiltration into Afghanistan of militants like the one who carried out a suicide bombing in a mosque at Qandahar recently.

[...]
Nerves in Islamabad will have been frayed by CIA director Porter Goss's recent comments saying that he had a good idea of where Bin Laden was, but was impeded in getting him by diplomatic considerations. These remarks were widely interpreted as suggesting that he a) thought Bin Laden was somewhere in Pakistan and b) Gen. Musharraf's hold on power was too weak to allow the US to push hard for nabbing the al-Qaeda leader.


Everyone is afraid of pushing Pakistan too hard on the Bin Laden issue, lest radical Muslim junior officers or military intelligence types be provoked to make a coup, giving the world a radical Islamist state with an atomic bomb.


But the fact is that no one knows exactly where Bin Laden and Zawahiri are, or they would have been apprehended. They are rumored to be in the rugged Waziristan tribal area. But other high al-Qaeda officials have been captured in urban mansions, so that I'm not so sure. Bin Laden's videotape released before the US election demonstrates that he had seen Fahrenheit 9/11, which would be hard to do in a cave. Moreover, Bin Laden did have bases in Afghanistan for 20 years, and that he is in Paktika or someplace can't be ruled out.

Iraq has become history's most prolific producer of master terrorists, Rice has swept through the Middle East criticizing our allies and encouraging the Muslim Brotherhood, US Special Forces continue their undermining of Iran, the US occupies eastern Syria, Israel has produced another generation of terrorists in the Territories and southern Lebanon, and now Afghanistan continues to destabilize under the neglect of Washington and pressure from our "ally" Pakistan. Cole points out the vulnerability of Musharraf, the man who must span the political sensibilities of Jihadists and US conservatives.

Bush Making Peace with Vietnam??

The Agonist - From tonight's Nelson report:

President Bush accepted Prime Minister Phan Van Khai's invitation today (for next year), while extending the hospitality of the White House. Since virtually every step of the official US-Vietnam Summit was carefully pre-scripted and agreed to, the results were both positive and pre-ordained....the US supports WTO accession and hopes to finish this year (although doubts persist on the practicality of this schedule, and negotiations will continue); there will be increased defense cooperation and an intelligence exchange, etc. (no doubt of major interest to China).


Bush and Khai also agreed progress on human and religious rights needed before Congress can be expected to approve any WTO deal. Management issues also persist, partly because the Vietnamese Government didn't coordinate it's own involved bureaucracies, with some resulting confusion; and two US business groups were dueling behind the scenes for primacy. All in all, a metaphor for the types of things Hanoi needs to work on to resolve issues with business and the international community as it grows into the economic and diplomatic life of Asia.

If one is not paying attention to the subject between the lines, one might conclude Bush has changed his stripes. The truth is Vietnam is the only country to have decisively beaten China TWICE in border wars in this century. Bush is after the intellegence Vietnam can offer. This is just another move in the plan to encircle China with US allies to contain it's hegemony. Bush'll be happy to provide all the disinformation he can to Vietnam, so that we can fight the Chinese to the last Vietnamese.

Afghanistan Insurgency Rekindles a Second Front

The second front for the Battle for the World Caliphet has received reinforcements. Incredibly, by leaving the "backdoor open" and Bush has allowed a resurgence in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda and it's allies should have been the only target for the War on Terror.
Guardian Unlimited | Al-Qaida militants raise fears of Taliban resurgence

Predictions of a Taliban collapse, made by US commanders after last October's peace ful presidential election, look increasingly hollow. Insurgents were carrying out the same number of attacks as this time last year but with greater effectiveness, said Christian Willach of Anso, an aid agency security group. "Last week they attacked one southern district and held it for a few hours. That never happened before," he said.


An increase in targeted assassinations, usually of "soft" targets, marks another tactical shift. On Saturday night gunmen in Helmand, killed three civilians - a judge, an intelligence worker and a civil servant, according to a spokesman for the governor. But senior US officers and Afghan officials insist the insurgency is under pressure. Last April the former combined forces commander, Lieutenant General David Barno, predicted that a government amnesty offer would split the leadership.


The US claims to have killed more than 150 Taliban this year and yesterday the Afghan national army said it had captured a Taliban intelligence chief in Ghazni province. But the violent surge bodes ominously for September's parliamentary elections, said Mr Willach. Voter intimidation, especially in the southern belt, was likely. "Insurgents may try to influence voters in favour of ex-Taliban candidates," he said.

Iraq is producing master terrorists with hatred for United States

The Enemy Spies - Newsweek - MSNBC.com

The CIA produced a study this May on a topic so sensitive that even the title is classified. The paper discussed the environment in which jihadists trained at Al Qaeda's camps in Taliban-run Afghanistan, contrasting that against the environment in which Iraq's insurgents are mastering the techniques of urban warfare. For starters, not all new recruits in Afghanistan necessarily hated America before undergoing Al Qaeda indoctrination. In Iraq, on the other hand, hostility toward America is practically the only thing that all insurgents agree on—foreign infiltrators and native recruits alike. And jihadists in Iraq are getting direct, on-the-job training in a real-life insurgency, with hands-on experience in bombing, sniping and all the skills of urban warfare, unlike the essentially artificial training that was given at Al Qaeda's rural Afghan camps. One of the paper's main points is that America's Iraqi troubles will not end with the insurgency. In effect, Iraq is producing a new corps of master terrorists with an incandescent hatred for the United States—the "class of '05 problem," as it's called in the shorthand of CIA analysts. This war is proving to be longer and nastier than almost anyone expected. One day, its results may be felt closer to home.

Feel safer with the war in Iraq? Then you are not paying attention.

Domenici: The US must act to curb greenhouse gasses

More Republican Statesmen are standing up to Bush dominance of the Republican agenda. Bush's falling popularity, last reported at 42%, has encouraged moderate Republicans who had been strong armed into silence by the strong arm tactics of DeLay and is henchmen. Now the Environmentalists gain an important supporter for curbing greenhouse gases.
Politics News Article | Reuters.com

The U.S. Senate's top Republican energy bill negotiator, risking a break with the White House over the global warming issue, on Friday said the United States must act to curb heat-trapping greenhouse gases.


Pete Domenici of New Mexico, chairman of the Senate Energy Committee, "is convinced that the science now indicates that climate change is occurring and we need to do something about it,"

Iran-China "Silk Road" Economic Cooperation

Iranian envoy calls for Silk Road revival via SCO - Irna

Iranian Ambassador to China Fereydoun Verdinejad here Wednesday referred to Tehran and Beijing as two countries complementary to each other and said that by reviving the Silk Road through Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) the two states can act as a bridge connecting the East and the West.


Speaking to Xinhua News Agency, Verdinejad added that the through cooperation with SCO the regional countries will be able to move along this route. At present, China, Russia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan are members of the organization, which was founded in 2001. The membership of Iran, India and Pakistan as observers of the organization was approved by the foreign ministers of the member states in a meeting in Kazakhstan on June 4, 2005, which is due to be officially ratified during the two-day conference (July 5-6) to be held in the Kazakh capital of Astana.


Placing special focus on strengthening bilateral ties, Verdinejad said that priority should be given to seven measures including increased trade exchange, expansion of cooperation between the private sectors of both sides, establishment of special support tariffs, exchange of updated information, formation of a joint private bank, founding joint transportation companies and establishment of a state credit system aiming to support small and medium industries.

An Asian Economic Cooperative seems inevitable. The US is attempting to elbow it's way into the area, but the truth is, the Central Asian countries can take US dollars and do what they want anyway. The only thing the US can do with withhold the money they've gotten along without anyway. They can instead rely on their neighbors commerce, a much more reliable benefit with fewer complicated strings. The US and it's few allies aren't very popular these days.

Why aren't the media covering the war in the Congo?

In Congo, 1,000 die per day: Why isn't it a media story? | csmonitor.com

Why aren't the media covering the Congo? With an estimated 1,000 people dying there every day as a result of hunger and disease caused by war, it is an appropriate question. But the extent of this coverage of noncoverage is reaching the absurd....

[...]
What the world media are missing is one of the deadliest conflicts since World War II: 3.8 million people have died in the Congo since 1998, dwarfing not only the biggest of natural catastrophes, such as December's South Asia tsunami, but also other manmade horrors, such as Darfur.


Congo's situation is complicated - any war on such a scale would be - but the outlines of the current stage of the conflict are straightforward enough for any journalist to summarize. After four years of civil war (a free-for-all in which eight neighboring countries played a part) a transitional government was established in Kinshasa, the capital, in 2003. Since then, the warlords-turned-politicians who dominate the transition, each of whom still maintains his own militia, have vied for political advantage and access to the country's vast economic resources. None is above using violence as a means to stay in power and resist the integration of the country, and that violence looks set to get worse in the run-up to elections, technically slated for this month, though certain now to be postponed - a delay that in itself may cause significant unrest.


The deadly game has one particularly poisonous wild card: the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a key rebel group in the eastern Congo that regularly attacks civilians. Because the FDLR has its origins in the Hutu extremists who slaughtered 800,000 people in the Rwandan genocide of 1994, Rwanda has a pretext to invade its neighbor, which it has done at least twice in recent years and threatened to do again in April - a move that would undermine Congo's fragile transition and could reignite a regional war.

There is a reason the Congo isn't in the sights of the mainstream media. The last paragraph says it all. The problems of Rwanda have spread to the Congo. Yes, it is more complex than that, but the presence of the renegade Hutu militias from Rwanda are a reminder of the West's unofficial hands-off policy for Africa. It's assumed that Africa's problems are too complex, the solutions evasive and the costs of involvement are too high. The Congo is another "failed state" the west has given up on, even the press ignores it. After all, they are "just" Africans.

Iran Electorate Swings to the Right Repudiating the Reformers

Informed Comment

The Iranian voting public put a hardliner and a conservative pragmatist into a run-off election with their ballots on Friday. With a turnout of 62 percent or more, voters rejected reformist youth calls for a boycott and some said they meant their vote to be a slap in the face of US President George W. Bush.

[...]
It is likely that the Iranian electorate's swing to the Right reflects in part a deep unease about being surrounded by the United States, which has troops both in Afghanistan and Iran. Post-revolutionary Iranians are nationalistic and determined to maintain their national independence, and all the talk by the Bush administration about regime change, aggressive action against Iran over its nuclear research program [which so far appears to have been conducted within the limits set by the Non-Proliferation Treaty], and the illegitimacy of the Iranian elections themselves, appears to have contributed to the greater success of the hardliners.

The Bush Administration foreign policy failures continue. Attempts to influence Iranians from moving away from the Rightwing Mullahs has backfired. Iranians came out to vote in larger numbers than the typical US elections, 62% of the voting public rejected the boycott of the reformist movement.
American public is more at risk to terrorists now and in the future than it has ever been. Thank you Mr. Bush.

Halliburton given $30m to expand Guantanamo Bay

Gotta give credit to Dubya, he takes care of his buddies. Halliburton will make billions in profits every year of the Dubya War. We're spending our children's tax dollars lining the pockets of people who will employ much of the Bush Administration after the next election. The Dubya legacy will be the most money ever spent on Corporate welfare than at anytime in the history of America. Much of that money is borrowed from China. Imagine that.
Independent News

A subsidiary of Halliburton, the oil services group once led by the US Vice-President, Dick Cheney, has won a $30m contract to help build a new permanent prison for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.


The Pentagon announcement, giving further details of the planned two-storey jail, complete with air conditioning and exercise and medical facilities, is a further sign that the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, is determined to keep the jail in operation.


There are some 520 inmates from 40 countries at Guantanamo, some of them held there for more than three years. The new jail will be capable of holding 220 people. Under the contract with the US Naval Engineering Command, the work is to be finished by the end of July 2006. The final deal could be worth as much as $500m.


The work will be carried out by Halliburton's contracting subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR). It will include site work, heating, ventilation and air conditioning, plumbing and electrical work.

Homelessness is Epidemic

How does the Christian dominated richest country in the world treat it's poor?
County's Homeless Number 90,000

The first head count of homeless people in Los Angeles County found more than 90,000 men, women and children living on streets and in encampments, vehicles and shelters — with about 35,000 of them chronically homeless.


Previous estimates of the subgroup who have been homeless for more than a year — and who traditionally require more intensive and costly services — were only about 7,500 people.

They used to call people who talked the talk but couldn't walk the walk "Sunday Christians".

The Coming Decline of Europe

The End of Europe

It's hard to be a great power if your population is shriveling. Europe's birthrates have dropped well below the replacement rate of 2.1 children for each woman of childbearing age. For Western Europe as a whole, the rate is 1.5. It's 1.4 in Germany and 1.3 in Italy. In a century -- if these rates continue -- there won't be many Germans in Germany or Italians in Italy. Even assuming some increase in birthrates and continued immigration, Western Europe's population grows dramatically grayer, projects the U.S. Census Bureau. Now about one-sixth of the population is 65 and older. By 2030 that would be one-fourth, and by 2050 almost one-third.

Even Russia faces a declining population. The US has a different story, population is growing, but the proportion of whites to non-whites in the US is rapidly headed towards one to one. Caucasions are on the way to being a minority in America.
The reason is that affluent societies have fewer children. Isn't that an interesting statistic? Even India's south is approaching zero population growth. All of their future growth will be among the largely illiterate north.

More Evidence that Bush Lied About Iraq

New Memos Detail Early Plans for Invading Iraq

In one memorandum, dated March 14, 2002, and labeled "secret — strictly personal," Blair's chief foreign policy advisor, David Manning, described to the prime minister a dinner he had had with Rice.


"We spent a long time at dinner on Iraq," wrote Manning, now the British ambassador to the U.S. "It is clear that Bush is grateful for your [Blair's] support and has registered that you are getting flak. I said that you would not budge in your support for regime change but you had to manage a press, a Parliament and a public opinion that was different from anything in the States. And you would not budge either in your insistence that, if we pursued regime change, it must be very carefully done and produce the right result. Failure was not an option."


The memo went on to say:


"Condi's enthusiasm for regime change is undimmed. But there were some signs, since we last spoke, of greater awareness of the practical difficulties and political risks…. From what she said, Bush has yet to find answers to the big questions:

• How to persuade international opinion that military action against Iraq is necessary and justified;


• What value to put on the exiled Iraqi opposition;


• How to coordinate a US/allied military campaign with internal opposition (assuming there is any);


• What happens the morning after?"

[...]
Another memo, from British Foreign Office political director Peter Ricketts to Foreign Secretary Jack Straw on March 22, 2002, bluntly stated that the case against Hussein was weak because the Iraqi leader was not accelerating his weapons programs and there was scant proof of links to Al Qaeda.
"What has changed is not the pace of Saddam Hussein's WMD programs, but our tolerance of them post-11 September," Ricketts wrote. "Attempts to claim otherwise publicly will increase skepticism about our case….
"U.S. scrambling to establish a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda is so far frankly unconvincing," he said.
Ricketts said that other countries such as Iran appeared closer to getting nuclear weapons, and that arguing for regime change in Iraq alone "does not stack up. It sounds like a grudge between Bush and Saddam." That was why the issue of weapons of mass destruction was vital, he said.
"Much better, as you [Straw] have suggested, to make the objective ending the threat to the international community from Iraqi WMD before Saddam uses it or gives it to terrorists," he said. A U.N. Security Council resolution demanding renewal of weapons inspections, he says, would be a "win/win."
"Either [Hussein] against all the odds allows Inspectors to operate freely, in which case we can further hobble his WMD programs, or he blocks/hinders, and we are on stronger grounds for switching to other methods," he wrote.
The arguments that Iraq had illegal, hidden weapons of mass destruction, programs to develop more of them, and that it might give them to terrorists were to become some of the Bush administration's chief reasons for the war. When no weapons were found, the administration blamed faulty intelligence and said the war still was justified because it ended Hussein's brutal dictatorship and allowed an emerging democratic government.

Religious Right, Left Meet in Middle

How about some hopeful news?
Religious Right, Left Meet in Middle

Last week in Washington, representatives of more than 40 U.S. denominations took part in the Convocation on Hunger at the National Cathedral, where they sang a Tanzanian hymn while the choir director shook a gourd full of seeds and children laid breads from around the world on the altar.


It may have been mistaken for a hippie ceremony were it not for the sight of clergy from the Southern Baptist Convention, Assemblies of God and other evangelical churches praying alongside Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodox, mainline Protestants and Jews.


The show of solidarity was partly a reaction against "the recent manipulation of religion in ways that are divisive and partisan," said David Beckmann, a Lutheran minister and president of Bread for the World, a nonprofit group that helped organize the service.
"Because religion has been dragged into political life in some ways, this is the religious leadership of the nation saying, 'No, let us show you what religion in the public square should really be about,' " he said.

Fortunately, there are religion leaders not so caught up in the trappings of power in political movements and still have a perspective that contributes to all of us, not just a select few.

US Forces Have Been Aiding the Kurds in Kidnapping Turkmen

Kurdish Officials Sanction Abductions in Kirkuk

Police and security units, forces led by Kurdish political parties and backed by the U.S. military, have abducted hundreds of minority Arabs and Turkmens in this intensely volatile city and spirited them to prisons in Kurdish-held northern Iraq, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials, government documents and families of the victims.


Seized off the streets of Kirkuk or in joint U.S.-Iraqi raids, the men have been transferred secretly and in violation of Iraqi law to prisons in the Kurdish cities of Irbil and Sulaymaniyah, sometimes with the knowledge of U.S. forces. The detainees, including merchants, members of tribal families and soldiers, have often remained missing for months; some have been tortured, according to released prisoners and the Kirkuk police chief.

Another bombshell from Iraq? And from the Washington Post! Maybe it's getting popular with newspaper sponsors to embarass the thoroughly embarassing Doublethink Dubya Administration.
Imagine how this will play in Turkey where the US has been seen as stirring up their arch enemy the Kurds. And in Iraq, the US will have very little hope of retrieving it's image of taking sides in the ethnic conflict. Rummy shoots himself in the foot again!

Who Me, Trust the Press?

The Interactive Truth - New York Times

More than 60 percent of the American people don't trust the press. Why should they? They've been reading "The Da Vinci Code" and marveling at its historical insights. I have nothing against a fine thriller, especially one that claims the highest of literary honors: it's a movie on the page. But "The Da Vinci Code" is not a work of nonfiction. If one more person talks to me about Dan Brown's crackerjack research I'm shooting on sight.


The novel's success does point up something critical. We're happier to swallow a half-baked Renaissance religious conspiracy theory than to examine the historical fiction we're living (and dying for) today. And not only is it remarkably easy to believe what we want to believe. It's remarkably easy to find someone who will back us up. Twenty-five years ago George W. S. Trow meditated on this in "Within the Context of No Context." Then it indeed appeared that authority and orthodoxy were wilting in the glare of television. Have we exterminated reason in the meantime?

[...]
Wikipedia [is] the free online encyclopedia to which anyone can contribute, and which grows by accretion and consensus. Relatedly, it takes as its premise the idea that "facts" belong between quotation marks. It's a winning formula; Wikipedia is one of the Web's most popular sites. I asked a teenager if he understood that it carries a disclaimer; Wikipedia "can't guarantee the validity of the information found here." "That's just so that no one will sue them," he shrugged. As to the content: "It's all true, mostly."

[...]
What is new is our odd, bipolar approach to fact. We have a fresh taste for documentaries. Any novelist will tell you that readers hunger for nonfiction, which may explain the number of historical figures who have crowded into our novels. Facts seem important. Facts have gravitas. But the illusion of facts will suffice. One in three Americans still believes there were W.M.D.'s in Iraq.

It's quite refreshing to hear the press criticize it's audience with deep sarcasm. It would be very funny if it was ultimately true. America has lost it's passion for the truth. The public simply wants to hear what they believe already. And changing the public's view is a multi-year project. In the nearly four years since 9/11/2001, still one in three Americans still believe in WMDs in Iraq. People don't want to believe they made a mistake. They don't want to believe Bush lied. They like Bush because he seems more like them, a good ol' boy who barbecues and rides his horse on weekends, not stuffed shirt guy who talks and walks like a politician and plays tennis and sails the Cape on weekends.
The only solution to this political reality is to adopt some of the same tactics politically and educate, educate, educate. Only an informed populous can vote on issues, rather that horse sense. Then, in the end, we won't be stuck with horse pucky.
And the press, driven by readers and the wishes of sponsors, just gives the reader and the sponsor what he wants.
I have noticed that the tone has changed in the mainstream news. As the polls leave Bush, the content has shifted. Many stories suppressed in the US have now reappeared in the American press. The Downing Street memo, the story about Douglas J. Feith, the former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, boss of the recently indicted alleged Israeli spy, Larry Franklin both have hit the pages of the big newspapers, even snuck into TV news.
The press has been relegated to following public opinion, no longer providing the facts that educate and allow opinion to form. But blogs have forced out stories, by spreading the word and forcing people to ask, "why haven't I read this in the NY-Times?" Blogs don't have a corner on credibility, indeed, some are a forum of disinformation and bigotry. But they do teach the principle that you have to spend sometime getting your news, or you are likely to be mislead. I think that simply good ol' "watchful vigilance."

The Pimping of the Presidency

One can usually tell the values of a president by the friends he keeps. Jack Abramoff is subject of multiple investigations. Just one of them was pimping the President.
The Pimping of the Presidency, 6/10/2005 - The Texas Observer

Four months after he took the oath of office in 2001, President George W. Bush was the attraction, and the White House the venue, for a fundraiser organized by the alleged perpetrator of the largest billing fraud in the history of corporate lobbying. In May 2001, Jack Abramoff’s lobbying client book was worth $4.1 million in annual billing for the Greenberg Traurig law firm. He was a friend of Bush advisor Karl Rove. He was a Bush “Pioneer,” delivering at least $100,000 in bundled contributions to the 2000 campaign. He had just concluded his work on the Bush Transition Team as an advisor to the Department of the Interior. He had sent his personal assistant Susan Ralston to the White House to work as Rove’s personal assistant. He was a close friend, advisor, and high-dollar fundraiser for the most powerful man in Congress, Tom DeLay. Abramoff was so closely tied to the Bush Administration that he could, and did, charge two of his clients $25,000 for a White House lunch date and a meeting with the President. From the same two clients he took to the White House in May 2001, Abramoff also obtained $2.5 million in contributions for a non-profit foundation he and his wife operated.


Abramoff’s White House guests were the chiefs of two of the six casino-rich Indian tribes he and his partner Mike Scanlon ultimately billed $82 million for services tribal leaders now claim were never performed or were improperly performed. Together the six tribes would make $10 million in political contributions, at Abramoff’s direction, almost all of it to Republican campaigns of his choosing. On May 9, 2001, when he ushered the two tribal chiefs into the White House to meet the President, The Washington Post story that would end his lobbying career and begin two Senate Committee investigations was three years away. (When the Post story broke in February 2004, however, Abramoff and Scanlon, a former Tom DeLay press aide, were already targets of a U.S. Attorney’s investigation in Washington.)


Abramoff brought the Coushatta and Choctaw chiefs to Washington at the request of Grover Norquist. Norquist is founder and director of Americans for Tax Reform, the advocacy group committed to slashing taxes until the federal government is so small you “can drown it in the bathtub.” Norquist started ATR in 1985. His power increased exponentially in 1994, when Republicans took control of the House of Representatives and he collaborated with then-Majority Whip Tom DeLay to launch the “K Street Project”—a coordinated campaign to compel lobbyists to contribute only to Republican candidates and ultimately to hire only Republicans. Like Abramoff and Rove, Norquist considered George Bush’s victory over Al Gore the culmination of a project the three Washington insiders started 30 years ago as national leaders of the College Republicans.

China's Restive Population

It seems China has much to be concerned about from it's restive population. Repeating the Tiananmen Square too often, China will merely stoke the fires of dissent.
For Chinese, Peasant Revolt Is Rare Victory

A pitched battle erupted that soggy morning between enraged farmers and badly outnumbered police. By the end of the day, high-ranking officials had fled in their black sedans and hundreds of policemen had scattered in panic while farmers destroyed their vehicles. It was a rare triumph for the peasants, rising up against the all-powerful Communist Party government.


The confrontation was also a glimpse of a gathering force that could help shape the future of China: the power of spontaneous mass protest. Peasants and workers left behind by China's economic boom increasingly have resorted to the kind of unrest that ignited in Huaxi. Their explosions of anger have become a potential source of instability and a threat to the party's monopoly on power that has leaders in Beijing worried. By some accounts, there have been thousands of such protests a year, often met with force.

[...]
Six of the 13 factories were ordered to move out of Huaxi for good, and Dongyang authorities organized "working groups" of local and outside officials to visit peasant homes and urge that the protest be ended on that basis, according to Chen, the city government spokesman.


To some extent, the diplomacy paid off. With the accord of villagers, local officials took down the tents on May 20. Local police and officials -- Dongyang authorities were asked to stay away -- escorted the elderly protesters home and prevented them from returning. But activists said they put the town council and other officials on notice that if the factories start operations again, the tents will go back up.


No arrests have been made yet, Chen said. But police -- plainclothes as well as uniformed -- have established a heavy presence in Huaxi and local residents have been enlisted in the hunt for those responsible for the peasant rebellion on April 10. The Dongyang administration has made it clear that somebody has to pay.


A "system of punishment and prevention" has been put into place to create a "harmonious society" in Huaxi, a Dongyang city hall statement said. "Our next step is to investigate some party members who were believed to be leaders of the riot," it added.

Nine Killed in Bombings Around Iran

Nine Killed in Bombings Around Iran

Bomb blasts struck Iranian government buildings in the capital of an oil-rich border province, followed within hours by two other bombs in central Tehran, killing a total of nine people days before Iran's presidential elections.


Iran's security service blamed the bombings -- the deadliest in Iran in more than a decade -- on supporters of ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.


State-run television quoted hospital officials as saying at least eight people were killed and 86 injured in four bomb explosions in Ahvaz, capital of the southwestern Khuzestan province bordering Iraq.

[...]
Some Sunni leaders in Iraq have accused Shiite Iran of meddling in Iraqi affairs by backing Shiite Muslim clergy and politicians in a bid to sway Iraq's politics toward an Islamic establishment.


Iran denies the allegations, but some speculate that extremists loyal to Saddam could be trying to create insecurity in Iran ahead of the presidential polls.


Others pointed to a more local cause. Ahvaz was the site of recent violent protests over alleged plans to alter the proportion of Arabs and non-Arabs in the region.

[...]
Bomb explosions have been rare in Iran since the end of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

I think it's very unlikely the Sunni's would bother with Iran right now, not with so many immediately available targets in Iraq. They only way it would make sense is if they have a surplus of capability. I think we'd be seeing a whole lot more attacks against US and Iraqi forces if that were true.
The much more like explanation is the US Special Forces that have been operating in Iran since around the first of the year. It's just their style to foment conflict between Arabs and Iranians. And again, now that Iran has "won" the war in Iraq, we find our fortunes on the same side as the insurgents now. How stupid is that?

US and Britain Circumvented International Law Before Iraqi Invasion

Here is another bombshell from London about the roll up to the invasion of Iraq. Bush was committed immediately after 9/11 to invade Iraq. It was Blair who insisted on an invasion of Afghanistan first as political cover for military action in the Middle East. After Bush agreed, in April 2002, Blair committed Britain to join in an invasion of Iraq one year later.
Ministers were told of need for Gulf war ‘excuse’ - Sunday Times - Times Online

MINISTERS were warned in July 2002 that Britain was committed to taking part in an American-led invasion of Iraq and they had no choice but to find a way of making it legal.


The warning, in a leaked Cabinet Office briefing paper, said Tony Blair had already agreed to back military action to get rid of Saddam Hussein at a summit at the Texas ranch of President George W Bush three months earlier.


The briefing paper, for participants at a meeting of Blair’s inner circle on July 23, 2002, said that since regime change was illegal it was “necessary to create the conditions” which would make it legal.


This was required because, even if ministers decided Britain should not take part in an invasion, the American military would be using British bases. This would automatically make Britain complicit in any illegal US action.


“US plans assume, as a minimum, the use of British bases in Cyprus and Diego Garcia,” the briefing paper warned. This meant that issues of legality “would arise virtually whatever option ministers choose with regard to UK participation”.


The paper was circulated to those present at the meeting, among whom were Blair, Geoff Hoon, then defence secretary, Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, and Sir Richard Dearlove, then chief of MI6. The full minutes of the meeting were published last month in The Sunday Times.


The document said the only way the allies could justify military action was to place Saddam Hussein in a position where he ignored or rejected a United Nations ultimatum ordering him to co-operate with the weapons inspectors. But it warned this would be difficult.


“It is just possible that an ultimatum could be cast in terms which Saddam would reject,” the document says. But if he accepted it and did not attack the allies, they would be “most unlikely” to obtain the legal justification they needed.


The suggestions that the allies use the UN to justify war contradicts claims by Blair and Bush, repeated during their Washington summit last week, that they turned to the UN in order to avoid having to go to war. The attack on Iraq finally began in March 2003.

[...]
The complaints of media self-censorship have been backed up by the ombudsmen of The Washington Post, The New York Times and National Public Radio, who have questioned the lack of attention the minutes have received from their organisations.

Ever had doubts about media censorship in America? It's not the government that is censoring, it's the newspaper advertisers who have given the word to omitting dirt on the President. So much for the "Free Press".

Religion Less Important in Politics in Lebanon?

Very interesting alliances have formed in Lebanon. While religion is still important in politics, old enemies are joining together in a realignment of power brought on by the loss of power of the Maronite Christians since the 1980s, and the strength of Hezbollah, the ally of Iran. These two mortal enemies are aligned with the support of Syria against the anti-Syrian opposition led by Jumblatt.
One can only hope that the shifting loyalties signal a change of emphasis on religion in politics in the Middle East.
Lebanese Rivals, in a Tangled Web of Alliances, Face Off in a Crucial Stage in Elections - New York Times

Lebanese politics, dominated here for decades by neighboring Syria, are always religious and tribal. But this election is developing into a tale of intrigue tangled even by Levantine standards, a quintessentially Lebanese melange of bloodshed, betrayal and a raven-haired beauty.


Indeed, the campaign is now so convoluted that Gen. Michel Aoun, the anti-Syrian nationalist who returned from 15 years in exile, has allied himself with politicians widely regarded as Syrian vassals. And in a breathtakingly odd moment the other night, Sheik Hassan Nasrullah, the Hezbollah leader whose Shiite guerrillas drove Israel out of southern Lebanon, exhorted his followers to vote for candidates of the outlawed Christian militia, the Lebanese Forces, invoking the name of its assassinated leader, Bashir Gemayel, who cooperated with the Israelis' invasion in 1982 and was elected president behind their tanks.

Losing Our Country

Paul Krugman, a noted economist, op-ed columnist of the NY-Times, has another great article the eloquently challenges to sound-byte politics of Doublethink Dubya and his gang of super-rich elitists. It has always struck me as ironic that the Republicans have been very successful with appeals to greed, blind patriotism, and paranoia. The Dems have only the facts to make their case. Oh sure, there have been attempts to try on the same political strategy of their opponents, but the fact is, the Democrats are about educating the electorate, participatory politics, and making the American Dream to anyone who works hard.
The Republicans are about capital formation, trickle down opportunity, favoritism to the privileged, locking out the underclass because they are of poor moral character, making the middle class pay for it's own benefits such as Social Security from taxes or private investment, and transfering risk to working families with a minimal underfunded safety net dependent solely on soup kitchens, food shelves and shelters run by Churches. That is their agenda. Anyone who can't see that isn't paying attention to what they do and instead listens to Doublethink Dubya and his doubletalkers say.
Losing Our Country - New York Times

Working families have seen little if any progress over the past 30 years. Adjusted for inflation, the income of the median family doubled between 1947 and 1973. But it rose only 22 percent from 1973 to 2003, and much of that gain was the result of wives' entering the paid labor force or working longer hours, not rising wages.


Meanwhile, economic security is a thing of the past: year-to-year fluctuations in the incomes of working families are far larger than they were a generation ago. All it takes is a bit of bad luck in employment or health to plunge a family that seems solidly middle-class into poverty.

[...]
But the real reasons to worry about the explosion of inequality since the 1970's have nothing to do with envy. The fact is that working families aren't sharing in the economy's growth, and face growing economic insecurity. And there's good reason to believe that a society in which most people can reasonably be considered middle class is a better society - and more likely to be a functioning democracy - than one in which there are great extremes of wealth and poverty.


Reversing the rise in inequality and economic insecurity won't be easy: the middle-class society we have lost emerged only after the country was shaken by depression and war. But we can make a start by calling attention to the politicians who systematically make things worse in catering to their contributors. Never mind that straw man, the politics of envy. Let's try to do something about the politics of greed.

Update on Bolivia: The "Eastern Oligarchy" Blinks

It looks like Bolivia steps back from what would surely have been a civil war. A compromise has been struck. At least some of the opposition will go home now that their own man is President. But what about the others. This conflict is not over.
The NarcoSphere || In Bolivia, a Decision to Make

Bolivia has a new President. This news comes at the end of a day in which the nation seemed to be heading towards extreme crisis. Under duress from social movements who declared that under no conditions would they accept the Presidency of Senate President Hormando Vaca Diez (first in line after Mesa), Congress had been unable to convene today, dismissed itself at 6pm and declared an cuarto intermedio (break) of indeterminate length. The people of Bolivia were enflamed by their government's continuing inefficacy and it was at approximately 9pm, as movement leaders were coming across the airwaves to talk about the mass mobilizations of tomorrow, that Vaca Diez finally gave in and announced that he would agree to resign. At 10:50pm, Congress convened in Sucre, the city to which the politicians had fled to escape the pressure of La Paz. Within minutes, Parliament approved Carlos Mesa's resignation and Vaca Diez and the number two in line, Mario Cossio, both renounced their position as the new executive cheif. At 11:47pm, Eduardo Rodriguez, President of the Supreme Court, was sworn in as the new President of Bolivia.


The people here now have a decision to make. Rodriguez is constitutionally obligated to call new elections for Presidency, which he has he said will set for the coming months. Over the past two weeks, as Mesa and Congress proved unresponsive to the people's demands for nationalization and a Constitutional Assembly, protesters had begun demanding a new government. With this victory, the social movements must make a choice of how to proceed in the immediate future: postpone the fights for their main demands or continue the battle right now?

The NarcoSphere || It's Not Over Yet

...But some social movements, like those in El Alto, haven’t let themselves be demobilized so easily. As long as “the issue of hydrocarbon nationalization” has not been touched upon, as Edgar Patana of the Bolivian Workers’ Federation said, the demonstrations and blockades will continue.

The US Military Has Been Operating in Syria for Three Months

White House Tells Syria to Pull Agents From Lebanon - New York Times

The White House demanded today that Syria remove intelligence agents from Lebanon, saying Syria was guilty of interference and intimidation during the Lebanese elections.


"We are deeply concerned about Syria's interference and intimidation inside Lebanon," the chief White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said. "Syria needs to comply fully with United Nations Security Council resolution 1559. That means getting all their intelligence operatives out of Lebanon."


Mr. McClellan added, "We are concerned that those intelligence operatives are interfering with Lebanon's internal affairs. That concern is real."


On Thursday, a senior administration official said that the United States had received "credible information" that Syrian operatives in Lebanon planned to try to assassinate senior Lebanese political leaders and that Syrian military intelligence forces were returning to Lebanon to create "an environment of intimidation."

The Bush Administration and it's neo-con ideologs are increasing the pressure on Syria. But what are they planning to do with this increasing political pressure? Here is a very interesting scenario from a Saudi newspaper. It's written by Mamoun Fandy, Ph.D., a senior fellow at the Baker Institute, specializing in Middle East politics. He is a former professor of politics at Georgetown University and professor of Arab politics at the Near-East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University.
I find it facinating that we much read newspapers from around the world to find out what Bush and the Neo-cons are up to.
Asharq Alawsat Newspaper (English)

"I have no information about a strip to separate Syria and Iraq, but I can confirm that US troops have been engaged in combat operations inside Syrian territory for months." This is what an official from the United States State Department told me, in response to a question I asked on rumors of the imminent creation of a separation strip between Iraq and its Western neighbor which will extend 10km wide into Syrian land. With regard to this subject, three scenarios seem to be under discussion.


In the first instance, the US military will create a strip of land to be modeled after that used by Israel in South Lebanon to enable it to wage preemptive strikes against the Lebanese resistance. Supporters of this view see the current relationship between Syria and Iraq resembling the past relationship between Beirut and Tel Aviv. They speak of host centers in Syria that assist Arab fighters to crossing the border and join the resistance against US military presence. As such, they argue, in order to eliminate the resistance, the American military should penetrate into Syria territory, for a distance of 10 km, and eradicate these centers offering logistical support. This perspective is presented as a pre-emptive security measure that doesn't aim to destabilize Syria, but rather, to abolish support for the fighters.


The second scenario sees a return to the situation in Iraq before the last Gulf War when the country was divided into three zones, the Northern Zone, where Iraqi planes were banned from flying, north of the latitude 36 degrees north, and the Southern Zone, where the regime's aircraft was also barred from flying, south of the latitude 36 degrees north, and the area in between. In addition to being a no-fly zone, the Southern region was also a no-drive zone for Iraqi government vehicles. Currently, the Pentagon is studying the feasibility of applying a similar plan along the 380 mile-long Iraqi-Syrian border. If this plan were to become reality, it will bring difficulties to the regime in Damascus; it will be trapped between the Occupied Golan Heights in the South, and the US occupied strip in the East. Is this arrangement a clear declaration of US intentions to encircle and destabilize the regime of President Bashar Assad in Syria?


The US government has already held discussions with a number of Arab governments to look into establishing a corridor or a separation passageway between Syria and Iraq. In this third scenario, according to a senior Arab official, the width of corridor will be less than the 10km proposed in the first instance. This suggestion has benefited from the support of Arab governments, which according to an informed source, are keen to prove to Washington that their citizens are not crossing into Iraq and killing US soldiers. This last proposal, I imagine, is more likely to be accepted, to avoid the other two models: the Iraqi no-fly zone and the Lebanese-Israeli border strip.

Presumably, the US believes it can handle any military challenge with it's airforce. And I'm sure if it got too hot and heavy, Israel would be glad to invade from the Golan.

Afghanistan Has Become the Second Front for the Caliphate

Diverse Afghan groups behind unrest | csmonitor.com

Afghan officials are concerned that a spate of recent attacks shows renewed vigor from Islamic militants in the region, as well as a convergence of disparate groups interested in destabilizing the country in the run-up to parliamentary elections.


Though blame is often laid at the feet of Al Qaeda and the Taliban for most of the unrest here, security officials say that drug profiteers, warlords reluctant to disarm, rival politicians, and ordinary Afghans with personal vendettas are behind many violent incidents.

[...]
Kidnappings have been a tactics to extort money from reconstruction projects. According to security experts, dozens of Turkish and Chinese road workers and engineers have been kidnapped or killed because their employers have refused to pay bribes to local commanders. However, immediate news reports of such events often suggest these to be acts of terror by rebels.


To be sure, insurgents linked to the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and renegade warlord Gulbudin Hekmatyar are to blame for much violence. Mashal estimates that 70 percent of the incidents are planned and carried out by these three rebel groups.

It was only a matter of time before the conditions that defeated the Soviets in Afghanistan would re-emerge and take on the new occupiers. Chaos has ruled in Afghanistan for most of the past century. How is it that a skeleton force is going to support the new elected government?
And Bush thought he had things in control when the fight has simply just began.