U.S. doesn't hold talks with Iran, Syria at conference

Iraq appeals to neighbors to join terrorism fight

James Palmer, Chronicle Foreign Service

Sunday, March 11, 2007

(03-11) 04:00 PDT Baghdad -- At a conference here that brought together Middle Eastern neighbors and Western delegates to talk about Iraq's security, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki urged regional and world powers to support his government's struggle to halt the wave of terrorism that has gained a stranglehold on Iraq during the past four years.

"This international epidemic -- the price of which is being paid by the people of Iraq, with Iraq its first theater of confrontation -- needs to be met by an international stand," al-Maliki said Saturday in his opening statement at the one-day meeting.

The prime minister's words were accentuated when two ear-splitting mortar rounds landed within close range of the Foreign Ministry building situated on the outskirts of the fortified Green Zone, which sent some journalists and security forces scurrying for cover but caused no casualties.

"This is part of the threat toward us," Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told journalists after the shells exploded, as the delegates continued to confer behind closed doors.

While American delegates did not sit down with their Iranian and Syrian counterparts for much-anticipated bilateral talks, they did shake hands before the meetings began and spoke directly to one another, according to al-Dabbagh.

The United States cut diplomatic ties with Iran nearly three decades ago, and relations between the two nations have been further strained over Iran's nuclear program and U.S. assertions that the government is providing arms to both Shiite militias and insurgents in Iraq. The Bush administration also blames Syria for allowing weapons and fighters to flow into Iraq across their porous border.

Saturday's conference -- the first of its kind in Iraq since 1990 -- was attended by 69 delegates representing 13 countries, including the United States, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait and Turkey. Representatives of the Arab League, the Islamic Conference, the United Nations and the four other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council -- Britain, Russia, China and France -- also were in attendance. Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari led seven envoys representing Iraq.

The most significant result of the talks was an agreement to tackle Iraq's most pressing issues. Zebari said the delegates consented to form committees to address Iraq's security situation, internal displacement and refugee crisis, and its energy resources.

A second conference involving higher-ranking delegates is scheduled for next month, but the location is still a matter of contention. U.S. representatives are pushing for Istanbul, Iraq and Iran are insisting on Baghdad, and others want the second round of talks in Cairo.

At a news conference after Saturday's session, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi restated his country's demands for a clear timetable for the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces, which he insisted had made Iraq a magnet for extremists from across the Muslim world. "For the sake of peace and stability in Iraq ... we need a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign forces," he said.

Labid Abbawi, a senior Iraqi Foreign Ministry official who attended the meeting, said an argument broke out between the Iranian and U.S. envoys. He would not elaborate.

Another official familiar with the discussions said one U.S. envoy, State Department Iraq expert David Satterfield, pointed to his briefcase during the talks and said it contained documents proving Iran was arming Shiite Muslim militias in Iraq.

"Your accusations are merely a cover for your failures in Iraq," Araghchi said, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.

U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad said the focus of Saturday's meeting, which he described as "businesslike, constructive," was intended to enhance Iraq's security and bring stability to the country.

"No country represented at the table would benefit from a disintegrated Iraq," said Khalilzad, who led the U.S. delegation.

The ambassador also appealed for Iraq's neighbors to control their borders in order to "halt the flow of fighters, weapons and other lethal support to militias and other illegal armed groups, and cease sectarian rhetoric and other propaganda that could incite violence."

Al-Maliki advised Sunni-dominated countries such as Saudi Arabia, which have expressed support for changes in the Constitution created under Iraq's Shiite-led government, to respect his country's independence.

"Iraq does not allow itself to intrude on others' affairs, or its territory to be a launching pad for attacks against others," he said. "We, in the meantime, expect to have the same stance from others."

The prime minister also warned neighboring countries not to use his country as a battleground and that Iraq "will not accept that our lands, cities and streets serve as an arena for inter-regional or regional-international disputes."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Iraq: the hidden cost of the war

Published 12 March 2007

America won't simply be paying with its dead. The Pentagon is trying to silence economists who predict that several decades of care for the wounded will amount to an unbelievable $2.5 trillion.

They roar in every day, usually direct from the Landstuhl US air-force base in the Rhineland: giant C-17 cargo planes capable of lifting and flying the 65-tonne M1 Abrams tank to battlefields anywhere in the world. But Landstuhl is the first staging post for transporting most of the American wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan back to the United States, and these planes act as CCATs ("critical care air transport") with their AETs - "aeromedical evacuation teams" of doctors, nurses and medical technicians, whose task is to make sure that gravely wounded US troops arrive alive and fit enough for intensive treatment at the Walter Reed Army Medical Centre, just six miles up the road from me in Washington.

These days it is de rigueur for all politicians, ranging from President Bush and Ibrahim al-Jaafari (Iraq's "prime minister") to junior congressmen, to visit the 113-acre Walter Reed complex to pay tribute to the valour of horribly wounded soldiers. Last Christmas, the centre was so overwhelmed by the 500,000 cards and presents it received for wounded soldiers that it announced it could accept no more.

Yet the story of the US wounded reveals yet another deception by the Bush administration, masking monumental miscalculations that will haunt generations to come. Thanks to the work of a Harvard professor and former Clinton administration economist named Linda Bilmes, and some other hard-working academics, we have discovered that the administration has been putting out two entirely separate and conflicting sets of numbers of those wounded in the wars.

This might sound like chicanery by George W Bush and his cronies - or characteristic incompetence - but Bilmes and Professor Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel laureate economist from Columbia University, have established not only that the number wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan is far higher than the Pentagon has been saying, but that looking after them alone could cost present and future US taxpayers a sum they estimate to be $536bn, but which could get considerably bigger still. Just one soldier out of the 1.4 million troops so far deployed who has returned with a debilitating brain injury, for example, may need round-the-clock care for five, six, or even seven decades. In present-day money, according to one study, care for that soldier alone will cost a minimum of $4.3m.

However, let us first backtrack to 2002-2003 to try to establish why the administration's sums were so wildly off-target. Documents just obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show how completely lost the Bush administration was in Neverland when it came to Iraq: Centcom, the main top-secret military planning unit at Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon, predicted in its war plan that only 5,000 US troops would be required in Iraq by the end of 2006.

Rummy's deputy Paul Wolfowitz was such a whizz at the economics of it all that he confidently told us that Iraq would "really finance its own reconstruction". Rumsfeld himself reported that the administration had come up with "a number that's something under $50bn" as the cost of the war. Larry Lindsey, then assistant to the president on economic policy at the White House, warned that it might actually soar to as much as $200bn - with the result that Bush did as he habitually does with those who do not produce convenient facts and figures to back up his fantasies: he sacked him.

From official statistics supplied by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, we now know that the Iraq war is costing roughly $200m a day, or $6bn every month; the total bill so far is $400bn. But, in their studies, Bilmes and Stiglitz consider three scenarios that were not even conceivable to Bush, Rummy, Wolfowitz et al back in 2003. In the first, incurring the lowest future costs, troops will start to be withdrawn this year and be out by 2010. The second assumes that there will be a gradual withdrawal that will be complete by 2015. The third envisages the participation of two million servicemen and women, with the war going on past 2016.

Estimating long-term costs using even the second, moderate scenario, Bilmes tells me: "I think we are now approaching a figure of $2.5 trillion." This, she says, "includes three kinds of costs. It includes the cash costs of running the combat operations, the long-term costs of replenishing military equipment and taking care of the veterans, and [increased costs] at the Pentagon. And then it includes the economic cost, which is the differential between reservists' pay in their civilian jobs and what they're paid in the military - and the macroecono mic costs, such as the percentage of the oil-price increase."

Let me pause to explain those deceptive figures. Look at the latest official toll of US fatalities and wounded in the media, and you will see something like 3,160 dead and 23,785 wounded (that "includes 13,250 personnel who returned to duty within 72 hours", the Washington Post told us helpfully on 4 March). From this, you might assume that only 11,000 or so troops, in effect, have been wounded in Iraq. But Bilmes discovered that the Bush administration was keeping two separate sets of statistics of those wounded: one (like the above) issued by the Pentagon and therefore used by the media, and the other by the Department of Veterans Affairs - a government department autonomous from the Pentagon. At the beginning of this year, the Pentagon was putting out a figure of roughly 23,000 wounded, but the VA was quietly saying that more than 50,000 had, in fact, been wounded.

Casualty conspiracy

To draw attention to her academic findings, Bilmes wrote a piece for the Los Angeles Times of 5 January 2007 in which she quoted the figure of "more than 50,000 wounded Iraq war soldiers". The reaction from the Pentagon was fury. An assistant secretary there named Dr William Winkenwerder phoned her personally to complain. Bilmes recalls: "He said, 'Where did you get those numbers from?'" She explained to Winkenwerder that the 50,000 figure came from the VA, and faxed him copies of official US government documents that proved her point. Winkenwerder backed down.

Matters did not rest there. Despite its independence from the Pentagon, the VA is run by Robert James Nicholson, a former Republican Party chairman and Bush's loyal political appointee. Following Bilmes's exchange with Winkenwerder - on 10 January, to be precise - the number of wounded listed on the VA website dropped from 50,508 to 21,649. The Bush administration had, once again, turned reality on its head to concur with its claims. "The whole thing is scary," Bilmes says. "I have never been conspiracy-minded, but watching them change the numbers on the website - it's extraordinary."

What Bilmes had discovered was that the tally of US fatalities in Iraq and Afghanistan included the outcome of "non-hostile actions", most commonly vehicle accidents. But the Pentagon's statistics of the wounded did not. Even troops incapacitated for life in Iraq or Afghanistan - but not in "hostile situations" - were not being counted, although they will require exactly the same kind of medical care back home as soldiers similarly wounded in battle. Bilmes and Stiglitz had set out, meantime, to explore the ratio of wounded to deaths in previous American wars. They found that in the First World War, on average 1.8 were wounded for every fatality; in the Second World War, 1.6; in Korea, 2.8; in Vietnam, 2.6; and, in the first Gulf war in 1991, 1.2. In this war, 21st-century medical care and better armour have inflated the numbers of the wounded-but-living, leading Bilmes to an astounding conclusion: for every soldier dying in Iraq or Afghanistan today, 16 are being wounded. The Pentagon insists the figure is nearer nine - but, either way, the economic implications for the future are phenomenal.

So far, more than 200,000 veterans from the current Iraq or Afghanistan wars have been treated at VA centres. Twenty per cent of those brought home are suffering from serious brain or spinal injuries, or the severing of more than one limb, and a further 20 per cent from amputations, blindness or deafness, severe burns, or other dire conditions. "Every person injured on active duty is going to be a long-term cost of the war," says Bilmes. If we compare the financial ramifications of the first Gulf war to the present one, the implications become even more stark. Despite its brevity, even the 1991 Gulf war exacted a heavy toll: 48.4 per cent of veterans sought medical care, and 44 per cent filed disability claims. Eighty-eight per cent of these claims were granted, meaning that 611,729 veterans from the first Gulf war are now receiving disability benefits; a large proportion are suffering from psychiatric illnesses, including post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.

More than a third of those returning from the current wars, too, have already been diagnosed as suffering from similar conditions. But although the VA has 207 walk-in "vet centres" and other clinics and offices throughout the US, it is a bureaucracy under siege. It has a well-deserved reputation for providing excellent healthcare for America's 24 million veterans, but is quite unable to cope with a workload that the Bush administration did not foresee.

The unknown unknowns

There is now a backlog of 400,000 claims from veterans and waiting lists of months, some of which "render . . . care virtually inaccessible", in the words of Frances Murphy, the VA's own deputy under-secretary for health. Claims are expected to hit 874,000 this year, 930,000 in 2008. Casualties returning from Iraq meanwhile outnumber other patients at Walter Reed 17 to one, and many have to be put up at nearby hotels and motels rather than in the hospital beds they desperately need. Suicide attempts are frequent; often the less wounded end up having to care for the more seriously wounded.

Since I researched this piece, the Washington Post has published a series of articles outlining the chaos at Walter Reed and elsewhere. Undercover reporters found soldiers suffering from schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress and other brain injuries, occupying rooms infested with mice and cockroaches. The ensuing furore resulted in the sacking of the general in charge. Even Bush says he is "deeply troubled" by these "unacceptable" conditions at Walter Reed, but his government has carefully avoided the issue of how much it will cost to put right these wrongs. The failure to look after returning, often traumatised troops leads to yet further hidden costs to the US economy: the consequences of unemployment, family violence, crime, alcoholism and drug abuse, for example.

The projected $2.5trn price tag also includes the costs of replacing and replenishing military equipment in use. Nearly 40 per cent of the army's equipment, according to the Washington Post, is currently deployed in Iraq; as long ago as March 2005, Rumsfeld conceded that tanks, fighting vehicles and helicopters were wearing out at six times the normal rate.

Significant quantities of equipment are being destroyed, too. The Washington Post reported last December that the army alone has lost more than 280,000 major pieces of equipment in the combat zones; the Army Times reported as long ago as February last year that 20 M1 Abram tanks, 50 Bradley fighting vehicles, 20 Stryker wheeled combat vehicles, 20 M113 armoured personnel carriers, 250 Hum vees, hundreds of mine-clearing vehicles and the like - plus more than a hundred aircraft, most of them helicopters - have been lost. Those figures have increased considerably since then as fighting has intensified. Add something between $125bn and $300bn for these unanticipated long-term costs, say Bilmes and Stiglitz.

Yet another gargantuan White House miscalculation was over the price of oil. Before his departure, Larry Lindsey told the Wall Street Journal in September 2002 that "the successful prosecution of the war would be good for the economy"; the WSJ echoed his thoughts in an editorial the same day, arguing that "the best way to keep oil prices in check is a short, successful war on Iraq". In 2002, the average cost of a barrel of oil was $23.71; today, it is hovering around $50. Dick Cheney's chums in firms such as his own Halliburton - or ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and Chevron - have profited enormously, but Bilmes estimates that even if only $5 of the oil-price increase can be attributed to the Iraq war, that alone adds $150bn to the cost of war.

There are also countless imponderables that add to the bill. The deployment of hundreds of thousands of reservists depletes the economy. At present, 44 per cent of US police forces, for example, have members deployed as reservists in Iraq, and their duties have to be performed by others in America; the same goes for firefighters, medical staff, prison wardens.

Then there are the future illnesses that may well unfold. For instance, nobody knew that the notorious Agent Orange defoliant, used by the US in Vietnam from 1961-71, would turn out to have had carcinogenic and other effects on US troops. Today, there is mounting evidence that exposure to depleted uranium - used for firing anti-tank rounds from US M1 tanks and A-10 attack aircraft - can cause cancer, diabetes and birth defects. Many veterans are returning to the US with their health apparently in ruins from adverse reactions to anti-anthrax injections and/or consumption of experimental pills to counter chemical warfare agents. The long-term costs of looking after the likes of them make the cost of the actual war dead pale by comparison: spouses of deceased soldiers receive a "death gratuity" of $100,000. Troops are also given the opportunity to take out subsidised life insurance policies for up to $500,000 for dependants. In the dispassionate way economists assess such things, Bilmes and Stiglitz estimate the additional cost to the economy of the death of a young soldier - typically 25 years old - to be $6.5m.

Bilmes has become a marked woman to the Bush administration. She was invited to participate in a VA seminar on the cost of war, to be held on the last day of this month - but then was suddenly uninvited. She is no raving lefty, though, and her economic credentials are unimpeachable: she was responsible for an annual budget of $9bn in the Clinton-era commerce department. Like none other than George W Bush, she, too, holds an MBA from Harvard.

It is sobering to think how the money going down the drain in Iraq could otherwise have been spent. "For this amount of money, we could have provided health insurance for the uninsured of this country," Bilmes tells me. "We could have made social security solvent for the next three generations, and implemented all the 9/11 Commission's recommendations [to tighten domestic security]."

That kind of list goes on: the annual cost of treating all heart disease and diabetes in the United States would amount to a quarter of what the Iraq war is costing. Pre-school for every child in America would take just $35bn a year. In their main paper, Bilmes and Stiglitz come up with an even more intriguing possibility: "We could have had a Marshall Plan for the Middle East, or the developing countries, that might have succeeded in winning hearts and minds."

What a historic triumph that would have been for Bush. Instead, his legacy to generations of Americans will be a needless debt of at least $2.5trn, what his own defence secretary describes as a four-way civil war in Iraq, dangerous instability in the Middle East, and increasingly entrenched hatred of the United States throughout the world. Alas, we are likely to hear the daily roar of those C-17s as they approach Andrews Air Force Base for years to come.

The unknown price that Britain is paying

No one is counting the long-term costs of caring for injured British troops, reports Sam Alexandroni

The cost to Britain of the Iraq war, according to the Ministry of Defence, will hit £5bn at the end of this financial year. This is the figure given for direct spending on fuel, ammunition, repairs and transport; the real bill is certainly much bigger. The greatest of the uncounted costs is the financial and human toll the war is taking on the mental and physical health of British personnel serving in Iraq.

The government has not attempted to calculate the long-term cost of caring for the injured, and official statistics offer little guidance. Four thousand eight hundred personnel have been evacuated from Iraq on medical grounds but only 144 were classified as "seriously" or "very seriously" injured. What about the rest? Nobody in the MoD or NHS was able to say how many personnel who served in Iraq are being treated in Britain, or how many will require long-term medical care. The treatment costs of servicemen at NHS hospitals such as Selly Oak in Birmingham - home to the Royal Centre of Defence Medicine - are passed on to the MoD, which in turn bills the Treasury Reserve, but once a patient leaves the armed forces, ongoing treatment is paid for by the NHS.

Mental health offers similar uncertainties. So far, 2,123 troops who served in Iraq have been diagnosed with mental health problems, 328 with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD); but cases take 12 years on average to surface and there is no sure cure. "We won't know for many years after the Iraq war is over how many former servicemen are suffering from psychological problems," says Toby Elliot, chief executive of the charity Combat Stress. "The MoD doesn't provide all the funds we need by a long way. We have to make up 40 per cent of our funding ourselves, and that's a problem."

Nor has anyone tried to quantify the indirect economic effects. The surge in the price of Brent crude oil from $31 a barrel at the start of 2003 to $60 today has been driven largely by increased demand, but Middle East instability affects the market and "Iraq has been factored in for years", according to the oil analyst Jean-Luc Amos. The extent to which the Iraq war has exacerbated the domestic threat of terror and made Britain less safe remains similarly ungauged. Then there are other costs barely considered. In 2002 a study commissioned by Ken Livingstone, the city's mayor, estimated that war in Iraq would cost the London economy £1bn in lost tourism alone, though there has been no post-invasion follow-up.

That no one in the British government has even attempted these calculations is worrying, but perhaps any cost-benefit analysis of the war misses the point. "In the end, if the Iraq war had brought the Iraqis a better life and us greater security, then - whatever the costs - it would seem 'worth it'," says Sir Lawrence Freedman, professor of war studies at King's College London. "Because it has been such a screw-up, then, even at a lower level of calculated costs, it seems like a waste."

Iraq War: Key Dates
Research by Sarah O'Connor

20 March 2003 US and Britain invade
1 May 2003 Bush announces "mission accomplished"
13 December 2003 Saddam Hussein is captured
28 April 2004 Images of US troops abusing prisoners emerge from Abu Ghraib
November 2004 US assault on Fallujah insurgents
30 January 2005 Eight million Iraqis vote in elections
July 2006 Deadliest month in Iraq: 3,438 civilians are killed
30 December 2006 Saddam Hussein is executed
10 January 2007 Bush announces 21,500 troop surge to Iraq
21 February 2007 Blair announces the withdrawal of 1,600 British troops

Iraq 2007 by numbers
Research by Rebecca Bundhun

l57,805 minimum number of Iraqi civilians reported killed since the 2003 invasion, according to the Iraq Body Count website
33% of Americans in a March 2007 poll approved of George Bush's Iraq policy
80 US soldiers killed in Iraq last month
7,100 number of UK troops currently in Iraq
135,000 number of US troops currently in Iraq
134 number of British soldiers killed in Iraq
21,500 additional troops Bush plans to deploy in the "troop surge"
28 percentage of Americans in the March poll who said the US will probably or definitely win the war

Andrew Stephen

Proliferation of conferences seen as a sympton of half-baked US policy

Saturday, March 10, 2007

All of a sudden the idea of holding an international conference on Iraq has become a very popular idea, Azzaman notes in its curtain-raiser to the Baghdad conference starting today. In Baghdad, European sources told the reporter they think there will be a follow-up meeting in Berlin, with the same participants, if there is any progress at all in Baghdad this weekend. In Ankara, the news is that Turkey, for its part, is also making plans to host a meeting of countries neighboring Iraq. And The Egyptian foreign minister said Cairo will host a meeting of Iraq-neighbors, right after the Riyadh summit of the Arab League (the end of this month).

The Azzaman reporters don't offer any explanation for the sudden outbreak of meeting-announcements, but Abdulbari Atwan does, in his regular column this morning in Al-Quds al-Arabi.

The Bush administration, he notes, has run out of friends elsewhere, what with Congress threatening to cut off funds for the Iraq fiasco, Latin Americans preparing demos against his visit there [and Mayan priests announcing plans to re-purify national lands after they are defiled by the Bush visit] and so on and so forth. So the axis of moderate Arab regimes, ironically, has become the designated front-line ally and rescue team.

Their task: Somehow extricate the US from the Iraq quagmire, where troop-casualties are escalating, political support for the regime is eroding (citing the Fadhila exit from the UIA), and victory is not in sight. If necessary, it will even be permissible to talk with Syria and Iran about this [but the US will do this only over orange juice, according to the latest pronouncement from David Satterfield of the State Dept]. The moderate regimes would like to help, Atwan recognizes, but what can they do?

The leaders of Saudi Arabia and Egypt are old, and suffering from the complaints attendant on senility, they surround themselves with experts in medical diagnosis, in place of economists or those familiar with international relations or politics. And their regimes are not that stable either.

For Atwan, the Bush adventure has resulted in a situation where the alternatives are stark. Iran's price for definitive settlement will be its recognition as a nuclear power. Syria's price will be return of the Golan Heights, restoration of its influence in Lebanon, and killing the international-court project re the Hariri murder. The other alternative would be interim pacification, in recognition of the one common-denominator of all participants, which is the undesirability of all-out civil war and eventual partition.

None of these alternatives is likely to be in the interests of the Arabs, Atwan says. Interim pacification, if it is part of, or facilitates, the US runup to an attack on Iran, will only mean untold catastrophe for the region once Iran is attacked. On the other hand, definitive settlement with Iran on the basis of its nuclear status would mean transferring the center of gravity in the Gulf region to Tehran and away from the Arab states.

The core problem, says Atwan, is that the Bush administration isn't prepared to face its primary adversaries, and is still attempting to deal with secondary factors as if they were the determining ones. Thus: Instead of dealing with the Iraqi resistance, which has been the root cause of its defeat in the country, the Bush administration wants to limit itself to conversations over orange juice with Syria and Iran. Similarly, while touting the importance of Palestine, the US continues its year-old starvation-blockade against the Palestinians, and continues to refuse to recognize the elected government. This penchant for not facing up to issues, Atwan says, is what has resulted in this spectacle of reliance on senile Arab regimes to try and reach solutions that would not, in any event, be in the interests of the Arabs themselves.

(The problem of Bush turning away from the main issues is sometimes recognized even in America, where it is seen as the result of an internal conflict between the Cheneyans and the Riceites. A couple of investigative pieces by Conflicts Forum, one a while ago on attempted negotiations with the resistance, and one more recently on the Mecca agreement, give you the picture. It is an insight that could be seeping into the mainstream. At the conclusion of the orange-juice citation above, someone from Brookings is quoted: “They want to be coy about it,” [the Brookings person said, referring there specifically to talking to Iran]. “But are they being coy because they’re really coy, or are they being coy because half of the administration doesn’t want any talks, which forces the ones who do to adopt this middle position?”)

The Rise of the Rove Reich

Mar 10, 2007

By Mike Whitney

Politics is the art of destroying one’s enemies and rewarding one’s friends. By this standard, the Bush regime is the most capable administration in American history. Bush and his fellows have shown time and again that they have sharp elbows and can be cold-blooded political street-fighters. The "Swift-boating" of John Kerry, Dan Rather and Joseph Wilson are just a few of the more familiar examples. Each was singled out as a potential rival by high-ranking members of the administration and summarily drawn-and-quartered by the assassins in the far-right media.

The unexpected sacking of 8 US Attorneys is another example of the administration’s astonishing proficiency at destroying its enemies, although the attorneys in question were not the "real targets" per se. The purpose of the firings was to use the justice system to conduct personal attacks on members of the Democratic leadership either by indicting them prior to elections or challenging the results of recent balloting. The intention was to strengthen the "one party" system of Karl Rove’s dreams.

This, of course, is a much more serious charge than "outing" a CIA agent (Valerie Plame) or slandering a decorated veteran. (John Kerry) It is a direct attack on the two-party system and the foundations of democratic government.

Paul Krugman gives a good explanation of how this works in his latest article "Department of Injustice". Krugman recalls how New Jersey US Attorney "issued subpoenas in connection with allegations of corruption on the part of Democratic Senator Bob Menendez, two months before the 2006 election". The news of the subpoenas was quickly leaked to local news media. It was a deliberate and obvious attempt to manipulate the upcoming election by putting Menendez under a cloud of criminal indictment. If it had worked, Republicans would have held the majority in the Senate and the same trends in authoritarian legislation would have persisted for the next two years.

Congressional investigations last week indicate that other US Attorneys have revealed similar "politically motivated" meddling which was designed to crush the Democratic Party by decapitating the leadership. It’s clear that the administration’s maneuverings are an essential part of their strategy to maintain a permanent GOP "lock on power".

This is serious business. Watergate pales in comparison. Karl Rove is actively sabotaging the democratic process by stacking the US Attorneys office with Bush foot-soldiers.

Attorney General Gonzales has denied charges that politics played any part in the recent firings, but Krugman proves otherwise. Since Bush took office in 2000, US Attorney’s across the nation have investigated 298 Democrats, but only 67 Republicans. Clearly the office is being used to carry out personal vendettas to remove Democrats from power and fortify a one party system; the Rove Reich.

Krugman also adds this shocking detail from the Rovian chronicle which further strengthens his thesis:

"Let's not forget that Karl Rove's candidates have a history of benefiting from conveniently timed federal investigations. Last year Molly Ivins reminded her readers of a curious pattern during Mr. Rove's time in Texas: "In election years, there always seemed to be an F.B.I. investigation of some sitting Democrat either announced or leaked to the press. After the election was over, the allegations often vanished.’"

Over the years, Rove has perfected the politics of personal destruction and transformed it into an art-form. It’s clear now that the Gonzales 8 were tossed overboard because they clung to their standards of decency and refused to become political henchmen for the gangsters in Washington. We can assume that the new appointees are neither true conservatives nor traditional Republicans, but party loyalists who will faithfully execute directives from the Bush Politburo.

Alas, the Bush regime is not in the business of governing, but politics. And, once again, they've proved that they’re damn good at it.

Red, White, and...

(Ben Heine © Cartoons)

Profiting From Chaos

Sun Mar 11 2007 2:44 pm

Posted by Mash

Now that the warlords are back in control in Somalia, it is probably not surprising that the country is devolving into chaos again. After America’s Ethiopian allies drove the Islamic Courts Union out of power a few months ago, the brief period of stability Somalia experienced after years of bloodshed abruptly collapsed. Now, the situation on the ground is ripe for profit.

As African Union peacekeepers take up positions in Mogadishu, under fire, they are being supported by contractors hired by the United States. The company that is the beneficiary of the contract is DynCorp International:

The State Department has hired a major military contractor to help equip and provide logistical support to international peacekeepers in Somalia, giving the United States a significant role in the critical mission without assigning combat forces.

DynCorp International, which also has US contracts in Iraq, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq, will be paid $10 million to help the first peacekeeping mission in Somalia in more than 10 years.

DynCorp International has a long and illustrious history in government waste and unseemly activities overseas.

In January the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction reported on DynCorp’s activities in Iraq as part of a larger investigation into waste and fraud:

One of the reports released on Wednesday found that an American company, DynCorp, appeared to act almost independently of its contracting officers at the Department of State at times, billing the United States for millions of dollars of work that was never authorized and starting other jobs before they were requested.

The findings of misconduct against the company, on a $188 million job order to build living quarters and purchase weapons and equipment for the Iraqi police as part of a training program, were serious enough that the inspector general’s office began a fraud inquiry.

The Washington Post provides more detail on DynCorp’s contracts in Iraq:

In its review of work under DynCorp’s $1.8 billion State Department contract, the special inspector general found that the department’s lax oversight led it to pay $43.8 million for a residential camp for DynCorp trainers that has never been used.

…

The State Department ordered work on the project stopped in September 2004, shortly after issuing the contract, because of concerns that the location was too dangerous for DynCorp’s trainers. DynCorp initially told the department that the camp had already been completed, but more than a year later said it wasn’t.

…

In 2005, a State Department official became concerned about "potential fraud" regarding DynCorp’s billing for 500 trailers that may have never been built. Yesterday’s report said the investigation is ongoing.

The department also can’t account for $36.4 million of weapons and equipment, including armored vehicles and body armor, because DynCorp’s invoices were vague, the report said. "DynCorp invoices were frequently ambiguous and lacked the level of detail necessary to identify what was procured," the report said.

With all this waste I can see how DynCorp’s contract to train Iraqi police might not have gone so well.

DynCorp has also spread good cheer in Afghanistan in a blow to Karen Hughes’ ill-fated public diplomacy mission. DynCorp’s heavy-handed mercenaries that protect Afghan president Hamid Karzai have managed to upset not only the Afghans but also America’s NATO allies. DynCorp’s behavior in Afghanistan earned a rebuke from the State Department:

The US State Department has rebuked a private security firm over the "aggressive behaviour" of guards hired to protect Afghan leader Hamid Karzai.

US State Department’s Richard Boucher said the issue was raised with DynCorp, the company that supplied the guards.

There have been several reported cases of apparently over-zealous and insensitive conduct on the part of Mr Karzai’s private security contractors.

A BBC correspondent recently saw one of the guards slap an Afghan minister.

Crispin Thorold reported seeing the Afghan transport minister receive a slap from one of Mr Karzai’s security guards on a visit to the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif.

To complete the waste and public diplomacy picture, DynCorp adds child prostitution:

DynCorp is the same company whose employees hired child prostitutes while working in Bosnia a few years ago, until some people started complaining. Rather than face local justice or courts-martial, the perpetrators were simply sent home.

One of the whistleblowers, a DynCorp employee named Ben Johnston, lost his job for speaking out. He later told Congress, ‘’DynCorp is the worst diplomat our country could ever want overseas.'’

Texas-based DynCorp’s parent, CSC, declined to comment on any of these incidents, saying that it is ‘’constrained'’ from doing so by its contracts with the State Department.

With a resume as illustrious as this, DynCorp appears poised to carry on the tradition of lawlessness into the already lawless Horn of Africa.

As the United States turns more and more to private contractors to support post-conflict operations, it must also extend the realm of accountability to include these contractors. As the story of DynCorp demonstrates, that much needed accountability is lacking. What exists today is government (tax payer) financed lawlessness that only serves to undermine any goodwill America hopes to engender in conflict regions such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia. The fact that firms like DynCorp are constantly rewarded with new contracts, in the face of their bad behavior, fits a pattern of behavior for the Bush Administration - where bad behavior is rewarded and calls for accountability are often punished harshly. It is up to the long comatose Congress to protect the funds we, the tax payers, have entrusted with the government - they must ensure accountability by punishing bad behavior. It is also up to the Congress to ensure that if the United States is going to outsource war fighting and post-conflict operations to mercenaries, these mercenaries must follow the same code of conduct that we expect of our soldiers.

However, a quick look at DynCorp’s donor list suggests that the bad behavior will continue, with government sanction. The hearts and minds will have to be won after the money runs out and the feeding trough is empty.

under Politics , International , Foreign Policy
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Stop Mideast Violence - Negotiate!

Sunday, March 11, 2007

.(Ben Heine © Cartoons)
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Support Negotiation, Support Peace
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By Richard Silverstein (*)
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I would like to challenge all my fellow bloggers writing about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to post this graphic. I would especially encourage those who blog either from the pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian side to post this as well. Even if you disagree with the sentiments I write below, post this image with your own sentiments. For the sake of peace.

There is a compassion deficit on both sides of this conflict. Of course, it is entirely understandable why this deficit exists. Too much blood has been shed and attitudes harden when there is an unending stream of violence.

But perhaps we can imagine a world in which we put our respective massacres behind us and embrace a future vision of peace between two peoples. We can tell the leaders of the U.S., Israel and Palestine that we are tired of massacres. We want peace. We want negotiation: Israel-Palestine. Israel-Syria. Stop with conditions. Stop with blame. Sit down and talk. Now.

President Bush: Support negotiation, support peace. End the dithering. End the "No."

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(*) Richard Silverstein runs Tikun Olam, a peace blog dedicated to a negotiated resolution of the Israeli-Arab conflict. He also created Israel Palestine Blogs, an aggregator of 50 peace blogs written by Israelis, Palestinians, American Jews, Arab Americans and Lebanese. He earned a Bachelor of Hebrew Literature degree from the Jewish Theological Seminary and an MA in Hebrew Literature at UCLA. He served as a communal fundraiser at Jewish federations in New York and California, and Brandeis University. He also worked as administrator of a Los Angeles Reform temple. He has been a proponent of Israeli-Arab peace since 1968, and currently lives in Seattle with his wife and three children.

--> More about Richard Silverstein
--> This post originally appeared on Tikun Olam : Make the World a Better Place
--> See also Brit Tzedek's campaign and the petition Let's Talk
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Israel spying in and on the United States

11. March 2007

It’s big news in the US that the FBI has overstepped its authority by spying on US citizens illegally. What hasn’t made it to the news - or should I say it did but was pulled after running as a story just once - is that while the FBI and other government agencies are spying on American citizens, a foreign country (and supposed US ally) is spying on the FBI and other law enforcement agencies.

Who is this ally? Well, it is a not secret that the best and biggest ally of U.S. is Israel. They are paid billions of dollars every year and Israel sucks these billions of dollars from U.S. budget to support the Zionist regime and its crimes. However, the irony of the story is that Americans are actually willingly (or should I say forced, if we talk about AIPAC?) paying Israel to betray their country and stab them in the back and use part of that money to spy on Americans.

Here a series of four parts investigation report by FOX news (the one which you trusted always for accurate news), which give us the details of Israel links and fact about their spying on YOU and Israel links to 9/11 and terrorism ties. Of course this is disappearing story that’s too hot to handle. Imagine that Israelis were caught but later shipped to Israel as “art students”. Not only that, believe it or not, they have records of all your phone calls. In fact, they have records about you which your government does not have. [Hat tip: Robin]

Enjoy the show:

Israeli 911 terrorism ties FOX news report now CLASSIFIED 1:

They may have known things they didn’t tell U.S. before September 11th. Continuation of more CLASSIFIED information on Israeli spying, ‘classified’ links to 911 and more.

Israeli 911 terrorism ties FOX news report now CLASSIFIED 2:

It’s virtually impossible to make a call in the US without Amdocs (an Israeli company) making a record of it!

Israeli 911 terrorism ties FOX news report now CLASSIFIED 3:

More hints of Israeli spying, criminality, terrorism and 911 links. “One Israeli company controls the US’s entire eavesdropping system.”

Israeli 911 terrorism ties FOX news report now CLASSIFIED 4:

Somehow the bad guys had the cops’ beepers, cell phones - even home phones - under surveillance.

Of course this is not the first time (or last) that Israelis are caught spying on U.S. not to mention previous stories about AIPAC espionage links!

Part of Haitham's adventure in USA, Israel, Terrorism, Video, Zionism, 911

US Attorney scandal...of NH phone-jamming

Hey--what about the US Attorneys who didn't get fired? Paul Krugman is asking (free link here)--and it's a good question. Check out the US Attorney in charge of the NH phone-jamming, Thomas J Colantuono. Does Gonzales give prizes for slow response to Republican dirty tricks? It took Colantuono's people more than a year before the FBI questioned their top/only suspect in the NH phone-jamming, a crime by Republicans.

But in other matters, Colantuono could move fast. Just before the 2004 elections, he moved fast to block Democrats from questioning phone-jamming suspects--and fast again to file corruption charges against a NH Democrat.

In 2006, right after the Democrats' landmark electoral victory, Colantuono also moved fast to shut down his phone-jamming enquiries, making a guilty plea deal with the last defendant that gave the Feds nothing and the Republicans everything.

When Republicans commit crimes, Colantuono moves sloowwwwwly:

Nov. 5, 2002: During a tight race for a US Senate seat, phone lines to 5 get-out-the-vote operations run by NH Democrats around the state, and one GOTV operation run by the Manchester Firefighters' Association, are swamped by repeated hang-up phone calls from Idaho. Republican John Sununu wins the Senate seat.

Feb. 7, 2003: Union Leader headline "Dirty tricks: Federal officials alerted by police to alleged GOP phone jamming". Article names Chuck McGee, Allen Raymond, GOP Marketplace, and Mylo Enterprises, the company owned by Shaun Hansen.

Feb 20, 2003: Union Leader reports that GOP Marketplace has shut down its website in anticipation of investigation; their lawyer says no federal investigators have contacted them.

December, 2003. More than a year after the phone jamming, FBI first interviews Chuck McGee.

More timeline here

When Democrats have problems, Colantuono moves fast:

On June 10, 2004, NH State Senator Burt Cohen dropped out of the US Senate race against incumbent Judd Gregg (R, NH) after controversy surfaced about Cohen's campaign manager Jesse D Burchfeld. Cohen's withdrawal so close to election left Democrats without a credible candidate. In November of 2004, Gregg defeated his opponent "Granny D" Haddock (aged 94) by a 66 to 34% margin--and Burchfield pled guilty to making false statements to the FCC.

The problem surfaced in June, 2004, but by August, 2004 (well in time for the 2004 election) Colantuono had sent out a press release describing the charges against Jesse Burchfeld, with liberal mention of Democrat Burt Cohen.

Yes, within two months after a Democrat's problem surfaced, Colantuono could not just investigate but file charges.

2004 was a Presidential election year, as you may recall (and Mrs. Colantuono's innovative pro-GOP tactics made local news). And, in 2004, US Attorney Colantuono could move fast not just to start enquiries but also to block them.

August 11, 2004: US Department of Justice Attorney Todd Hinnen, who obtained guilty pleas from McGee and Raymond that mention an unnamed "official in a national political organization", will be pulled off the phone-jamming case.

October 11, 2004: Josh Marshall identifies James Tobin as the (still unindicted) Republican official mentioned by Hinnen.

October 15, 2004: James Tobin resigns as Bush-Cheney New England campaign chair.

October 21, 2004: Twenty minutes before Democrats are set to depose to interview phone-jamming witnesses for their civil suit, the DOJ intervenes to shut down their investigation for six months.

But--slow again--James Tobin was not indicted until December 2004, safely after the Presidential election. And his trial was scheduled, once again post-election, in December of 2005.

And--fast again--US Federal Attorneys for NH and Idaho moved fast in 2006, to accept a deeply-flawed guilty plea from their very last phone-jamming defendant.

So, if you're wondering how the Bush Justice Department would like all its US Attorneys to act...

Will somebody notice that it's almost a year that Colantuono's many ties to the GOP prompted a request to Gonzales for a special prosecutor on the NH phone jamming?

URL

Four years later: Iraqis look back on pre-invasion era with longing

Perspective

Sun Mar 11 2007

By Leila Fadel

BAGHDAD -- Four years ago, Iraqi poet Abbas Chaychan, a Shiite Muslim who'd been forced into exile during the predominantly Sunni Muslim regime of Saddam Hussein, hailed the American presence here in a poem that praised the top U.S. diplomat in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer.

We have breakfasts of kabab and qaymar, he wrote, describing the new Iraq with a reference to a rich cream that's considered a sign of wealth.

We put, in your stead, Mr. Bremer / Better than a tyrant of our own flesh and blood, and his torture.

Last January, shortly after Saddam was hanged, Chaychan again put words to paper. But his outlook had changed.

History is proud to write about him, he said of Saddam. It wasn't a rope that wrapped around the neck / It was the neck that wrapped around the rope....

From his childhood he was a leader, stubborn and against the occupation.

As the anniversary of the March 20, 2003, U.S.-led invasion of Iraq nears, many Iraqis, like Chaychan, are expressing nostalgia for the time more than 1,000 days ago when Saddam's statue stood proudly in Baghdad's Fardos Square.

Chaychan's reading of his most recent work, in which he calls Saddam the Arab world's "knight" and compares his death to the eclipsing of the sun, has become a popular Iraqi destination on video-sharing services such as YouTube, where his pained voice rings out over a montage of shots of the Iraqi dictator: clenching his fist in the air, sporting his signature beret, at trial holding a Qur'an, with a noose around his neck.

In a January interview with CBS News' 60 Minutes, U.S. President George W. Bush told correspondent Scott Paley that the American invasion had taken "care of a source of instability in Iraq."

"Envision a world in which Saddam Hussein was rushing for a nuclear weapon to compete against Iran," Bush said.

"My decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the correct decision, in my judgment. We didn't find the weapons we thought we would find or the weapons everybody thought he had. But he was a significant source of instability."

In interviews across Baghdad recently, few Iraqis agreed.

Instead, they displayed a collective fatigue, even as another plan to bring about security got underway.

They're tired of waiting for better days when each morning brings new terrorism.

Trapped in their homes, afraid that death will knock, they're worn down, they said.

Law and order -- even under a bloody dictator who killed thousands and tortured many others -- was better than this, many said. Even those who are glad to see Saddam dead expressed a longing for more orderly times.

Layla Mohammed, a Sunni Muslim mother of three, remembered that heady day four years ago when a noose tightened around the neck of Saddam's statue.

"I felt that I was at the highest point of a roller-coaster, just about to plunge into what I hoped would be an exhilarating experience," Mohammed said. "I thought, 'Oh, my God, it's happening. I live to see my sons set free.' "

A pharmacist, she said she'd voted in all three elections that Iraq has had since Saddam was toppled: first for an interim government, then for a new constitution, then for a permanent government. She remembers dipping her finger in purple ink -- to indicate that she'd voted -- with her two sons and her daughter. Together they held up their fingers and took a family photo to commemorate their future democracy.

"At that moment I felt that I was, at last, a sated human being. I had an opinion and it carried weight! I shall treasure that moment all my life," she said. "If only I could have that moment back; its joy was untainted.

"Now I know better."

The life of freedom and liberty she was promised never came. Her sons are trying to flee the country. She can't afford to keep her house warm, and no longer goes to her pharmacy in the neighbourhood of Hurriyah, a once mixed-sect community that was emptied of most Sunnis in December.

"I have been conned," Mohammed said.

When Saddam was executed she told herself, "There goes the one man who could stop this bloodbath. I thought we would have to pay oil for freedom and democracy, but not our life's blood. It's too much."

She put her hand to her head. "It's too much."

* * *

Ahmed al Yasseri, a Shiite, also remembers his excitement at the fall of Saddam. He excitedly set up a once-forbidden satellite dish. For the first time he watched Arabic news channels and foreign stations. He bought a cellphone and subscribed to an Internet service.

Then his brother, a former officer in Saddam's army, was shot as he returned from his electronics shop in 2004. Yasseri's two nephews ran outside to see their father's body riddled with bullets. Yasseri fled his neighbourhood looking for somewhere safer.

Three months later his uncle was killed, caught in a crossfire as he waited in a long line to buy gasoline. Yasseri moved again.

"In a short time you lose your dear ones, and for what?" he asked with despair. "Believe me, for nothing."

Now his current neighbourhood, Mansour, once an upscale shopping district in central Baghdad, has grown dangerous as well. The crowded Shorja market, where he works, is a tempting target for bombs: A triple car bomb there killed at least 67 people a few weeks ago. He travels nowhere but the path between home and work. Every moment he worries that he'll die in the kind of bombing that fills the morgue with body parts.

"We envy the people who die in one piece now," he said.

* * *

Saddam was caught nearly nine months after the invasion, hidden in an underground hole with a pistol. Bilal Ali, 40, a Shiite, remembers that night. He pulled out an AK-47 rifle that he'd received as a gift and fired into the air in celebration -- a burst of pop-pop-pops -- then handed the weapon to his mother, then to his seven-year-old son.

"I shot five full magazines," he said. Each held 30 bullets. "Thank God, who blessed even the hearts of the martyrs in their grave, for this gift."

But it didn't bring the peace that Bilal Ali, a shopkeeper in the Shiite area of Karada, had imagined. Car bombs became prevalent in Shiite areas. Shiites were afraid to pray in their mosques, and Iraqis were afraid to shop in outdoor markets, targets of the Sunni insurgency.

Shiite militias struck back. Men, mostly Sunnis, turned up in the morgue, shot in the head, hands tied behind their back, drill holes in their bodies. The perpetrators eventually were linked to the Ministry of Interior, which oversees the police.

Electricity grew scarcer, at first available for eight hours, then six, then as few as three hours a day. Salaries went up, but so did the cost of living. A tank of cooking gas soared to $60 on the black market. A lower price cost a day's wait in line. The use of a generator cost $100 a month. At $300 a month, wages hardly kept pace.

Still, Bilal Ali is happy that Saddam was hanged.

"I had hope at that time that life would be much better after his regime's collapse," he said. "But I'm very happy with his end even if the security situation is bad."

* * *

EVERY morning as Mona Ali, a single Shiite mother, prepares sandwiches and breakfast for her three children she wonders whether they won't return to her. She leaves her four-year-old son at home and tightly grips the hands of her two young daughters. On the daily walk to school, bullets sometimes have whizzed above their heads in the Shiite Amil neighbourhood in west Baghdad.

"There is fear in my heart every day that my kids will go and not come back to me," she said.

Daily she walks to the neighbourhood marketplace. On one trip, a car bomb ripped through the vegetable stands as she approached. The blood, the dead, the injured lay in front of her and she thought, it could have been me. She had a nightmare about her children as orphans.

"I remembered the fear I had for my children and I realized I might not return safely to them," she said.

"Baghdad is dirty. When it gets dark everybody hides in their houses just like rats," she said.

Over and over again she repeated, "Baghdad is dirty."

She remembers the bombing of the gold-domed Shiite shrine in Samarra more than a year ago. She knew the attack was different from all the others.

"I felt bitterness in my heart that day," she said. "I knew that things would not rest; I knew that we shall have torment for a long time, and it was true."

Shiite revenge killings soared. Neighbours soon couldn't live with one another. Sunnis feared Shiite militias and their dreaded checkpoints; Shiites feared the Sunni insurgency and its bloody bombings. People fled, and families were torn apart.

Many, like Ali, feel numb to the pain, cheated out of the lives they expected.

On the morning Saddam was hanged, Ali said, she wept. Not for the dictator, but for the death of her hope and the loss of confidence in a government that she thinks is worse than the one that came before it.

"I want safety," she said. "Saddam's time was a safe time for us."

* * *

Abbas Chaychan never returned to Iraq after the war. He remains an exile, part of an Iraqi diaspora that grows daily. As many as two million Iraqis have fled their homeland since the war began, according to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Up to 1.7 million Iraqis have been displaced internally.

It's the largest refugee movement in the Middle East since the displacement of the Palestinians in 1948, the UN reports. About eight per cent of Iraq's population before the war has left; up to 50,000 more Iraqis are displaced each month.

Bodies are stacked at the morgue, mothers weep and children are maimed.

For four years Iraqis have waited for better days, and they weep for the time lost: no liberty, no freedom, just death.

Chaychan's most recent poem doesn't lament Saddam's death as much as it pines for the era when he lived.

"I cried & I didn't cry for you," he wrote. "I cried for the time that put you in a tomb."

-- McClatchy Newspapers

Special correspondents Laith Hammoudi, Zaineb Obeid and Sahar Issa contributed to this report.

Bloodshed by the numbers

How many have died since the March 20, 2003

invasion?

COALITION MILITARY DEATHS

* U.S.: 3,188

* U.K.: 134

* Other coalition countries: 124

* Total: 3,446

(Through March 7, 2007. Source: Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, which monitors news releases from coalition departments of defence)

IRAQI CIVILIAN DEATHS

58,022 to 63,800

(Through March 7, 2007. Source: Iraqi Body Count, British-based anti-war group which monitors news reports.)

'EXCESS DEATHS'

655,000

(As of Oct. 11, 2006. Source is polling done by Iraqi doctors, supervised by a team of epidemiologists from Johns Hopkins University. The study compared death rates under the pre-invasion Saddam regime with current rates, and concludes that 655,000 people may have died who would still be living had the coalition not invaded.)

---

© 2007 Winnipeg Free Press. All Rights Reserved.

Gonzales starts to lose it

After Tough Week, Gonzales Says He Remains Focused

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 11, 2007; A09

Excerpt

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales met privately with top members of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday to offer an olive branch, but he did not seem too happy about it.

Gonzales had agreed to let Congress limit his powers and interview Justice Department officials as part of an escalating battle over the firings of eight U.S. attorneys. He knew that another scandal on FBI abuses was about to break and that some GOP lawmakers were hinting that he was in over his head.

"What else do you want us to do?" the normally taciturn Gonzales asked in exasperation, according to several officials with knowledge of the meeting.

A response to Time magazine's "Why they hate each other"

Iraq

Sunday, March 11, 2007

"Sunnis vs. Shi'ites, Why they Hate each other. What's really driving the civil war that's tearing the Middle East apart."

So proclaims the cover of the March 5th, 2007, issue of Time magazine, U.S and Pacific editions. Presumably, they know better than to put it on the cover of the European edition.

It reminds me of the "Iraq at war with itself" cover of The Economist, May 2006, which featured the face of a bawling Iraqi man. I commented on it here.

Then it was the face of grief. Now it's the face of hate.

In both cases, Iraqis are portrayed as unfortunately emotional before the typical reader of Time, whose "person of 2006", let us recall, was You, the face of which is rationality itself, a computer.

Note the shades of "Why do they hate us?" which followed the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

Beyond this (staged and unconvincing) image of these two hate-ful Iraqis, we find the now familiar American explanation of these 'hateful warring sects', in Behind the Sunni-Shi'ite Divide.

The lead-in from the contents page gives the gist:

The war between the two Islamic sects has left the U.S.'s hopes of building a stable Iraq in ruins. A look at the roots of the struggle —and whether anything can stop it.

This must be such a comfort to American readers. The guerrilla war against their soldiers, which is intensifying even during the present security crackdown, is not mentioned in this Time article.

Thus, in the space of a year the "narrative" has been transformed from the Iraq which America has ruined to the ruins of the "U.S.'s hopes". So it's Americans we should empathize with. If it wasn't for these over-emotional Iraqis, they'd have rebuilt the country, packed up and gone home by now.

No wonder they didn't run this cover in the European edition. They think little enough of America as it is.

Rather slap a declaration on its cover, and then presuming to clear up any lingering misunderstanding in the actual news story, Time would do better to form the words into a question: Why do they hate each other?

It's a good question, because until recently, whether Iraqis were Sunni or Shi'ite was not the defining feature of their identity.

To be sure, the common view that Sunnis, though a minority, controlled Iraq and discriminated against Shi'ites, who deeply resented their treatment, is amply supported by the historical record.

But it wasn't the doing of Saddam Hussein. It goes back to the days of the Ottoman empire (1534-1918), when Sunni Arabs from around Baghdad were placed in positions of power to ward off the threat of Iran connected Shia clerics.

The British continued this practice during the first half of the last century when they took control of the region. Integration of Sunnis and Shi'ias began as soon as the British left (although their monarch remained) and it continued under the Baathists.

More recently:

The real tension in Iraq in the latter 1980s was between the majority of the population, Sunnis as well as Shias, for whom religious belief and practice were significant values, and the secular Baathists, rather than between Sunnis and Shias. Although the Shias had been underrepresented in government posts in the period of the monarchy, they made substantial progress in the educational, business, and legal fields. Their advancement in other areas, such as the opposition parties, was such that in the years from 1952 to 1963, before the Baath Party came to power, Shias held the majority of party leadership posts. Observers believed that in the late 1980s Shias were represented at all levels of the party roughly in proportion to government estimates of their numbers in the population. For example, of the eight top Iraqi leaders who in early 1988 sat with Husayn on the Revolutionary Command Council--Iraq's highest governing body-- three were Arab Shias (of whom one had served as Minister of Interior), three were Arab Sunnis, one was an Arab Christian, and one a Kurd. On the Regional Command Council--the ruling body of the party--Shias actually predominated. During the war, a number of highly competent Shia officers have been promoted to corps commanders. The general who turned back the initial Iranian invasions of Iraq in 1982 was a Shia. [Helen Chapin Metz. ed. Iraq: A Country Study, 1988]

During the Presidency of Saddam Hussein, integration of Sunnis and Shi'ites continued. Most of his government were Shi'ia. As I recall, the majority of those "most wanted" depicted on playing cards by the U.S. Department of Defense, are Shi-ites, not Sunnis.

They married each other and lived together as Muslims and Iraqis. A little over a year ago they were fighting together side-by-side in the resistance to the occupation.[Link]

So well might we ask, Why all the sectarian killing now?

Most basically, if someone tries to kill you and yours, the emotions of anger and hate are a normal response. When there is no State justice system and given Iraqis tribal sense of honour, that those who are attacked will retaliate should surprise no one—least of all those inciting this civil war.

There is now a rat's nest of attacks and retaliation, causes and effects. But let's start with the event which seems to have transformed a united Iraqi resistance to the occupation into a civil war, the bombing of the al-Askari mosque, a little over a year ago.

My own thoughts on this at the time are in The al-Askari mosque: who were those masked gunmen?

Is it true that the mood on the street following the destruction of the dome was anti-Sunni? Not according to Sami Ramadani, writing in The Guardian: The word on the street was (and is) that this was the work of the U.S. and its allies—U.S. and Israeli flags were burned in protest—not Sunni extremists. The mood was anti-occupation, not sectarian.

So who were those masked gunmen who took around 12 hours to plant the explosives under that dome, in the then U.S. controlled Samarra?

It's a question many Iraqis are asking even now. It underlies Akram Abdulrazzaq's Iraq's Car Bombers—Who are They? Why is it that of the thousands of car bombs, not a single owner of these cars has been identified?

He goes on:

Before Baghdad fell to U.S. troops, the country had a sophisticated car registration system, and the authorities were able to identify the owner of any wrecked vehicle in a matter of minutes.

So why not now?

Don't these cars have registrations and serial numbers? We have yet to hear of the authorities identifying the owner of a single vehicle used in a car bombing or even where it came from.

Iraqis, he argues, are not persuaded by the authorities' "naive excuses".

They need the Americans and the Iraqi authorities they support to tell them where in the world all these car bombs are coming from. How is it that they manage to sneak through so many American and Iraqi checkpoints and road blocks, especially in Baghdad?

With more than 80,000 American troops now in Baghdad, and every modern means of technology available to them, how indeed.

Amin al-Hashmee, in Hiding Iraq’s Death Squads is No Game, asks:

How can one ignore the fact that with all of their capabilities, the occupiers and the government failed to prevent a vehicle carrying hundreds of kilos of explosives from freely crossing the border, traveling the streets and passing through check point after check point? On top of that, the authorities have been unable to identify even a single car bomb or person who prepares them; and they have failed to inhibit their passage through government checkpoints on their way to park amid shops and innocent people.

Wouldn't you think that the "security services" would make a special effort at the February 12 ceremony at the Shorja market to mark the one year anniversary of the bombing of the al-Askari mosque? Two car bombs. At least 80 people killed. [Link]

Where did these cars come from? Who owned them? How is it that the perpetrators of these car bombings are always "unknown"?

A lot of the cars used as car bombs, you may be surprised to learn, come from the United States. So argues Debbie Hamilton of Right Truth. She believes that they are supplied by "Muslim/Arab used car dealers", in support of the "terrorists", but a rather more obvious conclusion is possible.

Consider also Are the 70,000 Pentagon Mercs in Iraq killing Shias, Sunnis? published in Aljazeera, a review of Robert Pelton's book Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror:

Could some of the Pentagon’s hired Mercenaries be the real perpetrators of the daily bombings and assassinations of Sunnis and Shias in Iraq?

Is the current disaster taking place in the war-torn country part of a wider plot to provoke a U.S./Israeli planned civil war that will dismember Iraq?

Just who is accountable for this privatized war machine?

And while we're on this topic, whatever became of those two British SAS soldiers, disguised as Arabs, caught about to plant a bomb near a religious festival in Basra? John Pilger's account is here. My own is here. See also Steve Watson's Who are the Real Terrorists in Iraq?

Why isn't Time magazine asking questions such as these? Americans (and the British, come to that) have such an exaggerated opinion of themselves that they don't believe "they" could have a hand in inciting this civil war.

If the recent BBC World Service poll, which evaluates the USA alongside Iran, Israel and North Korea, is any guide, the rest of the world appears not to have this problem.

Links
Ali Al-Hamdani, An "Open Letter" to the Iraqi Resistance; Call for "Joint Action"

Fred Halliday, Sunni, Shi'a and the "Trotskyists of Islam" Open Democracy, 9-2-2007

Jessica Long Analyzing the pandemic of global American hatred.

Jan Morris Once the most beloved country in the world, the US is now the most hated.

01:18 PM in Iraq | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's Israel that incites hate

March 11, 2007 12:36 am


BETHLEHEM, Palestine--I am surprised that you find so terrible some of the quotes you record ["A steady diet of hate for kids in Palestine," Feb. 11] from Palestinian textbooks, such as "Palestine will be liberated by its men, its women, its young ones and its elderly." Surely something of this sort was said by Americans fighting for their independence during the Revolutionary War. Their desire to sacrifice for freedom echoes some of our first generals: "[A]ppealing to Heaven for the justice of our cause, we determine to die or be free" (Joseph Warren, American account of the Battle of Lexington, 1775).

I spent three months in Palestine and Israel. I have been a witness to injustice that rarely makes it to mainstream news in the U.S.

I have spent time with families whose houses have been demolished; families who are left with no means of income after their fields have been destroyed; men who have been tortured in prison and who are nevertheless seeking a nonviolent way to resist; children who have been shot while playing; children who have been beaten by soldiers; and children whose siblings are in jail simply for being members of a political party.

The lives of Palestinians are devalued at the expense of Israelis. Palestinian children have little or no access to play areas, because of Israeli building restrictions and continued confiscation of land. While settlements atop hills in Palestine use water for swimming pools, gardens, and open spaces, Palestinians must pay four times as much to Israel for water.

Sewage from these settlements often runs directly onto Palestinian farmland.

Palestinian children in refugee camps face raids, where soldiers come in the middle of the night, break into their houses, and sometimes make an arrest or simply break things and leave.

You state that Palestinians do not learn about the Holocaust. Well, Israelis are not taught in school about the history of their country beyond the Jewish perspective. It is not taught, for example, that in the 1948 war more than 400 Palestinian towns were destroyed, and thousands of Palestinians were expelled or killed.

I have found that Israeli soldiers know little about why they receive orders, and Israeli civilians are ignorant of what happens in the West Bank. Please consider the following typical examples:

The first week I was here, I met a Palestinian family whose 11-year-old son was shot from a watchtower while playing on his porch.

I told an Israeli girl in her 20s about it. Her reply: "That couldn't have happened. It would have been on the news."

Two weeks ago we received a phone call from a family whose sons, 17 and 18 years old, had been beaten and arrested by the Israeli Defense Force in the village of Budrus.

I called the spokesperson for the IDF. I did not get in direct contact with the general. Instead I talked to an office worker. His response: "This doesn't have to do with us. We just talk to the media. But soldiers do not hurt innocent people. I am really sorry."

Last week I asked an Israeli soldier if he knew where the Green Line (the internationally recognized border that gives Palestine 22 percent of its original territory) is--since bulldozers, 12 kilometers away from this border, removed 700-year-old olive trees, the livelihood of 200 people.

His answer: "I don't know where the border is. I am just following orders."

There are actually many schools in Palestine that teach about Israelis and Palestinians living peacefully together. The Hope Flowers School near Bethlehem works to bring Palestinian and Jewish Israelis together to teach about reconciliation.

This school faces a court order--from Israel--that its cafeteria be demolished to make room for a security road. In addition, the school's water well will be taken. This school is even denied the right to repair the road that leads to the school.

Palestinians do not need to learn hate from textbooks. They can learn it when they see what happens to their friends and families, their schools, and their land. They learn it by having dignity and rights taken away.

The Web site Palestinian Media Watch teaches Americans to hate. It turns the parents and teachers of Palestine into caricatures of terrorists whom we can easily blame.

Every parent and teacher I have met here is struggling to meet basic needs--and at the same time is teaching children that education is the key to freedom. But you cannot tie a cat down and ask it to make peace.

It would be much more useful if the Web site were devoted to America's role in unilaterally supporting Israel and how we can reach a solution that is just.

It would also be helpful if Americans came to visit Palestine, to see for themselves.
Caroline Borden, from Catlett, works in Bethlehem, Palestine.

Copyright 2007 The Free Lance-Star Publishing Company.