Bush faces fury

These images are from anti-war protests staged in LA on Sept.24, 2005. The article was written on Aug.31, 2005.


pv vivekanand

The American people are increasingly becoming aware that their government misled them into a disastrous war that has cost at least 1,800 American lives and crippled more than 15,000 soldiers -- not to mention the tens of thousands of Iraqis who have died -- and spent hundreds of billions of dollars and planning to spend more of their tax money for the country's military engagement in Iraq. They have realised that the war has only worsened the potential threats to their personal security. They have realised that their country has lost its standing as the leader of the "free world" in following democratic norms, respecting human rights, and staying away from meddling in the internal affairs of other countries. They have realised that their administration has deprived them of their pride in the founding principles of their country. And they are furious that their government is continuing to maintain the false facade and coming up explanations that no longer make sense to them.

Why is the US in Iraq? This is the question that Americans are raising. The international community has been asking this question for some time, and now Americans are picking it up and posing it to their government.

Was it because Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, had links with the Sept.11 attacks and posed a threat to the national security of the US?

They know the answers, all of them no.

Was it because Saddam was a brutal dictator who oppressed his people and they needed to be liberated?

Vivid images from Iraq bring home to the Americans the reality that the lot of the Iraqi people is much worse than it was during the reign of Saddam Hussein. They live in perpetual fear, face a critical shortage of basic services, few jobs and have little to look forward to in terms of economic betterment.

Is it because the US wants to bring "democracy" to Iraq?

Not many Americans agree that the US has the right to impose "democracy" on the people of Iraq or any other country. If a situation like that arises, then it is the responsibility of the United Nations to work out an international consensus on what should be done and how it could be done within the parameters of international law and conventions.

Track record

The American track record on democracy under the Bush administration is not exactly the brightest. Bush's victory in the 2000 elections was never accepted as legitimate by a good number of American voters. His re-election in 2004 was even more controversial, with allegations of vote-rigging in several states. This allegation continues to reverberate in cyberspace. Those who are making the charge are asking how could a US president, whose own election remains under a cloud of public rejection, assume a high moral ground and argue for democracy to be imposed on other people.

It has also been reported that Bush was willing to endorse vote-rigging during the Jan.30, 2005 elections in Iraq but for unknown reasons he stopped short of doing so.

Another relevant question is: How could the US president agree to a draft constitution for a country under occupation and force it on its people?

That is what is happening today, critics say. Washington has accepted the demands and impositions of the Shiites and Kurds of Iraq in the draft constitution at the expense of the country's Sunnis whose numbers are as strong as those of the Kurds. And Bush on Tuesday made it clear that he expected the Sunnis to accept the draft.

There goes the democracy argument through the window.

Is the US in Iraq to ensure that the resources of the oil-rich country are used in a way that benefit its people?

Well, the world knows that the only people benefiting from Iraq's oil are the cronies selected by the US and American contractors to whom the interim government in Baghdad is bound under the terms that were dictated by the US when it handed over "sovereignty" on April 28, 2004.

No wonder, Bush is finding it difficult to come up with a coherent answer to the question why the US is in Iraq.

Those asking the questions are also providing the right answers. In summary, they argue that the answers are:

The US invaded and occupied Iraq because of several reasons:

-- It has always been an American objective to gain absolute control over a sizable chunk of the world's oil reserves outside the US. Iraq, with 12 per cent of the world's known reserves of oil and with potential of up to 30 per cent, fits the bill.

-- The idea to invade an Arab country with enough oil resources and occupy it was originally mooted in 1973 -- following the Arab oil embargo -- but shelved because of fears of international opposition to such a move. The plan, first presented by the then secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, following the Arab oil embargo of 1973, was dusted off in the year 2000 and set as a policy objective of the US.

Empire building

The plan for a "global Pax Americana' was drawn up for **** Cheney (now vice- president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz, who is now World Bank president, George W Bush's younger brother Jeb and Lewis Libby, who serves as Cheney's chief of staff.

The document, entitled Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century, was written in September 2000 by the neo-conservative think-tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

It clearly shows that the military action against Iraq was planned even before Bush took office in 2001.

The plan shows the US intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power.

"The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security," says the plan. "While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."

The shape of things to come in the region is also spelt out in the plan. It refers to Iran, which is targeted for regime change by the Bush administration -- an objective that Bush promised his neocon supporters before he was re-elected as president last year.

According to the plan "even should Saddam pass from the scene" bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will remain permanently because "Iran may well prove as large a threat to US interests as Iraq has."

-- Saddam, despite having lost his military prowess in the wake of the disastrous war that ended Iraq's seven-month occupation of Kuwait in early 1991, remained a potential threat to the regional hegemony of Israel, the staunchest American ally in the Middle East and which wields immense political influence in the corridors of power in Washington. So he needed to be removed.

The Israeli link to the US action against Iraq is all the more a source of anger for many Americans given revelations that the Jewish state was stealing intelligence information through its spies in key departments like the Pentagon and State Department. Proved connections between some of the key suspects and the neoconservatives have strengthened the conviction of many Americans that the neocons had indeed planned and executed the invasion of Iraq in order to protect and serve Israeli interests more than American interests. The Americans have realised that Israel is the first beneficiary from the war against Iraq.

-- Setting up advanced military bases in the Middle East with enough power to intervene in any country which challenged American interests was key to the neoconservatives' goal of establishing the US as a global empire based on military and political clout. Those bases have to be set up in a country where the regime would be in no position to ask questions. Today, the US is building Iraq as a major military base in the Gulf.

The American military establishment has benefited immensely from the 2001 war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda and the 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq.

War spending

The US is said to have already spent more than $300 billion for the Afghan and Iraq wars and is expected to spend more than $700 billion in 10 years. The bulk of the military orders have gone to huge American companies, with a sizable portion of the money channelled to firms with "political connections" in Washington, according to American critics of the Bush administration.

All these purposes were served with the invasion and occupation of Iraq. However, it would be a much more difficult task to force Bush to admit that these were indeed the reasons that he ordered the invasion and occupation of Iraq and these were the direct results of that action.

The US publicly maintains that the size of the American military contingent in Iraq could be scaled back next year if certain goals are realised.

These include: Agreement on an Iraqi constitution by various groups and its endorsement by the interim assembly elected in January this year to be followed by a national referendum and elections for a new government under that charter.

What should be surprising is that the realities on the ground in Iraq are not conducive to the realisation of the American objectives. Complexities are too dense to be sorted out through military means even if the US were to double the number of forces in Iraq.

The divide among the three main sects in Iraq -- Shiites, Kurds and Sunnis -- is yawning with the Kurds and Shiites moving steadily closer to sedition. The Kurds want northern Iraq, including the oil-rich Kirkuk province, for themselves to set up an "independent Kurdistan" while the Shiites want a federal entity for themselves encompassing central and southern Iraq. The Kurdish-Shiite equation leaves the Sunnis, who account for between 15 and 18 per cent of the 25-million population, high and dry, for nothing to show or claim for themselves after being the dominant power in the country under the Saddam regime.

American fury

In a series of speeches this week, Bush declared that to withdraw the US military from Iraq would hurt that country's fledgling democracy and the United States too.

Bush was seeking to shore up support for the war in the face of the anti-war movement spearheaded by led by Cindy Sheehan, a California woman who first met the president after her son's death in Iraq last year and is now pressing for a follow-up meeting. She is also demanding that the US recall its troops from Iraq.

Bush countered by saying on Tuesday: "I think immediate withdrawal from Iraq would be a mistake" and a "policy that would weaken the United States."

As he addressed the press in Idaho, more than 100 anti-war protesters gathered at a park across from the Idaho Statehouse to read the names of the more than 1,800 US soldiers who have died in Iraq and to erect hundreds of tiny crosses in their memory.

"Nothing is going to justify my husband's death," said Melanie House, 27, of Simi Valley, California, whose husband, John House, was killed in a January helicopter crash in Iraq.

"Why are we there? What is President Bush trying to get out of this? Why must my son be fatherless?" she told the crowd, referring to her eight-month-old son.

Laura McCarthy of Eagle, Idaho, whose son, Gavin, 21, is in Iraq, said: "Guess what? (Bush is) going to find a Cindy Sheehan in every community across the US."

That Bush is losing public backing among Americans was shown in the result of a recent opinion poll conducted by American Research Group, which showed that only 36 per cent of respondents approve of their president's performance, down six points since July.

The approval rating registered by Bush this month is the lowest of his tenure in the Group's survey. The president had his best showing in January 2005 with 51 per cent.

On the political front, there are stirrings in the US Congress against the continued military presence in Iraq, but at this point it is more focused on establishing that the Bush administration lied to the legislature into approving military action against that country. Even some among Bush's own Republican party are supporting moves to hold the administration accountable for lying.

Democrats split

The Democrats seem to be split. A recent Washington Post article, titled "Democrats Split Over Position on Iraq War," said:

"Democrats say a long-standing rift in the party over the Iraq war has grown increasingly raw in recent days, as stay-the-course elected leaders who voted for the war three years ago confront rising impatience from activists and strategists who want to challenge President Bush aggressively to withdraw troops."

Celebrated columnist and former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan firmly states that the antiwar movement will continue to grow and it would be an influential factor in the next presidential elections.

He writes:

" The reason Democrats must worry most today is that the antiwar movement taking shape is virulently anti-Bush; it is lodged, by and large, inside their party; it is passionate and intolerant; it has given new life to the Howard Deaniacs who went missing after the Iowa caucuses; and it will turn on any leader who does not voice its convictions....

"This surging antiwar movement will not permit moderates to get away with a stay-the-course, we-support-the-troops position. They will demand a timetable for withdrawal and rally to the candidate who offers one, just as antiwar Democrats rallied to Gene McCarthy, Bobby Kennedy, and George McGovern in 1968 (against the Vietnam war).

"The Democrats' dilemma is hellish. If this war ends successfully, Republicans get the credit. If it ends badly, Bush will be gone, but antiwar Democrats will be blamed for having cut and run, for losing the war, and for the disastrous consequences in the ... Gulf and Arab world."

Gone wrong

Prominent author and commentator Justin Raimundo has ridiculed the administration's acceptance of the Shiite demands in the draft constitution for Iraq and asserted that Washington would not have success in creating a US-friendly regime that country.

Raimundo writes:

"Cindy Sheehan is camped outside George W. Bush's Crawford ranch, demanding to know why her son -- and 1,800-plus other American soldiers, as well as tens of thousands of uncounted Iraqis -- had to die in this bitter war, and the answer is: To install Sharia law in southern Iraq and deliver the country over to parties for whom the Ayatollah Khomeini is a hero."

Raimundo also blasts the US administration for having supported "Kurdish thuggery" in northern Iraq and goes on to say:

"Both the neocon right and the 'centrist' (ie. left-neocon) Democratic Leadership Council denounce the antiwar movement * and any timetable for withdrawal * as 'anti-American.' But how 'pro-American' is the regime we've installed in Iraq by force of arms? When you look at what we've actually done in Iraq * the emerging Islamist-Kurdish tyranny we've empowered * it turns out that the US government is the biggest exponent * and exporter * of true anti-Americanism."

"As Shiite party militias roam the ruins of Iraq's cities killing and beating political dissidents, and whipping women who fail to wear the requisite head-to-toe chador, our "democracy"-crazed neocons cite the country as a "model" * and look forward to the "liberation" of the rest of the Middle East along similar lines," says Raimundo. "The world seen through the prism of neoconservatism is truly a bizarre world, where everything is stood on its head, not just physical laws but also traditional moral precepts as well as the rules of logic.

"Americans are naturally repulsed by the sight of what the Busheviks have wrought in Iraq, but the alternative is not to turn around and make war on the Shiite-Kurdish tyranny we made possible in the first place. A war along those lines would be an act of such incredible hubris that it would make our prior mistakes * beginning with the invasion of Iraq * seem almost benign."

"It's time to face up to the horrific reality: There are places on this earth that in no way resemble the cultural and political landscape of the US, and nothing we do will turn Iraq into a suburb of the American metropolis. Short of wiping out a good portion of the population and imprisoning most of the rest in 're-education' camps where they'll be forced to memorise Robert's Rules of Order and the aphorisms of Emily Post, it simply cannot be done."

However, the Bush administration appears not to have accepted the realities on the ground in Iraq and is determined that the solution to the problem is through continued military presence as affirmed by the top general of the US Army that the military intends to keep the present strength of nearly 140,000 in Iraq for four more years.


Long haul

US General Peter Schoomaker, who said in an interview with the Associated Press that the army was prepared for the "worst case" in terms of the required level of troops in Iraq, spoke in strictly military terms. He did not refer to the politics behind it or the ulterior American objectives.

"We are now into '07-'09 in our planning," Schoomaker said referring to the presence of 138,000 American soldiers in Iraq.

Schoomaker's comments indicated that the US military is in Iraq for the long haul, beyond the term of Bush, which ends in 2007. In military terms, the current rotation of troops for 2005-07 will overlap with the 2006-08 replacements. Beyond that, the army is drawing up the plan for the 2007-09 switch, Schoomaker said.

A close look at the statements made by Bush himself and other senior administration officials since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 would show that all of them were trying to tell the world that the US military presence in Iraq was a short-term affair and limited to handing over power to an institutionalised political system in the country.

Indeed, it was only recently that Rumsfeld spoke of the possibility of the US presence in Iraq remaining as far ahead as 10 or 12 years. That sounded more realistic, given the almost impossible task the US faces in trying to institutionalise Iraq in a manner that serves American strategic interests in the Middle East.

Bush is perfectly right when he says that withdrawal from Iraq would "weaken" the US as long as it is seen in the context of the neoconservative objective of turning the US into a global empire. Quitting Iraq means removing a key piece from that global picture of the US that the neocons are trying to piece together, and hence ending the American military presence there is not in their agenda, which in turn means "staying the course."

However, the American people are not standing by. The days ahead would see a bitter confrontation between the pro-war and antiwar camps in the US, with the neocons seeking to bulldoze their way through anyone and anything that could cast a cloud on their course. The intense smear campaign levelled against Sheehan is a classical example of how the neocons work.

Given the declarations and affirmations from Bush and other senior administration officials, it is clear that Washington would stay firm against any pressure for withdrawal from Iraq and would continue to take American casualties. As such, the question should shift from "why the US is in Iraq" to "how long would it take for the neocon camp to see the realities as they are and how many American soldiers and Iraqis have to die before they decide Iraq was a misadventure?"

Bush vs Sheehan

August 30 2005

pv vivekanand


SHE IS A "treasonous crackpot" who has nothing better to do than encouraging the insurgents in Iraq. She is out to gain fame and fortune by exploiting her son's death. She has an extremist left-wing agenda for anarchy. She is a tool of the Democratic Party. She is being used by anti-American forces. She is anti-Semitic (anti-Israeli). She is mentally deranged.
These are some of the many descriptions given to Cindy Sheehan, an American mother who has galvanised the anti-war movement in the US by setting up camp near President George W Bush's ranch at Crawford, Texas. She is demanding a meeting with Bush during which she wants to ask him why the US invaded Iraq and why is the US military continuing its occupation of that country despite the rising casualties among American soldiers.
Bush has not only refused to meet Sheehan — obviously because he does not want to face specific questions related to Iraq and be forced to give credible answers — but also seems to have ordered his neoconservative political propaganda machinery to discredit the woman, who lost her young son in action in Iraq in April last year.
"Camp Casey" — named after Sheehan's dead son — drew thousands of visitors and suppporters since it was set up on Aug.6.
Among the prominent visitors were Martin Sheen, Sheila Jackson Lee, Maxine Waters, Steve Earle, Joan Baez, Russell Means, Dennis Banks and Al Sharpton, adding to the pressure on the administration.
Put that mounting pressure against recent polls which show the majority of Americans are concerned about the US quagmire in Iraq, and one could sense the sense of urgency of the neocons to dissuade them from demanding answers to their questions and force the Bush administration to reveal the secret agenda — drawn up and propagated by the pro-Israeli neocons — that prompted Bush to wage war against Iraq, resulting in more than 1,800 American deaths and up to $300 billion spent to run the war machine.
The neocon propaganda machinery has already swung into action, and the descriptions cited here of Sheehan aired through different media outlets and indeed in cyberspace are part of the bitter smearing campaign against the woman.
Clearly, the neocon camp and allies are evading the woman's real questions, assailing her integrity and questioning her patriotism and her motives, her mental health and her ideology and raising issues related to her family.
The neocons might not be willing to acknowledge it, but they should know within themselves that Sheehan campaign has given rise to a situation where many Americans see a confrontation between a government which deceived its people into a disastrous war and the people themselves represented by a grieving woman.
That should be giving nightmares to the neocons, who have consistently went after every critic of some value against the Iraq.
An article appearing on www.prisonplanet.com under the title "Counteroffensive: Bush launches Operation Cindy Sheehan" notes:
"Every critic of this war has taken his lumps. Gen. Eric Shinseki was ushered out of the army for suggesting that the occupation of Iraq required hundreds of thousands of foot soldiers.
"Lawrence Lindsey was dismissed when he estimated that the war would cost up to $200 billion. The neocons berated both men’s estimates as being ‘wildly off the mark.’
"We all know what happened to Ambassador Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame. Hans Blix was publicly defamed, Scott Ritter was ignored and General Anthony Zinni was smeared as an anti-Semite. Former treasury secretary Paul O'Neill was labelled a malcontent. And who now remembers Richard Clarke, the anti-terror adviser, who accused both Bush and (former president Bill) Clinton of dropping the ball in confronting (Osama) Bin Laden prior to 9/11."
Definitely, the pattern reveals that there is a group within the neocon camp dedicated to destroying critics of the Bush administration's policies, particularly the Iraq war. Indeed, it could not but be part of the overall neocon strategy for the planning and execution of the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
The article on prisonplanet.com suggests that Bush's close advisor, Karl Rove, who is credited with orchestrating the president's re-election in 2004, is heading the propaganda and counter-propaganda group.
Rove is the same person who is said to have revealed to the media the name of Valerie Plame as a secret operative of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in retaliation for her husband former ambassador Joseph Wilson's public revelations that there was no evidence that Iraq had bought material for nuclear weapons from Niger — a charge that the Bush administration had levelled despite Wilson's official report to the contrary.
Also under fire are mainstream American media organisations, some of which — wittingly and unwittingly — supported Washington's build-up to the invasion of Iraq.
The prisonplanet.com article notes:
"Mass media corporations have transformed themselves into one giant burial ground for this administration’s scandals. In covering the Iraq war, the major media outlets have consistently acted as an echo chamber for the rosy projections originating in the White House. In the last month alone, they have dodged the responsibility to cover the Plame case and the AIPAC spy scandal at the Pentagon. Allegations of war profiteering by Dick Cheney and Paul Bremer have been put aside."
The neocon campaign to discredit Sheehan is countered with growing support for the American mother in many other states, and soon it could reach a point where the neocons would have to mount similar drives against hundreds of anti-war activists. However, the neocons seem to believe that discrediting Sheehan would deal a severe blow to the anti-war protesters.
Indeed, many pro-war activists have also sprung up, some of them genuine believers that whatever the president is doing should be for the good of the country and some others hardcore military people who argue that public expressions indicating mounting pressure for withdrawing the US forces from Iraq would only encourage the insurgents in that country to step their attacks and claim more American casualties.
"Cindy is killing American troops by her anti-American protest," is their key slogan.
Reports in pro-war websites claim growing strength for supporters of those who argue that Bush is doing the right thing in Iraq.
Sheehan is beginning a tour across the US with her "Camp Casey" to Washington on Wednesday when Bush ends his Crawford vacation and returns to the White House.
She and supporters would be regroup n Washington Sept.24.
For many, the tour would make it clear to everyone how strong or weak her campaign has grown and Sept.24 would be "the day" for the anti-war camp since all those who oppose the war are asked to converge in Washington on that day.
In the meantime, trust the neocon camp to pull all the plugs against Cindy Sheehan, who, in the words of a supporter, has come to symbolise the "American conscience against war."

Bush exit through Iran?

pv vivekanand


THE undue and unwarranted haste in the American moves against what Washington describes as Iran's plans to develop nuclear weapons and its alleged role in the insurgency in Iraq is strengthening the belief that the US is inching towards military action against that country.
There are many who believe that destabilising Iran and regime change in Tehran could be part of US President George W Bush's "exit strategy" from Iraq. Those who support this theory argue that it makes better sense because everything else that the Bush administration does and says does not make sense in the Iraqi context.
American casualties are mounting in Iraq, Bush's popularity rating is dipping fast, the anti-war movement in the US is growing in strength, moves are underfoot in Congress to hold the administration responsible for misleading the legislature on Iraq into the disastrous war, several Bush confidants could face criminal charges for deceptive actions bordering on treason, and many critics are even calling for impeaching the president.
Given these problems, Bush's declarations that he had done and is continuing to do the right things in Iraq and his pledges that he would stay the course do not make sense to many unless seen in the wider context of planned action against Iran.
Chris Floyd, a strong proponent of this argument, writes in the Moscow Times: "The 'high' Bush got from his Iraq assault is now wearing off, politically and personally. He needs another hit of blood and destruction. And don't think he's worried about the prospect of a much wider conflagration arising from a bombing strike against Iran. After all, chaos and instability only mean more money for his war-profiteering family and cronies — and greater authority for 'war leaders' seeking to 'secure the Homeland'."

'False flag attack'

According to reports in the US press, Vice-President Dick Cheney has already given the green signal for military action against Iran immediately in the event of a terror attack in the US.
Some reports speak of plans for a "false flag" operation that would point the finger at Iran and justify American military strikes against that country.
In this context, the emerging story of a US general who was relieved of his command is significant.
Reports in cyberspace as well as linked but not-so-explicit articles in mainstream papers suggest that General Kevin P. Byrnes, commander of the army's Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) at Fort Monroe, was relieved of his command because he opposed plans for a "staged attack" in the US that would be used to justify action, both political and military, against Iran.
Officially, the four-star general was relieved of his command because he had an "extramarital affair with a civilian.”
An article under the title "Nuclear Terror Drill to Go Live? Let's Hope Not" (www.rense.com) says "Byrnes was about to lead a coup against the hawks in the military and executive branch determined to lead America into a global conflict, leading to devastating ramifications for the country, as well as financial and social chaos.”
According to the article, the "hawks" were planning to stage a "false attack" at a US military base in Charleston, South Carolina, as part of a routine exercise in September this year.
During that exercise, a real nuclear warhead was to be smuggled off a ship and detonated while the official report would have been that the warhead was a dummy and someone had replaced it with a real one and the suspicion would be pointed at Iran, under this scenario.
This would have allowed the US administration to seek immediate UN Security Council sanctions against Iran and eventual UN approval for US military action against Iran, according to the plot.
Byrnes was commander of the same base where the nuclear terror drill was to occur.
He was said to be among "a growing faction of discontented high-ranking officers are attempting internally to try and stop the Bush administration’s imminent plans for war with Iran in an effort to avert global war.”
Apparently, Byrnes knew in advance of the plot and objected to it, and hence he was relieved of his job.
It was strange that the Pentagon cited "extramarital affair" as the reason for relieving Byrnes whereas there is no precedent to such action. Generals and high-ranking officers in the military are not dismissed from service for sexual affairs. They are given a reprimand and it is entered into their service record.
It was also strange that the Pentagon even refused to say whether it was a male or female who had this "extramarital" affair with Byrnes. Again, that is questioned by many people who point out that the Pentagon has deliberately left it vague in order to silence Byrnes. Under the laws that govern the US military, Byrnes could be sent to jail if he talks about whatever he knew about US military activities while in service. Therefore , the argument goes, Byrnes is not talking about what had actually happened.

***
Multi-pronged approach

Washington has adopted a multi-pronged approach against Iran. On one front, it is trying to have the UN Security Council impose sanctions against Iran for alleged violations of the international nuclear regime. Another front is accusations that Tehran is behind the mounting insurgency in Iraq and is harbouring Al Qaeda militants; and then come charges that Iran is in gross violations of human rights.

The nuclear front

The facts of the so-called Iranian nuclear crisis are largely clear. Iran is exercising its right as any sovereign country to develop nuclear energy, and it is doing so under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has certified that the country does not have a programme to develop nuclear weapons.
Even if Iran were to deviate from its commitments under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and clandestinely develop nuclear weapons, it is estimated that it would take seven to 10 years before it succeeds in doing so. It means there is enough time for the "feverish diplomacy" that the US says it is trying to use to run its course and arrive at a measure that would pre-empt Iran from acquiring nuclear weapon capability.
If Tehran appears to be defiant, then that attitude reflects its resentment over the US-engineered pressure and bullying tactics. The Iranians know that they are perceived as a hurdle to American strategic objectives in the region and that Washington wants to reshape Iran to suit American interests.
However, Tehran playing into the American hands. Bush wants the Iranian "crisis" to worsen so that he could use military force against Iran, according to seasoned analysts and commentators.
It is no secret that Iran is in American gunsights for "regime change." Bush promised his neoconservative gurus that this would be one of his priorities in his second term during his campaign for the November 2004 elections which gave him another four years in office.
Bush has stated that "all options," including the use of force against, remained open in order to persuade Iran to drop its alleged nuclear weapons ambitions.


Iraq insurgency

The key question that Bush or anyone else in his administration does not answer is: Why should Shiite Iran would want to help Sunni insurgents oust a Shiite-dominated Iraqi government led by Iran's natural allies.
Floyd says: "That's the kind of self-defeating stupidity one might expect from the Bush poltroons, who have spent $300 billion and almost 1,900 American lives to establish an unstable, terrorist-ridden, fundamentalist Islamic state in the centre of the Middle East. But it's unlikely that the subtle Persians, with 3,000 years of statecraft behind them, would be foolish enough to kill the golden goose that Bush has handed them by destroying Saddam and installing their allies in power."
However, that logic seems to have failed to penetrate into the thinking of the Bush administration.
Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said last week: "It's true that weapons clearly, unambiguously, from Iran have been found in Iraq."
It has to be remembered here that Rumsfeld had once claimed that he knew where Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction were hidden: "They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad, and east, west, south and north somewhat."
Several thousand Iranians are indeed held in detention in Iraq, with many of them facing charges that they were involved in the insurgency and carried out bombings and other attacks against the US forces there and their allies. A few of them have already been convicted and sentenced to death.

The Al Qaeda 'link'

It could not be ruled out that there are Al Qaeda elements present in Iranian territory, having fled there from Afghanistan after the US invasion of that country. However, there could not be much substance to charges that Iran is using them to stage attacks across the border in Iraq and other countries, experts on international terrorism say.
Had there been any truth to such allegations, they point out, the US would have cranked up the pressure on Iran to new heights in the context of the US-led war against terror by naming Tehran as a sponsor of international terrorism.
Tehran has said an unspecified number of Al Qaeda activists are in Iranian detention but has not named them. At one point, it was reported that it handed over some of them to Saudi Arabia after Riyadh made a request.
Of course, the Iranian support for Lebanon's Hizbollah, an avowed opponent of Israel and which is blamed for anti-US attacks during the 1980s in Lebanon, is another bone of contention. Hizbollah, which represents the Lebanese Shiite community, is listed in the US list of "terrorist" organisation and Iran's links with the group would be used by Washington to boost its charge that Tehran supports international terrorism.

Deliberate 'crisis'

Floyd asserts in the Moscow Times:
"The plain fact is that Bush doesn't want diplomacy to work against Iran. He wants the situation to reach a crisis point that will 'justify' military action. It's the only form of politics he knows: You foment (or invent) a crisis, then use deceit, fear and brute force to impose your radical agenda. And the takedown of Iran is a long-held ambition of the corporate militarists behind the Bush Faction's relentless quest for 'full spectrum dominance' over world affairs.
When seen against this assertion, the consistent expressions of US concern over Iran's nuclear programme is explained.
Despite reported findings by scientists that bomb-grade uranium traces found in Iran came from contaminated Pakistani equipment, the State Department insists that the US approach is right and the world shares Washington's concern.
The Washington Post has reported that a panel of scientists from the United States, Russia, France, Japan and Britain, supports Iran's claim that the traces of highly enriched uranium came from contaminated centrifuges imported from Pakistan.
Washington had pointed to the material as evidence that Iran was making bomb-grade ingredients.
It is unlikely that the Bush administration would accept any argument which contradicts its allegations against Iran. That is what happened in the case of Iraq ,and we might yet have to live through a similar experience, perhaps if only because Bush's "exit stragey" for Iraq runs through Iran.

Iran in US gunsights

Ali Khamenei






pv vivekanand

THE US is slipping deeper and deeper into the Iraq quagmire. There is little chance that the US would achieve its goal of institutionalising Iraq into a shape that suits American interests. The insurgency is gaining strength and it is also unlikely that the US military and allied forces would be able to beat it back and contain it into manageable confinements.
More than 1,800 American soldiers have died in action in Iraq, and more than 15,000 American soldiers have been maimed. Dozens of Iraqis are killed every day, adding to the tens of thousands who have already dead.
In summary, the US is fighting a losing war in Iraq.
Add to that the anti-war movement in the US that has found new impetus and is steadily gaining strength in its demand that the American soldiers in Iraq be recalled home. President George W Bush's popularity rating is in the range of 30 per cent and it is steadily declining.
Washington is not willing to accept these realities. US Bush has vowed to stay the course in Iraq.
There is no sign of an American exit strategy. The US cannot withdraw from Iraq without causing major chaos in the short term and a division of that country in the medium term. Its only option is to hang in there, hoping for a miracle to happen.
Effectively, the US is reliving Vietnam, but the Bush administration does not seem to have learnt the lesson its 1960s predecessors learnt in the Far East.
In the meantime, the US Army is planning for another four years of occupation of Iraq, clearly signalling that Washington has long-term military goals in the Middle East.
When all these elements are seen put together, the obvious conclusion is that these goals include military action against Iraq's neighbour Iran on the ground that the Iranians are developing nuclear weapons. All the signs are there, particularly the way Washington is summarily brushing aside all Iranian gestures and insisting that all options remain open, including the use of force, to resolve the perceived crisis. The world is reminded of the way Washington pressed ahead with its objective of invading Iraq, toppling Saddam Hussein and occupying that country.
Well, conventional wisdom says the US, ensnared as it is in Iraq, would shy away from similar action in Iran, but, given that Washington seems to think that the only way ahead is more war, the region is keeping its fingers crossed against any such misadventure.

Quit Iraq? Who you kidding

By PV Vivekanand


THE affirmation by the top general of the US Army that the military intends to keep the present strength of nearly 140,000 in Iraq for four more years is the clearest revelation yet of the American designs in the Middle East. But then, it has always been a known fact in this part of the world that the US was targeting Iraq for keeps.
The general's comments only contribute to the reality that the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq was part of a long-term strategy aimed at global domination while also securing the interests of Israel in the Middle East.
The fact has been proved that the US military action against Iraq had no reasonable justification — except in the context of American and Israeli interests. Saddam Hussein did not have any weapons of mass destruction and did not have any links with Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaeda or the Sept. 11 attacks in the US.
Well, Saddam was indeed an oppressor of his people, but US President George Bush has no business to claim that the war against Iraq was aimed at "liberating" the people of Iraq. If anyone had anything to do about it, it should have been the United Nations, and the US invaded Iraq without UN approval.
US General Peter Schoomaker, who said in an interview with the Associated Press that the army was prepared for the "worst case" in terms of the required level of troops in Iraq, spoke in strictly military terms. He did not refer to the politics behind it or the ulterior American objectives.
"We are now into '07-'09 in our planning," Schoomaker said referring to the presence of 138,000 American soldiers in Iraq.
Schoomaker's comments indicated that the US military is in Iraq for the long haul, beyond the term of Bush, which ends in 2007.

How long will it take?

Why is the US in Iraq? This is the question that President George W Bush and his coterie of neoconservatives have to answer.
Is it because Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, had links with the Sept.11 attacks and posed a threat to the national security of the US?
Bush can no longer hide behind these "justifications" because all of them have been proven to be false and part of the deception that his administration used to mislead and convince the American people and Congress to approve military action against Iraq.
Was it because Saddam was a brutal dictator who oppressed his people and they needed to be liberated?
Bush can longer argue this point because the lot of the Iraqi people is much worse than it was during the reign of Saddam Hussein. They live perpetual fear, face a critical shortage of basic services, few jobs and have little to look forward to in terms of economic betterment.
Is it because the US wants to bring "democracy" to Iraq?
The US has no right whatsoever to impose "democracy" on the people of Iraq or any other country. If a situation like that arises, then it is the responsibility of the United Nations to work out an international consensus on what should be done and how it could be done within the parameters of international law and conventions.
The American track record on democracy under the Bush administration is a subject of international loathing. Bush's victory in the 2000 elections was never accepted as legitimate by a good number of American voters. His re-election in 2004 was even more controversial, with allegations of vote-rigging in several states. So, how could a US president whose own election remains under a cloud of public rejection assume a high moral ground and argue for democracy to be imposed on another people?
It has also been reported that Bush was willing to endorse vote-rigging during the Jan.30, 2005 elections in Iraq but for unknown reasons he stopped short of doing so. What does that speak for Bush as someone who believes in democracy?
If we take it one step further, how could the US president agree to a draft constitution for a country under occupation and force it on its people?
That is what is happening today. Washington has accepted the demands and impositions of the Shiites and Kurds of Iraq in the draft constitution at the expense of the country's Sunnis whose numbers are as strong as those of the Kurds.
There goes the democracy argument through the window.
Is the US in Iraq to ensure that the resources of the oil-rich country are used in a way that benefit its people?
Well, we all know that the only people benefiting from Iraq's oil are the cronies selected by the US and American contractors to whom the interim government in Baghdad under the terms that were dictated by the US when it handed over "sovereignty" on April 28, 2004.
No wonder, Bush is finding it difficult to come up with a coherent answer to the question why the US is in Iraq. He is evading answers and making a real bad of it too.
The right answers to the question, if Bush has the guts to spell them out, would be:

The US invaded and occupied Iraq because of several reasons:
— It has always been an American objective to gain absolutely influential control over a sizable chunk of the world's oil reserves outside the US. Iraq, with 12 per cent of the world's known reserves of oil and with potential of up to 30 per cent, fit the bill.
— The idea to invade an Arab country with enough oil resources and occupy it was originally mooted in 1973 — following the Arab oil embargo — but shelved because of fears of international opposition to such a move. It was dusted off by the Israeli-driven neo-conservative camp in Washington in 2000 and marked as a priority for the Republican administration of Bush who assumed power in 2001.
— Saddam, despite having lost his military prowess in the wake of the disastrous war that ended Iraq's seven-month occupation of Kuwait in early 1991, remained a potential threat to the regional hegemony of Israel, the staunchest American ally in the Middle East and which wields immense political influence in the corridors of power in Washington. So he needed to be removed.
— Setting up advanced military bases in the Middle East with enough power to intervene in any country which challenged American interests was key to the neoconservatives' goal of establishing the US as a global empire based on military and political clout. Those bases have to set up in a country where the regime would be in no position to ask questions. Today, the US is building three of its largest military bases in Iraq.
— The American military establishment wanted enough orders for war-planes, weapons and other gear related to war. The US is said to have already spent more than $300 billion for the Afghan and Iraq war and is expected to spend more than $700 in 10 years. The bulk of the orders have to huge American companies, with a sizable portion of the money channelled to companies with "political connections" in Washington.
All these purposes were served with the invasion and occupation of Iraq. However, it would be a much more difficult task to force Bush to admit that these were indeed the reasons that he ordered the invasion and occupation of Iraq and these were the direct results of that action.
As Iraqi groups continue to wrangle over the draft constitution, this is what prominent author and commentator Justin Raimundo has to say:
"Cindy Sheehan is camped outside George W. Bush's Crawford ranch, demanding to know why her son —  and 1,800-plus other American soldiers, as well as tens of thousands of uncounted Iraqis — had to die in this bitter war, and the answer is: to install Sharia law in southern Iraq and deliver the country over to parties for whom the Ayatollah Khomeini is a hero."
Raimundo also blasts the US administration for having supported "Kurdish thuggery" in northern Iraq and goes on to say:
"Both the neocon Right and the "centrist" (ie. left-neocon) Democratic Leadership Council denounce the antiwar movement – and any timetable for withdrawal – as 'anti-American.' But how 'pro-American' is the regime we've installed in Iraq by force of arms? When you look at what we've actually done in Iraq – the emerging Islamist-Kurdish tyranny we've empowered – it turns out that the US government is the biggest exponent – and exporter – of true anti-Americanism."
"As Shi'ite party militias roam the ruins of Iraq's cities killing and beating political dissidents, and whipping women who fail to wear the requisite head-to-toe chador, our "democracy"-crazed neocons cite the country as a "model" – and look forward to the "liberation" of the rest of the Middle East along similar lines," says Raimundo. "The world seen through the prism of neoconservatism is truly a Bizarro World, where everything is stood on its head, not just physical laws but also traditional moral precepts as well as the rules of logic.
"Americans are naturally repulsed by the sight of what the Busheviks have wrought in Iraq, but the alternative is not to turn around and make war on the Shi'ite-Kurdish tyranny we made possible in the first place. A war along those lines would be an act of such incredible hubris that it would make our prior mistakes – beginning with the invasion of Iraq – seem almost benign."
"It's time to face up to the horrific reality: there are places on this earth that in no way resemble the cultural and political landscape of the US, and nothing we do will turn Iraq into a suburb of the American metropolis. Short of wiping out a good portion of the population and imprisoning most of the rest in "reeducation" camps where they'll be forced to memorise Robert's Rules of Order and the aphorisms of Emily Post, it simply cannot be done."
Against these arguments, which are supported by facts on the ground in Iraq, the question shifts from "why the US is in Iraq" to "how long would it take for Bush to accept the realities and how many American soldiers and Iraq have to die before that?"

Out of Gaza to W Bank

Aug.17 2005
PV Vivekanand
Out of Gaza - to the West Bank

ISRAELI Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is projecting Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip as a major sacrifice by the Jews in favour of peace with the Palestinians and asserting that the Palestinian leadership has to prove itself by containing armed resistance and administering Gaza in a way that does not threaten Israel's security. In reality, Sharon is implemented a carefully drawn-up plan that places the Palestinians in a natural disadvantage to meet his conditions while also allowing him to consolidate Israel's grip on the occupied West Bank to a point where all possibilities of negotiations with the Palestinians are eliminated, with the Jewish state retaining long-term control of the territory,
As Israel launched and continued evacuating its settlements in the occupied Gaza Strip this week, the most asked question remained unanswered: What does the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza hold in store for the Palestinian problem and for the overall Middle East "peace process"? Few are of the opinion that it signals anything positive and most believe that the Israeli departure from Gaza is the key element in a scenario drawn up by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to freeze any movement towards negotiated peace with the Palestinians by refusing to give up a major chunk of the West Bank encompassing all the major Jewish settlements there. The firm conviction in the Arab World is that without major upheavals in the geopolitical realities on the ground in the region coupled with determined international action, there is no prospect for a just and fair solution to the Palestinian problem in the foreseeable future.
Whether from a layman's point of view or an analysis based on the ground realities, there are some key features of the Palestinian-Israeli equation which need to be dramatically altered and certain minimum requirements that have to be met for a generally acceptable solution to the Palestinian problem.

These include:

Return of all territory

With the evacuation of the Gaza Strip, the focus shifts to the West Bank, where more than 400,000 Jews — all of them armed — live in settlements built in violation of international conventions. Sharon has vowed not to dismantle the settlements. If anything, he would only expand these colonies and settle more Jews in the occupied territory.
Apart from the argument that the West Bank is indeed part of the "promised land," Sharon and other right-wing Israeli politicians would never agree to evacuate the settlements from the West Bank because the settlers represent a sizable vote bank.
The Palestinians are demanding that Israel withdraw to the lines it held before the 1967 war and there would not be peace without them securing control of all the land beyond the so-called "Green Lines" of 1967.
A compromise proposal was floated in the air last year where it was suggested Israel might give the Palestinians alternative land equivalent to the size of the settlements, and these included Arab-populated Israeli villages near the Green Line. This "compromise" would also serve Israel's purpose of reducing the number of its Arab citizens since the residents of the villages would automatically come under the jurisdiction — if it could be called that — of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) headed by Mahmoud Abbas.
Arab-Israelis have rejected the proposal outright.
In any event, the idea could be discussed only when the Israelis and Palestinians resume their negotiations, and we are at this point in time far from that prospect.

Arab East Jerusalem:

Israel, which seized and "annexed" the Arab eastern half of the old city in the 1967 war, remains firm on its vow not to relinquish it saying it will remain part of the Jewish state's "eternal and indivisible capital." It is a foregone conclusion that no Israeli leader or politician in power, however moderate he or she could be, would ever agree to let go of the Israeli grip on Arab East Jerusalem in view of the religious and political imperatives of the Jewish state. It would be political suicide for any Israeli leader to even suggest giving up Arab East Jerusalem.
The situation is no different in the Palestinian camp either. No Palestinian leader or politician would agree to accept Israeli sovereignty over Arab East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians see as the capital of their to-be created independent state. There is no magic key to lift this logjam.
Several proposals were made in the past with different formulas like "shared sovereignty" or making Jerusalem an international city with free access to everyone and the states of Israel and (proposed) Palestine both considering the city as their capital. Yet another proposed "compromise" is for Israel to let the Palestinians have their capital in the Abu Dis suburb of Arab East Jerusalem. Again, this could be discussed only in the context of revived peace negotiations, but Sharon has given no sign that he might even agree to listen to the idea.


International Law

Turning the tables

 August 14, 2005


Turning the tables
Most Palestinians and many in the Arab World and beyond do not believe that a just and fair solution to the Palestinian problem could be worked out unless regional geopolitical realities undergo dramatic changes. The core of the conflict is rooted in the Israelis' argument that Palestine is their "promised land" and this places the conflict in a religious-territorial backdrop rather than the moral-social-international context. Now, Al Qaeda seems to have entered the scene and a militant analyst is throwing the argument back at Israel's face saying that the Jews have proved themselves unworthy of the land that was "promised" to them,
writes PV Vivekanand

Israel is poised to evacuate the occupied Gaza Strip and dismantle the Jewish settlements on the Mediterranean coastal strip. The move is projected to the outside world as a magnanimous gesture -- after all no occupier voluntarily withdraws from occupied land -- and as the strongest indication of Israel's willingness to work out a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians.

In reality, judging from the facts on the ground, Israel is withdrawing from Gaza but is consolidating its grip on the occupied West Bank. The Palestinians have realised it and a majority of them are convinced that a genuine peace with Israel is never possible, regardless of whatever is being said and done in public. Many of them believe that only divine intervention could help them secure their rights because of the Israeli conviction that Palestine is their "promised land."

It does not need much research to reach the conclusion that Israel is deceiving not only the Palestinians but the entire international community by projecting the Gaza "disengagement" plan as the forerunner of negotiated peace in Palestine. It is even misleading the world on the actual number of Jews sent to live in illegal colonies in the West Bank.

Figures compiled by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) show that the number of Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank is more than double the number acknowledged by Israel. In the occupied Gaza Strip, the PCBS number is less than that given by Israel.

According to PCBS figures, there are 432,275 settlers living in the illegal settlements Israel has built in the occupied West Bank since 1967 and 8,140 in the occupied Gaza Strip.

The Israeli figures are 200,000 for the West Bank and 13,000 in the Gaza Strip (in 2003).

The number of formal (officially acknowledged) settlements totalled 165 in 2004, including 148 in the West Bank and 17 in Gaza Strip. There are dozens of other "illegal" settlements, which are nothing more than a couple of caravans housing three or four families.

Israel is seen as deceiving the world by removing these "illegal" settlements of not more than 20 people and showing it as a major sacrifice in order to gain sympathy for itself, Palestinian activists say.

In 2004, the number of formal urban settlements in the West Bank (except for those parts of Jerusalem, which were "annexed" after the 1967 occupation by Israel) totalled 24, distributed among population sectors as follows: 15 settlements with a population of 2,000-5,999 settlers, three settlements with a population of 6,000-9,999, the rest lived in settlements of a population of 10,000-41,999 settlers. In Gaza Strip, on the other hand, there was one urban colony with a population of 2,600 settlers.

The settlers' population of rural settlements is distributed among 124 settlements, including 50 religious settlements, 40 secular settlements and 13 mixed others.

Israel regularly sends new immigrants, from the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and Africa, to the settlements in the West Bank.

Israeli violations

Under the Geneva Conventions, the occupying force is not permitted to change the geopolitical and demographic features of the occupied territory. Therefore, Israel is in violation of the Geneva Conventions as well as UN Security Council resolutions which demand Israeli withdrawal from the territories it occupied in the 1967 war.

Israel is planning to withdraw from the Gaza Strip beginning on Aug.17, but that withdrawal is seen as cosmetic since the settlers moved from the Gaza Strip will be settled in the occupied West Bank. In any event, the Gaza Strip, which has the most dense per square kilometre population in the world and a concentration of militant groups, has always been seen ungovernable for Israel. Many Israeli officials have said since 1967 that Israel was anxious to leave the Gaza Strip which it seized from Egypt in the 1967 war, but it could not do in the absence of any authority to hand over the land.

Even the first draft of the so-called Oslo agreements signed by Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in 1993 was called "the Gaza-Jericho" plan (Jericho is a small town in the West Bank near the River Jordan). Subsequently, Israeli leaders like Benjamin Netanyahu and others have said that the Jewish state does not want to do anything with Gaza and the Palestinians could set up their independent state there but should not pose any threat to Israel's "security." Therefore, the Gaza "disengagement" plan could be seen only as the realisation of a decades-old Israeli wish to get rid of something it could not keep and control.

Parallel to its plans to withdraw from Gaza, Israel has announced plans to expand its settlements in the West Bank and these announcements have convinced the Palestinians that it is not realistic to expect to work out a fair and just peace agreement with Israel enshrining the legitimate Palestinian territorial rights.

A recent opinion poll taken by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR), showed that nearly two-third of Palestinians -- 65 per cent -- believe that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has reached the "point of insolvability" and that they do not think permanent peace with Israel was possible; more importantly only 3.1 per cent of target audience in the opinion poll said they believed such a peace was possible.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has not exactly concealed his plans. He has publicly assured settlers in the West Bank that they would not be uprooted from their illegal colonies and that the Israeli authorities would seek to expand and strengthen large settlements like Maale Adumim, Gush Itzion, Ariel and others in the West Bank.

All these settlements are located within the West Bank and, given Sharon's pronouncements, it becomes clear that their expansion undermines any possibility of a just and fair Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. A key chunk of the West Bank will thus be "absorbed" into Israel by using the wall.

American deception

By extension, the realisation of this certainty has led the Palestinians into questioning and rejecting the "promise" by US President George W Bush that he would make sure that "two states" -- Israel and Palestine -- would be a reality before he leaves the White House in 2008. Their conviction is further strengthened by the fact that Bush has steadily maintained that the US would not exert any pressure on either side and it was up to the Palestinians and Israelis to work out a peace accord. Such an attitude by the US is seen as a clear case of deception since the world knows that there could not be a fair agreement without pressuring Israel into accepting the basic rights of the Palestinian people as stipulated in various UN Security Council resolutions, and the only country which could apply pressure on the Jewish state is the US. Adding insult to injury to the Palestinians is the pressure that Washington has been applying on them.

For most Palestinians, it is a foregone conclusion that the 700-kilometre "security barrier" that Israel is building through the heart of the West Bank is designed to serve as a "separation fence" between Jewish settlements and Palestinian population centers and would eventually turn out to be the "border" between Jews and Arabs living in the West Bank without actually conceding independence to the Palestinians even in those areas on the eastern side of the wall under construction.

The ideal situation for Israelis like Sharon and his hard-line camp is to grant the Palestinians a measure of "autonomy" -- they could run their towns and municipalities, operate schools and hospitals and maintain law and order within their areas without posing any "security" threat to Israelis. They would have the choice to name the land where they have control but would have no say in external security and a limited decision-making power on relations with other Arab countries.

However, Israel would not accept the Palestinians as its citizens and would not issue them Israeli passport because the Palestinian content in Israel's acknowledged population would soon outgrow the Jewish -- given the high population growth among the Palestinians --and thus undermine the very concept of Israel as a state and country for the world's Jews. It wants the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) to address such issues.

Hidden agenda

In a recent article he wrote for Aljazeera.net, Palestinian journalist Khalid Al Amayreh observes that most Palestinians are convinced that the creation of an independent and viable Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza incorporating Arab East Jerusalem was no longer a realistic option because of the known and hidden Israeli motivations and objectives.

Amayreh quoted Hatim Abdul Qadir, a member of the Palestinian legislative assembly, as saying that he recognised that the "one-state solution" where Jews and Palestinians could live equally as citizens in a unitary democratic state in all of pre-1948 Palestine (the West Bank, Gaza and Israel), would not be possible because of Israel's vehement rejection of the idea. "So all is left is perpetual strife until God decrees a solution," Abdul Qadir said.

Amayreh also quotes Atif Adwan, professor of political science at the Islamic University of Gaza, as saying: "All Israeli actions and behaviours in the West Bank and Gaza Strip since 1967 have consistently demonstrated that Israel is not interested in a true peace with the Palestinians."

The professor says Israel is interested first and foremost in "imposing its will and fait accompli" regardless of what Palestinians think.

That has been made quite clear by many Israeli politicians and leaders who argue that "all the land between the (Mediterranean) Sea and the River (presumably Jordan, but it could even be the Euphrates in Iraq) is the land that God promised to Jews." On the basis of that argument, they say, it is magnanimous on the part of Israel even to allow any non-Jew (meaning the Palestinians) to remain in the "promised land."

Interestingly, Al Qaeda has stepped into the scene and has thrown the argument flat in the Israeli face.

In an article in a new print-Internet magazine, Zerwat al Sanam (Tip of the Camel's Hump), said to be an Al Qaeda mouthpiece, someone writing under the name Abu Zubeida Al Baghdadi says that the Jews have proved themselves unworthy of the "promised land" because they are cowards who are scared to fight for their paramount value, the Promised Land, and willing to give away parts in order to shirk war. That is a reference to Sharon's promise that he supports the creation of an independent Palestinian state, albeit on Israel's terms and conditions.

Theological arguments

Baghdadi's article -- How should Islam relate to the Jews? -- is apparently the first such discussion of Israel in theological terms in any Al Qaeda publication. And it seems to have ruffled quite a few feathers in Israel.

A website which is believed to have strong links with the Mossad secret agency, analyses what the article signifies and concludes that Al Qaeda is turning its gunsights on Israel.

(Mossad itself sought to create an Al Qaeda cell in Palestine by using its own agents and the scam was immediately exposed, with the Palestinian forces arresting some of the Mossad agents who subsequently admitted that they were assigned the job by the agency).

A mother speaks out

PV Vivekanand

"Opposition to Crawford protest grows as camp expands" — this was the headline given to a report from outside US President Geroge Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, where war protesters were gathering to support an American women, Cindy Sheehan, who lost her son in the Iraq war and who is demanding that the US brings its troops home from Iraq.
Parallel to that are hundreds of Internet postings expressing solidarity with "Cindy" and a handful of other messages opposing her, accusing her of having a political agenda and contending that she is staging the protest against the wishes of her husband's parents — grandparents of her son Casey Shehan, who died in Iraq on April 4, 2004.
But despite the low media coverage of Cindy's campaign, which includes a demand for a personal meeting with Bush, it could mushroom and create intense pressure on the administration in a fashion unprecedented in American history, save some aspects of the anti-war camp that existed during the years of the Vietnam War.
Indeed, it is an all-American affair, pitting those who lost their loved ones in the war in Iraq and who have seen through the deception of the military action against a combination of others, who include families who believe that the US military is waging a justified war, those who simply support the code of military conduct (obey first and ask questions later), those who are politically aligned with the Republicans, those who rally behind whatever the government is doing (for them, the administration could never go wrong) and, finally, those aligned with the neoconservatives whose agenda is to kill any voice that is raised against the Iraq war they had planned and executed with ulterior motives that have little to do with the interests of the American people.
However, those who oppose Cindy's campaign have only slippery excuses to make. They don't want to go into the substance of her demand. She is accused of having a political agenda that is dictated by the Democrats. That might indeed be true, but then the easy and typical answer to that contention, as one could see from the web postings, is: "Of course she has an agenda. She wants to stop a war that was started with lies. Why would anyone have a problem with this?"
Some people seem to have gone a step further to discredit Cindy.
An e-mail message purportedly sent by the Shehan family is seen to have originated with the neoconvervatives and their cronies.
It says: "The Sheehan Family lost our beloved Casey in the Iraq War and we have been silently, respectfully grieving. We do not agree with the political motivations and publicity tactics of Cindy Sheehan. She now appears to be promoting her own personal agenda and notoriety at the the expense of her son's good name and reputation. The rest of the Sheehan Family supports the troops, our country, and our President, silently, with prayer and respect."
It is signed: "Casey Sheehan's grandparents, aunts, uncles and numerous cousins."
Indeed, it has all marks of authenticity. But the clinch came when anti-war campaigners failed to locate the family. They located a woman called Cherie Quartarolo, who, according to the email, is an aunt of the late soldier and lives in California.
While they could not prove she was not related to Casey Shehan, all others named in the message, including the "grandparents" of the killed soldiers, could not be traced at all.
"The powerful search engine we used to confirm her identity also tracks possible relatives, and Casey's parents, Cindy and Pat Sheehan, didn't come up, nor did any other known relatives of Casey Sheehan," says those who tried to establish the authenticity of the message.
"Also, to this date, despite all the extensive press coverage of Casey Sheehan's death and Cindy Sheehan's activism, there is nothing that mentions Quartarolo...," they said.
Well, the affair reflects the extent to which the war-mongers in the US would to quell dissent.
In Cindy's case, they have all the more to fear because she appears to be a honest-to-God American mother with a genuine grievance, which is easily shared by at least 1,720 other American families (if we take the official Pentagon figures of American deaths in Iraq since March 2003).
What does Bush say about Cindy?
Bush, in a news conference on Thursday, said he had tried to comfort many slain soldiers´ relatives and that he grieves for each loss, but did not say whether he will meet with Sheehan.
"Listen: I sympathise with Mrs. Sheehan. She feels strongly about her position. And she has every right in the world to say what she believes. This is America. She has a right to her position," Bush said. "And I thought long and hard about her position. I´ve heard her position from others, which is: Get out of Iraq now. And it would be a mistake for the security of this country and the ability to lay the foundations for peace in the long run if we were to do so."
Casey Sheehan was killed in Sadr City, Baghdad, five days after he arrived to take up duty in Iraq "because of the ruinous policies of our government," says his mother.
On Friday, Bush passed by the site where Cindy and some 100 fellow supporters, including three other mothers who lost sons in Iraq, are camped. He was on his way to a fund-raising dinner at a nearby ranch. Quite aptly, Cindy held up a banner saying: "Why do you make time for donors and not for me?"
Activists believe that Bush is refusing to meet the protester because she has said in public remarks that although she had met the president in June — as part of a military family meeting — she would like to have time with him again because it has now been clearly established that intelligence was manipulated to pave the way for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Obviously, Bush would not want to be put in a position where he would be forced to answer some blunt questions that he has been evading since July when official minutes of a July 23 meeting at the office of the British prime minister showed that the Bush administration had decided to attack Iraq and was doctoring intelligence reports to justify the action.
In any event, judging from reports coming out of Crawford indicate that Cindy's initiative could make many American families realise that they were deceived into a disastrous war by their own government. In the meantime, it subject to speculation how the war-mongers would seek to pre-empt it.
In the meantime, the campaign to support Cindy is growing.
A posting on whatreallyhappened.com refers to Bush's rejection of the demand to withdraw troops from Iraq. "Pulling the troops out would send a terrible signal to the enemy," he said on Thursday.
The posting says: "What enemy? We were told we were invading Iraq to end the threat of weapons of mass destruction. Well, there WEREN'T any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The reason we were given for this war DOES NOT EXIST. The enemy was declared to be weapons of mass destruction, so the enemy does not exist.
"Bush started a war with lies, and he is desperate to keep those lies and the war going, and it will come down to who wants it more," it says.
It tells the American people:
"Right now Bush and his neocon warhawks profiteers are urging their shills to head for Crawford to try to shout down Cindy's message. YOU need to get down there and stand with Cindy, to protect her message, to remind the nation and the world that Bush and the Neocons LIED to start this way and he will go on lying to protect it and grow it, until the entire world is aflame.
"We are out of time. If you do not choose to fight against the war-mongers now, you will soon have no choice but to fight for them from now on. There is no neutral ground. You are either part of the solution or part of the problem.
"Get in your car NOW."


With input from news agencies and websites

An 'unkept' promise

August 10 2005

'Promised land"

PV Vivekanand


MOST Palestinians and many in the Arab World and beyond do not believe that a just and fair solution to the Palestinian problem could be worked out unless regional geopolitical realities undergo dramatic changes. The core of the conflict is rooted in the Israelis' argument that Palestine is their "promised land" and this places the conflict in a religious-territorial backdrop rather than the moral-social-international context. Now, Al Qaeda seems to have entered the scene and a militant analyst is throwing the argument back at Israel's face saying that the Jews have proved themselves unworthy of the land that was "promised" to them.
ISRAEL IS poised to evacuate the occupied Gaza Strip and dismantle the Jewish settlements on the Mediterranean coastal strip. The move is projected to the outside world as a magnanimous gesture — after all no occupier voluntarily withdraws from occupied land — and as the strongest indication of Israel's willingness to work out a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians.
In reality, judging from the facts on the ground, Israel is withdrawing from Gaza but is consolidating its grip on the occupied West Bank. The Palestinians have realised it and a majority of them are convinced that a genuine peace with Israel is never possible, regardless of whatever is being said and done in public. Many of them believe that only divine intervention could help them secure their rights because of the Israeli conviction that Palestine is their "promised land."
It does not need much research to reach the conclusion that Israel is deceiving not only the Palestinians but the entire international community by projecting the Gaza "disengagement" plan as the forerunner of negotiated peace in Palestine. It is even misleading the world on the actual number of Jews sent to live in illegal colonies in the West Bank.
Figures compiled by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) show that the number of Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank is more than double the number acknowledged by Israel. In the occupied Gaza Strip, the PCBS number is less than that given by Israel.
According to PCBS figures, there are 432,275 settlers living in the illegal settlements Israel built in the occupied West Bank since 1967 and 8,140 in the occupied Gaza Strip.
The Israeli figures are 200,000 for the West Bank and 13,000 in the Gaza Strip (in 2003).
The number of formal (officially acknowledged) settlements totalled 165 in 2004, including 148 in the West Bank and 17 in Gaza Strip. There are dozens of other "illegal" settlements, which are nothing more than a couple of caravans housing three or four families.
Israel is seen as deceiving the world by removing these "illegal" settlements of not more than 20 people and showing it as a major sacrifice in order to gain sympathy for itself, Palestinian activists say.
In 2004, the number of formal urban settlements  in the West Bank (except for those parts of Jerusalem, which were "annexed" after 1967 occupation by Israel) totalled 24, distributed among population sectors as follows: 15 settlements  with a population of 2,000-5,999 settlers, three settlements  with a population of 6,000-9,999, the rest lived in settlements  of a population of 10,000-41,999 settlers. In Gaza Strip, on the other hand, there was one urban colony with a population of 2,600 settlers.
The settlers' population of rural settlements  is distributed among 124 settlements, including 50 religious settlements, 40 secular settlements  and 13 mixed others.
Israel regularly sends new immigrants, from the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and Africa, to the settlements in the West Bank.
Under the Geneva Conventions, the occupying force is not permitted to change the geopolitical and demographic features of the occupied territory. Therefore Israel is in violation of the Geneva Conventions as well as UN Security Council resolutions which demand Israeli withdrawal from the territories it occupied in the 1967 war.
Israel is planning to withdraw from the Gaza Strip beginning on Aug.17, but that withdrawal is seen as cosmetic since the settlers moved from the Gaza Strip will be settled in the occupied West Bank. In any event, the Gaza Strip, which has the most dense per square kilometre population in the world and a concentration of militant groups, has always been seen ungovernable for Israel. Many Israeli officials have said since 1967 that Israel was anxious to leave the Gaza Strip which it seized from Egypt in the 1967 war, but it could not do in the absence of any authority to hand over the land.
Even the first draft of the so-called Oslo agreements signed by Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in 1993 was called "the Gaza-Jericho" plan (Jericho is a small town in the West Bank near the River Jordan). Subsequently, Israeli leaders like Benjamin Netanyahu and others have said that Israel does not want to do anything with Gaza and the Palestinians could set up their independent state there but should not pose any threat to Israel's "security." Therefore, the Gaza "disengagement" plan could be seen only as the realisation of a decades-old Israeli wish to get rid of something it could not keep and control.
Parallel to its plans to withdraw from Gaza, Israel has announced plans to expand its settlements in the West Bank and these announcements have convinced the Palestinians that it is not realistic to expect to work out a fair and just peace agreement with Israel enshrining the legitimate Palestinian territorial rights.
A recent opinion poll taken by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR), showed that nearly two-third of Palestinians — 65 per cent — believe that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has reached the "point of insolvability" and that they do not think permanent peace with Israel was possible; more importantly only 3.1 per cent of target audience in the opinion poll said they believed such a peace was possible.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has not exactly concealed his plans. He has publicly assured settlers in the West Bank that they would not be uprooted from their illegal colonies and that the Israeli authorities would seek to expand and strengthen large settlements like Maale Adumim, Gush Itzion, Ariel and others in the West Bank.
All these settlements are located within the West Bank and, given Sharon's pronouncements, it becomes clear that their expansion undermines any possibility of a just and fair Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. A key chunk of the West Bank will thus be "absorbed" into Israel by using the wall.
By extension, the realisation of this certainty have led the Palestinians into questioning and rejecting the "promise" by US President George W Bush that he would make sure that "two states" — Israel and Palestine — would be a reality before he leaves the White House in 2008. Their conviction is further strengthened by the fact that Bush has steadily maintained that the US would not exert any pressure on either side and it was up to the Palestinians and Israelis to work out a peace accord. Such an attitude by the US is seen as clear deception since the world knows that there could not be a fair agreement without pressuring Israel into accepting the basis rights of the Palestinian people as stipulated in various UN Security Council resolutions and the only country which could apply pressure on the Jewish state is the US. Adding insult to injury to the Palestinians is the pressure that Washington has been applying on them.
For most Palestinians, it is a foregone conclusion that the 700-kilometre "security barrier" that Israel is building through the heart of the West Bank is designed to serve as a "separation fence" between Jewish settlements and Palestinian population centers and would eventually turn out to be the "border" between Jews and Arabs living in the West Bank without actually conceding independence to the Palestinians even in those areas on the eastern side of the wall under construction.
The ideal situation for Israelis like Sharon and his hard-line camp is to grant the Palestinians a measure of "autonomy" — they could run their towns and municipalities, operate schools and hospitals and maintain law and order within their areas without posing any "security" threat to Israelis. They would have the choice to name the land where they have control but would have no say in external security and a limited decision-making power on relations with other Arab countries.
However, Israel would not accept the Palestinians as its citizens and would not issue them Israeli passport because the Palestinian content in Israel's acknowledged population would soon outgrow the Jewish content — given the high population growth among the Palestinians —and thus undermine the very concept of Israel as a state and country for the world's Jews . It wants the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) to address such issues.
In a recent article he wrote for Aljazeera.net, Palestinian journalist Khalid Al Amayreh observes that most Palestinians are convinced that
the creation of an independent and viable Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza incorporating Arab East Jerusalem was no longer a realistic option because of the known and hidden Israeli motivations and objectives.
Amayreh quoted Hatim Abdul Qadir, a member of the Palestinian legislative assembly, as saying that he recognised that the "one-state solution" where Jews and Palestinians could live equally as citizens in a unitary democratic state in all of pre-1948 Palestine ( the West Bank, Gaza and Israel), would not be possible because of Israel's vehement rejection of the idea. "So all is left is perpetual strife until God decrees a solution," Abdul Qadir said.
Amayreh also quotes Atif Adwan, professor of political science at the Islamic University of Gaza, as saying: "All Israeli actions and behaviours in the West Bank and Gaza Strip since 1967 have consistently demonstrated that Israel is not interested in a true peace with the Palestinians."
The professor says Israel is interested first and foremost in "imposing its will and fait accompli" regardless of what Palestinians think.
That has been made quite clear by many Israeli politicians and leaders who argue that "all the land between the (Mediterranean) Sea and the River (presumably Jordan, but it could even be the Euphrates in Iraq) is the land that God promised to Jews." On the basis of that argument, they say, it is magnanimous on the part of Israel even to allow any non-Jew (meaning the Palestinians) to remain in the "promised land."
Interestingly, Al Qaeda has stepped into the scene and has thrown the argument flat on Israel's phase.
In an article in a new print-Internet magazine, Zerwat al Sanam (Tip of the Camel’s Hump), said to be an Al Qaeda mouthpiece, someone writing under the name Abu Zubeida Al
Baghdadi says that the Jews have proved themselves unworthy of the "promised land" because they are cowards who are scared to fight for their paramount value, the Promised Land, and willing to give away parts in order to shirk war. That is a reference to Sharon's promise that he supports the creation of an independent Palestinian state, albeit on Israel's terms and conditions.
Baghdad's article —  How should Islam relate to the Jews? — is apparently the first such discussion of Israel in theological terms in any Al Qaeda publication. And it seems to have ruffled quite a few feathers in Israel.
A website which is believed to have strong links with the Mossad secret agency, analyses what the article signifies and concludes that Al Qaeda is turning its gunsights on Israel.
(Mossad itself sought to create an Al Qaeda cell in Palestine by using its own agents and the scam was immediately exposed, with the Palestinian forces arresting some of the Mossad agents who subsequently admitted that they were assigned the job by the agency).
Says the wesbsite "analysis": "From the first week of July, the terror group’s (Al Qaeda's) releases have included 'Israel,' the 'Jews' and 'Zionists' in the same threatening context as 'infidels,' 'Crusaders' and 'sons of Satan,' the epithets reserved for the Americans and their allies."
Baghdadi's article says:
"Allah decides to test the Jews when they were still an oppressed people (in Egypt of the Pharaohs). He seeks to lead them to the path of faith and victory and therefore urges them to conquer the land of Israel (here, the writer acknowledging that God caused the Jews to return to and conquer the land of Israel). But the Jewish people’s main weakness emerges at this early stage. Its shoulders are too feeble to carry the heavy burden; the Jews always aspire to victory, but they are not willing to devote the necessary effort, sacrifice or sweat to achieve this end."
"The Jews have learned and must still learn," says Baghdadi, "that there is no victory without sacrifice."
"To this day, the Jews have not discovered that which heaven imparted to us (the Muslims), that Allah grants victory only to he who dares cross the threshold and face danger alone. But the sons of Israel want God to go before them and win their victory for them," says the article.
It goes on to say: "Throughout the generations it transpired that Jews, unlike Muslims, do not fear Allah and are incapable of understanding that the world’s moving force is fear of Allah, not of people. For example, they are even more afraid to fight for the promised land than they are of God and they do not find it hard to break the covenant between God and Abram, which awarded the land of Israel to the Jewish people for all generations."
Based on this argument, says Baghdadi, the Muslims should fight the Jews. Because, he says, "God found His effort had been in vain after bequeathing the Jews every possible means for securing victory and independence, God found his effort had been in vain. Therefore the time has come to get rid of the Jews, because that is Allah’s wish."
Baghdadi cautions that the timing for a strike against the Jews should be carefully calculated: "If it delivered too early, it could miss its objective."
The Israeli "analysis" of Baghdadi's piece says: "This heightened focus on Israel and Jews dates from the internal directive (Jordanian militant and Al Qaeda associate Abu Musab Al ) Zarqawi passed to his adherents, which said: 'Israel is on our list of targets… and very soon'.”
Indeed, Al Qaeda is reported to have announced in early August the establishment of a Gaza branch called “Al Qaeda-Palestine, Jihad Brigades in the Border Land" on Internet sites normally reserved for statements claiming attacks and Zarqawi’s operations in Iraq.
If the announcement is true, then a stepped-up war of bloodshed and attrition could be expected in Palestine in the days ahead, further complicating the efforts of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to set the ground for resumed peace negotiations with Israel.

Unwitting bombers?

July 16, 2005

INDEPENDENT intelligence sources believe that the four British Muslims named as the perpetrators of the July 7 bombings in London were unwitting victims of a plot which could have involved another group than Al Qaeda as blamed by the British government.
The theory of these sources is that the four were enlisted into what they believed was a national security exercise aimed at testing the abilities of the British authorities to handle an emergency situation.
A "security" exercise was being conducted at the time of the blasts, but this was not given wide media coverage. Peter Power, managing director of Visor Consultants, and a former Scotland Yard official who worked at one time with the Anti Terrorist Branch, was closely involved in that exercise. The drill was being conducted at the exact same stations the bombings actually occurred, he told the BBC in an interview, but few people have taken note of the report.
(It has to be noted here that on the morning of 9/11/2001 in the US, the Central Intelligence Agency was also conducting drills of flying hijacked planes into the World Trade Centre and Pentagon at 8:30am in the morning, and that was why the US air defence forces did not react to the hijackings. They thought it was a drill.
North American Air Defence (NORAD), which is in charge of intervening in the event of genuine hijackings, did not act at all even though some 22 planes were showing on NORAD radar screens as hijacked airliners at the same time. NORAD had been briefed that this was part of the exercise drill and therefore normal reactive procedure was forestalled and delayed).
Power told the BBC that at the exact same time that the London bombings were taking place, his company was running a 1,000-person strong exercise which drilled the London Underground being bombed at the exact same locations, at the exact same times, as happened in real life.
"We planned this for a company and for obvious reasons I don't want to reveal their name but they're listening and they'll know it," Power told the BBC. "And we had a room full of crisis managers for the first time they'd met and so within five minutes we made a pretty rapid decision that this is the real one and so we went through the correct drills of activating crisis management procedures to jump from slow time to quick time thinking and so on."
Intelligence experts believe that the exercise fulfilled several different goals. It acts as a cover for everyone, including the bombers who did not know that they were carrying real explosives.
Several people have reported receiving an email message before the attacks that someone was trying to hire Muslims to play terrorists for a terror drill, to try to sneak onto the trains and buses with fake bombs to test out the security.
Under this theory, the four men responded to the email, and were told they were to be part of a security exercise and they were selected because they were Muslims and this could be a key test for the security forces involved in the exercise (to intercept Muslims carrying suspect backpacks). They were also told that the bags contained dummy explosives.
The four went in different directions from King's Cross station, and someone detonated the explosives carried by three of them from a distance. The fourth, somehow, got off the train at some point and got into a bus. Perhaps he was told to do so earlier, and the explosives were detonated while he was riding the bus. Or all the four backpacks were rigged to go off at the same time, but the fourth failed to go off simultaneously with the other three and exploded more than one hour later while he was on the bus.
The accused bombers don't fit the profile of men ready to die for any cause. Some of them were not particularly religious. Therefore, the possibility is that they thought they were carrying fake bombs as part of a terror drill. This also explains the nervousness of the man on the bus who had probably just heard of the real explosions and was starting to suspect that the fake bomb he was carrying might not be fake after all, but then it went off before he could do anying.
In the meantime, someone could have planted some explsoives of the same type in the house where in Leeds police found them during raids.
Many questions remain unanswered in the official police version of the bombings:
— Why the four had bought return tickets if they were to carry out suicide bombings?
— Why did they pay parking fees and put up the "pay and display" parking coupons in their vehicles?
— One of them had a child and a pregnant wife. Another had just launched a married life. Would someone like that undertake suicide attacks?
— How come the ID documents of one bomber were found at two bombing sites?