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Quietly Released Pentagon Report Contains Major Criticisms of Bush Regime

11.29.04 (2:35 pm) [edit]

[b]'They hate our policies, not our freedom'

Quietly released Pentagon report contains major criticisms of administration[/b].

Late on the Wednesday afternoon before the Thanksgiving holiday, the US Defense Department released a report by the Defense Science Board that is highly critical http://www.acq.osd.mil/dsb/re... of the administration's efforts in the war on terror and in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

--- "'Muslims do not hate our freedom, but rather they hate our policies [the report says]. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the long-standing, even increasing, support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan and the Gulf states. Thus, when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy.'" ---

The Pentagon released the study after The [i]New York Times[/i] ran a story http://www.nytimes.com/2004/1... about the report in its Wednesday editions.

[b]Check-it-out [/b] http://www.csmonitor.com/2004...

The World's Problem With War Criminals Bush & Cheney

11.29.04 (2:17 pm) [edit]

Once again, disturbing images are surfacing from the war in Iraq, this time of a young Marine shooting a wounded Iraqi prisoner in Fallujah. The soldier in question has been removed from duty and may face a court martial. U.S. military and Iraqi officials have decried the incident.

This sort of act is nothing new in war. Unarmed, or seemingly unarmed, people have been killed before and will be killed again by soldiers making split-second decisions under almost inconceivable stress. This event, however, and the reactions to it, illustrate exactly why the United States may be forced to follow Vermont Senator George D. Aiken's advice on ending the war in Vietnam – just declare victory in Iraq and withdraw.

In the past, the United States has tried to apply the principle of "civilized warfare." After World War II, we tried German and Japanese officers for mistreating prisoners of war and civilians. We were one of the first nations to sign the 1949 Geneva Conventions on the conduct of war. When the Viet Cong in the 1970s and the Iraqis in 1990 paraded captured Americans in front of television cameras, the nation was appalled. Despite urging from some quarters, the United States has not used nuclear weapons since 1945, and in recent bombing campaigns one of the goals of the Air Force has been to minimize civilian casualties.

Still, there has been a dark side to our conduct. While the Allies tried and hanged the architects of the German concentration camps in the 1940s, charges that U.S. soldiers starved and beat German POWs were generally ignored until the last decades of the 20th century. Tales of Americans committing atrocities in Korea have persisted for decades. While it is reasonable to assume that most of these accounts are North Korean propaganda, the Pentagon reluctantly admitted in 2001 that U.S. forces had killed refugees at No Gun Ri in 1950. These stories did not appear in textbooks or popular histories, and when they were brought up in public discourse, they were dismissed as anti-American naysaying.

With the Vietnam War, this attitude started to change. The army publicly charged and convicted Lt. William Calley of killing 22 villagers at My Lai. He may have become a sort of folk hero during his trial and was later paroled, but the taboo against discussing the less-than-honorable actions of U.S. soldiers had been broken. Stories of necklaces made of Viet Cong ears, burning villages and American-caused civilian casualties became the fodder of the nightly news. That is where they remain.

The United States puts itself forward as a force of civilization and justice in the world. Our soldiers are supposed to behave honorably, even if that is not always the case. Recent images from Abu Ghraib and Fallujah offend the national sense of decency. While there are always those who will rush to defend each atrocity as an unavoidable response in the war against terrorism, there are many more whose feelings range from disappointment to disgust. The armed forces themselves are taking these incidents seriously and are trying to maintain some humane standards, but will that be enough to keep barbarism at bay?

Unfortunately, the insurgents in Iraq will do anything to drive the occupying forces out. They have killed civilians, faked surrenders in order to draw out U.S. troops, booby-trapped corpses, and beheaded hostages. And while the temptation is there to ignore the rules of civilized warfare and to adopt their tactics, doing so will only strengthen the insurgency and bring down more international outrage.

The United States is faced with a difficult choice. On the one hand, the leadership in Washington and Baghdad can forget the Geneva Conventions and allow – or even encourage – the soldiers in the field to be as brutal as possible. This will just make the enemy stronger and put the United States in violation of international law. Or the armed forces can continue to fight hamstrung by humanitarian rules, leaving the soldiers exposed to ever more dangers. Americans like to believe that the moral fabric of their nation will not allow them to become war criminals, even if that means losing a war. It is time to admit this and start preparing an exit strategy for Iraq. - http://www.antiwar.com/orig/a...

Comical Allawi, the new Baghdad Bob

11.29.04 (2:05 pm) [edit]

"It's like the twin strands of a double helix of a DNA molecule. One strand is the technical and operational part. We are basically on course for that one, in perhaps 70 or 80 percent of Iraq. But the other strand, without which you can't have DNA, is the overall environment. There we have a problem." - An official http://www.nytimes.com/2004/1... involved in planning for the Iraqi elections, scheduled (still) for Jan. 30.

Comical Allawi is a lying toady for the Bush Crime Family!

[b]Check-it-out[/b] http://www.antiwar.com/blog/i...

The People vs. Bush

11.29.04 (6:54 am) [edit]

[i]The United States 'is deeply disturbed by extensive and credible indications of fraud committed in the Ukrainian elections...And we ought to know: We're Republicans[/i].'
- White House statement

[i]'The election was as democratic as they come...just like Florida'[/i]
- Russian Parliament Speaker Boris V. Gryzlov

Well, they did not say all of that. The first part of each statement, before the ellipse, was quoted in the mainstream media. The second portion of each statement could well have been what they were thinking.

I doubt if I am the only person struck by the contrast between impassioned protests of Ukrainians and the apathetic acceptance of Americans of government policies.

[b]Check-it-out [/b] http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

The People vs. Bush

11.29.04 (6:53 am) [edit]

When Fundamentalist Loonies Control the Classroom: God or Science?

11.29.04 (6:50 am) [edit]

[b]Ninth-grade biology teachers in Dover, Pa., must include 'intelligent design' in their instruction. Observers say it is a sign of what's to come[/b].

In the boldest strike against the teaching of evolution in more than a decade, the school board of this one-stoplight farming town has tilted its textbooks against virtually the entire scientific establishment - and brought home a lesson from this month's presidential election.

By mandating that ninth-grade biology teachers include "intelligent design" in their instruction, board members set a precedent last month. Never before has a school district decided to offer intelligent design, which suggests that only the action of a higher intelligence can explain the complexities of evolution. Moreover, say observers, it is a sign of what's to come.

Religious conservatives have battled against evolution theory in classrooms since the Scopes trial of 1925. Now, they are finding fresh purpose in the conservative resurgence so evident on Election Day, as well as in a new strategy of attacking evolution without mentioning God. The result is a handful of high-profile cases nationwide that challenge Darwin's place in the curriculum and presage a new offensive in America's culture war.

[b]Check-it-out [/b] http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

When Fundamentalist Loonies Control the Classroom: God or Science?

11.29.04 (6:48 am) [edit]

When Fundamentalist Loonies Control the Classroom: God or Science?

11.29.04 (6:48 am) [edit]

When Fundamentalist Loonies Control the Classroom: God or Science?

11.29.04 (6:46 am) [edit]

When Fundamentalist Loonies Control the Classroom: God or Science?

11.29.04 (6:46 am) [edit]

Karl 'Joseph Goebbels' Rove: Flip-Flops in Favor of Fascism ...

11.29.04 (6:36 am) [edit]

[b]Rove Unleashed

For the past 30 years he's focused like a laser on George W. Bush. What does Karl Rove do for an encore? The plans for a permanent GOP majority[/b]

It was the day before Thanksgiving, November 1973. Things were quiet enough at the Republican National Committee for the chairman to spend a few minutes on parental logistics. His eldest son was taking the train down from Harvard Business School and would need the family car for the weekend. Would the young aide deliver the car and the keys to Union Station? Years later, the aide describes what happened next in the kind of sunlit, slo-mo tones they use in movies. "I'm there with the keys and this guy comes striding in wearing jeans, cowboy boots and a bomber jacket," he recalls. "He had this aura." Which is how 22-year-old Karl Christian Rove met 27-year-old George Walker Bush.

Exactly 31 years later, on another quiet Thanksgiving week in the capital, the corridors of the West Wing were empty. The president was home in Texas, hunkering down at his Crawford ranch after his first post-election foreign trip. The senior staff had scattered to the winds, or the Washington suburbs, to be with family and friends after a grueling campaign. But in a cramped office on the second floor, one figure was still at his desk, opening his mail, making calls—and planning the next chapters in the extraordinary story he'd already written for Bush, the Republican Party and himself. Claiming victory after Election Day, the president had called the man at the desk "the Architect." "That was a deep embarrassment," said Rove. Maybe so, but it was the truth.

Given the story line—the long journey from train station to two-term presidency—the most consequential questions in American public life may be these: What is Rove up to now? And will he succeed? For more than three decades, he had one mission: to get Bush elected and then (in a first for the Bush family) re-elected. Now comes the reward: the surpassingly difficult task of governing for the sake of history, not mere victory.

In modern times there has never been anyone quite like Rove, possessing such a long working relationship with and influence over a president—a newly re-elected one who will wield an expanded majority in Congress. "I've been searching for a parallel figure," said Marshall Wittmann, a political strategist and writer. "The closest is Bobby Kennedy in his brother's administration. But even that doesn't get it. Because as loyal as Karl is, his political ambitions extend beyond one family."

Indeed they do. One thing Rove will be up to, he made clear in a NEWSWEEK interview, is involvement of some kind in the race for the next Republican presidential nomination. Meeting with reporters only days after the election, he seemed to count himself out. "And 2008 is going to be left to someone who has a little bit more energy and interest than me," he said then. "This will be the last presidential campaign I will ever do." [b]Last week he [i]backtracked (flip-flopped)[/i] on that pledge[/b]. "I said that in haste," he said. "A lot of people in the White House told me that that was a really stupid thing to say. So let me say that I can't imagine spending two years away from my wife and son again, the way I did this time. But besides that, who knows?"

[u]Translation:[/u] the Karl Rove Primary has begun—or at least Rove (and Bush) want the world to believe it has, if for no other reason than to dangle the possibility of help from (or the threat of opposition from) the Architect before the eyes of would-be GOP contenders and power brokers. "The president will be a lame duck soon enough," said a Republican strategist. "He can't afford to let Karl be one, too." Indeed, being seen as "close to Karl" is a sign among desperate Republicans of "election" in an almost theological sense. All the more reason for Rove to be slow about taking sides. "He won't actually commit for years," the strategist predicted.

[b]Check-it-out[/b] http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6...

Karl 'Joseph Goebbels' Rove: Flip-Flops in Favor of Fascism ...

11.29.04 (6:32 am) [edit]

Karl 'Joseph Goebbels' Rove: Flip-Flops in Favor of Fascism ...

11.29.04 (6:31 am) [edit]

Crazy Bush's Neo-Con NutJobs & Neo-Fascist WhackJobs: Lying About Iran

11.29.04 (6:23 am) [edit]

The neo-crazies – in and out of government – lied to you last year about Iraq's "nuclear programs," and this year they're lying to you about Iran's.

What constitutes lying? Well, either making an untrue statement with intent to deceive, or deliberately creating a false impression.

The neo-crazies told you right up till the eve of President Bush's "preemptive strike" that Iraq had reconstituted – deep underground and widely dispersed – the uranium-enrichment facilities totally destroyed back in 1991. That was an untrue statement, made with intent to deceive you.

They also told you that a uranium-enrichment capability was a necessary and sufficient condition for Iraq to have nukes within a year or two. That was an untrue statement, made to create a false impression.

You see, if you want to make a gun-type nuke, a uranium-enrichment capability is certainly necessary. And, if you have two 60-pound sub-critical pieces of weapons-grade enriched-uranium, all you have to do to make a gun-type nuke is bang them together.

But if you want to make an enriched-uranium implosion-type nuke – which is what Saddam was attempting to make – a uranium-enrichment capability is by no means sufficient.

Mohamed ElBaradei had reported to the UN Security that, as of March 2003, there had been no attempt whatsoever to reconstitute Iraq's uranium-enrichment capability. Furthermore, the CIA's Iraq Survey Group spent a billion dollars in the year following the invasion, searching everywhere and interviewing all the "usual suspects."

Result? Not only was ElBaradei right about there being no reconstituted uranium-enrichment capability, but there had also been no attempt since 1991 to design or test the high-explosive system absolutely required for an implosion-type nuke.

Well, now the neo-crazies would have you believe that Iran has an underground, widely dispersed uranium-enrichment capability. And that that uranium-enrichment capability is a sufficient condition for Iran to have nukes in a year or two.

But while the neo-crazies have been making that claim, Iran has been allowing ElBaradei to conduct in Iran the same sort of go-anywhere, see-anything inspection he conducted in Iraq.

Result? ElBaradei has concluded that all nuclear material in Iran has been accounted for and has not been diverted to activities prohibited by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Hence, there is no NPT issue for the IAEA Board to refer to the UN Security Council.

Furthermore, ElBaradei has found no evidence that Iran has yet introduced nuclear material into the uranium-enrichment facilities under construction.

That's important, because until nuclear material was actually introduced, Iran was under no obligation to report to the IAEA the construction of the gas-centrifuge plants at Natanz.

Obligated or not, Iran has placed "all essential components of centrifuges as defined by the Agency" under IAEA seals, except for 20 sets of centrifuge components to be used "for R&D purposes." Even then, Iran also offered to provide the IAEA with access to that R&D program "if requested."

Well, the neo-crazies promptly went bonkers. They charged that this R&D "exception" proved the Iranians had no intention of abiding by the agreement they made with Germany, France, and Great Britain to "suspend" all uranium-enrichment related activities and that this latest Iranian perfidy had to be brought immediately before the UN Security Council for action.

But don't let those neo-crazy charges create a false impression.

You see, Iran also stated that the "AEOI [Atomic Energy Organization of Iran] is not intending to use nuclear materials in any of the tests associated with the said R&D."

Gas centrifuges are not used exclusively for uranium isotope separation. Cascades of gas centrifuges are used to separate – in kilogram quantities for commercial sale – the isotopes of zinc, tungsten, molybdenum, krypton, xenon, germanium, iron, sulfur, oxygen, and carbon.

For example, large quantities of zinc-acetate-dihydrate are used as an additive in water-cooled, water-moderated nuclear power plants – particularly those burning plutonium-uranium mixed-oxide (MOX) fuels – to reduce corrosion and cracking of key components. However, the use of naturally occurring zinc would result in increased radiation exposure to plant workers, because Zn-64 – constituting 48% by isotopic concentration in naturally occurring zinc – is transformed into radioactive Zn-65 in the reactor environment. Hence the lucrative market for large quantities of "depleted" zinc-acetate-dihydrate wherein the Zn-64 isotopic concentration is reduced to less than 1%.

So, until IAEA Safeguarded "nuclear materials" are actually introduced into them, the origin of the centrifuges, the construction of cascades, and the operation thereof is none of the IAEA's beeswax. And who knows? Maybe the Iranians' secret plan all along has been to take over the depleted zinc market.

[b]Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy implementing official for national security-related technical matters in the Federal Energy Agency, the Energy Research and Development Administration, the Department of Energy, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of the Army. Dr. Prather also served as legislative assistant for national security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. -- ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and member of the Senate Energy Committee and Appropriations Committee. Dr. Prather had earlier worked as a nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico.[/b] - http://www.antiwar.com/prathe...

Crazy Bush's Neo-Con NutJobs & Neo-Fascist WhackJobs: Lying About Iran

11.29.04 (6:21 am) [edit]

George W. Bush's Crusade and American Fundamentalism ...

11.27.04 (12:38 pm) [edit]

"[i]God's blessing is on him [George W. Bush]. It's the blessing of heaven on the emperor[/i]."
-Pat Robertson, evangelist

"[i]The head of the statue was made of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay. While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them[/i]."
-Book of Daniel, II, 32-35

Especially now with the U.S. election results, many pundits appear rather taken aback by the increasing evidence of George W. Bush's "faith-based" presidency-his "true-believer" confidence that if you just "believe," all things are possible. Those who have this faith believe they can transcend the reality that circumscribes the actions of those who lack such belief.

In his October 17th New York Times article, "Without a Doubt," Ron Suskind recounts a conversation with a senior Bush adviser in the summer of 2002, who noted that people such as Suskind were "in what we call the reality-based community." When Suskind attempted a reply, the adviser replied: "That's not the way the world really works anymore. . . . We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality-judiciously, as you will-we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

This "arrogance of power" is right out of the imperial doctrine of Theodore Roosevelt, which was once called "pure act," or in a larger sense, the "action principle" of fascism. Clearly, any empire's administration believes that it is not constrained by the reality of the same "Law" that applies to the rest of society.

But, what is perhaps most significant in the events recounted by Suskind and in the election results is not President Bush's confident, unquestioning faith that he is "God's instrument," but the blind faith of his fundamentalist followers, reminiscent of Sinclair Lewis's descriptions in Elmer Gantry. As Suskind somewhat differently observes, one might say that George W. Bush went up the hill as a tolerant Methodist, and came down as a puritanical Calvinist.

What is less understood is that all of the great empires in history have been characterized by a decline of reason and an increase in super-naturalist faith, combined with a belief in the empire with the emperor holding God's "mandate" on earth.

There are only three ultimate sources upon which derivative values such as "equality" can be based: supernatural law, natural law and statist, positive law. Empires tend to combine all of the three so that the emperor's legitimacy flows from God, nature, and his position as head of State. The intertwining of religion and nationalism in the State is indeed a very powerful one.

Today's unflinching, fundamentalist Christian support for the war in Iraq and U.S. global interventionism (regardless of the facts) was foretold earlier by anti-rational evangelical attempts to control textbooks, deny evolutionary principles, and block scientific research-sure early signs of the rise of a new "Age of Empire." The most famous book-burning incidentally was not pro-war Lynn Cheney's recent effort, or even Adolf Hitler's in 1933, but rather that of the great Ch'in Emperor, Shih Wang-ti (a central figure in the recent film, Hero) of imperial China in 221 B.C.

In Rome, before it was co-opted by the State, early Christianity was in many ways a tax revolt against the Roman Empire's increasing taxation burdens, ineptitude, and brutality. But instead of fighting taxes directly, which would have been quite fatal, the Christians (in keeping with Jesus's teachings of the Golden Rule and peace) sought to evade the Roman taxes by steering clear of the State and taking care of their own and others. For example, by 150 A.D. in the City of Rome, Christians, and not the State, were taking care of 1,500 widows and orphans, and if you were captured or kidnapped by barbarians (much as in Iraq today) your only hope of ransom was if you were a Christian.

However, by the 4th century the growing strength of many diverse Christian groups (aided by their assimilation of older religious ideas from the East) and the decline of the Roman Empire had made it clear to the Roman State under Constantine that its survival would require formally merging with and centralizing Christianity. (Charles Freeman's recent book, The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason details the way in which this took place.)

There had already been a rise of mysticism in the Greek Empire phase of classical civilization, led by Pythagoras against Ionian empiricism, and later this same irrational process was repeated in Rome. What was left of Roman "science" declined as "faith" rose to be preserved and carried to the West later by Islamic civilization.

And as Western Civilization emerged out of the ruins of the western part of the Roman Empire, we evolved to America on the periphery of the European core-pragmatic, Calvinist, fundamentalist (certainly not showing much influence of such natural-law thinkers as Thomas Aquinas), with America believing itself an exception to history (a messianic vision often shared by the periphery).

Given that historical context, American writers began to talk as early as 1828 of some U.S. leaders as Caesars. While the Founders sought to separate the State and religion, we never quite had a theocracy, but rather an "Erastian"-type state in New England (reminiscent of the theocratic doctrines adopted in Geneva from the Swiss theologian Thomas Erastus, 1524-1583), where formal governmental leaders were heavily influenced by religious ones. And so, with the growing corrupt, corporate-state empire based in America today, religionists have put themselves forward as one of the key corporate entities in that structure, and the fundamentalists have found their man in George W. Bush.

Religious zealotry was, of course, involved in the U.S.'s first formal venture into imperialism in 1898 with the Spanish-American War, when over 200,000 Filipinos were killed. The missionaries wanted to expand their efforts into China, and after President William McKinley supposedly communed with God, McKinley indicated we should take the Philippines and "Christianize" and "uplift" the natives there. (Protestants tended to ignore the fact that Spanish Catholicism had been there for over three centuries. And, this messianic zeal could sometimes end up embarrassingly when young missionaries returned from the East, instead praising insights of Eastern philosophies such as Buddhism and Taoism.)

Later, President Woodrow Wilson would extend this missionary mentality to the entire world during and after World War I, and the catastrophic repercussions are all too with us yet today!

Meanwhile, the decline of the U.S. empire has been evident for some decades now. Its growing bankruptcy since the 1960s is the most evident economic aspect, coupled with the cultural decline and intolerance regarding science and knowledge. With the plurality of those who voted in the recent presidential election saluting "Hail George," let us observe that the presidency of George W. Bush may well mark the turning point of exceptional acceleration of that process.

[b]Professor William Marina is Research Fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif., and Professor Emeritus of History at Florida Atlantic University.[/b] - http://www.iviews.com/article...

George W. Bush's Crusade and American Fundamentalism ...

11.27.04 (12:36 pm) [edit]

George W. Bush's Crusade and American Fundamentalism ...

11.27.04 (12:36 pm) [edit]

Why Israel Really Fears Iranian Nukes

11.27.04 (12:30 pm) [edit]

[b]Tel Aviv's concern about an Iranian bomb is more likely political rather than military [/b]

Israel's leaders are apt to portray the prospect of an Iranian nuclear warhead in highly apocalyptic terms. Earlier this year, for example, Ariel Sharon was prepared to call Iran "the biggest danger to the existence of Israel" and warned that "Israel will not allow Iran to be equipped with a nuclear weapon."

But though the image of fanatical mullahs brandishing nuclear weapons is of course a terrifying one, and a reality that the outside world must of course try very hard to prevent, the real reasons for Israel's alarm are, on closer inspection, easy to misapprehend.

Tel Aviv's concern is not, for example, likely to be based on narrowly military considerations. If Israel's main installations at Dimona really do house a large arsenal of around 200 nuclear missiles, as most independent analysts believe, and of course it has such close relations with the world's biggest nuclear power, the United States, why would the Iranians dare to provoke the massive and devastating retaliation that any foolish nuclear move would inevitably provoke?

The same logic holds true about the supposed risk that hardliners in Tehran could pass nuclear materials into the hands of terrorist third parties whose fanaticism renders them immune to the mutually assured destruction their actions would invite. But don't the mullahs know that any such move could easily be traced back to Iran and would therefore prompt a similarly devastating response?

Nor would an Iranian bomb make any difference to the state of play on the ground between the Israeli Defense Forces and Tehran's supposed protégés in the Middle East such as the Lebanese militia Hizbollah. As Basil Liddell Hart once argued, a nuclear weapon will deter only nuclear blackmail but will make no difference to the behavior of conventional forces in the field. Consider, after all, how many nuclear states have been attacked by the conventional forces of the non-nuclear – America in Vietnam, Britain in the Falklands, and Israel during the Yom Kippur War.

It seems likely, then, that there are other, more convincing, reasons why Israel is concerned about an Iranian bomb. One possibility, for example, is that Tel Aviv is deeply concerned that such a development could potentially create deep splits in the U.S.-Israel alliance.

Consider, for example, what would happen if Tehran, having developed a warhead and withdrawn from the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty, offered to reduce the size of or even eliminate its own nuclear arsenal in return for similar moves – all UN-monitored – by Tel Aviv.

This would be a typically calculating and manipulative ploy by an Iranian regime playing the Israeli card to bolster its support at home and in the Islamic world as a whole. But any such ploy by Tehran would also seek to divide the more moderate European governments from a U.S. administration that has consistently been far more skeptical of Iranian nuclear assurances.

This might prove an adept move by posing a very difficult dilemma for an administration anxious to eliminate Iran's nuclear capability but equally reluctant to pressure its key Middle Eastern ally.

Any subsequent U.S. diplomatic pressure on Tel Aviv would infuriate Israeli leaders, who have long considered their nuclear arsenal as their best deterrent against what they regard as a hostile and numerically vastly superior Arab world. On two occasions, during the wars of 1967 and 1973, IDF chiefs ordered the preparation of their nuclear missiles against enemy forces.

But because the Israelis have frequently fended off intense U.S. diplomatic pressure before now, this is probably not the real reason why Tel Aviv would fear any such Iranian move. More important, perhaps, is the possibility that it would pose awkward questions, or even a far-reaching debate, in Washington and amongst the American public in general about the cost to America of an unquestioning loyalty to Israel.

In short, the development of a nuclear bomb has not just obvious military implications; it also brings far-reaching political fallout of which Israeli chiefs must be very conscious. - http://www.antiwar.com/orig/h...

Why Israel Really Fears Iranian Nukes

11.27.04 (12:28 pm) [edit]

Why Israel Really Fears Iranian Nukes

11.27.04 (12:28 pm) [edit]

And You Wonder Why We Have Problems With The Muslim World? ...

11.27.04 (12:26 pm) [edit]

[b]Credibility Can Only Be Lost Once [/b]

Credibility, like virginity, can only be lost once and never recovered. Hence, the problem the Bush administration has in dealing with Iran is that having been so wrong about Iraq, who can believe it now?

I recognize that a majority of Americans shrugged off going to war on false premises. The rest of the world is not so forgiving. The Bush administration's unprofessional, undiplomatic approach to the question of Iran's nuclear intentions sounds too much like the Iraqi dialogue. That dialogue consisted of American officials calling the Iraqis liars and the Iraqis denying they had weapons of mass destruction.

Now we're hearing the same childish dialogue directed at Iran. Iran insists it is not attempting to build nuclear weapons, and the United States replies with name-calling.

It's sad to say, but the Iranian government currently has more credibility than the Bush administration. All credibility was destroyed by the administration's militant insistence that it had "factual evidence" of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. "We know where they are," Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said with his smug grin. Everybody from the president and the vice president to the national-security adviser to the secretary of state kept belligerently insisting that those weapons existed and scoffed at everyone who expressed any skepticism. And every one of them was 100 percent wrong.

So, I'm sorry, but merely saying that Iran intends to build nuclear weapons without a shred of proof just doesn't cut it. The Iranians might well be lying about their intentions, but the Bush administration has offered us no proof that they are. Two things favor the Iranian position. One is the Iranians' explanation for building nuclear plants. Their only export of real value is oil. They recognize that they have a limited supply of oil. So, rather using up their high-value export for domestic power, they decided to employ nuclear energy for their domestic use and thus stretch out their ability to export oil. That makes perfect sense.

Second, Iran has signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and Iran has repeatedly called for a nuclear-free Middle East. Guess who opposes that idea? The United States. Guess why? Israel is the only country in the Middle East that really does have nuclear weapons. Israel has also refused to sign the non-proliferation treaty and refuses to allow international inspections. And it is Israel that views Iran as a threat.

But in the perverted world of Washington, a Muslim country that has signed the non-proliferation treaty, which allows international inspections, and that has called for a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East is the villain, while Israel, which refuses both the treaty and inspections and has actually built nuclear weapons, is the hero.

And you wonder why we have problems with the Muslim world.

Furthermore, the attempt by Israel to maintain a nuclear-weapons monopoly in the Middle East explains quite well why Iran has dispersed its nuclear facilities. The Iranians haven't forgotten that the Israelis bombed the nuclear reactor in Iraq, nor are they unaware that the Bush administration has agreed to sell Israel our biggest bunker-buster bombs.

In the meantime, Iran has agreed with Europeans to suspend its enrichment of uranium, an operation Iran has a legal right to perform.

If Israel attacks Iran, the Iranians, who have missiles capable of reaching Israel, will fire back. Then we will probably get into it, and if the Syrians have any sense, they will attack Israel, and, to use a quote from an old movie, "This situation is out of control."

"Out of control" is a phrase no rational person would ever want to apply to the Middle East. There are just too many possibilities, and all of them are bad.

Rather than repeat the bad handling of the Iraq situation, the Bush administration should be joining the Arabs and Iran in calling for a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. But as John Wayne would say, "That'll be the day."

[b]Charley Reese has been a journalist for 49 years, reporting on everything from sports to politics. From 1969-71, he worked as a campaign staffer for gubernatorial, senatorial and congressional races in several states. He was an editor, assistant to the publisher, and columnist for the Orlando Sentinel from 1971 to 2001. He now writes a syndicated column three times a week for King Features, which is carried on Antiwar.com. Reese served two years active duty in the U.S. Army as a tank gunner. [/b] - http://www.antiwar.com/reese/...

And You Wonder Why We Have Problems With The Muslim World? ...

11.27.04 (12:24 pm) [edit]

And You Wonder Why We Have Problems With The Muslim World? ...

11.27.04 (12:24 pm) [edit]

The Christian Right Should Be Careful What It Wishes For ...

11.27.04 (12:20 pm) [edit]

"My pastor kept asking us to pray for George Bush to win," a Georgia woman told me last week, "and most folks seemed to go along with it. So I just kept quiet and secretly prayed for the other side."

She's not alone. A majority of frequent churchgoers may have voted for President Bush (if surveys are right), but a large minority voted for Sen. John Kerry. Not all Christians -- not even all evangelicals -- are born-again Republicans.

But the word "Christian" (not unlike the word "moral") is increasingly tied in the news media to the word "Republican," thanks to the successful alliance between Karl Rove and leaders of the religious right. (In one pre-election news account, a minister described comforting a parishioner who anxiously asked if he could remain a Christian and vote for Kerry.)

Growing numbers of Christians are alarmed by the hijacking of their faith. In an editorial last week, Robert Parham of the moderate Baptist Center for Ethics vowed to "take on the religious right more forcefully -- critiquing its false religion and anointment of the GOP as God's Only Party."

Meanwhile, emboldened by the perception that evangelicals decided the election, Jerry Falwell, James Dobson and other evangelical leaders close to the White House are already lining up to claim the spoils. They expect to have the power to shape the Republican agenda on everything from constitutional amendments to Supreme Court appointments.

But before conservative Christians get too comfortable with this church-state alliance, they would do well to remember a bit of familiar wisdom: Those who seek power by riding the back of the tiger end up inside.

The unprecedented mobilization of evangelical churches by the Republican Party and religious right leaders may have helped win an election, but it could end badly for people of faith in the pews. History teaches that partisan politics inevitably corrupts religion and divides the church.

As another Dobson, the Rev. Edward Dobson, wrote some years ago in Christianity Today, "the church -- as the church -- cannot allow itself to be co-opted by political action; and pastors and others who speak for the church cannot allow themselves to be distracted from the gospel by partisan engagement. As a former board member for the Moral Majority, I know the potential dangers of this kind of political activity -- the possible jettisoning of the gospel for a political agenda."

Some Christian churches have already tasted the fruits of the Christian-Republican alliance. By executive order, President Bush has opened the floodgates of funding through his "faith-based initiative." Millions of tax dollars now flow to churches for a whole range of programs -- with inadequate First Amendment safeguards to uphold religious liberty.

With government shekels come government shackles. Not only do churches risk losing their autonomy; they risk losing their prophetic voice. A church compromised by partisan politics and dependent on government funds can no longer distance itself from the culture and can no longer call the government to account for its failures.

This threat to religious faith from church-state entanglement is precisely what James Madison warned about during the great battle for disestablishment in Virginia more than 200 years ago. Warning against state support for religion, he argued from history:

"During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution."

Madison understood then what leaders of the religious right would have Christians forget today: When churches join forces with any political party, they are lured into a Faustian bargain -- trading the authentic power of faith for the fleeting rewards of worldly influence.

Before heeding the voices of false prophets on the far right, Christians would do well to recall the warning of Jesus himself:

"For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"

[b]Charles Haynes is senior scholar at the Freedom Forum's First Amendment Center. He can be reached at chaynes@freedomforum.org.[/b] - http://www.harktheherald.com/...

The Christian Right Should Be Careful What It Wishes For ...

11.27.04 (12:18 pm) [edit]

The Christian Right Should Be Careful What It Wishes For ...

11.27.04 (12:17 pm) [edit]

Canadians To Protest George W. Bush's "Coming" (They Don't Like the Asshole Either!)

11.23.04 (5:42 am) [edit]

George W. Bush is making an official visit to Canada November 30-December 1, in what will mark both his first trip to our capital -- that’s Ottawa, not Toronto, as I assume someone has briefed George -- and one of his first international visits since the November 2 election. People across the country are looking forward to giving the American President the welcome that he deserves. Hopefully we can make it a welcome worthy of the memory of the tens of thousands of Iraqis and one thousand plus American soldiers whose lives have been taken by Bush's immoral war for oil.

Earlier this month, reports speculated that Bush’s visit would take place in early January, shortly before his inauguration. The reason for the scant notice of the official visit – barely two weeks – is pretty clear. John Ibbitson, writing in the November 17 Globe and Mail (“Can PM silence Parrish”), notes the cynical reason for the timing while taking a cynical shot of his own at anti-war activists:

One reason for the rushed announcement might be to limit the ability of social and peace activists to mobilize. With only a fortnight to prepare, and with the temperatures getting nippy, the various coalitions in solidarity with each other will have a difficult time putting together anything truly impressive.

Despite Ibbitson’s sneering implication, the various grassroots anti-war coalitions are clearly representative of public opinion in Canada, both towards Bush and towards the war in Iraq. Activists across the country have already set about making plans for an impressive mobilization. (I don’t know about truly impressive, though, since Ibbitson fails to define what he hopes we fail to do.) The Ottawa No to Bush Committee put out a call within hours, casting a wide net indeed, rallying under the slogan, “Freedom, Justice, Equality: No to Bush!” The Canadian Peace Alliance has put out a call for actions in cities across the country, and in Toronto at least, buses are already being organized to get people up to Ottawa.

Perhaps the desire to minimize protest was the reasoning behind not only the short notice, but also behind the choice to make Canada an early post-election foreign visit for Bush. One could imagine that a visit to a European or Latin American capital might be likely to generate a more vociferous protest. For instance, this week’s APEC summit in Chile, which Bush is attending, is being greeted with mass protest and the accompanying state repression. Despite the tendency of the North American Right to rail against Canada as a socialistic holdout (and a tendency of a good chunk of the Left to glorify our relative egalitarianism and tolerance), we lag sadly behind much of Europe and our brothers and sisters in the South in terms of an oppositional political culture.

We also have a tendency to hold U.S. administrations to closer scrutiny than our own regimes in Ottawa. While Jean Chretien’s announcement that Canada would not send troops to Iraq was widely applauded, ongoing Canadian involvement in the occupations of Haiti and Afghanistan has been overwhelmingly ignored and unreported. Hopefully, then, the demonstrations that accompany Bush’s visit will also be aimed at the war-making policies explicitly or tacitly supported by Paul Martin and the Liberal government. And the issue of Canada’s participation in the misnamed National Missile Defence program -- rather than being denounced in isolation as leading to dangerous “Star Wars” weaponization of space -- should be linked to the overall strategy and efforts of the U.S. empire-builders to wield first-strike nuclear capability as part of their drive to maintain unrivalled military (and thereby economic) dominance.

And so the anti-war movement in Canada faces an important challenge and responsibility. The world will be watching for us to make a strong, principled, and visible stand against Bush and against the daily outrages that are being perpetrated in Iraq. The latest crime, of course, is seen in the appalling footage of a U.S. soldier killing a wounded and helpless Iraqi, caught by the cameras of NBC and now broadcast throughout the world. Like with Abu Ghraib, we can imagine that the camera has only shown us the tip of the iceberg.

The war in Iraq was rejected by world public opinion, and this was reflected with millions in the streets before the war. The occupation, with all the now absolutely routine atrocities, torture and death it has engendered, deserves to be rejected with equal force throughout the world. And what better opportunity to get back in the streets than George Bush’s first official visit to Ottawa. Welcome George. The U.S. election may be over, but the war in Iraq isn’t. And Canada’s demonstrations will only be the tip of the iceberg.

Derrick O’Keefe is a founding editor of the weekly on-line journal www.SevenOaksMag.com and a member of Vancouver’s StopWar coalition.

For a full listing of demonstrations in Canada, visit the Canadian Peace Alliance site at www.acp-cpa.ca.

Canadians To Protest George W. Bush's "Coming" (They Don't Like the Asshole Either!)

11.23.04 (5:42 am) [edit]

Today's Quote: CondoSleezy Rice Calls Her Slut-Master Bush "HUSBAND"!!!

11.23.04 (5:38 am) [edit]

"At a recent dinner party hosted by New York Times D.C. bureau chief Philip Taubman and his wife, Times reporter Felicity Barringer, and attended by Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Maureen Dowd, Steven Weisman, and Elisabeth Bumiller, Rice was reportedly overheard saying, 'As I was telling my hus--' and then stopping herself abruptly, before saying, 'As I was telling President Bush.' Jaws dropped, but a guest says the slip by the unmarried politician, who spends weekends with the president and his wife, seemed more psychologically telling than incriminating. Nobody thinks Bush and Rice are actually an item. A National Security Council spokesman laughed and said, 'No comment.'" --New York , "At a recent dinner party hosted by New York Times D.C. bureau chief Philip Taubman and his wife, Times reporter Felicity Barringer, and attended by Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Maureen Dowd, Steven Weisman, and Elisabeth Bumiller, Rice was reportedly overheard saying, 'As I was telling my hus--' and then stopping herself abruptly, before saying, 'As I was telling President Bush.' Jaws dropped, but a guest says the slip by the unmarried politician, who spends weekends with the president and his wife, seemed more psychologically telling than incriminating. Nobody thinks Bush and Rice are actually an item. A National Security Council spokesman laughed and said, 'No comment.'" --New York http://nymetro.com/nymetro/ne... , April 26, 2004

Today's Quote: CondoSleezy Rice Calls Her Slut-Master Bush "HUSBAND"!!!

11.23.04 (5:36 am) [edit]

Today's Quote: CondoSleezy Rice Calls Her Slut-Master Bush "HUSBAND"!!!

11.23.04 (5:32 am) [edit]

Today's Quote: CondoSleezy Rice Calls Her Slut-Master Bush "HUSBAND"!!!

11.23.04 (5:32 am) [edit]

Bush/Cheney: The Fascist Pigs' US Policy Harms Prospects for Middle East Peace

11.23.04 (5:27 am) [edit]

President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon have finally gotten their wish: Yasir Arafat, their long-time nemesis, has passed from the scene. In their minds, Arafat’s death brings exciting new possibilities for U.S. and Israeli policy gains in the Middle East peace process. They believe that the new Palestinian leaders—the more moderate Mahmoud Abbas and Ahmed Qurei—will be more compliant and malleable than Arafat.

The president and prime minister are certainly right about that. But the problem is that Abbas and Qurei have no support among the increasingly angry young men of Palestine and have little control over their more violent actions. Conflict is likely between the militants in Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade and the more moderate faction of the two new Palestinian leaders because they are rivals for influence in the Palestinian movement and have differing views about policy toward Israel. Recently, in a demonstration of the perilous position of Abbas and Qurei, Palestinian radicals fired gunshots in the vicinity of Abbas.

In other words, Bush and Sharon will have difficulty negotiating with a chaotic Palestinian movement in a post-Arafat struggle for succession. In that struggle, no one-and certainly not those two mundane bureaucrats—has the stature of Arafat. Furthermore, to gain the title of undisputed leader of the Palestinian people, any contestants will have to pander to the Palestinian street by showing how tough they’ll be toward Israel.

For the short-term, these realities actually make the prospects for genuine Middle East peace even more dismal than when Arafat was alive. Any U.S.-brokered Israeli settlement reached with Abbas and Qurei would lack widespread legitimacy among Palestinians and would thus be only a paper agreement. And if turmoil or civil war among Palestinians ensues, Bush and Sharon may have nostalgia for the days when Arafat ruled.

Since at this time, neither Israeli nor Palestinian behavior indicates a desire for peace, the United States should quit banging its head against the wall in an attempt to force the reluctant parties together. Unfortunately, the two sides will probably have to exhaust themselves in conflict before they are willing to negotiate a compromise peace in good faith. Thus, President Bush should readopt the lower profile toward the dispute that he took at the beginning of his first term. When the parties are genuinely ready to make peace the United States could mediate the outcome. But unlike the Camp David Peace Accords, signed in 1978, the United States should not pay both sides to do something that is clearly in both of their best interests.

The almost $3 billion a year in aid that the United States already gives Israel (about 3 percent of the Israeli GDP) actually undermines the peace process by underwriting Israeli military power, which Sharon uses aggressively to thwart settlement of the conflict. Arguments that Israel’s existence will be endangered if U.S. military aid is eliminated are specious. Israel has 200 nuclear weapons that ultimately guarantee its security vis-a-vis neighboring Arab countries, none of which are nuclear powers. Furthermore, Israel is at peace with Egypt—its largest and most dangerous neighbor. The hostile Saddam Hussein regime has been removed in Iraq. Syria, Israel’s sole remaining hostile neighbor, has an economy less than one-fifth the size of Israel’s and has not been able to significantly modernize its military after the demise of its Soviet benefactor.

Historically, Israeli security has not necessarily been correlated with the amount of U.S. military aid it receives. From 1949 until 1970, a period that included Israel’s smashing simultaneous 1967 victory over multiple Arab militaries, U.S. military aid was either nonexistent or small. Only in 1971 and thereafter did U.S. military aid increase 20 fold and beyond. After the quantum increase in U.S. military assistance, however, Israeli military performance actually deteriorated in the 1973 and 1982 Middle East wars. So foreign military aid creates dependence in the recipient country and may make its military more slothful and inefficient.

The same is true of economic aid. In 2004, the United States pumped an estimated half billion dollars into the already wealthy Israeli economy. This money provides a cushion, allowing that state-centric economy to avoid privatization and marketization that could dramatically increase economic growth. If Israel solved the Palestinian conflict and made economic reforms-which would be encouraged by ending U.S. military and economic aid, respectively-quantum increases in foreign investment and Israeli and Palestinian prosperity would likely result.

The United States should not force the two recalcitrant parties to the negotiating table but could encourage peace between them by changing its own policies toward Middle East. - http://www.antiwar.com/eland/...

Bush/Cheney: The Fascist Pigs' US Policy Harms Prospects for Middle East Peace

11.23.04 (5:25 am) [edit]

Bush/Cheney: The Fascist Pigs' US Policy Harms Prospects for Middle East Peace

11.23.04 (5:17 am) [edit]

Bush/Cheney: The Fascist Pigs' US Policy Harms Prospects for Middle East Peace

11.23.04 (5:16 am) [edit]

Insane Neo-Con Arm-Chair Chicken-Hawks Push Regime Change in North Korea!

11.23.04 (5:12 am) [edit]

The coalition of foreign-policy hawks that promoted the 2003 invasion of Iraq is pressing President George W. Bush to adopt a more coercive policy toward North Korea, despite strong opposition from China and South Korea.

By most accounts, North Korea ranked high in bilateral talks between Bush and Northeast Asian leaders, including Chinese President Hu Jintao, at the summit of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Santiago, Chile, this past weekend, although the final communiqué did not address the issue.

Bush reportedly tried to make clear that his patience toward Pyongyang and its alleged efforts to stall the ongoing "Six-Party Talks" was fast running out and that Washington will soon push for stronger measures against North Korea in the absence of progress toward an agreement under which Pyongyang will dismantle its alleged nuclear-arms program.

Bush claimed Sunday that his interlocutors, who included the leaders of the four other parties – Russia, China, Japan, and South Korea – agreed with him, but Hu and South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun have not backed down publicly from their strong opposition to a harder line toward Pyongyang.

Indeed, just before the weekend summit, Roh told an audience in Los Angeles that a hardline policy over North Korea's nuclear weapons would have "grave repercussions," adding, "There is no alternative left in dealing with this issue except dialogue."

The South Korean leader also denounced the idea of an economic embargo against Pyongyang.

That the hawks back in Washington are indeed mobilizing became clear Monday when William Kristol, an influential neoconservative who also chairs the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), faxed a statement entitled "Toward Regime Change in North Korea" to reporters and various "opinion leaders" in the capital.

PNAC, which boasts Vice President Dick Cheney, Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and Cheney's powerful chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby – among a dozen other senior Bush national-security officials – as signers of its 1997 charter, issues statements relatively infrequently.

"It's clear that they see the transition [between the Bush administration's two terms] and before any new round of the Six-Party Talks as the time to try to set policy direction," one veteran analyst told IPS on Monday.

Kristol's statement referred in particular to two recent articles, including one published last week by Nicholas Eberstadt, a Korea specialist at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), which appeared in the neoconservative The Weekly Standard, which is edited by Kristol.

The article, "Tear Down This Tyranny," called for the implementation of a six-point strategy aimed at ousting North Korean Chairman Kim Jong-Il, in part by "working around the pro-appeasement crowd in the South Korean government," which apparently includes Roh himself.

The second article, published Sunday in the New York Times, detailed a number of recent indications cited by right-wing officials and the press in Japan – including high-level defections and the reported circulation of anti-government pamphlets – that Kim's hold on power may be slipping.

The article noted in particular a recent statement by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Shinzo Abe, that "regime change" was a distinct possibility and that "we need to start simulations of what we should do at that time."

"Recent reports suggest the presence of emerging cracks in the Stalinist power structure of North Korea, and even the emergence of serious dissident activity there," wrote Kristol. "This should remind us that one of President Bush's top priorities in his second term will have to be dealing with this wretch[ed] regime," he went on, citing Eberstadt's strategy as "useful guidance for an improved North Korean policy."

Eberstadt's article, which criticized Korea policy in Bush's first term for being both "reactive" and "paralysed by infighting," proceeds from the explicit assumption that efforts to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear program – which U.S. intelligence believes may already include as many as eight nuclear weapons – are almost certainly futile.

"We are exceedingly unlikely to talk – or to bribe – the current North Korean government out of its nuclear quest," according to Eberstadt in an implicit rejection of the basic goal of the Six-Party Talks.

Moreover, he wrote, the nuclear crisis and the North Korean government are essentially one and the same: "Unless and until we have a better class of dictator running North Korea, we will be faced with an ongoing and indeed growing North Korean crisis."

To achieve the desired "regime change," Eberstadt called first for a purge of State Department officials who argued for engaging Pyongyang during Bush's first term.

Washington, according to Eberstadt, should also increase "China's 'ownership' of the North Korean problem" by making clear to Beijing that it "will bear high costs if the current de-nuclearization diplomacy failed."

At the same time, U.S. officials must recognize that South Korea has, under Kim and the "implacably anti-American and reflexively pro-appeasement" core of his government, become a "runaway ally" – "a country bordering a state committed to its destruction, and yet governed increasingly in accordance with graduate-school 'peace studies' desiderata."

"Instead of appeasing South Korea's appeasers (as our policy to date has attempted to do, albeit clumsily)," according to Eberstadt, "America should be speaking over their heads directly to the Korean people, building and nurturing the coalitions in South Korean domestic politics that will ultimately bring a prodigal ally back into the fold," he argued.

Washington should also ready "the non-diplomatic instruments for North Korean threat reduction," Eberstadt wrote, arguing that preparing for the deliberate use of such options – presumably an economic embargo or even military strikes – "will actually increase the probability of a diplomatic success."

Finally, echoing the LDP's Abe, Eberstadt called for planning for a "post-Communist Korean peninsula" with other interested parties, "to maximize the opportunities and minimize the risks in that delicate and potentially dangerous process."

Eberstadt's strategy, according to a number of analysts, largely echoes the views of Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton, a former AEI vice president who is openly campaigning to become deputy secretary of state under Condoleezza Rice.

Bolton, perhaps the administration's most extreme hard-liner, has strong support in Cheney's office and other right-wing strongholds, including The Weekly Standard and on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal.

On Saturday, right-wing Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara, who claims to be on friendly terms with Bolton, told Fuji Television that Bolton wants to impose economic sanctions against North Korea, which, in the U.S. official's view, would lead to Kim's ouster "within one year." - http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?...

Insane Neo-Con Arm-Chair Chicken-Hawks Push Regime Change in North Korea!

11.23.04 (5:10 am) [edit]

Insane Neo-Con Arm-Chair Chicken-Hawks Push Regime Change in North Korea!

11.23.04 (5:07 am) [edit]

Insane Neo-Con Arm-Chair Chicken-Hawks Push Regime Change in North Korea!

11.23.04 (5:07 am) [edit]

Thanksgiving in Herr Fuhrer Bush's Culture of Death

11.23.04 (5:02 am) [edit]

The other day, something quite remarkable happened. Ever since the election, news anchors warned of the "coming assault on Fallujah," the "final clampdown," the "major military offensive" that would put an end to the resistance in that city. Dire warnings were made for civilians to flee – civilians already weakened, exhausted and terrorized by a year and a half of U.S.-style "liberation" – to parts unknown, on some kind of magic carpet.

Because I've been taking care of my mother who is very ill, I could only imagine other elderly and sick people in Fallujah "fleeing" the city on walkers, attached to ponderous oxygen machines.

I looked at my own children and imagined how we'd feel if we were told to run away as fast as we could to who knows where, because U.S. bombers were headed our way. Having grown up in a military town, I know the panic that grips even seasoned residents when a bomber appears out of nowhere, flying extremely low and darkening the sky over your head. Before you can figure out what's happening, you feel the earth shake under your feet. You can't see them coming – that's the truly terrorizing part. By the time you see that dark bat-shaped jet, it's too late to run.

As TV and radio talking heads waxed poetic about the high-tech 500-pound bombs that would be dropped to "soften" human beings and "break the back of the insurgency," I felt that growing sense of dread that is by now familiar to anyone who doesn't rely on mainstream U.S. news sources. This dread, this feeling of waiting for the other shoe to drop, tightens the stomachs of those who were raised to take seriously "Thou shalt not kill" … that dusty old law around which the Bush administration has found a thousand loopholes.

I began to suffer insomnia, fear, and guilt because I could not turn off my empathy for all the families who were suffering, or about to be killed, or see their babies' legs blown off, because of my president's addiction to bullying with bombs and guns and expendable young men.

Then a couple of days ago, I learned that indeed the massacre had taken place. Fallujah was "quiet" at last. Some called it a ghost town. Quite a few young Americans died in the process. Reports varied on numbers killed, but all agreed that innocent people were killed while I was sleeping. Maybe as many as 800 civilians, but as many as – and the military said this with cheer, not with regret – 1,000 "insurgents" were killed. Whether the latter were actually insurgents or civilians or kids who happened to be in the way we have no way of knowing, now that the independent journalists have been scared away.

Staring at those numbers of people killed and children maimed while I was sleeping, I sat and waited. Nothing. No feeling. I was free of any sorrow, free of that depressing unease. At last I was joining the crowd. What a relief, to feel nothing! Even as a Christian, I could turn a blind eye to even the worst killing, and have a good day!

I closed my laptop and made breakfast, thankful to finally experience what my conservative Christian neighbors have enjoyed all along – a delightful numbness. No painful compassion, no vicarious suffering, no guilt.

Remarkable!

[b]Blissfully Numb in Bush's Culture of Death[/b]

The "God-fearing Christian" who wrote to tell me that I was stupid for talking about Jesus because that means Christians shouldn't defend themselves under any condition, and that it was better to "take the fighting to the Iraqis than to have it happen here," and that, all things considered, he hoped I'd get beheaded, would be proud of me now. I'd passed over to the other side, the side of comfort and tranquility. The side where might really does make right.

You know, the winning side.

It's been great this week, feeling that I have arrived at long last at the pearly gates of the Culture of Death, yet I see no evil. Even when I heard yesterday a commander saying in an interview, "Well, we didn't get rid of the insurgency in Fallujah, but we definitely killed a lot of them," I felt at ease: The killings didn't bring peace, but at least a lot of people are dead now.

In the Culture of Death where our president assures us that the ends justify the means, I can finally see war as somehow Christian. I can visit www.presidentialprayerteam.org now without wondering why no prayers are solicited for an end to the killings of Iraqis by the U.S., as well as the other way around – and without worrying about the implications of millions of American Christians being told not only whom and what to pray for, but actually being given a script to follow when praying.

While only days ago I was horrified by the use of massive bombs on residential neighborhoods because U.S. intelligence "suspected" that maybe some "bad guys" were "holing up" in a "safe house" nearby (the same code words are used in every bombing of every country), I'm too numb to feel that now. Instead, I simply repeat to myself the hypnotic phrase that Bush and Rumsfeld and Allawi and military psy-ops experts sing in tune: "We don't target civilians."

Since that strange buzzing numbness began, I no longer hear in my head the true emphasis of that statement – "we don't target civilians" – a huge difference in meaning that has bothered me for far too long.

Even now that another war appears to be in the making, I'm not bothered. I know that "we have to take the fighting over there, if we don't want it over here." I know that 800 or 1,000 people doesn't mean a thing to most people, because those are big numbers – most of us have trouble visualizing 800 or 1,000 dollars or shoes or paper clips, let alone 800 or 1,000 dead bodies.

We simply can't keep up with the casualties anymore – the numbers, the fancy airstrikes, the glorious memorials to "our fallen," they just keep coming too fast, and in numbers that are too big for us to comprehend. "That does not compute," as the lovable robot on Lost in Space used to say.

As American citizens, we who feel responsible for what our government is doing in our name try to keep our eyes and hearts open to the truth. But after these last three years of ridding the world of evil by ridding it of people, it hurts too much, and we're hated for being liberally compassionate anyway, so we begin to falter.

We are weary now. In Bush's Culture of Death, the war is not only to "break the back of the insurgency," but to break the hearts of Americans. To make us stop hearing or seeing or caring what our military does to Iraqis and to our own young soldiers. The real battle to win hearts and minds is being waged right here: It is the American conscience that President Bush and his men are most determined to subdue – one way or the other.

[b]Restoring Our Weary Souls This Thanksgiving[/b]

Sooner or later there comes a time when the horrors cannot touch us, when the dangers cannot rouse us, when we give thanks for a few moments of feeling absolutely nothing. My daughter tells me that it'll never last, this unexpected vacation from compassion, and as a psychologist I know she's right. It won't last, and when it returns it will do so with a vengeance. When the numbness wears off, the numbers of the dead will begin to hurt. But perhaps just a few days more….

Maybe this Thanksgiving we deserve some numbness, some relief. If you've read this far, I know you're the caring sort, whatever your politics or your faith, and that you have suffered, too. Let us decide this together: It's okay to take some time to recover from a traumatic election that was followed immediately by a new level of "emboldened" U.S. violence, violence that's making enemies for our children and our grandchildren. These are sins against God and future generations, not to mention the Iraqi people, sins for which we can only beg collective forgiveness.

Before we eat our Thanksgiving meal, we can give thanks that we're here instead of there, that we're not Iraqis fleeing bombs and war-crazed boys with guns. We can thank God for those soldiers who are still alive, and we can pray for their continued safety. For those of us who are Christian, we can say our own prayers, from our own hearts, without a script.

And, in defiance of all the warnings by every politician and pundit in the land that talking or even praying against war is treasonous and "gives comfort to the enemy," this Thanksgiving we can follow instead a higher command:

"You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?" - http://www.antiwar.com/orig/w...

Thanksgiving in Herr Fuhrer Bush's Culture of Death

11.23.04 (4:58 am) [edit]

Thanksgiving in Herr Fuhrer Bush's Culture of Death

11.23.04 (4:57 am) [edit]

Bush/Cheney's Fascist U.S.A.: GOP Nazis' Provision to Violate Your Privacy, Your Tax Returns!

11.23.04 (4:53 am) [edit]

[b]THANK GOD THE DEMOCRATS FOUND AND MADE PUBLIC THIS FASCIST PROVISION INSERTED AT THE 'LAST-MINUTE' BEFORE THE VOTE, THAT THE GOP NAZIS NOW "DISAVOW" ...

Spending Bill Held Up by Tax Provision

Measure Lets Panels Examine Returns; Repeal Is Planned[/b]

A $388 billion government-wide spending bill, passed by Congress on Saturday, was stranded on Capitol Hill yesterday, its trip to the White House on hold as embarrassed Republicans prepared to repeal a provision that could give the Appropriations committees the right to examine the tax returns of Americans.

Top GOP lawmakers disavowed the provision, expressed surprise that it was in the bill, and blamed both the Internal Revenue Service and congressional staffs for incorporating it into the omnibus spending package funding domestic departments in 2005.

But Democrats -- and some Republicans -- charged that the incident highlighted the deterioration of a budget-writing system that is prey to such incidents. Unable to agree on how much to spend on basic governmental services, they say, House and Senate GOP leaders increasingly are resorting to a secretive process that leaves the public and most members of Congress ignorant of the content of huge spending bills until hours before a final vote.

At a news conference denouncing this closed-door process, Sen. Kent Conrad (N.D.), ranking Democrat on the Budget Committee, warned that "something really seriously bad is going to happen if we let this continue." He quoted a Republican, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.): "This process is broken."

Republicans hope to finally quell the uproar over the provision tomorrow, when the House is set to approve a resolution repealing it. The Senate took that action on Saturday, after Senate leaders promised that the omnibus spending bill on which the provision was riding would not be sent to the president for his signature until both houses had repealed it.

The provision, added to the spending package of more than 3,000 pages last Thursday, would give staffers of the House and Senate Appropriations committees similar powers to enter IRS facilities and examine tax returns as are now available to the tax-writing committees of the two chambers.

But the provision appeared to some lawmakers to expressly set aside privacy safeguards, which mandate criminal penalties for those divulging individual tax information. Members of both parties charged this could breach the confidentiality of returns.

House officials said the language was intended only to allow staffers to enter IRS facilities where returns were being processed, to oversee how taxpayer money was being used. Such full access is now denied by the IRS, they said, because of the chance a congressional aide might inadvertently see a return.

The provision, House sources said, was drafted by the IRS and inserted into the bill by lower-level House staffers. Senior House and Senate Republicans said they never saw it until the bill appeared on the floor, and yesterday IRS spokesman Terry Lemons said the IRS commissioner "was unaware of the provision until after it was already approved" and "strongly supports it being deleted from the final bill."

On Saturday, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) referred to the provision as the "Istook amendment," and congressional aides said it had been inserted at the request of Rep. Ernest J. Istook Jr. (R-Okla.), who chairs the Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the IRS.

But yesterday Istook said in a written statement that he had been left in the dark about the provision: "I didn't write it; I didn't approve it; I wasn't even consulted. My name shouldn't be associated with it because I had nothing to do with it."

Micah Leydorf, Istook's spokeswoman, said she understood the language was added by the full Appropriations Committee staff or by Istook's subcommittee staff at the direction of staffers for the full committee.

"We have a problem with how bills like this are put together," Istook acknowledged. "The subcommittee chairman should never be bypassed like I was in this case."

He added that "honest mistakes were made but there's no conspiracy."

But some top Republicans were less charitable. Speaking on the Senate floor Saturday, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), who chairs the tax-writing Finance Committee, called the provision an "outrage" and said it will "bring us back to the doorsteps of the days of Nixon, Truman and similar dark periods in our tax history when tax return information was used as a club against political enemies."

"It's simply representative of the way Congress is now operating," said Allen Schick, a professor of public policy at the University of Maryland. "It shows on the one hand how easy it is to put something in [an omnibus bill] without anybody else knowing about it." Although this may look particularly egregious, he said, the giant bill also contains hundreds of other provisions that could not be enacted into law if they were offered as single bills requiring full debate and scrutiny in both houses.

Such huge bills, lawmakers acknowledge, represent a breakdown of the normal budget process. For the second time in three years, House and Senate Republicans, bitterly divided over the level of domestic spending, failed to agree on a budget blueprint, as required by law.

The impasse forced delays in drafting many of the spending bills, and when Congress returned last week from its election recess, it had yet to complete nine of the 13 annual appropriations bills. Seven of the spending bills had never been to the Senate floor for debate, one had never been to the House floor, and one funding the nation's nuclear weapons programs and Army Corps of Engineers water projects was still in a Senate subcommittee.

To overcome this problem, GOP leaders crammed all the remaining legislation into a single omnibus package that, under congressional rules, could not be amended.

It contained all the unfinished spending bills, along with three other pieces of major legislation -- the Satellite Home Viewer Extension and Reauthorization Act, the Snake River Water Rights Act, and the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act.

Along with those measures, lawmakers and staffs added thousands of local projects benefiting home states and districts. Also included in the final bill was a major provision barring states from enforcing laws that require health care providers, hospitals, HMOs or insurers to pay for, provide or give referrals for abortion.

But when the measure was rushed to the floors of the two chambers Saturday, few members had read it. Lawmakers absent from the Capitol for weeks while campaigning for reelection returned for a brief lame-duck session to complete the work of the 108th Congress.

The secretive process, Schick noted, gives GOP leaders enormous power to add provisions that they or special interests might want, and to delete provisions that GOP factions or the White House find objectionable.

Frist, for example, ordered negotiators to accept the abortion provision, even though it had never gone to the Senate floor and was only in the House-passed version of the bill covering health appropriations. Senate opponents agreed not to block its consideration after Frist promised to schedule a vote soon on a bill drafted by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) to repeal the provision.

GOP leaders also deleted provisions on overtime regulations and the outsourcing of government jobs despite support in both houses.

"It's not transparent, and it's a breakdown of legislative order," Schick said. - http://www.washingtonpost.com...

Bush/Cheney's Fascist U.S.A.: GOP Nazis' Provision to Violate Your Privacy, Your Tax Returns!

11.23.04 (4:49 am) [edit]