Monday, June 30, 2003

Re: It Matters Dear Friends: In her essay "Is There Anything Left That Matters?" Joan Chittister, a Benedictine Sister, writes of the importance of honesty and integrity in our lives, and in our government. She asks, "What is the depth of the American soul if we can allow destruction to be done in our name and the name of 'liberation' and never even demand an accounting of its costs, both personal and public, when it is over?" If the people speak and the government doesn't listen, there is something wrong with the government. If the government acts precipitously and the people say nothing, something is wrong with the people. Sister Joan  has been recognized by universities and national organizations for her work for justice, peace, and equality for women in the Church and society. She is a best-selling author, well-known international lecturer, and is an active member of the International Peace Council. ___________________________ National Catholic Reporter May 27, 2003  Vol. 1, No. 9   Is There Anything Left That Matters? by Joan Chittister, OSB   This is what I don't understand: All of a sudden nothing seems to matter. First, they said they wanted Bin Laden "dead or alive." But they didn't get him. So now they tell us that it doesn't matter. Our mission is greater than one man. Then they said they wanted Saddam Hussein, "dead or alive." He's apparently alive but we haven't got him yet, either. However, President Bush told reporters recently, "It doesn't matter. Our mission is greater than one man." Finally, they told us that we were invading Iraq to destroy their weapons of mass destruction. Now they say those weapons probably don't exist. Maybe never existed. Apparently that doesn't matter either. Except that it does matter. I know we're not supposed to say that. I know it's called "unpatriotic." But it's also called honesty. And dishonesty matters. It matters that the infrastructure of a foreign nation that couldn't defend itself against us has been destroyed on the grounds that it was a military threat to the world. It matters that it was destroyed by us under a new doctrine of "pre-emptive war" when there was apparently nothing worth pre-empting. It surely matters to the families here whose sons went to war to make the world safe from weapons of mass destruction and will never come home. It matters to families in the United States whose life support programs were ended, whose medical insurance ran out, whose food stamps were cut off, whose day care programs were eliminated so we could spend the money on sending an army to do what did not need to be done. It matters to the Iraqi girl whose face was burned by a lamp that toppled over as a result of a U.S. bombing run. It matters to Ali, the Iraqi boy who lost his family  and both his arms  in a U.S. air attack. It matters to the people in Baghdad whose water supply is now fetid, whose electricity is gone, whose streets are unsafe, whose 158 government ministries' buildings and all their records have been destroyed, whose cultural heritage and social system has been looted and whose cities teem with anti-American protests. It matters that the people we say we "liberated" do not feel liberated in the midst of the lawlessness, destruction and wholesale social suffering that so-called liberation created. It matters to the United Nations whose integrity was impugned, whose authority was denied, whose inspection teams are even now still being overlooked in the process of technical evaluation and disarmament. It matters to the reputation of the United States in the eyes of the world, both now and for decades to come, perhaps. And surely it matters to the integrity of this nation whether or not its intelligence gathering agencies have any real intelligence or not before we launch a military armada on its say-so. And it should matter whether or not our government is either incompetent and didn't know what they were doing or were dishonest and refused to say. The unspoken truth is that either as a people we were misled, or we were lied to, about the real reason for this war. Either we made a huge  and unforgivable  mistake, an arrogant or ignorant mistake, or we are swaggering around the world like a blind giant, flailing in all directions while the rest of the world watches in horror or in ridicule. If Bill Clinton's definition of "is" matters, surely this matters. If a president's sex life matters, surely a president's use of global force against some of the weakest people in the world matters. If a president's word in a court of law about a private indiscretion matters, surely a president's word to the community of nations and the security of millions of people matters. And if not, why not? If not, surely there is something as wrong with us as citizens, as thinkers, as Christians as there must be with some facet of the government. If wars that the public says are wrong yesterday  as over 70% of U.S. citizens did before the attack on Iraq  suddenly become "right" the minute the first bombs drop, what kind of national morality is that? Of what are we really capable as a nation if the considered judgment of politicians and people around the world means nothing to us as a people? What is the depth of the American soul if we can allow destruction to be done in our name and the name of "liberation" and never even demand an accounting of its costs, both personal and public, when it is over? We like to take comfort in the notion that people make a distinction between our government and ourselves. We like to say that the people of the world love Americans, they simply mistrust our government. But excoriating a distant and anonymous "government" for wreaking rubble on a nation in pretense of good requires very little of either character or intelligence. What may count most, however, is that we may well be the ones Proverbs warns when it reminds us: "Kings take pleasure in honest lips; they value the one who speaks the truth." The point is clear: If the people speak and the king doesn't listen, there is something wrong with the king. If the king acts precipitously and the people say nothing, something is wrong with the people. It may be time for us to realize that in a country that prides itself on being democratic, we are our government. And the rest of the world is figuring that out very quickly. From where I stand, that matters. --Comments or questions about this column may be sent to: fwis@nationalcatholicreporter.org Copyright © The National Catholic Reporter Publishing  Company, 115 E. Armour Blvd., Kansas City, MO 64111 All rights reserved. _______________________________ In peace, Otoño ________________________________ Read all about it and get the news that matters by receiving the War and Peace Watch. To subscribe, send an e-mail to:  Reikiworks@compuserve.com Thank you for your support, The War and Peace Watch publisher. contact:  Otoño Johnston ============================================================ (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment  for research and educational purposes only.) ======================== 7:49:20 PM

Re: Homeland Security's Nuala Kelly     Dear Friends: Nuala O'Connor Kelly has been chief privacy officer for the Department of Homeland Security for two months now. As such, she is charged with balancing the government's anti-terrorism program with protecting the privacy rights of  Americans. Will she be able to serve her masters and the public as well? Privacy proponents are divided over whether she'll be a glorified public relations flack or a true privacy advocate. One doesn't have to be familiar with C.S. Lewis' That Hideous Strength, the writings of George Orwell, or even the struggles against the dark side envisioned by J.K. Rowling, to be aware of the tension between the one and the many, the government and the people, or the security of the state vs. the rights of privacy. She'll truly be walking the razor's edge on this one. --Nuala O'Connor Kelly, a 34-year-old lawyer who describes herself as "truly a geek at heart," is best known in privacy-activist circles as part of the team that Internet advertising firm DoubleClick hauled in to clean house when the company was being besieged by complaints about its privacy policies -- or lack thereof. ________________________ Wired News June 30, 2003 Nuala: Tech Not a Complete Fix  by Michelle Delio  Two months into her job as chief privacy officer for the Department of Homeland Security Department, Nuala O'Connor Kelly spoke by phone and e-mail with Wired News about her personal experiences with both terrorism and government surveillance, what she really did at Internet advertising firm DoubleClick, and how she's balancing government antiterrorism efforts with the rights of the people whose privacy she's now charged with protecting. Wired News: You've described yourself a "geek at heart." What is it about technology that interests and excites you? O'Connor Kelly: What interests me about technology is our ability to develop and discover things that help us, particularly that help us communicate, live, work, and thrive through our own intelligence and ingenuity. I suppose it sounds incredibly corny, but it's one form of making the world a better place. What excites me is our own power to create; to make something that runs, moves, operates -- whether on the screen or elsewhere in our lives -- that essentially has a life, or at least a purpose, of its own. I think the challenge for me, since I am enamored of technological solutions, is to remember that sometimes technology is not the complete fix. It takes a combination of technology, people, policies and practices to ensure that something like privacy, for example, is embedded into the culture of an organization or into a particular program or activity. WN: How did you become involved in privacy issues? Was it a burning interest of yours or did you just sort of end up here? O'Connor Kelly: That story is part accidental and part intentional, probably like many people's careers. The accidental part was being fortunate to get a number of different jobs in different places all dealing with phenomenal privacy issues in the online space, in the government space. But I've been interested particularly in the relationship between government and the individual, and the impact on personal privacy and dignity for a long time. I was born in Northern Ireland and spent a little bit of time there as a child. Living in an environment of terrorism and security issues has an impact on people that goes far beyond even the immediate fear of the terrorist act. The governmental actions that often flow from anti-terrorism purposes equally affect the individual, and that individual's sense of their personal autonomy and space. We in the United States are learning and evaluating and creating our response to terrorist acts such as those on September 11, and in the process of developing that response, we need to consider the impact that our response will have on the lives and dignity and privacy of our neighbors and our children and ourselves. WN: What do you think will be the most challenging part of your job? O'Connor Kelly: I think any time you're trying to have a cross-cultural conversation -- between technologists and non-technologists, between government and those outside government, between our country and other countries -- the risk of misunderstandings is great. I see myself as an internal educator -- to bring an awareness of privacy and data-protection practices to a new organization -- and also as a translator. But I also I think external education is crucial as well, so that people can form educated opinions about the scope of DHS's activities. Being precise and accurate and complete and clear, particularly when talking about complex technologies, is a challenge. WN: Any unexpected challenges that have cropped up since you started, things that now appear to be a bit more complicated that you expected? O'Connor Kelly: I think our impact on non-U.S. citizens is something we need to consider further. As an immigrant, I've always thought that I've been sensitive to non-citizens living in the States. But the need for our government to understand the flow of people and persons is crucial to making our homeland safe for all of us, citizens and residents alike. I think having the conversation internationally about how people flow across borders is a hard one, since each country has a different system of accepting visitors, and also wants to protect the rights of its citizens to the greatest extent possible when they travel. WN: Some people are becoming increasingly spooked over the government's plans to gather private information in the war against terrorism. What is your response to people who are skeptical about the need and effectiveness (against terror) of the new surveillance plans? O'Connor Kelly: I have frequently said (both before and since joining the government) that a healthy skepticism about the government is a good thing, and part of our right as Americans. I think the idea of "mission creep" is something we should be constantly vigilant about, not only to protect the rights of people who are affected by these programs, but also because I want DHS to succeed as an organization, and part of that means defining and achieving its mission. WN: Some have suggested that your primary job is to provide good PR for homeland defense, not to make real changes in how the government handles private data. Your response to that? O'Connor Kelly: I've heard that comment (I think I read it in Wired, in fact), and I have to confess to being quite baffled by it. I have no background in PR, and I haven't been in Washington long enough to know how to "spin" things. People who know me know how hard I work now, and how hard I worked at DoubleClick to make good decisions internally for the organization. Perhaps I should have demanded more credit externally, but that part of the job never occurred to me. I do think it's incredibly important to be transparent and accountable and accessible. We owe it our citizens, our customers, our clients, to explain what it is we're doing. If that's PR, then I suppose it's part of the job. But I don't think of it as PR; I think of it as communicating accurately and responsibly to citizens so that they are aware of what their government is up to ... so that they can make informed judgments about those activities. Apparently, I've done a really poor job of PR on my own behalf, as I think that most of my work was internal to the organizations I've been a part of, and apparently those on the outside didn't know the scope of it. WN: Can you bring me up to date with what's happening with CAPPS II (Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System)? O'Connor Kelly: I think the CAPPS II program has come a tremendously long way from a privacy perspective since people first started talking about it. In the few weeks I've been here, I've learned about some important, and even impressive, privacy protections that the CAPPS II team has put in place based on feedback received formally and informally through responses to the first Federal Register notice announcing the system, through open meetings with the public, with advocacy groups, with members of Congress. Where it stands now is that the department will be issuing shortly a new Privacy Act notice that details what the system plan is, what it would do, what information is collected, used, and stored, and for what purpose. I think the notice will answer many of the questions and address many of the concerns that people have about the system. The notice may also raise some more questions, and that's OK. We still have questions, too, about CAPPS II and that's why we're going to test the technologies, put the system through its paces, over the summer and into the fall, to see if it can work. That's another reason for the test -- while it won't be making decisions affecting traveling passengers, the system will contain personal information for a time, and people have a right to know that. Wired News: Will you develop ways to check the accuracy of the data that CAPPS II accesses, limit the information that is collected, and also enable ways for people to easily correct captured data? O'Connor Kelly: Those are pretty much all the key questions, from a policy side, that we're in the process of answering on CAPPS II. We've built some good protocols on data accuracy and on minimizing what data will be collected and what data will be retained, and for how long. I think the harder question is the timely correction of data. We're in the process of building a system where people can complain about problems to a passenger advocate, but eventually DHS will have a process through which individuals can complain to a passenger advocate, an ombudsman, and eventually to me and my office. I'm confident that we will figure out a way to resolve issues in the long term but I want to, in the short term, minimize travelers' delays, and I believe that the greater accuracy that new technologies will bring in this system, versus the current system, will allow us to minimize the incidence of incorrect data. WN: What else is on your immediate to-do list? O'Connor Kelly: We want to create an educational structure across the department, where the privacy office works with and teaches fair information principles in a formal and informal way. And we're working on creating procedural frameworks where privacy is considered at the beginning of the development of any new policy or product or procedure, so that privacy becomes core to the development, rather than an afterthought. Plus, making sure we're being brought into all DHS programs that use personal data. It's a big department -- 182,000 employees -- so that's a lot of ground to cover. WN: Are you meeting any resistance within the DHS when you promote privacy concerns? O'Connor Kelly: In general, I have met with great support from my colleagues. The tension in providing access and transparency is particularly striking, however, in the most highly sensitive, classified information and information about law enforcement activities. We have some forms of information which are essential to ongoing investigations, for example, which, if revealed, might imperil a legitimate law enforcement activity ... while the investigation is ongoing. In these cases, we need to devise ways of providing redress mechanisms for people who feel that they've been wrongly singled out, or who believe that the wrong information might be somehow associated with them, while still protecting the data for legitimate purposes. That's something I will be working on, and that I already am working on. WN: How do you balance the needs of your employer (the government) with the needs of the people whose privacy you're charged with protecting? O'Connor Kelly: I think of citizens and the people affected by DHS's activities as our ultimate client, or boss, or stakeholder, whatever word you want to use. I actually find it much easier -- perhaps this is my legal training or just a personal trait -- to aggressively protect the needs of others rather than my own personal needs. Ultimately I don't see a tension or a balancing act between the needs of the government and the people. The mission of the government should be to meet the needs of the people. In DHS's case, the need is to create a secure homeland, but that means not only securing the people and the places, but also the lifestyles and the liberties of Americans and our visitors. And just as being safe from terror is one of those liberties; so is the ability to safeguard one's privacy. Wired News © Copyright 2003, Lycos, Inc. All Rights Reserved. _______________________________ In peace, Otoño ________________________________ Read all about it and get the news that matters by receiving the War and Peace Watch. To subscribe, send an e-mail to:  Reikiworks@compuserve.com Thank you for your support, The War and Peace Watch publisher. contact:  Otoño Johnston ============================================================ (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment  for research and educational purposes only.) ============================================================ 7:48:48 PM

Re: The Not in Our Name Project Dear Friends: The Not In Our Name project was initiated at a meeting in New York City, on March 23, 2002. The meeting was called for by a letter that proposed ways to strengthen and expand resistance to the U.S. government's course in the wake of September 11, 2001. The meeting adopted the proposal - and the Not In Our Name project was born. To quote from the project, "We are people of conscience who cannot stand silent as our government wages war without limits of time and space. We cannot stand silent as immigrants are rounded up and detained. We cannot stand silent in the face of new police state restrictions threatening the very right to dissent. We refuse to allow President Bush to speak for all the American people. We will not give up our right to question. We will not hand over our consciences in return for a hollow promise of safety. Together as one, we say NOT IN OUR NAME." The Not In Our Name project is being developed to strengthen and expand the existing movement of resistance - resistance that must take many forms. Resistance of critical thought, resistance by speaking out, resistance through creating powerful art, and resistance through finding ways to halt the machinery of war and repression. Resistance by individuals and resistance through mass action. _______________________ Not In Our Name May 5, 2003 This Was Not a War of Liberation but an Unjust War and Occupation US & UK Troops Out of Iraq NOW! Our government told us we had to go to war because of terrorism - but it was never proven that Iraq was linked with Al Qaeda. Our government told us we had to go to war because of weapons of mass destruction - but the evidence of Iraq's nuclear weapons program, which Colin Powell brought to the UN Security Council and George Bush brought to the nation in his State of the Union address, contained forged documents that were the so-called proof that Iraq was trying to buy 500 tons of uranium oxide from Niger. No chemical or biological weapons have been found and, moreover, the Iraqis used no such weapons against U.S. troops - which hardly gives credibility to U.S. claims that Iraq posed an immediate threat to the security of the United States. Our government told us that the goal was disarmament - but when the U.S. refused to go along with the majority of the Security Council's call for continued weapons inspections and disarmament, it was made explicit that the raison d'etre for this war has all along been regime change, an objective the Bush administration put on the agenda only days after Sept 11th 2001. Our government tells us that this was a war of liberation to free the Iraqi people from the brutal tyranny of Saddam Hussein - and now the Iraqi people will have democracy and the right to choose. But the Iraqi people were given no choice in the matter of literally hundreds of thousands of military sorties over Iraq and rockets raining down on Iraqi streets. The Iraqi people were not given a choice to be "collateral damage." The Iraqi people were given no choice in the matter of U.S. military generals who will occupy and rule the country indefinitely - or the decisions to protect the Ministry of Oil while the heritage of the country was looted. The Iraqi people were given no choice when U.S. Marines shot into crowds of demonstrators and killed people - including children - who were demanding that the U.S. leave their country. Our government tells us that they seized the oil fields first, to keep them safe for the people of Iraq. But the press conferences of the war planners unashamedly announced that revenues from the oil fields will be used to pay for the invasion, occupation and rebuilding of Iraq. The first contracts for rebuilding Iraq have gone without bidding to the very corporations who sat on the policy boards that directed the rush to war. Companies like Bechtel and the Stevedoring Services of America are getting hundreds of billions worth of contracts to rebuild the country they just destroyed. The agribusiness conglomerate Cargill is being brought in to bust open the Iraqi market for U.S. exports by administering to the reconstruction of the Ministry of Agriculture, and ex-CIA chief James Woolsey is being recommended to reconstruct the Ministry of Information. Our government is now telling us that we are there to "help build a peaceful and representative government. And then our military forces will leave." But a terrible historical precedent has been established in Iraq - of pre-emptive use of military force to reorder whole countries, with the promise of reordering whole regions of the world strategic to U.S. imperial interests. Woe be the national sovereignty of the country that stands in the way of Pax Americana. Patriot Missiles and Patriot Acts The Bush national security doctrine of "global domination" and "pre-emptive" use of military power has ushered in an era of unprecedented and radical change in foreign policy and in government - a dangerous direction of endless war and domestic repression, of patriot missiles and patriot acts. Under the Patriot Act, the powers of government have been steadily transferred to the executive branch. Under the Patriot Act, immigrants - especially Arabs, Muslims and South Asians - have been stripped of any rights. They have been ordered to report for government interviews and put on lists, detained and deported with no right to due process. Thousands have been "disappeared" from their families with no right to contact a lawyer or family member, reminiscent of the very tyranny our government is supposedly liberating people from. The use of torture at off shore prisons and the denial of the Geneva Convention for "enemy combatants" have been legitimized. Unlimited police powers to spy on U.S. citizens have been established, and now members of the U.S. Senate are advocating eliminating the "sunset clause" of Patriot Act I while advocating the passage of Patriot Act II with provisions that make the fiction of George Orwell's 1984 real life. Iraq is only the second stop in the so-called "war on terrorism" - a war we were told was for our safety and turned out to be for empire. But we as citizens of the United States do not want to live in the new Rome - where the U.S. is not bound by international treaties or international bodies and where wars are promised to last generations. As the U.S. declared victory over Baghdad, Donald Rumsfeld was already directing belligerent and inflammatory remarks towards Syria, Iran and North Korea. U.S. troops lie just off the coast of the Philippines - awaiting a way around the Philippine constitution that outlaws foreign troops on its soil. Ex-CIA director James Woolsey told a group of college students on April 8 that the war the U.S. in engaged in should be called World War 4. He said, "I think that more accurately characterizes the degree of commitment that we [the U.S.] are going to be engaged in now for some years." We Will Not Stop Resisting! This war on Iraq was wrong, the occupation is Iraq is wrong, and the whole Bush doctrine of war and repression is wrong! Not In Our Name calls on all people living in the U.S. to refuse to be party to this and to repudiate this war and occupation and any inference that this war by our government is in our name. We stand with the world against this war and extend our hand to those suffering under U.S. military attack and occupation. We pledge that we will not stop until this war and the entire war on the world are stopped. We pledge that our youth will not be used as cannon fodder for immoral wars. We pledge to the youth of the world a better world than this! Our actions and protest leading up to the Iraq war made an historic difference. All over the world people take heart to know that there is an anti-war movement in the United States. The Iraqi people need to know that there are people here in this country that are opposed to the military occupation they do not want. You are invited to join with Not In Our Name to expand and strengthen resistance to end this war and the government's whole course of war and repression. End the Occupation of Iraq! U.S. and UK Troops Out of Iraq Now! Stop the War on the World! Stop Detentions, Roundups and Registration of Immigrants! End Police State Measures!   --Not In Our Name www.notinourname.net info@notinourname.net _______________________________ In peace, Otoño ________________________________ Read all about it and get the news that matters by receiving the War and Peace Watch. To subscribe, send an e-mail to:  Reikiworks@compuserve.com Thank you for your support, The War and Peace Watch publisher. contact:  Otoño Johnston ============================================================ (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment  for research and educational purposes only.) ============================================================ 7:48:16 PM

Re: The Pledge of Resistance Dear Friends: The Not In Our Name Pledge of Resistance was created collectively by artists and activists in April 2002 as a means of inspiring protest and resistance. It is at the heart of the Not In Our Name Project. The Pledge was not intended to be signed, rather, it is a tool to be used by individuals, organizations and communities to inspire and strengthen individual and group resistance. Student organizations, trade unions, religious congregations and professional organizations could adopt the Pledge. Meetings and gatherings of all kinds could end (or begin) with the Pledge recited aloud by everyone.  Sermons could be written around it. Letters-to-the-editor could discuss its themes. The Pledge of Resistance could be printed in campus and community newspapers and organization newsletters all over the country. ________________________ The Pledge of Resistance We believe that as people living in the United States it is our responsibility to resist the injustices done by our government, in our names Not in our name will you wage endless war there can be no more deaths no more transfusions of blood for oil Not in our name will you invade countries bomb civilians, kill more children letting history take its course over the graves of the nameless Not in our name will you erode the very freedoms you have claimed to fight for Not by our hands will we supply weapons and funding for the annihilation of families on foreign soil Not by our mouths will we let fear silence us Not by our hearts will we allow whole peoples or countries to be deemed evil Not by our will and Not in our name We pledge resistance We pledge alliance with those who have come under attack for voicing opposition to the war or for their religion or ethnicity We pledge to make common cause with the people of the world to bring about justice, freedom and peace Another world is possible and we pledge to make it real.   --Not In Our Name is not collecting individual Pledge of Resistance signatures; however, we encourage groups and organizations to adopt it. Not In Our Name www.notinourname.net info@notinourname.net _______________________________ In peace, Otoño ________________________________ Read all about it and get the news that matters by receiving the War and Peace Watch. To subscribe, send an e-mail to:  Reikiworks@compuserve.com Thank you for your support, The War and Peace Watch publisher. contact:  Otoño Johnston ============================================================ (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment  for research and educational purposes only.) ============================================================ 7:47:41 PM

Re: America's Crime of Silence Dear Friends: The recent leaks of classified intelligence information have alerted the American people that something is amiss. Many government experts feel that intelligence had been manipulated to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and yet the public seems complacent to bask in the "patriotic" glow of victory, caring little about what happens to the defeated country now that the war is over. One of the most disturbing things about Iraq War II is that the American people had plenty of evidence before the war that the Bush administration was exaggerating the threat, and yet they did not speak out. This is not patriotism--this is America's crime of silence. ______________________________ Too Many Lies, Too Little Outrage by Ivan Eland Alternet June 24, 2003 Recent leaks of highly classified intelligence information are a clear signal to the American people that many government experts felt that intelligence was manipulated to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Yet the public so far seems complacent to bask in the "patriotic" glow of the battlefield victory over Iraq. As a nation, most Americans relished the sight of the American flag being draped over the statue of Saddam Hussein in downtown Baghdad as a symbol of the U.S. conquest of another vanquished foe. And we were a bit disappointed that the reception from the "liberated" Iraqi masses to the American troops was one of ambivalence rather than adulation. In short, the war was about "us" and not the Iraqis. To demonstrate this unnerving conclusion, one needs only to look at the media coverage, which may well reflect where the public's attention lies. We have moved on to coverage of Scott Peterson's trial and the Catholic bishop who allegedly committed a hit-and-run crime. And who can tell us what is happening in Afghanistan now -- the scene of the last U.S. military victory? The ugly truth is that most Americans care little what happens to defeated countries after the war as long as we can "beat our chests," as Lt. Gen. Garner put it, and revel in the military trouncing our superpower juggernaut gave to the armies of tinpot despots in the relatively poor developing world. In fact, as long as a victory was won, the slumbering public doesn't care much about why we went to war in the first place. We don't seem to care that the administration twisted the intelligence (and maybe even lied) to hype the threat from Iraq in order to garner support for a questionable war. The Congress's and the media's focus on the U.S. military's failure to find mass quantities of chemical and biological weapons after the war is quite curious, however. More important -- even if some such weapons are eventually found -- before the war the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency both reported to the administration that unless attacked, Iraq was unlikely to use such weapons or give them to terrorists. In a letter to Congress made public prior to the war, CIA Director George Tenet made this assessment fully known. Yet senior Bush administration officials simply ignored the unveiling of embarrassing information and soldiered on -- apparently taking a page out of the Bill Clinton playbook during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. In repeated public statements, senior Bush officials portrayed Iraq's chemical and biological weapons as a threat to the United States, either directly or because they might be given to terrorists. Subsequent events proved that the threat from Iraq proved to be even less than the intelligence community predicted. Iraq did not even use such "super weapons" in the most dire case imaginable for the Saddam Hussein Regime -- being overrun by a U.S. invasion. And now the U.S. can't seem to even find any of the vast quantities of chemical and biological agents promised by the administration. The most troubling matter surrounding the war is not that the Bush administration has failed to uncover super weapons in Iraq; it is that the American public did not say "no" to the war (and to this day has not reversed its approval of the conflict) even when the war rationale by Bush administration officials was contradicted publicly by their own intelligence community. This public acceptance of the war is even more curious given the sordid history of presidential lying to the American people about wars in the past. In 1846, the Polk administration sent U.S. troops into a disputed region along the Texas-Mexican border to provoke Mexico into firing the first shot in the Mexican War. In 1898, the McKinley administration used an explosion aboard the U.S. warship Maine in a Cuban harbor to take the country to war against Spain. Most historians now believe the explosion was a total accident. In the 1916 election, Woodrow Wilson promised the American people he would keep the United States out of war; in 1917, the United States entered World War I. In 1940, also an election year, Franklin Roosevelt promised to keep the country out of World War II, while actively trying to start a naval war with the Germans in the Atlantic and imposing provocative economic sanctions on Japan in the Pacific. In 1964, Lyndon Johnson lied about an incident between U.S. and North Vietnamese ships in the Gulf of Tonkin to gain acceptance from Congress to escalate the war in Vietnam. But he conveniently waited until 1965, after the 1964 election, to do so. To justify Operation Desert Storm, the first Bush administration cited satellite photos showing Iraqi forces massing on the border between newly-occupied Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Curiously, simultaneous photographs from Russian satellites did not detect any military build-up. In all these cases, however, Americans trusted their government and later found such trust to be misplaced. The alarming thing about Iraq War II is that the American people had plenty of evidence before the war -- from the president's own intelligence chief -- that the Bush administration was exaggerating the threat. In a republic, aren't the people ultimately responsible for the policies their government adopts in their name? Most of the public seems to revel in its willingness to allow the U.S. Government -- like the empires of old -- to conduct "patriotic" wars of conquest for glory. The Founders of our nation -- who realized that foreign wars lead to many ill-effects, both domestically and abroad -- would find this misguided conception of "patriotism" very troubling indeed. --Ivan Eland is Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif., and author of the book, "Putting 'Defense' Back into U.S. Defense Policy: Rethinking U.S. Security in the Post-Cold War World." © 2003 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved. _______________________________ In peace, Otoño ________________________________ Read all about it and get the news that matters by receiving the War and Peace Watch. To subscribe, send an e-mail to:  Reikiworks@compuserve.com Thank you for your support, The War and Peace Watch publisher. contact:  Otoño Johnston ============================================================ (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment  for research and educational purposes only.) ============================================================ 7:47:11 PM

Re: The Language of Domination          Dear Friends: Do we say what we mean, or mean what we say? Clinical psychologist Renana Brooks offers us insights into how Bush uses negative and dominating language to intimidate Americans. Remember, it's never "just words." We speak as we think, and we think as we speak. ____________________________ The Nation June 30, 2003 Issue Bush Dominates a Nation of Victims by Renana Brooks George W Bush is generally regarded as a mangler of the English language. What is overlooked is his mastery of emotional language - especially negatively charged emotional language - as a political tool. Take a closer look at his speeches and public utterances, and his political success turns out to be no surprise. It is the predictable result of the intentional use of language to dominate others. President Bush, like many dominant personality types, uses dependency-creating language. He employs language of contempt and intimidation to shame others into submission and desperate admiration. While we tend to think of the dominator as using physical force, in fact most dominators use verbal abuse to control others. Abusive language has been a major theme of psychological researchers on marital problems, such as John Gottman, and of philosophers and theologians, such as Josef Pieper. But little has been said about the key role it has come to play in political discourse, and in such "hot media" as talk radio and television. Bush uses several dominating linguistic techniques to induce surrender to his will. The first is empty language. This term refers to broad statements that are so abstract and mean so little that they are virtually impossible to oppose. Empty language is the emotional equivalent of empty calories. Just as we seldom question the content of potato chips while enjoying their pleasurable taste, recipients of empty language are usually distracted from examining the content of what they are hearing. Dominators use empty language to conceal faulty generalizations; to ridicule viable alternatives; to attribute negative motivations to others, thus making them appear contemptible; and to rename and "reframe" opposing viewpoints. Bush's 2003 State of the Union speech contained thirty-nine examples of empty language. He used it to reduce complex problems to images that left the listener relieved that George W Bush was in charge. Rather than explaining the relationship between malpractice insurance and skyrocketing healthcare costs, Bush summed up: "No one has ever been healed by a frivolous lawsuit." The multiple fiscal and monetary policy tools that can be used to stimulate an economy were downsized to: "The best and fairest way to make sure Americans have that money is not to tax it away in the first place." The controversial plan to wage another war on Iraq was simplified to: "We will answer every danger and every enemy that threatens the American people." In an earlier study, I found that in the 2000 presidential debates Bush used at least four times as many phrases containing empty language as Carter, Reagan, Clinton, Bush Senior or Gore had used in their debates. Another of Bush's dominant-language techniques is personalization. By personalization I mean localizing the attention of the listener on the speaker's personality. Bush projects himself as the only person capable of producing results. In his post-9/11 speech to Congress he said, "I will not forget this wound to our country or those who inflicted it. I will not yield; I will not rest; I will not relent in waging this struggle for freedom and security for the American people." He substitutes his determination for that of the nation's. In the 2003 State of the Union speech he vowed, "I will defend the freedom and security of the American people." Contrast Bush's "I will not yield" etc. with John F: Kennedy's "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." The word "you" rarely appears in Bush's speeches. Instead, there are numerous statements referring to himself or his personal characteristics - folksiness, confidence, righteous anger or determination - as the answer to the problems of the country. Even when Bush uses "we," as he did many times in the State of the Union speech, he does it in a way that focuses attention on himself. For example, he stated: "Once again, we are called to defend the safety of our people, and the hopes of all mankind. And we accept this responsibility." In an article in the Jan. 16 New York Review of Books, Joan Didion highlighted Bush's high degree of personalization and contempt for argumentation in presenting his case for going to war in Iraq. As Didion writes: "'I made up my mind,' he had said in April, 'that Saddam needs to go.' This was one of many curious, almost petulant statements offered in lieu of actually presenting a case. I've made up my mind, I've said in speech after speech, I've made myself clear. The repeated statements became their own reason." Poll after poll demonstrates that Bush's political agenda is out of step with most Americans' core beliefs. Yet the public, their electoral resistance broken down by empty language and persuaded by personalization, is susceptible to Bush's most frequently used linguistic technique: negative framework. A negative framework is a pessimistic image of the world. Bush creates and maintains negative frameworks in his listeners' minds with a number of linguistic techniques borrowed from advertising and hypnosis to instill the image of a dark and evil world around us. Catastrophic words and phrases are repeatedly drilled into the listener's head until the opposition feels such a high level of anxiety that it appears pointless to do anything other than cower. Psychologist Martin Seligman, in his extensive studies of "learned helplessness," showed that people's motivation to respond to outside threats and problems is undermined by a belief that they have no control over their environment. Learned helplessness is exacerbated by beliefs that problems caused by negative events are permanent; and when the underlying causes are perceived to apply to many other events, the condition becomes pervasive and paralyzing. Bush is a master at inducing learned helplessness in the electorate. He uses pessimistic language that creates fear and disables people from feeling they can solve their problems. In his September 20, 2001, speech to Congress on the 9/11 attacks, he chose to increase people's sense of vulnerability: "Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen.... I ask you to live your lives, and hug your children. I know many citizens have fears tonight.... Be calm and resolute, even in the face of a continuing threat." (Subsequent terror alerts by the FBI, CIA and Department of Homeland Security have maintained and expanded this fear of uknown, sinister enemies.) Contrast this rhetoric with Franklin Roosevelt's speech delivered the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He said: "No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.... There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger. With confidence in our armed forces  with the unbounding determination of our people - we will gain the inevitable triumph - so help us God." Roosevelt focuses on an optimistic future rather than an ongoing threat to Americans' personal survival. All political leaders must define the present threats and problems faced by the country before describing their approach to a solution, but the ratio of negative to optimistic statements in Bush's speeches and policy declarations is much higher, more pervasive and more long-lasting than that of any other President. Let's compare "crisis" speeches by Bush and Ronald Reagan, the President with whom he most identifies himself. In Reagan's October 27, 1983, televised address to the nation on the bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut, he used nineteen images of crisis and twenty-one images of optimism, evenly balancing optimistic and negative depictions. He limited his evaluation of the problems to the past and present tense, saying only that "with patience and firmness we can bring peace to that strife-torn region and make our own lives more secure." George W Bush's October 7, 2002, major policy speech on Iraq, on the other hand, began with forty-four consecutive statements referring to the crisis and citing a multitude of possible catastrophic repercussions. The vast majority of these statements (for example: "Some ask how urgent this danger is to America and the world. The danger is already significant, and it only grows worse with time"; "Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists") imply that the crisis will last into the indeterminate future. There is also no specific plan of action. The absence of plans is typical of a negative framework, and leaves the listener without hope that the crisis will ever end. Contrast this with Reagan, who, a third of the way into his explanation of the crisis in Lebanon, asked the following: "Where do we go from here? What can we do now to help Lebanon gain greater stability so that our Marines can come home? Well, I believe we can take three steps now that will make a difference." To create a dependency dynamic between him and the electorate, Bush describes the nation as being in a perpetual state of crisis and then attempts to convince the electorate that it is powerless and that he is the only one with the strength to deal with it. He attempts to persuade people they must transfer power to him, thus crushing the power of the citizen, the Congress, the Democratic Party, even constitutional liberties, to concentrate all power in the imperial presidency and the Republican Party. Bush's political opponents are caught in a fantasy that they can win against him simply by proving the superiority of their ideas. However, people do not support Bush for the power of his ideas, but out of the despair and desperation in their hearts. Whenever people are in the grip of a desperate dependency, they won't respond to rational criticisms of the people they are dependent on. They will respond to plausible and forceful statements and alternatives that put the American electorate back in touch with their core optimism. Bush's opponents must combat his dark imagery with hope and restore American vigor and optimism in the coming years. They should heed the example of Reagan, who used optimism against Carter and the "national malaise"; Franklin Roosevelt, who used it against Hoover and the pessimism induced by the Depression ("the only thing we have to fear is fear itself"); and Clinton (the "Man from Hope"), who used positive language against the senior Bush's lack of vision. This is the linguistic prescription for those who wish to retire Bush in 2004. --Renana Brooks, PhD, is a clinical psychologist practicing in Washington, DC. She heads the Sommet Institute for the Study of Power and Persuasion (www.sommetinstitute.org) and is completing a book on the virtue myth and the conservative culture of domination. Copyright  2003 The Nation   _______________________________ In peace, Otoño ________________________________ Read all about it and get the news that matters by receiving the War and Peace Watch. To subscribe, send an e-mail to:  Reikiworks@compuserve.com Thank you for your support, The War and Peace Watch publisher. contact:  Otoño Johnston ============================================================ (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment  for research and educational purposes only.) ============================================================ 7:46:42 PM

Re: Robert Fisk Interview Dear Friends: Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman recently interviewed Robert Fisk, reporter with the Independent newspaper of London. Just out of Iraq, where he was chronicling the rising resistance to the U.S. occupation, he gives his thoughts on the anti-US opposition in Iraq and the Roadmap to peace in the Middle East. __________________________ Democracy Now   June 12, 2003 Anti-US Opposition In Iraq And The So Called Roadmap An Interview with Robert Fisk by Amy Goodman and Robert Fisk On June 11, 2003, Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman interviewed Robert Fisk, reporter with the Independent newspaper of London. He recently left Iraq where he was chronicling the rising resistance to the U.S. occupation. Ten American soldiers have been killed in ambushes across Iraq in the past 15 days including one yesterday in Baghdad who was attacked with rocket propelled grenades. Fallujah has been a hotbed of Iraqi resistance since April when U.S. troops fired into large crowds of civilians twice killing at least 18 people. Democracy Now! is a national listener-sponsored radio and television program. ------------------------------------------------ AMY GOODMAN: Robert Fisk, can you talk more about what you found there? ROBERT FISK: I don't think I've ever seen a clearer example of an army that thought it was an army of liberation and has become an army of occupation. It's important perhaps to say -- I did mention it in [a recent] article that a number of those soldiers who were attached to the 3rd infantry division who were military policeman, American ordinary cops like one from Rhode Island, for example--they had a pretty shrewd idea of what was going on. You got different kinds of behavior from the Americans. You got this very nice guy, Phil Cummings, who was a Rhode Island cop, very sensitive towards people, didn't worry if people shouted at him. He remained smiling. He just said that if people throw rocks at me or stones at me, I give them candies. There was another soldier who went up to a middle aged man sitting on a seat and he said, "If you get out of that seat, I'll break your neck," and there was quite a lot of language like that as well. There were good guys as well as bad guys among the Americans as there always are in armies, but the people who I talked to, the sergeants and captains and so on--most of them acknowledge that something had gone wrong, that this was not going to be good. One guy said to me, every time we go down to the river here--he was talking about the river area in Fallujah--it's a tributary of the Tigris--it's like Somalia down there. You always get shot at and you always get stoned, I mean, have stones thrown at them. Some of the soldiers spoke very frankly about the situation in Baghdad. One man told me--I heard twice before in Baghdad itself, once from a British Commonwealth diplomat and once from a fairly senior officer in what we now have to call the coalition, C.P.A., the Coalition-- for the moment forces or whatever it's called--Authority, the authority that's hanging on there until they can create some kind of Iraqi government--they all say that Baghdad airport now comes under nightly sniper fire from the perimeter of the runways from Iraqis. Two of them told me that every time a military aircraft comes in at night, it's fired at. In fact some of the American pilots are now going back to the old Vietnamese tactic of cork screwing down tightly on to the runways from above rather than making the normal level flight approach across open countryside because they're shot at so much. It's a coalition provisional authority I'm thinking of, the C.P.A., previously an even more long fangled name. There is a very serious problem of security. The Americans still officially call them the remnants of Saddam or terrorists. But in fact, it is obviously an increase in the organized resistance and not just people who were in Saddam's forces, who were in the Ba'ath Party or the Saddam Fedayeen. There was also increasing anger among the Shiite community, those who were of course most opposed to Saddam, and I think what we're actually seeing, you can get clues in Iraq, is a cross fertilization. Shiites who are disillusioned, who don't believe they have been liberated, who spent so long in Iran, they don't like the Americans anyway. Sunni Muslims who feel like they're threatened by the Shiites, former Sadaam acolytes who've lost their jobs and found that their money has stopped. Kurds who are disaffected and are beginning to have contacts, and that of course is the beginning of a real resistance movement and that's the great danger for the Americans now. GOODMAN: We're talking to Robert Fisk, who is just come out of Iraq. There's a front page piece in The New York Times today, "GI's In Iraqi City Are Stalked By Faceless Enemies At Night, and Michael Gordon writes about how organized the resistance is, how it seems to come alive at night and that what's clear, he says , is some attacks are premeditated, involve cooperation among small groups of fighters including a system of signaling the presence of American forces: talking about the use of red, white and blue flares when forces come and then the attacks begin. FISK: Yes, I've heard this. I also know that in Fallujah, for example, there's a system of honking the horns of cars: when the vehicles approach, the American convoy approaches, there's one honk on the horn. When the last vehicle goes by the same spot, there's two honks on the horn, and the purpose is to work out the time element between the first hooter and the second because by that, they know how big is the convoy and whether it's small enough to be attacked. That comes from a sergeant in the military police in Fallujah taking part in this actual operation which I described to you just now, which you read out from my report. One of the problems with the Americans I think is that the top people in the Pentagon always knew that this wasn't going to be human rights abuses ended, flowers and music for the soldiers, and everyone lives happily every after and loves America. You may remember when Rumsfeld first came to Baghdad, something your president didn't dare to do in the end, he wanted to fly over in an airplane. He made a speech which I thought was very interesting, rather sinister in the big hanger at Baghdad airport. He said we still have to fight the remnants of Saddam and the terrorists in Iraq, and I thought, hang on a minute, who are these people? And it took me a few minutes to realize I think what he was doing, he was laying the future narrative of the opposition to the Americans. I.E when the Americans get attacked, it could be first of all laid down to remnants of Saddam, as in remnants of the Taliban who seem to be moving around in Afghanistan now in battalion strength, but never mind. It could be blamed on Al Qaeda, so America was back fighting its old enemies again. This was familiar territory. If you were to suggest that it was a resistance movement, harakat muqawama, resistance party in Arabic, that would suggest the people didn't believe they had been liberated, and of course, all good-natured peace loving people have to believe they were liberated by the Americans, not occupied by them. What you're finding for example is a whole series of blunders by Paul Bremer, the American head of the so-called coalition forces, at least coalition authority in Baghdad. First of all, he dissolved the Iraqi Army. Well, I can't imagine an Army that better deserves to be dissolved. But that means that more than quarter of a million armed men overnight are deprived of their welfare and money. Now if you have quarter of a million armed Iraqis who suddenly don't get paid any more, and they all know each other, what are they going to do? They are going to form some kind of force which is secret, which is covered; then they will be called terrorists, but I guess they know that, and then of course they will be saying to people, why don't you come and join us. It was very interesting that in Fallujah, a young man came out to see me from a shop just after the American searches there had ended and said some people came from the resistance a few nights ago and asked him to join. I said, what did you say, and he said, I wouldn't do that. But now, he said, I might think differently. I met a Shiite Muslim family in Baghdad who moved into the former home of a Saddam intelligence officer. This family had been visited three nights previously by armed men who said, you better move out of this house. It doesn't belong to you unless you want to join us. The guy in Fallujah said that the men, the armed men who came to invite him to join the resistance had weapons, showed their mukhabarat intelligence identity card and said, we're still being paid and we are proud to hold our I.D. cards for the Ba'ath Party. So, now you have to realize that Fallujah and other towns like it are very unlike Tikrit, are very much pro-Saddam. Fallujah is the site of a great munitions factory, it gave people massive employment. They all loved Saddam in the way Arabs are encouraged to love dictators or go to prison otherwise. But nonetheless, there is an embryo of a serious resistance movement now. On top of this, you can see the measure of what I think is basically desperation. I've been writing about this in The Independent this morning in London, well, last night for this morning's paper, and Paul Bremer now asked the legal side of the coalition provisional authority to set up the machinery of Iraqi press censorship. In other words, Iraqi newspapers are going to be censored. Controlled I think is the official word they use, but that means censorship. That is the kind of language that Saddam used. Iraqis are used to a censored press; after all, they lived with it for more than 20 years under Saddam Hussein. Now when you question the Americans about it, first of all they deny it. Then the British half accept it; then other people involved in the coalition say well it's probably true, yes, it is true. But the problem is the wild stories appearing in the Iraqi press. Now, of course there's no tradition of western style journalism in Iraq. There are those that say it's a good idea, no tradition for example of letting the other side have a say, checking the story out, going back on the ground and asking the other side for their version of events. It doesn't exist. It's a little bit, but not much. What you get after saying that Americans are going with Iraqi prostitutes, American troops are chasing Iraqi women, that Muslim women are being invited to marry Christian foreigners, that this is worse than it was under Saddam. I'm actually quoting from one particular newspaper called The Witness, which is a Shiite Muslim paper, basically that had its first issue the other day. Other newspapers carry reports of American beatings; they also carry reports of "I was Saddam's double" , and the opening of mass graves. They're not totally one sided against the Americans. But you can see how the occupation forces, let's call them by their real name, are troubled by this kind of publication because it seems to them to provoke or incite animosity towards the liberators of Iraq, which it is not meant to do. But of course the problem is that the Imams in the mosques are saying the same thing about the Americans. Now, the last quote I read from American official said that it may be necessary to control what the Imams were saying in the mosques; well, this is preposterous. I sat on Rashid Street in Baghdad a few days ago and listened to the loud speaker carrying the sermon of the imam from within the mosque. I think he was saying the Americans must leave immediately, now. Well, under the new rule presumably he's inciting the people to violence. What are we going to do? Arrest all the Imams in the mosques, arrest all the journalists who won't obey, close down the newspapers? I mean what Iraqi journalists need are courses in journalism from reporters who work in real democracies. You can come along and say, look, by all means criticize the Americans and put the boot in if you want to, but make sure you get it right. And if you also do that you have to look at your own society and what is wrong in it and how Saddam ever came about. He didn't just come about because America supported Saddam which my goodness they did. But Bremer is not interested in this. What Bremer wants to do is control, control the press, control the Imams, and it doesn't work. A lot of the incidents taking place now, the violent incidents are not being divulged. GOODMAN: Robert, you were just talking about a lot of the attacks we're hearing about--what seems like a good number, a lot of the attacks--on U.S. forces are not being reported. FISK: I have a colleague, for example, who went down to Fallujah before the incident I was describing to you earlier, after two gunmen, one American had been killed in the fire fight, he reported, I spoke to both sides. On his way back he was traveling past the town of Abu Garab a rather sinister place where the huge prison is where Saddam executed so many prisoners, including an Observer journalist back in the late 1980's. As we were, as the colleague was passing by the town, he saw a young man come up and throw a hand grenade at American troops in the Humvee. The grenade missed them and exploded in the canal and wounded six Iraqi children, a very clear account of what happened. I rang the coalition forces, the telephone didn't answer as it very often doesn't do. And no report ever emerged except in my paper that this incident had occurred. Now, over and over again we keep seeing things, seeing small incidents occur, soldiers threatening people outside petrol lines because people are trying to jump the line and steal. And it just doesn't make it back into the coalition record of what's actually happening in Iraq. The danger here is not so much that we're not being told about it because we can see and find out for ourselves. The danger is that the United States leadership in Baghdad, and of course, especially back in the White House and Pentagon is also not being told about it. Or if it is, information is only going to certain people who can deal with that information. It's very easy to say, well Iraq's been a great success we've got rid of a dictatorship, the weapons of mass destruction which didn't exist have now been destroyed or whatever interpretation you want to put on that. Human rights abuses have ended, certainly the Saddam kind. But if you try and if this information goes up the ladder every bit of it to people like Bremer, I'm not sure it all is--I think it should be--then you can see how the coalition doesn't represent the reality. One of the big problems at the moment is the Americans and, to some extent the British, particularly the Americans in Baghdad. They're all ensconced in this chic gleaming marble palace, largest, most expensive palace. There they sit with their laptops trying to work out with Washington how they're going to bring about this new democracy in Iraq. They rely upon for the most part former Iraqi exiles who never endured Saddam Hussein, who are hovering around making sure that they get the biggest part of the pie possible. When they leave the palace, when they go into the streets of Baghdad, the dangerous streets of Baghdad, they leave in these armored black Mercedes with gunmen in the front and back, soldiers, plain clothes guys with weapons and sunglasses. One Iraqi said to me the other day "who did you think was the last person we saw driving through town like [this]?" I said, Saddam Hussein? They all burst out laughing, of course, they said, exactly the same. We are used to this just like they're used to press censorship. I think it's difficult--you need to be in Baghdad to understand the degree to which there's been this slippage of ambition and slippage in the ideological war. I was in small hotel called the Al Hama the other day--it has a swimming pool, 24-hour generators. Just going down to have a meal in the evening, I came across two westerners, one with a pump action shotgun, the other with a submachine gun passing me in the hallway. I said, "Who are you?" He said, "Well, who are you?" "I'm a guest in the hotel. You have guns. Who are you?" He said, "We work for D.O.D" "Department of Defense, right?" (But he was obviously English--he had a British accent.) "Hang on a second you're not American." "No, we're a British company that is hired to look after D.O.D. employees in Baghdad. That's why we're armed." I said, "Who gives you permission to have weapons?" He said, "The coalition forces, we're here protecting them." Now, how often have Iraqis seen armed plain clothes men moving in and out of hotels, they have for more than 20 years, now seeing them again. Well these guys are not going to string them up by their fingernails and electrocute them in torture cells. But again, the image, the picture is the same. The armored escort, limousines in the street, soldiers kicking down the doors searching for, "terrorists." The press censorship plans. Plain clothes armed men going into a hotel asking who you are immediately by asking them who they are, same system as before. It has this kind of ghastly ghostly veneer of the old regime about it. The Americans are not Saddam, they're not murdering people - they're not lining up people at mass graves, of course they're not. But if you see through the eyes of the Iraqis, it doesn't look quite that simple. GOODMAN: We are talking to Robert Fisk, just came out of Iraq but you've also written about the so-called road map to peace. I just wanted to get your response to what happened yesterday in Gaza, with the Israeli helicopter gun ships attempting to assassinate the political leader for Hamas, Abdel Azziz Rantizzi. And also Bush strongly criticizing the attempted assassination on the part of the Israel. FISK: First of all he didn't strongly criticize them, he mildly, rather pathetically and rather cowardly criticized the Israelis. This was an attack which was meant to kill the political head of Hamas. And in the ghastly role which the Palestinians and Israelis play in their bloody and useless conflict, I can understand why the attack was made in that context. But that attack did not kill Rantizzi, it killed a little child of five and a young woman. Now your president said that that was "troubling". That isn't troubling that's a shameful act, that's a despicable thing to do. But there was no strong condemnation from Mr. Bush, he just said it was troubling. If a Palestinian had attacked Israeli forces or Israeli political leader involved in encouraging violence, had killed a little Israeli girl, and a young innocent Israeli woman Mr. Bush would not have called it troubling. He would have said it was a shameful, terrorist act, which it would have been. How can it work when the most powerful president of the most powerful state in the world, United States of America, can be so gutless and cowardly in condemning the killing of two innocent people. It is not troubling. It is an outrage that those two innocent people died. Just as it would be if the Palestinians had done it. Just as it is when the Palestinians do do it. [For Bush]It is not an outrage. Not a tragedy. Not shameful. It is merely troubling. Like a flood is troubling or a heavy rainfall that kills people or a storm is troubling. In that context how can this new peace possibly work. It's called a road map, who invented the phrase road map? I suppose the poor old State Department and all the journalists dutifully used the word road map. They can't use peace process because that's associated with Oslo and that failed. You remember the cliche for the peace process, always had to be put back on track. I suppose peace process was a railway line or a railway train so it presumably always has to be put back on the main road or back on the highway that is the cliche. What has Sharon done? he's closed down a few empty caravans on hilltops. At large and continuing to expand Jewish settlements, the Jews and Jews only in occupied Arab land. What have the Palestinians done? Mahmoud Abbas says I'm going to finish terrorism, there's going to be no more violence by the Palestinians and, bang, there immediately is. We have the three main violent groups, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Al-Aqsa immediately carrying out the suicide bombing. And then praised by Rantizzi, I remember thinking, he's praising them, that's against the road map so Israelis have got a green light to knock him off and they tried and failed. I remember interviewing Rantizzi along similar lines about six months ago in Gaza, as I was talking to him I saw an Israeli helicopter emerge in the window and his body guard looked around very nervously and I thought, oh, no, please go away and so I finished the interview. But I always thought he was a target, he always had two gunmen with him all the time. That's not the point. Rantizzi is a very tough Hamas man, a very ruthless man. He was one of the Palestinians who was illegally deported from Israeli prisons into Lebanon in 1992. I actually met him there in the southern Lebanon in the hills, when he was living rough, months after months in a tent. This is a very rough character, very tough guy--grew up the hard way in guerrilla warfare as well as politics. But when you're going to have a situation where you have an Israeli prime minister who doesn't want to end the settlements, who is indeed the creator of the settlements, and a Palestinian prime minister who can't stop the intifada and a U.S. president who is so gutless he can only call a killing of a woman and a child troubling, what chance is there for a road map or peace process or any other kind of agreement in the Middle East? GOODMAN: We're talking to Robert Fisk, who is just come out of Iraq and who has reported extensively on the Middle East for more than 30 years. I wanted to end, back in Iraq. CNN is reporting today that Ahmed Chalabi who has addressed the Council on Foreign Relations is saying that Saddam Hussein is moving in an arc around the Tigris River starting northeast of Baghdad. He said finding Saddam would just be a matter of knowing whom to talk to. He says based on information from credible sources, he believes the former Iraqi president wants revenge and has obtained two suicide bombing vests for attacks on U.S. forces. Chalabi says Saddam is paying bounty for every U.S. soldier killed. Your response? FISK: I long ago gave up putting any credit in anything that Ahmed Chalabi says. The real issue is not where is Saddam Hussein, he could be sitting in Minsk or Belarus or he could be sitting in Tikrit or in the Iraqi countryside somewhere. Obviously there were plans to hide him in advance. You know this goes back to another issue of the degree of real effort to find him. Just look back, the Americans wanted to arrest Valadich and put him in the Hague. We were going to capture Osama bin laden, he's still on the loose. We were going to capture Mullah Omar, he's only got one eye, not difficult to identify. But he's still on the loose. We can't get vice president Ramadan in Iraq or Uday Hussein, the sons of Saddam. We can't get Saddam himself. Can't get Naji Sabri the foreign minister. I was sitting in a restaurant in Baghdad a week and a half ago, at the next table next to me was Saddam's personal translator. I sort of did a double take, I said, hi, how are you? I knew the guy. I'd known him for years and years. I said, are you okay? Fine, fine no problem, he was having a beer with friends. And he walked out. This is the same restaurant that later on I saw Paul Bremer walk into with several special forces men to protect him and his guests for dinner. I have to ask myself sometimes what's going on. Ahmed Chalabi says that Saddam is moving in an arc, he maybe moving in a circle or square for all I know but it's clear he's still alive. That's the point. GOODMAN: Well, Robert Fisk, thank you very much for being with us. Robert Fisk of the Independent of London just out of Iraq. _______________________________ In peace, Otoño ________________________________ Read all about it and get the news that matters by receiving the War and Peace Watch. To subscribe, send an e-mail to:  Reikiworks@compuserve.com Thank you for your support, The War and Peace Watch publisher. contact:  Otoño Johnston ============================================================ (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment  for research and educational purposes only.) ============================================================ 7:46:15 PM

Re: The Ends Don't Justify the Means Dear Friends: How does one keep a movement, or an agenda, pure? Immoral and undemocratic means lead inevitably to immoral and undemocratic ends. With the administration's core rationale for invading Iraq--saving the world from Saddam Hussein's deadly arsenal--almost wholly discredited, the Republicans now want us to believe that any distortions of the truth should have been forgotten once we took Baghdad. But as we all know, the ends don't justify the means. ______________________ Robert Scheer.com       June 24, 2003 No, Newt, the Ends Don't Justify the Means Whatever happens in Iraq, lying to Americans and the world about the reasons for war is not acceptable June 24, 2003--There was a time when the sickness of the political far left could best be defined by the rationale that the ends justified the means. Happily, support for revolutionary regimes claiming to advance the interests of their people through atrocious acts is now seen as an evil dead end by most on the left. Immoral and undemocratic means lead inevitably to immoral and undemocratic ends. Unfortunately, junior Machiavellis claiming to wear the white hat still are running amok among us. This time, however, they are on the right, apologists for the Bush administration arguing that noble ends justify deceitful means. With the administration's core rationale for invading Iraq--saving the world from Saddam Hussein's deadly arsenal--almost wholly discredited, the Republicans now want us to believe that any distortions of the truth should have been forgotten once we took Baghdad. As Newt Gingrich put it last week: "Does even the most left-wing Democrat want to defend the proposition that the world would be better off with Saddam in power?" The quick answer is that we don't know what the future holds for Iraq. Our track record of military interventions in the Middle East and elsewhere would lead any competent historian or Vegas bookie to conclude that a stable secular dictatorship is about the best outcome we can predict. But the larger, more frightening meaning of Gingrich's statement is that in order to rid the world of a tinhorn dictator who posed no credible threat to the United States, it was just dandy to lie to the people. It was OK to lie about the nonexistent evidence of ties between Hussein and Al Qaeda. It was OK to lie about the U.N. weapons inspectors, claiming they were suckered by Hussein. It was OK to lie, not only to Americans but to our allies in this war, about "intelligence" alleging that Iraq's military had chemical and biological weapons deployed in the field. Only it's not OK. Washington's verbal attack on the U.N. inspectors, for example, is of no small consequence, undermining global efforts to prevent nuclear weapons proliferation. Meanwhile, to justify a political faction's blunder we ignore core values upon which this country was built. The New York Times on Friday blithely referred to the use of "coercive" measures in interrogating former Iraqi scientists and officials. Apparently, protections in international treaties for political prisoners do not apply to us. Similarly, the indefensible gambit of preemptive war has seriously damaged two of this nation's most precious commodities--our democracy and the reputation of our form of government. By giving Congress distorted and incomplete intelligence on Iraq, the Bush administration mocks what is most significant in the U.S. model: the notion of separation of powers and the spirit of the Constitution's mandate that only Congress has the power to declare war. Is this an exaggeration? Consider that on Oct. 7, 2002, four days before Congress authorized the Iraq war, President Bush asserted that intelligence data proved Iraq had trained Al Qaeda "in bomb making and poisons and deadly gases." Yet no such proof existed. Never in modern times have we beheld a Congress so easily manipulated by the Executive branch. Last week, the Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee caved in and dropped their opposition to closed hearings on whether Congress was lied to. How can they not be open to the public, which is expected under our system to hold the president and Congress accountable? To be sure, many Americans were never fooled, and many more have become upset at seeing continuing casualties and chaos in Iraq after Bush's pricey aircraft carrier photo op signaled that the war was over. But much of our public has been too easily conned. For contrast, consider that in Britain the citizens, Parliament and media have been far more seriously engaged in questioning the premises of their government's participation in the invasion of Iraq. This administration's behavior is an affront to the nation's founders and the system of governance they crafted. It is sad that we now have a president who acts like a king and a Congress that is his pawn. Copyright © 2003 Robert Scheer   _______________________________ In peace, Otoño ________________________________ Read all about it and get the news that matters by receiving the War and Peace Watch. To subscribe, send an e-mail to:  Reikiworks@compuserve.com Thank you for your support, The War and Peace Watch publisher. contact:  Otoño Johnston ============================================================ (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment  for research and educational purposes only.) ============================================================ 7:45:45 PM