Thursday, July 28, 2005

Who pays the price?


July 28 2005

Who pays the price?

PV Vivekanand

WHOEVER was behind the July 7 bombings in London could not be a friend of Muslims or Asians or Arabs for that matter. For, from now on life for British Muslims and Asians is going to a nightmare in the UK.
While we reserve comment on the claims of responsibility for the dastardly crime against humanity, there is no doubt whatsover that whoever engineered the bombings have done nothing but the greatest harm to Muslims are a whole around the world. True Muslims who believe in the faith and its teachings would never undertake such heinous actions.
Wednesday's atrocity in Baghdad was another example of the mindlessness of such people. Nearly 40 children who had gathered to collect chocolates from American soldiers perished when someone driving a bomb-laden vehicle rammed into them.
Of course, the action is described as part of "resistance" against the American military in Iraq. But who paid the price? The families of those innocent children whose future the so-called "resistance" groups say they are seeking to protect. What was the net result, apart from the meaningless death of innocent children? Nothing but grief, anger, frustration and hatred.
What was the net result of the London blasts?
Nothing but grief, anger, frustration and hatred.
Definitely, Muslims are targeted, either by those who claims to be Muslims without realling understanding the faith or those who are plotting and carrying out actions that are aimed at spreading anti-Muslim feelings all over the globe.

Wrong epicentres


July 28 2005

Wrong epicentres

PV Vivekanand




"WHAT are all these about? Why are they doing it? Is the world as we know it coming to an end?" Although not without a trace of exaggeration, these questions are asked by many around the world in the wake of this month's bombings in London and Egypt.
Most people shake their heads in disbelief and seem resigned to accepting that there is something seriously wrong with someone, somewhere for obscure reasons.
It is no such mystery to the people of the region, and they know that the world has not heard the last of such atrocities. Justice has to prevail and the US-UK alliance has to start to recognise that the questions raised need hard and convincing answers.

The answer to the question — "what are all these about" — could be very simple or very complex depending on one's understanding. The simple answer — as the West explains it — is that terrorists are out to inflict as much damage to the Western way of life and thinking and would stop at nothing because they are prodded by "Islamic radicalism." At least that is what British Prime Minister Tony Blair and others would like the world to believe.
But is it as simple as that? Can Blair or his best expert on Islam pinpoint where "radicalism" figure in the faith?
Is the so-called radicalism linked to Muslims' "hatred" for the Western way of life prompted by jealousy, as US President George W Bush and his aides would like the world to believe?
If one were to accept the argument of "hatred," then the immediate question is: Why European nations like Sweden and Latin American countries like Brazil — where the style of life is radically different from that in the Muslim World — are not targeted for attacks?
The complex answer to the first question was perfectly answered by Arab League Secretary General Amr Musa in a recent interview with MSNBC TV. He pointed out that terrorism does not discriminate between people.
"We're angry, sad.  We feel we're all in the same boat, regardless of whatever — where you are, in Europe, in Africa, in the Mideast, in America.  We're all in the same boat," Musa said when asked about the recent bombings. "So, we cannot live with terrorism, waves of terrorism.  That has really sown havoc in many cities.  And the casualties are always innocent civilians," he told interviewer Rita Cosby.
He said security measures were not the sole answer to the challenge and called for solutions to the fundamental causes.
"We cannot defeat terrorism only through security measures.  We have to have a political understanding of the seriousness of the situation, the causes behind that, the effects, the organisations.  So, we must have a comprehensive approach," he said.
There is hostility towards the US in the Arab and Muslim worlds, he said, adding, however, that this is not a blanket attitude.
"It is anti-certain American policies," he said. "There is a huge, strong, solid opposition to the policies of the United States, especially when it comes to the Middle East and the bias in its policy between — towards Israel, at the expense of the other side.  But this is a policy that could change and that should change."
Now, what are the chances of such a change in policy?
Almost impossible, given the present geopolitical realities of the region. And where does that take us? A spiralling confrontation between those discontented with the US policy and those in the US who would not and cannot even think of shifting the American approach to the conflicts in the Middle East?
Blair did refer to the issue, but put that in a different context. He did not talk about any policy shift, but acknowledged that the Arab-Israeli conflict needed to be addressed.
Few would disagree with Blair that terrorist attacks are senseless and would never be a useful tool to achieve anything. It is indeed a folly for terrorists to believe that they could force any country to shift policies under pressure of attacks.
Blair did affirm that the world must make progress on issues used by militants as a reason for violence such as the Middle East conflict.
Core causes
We don't really know how far his thinking went when he admitted that there are core causes.
"There are obviously certain things in government and the international community we have to do to try to take away the legitimate causes upon which people prey," Blair said, adding that these and other issues such as Afghanistan and the Middle East were only used as an excuse by extremists.
"I don't accept they really care about these causes, the perpetrators of this ideology," he said. "There is no justification for suicide bombing whether in Palestine, Iraq in London, in Egypt, in Turkey, anywhere, in the United States of America, anywhere. There is no justification for it, period," he said.
"Neither have they any justification for killing people in Israel either," he said.
However, making progress on issues such as Palestinian statehood was "important," Blair said.
"There is a legitimate concern but that doesn't justify in the slightest way the suicide bombings or terrorism, but there is a concern about that and you have to deal with it," he said.
And that is where Blair hit the nail on its head, perhaps unwittingly though.
It is not a simple concern and it could not be addressed without fundamental changes in the Western, mainly American and British, approach to the problem.
It is a question about people's life and their right to live in dignity in their own land. It is not about what is not acceptable to the Islamic faith in the Western way of life. It is about lost lives and homes and the urge for freedom and life with dignity.
In Palestine, the equation is simple for the people. Israel is occupying the land of the Palestinian people and any effort to dislodge the occupation is fruitless as long as the US supports the Jewish state. It is not only support that the US is extending to Israel, but also outright protection from international action against it through forums like the United Nations.
The amount of funds and military supplies that flow to Israel from the US and the American record of vetos against any UN Security Council resolution calling for meaningful action speak for themselves.
Is it any mystery that the US automatically becomes an enemy in the eyes of the Palestinian people?
Again, it has to be remembered, as Musa pointed out, it is not a blanket anti-American hostility. People know that the ordinary American is not even aware of the depth of his or her government's involvement in the Middle East. Their question to the average American is straight: Why is it that you are not aware of what is going on?

Deceptive policies

Again, the people in this part of the world have all known all along of the deceptive policies of the US. No one is taken for a ride when Washington says that it wants peace in the Middle East but it is up to Israel and the Arabs to work out a peace agreement. That posture is clearly seen through. A majority in the region believe that had the US taken its hand off the Arab-Israeli conflict, a solution would have been reached years ago. It was the American way of professing neutrality but heavily lending itself to supporting Israel that is behind the Middle Eastern hostility towards Washington's policies and thus the administration in power itself.
Then another issue is Iraq. As Musa told MSNBC, another policy that needs to change is the US presence in Iraq.
"The best thing for Iraq is to have a plan, a reconciliation among all members of the Iraqis fighting, not to exclude any of the groups, so, reconciliation, a time frame for the withdrawal of the forces," he said.  "A time frame — it's not a question of, you should withdraw today or tomorrow, but a time frame, an agreed time frame," he said. "That would send a message to the people in Iraq and around that it is not a question of, we are not coming to stay, but we are going to leave."
Let us not go into the details. It is clear to the world today that the Bush administration blatantly lied its way into the invasion and occupation of Iraq. People might not cry for Saddam Hussein, but they cry for the people of Iraq today, Zarqawi or no Zarqawi.
As the question of Islamists themselves, it has to be taken into consideration, as noted regional commentator Rami Khoury points out , that "Islamist activist politics, legitimised by and packaged inside a political/military resistance role, is on the rise throughout this region."
"Engaging this force constructively and democratically is an urgent political challenge in the Middle East, and it is not being grasped quickly enough," he says.
But are the Islamist forces at work in countries like Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine behind the terror attacks?
Most definitely not. The West has to recognise the difference between them.
Corridors of power
In countries like Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon as well as most other Arab countries, the Islamist forces are seeking political power through the ballot. They know that they could get to the corridors of power if they play their cards right. In some countries, they feel that the system itself is stacked up against them and there is no way people's will would prevail until such time the regimes themselves acccept the inevitability of accepting their people's will.
Islamist groups have made strong headway into regional politics and they would continue to do so, but not because of their rejection of the political system but because of the natural evolution of politics.
Lebanon's Hizbollah is now in the country's government. There is nothing anyone could do about it since Hizbollah represents a good segment of the Lebanese population.
In Jordan, the Islamists are the strongest group. Indeed, they were given seats in the cabinet in the mid-90s because of the legislative clout they gained through electiosn, but they themselves bowed out citing reasons of their own that had to do with the country's peace negotiations with Israel and their efforts to impose certain restrictions in the society that were not acceptable to the people.
In Syria, the regime of Bashar Al Assad is slowly easing the ropes against groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Brotherhood is accepting indirect help from the US in order to stabilise itself as a political force in the country. And Washington would find itself confronting the group as and when the latter thinks the time is right to assert itself.
In Palestine, Hamas would emerge as a strong political force when elections are held there. Washington is worried about the prospect, but then it is unable to do much because Hamas represents the aspirations of the people to independence. Beyond that, Hamas would its political clout diminishing to a large extent if it were to push the broader agenda of elimination of the state of Israel.

Real threat
To focus on groups like Hamas in the US-led war against terror would be a misguided approach. They are not the source of terror threats. They represent the genuine desire of a people to secure their usurped rights.
The real threat is those disgruntled people who have seen that no matter how much they try there would never be a shift in the US approach to their genuine grievances. They are convinced that the US, instead of realising the need for fairness, justice and evenhandedness, is targeting them with a view to subduing and even eliminating them as a hurdle in way of Israel's quest to keep occupied lands for itself and for dominance in the region. They have understood that the invasion and occupation of Iraq had more to do with protecting Israel's interests than American interests, and they have realised that they are unable to wage a face-to-face battle with the US-Israeli combine and its allies. For them then the best way to hit back is to inflict as much damage as possible through selves or allies.
That is what we are witnessing today. The attacks in London and Sharm Al Sheikh, misguided and unacceptable as they were, are only indicators of the shape of things to come unless those who have the genuine interests of the US and UK in mind realise that the real problem lies in the conscious denial of justice to people.

Monday, July 25, 2005

Man of neocon dreams?

July 25 2005

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Man of neocon dream?


A conservative has won Iranian presidential elections, meaning that the country's theocratic camp has dug in its heels in power at a crucial period in history not only for the Iranians but also for the entire region. The emergence of Tehran's conservative mayor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the next president after winning an upset victory in the run-off presidential elections on June 24, need not necessarily mean that the Iranian voters also have turned conservative, but it signals tough times ahead. The collision course between the US and Iran had been kept in relative abeyance during the reign of Mohammed Khatami as president, and Ahmadinejad's victory has given a fillip to that confrontation.
Ahmadinejad's victory gives the conservatives control of Iran's two highest elected offices: The presidency and parliament. This combination strengthens the theocratic camp that is bitterly opposed to any rapprochement with the US.
Ahmadinejad, who served as mayor of Tehran, garnered 62 per cent or 27.8 million votes whereas former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, described by many as a reformist, polled only 37 per cent. That in itself was surprising because it was widely assumed that Rafanjani had the edge in the race.
There are indeed allegations of rigging and irregularities in the elections, but they are not going to make any difference to the reality that governance of the country has been returned to the theocratic camp.
The all powerful Guardian Council has confirmed the election results, adding that there had not been any irregularities in the voting process. The Council, which approves all the candidates before the election takes place, also confirmed that the deadline of June 28 had passed, after which it was no longer possible to formally contest the electoral process, and that no one had lodged any official protest.
Reform candidate Mehdi Karroubi resigned from two high-ranking government posts last week after supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei refused to investigate charges of irregularities in the first round of elections.
Ahmadinejad, who has worked closely with the outgoing government of Mohammed Khatami as well as the conservative camp, is seen to enjoy the support of the powerful Basij Islamist volunteer militia, which helped turn out voters in his favour.
Ahmedinejad will be Iran's first non-cleric president for 24 years when he assumes office next month as Khatami's successor.

Iran in US cross-hairs

It might indeed be argued that Ahmedinejad's victory has played neatly into the neoconservative camp in the US, because it negates the possibility of a compromise between Washington and Tehran and clears the ground for the neocons to step up their efforts to engineer a "regime change" in Iran.
Washington's ideal goal is a free hand that would allow it to shape Iran into suiting American interests. It does not want any hangovers from the hardline camp in Iran. An immediate example is Iraq, where it was clear that even if Saddam Hussein were to accept all American conditions and demands in the run-up to the March 2003 war, the Bush administration would not have accepted a compromise with him since the American strategists wanted absolute control of Iraq without someone like Saddam tagging along for a share of power.
Similarly, in Iran, Washington wants the Iranian groups it supports, including the monarchists, to be in power so that the US could call the shots in the country without having to worry about the theocrats who ousted the monarchy and assumed power in 1979.
There is no ambiguity in the American goal for regime change in Iran. President George W Bush promised his neoconvervative camp prior to his re-election in November that this would be one of his priorities during the second term in the White House.
Norman Solomon of the Institute for Public Accuracy, who was in Iran for the first round of presidential elections, believes the election results have delighted the neoconservative camp.
"Now we're in a situation where unfortunately somebody who has risen to power, carried forward by the Basijis and other vigilantes and people who are opposed to loosening of repression on women and political dissidents, and so forth," he says. "I think it's quite correct, this is a dream come true, these election results, for (US Defence Secretary Donald) Rumsfeld and (US Vice-President Dick) Cheney and Bush .... because they see now a wonderful foil.

Neocon's want collision

"I suspect they were worried about Rafsanjani's statements in recent weeks about wanting to be open to the US for rapprochement. This is really a dream come true for the neo-cons."
Experts on Iran see Ahmedinejad as essentially a nationalist who is unlikely to give priority to relations with either Europe or United States. He has committed himself to building a strong Iran and building the country's interests within its borders. He has also committed to developing the country's nuclear programmes -- not necessarily building nuclear bombs, but using nuclear energy for the nation's needs. He argues that it is the right of his country to develop and use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes as any other country in the world.
In his first post-election press conference, Ahmadinejad reaffirmed these commitments but said he would continue negotiations with the European Union.
Of course the US is not buying that argument and there would be increased pressure on Iran in the days ahead.

Ervand Abrahamian, professor of Middle Eastern and Iranian history at Baruch College, City University of New York, observes: "(The election of Ahmadinejad is) very significant in that US has been really on a collision course with Iran ever since the axis of evil speech (by Bush in late 2002). And the collisions, in a way, have been delayed because of the quagmire in Iraq, but this election in Tehran is going to basically put the collision course -- back on course."
Ahmadinejad, who won the elections on a popular platform portraying himself as a representative of the working class, has declared as much.
He has said that he does not think his country needs to improve relations with the US and could carry out development on its own without help from Washington.

"The policy of the Islamic Republic towards the United States has been stated many times before," he said. "With its self-belief and self-reliance, our nation continues on the path of progress. And in this path does not have any significant need for relations with the United States. We will pay attention to relations with any country that bears no hostile intent towards us."

US strategy takes shape

In turn, Bush, US Secretary of State Condeleezza Rice and Rumsfeld have dismissed the Iranian election as a farce.

"There were over 1,000 candidates that were disqualified that weren't even allowed to run," said Rumsfeld after the run-off. "So, the fact that they had a mock election and elected a hard-liner ought not to come as any surprise to anybody, because all the other people were told they couldn't run. It's against the law."

Indeed, Rumsfeld appeared to offer an insight into the American strategy vis-a-vis Iran under the presidency of Ahmaddinejad when he said: "Now, I don't know much about this fellow. He's young. I have read backgrounds on him, but he is no friend of democracy. He is no friend of freedom. He is a person who is very much supportive of the current ayatollahs who are telling the people of that country how to live their lives, and my guess is over time, the young people and the women will find him, as well as his masters, unacceptable."

It is the second part of what Rumsfeld said should figure as highly relevant since the US strategy is to stir up political unrest among Iranian people to a point where an uprising could take place and then the US military might intervene to a limited extent.

An Iraq-style military invasion of Iran is deemed to be ruled out if only because the mission would be too formidable, given the size of Iran and its huge population in comparison with Iraq.

One of the key elements in the American-British strategy is massive propaganda against the theocratic regime in power in Tehran. This is done through more than 15 radio and television channels beaming anti-government propaganda in Farsi to Iranians. These programmes focus on what they describe as government failures to serve the people of Iran and how the

Iranians could have a better life and more freedoms with western-style democracy. Many programmes show how Westerners live --particularly the young generation -- and suggest that the people of Iran could also live like them.

Also highlighted are programmes that show how the regime is "squandering" the country's resources and leave the people with their problems such as high unemployment, lack of infrastructure and services, and rising cost of living,

Stirring up troubles

An Israeli intelligence website reports that the recent troubles in Ahwaz, the mainly Arab region of Iran, were engineered by American and British intelligence and more of such unrest could be expected as part of the American strategy to destablise the Tehran regime.

Towards this end, according to the report, Washington is in touch with Arab Iranian leaders and groups. Said Taher Naama, deputy chief the National Liberation Movement of Ahwaz, the NLMA, which is led by Hazal Al Hashemi, was invited to the White House on April 23., says the report, (which adds that these are not the actual names of the NLMA leaders). Naama was invited to meetings with the National Security Council, including national security adviser Steve Hadley, and senior Iranian experts in the State Department.

"While Naama's presence in Washington was not thrown open to the media, the Bush administration did not seem to care if it was exposed through intelligence channels to the rulers of Tehran," says the report.

The Arab Iranian community has eight organisations and the US is said to be in contact with all of them.

American-British axis

A glimpse into how the American-British intelligence is working behind the scenes in Iran came in April when a forged a letter purportedly written by Mohammad Ali Abtahi, an adviser to Iran's President Mohammed Khatami, surfaced in Ahvaz and elsewhere in Khuzestan province. The letter was tailor-made to trigger unrest among Arab Iranians.

The letter mentioned plans to evict Arabs from the oil-rich Khuzestan province and settle ethnic Persians there. Leading the riots were Arab students, who were particularly incensed by a mention in the forged letter that Arab students would have to leave Khuzestan and go elsewhere to study.

Five people were killed in the clashes between the rioting Arabs and security forces. About 310 people were arrested in the clashes. They were released later.

According to the intelligence report, American-British agents had forged the Abtahi letter and they also incited the Arabs in the province to riot and clash with the security forces. Abtahi himself has denied having written such a letter.

In mid-June, several bombs went off in Ahwaz, killing at least eight people. Two others died in Tehran on the same day, but it is still not known whether the two incidents were linked. Tehran blamed a London-based Arab Iranian group -- the Popular Democratic Front of Ahwazi Arabs -- for the bombings and the group denied the charge.

Recent disturbances in Iranian Kurdistan when Jalal Talabani became Iraq's first Kurdish president were also part of the American intelligence operations, reports say. American spies are working with the illegal Kurdistan Democratic party of Iran, which is based in Kurdish-held Iraq. The group is said to have provoked the recent disturbances by releasing a plan for a federal constitution in Iran.

At the same time, people like Abrahamian believes that a misplaced move could turn out to be costly for Washington.

Elite decapitation

Noting that the US has already drawn up plans for military strikes at Iranian nuclear installations, Abrahamian says: "They (the US) also have plans, what they call elite decapitation, which would be surgical strikes at ministries of the top people. And that would be basically a sort of slippery slope they would start on.

"They would think that doing that would prevent Iran developing the nuclear programme, not taking into account that Iran also has its own cards it could play. If that was done, if any military action was implemented, I think that the Iranians would use the cards they have, which is in Afghanistan and Iraq, both areas, they have actually great advantages. They could unravel the already bad position the United States is in those countries, completely unravel it. All they have to do is give the green light to (Iraqi hardline Shiite leader Mortada) Sadr in southern Iraq to have a Shiite revolt....."

Similarly, Tehran could also stir up trouble for the Americans in Afghanistan with help from some of the warlords there, he notes.

"It's often forgotten here that Iran has actually done everything it can so far to help United States in both Iraq and Afghanistan," says Abrahamian. And if there's a confrontation, military confrontation, there would be no reason for them to co-operate with United States. They would do exactly what would be in their interests, which would be to destroy the US position in those two countries."

Pitfalls ahead

Indeed, the US-UK alliance cannot be expected to be unaware of the pitfalls.

Says a seasoned regional observer: "The American-British strategy is to intervene militarily only when the internal unrest reaches its high point and Washington and London could depend on Iranians to a large extent to overthrow the regime. The US and the UK will provide military assistance of a minimum level in order to help those Iranian elements which want to change the regime in Tehran, but only when the time is right."

While Ahmedinejad's victory is seen by the reformist camp as a triumph for theocracy, it remains to be seen how he will deal with economic issues, rising unemployment, civil liberties and women's rights. That could be crucial to determining the success of the American campaign to fuel internal unrest and bring things to a boil in Iran.

With inputs from websites

 

 

Saturday, July 23, 2005

Americans are angry






Images from anti-war protests staged on Sept.24, 2005. The article was written on July 23, 2005
PV Vivekanand

AMERICANS are angry, and the fury is growing. Soon something will have to yield, and the entire facade of the deep conspiracy and deception that went into hoodwinking them into accepting the invasion and occupation of Iraq as legitimate would collapse. That is what one realises when browsing through the thousands of websites that have sprung up to carry many objective and in-depth anayses and comments. No mainstream media are touching the real story of deception of which the unfolding details of how senior officials in the Bush administration stopped at nothing and pulled all the plugs in their desperate effort to build a non-existent case against Iraq. Exposing an undercover operative of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is only one of the classic examples of the neoconservatives' desperation, writes PV Vivekanand.
It now seems to be a certainty that Karl Rove, a senior adviser to US President George W Bush, had revealed the name of the undercover CIA operative to the Time magazine as welll as columnist Robert Novak. Time magazine's reporter, Matt Cooper, has also revealed that Vice-President Dick Cheney's aide Lewis Libby was another of his sources.
Linked to the same case is Judith Miller, The New York Times reporter, who was the main conduit for then Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi to plant false information in the US media. Miller is being praised as a heroine for opting to go to prison rather than reveal her sources in connection with the same case although she did not write about it.
However, American writers point out, the media which have been paying tribute to Miller's "courage" are clearly overlooking the fact that she is in prison not because of a stand against revealing sources but for a different reason.
Miller is in prison to protect someone high up in the Bush administration or someone who was there. It could be anyone, including the president, the vice-president or one of their powerful aides, including some who are now occupying high international positions and a revelation that they had revealed the name of the CIA operative to a journalist could have far-reaching consequences to their present status.
Not many journalists and commentators in the US are impressed by Miller, as their comments on various websites indicate. They are asserting that if Miller were to uphold the high ethics of journalism and freedom of the press, then she should have exposed the Bush administration's deceptive campaign to wage war against Iraq.
She is well-known for her expertise with the Middle East, and it should not have been a secret to her that the administration was determined to invade and occupy Iraq much before the actual invasion and that the scene was being prepared for it through deceptive means.
A suggestion, direct or indirect, explicit or implicit, never came in any of Miller's writings in the run-up to or during or after the invasion of Iraq that Washington had made up its mind to seal Saddam Hussein's fate even when it was dilly-dallying with the UN about weapon inspections in Iraq.
Instead, she steadily helped channel to her paper a flow of unverified information — now we know it Chalabi was her source — about Saddam's non-existent weapons of mass destruction, her critics point out.
The legality of the right of journalists to protect their sources is being debated in Washington now, and several members of Congress known to have strong links with the neoconservative camp are trying to introduce legislation that offers protection to journalists who refuse to reveal their sources.
Obviously, the Rove-Libby case is only the tip of an iceberg. Much deeper and intriguing plotting and planning has gone into setting the deceptive path towards the war against Iraq. And those who want to introduce legal protection for journalists refusing to reveal sources might perhaps be ensuring protection for themselves when more skeletons tumble out from the shelves of the Bush administration.




No one doubts that there was a grandiose scheme that went to paving the way for the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq and it was helped by many media outlets which, wittingly or unwittingly, sidestepped journalistic ethics, principles or code of conduct in their anxiety to help the neoconservatives to build the case for war.
We should have known this week whether Miller was protecting Karl Rove, Lewis Libby or someone else. But it has not happened.
Time reporter Cooper has already revealed that Rove was the first to tell him that the wife of former ambassador Joseph Wilson was an undercover CIA operative and she was instrumental in sending Wilson to Niger to investigate claims that Saddam Hussein had bought nuclear material from that country.
Cooper has also disclosed that Libby was another of his sources.
Now that both Libby and Rove have been named, it was logical that Miller would opt to admit that either of them or both of them were her sources too and get herself released from prison.
Her imprisonment could last for another three months if she continues to refuse to reveal her sources. Since she did not grab the opportunity offered when Copper named Rove and Libby, she is seen as definitely protecting someone else, and this opens up yet another chapter of deception at the highest levels in Washington to set the stage for war against Iraq.


In legal terms, both Rove and Libby could be charged with treason because they exposed an undercover CIA operative. Had the woman concerned been a regular employee of the CIA, there would have no such charge, but exposing an undercover agent is a serious crime.
That a senior White House official would go to the exent of committing such a crime is only a reflection of the determination to invade and occupy Iraq, many Americans argue.
Boston Globe columnist Derrick Z. Jackson writes that the election victory of Bush in 2000 was the hardliners in Washington were waiting for in their gameplan to invade and occupy Iraq.
According to Jackson, "Libby, Cheney, and the other influential right-wing hard-liners, such as Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Armitage, Richard Perle, and Douglas Feith, saw their dreams come true" when Bush was elected.
He notes that Cheney was defence secretary in the administration of Bush Senior and Libby and Wolfowitz were two of his aides who, after the first Gulf war left Saddam in power, drafted a document advocating ‘‘pre-emptive’’ war against possible threats.
They said the United States should be ‘‘postured to act independently when collective action cannot be orchestrated," notes Jackson. But their plans had to be held in abeyance because Democrat Bill Clinton won the 1991 elections and occupied the White House for the eight years beginning in January 1992.
"But when the junior Bush became president in 2000, the hard right on foreign policy took the helm," writes Jackson. "They used the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 as an excuse for invading Iraq, even though President Bush’s own 9/11 Commission found no tie between Saddam and 9/11.
"Libby was in the thick of whipping up fear over the thinnest of evidence. The level to which Libby and Cheney stooped to get their war was highlighted by the momentous presentation of Saddam’s 'threat’' before the United Nations Security Council by then secretary of state Colin Powell.
"Powell gave a presentation six weeks before the war where he said, 'every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions.’ Those assertions resulted in grudging acceptance of the war from many Democrats.
"Virtually all of Powell’s solid sources fell apart when the United States turned Iraq upside down, killing thousands of Iraqi civilians in the process. He would have looked much worse had he listened to everything Libby and Cheney tried to feed him."
Jackson concludes: " Libby may end up as a symbol of a government so driven to ignore the truth it was willing to resort to dirty tricks to stop anyone from telling it."
Why was the uranium-from-Niger deception so important for the Bush administration that its senior officials went far out of their way to discredit the Wilsons?
Ambassador Wilson exposed a particular lie that played an essential role it played in the administration’s plans for war against Iraq. 
Wilson pulled the rug from under the argument that Iraq was on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons. The argument was one that the administration wanted to flash before Congress and convince it into approving war on Iraq. 
Indeed, the "intelligence" on the non-existent Niger connection came from the British government, the White House's main partner, but even London had doubts over the authenticity of the information.
But it was a windfall for the neoconservative camp. The neocons charged up the spin-machine in Washington and soon it was taken for granted in the media that Baghdad was reconstituting its nuclear weapons development programme. 
Then came Wilson's bombshell, and no one in the neocon camp was willing to forgive him for upsetting the war wagon going to Baghdad, and hence the former ambasasdor and his wife had to pay a big price, and they paid it indeed.
What is deplorable is the way the administration continues to play phantom and insist that it was right all along and there was nothing wrong — notwithstanding that all its justifications for the Iraq war were lies, that it led the US and some of its allies into an illegal war where thousands of American soldiers have been killed and maimed — not to mention tens of thousands of Iraqis — and spent more than $200 billion of American taxpayer's money.
What is precisely the Wilson and CIA angle to the campaign of deception and lies?
It is simple and straight.
Wilson was sent by the CIA to Africa in 2002 to investigate claims that Saddam tried to buy uranium from Niger — a claim that was central to the White House justification for its invasion of Iraq that Saddam was building nuclear-arms capability.
Wilson conducted the investigation and reported back that there was no basis whatsoever for the claim. Well, it was not what the White House wanted and he was told to keep quiet.
However, the administration continued to maintain that Saddam was seeking nuclear material from Niger. Bush himself made that claim in public in his 2003 State of the Union address.
Obviously, Wilson was shocked by the blatant deception, and wrote an op-ed piece in The New York Times critical of the administration's strategies and exposing the deceit.
Wilson's article asked the question: "Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programmes to justify an invasion?"
At this point, he became an enemy of the administration, and it was time to punish Wilson for blowing the whistle and also to set an example for others like the former ambassador who had known of the campaign of deception at various levels. That punishment came in the form of exposing Wilson's wife Valery Plame as an undercover CIA operative.
Apparently, Rove suggested to Cooper that it was because of his wife's CIA influence that the former ambassador was assigned to investigate the Niger nuclear claim. The revelation was purportedly aimed at discrediting Wilson, but, in the bargain, his wife was named as a CIA undercover agent.
Obviously, the administration saw the stakes in the game as too high not to allow Wilson to get away with revealing its deceptions over Iraq and also sought to set a deterrent against others with similar thoughts. That is why someone like Rove went to the extent of exposing an undercover CIA agent that would have much deeper impact within the intelligence community. Exposing an undercover operative could lead to exposing many others. In this case, it is known that at least one "foreign undercover agent" of the CIA was executed by the host government because that agent was also exposed when Valery Plame was named a CIA agent. The damage to US intelligence operations could be vast, and no one is talking about it, at least not yet.
It should indeed be a shock to the American people that senior officials in their government were party to compromising intelligence and undermining the country's national security interests.
And we are hearing more and more from the American people expressing their anger and indignation over how they were taken for a ride in the Iraq context.
The first published account that Plame was a CIA operative came in a syndicated column written by Robert Novak, but he got off the hook by making a deal with the special prosecutor assigned to investigate the "leakage."
In his column, Novak identifed Valerie Plame as a CIA agent. He suggested that her influence had been used by Wilson to get the assignment to verify the Niger claim and torpedo the mission for his own narrow partisan ends. Novak cited as sources "two senior administration officials."
Plame was assigned to the CIA's Non-Proliferation Centre, an organisation of analysts, technical experts and former field operatives who work on detecting and, if possible, preventing foreign proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
Novak wrote: "Vice President Cheney and his chief of staff, Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, met with officials at the Non-Proliferation Centre before the invasion of Iraq to discuss reports that Iraq was seeking to buy uranium in Africa. A US official with knowledge of those meetings said Plame did not attend. But the former US intelligence official said she was involved in preparing materials for those meetings."


Then came the Time magazine report written by Cooper revealing Plame's name and an investigation was launched into who leaked the name. What we are hearing today is the continuation of that episode.
What was Miller's "crime"? She revealed that a White House official had mentioned the name of Plame, although she did not write about it.
And when the investigation was launched, Miller refused to reveal whom she'd talked to and that was why she was sent to jail. Novak was spared because of his deal with the investigator. Cooper tried to put up a fight, but ultimately he agreed to reveal his source to a grand jury and thus avoided going to prison like Miller.
A close look at Miller's writings since Sept.11, 2001 indicates that she had contributed much to building the non-existent case for war against Iraq by accepting whatever lies were fed to her of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. Of course, she might not have known that these were lies. But, surely, a journalist with decades of experience behind her would have definitely tried to verify some of the information. Obviously, as The New York Times had to admit later, the paper did not do justice to the mandatory process of verifying some of the reports.
But why would Miller persist in carrying the deceptive "details" that Chalabi provided her?
Well, the answer might perhaps be found in a March 18, 2002 letter revealing a conversation that took place between the former British ambassador to the US, Sir Christopher Meyer, and one of the architects of the Iraq war —  Paul Wolfowitz, often described as the most hawkish among the neoconservatives who planned the Iraq war eight years earlier (in a recommendation to Israel) and implemented the plan in 2003.
Meyer wrote to British Prime Minister Tony Blair on a meeting he held with Wolfowitz:
"We backed regime change, but the plan had to be clever and failure was not an option."
It was written one year before the US launched the invasion of Iraq.
Beyond that is the direct reference that Wolfowitz made to Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress (INC).
Meyer observed in the letter that Wolfowitz insisted that the INC should not be discredited despite warnings from Meyer.
"When I mentioned that the INC was penetrated by Iraqi intelligence, Wolfowitz commented that this was probably the case with all the opposition groups: It was something we would have to live with..."
(Indeed, it was Wolfowitz who insisted that Bush include a statement that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger in his State of the Union address despite a CIA warning that the information was unreliable and could not be verified.
“The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa,” Bush said in his address.
No doubt, the statement was technically correct because it accurately reflected a British intelligence report. However, the White House knew it was information that the CIA had explicitly warned might not be true.
That was the level of desperation of the Bush administration to build the false case for the war against Iraq).
Is there any connection with Wolfowitz's "obsession" with Chalabi and the false information the INC chief provided to Miller that unfailingly found its way to The New York Times?
Is Miller trying to protect Wolfowitz, who is now president of the World Bank?
The web of lies is spread far and wide. Among the officials who played a key role in creating the so-called Niger file and added it to Washington's case for war against Iraq was Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs John R. Bolton , according to Representative Henry Waxman, a ranking member of the House Government Reform Committee.
The document was part of an American presentation countering and discrediting a Dec.7., 2002 Iraqi disclosure about its weapons of mass destruction programme.
On Dec.19, 2002, the State Department issued a fact sheet entitled "Illustrative Examples of Omissions from the Iraqi Declaration to the United Nations Security Council."
Under the heading "Nuclear Weapons," the fact sheet stated:
The declaration ignores efforts to procure uranium from Niger.
Why is the Iraqi regime hiding their uranium procurement?
Waxman says he was told by the State Department in September 2003 that Bolton had no role in creating the document.
However, says Waxman, there is evidence that Bolton was specifically asked for help to counter the Iraqi declaration and Bolton assigned the work to "the Bureau of Nonproliferation," a subordinate office that reports directly to Bolton.
Is Miller protecting Bolton, who is nominated by Bush to be the next US ambassador to the UN?
We don't know yet who Miller is trying to protect and we could only take a wild shot at it, but we don't have to do that to know what she is not protecting.
The fury of the American people are showing in cyberspace.
Here is a classic example (http://wuamericaru.blogspot.com):

"The current Administration has done its very best to mangle, tear asunder, or annihilate: our constitutional rights, our freedoms and liberty, our privacy, America's standing in the world, the economy, the environment and ways of protecting it, the healthcare system and Medicare, Social Security, sound education and student development, the quality and safety of the agriculture industry and our food and water supply, proper judicial procedures, the peoples' right to know what their "duly elected" government is really doing. This is just a short list.
"The way in which the administration has imposed its whims and will over the entire country — and certain parts of the world that don't need mentioning — in a seemingly carte blanche manner, is very frightening and disturbing. It is troubling that a country founded on a premise and a philosophy of democratic, citizen-run government can devolve into a shell of its former self, with dangerous, avaricious, and bloodthirsty individuals and groups filling the void. On the outside, everything looks peachy keen. When one gets to the heart of the matter, however, they can see the slow, painful, and agonising death of the greatest country that ever was."
Justin Raimundo, a well-known anti-war activist and commentator, puts in a better perspective (www.antiwar.com/justin):
"What we are witnessing is an insurgency arising to take back Washington from the occupiers. It is a two-pronged legal assault, launched from within the FBI and the Department of Justice by patriotic Americans who mean to take back their country from the invader. That is the meaning of the Plame investigation and the AIPAC-Larry Franklin spy case. The battlefield is not Baghdad, it's an American courtroom: the weapon of choice is not the RPG but the subpoena. As the prosecutor-insurgents inch slowly toward the White House, occasionally scoring direct hits inside the Green Zone, the panic begins to spread: talk of "staying the course" is tempered by hints of negotiations and rumours of withdrawal. Donald Rumsfeld tells us that the Iraqi insurgency could last a decade or more, but the Washington version is likely to end much sooner — in a clear victory for the insurgents."


With inputs from website sources

Saturday, July 02, 2005

Unrealistic deadlines

The dice is loaded


WASHINGTON has set a mid-July deadline for Iraq's former prime minister Iyad Allawi to finalise a deal with the country's Sunni community to at least partially contain the ongoing insurgency there. The Bush administration is pinning high hopes that Allawi would succeed in his mission. Allawi is holding marathon meetings in Amman, Jordan, with Iraqi Sunni leaders who travel there upon his invitation, according to intelligence reports.
Allawi is seeking to convene a Sunni Arab Congress grouping some 250 delegates representing all Sunni factions, parties and guerrilla groups. They will be invited to enter Iraq’s mainstream political process.
Allawi is backed in his mission by Sunni Defence Minister Saadoun Al Duleimi.
The optimism that Allawi would be able to finalise a deal with the Sunnis is seen behind the upbeat note in the speech US President George W. Bush made on June 28 at the US air base at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Bush said that he was not making any major change in his approach to the insurgency in Iraq but that he had a plan to end the crisis in the beleaguered country where dozens of Iraqis are being killed on a daily basis. He assured Americans that he would win the war in Iraq.
According to the sources, Washington retained Allawi as its pointman Iraq even after his party failed to secure enough seats in the Jan.30 elections that produced a new government with Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani as president and Shiite Ibrahim Jaafari as prime minister.
The mainstream Sunni community stayed away from the elections and are not represented in the government. Washington wanted to address that through nominating a few Sunni leaders, but Shiite rejection of that strategy scuttled the American plan.
Since then Allawi, a Shiite with strong connections with the Central Intelligence Agency has been trying to convince the Sunnis into dropping their boycott and joining the process of drafting a constitution leading to new elections for a government on the basis of that constitution.
Since the Jaafari government took office in April, more than 1,000, most of them Iraqis, have been killed in the insurgency.
While Allawi is tasked with dealing with the Sunni community, the US military is focusing on the non-Iraqi Jihad component of the insurgents said to be led by Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant affiliated with Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda.
Allawi has enlisted the help of Jordan and Egypt as well as the Arab League in his mission. He visited Cairo on June 24 and held talks with President Hosni Mubarak and Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa. Both supported his mission.
A recent call by the grand mufti of Al Azhar, the highest Sunni authority, on the insurgents in Iraq to suspend their attacks was seen as linked to Mubarak's endorsement of Allawi's mission.
According to the sources, Allawi visited Syria on June 23 and held talks with President Bashar Al Assad, but the response from Damascus to his appeals for a total blockade of jihadist volunteers entering Iraq through the porous border was not seen to be very positive.
The Syrians categorically denied that they were party to the infiltration to Iraq and pointed out that they had co-operated fully with the US forces in recent operations against Zarqawi near the frontier.
Jordan has also endorsed Allawi's mission. Allawi was based in Amman during the last decade of Saddam Hussein's reign in power and he had developed close contacts with senior Jordanian leaders. National security adviser General Saad Kheir is said to be in charge of the Jordanian liaison officers carrying messages back and forth between the Iraqi parties.
Among the people Allawi has already met in Amman were some leaders of the militant Ansar Al Islam movement, which has claimed responsibility for scores of attacks against the US-led coalition forces in Iraq as well as kidnappings (Jordan has given an undertaking that it would not seek to detain any visitors to Allawi in Amman even though they might be wanted for anti-Jordanian activities in Iraq).
Ansar al Islam was upset when the contacts with Allawi were leaked to the media and therefore it hastily issued several statements reaffirming its commitment to jihad.
Washington is not hoping for a complete end to insurgent attacks on the basis of agreements hoped to be worked out at the proposed Sunni congress. It is only expecting to convince the mainstream Sunni leaders to stay away from the insurgency and refuse to align themselves with non-Iraqi jihadists like Zarqawi.
If that mission is accomplished, according to the American strategy, then it would make it easier for the US military in Iraq to hunt down jihadists and eliminate them.
Bush, who has said he did not think he needed to send more troops to Iraq to suppress the insurgency, should but be aware that there is no military solution in Iraq and hence he is betting on Allawi's success.
However, the reality on the ground suggests Allawi would not be able to make much headway either.
If anything, the intensity of the insurgency has only grown in recent weeks. It was based on this realisation that US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made the gloomy assessment that insurgencies tend to go on for six, eight, 10, 12 years.
US Middle East commander General John Abizaid recently told a Congressional panel that the Iraqi insurgency was still running with the same intensity and foreign fighters were continuing to join the war at the same level that existed six months ago.
Other factors that undermine Allawi's mission include the pattern that has emerged in Iraq under which the Sunni leaders engage themselves in political talks with mediators but also continue to support the insurgency — "they keep shooting and speaking at the same time" as one source puts it."
Another is the ambitions of the Shiites and Kurds to consolidate their newfound prominence in pos-Saddam Iraq at the expense of the Sunnis. Both communities are expanding their respective spheres of influence in the south and north and this has narrowed the Sunni options to central Iraq and the area is fast shrinking.
The US has not been able to influence Iran into suspending its alleged clandestine operations in support of the insurgents. American strategists argue that the conservative Shiite theocrats of Tehran and Qom are aware that American gunsights would be trained against them if the US military is allowed to stabilise Iraq and therefor continued instability in their western neighbour is deemed to be a necessity for their survival in power.
Both President Talabani and Prime Minister Jaafari as well as the Kurdish and Shiite camps they represent are not very enthusiastic about giving more weightage to the Sunnis in governance and this also is seen as working against Allawi's mission.
What all these boil down to is simple: The US is severely handicapped in its effort to pacify Iraq. More and more volunteers are turning up to fight the US-led coalition forces and Iraqis seen aligned with them, including the more than 160,000 ill-trained soldiers. The killing and maiming of a few insurgents here and there are temporary victories since those challenging the US presence in Iraq are fighting the war without any rules and resort to most unexpected tactics.
"The solution is more political than military at this point," according to Michael O'Hanlon, who heads the Iraq Index project at the Brookings Institution. "We do need to improve safety on the streets, to get the politics working to our advantage, but most of the solution is to get the Sunni Arabs aboard the political process," he recently told San Francisco Chronicle.
That is what Allawi is trying to do and this why Bush is hoping against hope that Allawi would succeed. However, the mid-July deadline is unrealistic. Allawi had been in touch with the Sunnis since he took over from US administrator Paul Bremer in June 2004 and has not made much headway, and there are only negative signals coming out of Iraq for any deadline for the Sunnis to sign on his proposals.