Hillary: Vote for Me, I was Duped

May 6, 2007

Late last week, Senator Hillary Clinton offered a bill that would effectively revoke the 2002 congressional authorization that allowed the Bush Administration to wage war in Iraq, and require the president to convince Congress to re-approve the war this October. It’s the latest step taken by Clinton to establish herself as the Democratic Party’s anti-war candidate. If she’d only known in 2002 what she knows now, she has repeatedly said, she would never have supported the earlier resolution.

At its essence, Clinton is saying that the Bush Administration tricked her into voting for the war resolution. “I Was Duped” is hardly an inspiring slogan, and in Hillary’s case it’s a thoroughly disingenuous one as well. She wasn’t duped. She was playing the polls, and at the time she concluded that a vote for war was the smart bet.

Take a look at Clinton’s October 10, 2002, floor speech in which she authorized the use of force against Iraq. She didn’t just side with the Bush Administration, she more or less endorsed its entire case for war:

Intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program . . .

If left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons. Should he succeed in that endeavor, he could alter the political and security landscape of the Middle East, which as we know all too well affects American security.

While acknowledging that there was no evidence to tie Saddam to the September 11 attacks, she said he had “given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members,” and went on to say:

This is probably the hardest decision I have ever had to make–any vote that may lead to war should be hard–but I cast it with conviction. Over eleven years have passed since the U.N. called on Saddam Hussein to rid himself of weapons of mass destruction as a condition of returning to the world community. Time and time again he has frustrated and denied these conditions. This matter cannot be left hanging forever with consequences we would all live to regret . . . A vote for it is not a vote to rush to war; it is a vote that puts awesome responsibility in the hands of our President and we say to him - use these powers wisely and as a last resort. And it is a vote that says clearly to Saddam Hussein–this is your last chance–disarm or be disarmed.

“I Was Duped” is hardly an inspiring slogan and in Hillary’s case it’s a thoroughly disingenuous one as well.

Dick Cheney could hardly have put it better. Now compare Clinton’s remarks with those made by other prominent Democrats during the runup to war. Even if they believed that Saddam had WMDs, many of Clinton’s Democratic colleagues opposed the war and challenged the administration’s case for an invasion. Take Al Gore during a September 23, 2002 speech in San Francisco:

The resulting chaos in the aftermath of a military victory in Iraq could easily pose a far greater danger to the United States than we presently face from Saddam. Here’s why I say that; we know that he has stored away secret supplies of biological weapons and chemical weapons throughout his country. As yet, we have no evidence, however, that he has shared any of those weapons with terrorist groups. If the administration has evidence that he has, please present it, because that would change the way we all look at this thing.

Senator Edward Kennedy’s speech in Washington on September 27 rejected just about every argument tossed out by President Bush.

Information from the intelligence community over the past six months does not point to Iraq as an imminent threat to the United States or a major proliferator of weapons of mass destruction. I have heard no persuasive evidence that Saddam is on the threshold of acquiring the nuclear weapons he has sought for more than 20 years. And the administration has offered no persuasive evidence that Saddam would transfer chemical or biological weapons of mass destruction to Al Qaeda or any other terrorist organization. As General Joseph Hoar, the former Commander of Central Command told the members of the Armed Services Committee, a case has not been made to connect Al Qaeda and Iraq . . . To the contrary, there is no clear and convincing pattern of Iraqi relations with either Al Qaeda or the Taliban.

When Hillary cast her “yes” vote “with conviction” a few weeks later, Kennedy and 22 other Democratic senators (and a majority of Democrats in the House) rejected the use-of-force resolution. “The question,” Senator Patrick Leahy said during the debate on the vote, “is not whether Saddam Hussein should be disarmed; it is how imminent is this threat and how should we deal with it?” Leahy continued:

The resolution now before the Senate leaves the door open to act alone, even absent an imminent threat. It surrenders to the President authority which the Constitution explicitly reserves for the Congress . . . Many respected and knowledgeable people–former senior military officers and diplomats among them–have expressed strong reservations about this resolution. They agree that if there is credible evidence that Saddam Hussein is planning to use weapons of mass destruction against the United States or one of our allies, the American people and the Congress would overwhelmingly support the use of American military power to stop him. But they have not seen that evidence, and neither have I. We have heard a lot of bellicose rhetoric, but what are the facts? I am not asking for 100 percent proof, but the administration is asking Congress to make a decision to go to war based on conflicting statements, angry assertions, and assumption based on speculation. This is not the way a great nation goes to war.

Then there was Robert Byrd, who unsuccessfully tried to mount a filibuster against the resolution, which he described as “the Tonkin Gulf resolution all over again”:

The resolution before us today is not only a product of haste; it is also a product of presidential hubris. This resolution is breathtaking in its scope. It redefines the nature of defense, and reinterprets the Constitution to suit the will of the Executive Branch. It would give the President blanket authority to launch a unilateral preemptive attack on a sovereign nation that is perceived to be a threat to the United States.

Byrd rejected the administration’s arguments about Saddam posing an imminent WMD threat and noted that no one “has been able to produce any solid evidence linking Iraq to the September 11 attack.” He also said that any overthrow of the Iraqi regime “would require a long term occupation,” and that this “kind of nation-building cannot be accomplished with the wave of a wand by some fairy godmother, even one with the full might and power of the world’s last remaining superpower behind her.”

So here are some questions for Hillary:

• Other Democrats knew. Why didn’t you?
• Why did you trust President Bush more than you trusted top figures in your own party?
• Did you, in fact, vote for the war resolution on the basis of polling numbers and political calculations about an expected future run for the presidency?
• And finally, if you won’t vote your conscience on questions of war and peace, when will you?

The answer to that last question is “never.” A recent Washington Post story on Mark Penn, Clinton’s pollster, described him as taking “taking increasing control” of her presidential campaign. “Armed with voluminous data that he collects through his private polling firm, Penn has become involved in virtually every move Clinton makes, with the result that the campaign reflects the chief strategist as much as the candidate,” the Post said. “If Clinton seems cautious, it may be because Penn has made caution a science, repeatedly testing issues to determine which ones are safe and widely agreed upon.”

Ken Silverstein

A Bloody Lie of George Tenet

by Larry C Johnson

How many lies is George Tenet allowed to tell on TV before he immolates the last shred of credibility? Judging by his latest sad performance on Meet the Press I would say his time is up. Tenet insisted to Tim Russert today that he was crystal clear in debunking the assumption that Al Qaeda and Iraq were in cahoots:

Well, Tim, Tim, I will tell you that I had many conversations, particularly on Iraq and al-Qaeda, particularly on the terrorism question, where we drew the line as sharply as we knew how. We were very, very clear about our judgments. We worked very, very hard to make sure that people comported and stayed within the bounds of what the intelligence showed.

But George Tenet can’t keep his stories straight. For example, as has been widely reported, he starts his book off with an inaccurate account of a conversation with neocon and Iraq war advocate Richard Perle. It is the day after 9-11, Perle is stuck in France, yet Tenet writes that he saw Perle exiting the White House and talking about attacking Iraq. Leave it to George Tenet to make Richard Perle sound sane.

George Tenet wants gullible book buyers to believe that he always disputed the notion that Saddam and the 9-11 attackers were working in concert. But the words and actions of George Tenet tell a radically different story. A damning one at that.

In March of 2002 George Tenet said:

"There is no doubt that there have been contacts and linkages of al-Qaeda organization. As to where we are in September 11, the jury is out. . . . . Their ties may be limited by divergent ideologies, but the two sides' mutual antipathy toward the United States and the Saudi royal family suggest that tactical cooperation between them is possible."

Why did George Tenet leave open the window of doubt on this critical issue when he now insists that there was no there there? But wait, there is more.

CIA Deputy Director, John McLaughlin, sent a letter responding to a query from Senator Evan Bayh on October 7, 2002 that said:

"Regarding Senator Bayh's questions of Iraqi links to al-Qaeda, senators could draw from the following points for unclassified discussions. One, We have solid reporting of senior level contact between Iraq and al-Qaeda going back a decade." Two, "Credible information indicates that Iraq and al-Qaeda have discussed safe haven and reciprocal" aggression." Three, "Since Operation Enduring Freedom, we have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of al-Qaeda members, including some that have been in Baghdad." And lastly, "We have credible reporting that al-Qaeda leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire WMD capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has provided training to al-Qaeda members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs."

Did anyone hear George Tenet at the time remind anybody that there was no “operational tie” between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda? He chose to say nothing. Did he challenge those--like Dick Cheney--who suggested there was a substantive ongoing relationship? Nope. George Tenet said nothing to dispel that false conclusion.

That same day (October 7, 2002) President Bush gave a speech in Cincinnati, Ohio (this is the famous speech in which Tenet excised the reference to Niger, Iraq, and uranium) and said the following:

And that is the source of our urgent concern about Saddam Hussein's links to international terrorist groups. Over the years, Iraq has provided safe haven to terrorists such as Abu Nidal, whose terror organization carried out more than 90 terrorist attacks in 20 countries that killed or injured nearly 900 people, including 12 Americans. . . . We know that Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy -- the United States of America. We know that Iraq and al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade. Some al Qaeda leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq. These include one very senior al Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year, and who has been associated with planning for chemical and biological attacks. We've learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases. And we know that after September the 11th, Saddam Hussein's regime gleefully celebrated the terrorist attacks on America.

George Tenet's CIA approved this language and Tenet was familiar with the speech because he had called the White House to protest another portion of the speech. This provides circumstantial evidence for Richard Dearlove's (George Tenet's British counterpart) now famous memo (the Downing Street Memo) that the facts and the intelligence were being fixed around the policy of going to war with Iraq. In my day we called it cooking the books and George Tenet was one of the chefs.

Tenet’s participation in the hoodwinking of the American public continued when, on February 4, 2003 , he sat stoically behind Colin Powell at the UN Security Council and, by virtue of his presence, provided the CIA ’s imprimatur for the following claim:

Al Qaeda continues to have a deep interest in acquiring weapons of mass destruction. As with the story of Zarqawi and his network, I can trace the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these weapons to al Qaeda. Fortunately, this operative is now detained, and he has told his story.
I will relate it to you now as he, himself, described it. This senior al Qaeda terrorist was responsible for one of al Qaeda's training camps in Afghanistan . His information comes firsthand from his personal involvement at senior levels of al Qaeda. He says bin Laden and his top deputy in Afghanistan , deceased al Qaeda leader Mohammed Atef, did not believe that al Qaeda labs in Afghanistan were capable enough to manufacture these chemical or biological agents. They needed to go somewhere else. They had to look outside of Afghanistan for help. Where did they go? Where did they look? They went to Iraq .
The support that (al Libi) describes included Iraq offering chemical or biological weapons training for two al Qaeda associates beginning in December 2000. He says that a militant known as Abu Abdula Al-Iraqi (ph) had been sent to Iraq several times between 1997and 2000 for help in acquiring poisons and gases. Abdula Al-Iraqi (ph) characterized the relationship he forged with Iraqi officials as successful.

This intelligence came from Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, an al-Qaeda commander who was tortured by the Egyptians. Even though George Tenet was briefed in January 2003 that his analysts doubted al-Libi’s account (see Hubris pp. 187-88) he signed off on Powell’s briefing.

But he did more. On February 11, 2003 Tenet he went before Congress and said:

Iraq is harboring senior members of a terrorist network led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a close associate of al Qaeda. ... Iraq has in the past provided training in document forgery and bomb-making to al Qaeda. It has also provided training in poisons and gases to two al Qaeda associates. One of these associates characterized the relationship he forged with Iraqi officials as successful. ... I know that part of this - and part of this Zarqawi network in Baghdad are two dozen Egyptian Islamic jihad which is indistinguishable from al Qaeda - operatives who are aiding the Zarqawi network, and two senior planners who have been in Baghdad since last May.
Now, whether there is a base or whether there is not a base, they are operating freely, supporting the Zarqawi network that is supporting the poisons network in Europe and around the world. So these people have been operating there. And, as you know - I don't want to recount everything that Secretary Powell said, but as you know a foreign service went to the Iraqis twice to talk to them about Zarqawi and were rebuffed. So there is a presence in Baghdad that is beyond Zarqawi.

The public record is quite clear about the role George Tenet played in helping condition the American people to fear Iraq and support a preemptive war against Iraq. He helped build the myth that Al Qaeda enjoyed safehaven in Iraq and was biding its time to strike us again. George Tenet was not an honest broker trying to get the best intelligence to the President and the Congress. He willingly and knowingly agreed to make public statements and authorized statements that were at odds with the actual intelligence.

What do you think would have happened if George Tenet had gone to members of Congress and warned them that there was no relationship between Al Qaeda and Saddam’s Iraq? Would overwhelming majorities have voted to give the President authority to start a war with Iraq? I do not think so. Would Americans still raw from the wounds inflicted by Al Qaeda on 9-11 support the President’s campaign to attack a country which had nothing to do with those attacks and, despite claims to the contrary, was not protecting or enabling Al Qaeda operatives who wanted to launch new attacks against the United States? The answer. No, and hell no!

Lie is the only word that comes to mind and seems appropriate to describe what George Tenet has done. This is the chief reason I say he has the blood of American soldiers on his hands. And I, along with several former members of the CIA , the U.S. Department of State, and the U.S. Army, believe that George Tenet owes the soldiers and the families of soldiers who have died or been wounded in Iraq part of the proceeds from his $4 million dollar advance for his book. It would be the decent thing to do, but George Tenet’s decency quotient appears to be running on empty.

Posted by Larry Johnson on Monday, 07 May 2007 at 00:57 | Permalink

Maliki withdraws statement, wall construction continues

Related
Work on Baghdad wall continues
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Original in Arabic

Machine translation

Maliki backtrack on his statements (orders) to continue building the wall in sectarian hung history 23 / 04 / 2007 9:39:22 | section : policy-our sources that Nouri Al-Malki retreat from his earlier statements and is moving ahead with the construction of the wall that separates the area from the rest hung areas of Baghdad, sources reported that telephone call today Maliki and library in Baghdad gave orders to build the wall falls down yesterday to the Secretary-General of the League Arab and to the entire world, which was heard across the screens

Israelis with Ahmed Chalabi are building the walls in Iraq

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

من يبني الحائط؟

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فريق عمل إسرائيلي يعمل بتنسيق كامل مع لجنة الحشد الشعبي والتي يرئسها احمد الجلبي لتطويق أكثر من خمسين مدينه في العراق بسياج عزل

دار بابل للدراسات والإعلام - الموصل

ـ24 نيسان 2007

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Dar Babel for Studies & Information (Mosul) has issued a report (above, in Arabic, April 24, 2007) indicating that work on the "walls" that are now being put up in Iraq have been in preparation for over three months. This project is being headed by Ahmad Al-Chalabi in conjunction with the Israeli company of Zeef Belinsky who has a long track record in ghetto construction, and with Al-Mahdi Army's financing and labor. The document provides sufficient details on the six work locations producing these concrete blocks, for easier targeting.

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posted by Imad Khadduri # 6:52 AM

Bowing down to our own violence

April 22, 2007

By Norman Solomon

Many days after the mass killings at Virginia Tech, grisly stories about the tragedy still dominated front pages and cable television. News of carnage on a vastly larger scale -- the war in Iraq -- ebbs and flows. The overall coverage of lethal violence, at home and far away, reflects the chronic evasions of the American media establishment.

In the world of U.S. mainline journalism, the boilerplate legitimacy of official American violence overseas is a routine assumption.

“The first task of the occupation remains the first task of government: to establish a monopoly on violence,” George Will wrote on April 7, 2004, in the Washington Post. But three years later, his Newsweek column laments: “Vietnam produced an antiwar movement in America; Iraq has produced an antiwar America.”

Current polls and public discourse -- in spite of media inclinations to tamp down authentic anger at the war -- do reflect an “antiwar America” of sorts. So, why is the ghastly war effort continuing unabated? A big factor is the undue respect that’s reserved for American warriors in American society.

When a mentally unstable person goes on a shooting rampage in the United States, no one questions that such actions are intrinsically, fundamentally and absolutely wrong. The media condemnation is 100 percent.

However -- even after four years of a U.S. war in Iraq that has been increasingly deplored by the American public -- the standard violence directed from the Pentagon does not undergo much critical scrutiny from American journalists. The president’s war policies may come under withering media fire, but the daily activities of the U.S. armed forces are subjected to scant moral condemnation. Yet, under orders from the top, they routinely continue to inflict -- or serve as a catalyst for -- violence far more extensive than the shooting sprees that turned a placid Virginia campus into a slaughterhouse.

News outlets in the United States combine the totally proper condemnation of killing at home with a notably different affect toward the methodical killing abroad that is funded by the U.S. Treasury. We often read, see and hear explicit media commendations that praise as heroic the Americans in uniform who are trying to kill, and to avoid being killed, in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In recent decades, the trends of war have been clear. A majority of the dead -- estimated at 75 to 90 percent -- are civilians. They are no less innocent than the more than 30 people who suddenly died from gunshots at Virginia Tech.

It would be inaccurate to say that the bulk of U.S. media’s coverage accepts war launched from Washington. The media system of the USA does much more than accept -- it embraces the high-tech violence under the Pentagon’s aegis. Key reasons are cultural, economic and political.

We grew up with -- and continue to see -- countless movies and TV programs showing how certain people with a handgun, a machine gun or missiles are able to set wrongs right with sufficiently deft and destructive violence.

The annual reports of large, medium and small companies boast that the U.S. Defense Department is a lucrative customer with more and more to spend on their wares for war.

And the scope of political discourse, reinforced by major news outlets, ordinarily remains narrow enough to dodge the huge differences between “defense spending” and “military spending.” More broadly, the big media rarely explore the terrain of basic moral challenges to the warfare state.

Everyone who isn’t deranged can agree that what happened on April 16, 2007, at the campus of Virginia Tech was an abomination. It came about because of an individual’s madness. We must reject it without the slightest equivocation. And we do.

But the media baseline is to glorify the U.S. military -- yesterday, today and tomorrow -- bringing so much bloodshed to Iraq. The social dynamics in our own midst, fueling the war effort, are spared tough scrutiny. We’re constantly encouraged to go along, avidly or passively.

Yet George Will has it wrong. The first task of government should not be “to establish a monopoly on violence.” Government should work to prevent violence -- including its own.

Norman Solomon’s book “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death” is out in paperback. The world premiere of the “War Made Easy” documentary film will happen in New York City on May 14. For information, go to: www.WarMadeEasy.com

New light on the Nick Berg case: US contractors ‘tortured’ for talking to the FBI

Occupation turf war sheds new light on the Nick Berg case
US contractors ‘tortured’ for talking to the FBI

11 April 2007

The case of Donald Vance, an American citizen secretly imprisoned by the US military in Iraq after making accusations against an Iraqi-owned security company for which he worked, has revealing parallels with the 2004 disappearance of Nick Berg, a US contractor whose murder is officially attributed to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Vance was last week awarded the prestigious Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling at a ceremony at the National Press Club in Washington (see "My Name Used to Be 200343" by David Phinney here). The case constitutes further evidence that US military intelligence forces have secretly detained and tortured citizens of the US and probably other Western nations whom they believe may have compromised ‘unconventional operations’ in Iraq.

Vance is a US Navy veteran who signed on with an Iraqi-owned security company based in Baghdad. He and a fellow-worker, Nathan Ertel, came to suspect that the company was involved in illegal arms dealing “and other nefarious activity”.
He contends that he fell foul of the Occupation military authorities because he shared this information with the US Federal Bureau of Investigation. According to David Phinney:

Vance claims that during the months leading up to his arrest, he worked as an unpaid informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Sometimes twice a day, he would share information with an agent in Chicago about the Iraqi-owned Shield Group Security, whose principals and managers appeared to be involved in weapons deals and violence against Iraqi civilians. One company employee regularly bartered alcohol with U.S. military personnel in exchange for ammunition they delivered …

Vance and Ertel barricaded themselves in their office after the Iraqi firm confiscated their ID tags. They were rescued by US soldiers and taken back to the Green Zone. There they were arrested and held, secretly, for three months. They were systematically mistreated and tortured with very loud music.

In a lawsuit now pending against former Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and "other unidentified agents," Vance and Ertel accuse their U.S. government captors of subjecting them to psychological torture day and night. Lights were kept on in their cell around the clock. They endured solitary confinement. They had only thin plastic mattresses on concrete for sleeping. Meals were of powdered milk and bread or rice and chicken, but interrupted by selective deprivation of food and water. Ceaseless heavy metal and country music screamed in their ears for hours on end, their legal complaint alleges.

…

But darker allegations are included in the complaint over false imprisonment. Because he worked with the FBI, Vance contends, U.S. government officials in Iraq decided to retaliate against him and Ertel. He believes these officials conspired to jail the two not because they worked for a security company suspected of selling weapons to insurgents, but because they were sharing information with law enforcement agents outside the control of U.S. officials in Baghdad.

…

“In other words,” claims the lawsuit, “United States officials in Iraq were concerned and wanted to find out about what intelligence agents in the United States knew about their territory and their operations. The unconstitutional policies that Rumsfeld and other unidentified agents had implemented for 'enemies' provided ample cover to detain plaintiffs and interrogate them toward that end.”

If this is true, Vance and Ertel fell victim to a vicious turf war between the shadowy special operations and intelligence forces created by the Neocons and Vice President Cheney – the ‘Other Agencies’ (OAs) set up by Rumsfeld’s Office of Special Plans – and anti-Neocon forces represented by the State Department and the FBI.

This, I have long contended, is probably what happened to Nicholas Berg in April 2004. (For a full list of the material about the Nick Berg case published on my website see links below).

For those new to the case, a brief summary follows …

Nick Berg was a 26 year-old US businessman of Jewish extraction. He was a specialist in radio communications tower repair and construction. Although Berg was, by all accounts, a supporter of George Bush and the US invasion of Iraq, his father, a member of the Democracy Now! group, was an open opponent of the war.

In Iraq, Berg found a commercial partner in Aziz al-Taee, a seedy Iraqi businessman, previously resident in the US, who was an associate of the Iranian-aligned Shiite businessman, Ahmad Chalabi. Aziz had an interesting criminal record in the US but had been instrumental in organising pro-invasion rallies before the war. It is likely that Berg combined his own fledgeling business endeavours with simple commercial intelligence-gathering for others.

Berg also had Iraqi relatives resident in Mosul. It was during a visit to Mosul, on 24 April 2004 that he was arrested by the Iraqi Police at a checkpoint because his Jewish name and Israeli stamps in his passport aroused suspicion. He was reportedly carrying a Farsi phrase book and anti-Zionist literature.

The Iraqi police turned Berg over to US military custody where he was interviewed on three occasions by the FBI. Berg was already well known to the Bureau. It is a curious fact that, while briefly a student at Oklahoma University, and before the events of 11 September 2001, his computer user ID had been used by Zacarias Moussaoui. The FBI had investigated this incident but found him innocent of any wrongdoing. The 911 investigator Michael Wright unearthed evidence supporting the view that Berg was working under CIA supervision at OU, perhaps spying on some of the alleged 911 hijackers who were living nearby at the time. Whatever the truth of this, suspicion must arise that Nick Berg was a part-time CIA operative and/or FBI informant. Certainly Berg made no complaints about his treatment by the FBI while he was in US custody in Mosul.

On 5 April, Berg’s father, who had learned of his incarceration from the US Consul in Baghdad, commenced legal proceedings for his release in the US Federal Court. The circumstances suggest that the US Consulate and the FBI spoke up for him. He was quickly released and offered a flight from Baghdad to Jordan. Reportedly he didn’t take up this offer, saying that he preferred to travel by road, with persons unknown whom he had somehow met. He left the al-Fanar Hotel on 10 April and disappeared.

No credible claim has ever surfaced that ransom demands were made, although Berg would have been a valuable, high-profile captive. A month later his decapitated body was found in Baghdad. Shortly afterwards, the infamous video of his decapitation, officially attributed to al-Qaeda, appeared on the internet. For George Bush, the timing was fortuitous, because the video provided a tailor-made “moral relativity”argument to bolster the US Government just as the story of the US torture of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib broke.

It is not difficult to see what might have happened in Berg’s case.

Remember that in early 2004, it was still possible for small-time would-be entrepreneurs like Berg to move about Iraq relatively freely. But operations by the Sunni and Baathist resistance were increasing. In late May, four US mercenaries were killed in an ambush in the Fallujah, a Sunni stronghold. The subsequent US attempt to subdue the city resulted in a minor disaster for US forces. A few days later US troops raided the offices of the cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, triggering a Shiite uprising. Suddenly, US troops were being attacked by the Shiites whom the US had relied upon to remain moderately well-disposed towards the occupation or at least neutral in relation to the escalating conflict with the Sunni and Baathist resistance. At the same time, in the US mainstream media, the view that the US had been tricked into invading Iraq on behalf of Iran began to be advanced. The fortunes of Ahmad Chalabi, until then something of a favourite with US ruling circles, suddenly plunged. The whole Neocon game-plan was falling apart. Behind the scenes rampant political confusion and paranoia would have reigned.

The Neocon-aligned OAs controlling much of the action in Iraq would certainly have known of Berg’s arrest in Mosul and would have resented the FBI and the Consulate’s interference in the case. And Berg’s relationship to a businessman close to the now discredited Ahmad Chalabi would not have helped. Under the confusing circumstance of the time, Berg looked like a highly suspicious character and he was one with whom the Neocon OAs would have felt they had unfinished business. It isn’t difficult to imagine they would have wanted to have a little chat with him. Nor is it difficult to imagine he might have died “accidentally” while under interrogation. Having seized Berg after his first incarceration had become a legal issue in the United States, his captors would have been in a lot of trouble had they later released him, but his death, apparently at the hands of al-Qaeda, would have been a safe resolution.

Donald Vance was lucky he got a prisoner registration number. At the time Berg was picked up, the CIA and OAs were holding unregistered “ghost prisoners” and they may still be doing so. Vance was probably given a number because the circumstances under which he was rescued by US troops from the Iraqi security company meant that several people whose loyalty and silence could not be relied on by the OAs, knew he had been taken into custody. In Berg’s case he was probably picked, unobserved, by an OA squad.

Donald Vance and his friend Nathan Ertel were very lucky indeed. In slightly different circumstances they might have ended up featuring in an “al-Qaeda” atrocity video, or perhaps, more likely these days, in one featuring “Iranian terrorists”.

Oh, and the Iraqi security company for which they worked is still in business, but under a slightly different name, and is still receiving US funds.

The Nick Berg case on the Nick Possum Home Page
WARNING: some articles contain disturbing images

The Nicholas Berg execution:
A working hypothesis and a resolution for the orange jumpsuit mystery
23 May 2004
Why was Nick Berg wearing a US prison "jumpsuit" when he was apparently executed on video by what are claimed to be al-Qaeda-linked terrorists? Something fishy there, but there was an elegant explanation. This was my first work on the case, later elaborated by …

New evidence and observations on the Berg case
18 July 2004
A close comparison of frames from the Berg video and pictures from Abu Ghraib prison reveals more evidence that the execution video was recorded in the notorious prison complex. Also, a refinement on the issue of the orange jumpsuit, which was actually a two-piece US prison uniform. And for an "off camera" view of a videotaped interrogation like the one seen in the opening 13 seconds of the Berg execution video, see the postscript to this piece. WARNING: disturbing images.

Nick Berg: the missing month
1 June 2004
A lot of people would like to know what happened to Nicholas Berg after he walked out of Baghdad’s Fanar Hotel on 10 April. They say the 26 year-old American contractor was looking for a taxi when he walked off down the street and into history.

Nagging questions about Nicholas Berg's last days:
An open letter to Beth A. Payne, US Consul, Baghdad, Iraq
9 June 2004
Millions want to know the truth about the last days of the young American contractor murdered in Iraq. Was he seized a second time by US forces? The US Consul in Baghdad should tell us all she knows.

Our man in Kabul:
Torturing Afghanis with Fox News' celebrity mercenary
1 August 2004
The fascinating case of Jonathan Keith Idema a mercenary headhunter and one of Donald Rumsfeld's OA boys until he fell foul of the US State Department and the Afghan regime.

A Paradigm Shift: America as Proxy

The US orchestrates proxy wars. Israel is now adopting a similar scheme.

Friday 13th of April 2007

By RAMZY BAROUD

Conflicts in the Middle East are often orchestrated from afar, using proxies -- the least risky method to fight and win a war. Despite its geopolitical fragmentation, the Middle East is loosely united insofar as any major event in any given locale can subsequently be felt throughout the region. Thus Lebanon, for example, has been a stage for proxy wars for decades. And it is not just Israel and the United States that have laboured to penetrate and further fragment Lebanese society. The intelligence services of various Arab countries, as well as Iran, have used Lebanon as a hub for their invariable interests, the outcome of any conflict -- be it internal or external -- directly affecting the image and political positioning of this or that country.

Palestinians have often been used as, and in some cases have presented themselves to play the role of, a proxy force. The rationale, in some cases, was personal interest; in others, lack of a platform that would allow them to organise. In the two most notable instances in which they tried to exert control over their host domains -- the cases of Jordan in the 1970s and Lebanon in the 1970s and 80s -- the cost was horrendous, leading to unprecedented bloodshed. After Arafat's forced exit from Beirut in 1982, Palestinians were forced to exchange the physical space they obtained for overt allegiance to various regimes. Arafat mastered the art like no other Palestinian leader. The supporters of the Oslo Accords argued that the agreement's key success was freeing the Palestinian political will from pandering to host countries for survival, which proved untrue. A Hamas leader in Syria told me, off the record, during a telephone interview recently: "We have no doubt that Damascus will dump us the moment we are no longer of use, but we have no other option but to play along."

Proxy politics is strategically significant for it helps take the battle to someone else's physical space, create distractions and circumvent internal crises. Both Israel and Iran, despite the colossal chasm that separate their political and military intents, are currently involved in such a manoeuvre.

President Ahmadinejad, backed by or directed by the instrumental forces in his country -- Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Supreme National Security Council -- is well acquainted with the fact that if Iraq is subdued by US forces, it will be Iran's turn to bear the brunt of obtrusive US imperial designs, cheered on, if not largely facilitated by Israel's neo- conservative allies in Washington. Accordingly, Iran is involved in trying to shape a political milieu in Iraq that will keep the Americans at bay. This is not to suggest that it was Iran, as opposed to the unwarranted American invasion, that engender the current chaos in Iraq; however, Iran, like other Middle Eastern countries involved in Iraq, wishes to manage and manipulate the outcome to suit its own interests. From Iran's point of view, this action makes perfect sense.

While Iran's prime objective is to discourage an American military assault against it, Israel seeks regional hegemony, where it is left only with "moderate" neighbours. According to this vision, conceived and promoted publicly by Israeli leaders and their friends in Washington and emphasised to the point of boring repetition by every relevant US official at every possible opportunity, the Iranian "threat" must be eradicated at any cost. Israel's fears of Iran are not nuclear in essence. What worries Israel is that Iran is militarily strong, politically cohesive and economically viable, enough to allow Iran opportunity to challenge Israel at every turn. The Israelis, as their country's history illustrates, simply despise such contenders. Israel's attempt to demolish Gamal Abdel Nasser's national regime in 1956, only eight years after the establishment of the Israeli state, is a poignant example.

Yet a paradigm shift has occurred since the US invasion of Iraq four years ago. While the US was the major power that often orchestrated proxy wars through clandestine tactics, as it did in Central America and various parts of Asia, Israel is now adopting a similar scheme. In most instances in the past, Israel managed to sway US administrations to behave according to the misleading mantra: "What's good for Israel is good for America." But a clash of interests here is unavoidable. While Israel's heart is set on a war against Iran, it is elementary knowledge that a war against Iran would bring irrevocable disaster for the United States. Prolonged political hostility with Iran is equally dangerous, for it will further complicate the American task in Iraq.

But Israel is still cheering for war. Former director of Mossad, Uzi Arad, told the British Guardian that, "A military strike may be easier than you think." He outlined what targets were to be bombed -- not just nuclear, but security and economic centres. "Iran is much more vulnerable than people realise," he stated casually. Arad, like most Israeli officials, wants war, even if such a war would complicate America's regional involvement and cost it innumerable human lives, notwithstanding a foreseeable large number of dead Iranians. It would matter little to Israel, however, for a chaotic Iran, like a chaotic Iraq, is just another opportunity to be exploited, and another "threat" to be checked off Israel's security list.

While proxy relations are part and parcel of Middle East politics, even arrogant superpowers can find themselves exploited, wittingly or not.


Ramzy Baroud is an author and a journalist. His latest volume: The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle (Pluto Press, London) is available from Amazon and other book vendors.

Club Democracy Says Iraq Isn't Worthy of Invite

By Glenn Kessler

Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 13, 2007; A15

Four years after Iraq's Saddam Hussein was deposed by U.S.-led troops, an international panel charged with recommending invitations for an exclusive meeting of the world's democracies has rendered its verdict on Iraq's fledging democracy.

Not good enough.

The announcement by the advisory committee of the Community of Democracies marked a step back for Iraq. Two years ago, when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice attended the group's biannual meeting in Santiago, Chile, and lauded Iraq's recent elections, Iraq was granted observer status. Under the committee's plan, it would now have the same status as when Hussein ruled Iraq: "not invited."

Afghanistan was a participant two years ago, but the committee said it should only be offered observer status for the body's meeting in Mali in November. Russia also was knocked off the invitation list. The committee said Russian President Vladimir Putin has consolidated power through "decidedly undemocratic measures."

Two key U.S. allies that the administration has praised for progress on democracy -- Egypt and Jordan -- were also downgraded.

The committee said 100 governments could participate, 18 could be observers and 54 should be rejected. The committee took no position on the 16 nations, including the United States, that will make the final decisions on invitations by July.

Ted Piccone, executive director of the Democracy Coalition Project, said an advisory committee was formed to help craft the invitation list because some countries felt previous invitations had been inappropriately altered for political reasons. He said his contacts in the State Department were not happy about the downgrading of Iraq and Afghanistan, but the committee is trying hard to make it as difficult as possible for its recommendations to be rejected.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the United States "has some differences" with the committee, but "no one will agree to lower the bar for democracies attending this meeting."

Questions for Time magazine

Friday, April 13, 2007

(This is an expanded version of an earlier post called "Questions for Time magazine"; the material relating to Time is down in the second half of this).


The Islamic State of Iraq has posted claims of responsibility for the Green Zone bombing, (thanks to veteran chat-site navigator Abu Aardvark for calling attention to that) which the ISI says was carried out by a suicide bomber. These claims, which can be found among other places on the "news" forum of muslm.net, are signed by something called the Fajr Media Center, and there isn't any question they have been issued by the ISI organization. The following comments have to do with a different question: Assuming ISI responsibility, there are reports about a relationship between the attack and the emerging dispute between AlQaeda/ISI on the one side and the domestic resistance groups apparently led by Islamic Army in Iraq on the other.

Al-Hayat says there was a video announcement yesterday by someone known as Abu Suleiman al-Atibi who calls himself the "lawful judge of the Islamic State of Iraq", and the paper has this to say about it, after describing the events of the bombing:

The AlQaeda organization had threatened yesterday to "cut off the head of those who resist [us], and [he said] in a video message, "I warn the tribe of those among the proprietors of party and politics, who make a weapon of double-dealing..." and he added, tacitly referring the differences that have widened recently between AlQaeda and Iraqi armed groups, "we will cut off their hands and we will strike them in the neck".

The Al-Hayat reporter then refers to recent interview statements by the head of the Islamic Army in Iraq that have been taken loosely to mean a degree of openness to the idea of negotiating with the occupation. But at least for English-speaking readers it is worth noting what the Islamic Army person actually said (in an Al-Jazeera interview), because the reports in English having passed from hand to hand, have gotten a little distorted. Here's the relevant quote from the interview:

We do not reject in principle talks with the Americans or others, and we have laid out many times in official and other media our conditions for such talks, and we have emphasized that there are two conditions for successful talks, first that the American congress issue a binding decision announcing a complete withdrawal by a fixed date, and second, recognition that the resistance is the legitimate and sole representative of the Iraqi people.

(This interview was published April 10, so the Awni Qalamji piece in Al-Quds al-Arabi, summarized in the prior post, was probably at least partly a reply to this, warning against thinking there is any possibility of any voluntary American withdrawal. Qalamji is associated with the domestic resistance. I'm sorry I'm reporting these out of chronological order).

In any event, if the statement by the "judicial officer" cited by Al-Hayat this morning is authentic, and the paper's acceptance of it suggests it is, then apparently the the hard-line domestic resistance represented by Qalamji wasn't the only group alarmed by even this conditional suggestion of negotiations.

Still, there is something considerably fishy about what Time magazine is reporting on its website about this.

In its article yesterday on the Green Zone bombing, Time said this:

Within an hour of the explosion, a message from the al-Qaeda-controlled Islamic State in Iraq was posted on a prominent militant website, muslm.net, calling the blast a "message" to anyone who cooperates with "the occupier and its agents." It said ominously, "We will reach you wherever you are"

And Iraqslogger printed what it said was a screenshot of the item referred to, which you can see here. The text in red says: "This (referring to the GZ bombing) is a message of the Islamic State of Iraq to the Islamic Army: Anyone who is going to negotiate with the occupiers and their agents, we will find them wherever they are".

But notice the light blue strip at the top, right above the yellow exclamation point. In an authentic posting, that light blue strip is a little wider, and serves as the background for a couple of important pieces of information printed in black. At the right-hand side, there is always the screen-name of the poster, and a button next to that name, triggering a pull-down menu with two items: You can look at all of the postings of this particular individual (even if you are not a registered user); or you can look at his personal information (for which you have to be registered). And at the left-hand side, also against the background of the light-blue bar, there is the date of the poster's registration as a user, and the number of his "participations", which means either postings or postings and comments. This obviously serves as a rudimentary or entry-level check on reliability, because it shows how long the person has been posting, and what he has been posting.

Anyone with the expertise to find a posting like this would obviously first check the name of the poster and his posting history, to see if he is a known quantity or not. Iraqslogger said it wasn't taking this as necessarily an Al-Qaeda message. "The statements" of the Islamic State of Iraq, it said, "are usually more detailed with more verifiable information, often containing florid prose and multiple references to the Quran." But really, the first question is where Iraqslogger got this screenshot, because it would seem if they went to the muslm.net site and saw it there themselves, the light-blue bar would in fact be the background for the name of the poster and the other information to be found there. And if they got it from Time, then the same question: Where exactly did Time find it, and where is the basic information one looks for printed on that light-blue bar?

The solution, of course, is to go to the site and find the posting ourselves. But I do not see it there, and as far as I am aware, no one else has found it there either.

This is not just a question of the authenticity of a posted message, if in fact there was one, because unless there is some explanation, this would be a question of Time magazine relying on an obvious, clearly recognizable forgery to anchor a news story. The lead to its story yesterday went like this: "In an assault apparently aimed at chilling negotiations between the Iraqi government and a faction of the insurgency, the Iraqi Parliament, located in Baghdad's high-security Green Zone, suffered a bomb attack." The phrase "apparently aimed at chilling negotiations..." refers to the supposed posting in question.

Silence of the hawks

As the humanitarian crisis in Iraq goes from bad to worse, the war propagandists are turning to more trivial matters.

April 13, 2007 1:30 PM

Neil Clark

The International Red Cross warned this week that the humanitarian crisis in Iraq is getting even worse. At the same, time a major academic study by the Oxford Research Group concludes that the illegal US/UK invasion has "spawned new terror" in the region. In the light of the latest damning evidence of the consequences of the invasion, what has been the reaction of the lap-top bombadiers who five years ago so energetically propagandised for war? I've been trawling the web to find out.

Melanie Phillips, the "moralist" who condemns teenage youths for smashing up bus shelters but not coalition forces for smashing up Iraq, makes no mention of either report on her website this week.

Ditto William Shawcross and Nick Cohen, self-appointed scourge of the anti-war left.

David Aaronovitch has kept his silence too (perhaps he's in training for another London marathon), as has Andrew Roberts, the "talented historian" who argued that we could equate sanctions-devastated Iraq (including its non-existent air force and its Dad's Army) with Nazi Germany at its peak.

Harry's Place, favourite watering hole of "pro-liberation left" prefers to discuss road rage, school history syllabuses and union-made hoodies.

Daniel Finkelstein of The Times has discovered an interest in mediums.

Stephen Pollard informs us that he's been reading Norman Lebrecht's Maestros and Madness: The Secret Life and Shameful Death of the Classical Record Industry. The Daily Telegraph's 'Neo' Con Coughlin, who regaled us with tales of Saddam's deadly armoury, has turned his attention to Russian bear-baiting.

Across the pond, Andrew Sullivan opines about shopping bags, while David 'Axis of Evil' Frum tells us about his grandfather.

Mark Steyn, who once accused anti-war demonstrators of having blood on their hands, focuses on the trial of his old mentor, Conrad Black.

Down Under, Tim Blair, who in 2004 ridiculed claims that the future in Iraq was "frightening", shares his thoughts on Alaskan sea otters.

From all these people, not a single word about either the International Red Cross or the Oxford Research Group reports. How very different it was four years ago! On the day that Saddam's statue toppled in Baghdad, the neo-cons couldn't wait to brag about the "success" of the war they had so enthusiastically supported. This was William Shawcross, writing in the Wall Street Journal:

April 9 - Liberation Day! What a wonderful, magnificent, emotional occasion - one that will live in legend like the fall of the Bastille, V-E Day or the fall of the Berlin Wall. Watching the tearing down of Saddam Hussein's towering statue in Baghdad was a true Ozymandias moment. All those smart Europeans who ridiculed George Bush and denigrated his idea that there was actually a better future for the Iraqi people - they will now have to think again."

Really, William? Since the illegal invasion, an estimated 600,000 people have lost their lives in Iraq. Twice as many people have died in Iraq in the last four years as were killed in the previous 23 years under Saddam. The only people who need to "think again" are not those "smart Europeans" who opposed the war, but those far from "smart" people who faithfully parroted - for whatever reasons - the official US/UK propaganda.

Forget mediums, shopping bags and union-made hoodies: it's apologies that we really want.

Neil Clark is a UK-based journalist, blogger and writer. A regular contributor to the Guardian, the Times, the New Statesman and the Spectator, his work has also appeared in publications as diverse as The American Conservative, Pravda, the Morning Star and the Racing Post.

Video: The US used neutron weapons in the battle of the airport

This is four days old news, but for Arabic speaking people I have the video of the interview with former republican guards leader Saif Al-Din Al-Rawi.

Al-Rawi reveals in this interview all the hidden details about the Battle of Baghdad, details that blocked by western media.

Al-Rawi says that the US used Neutron and thermal weapons against Iraqi troops in the battle of the airport, but the Iraqis kept fighting until the last man and nobody survived the fight.

Some more details about the courageous Iraqi military fighters, very interesting to watch.

Watch the video here [Arabic]

The spectre of Saigon looms over Baghdad

Related
A bloody message from Iraq: nowhere is safe...
---
Leading article

Published: 13 April 2007

The exact death toll had still to be established last night, but the symbolic significance of the attack was instantly clear. A suicide bomber had successfully penetrated the fortified "green zone" in Baghdad and blown himself up inside the cafeteria of the Iraqi parliament. Three MPs were among the eight or more dead; at least 30 people were injured.

For several weeks now, the US military authorities have argued that an upsurge in violence was only to be expected as the new "surge" tactics started to bite. The enemy, they reasoned, would fight ever more desperately until it was finally overcome. The possibility that there might be a different explanation - that the "surge" might simply not be having the desired effect - was not entertained, at least in public pronouncements.

Yesterday's bombing constitutes a direct challenge to the US strategy in Iraq. The last time bombers successfully penetrated the "green zone" was in October 2004. Since then, the only violence had been at the outermost edges; its formidable security had held. That someone was able to pass through the security checks yesterday with explosives sufficient to inflict so much death and destruction means that the "green zone" can no longer be considered impregnable.

It hardly matters whether, as is suspected, the bomber was a security guard to an MP. The fact is that US forces are responsible for making the zone safe, and its security has now been compromised. All the elaborate fortifications and entry procedures will have to be reviewed.

That it was the Iraqi parliament that was targeted conveys an especially dispiriting message. The Parliament represents the last vestige of US (and British) hopes of planting something even faintly recognisable as democracy. The elections in December 2005 were, in retrospect, the high point of optimism for Iraq's future. Iraqis defied the threat of violence to cast their votes with quite extraordinary heroism. Already, though, their ministers and legislators seem estranged from them. If the Parliament is no longer able to meet, or if so many MPs fear for their security that they stop attending, the last chance for an orderly Iraq governed by Iraqis would seem to be gone for good.

The other risk is that any remaining confidence that the Americans are able to keep their allies safe will be undermined. Inside the "green zone" are not just the Iraqi parliament and many US military and diplomatic facilities. The "zone" is also home to many Iraq government offices and foreign representations; several thousand Iraqis live there. If the "zone" is seen to be vulnerable, all trust in the possibility of order spreading out from there to the rest of Baghdad will evaporate. The spectre of a Saigon-style retreat from Baghdad will be harder and harder to dispel.

This is the ninth week of the US "surge". More and more American and Iraqi soldiers are to be seen on Baghdad streets, as the attempt to crack down on the violence gains pace. The greater visibility of US troops, which is an integral part of the strategy, automatically makes them more vulnerable. It is probably inevitable that, even as the number of violent incidents has declined, US military casualties have increased.

For the strategy to work, it must do much more than multiply armed patrols. It must convince Iraqis that law and order can be restored, not just now but in the longer term. It is not just about deterring gunmen and bombers; it is about instilling confidence in the authorities' prospects of success and reducing support for militant sectarianism. The US "surge" already seemed to be in trouble; yesterday's bombing showed that the citadel could be breached. If and when the US abandons Iraq, this day will mark the beginning of that end.

DC Madam Says Iraq War Strategist Was A Customer

'D.C. madam' names a purported customer

Story Highlights

• Escort-service operator describes man as a regular client
• Harlan K. Ullman says "allegations do not dignify a response"
• Ullman a leading theorist behind "shock and awe" strategy in Iraq war
• Name dropped during hearing on changing lawyers

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The alleged "D.C. madam" dropped a name in court documents filed Thursday, but the man named bristled at being accused of hiring the high-end escort service run by Deborah Jean Palfrey.

Government prosecutors say Pamela Martin and Associates was actually a prostitution ring that Palfrey operated in the Washington area for 13 years. Palfrey denies that her business provided sexual services to its customers.

In her motion to reconsider appointment of counsel, Palfrey named Harlan K. Ullman as "one of the regular customers" of the business.

Ullman is one of the leading theorists behind the "shock and awe" military strategy that was associated with the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

"The allegations do not dignify a response," Ullman told CNN. "I'm a private, not a public, citizen. Any further questions are referred to my attorneys."

Ullman -- a former Navy commander and "a highly respected and widely recognized expert in national security whose advice is sought by governments and businesses," according to his Web site -- also said he is considering "some sort of legal action."

His attorney, Marc Mukasey of Bracewell & Giuliani in New York, declined to add to his client's comment.

Palfrey's civil defense attorney, Montgomery Blair Sibley, told CNN that it was his understanding that Ullman used the business' services but did not engage in sexual activity with the escorts.

Palfrey is fighting a multiple-count racketeering and money-laundering indictment. Her attorneys have been engaged in a battle with the court over documents that list the names and personal information of her clients.

U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler has restricted access to the documents, but Sibley argued that the order applies to the originals of the documents, not to copies.

Copies have already been given to a media outlet, he said.

The motion filed Thursday asks the judge to install Sibley in place of the public defender Palfrey has been assigned for the criminal case, and to order the government to continue to pay for her defense. The government has seized her assets, and she cannot afford to pay on her own.

Sibley is Palfrey's attorney in a civil case against one of her former employees.

Iran: the war ahead

Politics

John Pilger

Published 16 April 2007

The sailors' ordeal was a diversion from the bigger danger. The US and UK identified their new enemy long ago and are preparing the propaganda for the war ahead.

The Israeli journalist Amira Hass describes the moment her mother, Hannah, was marched from a cattle train to the Nazi concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen. "They were sick and some were dying," she says. "Then my mother saw these German women looking at the prisoners, just looking. This image became very formative in my upbringing, this despicable 'looking from the side'."

It is time we in Britain stopped looking from the side. We are being led towards perhaps the most serious crisis in modern history as the Bush-Cheney-Blair "long war" edges closer to Iran for no reason other than that nation's independence from rapacious America. The safe delivery of the 15 British sailors into the hands of Rupert Murdoch and his rivals (with tales of their "ordeal" almost certainly authored by the Ministry of Defence - until it got the wind up) is both a farce and a distraction. The Bush administration, in secret connivance with Blair, has spent four years preparing for "Operation Iranian Freedom". Forty-five cruise missiles are primed to strike. According to Russia's leading strategic thinker General Leonid Ivashov: "Nuclear facilities will be secondary targets . . . at least 20 such facilities need to be destroyed. Combat nuclear weapons may be used. This will result in the radioactive contamination of all the Iranian territory, and beyond."

And yet there is a surreal silence in Britain, save for the noise of "news" in which our powerful broadcasters gesture cryptically at the obvious but dare not make sense of it, lest the one-way moral screen erected between us and the consequences of an imperial foreign policy collapse and the truth be revealed. John Bolton, formerly Bush's man at the United Nations, recently spelled out the truth: that the Bush-Cheney-Blair plan for the Middle East is "an agenda to maintain division and ethnic tension and the only way to finally capture and enslave a country that has historically thrown out its occupiers on every occasion". He was referring to Iraq, but he also meant Iran, which would be next. That is the news.

One million Iraqis fill the streets of Najaf demanding that Bush and Blair get out of their homeland - that is the news: not our nabbed sailor-spies, nor the political danse macabre of the pretenders to Blair's Duce delusions. Whether it is Gordon Brown, the paymaster of the Iraq bloodbath, or John Reid, who sent British troops to pointless deaths in Afghanistan, or any of the others who sat through cabinet meetings knowing that Blair and his acolytes were lying through their teeth, only mutual distrust separates them now. They knew about Blair's plotting with Bush. They knew about the fake 45-minute "warning". They knew about the fitting up of Iran as the next "enemy".

Declared Brown to the Daily Mail: "The days of Britain having to apo logise for its colonial history are over. We should celebrate much of our past rather than apologise for it." In Late Victorian Holocausts, the historian Mike Davis documents that as many as 21 million Indians died unnecessarily in famines criminally imposed by British colonial policies. Moreover, since the formal demise of that glorious imperium, declassified files make it clear that British governments have borne "significant responsibility" for the direct or indirect deaths of between 8.6 million and 13.5 million people throughout the world from military interventions and at the hands of regimes strongly supported by Britain. The historian Mark Curtis calls these victims "unpeople". Rejoice! said Margaret Thatcher. Celebrate! says Brown. Spot the difference.

Brown is no different from Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and the other warmongering Democrats he admires and who support an unprovoked attack on Iran and the subjugation of the Middle East to "our interests" - and Israel's, of course. Nothing has changed since the US and Britain destroyed Iran's democratic government in 1953 and installed Reza Shah Pahlavi, whose regime had "the highest rate of death penalties in the world, no valid system of civilian courts and a history of torture" that was "beyond belief" (Amnesty).

True carnage

Look behind the one-way moral screen and you will dis tinguish the Blairite elite by its loathing of real democracy. They used to be discreet about this, but no more. Two examples spring to mind. In 2004, Blair used the secretive "royal prerogative" to overturn a high court judgment that had restored the very principle of human rights set out in Magna Carta to the people of the Chagos Islands, a British colony in the Indian Ocean. There was no debate. As ruthless as any dictator, Blair dealt his coup de grâce with the lawless expulsion of the islanders from their homeland, now a US military base, from which Bush has bombed Iraq and Afghanistan and will bomb Iran.

In the second example, only the degree of suffering is dif ferent. Last October, the Lancet published research by Johns Hopkins University in the US and al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad which calculated that 655,000 Iraqis had died as a direct result of the Anglo-American invasion. Downing Street officials derided the study as "flawed". They were lying. In fact, the chief scientific adviser to the Ministry of Defence, Sir Roy Anderson, had backed the survey, describing its methods as "robust" and "close to best practice", and other government officials had secretly approved the "tried and tested way of measuring mortality in conflict zones". The figure for Iraqi deaths is now estimated at close to a million - carnage equivalent to that caused by the Anglo-American economic siege of Iraq in the 1990s, which produced the deaths of half a million infants under the age of five, verified by Unicef. That, too, was dismissed contemptuously by Blair.

"This Labour government, which includes Gordon Brown as much as it does Tony Blair," wrote Richard Horton, editor of the Lancet, "is party to a war crime of monstrous proportions. Yet our political consensus prevents any judicial or civil society response. Britain is paralysed by its own indifference."

Such is the scale of the crime and of our "looking from the side". According to the Observer of 8 April, the voters' "damning verdict" on the Blair regime is expressed by a majority who have "lost faith" in their government. No surprise there. Polls have long shown a widespread revulsion to Blair, demonstrated at the last general election, which produced the second lowest turnout since the franchise. No mention was made of the Observer's own contribution to this national loss of faith. Once celebrated as a bastion of liberalism that stood against Anthony Eden's lawless attack on Egypt in 1956, the new right-wing, lifestyle Observer enthusiastically backed Blair's lawless attack on Iraq, having helped lay the ground with major articles falsely linking Iraq with the 9/11 attacks - claims now regarded even by the Pentagon as fake.

As hysteria is again fabricated, for Iraq, read Iran. According to the former US treasury secretary Paul O'Neill, the Bush cabal decided to attack Iraq on "day one" of Bush's administration, long before 11 September 2001. The main reason was oil. O'Neill was shown a Pentagon document entitled "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts", which outlined the carve-up of Iraq's oil wealth among the major Anglo-American companies. Under a law written by US and British officials, the Iraqi puppet regime is about to hand over the extraction of the largest concentration of oil on earth to Anglo-American companies.

Nothing like this piracy has happened before in the modern Middle East, where Opec has ensured that oil business is conducted between states. Across the Shatt al-Arab waterway is another prize: Iran's vast oilfields. Just as non existent weapons of mass destruction or facile concerns for democracy had nothing to do with the invasion of Iraq, so non-existent nuclear weapons have nothing to do with the coming American onslaught on Iran. Unlike Israel and the United States, Iran has abided by the rules of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, of which it was an original signatory, and has allowed routine inspections under its legal obligations. The International Atomic Energy Agency has never cited Iran for diverting its civilian programme to military use. For the past three years, IAEA inspectors have said they have been allowed to "go anywhere". The recent UN Security Council sanctions against Iran are the result of Washington's bribery.

Until recently, the British were unaware that their government was one of the world's most consistent abusers of human rights and backers of state terrorism. Few Britons knew that the Muslim Brotherhood, the forerunner of al-Qaeda, was sponsored by British intelligence as a means of systematically destroying secular Arab nationalism, or that MI6 recruited young British Muslims in the 1980s as part of a $4bn Anglo-American-backed jihad against the Soviet Union known as "Operation Cyclone". In 2001, few Britons knew that 3,000 innocent Afghan civilians were bombed to death as revenge for the attacks of 11 September. No Afghans brought down the twin towers, only citizens of Saudi Arabia, Britain's biggest arms client, which was not bombed. Thanks to Bush and Blair, awareness in Britain and all over the world has risen as never before. When home-grown terrorists struck London in July 2005, few doubted that the attack on Iraq had provoked the atrocity and that the bombs which killed 52 Londoners were, in effect, Blair's bombs.

In my experience, most people do not indulge the absurdity and cruelty of the "rules" of rampant power. They do not contort their morality and intellect to comply with double standards and the notion of approved evil, of worthy and unworthy victims. They would, if they knew, grieve for all the lives, families, careers, hopes and dreams destroyed by Blair and Bush. The sure evidence is the British public's wholehearted response to the 2004 tsunami, shaming that of the government.

Certainly, they would agree wholeheartedly with Robert H Jackson, chief of counsel for the United States at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders at the end of the Second World War. "Crimes are crimes," he said, "whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct which we would not be willing to have invoked against us."

As with Henry Kissinger and Donald Rumsfeld, who dare not travel to certain countries for fear of being prosecuted as war criminals, Blair as a private citizen may no longer be untouchable. On 20 March, Baltasar Garzón, the tenacious Spanish judge who pursued Augusto Pinochet, called for indictments against those responsible for "one of the most sordid and unjustifiable episodes in recent human history" - Iraq. Five days later, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, to which Britain is a signatory, said that Blair could one day face war-crimes charges.

These are critical changes in the way the sane world thinks - again, thanks to the Reich of Blair and Bush. However, we live in the most dangerous of times. On 6 April, Blair accused "elements of the Iranian regime" of "backing, financing, arming and supporting terrorism in Iraq". He offered no evidence, and the Ministry of Defence has none. This is the same Goebbels-like refrain with which he and his coterie, Gordon Brown included, brought an epic bloodletting to Iraq. How long will the rest of us continue looking from the side?

John Pilger's new film "The War on Democracy" will be previewed at the National Film Theatre, London SE1, on 11 May. http://www.bfi.org.uk/nft

http://www.johnpilger.com

John Pilger, renowned investigative journalist and documentary film-maker, is one of only two to have twice won British journalism's top award; his documentaries have won academy awards in both the UK and the US. In a New Statesman survey of the 50 heroes of our time, Pilger came fourth behind Aung San Suu Kyi and Nelson Mandela. "John Pilger," wrote Harold Pinter, "unearths, with steely attention facts, the filthy truth. I salute him."
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John Pilger Videos/Films

John Pilger - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tyre, Lebanon: Sean Smith's award-winning images

Sean Smith in Lebanon

July 23 2006: Ali Sha'ita, 12, (l) tries to comfort his mother. The extended family were wounded when the three vans in which they were travelling were hit by an Israeli missile

Photograph: Sean Smith

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Tyre, Lebanon In pictures: Sean Smith's award-winning images. In pictures

Pentagon opens civilian claim files against military: Chilling accounts of fatalities

Related
ACLU Releases Files on Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq: See story and link to database following this story.
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Chilling accounts of civilian fatalities in Iraq and Afghanistan released under freedom of information act.

Ewen MacAskill in Washington
Friday April 13, 2007
The Guardian

Chilling accounts of hundreds of fatal encounters between the US military and civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, providing a rare glimpse of the confusion and chaos of daily life in the conflict zones, were released by the Pentagon yesterday under the freedom of information act.

Four hundred and ninety-six files deal with Iraqi claims for compensation for family members killed by US forces between 2003 and 2006 and 17 from Afghanistan. The files, including handwritten notes from some of the soldiers involved, record the deaths of civilians killed mainly at checkpoints, or in their homes, or when US forces sprayed roads with gunfire to protect convoys.

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Many of the deaths result from a failure of communication between US forces, most of whom do not speak Arabic, and civilians. Among the files is one relating to a mother shot dead and her two children wounded when the taxi they were in went through a checkpoint at Baqubah, north of Baghdad, in February last year.

The US defence department file said: "While the matter is still under investigation, there is evidence to suggest that the warning cones and printed checkpoint signs had not yet been displayed in front of the checkpoint, which may be the reason why the driver of the taxi did not believe he was required to stop." The case has since been resolved and the US military has paid out $7,500 (£3,750).

Another file, from the 101st Airborne Division, deals with a claim for $4,800 from a father whose son was shot dead in a car at a checkpoint between Baghdad and Kirkuk in 2005. A sergeant dealing with it writes: "How was he supposed to know to get out of the vehicle when they fired warning shots? If I was in his place I would have stayed put too." In spite of his comments, the claim was turned down.

The defence department paid out $2,500 in another case, near Tuz in eastern Iraq, in which four family members were killed at their home in March 2004. The file records that more than 100 rounds were fired, so indiscriminate that 32 sheep and a cow were also killed.

The files were released after a request by the American Civil Liberties Union and amount to only a fraction of civilian deaths at the hands of US troops and the compensation claims lodged. Of the 496 Iraq claims released yesterday, cash payments were made in 164 cases.

Marc Garlasco, a spokesman for Human Rights Watch, said what he found shocking was the lack of consistency in deciding who was entitled to compensation.

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ACLU Releases Files on Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq (4/12/2007)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: media@aclu.org

Americans Have a Right to Unfiltered Information About the Human Costs of War, ACLU Says

NEW YORK - The American Civil Liberties Union today made public hundreds of claims for damages by family members of civilians killed or injured by Coalition Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The ACLU received the records in response to a Freedom of Information Act request it filed in June 2006.

The hundreds of files provide a vivid snapshot, in significantly more detail than has previously been compiled and released, of the circumstances surrounding reports of civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Since U.S. troops first set foot in Afghanistan in 2001, the Defense Department has gone to unprecedented lengths to control and suppress information about the human costs of war," said Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU. "Our democracy depends on an informed citizenry, and it is critical that the American people have access to full and accurate information about the prosecution of the war and the implications for innocent civilians."

The ACLU pointed out that during both the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Defense Department has instituted numerous policies designed to control information about the human costs of war. These policies include:

• Banning photographers on U.S. military bases from covering the arrival of caskets containing the remains of U.S. soldiers killed overseas;
• Paying Iraqi journalists to write positive accounts of the U.S. war effort;
• Inviting U.S. journalists to "embed" with military units but requiring them to submit their stories for pre-publication review;
• Erasing journalists' footage of civilian deaths in Afghanistan; and
• Refusing to disclose statistics on civilian casualties.

The files made public today are claims submitted to the U.S. Foreign Claims Commissions by surviving Iraqi and Afghan family members of civilians said to have been killed or injured or to have suffered property damages due to actions by Coalition Forces. The ACLU released a total of 496 files: 479 from Iraq and 17 from Afghanistan. The documents released by the ACLU are available online in a searchable database at www.aclu.org/civiliancasualties

Most of the Iraq claims range from early 2003 to late 2006; the majority are from 2005. Most claims from Afghanistan are from May 2006, with one dating back to 2001. Based on the number of deaths represented and the variation in number and location of claims per year, the ACLU said it believes there are additional documents being withheld and is pressing the Defense Department to disclose them all.

Of the 496 files, 198 were denied because the military found that the incidents arose "from action by an enemy or resulted directly or indirectly from an act of the armed forces of the United States in combat," which the military calls "combat exclusion."

Of the 496 claims, 164 incidents resulted in cash payments to family members. In approximately half of the cash payment cases, the United States accepted responsibility for the death of the civilian and offered a "compensation payment." In the other half, U.S. authorities issued "condolence" payments, which are discretionary payments capped at $2,500 and offered "as an expression of sympathy" but "without reference to fault." Claims based on incidents that were not reported in the military's "SIGACT" ("significant act") database, despite eyewitness corroborations, are generally denied for compensation although a condolence payment may be issued.

The files provide a window into the lives of innocent Afghans and Iraqis caught in conflict zones. In one file, a civilian from the Salah Ad Din (PDF) province in eastern Iraq states that U.S. forces opened fire with more than 100 hundred rounds on his sleeping family, killing his mother, father and brother. The firepower was of such magnitude that 32 of the family's sheep were also killed. The Army acknowledged responsibility and the claim resulted in two payments: a compensation payment of $11,200 and a $2,500 condolence payment. In another file, a civilian in Baghdad states that his only son, a nine-year-old (PDF), was playing outside when a stray bullet hit and killed him. The Army acknowledged responsibility and paid compensation of $4,000.

"As these files remind us, war imposes heavy burdens on innocent civilians," said Jameel Jaffer, Deputy Director of the ACLU's National Security Program. "Although these files are deeply disturbing to read, they allow us to understand the human cost of war in a way that statistics and the usual platitudes do not."

The ACLU noted that a significant number of the files - 92 of 496 - relate to deaths at checkpoints (50 files) or near American convoys (42 files). In one file, a civilian states that his son drove up to a checkpoint (PDF) in Kirkuk, was shot at through the roof of the car and hit in the abdomen; he later died from his wounds. An e-mail in the file from an Army sergeant states: "How was he supposed to know to get out of the vehicle when they fired warning shots? If I was in his place I would have stayed put too." The claim was denied although the sergeant suggested that the civilian might seek a condolence payment.

In another file, a civilian states that his mother was killed (PDF), his four-year-old brother suffered shrapnel wounds to the head, and his sister was shot in the leg after the taxi they were riding in ran through a checkpoint in the eastern Iraq town of Baqubah. An Army memorandum states: "[T]here is evidence to suggest that the warning cones and printed checkpoint signs had not yet been displayed in front of the checkpoint, which may be the reason why the driver of the Taxi did not believe he was required to stop." The Army suggested a condolence payment of $7,500. It is not known whether it was granted.

Attorneys on the FOIA project are Jaffer and Nasrina Bargzie of the national ACLU.

In a separate project, the ACLU filed a FOIA request in October 2003 for records concerning the abuse of prisoners held by U.S. forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay. To date, that request has resulted in the release of more than 100,000 pages, all of which are available online at: www.aclu.org/torturefoia. Litigation regarding that FOIA request is ongoing.