GLOBAL PARTNER

2007-10-01T00:59:00.001+08:00

OIC Condemns US Senate

Plan To Split Iraq

DUBAI, Sept 30 (Bernama) -- The Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) has strongly condemned the US Senate plan to split Iraq along ethnic and religious lines.

OIC secretary-general Prof Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu said such a move would only result in more disunity in Iraq and further exacerbation of social strife.

It could also create sectarian warfare among the people of the same nation, he said in a statement issued in Jeddah.

"What is needed now is not the division of the country but rather unity and a real national reconciliation," he said.

He stressed that no one has the right to decide the destiny of a country except the citizens themselves.

"And Iraq's destiny is an inalienable right of the Iraqi people exclusively and cannot be delegated to any party whatsoever," Ihsanoglu said.

He described the US Senate proposal as "full of imperfections and dangers that will intensify instability in the Middle East and the entire world."

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have also criticised the US Senate's non-binding resolution to divide Iraq on ethnic and religious lines, saying the move would complicate matters further in the war-torn country.

"The Bosnia-style plan, touted as a way out of the sectarian strife, which has risen steadily since the 2003 US-led invasion, would add new complications to the already difficult situation in Iraq," Arab News reported GCC secretary-general Abdul Rahman Al-Attiyah as saying in a statement.

Instead of calling for a division, the causes that led to the current situation should be addressed, he said.

"These include (US-led) occupation, sectarian and ethnic quota system, absence of law and security and paralysed administration," the GCC head said.

Besides Saudi Arabia, the GCC comprises Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

-- BERNAMA
http://www.bernama.com/

2007-09-28T16:32:00.000+08:00

Bush At The UN: A War Criminal
Lectures The World On “Human Rights”

By Bill Van Auken

George W. Bush delivered his next to the last annual address to the United Nations General Assembly Tuesday. Taking the same podium that he used five years ago to condemn the world body to “irrelevance” if it failed to rubber stamp his plans for a war of aggression against Iraq, Bush cast his regime in Washington as the world’s greatest champion of human rights and its most generous and selfless benefactor.

That the assembled UN delegates could sit through and then politely applaud such a hypocritical harangue from a man who is without rival as the world’s greatest war criminal is testimony to the spinelessness and complicity of both the world’s governments and the United Nations itself.

While Bush made only the barest mention of either Iran or Iraq in his address, everyone in the hall was well aware that he is attempting once again to utilize the world body—much as his administration did five years ago in relation to purported Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction”—to secure a phony pretext for another war of aggression, this time against Iran.

No doubt Bush’s handlers in Washington recognized that to deliver a belligerent speech demanding action by the UN against Iran would only recall the lies and intimidation used by the US administration in 2002-2003 to prepare its war against Iraq.

Since then, an estimated 1 million Iraqis have been killed and nearly 4 million more turned into refugees as a result of the unprovoked US invasion with its “shock and awe” bombardments and the subsequent occupation that has destroyed every aspect of Iraqi society.

So instead, Bush came before the assembled delegates in the most improbable guise, as the apostle of liberty, equality and the rights of man.

He began his speech by hailing the founding document of the UN drafted more than six decades ago, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, asserting that this formal declaration in support of freedom, justice and peace “must guide our work in this world.”

“When innocent people are trapped in a life of murder and fear, the Declaration is not being upheld,” he declared. Who does the American president think he is kidding? Where on the face of the planet are more men, women and children “trapped in a life of murder and fear” than in US-occupied Iraq? The death toll for Iraqis has been estimated as high as 1,000 a week due to US military operations, the murderous rampage of mercenaries who kill with impunity and the sectarian violence unleashed by the country’s devastation at the hands of Washington.

Bush declared that the UN must work “to free people from tyranny and violence, hunger and disease, illiteracy and ignorance, and poverty and despair,” adding that “every member of the United Nations must join in this mission of liberation.”

In the Orwellian language favored by the right-wing ideologues in the Bush administration, “liberation” is continuously invoked as the description for the war to impose semi-colonial domination by the US over Iraq and its oil wealth. And it is this “mission” undertaken by means of an eruption of American militarism that Bush demands the world body sanction and support.

Bush continued by invoking the first article of the Universal Declaration, which affirms that “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” The greatest threat to this principle, he claimed, comes from “terrorists and extremists.” Therefore, he argued, “all civilized nations” must join the US in its global war on terrorism.

Bush then moved on to other subjects, a wise move, given that a more detailed citation of the Universal Declaration would have sounded like a war crimes indictment against his own administration.

It includes, for example, the injunction that “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment,” a principle that the Bush White House has explicitly repudiated, both by renouncing the Geneva Conventions and subjecting those detained in the US “war on terror” to waterboarding, beatings, sensory deprivation, sexual humiliation and other forms of torture and degrading treatment.

The declaration affirms that “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile,” practices that the Bush administration has carried out with impunity, through the holding of detainees without charges, not only at the infamous detention facilities in Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib, but also at secret CIA prisons around the world. It has introduced “extraordinary rendition” into the lexicon of foreign policy, a discreet term for kidnapping people, drugging them and then sending them in hoods and chains to other countries so that they can be tortured.

And there is also the clause of the declaration asserting that “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence.” This is a principle that the administration has explicitly violated in relation to the American people, not to mention the rest of the world, through the massive illegal domestic spying operation organized through the National Security Agency.

Given his administration’s infamous reputation, the world’s horror over the unfolding debacle in Iraq and the mounting fears that an even worse catastrophe is about to be unleashed in Iran, it appeared that those who drafted Bush’s speech thought it was a good time to change the subject.

Thus, a major thrust of his remarks—and the issue that garnered by far the greatest press coverage—was the American president’s announcement that he is ordering a tightening of economic sanctions against Myanmar (Burma).

He declared: “Americans are outraged by the situation in Burma, where a military junta has imposed a 19-year reign of fear.” While no doubt the corrupt military regime that rules the country has carried out brutal repression against its people, the claim that “Americans are outraged” by these practices is belied by the fact that given the virtual failure of either the administration or the mass media to pay any attention to the developments there, most Americans know nothing about them.

Bush’s new measures were hardly sweeping, amounting to further restrictions on visas for Myanmar officials and their families and financial sanctions against the ruling junta and its backers.

The pretense that the Bush administration’s concerns lie with the aspirations of the people of Myanmar, who have taken to the streets in recent days in mass demonstrations, is farcical. The US government has supported and directly installed countless military dictatorships from Indonesia to Chile, helping them to carry out far worse atrocities than the Burmese junta in suppressing their own people.

Rather, under mantle of “liberation” and “democracy,” US imperialism is once again pursuing its own strategic interests, attempting to bring to power a pro-American government that would open up the country to exploitation by US capital. Given the Myanmar government’s close economic and political relations with neighboring China, such an exercise in regime change would significantly advance Washington’s attempts to challenge Beijing for supremacy in the region, while steadily working to militarily encircle China.

Also invoked as targets for the American-led “mission of liberation” were the governments of Iran, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Belarus, North Korea and Syria, all of which Washington has presumably found guilty and sentenced to be overthrown.

Continuing with his invocation of the Universal Declaration, Bush cited a passage affirming that “everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food and clothing and housing and medical care.”

He used this clause to engage in a round of shameless and deceptive self-congratulation, proclaiming US benevolence in the distribution of food internationally and, in particular, in assistance to the campaign to combat AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa.

The reality, as the news agency Reuters reported earlier this month, is that “food donations to the world’s hungry have fallen to their lowest level since 1973.” The impending crisis, which threatens starvation for sections of the world’s 850 million people facing hunger, is driven by the capitalist market. Food prices have soared, in no small part due to the drive by the US to promote the production of corn-based ethanol as an alternative to gasoline.

As for AIDS funding, Bush’s presentation of Washington’s role obscures the fact that the US ranks fifth among donor nations relative to the size of their national economies. Inadequate funding for the programs—as well as restrictions imposed on the use of US aid crafted to please the Christian right—means that millions of Africans will be denied any treatment.

Meanwhile, US aid as a whole amounts to a paltry sum compared to the vast wealth that Wall Street appropriates from the rest of the world and is utilized largely as a weapon to facilitate this global looting process. In 1970, international donor nations signed an agreement that they would assign 0.7 percent of their national incomes to foreign aid. While no country has come close to donating this amount, in the US last year aid amounted to just 0.17 percent of gross national income.

Finally, Bush warmed up to his subject, citing the Universal Declaration’s assertion of the “right to work” and to “just and favorable conditions of work” as an argument for free-market capitalism and the tearing down of all barriers to the exploitation of the world’s economy by the transnational banks and corporations.

Bush closed his remarks with a demand that the UN reform itself, again invoking “the American people” and their supposed disappointment with the functioning of the world body’s Human Rights Council. In essence, Bush demanded that the council focus on denouncing Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea and Iran and halt its criticism of Israel for killing civilians in Lebanon and suppressing the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

Behind Bush’s criticism is the embarrassing reality that Washington has chosen for the last two years not to seek a seat on the Human Rights Council for fear that it would fail to get the necessary votes.

The successive revelations over Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo, extraordinary renditions and CIA torture—not to mention the continued use of the death penalty at home—makes the US the most fitting target for human rights charges. Yet it presumes to dictate to the world which countries should be investigated and which should not. Naturally those where Washington is seeking regime change—such as Iran, Cuba and Venezuela—are vilified, while those despotic regimes considered strategic allies of the US—Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel, Washington’s chief ally in suppressing the Arab masses—are declared above suspicion.

Bush’s appearance before the UN General Assembly was an entirely predictable exercise in imperialist arrogance, rank hypocrisy and double-talk in service of American big business. In the final analysis, his speech was probably more significant for what it omitted than for the American president’s absurd posturing as a crusader for human rights and universal liberation. Behind the virtual silence on Iraq and Iran, new and more terrible crimes are being prepared.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/sep2007/bush-s26.shtml

2007-09-09T13:42:00.000+08:00

Nippon Oil To Buy Iran Oil In Yen

Japanese firm Nippon Oil is to start paying for Iranian oil in yen, rather than in US dollars.

The first payments to be made in the new currency for crude oil contracts will take place in October 2007.

Iran has been increasingly selling oil in currencies other than the US dollar, which has fallen in value.

Iran, the fourth-biggest oil exporter, has made the shift in the light of political differences with the US over its nuclear programme.

While Iran says the project is for civilian purposes only, the US argues it is to develop nuclear weapons.

Last year, Iran inserted a clause into oil contracts enabling it to require payment in currency other than the US dollar.

Iran and other countries that rely heavily on oil exports have been hard hit by the decline in the dollar's value.

The move is not intended to change the original value of the oil contracts being traded. - BBC

2007-08-30T00:01:00.000+08:00

Australian Troops Carry Out
Provocations Against East Timor’s Fretilin

Richard Phillips
27 August 2007

Australian troops occupying East Timor vandalised and stole Fretilin flags from two villages in the country’s eastern districts of Baucau and Viqueque last week. The arrogant and crude provocation is part of the Australian government’s ongoing attempts to intimidate opponents of the recent appointment of Xanana Gusmao as East Timorese prime minister.

According to eyewitnesses, soldiers travelling in two Australian military vehicles on August 18 pulled down flags outside Walili, wiped their backsides with them and then drove off with the torn material. At Alala, in the Viqueque district, troops tried to pull a Fretilin flag away from its rope, dragged it onto the road and then drove over it.

Fretilin supporters were flying the flags in protest against the new government, which was appointed on August 6 by East Timorese President Jose Ramos-Horta after obvious prompting from Canberra. Gusmao heads an anti-Fretilin coalition government, despite the fact that Fretilin won 29 percent of the popular vote in the June 30 election and is the largest party bloc in the 65-member parliament.

The flag desecrations were immediately condemned by Fretilin vice president Arsenio Bano and Fretilin president and former prime minister Mari Alkatiri.

Bano correctly noted that the actions were not just carried out by “misguided individual soldiers” but were “another demonstration of the partisan nature of the Howard government’s military intervention in East Timor.” It reflected, he continued, the “cultural insensitivity and arrogance that typifies Australian military operations in the Pacific region.”

Alkatiri said that the Australian troops had been intimidating Fretilin supporters for an extended period. “They [Australian troops] came here to help us solve our problems but they came to give their backing to one side and fight against the other. They had better return home because they are not neutral,” he said.

Alkatiri’s claim that the Australian troops had come “to help us solve our problems” is patently false. The Fretilin leader himself was forced to resign as prime minister last year after a dirty tricks campaign orchestrated by Canberra and the Australian media. During his last visit to East Timor in July, Prime Minister John Howard arrogantly declared that Australian troops would remain in the country until there was “stability”.

From the outset, Australia’s intervention in the poverty stricken country has been a neo-colonial operation aimed at securing the largest share of the oil and gas resources in the Timor Gap, while preventing other regional powers from exercising influence.

Alkatiri’s tentative suggestion that the military should “return home”—the first time a Fretilin leader has publicly called for the withdrawal of Australian troops—is a pale reflection of the popular opposition to the open-ended Australian occupation.

Growing numbers of East Timorese people are hostile to Canberra’s meddling and its increasingly aggressive ultimatums. The protests that erupted following the appointment of Gusmao as prime minister were another indication of the extent of the anger, which Fretilin has attempted to both contain and use for its own immediate political ends.

When Ramos-Horta announced his appointment of Gusmao to head the government, Fretilin declared the new regime unconstitutional, threatened legal action and called for a parliamentary boycott by its MPs. Alkatiri suggested that “people power” might force Fretilin’s inclusion in a new “grand coalition”. But when the demonstrations condemning Gusmao and Ramos-Horta as Canberra’s puppets threatened to escalate out of control, the party leadership quickly moved to dissipate the widespread opposition.

After three days of protests and riots, in which scores of people were arrested, and refugee camps in Dili surrounded by Australian troops to prevent the residents from demonstrating, Alkatiri met with Ramos-Horta and Gusmao and pledged to calm the situation. Before the meeting, Ramos-Horta threatened to sack any civil servant who joined anti-government protests.

A week later, the Fretilin leadership dropped its threatened legal action against the government. The party’s leading personnel visited villages, telling local leaders that they would be held responsible for any violence. On August 13, Aniceto Lopes, leader of Fretilin’s parliamentary group, issued a statement appealing to party members and supporters to “guarantee stability” in the country and announced that MPs were ending their boycott.

As UN spokesperson Allison Cooper told SBS News: “We are very, very relieved and we welcome Fretilin’s decision to return into the parliament. They have a very valid and important role as the opposition and the opposition’s role in formulating policies and laws that will guide this country over the next five years...”

In other words, the Fretilin leadership is being relied upon to accept the anti-democratic appointment of an Australian-backed puppet regime, become its “loyal” parliamentary opposition, and collaborate with it in the continuing exploitation of the people and resources of East Timor.

Meanwhile, the Howard government’s provocations against Fretilin are continuing unabated.

In the eastern districts, Australian troops have reportedly been canvassing villages, telling residents they should stop supporting Fretilin and back the new government. Fernando Soares, a 35-year-old farmer and a well-known Fretilin member in Bucoli, said that at 8 p.m. on August 16, two days before the flag provocation, a group of Australian soldiers accompanied by a Timorese interpreter, came to his home and demanded to know whether he supported Fretilin or the Gusmao government.

When Soares said he supported Fretilin, he was told that he should back the new government and “influence” youth in his area to do the same. Other villagers have reported similar demands by Australian troop patrols over the past year. Fretilin’s response to this bullying has been to call for a Fretilin and United Nations Integrated Mission in Timor (UNMIT) investigation into Australian Defence Force operations.

Notwithstanding their differences with Gusmao and Ramos-Horta, the Fretilin leadership has no program to alleviate the mass poverty that afflicts the East Timorese people. Fretilin’s manoeuvres are directed toward demonstrating that it is the most effective political instrument for containing the East Timorese masses while appealing to one or another major power in Europe or Asia to counteract Australian domination.

http://wsws.org/articles/2007/aug2007/etim-a27.shtml

2007-08-29T00:48:00.000+08:00

US Occupation Fuels Ethnic Cleansing
And Mass Repression In Iraq

By Patrick Martin
27 August 2007

Several reports on conditions in Iraq released last week confirm that the US troop surge in 2007 has accelerated the division of the Iraqi population along ethno-religious lines and dramatically increased the number of Iraqis held in barbaric conditions of imprisonment.

The Iraqi Red Crescent Organization reported that the number of internally displaced Iraqis has more than doubled, from 499,000 to 1.1 million, since the latest US troop buildup began in February. According to the New York Times, “the scale of this migration has put so much strain on Iraqi governmental and relief offices that some provinces have refused to register any more displaced people, or will accept only those whose families are originally from the area.”

The vast majority of the displaced are Sunnis driven out of Shiite-dominated areas or Shiites driven out of Sunni-dominated areas: victims of ethnic cleansing carried out on the basis of religious sect.

According to a summary of the Red Crescent data in the Times, “The effect of this vast migration is to drain religiously mixed areas in the center of Iraq, sending Shiite refugees toward the overwhelmingly Shiite areas to the south and Sunnis toward majority Sunni regions to the west and north.”

The International Organization for Migration, an agency of the United Nations, found that the rate of displacement from Baghdad, the main target of stepped-up US military violence, has increased by a factor of 20, a rise so staggering that it seems the outcome of a deliberate US military policy of partitioning the Iraqi capital city. While Baghdad was once believed to have been divided roughly 60-40, with Sunnis in the majority, the current sectarian breakdown could be as much as 80-20 Shiite.

Violence, overwhelmingly along sectarian lines, was the leading cause of forced migration. The UN agency reported that, among Iraqi internal migrants who responded to a survey, 63 percent said they had fled neighborhoods because of direct threats to their lives. More than 25 percent said they had been forcibly expelled from their homes.

The third report came from the US military’s Task Force 134, which runs US detention operations in Iraq. It reported that since February the number of prisoners held by US and other foreign military forces has risen by 50 percent, from 16,000 in February to 24,500 now. Some 85 percent of those detained are Sunni Arabs, with the remainder mainly Shiites. Contrary to Bush administration propaganda, which portrays the armed resistance to US occupation as largely the work of foreign terrorists, only 280 of those detained are from outside Iraq, many of them citizens of states allied to the US, like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

Both the Red Crescent and the UN migration office suggested that the increased tempo of US military operations was directly correlated with the rapid growth in forced migration. According to Dr. Said Hakki, director of the Iraqi Red Crescent Organization, 100,000 people a month have been fleeing their homes since the US “surge” began.

The US troop surge, in point of fact, has generated more internal flight and population shift than the explosion of Sunni-Shiite violence after the bombing of the Shiite mosque of the golden dome in Samarra in February 2006, an event frequently (but falsely) cited by the Bush administration as the starting point of sectarian violence.

The internal population movement after the US escalation that began in February is greater than any in Iraq’s previous three decades of bloody conflict: the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, the Kurdish uprising of 1987-88, the first Gulf War in 1990-91, the failed Kurdish and Shiite uprisings of 1991, and the US invasion and conquest in 2003.

The Times noted, “The demographic shifts could favor those who would like to see Iraq partitioned into three semi-autonomous regions: a Shiite south and a Kurdish north sandwiching a Sunni territory.” The US newspaper delicately avoided identifying those who support partition, but it includes not only Shiite and Kurdish sectarian leaders, but much of the US political and military establishment, including leading figures in both the Democratic and Republican parties.

Such a policy of forced population transfer along sectarian and ethnic lines, using violence and intimidation to stampede those unwilling to move, is a war crime under the principles laid down at the Nuremberg Trials after World War II. Charges of ethnic cleansing could be brought against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice and the rest of the leadership of the Bush administration, as well as their accomplices in Congress and the officer corps following its orders.

One leading Democrat, Senator Joseph Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has gone so far as to make the demand for partition of Iraq—i.e., advocacy of a war crime—a major element of his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

The longer the US occupation continues, the bloodier the crimes will become. The intensifying crisis of the stooge government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has recently led a number of US officials, military and civilian, to call on the Bush administration to drop its pretense of establishing “democracy” in Iraq and establish an open military dictatorship that will take even more brutal measures against the Iraqi population.

Brig. Gen. John Bednarek, one of the commanders of the Task Force Lightning offensive in Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, told CNN Wednesday, “Democratic institutions are not necessarily the way ahead in the long-term future” of Iraq. The network cited this comment on its website, saying that “exasperated front-line U.S. generals talk openly of non-democratic governmental alternatives ...”

Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, commander of Task Force Lighting, said his goal was “an effective and functioning government that is really a partner with the United States and the rest of the world in this fight against the terrorists.” His soldiers were fighting for security, not democracy, he told CNN, “stating that democracy is merely an option that Iraqis are free to choose or reject.”

A leading House Republican, Congressman Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, echoed this sentiment Friday. In an appearance on local public television in Lansing, Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, declared, “The president has to be willing to say, ‘I’m going to take democracy off the table. We’re going to aim for safety and stability.’” Another Michigan Republican congressman, Mike Rogers, seconded Hoekstra’s sentiments, saying the US goal in Iraq should be “strategic victory” rather than democracy.

These developments underscore the falsity of the pro-war argument that is being increasingly raised by both the Bush administration and liberal apologists for the war—the claim that the United States must keep forces in Iraq, more or less indefinitely, to prevent a bloodbath among the civilian population.

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, for instance, who has postured as a born-again opponent of the war he voted to authorize in 2002, declared that “the US must retain sufficient forces in the region to prevent a genocide.” Similar arguments have been made across the spectrum of the corporate-controlled media, from the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal, as well as by the Bush White House.

The truth is that the bloodbath of civilians is taking place in Iraq right now, under the auspices of the US occupation. The longer the occupation continues, the greater the destruction of Iraqi society, and the greater the danger that the war will spread beyond the borders of Iraq to become a more general military conflagration.

The US invasion and conquest of Iraq is directly responsible for a death toll that will, long before Bush leaves office, exceed 1 million people. This war is one of the greatest crimes in history, and all those responsible for it must be held legally and criminally responsible.

http://wsws.org/articles/2007/aug2007/iraq-a27.shtml

2007-08-26T02:39:00.000+08:00

British Army Deploys New Weapon
Based On Mass-killing Technology

John Byrne

A new 'super-weapon' being supplied to British soldiers in Afghanistan employs technology based on the "thermobaric" principle which uses heat and pressure to kill people targeted across a wide air by sucking the air out of lungs and rupturing internal organs.

The so-called "enhanced blast" weapon uses similar technology used in the US "bunker busting" bombs and the devastating bombs dropped by the Russians to destroy the Chechen capital, Grozny.

Such weapons are brutally effective because they first disperse a gas or chemical agent which is lit at a second stage, allowing the blast to fill the spaces of a building or the crevices of a cave. When the US military deployed a version of these weapons in 2005, DefenseTech wrote an article titled, "Marines Quiet About Brutal New Weapon."

According to the US Defense Intelligence Agency, which released a study on thermobaric weapons in 1993, "The [blast] kill mechanism against living targets is unique--and unpleasant.... What kills is the pressure wave, and more importantly, the subsequent rarefaction [vacuum], which ruptures the lungs.… If the fuel deflagrates but does not detonate, victims will be severely burned and will probably also inhale the burning fuel. Since the most common FAE fuels, ethylene oxide and propylene oxide, are highly toxic, undetonated FAE should prove as lethal to personnel caught within the cloud as most chemical agents."

A second DIA study said, "shock and pressure waves cause minimal damage to brain tissue... it is possible that victims of FAEs are not rendered unconscious by the blast, but instead suffer for several seconds or minutes while they suffocate."

"The effect of an FAE explosion within confined spaces is immense," said a CIA study of the weapons. "Those near the ignition point are obliterated. Those at the fringe are likely to suffer many internal, and thus invisible injuries, including burst eardrums and crushed inner ear organs, severe concussions, ruptured lungs and internal organs, and possibly blindness."

British defense officials told the UK Guardian that British bombs were "different."

"They are optimized to create blast [rather than heat]", one said, speaking on the standard condition of anonymity in Britain. The official added that it would be misleading to call them "thermobaric."

Officials told the Guardian the new weapon was classified as a soldier launched "light anti-structure munition" and that the bombs would be more effective because "even when they hit the damage is limited to a confined area."

"The continuing issue of civilian casualties in Afghanistan has enormous importance in the battle for hearts and minds," said Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell in the article. "If these weapons contribute to the deaths of civilians then a primary purpose of the British deployment is going to be made yet more difficult."

According to Campbell, the deployment of the weapons was not announced to Parliament.

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/British_Army_deploys_new_weapon_based_0823.html
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=7056

2007-08-21T03:06:00.000+08:00

New Provocation Against Tehran
Bush To Brand

Iranian Force As “Terrorist”

Peter Symonds

In a move with ominous implications, the Bush administration, according to articles in yesterday’s New York Times and Washington Post, has resolved to brand the entire Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a “specially designated global terrorist” organization. In doing so, Bush will use powers provided under a presidential order signed shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The highly provocative step not only sets the stage for intensified economic pressure on Tehran, but also formalises a potential casus belli for US military action against Iran.

The decision to unilaterally criminalise a major branch of the military of a sovereign nation is unprecedented. The IRGC, which was formed after the 1979 Iranian revolution, has an estimated 125,000 soldiers and other personnel in its land, sea and air forces.

The designation will place the IRGC in the same category as Al Qaeda, Lebanon’s Shiite militia Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups, all of which have been attacked either by the US military or its Israeli allies, and their members detained and tortured as “terrorist” suspects.

The pretext for the move is the unsubstantiated US claim that the IRGC is “interfering” in Iraq and Afghanistan and supporting “terrorist” groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas. Bush administration and Pentagon officials have been engaged in an escalating propaganda offensive in recent weeks claiming that the IRGC, in particular its elite Quds Force, has been arming, training and directing Shiite militias engaged in attacking US troops in Iraq. Washington further alleges that the IRGC has been assisting the Taliban and other anti-occupation forces in Afghanistan.

Even if one were to accept these allegations at face value, it is the height of hypocrisy for the gangsters of the Bush administration to brand a section of Tehran’s military as terrorist and proscribe it for “meddling” in Iraq and Afghanistan, two countries on its border that are occupied by US-led forces. The US military has killed thousands of Afghanis and reduced Iraq to ruins over the past five years. American occupation forces have slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, forced millions to flee the country and devastated the physical and social infrastructure. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been rounded up, detained indefinitely without charge and tortured.

No one deserves the designation of “terrorist” more than the Bush administration, which has utilised its vast military superiority to terrorise the Afghan and Iraqi peoples in an effort to stamp out the legitimate opposition to neo-colonial occupation.

The US propaganda against Iran bears an eerie resemblance to the lies used to justify the illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq. It is a concoction of bald assertions, half-truths and outright falsehoods, all riddled with unexplained contradictions. No evidence has been provided to rebut Iran’s repeated denial of any involvement in supporting Shiite militias in Iraq. No attempt is made to explain why Iran would be arming the Taliban and other Sunni extremists, who regard all Shiites, and the Tehran regime in particular, as heretics to be wiped out.

Iran may very well be providing aid to anti-US Shiite forces in Iraq, but the Bush administration’s suggestions that Tehran is the mastermind behind the Iraqi resistance and is using it to wage a proxy war against America are patently absurd, as are the entirely contradictory claims that the Sunni extremist Al Qaeda is the main source of attacks on US occupation forces and their Iraqi allies. According to the twisted logic of American imperialism, any Iraqis who oppose US domination of their country are, by definition, “anti-Iraqi” agents of external terrorist forces.

While Iranian intelligence agents are undoubtedly active in Iraq, so too are Saudi, Jordanian and other intelligence agencies. Saudi citizens, not Iranians, account for the majority of suicide bombings in Iraq. And while demanding ever tougher sanctions against Iran over its alleged nuclear weapons program, the Bush administration has just concluded multi-billion dollar arms deals with Saudi Arabia, Israel and other Middle Eastern allies that can only trigger an arms race in the volatile region.

The immediate effect of branding the IRGC as “specially designated global terrorist” organisation is economic. Any organisation or individual knowingly providing material support to the IRGC would be subject to criminal charges. Any US bank that uncovered IRGC resources would be compelled to hand them over to the Treasury Department.

The main impact would not be inside the US, which has maintained an economic blockade of Iran since 1981 and designated the regime as a state sponsor of terrorism in 1984, but against foreign corporations with any relations with the IRGC’s extensive business interests.

According to the Washington Post, the Bush administration is considering unveiling the measure at next month’s session of the UN General Assembly. The timing is calculated to maximise pressure on Russia, China and the European powers to agree to US demands for tough new economic sanctions against Iran.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had already reportedly told European countries that the unilateral measure was necessary due to the delay in a new UN resolution—the result of Chinese and Russian opposition. “Anyone doing business with these people will have to reevaluate their actions immediately,” one US official told the Washington Post. “It removes the excuses for doing business with these people.”

Military confrontation

The purpose of the US move, however, goes far beyond economically penalising Iran and America’s European and Asian rivals, which have huge economic interests at stake. A mad logic is propelling the Bush administration towards a military confrontation with Iran despite the quagmires in which the US military is bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan. Having set out through its previous invasions to establish its untrammelled domination over the Middle East and its energy resources, the Bush administration now finds that it has only strengthened Iranian influence in the region by removing two of Tehran’s chief rivals—Saddam Hussein in Baghdad and the Taliban in Kabul.

The IRGC’s “terrorist” designation is one more sign that the internal debate in the White House is shifting in favour of a military adventure against Iran despite its potentially disastrous consequences for US imperialism. Over the past year, Rice’s diplomatic efforts to pressure Iran to bow to US demands have appeared to predominate. But, as the New York Times noted, “in recent months, there has been resurgent debate within the administration about whether the diplomatic path is working, with aides to Vice President Dick Cheney said to be pushing for greater consideration of military operations.”

An article syndicated last week in McClatchy Newspapers reported: “Vice President Dick Cheney several weeks ago proposed launching air strikes at suspected training camps in Iraq run by the Quds force, a special unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to two US officials who are involved in Iran policy.” It added: “Cheney, who’s long been skeptical of diplomacy with Iran, argued for military action if hard new evidence emerges of Iran’s complicity in supporting anti-American forces in Iraq: for example, catching a truckload of fighters or weapons crossing into Iraq from Iran, one official said.”

At his press conference last Thursday, President Bush bluntly threatened Iran, declaring: “When we catch you playing a non-constructive role, there will be a price to pay.” He also made clear that recent meetings in Baghdad between US and Iranian ambassadors did not involve negotiations, but were to present US ultimatums to Tehran. “One of the main reasons that I asked Ambassador Crocker to meet with Iranians inside Iraq was to send the message that there will be consequences for... people transporting, delivering EFPs [roadside bombs]... that kill Americans in Iraq,” he said.

Bush publicly contradicted Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who was visiting Tehran at the time and described Iran’s role in the region as constructive. “Now, if the signal is that Iran is constructive, I will have to have a heart-to-heart with my friend the prime minister, because I don’t believe they are constructive,” he said.

Maliki, whose government is dominated by Shiite parties with longstanding ties to Iran, may well be one of the first casualties of Washington’s sharpening conflict with Tehran. His cabinet has suffered a series of damaging defections in recent months and, amid rumours of a no-confidence motion when parliament resumes next month, Bush has been less than fulsome in publicly supporting his “friend.”

Cheney’s reported call for strikes on IRGC bases inside Iran in the event of the discovery of “a truckload of fighters or weapons” crossing into Iraq recalls comments earlier this year by former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, in which he mooted “a plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran.” In the midst of a scathing denunciation of Bush’s “war on terror” and its deleterious impact on US interests, Brzezinski suggested the following scenario: “Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks, followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure, then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the US blamed on Iran, culminating in a ‘defensive’ US military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

Brzezinski, a man with contacts at the highest levels of the US state apparatus and his own experiences in organising provocations, knows whereof he speaks. It is not difficult to imagine any number of incidents—from the Iranian capture of US sailors to a devastating attack on a US military base—that could be exploited by the Bush administration to whip up an atmosphere of hysteria and jingoism for the purpose of initiating plans that are already in place for a military attack on Iran. In fact, the declaration of the IRGC as a “terrorist” organization, along with the Bush administration’s increasingly inflammatory language, is calculated to incite sections of the Iranian regime to provide just such a pretext.

The Democrats, far from opposing a new war against Iran, have already indicated that they would rapidly fall into line and rubberstamp American aggression. None of the Democratic contenders for the presidency have ruled out the use of military force against Iran.

Significantly, Tom Lantos, Democratic chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Relations, yesterday immediately welcomed the Bush administration’s move against the IRGC as the means for keeping Iran and its agencies “from destabilising global security.” While cautiously declaring that “we are far from exhausting all the peaceful options,” he went on to repeat the Bush administration’s litany of accusations against the IRGC, from its alleged involvement in nuclear weapons development to its alleged role in training “terrorists” in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. In the event of a military confrontation, all of the verbal caveats would quickly be torn up—just like the promises to withdraw US troops from Iraq.

With just over a year to the presidential elections, the Bush administration is under few restraints in aggressively pursuing its agenda—including a military attack on Iran as a desperate gamble to fulfill US ambitions to become the predominant power in the resource-rich region. All the signs indicate that it is not so much a question of if, but when US imperialism launches its next criminal war—this time against Iran.

See Also:

US military launches offensive against "Iranian-backed" militia in Iraq[16 August 2007]

US generals insist on no troop withdrawal from Iraq[9 August 2007]

Adding fuel to the Mideast fire: US unveils huge arms package[1 August 2007]

US Senate unanimously passes threatening measure against Iran[14 July 2007]

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/aug2007/iran-a16.shtml

2007-08-12T12:51:00.000+08:00

Cheney Urging Strikes On Iran

Warren P. Strobel, John Walcott and Nancy A. Youssef
McClatchy Newspapers
August 9, 2007

President Bush charged Thursday that Iran continues to arm and train insurgents who are killing U.S. soldiers in Iraq, and he threatened action if that continues.

At a news conference Thursday, Bush said Iran had been warned of unspecified consequences if it continued its alleged support for anti-American forces in Iraq. U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker had conveyed the warning in meetings with his Iranian counterpart in Baghdad, the president said.

Bush wasn't specific, and a State Department official refused to elaborate on the warning.

Behind the scenes, however, the president's top aides have been engaged in an intensive internal debate over how to respond to Iran's support for Shiite Muslim groups in Iraq and its nuclear program. Vice President Dick Cheney several weeks ago proposed launching airstrikes at suspected training camps in Iran run by the Quds force, a special unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to two U.S. officials who are involved in Iran policy.

The debate has been accompanied by a growing drumbeat of allegations about Iranian meddling in Iraq from U.S. military officers, administration officials and administration allies outside government and in the news media. It isn't clear whether the media campaign is intended to build support for limited military action against Iran, to pressure the Iranians to curb their support for Shiite groups in Iraq or both.

Nor is it clear from the evidence the administration has presented whether Iran, which has long-standing ties to several Iraqi Shiite groups, including the Mahdi Army of radical cleric Muqtada al Sadr and the Badr Organization, which is allied with the U.S.-backed government of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, is a major cause of the anti-American and sectarian violence in Iraq or merely one of many. At other times, administration officials have blamed the Sunni Muslim group al Qaida in Iraq for much of the violence.

For now, however, the president appears to have settled on a policy of stepped-up military operations in Iraq aimed at the suspected Iranian networks there, combined with direct American-Iranian talks in Baghdad to try to persuade Tehran to halt its alleged meddling.

The U.S. military launched one such raid Wednesday in Baghdad's predominantly Shiite Sadr City district.

But so far that course has failed to halt what American military officials say is a flow of sophisticated roadside bombs, known as explosively formed penetrators, into Iraq. Last month they accounted for a third of the combat deaths among U.S.-led forces, according to the military.

Cheney, who's long been skeptical of diplomacy with Iran, argued for military action if hard new evidence emerges of Iran's complicity in supporting anti-American forces in Iraq; for example, catching a truckload of fighters or weapons crossing into Iraq from Iran, one official said.

The two officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to talk publicly about internal government deliberations.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice opposes this idea, the officials said. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has stated publicly that "we think we can handle this inside the borders of Iraq."

Lea Anne McBride, a Cheney spokeswoman, said only that "the vice president is right where the president is" on Iran policy.

Bush left no doubt at his news conference that he intended to get tough with Iran.
"One of the main reasons that I asked Ambassador Crocker to meet with Iranians inside Iraq was to send the message that there will be consequences for . . . people transporting, delivering EFPs, highly sophisticated IEDs (improvised explosive devices), that kill Americans in Iraq," he said.

He also appeared to call on the Iranian people to change their government.

"My message to the Iranian people is, you can do better than this current government," he said. "You don't have to be isolated. You don't have to be in a position where you can't realize your full economic potential."

The Bush administration has launched what appears to be a coordinated campaign to pin more of Iraq's security troubles on Iran.

Last week, Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the No. 2 U.S. military commander in Iraq, said Shiite militiamen had launched 73 percent of the attacks that had killed or wounded American troops in July. U.S. officials think that majority Shiite Iran is providing militiamen with EFPs, which pierce armored vehicles and explode once inside.

Last month, Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner, a multinational force spokesman, said members of the Quds force had helped plan a January attack in the holy Shiite city of Karbala, which lead to the deaths of five American soldiers. Bergner said the military had evidence that some of the attackers had trained at Quds camps near Tehran.

Bush's efforts to pressure Iran are complicated by the fact that the leaders of U.S.-supported governments in Iraq and Afghanistan have a more nuanced view of their neighbor.

Maliki is on a three-day visit to Tehran, during which he was photographed Wednesday hand in hand with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Unconfirmed media reports said Maliki had told Iranian officials they'd played a constructive role in the region.

Asked about that, Bush said he hadn't been briefed on the meeting. "Now if the signal is that Iran is constructive, I will have to have a heart-to-heart with my friend the prime minister, because I don't believe they are constructive. I don't think he in his heart of hearts thinks they're constructive either," he said.

Bush and Afghan President Hamid Karzai differed on Iran's role when they met last weekend, with Karzai saying in a TV interview that Iran was "a helper" and Bush challenging that view.

The toughening U.S. position on Iran puts Karzai and Iraqi leaders such as Maliki in a difficult spot between Iran, their longtime ally, and the United States, which is spending lives and treasure to secure their newly formed government.

A senior Iraqi official in Baghdad said the Iraqi government received regular intelligence briefings from the United States about suspected Iranian activities. He refused to discuss details, but said the American position worried him.

The United States is "becoming more focused on Iranian influence inside Iraq," said the official, who requested anonymity to discuss private talks with the Americans. "And we don't want Iraq to become a zone of conflict between Iran and the U.S."

Proposals to use force against Iran over its actions in Iraq mark a new phase in the Bush administration's long internal war over Iran policy.

Until now, some hawks within the administration — including Cheney — are said to have favored military strikes to stop Iran from furthering its suspected ambitions for nuclear weapons.

Rice has championed a diplomatic strategy, but that, too, has failed to deter Iran so far.

Patrick Clawson, an Iran specialist at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said a strike on the Quds camps in Iran could make the nuclear diplomacy more difficult.

Before launching such a strike, "We better be prepared to go public with very detailed and very convincing intelligence," Clawson said.

www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/18834.html

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=6997

2007-08-10T12:55:00.000+08:00

Red Cross Confirms
Bush Administration And CIA
Used Torture In Interrogations

By Patrick Martin

A confidential report by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) suggests that Bush administration officials may have committed war crimes in the operation of CIA “secret prisons” overseas, according to a lengthy analysis published on the web site of the New Yorker magazine Sunday.

The Red Cross report concluded that the methods used in the CIA interrogation of alleged 9/11 terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other Al Qaeda prisoners were “tantamount to torture” and that Bush administration officials had likely committed “grave breaches” of the Geneva Conventions.

The article by Jane Mayer, entitled “The Black Sites,” is the product of a series of interviews with former CIA officers involved in operating the agency’s secret prisons overseas, agents who directly participated in torture sessions and apparently concluded that the methods they were employing were either immoral or counterproductive, or both.

The New Yorker has become one of the principal conduits for dissent within the military/intelligence apparatus directed against the policies of the Bush White House. Mayer’s colleague, Seymour Hersh, wrote the first extensive report on the abuse of prisoners at the US military prison at Abu Ghraib, near Baghdad, as well as a series of exposés about US preparations for a military strike against Iran.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was captured by Pakistani authorities in early 2003, just before the US invasion of Iraq, and held at secret CIA locations for nearly four years before his transfer to Guantánamo Bay. Last March, the Pentagon made public his “confession” to carrying out or planning no less than 31 separate terrorist atrocities, a statement widely hailed in official circles as proof that torture—or, in Washington-speak, “enhanced interrogation techniques”—was an effective and legitimate practice in the “war on terror.”

At the time, the World Socialist Web Site noted the dubious character of Mohammed’s self-incriminating statements, in which he claimed responsibility for an improbable number of spectacular plots, including purported plans to destroy the Sears Tower, the Empire State Building and London’s Big Ben, and to assassinate former US President Jimmy Carter and Pope John Paul II. (See: “Washington exploits Guantánamo ‘confession’ to justify its crimes”)

No politically literate observer doubted that Mohammed had been severely tortured, and many said so, among them journalist Nat Hentoff (“Was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed tortured?”) and Professor Anthony D’Amato of Northwestern University School of Law (“True Confessions: The Amazing Tale of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed”), who compared the 26-page “confession” to the self-indictments by prisoners in the Stalinist purge trials of the 1930s. Mayer’s article confirms, in fact, that the CIA actually employed torture techniques first developed by the Soviet KGB and copied by US intelligence agencies during the Cold War.

The International Committee of the Red Cross was given access to Mohammed late last year, after his transfer to Guantánamo Bay. The policy of the ICRC is to discuss its findings only with the government holding prisoners in custody, not with the press, in order to insure its continued access to prisoners. But, according to Mayer, the ICRC report on the 15 detainees held in the CIA’s secret prisons was circulated through the very highest levels of the White House, State Department and National Security Council, and to some congressmen on the House and Senate committees that oversee the intelligence agencies.

Mayer cited “congressional and other Washington sources familiar with the report,” writing that “one of the sources said that the Red Cross described the agency’s detention and interrogation methods as tantamount to torture, and declared that American officials responsible for the abusive treatment could have committed serious crimes. The source said the report warned that these officials may have committed ‘grave breaches’ of the Geneva Conventions, and may have violated the US Torture Act.” Mayer adds, “The conclusions of the Red Cross, which is known for its credibility and caution, could have potentially devastating legal ramifications.”

In other words, those US government officials who authorized and carried out the torture of CIA prisoners could face war crimes charges before either an American or international tribunal, as could those who subsequently became aware of what was taking place in the secret prisons and covered it up.

According to Mayer’s article, the CIA use of torture was not a “rogue” operation, but a massive bureaucratic enterprise involving systematic research and development to find the “best” methods for breaking down prisoners. CIA officials reviewed the techniques employed by the Phoenix Program during the Vietnam War as a model for the “war on terror.” The Phoenix Program involved the systematic assassination of an estimated 20,000 cadres, supporters and sympathizers of the National Liberation Front, as well as the widespread torture of prisoners.

The agency also sought interrogation advice from the secret police of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, all of which practice barbaric methods of torture against political prisoners. And one former military interrogator described the techniques of exerting total control over a prisoner’s environment as “the KGB model,” developed during the purges against political dissidents in the former Soviet Union, and subsequently mimicked by the CIA.

Among the techniques used on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed were prolonged sensory deprivation, continuous shackling while naked, use of a dog leash and female interrogators, forcible slamming into the walls of his cell, suspension from the ceiling of the interrogation room by his arms, and the now-notorious practice of waterboarding, the simulated drowning technique employed as torture since medieval times (when it became known as the “Chinese water torture.”)

One interrogation expert told Mayer, referring to the victims of the torture sessions: “People were utterly dehumanized. People fell apart. It was the intentional and systematic infliction of great suffering masquerading as a legal process. It is just chilling.”

The torture was so severe and systematic that it had a profound psychological effect on some of the torturers themselves, according to Mayer, who interviewed one of those who interrogated Mohammed. This interrogator described a fellow torturer who now “has horrible nightmares ... It really haunts him. You are inflicting something really evil and horrible on somebody.”

CIA officials repeatedly voiced concerns that the orders they were receiving from the White House, and particularly from Vice President Dick Cheney, might leave them vulnerable to criminal prosecution, particularly since they were instructed to keep prisoners like Mohammed alive and thereby preserve them as witnesses to their own abuse. As one official told Mayer, in a particularly chilling passage, “It would have been better if we had executed them.”

A former CIA official told Mayer that many agents had taken out liability insurance to help cover the anticipated legal bills when they face prosecution for prisoner abuse. There is a “high level of anxiety about political retribution,” he said, and “several guys expect to be thrown under the bus,” serving as fall guys for the decision-makers at the highest levels, including Bush, Cheney, former CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who, as White House counsel, supervised the process of giving a legal stamp of approval to torture.

Several leading congressional Democrats are well aware of the ICRC report, which was circulated to leaders of the Senate and House Intelligence committees, chaired by Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia and Congressman Sylvestre Reyes of Texas. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid were likely “in the loop” as well.

This fact underscores the complicity of the congressional Democratic leadership, who only two days ago pushed through legislation that greatly expanded the domestic spying powers of an administration which they knew had been branded by the International Committee of the Red Cross as a serial perpetrator of war crimes.

Despite the sensational character of Mayer’s revelations, there has been relatively little comment on the subject in the American media. The Washington Post, in an article Sunday previewing the New Yorker account, confirmed the existence of the Red Cross report and its circulation at the highest levels in the US capital.

It cited “sources familiar with the document” as confirming that the detainees interviewed by the ICRC gave similar accounts of their torture even though they were held in isolation from each other and could not coordinate their stories. This reinforces the credibility of their testimony—as does the exporting of these methods from the CIA secret prisons and the Guantánamo Bay concentration camp to the US military prison in Abu Ghraib, Iraq, where digital photographs made public in 2004 caused worldwide revulsion at US torture methods.

http://www.wsws.org./articles/2007/aug2007/tort-a07.shtml

2007-08-09T23:12:00.000+08:00

The West And Islam
Should Not Be Allowed
To Remain On The Warpath

KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 9 (Bernama) -- The West and Islam should not be allowed to remain on the warpath, with each side recycling old prejudices to denigrate the other, Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak said.

"We need to develop new contexts for understanding each other. We need to lay a new foundation for a better future," he said in the Seventh Tun Razak Lecture souvenir book.

The lecture, entitled "The West and Islam: Rethinking Orientalism and Occidentalism" was delivered by Prof Dr Carl W. Ernst, a specialist in Islamic studies with focus on West and South Asia.

Najib was represented by Higher Education Minister Datuk Mustapa Mohamed at the function. Present were Universiti Malaya Vice-Chancellor Datuk Rafiah Salim, President of Ohio University Dr Roderick McDavis and Najib's brother, Datuk Nizam.

"It is equally important that people should correct the many wrongs done in the name of democracy and globalisation which, to all intents and purposes, have become the roots of today's international terrorism.

"For example, the West, equipped with its financial wherewithal, should do more to bridge the economic gap between itself and the Islamic world.

"With many Muslim countries still mired in poverty, and therefore a good breeding ground for all kinds of extremism, this is one way of arresting its growth," Najib said.

He said the negativism associated with those who preferred to look at Muslims and their religion in the light of their past showdowns with Islam smacked of orientalism at its worst.

"Orientalism may look like a thing of the past, but in reality, there are many researchers and writers, notably in the academia, who still draw sustenance from the uneasy relationship between the West and Islam based on their antagonistic encounters in the past," he said.

He said the "traders of knowledge" simply placed Islam in the political straightjacket by portraying it as a religion of violence.

"Muslims not only stand to suffer, but the whole of the international community too has to bear the consequences of their actions."

Najib said the occidentalists should not willy-nilly arrogate to themselves the right of judgment, including by making sweeping generalisations and wholesale condemnation of other civilisations.

-- BERNAMA
http://www.bernama.com

2007-07-21T02:29:00.000+08:00

White House Preparing To Stage
New September 11 - Reagan Official

WASHINGTON, July 20 (RIA Novosti) - A former Reagan official has issued a public warning that the Bush administration is preparing to orchestrate a staged terrorist attack in the United States, transform the country into a dictatorship and launch a war with Iran within a year.

Paul Craig Roberts, a former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, blasted Thursday a new Executive Order, released July 17, allowing the White House to seize the assets of anyone who interferes with its Iraq policies and giving the government expanded police powers to exercise control in the country.

Roberts, who spoke on the Thom Hartmann radio program, said: "When Bush exercises this authority [under the new Executive Order], there's no check to it. So it really is a form of total, absolute, one-man rule."

"The American people don't really understand the danger that they face," Roberts said, adding that the so-called neoconservatives intended to use a renewal of the fight against terrorism to rally the American people around the fading Republican Party.

Old-line Republicans like Roberts have become increasingly disenchanted with the neoconservative politics of the Bush administration, which they see as a betrayal of fundamental conservative values.

According to a July 9-11 survey by Ipsos, an international public opinion research company, President Bush and the Republicans can claim a mere 31 percent approval rating for their handling of the Iraq war and 38 percent for their foreign policy in general, including terrorism.

"The administration figures themselves and prominent Republican propagandists ... are preparing us for another 9/11 event or series of events," he said. "You have to count on the fact that if al Qaeda is not going to do it, it is going to be orchestrated."

Roberts suggested that in the absence of a massive popular outcry, only the federal bureaucracy and perhaps the military could put constraints on Bush's current drive for a fully-fledged dictatorship.

"They may have had enough. They may not go along with it," he said.

The radio interview was a follow-up to Robert's latest column, in which he warned that "unless Congress immediately impeaches Bush and Cheney, a year from now the U.S. could be a dictatorial police state at war with Iran."

Roberts, who has been dubbed the "Father of Reaganomics" and has recently gained popularity for his strong opposition to the Bush administration and the Iraq War, regularly contributes articles to Creators Syndicate, an independent distributor of comic strips and syndicated columns for daily newspapers.

http://en.rian.ru/world/20070720/69340886.html

2007-07-15T01:29:00.000+08:00

New US Accusations Against Iran

By Joe Kay

A US military official leveled new accusations against Iran on Monday, asserting Iranian government involvement in a January, 2007 attack that killed five American soldiers in Iraq. The charges are the latest in a campaign to increase pressure on Iran, while laying out a rationale for possible future military action.

Brigadier General Kevin Bergner, the lead spokesman for US forces in Iraq, said that interrogations of prisoners in Iraq had provided evidence of Iranian involvement in a January raid in the city of Karbala. He accused Iran of using the Lebanese group Hezbollah as a “proxy” to help train Iraqis to attack US forces.

These allegations are based on statements Bergner said were made by Qais Khazali and Ali Musa Daqduq, both of whom were captured in Iraq by the US military in March.

Bergner said that Khazali has admitted to planning the Karbala attack, and that Daqduq admitted to being a member of Hezbollah. Bergner said that the two prisoners “state that senior leadership within the Quds force knew and supported planning for the eventual Karbala attack that killed five coalition soldiers.”

He added, “Our intelligence reveals that the senior leadership in Iran is aware of this activity.” When asked by a reporter, “Do you think it’s possible that [Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] doesn’t know?”, Bergner replied, “I think that would be hard to imagine.”

Bergner said that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Quds Force has “funded, trained and armed” Shiite groups operating in Iraq. “Quds Force, along with Hezbollah instructors, trained approximately 20 to 60 Iraqis at a time” at camps near Tehran, he said. “The Iranian Quds force is using Lebanese Hezbollah essentially as a proxy, as a surrogate in Iraq.”

The US has been escalating accusations against Iran for several months, but the statements by Bergner represent the first time that top Iranian leaders have been accused so directly of helping plan specific attacks on US forces. The statement also represents the first time that Hezbollah has been directly accused of involvement in Iraq. [www.wsws.org 3 July 2007]

To read the detailed article, please click:

http://www.wsws.org./articles/2007/jul2007/iran-j03.shtml

IAEA Chief Declares
Any Attack On Iran
“An Act Of Madness”

By Peter Symonds

The latest meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which ended on Thursday, has set the stage for a new round of punitive measures against Iran over its nuclear programs. Washington is pressing for a third round of UN Security Council sanctions, but the presence of two US aircraft battle groups in the Persian Gulf is a constant reminder that the Bush administration is keeping “all options on the table”.

In his concluding remarks, IAEA director general Mohammed ElBaradei ominously warned that the use of force against Iran would be “an act of madness ... [that] would not resolve the issue.” Having witnessed firsthand the Bush administration’s use of lies about WMDs to justify military aggression against Iraq, ElBaradei is well aware that US “diplomacy” is also providing the pretext for war against Iran.

ElBaradei bluntly told the BBC a fortnight ago: “I wake up every morning and see 100 Iraqi innocent civilians are dying. I have no brief other than to make sure we don’t go into another war or that we go crazy into killing each other. You do not want to give [an] additional argument to the new crazies who say ‘let’s go and bomb Iran.’” Asked who the “new crazies” were, the IAEA chief refused to be drawn, simply saying: “Those who have extreme views and say the only solution is to impose your will by force.”

It is not difficult to identify who ElBaradei is referring to: the dominant sections of the American establishment. While the Bush administration publicly maintains the fiction that it wants a “diplomatic solution”, Vice President Dick Cheney and his supporters barely disguise their support for military action. All bar one of the Republican presidential candidates declared their willingness in a televised debate on June 5 to use nuclear weapons to destroy Iran’s atomic facilities. As for the Democratic contenders, most have publicly backed the US campaign of diplomatic bullying, economic sanctions and military threats that is preparing the ground for war against Iran. – [www.wsws.org 16 June 2007]

To read the detailed article, please click:

http://www.wsws.org./articles/2007/jun2007/iran-j16.shtml

2007-07-09T04:29:00.000+08:00

Al-Qaeda, the Eternal Covert Operation:
British "Terror" Incident
Latest Product Of "War on Terror" Propaganda

by Larry Chin
Global Research

It is a well-established and deliberately unaddressed historical fact that the CIA created "radical Islam" and Islamic "terrorism" during the Cold War. It is also a documented fact that the US, its allies, and their intelligence agencies (CIA, Pakistan’s ISI, Britain’s MI-6, etc.) have -- from the 1970s to the present day -- continued to use and guide terrorist groups, including "Al-Qaeda," as intelligence and propaganda assets. "Islamic terrorism" is a manufactured weapon of Western geostrategy, serving Anglo-American interests.

Planned covert operations and false flag operations using "terrorists" in direct and indirect military-intelligence roles are of imperial design. Such operations (exemplified by 9/11), and their predictable propaganda results ("the war on terrorism") are now routine events.

Official "war on terrorism" disinformation is repeated ad nauseum, accepted as fact by the mass populace, and used as the justification for ever-expanding Anglo-American war and ever-deepening criminality. Virtually no attention is paid to the Anglo-American support and management of "Al-Qaeda" and other "terror" groups. Little or no attention is devoted to the criminally fabricated nature of modern "terrorism" or the fact that every major "terrorism" event in recent times has been a US or US-allied covert operation, followed by political manipulation and cover-up.

September 11 was a false flag operation. The Mumbai transit bomb attack was a covert operation carried out by terror cells directly connected to Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, the ISI (a virtual branch of the American CIA), and the same (alleged "Al-Qaeda") apparatus. The London 7/7 attack was the work of

British intelligence, as well as Pakistan's ISI. Previously foiled London terror incidents pin the responsibility on "homegrown" terrorists with ties to Pakistan and "Al-Qaeda," and London 7/7 .

While new details continue to emerge, the botched July 30, 2007, Glasgow Airport and June 28, 2007, London nightclub incendiary attacks bear a marked resemblance to every other post-9/11 "terrorism" false flag operation.

The political choreography of the Glasgow/London incident

Regardless of the actual case evidence to come, what is clear and obvious is the propaganda and political effect that has already been achieved by the aggressive Anglo-American response to the events (violence that may have involved their own intelligence agencies and proxies).

Even before the fires at Glasgow Airport were put out, official accounts and worldwide media reports had already forcefully declared the event to be the work of "Al-Qaeda" and "Islamic extremists." The new British prime minister, Gordon Brown, quickly declared, "We are dealing, in general terms, with people who are associated with al Qaeda," and immediately enacted a draconian "security" agenda in the UK. The Telegraph attributed the incident to an "unknown Al-Qaeda terrorist cell thought to be preparing to launch a series of Baghdad-style car bombings."

An ABC account of the foiled London night club attacks suggests that there was foreknowledge (a typical aspect of all recent false flag events), and that warnings were issued by unnamed intelligence operatives weeks in advance, and that "Al Qaeda had targeted nightclubs and other soft targets" using cars laden with gasoline and propane cylinders. The ABC report concludes: "All of this comes just three weeks after what was described as an al-Qaeda graduation ceremony for suicide bombers at a training camp in Pakistan. A video obtained by ABC News shows commanders sending teams of 50 to 60 men to the United States, Canada, Germany and Great Britain."

Another piece from the Telegraph suggests that the US was already involved in steering British authorities towards an "Al-Qaeda" conclusion. The article states: "reports from the US that the three men had been identified and known to be an associate of Dhiren Barot [a British Al-Qaeda detainee - LC], a suspected terrorist who had planned to set off bombs across London, were dismissed by government officials."

While the worldwide propaganda and "war on terrorism" policy effect has been largely uniform and aggressive, as of this writing, the actual case details have been wildly inconsistent, speculative, and even contradictory. According to the official narrative, on June 30, 2007, according to British security officials, two men crashed a Jeep containing propane and gasoline into the main terminal of the Glasgow Airport in Scotland. This botched suicide car attack came in the wake of the foiled London nightclub attacks of June 28, 2007, an incident that authorities have attempted to link to Glasgow.

At least eight arrests have been made, including at least six medical workers: Bilal Abdullah (an Iraqi doctor), Mohammed Asha, a Jordanian physician (of Palestinian origin) and his wife, and Khalid Ahmed (a doctor and colleague of Abdullah’s), Mohammed Haneef (an Indian doctor). Foreign nationals from Iraq, Jordan, India and Saudi Arabia have been rounded up and arrested in connection with the case. Asha’s family insists that he is innocent. Friends, family and colleagues of many of the suspects are also expressing shock and doubt. Prime Minister Brown has begun a sweeping profiling operation of all Muslim medical personnel.

According to the July 4 Los Angeles Times, "officials have still not determined whether a foreign terrorist group sent them to Britain or if they were recruited here (London)." The same piece declares, "one of more of the detainees may have been radicalized and in touch with extremist networks before arriving, while others may have been radicalized only after establishing themselves in Britain."

A July 3 article from the Los Angeles Times breathlessly speculates: "Although Islamic terror cells are often ethnically and sociologically diverse, the doctors’ background breaks with a pattern in a string of recent terror cases in England, including last year’s plot to bomb US-bound jets and the London transport bombings of 2005 . . . In contrast, the Middle Eastern angle could point at the Iraqi war theater, where a constellation of extremist networks operate -- among them an al Qaeda offshoot dominated by foreign fighters."

This coverage, like most Western media reporting, accepts official declarations without question, and strongly suggests the guilt of all suspects.

Of course, no mention is made regarding the key issue at the heart of every "terror" event, and at the heart of the entire post-9/11 world crisis: Anglo-American military-intelligence connections to "Al-Qaeda" and other "radical Islamic terror" groups.

Beneficiaries: Washington and London

What is clear and predictable is that the British incidents, like all post-9/11 "terror," benefits the political agendas in Washington and London at a key moment, while undermining all political opposition to Anglo-American foreign and domestic policies:

Bush-Cheney (and the equally complicit Democratic Party leadership) is provided another justification to ramp up the "war on terrorism," and expand its intensifying world war and resource conquest, and step up of the pace of installing a police state within US borders. The Bush administration and its allies around the world have been planning a new 9/11 (blamed on "terrorists") that could create both a justification and an opportunity to retaliate against selected targets.

Britain’s incoming Gordon Brown government has been provided with a fresh London 7/7-9/11-style crisis around which it can now impose draconian police state measures upon the British people.

Brown seamlessly inherits the "war on terrorism" agenda from war criminal and liar Tony Blair, and ups the ante. It is not clear if Brown’s ham-fisted actions are completely of his own design, to "appear tough" to his new constituents, or the result of pressure from Blair and Bush (who is "pleased" with Brown’s forceful response).

A violent "wag the dog" distraction from ongoing US domestic political scandals, notably Bush’s commuting of the sentence of Scooter Libby in the CIA/Valerie Plame affair, benefits Bush-Cheney.

Spreading Al-Qaeda everywhere

The British incidents come in the wake of a crescendo of "Al-Qaeda"-related events all over the world. Bush-Cheney’s "Al-Qaeda terror" propaganda is at full pre-Iraq invasion fervor.

A recent news search demonstrates the fact that "Al-Qaeda" activity is mushrooming, in Egypt, Pakistan-Iran, Spain, Iraq, Yemen, Gaza/Palestine, Afghanistan, Lebanon, as well as within the United States and the UK.

Given the true nature of "Al-Qaeda" as Anglo-American assets, this is a clear signal that Anglo-American covert operations are intensifying -- and that targets for the next round of Anglo-American wars are being lined up.

Al-Qaeda: eternal intelligence asset

The central issue of our time cannot be overemphasized: extensive historical (but ignored and covered-up) documentation establishes the fact that Al-Qaeda and Islamic "terrorism" are the creation as well as key instruments of Anglo-American military-intelligence, and Western geostrategy, managed and guided by the CIA, Pakistan’s ISI, Britain’s MI-6 and MI-5, etc.

No "terror" event, current or past, can be understood without a full inquiry against this context.

Books such as Michel Chossudovsky’s America's "War on Terrorism" and Michael C. Ruppert’s Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the end of the Age of Oil exhaustively detail this milieu.

As written by Michel Chossudovsky in America's "War on Terrorism", while "Islamic terrorists" are featured by the Bush administration and its allies as eternal threats, and blamed for every terror event including and since 9/11, "these same Islamic organizations constitute a key instrument of U.S. military-intelligence operations" all over the world.

"According to the CIA," writes Chossudovsky, "an ‘intelligence asset’ -- as distinct from a bona fide ‘intelligence agent’ -- need not be committed to the pursuit of U.S. interests. Rather, it is meant to act and/or behave in a way that serves U.S. foreign policy pursuits . . .

Intelligence assets are invariably unaware of the precise functions and roles they are performing on behalf of the CIA on the geopolitical chessboard. In turn, for these covert operations to be ‘successful,’ the CIA will use various proxy and front organizations such as Pakistan’s extensive military intelligence apparatus (the ISI)."

A recently declassified French intelligence report details the extent to which "Al-Qaeda" and Osama bin Laden ran operations for the CIA. "Al-Qaeda" has also served multinational oil interests. Washington’s support and management of the "Militant Islamic Network", including "Al-Qaeda," has been continuous since the Carter administration, through the Bosnia/Kosovo/Macedonia NATO wars of the Clinton administration, and in full flower beginning with and since 9/11. "Al-Qaeda" as well as Al-Qaeda "foreign fighter hordes" propaganda is a key component of the Pentagon’s Iraq occupation and pacification program.

Also see: "Who is Osama bin Laden?" and "Al-Qaeda: the database"

As written by Mike Ruppert in Crossing the Rubicon, "Great Britain -- one of the major players supporting the KLA in Kosovo -- also maintained secret relationships with bin Laden and al Qaeda that served its interests." Britain’s MI-6 funded and worked with Al-Qaeda to assassinate and overthrow Libya’s Muammar Qaddafy in 1996. Since 9/11, bin Laden was a guest of British intelligence, even as a wanted man. As noted by Ruppert, "a November 2002 UPI story by Arnaud de Borchgrave indicated not only that Pakistani ISI had helped Osama bin Laden escape from Afghanistan but also that the American government had deliberately paid little attention to offers from an Afghan warlord to pinpoint and capture the alleged mastermind of 9/11."

The eternal cycle of real and manufactured murder and destruction since 9/11, from the false flag operations to the genocidal wars justified by "terrorism," has escalated beyond the ability of criminal governments to control and manage. It is now difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish assets of planned government covert operations from "homegrown" resistance and opposition to Anglo-America policy.

The idea of "blowback," the notion that terrorist assets have turned on their sponsors, is, however, bogus: Western intelligence has not severed its ties to "terrorists." The true "root cause" of "Islamic terrorism" remains Western manipulation and political guidance of "terror."

Al-Qaeda propaganda

As pointed out by Michel Chossudovsky in "The Anglo-American War of Terror: An Overview", the continuing US-led "war on terrorism" agenda rests squarely upon the perpetuation of the "Al-Qaeda" deception and the 9/11 lie, the perpetual threat of a fabricated outside enemy.

"Terrorism," from violent attacks against civilians to bogus "resistance movements" (made up of sponsored "Islamic terrorists") to pervasive propaganda and disinformation, undermines public support for all political opposition to Anglo-American foreign policy, and creates divisions within antiwar and peace movements.

More importantly, absolute control of mass populations is made possible by fear. Based on Pavlovian reactions to every new "terror" incident, the fear of "terrorists" and bone-deep racism inspired by Bush-Cheney’s manufactured 9/11 false flag operation remain tragically potent.

The imperial hand behind "radicalism"

Who or what is truly behind "Islamic terrorism" and "terror" catastrophes? Who or what created it, and funds, manages, nurtures and wields "terror"? Whose geostrategic interests have been exclusively served by "terror"? Whose political goals have been permanently destroyed? Cui bono? The answers lead directly t0 the highest levels in Washington, London, Tel Aviv, Islamabad, etc.

"Islamic terrorism" is a covert operation and a geostrategy. "Al-Qaeda" is a military-intelligence asset and a leading brand of war propaganda.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6223

2007-06-28T00:56:00.000+08:00

Sudan Official

Dies In Car Crash

A close political adviser to Sudan's president has died in a car accident.

Adviser Majzoub al-Khalifa and his brother were killed in the accident in northern Sudan, and several other people were injured.

Khalifa headed the government negotiating team in talks which led to last year's signing of a peace deal with rebels in the Darfur region.

The agreement has failed to halt the four-year Darfur conflict which has made some 2m people homeless.

Chadian President Idriss Deby has cancelled his scheduled visit to Sudan following the announcement of the deaths.

A statement from the president's office read on state television described Khalifa as a "distinguished figure in Sudan".

He served as a minister of agriculture and information under President Omar al-Bashir.

The burial is due to take place on Wednesday.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/6244884.stm
Published: 2007/06/27

Note:

The above news item was e-mailed to me today with this remark: Murdered by M16 and CIA because he (Majzoub al-Khalifa) had evidence that the conflict in Darfur was done by M16 and CIA. But, through the world media, M16 and CIA managed to blamed the killings in Darfur on Sudanese government. – Ruhanie Ahmad

2007-06-26T23:59:00.000+08:00

US Needs To Be
‘Less Arrogant’

By David Ignatius

WASHINGTON: When foreign policy gurus Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft all start saying the same thing, it’s time to pay attention. That happened this month in a joint appearance broadcast on “The Charlie Rose Show,” and their comments ought to be required reading for presidential candidates in both parties - not to mention the current occupant of the Oval Office.

Their collective message was this: in a radically changing world, America needs to be less arrogant about its use of power and more willing to talk to other nations. That may sound obvious, but the United States has spent much of the past six years doing the opposite. The three former top officials argued for more dialogue not just to improve America’s image but so that we can understand the new rules and opportunities in the game of nations.

“The international system is in a period of change like we haven’t seen for several hundred years” because of the declining power of nation-states, said Kissinger, who was secretary of state under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. “We are used to dealing with problems that have a solution,” but Americans have to realise that “we’re at the beginning of a long period of adjustment”.

Brzezinski described the changes taking place as a global political awakening: “The world is much more restless. It’s stirring. It has aspirations which are not easily satisfied. And if America is to lead, it has to relate itself somehow to these new, lively, intense political aspirations, which make our age so different from even the recent past.” Brzezinski served as national security adviser for President Jimmy Carter.

In this new, “very different world,” explained Scowcroft, “the traditional measures of strength don’t really apply so much. . . . It’s a world where most of the big problems spill over national boundaries, and there are new kinds of actors and we’re feeling our way as to how to deal with them.” Scowcroft was national security adviser for Presidents Ford and George H.W. Bush.

Now, you could argue that these prominent establishment figures are three peas in a pod who would inevitably agree on foreign policy. They’re all counsellors at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, which brought them together for the June 14 discussion.

But on the dominant issue of Iraq, they have taken radically different courses. Brzezinski was the earliest and sharpest critic of the war among former officials; Scowcroft argued against the invasion and has criticised neoconservatives within the administration, but he remains a Bush family insider; Kissinger has supported the war and talks regularly with President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to give them advice.

So it’s noteworthy that the three offer similar prescriptions for what to do, post-Iraq. They all argue that this is a time when America needs to be out in the world - talking, yes, but even more, listening. And their advice to the next president is almost identical.

Scowcroft urged America’s next leader to declare: “I think that we are a part of the world that we want to cooperate with the world. We are not the dominant power in the world that everyone falls in behind us.” Brzezinski offered a similar formulation: “The next president should say to the world that the United States wants to be part of the solution to its problems” and that it will be “engaged in the quest to get people in the world the dignities that they seek today”. Even the sometimes brusque Kissinger agreed that the next president should express his willingness “to listen to a lot of other countries about what they think should be done. He should not pretend that he has all the answers”.

All three want to see America talking not just with friends but also with potential adversaries. With Iran, where Kissinger said “we should at least attempt to have a quiet negotiation with a high-level Iranian to determine where we’re trying to go”. With Russia, where Brzezinski advised “we shouldn’t overdramatise the current disagreements”. With the Chinese, who, Scowcroft insisted, “need a stable world,” too.

This triad of experts helped shape foreign policy for the past 50 years. They’re old men now, but they remain intellectual rivals - still jockeying for influence and trying to outsmart each other in the Faculty Club of life. What’s striking is that they see the future in such similar terms: a new global game is underway; the very idea of power is changing; America’s future security will be more about adapting than imposing our will.

- Dawn (Pakistan)/The Washington Post News Service
http://www.dawn.com/2007/06/25/int9.htm

2007-06-23T02:32:00.000+08:00

US Military Launches
Massive Assault In Iraq

By Bill Van Auken

Backed by armored columns and helicopter gunships, some 10,000 US troops have launched a massive assault on the provincial capital of Baquba and other areas north and east of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad.

The operation, dubbed Arrowhead Ripper, is one of the largest since the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003. It is being portrayed as an offensive aimed at clearing Al Qaeda terrorists from Diyala province, which is said to have become a new stronghold for the group.

“The end state is to destroy the Al Qaeda influences in this province and eliminate their threat against the people,” Brig. Gen. John Benarek, deputy commanding general of the 25th Infantry Division, declared in a statement.

In reality, the attack is directed at crushing opposition to the US occupation in a region where the overwhelming majority of the population opposes the American presence and is therefore a center of resistance in which Al Qaeda plays a decidedly limited role.

In one of its first communiqués, the Pentagon claimed that a “quick-strike nighttime air assault” by the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division had included an assault by attack helicopters and ground forces which had “engaged and killed 22 anti-Iraqi forces in and around Baquba.”

“Anti-Iraqi forces” is the Orwellian term used by the American military command to describe any Iraqis who resist the US occupation of their country. How many have really been killed and the breakdown between resistance fighters and civilians is by no means clear.

The offensive follows the announcement last week that the buildup of US combat forces announced by President George W. Bush last January is complete, with an additional 30,000 troops deployed in the country.

The operation is the largest since US troops laid a murderous siege to the predominantly Sunni city of Fallujah in November 2004, killing thousands, reducing most of its buildings to rubble and turning tens of thousands more into refugees.

Baquba, about 30 miles northeast of Baghdad, is roughly the same size as Fallujah - both had pre-war populations of over 300,000. Whether it will be subjected to similar devastation remains to be seen.

The siege of Baquba was joined with a series of other actions by US and allied forces in the southern suburbs of Baghdad as well as in the predominantly Shia south of the country.

In the Arab Jubour area south of the capital, an offensive began with a nighttime raid by American B-1 bombers, which dropped “precision-guided bombs” in heavily populated areas.

Meanwhile, further south in Maysan province, US and British forces launched attacks on Shia militiamen, who fought back with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. The US-led forces called in air strikes, which left dozens dead. The action saw the most intense fighting between the occupation forces and the Mahdi Army since this militia loyal to Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr spearheaded a two-month uprising against the occupation in April 2004.

From each of these fronts in the US-led counteroffensive against the Iraqi resistance there emerged reports of atrocities, civilian deaths and sweeping house-to-house raids together with the roundup of many Iraqis as “security detainees.” Television broadcasts from Baquba included footage of long lines of blindfolded Iraqi males being held at gunpoint or herded into vehicles for transfer to one of the large US prison camps in the country.

According to one Iraqi press report, the US assault force brought in tanks to attack the Abudullah bin Mobark Mosque in the “teachers” area of Baquba Sunday afternoon. Eyewitnesses said the mosque had sustained heavy damage and that nearby houses were also struck, killing five civilians, including two women.

In regard to the fighting in the southern suburbs of Baghdad, the Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq (AMSI) issued a press release denouncing the mass arrest of at least 20 people in the village of al-Ahmad al-Azzawi.

“The crime occurred when the occupation forces encircled the area and carried out a landing on rooftops; then [they were] breaking furniture and property, and killed a citizen (Hussein Mohamed Azzaoui) while [he was] sleeping in his bed,” the release said.

In southern Iraq, the Iraqi paper Az-Zaman reported that over 115 Iraqis were killed or injured in the clashes, including many civilians. Witnesses reported that at least 32 corpses from the town of Amarah, a focus of the fighting, were brought to the Shiite holy city of Najaf for burial on Monday, many of them women and children.

Meanwhile, in Amarah itself, the director of the local health department, Jamel Mohammed, confirmed receiving 16 bodies and taking in 37 wounded.

The chief of the province’s security council, Latif al Tamini, described the operation a “catastrophe,” declaring that occupation troops had fired indiscriminately.

“Many innocents were killed because in the summer people sleep on the roofs to avoid the heat,” Hamid Nouri, a clergyman loyal to Sadar in Amarah, told the media.

The spokesman for the British military declared that the operation “was conducted under the directive of [Prime Minister] al-Maliki and the government of Iraq. Iraqi special operations forces were very much in the lead.”

In reality, what has characterized all of these operations is the relatively minor role played by the Iraqi puppet forces, with foreign troops and airpower carrying out the bulk of the offensive.

Senior US military officers have warned that the offensive cannot sustain the suppression of the Iraqi resistance without the deployment of substantial Iraqi forces prepared to continue the crackdown. Yet, after over four years of US occupation, these forces do not exist.

Maj. Gen. Martin Dempsey, who just completed a 22-month tour in Iraq directing the training and arming of Iraqi security forces, expressed the frustration of the Pentagon over the Iraqi forces, reporting that Iraqi units were being deployed with only 75 percent of the forces they had on paper because of desertions and absences, while one in six of the Iraqi police trained by the Americans have been killed, wounded or have deserted.

Asked by the media whether he anticipated that the next Iraqi units to be rotated into Baghdad would be even weaker and less able to conduct operations than those now deployed in the capital, he responded, “I’m absolutely convinced that’s exactly what we’ll see.”

While, the Bush administration’s surge was billed as a campaign to provide security in Baghdad, the bulk of the newly deployed US troops have now been sent out of the capital. The failure to achieve security was made tragically apparent once again on Tuesday, when a massive truck bomb struck a Shia mosque, killing at least 78 people and wounding an estimated 200 more.

The attack on the Khillani mosque in Baghdad’s commercial district of Sinak came just two days after the occupation authorities lifted a four-day curfew imposed in the wake of the bombing of another Shia mosque in Samarra last week.

Press reports from the scene of the latest bombing indicated that local residents blamed the US occupation forces for the atrocity, many voicing the opinion that such attacks are allowed to take place as a means of sowing division between Iraq’s different religious and ethnic groups.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/jun2007/iraq-j20.shtml

2007-06-14T17:16:00.000+08:00

Accusations
Pave The Way
For Assault On Iran

Philip Giraldi

Sometimes it really is déjà vu all over again. Those who have hoped for a peaceful resolution of the outstanding issues between the United States and Iran must have been discouraged to watch the June 5 Republican presidential candidates' debate. With the honorable exception of Ron Paul, the Republicans lined up firmly in support of a policy to stop Iran's acquisition of a nuclear weapon using whatever means are necessary to do so, including the American nuclear arsenal. All except Paul derided Iran as the main source of terrorism in the world. Rudy Giuliani repeated the now familiar "you shouldn't take any options off the table" when asked about the possible use of nuclear weapons against Iran and stated that he even opposes Iran's acquisition of "nuclear power." Duncan Hunter said flatly that he "would authorize the use of tactical nuclear weapons" against Iran. The top Republican candidates united in their view that the Democrats would be soft on the issue of Iran, a charge that lacks validity as the leading Democratic candidates for president are as bellicose as the Republicans when it comes to Tehran's ambitions.

And the media is doing its bit to help the cause, just like in the lead-up to Iraq, this time by completely ignoring the issue. The New York Times' coverage of the debate did not even mention Iran, stressing instead disagreements on immigration policy. The Washington Post also was silent, as if the general agreement by presidential candidates to use nuclear weapons to bomb a sovereign nation that has not attacked the United States is not newsworthy.

It is arguable that the candidates are just polishing up their pro-Israel credentials and are not to be taken seriously when they speak about Iran, a subject on which they appear to know little or nothing. But is also possible that momentum is building that will lead to a war willy-nilly, whether or not it is in the national interest and whether or not anyone genuinely wants it. Iran's alleged support of terrorism refers to its links to Hamas and Hezbollah, groups operating against the Israeli occupation of Palestine and parts of Lebanon and not against the United States, a refinement that appears to exceed the grasp of America's political elite. Sam Brownback specifically insisted that "we have to stand with our allies like Israel," revealing that he considers Israel's security paramount.

Several candidates referred to the Iranians killing American soldiers, an allegation that has been around for some months and is clearly becoming the focal point for efforts to create a consensus that Iran must be stopped, no matter the costs or consequences. The rhetoric is particularly significant in that it parallels recent developments in Vice President Dick Cheney's office, where hope springs eternal that Iran will be nuked before the sun sets on the Bush administration. Cheney is reportedly very interested in obtaining definitive evidence confirming that Iran is arming the Taliban against U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, and it appears that he has been sending his staffers to get the goods by attending the weekly Afghanistan Interagency Operating Group.

On one level, if the Iranians were assisting the Iraqi Shi'ite militias with which they have had long-standing relations, it should not come as a great surprise. The United States armed militias against the Russians in Afghanistan and against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, setting the precedent for such activity. Iran is confronted by 160,000 U.S. soldiers across the border in Iraq and two carrier groups in the Persian Gulf. It has been hearing mostly threats from Democrats, Republicans, and the White House. Nonetheless, the case that Iran is arming insurgents with sophisticated weapons able to destroy any of the armored vehicles in the U.S. arsenal is tenuous at best.

The evidence for the existence of so-called enhanced improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Iraq consists of reports that go back more than two years. The first reports stated that there was a new type of sophisticated IED being used in Iraq. By one account, the new IEDs appeared to be the product of a weapons factory because they were all machined in the same way, while in another version the IEDs had some parts of Iranian origin, though how that was determined is unclear. It was further claimed that some of these weapons were intercepted on the border between Iraq and Iran. Variations on the story indicated either that Iranian "experts" were helping the Iraqis build IEDs that were more effective or that Iran was training Shi'ite militiamen in their use. More recently, it has been alleged that Iran is even supplying the highly effective ordnance to its traditional enemies, including Sunni insurgents and al-Qaeda.

One thing that all the stories about Iranian involvement have in common is their lack of substantiating detail. There are no names, dates, places, or corroborating information, and most rely on anonymous government sources or bald assertions that are presented as fact. Photos of alleged captured ordnance have been unconvincing. Further, the presence of the weapons, even if true, cannot be traced back to any official Iranian government body or policy through documentary or other evidence. In March 2006, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, conceded that there was no evidence to back up the claims of direct Iranian involvement in the development of the more effective IEDs, referred to as explosively formed projectiles (EFPs). The United Kingdom media has reported that the EFP is, in fact, a British design that was inadvertently given to the IRA in a sting operation that went horribly wrong in Northern Ireland in the early 1990s. It is not an Iranian innovation or something that is unique to Tehran's arsenal.

A widely advertised Pentagon briefing in Baghdad in February 2007 was supposed to provide stacks of documents and examples of hardware that would make the case for Iranian involvement. The press conference turned out to be a bust, with little more than fragments of ordnance actually on display. When questioned, a senior Defense Department analyst admitted that there was no "smoking gun." Other sources familiar with the weapons themselves and with Asian weapons markets in general have noted that Iraqis hardly need instruction or assistance in constructing the IEDs and EFPs, as they have become the real experts in their design and deployment. The Iraqi army of Saddam Hussein had many specialists in ordnance design working in its armories, most of whom have been unemployed since 2003. The sources also note that Iraq is well supplied with all the artillery shells and bombs it could possibly need to construct huge and highly sophisticated roadside weapons, all accomplished without any need for Iranian assistance. One British Defense Ministry source estimates that the Iraqis have enough high explosives on hand to continue IED attacks at the current level for the next 274 years. When Iranian-origin weapons do show up, many can be traced to illegal and quasi-legal arms markets that exist throughout central Asia.

More recently, there are claims that Iranian-produced IEDs and EFPs are appearing in Afghanistan. The first alleged Iranian EFP, discovered this past spring by a British unit fighting as part of the NATO force in southern Afghanistan, was found among a shipment of weapons that was presumed to be going to the Taliban. The British initially were hesitant about passing the information to the United States because of serious concerns that Cheney would use the new intelligence as a pretext to start a bombing campaign against Iran.

In April 2007 Gen. Peter Pace said that other Iranian-made weapons had been captured at Taliban bases in Kandahar and along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The claim was then reiterated by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher, and White House Deputy Press Secretary Dana Perino. Defense experts in Europe who monitor weapons sales and arms smuggling dispute the claim, however, noting that the Iranians have a particular antipathy for the Taliban. The Taliban executed eight Iranian diplomats in Mazar-i-Sharif in 1997 and have declared Shi'ite Islam to be a heresy. Iran undoubtedly is working to cultivate its ties with Afghanistan's Shi'ite minority the Hazars, who live close to the border between the two countries, but there is no love lost between Tehran and the Taliban. As for the weapons themselves, Afghanistan is awash with arms that were manufactured by Iran, Russia, the United States, and China. Many of the weapons are leftovers from the years of Russian domination, while the newer equipment derives from the civil war that followed in which the Taliban fought the Northern Alliance. The Iranians provided the Northern Alliance with weapons, as did the United States and Russia. One journalist source describes the Pace allegations as a "war of words with little relationship to reality." Another diplomatic source speculated that the statements appear to be part of a coordinated effort to demonize Iran, possibly to prepare the American public and world opinion for a military strike later this year.

www.antiwar.com/orig/giraldi.php?articleid=11116
AntiWar.com, 13 June, 2007

2007-06-06T01:46:00.000+08:00

Asean System Can Be Used
To Manage Peace, Security
In Asia-Pacific: Abdullah

KUALA LUMPUR, June 5 (Bernama) -- The Asean system of managing peace and security can be used to bring stability and predictability in the wider Asia- Pacific region, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said Tuesday.

He said although the Asean system of managing peace and security needs to be further developed, there was similarity between Asean and the Asia-Pacific region when it comes to managing peace and security issues.

"The Asean experience could in fact serve us equally well in the wider Asia- Pacific region," he said in his keynote address at the Asia-Pacific Roundtable entitled "The Way to Mutual Security in the Asia-Pacific" organised by the Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS).

Abdullah said Asean had taken the bold step by recognising that its destiny lay with member states, realising that peace was possible without hegemony and security was attainable without maintaining preponderant power.

This had resulted in a system of managing peace and security embedded within a wider framework for cooperation embodied in Asean even though the system was by no means perfect.

"There is still some lingering lack of trust. Occasionally, there are strong disagreements. Sometimes, naval vessels are deployed to keep an eye on each other in disputed waters. Some still feel the need to be reassured of their security by having linkages with outside powers.

"All things considered, however, the framework within Asean has done a remarkable job. It has helped bring stability and predictability to the region," he said, adding that this has led to full reconciliation among all member states and across political divides, with confidence having improved tremendously.

Abdullah described war as having become unimaginable, many territorial disputes were being settled through peaceful negotiations or through judicial settlements, no major military build-ups with vestigial defence arrangements remained but they were essentially for exercise and training.

"The window of opportunity to make a similar choice is open to the countries of the Asia Pacific.

"I think the countries of Asean were able to make the right choice because their judgement was sober and sound. We did not exaggerate threats and we did not overreact to exaggerated threats. We saw the rivalry among the major powers and chose to distance ourselves from the rivalry," he said.

Abdullah said Asean had opted to engage with the major powers for mutual peace and prosperity, with priority for political and economic engagement even though it included the field of security.

"When we discuss security, we make sure that it is about security cooperation that engages all, and is for all. This kind of engagement has brought enormous benefits not only to Asean but also to the entire region," he said.

He said Asean retained its existing security arrangements and military alliances as they were already in place and there was no need to dismantle them but it did not seek to strengthen or widen its membership while, at the same time, it did not spend excessively on weaponry.

"We recognise that many of us lack capacity in so many areas, including defence capabilities. We do not therefore question or seek to deny to others what we think would have been proper even for ourselves," he said.

Therefore, Abdullah said, Asia-Pacific leaders could emulate the Asean spirit of enlightened rather than narrow interest as well as recognise that influence and strategic stature ensue much less from military preponderance than from economic weight, technological prowess and cultural appeal.

Abdullah also said that he does see the present situation in the region as a delicate one -- on the one hand, countries are strengthening the infrastructure for cooperation while, on the other, they seem to be allowing the preparation for confrontation to continue.

"But I would like to ask the question whether we are in fact giving sufficient attention to building peace while preparing, at the same time, for eventualities of conflict and of war.

"I am concerned whether we are inadvertently putting in place mechanisms that in fact invite the very instability and conflict that we want to prevent and manage," he said.

Therefore, Abdullah said, he believed the window of choice was still open in the Asia-Pacific region as "the concrete has not quite set to make the structure for managing regional security unalterable".

"I think we can do more, much more, to lay down a firm foundation for enduring peace, stability and prosperity in the region than we are doing now. The choice is ours," he said.

http://www.bernama.com

2007-06-03T00:29:00.000+08:00

U.S. Government
Uses Al-Qaeda
To Attack Iran

Recent revelations illustrating the fact that the U.S. government is using a Sunni Al-Qaeda terrorist group formerly headed by the alleged mastermind of 9/11 to carry out bombings in Iran undermines the entire war on terror as a monumental hoax that is being exploited purely to realize a geopolitical agenda.

"President George W Bush has given the CIA approval to launch covert "black" operations to achieve regime change in Iran, intelligence sources have revealed.

Mr Bush has signed an official document endorsing CIA plans for a propaganda and disinformation campaign intended to destabilise, and eventually topple, the theocratic rule of the mullahs."

"The CIA is giving arms-length support, supplying money and weapons, to an Iranian militant group, Jundullah, which has conducted raids into Iran from bases in Pakistan," the London Telegraph reported yesterday.

Jundullah is a Sunni Al-Qaeda offshoot organization that was formerly headed by alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Even if you believe the official story of 9/11 to the letter, the fact that Bush has personally authorized U.S. support for this group completely dismantles the facade of the war on terror.

The group has been blamed for a number of bombings inside Iran aimed at destabilizing Ahmadinejad's government and is also active in Pakistan, having been fingered for its involvement in attacks on police stations and car bombings at the Pakistan-US Cultural Center in 2004.

The U.S. government is arming and directing a Sunni Al-Qaeda group to carry out bombings in Iran and yet Bush has the temerity to grandstand during his Rose Garden speech last week and wave the Al-Qaeda bogeyman to strike the fear of God into American citizens.

"As to al Qaeda in Iraq, al Qaeda is going to fight us wherever we are. That's their strategy. Their strategy is to drive us out of the Middle East. They have made it abundantly clear what they want. They want to establish a caliphate. They want to spread their ideology. They want safe haven from which to launch attacks. They're willing to kill the innocent to achieve their objectives, and they will fight us. And the fundamental question is, will we fight them? I have made the decision to do so. I believe that the best way to protect us in this war on terror is to fight them," Bush said on Thursday.

Bush's definition of fighting Al-Qaeda is apparently to lend them all the funds, weapons and tactical know how they need to carry out attacks against innocent civilians in Iran, and let us not forget that America's allies the British have also been caught training insurgents in Iraq to carry out hi-tech bombings that are later blamed on Iran - just as the SAS worked with U.S. special forces to train the KLA in Kosovo , which was also an Al-Qaeda chapter having been financed directly by Bin Laden himself.

But in the world of newspeak and the lowest common denominator propaganda that cloaks the real agenda of the "war on terror", anyone who rises up against occupation, be it a kid who throws a rock in Baghdad or a car bombing on behalf of an increasingly Shiite-led insurgency, the natural enemies of the Sunni "Al-Qaeda," are terrorists and are Al-Qaeda members.

A cruel irony exists whereby anyone and everyone who opposes military occupation is smeared as an Al-Qaeda terrorist and yet the only real Al-Qaeda terrorists are being bankrolled, armed and directed by the CIA itself, with Bush's explicit approval.

Since President Bush didn't know the difference between Sunni & Shiite Muslims until two months before the invasion of Iraq and the incoming chairman of a congressional intelligence committee said Al Qaeda prominently came from the Shia branch of Islam, we can't hold out much hope for Joe Public and this is why the simplest propaganda is always the most effective.

They're the bad guys, we're the good guys - black and white with no shades of gray.

In reality, Al-Qaeda only exists within intelligence circles coordinated by the highest echelons of the U.S. government, and is being used yet again as a tool for destabilization in nations targeted for regime change by the Neo-Cons.

Jundullah is not the only anti-Iranian terror group that US government has been accused of funding in an attempt to pressure the Iranian government.

Multiple credible individuals including US intelligence whistleblowers and former military personnel have asserted that the government is conducting covert military operations inside Iran using guerilla groups to carry out attacks on Iranian Revolution Guard units.

It is widely suspected that the well known right-wing terrorist organization known as Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), once run by Saddam Hussein's dreaded intelligence services, is now working exclusively for the CIA's Directorate of Operations and carrying out remote bombings in Iran of the sort that the Bush administration condemns on a daily basis inside Iraq.

After a bombing inside Iran in March, the London Telegraph also reported on how a high ranking CIA official has blown the whistle on the fact that America is secretly funding terrorist groups in Iran in an attempt to pile pressure on the Islamic regime to give up its nuclear program.

http://www.infowars.com/articles/ww3/iran_us_uses_al_qaeda_to_attack_iran.htm

2007-05-26T02:29:00.000+08:00

Final Part:
The US War And Occupation Of Iraq
The Murder Of A Society

By Bill Van Auken

Higher Education

Estimates of the number of university professors killed since 2003 range between 250 and 1,000. These educators have been targeted by Islamist militias because they are seen as proponents of secularism and a national identity that cuts across religious-ethnic divides.

Attacks on universities have also driven away students. The first two months of this year saw two bombing attacks on Al Mustansiriya University that claimed a total of 111 lives.

The entire higher educational system - once considered one of the best in the region - is in a state of collapse. Classes are being taught by untrained graduate students and undergraduates.

“Violence and lack of resources have undermined the education sector in Iraq,” Professor Fua’ad Abdel-Razak of Baghdad University told the IRIN news agency. “No student will graduate this year with sufficient competence to perform his or her job, and pupils will end the year with less than 60 percent of the knowledge that was supposed to be imparted to them.”

He added that medical graduates in particular are leaving the university without the knowledge or confidence to provide care. “There is a really huge difference between now and the times of Saddam Hussein, when medical graduates left college with the competence to treat any patient,” he said.

Mass Poverty

At the base of society, the Iraqi economy has ground to a halt. The official unemployment rate is reported by the Iraqi Ministry of Social Affairs to be 48 percent. However, when one adds the hundreds of thousands of former employees of now closed state enterprises, who still receive 40 percent of their old salaries, the figure climbs to 70 percent.

The inflation rate for 2006 climbed to 50 percent, the second highest in the world. Increased prices for basic necessities, including food, have dramatically affected the living standards for the vast majority of Iraqis. Within the space of just the last two years, the price of fuel has increased five-fold.

The report released in April by the UN aid mission in Iraq found that 54 percent of the population is barely surviving on less than US$1 a day, while 15 percent must endure extreme poverty, with less than 50 US cents a day. The Iraqi regime’s Central Statistical Bureau echoed these findings, saying that 43 percent of Iraqis suffer from “absolute poverty,” lacking the necessary food, clothing or shelter to survive.

The International Monetary Fund has estimated the country’s per capita Gross Domestic Product at $1,687, less than half the figure reported 25 years ago. Even oil production - the principal concern of the American occupiers - has yet to be restored to the severely depressed pre-invasion levels, with sabotage curtailing operations and much of what is produced apparently being stolen.

On top of the armed violence and sabotage, decisions imposed by the US occupation authorities have deepened the economic crisis and the agony it has created for millions of Iraqis. Driven by the profit interests of US-based corporations and the right-wing ideology of the US administration, the occupation regime headed by L. Paul Bremer launched the wholesale privatization and shutdown of 192 state-owned enterprises that employed half a million Iraqis.

The Washington Post noted recently that among these enterprises - all decreed hopelessly outmoded and inefficient by Bremer - was “a bus and truck factory south of Baghdad that had a modern assembly line, talented managers and skilled employees.” It added, “All but 75 of 10,000 employees had been laid off,” as the Iraqi government, previously its sole customer, has been barred from buying the vehicles.

Clearly, the aim was to eradicate the national economy, sell off whatever profitable sectors existed to US transnationals and, above all, clear the way for the US oil companies to seize control of the Iraqi oilfields.

Bremer also decreed an end to all tariffs aimed at protecting Iraqi agriculture, ostensibly for the purpose of making imported goods cheaper. The effect - and it is hard to believe that it was unintended - was to bankrupt Iraq’s small farms, where production was already hampered by continuous military attacks. Now, as the occupation enters its fifth year, the Iraqi agricultural sector has collapsed and the country is totally dependent upon imported food, which sells at prices that are beyond the reach of much of the population.

Finally, the US colonial administrator implemented a “flat tax” - the dream of the Republican right in the US itself -and issued decrees allowing foreign corporations to repatriate all profits and giving them equal rights with domestic producers in the Iraqi economy.

US War Crimes

Both Democrats and Republicans in Washington now find it politically expedient to place the blame for the catastrophe in Iraq on the Iraqi people themselves. They claim that US troops are caught in a sectarian civil war and complain that the Iraqi government has failed to act decisively in quelling the violence and transforming political, economic and social conditions.

This is all self-serving and hypocritical nonsense. First of all, the sectarian violence that exists in Iraq is entirely the responsibility of Washington - legally, politically and morally. The US is an occupying power and, under the Geneva Conventions, is obliged to guarantee the security of the occupied population. But thousands of Iraqis are killed or wounded and tens of thousands driven from their homes every week.

More fundamentally, the eruption of sectarian violence was directly stimulated by US policy. Like colonial conquerors before it, Washington sought to dominate Iraq with a policy of divide and rule. Having destroyed every national institution in the country, it sought to reconstitute political life along ethno-religious lines, giving a weight to the division between Sunnis and Shia that had never before existed in Iraq.

The US occupation authorities handed out political positions in the emerging Iraqi puppet regime along strictly sectarian lines. Tensions between Sunnis and Shia were whipped up and the Iraqi security forces were handed over to the militias of Shia religious parties.

Now, the US occupation has reached the point of trying to erect walls around Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad, separating populations along ethnic lines in a practice that echoes brutal colonial counterinsurgency wars in a number of countries and, indeed, recalls the Nazis’ creation of the Warsaw ghetto.

Before the US invasion, Sunnis and Shia lived side-by-side in Baghdad and other cities, without friction and little concern over the religious background of their neighbors. Fully a third of marriages in Iraq were between the two communities. Now this ethno-religious identity is a matter of life and death for millions, forcing them to flee their homes and condemning them to summary executions at the hands of militias.

As for the demands that the Iraqi government meet “benchmarks,” this is strictly for political show. The fact remains that the regime headed by Nouri al-Maliki inside the US-controlled Green Zone is a largely powerless puppet, with the US continuing to exercise effective control over the country.

This reality was underscored last week with the release of a report by the leading British think tank, Chatham House, describing the Iraqi government as “largely irrelevant in terms of ordering social, economic and political life.” It added, in what is unquestionably a major understatement, that the country is on the “verge of becoming a failed state.”

River Tigris

Among the most emblematic of the horrific stories coming out of Iraq is the transformation of the River Tigris, cited in the Bible as a tributary of the river flowing from the Garden of Eden and the historic lifeline of civilization in the region from ancient times. It has been turned into a stagnant and fetid waterway, hopelessly polluted by raw sewage, chemicals and toxic military waste produced by the US war and occupation.

While before the war the river supported fishermen, now it is virtually dead, with boats banned from the water and subject to hostile fire. Much of the river’s banks have also been turned into military no-go zones.

The river has also become a dump for corpses, which are pulled daily from the water, most of them bearing the marks of horrible torture. The IRIN news agency quoted an Iraqi Interior Ministry officer as saying that since January 2006, over 800 bodies have been pulled from one area of the river alone, where iron nets had been put in place to catch water lilies and garbage.

The impact of four years of US occupation upon the consciousness of the Iraqi people found at least partial reflection in the recent poll carried out in March by US, British and German news agencies. It found that fully 78 percent of Iraqis oppose the presence of US troops—up from 65 percent in 2005 - and 51 percent, a majority, support armed attacks on US military forces, compared to only 17 percent in 2004.

Such a dramatic shift in public opinion is explicable only from the standpoint of the magnitude of the crimes that have been carried out against the Iraqi people, who have been subjected to a bloodbath and seen their society reduced to rubble.

These are world historic crimes, and those responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and thousands of American troops - and for the systematic destruction of an entire society - remain unpunished and occupy the leading positions of power within the US.

The Nuremberg Precedent

The government in Washington - both the Republican White House and the Democratic Congress - continues to embrace the doctrine of “preemptive war,” i.e., unprovoked aggression, as a principal instrument of US foreign policy. Both the US president and leading figures in the ostensible opposition party - the Democrats - regularly threaten to reprise this policy in an even more catastrophic form in a war against Iran.

A thorough criminal investigation and prosecution of those responsible for the Iraq war is an urgent political task confronting the American people. It is indispensable both for preventing new and even bloodier wars of aggression and for halting and reversing the unprecedented attacks on basic democratic rights within the US itself.

The handful of prosecutions that have been brought against junior enlisted personnel responsible for such horrors as the gang rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl in Mahmoudiya and the slaughter of her entire family, or the massacre perpetrated by Marines in Haditha, only underscores the reality that those who bear the ultimate responsibility not only for these individual atrocities but for the rape of an entire country enjoy continued impunity.

The premeditated destruction of an entire society carried out on the basis of lies and in pursuit of the financial and geo-strategic interests of America’s ruling elite constitutes a war crime of historic proportions, punishable under the same statutes and on the basis of the same principles as those used to condemn leading figures of Germany’s Third Reich at Nuremberg.

Those responsible for launching the war in Iraq consist not merely of the right-wing Republican cabal grouped around Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz. They include also the Democrats who enabled this war, the heads of US energy conglomerates and finance houses that hoped to profit from it and the chiefs of the media monopolies that promoted it. All of these layers, constituting the political establishment and financial aristocracy of the United States, are guilty of the same fundamental crime for which the Nazis were prosecuted nearly 60 years ago: the plotting and waging of a war of aggression. It is from this principal crime that all the multiple crimes and horrors inflicted upon the Iraqi people have flowed.

For these crimes to go unpunished and those responsible to continue acting with impunity would have fatal implications for the political, social and indeed moral life of the US and indeed the world. It would only render the next round of war crimes and atrocities that much easier and more inevitable.

The struggle against the war in Iraq must be waged on the basis of the demand for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all US troops, the implementation of a massive program of humanitarian and economic aid to the Iraqi people, and the prosecution of all those responsible for this war before an independent and international tribunal.

The six months since the US midterm elections have amply confirmed that none of these demands can be realized through the existing political parties or government institutions. As this is published, congressional Democrats, who gained the leadership of Congress as a result of the massive vote against the war last November, are holding closed-door meetings with their Republican counterparts and White House officials to work out a bill that will provide tens of billions of additional dollars to continue the bloodbath in Iraq. Behind their ever more transparent posturing as opponents of the war, the Democrats have made it clear that they remain committed to the imperialist aims of the 2003 invasion and are determined to maintain tens of thousands of US troops in Iraq to realize those aims.

Ending the war and holding the war conspirators accountable - to prevent further and even more catastrophic acts of aggression - can be achieved only by means of a direct political struggle against both parties of war: the Democrats and Republicans Workers, students and young people must fight for the building of an independent mass political movement of the working class based upon a socialist program that is directed against the American financial oligarchy in whose interests the war is being waged.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/may2007/iraq-m22.shtml

2007-05-24T00:07:00.000+08:00

Part Two:
The US War And Occupation Of Iraq
The Murder Of A Society

By Bill Van Auken

Children

Iraq’s Ministry of Health estimates that fully half of the country’s children suffer from some form of malnutrition. According to a recent study by UNICEF, 10 percent of Iraqi children under five are acutely malnourished, while another 20 percent are chronically malnourished.

With the heat of Iraq’s summer coming on, medical authorities fear a sharp rise in child deaths from dehydration, cholera and infections, and they warn that the shattered Iraqi medical system is virtually powerless to stop it.

The desperate plight of Iraqi children and their families was summed up by one Iraqi mother. “Last year I lost my daughter and my mother because of dehydration,” Zahra Muhammad, 35, told the UN news agency IRIN. She said that the family had been forced from their home last May.

“We couldn’t afford cooling systems in our tent. My daughter was only four years old and couldn’t stand the hard living conditions in addition to the very hot weather,” she continued. “I have two more children and they are already sick because of malnutrition. The doctors have told me that without proper cooling and drinkable water, I should expect serious consequences in the coming months. If I lose another child for lack of electricity and clean water, then I would prefer to die with them.”

As many as 260,000 children have died since the March 2003 invasion, according to one estimate reported by the British daily The Independent in January.

For those children who do live to see their fifth birthday, Iraq has become a hostile and often deadly environment.

Less than a third of Iraq’s children now attend school, compared to 100 percent attendance before the March 2003 invasion. The principal reason students are staying out of the classrooms is fear of the endemic violence that makes a trip to school a deadly risk their families are unwilling to take.

At the same time, the relentless killing has left countless thousands of Iraqi children orphans, who have become a new and tragic fixture of life in Baghdad and other major cities, sleeping and begging in the streets. As the UN’s IRIN news agency reports: “Thousands of homeless children throughout Iraq...survive by begging, stealing or scavenging garbage for food. Only four years ago, the vast majority of these children were living at home with their families.”

The desperate conditions confronting Iraqi children led a group of 100 prominent British physicians to address an open letter to Prime Minister Tony Blair in January expressing their extreme concern over the impact of the occupation. “We are concerned that children are dying in Iraq for want of medical treatment. Sick or injured children, who could otherwise be treated by simple means, are left to die in their hundreds because they do not have access to basic medications or other resources. Children who have lost hands, feet and limbs are left without prostheses. Children with grave psychological distress are left untreated.”

There are fears that this last issue - the wholesale traumatization of an entire young generation - may have the most far-reaching and devastating effect upon Iraqi society. “Children in Iraq are seriously suffering psychologically with all the insecurity,” the Association of Psychologists of Iraq declared. Based on a survey of 1,000 school children, it found that 92 percent had learning impediments caused by the climate of violence and fear. “The only things they have on their minds are guns, bullets, death and a fear of the US occupation,” Maruan Abdullah, spokesman for the association told reporters.

The hellish conditions that have been imposed upon Iraqi children constitute a war crime. As the occupying power, the United States is enjoined by the Geneva Conventions to ensure “preferential measures in regards to food, medical care and protection” in favor of children under 15 years, expectant mothers, and mothers of children under seven, and to “maintain all institutions devoted to the care and education of children.”

Women

The US war and occupation have driven Iraqi women back generations, condemning millions to statutory second-class citizenship and nightmarish conditions in which they are virtually prisoners in their homes.

This development is closely bound up with the record rise in infant mortality and is just as vital an indicator of social progress - or retrogression. It was Charles Fourier, the French utopian socialist, who wrote 155 years ago, in a passage cited by Marx and Engels: “Social progress and changes of a period are accompanied by the progress of women towards freedom, while the decay of the social system brings with it a reduction of the freedoms enjoyed by women.” He concluded: “Extension of the rights of women is the basic principle of all social progress.”

A report released in April by the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) on human rights in the country recorded 40 cases of “honor killings” of women over a three-month period in the governorates of Erbit, Duhok, Sulaimaniya and Salahuddin. These women were murdered by their own family members, in some cases burned alive, for alleged “immoral” conduct.

A report by the Iraqi news agency Awena indicates that this hideous practice is even more widespread. Basing itself on data obtained from the Duhok criminal court and the Duchok Azadi Hospital, Awena reported last January that in this governorate there were 289 burning cases resulting in 46 deaths of women in 2005, and 366 burning cases resulting in 66 deaths in 2006. Meanwhile, the Emergency Management Center in Erbil cited 576 burning cases resulting in 358 deaths in that governorate since 2003.

Also in Erbil, the UN report found that the number of reported rapes quadrupled between 2003 and 2006.

The Iraqi constitution, drafted under US supervision, declares Islam the official state religion and establishes that no law may be enacted that “contradicts the immutable rulings of Islam.” This principal sets the stage for the overturning of Iraq’s more liberal civil laws governing divorce, family property and child custody, substituting in their place sharia law, which denies women most rights.

Already, these principles are being imposed in the streets by armed militias of the Islamist parties, which have killed women for daring to hold professional positions as professors or doctors or to play a visible directing role in a business. Vigilantes have also forced the use of Islamic dress, including the hijab, or veil, backed by the threat of violence. Such groups in some areas have also demanded that women not leave their houses after midday, not drive automobiles or walk outside without a male relative.

A report issued by the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq on the fourth anniversary of the US invasion declared: “Women of Iraq have gradually let go of most of their 20th century gains and privileges in the last 4 years of occupation. Iraq turned from a modern country of educated and working women into a divided land of Islamic and ethnic warlords who compete in canceling women from the social realm. Millions of women’s destinies are wasted between the destructive US war machine and different kinds of Islamic rule which have turned women into helpless black objects of no will or worth.”

The report cited growing violence against women, including gang rapes of female detainees and assaults on women by militias of other sects as an instrument of sectarian warfare. Kidnappings of women have also become rampant. A report issued by the group in March of last year found that the crime, virtually unknown under the regime of Saddam Hussein, claimed 2,000 female victims in the first three years after the US invasion, many of whom were raped or tortured. Such incidents, together with all other forms of violence, have escalated markedly over the last year.

Four women are on Iraq’s death row, waiting to be hanged, two of them imprisoned together with their young children.

Minorities

Also a telling sign of the social disintegration in Iraq is the status of minorities. A report issued this month by Minority Rights Group International warns that minority communities in Iraq are being systematically eradicated. It ranks Iraq as the second-worst country in the world in terms of the threat posed to minorities - better only than Somalia and worse than Darfur.

The report, entitled “Assimilation, Exodus, Eradication: Iraq’s Minority Communities Since 2003,” tracks the situation confronting Iraq’s Armenian and Chaldo-Assyrian Christians, Bahais, Faili Kurds, Jews, Mandaeans, Palestinians, Shabaks, Turkomans and Yazidis, who together make up 10 percent of the country’s total population.

“Iraq continues to see targeted killings of people from minority groups, including Christians, Yezidis and Mandaeans. Other minority groups in Iraq face daily violence, torture and political assimilation, which has led to an exodus of these communities from the country,” the report states. Last year, Iraq ranked the worst in the world. Its decline to the second worst is a reflection of the marked deterioration of the situation in Somalia, where a US-engineered intervention has unleashed rampant violence.

Some of Iraq’s minorities predate the Arabs in terms of their presence in the country, which dates back to ancient Mesopotamia. Now, victims of violence and intimidation, they are disappearing from Iraq, many killed and the rest fleeing into exile.

The report’s authors blame the US occupation for this disaster. They write: “Following the occupation of Iraq in 2003, the coalition authorities established an Iraqi Governing Council in which membership was strictly apportioned along ethnic and sectarian lines. Political patronage ensured that whole ministries became dominated by officials from the minister’s own sect or group, and sectarian politics quickly became the defining feature of the new Iraqi state.” As a result, minority populations were excluded and subsequently repressed.

Doctors

The murderous violence in Iraq and the flight of millions of refugees have decimated the ranks of key professions who are indispensable for the maintenance of society.

The British non-governmental organization Medact, citing the official figures of the Iraqi Medical Association, reported in March of last year that 18,000 of Iraq’s 34,000 doctors have left the country. Another 2,000 have been murdered and at least 250 have been reported kidnapped.

In his article on the exodus of refugees from Iraq in the May 13 New York Times Magazine, Nir Rosen interviewed one such doctor, a family medicine specialist, who had fled to Damascus with her five children.

She left after her husband, a thoracic surgeon and a medical school professor, was dragged from his car by armed men, abducted and later found murdered. She told Rosen that when she asked the Iraqi police to investigate, they said, “He is a doctor, he has a degree and he is a Sunni, so he couldn’t stay in Iraq. That’s why he was killed.” Both the police and the Ministry of Health are controlled by Shiite Islamist factions. She was subsequently ordered by letter to leave her neighborhood.

The lack of trained medical staff, together with the shortage of basic supplies and the overwhelming burden of mass casualties, has left Iraq’s healthcare system in a shambles.

In an article published last October in the British Medical Journal, three doctors from the Diwaniyah College of Medicine in Iraq estimated that nearly half of the hundreds of thousands who have been killed since the 2003 US invasion could have survived if they had received adequate medical care.

“The reality is we cannot provide any treatment for many of the victims,” they wrote. “Emergency departments are staffed by doctors who do not have the proper experience or skills to manage emergency cases. Medical staff...admit that more than half of those killed could have been saved if trained and experienced staff were available.”

The article added: “Our experience has taught us that poor emergency medicine services are more disastrous than the disaster itself. But despite the daily violence that is crushing Iraq, the international medical community is doing little more than looking on.”

It is not just the international medical community. The state of the Iraqi healthcare system constitutes a US war crime. The Fourth Geneva Convention demands that an occupying power “[e]nsure the effective operation of medical services, including hospitals and public health programs, with special focus on preventing the spread of contagious diseases and epidemics, and allow medical personnel to carry out their duties.”

The Geneva Conventions also require that an occupying power guarantee the neutrality of hospitals, protecting them from attack and ensuring that all are able to seek medical care. Yet US occupation troops have repeatedly attacked hospitals. Moreover, militias have been given free rein in the medical facilities, often dragging away patients of other sects for execution.

The killing and kidnapping of doctors and their wholesale flight from the country are phenomena common to virtually every profession in Iraq. The Iraq Index, maintained by the Brookings Institution in Washington, estimates that 40 percent of Iraq’s “professional class,” including doctors, professors, pharmacists and other university-trained personnel, have left the country since 2003. – [to be continued]

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/may2007/irq2-m21.shtml

2007-05-22T02:40:00.000+08:00

Part One:
The US War And Occupation Of Iraq
- The Murder Of A Society

By Bill Van Auken

While official politics and the media in the United States are focused largely on competing plans for salvaging the American occupation from the debacle it confronts in Iraq, little serious consideration is given to the historic catastrophe that has been inflicted upon Iraqi society itself.

Although no definitive figures can be given on the total number of Iraqis who have died as a result of the US war and occupation - including those killed in the invasion and subsequent armed violence and those whose lives have been cut short by disease and hunger, particularly among the young and old - every serious estimate places the excess death toll between several hundred thousands and one million human beings.

Iraq, once among the most advanced countries of the region, has been reduced, in terms of basic economic and social indices, to the level of the poorest countries of sub-Saharan Africa.

What is involved is the systematic destruction of an entire society through the unleashing of violence and criminality on a scale not seen since Hitler’s armies ravaged Europe in the Second World War.

American society itself is suffering deadly consequences from this war. The number of US soldiers killed in Iraq has topped 3,400, with every indication that the casualty rate is climbing as the Bush administration’s “surge” sends combat troops into the densely populated and overwhelmingly hostile neighborhoods of Baghdad.

Another 30,000 American military personnel have been wounded or injured, many of them grievously. Undoubtedly, hundreds of thousands more will suffer the psychological effects of having participated in a dirty colonial war.

The war’s daily drain on the US economy is estimated at over $300 million, with predictions that its total cost could top $2 trillion.

There is an even greater cost, however, in terms of the damage done by this criminal war to the political, social and, indeed, moral health of American society. The Iraq war - all of the tired propaganda about the “war on terrorism,” the struggle for “democracy” and the “liberation” of the Iraqi people notwithstanding - is a failed attempt by America’s financial elite to further enrich itself and secure its continued global hegemony through the naked theft of Iraq’s oil wealth.

Every section of the US political and corporate establishment, all branches and levels of government, both major political parties, and the mass media are all implicated in massive war crimes. Criminality on such a grand scale cannot go unpunished without grave implications for the future of the American people and, indeed, all of humanity.

Taken together, US operations in Iraq have amounted to sociocide - the deliberate and systematic murder of an entire society.

A series of recent reports have pointed to the scale of death, destruction and oppression that have been wrought by the US occupation, now in its fifth year.

Slaughter

First, as a telling indicator of the violence that the US occupation has unleashed against the Iraqi people, there is the report released by the Pentagon earlier this month on the mental state of American occupation troops. The document presents a chilling portrait of an army suffering from growing demoralization and mental and emotional dysfunction, which find expression, in part, in callous indifference, if not outright hatred, towards Iraq’s civilian population.

The survey found that a majority of troops believed that Iraqi civilians have no right to be treated “with dignity and respect,” and that approximately 10 percent of them admitted to having inflicted gratuitous violence on Iraqis in the form of beatings or destruction of personal property.

Perhaps the most significant finding was that 14 percent of US soldiers and Marines said they were directly responsible for the death of an “enemy combatant.” Given that some 170,000 US troops are currently in Iraq - and over 650,000 have been deployed there at one time or another since 2003 - this would indicate a massive death toll inflicted directly by US forces.

Many of these troops, of course, are in Iraq for second and third tours of duty, and the data does not account for incidents in which more than one person is killed, much less air strikes or artillery bombardments that can claim scores of victims. Nor does it include those killed by the tens of thousands of armed mercenary contractors, who are answerable neither to Iraqi law nor the military code of justice.

A further indication of the universal character of the deadly violence that has been inflicted upon the country came in the poll conducted earlier this year by ABC News, USA Today, the BBC and ARD German television, which found that fully 53 percent of Iraqis reported having a close friend or immediate relative either killed or wounded.

Along with the rising death toll has come a marked increase in the number of disappeared, which has far outstripped the horrors that this word came to symbolize in the worst years of dictatorship in countries like Argentina and Chile. Iraqi human rights organizations estimate that 15,000 or more Iraqis are missing, with between 40 and 60 more people joining the ranks of the disappeared daily - in other words, as many as 20,000 people on an annual basis.

Many, no doubt, have been exterminated by death squads, while others have joined the country’s burgeoning population of detainees, who are imprisoned without charges and subject to unlimited periods of pre-trial detention and often torture.

The Iraqi Ministry of Human Rights reported in March that the regime was holding nearly 38,000 detainees and prisoners, while the US military admits to 19,000 detainees jailed in its two main detention camps - Camp Cropper and Camp Bucca. This total amounts to nearly six times the number of prisoners held by the Saddam Hussein regime before the US invasion to “liberate” the Iraqi people. No doubt, it will rise substantially as the US military’s “surge” continues to sweep up large numbers of Iraqi civilians.

Displacement

In addition to the hundreds of thousands of deaths that the occupation has inflicted upon the Iraqi population, an equally telling indicator of its catastrophic implications for Iraqi society is the massive population of refugees and internally displaced persons.

It is estimated that 2 million Iraqis have fled their homeland, the vast majority of them seeking refuge in Syria and Jordan. Another 1.9 million Iraqis have been reduced to the status of displaced persons inside the country.

In sum, fully 15 percent of the country’s population has been driven from their homes. The United Nations Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that between 40,000 and 50,000 more Iraqis are being displaced every week, many of them forced to sleep in tents or out in the open with no means of support.

“We left Baghdad because the situation is very difficult. We were threatened with death and they took our houses and also our shops,” a man who recently came with his family to Syria told UNHCR. “You see what the situation is there - just destruction and death.”

The United States, which unleashed this destruction and death, has since 2003 admitted only 701 Iraqi refugees. Syria is currently hosting some 1.2 million. Washington has sought to obscure this massive refugee crisis - let alone take any responsibility for it - because it is such a damning indictment of the social catastrophe it has created in Iraq.

The vast flow of internal refugees has created increasingly desperate and volatile conditions in the country’s south, where an estimated 700,000 have fled, joining some 200,000 locally displaced people within Najaf, Kerbala and Basra provinces. Local governments and relief agencies are overwhelmed, unable to provide this vast population with housing, food or medical care. The central government in Baghdad has proven unable and unwilling to provide basic support.

“There are dozens of families arriving every day at camps for the displaced, causing a lack of essential needs such as food and health care,” Ali Fakhouri, a spokesman for the Najaf provincial council told IRIN, the news agency of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, in March. “The past two months were the worst for those families. For security reasons, the delivery of aid has decreased considerably and because of a lack of medicines in the region’s hospitals and inaccessibility to hospitals, children are more vulnerable to diseases. Diarrhea is common among children in the displaced groups in the south.”

Infant mortality

Perhaps most startling of the recent reports is that issued by the children’s advocacy group Save the Children documenting worldwide trends in infant mortality rates, universally accepted as one of the most fundamental indices of social progress.

According to this report, Iraq recorded a staggering 150 percent increase in the rate of infant deaths between 1990 and 2005. In raw figures, 122,000 Iraqi children died in 2005, half of them newborn babies. The rate was 125 deaths of children under five for every 1,000 live births, compared to 50 in 1990. According to the Iraqi health ministry, conditions have only worsened since, with the ratio climbing to 130 deaths for every 1,000 births in 2006.

The years selected by Save the Children in conducting its international survey had particular relevance for Iraq, beginning in 1990 with the initiation of the punishing US-backed economic sanctions and ending in 2005, two years after the invasion. As with most of the essential indices of social devastation in Iraq, the infant mortality figures reflect both the country’s relentless economic strangulation - punctuated by periodic military attacks - over the course of more than a decade, and the violent destruction of the invasion and occupation which followed.

The vast rise in infant mortality in Iraq is unprecedented. Even sub-Saharan African countries that have suffered the worst ravages of AIDS have not approached such a terrible retrogression.

No doubt a significant share of these infant deaths can be attributed to US military operations. Virtually every air strike and bombardment carried out against populated areas claims children among their victims.

Far more important, however, is the overall disintegration of Iraq’s water, electricity and sewage systems, as well as its healthcare network, which together have created conditions in which the principal killers of children - diarrhea, malnutrition and preventable diseases like typhoid and hepatitis - go unchecked and untreated.

The United Nations has reported a stunning 70 percent increase in diarrhea among Iraqi children just since January 2006, with the highest rates in Anbar province, a center of resistance to the occupation that has been continuously under siege by US forces. Fully 60 percent of the people in the province have access only to polluted river water for drinking.

Less than a third of the population nationwide has access to clean drinking water, and just 19 percent have a functioning sewage system. Both the water and sewage systems were damaged heavily by US bombardments in the 1991 Persian Gulf War and the 2003 invasion. After toppling the Iraqi government, US forces did nothing to stop looters from stripping water treatment and pumping stations of essential equipment. “Reconstruction” here, as elsewhere, has proven catastrophically inadequate.

On average, Iraqis receive only eight hours of electricity a day, with even worse conditions in Baghdad, where most of the capital’s seven million people get only six hours or less of service daily. – [to be continued]

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/may2007/iraq-m19.shtml

2007-05-15T22:57:00.000+08:00

Iraqi Infant Mortality
Soars By 150 Percent
Bill Van Auken

The infant mortality rate in Iraq has increased by a shocking 150 percent since 1990 - the highest such increase recorded for any country in the world -according to an annual report issued by the child advocacy group, Save the Children.

According to the report, in 2005, the last year for which reliable data is available, one in eight Iraqi children - 122,000 in all - died before reaching their fifth birthday. More than half of these deaths were recorded among new-born infants, with pneumonia and diarrhea claiming the greatest toll among Iraqi babies.

The infant mortality rate has long been considered one of the key measures of societal progress and wellbeing. The astounding figures recorded in Iraq are an accurate reflection of the social devastation wrought both by the US invasion of 2003 and more than a decade of US-backed economic sanctions that preceded it.

"Conservative estimates place increases in infant mortality following the 2003 invasion of Iraq at 37 percent," according to the Save the Children report. The implications of such a change - in the space of just two years - are staggering. Given the steady escalation of the armed conflict in Iraq and the continued deterioration of social conditions for masses of people in the country, the rate of increase in infant and child deaths was no doubt even greater over the course of 2006.

The report blamed the horrific decline in infant and child health since the invasion on the steadily worsening living conditions for the Iraqi population as a whole, including "electricity shortages, insufficient clean water, deteriorating health services and soaring inflation."

This overall destruction of basic social infrastructure unleashed by the US invasion and occupation has been translated into a horrendous decline in child health. "Only 35 percent of Iraqi children are fully immunized, and more than one-fifth (21 percent) are severely or moderately stunted" as a result of malnutrition, the study found.

Destruction

The statistics compiled by Save the Children indicate that in 1990 the mortality rate for children under five in Iraq stood at 50 for every 1,000 live births - among the best outcomes reported for the entire Arab world at the time. In 2005, the figure was 125 per 1,000 live births - roughly equivalent to the figures recorded in countries like Malawi, Mauritania, Uganda and Haiti.

While some countries - all with one exception in Africa - have higher death rates than Iraq, none came even near the rate of increase in infant mortality recorded by the US-occupied country (Botswana came closest, with a 107 percent rise, while still recording a slightly lower rate of 120 deaths per 1,000 live births).

The destruction of the conditions and very lives of Iraqi children began well before US troops invaded the country in 2003. The 1990-1991 Gulf War saw more than 90,000 tons of US bombs and missiles dropped on Iraq, smashing much of its essential infrastructure, including power plants and water and sanitation systems and creating the conditions for a public health disaster.

The war was followed by a decade of punishing sanctions that deprived Iraqi children and the population as a whole of essential medical supplies and adequate nutrition. Even chlorine, needed to purify water, was embargoed, depriving infants and small children of a clean water supply and condemning many to death.

It was during this period that the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimated that an additional half a million Iraqi children had died between 1991 and 1998 as a result of the sanctions.

In 1998, the coordinator of United Nation humanitarian operations in Iraq, Denis Halliday, resigned in protest calling the sanctions a form of "genocide" and "a deliberate policy to destroy the people of Iraq." Halliday said at the time, "We are in the process of destroying an entire society. It is as simple and terrifying as that. It is illegal and immoral."

500,000 Children

President Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, confronted in a television interview with the UN estimate of 500,000 children having died as a result of the US-backed sanctions, famously answered, "We think the price is worth it."

The rise in infant mortality rates represents the starkest manifestation of the murderous impact that US aggression upon Iraq and its children over a protracted period. But there are many other indications that for those who survive, conditions of life have become increasingly unbearable.

According to figures reported by the Iraqi government, some 900,000 children have been left orphans by the carnage that has swept Iraq since the US invasion of 2003. It is estimated that at the present levels of violence, some 400 children are left orphaned every day in the country.

The Iraqi Ministry of Education, meanwhile, estimates that barely 30 percent the country’s 3.5 million elementary school children are attending classes, a sharp decline from 75 percent last year. A study sponsored by the World Health Organization in the Iraqi city of Mosul, found fully 30 percent of school children surveyed suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder.

Afghanistan

Significantly, the other country that is presently occupied by the US military and remains the scene of a bitter counterinsurgency war – Afghanistan - ranks as the second worst in the world in terms of its infant mortality rate, with 257 deaths for every 1,000 live births. In other words, more than one out of four Afghan children dies before the age of five. On average, every Afghan mother sees two of her children die as infants, while one in six women die in childbirth.

According to the Save the Children study, 40 percent of Afghan children are malnourished and less than half have access to safe water. The report also notes that, while "1 child in 100,000 in the United States dies of pneumonia each year, roughly 1 in 15" dies of the disease in Afghanistan.

On a world scale, Save the Children reports, "Every year, more than 10 million children die before they reach the age of 5, most from preventable causes and almost all in poor countries." It adds that while infant global infant mortality rates had improved in previous decades, "rates of progress are slowing and in many countries, child death rates are getting worse."

The organization insists that available and low-cost solutions could easily prevent 6 million of these deaths annually. These include, "skilled care at childbirth, breastfeeding, measles immunization, oral rehydration therapy for diarrhea and medical care for pneumonia." But for many of the most impoverished countries, and for many others in the most oppressed layers of society elsewhere, these elementary forms of health care and education are not provided.

www.wsws.org/articles/2007/may2007/iraq-m09.shtml

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=6540

2007-05-07T01:19:00.000+08:00

“U.S., UK Must Admit Defeat And Leave Iraq”
[www.tehrantimes.com]

Iraqi resistance fighters have a right to oppose the occupation and to force foreign troops out of their country, a former British army commander said.

General Sir Michael Rose, who commanded UN forces in Bosnia, urged the U.S. and its allies to "admit defeat" and stop fighting "a hopeless war" in Iraq, according to the BBC's Newsnight program.

More than 140 British troops and about 3,300 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. When asked whether he believes Iraqi fighters have a "right" to drive U.S. occupation forces out of Iraq, Sir Michael said: "Yes, I do."

"As Lord Chatham said, when he was speaking on the British presence in North America, he said 'if I was an American, as I am an Englishman, as long as one Englishman remained on American native soil, I would never, never, never lay down my arms," he told Newsnight.

Iraqi fighters feel the same way, he added.

Sir Michael also said it was time for foreign troops to leave Iraq and go back home. "It is the soldiers who have been telling me from the frontline that the war they have been fighting is a hopeless war, that they cannot possibly win it and the sooner we start talking politics and not military solutions, the sooner they will come home and their lives will be preserved." Asked if that meant admitting defeat, the general replied: "Of course we have to admit defeat. The British admitted defeat in North America and the catastrophes that were predicted at the time never happened.”

"The catastrophes that were predicted after Vietnam never happened. The same thing will occur after we leave Iraq," he added.

Sir Michael has written a book comparing the resistance fighters' tactics with those of George Washington's irregular forces in the American War of Independence.

Last year, he called for British Prime Minister Tony Blair to be impeached for going to war on "false pretences".

A two-day conference of world and regional powers aimed at stabilizing Iraq ended on Friday.

Iraq’s neighbors, including Iran and Syria, had joined ministers from the G8 nations and the EU at the conference in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

More than $30bn in aid and debt relief was pledged by donors on the first day of the summit.

According to the Iraqi finance minister, Egypt agreed to write off about $800m owed to it by Iraq while Slovenia, Bulgaria and Poland would cancel 80% of Iraq's debts.

The UK and European Union each pledged $200m in grants.

The participants also signed a five-year agreement offering financial aid but requiring Iraq to push towards political reform and reconciliation.

Already-strained troops are being put in great mental health problems by the military due to the repeated deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, a Pentagon panel said Thursday, warning of an overburdened state of the military's health care system.

The 14-member task force issued an urgent warning, saying more than a third of U.S. troops and veterans already suffer from problems that include traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder.

It found that 38 percent of soldiers and 31 percent of Marines report psychological concerns.

Among members of the National Guard, the figures have reached 49 percent, with the numbers expected to grow because of repeated deployments.

The figures are likely to rise as the war in Iraq escalates, and that current staffing and budget levels won't be enough to meet the need, the group said in a preliminary report.

The task force also characterized current Pentagon policies as overly conservative and out-of-date. "The system of care for psychological health that has evolved in recent decades is not sufficient to meet the needs of today's forces and their beneficiaries, and will not be sufficient to meet the needs in the future." (Source: Aljazeera.com)

http://www.tehrantimes.com/Description.asp?Da=5/6/2007&Cat=4&Num=3

2007-05-04T02:59:00.000+08:00

Final Part:
The Pivotal Import Of Yellowcake
False Flags And "Big Time" Evil

[forgingnewparadigms.blogspot.com]
Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Never forget that the CIA repeatedly warned the [US] President not to use that information in his speeches, yet he and Cheney stubbornly and knowingly used easily proven forgeries as a linchpin of the lies used to sell the Iraq war!

Why were they so hell-bent on feeding already proven lies to the American public? Lies that were prepared before 9:11 and before Bush and Cheney were [s]elected. Are we to believe that Bush and Cheney are so clueless about the content of the speeches they practice repeatedly before giving them that it is somehow legitimate to blame others (Tenet, et al) for the lies they used to sell the wars they blatantly planned long before they were [s]elected to office?

Why do you think Cheney (aka 'Big Time") was so preoccupied with discrediting Joe Wilson? Why do you think Tenet referred to the outing of Valerie Plame as a “Big Time Wrong"?

There's much more to hide than a mere "intelligence failure" and a fake letter. Their attempts to prevent inquiries into the 9:11 attacks, coupled with the way those buildings collapsed, even though the fires were never hot enough to melt steel girders, along with a host of other glaring irregularities and near impossibilities, points to some very heinous deceptions.

Never forget that we were also lied to about the Gulf of Tonkin incident that was used to justify the Vietnam war, the cause of the Spanish American War, and the facts about Pearl Harbor. What's one more noble sacrifice in the causes of freedom, democracy, and military-industrial profiteering?

Now even more "Big Time" lies, that will shake this world to its foundations, are being exposed. For example, follow the Medals of Freedom handed out by Little W.

The previous Pope received one as an excuse for Bush to complain, in person, that the Vatican wasn't being aggressive enough in helping him during the 2004 election.

Shortly thereafter, there were news stories about Bush's brain-dead requests for the Vatican's help. That was another impeachable offense never picked up by our so-called free press.

It is a treasonous act to conspire with a foreign potentate (the Pope) to manipulate the US election process.

Notice how the Vatican pretends to oppose the Iraq war while secretly supporting Bush and the Neo-cons? Notice how they pretend to oppose Freemasonry while belonging to the Neo-facist P2 lodge? Connect the dots.

And never forget that the Bin Laden's are very close associates of the Bushes, and were given a special pass to leave the country while all other flights were grounded after the 9:11 attacks.

How dumb can the American public remain and for how long? How many unlikely coincidences must occur before more people connect the dots to discern the patterns in the noise?

The Neo-cons and their supporters are now beginning to face the Truth and Justice they purposely denied the peoples of both East and West.

There are very few remaining on both sides of this so-called War on Terror, (aka the Neo-Crusades) who aren't aware of the great greed, duplicity, and Machiavellian character of the Bush-Cheney crew and their cohorts.

Now Iraq and the War on Terror are about to do for the USA and the Vatican what Afghanistan did for the Soviet Union.

And make no mistake about it, the ultimate driving force behind this latest convulsion of great evil has been the Vatican and its secret society cohorts.

The "yellow cake" lies that helped start this war have been traced back to Rome and the P2 lodge.

The time is long overdue to connect the dots and deliver long-overdue Truth and Justice to the Vatican, conspiring world leaders, and their criminal associations and organizations.

Be prepared for things to accelerate out of their control very soon...

posted by Seven Star Hand at 11:11 PM
http://forgingnewparadigms.blogspot.com/

2007-05-03T16:18:00.000+08:00

Malaysia Urges US
To Leave Iraq
And Make Amends

NUSA DUA (Bali), May 3 (Bernama) -- Malaysia wants the United States to leave Iraq and stop being the world's "policeman in all and every sense of the word", the 116th Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) meeting was told today.

This was conveyed by Malaysian Member of Parliament Datuk Dr Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar at the IPU's First Standing Committee on Peace and International Security.

He said that the nations involved in the prolonged Iraq war must admit their mistakes and seriously make amends.

"I know that it's not easy to be humble when you're victorious. I know too that it's not easy to be humble when your weaponry could annihilate the world 10 times over. But leave Iraq you must," he said.

Speaking on the fifth day of the IPU meeting here, he said the world knew that what was happening in Iraq was a manufactured war to control the country's resources and riches.

This could only result in mistrust and hatred in the hearts of the Iraqis who resented the colonisation of their homeland, he said.

Dr Wan Junaidi said that once the war started, no convention or rules could prevent those with the military might from carrying out violent acts, citing the harsh treatment of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay detention centres.

He pointed out that when pushed into a corner with their families and properties gone, those without any means to fight back would have nothing to lose by resorting to terrorism.

Terrorism, he said, was an ideology that could never be defeated by military might and that the aggrieved people could only be won over by capturing their hearts and minds through dialogues and discussions among equals.

Dr Wan Junaidi said Malaysia wanted the IPU, which comprises more than 140 parliaments in the world, to ensure that the right to life, liberty and happiness belongs to every citizen of the world and not just the people of any one country.

-- BERNAMA
http://www.bernama.com

2007-05-03T12:48:00.001+08:00

Part One:

The Pivotal Import Of Yellowcake
False Flags And "Big Time" Evil

[forgingnewparadigms.blogspot.com]
Tuesday, May 01, 2007

The combination of George Tenet's book, At the Center of the Storm, Eisner & Royce's The Italian Letter and the books and research of many others in recent years now provides enough of a foundation for everyone to finally discern that 9:11 was a "false flag" operation against both the American public and the Muslim world.

Likewise, the uncanny synchronicity of Al Qaeda's videos and other activities perfectly timed to reinforce and support the Bush-Cheney administration's political needs coupled with the actions of the Bush administration actually serving to strengthen Al Qaeda's position, now makes perfect sense.

The apparent mistakes and chaos that have characterized the Iraq war, the easily prevented resurgence of the Taliban, and permitting Bin Laden to escape Tora Bora to a safe haven in Pakistan all fit the same pattern.

It's hard to maintain a state of continuous war if you allow your made-to-order enemies to be defeated too early. It is likewise hard to remain a "war president" if your wars end too soon!

The letterhead used to forge the "Yellowcake letter" that was then used to help "sell" the Iraq war was stolen in Rome on 1/1/2001, more than nine months before 9:11 and before Little W. became president.

Consequently, the use of the "Yellow-Cake Lie" was obviously discussed and planned before then! The import of this fact is that the Niger embassy in Rome was burglarized, before Bush became president, to lay the groundwork for the web of deception used to sell the Iraq War, after 9:11.

More importantly, it is highly unlikely that the Iraq war could ever have been sold to the American public, without something like 9:11 happening first.

Any excuses of other uses for the stolen letterhead are laughable since the letterhead burglary would have been pointless, without 9:11. This evidences foreknowledge of those attacks, a full nine months before they occurred, among other things!

It is well known that Neo-con think tanks were advocating war with Iraq and Iran during the Clinton years, long before Little W. was [s]elected.

Years later, this administration has yet to tell the truth to the American public about far too many things, even though lie after lie have been exposed.

Consequently, the fact that 9:11 was also used as a prime reason for the Iraq war and is likewise mired in a web of deception and misdirection, leaves little doubt that the two events were part of the same deception.

Regardless of the many disingenuous denials, the Bush-Cheney administration, Neo-cons, and their supporters were openly pushing for war with Iraq long before 9:11.

They also quickly blamed Iraq and publicly called for war with them in the hours following the 9:11 attacks; even though the hijackers were mostly Saudis and Bin Laden was based in Afghanistan.

[Google : "Yellow Cake" "False Flag" P2. Also Google Panorama Burba Yellow cake Berlusconi and do a little more digging from those results.]

Most people don't understand that Berlusconi was also involved in this deception, which helps explain his coziness with the Neo-cons and Bush-Cheney administration, as well as the Italian participation in the Iraq War, though it was paltry, mostly symbolic, and against overwhelming Italian anti-war opinion.

The forged "Yellowcake Letter" affair pulls together actors from Watergate, Iran-Contra, and the Vatican Bank scandal, which means the P2 Masonic lodge in Rome, where the Niger embassy letterhead was stolen.

Since Cheney and the Neo-cons were actively planning the war in Iraq before Little W was [s]elected, and the stolen Niger embassy letterhead was used as a pivotal component of the "sales job" for the war, Cheney and cohorts were undeniably linked to that deception, before 9:11, and before January 1, 2001.

[to continue in the final part to be published tomorrow.]

posted by Seven Star Hand at 11:11 PM
http://forgingnewparadigms.blogspot.com

2007-05-02T22:51:00.000+08:00

Final Part:
Ex-CIA Director Tenet
Admits Lies Told On War

By Bill Van Auken

For all of his claims that he has been made a scapegoat, Tenet’s own memoir confirms the indisputable fact that he shares major culpability for preparing the criminal war against Iraq.

He accepts blame for the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) issued in 2002, which sought to make the case for war with Iraq by deliberately exaggerating and even falsifying Iraq’s alleged WMD capabilities.

Tenet describes the 2002 NIE as “one of the lowest moments of my seven-year tenure,” and expressed regrets that the document was not “more nuanced.”

But it was this document - far more than any “slam dunk” comment at the White House - that served as the foundation for the drumbeat of warnings from Bush, Cheney and Rice about the imminent threat of Iraqi attacks and even “mushroom clouds” if Iraq was not invaded.

It likewise was the justification given by congressional Democrats for voting for the resolution authorizing Bush to launch a war of aggression.

False Charges

As for the lack of “nuance,” this is precisely what Tenet himself had demanded. As USA Today reported in February 2004, the CIA director “pushed [those who drafted the NIE] to avoid wishy-washy conclusions.”

Thrown into the document were false charges that Iraq had resumed its nuclear program, had imported aluminum tubes for uranium enrichment and was seeking “yellowcake” in Africa.

Tenet then had a declassified version of the NIE issued, which eliminated all dissenting views from intelligence professionals who challenged the phony charges against Iraq.

Yet, while he was director of the CIA, Tenet repeatedly went to Capitol Hill to make the Bush administration’s fabricated case of an Iraqi-Al-Qaeda connection.

And in his book, he acknowledges that in October 2002, at Rice’s request, he called up a New York Times reporter covering the congressional debate on impending war to falsely claim that nothing that the CIA had learned contradicted the Bush administration’s claims.

Partisan

“In retrospect,” he writes. “I shouldn’t have talked to...the reporter at Condi’s request. By making public comments in the middle of a contentious public debate, I gave the impression that I was a partisan player.”

This is precisely what he was, and a valuable one at that, given both his supposedly “above politics” post as CIA director and his personal past as a Democrat.

In another significant statement, Tenet confirms that the administration essentially looked the other way during the summer of 2001, when intelligence reports about impending Al Qaeda terrorist attacks within the United States should have set off alarm bells.

He describes a meeting on July 10, 2001 at the White House, where he gave Rice a briefing in which he warned of “multiple, spectacular attacks against the United States.”

Terrorism

He said he told her: “We believe these attacks are imminent. Mass casualties are likely.” He also claims he urged preemptive strikes inside Afghanistan.

In his book, he states that Rice essentially discounted the warning, delegating it to lower-ranking functionaries.

Rice responded on CBS “Face the Nation” Sunday, declaring, “Well, it’s very interesting because that’s not what George told the 9/11 Commission at the time. He said that he felt that we had gotten it.”

It is true that Tenet told a different story to the 9/11 Commission, but it is his current version that rings true. The shift only underscores the whitewash character of the 9/11 report, which portrayed the Bush administration as giving sporadic and insufficient attention to terrorism, rather than deliberately turning its back on the probable Al Qaeda strike, in order to obtain the necessary pretext for military action.

Suspicion

Tenet’s book only provides more grounds for suspicion that elements within the US government deliberately prevented the foiling of the terrorist plot, because such an attack was needed to provide a pretext for long-planned military interventions in the oil-rich Middle East and Central Asia.

One other aspect of Tenet’s book and TV appearance has been less noted in the media, but clearly bears examination. That is his vigorous defense of “enhanced interrogation techniques” - i.e., torture - which he claimed was more effective than any other terrorism-related intelligence activities.

“I know that this program alone is worth more than the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency put together, have been able to tell us,” he said on “60 Minutes.”

Here is an apt yardstick for measuring the moral stature of the advocates of “freedom” and “democracy” in the White House, Pentagon, State Department and CIA.

Tenet adamantly defends the systematic use of kidnapping, illegal detention and torture - as well as systematic lying to the American people to engineer an illegal war. His outrage is sparked only when his fellow war criminals turned on him and threw him to the wolves, in order to buy time to continue and deepen the military aggression in Iraq.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/may2007/tene-m01.shtml

2007-05-02T00:25:00.000+08:00

Part One:
Ex-CIA Director Tenet
Admits Lies Told On War

By Bill Van Auken

With the publication of his new memoir, At the Center of the Storm, released Monday, and in an appearance on the CBS television new program “60 Minutes”, former CIA director George Tenet has become the latest former official to admit publicly that the Bush administration launched its war against Iraq based upon false pretenses and manipulated intelligence.

Tenet’s CBS interview was a display of moral cowardice and self-righteousness. The former CIA director hailed the day-to-day work of the organization of spies, torturers and assassins that he headed for seven years, passed over the horrific death toll in the Iraq war with mild tut-tutting, and reserved his real passion for complaints about backstabbing against himself by former partners in crime like Vice President Cheney and Condoleezza Rice.

It made for a degrading spectacle, with Tenet sounding like nothing so much as third-rate Mafia hitman whining about how the big shots had sold him out after all his loyal service.

Nonetheless, the former CIA director’s comments have an objective significance. One of the inner circle of war conspirators has now testified publicly that the Bush administration had decided on war with Iraq from its inception, and seized on the 9/11 attacks as a pretext for the action.

“There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat,” Tenet writes in his memoir, according to advance press reports.

Strategy

Rather than discussing whether or not to invade Iraq, Tenet says, the highest circles in the Bush administration were preoccupied with how to sell the war to the American public, using the deaths of 3,000 people at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon to justify killing tens and hundreds of thousands more people in Iraq who had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.

The marketing strategy adopted by the administration had two components: claiming that Saddam Hussein had vast stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, and claiming that Hussein had active, ongoing ties to Al Qaeda, to make its convoluted and preposterous argument that there was a real danger that the Iraqi leader would supply WMD for a terrorist attack on the United States.

Both legs of this construct were false, as Tenet now admits, although he claimed that only the second, the Iraq-Al Qaeda “connection” was deliberately fabricated. He writes in the memoir, “Let me say it again. CIA found absolutely no linkage between Saddam and 9/11.”

As for the Saddam WMD claim, Tenet clings to the “we were all mistaken” mantra that the Bush administration has employed ever since its failure to find any shred of such weapons in post-invasion Iraq.

Pretext

But he confirms the role of Cheney and other officials in deliberately exaggerating the WMD issue and seizing on it as a pretext for war.

Tenet’s main complaint in his “60 Minutes” interview, as well as in the book, was over the supposed distortion of his use of the words “slam dunk” in relation to evidence of the existence of Iraqi WMD.

The ex-CIA director admits that he used the basketball metaphor, but claims it was not an affirmation that Iraq actually had such weapons, but rather expressed his certainty that the administration could use WMD as an effective argument to stampede the American people into war.

“We can put a better case together for a public case. That’s what I meant,” Tenet told “60 Minutes.”

Afterwards, the ex-CIA director complained, administration officials, including Vice President Cheney, falsely twisted his words into a supposed confirmation by the CIA that the Iraqi threat was real, and therefore going to war justified.

Slam Dunk

“The hardest part of all this has been just listening to this for almost three years, listening to the vice president go on ‘Meet the Press’ on the fifth year of 9/11 and say, ‘Well, George Tenet said slam dunk,’ as if he needed me to say ‘slam dunk’ to go to war with Iraq,” said Tenet.

Tenet claims that what was merely a passing comment on his part became turned into a main line of defense for the administration’s decision to go to war.

He casts himself as a scapegoat, claiming that the false allegations had injured his “reputation” and “personal honor.”

Tenet refers to the December 2002 Oval Office session in which he made his “slam dunk” remark as “essentially a marketing meeting.”

This cynical language was typical of the administration in the run-up to the war of aggression against Iraq. In September 2002, then-White House chief of staff Andrew Card told the New York Times in relation to the war buildup, “From a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August.”

Target

Tenet writes in his book: “I told the president that strengthening the public presentation was a ‘slam dunk,’ a phrase that was later taken completely out of context. If I had simply said, ‘I’m sure we can do better,’ I wouldn’t be writing this chapter - or maybe even this book.”

In other words, if only he had avoided trying to impress the president with sports jargon and his name had not been bandied about on television talk shows, Tenet would presumably be enjoying his retirement. What can one say? This, after playing a central role in promoting a war that has cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and more than 3,300 American troops.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who as former national security adviser is one of the main targets of Tenet’s ire, appeared on talk shows Sunday morning to counter Tenet’s charges. She called his claim in the memoir that the administration had plans for war on Iraq pre-dating 9/11, “Flat out wrong.”

Probed on the question of whether there was a debate on the “imminence of the Iraqi threat,” Rice responded with a reaffirmation of the administration’s doctrine of preventive war of aggression.

Imminence, she proclaimed is not a question of “if somebody is going to strike tomorrow.” Rather, she insisted, “It’s whether you believe you’re in a stronger position today to deal with the threat, or whether you’re going to be in a stronger position tomorrow.”

Based upon this same logic, the US could launch unprovoked wars against Iran, Russia, China or any other perceived current or future enemy.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/may2007/tene-m01.shtml

2007-05-01T23:22:00.000+08:00

Israel:
1000 Missiles Raid
Would Hit Iran

[Persian Journal – April 29, 2007]

Iran's disputed nuclear programme could be severely hit by firing 1,000 cruise missiles in a 10-day attack, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was quoted as saying on Saturday. Asked in an interview with Germany's Focus magazine whether military action would be an option if Iran continued to defy the United Nations, Olmert said:

"Nobody is ruling it out. It is impossible perhaps to destroy the entire nuclear programme but it would be possible to damage it in such a way that it would be set back years," Olmert said.

"It would take 10 days and would involve the firing of 1,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles."

Meanwhile, Olmert's spokeswoman, Miri Eisin, said the prime minister had spoken to the author of the Focus article, but she said Olmert did not make the comments that were attributed to him. Eisin said the meeting was not an interview and was conducted for background purposes, on the understanding it would not be used.

"The prime minister did not say these things," Eisin said.

Ulrich Schmidla, a foreign affairs editor at Focus magazine, said he would try to contact the reporter who conducted the interview, who was a regular contributor.

Iran says it is developing nuclear technology for power generation, but the West fears it is trying to build a bomb and two sets of UN sanctions have been imposed on Tehran. European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana urged Washington on Friday to speak directly to Iran over its nuclear programme and said he was sure Tehran was ready for such talks.

Focus quoted Olmert as saying UN sanctions should be given a chance to work before military action was considered.

"We must give the (UN) process time to take effect," he said. "We have no intention of attacking Iran at the moment."

Olmert said he doubted whether Iran's nuclear programme was as far advanced as Tehran said. "I don't think that Iran is about to cross the nuclear technology threshold as its leaders claim," he said. "We still have time to stop them."

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has proclaimed Iran's ability to enrich on an "industrial scale", but UN inspectors say it remains at test level. Iran would face further sanctions if it has not stopped enrichment by a new Security Council deadline of May 24.

www.iranian.ws/iran_news/publish/article_21708.shtml
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=6469

2007-04-25T13:10:00.000+08:00

Haditha Massacre Report:
US Commanders
See Killing Iraqi civilians
As “Cost Of Doing Business”

An unpublished report commissioned by the US military on the massacre carried out in the Iraqi town of Haditha by American marines in November 2005 is an unintended indictment of the entire war and occupation.

In its Saturday edition, the Washington Post published an article on Maj. Gen. Eldon A. Bargewell’s report, including excerpts from the document, a copy of which the newspaper had obtained. Bargewell makes clear that indifference to the fate of Iraqi civilians is pervasive in the military high command.

On November 19, 2005, a roadside bomb struck an American Humvee near Haditha, in western Iraq, killing one of the marines on board. In response, according to eyewitnesses and local officials, the US forces went on a rampage, killing as many as 24 unarmed Iraqis in their houses, including seven women and three children.

A marine communiqué at the time claimed that the civilians had been killed in the blast and that “gunmen attacked the [US] convoy with small-arms fire.” The Bargewell report, completed in June 2006, makes clear that those who issued the news release knew from the outset that marines had killed the civilians.

Bargewell concluded that the Marine Corps chain of command ignored “obvious” signs of “serious misconduct” in Haditha. The Post reports that the general “found that officers may have willfully ignored reports of the civilian deaths to protect themselves and their units from blame.”

The general went on, in the most damning portion of the report cited by the Post, to underline the hostility and contempt felt by the American military command for the Iraqi population. “All levels of command tended to view civilian casualties, even in significant numbers, as routine and as the natural and intended result of insurgent tactics,”

Bargewell commented. “Statements made by the chain of command during interviews for this investigation, taken as a whole, suggest that Iraqi civilian lives are not as important as U.S. lives, their deaths are just the cost of doing business, and that the Marines need to get ‘the job done’ no matter what it takes.”

The Haditha massacre is a horrific event, but it is the inevitable product of a colonial war fought against a resisting population. How many more such episodes have gone unreported or undetected? Daily violence, often homicidal, is visited on the Iraqi population by US forces, who are themselves demoralized and brutalized.

http://wsws.org/articles/2007/apr2007/hadi-a24.shtml

2007-04-25T12:49:00.000+08:00

Senate Leader:
Iraq War Is "Lost"

The US Senate Majority Leader has defended comments in which he called the war in Iraq a "lost" cause and branded President Bush a "liar”.

"I have no doubt the war cannot be won militarily and that's what I said last Thursday and I stick with that," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in an interview with CNN on Monday.

"General Petreaus has said the war cannot be won militarily. President Bush is doing nothing economically, he's doing nothing diplomatically, he's not doing even the minimal requested by the Iraq Study Group, so I stick with General Petreaus," Reid said.

His comments have triggered angry backlash from the White House and several Republican congressmen, some of whom say Reid's comments send the wrong message to US troops in Iraq.

"I do what I think is right and I think this war is headed in the wrong direction," Reid said during the televised interview. "And I'm going to speak out as often and as regularly as I can."

The Senate Majority Leader has been an outspoken critic of the president, in the past calling him a "loser" and a "liar".

"I don't back off that at all," he said. "If you say something that is untrue to me and in the right circumstances, I will call you a liar. I have no regret having called him a liar, because he lied."

In a speech in Washington Monday, Reid said Congress will send a supplemental war spending bill that would require the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq to commence by October 1 and be completed by April 1, 2008.

President Bush on Monday reiterated his pledge to veto any legislation that includes a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq.

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=6436

2007-04-20T11:08:00.000+08:00

Final Part:

Behind The Iran Crisis

Mark Weber
[Institute for Historical Review]

In 1941, military forces of Britain and the Soviet Union, with backing from the United States, invaded and occupied Iran in flagrant violation of international law. The British and Soviet Russian occupation forces removed the government in Tehran, which was considered too sympathetic to Germany, and installed the youthful Mohammed Reza Pahlavi as the country’s Shah, or monarch.

In 1953 the United States, operating through the Central Intelligence Agency, and acting in concert with the British, organized the overthrow of the popular government of prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh, and brought back to power the Shah who had briefly fled the country.

From 1953 until 1979, the United States generously supported the Shah, a ruler who became increasingly out of touch with the interests and aspirations of his people. In 1979 he was overthrown in a popular uprising, and fled into exile. An Islamic Republic was proclaimed.

In the aftermath of the Iranian revolution, Saddam Hussein in neighboring Iraq ordered his armed forces to invade what he regarded as a weakened and vulnerable Iran. The war started by Iraq in September 1980 lasted nearly eight years, and was one of the most destructive of the twentieth century. Casualty figures are uncertain, though estimates suggest more than one and a half million war and war-related casualties. Iran acknowledged that nearly 300,000 people died in the war, and estimates of the Iraqi dead range from 160,000 to 240,000.

The US role in that conflict was a cynical one. While publicly lamenting the bloodshed, the United States at the same time provided aid and support to Iraq. To cement that support, Donald Rumsfeld, who later served as Secretary of Defense during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, flew to Baghdad in December 1983 as a special envoy of President Reagan, to meet and shake hands with Saddam Hussein, and to reaffirm US backing in the war against Iran.

Showdown

In the current US-Iran showdown, much of the world is mindful of the blatant double standard of US policy. While Washington threatens war against Iran for developing a nuclear program, it sanctions Israel ’s vast arsenal of nuclear weapons, and seemingly has no problem with a nuclear-armed China, Pakistan, Russia or India.

In fact, given its geo-political position, Iran would be foolish if it did not try to develop the most effective military force possible. On its eastern border is Pakistan, which now has nuclear weapons, and Afghanistan, which is currently under the control of the military forces of a nuclear-armed United States. On Iran’s western border is Iraq, which likewise is occupied by the armed forces of a nuclear US.

In the region, the only country that currently has a nuclear weapons arsenal, that occupies territory of its neighbors, and which is in violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions – is Israel.

In fact, if the United States held Israel to the same standards that it has applied to Iraq and now Iran, American bombers and missiles would be blasting Tel Aviv, and American troops would seize Israel’s leaders and punish them for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

When a society is healthy, its leaders – political, social, cultural and intellectual – speak to its citizens with honesty and candor. A sound social-political system encourages truth. In a sick and corrupt society, leaders resort to lies and deceit. And the more decayed the society, the more its leaders lie and deceive.

In our society, the official lies and deceptions are so numerous and so brazen, it’s difficult to enumerate them. I’ve already referred to its lies about the Baghdad regime in the months before the US invasion of Iraq. But it’s much worse than that.

Freedom

In the aftermath of the 2001 Nine Eleven terrorist attack, for example, President Bush on national television told the world that: “America was targeted for attack because we're the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world." The next day he said that "freedom and democracy are under attack," and that the perpetrators had struck against "all freedom-loving people everywhere in the world." These are not just false statements. They are absurdly ignorant and deceptive ones.

The focus of the Walt-Mearsheimer paper, mentioned earlier, is, appropriately, the role of the Israel lobby in determining US policy in the Middle East. But this is no ordinary lobby. Its power and influence is much greater, more insidious, and more dangerous, than that of any other lobby. Far beyond determining US policy in the Middle East, it has a profound impact on every aspect of American social, political and cultural life. That’s one reason why, instead of talking about the “Israel Lobby,” I routinely speak instead of Jewish-Zionist power.

The Walt-Mearsheimer paper is much more than a trenchant analysis or persuasive critique of a particular lobby. It is implicitly a damning indictment of the American social-political system. The Jewish-Zionist grip on our nation is an expression of a profound and deeply rooted problem. Such a lobby or power – particularly one that represents the interests of a self-absorbed community that makes up no more than three or four percent of the population – could only gain such a hold on the governmental machinery of a society that is fundamentally sick and corrupt. No healthy society would permit a small minority to gain and hold such power, and wield it for its own particular interests.

The failure of virtually the entire American political and intellectual establishment to challenge this power is an expression of deep-rooted cowardice and corruption. Cowardice and corruption on such a scale is possible only in a society that is gravely ill – one that is beyond reform or redemption. This sickness is manifest not merely in the hijacking of our foreign policy, or in the corruption of our political system, but also in the squalor of our inner cities, in our nation’s high level of crime, in a culture that is ever more infantile and crass, and in the spreading vulgarity of our social life.

In every society, it is quite normal that most people are concerned with little more than the happiness, interests and well-being of themselves, their families, and their friends. In any society, only a small number of men and women have the wit and awareness to understand the social, political and cultural forces that shape the present and the future. Only a small minority has the soul or temperament to care about, and be seriously concerned for, the long-term health and well-being of the world, or even of their country.

Future

Normally, and understandably, we expect – and have every right to expect – that our political leaders are mindful of and planning for the long-term interests of the nation. Tragically, our leaders have proven themselves grossly derelict. With very few exceptions, our political leaders – Republican and Democrat, conservative and liberal – show far more concern for their own welfare and for the outcome of the next election, than for the long-term interests of our people and the world.

We seek to raise public awareness of the great issues that confront us, that impact every aspect of our lives, and which have the most profound consequences for the future. We realize, of course, that our words will reach the minds and hearts of only a few. We know that we cannot hope to match the financial resources, influence and outreach of our adversaries. We cannot hope to compete, much less offset, the great power and influence of the media giants who control most of what we read, hear and view.

Our great task is to reach those who, first, think about the present and the past, and second, who care about our future. That is, we work to reach men and women, especially younger men and women, of unusual awareness and a higher sense of responsibility – the men and women who will be the leaders of the future, who can, and, if our children and grand-children are to live in a decent world, must assume power, replacing the failed leaders who have betrayed the people’s trust.

A few of those who are here this evening have come, perhaps, out of simple curiosity, or to meet others who are attending. But most of us are here this evening because we care. We care about what is right and wrong. We care about what is true and not true.

We care about the past and, more importantly, we care about the future. We care about the world we live in. We feel a sense of responsibility for the world we’ve inherited, and for the world of the future. We want to make a difference – to make this a better world – a world that, even beyond our own lifetimes, is more just and right.

Peace

Some of us may feel a special concern for the cause of peace, mindful of the destruction, suffering, and death of war. Some may be moved by a strong concern for justice, perhaps especially for the people who have lived for decades under Zionist occupation. Some may have an unusually strong religious sensibility. Some may feel a special concern for the welfare and future of his or her own culture, race or nation, while others may feel a responsibility for the future of all mankind.

Regardless of the particular causes or principles that most move us, that are closest to our hearts, no issue is of greater urgency than breaking the Jewish-Zionist grip on American political, social and cultural life. As long as that power remains entrenched, there will be no end to the systematic Jewish-Zionist distortion of history and current affairs, the Jewish-Zionist corruption and domination of the US political system, Zionist oppression of Palestinians, the bloody conflict between Jews and non-Jews in the Middle East, and the Israeli threat to peace.

We are engaged in a great, global struggle – in which two distinct and irreconcilable sides confront each other. A world struggle that pits an arrogant and malevolent power that feels ordained to rule over others, on one side, and all other nations and societies – indeed, humanity itself – on the other.

This struggle is not a new one. It is the latest enactment of a great drama that has played itself out again and again, over centuries, and in many different societies, cultures and historical eras. In the past this drama played itself out on a local, national, regional, or, sometimes, continental stage. Today this is a global drama, and a global clash.

It is a struggle for the welfare and future not merely of the Middle East, or of America, but a great historical battle for the soul and future of humanity itself. A struggle that calls all of us – across the country and around the world – who share a sense of responsibility for the future of our nation, of the world, and of humankind.

www.ihr.org/news/0704_weber.shtml http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=6389http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=6389

2007-04-19T03:56:00.000+08:00

Part Two:

Behind The Iran Crisis

By Mark Weber
[Institute for Historical Review]

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reports that the US is planning military action against Iran, and that President Bush is already intent on “regime change” there. Hersh wrote that the Bush administration is stepping up clandestine activities inside Iran, and has intensified planning for a major air attack. Hersh also concluded that the White House is considering the use of tactical nuclear weapons against Iran.

With regard to Iran, professors Walt and Mearsheimer wrote in their paper: “Israelis tend to describe every threat in the starkest terms, but Iran is widely seen as their most dangerous enemy because it is the most likely to acquire nuclear weapons. Virtually all Israelis regard an Islamic country in the Middle East with nuclear weapons as a threat to their existence… In late April 2003, [the Israeli daily] Ha’aretz reported that the Israeli ambassador in Washington was calling for regime change in Iran. The overthrow of Saddam, he noted, was ‘not enough’. In his words, America ‘has to follow through. We still have great threats of that magnitude coming from Syria, coming from Iran.’ The neo-conservatives, too, lost no time in making the case for regime change in Tehran … As usual, a bevy of articles by prominent neo-conservatives made the case for going after Iran…

“The Bush administration has responded to the Lobby’s pressure by working overtime to shut down Iran’s nuclear program. But Washington has had little success, and Iran seems determined to create a nuclear arsenal. As a result, the Lobby has intensified its pressure. Op-eds and other articles now warn of imminent dangers from a nuclear Iran, caution against any appeasement of a ‘terrorist’ regime, and hint darkly of preventive action should diplomacy fail... Israeli officials also warn they may take pre-emptive action should Iran continue down the nuclear road, threats partly intended to keep Washington’s attention on the issue.

“One might argue that Israel and the Lobby have not had much influence on policy towards Iran, because the US has its own reasons for keeping Iran from going nuclear. There is some truth in this, but Iran’s nuclear ambitions do not pose a direct threat to the US. If Washington could live with a nuclear Soviet Union, a nuclear China or even a nuclear North Korea, it can live with a nuclear Iran. And that is why the Lobby must keep up constant pressure on politicians to confront Tehran. Iran and the US would hardly be allies if the Lobby did not exist, but US policy would be more temperate and preventive war would not be a serious option.”

Neocon

A good example of the “bevy of articles” referred to here by Walt and Mearsheimer is a prominently featured piece in the Los Angeles Times last November, entitled, “Force is the Only Answer.” Written by Joshua Muravchik, a prominent neocon associated with the pro-Israel “American Enterprise Institute” think tank, the essay begins with the sentence: “We must bomb Iran.”

In Israel, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called Iran an “existential threat,” and in January the London Sunday Times reported that the Israeli government is planning to attack Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons.

In December the former commander of the artillery units of Israel’s armed forces, Brigadier General Oded Tira, has been candid in calling for a US attack against Iran on behalf of the Jewish state. General Tira declared:

“President Bush lacks the political power to attack Iran. As an American strike in Iran is essential for our existence, we must help him pave the way by lobbying the Democratic Party and US newspaper editors. We need to do this in order to turn the Iranian issue to a bipartisan one and unrelated to the Iraq failure. We must turn to Hillary Clinton and other potential candidates in the Democratic Party so that they publicly support immediate action by Bush against Iran.”

Scott Ritter, an American who served as a senior United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, says in his new book, Target Iran: “The Bush administration, with the able help of the Israeli government and the pro-Israel lobby, has succeeded in exploiting the ignorance of the American people about nuclear technology and nuclear weapons so as to engender enough fear that the American public has more or less been pre-programmed to accept the notion of the need to militarily confront a nuclear armed Iran.” Ritter also writes: “Let there be no doubt: If there is an American war with Iran it is a war that was made in Israel and nowhere else.”

Unilateral

An attack against Iran by the United States, or Israel, would be, in the absence of an imminent threat, an illegal, unilateral act of war. If undertaken by the US without a formal congressional declaration of war, such an attack would be unconstitutional. A war against Iran would serve only Israeli and Zionist interests. For everyone else, war against Iran would be a catastrophe.

For many years now, American political leaders of both parties have declared themselves staunchly committed to Israel and its security. This unparalleled devotion to Israel – which is an expression of the Jewish-Zionist grip on America’s political and cultural life – seems to have reached an apex in the current administration.

In an address to pro-Israel activists at a convention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), President Bush said: “The United States is strongly committed, and I am strongly committed, to the security of Israel as a vibrant Jewish state.”

President Bush’s worldview is shared by Condoleezza Rice, who served as his National Security Advisor, and is now US Secretary of State. In a May 2003 interview Rice made the astounding statement that the “security of Israel is the key to security of the world.”

It’s difficult to imagine an American leader making a similar statement about any other country. Imagine a US Secretary of State saying, for example, that the “security of Nigeria is the key to security of the world.” Or, that the security of Russia, Taiwan, or Serbia, is the key to security of the world. It’s unthinkable.

President Bush, in talking about the possibility of war against Iran, has sometimes “slipped” by candidly citing Israel as the sole or primary reason for taking military action against Iran.

Destroy

In an interview in February 2006, he was asked about his reaction to anti-Israel remarks by Iran’s president. Bush replied: “We will rise to Israel’s defense, if need be.” And he added, “You bet we’ll defend Israel."

In a speech in March 2006, Bush said: “Now that I’m on Iran … the threat from Iran is, of course, their stated objective to destroy our strong ally Israel. It’s a threat to world peace; it’s a threat, in essence, to a strong alliance. I made it clear, I’ll make it clear again, that we will use military might to protect our ally, Israel.”

Such remarks have worried Jewish leaders – not because they do not agree with them, or because they doubt Bush’s sincerity, but because they believe that the President has been too candid, too open, in acknowledging Israel’s importance in determining American war policy. Jewish leaders are concerned that non-Jews might draw all-too-obvious conclusions from such statements.

In April 2006, the Jewish Week of New York reported: “President Bush is risking a backlash that could injure the Jewish community – and his own cause – by repeatedly citing Israel as his top rationale for possible US military conflict with Iran, Jewish leaders and Middle East analysts warned... Bush’s repeated, sometimes exclusive, focus on Israel could spark public fury against the Jewish state and Jews if US military action is accompanied by skyrocketing gas prices, terrorism at home or fallen GIs who might be seen as dying for Israel, some said.”

Another Jewish community paper, the influential Forward of New York reported in May 2006: “Jewish community leaders have urged the White House to refrain from publicly pledging to defend Israel against possible Iranian hostilities, senior Jewish activists told the Forward … [Jewish] communal leaders say that although they deeply appreciate the president’s repeated promises to come to Israel’s defense, public declarations to that effect do more harm than good.” Jewish leaders went on to express concern that such statements “could lead to American Jews being blamed for any negative consequences of an American strike against Iran.”

Taliban

George W. Bush, and others in his administration, have often lectured Iran about democracy. Well, that’s pretty rich coming from a man who became president after an election in which he received fewer votes than his opponent.

Contrary to the impression given by the Bush administration and neocon propagandists, Iran was never allied with, or even friendly to, the Al Qaeda organization or the Taliban regime in neighboring Afghanistan. In fact, in 1999 Iran almost went to war against Taliban-ruled Afghanistan after Taliban fighters kidnapped and murdered nine Iranian diplomats.

In the barrage of alarmist anti-Iran and pro-war propaganda of recent months, we’ve heard a lot about how Iran is a great danger to Jews. To be sure, Jews do not have anything like the power and influence in Iran that they do here in the US, but the insinuation that Iran’s Jews are somehow terrorized or oppressed is rubbish. Jews have far more freedom in Iran than they do in several Middle East countries that are allied with the United States, such as Saudi Arabia or Pakistan. Iran’s Jewish community of some 25,000 is represented in the nation’s parliament by a Jewish representative. There are 20 active synagogues in Tehran. The Jews of Iran, many of whom own and run successful businesses, have a standard of living that is above the country’s average.

To put this Iran “crisis” into some perspective, it’s worth noting that although Iran has not attacked another country in 200 years, it has itself repeatedly been a victim of aggression. A look at the historical record shows that Iran has at least some valid reason to be skeptical of Washington ’s policies and intentions.

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=6389

2007-04-18T01:20:00.000+08:00

Call For Universal Definition
Of Terrorism To Stop Bias

KUALA LUMPUR, 17 (Bernama) -- There must be a universal definition of terrorism before governments could embark on counter-terrorism measures based on fact-finding and intelligence-sharing.

South-East Asia Regional Centre For Counter-Terrorism (SEARCCT) director-general Datuk Md Hussin Nayan said this was to give the global community a basic understanding of what terrorism and terrorist groups were all about, but right now the west tended to associate these with Muslims.

"Right now the term does not differentiate terrorist groups from insurgent groups, or human rights or freedom fighters. And as long as there is no firm definition, people will continue to have problems with the matter."

Md Hussin even said that there should be an attempt to rebrand some of these groups as human rights or freedom fighters. "However, Al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah have been branded as terrorists."

He said this via teleconferencing with the Pacific Area Special Operation Conference 2007 (PASOC 07) in Honolulu, Hawaii, from the United States embassy here.

Earlier, he said counter-terrorism should not merely be based on perceptions and assumptions but by fact-finding to ensure effectiveness of the plans and measures.

"Repeated use of assumptions would make people believe that something is fact, consequently creating public fear of Muslims or Islamophobia."

The other speakers were US Special Operations Command vice-commander Major- General Donald C. Wurster and Philippines' ABS-CBN News and Current Affairs senior vice-president Maria Ressa.

http://www.bernama.com/

Comment:

It is only appropriate and pertinent for Malaysia to urge the UN to have a universally-accepted definition on terrorism. But, who is going to listen to such a call? The US has already used the terminology “terrorism” - being defined according to its own sets of reasons and prejudices - to legitimize wars, destructions and bloodsheds in Afghanistan and Iraq. The same excuse has been used to legitimize series of bomb blasts, being conducted according to false flag propaganda, to destabilize Indonesia, a country with the biggest number of Muslim population in the entirely world.

The so-called War On Terror is actually not a war to combat international Muslim terrorists and/or terrorism. It is a propaganda war. It is an illegal war preemptively and unilaterally launched without the approval of the UN. It is a fake war. It is a full-scale and hyper nuclear war against phantom enemies. It is a war of lies and deceptions. It is a war which uses the term “terrorism” as an excuse to crush, wreck and occupy several “failed states” in the Muslim world. It is a war aimed at expanding western imperialism in the 21st century. It is a war being created to enable western oil cartel to control the petroleum wells in the West and Central Asian regions. It is a war to control crucial international waters for safe passage of their oil tankers and nuclear vessels. It is a war to firmly establish the US political, military and economic hegemonies in Asia. Last but not least, the War On Terror is a war to maintain the status-quo of the world’s balance of power against China, the rising dragon of the East.

So, the best solution to this madness called the War On Terror is for the UN to undergo a total revamp of its structure, functions and objectives. If the world community fails to do so, we will only be experiencing a merry-go-round scenario with the UN behaving like a toothless lion or even a paper tiger! – Ruhanie Ahmad

2007-04-17T09:41:00.000+08:00

Part One:

Behind The Iran Crisis

By Mark Weber
[Institute for Historical Review]

In the months leading up to the March 2003 attack on Iraq, President Bush and other high-ranking US officials repeatedly warned that the Baghdad regime posed a threat to the US and the world – a threat so grave and imminent that the United States had to act quickly to bomb, invade and occupy that country.

On Sept. 28, 2002, for example, Bush said: “The danger to our country is grave and it is growing. The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons, is rebuilding the facilities to make more and, according to the British government, could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given... This regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material could build one within a year.”

Shortly before the invasion, on March 6, 2003, the President declared: “Saddam Hussein and his weapons are a direct threat to this country, to our people, and to all free people... I believe Saddam Hussein is a threat to the American people. I believe he’s a threat to the neighborhood in which he lives. And I’ve got good evidence to believe that. He has weapons of mass destruction... The American people know that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction.”

These claims were untrue. As the world now knows, Iraq had no such arsenal, and posed no threat to the US. Alarmist suggestions that the Baghdad regime was working with the al-Qaeda terror network likewise proved to be without foundation. The claims by President Bush and other high-level American officials to justify the war, and their glib assurances about how “regime change” in Iraq would usher in a new dawn of democracy and freedom throughout the region have proven disastrously wrong.

Now, four years later, something of the scale of the calamity is clear. More than 3,000 American military personnel have lost their lives, along with many tens of thousands of Iraqis. Many more have been horribly wounded and maimed. The war and the occupation have cost hundreds of billions of dollars. In Arab and Muslim countries, it has fueled intense hatred of the US, and has brought many new recruits to the ranks of anti-American terrorists. Around the world, it has generated unmatched distrust and hostility toward the United States.

Skeptics

A few months after the attack, President Bush denounced as “revisionists” and “revisionist historians” the skeptics who questioned his claims that the Baghdad regime had an arsenal of weapons so vast and so dangerous that the US had to act quickly to attack and occupy Iraq. On that occasion, Bush was unintentionally telling the truth. Those who question government claims, particularly wartime claims, are indeed “revisionists” – that is, thinking men and women who question dogma, propaganda and political orthodoxy.

Today, virtually the entire world is “revisionist.” Regardless of what President Bush and his friends may snidely suggest, the revisionists were and are right, and revisionism – that is, thoughtful skepticism of official claims – is an honorable and essential feature of any free society.

In recent years, awareness of the Jewish-Zionist role in the war, of the reality of Jewish-Zionist power, and of its hold on US policy, has grown everywhere – an awareness that, once grasped, is obvious and confirmed anew each day with the unfolding of events.

More prominent individuals have been willing publicly to acknowledge this power. In Britain, a veteran member of the House of Commons bluntly declared in May 2003 that Jews had taken control of America’s foreign policy, and had succeeded in pushing the US into war. Tam Dalyell, a Labour party deputy and the longest-serving House member, said: “A Jewish cabal have taken over the government in the United States and formed an unholy alliance with fundamentalist Christians… There is far too much Jewish influence in the United States.”

In Malaysia, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed declared in October 2003: “The Europeans killed six million Jews out of twelve million. But today the Jews rule this world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them.”

Zionist

Here in the United States, John Mearsheimer, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, and Stephen Walt, a professor of international affairs at Harvard, issued in March of last year a carefully written, judiciously worded and copiously referenced paper, “The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy,” which has generated wide interest and spirited discussion.

Quickly, and predictably, the paper and its authors came under fierce attack from Zionist leaders and organizations – a response that underscored one of the paper’s main points. But the critics have been outnumbered by those who have welcomed this work as a landmark event and as an important breakthrough.

In their paper, professors Walt and Mearsheimer wrote: “For the past several decades, and especially since the Six-Day War in 1967, the centerpiece of US Middle Eastern policy has been its relationship with Israel. The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread ‘democracy’ throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardized not only US security but that of much of the rest of the world. This situation has no equal in American political history…

“The Israeli government and pro-Israel groups in the United States have worked together to shape the administration’s policy towards Iraq, Syria and Iran, as well as its grand scheme for reordering the Middle East. Pressure from Israel and the Lobby was not the only factor behind the decision to attack Iraq in March 2003, but it was critical. Some Americans believe that this was a war for oil, but there is hardly any direct evidence to support this claim. Instead, the war was motivated in good part by a desire to make Israel more secure.”

Almost nothing in the Walt-Mearsheimer paper is new or original. Its main point about the dangerous role of what they call “The Lobby” is understood around the world by informed men and women who closely follow political affairs and history. The paper is significant because it was written by two scholars of eminence and stature.

Oppression

Another important contribution to the growing public awareness of the power and impact of the pro-Israel lobby has been the new book by former president Jimmy Carter. In this book, entitled Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, and in statements made in connection with the book’s appearance, Carter has spoken pointedly and critically about the pro-Israel lobby and its role in shaping US policy to support Israeli oppression and war.

Immediately following the book’s publication, the former president was predictably assailed with the usual smears, and by the usual crowd. Jewish writer David Horowitz, for one, wrote a widely-circulated essay entitled “Jimmy Carter: Jew-Hater, Genocide-Enabler, Liar,” a vicious item that reflects his outlook and the attitude of many other pro-Israel activists.

As it happens, I had a run-in myself with David Horowitz in December [2006], when I appeared with him as a fellow “guest,” if that’s the right word, on the nationally-broadcast radio show of Sean Hannity. I won’t go into details of that raucous appearance, except to mention that both Horowitz and Hannity were as ignorant and as bigoted as they were rude.

In recent months the most pressing international issue has been the question of a new war in the Middle East . The world is anxiously following the so-called crisis over Iran, or as Israel-firsters prefer to call it “The Iranian Threat.”

This crisis is artificial. It is every bit as phony as the one manufactured to provide a pretext for war against Iraq.

Propaganda

Once again our leaders prepare Americans for a new war. Once again we are told that another country that Israel regards as an adversary is a grave threat to peace.

Once again our politicians and a compliant media present a barrage of sensational and frightening propaganda claims – claims remarkably similar to those we heard in 2002 and 2003, and from the same Israel-friendly crowd.

For more than a year now, Washington has been pressuring Iran with economic sanctions and repeated threats of military attack to back its demand that the Tehran government give up its nuclear development program.

The announcement last year that Iran had enriched a minute amount of uranium unleashed urgent calls for a preventive US military strike against that country. Officials in Washington ominously declare that “all options” are “on the table.” Vice President Cheney has said that Iran is “right at the top” of the world’s so-called dangerous countries, and he expressed the view that Israel “might well decide to act first” to destroy Iran’s nuclear program.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declared: “The pursuit by the Iranian regime of nuclear weapons represents a direct threat to the entire international community, including to the United States and to the Persian Gulf region.” - To be continued in Part Two.

[An address by Mark Weber, director of the Institute for Historical Review, delivered at an IHR meeting in Irvine, Califronia, on March 24, 2007]

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=6389http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=6389

2007-04-15T17:26:00.000+08:00

The Freed British Sailors
And The Politics Of Storytelling

By Chandra Muzaffar
[www.tehrantimes.com]

The decision of the British Ministry of Defence to grant permission to the 15 naval personnel detained in Iran for 13 days recently to sell stories of their experience in captivity to the media has had far reaching implications for international politics.

A couple of the sailors had opined that the decision, which has since been rescinded, would have allowed them to ‘tell the truth’ to the world about what had happened to them during their captivity. Given the situation they were in, it is quite conceivable they felt ‘psychologically pressured’ to make statements that were favorably disposed to their captors. That captives are always under duress and respond to their circumstance in a certain manner is a fact that the Iranian government will have to accept.

Nonetheless, there is ample evidence to suggest that a lot of what some of the naval personnel are now saying borders on gross exaggeration and outright distortion. Television clips showing cheery, healthy-looking sailors admitting that they had intruded into Iranian waters and apologizing for their action cannot be dismissed as ‘fake’. Neither should one argue that the captured personnel were forced to play chess and table tennis for Iranian cameras. On her release, Faye Turney, for instance, who reportedly had sold the story of her ‘ordeal in Tehran’ to a British tabloid for an astronomical sum, told the Iranian people, “Just thank you for letting us go and apologies for our actions, but many thanks for having it in your hearts to let us go free… It was fantastic, we were treated well, we weren’t harmed in any way”. Another seaman, Lieutenant Felix Carman, who is now in the forefront of the campaign to expose the ‘mistreatment’ that he and his fellow military personnel suffered at the hands of the Iranian authorities, not only expressed gratitude to the Iranian government for his release but also added, “I can understand why you were insulted by our apparent intrusion into your waters.”

It is obvious that the huge royalties that await those sailors who have already gone to the media induced them to fabricate stories of their ordeal in Tehran. The more outlandish the spin, the greater the reward. This is why a number of British political leaders, social commentators and even retired military personnel criticized the original decision of the Ministry of Defence to commercialize the Tehran episode. They were right in emphasizing that it would undermine the credibility of the British armed forces.

But none of them have highlighted one of the other motives behind the crass move by the British government. Through the tales of the sailors, the government hopes to escalate the massive propaganda war against Iran. For some time now, a section of the British media, like a significant segment of the American media, has been on a rampage, denigrating the Iranian state and society as ‘backward’, ‘medieval’, ‘barbaric’ and ‘autocratic’. Indeed, a plethora of outrageous lies is being deliberately pedaled as part of a crafty plan to tarnish and isolate Iran in the eyes of world public opinion. The recent Hollywood film ‘300’, which distorts and disparages Persian history and culture, is integral to this campaign. It is a thinly veiled attempt to vilify contemporary Iran as it struggles to prevent the Washington-London-Tel Aviv Axis, abetted by its client rulers in the region, from establishing total hegemony over the Middle East.

Employing the media and the entertainment industry to target a nation while intensifying political pressure on it through the United Nations Security Council has become the Axis’s defined strategy in pursuit of global hegemony. It will be observed that in the last nine months, the UN Security Council has steadily expanded its sanctions against Iran in relation to the latter’s nuclear enrichment program. This will continue until Iran abandons its nuclear program for producing nuclear energy -- a right it enjoys under Article IV of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) -- or until it submits meekly to the Axis. In this regard, it should be remembered that the Axis manipulated that monstrous lie about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) through the media and the UN Security Council before it invaded and occupied Iraq in March 2003.

This is why we maintain that the crude commercialization of the Tehran sailors’ episode was part of a larger agenda. It was yet another maneuver designed to create an atmosphere unfavorable for Iran. In facing this challenge, the Iranian leadership has to show that it is capable of holding on to certain principles while remaining strategically intelligent.

http://www.tehrantimes.com/Description.asp?Da=4/15/2007&Cat=14&Num=001

Comment:

I have been consistently following the developments of the War On Terror in Afghanistan and Iraq since late 2001. I observed that there is one very distinct pattern about the war – it is always being preceded by propaganda through the print, electronic and digital media.

The basic theme of this propaganda is that the West (the US and its allies) has every rights to bombard, destroy and occupy Afghanistan and Iraq because they are allegedly harboring Muslim terrorists accused by the US as being the group responsible for the 911 tragedy in the US.

This propaganda was amended before the war was launched against Iraq in 2003. That was why the US accused Iraq of having a huge stock of WMD which could destroy the entire western world. This accusation failed to be proven until today. Iraq, however, has been destroyed and occupied by the US troops and its allies. Iraq is now plagued with civil war as a result of the occupation by the West.

And now, the western propaganda is being focused onto Iran. Day in and day out, the international community is being fed with news items, video clips, talks shows and interviews over the Zionist controlled media that Iran’s nuclear reactor is geared to producing nuclear arms to be targeted to the West. This propaganda, to borrow the words of Noam Chomsky, is aimed at manufacturing consent to legitimized the US intending war on Iran in the coming months, if not year.

My question here, therefore, is: what is the OIC, the Arab League or even NAM’s move to counter this ever mounting propaganda? In the context of the above story by the Chandra Muzaffar in Tehran Times, will the Iranian officially express its displeasure to what the British government is doing – allowing its naval officers who were being captured and later being released by the Iranian authority, to sell their version of the stories - fabricated with lies - to the British media? – Ruhanie Ahmad

2007-04-11T03:48:00.000+08:00

Iran’s Nuclear Victory

By Hassan Hanizadeh
[www.tehrantimes.com]

The Islamic Republic of Iran achieved the most significant scientific triumph in its history on April 9, 2007, when it launched the second cascade of centrifuges at the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility.

Bringing centrifuge cascades on stream is one of the most complicated technical operations in the nuclear industry.

This action will enable Iran to produce the fuel required for its nuclear power plants and allow it to avoid dependence on foreign countries for its nuclear fuel supply.

Despite the strict economic sanctions imposed on Iran by the West, Tehran’s attainment of this technology is a sign of Iranians’ resolute will to conquer the summits of scientific development in order to guarantee Iran’s national independence.

Civilization

Throughout its 7,000-year-old civilization, Iran has made many contributions to humanity in fields such as mathematics, astronomy, geography, and literature.

Therefore, it can undoubtedly utilize the most modern and up-to-date scientific discoveries and information to rejuvenate its ancient civilization that is intermingled with religious doctrines.

Attaining access to the complete nuclear fuel cycle, which is a significant part of the nuclear energy industry, is a national cause for which the Iranian nation will accept any hardship.

During the past two decades, Iran has acquired nuclear expertise by relying on the talent and innovation of its nuclear scientists because diversifying energy sources is the only logical way to maintain national independence.

Throughout this period of time, Iran has always worked to develop this complicated technology within the framework of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) regulations, without receiving any technical, financial, or scientific assistance from the West.

Realistic

Although the United States and some other Western countries have tried to deprive Iran of its inalienable right to possess nuclear technology by manipulating the United Nations Security Council, the Iranian people are determined to attain their goal.

Consequently, no foreign pressure can ever change Iranians’ national position or force them to back down.

Iranians believe that the United States and some other Western countries are trying to monopolize this essential technology so that they can oblige Islamic and Third World countries to obey them.

However, Iran has always had a realistic approach to global industrial developments and thus has understood that the development of nuclear technology is a crucial project that can guarantee national dignity for future generations of Iranians.

Therefore, despite the harsh response of the United States and some other Western countries and their military and economic threats, the Iranian nation has prepared itself to confront any possible hardship.

Celebration

The great nuclear celebration of Iran -- attended by President Mahmud Ahmadinejad and other high-ranking Iranian officials -- that was held in Natanz on Monday marked a turning point in Iranian history.

The Iranian nation is entitled to a brilliant future and will never forgo its legitimate rights.

April 9, 2007 is a day that will be immortalized in the history of Iran’s national and political struggles since it is the day of triumph of Iranians’ firm willpower.

It was proven to the world on April 9, 2007 that the real victory belongs to those nations that love to live a dignified life.

Iran will definitely never use its nuclear expertise and technology for military purposes because such objectives have no place in the national and religious causes of Iranians.

http://www.tehrantimes.com/Description.asp?Da=4/10/2007&Cat=14&Num=001

Comment:

Congratulation Iran! You definitely make most Muslims all over the world feel proud. You also have proven to the West - the US and Israel in particular - that will power is the basic pre-requisite to success. Your scientists really uphold the glory and fame of our medieval Muslim scholars, including pioneers in science and mathematics.

All these, as being correctly said by Hassan Hanizadeh, are achievements made by Iranian nuclear scientists “despite the strict economic sanctions” imposed on Iran by the West since many years ago.

I believed “Iran will definitely never use its nuclear expertise and technology for military purposes because such objectives have no place in the national and religious causes of Iranians.”

But, I am still of the opinion that such an honorable statement of truth will surely continue to be viewed by the US and Israel with the outmost prejudice.

Why? As Hassan Hanizadeh said, because “the US and some other Western countries are trying to monopolize this essential (nuclear) technology so that they can oblige Islamic and Third World countries to obey them.”

Once again, congratulation Iran. But please be on the alert all the times because the on-going fitnahs from your enemies are endless since they want to legitimize their propaganda that Iran is really and actually “an axis of evil”, not such much due to Iran’s evil doings, but because Iran is a great stumbling block in their painful efforts to re-mapped the entire West Asia region according to the hegemonic design of the neo-conservative’s herd in President George W. Bush’s closet.

- Ruhanie Ahmad

2007-04-10T00:43:00.000+08:00

Iran Charges Washington
With Sponsoring Terrorist Attacks

By Bill Van Auken
[www.wsws.org]

A leading government official in Teheran charged Thursday that the Bush administration is sponsoring terrorist attacks as a means of ratcheting up its campaign of aggression against Iran.

The charge by the speaker of the Iranian parliament, Gholamali Haddadadel, followed a report by ABC News in the US that Washington has been covertly aiding and advising a militant Pakistani Islamist group that has carried out a string of terrorist attacks against Iranian targets.

“There is no doubt in our minds that the United States spares no efforts to put pressure on the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Haddadadel told reporters following a meeting with Pakistani officials in Islamabad.

“The best indication of United States support to a particular terrorist group is that one of the leaders of his terrorist group was given the opportunity to speak on VoA [Voice of America] after committing the crime.”

In its report aired first on Tuesday night, ABC charged that a group known as Jundullah (Army of God), a Sunni militant organization made up of members of the Baluchi tribe, “has been secretly encouraged and advised by American officials since 2005” as it has carried out its deadly operations inside Iran.

Trafficking

According to numerous published reports, this US-backed terrorist group has close ties to both Al Qaeda and the Taliban, supposedly the principal enemies in Washington’s “global war on terrorism.”

The organization is also believed to be involved in narcotics trafficking across the porous Iranian-Pakistani border.

Jundullah’s attacks have centered on the Iranian province of Sistan-Baluchestan, which borders both Afghanistan and Pakistan. In February, Jundullah terrorists carried out a car bomb attack on a bus in the Iranian city of Zehedan, killing at least 11 Iranians, most of them apparently members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. Another 31 people were wounded in the blast.

Other bloody attacks included a May 2006 bombing of a motorcade, which claimed the lives of at least 20. The group has also filmed the beheadings of captured Iranian soldiers and officials.

According to the ABC report, Pakistani intelligence sources said that the covert terror campaign was a central topic of discussion when US Vice President Dick Cheney met Pakistan’s dictator, President Pervez Musharraf, in February.

When asked by the Reuters news agency about this account, a spokeswoman for Cheney replied, “We don’t discuss conversations between the vice president and foreign leaders.”

Militants

Haddadadel, who was in Islamabad in part to seek Pakistani cooperation in stemming the cross-border attacks, dismissed this aspect of the ABC report.

“Some of the militants...are active in our border areas and we should work with Pakistan in order to increase security cooperation,” he said. “There is no news, no evidence, and we don’t have any reason to believe that the military establishment in Pakistan is also supporting such militant groups.”

ABC indicated that the US-sponsored terrorism is an “off-the-books” operation, which some officials told the network was reminiscent of the illegal covert US “contra” war against Nicaragua under the Reagan administration in the 1980s.

Money, according to ABC’s sources, is funneled through Iranian exile groups in Europe and elsewhere to Jundullah’s leader, Abd el Malik Regi. Counterrorism expert Alexis Debat told ABC that Regi “used to fight with the Taliban. He’s part drug smuggler, part Taliban, part Sunni activist.”

The purpose of this arrangement, US officials told the network is to avoid the necessity of “an official presidential order or ‘finding’ as well as congressional oversight.”

Conflict

It is evident that the covert US links with Jundullah are only part of a broader destabilization campaign being waged by Washington with the aim of fomenting conflict between Iran’s Shia majority and a Sunni minority that accounts for nearly 12 percent of the country’s 70 million people. The largest component of this Sunni population is made up of Kurds, followed by the Baluch and then the Turkoman, based in the northeast.

The CIA is also reportedly funding the Iran-based Kurdistan Free Life party to destabilize the Iranian government. And Washington has come into conflict with the Iraqi regime over the presence in Iraq of some 3,800 expatriate Iranian members of the Mujahedin-e Khalq, or MEK, which has claimed responsibility for numerous terrorist attacks against Iran.

Even though the State Department has classified the MEK as a foreign terrorist organization, and the Iraqi regime accuses it of acting as an arm of the Saddam Hussein regime security forces, the Pentagon and CIA have provided it with protection at a base outside Baghdad and have reportedly sponsored its operations inside Iran.

Propaganda

Washington’s covert terror war against Iran is aimed at furthering a goal of “regime change” in Teheran. It is likewise designed to pave the way for a far more direct US military intervention.

As ABC aired its report of US-sponsored terrorism, a third US nuclear aircraft carrier battle group set sail for the Persian Gulf. The USS Nimitz and its accompanying warships left San Diego on Monday, supposedly to relieve the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower. The John C. Stennis Strike Group is also in the Gulf. Obviously, the Pentagon has the option of reversing the order to withdraw the Eisenhower, thereby concentrating unprecedented firepower against Iran.

The preparations for a US war against Iran are being carried out—with support from both Democrats and Republicans in Washington—under the same propaganda slogans used to justify the attack on Iraq: the threat from a supposed drive to build “weapons of mass destruction” and terrorist ties.

But, as the ABC report indicates, Washington itself appears to be pursuing its militarist policy by funding and advising a terrorist group connected to Al Qaeda, the organization blamed for the September 11, 2001, attacks.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/apr2007/iran-a06.shtml

Comment:

I am least surprised to know about what has happened in Iran lately. After all, the US is well-known for her black operations or false-flag operations being launched against its enemies or adversaries all over the world since the cold war era. Even Indonesia under the leadership of the late President Sukarno was once the victim of such operations in 1950s.

What is important to the US is that the means always justify the end – world hegemony. In the case of Iran, this Islamic republic has to be crushed to the ground. Not so much because of her alleged possession of nuclear weapons. But, because of her consistent defiance of the US.

Iran’s days are numbered. Iran is currently being sandwiched. The US and its allies are already in Afghanistan and Iraq. Iran is the ultimate target of the so-called US-led war on terror. It is so because the US and other western neo-imperialists want to monopolize Iran’s vast petroleum and gas resources. It is so because the western neo-imperialists want to establish a full-pledged military, economic and political hegemonies in the West Asia-Central Asia-South Asia regions.

But, if the US launches a full-scale war against Iran in the coming months, will this war escalates into a full-blown world war? If Iran is being attacked by the US and its neo-imperialist allies, especially Britain, will Russia and China jump into the same band wagon? If Iran is being bombarded by the US tomorrow, what will be the reactions and stands of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), the United Nations and other world bodies?

- Ruhanie Ahmad

2007-04-08T17:47:00.000+08:00

US Reiterates Opposition To
Iran-Pak-India Pipeline Project

ISLAMABAD, April 7 (Bernama) -- US has reiterated its opposition to the US$7 billion Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline project to bring gas to the Indian sub-continent, but was ready to help Islamabad overcome its energy crisis through "financial and technical support".

Responding to queries on the project, Gordon W. Weynand, a US energy expert and a senior official in the US Agency for International Development (USAID), was quoted by PTI as saying that Washington was against associating the Iranian regime with the IPI gas project and was ready to help Islamabad meet its energy needs.

"Next three years are going to be very difficult and challenging for Pakistan to resolve its energy crisis for which we are ready to offer our financial and technical support," said Weynand, who is on a two-week visit to Islamabad.

The Bush administration, which has declined to sign a civil nuclear pact with Pakistan on the line of the India-US civil nuclear deal, has offered Pakistan financial and technical assistance to overcome its energy shortage.

Weynand said the US had decided to help Pakistan import electricity from Central Asia, especially Tajikistan. The US energy expert said that the World Bank planned to provide financial assistance while the Asian Development Bank would be extending technical support to help Pakistan import 1,000 megawatts of electricity from Tajikistan.

"Our mission is to put together economic growth strategy for Pakistan for the next five years and to see how energy fits into the Pakistani economy," Weynand was quoted Friday by the Dawn daily as saying.

In regard to the security concerns about the Afghan transit route for the energy project, he said: "These are some difficult issues but then we will make sure that every thing goes normal in Afghanistan and Pakistan gets this electricity from Tajikistan and also from Kyrgyzstan."

-- BERNAMA
http://www.bernama.com

Comment:

In my humble opinion, the above news item is reflective of the hidden agenda of the US in the Central and South Asia regions in the 21st century. The agenda are:

To exert the divide-and-rule principles to selected nations. Example: The US “has declined to sign a civil nuclear pact with Pakistan” but had already established one “India-US civil nuclear deal.”

To subtly forced Pakistan to become the reluctant ally of the US in the Central and South Asia regions through various aids and technical assistance.

To block any business deals between Iran and nations in the Central and South regions aimed at marginalizing Iran from spreading its sphere of influence in both regions.

All the above are some of the ways to ensure that the US military, economic and political hegemonies in Central and South Asia, which were indirectly established through the launching of the war against international muslim terrorists in 2001, will remain intact and free from interferences by nations considered as unfriendly to the US.

Therefore, it is interesting to see what will be the ultimate response of Pakistan to such a statement that the US opposes the US$7 billion Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline project to bring gas to the Indian sub-continent. Will Pakistan accept the US offer of "financial and technical support" to help her overcome her energy crisis?

– Ruhanie Ahmad

2007-04-06T02:37:00.000+08:00

2,252 Victims Of Violence
Buried In ’Mass Graves’
In Karbala

By Muslim Abdulhameed
[www.azzaman.com]
April 5, 2007

IRAQ: The government is burying en mass hundreds of bodies of victims of violence which have been lying in Baghdad morgue for several months.

Government sources, refusing to be named for fear or retribution said, at least 2,252 bodies have been buried in the Shiite holy city of Karbala.

But the government itself is making no secret of the burials. A government-related website said on Wednesday that 93 more bodies were buried in Karbala.

It said they were all numbered and pictured before burial. It also said, the 93 bodies could not be identified and have been lying in the morgue for a long period. No one has come forward to claim them.

The dead were victims of current sectarian strife in the country. It is not clear why so many bodies had remained in the morgue for so long period without anyone asking for them.

http://www.azzaman.com/english/index.asp?fname=news\2007-04-05\kurd.htm

Comment:

This will not happen if President George W Bush did not launched the US-led pre-emptive war against Iraq beginning 2003 – a war based on falsehood and deception. This will also not happen if The United Nations Security Council is not being dominated by superpowers like the US and Britain – neo-imperialists of the 21st century. – Ruhanie Ahmad.

2007-04-04T22:02:00.000+08:00

U.S. Could Strike Iran
But Not Win
- Russian General
[www.tehrantimes.com]

MOSCOW (Reuters) -- The United States cannot inflict a military defeat on Iran and any attack would be a huge political mistake, Russia's top general said on Tuesday.

"It is possible to damage Iran's military and industrial potential, but it is impossible to win," Russian news agencies quoted General Yuri Baluyevsky, head of the Russian general staff, as saying.

"The United States has a contingent in the region capable of launching a strike on Iranian territory.

"However, such possible strikes would be a huge political mistake. Shockwaves from this attack could be felt around the world."

Washington and its Western allies claim Iran wants to build nuclear bombs, a charge vehemently denied by Tehran.

Russia sells weapons to the Iranian military and is helping Tehran build a nuclear power station on the Persian Gulf although work there is on hold over a payment dispute.

Russian media late last month quoted unnamed sources in Russian military intelligence as saying the United States could launch a strike on Iran as early as April 6.

RIA news agency quoted a Russian security source as saying Moscow has military intelligence reports that the U.S. has already approved a list of Iranian targets for bomb and missile strikes. The source said a land operation could follow.

Baluyevsky said military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan showed the United States would face a fiasco if it took on Iran as well. "The Americans must think twice (about attacking Iran)," he said.

"They have already got stuck in Afghanistan and Iraq."

http://www.tehrantimes.com/Description.asp?Da=4/4/2007&Cat=2&Num=005

2007-04-04T21:50:00.000+08:00

Australia Bars Radical Sheik
From Entering Country

MELBOURNE, April 4 (Bernama) -- The Australian government has banned a radical Muslim sheik from entering Australia to speak at a major Islamic conference in Melbourne on the weekend, a newspaper reported.

The Herald Sun said Sheik Bilal Philips, who has been linked to the 1993 World Trade Centre bombings in New York, was refused a visa at the last moment by Department of Immigration officials

It is believed that the department acted on advice from national security agencies.

Sheik Philips, 50, a Canadian citizen who lives in Qatar, once wrote: "Western culture, led by the United States, is the enemy of Islam."

The US government named him as an "unindicted co-conspirator" in the 1993 bombings that killed six people and injured 1000. He was deported from the US in 2004.

A second speaker billed to attend the first annual Australian Islamic Conference at Melbourne University on Easter weekend had been asked to show cause why he should be allowed to enter the country, the newspaper said.

Sources said it was unlikely that Sheik Jaafer Idris, a Saudi-based academic, would be able to provide information in time.

-- BERNAMA
http://www.bernama.com

2007-04-04T00:18:00.000+08:00

Indonesia Floats
Muslim Solution To Iraq
By Muklis Ali

BOGOR, Indonesia (Reuters) - Muslim nations should ultimately replace coalition forces in Iraq after a period of national reconciliation, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono told a meeting of Islamic clerics on Tuesday.

Yudhoyono, who is keen to see Indonesia take a bigger role in global issues and in particular in the Middle East, first floated his proposals on Iraq at a joint news conference with U.S. President George W. Bush last November in Bogor.

"The spiral effect of violence has dreadfully eroded the national tradition of religious tolerance and mutual respect. This is not the natural state of affairs between the Sunnis and Shi'ites of Iraq," he said in a speech to about 20 clerics from around the world gathering at the Bogor presidential palace to discuss Iraq.

"The first and most vital track in this proposed solution is the launching and unrelenting pursuit of reconciliation," added Yudhoyono, a former general who spent years training in U.S. military bases.

"Once the national reconciliation is achieved, the second track is the withdrawal of the coalition forces replaced by a new coalition of forces comprising of like-minded Muslim countries," said Indonesia's first directly elected president.

Yudhoyono also joined Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf in January in backing a new Muslim initiative to resolve turbulence and violence in the Middle East.

Since Yudhoyono outlined his Iraq proposal on Bush's second visit to Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, there has been little evidence of it gaining much traction.

Under the Bush administration's new Iraq policy announced earlier this year, the Pentagon has increased force levels in Iraq by about 30,000 troops in an attempt to regain control of security and reduce sectarian violence.

But opposition Democrats who hold the majority in the U.S. congress are seeking to withdraw all combat troops from Iraq in the near future.

Some Bush policies, especially in the Middle East, are deeply unpopular in Indonesia, where 85 percent of the population follows Islam. Jakarta has consistently criticised the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

2007-04-02T12:20:00.000+08:00

Solomons Hit By Tsunami
After Powerful Pacific Quake

HONIARA (AFP) - A tsunami spawned by a strong 8.0-magnitude undersea earthquake pounded the Solomon Islands Monday, sweeping over villages and leaving several people dead or missing, officials and locals said.

Witness reports spoke of waves washing up to 200 meters (yards) inland and destroying houses, triggering landslides and forcing residents to evacuate to higher land.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre issued a tsunami warning for a series of countries in the region. Japan's Kyodo News, quoting Solomons officials, said some 60 buildings had collapsed in and around the town of Gizo, just 45 kilometres (28 miles) from the quake's epicentre.

A spokesman for the Solomon Islands Office of Emergency Management said there were reports of several people missing after two villages were flooded or hit by associated mudslides in the far west of the archipelago.

"We have unconfirmed reports of a tsunami washing parts of the most western end of the Solomons, where two villages ... near Bougainville are reported to be completely inundated," he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

The UN-funded communications project Solomon Islands People First Network quoted one of its workers saying villages on the western island of Simbo had been destroyed. "(The worker) estimated waves washed inland a distant of about two hundred meters from the shoreline," the People First Network said. "He estimates almost every building of Tapurai village on the island has been washed away," it added, as well as houses in Marusu village and a school classroom.

It said Gizo was reported to have been inundated by the tsunami. The town has reported unconfirmed deaths, while a female is thought to have been killed in a landslide.

In the capital Honiara, news of the quake and tsunami sent people running screaming from waterfront markets, said Daniel Evans, an Australian lawyer. "I just saw everyone on the street start to run and scream," he told AFP in Sydney. "But people are just back to normal now. People are down along the shoreline looking at the water but everyone's fine. No one is panicking."

The Solomon Islands, 2,575 kilometres east of Australia, has a little over half a million people living on dozens of islands.

It is part of the Pacific "Ring of Fire" where continental plates meet and frequently experiences volcanic and seismic activity. The US Geological Survey reported a series of aftershocks measuring up to 6.7.

A resident from Noro, near Gizo, reported further tremors, causing high seas in the affected areas, People's First Network said. Boats had been swept up on to nearby roads, it added.

A news report in Japan said three people were dead following the tsunami, but officials could not confirm the toll. The Office of Emergency Management's deputy director, Janet Batee, told AFP officials were having trouble contacting the stricken area. "We haven't got solid information from the affected area because of communication problems," she said. "We are still waiting for reliable casualty and damage reports."

A state of emergency was expected to be declared later Monday, Batee said. Solomons police spokesman Mick Spinks said the town of Taro had been hit by a large wave and there were reports of buildings being damaged. The settlement of Lofung also reported being hit with residents evacuating to higher ground, Spinks said.

The quake struck at 7:40 am local time (2040 GMT Sunday) centred about 350 kilometres west-northwest of the capital Honiara at a depth of 10 kilometres, the US Geological Survey and Hong Kong Observatory said. "An earthquake of this size has the potential to generate a destructive tsunami that can strike coastlines in the region near the epicentre within minutes to hours," the tsunami warning centre said.

The warning covers the Solomons, Australia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, Nauru, Chuuk, New Caledonia, Pohnpei, Kosrae, Tuvalu, Kiribati and the Marshall Islands, with countries as far away as Japan on alert. Australia issued urged residents on its northeast coast to move to higher ground, while authorities in New Caledonia, some 1,000 kilometres south of the Solomons, evacuated schools in threatened areas.

© AFP 2007
http://www.bernama.com

2007-04-01T23:19:00.000+08:00

Operation Bite - April 6 Sneak Attack
By US Forces On Iran Planned
- Russian Military Sources Warn

By Webster G. Tarpley
25 March 207

WASHINGTON DC -- The long awaited US military attack on Iran is now on track for the first week of April, specifically for 4 AM on April 6, the Good Friday opening of Easter weekend, writes the well-known Russian journalist Andrei Uglanov in the Moscow weekly "Argumenty Nedeli." Uglanov cites Russian military experts close to the Russian General Staff for his account.

The attack is slated to last for twelve hours, according to Uglanov, lasting from 4 AM until 4 PM local time. Friday is a holiday in Iran. In the course of the attack, code named Operation Bite, about 20 targets are marked for bombing; the list includes uranium enrichment facilities, research centers, and laboratories.

The first reactor at the Bushehr nuclear plant, where Russian engineers are working, is supposed to be spared from destruction. The US attack plan reportedly calls for the Iranian air defense system to be degraded, for numerous Iranian warships to be sunk in the Persian Gulf, and the for the most important headquarters of the Iranian armed forces to be wiped out.

The attacks will be mounted from a number of bases, including the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Diego Garcia is currently home to B-52 bombers equipped with standoff missiles. Also participating in the air strikes will be US naval aviation from aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf, as well as from those of the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean. Additional cruise missiles will be fired from submarines in the Indian Ocean and off the coast of the Arabian peninsula. The goal is allegedly to set back Iran's nuclear program by several years, writes Uglanov, whose article was re-issued by RIA-Novosti in various languages, but apparently not English, several days ago. The story is the top item on numerous Italian and German blogs, but so far appears to have been ignored by US websites.

Observers comment that this dispatch represents a high-level orchestrated leak from the Kremlin, in effect a war warning, which draws on the formidable resources of the Russian intelligence services, and which deserves to be taken with the utmost seriousness by pro-peace forces around the world.

Asked by RIA-Novosti to comment on the Uglanov report, retired Colonel General Leonid Ivashov confirmed its essential features in a March 21 interview: "I have no doubt that there will be an operation, or more precisely a violent action against Iran." Ivashov, who has reportedly served at various times as an informal advisor to Putin, is currently the Vice President of the Moscow Academy for Geopolitical Sciences.

Ivashov attributed decisive importance to the decision of the Democratic leadership of the US House of Representatives to remove language from the just-passed Iraq supplemental military appropriations bill which would have demanded that Bush come to Congress before launching an attack on Iran. Ivashov pointed out that the language was eliminated under pressure from AIPAC, the lobbing group representing the Israeli extreme right, and of Israeli Foreign Minister Tsipi Livni.

"We have drawn the unmistakable conclusion that this operation will take place," said Ivashov. In his opinion, the US planning does not include a land operation: " Most probably there will be no ground attack, but rather massive air attacks with the goal of annihilating Iran's capacity for military resistance, the centers of administration, the key economic assets, and quite possibly the Iranian political leadership, or at least part of it," he continued.

Ivashov noted that it was not to be excluded that the Pentagon would use smaller tactical nuclear weapons against targets of the Iranian nuclear industry. These attacks could paralyze everyday life, create panic in the population, and generally produce an atmosphere of chaos and uncertainty all over Iran, Ivashov told RIA-Novosti. "This will unleash a struggle for power inside Iran, and then there will be a peace delegation sent in to install a pro-American government in Teheran," Ivashov continued. One of the US goals was, in his estimation, to burnish the image of the current Republican administration, who would now be able to boast that they had wiped out the Iranian nuclear program.

Among the other outcomes, General Ivashov pointed to a partition of Iran along the same lines as Iraq, and a subsequent carving up of the Near and Middle East into smaller regions. "This concept worked well for them in the Balkans and will now be applied to the greater Middle East," he commented.

"Moscow must expert Russia's influence by demanding an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council to deal with the current preparations for an illegal use of force against Iran and the destruction of the basis of the United Nations Charter," said General Ivashov. "In this context Russia could cooperate with China, France and the non-permanent members of the Security Council. We need this kind of preventive action to ward off the use of force," he concluded.

http://fr.rian.ru/world/20070319/62260006.html
http://www.rense.com/general75/bite.htm

2007-04-01T23:10:00.000+08:00

The Coming Shakedown
Of The US And Iran

By Henry Makow Ph.D
March 30, 2007

[www.thetruthseeker]

If Russian warnings are correct, at this time next week the US could be at war with Iran. Let us be clear that this war is really an assault by the Illuminati on both countries.

The top rung of Freemasonry, the Illuminati Order is an international satanic cult that aims to subdue humanity by pitting nations against each other. It represents an ancient occult conspiracy of international finance and many "leading families" of Europe and America.

Empowered by the central banking cartel, the Illuminati Order has the resources to infiltrate both sides of every conflict and steer them according to the New World Order agenda. They call this a "dialectical process." They were on both sides of both world wars, the Cold War, Korea and Vietnam.

Iran's nuclear ambitions are merely a pretext. The real object is to degrade both the US and Iran so citizens will forfeit political, economic and spiritual rights to Illuminati banker "world government."

As you know, in 1871 Albert Pike, the Grand Commander of US Freemasonry wrote a letter to Giuseppe Mazzini, his European counterpart, foretelling three world wars. He was correct about the first two.

"The Third World War must be fomented by taking advantage of the differences caused by the "agentur" [agents] of the "Illuminati" between the political Zionists [i.e. Americans] and the leaders of Islamic World. The war must be conducted in such a way that Islam and political Zionism mutually destroy each other."

I don’t see this conflict starting WWIII. Like the Spanish Civil War, it is a dress rehearsal. In turn, the Israel attack on Lebanon last July was a dry run for this attack on Iran. It may even have been part of an Israeli-American quid pro quo.

And just as Israel suffered some humiliating setbacks at the hands of the Hezbollah, I wouldn’t be surprised if the US "victory" is also Pyrrhic.

The important thing is that a satanic cult covertly controls all countries and wages a covert war against humanity. Thus, people are too busy to recognize that their real enemies are among their own leaders, the mass media and the bankers who own both.

This is a possible Iran scenario: Like all wars, the conflict will be orchestrated. It will take place in the next month or two and probably resemble the Lebanon war. Iran and the US will both suffer serious losses; the price of oil will sky rocket and the stock market will take a hit. Israel and Iran may exchange fire but I don't foresee any invasions. If Iran goes into Iraq, all bets would be off.

I'd like to be %100 wrong about this, and free to enjoy the Spring weather.

ORCHESTRATIONS

Here are some articles that suggest the Illuminati is orchestrating both sides:

Some observers have noted that the British female sailor was interviewed by the BBC and The Independent just hours before she was taken prisoner. How convenient. At least the BBC didn't broadcast the capture before it took place.

Some have suggested the capture is so unlikely that both sides may have staged it, or it was a trap laid by the British. This would explain the lack of resistance. The parallel between the prisoner-takings that started the Lebanon war, and the present situation is obvious.

In a recent article, Seymour Hersh reveals that Dick Cheney has been running an Iran-Contra style operation that includes support for groups linked to al Queda. They are also engaged in clandestine operations in Iran and the kidnapping of hundreds of Iranians.

Isn't it strange that the Iranians have never captured any of the Americans involved in this? Why haven't the Iranians demanded a prisoner exchange, particularly for the ex-Deputy Minister of Defense kidnapped in Turkey?

Hersh also says the US is trying to repackage the Iraq war as a regional Shiite-Sunni conflict in which the US finds itself an innocent peace keeper. This has put the US in the contradictory position of having installed a pro-Iranian Shiite government in Iraq; and now supporting the Sunni and Al Qaeda insurgents, who are its enemies. It doesn’t make any sense unless you see the war as an end in itself.

David Icke received the shocking picture of Ahmadinejad from an aghast Iranian. "What's going on? This doesn't have anything to do with Islam!" he exclaimed.

In his exclusive newsletter, Icke recently wrote that Ahmadinehad seems to be a Illuminati puppet: "The propaganda war against Iran really picked up after the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as President of the Islamic Republic in 2005. After he took office in the August he was soon making speeches that the American propagandists and spinners must have dreamed of. I cannot believe this was a fortuitous coincidence. He defeated the one-time favourite, the former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani whose reputation and record would have made it almost impossible to demonize Iran as a threat to America or anyone else."

Icke continues: "Mehdi Karroubi, a Reformist candidate seeking to open Iranian society and oppose the extremes of hard-line Islam, finished a good third in the first round of voting. He then alleged that a network of mosques, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and Basij militia forces had illegally generated support for Ahmadinejad and specifically named Mojtaba Khamenei, a son of the Supreme Leader Ayatolla Khamenei, as being involved in this election fraud. The Ayatollah told Karroubi that the allegations were below his dignity and he would not allow the crisis in Iran that they could cause.Karroubi wrote back, resigning from all his political posts and some Reformist newspapers were [banned] for publishing Karroubi's letter."

Finally Icke says: "British and American military intelligence ousted Prime Minister Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953 in a CIA-planned coup called Operation Ajax; imposed the vicious Shah of Iran as a dictator; and then removed him for the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979. Why would the same forces not continue to be involved in election manipulation in Iran when they so badly needed Ahmadinejad to defeat Rafsanjani for their 'Axis of Evil' plan to work?"

Switching to the domestic front, an example of the Illuminati "dialectic" at work is Rosie O'Donnell's recent pronouncements on 9-11. The Lesbian poster girl sounds like Alex Jones. Though appearing heroic, her function is to recast the present debate in the image of the 1960's anti-war movement, focusing blame on the fall guy Bush and "the government" instead of the long-term international Masonic conspiracy ultimately responsible. Celebrities seem to perform an elite political function these days.

You also see Zbigniew Brzezinski saying the war on terror "has undermined democracy" in the banker-owned Washington Post. That's pretty funny coming from one of the architects of this policy. He is trying to distance himself and his Rothschild-Rockefeller sponsors from their handiwork.

Meanwhile Democrats in Congress try to placate an angry electorate with timetables for withdrawal. This is a diversion. US democracy is a charade. The US will never willingly withdraw from Iraq. The US is the Illuminati's goon.

CONCLUSION

If the Illuminati have so much power, why don't they just proclaim their world dictatorship now? It's the process, which is both necessary and incredibly profitable. Humanity must be gradually transformed so it sees slavery as freedom and embraces the NWO shibboleths, world government, diversity, the anti Christ etc.

War is the Illuminati's cement mixer. They just throw in nations, women, children, cultures, religions; break and mix and then reset in their own mold. They call it "creating order out of chaos" but first they create chaos.

They envisage a Middle East including Israel as conformist and vapid as the EU today. Middle East-EU union is already on the drawing board. Wars also kill a lot of innocent people as well as pesky idealists.

The greatest barrier to understanding world events is our failure to imagine the dimensions of evil, and how readily most people will serve Satan.

If we have a war against Iran, it will be instigated by an international satanic cult, to further degrade destroy and demoralize humanity, especially in Iran and the US.

Henry Makow Ph.D. is the inventor of the game Scruples and author of "A Long Way to go for a Date." His articles exposing fe-manism and the New World Order can be found at his web site www.savethemales.ca He enjoys receiving comments, some of which he posts on his site using first names only. hmakow@gmail.com

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=6285

2007-04-01T19:15:00.000+08:00

The Human Costs
Of Four Years Of War
Part Two:

The US invasion has caused
nearly three-quarter million
Iraqi deaths
[www.wsws.org]

In addition to those who have lost their lives, one must assume that more than a million Iraqis have suffered some form of physical injury as a consequence of the bloodshed unleashed by the US invasion.

This still does not encompass the full scale of the human tragedy for which the US is responsible. An estimated two million refugees have fled Iraq, creating one of the most severe refugee crises anywhere on the planet. At least another 1.7 million are internal refugees, driven from their homes by the war and the uncontrolled and savage ethnic cleansing operations taking place throughout the country.

Given these figures, it is likely that a quarter of the Iraqi population has been killed, wounded or turned into refugees.

This is the real context in which the working class in the US and around the world must view Bush’s calls for “more time” to implement his “new strategy” of escalation, Condoleezza Rice’s statement Monday that the Iraq war is “worth the sacrifice,” or the Democrats claims that the only way to end the war is to give the White House another $100 billion to wage it.

What has taken place in Iraq and what is continuing and escalating is a crime of blood-curdling proportions. The so-called “surge” of some 30,000 additional troops into Baghdad and Anbar province will only mean an escalation of this mass killing, maiming and uprooting of Iraqis.

In the end, the US intervention in Iraq has amounted to an exercise in sociocide, the unleashing of violence, death and destruction on such as a scale as to traumatize, deform and even destroy Iraqi society.

Devastated

This finds its expression in every area of life in occupied Iraq. The country’s economy remains devastated, with between 50 and 75 percent of the population unemployed. Poverty has soared, and with it child malnutrition and infant mortality. According to the Catholic relief agency Caritas, nearly one third of Iraqi children are going hungry. Press reports from Iraq indicate that legions of war orphans and impoverished children have taken to the streets of Baghdad and other cities to beg for food.

Essential services such as clean water and electricity are less available to the average Iraqi now than they were before the US invaded the country four years ago, when conditions were already vastly deteriorated as a result of a decade of international sanctions and the widespread destruction inflicted during the first Persian Gulf War and subsequent US missile attacks.

Meanwhile, the national health care system, once considered one of the best in the region, has largely collapsed, leading to countless more unnecessary deaths. In an open letter published earlier this year, Iraqi doctors and foreign aid professionals wrote: “. . . children are dying in Iraq for want of medical treatment . . . Sick or injured children, who could otherwise be treated by simple means, are left to die in their hundreds because they do not have access to basic medicines or other resources. Children who have lost hands, feet, and limbs are left without prostheses. Children with grave psychological distress are left untreated.”

The desperate conditions created by the US intervention in Iraq found fresh expression in a poll released Monday by a group of major US and European news organizations, showing that fully 53 percent of Iraqis report having had family member or close friends killed or wounded. Close to 90 percent say that they live in fear of someone in their own family becoming a victim.

Moreover, in virtually every area of life, the poll pointed to a dramatic deterioration in the past two years. Thus, while in a poll taken in 2005, 54 percent said that their electricity supply was inadequate or non-existent, now the figure is 88 percent. Similar changes were recorded in relation to jobs, water supply and hopes for the future. Not surprisingly, the attitude towards US occupation forces also registered a sharp shift, with 51 percent expressing the view that it was “acceptable” to attack them, triple the rate recorded three years ago. Nearly 80 percent opposed their presence on Iraqi soil.

War Crimes

The desperate social and economic conditions prevailing in Iraq, as well as the killing and maiming of Iraqi civilians, constitute war crimes committed by Washington. They are a blatant violation of the Geneva Accords, which imposes upon an occupying power the “duty of ensuring the food and medical supplies of the population,” and a special responsibility to ensure the maintenance, care and education of its children.

Far from reconstructing Iraq, the US occupation has unleashed upon the ravaged country all that is corrupt, sick and criminal within American society itself. This has included the sadism and perversity of Abu Ghraib, the psychotic massacres and rapes for which some lower-ranking enlisted personnel are now being tried and, on a far more massive scale, the outright theft and embezzlement carried out by a host of politically connected contractors, foremost among them Halliburton, whose former bagman is now vice president of the United States.

These are the crimes not just of an administration in the White House, but of the entire political establishment and the social order as a whole.

Every significant institution in American society bears responsibility for this criminal enterprise, from the right-wing leadership that conspired to launch the war, to the Democratic Party, which voted the administration unlimited war powers and hundreds of billions of dollars in war funding, to the mass media, which transformed itself into a conduit for lies and war propaganda, both before the invasion and after.

Behind these political institutions stand the major economic forces within US society—the banks, corporations and, most immediately, the giant energy conglomerates—all of which saw in the Iraq war a means of reversing the relative decline of US capitalism on the world market by means of military aggression and plunder.

As both the Bush administration and leading Democratic politicians like Senator Hillary Clinton of New York issue demands and threats to compel the Iraqi regime to speedily enact a new petroleum law opening up the country’s vast reserves to exploitation by ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco and ConocoPhillips,, etc, the already transparent motives underlying the US invasion four years ago are becoming ever more explicit.

Guilty

These companies are just as guilty in relation to the pillaging and mass slaughter in Iraq as the German firms IG Farben, Krupp and Flick were in the atrocities of Hitler’s Third Reich, crimes for which their directors were convicted - if less than adequately punished -at Nuremberg.

These are the real issues confronting American society on this fourth anniversary of a war characterized by unspeakable criminality and filth.

The so-called debate between the Bush White House and the Democratic leadership in Congress over how best to salvage US interests from the debacle in Iraq does not begin to confront these questions. Both Bush’s escalation and Democratic proposals for reducing US forces, while continuing the occupation, are based on a continued strategy of conquest and on the conception that, eventually, the mass killing and repression will force the Iraqi people to submit. Both parties express the interests and methods of an American capitalist class that has enriched itself through parasitism and methods of violence and criminality, employed both at home and abroad to effect the transfer of vast amounts of wealth from the working population of the world to a tiny financial aristocracy.

An end to the immense and tragic crisis that now exists in Iraq is unthinkable outside of the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all US troops. Moreover, no real settlement can be contemplated outside of those who conspired to carry out this illegal war being held politically and legally responsible, including through prosecution for war crimes.

Such a solution cannot be achieved through the existing political institutions and the two major parties in the US, all of which have Iraq blood on their hands. It requires the independent political mobilization of working people, both in the US and internationally, in a class-conscious socialist movement.

On this, the fourth anniversary of the war in Iraq, the Socialist Equality Party and the World Socialist Web Site pledges to intensify the struggle to build such a movement to put an end to war and the profit system that creates it.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/mar2007/iraq-m20.shtml

2007-04-01T02:12:00.000+08:00

The Human Costs
Of Four Years Of War
Part One:

The US Invasion Has Ccaused
Nearly Three-Quarter Million
Iraqi Deaths
[www.wsws.org]

On the fourth anniversary of Washington’s unprovoked invasion of Iraq, President Bush delivered a five-minute midday televised speech pleading with the American people to give his latest escalation of the war more time to suppress Iraq resistance to the US occupation.

In a subdued and defensive tone, Bush recycled the same lies used to promote and justify the war since well before the launching of the “shock and awe” bombing of Baghdad in March of 2003. He claimed once again that the US had intervened because of the “threat” Iraq posed to the world, without mentioning the supposed substance of that threat, weapons of mass destruction and ties to terrorist groups, both of which were fabricated by the White House.

He made the absurd claim that the US-backed Iraqi regime is “working to build a free society that upholds the rule of law, that respects the rights of its people, that provides them security . . .” This is under conditions in which death squads and terrorist attacks claim scores if not hundreds of lives daily, and disappearances and torture are rampant.

Finally, he once again invoked September 11, echoing the innumerable attempts of his administration to perform the political sleight of hand of blaming Iraq for the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington and selling the war of aggression as vengeance for those killed in the Twin Towers and at the Pentagon.

Pretext

The “consequences for American security would be devastating,” if US troops were withdrawn from Iraq, Bush declared. He continued, “The terrorists could emerge from the chaos with a safe haven in Iraq to replace the one they had in Afghanistan, which they used to plan the attacks of September 11, 2001. For the safety of the American people, we cannot allow this to happen.”

The reality is that Iraq had nothing to do with September 11, which was utilized as a pretext for launching a long-planned war to conquer Iraq and its oil wealth. And the US invasion is the cause of, not the solution to, the chaos in Iraq. The claim that the US troops must remain in the country because otherwise terrorists could set up training camps there could be used to justify the invasion and occupation of any country in the world that Washington perceives as insufficiently stable or repressive.

Bush’s speech provoked predictable rebuttals from his ostensible political opposition, the Democratic leadership in Congress. Senate majority leader Harry Reid of Nevada charged that the last four years have amounted to “a series of failures by the Bush administration: failure to plan for the occupation, failure to anticipate an insurgency, failure to provide for our troops, and a failure to level with the American people.”

Others condemned Bush for allowing Iraq to divert military resources from the “real” war on terror.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi criticized Bush’s handling of the war, referring, like many others, to the more than 3,200 soldiers killed in Iraq and the tens of thousands wounded, while adding that the invasion and occupation had brought “our military’s readiness to the lowest levels since the Vietnam war.”

Meanwhile, the House Democrats are moving ahead with plans to approve over $100 billion in “emergency” funding to pay for the war and its escalation, while attaching non-enforceable language suggesting a timeline for the withdrawal of some - though by no means all - US troops from Iraq.

Destruction

What is ignored entirely in this phony debate and largely obscured by the mass media is the staggering level of death and destruction that the four-year-old US war has inflicted upon the Iraqi people.

Press reports marking the fourth anniversary of the war largely glossed over this question, or presented figures that wildly underestimated the death toll.

Thus, for example, the Los Angeles Times reported Monday, “an estimated 60,000 Iraqis have been killed since the US-led invasion on March 20, 2003.”

CNN similarly stated, “Iraqi civilian deaths are estimated at more than 54,000, possibly much higher.”

The figure of 60,000 Iraqi deaths was given by both NBC and ABC in their early morning newscasts.

For its part, the cable news network MSNBC declared simply that the number of Iraqis killed was “almost impossible to estimate.”

Casualties

The source of these estimates - or why any estimate is next to impossible - is not explained by these media organizations. It is as if the fate of the Iraqi people - whose “freedom” is constantly invoked as the supposed purpose of the war - is a minor question, of no real interest to anyone.
Even if the unattributed estimates of 60,000 dead were true, it would represent a horrifying slaughter, representing 20 dead Iraqis for every US soldier killed. The reality, however, is that the ratio is at least 200 to 1.

In October of last year, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health published the results of a meticulous epidemiological study finding that an estimated 655,000 Iraqis had lost their lives as a result of the US war and occupation between March of 2003 and June of 2006. The public health experts who directed the study - the only scientific investigation of Iraqi casualties - cautioned that the real death toll could be significantly higher and attributed nearly one third of it directly to US military operations.

Given the marked escalation of the violence in the past several months, it is entirely likely that three-quarters of a million Iraqis have died as a result of the US invasion and occupation of their country.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/mar2007/iraq-m20.shtml

2007-03-31T01:39:00.000+08:00

British Government Scientists
Vouched For Validity Of Study
Estimating 655,000 War Deaths In Iraq

By Naomi Spencer
28 March 2007
[www.wsws.org]

British government scientists endorsed the validity of a study released last October that estimated 655,000 Iraqis have been killed as the result of the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, the BBC reported March 26.

Despite the advice of its own scientists, however, the government of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, along with US President Bush and Australian Prime Minister John Howard, brushed aside the study, conducted by Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health and published in the British medical journal the Lancet, calling its methodology “flawed” and its results “suspect.” The media in both the US and Britain buried the report.

According to documents obtained by the BBC World Service’s “Newshour” program under a freedom of information request, senior officials and scientists had advised the Blair government against publicly criticizing the findings, saying that the methodology was “a tried and tested way of measuring mortality in conflict zones.”

The BBC report confirms the validity of the Johns Hopkins study and underscores the monumental scale of US and British war crimes in Iraq. It also highlights the dishonesty and complicity of the media in these crimes.

The Johns Hopkins study, published October 11, 2006, compared mortality rates before and after the US-led invasion by conducting thousands of interviews in Iraq. The survey was an enormous undertaking, with a sample size of over 12,800 individuals in 1,849 households in 47 randomly chosen areas throughout the country. With 95 percent statistical certainty, researchers concluded that the number of war dead was between 392,979 and 942,636, with the highest statistical likelihood around 655,000.

In 92 percent of the interviews, respondents furnished death certificates for the researchers. They concluded that, in three years, 2.5 percent of the Iraqi population had been killed in the war - an average of more than 500 a day. Most of the deaths were from gunfire. If the rate of Iraqi deaths were extrapolated to the US population, the toll of American fatalities would be 7.5 million - nearly equal to the population of New York City.

President Bush

At a press conference the same day the study was published, President Bush told reporters, “I don’t consider it a credible report . . . Neither does General Casey, neither do Iraqi officials.” The Iraqi Health Ministry’s mortality estimate is one-tenth the Johns Hopkins estimate. Without providing an explanation, alternative estimate, or even demonstrating that he had read the study, Bush described the methodology as “pretty well discredited.”

Australian Prime Minister Howard declared, “I don’t believe that Johns Hopkins research. I don’t. It’s not plausible. It’s not based on anything other than a house-to-house survey.”

Likewise, a spokesman for Tony Blair told the press, “The problem is they’re using an extrapolation technique from a relatively small sample from an area of Iraq which isn’t representative of the country as a whole. We have questioned that technique right from the beginning and we continue to do so.”

The British government issued a statement following Monday’s BBC report in which it reiterated the same “uncertainty:” “The methodology has been used in other conflict situations, notably the Democratic Republic of Congo. However, the Lancet figures are much higher than statistics from other sources, which only goes to show how estimates can vary enormously according to the method of collection.”

Among the documents obtained by the BBC was a memo by the chief scientific adviser at the British Ministry of Defense, Roy Anderson, written just two days after the Johns Hopkins study was published. The memo said, “The study design is robust and employs methods that are regarded as close to ‘best practice’ in this area, given the difficulties of data collection and verification in the present circumstances in Iraq.”

Responding to Anderson’s memo, a British government official wrote, “Are we really sure the report is likely to be right? That is certainly what the brief implies.”

Another official responded to Anderson’s statement: “We do not accept the figures quoted in the Lancet survey as accurate.” Yet in the same email, the official stated, “However, the survey methodology used here cannot be rubbished, it is a tried and tested way of measuring mortality in conflict zones.”

Political

Clearly, the reason the Blair government did not accept the estimates had nothing to do with the science, and everything to do with the political and legal implications of a death toll on the scale of genocide for which the US-led coalition is responsible.

There has been virtually no US media coverage of the BBC’s damning report. A day after the story broke in Britain, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, USA Today, CNN, MSNBC, the four major broadcast networks and other outlets failed to mention the report. Only the Washington Times online picked up the story, reposting a United Press International brief of less than two hundred words.

The mainstream press has played an integral role in suppressing politically damaging information from the build-up to the Iraq invasion up to the present. With its latest blackout, the US media yet again affirms its complicity in the mass killing and social devastation carried out by American imperialism in Iraq.

Last October, when the Johns Hopkins study was released, the New York Times and Washington Post buried the story in their back pages and made no editorial comment. When confronted by reporters for the World Socialist Web Site about his newspaper’s handling of the subject during a talk on security and press freedom at the University of Michigan in October, New York Times editor Bill Keller shrugged off the suppression of the story, saying, “We didn’t splash it on the front page.”

On October 18, 2006, the Wall Street Journal ran the despicably entitled opinion piece, “655,000 War Dead? A Bogus Study on Iraq Casualties.” It was written by Steven Moore, who had worked under Paul Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. Declaring that “the Johns Hopkins tally is wildly at odds with any numbers I have seen in that country,” Moore suggested that the study was ideologically biased.

As the blackout on Monday’s BBC report makes clear, the media continues to keep people in the dark about the scale of the carnage in Iraq and shield those who are responsible.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/mar2007/iraq-m28.shtml

2007-03-19T01:10:00.000+08:00

The Bush Administration
Manoeuvres To Unseat
Iraqi Government

By Peter Symonds
16 March 2007
[www.wsws.org]

Despite denials from Washington, there are growing signs that the Bush administration has issued threats to its puppet government in Baghdad to meet US-dictated “benchmarks” or face the consequences. The White House aims not only to end the military disaster in Iraq and open up the country’s oil for exploitation, but to fashion an Iraqi regime more supportive of US preparations for aggression against Iran.

Associated Press reported on Wednesday that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki feared the Bush administration would “torpedo” his government if it failed to meet US demands. The article highlighted a US threat to withdraw support from the government if it failed to pass a draft hydrocarbons law by the end of June that would open up Iraqi oil and gas fields to American corporations.

In line with its efforts to forge an alliance of so-called Sunni states against Shiite Iran, Washington is also demanding a government in Baghdad by the end of the year “acceptable to the country’s Sunni Arab neighbours, particularly Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt”. These governments are concerned that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the emergence of a Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad have bolstered Iran’s influence in Iraq and throughout the region.

The Arab League, which consists largely of states controlled by Sunni elites, issued a statement earlier this month demanding an end to anti-Sunni discrimination and measures to enhance the political role of the Sunni minority, which formed the social base of Hussein’s Baathist regime. The comments provoked an angry statement from the ruling Shiite United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), denouncing the Arab League for its “flagrant interference in Iraq’s internal affairs,” which would “incite discord and acts of violence inside Iraq”.

The US has reinforced “Sunni” demands by imposing “benchmarks” on the Maliki government, requiring a reversal of previous de-Baathification laws, fresh elections for regional councils and changes to the present Iraqi constitution. The measures would open the door for members of the Sunni elite to play a greater political role and resume their posts in the state bureaucracy and security forces.

Oil Law

The New York Times yesterday reported that the Maliki government had already failed to meet these objectives which were due to be completed this month. A Pentagon assessment submitted to the US Congress on Wednesday said Maliki had “promised to reform his government, beginning with his cabinet and ministries,” but there had been no changes as yet. It also pointed to “little progress on the reconciliation front [with Sunnis]” and modest steps toward finalising the oil legislation.

At the end of last month, the Maliki cabinet, under pressure from Washington, adopted an oil law aimed at ending the bitter differences over the internal sharing of revenues. But the legislation is yet to be passed by the national assembly, where it is opposed by two significant blocs—the Iraqi National List led by former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and the Sunni-based Iraqi Accord Front. Both are demanding constitutional changes to enhance the position of Sunnis as the price for supporting the oil legislation.

As a result, Maliki is caught in a dilemma. Any concessions to the Sunni minority are bitterly opposed by the Shiite fundamentalist parties on which his ruling coalition rests. But if he fails to meet the Bush administration’s “benchmarks,” in particular the passage of the oil law by June, he risks the loss of American backing. “Al-Maliki is committed to meeting the deadline because he is convinced he would not survive in power without US support,” one of his close associates told Associated Press.

Officially, the Bush administration has denied issuing any ultimatum to the Maliki government. “The notion that we have in any way, shape or form threatened to bring down his government over this law is simply untrue,” US State Department spokesman Tom Casey told the media. Behind the scenes, however, US officials are not only insisting that the “benchmarks” have to be met, but are actively conniving with Allawi to undermine the Maliki government and prepare an alternative regime.

Allawi is a former Baathist thug who broke with the Hussein regime. A longstanding CIA asset, he was installed as prime minister in May 2004 by the US proconsul in Baghdad, Paul Bremer III, but failed dismally in national ballots. In the December 2005 election, Iraqis overwhelmingly repudiated Allawi’s Iraqi National List (INL), which currently has only 25 seats in the National Assembly. After retiring to London, he then returned to Iraq and is attempting to make a comeback with obvious backing from Washington.

Anti-Sunni

Allawi is positioning himself as the mouthpiece for the Bush administration’s policies: opposing anti-Sunni discrimination, posturing as a “secular” alternative to Maliki’s Shiite coalition and seeking support from neighbouring Arab states. His INL, which currently has five ministers, is threatening to pull out of Maliki’s government if its demands are not met. In a statement issued on March 1, the bloc warned “it will soon no longer be able to accept the responsibility of being in this government, because of its sectarian domination and narrow-mindedness”.

In recent weeks, Allawi, with US support, has assembled an alliance of more than 80 seats in the 275-seat National Assembly, including the Sunni-based Tawafuq bloc, as well as independents and smaller parties. His prospects of challenging Maliki were boosted by the decision of the Shiite Fadhila party to walk out of the UIA coalition last week. Fadhila, which has 15 MPs, has criticised the UIA’s “sectarianism” and is being actively courted by Allawi, but has yet to join his grouping.

Allawi is also wooing the Kurdish nationalist parties, which have 55 seats. He travelled to the Kurdish north last week to meet with Massoud Barzani, who is head of the Kurdish regional government. As Barzani’s spokesman Abdul-Khaleq Zanganah told Associated Press, the two held talks on forming “a national front to take over from the political bloc now supporting al-Maliki”. The presence of the US ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, at the discussions was an obvious sign of US backing for the enterprise, as well as a warning to Maliki.

Just as significant is the fact that the two men flew to Riyadh this week for discussions with the Saudi monarchy, which, with Washington’s encouragement, has taken a more aggressive role in regional politics since the end of last year, with the aim of undermining Iranian influence. Sections of the Saudi elite are openly hostile to the Maliki government, regarding it as little more than a stooge for their regional rival Iran. Allawi needs no convincing to get rid of Maliki, but Kurdish leaders may well need inducements and guarantees.

The main objective of the two major Kurdish parties—Barzani’s Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK)—has been to secure an autonomous Kurdish regional government and to extend it to include the oil-rich northern area around Kirkuk. Allawi and his bloc, however, are calling for constitutional changes that would weaken or even abolish regional groupings of provinces. At the same time, Barzani may consider an alliance with Allawi as necessary to ensure continued US backing.

Withdrawal

Much of the commentary about Allawi’s obvious manoeuvring is preoccupied with speculation about possible political combinations that would give him a parliamentary majority. For instance, if Allawi fails to gain the support of the Kurdish parties, the UIA will continue to control the National Assembly, provided its 113-seat bloc remains intact. Such calculations ignore the fact that neither the Bush administration nor Allawi would have the slightest hesitation in ignoring the Iraqi constitution, dispensing with its extremely limited “democratic” norms and using other means to seize power.

The World Socialist Web Site reported a series of articles in the US press last year, beginning in August, openly hinting that the Bush administration was considering dispensing with the Maliki government and “democracy” in Iraq. It is significant that the reemergence of Allawi into the political limelight coincides with an article in the Los Angeles Times on March 12 revealing that the Pentagon has already begun planning for a fallback strategy if the current “surge” of US troops in Baghdad should fail to suppress the anti-US insurgency and expanding sectarian civil war.

According to the newspaper, the “El Salvador” option is currently under consideration, which includes a gradual withdrawal of US forces and a renewed emphasis on training Iraqi fighters. “El Salvador veterans and experts have been pushing for the model of a smaller, less visible US advisory presence,” the article reported. “Some academics,” it noted in passing, “have argued the US military turned a blind eye to government-backed death squads or even aided them.” In fact, the US-backed death squads and savage military repression were the strategy used to eliminate leftist opponents of the regime in El Salvador and terrorise the entire population. At the height of the bloodletting in the early 1980s, over 13,000 people were being slaughtered a year.

Stephen Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations argued in the Los Angeles Times that the El Salvador option would not work in Iraq because of the country’s raging sectarian civil war. Any attempt to build a plan around training the Shiite-dominated government forces, he said, was bound to fail. The obvious solution is to get rid of the Maliki government and install a strongman who is prepared to do whatever it takes to stamp his authority on the security forces and unleash death squads to eliminate opposition to the US occupation.

Allawi certainly fits the bill. During his long exile from Iraq before 2003, he maintained close connections with dissident elements of the Baathist security and intelligence apparatus and has been accused of masterminding several terrorist acts against Hussein’s regime. After his installation as prime minister in 2004, he reappointed former Baathist officials to key posts to exploit their expertise in suppressing political opposition. During Allawi’s term of office, notorious death squads such as the Wolf Brigade were established with the assistance of US advisers such as James Steele, a veteran of the El Salvador campaign.

Allawi is not averse to getting his hands dirty. In July 2004, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that two Iraqi eyewitnesses saw Allawi shoot dead six handcuffed and blindfolded prisoners at the Al-Amariyah security centre in Baghdad the previous month. The cold-blooded executions, carried out in front of US special forces troops, were meant as a lesson to Iraqi police and troops that they could also kill with impunity. No adequate investigation has been carried out into this brutal incident.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/mar2007/iraq-m16.shtml

2007-03-19T00:47:00.000+08:00

Sand Ban A Lost Opportunity
For Economic Cooperation
Says S'pore PM

By Jackson Sawatan
[bernama.com]

SINGAPORE, March 18 (Bernama) -- Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has described Indonesia's ban on sand export as a lost opportunity for economic cooperation which hurts both sides, a report here said.

Commenting for the first time on the issue, Lee said that Singapore had to accept the decision and look for ways to overcome the problem.

"The official explanation is that it's because of concerns over the environment and that it has nothing to do with other issues which we are negotiating like the extradition treaty and the defence cooperation agreement or the ongoing talks on boundary demarcation," he told a group of Japanese journalists ahead of his visit to Japan today, as reported by The Straits Times.

Last month, Indonesia imposed the ban on the export of sand of which Singapore is the biggest importer, citing environmental concerns.

Lee said: "So, we accept the explanation they've given us and we hope that over time, the matter will stabilise and we will be able to resume our cooperation."

The sand import ban took a new twist just days after it took effect on Feb 6 when several Indonesian legislators remarked that the ban was Indonesia's way of pressuring Singapore into signing an extradition treaty and to resolve border disputes between both countries.

Indonesia wants the extradition treaty to bring back Indonesian tycoons which Jakarta has alleged to have fled to Singapore, taking with them corrupt money.

Following the ban, Singapore released its sand stockpile to ease the shortage of the building material.

Lee said Singapore's sand stockpile would last for a considerable time and that the cost increase would be quite bearable.

He described as unfortunate that the problem has come up. "We don't fully understand why," he said.

Besides releasing its sand stockpile, Singapore is also importing sand from other sources to make up for the shortage and is exploring ways to reduce dependency on sand in construction.

"There is potential to go for more efficient processes, steel and drywalls. These are things which we are embarking on to reduce our construction costs," he said.

-- BERNAMA
http://www.bernama.com

2007-03-16T11:35:00.000+08:00

Singapore And Neighbors
Just Can't Get Along

By Wayne Arnold and Thomas Fuller
[International Herald Tribune]

Some countries have strategic oil reserves; others stockpile rice or wheat. The island nation of Singapore has emergency reserves of imported sand.

The sand is there to secure Singapore's insatiable demand for concrete, a reminder of Singapore's vulnerability as a nation without a hinterland to supply it with vital resources.

Singapore's government is now being forced to tap its sand horde after its usual supplier, Indonesia, abruptly banned exports in February, citing the impact of a recent Singapore construction boom on its beaches and island environments.

The ban touched off the latest in a string of disputes between Singapore and its neighbors over water, land reclamation, satellite concessions, corporate takeovers and the flight patterns of the Singaporean Air Force — just to name a few.

A Malaysian politician has blamed Singapore for worsening floods in his constituency. A top Indonesian politician has appealed for the recall of Singapore's ambassador. The general in Thailand who led the coup there last September has accused Singapore of tapping his phones.

Tiffs between Singapore and its neighbors are nothing new, and analysts say the latest dust-ups are unlikely to seriously harm relations.

But the analysts say that the recent quarrels highlight the fissures that continue to thwart the region's ability to compete collectively against the economies of India and China.

If Singapore and its neighbors cannot agree to share such basic resources as sand and water, they say, the dream of a single market by 2015 - the stated goal of the 10-member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations - may be illusory.

"They're more competitive with each other than natural allies," said Robert Broadfoot, managing director of the Political & Economic Risk Consultancy in Hong Kong.

The disputes also raise questions about Singapore's drive to expand its investments in the region. Singapore's advances appear to be aggravating what might be described as a personality conflict between what is one of the world's richest countries and its much larger, but much poorer, neighbors.

"We see Singapore in two ways," said Drajad Wibowo, a legislator from Indonesia's National Mandate Party. "On one hand as a role model for development; on the other hand, many see Singapore as an arrogant economic giant, which is prepared to use its financial muscle to 'undermine' neighboring countries."

Singapore's problems with its neighbors are as old as the country itself. Independence in 1965 came about after it was ejected by Malaysia.

Singapore's leaders took advantage of their city's historic role as a trading post to lure investment and manufacturing, vaulting Singapore within 20 years to the ranks of the world's most affluent nations - and breezing past Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand along the way.

While its shrewdness has prompted frequent comparisons to Switzerland, some say its assertiveness places it closer to Israel. In his memoirs, Singapore's founding prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, said his goal "was to leapfrog the region, as the Israelis had done."

Like Israel, Singapore is an ethnic anomaly, a predominantly Chinese population in a predominantly Malay region. Indeed, Singapore even sought advice from Israel on how to build its defenses after independence. As such, Singapore has become a magnet for ethnic Chinese talent and wealth from around Southeast Asia.

But while Singapore is part of the region, it often seems to be apart from it. In a region where politics are ruled by nuance and consensus, they say, Singapore can be self-servingly rational, legalistic and seemingly tone-deaf to local sensitivities.

"Singapore doesn't really care about the opinion of its neighbors," the former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir bin Mohamad complained to a Thai television station in January. "Singapore believes the most important thing is what profits Singapore."

"Their values and their efficiency don't export well," said Broadfoot.

Singapore's officials, for the most part, are not apologetic.

"For Singapore, the rule of law and the protection of property are absolutely important from the days we were established as a trading post for the British East India Company," said Foreign Minister George Yeo in a written response to questions. "Why else would this piece of rock, amidst thousands scattered in the archipelago, flourish?"

In Singapore's Parliament, legislators recently complained that Singapore was being picked on unfairly. One member of Parliament blasted efforts by neighbors to make Singapore a "scapegoat for their own domestic troubles."

But as the disputes accumulate there are also voices in Singapore calling for a change of approach.

A March 12 editorial in Business Times, which like all Singapore newspapers is state controlled, proposed that the government's investment arm, Temasek, create a charitable foundation.

While that might not eliminate "nationalistic responses" to Temasek's activities in the region, the editorial read, "giving back rather than merely extracting profits (legitimate though that may be), yields a huge payoff for companies in terms of building good will, respect, networks, and in the end, profitability."

The rising animosity in Thailand toward Singapore is especially troubling for the city-state because the two countries were Cold War allies with little history of rancor. The mood began to change when Singaporean banks took over Thai banks after the 1997 financial crisis, adding to a general resentment among the Thai elite about selling off distressed assets.

In 2004, when Singapore struck a 15- year deal with the Thai military for use of one of its military bases, activist groups in Thailand said the deal violated the country's sovereignty.

More recently, Singapore became a national punching bag in Thailand after Temasek led a group of investors in buying the telecommunications empire of Thaksin Shinawatra, the prime minister ousted in the coup last September.

The Thai government says the transaction was illegal, an accusation Singapore denies.

As for Indonesia, it remains unclear what sparked the new ban on sand exports. Indonesia's official explanation is damage to its environment. In 2002, Indonesia begin restricting exports of sand after reports emerged of entire islands disappearing as Singapore expanded.

However, Indonesia's maritime affairs minister, Freddy Numberi, later said the ban was also aimed at pressuring Singapore into signing a long- stalled extradition treaty.

Wealthy Indonesians, particularly ethnic Chinese, have long used Singapore as a haven from Indonesia's periodic strife. Indonesians are the leading foreign property owners in Singapore, and wealthy Indonesians keep as much as $87 billion stashed in Singapore banks, according to estimates.

Many Indonesians suspect that Singapore is harboring white-collar criminals, though there have been no publicized cases of fugitives living here.

Indonesia's foreign minister denied Freddy's claim, but Singapore bristled, calling Indonesia's mixed signals "puzzling and disappointing."

Singapore says the two countries had already agreed that the extradition treaty would be negotiated, together with a defense cooperation pact. Foreign Minister Yeo told Singapore's Parliament last week that an agreement was near.

The confusion over Indonesia's policy is only growing, though. In late February, the Indonesian Navy detained 13 tugs pulling barges full of granite, another widely used construction material, saying they were searching for smuggled sand.

It was into this fracas that the speaker of Indonesia's Parliament, Agung Laksono, waded when he called for the recall of Singapore's ambassador.

"I think the government must immediately send the Singaporean ambassador home in protest against that country's unfriendly attitude," he was quoted as saying by Indonesia's state news agency, Antara.

Now, with the price of sand nearly triple what it was before the ban, Singapore is drawing down its sand stockpiles while looking for new suppliers. How long the reserves will last and where sand will be bought, authorities won't say.

In the meantime, Singapore is standing firm.

"From time to time, we must expect other countries will pressure Singapore in the hope that we will then give way to their demands," Yeo told Parliament. "Singaporeans know that, if we give in to such pressures, we would only invite more such pressures."

http://malaysia-today.net/blog2006/newsncom.php?itemid=3163

2007-03-07T15:14:00.000+08:00

Final Part:
Australian PM Outlines
Indefinite Military Agenda
In South Pacific
[www.wsws.org]

The Howard government’s vision of neo-colonial military-led interventions in the Pacific lasting 10 to 20 years presents enormous dangers to working people and youth in the Pacific Islands and in Australia.

It will inevitably produce a catastrophe. The population of the Pacific Islands have suffered a long history of British, French, German, and Australian colonial domination. It is impossible that such forms of rule can be peacefully imposed in the twenty-first century. Pacific Islanders have every right to resist Canberra’s machinations and it is only a matter of time before Australian soldiers and police are targeted. The initial stages of such a struggle are already evident in East Timor and the Solomon Islands. Canberra will respond by escalating its violence and repression, unleashing military force on a scale not seen in the Pacific since World War II.

The domestic repercussions will be no less calamitous. Democratic rights are already under sustained attack, and this will intensify as opposition to Howard’s agenda mounts. Bourgeois democratic norms and basic legal and constitutional rights are fundamentally incompatible with a state of permanent military mobilisation. In its efforts to forge a constituency for war and divert mounting social tensions, the political and media establishment is pumping out the poison of national chauvinism—involving the incitement of anti-Muslim racism and promotion of “Australian values”—and glorifying militarism.

Militarism

Young people face a future of being dragooned into the armed forces as cannon fodder for military interventions. School children are already being encouraged to enlist in the cadets and then the army. The Howard government has introduced a military “gap year” for those who have finished school but do not wish to immediately begin their tertiary education. Last year Howard announced that an additional $10 billion will be spent to recruit another 2,600 troops, on top of a 1,500 increase announced in December 2005, bringing the total increase to 20 percent. Half a billion dollars has also been committed for the near doubling of the Australian Federal Police’s “international deployment group”—an outfit focussed on operations in the South Pacific. Inevitably, these initiatives will soon be accompanied by moves to introduce conscription.

The billions of dollars in public funds being poured into the military represent a massive social misappropriation. While funding for public health and education, social infrastructure, and welfare and social services have all been gutted by successive state and federal governments, “defence” spending has skyrocketed. Australia is now the eleventh largest military spender in the world and ranks ahead of countries such as Israel, Turkey, Brazil, and Iran.

The political starting point for a struggle against the turn to militarism and war is the recognition that not a single element within the Australian political and media establishment opposes any aspect of the Howard government’s neo-colonial operations in the South Pacific. To the extent that the opposition Labor Party and its new leader Kevin Rudd have any criticisms of the government, they are all from the right. Rudd accuses Howard of incompetence for allowing an “arc of instability” to develop, and advocates greater tact in diplomatic efforts aimed at browbeating Australia’s neighbours. Like the Greens, Labor calls for the redeployment of Australian troops from Iraq to the South Pacific in order to bolster operations in East Timor, the Solomons, and elsewhere.

Interventions

The unanimous defence by Labor and the minor parties of Australia’s Pacific interventions ultimately derives from their support for the profit system and the nation-state system upon which it rests. Opposition to war, militarism, and neo-colonialism can only be advanced on an independent socialist and internationalist basis.

The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) will be standing candidates in the New South Wales state election scheduled for March 24 and the federal election due later this year. Our campaign will be focussed on building a mass movement of the working class against militarism and war—in Iraq, the Middle East and in the South Pacific. We demand the immediate withdrawal of all US, Australian and other troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, and all Australian soldiers, police, and bureaucratic personnel from the Pacific. We demand an end to all those regional “aid” programs that function as nothing more than international slush funds for Australian corporations.

Instead, billions of dollars in genuine aid must be spent to lift the Pacific Islands out of poverty and undo the terrible legacy of colonialism and the damage still being inflicted by International Monetary Fund and World Bank programs.

At the same time, the SEP defends the right of every worker in the region to freely travel and work in Australia with full democratic and legal rights. We urge every socially conscious worker and young person in Australia and throughout the Pacific to take up the fight for this perspective by contacting the World Socialist Web Site and the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) and building it as the new international party of the working class.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/jan2007/sep-j18.shtml

2007-03-07T14:24:00.000+08:00

Singapore-Malaysia Ties
'Good And Getting Better'
[wongkanseng.blogspot.com]

THE Prime Ministers of Singapore and Malaysia will hold their first retreat in May in one of the clearest signs yet that bilateral ties are 'good and getting better'.

That was the phrase Minister for Foreign Affairs George Yeo used yesterday to describe warming relations.

He told Parliament that Mr Lee Hsien Loong would lead a delegation of ministers up north for a retreat with Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi and his colleagues.

Singapore had also proposed setting up a consulate in Johor Baru, a move welcomed by Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar, said Mr Yeo as he gave an overview of the Republic's foreign relations.

Quoting his Malaysian counterpart, Mr Yeo said he agreed with him that bilateral ties 'have never been better'.

Datuk Seri Syed Hamid had also said that while it did not mean all bilateral issues had been resolved, the two sides were now moving to a more mature track and could separate those areas where there was potential for progress and move ahead on them.

'I welcome this new phase in our relationship,' said Mr Yeo.

'Close cooperation between our two countries will benefit our peoples,' he added.

He expressed his own delight at Genting's successful bid for the Sentosa integrated resort project. Singapore also looked forward to working with Malaysia on the Iskandar Development Region in south Johor 'on the basis of mutual respect and mutual benefit'.

Mr Yeo told the House too that the National University of Singapore would be conferring on the Sultan of Johor an honorary doctorate when he visits the Republic next month.

Turning to the overall regional and international outlook for Singapore, Mr Yeo said it was favourable.

Ties between the big powers, namely, the United States, China and Japan, which affected Singapore, had improved.

On the regional front, Singapore was doing all it could to move Asean forward as it believed that a strong and peaceful regional grouping could play a major role in maintaining the larger peace in Asia.

On current tensions with some fellow Asean members, Mr Yeo said it was understandable that Singaporeans would be concerned, but they should take the ups and downs in their stride.

'From time to time, we must expect countries to pressure us in the hope that we will then give in to their demands,' he said.

Singapore would not give in to such pressures but was always prepared to build good relations with its neighbours on the basis of mutual respect and benefit, he said.

He was responding to nine Members of Parliament, who asked about Indonesia's recent ban on sand exports to the Republic.

Mr Yeo replied that it was 'not clear' what caused the recent events that threatened bilateral relations.

'We know, for a fact, that President Yudhoyono values good bilateral relations, as we do,' he added, referring to Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

On ongoing talks for an extradition treaty and a defence cooperation agreement, Mr Yeo said the two countries were not far from a solution.

Both have agreed to elevate the negotiations to the ministerial level so that 'they can be jointly concluded on an overall balance of benefits', he added.

On Thailand, he was confident that ties would weather the uproar over former premier Thaksin Shinawatra's visit to Singapore in January.

MPs welcomed the news of improving ties with Malaysia.

On the proposed consulate in Johor, Mr Michael Palmer, deputy chairman of the Government Parliamentary Committee for Defence and Foreign Affairs, said: 'If our interests in Johor increase, we should have diplomatic representation. It would help our businesses there if and when they run into any problems.'

shpeh@sph.com.sg

http://wongkanseng.blogspot.com/2007/03/singapore-malaysia-ties-good-and.html

2007-03-06T14:35:00.000+08:00

Part Two:

Australian PM Outlines
Indefinite Military Agenda
In South Pacific
[www.wsws.org]

The region’s natural resources now help fuel China’s ongoing industrial expansion. Papua New Guinea, for example, was China’s second largest source of logs in 2005, behind Russia, and 80 percent of PNG’s log exports go to China. One of China’s largest overseas investment projects, the Ramu nickel mine, is located in PNG. Opened late last year, the mine was developed by China’s Metallurgical Construction Corp after Beijing reached a $US915 million financing agreement with the PNG government. The investment was directly driven by a shortage of raw materials for China’s stainless steel industry.

The Beijing bureaucracy is investing considerable resources in its diplomatic relations with the South Pacific countries. China now has more diplomats in the region than any other country, and Pacific leaders visiting Beijing are granted lavish receptions. While there are no official figures available, Chinese aid to the South Pacific is estimated at more than $A300 million annually—a sum nearly twice the total gross domestic product of the three poorest nations in the region (Kiribati, Nauru, and Tuvalu). Much of Beijing’s aid is devoted to prominent “prestige projects”—sports stadiums in Fiji and Samoa, a parliamentary complex in Vanuatu, and new foreign ministry headquarters in PNG—and unlike Australian aid money, Chinese funding does not require Pacific governments to fulfil “good governance” and other obligations.

Several American and Australian foreign policy analysts have warned of the long-term strategic implications of China’s growing influence. In World War II, the US was forced to wage a series of bloody battles against the Japanese to secure control of the Pacific Islands. After the war, US authorities considered the entire Pacific Ocean to be an “American lake”. In partnership with allies such as Australia, Washington’s intent was to maintain exclusive control and prevent any potential adversaries from gaining a foothold in the strategically significant region.

Dominance

Stratfor, an American security and intelligence think tank, has warned that, “China’s need to counter American power - combined with Beijing’s limited naval capability - makes a Pacific Island strategy as natural to them as it was to the Japanese decades ago.” Stratfor raised the prospect of Beijing attempting to counter US naval dominance by stationing missiles in South Pacific countries. “While Beijing is unlikely to deploy forces to the South Pacific soon, its relationships with the island nations offer it a strategic tool to counter US naval power in Asia. The Chinese military has paid great attention to the development of shore-based anti-ship missile systems it eventually could deploy throughout the South Pacific and Southeast Asia.”

The US has already made clear its unwillingness to allow any erosion of its military position in the Pacific. Washington paid considerable attention to a satellite tracking station constructed by the Chinese government in Kiribati in 1997. While Beijing insisted the station was only used for scientific and commercial purposes, the Bush administration alleged that it was being used to develop a Chinese space warfare program and also spy on the US military’s missile testing facility in the neighbouring Marshall Islands. This facility is vital for the development of the Bush administration’s Strategic Defence Initiative (“Son of Star Wars”) missile defence system. The Chinese tracking station was shut down in 2004 after Kiribati’s government recognised Taipei. Although never proven, Washington was widely believed to have been involved in behind-the-scenes manoeuvres encouraging the diplomatic switch.

Canberra fears Beijing’s growing influence in the South Pacific for a number of reasons. China’s increasing commercial ties—particularly its aggressive pursuit of oil, gas, minerals, timber, and fishing investments—threatens corporate Australia’s dominant position in the exploitation of the region’s natural resources. Canberra’s foreign policy establishment is also hostile to Beijing and Taipei’s aid and trade rivalry, which it considers a threat to its efforts to cultivate compliant pro-Australian regimes in the Pacific states.

Beijing

Canberra’s alliance with Washington is a critical factor shaping the Howard government’s response to Beijing’s entry into the South Pacific. Bush has previously designated China as a “strategic competitor” and looks to Canberra to defend US interests in the region.

In the Sunday Telegraph interview, Howard explained, “That’s why we’ve been increasing the size of our army. It’s all designed to give us the capacity to deal with things in the region. And this is our responsibility. The rest of the world looks to us to do it, and the more we are able to play our part effectively here, the less is legitimately expected of us in other parts of the world. That’s not to say we won’t do other things, but if we can have an effective stabilising role in the whole Pacific region, I can assure you that is mightily important to the Americans and to our allies in Europe.”

The Howard government has unconditionally backed the Bush administration’s criminal interventions in the Middle East, dispatching troops to both Afghanistan and Iraq. In return, Washington has provided critical backing for Canberra’s operations in the Pacific. Underlying this quid pro quo is a convergence of interests, with the Howard government advancing its agenda in the region under the aegis of US imperialism’s claim to global hegemony. This is the essence of Howard’s self-proclaimed role of “deputy sheriff”.

Terror

The Bush administration’s so-called war on terror and its doctrine of “regime change” and pre-emptive war were the basis for the Howard government’s takeover of the Solomon Islands in 2003, when it dispatched hundreds of soldiers, police, and bureaucratic personnel to the tiny country. The Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) was subsequently hailed as a model military-led intervention into a “failing state” that could be applied throughout the region. When announcing the expansion of the Australian military last year, Howard named Papua New Guinea, Fiji, and Vanuatu as further potential targets.

The Bush administration has repeatedly expressed its appreciation of Canberra’s role. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was asked last month whether she was disappointed that Australian troops were not playing a more front-line role in Iraq. “I would never use the word disappointment in the same line with Australia,” she replied. “This is a country that, not only in Iraq, not only in Afghanistan, not only in tsunami relief, not only in support for all that we’re doing in the Asia Pacific, but also in taking really primary responsibility in places like the Solomon Islands, Fiji, East Timor, has put its resources and its assets at the disposal of peace and security in the region, and in the spread of freedom. And I just can’t think of a better friend and a better ally.”

Nevertheless, Canberra and Washington do not share identical positions in relation to Beijing. The Howard government has generally adopted a less belligerent stance than the Bush administration. This is due to the Australian ruling elite’s interest in maintaining its lucrative exports of natural resources such as gas, gold, iron ore, coal, and aluminium to China. These exports have been crucial for Australia’s economic growth - and Howard’s electoral successes -over the past decade. Canberra is currently seeking to negotiate a free trade deal with Beijing.

Despite these differences, the Howard government and the Bush administration agree that no potentially hostile power can be permitted to advance its strategic and economic interests in the South Pacific at their expense. That Howard abandoned his usual caution in the Telegraph interview and identified China as a rival indicates just how much is at stake.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/jan2007/sep-j18.shtml

2007-03-06T02:03:00.000+08:00

Malaysia Wants
Stereotyping Of Terrorism With Islam
To Stop

By Mohd Nasir Yusoff
[bernama.com]

JAKARTA, March 5 (Bernama) -- Malaysia wants the inclination of the West and their media to stereotype terrorism with Islam to stop and be eliminated immediately to prevent a jaundiced perception by the world of the majority of Muslims who have never supported terrorism.

Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar said the use of terms by Western leaders and media such as "Islamic terrorists", "Islamic extremists" and "establishing an Islamic caliphate" hurt the feelings of peace-loving Muslims.

"Similarly `Islamic jihadists', which in Islam gives a very good and positive connotation of a struggle for good or positive purpose, has been misused and misinterpreted," he told a press conference at the end of the first day of the Sub-Regional Ministerial Conference on Efforts Against Terrorism here today.

In explaining Malaysia's views on anti-terrorism efforts at the conference, attended by ministers from six countries in the region, he said Malaysia wanted the negative terms and perception not to be linked to all Muslims.

"Stereoptyping makes Muslims, particularly in the Middle East, to feel that they are being collectively penalised when in fact they practise the true Islamic teaching that never encourages terrorism," he said.

Syed Hamid said Malaysia's views were welcomed by foreign ministers who were there, including Alexander Downer of Australia, which jointly hosted the two-day conference with Indonesia. The conference was a follow-up to a similar conference in Bali in February 2004.

On the level of cooperation between the six participating countries, namely Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia, Thailand, the Philippines and Singapore, in dealing with terrorism so far, Syed Hamid said the ties were very good especially in terms of the exchange of intelligence information which enabled the preliminary steps to be taken.

"The cooperation between the police and security forces of the countries and also other Asean countries was generally very good," he said and added that the conference also discussed ways to deal with the new mass media that used Internet to spread terrorism ideology.

On the bilateral meeting with Downer, Syed Hamid said they also discussed peaceful resolution of issues in the Middle East, the United States' stance in efforts against terrorism besides agreeing that the Malaysia-Australia cooperation in various fields had been getting better.

Syed Hamid also held a bilateral meeting with Singapore's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Dr Balaji Sadasivan.

- BERNAMA March 05, 2007

2007-03-05T14:49:00.000+08:00

Part One:
Australian PM Outlines
Indefinite Military Agenda
In South Pacific
[www.wsws.org]

Australian Prime Minister John Howard has revealed the real motivations behind his government’s interventions in the South Pacific and foreshadowed permanent military operations there. Speaking to the Sunday Telegraph on December 31, Howard acknowledged his concern that hostile rival powers, such as China and Taiwan, could “take over” the region. The prime minister also pointed to Washington’s expectation that Australia would take responsibility for maintaining “stability” in an area US imperialism regards as its own sphere of influence.

Howard’s comments are intended to signal that his government will not back down in the face of mounting hostility to its activities in the region, and will be prepared to utilise military force to suppress opposition. The Telegraph interview confirms that Australia’s recent interventions in East Timor, the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea (PNG), Tonga, and Fiji are only the beginning of its long-term plans.

Howard’s Pacific agenda is marked by recklessness, arrogance and complete disregard for international law. The government - and behind it the entire Australian political establishment - aims to politically and economically restructure the South Pacific in line with the strategic and economic interests of Australian imperialism. National sovereignty and the basic right of ordinary Pacific Islanders to determine their own future are regarded by Howard and his accomplices as totally irrelevant.

Neo-Colonialism

The emergence of Australian neo-colonialism in the Pacific occurs amid the eruption of US militarism and the re-surfacing of bitter inter-imperialist antagonisms, comparable to those that dominated world politics in the 1930s. Under the banner of the “global war on terror”, the Bush administration has torn up international law and conventions, embarking on pre-emptive wars of aggression in an attempt to overcome America’s declining economic status relative to its European and Asian rivals. Bush’s recently announced escalation of the Iraq war, and its likely extension to Iran and Syria, underscores the speed with which the American ruling elite is resorting to outright criminality and truly barbaric methods of rule.

No part of the globe - including the South Pacific - is immune from the consequences of the breakdown of the international order established after World War II. Howard pointedly warned the Australian people to get used to permanent military deployment throughout the region. “This is a long, hard road, and it will need great patience and understanding by the Australian public to live with, probably for a period of 10 to 20 years, with a two-steps-forward, one-step-backward situation,” he told the Telegraph.

“I can understand Australians saying, ‘Well, look, let’s forget about it. Leave them to their own devices; don’t waste any money’, but that’s the wrong approach to take, because they will fall into the hands of the evil from other countries and we have to work very hard,” he continued. “Certainly there’s a bit of a battle between China and Taiwan... If we just throw up our arms and go away, you’ll end up with these places being taken over by interests that are very hostile to Australia.”

China’s Influence

Notably, the prime minister made little effort to repeat his government’s usual justifications for Australia’s neo-colonial interventions: rescuing “failed states”, preventing terrorism, providing humanitarian aid, combating corruption, promoting democracy and the rule of law, etc. That he set these aside, pointing instead to the “evil” from Australia’s rivals, indicates his alarm at the growing opposition to Canberra’s manoeuvres among ordinary Pacific Islanders and the move by sections of the political elites in East Timor, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Fiji towards other powers, especially China, as a counterbalance to Australian demands and dominance.

The South Pacific has long been an arena for great power rivalries between the old colonial powers, France, Britain, and Australia, as well as Asian countries including Japan, Malaysia, and Indonesia. The rising economic and diplomatic influence of China, however, is a new and profoundly destabilising factor that is challenging long-established relations. While Howard describes the South Pacific as Australia’s “special patch”, Beijing now has substantial economic interests in the region, and is seeking to develop its geo-strategic position.

The Chinese and Taiwanese governments are competing to secure diplomatic recognition from the various Pacific states. Of the 24 countries in the world that recognise Taipei over Beijing, six are in the Pacific (Palau, the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu, Nauru, Solomon Islands, and Kiribati). Governments in the region have played off the two powers against each other, granting diplomatic recognition and support in the UN General Assembly to the highest bidder in terms of aid and trade agreements. Both China and Taiwan have been accused of bribing favoured politicians and factions to ensure the installation of friendly governments.

China’s interest in the South Pacific, however, goes far beyond the question of Taiwan and the “one China” policy. An estimated 3,000 state-owned and private Chinese companies operate in the region, including in mining, logging, fishing, and tourism. Economic ties are rapidly developing. Bilateral trade between China and Papua New Guinea, the South Pacific’s largest economy (and until 1975 Australia’s colony), has increased from $A5 million in 1991, to $A233 million in 2000, to $A540 million in 2005.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/jan2007/sep-j18.shtml

2007-03-03T16:04:00.000+08:00

Bush Right Candidate
For KL War Crimes Tribunal

Final Part:
War Crime Commission

By Datuk Rejal Arbee
www.beritakmu.net

With all those developments being deliberated in Part One and Part Two of this article, the decision by the "Expose War Crimes, Criminalise War" conference organised by the Perdana Global Peace Organisation in Kuala Lumpur early last month to set up a War Crimes Commission (KLWCC) to check on allegations of war crimes and atrocities pepetrated by Bush and company is most appropriate.

The Commission presents and avenue to war victims and survivors of war crimes from countries such as Iraq and Palestine to file their claims. If the KLWCC can establish a prime facie case against a war monger leader then it would be heard before the KL War Crimes Tribunal (KLWCT) that is to be set up and those found guilty would be branded as war criminals and be recorded for posterity.

Despite the fact that the KLWCC is manned by prominent lawyers and law academics and the pro-tem committee established for the setting up of the KLWCT are also composed of other prominent legal figures, a former Federal Court Judge and a prominent law academic, a couple of detractors who have an axe to grind against the fourth Prime Minister, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, have questioned the veracity of the KLWCT.

One such person who is belittling the efforts, Datuk Param Cumaraswamy, a lawyer and former UN Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers, has described the KLWCC and the KLWCT as a circus since there was no legal basis for its formation.

He further contended that it could deter 'respectable and credible foreign investors' to this country. He probably outdid even the Bush apologists and the neocons when he described the Tribunal's formation as a farce and would make Malaysia the laughing stock of the world.

Alternative

But there are enough concerned people and peace activists around the world who see this as a most welcomed initiative to get the war mongers and criminals to be so branded. They also realised that the KLWCT was needed as an alternative to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Holland, which Mahathir had accused of being biased in selecting cases it would hear.

I am posting here excerpts from a letter by Prof Dr Shad Saleem Faruqi, as a most compeling rejoinder to Cumaraswamy’s contentions. Prof Faruqi argued that both the KLWCC and the KLWCT have jurisdiction to investigate and adjudicate war crimes in Iraq and elsewhere since the concept of law is not confined to enacted, formal law. He also submitted that:

"Even if the KL proceedings have no legality, no one can deny that they have legitimacy. Their legitimacy is derived from the nobleness of the cause of peace and justice, the reverence for life and the abhorrence of war as a means of solving disputes.

“The KL proceedings are inspired by the principle that wherever there is a right there must be a remedy. Ubi jus ibi remedium. The families of the 650,000 innocents slaughtered in Iraq in the last three years, the thousands more who have been tortured and the millions more who have been displaced, have no remedy in national or international courts. Their country is under a brutal occupation and it is inconceivable that any Iraqi court will prosecute members of the occupation force for war crimes.

American courts have no jurisdiction in Iraq and have even feigned helplessness in relation to torture and unlawful detentions in American controlled concentration camps in Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere.

The ICC has been approached by 240 complainants from Iraq. Its Chief Prosecutor has most amazingly ruled that the complaints do not have “sufficient gravity” to merit the initiation of a prosecution!

Racist

By far and large international law on genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and wars of aggression is applied selectively and in a racist and colonial fashion. Except for the mass murders in Nazi Germany and former Yugoslavia, no other crime perpetrated by Europeans and Americans has ever been prosecuted in international courts. European, American and Australian colonisers have committed genocide on four continents. The United States has bombed 28 countries since World War II. Europe and America are complicit in the genocide that is raging unhindered in Palestine, Gaza and Lebanon. No bells toll for the victims of mass murders in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Vietnam, Kampuchea, Laos, Afghanistan, Palestine, Lebanon, Chechnya, Chile, Argentina and Nicaragua. No one has been prosecuted.

The KL War Crimes Commission and Tribunal will, on the other hand, provide a forum to all, irrespective of race, religion or nationality, who are victims of mass crimes to make their case before the Commission and the Tribunal.

The Rome Statute has a number of flaws that prevent horrendous war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity and the crime of aggression from being prosecuted.

First, the US under George Bush de-recognised the Rome Statute. As such, Washington is not obliged to surrender any US politicians and Army Generals for trial before the International Criminal Court. Criminals in the UK and Australia belong to a ratifying state and as such are subject to the ICC’s jurisdiction. Unfortunately they are being shielded by the ICC prosecutor because in his opinion their crimes of complicity lack sufficient gravity!

Second, for a crime to be prosecuted before the ICC, it must be committed on the territories of a member state of the ICC. Iraq and Afghanistan are not parties to the ICC Statute and the bestialities committed there are, therefore, exempt from the ICC’s jurisdiction. Only if these countries were to sign the Statute (which is unlikely), the possibility of prosecution will open up.

Immune

Third, Article 98 of the Rome Statute provides that a country need not hand over a foreign national to the ICC if it is prohibited from doing so by an agreement with the national’s country. The American government has forced nearly 100 countries to sign such “Article 98 agreements” thereby making its war criminals immune from international prosecution.

Fourth, the UN Security Council has the power to refer crimes committed by a non-signatory to the ICC (as it did for Darfur). But due to its geo-politic, racial and religious bias, the UNSC will not refer wrong-doers in the US, UK, Poland, Italy or Australia to the ICC.

Fifth, the ICC can investigate a case only if national courts fail or are unable to investigate a case. The major offending states, the US and UK are putting up the charade of prosecuting low ranking soldiers but are ignoring compelling evidence that the massacre of civilians, tortures and other crimes against humanitarian law were authorized by top politicians.

Sixth, the US and its allies committed the undoubted crime of an illegal war of aggression in Iraq. But this crime, though mentioned in the Treaty, is not yet allowed to be prosecuted because no definition of a “crime of aggression” has been agreed upon.
Powerless

Seventh, before mounting the Iraq invasion the US President had threatened use of nuclear weapons. During the war the US and the UK used many weapons of mass destruction that are banned in international law. But use of these WMDs is not a crime under the ICC Statute. India had asked for inclusion of nuclear weapons and WMDs as a crime against humanity. But the US disagreed and the matter was not pursued.

* The KL proceedings are inspired by previous precedents of People’s Tribunals e.g. the Sir Bertrand Russell Tribunal in relation to America’s war crimes in Vietnam; the recent Tokyo Tribunal on Afghanistan; and the Turkish Tribunal in relation to Iraq.

* Such people’s initiatives have basis in democratic theory, in human rights jurisprudence and in the Charter of the United Nations.

Democracy permits the powerless to organise against the powerful. Democracy permits NGOs to raise their voice of concern on issues of national and international concern. Only those without democratic impulses and with authoritarian and fascist tendencies will argue that citizens’ initiatives must proceed only with official and legal backing.

Our fidelity to human rights demands that we do not remain silent in the face of mass murders, the brutalization of a whole nation and the de-humanisation of a whole people. We cannot remain apathetic if atrocities continue to be committed and international institutions are comatose and content to be so.

United Nations

The Charter of the United Nations permits NGO involvement in world affairs. The Charter begins with the words “We the peoples”. It provides for some UN agencies to consult with people’s organizations. In fact approximately 1,000 NGOs have official consultative status with UN agencies.

* The fact that the KL War Crimes Tribunal cannot impose its judgment on the aggressors is not the heart of the matter. The point is to expose wrong-doing and to shame the criminals in the eyes of the world.

* The fact that the KLWCC and the KLWCT may have to proceed without the presence of the accused is indeed troublesome. All accused will be notified and invited to be represented. But if the accused refuse to respond, then the trial will proceed in abstentia. This is not without precedent. After World War II many Nazi criminals were prosecuted in their absence.

* Admittedly, the KLWCT suffers from many limitations. But many distinguished jurists from around the world believe that it can make a significant impact.

It can mobilise the conscience of the world community. It can report its findings to the General Assembly of the United Nations with a view to a “Uniting for Peace Resolution”. It can submit its findings to the ICC to enable the ICC to wake up from its stupor.

Rome Statute

It can transmit the report of its deliberations to the 104 countries that have ratified the Rome statute. Some of these states like Germany and Belgium have laws that permit prosecutions for genocide and for crimes against humanity no matter where the offence was alleged to have been committed.

Finally, the KL War Crimes Tribunal can refer its findings to many peace loving groups in the USA and elsewhere and request them to exert democratic pressures on their leaders to end this senseless slaughter of the innocents.”

So much for the detractors of the KLWCC and the KLWCT.

http://www.beritakmu.net/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=5763