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| ISRAELI ARMY OFFICER SHOOTS UNARMED PALESTINIAN BOY IN THE BACK |
| 02.29.04 (1:39 pm) [edit] |
[b]U.N. staff see boy shot in back
Israeli officer suspended after incident [/b]
GAZA CITY—An Israeli army officer has been suspended after an unarmed Palestinian youth was shot in the back at close range as he waved goodbye to a delegation of visiting United Nations aid workers, the Star has learned.
Yousef Bashir, 15, remains in serious condition at a hospital in Tel Aviv, where he was taken after the Feb. 18 incident at his family's home near the Jewish settlement of Kfar Darom in the southern Gaza Strip.
He is partially paralyzed beneath his shoulder blades, with shrapnel lodged against his spine, the boy's father said.
An Israel Defence Forces spokesperson confirmed yesterday an unnamed officer has been suspended in connection with the shooting, pending the outcome of an investigation.
In a conflict marked by a surfeit of civilian casualties on both sides, Palestinian claims seldom result in convictions against IDF soldiers because of conflicting eyewitness accounts.
The Bashir shooting is rare because it happened in plain view of three U.N. personnel who were visiting the family home.
Rarer still, the victim's father, Khalil Bashir, said last night he doesn't want punishment for the shooter.
Instead, he's asking that Yousef's plight become "a turning point for an historic reconciliation with Israel.
"We make a mistake if we let our wounded memory guide our future. Punishment doesn't pay. What pays is a change of mentality," an emotional Bashir told the Star.
"It is time for tolerance and forgiveness. I want the Israelis to know that we, both sides, have no other option. Let us devote ourselves to melting the ice and find a solution to give our children a chance to live."
U.N. field workers are routinely forbidden to speak directly to reporters on security incidents, but the organization has made an exception in this case.
The witnesses were made available to the Star with the approval of their superiors on condition their names not be used.
"The boy was no more than five metres from us, waving goodbye after our visit, with his back to the Israeli observation post," said one of the U.N. field staff.
"It was absolutely quiet. But then a single shot was fired. The boy fell to his knees and then he collapsed on the ground. It was like slow-motion video.
"There is absolutely no doubt in my mind the bullet came from the Israeli army position. They were only about 20 metres away. There was nothing else going on. There is no other explanation."
The shooting comes as the most severe incident in the Bashir family's long struggle with the IDF.
Nearly three years ago, the army confiscated a large swath of the family property to increase the buffer zone for the Jewish settlers of nearby Kfar Darom.
In the process, the family said their greenhouses were demolished, nearly 120 date palms were uprooted and IDF actually moved into the home, establishing military positions on the second and third floors, replete with a closed-circuit television camera and camouflage netting.
Khalil Bashir, a school principal in the nearby town of Deir Al-Ballah, has refused to vacate the home and has moved the family — elderly mother, wife and five children — to a single room on the ground floor.
In recent weeks, the IDF intensified restrictions on the family, forbidding visitors without prior arrangement and giving them outdoor access only to their northern garden.
On Feb. 3 — just as the Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon unveiled plans for a unilateral withdrawal of the Israeli settlements in Gaza, including Kfar Darom — the Bashir family and other property owners in the neighbourhood were served written orders by the IDF for additional land confiscations.
According to the orders, signed by IDF Maj.-Gen. Dan Harel, the Bashirs and 17 other Palestinian families were required to forfeit 43 dunams (one dunam equals one-quarter acre) for a new security fence to better protect the settlement.
The U.N. field team, based in Gaza City, was visiting the family in order to investigate the new orders when the shooting occurred.
"We arrived in a clearly marked United Nations armoured car, white with black markings," a second U.N. staffer told the Star in a separate interview.
After a brief visit, a soldier shouted for the U.N. visitors to leave.
"Khalil Bashir and his son Yousef walked us back to our car. We climbed in and began to reverse. They waved goodbye and that's when the shot rang out and the boy fell to the ground," the second U.N. staffer said.
"I was terrified we would also be shot. Mr. Bashir shouted at us to come help. We inched forward, opened the door of the armoured car and got the boy inside. His legs were like Jell-O. But he was conscious, speaking in a mix of Arabic and English. We hurried him to hospital in Deir al-Ballah."
Bashir was transferred that night to Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Two days later he was moved to better facilities in Israel, where Tel Aviv doctors are weighing the possibility he will be able to walk one day.
The U.N. witnesses have each written reports. So far, they have not been interviewed by Israeli army investigators, but expect their accounts will be raised with Israeli authorities via U.N. diplomatic channels.
"Unfortunately, living in Gaza, we are exposed to some ugly things," said one of the workers.
Khalil Bashir said last night he has not been contacted by army investigators for his account of his son's shooting.
"They (IDF officers) went to my house and apologized to my wife two times, saying the shooting was a mistake. But whether they made a mistake or not, the reality is they shot my son," he said.
"In spite of my bitterness, in spite of my calamity and my tragedy, I thank God my son is still alive.
"In thanks to God, I am more determined than ever to find a way to peace. I ask our friends all over the world, help me exploit this chance to change the mentality. I can forgive. Let us all forgive."
[i][b]MITCH POTTER, TORONTO STAR[/b][/i], http://www.thestar.com/NASApp...
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| ISRAELI FORCES ASSASSINATE INNOCENT AND DEFENSELESS PALESTINIANS |
| 02.29.04 (11:30 am) [edit] |
[b]US Human Rights Report takes Israel to task
[i]Says IDF uses excessive force against Palestinian non-combatants, tramples human rights in territories[/i].[/b]
The Israel Defense Forces uses excessive force in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in confrontations with Palestinian demonstrations or pursuing suspects, according to the U.S. State Department's annual Human Rights Report issued on Wednesday.
The report sharply criticizes Israel, stating that in its assassinations of Palestinian militants it killed more innocent people than terrorists.
The report says Israeli troops obstructed medical assistance to Palestinian civilians at roadblocks, carried out systematic demolitions and imposed strict curfews and closures that directly punished innocent civilians.
Israel's human rights record in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 2003 "remained poor and worsened in the treatment of foreign human rights activists", the report states.
The report says that Israeli security forces killed at least 573 Palestinians and one foreign national and injured 2,992 Palestinians and others during the year, including bystanders. Israel assassinated at least 44 Palestinians, many of whom were terrorists or suspected terrorists, but also 47 innocent bystanders, including children.
The report says security forces carried out many of the targeted killings in areas where civilian casualties were likely, added the government said it made every effort to reduce civilian casualties during these operations.
[b]PA also hauled over the coals[/b]
The report also blasts the human rights situation in the Palestinian Authority. "Many members of Palestinian security services and the Fatah faction of the PLO participated with civilians and terrorist groups in violent attacks against Israeli civilians inside Israel, Israeli settlers, foreign nationals, and soldiers", it says.
"Palestinian terrorists and gunmen were responsible for the deaths of 376 Israelis killed in the occupied territories".
The report notes that Palestinian security forces used excessive force against Palestinians during demonstrations, abused prisoners and arbitrarily arrested and detained persons.
The report, which surveys the human rights situation throughout the world, also elaborates on the situation in the Arab states, commending some of them and blasting others for failing to keep international standards.
The United States criticized the IDF's operation in Ramallah on Wednesday, in which Israeli troops took close to NIS 40 million from banks in the town/ State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said some of Israel's actions jeopardize the Palestinian banking system, and that Israel must work together with the PA to stop the financing of terror organizations.
Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said the operation was intended to strike at terror organizations and not civilians. He said the expropriated funds will be used to provide humanitarian aid to the Palestinian society. "We decided to act against a number of banks in Ramallah, which have some 460 accounts of terror organizations", he said.
[i][b]Maariv News Service[/b][/i], http://www.maarivintl.com/ind...
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| SUPREME COURT ORDERS HALT TO ISRAELI APARTHEID WALL - SLAUGHTER OF INNOCENT PALESTINIANS |
| 02.29.04 (11:21 am) [edit] |
[b]Work on Israeli Barrier Ordered Stopped [/b]
[b]JERUSALEM ([i]AP[/i])--[/b]The Israeli Supreme Court on Sunday ordered a one-week halt to construction at a section of the West Bank security barrier where soldiers shot dead two Palestinians during a violent protest last week.
Under intense international pressure, including last week's highly publicized hearing about the legality of the barrier at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, Israeli officials had already pledged to change the planned route of the barrier to ease hardships on Palestinians.
The Israeli court on Sunday issued an order to temporarily stop work on a section of the barrier being built near Jerusalem while the military considers alternate routes.
Also Sunday, two Palestinian militants were killed in West Bank clashes with Israeli forces. Soldiers entered the Balata refugee camp next to the city of Nablus and traded fire with militants, killing Mohammed Zuheir Oweis, 23, Palestinians said.
Oweis was a member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a violent group linked to Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement.
A few hours later, during Oweis' funeral, another clash erupted and a second Palestinian, Iyad Abu Shalal, was killed. Security officials said he was involved in a December ambush that wounded seven Jewish worshippers returning from an unauthorized visit to a holy site in Nablus.
At another funeral procession, this one in Gaza City, militants threatened to hit back at Israel as they buried three Palestinians killed in an Israeli missile strike Saturday night near the sprawling Jebaliya refugee camp.
Two of the three were prominent in the Islamic Jihad, and their coffins were covered with flags from the violent group. The third, a supporter of the group, was a cousin of one of the militants.
``We promise Sharon that our retaliation is coming soon,'' said a masked militant, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Meanwhile, police said Sunday they had arrested three Palestinian boys who said they were on their way to carry out an attack in the Israeli city of Afula.
The boys--ages 12, 13 and 15--were among the youngest arrested in three years of conflict. Relatives said they left behind letters that indicated they did not expect to return alive from their mission.
The father of one of the boys said he was furious with militant groups for recruiting the children.
At the Israeli Supreme Court on Sunday morning, Palestinian and Israeli opponents of Israel's West Bank barrier won a temporary victory.
In its order stopping work on a section northeast of Jerusalem _ scene of the first fatalities in anti-barrier protests--the court ordered the military to grant hearings to the residents, Israel Radio reported.
On Thursday, protesters tried to stop bulldozers from flattening land for the barrier on the West Bank side of the boundary with Israel, opposite a Jewish suburb. Israeli soldiers opened fire, killing two Palestinians and wounding more than a dozen.
According to present plans, the barrier is to run 400 miles around and in the West Bank, carving out large chunks that would remain under Israeli control and isolating many Palestinian towns and villages.
The Haaretz daily reported Sunday that Israel has told the United States it would make further changes in the route, canceling some ``fingers'' extending into the West Bank to protect Jewish settlements and eliminating some double fences that would trap thousands of Palestinians.
Mohammed Dahla, a lawyer for the Popular Committee Against the Wall--a grouping of Palestinians and Israelis--told the court that the section of the fence near Jerusalem would imprison 30,000 Palestinians in eight towns and villages by encircling them.
A single gate would allow them to exit the area, effectively cutting them off from both Jerusalem and nearby Ramallah.
``There is no reason ... to cut these residents off from their community, from their society,'' Dahla said. ``You can't just enclose people in corrals.''
Israel insists that the barrier, including the encirclements, is necessary for security, designed to keep Palestinian suicide bombers and other attackers out. Palestinians call it a land grab aimed at preventing them from setting up a state.
About one-quarter of the barrier is complete, in the northern section of the West Bank. Israeli officials say it has already prevented suicide bombings in the part of Israel opposite the barrier.
[i][b]By MARK LAVIE, Associated Press Writer[/b][/i], http://www.ajc.com/news/conte...
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| THE ISRAELI CRISIS: AMERICA'S ALBATROSS |
| 02.29.04 (7:22 am) [edit] |
[b]The Israeli Crisis
[i]America's Albatross[/i][/b]
"Ah! Well a day! What evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung."
(Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner)
Two issues dominate the electoral debate as Kerry battles Edwards and Bush, abandoning the crisis in Israel, enters the fray: homeland security and job loss caused by exporting jobs "offshore." One issue that encompasses both cannot be mentioned by political commentators and politicians for fear of condemnation as anti-Semitic and for fear, among politicians, of loss of their positions: what role does America's support of Israel play relative to homeland security and job loss? Is it the Albatross around America's neck?
Before undertaking this discussion, I need to make this assertion in self-defense: the violence that corrodes the mind and heart of fanatics in Palestine and Israel nourishes seeds of vengeance in children and adults alike, breeding only destruction and death; vengeance, retaliation, and terrorism - - caused by purported freedom fighters or by the state--cannot and must not be tolerated in a world that claims to be civilized. I do not condone suicide bombing any more than I condone the firing of missiles into crowded streets. I do condemn my country's blind support of the government of Ariel Sharon, the principal cause of insecurity in America and the greatest threat to peace in the world today.
"Israel, world's biggest threat to world peace!" blared the headlines in Europe when the "Eurobarometer" poll, undertaken by the European Commission, reported more than 59% of EU citizens see Israel as a threat to world peace (Brussels: AFP-Reuter-Agencies, Nov. 2003). The United States, in the company of Iran and North Korea, came in second at 53%. Fifteen countries participated in the poll. Israel voiced outrage at the poll results claiming it reflected media bias against Israel. This despite the fact that a terrorist attack against Israeli citizens outpaces Israeli attacks against Palestinians 20 to 1 in media coverage. This poll follows the Pew Research Center survey of December 2002 that reflected growing discontent with America around the world. Criticism of America is on the rise as 19 of 27 countries disapprove of the actions taken by the Bush administration, actions that reflect an increased movement away from inter- nation engagement to a position of isolationism and unilateralism. "True dislike, if not hatred, of America is concentrated in the Muslim nations of the Middle East and in Central Asia, today's areas of greatest conflict." Less vociferous are America's traditional allies, but they too critique harshly "American- style democracy and business practices."
"Huge majorities (64%, 71%, and 79% respectively) in France, Germany and Russia oppose(d) the use of military force to end the rule of Saddam Hussein." The reason? The war with Iraq will increase the risk of terrorism in Europe, and while Americans seem to believe that terrorism has diminished as a result of the invasion of Iraq, the reality is that we are fast approaching a death rate of American soldiers in Iraq comparable to one third the number killed in the 9/11 attacks. Are we willing to say that it's OK for Americans to die in the Middle-East as long as they are not being killed on American soil? Similar attitudes about America exist in Indonesia, Senegal, Western Europe, Australia and Canada. In short, Israel and America are perceived by the vast majority of people around the world as true threats to world peace. What does the world know that we are unwilling to face? In this election year, America's absolute and unswerving support for Israel and its unquestioned spread of corporate-style democracy (read Globalized Capitalism) remains the unseen elephant in the Oval Office and the campaign rooms of Kerry and Edwards.
Interestingly, John Kerry's Presidential web site mocks Howard Dean for a string of "misstatements" about Israel and America's unstinting support of that state. What constitutes a "Misstatement"? Disagreement with Kerry's statement that "Every candidate who aspires to be president should know that Israel is a democracy and our closest ally in the region." What did Dean say? Israel is "a Jewish state, it's not a democracy." He's right! Israel is NOT a democracy: it has no constitution after fifty years of existence, yet we demand that Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine have a constitution; its system of laws is determined by the Torah, a religious document not a secular one; it denies recognition of the Palestinian minority despite UN Resolution 181 calling for such recognition; it defies UN Resolutions requiring it to accept return of the indigenous Palestinians from the refugee camps to their rightful homes taken from them in 1948 or 1967 but allows Jews from Russia and other lands to immigrate and become citizens solely because of their religion, making Israel a de facto theocracy (similar, ironically, to an Islamic democracy!); and it keeps on the books more than 20 laws that discriminate against the Palestinian minority (Adalah: Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel).
John Edwards parrots the same line as Kerry: "John Edwards believes that Israel is one of America's vital allies, and that the US must support Israel to help it fight terror and achieve peace." Such blind support for a state that, in the eyes of the vast majority of the world communities, is seen as instigating terror by its overwhelming military power (the fourth largest military in the world protecting a nation the size of New Jersey and with a smaller population) against an impoverished people that has no meaningful military force to speak of, only desperate people deprived of human dignity and hope, runs counter to reason, to say nothing of human rights.
Ridiculing Dean became a cause celebre that all had to join because he refused to lockstep behind the blind leading the blind into the ditch. "He was not ready for the presidency" because he had not joined the chorus directed by AIPAC; an "even handed" approach to the crisis in Israel/Palestine meant criticism of Israel that cannot be tolerated. The Israeli political forces launched a massive attack against Dean, as vicious as any mounted against Arafat, and he folded. Such is the power that controls America's democracy.
That leaves Kucinich; but nobody pays attention to Kucinich because he, too, contradicts the Neo-Con line that dictates America's allegiance to Israel. Kucinich would not cave to the powers that forced House Resolution 392, expressing solidarity with Israel, into being, a resolution that blared to the disenfranchised world America's bias against the Palestinian people even as it solidified in the minds of the terrorists (our term, they see themselves as freedom fighters) America's desire to control the Mid-East through its 51st state, Israel. Kucinich declared that "...we are missing an opportunity to lead people of the Middle East toward a secure and stable future together...The same humanity that requires us to acknowledge with profound concerns the pain and suffering of the people of Israel requires a similar expression for the pain and suffering of the Palestinians." How simple and how compassionate! Here is recognition that the suffering of both peoples must be our concern, not a wimpish subservience to a powerful elite that controls the current administration and our Congress.
The accepted dogma in the US states that America must support Israel to ensure peace in the Mid-East and to secure America against "terrorism" since Israel, like America, battles and fights the same "terrorists." But how substantive is this argument? If all the states that surround Israel, including the citizens of our puppet states Egypt and Jordan, and fifteen countries in the European Union observe Israel stealing land from the indigenous population of Palestine by defying UNSC resolutions that demand it return land taken in 1948 and 1967, if they see Israel placing illegal settlements in Palestinian territory eating up another 2% of Palestinian land and blatantly defying other UN resolutions, if they see America hypocritically demand that the UN invade Iraq for defying its resolutions while remaining silent about Israel's defiance, if they witness Israel incarcerate the indigenous population behind barbed wire and cement walls, even as they steal more land and isolate the people from relatives, mosques, work, and land, a device resurrected from Medieval days when states walled in the Jews in ghettoes, if they watch helplessly the willful invasion of Palestinian territory by tanks, armored vehicles, thousands of soldiers, and bulldozers that decimate homes, how can we believe that our support of Israel brings peace when it is so obvious that it is the reason there is no peace?
Bush prides himself on deposing "madmen," "ruthless dictators," "murderers," and "criminals" who kill wantonly, women, children, the old and infirm. In August of 1953, a poverty plagued refugee camp suffered an onslaught, supervised by a military commander that resulted in the deaths of 50 civilians as "bombs were thrown through the windows of huts in which the refugees were sleeping." Another village, Qibya, endured a massacre when that same commander reduced the village to rubble killing 69 civilians, two-thirds of them women and children, then buried the victims under their homes as they were blown up over them. In Gaza strip, after the 1967 war, Had'd Street, a narrow alley in a mass of similar alleys that made up a shantytown for refugees, was eradicated and hundreds of homes destroyed by bulldozers to enable tanks and armored vehicles to move unhindered through the camp, while this same commander allowed his soldiers to beat the people leaving them homeless once again. That same commander later destroyed an additional 2,000 homes uprooting 16,000 people and assassinated 104 suspected guerrillas without benefit of trial or jury. In 1982 this same commander directed the bombing of civilian populations and oversaw the massacres of 1,962 people at Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps, all infants, children, women, pregnant women, and the elderly, many mutilated (The Crimes of Ariel Sharon, Counterpunch 2/7/04). Was this Saddam? Was he the "little madman" in North Korea? No, quite obviously, he is Bush's mentor in Israel, a "man of peace" according to "W," Ariel Sharon.
Prior to the ascendancy of Ariel Sharon to head the government of Israel, prospects for a peaceful settlement existed. Sharon cripples any and all peace efforts and he does so with the complicity of the US administration and our government. He knowingly caused the current intifada by taking a 1000 IDF entourage to the holy Al Aqsa Mosque understanding his act as a defilement, and America said nothing, but the world looked on and the world objected. He alone of all Israeli leaders has used the full force of the Israeli military machine to subdue a defenseless people who fight against all odds to retain even a sliver of the land they owned before the state of Israel was forced upon them, a military machine bought and paid for by our tax dollars, and the world looks on and the world objects. He instigated the creation of settlements in Palestinian territory creating in the process groups of "terrorists" who plague Palestinians on their own land under the protection of the IDF, settlements paid for by our tax dollars, and the world looks on and the world objects. He prevented the introduction of UN Peace keepers as a means to resolve the crisis, and the world observes and objects. He instituted the pernicious practice of "extra judicial executions" that abandons the most rudimentary principles of Western justice, and America adopts that same pernicious practice in Iraq and Yemen, and the world looks on and the world objects. He cries to the world that he must defend Israelis against "terrorists" by any means even as he crushes 30 to 40 Palestinian homes per month under the relentless treads of America's paid for caterpillars, arrests and detains young Palestinians without charge, allows torture of some, accepts in silence the murder of international peace observers, and America says nothing to this man Bush calls a "man of peace," and the world looks on and the world objects.
But the Arab world sees more than just Sharon and his savage legacy; they see what Benny Morris, author of Righteous Victims: a History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict 1881-2001, has revealed recently that confirms a planned genocide against Palestinians by Ben Gurian and Moshe Carmel as far back as 1948. The massacre at the Dahmash Mosque (July 11, 1948) that resulted in the deaths of 350 worshippers by the 89th Israel Commando Battalion commanded by Moshe Dayan exemplifies the nature of the genocide and the savagery of its execution as Dayan's forces stripped the dead of their valuables and tossed the bodies out of the Mosque into the boiling sun (Gains, UK). While the West bought the lies of the Israeli historians and the media covered up the reality of "transference," what we now euphemistically call "ethnic cleansing," and what properly should be called massacre and theft, the release of Ben Gurian's orders tells the truth and confirms what the Arab world has said all along. That alone gives reason for the world to see Israel as the cause of instability in the Mid-East since it gives legitimacy to the cause of the Palestinians to resist Israeli occupation and insist on return of the refugees. Morris reveals, "In the months of April-May 1948, units of Haganah (precursor of IDF) were given operational orders that stated explicitly that they were to uproot the villagers, expel them and destroy the villages themselves" (Ari Shavit, Ha'aretz, Sun. 2/15/04). When asked how many acts of massacre occurred, Morris replied, 24, in Dawayima, Saliha, Deir Yassin, and Abu Shusha, "Ben Gurian silenced the matter. He covered up for the officers who did the massacres." Should not these revelations force a reconsideration of America's one-sided support of Israel? Doesn't Dean's observation that a more "even-handed" approach seems justified and Kerry and Edwards' blind adherence to an unanalyzed policy to a purported "democratic" Israel and a "peaceful" Israel need reconsideration?
Now let's take a more selfish look at the consequences this parasitic allegiance to Israeli interests causes the American taxpayer. The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs summarizes the amount of US tax dollars going to Israel: $134, 791, 507, 200 from 1949 to 1997. Tom Malthaner writes in "U.S. Aid to Israel: What U.S. Taxpayers Should Know" (WRMER 2/16/04), "When grants, loans, interest and tax deductions are added together for the fiscal year ending in September 30, 1997, our special relationship with Israel cost U.S. taxpayers over $10 billion." Using that figure, we can increase US aid to Israel by 10 billion from 1997 to 2004 or something close to 200 billion in taxpayer support. Would you believe that this is the conservative figure? David Francis of the Christian Science Monitor notes that "Since 1973, Israel has cost the United States about $1.6 trillion. If divided by today's population, that is more than $5,700 per person." (CSM, 12/9/02). This, he points out, is an estimate by Thomas Stauffer, a consulting economist in Washington, who notes that this represents more than twice the cost of the Vietnam War!
Considering that Israel is the 16th wealthiest nation in the world with a per capita income just below that of Britain and France, one has to ask why the American taxpayer spends one-third of its foreign aid budget on Israel, a country with a population only two thirds the size of New Jersey representing 1/1000 of the world's population; a give-away comparable to Bush's tax relief program for the well-healed! For every dollar we spent on an African since 1948 (a continent that desperately needs foreign aid), we have donated to each and every Israeli standing on the street corner, cup in hand, $250.65! (Adhaf Soueif, 11/03). To put it another way, "The per capita U.S. foreign aid to Israel's 5.8 million people (that doesn't include the 20% Arab population living in the Israeli state) during the same period was $10,775.48." (Richard Curtiss, "The Cost of Israel to U.S. Taxpayers"). Turn that into dollars per American taxpayer: the cost to each taxpayer up to 1997 amounts to $23,240 per Israeli. A quarter of Israel's income comes from the taxpayer in America. Perhaps they need it since they have a higher life expectancy than that of the U.S.! But what if 10 billion were distributed to individual states? California could use 10 billion and it has more than 34 million people not a paltry 5.8 and its land area far exceeds that of Israel. Now there's bang for the buck! But Alan Cranston in 1984 created an amendment to the U.S. Foreign Aid bill that compels the U.S. government to provide Israel enough Economic Support Funds to meet its debt burden to the United States, an act of generosity not offered to California, the state he represented! And what have we gotten for our investment?
Putting aside the origins of the state of Israel that by itself could account for a major portion of the hatred of the United States in the Arab world, Israel has given the US taxpayer the following return on his/her investment:
(1) an absolute unwillingness to return land stolen from the Palestinians during the 1967 war despite UNSC resolutions demanding that return, leaving the indigenous population with about 14% of the land they originally inhabited before 1948, a time when the Palestinians owned all but 6% of the land in Palestine and constituted 69% of the population, the Jewish population in 1948 being only 806,000, a defiance guaranteed to bring hatred not peace;
(2) an absolute defiance of more than a hundred UN resolutions demanding that Israel abide by international law and the Human Rights guarantees of the Geneva Accords, a defiance guaranteed to bring distain not peace;
(3) a sadistic disregard for American friendship and loyalty by its insidious use of spies against America as the Jonathan Pollard case readily demonstrates and David Tenenbaum before him, actions guaranteed to undermine the taxpayers loyalty to Israel if this democracy had an uncensored press;
(4) an absolute defiance of expected behavior between allies by executing an act of war against America in its attack on the U.S. Liberty in 1967, a crime covered up by the Johnson administration as it acquiesced to Jewish interests, a crime that almost forced the US into another war on behalf of Israel, a crime that cost the American taxpayer untold amounts of dollars even as it demonstrated to the world the extent the Israeli government would go to protect its own interests;
(5) a sadistic strategy of infiltration into US government affairs through the Neo-Con Cabal that worked on behalf of Israeli interests as laid out in their advisory report to the Israeli government, "Securing the Realm," that brought America to war against Iraq based on lies generated by these men, an act guaranteed to bring hatred not peace to the Mid-East;
(6) an open defiance of the American government's desires regarding the invasion of the Jenin refugee camp, the bulldozing of thousands of Palestinian homes, the murder of international peace observers, and the construction of the Israeli Wall, all defiance's that disregard American interests and guarantee hatred of America not peace;
(7) an insidious desire to encourage Evangelical Zionist Christians to invest millions in Settlements that cause terrorism in Palestinian territory while inciting hatred of Arabs by encouraging their fanatical beliefs in the "Clash of Cultures" that will come with the fulfillment of the prophecies of Revelation, actions guaranteed to rouse deeper suspicion and hatred not peace;
(8) a defiance of the Arms Export Control Act that provides US military hardware to Israel on condition it be used only for defensive purposes by using US made cluster bombs in 1982 against civilian targets in Lebanon, an action guaranteed to cause hatred not peace;
(9) finally, and this brings us back to the second issue that dominates this year's election debate, a maneuvering of the agreements that provide Israel with taxpayers' dollars, an arrangement that allows Israel to purchase military equipment from Israeli manufacturers even though they are available here in the US and an arrangement that requires that the US purchase with Department of Defense funds military hardware from Israel, an action that in effect ships American jobs to Israel, jobs paid for by the taxpayer! Talk about robbing Peter to pay Paul. And we haven't mentioned here the sale by Israel of US classified technology to Ethiopia, South Africa, Chile, Venezuela and China contrary to the agreements made between the US and Israel (Shawn Twing, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, 4/96).
Why does this administration pretend that it is in the best interests of this country to continue to spend an estimated 10 billion a year on a relatively wealthy people that is protected by the fourth largest military in the world, one that possesses nuclear weaponry as well as chemical and biological, for a population that is slightly larger than the population of the city of Los Angeles? Wouldn't it be more effective to force that state to make peace with its neighbors by returning to the ideals that gave rise to its existence in the first place, not the driven purpose of the Zionists, but the compassionate values of Europe and America when it sought to establish a homeland for Jews who had suffered for centuries the racism that eventually resulted in the holocaust of WWII? How can peace be brought to the Mid-East unless Europe and America recognize that they bear responsibility for imposing a population on an existing indigenous people, without their consent, who were innocent of the evil done to the Jews in Europe? How can peace arise when Palestinians look back at the forcible eviction of 737,166 of their people in 1948 and, in 1967, an additional 69,000 from the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights, a population that has grown to over a million people now living in refugee camps and denied both compensation for their stolen homes and right of return that flaunts international law? Rights denied are sores that infest the soul only to explode in vengeance and retaliation.
But do we have a return to the compassion that the world offered to the Jews? Do we address the consequences of the actions that have given rise to the unrelenting horror of oppression, occupation, and insane reaction that uses humans as bombs? No! We have the erecting of an American taxpayer Wall, an Israeli constructed "Wall of Fear" that creates an Israeli Pogrom to encircle the most deprived in the world, the mirror image of the suffering of the Jews at Terezin, and the world sees fear on both sides--fear of imprisonment and deprivation and fear of retaliation for wrongs inflicted. I empathize with Shlomo Shmelzman when he cries, "I see bombs falling on a city, on innocent civilians--men, women, children and babies. Houses crumbling, dead bodies in the streets. I remember a morning in September 1939, when my mother and I were running to my grandmother's home, through the fire and smoke under a heavy bombardment, finding our way between dead bodies lying in the streets of Warsaw. Too many things in Israel remind me of too many other things from my childhoodToday, as a citizen of Israel, I cannot accept the systematic destruction of cities, towns, and refugee camps. I cannot accept the technocratic cruelty of the bombing, destroying and killing of human beings."
Coleridge's Ancient Mariner carried the Albatross until "A spring of love gushed from my heart/ And I blessed them unaware/The self same moment I could pray/ And from my neck so free/ The Albatross fell off, and sank? Like lead into the sea." And so must America bring peace by forging an alliance with the Jews for Peace and their counterparts in Palestine; when love and fairness guides our policy toward both peoples, when love and fairness rise in our hearts "unawares," then will peace come to the Mid-East and America's Albatross sink like lead into the sea. "He prayeth best who loveth best/ All things both great and small./ For the dear God who loveth us/ He made and loveth all."
[i][b]William Cook is a professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California. His new book, Psalms for the 21st Century, was just published by Mellen Press. He can be reached at: cookb@ULV.EDU [/b][/i], http://www.counterpunch.com/c...
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| NEO-CONS, ISRAEL AND THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION: A SELL-OUT |
| 02.29.04 (7:13 am) [edit] |
[b]Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Administration[/b]
[i][b]Can They Really Serve Two Flags?[/b][/i]
Since 9-11, a small group of "neo-conservatives" in the Administration have effectively gutted--they would say reformed--traditional American foreign and security policy. Notable features of the new Bush doctrine include the pre-emptive use of unilateral force, and the undermining of the United Nations and the principle instruments and institutions of international law....all in the cause of fighting terrorism and promoting homeland security.
Some skeptics, noting the neo-cons' past academic and professional associations, writings and public utterances, have suggested that their underlying agenda is the alignment of U.S. foreign and security policies with those of Ariel Sharon and the Israeli right wing. The administration's new hard line on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict certainly suggests that, as perhaps does the destruction, with U.S. soldiers and funds, of the military capacity of Iraq, and the current belligerent neo-con campaign against the other two countries which constitute a remaining counterforce to Israeli military hegemony in the region--Iran and Syria.
Have the neo-conservatives--many of whom are senior officials in the Defense Department, National Security Council and Office of the Vice President--had dual agendas, while professing to work for the internal security of the United States against its terrorist enemies?
A review of the internal security backgrounds of some of the best known among them strongly suggests the answer.
[b]Dr. Stephen Bryen and Colleagues[/b]
In April of 1979, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Robert Keuch recommended in writing that Bryen, then a staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, undergo a grand jury hearing to establish the basis for a prosecution for espionage. John Davitt, then Chief of the Justice Department's Internal Security Division, concurred.
The evidence was strong. Bryen had been overheard in the Madison Hotel Coffee Shop, offering classified documents to an official of the Israeli Embassy in the presence of the director of AIPAC, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee. It was later determined that the Embassy official was Zvi Rafiah, the Mossad station chief in Washington. Bryen refused to be poly-graphed by the FBI on the purpose and details of the meeting; whereas the person who'd witnessed it agreed to be poly-graphed and passed the test.
The Bureau also had testimony from a second person, a staff member of the Foreign Relations Committee, that she had witnessed Bryen in his Senate office with Rafiah, discussing classified documents that were spread out on a table in front of an open safe in which the documents were supposed to be secured. Not long after this second witness came forward, Bryen's fingerprints were found on classified documents he'd stated in writing to the FBI he'd never had in his possession....the ones he'd allegedly offered to Rafiah.
Nevertheless, following the refusal of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to grant access by Justice Department officials to files which were key to the investigation, Keuch's recommendation for a grand jury hearing, and ultimately the investigation itself, were shut down. This decision, taken by Philip Heymann, Chief of Justice's Criminal Division, was a bitter disappointment to Davitt and to Joel Lisker, the lead investigator on the case, as expressed to this writer. A complicating factor in the outcome was that Heymann was a former schoolmate and fellow U.S. Supreme Court Clerk of Bryen's attorney, Nathan Lewin.
Bryen was asked to resign from his Foreign Relations Committee post shortly before the investigation was concluded in late 1979. For the following year and a half, he served as Executive Director of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), and provided consulting services to AIPAC.
In April, 1981, the FBI received an application by the Defense Department for a Top Secret security clearance for Dr. Bryen . Richard Perle, who had just been nominated as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy, was proposing Bryen as his Deputy Assistant Secretary! Within six months, with Perle pushing hard, Bryen received both Top Secret-SCI (sensitive compartmented information) and Top Secret-"NATO/COSMIC" clearances.
[b]Loyalty, Patriotism and Character[/b]
The Bryen investigation became in fact the most contentious issue in Perle's own confirmation hearings in July, 1981. Under aggressive questioning from Sen. Jeremiah Denton, Perle held his ground: "I consider Dr. Bryen to be an individual impeccable integrity....I have the highest confidence in [his] loyalty, patriotism and character."
Several years later in early 1988, Israel was in the final stages of development of a prototype of its ground based "Arrow" anti-ballistic missile. One element the program lacked was "klystrons", small microwave amplifiers which are critical components in the missile's high frequency, radar-based target acquisition system which locks on to in-coming missiles. In 1988, klystrons were among the most advanced developments in American weapons research, and their export was of course strictly proscribed.
The DOD office involved in control of defense technology exports was the Defense Technology Security Administration (DTSA) within Richard Perle's ISP office. The Director (and founder) of DTSA was Perle's Deputy, Dr. Stephen Bryen. In May of 1988, Bryen sent a standard form to Richard Levine, a Navy tech transfer official, informing him of intent to approve a license for Varian Associates, Inc. of Beverly, Massachusetts to export to Israel four klystrons. This was done without the usual consultations with the tech transfer officials of the Army and Air Force, or ISA (International Security Affairs) or DSAA (Defense Security Assistance Agency.
The answer from Levine was "no". He opposed granting the license, and asked for a meeting on the matter of the appropriate (above listed) offices. At the meeting, all of the officials present opposed the license. Bryen responded by suggesting that he go back to the Israelis to ask why these particular items were needed for their defense. Later, after the Israeli Government came back with what one DOD staffer described as "a little bullshit answer", Bryen simply notified the meeting attendees that an acceptable answer had been received, the license granted, and the klystrons released.
By now, however, the dogs were awake. Then Assistant Secretary of Defense for ISA, (and now Deputy Secretary of State) Richard Armitage sent Dr. Bryen a letter stating that the State Department (which issues the export licenses) should be informed of DOD's "uniformly negative" reaction to the export of klystrons to Israel. Bryen did as instructed , and the license was withdrawn.
In July, Varian Associates became the first U.S. corporation formally precluded from contracting with the Defense Department. Two senior colleague in DOD who wish to remain anonymous have confirmed that this attempt by Bryen to obtain klystrons for his friends was not unusual, and was in fact "standard operating procedure" for him, recalling numerous instances when U.S. companies were denied licenses to export sensitive technology, only to learn later that Israeli companies subsequently exported similar (U.S. derived) weapons and technology to the intended customers/governments.
In late1988, Bryen resigned from his DOD post, and for a period worked in the private sector with a variety of defense technology consulting firms.
[b]Bryen and the China Commission[/b]
In 1997, "Defense Week" reported (05/27/97) that, ...." the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence reaffirmed that U.S.- derived technology from the cancelled [Israeli] Lavi fighter project is being used on China's new F-10 fighter." The following year, "Jane's Intelligence Review" reported (11/01/98) the transfer by Israel to China of the Phalcon airborne early warning and control system, the Python air-combat missile, and the F-10 fighter aircraft, containing "state-of-the-art U.S. electronics."
Concern about the continuing transfer of advanced U.S. arms technology to the burgeoning Chinese military program led, in the last months of the Clinton Administration, to the creation of a Congressional consultative body called the United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission. The charter for the "The China Commission", as it is commonly known, states that its purpose is to...."monitor, investigate, and report to the Congress on the national security implications of the bilateral trade and economic relationship between the United States and the Peoples Republic of China." The charter also reflects an awareness of the problem of "back door" technology leaks: "The Commission shall also take into account patterns of trade and transfers through third countries to the extent practicable."
It was almost predictable that in the new Bush Administration, Dr. Stephen Bryen would find his way to the China Commission. In April 2001, with the support of Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Senator Richard Shelby (R-Alabama) Bryen was appointed a Member of the Commission by Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert. Last August, his appointment was extended through December of 2005.
Informed that Bryen had been appointed to the Commission, the reaction of one former
senior FBI counter-intelligence official was: "My God, that must mean he has a "Q clearance!" (A "Q" clearance, which must be approved by the Department of Energy, is the designation for a Top Secret codeword clearance to access nuclear technology.)
[b]Michael Ledeen, Consultant on Chaos[/b]
If Stephen Bryen is the military technology guru in the neo-con pantheon, Michael Ledeen is currently its leading theorist, historian, scholar and writer. It states in the website of his consulting firm, Benador Associates, that he is "...one of the world's leading authorities on intelligence, contemporary history and international affairs" and that...."As Ted Koppel puts it, 'Michael Ledeen is a Renaissance man....in the tradition of Machiavelli.'" Perhaps the following will add some color and texture to this description.
In 1983, on the recommendation of Richard Perle, Ledeen was hired at the Department of Defense as a consultant on terrorism. His immediate supervisor was the Principle Assistant Secretary for International Security Affairs, Noel Koch. Early in their work together, Koch noticed with concern Ledeen's habit of stopping by in his (Koch's) outer office to read classified materials. When the two of them took a trip to Italy, Koch learned from the CIA station there that when Ledeen had lived in Rome previously, as correspondent for The New Republic, he'd been carried in Agency files as an agent of influence of a foreign government: Israel.
Some time after their return from the trip, Ledeen approached his boss with a request for his assistance in obtaining two highly classified CIA reports which he said were held by the FBI. He'd hand written on a piece of paper the identifying "alpha numeric designators". These identifiers were as highly classified as the reports themselves....which raised in Koch's mind the question of who had provided them to Ledeen if he hadn't the clearances to obtain them himself. Koch immediately told his executive assistant that Ledeen was to have no further access to classified materials in the office, and Ledeen just ceased coming to "work".
In early 1986, however, Koch learned that Ledeen had joined NSC as a consultant, and sufficiently concerned about the internal security implications of the behavior of his former aide, arranged to be interviewed by two FBI agents on the matter. After a two hour debriefing, Koch was told that it was only Soviet military intelligence penetration that interested the Bureau. The follow-on interviews that were promised by the agents just never occurred.
Koch thought this strange, coming as it did just months after the arrest of Naval intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard on charges of espionage for Israel. Frustrated, Koch wrote up in detail the entire saga of Ledeen's DOD consultancy, and sent it to the Office of Senator Charles Grassley, then a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which had oversight responsibility for, inter alia, the FBI.
A former senior FBI counter-intelligence official was surprised and somewhat skeptical, when told of Koch's unsuccessful attempts to interest the Bureau in an investigation of Ledeen, noting that in early 1986, the Justice Department was in fact already engaged in several on-going, concurrent investigations of Israeli espionage and theft of American military technology.
[b]Machiavelli in Tel Aviv[/b]
Koch's belated attempts to draw official attention to his former assistant were too late, in any event, for within a very few weeks of leaving his DOD consultancy in late 1984, Ledeen had found gainful (classified) employment at the National Security Council (NSC). In fact, according to a now declassified chronology prepared for the Senate/House Iran-Contra investigation, within calendar 1984 Ledeen was already suggesting to Oliver North, his new boss at NSC...." that Israeli contacts might be useful in obtaining release of the U.S. hostages in Lebanon." Perhaps significantly, that is the first entry in the "Chronology of Events: U.S.- Iran Dialogue", dated November 18,1986, prepared for the Joint House-Senate Hearings in the Iran-Contra Investigations.
What is so striking about the Ledeen-related documents which are part of the Iran-Contra Collection of the National Security Archive, is how thoroughly the judgements of Ledeen's colleagues at NSC mirrored, and validated, Noel Koch's internal security concerns about his consultant.
[i]- on April 9, 1985, NSC Middle East analyst Donald Fortier wrote to National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane that NSC staffers were agreed that Ledeen's role in the scheme should be limited to carrying messages to Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres regarding plans to cooperate with Israel on the crisis within Iran, and specifically that he should not be entrusted to ask Peres for detailed operational information;
- on June 6, 1985, Secretary of State George Shultz wrote to McFarlane that, "Israel's record of dealings with Iran since the fall of the Shah and during the hostage crisis [show] that Israel's agenda is not the same as ours. Consequently doubt whether an intelligence relationship such as what Ledeen has in mind would be one which we could fully rely upon and it could seriously skew our own perception and analysis of the Iranian scene."
- on 20 August, 1985, the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense informed Ledeen by memorandum that his security clearance had been downgraded from Top Secret-SCI to Secret.
- on 16 January, 1986, Oliver North recommended to John Poindexter "for [the] security of the Iran initiative" that Ledeen be asked to take periodic polygraph examinations.
- later in January, on the 24th, North wrote to Poindexter of his suspicion that Ledeen, along with Adolph Schwimmer and Manucher Ghorbanifar, might be making money personally on the sale of arms to Iran, through Israel.[/i]
During the June 23-25, 1987 joint hearings of the House and Senate select committees' investigation of Iran-Contra, Noel Koch testified that he became suspicious when he learned that the price which Ledeen had negotiated for the sale to the Israeli Government of basic TOW missiles was $2,500 each.
Upon inquiring with his DOD colleagues, he learned the lowest price the U.S. had ever received for the sale of TOWs to a foreign government had been a previous sale to Israel for $6,800 per copy. Koch, professing in his testimony that he and his colleagues at DOD were not in favor of the sale to begin with, determined that he--Koch--should renegotiate the $2,500 price so that it could be defended by the "defense management system." In a clandestine meeting on a Sunday in the first class lounge of the TWA section of National Airport, Koch met over a cup of coffee with an official from the Israeli purchasing mission in New York, and agreed on a price of $4,500 per missile, nearly twice what Ledeen had "negotiated" in Israel.
There are two possibilities here--one would be a kickback, as suspected by his NSC colleagues, and the other would be that Michael Ledeen was effectively negotiating for Israel, not the U.S.
Like his friend Stephen Bryen (they've long served together on the JINSA Board of Advisors) Ledeen has been out of government service since the late1980s....until the present Bush Administration. He, like Bryen, is presently a serving member on the China Commission and, with the support of DOD Undersecretary for Policy Douglas Feith, he has since 2001 been employed as a consultant for the Office of Special Plans OSP). Both involve the handling of classified materials and require high-level security clearances.
[b]The Principals: Perle, Wolfowitz and Feith[/b]
One might wonder how, with security histories like these, Messrs. Bryen and Ledeen have managed to get second and third chances to return to government in highly classified positions.
And the explanation is that they, along with other like-minded neo-conservatives, have in the current Bush Administration friends in very high places. In particular, Bryen and Ledeen have been repeatedly boosted into defense/security posts by former Defense Policy Council member and chairman Richard Perle (he just quietly resigned his position), Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith.
As previously mentioned, Perle in 1981 as DOD Assistant Secretary for International Security Policy (ISP) hired Bryen as his Deputy. That same year, Wolfowitz as head of the State Department Policy Planning Staff hired Ledeen as a Special Advisor. In 2001 Douglas Feith as DOD Under Secretary for Policy hired, or approved the hiring of Ledeen as a consultant for the Office of Special Plans.
The principals have also assisted each other down through the years. Frequently. In 1973 Richard Perle used his (and Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson's) influence as a senior staff member of the Senate Armed Services Committee to help Wolfowitz obtain a job with the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. In 1982, Perle hired Feith in ISP as his Special Counsel, and then as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Negotiations Policy. In 2001, DOD Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz helped Feith obtain his appointment as Undersecretary for Policy. Feith then appointed Perle as Chairman of the Defense Policy Board. In some cases, this mutual assistance carries risks, as for instance when Perle's hiring of Bryen as his Deputy in ISP became an extremely contentious issue in Perle's own Senate appointment hearings as Assistant Secretary.
Every appointment/hiring listed above involved classified work for which high-level security clearances and associated background checks by the FBI were required. When the level of the clearance is not above generic Top Secret, however, the results of that background check are only seen by the hiring authority. And in the event, if the appointee were Bryen or Ledeen and the hiring authority were Perle, Wolfowitz or Feith, the appointee(s) need not have worried about the findings of the background check. In the case of Perle hiring Bryen as his deputy in 1981, for instance, documents released in 1983 under the Freedom of Information Act indicate that the Department provided extraordinarily high clearances for Bryen without having reviewed more than a small portion of his 1978-79 FBI investigation file.
[b]RICHARD PERLE: A HABIT OF LEAKING[/b]
Perle came to Washington for the first time in early 1969, at the age of 28, to work for a neo-con think tank called the "Committee to Maintain a Prudent Defense Policy." Within months, Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson offered Perle a position on his staff, working with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. And within months after that--less than a year--Perle was embroiled in an affair involving the leaking of a classified CIA report on alleged past Soviet treaty violations.
The leaker (and author of the report) was CIA analyst David Sullivan, and the leakee was Richard Perle. CIA Director Stansfield Turner was incensed at the unauthorized disclosure, but before he could fire Sullivan, the latter quit. Turner urged Sen. Jackson to fire Perle, but he was let off with a reprimand. Jackson then added insult to injury by immediately hiring Sullivan to his staff. Sullivan and Perle became close friends and co-conspirators, and together established an informal right-wing network which they called "the Madison Group," after their usual meeting place in--you might have guessed--the Madison Hotel Coffee Shop.
Perle's second brush with the law occurred a year later in 1970. An FBI wiretap authorized for the Israeli Embassy picked up Perle discussing with an Embassy official classified information which he said had been supplied to by a staff member on the National Security Council. An NSC/FBI investigation was launched to identify the staff member, and quickly focused upon Helmut Sonnenfeldt. The latter had been previously investigated in 1967 while a staff member of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, for suspected unauthorized transmission to an Israeli Government official of a classified document concerning the commencement of the 1967 war in the Middle East.
In 1981, shortly before being appointed Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy (ISP)--with responsibility, inter alia, for monitoring of U.S. defense technology exports, Richard Perle was paid a substantial consulting fee by arms manufacturer Tamares, Ltd. of Israel. Shortly after assuming that post, Perle wrote a letter to the Secretary of the Army urging evaluation and purchase of 155 mm. shells manufactured by Soltam, Ltd. After leaving the ISP job in 1987, he worked for Soltam.
[b]PAUL WOLFOWITZ : A WELL PLACED FRIEND[/b]
In 1973, in the dying days of the Nixon Administration, Wolfowitz was recruited to work for the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA). There was a certain irony in the appointment, for in the late 1960's, as a graduate student at the University of Chicago, Wolfowitz had been a student and protege of Albert Wohlstetter, an influential, vehement opponent of any form of arms control or disarmament, vis a vis the Soviets. Wolfowitz also brought to ACDA a strong attachment to Israel's security, and a certain confusion about his obligation to U.S. national security.
In 1978, he was investigated for providing a classified document on the proposed sale of U.S. weapons to an Arab government, to an Israel Government official, through an AIPAC intermediary. An inquiry was launched and dropped, however, and Wolfowitz continued to work at ACDA until 1980.
In 1990, after a decade of work with the State Department in Washington and abroad, Wolfowitz was brought into DoD as Undersecretary for Policy by then Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney. Two years later, in 1992, the first Bush Administration launched a broad inter-departmental investigation into the export of classified technology to China. O particular concern at the time was the transfer to China by Israel of U.S. Patriot missiles and/or technology. During that investigation, in a situation very reminiscent of the Bryen/Varian Associates/klystrons affair two years earlier, the Pentagon discovered that Wolfowitz's office was promoting the export to Israel of advanced AIM-9M air-to-air missiles.
In this instance, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, aware that Israel had already been caught selling the earlier AIM 9-L version of the missile to China in violation of a written agreement with the U.S. on arms re-sales, intervened to cancel the proposed AIM (-M deal. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs at the time was General Colin Powell, currently Secretary of State.
Wolfowitz continued to serve as DoD Undersecretary for Policy until 1993, well into the Clinton Administration. After that, however, like most of the other prominent neo-conservatives, he was relegated to trying to assist Israel from the sidelines for the remainder of Clinton's two terms. In 1998, Wolfowitz was a co-signer of a public letter to the President organized by the "Project for the New American Century." The letter, citing Saddam Hussein's continued possession of "weapons of mass destruction," argued for military action to achieve regime change and demilitarization of Iraq. Clinton wasn't impressed, but a more gullible fellow would soon come along.
And indeed, when George W. Bush assumed the Presidency in early 2001, Wolfowitz got his opportunity. Picked as Donald Rumsfeld's Deputy Secretary at DoD, he prevailed upon his boss to appoint Douglas Feith as Undersecretary for Policy. On the day after the destruction of the World Trade Center, September 12, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz raised the possibility of an immediate attack on Iraq during an emergency NSC meeting. The following day, Wolfowitz conducted the Pentagon press briefing, and interpreted the President's statement on "ending states who sponsor terrorism" as a call for regime change in Iraq. Israel wasn't mentioned.
[b]Douglas Feith: Hardliner, Security Risk[/b]
Bush's appointment of Douglas Feith as DoD Undersecretary for Policy in early 2001 must have come as a surprise, and a harbinger, even to conservative veterans of the Reagan and George H.W. Bush Administration. Like Michael Ledeen, Feith is a prolific writer and well-known radical conservative. Moreover, he was not being hired as a DoD consultant, like Ledeen, but as the third most senior United States Defense Department official. Feith was certainly the first, and probably the last high Pentagon official to have publicly opposed the Biological Weapons Convention (in 1986), the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty (in 1988), the Chemical Weapons Convention (in 1997), the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (in 2000), and all of the various Middle East Peace agreements, including Oslo (in 2000).
Even more revealing perhaps, had the transition team known of it, was Feith's view of "technology cooperation," as expressed in a 1992 Commentary article: "It is in the interest of U.S. and Israel to remove needless impediments to technological cooperation between them. Technologies in the hands of responsible, friendly countries facing military threats, countries like Israel, serve to deter aggression, enhance regional stability and promote peace thereby."
What Douglas Feith had neglected to say, in this last article, was that he thought that individuals could decide on their own whether the sharing of classified information was "technical cooperation," an unauthorized disclosure, or a violation of U.S. Code 794c, the "Espionage Act."
Ten years prior to writing the Commentary piece, Feith had made such a decision on his own. At the time, March of 1972, Feith was a Middle East analyst in the Near East and South Asian Affairs section of the National Security Council. Two months before, in January, Judge William Clark had replaced Richard Allen as National Security Advisor, with the intention to clean house. A total of nine NSC staff members were fired, including Feith, who'd only been with the NSC for a year. But Feith was fired because he'd been the object of an inquiry into whether he'd provided classified material to an official of the Israeli Embassy in Washington. The FBI had opened the inquiry. And Clark, who had served in U.S. Army counterintelligence in the 1950's, took such matters very seriously.....more seriously, apparently, than had Richard Allen.
Feith did not remain unemployed for long, however. Richard Perle, who was in 1982 serving in the Pentagon as Assistant secretary for International Security Policy, hired him on the spot as his "Special Counsel," and then as his Deputy. Feith worked at ISP until 1986, when he left government service to form a small but influential law firm, then based in Israel.
In 2001, Douglas Feith returned to DoD as Donald Rumsfeld's Undersecretary for Policy, and it was in his office that "OSP", the Office of Special Plans, was created. It was OSP that originated--some say from whole cloth--much of the intelligence that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld have used to justify the attack on Iraq, to miss-plan the post-war reconstruction there, and then to point an accusing finger at Iran and Syria.....all to the absolute delight of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
[b]Reason for Concern[/b]
Many individuals with strong attachments to foreign countries have served the U.S. Government with honor and distinction, and will certainly do so in the future. The highest officials in our executive and legislative branches should, however, take great care when appointments are made to posts involving sensitive national security matters. Appointees should be rejected who have demonstrated, in their previous government service, a willingness to sacrifice U.S. national security interests for those of another country, or an inability to distinguish one from the other.
[i][b]By Stephen Green[/b][/i], http://www.counterpunch.com/g...
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| MIDEAST NEEDS END TO ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT |
| 02.28.04 (11:00 am) [edit] |
[b]Schroeder: Mideast needs end to Israeli-Palestinian conflict [/b]
WASHINGTON - German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder on Friday after a meeting with U.S. President George Bush, said ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was necessary in order to bring peace to the region.
"Whenever one pursues a border outline and a border approach here, one has not to lose sight of the fact that a settlement of the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians is necessary if one wants to bring peace to this region," Schroeder told reporters.
Bush and Schroeder also released a joint statement committing their countries to the goal of promoting "freedom, democracy, human dignity, the rule of law, economic opportunity and security in the Greater Middle East."
Bush said Friday it is cynical to doubt Arabs want freedom and democracy. "Freedom is inherently part of every soul," he said.
A few hours later, the State Department announced Undersecretary Marc Grossman would go to Jordan, Egypt, Morocco and Bahrain to discuss ways to promote reform.
"Ideas for reform must come from the region," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in announcing Grossman's week-long trip that also will take him to Turkey and to NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.
Grossman's talks with the allies will involve what NATO might do to assist reform and security among Arab nations, Boucher said.
Bush, in a picture-taking session with Schroeder, said it is important to establish democracy in the Middle East.
"It's important to get the structure right in order for free societies to develop," the president said.
Bush acknowledged "there is some skepticism as to whether or not people in the Middle East can self-govern."
But he said he strongly rejects that skepticism "and might call it cynicism if people hold that attitude."
"I believe that freedom is inherently a part of every soul and that, if given the proper structure and proper institutions, people can self-govern," he said.
A self-governing Middle East that is based on freedom and democracy will make the world more peaceful, Bush said.
[i][b]Haaretz - Israel News[/b][/i], http://www.haaretzdaily.com/h...
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| HALLIBURTON'S IRAQ GRAVY TRAIN |
| 02.28.04 (10:55 am) [edit] |
[b]Halliburton's Iraq gravy train[/b]
[i]A former procurement specialist for the giant, White House-connected company charges that it failed to seek out competitive bids -- enriching itself and costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars extra.[/i]
Halliburton Corp.'s latest image-rehabilitating television commercial begins with a narrator wistfully declaring, "When I joined Halliburton, I knew I was going to work on some big things." At Halliburton, the narrator explains, people are constantly trying to improve the lives of others. They fight oil-well fires, they bring supplies to stranded troops. "We built bridges, schools, all over the world." And that's not even the best part. "The biggest thing?" the narrator asks as the screen flashes to a group of smiling Halliburton employees dishing up hot meals to American GIs. "Serving our troops good ol' American food, so they'd feel just a little closer to home. Yeah."
It's a nice image. But to Henry Bunting, a veteran procurement specialist who worked for Halliburton's subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root in Kuwait last summer, this saccharine picture of Halliburton as a beneficent do-gooder doesn't ring true. According to Bunting, Halliburton's personnel in the Middle East weren't looking out for the government as much as they were looking out for the company. Bunting, who has recently been telling his story to congressional Democrats, says that Halliburton, which has been awarded billions of dollars of contracts for work in Iraq, routinely purchased the most expensive equipment and services on the government's tab. Bunting claims that Halliburton managers frowned on any attempts to save the military any money. They had no incentive to do so: taxpayers would pick up the cost. In fact, they had an incentive to bill high: the more they spent, the more money their company would make.
Bunting worked as a buyer for Halliburton's "Logcap" contract with the U.S. Army, a $3.7 billion deal under which Halliburton provides the military with logistics support -- it builds bases, runs mess halls, does the laundry, supplies water and performs dozens of other tasks necessary to keep the Army running. The contract is a "cost-plus" contract, meaning that the military reimburses Halliburton for all of its expenses, and then gives it an extra percentage as a profit. Experts have long criticized cost-plus contracts as being economically inefficient; companies that work under cost-plus deals have no reason to reduce their expenses, meaning that the government may end up paying more than it should for services.
To keep costs down, firms that have been awarded cost-plus contracts pledge to open their processes to competitive bidding, making sure that they're getting low prices on equipment they use. Halliburton says that it complies with all federal requirements regarding competitive bidding. But according to Bunting, this is where Halliburton fell short; it constantly failed to seek low prices in its operations, violating the spirit, if not the letter, of its contract with the government. Bunting says that even though his job was ostensibly to get the best deals on equipment for the Army -- everything from office chairs to medical supplies -- his managers often told him, "Don't worry about the price, it's cost-plus." Supervisors urged buyers like him to keep their orders under $2,500, Bunting says, because orders for more than that amount would need to be submitted to multiple vendors for competitive bidding -- a process that would potentially reduce Halliburton's take.
Bunting has been working in procurement for almost 20 years, though this was his first job in a war zone. Experts say that while some of Halliburton's actions may in fact be ripe for investigation, others may be defensible -- or at least understandable -- considering the conditions in which it operates. "In a perfect world contractors pay attention to cost control," said Steven Schooner, an expert in procurement law and professor at George Washington University Law School. "Everybody would be happier if Halliburton were more careful about cost control. But one of the reasons they're not being that careful is because the government has given them broad contracts and has not devoted sufficient resources to keeping track of this. So there is a chaotic, Wild West aspect to it. Could another contractor have done it better? Maybe -- but it's unlikely."
But others aren't so blasé about Halliburton's alleged actions. "What is most disturbing is the regular and routine nature of the overcharging," wrote Reps. Henry Waxman and John Dingell, two Democrats who've been vocal critics of Halliburton, in a recent letter to the Defense Department. The company "paid inflated prices for goods and services on a daily basis and then passed these overcharges on to the U.S. taxpayer. An approach of 'don't worry ... it's cost-plus' may be lucrative for Halliburton, but it should be of great concern to the government and the taxpayer."
Bunting arrived at KBR's Kuwait office in early May, and he stayed on for about 15 weeks. He left, he says, because he was "completely worn out" from working long hours in an environment that he says was less than ideal. He was not fired, he stresses. But he says that he and his supervisors did clash often, mostly over whether or not it was worth taking the time to do his job the right way. When he got back from Kuwait, Bunting contacted Waxman with his story. On Feb. 13, Bunting testified before a panel of Senate Democrats.
Halliburton rejects Bunting's allegations. In a statement she sent by e-mail, Wendy Hall, a company spokeswoman, said, "Halliburton takes any charges of improper conduct seriously. That is the reason why we have such an aggressive internal audit team that performs forensic-like audits of our contracts." She noted that the company runs an internal hotline through which people can report their concerns. "This information is made available to every employee, including Mr. Bunting. We have no record of any calls from Mr. Bunting, or even any anonymous complaints that match up with this set of facts. If he was so concerned about this information, we question why he did not raise the issue by means made available to him in the Code of Business Conduct information that he acknowledged receiving."
Bunting says he didn't call the hotline because he knew retaliation would be swift. The atmosphere in the office, he said, "wasn't conducive to open communication."
Bunting is not the only one who has questioned Halliburton's commitment to saving the government money. On Monday, the Pentagon disclosed that it has opened a criminal investigation of the company stemming from a discovery that the firm might have overcharged the government by $61 million for fuel it shipped from Kuwait into Iraq. Investigators are reportedly looking into the same question that Bunting raises -- did Halliburton do all it could have done to secure the lowest price for the government? Halliburton denies any wrongdoing in the case.
[b][u]Bunting spoke to Salon from his home in Houston[/u][/b].
[b]Tell me what troubled you about Halliburton[/b].
Their business practices. Their business practices were pretty shoddy -- I wouldn't run a lawn service on some of their practices.
For example, we were instructed to keep all purchase orders under $2,500 so we wouldn't have to get two quotes. I went out and got two quotes on several of them, and my supervisor said, "We only need one quote." So I went back to my desk and deleted the high quote. I mean, I pulled it from the file and put it in the paper shredder.
When I was hired we were given a list of vendors. They said, "Use these vendors." This was identified as their preferred vendor list. We used vendors without regard to cost. It was very common, it was said many times by the supervisors that the contract is a cost-plus contract: "Halliburton's going to be reimbursed, don't worry about the price."
[In an e-mail, Hall wrote that "The company has no official, authorized preferred vendor list for government operations in Kuwait and Iraq. However, when dealing in mission-critical situations where failure and delays are not an option, it is logical that the company would select vendors who have a proven track record of on-time and on-specifications delivery." But Bunting disputed this characterization. He said the vendors were often "late in delivery or late in quoting -- there was nothing qualifying these vendors."]
[b]I've heard it said that "Don't worry about the price" was in some ways the company motto?[/b]
Right, "Don't worry about the price." I did seek out low-cost vendors. For example, I sought to try to standardize the office desks and chairs we were getting. I located some vendors and sent them a quote to get an idea on pricing compared to the preferred vendors. The preferred vendor was $30 higher on the desks and $10 higher on the office chairs.
[b]Why did Halliburton choose those vendors?[/b]
You'll have to ask them, I don't know. Obviously they hadn't gone out to seek vendors who were qualified; they made no effort to contain cost.
[b]Any other examples of cost overruns?[/b]
Well, there was pressure to purchase exercise equipment from a vendor in Kuwait. And I refused to do that. I went out and had the stuff quoted. The manager responsible for the exercise facilities, he said "Geez, it's available here, just place it with them. It's a cost-plus contract." I went out and had it quoted, and they kept giving me a hard time to place the order. Eventually we placed the order in the U.S. -- the only order that I know of that was placed with a vendor in the U.S. from Kuwait. The end result was that by placing it with them there was a savings of over $60,000 in that equipment.
[b]What other kinds of equipment did you purchase?[/b]
We purchased office equipment, plumbing supplies, medical supplies, you name it, it went from A to Z. They told me to get the reqs placed. "We're not looking for the best prices, we're just looking to fill the order."
[b]So did your supervisors ever get upset because you were trying to do things the right way?[/b]
Yes, he got upset. He frowned on me getting two bids. It didn't take long to understand that if you wanted your order to go through you had to just get one quote.
[b]Was that different from other procurement offices you've worked in? [/b]
That was foreign to any procurement function that I've ever worked in, absolutely against all procurement experience that I've ever had.
[b]You told the Democrats that Halliburton purchased expensive embroidered towels for the Army rather than standard towels -- tell me about those[/b].
I had placed an order for 2,500 towels with a vendor, and the vendor could not meet the due date so I canceled the order. [When I tried to place the order with another vendor] the manager wanted to change the order to have them embroidered and to have a higher-grade towel. The towels they settled on were gold with the [words "MWR Baghdad" embroidered] on them. I left before the order was placed, but I'm assuming they awarded it to the next lowest bidder.
[b]What does MWR mean?[/b]
"Morale, Welfare, Recreation." [[i]MWR is a unit of the Army; the towels were to be used in an MWR exercise facility[/i].]
[b]So did the military ask for the embroidery?[/b]
I don't think the military insisted they have MWR embroidered on them. It was not to their advantage -- all they wanted was their exercise facilities running smoothly, to make sure that the GIs had sufficient equipment, in this case towels. I don't think it matters to the military whether their towels had MWR on it or U.S. Army on it. They're not into embroidery.
[b]So whose idea was it?[/b]
The MWR manager's.
[b]And he's a Halliburton employee?[/b]
Yes, he works for Halliburton. For him it was ego. He said, "Geez, we want it to be a nice facility. It's a showplace, so we'll have embroidered towels." It was just like the polo shirts and other things he ordered with the embroidery. It was an ego thing.
[b]So how much more did they pay for the embroidered towels?[/b]
It added $3.50 to $4 U.S. to the price of each towel.
[i][Halliburton rejected these figures. "These towels were ordered at a cost of approximately US$3 each, not the $7.50 that the former employees are alleging," Hall wrote in an e-mail. She added that there was a legitimate reason for embroidering the towels -- to "prevent pilferage." The military approved the monogramming "because it was estimated that such action would result in approximately one-third fewer towels being permanently removed from the facilities," Hall wrote. "When towels are clearly marked and easily recognizable, they are more frequently returned to the correct facility (either by patrons or by laundry staff), thereby reducing the need to constantly reorder to replenish the supply. Apparently, however, this anti-theft device is not completely fool-proof as Mr. Bunting proved that he was in possession of one of these towels without proper authorization when he presented it at the Senate Democratic Committee Hearing." Asked again about the price of the towels, Bunting said he could not provide any documentation showing that they cost more than $7. But he said Halliburton's $3-per-towel price seemed low. Halliburton did not respond to a request for documentation on the price of the towels in time for publication. Bunting denied Hall's suggestion that he'd stolen any towels. The towel he showed to the Democrats was a sample provided by the manufacturer, he said. Bunting also questioned Halliburton's theory that the towels were embroidered to prevent theft. Indeed, he speculated that that the fancy towels might make a more attractive target. "A GI going into a workout area with an embroidered towel, he says, 'I got a good souvenir to go home with.' Why would anybody take a plain unembroidered towel?"] [/i]
[b]Why did you decide to come forward?[/b]
When I left I said to my supervisor that this was the worst-run procurement office I'd ever seen. And I planned before I left that I was going to speak up and indicate to people this was not the way you run a purchasing function. I had so little faith in the supervisors that I kept copies of all the reqs I made. I did that electronically -- I have electronic copies of 95 percent of the purchase orders.
[b]And what do they show?[/b]
I think they would substantiate that the bulk of my orders were for under $2,500. It would show that in the purchase order logs we would skip requisition numbers to make it look like we weren't using the same vendor over and over.
[b]What purpose did that serve?[/b]
Well, the logs maintained all of the purchase orders in a sequence. Now, I don't come to the table with clean hands, I am as guilty as anybody else. So for example we were buying PVC pipe, plumbing fixtures. We would have four or five [requests] going to the vendor, he would send back a quote. We would group two or three items together, keeping the order under $2,500. Then you would go into the log and pick a number that was 10 or 15 different from the first one, then do the rest of the orders. So it looked like the orders were done at two different times. [i][If all of the orders were combined into a single purchase, Bunting explained, the price would have exceeded $2,500, forcing Halliburton to seek competitive bids on the items; therefore, buyers were encouraged to combine orders only if they didn't exceed $2,500.][/i]
[b]Tell me more about why they wanted you to keep your orders under $2,500[/b].
Because the more money Halliburton spends the greater their commission. The higher their costs, the more money they make. If they would have gone out and competitively bid, you probably would have gotten a lower cost. I'm sure you would have gotten a lower cost.
[i][Halliburton denied Bunting's claim that buyers were encouraged to keep their orders under $2,500 to avoid seeking competitive bids. Hall wrote, "Purchases under $2,500 may be made without securing competitive prices if and only if the buyer is able to determine that the price is reasonable and maintains this price reasonableness determination as part of the file." But Bunting disputed that assessment. "That was never said to us. They weren't concerned about cost -- never once did they say the price is too high. Sometimes we [the buyers] would look at something and say, 'Gee, that looks out of line,' but not at the urging of the supervisor."][/i]
For instance I used one vendor for stationery. The guy would show up at night -- he'd show up at 6 p.m. every day looking for orders. Because it was easy I'd give him the stationery orders. Every time that I sent him a request for a quote, he was always higher. He always gave me a higher price. But he never once got any order if we put it up for competitive bidding.
[b]We were talking about why you decided to come forward[/b].
Yes, I wanted to point out there's a need to look at Halliburton's poor business practices and the raping of the U.S. Treasury based on how they're doing business. You know, they're spending my money and they're making a helluva buck from it.
And in Kuwait, the buyers were told not to talk to the auditors, not to talk to the press, not to talk to anybody about the buying practices we had. They would tell us that the auditors were coming and they said don't speak to them -- and if you do speak to them make sure that you put KBR in the best light possible.
[b]Did they ask you to lie?[/b]
Well, I said to one supervisor, "You're asking us to lie to the auditors?" She didn't say no and she didn't say yes. I said I'm not going to lie to government auditors to make KBR look good. I don't need a job bad enough to lie.
[b]But why did you go to the Democrats? Was this a political thing?[/b]
I sent a letter to Waxman because I had read his letter to the Department of Defense requesting specific information about contracts in Iraq. I said you should look at KBR's poor business practices. Somebody from his office gave me a call and said, "Tell me about Halliburton's poor business practices." I got another phone call from the Democratic policy representative. He said, "Would you mind coming to Washington to talk about this?" I said, "No, I have no problem with that." And I would be more than happy to appear at any other hearing.
[b]I have to ask you -- are you a Democrat or a Republican? [/b]
I think I'm registered as Republican, but I have voted for as many Democrats as I have Republicans. When I'm voting I look for the best candidate that can do the job. Did I vote for Bill Clinton? Absolutely I did not, I thought he was a jerk. Did I vote for Bush? Yes, I did vote for Bush. But I think Bush is doing a poor job in Iraq. If it continues, Bush will not be the president in 2005.
I don't think politics enters into good business. I don't think Cheney has influence over this whatsoever, he's gone. You look at the current people running Halliburton, this is a deep-seated culture we're talking about.
[b]But do you think that what happened was deliberate -- was Halliburton trying to keep the costs high? Or were they just poor business people?[/b]
I don't think they're poor business people at all. Halliburton has been very successful. Did they know about what was happening in Kuwait? A manager from Halliburton spent four or five weeks in Kuwait in the June-July period. Certainly he knew what good purchasing practices were, and he had the opportunity to put things right. By their failure to correct it, they condoned it.
[b]Has Halliburton contacted you since you came forward?[/b]
I have not heard from Halliburton. If you're asking whether I'm afraid that I'm going to be taken to court -- I gave that a lot of thought. If that happens it happens, it's beyond my control. But then everything that I have will be on the table. If I were any company I wouldn't want public view of my business practices, even if I had the best business practices.
Say what you want, Halliburton is servicing the military. They have done this for a while so they're good at it. Anybody could do the same job. There are lots of companies that can manage very large projects and do it as well.
[b]How have other people reacted to your testimony?[/b]
A couple people said I was nuts for speaking up. Some folks have said, "I really admire you for having the courage to stand up." The reason I have no problem with you using my name is, if there's a problem and you're not willing to stand up and be counted -- if you want to hide behind "anonymous" or "reliable source" -- then you may as well not say anything. If anybody wants to talk to me I'd be more than happy to talk to them. I have nothing to hide and I recognize that, because I participated in this, I'm as guilty as the guys doing it.
[i][b]By Farhad Manjoo, Salon Magazine[/b][/i], http://www.salon.com/tech/fea...
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| ISRAEL NEWS: ISRAELI SOLDIERS USE BULLY FORCE |
| 02.27.04 (10:20 am) [edit] |
[b]When soldiers become bullies [/b]
Three armed bullies in black ski masks get out of the jeep quickly. One breaks into shouts at the taxi driver who is letting off a female passenger, waving a rifle in the driver's face and ordering him out of the car. The bully then orders the frightened driver to hand over the keys to his taxi and get going. The helpless driver hands over his keys. In a feeble voice he asks if and when he can get his taxi back. "Maybe at the end of the day, maybe Wednesday. We'll see," says the thug, sticking the keys into his pocket, getting back in the jeep and driving away.
Highway bandits in Chechnya? Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in Balata? No. The three bullies were Israeli soldiers. They confiscated the car from its owner, as they routinely do, because he let out a passenger on the other side of a blurry yellow line painted onto the Tul Karm road. The road is blocked by an unmanned iron bar. Passengers are supposed to cross on foot, from taxis on one side to taxis on the other - it's not at all clear why - and the drivers know that if they cross the yellow line the soldiers will appear out of nowhere and confiscate the cars or slice the tires. Indeed, one of the soldiers threatened to slice the tires of our car, which was parked past the remnants of the yellow line.
This "battle heritage" is passed down through the Israel Defense Forces without obstruction and all the Palestinians drivers know it. Any time they venture onto one of the few roads left to them in the West Bank, they are taking a risk. Maybe they'll be shot "by mistake," maybe their car will be confiscated for some vague reason. That's why the few roads of the West Bank where Palestinians are allowed to drive are nearly always empty. The driver whose car was confiscated, Samr Abdullah, did not know how to get home.
A brigadier who serves in the territories said in a private conversation on the weekend that the confiscation of cars and ID cards is prohibited by the army. Really? After all, if the army wanted to put an end to it, it could easily do so. The IDF Spokesman's Office also says there is no policy of confiscating cars and if it turns out that the events we witnessed last Sunday happened, "the soldiers will be severely punished."
Is the IDF Spokesman's Office being naive or disingenuous or was this really the first time it heard about soldiers confiscating the keys to a Palestinian car or slashing its tires? It's not clear what's worse. Any soldier nowadays can take any Palestinian car for any reason and for as long as he wants. When every soldier is a king, any group of soldiers can turn into a gang.
Confiscating cars is only one example of how an IDF regime of bullying has emerged and is being strengthened in the territories. There is a great deal of hypocrisy in the talk about how anarchy will reign in the territories after the IDF leaves. The disintegration of the rule of law and order begins inside the army. Every day one can see soldiers confiscating ID cards from residents, making them line up for hours in the sun and rain for no reason whatsoever, and just for the fun of it smashing memorial monuments to Palestinian casualties - like last week in Beir Furik.
In the last three years, an atmosphere of anything goes has taken root in the IDF in the territories. Any soldier can do whatever he feels like to any Palestinian - the incident won't be investigated, the soldier won't be punished.
The disintegration of the rule of law does not stop with the soldiers. Brothers Naim and Ayad Murar, who organized nonviolent demonstrations against the separation fence in Budrus, were arrested a month ago with the intention of throwing them into long months of administrative detention without trial. At the last minute, Ayad was freed by a judge who ruled that nonviolent demonstrations are no cause for administrative detention. But his brother Naim was sent to four months of administrative detention for his "terror-supporting activity." Only due to the intervention of attorneys Tamar Peleg and Yal Barda, and the courageous position taken by Lieutenant Colonel Shlomi Kochav, was Naim freed on the weekend after a month in detention, thus preventing a further disgrace. Serious questions are raised by the arrogance of security officials who wanted to lock people up for attempting to organize nonviolent demonstrations against a fence being built on their property.
There is a direct and disgusting line between the car confiscators and those who jail demonstrators without trial. Both are manifestations of gangland rule. Despite the separation fence, that kind of behavior will inevitably cross the Green Line.
[i][b]By Gideon Levy, Haaretz Israel News[/b][/i], http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/...
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| U.S. REPORT: ISRAEL USES 'EXCESSIVE FORCE' IN OCCUPIED TERRITORIES |
| 02.27.04 (10:13 am) [edit] |
[b]U.S. report: Israel 'used excessive force' in territories [/b]
Israeli forces often used excessive force when confronting Palestinian demonstrations or pursuing suspects, according to a report on human rights issued by the U.S. State Department on Wednesday.
The report also said that Israeli troops impeded medical assistance to Palestinian civilians at roadblocks, and carried out policies of demolitions, strict curfews, and closures that directly punished innocent civilians.
Israel's human rights record in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 2003 "remained poor and worsened in the treatment of foreign human rights activists," the report said.
The report, which details human rights practices throughout the world, also said the Palestinian Authority's overall human rights record "remained poor" and that it continued to commit "numerous, serious abuses."
"Many members of Palestinian security services and the Fatah faction of the PLO participated with civilians and terrorist groups in violent attacks against Israeli civilians inside Israel, Israeli settlers, foreign nationals, and soldiers," it said.
"Palestinian terrorists and gunmen were responsible for the deaths of 376 Israelis killed in the occupied territories."
The report also said Palestinian security forces used excessive force against Palestinians during demonstrations, abused prisoners and arbitrarily arrested and detained persons.
It said the Palestinian court system failed to provide fair trials, and the security services ignored or failed to carry out judicial rulings.
The report said that Israeli security forces killed at least 573 Palestinians and one foreign national and injured 2,992 Palestinians and others during the year, including bystanders, the report found. Israel targeted and killed at least 44 Palestinians, many of whom were terrorists or suspected terrorists.
The report said security forces carried out many of the targeted killings in areas where civilian casualties were likely, killing 47 bystanders in the process, and added the government said it made every effort to reduce civilian casualties during these operations.
The report charged Palestinian militants with used minors to prepare or carry out attacks, calling the practice "exploitation that amounted to forced conscription."
The number of Israelis killed by Palestinian terror within the Green Line went down in 2003 by 50 percent since the previous year, according to the Israeli assessment cited in the report. Those attacks resulted in the deaths of about 213 Israelis, including about 50 soldiers, while about 900 Israelis were wounded.
Jordan, Morocco praised on women's rights
The report noted that Jordan's King Abdullah II had increased the number of women in the appointed 55-member Senate from three to seven, and Morocco had undertaken reforms to improve the status of women.
Egypt was continuing to restrict basic rights through the use of emergency laws and Syria used torture, significantly limited the right of free speech and assembly and allowed no political opposition, the report said.
In Saudi Arabia, the kingdom used torture and arbitrary detention, restricted the right to freely practice one's religion and had not stopped violence and discrimination against women.
The report also said the Iranian government continued to commit numerous, serious abuses.
"The Iranian people's ability to assert their democratic will continued to be hindered by a structure that exerts undue influence on the electoral and legislative processes by regime hard-liners," the State Department said.
[i][b]By Haaretz Service and The Associated Press[/b][/i], http://www.haaretzdaily.com/h...
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| NOAM CHOMSKY: A WALL AS A WEAPON |
| 02.27.04 (8:18 am) [edit] |
[b]A Wall as a Weapon [/b]
It is a virtual reflex for governments to plead security concerns when they undertake any controversial action, often as a pretext for something else. Careful scrutiny is always in order. Israel's so-called security fence, which is the subject of hearings starting today at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, is a case in point.
Few would question Israel's right to protect its citizens from terrorist attacks like the one yesterday, even to build a security wall if that were an appropriate means. It is also clear where such a wall would be built if security were the guiding concern: inside Israel, within the internationally recognized border, the Green Line established after the 1948-49 war. The wall could then be as forbidding as the authorities chose: patrolled by the army on both sides, heavily mined, impenetrable. Such a wall would maximize security, and there would be no international protest or violation of international law.
This observation is well understood. While Britain supports America's opposition to The Hague hearings, its foreign minister, Jack Straw, has written that the wall is "unlawful." Another ministry official, who inspected the "security fence," said it should be on the Green Line or "indeed on the Israeli side of the line." A British parliamentary investigative commission also called for the wall to be built on Israeli land, condemning the barrier as part of a "deliberate" Israeli "strategy of bringing the population to heel."
What this wall is really doing is taking Palestinian lands. It is also - as the Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling has described Israel's war of "politicide" against the Palestinians - helping turn Palestinian communities into dungeons, next to which the Bantustans of South Africa look like symbols of freedom, sovereignty and self-determination.
Even before construction of the barrier was under way, the United Nations estimated that Israeli barriers, infrastructure projects and settlements had created 50 disconnected Palestinian pockets in the est Bank. As the design of the wall was coming into view, the World Bank estimated that it might isolate 250,000 to 300,000 Palestinians, more than 10 percent of the population, and that it might effectively annex up to 10 percent of West Bank land. And when the government of Ariel Sharon finally published its proposed map, it became clear that the wall would cut the West Bank into 16 isolated enclaves, confined to just 42 percent of the West Bank land that Mr. Sharon had previously said could be ceded to a Palestinian state.
The wall has already claimed some of the most fertile lands of the West Bank. And, crucially, it extends Israel's control of critical water resources, which Israel and its settlers can appropriate as they choose, while the indigenous population often lacks water for drinking.
Palestinians in the seam between the wall and the Green Line will be permitted to apply for the right to live in their own homes; Israelis automatically have the right to use these lands. "Hiding behind security rationales and the seemingly neutral bureaucratic language of military orders is the gateway for expulsion," the Israeli journalist Amira Hass wrote in the daily Haaretz. "Drop by drop, unseen, not so many that it would be noticed internationally and shock public opinion." The same is true of the regular killings, terror and daily brutality and humiliation of the past 35 years of harsh occupation, while land and resources have been taken for settlers enticed by ample subsidies.
It also seems likely that Israel will transfer to the occupied West Bank the 7,500 settlers it said this month it would remove from the Gaza Strip. These Israelis now enjoy ample land and fresh water, while one million Palestinians barely survive, their meager water supplies virtually unusable. Gaza is a cage, and as the city of Rafah in the south is systematically demolished, residents may be blocked from any contact with Egypt and blockaded from the sea.
It is misleading to call these Israeli policies. They are American-Israeli policies - made possible by unremitting United States military, economic and diplomatic support of Israel. This has been true since 1971 when, with American support, Israel rejected a full peace offer from Egypt, preferring expansion to security. In 1976, the United States vetoed a Security Council resolution calling for a two-state settlement in accord with an overwhelming international consensus. The two-state proposal has the support of a majority of Americans today, and could be enacted immediately if Washington wanted
to do so.
At most, the Hague hearings will end in an advisory ruling that the wall is illegal. It will change nothing. Any real chance for a political settlement - and for decent lives for the people of the region - depends on the United States.
[i][b]Noam Chomsky[/b][/i], http://www.zmag.org/content/s...
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| TRUE TORAH JEWS ARE AGAINST ZIONISM |
| 02.23.04 (12:14 pm) [edit] |
ZIONIST [b]EXPANSIONISM [/b]BREEDS WAR AND KILLING OF INNOCENT ARABS.
TO BE ANTI ZIONIST [b]EXPANSIONISM[/b] IS NOT TO BE ANTI-SEMITIC, ANTI-JEWISH OR ANTI-ZION. THOSE OF US WHO SUPPORT ISRAEL BELIEVE THAT ISRAEL SHOULD [b]OBEY INTERNATIONAL LAW[/b]. TO BE ANTI ZIONIST[b] EXPANSIONISM [/b]IS TO BE ANTI-KILLING PALESTINIANS IN ORDER TO WIPE THEM OUT AND BRING ABOUT SOME BIZARRO ARMAGEDDON.
ISRAEL SHOULD BE A STATE THAT LIKE OTHER COUNTRIES HAS TO RESPECT OTHER PEOPLE AND THEIR BORDERS. PEOPLE LIVING INSIDE OF ISRAEL SHOULD HAVE RIGHTS AND PROTECTIONS AND NOT BE TORTURED OR KILLED.
[b]Jews Against Zion[/b]
This site was created to provide historical documentation refuting the misconception that all Jewry supports Zionism (the existence of the so-called "State of Israel") for website visitors seeking information on the history of Zionism, its historical and current day impact on the Jewish community worldwide and the danger it presents to us all.
For decades renowned Rabbinical leaders and scholars have opposed the creation of a "Jewish State", supporting their opposition with words of the scriptures and of the Torah, as being diametrically opposed to the ideology of Judaism. We have provided many such quotations for the inquiring website visitor who is seeking such information.
Although there are those who refuse to accept the teachings of our Rabbis and will continue to support the Zionist state, there are also many who are totally unaware of the history of Zionism and its contradiction to the beliefs of Torah-True Jews.
Click on http://www.jewsagainstzionism...
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| ZIONIST PROPAGANDA: YOU'RE NOT ANTI-SEMITIC FOR OPPOSING ISRAELIS KILLING PALESTINIANS |
| 02.23.04 (12:05 pm) [edit] |
SOME JEWS THINK THAT ANYONE WHO SPEAKS OUT AGAINST THE ISRAELIS MASSACRING THE PALESTINIANS IS "ANTI-SEMITIC": THAT IS PROPAGANDIST [b]CLAP-TRAP[/b].
ONE SHOULD NOT BE INTIMIDATED OR ATTACKED FOR SPEAKING OUT AGAINST ZIONIST [b]EXPANSIONISM[/b] DESIGNED TO BRING ABOUT SOME LUDICROUS ARMAGEDDON:
[b]Jews for Peace in Palestine and Israel (JPPI)[/b]
Jews for Peace in Palestine and Israel (JPPI) is a group of American Jews who believe that a just, comprehensive, and lasting peace in Palestine and Israel is attainable through negotiations based on international law and the implementation of relevant United Nations (UN) resolutions.
We believe that as Jews outside of Israel, we have both a right and obligation to speak out in favor of an Israel that pursues peaceful, ethical, just, and democratic policies.
Please visit regularly to view our latest activities, campaigns and publications.
For media inquiries or other questions, please contact Josh Ruebner at 202-423-7666 or email us at: info@jppi.org.
Click on http://www.jppi.org/
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| ISRAEL'S MAD LAND GRAB AND MASSACRE OF INNOCENT PALESTINIANS |
| 02.23.04 (11:46 am) [edit] |
"There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people." – Howard Zinn
[b]The law of the land grab[/b]
[i][b]Whenever Israeli actions in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip are criticised by the international community, state officials readily evoke the defensive mantra that Israel is a democracy and a law-abiding country[/b][/i].
However, Palestinians, human rights activists, including London-based Amnesty International do not buy this argument, dismissing it as deceptive.
They contend that when it comes to the occupied territories, the authority of the law in Israel is effectively subservient to the requirements of the occupation.
Manifestly illegal acts, such as house demolitions, civilian deportations and the confiscation of privately owned land, are rendered legal by the issuing of a military order. Such orders enable the army to carry out the originally illegal act “in accordance with the law”.
Mahmud Nammura, a human rights activist from the town of Dura near Hebron, has ample experience of the Israeli justice system.
He says the laws Israel applies in the occupied territories are “inherently incompatible with even most elementary elements of justice”.
[b]Tormented[/b]
“Of course Israel claims it follows the rule of law. The question is: what law? It is the occupier’s law that is designed to torment the Palestinians, persecute and dispossess them of their land and property. The Nazis also claimed they did everything according to the law.”
Nammura, whose home and small library were dynamited last year without him being informed in advance as a punishment for his two sons’ involvement in the Intifada, says the problem with Israeli laws, particularly those pertaining to non-Jews, is that they are racist and devoid of justice.
He gives the example of home demolitions, a sinister and routine form of punishment, meted out to Palestinian civilians.
“Where on earth is a person punished for a crime he or she has not committed? Here, in the so-called only democracy in the Middle East. Innocent people, including children, babies and old men and women are tormented and tortured because a grown-up member of the family threw a stone at an Israeli tank or was involved with the resistance.
“When Israeli troops come before dawn to demolish the family home of a Palestinian detainee, without giving the family even five minutes to save their belongings and furniture, they are punishing not the culprits but the innocents.”
[b]Rubber stamp[/b]
According to Nammura, the Israeli justice system is used as a “rubber stamp” in the hands of the occupation army for the purpose of tormenting Palestinians.
According to Israeli military law, the family home of a Palestinian detainee cannot be destroyed before the detainee is sentenced by the military court and granted the opportunity to appeal against the sentence.
In Nammura’s case, however, his home was dynamited before a court judgment was issued, leaving Nammura unable to appeal a non-existent court sentence.
“A large force arrived at our home at dawn,” says Nammura. “They told us they wanted to blow up our home and that we had five minutes to leave. I asked them if they had a court order to destroy the home. The commanding officer said: ‘I am the law.’”
“I told him: ‘You are the most honest Israeli I have ever met in my life. You are telling the truth. You are the law.’”
[b]Nazi history[/b]
A historian, Nammura, argues that the Israeli army is “worse than the Nazis”.
“History’s worst occupiers didn’t do what the Israelis are doing to us. When the Nazis occupied Paris, they forced the French to do certain work for the army, but they didn’t destroy the homes of French citizens; they didn’t confiscate the private property of the French like Israel is doing in Palestine.”
Ada Ravon is an Israeli lawyer dealing with, among other things, the Israeli occupation army’s violations of Palestinian rights in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
She told Aljazeera.net whenever it came to the Palestinians, the rule of law (and the law itself) became “utterly emasculated”.
“The occupation itself is illegal. The rest is details,” she says.
[b]Blatantly illegal[/b]
“Israel knows that what it is doing is blatantly illegal, but it does it nevertheless.”
When pressed to explain why the Israeli justice system allowed blatantly illegal activities, such as building “illegal settlements on private Arab land,” Ravon says:
“In dealing with the Palestinians, Israel stops acting as a law-abiding country. That is the crux of the matter.”
In addition to “legalising” the oppression of the Palestinians, apparently in order to make their daily life unbearable and force them to immigrate, Israel applies two sets of laws in the West Bank, one for Jews and the other for non-Jews.
[b]Draconian laws[/b]
According to Yusuf Rabai, a prominent Palestinian lawyer in the Hebron region, Israel uses “anachronistic and draconian laws” dating back to the British mandate era.
“They select the harshest and most unjust laws and apply them to the Palestinians. If they find that these laws are not sufficiently oppressive, they issue additional military orders to inflict maximum suffering on the Palestinians.”
Rabai points out that the discriminatory nature of the Israeli justice system is conspicuous in preventing Palestinians from building homes in the vicinity of Israeli settlements.
“What they are saying is that only Jews have the right to build on “meiri” or state land. If a Palestinian builds a home on his own land near a settlement, the house is demolished.
“Sometimes they claim that the land doesn’t belong to him. But when he produces a land deed, they claim he can’t build for unspecified security reasons. In the final analysis, everyone knows it comes down to the real thing, namely that he is not a Jew.
“And they call themselves the only democracy in the Middle East.”
[i][b]By Khalid Amayreh in the West Bank[/b][/i], http://english.aljazeera.net/...
[b]ISREAL HAS MASSACRED OVER 3000 PALESTINIANS SINCE BUSH TOOK OFFICE[/b].
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| AMERICA IS COMPLICIT IN ILLEGAL APARTHEID WALL IN ISRAEL |
| 02.23.04 (6:23 am) [edit] |
[b]America is Complicit in Illegal Wall [/b]
WHEN THE International Court of Justice at The Hague meets on Monday about Israel's "security fence" in the West Bank, it should find that the wall constitutes a violation of both fundamental human rights and international law.
The fundamental issue lies between "military necessity" and "proportionality." Israel certainly has an obligation to protect its citizens from violent attacks, but it also has a responsibility to protect the safety, well-being, and rights of the Palestinian civilian population under its control. The wall's route, extending deep into Palestinian territory, has the look of a political border, not a security barrier.
Rather than a linear defensive barrier bordering the West Bank, the wall is a complex matrix that literally imprisons thousands of Palestinians in enclaves encircled by 24-foot high walls, electronic fences, and watchtowers manned by armed Israeli soldiers.
In a brief presented to the International Court, the Association of Civil Rights in Israel argues that the wall's route and its other mechanisms of control are not necessary, proportionate, or legitimate security measures.
As a result, the wall violates the basic provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention, a key component of international law which protects civilians living under occupation. It divides families, destroys communities, obstructs people's freedom of movement, and, ultimately, drives them out. It violates prohibitions on confiscating private property in occupied territories. By alienating farmers from their land, it prevents them from earning a livelihood.
Overall, it violates Israel's legal obligations to ensure the well-being of the civilian population under its control, including its right to liberty, security of person, mental and physical health, and freedom from cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. As such the wall constitutes a form of collective punishment levied against innocent civilians. The wall also violates political provisions of international law which forbid the acquisition of territory by force and thus prohibit an occupying power from making its occupation permanent.
The route of the wall illegally protects and annexes already illegal settlements. By impinging on Palestinian territory it violates their right to self-determination. Indeed, it violates the international prohibition of apartheid as an aggravated form of racial discrimination. But complicity in violations of human rights is not confined only to Israel. The United States, Israel's chief ally, is culpable as well -- and by extension so are citizens of the United States.
The US government sells massive quantities of sophisticated arms to Israel, a major violator of human rights according to the State Department, even though US law prohibits sales to countries designated as such. American arms intended to be used against armies -- F-16s, Apache helicopters with laser-guided missiles, tanks, and artillery -- are deployed against civilian neighborhoods and refugee camps. It provides an umbrella for Israel, enabling it to treat the Palestinians with impunity and steadily strengthen its occupation, yet avoid international accountability. It even provides funds -- tax dollars -- for Israeli-only highways connecting West Bank settlements to Israel proper. Is American support for the wall (with minor reservations) congruent with American interests? In a world in which the United States seeks to combat terrorism yet is seen as a bully toward Arabs and Muslims, is active involvement in repressing the Palestinian people truly constructive? Can US-Israeli unilateralism provide a sustainable approach to a better, more peaceful, more just world?
Israel's wall poses a threat and a challenge to all of us. Human rights and international law, formulated largely against the backdrop of the Holocaust, affirm that suffering and oppression can no longer be considered "internal affairs" of particular countries.
We are all responsible for what happens everywhere. What made the Berlin Wall so significant for us all? What motivated President Kennedy to declare: "We are all Berliners"?
It was the idea that there are certain fundamental rights, certain fundamental conditions of life that, if violated, compromise the very essence of human existence. To the degree that the international community accepts responsibility for the well-being of people everywhere, you as a part of civil society have a responsibility to oppose the wall. To the degree that our tax dollars enable Israeli occupation and violations of human rights such as those represented by the wall, we bear a direct responsibility. If Kennedy were alive, today, he might travel to the besieged, walled-in city of Qalqiliya to pronounce: "We are all Palestinians."
[i][b]By Jeff Halper is coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions[/b][/i]., http://www.commondreams.org/v...
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| RIGHT-WINGERS DOCTOR JOHN KERRY PHOTOS ... LIKE THEY DOCTORED PHONY WMD PHOTOS? |
| 02.21.04 (8:00 am) [edit] |
IS THE SAME BUSH [i]FABRICATION AND SPECIAL EFFECTS FACTORY [/i]THAT DOCTORED PHONY WMD PHOTOS ALSO DOCTORING PHOTOS OF JOHN KERRY?
[b]Doctored Kerry Photo Brings Anger, Threat of Suit [/b]
The photographer who snapped John Kerry attending a 1971 anti-war rally says he and his photo agency intend to track down -- and possibly sue -- whoever doctored and circulated a photo that made it appear that the then 27-year-old Vietnam veteran was appearing alongside actress Jane Fonda.
Ken Light, now a UC Berkeley professor of journalism ethics, says he photographed Kerry at an anti-war rally in Mineola, N.Y., on June 13, 1971. The decorated Vietnam veteran was preparing to give a speech at the rally -- but Fonda was never at the event.
Light's photo gained prominence when someone took it and merged the shot of the now Democratic presidential front-runner with another separate photo of Fonda -- one taken by photographer Owen Franken as the actress spoke to a 1972 rally in Miami Beach, Fla.
The fabricated Kerry-Fonda photo was circulated with an identifying logo of the Associated Press and became the subject of talk show fodder after it was placed on many Web sites as evidence of Kerry's "anti-American" activities after his war service.
Light said this week that the use -- and misuse -- of his copyrighted photo might result in legal action.
"(We're) doing everything possible to track down who it was and bring them to justice,'' said Light, who said the Associated Press also intended to examine the issue of who would use the agency's copyright for fraudulent purposes.
A spokesman for Light's photo agency, Corbis, said its photographers' work and copyrights are treated seriously.
The agency will "investigate this matter and take appropriate action as necessary,'' the spokesman said.
Light, who teaches at the journalism school at UC Berkeley, said he regularly instructed his students on matters of law and photo ethics. But ironically, this year, "I've become the lesson,'' he said, referring to how easy it has become to produce sophisticated and potentially damaging photos via computer.
"With modern technology, anybody can do it,'' he said of the doctored photo of Kerry, now a 60-year-old, four-term Massachusetts senator. "Someone has to be really motivated and understand what they're doing.''
Still, "it's one thing to (create) an image and another to try to make it look like it came right from a newspaper,'' Light said. The addition of the Associated Press logo suggested that whoever fabricated the photo was "definitely more than someone having fun. ... People just see it, and it creates this impression that it really happened."
Light said he was outraged by his almost 33-year-old photo's popping into the news and becoming the subject of such Internet chatter.
"I was completely shocked and a little disappointed there would be this type of fakery in a political campaign,'' he said.
"You become very concerned for democracy when you realize people are so angry, they're desperately trying to find anything to tilt the direction of what people are thinking,'' he said.
[i][b]Carla Marinucci, San Francisco Chronicle[/b][/i], http://www.commondreams.org/h...
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| IRAN DENIES PRESENCE OF CENTRIFUGES AT MILITARY BASE |
| 02.20.04 (3:06 pm) [edit] |
[b]Iran denies presence of centrifuges at military base[/b]
TEHRAN: The Iranian foreign ministry denied "in the strongest possible terms" on Thursday reports from diplomats at the UN’s nuclear watchdog that components of an advanced uranium enrichment centrifuge had been found by international inspectors at a military base.
"The reports that there are centrifuges of this type in a military base are without any basis or foundation and we deny them in the strongest possible terms," spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said in a statement.
Asefi asserted that Iran’s research into advanced centrifuges was "a purely scientific project", in other words only the subject of research, and that such centrifuges had "never been put into service".
"There is no nuclear activity and no centrifuges of this type in any military bases," he insisted, asserting that the Islamic republic had "never carried out any nuclear activity for military purposes."
Earlier, diplomats at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna said that the UN teams in Iran had found components of an advanced uranium enrichment centrifuge of a type Tehran had failed to declare while claiming to provide full disclosure on its atomic programme.
A diplomat close to the IAEA said inspectors had found "design components of a G-2 centrifuge", an advanced model of what is the crucial machine used in configurations of hundreds of gas centrifuges to enrich uranium for either civilian power use or for making an atomic bomb.
The diplomats were confirming a report in the newspaper USA Today on Thursday that quoted US and foreign sources as saying the IAEA inspectors had found sophisticated uranium-enrichment machinery at an air force base outside Tehran.
The machinery, described as a gas-centrifuge system that had been constructed and tested, was found at Doshen-Tappen air base, said the daily. Meanwhile, the White House said that it had "serious concerns" about reports that UN inspectors had found components of an advanced uranium-enrichment centrifuge. "We have serious concerns about these reports," said spokesman Scott McClellan.
"We have long said that our belief is Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons programme under the cover of a peaceful effort. We look forward to the (IAEA) director general’s next report on Iran and the discussion that will follow at the March board of governors meeting," he said.
[i][b]International The News[/b][/i], http://jang.com.pk/thenews/fe...
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| ISRAELI SUSPECTED OF SELLING NUKES TO INDIA AND PAKISTAN |
| 02.20.04 (3:03 pm) [edit] |
[b]Israeli suspected of selling nukes to India and Pakistan[/b]
WASHINGTON - An Israeli businessman accused of being a middleman in the nuclear black market worked to supply not only Pakistan but also its arch-rival India, court records indicate.
South Africa-based Asher Karni faces felony charges of exporting nuclear bomb triggers to Pakistan. But court files in the case also include e-mail exchanges between Karni and an Indian businessman who was trying secretly to buy material for two Indian rocket factories.
"Be careful to avoid any reference to the customer name," warned one message from Karni's Indian contact, Raghavendra "Ragu" Rao of Foretek Marketing (Pvt.) Ltd.
The messages offer a rare glimpse into such dealings. Federal prosecutors filed them in court as part of their attempts to persuade a judge to keep Karni behind bars before his trial.
After conferring with U.S. Magistrate Judge Alan Kay on Thursday, lawyers for both sides agreed to postpone a bond hearing for Karni until next Tuesday. L. Barrett Boss, one of Karni's lawyers, declined comment after the hearing.
Karni, 50, has pleaded innocent. Federal agents arrested him on New Year's Day when he arrived in Denver for a ski vacation.
Authorities accuse Karni of using front companies and falsified documents to buy nuclear bomb triggers in the United States and ship them to Pakistan.
The United States is pressuring Pakistan to shut down the black-market network it used to supply its nuclear weapons program and in turn to supply Iran, North Korea and Libya with nuclear technology. A key scientist in Pakistan's nuclear program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, said this month that he ran the network but insisted Pakistan's government was not involved.
Rao's e-mails from India ask Karni to procure three kinds of high-tech equipment while concealing that they were meant for the two rocket labs. The United States restricts exports of missile-related material to the two organizations, the Liquid Propulsion Systems Center and the Vikram Sarabhai Space Center.
An August 2002 e-mail from Rao to Karni warns Karni to conceal the final customer of an accelerometer to the LPSC, noting its export is restricted because of its "possibility of being used in guidance systems for missiles."
Rao did not respond to AP e-mails seeking comment Thursday.
Prosecutors said they found his e-mails while searching a laptop computer and six computer discs Karni had when he was arrested.
The court files also include records of other deals Karni made with his contact in Pakistan, Humayun Khan of the company Pakland PME. One involved Khan's urgent request last May for Karni to buy infrared sensors for AIM-9L Sidewinder missiles - which Pakistan uses on its F-16 fighter planes for air-to-air combat.
While it is unclear whether that deal went through, the request shows Karni must have known Khan had ties to the Pakistani military, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay Bratt argued in court documents.
Another deal which apparently was completed was Humayun Khan's request for a sophisticated oscilloscope, a measuring device that could be used in nuclear weapons programs. For that deal, the documents indicate, Karni used the same U.S. intermediary he used for the bomb triggers: Giza Technologies Inc. of Seacaucus, New Jersey.
In an August e-mail to Giza head Zeki Bilmen, Karni said he had a "new project" for Giza. "It is very important that they will not know it is coming to S.A. (South Africa)," Karni wrote.
Karni in May had asked the oscilloscope maker, Tektronix Inc., if he could buy an oscilloscope for Pakistan, but the company told him to ask for a U.S. export license first, court records indicate. There is no indication Karni contacted Tektronix directly again.
Bilmen has declined comment. Neither he nor his company have been charged, though Bratt wrote that agents searched Giza's offices in December at the same time South African police raided Karni's offices in Cape Town.
The criminal case against Karni centers on his efforts to buy devices called triggered spark gaps from PerkinElmer Optoelectronics of Salem, Mass. The devices can be used in machines to break up kidney stones, but exports are restricted because they also are key to triggering nuclear detonations.
A PerkinElmer representative in France rebuffed Karni's efforts to buy spark gaps last spring, saying Karni had to certify they would not be used in nuclear weapons. Khan urged Karni to try harder, writing in an e-mail: "I know it is difficult but that's why we came to know each other."
Karni then used Giza as a front to buy 66 spark gaps from PerkinElmer, prosecutors allege.
Giza said on shipping documents the spark gaps were destined for a South African hospital, but Karni repackaged them and sent them on to Pakistan, court documents allege.
A court filing from Karni's Colorado lawyers includes a letter purportedly from the Pakistani user of the triggers, saying they had been sent to "Agha Khan Foundation University and Hospitals" in Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
The Aga Khan Foundation does not have any hospitals in Sri Lanka, however. Its hospital in Karachi, Pakistan, has only one of the kidney stone treatment machines. PerkinElmer executives told U.S. authorities that even the largest hospital would need only two or three of the triggers for a kidney treatment center, not dozens of them.
[i][b]Associated Press (AP)[/b][/i], http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/...
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| ISRAEL'S FAILING WALL: THE WALL OF APARTHEID! |
| 02.20.04 (3:00 pm) [edit] |
[b]Israel's Failing Wall[/b]
[i]Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall...
(from "Mending Wall," Robert Frost)[/i]
It used to take ten minutes to ride from the village of Azariya to the Old City that divides West (Jewish) and East (Arab) Jerusalem. Following the outbreak of the second intifada in September 2000, Israeli soldiers set up a checkpoint across the main (only) street that links the West Bank with Jerusalem. As the cycle of violence increased, with Palestinian suicide bombers striking at Israeli civilians in Jerusalem buses and cafes, the Israeli army built a six-foot-high wall across the street. That stopped cars from crossing, but enterprising Palestinians placed boulders on both sides of the wall, enabling men going to work, youth going to school, old men with canes and women with shopping bags to climb back and forth. People would pass babies over the barrier like an old-time bucket brigade. Entrepreneurial souls even set up makeshift stands to sell goods and produce on both sides of the wall, a spontaneous Middle Eastern souk. Taxis took travelers to one side of the wall, they climbed over, and were picked up on the other side by another taxi to continue on their way. Sometimes bored soldiers stood alongside the wall and spot-checked people, but more often than not there was just the wall, and a semblance of normal life continued.
A few weeks ago the residents of Azariya suddenly awoke to discover that a hulking, twelve-foot-high granite wall was emerging in place of the six-foot obstacle. It wound its way up and down hills like a gloomy medieval dragon, casting a dark shadow over the area. An outsider could immediately sense the dispirited pessimism that overtook Azariya. All the stores on both sides of the wall closed, almost overnight. It was like a scene from a novel by García Márquez.
This granite monstrosity--there's nothing even slightly aesthetic about it--is part of the "Jerusalem envelope" built to protect the citizens of Jerusalem, Jewish and Palestinian, since both are random victims of the suicide bombers.
And now the wall is going to The Hague, to the International Court of Justice (the World Court), with hearings beginning on February 23.
Originally a fence/wall was proposed by Labor Party members as a temporary security barrier until negotiations for a permanent settlement could resume and reach fruition. The idea was that it would run more or less along the Green Line that separates the State of Israel from the West Bank. The right, including Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, was opposed to the idea, because it implied recognition of the pre-1967 borders as the eventual dividing line between Israel and a future Palestinian state. However, as Sharon proved unable to provide the "peace and security" he promised in his election campaign, the idea of a security barrier began to look more appealing, particularly when compared with a political initiative that would require genuine and "painful" (his words) compromises. The settler lobby insisted that the barrier should include as many West Bank settlements on the Israeli side as possible, so the barrier kept moving eastward, encompassing more and more settlers and Palestinian villagers--tens of thousands of them. It cut off farmers from their lands, children from their schools and workers from their sources of livelihood, uprooting ancient olive trees in the process.
The Israeli government is clearly concerned about the fact that the UN General Assembly has asked the World Court for an advisory opinion on the issue. The government submitted an affidavit to the Court arguing that it has no legal authority to rule on the issue but decided not to send representatives to participate in the deliberations. Meanwhile, two Israeli NGOs have submitted petitions to the Israeli Supreme Court arguing the illegality of a separation barrier in occupied territory, the declaration of the adjacent area as a closed military zone and the access permit system, which "gravely infringes the rights of thousands of Palestinian residents, and could potentially destroy the social fabric and compel the residents to flee their homes." Says Association for Civil Rights in Israel spokesperson Yoav Loeff, "We believe that Israel has the right to defend itself, and wouldn't be opposed to a separation barrier if it were located along the Green Line."
Regardless of how the World Court and the Israeli Supreme Court rule on the issue, the Israeli government is already on the defensive. With the specter of the beginnings of a South Africa-type international boycott looming over the horizon, Sharon has begun to waver. And "Sharon-gate"--the police investigation into bribery charges against his sons, in which he himself is implicated--hasn't helped matters. Thus his sudden readiness to reconsider the route of the separation barrier, to make it coincide more closely with the Green Line. Thus also his surprising announcement that all of the 7,500 Jewish settlers who live among 1.4 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip will eventually have to return to Israel. However, as most Israeli pundits note, with Sharon the question is always, Will his words be followed by deeds? So far, it's only words.
Najat Hirbawi, circulation manager of the[i] Palestine-Israel Journal[/i], lives in Azariya. She says there are three ways of coping with the new walled-off reality. She and her family have moved to East Jerusalem, to guarantee access to work; those who can afford it choose this option. A second option open to bearers of foreign passports is simply to leave--to Canada, the United States, Europe or Latin America. Left behind are the poor, the less educated, less mobile, many of them depressed and very angry.
The irony is that one can see a mirror image on the Israeli side. A growing number of the young, the ambitious, the more highly educated and the mobile are thinking of leaving. Are we, both Israelis and Palestinians, in the process of turning back the clock to the days when Mark Twain visited almost 150 years ago and saw only a miserable and backward population, described in [i]The Innocents Abroad[/i]--with the modern addition of unhealthy doses of religious fundamentalism on both sides of the divide? Or will we, with the aid of the international community, rediscover the life force necessary to generate an equitable solution to our bloody conflict?
The Hebrew University's noted military historian Professor Martin van Creveld says that walls for security purposes have worked--in Berlin, Cyprus and Korea. Yet when a few Knesset members recently returned from a visit to China they described how their guide took them to visit the Great Wall and proudly noted that it is the only man-made structure visible from space. "However," he said as a lesson to would-be wall-builders, "it didn't succeed in keeping out the Mongols."
[i][b]By Hillel Schenker, Tel Aviv, THE NATION[/b][/i], http://www.thenation.com/doc....
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| DON'T GIVE HIM THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE - GIVE HIM THE BIG BOOB PRIZE |
| 02.19.04 (1:21 pm) [edit] |
[b]'Kicking around a Peace Prize'[/b]
The wire services distributed it.
The news media published it.
Even Netscape put it on its front page.
George W. Bush was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.
Yes, [i]that [/i]George W. Bush.
The same one who, with a gaggle of senior advisors, rammed the USA Patriot Act into our stomachs and claimed it protected our civil liberties and national security, although it violates the First, Fourth, Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth amendments to the Constitution.
The president who not only destroyed a fragile truce between the United States and North Korea, but alienated Canada, France, Germany, and half the world as well.
The commander-in-chief who sent more than 200,000 Americans into harm's way to destroy both non-existent weapons of mass destruction and a nation that was at the birthplace of civilization. The commander-in-chief who donned a flight suit and landed on an aircraft carrier to proclaim "Mission Accomplished." The commander-in-chief under whose command more than 500 Americans and several thousand Iraqis, most of them civilian, have died; and more than 2,500 Americans and several thousand more Iraqis have been wounded, some with permanent and debilitating injuries. The commander-in-chief who proudly proclaims himself to be a war-time president, whose own vice-president told the Washington Post that warfare under Bush "may never end."
[i]That[/i] George W. Bush.
The requirements to win a Nobel Peace Prize include that the recipient "shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses." Nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize can come from thousands of individuals, including any member of a nation's legislature, past Nobel laureates, and university professors. This year, 129 individuals and 44 organizations were nominated. The Nobel committee doesn't announce names for 50 years, but those who nominate individuals or the individuals themselves often let the news media know. Jan Simonsen, a right-wing member of the Norwegian parliament, nominated Bush and British prime minister Tony Blair "for having dared to take the necessary decision to launch a war on Iraq without having the support of the UN." That statement alone should disqualify Bush from any consideration.
Fortunately, the Norwegian parliament, which selects the five members of the committee, has strongly opposed American war policies. Stein Toennesson, director of the International Peace Research Institute, said that when the Nobel committee rightly awarded a Peace Prize to former president Jimmy Carter, it was "a kick in the legs" to Bush's war policies. Geir Lundestad, the Committee's secretary, says he has received thousands of e-mails and letters opposing Bush's nomination.
In her acceptance speech in December, upon winning last year's Nobel Peace Prize, Shirin Ebadi, a judge who had been imprisoned by Iran for her vigorous defense of children's and women's rights, boldly stated, "In the past two years, some states have violated the universal principles and laws of human rights by using the events of 11 September and the war on international terrorism as a pretext." Elaborating, but not specifically identifying Bush, she vigorously noted that "Regulations restricting human rights and basic freedoms . . . have been justified and given legitimacy under the cloak of the war on terrorism."
To American presidents Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Jimmy Carter; to statesmen and diplomats Ralph Bunche, Elihu Root, and Cordell Hull; to social workers Jane Addams and Emily Balch; to Martin Luther King Jr., Elie Wiesel, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandella, Mother Teresa, and Red Cross founder Jean Henry Dunant, who earned the honor, this nomination is an insult. But, it is certainly in line with the nomination in 2001 that the sport of soccer be given a Nobel Peace Prize.
[i][b]By Walter Brasch, http://www.smirkingchimp.com/... , Walter Brasch's latest book is Sex and the Single Beer Can, a witty and incisive look at American media and culture. You may contact Dr. Brasch through www.walterbrasch.com or at brasch@bloomu.edu[/b][/i]
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| PALESTINIAN P.M. WANTS U.N. PEACEKEEPERS |
| 02.19.04 (12:33 pm) [edit] |
[b]Palestinian PM wants UN peacekeepers[/b]
Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie yesterday called for international forces to keep the peace between Israelis and Palestinians if Israel withdraws from Gaza, to restore confidence as Palestinians resume control.
"If the Israelis withdraw (from Gaza) I think we will be able to run the areas that they withdraw from," Qurie said in the European Parliament on a visit to Brussels.
"What we want from you, we want your support to rebuild our security... I think we need international forces or peacekeeping forces at that time. This will help," he said.
Qurie reacted positively to a suggestion by one deputy in parliament that peacekeepers should come from the United States and the European Union, agreeing that US troops would be popular in Israel while Palestinians would respect EU troops.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced this month he would remove most Jewish settlements from the Gaza Strip, which Israel seized with the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war. Sharon did not say when.
The proposal has raised fears of a power vacuum following Israel's departure, which could be exploited by Palestinian militant groups and further increase violence.
Qurie gave cautious approval to Sharon's proposed withdrawal, but insisted any peace settlement be part of an established US-backed "road map" for Middle East peace.
"Of course we will not say 'no you should stay there'. We will welcome this step, but we want it to be part of the deal, not the deal," he said. "We want it to be on the basis of the road map."
He warned of tensions between democratic, secular Palestinians and others with what he called "an extremist agenda", making the presence of international peacekeepers vital if Israel withdrew.
"We are not fighting each other, but we are competing with each other in a democratic way. If this situation will continue then the democratic secular program will fail and the extremists will win," he said.
"I believe that this is the time for the world to decide to send peacekeeping forces, international forces to separate between the Palestinians and Israelis," he said.
-[i][b] Reuters[/b][/i], http://www.theage.com.au/arti...
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| RED CROSS CONDEMNS ISRAELI WALL |
| 02.19.04 (12:28 pm) [edit] |
[b]Red Cross condemns Israeli wall[/b]
Israel has rejected a declaration by the International Committee of the Red Cross that its West Bank fence violates international humanitarian law because it cuts across Palestinian land.
The Red Cross called on Israel "not to plan, construct or maintain this barrier within occupied territory". The aid agency said the barrier, part wire fence and part 26ft concrete wall, barred thousands of Palestinian civilians from adequate access to water, health care and education. This went "far beyond what is permissible for an occupying power under international humanitarian law", the Red Cross said. The barrier gave rise to "widespread appropriation of Palestinian property and extensive damage to, or destruction of, buildings and farmland".
The International Court is to start hearings into the legality of the fence in The Hague on Monday. Israel, which challenged the court's jurisdiction, will not present its case to the 15 judges. But outside the courthouse it will display the burnt-out frame of a Jerusalem bus in which a suicide bomber killed 11 passengers three weeks ago.
The court said yesterday that the United States and most European countries, which submitted written statements to the court, would not put forward oral arguments. Britain has condemned the building of the barrier but says it is inappropriate for the court to examine the legality of the barrier "without the consent of both parties".
Jonathan Peled, a foreign ministry spokesman, said Israel was forced to build the fence after more than 20,000 terrorist attacks in the past three years. He said the Red Cross was compromising its neutral status by intervening in a political issue.
Balthasar Staehelin, a Red Cross official, said that if the fence followed the pre-1967 war border, "that would solve many of the problems".
[i][b]By Eric Silver in Jerusalem, UK Independent[/b][/i], http://news.independent.co.uk...
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| NEOCON'S PUPPET-IN-IRAQ SAYS: SO WHAT IF WE LIED - SO WHAT IF WE ARE LIARS |
| 02.19.04 (11:15 am) [edit] |
[b]Chalabi stands by faulty intelligence that toppled Saddam's regime[/b]
An Iraqi leader accused of feeding faulty pre-war intelligence to Washington said yesterday his information about Saddam Hussein's weapons, even if discredited, had achieved the aim of persuading America to topple the dictator.
Ahmad Chalabi and his London-based exile group, the Iraqi National Congress, for years provided a conduit for Iraqi defectors who were debriefed by US intelligence agents. But many American officials now blame Mr Chalabi for providing intelligence that turned out to be false or wild exaggerations about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
Mr Chalabi, by far the most effective anti-Saddam lobbyist in Washington, shrugged off charges that he had deliberately misled US intelligence. "We are heroes in error," he told the Telegraph in Baghdad.
"As far as we're concerned we've been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important. The Bush administration is looking for a scapegoat. We're ready to fall on our swords if he wants."
His comments are likely to inflame the debate on both sides of the Atlantic over the quality of pre-war intelligence, and the spin put on it by President George W Bush and Tony Blair as they argued for military action.
US officials said last week that one of the most celebrated pieces of false intelligence, the claim that Saddam Hussein had mobile biological weapons laboratories, had come from a major in the Iraqi intelligence service made available by the INC.
US officials at first found the information credible and the defector passed a lie-detector test. But in later interviews it became apparent that he was stretching the truth and had been "coached by the INC".
He failed a second polygraph test and in May 2002, intelligence agencies were warned that the information was unreliable.
But analysts missed the warning, and the mobile laboratory story remained firmly established in the catalogue of alleged Iraqi violations until months after the overthrow of Saddam.
America claimed to have found two mobile laboratories, but the lorries in fact held equipment to make hydrogen for weather balloons.
Last week, US State Department officials admitted that much of the first-hand testimony they had received was "shaky".
"What the INC told us formed one part of the intelligence picture," a senior official in Baghdad said. "But what Chalabi told us we accepted in good faith. Now there is going to be a lot of question marks over his motives."
Mr Chalabi is now a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, but his star in Washington has waned.
[i][b]By Jack Fairweather in Baghdad and Anton La Guardia[/b][/i], http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ne...;$sessionid$5RM3YWKKUZDFX QFIQMGSFFOAVCBQWIV0?xml=/ news/2004/02/19/wirq19.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/02/ 19/ixworld.html
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| BUSH GANG BREAKS THE LAW... BUSH GANG HAS NO RESPECT FOR THE LAW... |
| 02.18.04 (3:51 pm) [edit] |
[b]Bush Gang Breaks Law, Retaliates Against Wicked Messenger of Truth[/b]
The Bush Administration has retaliated against a retired U.S. ambassador by going after his wife, and in the process has broken a federal law enacted to protect national security.
Joseph C. Wilson was recruited by the Bush Administration to discover evidence that Saddam Hussein was attempting to purchase uranium from Niger for his alleged nuclear weapons program. The Administration considered the former ambassador an excellent choice for the job. Wilson had been a State Department officer in Niger in the mid-1970s, Ambassador to Gabon in the early 1990s, and senior director for Africa at the National Security Council in 1997 and 1998. In all of his capacities, Wilson had spent a lot of time dealing with the Niger government.
Former President George H. W. Bush, as quoted in a July 2003 Washington Post article, commended Wilson for his accomplishments during the Gulf War: "Your courageous leadership during this period of great danger for American interests and American citizens has my admiration and respect. I salute, too, your skillful conduct of our tense dealings with the government of Iraq....The courage and tenacity you have exhibited throughout this ordeal proves that you are the right person for the job."
The younger Bush, however, after recruiting Wilson to uncover information about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, a crucial argument in the Administration's pre-Iraq War public relations campaign to justify invasion, would go after Wilson with a vengeance. What happened? And why was the Bush Administration willing to break the law to harm Wilson?
[i][b]Mission Impossible[/b][/i]
The former ambassador, National Security Council official, and Africa expert was sent by the Bush Administration on a secret fact-finding trip to Niger in February 2002. This clandestine mission was sponsored by the CIA. Wilson’s findings in Africa, however, contradicted the Bush line that Saddam was attempting to purchase uranium from Niger.
It was the Bush position that subsequently became discredited. In March 2003, a year after Clark’s journey to Niger and his report that there was not a Niger connection, the International Atomic Energy Agency concluded the documents upon which the Niger allegation was based were not only forgeries but amateurish forgeries. The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed, then, Clark’s conclusion there was not evidence that Iraq was attempting to obtain nuclear-weapons materials from Niger.
The Bush Administration’s charges about Iraq's weapons program had been repeatedly used to justify the invasion of Iraq, and the President again repeated them in his 2003 State of the Union address. For the Administration, evidence that Iraq had attempted to obtain uranime in Africa was critical for its plan to invade Iraq.
On Sunday, July 6, 2003, The New York Times printed Wilson 's "What I Didn't Find in Africa." His introductory paragraph began, " Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq?
"Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."
This Op-Ed in The New York Times and an interview with a Washington Post reporter about his trip to Niger in February 2002, discredited Bush's center piece for launching his Middle East war. Wilson aired his beliefs only after the war in Iraq had been declared officially over by President Bush. Not until the war was supposedly over, did the former ambassador voice his opinion publicly.
Yet, immediately after the publication of his article in The New York Timees, the Bush Administration lauched a campaign to retaliate against Wilson.
[i][b]Valerie Plame (Mrs. Wilson) Exposed As CIA Operative[/b][/i]
Wilson's disclosure of his Niger trip and negative findings to the media made the White House look bad, if not look like liars. Retaliation came swiftly through conservative columnist Bob Novak's July 14, 2003 column. In the back-story on Wilson's mission, Novack wrote: "Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate [allegations of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction]."
Responding to Novack's column, Wilson said, "I will not answer questions about my wife. This is not about me and less so about my wife. It has always been about the facts underpinning the President's statement in [his] State of the Union speech."
Wilson would neither confirm nor deny that his wife, the mother of their three-year-old twins, works for the CIA. However, assuming Ms. Plame does indeed carry out undercover missions for the CIA, this means the Bush Administration exposed a top-secret operative just to punish her husband who voiced his disagreement with the Bush Administration, an opinion that has turned out to be true.
What the Administration is in fact doing is sending a strong message to others who might disagree with or even contradict the administration's contrivances.
"Stories like this [in Novack's column]," Wilson said, "are not intended to intimidate me, since I've already told my story. But it's pretty clear it is intended to intimidate others who might come forward. You need only look at the stories of intelligence analysts who say they have been pressured. They may have kids in college, they may be vulnerable to these types of smears."
Some in the media characterized Bush's retaliation as Nixonesque, while others called it a smear campaign. But the fact is the Bush officials, by revealing to Novack the name of Wilson's wife as a "high level" undercover CIA agent, violated federal law.
"Two senior administration officials" had been referenced as sources for Novak's assertion about Wilson's wife. This would mean that two Bush officials revealed to a reporter the name of a CIA operative who had apparently worked under "nonofficial cover."
Given the nature of weapons intelligence undercover work, Plame would have had the dangerous mission of tracking criminals or terrorists trying to buy or sell weapons of mass destruction or WMD material. If Mrs. Wilson is such a person, then her career has certainly been destroyed by the Bush administration exposure of her identity.
[i][b]Violating Law, Endangering National Security[/b][/i]
Under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, it is a crime for anyone with access to classified information to disclose intentionally information identifying a covert agent. The punishment for such an offense is a fine of up to $50,000 and/or up to 10 years in prison. However, journalists are specifically protected from prosecution, unless they engage in a "pattern of activities" to name agents in order to undermine U.S. intelligence activities. Thus while Novack would appear to be in the clear, the "two senior [Bush] administration officials" are not.
The 1982 national security law is intended to protect CIA operatives whose lives might be endangered if their identities and missions are exposed. The White House staff violated a federal law when it passed on the information to Bob Novak for his column on "Nigergate" that stated "Valerie Plame is an [Central Intelligence] Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction."
Not only did Bush Administration break a national security law by revealing this sensitive information, they also endangered our national security by making it more difficult to discover any weapons of mass destruction.
[i][b]Frederick Sweet is Professor of Reproductive Biology in Obstetrics and Gynecology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Reprinted from Intervention Magazine[/b][/i]., http://www.anewdeale-zine.com...
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| EXPOSING THE PROJECT FOR THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY (PNAC) |
| 02.18.04 (3:07 pm) [edit] |
PNAC.INFO - EXPOSING THE PROJECT FOR THE NEW AMERICAN CENTORY (PNAC)
An effort to investigate, analyze, and expose the Project for the New American Century, and its plan for a "unipolar" world. Click on http://pnac.info/
CHECK-OUT EMPIRE BUILDERS ON http://www.csmonitor.com/spec...
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| CNN GALLUP POLL: KERRY IN DOUBLE-DIGIT LEAD OVER BUSH! |
| 02.18.04 (2:54 pm) [edit] |
[b]Top Democrats lead Bush in poll[/b]
WASHINGTON (USATODAY.com) — Democrat John Kerry holds his largest lead yet over President Bush in a head-to-head match-up among likely voters, a new USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup poll concludes, and rival John Edwards also holds a double-digit lead over the president.
The poll, taken Feb. 16-17, indicates that if the election were held today, Kerry would be chosen by 55% of likely voters, compared to 43% for Bush. In the last polling, Feb. 6-8, Bush held a 49-48 advantage.
Edwards, Kerry's sole remaining major rival for the Democratic nomination, holds a 54%-44% advantage, the poll indicates. The question has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
The numbers come as both Kerry, a Massachusetts senator, and Edwards, a senator from North Carolina, have maintained a relatively high public profile because of the ongoing Democratic presidential campaign. They also come as questions continue to be raised about Bush's Vietnam-era service in the National Guard.
Republicans have been skeptical of the head-to-head numbers during the primary season, saying they in part reflect news coverage that focuses on Democratic candidates' criticism. Earlier this month, a Bush adviser said he would rebound in time to win re-election.
"This is the way the political season works," Mary Matalin, a Bush campaign adviser, told USA TODAY earlier this month. "All of these problems are manageable."
Democrats hope Bush's troubles signal a decline that will end with an election loss.
"There is a very strong risk that this president is irreparably damaging his credibility," Joe Lockhart, a former spokesman for President Clinton, said earlier this month.
The poll indicates Kerry and Edwards hold lesser leads — or no lead at all — when all registered voters are measured. Kerry has a 51-46 edge over the president among registered voters, and Edwards holds a 49-48 edge, a statistical tie.
Bush's approval rating remained unchanged in the latest poll and remains near the lowest spot of his presidency. It currently stands at 51%, with 46% disapproving and 3% of those polled offering no opinion. Bush's low of 49% — the only time his approval ratings have sunk below 50% in his presidency — came in a Jan. 29-Feb. 1 survey.
Kerry was by far the choice for the party's nomination among registered Democrats or Democratic leaners in the latest survey, with 65% of those saying he was their Democrat of choice. Edwards trailed at 19%.
Continuing a decline that has gone on for more than a year, 55% of those surveyed said Bush was honest and trustworthy. That compares to 59% the last time the question was asked in November, and 70% when the question was asked in early January 2003. Sixty-one percent of those surveyed said Kerry was honest and trustworthy.
The poll indicated Americans felt better about Bush the person than they did about his job performance. Majorities said Bush has strong moral character and is a strong and decisive leader, but less than a majority said Bush generally agrees with them on important issues and has a clear plan for solving the country's problems.
And only 42 percent agreed Bush did his duty for the country during the Vietnam era, compared to 68 percent for Kerry.
However, the Vietnam service issue does not to be a key one to voters. Eighty percent of likely voters said Bush's actions while in the National Guard would not have much effect on their votes, and 78 percent said Kerry's combat experience in Vietnam would not have much effect.
[i][b]Contributing: USA TODAY's Judy Keen[/b][/i]., http://usatoday.printthis.cli...+-+Top+Democrats+lead+Bus h+in+poll&expire=&urlID=9 332487&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2 F%2Fwww.usatoday.com%2Fnews%2Fpoliticselec tions%2Fnation%2Fpresiden t%2F2004-02-18-poll_x.htm&partnerID=1660
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| UPDATE: ON GUARD - OR - AWOL? ANSWER: AWOL! |
| 02.18.04 (2:46 pm) [edit] |
[b]Update: On Guard - or AWOL?[/b]
Two members of the Air National Guard unit that President George W. Bush allegedly served with as a young Guard flyer in 1972 had been told to expect him late in that year and were on the lookout for him. He never showed, however; of that both Bob Mintz and Paul Bishop are certain.
The question of Bush's presence in 1972 at Dannelly Air National Guard base in Montgomery, Alabama - or the lack of it - has become an issue in the 2004 presidential campaign. And that issue, which picked up steam last week, continues to rage.
Recalls Memphian Mintz, now 62: "I remember that I heard someone was coming to drill with us from Texas. And it was implied that it was somebody with political influence. I was a young bachelor then. I was looking for somebody to prowl around with." But, says Mintz, that "somebody" -- better known to the world now as the president of the United States -- never showed up at Dannelly in 1972. Nor in 1973, nor at any time that Mintz, a FedEx pilot now and an Eastern Airlines pilot then, when he was a reserve first lieutenant at Dannelly, can remember.
"And I was looking for him," repeated Mintz, who said that he assumed that Bush "changed his mind and went somewhere else" to do his substitute drill. It was not "somewhere else," however, but the 187th Air National Guard Tactical squadron at Dannelly to which the young Texas flyer had requested transfer from his regular Texas unit - the reason being Bush's wish to work in Alabama on the ultimately unsuccessful U.S. Senate campaign of family friend Winton "Red" Blount.
It is the 187th, Mintz's unit, which was cited, during the 2000 presidential campaign, as the place where Bush completed his military obligation. And it is the 187th that the White House continues to contend that Bush belonged to - as recently as last week, when presidential spokesman Scott McClellan released payroll records and, later, evidence suggesting that Bush's dental records might be on file at Dannelly.
Late last weekend, the White House even made available what it said was the entirety of Bush's service record. Even so, the mystery of the young lieutenant's whereabouts in late 1972 remains.
"THERE'S NO WAY WE WOULDN'T HAVE NOTICED a strange rooster in the henhouse, especially since we were looking for him," insists Mintz, who has begun poring over such documents relating to the matter as are now making their way around the Internet. One of these is a piece of correspondence addressed to the 187th's commanding officer, then Lt. Col. William Turnipseed, concerning Bush's redeployment.
Mintz remembers a good deal of base scuttlebutt at the time about the letter, which clearly identifies Bush as the transferring party. "It couldn't be anybody else. No one ever did that again, as far as I know." In any case, he is certain that nobody else in that time frame, 1972-73, requested such a transfer into Dannelly.
Mintz, who at one time was a registered Republican and in recent years has cast votes in presidential elections for independent Ross Perot and Democrat Al Gore, confesses to "a negative reaction" to what he sees as out-and-out dissembling on President Bush's part. "You don't do that as an officer, you don't do that as a pilot, you don't do it as an important person, and you don't do it as a citizen. This guy's got a lot of nerve."
Though some accounts reckon the total personnel component of the 187th as consisting of several hundred, the actual flying squadron - that to which Bush was reassigned - numbered only "25 to 30 pilots," Mintz said. "There's no doubt. I would have heard of him, seen him, whatever."
Even if Bush, who was trained on a slightly different aircraft than the F4 Phantom jets flown by the squadron, opted not to fly with the unit, he would have had to encounter the rest of the flying personnel at some point, in non-flying formations or drills. "And if he did any flying at all, on whatever kind of craft, that would have involved a great number of supportive personnel. It takes a lot of people to get a plane into the air. But nobody I can think of remembers him.
"I talked to one of my buddies the other day and asked if he could remember Bush at drill at any time, and he said, 'Naw, ol' George wasn't there. And he wasn't at the Pit, either.'"
The "Pit" was The Snake Pit, a nearby bistro where the squadron's pilots would gather for frequent after-hours revelry. And the buddy was Bishop, then a lieutenant at Dannelly and now a pilot for Kalitta, a charter airline that in recent months has been flying war materiel into the Iraq Theater of Operations
"I never saw hide nor hair of Mr. Bush," confirms Bishop. . "In fact," he quips, mindful of the current political frame of reference, "I saw more of Al Sharpton at the base than I did of George W. Bush."
IN AIR NATIONAL GUARD CIRCLES, BISHOP, who now lives in Goldsboro, N.C., is something of a legendary figure. Known to his mates as "Papa Whiskey" (for "P.W.") Bishop, he is a veteran of Gulf War I, a conflict in which he was the ranking reservist. During the current conflict, on behalf of Kalitta, Bishop has flown frequent supply missions into military facilities at Kuwait...
Some years ago, he flew a Kalitta aircraft, painted over with Air Force One markings, in the movie Air Force One starring Harrison Ford. Bishop did the rolls, tumbles, and other stunt maneuvers that looked in the movie like stressful motions afflicting the hijacked and embattled plane.
Bishop voted for Bush in 2000 and believes that the Iraq war has served some useful purposes - citing, as the White House does, disarmament actions since pursued by Libyan president Moammar Khadaffi - but he is disgruntled both about aspects of the war and about what he sees as Bush's lack of truthfulness about his military record.
"I think a commander-in-chief who sends his men off to war ought to be a veteran who has seen the sting of battle," Bishop says. "In Iraq: we have a bunch of great soldiers, but they are not policemen. I don't think he [the president] was well advised; right now it's costing us an American life a day. I'm not a peacenik, but what really bothers me is that of the 500 or so that we've lost almost 80 of them were reservists. We've got an over-extended Guard and reserve."
Part of the problem, Bishop thinks, is a disconnect resulting from the president's own inexperience with combat operations. And he is well beyond annoyed at the White House's persistent claims that Bush did indeed serve time at Dannelly. Bishop didn't pay much attention to the claim when candidate Bush first offered it in 2000. But he did after the second Iraq war started and the issue came front and center.
"It bothered me that he wouldn't 'fess up and say, Okay, guys, I cut out when the rest of you did your time. He shouldn't have tried to dance around the subject. I take great exception to that. I spent 39 years defending my country."
Like his old comrade Mintz, Bishop, now 65, was a pilot for Eastern Airlines during their reserve service in 1972 at Dannelly. Mintz then lived in Montgomery; Bishop commuted from Atlanta, a two-hour drive away. Mintz and Bishop retired from the Guard with the ranks of lieutenant colonel and colonel, respectively.
BOTH MEN KNEW JOHN "BILL" CALHOUN, the Atlanta businessman who was flight safety officer for the 187th in 1972 and who subsequently retired as a lieutenant colonel. Calhoun created something of a sensation late last week when he came forward at the apparent prompting of the administration to claim that he did in fact remember Lt. Bush, that the young officer has met with him during drill weekends, largely spending his time reading safety manuals in the 187th's safety office.
Even in media venues sympathetic to the president, doubt was cast almost immediately on aspects of Calhoun's statement - particularly his claim that Lt. Bush was at the 187th during spring and early summer of 1972, periods when the White House itself does not claim the young lieutenant had yet arrived at Dannelly.
Mintz and Bishop are both skeptical, as well.
"I'm not saying it wasn't possible, but I can't imagine Bill not introducing him around," Mintz said. "Unless he [Bush] was an introvert back then, which I don't think he was, he'd have spent some time out in the mainstream, in the dining hall or wherever. He'd have spent some time with us. Unless he was trying to avoid publicity. But he wasn't well known at all then. It all seems a bit unusual."
Bishop was even more explicit. "I'm glad he [Calhoun] remembered being with Lt. Bush and Lt. Bush's eating sandwiches and looking at manuals. It seems a little strange that one man saw an individual, and all the rest of them did not. Because it was such a small organization. Usually, we all had lunch together.
"Maybe we're all getting old and senile," Bishop said with obvious sarcasm. "I don't want to second-guess Mr. Calhoun's memory and I would hate to impugn the integrity of a fellow officer, but I know the rest of us didn't see Lt. Bush." As Bishop (corroborated by Mintz) described the physical environment, the safety office where the meetings between Major Calhoun and Lt. Bush allegedly took place was on the second floor of the unit's hangar, a relatively small structure itself... It was a very close-quarters situation " It would have been "virtually impossible," said Bishop, for an officer to go in and out of the safety office for eight hours a month several months in a row and be unseen by anybody except then Major Calhoun.
As Bishop noted, "Fighter pilots, and that's what we were, have situational awareness. They know everything about their environment - whether it's an enemy plane creeping up or a stranger in their hangar."
In any case, said Bishop, "If what he [Calhoun] says is true, there would be documentation of the fact in point summaries and pay documents."
AND THAT'S ANOTHER MYSTERY.
Yet another veteran of the 187th is Wayne Rambo of Montgomery, who as a lieutenant served as the unit's chief administrative until April of 1972. That was a few months prior to Bush's alleged service, which Rambo, who continued to drill with the 187th, also cannot remember.
Rambo was, however, able to shed some light on the Guard practice, then and now, of assigning annual service "points" to members, based on their record of attendance and participation. The bare minimum number is 50, and reservists meeting standard are said to have had "a good year," Rambo said. Less than that amount to an "unsatisfactory" year - one calling for penalties assessed against the reservist' retirement fund and, more immediately, for disciplinary or other corrective action. Such deficits can be written off only on the basis of a "commander's call," Rambo said - and only then because of certifiable illness or some other clearly plausible reason.
"The 50-point minimum has always been taken very seriously, especially for pilots," says Rambo. "The reason is that it takes a lot of taxpayer money to train a pilot, and you don't want to see it wasted."
For whatever reason, the elusive Lt. George W. Bush was awarded 41 actual points for his service in both Texas and Alabama during 1972 - though he apparently was given 15 "gratuitous" points -- presumably by his original Texas command -- enough to bring him up from substandard. That would have been a decided violation of the norm, according to Rambo, who stresses that the awarding of gratuitous points was clearly meant only as a reward to reservists for meeting their bottom line
"You had to get to 50 to get the gratuitous points, which applied toward your retirement benefits," the former chief administrative officer recalls. "If you were 49, you stayed at 49; if you were 50, you got up to 65."
Bishop raises yet another issue about Bush's ANG tenure - the cancellation after 1972 of the final year of his six-year obligation - ostensibly to pursue a post-graduate business degree at Yale.
That didn't sit well with the veteran pilot. "When you accept a flying slot with the Air National Guard, you're obligated for six years," Bishop said. "Even if you grant him credit for that missing year in Alabama which none of us remember, he still failed to serve his full commitment. Even graduate school, for which he was supposedly released, is attended during the week usually. It wouldn't have conflicted with drill weekends, whether he was in Connecticut or Massachusetts or wherever. There would have been no need for an early release."
Bishop paused. "Maybe they do things differently in Texas. I don't want to malign the commander-inc-chief, but this is an issue of duty, honor country. You must have integrity."
BISHOP, ESPECIALLY, IS BITTER ABOUT THE FATE of Eastern Airlines, which went bankrupt during the administration of President George H.W. Bush, the current incumbent's father. "I watched my company dissolve under his policies. They let the airline fall victim to a hostile takeover," Bishop said. Both Bushes were "children of privilege," unlike himself and Mintz.
"Our fathers were poor dirt farmers. We would not have been given the same considerations he and his father were," says Bishop, who maintains that, just as the junior Bush used family and political influence to jump himself ahead of 500 other flight training applicants, the senior Bush "apparently" did something similar when he became a naval aviator during World War Two. "I applaud him for volunteering, but he should have waited his turn like everybody else."
But, says Bishop, "At least I can give him credit for serving his country." That is more, he suggested, than can be granted the younger Bush.
Would he consider voting for the president's reelection? "Naw, this goes to an integrity issue. I like either [John] Kerry or [John] Edwards better." And who would Mintz be voting for? "Not for any Texas politicians," was the Memphian's sardonic answer.
[i][b]By Jackson Baker, Memphis Flyer
(This is an updated and expanded version of a story which first appeared in this space last week.)[/b][/i], http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...
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| GOP RIGHT-WING PROPAGANDA MACHINE FABRICATES LIES ABOUT KERRY |
| 02.18.04 (2:42 pm) [edit] |
[b]The attack machine gears up: How the Bush team will try to paint Kerry[/b]
WASHINGTON — President Bush's campaign strategists believe "Massachusetts liberal" is a potent political epithet. But they don't think it's enough to defeat Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry.
So the Bush team, which believes Kerry has the nomination wrapped up, is preparing a broad attack on his record over 19 years in the Senate and what they call his opportunistic reversals on key issues.
The faceoff between Bush and Kerry has begun extraordinarily early in volleys of press releases and Web videos. It will continue for eight months and signals a long, nasty campaign. Decisions being made now will define the territory on which the campaign is fought and establish competing portraits of the two men.
Already, Republicans are depicting Kerry as a product of Washington, beholden to special interests and out of touch with regular Americans. The "Massachusetts liberal" tag that worked so well when the elder George Bush used it to defeat Gov. Michael Dukakis in the 1988 presidential race is just part of the case this Bush will try to make, aides say.
The drawback to the Bush strategy is that much of it has been tried before, most recently by Kerry's rivals for the nomination. Former Vermont governor Howard Dean called Kerry "the handmaiden of special interests," and retired general Wesley Clark said he's "part of the problem" in Washington. Those criticisms have not slowed Kerry in the Democratic primaries. But Bush strategists believe that the sustained attack they began last week will take hold with voters and raise doubts. Bush's campaign will have at least $170 million to spend, much of it on TV ads hammering Kerry's record.
Full-force GOP criticism began as soon as Kerry won the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 19. Four days later, Republican Party chairman Ed Gillespie declared him "out of sync" with most Americans and one of the "most liberal members" of the Senate.
The first wave of disparagement is an old political tactic: Define your opponent before he defines himself. Bush's strategists want to negate Kerry's self-portrait of a moderate who fights special interests before that picture is rooted in voters' minds.
"Politicians get in a lot of trouble when they present themselves as different than who they really are," says Matthew Dowd, the Bush campaign's chief strategist.
Something personal also is driving the Bush strategy. Some advisers believe the first President Bush dismissed his challenger's chances in his 1992 re-election battle and waited too long to take on Bill Clinton. There will be no repeat of that mistake, they say.
Kerry: 'Bring it on'
Researchers with the Bush campaign and at the Republican National Committee have examined Kerry's tenure as Massachusetts' lieutenant governor from 1982 to 1984, the 6,500 votes he has cast since he was joined the Senate in 1985, his speeches, his campaign donors and his finances. They have studied his last campaign against a Republican, a 1996 victory over William Weld, who was governor of Massachusetts.
They see Kerry as a traditional candidate and expect him to follow a predictable plan. They expect him to take mainstream Democratic positions and avoid both the centrism of Clinton and the leftist populism of Dean. They also hope he follows a historic pattern: No sitting member of Congress has been elected president since John Kennedy — a Massachusetts Democrat — in 1960.
But Bush's team sees plenty to worry about. Kerry, they say, is a relentless campaigner, an adept debater, a candidate with a history of strong finishes. "I didn't think he ever got below the belt," says Weld, who lost 45%-52%. "His instinct is not to be personally offensive. ... I would anticipate a substantive campaign."
Legislative record a target
A dozen Bush insiders in the White House, the campaign and key states described the evolving Bush strategy. Most spoke on condition that they not be named. A preview of their lines of attack:
• Kerry has left no footprint on Capitol Hill. "What's he done?" asks Mary Matalin, a Bush campaign adviser. "He's been on the Hill forever, and what does he have to show for it?"
Dean's campaign did the research and e-mailed the results to reporters: Kerry has sponsored 371 bills. Nine became law and six of those were more ceremonial, such as renaming a federal building, than substantive. The others were two bills related to marine research and one providing grants to women who own small businesses.
Kerry campaign staffers didn't dispute the Dean campaign's information, but they argued that it misrepresented Kerry's record. He teamed with Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona to reopen U.S. relations with Vietnam in 1995, and they are trying to raise fuel-economy standards and make Internet transactions tax-free. He helped stall Bush's plan to drill for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. "Sometimes," Kerry said in a debate Jan. 29, "your accomplishments are not in what you get done, but in what you stop other people from doing."
Reality check: Kerry has a short list of laws with his name on them. But interviews with people who had just voted in Democratic primaries found experience ranked near the bottom of considerations that determined their vote. In the 2000 election, experience was less important to voters than honesty.
• He switches positions when it's politically expedient. Kerry voted against the Persian Gulf War in 1991, but in 2002, he voted for a resolution authorizing Bush to go to war against Iraq. His explanation: In 1991, he believed the first Bush administration should take more time to try diplomacy before military action. In 2002, he believed this Bush administration had agreed to pursue diplomacy first.
Kerry voted for Bush's education bill, the No Child Left Behind Act, but now says he'd repeal it because it doesn't work. He voted for the USA Patriot Act, which expanded government power to monitor citizens after the Sept. 11 attacks, but now opposes it as too intrusive. He opposed the death penalty for terrorists who kill Americans abroad but now supports it.
Reality check: Bush's strategists are planning ads focused on some of those things. Campaign manager Ken Mehlman said in an online chat Feb. 9 that Kerry's opposition to Bush's education bill means he wants to "take our nation backward." Some Democrats aligned with other candidates say privately that Kerry will have to come up with better explanations.
•He's on the wrong side of issues that matter most to voters. "We question his judgment in consistently voting to cut defense and intelligence funding critical to our national security," Mehlman says.
After the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, Kerry voted to cut spending on intelligence by $1.5 billion over five years. In 1996, he voted to cut defense by $6.5 billion. He has since said that some of those votes were mistakes.
Bush's advisers see vulnerability in Kerry's stand on an emotional and divisive issue: gay marriage. In 1996, Kerry voted against the Defense of Marriage Act, which banned federal recognition of gay marriages and allowed states to refuse to recognize those performed in other states. Kerry opposes gay marriage but supports civil unions and partnership rights.
Reality check: The differences between Bush's priorities and Kerry's are likely to dominate the competition for moderate and independent voters. How this debate plays out will depend on the shape the economy is in, progress in Iraq and whether gay marriage becomes a big campaign issue.
• He's a hypocrite on the Vietnam War. "Hypocrisy is a character issue that we ought to be concerned about," Gillespie said Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press. The charge is a crucial element of Bush's plan to rebut criticism of his own National Guard service during the Vietnam War. Bush wants to label Kerry, a combat veteran who later opposed the war, a hypocrite. Their case: During a 1971 protest at the U.S. Capitol, Kerry tossed onto the steps his combat ribbons and other veterans' medals, but he kept his own medals. For years, Kerry did not correct the impression that he had discarded his medals in protest.
"Doing something that phony on such a poignant issue of conscience is viscerally unsettling," Matalin says. "What does the capacity to be so calculating say about him?"
Behind the strategy are concerns in Bush's camp about the potential damage of controversy over Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War. Although he was honorably discharged, there are questions about how diligent Bush was during his Guard service.
Reality check: This issue is about more than who did what 30 years ago. Kerry hopes his military record will help him counter doubts about his readiness to be commander in chief. Bush aides wish the media would focus on Kerry's past conduct, not on Bush's.
By 1990, 71% of Americans considered the Vietnam War a mistake. That suggests Kerry's opposition after serving may not be a pivotal issue. But questions about both men's conduct are more about character and credibility, qualities that matter in presidential campaigns.
If he wants to make an issue of Bush's military record, Kerry may be hindered by a remark he made in 1992 amid charges that Bill Clinton had dodged the draft. "We do not need to divide America over who served and how," Kerry said.
• He's a captive of special interests. "Special interests' best friend," was the headline on a GOP press release about Kerry this month. In speeches, Kerry warns lobbyists, "We're coming, you're going, and don't let the door hit you on the way out."
But Kerry has raised more money from lobbyists than any other senator over the past 15 years, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics, a watchdog group. He received nearly $640,000 from lobbyists for his four Senate campaigns. For this race, Kerry has raised more than $225,000 from lobbyists.
Reality check: Last week, Bush's campaign posted a video ad on its Web site and e-mailed it to supporters. The ad, titled "Unprincipled," recites how much money Kerry's campaigns have received from lobbyists. But that criticism may ring false for Bush, who collects considerable lobbyist donations and whose administration has consulted with special interests on energy, health and tax policies. Kerry's campaign responded with a Web ad that said Bush has "taken more special interest money than anyone in history."
• He's the Democrats' default choice, not an inspirational leader. In a Feb. 4 memo, Bush strategist Dowd called Kerry a "safe, old standby ... a traditional Democratic choice after the thrill of the Dean candidacy wore off."
Reality check: Bush strategists may be counting on a replay of the 1996 campaign. GOP nominee Bob Dole, who like Kerry was a war hero and veteran legislator, generated little excitement and lost to Clinton.
All those points will become familiar themes of Bush's campaign, and he'll still haul out the "Massachusetts liberal" label often. Kerry supports gun control and gay rights. He opposes restrictions on abortion. Bush will emphasize those views to deny him support across the South.
"His problem isn't where he's from, it's where he stands on issues," says Ralph Reed, Bush's campaign chairman for the southeast. "Kerry's record of voting for huge tax increases, opposing a strong defense and undermining our intelligence is out of the mainstream for a majority of voters."
Weld says Bush had better not underestimate Kerry. In the final months of their 1996 campaign, he says, Kerry's campaign "turned on a dime. The ads got sharper, the stump speech got crisper." Weld predicts that "man-to-man combat" lies ahead.
[i][b]By Judy Keen, USA TODAY[/b][/i], http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...
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