by Felipe Seligman and Juliana Lara Resende |
| The United States sharply warned North Korea against testing a ballistic missile, saying it would take steps to protect itself as speculation mounts about an imminent launch. "Together, our diplomacy and that of our allies has made clear to North Korea that a missile launch would be a provocative act that is not in their interests and will further isolate them from the world," said US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack. "We have a variety of national technical means that we could use to monitor the situation. We, of course, will take necessary preparatory steps to track any potential activities and to protect ourselves," he told reporters. North Korea on Friday accused a US reconnaissance plane of intruding over its territorial space to spy on strategic targets, amid jitters over the Stalinist country's apparent preparations for a missile test. South Korean and US officials have said that North Korea appears to be preparing to test-launch an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the mainland United States. On Friday, South Korean officials and analysts said that North Korea had not yet begun fueling a long-range missile on its northeast coast, the final step before a possible launch. "It will take at least two days to fill the rocket with liquid fuel and if they finish it, we can say they are ready to start the countdown," Baek Seung-Joo from the government-backed Korean Institute for Defence Analyses told AFP. Also on Friday, Japan warned North Korea against testing a ballistic missile, saying it would set back efforts to normalize diplomatic relations. "If a ballistic missile is launched, it would directly affect our nation's security and constitute a violation of the Pyongyang Declaration," Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe, the government spokesman, told reporters. North Korea is believed to be developing the missile for a range of up to 10,000 kilometers (6,200 miles). It shocked the world in August 1998 by firing a long-range Taepodong-1 missile with a range of up to 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles) over Japan into the Pacific Ocean. The North claimed that was a satellite launch. Asked about the possible missile test, White House national security spokesman Fred Jones replied: "We're not going to discuss or speculate about intelligence matters. Our concerns about North Korea's missile program are well-known." "North Korea should abide by the long-range missile test moratorium it has observed since 1999 and return to the six-party talks" aimed at ending the crisis over its nuclear weapons, said Jones. Jones said North Korea should "negotiate steps to implement" an agreement in principle, made in September 2005, "in which North Korea agreed to abandon all its nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs." The latest developments led prominent Democratic senators Hillary Clinton and Carl Levin to send President George W. Bush a letter on Thursday pushing for a policy change after "largely fruitless" six-party talks. "We may be approaching the nightmare scenario in which our only option is to negotiate with a North Korea that can attack the United States with a nuclear weapon instead of a North Korea that is still working towards that capability," they wrote. The lawmakers urged Bush to craft a "single, coordinated presidential strategy" to deal with North Korea's nuclear and missile programs, led by a senior envoy. The United States had been involved with China, Russia, Japan and South Korea in talks with North Korea to disband the reclusive state's nuclear arms program in return for security and diplomatic guarantees and energy aid. Six-party talks came to a head in September 2005, with North Korea agreeing in principle to end its atomic weapons program. But talks collapsed two months later, after the United States imposed financial sanctions on Pyongyang for alleged US dollar counterfeiting and money laundering activities. North Korea refused to come back to the table unless sanctions were lifted, while the United States did not budge, saying it cannot compromise on issues such as counterfeiting that threaten national sovereignty. On Wednesday, White House national security adviser Stephen Hadley said that a missile launch "would be a bad idea for North Korea." North Korea's Air Force Command said Friday that a US RC-135 plane had spied on strategic targets for hours after flying over North Korean waters off the northeast coast. "The ceaseless illegal intrusions of their strategic reconnaissance planes on spy missions have created an imminent danger of military clash in the sky above those waters," it warned in a statement published by the official Korean Central News Agency. On Sunday, the North Korean air force threatened to "punish" US spy flights, recalling the fate of a US Navy plane it shot down in the Sea of Japan (East Sea) in 1969. Another US-North Korean incident occurred when North Korea fired missiles at a SR-71 spy plane in August 1981. The jet was undamaged. |
20.6.06
US Warns North Korea against 'Provocative' Missile Test
19.6.06
US Not Prepared for Catastrophe: Official Report
The United States is not prepared to cope with a large-scale terrorist attack or a powerful hurricane, the US Department of Homeland Security has said in a report.
The Nationwide Plan Review, conducted in response to directives from President George W. Bush and Congress, examined whether the emergency plans of cities and states were adequate to manage another tragedy.
"The majority of the nation's current emergency operations plans and planning processes cannot be characterized as fully sufficient to manage catatrophic events," the report said.
"Significant weaknesses in evacuation planning are an area of profound concern," it said, adding that the capabilities to receive and care of large numbers of evacuees were found to be "inadequate."
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement: "Most areas of the country are well-prepared to handle standard situations."
But the review findings "demonstrate the need for all levels of government across the country to improve emergency operations plans for catastrophic events such as a major terrorist attack or (top) category-five hurricane strike," it said.
"Several areas, including evacuation, attention to populations with special needs, command structure and resource management, were areas needing significant attention," it said.
The report also lists measures the federal government needs to take to improve and coordinate disaster planning.
The findings "unequivocally support the need to modernize planning processes, products and tools, and to move our national emergency planning efforts to the next level needed for catastrophic events," said George Foresman, the department's under-secretary for preparedness.
"It is a natural evolution towards working together as a nation to implement the lessons from seminal events such as the September 11 attacks and Hurricane Katrina," he said in a statement.
Authorities at all levels of government were blasted over their response to Hurricane Katrina, which killed 1,300 people and displaced tens of thousands along the US Gulf coast in August last year.
The city of New Orleans is still struggling to recover and engineers have warned its levees may not withstand another Katrina-style battering.
Some groups warn Louisiana is especially vulnerable to hurricanes this season, because erosion continues to eat away a chunk of Louisiana's coastal wetlands the size of a football field every 30 minutes.
Scientists and environmental activists say that the wetlands are nature's barriers against hurricanes.
The Nationwide Plan Review comes two weeks into the hurricane season, which started June 1. US weather experts are forecasting between eight to 10 hurricanes -- as many as six of them major -- in the Atlantic basin this year.
The review was conducted in all 56 states and territories and 75 urban areas over six months.
The emergency plans were compared to pre-Katrina standards by review teams that included former state and local homeland security and emergency management officials.
16.6.06
After the War
by Howard Zinn |
| The war against Iraq, the assault on its people, the occupation of its cities, will come to an end, sooner or later. The process has already begun. The first signs of mutiny are appearing in Congress. The first editorials calling for withdrawal from Iraq are beginning to appear in the press. The anti-war movement has been growing, slowly but persistently, all over the country. Public opinion polls now show the country decisively against the war and the Bush Administration. The harsh realities have become visible. The troops will have to come home. And while we work with increased determination to make this happen, should we not think beyond this war? Should we begin to think, even before this shameful war is over, about ending our addiction to massive violence and instead using the enormous wealth of our country for human needs? That is, should we begin to speak about ending war—not just this war or that war, but war itself? Perhaps the time has come to bring an end to war, and turn the human race onto a path of health and healing. A group of internationally known figures, celebrated both for their talent and their dedication to human rights (Gino Strada, Paul Farmer, Kurt Vonnegut, Nadine Gordimer, Eduardo Galeano, and others), will soon launch a worldwide campaign to enlist tens of millions of people in a movement for the renunciation of war, hoping to reach the point where governments, facing popular resistance, will find it difficult or impossible to wage war. There is a persistent argument against such a possibility, which I have heard from people on all parts of the political spectrum: We will never do away with war because it comes out of human nature. The most compelling counter to that claim is in history: We don’t find people spontaneously rushing to make war on others. What we find, rather, is that governments must make the most strenuous efforts to mobilize populations for war. They must entice soldiers with promises of money, education, must hold out to young people whose chances in life look very poor that here is an opportunity to attain respect and status. And if those enticements don’t work, governments must use coercion: They must conscript young people, force them into military service, threaten them with prison if they do not comply. Furthermore, the government must persuade young people and their families that though the soldier may die, though he or she may lose arms or legs, or become blind, that it is all for a noble cause, for God, for country. When you look at the endless series of wars of this century you do not find a public demanding war, but rather resisting it, until citizens are bombarded with exhortations that appeal, not to a killer instinct, but to a desire to do good, to spread democracy or liberty or overthrow a tyrant. Woodrow Wilson found a citizenry so reluctant to enter the First World War that he had to pummel the nation with propaganda and imprison dissenters in order to get the country to join the butchery going on in Europe. In the Second World War, there was indeed a strong moral imperative, which still resonates among most people in this country and which maintains the reputation of World War II as “the good war.” There was a need to defeat the monstrosity of fascism. It was that belief that drove me to enlist in the Air Force and fly bombing missions over Europe. Only after the war did I begin to question the purity of the moral crusade. Dropping bombs from five miles high, I had seen no human beings, heard no screams, seen no children dismembered. But now I had to think about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the firebombings of Tokyo and Dresden, the deaths of 600,000 civilians in Japan, and a similar number in Germany. I came to a conclusion about the psychology of myself and other warriors: Once we decided, at the start, that our side was the good side and the other side was evil, once we had made that simple and simplistic calculation, we did not have to think anymore. Then we could commit unspeakable crimes and it was all right. I began to think about the motives of the Western powers and Stalinist Russia and wondered if they cared as much about fascism as about retaining their own empires, their own power, and if that was why they had military priorities higher than bombing the rail lines leading to Auschwitz. Six million Jews were killed in the death camps (allowed to be killed?). Only 60,000 were saved by the war—1 percent. A gunner on another crew, a reader of history with whom I had become friends, said to me one day: “You know this is an imperialist war. The fascists are evil. But our side is not much better.” I could not accept his statement at the time, but it stuck with me. War, I decided, creates, insidiously, a common morality for all sides. It poisons everyone who is engaged in it, however different they are in many ways, turns them into killers and torturers, as we are seeing now. It pretends to be concerned with toppling tyrants, and may in fact do so, but the people it kills are the victims of the tyrants. It appears to cleanse the world of evil, but that does not last, because its very nature spawns more evil. Wars, like violence in general, I concluded, is a drug. It gives a quick high, the thrill of victory, but that wears off and then comes despair. I acknowledge the possibility of humanitarian intervention to prevent atrocities, as in Rwanda. But war, defined as the indiscriminate killing of large numbers of people, must be resisted. Whatever can be said about World War II, understanding its complexity, the situations that followed—Korea, Vietnam—were so far from the kind of threat that Germany and Japan had posed to the world that those wars could be justified only by drawing on the glow of “the good war.” A hysteria about communism led to McCarthyism at home and military interventions in Asia and Latin America—overt and covert—justified by a “Soviet threat” that was exaggerated just enough to mobilize the people for war. Vietnam, however, proved to be a sobering experience, in which the American public, over a period of several years, began to see through the lies that had been told to justify all that bloodshed. The United States was forced to withdraw from Vietnam, and the world didn’t come to an end. One half of one tiny country in Southeast Asia was now joined to its communist other half, and 58,000 American lives and millions of Vietnamese lives had been expended to prevent that. A majority of Americans had come to oppose that war, which had provoked the largest anti-war movement in the nation’s history. The war in Vietnam ended with a public fed up with war. I believe that the American people, once the fog of propaganda had dissipated, had come back to a more natural state. Public opinion polls showed that people in the United States were opposed to send troops anywhere in the world, for any reason. The Establishment was alarmed. The government set out deliberately to overcome what it called “the Vietnam syndrome.” Opposition to military interventions abroad was a sickness, to be cured. And so they would wean the American public away from its unhealthy attitude, by tighter control of information, by avoiding a draft, and by engaging in short, swift wars over weak opponents (Grenada, Panama, Iraq), which didn’t give the public time to develop an anti-war movement. I would argue that the end of the Vietnam War enabled the people of the United States to shake the “war syndrome,” a disease not natural to the human body. But they could be infected once again, and September 11 gave the government that opportunity. Terrorism became the justification for war, but war is itself terrorism, breeding rage and hate, as we are seeing now. The war in Iraq has revealed the hypocrisy of the “war on terrorism.” And the government of the United States, indeed governments everywhere, are becoming exposed as untrustworthy: that is, not to be entrusted with the safety of human beings, or the safety of the planet, or the guarding of its air, its water, its natural wealth, or the curing of poverty and disease, or coping with the alarming growth of natural disasters that plague so many of the six billion people on Earth. I don’t believe that our government will be able to do once more what it did after Vietnam—prepare the population for still another plunge into violence and dishonor. It seems to me that when the war in Iraq ends, and the war syndrome heals, that there will be a great opportunity to make that healing permanent. My hope is that the memory of death and disgrace will be so intense that the people of the United States will be able to listen to a message that the rest of the world, sobered by wars without end, can also understand: that war itself is the enemy of the human race. Governments will resist this message. But their power is dependent on the obedience of the citizenry. When that is withdrawn, governments are helpless. We have seen this again and again in history. The abolition of war has become not only desirable but absolutely necessary if the planet is to be saved. It is an idea whose time has come. Howard Zinn is the co-author, with Anthony Arnove, of “Voices of a People’s History of the United States.” |
FRONTLINE: coming soon: the dark side | PBS
Watch a preview
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In July 2003, United States [Dr. Evil] Vice President Dick Cheney stands outside the Oval Office as he listens to President [Curious George] W. Bush speak about Iraq in the Rose Garden at the White House. Credit: © Brooks Kraft/Corbis
(60 minutes) On September 11, 2001, deep inside a White House bunker, Vice President Dick Cheney was ordering U.S. fighter planes to shoot down any commercial airliner still in the air above America.
At that moment, CIA Director George Tenet was meeting with his counter-terrorism team in Langley, Virginia. Both leaders acted fast, to prepare their country for a new kind of war.
But soon a debate would grow over the goals of the war on terror, and the decision to go to war in Iraq. Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and others saw Iraq as an important part of a broader plan to remake the Middle East and project American power worldwide. Meanwhile Tenet, facing division in his own organization, saw non-state actors such as Al Qaeda as the highest priority.
FRONTLINE's investigation of the ensuing conflict includes more than forty interviews, thousands of pages of documentary evidence, and a substantial photographic archive. It is the third documentary about the war on terror from the team that produced Rumsfeld's War and The Torture Question. (read the press release)
WEB SITE FEATURES
Extended interviews with former members of the U.S. intelligence community, journalists, and White House and Congressional officials involved in intelligence oversight [Was it??];
Analysis of some of the main themes covered in the program;
A chronology of events;
Plus, the opportunity to watch the full program again in streaming video, readings and links, and more.
PRESS RELEASE
FRONTLINE INVESTIGATES VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY'S ROLE AS CHIEF ARCHITECT OF THE WAR ON TERROR AND HIS BATTLE WITH THE DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE FOR CONTROL OF THE "DARK SIDE"FRONTLINE presents
THE DARK SIDE {Dr. Evil and Curious George}
Tuesday, June 20, 2006, 9 to 10:30 P.M. ET on PBS
http://www.pbs.org/frontline/darkside
Amid daily revelations about prewar intelligence and a growing scandal surrounding the indictment of the vice president's chief of staff and presidential adviser, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, FRONTLINE goes behind the headlines to investigate the internal war that was waged between the intelligence community and Richard Bruce Cheney, the most {EVIL} powerful vice president in the nation's history.
"A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies," Cheney told Americans just after 9/11. He warned the public that the government would have to operate on the "dark side." They already had.
In The Dark Side, airing June 20, 2006, at 9 P.M. on PBS (check local listings), FRONTLINE tells the story of the vice president's role as the chief architect of the war on terror and his battle with Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet for control of the "dark side." Drawing on more than 40 interviews and thousands of documents, the film provides a step-by-step examination of what happened inside the councils of war.
Early in the Bush administration, Cheney placed a group of allies throughout the government who advocated a robust and pre-emptive foreign policy, especially regarding Iraq. But a potential obstacle was Tenet, a holdover from the Clinton administration who had survived the transition by bypassing Cheney and creating a personal bond with the president.
After the attacks on 9/11, Cheney seized the initiative and pushed for expanding presidential power, transforming America's intelligence agencies, and bringing the war on terror to Iraq. Cheney's primary ally in this effort was Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
"You have this wiring diagram that we all know of about national security, but now there's a new line on it. There's a line from the vice president directly to the secretary of defense, and it's as though there's a private line, private communication between those two," former National Security Council staffer Richard Clarke tells FRONTLINE.
In the initial stages of the war on terror, Tenet's CIA was rising to prominence as the lead agency in the Afghanistan war. But when Tenet insisted in his personal meetings with the president that there was no connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq, Cheney and Rumsfeld initiated a secret program to re-examine the evidence and marginalize the agency and Tenet.
Through interviews with DoD staffers who sifted through mountains of raw intelligence, FRONTLINE tells the story of how questionable intelligence was "stovepiped" to the vice president and presented to the public.
From stories of Nigerian yellowcake to claims that 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta had met with Iraqi agents in Prague, The Dark Side dissects the now-familiar assertions that led the nation to war. The film also examines how that stovepiped intelligence was used by the vice president in unprecedented visits to the CIA, where he questioned mid-level analysts on their conclusions. CIA officers who were there at the time say the message was clear: Cheney wanted [to create the illusion of] evidence that Iraq was a threat.
At the center of the administration's case for war was a classified October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that found evidence of an Iraqi weapons of mass destruction program. But Paul Pillar, one of the report's principal authors, now admits to FRONTLINE that the NIE was written quickly in a highly politicized environment, one in which the decision to go to war had already been made.
Pillar also reveals that he regrets participating in writing a subsequent public white paper on Iraqi WMD. "What was the purpose of it? The purpose was to strengthen the case for going to war with the American public. Is it proper for the intelligence community to publish papers for that purpose? I don't think so, and I regret having had a role in it," Pillar says.
For the first time, FRONTLINE tells of George Tenet's personal struggle in the runup to the Iraq war through the accounts of his closest advisers.
"He, I think, asked himself whether or not he wanted to continue on that road and to be part of it. And I think there was a lot of agonizing that George went through about what would be in the best interest of the country and national interest, or whether or not he would stay in that position and continue along a course that I think he had misgivings about," says John O. Brennan, former deputy executive director of the CIA.
Tenet chose to stay, but after the failure to find Iraqi WMD, the tension between the agency and Cheney's allies grew to the point that some in the administration believed the CIA had launched a covert war to undermine the president.
The film shows how in response, Cheney's office waged a campaign to distance itself from the prewar intelligence the vice president had helped to cultivate. Under pressure, Tenet resigned. Cheney's chief of staff, Scooter Libby, would later admit to leaking key sections of the NIE -- authorized, [no doubt] he says, by Cheney.
Libby also stated that the vice president told him that President Bush had declassified the material. Insiders tell FRONTLINE that the leak was part of the battle between the vice president and the CIA.
The Dark Side is a FRONTLINE co-production with the Kirk Documentary Group. The producer, writer and director is Michael Kirk. The co-producer is Jim Gilmore. FRONTLINE is produced by WGBH Boston and is broadcast nationwide on PBS. Funding for FRONTLINE is provided by the Park Foundation and through the support of PBS viewers. FRONTLINE is closed-captioned for deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers. FRONTLINE is a registered trademark of WGBH Educational Foundation. The executive producer for FRONTLINE is David Fanning.
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Promotional photography can be downloaded from the PBS pressroom.
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Diane Buxton (617) 300-3500
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MADNESS OF KING GEORGE CONTINUES
"A little Madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King."
-- Emily Dickinson
American Poet 1830-1886
For our loathsome king, madness is always in season. His newfound "passion" for cycling is yet another excess in exercise, a diversion from the demons that usually grip him. But, gratefully, when he's outside peddling, he's not clowning in the Oval Office where the "decider" and his "gut" create more suffering and havoc for the world.
Washington in the spring is lush and green, brimming with blossoms, freshness and hopeful renewal -- a state of nature not found in the state of our union.
It's too much to hope that someday, when tooling around on his expensive bike, Bush might actually think about how fragile and threatened our green Earth is and how imperative good stewardship is to save it for other generations.
Bush says cycling allows him to "chase the fountain of youth."
Yet, six years into his presidency, he has done nothing to deal with the greenhouse gases that spur global warming and shorten the life expectancy of our entire ecosystem. He has fostered our national addiction to petroleum. His energy policies encourage wasteful consumption and add to the already-obscene profits of oil companies and their executives.
Bush permits his favored industries to poison the air we breathe and imperil the health of millions of people, especially children. He devotes his energies to enhancing the wealth of his family and his Houston cronies.
Issues like clean air and the survival of the planet don't occupy any of King George's precious time. Once, though, he did sit down with half a dozen cycling enthusiasts for a chat about their shared hobby. They met for 35 minutes.
That's 34 minutes and 45 seconds longer that Bush spent reacting to the intelligence report he received in August 2001 titled, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." (Can you blame anyone for wanting to strike the US as it is today?)
Bush spent more time in one cycling seance than he has personally devoted -- during his entire administration -- to working on the creation of the nation of Palestine, the single most important deed required to even begin quelling violence and terrorism in the Middle East.
Bush's spring offensive, aimed as jolting his tanking poll numbers, is another flop. His staff shuffle and the new branding of the struggle with terrorism as "World War III" no longer fool the long-fooled American people.
The latest CBS poll shows only 30 percent now say they approve of Bush's handling of his war in Iraq.
CIA Director Porter Goss got sacked amid reports one of his top deputies attended hooker-graced poker parties at the Watergate Hotel in Washington with former Congressman Duke Cunningham, the convicted bribe taker. Goss may have played a few hands himself.
He was a disaster from the get-go, filling top CIA posts with his own political hacks. Goss had an undistinguished stint with the agency decades ago, but built his political stock as a Florida congressman and House Intelligence Committee chairman.
During his oversight, he presided over the colossal intelligence failures prior to the 9/11 attacks. He also allowed his predecessor, George "The Whore" Tenet, to get away with blaming the agency for Bush's "intelligence failures" on Iraq's weapons programs.
The Busheviks are back-pedaling on any real diplomatic initiatives. Their essential foreign policy is protecting oil interests and corporate greed.
When big oil beckons, big Dick rises to the occasion. Vice President Cheney made a rare trip from the bat cave and accused Russia of using its oil and gas resources as "tools of intimidation or blackmail." Cheney wants to rekindle the Cold War and rattle the Russian bear. His disgraceful hypocrisy is as transparent as it is dangerous.
In his speech to European leaders in Vilnius, Lithuania, last week, Cheney dared to pretend the United States can preach civic virtue and democratic values to the Russian government.
He accused the Putin government of alienating allies and "other actions by the Russian government have been counterproductive, and could begin to affect relations of other countries."
Dick Cheney has systematically and repeatedly attacked the fundamental constitutional rights of the American people. He favors illegal spying, denial of due process and claims unlimited executive authority. He and his boy Bush should be impeached and tried for treason. I AM STILL WAITING
For "enemy combatants," Cheney supports torture, imprisonment without charges, kidnapping and the rejection of international law and the Geneva accords.
He claims the "war-time president" can do anything with no accountability to any one. In a just world, those actions would assure Cheney and Bush a war crimes trial in the Hague.
Of all people to lecture the Russians on human rights and democratic principles, no one is more unfit than Dick Cheney. The hypocrisy of his mission was even more apparent when he went to Kazakhstan to cozy up with its despotic leaders and promote U.S. oil interests, especially -- surprise, surprise -- Halliburton's.
If freedom and democracy are taking lickings in Russia, they are getting killed in Kazakhstan. But Lord Halliburton didn't utter a syllable about those abuses. He was too busy cutting deals for his former company -- in which he still has a financial stake -- and pumping up other U.S. energy interests there.
Nursultan Nazarbayev, the Kazakh president, won re-election to his third six-year term in 2005 with a Stalin-like 91 percent of the vote. In the last six months, two of his political opponents have been murdered. Amnesty International has cited Kazakhstan for a litany of human rights abuses.
But when did a little blood in the pursuit of oil ever bother [the] big Dick? He's plunged into the geopolitical conflicts in the region sucking up to the Kazakhs to assure a U.S. claim on its vast energy resources. Halliburton runs an oil services operation there and wants to build new export routes for the nation's enormous reserves.
While every single organization monitoring human rights abuses ranks Kazakhstan's record much worse than Russia's, Cheney chose to ignore that unpleasant truth. He expressed support for the Kazakh government, without hesitation or reservation.
He told reporters, "I have previously expressed my admiration for what has transpired here over the past 15 years both in terms of economic development as well as political development."
The murders, torture, political prisoners and rigged elections don't mean a damn thing to Cheney. Like in Iraq, it's all about oil and the use of the U.S. military power and influence to assure its steady flow.
The Busheviks use stunning arrogance to pressure and demand that nations in Central Asia and the Middle East cater to our insatiable thirst for oil. We wage wars and support tyrants to get it. We claim foreign energy reserves as our "own," usually depriving impoverished people of their resources.
Our greed creates more unrest in already troubled regions and encourages terrorism.
Nations around the world, including many long-time friends, distrust, even despise us. George W. Bush doesn't really care. He and his people are wealthy and content. Now, in another spring of the world's discontent, Bush is taking carefree rides on his bike, isolated from the disasters he inflicts on suffering people and our environment.
Emily Dickinson concluded the poem from which the words at the beginning of this column are taken with the following:
"But God be with the Clown
Who ponders this tremendous scene
This Experiment of Green
As if it were his own!"
God save us from our clown-king.
9.6.06
Painting Captures U.S. Arrogance, Artist Says
Iraq exhibit to show work depicting Rumsfeld Boots deliver message 'America rules world' | |
| by Hamza Hendawi | |
| BAGHDAD—The photo both enraged and inspired Muayad Muhsin: U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld sitting back in an airplane seat, his feet — in heavy army boots — stretched out in front of him. "It symbolized America's soulless might and arrogance," said Muhsin, whose painting of Rumsfeld in a similar pose is to be unveiled in an exhibition opening in Baghdad on Monday.
After President George W. Bush, most Iraqis see Rumsfeld as the man behind the invasion of their oil-rich country and the chief architect of U.S. military actions in Iraq. Those who closely follow Rumsfeld remember his infamous comment — "Stuff happens" — when asked why U.S. troops did not actively seek to stop the lawlessness in the Iraqi capital in the weeks that followed the city's capture in April 2003. Another memorable Rumsfeld comment, also made in 2003, was his suggestion that Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction were deeply hidden in Iraq. "It's a big country," he said. Muhsin first saw the Rumsfeld photo about 18 months ago. He went to work right away, but did not finish the painting — titled "Picnic" — until recently. The oil-on-canvas work shows Rumsfeld in a blue jacket, tie, khaki pants and army boots reading from briefing papers. His boots are resting on what appears to be an ancient stone.He sits next to a partially damaged statue of a lion standing over a human — a traditional image of strength in ancient Babylon. The statue's stone base is ripped open, revealing shelves from which white pieces of papers are flying away, later turning into birds. Muhsin said the symbolism has to do with Washington's repeated assertions before the U.S.-led invasion that Saddam's regime had weapons of mass destruction, the cornerstone of the Bush's argument for going to war. No such weapons turned up, but the Bush administration maintained that removing Saddam's regime alone justified the decision to invade Iraq. "Rumsfeld's boots deliver a message from America: `We rule the world,'" Muhsin, 41, said in an interview. "It speaks of America's total indifference to what the rest of the world thinks." Muhsin said he signed the painting in the middle, instead of the customary bottom corner, to avoid having it under Rumsfeld's boots. "The Americans brought us rosy dreams but left us with nightmares. They came with a broad smile but gave us beheaded bodies and booby-trapped cars." I am impressed by his work, and would want a print of the painting except I find the thought of looking at Rumsfeld everyday deplorable- Yet to support the spirit of Iraq that america has stolen unmercilessly, would be worth the cause. |
For the Women of Iraq, the War is Just Beginning
by Terri Judd |
| The women of Basra have disappeared. Three years after the US-led invasion of Iraq, women's secular freedoms - once the envy of women across the Middle East - have been snatched away because militant Islam is rising across the country. Across Iraq, a bloody and relentless oppression of women has taken hold. Many women had their heads shaved for refusing to wear a scarf or have been stoned in the street for wearing make-up. Others have been kidnapped and murdered for crimes that are being labelled simply as "inappropriate behaviour". The insurrection against the fragile and barely functioning state has left the country prey to extremists whose notion of freedom does not extend to women. In the British-occupied south, where Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army retains a stranglehold, women insist the situation is at its worst. Here they are forced to live behind closed doors only to emerge, concealed behind scarves, hidden behind husbands and fathers. Even wearing a pair of trousers is considered an act of defiance, punishable by death. One Basra woman, known only as Dr Kefaya, was working in the women and children's hospital unit at the city university when she started receiving threats from extremists. She defied them. Then, one day a man walked into the building and murdered her. Eman Aziz, one of the first women to speak publicly about the dangers, said:"There were five people on the death list with Dr Kefaya. They were threatened 'If you continue working, you will be killed'." Many women are too afraid to complain. But, fearful that their rights will be eroded for good, some have taken the courageous step of speaking out. Dr Kefaya was only one of many professional women murdered in recent months. Speaking to The Independent near Saddam's old palace in the middle of Basra, Mrs Aziz, reeled off the names of other dead friends. Three of her university class have been killed since the invasion. "My friend Sheda and her sister. They were threatened. One day they returned to their house with two other women. They were all shot," she said. Her language is chillingly perfunctory. "And my friend Lubna, she was with her fiancé. They shot him in the arm and then killed her in front of him," she explained. Then there were the two sisters who worked in the laundry at Basra Palace base. With a shrug, she briefly detailed each life cut short. Under Saddam, women played little part in political life but businesswomen and academics travelled the country unchallenged while their daughters mixed freely with male students at university. Now, even the most emancipated woman feels cowed. A television producer Arij Al-Soltan, 27, now exiled, said: "It is much worse for women in the south. I blame the British for not taking a strong stand." Sajeda Hanoon Alebadi, 37, who - like Mrs Aziz - has now taken to wearing a headscarf, said: "Women are being assassinated. We know the people behind it are saying we have a fatwa, these are not good women, they should be killed." Behind the wave of insurgent attacks, the violence against women who dare to challenge the Islamic orthodoxy is growing. Fatwas banning women from driving or being seen out alone are regularly issued. Infiltrated by militia, the police are unwilling or unable to crack down on the fundamentalists. Ms Alebadi said: "After the fall of the regime, the religious extremist parties came out on to the streets and threatened women. Although the extremists are in the minority, they control powerful positions, so they control Basra." To venture on the streets today without a male relative is to risk attack, humiliation or kidnap. A journalist, Shatta Kareem, said: "I was driving my car one day when someone just crashed into me and drove me off the road. If a woman is seen driving these days it is considered a violation of men's rights." There is a fear that Islamic law will become enshrined in the new legislation. Ms Aziz said: "In the Muslim religion, if a man dies his money goes to a male member of the family. After the Iran-Iraq war, there were so many widows that Saddam changed the law so it would go to the women and children. Now it has been changed back." Mrs Alebadi estimated that as many as 70 per cent of women in Basra had been widowed by the constant conflicts. "You see widows on the streets begging at the intersections." Optimists say the very fact that 25 per cent of Iraq's Provincial Council is composed of women proves women have been empowered since the invasion. But the people of Basra say it is a smokescreen. Any woman who becomes a part of the system, they say, is incapable of engineering any change for the better. Posters around the city promoting the constitution graphically illustrate that view. The faces of the women candidates have been blacked out, the accompanying slogan, "No women in politics," a stark reminder of the opposition they face. Ms Aziz said: "Women members of the Provincial Council had many dreams but they were told 'With respect, you don't know anything. This is a world of men. Your view is good but not better.' More and more they just agreed to sign whatever they were told. We have got women in power, who are powerless." Many of the British officers in Basra say they feel "uncomfortable" with the situation but a spokesman for the Foreign Office would only say: "As part of the new government's programme, they do say in their top 10 items to be looked at that women constitute half of society and are nurturers of the other half and, therefore, must take an active role in building the society and the state. Their rights should be respected in all fields." In the villages around Basra, the shy women who peer round doorways are uncomplaining. For one Marsh Arab, Makir Jafar, the fact she has been given enough education to help her 10-year-old son with his homework is enough. "Life is nice. There is the river. I do not want for anything," she said. There is a growing fear among educated women, however, that the extreme dangers of daily life will allow the issue of women's oppression to remain unchallenged. In Mrs Kareem's words: "Men have been given a voice. But women will not get their part in building this country." |
Report Implicates 20 Nations in 'Spider's Web' of CIA Abductions
by Jonathan S. Landay |
| WASHINGTON - More than 20 nations - from Central Asia to Western Europe - colluded in a CIA-run "spider's web" of secret flights and prisons for abducted terrorism suspects that breach European and international human rights accords, a report to Europe's top human rights organization charged Wednesday. "Rather than face any form of justice, suspects become entrapped in the spider's web," the report says. The findings could further damage the United States' image in Europe and the Muslim world, where many people already are angry about the Iraq invasion, alleged torture of U.S.-held detainees and what they perceive as a Bush administration bias toward Israel. Bush administration spokesmen said the report rehashed old allegations with no basis in facts. They denied that the United States practices torture and said rendition - transporting suspects to face criminal charges in their native countries - was legal under international law. "The fight against terrorism is our highest priority, but it must be conducted with respect for the international rule of law," asserted Rene van der Linden, the president of the 46-nation Council of Europe. The council, Europe's oldest human rights organization, can pressure member governments and legislatures into using the report as the basis for further investigations. It has no power on its own to enforce human rights accords, however. The report, by Swiss Sen. Dick Marty, charges that 14 European governments and eight other nations aided the CIA in some way in illegally seizing suspected Islamic terrorists. It didn't give a total number of abductions, but said investigators had confirmed 10 cases of "alleged unlawful interstate transfer" involving 17 men. The men claimed they were abducted by American agents, trussed up and blindfolded, subjected to maltreatment that included beatings and flown to U.S. prisons in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and Afghanistan or to Poland, Morocco, Romania, Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Uzbekistan, Iraq and Pakistan. Several of the men were released after investigators found that they'd been erroneously identified as Islamic terrorists or accomplices. "Rendition is not something that began with this administration, and it's certainly going to be practiced, I'm sure, in the future," White House spokesman Tony Snow said. But Marty said that after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Bush administration oversaw a "critical deviation" in U.S. rendition policy under which the practice was used to "place captured terrorist suspects outside the reach of any justice system and keep them there." The "absence of human rights guarantees" and the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" led in several cases "to detainees being subjected to torture," he said. The extraordinary renditions were carried out by "an elite, highly trained and highly motivated group of CIA agents who traveled around the world mistreating victim after victim," the report charges. Interviews with released detainees found they suffered from "lasting psychological damage," it says. Marty said he had "no formal evidence" to substantiate American news reports that the CIA maintained secret detention centers in Poland and Romania. Both countries deny the allegation. "Nevertheless, it is clear that an unspecified number of persons . . . were arbitrarily and unlawfully arrested and/or detained and transported under the supervision of (security) services acting in the name, or on behalf, of the American authorities," he wrote. The report traced specific flights of U.S. military and CIA-operated aircraft, often beginning in Washington, using flight logs from Eurocontrol, the European air-traffic authority, and national aviation authorities. It also relied on the statements of people who claimed to have been abducted, interviews with American and European officials, and police and judicial investigations in several countries. Among the cases the report cites is that of Khaled El Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent who was detained in Macedonia in 2003 and flown to Baghdad and then to Kabul, where he was imprisoned until May 2004. El Masri, who's sued the CIA in the United States, claimed he was stripped, beaten, drugged and chained up during his abduction. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said last December after speaking with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about El Masri that the United States "has acknowledged being in error." Washington denied that Rice had admitted a mistake. The report also cited the CIA's alleged 2003 abduction in Milan, Italy, of an Egyptian cleric suspected of links to Islamic militants, who was flown to Cairo. Italian authorities have issued arrest warrants for 22 CIA officers in the case. |
Cheney Cuts Senator Out of Democratic Process
Specter's Uneasy Relationship With White House Is Revealed in a Letter to Cheney
By Carl Hulse and Jim Rutenberg
The New York Times
Thursday 08 June 2006
Washington - A senior Republican lawmaker went public on Wednesday about his often tense and complicated relationship with the Bush White House in a remarkable display of the strains within the party.
The lawmaker, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, accused Vice President Dick Cheney of meddling behind his back in the committee's business, bringing into the open a conflict that has simmered for months.
In a letter to Mr. Cheney that the senator released to the news media, Mr. Specter said the vice president had cut him out of discussions with all the other Republicans on his own committee about oversight of the administration's eavesdropping programs, a subject on which Mr. Specter has often been at odds with the White House.
The trigger for Mr. Specter's anger was a deal made by Mr. Cheney with the other Republicans on the committee to block testimony from phone companies that reportedly cooperated in providing call records to the National Security Agency.
Mr. Specter, who had been considering issuing subpoenas to compel telephone company executives to testify, learned of Mr. Cheney's actions only when he went into a closed meeting of the committee's Republicans on Tuesday afternoon, shortly after encountering the vice president at a weekly luncheon of all Senate Republicans.
Mr. Specter's tone in the letter was restrained, but he made no effort to hide his displeasure at having been outmaneuvered and, in his view, undermined, by Mr. Cheney.
"I was surprised, to say the least, that you sought to influence, really determine, the action of the committee without calling me first, or at least calling me at some point," Mr. Specter wrote. "This was especially perplexing since we both attended the Republican senators caucus lunch yesterday and I walked directly in front of you on at least two occasions en route from the buffet to my table."
A spokeswoman for Mr. Cheney, Lea Anne McBride, said Wednesday night that the vice president "has not had an opportunity to study" the letter.
"We're going to continue to work with members, listening to their legislative ideas," Ms. McBride said, although she added that it was "not necessary to have legislation to carry out the terrorist surveillance program."
She had no comment on the assertion that Mr. Cheney had worked behind the chairman's back.
Mr. Specter's evident frustration underscored the growing unease on Capitol Hill, among some Republicans as well as many Democrats, over the administration's efforts to exert executive power. At the same time, the White House has been trying to repair its relations with Congress.
One Republican with close ties to the administration, who was granted anonymity to discuss the thinking at the White House, said Mr. Specter had been increasingly nettlesome to the administration with his persistent criticism, especially of the surveillance programs.
Noting that the White House was ultimately pleased with Mr. Specter's help in securing the confirmations of Mr. Bush's Supreme Court nominees, this Republican said, "All of that good will he's built up has really been dissipated because he keeps smacking them around."
A senior White House official, granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said the president's chief of staff, Joshua B. Bolten, had reached out to Mr. Specter on Friday to press the administration's case for how to handle the phone companies.
The official described the conversation as "cordial but not productive."
"That's when we started reaching out to other members," the official said. "It was not out of disrespect."
The official went on, "The chairman's position is well known, and he knows our position, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't work with other members who may be more open to our position."
Mr. Specter has been the leading Republican voice raising questions about the legal underpinnings of the surveillance programs.
In his letter, Mr. Specter told Mr. Cheney that events were unfolding in a "context where the administration is continuing warrantless wiretaps in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and is preventing the Senate Judiciary Committee from carrying out its constitutional responsibility for Congressional oversight."
Mr. Cheney, by contrast, has led the White House's effort to defend the surveillance programs on legal and national security grounds.
The vice president has also been the primary force behind the administration's efforts to expand executive power in a wide variety of areas, a stance that has at times put him in direct conflict with Mr. Specter.
When Mr. Specter faced a difficult primary challenge in 2004, Mr. Bush sided with Mr. Specter, giving him vital political support.
In an interview, Mr. Specter described his relationship with Mr. Cheney as generally friendly and cordial. But he was clearly put out by the vice president's handling of the issue and his failure to pull Mr. Specter aside as he made several trips to the buffet for tuna salad and hard-boiled egg, salad dressing and fruit.
"He can talk to anybody he wants to," Mr. Specter said. "I think as a matter of basic protocol he ought not to exclude the chairman."
8.6.06
Cheney's Office Declares Exemption From Secrecy Oversight
By Michelle Chen
The NewStandard
Wednesday 07 June 2006
Thickening the haze of secrecy surrounding the executive branch, the Office of Vice President Dick Cheney has declared itself exempt from a yearly requirement to report how it uses its power to classify secret information. (He's a drunk, and when drunk talks too much)
In its 2005 report to the president released last month, the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO), a branch of the National Archives, provides a quantitative overview of hundreds of thousands of pages of classified and declassified documents. But the vice president's input consists of a single footnote explaining that his office failed to meet its reporting requirements for the third year in a row.
Open-government advocates say Cheney's refusal to divulge even basic information about classification activities reflects an alarming pattern of broadening executive privilege while narrowing public accountability.
"It's part of a larger assertiveness by the Office of the Vice President and a resistance to oversight," said Steve Aftergood of the Project on Government Secrecy, a division of the public-interest association American Federation of Scientists. "It's as if they're saying, 'What we do is nobody's business.'"
Though not the only government entity to shrug off the reporting duties, Cheney's office is unique in that it has actually issued a public justification for its non-compliance. Cheney's office argued on Monday that its dual role in the federal government places it above the reporting mandate.
"This matter has been carefully reviewed, and it has been determined that the reporting requirement does not apply to [the Office of the Vice President], which has both executive and legislative functions," Lea McBride, a spokesperson for Cheney's office, told The NewStandard.
Cheney's press aides declined to specify to TNS how the office's legislative role effectively exempted it from the executive order, or why the office had complied prior to 2003.
In a May 30 letter to J. William Leonard, director of the ISOO, the Project on Government Secrecy contended that Cheney's rationale was illogical, because additional legislative functions should have no bearing on the vice president's executive-branch obligations. Troubled by the continued non-compliance, the organization warned that if the ISOO did not act to enforce the vice president's responsibilities under the executive order, "every agency will feel free to re-interpret the order in idiosyncratic and self-serving ways."
Each year, the ISOO publishes data on the amount of information classified by government entities, such as the Department of Justice and the Pentagon, and broadly analyzes how the bureaucracy processes national-security secrets. Mandated by an executive order, the report is intended to encourage greater accountability and minimize secrecy.
In 2003 - around the time Cheney's office stopped reporting to the ISOO - the Bush administration affirmed and expanded the vice president's classification powers through a revision of Executive Order 12958, the same order mandating the yearly ISOO assessment. The amended order explicitly granted the vice president unprecedented authority to classify information "in the performance of executive duties," including the ability to label information "secret" and "top secret" on par with the heads of federal agencies and the president himself.
Critics also note another legal shield compounding the vice president's reticence about how he handles secrets: Cheney enjoys general immunity from the Freedom of Information Act, which empowers members of the public with a process for demanding the release of government documents.
Along with Cheney's office, the President's Foreign-Intelligence Advisory Board and Homeland Security Council - both advisory bodies attached to the White House - also failed to report classification activity in 2005. In the footnote of its report, the ISOO suggested that the loss of this information was inconsequential, because these entities "historically have not reported quantitatively significant data."
However, Aftergood argued that because the annual report is a statistical breakdown of information processed, the quantitative data merely reflects the volume, not the individual public-interest value, of the secrets withheld by the government.
The most recent report shows that decisions to classify information have declined by about 9 percent since 2004, and the volume of newly declassified information has risen slightly. But watchdogs say the government is still amassing secrets at a disturbing rate: total classification activity was over 60 percent higher in 2005 than in 2001. Overall, agencies reported 14.2 million classification decisions last year.
Though Cheney's obfuscation of his classification activity has been ongoing since 2003, the explosion of the Valerie Plame leak scandal, which centers on the suspected retaliatory leak of a CIA agent's identity by the White House, has invited fresh scrutiny of the administration's political opacity. Some question whether Cheney has wielded his power over secret government information to smear opponents.
In a February interview with Fox News, asked whether he had ever exercised declassification powers, Cheney replied, "I've certainly advocated declassification and participated in declassification decisions," though he refused elaborate on the nature of those decisions.
Aftergood said that the ISOO could try to compel Cheney to comply with the executive order through enforcement mechanisms. These could include sanctions, which under the ISOO's mandate might entail "termination of classification authority" or "denial of access to classified information" - or officially requesting an advisory ruling from the attorney general to clarify the vice president's obligations.
Since receiving the letter, Leonard of the ISOO told TNS that he is "currently pursuing the matter." Noting the novelty of Cheney's defense, he added, "I am not aware of any other entity claiming any such 'exemption.'"
Jennifer Gore, communications director for the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight (POGO), pointed to a precedent for public-interest advocates bringing legal challenges to curb executive secrecy. Referring to the Watergate scandal, which also involved a court battle over the White House's refusal to disclose incriminating documents, she said, "In the past, when members of the executive branch have voiced privilege as a reason not to turn something over, then it's time to go to the courts."
To counterbalance the expansion of secrecy under the current administration, POGO is also advocating the Executive Branch Reform Act of 2006. The bill, introduced by Representatives Tom Davis (R-Virginia) and Henry Waxman (D-California), targets new, vaguely defined categories that build on the regular classification system, mainly the "sensitive but unclassified" label that has enabled agencies to limit public access to counterterrorism-related information.
Aftergood said that systemic problems in the classification system undermine the public value of the ISOO's annual report, with or without full compliance from agencies. To move toward genuine transparency, he said, the ISOO's tracking should encompass more aggressive, in-depth reviews of classified materials to monitor whether federal operatives are overusing or abusing their privilege.
"What's really missing is a sense of the quality of the classification activity," Aftergood said. "You could tell me how many things you classify, but that doesn't give me any indication of whether you exercised good judgment or not."
