Bush in the Window Seat

Posted by Harkavy at 6:36 PM, August 31, 2005

What a bumpy ride for George W. Bush on the way back to D.C. today. His poll numbers are falling and our gas prices are soaring. And then Air Force One had to dip down over Louisiana to give him a look at the damage.

New Orleans happens to be on an easy flight path from Never-Admit-Anything-Land Ranch in Crawford to the liberal-infested East Coast. So Bush looked out the window.

After arrival, Bush called the hurricane "historic" and pledged help. How soon he'll actually go to New Orleans is not yet known. But this isn't an election year, so he doesn't really have to go, unless his handlers decide that the storm will give him some good photo-ops as a distraction from the deadly war in Iraq.

Last August, on the other hand, Bush rushed down to Florida to survey damage from Hurricane Charley. He flew over the affected areas with brother Jeb and hopped off the helicopter to hand out water and hug assorted residents.

The people in Louisiana have it a lot worse, but the rest of America will now suffer with even higher gas prices. Too bad Bush was a bust at finding oil when he was involved with companies like Harken Energy.

World Goes Nuts

Posted by Harkavy at 4:17 PM, August 31, 2005

Desperately seeking refuge from Topical Storm Cindy, George W. Bush is now telling us that we're in Iraq for the oil.

If that didn't blow your mind, consider that the radical right is now saying, "Impeach Bush!" World Net Daily's Joseph Farah, formerly an ardent supporter of the POTUS because John Kerry was "treasonous," says Bush is too soft on illegal immigrants. (When Bush gets up from his nap and hears about this, he's going to be so cranky.)

And then we learn that hundreds of people died today in a religious stampede in Baghdad.

And if that still hasn't fried all your wiring, long-dead Louisiana governor Huey Long re-appeared this morning to talk about the hurricane that killed thousands of people in his beloved state.

Battered Louisianans who had access to a working TV set probably didn't turn it to C-SPAN this morning. Even on a calm day, most people wouldn't. But if they did they probably did a double-take when Paul McHale, the assistant secretary of defense for homeland security, appeared at a FEMA press conference on Hurricane Katrina relief efforts.

Tell me that McHale isn't a dead ringer for the Kingfish (see photos above).

In times like these, lots of people turn to religion for answers, although maybe they don't also turn completely away from reality, as Bridgett Magee has. Sure enough, she says, the Jews did it. Well, some of them, anyway.

In a fascinating piece on BeliefNet, Deborah Caldwell explores Magee's theories:

At least one New Orleans-area resident believes God created the storm as punishment because of the recent role the United States played in expelling Jews from Gaza. On Sunday evening, Bridgett Magee of Slidell, La., told the Christian website Jerusalem Newswire that she saw the hurricane "as a direct 'coming back on us' [for] what we did to Israel: a home for a home."

Stan Goodenough, a website columnist, described Katrina as “the fist of God” in a Monday column. “What America is about to experience is the lifting of God’s hand of protection; the implementation of His judgment on the nation most responsible for endangering the land and people of Israel,” Goodenough writes. “The Bible talks about Him shaking His fist over bodies of water, and striking them.”

Other people say it's not God but Gaia the earth mother. As Caldwell notes:

Meanwhile, spiritual and political environmentalists say that massive hurricanes such as Katrina, along with the Asian tsunami, are messages from the earth, letting humanity know of the earth’s pain. These hurricanes are caused by global warming, environmentalists say, which are the result of using too much fossil fuel. They see the catastrophic consequences as a kind of comeuppance.

All we really know for certain about comeuppance is that Paul McHale, the dead ringer for Huey Long, used to be in the House of Representatives, where he was the first Democrat to condemn Bill Clinton for getting a blow job from Monica Lewinsky.

Unlike Hurricane Katrina, that was an imperfect storm.

Jerks Nix Vics' Pix

Posted by Harkavy at 12:55 PM, August 31, 2005

Coming off the bench at the last minute to fight against release of further Abu Ghraib photos and videos, General Richard "Quag" Myers has apparently wowed Judge Alvin Hellerstein with an argument that flies in the face of facts.

Hellerstein, hearing the case in Manhattan federal court, hasn't decided whether to let the public see these additional torture/abuse photos, but he promises to do so quickly. If he buys Myers's argument that bad publicity from release of the photos would endanger our troops to the extent that the material shouldn't be shown to us, that's bad news.

The public needs to know the full scope of the prison abuses. Maybe then, the public would exert more pressure on the Bush regime to stop trying to white-knuckle its way to the bitter end of the Iraq debacle.

For now, you can keep track of this vital case via the ACLU and other sites, including the excellent legal-news source Jurist, which also has links to Myers's affidavit to the court and other stuff.

The AP reports this morning that the judge expressed hesitation during Tuesday's hearing in New York to release additional photos and videos from Abu Ghraib, as requested by the ACLU:

The judge questioned whether he could disregard arguments by Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who has warned that releasing the photos would aid al-Qaida recruitment, weaken the Afghan and Iraqi governments and incite riots against U.S. troops.

"How can I ignore the expert opinion of General Myers, who is concerned with the safety of his troops?" the judge asked. "I can't substitute my opinion for the opinion of General Myers."

But Myers's affidavit is based on the unstated fallacy that most of the bloodshed in Iraq has been caused by the insurgents.

The Bush regime is desperate to prevent release of the photos because they would prove harmful to the Bush regime, whose approval ratings are plummeting. Safety of the troops is secondary, as it has been throughout the Iraq fiasco.

In the general's "second amended declaration" to the court, dated August 26, Myers said:

Among the goals of the insurgency are to use violence against innocent civilians … . The insurgents will use any means necessary to incite violence and, specifically, will focus on perceived U.s. or Coalition mistreatment of Iraqi civilians and detainees as a propaganda and recruiting tool to aid their cause.

Thus, for example, we have documented situations in which insurgents have falsely claimed that U.S. actions in Iraq, rather than their own terrorist attacks have caused death and suffering.

Yes, the insurgents do doctor photos and present false evidence. No doubt. But the facts are that we have killed more civilians than the insurgent terrorists have. As I pointed out last month, most of the bombs exploding in Iraq are ours.

Iraq Body Count's detailed study released in late July estimated 25,000 civilian casualties so far and asked, "Who did the killing?" The answers:

• US-led forces killed 37% of civilian victims.

• Anti-occupation forces/insurgents killed 9% of civilian victims.

• Post-invasion criminal violence accounted for 36% of all deaths.

• Killings by anti-occupation forces, crime and unknown agents have shown a steady rise over the entire period.

What puts our troops in danger in Iraq is their continued presence in Iraq.

Morning Report 8/31/05
Stampede in Baghdead

Posted by Harkavy at 8:30 AM, August 31, 2005

How could it get any worse in Baghdad? Well, it has. A understandably jittery crowd of Shiite pilgrims, gathered a million strong for a holy day, panicked today, and more than 600 people were killed in the resulting stampede on a bridge.

Martrydom is a major theme in the Shia branch of Islam, so this tragedy is likely to find a hallowed place.

As far as death by human stampede, this tragedy moves to the top of the list for 2005, according to stats compiled by Crowd Dynamics Ltd., a consulting firm that works with the Saudis on preventing similar tramplings during the annual Hajj. (See Wikipedia's list of fatal incidents during Hajj.)

Rumors of a suicide bomber in the crowd apparently set off today's stampede near the Khadimiya mosque, but religious events are particularly deadly anyway. This past January 25, about 300 people were trampled to death during a religious festival in Wai, India, according to Crowd Dynamics.

Here's what happened today, from the Washington Post:

Rumors of a suicide bomber in the midst of a crowd of Shiite Muslim pilgrims set off a stampede Wednesday on a Tigris River bridge, killing hundreds as panicked worshipers trampled others or hurled themselves off the bridge, according to witnesses and officials.

Col. Adnan Abdul Rahman, spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said 637 people died and another 183 were injured, though other estimates ranged widely.

The stampede occurred as hundreds of thousands of Shiite pilgrims walked to a Baghdad shrine in an annual religious commemoration that shut down much of Baghdad.

You can hardly blame people for panicking. Only two hours earlier, mortar rounds and rockets hit the area of the shrine, killing seven and wounding 40, and U.S. helicopters blasted back at the rocket launchers.

This was a huge crowd, estimated by some at a million people. And many of them were on a bridge over the Tigris when the rumor of a suicide bomber swept through them. More from the Post:

"The people when they were at the bridge, more than one person started yelling, and saying the bridge will fall down, the bridge will explode," said Khalid Fadl, a nearby resident. "So the people started running in panic, pushing each other, trying to run away. Some of the people fell down, and the people stepped on them," Fadl said.

"The others threw themselves off the bridge, into the river."

Crowds tore down metal sidings erected along the sides of the bridge in order to leap into the river, witnesses said. Worshipers pulled countless bodies from the river into late afternoon.

No expression of sympathy yet from George W. Bush, whose handlers could at least release a statement. The White House's "Renewal in Iraq" page gets renewed only when there's supposedly good news. No wonder it's not up to date.

Morning Report 8/30/05
Sadr Days Ahead in Iraq

Posted by Harkavy at 10:51 AM, August 30, 2005

As Don Rumsfeld sounds more and more like Robert McNamara — the blustery, dogged, pre-"apology" McNamara — what the current secretary of defense says publicly about Iraq is increasingly irrelevant.

What Moqtada al-Sadr says, on the other hand, is increasingly important. Muckety-muck of the Mahdi militia, he's been the bane of arrogant U.S. policymakers like Rumsfeld, Doug Feith, and Jerry Bremer. They've long ignored evidence that he's consistently been more popular with Iraqis than various U.S. puppets like Ayad Allawi and Ahmed Chalabi.

Anthony Shadid writes in a brilliant piece in this morning's Washington Post that Sadr stands at the head of "a protest movement in a country with plenty to protest about."

The country's shattering into militias, as Lebanon once did.

What makes Shadid's story so good is that he has humanized rebellious Iraqis. I don't mean that he's glorifying them, only that he's delving into what makes them tick. The early days of war reporting in Iraq were filled with nothing but portraits of our soldiers fighting a faceless enemy. Now there are faces. Shadid's story is a sharp profile and a history lesson, starting with this:

Hazem Araji's résumé reads like a story of Iraq's recent past — and perhaps its near future.

In the tumult that followed the U.S. invasion in 2003, he hit the streets with a clique of fellow Shiite Muslim clerics to organize what became Iraq's first postwar popular movement. Their symbol was Moqtada Sadr, a young, radical clergyman and son of a revered ayatollah. The next year, Araji emerged as the group's public face, as it twice fought U.S. troops. He and others were arrested, and for nine months he languished in U.S. custody in Abu Ghraib prison, then at Camp Bucca.

Now, as the country enters a time as politically uncertain as any since the fall of President Saddam Hussein, Araji is a free man. So are a handful of Sadr's other closest, most dynamic aides, men in their thirties who have helped shape the organization's combustible mix of Iraqi and Arab nationalism, millenarian religious ideology, grass-roots protest and gun culture. With customary bravado, Araji and the others today are sending a message: They are ready to make up for lost time.

A little more than a year ago, Jerry of Arabia shut down Sadr's newspaper and issued an arrest warrant. And then Bremer left Iraq with a whimper. Pin a medal on him. So George W. Bush did.

Much of the U.S. "strategy" regarding Sadr was foolish. Naomi Klein drew a fine portrait of that period in 2004 in her "Baghdad Year Zero" piece last year in Harper's:

… I got word that there was a major demonstration outside the CPA headquarters. Supporters of the radical young cleric Moqtada al Sadr were protesting the closing of their newspaper, al Hawza, by military police. The CPA accused al Hawza of publishing “false articles” that could “pose the real threat of violence.” As an example, it cited an article that claimed Bremer “is pursuing a policy of starving the Iraqi people to make them preoccupied with procuring their daily bread so they do not have the chance to demand their political and individual freedoms.” To me it sounded less like hate literature than a concise summary of Milton Friedman’s recipe for shock therapy.

Two years after our invasion, our abrasive occupation is the only thing that Iraqis can agree on: They hate it. The level of their discontent — not we or our plans for belatedly training their troops — will determine the timetable for our departure.

Shadid weaves the personal stories of Sadr's Mahdi movement people into the current combustible climate. The agitprop of the Bush regime doesn't take into account the nuances of Iraq. Shadid does:

In a country whose sectarian and ethnic divides have relentlessly deepened, Sadr stands as a rare figure with support among both Sunnis and Shiites. At a protest Monday against Iraq's new constitution in Tikrit, near Hussein's home town, Sunnis held aloft pictures of the cleric. "Yes, yes to Sadr!" some of the 1,500 protesters shouted.

Ahead are difficult questions, namely about Sadr's still-undeclared stance on the proposed constitution: Support could anger Sunni allies, but opposition might endanger his Shiite support. One aide hinted that Sadr may leave his position ambiguous. But for the moment, Sadr officials say they are reaping the benefits of their position as a protest movement in a country with plenty to protest about.

The Bush regime, fearing a fragging, has retreated to its bunker, emerging only to talk to troops and other friendly audiences.

Yesterday, for example, Rumsfeld was at Fort Irwin, California, talking to soldiers in training for desert warfare. Sergeant Sara Wood, one of the Pentagon's permanently embedded reporters, writes this morning:

Every war has had critics who say it's the wrong place, wrong time or wrong fight, Rumsfeld said, but in every instance, those people have been wrong. The U.S. does not go to war lightly, and the fight against terrorists is one that this country will see through, he said.

"People who want to toss in the towel were wrong yesterday, they're wrong today, and they'll be wrong tomorrow," he said.

I told you that Rumsfeld sounds like the old McNamara.

Through this crucial period, the Democrats are missing in action — Hillary Clinton's showing her true colors as a hawk. So it's up to moderate Republicans like Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska to call the war for what it is: a debacle.

The mostly somnolent New York Times still runs predictably establishmentarian stories from Iraq, for the most part. But back in the arts-fartsy pages, Frank Rich is regularly splenetic. On August 28, in "The Vietnamization of Bush's Vacation," Rich wrote:

Mr. Bush's current definition — "as the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down" — could not be a better formula for quagmire.

While Bremer is back home in America writing his memoirs, it's Sadr who's standing up. We never could make him stand down.

Morning Report 8/29/05
Pentagon Fights a Major Storm

Posted by Harkavy at 9:15 AM, August 29, 2005

Not as deadly as Hurricane Katrina promises to be, Whistleblower Bunny represents a threat to only two structures — three, if you count Halliburton's headquarters.

But that's why the Pentagon and White House have urgently demoted the top U.S. Army Corps of Engineers contract overseer, Bunnatine H. "Bunny" Greenhouse.

The veteran official, fed up with her inability to call attention to cronyism that led to a five-year, $7 billion Iraq oil-repair contract to Kellogg Brown & Root, the subsidiary of Dick Cheney's Halliburton, ignored her bosses' warnings and testified before a powerless Senate Democrats-only panel in June that the sweetheart deal was "the most blatant and improper contract abuse I have witnessed during the course of my professional career."

Greenhouse is one of the highest-ranking and most potentially damaging whistleblowers about the Bush regime's bidness practices. She's been the focus of stories like Michael Shnayerson's "Spoils of War" in the April 2005 Vanity Fair. If there is ever a real investigation, she'll be a household name. After her strenuous objections to cronyism were ignored, she was forced to go public. Obviously in reprisal, Pentagon officials demoted her. The New York Times reports it this morning, but a better story on the outrageous action can be found at Halliburton Watch.

Greenhouse's effect has been to spur investigations by the Justice Department, the FBI, and the Pentagon's inspector general, Halliburton Watch notes. Nevertheless, while those probes supposedly continue, Greenhouse has been bounced from her executive post.

She showed courage back in 2002 and 2003, while the charges of cronyism were being directly denied by the White House and Pentagon. Later, of course, the liars came clean — partially.

In June 2004, the Pentagon finally admitted that the first sweetheart Halliburton deal for the war was awarded on the recommendation of aptly named political appointee Michael Mobbs, an assistant to Undersecretary of Defense Doug Feith, a chief neocon schnorrer. Feith was in charge of post-war planning.

Mobbs, a former associate in Feith's law firm that serviced defense contractors before the neocons came to power, was placed in charge of half of Iraq's ministries. He was also a fixer on the pre-invasion issue of how to mistreat "enemy combatants."

His role in the Hamdi case back in August 2002 produced a frighteningly hilarious episode in federal court. District Judge Robert Doumar grilled the government on its reasons for holding Yaser Esam Hamdi incommunicado in a Navy brig. As the Washington Post wrote at the time:

The government has declared Hamdi an "unlawful enemy combatant," entitled to neither constitutional protections nor international prisoner-of-war status.

And the government provided a two-page "declaration of facts" by Mobbs about how the Pentagon determined that Hamdi was an "enemy combatant." The judge questioned the government's attempt to ignore due process:

"I have no desire to have an enemy combatant get out of any status. However, I do think that due process requires something other than a basic assertion by someone named Mobbs that they have looked at some papers and therefore they have determined he should be held incommunicado. Just think of the impact of that. Is that what we're fighting for?"

No, judge, we're fighting to liberate Halliburton. Dogged work by Congressman Henry Waxman has helped uncover that rock. Waxman's June 13, 2004, letter to Cheney about the Mobbsed-up contract with Halliburton is a classic, a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the bidness scandal surrounding our unjustified invasion of Iraq.

As Halliburton Watch said at the time:

During the Summer of 2002, Mobbs was in charge of the Pentagon's Energy Infrastructure Planning Group to develop a plan for reconstructing Iraq's oil industry. By the Fall of 2002, Mobbs had decided that three companies could carry out the oil fire contract: Halliburton, Bechtel Group and Fluor Corp.

Contracting experts say it is highly unusual for a political appointee, rather than career civil servants, to designate which companies will compete for a government contract. "The suggestion that political appointees would be directing that type of investigation does not seem consistent with maintaining the appearance of propriety," contracting expert Steven L. Schooner told the Los Angeles Times.

In 2002, an Army lawyer objected to the oil fire contract on grounds that it would be awarded to Halliburton under the company's Army supply contract, which is not authorized to govern firefighting issues. Mobbs overruled the lawyer and the contract was later awarded to Halliburton under the Army supply contract. But the auditing arm of Congress, the General Accounting Office, will release a report this week concluding that the firefighting contract was indeed improperly awarded to Halliburton because it was not awarded as a separate contract from the company's already-existing Army supply contract.

"Rumsfeld's political lawyers steamrollered the career guys to push through Halliburton's secret deal," law professor Charles Tiefer told the Times. "It creates a disturbing appearance of influence when Cheney's lawyers are told several times Halliburton is getting special deals, and they never say, 'Make sure the career people agree this is being done right.'"

This past June, Waxman rounded up examples of the preferential treatment of Halliburton — including the Mobbs and Greenhouse incidents. Of Greenhouse's work, the roundup notes:

Despite strenuous objections from the chief contracting official at the Army Corps of Engineers, the Defense Department secretly awarded Halliburton a five-year, no-bid contract to repair Iraq's oil infrastructure in March 2003. Bunnatine H. Greenhouse served as the Principal Assistant Responsible for Contracting (PARC) with the Army Corps of Engineers. Ms. Greenhouse objected for several reasons to the award to Halliburton of the RIO contract, which was worth up to $7 billion.

It didn't take Halliburton, which still pays Cheney, much time to run up a tab. In December 2003, the government found that it had overcharged taxpayers $61 million for importing gasoline from Kuwait to Iraq. The next month, however, the Pentagon ignored its own auditors and gave Halliburton yet another huge contract.

Will there ever be a real investigation? Not as long as the GOP controls Congress.

And not as long as ass-kissing officials in agencies like the Corps of Engineers keep demoting whistleblowers to please the Pentagon and White House bosses.

Greenhouse warnings just don't go over too well with this White House.

Morning Report 8/28/05
A Gratuitous War's 'Death Gratuity'

Posted by Harkavy at 11:29 AM, August 28, 2005

In George W. Bush's deadly version of no-limit Texas Hold 'Em, bullshit talks and money walks.

On July 1, Don Rumsfeld's Pentagon announced an immediate pay hike for dead soldiers, an increase in what's been known as the "Death Gratuity" from $12,420 to $100,000. That's the "immediate cash payment," the Pentagon boasts, for survivors of "those whose death is as a result of hostile actions and occurred in a designated combat operation or combat zone or while training for combat or performing hazardous duty."

Plus retroactive payments. Plus payment or reimbursement of premiums for automatically higher life insurance. What a good deal.

As military.com notes, the Pentagon "is making an effort to ease the hardship for families in mourning."

In all, the retroactive money and pay hikes are estimated to cost about $47 million. As I said, bullshit talks, and money walks. That total cost of the extra money is pocket change compared with the $5 billion a month we're spending on the unjustified war in Iraq — the increasingly deadly war that Bush continues to bullshit us about as a heroic cause.

Particularly galling is the continuing public-relations spin slapped on the war — and not only by the Bush regime, which, I noted a few days ago in "Slab in the Face," is chiseling euphemistic slogans on dead soldiers' tombstones.

Democratic senator Ken Salazar of Colorado pushed through Congress a replacement of the term "Death Gratuity," which has long described the financial help taxpayers give to survivors of dead soldiers, with the term "Fallen Hero Compensation."

In a March speech to a VFW conference in D.C., Salazar said:

Hearing the term "gratuity" is a bitter pill for survivors who have just received the worst news of their lives. Not one of the widows, widowers, or children left behind think of that money as a gift.

This is a simple change, but it more properly reflects the sacrifices military survivors have made and more properly expresses the gratitude and dignity we owe these families.

Actually, what we owe them is a just war, not just war.

The best thing Salazar could do, as a member of the supposed opposition party, is not to come up with a jingoistic euphemism but to press the GOP majority into finally investigating the reasons for and conduct of the war.

The facts already revealed in the Downing Street Memo and numerous other documents indicate that, if anything, survivor benefits for Iraq war deaths could be renamed "gratuitous death gratuity."

Salazar noted in his speech that 1,504 American soldiers had died in Iraq and 158 in Afghanistan.

Hey, Ken, those figures, as of 10 a.m. EDT on August 26, are now 1,872 killed in Iraq and 231 in Afghanistan. Do your fucking job.

Not that the money won't help the grieving families. Presumably, the money means a better effort than the Pentagon made to ease the pain of Pat Tillman's family.

Under severe pressure, the Pentagon said August 22 — only in response to a San Francisco reporter's prodding — that it's reopening the probe of the former NFL star's 2004 death by friendly fire in Afghanistan (and subsequent coverup for public-relations purposes) by reviewing a previous "investigation" that Tillman's family has denounced.

"The other investigations were frauds," Tillman's father told Robert Collier of the San Francisco Chronicle. The football player's mom, Mary Tillman, said, "People above should have been punished."

As Steve Coll and others at the Washington Post have revealed, the Bush regime lied about the circumstances of Tillman's death, saying he had been killed in combat with the Taliban, when in fact they almost immediately knew that he had been mistakenly shot to death by his own troops as he frantically yelled, "I am Pat [expletive] Tillman, damn it!"

Until the facts were finally revealed, Bush's handlers got good p.r. mileage out of his death, lauding him, the Chronicle's Collier recalls the White House saying, as "an inspiration on and off the football field, as with all who made the ultimate sacrifice in the war on terror."

As Collier noted, Tillman's death by friendly fire — not exactly the death this heroic figure deserved — was known by Pentagon commanders, including General John Abizaid, head of Centcom. But the unheroic circumstances of his death were withheld from the public — even from his family — until after Tillman's funeral.

When the likes of Abizaid and Rumsfeld die, do we have to call them "fallen heroes" too?

Morning Report 8/26/05
Siege Points to Growing Insurgency

Posted by Harkavy at 7:44 AM, August 26, 2005

It's purty hot down there in Crawford, but it's not the heat that makes George W. Bush feint. Even during his quick dip in the press pool the other day in Idaho, he lied about his nemesis Cindy Sheehan (left), captured in this shot by Dallas photog Randal Dean (check out Dean's other work). No, Bush's discombobulation is probably the result of a growing insurgency coalescing around Sheehan this summer that provides a sharp contrast to last summer's overly polite protest of the Republican National Convention.

Half a million people turned up in New York City exactly a year ago for that one, but the protest organizers' tack of asking the city's government and cops for permission to march led to the crowd's being co-opted and herded like so many sheep.

The lack of spontaneity doomed any chances of impact. It didn't help that the mainstream media went along with the propaganda that the protesters were "anarchists" and that the Democratic Party leadership and namby-pamby nominee John Kerry pointedly ignored them. Look what that got Kerry.

Sheehan didn't ask permission. She simply went to the Crawford ranch this summer to try to talk to Bush. It was the kind of "Schelling incident" that sparked what has turned out to be a long-overdue protest of the war and Bush.

If at least some of last summer's protesters hadn't submitted to their organizers, there would have been a convergence at Central Park, from which the protesters had been banned. Maybe it would have gotten ugly. But it wouldn't have been as ugly as what's going on in Iraq right now. As the Belfast Telegraph reports today:

The latest bloodshed — including the deaths of 13 policemen and an American — came after dozens of masked gunmen occupied parts of Baghdad. President Jalal Talabani escaped an assassination attempt in which eight of his bodyguards were killed and 15 injured. In further evidence of sectarian unrest, the bodies of 36 men, thought to be Kurds, were found in a dry river bed near the Iranian border at Badrah. They had been "executed" with shots to the head.

Meanwhile, back at Bush's vacation ranch, his handlers are taking Sheehan's protest seriously. That's why Bush trekked to Utah and Idaho in search of friendly crowds. But even there he couldn't escape from Sheehan. The first question from the pool gathered on August 23 at Tamarack Resort in Donnelly, Idaho, was directly about Sheehan, and Bush was typically comatose — non-responsive:

Q: Mr. President, we know you met with Cindy Sheehan a year ago, but she says a lot has changed since then; she has more to say to you. And even some Republicans have said that you should meet with her. Why not do that when you get back to the ranch?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I did meet with Cindy Sheehan. I strongly support her right to protest. There's a lot of people protesting, and there's a lot of points of view about the Iraq war. As you know, in Crawford last weekend there were people from both sides of the issue, or from all sides of the issue there to express their opinions.

That's the kind of response you'd expect to get from someone who's been smoking weed all day. No, Bush didn't meet with Sheehan. The questioner specifically mentioned last year's meeting and asked about the possibility of Bush's meeting with her this year.

The president will face more such questions now that he's back in Crawford after his brief hunt for weapons of mass distraction (during which he found some). The Washington Post reports this morning from Crawford:

Both the president and Sheehan returned to Crawford on Wednesday to find the protests larger and more organized than when they left.

The focus of anti-war activity has moved to "Camp Casey 2," named after Sheehan's 24-year-old son, Army Spec. Casey Sheehan, who was killed last year in Iraq. It is a large tent complex erected in Sheehan's absence on private land, with several portable toilets, a stage, a hot buffet and parking attendants.

Meanwhile, dozens of Bush supporters are camping along the perimeter of the president's ranch, opposite the tent Sheehan used when she first arrived. More supporters of the "You Don't Speak for Me, Cindy" tour are expected to arrive in the next few days.

Sheehan's letter to Bush last November 4 was powerful, but it rambled — understandable because Casey (left) was an altar boy and a Boy Scout and had been in Iraq only two weeks when he was blown up in Baghdad. Her new little video is such a blockbuster of brevity that I don't think Bush's handlers will ever let their little feller go outside to play with that mean ol' girl:

Mr. President, my name is Cindy Sheehan. On April 4, 2004, my son Casey was killed in Iraq. He was only 24, and he died in his best friend's arms.

Casey was so good and so honest. Why can't you be honest with us? You were wrong about the weapons of mass destruction. You were wrong about the link between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

You lied to us. And because of your lies my son died.

You said he died for a noble cause. What cause?

Mr. President, I want to tell you face-to-face how much this hurts. I love my country. But how many more of our loved ones need to die in this senseless war? How many more soldiers have to die before we say, "Enough"?

I know you can't bring Casey back. But it's time to admit mistakes and bring our troops home now.

Actually, Bush is doing the opposite. We're sending reinforcements to Iraq for the supposed election that's coming up. And with Sheehan's video scheduled to run as an ad on cable, Bush's handlers are spending more time on the insurgency here than they are on the insurgency in Iraq. As the Post story notes:

The president stepped up the strategy to divert attention from Sheehan on Wednesday, with a speech to the Idaho National Guard in which he praised Tammy Pruett, whose husband and five sons have served or are serving in Iraq. Providing an unmistakable counterpoint to Sheehan, Bush declared: "America lives in freedom because of families like the Pruetts."

But Sheehan's protest has already generated as much face time on prime time as last year's overly polite RNC protest. More from the Post:

The anti-war protesters responded Thursday with an emotional ceremony, carried live on national television, in which Sheehan was presented with the boots worn by her son before he was killed. She tearfully laid them before a small cross bearing her son's name, surrounded by dozens of supporters. There were sobs from other women whose sons were killed in Iraq.

Sheehan said that she realizes Bush has no intention of meeting with the protesters, but that her vigil has accomplished other things. "We've started people talking about the war again," she said.

Toxic Material Paralyzes U.N. and Ecuador

Posted by Harkavy at 8:21 AM, August 25, 2005

John Bolton just arrived at the U.N. and he's already made a splash. Typically, it was a caustic spill of some sort. The face of American arrogance (left) proliferated a ton of paperwork on other countries, calling for a rewrite of practically everything the other countries were supposed to discuss, do, or not do.

All part of the neocons' master plan to destabilize the hated U.N. We've got that destabilizing thing down pat. Bolton's diplomacy reminds me of preposterous pasha Jerry Bremer's maneuvers with Moqtada al-Sadr and other Iraqis in Baghdead. And Bolton's just treating the rest of the world the way Doug Feith treats Arabs.

Meanwhile, our dumping of nuts and Boltons on the U.N. is sure to not only screw up the rusty gears of the world body but also worsen the chances of holding U.S. corporate citizens accountable for a mammoth oil spill in Ecuador.

The Bush regime and its pals are mounting a multi-level attack on South America, the only continent on Earth in which left-leaning governments have been on the rise.

While the Cheney administration's theocratic wing — in the person of wing nut Pat Robertson — has called for the assassination of Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, the regime's envoys are putting the economic squeeze on every other country down there to pledge not to hold us accountable to any international court of law.

Juan Forero of the New York Times pointed this out on August 19:

Three years ago the Bush administration began prodding countries to shield Americans from the fledgling International Criminal Court in The Hague, which was intended to be the first permanent tribunal for prosecuting crimes like genocide.

The United States has since cut aid to some two dozen nations that refused to sign immunity agreements that American officials say are intended to protect American soldiers and policy makers from politically motivated prosecutions.

Our rich partners, like Australia, Japan, Germany, and Great Britain, have been exempted from these "immunity agreements," but things look darker for people of darker color.

More than 100 countries yielded and signed the agreements. But 53 others — including Ecuador — haven't, and they're paying the price. Here's more from Forero:

Most of the penalties, outlined in a law that went into effect in 2003, have been in the form of cuts in military training and other security aid. But a budget bill passed in December also permits new cuts in social and health-care programs, like AIDS education and peacekeeping, refugee assistance and judicial reforms.

Though the amounts are a pittance for Washington, their loss is being sorely felt in small countries.

In an outburst, in June, President Alfredo Palacio of Ecuador told a Quito television station that he would not yield to Washington. "Absolutely no one is going to make me cower," he said. "Neither the government, nor Alfredo Palacio nor the Ecuadorean people need to be afraid."

His nation has one of the region's largest American military bases and has become increasingly important as a staging ground for American surveillance of everything from the cocaine trade to immigrant smuggling. Still, Ecuador has lost $15 million since 2003 and may lose another $7 million this year.

Ecuador's not alone. Forero pointed out that 12 nations in Latin America and the Caribbean have been penalized. He added:

The cuts are generating strong resentment at what many see as heavy-handed diplomacy, officials and diplomats in seven countries said.

More than that, some Americans are also beginning to question the policy, as political and military leaders in the region complain that the aid cuts are squandering good will and hurting their ability to cooperate in other important areas, like the campaigns against drugs and terrorism.

Just like in the Middle East, the Bush regime's civilian troublemakers are ignoring warnings from their military people:

In testimony before Congress in March, Gen. Bantz J. Craddock, the commander of American military forces in Latin America, said the sanctions had excluded Latin American officers from American training programs and could allow China, which has been seeking military ties to Latin America, to fill the void.

"We now risk losing contact and interoperability with a generation of military classmates in many nations of the region, including several leading countries," General Craddock told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

This "immunity" business certainly doesn't protect the people in Ecuador from the poison that U.S. oil companies dumped on them. The watchdog ChevronToxico summarizes a historic trial now going on in eastern Ecuador:

The lawsuit on behalf of five indigenous tribes and 80 communities alleges Texaco dumped more than 18 billion gallons of toxic wastewater into Ecuador's rainforest during its two decades of operations in Ecuador's northern Amazon region, from 1970 to 1992.

The amount of direct crude dumped is roughly 30 times larger than the amount spilled during the Exxon Valdez disaster.

The trial is the first time in history that rainforest dwellers have forced a multinational oil company to be subjected to jurisdiction in their national courts. The Ecuador phase began in 2003 in the jungle town of Lago Agrio and is expected to conclude next year.

If only the U.S. had had a little more time to coerce these countries into extending immunity to our corporate citizens. Oh, well. The latest dispatch from activists about water samples from poisoned wells in Ecuador's rainforest bodes ill for the oil conglom now known as Chevron:

Chevron’s own sampling has produced devastating proof against itself — for example, of 77 water samples submitted to the court by Chevron, 97 percent violate Ecuadorian legal standards.

And those standards are far more relaxed than the ones that protect Americans' health.

But, hey, these are Ecuadoreans we're talking about. They don't really count. Proof of that is how they were treated this past April at Chevron's annual shareholder meeting in San Ramon, California:

Perhaps angered by a call by large shareholders that the Ecuador situation be independently reviewed by the Board of Directors, ChevronTexaco CEO David O'Reilly Wednesday reported record oil profits and then promptly shut down the microphone on a prominent Ecuadorian rainforest leader before she had a chance to speak at the company's annual meeting about oil contamination caused by Texaco in her homeland.

"I may be foreign to you but I am human. The jungle was once a great university, market, and hospital to us. Since ChevronTexaco came, our university, market, and hospital has been vanishing. I am not here to tarnish your image but to find a solution to this crisis."

Sit down and shut up, pal. We're Americans. Yeah, you Ecuadoreans are upset. And some of you, like Carmen Perez, are even sad:

Perez, a mother of six from Ecuador's Amazon region, had traveled two days by bus from her small community just to arrive in Quito, Ecuador's capital. She then flew a full day to the Bay Area to attend ChevronTexaco's annual meeting at the invitation of shareholders and the human rights organization Amnesty International.

"I was very sad that I traveled for three days to come to this meeting, only not to be heard by the chairman of the company," said Perez, who is a health care worker in the community of La Primavera, in Ecuador's Sucumbios province. Sucumbios is the epicenter of what industry experts believe could be the worst oil-related environmental catastrophe in the world.

Flexing his American muscles, Chevron's chairman ran roughshod over the activists:

Five minutes before the meeting was scheduled to end, O'Reilly shut down the microphone and adjourned the meeting in the middle of a presentation by Atossa Soltani, the executive director of Amazon Watch, a non-profit group that has been working for years with the Ecuadorian communities.

Soltani was presenting a letter sent by Amazon Watch to O'Reilly earlier in the week accusing company employees of making false and misleading public statements about the evidence at the trial, which thus far shows significant levels of toxic contamination at Texaco's former sites. She was attempting to cite ChevronTexaco's own soil and water tests from a well called Sacha-53 that found 22 samples over the maximum allowable legal limits for toxins.

Turning off a microphone is one ploy. Another good tactic is to dump an unexpected load of documents on your enemies. That's what John Bolton has done at the U.N., hardly a surprise considering his longstanding enmity toward the international body and his history as an expert in controlling arms by twisting them. As Colum Lynch of the Washington Post reports this morning:

Less than a month before world leaders arrive in New York for a world summit on poverty and U.N. reform, the Bush administration has thrown the proceedings in turmoil with a call for drastic renegotiation of a draft agreement to be signed by presidents and prime ministers attending the event.

The United States has only recently introduced more than 750 amendments that would eliminate new pledges of foreign aid to impoverished nations, scrap provisions that call for action to halt climate change and urge nuclear powers to make greater progress in dismantling their nuclear arms.

Our diplomatic moves have paid off in Iraq. Sending Bolton to the U.N. with a load of documents is just another example of what we Americans like to call "reinforcing success" in "support of continued progress."

Morning Report 8/25/05
Fucked by the Abstinence Crowd

Posted by Harkavy at 12:30 AM, August 25, 2005

The best-laid plans of Rick Santorum's fave no-teen-sex group to keep shagging the public have hit a snag.

Apparently, the whole abstinence thing promoted by the Pennsylvania-based Silver Ring Thing national organization is just another ploy to brainwash teens for Christ. What a shock.

OK, youth ministers, go ahead and try to stop teens from screwing. But first, why don't you stop fucking us taxpayers?

It was so obvious that even the Bush regime's Department of Health and Human Services had to formally instruct the Silver Ring Thing to stop fucking the public. Ceci Connolly of the Washington Post wrote on August 23:

The Bush administration yesterday suspended a federal grant to the Silver Ring Thing abstinence program, saying it appears to use tax money for religious activities.

Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services ordered the group to submit a "corrective action plan" if it hopes to receive an expected $75,000 grant this year.

The group's gotten more than $1.1 million in fed funds overall. Run by a guy named Denny Pattyn out of Pittsburgh evangelist John Guest's Christ Church at Grove Farm, the Silver Ring Thing denies that it is reaming taxpayers:

Representatives of the Pennsylvania-based nonprofit describe Silver Ring Thing as a "faith-based" group but dispute charges it has commingled its public funds with religious activities.

"Any religious teaching that goes on is separate in time and place from what the government is funding," said Joel Oster, senior litigation counsel at the Alliance Defense Fund, which is representing the Silver Ring Thing. "They offer a religious program and they offer a secular program; kids can choose which one they want to go to."

In an advertisement on its Web site for a set of educational materials on DVD, Silver Ring Thing promises: "A secular program is also in development."

Uh-huh. As the Post story noted:

The action comes three months after the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against HHS, accusing the administration of using tax dollars to promote Christianity. In documents filed in federal court in Boston, the ACLU alleged that the activities, brochures and Web site of Silver Ring Thing were "permeated with religion" and use "taxpayer dollars to promote religious content, instruction and indoctrination."

Teenage graduates of the program sign a covenant "before God Almighty" to remain virgins and earn a silver ring inscribed with a Bible passage reminding them to "keep clear of sexual sin." Many of its events are held at churches.

Santorum is probably frothing at the ACLU over this development. In December 2003, when he announced a $700,000 grant of taxpayer money to Silver Ring Thing—which followed a $400,000 grant in February 2003 — the GOP senator said:

Funding for education programs which promote sexual abstinence will help Pennsylvania youth become better informed about healthy alternatives to sexual activity. I believe these important programs will also provide young people with the necessary tools to combat peer pressure, reducing the rate of STDs and teen pregnancy.

But Christ Church at Grove Farm, in the tony Pittsburgh suburb of Sewickley, already had a prominent role that same year in alerting teens about alternatives to healthy sexual activity.

In May 2003, the news broke in Pittsburgh that an Episcopal priest allegedly sexed up a teen girl at Christ Church in 2001.

No big deal: The guy, a junior pastor, who was quietly let go by Christ Church in '01 and had to be tracked to Tucson to be arrested, was charged with rape, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, indecent assault, endangering the welfare of children, corruption of minors, and three counts of unlawful contact or communication with minors.

Here's how the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote about it in 2003:

The girl's father was on the Christ Church parish council, and he and his wife had vacationed with the Guests, he said. [The junior pastor] was in their home several times each month to lead a Bible study and prayer group for church members.

"He cooked in our kitchen. He was a friend," the father said.

He said he also gave [the junior pastor] "significant" financial support because [he] always seemed to be short of money. The father attributed it to poor management skills.

His daughter began seeing [the junior pastor] for weekly counseling sessions in spring 2001. According to police records, after several sessions he began telling her she was beautiful, raising issues about her self-esteem and proposing that they engage in "sexual therapy." The girl told police she tried to resist his advances, but relented during three sessions between May and August 2001.

A later story in the Tribune-Review noted that the rape charge was dropped, but that the case was continuing full force on the other charges. (I haven't discovered the outcome.) The follow-up story did add some juicy details of this passion of the Christ Church:

[The junior pastor] massaged the girl's bare breasts and performed other sex acts on her, according to the affidavit of probable cause.

"He insinuated to her that because her family was not paying for these counseling sessions, and that he was helping her out of the goodness of his heart, she should do her best to keep her family happy," the affidavit said.

The girl initially refused his offer of what he referred to as "sexual therapy" and denied further requests for sexual contact after the third incident, the affidavit said. He apologized and instructed her not to tell anyone, the affidavit said.

I didn't realize until now that "just say no" is short for "just say nothing."

Hugs and Kiss-Offs

Posted by Harkavy at 8:33 PM, August 24, 2005

Continuing his hunt for weapons of mass distraction, George W. Bush's handlers captured an Idaho auditorium for him today—at least long enough for the POTUS to get a hug from a military mom not named Cindy Sheehan.

But more than two years since Bush declared, "Mission accomplished!," the Baghdad airport still hasn't been secured. Neither has the road from the $1 billion U.S. embassy in Baghdad to the airport. And neither has Baghdad, where bloody shootouts all day today shattered the lack of calm:

Dozens of insurgents wearing black uniforms and masks launched the boldest assault in Baghdad in weeks, attacking Iraqi police Wednesday with multiple car bombs and small-arms fire that killed at least 13 people and wounded 43.

The violence came as politicians struggled to end a stalemate over the country's draft constitution.

Nothing to worry about. The Pentagon announced today that things are going great. Thanks to colleague Jarrett Murphy for alerting me to one of the best quotes to emerge from the Bush regime.

Shockingly, Bush didn't utter it. The Pentagon spokesman of the moment, Lieutenant Colonel Barry Venable, told the press today in D.C. that two more infantry battalions are being sent to Iraq for added security during the upcoming elections. Venable explained:

"Political progress in Iraq is on track, and this deployment is in support of continued progress. We are reinforcing success."

Bush's personal handlers took the opposite tack today: They deployed the POTUS to his reinforcements.

Call it "mission accomplished": Bush got a hug from a military mom. Tammy Pruett has four kids serving in Iraq, and here she is hugging our president. That beats Cindy Sheehan's one dead son all to hell. "Reinforcing success." That's what the Bush regime's all about.

Back in Baghdad, airmen from the 447th have been working in the 120-degree heat on another kind of reinforcement: Stringing barbed wire to protect the flight path at Baghdad International Airport. Here's a number: We're putting up more than 36,000 feet of wire to protect people and planes at the airport.

Just another mission accomplished that will make our frantic Saigon-like exit go more smoothly when we finally go.

Why Do You Think They Call Him Dope?

Posted by Harkavy at 1:57 PM, August 24, 2005

Add to the mess that the Bush regime is leaving behind in Iraq the meth that the president and his handlers are leaving behind in the heartland of America.

If you block out the sounds of gunfire currently taking place on the streets of Baghdad, you can almost hear the cries of outrage from Republican senators and ordinary Americans about George W. Bush's mishandled drug war back home.

The people at Wal-Mart Watch, an activist website launched this spring that bids to be as comprehensive as the excellent Halliburton Watch, are on top of this meth.

Seems that Wal-Mart and the business-suited drug dealers who work out of Big Pharma's boardrooms are unhappy with various states' restrictions on sales of pseudoephedrine, a key component in the manufacture of methamphetamines.

The Bush regime has proposed new nationwide rules that are less restrictive than many meth-plagued states' rules and go easier on Wal-Mart, which peddles the legal drugs made by Big Pharma that are combined in meth labs to make illegal drugs.

Iowans, as a result, are enraged. An August 22 editorial in the Des Moines Register, brought to our attention by Wal-Mart Watch, is brief and so to the point that it bears repeating:

Meth is a contemporary plague. Yet the Bush administration seems dazed and confused about this reality.

The White House unveiled a federal anti-meth plan last week. Unlike Iowa law, it wouldn't require most cold medicines containing pseudoephedrine — a key ingredient in making meth — be sold only by pharmacies. It would allow consumers to purchase up to 110 pills in a single purchase.

It's essentially a non-policy. Even Republican lawmakers are criticizing it.

Sen. Charles Grassley said the White House is "listening more to Wal-Mart than to the economic and social problems" meth causes. Actually, White House officials are probably listening to drug companies, which stand to lose sales when drugs are difficult to purchase.

Or maybe they're not listening to anyone. Maybe they just can't get their eyes off their old enemy: marijuana. The administration has focused on this as a gateway drug that's widely used.

But being widely used doesn't make it the biggest problem. Ask governors, law-enforcement officers, child-welfare workers, landlords. Meth may not be the most common drug, but it's the biggest problem in many states. It's deadly. It's dangerous. It's destructive.

It makes pot look harmless.

Late last week, the most mainstream newspaper in the nation, USA Today, delivered a body blow in its news pages to the Bush regime:

A federal anti-methamphetamine plan unveiled [August 18] by the Bush administration is yet another example of how the administration is floundering in its efforts to combat the nation's top drug problem, Republican members of Congress said.

Pols of all stripes — from reactionaries like Indiana's Mark Souder and Missouri's Jim Tallent to moderates like Grassley to dippy Dems like Delaware's Joe Biden of Delaware to libs like California's Dianne Feinstein of California — are all united in their disgust for the Bush team's national drug policy. More from USA Today:

The administration plan also would provide $16.2 million for meth treatment programs in seven states — California, Tennessee, Oregon, Texas, Montana, Georgia, and New Mexico.

But President Bush's proposed fiscal 2006 budget would substantially cut anti-meth programs, another source of congressional anger.

"We are going to defeat you in the budget process and debate process until you cry uncle," Souder said last week in comments directed at the administration.

Meanwhile, the Bush regime is still consumed by reefer madness. As USA Today pointed out:

The administration's announcement caps weeks of harsh criticism from GOP lawmakers who say the administration does not have a comprehensive strategy to deal with the costly environmental and social problems caused by meth.

White House officials have focused more attention on marijuana.

"Methamphetamine causes much more destruction in a much shorter period of time," Grassley and Democratic Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware said in an Aug. 1 letter to national drug czar John Walters.

The token effort against meth seems inexplicable — until you read how Walters replies to average Americans' drug questions. On April 9, 2004, for example, on the White House's insipid "interactive" page, there was this exchange:

Q: Christopher from South Carolina: Why is it that marijuana hasn't been legalized in the United States yet we spend so much money fighting against something that really isn't that bad.

I personally have smoked marijuana in the past and still can not figure out why it's not legal to smoke. Alcohol is more dangerous than marijuana is. So why not legalize it?

John Walters, White House Drug Czar: Marijuana is a dangerous drug that remains illegal because of the threat it poses to Americans, particularly children. Our current knowledge surrounding marijuana — including treatment center admission data, scientific research, and medical knowledge — directly contradicts the myths that this drug is non-addictive and harmless.

Walters went on to say that "the perpetuation of these falsehoods has fueled the spread of this harmful drug among Americans over the last 30 years." So he thought it was "important that Americans understand the facts about marijuana."

You have to wonder what Walters is smoking — he either lies about or exaggerates the government's own official pronouncements on marijuana. Here were the "facts" from Walters:

• Marijuana smoke contains 50 to 70 percent more carcinogens than tobacco smoke, which can lead to cancer of the respiratory system and can disrupt the immune system.

• Marijuana use has a negative effect on learning and memory, and is associated with an increased risk of developing schizophrenia.

• Marijuana users are more likely to be depressed and have suicidal thoughts.

• Of the 7.1 million Americans — 1.4 million of whom are teenagers — identified as needing drug treatment, over 60 percent have a dependency on marijuana.

• In recent years, for the first time, more teens have presented themselves for treatment of marijuana dependency than have presented themselves for treatment of alcohol dependency.

Legalizing marijuana will only cause more Americans, especially children, to believe the marijuana myths and try this harmful drug. Because of these concerns for public health and safety, the federal government will continue to oppose the legalization of marijuana.

Now, go to the chart on "Uses and Effects" in the DEA's Drugs of Abuse 2005. Let's compare marijuana and alcohol, leaving not one word out of the DEA's descriptions.

Here are the "possible effects":

• Marijuana: "Euphoria, relaxed inhibitions, increased appetite, disorientation."

• Alcohol: "Impaired memory, slurred speech, drunken behavior, slow onset vitamin deficiency, organ damage."

Here are the "effects of overdose":

• Marijuana: "Fatigue, paranoia, possible psychosis."

• Alcohol: "Vomiting, respiratory depression, loss of consciousness, possible death."

And here is the "withdrawal syndrome":

• Marijuana: "Occasional reports of insomnia, hyperactivity, decreased appetite."

• Alcohol: "Trembling, anxiety, insomnia, vitamin deficiency, confusion, hallucinations, convulsions."

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Walters. Better yet, pour yourself a drink. And one for Bush, too.

Oh, and of all the drugs listed on the comprehensive DEA chart, the only one the feds consider to be milder than marijuana in its effects is LSD. And LSD is the only drug that the DEA lists as having "none," under "withdrawal syndrome."

But nothing seems to stop the Bush regime from doing its own kind of trippin'. Too bad its "withdrawal syndrome" regarding Iraq is also "none."

Morning Report 8/24/05
Slab in the Face

Posted by Harkavy at 8:42 AM, August 24, 2005

The Bush regime's monumental hubris has led us on a death march that no one will ever forget.

And to make sure, it's engraving its public-relations slogan for the unjustified invasion of Iraq onto the grave markers of our dead soldiers.

Apparently, one grave miscalculation deserves another — and another and another. David Pace of the Associated Press turned over enough rocks to discover this unprecedented public-relations ploy. Pace followed typically straightforward AP style in describing the devious maneuver by the chiselers in the White House and Pentagon:

Unlike earlier wars, nearly all Arlington National Cemetery gravestones for troops killed in Iraq or Afghanistan are inscribed with the slogan-like operation names the Pentagon selected to promote public support for the conflicts.

The vast majority of military gravestones from other eras are inscribed with just the basic, required information: name, rank, military branch, date of death and, if applicable, the war and foreign country in which the person served.

Digression: A tip of the fedora to Bush Beat reader Mike Silverman in Israel for sending along the link late last night. Silverman, a New Yorker who moved to Israel in 1974, lives in Clil, a relatively peaceful artist colony and farming village overlooking the Mediterranean whose own slogan calls for the promoting of "harmonious dialogue with our Christian, Moslem and Druze neighbors." End digression.

The AP's Pace did some diligent digging for his tale beyond the crypt. We've already seen how the Pentagon tried to spin the death of former NFL star Pat Tillman, using even his corpse as a public-relations prop. Mary Tillman, like Cindy Sheehan a grieving mom who felt used by the Bush regime, bitterly complained about the relentless coverup of Tillman's senseless death in Afghanistan at the hands of his own soldiers. The coverup continued so that Bush, Don Rumsfeld, and NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue could continue to milk the iconic Tillman for all the public-relations value he was worth after his death.

Once again, it appears, the Bush regime can't let dead soldiers and their families rest in peace. More from the AP's Pace:

Families are supposed to have final approval over what goes on the tombstones. That hasn't always happened.

Nadia and Robert McCaffrey, whose son Patrick was killed in Iraq in June 2004, said "Operation Iraqi Freedom" ended up on his government-supplied headstone in Oceanside, Calif., without family approval.

"I was a little taken aback," Robert McCaffrey said, describing his reaction when he first saw the operation name on Patrick's tombstone. "They certainly didn't ask my wife; they didn't ask me." He said Patrick's widow told him she had not been asked either.

"In one way, I feel it's taking advantage to a small degree," McCaffrey said. "Patrick did not want to be there, that is a definite fact."

Hell, even the people who make the grave markers think it's a bad idea:

The owner of the company that has been making gravestones for Arlington and other national cemeteries for nearly two decades is uncomfortable, too.

"It just seems a little brazen that that's put on stones," said Jeff Martell, owner of Granite Industries of Vermont. "It seems like it might be connected to politics."

VA officials of course deny that higher-ups at the Pentagon and White House ordered them to do things differently. But the facts don't back that up, as Pace found. In fact, the Bush regime is taking advantage of a relatively recent change in rules to try to leave its public-relations spoor on the illegal, unjustified, disastrous war. Pace notes:

Since 1997, the government has been paying for virtually everything inscribed on the gravestones. Before that, families had to pay the gravestone makers separately for any inscription beyond the basics.

It wasn't until the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 that the department instructed national cemetery directors and funeral homes across the country to advise families of fallen soldiers and Marines that they could have operation names like "Enduring Freedom" or "Iraqi Freedom" included on the headstones.

VA officials say neither the Pentagon nor White House exerted any pressure to get families to include the operation names. They say families always had the option of including information like battle or operation names, but didn't always know it.

"It's just the right thing to do and it always has been, but it hasn't always been followed," said Dave Schettler, director of the VA's memorial programs service.

Bullshit. And what's worse, government officials do more than just offer an option to grieving families:

At Arlington, the nation's most prestigious national cemetery, all but a few of the 193 gravestones of Iraq and Afghanistan dead carry the operation names. War casualties are also buried in many of the 121 other national cemeteries and numerous state and private graveyards.

The interment service supervisor at Arlington, Vicki Tanner, said cemetery representatives show families a mock-up of the headstone with "Operation Iraqi Freedom" or "Operation Enduring Freedom" already included, and ask their approval.

"Mock-up" is right. As Pace notes:

Former Sen. Max Cleland, D-Ga., who lost both legs and an arm in Vietnam and headed the Veterans Administration under President Carter, called the practice "a little bit of glorified advertising."

"I think it's a little bit of gilding the lily," Cleland said, while insisting that he's not criticizing families who want that information included.

"Most of the headstones out there at Arlington and around the nation just say World War II or Korea or Vietnam, one simple statement," he said. "It's not, shall we say, a designated theme or a designated operation by somebody in the Pentagon. It is what it is. And I think there's power in simplicity."

And I think there's a simpleton in power.

The Two Minutes Hate

Posted by Harkavy at 6:31 PM, August 23, 2005

That Pat Robertson is such a caution. Where does this elderly evangelist get all his energy?

Friends, I'm glad you asked that. Robertson calls it "Robust Living." Go to the Christian Broadcasting Network's "community resources" to find the stories of "Pat Robertson's Age-Defying Pancakes" and "Pat Robertson's Age-Defying Shake." Or clean out those toxins with "Pat's Age-Defying Antioxidants":

Where does Pat Robertson get the powerhouse energy to do the things he loves and keep up with his day to day tasks?

Pat's secret to keeping his energy high comes from taking his age-defying protein shake and his age-defying antioxidants.

From traveling the world in the name of Jesus — to being a national spokesman and spiritual leader, Pat has an amazing capacity to live life to its fullest.

But Robertson won't be sipping protein with Hugo Chávez (except in Robertson's most private, secret dreams).

Last night on the 700 Club, Robertson called for the assassination of Chávez. Robertson made like it was politics, but it sounds as if the evangelist is still wrestling with the confused sexual feelings that so often provoke him to go off on gays.

He can do the Two Minutes Hate with time left over, especially if the subject hits close to home.

The Times (U.K.) reports:

The right-wing religious broadcaster said that President Chávez was a "terrific danger" to the US because he wanted to use his oil-rich country as "a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism".

"We have the ability to take him out and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability," Mr Robertson told the Christian Broadcast Network’s 700 Club. "We don’t need another $200 billion war to get rid of one strong-arm dictator."

See, it can't just be a matter of politics, because Chávez couldn't be trying to "launch" both "communist infiltration" and "Muslim extremism" at the same time. Only a fucking idiot would say that. And Robertson's not an idiot. So maybe his rage toward Chavez is Robertson's ragingly homo-hating sexual inner war surfacing once again.

After all, Chavez is a pretty robust-looking fellow (see photo).

My favorite story so far on the fatuous fatwa is from Forbes, which describes the Venezuelan president as a "radical demagogue."

Jesus, what does that make Robertson? As the Forbes story itself notes, the evangelist once wished that a nuclear bomb would explode in D.C.:

… in October 2003, [Robertson] criticized the U.S. State Department during an interview, saying "maybe we need a very small nuke thrown off on Foggy Bottom to shake things up."

And Robertson said it at least twice that year. As CNN reported at the time:

In June [2003], Robertson made similar remarks.

"Maybe we need a very small nuke thrown off on Foggy Bottom to shake things up like Newt Gingrich wants to do," he said.

Chavez, as Time's Tim Padgett writes, is a "source of concern for Washington if only because Venezuela is America's fourth-largest foreign oil supplier." The lame newsmag adds:

Chávez's erratic and often bellicose anti-U.S. rhetoric — he publicly called Bush an "ass____" in Spanish last year — as well as his desire to sell less oil to the U.S. and more to ideological allies like China, are hardly comforting as gas nears $3 per gallon.

Who is Time calling "erratic and often bellicose"? These days, that would be George W. Bush, right?

And "ideological allies like China"? The biggest ideological ally of China's is Wal-Mart.

The world's largest company shares with the government of the world's largest nation an abiding contempt for the rights and lives of working people.

You'll never hear Pat Robertson go nuclear about those rights, those lives, or those people.

Morning Report 8/23/05
Bush Counts on a Safe Crowd

Posted by Harkavy at 11:42 AM, August 23, 2005

George W. Bush finally escaped from his vacation and found a cheering audience Monday in Utah. But then he went and blew it by misunderestimating the number of dead soldiers in Iraq.

Like the terrorists in Iraq, Bush is picking his spots for forays into the U.S. heartland to try to promote the absurd war his regime started.

You'll see him in places like Salt Lake City. Utah's National Guard has suffered "only" four casualties during Bush's War of Terror (WOT?) since 9/11.

Not many mothers in Utah like Cindy Sheehan or Mary Tillman to raise troubling questions.

You likely won't see Bush pedaling to Ohio to peddle his forever war, because that state has truly become a battleground, instead of just a media battleground.

One Marine company from Ohio — the ill-named "Lucky Lima" — has lost more soldiers to Bush's War than the entire Utah National Guard has lost.

But in Utah, at least, Bush's handlers were able to try out some new strategies. One weapon of mass distraction that his advisers have found and are deploying is to start actually giving out numbers. As Peter Wallsten noted this morning in the Los Angeles Times:

Speaking Monday to a friendly audience at the annual convention of Veterans of Foreign Wars, Bush offered a rare presidential tally of the fallen U.S. soldiers in Iraq — more than 1,800 at the time of his appearance.

Bush did not mention Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a slain soldier who has led the protests near his Texas vacation property. But his reference to the dead troops and their grieving families was an apparent acknowledgment that Sheehan and other parents allied with her have proven to be formidable foes in the battle for public opinion.

"We have lost 1,864 members of our armed forces in Operation Iraqi Freedom and 223 in Operation Enduring Freedom," Bush said, referring to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. "Each of these men and women left grieving families and loved ones back home."

The Bush regime's strategy of sending the POTUS on carefully crafted speaking tours worked during the 2004 election campaign. It's not likely to work these days.

Wallsten's story, like an increasing number of mainstream media accounts, points out the likewise increasing number of absurdities gushing like so much blood from the Cheney/Rumsfeld administration's poor handling of a bad idea. The bad idea I'm referring to is the unjustified diversion of our war on terrorists to invade Iraq on behalf of oil companies, defense contractors, and Israel's right-wing government. This paragraph in Wallsten's story is what I'm talking about:

Further illustrating the conundrum for the administration, the death toll in Iraq had risen by the end of the day, surpassing the number Bush gave by at least five.

For you numb and number numbers-crunchers, as of 10 this morning EDT, according to my Backwards Bush keychain, the president has 1,245 days left in office.

If you want to count along with Bush as he continues his War on Dead Soldiers' Mothers tour, consult the Defense Department's up-to-the-day casualty report.

As of 10 this morning EDT, 1,863 U.S. soldiers and five DOD civilian contractors had died during "Operation Iraqi Freedom," according to Rumsfeld's agency.

Bush didn't point out to his audience at the VFW convention in Salt Lake another DOD factoid that's updated daily: As of 10 this morning, 92.3 percent of those 1,868, or 1,724, have died in "post combat ops." That is, since Bush, bulging with pride, declared "Mission accomplished!" on May 1, 2003.

Morning Report 8/22/05
Bush Announces Withdrawal

Posted by Harkavy at 9:27 AM, August 22, 2005

George W. Bush's handlers have finally figured out how to extricate the POTUS and his party from a nasty, impossible, unwinnable situation.

Yes, trapped at Prairie Chapel Ranch by Cindy Sheehan and other insurgents, they've decided — typically — to take the offensive: Bush is leaving on a speaking tour to promote the idea that we're engaged in an endless war.

We're here! We're queer for war! Get used to it!

The problem for Bush is that even the straight media are now casting a queer eye on him.

Take ol' mainstream CNN, for instance. Reporting this morning that Bush "will launch a new round of speeches to rally support for the war in Iraq," starting with a speech this afternoon to veterans in Utah, the pedestrian news service added this cluster of information starting in the fifth paragraph—significantly, even before Sheehan's name was first mentioned:

In a previous attempt this summer to boost sagging support for the war, the president delivered a prime-time, nationally televised address in June to a military audience in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. In his speech, Bush assured Americans that the conflict in Iraq was worth the sacrifice.

The sacrifice includes 1,862 U.S. troops deaths, including a soldier who was killed by a roadside bomb Saturday near Baghdad, the U.S. military said.

"Our mission in Iraq is clear: We're hunting down the terrorists. We're helping Iraqis build a free nation that is an ally in the war on terror," Bush said in June.

"We're advancing freedom in the broader Middle East. We are removing a source of violence and instability, and laying the foundation of peace for our children and our grandchildren."

But his remarks did little to move public opinion. A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll conducted August 5-7 found that 54 percent of those surveyed thought the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a mistake.

The 9/11 Commission's report, issued in July 2004, found no evidence that Iraq had any operational relationship with al Qaeda.

The CIA concluded in February that Iraq had become a training ground for terrorists who wish to attack U.S. troops — a haven critics say did not exist before Saddam Hussein's ouster.

If this is the way the mainstream media are going to cover the remainder of Bush's term, the GOP is facing disaster in next year's congressional elections.

Already, moderate Republicans like Chuck Hagel are distancing themselves from Bush by bringing up comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam. Hagel points out that the Iraq war has destabilized the Middle East —oh, really? — and he adds:

We're past that stage now because now we are locked into a bogged-down problem not unsimilar, dissimilar to where we were in Vietnam. The longer we stay, the more problems we're going to have.

Even the GOP senators who are trying to help Bush — or make it seem like they're trying to help Bush — are only making things worse. South Carolina's Lindsey Graham, for instance, said on Fox News Sunday:

"The worst-case scenario is not staying four years. The worst-case scenario is leaving a dysfunctional, repressive government behind that becomes part of the problem in the war on terror and not the solution."

I guess Graham was talking about Iraq. But he might as well have been talking about the "dysfunctional, repressive government" run by Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, and the other Bush handlers. You know, the guys who are part of the problem, not the solution.

Morning Report 8/21/05
Them's Fightin' Words

Posted by Harkavy at 7:34 AM, August 21, 2005

The U.S. is so desperate that Iraqis hurry up and produce a constitution — any piece of paper will do — that, only 24 hours before the new deadline, we're making (and are willing to accept) all sorts of veiled threats.

The result would be a theocracy, and any attempt at guaranteeing women's rights would be sacrificed.

That's not a major surprise, I know, considering that Christocrats have disproportionate power these days in our own country and, with the avid help of front man George W. Bush, are constantly trying to roll back women's rights and replace our own Constitution with the Bible.

Besides, the U.S. official peddling that idea in Baghdad is neocon theorist Zalmay Khalilzad, the Afghanistan-born former RAND and Unocal consultant who had no problem cozying up to the Taliban during the Reagan years.

But Ellen Knickmeyer's story in this morning's Washington Post is nonetheless interesting because it sharpens the focus on the sharp divisions that will tear Iraq apart. The Post's main story on Iraq talks about the rise of militias, including the peshmerga, whom my colleague David Axe wrote about in April from Sulaymaniyah.

Knickmeyer, in her piece today, zoomed in on the constitutional maneuvering:

Kurdish politicians negotiating a draft constitution criticized the U.S. ambassador to Iraq on Saturday for allegedly pushing them to accept too great a role for Islamic law in his drive to complete the charter on time.

Although a Sunni delegate made similar charges, U.S. officials declined to comment publicly while they worked with politicians as a Monday deadline loomed.

Khalilzad was playing mediator, shuttling between and among the various clusters of Kurds, Sunnis, and Shiites wrestling to meet the ridiculous U.S.-imposed deadline. The Kurds, angling for their own nation, want no part of Sharia. As Knickmeyer reports:

The working draft of the constitution stipulates that no law can contradict Islamic principles. In talks with Shiite religious parties, Kurdish negotiators said they have pressed unsuccessfully to limit the definition of Islamic law to principles agreed upon by all groups. The Kurds said current language in the draft would subject Iraqis to extreme interpretations of Islamic law.

Kurds also contend that provisions in the draft would allow Islamic clerics to serve on the high court, which would interpret the constitution. That would potentially subject marriage, divorce, inheritance and other civil matters to religious law and could harm women's rights, according to the Kurdish negotiators and some women's groups.

For a good, acerbic dose of the bigger picture — a view that encompasses the Gaza "disengagement" as well as the Iraqi "constitution" (ironic quote marks necessary in both cases), read Ian Macwhirter's piece this morning in Glasgow's Sunday Herald.

Racist Southerners are always crowing about how proud they are of their Scottish heritage. (The bookstore at Bob Jones University is packed with such material — read my March 2000 story from the GOP primary stop in South Carolina.) Well, maybe they ought to pay attention to Scots like Macwhirter, George Galloway, and the late Robin Cook.

In "Time for the World to Save America," Macwhirter argues that if the rest of the planet doesn't step in to organize the inevitable withdrawal from Iraq, the U.S. will sink into isolationism, and dictators around the world will wreak even more havoc than they already do.

On his way to that conclusion, Macwhirter makes some interesting points. Noting that both the Pentagon and the British military are already talking about pulling troops out, he writes:

It looks like a withdrawal and has led some to speculate that the coalition intends to "cut and run."

Chance would be a fine thing. There seems little prospect of any early disengagement, even if the Iraqi ethnic groups agree a new constitution tomorrow when the second deadline expires. America was clearly hoping that the Middle East would turn the corner this summer. The withdrawal of Israeli troops from occupied Gaza was carefully choreographed to coincide with the new constitution in Iraq.

With progress over Palestine (not that the Palestinians in the still Israeli-occupied West Bank would recognise it as such) and a democratic constitution in place for Iraq, the Americans could have returned claiming some sort of victory and announced the job done.

However, right now, a withdrawal from Iraq would look like a victory for the insurgents. The lightly-armed attackers have proved terrifyingly effective in keeping up the pressure with suicide bombs and, increasingly, with more sophisticated remotely-controlled detonations. The insurgents are better organised and trained than a year ago, and unlike America, there seems no shortage of recruits to the cause of jihad.

But insurgency is one thing, and full-on civil war is another. Macwhirter continues:

If America pulled out tomorrow, there would very likely be civil war. The Kurds in the north are determined to have an autonomous Kurdistan, and have demanded that the oil-rich region of Kirkuk should be part of it.

Unlike the Sunni Muslims in the centre of Iraq and the Shia in the south, the Kurds are intensely pro-American and want nothing of the Islamic theocracy that is likely to emerge in most of the country. It’s a little like Ulster in the 1920s after the creation of the Irish Free State. Like the Ulstermen, the Kurds are also determined to keep their Peshmerga armed forces.

If US troops withdrew tomorrow, the insecurity on both sides would be difficult to contain, especially since most of the country remains shattered and filled with armed Islamic fundamentalists. The suicide bombers who have been targeting the Americans would likely turn to the secular Kurds. The Sunnis and the Shia, meanwhile, would pursue their theological disputes on the streets in the traditional bloody manner.

Next year's elections in the U.S. may feature some bloodletting as well. After all, there will be some mighty unhappy Americans by then. How many? Who knows? But as Macwhirter points out:

Whatever government finally emerges [in Iraq], it’s clear that most of the country will become an introverted Islamic Republic, closer to Iran than America. In Basra, fundamentalism already has a power base. What will the service moms say when they discover their boys sacrificed their lives to create another Islamic dictatorship which loathes America and everything it stands for, which treats women as second-class citizens, persecutes non believers and which regards Christianity as evil?

Morning Report 8/20/05
Bangladesh Bomb Blasts? Sew What?

Posted by Harkavy at 11:06 AM, August 20, 2005

I was wrong when I recently wrote that the 350 bombs that exploded all across Bangladesh on August 17 were among the shots heard 'round the world that day.

Hey, my apologies. I didn't realize that the major U.S. media didn't give a shit about what's going on in the planet's seventh most populous nation, a crowded country whose sweatshop workers sew many of our clothes.

It's not that newspapers never cover Bangladesh. Only last October, the New York Times ran a long story about how vibrant the expatriate Bengali press is in New York City, about how Bangladeshis love to read, about how there are 12 competing Bengali-language newspapers in the city.

That heart-warming story, by Tripti Lahiri, was headlined "Immigrants with Ink in Their Blood."

No doubt. But what happened to the ink in the blood of the Times editors?

Lahiri's good read was a feel-good story. The frightening news that radical Islamists set off all these bombs in Bangladesh must have been a feel-nothing story.

When's the last time you heard of more than 300 bombs going off across a country, all within an hour's time and all accompanied by leaflets from an extremist group claiming credit?

Nevertheless, the only mention of the August 17 bomb blasts I can find in the Times, web or print, is brief wire-service stuff.

Only the Christian Science Monitor, among the better daily papers, carried a report of any length at all and from its own correspondent.

Well, many of the 144 million inhabitants of Bangladesh cared. They conducted a one-day strike to protest their government's inability to stem rising radicalism. By the way, there were 400 explosions, not just 350.

Here's more from the BBC's Roland Buerk this morning from Dhaka:

A 10-year-old boy and a rickshaw puller were killed and more than 100 others were injured.

Leaflets bearing the name of a banned Islamic organisation, Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen, were found at every bomb site. They called for the establishment of Islamic law in Bangladesh.

Meanwhile, the police are interrogating more than 120 people detained since the attacks. Several of the suspects are alleged to be members of Islamic groups linked to Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen.

The incident has caused some people here to doubt the government's long standing insistence that it has religious extremists under control.

Bangladesh is already beset by out-of-control flooding during monsoon season, paralyzing poverty, and overpopulation.

Just imagine 144 million people crammed into an area the size of Iowa.

But at least its workers are under control. Bangladesh is a sweatshop haven. In fact, you probably own a ball cap or sweatshirt made by a Bangladeshi.

Speaking of Iowa, Bangladeshi workers are paid 1½ cents to make each Iowa State Cyclone ball cap.

Just in case you heard about the bomb blasts despite the U.S. media's general cone of silence, here's an update on working conditions in Bangladesh, as of January.

You might be interested if you're an American working woman who's ever been pregnant, is pregnant, or may become pregnant — or if you know any women like that. Otherwise, don't read this from the National Labor Committee:

An estimated 90 percent of the more than 3,780 export garment factories in Bangladesh violate women's legal right to 3 months maternity leave full pay. Some companies harass and pressure the pregnant women workers to force them to quit. Others give the leave but will only take the women back as new employees. Only a handful of companies in fact pay the benefits. The vast majority of factories simply cheat the women.

Please write to Wal-Mart, Kohls and other companies asking them to sign The Pledge — that any woman in Bangladesh sewing their garments will be guaranteed her legal right to maternity leave with benefits. The law in Bangladesh is very straightforward — it requires companies to provide three months maternity leave with full pay.

Only last September, Bangladeshi workers toured the U.S., in the company of American labor activists, to explain what daily life is like. Here's a glimpse of their stop in Charleston to meet with West Virginia union workers:

When the workers spoke to the unionists, you could hear a pin drop. They described how they are treated in their factories, making clothing for Wal-Mart, and laid out their modest demands for one day a week off because they are sick and exhausted, an end to the beatings and physical abuse, that they receive their legal maternity leave of three months with full pay, and that they be paid the proper double-time rate for overtime, rather than being routinely cheated by some of the largest companies in the world.

In their wildest dreams, they would have the right to organize and would earn 37 cents an hour, which would allow them to climb out of misery and into poverty.

Surely Wal-Mart could afford this. The company made a $9.1 billion profit last year, the Walton family is worth $90 billion and CEO Lee Scott pays himself $240,000 a week. On the other hand, Robina, who sews Faded Glory cargo pants for Wal-Mart, earns just 13 cents an hour, $1.04 a day and less than $6.50 a week.

Don't tell me that Americans don't care about what goes on in the rest of the world. It's the media gatekeepers who are at fault.

Here's what happened in Charleston after the Bangladeshi workers spoke:

At the end, the workers received a standing ovation. Some were so moved there were tears in their eyes. There was a 100% commitment to help these workers win their rights and to finally call for legislation that will hold corporations accountable to respect human, women's and workers rights and prohibit the import into the U.S. of products made under harsh sweatshop conditions.

Currently, under the WTO, the product and trademark are protected by enforceable laws backed up by sanctions. But there is no such protection for the worker, the sixteen-year-old girl who made the product.

More importantly for many Americans, I suppose, is if there's strife in Bangladesh — let's say, 400 bigger bombs the next time — who the hell is going to make our ball caps and sweatshirts?

Morning Report 8/19/05
Dual Disloyalty: Feith and the Occupations of Gaza and Iraq

Posted by Harkavy at 4:38 PM, August 19, 2005

During the Gaza "disengagement" saga — Jon Stewart calls it "The Jew Carry Show" — a lot of people are showing their true colors. But as the strange sight of fanatical young acidic Jews fighting other Jews proves, the color orange, for one, means different things in different contexts.

In Ukraine, orange was the color of a democratic revolution. In Israel, orange is the color of the reactionaries, the colonists who won't let go of the land they say God told them they could have.

However, in all the stories about places like Kfar Darom, as in the recounting of the current misery in Baghdead, one reactionary gets little notice. No one is mentioning Doug Feith, who has been mostly successful in hiding his true colors as a right-wing Zionist while carrying out his fanatical wing's aims in Iraq.

The erstwhile Pentagon official is a key player in not only the disastrous occupation of Iraq but in trying to make sure Israel clung to the disastrous occupation of Gaza.

Feith is such a radical that he won't even refer to the West Bank as the West Bank — he uses the biblical names Judea and Samaria. And he doesn't even like to say "occupied territories," even though they are. In fact, our own government officially refers to them as "occupied" and freely uses the term "West Bank." Just look at the CIA map of Israel above, and you'll see that Gaza and the West Bank are separate from Israel, and each carries an asterisk.

But there's no asterisk attached to Feith's version of Israel. The son of a founder of Likud, he has pursued a radical Zionist policy at the expense of Israel's own Jews, a majority of whom don't favor the settlers.

His behavior as a Pentagon official toward the Arabs in Iraq is one of the shameful legacies of our unjustified invasion. We know quite a lot — although not enough — about Feith's role in propelling the U.S. into war and beyond. As one of the most prominent neocons, he hammered away at the need for regime change. And of course, he was one of the key Pentagon officials who didn't plan for the aftermath. He was in charge, however, of figuring out how to handle our Arab prisoners.

Bad idea. He's almost as anti-Arab as the fanatical anti-Semites over in the Arab camp are anti-Jewish.

Does Feith have divided loyalties? That's a common allegation leveled against those neocons and others who seem to put Israel's interests before those of the United States. It's clear, though, that Feith doesn't. His loyalty belongs to Israel and to its extremist politicians like Bibi Netanyahu, for whom he was an adviser.

Maybe the details of Feith's loyalties will emerge in the unfolding of the AIPAC spy scandal. One of Feith's direct subordinates, Larry Franklin, has already been charged with leaking U.S. secrets to Israel, and two major AIPAC officials (fired only after the scandal broke) have also been indicted.

Dick Cheney had his business reasons—you go where the oil is—for trying to take over Iraq. No one has feasted off the 9/11 tragedy like the old cold warriors Cheney and Don Rumsfeld, who wound up agreeing, for different reasons, with the aims of Feith's radical wing of Zionism, which wanted to take out Saddam Hussein, the most direct threat to Israel's security.

Before you accuse me of being a self-hating Jew, please understand that, like Larry David, I hate myself but it has nothing to do with my being Jewish.

More importantly, you can't lump all Zionists with Feith's wing, which is off the scale as a radical group.

A decade ago, Feith took his hammer and helped destroy hopes for peace — if there are any left — in Israel's occupied territories.

In the fall of 1993, for example, in the prime neocon journal The National Interest, Feith wrote "A Mandate for Israel." Blasting the recently concluded Oslo accords, Feith laid out a typically long-winded screed justifying Israel's permanent, perpetual, God-given, ultimate, and final claim to Gaza and the West Bank.

The funniest part of his argument is that Feith actually talked about the Geneva conventions. You'll recall that he was one of the leaders in the Pentagon's active flouting of those conventions when it came to the treatment of Iraqi prisoners. As Jim Lobe reminds us, Feith ran the office that ran Abu Ghraib, and even our military lawyers strenuously objected to the loosening of interrogation standards.

Here's Feith, in his own 1993 article, talking about the Geneva rules — as they apply (or don't apply) to Gaza:

Contrary to the refrain of various United Nations resolutions, the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention does not render Jewish settlement in these territories unlawful.

By "these territories," Feith means "Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip." He goes back to the Balfour Declaration as his authority, saying:

It can also be argued that Article 49 of the Convention, which provides that an occupying power "shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies," is not applicable to the case at hand. …

Even if one assumes Article 49's applicability to Israel's authority as military occupant, however, the Jewish people do not thereby lose their Mandate-recognized rights in Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip. If the Fourth Geneva Convention applies, Israel is constrained solely in its capacity as an occupying power. The Convention does not address or affect the rights or authority of the Jewish people in their capacity as beneficiaries of the Mandate. In other words, Jewish rights there do not derive from Israel's capture of the territories in 1967. So any limitations imposed by the laws of war on Israel with respect to the military occupation of the territories cannot negate those independent, pre-existing rights.

This is the radical who wound up running a large part of our war effort in Iraq. No wonder we're fucked.

Let's recall what Feith told Congress on February 11, 2003, when he was, as he put it, "pleased to have this opportunity to talk with you today about efforts underway in the Defense Department and the U.S. Government to plan for Iraq in the post-conflict period, should war become necessary."

In his testimony, called "Post-War Planning," Feith listed five "objectives." Let's run through them and see what has happened:

• First, demonstrate to the Iraqi people and the world that the United States aspires to liberate, not occupy or control them or their economic resources.

Mission not accomplished.

• Second, eliminate Iraq's chemical and biological weapons, its nuclear program, the related delivery systems, and the related research and production facilities. This will be a complex, dangerous and expensive task.

There weren't any. It wasn't.

• Third, eliminate likewise Iraq's terrorist infrastructure. A key element of U.S. strategy in the global war on terrorism is exploiting the information about terrorist networks that the coalition acquires through our military and law enforcement actions.

There was no "terrorist infrastructure" until we invaded. The "terrorist infrastructure" was in Afghanistan, from where we diverted resources and manpower so we could invade Iraq.

• Fourth, safeguard the territorial unity of Iraq. The United States does not support Iraq's disintegration or dismemberment.

How many Iraqis have been disintegrated or dismembered? Oh, I forgot. We don't do body counts.

• Fifth, begin the process of economic and political reconstruction, working to put Iraq on a path to become a prosperous and free country. The U.S. government shares with many Iraqis the hope that their country will enjoy the rule of law and other institutions of democracy under a broad-based government that represents the various parts of Iraqi society.

How about starting by turning on the fucking electricity? It's 120 degrees in Baghdad, and even hotter when buses and cars explode.

Morning Report 8/18/05
Shots Heard 'Round the World

Posted by Harkavy at 9:27 AM, August 18, 2005

It's a ball of confusion. That's what the world is today.

Try to resist the temptation to break out into song. Terrorists have stopped the music all across Bangladesh, setting off 350 bombs. Meanwhile, militants and government troops battled with guns in the streets of Riyadh, capital of the world's biggest oil producer.

By the way, four U.S. soldiers were blown up today by a roadside bomb north of Baghdad, pushing the total of American dead for the month over 60.

The Bengali blasts were timed but small, killing two people but injuring 100 more. A recently outlawed Islamist group, Jamatul Mujahideen Bangladesh, claimed credit. Leaflets at some of the bombing sites said, "It is time to implement Islamic law in Bangladesh" and contained a special message:

"Bush and Blair be warned and get out of Muslim countries."

Hey, George W. Bush isn't going anywhere. Cindy Sheehan's troops have him pinned down at his ranch in Crawford, and now it looks as if he can't even slip away for some R&R in Dhaka.

He also won't be making a hajj anytime soon. In Saudi Arabia, at least two people were reported killed in the shootout in Riyadh. East of there, in the holy city Medina, cops fought militants after raids by the authorities.

The U.S. shut its embassy and two consulates after new terror threats. But the good news for the Cheney regime's pals is that the warnings helped push crude oil prices to new highs.

The POTUS can't even go visit his old pal Vladimir Putin — Russia and China are conducting unprecedented joint war games under the title "Peace Mission 2005." As the BBC describes it:

Marines will storm beaches, to be joined by paratroopers in a mock invasion of an imaginary country.

The eight-day operation got under way in Vladivostok, in Russia's far east, with consultations between military delegations from the two countries.

Analysts say the two sides are signalling they are prepared to counter US dominance in international affairs.

Sure, they're flexing their muscles, but our president is out standing in his field. During the current hiatus in Crawford, though, he's done little else. When things were calmer during his past vacations, he often made sorties into the countryside. On August 23, 2001, for example, he paid a visit to Crawford Elementary School for a Q&A with the kids.

In light of the events of the past two days, something Bush said during that visit — just after he heard the warning in the President's Daily Brief that Osama bin Laden planned to attack the U.S. and just before the 9/11 attack itself — sticks with me. He reminisced to the kids on that August day four years ago:

"When I got sworn in as President, it was a pretty cold day in Washington, D.C."

Cold, yes, but not as chilling as the past two days in Baghdad, Bangladesh, and Saudi Arabia.

Hell on Wheels

Posted by Harkavy at 4:42 PM, August 17, 2005

If scenes of the Gaza "disengagement" haven't overwhelmed you, then maybe you've seen the photos of today's Baghdad bus bombings.

In both situations, pictures are worth thousands of words. Too bad, though, that in the case of the Iraq deaths—43 at last count—the Bush regime ignored the words of its own little cluster of neocons.

Back in the summer of 2001, before 9/11—before Bush even received the August 6, 2001, President's Daily Brief stating that Osama bin Laden was going to attack us—Kuwaiti professor Shafeeq Ghabra wrote in Middle East Quarterly, one of the neocons' bibles:

The ultimate causes of Iraq's woes are communal and have to do with the relation between the country's three main religio-ethnic groups. Therefore, before the country can become healthy, this fundamental issue will need to be addressed. It is the prime challenge of the post-Saddam era. Unless this is faced, Iraq will not resolve the decades-long tensions between minorities and majorities, between Sunni, Shi'is, and Kurds, between rulers and ruled, and between Iraq's national needs and the adventurism that undermines those needs.

Hello?! Anyone there?! This wasn't Seymour Hersh talking. This was the analysis of a guy who, at that very time, the summer of 2001, was the director of the Kuwait Information Office in D.C. He was a friend of the neocons. And he was writing in a journal published by Middle East Forum, a neocon think tank run by radical rightist Daniel Pipes. For God's sake, neocon schnook Doug Feith's father, Zionist legend Dalck Feith, is on the Middle East Forum's board of governors. This major neocon propaganda arm features a "list of experts" that includes Bill Kristol, nabob of the Weekly Standard.

These are people who played a major role in steering the United States into the unjustified invasion of Iraq.

And in the neocons' own journal, Ghabra gave an intense history lesson on the country they were just itching to conquer for the sake of Israel and oil.

In fact, Ghabra specifically addressed the problems of a "post-Saddam government."

Four years later, we know from the Downing Street Memo and other British documents that George W. Bush's handlers made no plans for the aftermath of their unjustified invasion.

But history will be even harsher. Not only was this imperial adventure taken against the advice of our only significant allies, the British, but the neocons launched this in ignorance of their own recounting of Iraq's bloody history.

Yes, Ghabra's article—one of several like it that I dug up from the neocons' own graveyard of words—shows that the Bush regime thought about the aftermath—and then it didn't. Inexplicably.

In other words, the invasion, which has cost nearly 2,000 American lives and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives, was not only wrong-headed but it also was stupid.

The Bush regime can't even get imperialism right.

In the neocons' own journal, Ghabra discussed the very issues that right now—today—are preventing Iraqis from coming to an agreement on a constitution.

Who put these hapless Iraqi pols under the gun? We did. And we expect them to solve age-old problems in the midst of this bloodshed and chaos, and under our thumb? In the midst of violence that all the bunkers and troops and searches can't stop?

Anyway, Ghabra continued his discussion of Iraq's age-old communal problems this way:

How can a post-Saddam government address this issue? How can it be inclusive and alleviate longstanding grievances among the country's communities?

This is not an unusual task. One finds many examples of inclusive states all over the world, from Latin America to eastern Europe, and some of them have dealt successfully with inclusion. South Africa, for example, provides an example of power-sharing and the ending of racism. Most of eastern Europe avoided Yugoslavia's route of conflict.

Iraq's experience can similarly escape civil strife and war, for the past need not haunt the future. In fact, a negative past can in itself be a motivating force to bring about positive changes; note the German and Japanese examples. Iraqis are fed up with being victims of their government's actions. They are fed up with poverty, isolation, and repression. They want to visit other countries; they want not to be treated like outlaws.

OK, fine. That sounds pretty hopeful. Now, fellas, what should we do if we ever get Saddam out of there? What's the long-term solution for letting freedom reign in Iraq? Here was Ghabra's advice:

The far-reaching changes that Iraq requires can be done only from within— not by exiles or an external power. Yes, the agents of change need international support and Iraq's outside opposition is an important factor, but domestic forces are the key. An Iraq that goes through a truly meaningful change must find the sources at home, not abroad.

And what has the Bush regime done? Well, as the "external power" it installed Jerry Bremer as pasha. With the help of Judy Miller, it touted returning exile Ahmed Chalabi for a while and appointed his crook son, Salem, as the "justice minister" in charge of trying Saddam. It installed returning exile Ayad Allawi as Iraq's first puppet leader.

The Cheney regime placed other exiles in vital posts: Please recall Alaa al-Tamimi's reign as Baghdad governor. In fact, as I noted recently, he was recalled last week—recalled by an armed coup.

I mean, Ghabra titled his analysis "Iraq's Culture of Violence." And his very first paragraph was this:

No Arab people have been so traumatized by dictatorial rule, foreign adventurism, and war as the Iraqis under Saddam Husayn. To a considerable extent, the cause has been the Iraqi regime's failure to build a national identity that includes all Iraqis. It was this absence of integration that contributed directly to the rise of Saddam Husayn, who emerged from Iraq's need for a power stronger than its divisions.

Now, with Iraq descending rapidly into madness and civil war, we're demanding that its pols produce a document, any document, anything that resembles a "constitution." We don't give a shit what it is. The Bush regime is just worried about its own elections next year.

We never gave a shit about Iraq's 25 million people. What about our own dead soldiers and their grieving families? Good question.

The simplest answer: We just wound up doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons.

Morning Report 8/17/05
'Charred Bodies All Over the Place'

Posted by Harkavy at 11:36 AM, August 17, 2005

There's nothing like the sizzle and smell of a barbecue on a summer day. That aroma hangs over Baghdad as the sun goes down this evening.

George W. Bush, meanwhile, is doing his grilling at Prairie Chapel Ranch, where he continues to hide out from Cindy Sheehan. A recent Associated Press story on Bush's scorched-flesh approach noted:

President Bush has turned his remote ranch into a stage for down-home diplomacy, where a barbecue grill and a pickup have become his favorite tools for dealing with world leaders.

Cooking with mesquite or hickory, though, just can't match the smell of burning human beings from the flaming mess Bush's handlers have created on the other side of the globe.

In this morning's Washington Post, Khalid Alsaffar and the estimable Ellen Knickmeyer tell it succinctly:

Three back-to-back bombings hit near a Baghdad bus station Wednesday and then at the hospital where rescuers rushed the victims, killing at least 43 people and wounding nearly 90, authorities said.

In addition, officials announced that six Iraqi security-force members and one U.S. soldier also died in other incidents.

No war correspondent is putting words to war any better than Knickmeyer is right now. Her frontlines account in May of ill-fated "Lucky Lima" Marines in Haditha is one of the most poignant sagas to emerge from Iraq in the U.S. daily press since the Cheney regime's unjustified invasion.

Unfortunately, Knickmeyer keeps getting opportunity after opportunity to stretch her writing skills, particularly her eye for detail. More from her co-bylined story this morning:

Bodies of the victims collected in pools of blood in the grounds outside the emergency room of the targeted hospital after medical teams ran out of room for the dead inside.

Rescuers also ran out of cloth to cover the dead and resorted to splitting open cardboard boxes to cover the faces and corpses.

The bodies are piling up so fast in Iraq that even the perfunctory quotes from officials can't help but be dreadfully colorful. As Alastair Macdonald of Reuters writes of today's horror:

At least 43 people were killed and 76 wounded, an official in the Interior Ministry said, adding: "The casualty figure could rise as there are charred bodies all over the place."

The word from Crawford, however, is that Bush is mighty proud of what's going on in Iraq. Only yesterday, he marked the failure of Iraqi pols to meet their absurd deadline by the release of an equally absurd statement:

Their efforts are a tribute to democracy and an example that difficult problems can be solved peacefully through debate, negotiation, and compromise.

No need to put another shrimp on the barbie. Bush is enough.

Morning Report 8/16/05
Unsettling Developments

Posted by Harkavy at 1:57 PM, August 16, 2005

While you're inundated by images of the "disengagement" of Jews from Gaza — a pullout ordered by the guy who put them there in the first place — there's no better time than now to listen to Israeli novelist and journalist David Grossman (left). He says things about the Israeli-Palestinian death dance that many people don't want to hear.

Grossman's first love is the serious, and acclaimed, literature he produces. As a Guardian (U.K.) profile of him in 2003 put it:

"The media is such a collaborator in the simplification of things," [Grossman] says. Literature, by contrast, is "subversive of all contacts — with wife, children, parents, country, history, language. Nothing can be taken for granted."

But Grossman's journalism can't be taken for granted. His essay "Something to Mourn," in yesterday's Haaretz, typically cuts to the heart of matters.

And I mean the heart, because Grossman often writes about how the act of occupying foreign territory, in addition to obviously damaging those whose land is occupied, corrupts and coarsens the colonizers' spirit, soul, and entire society as well. Our enslavement of Africans and long, long war against the indigenous peoples on this continent didn't do American colonists any favors either, and the scar tissue remains on this America's pysche. You can tell by how our political leadership, with its conquerer's mentality, has treated the "other" among us.

Anyway, back to Israel. Here's how Grossman starts his August 15 essay:

For decades, the settlers have excelled at finding the weak points and illnesses within Israeli society and exploiting them to their own advantage. With a keen intuition, they operated in the gray areas of the Jewish-Israeli soul, in the places where fears, past nightmares, the urge for revenge and hopes for redemption are intertwined.

They succumbed to the temptation — usually suppressed — of being drunk with power after thousands of years as a humiliated people. They indulged the human desire to bend rational considerations and the demands of reality to the unyielding concepts of messianic religious faith.

Above all, they shined at exploiting the deep wound of the Jewish experience — that of the sacrificial victim — and convinced many into believing that sacrifice itself justified any action or injustice.

Yes, to Grossman and many other Israelis, the whole "settler" enterprise has been a catastrophe. His open empathy with Palestinians has of course brought condemnation from right-wing Jews and their supporters.

The current crisis brings to mind Grossman's January 2002 essay after Israel's government proudly announced that it had seized a Palestinian arms ship. In the government and media, he wrote at the time, there was "an unconcealed note of joy" that at long last "final proof" has been found of the "Palestinians' criminal, terrible intentions." And then he noted:

But what proof has been obtained here? Proof that if you oppress a people for 35 years, and humiliate its leaders, and harass its population, and do not give them a glimmer of hope, the members of this people will try to assert themselves in any way possible? And would any of us behave differently from the Palestinians in such a situation? And did we behave any differently when for years we were under occupation and tyranny?

Avshalom Feinberg and Yosef Lishansky set out for Cairo to bring money from there to the Nili underground so that the Jewish community in Palestine could assert itself against the Turks. The fighters of the Haganah, the Lehi and the Etzel underground movements collected and hid as many weapons as they could, and their splendid sliks (arms caches) are to this day a symbol of the fight for survival and the longing for liberty, as were the daring weapons acquisition missions during the British Mandate (which were defined by the British as acts of terror).

When "we" did these things, they were not terrorist in nature. They were legitimate actions of a people fighting for its life and liberty. When the Palestinians do them, they become "proof" of everything we have been so keen to prove for years now.

Indeed, in the late 1940s, many American Jews helped smuggle arms to Jewish terrorists in Palestine. Both smugglers and terrorists were considered heroes by many. (See "Pipeline to Palestine," my 1997 long profile, in the Denver paper Westword, of one such smuggler.)

As I've said before, terror is a weapon, a tactic. There are other tactics that are less bloody in the short run but could prove more dangerous to more people — like the current Israeli government maneuver to tie up Jerusalem and the West Bank while the world's eyes are on Gaza. Observers warn that Jerusalem is a powder keg.

For now, though, Ariel Sharon will reap good publicity for supposedly taking a step toward peace. He's not. He's just bustin' a move in the death dance. What Grossman said back in 2002, regarding the Palestinian arms ship, is still true now:

These are disgusting days. Days of total befuddlement of the senses. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will wring every possible drop of propaganda out of this ship. The media, for the most part, will run panting after him. The Israeli street, too exhausted and apathetic to think, will adopt any definite conclusion that will solve for it the internal and moral contradiction in which it lives and reinforce its sense of righteousness, which has been undermined at its base.
Who has the strength these days to remember the beginning, the root of the matter, the circumstances, the fact that what we have here is occupation and oppression, reaction and counter-reaction, a vicious circle and a bloody circle, two peoples that are becoming corrupt, violent and crazy with despair, a death trap in which we are suffocating more with every passing day?

Three years later, the atmosphere is more suffocating. But because Grossman typically expresses more compassion than passion, his August 15 essay doesn't castigate the settlers. Instead, he advocates grief as an alternative to the anger. He focuses on the fact that this phase of the madness is openly and publicly pitting Jew vs. Jew, with soldiers mixed in the mess:

We should all take a deep breath right now and remind ourselves that, in the final analysis, the days to come are days of mourning for all Israelis. Mourning for the personal and ideological pain of the settlers whose dreams have been shattered; mourning for the fact that Israel was drawn into such a dangerous and unrealistic adventure like the creation of Gush Katif; mourning for the fact that the state brought itself to the place where it was forced to do such a violent, warlike and brutal thing to thousands of its citizens; mourning for the abyss that is being created inside our home, and for the disaster that could befall us very soon; mourning for the situation in which we are trapped, Jew against Jew with a foreign, naked hostility that stands in complete, existential contradiction to our own interests.

Dreams of Dough Turn to 'D'oh!'

Posted by Harkavy at 10:30 AM, August 15, 2005

The Iraq crusade must be nearly over. Having done our damage, we're even changing our tune, according to Sunday morning's front-page Washington Post story "U.S. Lowers Sights On What Can Be Achieved in Iraq."

It would have been much more powerful if Robin Wright and Ellen Knickmeyer had quoted a named official, but the quote this crack duo got is pretty fucking incredible. And their lead-in to it is superbly droll:

The United States no longer expects to see a model new democracy, a self-supporting oil industry or a society in which the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges, U.S. officials say.

"What we expected to achieve was never realistic given the timetable or what unfolded on the ground," said a senior official involved in policy since the 2003 invasion. "We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we're in and shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning."

Yeah, no shit. How many thousands of people have been saying this since before day one of the unjustified invasion of Iraq? We're not going to be controlling Iraq's rich reserves of oil. Halliburton's days of milking the country will eventually come to an end. We're squeezing out more blood than oil.

You can't give the suckers all the bad news at once. Whether this was really a trial balloon or not, the Bush regime will have to prepare the country for a letdown, hoping that this will ease the GOP into and out of next year's congressional elections without too much damage.

I'm not taking anything away from Wright and Knickmeyer. They take the understated approach, and it's effective:

The realities of daily life are a constant reminder of how the initial U.S. ambitions have not been fulfilled in ways that Americans and Iraqis once anticipated. Many of Baghdad's 6 million people go without electricity for days in 120-degree heat. Parents fearful of kidnapping are keeping children indoors.

Barbers post signs saying they do not shave men, after months of barbers being killed by religious extremists. Ethnic or religious-based militias police the northern and southern portions of Iraq. Analysts estimate that in the whole of Iraq, unemployment is 50 percent to 65 percent.

The Iraq adventure never had a chance. No close shave for the neocons. Just lots of stubble and rubble.

To read a New York Times story on Iraq that's this good, you have to leave its front page. Yesterday, you could have turned to Frank Rich for this screed:

Like the Japanese soldier marooned on an island for years after V-J Day, President Bush may be the last person in the country to learn that for Americans, if not Iraqis, the war in Iraq is over. "We will stay the course," he insistently tells us from his Texas ranch. What do you mean we, white man?

'Disengagement': Just Another Brick in the Wall

Posted by Harkavy at 8:54 AM, August 15, 2005

Most of the world is distracted by the astonishing sight of Jews evicting Jews from illegally occupied land in Gaza. But don't think of Ariel Sharon's "disengagement" plan as a step toward peace.

While the cameras are focused on Gaza, Jerusalem is being rapidly expanded and walled off, shutting out not only Muslims but also Christians.

The occupation is far from over, which means that Israel's security worries will only increase.

Americans for Peace Now (APN), the vibrant but little-publicized U.S. arm of a strong peace movement among Israeli Jews, recently noted plans to build a Jewish neighborhood inside the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City.

Judging by coverage in the U.S. press, you'd think that most Israelis are religious fanatics bent on flouting international law by using the Bible to claim land that is not theirs. Not true. They're like us—dominated by a government of zealots and ideologues.

As APN notes, a survey released in late July by Tel Aviv University's Herzog Institute indicated that 57 percent of Israelis believe the settlements in Gaza should have never been created, and 52 percent say those settlements have worsened Israel's security.

As for what's going on in Jerusalem, watch out. Here's an APN excerpt based on reports by the AP and Maariv:

Jerusalem Councilman Peppe Allalo vehemently protested the political motives behind the [Jerusalem] project, describing it as a "virtual" plan that was merely geared as a provocation.

"This plan is liable to cause a third Intifada," he said. "From the Muslims' point of view, it's like ascending the Temple Mount. Also in terms of planning, this is a disaster because the plan undermines all the principles of preserving the Old City and the municipal master plan."

Allalo added that the municipality would have to rezone a "green" area to build the apartments. MK Ran Cohen went further in a protest letter to Housing Minister Yitzhak Herzog, writing, "The sole purpose of this plan is to insert a political divider in the Old City. The plan is a keg of dynamite [that] is liable to set Jerusalem ablaze, to tear the delicate membrane between Muslims and Jews in the city, and even to become the focus of an international political crisis in the Middle East."

Informed sources said the project was pushed forward mostly by people from the Prime Minister's Office and the Jerusalem Mayor's Office.

But don't listen to just those in mad, sad Israel. Lindsey Hilsum writes in the latest issue of the New Statesman:

While we are reporting the demise of the Gaza settlements, [Sharon] is presiding over the creation and expansion of settlements in more strategically important areas, where few are watching. According to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics, 3,981 new "housing units" are under construction in the occupied West Bank. At the same time, the Israeli government is building apartments and infrastructure on the outskirts of Jerusalem, to consolidate its hold over the city both Israelis and Palestinians claim as their capital.

And the focus on Gaza, Hilsum writes, means that Jerusalem is off the negotiating table, as far as the right-wing Israelis are concerned:

"We were stuck, so we decided to change the strategic equation," explained an Israeli general. Whatever the talk about the "road map to peace", after withdrawing from Gaza, there will be little pressure on Israel to negotiate on Jerusalem or anything else.

The onus will be on the Palestinians to prove to the world that they can run Gaza. The Israelis will sit back and wait for them to mess it up. If the Palestinian Authority fails to stop Hamas from lobbing missiles into Israel, or if the factions fight among themselves in Gaza, creating a "failed state" before there is any Palestinian state at all, it will be more reason for Israel not to negotiate.

"The significance is the freezing of the political process," said Sharon's senior adviser Dov Weisglass, in an interview last year so frank that his boss tried to distance himself from the remarks. "When you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and you prevent discussion about the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. In effect, this whole package that is called a Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed from our agenda indefinitely."

Analysts at the serious and sober International Crisis Group warned on August 2 of "The Jerusalem Powder Keg." Here's just one of many specific examples of what the Sharon government means to do with its horrific "separation barrier"—a wall that's already been condemned by the International Court of Justice:

The separation barrier, once completed, would create a broad Jerusalem area encompassing virtually all of municipal Jerusalem as expanded and annexed in 1967 as well as major settlements to its north, east, and south. This new "Jerusalem envelope", as the area inside the barrier euphemistically has been called, incorporates large settlement blocks and buffer zones, encompasses over 4 per cent of the West Bank, absorbs many Palestinians outside of municipal Jerusalem and excludes over 50,000 within, often cutting Palestinians off from their agricultural land.

Again, don't be fooled by what's going on in Gaza. The ICG report adds:

As virtually all recent Israeli-Palestinian peace plans, as well as Crisis Group's own 2002 proposal, recognise, Israel's future capital will include Jewish neighbourhoods of Jerusalem that were not part of Israel prior to 1967 and are home to over 200,000 Jews today.

Moreover, Israel has legitimate security concerns in Jerusalem, where Palestinian attacks since the intifada have led to hundreds of dead and more than 2,000 wounded. Addressing them will require energetic steps, including Israeli but also and importantly Palestinian security efforts.

But the measures currently being implemented are at war with any viable two-state solution and will not bolster Israel's safety; in fact, they will undermine it, weakening Palestinian pragmatists, incorporating hundreds of thousands of Palestinians on the Israeli side of the fence, and sowing the seeds of growing radicalisation. …

Perhaps most significantly, current policies in and around the city will vastly complicate, and perhaps doom, future attempts to resolve the conflict by both preventing the establishment of a viable Palestinian capital in Arab East Jerusalem and obstructing the territorial contiguity of a Palestinian state. None of this is good for the Palestinian people, the people of Israel, or the peace process.