Monday, June 25, 2007

Video released of BBC man in 'explosives belt'. A video has been released showing kidnapped British Gaza-based journalist Alan Johnston in an apparent suicide bomber explosives belt and warning it will be detonated if an attempt is made to free him by force. [Independent.co.uk/News/World] 8:25:17 AM    comment []

Sen. Mike Gravel: Why Hillary Scares Me. During one of the debates I mentioned that my fellow Democratic candidates scare me. Hillary's speech last week to the Take Back America conference gives me yet another reason to be afraid. In an indignant voice she decried the Bush administration's ''stunning record of secrecy and corruption, of cronyism run amok. . . It is everything our founders were afraid of, everything our Constitution was designed to prevent.'' Actually, our Constitution grants Congress the power to prevent these ills but Hillary and her colleagues weren't up to the task. Our founders' legacy did not stop Hillary from voting for the Patriot Act and then supporting its renewal in 2006 despite revelations that the government was using it to infringe on the very liberties that our founders held sacred. Where was her commitment to our founders when she voted to gut our habeas corpus protections? As for cronyism -- Hillary has repeatedly authorized billions that the Pentagon gave in no-bid contracts to Halliburton. Even though the Democrats have been in control of Congress for months, they still haven't summoned Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and the other usual suspects to account for the missing millions in reconstruction funding. When I think about how Congress enabled Bush's corruption and cronyism, I'm reminded of the lines from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: And why should Caesar be a tyrant then? Poor man! I know he would not be a wolf, But that he sees the Romans are but sheep: He were no lion, were not Romans hinds. In the same frightening speech, Hillary went on the blame the Iraqis for the mess in their country: "The American military has succeeded. It is the Iraqi government which has failed to make the tough decisions that are important for their own people.'' Let me get this straight. The Iraq disaster is not the fault of the delusional neo-cons, the greedy oil companies, or the gullible and cowardly Congressional warhawks. (Most senators including Clinton didn't even bother to read the 90-page National Intelligence Estimate). According to Hillary, the real culprit is the Iraqi government that we created virtually overnight and left to govern a fractured, impoverished society. Talk about blaming the victim! Hillary, as an active supporter of the war, you are one of many Americans who are guilty. And now all Americans are left responsible, regardless of whether we supported or opposed he war. When we pull out, our hands will drip with the blood of the tens of thousands of American casualties and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead. The Iraqi government didn't start this, we did. Of course we can continue to compartmentalize ourselves from the truth, remove the troops and blame the rubble on the Iraqis. We can feed the collective fantasy that our good intentions and heroic efforts were thwarted by the cowardice and incompetence of others. But if that's what we take from our experience in Iraq, we will never learn the true lessons and we will be condemned to repeat the same mistakes. The inability to admit a mistake and assume responsibility is not just a morally bankrupt way to walk through life; it is a dangerous and deadly way to lead a nation. When I am president, I will open up all secret files relating to the Iraq war and expose all officials who lied to the public in promoting it. (That's right, Dick, your files too.) My Justice Department will prosecute everyone who lied under oath or ripped off the American taxpayer by exploiting the Iraq reconstruction effort. And I will pardon to no one. [The Huffington Post Full Blog Feed] 8:24:42 AM    comment []

Published on Sunday, June 24, 2007 by The New York Times They[base ']ll Break the Bad News on 9/11 by Frank Rich By this late date we should know the fix is in when the White House[base ']s top factotums fan out on the Sunday morning talk shows singing the same lyrics, often verbatim, from the same hymnal of spin. The pattern was set way back on Sept. 8, 2002, when in simultaneous appearances three cabinet members and the vice president warned darkly of Saddam[base ']s aluminum tubes. [base "]We don[base ']t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud,[per thou] said Condi Rice, in a scripted line. The hard sell of the war in Iraq [~] the hyping of a (fictional) nuclear threat to America [~] had officially begun. America wasn[base ']t paying close enough attention then. We can[base ']t afford to repeat that blunder now. Last weekend the latest custodians of the fiasco, our new commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and our new ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, took to the Sunday shows with two messages we[base ']d be wise to heed. The first was a confirmation of recent White House hints that the long-promised September pivot point for judging the success of the [base "]surge[per thou] was inoperative. That deadline had been asserted as recently as April 24 by President Bush, who told Charlie Rose that September was when we[base ']d have [base "]a pretty good feel[per thou] whether his policy [base "]made sense.[per thou] On Sunday General Petraeus and Mr. Crocker each downgraded September to merely a [base "]snapshot[per thou] of progress in Iraq. [base "]Snapshot,[per thou] of course, means [base "]Never mind![per thou] The second message was more encoded and more ominous. Again using similar language, the two men said that in September they would explain what Mr. Crocker called [base "]the consequences[per thou] and General Petraeus [base "]the implications[per thou] of any alternative [base "]courses of action[per thou] to their own course in Iraq. What this means in English is that when the September [base "]snapshot[per thou] of the surge shows little change in the overall picture, the White House will say that [base "]the consequences[per thou] of winding down the war would be even more disastrous: surrender, defeat, apocalypse now. So we must stay the surge. Like the war[base ']s rollout in 2002, the new propaganda offensive to extend and escalate the war will be exquisitely timed to both the anniversary of 9/11 and a high-stakes Congressional vote (the Pentagon appropriations bill). General Petraeus and Mr. Crocker wouldn[base ']t be sounding like the Bobbsey Twins and laying out this coordinated rhetorical groundwork were they not already anticipating the surge[base ']s failure. Both spoke on Sunday of how (in General Petraeus[base ']s variation on the theme) they had to [base "]show that the Baghdad clock can indeed move a bit faster, so that you can put a bit of time back on the Washington clock.[per thou] The very premise is nonsense. Yes, there is a Washington clock, tied to Republicans[base '] desire to avoid another Democratic surge on Election Day 2008. But there is no Baghdad clock. It was blown up long ago and is being no more successfully reconstructed than anything else in Iraq. When Mr. Bush announced his [base "]new way forward[per thou] in January, he offered a bouquet of promises, all unfulfilled today. [base "]Let the Iraqis lead[per thou] was the policy[base ']s first bullet point, but in the initial assault on insurgents now playing out so lethally in Diyala Province, Iraqi forces were kept out of the fighting altogether. They were added on Thursday: 500 Iraqis, following 2,500 Americans. The notion that these Shiite troops might [base "]hold[per thou] this Sunni area once the Americans leave is an opium dream. We[base ']re already back fighting in Maysan, a province whose security was officially turned over to Iraqi authorities in April. In his January prime-time speech announcing the surge, Mr. Bush also said that [base "]America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced.[per thou] More fiction. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki[base ']s own political adviser, Sadiq al-Rikabi, says it would take [base "]a miracle[per thou] to pass the legislation America wants. Asked on Monday whether the Iraqi Parliament would stay in Baghdad this summer rather than hightail it to vacation, Tony Snow was stumped. Like Mr. Crocker and General Petraeus, Mr. Snow is on script for trivializing September as judgment day for the surge, saying that by then we[base ']ll only [base "]have a little bit of metric[per thou] to measure success. This administration has a peculiar metric system. On Thursday, Peter Pace, the departing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called the spike in American troop deaths last week the [base "]wrong metric[per thou] for assessing the surge[base ']s progress. No doubt other metrics in official reports this month are worthless too, as far as the non-reality-based White House is concerned. The civilian casualty rate is at an all-time high; the April-May American death toll is a new two-month record; overall violence in Iraq is up; only 146 out of 457 Baghdad neighborhoods are secure; the number of internally displaced Iraqis has quadrupled since January. Last week Iraq rose to No. 2 in Foreign Policy magazine[base ']s Failed State Index, barely nosing out Sudan. It might have made No. 1 if the Iraqi health ministry had not stopped providing a count of civilian casualties. Or if the Pentagon were not withholding statistics on the increase of attacks on the Green Zone. Apparently the White House is working overtime to ensure that the September [base "]snapshot[per thou] of Iraq will be an underexposed blur. David Carr of The Times discovered that the severe Pentagon blackout on images of casualties now extends to memorials for the fallen in Iraq, even when a unit invites press coverage. Americans and Iraqis know the truth anyway. The question now is: What will be the new new way forward? For the administration, the way forward will include, as always, attacks on its critics[base '] patriotism. We got a particularly absurd taste of that this month when Harry Reid was slammed for calling General Pace incompetent and accusing General Petraeus of exaggerating progress on the ground. General Pace[base ']s record speaks for itself; the administration declined to go to the mat in the Senate for his reappointment. As for General Petraeus, who recently spoke of [base "]astonishing signs of normalcy[per thou] in Baghdad, he is nothing if not consistent. He first hyped [base "]optimism[per thou] and [base "]momentum[per thou] in Iraq in an op-ed article in September 2004. Come September 2007, Mr. Bush will offer his usual false choices. We must either stay his disastrous course in eternal pursuit of [base "]victory[per thou] or retreat to the apocalypse of [base "]precipitous withdrawal.[per thou] But by the latest of the president[base ']s ever-shifting definitions of victory, we[base ']ve already lost. [base "]Victory will come,[per thou] he says, when Iraq [base "]is stable enough to be able to be an ally in the war on terror and to govern itself and defend itself.[per thou] The surge, which he advertised as providing [base "]breathing space[per thou] for the Iraqi [base "]unity[per thou] government to get its act together, is tipping that government into collapse. As Vali Nasr, author of [base "]The Shia Revival,[per thou] has said, the new American strategy of arming Sunni tribes is tantamount to saying the Iraqi government is irrelevant. For the Bush White House, the real definition of victory has become [base "]anything they can get away with without taking blame for defeat,[per thou] said the retired Army Gen. William Odom, a national security official in the Reagan and Carter administrations, when I spoke with him recently. The plan is to run out the Washington clock between now and Jan. 20, 2009, no matter the cost. Precipitous withdrawal is also a chimera, since American manpower, materiel and bases, not to mention our new Vatican City-sized embassy, can[base ']t be drawn down overnight. The only real choice, as everyone knows, is an orderly plan for withdrawal that will best serve American interests. The real debate must be over what that plan is. That debate can[base ']t happen as long as the White House gets away with falsifying reality, sliming its opponents and sowing hyped fears of Armageddon. The threat that terrorists in civil-war-torn Iraq will follow us home if we leave is as bogus as Saddam[base ']s mushroom clouds. The Qaeda that actually attacked us on 9/11 still remains under the tacit protection of our ally, Pakistan. As General Odom says, the endgame will start [base "]when a senior senator from the president[base ']s party says no,[per thou] much as William Fulbright did to L.B.J. during Vietnam. That[base ']s why in Washington this fall, eyes will turn once again to John Warner, the senior Republican with the clout to give political cover to other members of his party who want to leave Iraq before they[base ']re forced to evacuate Congress. In September, it will be nearly a year since Mr. Warner said that Iraq was [base "]drifting sideways[per thou] and that action would have to be taken [base "]if this level of violence is not under control and this government able to function.[per thou] Mr. Warner has also signaled his regret that he was not more outspoken during Vietnam. [base "]We kept surging in those years,[per thou] he told The Washington Post in January, as the Iraq surge began. [base "]It didn[base ']t work.[per thou] Surely he must recognize that his moment for speaking out about this war is overdue. Without him, the Democrats don[base ']t have the votes to force the president[base ']s hand. With him, it[base ']s a slam dunk. The best way to honor the sixth anniversary of 9/11 will be to at last disarm a president who continues to squander countless lives in the names of those voiceless American dead. © 2007 The New York Times 8:11:17 AM    comment []

Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan Causing Alarm. US-led coalition and NATO forces fighting insurgents in Afghanistan have killed at least 203 civilians so far this year - surpassing the 178 civilians killed in militant attacks. Insurgency attacks and military operations have surged in recent weeks, and in the past ten days, more than 90 civilians have been killed by airstrikes and artillery fire targeting Taliban insurgents. [t r u t h o u t] 8:08:08 AM    comment []

Published on Sunday, June 24, 2007 by Inter Press Service Neo-cons Spinning Hearts and Minds by Khody Akhavi WASHINGTON - As the George W. Bush administration struggles through its last two years in office, it appears that the agenda of neoconservative ideologues has finally lost its appeal among strategic parts of the U.S. foreign policy apparatus. But as their influence has waned at the Pentagon and State Department, neo-conservative hawks have taken charge on the battlefield of public diplomacy.Intent on fixing what American Enterprise Institute (AEI) fellow Joshua Muravchik termed Bush[base ']s [base "]public diplomacy mess,[per thou] right-wing hawks have gained control of the weapons in the [base "]war of ideas[per thou] [~] U.S. government-funded and supported media outlets such as Voice of America (VOA), Al-Hurra, and Radio Farda, which broadcast to the Middle East and aim to offer an alternative view of the news. The recent appointment of Jeffrey Gedmin, a veteran neo-conservative polemicist, as the director of Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty (RFE), and a smear campaign that led to the recent resignation of Larry Register, Al-Hurra[base ']s former news director, appears to herald a turn towards more ideologically rigid programming. As a result, viewers and listeners of U.S.-supported media in the Middle East are being exposed to a tougher ideological line that endorses the hallmarks of the neoconservative agenda [~] regime change and interventionist policies in the region. [base "]No group other than neocons is likely to figure out how to do that,[per thou] wrote Muravchik, in a December 2006 article in Foreign Policy magazine entitled [base "]Operation Comeback[per thou], a reference to the declining influence of neo-conservatives in the Bush administration. [base "]We are, after all, a movement whose raison d[base ']etre was combating anti-Americanism in the United States. Who better then to combat it abroad?[per thou] In a widely-circulated email memo sent to White House advisor Karl Rove in July 2006 and obtained by IPS, the former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich also criticised the State Department[base ']s inability to manage the information campaign advocating U.S. foreign policy interests in the region. He called on Karen Hughes, undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs at the State Department, to [base "]run the information operation aimed at delegitimising Syria, Iran and Hezbollah every day.[per thou] Earlier this year, a report authored by Ladan Archin, head of the Pentagon[base ']s Iran directorate who, in the run-up to the Iraq War, worked in the agency[base ']s controversial Office of Special Plans, charged that both VOA[base ']s Persian TV service and Radio Farda, a Persian-language radio station that broadcasts from Prague and Washington, were too soft in the their criticism of Iran[base ']s regime. Archin[base ']s report, which was obtained by the McClatchy Newspapers Washington bureau, complained that, while VOA[base ']s Persian TV service [base "]often invites guests who defend the Islamic Republic[base ']s version of issues, it consistently fails to maintain a balance by inviting informed guests who represent another perspective on the same issue.[per thou] With the neo-conservative drums beating inside the Washington Beltway, the reshuffling of key positions at REF and Al-Hurra came as no surprise. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced in February a major initiative to promote democracy in Iran, including 50 million dollars to increase Persian-language television broadcasts. Congress also appropriated 21.4 million dollars to expand VOA[base ']s Persian television programming to 12 hours a day, and 14.7 million dollars more for Radio Farda (which means [base "]Tomorrow[per thou] in Farsi). In early 2007, the Broadcasting Board of Governor[base ']s chairman, Kenneth Tomlinson, named Gedmin, a former AEI fellow and a founding member, along with Vice President Dick Cheney and former Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, of the Project for a New American Century, as RFE[base ']s director. Gedmin[base ']s new job gave him control over Radio Farda and Voice of America. Some listeners have since noted changes in the tone and content of their programming. A Jun. 14 VOA broadcast in Persian, for example, featured an original interview with AEI fellow and leading neo-conservative Richard Perle on the future of democracy in Iran, as well as a roundtable discussion with Shahryar Ahi, chief organiser of a conference of Iranian opposition groups in Paris. Ahi, an informal liaison during the 1970[base ']s between the Shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, and the White House, currently works with the Shah[base ']s 45-year-old, Washington-based son, Reza Pahlavi. Radio Farda has featured three exclusive and well-publicised interviews with Perle, Michael Rubin, yet another AEI fellow, and Pahlavi, according to Hossein Derkhshan, an Iranian blogger whose weblog, hoder.com, is widely read. As the Bush administration ramps up its offensive against Iran[base ']s regime through VOA and Radio Farda, neo-conservatives have also taken aim at Al-Hurra, a U.S.-sponsored Arabic-language satellite television station that broadcasts to 22 countries across the Middle East on an annual budget of more than 70 million dollars. In early June, Register resigned from Al-Hurra after less than six months on the job, in the wake of a series of public attacks against him and the station[base ']s allegedly anti-U.S. content by neo-conservative columnist Joel Mowbray in the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal. Mowbrey complained that Register was directly responsible for most Al-Hurra broadcasts that, among other things, carried Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah[base ']s December 2006 speech in its entirety, reported uncritically on last year[base ']s Holocaust conference in Iran, and referred to the establishment of Israel in 1948 as [base "]al Naqba,[per thou] which means [base "]catastrophe[per thou] in Arabic. [base "]Our taxpayer-financed Arabic network was set up to counter Al-Jazeera, not echo it,[per thou] he wrote. Since its launch in 2004, Al-Hurra had served as the centrepiece of Washington[base ']s [base "]aggressive post-9/11 courtship of the Arab world[per thou] and was [base "]fulfilling its mission[per thou] until it hired Register, according to another Mowbray column. Yet Register[base ']s predecessor, Moufac Harb, resigned a month after a scathing report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that Al-Hurra lacked [base "]a comprehensive, long-term strategic plan[per thou] and criticised its reported audience statistics. Register, a veteran producer and vice president who worked at CNN for 20 years, was supposed to boost the profile of the station, win audience share and generate political debate. But his attempts to appeal to an Arab audience ostensibly went against the goals of the neo-conservative establishment in Washington. [base "]The conservative crusade against Register demonstrates one of the great difficulties facing any official American broadcasting in the Middle East,[per thou] wrote Marc Lynch, a professor at George Washington University whose blog, www.abuaardvark, on Arab media and politics is widely read in Washington, in Britain[base ']s Guardian newspaper. [base "]To be a free and credible media outlet means allowing critics of American policy to speak and covering news that might make America look bad,[per thou] he noted. ***** Copyright © 2007 IPS-Inter Press Service. 7:24:58 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2007 Patricia Thurston.