LONDON: The bizarre Russian spy poison plot thickened with an autopsy on Alexander Litvinenko's poison-wracked body on Friday, confirmation that at least two British Airways planes had been contaminated by the deadly isotope Polonium 210 and the British government telling parliament that 12 of 24 London locations showed traces of radioactivity.
Even as another Russian poison mystery emerged with the family of former prime minister Yegor Gaidar alleging he too had been poisoned while attending a conference in Ireland last week, the post mortem on Litvinenko's body set out to establish the sequence and chronology of events that ended in his mysterious death in London.
The widening investigation into the former KGB colonel's death has already seen British Airways embark on the difficult process of contacting at least 33,000 passengers and 3,000 staff because they flew on planes thought to be contaminated. Amid raging speculation about the radioactive trail left by Litvinenko's alleged assassins, experts suggested that the polonium-210 traces found at various London locations could have leaked from a container.
Alternatively, they say, the highly-toxic alpha-emitting radioactive poison could have been present in people's bodily fluids. But even as the public health scare reached bizarre and unsustainable levels and the British home secretary made a statement in Parliament confirming that half of the 24 crime-scene locations in London were radioactive, Litvinenko's alleged killers were said to have most likely dropped the polonium on the floor of a leading London hotel.
According to reports in the British press, Scotland Yard is focusing on "rogue elements" in the Russian state and tentatively ruling out involvement by the Kremlin and President Putin. Police are said to be interested in the movements of five or more Russian men who are alleged to have arrived in London from Moscow to watch a football match.
Friday's post mortem comes exactly 24 hours after the inquest into Litvinenko's death opened and was adjourned at a London court with the coroner darkly confirming that the level of polonium-210 in his system showed it had come from a source "other than a natural one".
Litvinenko's friend Alex Goldfarb, also a Russian dissident and London-based exile, told the inquest that the flights being investigated by BA and by police "reinforces the theory that the origin of this material (Polonium 210) that killed Alexander was in Moscow".
Meanwhile, it has emerged that Britain's culture secretary Tessa Jowell and the head of London's 2012 Olympics bid, Lord Sebastian Coe travelled on one of the radiation-contaminated aircraft in the course of their official work.
Scotland Yard's tentative all-clear for Putin comes after more than a week of hysterical speculation over Moscow's dark and deadly deeds.
28.11.06
Why America Will Fail in Iraq
The future of Iraq may depend more on the policies of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr than those of U.S. President George W. Bush. The young firebrand’s views remain clouded in mystery, in part because he and his loyalists usually refuse to speak to the Western media. In a rare interview, his spokesman, Baha al-Araji, sounds off on Iraq’s troubled past, present, and future.
FOREIGN POLICY: Was Iraq better off under Saddam Hussein than it is today?
Baha Al-Araji: The Iraqi people knew terrible oppression and prejudice from the dictator Saddam Hussein, and the Iraqi people once thought that the American project would end that. But because the American commanders lack any awareness of the nature of the Iraqi people, their presence has actually increased the level of oppression.
Saddam Hussein killed my father and my elder brother and jailed one of my brothers and my mother for a long time. Some of my family escaped Iraq and lived in exile, while others remained in the country. Now we are able to see, unfortunately, that the situation during Saddam’s reign was better than today because then, the oppression was targeted and predictable. Today, danger and oppression overwhelm all Iraqi people without exception.
FP: Why are the Americans failing in Iraq?
BAA: The situation in Iraq differs from that in the United States. There is bureaucratic competition for power [in the United States]. The Department of Defense took control for a certain period, and then the State Department did. And this kind of alternating power and influence is good. But that is the United States. The same is not true in Iraq. Thus, the American project in Iraq will fail.
Sometimes, the Iraqi government reaches a good agreement with the political advisor of the U.S. embassy here in Baghdad. But, then, suddenly, in the night, some military commander will [attack] a certain local community. And so negates the accord that was reached between the Iraqi government and the U.S. embassy’s political advisor.
The Americans should look at the Iraqis as Iraqis, not [as] Americans in training.
FP: Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki wants to disband the militias or find some way to incorporate them into the government. What does this mean for Sadr’s movement and the Mahdi Army?
BAA: I personally disagree with [that]. Whether or not these militias undermine the sovereignty of the Iraqi government is an open question. This question was provoked by the Maliki government. [They] raised it for purely political reasons in an effort to provoke a clash between the Sadr movement and the current government.
The emergence of militias in Iraq is a natural response to the situation here. There is a principle which says that for every action, there is a reaction. So, when there are occupation forces on the ground, there should naturally be a resistance to that occupation. We choose peaceful and diplomatic resistance, so the government and the coalition forces should not exaggerate our activities. Because those of us who are affiliated with the Sadr movement are sensitive, we don’t like to provoke this contentious question.
Do you know that 60 percent of the Mahdi Army already serves in government programs and installations? One of our biggest challenges with this issue is getting the Americans to understand it. The problem is that the U.S. leaders in Iraq, even though they are here, still think in an American way. But Iraq totally differs in its nature, its economy, and its culture from the United States.
FP: Many people in the American government blame the Mahdi Army for some of the insecurity. How do you respond to these critics?
BAA: There are many terrorists who can acquire and get this green badge [pointing to his Green Zone credential]. Terrorists can easily gain access to the Green Zone. And they enter with weapons. This highly protected area is already penetrated. Some of these activities have been disclosed by the Iraqi government and the Americans as the actions of the Mahdi Army. But these actions are actually not linked to [us], because our army is ideological.
FP: In the elections in December 2005, the Sadr movement was part of the United Iraqi Alliance. But now you’re saying that you’re anti-government. What are the relations like between the parties in the UIA?
BAA: Because I am affiliated with the Sadr movement, I received 40,000 votes. If I had run as an individual candidate, I would only have received 3,000 votes.... But 70 percent of these attacks, and this is my personal viewpoint, derive from disputes between the leadership of the political parties, whether they are in the council of representatives or the government. This is unacceptable.
FP: What should be the role of Iraq’s neighbors?
BAA: We have problems, unfortunately, with all of Iraq’s neighbors. Some are historical problems. Some are ethnic problems … The Shiites are the majority in Iraq. But, in the Islamic world, they are the minority. And our neighbors, the Arab countries that border us, are 100 percent Sunni. So they fear the situation in Iraq. To be sure, some of the problems we face today in Iraq are of our own making. But the biggest challenges derive from Iraq’s neighbors. Our mistake is that we didn’t go to them in the beginning and tell them about the nature of Shiites in Iraq, that we are peaceful. But the real problem—the enduring challenge—is that Iraq’s neighbors won’t tolerate a Shiite-governed Iraq. They think that there is major collaboration between Iraqi Shia and Iran, but we will control this. It is a very big mistake to think that our community works at the behest of Iranian allies and friends.
I don’t think Iran likes Iraq. Iran is the beneficiary of this current situation. Iran’s enemy is the United States, so Iran does everything in its power to fuel instability in the new Iraq so that Iran can remain strong and keep the United States distracted. The reason nobody is doing anything about Iran’s nuclear program is that they are all too busy trying to salvage Iraq.
We also have a small problem with Syria. Saddam’s regime was affiliated with the same school and political party that rules Syria. In Syria, there are many in the local Baath Party leadership who think that the situation in Iraq is a big loss for the Baath Party. Though the Syrian Baathist ideology differs from Saddam’s, there is still a desire [there] to see him reinstated. And this sense of party solidarity has led them to incite instability in Iraq in order to ensure that the occupiers—and the new government they support—fail.
FP: Do you think Kurdistan will split off from Iraq? Will the south also secede?
BAA: Of course other regions want to secede. Would you want to be part of this mess by choice? If you believed that you could build a prosperous life and leave the forces of violence to fight their own petty wars of attrition on the streets of Baghdad, you would do it. These threats of secession say nothing of Iraqi unity or fragmentation. People just want a normal life.
This interview is excerpted from an upcoming volume of the Oxford International Review.
Bush Blames Al Qaeda for Rising Iraq Violence
No DUH-bya, its the unwanted occupation and take over of their country by american troops
TALLINN, Estonia, Nov. 28 — President Bush today blamed al Qaeda for the rising wave of sectarian violence in Iraq, and refused to label the recent surge in killings there a civil war.
"There's a lot of sectarian violence taking place, fomented in my opinion because of the attacks by al Qaeda causing people to seek reprisal," Mr. Bush said. Referring to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al Qaeda leader in Iraq who was killed by American forces over the summer, he added, "The plan of Mr. Zarqawi was to foment sectarian violence."
The remarks, at a press conference here with President Toomas Hendrik Ilves of Estonia, were Mr. Bush's first on the situation in Iraq since a series of bombings last Thursday killed more than 200 people in a Shiite district of Baghdad.
Mr. Bush also had harsh words for Syria and Iran, and reiterated his stance that he does not intend to negotiate directly with those nations to enlist their help in ending the violence in Iraq. He said he would leave such talks to the government of Iraq, "a sovereign nation which is conducting is own foreign policy."
Last week's bombings in Baghdad constituted the deadliest single attack since the American invasion. The following day, Shiite militiamen staged a vengeful reprisal, attacking Sunni mosques in Baghdad and in the nearby city of Baquba. The growing cycle of violence have prompted warnings from world leaders, including Jordan's King Abdullah and Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary General, that the region is at the brink of civil war.
But Mr. Bush, who heads to Jordan on Wednesday for two days of meetings with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of Iraq, dismissed a question about whether a civil war has indeed erupted. "There's all kinds of speculation," he said, adding, "No question about it, it's tough."
As the tensions in Iraq have escalated, so have the tensions between the Bush and Maliki governments. The president said today that he would be asking Mr. Maliki to lay out a strategy for controlling the violence. "I will ask him what is required, and what is your strategy," Mr. Bush said.
Mr. Bush arrived here in Tallinn late Monday night, becoming the first sitting United States president to visit Estonia, a tiny Baltic nation sandwiched between Russia and the Baltic Sea. The president is here on his way to Riga, Latvia, where he is to attend a N.A.T.O. summit before his Jordan trip.
Afghanistan will top the agenda at the N.A.T.O. meeting. The alliance has committed 32,000 troops to that country, but many nations have imposed restrictions on their troops that N.A.T.O. commanders say are hampering the mission. Mr. Bush is expected to press for the lifting of those restrictions.
24.11.06
Big Brother, Big Business
Big Brother, Big Business
Video Broadcast 11/01/06 - Runtime 120 Minutes
Video Broadcast 11/01/06 - Runtime 120 Minutes
Big Brother, Big Business
CNBC Special Report:
Technology is being used to monitor Americans more than ever before.
"Big Brother Big Business," CNBC takes a look at the companies behind the powerful business of personal information and the people whose lives are affected by it, including: a woman who lost her job due to mistaken identity; a man whose cell phone records were stolen by his former employer; a woman whose personal information was stolen from a company she had never heard of; a man who discovered his rental car company was tracking his every move.
The documentary also looks at how the FBI, the Border Patrol, police departments and schools are using biometric technologies to establish identity as well as an inside peek at an AOL division that works solely to satisfy the requests of law enforcement for information about AOL's members.
Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq
Video Description
This is a brief excerpt from John Pilger's "Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq" (2000 - UK). The fact that NOT ONE U.S. television station - "public" or private - aired and discussed superb films such as this documentary or "Hidden Wars of Desert Storm" (Ungerman/Brohy 2000) in the run up to the invasion and occupation of Iraq proves, perhaps more than any other single thing, that America's media system is a failure.
bio: http://about-scott-sanders.blogspot.com/
blog: http://www.chicagomediaaction.org/
Personal Message
Hey! If you ever wonder why I do this...This is why I do this...
Last Summer I saw oo much broken kids bodies and broken sculs...
Here you can find the truth:
18.11.06
Civil rights leaders moved by King memorial groundbreaking
Civil rights leaders moved by King memorial groundbreaking
Washington — A scant half-mile from where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and urged a divided nation to complete the work of the great emancipator, ground was broken Monday for a monument to King's place in American history.
From across the political spectrum, dignitaries gathered to mark the moment and reflect on King's legacy. They included former President Bill Clinton, who signed legislation to create the monument, and President Bush, who declared, "An assassin's bullet cannot shatter the dream. It continues to inspire millions around the world."
But among the most visibly moved among the thousands at the site on the National Mall was one who shared the podium with King when his "I Have a Dream" speech gave momentum to the movement for new civil rights laws.
U.S. Rep. John Lewis, a leader of the 1963 March on Washington that culminated in King's speech, broke down in tears as he held a groundbreaking shovel.
"It's unreal. It's so fitting and appropriate," the Atlanta Democrat said of the ceremony. "Out of all the people that spoke that day, I'm the only one who is still around."
Also on hand were several of King's children, who this year laid to rest their mother, Coretta Scott King, near their father's tomb at the King Center in Atlanta.
"My mother reminded us on so many occasions that my father just wanted to be a great pastor," the Rev. Bernice A. King, the civil rights leaders' daughter. "Little did he know he would be a great pastor to the world."
Former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, both former King deputies, and other leaders of the civil rights movement listened as Bush spoke of the importance of the monument's location, flanked by the Lincoln Memorial and the Jefferson Memorial.
"It will unite a man who declared the promise of America and the man who defended the promise of America with the man who redeemed the promise of America," Bush said.
Also attending the ceremony were luminaries such as Oprah Winfrey, poet Maya Angelou, U.S. Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, Rep. Harold Ford Jr. of Tennessee, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and fashion mogul Tommy Hilfiger — a major donor to the project.
"I am who I am because of Dr. King and his hope for this country," Winfrey, the billionaire talk-show queen, said as she arrived at the ceremony.
Fifty students from across the country who won an essay contest, including 18-year-old Natasha Lawson of Augusta State University, also took part in the event.
"He's done so much [for America]," Lawson said. "He would really appreciate this."
The 4-acre monument has been in the works for more than a decade. In 1996, Clinton signed legislation proposing creation of the monument, and in 1999, it won a coveted place on the Mall.
In 2003, concerns about plans for a host of new memorials led Congress to declare the Mall a completed work of civic art, and lawmakers imposed a moratorium on new construction. But the effort for the King memorial overcame the objections, and in 2005, the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Project Foundation launched a drive that has so far raised at least $65.5 million.
One more obstacle remains to the construction of the monument: raising the remainder of the estimated $100 million cost, a project Hilfiger and hip-hop entrepreneur Russell Simmons are helping to lead.
Harry Johnson, president of the foundation, said he hopes construction will be completed by spring 2008.
The entrance to the memorial will include a central sculpture called "The Mountain of Despair." Recalling King's call in his 1963 speech to "hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope," it is split to signify the racially and socially divided American that inspired King's nonviolent efforts.
Obama, who has said he is considering a presidential run in 2008, imagined bringing his two young children to the memorial when it is completed and passing through the mountain.
"He never did live to see the promised land from that mountaintop," Obama said. "But he pointed the way for us."
Niches around the monument grounds will honor others who, like King, gave their lives to the cause of equality.
"This is not a one-man movement," said Young as those gathered around him gripped shovels. "As we turn the dirt on this ground, let us go back to our communities and turn the dirt."
The Associated Press contributed comments from Sen. Barack Obama.
17.11.06
Pakistan Link Seen in Afghan Suicide Attacks - New York Times
Pakistan Link Seen in Afghan Suicide Attacks - New York Times
Pakistan has been looming in the background since BEFORE 9/11.
Why their role has not been further investigated...may have something to do with the pre-9/11 wining and dining of Pakistani ISI.
Pakistan has been looming in the background since BEFORE 9/11.
Why their role has not been further investigated...may have something to do with the pre-9/11 wining and dining of Pakistani ISI.
Pakistan Link Seen in Afghan Suicide Attacks
Allauddin Khan/Associated Press
A suicide bomber hit a NATO convoy in October in southern Afghanistan. Recent attacks aimed at civilians.
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Nov. 13 — Afghan and NATO security forces have recently rounded up several men like Hafiz Daoud Shah, a 21-year-old unemployed Afghan refugee who says he drove across the border to Afghanistan in September in a taxi with three other would-be suicide bombers.
The Reach of War 
Akhtar Soomro for The New York Times
Ahmed Shah, right, father of an Afghan who returned to Kabul as a suicide bomber, at his home in Karachi, Pakistan, with another son, Nadir.
Every case, Afghan security officials say, is similar to that of Mr. Shah, who repeated his story in a rare jailhouse interview with a reporter in Kabul, the Afghan capital. The trail of organizing, financing and recruiting the bombers who have carried out a rising number of suicide attacks in Afghanistan traces back to Pakistan, they say.
“Every single bomber or I.E.D. in one way or another is linked to Pakistan,” a senior Afghan intelligence official said, referring to improvised explosive devices like roadside bombs. “Their reasons are to keep Afghanistan destabilized, to make us fail, and to keep us fragmented.” He would speak on the subject only if not identified.
A senior United States military official based in Afghanistan agreed for the most part. “The strong belief is that recruiting, training and provision of technical equipment for I.E.D.’s in the main takes place outside Afghanistan,” he said. By I.E.D.’s he meant suicide bombers as well. He, too, did not want his name used because he knew his remarks were likely to offend Pakistani leaders.
The charge is in fact one of the most contentious that Afghan and American officials have leveled at the Pakistani leadership, which frequently denies the infiltration problem and insists that the roots of the Taliban insurgency lie in Afghanistan.
The dispute continues to divide Afghan and Pakistani leaders, even as the Bush administration tries to push them toward greater cooperation in fighting the Taliban, whose ranks have swelled to as many as 10,000 fighters this year.
A year ago, roadside bombs and suicide attacks were rare occurrences in Afghanistan. But they have grown more frequent and more deadly. There have been more than 90 suicide attacks in Afghanistan this year. In September and October, nearly 100 people were killed in such attacks.
Afghan security forces say that in the same period, they captured 17 suspected bombers, two of them would-be suicide bombers; NATO forces say they caught 10 people planning suicide bomb attacks in recent weeks.
Last week, for the first time, a Pakistani intelligence official acknowledged that suicide bombers were being trained in Bajaur, a small Pathan tribal area along the border. In a briefing given only on condition of anonymity, the official cited the training as one reason for an airstrike this month on a religious school there that killed more than 80 people.
The arrests of Mr. Shah and others like him, Afghan and NATO officials say, show that groups intent on carrying out attacks in Afghanistan continue to operate easily inside Pakistan.
Mr. Shah said he was one of four would-be suicide bombers who arrived in Kabul from Pakistan on Sept. 30. One of them killed 12 people and wounded 40 at the pedestrian entrance to the Interior Ministry the same day.
The attack was the first suicide bomb aimed not at foreign troops but at Afghans, and it terrified Kabul residents. The dead included a woman and her child.
By Mr. Shah’s account, it could have been far worse. Mr. Shah said he and his cohort had planned to blow themselves up in four separate attacks in the capital. That they failed was due partly to luck and partly to vigilance by Afghan and NATO security forces. But their plot represented a clear escalation in the bombers’ ambitions in Afghanistan.
Wearing a black prayer cap and long beard, Mr. Shah recounted his own involvement in the presence of two Afghan intelligence officers at a jail run by the National Directorate of Security. The Afghan intelligence officers offered up Mr. Shah because, unlike others in custody facing similar charges, his investigation was over. He is now awaiting trial.
Mr. Shah showed no signs of fear or discomfort in front of his guards. But after two weeks in detention, he complained of tiredness and headaches from a longstanding but unspecified mental ailment, something his father confirmed in a separate interview at the family home in Karachi, the southern Pakistani port city.
At first Mr. Shah, who was educated through the sixth grade, denied that he intended to be a suicide bomber, but said he had gone to Afghanistan only to fight a jihad, or holy war. “I was just thinking of fighting a jihad against the infidels,” he said. “I was hearing there was fighting in Afghanistan and seeing it in the newspapers.”
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15.11.06
War Crimes Suit Filed Against Rumsfeld in Germany
War Crimes Suit Filed Against Rumsfeld in Germany
BRAVO!
By Joshua Daniel Hershfield 11/14/06
An international grouping of lawyers has filed a 220-page lawsuit, calling on German prosecutors to investigate Donald Rumsfeld for sanctioning torture. The complaint asks Germany's federal prosecutor Monika Harms to open an investigation and criminal prosecution that will examine the responsibility of high ranking US officials in the authorization of war crimes in the context of the so-called "War on Terror."
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German law allows the pursuit of war crimes cases regardless of where in the world they occur.
Torture Suit Star Witness, Former. Abu Ghraib Head Janis Karpinski Points to Signed Rumsfeld Memo Listing Harsh Interrogation Techniques read or listen
The Center for Constitutional Rights: Please join our effort! The letter appears below, first in German and then in English. The German Prosecutor has discretion to decide whether to initiate an investigation. It is critical that he hear from you so he knows that people around the world support this effort.
A Trucker’s View from the Road
Kim, long distance trucker and mom, writes about Marine returned form Fallujah, working at a Denny’s in Rollo MO:
In Fallujah, it was like in the Bible,” he began slowly. “When they marked the houses with lamb’s blood, and the Angel of Death flew over and killed the firstborn sons in all the houses that weren’t marked. They marked the houses…and the ones that weren’t marked, they had us go in and open fire and…” He stopped speaking and only made gestures.
“The kids?” asked my co-driver.
“Yes.”
The waiter’s words came a little faster now. “If people knew what was really happening over there, they’d rise up and say, ‘bring our kids home NOW!’ If people knew, they wouldn’t stand for it.”
Also in the Center for Constitutional Rights:
If Donald Rumsfeld is going to be held accountable for authorizing torture and other human rights abuses, we need your help .
Today, CCR filed a criminal complaint in Germany under their universal jurisdiction law charging Rumsfeld, Gonzales and other high-ranking officials in the Bush administration with war crimes . The complaint was filed on behalf of 11 former detainees who were victims of severe beatings, sleep and food deprivation, hooding and sexual abuse in Abu Ghraib, and one detainee at Guantnamo Bay subjected to torture and abuse there under Rumsfelds specific authorization.
By clicking on the link here, you can send a letter to the German Prosecutor and show your support for justice for torture victims and accountability for perpetrators.
WHY RUMSFELD?
CCR has reviewed new evidence and documentation that lays the responsibility for U.S. torture program directly at Rumsfelds feet. Rumsfeld himself authorized severe special interrogation techniques and other abusive, unlawful treatment of detainees. Rumsfelds resignation last week means that he can no longer claim immunity from international prosecution as a sitting government official.
WHY GERMANY?
Germany appears to be the court of last resort for a war crimes prosecution of Rumsfeld because the United States has tried to close the door to accountability. For example, the United States has failed to take any action to investigate high-level involvement in the torture program; Congress passed the Military Commissions Act last month, which tries to shield American officials from being prosecuted for war crimes here; and the United States has refused to join the International Criminal Court and has barred the Iraq from prosecuting U.S. officials in that country.
On the other hand, as a signatory to the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court, German law recognizes the principle of universal jurisdiction: that grave breaches of international law like the U.S. torture program authorized by Rumsfeld, must be investigated and, where called for, prosecuted no matter where the crime was committed or the nationality of those involved. CCR has filed this complaint in Germany because we represent torture victims who have yet to see justice, the truth has yet to be investigated and the United States is evading accountability.
Together we can make a difference. Stand with our plaintiffs who include Nobel Peace Prize winners and the former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture and tell the German Prosecutor that you support opening an investigation. With your support, we can show the world community that Americans think torture is immoral and illegal, and that its perpetrators -- wherever they are found -- must be held accountable. Act now.
Sincerely,
Vincent Warren
Executive Director
For more information, please visit our website at www.ccr-ny.org .
11.11.06
Who is Robert Gates?
Consortiumnews.com
Its no secret the Duh-bya makes BAD choices about people with an unpalatable history for very prominent and important to the US of A positions. Just what will we discover about the most recent appointment of Robert Gates, who will replace Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defence.
At the time, Ben-Menashe was in jail in New York on charges of trying to sell cargo planes to Iran (charges which were later dismissed). When the interview took place, Gates was in a relatively obscure position, as deputy national security adviser to President George H.W. Bush and not yet a candidate for the top CIA job.
“I was accused on television and in the print media by people I had never spoken to or met of selling weapons to Iraq, or walking through Miami airport with suitcases full of cash, of being with Bush in Paris in October 1980 to meet with Iranians, and on and on,” Gates wrote in his memoirs. “The allegations of meetings with me around the world were easily disproved for the committee by my travel records, calendars, and countless witnesses.”
Not one of Gates’s “countless witnesses” who could vouch for Gates’s whereabouts was identified. Though Boren pledged publicly to have his investigators question Babayan, they never did.
When I first asked about this claim, congressional investigators told me that Gates had a perfect alibi for that day. They said Gates had been with Senator Boren at a speech in Oklahoma. But when we checked that out, we discovered that Gates’s Oklahoma speech had been on April 19, a day earlier. Gates also had not been with Boren and had returned to Washington by that evening.
Its no secret the Duh-bya makes BAD choices about people with an unpalatable history for very prominent and important to the US of A positions. Just what will we discover about the most recent appointment of Robert Gates, who will replace Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defence.
Robert Gates, George W. Bush’s choice to replace Donald Rumsfeld as Defense Secretary, is a trusted figure within the Bush Family’s inner circle, but there are lingering questions about whether Gates is a trustworthy public official.
The 63-year-old Gates has long faced accusations of collaborating with Islamic extremists in Iran, arming Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship in Iraq, and politicizing U.S. intelligence to conform with the desires of policymakers – three key areas that relate to his future job.
Gates skated past some of these controversies during his 1991 confirmation hearings to be CIA director – and the current Bush administration is seeking to slip Gates through the congressional approval process again, this time by pressing for a quick confirmation by the end of the year, before the new Democratic-controlled Senate is seated.
If Bush’s timetable is met, there will be no time for a serious investigation into Gates’s past.
Fifteen years ago, Gates got a similar pass when leading Democrats agreed to put “bipartisanship” ahead of careful oversight when Gates was nominated for the CIA job by President George H.W. Bush.
In 1991, despite doubts about Gates’s honesty over Iran-Contra and other scandals, the career intelligence officer brushed aside accusations that he played secret roles in arming both sides of the Iran-Iraq War. Since then, however, documents have surfaced that raise new questions about Gates’s sweeping denials.
For instance, the Russian government sent an intelligence report to a House investigative task force in early 1993 stating that Gates participated in secret contacts with Iranian officials in 1980 to delay release of 52 U.S. hostages then held in Iran, a move to benefit the presidential campaign of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
“R[obert] Gates, at that time a staffer of the National Security Council in the administration of Jimmy Carter, and former CIA Director George Bush also took part” in a meeting in Paris in October 1980, according to the Russian report, which meshed with information from witnesses who have alleged Gates’s involvement in the Iranian gambit.
Once in office, the Reagan administration did permit weapons to flow to Iran via Israel. One of the planes carrying an arms shipment was shot down over the Soviet Union on July 18, 1981, after straying off course, but the incident drew little attention at the time.
The arms flow continued, on and off, until 1986 when the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal broke. [For details, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege. For text of the Russian report, click here. To view the actual U.S. embassy cable that includes the Russian report, click here.]
Iraqgate Scandal
Gates also was implicated in a secret operation to funnel military assistance to Iraq in the 1980s, as the Reagan administration played off the two countries battling each other in the eight-year-long Iran-Iraq War.
Middle Eastern witnesses alleged that Gates worked on the secret Iraqi initiative, which included Saddam Hussein’s procurement of cluster bombs and chemicals used to produce chemical weapons for the war against Iran.
Gates denied those Iran-Iraq accusations in 1991 and the Senate Intelligence Committee – then headed by Gates’s personal friend, Sen. David Boren, D-Oklahoma – failed to fully check out the claims before recommending Gates for confirmation.
However, four years later – in early January 1995 – Howard Teicher, one of Reagan’s National Security Council officials, added more details about Gates’s alleged role in the Iraq shipments.
In a sworn affidavit submitted in a Florida criminal case, Teicher stated that the covert arming of Iraq dated back to spring 1982 when Iran had gained the upper hand in the war, leading President Reagan to authorize a U.S. tilt toward Saddam Hussein.
The effort to arm the Iraqis was “spearheaded” by CIA Director William Casey and involved his deputy, Robert Gates, according to Teicher’s affidavit. “The CIA, including both CIA Director Casey and Deputy Director Gates, knew of, approved of, and assisted in the sale of non-U.S. origin military weapons, ammunition and vehicles to Iraq,” Teicher wrote.
Ironically, that same pro-Iraq initiative involved Donald Rumsfeld, then Reagan’s special emissary to the Middle East. An infamous photograph from 1983 shows a smiling Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein.
Teicher described Gates’s role as far more substantive than Rumsfeld’s. “Under CIA Director [William] Casey and Deputy Director Gates, the CIA authorized, approved and assisted [Chilean arms dealer Carlos] Cardoen in the manufacture and sale of cluster bombs and other munitions to Iraq,” Teicher wrote.
Like the Russian report, the Teicher affidavit has never been never seriously examined. After Teicher submitted it to a federal court in Miami, the affidavit was classified and then attacked by Clinton administration prosecutors. They saw Teicher’s account as disruptive to their prosecution of a private company, Teledyne Industries, and one of its salesmen, Ed Johnson.
But the questions about Gates’s participation in dubious schemes involving hotspots such as Iran and Iraq are relevant again today because they reflect on Gates’s judgment, his honesty and his relationship with two countries at the top of U.S. military concerns.
About 140,000 U.S. troops are now bogged down in Iraq, 3 ½ years after President George W. Bush ordered an invasion to remove Saddam Hussein from power and eliminate his supposed WMD stockpiles. One reason the United States knew that Hussein once had those stockpiles was because the Reagan administration helped him procure the material needed for the WMD production in the 1980s.
The United States also is facing down Iran’s Islamic government over its nuclear ambitions. Though Bush has so far emphasized diplomatic pressure on Iran, he has pointedly left open the possibility of a military option.
Political Intelligence
Beyond the secret schemes to aid Iran and Iraq in the 1980s, Gates also stands accused of playing a central role in politicizing the CIA intelligence product, tailoring it to fit the interests of his political superiors, a legacy that some Gates critics say contributed to the botched CIA’s analysis of Iraqi WMD in 2002.
Before Gates’s rapid rise through the CIA’s ranks in the 1980s, the CIA’s tradition was to zealously protect the objectivity and scholarship of the intelligence. However, during the Reagan administration, that ethos collapsed.
At Gates’s confirmation hearings in 1991, former CIA analysts, including renowned Kremlinologist Mel Goodman, took the extraordinary step of coming out of the shadows to accuse Gates of politicizing the intelligence while he was chief of the analytical division and then deputy director.
The former intelligence officers said the ambitious Gates pressured the CIA’s analytical division to exaggerate the Soviet menace to fit the ideological perspective of the Reagan administration. Analysts who took a more nuanced view of Soviet power and Moscow’s behavior in the world faced pressure and career reprisals.
In 1981, Carolyn McGiffert Ekedahl of the CIA’s Soviet office was the unfortunate analyst who was handed the assignment to prepare an analysis on the Soviet Union’s alleged support and direction of international terrorism.
Contrary to the desired White House take on Soviet-backed terrorism, Ekedahl said the consensus of the intelligence community was that the Soviets discouraged acts of terrorism by groups getting support from Moscow for practical, not moral, reasons.
“We agreed that the Soviets consistently stated, publicly and privately, that they considered international terrorist activities counterproductive and advised groups they supported not to use such tactics,” Ekedahl said. “We had hard evidence to support this conclusion.”
But Gates took the analysts to task, accusing them of trying to “stick our finger in the policy maker’s eye,” Ekedahl testified
Ekedahl said Gates, dissatisfied with the terrorism assessment, joined in rewriting the draft “to suggest greater Soviet support for terrorism and the text was altered by pulling up from the annex reports that overstated Soviet involvement.”
In his memoirs, From the Shadows, Gates denied politicizing the CIA’s intelligence product, though acknowledging that he was aware of Casey’s hostile reaction to the analysts’ disagreement with right-wing theories about Soviet-directed terrorism.
Soon, the hammer fell on the analysts who had prepared the Soviet-terrorism report. Ekedahl said many analysts were “replaced by people new to the subject who insisted on language emphasizing Soviet control of international terrorist activities.”
A donnybrook ensued inside the U.S. intelligence community. Some senior officials responsible for analysis pushed back against Casey’s dictates, warning that acts of politicization would undermine the integrity of the process and risk policy disasters in the future.
Working with Gates, Casey also undertook a series of institutional changes that gave him fuller control of the analytical process. Casey required that drafts needed clearance from his office before they could go out to other intelligence agencies.
Casey appointed Gates to be director of the Directorate of Intelligence [DI] and consolidated Gates’s control over analysis by also making him chairman of the National Intelligence Council, another key analytical body.
“Casey and Gates used various management tactics to get the line of intelligence they desired and to suppress unwanted intelligence,” Ekedahl said.
Career Reprisals
With Gates using top-down management techniques, CIA analysts sensitive to their career paths intuitively grasped that they could rarely go wrong by backing the “company line” and presenting the worst-case scenario about Soviet capabilities and intentions, Ekedahl and other CIA analysts said.
Largely outside public view, the CIA’s proud Soviet analytical office underwent a purge of its most senior people. “Nearly every senior analyst on Soviet foreign policy eventually left the Office of Soviet Analysis,” Goodman said.
Gates made clear he intended to shake up the DI’s culture, demanding greater responsiveness to the needs of the White House and other policymakers.
In a speech to the DI’s analysts and managers on Jan. 7, 1982, Gates berated the division for producing shoddy analysis that administration officials didn’t find helpful.
Gates unveiled an 11-point management plan to whip the DI into shape. His plan included rotating division chiefs through one-year stints in policy agencies and requiring CIA analysts to “refresh their substantive knowledge and broaden their perspective” by taking courses at Washington-area think tanks and universities.
Gates declared that a new Production Evaluation Staff would aggressively review their analytical products and serve as his “junkyard dog.”
Gates’s message was that the DI, which had long operated as an “ivory tower” for academically oriented analysts committed to an ethos of objectivity, would take on more of a corporate culture with a product designed to fit the needs of those up the ladder both inside and outside the CIA.
“It was a kind of chilling speech,” recalled Peter Dickson, an analyst who concentrated on proliferation issues. “One of the things he wanted to do, he was going to shake up the DI. He was going to read every paper that came out. What that did was that everybody between the analyst and him had to get involved in the paper to a greater extent because their careers were going to be at stake.”
A chief Casey-Gates tactic for exerting tighter control over the analysis was to express concern about “the editorial process,” Dickson said.
“You can jerk people around in the editorial process and hide behind your editorial mandate to intimidate people,” Dickson said.
Gates soon was salting the analytical division with his allies, a group of managers who became known as the “Gates clones.” Some of those who rose with Gates were David Cohen, David Carey, George Kolt, Jim Lynch, Winston Wiley, John Gannon and John McLaughlin.
Though Dickson’s area of expertise – nuclear proliferation – was on the fringes of the Reagan-Bush primary concerns, it ended up getting him into trouble anyway. In 1983, he clashed with his superiors over his conclusion that the Soviet Union was more committed to controlling proliferation of nuclear weapons than the administration wanted to hear.
When Dickson stood by his evidence, he soon found himself facing accusations about his psychological fitness and other pressures that eventually caused him to leave the CIA.
Dickson also was among the analysts who raised alarms about Pakistan’s development of nuclear weapons, another sore point because the Reagan-Bush administration wanted Pakistan’s assistance in funneling weapons to Islamic fundamentalists fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan.
One of the effects from the exaggerated intelligence about Soviet power and intentions was to make other potential risks – such as allowing development of a nuclear bomb in the Islamic world or training Islamic fundamentalists in techniques of sabotage – paled in comparison.
While worst-case scenarios were in order for the Soviet Union and other communist enemies, best-case scenarios were the order of the day for Reagan-Bush allies, including Osama bin Laden and other Arab extremists rushing to Afghanistan to wage a holy war against European invaders, in this case, the Russians.
As for the Pakistani drive to get a nuclear bomb, the Reagan-Bush administration turned to word games to avoid triggering anti-proliferation penalties that otherwise would be imposed on Pakistan.
“There was a distinction made to say that the possession of the device is not the same as developing it,” Dickson told me. “They got into the argument that they don’t quite possess it yet because they haven’t turned the last screw into the warhead.”
Finally, the intelligence on the Pakistan Bomb grew too strong to continue denying the reality. But the delay in confronting Pakistan ultimately allowed the Muslim government in Islamabad to produce nuclear weapons. Pakistani scientists also shared their know-how with “rogue” states, such as North Korea and Libya.
“The politicization that took place during the Casey-Gates era is directly responsible for the CIA’s loss of its ethical compass and the erosion of its credibility,” Goodman told the Senate Intelligence Committee in 1991. “The fact that the CIA missed the most important historical development in its history – the collapse of the Soviet Empire and the Soviet Union itself – is due in large measure to the culture and process that Gates established in his directorate.”
Confirmation Battle
To push through Gates’s nomination to be CIA director in 1991, the elder George Bush lined up solid Republican backing for Gates and enough accommodating Democrats – particularly Sen. Boren, the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman.
In his memoirs, Gates credited his friend, Boren, for clearing away any obstacles. “David took it as a personal challenge to get me confirmed,” Gates wrote.
Part of running interference for Gates included rejecting the testimony of witnesses who implicated Gates in scandals beginning with the alleged back-channel negotiations with Iran in 1980 through the arming of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in the mid-1980s.
Boren’s Intelligence Committee brushed aside two witnesses connecting Gates to the alleged schemes, former Israeli intelligence official Ari Ben-Menashe and Iranian businessman Richard Babayan. Both offered detailed accounts about Gates’s alleged connections to the schemes.
Ben-Menashe, who worked for Israeli military intelligence from 1977-87, first fingered Gates as an operative in the secret Iraq arms pipeline in August 1990 during an interview that I conducted with him for PBS Frontline.
At the time, Ben-Menashe was in jail in New York on charges of trying to sell cargo planes to Iran (charges which were later dismissed). When the interview took place, Gates was in a relatively obscure position, as deputy national security adviser to President George H.W. Bush and not yet a candidate for the top CIA job.
In that interview and later under oath to Congress, Ben-Menashe said Gates joined in meetings between Republicans and senior Iranians in October 1980. Ben-Menashe said he also arranged Gates’s personal help in bringing a suitcase full of cash into Miami in early 1981 to pay off some of the participants in the hostage gambit.
Ben-Menashe also placed Gates in a 1986 meeting with Chilean arms manufacturer Cardoen, who allegedly was supplying cluster bombs and chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein’s army. Babayan, an Iranian exile working with Iraq, also connected Gates to the Iraqi supply lines and to Cardoen.
Gates has steadfastly denied involvement in either the Iran-hostage caper or the Iraqgate arms deals.
“I was accused on television and in the print media by people I had never spoken to or met of selling weapons to Iraq, or walking through Miami airport with suitcases full of cash, of being with Bush in Paris in October 1980 to meet with Iranians, and on and on,” Gates wrote in his memoirs. “The allegations of meetings with me around the world were easily disproved for the committee by my travel records, calendars, and countless witnesses.”
But none of Gates’s supposedly supportive evidence was ever made public by either the Senate Intelligence Committee or the later inquiries into either the Iran hostage initiative or Iraqgate.
Not one of Gates’s “countless witnesses” who could vouch for Gates’s whereabouts was identified. Though Boren pledged publicly to have his investigators question Babayan, they never did.
Perhaps most galling for those of us who tried to assess Ben-Menashe’s credibility was the Intelligence Committee’s failure to test Ben-Menashe’s claim that he met with Gates in Paramus, New Jersey, on the afternoon of April 20, 1989.
The date was pinned down by the fact that Ben-Menashe had been under Customs surveillance in the morning. So it was a perfect test for whether Ben-Menashe – or Gates – was lying.
When I first asked about this claim, congressional investigators told me that Gates had a perfect alibi for that day. They said Gates had been with Senator Boren at a speech in Oklahoma. But when we checked that out, we discovered that Gates’s Oklahoma speech had been on April 19, a day earlier. Gates also had not been with Boren and had returned to Washington by that evening.
So where was Gates the next day? Could he have taken a quick trip to northern New Jersey? Since senior White House national security advisers keep detailed notes on their daily meetings, it should have been easy for Boren’s investigators to interview someone who could vouch for Gates’s whereabouts on the afternoon of April 20.
But the committee chose not to nail down an alibi for Gates. The committee said further investigation wasn’t needed because Gates denied going to New Jersey and his personal calendar made no reference to the trip.
But the investigators couldn’t tell me where Gates was that afternoon or with whom he may have met. Essentially, the alibi came down to Gates’s word.
Ironically, Boren’s key aide who helped limit the investigation of Gates was George Tenet, whose behind-the-scenes maneuvering on Gates’s behalf won the personal appreciation of the senior George Bush. Tenet later became President Bill Clinton’s last CIA director and was kept on in 2001 by the younger George Bush partly on his father’s advice.
Now, as the Bush Family grapples with the disaster in Iraq, it is turning to an even more trusted hand to run the Defense Department. The appointment of Robert Gates suggests that the Bush Family is circling the wagons to save the embattled presidency of George W. Bush.
To determine whether Gates can be counted on to do what’s in the interest of the larger American public is another question altogether.
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'
8.11.06
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: World :: Saddam to Iraqis: Be like Jesus, forgive
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: World :: Saddam to Iraqis: Be like Jesus, forgive
November 8, 2006
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A somber and subdued Saddam Hussein called on Iraqis to ''forgive, reconcile and shake hands'' as he returned to court Tuesday for his Kurdish genocide trial two days after being sentenced to death in a separate case.Iran urged Iraq to disregard calls for clemency and hang the ousted president, saying Saddam's ''very existence is anti-human.''
The startling call from Saddam came after he rose during the afternoon session to question the testimony of the witnesses, who told of a mass killing of Iraqi Kurds in the 1987-88 Operation Anfal crackdown on Kurdish guerrillas.
'Reconcile and shake hands'
Saddam then calmly spoke about how the Prophet Muhammad and Jesus Christ asked for forgiveness for those who had opposed them.''I call on all Iraqis, Arabs and Kurds, to forgive, reconcile and shake hands,'' Saddam said before resuming his seat.
The former president's demeanor was far different from his combative performance Sunday, when another court convicted him in the deaths of about 150 Shiite Muslims following an assassination attempt against him in the town of Dujail in 1982.
Saddam and two others were sentenced to death by hanging. Saddam thundered ''Long live the people and death to their enemies'' when the sentence was imposed.
On Tuesday, however, Saddam, dressed in a dark suit and white shirt, sat quietly along with the six other defendants in the Anfal case, calmly taking notes as four Kurdish witnesses gave their testimony. AP
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