| Smoking Dutch Cleanser |
| Vice President Dick Cheney bitterly complains that national security leaks are endangering America. Unless, of course, he's doing the leaking, tapping Scooter Libby to reveal national security information to punish a political critic. President Bush says he will not talk about specific security threats to America. Unless, of course, he needs to talk about a specific threat to Los Angeles to confuse the public and gain some cheap political advantage. The White House says it has done everything possible to protect the homeland. Unless, of course, it hasn't. Then it can lie to hide the callous portrait of Incurious George in Crawford as New Orleans drowned. The attorney general can claim that torture and warrantless wiretapping are legal, and can mislead Congress. Unless, of course, enough Republicans stand up and say, as Arlen Specter told The Washington Post, that if that lickspittle lawyer thinks all this is legal, "he's smoking Dutch Cleanser." The president doesn't know the Indian Taker Jack Abramoff. Unless, of course, W. has met with him a dozen times, invited him to Crawford and joked with him about his kids. The Bushies can continue to claim that the invasion of Iraq was justified because Saddam was a threat to our security. Unless, of course, he wasn't, and the Cheney cabal was simply abusing the trust of Americans to push a wild-eyed political scheme. At the Bush White House, the mere evocation of the word "terror" justifies breaking any law, contravening any convention, despoiling any ideal, electing any Republican and brushing off any failure to govern. Asked yesterday by Senator Susan Collins why the administration had reacted in slo-mo on Katrina, with "people dying, people waiting to be rescued," Michael Brown replied that if FEMA had declared that a terrorist had blown up the 17th Street Canal levee, "then everybody would have jumped all over that and been trying to do everything they could." Instead of just going after the 9/11 fiends, as W. promised with his bullhorn, the president and Vice President Strangelove have cynically played the terror card to accrue power and sidestep blame. They have twisted our values, mismanaged crises, fueled fundamentalist successes and violence around the world, and magnified a clash of civilizations. It used to take an Israeli incursion to inflame the Arab world. Now all it takes is a cartoon in Denmark. W. and Vice have wasted hundreds of billions of dollars, turning Iraq into a terrorist training ground, leaving the 9/11 villains at large, and letting cronies and losers botch the job of homeland security. Brownie, one of the biggest boneheads in U.S. history, considered the homeland security chief, Michael Chertoff, so useless that he deliberately didn't call him right away about the suffering in New Orleans. "The culture was such that I didn't think that would have been effective and would have exacerbated the problem, quite frankly," Brownie told the Republican senator Bob Bennett, who called the statement "staggering." A telephone call to his boss, Brownie said, "would have wasted my time." The doofus who frittered away lives e-mailing colleagues about being a "fashion god" and wondering how he looked on television may have just been engaged in self-protective spin. Or has the Homeland Security Department simply created another set of paralyzing turf battles? The most dysfunctional man in government is calling the government dysfunctional. W.'s sophomoric "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job" line makes even Brownie cringe. "Unfortunately," the former FEMA chief complained, "he called me 'Brownie' at the wrong time. Thanks a lot, sir." In the new Foreign Affairs, Paul Pillar, who was a senior C.I.A. official overseeing Middle East intelligence assessments until October, says the obvious conclusion that should have been drawn from the intelligence on Iraq was that war was unnecessary. He says the White House "went to war without requesting -- and evidently without being influenced by -- any strategic-level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq." He calls the relationship between the intelligence community and the policy makers -- you guessed it -- politicized, damaged by bureaucratic rivalries and dysfunctional. A final absurd junction of dysfunction was reached on Wednesday, when Republican Party leaders awarded Tom DeLay with a seat on the Appropriations subcommittee overseeing the Justice Department, which is investigating Jack Abramoff, including his connections to Tom DeLay. Perfect. |
Sunday, February 12, 2006
Gozo smokes dutch cleanser, when he isn't licking sptitle
Senators: Cheney Should Be Probed in Leak
1 hour, 45 minutes ago
Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald should investigate Vice President Dick Cheney and others in the CIA leak probe if they authorized an aide to give secret information to reporters, Democratic and Republican senators said Sunday.
Sen. Jack Reed (news, bio, voting record), D-R.I., called the leak of intelligence information "inappropriate" if it is true that unnamed "superiors" instructed Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, to divulge the material on Iraq.
Sen. George Allen (news, bio, voting record), R-Va., said a full investigation is necessary.
"I don't think anybody should be releasing classified information, period, whether in the Congress, executive branch or some underling in some bureaucracy," said Allen, who appeared with Reed on "Fox News Sunday."
According to court documents disclosed last week, Libby told a federal grand jury that he disclosed in July 2003 the contents of a classified National Intelligence Estimate as part of the Bush administration's defense of intelligence used to justify invading Iraq.
Fitzgerald said in the documents it was his understanding that "Mr. Libby testified that he was authorized to disclose information about the NIE to the press by his superiors."
The White House has refused to comment on the case.
"I think this calls into question in terms of Fitzgerald's investigation of the conduct of the vice president and others," Reed said. "I think he has to look closely at their behavior."
Allen expressed confidence in Fitzgerald, whom he called "a very articulate, professional prosecutor."
"And I think the facts will lead wherever they lead, and I think he will prosecute as appropriate," Allen said.
Libby, 55, was indicted on charges that he lied to FBI agents and the grand jury about how he learned CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity and when he told reporters. He is not charged with leaking classified information.
LINK-Is the opposition being blackmailed?
When a Reagan conservative slaps such an accusation on the table, you have to sit up and take notice. This time it can't be dismissed as simply more left wing paranoia. Roberts served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration, later as Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of the conservative, National Review.
By Paul Craig Roberts
A number of readers have asked me when did I undergo my epiphany, abandon right-wing Reaganism and become an apostle of truth and justice.
I appreciate the friendly sentiment, but there is a great deal of misconception in the question.
When I saw that the neoconservative response to 9/11 was to turn a war against stateless terrorism into military attacks on Muslim states, I realized that the Bush administration was committing a strategic blunder with open-ended disastrous consequences for the US that, in the end, would destroy Bush, the Republican Party, and the conservative movement.
My warning was not prompted by an effort to save Bush's bacon. I have never been any party's political or ideological servant. I used my positions in the congressional staff and the Reagan administration to change the economic policy of the United States. In my efforts, I found more allies among influential Democrats, such as Senate Finance Committee Chairman Russell Long, Joint Economic Committee Chairman Lloyd Bentsen and my Georgia Tech fraternity brother Sam Nunn, than I did among traditional Republicans who were only concerned about the budget deficit.
My goals were to reverse the Keynesian policy mix that caused worsening "Phillips curve" trade-offs between employment and inflation and to cure the stagflation that destroyed Jimmy Carter's presidency. No one has seen a "Phillips curve" trade-off or experienced stagflation since the supply-side policy was implemented.
In Reagan's time we did not recognize that neoconservatives had a Jacobin frame of mind.
Reagan was certainly no neoconservative.
Neoconservatives were disappointed with Reagan.
I have always objected to injustice. My writings about prosecutorial abuse have put me at odds with "law and order conservatives." I have written extensively about wrongful convictions, both of the rich and famous and the poor and unknown.
Americans have forgotten what it takes to remain free.
We have reached a point where the Bush administration is determined to totally eclipse the people.
Having eliminated internal opposition, the Bush administration is now using blackmail obtained through illegal spying on American citizens to silence the media and the opposition party.
Before flinching at my assertion of blackmail, ask yourself why President Bush refuses to obey the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The purpose of the FISA court is to ensure that administrations do not spy for partisan political reasons. The warrant requirement is to ensure that a panel of independent federal judges hears a legitimate reason for the spying, thus protecting a president from the temptation to abuse the powers of government.
The United States is undergoing a coup against the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, civil liberties, and democracy itself.
The TV networks mimic Fox News' faux patriotism. Anyone who depends on print, TV, or right-wing talk radio media is totally misinformed.
The years of illegal spying have given the Bush administration power over the media and the opposition. Journalists and Democratic politicians don't want to have their adulterous affairs broadcast over television or to see their favorite online porn sites revealed in headlines in the local press with their names attached. Only people willing to risk such disclosures can stand up for the country.
Homeland Security and the Patriot Act are not our protectors. They undermine our protection by trashing the Constitution and the civil liberties it guarantees. Those with a tyrannical turn of mind have always used fear and hysteria to overcome obstacles to their power and to gain new means of silencing opposition.
Consider the no-fly list.
If Senator Ted Kennedy, a famous senator with two martyred brothers, can be put on a no-fly list, as he was for several weeks, anyone can be put on the list. The list has no accountability. People on the list cannot even find out why they are on the list. There is no recourse, no procedure for correcting mistakes.
I am certain that there are more Bush critics on the list than there are terrorists. According to reports, the list now comprises 80,000 names! This number must greatly dwarf the total number of terrorists in the world and certainly the number of known terrorists.
How long before members of the opposition party, should there be one, find that they cannot return to Washington for important votes, because they have been placed on the no-fly list?
If the government can have a no-fly list, it can have a no-drive list. The Iraqi resistance has demonstrated the destructive potential of car bombs. If we are to believe the government's story about the Murrah Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City, Timothy McVeigh showed that a rental truck bomb could destroy a large office building. Indeed, what is to prevent the government from having a list of people who are not allowed to leave their homes?
Many readers have told me, some gleefully, that I will be placed on the no-fly list along with all other outspoken critics of the growth in unaccountable executive power and war based on lies and deception. It is just a matter of time. Unchecked, unaccountable power grows more audacious by the day.
Congress and the media have no fight in them, and neither, apparently, do the American people.
The sooner the Bush administration realizes its goals of attacking Iran, Syria, and the Shia militias in Lebanon, the more likely the administration will collapse in the maelstrom before it achieves a viable police state. Hamas' victory in the recent Palestinian elections indicates that Muslim outrage over further US aggression in the Middle East has the potential to produce uprisings in Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. Not even Karl Rove and Fox "News" could spin Bush out of the catastrophe.
Debate is dead in America for two reasons:
Americans need to understand that many interests are using the "war on terror" to achieve their agendas. The Federalist Society is using the "war on terror" to achieve its agenda of concentrating power in the executive and packing the Supreme Court to this effect. The neocons are using the war to achieve their agenda of Israeli hegemony in the Middle East. Police agencies are using the war to remove constraints on their powers and to make themselves less accountable. Republicans are using the war to achieve one-party rule--theirs. The Bush administration is using the war to avoid accountability and evade constraints on executive powers. Arms industries, or what President Eisenhower called the "military-industrial complex," are using the war to fatten profits. Terrorism experts are using the war to gain visibility. Security firms are using it to gain customers. Readers can add to this list at will. The lack of debate gives carte blanche to these agendas.
One certainty prevails. Bush is committing America to a path of violence and coercion, and he is getting away with it.
War Pimp Alert!
| By Yoav Stern, Haaretz Correspondent | ||
 | ||
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The World Jewish Congress has launched a campaign against Iran following the nuclear crisis and the anti-Semitic statements of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. | ||
Global Warming past tipping point
Our special investigation reveals that critical rise in world temperatures is now unavoidable
Read OnGovernment wants to sell thousands of acres
By Hal Bernton
Seattle Times staff reporter
The Bush administration on Friday proposed the largest Forest Service land sale in decades, listing 309,421 acres in more than 30 states — including nearly 7,500 acres in Washington state.
The plan, which requires congressional approval, would funnel the money from sales to rural counties, in part to replace proposed cutbacks of federal dollars that now help pay for schools and roads.
Most of the Forest Service tracts are small, isolated parcels adjacent to private or state land. Successful bidders could develop, or possibly log, these lands so long as they complied with state and local land-use laws.
"The lands we identified today are isolated and expensive to manage," said Mark Rey, undersecretary of agriculture in a Friday news conference in Washington, D.C. "In some places, they are part of Forest Service ownership more as an accident of history."
In Washington, the potential sale acreage is scattered across the state, including tracts in the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area and the Colville, Wenatchee, Olympic, Mount Baker-Snoqualmie, Okanogan and Wenatchee national forests.
One of the largest proposed sales involves seven tracts — totaling more than 1,300 acres — in a remote Sultan River corridor in Snohomish County popular with kayakers.
The land sales are part of President Bush's new budget proposal, which seeks to pare the federal deficit. As part of those cuts, the administration seeks to phase out taxpayer payments to rural timber counties and partial replacement of those dollars with land-sale revenues.
Read OnSuicide muddies the waters around Vodafone revelations
Monday, Feb 06, 2006,Page 6
The suicide of a Greek telecommunications expert added to the murkiness surrounding the explosive revelations that eavesdroppers listened in on Greece's entire political and military elite, including the prime minister, for almost a year.
The death of Kostas Tsalikides, 39, who took his own life last March, a day after the discovery of sophisticated spy software at the mobile telephone operator Vodafone, has deepened the mystery of how 100 mobile phones, belonging to senior officials, were tapped in the run-up to the Athens Olympic Games. By hanging himself from his loft, the British-trained technician may have taken the secrets of Greece's Watergate to his grave.
"His suicide conceals many unanswered questions," wrote Ta Nea, the newspaper that broke the story last week. The extraordinary timing of the death, a day before Vodafone reported the surveillance system to the Greek government, had unleashed "all kinds of scenarios," the newspaper said. As the mobile company's network planning manager, he was best placed to know who installed the software, insiders claim.
"We found no suicide note," said Tsalikides's brother, Panayiotis. "He had no health problems, was about to marry and was doing very well at work."
Even by the standards of scandal-prone Greece, the wiretaps revelations have been met with disbelief. Among those targeted by the eavesdroppers were the foreign, defense and public order ministers, as well as Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis and the leadership of the armed forces. Others included civil rights activists, the head of the "stop the war" coalition, journalists and Arabs based in Athens.
According to the government, which caused as much commotion with its abrupt decision to inform the public last Thursday, the monitoring began in June 2004, peaked around the August Olympic Games, and continued to March 2005 when the illicit system was uncovered following a barrage of operational complaints from customers.
The hi-tech software enabled phone conversations to be diverted to a set of 14 "shadow" mobile phones which then relayed them to a recording system. Officials say the calls were intercepted on mobile phones picked up by antennae in an area close to the US embassy.
"This is all like something out of science fiction," said the Socialist opposition leader George Papandreou.
Why had Vodafone unilaterally deactivated the system, he asked, making it impossible for the authorities to trace where the calls were being monitored?
Vodafone embroiled in Greek phone-tapping scandal
Last week, an inquiry was ordered by Costas Karamanlis, the prime minister, who was among the targets. It will focus on how spy software was installed within Vodafone's Greek mobile network before the 2004 Olympics. The spyware, understood to have been lurking within software bought from Ericsson, was spotted by the mobile phone operator last spring. When found, Vodafone disabled it and passed all the information on to the authorities.
Read On'Bush is certainly not welcome in India' - Newindpress.com
Sunday February 12 2006 00:00 IST
PTI
NEW DELHI: Seven political parties, including CPI, CPI(M) And Samajwadi Party, on Friday decided to oppose the forthcoming visit of US President George W Bush to the country.
"Under President Bush, the US continues to occupy Iraq and oppress its people. It threatens Syria and has targeted Iran on the issue of its nuclear programme. It backs the naked oppression of the Palestinian people by Israel.
"He is certainly not welcome in India," a joint statement of CPI, CPI(M), RSP, AIFB, CPI(ML) Liberation, JD(S) and SP said after a decision in this regard was taken at a meeting on Thursday.
"We have constituted a broad-based committee against Bush's visit and decided to organise under its banner a massive peoples march and rally to protest against his visit," it said, calling the American leader an "enemy of sovereign nations".
The protest would begin on March two from Ramlila Maidan, the statement said.
Why We Fight
02/11/06 "Lew Rockwell" -- -- Director Eugene Jarecki has put together a wonderful, moving and important film that examines the modern American military machine and the modern American militaristic mindset.
His film is the 2004 Sundance Film Festival’s Documentary Award-winning Why We Fight. The title of the film recalls Frank Capra’s World War II films – popular movies that promoted, eulogized and helped mythologize America’s participation and sacrifice in that war. We fought in World War II for many reasons, but mostly it seems, because we believed.
Why We Fight carefully illustrates how our beliefs, our national character, our shared view of ourselves as Americans have changed since World War II. Jarecki utilizes President Eisenhower’s famous farewell speech of January 17th, 1961. In this speech, Ike warned of a growing military-industrial complex, and its possible negative impact on our democracy and our republic. As the late Colonel David Hackworth used to remind me, Eisenhower spoke of the dangers presented by military-industrial-congressional complex.
Eisenhower advised there was a "…danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite." He reminded us, "Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. He said,
…we – you and I, and our government – must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without asking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.
I had read, but never before actually watched Eisenhower’s farewell speech until I saw Why We Fight. Those who are today manning the ship of state in Washington, D.C., like people my age, completely missed this prophetic speech. As Ike passed the presidential baton to a fresh new face, a youthful George W. Bush, like most of his generation, was focused on high school shenanigans, and the American people basked in long-awaited economic prosperity.
Ike knew a thing or two about war, American government, and our nascent military-industrial complex. Eisenhower worried, but we weren’t paying attention – at least in 1961. When asked why he made the film, Jarecki said, "Americans [today] have a visceral sense that something is rotten, but no-one can seem to connect the dots…. I wanted to make this film because we need what Eisenhower called an ‘alert and knowledgeable citizenry’ to compel change, to improve the public’s ability to monitor those in power."
Why We Fight is filmed in a new kind of America. It is still filled with everyday people pulling together for glory, Capra-style. But this documentary carefully and intelligently reveals the present-day fruition of Ike’s darker vision.
Many everyday Americans are featured in Why We Fight. A father who lost his son in the Twin Tower attacks on 9-11. Workers making armaments on massive factory floors, and workers writing global engagement policy prescriptions from inside carefully appointed urban thinktanks. Politicians and contractors and military recruiters and soldiers. These simultaneously common and uncommon people are key to the film’s humanity and its directness – because these people are us.
However, Jarecki’s steady hand reveals that while we are indeed Frank Capra’s Americans, we are today, in Jarecki’s words, " …caught in a vortex of spiraling militarisation and moral and economic bankruptcy, and [we] feel remote from and powerless to change those forces."
Why We Fight grapples with this sense of moral and economic bankruptcy that many feel as we stay the course and fight wars in Iraq, and elsewhere. The film illuminates the "insolvent phantom of tomorrow" that Ike foretold, and it attempts to get underneath the superficial explanations, and ideological perspectives. In Jarecki’s words, "We tend to hunt for heroes and villains, rather than study roots of the problem. I wanted to make a film that goes beyond the focus on the individual."
Jarecki gets it. He understands and clearly articulates how the care and feeding of the American military leviathan has been, and remains, a shared role of both Democratic and Republican Parties. There hasn’t been an antiwar party at the national level for decades, and it is easy to see why. What Cold War competition, massive federalization and sophisticated and relentless government agitprop pitting "us" against "them" has produced is summed up in a Raytheon worker’s reflection on her job. She pauses for a moment, and says, "I’d really rather be making toys for Santa." But she isn’t.
Will Washington, D.C. like the film? It is hard to predict whether the Bush Administration or the loyal opposition in Congress will first launch a stone at Why We Fight. Jarecki has provided an apolitical history and an apolitical reality, portraying an America evolved in the dangerous direction that Eisenhower exactly foretold.
Can the military-industrial-congressional complex be reined in? Should it be? To the extent that Jarecki passes judgment on the latter question, he defers to Eisenhower in the affirmative. It should be "compelled" and controlled by an alert and knowledgeable citizenry, such that "security and liberty" may prosper together. But can it be?
The film is perhaps less optimistic of whether it can be reined in, as an interesting clip with Senator John McCain discussing the growth of the military industrial complex is cut short by an urgent phone call from the former CEO of Halliburton, and Vice President of the United States.
But what I really find inspiring about Why We Fight is that we see the words, thoughts and deeds of the average American in this movie – the factory workers, the fathers and mothers and sons and daughters, the backbone of this nation. To a person, it is these Americans who exude patriotism and deep abiding love for this country. It is these Americans who, with all their faults, are founts of common decency and morality. Jarecki is excruciatingly fair in his portrayal of war-promoting policy wonks and war policy beneficiaries like Richard Perle, Bill Kristol, Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and George W. Bush. But the fact remains that these policy designers simply don’t make a hell of a lot of sense.
Jarecki has both artfully and scientifically pulled away the curtain that currently shields the pillars of the present-day American military-industrial-congressional complex. In a time where Abramoff, Halliburton overcharges, and Duke Cunningham-style "congressional leadership" has already publicly embarrassed Washington and the Pentagon, this film will be downplayed by the leadership in Washington, D.C. on both sides of the aisle. These public servants and the defense corporations in league with them will say, "Enough already!"
But Why We Fight will eagerly be consumed and digested by millions and millions of real and loyal Americans who are now weary of strange endless wars in far away places and an economy wasting under the demands of voracious spending on "defense." These American, as I did upon watching the film, will begin to really think about what we have become. These Americans will become newly awake, newly alert, newly watchful. These Americans will begin to embrace and assert, as did our forefathers, the blessed idea that we are governed and directed by our own consent, and none other. Eisenhower would certainly approve.
Karen Kwiatkowski, Ph.D. [send her mail], a retired USAF lieutenant colonel, has written on defense issues with a libertarian perspective for militaryweek.com, hosts the call-in radio show American Forum on Saturday nights, and blogs occasionally for Huffingtonpost.com. To receive automatic announcements of new articles and upcoming guests on her American Forum radio program, click here.
Copyright © 2006 LewRockwell.com
Could someone shut Newt's yapper?
Newt Gingrich: U.S. Must Stop Iran
Facing a potential nuclear holocaust at the hands of Iran, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says the United States must do everything in its power to bring about regime change there, even if it means invading that nation.
Saying that he hopes President Bush, "will focus first of all on telling the American people the truth about how dangerous the world has become,” he warned that if we don’t have a very serious systematic program to replace the government of Iran, we’re going to live in an unbelievably dangerous world.”
Speaking to Human Events magazine, Gingrich, a noted historian, compared the president’s handling of the Iran problem to the way British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin handled Nazi Germany in the mid-1930s, when Baldwin refused to rearm or recognize the threat Adolf Hitler posed to Britain and Europe. He contrasted Baldwin's polcies with those of another prime minister, Winston Churchill, who adopted a hard-line stance against the Nazi dictator’s ambitions.
"This is 1935 and [Iranian president] Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is as close to Adolf Hitler as we’ve seen. We now know who they are -- the question is who we are. Are we Baldwin or Churchill? " Gingrich said, noting that Churchill recognized the danger from Nazi Germany and urged that Britain prepare to meet it.
Asked what Churchill would do about Ahmadinejad, Gingrich said he had just read the opening passages of Churchill’s book, "The Gathering Storm,” the first volume of his World War II memoir. In the book Churchill recalled that President Franklin D. Roosevelt once asked him "What should they call the war?.” Churchill’s reply: "We should call it "The Unnecessary War,” noting that "had we done simple, practical things in 1935, 1936, we would have saved 100 million lives.”
Gingrich laid out his strategy for dealing with the Iranian threat:
Asked if such aid would need congressional approval, he said "absolutely,” noting that a bill by Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., that "shamefully had a part taken out by Democrats just before Christmas. He had a bill for getting to a free Iran. And Rick Santorum has done yeoman’s work on this.”
When asked if the administration is working with Iranian exiles, he told Human Events that he asked White House spokesman Scott McClellan at a briefing if they were in touch with the exile community from Iran. The answer was no.
Said Gingrich: "The current behavior of the bureaucracy is perfectly compatible with Stanley Baldwin and totally incompatible with Winston Churchill." He added that he hopes the president "will impose his will.” Short of that, he said, "It is inconceivable that the current system would be prepared to take on the Iranian government.”
If all else fails, Gingrich said, the United States will have to invade.
"Look, I think that winning the long war -- and that’s the only way you can think of this, this is a 50- to 70-year campaign if we’re lucky -- is going to be a long, difficult process. But I think there are certain ground rules we have to set very early. One of them has to be: We are not going to accept dictatorships with weapons capable of destroying the United States.”
On the domestic front, Gingrich said the GOP must control spending and keep cutting taxes to increase economic growth, focus very narrowly on a personal Social Security savings account for people under 40, curb the power of wealthy groups and corporations by allowing private citizens to make unlimited contributions to political candidates and parties.
LINKUse of force debate persist on Iran
02/11/06 -- WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a private meeting with European diplomats this week, a former senior U.S. official raised the idea of launching a dozen B2 bombers in an air raid aimed at crippling key Iranian nuclear facilities.
The suggestion was at odds with current U.S. and European strategy, which has emphasised patient diplomacy to resolve a major security challenge for Western powers -- keeping Tehran from acquiring a nuclear bomb.
But it underscored how questions about possible use of force persist even though Iran has been reported to the U.N. Security Council this month, triggering a new diplomatic phase that could lead to sanctions and later, anything more.
The military possibility "comes up whenever we've been around (Washington)," talking with administration officials and congressmen, a European diplomat told Reuters, but "we don't see the military option as being anywhere near in view."
Western powers accuse Iran of developing an atomic weapon, while Tehran insists it aims to produce only civilian energy.
U.S. President George W. Bush and top aides have said repeatedly that military action against Iran's growing nuclear infrastructure remains possible. Bush reaffirmed last weekend that Iran's nuclear ambitions "will not be tolerated."
But unlike the run-up to the Iraq war, when Bush touted a post-Sept 11 doctrine of pre-emptive action against a gathering threat, the administration has not played up the force option.
Especially in light of continuing turmoil in Iraq, talk of military action against Iran scares many foreign leaders, diplomats say. That made it harder for Western allies to secure last weekend's vote of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency shifting Tehran's case to the more powerful Security Council.
DELAY, NOT DESTROY
"Now that Security Council referral is in prospect, people are saying we must be focusing on the military option," said the European diplomat, who spoke anonymously because of the sensitivity of the subject.
"But both on diplomacy and also in terms of how Iran's nuclear program is developing, we have not taken a quantum leap in the last two weeks .. I don't think the bombers are warming up on the runway," he said.
U.S. warplanes could destroy some Iranian nuclear plants but many facilities are unknown or underground, so the best outcome for the West would be a delay in Iran's nuclear capability, not its destruction, officials and experts say.
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, aiming to calm anxieties, told a parliamentary committee on Wednesday military action is not inevitable even if Iran develops a bomb.
But others say that force, while fraught with potential dangers like further inflaming hostility in the Muslim world, may ultimately be deemed necessary, at least by Washington.
"There is only one thing worse than the United States exercising a military option and that is a nuclear-armed Iran," Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a possible 2008 U.S. presidential candidate, told CBS Television.
Barring some dramatic near-term advance in Iran's program, Washington and its allies likely will not have to consider this option for a year or more, officials and experts say.
Some experts have predicted that Israel, feeling threatened by Iran, could take early pre-emptive action. Bush may have eased such concern when he told Reuters last week the United States would "rise to Israel's defence" if needed.
Siniyah: an Iraqi town that is now a prison
A month back, the United States military built a 10 kilometre wall of sand around the town of Siniyah, 220km north of Baghdad. The town is close to Saddam Hussein’s hometown Tikrit and the oil refining centre at Beiji.
Construction of a sand wall around the town began on January 7 in response to repeated attacks against the 101st Airborne US forces stationed in the area. A night curfew has been imposed in the area.
An IPS correspondent could not visit the town to look at the situation within, despite official claims.
“Journalists have not been limited or prevented from travelling in and around Siniyah,” US military spokesman Major Tim Keefe told IPS. “Coalition and Iraqi Forces go to great lengths to make sure journalists are able to do their job in a safe environment.”
That was after soldiers stopped the IPS correspondent entering the town on two occasions. But in the queue to the main checkpoint many people were more than willing to speak to IPS about the situation within.
“On the 7th of January, the US troops started building this wall around Siniyah,” said Mohammed, a 34-year-old engineer from Siniyah. “They are trying to isolate Iraqi fighters who are attacking them every day. The troops have been exposed to attacks near Siniyah by roadside bombs and by different weapons... Also, the resistance blows up the petrol pipelines leading to Turkey.”
The issue of the pipeline is a salient one for residents of Siniyah. The town has been sealed off not because of attacks within the town, but due to the belief it is being used as a staging ground for attacks outside... The coalition forces are attempting to halt attacks directed mainly at the Beiji refinery and at convoys serving the coalition.
The chosen targets have brought general support for Iraqi resistance within Siniyah. Mohammed says the attacks are taking place because “this petrol will go to Turkey and is stolen by occupation forces, or when Turkey buys this petrol the money is taken by the occupation forces.”
Residents of Siniyah speak also of injustices by the occupation troops. The wall of sand is now dividing residents from the Iraqi government, they say.
“Siniyah has become a real battlefield now, and the occupation forces have destroyed many of our homes,” said Sumiya, a 33-year-old housewife. “There is no security inside Siniyah and it is worse than any place in Iraq now. The occupation forces and Iraqi National Guard are raiding Siniyah houses everyday and arresting many people. There is a curfew from 5pm to 5am; in Baghdad it is only midnight to 5am.”
Sumiya said her children have stopped going to school. Everyone in the town is affected. “My problem is that my college is outside Siniyah, and it is very difficult for me to go back and forth everyday with these checkpoints,” said a 20-year-old student who gave his name as Ammar.
“I left my job because it was outside Siniyah, it is impossible to go and come back every day because of this earth wall and these checkpoints on the way,” said 45-year-old Abdullah Jabar.
The US forces say the wall was built with local approval. “Local police, city council members, sheikhs and religious leaders met with leaders from the 1st Squadron, 33rd Cavalry Regiment 101st Airborne Division, Air Assault, to discuss the operation,” Major Keefe said. He declined to comment on the specifics of the negotiations.
As the isolation of Siniyah continues, its 3,000 residents appear to be unifying behind the opposition. “I don’t think that the occupation force will stop resistance by these steps, because violence causes violence,” Ammar said. “It is normal throughout history there is resistance in any occupied country. But there is no occupation that used this kind of violence.”
“We are in very bad situation and we live in very big jail for three thousand, one called Siniyah,” said Jabar, echoing sentiments of residents interviewed by IPS last month.
The Multi National Forces-Iraq (MNF-I) have used such tactics before. Walls and checkpoints were used to isolate residents of Samarra and Fallujah before the eventual devastation of the towns.—Dawn/IPS News Service
France Invades U.S. (Part 10): "Freedom Isn't Free"
By Jerry Ghinelli
Riding-high with Hugo Chavez
02/11/06 "ICH" -- -- Hugo Chavez’s meteoric rise on the world stage has as much to do with his defiance of Washington as it does with his leadership of a hemispheric revolution. At great personal risk, Chavez has consistently lashed out against his witless-nemesis, George Bush, and the coterie of sycophants who do his bidding.
Yesterday, it was Bush’s poodle, Tony Blair, who entered the Chavez crosshairs. Blair has been Bush’s main ally in the illegal occupation of Iraq and the ongoing war of terror. In Parliament this week, Blair admonished Chavez that he should “respect the rules of the international community”, ignoring his own gross violations of the UN Charter and the Nuremburg Tribunal. Chavez responded to Blair with a hearty salvo:
“Don’t be shameless, Mr. Blair. Don’t be immoral, Mr. Blair, that you are one of those who have no morals. You are not one that has the right to criticize anyone about the rules of the international community”…You are an “imperialist pawn” who attempts to curry favor with “Danger Bush-Hitler, the number one mass murderer and assassin there is on the planet.”
“Go straight to hell, Mr. Blair,” Chavez roared.
What Chavez lacks in discretion, he makes up for in candor. While the feckless US Congress quivers at every edict issued from the White House, the barrel-chested Venezuelan fires off another round of grapeshot at the fraudster-and-chief:
“Bush is the world’s greatest terrorist”…”a madman”… (who) “thinks he owns the world and now is making plans to invade Iran, and plans to invade Venezuela, too…The American people are going to have to tie him down one of these days, because if they don’t he’s capable of destroying half the world.”
Chavez is the polar opposite of his arch-rival, George Bush. Raised in a dirt-floor shack, Chavez worked his way up through the ranks of the elite paratrooper-corps dreaming of becoming of becoming a baseball player and moving to the United States.
Bush, on the other hand, is a patrician slacker, who drank his way through high school and college, went “missing” during his tour with the Champagne Unit of the Texas National Guard, and ran three companies (Spectrum, Arbusto, and Harken) into the ground. He finally, found his niche in politics when he realized he could translate his family name and connections into political capital. Since then, he has faithfully served the corporate interests that catapulted him to the presidency; providing lavish subsidies to industry giants, tax cuts to the wealthy, and deregulation to nearly every area of commerce.
The divisions between Chavez and Bush are more than just personal. Chavez imagines a world where government is deeply involved in the health and welfare of its citizens and where certain guarantees of security are provided under the rule of law. He has worked tirelessly to actualize a modern Bolivarian Revolution, loosening the centuries-long grip of colonial rule and binding the continent together in a shared vision of peace and cooperation.
He’s become the bane of the petro-oligarchs who see his efforts to redistribute some of Venezuela’s vast oil wealth into social programs as a direct challenge to their authority. (Ironically, Chavez’s attempts to share oil profits are not nearly as extreme as the many programs initiated by FDR under the New Deal. Even into the 1950s the highest tax rate for anyone making over $200,000 was 92%. This “socialistic” redistribution of wealth explains the explosive growth of America’s middle class following the Second World War)
Chavez has provided clinics and schools in every barrio in Caracas; ensuring that even the neediest citizens will enjoy federally funded health care, literacy programs, and a minimal standard of living. His vision of social justice is sharply contrasted to that of Bush who has consistently hacked away at education, public television, Medicaid, student loans, and the crumbling social safety-net that provides vital resources for the destitute. In Bush-world, the solitary function of government is to enhance the wealth of America’s “privileged few”.
While Chavez is working to create a nationally-owned web of oil and gas pipelines that will knit the continent together, Bush is pursuing a global resource war that has destroyed much of Iraq and killed tens of thousands of innocent people. The Chavez approach requires partnership and cooperation, whereas the Bush strategy is merely a continuation of smash-and-grab imperialism.
Chavez is correct to dismiss Bush’s wars as an expression of “savage capitalism”, the likes of which Latin Americans have endured for more than a century.
Starting in the “lost decade” of the 1980s, the policies which sprouted from the “Washington consensus” have increased poverty and despair throughout the continent on an incalculable scale. The IMF and World Bank forced austerity measures, deregulation, privatization of public services and resources, as well as painful cuts to social programs and education. The “free market” policies have curbed hyperinflation, but left 128 million Latin Americans living on less that $2 a day.
Chavez’s political fortunes are due in large part to the widespread rejection of the exploitative neoliberal policies and market-oriented reforms that have failed to reduce poverty. His ascendancy has breathed life into a vision of socialism that is essentially non-ideological, but deals with the immediate needs of the people and the obligation of government to meet those needs.
Chavez’s new-found wealth and celebrity presents a serious challenge to Washington. The Pentagon issued a report 2 years ago that warned of the dangers of “radical populism” spreading through Latin America. The Bush administration is concerned that real democracy will take root in the region and undermine the dominant role of US industry.
Equally worrisome, is Chavez’s threat to divert vital oil supplies going to the United States to foreign tenders if Washington continues meddling in Venezuelan politics. (Venezuela currently provides 15% of US oil imports.)
Chavez star seems to be rising just as Bush’s is beginning to fizzle. While Bush is mired in scandal and war, Chavez is grabbing headlines by promising to give away $4 billion in aid to his neighbors, provide assistance to victims of Hurricane Katrina, and donate cheap heating fuel to the needy in Massachusetts. His generosity has enhanced his stature as a world leader while America’s moral authority vanished sometime between the carpet-bombing of Falluja and the sadistic treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
Chavez’s popularity has only grown with every scathing brickbat he hurls at the Bush claque. The public obviously enjoys seeing David tweak Goliath’s nose while the giant stumbles blindly from one bloody conflict to the next.
“We are happy that the maximum representatives of the assassin and genocide Empire attack us and call us what they like,” Chavez boomed. “If the dogs are barking, Sancho, it’s because we are riding”.
Chavez’s comments elicited a sharp response from Donald Rumsfeld who said, “We’ve see some populist leadership appealing to masses of people in those countries” that is “worrisome”…Chavez “was elected legally- just as Adolf Hitler was elected legally-and then consolidated his power.”
“Adolf Hitler”?
That’s a stretch even by Rumsfeld’s standards.
Never the less, Chavez dismissed the Defense Secretary’s remarks saying, “Let the dogs of imperialism bark…that’s their role, to bark. Our task is to consolidate this century and the real liberation of our people right now.”
In recent months, Chavez has been aggressively trying to buy weapons from Russia anticipating another American coup or (possible) invasion. (He said that he has proof of a US plan code-named Balboa that was worked out under the Bush administration) He has vowed to cut off the flow of oil to the US if the Bush administration makes another attempt on his life and promised a century-long war if the US invades. Never the less, the prospect of hostilities hasn’t intimidated the effusive Chavez or caused him to tone down his rhetoric.
“The imperialist, mass-murdering, fascist attitude of the president of the United States doesn’t have limits”, Chavez said. “I think Hitler could be a nursery-baby next to George W. Bush”.
Ouch.
Chavez undoubtedly grasps the gravity of his situation and the likelihood that Bush will take military action against him sometime following an attack on Iran. As he noted last week when he was awarded the prestigious Jose Marti prize by UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural organization:
“They will forever try to preserve the US Empire by all means, while we do everything possible to shred it.”
Chavez is persisting with his ambitious plans for agrarian reform, public housing, free health care, and redistribution of wealth. He is reshaping Venezuelan politics and influencing the way we think about governments’ obligations to its citizens.
As Chavez said, “The world needs development and peace, and the only road to peace is justice.”
Vive Chavez.
The Urgency of Now: Stopping the War on Iran
By Mike Kress
02/10/06 "ICH" -- -- “Last winter, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter revealed that George Bush asked for an Iran war plan ready to use by June of 2005. Seymour Hersh, writing for the New Yorker, has reported for some time about US covert operations in Iran. Today we are told that war in Iran is inevitable by the same observers who warned us about the cooked-up war in Iraq.
Evidently, the neo-conservatives who control the US government decided to wage war against Iran long ago.
Now that International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed El Baradei says that Iran isn’t cooperating fully with IAEA inspectors, the neo-cons will use their tool at the UN, Ambassador John Bolton, to help create an international crisis and thereby justify attacks on Iran. Though there’s no evidence to prove that Iran has a nuclear weapons program, Iran’s refusal to halt its lawful nuclear programs will become the pretext for America’s next unnecessary war.
Again, the mainstream sources that most Americans use to get their information will not investigate the facts or give equal time to critics, and the smoke and mirrors of the Bush administration will dominate the debate. To paraphrase Noam Chomsky, in the absence of just cause the consent for war will be manufactured.
It now falls upon people of conscience to create and organize a mass movement of nationwide non-violent resistance – in the spirit of Dr. King and Mohandas K. Gandhi – that will stop the war before it starts. At the rate the White House rhetoric is beginning to boil, this movement must start now and swing into full action by the early days of March.
The only way to stop another senseless and unnecessary war is with a mass movement rooted in a moral strategy that brings people together. This movement must also earn the sympathy and trust of those who are undecided about the necessity of another Middle East war. Forget traditional protest rallies – 200,000 people crowding the Capitol Mall make no difference. Large marches that don’t influence the nation’s decision makers will only increase people’s cynicism, as well as the atmosphere of inevitability that the neo-cons wish to create.
Without a moral and unifying strategy that spells out specific non-violent tactics to achieve our goal, the power elite and the corporate media will ignore or marginalize our efforts. Remember the moral claims for justice and the appeals to America’s founding ideals during the civil rights movement, and you’ll understand the type of strategy we need today. Think of the Montgomery bus boycott, the Freedom Rides, and Gandhi’s march to the sea for salt, and you will have inspiration for the actions necessary to stop the march to war.
The leaders of every organization that opposed the Iraq war must reconnect today and formulate a sustained campaign of militant non-violent action that everyone can follow tomorrow. Peace, justice, religious, and human rights leaders must gather and articulate a path to preventing war that people believe is effective – not because that path is safe, but because that path is righteous and they are inspired to overcome their fears.
This path must be part of a moral vision that appeals to the emotions and values of every citizen. Using communication techniques put forth by thinkers such as George Lakoff, we must revive the “revolution of values” that Dr. King called for in his 1967 speech at Riverside Church. In the words of King: “When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.” Simply debating facts will not prevent war.
People for peace must speak with their mouths, pens, keyboards, and bodies against another war for empire. We must push our peace and justice leaders to act. We must work around the corporate media to spread our message. We must tell our elected officials that they will not receive money or votes if they sell their souls for the neo-conservative agenda. We must take risks, and we must welcome the metaphorical stones and arrows of the warmongers, knowing in our hearts that we were right about the last war and that we act today with our consciences clear.
Innocent Iranians, our children, our military, and all the world waits for us to wrest America’s destiny from the hands of the warlords. There is no time to waste. Gradualism is a luxury we cannot afford. The architects of the war against Iran have a head start – but we can prevail if we put our demands for peace into action.
Mike Kress is a Persian Gulf veteran who left the Air Force as a conscientious objector. He served as vice-chair of the Spokane Human Rights Commission and is a member of the Peace and Justice Action League of Spokane (www.pjals.org). He also produces and hosts “Take The Power Back” for KYRS FM www.kyrs.org Comments welcome at takethepowerback@kyrs.org
For Possible '08 Run, McCain Is Courting Bush Loyalists
Sunday, February 12, 2006; Page A01
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a man in perpetual motion, flew to South Carolina on Jan. 16. His stops included a tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. and speeches to local Republican groups. But one of his most important events was not on the public schedule -- a 5 p.m. meeting at a Spartanburg hotel with loyalists to President Bush.
A dozen or so people were in attendance. At least two were among Bush's major national fundraisers. Virtually all had been on Bush's side in the bitter 2000 South Carolina primary that badly damaged McCain's chances of winning the presidential nomination and scarred the relationship between the two men and their rival political camps. McCain was there to woo them.
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