General Ashcroft's detention camps
Nat Hentoff, Village Voice, September 4, 2002
Ever since General Ashcroft pushed the U.S. Patriot Act through an overwhelmingly supine Congress soon after September 11, he has subverted more elements of the Bill of Rights than any attorney general in American history.
Bush: Patient is as patient does
David Corn, AlterNet, August 30, 2002
"I'm a patient man," George W. Bush says regarding Saddam Hussein, who has surpassed (at least in presidential rhetoric) Osama Bin Laden as America's most most-wanted. Yet days later, from a disclosed location, Vice President, Dick Cheney, the soul of the Bush White House, blasts Saddam as a clear-and-present danger, noting "there is no doubt" he is "amassing" weapons of mass destruction to use against the United States, and "what he wants is time and more time" to amass further. In other words, patience ain't a virtue here.
So which is it? Is the administration, as Bush suggested, biding its time as it carefully figures out how best to confront Saddam? Or, as Cheney hinted, does an attack have to happen by yesterday?
Iraq debate in mainstream is ultra-hawks v. moderate-hawks
Robert Jensen and Rahul Mahajan, Common Dreams, August 30, 2002
The question dominating the news: When will we go to war against Iraq?
The answer: We are already at war with Iraq.
The debate over the Bush administration's call for war is usually described as hawks v. doves -- those for the war pitted against those opposing war. In fact, the debate in mainstream news is hawks v. hawks; the question isn't whether or not to wage war, but what form that war should take.
Iraq and poison gas
Dilip Hiro, The Nation, August 28, 2002
It is suddenly de rigueur for US officials to say, "Saddam Hussein gassed his own people." They are evidently referring to the Iraqi military's use of chemical weapons in the Iraqi Kurdistan town of Halabja in March 1988 during the Iran-Iraq War, and then in the area controlled by the Teheran-backed Kurdish insurgents after the cease-fire in August.
Since Baghdad's deployment of chemical arms in war as well as peace was known at the time, the question is: What did the US government do about it then? Nothing. Worse, so strong was the hold of the pro-Iraq lobby on the Republican administration of President Ronald Reagan, it succeeded in getting the White House to frustrate the Senate's attempt to penalize Baghdad for violating the Geneva Protocol on Chemical Weapons, which it had signed. This led Saddam to believe that Washington was firmly on his side--a conclusion that paved the way for his invasion of Kuwait and the 1991 Gulf War, the full consequences of which have yet to play themselves out.
Cakewalk or oblivion
Editorial, The War in Context, August 30, 2002
On September 11, even before George Bush had addressed the nation, Dick Cheney's buddies were already laying out the course of this administration's foreign policy, as they believed it should unfold over the following months and years.
Hate, American style
Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times, August 30, 2002
I came to East Peoria to meet Mr. Hale because he has become the key figure in America's hate community, revitalizing racism by recruiting women, children and convicts into a high-tech, energetic organization whose followers show a pattern of random brutality toward blacks and other "enemies." It would be flattering Mr. Hale too much to call his group America's Al Qaeda, but the scary thing is that I think the comparison would leave him feeling flattered.
Israeli challenger on the rise
Ex-general wants to lead Labor Party back to peace role
John Ward Anderson, Washington Post, August 30, 2002
A dovish former general, Amram Mitzna, has burst onto Israel's political stage seeking to lead the Labor Party out of its uneasy alliance with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and back toward its traditional stand of flexibility toward the Palestinians.
Palestinian factions ready to plot new course united under Arafat
Ewen MacAskill, The Guardian, August 30, 2002
Rival Palestinian militant groups, after six months of behind-the-scenes negotiations, have come close to a breakthrough that could alter the course of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Thirteen factions, including Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, have been meeting regularly in Gaza City to try to end their historic squabbles and put together a united front.
The ongoing discussions are comparable to the internal debates within the IRA in the 1980s and 1990s that led to shifts in strategy.
A switch in Palestinian military and political strategy could bring a halt to attacks, including suicide bombings, in Israel. Attacks would be confined to Israeli soldiers and armed Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza.
Washington bends the rules
James Bamford, New York Times, August 27, 2002
Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested." So begins "The Trial," Franz Kafka's story of an ordinary man caught in a legal web where the more he struggles to find out what he did wrong, the more trapped he becomes. "After all," says Kafka's narrator, "K. lived in a state governed by law, there was universal peace, all statutes were in force."
With increasing speed, the Justice Department of Attorney General John Ashcroft is starting to resemble the "always vengeful bureaucracy" that crushed Josef K. Recently, in two federal cases, the Justice Department argued that it is within the president's inherent power to indefinitely detain, without any charges, any person, including any United States citizen, whom the president (through the Justice Department) designates an "enemy combatant." Further, the person can be locked away, held incommunicado and denied counsel. Finally, Mr. Ashcroft argues that such a decision is not subject to review by federal or state courts. This situation is beyond even Kafka, who in his parable of punishment and paranoia at least supplied Josef K. with an attorney.
Now every Jew must decide
Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian, August 30, 2002
The chief rabbi [in Britain] has made waves before, but never like this. His comments to this newspaper - noting that the conflict with the Palestinians was forcing Israel into positions "incompatible" with Judaism's deepest ideals and "corrupting" of Israeli culture - have reverberated far beyond Britain's Jewish community. They have provoked outrage in Israel and fierce debate across the diaspora.
One Jerusalem rabbi, Sholom Gold, told the BBC that Jonathan Sacks's statements were so far beyond the pale, he was now "irrelevant" in the world Jewish community. Yesterday's edition of the hardline Jerusalem Post ran an editorial with the simple headline: "Resign, Rabbi Sacks."
It will be of little comfort to him, but the scale of this row is testament to the chief rabbi's standing in the Jewish world. There are not many diaspora clerics whose pronouncements would lead the morning news bulletin on Israel radio - as the Guardian interview did on Tuesday - even fewer from a community as small as Britain's. But Professor Sacks's standing as a first-class scholar and, crucially, his reputation as a passionate advocate for Israel, ensured that his words carried an extra punch - making them all the more shocking to those who now condemn him.
Do the moral maths: Bush's war on terror doesn't add up
Martin Woollacott, The Guardian, August 30, 2002
The organisers of the earth summit altered the original dates so that it would not run too close to September 11, when the president of the United States, for reasons of security and symbolism, would be expected to be at home. President Bush chose not to go anyway. It is a decision that has been interpreted as further proof that his administration sees such meetings as too often ending in attempts to force sacrifices on Americans that are neither scientifically justified nor matched by genuinely equivalent action on the part of other countries.
But while it is true that his administration has increased foreign aid, the president's decision can also be taken to have another meaning, which is to reject any connection between global economic injustice and the terrorist attacks of last year.
SWEET IS WAR TO THOSE WHO KNOW IT NOT
The critics might make Bush hurry
William Pfaff, International Herald Tribune, August 29, 2002
It is hard to judge whether the generational split on the Iraq issue, between Republicans who governed under the first President George Bush and those in Washington today, is more likely to block a war or speed its coming.
The young George Bush and his neoconservative advisers and cheerleaders want the war, but opposition is widening and solidifying, in public opinion as well as within the Republican Party. It is possible that the administration will feel compelled to go to war while it can. Gallup Poll findings released on Friday say that only 20 percent of Americans support a U.S. attack made without allies.
By now the public has also taken note that members of the war party and their main backers in the press seem, without exception, to have arranged to be elsewhere while the last serious fighting was done, in Vietnam.
The "chicken-hawk" issue is not simple demagogy. It justifies asking if those planning this war are serious, and if they know what they are doing. "Sweet is war," wrote Erasmus, "to those who know it not."
How dangerous is Iraq's arsenal?
Scott Peterson, Christian Science Monitor, August 29, 2002
The smashed Iraqi laboratory may once have produced a million veterinary vaccines a year, as Saddam Hussein's regime claimed. But in 1998 this site outside Baghdad was ground zero in United Nations efforts to erase Iraq's biological weapons program. Armed with the most intrusive arms-control mandate in history, the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) destroyed whatever it could find of Iraq's chemical, biological, nuclear, and long-range missile programs. By some estimates, the seven-year mission disarmed the regime by up to 95 percent.
But what is left? What weapons has Iraq been able to reassemble since UNSCOM departed in late 1998? Those uncertainties lie at the heart of the current debate over possible US military action against Iraq. The key question is this: Could renewed, unfettered weapons inspections contain Iraq and avert war, as many weapons experts say? Or, as the White House argues, is military action the only course that remains?
'Ignorant and inept' FBI failed to heed warning of attacks
Philip Shenon, New York Times, August 29, 2002
The ignorance and ineptitude of FBI supervisors and lawyers in Washington obstructed agents all over America from pursuing evidence that could have provided them in advance with a "veritable blueprint" of the September 11 attacks, a Senate report has found.
See also Lack of e-mail trail irks Moussaoui judge
Iran's president trying to limit power of clergy
Nazila Fathi, New York Times, August 29, 2002
Iran's president, Mohammad Khatami, said today that hard-line clerics had made it all but impossible for him to do his job and that he would propose legislation to adjust the balance of power so that he could pursue reforms.
President Khatami's statement amounted to a clear expression of frustration with the clerics who hold most real levers of power and have thwarted a president elected twice on promises to open the economy and usher in greater civil liberties.
"I am announcing today that the president must have the power to perform his duties within the framework of the Constitution," he said at a news conference.
"We cannot speak of democracy if we are not ready to play by its rules," he added. "The main aspect of democracy is the right of people to change a government if they do not like it."
The President is reading a book, I’m afraid
Robert Higgs, AlterNet, August 28, 2002
In an interview with an Associated Press reporter, Bush said that on his vacation he had been reading a recently published book by Eliot A. Cohen, "The Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen and Leadership in Wartime." Cohen is a well-known neocon war-hawk and all-around armchair warrior who professes "strategic studies" at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and, in his spare time, ponders mega-deaths (his own not included) with other lusty members of the Defense Policy Board. The quintessential civilian go-getter, he never met a war he didn't want to send somebody else to fight and die in.
THE PRINCE OF DARKNESS
Richard Perle
Washington's faceful bureaucrat
Chris Suellentrop, Slate, August 23, 2002
Anyone who has listened to a single political speech knows that Washington, D.C., is a swampy morass controlled by pencil pushers, experts in bureaucratic intrigue. Richard Perle is one of these men. By dint of his mastery of the dark arts of memos and news leaks, Perle has become a Washington eminence, appearing on TV shows, publishing op-eds in the national dailies, and getting quoted (by name!) in news stories. He's something you don't hear about in politicians' speeches: the faceful bureaucrat.
Courage to speak out
Lead Editorial, The Guardian, August 29, 2002
For Jews in the diaspora to criticise Israel's conduct has long been a matter of extreme delicacy verging on a taboo. Opinion leaders provoke debate on many public issues, but on Israel the conventional view in the Jewish community was that there were only two policies, either unqualified support or discreet silence. Those who broke the unwritten rule were reminded that as non-Israelis they could not understand the dangers and pressures that weigh on the country every day and night.
So when Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks decided to air controversial views about Israel's conduct in the occupied territories, he knew he would cause a storm. He has had a volume of email from Israel, much of it hostile. Jews in the United States (where the loyalty principle is strong) have also been vigorous in attack. Among British Jews the mood has been more balanced, with many applauding the chief rabbi for his courage and for his argument that "there are things that happen on a daily basis which make me feel very uncomfortable as a Jew". In Israel too there have been influential voices of praise. Arik Aschermann of Rabbis for Human Rights, an organisation of reform, orthodox, conservative and reconstructionist rabbis, made the point that chief rabbi Sacks was saying things "which many others believe but are hesitant to say out loud".
See also Israel set on tragic path, says chief rabbi
U.S. must not act like a rogue superpower
Helen Thomas, Albany Times-Union, August 27, 2002
More and more, the United States is parting company with European and other nations on political, diplomatic and judicial issues.
Our friends and allies are wondering what has happened to the great America they once knew. To many of them, we have lost the moral high ground. There is a growing perception that with its solo superpower status, the Bush administration is saying to the rest of the world: Who cares what you think?
Deterrents that haven't deterred
Amira Hass, Ha'aretz, August 28, 2002
The IDF and Shin Bet claim that demolishing the homes of terror suspects and expelling their families to Gaza is a deterrence that has already yielded results. Such an opinion relies on the ignorance or willful amnesia of the Israeli public.
Senior IDF and Shin Bet officers depend on Israelis not taking note of the fact that for the last two years most of Israel's military activity in the territories has been about deterrence. The punishments meted out were collective and harmed the entire Palestinian population. But the terrorist attacks not only proliferated and became bloodier, but were aimed at ever larger numbers of people, and Palestinian public opinion polls show support for the attackers has not declined.
Israel ready for war with Iraq
Marc Erikson, Asia Times, August 28, 2002
"My working assumption as defense minister is that the Iraqis will not give us a moment of rest from the very first minute," Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer recently told the mass circulation daily Yedioth Ahronoth. "If Saddam understands that this time he won't be able to escape an American strike, he will take out everything he has and we will be one of his first targets."
In that event, Israel will strike back and with commensurate force and weapons selection. "If they hit us, we reserve the right of response," says Ben-Eliezer. And according to top military analyst Zeev Schiff, writing in the Haaretz daily, retaliation might well include a nuclear strike. Such commentary by an analyst with high-level military connections is, of course, in part penned for propaganda purposes and designed to reinforce deterrence. But, though Pentagon analysts assign it a very low probability, an Israeli nuclear counterstrike cannot be ruled out.
Report of mass Afghan graves won't be probed, envoy says
Pamela Constable, Washington Post, August 28, 2002
The U.N. special representative in Afghanistan said today that the weakness of the Afghan government and the risk to investigators or witnesses make it almost impossible to investigate reports that there are mass graves in northern Afghanistan.
The envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, was speaking about a report in Newsweek magazine that mass graves discovered in May near the northern city of Shebergan could contain as many as 1,000 bodies of Taliban prisoners who suffocated in sealed trucks last November while being transported by Afghan militiamen from Kunduz province to a militia prison at Shebergan, 200 miles to the west.
Arab resolve against invasion of Iraq deepens
Michael Slackman, Los Angeles Times, August 28, 2002
Qatar's foreign minister ended a two-day visit to Baghdad on Tuesday during which he added his voice to a growing chorus of Arab opposition to a U.S. invasion of Iraq, complicating the Bush administration's ability to launch an attack from the region.
The announcement coincided with a failed attempt by President Bush to win Saudi support for a military campaign and marked a victory for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's diplomatic efforts to shield his regime from attack.
Cuckoo in Carolina
Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, August 28, 2002
The ruckus being raised by conservative Christians over the University of North Carolina's decision to ask incoming students to read a book about the Koran — to stimulate a campus debate — surely has to be one of the most embarrassing moments for America since Sept. 11.
Why? Because it exhibits such profound lack of understanding of what America is about, and it exhibits such a chilling mimicry of what the most repressive Arab Muslim states are about. Ask yourself this question: What would Osama bin Laden do if he found out that the University of Riyadh had asked incoming freshmen to read the New and Old Testaments?
He would do exactly what the book-burning opponents of this U.N.C. directive are doing right now — try to shut it down, only bin Laden wouldn't bother with the courts. It's against the law to build a church or synagogue or Buddhist temple or Hindu shrine in public in Saudi Arabia. Is that what we're trying to mimic?
Cheney speech seen setting path to war
John Donnelly and Susan Milligan, Boston Globe, August 28, 2002
The Bush administration has set itself on a ''path toward war'' against Iraq with Vice President Dick Cheney's forceful speech on Monday, accelerating the campaign to win over allies to oust Saddam Hussein, conservative and liberal analysts agreed yesterday.
''The debate is over,'' said William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard and a former senior official in the first Bush presidency whose views are influential with members of the current administration. ''It marks a transition from an administration weighing what to do to an administration beginning to make its case at home and abroad over the next two or three weeks in favor of an attack.''
Howellin' wolf
'Times' hounds Bush over war plan
Cynthia Cotts, Village Voice, August 28, 2002
If certain conservatives fear the liberal media will turn public opinion against the upcoming war on Iraq, it's too late. The cat's out of the bag. Voices all along the political spectrum are questioning the administration's strategy for a preemptive strike (a.k.a. the Bush Doctrine), and according to the latest polls, public support for such a strike is eroding. Some conservatives have blamed The New York Times for intentionally manufacturing this anti-war consensus, which may or may not be true. But if it is, then three cheers for Executive Editor Howell Raines. With the rule of law and every nation's security at stake, he could not have chosen a better cause.
The Vietnam folly calls out to us as war fever burns
Stanley I. Kutler, Los Angeles Times, August 27, 2002
The lessons of the past are problematic, sometimes distorted for partisan gain, but they can provide sober enlightenment. They will not go away, however the president might wish. He should remember the Vietnam War's painful, clear lessons on the limits of our power, limits to our ability to impose our will on others, and the hazards of unilateralism and lack of support in the international community. He should remember his father's determination to build a grand coalition for the Persian Gulf War.
Bush II is considering the necessity of an invasion of Iraq and the toppling of its regime. Where is the debate? Absent any real dissent, we have a lethal combination of inertia, intimidation and political impotence, all combining to cast an illusion of overwhelming consensus.
Iraq: The doubters grow
Editorial, The Nation, September 2, 2002
This past week confirmed that the American political establishment is not united in support of the Bush Administration's policy of forcible "regime change" in Iraq. Odd as it may seem, the strongest expression of doubt came from a key member of the GOP's right wing, House majority leader Dick Armey. Expressing concern that an unprovoked attack on Iraq would violate international law, Armey was quoted as saying that such an attack "would not be consistent with what we have been as a nation or what we should be as a nation." Meanwhile, Armey's colleague across the aisle, Carl Levin, voiced the thinking of many of his fellow Democrats when he argued that "containment of Saddam is so far working."
An alternative to Bush is demanding to be heard
Hugo Young, The Guardian, August 27, 2002
For all his scripted dumbness, George Bush is the voice of America. He manages to be loud and anxious at the same time. When he speaks his own words they often sound evasive and uncomprehending. But his is the only voice there seems to be. He is, after all, the president. Through him and the handful of his ministers regularly heard from - which means, in effect, the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and almost no one else - we get a monochrome picture of the US: an America defiant, haughty and contemptuous towards both dissenters at home and, mitigated by the softenings of the secretary of state, Colin Powell, other governments that do not agree with the Bush line abroad.
The dominance of this tone is surprising. Had it not been for the 9/11 crime against America last year, Bush would surely not get away with it. That remembered horror shelters him from the truth that an election he did not win fair and square should have induced a subtler humility. What is even more striking than the president's strident emptiness, however, is the absence of competing voices with a different philosophy.
Court calls for open detainee hearings
U.S. chastised on immigration case secrecy policy
Charles Lane, Washington Post, August 27, 2002
A federal appeals court ruled yesterday that the press and public must be allowed to witness immigration hearings for suspects detained in the Sept. 11 investigation, strongly rebuking the Bush administration for its policy of maximum secrecy in the war on terrorism.
A three-judge panel of the Cincinnati-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit concluded that the news media and ordinary citizens have a constitutional "right of access" to deportation proceedings that was violated by a Sept. 21, 2001, Justice Department order that closed hearings deemed of "special interest" to the terrorism investigation.
Under the order, "The Executive Branch seeks to uproot people's lives, outside the public eye, and behind a closed door," Senior Judge Damon J. Keith wrote in the opinion for the court. "Democracies die behind closed doors. The First Amendment, through a free press, protects the people's right to know that their government acts fairly, lawfully, and accurately in deportation proceedings."
Advisory board pushing Iraq attack
Stephen J. Hedges, Chicago Tribune, August 18, 2002
A once-obscure Pentagon board is playing an influential, little-noticed role in pushing the Bush administration toward an invasion of Iraq, generating support for military action as members seek to transform a controversial idea into a central pillar of U.S. foreign policy.
Since 1985, the Defense Policy Board has offered advice to top Pentagon officials on a range of military issues, usually providing a diversity of views. During the Bush administration, though, members of the innocuous sounding board have used inside access and outside voices to press a long-held belief that the U.S. should oust Saddam Hussein.
And they have done it from their very first meeting under this administration, held just a few days after Sept. 11.
A shot across the bow from the darkness
Jonathan Turley, Los Angeles Times, August 26, 2002
For many citizens, the notion of an American "secret court" would appear a striking contradiction in terms. Until last week's disclosures by Congress, few Americans were aware that our government routinely used such a court to conduct searches of its own citizens for the purpose of foreign intelligence gathering, searches that would be denied as unconstitutional by any conventional court. However, this little-known court released to Congress a rare public opinion chastising Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft and disclosing dozens of secret violations by the Justice Department.
Most alarming is the disclosure of a plan by Ashcroft to change the role of the court in spying on citizens. Not only would the court no longer have foreign intelligence gathering as its primary purpose, but Ashcroft's prosecutors would be in direct control of the use and dissemination of information gathered on citizens.
Preparing for war
Galal Nassar, Al-Ahram Weekly, August 22, 2002
According to some sources, Hussein and Qusai have drawn up a parallel plan to strike at US interests in the event of an assault. The sources say that over the past weeks some 300 suicide fighters have received training and have been sent into various Arab, Asian and European countries. The suicide fighters are said to be under the command of the Iraqi Intelligence Agency and its covert operations department and will be supervised by special field agents. Some of these agents, who include Major Abu Akthum Al- Hamiri, Colonel Samir Al-Takwiti and a Special Forces officer known as Colonel Hisham, have supposedly already left Iraq to be in place for executing the plan.
We the people, we the warriors
Talbot Brewer, Washington Post, August 26, 2002
One common philosophical argument for democracy is that democratic regimes are particularly unlikely to start wars. When the power to declare war is closely tethered to the preferences of those who would bear the costs of fighting, it stands to reason that this power will be used sparingly. Thus, many political philosophers have followed Kant in supposing that the universal embrace of democracy offers the best hope of world peace.
Our nation now finds itself on the verge of initiating war against another sovereign nation. We have not been attacked by Iraq, and we have thus far failed to produce convincing evidence that Iraq has aided, or plans to aid, those who have attacked us. If we go to war, we will be the initiators of aggression.
It would be a mistake, however, to take this as fresh cause for doubt about the link between democracy and peace. We ought instead to view this imminent possibility as an occasion for raising hard questions about whether, in the critical matter of waging war, we still function as a genuine democracy.
Whither Afghan aid?
Editorial, Christian Science Monitor, August 26, 2002
The surest way to keep Afghanistan terror-free is to move as quickly as possible to rebuild the country. And that requires substantial amounts of aid. Afghans themselves can contribute mainly willing minds, whatever skill and experience they have, and muscle power.
Such aid was promised back in January at an international donors' meeting in Tokyo – $4.5 billion over five years. So far, however, little of that has trickled into the war-battered nation.
Connect the dots with Rumsfeld
David Corn, AlterNet, August 23, 2002
Who died and left Donald Rumsfeld Secretary of State? Seems like every few days, he meets with the press and tosses out another foreign-policy making remark. Students of bureaucratic gamesmanship must view the Defense Secretary with awe. When the Afghanistan campaign was underway last year, he took to holding daily briefings with the Pentagon press corps. The sessions were a hit; among the commentariat there was silly talk that Rummy, with his no-nonsense style, had become a matinee idol. (For whom? Republican matrons in their 60s?) But every day he was out there making news -- or making it on to the news -- and as the war in Afghanistan slowed to a trickle of small actions, Rumsfeld still kept his date with the television cameras. With less to talk about Afghanistan-wise, he was happy to share his views on other matters -- the Middle East, say. Most recently, he warned (at a public meeting with Army troops) that if Russia maintains its trading relationship with Iraq, the nation will be branded a pal of terrorism and global investors will steer clear of Russia. Normally, it would be the job of the Secretary of State or the President to wag a finger at another nuclear power. But in this instance, the SecDef -- on his own or not -- was sending a serious foreign-policy message. Colin Powell, call your office. Henry Kissinger would never have stood for this.
Should we invade Syria?
Tom DeLay's case for war with Iraq—and nine other countries
William Saletan, Slate, August 23, 2002
Should we send troops to Iraq to get rid of Saddam Hussein? President Bush says we should, but others say it might fracture the coalition against al-Qaida. Now comes Tom DeLay, the de facto Republican leader in Congress, with a speech—reportedly vetted by Bush's national security adviser—laying out the case for war. DeLay says Bush has established a new doctrine: "America must preempt threats before they damage our national interests." Is DeLay right? Should we attack Saddam before he attacks us?
U.S. general backs probe of reported Afghan mass graves
CNN, August 25, 2002
The general in charge of the U.S.-led mission in Afghanistan said Sunday he supports an investigation into allegations that hundreds of Taliban prisoners suffocated and were dumped into mass graves after surrendering to U.S.-backed forces last year.
15,000 reserves to serve second year
Dave Moniz, USA Today, August 25, 2002
For the first time since the Vietnam War, the Pentagon will keep National Guard and reserve troops on active duty for as long as two years, military officials say.
About 15,000 reservists — the vast majority of whom are in the Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard — have been notified that their current military tours of duty could be extended to up to 24 months. Several hundred Army reservists likely will be kept on active duty beyond 12 months, as well.
More than 76,000 reserve and Guard troops are on active duty in the war on terrorism, having been called up after Sept. 11.
Although the nation's 1.3 million guardsmen and reservists know they can be called up for several years during wartime, there is no precedent for a call-up of two years since the all-volunteer military was created in 1973. The vast majority of reservists and guardsmen are part-time soldiers who hold full-time jobs and typically train one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer.
Dishonesty in the hunt for terrorists
Editorial, New York Times, August 26, 2002
In 1978, when Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, it built a wall between information collected for national security and for ordinary crime. The wall is critical because the act allows wiretapping and the search of espionage and terrorism suspects under more lenient standards than the Constitution permits in criminal prosecutions. If information collected under FISA flowed freely to criminal prosecutors, it would be a giant end run around the Fourth Amendment.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was set up to make sure federal spies stick to the rules. In a May ruling that came to light last week, the court identified 75 cases in which the Federal Bureau of Investigation breached the wall of separation. Criminal investigators were allowed to direct the use of intelligence wiretaps. And information being collected by intelligence investigators was handed over, without the court's permission, for use in criminal prosecutions.
Hawks, doves and Dubya
Michael Hirsh, Newsweek, September 2, 2002
“It is interesting to me that many of those who want to rush this country into war and think it would be so quick and easy don’t know anything about war,” said Sen. Chuck Hagel (a longtime Powell friend and fellow Vietnam vet). “They come at it from an intellectual perspective versus having sat in jungles or foxholes and watched their friends get their heads blown off. I try to speak for those ghosts of the past a little bit.” Cheney, Wolfowitz and Perle all avoided Vietnam—Rumsfeld was a Navy pilot between wars—and Bush was one of the “sons of the powerful” whom Powell, in his 1995 memoirs, condemned as a group for managing “to wangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units.”
Drowning freedom in oil
Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, August 25, 2002
On a recent tour of India, I was visiting with an Indian Muslim community leader, Syed Shahabuddin, and the conversation drifted to the question of why the Muslim world seems so angry with the West. "Whenever I am in America," he said, "people ask me, 'Why do they hate us?' They don't hate you. If they hated you, would they send their kids to be educated by you? Would they look up to you as a model? They hate that you are monopolizing all the nonrenewable resources [oil]. And because you want to do that, you need to keep in power all your collaborators. As a consequence, you support feudal elements who are trying to stave off the march of democracy."
The more I've traveled in the Muslim world since 9/11, the more it has struck me how true this statement is: Nothing has subverted Middle East democracy more than the Arab world's and Iran's dependence on oil, and nothing will restrict America's ability to tell the truth in the Middle East and promote democracy there more than our continued dependence on oil.
A guessing game
Mohamed El-Sayed Said, Al-Ahram, August 22, 2002
Do President Bush's most recent statements, as interpreted in the American press, suggest that the war on Iraq is now on hold? Or do they mean the opposite? Perhaps the only certain thing is that we will spend a great deal more time making "informed" guesses about the likelihood, or not, of war.
The whole process is based on leaks to the press by senior figures in the Pentagon and other relevant departments or agencies. So systematic are the leaks, so ubiquitous their reporting, that one can only assume they have themselves become a policy tool. Their real purpose is to manipulate the psychological and political climate inside and outside Iraq. This plethora of press leaks outlining battle plans and military exercises aims at inducing Iraq to behave in a way the US might use as an excuse to attack and invade. If the war against Iraq is certain, then it is in Washington's interest to pressure Iraq to behave in such a way as might serve American war plans.
A lonely voice of New York dissent
Michael Steinberg, The Observer, August 18, 2002
It is a persistent misconception that the United States - where free speech is guaranteed by the Constitution - has a vigorous tradition of dissent and protest. Just as conservatives fail to see how unusual the quiet, relatively crime-free 1950s were, so leftists forget that the fractious 1960s were an anomaly. Americans remain likely to identify with government policy, especially in international affairs where there is something of a national consensus that the U.S. should present a united front to the rest of the world.
THIS IS NOT WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE
Probe of hill leaks on 9/11 is intensified
FBI seeks records from 17 senators
Dana Priest, Washington Post, August 24, 2002
The FBI has intensified its probe of a classified intelligence leak, asking 17 senators to turn over phone records, appointment calendars and schedules that would reveal their possible contact with reporters.
In an Aug. 7 memo passed to the senators through the Senate general counsel's office, the FBI asked all members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to collect and turn over records from June 18 and 19, 2002. Those dates are the day of and the day after a classified hearing in which the director of the National Security Agency, Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, spoke to lawmakers about two highly sensitive messages that hinted at an impending action that the agency intercepted on the eve of Sept. 11 but did not translate until Sept. 12.
The request suggests that the FBI is now focusing on the handful of senior senators who are members of a Senate-House panel investigating Sept. 11 and attend most classified meetings and read all the most sensitive intelligence agency communications. A similar request did not go to House intelligence committee members.
The request also represents a much more intrusive probe of lawmakers' activities, and comes at a time when some legal experts and members of Congress are already disgruntled that an executive branch agency, such as the FBI -- headed by a political appointee -- is probing the actions of legislators whose job it is to oversee FBI and intelligence agencies.
Secret court may limit government power
Anne Gearan, Associated Press, August 23, 2002
The Bush administration's latest courtroom setback in the post-Sept. 11 hunt for terrorists came from an unlikely source: a secretive panel of federal judges that until now had always given the government what it wanted.
The rebuff by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court may test the limits of the government's power to spy on terror suspects in the United States, and prompted a strongly worded appeal from the government.
The FBI abuses trust
Editorial, Washington Post, August 24, 2002
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has argued that law enforcement and intelligence agencies can be trusted to wield broad new powers - both those additional powers voted into law last year and powers still under consideration. Officials have in many instances brushed aside suggestions that accountability and openness should accompany these new authorities. And their "trust us" mantra has largely carried the day as Congress has approved intrusive new powers for the executive branch. So it is no wonder that the Justice Department did not hasten to produce to Senators Patrick Leahy, Charles Grassley and Arlen Specter a copy of an extraordinary May 17 opinion by the seven judges of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The work of this super-secret tribunal, which considers government applications for search warrants and wiretaps in intelligence matters, almost never sees the light of day - in fact, this is the first opinion the full court has published since its creation in 1978. But in this instance, the judges themselves, responding to a request by the senators, took action to make sure that the senators and the public saw their unprecedented, unclassified opinion. The opinion, which the three senators released Thursday, paints a disquieting portrait of the FBI's trustworthiness, or lack thereof, in some of the most sensitive matters it handles.
Ashcroft -- above the law?
Editorial, San Francisco Chronicle, August 23, 2002
The chair of a congressional committee should not be forced to issue a subpoena to get the U.S. attorney general to respond to basic questions about the administration of justice in this country.
And Americans who worry about civil liberties should not have to file a lawsuit to determine whether their government is scanning library records or monitoring the e-mail of people who are not suspected of any crime.
But the Justice Department appears unwilling to subject itself to even the most rudimentary levels of accountability over the way it has handled the vast new powers it acquired under the so-called Patriot Act last year.
Extraordinary arrogance calls for extraordinary steps.
Losing our best allies in the war on terror
Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, New York Times, August 20, 2002
An Asian human rights activist proudly introduced herself to my class as a threat to national security: her commitment to democratic values put her so at odds with two Southeast Asian governments that she had to travel clandestinely. Yet, as our seminar on democratic culture came to an end earlier this month in Cracow, Poland, she, of all people, declared: "I have doubted a simple assertion for years, but I am now convinced that American democracy requires the repression of democracy in the rest of the world."
Worse still, she was expressing the consensus of the students. These young people, moved by values of human rights and democracy, have become convinced that the existence of these rights in America is predicated on their repression elsewhere.
Public support slips for ousting Saddam
Richard Benedetto, USA Today, August 22, 2002
A thin majority of Americans still support sending ground troops to Iraq to oust Saddam Hussein, but the size of that majority has dwindled to pre-Sept. 11 levels, a Gallup Poll finds. Support for sending troops to Iraq has fallen from a high of 74% in November, when allied forces had al-Qaeda terrorists on the run, to 53% now, when the war on terror has shown little recent progress and al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is still at large.
The war within Washington
Jim Lobe, AlterNet, August 22, 2002
The Republicans have gone to war, only this time it's against themselves.
This war is over going to war, specifically against Iraq. The hawks are led by Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, and the neo-conservative Likudniks who surround them. Also arrayed on their side are a host of cheerleaders in the media, including the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, Rupert Murdoch-owned Weekly Standard and Fox News channel, and political pundits like Charles Krauthammer and Bill Kristol.
Ashcroft assailed on policy review
Dan Eggen, Washington Post, August 21, 2002
Lawmakers on the House and Senate judiciary committees are complaining that Attorney General John D. Ashcroft is blocking attempts to review Justice Department counterterrorism policies, setting the stage for another round of clashes between the Bush administration and Congress.
In one of the latest skirmishes, the Democratic chairman and two leading Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee say Justice officials have refused to turn over a legal opinion issued by the court that oversees secret intelligence warrants, even though the document is unclassified. In another case, Justice has refused requests from the House Judiciary Committee to turn over certain details about anti-terror tactics contained in the USA Patriot Act. Assistant Attorney General Daniel J. Bryant told the committee in a letter that some classified information would be provided to the House intelligence committee instead.
The stance has so angered the House Judiciary committee's chairman, Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), that he has threatened to issue a subpoena for Ashcroft if answers are not provided by Labor Day.
Dissing the dissenters
David Ignatius, Washington Post, August 23, 2002
Have "prudence" and "foresight" become dirty words in conservative foreign policy circles? You begin to wonder, watching the debate taking place on the right about what policies the United States should adopt toward Iraq and Saudi Arabia.
Bush as general
Editorial, Financial Times, August 22, 2002
"If I could ask President Bush to read one book, this would be it," writes arch-hawk Bill Kristol in the blurb to the book that, hey presto, George W. Bush is reading on vacation between bouts of bass-fishing on his Texas ranch.
The book, by neo-conservative military analyst Eliot A. Cohen, is called Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime. Given that war with Iraq is ostensibly likely, if not imminent; that Mr Bush is ex-officio the Supreme Commander; and that Mr Cohen is all for going after Saddam Hussein, what does this book say?
To read the Koran
Editorial, Washington Post, August 22, 2002
The public firestorm over the University of North Carolina's decision to ask that incoming students read a book about the Koran is a peculiar display of enthusiasm for ignorance. The university made an altogether rational judgment, in light of the circumstances in which this country finds itself, that students might benefit by reading and discussing a book titled "Approaching the Qur'an: The Early Revelations" by a professor at Haverford College named Michael Sells. In response, a group of conservative Christians sued, contending that such an assignment by a state university violates the First Amendment. North Carolina legislators, meanwhile, have threatened to cut state funding for the program. And some prominent people have denounced the book as a supposed whitewash of Islam -- or even objected to the notion that students might study the Koran at all. In a particular display of demagogic illiteracy, popular talk show host Bill O'Reilly last month compared studying the Koran today to reading "Mein Kampf" during World War II.
November surprise?
James Ridgeway, Village Voice, August 21, 2002
The word among wags in Washington is that George W. Bush will invade Iraq right after the fall congressional elections, giving himself time to get the war out of the way before his own presidential campaign swings into gear. An attack before November would be difficult because the desert would be too hot for troops to maneuver with all their biochemical gear, or so the argument goes.
See also Foreign Policy in Focus report
U.S. accused of rigging war game
Defeat of 'Iraq' ensured
Jan Cienski, National Post, August 21, 2002
The quality of U.S. preparation for a possible attack on Iraq is being called into question by a retired Marine Corps general who says recent military games -- the largest ever held by the Pentagon -- were rigged to ensure the forces posing as the Iraqis would lose. The games were "almost entirely scripted to ensure a [U.S. military] 'win'" said General Paul Van Riper, commander of the opposing "Red" forces, who quit in disgust halfway through the exercise.
Ex-diplomat warns Blair over attack on Iraq
Richard Norton-Taylor, The Guardian, August 22, 2002
Britain's top diplomat at the time of the 1991 Gulf war warned yesterday that a military attack on Iraq could have devastating consequences. Lord Wright of Richmond, former permanent secretary at the Foreign Office, joined the growing number of voices warning the government of the dangers of backing an American assault on Baghdad.
Some lives are cheaper than others
Gideon Levy, Ha'aretz, August 18, 2002
Which is preferable - "pressure cooker" or "neighbor procedure"? Is it better to detonate a building with the occupants inside - a practice known in the Israel Defense Forces as "pressure cooker" - or to send one of the local neighbors to defend the soldiers bodily, the "neighbor procedure" in IDF argot. [...]
An innocent neighbor is ordered to go to his death, a bulldozer topples a building on a live wanted person - however cruel and however senior he may have been in his organization - without anyone knowing who else was in the house, and officers and politicians justify the operation without blinking an eye. If we have any desire to know how deep our insensitivity now runs and how morally obtuse we have become, this can make for an excellent case study: the nifty names the IDF has chosen - "pressure cooker" and "neighbor procedure" - can no longer mitigate the serious implications of both actions, which not even the most just war against terrorism can justify.
The coming war over Iraq: prelude, course, aftermath
Paul Rogers, Open Democracy, August 14, 2002
While there are indications of substantial differences between some of the senior US military and the civilian security establishment in the Bush administration, it is clear that it is the latter who are now dominant in the argument over how to handle the regime of Saddam Hussein.
The bottom line was expressed with admirable clarity by John Bolton of the State Department ten days ago when he emphasised that it was not sufficient for United Nations (UN) inspectors to be allowed back into Iraq – US policy was to terminate the regime itself.
The men from JINSA and CSP
Jason Vest, The Nation, September 2, 2002
Almost thirty years ago, a prominent group of neoconservative hawks found an effective vehicle for advocating their views via the Committee on the Present Danger, a group that fervently believed the United States was a hair away from being militarily surpassed by the Soviet Union, and whose raison d'être was strident advocacy of bigger military budgets, near-fanatical opposition to any form of arms control and zealous championing of a Likudnik Israel. Considered a marginal group in its nascent days during the Carter Administration, with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 CPD went from the margins to the center of power.
Just as the right-wing defense intellectuals made CPD a cornerstone of a shadow defense establishment during the Carter Administration, so, too, did the right during the Clinton years, in part through two organizations: the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) and the Center for Security Policy (CSP). And just as was the case two decades ago, dozens of their members have ascended to powerful government posts, where their advocacy in support of the same agenda continues, abetted by the out-of-government adjuncts from which they came. Industrious and persistent, they've managed to weave a number of issues--support for national missile defense, opposition to arms control treaties, championing of wasteful weapons systems, arms aid to Turkey and American unilateralism in general--into a hard line, with support for the Israeli right at its core.
Seeking the truth in Afghan graves
Leonard S. Rubenstein, Washington Post, August 21, 2002
For months, evidence has accumulated that many of the Taliban fighters who surrendered after the fall of Mazar-e Sharif and Kunduz last November were killed by Northern Alliance forces under the control of Gen. Abdurrashid Dostum. Eyewitnesses report that the prisoners died of asphyxiation after being transported in sealed containers to the Shebergan prison. The number of dead is not known, but the current issue of Newsweek, citing the accounts of survivors and drivers of the container trucks, estimates hundreds or even thousands of deaths.
The clues to finding the truth lie in mass graves near the prison. A comprehensive forensic investigation could reveal the number of dead, who they are and how they died -- and lead to a determination of who was responsible. In January, two investigators from Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) discovered a mass grave site, and in February PHR's forensic scientists found fresh remains. In early March, we shared the information about our discoveries with the State and Defense departments, as well as with the United Nations and the Afghan government. We urgently sought American military protection of the sites from the high risk of tampering, and we asked for an immediate and thorough investigation of the graves.
Only the United States is in a position to ensure the security essential to allowing an investigation to go forward. On moral grounds, too, an especially compelling reason exists for U.S. action: The perpetrator of the alleged war crime is its own military ally.
We, the people, can stop a war
Medea Benjamin, AlterNet, August 20, 2002
As someone trying to build a third party in the United States, I often complain about the lack of democracy in this country: the way money has corrupted politics, the exclusion of third party candidates from debates, a corporate-run media that usually ignores third party challengers, two major parties so alike that half the eligible voters don't even bother to vote. Add to that our daily exposés of corporate scoundrels with hands in the public till, or political scoundrels with hands in the corporate till, and it's hard not to be cynical about the state of our democracy.
But right now I don't want to complain. Right now I am desperately eager to be proven wrong about how this country works. Right now I want to believe that the people do indeed have a voice in the critical issues of our times, a voice that can influence the policy-makers. I want us, the people, to leave aside our partisan differences. I want us, the people, to free our representatives in Washington from the saber-rattling that envelops them and endangers us. I want us, the people, to stop a war with Iraq.
Biological warfare in Iraq
Ramzi Kysia, Common Dreams, August 21, 2002
At first glance, Saddam Pediatric Hospital is a dark, grim place: the walls need painting, less than a third of the lights work, and the hallways are overflowing with parents seeking medical treatment for their children. According to UNICEF reports, at least 500,000 Iraqi children have died over the last 11 years as a result of Gulf War bombings and sanctions.
Dr. Thomas Nagy, a Holocaust survivor and professor at George Washington University in Washington D.C., claims that hospitals like Saddam Pediatric are on the frontlines of a modern-day Holocaust. After analyzing recently declassified U.S. military documents that describe plans to destroy Iraq’s civilian water supply during the Gulf War, Dr. Nagy now believes he has the evidence to make his charges stick. In a controversial paper presented to the Association of Genocide Scholars in the United States last summer, Dr. Nagy argued that the purposeful destruction of Iraq’s water treatment facilities amounted to “a plan for achieving extermination without the need of constructing extermination camps.”
What the New York Times left out
William Blum, Yellow Times, August 21, 2002
According to a Senate Committee Report of 1994: From 1985, if not earlier, through 1989, a veritable witch's brew of biological materials were exported to Iraq by private American suppliers pursuant to application and licensing by the U.S. Department of Commerce.
See the complete Senate committee report
Poppies bloom in Afghan fields, again
Scott Baldauf, Christian Science Monitor, August 21, 2002
By most accounts, the antidrug policies of Afghanistan's new government appear to be in a shambles. This week, a spokesman for the United Nations in Kabul admitted that the government's ban on opium had failed so far.
Palestine's partisans
Paul Foot, The Guardian, August 21, 2002
The unquenchable defiance of the Palestinian people inspired the furious speech from the dock last week by the handcuffed Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti. In a single sentence, repeated with great passion, he summed up the one absolutely undeniable truth about Palestine: that there can be "no peace with occupation". In other words, whatever the vacillations of Zionist intellectuals in the west, whatever the reactions to the suicide bombings, the plain fact remains that there is no hope for peace in the region as long as Israel maintains its illegal and brutal occupation of other people's territory.
Don't trust Bush or Blair on Iraq
Richard Norton-Taylor, The Guardian, August 21, 2002
Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons in the past is repeatedly cited by the US and British governments as justification for his removal from power now. But just what was their response to his use of poison gas against Iranian troops and Iraqi Kurds in the 1980s? Far from condemning his actions, they stepped up their support for Baghdad.
One of the most damning revelations to come out of the Scott inquiry into the arms-to-Iraq affair was the British government's secret decision to supply Saddam with even more weapons-related equipment after he shelled the Kurdish town of Halabja in March 1988 with gas bombs, killing an estimated 5,000 civilians and maiming thousands more. Saddam said he had punished the Kurds for "collaboration" after the town had been successfully attacked by Iran. The weapons were produced with German-supplied chemicals.
Simplistic hunt for evil in a complex world
Robert Scheer, Los Angeles Times, August 20, 2002
Doomed by the incoherence of a foreign policy defined largely by biblical notions of the struggle between good and evil, the Bush administration thrashes about in its hunt for the devil. Sadly, all that has produced are shopworn enemies that were once our surrogates in battles we would rather forget.
That is the case with Saddam Hussein, whose war against Iran in the 1980s was decisively aided by a U.S. eager to protect pro-Western Arab oil sheikdoms from the contamination of Iran's virulently anti-American Islamic revolution. Hussein's use of chemical weapons, now cited with horror in the Bush administration's daily demonization of Hussein, occurred early in that war and was well known to U.S. officials, who at least implicitly condoned his war crimes.
US pushes PR for war with Iraq
Eli J. Lake, UPI, August 20, 2002
The United States, faced with a survey by diplomats showing widespread foreign skepticism about their motives, is planning a public relations offensive to build international support among foreign opinion leaders for a war against Iraq.
The Iraq Public Diplomacy Group, a U.S. interagency task force, will be launching a widespread public relations campaign this fall, targeting newspaper editors and foreign policy think tank analysts in Western Europe and the Middle East.
Detainees equal dollars
Alisa Solomon, Village Voice, August 14, 2002
The INS is desperate for more beds for its ever expanding detainee population. And the state of Nebraska, collecting $65 per detainee per day from the INS, rakes in more than $1 million a year over and above the cost of running the place.
County jailers have long known that housing INS detainees pumps easy income into the coffers. Nearly 900 facilities around the country provide beds for the INS, and in interviews over the years, several county sheriffs and wardens have described such detainees as a "cash crop."
Passaic County Jail in New Jersey learned the lucrative lesson after 9-11, as INS transfers boosted its detainee population from 40 to 386 by December 18. The INS paid $77 per day per detainee, compared to New Jersey reimbursements of $62 for state prisoners; some $3 million in INS payments poured into Passaic last year.
US thinktanks give lessons in foreign policy
Brian Whitaker, The Guardian, August 19, 2002
A little-known fact about Richard Perle, the leading advocate of hardline policies at the Pentagon, is that he once wrote a political thriller. The book, appropriately called Hard Line, is set in the days of the cold war with the Soviet Union. Its hero is a male senior official at the Pentagon, working late into the night and battling almost single-handedly to rescue the US from liberal wimps at the state department who want to sign away America's nuclear deterrent in a disarmament deal with the Russians.
Ten years on Mr Perle finds himself cast in the real-life role of his fictional hero - except that the Russians are no longer a threat, so he has to make do with the Iraqis, the Saudis and terrorism in general.
In real life too, Mr Perle is not fighting his battle single-handed. Around him there is a cosy and cleverly-constructed network of Middle East "experts" who share his neo-conservative outlook and who pop up as talking heads on US television, in newspapers, books, testimonies to congressional committees, and at lunchtime gatherings in Washington.
The wrong war
Grenville Byford, Foreign Affairs, July-August, 2002
Wars have typically been fought against proper nouns (Germany, say) for the good reason that proper nouns can surrender and promise not to do it again. Wars against common nouns (poverty, crime, drugs) have been less successful. Such opponents never give up. The war on terrorism, unfortunately, falls into the second category. Victory is possible only if the United States confines itself to fighting individual terrorists rather than the tactic of terrorism itself. Yet defining who is a terrorist is more complicated than it might seem -- and even if it were not, choosing one's enemies on the basis of their tactics alone has little to recommend it.
Inside the secret war council
Mark Thompson, Time, August 26, 2002
Meeting last month in Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's private conference room, a group called the Defense Policy Board heard an outside expert, armed only with a computerized PowerPoint briefing, denounce the Saudis for being "active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader." Such claims have been on the rise since Sept. 11, when 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis. Relatives of those killed in the attacks filed suit last week seeking $1 trillion from, among others, three Saudi princes who allegedly gave money to groups supporting the terrorists. But the Pentagon briefer's solution to the Saudi problem was provocative in the extreme: Washington should declare the Saudis the enemy, he said, and threaten to take over the oil wells if the kingdom doesn't do more to combat Islamic terrorism. "I thought the briefing was ridiculous," a board member said, "a waste of time, and the quicker he left the better." When the briefing leaked to the press, it sent diplomatic tremors ricocheting to Riyadh.
This is the kind of outside-the-Pentagon-box thinking that routinely takes place inside the Defense Policy Board, the Secretary's private think tank in a building where helmets often trump thinking caps. Chaired by Richard Perle — a Reagan Pentagon official whose hard-line views won him the title "Prince of Darkness"--the board gives its 31 unpaid members something every Washington player wants: unrivaled access without accountability. Perle uses his post as a springboard for his unilateralist, attack-Iraq views to try to whip the Bush Administration into action. But despite its name, the board does not make policy. As the Saudi episode shows, it can do something far scarier: give a false impression of it.
CNN chief claims US media 'censored' war
Julie Tomlin, Press Gazette, August 15, 2002
US news organisations “censored” their coverage of the US campaign in Afghanistan in order to be in step with public opinion in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, a CNN senior executive has claimed.
Coverage of the war in Afghanistan was shaped by the level of public support that existed for US action, Rena Golden, the executive vice-president and general manager of CNN International claimed.
Speaking at Newsworld Asia, a conference for news executives in Singapore, Golden said: “Anyone who claims the US media didn’t censor itself is kidding you. It wasn’t a matter of government pressure but a reluctance to criticise anything in a war that was obviously supported by the vast majority of the people.
“And this isn’t just a CNN issue -every journalist who was in any way involved in 9/11 is partly responsible.” Senior figures from Afghanistan and Pakistan criticised Western news organisations which flooded the region with journalists, who were unfamiliar with its politics and history.
Chicken hawks
Matthew Engel, The Guardian, August 20, 2002
[A]s the Bush administration paints itself into an ever-tighter corner with its Iraq rhetoric, it is instructive to note the astonishing extent to which those so anxious to stage the next war managed to be absent from the last one. [...]
Consider Washington's two most prominent superhawks: Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy) and his adviser Richard Perle. Who's Who in America is curiously vague about their precise whereabouts in the late 1960s, though it is fairly clear where they were not. As the shrewd and sceptical Republican senator Chuck Hagel said last week: "Maybe Mr Perle would like to be in the first wave of those who go into Baghdad."
The two Democrat leaders in Congress, Dick Gephardt and Tom Daschle, served; their Republican counterparts, Trent Lott and Dick Armey, did not. Tom DeLay, the most powerful hawk in the House of Representatives, missed Vietnam too: he was working as a pest exterminator. Reportedly, he once complained that he would have served; but, he said, all the places were taken up by ethnic minorities.
Iraq: In all but name, the war's on
Marc Erikson, Asia Times, August 17, 2002
At the beginning of this year, when US President George W Bush started talking ever more in earnest about taking out Saddam Hussein and signed an intelligence order directing the CIA to undertake a comprehensive, covert program to topple the Iraqi president, including authority to use lethal force to capture him, the US and putative ally Britain had approximately 50,000 troops deployed in the region around Iraq.
By now, this number has grown to over 100,000, not counting soldiers of and on naval units in the vicinity. It's been a build-up without much fanfare, accelerating since March and accelerating further since June. And these troops are not just sitting on their hands or twiddling their thumbs while waiting for orders to act out some type of D-Day drama. Several thousand are already in Iraq. They are gradually closing in and rattling Saddam's cage. In effect, the war has begun.
THE PRINCE OF DARKNESS CASTS A LONG SHADOW
Iraq hawks have Bush's ear
Stephen J. Hedges, Chicago Tribune, August 18, 2002
A once-obscure Pentagon board is playing an influential role in pushing the Bush administration toward an invasion of Iraq, generating support for military action as members seek to transform a controversial idea into a central pillar of U.S. foreign policy.
Iraq war to carry a high tab
Howard LaFranchi, Christian Science Monitor, August 19, 2002
Within weeks of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, oil nearly doubled in price to $40 a barrel – a spike that eventually settled down but was a factor, some economists hold, in the US slipping into recession.
Now as the US debates the merits of a war to bring down Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, officials and economists are beginning to ponder the impact of another conflict on the US and world economies.
Officers say U.S. aided Iraq in war despite use of gas
Patrick E. Tyler, New York Times, August 18, 2002
A covert American program during the Reagan administration provided Iraq with critical battle planning assistance at a time when American intelligence agencies knew that Iraqi commanders would employ chemical weapons in waging the decisive battles of the Iran-Iraq war, according to senior military officers with direct knowledge of the program.
Those officers, most of whom agreed to speak on the condition that they not be identified, spoke in response to a reporter's questions about the nature of gas warfare on both sides of the conflict between Iran and Iraq from 1981 to 1988. Iraq's use of gas in that conflict is repeatedly cited by President Bush and, this week, by his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, as justification for "regime change" in Iraq.
Oily diplomacy
Editorial, New York Times, August 19, 2002
The Bush administration, promiscuously invoking the war against terrorism, is using its influence inappropriately to assist an American oil company that has been sued for misconduct overseas. The intervention reinforces the impression that the administration is too cozy with the oil industry.
THE WAR CRIMES OF AFGHANISTAN
The death convoy of Afghanistan
Babak Dehghanpisheh, John Barry and Roy Gutman, Newsweek, August 26, 2002
Mass graves are not always easy to spot, though trained investigators know the signs. “You look for disturbance of the earth, differences in the vegetation, areas that have been machined over,” says Haglund, a forensic anthropologist and pioneer in the field of “human-rights archeology.” At Dasht-e Leili, a 15-minute drive from the Northern Alliance prison at Sheber-ghan, scavenging animals had brought the evidence to the surface. Some of the gnawed bones were old and bleached, but some were from bodies so recently buried the bones still carried tissue. The area of bulldozer activity—roughly an acre—suggested burials on a large scale. A stray surgical glove also caught Haglund’s eye. Such gloves are often used by people handling corpses, and could be evidence, Haglund thought, of “a modicum of planning.”
Haglund was in Dasht-e Leili on more than a hunch. In January, two investigators from the Boston-based Physicians for Human Rights had argued their way into the nearby Sheberghan prison. What they saw shocked them. More than 3,000 Taliban prisoners—who had surrendered to the victorious Northern Alliance forces at the fall of Konduz in late November—were crammed, sick and starving, into a facility with room for only 800. The Northern Alliance commander of the prison acknowledged the charnel-house conditions, but pleaded that he had no money. He begged the PHR to send food and supplies, and to ask the United Nations to dig a well so the prisoners could drink unpolluted water.
But stories of a deeper horror came from the prisoners themselves. However awful their conditions, they were the lucky ones. They were alive. Many hundreds of their comrades, they said, had been killed on the journey to Sheberghan from Konduz by being stuffed into sealed cargo containers and left to asphyxiate. Local aid workers and Afghan officials quietly confirmed that they had heard the same stories. They confirmed, too, persistent reports about the disposal of many of the dead in mass graves at Dasht-e Leili.
Under a veil of deceit
Gary Younge, The Guardian, August 19, 2002
Feriba is a woman - an Afghan woman at that. In November, when the US and Britain were bombing Afghanistan to oblivion, there was a great deal of high-minded talk about the need to defend her rights. Peering through a burka for the cameras, Cherie Booth, the prime minister's wife, railed against the Taliban for their vicious treatment of women. "For women to make a contribution they need opportunities, self-esteem and esteem in the eyes of their society," she argued.
In a carefully coordinated offensive, the first lady Laura Bush took over her husband's weekly radio address to back the use of B-52s and smart bombs to defend women's honour. "The fight against terrorism is also the fight for the rights and dignities of women," she said. "Women have been denied access to doctors when they are sick ... the plight of women and children in Afghanistan [is] a matter of deliberate human cruelty," where "small displays of joy are outlawed" and "children are not allowed to fly kites".
It's strange then that there would have been so little support for Feriba from the British and American governments. For she once had self-esteem and was keen to make a contribution. Having fled the Taliban and arrived here, via Germany, she dreamed of becoming a doctor or nurse. But as she wept in the back of a police car on Wednesday morning, her sense of self-worth had all but evaporated.
This land is your land
Jacqueline Rose, The Observer, August 18, 2002
My first visit to Israel in 1980 was hardly typical for a young Jewish woman. On the plane, I found myself sitting next to Dima Habash, 16-year-old niece of George Habash, the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. 'Are you Jewish?' she asked, and when I said I was, without a moment's pause she continued: 'You think Israel belongs to you.'
'No,' I replied, surprised by my own urgency, 'I think it belongs to you.'
I am not an Israeli and I have never understood why, solely as a Jew, I should lay claim, over the Palestinians, to the land. I have never understood why the historic, biblical claim of the Jewish people, even when seared by the horror of the Holocaust, should usurp the rights of the Arabs who had lived there for hundreds of years. I was going as a stranger to see a sister, who was on an extended visit to the country. 'Come to Ramallah,' Dima insisted, 'so you can see the camps for yourself.'
Life after death
Dirk Wittenborn, The Observer, August 18, 2002
On 11 September, novelist Dirk Wittenborn's wife went into labour as their city was convulsed with terror. He recalls how his private world and history were thrown together in the best and worst of all days.
Nothing happened
Half a dozen bullets fired by an IDF soldier pierced the windshield of a taxi in which Gideon Levy was traveling this week. A personal account.
Gideon Levy, Ha'aretz, August 16, 2002
Last Friday it was Ahmed al-Karini, an employee of the Nablus Municipality, who was driving, with the authorization of the army, to repair telephone poles, who was killed by soldiers in his vehicle - a "lapse of coordination." On Saturday it was a farmer, Hosni Damiri, who went out to his field on the outskirts of Tul Karm with the authorization of the army, and again - a "lapse of coordination," as the army describes it, as though the appalling ease with which soldiers open fire is not the real problem, only a "lapse of coordination."
Afghanistan is on the brink of another disaster
Robert Fisk, The Independent, August 14, 2002
The garden was overgrown, the roses scrawny after a day of Kandahar heat, the dust in our eyes, noses, mouth, fingernails. But the message was straightforward. "This is a secret war," the Special Forces man told me. "And this is a dirty war. You don't know what is happening." And of course, we are not supposed to know. In a "war against terror", journalists are supposed to keep silent and rely on the good guys to sort out the bad guys without worrying too much about human rights.
How many human rights did the mass killers of 11 September allow their victims? You are either with us or against us. Whose side are you on? But the man in the garden was worried. He was not an American. He was one of the "coalition allies", as the Americans like to call the patsies who have trotted after them into the Afghan midden. "The Americans don't know what to do here now," he went on. "Their morale in Afghanistan is going downhill – though there's no problem with the generals running things in Tampa. They're still gung-ho. But here the soldiers know things haven't gone right, that things aren't working. Even their interrogations went wrong". Brutally so, it seems.
WHO SETS THE AGENDA IN WASHINGTON?
Israel urges U.S. to attack Iraq
Jason Keyser, Associated Press, August 16, 2002
Israel is urging U.S. officials not to delay a military strike against Iraq's Saddam Hussein, an aide to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Friday.
Israeli intelligence officials have gathered evidence that Iraq is speeding up efforts to produce biological and chemical weapons, said Sharon aide Ranaan Gissin.
"Any postponement of an attack on Iraq at this stage will serve no purpose," Gissin told The Associated Press. "It will only give him (Saddam) more of an opportunity to accelerate his program of weapons of mass destruction."
Rights trampled in U.S., report says
Paul Knox, Toronto Globe and Mail, August 15, 2002
U.S. authorities deliberately trampled constitutional rights after Sept. 11 in a crackdown that saw immigrants jailed without cause, tried in secret and, in some cases, physically abused, a leading human-rights group has charged.
In a report to be released today, Human Rights Watch accuses President George W. Bush's government of displaying "a stunning disregard for the democratic principles of public transparency and accountability" in its response to the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.
All the facts about Iraq
Phyllis Bennis, AlterNet, August 15, 2002
Nelson Mandela was right when he said that attacking Iraq would be "a disaster." A U.S. invasion of Iraq would risk the lives of U.S. military personnel and inevitably kill thousands of Iraqi civilians; it is not surprising that many U.S. military officers, including some within the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are publicly opposed to a new war against Iraq.
Such an attack would violate international law and the UN Charter, and isolate us from our friends and allies around the world. An invasion would prevent the future return of UN arms inspectors, and cost billions of dollars urgently needed at home. And at the end of the day, an invasion will not insure stability, let alone democracy, in Iraq or the rest of the volatile Middle East region, and will put American civilians at greater risk of hatred and perhaps terrorist attacks than they are today.
Firefighters vote to boycott Bush Sept. 11 tribute
Steve Friess, Reuters, August 16, 2002
The International Association of Fire Fighters voted unanimously on Wednesday to boycott a national tribute to firefighters who died on Sept. 11, in an angry response to U.S. President George Bush's rejection of a bill that included $340 million to fund fire departments.
US adviser warns of Armageddon
Julian Borger and Richard Norton-Taylor, The Guardian, August 16, 2002
One of the Republican party's most respected foreign policy gurus yesterday appealed for President Bush to halt his plans to invade Iraq, warning of "an Armageddon in the Middle East".
The outspoken remarks from Brent Scowcroft, who advised a string of Republican presidents, including Mr Bush's father, represented an embarrassment for the administration on a day it was attempting to rally British public support for an eventual war.
Mandela to observe Fatah leader's trial
Jonathan Steele, The Guardian, August 15, 2002
In a major embarrassment to Israel, Nelson Mandela has agreed to observe the trial of a Palestinian leader formally indicted yesterday on charges of murder and terrorism.
A lawyer for Marwan Barghouti, a member of the Palestinian legislative council and secretary general of the Fatah movement in the West Bank, revealed he had been in South Africa last week to invite the former president to the trial.
"He said he was enthusiastic about coming," Khader Shkirat said. He quoted South Africa's most famous political prisoner as saying: "What is happening to Barghouti is exactly the same as what happened to me. The government tried to de-legitimise the African National Congress and its armed struggle by putting me on trial."
See also Terror trial may put Israel in the dock
US rebuffed on international court exemption
Matthew Engel, The Guardian, August 14, 2002
Switzerland and Yugoslavia yesterday handed the US new diplomatic rebuffs by rejecting its attempts to press them into signing bilateral deals to stop the possibility of Americans appearing before the newly formed International Criminal Court (ICC). Joseph Deiss, the Swiss foreign minister, said the US suggestion would have undermined the court's authority and the principle of universal justice. "I do not believe Switzerland should sign this kind of agreement," Mr Deiss said. "We hope the United States will not impede the work of the court." The Yugoslav president, Vojislav Kostunica, has also turned the US down. "Those who would enjoy immunity from prosecution would not only sleep soundly, but would also be encouraged to keep committing crimes," the state news agency Tanjug reported him as saying. Mr Kostunica's predecessor, Slobodan Milosevic, is already on trial at the Hague before the tribunal specially set up for Yugoslavia which predated the formation of the court, and there is a strong feeling in Belgrade that the US is using double standards.
IN THE NAME OF THWARTING SADDAM'S NUCLEAR AMBITIONS, WILL BUSH LET SHARON UNLEASH ISRAEL'S NUCLEAR ARSENAL?
Israel has 'capabilities' to react to Iraq strike
Ze'ev Schiff, Ha'aretz, August 16, 2002
If Iraq strikes at Israel with non-conventional weapons, causing massive casualties among the civilian population, Israel could respond with a nuclear retaliation that would eradicate Iraq as a country. This grave assessment, from American intelligence, was presented last week to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
"Pity the man who relies on Rumsfeld, Cheney and Rice for counsel"
The Guardian, August 15, 2002
President George Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, today insisted that the west does not have the "luxury of doing nothing" over Saddam Hussein, one of the clearest signs so far from Washington that it is ready to go to war against Iraq.
Global warmth for U.S. after 9/11 turns to frost
Ellen Hale, USA Today, August 14, 2002
On a packed train out of London recently to this historic college town, a young American woman struck up a conversation with her seatmate, a nattily dressed older British man. They chatted amiably about Oxford until she worked up the courage to ask what was weighing on her mind:
"Why," she blurted out, "does everybody hate us?"
The man paused — but didn't disagree — before proceeding to enumerate the reasons, from U.S. foreign policies to the seeping influence of American popular culture.
In the shock wave that followed the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, many Americans found themselves asking why so many people in Muslim countries hate the United States. But the anti-American sentiment has turned into a contagion that is spreading across the globe and infecting even the United States' most important allies.
Justice Dept. balks at effort to study antiterror powers
Adam Clymer, New York Times, August 15, 2002
The Justice Department has rebuffed House Judiciary Committee efforts to check up on its use of new antiterrorism powers in the latest confrontation between the Bush administration and Congress over information sought by the legislative branch. Instead of answering committee questions, the Justice Department said in a letter that it would send replies to the House Intelligence Committee, which has not sought the information and does not plan to oversee the workings of the U.S.A. Patriot Act.
US picks Sept. 11 as launch date for controversial security system
Bret Ladine, Boston Globe, August 14, 2002
A new security system that will fingerprint and photograph tens of thousands of foreign visitors upon their entry to the United States will be launched on the anniversary of last year's terrorist attacks, the Justice Department announced Monday.
The program will be implemented by the Immigration and Naturalization Service at undisclosed ports of entry beginning Sept. 11. After a 20-day trial, the system will become operational at all ports of entry on Oct. 1.
Under the program, visitors designated by the Justice Department as a national security concern will be fingerprinted, photographed, and required to register with the INS within 30 days of their entry into the country and every year thereafter. Those subject to the regulations include all citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, and Syria, and nonimmigrant visitors determined by the State Department. Anyone refusing to comply will be deported.
Anti-Baghdad talks shunned by top Kurd
Patrick E. Tyler, New York Times, August 15, 2002
The most powerful Kurdish chieftain in northern Iraq, Massoud Barzani, refused the Bush administration's invitation to attend the meeting of Iraqi opposition figures at the White House last week, Kurdish and administration officials said today. The absence of Mr. Barzani, whose father, Mustafa Barzani, led the largest Kurdish rebellion of the last century and died in exile in the United States, was a blow to Bush administration officials who had orchestrated the meeting in part to demonstrate that Iraqi opposition forces were unified behind a new campaign to oust Saddam Hussein.
Saudi Arabia gives US the cold shoulder
Michael Evans, The Times, August 15, 2002
Relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia have deteriorated so far that the Saudi Arabians are no longer considered allies, senior diplomatic sources said yesterday. Saudi Arabia, once the indispensable cornerstone of US policy in the Arab world, has refused to co-operate with the war on terrorism or support President Bush’s plans to overthrow President Saddam Hussein. According to the sources, it has handed over no Intelligence of any value about the al-Qaeda terrorist organisation, which has roots in Saudi Arabia.
How Al Qaeda slipped away
Rod Nordland, Sami Yousafzai and Babak Dehghanpisheh, Newsweek, August 19, 2002
At a time when leaders in Washington are agitating to move on to the next war—to remove Saddam Hussein—it’s perhaps surprising that few if any are critiquing the Afghan campaign. Criticism is deemed to be almost unpatriotic. But the Afghan war is not over, and the primary mission is not accomplished.
In Kabul, Iranian president blasts U.S. shift to 'angry policy'
Pamela Constable, Washington Post, August 14, 2002
Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, whose Islamic government has been denounced by the Bush administration as part of an "axis of evil," lashed back during a one-day visit here today, condemning Washington's "angry policy" and warning that "no country should use the fight against terrorism to impose its power on other countries."
Judge skewers U.S. curbs on detainee
Tom Jackman, Washington Post, August 14, 2002
Line by line, a federal judge today dissected the government's reasoning for holding Yaser Esam Hamdi incommunicado in a Navy brig here and indicated that he didn't think prosecutors provided enough facts for him to decide whether Hamdi should have access to a lawyer.
U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar said he would soon rule on a request by Hamdi's father to allow a federal public defender to visit Hamdi, who was captured in Afghanistan with Taliban forces in November, taken to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, with other prisoners, then moved here when he told authorities that he was born in the United States. The government has declared Hamdi an "unlawful enemy combatant," entitled to neither constitutional protections nor international prisoner-of-war status.
Doumar sparred repeatedly with the government's lawyer over why Hamdi was an enemy combatant and what exactly that meant, saying the government appeared to be trying to place unprecedented restrictions on a prisoner's rights.
"I tried valiantly to find a case of any kind, in any court, where a lawyer couldn't meet" with a client, Doumar said. "This case sets the most interesting precedent in relation to that which has ever existed in Anglo-American jurisprudence since the days of the Star Chamber," a reference to English kings' secret court from the 1400s to the 1600s.
Making life difficult for the Palestinian peace camp
Amira Hass, Ha'aretz, August 14, 2002
Some 700 Palestinian demonstrators in Bethlehem waited in vain on Saturday evening for activists from Ta'ayush Jewish-Arab Coexistence to arrive for a planned joint demonstration in the middle of the occupied city. When it turned out that the IDF would not allow the two sides to meet, they decided to use mobile phones and loudspeakers to show "there is someone to talk to" on both sides.
There were Palestinians who found it difficult to believe the Israeli authorities would indeed prevent a peace demonstration from taking place. One said that he heard some young people hissing, "if they don't want peace demonstrations, they'll get attacks." Simplistic, but it says something about the working conditions for Palestinian groups and individuals who believe the terror attacks are wrong, both practically and morally, and that perhaps the militarization of the uprising was a mistake from the start.
Blowback
Baltimore Sun, August 13, 2002
Trouble is being stirred up again in Afghanistan's Paktia province, and the chief stirrer is America's good friend Padsha Khan Zadran.
Mr. Zadran, a warlord who joined the fight against the Taliban, is now defying the government of Hamid Karzai and promising to fight if any move is made against him.
Here's what is so distressing: Mr. Zadran is a warlord pure and simple, but he's also the recipient of generous American financial backing.
Camps for citizens: Ashcroft's hellish vision
Attorney general shows himself as a menace to liberty
Jonathan Turley, Los Angeles Times, August 14, 2002
Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft's announced desire for camps for U.S. citizens he deems to be "enemy combatants" has moved him from merely being a political embarrassment to being a constitutional menace.
Ashcroft's plan, disclosed last week but little publicized, would allow him to order the indefinite incarceration of U.S. citizens and summarily strip them of their constitutional rights and access to the courts by declaring them enemy combatants.
The proposed camp plan should trigger immediate congressional hearings and reconsideration of Ashcroft's fitness for this important office. Whereas Al Qaeda is a threat to the lives of our citizens, Ashcroft has become a clear and present threat to our liberties.
A U.S. attack on Iraq unlawful, warn Mideast experts
Thalif Deen, Inter Press Service, August 13, 2002
A U.S. military attack on Iraq without U.N. Security Council authorization would be tantamount to aggression, say Middle East experts and American academics. "To date, no branch of the U.S. government has officially explained a basis on which an attack on Iraq would be lawful," John Quiqley, professor of law at Ohio State University, said Monday. He argued that the only basis for one state to use military force unilaterally against another is self-defense against an "armed attack". "The United States is not being attacked by Iraq. And under the U.N. charter, an armed attack must be ongoing and present. Speculation about a future attack is not sufficient for a state to use armed force against another state," Quigley told IPS.
Humiliation greets visitor at airport
Truong Phuoc Khánh, San Jose Mercury News, August 13, 2002
Every summer for the past 25 years, New Zealand native Maggie Anderson and her American husband have visited their family in Portola Valley. But never before had her visit begun in handcuffs and humiliation. Upon landing at Los Angeles International Airport at 11 a.m on July 24, Anderson -- a former flight attendant who had flown in and out of U.S. airports hundreds of times -- was questioned and arrested by federal immigration agents. She was separated from her husband and escorted to a room where a female agent wearing rubber gloves searched underneath her bra and underwear. Nothing was found. Anderson, 51, was held for 12 hours at the airport before she was taken away in handcuffs to a detention center where she remained for an additional 21 hours until the next flight back to New Zealand. The charge? In 1998 -- three U.S. visits ago -- she overstayed her visa by eight days.
U.S. Navy retracts denial of arms shipment to Gulf
Stefano Ambrogi, Reuters, August 13, 2002
The U.S. Navy confirmed on Tuesday it was seeking a large ship to carry helicopters and arms from the United States to the Red Sea, a day after denying it had placed such an order.
Americans begin to suffer grim and bloody backlash
Robert Fisk, The Independent, August 14, 2002
The US special forces boys barged into the Kandahar guest house as if they belonged to an army of occupation. One of them wore kitty-litter camouflage fatigues and a bush hat, another was in civilian clothes, paunchy with jeans. The interior of their four-wheel drives glittered with guns.
They wanted to know if a man called Hazrat was staying at the guest house. They didn't say why. They didn't say who Hazrat was. The concierge had never heard the name. The five men left, unsmiling, driving at speed back on to the main road. "Why did they talk to me like that?" the concierge asked me. "Who do they think they are?" It was best not to reply.
"The Afghan people will wait a little longer for all the help they have been promised," the local district officer in Maiwind muttered to me a few hours later. "We believe the Americans want to help us. They promised us help. They have a little longer to prove they mean this. After that ..." He didn't need to say more. Out at Maiwind, in the oven-like grey desert west of Kandahar, the Americans do raids, not aid.
At the al-Qa'ida cemetery, people kiss the earth above the honoured dead
Robert Fisk, The Independent, August 11, 2002
They are honoured as saints. Beneath the grey mounds of dust and dried mud lie the "martyrs" of al-Qa'ida. Here, among these 150 graves, lie the three men who held out to the end in the Mirweis hospital, shooting at the Americans and their Afghan allies until they died amid sewage and their own excrement. Other earth hides the bodies of the followers of Osama bin Laden who fought at Kandahar airport in the last battle before the fall of the Taliban. They are Arabs and Pakistanis and Chechens and Kazakhs and Kashmiris and all – if you believe the propaganda – are hated and loathed by the native Pashtun population of Kandahar.
Not true. For while the US special forces cruise the streets of this brooding, hot city in their 4x4s, the people of Kandahar visit this bleak graveyard with the reverence of worshippers. They tend the graves in their hundreds. On Fridays, they come in their thousands, travelling hundreds of miles.
For her, the nightmares come back every day
Tamar Rotem, Ha'aretz, August 13, 2002
The road is long washed clean; the dead have been buried; and routine has returned to the street. But the memories keep rising and washing over her. Looking out toward the bustling Sharon mall junction and the people casually crossing the street, Tamar Sharvit stares through them, seeing more layers of life reflected in their own. Every once in a while, it appears to her that the bleeding lumps of flesh are still lying on the road and that the gathering crowd is still staring at them, mesmerized.
For hire: the boy human shields in Gaza's most desperate town
Palestinian children tout for risky work at border as Israel's tightening grip creates poverty and hunger
Jonathan Steele, The Guardian, August 6, 2002
Every day Usama Khalid jumps into a car or taxi queuing at an Israeli checkpoint, travels 300 yards, and gets one shekel for the trip. The 11-year-old Palestinian is an officially sanctioned human shield.
For the Israeli troops who squint out of a watchtower above the road, the boy's presence is taken as proof that a suicide bomber is not at the wheel of the car passing beneath them. Cars with a lone occupant will be immediately fired upon, according to an Israeli warning.
So drivers give boys like Usama the equivalent of 14p [20 cents] for the short journey. A gang of boys presses round the waiting cars and although Usama often works 15 hours a day, he usually earns only about seven to 10 shekels.
US readies for strike, tries to move heavy arms to Red Sea
Arab News, August 13, 2002
Baghdad yesterday ruled out a return of UN weapons inspectors, saying they had finished their work in Iraq as US Navy sought to charter a large ship to carry military helicopters and ammunition from the United States to two ports in the Red Sea.
The request follows a recent order for a vessel to carry military hardware from Europe to the Middle East, heightening speculation that the US is pre-positioning equipment for a possible strike on Iraq.
US considers assassination squads
Oliver Burkeman, The Guardian, August 13, 2002
The US government is considering plans to send elite military units on missions to assassinate al-Qaida leaders in countries around the world, without necessarily informing the governments involved, it was reported yesterday.
The Pentagon is discussing proposals which could see special operations units dispatched to capture or kill terrorists wherever they are be lieved to be hiding, despite a long-standing presidential order forbidding US personnel from carrying out assassinations abroad, the New York Times reported.
See also Rumsfeld weighs new covert acts by military units
By wading deeper into Afghanistan, the U.S. could step into a big hole
Amir Taheir, Los Angeles Times, August 13, 2002
There is a joke from Kabul: Hamid Karzai, the interim head of state, signs a document and hands it to a man sitting across from him. "Here is the edict for your appointment to a senior position in my government. Now it's your turn to sign a document." The new appointee asks: "What is the document that I should sign?" Karzai replies: "Your last will and testament."
The joke may sound cynical, but it reflects the mood of anxiety in Afghanistan. During the last six months, at least a dozen senior officials have been killed, including a vice president, a Cabinet minister and a provincial governor. The ex-king, Mohammad Zaher Shah, and Defense Minister Mohammed Qassim Fahim have escaped assassination attempts.
In every case, Karzai's entourage, using leaks to the American media, has alleged that the killings were organized by unspecified factions within the governing coalition. Karzai is so distrustful that he replaced his Afghan bodyguards with 72 U.S. Marines in July.
Propaganda office won't win over the world
Max Castro, Miami Herald, August 13, 2002
In case you missed the news: Your government, specifically the Bush administration, has just created a White House office for global propaganda. They are not calling it that, of course. They are calling it the Office of Global Communications. Its purpose: to explain and promote U.S. policies and actions to the rest of the world. Or, as White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said, the new office will put out the word about "what America is all about and why America does what it does.''
Selective Memri
Brian Whitaker, the Guardian, August 12, 2002
Nobody, so far as I know, disputes the general accuracy of Memri's translations but there are other reasons to be concerned about its output.
The email it circulated last week about Saddam Hussein ordering people's ears to be cut off was an extract from a longer article in the pan-Arab newspaper, al-Hayat, by Adil Awadh who claimed to have first-hand knowledge of it.
It was the sort of tale about Iraqi brutality that newspapers would happily reprint without checking, especially in the current atmosphere of war fever. It may well be true, but it needs to be treated with a little circumspection.
Mr Awadh is not exactly an independent figure. He is, or at least was, a member of the Iraqi National Accord, an exiled Iraqi opposition group backed by the US - and neither al-Hayat nor Memri mentioned this.
US allies leery of post-attack Iraq
Howard LaFranchi, Christian Science Monitor, August 12, 2002
When war commenced in Afghanistan last October, President Bush said the United States was committed not just to routing terrorists, but to rebuilding a broken country so no international threat would rule there again.
But today, US military forces – off fighting the war in the mountains against Al Qaeda – are not an active part of the international security force trying to support a shaky interim government in the capital of Kabul. And promised roads to reknit the Afghan fabric aren't being built, regional warlords are gaining strength, and signs of schisms within the new government grow by the day.
These so-called "day-after" issues go a long way in explaining why US allies remain leery of an American attack on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. While there is no love for the tyrant of Baghdad in either European or Arab capitals, there is plenty of fretting that the US will take out Hussein without preparing much for the aftermath – or even sticking around for it.
Let South Africa be the example
Michael Hill, Baltimore Sun, August 11, 2002
The deadly dance that plays out almost daily between the Israelis and Palestinians is reminiscent of the violence that gripped South Africa a decade ago. But unfortunately, the response of Ariel Sharon and Yasser Arafat does not bring back memories of Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk.
US opposition to Iraq attack grows
BBC News, August 12, 2002
An influential US senator has added his voice to growing opposition to a military strike against Iraq.
Carl Levin, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the US military was much more cautious about going to war with Iraq than civilian officials.
He said "containment of Saddam is working".
"It's almost certain that if we did attack Saddam that he then would use the weapons of mass destruction because he'd have nothing to lose in response to that kind of an attack," the Michigan senator said.
Bush wants Big Bad Saddam
David Corn, AlterNet, August 9, 2002
If George W. Bush bothered to turn on C-SPAN and watch the recent Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on Iraq, he might have learned he has a problem -- not with Senate Democrats, but with Senate Republicans. As various experts testified about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein (actually, the possible threat), the appropriate U.S. response, and what obligations the United States might be stuck with after a military attack on Iraq, at least two key GOPers, Senators Dick Lugar and Chuck Hagel, expressed doubts about the rush to war and seemed to be signaling "whoaaa" to the White House. And the two joined with Democrat Joe Biden, the committee chairman, in saying often that the White House had promised them it would not strike Iraq either before the November elections or without consulting Congress. This was a piece of Washington theater, with influential senators publicly laying down a marker -- and trying to box Bush in. Lugar is essentially the ranking Republican on the committee, now that Jesse Helms is sidelined due to health problems; Hagel is a Vietnam combat hero with McCain-ish credibility on military topics.
West's greed for oil fuels Saddam fever
Anthony Sampson, The Observer, August 11, 2002
Is the projected war against Iraq really turning into an oil war, aimed at safeguarding Western energy supplies as much as toppling a dangerous dictator and source of terrorism? Of course no one can doubt the genuine American hatred of Saddam Hussein, but recent developments in Washington suggest oil may loom larger than democracy or human rights in American calculations.
The alarmist briefing to the Pentagon by the Rand Corporation, leaked last week, talked about Saudi Arabia as 'the kernel of evil' and proposed that Washington should have a showdown with its former ally, if necessary seizing its oilfields which have been crucial to America's energy.
And the more anxious oil companies become about the stability of Saudi Arabia, the more they become interested in gaining access to Iraq, site of the world's second biggest oil reserves, which are denied to them. Vice-President Dick Cheney, who has had his own commercial interests in the Middle East, baldly described his objection to Saddam in California last week: 'He sits on top of 10 per cent of the world's oil reserves. He has enormous wealth being generated by that. And left to his own devices, it's the judgment of many of us that in the not too distant future he will acquire nuclear weapons.'
If Saddam were toppled, the Western oil companies led by Exxon expect to have much readier access to those oil reserves, making them less dependent on Saudi oilfields and the future of the Saudi royal family. The US President and Vice-President, both oilmen, cannot be unaware of those interests.
Even at its best, war is never predictable
Andrew Greeley, Chicago Sun-Times, August 9, 2002
Some words of warning for Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and all the civilian war hawks in the Defense Department and for the president who wants to clear his father's honor by going to war in Iraq:
Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on that strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events. Weak, incompetent or arrogant commanders, untrustworthy allies, hostile neutrals, malignant fortune, ugly surprises, awful miscalculations--all take their seat at the Council Board.
You can put quotes around that paragraph. It was written by Winston Churchill in 1930, reflecting on the experience of the Great Boer War of 1899 to 1902, a war that the English thought would be a cakewalk. A ''change in regime'' was necessary in Natal and the Transvaal. They also believed that their prestige and credibility were at stake. Incalculable wealth in diamonds and gold would belong to the winner. When the war came to an ambiguous end with perhaps 100,000 dead--many in the ''concentration camps'' established by the English for Boer women and children--it seemed much less glorious.
You can be warriors or wimps; or so say the Americans
Editorial, Economist, August 8, 2002
Last autumn it all seemed very different. Galvanised by outrage at the attacks on the World Trade Centre, Europeans rushed to align themselves with the United States. Gerhard Schröder, the German chancellor, proclaimed “unlimited solidarity” with America. The editor of France's left-leaning Le Monde wrote a front-page editorial headlined “We are all Americans now.” Tony Blair got a standing ovation in Congress in recognition of Britain's staunch support for the United States.
Almost a year on, the mood has changed. On August 5th Mr Schröder, hitting the campaign trail in Hanover, warned the United States against “playing around with war or military action” in Iraq. On the same day, Le Monde published another front-page piece, this time lamenting the mutual “incomprehension” between Europe and the United States and the “mood of indifference, indeed of mistrust, towards France and Europe, in the entourage surrounding President Bush.”
Mr Blair remains grimly determined to be the Americans' staunch ally. But British voices raised against participation in an attack on Iraq now range from the incoming Archbishop of Canterbury, to top retired generals and backbench MPs in Mr Blair's own party. An opinion poll for television's Channel 4 in Britain this week showed 52% of Britons against joining an American-led attack and just 34% in favour.
Beyond Baghdad:
Expanding target list
Roy Gutman and John Barry, Newsweek, August 19, 2002
While still wrangling over how to overthrow Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, the Bush administration is already looking for other targets. President Bush has called for the ouster of Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat. Now some in the administration—and allies at D.C. think tanks—are eyeing Iran and even Saudi Arabia. As one senior British official put it: “Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran.”
The Mideast threat that's hard to define
Youssef M. Ibrahim, Washington Post, August 11, 2002
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, perpetrated by people who mostly came from Saudi Arabia, "Wahabism" has entered the vocabulary of American policy makers almost as synonymous with death, destruction and terror. Moreover, Wahabi teachings and influence in Riyadh have colored our image of Saudi Arabia, threatening to move it from the category of a friend helping to stabilize oil prices and the region to one of a foe alien to our values and bent on hurting us.
Less obvious, however, is that the Sept. 11 attacks also have strained ties between the "Wahabis" and Arab governments. The alliance between the House of Saud -- wealthy, cosmopolitan, and increasingly Western in tastes and habits -- and the proponents of an austere form of Islam based on a literal interpretation of the Koran is becoming harder to sustain. An increasing number of newspaper commentators, regional leaders and Saudi officials are daring to speak up against the backwards "Wahabi" vision of society. And Persian Gulf governments are taking a tougher line against extremists once thought to be useful, or at least relatively harmless. Instead of representing growing Wahabi power, the Sept. 11 attacks and their aftermath in Afghanistan may signal the peak of Wahabi influence, and a turning point in Arab attitudes toward such extremists.
These nuances are important for the United States as it wages its war against terror and tries to decide, to paraphrase the president, who is with us and who is against us. The Bush administration must better distinguish between Islam and the real enemy -- radical extremists within Islam. Otherwise we risk a collision with 1.2 billion Muslims around the word who do not appreciate being demonized -- as Saudi officials felt they were the other day by a report leaked to this newspaper -- just because they disagree with our policies in the Middle East or our plans to invade Iraq.
Afghanistan: anti-terrorism or nation building?
Paul Rogers, Open Democracy, August 7, 2002
There is an assumption that the war in Afghanistan is over and that all that remains to be done is to conduct ‘mopping up’ operations against the Taliban and al-Qaida. This view has been rudely shattered by reports that there is considerable frustration in US defence circles with progress in Afghanistan and that substantial additional special forces are to be used there, and in other regions where al-Qaida or its associates may be operating.
The forces are likely to include US Navy Seals, US Army Delta Force troops and members of the CIA Special Activities Division. While the emphasis will be on Afghanistan, it is likely that Pakistan and possibly some Central Asian republics will also be involved.
The other anti-Semitism
Omayma Abdel-Latif, Al-Ahram, August 8, 2002
"May the holy name visit retribution on the Arabs' heads, cause their seeds to be lost and annihilate them, cause them to be vanquished and cause them to be cast from the world. It is forbidden to be merciful to them. You must give them missiles, with relish. Annihilate them, the evil ones." Those words were spoken by the leader of Israel's Shas Party, Rabbi Ouvadia Ben Yousef. Such a striking case of overtly racist comments comes to mind in the lead up to a lawsuit charging that an Egyptian newspaper was guilty of "perverse racism" in its coverage of Israeli crimes against Palestinians.
'It's gone beyond hostility'
Suzanne Goldenberg, The Guardian, August 12, 2002
Increasingly, Israelis are resistant to hearing or seeing anything that challenges their version of events, a nationally adopted cant that basically says: "We are the victims, they are terrorists and the whole world is against us."
Palestinians, naturally, see themselves as universal victims as well. The competition for victimhood reached its apogee a few days after September 11, when Palestinians and Israelis held candelight memorials with astoundingly similar placards: "We know how you feel, we are victims of terrorism too."
This is a recipe for global turmoil and endless war
George Galloway, The Guardian, August 12, 2002
Saddam Hussein raised a dyed black eyebrow when I asked him last week in an underground bunker in Baghdad if he'd seen the picture of the British Foreign Office minister, Mike O'Brien, kissing Colonel Gadafy under the canvas on a Mediterranean beach. As well he might. Here was the ultimate example of preferring jaw-jaw to war-war, in Churchill's famous phrase. In the not too distant past, Gadafy armed and financed terrorists to blow up British cities, while his men shot dead a policewoman in a London street and have been held responsible for the biggest act of mass murder, at Lockerbie, in British criminal history. Yet, rightly in my view, the Foreign Office has concluded that we can't choose who rules Libya and would be better off talking to those who do.
Jaw-jaw sells more papers than war-war in deepest Poughkeepsie
Peter Preston, The Observer, August 11, 2002
Can you have a free press, in the land of the free, which freely settles for ideological stultification? You can indeed. Come with me to America this summer for the great non-debate about invading Iraq. There may be furious arguments raging in Fleet Street, even Max Hastings and Melanie Phillips locking horns across the Daily Mail atrium; yet here, in the Springsteen-revived USA, such controversies barely seem to exist.
On the one hand, there's a war coming, with George W Bush beating his drum. On the other hand, there's only shrugging, snoring silence. And, fascinatingly, the boredom is structural. It is rooted not only in the tidal emotions which followed 11 September, but in a pattern of news provision which shrinks from this controversy. The press hasn't had its freedoms ripped away. Rather, for the moment at least, it has given up the ghost.
Palestinians lose their lifelines
West Bank villagers cut off from jobs, doctors, shops
Molly Moore, Washington Post, August 6, 2002
Ajul, a sun-scorched Palestinian village of 1,200 souls that is accessible by a single rocky dirt track, has lost its lifeline. Six weeks ago, when the Israeli military clamped a curfew on Ramallah, people here were severed from their livelihoods, their doctors and medical clinics, their shopping opportunities and just about any major services a rural community needs to survive.
Under fire, Justice shrinks TIPS program
Dan Eggen, Washington Post, August 10, 2002
Justice Department officials have decided to scale back the controversial Operation TIPS program before it even begins, saying yesterday that they no longer plan to ask thousands of mail carriers, utility workers and others with access to private homes to report suspected terrorist activity. The decision comes as the latest setback in the federal government's halting efforts to enlist citizens as the eyes and ears of the war on terrorism. Many of the initiatives have produced mixed results or are barely off the ground nearly a year after the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Israel to kick out peacenik
Deborah Blachor and Corky Siemaszko, New York Daily News, August 8, 2002
A controversial Jewish peace activist from Brooklyn is about to be booted out of Israel. Adam Shapiro, branded a turncoat by fellow Jews for opposing the occupation of Palestinian territories, was arrested during a demonstration Wednesday. He's now sitting in a jail packed with common criminals and likely to be sent back to the U.S. on Sunday. Shapiro's wife, Huwaida Arraf, said she has been barred from seeing her husband and that soldiers roughed him up. She said Shapiro has asthma and needs his medicine. "I'm worried about him," said Arraf, a Palestinian-American. "The Israelis psychologically mess with peace activists by putting them in cells and telling the criminals they are terrorists."
Punishment by detail
Edward Said, Al-Ahram, August 8, 2002
Reading the news from Palestine and seeing the frightful images of death and destruction on television, it has been my experience to be utterly amazed and aghast at what I have deduced from those details about Israeli government policy, more particularly about what has been going on in the mind of Ariel Sharon. And when, after the recent Gaza bombing by one of his F-16s in which nine children were massacred, he was quoted as congratulating the pilot and boasting of a great Israeli success, I was able to form a much clearer idea than before of what a pathologically deranged mind is capable of, not only in terms of what it plans and orders but, worse, how it manages to persuade other minds to think in the same delusional and criminal way. Getting inside the official Israeli mind is a worthwhile, if lurid, experience.
Explosives that US knew would kill innocents continue to take their toll
Robert Fisk, The Independent, August 10, 2002
Statistics, for Mr Matin, bear no emotions. His office covers seven provinces around Kabul in which 1.1 million unexploded bombs and mines have already been cleared. In these de-mining operations, about 100 Afghans have died. More than 500 have been injured, many of whom return to the minefields to work once their wounds are healed.
A vote for war
George Will, Washington Post, August 9, 2002
War of the sort being contemplated is not the sort of plunge into uncertainty that a prudent president wants to embark upon alone, even if the Constitution permitted that, which it does not.
Iraq is defiant as G.O.P. leader opposes attack
Eric Schmitt, New York Times, August 9, 2002
The House majority leader, Representative Dick Armey, warned today that an unprovoked attack against Iraq would violate international law and undermine world support for President Bush's goal of ousting Saddam Hussein. The remarks by Mr. Armey, a Texas Republican who is retiring this year, are the most prominent sign of Congressional unease that the administration is moving rapidly toward a war against Iraq and were especially striking coming from a leading conservative and a staunch Bush ally.
It's amateur hour for administration hawks
William Pfaff, Seattle Times, August 9, 2002
George W. Bush is talking himself into a position where he will have to go to war, even though there is no convincing argument that war would be good for the United States, or even good for the president. The military are certainly not convinced that war is a good idea. The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff have made that clear through a series of leaks to the press. They are wary of a war whose objectives — beyond Saddam Hussein's overthrow — remain murky, and for whose aftermath no serious policy exists.
Hard to make case against Iraq
Anthony B. Robinson, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, August 9, 2002
We have heard the cryptic slogan-like accusations. "This is a man who has poisoned his own people." "He is secretly developing weapons of mass destruction." "He has violated U.N. mandates." But these are more slogans than a convincing or substantive case for a war that would not only put American lives at risk but that would further jeopardize the already sorely tested and traumatized people of Iraq.
Israeli 'restraint' still means terror for the Palestinians
Jonathan Steele, The Guardian, August 9, 2002
After the recent UN report on Jenin and other West Bank cities the Israeli government's defenders have made great play of the word "massacre". They leapt on the fact that the report did not use the word and cited a total of 22 dead civilians rather than 500, as some Palestinian leaders had claimed. The notion of massacre is relative. In Kosovo and Chechnya the deaths of two dozen innocent people in a single military operation were often described as massacres. But the key criticism of Israel in the UN report on Jenin was not a matter of semantics nor the issue of how many civilians died. It was Israel's comprehensive violation of the laws of war.
Ladies and gentlemen, let's have a big hand for Gul Agha - the UN's warlord of the year
Robert Fisk, The Independent, August 9, 2002
Gul Afgha knows how to handle the United Nations. He smiles, he praises, he loves the UN, and he is immensely grateful for the advice of Under Secretary General and Special Representative of the Secretary General for Children and Armed Conflict, the diminutive Ugandan Olara Utunnu. Every time Mr Utunnu talks about democracy and peace and the need for children to receive proper schooling, the governor of Kandahar beams with delight. In one corner of his office, the chief of police sits, a massive, high-peaked Soviet-style cap on his head, a tsarist leather strap across his military blouse. In the other, the thin, rather weedy-looking director of education reclines nervously on a sofa, his hands fidgeting constantly with his tie.
Iraq war could engulf region, Britain warns US
Kim Sengupta, The Independent, August 9, 2002
Britain has strongly advised the United States against attacking Iraq, warning that it risked intensifying the conflicts in Afghanistan, Israel and Kashmir, senior defence and diplomatic sources say.
In a sign of deepening discord between the two allies, British ministers and officials in Whitehall believe that a new war would "contaminate" the other crises."These are issues the Americans appear not to have considered," said one official.
They also have grave reservations about President George Bush's demand for a "regime change" in Baghdad because, London believes, no alternative regime has been identified for such a change to take place. Britain may be lumbered with leading a massive stabilisation force for "up to five years" in an anarchic post-war Iraq, with the prospect of the country being partitioned.
Families of the disappeared demand answers
Robert Fisk, The Independent, August 8, 2002
They came for Hussain Abdul Qadir on 25 May. According to his wife, there were three American agents from the FBI and 25 men from the local Pakistani CID. The Palestinian family had lived in the Pakistani city of Peshawar for years and had even applied for naturalisation.
But this was not a friendly visit to their home in Hayatabad Street. "They broke our main gate and came into the house without any respect," Mrs Abdul Qadir was to report later to the director of human rights at Pakistan's Ministry of Law and Justice in Islamabad.
"They blindfolded my husband and tied his hands behind his back. They searched everything in the house – they took our computer, mobile phone and even our land-line phone. They took video and audio cassettes. They took all our important documents – our passports and other certificates – and they took our money too," she said.
U.S. fears grow over turmoil in Afghanistan
Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, August 8, 2002
Less than two months after the Bush administration helped engineer the election of an interim government in Afghanistan, U.S. policymakers are growing increasingly concerned that the country is entering a more dangerous period and are unsure what steps to take next to prevent a spiral of factional violence.
Yesterday, armed gunmen stormed an Afghan army post on the outskirts of Kabul, setting off a three-hour gun battle that left 16 people dead. It was the bloodiest incident in the capital since the Taliban was ousted last fall. An Afghan government official described the assailants as members of the al Qaeda terrorist network.
Administration officials publicly express confidence that U.S. policy is on the right track. Over the next 18 months, they say, the United States must help the new government establish itself by building a new national army, and it must ensure that international aid begins to flow into the country. But privately, officials acknowledge that the task is daunting, given the continuing security problems throughout the country and the weakness of the central government.
Its own worst enemy
A review of Joseph Nye's The Paradox of American Power, The New York Review of Books, August 15, 2002
Americans—just 5 percent of the world's population—generate 30 percent of the World's Gross Product, consume nearly 30 percent of global oil production, and are responsible for almost as high a share of the world's output of greenhouse gases. Our world is divided in many ways: rich/poor; North/South; Western/non-Western. But more and more, the division that counts is the one separating America from everyone else.
Why we should invade Iraq - right now!
Not sure why we're going to war against Iraq? Mark Fiore has some answers.
RUMSFELD'S WORLD
COMMENT -- Free from the constraints of diplomacy, Donald Rumsfeld acted as unofficial spokesman for the Sharon administration (GWB does report to Sharon doesn't he?) when he dismissed the notion of "occupied territories." Israel won the war, so Israel gets to build as many settlements as it wants - this is the Rumsfeld logic. Does this explain why the Rumsfeld-Cheney-Wolfowitz cabal argue that war against Iraq will hasten a solution to the Middle East conflict? The US wins the war against Iraq; the US can then define the power structure for the whole Middle East; peace then reigns (just like the peace in Israel).
Rumsfeld view veers from Mideast policy
Barbara Slavin, USA Today, August 7, 2002
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld appeared to break with long-standing U.S. policy toward the Middle East on Tuesday, repeatedly referring to Israel's control of the West Bank and Gaza as a ''so-called'' occupation.
Rumsfeld, in a meeting with Pentagon employees, also defended Israel's policy of building Jewish settlements in Palestinian areas. More than 200,000 Jews live in those settlements.
''Focusing on settlements at the present time misses the point,'' Rumsfeld said. ''Settlements in various parts of the so-called occupied area . . . (were) the result of a war, which they (the Israelis) won.''
Kissinger, Quayle, Gingrich and Perle on a lie detector?
David Corn, The Nation, August 7, 2002
Will the Pentagon wire up Henry Kissinger, Dan Quayle and Newt Gingrich--that is, submit them to lie detector tests? And do the same with all other members of the Defense Policy Board? It seems that someone connected with this advisory panel--a neocon-tilting group of prominent ex-government officials chaired by former Reagan Pentagon official Richard Perle--leaked word to The Washington Post of a private briefing. In that session, RAND analyst Laurent Murawiec maintained that Saudi Arabia, due to its support of Islamic terrorists, ought to be considered an adversary of the United States and that Washington should demand that Riyadh cease funding Islamic fundamentalist outlets. If the Saudis do not comply, he argued, its oil fields and overseas financial assets should be "targeted."
Unlimited presidential powers
Editorial, New York Times, August 8, 2002
The Justice Department all but told a federal judge this week to take his legitimate concerns about civil liberties and stuff them in the garbage pail. The Bush administration seems to believe, on no good legal authority, that if it calls citizens combatants in the war on terrorism, it can imprison them indefinitely and deprive them of lawyers. It took this misguided position to a ludicrous extreme on Tuesday, insisting that the federal courts could not review its determinations.
This defiance of the courts repudiates two centuries of constitutional law and undermines the very freedoms that President Bush says he is defending in the struggle against terrorism. The courts must firmly reject the White House's assertion of unchecked powers.
Jews in UK renounce right to live in Israel
Steven Morris, The Guardian, August 8, 2002
A group of prominent Jews seek today to renounce their right to Israeli residence and citizenship in protest at Israel's "barbaric" policies towards the Palestinians. In a letter to the Guardian, the group, which includes writers, academics and artists, say they regard the legal entitlement as "morally wrong" when those who "should have the most right to a genuine return ... are excluded."
The complete letter:
We are Jews, born and raised outside Israel, who, under Israel's "law of return", have a legal right to Israeli residence and citizenship. We wish to renounce this unsought "right" because:
1) We regard it as morally wrong that this legal entitlement should be bestowed on us while the very people who should have most right to a genuine "return", having been forced or terrorised into fleeing, are excluded.
2) Israel's policies towards the Palestinians are barbaric - we do not wish to identify ourselves in any way with what Israel is doing.
3) We disagree with the notion that Zionist emigration to Israel is any kind of "solution" for diaspora Jews, anti-semitism or racism - no matter to what extent Jews have been or are victims of racism, they have no right to make anyone else victims.
4) We wish to express our solidarity with all those who are working for a time when Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip can be lived in by people without any restrictions based on so-called racial, cultural, or ethnic origins.
We look forward to the day when all the peoples of the area are enabled to live in peace with each other on this basis of non-discrimination and mutual respect. Perhaps some of us would even wish to live there, but only if the rights of the Palestinians are respected. To those who consider Israel a "safe haven" for Jews in the face of anti-semitism, we say that there can be no safety in taking on the role of occupier and oppressor. We hope that the people of Israel and their leaders will come to realise this soon.
Michael RosenIan Saville
Prof Irene Bruegel
Michael Kustow
Mike Marqusee
Prof Steven Rose
Leon Rosselson
and 38 others
Counting the dead
Marc Herold, The Guardian, August 8, 2002
In the eight months since I published my original study, I have updated and corrected my database, and incorporated the civilian deaths resulting from British and US special forces attacks. My most recent figures show that between 3,125 and 3,620 Afghan civilians were killed between October 7 and July 31.
Secret detentions violate American values
Editorial, The Seattle Times, August 7, 2002
The Bush administration should follow, not appeal, a federal judge's order to identify hundreds of people arrested and held in secret after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Federal Judge Gladys Kessler pushed back hard last week against government assertions that unprecedented secrecy was in the best interest of protecting the nation.
Her opinion went to the character of a free society, noting "the first priority of the judicial branch must be to ensure that our government always operates within the statutory and constitutional constraints which distinguish a democracy from a dictatorship."
I would have done the same
My son was killed by a Palestinian fighter. But Israel's occupation is to blame for his death
Yitzhak Frankenthal, The Guardian, August 7, 2002
My beloved son Arik, my own flesh and blood, was murdered by Palestinians. My tall, blue-eyed, golden-haired son who was always smiling with the innocence of a child and the understanding of an adult. My son. If to hit his killers, innocent Palestinian children and other civilians would have to be killed, I would ask the security forces to wait for another opportunity.
My beloved son Arik was murdered by a Palestinian. Should the security forces have information of this murderer's whereabouts, and should it turn out that he was surrounded by innocent children and other Palestinian civilians, then - even if the security forces knew that the killer was planning another murderous attack and they now had the choice of curbing a terror attack that would kill innocent Israeli civilians, but at the cost of hitting innocent Palestinians, I would tell the security forces not to seek revenge.
I would rather have the finger that pushes the trigger or the button that drops the bomb tremble before it kills my son's murderer, than for innocent civilians to be killed. I would say to the security forces: do not kill the killer. Rather, bring him before an Israeli court. You are not the judiciary. Your only motivation should not be vengeance, but the prevention of any injury to innocent civilians.
Facts are the best cure for this outbreak of war fever
Simon Tisdall, The Guardian, August 7, 2002
It may come as a surprise to George Bush but the war over Iraq has already begun - in Britain. Among the warrior class that favours bashing Saddam, new cases of what might be termed second Gulf war syndrome are reported every day. Symptoms include hot flushes of rage, irrational and confused thinking, unsightly rashes of adjectives and the pathological impugning of the motives of those opposed to war. These outbreaks of belligerence are naturally alarming to normal, healthy people - including, as polls indicate, a majority of the British public. Yet this early diagnosis of second Gulf war syndrome means that preventive measures can now have a good chance of success - before irreversible mistakes on Iraq are made.
WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
COMMENT -- Iraq may or may not be in possession of weapons of mass destruction. Israel not only possesses nuclear weapons but is believed to be willing to use them if it is attacked by Iraq. Even if an Iraqi missile attack involves a conventional warhead, the mere fear of biological attack may be enough to trigger a swift nuclear response from Israel. In this event, the United States will be an accomplice in nuclear warfare.
Conflict could soon be nuclear
Roland Watson, The Times, August 7, 2002
The US Congress has been warned that President Bush’s proposed attack on Iraq could escalate into a nuclear conflict. An assessment of Iraq’s capabilities says that the US is unlikely to knock out many, if any, of President Saddam Hussein’s mobile missile-launchers in a first wave of airstrikes. It raises the possibility of Baghdad hitting an Israeli city with a missile carrying biological agents, saying that Saddam is likely to use chemical and biological weapons.
Israel’s likely reaction would be nuclear ground bursts against every Iraqi city not already occupied by US-led coalition forces. Senators were told that, unlike the 1991 Gulf War, when Washington urged Israel not to retaliate against Iraqi missile strikes, Israeli leaders have decided that their credibility would be hurt if they failed to react this time.
Bush policies may push Iran to ally with Iraq
Dilip Hiro, Newday, August 6, 2002
It came as no surprise that President George W. Bush has abandoned hope of working with Iranian President Mohammad Khatami's reformist government. After all, he had famously and controversially labeled Iran part of the "axis of evil" in his State of the Union speech; and Khatami, who was elected in 1997 and reelected last year, has yet to trounce his conservative adversaries.
But Khatami's angry response revealed the possibility that, with its bellicose and intolerant words, the Bush administration may well achieve what 20 years of diplomacy has failed to bring about: an alliance between the beleaguered Tehran and Baghdad. Such an alliance would portend further instability in a region that contains two-thirds of the world's proved oil reserves - and frustrate the United States' aim to be the unchallenged foreign power in the region.
For the forgotten Afghans, the UN offers a fresh hell
Robert Fisk, The Independent, August 7, 2002
In Afghanistan, it is possible to go from hell to hell. The first circle of hell is the Waiting Area, the faeces-encrusted dustbowl in which 60,000 Afghans rot along their frontier with Pakistan at Chaman – a bone-dry, sand-blasted place of patched bedouin tents, skinny camels, infested blankets and skin disease. There are laughing children with terrible facial sores, old women of 30, white-bearded, dark-turbaned men who from huts of dry twigs look with suspicion and astonishment at Westerners.
The logic of empire
George Monbiot, The Guardian, August 6, 2002
There is something almost comical about the prospect of George Bush waging war on another nation because that nation has defied international law. Since Bush came to office, the United States government has torn up more international treaties and disregarded more UN conventions than the rest of the world has in 20 years.
Briefing depicted Saudis as enemies
Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post, August 6, 2002
A briefing given last month to a top Pentagon advisory board described Saudi Arabia as an enemy of the United States, and recommended that U.S. officials give it an ultimatum to stop backing terrorism or face seizure of its oil fields and its financial assets invested in the United States.
"The Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot-soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader," stated the explosive briefing. It was presented on July 10 to the Defense Policy Board, a group of prominent intellectuals and former senior officials that advises the Pentagon on defense policy.
Help from the Hill
Jason Vest, The American Prospect, August 26, 2002
As a rule, both the joint Chiefs of Staff and the Central Intelligence Agency's leadership prefer that Congress stay out of their affairs. Indeed, an ideal Congress for many denizens of this realm would be one that simply holds open the cash spigots while Langley and the Pentagon set their own agendas. That makes it particularly alarming to see that as the Bush administration lays its plans for Iraq, career military and intelligence officers are increasingly -- and desperately -- looking to Congress to help stave off what they fear will be a disaster.
Palestinian malnutrition found
Charles A. Radin, Boston Globe, August 6, 2002
Malnutrition and anemia have reached critical levels among Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip and are growing worse in the West Bank because of interruption of food supplies during the Palestinian uprising, according to a study commissioned by the US Agency for International Development and released here yesterday.
High Court allows demolitions of terrorist homes without warning
Dan Izenberg, Jerusalem Post, August 6, 2002
The High Court of Justice on Tuesday upheld the practice of demolishing homes of Palestinian terror suspects without warning. The court rejected a petition by 35 Palestinian relatives of terror suspects whose homes are slated for demolition by the Israeli military. Petitioners asked for 48 hours notice to give them time to go to court to stop demolitions. The military said soldiers would be put at risk if warning was given. The petitioners were represented by Andre Rosenthal, a lawyer for the Moked organization. By the time Rosenthal submitted his petitions, the army had already demolished three of the homes mentioned in his petitions.
Without Lugar, Bush can't have a Gulf War
David M. Shribman, Boston Globe, August 6, 2002
President Bush can go to war with Iraq without Britain's Tony Blair. He can go to war without Jordan's King Abdullah. He can even go to war without Saudi Arabia's King Fahd. But he can't go to war without Indiana's Dick Lugar.
Six Americans fast in Baghdad in anti-U.S. protest
Huda Majeed Saleh, Reuters, August 6, 2002
Six Americans staged a fast outside U.N. headquarters in Baghdad on Tuesday to protest against U.S. threats to attack Iraq. The activists, members of the Chicago-based Voices in the Wilderness, said their campaign was aimed at encouraging the United Nations and people around the world to break ranks with the United States.
Post-9/11 security hinders access at capitols
Kathy Kiely, USA Today, August 4, 2002
"Capitol buildings are symbols of government, and the people who inhabit them are symbols, too," says Tony Beard, chief sergeant-at-arms for the California state Senate.
But if the capitols symbolize something, so does the security that's being erected around them. It represents "a move away from a symbol of free and open government to one that needs to protect itself," says Charles Goodsell, author of The American Statehouse: Interpreting Democracy's Temple. "It's going to have a big subconscious effect on how we see ourselves."
Welcome to Fortress USA.
Senate didn't hear from Iraq experts
Sean Gonsalves, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, August 6, 2002
Last week's Senate hearings on whether the United States should go to war in Iraq could hardly be given much credibility by any serious student of U.S.-Iraq policy, given the conspicuous absences of Iraq experts who offer indispensable insight.
For starters, even though he notified Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden of his willingness to testify, Hans Von Sponeck was not invited to the discussion table. Who is Von Sponeck? Only a former United Nations assistant secretary general with impeccable credentials and the former head of the U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq -- the organization that sanctions supporters claim is adequate to meet the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi civilian population.
Weighing a just war, or settling an old score?
Robert Scheer, Los Angeles Times, August 6, 2002
What the heck, let's bomb Baghdad. Sure, it's one of the more historically important cities in the world, and many of its more than 3 million inhabitants will probably end up as "collateral damage," but if George the Younger is determined to avenge his father and keep his standings in the polls, that's the price to be paid.
George the Elder, it will be recalled, was a bit squeamish about leveling Iraq's capital, but his son, who has emerged as a big believer in "regime change," will stop at nothing in his drive to win foreign victories that distract from his startling domestic failures. If nothing else, a nightly CNN fireworks display will take our minds off pervasive corporate corruption and the Incredible Shrinking Stock Market.
Secrecy vs. the Republic
Editorial, Los Angeles Times, August 6, 2002
A federal judge in Washington had no hesitation last week in ordering the Justice Department to reveal the names of almost 1,200 people it jailed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "Secret arrests are 'a concept odious to a democratic society,' and profoundly antithetical to the bedrock values that characterize a free and open one such as ours," said U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler, quoting an earlier ruling in her own decision. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft should let the matter rest there. He's likely to appeal, however, just as he has in related challenges since the detentions.
Iraq chose Saddam for good reason. The West needs a history lesson
Phillip Knightley, The Independent, August 4, 2002
Before Tony Blair joins the new crusaders trying to impose a "regime change", a Western "settlement" on Iraq, he should at least look at the historical facts that explain the rise of nationalist leaders such as Saddam Hussein. And while he is at it, since he is good at empathy, he might try looking at Britain through Iraqi eyes. Seen from Baghdad, the British have bombed and invaded their country, lied to them, manipulated their borders, imposed on them leaders they did not want, kidnapped ones they did, fixed their elections, used collective terror tactics on their civilians, promised them freedom and then planned to turn their country into a province of India populated by immigrant Punjabi farmers. Small wonder that the author Said Aburish said to me recently: "If you think Saddam Hussein is a hard man to deal with, just wait for the next generation of Iraqi leaders."
Palestinians face disaster, warns US government group
Justin Huggler, The Independent, August 6, 2002
A report by a US government agency warned of a "humanitarian disaster" in the West Bank and Gaza Strip yesterday as the Israeli government announced stricter controls on Palestinians following the deaths of 13 Israelis in militant attacks in 24 hours.
One fifth of Palestinian children under five are suffering from malnutrition, according to the report released yesterday by the United States Agency for International Development (USAid) and the charity Care International.
The return to Afghanistan: Collateral damage
Robert Fisk, The Independent, August 6, 2002
The first anniversary is approaching of the attacks of 11 September and the subsequent 'war on terror'. To mark the date, The Independent today launches a major new series of special reports by our Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk. In his first dispatch from Afghanistan, he relates the untold story of Hajibirgit, a tiny village in the south-west of the country, where a raid by US Special Forces left a tribal elder and a three-year-old girl dead . . .
Who declares a war?
Jack Rakove, New York Times, August 5, 2002
Last week's Senate hearings on military action against Iraq mark a welcome step toward maintaining constitutional government in a time of national emergency. But this process will be incomplete if Congress shirks the two fundamental questions it must ultimately face: Can the Bush administration unilaterally decide when to go to war against Iraq without seeking the assent of Congress? And can a Congress in which each party narrowly controls one house effectively discharge its constitutional duties?
Since 1973, most discussions about the powers of the executive and Congress on the question of military interventions have been framed by the War Powers Act. That law was designed to prevent presidents from exploiting or creating situations in which Congress would be able only to accede to military actions that had already been taken without its approval. The remedy was to require American forces to withdraw within 60 days, extendable to 90 days, if Congress did not quickly vote its approval.
But the debate now unfolding raises a more profound constitutional dilemma than the one Congress addressed in 1973. An invasion of Iraq would amount to war in its fullest scope, in the extent of the preparations required and especially in its object, which involves crushing a regime and its army and liberating a nation. It will not be a humanitarian intervention on the model of Somalia or Kosovo, or a military lark like Grenada or Panama, but an offensive that will reveal far more about the new world order of the 21st century than did our last war against Iraq a decade ago. Perhaps most important, it will not take place suddenly, without advance notice, under conditions that preclude prior Congressional consultation.
Arms trump words in Mideast
Cameron W. Barr, Christian Science Monitor, August 5, 2002
As the violence intensifies once again – with Israeli tanks rumbling through Palestinian cities and Palestinians killing themselves in order to kill Israelis – even the experts are confounded over where the conflict is heading. "I don't know. I really don't know," says Anat Kurtz, an Israeli specialist on low-intensity conflict at Tel Aviv University. "I'm afraid the situation will go on for quite a while until there is some change in the Israeli mind-set or the Palestinian mind-set or the global mind-set." There is little sign of any of that.
Fundamentally unsound
Michelle Goldberg, Salon, August 2, 2002
Political attitudes and actions that make no practical or moral sense to secularists become comprehensible when viewed through Christian pop culture's eschatological looking glass. At a time when America is flagrantly flouting international law, spurning the U.N. and tacitly supporting the land grabs of Israeli maximalists, surely it's significant that the most popular fiction in the country creates a gripping narrative that pits American Christians against a conspiracy of Satan-worshipping, abortion-promoting, gun-controlling globalists -- all of it revolving around the sovereignty of Israel.
Israel, there and here
Katha Pollitt, The Nation, August 19, 2002
Refugee camp invasions. Suicide bombers. House demolitions. Suicide bombers. Arrests of children, curfews, roadblocks, collective punishments, dropping one-ton bombs on densely populated streets. Suicide bombers.
Only two years ago, a Syrian-American friend laid out for me a vision for the Middle East. Both Israelis and Palestinians, she said, were modern, entrepreneurial people who valued education and technology. She foresaw a kind of Middle Eastern co-prosperity sphere that would gradually draw the two closer as their economies meshed and bygones became bygones. That would have been a happy ending, but what are its chances now?
Bush's shame
Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, August 5, 2002
Watching the pathetic, mealy-mouthed response of President Bush and his State Department to Egypt's decision to sentence the leading Egyptian democracy advocate to seven years in prison leaves one wondering whether the whole Bush foreign policy team isn't just a big bunch of phonies. Shame on all of them.
See also 'Determined to fight on' in Al-Ahram Weekly.
Double warning against Iraq war
Roland Watson and Melissa Kite, The Times, August 5, 2002
America's National Security Adviser during the Gulf War warned President Bush yesterday that invading Iraq would cause an “explosion” in the Middle East and consign the United States to defeat in its War on Terror. Brent Scowcroft, who remains close to the Bush family, urged the President to concentrate on trying to broker peace between the Israelis and Palestinians while separately pursuing terrorist threats to the United States. But he said that by going to war with Iraq without linking President Saddam Hussein and September 11, Washington was risking a conflagration in the Middle East that would also engulf its efforts to defeat global terror groups.
They had a plan
Michael Elliot, Time, August 4, 2002
Sometimes history is made by the force of arms on battlefields, sometimes by the fall of an exhausted empire. But often when historians set about figuring why a nation took one course rather than another, they are most interested in who said what to whom at a meeting far from the public eye whose true significance may have been missed even by those who took part in it.
One such meeting took place in the White House situation room during the first week of January 2001. The session was part of a program designed by Bill Clinton's National Security Adviser, Sandy Berger, who wanted the transition between the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations to run as smoothly as possible. With some bitterness, Berger remembered how little he and his colleagues had been helped by the first Bush Administration in 1992-93. Eager to avoid a repeat of that experience, he had set up a series of 10 briefings by his team for his successor, Condoleezza Rice, and her deputy, Stephen Hadley.
Berger attended only one of the briefings—the session that dealt with the threat posed to the U.S. by international terrorism, and especially by al-Qaeda. "I'm coming to this briefing," he says he told Rice, "to underscore how important I think this subject is." Later, alone in his office with Rice, Berger says he told her, "I believe that the Bush Administration will spend more time on terrorism generally, and on al-Qaeda specifically, than any other subject."
Bush ready to declare war
Peter Beaumont, Gaby Hinsliff and Paul Beaver, The Observer, August 4, 2002
President George W. Bush will announce within weeks that he intends to depose Iraq's ruler, Saddam Hussein, by force, setting the stage for a war in the Gulf this winter. Amid signs of active preparations for a war within six months, senior officials on both sides of the Atlantic have said that war against Iraq is now inevitable.
Amid the clouds of deception, US speeds along road to war
Peter Beaumont, The Observer, August 4, 2002
This is the summer of the phoney war against Iraq; expect much smoke but very little fire. But come the autumn, expect it to get real.
Aggressive new tactics proposed for terror war
Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post, August 3, 2002
The chief of the U.S. Special Operations Command proposed a series of aggressive new covert actions against al Qaeda and other terrorist groups in a closed-door meeting with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld yesterday, part of a new Pentagon initiative to reenergize the 10-month-old counteroffensive against terrorism. [...] Under the proposal, U.S. Navy SEALs would regularly board and search suspicious vessels on the high seas around the world even when permission is not granted.
Fear and anxiety permeate Arab enclave near Detroit
Robert E. Pierre, Washington Post, August 4, 2002
To the outside world, the Arab Americans in this community are adjusting well to the heightened scrutiny they receive from law enforcement, cooperating with interviews and proudly displaying their American flags.
But inside, said Don Unis, a U.S. citizen of Lebanese descent, people are upset, anxious and increasingly angry at what they perceive as a war -- domestically and abroad -- on Arabs and Muslims.
This war would not be a just war
Richard Harries, The Observer, August 4, 2002
The threat of military action against Iraq is now beginning to dominate Western politics. So what light does the long history of Christian thinking on the morality of warfare shed on this?
After Sept. 11, a legal battle over limits of civil liberty
Adam Liptak, Neil A. Lewis and Benjamin Weiser, New York Times, August 4, 2002
In the fearful aftermath of Sept. 11, Attorney General John Ashcroft vowed to use the full might of the federal government and "every available statute" to hunt down and punish "the terrorists among us."
The roundup that followed the attacks, conducted with wartime urgency and uncommon secrecy, led to the detentions of more than 1,200 people suspected of violating immigration laws, being material witnesses to terrorism or fighting for the enemy.
The government's effort has produced few if any law enforcement coups. Most of the detainees have since been released or deported, with fewer than 200 still being held.
But it has provoked a sprawling legal battle, now being waged in federal courthouses around the country, that experts say has begun to redefine the delicate balance between individual liberties and national security.
Backing Bush all the way, up to but not into Iraq
Michael Janofsky, New York Times, August 3, 2002
A lifelong Republican, Tom Meaker worked on Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign in 1964, served as a Marine officer in Vietnam and now owns a small printing company. His vote helped George W. Bush carry Arizona in 2000.
But ask Mr. Meaker about the Bush administration's not-so-veiled hints of plans to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein, and party loyalty evaporates in the afternoon heat.
"How many countries are there in the world?" Mr. Meaker said without waiting for an answer. "How many dictators are there? How many terrible places are there? That's the problem. We pick and choose our evils. There are so many places to go, so why are we going to commit ourselves to this one?"
FBI leak probe irks lawmakers
Dana Priest, Washington Post, August 2, 2002
FBI agents have questioned nearly all 37 members of the Senate and House intelligence committees and have asked many if they would be willing to submit to lie detector tests as part of a broad investigation into leaks of classified information related to the Sept. 11 attacks, according to officials involved in the inquiry.
Most of the lawmakers have told the FBI they would refuse a polygraph, citing the constitutional separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches of government and the unreliability of the exam, those involved in the inquiry said.
The rush to war
Richard Falk, The Nation, August 19, 2002
The American Constitution at the very beginning of the Republic sought above all to guard the country against reckless, ill-considered recourse to war. It required a declaration of war by the legislative branch, and gave Congress the power over appropriations even during wartime. Such caution existed before the great effort of the twentieth century to erect stronger barriers to war by way of international law and public morality, and to make this resistance to war the central feature of the United Nations charter. Consistent with this undertaking, German and Japanese leaders who engaged in aggressive war were punished after World War II as war criminals. The most prominent Americans at the time declared their support for such a framework of restraint as applicable in the future to all states, not just to the losers in a war. We all realize that the effort to avoid war has been far from successful, but it remains a goal widely shared by the peoples of the world and still endorsed by every government on the planet.
Where is the voice of dissent?
Norman Solomon, Los Angeles Times, August 2, 2002
As prominent senators consider the wisdom of making war on Iraq, truly independent thinking seems to stop at the water's edge. But I keep recalling a very different scene: On Feb. 27, 1968, I sat in a small room on Capitol Hill. Around a long table, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was in session, taking testimony from an administration official. I remember a man with a push-broom mustache and a voice like sandpaper, raspy and urgent.
Wayne Morse, the senior senator from Oregon, did not resort to euphemism. He spoke of the "tyranny that American boys are being killed in South Vietnam to maintain in power." Moments before the hearing adjourned, Morse said he did not "intend to put the blood of this war on my hands.
The Saddam in Rumsfeld's closet
Jeremy Scahill, Common Dreams, August 2, 2002
Five years before Saddam Hussein’s now infamous 1988 gassing of the Kurds, a key meeting took place in Baghdad that would play a significant role in forging close ties between Saddam Hussein and Washington. It happened at a time when Saddam was first alleged to have used chemical weapons. The meeting in late December 1983 paved the way for an official restoration of relations between Iraq and the US, which had been severed since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
With the Iran-Iraq war escalating, President Ronald Reagan dispatched his Middle East envoy, a former secretary of defense, to Baghdad with a hand-written letter to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and a message that Washington was willing at any moment to resume diplomatic relations.
That envoy was Donald Rumsfeld.
U.S. returns to theory of Iraq link to Sept. 11
Bob Drogin, Paul Richter and Doyle McManus, Los Angeles Times, August 2, 2002
Despite deep doubts by the CIA and FBI, the White House is now backing claims that Sept. 11 skyjacker Mohamed Atta secretly met five months earlier with an Iraqi agent in the Czech capital, a possible indication that President Saddam Hussein's regime was involved in the terrorist attacks. In an interview, a senior Bush administration official said that available evidence of the long-disputed meeting in Prague "holds up." The official added, "We're going to talk more about this case." Hard evidence that Hussein was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks would give strong ammunition to the administration in its efforts to build domestic and international support for a military campaign to topple the Iraqi leader. But the CIA and FBI concluded months ago that they had no hard evidence to confirm Czech claims that the Prague meeting took place.
Terror pact forged by cruise missiles
Alan Cullison and Andrew Higgins, Wall Street Journal, August 2, 2002
In April 1998, shortly after Osama bin Laden called on Muslims everywhere to slaughter Americans, a group of senior U.S. officials traveled to the Afghan capital to try to break the ice with the Saudi exile's Taliban hosts. [...] Behind a facade of Islamic solidarity presented to the visitors raged a bitter struggle between two standard-bearers of radical Islam: the Taliban's Mullah Mohammed Omar and Mr. bin Laden.
Iraq invites U.N. weapons inspector
Edith M. Lederer, Associated Press, August 2, 2002
Facing an increasing possibility of U.S. military action, Iraq gave the first solid indication in nearly four years that it will allow U.N. weapons inspectors to return and invited the chief inspector to Baghdad for talks. The return of inspectors is a key demand of the U.N. Security Council and especially of the United States, which has accused Iraq of trying to rebuild its banned weapons programs and of supporting terrorism.
Surveillance rules are needed to save privacy, senators say
Adam Clymer, New York Times, August 2, 2002
Two Democratic senators, Charles E. Schumer of New York and John Edwards of North Carolina, said today that federal and state governments needed to set standards for how they used new surveillance techniques like video cameras and the monitoring of Internet use and called for a commission to propose such standards.
The senators, who do not yet have Republican supporters for their idea, said such surveillance techniques could threaten privacy if not used thoughtfully.
Their proposal is part of a growing concern in Congress about privacy. Last Friday the House voted to prohibit the proposed Department of Homeland Security from developing a national identity card and to block any government agency from using the proposed TIPS (for Terrorism Information and Prevention System) program of an organized corps of citizens reporting suspicious activities.
Still tilting at windmills, and fighting for rights
Chris Hedges, New York Times, August 2, 2002
Michael Ratner, as a law student at Columbia University, was pushed to the ground and beaten by the police in 1968 as he and other students blocked the entrance to a building occupied by protesters.
This would turn out to be one of those defining moments. Mr. Ratner, who would graduate second in his class, got up, looked at his bloodied fellow protesters and decided to become a rebel.
"That night was crucial," he said. "An event like this created the activists of the next generation. I never looked back. I decided I was going to spend my life on the side of justice and nonviolence."
Three decades later, he is still at it.
Directed energy: a new kind of weapon
Paul Rogers, Open Democracy, July 31, 2002
The US development of directed energy weapons – designed to advance protection of its forces, control of space, and the capacity to strike foreign targets at will – appears to be a seductive and effective route to guaranteeing US security in the 21st century. But, in the absence of any arms control regime, could the result instead be a higher level of threat?
America sleepwalks to war with Iraq
Gwynne Dyer, Toronto Star, August 1, 2002
I always kid him and say: Mr. President, there is a reason why your father stopped and didn't go to Baghdad," said Senator Joseph Biden, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "He didn't want to stay for five years."
Jumping the gun
Michael Byers, London Review of Books, July 25, 2002
'We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge.' Last month, in a commencement speech at West Point, George W. Bush announced an expansive new policy of pre-emptive military action. The graduating students greeted the announcement with enthusiastic applause, thus demonstrating not only their patriotism, but also a certain lack of historic awareness.
Americans need a national discussion
Senator Joseph Biden and Senator Richard Lugar, International Herald Tribune, August 2, 2002
In recent months, President Bush has made clear his determination to remove Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein from power - a goal many of us in Congress share. Without prejudging any particular course of action - including the possibility of staying with nonmilitary options - we hope to start a national discussion of some critical questions.
What a cornered Saddam might do
Graham T. Allison, International Herald Tribune, August 2, 2002
Imagine, God forbid, that as the United States builds up an invasion force in the Gulf, Saddam sends a secret letter to Bush informing him that he has placed biological weapons in New York, Washington and several other U.S. cities. Where would the confrontation go from there?
Timing, tactics on Iraq war disputed
Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post, August 1, 2002
An increasingly contentious debate is underway within the Bush administration over how to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, with the civilian leadership pushing for innovative solutions using smaller numbers of troops and military planners repeatedly responding with more cautious approaches that would employ far larger forces.
Bush urged to gain support for action on Iraq
Richard Wolffe, Financial Times, July 31, 2002
The Bush administration faced questions from Republicans and Democrats on Wednesday about the cost and effectiveness of US military strikes to topple Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq.
War and forgetfulness -- a bloody media game
Norman Solomon, Media Beat, August 1, 2002
Three and a half years ago, some key information about U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq briefly surfaced on the front pages of American newspapers -- and promptly vanished. Now, with righteous war drums beating loudly in Washington, let's reach deep down into the news media's Orwellian memory hole and retrieve the story.
"U.S. Spied on Iraq Under U.N. Cover, Officials Now Say," a front-page New York Times headline announced on Jan. 7, 1999. The article was unequivocal: "United States officials said today that American spies had worked undercover on teams of United Nations arms inspectors ferreting out secret Iraqi weapons programs.... By being part of the team, the Americans gained a first-hand knowledge of the investigation and a protected presence inside Baghdad."
Bomb Saddam, save the G.O.P.
William Rivers Pitt, TruthOut.com, July 30, 2002
Scott Ritter had come to Boston with a political agenda, one that impacts every single American citizen. Ritter was in the room that night to denounce, with roaring voice and burning eyes, the coming American war in Iraq. According to Ritter, this coming war is about nothing more than domestic American politics, based upon speculation and rhetoric and entirely divorced from fact. According to Ritter, that war is just over the horizon.
King Abdullah: Foreign leaders oppose attack
Glenn Kessler and Peter Slevin, Washington Post, August 1, 2002
Foreign leaders are increasingly concerned that the United States is preparing for war against Iraq, and U.S. officials are making a "tremendous mistake" if they do not heed warnings from abroad against a military campaign, King Abdullah of Jordan said yesterday.
Patriotism vs. protest
Kris Axtman, Christian Science Monitor, July 31, 2002
No one really knows what motivated John Walker Lindh to fight alongside the Taliban, but a controversial new song tries to figure out why: It begins: "I'm just an American boy raised on MTV/ and I've seen all those kids in the soda pop ads/ but none of 'em looked like me," and ends: "Now they're dragging me back/ with my head in a sack/ to the land of infidel."
Experts warn of high risk for American invasion of Iraq
James Dao, New York Times, August 1, 2002
In the first public hearings on the administration's goal of ousting Saddam Hussein from the Iraqi presidency, an array of experts warned a Senate committee today that an invasion of Iraq would carry significant risks ranging from more terrorist attacks against American targets to higher oil prices.
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