Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Miller Testimony Contradicts Libby Story

Editor's note: I am moving over to the other blog.
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Tuesday January 30, 2007 8:16 PM

By MATT APUZZO

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Former New York Times reporter Judith Miller testified Tuesday that former vice presidential aide I. Lewis ``Scooter'' Libby first discussed a CIA operative with her weeks before he told investigators he believed he first heard it from another reporter.

Miller spent 85 days in jail for refusing to cooperate with Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into who leaked the CIA operative's identity to reporters. She had refused to disclose conversations she had with Libby.

Libby is charged with perjury and obstruction of justice. Fitzgerald says Libby discussed CIA officer Valerie Plame with reporters, then lied about those conversations.

Miller ultimately agreed to cooperate with authorities, saying Libby had given her permission to do so. She is a key witness in Fitzgerald's case because she describes two conversations with Libby regarding Plame before Libby told investigators he was surprised to learn about Plame from NBC reporter Tim Russert.

Miller testified Tuesday that Libby discussed the CIA officer on June 3, 2003. He said Wilson's wife worked for the ``bureau,'' Miller recalled. She was confused about that at first, she said.

``Through the context of the discussion, I quickly determined it to be the CIA,'' she testified.

The discussion occurred amid a growing controversy about intelligence failures leading up to the war in Iraq. Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, said he debunked some of the intelligence that was used to justify the war and said Vice President Dick Cheney should have known it.

Miller also discussed a second meeting with Libby, this one on July 8, 2003. She said Libby mentioned that Wilson's wife worked for a CIA division specializing in weapons of mass destruction.

Libby says his discussion with Russert occurred on July 10, 2003.

Journalism groups have criticized Fitzgerald for calling reporters as witnesses and demanding they discuss conversations with sources. Miller's notes likely will be used as evidence, and Fitzgerald is expected to call two other reporters - Russert and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine - during the trial.

Earlier Tuesday, David Addington, who served as Cheney's legal counsel during the CIA leak scandal, described a September 2003 meeting with Libby around the time that an investigation into the leak began.

``I just want to tell you, I didn't do it,'' Addington recalled Libby saying. ``I didn't ask what the 'it' was,'' Addington added.

Fitzgerald hopes Addington's testimony will bolster his argument that Libby was worried about whether his conversations with reporters were improper and therefore lied to conceal them.

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Associated Press Writer Michael J. Sniffen contributed to this report.

When signing statements aren't enough

As the New York Times reports this morning, George W. Bush has signed an executive order aimed at giving the White House much greater control over the implementation of laws passed by Congress.

Under Bush's order, published last week in the Federal Register, the White House will place political appointees in new regulatory policy offices in major federal agencies. Their job: Keep a lid on efforts to regulate industry by making sure that any new agency "guidance documents" are justified by a specific "market failure." The order prohibits agencies from using "mandatory language such as 'shall,' 'must,' 'required' or 'requirement'" in guidance documents they publish, and it requires agencies to give the White House the chance to review -- and presumably, reject -- "any significant guidance documents" before they are issued.

Here's the part of this we don't understand: Why is Bush's order even necessary? Last time we checked, the president's political appointees were already running the federal agencies he now feels a need to put in check. And as the Washington Post reported in a series of articles back in 2004, the result has already been pretty impressive: The administration has killed regulatory work that was in progress when Bush took office; canceled a plan that could have prevented 25,000 tuberculosis infections a year; eased regulations to allow more strip mining in the Appalachians; and lightened the regulatory load on everything from healthcare to food safety to protection of the environment.

Even back in 2004, Bush's critics and supporters agreed that his regulatory rollbacks had been profound. Now his industry supporters want more. And with Congress not quite the easy target for them that it was just a few months ago, they're relieved that Bush is delivering for them again.

William Kovacs, a vice president for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, tells the Times that Bush's order is "the most serious attempt by any chief executive to get control over the regulatory process." He thinks that's a good thing -- it will result in regulations that are "less onerous and more reasonable," he says -- but academics, activists and Democrats see things just a little differently. "The executive order allows the political staff at the White House to dictate decisions on health and safety issues, even if the government's own impartial experts disagree," says House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform chairman Henry Waxman. "This is a terrible way to govern, but great news for special interests."

-- Tim Grieve

Permalink [08:58 EST, Jan. 30, 2007]

Demagoguery Posing as Scholarship

January 29, 2007

Dinesh D’Souza, a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University, has raised a ruckus in his new book The Enemy at Home. In the book, he contends that the 9/11 attackers were motivated by neither U.S. foreign policy abroad nor by a hatred of U.S. freedom, as President Bush has repeatedly argued. Instead, D’Souza declares that Osama bin Laden hates the liberal U.S. culture that promotes contraception, abortion, and homosexuality. In a recent op-ed piece in the Washington Post defending the book, D’Souza says that he doesn’t “hate America.” No, he just hates liberal America and is reprehensibly trying to use the horrible 9/11 attacks to score points against the Democrats of the left.

D’Souza is not the first person to try to turn the 9/11 attacks to his advantage. President Bush disingenuously tied them to Saddam Hussein and invaded Iraq. In fact, D’Souza is not even the first person on the right to try to pin the blame for 9/11 on the left. Jerry Falwell blamed gays, pagans, and the ACLU for the attacks. Although D’Souza seems horrified to have been compared with Falwell, they both end up at the same place. Falwell argued that God was punishing the United States for the activities of these liberal groups, and D’Souza argues that bin Laden has been enraged by American liberal groups’ overseas distribution of contraceptives and lobbying of non-Western countries to liberalize laws against homosexuality and abortion. Although Falwell’s explanation is religious and D’Souza’s is more secular, they both blame the left. Because D’Souza is a fellow at the Hoover Institution, however, he claims that he is not an “unqualified right-wing hack.”

But D’Souza’s qualifications for commenting on the causes of 9/11 are suspect. D’Souza’s biography on the Hoover Institution’s website indicates no scholarship expertise in fundamentalist Islam. In fact, D’Souza’s biography indicates no expertise on terrorism, foreign affairs, or national security policy. His Hoover Institution biography lists his expertise as follows: “Social and individual responsibility, civil rights and affirmative action, economics and society, higher education.” All previous books he has authored are on domestic subjects, and he was a senior domestic policy analyst at the White House during the Reagan administration. Academically, he earned a B.A. in English. After 9/11, everyone wants to be a foreign policy expert.

As a result of minimal credentials in the fields about which he is speaking, D’Souza, unsurprisingly, gets it wrong on the causes of 9/11. D’Souza writes in the Washington Post:

Contrary to the common liberal view, I don’t believe that the 9/11 attacks were payback for U.S. foreign policy. Bin Laden isn’t upset because there are U.S. troops in Mecca, as liberals are fond of saying. (There are no U.S. troops in Mecca.) He isn’t upset because Washington is allied with despotic regimes in the region. Israel aside, what other regimes are there in the Middle East? It isn’t all about Israel. (Why hasn’t al-Qaeda launched a single attack against Israel?) The thrust of the radical Muslim critique of America is that Islam is under attack from the global forces of atheism and immorality—and that the United States is leading that attack.

To evaluate D’Souza’s view, an examination is needed of bin Laden’s original motives for undertaking his war against the United States. Most terrorism experts—not just liberals—have concluded that bin Laden’s original motive for attacking the United States was seeing non-Muslim U.S. forces in the Islamic holy land of Saudi Arabia when he arrived back there after fighting the “infidel” Soviet occupiers in Afghanistan. In the Islamic world, it is the duty of every Muslim to do what he or she can to help evict non-Muslim occupiers from Muslim lands. This is what fuels Muslim resistance in Chechnya, Palestine, Afghanistan (both against Soviet and American occupiers), and Iraq. In fact, exhaustive empirical research on suicide terrorism by Robert Pape, a national security expert at the University of Chicago (hardly a bastion of liberalism), indicates that suicide terrorism has much less to do with religion than it does with the “nationalist” impulse to evict foreign occupiers from the homeland. Pape’s research shows that al Qaeda’s activities fall into this category because the group wants to evict the U.S. military presence from the Persian Gulf.

In addition, bin Laden’s other original motive for attacking the United States was its support for despotic, corrupt regimes in the Middle East. Just because there are many of them there doesn’t mean that this was not one of his prime motivators. His greatest hatred is for the autocratic government in his home country—Saudi Arabia. D’Souza, however, is right that bin Laden was not originally motivated to attack the United States because of its support for Israel. This justification was added later merely to gain more support for bin Laden’s cause in the Arab world.

In addition to most expert opinion, based on bin Laden’s original writings, and Pape’s empirical research, repeated public opinion polls in the Arab/Islamic world discredit D’Souza’s unsubstantiated musings. Those polls indicate that people in Islamic countries like U.S. technology, political and economic freedom, and even culture (which polls high even in Iran). The numbers start going south only when U.S. foreign policy toward the Islamic world is mentioned. As D’Souza even admits, the opinions of the Islamic mainstream are important because it has been the traditional recruiting pool for Muslim extremists.

Since D’Souza has few qualifications in the field and has little empirical data or expert opinion on his side, one has to conclude that he is, in fact, a political hack in scholar’s clothing, who is exploiting 9/11 merely to pillory his political opponents. His demagogic bloviation, like that of Falwell and Bush, is dangerous because it obfuscates the demonstrated link between interventionist U.S. foreign policy and blowback terrorism and lets politicians and pundits avoid the most obvious solution: a more humble U.S. foreign policy.

Ivan Eland
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Ivan Eland is Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute and Assistant Editor of The Independent Review. Dr. Eland is a graduate of Iowa State University and received an M.B.A. in applied economics and Ph.D. in national security policy from George Washington University. He has been Director of Defense Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office, Evaluator-in-Charge (national security and intelligence) for the U.S. General Accounting Office, and Investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Full Biography and Recent Publications

The possible war against Iran

Posted by Imran H. Khan on Jan 28, 2007, 18:04

The Regime change commission within the Bush Administration has unofficially elucidated its case for turning Iran into the new Iraq.

The Regime change commission within the Bush Administration has unofficially elucidated its case for turning Iran into the new Iraq.

Robert Gates, the new Defense Secretary and member of the Iraq Study Group, who many thought would make significant moves to end America’s current quagmire will instead make Iran "the target of US military moves in the Persian Gulf." The media has responded admirably in maintaining the assertions made by Bush et al that ‘Iran is the actual enemy and one that is fighting against our troops in Iraq’.† The arrest of Iranian government liaison officers in Northern Iraq facilitates this assertion and provides the oil to fuel this fire!

(No pun intended!)

However, there are two sides to any tale, unless it is about real life and then you have so many angles that it is hard to know where to initiate or terminate the examination! So just like a fairytale this article will examine the pros and cons of a possible war against Iran.

Speaking as an ancillary of neo-conservative thought one can rationalize the argument that in the not too distant future Persian Iran will become the hegemonic power in the midst of the Arab Middle East. The only deterrent preventing Iran from asserting its overt influence on the pitiful Arab states is the fear of a direct conventional attack from powerful European and American allies (and Israel). If Iran were to become a nuclear power then the threat of conventional deterrence becomes nullified. Thus this autocratic, theocracy will eventually subsume its weak and vulnerable neighboring states. The other dangers posed along with this scenario are, according to Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post, "…permitting nuclear weapons to be acquired by religious fanatics seized with an eschatological belief in the imminent apocalypse and in their own divine duty to hasten the End of Days. The mullahs are infinitely more likely to use these weapons than anyone in the history of the nuclear age. Every city in the civilized world will live under the specter of instant annihilation delivered either by missile or by terrorist. Against millenarian fanaticism glorying in a cult of death, deterrence is a mere wish. Is the West prepared to wager its cities with their millions of inhabitants on that feeble gamble?"

These are all credible and considerable concerns that could justify war and military action if the world was painted in black and white!

The Bush Administration is utilizing these concerns as said by Charles Krauthammer "that the US is not winning in Iraq because of Iran." Robert Gates who has effectively replaced Rumsfield as the agent provocateur insists that "The Iranians are acting in a very negative way".

There seems to be a certain amount of deja vu. In shifting focus and attention from Osama bin Laden to Saddam Hussein the same arguments and techniques were used to justify the war in Iraq! Thus one must query the rationale in attacking Iran when Iraq and Afghanistan are proving to be an embarrassment and a gaping wound on the Bush Administration’s record. There is no reason to suggest that the US and its nominal allies will ever be able to occupy Iran. President Bush has publicly admitted the shortcomings of the war in Iraq; his public profile is fast becoming associated with tyrants and sycophants. President Bush needs a victory and Iran, according to Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury to Reagan, will let him have it in order to gain the long-run victory.

The former bureaucrat believes that "Bush will be able to claim victory over Iran, because Iran will avoid responding militarily. Iran will not use its Russian missiles to sink our aircraft carriers, to shut down oil facilities throughout the Middle East, or to destroy US headquarters in the "green zone" in Baghdad.† Instead, Iran will adopt the posture of another Muslim victim of US/Israeli aggression and let the anger seep throughout the Muslim world until no pro-US government is safe in the Middle East."

This could be wishful thinking or an astute long-term strategy, only time will tell but history certainly backs this observation.

Waste, Fraud, and Abuse: Another Day at the Pentagon

by Chris Townsend

When I was a teenager apprenticing at being a trade unionist and a left winger both, two of my favorite books were Labor's Untold Story and History of the Great American Fortunes. I recommend them to any readers desiring a review of our own history as working people here in the United States. Both are monuments to working-class scholarship as well. Way back then, I was introduced to dog-eared copies by union old-timers who figured that a young militant like me might benefit from their contents. I sure did.

It was in the pages of these two volumes where I first discovered that -- over the course of U.S. history -- countless unscrupulous businessmen made instant and often massive fortunes by bilking and defrauding our government. More often than not, this meant our armed forces. Back in the 1800s, millions were made selling inedible foodstuffs to the Army, providing ships to the Navy that were not seaworthy, and selling arms and munitions at top-dollar prices that were so poor in quality as to be useless, even dangerous to soldiers in the field. Every imaginable kind of fraud was perpetrated by these incipient Robber Barons, who all systematically took advantage of whatever conflict was underway or looming as a means to get rich quick at taxpayers' expense.

The last 100 years has seen this criminal phenomenon grow exponentially. The overcharging and stealing is often done more professionally than in the past, but the price paid by our government is larger than ever. But, that said, nothing could have prepared any of us for the kleptomaniacal bonanza that has followed on the heels of September 11th and the Iraq invasion. For the sheer size and scope of the fraud and looting, no moment in human history can compare to what is happening today. The schemers and stealers of past years were small-time operators by today's standards. Every expensive restaurant around the Pentagon is jammed on a daily basis with operators in the pay of today's Robber Barons, all looking to coax lucrative and do-nothing contracts out of their armed forces procurement staff lunch guests.

Working here in Washington, D.C. has provided me with a front-row seat to the crime of robbing the Pentagon. In addition to our uniformed armed forces service members -- now quite visible as their enlarged numbers go to-and-from their daily duties here in the D.C area -- one can see the steady growth of every conceivable kind of military contractor, service provider, vendor, hardware or software salesman, equipment peddler, consultant, etc. Never in the history of the world has a military agency -- our Pentagon -- had so much money to spend in so short a time. This is what a "money for nothing" moment looks like, I am sure.

My observations and disgust in this regard multiplied when I opened the pages of the defense industry publication Defense News back in November of last year. Their November 6th issue contained an editorial entitled "U.S. Defense Funding -- Budget? What Budget?" This gem went on to lambaste Republicans for their reckless defense spending, and to skewer the armed forces for going before Congress proposing big increases in funding requests that were nothing but "WAGs." That's military speak for "Wild Ass Guesses." The publishers of this military business magazine seemed to understand that, if the stealing and robbing and just plain sloppiness of Pentagon spending got any more out of hand, the gravy train would someday soon come to a crashing end. The sober business elements get nervous when their good thing gets a little too good for too many and begins to make headlines and draw the attention of the politicians.

That editorial in Defense News was but the tip of an iceberg, however. When acting Pentagon Inspector General (IG) Thomas Gimble testified before the Readiness and Management Support Subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee on January 17th, the lid blew off. Gimble is the "acting" IG because his predecessor bailed out to go to work for the Prince Group, which has as one of its subsidiaries Blackwater USA, a private security contractor doing big business with the Pentagon in Iraq and elsewhere. Acting IG Gimble unloaded an astonishing report on the Senate panel. The average Senate hearing is pretty boring, but I can assure you that no one slept during this one. And remember; the IG is the in-house guy who is supposed to -- or at least try -- to safeguard the integrity and honesty of the agency, its staff, and its processes.

Here are just some of the nuggets revealed at the hearing by acting IG Gimble, in no particular order: the Pentagon has so much money pouring in that it cannot spend it fast enough. In fact, the Defense Department has set up a scheme where other federal agencies are now spending vast sums of monies appropriated to the Pentagon. Billions of dollars under tens of thousands of contracts, in fact. Laws governing the procurement process are routinely ignored. Competition, price limits, and oversight have been "abandoned." Auditing of contracts and contractors is either non-existent or so slow and superficial as to be ineffective. The Pentagon has so much money left over at the end of the year that it has concocted yet another scheme to hide billions of dollars at other federal agencies. I think my favorite was the case of a rookie Navy contracting staffer who was allowed as a beginner to let contracts with a maximum combined value of $5 million dollars. He spent $135 million. Get the picture?

Our friends at Defense News did a story on this hearing and its bombshell testimony by acting IG Gimble: William Matthews, "Pentagon IG: Procurement Laws Are Routinely Broken: Blames DoD for Hiring Other Agencies To Help Spend Funds" (January 22, 2006). See it at the Defense News Web site. If you want to review the full report by IG Gimble, see it online at <www.dodig.osd.mil/Audit/reports/FY07/07-044.pdf>.

This out-of-control shenanigans is transpiring at the Pentagon, right here in Northern Virginia, and within sight of the U.S. Capitol. I think we are all fully aware of the equally bad -- or even worse -- situation regarding the waste, fraud, and theft which have been rampant since the first boot hit the ground in Iraq four years ago. The "legitimate" cost of maintaining the world's most massive military machine is staggering. The exorbitant costs of an illegal adventure like Iraq adds to this expense exponentially. Last, when profit-driven companies milk the corrupt and broken procurement and contracting system to the extent that is apparent, then the military budget grows into the malignant and parasitic growth on the national body that it has become. No nation in the history of the world has ever endured for long under such pressures.

Such colossal fraud and theft should add to our resolve to bring the Iraq war to an end as fast as possible. It should serve as notice to our new Democratic Party Congressional majority that its work is cut out for them in this regard. Vast budget cuts at the Pentagon are in order, in fact required. A complete top-to-bottom audit of expenditures and those doing the spending and those cashing the checks is next. Third, it is obvious that a special federal court will need to be improvised in order to prosecute what is likely several tens of thousands of criminals -- both Pentagon and private-sector -- who have engineered this massive disregard of the law and subsequent robbery of U.S. government funds. This must go all the way up the command chart, to the ousted Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, to Vice President Dick Cheney, and to President George W. Bush.

Don't expect any of this to happen, however. But so as to add something practical to my advice, try downloading this article for starters. Then whip it out the next time you are talking to a Republican or Democrat politician who starts on the "We Can't Afford National Health Care" or "Everyone Has to Sacrifice a Little" Baloney. We have plenty of money to fix our problems. What we lack are civilized and sane priorities, the political will to implement them, and the motivation to prosecute those white-collar hoodlums who are carting away public money by the truckload. You'll feel better if you do this, even if we are headed to the poorhouse because of the Pentagon.

Chris Townsend is the Political Action Director of the United Electrical Workers Union (UE).

The Imperial Vice-Presidency

Mad About Mary, By STACY SCHIFF
The New York Times
January 30, 2007

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Tuesday, January 30, 2007

30 Jan 2007 12:41 pm

Stacy Schiff (Times[Select]Delete) gets it right about the Cheney-Blitzer interview:

What the vice president's nonresponse did deliver was a very cogent message: the rules apply to you, but not to us. It's our privacy, your patriotism; our delusion, your sacrifice; our tax cuts, your kids. After all, as Mr. Cheney so tellingly said of his Republican critics, "I'm the vice president, and they're not." The part for which some of us have no stomach is the sense of entitlement.

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'The Imperial Vice-Presidency'

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In Aipac Case, Judge Declines Probe Into Leaks

January 30, 2007 Edition > Section: National >

BY JOSH GERSTEIN - Staff Reporter of the Sun
January 30, 2007

A federal judge overseeing a criminal case against two former pro-Israel lobbyists has declined to order an investigation into what the defense alleged were repeated leaks of grand jury information by government officials.

Judge Thomas Ellis III ruled that the news reports cited by the former employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, did not reflect grand jury deliberations and therefore did not constitute a breach of the secrecy obligations under federal court rules.

"Leaks of information from law enforcement investigations that relate to matters under grand jury investigation do not concern 'matters before the grand jury,' unless, of course, they disclose secret details about proceedings inside the grand jury room," Judge Ellis wrote in a 10-page opinion dated Friday. "The media reports identify no grand jury witnesses, disclose no questions that were asked or would be asked of witnesses in the grand jury, nor do the reports even describe or summarize any grand jury witness' testimony. Indeed, the reports never even mention a grand jury investigation."

Judge Ellis recently set a trial date of June 4 for Messrs. Rosen and Weissman, who were indicted in 2005 on charges that they conspired to convey classified information to journalists and foreign officials not authorized to receive it. The two lobbyists, who were fired by Aipac, have pleaded not guilty. The case has drawn First Amendment scrutiny because it is unprecedented for individuals outside of government to be charged criminally with passing on classified information, except in cases where espionage was alleged.

The defense has complained that 18 news reports in 2004 and 2005 by outlets such as CBS, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Miami Herald contained grand jury information. Of these reports, the judge said only one Reuters dispatch verged on reporting grand jury information by stating that Messrs. Rosen and Weissman were about to be charged. However, Judge Ellis said the Reuters report was "ambiguous" because it didn't indicate whether the pair would be indicted or charged in another fashion.

Spokesmen for prosecutors and for Mr. Rosen's attorney, Abbe Lowell, declined to comment on the ruling. Mr. Weissman's lawyer, John Nassikas III, did not return a call seeking reaction. The judge's decision was first reported by an online newsletter, Secrecy News.

The status of an apparently separate investigation into CBS's Aipac stories is unclear. The New York Sun reported in August that Judge Ellis had ordered the Justice Department to track down those who might have leaked information about the case to a "60 Minutes" correspondent, Lesley Stahl. That probe was predicated not on alleged grand jury leaks but on alleged breaches of the laws regarding foreign intelligence wiretaps. The Justice Department has updated Judge Ellis on its progress, but those reports have not been made public.

HARRY POTTER has called on fellow Jews to stand up to Israel and fight to end the occupation of Palestine

MARGOLYES CAMPAIGNS FOR PALESTINIAN JUSTICE

HARRY POTTER star MIRIAM MARGOLYES has called on fellow Jews to stand up to Israel and fight to end the occupation of Palestine. The 65-year-old officially launched the Enough! campaign in London today (30JAN07) to campaign for Palestinian justice, and a series of major events are already planned later this year (07) to coincide with the 40th anniversary of Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. She says, "I am a Jew and I want Palestinians to know that not all Jews are from the cruel branch of Zionism which they've had to experience over the past 40 years. "The Jews are supposed to be bright people but my God, they are making mistakes. The policy of this government is disgraceful. Forty years is too long - let's stop it right now." Enough! already has celebrity support from British actresses EMMA THOMPSON and ZOE WANAMAKER, as well as director MIKE LEIGH.

30/01/2007 17:35

Also see:
HARRY POTTER
MIRIAM MARGOLYES

TIME FOR CONGRESS TO ACT LIKE ROMANS






© 2007 Eric Margolis

January 29, 2007

NEW YORK – President George Bush’s State of the Union address on 23 January was comparatively somber and restrained. There was little of the usual jingoism and flag-waving that normally characterizes these carefully staged nationalistic spectacles which always remind me of old Chairman Leonid Brezhnev’s harangues to the Soviet Central Committee, whose members, like many US legislators, would jump up at every cliché and clap like trained seals.

The reason for the somber mood was clear: the unfolding debacle in Iraq. There was no more, `bring’em on’ gasconading, though the president again sought to link the war he began in Iraq to his ongoing campaign against Islamic resistance movements and terrorists. Outside of the sticks of Alabama and Georgia, less and less Americans are buying Bush’s preposterous claim that pursuing the ugly war in Iraq is somehow fighting `worldwide terrorism.’ Most sensible Americans have finally understood that their nation’s invasion of Iraq has magnified, not diminished, anti-western violence.

As Bush was giving his speech, a remarkable new poll showed most Americans now believe Congress, not the president, should manage foreign policy. Hopefully, the long era of presidential pre-eminence in America might be nearing an end.

This is a remarkable sea change. Following Bush’s address, the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee politely rebuked Bush’s plans to send more troops to Iraq. A similar non-binding resolution from the full Democratic-controlled Congress is expected shortly.

But the real power behind Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, immediately sneered back, `it won’t stop us.’ His contemptuous retort illustrates the neo-totalitarian impulses that continue to grip the Republican Party’s far right. Cheney and pro-war neoconservatives closely linked to Israel’s far rightists are the prime exponents of imperial presidency, the Iraq war, and attacking Iran. They dismiss Congress and America’s courts as `little jabber houses,’ to paraphrase the notorious British imperialist, Sir Basil Zaharoff.

The stage is now set for what could become a major constitutional crisis between executive and legislative branches.

Under the US Constitution, the president, a position modeled on the consular office of Republican Rome, is military leader and holds primacy in foreign policy. The US Senate was patterned on the Roman Senate, whose bunched rods and ax insignia it bears on its wall on either side of the speaker’s dais. Congress declares war, controls pursue strings, levies troops, and confirms treaties. The Constitution is vague about Congressional power in foreign affairs. But, at minimum, Congress speaks for all Americans; particularly in wartime, and must not be ignored.

Bush’s last term marks the zenith of the long growth of the imperial presidency that began with Franklin Roosevelt, and the lamentable, concurrent decline of Congressional authority. When I was a boy – during the term of the man I consider modern America’s greatest president, Dwight Eisenhower, the leaders of the Senate and House were men of great power and distinction whose influence was almost equal to that of the president. The relentless growth of presidential power, and the slavish attention focused on the presidency by the media, steadily undermined the role of Congress and that other nearly forgotten arm of government, the judiciary.

The 9/11 attacks and a too obedient Republican majority, dominated by Southerners and Christian fundamentalists, turned Congress into a rubber stamp for Bush’s policies. In the process, most members of Congress demonstrated political cowardice and gross dereliction of their duty to defend the Constitution, the nation’s laws, and citizen’s rights.

Hillary Clinton and fellow Democrats who now piously denounce the Iraq war eagerly voted for it in 2002 out of sheer ignorance, war fever, or fear of being branded `anti-patriotic’ by Republicans. In 2008, American voters will hopefully censure those legislators who voted for this faked, totally unnecessary war, and then approved the administration’s growing use of torture, kidnapping, and secret prisons. Never, in my memory, has Congress brought so much shame on itself, nor sunk so low.

Congress is now belatedly trying to assert itself. But its so far timid pleadings for Bush to desist from his latest Iraq folly are not enough. The Constitution declares Congress the premier arm of government. It is Congress’ duty to demand President Bush and VP Cheney, who have gone dangerously astray, to cease and desist. Cheney’s views notwithstanding, America is not a monarchy, and he is not Richelieu.

White House defenders claim Congress had no constitutional right to interfere in the detailed conduct of war. They claim being in a war gives the president the right to ignore or violate the Constitution, America’s laws, and citizen’s civil rights.

This is not true. The essence of America’s political system that has been a beacon to the world for two centuries is the remarkable system of checks and balances conceived by its founding fathers to prevent the emergence of an autocrat, despot, or monarch. A president run amok, or one with monarchist ambitions, was the greatest fear of the founding fathers who had just waged a bitter national struggle to free themselves from the rule of King George III.

It is precisely Congress’ vital duty to stop a president and vice president who have lost touch with reality, violate the Constitution, and are taking America over a cliff. Besides advising and consenting, Congress must, in rare times of peril, confront. In Republican Rome, the Senate had the right to remove a consul who failed to win wars, behaved shamefully, dishonored the republic, or violated the Senate’s orders.

Congress must cease its timidity and stop entreating the president as if he were king. He is only chief executive of the republic, one man among many. Congress is the board of directors. The president, in spite of his supporter’s efforts, is not the sacrosanct embodiment of America; that role belongs to Congress.

Congress bears heavy responsibility for the debacle in Iraq and the ruin of America’s good name around the globe. It’s time for the new US Congress to begin doing its job by acting like Roman Senators and stop acting like a bunch of obsequious courtiers.

Posted by Eric Margolis at 01:43 PM | Comments (13)

The Real Game: Bush's Splurge

by William S. Lind

Bush's splurge is already bringing premature claims of success, even though the first troops are just arriving in Iraq. A column in today's Washington Times by Ollie North quotes an American officer in Iraq as saying, "Do they (Members of Congress opposed to the war) even know that in the last two weeks we have set AQI (al Qaeda in Iraq) and the Mahdi Army both back on their heels?" Well, maybe, but if they are back on their heels, it is only to sit and see how their enemy's latest operation evolves. That is smart guerilla tactics, and does not mean they have suffered a setback.

In Anbar province, al Qaeda may have overplayed its hand. A number of reports suggest some of the local sheiks have turned against al Qaeda, and we are providing the sheiks with discreet assistance in going after them. That is smart on our part. But Bush administration propaganda to the contrary, al Qaeda does not represent the bulk of the Sunni resistance. The nationalists will continue to fight us because we are there, and the Baathists will continue to fight us so long as we represent a despised Shiite regime in Baghdad. We can and should try to negotiate settlements with both nationalists and Baathists, but political considerations in Washington and in Baghdad have largely tied the hands of our local commanders.

The Mahdi Army and other Shiite groupings have a different perspective. Once we understand what it is, we can see that it makes sense for them to avoid a confrontation with the U.S. military if they can. From the Shiite perspective, American forces are in Iraq to fight the Sunnis for them. Our troops are, in effect, the Shiites' unpaid Hessians.

Thus far, we have been willing to play the Shiites' game. Their challenge now is to make sure we continue to do so as Bush's "big push" in Baghdad unfolds. Originally, they wanted U.S. forces to control access to Baghdad, cutting the Sunnis’ lines of communication and reinforcement, while the Shiite militias carried on their successful campaign of ethnic cleansing. With Bush insisting American forces work in Baghdad, the Shiites came up with an alternate plan, one we have seemingly accepted: the Americans will drive out the Sunni insurgents, leaving Sunni neighborhoods defenseless. As the American troops move on, they will be replaced by Iraqi soldiers and police, mostly Shiite militiamen, who will ethnically cleanse the area of Sunnis, just as in plan A. Again, the Americans will have fulfilled their allotted function, fighting the Sunnis on behalf of the Shiites. Aren't Hessians great?

The potential spoiler is the possibility that the Americans will also go after some Shiite militias, particularly the Mahdi Army. If we do so by entering Sadr City in strength, the Mahdi Army can simply let us come – and go. We cannot tell who is a militiaman and who is not. They can let us mill around for a while, achieving nothing, then watch us leave. Big deal.

An action that might force them to respond would be an intensification of our ongoing drive to capture or kill Mahdi Army leaders. But they still would not have to respond in Baghdad. The classic guerilla response in such a case is to retreat from the area where the enemy is attacking and hit him somewhere else. An obvious place would be in Iraq's Shiite south, with our supply convoys coming up from Kuwait the target. Another response would be to match our escalation of raids with an escalation of mortar and rocket attacks on the Green Zone. As we go after their leaders, they return the favor by going after ours. There are some indications this may be occurring.

No doubt, our forces will attempt to be even-handed between Sunnis and Shiites. But this merely shows that we do not understand the real game. The real game, and a successful one to date, is to let the Americans take the brunt of the fight with armed Sunni organizations, whether nationalist or Baathist or Al Qaeda or whomever, while the Shiite militias get the softer job of terrorizing Sunni civilians and forcing them out. That is likely to be the story of Operation Baghdad, regardless of our intentions.

Should the day ever come when we cease to play that game, our utility to the Shiites, and thus to the Shiite-controlled Iraqi government, will be over. Like Hessians in earlier wars, we will then be sent home. All it takes is a fatwa from Ayatollah Sistani, telling us to go. If we don't understand this, everyone else in Iraq certainly does, including Muqtada al Sadr.

January 30, 2007

William Lind is an analyst based in Washington, DC.

Hagel Interview: More Anti-War Than Most Dems

THE ANGRY ONE

Republican senator Chuck Hagel sounds off on the sorry state of Congress, the president’s lies, and the vote for war that he now regrets
Interview by Wil S. Hylton

GQ, January 2007

Chuck Hagel came home from Vietnam in 1968 with shrapnel in his chest, scars on his face, and an unyielding certainty that the freedom of men is theirs alone to win. As an infantryman, he had not bombed from above or commanded from behind; he had stood knee-deep in the muck, face-to-face with the enemy, firing on men and watching them die. It’s a hard memory to leave behind. Even after four decades and a lifetime of change—a fortune earned in the investment-banking business; a decade as a senator from Nebraska; and a position as one of the GOP’s conservative torchbearers with a shot at the White House—Hagel has put everything on the line to oppose the war in Iraq, refusing to send a “surge” of new troops into battle, or to forget the lessons he brought home from the killing fields long ago.

Sitting in his office on a recent afternoon, Hagel leaned back in his armchair to explain, in a voice reminiscent of sandpaper on rough oak, how he was deceived by the president, and won’t let it happen again.

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We, Too, Are the People!

At the end of last year, Arab intellectuals in Israel published a document in which they did not only insist on equal status for the Arab-Palestinian minority, but they also list an extensive series of demands on the Israeli state. Joseph Croitoru reports

| Bild:

Palestinian children let go of ballons that carry the colours of the Palestinian flag (photo: AP)

Arab intellectuals in Israel call on Israel to define itself anew: no longer as the "homeland of the Jews," but as the "common homeland" of Jews and Palestinian Arabs | Arab intellectuals in Israel are causing a stir. The declaration they published last year was signed by over forty leading Israeli Palestinian intellectuals and extracts have been published in Israeli newspapers. It carries the title "A Vision for the Future of Palestinian Arabs in Israel," and the title itself is a statement that the Jewish state's attempt to create "Israeli Arabs" – Arabs who do not identify themselves as being part of the Palestinian people – has failed.

Prominent among the signatories are teachers at universities and independent research institutes. Among them are the historian Aziz Haider of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, who has researched into discrimination against Arabs in the Israeli economy, as well as other Arab academics and university teachers specialising in the history and culture of Palestinians in Israel.

In addition there are human rights activists and representatives of Arab Israeli NGOs, as well as the mayors of Arab towns, such as Sheikh Hashem Abdelrahman of Umelfachem or Avni Touma of Kefar Yasif.

Systematic discrimination

The signatories define themselves first and foremost as Arab Palestinians, as, in their words, "part of the Arab nation and the Arab cultural world." Following the defeat of the Arabs in the Israeli-Palestinian war of 1948, Israeli citizenship was forced on them by the Jewish state. As a result they became the minority rather than the majority in their homeland, the historic Palestine.

In a detailed passage, the declaration criticises the way the state of Israel deals with the Palestinian minority. It speaks of systematic discrimination, of the confiscation of land, and of disadvantages in the distribution of state money and other state resources.

But the intellectuals emphasise that, in spite of its attempts to carry out a "colonialist-style Judaisation," with enforced assimilation and Israeli citizenship, the Jewish state has not succeeded in getting Palestinians to give up their national and cultural identity.

At the same time, the authors insist that Palestinians living in Israel must remain part of Israeli society and full citizens of the country.

The demand for real, equal participation

But they put forward a series of demands. They want real, equal participation in the processes of democratic decision-making, allowing the Palestinians in the country, like the Jews, to ensure their national and cultural identity. They speak of the start of a "new era," in which the right to Palestinian identity will be guaranteed by law according to current international standards of minority rights.

But they see no future for themselves in the country unless there is a thoroughgoing revision of the exclusively Jewish character of the state, which they describe in the declaration as "ethnocracy." They call on the state to define itself anew: no longer as the "homeland of the Jews," but as the "common homeland" of Jews and Palestinian Arabs.

A complete reform of the education system, which currently alienates Arabs from their culture and history, is necessary. State symbols would have to be changed. For example, one of the authors, the sociologist Asad Ghanem of Haifa, is prepared to allow the Jewish majority to continue to use its Zionist symbols, but he is opposed to their being forced on the Arabs in the country.

And the Israeli-Arab poet, Suliman Massalha, has already written an alternative national anthem called "Song for the Country," instead of "Hatikva" ("The Hope"). The poem recalls the bloodletting of the past and looks forward to the peace of the future between the "sons of Arabia, Nazareth and Abraham." There is no mention of Jews.

The state body bringing together Israeli Arab organisations has adopted the document. It contains no explicit mention of autonomy, but many Jewish observers consider that this is one of its aims. The Jewish Israeli majority has long feared the so-called Palestinianisation of the Israeli Arab population as a side-effect of the establishment of a state entity in the Palestinian territories, and now, it seems to many, it has come to pass.

It is no surprise that the political right in Israel is alarmed. They see the declaration as a sign that Israeli Arabs represent a fifth column and are on the point of rejecting their loyalty to the Jewish state. Those on the left rather welcome the initiative, even if they are worried about possible Arab Israeli separatism, and the risk that they might be faced with an alternative "Arab parliament."

Ghaida Rinawie-Zuabi, responsible for development in the organisation of Arab local councils in Israel and the driving force behind the declaration, is trying to lay such fears to rest with an intensive publicity campaign. He told the Israeli Ha'aretz newspaper that what was new about this initiative was that this time the Arabs had made themselves heard on their own.

They would have to learn how to do this in a sensitive way, but Jewish Israelis would also have to work on their readiness to listen to their Arab fellow-citizens.

Joseph Croitoru

© Qantara.de 2007

Translated from the German by Michael Lawton
Published: 25.01.2007 - Last modified: 25.01.2007

Lady Lynn de Rothschild throws her support behind Hillary

Who is this supporter?
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"...Barclays Bank, Hollinger (Owned by Canadian Privy Councilor Conrad Black; Evelyn de Rothschild sat on the same board, as did Kissinger and many other very important globalists."
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"...Zionists Henry Kissinger (Fritz Kraemer and Rockefeller protege; friend of Jacob and Evelyn de Rothschild..."

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"Sir Evelyn and Lady (Lynn) de Rothschild who have a house this summer at Edgartown. The ebullient American, Lynn, was at dinner in a gauzy little nothing, sporting an enormous ring. Vogue's Billy Norwich gazed at it and asked if the bauble came from JAR (Joel Rosenthal's multi-coveted international gems shop). Lynn laughed and showed that the ring was just a bunch of colorful beads held together on an elastic string. "I paid only a few dollars for it in a local dress shop." Billy pressed, "Well, do you have any good jewelry, Lady de Rothschild?" She laughed. "Lord de Rothschild, does your wife have any good jewelry?" Evelyn just smiled and sat back in his chair. He seems very proud of his Yankee girl and he is getting used to the way Americans tease him... Lynn was deeply involved in the recent Live 8 event and was even instrumental in getting U.S. television to carry the show after they dragged their feet, worrying that the event might become politicized. She spoke with Karl Rove several times seeking and getting White House help."
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Related

Lady Lynn De Rothschild Profile - Forbes.com

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Hillary Clamps Down
Right Out of Campaign Gate, Senator Clinton Tells Fund-Raisers There’s Only One Very Hungry Democratic Presidential Candidate! Lady Lynn de Rothschild E-Mails 50 of Her Dearest Friends

By: Jason Horowitz
Date: 1/29/2007
Page: 1

Hassan Nemazee is a very powerful Democratic fund-raiser.

As one of the premiere money people in a pivotal check-writing town, Mr. Nemazee’s apartment has been the site of visit after visit by prospective 2008 candidates hoping for a taste of his homemade Chinese food and considerable financial influence. Practically since the day the 2004 race ended, he has obliged, arranging small audiences of key donors on a regular basis.

That’s all over now.

Just three days after Hillary Clinton officially entered the race by announcing the formation of a presidential exploratory committee, Mr. Nemazee winnowed his dinner list down to her alone.

“You basically don’t want to deal with this stuff anymore, because you are taking too much time out of your day,” Mr. Nemazee told The Observer. “I mean, you’ve seen all these people. Just sit down in the last 24 hours and make your decision—and just go with it.”

After months of speculation, Mrs. Clinton’s formal step into the 2008 Presidential race has drastically and immediately changed the political lives of all the candidates seeking to extract cash from New York and other donor-heavy locales. Her folksy and pillow-propped “Let the conversation begin” announcement in a Saturday-morning Web video finally set in motion a massive donor network-in-waiting, simultaneously ending the conversation that Barack Obama, John Edwards, Bill Richardson and the other members of an increasingly crowded field of candidates hoped to have with key fund-raisers.

“It is absolutely time for people to make a choice,” said Fred P. Hochberg, dean of the Milano School for Management and Urban Policy at the New School and a major fund-raiser for Mrs. Clinton.

“The check-raisers will need to decide,” he added, “because they are not going to be credible with a donor if they are raising for different Presidential candidates.”

The sheer scale of what Mrs. Clinton is trying to do, if she can do it, will leave little room for her rivals to profit from the traditional Democratic money network. As soon as she announced, Mrs. Clinton began collecting contributions outside the public financing program, allowing her to avoid the spending limits that go along with it. She was the first candidate to do so for both primary and general campaigns since the program began in 1976.

Mrs. Clinton clearly thinks that her fund-raising network can do better than the $150 million made available through public funding, and an aide to Mrs. Clinton said that the campaign plans to raise $65 million this year alone.

Her major backers have already hit the phones, trying to give her the insurmountable financial advantage that political analysts say has already chased away once-promising candidates Mark Warner and Evan Bayh.

Alan J. Patricof, a prominent venture capitalist and Mrs. Clinton’s Senate campaign chair, has been one of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s most reliable and prodigious fund-raisers. By Monday afternoon, he said he had already reached out to 25 donors in New York.

“Every person said they would support her financially to the maximum extent. I’ve never seen anything like that before,” said Mr. Patricof. “There have got to be at least 20, 30, 40 people like me who are making calls. There are a lot of people making the calls.”

The fund-raising operation—overseen by campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle, who came on as Mrs. Clinton’s scheduler 15 years ago, and finance director Jonathan Mantz, who worked for New Jersey Governor Jon S. Corzine—moved quickly after this weekend’s announcement.

Maureen White, the former national finance chair of the Democratic National Committee, told The Observer that she started reaching out to donors “bright and early” on Saturday morning, and as of Tuesday had made nearly 90 phone calls soliciting contributions, with an “overwhelmingly positive response.”

Francis Greenburger, a prominent literary agent and Democratic donor who sits on Mrs. Clinton’s finance committee, said that he immediately got on the phone to pitch a half-dozen deep-pocketed friends.

Lady Lynn de Rothschild, a diehard Clinton supporter with an extensive social network, said that a senior member of Mrs. Clinton’s staff sent her an e-mail about the announcement while she was in Delhi. Back at home in London on Monday, Lady de Rothschild said that before getting the official word, she felt “like a horse chomping at the bit” and had begun drafting an e-mail soliciting maximum financial support for Mrs. Clinton, which she expected to send out to about 50 friends on Wednesday.

“Now is a time that we should really step up and support her. Those of us who have really waited a long time, we’re the ones who should be doing our all as early as we can,” said Lady de Rothschild. “We have to feel really energized. We can’t be complacent about this one. There are going to be enough people on the other side working against her.”

“It is hard for other candidates,” added Mr. Nemazee, who was mentioned around the time of Mrs. Clinton’s announcement as one of a number of unattached bundlers being courted by Mr. Obama’s campaign. “There is just so much oxygen available. There are only so many people out there who know how to do this and are willing to do this.”

Mrs. Clinton’s rivals seem to be braced for the onslaught, and some are sounding defiant tones about their ability to make headway in the shadow of the Clinton machine.

“I raised $2 million last year in New York in the midst of Hillary’s run,” said Senator Joe Biden, who is hoping to raise $20 million by the end of the year. “Will I raise the most money? I don’t know. But I will raise enough money.”

Mr. Obama has already lined up some major donors like billionaire George Soros, and has demonstrated a willingness—if not an actual ability—to compete with Mrs. Clinton for donors on her home turf.

Mr. Edwards is counting on the ability to tap into his base of trial lawyers and old hedge-fund associates for money, although he has consciously decided to spend most of his time over the last few months looking for support among voters in the early primary states.

“He won’t raise as much as Hillary, but he certainly will raise money in New York,” said Richard Thaler, vice chairman of Deutsche Bank Securities and a major donor to Mr. Edwards. “I think Edwards is going to be able to raise the money nationally—No. 1, because a lot of people like him and see that he can win in places like Iowa and Nevada and South Carolina, and that he is highly competitive in New Hampshire. And people want to win this election.”

And some of the other contenders, such as Senator Chris Dodd and Mr. Biden, now lead powerful committees that will inevitably make them attractive to certain strategic-minded contributors.

“They all have instant bases,” said Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, who managed Al Gore’s 2000 Presidential campaign. “They can draw their own internal sources from their respective home sources and states. And there are new donors that have come into the fold since the Clinton Presidency that they can perhaps tap into. Some need $100 million to be credible, others probably need 10 to 15 million. As long as they get their message out, they can succeed.”

How effectively they can get the message out, though, is an open question.

On Sunday, when Mrs. Clinton made her first flesh-and-blood public appearance after declaring the formation of her exploratory committee over the weekend, there were a dozen rows of seats filled with reporters pecking at laptops, surrounded by babies bouncing on their mothers’ knees and supporters hoisting their camera phones in the air. Behind the plastic seats, reporters crouched on the cold floor between the tripod legs of television cameras. With the microphone dead onstage, the room resounded mostly with the machine-gun blasts of camera shutters each time one of the children interacted with the candidate.

When Mrs. Clinton spoke, she projected her voice to the back of the room, especially when asked about the battle ahead.

“I’m looking forward to it,” she said. “It’ll be a great contest with a lot of talented people, and I’m very confident. I’m in, I’m in to win, and that’s what I intend to do.’’

The same can be said of her donors.

“We’re all staffers for Hillary,” said Lady de Rothschild, who added: “My apartment is good for 30, 40 people. Things are going to scale up a lot.”

Jewish Liberals Say The Dog Wags the Tail (I Say the Tail Wags the Dog)

Doni Remba, a peace activist, disputes my claim that the progressive voice in Jewish life has been marginalized by the neocons. He has some evidence: he says he's getting traction in the Jewish press for his view that there has to be a progressive lobby, to push for a two-state solution in Israel/Palestine. His post follows, below.

I have one important quibble, ahead of time. Remba reflects the conventional leftish pro-Israel view that the dog wags the tail. I.e., that Israel is a client that does as the imperial U.S. wants it to do. The U.S. doesn't want Israel to talk to Syria; so it doesn't. His view of the Israel lobby is that it is merely seconding rightwing choices that the U.S. government is making. And so he says:

American choices heavily constrain the Jewish state, eliminating options and creating the environment in which Israel must make its own now far more limited and difficult choices.

That's where I demur. I feel like a lot of lefty Jews want to think this is true; it is the Stephen Zunes line, that neocon Zionist Jews have had only minor influence over a rightwing administration. I believe that Israel has made its own choice not to speak to Syria, for years, and that its friends in Congress reinforce that line here. Or here is Shlomo Ben-Ami, in the latest Commentary, making the same point (I'm afraid it's not online yet, but I just got my issue in the mail):

"[T]he interplay of factors that truly make up American foreign policy [are] strategic considerations, imperial ambitions, oil, the arms industry, corporations like Bechtel and Halliburton, ideology, and, last but not by no means least, the political and intellectual profile of the president. Bush's moral certitude and self-imposed divine mission makes [sic] utterly redundant the need for an 'Israel Lobby' to teach him the political gospel it wants him to follow in the Middle East."

I think Ben Ami is wrong, that he is blinding himself to a multitude of sins under that little word "ideology," and that George Bush had little idea of anything when he came into office. I.e., that neocons are smart guys with a highly-developed belief system; and they also had agency here (yes, along with a lot of other fools who pushed this war).

In fairness, Remba does go after Jewish "communal leaders" choices. A nice way of putting the fact that neocon beliefs about the Arab world have gained wide currency in the erstwhile liberal Jewish leadership. But read Remba's post (which he was not able to post; problems again, sorry folks):

You write: "I do question the political will of the body of American Jewry; if they feel misrepresented by the Israel lobby and their congressmen, they ought to rise up against them. George Soros says he's going to start an anti-occupation lobby. Good for him, I'm in his camp. Will he get numbers?"

I'd like to offer two of my recent articles on this subject for your and your readers' consideration. The first, published in the English edition of Ha'aretz, "Wanted: A Moderate Pro-Israel Lobby," can be read in Ha'aretz or on my blog at http://tough-dove-israel.blogspot.com/2006/11/haaretz-wanted-moderate-pro-israel.html

The new dovish pro-Israel peace lobby is not a Soros initiative, but an cooperative effort of many liberal/progressive Jews from various Jewish organizations, think tanks, liberal Democratic political activists and funders.

How many supporters will we get? Watch and wait. Many of us are working on it.

As president of Chicago Peace Now (Americans for Peace Now's Illinois-Indiana Chapter) for the last six years I, for one, have had some success, with the help of many colleagues and friends, in building support for dovish policies on the Arab-Israeli and Palestinian-Israeli conflicts in the mainstream Chicago Jewish community and beyond.

Second, here is an excerpt from my latest monthly column in the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle, which is sometimes syndicated nationally in the Jewish press. Perhaps it will give you a dash more hope to realize that pieces like mine are printed in mainstream Jewish papers around the country. This piece is titled, "Look Who's Pressuring Israel":

Writing in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz in November, I wondered whether AIPAC would work to promote a US-Israeli peace initiative with Syria or the Palestinians. AIPAC's Israel spokesperson responded on November 23rd in Ha'aretz that "AIPAC's mandate is not to pressure the Israeli government to follow a particular course." Reading these words, I scratched my head. Who said anything about "pressure?" In reality, the Bush Administration is pressuring the Israeli government to refuse peace talks with Syria, according to the testimony of Prime Minister Olmert, his advisors and cabinet ministers. AIPAC, and its allies in the organized Jewish community, who rush to loudly protest any time there is a whiff of US pressure on Israel in favor of a peace initiative, has absolutely nothing to say when the White House blocks Israel from talking with Syria. Even when the US isn't making overt demands on Israel, US foreign policy choices have so large an impact on the Middle East and the overall strategic context in which Israel lives, that every action the US takes--and those actions it fails to take--casts an iron boot of coercion on Israel. American choices heavily constrain the Jewish state, eliminating options and creating the environment in which Israel must make its own now far more limited and difficult choices.

The Bush Administration's military escalation in Iraq, which includes raids and arrests of Iranians, may lead the US down the slippery slope to a new war with Iran, warns Kenneth M. Pollack of the Brookings Institution. Bush's actions may provoke "the Iranians to respond, which in turn would escalate the situation and provide the Bush administration with the casus belli it needs to win Congressional support" for such a war, fears Johns Hopkins University Iran scholar Trita Parsi. Bush's refusal to bargain directly with Iran, his rejection of the unanimous bipartisan recommendation of the Iraq Study Group for direct talks with Iran and Syria, and his preference for more force, are recklessly pushing Israel and our Sunni Arab allies into an incendiary region-wide conflagration with Iran, Hezbollah and Syria. Neither Israel nor the US will achieve their military or political goals in such a clash, which will give birth to an even more insecure and explosive Middle East in which Israel will have to live.

I called, and I call again, on the Bush Administration to return to sanity: to abandon its failed policy of isolation and implied threats of regime change against Syria and Iran; to explore the possibilities for a grand bargain with both countries which would meet US strategic interests in Iraq, Lebanon, the Gulf Arab states, Israel and Palestine. I call on the President not only to permit Israel to test the waters with Syria through a secret back-channel, but to send American mediators to such meetings to maximize the chances of their success.

Finally, there's the stifling burden of inaction to which we subject Israel daily: the crushing weight of the Bush Administration's failure to build a regional diplomatic framework within which Israel can make safe and secure choices for peace with its Arab neighbors; the failure of American Jews to speak up--as American citizens, if not as Jews who are deeply concerned for Israel's well-being--about what's best for the national security of the United States and its allies, especially Israel; the timorousness and apathy of so many American Jews who have yet to express their solidarity with the forces of progress and peace in Israel itself, even within the Israeli government. We, the American Jewish community, have massively constrained Israel's freedom by the many dangerous choices we have let our communal leaders, and our government, make in the Middle East. Citizenship doesn't end at the voting booth.

Gidon D. Remba is co-author of the forthcoming The Great Rift: Arab-Israeli War and Peace in the New Middle East. His commentary is available at http://tough-dove-israel.blogspot.com/ He served as senior foreign press editor and translator in the Israel Prime Minister's Office during the Egyptian-Israeli peace process from 1977-1978. His essays have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, the New York Times, the Nation, the Jerusalem Report, Ha'aretz, Tikkun, the Forward, the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, Chicago Jewish News, JUF News, and the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle.

(Gidon) Doni Remba (aka Tough Dove Israel)

P.S. My piece, "Look Who's Pressuring Israel," excerpted in my post, was also reprinted by the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago/Jewish United Fund in their weekly E-Alert. You can't get more Jewish mainstream than that. It's slightly encouraging that such establishment outlets are circulating my writing, particularly when I say the kinds of things I say in this piece, including the criticisms of AIPAC, exposing its hawkishness and bursting its propaganda bubble.

FILE UNDER: Neocons, U.S. Policy in the Mideast

Posted by Phil Weiss on January 30, 2007 10:12 AM | Permalink

Specter: Bush not sole 'decision-maker'

By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press Writer 4 minutes ago

A Senate Republican on Tuesday directly challenged President Bush's declaration that "I am the decision-maker" on issues of war.

"I would suggest respectfully to the president that he is not the sole decider," Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record), R-Pa., said during a hearing on Congress' war powers amid an increasingly harsh debate over Iraq war policy. "The decider is a shared and joint responsibility," Specter said.

The question of whether to use its power over the government's purse strings to force an end to the war in Iraq, and under what conditions, is among the issues faced by the newly empowered Democratic majority in Congress, and even some of the president's political allies as well.

No one challenges the notion that Congress can stop a war by canceling its funding. In fact, Vice President Dick Cheney challenged Congress to back up its objections to Bush's plan to put 21,500 more troops in Iraq by zeroing out the war budget.

Underlying Cheney's gambit is the consensus understanding that such a drastic move is doubtful because it would be fraught with political peril.

But there are other legislative options to force the war's end, say majority Democrats and some of Bush's traditional Republican allies.

The alternatives range from capping the number of troops permitted in Iraq to cutting off funding for troop deployments beyond a certain date or setting an end date for the war.

"The Constitution makes Congress a coequal branch of government. It's time we start acting like it," said Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., who presided over a hearing Tuesday on Congress' war powers. He also is pushing legislation to end the war by eventually prohibiting funding for the deployment of troops to Iraq.

His proposal, like many others designed to force an end to U.S. involvement in the bloody conflict, is far from having enough support even to come up for a vote on the Senate floor.

Closer to that threshold is a nonbinding resolution declaring that Bush's proposal to send 21,500 more troops to Baghdad and Anbar province is "not in the national interest." The Senate could take up that measure early next month.

But some senators, complaining that the resolution is symbolic, are forwarding tougher bills.

Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer (news, bio, voting record) of California, for example, is a sponsor of a bill that would call for troops to come home in 180 days and allow for a minimum number of forces to be left behind to hunt down terrorists and train Iraqi security forces.

"Read the Constitution," Boxer told her colleagues last week. "The Congress has the power to declare war. And on multiple occasions, we used our power to end conflicts."

Congress used its war powers to cut off or put conditions on funding for the Vietnam war and conflicts in Cambodia, Somalia and Bosnia.

Under the Constitution, lawmakers have the ability to declare war and fund military operations, while the president has control of military forces.

But presidents also can veto legislation and Bush likely has enough support in Congress on Iraq to withstand any veto override attempts.

Seeking input, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record), D-Vt., and Specter, asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for the White House's views on Congress' war powers.

Boxer and Feingold are in effect proposing managing a way in some way other than zeroing out the budget. But some lawmakers and scholars insist war management is the president's job.

"In an ongoing operation, you've got to defer to the commander in chief," said Sen. John Warner (news, bio, voting record), R-Va., ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee. But the veteran senator and former Navy secretary said he understands the debate over Congress' ability to check the executive branch.

"Once Congress raises an army, it's his to command," said Robert Turner, a law professor at the University of Virginia who was to testify Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

In recent decades, presidents have routinely bypassed Congress when deploying troops to fight. Not since World War II has Congress issued an official declaration of war, despite lengthy wars fought in Vietnam and Korea.

Congress does not have to approve military maneuvers.

John Yoo, who as a Justice Department lawyer helped write the 2002 resolution authorizing the Iraq invasion, called that document a political one designed only to bring Democrats on board and spread accountability for the conflict.

The resolution passed by a 296-133 vote in the then-GOP-run House and 77-23 in the Democratic-led Senate, but it was not considered a declaration of war.