Monday, September 29, 2003

Hossein Khomeini in US

pv vivekanand

If there was any trace of doubt that Washington had
enlisted the grandson of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini, who despised the US and declared it was the
greatest enemy of Iran, in seeking "regime change" in
Terhan, then that has been removed by his arrival in
Washington.
Hossein Khomeini, 46, crossed to Iraq from Iran in
July and since then had issued several statements and
granted media interviews castigating the theocratic
regime in Tehran and openly welcoming American
military intervention to topple it.
He arrived in Washington last week and is addressing
Iranian Americans as well as others in gatherings,
explaining his opposition to the Iranian regime and
calling for support for Washington's plans for regime
change in Tehran.
Such calls add to the growing American pressure on
Iran, which the US accuses destabilising the region by
seeking to develop nuclear weapons and supporting
"terrorist" groups in Palestine and Lebanon.
The political clout of Hossein Khomeini, who carries
the title of hojatoeslam -- several rungs down the
ultimate Shiite rank of grand ayatollah that his
grandfather occupied -- is not known.
But his ongoing visit to the US is definitely sending
a signal to Iranians that he is now entrenched in the
American camp and could be the link between Washington
and Iranians opposed to the clerical regime.
Hossein Khomeini used to be a constant companion of
his grandfather, including 14 years of exile in Iraq
during the Shah's reign. His father, Mustafa Khomeini,
was killed by agents of the Shah's dreaded Savak
secret police in the 70s.
Some Iranians content that Hossein Khomeini went
against the regime that followed the death of his
grandfather when it became clear that the ultimate
helm of Shiites was not a hereditary affair.
Others say that Hossein Khomeini was always a liberal
and had disputes with his grandfather, who once jailed
him for a week.
The late Ayatollah Khomeini continues to the most
reverred among Iranians, as well as among Iraq's
Shiites, who comprise almost two-thirds of Iraq's 24
million people.
It is in the course of those interviews that Hossein
Khomeini sent shockwaves through the region and indeed
outside by describing the current regime in Tehran as
"the worst dictatorship... worse even than the
communists."
He contented that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein
would allow newfound freedoms to flourish in the
region and if they did not, US intervention would be
welcomed by most Iranians.
"Iranians insist on freedom, but they are not sure
where it will come from," he said. "If it comes from
inside, they will welcome it, but if it was necessary
for it to come from abroad, especially from the United
States, people will accept it."
Hossein Khomeini accused the regime of oppressing
the Iranian people and committing human rights abuses.

He argued that Iran's reformist movement was finished
and suggested that a referendum to decide how the
country should be governed in the future.
He questioned the principle of velayat faqih, or
Islamic jurisprudence, upon which the Iranian system
is based.
According to Hossein Khomeini, if his grandfather
were alive today, he would have opposed all of Iran's
current leaders because of what he described as their
excesses and wrongdoing.
The reformist camp in Iran is finished, he said.
People who had voted for President Mohammed Khatami in
1997 hoping things would change had seen things get
worse, rather than better, in his second term of
office, he said, adding that those who voted for an
Islamic Republic in Iran more than 20 years ago were
now in a minority.
He is vague about his political ambitions, but affirms
he would like to be involved in politics.
"I would love to be effective in bringing about
freedom with a movement either inside Iran or
outside," he said. "I want freedom for myself and my
children, whether in the leadership or a step away."
"Iran has given an order that I must be assassinated
by whatever means possible," he said. "Their feeling
is: This man is dangerous."

Sunday, September 28, 2003

Beans are spilled..

pv vivekanand


THE BEANS are out now. It has now been made clear that
the Bush administration took the decision to invade
Iraq on Sept.17, 2001, six days after the aerial
assaults in New York and Washington offered the
perfect opportunity to wage war against America's
enemies and bag the biggest oil price of all - Iraq.
The only question that remained was the timing of the
war and the build-up to justifying military action.
The administration tried to link Sadddam Hussein with
Osama Bin Laden but failed; then it was suggestions
that Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction was a
terrorist threat and this suited the US well since no
one could prove whether Saddam had WMD or otherwise.

On Sept.17, 2001, President George Bush signed a top-
secret directive to the Pentagon to
begin planning military options for an invasion of
Iraq, according to highly reliable sources in
Washington.
The directive was signed at a meeting attended by
hawks like Defence Secretary Ronald Rumseld and
National Security Advisor Condaleeza Rice. Secretary
of State Colin Powell had reservations about the move
and he was bluntly told that he was free to quit the
administration if he did not like the decision, said
the sources. Obviously, Powell opted to stay on and
became part of the plot as anyone else involved.
Since then, it was a question of justifying the
planned invasion and building up the scenario to
launch the invasion of Iraq and a group of pro-Israeli
hawks were more than glad to oblige by fabricating
evidence and drumming up Israeli-inspired political
influence in Congress and intellgence services to do
the groundwork of the war.
However, Afghanistan figured in between; military
experts say that the war that the US waged against
Afghanistan beginning in October 2001 was as much as
a "dress rehearsal" for the invasion of Iraq as
military action aimed at destroying Osama Bin Laden's
Al Qaeda and its Taliban backers. Never mind that not
a single hijacker on Sept.11 came from Afghanistan.
Part of that build-up to war against Iraq was
establishing reasons. And that entailed dramatic
reversals of Washington's firm assertions that Saddam
Hussein was a caged lion that could be manipulated at
will and was kept "contained" since the 1991 war that
ousted Iraq from Kuwait.
Bush administration officials had declared before
Sept.11, 2001 that Saddam Hussein was no longer a
threat to anyone - the international community, the
Middle East and the Gulf states.
After all, it was then an American need to convince
the world that Washington's stragey of "containing"
both Iraq and Iran were working.
In February 2001, Powell said in Cairo: "He (Saddam
Hussein) has not developed any significant capability
with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is
unable to project conventional power against his
neighbours."
In May 2001, Powell reiterated that Saddam had not
been able to "build his military back up or to develop
weapons of mass destruction" for "the last 10 years."
Washington's firm policy, he claimed, had been
successful in keeping the Iraqi leader "in a box."
In June 2001, Rice said iraq had been rendered weak,
divided and militarily defenceless, with Saddam
deprived of control the northern part ofthe country.
"We are able to keep his arms from him. His military
forces have not been rebuilt," she said.
How come the situation changed so dramatically in less
than a few months, with the same Powell and Rice, as
well as Bush himself and others in Washington,
declaring that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction
and posed a threat not only to his neighbours but also
to the region and the international community,
including mainland US?
In November 2001, more than a month into the war, the
writing was clear on the wall that the US was going to
invade Iraq, when Bush included Iraq in his "war
against terror" by saying that any country which had
weapons of mass destruction to "terrify its
neighbours" was a legitimate target.
The broader plot came to the fore a few months later,
when Bush described iraq, iran and North Korea as the
"axis of evil."
The course of events since a few hours after the
Sept.11 attack has been brought out by investigations,
interviews and research that went into making a
British television documentary -- Breaking the
Silence. It makes clear that the Bush administration
as well as the British government of Tony Blair
collaborated and created falsehoods and reasons
justifying the invasion of iraq and hoodwinking the
American public and distracting the media from
exposing the real reason for the military action.
In secret meetings that were never reported in the
mainstream media, US officials had indeed referred to
the real reasons, starting with Rumsfeld himself.
According to John Pilger, who made the documentary,
the idea that the Sept.11 attacks could be turned into
a reason for attacking Iraq came from Rumsfeld.
Pilger writes in London's Mirror newspaper:
"At 2.40pm on September 11, according to confidential
notes taken by his aides, Donald Rumsfeld... said he
wanted to 'hit' Iraq  — even though not a shred of
evidence existed that Saddam Hussein had anything to
do with the attacks on New York and Washington. 'Go
massive,' the notes quote Rumsfeld as saying. 'Sweep
it all up. Things related and not.'
"Iraq was given a brief reprieve when it was decided
instead to attack Afghanistan," writes Pilger. "This
was the 'softest option' and easiest to explain to the
American people - even though not a single September
11 hijacker came from Afghanistan. In the meantime,
securing the 'big prize' Iraq, became an obsession in
both Washington and London."
Pilger also says that in April last year Condoleezza
Rice said in a secret meeting in April last year that
the the Sept.11 attacks were an "enormous
opportunity" and said America "must move to take
advantage of these new opportunities."
Indeed, Iraq, with 11 per cent of the world's oil
known oil reserves and with immense potential to
challenge Israel - the US' strategic partner in the
Middle East -- was on top of all those "new
opportunities."
How did Blair enter the picture?
It is almost certain that Blair was told of the
American resolve to invade Iraq in a few weeks after
the decision was made in Washington, and the British
prime minister plunged into campaigning for war
immediately there after.
At times Blair appeared to be more determined that
Bush himself to invade Iraq and topple Saddam. That
should explain the series of British government
efforts, including proved falsification of
intelligence documents and "sexing up" of a dossier on
Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, that
followed.
In September, Blair told his parliament that
intelligence documents showed that Iraq's "weapons
of mass destruction programme is active, detailed and
growing.
"The policy of containment is not working. The weapons
of mass destruction programme is not shut down. It is
up and running now."
It has now been established beyond any reasonable
doubt that Saddam did not have any weapons of mass
destruction and former chief UN weapon expert Hans
Blix has publicly stated that the ousted Iraqi leader
could have destroyed whatever he had in 1991 itself.
The Iraq Survey Group, an Anglo-American team of 1,400
scientists, military and intelligence experts, which
searched through US-occupied Iraq since June has
failed to uncover any evidence of weapons of mass
destruction. Subsequently, it was not surprising that
the US and UK decided to delay indefinitely the
publication of the team's report, which was supposed
to have been released in mid-September.
American efforts to link Saddam with Al Qaeda also
failed miserably, and it was ironic that Rumsfeld said
in September 2003 that he had never said that the
Iraqi leader had ties with Osama Bin Laden. In
reality, Bush himself and all his aides, including
Rumsfeld, had clearly stated or implied that Saddam
was in collusion with Bin Laden in the Sept.11 attacks
and further plans for similar attacks. It was those
assertions and implied affirmations that led more than
two-thirds of Americans to believe -- as pre-war
opinion polls showed -- that Saddam was the mastermind
of the Sept.11 attacks.
In mid-September 2003, Rumsfeld was asked at a press
encounter why he thought most Americans still believed
Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks of Sept.11, he
replied: "I've
not seen any indication that would lead me to believe
I could say that."
In the Breaking the Silence documentary, Ray
McGovern, a former senior CIA officer and personal
friend of George Bush senior, the president's father,
says on record that a group of "crazies" were behind
the plot to invade Iraq.
"They were referred to in the circles in which I
moved when I was briefing at the
top policy levels as 'the crazies'," he says.
"The crazies," says McGovern citing "plenty of
documented evidence," were planning the (invasion of
iraq) for a long time and that 9/11 accelerated their
plan. (The weapons of mass
destruction issue) was all contrived, so was the
connection of Iraq with al Qaeda. It was all PR...
Josef Goebbels had this dictum: If you say something
often enough, the people will believe it."
The "crazies" – or "neoconseratives" —  as it has
turned out since theen, could be seen to include
Vice-President Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, John Bolton,
under-secretary of state, Douglas Feith,
under-secretary of defence, Paul Wolfowitz, a deputy
to Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, former chairman and
current member of the Defence Advisory Board, and I.
Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, and Stephen
Hadley, the deputy national security adviser.
Collaborating with the "neocons" from outside the
administration are former CIA chief James Woolsey and
Kenneth Adelman, a former official in the Ford and
Reagan administrations.
L Paul Bremer, the current head of the US occupation
of Iraq, has come from the ranks of the "neocons."
Reports in the American media have said that the
"neo-cons" had set up their own intelligence network
-- taking in material provided by Israel's Mossad
agency -- to build a case for military action against
Iraq and often overlooking or ignoring CIA-gathered
information that would not have suited their case for
US invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Friday, September 19, 2003

Arafat in Sharon gunsights

PV Vivekanand

FEARS are high that despite Israeli utterances to the contrary, plans should definitely be afoot to physically eliminate Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. It is only a question of how and when the plans would be implemented.
No Israeli might be directly involved in a possible operation and the accusing finger might be pointed at a Palestinian or Arab. Israel's notorious spy and security agencies, including Mossad and Shin Bet, have a record of having "arranged" such killings, prominent among them the murder of Salah Khalaf (Abu Iyad) in Tunis in January 1991.
It was a Palestinian bodyguard who shot and killed Abu Iyad and it was then alleged that he was acting upon the orders of the Abu Nidal group. However, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) could not get to the bottom of the affair or did not choose to release to the public what it had learnt. That left a deep impression among the people of the Middle East that it was indeed an Israeli mind that went to planning and executing the attack on Abu Iyad.
There could be many scenarios in Ramallah to serve Israel's goal of eliminating Arafat from the political equation.
With Tuesday's American veto of a UN Security Council resolution that called on Israel to refrain from expelling Arafat from Palestine or harming him otherwise, it is clear that no international pressure will force Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to abandon his plans to remove Arafat from the political scene.
Removing Arafat from theequation is one the central pillars in Sharon's strategy to eliminate all sources of Palestinian resistance.
Despite all the shortcomings attributed to him, Arafat symbolises the Palestinian struggle for independence and represents a rallying point for Palestinians. Sharon knows this well and hence his campaign to expel Arafat.
Sharon also hopes that the disappearance of Arafat from Palestine will destroy all traces of the Olso agreements and do away with any commitment to retain whatever has been achieved under the 1993 accords.
Notwithstanding its veto of the draft resolution, Washington is opposing Sharon's plan to deprive Arafat of a physical presence among his people not because it has any sympathy for the Palestinian cause or finds any use for the Palestinian leader as far as American interests are concerned; if anything, the US has
been the first to push the idea of easing Arafat out of
the equation.
Howeve,r Washington realises that exiling Arafat would give him the international scene to press his cause for Palestine and this would only bring about more headaches and pressure on the US administration.
It will be a folly to expect any revival of the "roadmap" for peace notwithstanding the reality that it is the only proposal on the table for the parties to pursue.
We could issue repeated calls for its revival, but, in effect, it remains only on paper and will remain so as
along as there is no change in the Israeli mindset.
Obviously, Sharon does not believe that he should be making any compromises with the Palestinians. He is convinced that it is only a matter of time before the Palestinians succumb to military assaults, ruthless killings and targeted assassinations and agree to accept his version of a peace agreement.
Against the backdrop of that mindset, Sharon might only put off his plans against Arafat and wait for the opportune time to strike at the Palestinian leader.
It will clear the ground for Sharon to make his rejection of the Oslo accord complete and set his own terms for peace with no reference to the 1993 Oslo agreements.
Obviously, the resignation of Mahmoud Abbas as prime
minister citing lack of Israeli co-operation and "internal problems" -- meaning fueds with Arafat -- has offered Sharon the opportunity he has been waiting for.
he could cite the Abbas resignation as the most vivid example of Arafat's machinations against peace and smoother, to an extent, European opposition against removing him from Palestine.
The Europeans and rest of the international community
will find their backing for Arafat somewhat undefensible in view of what Sharon could cite as the Palestinian leader's stands against the implementation of the "roadmap."
Had it not been for fears of unprecedented and perhaps uncontrollable Palestinian retaliation, Sharon would not wait for one second to order a death strike against Arafat if he thought he could get away with it.
Sharon is not worried about world pressure or condemnation of his actions since he knows he could defend himself saying he was
only acting in the interest of peace against a man
who, according to his argument, has done everything
to block the effort for peace.
The real and immediate danger is Sharon and his spychiefs and notorious agencies staging a repeat of the Abu Iyad killing in 1991.
Sharon has already crossed the point of no return with his public declaration that every Hamas leader is marked for death.
His posture indicates that he could not care less for the backlash that would come from the fiercely loyal supporters of Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and other leaders of the group.
Had Sharon been successful in killing Yassin and others through the missile and bombings of their homes in Gaza in September, then it would have meant waves of suicide attacks; for such would have been the height of Palestinian rage, fury, sorrow, grief, despair and frustration at Israel's arrogance that it could get away with anything in Palestine.
The danger is very much alive today. We could only hope against hope that sense will prevail and Sharon would realise, sooner or later, that violence begets violence and he would never be closer to his "dream" of acquiring Palestine without the Palestinians even if he manages to eliminate Arafat and Yassin and other leaders of the Palestinian struggle.

Saturday, September 13, 2003

Unravelling lies and growing crisis

PV Vivekanand

Has the US found its second Vietnam in Iraq?
Although some experts already see a Vietnam-like scenario emerging in Iraq, others think the situation has not reached that point but that it is definitely a possibility. General consensus is that it would take a few more attacks claiming casualties in double digits to drive home the reality that the US has failed to "pacify" Iraqis, and this would intensify the war of attrition.
Is it possible for the US to shift strategy and hope to win over the people of Iraq to its side as a benevolent occupier?
It seems difficult, given that the US military is in a vengeful mode and treats Iraqis will brutality, contempt and hostility.
The US military does not accept that it has a responsibility to bring about normal life for Iraqis in an atmosphere of safety and security.
American soldiers storm houses without discrimination, haul away people without justification and subject even women to humiliating bodysearches, reports from Baghdad say.
The growing hostility towards Americans among Iraq was perhaps summarised in the words of Abdullah Oman, 18, carried by the Associated Press this week.
"They are watching us die and laughing. They humiliate us. They handcuffed me and arrested me in front of my parents late one night because I stood on my house porch after curfew."
The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) underlined the dilemma the US faces in a recent report that warns of growing popular support for the forces challenging the US occupation of Iraq and says efforts to rebuild the country could collapse without immediate corrective action.
The CIA analysis reportedly suggests that the escalation of the US military campaign against guerrillas could cause new civilian casualties and drive more Iraqis to the side of the insurgents. It also says that the inability of US forces to crush the guerrillas is convincing growing numbers of Iraqis that the occupation can be defeated. The report is said to warn that none of the postwar Iraqi political institutions and leaders has shown an ability to govern the country or even make progress on drafting a constitution or holding an election.
The American strategists and decision makers might need a CIA report like that to understand, if they wish to, the realities on the ground in Iraq. But people in the region do not have to read such reports to draw up a clear picture of the situation in Iraq and realise what is going wrong where for the Americans, starting with the very decision that seems to have been made years ago to invade and occupy Iraq citing whatever reasons and justifications they could cite.
It is essential to note here that none of the reasons that the US cited as having left Washington with no choice but to wage war on Iraq has been proved true.
It is surprising that US President George W Bush and his senior aides continue to insist that the reasons they cited for the war were very valid. There are a few questions that many are desparate to ask them without any trimmings and demand clear-cut, non-evasive and truthful answers. They include:
-- You had said Iraq possessed and was continuing to produce massive stocks of weapons of mass destruction which was a threat to American security and indeed the world. Now, six months after securing absolute military control of the country, where are those weapons of mass destruction?
-- You had said Iraq was linked to Al Qaeda and was somehow involved in the Sept.11 attacks and the invasion of that country was part of the US-led war against terrorism. Where is the proof?
-- Your argument today is that the ouster of Saddam Hussein meant liberation for the people of Iraq. Aren't today the people of Iraq subjected to brutal occupation that seems like a leaf taken from the Israeli occupation of the Palestinians?
— You argue that the Iraqi Governing Council is in charge of things in Iraq. But, as members of the council have affirmed, they are taking orders from the US overseer in Iraq, Paul Bremer, who retains absolute authority over anything and everything concerning the council's purported mission. How could you blame the council for the slow pace in work towards a constitution and general elections?
In the meantime, the ground reality in Iraq is a vicious circle. As American soldiers seeth with fury and hit back at suspected Iraqis with a vengeance after every resistance attack, they are making it all the more difficult for moves to convince the Iraqis that the US means "well" for them. If anything, the US military is making more enemies in Iraq every day.
Who is behind the mounting attacks against US and other coalition forces in Iraq?
It is difficult to say. No doubt, Saddam loyalists have a role in the operations but it would be a gross exaggeration to conclude that the ousted president is running the war of resistance. He might want to do that and might even think he is doing it, but his circle of influence is relatively limited but is indeed effective in inflicting casualties among the American forces.
It is certain that non-Iraqi Arabs play a prominent role the attacks, but it is unclear whether Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda is the leading force among them.
US officials and members of the Washington-backed Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) have said foreign volunteers, including some from Al Qaeda, have slipped across the borders into Iraq to take part in a "holy war" against the US-led occupation.
"We're seeing Yemenis, we're seeing Sudanese, we're seeing Syrians and Egyptians, to name a few," according to a senior US commander.
Sources in Ammans said Jordanians and Palestinians were also among those fighting the Americans in Iraq.
What the Americans fail to realise and accept is that it does not need Bin Laden or Al Qaeda to fuel anti-US sentiments or orchestrate attacks. There are millions who see the American approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict and Muslims in general as totally biased and thus consider Washington as part of the problem at par with Israel.
If anything, the US, by maintaining the presence of over 15,000 soldiers in Iraq, has offered a perfect target for attacks. It might not be an exaggeration to say that some of the guerrillas in Iraq are more concerned with inflicting as much damage to the US military than worrying about the US occupation of the country. For many of them, dying while staging an attack against the US is only performing their duty in defence of the Arab and Muslim causes.
The Iranian role, if any at all, in anti-occupation attacks in Iraq is at best murky. It is deemed highly unlikely that the Iranian government would involve itself in such actions, particularly given that Tehran is acutely aware that it is being targeted for "regime change" and anything and everything it does could be used in the US-led campaign against it.
At the same time, Tehran would not sit idle if Iranian interests among the 15 million and plus Shiites of Iraq are undermined. It would like to use its influence through the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and ensure that its interests are protected. So far, there is no evidence that SCIRI has undertaken any anti-US attack in Iraq and it is clear the group wants a major share of power in post-war Iraq.
There are indeed hardline groups within Iran with enough influence and financial clout to support anti-US attacks across the border in Iraq. Again, no evidence has emerged of such activities yet.
Tehran would also like to eliminate the main Iranian opposition group, Mujahedeen e-Khalq, which had upto 30,000 members in camps in Iraq with the blessing of the Saddam regime. The group has been disarmed by the US, but Washington is not ready to accept the Iranian demand that its members be handed over to Tehran. It remains a serious sore point in the tense relationship between Washington and Tehran.
Syria has rejected American charges that it is allowing anti-US guerrillas to enter Iraq along its borders; so has Saudi Arabia. It is highly unlikely that either of them would allow such infiltration, but it is a possibility that the porous desert frontier is being used by guerrillas to enter Iraq. The same applies to Jordan, which has always found it difficult to patrol its border with Iraq against drug and weapon smugglers.
Turkey has its own interests to protect in northern Iraq and the Ankara government could be expected to check infiltration across the border to Iraq. However, there are militant anti-US groups in Turkey and it cannot be ruled out that some of them are active in Iraq.
Kuwait recently imposed controls over access to areas near its border with Iraq, apparently after intelligence reports indicated guerrilla infiltration.
What are the prospects for an American decision to quit Iraq?
Very little at this point in time.
Reports in the mainstream American media have exposed that hardliners in the Bush administration had planned the invasion and occupation of Iraq as part of an American strategy to control the international oil market, maintain a strong American military presence in the Arabian Gulf as a deterrent, and remove Saddam Hussein as a potential threat to Israel, Washington's "strategic ally" in the Middle East.
Having accomplished the three objectives through the war against Iraq, Washington has just set out to implement other actions that would entrench the US in the region. Against that reality, there is no room whatsoever for entertaining any thought of withdrawal from Iraq no matter what cost Washington has to pay in American soldiers' lives.
That is definitely the impression one gets from reading between the lines of the affirmations of President Bush and his aides that the US would not be forced into "prematurely" leaving Iraq. While, for all technical purposes, the "maturity" will be accomplished when "democracy" is established in Iraq and Iraqis assume control of their country. For practical purposes, in the view of many Arabs, the "maturity" that the US seeks would be a stage where whoever is in power in Iraq would take orders from Washington without raising any question whatsoever.
As such, for those Arabs and a majority of Iraqis, and indeed many others in the world, there is little sincerity in American promises. They view any American move in the Middle East as aimed solely at serving American and Israeli interests.
Given the documentary evidence that have appeared even in the American press showing that grabbing control of Middle Eastern oil wells as a strategic weapon was being planned as far back as 1975, it would take much more than words from Washington to convince the Arabs that Bush and his aides mean it when they affirm their resolve to "rebuild" Iraq. For the sceptics, their words only mean that they are using "rebuilding" Iraq as a pretext to maintain and expand the American presence in the region and achieve absolute US domination of the world.
For the world at large, it is a matter of the sole superpower of the world challenging anyone and everyone. "We are the United States of America and we intend to accomplish whatever we wish. Dare us at your peril" -- this is message they are seeing in American actions around the globe.

Sunday, September 07, 2003

Wolfowitz knows the game

by pv vivekanand


OF THE many American officials and members of Congress who passed through the Middle East — including Iraq — in recent weeks, Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz stood out as the most man who zeroed in on Arab satellite channels like Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya for broadcasting statements and videotapes of Iraqi groups waging attacks on the US forces occupying Iraq.
Why should Wolfowitz be the one too perturbed by Al Jazeera and Al Araibya?
The reason is clear: Wolfowitz stands out among the so-called neoconservatives, or, to be more accurate, pro-Israelis, who orchestrated the war against Iraq, and he would definitely like the link to be kept away from public debate. Therefore, it is not as much the anti-US "incitement" broadcast by the two television channels that is distressing him as the pointed debates on the two channels on the short, medium-term and long-term implications of the US-led war against Iraq and how Israeli interests are served more than American interests by the US occupation and "containment" of Iraq.
There might or might not be truth in Wolfowitz's contention that the statements and videotapes attributed to Iraqi groups encourage further attacks on US forces occupying Iraq. But then, to warn the channels against broadcasting them goes against the grain of the very freedom of the media that is held high in the United States and elsewhere in the world.
Indeed, would Wolfowitz dare to accuse American television and radio stations or newspapers of anything? Of course, he might find no compelling reason to do so since it is unlikely that the same material transmitted by Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya will be carried by any US media in the same context and analysis.
An easy (hypothetical) example is: An American channel might carry a video-tape or statement issued by an Iraqi group vowing more attacks against the US forces in Iraq with an American commentary explaining that the group was obscure, unheard of before and suggesting that it could be nothing but terrorist and paid for by Saddam Hussein from his hideout, wherever that might be.
In contrast, the Al Jazeera or Al Arabiya commentary that would go with the same message or tape would say that it is an example of the growing Iraqi resistance against the US occupation and the group might or might not be linked with Saddam. Such portrayals are invariably picked up international news agencies and newspapers -- including American publications -- and reach American readers although with the typical twists and narrow interpretations.
The above summation is rather simplified. The key factor that complicates the American viewpoint here is the fact that it fails to take into account that the situation in Iraq today is very much an Arab concern and the Arab media are projecting the Arab viewpoint through lengthy debates that expose what many commentators describe as the hidden American/Israeli agenda in the invasion and occupation of the country.
To a large extent, American officials and even some of the media outlets see Arab newspapers, television and their enemy and embedded in the same camp with those resisting the American occupation of Iraq not because of Iraq alone but also because of Arab resentment over Washington's biased approach to Middle Eastern and Arab issues in general and Palestine in particular.
People like Wolfowitz are not willing to take in that Western media also portray the US presence in Iraq as occupation (that is the way even the UN describes it) and the attacks against US forces in Iraq as armed resistance.
They are overlooking that debates carried on American channels describe Palestinians fighting the Israeli occupation of their land as terrorists and such descriptions are an insult to the Arab cause in Palestine.
They do not want to acknowledge that Arab media do carry comments by American officials without censoring them.
They would never affirm -- perhaps they are incapable of doing so -- that the Arab media representation of events in Iraq are more accurate than that presented by their American counterparts.
As well-known Middle Eastern commentator Rami Khouri notes:
"At the technical level, the Arab media do exactly what the mainstream American media have done since March: They mirror and pander to the dominant emotional and political sentiments of their own public opinion, because they seek to maximise their market share of audience and advertising.
"In choosing, framing and scripting their stories, Arab and American television stations alike unabashedly and unapologetically cater to their respective audiences' sentiments: The flag-adorned US media emotionally support the US troops, and the Arab media are equally fervent in opposing America's occupation of Iraq."
Parallel to that analysis is indeed the American neoconservatives' anxiety to hide their pro-Israeli stand and activities away from the public eye and ear. It might even be argued that their concerns in this context are more intense than their alarm that Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya is "inciting" attacks against US soldiers in Iraq. They know that reports and debates focusing on how far Israel's interests were and are being served in the war against and occupation of Iraq are doing them damage by exposing their pro-Israeli priorities and, at some point, they could be held accountable.

Wolfofitz knows the game

by pv vivekanand


OF THE many American officials and members of Congress who passed through the Middle East — including Iraq — in recent weeks, Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz stood out as the most man who zeroed in on Arab satellite channels like Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya for broadcasting statements and videotapes of Iraqi groups waging attacks on the US forces occupying Iraq.
Why should Wolfowitz be the one too perturbed by Al Jazeera and Al Araibya?
The reason is clear: Wolfowitz stands out among the so-called neoconservatives, or, to be more accurate, pro-Israelis, who orchestrated the war against Iraq, and he would definitely like the link to be kept away from public debate. Therefore, it is not as much the anti-US "incitement" broadcast by the two television channels that is distressing him as the pointed debates on the two channels on the short, medium-term and long-term implications of the US-led war against Iraq and how Israeli interests are served more than American interests by the US occupation and "containment" of Iraq.
There might or might not be truth in Wolfowitz's contention that the statements and videotapes attributed to Iraqi groups encourage further attacks on US forces occupying Iraq. But then, to warn the channels against broadcasting them goes against the grain of the very freedom of the media that is held high in the United States and elsewhere in the world.
Indeed, would Wolfowitz dare to accuse American television and radio stations or newspapers of anything? Of course, he might find no compelling reason to do so since it is unlikely that the same material transmitted by Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya will be carried by any US media in the same context and analysis.
An easy (hypothetical) example is: An American channel might carry a video-tape or statement issued by an Iraqi group vowing more attacks against the US forces in Iraq with an American commentary explaining that the group was obscure, unheard of before and suggesting that it could be nothing but terrorist and paid for by Saddam Hussein from his hideout, wherever that might be.
In contrast, the Al Jazeera or Al Arabiya commentary that would go with the same message or tape would say that it is an example of the growing Iraqi resistance against the US occupation and the group might or might not be linked with Saddam. Such portrayals are invariably picked up international news agencies and newspapers -- including American publications -- and reach American readers although with the typical twists and narrow interpretations.
The above summation is rather simplified. The key factor that complicates the American viewpoint here is the fact that it fails to take into account that the situation in Iraq today is very much an Arab concern and the Arab media are projecting the Arab viewpoint through lengthy debates that expose what many commentators describe as the hidden American/Israeli agenda in the invasion and occupation of the country.
To a large extent, American officials and even some of the media outlets see Arab newspapers, television and their enemy and embedded in the same camp with those resisting the American occupation of Iraq not because of Iraq alone but also because of Arab resentment over Washington's biased approach to Middle Eastern and Arab issues in general and Palestine in particular.
People like Wolfowitz are not willing to take in that Western media also portray the US presence in Iraq as occupation (that is the way even the UN describes it) and the attacks against US forces in Iraq as armed resistance.
They are overlooking that debates carried on American channels describe Palestinians fighting the Israeli occupation of their land as terrorists and such descriptions are an insult to the Arab cause in Palestine.
They do not want to acknowledge that Arab media do carry comments by American officials without censoring them.
They would never affirm -- perhaps they are incapable of doing so -- that the Arab media representation of events in Iraq are more accurate than that presented by their American counterparts.
As well-known Middle Eastern commentator Rami Khouri notes:
"At the technical level, the Arab media do exactly what the mainstream American media have done since March: They mirror and pander to the dominant emotional and political sentiments of their own public opinion, because they seek to maximise their market share of audience and advertising.
"In choosing, framing and scripting their stories, Arab and American television stations alike unabashedly and unapologetically cater to their respective audiences' sentiments: The flag-adorned US media emotionally support the US troops, and the Arab media are equally fervent in opposing America's occupation of Iraq."
Parallel to that analysis is indeed the American neoconservatives' anxiety to hide their pro-Israeli stand and activities away from the public eye and ear. It might even be argued that their concerns in this context are more intense than their alarm that Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya is "inciting" attacks against US soldiers in Iraq. They know that reports and debates focusing on how far Israel's interests were and are being served in the war against and occupation of Iraq are doing them damage by exposing their pro-Israeli priorities and, at some point, they could be held accountable.

Friday, September 05, 2003

US rider on UN

BY PV VIVEKANAND

PV Vivekanand

IT IS NOT surprising that US President George W Bush has agreed to accept an increased United Nations role in post-war Iraq although he has attached a condition that a UN-authorised military force in the counrty should be placed under American command.
The Bush administration's initial projections went wrong in Iraq, and now, nearly five months after a US-led military force toppled Saddam Hussein in war, Washington has come to realise that it is indeed slipping into a deeper abyss as every day passes with increased attacks on American soldiers and growing unrest among Iraqis that bode ill for the occupation authorities.
There would be backlashes in Washington and some heads might roll, particularly of those pro-Israeli hawks who orchestrated the war with predictions that Iraqis would be eternally grateful to the US for having ousted the Saddam regime.
That is indeed a problem for Bush and his people and we would be seeing its manifestations sooner than later
From the vantage point in the Middle East, Bush's change of mind was expected although he had all but ruled out any effort or a new Security Council resolution that could give a UN umbrella for hesitant countries prompted to contribute troops to keep peace in post-war Iraq. His advisers have come to appreciate the reality that it is impossible to keep Iraq under the US feet for long without facing the risk of the toes being blown away.
The conservative Financial Times of London commented this week: “Facing resistance by forces they have yet to identify with any conviction, the US-led occupation authorities are unable to control the roads or the borders, the water or the electricity supply. It is now increasingly clear they are also unable to defend the allies and institutions they need to rebuild Iraq.”
Few people in the Middle East and Asia needed to be told of the analysis that it was only a matter of time that the US strategists would realise the enormity of the task in Iraq and would want a face-saving formula, and that is what the Bush administration is trying to do by securing a UN resolution that would alleviate the risks that the US and allied forces are currently facing in Iraq.
According to the New York Times, the administration has already drawn up a draft resolution that has only been shown to the British government. Details of the draft are not available yet, but it is believed to contain language that clearly grants the US the overall command and authority to take important decisions on its own.
However, France and Russia, among others, might not want to grant that kind of authority to the US for several reasons, the first being of course allowing the US to have a largely free hand in Iraqi affairs under a UN umbrella. They are also aware that a UN-mandated force with majority American participation and under American command would not be accepted by many Iraqis who would find little difference between the Blue Berets and the American-led now occupying Iraq.
According to Ellie Goldsworthy, a military expert at London's Royal United Services Institute, Washington wanted to appear willing to compromise, while keeping military control.
"There is no solution that anyone will leap at," she told Reuters, but argued that even opponents of the US-led war recognised that Iraq could not be allowed to spin out of control.
"It's in everyone's interest to see internationalisation," she said. "It spreads the emotional as well as the military burden and would alleviate the political pressure on Bush and (British Prime Minister Tony) Blair."
India, Pakistan and Turkey are three countries which have adopted a position that their contribution to a military force would come only under a UN umbrella; all the three governments face bitter opposition to sending troops to Iraq even under a UN resolution.
The International Crisis Group, a body of experts in various aspects of governance, military affairs and international politics, has recommended a division of labour between the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), the United Nations and the interim Iraqi Governing Council.
Under the proposal, the CPA should keep control of military security, law and order, and restoring basic infrastructure; the UN would oversee the Governing Council and the constitutional process, organise elections and coordinate humanitarian aid, among other responsibilities.
The council would take on day-to-day governance of Iraq, including a role in reconstituting the police and armed forces.
According to the group, only such a balanced approach could help resolve the problem of who governs Iraq during the occupation.
Regional experts say that an enhanced UN role with full authority in shaping post-Saddam Iraq is an absolute necessity in order to change the perception that Iraq has become an American colony.
Some analysts argue that Iraqis have lost faith in the UN: They believe that although the Security Council did not explicitly authorise the US to go to war, it is seen to have led the US into it.
The UN is seen by many Iraqis as being responsible for the sanctions imposed in 1990, which is said to have cost the lives of half a million Iraqi children. The Iraqis see the UN as responsible for the humiliating weapons inspections, which disarmed the country and delivered it up defenceless to the American attack. By setting up deadlines on non-existent weapons of mass destruction, the UN helped provide the excuses that the Bush government desperately needed in order to sell the war to the American public.
And now the world boy has legitimised the US occupation of Iraq. That is how some commentators see the Iraqi mindset.
This week, a contingent led by Poles and including brigades that are commanded by Ukrainians and Spaniards replaced a US Marines unit in southwestern Iraq.
Other countries which have sent troops or have agreed send troops to post-war Iraq include Japan, Bulgaria, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Honduras, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Mongolia, Nicaragua, Norway, the Philippines, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Thailand.
At present there are 150,000 American, 11,000 British and 10,000 other soldiers in Iraq.
Apart from the human cost of occupying Iraq -- at least 67 American soldiers have been killed since Bush announced a formal end to combat in Iraq in May -- Washington is burdened with spending $125 million a day in the country, according to some accounts.
Bush's decision to go for a UN resolution came after several rounds of intense meetings with his advisers and key cabinet official.
"While not unexpected, it was a tacit admission that the current American-dominated force is stretched too thin," said the New York Times. "It also amounts to one of the most significant changes in strategy since the end of major combat in Iraq."
A Congressional study has showed that the US Army lacked the active-duty troops to keep the current occupation force in Iraq past March, without getting extra help from either other services and reserves or from other nations, or without spending tens of billions to vastly expand its size, according to the Times.
The New York Times also quoted a senior official as saying that Bush's national security team hopes to start withdrawing the majority of American forces now in Iraq within 18 months to two years, and "making this peacekeeping operation look like the kind that are familiar to us," in Kosovo, Bosnia and other places where the United Nations has taken the major role.
Another senior administration official told the paper that Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell had discussed "ways to persuade the Security Council members to create such a force, and added that Mr. Powell "is going to be working with our colleagues and allies to talk about language that can bring maximum, effective resources to bear" in Iraq.



According to a US Congressional study, if the Defence Department pushed ahead with its plan of rotating active-duty army troops out of Iraq after a year, it would be able to sustain a force of only 67,000 to 106,000 active duty and reserve forces. A larger force would put at risk the military's operations elsewhere around the globe, according to the study.
It said the Pentagon did not have enough personnel to keep the troops fresh and still conduct operations in Afghanistan, Kosovo, Bosnia and Korea.
The study was requested by Democrat Senator Robert C. Byrd, a critic of the Iraq war, after the Bush administration refused to discuss the long-term cost of a sustaining the occupation force in Iraq.
Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., also a Democrat, said recently: "We're 95 percent of the deaths, 95 percent of the costs, and more than 90 percent of the troops.
"The costs are staggering, the number of troops are staggering, we're seeing continuing escalation of American casualties, and we need to turn to the UN for help, for a UN-sanctioned military operation that is under US command."
The congressional study also analysed the financial cost of the occupation. It said the US could maintain in Iraq a force of up to 106,000 if it uses Marine Corps units, Army Special Forces groups and National Guard combat units. Such units have generally not been used for peacekeeping, and the budget office said using them would bring the cost of the occupation to $19 billion a year compared with the $46.8 billion projected by the Pentagon.
According to the study, if the Defence Department stuck with its present plans of using army unit, then recruiting, training and equipping two new divisions would require an up-front cost of up to $19 billion and take five years; it would cost an extra $9 billion to $10 billion a year to put the units in place in Iraq raising the total cost of the occupation force up to 129,000 troops and cost up to $29 billion a year.
Byrd used the report to argue that the Bush administration failed to inform the nation of the true costs of invading Iraq, and said the United States must now get support from the international community to sustain the occupation.
Evidently, the Americans have not heard the last about the issue from Byrd. Come election time next time, every "shortcoming" of the Bush administration would be used to its full strength.

The pro-Israeli camp, or the so-called neoconservatives, in Washington might be feeling heat of the situation, after having stood firm on their suggestions that occupying Iraq was not a risky proposition. After all, Bush is coming to grips with the realities of the situation on the ground in Iraq and should be turning around to ask who pushed him into it.
"It reflects a reality check for the neo-conservatives, who now feel exposed," said Jonathan Stevenson, a security expert at London's International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).
"The post-conflict situation is proving much more fraught than the United States anticipated, but the Pentagon is still less inclined than the State Department to yield real authority to the United Nations. They are not ready to capitulate." Stevenson told Reuters.
The hawks who pushed Bush into invading Iraq on easy assumptions are believed to include
Vice-President Dick Cheney, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfovitz.
"The neo-conservatives had certainly followed the belief that Iraq would fall easily, the Americans would be welcomed as liberators and Iraq would become a democracy," according to Gareth Stansfield, an Iraq expert at Britain's Exeter University,
"The Americans are now trying to identify the least worst solution," Stansfield said. "They are looking for an exit strategy by internationalising the situation."
Worse still, reports from Washington indicate, the neoconseratives convinced Bush before the war that the UN was a teethless tiger and the US had the ability to take and implement unilateral US action.
It was under their advice that the UN would condemn itself to "irrelevance" unless it endorsed military action. But now Bush has to go back to the UN, and that is not something he would like to forget in a hurry.
According to Dana Allin, a senior fellow for transatlantic relations at the IISS, , returning to the UN represented "a defeat for the idea that the US can do this more or less on its own, without seeking a compromise on the Security Council on defining the legitimacy of the US occupation of Iraq."
But that view is not shared by the hawks in the Bush administration who are seen ready to expose the US to more risks in order to achieve their strategy of transforming the Middle East into an area that serves Israeli interests and propel the Jewish state as the dominant power in the region at American expense. They need a puppet regime in Iraq that would be ready to use as brutal force as that was employed by the Saddam regime; for them, the well-being of the people of Iraq is not a priority at all.
As such, a battle is brewing within Washington circles for and against granting the UN real authority in Iraq. That posts a key question: Could Bush's pointman Powell be able to work out a deal that pleases everyone now, but increases the risks for foreign troops landing in Iraq at a later stage?
Equally important is the question how "aggressive" would the proposed UN force be?
Given the presence of groups hostile to foreign presence, notably American, in post-war Iraq, the UN force might not be able to pursue a pacifist approach. Would than mean the Blue Berets storming houses and suspected hideouts with their guns blazing as the Americans are doing today?

Thursday, September 04, 2003

Saddam fate not lost on Qadhafi

By PV Vivekanand

THE example that the US set with its invasion of Iraq and ouster of Saddam Hussein has not been lost on Libya's Muammar Qadhafi, who has now made deals involving acceptance of responsibility and payment of compensation for attacks outside Libya that are blamed on his agents.
That also proves that the US has succeeded largely in its drive -- launched with the war on Iraq — to establish itself as an unchallenged power in the world and warn off anyone who stands against American interests anywhere in the world.
Indeed, it could be argued that the Libyan moves towards settling its dispute with the US and UK over the 1988 bombing of an American airliner over Scotland and with France over the 1989 bombing of a French passenger plane over Niger were launched much earlier than the 2003 US-led ouster of Saddam from power in Iraq.
However, the way in which Libya succumbed to pressure and agreed to accept responsibility for the downing of PanAm Flight 103 in 1988 and pay $2.7 billion as compensation and also to increase by an unspecified amount the compensation for victims of the 1989 bombing of a French UTA plane clearly indicates that Qadhafi was and is concerned that he might eventually have faced the same fate as Saddam Hussein if he had rejected the demands.
Had Libya not accepted the French demand for an increase in compensation in the UTA bombing, its moves to close the Lockerbie file with the US and UN would not have come through since France would have blocked a Security Council resolution lifting the UN sanctions against Libya. That situation would have left a Damocles threat hanging over Qadhafi.
Equally importantly, Libya needs advanced Western technology and equipment for its oil industry and this would not have come through without an end to the UN sanctions against it.
This week, Libya and France has reached a deal to settle the dispute over compensation for victims of the UTA bombing, which, according to a verdict by a French court, was carried out by Libyan agents.
Under the agreement over the PanAm blast that Libya worked out with the governments of the US and UK, it has already transferred $2.7 billion to an escrow account in the Bank for International Settlements in Switzerland as compensation to the relatives of those killed in the bombing.
Technically, the transfer, coupled with the deal over the UTA bombing — signal the closure of the file on the bombing and should lead to the lifting of UN sanctions against Libya in 1991 when it refused to hand over two Libyans accused of the bombing.
Under the Lockerbie deal, 40 per cent of $10 million will be released to relatives of the 270 victims immediately upon the lifting of United Nations sanctions against Libya, another 40 per cent with the removal of US sanctions, and a final 20 per cent in return for Libya being removed from the US list of states “sponsoring terrorism.”
It was the disparity in the compensations that Libya agreed to pay in the Lockerbie case and the UTA case that prompted Paris to demand a comparable level of compensation for UTA 772’s victims.
Six Libyan officials were convicted in a French court in absentia for the UTA bombing attack and the victim’s relatives were paid up to $33,000 each by Libya.
It is not known how much Libya agree to pay more to settle the feud with France.
Qadhafi announced on state television late Sunday that an agreement had been reached following weekend negotiations in Tripoli.
"We can say that the UTA affair and the Lockerbie affair are now behind us and that we are turning a page with France and the United States," Qadhafi said. "The money is of little importance to us. We have our dignity."
It was as much a national need for Libya to strike a deal in both Lockerbie and UTA cases -- although the latter was not directly tied to UN sanctions -- in order to remove the sanctions.
Libya has been under strong American and British pressure and the UN sanctions had started to bite at the Libyan oil industry towards the late 90s and that was when Qadhafi worked out a compromise and allowed the two Libyans to be tried in a special Scottish court set up in the Netherlands.
The court tried the two, Abdelbaset Ali Mohammed Al Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah. It acquitted Fhimah but convicted Megrahi and sentenced to life in prison in Scotland.
However, the matter did not end there since an end to the UN sanctions — as well as sanctions adopted by the US on its own -- was contingent on Libya owning up responsibility for the blast and paying compensation to victims of the bombing.
It is clear that Qadhafi accepted the conditions and moved to settle the dispute once and for all because -- apart from concerns raised by the Saddam affair — he needed American and European involvement in his country's oil industry.
Libya holds the sixth largest known deposit of oil and is the eighth largest oil exporter and it is vital that it has access to advanced technology in oil exploration and production that was denied to it under the sanctions.
Therefore, the acceptance of responsibility and payment of compensation should be seen as political as well as technical rather than what it implies on the surface.
That leaves the key question hanging in the air: Who was behind the Lockerbie bombing?
That question has dogged all those who have been following up the case since the day the PanAm plane went down.
The question stemmed from the considerations of the following factors:
Researchers had unearthed circumstantial evidence suggesting that responsibility for Lockerbie may lie primarily with the intelligence services of several Western governments, particularly the United States. Researchers say the media were blindly following the official line and that no major British or US newspaper, radio, or TV channel undertook a sustained investigation of this possibility
At the very outset of investigations, the US said it suspected Iran was behind the bombing, and a few weeks later claimed it had prima facie evidence that a Palestinian group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) led by Ahmed Jibrial, had planted bomb at Tehran's behest. Tehran was said to be exacting revenge for the downing of an Iran Air passenger plane in the Gulf by an American warship at the peak of the Iran-Iraq war.
Why was it then that the Iran angle was quietly dropped from the investigations and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) zeroed in on Libya?
Why did then, the then US president, George Bush Senior, personally asked the then British prime minister Margaret Thatcher not to pursue the Iranian angle? (That Bush made that request and Thatcher accepted it was reported in the British press and was not denied by the British or American governments).
An independent investigation conducted by an agency hired by PanAm had reported that the explosives-laden suitcase which exploded on board the plane over Lockerbie was supposed to have contained drugs and was part of an operation involving the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
It was then reported that the CIA was co-operating with a Lebanon-based drug trafficking group in return for seeking to use the group's underworld connections to get to militants who were holding more than 10 Americans are hostage. As part of the deal, the CIA allowed the suitcase to pass unchecked and be placed aboard the PanAm plane. Reports said somewhere along the line before it went aboard, the contents of the suitcases were switched to explosives.
Charles McKee, a US Army Special Forces major who was leading the hostage rescue efforts in Lebanon, was aboard the plane and it was suggested that he might have carried the bomb-laden suitcase without being aware that it contained explosives instead of drugs.
The evidence that led to the conviction of the Libyan, Megrahi, was based on shreds of clothing that was used to wrap the radio cassette player which was rigged with the explosives in the suitcase.
US and British forensic experts traced the clothing to a shop in the Mediterranean island of Malta and the shop's owner testified that Megrahi "could have been" the man who bought the clothes. Apart from that, there was no evidence linking Megrahi to the bombing except an unproven contention that he had placed the suitcase at a luggage ramp at Malta with a New York tag and it found its way aboard the Pan Am flight from London where it had arrived via Frankfurt, Germany.
A tiny piece of debris recovered from the wreckage was found to be that of a timer manufactured and supplied to Libya by a small electronics company called MEBO based in Zurich, Switzerland.
However, similar timers were supplied to several parties, including the Stasi secret service of former East Germany which had close ties with the PFLP-GC.
Another theory said that the CIA station chief in Lebanon, who was travelling aboard the PanAm flight, was the actual target of the bombing and the plot involved "rogue" CIA agents who faced trial in the US on "treason" charge. The CIA chief in Lebanon was reportedly carrying with him evidence that implicated them and enough to convict them. That evidence, presumably under this theory, was also destroyed in the blast.
When Megrahi was first convicted in 2001, Libya appealed the ruling and said it would unveil "shocking" revelations of the mid-air blast during the appeal.
Qadhafi said Libya had in its possession evidence that pointed the figure at the "real culprit" behind the bombing, which the US says was Libya's revenge for a 1985 US bombing of Libyan cities.
He asserted that when he produced the purported evidence, it would leave the trial judges with the choice of quitting their profession or committing suicide.
But he never came forth with the evidence, obviously because that would have tied him down in a continuing dispute with the US, with no end in sight for the UN sanctions on his country. Megrahi's conviction was upheld by an appeals panel in early 2002.
Among new evidence unearthed by researchers and cited in a recent book, it is reported that the then US ambassador to Lebanon, John McCarthy, and South African Foreign Minister Pik Botha had their travel plans altered at the last minute in order to avoid the ill-fated PanAm flight.
Libya, whose Qadhafi was spewing anti-US rhetoric and supporting anti-US groups around the world, was indeed an ideal target to be implicated in the affair.
A book on the Lockerbie affair written by John Ashton and Ian Ferguson has brought up additional elements that raise further questions about the published and unpublished facts about the downing of the plane.
Both writers have worked with the case for years - Ashton as deputy to the late British film maker Allan Francovich, whose film The Maltese Double Cross, favouring the theory that the bombing was a consequence of a CIA-controlled drug running operation utilised to spy on Palestinian, Lebanese and Syrian groups, and Ferguson, a journalist, has written many articles on Lockerbie, and along with Scottish lawyer Robert Black.
They have done extensive research and interviews with a large number of people involved in the disaster
They note in their book that:
-- After the 1988 American attack by the USS Vincennes on an Iranian Airbus, in which 255 pilgrims were killed,, Iranian broadcasts warned that the skies would “rain blood” in consequence. -- The PFLP_GC , which has a history of attacks on passenger aircraft, was known to be operating in Germany.
-- A bomb, rigged up in a Toshiba tape recorder identical to the one that was found to have caused the Lockerbie crash, was reported to have gone missing after a German police raid on a PFLP-GC group one year before the PanAm bombing.
-- American diplomats in Moscow were advised not to fly PanAm around Christmas time in 1988.
-- In two hours after the crash, US intelligence officers landed in Lockerbie and worked independently and were searching for particular pieces of debris, luggage and particular corpses.
A forensic expert from British police says that one body was moved, after it had been tagged and its location noted, while another disappeared entirely.
-- Large quantities of cash, cannabis and heroin were found in the wreckage.
-- Intelligence papers owned by make were removed from his luggage and replaced. A report noting the location of hostages held in Beirut was apparently found on the ground.
-- Among those who alleged possible CIA involvement include an Israeli spy, Java Aviv, hired by Pan Am to investigate the bombing, ex-US spy Lesser Coleman, who at one point sought political asylum in Sweden, William Chase, a Washington DC lobbyist, and Time journalist Roe Rowan. None of them was questioned by the American/British investigators.
"Under conditions where the US government is refusing to investigate its own intelligence failures leading up to the September 11 terror attacks, any exposure of a possible CIA role in aircraft terrorism clearly assumes great significance," said a review of the book written by Freemason and Ashton.
It says:
"Without making wild or unsustainable accusations, and despite serious political limitations, Ashton and Ferguson have provided an essential reference for anyone seeking to understand why a Boeing 747 should explode in mid-air killing hundreds of ordinary air travellers, and yet.... there is still no generally accepted explanation of why it happened and who was responsible."

Tuesday, September 02, 2003

Qaeda in Iraq but no Saddam ties

PV Vivekanand
FIGHTERS of Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda group entered Iraq and had been behind some of the most effective attacks against US forces occupying the country after Saddam Hussein's ouster, but there is no evidence that the group had links with the ousted regime, intelligence sources said on Sunday.
The US is also seeking to step up pressure on Saudi Arabia by highlighting that some of them were from the Wahabi sect of Sunnis since that is the dominant group in Saudi Arabia and the Saudi royal family is also Wahabi.
The sources were commenting on reports from Iraq that nearly 20 people, including Saudis, Kuwaitis, Palestinians and Jordanians as well as Iraqis, who were detained following Friday's bombing outside Imam Al Mosque in Najaf, had admitted to being Al Qaeda members.
"It is doubtful that all of them were Al Qaeda members," said one source who spoke to Malayalamanorama on condition of anonymity. "Some them were driven into staging anti-US attacks on their own because of ideological and personal reasons while others were organised and under the Al Qaeda banner."
However, American officials say otherwise. They insist that Al Qaeda and the Saddam regime were linked and Friday's bombing was irrefutable evidence that the links are continuing.
At least two of the detainees were intelligence operatives of the Saddam regime, according to the reports.
The sources said the Ansar Al Islam group, which had presence in northern Iraq in an area beyond the control of the Saddam regime in Baghdad and cited by the US as the link between Saddam and Bin Laden, appears to be operating on its own.
Ansar Al Islam is one of the groups suspected to have carried out the Aug.19 bombing against the UN headquarters in Baghdad and an earlier attack against the Jordanian embassy in the Iraqi capital.
"To an extent it could be said that Ansar Al Islam is following the lines of Al Qaeda in post-war Iraq," said the intelligence source. "There might or might not be communications between the group and some of the Qaeda leaders in hiding after the Afghan war. It does not really matter since the danger is very much existent in Iraq with or without any Qaeda leadership role."
Ansar Al Islam is "one of the several groups that is engaged in hit-and-run attacks" against the Americans in Iraq, said the source.
"There are Saddam loyalists, remnants of the Baathist regime, independent Islamist groups which are dedicated to fighting the US because of what they see as Washington's bias against Muslims and others.
"The most dangerous among these are the Islamists and they pose a continuing threat to the US since it is not a specific group with a specific number of members; their number could run into thousands like the Islamic Jihad or Hamas groups of Palestine sicne they are driven by despair, frustration and fury over the American approach to the Palestinian problem as well as all Muslim issues."
According to the source, the Najaf blast served several purposes for whoever was behind it: Apart from throwing out of gear US efforts to pacify post-war Iraq, it eliminated the leading Shiite cleric in the south, Ayatollah Mohammed Al Baqr Al Hakim, who was advocating co-operation with the US forces occupying the country, it (could have) led to widening the deep schism between the Hakim camp and the group led to Moqdata Baqr who preaches a hostile approach to the US, and brought up many theories and suppositions that added more complexities to the chaos of Iraq.
Obviously, in the short term the Americans would like to use the purported Al Qaeda role in Friday's blast that killed over 100 to re-emphaise that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was justified since Al Qaeda had links with the Saddam regime.
Deliberately left to in the grey area is that Al Qaeda operations in Iraq today could not be cited as evidence that the ousted regime had links with it.
On the Saudi angle, it is clear that the emphatic reference in all statements that some of those arrested are "Wahabis" is another form of American pressure on Saudi Arabia after contenting that Arab guerrillas were entering Iraq across the 800-kilometre Saudi-Iraq border.
Riyadh has denied the charges, but the denial has done little to improve the worsening strain in relations between Saudi Arabia and the US since Sept.11, 2001.
Fifteen of those carried out the suicide hijacking were Saudi members of Al Qaeda and since then Washington has been building a steady case that the source for Al Qaeda funds was Saudis, including members of the ruling family and various charity organisations and groups linked to mosques.

Wolfowitz - the man who knows

by pv vivekanand


OF THE many American officials and members of Congress who passed through the Middle East — including Iraq — in recent weeks, Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz stood out as the man who zeroed in on Arab satellite channels like Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya for broadcasting statements and videotapes of Iraqi groups waging attacks on the US forces occupying Iraq.
Why should Wolfowitz be the one too perturbed by Al Jazeera and Al Araibya?
The reason is clear: Wolfowitz stands out among the so-called neoconservatives, or, to be more accurate, pro-Israelis, who orchestrated the war against Iraq, and he would definitely like the link to be kept away from public debate. Therefore, it is not as much the anti-US "incitement" broadcast by the two television channels that is distressing him as the pointed debates on the two channels on the short, medium-term and long-term implications of the US-led war against Iraq and how Israeli interests are served more than American interests by the US occupation and "containment" of Iraq.
There might or might not be truth in Wolfowitz's contention that the statements and videotapes attributed to Iraqi groups encourage further attacks on US forces occupying Iraq. But then, to warn the channels against broadcasting them goes against the grain of the very freedom of the media that is held high in the United States and elsewhere in the world.
Indeed, would Wolfowitz dare to accuse American television and radio stations or newspapers of anything? Of course, he might find no compelling reason to do so since it is unlikely that the same material transmitted by Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya will be carried by any US media in the same context and analysis.
An easy (hypothetical) example is: An American channel might carry a video-tape or statement issued by an Iraqi group vowing more attacks against the US forces in Iraq with an American commentary explaining that the group was obscure, unheard of before and suggesting that it could be nothing but terrorist and paid for by Saddam Hussein from his hideout, wherever that might be.
In contrast, the Al Jazeera or Al Arabiya commentary that would go with the same message or tape would say that it is an example of the growing Iraqi resistance against the US occupation and the group might or might not be linked with Saddam. Such portrayals are invariably picked up international news agencies and newspapers -- including American publications -- and reach American readers although with the typical twists and narrow interpretations.
The above summation is rather simplified. The key factor that complicates the American viewpoint here is the fact that it fails to take into account that the situation in Iraq today is very much an Arab concern and the Arab media are projecting the Arab viewpoint through lengthy debates that expose what many commentators describe as the hidden American/Israeli agenda in the invasion and occupation of the country.
To a large extent, American officials and even some of the media outlets see Arab newspapers, television and their enemy and embedded in the same camp with those resisting the American occupation of Iraq not because of Iraq alone but also because of Arab resentment over Washington's biased approach to Middle Eastern and Arab issues in general and Palestine in particular.
People like Wolfowitz are not willing to take in that Western media also portray the US presence in Iraq as occupation (that is the way even the UN describes it) and the attacks against US forces in Iraq as armed resistance.
They are overlooking that debates carried on American channels describe Palestinians fighting the Israeli occupation of their land as terrorists and such descriptions are an insult to the Arab cause in Palestine.
They do not want to acknowledge that Arab media do carry comments by American officials without censoring them.
They would never affirm -- perhaps they are incapable of doing so -- that the Arab media representation of events in Iraq are more accurate than that presented by their American counterparts.
As well-known Middle Eastern commentator Rami Khouri notes:
"At the technical level, the Arab media do exactly what the mainstream American media have done since March: They mirror and pander to the dominant emotional and political sentiments of their own public opinion, because they seek to maximise their market share of audience and advertising.
"In choosing, framing and scripting their stories, Arab and American television stations alike unabashedly and unapologetically cater to their respective audiences' sentiments: The flag-adorned US media emotionally support the US troops, and the Arab media are equally fervent in opposing America's occupation of Iraq."
Parallel to that analysis is indeed the American neoconservatives' anxiety to hide their pro-Israeli stand and activities away from the public eye and ear. It might even be argued that their concerns in this context are more intense than their alarm that Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya is "inciting" attacks against US soldiers in Iraq. They know that reports and debates focusing on how far Israel's interests were and are being served in the war against and occupation of Iraq are doing them damage by exposing their pro-Israeli priorities and, at some point, they could be held accountable.