Israel and Falashas

by pv vivekanand

In the most serious and telling move yet of its intentions to retain the Palestinian territories in its control, Israel has decided to bring in some 20,000 Jewish migrants from Ethiopia who were left behind in transfers carried out in the 1980s and 90s. While it has not been announced where they would be housed, it is a foregone conclusion that they would be herded to Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank in a process paid for by the Americans.
Israel's decision this week to authorise the immigration of 20,000 Jews from Ethiopia - otherwise known as Falasha -- exposes the reality that the government of Ariel Sharon has little or no intention of returning the occupied territories to the Palestinians and allowing the creation of a viable Palestinian state there.
There is little doubt that the newcomers would be sent to the occupied West Bank and live in Jewish settlements there -- meaning the construction of new settlements and expansion of existing ones -- and add to the nearly 200,000 settlers already living there.
The irony, if you will, is that the United States would pay for their transfer and resettlement in the West Bank without the American taxpayer being aware of it or being told about it.
It is naive to argue that the Falashas would be settled in "mainland Israel" that existed within the 1967 borders. "Black" Jewish migrants from Ethiopia smuggled to Israel in 1980s and 1990s have found it difficult to live alongside "white" Jews of European and Middle Eastern origin who look down upon them. They complain they are being segregated in separate neighbourhoods and are denied the same services as other Israelis. Hence, it is elementary that they be settled in dedicated communities away from the "mainstream" society, and that is where the West Bank comes in handy. Furthermore, it suits the thinking of Prime Minister Sharon, who wants to increase the number of Jews living in the occupied territories and thus consolidate the Jewish state's grip of the land where the Palestinians want to set up an independent state.
The 20,000 Falashas, who are also called Black Jews and Beta Israel and live in the Gondar and Tigray regions of northwestern Ethiopia, expected to be airlifted to Israel represent the last of their community there. Most of them have converted to Christianity and their assimilation into Israel would involve a "reconversion and purification" process.

Part of a pattern

The Israeli move to bring them to Palestine comes alongside a continuing flow of Jews from the former Soviet Union, and the Jewish Agency, the organisation which handles the "return" of Jews to their "promised land," is very active in the former Soviet republics scouting for potential migrants. Some 800,000 Jews arrived in Israel from the Soviet republics since the 1980s, and many families have been given free or subsidised accommodation in the illegal settlements in the West Bank.
Notwithstanding the ongoing controversy in Israel over the "Jewishness" of the Falashas and concerns that the new move could encourage many of non-Jewish origin to disguise their religious background and claim the right to d to immigrate to Israel under the country's "law of return," the decision to allow in 20,000 more Ethiopian Jews reflects nothing but Sharon's determination to fight off the Palestinian struggle for statehood.
The Israeli move also comes amid mounting fears that Sharon intends to use the chaos of the expected US-led war on Iraq to expel tens of thousands of Palestinians to the East Bank -- the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan -- in another step to quell Palestinian resistance and reduce the number of Palestinians living in the West Bank. While the feasibility of such a move and international reaction to it remain unpredictable, Jordanian commentators have expressed serious concern that the rules of the game of co-existence under the 1994 Jordan-Israeli peace treaty might not remain valid in the event of a war against Iraq.
The Jordanian fears have to been seen against the fact that Sharon has been an ardent proponent of the "Jordan is Palestine" theory and favours the en masse transfer of all Arabs -- including the nearly one million Arab Israelis -- to Jordan.

Funding the transfer

Indeed, the planned transfer of 20,000 Falashas from Ethiopia to Israel and onto the occupied West Bank demands hundreds of millions of dollars and reports in the Israeli press say that there is no government budget available for the purpose.
However, that is where the $8 billion in "loan guarantees" that Sharon is seeking from the US come into play. Officially, the loan guarantees would be used to give a kick-start to Israel's recession-hit economy, but there is little doubt that part of the loan facilities would be channelled into funding the transfer and resettlement of the wave of Falashas.
The sought-for $8 billion is in addition to $4 billion in additional military assistance and the just under $3 billion a year a year it receives automatically after it signed the 1979 Camp David agreement with Egypt. Another $2 billion to $3 billion reach Israel from the US every year in funds disguised as departmental, project-specific assistance and as direct contributions from major Jewish corporates and organisations.
Thomas Stauffer, a consulting economist in Washington and well-known critic of American aid to Israel, doubts the Israel bonds covered by the loan guarantees will ever be repaid. Stauffer argues that the bonds are likely to be structured so they do not pay interest until they reach maturity and the US would end up paying principal as well as interest in about 10 years.
He also argues that the US would also have to make good its guarantees of $10 billion in commercial loans to Israel and $600 million in "housing loans" granted in the early 90s when they reach maturity.

From 'illegal' to 'hurdle'

What would be the Bush administration's position on the loan guarantees being channelled, directly or indirectly, into financing Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories?
Officially, the US position has changed from calling the settlements illegal (in the 1980s) to describing them as a hurdle (in the 90s) in the path to peace with the Palestinians.
Recent US "initiatives" for Israeli-Palestinian peace called for a freeze in Israel's settlement activities in the occupied territories parallel to peace negotiations, but Israel has steadfastly rejected the calls. It has maintained a cool approach to the so-called "roadmap" for peace drafted the Quartet -- the US, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations -- which also calls for a suspension of Israel's building activities in the occupied lands. Obviously, the plan's objective in this context is to leave the issue of settlements to be worked out between the Palestinians and Israel -- that is, if they ever resume peace talks in the present framework. The catch there is that the US and others know only too well that Israel would not compromise on its position that it would not dismantle the settlements and the Palestinians could be eventually forced to accept that situation.
Washington officials have made no comment on the Israeli request for the loan guarantees and additional aid, but speculation is that the assistance would be given as part of a supplemental spending bill that is likely to be passed early this year, perhaps figured in and accounted along with the cost of a war with Iraq.
George Bush Senior used an Israeli request for $10 billion in housing loan guarantees to pressure the then Israeli government of Yitzhak Shamir into attending the 1991 Madrid conference where Arab-Israeli peace negotiations were launched.
Shamir said later that he had agreed to attend the conference and launch peace talks with the Arabs because of American pressure but that he had no intention of ever working out an agreement with the Palestinians. He said he wanted to stretch the negotiations for 10 or 20 years without actually yielding anything to the Palestinians.

Disguised spending

Bush Senior, coming under Arab pressure against Israel's colonialisation of the West Bank, had also attached a condition that the amount that Israel spends on its settlement activities in the occupied territories would be reduced from the guarantee amount. A few hundred million dollars were actually deducted from the loan guarantees but that were made up in other forms of American assistance to Israel.
Furthermore, the loan guarantees afforded Israel the luxury of freeing other funds to be spent on the settlements and thus reduce by more than 80 per cent the actual amount that was deducted from the credit facility guarantees by the US.
But then the loan guarantees of 1991 or that are requested now are only a flash on the pan of American aid to Israel.
Stauffer, the Washington economist, tallies that since 1973 the US has given Israel and spent $1.6 trillion to serve Israeli interests in direct and indirect forms -- more than twice the cost of the Vietnam War.
According to Stauffer, adjusting the official aid to 2001 dollars in purchasing power, Israel has been given $240 billion since 1973. In addition, the US has given Egypt $117 billion and Jordan $22 billion in foreign aid in return for signing peace treaties with Israel.
In addition are direct and indirect US losses resulting from the 1973 oil embargo, several Israeli-blocked arms sales the Arabs and directly and indirectly Israeli-linked sanctions against trade with some Arab and Middle Eastern countries.
However, these figures are not released for public knowledge in the US, although, in Stauffer's tally, every American has paid $5,700 each in aid to Israel and to protect Israeli interests since 1973.
Rather than moving to reduce its assistance to Israel, the US has been raising it over the years, and the latest loan guarantees should be seen as part of that trend, particularly when we see signs of what analysts call a "cohesive Bush-Sharon doctrine" aimed consolidating Israel's status as the dominating power in the Middle East through eliminating Iraq as a potential medium-term threat to the Jewish state.
Seen in light of that "doctrine," it does not take much imagination to reach the conclusion that the Bush administration would think nothing about American tax dollars spent for the air passage of the 20,000 Falashas from Ethiopia to Palestine, for the cost of "reconverting and purifying them" and for resettling them in Jewish colonies built on land to which Israel has no legitimate right.

Shutting out dissent

By PV Vivekanand
Shutting out voices which raise substantiated questions about the truth/lies in the Bush administration's contentions about Iraq seems to be an integral part of Washington spin doctors. The latest to suffer from what is widely perceived as a dedicated campaign to deny critics any forum was a website which has been critical of the administration's policies and allowed a former Iraqi scientist to point out the hollowness of US Secretary of State Colin Powell's contention that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons.
A website which was taken off the Internet after it carried a strong refuttal of charges made by US Secretary of State Colin Powell against Iraq early this month is back in business. While the company which hosted the site cited technical reasons for the shut-down, those who maintained the site argues that the move reflected Washington's anxiety to shut out any dissenting voice against its plans to wage war on that country.
The website, yellowtimes.org, was advised by its hosting company that the site was being shut on Feb.10, less than three days after it carried an article by Imad Khadduri, a former Iraqi nuclear scientist, countering Powell's allegations against Iraq made in a Feb.5 speech at the UN.
The operators of the website has found a new server and host and is now accessible under the same address, according to Firas Al Atraqchi, who is a regular columnist on the website.
Atraqchi says that "the campaign to stifle dissent and censor any questioning of current US policies vis a vis the Middle East in general, and Iraq in particular, has reached new levels."
He asserted that websites which host alternative views, and/or views that contradict US foreign policy are no longer tolerated on the Internet and are systematically coming under hacker attack and political pressures to "relocate."
The hosting company claimed that "we were using up too many CPU resources and therefore slowing down their other sites," said Atraqchi. "By CPU resources, I do not mean hard drive
space or bandwidth. We did not exceed what we were paying for (over $100 a month). Yet we were told that they simply no longer had the technical requirements to run our site as is."
He adds that the site had been under "constant malicious attack from people (and groups) regarding our content -- e-mail attacks, defamation, hacking into our website, and possibly denial of service attacks."
Imad Khadduri's articles on the Iraqi nuclear science programme only heightened such activities, says Atraqchi.
The YellowTimes.org website, according to Atraqchi, drew fire because it published views that "directly question, criticise, and berate the US official line regarding the impending invasion of Iraq."
Khadduri, who is now based in Canada, wrote under the title "the nuclear bomb hoax" that the "evidence" that Powell said the US had against Iraq was at best flimsy.
Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, in his Feb.14 report to the UN Security Council, has also raised questions about Powell's assertions.
The charges Powell made in his speech reveal the US administration's "untenable attempt to cover with a fig leaf their thread bare arguments and misinformation campaign" against Iraq, wrote Khadduri, who cited a series of questions based on the realities on the ground in Iraq. These realities, he said, quashed Powell's allegations.
Khadduri, who has a MSc in Physics from the University of Michigan and a PhD in Nuclear Reactor Technology from the University of Birmingham, wrote that Powell had a wrong translation of a declaration that Iraqi scientists were asked to sign with a condition that they faced execution if they did not abide by it. The declaration, according to Powell, bound the signatory not to reveal secrets to the International Automic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspection teams.
"Exactly the opposite is true," said Khadduri, who worked with the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission from 1968 until 1998. "The four or five, as I recall such declarations, which I read in detail, held us to the penalty of death in the event that we did not hand in all of the sensitive documents and reports that may still be in our possession."
"Had Powell's intelligence services provided him with a copy of these declarations, and not depended on testimonies of "defectors" who are solely motivated by their self-promotion in the eyes of their "beholders," and availed himself to a good Arabic translation of what these declarations actually said, he would not, had he in any sense been abiding by the truth, mentioned this as "evidence." 
According to Khadduri, "the cache of documents" seized from the house of scientist Faleh Hamza and cited by Powell as evidence that Iraq is hiding or is still working on its "third" uranium enrichment process was actually reported to the UN inspectors in 1997.
The documents contained the summary of a failed project that dated back to 1988 and that the disclosure of the programme had been acknowledged by Mohammed Al Baradei, the head of the IAEA, according to Khadduri, who was able to leave Iraq in late 1998 with his family. and now teaches and works as a network administrator in Toronto, Canada
"The 3,000 pages of documents were financial statements and Faleh's own lifetime research work, and had nothing to do with the nuclear weapon programme," wrote Khadduri. "That is why he kept them at his home."
"Powell only accused but did not provide any evidence that Iraq had tried to get nuclear grade fissile material since 1998," according to Khadduri. "He vainly gave the impression that everything was set and readily waiting for just this material to be acquired and the atomic bomb would be rolling out the other door."
Khadduri has also charged Khidhir Hamza, a former Iraqi scientist with whom Khadduri worked, with fabricating and exaggerating his importance in Iraq's nuclear program outlined in Hamza's book "Saddam's Bombmaker."
Khadduri wrote that Powell should have sought answers to some key questions in order to find the truth behind his charges. These included:
"Where is the scientific and engineering staff required for such an enormous effort when almost all of them have been living in abject poverty for the past decade, striving to simply feed their families on $20 a month, their knowledge and expertise rusted and atrophied under heavy psychological pressures and dreading their retirement pension salary of $2 a month? 
"Where is the management that might lead such an enterprise? The previous management team of the nuclear weapon programme in the eighties exists only in memories and reports. Its members have retired, secluded themselves, or turned to fending for their livelihood of their families. 
"Where are the buildings and infrastructure to support such a programme? The entire nuclear weapon programme of the 80s has been either bombed by the Americans during the war or uncovered by the IAEA inspectors. It is impossible to hide such buildings and structures. Powell should only take a look at North Korea's atomic weapon facilities, or perhaps even Israel's, to realise the impossibility of hiding such structures with the IAEA inspectors scouring everything in sight."
"Powell need only ask those on the ground, the IAEA inspectors delegated by the UN upon America's request, to receive negative answers to all of the questions above," according to Khadduri. "Instead, he chose to fabricate an untruth."

US weaving a web of lies

by 'Inad Khairallah (pen name)

IT IS DISGUSTING at best and frustrating at worst to hear senior US officials continuing to air their self-deceptive contentions about Iraq as they try to con the world into accepting that there is legitimate ground for war against that country. It is as if the rest of the world is ignorant, could not think on its own, and is incapable for ascertaining facts for itself.
The US approach is indeed typical: The US wants to wage war on Iraq in order to serve its strategic, economic and political interests and it is building a web of unsubtantiated allegations and hypothetical scenarios tailored to suit its thinking. Nothing that contradicts its thinking is allowed to stand in its way.
It is like fixing a dome in the air on wobbling poles and then trying to build those poles into concrete pillars. The blatant doctoring of academic studies into intelligence documents is only part of that effort and should not surprise anyone.
It is definitely not as if the US is working through the UN process to prove beyond any trace of doubt that Iraq is in material breach of Security Council resolutions. Washington is perched high in the middle of its planned war scenario, trying to affirm to the world at every given opportunity and building the slightest question against Iraq into massive arguments for war. We heard National Security Council Advisor Condaleeza Rice on CNN on Sunday repeating the themes that Iraq had 12 years to disarm but did not and that Baghdad is a "serious abuser" of UN Security Council resolutions.
It was even more revulsive to hear Rice talk about the UN's credibility and how US viewed the Security Council as the strongest and most powerful international body whose orders have to be obeyed by the world community because that was the very purpose for which it was created.
It is on old story anyway, and it is being replayed now but it only goes to highlight the double-standards that the US had consistently followed while dealing with the Middle East.
Conveninently ignoring the international rejection of a unilateral US war against Iraq and demand for a UN context for such action that forced President George W. Bush into seeking Security Council Resolution 1441, Rice spoke as if her boss had voluntarily taken the issue to the Security Council in September in all good faith.
Don't we all know that Bush was cornered into entering the council rather than voluntarily going in? Don't we know that had it not been for bitter opposition from fellow Security Council permanent members France, Russia and China coupled with bitter European, Arab, Muslim and Third World criticism that left Bush little choice but to seek some grain of legitimacy for his plans against Iraq through the UN?
Indeed, assumptions like those made by Rice and her colleagues in Washington, including Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others as well Bush's spin doctors could be swallowed by Americans, but not people in this part of the world.
We wish there was some way of reminding them that we could see through their game because we know the realities on the ground in this region.
We also heard Rice talk about the need to preserve the UN Security Council all-embracing authority in world affairs, and how Iraq's behaviour was in total disregard of Security Council decisions. One would indeed be prompted by hearing such lofty assertions that the US and indeed the world community had always taken every country to task for violating UN Security Council resolutions.
Just in case Rice has a short memory, let us remind her:
For more than 50 years Israel has consistently violated UN Security Council resolutions with impunity. It has scoffed at the resolutions, rejecting them out of hand and continuing its practices as if it was beyond the UN Security Council's authority -- that was emphatically highlighted by Rice on Sunday.
For more than 34 years Israel has illegally occupied other's territory. It has refused to accept international conventions and charters that uphold the rights of the Palestinians and reject human rights violations.
It has steadfastly refused to allow UN investigators entry to the Palestinians territories it occupies.
We would like to ask Rice and her colleagues a few questions:
Where is the authority of the Security Council when confronted with the Israeli refusal every year when the investigators seek to go in?
Where was the authority of the Security Council when Israel contented that the mandatory Fourth Geneva Conventions do not apply to the territories it occupies?
Where is the authority of the Security Council when Israel rejects implemention of Resolution 242 of 1967 and 338 of 1973 -- and indeed the dozens of other council demands since 1948?
Where is the authority of the Security Council when Israel scoffs at demands that it sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and open its nuclear programmes for inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency?
Why is the Security Council keeping quiet while it is known that Israel's stockpile of weapons of mass destruction is more than those of all other countries in the Middle East put together?
And then we are told by people like Rice of the need to disarm Iraq; even at that there is no substantiation that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction.
It is adding insult to injury when we are reminded of Iraq's violations of UN resolutions while we know that Israel is in material breach of at least 70 Security Council resolutions (not to mention the scores of draft resolutions that were vetoed by its guardian angel, the US).
It is all the more ironic or even funny that the US administration officials pushing hard to open up the guns against Iraq could keep a straight face while coming out with assertions that any level-headed person would reject.
Who knows, perhaps they themselves are so much indoctrinated that they have started to believe in what they are saying.

Mossad and Kenya

pv vivekanand

ISRAEL has gone silent on its investigations into the November attacks against Israeli targets in Mombassa, Kenya, and the silence is alarming and could herald stunning revelations of the nefarious operations of its super-secret spying agency, Mossad.
It was no empty pledge that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon made when he vowed that the notorious Mossad would launch its own investigations and exact revenge for the attacks.
Mossad is ruthless and employs whatever means available to it to accomplish its mission. These could include murder, intimidation, blackmail and other "incentives" to enlist help from whatever source, and the agency leaves no trace behind. "The dead can't talk," that is the philosophy followed by Mossad, as Israeli commentators have affirmed.
For all we know, Mossad could have already traced those behind the attacks and spirited them away to Israel for questioning. An Israeli announcement could be made when Mossad feels it is safe to do so.
Mossad would have no consideration whatsoever except its secrecy and confidentiality even if those could delay a triumphant announcement by the Israeli government of "success in hunting down the enemies of the Jewish people."
Who knows, it could be Sharon's master stroke to make up for the loss of popularity and decline in prospects for an election victory resulting from corruption allegations.
Regardless of the politics involved, it is a fair conclusion that Mossad would have devoted itself to the assigned task of bringing the Mombassa attackers to Israeli-style "justice."
Mossad has an added incentive. It has to "redeem" itself after it suffered a series of setbacks in recent years leading what many see as a crisis of confidence in an agency once seen as a ruthless and highly efficient secret service.
Reports from Africa indicate that Mossad agents are targeting Somalia as the prime area for investigations, probably because of suspicions that Al Ittihad Al Islamiya of that country was alleged to have ties with Al Qaeda.
However, fair-skinned Israelis would stick out like a sore thump in Somalia. As such, the agency is said to be using Ethiopian immigrants to Israel -- the so-called Falasha Jews of Ethiopia -- and other Africans as its operatives in Somalia and elsewhere in the continent.
That is only a flash of the techniques employed by Mossad, which has been responsible for assassinating dozens of Palestinians, Arabs and others who were seen as potential sources of threat for Israel in whatever manner and form.
The "reputation" stemming from those "successes" suffered a series of setbacks in recent years as a result of blotched operations.
These included:
In February 1999, two agents were arrested in Cyprus near prohibited military areas. They were carrying cameras and investigations showed that they were taking photographs for possible delivery to Turkey.
In March 1999, a retired Mossad agent was convicted of fabricating intelligence reports suggesting Syria was about to attack. It was his Mossad background that had lent credibility to the claims.
In February 1998, Mossad agents were caught installing bugging equipment at an apartment in Berne, Switzerland. In a trial that ended in July 2000, One of them was given a one-year suspended prison term and barred from entering Switzerland for five years.
The wire-tapping operation targeted a Swiss citizen of Lebanese origin who Mossad suspected of having links with Lebanon's Hizbollah. The man testified during the trial that he had no links whatsoever with the group.
Israel had furnished a $2 million bail for its operative to secure his release and kept a promise of sending him back for trial. That infuriated Mossad agents to threatening an unprecedented strike and refusal to take up missions in protest against what they saw as a lack of backing from their superiors.
The worst of Mossad operations came in September 1997 where two agents were caught in Amman after they poured a slow-acting poison into the ear of Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal. Israel had to provide an antidote to the poison and also release Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin as well as dozens of Jordanian and Palestinian leaders in return for the two detained agents in Amman who were travelling on false Canadian passports.
Danny Yaton survived as chief of Mossad at the time of the Amman operation until February 1998 but was forced to resign after the agency carried out an in-house investigation.
The Kenyan capital of Nairobi is one of Mossad's main operating bases in Africa. Reports have suggested that it was Mossad which informed the US that Felicien Kabuga, one of the leading figures wanted for crimes in the Rwandan genocide of 1994, was being sheltered in Kenya. Subsequently, the US started applying pressure on Nairobi to hand him over for trial at the Rwandan War Crimes Tribunal.
The timing of the revelation is suspect since it followed the November attacks in Mombassa and a change of guard in the Kenyan government after late December elections.
As such, some observers believe, Mossad used its US connections to apply pressure on the new Kenyan government to ensure it co-operated with the Israeli investigations into the Mombassa bombing.
It would seem to be a far-fetched theory even though it could not be ruled out in view of Mossad's chequered record of exploiting situations to its advantage.
Ten Kenyans and three Israelis were killed when an Israeli-owned hotel near Mombassa is blown up by a car bomb. A simultaneous rocket attack on an Israeli airliner failed and a statement - purportedly from the Al Qaeda network -- claimed responsibility for the two attacks. It also threatened more attacks on Israeli and US targets.
In mid-December, Kenyan police cleared six Pakistanis and three Somalis who were detained after the attacks. They were only charged with entering Kenya illegally and faced fines and deportation.
Kenyan police are still questioning three people who they say witnessed the sale of the car they allege was used in the attack on the hotel.
Police have released computer-generated images of two men they suspect carried out the failed missile attack,
If, as claimed, Al Qaeda was behind the attacks, then we would be witnessing a scenario that involves Mossad tactics matched against the labyrinth of Osama Bin Laden's followers.
And indeed, the war could already be in action behind the scenes and it would have wider implications than simple Mossad-style assassinations.

Israel paid to stay out of war

by pv vivekanand

When United Airlines appealed for $1.8 billion loan guarantees to bail itself out of financial troubles, the Bush administration turned down the plea and the airline went bust. Today, Israel is seeking $8 billion in loan guarantees and the administration appears to be more than willing to extend it, but Israel is not going to go bust if it does not receive it.
In fact, the $8 billion sought by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is in addition to another $4 billion, which would eventually be converted to aid, and that is the price Washington is paying Sharon to stay out of a possible US-led war against Iraq. That is the way leading American commentators see it, and they include columnist and former presidential hopeful Pat Buchanan.
Indeed, it is an issue to debated among American taxpayers. They are footing the bill for what their administration calls as "strategic partnership" with Israel and they should be the ones to demand an explanation to the lopsided policies of their government in the Middle East.
If they need any pointers -- from the look of things it would seem that they do indeed need a nudge since the mainstream media that reach them do not tell them the full truth -- let us remind the Americans that their country is officially paying $3.1 billion in annual aid to Israel, not to mention an equal amount that reaches Israel as contributions from powerful Jewish organisations. In addition are the periodic doses of hundreds of millions of dollars disguised as "emergency assistance," "special project aid" and various other forms. These allocations need not be cleared through the US Congress since the funding comes from the budgets of the various departments of the administration.
The American taxpayers should be looking at the per capita "tax" that they are paying to maintain their administration's "strategic" ties with Israel. Has it been useful to defending the security and safety of Americans, whether in the US or outside? Well, if anything, the US has only reaped the hostility of the Arabs and Muslims around the world. This makes it a simple equation: American tax dollars are sent to Israel and spent on increasing hostility towards the US. It has made life difficult for Americans, and, today the number of countries where American lives are perceived to be under threat and hostility is more than where they are deemed safe and secure.
As Buchanan highlighted it, "journalists and diplomats alike, returning from the Mideast, attest that our almost-blind support of Israel is a major cause of the anti-Americanism that is sweeping the Islamic world."
"Why should we do this?" he asked. "What does America get out of this? What has all the $100 billion in aid we have shovelled out to Israel bought us, other than ingratitude and the enmity of the Arab World?"
Buchanan's sharp references to the unhealthy relationship between the US and Israel represent a segment of the conservatives in the American society, but it is a minority.
However, the silver lining in the horizon, if you will, is the gradual increase in the number of people who realise that there is something wrong in the US approach to the Middle East.
Among them is Victor Marshall, a research fellow at the Independent Institute, a public policy group,.
In Jan.5 issue of the Los Angeles Times, Marshal wrote a courageous article "The lies we are told about Iraq."
He asserts that during the Gulf war of 1991, the then administration of George Bush Senior of misrepresenting the "cause of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the nature of Iraq's conduct in Kuwait and the cost of the Gulf war."
He says that the administration demonised Iraq, exaggerated Iraq's military capabilities, and used
"the confrontation to justify a more expansive and militaristic foreign policy in the post-Vietnam era."
Isn't it ironic? But the irony seems to lost on the American public at large.
On the political front, US President George W.Bush, who is reportedly "very understanding" of the Israeli request for $12 billion, seems to have a short memory.
When, in mid-2001, when Bush articulated his "vision" of Israel and a Palestinian state existing side by side, it was none other than Sharon who warned him off and had the audacity to assert that Israel had more clout in the US Congress than the president himself. Wasn't such an assertion the deepest of the depths of humiliation and insult to an American president?
Wasn't it Sharon who scoffed at Bush, who seemed to have put the prestige of the White House on the firing line and publicly asked him to withdraw the Israeli army from the West Bank?
In simpler terms, Sharon -- and indeed his predecessors -- have always acted as if it was the God-assigned responsibility and duty of the US to back Israel to the hilt wherever, whenever and however asked to do so even it meant losing American prestige and credibility. Whenever the administration showed any reluctance, Israeli leaders have always whipped out their ace card and threatened to "go to the American Congress and people."
Well, Washington has not behaved any different from the Israeli expectations either. That could perhaps also explain why the US spent more than half of the $2.5 billion funding for the much-touted "Arrow" missile defence system for Israel and seems to be willing to shell out another $1 billion for a third battery of the missile system that offers a protective umbrella against missiles that might come Israel's way.
However, the Arabs and Palestinians could not maintain silence and leave it to American debate. The US "aid" to Israel has a direct bearing on life in the Middle East. The $8 billion "loan guarantees" sought by Israel are to be spent on building more settlements in the occupied West Bank to further the Israeli grip on the Palestinian territories. It would only compound the already complex problems that need to be sorted out when the time comes up for realistic peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
Again it is only a small patch in the overall picture of the Arab-Israeli equation. Had it not been for the almost unlimited political, military, diplomatic and financial support that the US extended to Israel over the decades, Israel would not have been encouraged to ridicule international laws and conventions and the situation in the Middle East today would have been different.
Amid the mounting US-condoned Israeli brutality against the Palestinians and rising clouds of war against Arab Muslim Iraq, one could only hope for a miracle that Washington wakes up to the realities of its policies and comprehend that its blind support for Israel and obvious hostility towards the Arabs are leading the Middle East to a disaster.

Who will wink first

PV Vivekanand

I was asked the other day what I thought was the reason for the contrasting American approach to Iraq and North Korea. The US insists on a military confrontation with Iraq which says it has no weapons of mass destruction and poses no threat to its neighbourhood. On the other hand, the US is softpedalling around North Korea which has openly declared it is capable of producing nuclear weapons and poses a threat to US allies South Korea and Japan, and, if need be, the US itself.
Well, I had thought, until the question was put to me, that the situation was fairly clear and did not really need an explanation since the whole affair was and is superficial. There was never the possibility of the Korean "dispute" getting out of hand and North Korea firing a nuclear weapon (not that it is known it has one; even if it had, it knows well that it would definitely lead to the obliteration of North Korea as we know it today. There is no reason to believe that the reclusive North Korean leadership is turning suicidal either).
On the surface, North Korea has done everything to attract international punitive measures of a higher intensity than Iraq warrants. It has been established that it has a nuclear weapons programme and it is not willing to co-operate with the world community, whereas it has yet to be proven that Iraq has such a programme and Baghdad is indeed co-operating with UN weapons inspectors .
Why still the US says diplomacy is the way to resolve the Korean "crisis" while it maintains that military means is the way to deal with Iraq?
In direct comparison, it was the US which pushed the Iraq situation into a real crisis and created the possibility of war for purposes that suit American interets, while North Korea was the culprit on the Asian front but with non-war objectives in mind.
The contradiction between the two "problems" is also clear: the US intends to follow up its anti-Iraq campaign with a war in the Middle East whereas North Korea seems to be the last country interested in war and the US would not be drawn into one either.
Pyongyang's implied and implicit suggestions that poses a nuclear threat in its neighbourhood are the roar of a paper tiger aimed at realising its objective of solving critical internal crises. It is hoping to kill two birds with one stone -- securing external help without compromising its isolationist ideology or exposing its leadership to political risks. And it seeks a position to strength to drive a hard bargain.
Deeply mired in economic problems that have led to starvation and mounting unrest among its people and political isolation that has denied timely external help, the North Korean leadership wants a way out. Pyongyang believes that the US is its best bet for securing foreign aid, including food and fuel. But the Stalinist leadership also knows that they would have to "lose face" if they were to seek direct help and that such help would be at the expense of opening up the country which they are not yet ready to do.
North Korea has also accepted the reality that it could no longer count on its traditional friend China to pull it out of the quagmire. Beijing has its own preoccupation with its newfound economic strength without compromising communism and it is highly unlikely that it would risk a halt to its international windfall by throwing its weight behind a "loser" like North Korea.
As such, it appears to me, Pyongyang found the best means to solve its internal problems through external engagement, and the process was launched from a confrontational approach to the US.
It announced that it had violated a 1994 nuclear agreement with the US, was determined to pursue its nuclear plans, kicked out nuclear inspectors, and broke open the seals of a mothballed nuclear plant deemed capable of producing a nuclear bomb. The world has no idea at this point in time whether such a bomb has already been produced, is being produced or whether the country already had a nuclear arsenal at the outset of the "dispute."
In retaliation, the US and others suspended aid to North Korea and turned off the fuel taps, but Washington has consistently maintained that the way out of the crisis was through diplomacy and dialogue. It has ruled out a pre-emptive strike to eliminate North Korea's nuclear facilities and it has not assembled military force to do so either.
As such, it emerges that Washington is fully aware of North Korea's ulterior objective of sitting down to discuss and resolve the "dispute" and there is little chance of a military conflict erupting in the Korean peninsula despite the mix of threatening rhetoric and calls for diplomatic talks oozing out of Pyongyang.
Armed with that knowledge that North Korea is seeking to assume a high ground -- a positions of strength from its point of view -- in eventual negotiations to settle the crisis, the US is letting Pyongyang have its way for the time being until Washington is ready to sit down for talks. Under normal circumstances, the anti-US language coming out of North Korea is not the kind of talk that Washington would tolerate, but then it knows it is not a war cry but an invitation to dialogue.
Indeed, in public statements, the US has ruled out any negotiations with North Korea saying it would be tantamount to nuclear blackmail. It demands that Pyongyang freezes its nuclear weapons programmes first. But North Korea believes agreeing to the US demand would show that it is vulnerable to pressure and therefore rules it out.
South Korea and Japan are caught in the middle. They are not fully convinced and pacified that the North would not use nuclear weapons against them, but then such successful pacification would not serve the US strategic objective of maintaining control in the region since the bogeyman in the equation would cease to exist.
In the US-North Korean dispute it is only a matter of who will wink first and what could follow is a tug-of-war to determine how much Washington -- and its allies -- are willing to foot the bill and take care of Pyongyang's chronic internal problems.

US hoodwinking the world

PV VIVEKANAND


ALONG WITH the growing certainty of a US-led war against Iraq, it is becoming abundantly clear that Washington would be a fighting the war partly for Israel as much as for driving a deep stake of military control in the Gulf region that would suit its strategic interests, primarily in the international oil market.
US officials doing the rounds through the Middle East ahead of the possible war against Iraq have been known to have promised Arab leaders that Washington needs to take care of the Iraq crisis -- that is of American making in the first place in any case -- before turning the wagon to Palestine.
There is as much substance in the American pronouncements that the US is seeking a fair and just Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement as in there is life in the Dead Sea. The Bush administration's promises that it would get around to serious efforts to just, fair, comprehensive and durable peace in Palestine after it takes care of the Saddam Hussein regime in Baghdad ring hollow since its track record speaks otherwise.
Indeed, the US wants to see peace in Palestine but only at Israel's terms, and that would little semblance of justice, fairness, comprehensiveness or durability.
The shape of peace that the US favours is designed by Israel, and the clearest indication of that came is in the added emphasis in the "revised road map" of the Quartet on the conditions it imposes on the Palestinians by insisting that they end their resistance against occupation while demanding little from Israel.
No doubt, US President George W Bush will definitely seek to settle the crisis in Palestine after the war on Iraq, but the outcome of the American effort would be a peace agreement being forced down the Palestinian throat, with the Arab World and the international community unable to step in and help rectify the lopsidedness.
It is a different story whether the Palestinians would accept any Israeli-designed peace, and Washington should know it better than anyone. But then it has not diluted Washington's hoodwinking assertions.
In the meantime, the sole Middle Eastern beneficiary from sought-for removal of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, coupled with the installation of a US-friendly (read US-controlled) regime in Baghdad, would be Israel.
For the US, a successful war would open the door for gaining absolute control of Iraq, with all that it entails -- including a base for its military in the region without being held answerable to anyone and the strategic prize of Iraq's oil wealth at its disposal.
That is not to underplay the immense dangers facing the US military in Iraq and prospects of a protracted conflict there that would put off any prospects of peace in Palestine and would only worsen the continuing cycle of violence there.
For Israel, Iraq would cease to be a source of military threat as Israeli leaders like Ariel Sharon and others go around executing their sinister designs in Palestine and elsewhere in the region, including Syria and Lebanon.
As such, there is indeed deceptive substance in American claims that "the road to Arab-Israeli peace will go through Baghdad," with the only difference being the conflicting interpretation of what fair, just and durable peace means.
Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, who recently visited the Middle East and met Sharon, told a Chicago audience upon his return home: "Military force alone will neither assure a democratic transition in Iraq, bring peace to Israelis and Palestinians, nor assure stability in the Middle East."
According to Hagel, Sharon admitted as much in a private conversation with Hagel and other members of the US Congress that the greatest US assistance to Israel would be to get rid of Saddam Hussein.
Why would Sharon hold Saddam as his arch enemy?
There are many reasons indeed. It was under Saddam that Iraq had tried to develop its nuclear programmes before Israel bombed out the country's nuclear research plant in Baghdad in 1981; Iraq has a track record of taking part in every Arab-Israeli war; its army has acquired better combat skills than any other Arab country from the 1980-88 war with Iran; Saddam refuses to recognise Israel and openly supports and even funds Palestinian resistance in the occupied territories.
Many Arab political observers entertain the notion that the machinations towards a war against Iraq would be frozen if Saddam declares in public today that he recognises the state of Israel and is ready to deal with it. That might indeed be stretching the issue too far at this point in time, but that the idea exists in the Arab mind highlights the perception that the US would be removing a major thorn on Israel's side by ousting Saddam.
Concrete signs of the US moves in the Middle East are largely Israel-centric have also been given by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, who has been going around Capitol Hill meetings maintaining that Lebanon's Hizbollah and not Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda is the most dangerous "terrorist" organisation and needs to be taken care of. It was as if Sharon had moved in and was speaking up.
Rice has no explanation to offer when confronted with the question that Hizbollah has no recent record of taking part in any action outside the region or mounting attacks against any government except that of Israel.
Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the Hizbollah leader, pointed out in a recent interview that "outside this fight [against Israel], we have done nothing." Indeed, the group's anti-US rhetoric is fierce and bitter but that comes in the context of Washington's unreserved support for Israel.
Against the reality that Israel lives in perpetual fear of Hizbollah, which forced an end to the Israeli occupation of south Lebanon, Rice's unfounded claim is nothing but a reflection that the US is being manipulated by Israel and American gunsights could turn to Hizbollah after Iraq - meaning that Bush's war against terrorism is also being redesigned to fit Israel.

Israel and world domination

PV Vivekanand

IT IS irony at its peak that Israel is seeking to add to its hi-tech arsenal deployed in its ruthless campaign to wipe out Palestinian resistance, skilfully forcing others into a position of being taken for granted that its annihilation of the Palestinian people has become business as usual.
A classic case has come up with Israel applying pressure on Germany to provide advanced armoured personnel carriers.
The relationship between Germany and Israel has always been characterised by Israel's blatant exploitation of the Germans' feeling of "guilt" over its Nazi past. Indeed, Israel has never wasted an opportunity to capitalise on what it has established as "European collective guilt for the Holocaust," but Germany had been singled out for "special treatment." Never mind that Israelis are engaged in Nazi-like practices against the Palestinians.
That is only one piece of a larger picture where Israel has consistently been successful in manipulating the elements available to it through a powerful propaganda machinery that functions round the clock, exploiting every opportunity to advance Israeli interests with no niceties and compromises.
It was no wonder that Germany was one of the main benefactors of Israel for several decades. Germany was also the first country to send its foreign minister to Israel with a cheque for $150 million and an offer of anti-missle missiles when the first Iraqi Scud landed in Tel Aviv after the US launched the Gulf war in 1991. It was a reflection of Germany's Israeli-nurtured sentiment that the long-persecuted Jews were in mortal danger of annihilation in their newfound home.
This time around also, Germany has agreed to provide US-built Patriot missiles to Israel if Iraq launches Scud missiles against it as during the 1991 war, and indeed Israel is bidding for the best of what it could get from the Germans since it knows well the German generocity might not linger for much longer.
The Berlin government cut off direct financial aid to Israel in the mid-90s when such assistance became incompatible with the base parameters adopted by the Germans: the per capita income in Israel broke the $15,000 ceiling set by Germany for recipients of direct financial assistance.
In all probability, the German sense of "guilt" would not last beyond this generation, and Israel is out to make hay. But we are faced with an immediate situation where the international community is growing accustomed to accepting Israel's use of massive military power against the Palestinians as a way of life in Palestine.
The Israeli request for German-made Fuchs armoured vehicles is a classic case of such exploitation, but it is an open challenge to German laws which ban supply of military equipment to countries involved in armed conflict. Israel has stepped up pressure on the German government to ensure that the request is granted.
Moshe Katsav, the Israeli president, has the audacity to tell the Germans that he could not assure them that the APCs would not be used in Israel's brutal military oppression of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Indeed, the government of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder might find it immediately difficult t meet the Israeli demand for Fuchs APCs, particularly that the pacifist-oriented Greens, junior partners in the coalition, oppose the move.
However, Katsav's comments were very telling and seemed based on confidence that Israel would be able to circumvent the Greens' objections.
He said Israel would be "very disappointed" if the German answer was no. "As we usually have very good relations, I hope we will find an agreement in this matter," he said.
While the statement could mean sincerity if it was made in good faith, we know that no Israeli leader is known for good faith promises, and, as such, it is a clear affirmation that the APCs would indeed be deployed against the Palestinians.
It is not a good faith situation either; Israel has not baulked at using US-made F-15 fighter/bombers and British-made heavy tanks as well as almost every weapon in its arsenal -- save massive nuclear, chemical and biological arms -- against the Palestinians. It has made no apology to the US or the UK although "end-usage" stipulations related to the supply of military hardware bans such use. But then neither the US nor the UK has exactly been very concerned about the issue as if they could not care less if Israeli blew up the entire West Bank and Gaza -- along with the Palestinians there -- into smithereens. Britain has even started supplying hi-tech electronic gear to be fitted in F-16 fighter/bombers to be supplied by the US to Israel with little regard to any consideration that F-16s are regularly used in Israel's war to annihilate the Palestinian peole; most notable of such use was when Israel dropped a one-tonne bomb in a Gaza neighbourhood that killed 16 people, most of them children, two months ago.
There is a common theme to the Israeli and Palestinian situations with Germany and Britain in that order: If anyone accepts that the Germans has a "historical" responsibility to rally behind Israel, then it should also be noted in equally strong terms that the colonial British government was directly responsible for the plight facing the Palestinians today. The Palestinian problem is a direct result of a British conspiracy with the world Zionist movement that dates back to the turn of the century that led to the creation of the Jewish state in the land of Palestine at the expense of the Palestinian people who lived there in their ancestral land.
Indeed, it is the inability of the Palestinians that they could not implant in Britain the same sense of guilt as Israel has done with Germany. Then again, few in the Arab World have ever managed to do a successful public relations exercise in the West by skilfully using realities and the various elements and extensions of arguments to benefit them. It could be argued that the Israeli propaganda and public relations machinery is so effective that the Arab exercises simply bounce off the West; simply put, it has been a high-stake political battle of wits that the Arabs have lost.
The growing dispute between the United Nations and Israel after the death of at three UN employees, including a Britain who was deliberately shot and killed last month, is just another example of the high state of alert that the Israeli machinery maintains. At any given point in time, Israel has the answers -- never mind their justifiability -- and it has learnt to use them effectively.
The UN, which has censured Israel for the killings, now finds itself at the receiving end of allegations that UN vehicles were being used to transport Palestinians heading for bombing operations within the occupied territories and beyond the 1967 green line.
Israel has jacked up the allegations, which it says are based on intelligence findings, by imposing restrictions on the movement of UN vehicles in the occupied West Bank, and now the world body finds itself cornered into defending itself against the charges rather than being in a position to demand that UN personnel be spared from Israeli assaults and gunfire.
That the level of degeneration that the UN has been forced into by Israel, and, sure enough, without a concerted long-term Arab movement backed by friends of the Arab World, Israel would soon clear the last laps in its race to be in a position to call the shots anywhere in any situation -- the ultimate realisation of the Zionist dream for world domination.

Blair means war on Iraq

By PV Vivekanand

ONE COULD not but sympathise with British Fire Brigades Union leader Andy Gilchrist when he says that Prime Minister Tony Blair is ready to spend money on waging war against Iraq but not to offer a payrise for firefighters. For that matter, Blair should indeed be looking at other pressing issues at home in addition to the demands of the striking firefighters, and, for sure, he would not find equally important problems lacking.
Indeed, the issue is British and it is up to Britons to demand their money should not be spent on waging an American war several thousand kilometres away that would also undermine the country's ties with the Arab World.
In all probability, an overwhelming majority of British voters would not approve their money being squandered on military action which does not make much sense among Britons in terms of what they stand to gain from it (except given a role to play as lieutenants in a self-styled American-captained international police force that few are willing to accept anyway).
But then, a war on Iraq would affect the lives of everyone around in the Middle East, and, as such, we could not but take an interest and try to figure out why Blair is perched high behind US President George W.Bush's war wagon on the way to Baghdad.
It is not known yet how much the British treasury would be forking out to pay for the British military involvement in a US-spearheaded war against Iraq with the aim of toppling Saddam Hussein and replacing him with a US-friendly (US-controlled) puppet in power in Baghdad.
It is generally known that the British contribution to the US war effort could be between 15,000 and 30,000 soldiers and massive back-up equipment.
Unlike the 1991 war, there would not be many -- even the Japanese are squirming -- to foot the bill this time around.
Definitely, the British share of the cost for the war could run into a few billion pounds, and the question being raised is why should the British prime minister be spending that money on action that would not only alienate British friends in the region but also help lead to chaos and destabilisation in the Arab region and what he could be expecting in return.
We are unable to buy the theory that Blair (or Bush for that matter) is genuinely concerned that Saddam poses a military threat to Iraq's Arab neighbours and that is why they are hell-bent upon toppling him in order to uphold world peace and stability.
Both Bush and Blair tried and failed to link Iraq to international terrorism and project it as a natural target in the US-led war on terror before they switched to the "threat" Iraq poses to the world.
"Secret" documents released by Blair failed to convince anyone -- except perhaps those who drew them up for his benefit -- that Saddam's hands are hovering over switches that would activate and launch a massive pile of weapons of mass destruction at his neighbours.
Blair's defence of his posture, in an article in the Pakistani newspaper Daily Jung on Saturday, fails to offer a justifiable explanation. His case that Saddam needed to be disarmed broke no new ground. Blair only tried to rehash and recycle the argument that Saddam's ouster was sought by the international community. He sidestepped the reality that a majority of world governments have welcomed Baghdad's co-operation with UN inspections with the hope that a war could be avoided and even at that they are insisting that the UN has the final say in deciding whether military action was warranted against Iraq.
Obviously aiming to convince Pakistani Muslims, Blair wrote on Saturday that a war on Iraq was not motivated by religious considerations. But then, not many Muslims have said the potential military action against Iraq had anything to do with religion. They are aware that much deeper political and economic considerations are at the core of the US and British motivations to launch war on Iraq.
"I am also waiting for the time when Iraq in the truest sense will have peace and will start living with its neighbours in a peaceful manner and the aspirations and hopes of the people of Iraq will be realised in an appropriate manner," Blair said in the article.
It is ironic that such arguments are put forward when the world knows only too well that these expressions of concern for Iraqis were never really reflected in past British actions.
We know that Bush primarily aims at serving the American oil lobby, which includes his own commercial interests as well as those of some people around him (Vice-President Dick Cheney included), by invading and taking absolute control of Iraq which would then be ruled by a US military occupation force. That situation could last for at least two years, according to reports in the US media; that should be enough for Bush to establish US oil firms' supremacy in Iraq's oil sector (whether Bush survives the presidential race in 2004 is another issue).
Bush is hoping to recoup the $100 billion to $150 billion the US is expected to spend on a war and military occupation of Iraq through benefits to American oil companies which are raring to go into lucrative Iraqi oil fields after having been denied entry since 1990.
Obviously, one of the first priorities of Bush in a hypothetical Saddamless Iraq will be to freeze or nullify altogether all oil agreements that the present Baghdad government has signed with international (non-US) companies since the end of the 1991 war over Kuwait.
However, he appears to have had to make some compromises.
French, Russian, Chinese and Indian companies are among those who have signed such agreements, and US oil giants are frustrated of not being given a share of the Iraqi oil pie, given assumptions that Iraq could hold oil reserves more than even Saudi Arabia.
As such, apart from removing from power a ruler who has steadfastly refused to toe the American line and challenged American strategic interests in the region, Bush has a vested oil interest in Iraq that he hopes would be served with a US military occupation -- meaning absolute control of Iraq and its resources and restored American domination of the international oil market.
Equally important is resumed American exports to Iraq. US companies were deprived of up to $4 billion to $5 billion of annual exports to Iraq when the UN imposed sweeping trade sanctions against Iraq in August 1990. An indication of the loss is clear when we take note that Iraq used to spend about $500 million in imports of American vehicles and spare parts alone every year.
Figuring high in the horse-trading and persuasion that went on among the big powers at the UN Security Council before Resolution 1441 was adopted was haggling over who would get what share of a post-Saddam Iraq's oil resources. As yet unknown is the nature of the assurances that the US offered to its big power colleagues in the council in order to persuade them to raise their hands when the vote was taken on Resolution 1441.
Bush has offered a public assurance to Russian President Vladimir Putin that the US would not undermine Russian interests in Iraq as and when Saddam is removed from power. It was taken to mean that the US would perhaps make sure Russia recovers the $7 billion or so Baghdad reportedly owes Moscow from the days of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. But then, why should Putin be persuaded to accept the pledge and settle for less when Moscow stood to make much more in a potential $40 billion five-year deal that it was reportedly poised to sign with Baghdad?
So we know why Bush is going to Iraq. What then is the deal between Bush and Blair?
Of course, being kept mouthwatering but at arms length from the Iraqi pie are also British firms. Obivously there is a Bush assurance to Blair that British companies would have their share of Iraq when it falls under US military control.
Otherwise, it beats logic to figure out why Blair has already secured his seat on the Bush wagon to Iraq since it is simply difficult to assume that transatlantic political loyalty runs so deep that a British prime minister would be so adventurous into undertaking a mission that would alienate his country's traditional friends in the Arab World.

Iraq UN inspections

by pv vivekanand

AN advance team of UN weapons inspectors heads for Iraq tomorrow on what is definitely the most important mission undertaken by the UN this millennium but weighed down by the realisation that the world's sole superpower wants them to fail in their mission - and their failure means a devastating war that could reshape the Middle East.
The advance team will include 30 experts and they will be followed by 20 others on Nov.27. Others will join them in the run-up to the Dec.8 deadline for Iraq to make a voluntary disclosure of all its weapons programmes.
The Iraqi disclosure will be matched against data provided by US intelligence agencies and by other UN member states, but what would really matter would be the US furnished details and, indeed, the findings of the UN team between now and Dec.8 from surprise inspections and interviews with Iraqi scientists, engineers and army officers involved in the country's military industry.
It might be easier for the experts to approve the Iraqi data as accurate than disproving the US-provided details as inaccurate because the latter carries with it a threat that Washington would undertake unilateral military action against Iraq if it felt the UN inspectors were not doing their job properly.
It is no secret that parallel to pushing through the UN Security Council the key resolution that dictated a "last-chance" opportunity for Iraq to come clean with its weapons programme, the US has also been setting in place a mechanism that pre-empts any possibility that Baghdad could successfully manoeuvre through the elaborate but hidden traps in the resolution.
There is no question of what if Baghdad meets every condition and requirement laid down by the UN weapons inspectors since Washington has reserved for itself the role of the final and absolute judge; even if the UN team issues a super-clean certificate to Iraq, it would only be torn apart by the US, whose scenario does not provide for Saddam Hussein continuing in power in Baghdad. Any success of the UN inspectors succeed in disarming Iraq is bad news for the administration of US President George W. Bush since it would make it difficult justify its aim of removing Saddam Hussein.
It would be a political disaster for Bush to go to re-election in the 2004 with Saddam still in power in Baghdad.
The hardliners surrounding Bush were actually disappointed that Saddam not only accepted Resolution 1441 but also told his people to co-operate with the UN inspectors.
His foreign minister, Sabri Naji, told the chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, a former Swedish foreign minister, and Mohammed Al Bardei, head of the he International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), during their two-day visit to Baghdad last week that the Iraqi government would extend to them complete co-operation. Naji also removed a final thorn when he conveyed to Blix his government's acceptance of "no-notice" UN inspections of "presidential sites" in the country.
Such Iraqi gestures are downplayed by the US hardliners, who argue that Saddam Hussein has no intention of coming clean and meeting the UN demands and would only continue a cat-and-mouse game with the UN inspectors, trying to outguess them and outsmart them. That is the very framework for the run-up to the Dec.8 deadline.
There is no argument either that Saddam is prompted by a guitly conscience and is all eager to make up by pleasing the UN. Accepting the UN demands, which Saddam and others around him see as the depth of humiliation for the Iraqi leadership and people, in good faith does not fit into Saddam's track record, but the Iraqi leader seems to have clearly understood that he had no choice but to comply with Resolution 1441 or face war that would be his end. Otherwise, Baghdad would have never agreed that UN inspectors could visit Saddam's palaces at will without prior notice and go through every knook and corner of the structure; for the Iraqis, and most people for that matter, it is the ultimate humiliation.
Bush and other US officials are trying to twist the knife in the Iraqi wound by repeatedly warning Saddam not to conceal any weapon-related information and threatening that his "final days" could be near hoping it would produce a knee-jerk Iraqi reaction that would suit Washington's interests of seeing the UN inspection fail.
The American bait of a new life in the US for some 500 Iraqi scientists who worked with their country's military programmes is part of the American gameplan.
As such, the UN inspectors bear the heavy burden of having to carry out their mission knowing well that their success might not amount to much in terms of averting a war against Iraq.
The technicalities of their work are complex. Indeed, they are armed with wide UN authorisation to make demands at will on the Iraqi government, but finding concrete evidence of Baghdad's alleged weapons of mass destruction and contradict Iraq's expected disclosures could be a difficult if not impossible task.
On the nuclear front, the IAEA said in 1998 that it had bust an Iraqi programme to build an atomic weapon after IAEA experts combed the country. It informed the UN Security Council that all material which could go into producing a nuclear weapon was removed from Baghdad and that the country no longer possessed the ability to renew its nuclear project even in the medium term. However, the US vetoed an IAEA certification that would have closed Iraq's nuclear file.
A hypothesis says that Iraq could have focused on developing a "dirty bomb" -- nuclear material detonated by conventional explosives causing limited but deadly damage to human life and nature in the immediate environment. But to locate such "dirty bombs" would not be easy since they leave little traces of tell-tale radiation.
On the missile front, previous UN inspections have accounted for all but less than half a dozen long-range missiles that Iraq had known to have acquired from the then Soviet Union and developed on its own. This was conceded by Australian Richard Butler, who headed the UN Special Commission which became defunct four years ago, after he paid several visits to Baghdad in mid-1997.
On the two other fronts -- chemical and biological weapons -- the scene is murky. Without actually discovering allegedly hidden caches of such weapons and components, some which have civilian as well as military use, the UN inspectors would only have conjectures and no physical evidence to support any charge. Again, it would be the US intelligence findings, including satellite information and details of Iraqi imports of "dual-purpose" materials -- that would have the final say in the matter; again a deadly trap for Baghdad.
The US has further armed itself by describing Iraqi defiance of Western patrolling of "no-fly" zones in Iraq -- Iraqi fixed wing aircraft are not supposed to fly beyond the 36th parallel in the north and 32nd parallel in the south -- as "material breach" of Resolution 1441. However, Russia, China and France as well as UN Secretary General Kofi Annan have rejected the assertion since there is no UN Security Council authorisation for American and British warplanes to carry out reconnaissance flights in Iraqi airspace.
At the same time, American insistence on its argument is defintely going to be part of Washington's case for war against Iraq.
Seen from the UN inspectors' perspective -- barring perhaps that of the 27 Americans among them -- they are the foot soliders in an immediate war of wits, pitting their boss Blix against US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who is in the forefront of the hardliners in Washington who include Vice-President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Condaleesa Rice and several top officials at the Pentagon.
The UN inspectors, who have no little means of gathering information except their field work and interviews, need more than prayers for success in their mission; and indeed the Washington hardliners' prayers for their failure is backed by the economic, political and military might of the world's superpower, which also boasts of the best intelligence-gathering capability.

Bush Doctrine at work

2002

THE "Bush doctrine" is at play. It is the latest and
the most dangerous yet of any American declaration of
its supremacy of the world. Officially labelled as a
national security strategy document, the declaration,
made by US President George W. Bush on Sept. 20, is,
in its bare form, is a notice to the world that it
reserves all options, notably the military one, to
strike at any country or group that it feels threatens
the US. As the overriding element, the notice says
that the US would not allow its military supremacy to
be challenged; what it does not say but what the world
has heard is also clear: the US is free to take
whatever action it finds fit against any country or
group which does not fall in line with American
interests, and the United Nations would have no
relevance in American considerations of who is at
fault, how and why. Indeed, if anyone does not like
it, please feel free to challenge the US.
The doctrine's foundation and objective are one: The
US reserves the right to to take "pre-emptive action"
against any country it deems as hostile and any group
it sees as terrorist and developing weapons of mass
destruction.
We have seen many American doctrines, starting with
the "Manroe doctrine" -- a warning issued by the firth
president of the US, James Monroe, in 1823. It
warned that the European colonial powers that “the
American continents, by the free and independent
condition which they have assumed and maintain, are
henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future
colonisation...." and declared the US as protector
of independent nations in the Americas.
In the 180 years since then, as Peter Beaumont,
foreign affairs editor of London's Sunday Observer
acutely observes, America "has moved from local to
regional and then to global superpower."
"At the end of the American Century, the United States
stands alone as the only superpower," writes Beaumont.
"The country that once challenged those renewing their
imperial ambitions in its orbit is now declaring in
this document the 'manifest destiny' of Americans to
exercise good across the world."
The 35-page doctrine, a document every US president
has to submit every year to Congress, states:
"Given the goals of rogue states and terrorists, the
United States can no longer solely rely on a reactive
posture as we have in the past. ... We cannot let our
enemies strike first... as a matter of common sense
and self-defense, America will act against such
emerging threats before they are fully formed.
The key element of the doctrine is an unequivocal
statement of America's right to act on its own:
"While the United States will constantly strive to
enlist the support of the international community, we
will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to
exercise our right of self-defense by acting
pre-emptively against such terrorists to prevent them
from doing harm against our people and our country."
It also rules out American tolerance of any challenge
to the US military superiority. "Our forces will be
strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from
pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing or
equaling the power of the United States," it says.

My say on 9/11 - one year on

THE world was horrified on Sept. 11, 2001. It watched
in disbelief the most damaging and well-orchestrated
terror attack at the most prestigious symbols of the
United States of America. One could have never
expected an assault of that nature and magnitude, and,
sure enough, it changed the shape of the world and
turned international relations into an unprecedented
course where nothing conventional remained
conventional.
The final count of the dead in New York is put at
around 3,000 -- the highest ever deaths in a single
terror attack.
It was an act whose impact, direct and indirect,
spared no one even in the remotest corner of the
earth. No other incident in history had brought out
that kind of effect on human life. But have we learned
anything from it?
Our hearts and minds went out to the victims of the
assaults in New York and Washington and of the crash
of a fourth hijacked plane in Pennsylvania and their
families. No one could help feeling a sense of grief
and helplessness over the loss of human life. It was
never without a choking feeling that we could listen
to the tragic stories of fathers, mothers, sons,
daughters, brothers and sisters who lost their lives
in the rubble of the World Trade Center towers in New
York and the Pentagon in Washington not to mention the
fiery crash in Pennsylvania.
And then came the recriminations as the US declared a
war on terrorism. Today, after Afghanistan, the
Taliban and Al Qaeda, the US is still on a
confrontational course with the Arabs as if the entire
Arab World was behind Sept. 11.
As Americans, and indeed the rest of the world,
remember the direct and indirect victims of the
Sept.11 attacks, the sole focus should not be grief
and sorrow over what happened and a growing sense of
revenge. They should ask themselves why 9/11 happened
and why it has led to a growing divide between the US
and the Arab World, with the strong relationship the
two sides enjoyed until one year ago fading into
oblivion.
It is indeed surprising to observe that few in the US
leadership seem to have given any serious thought to
the fundamentals of what had led to Sept. 11.
While there could be no justification for the Sept. 11
slaughter, it is obvious the US could not come to
terms with the possibility that something was wrong
somewhere in its policy that might have built up into
the aerial assaults.
What we witness today is a worsening situation of
anger, aggressiveness and sense of revenge prevailing
in Washington. Perhaps justifiably so when seen from
within a strictly American vantage point with little
regard to others in the world who suffer from the
fallout of misguided American policies.
But the soul-searching should start with trying to
answer the key question: Why was the US, the country
that is being looked up at by the rest of the world
for its lofty principles of freedom, justice and
dignity for mankind, the target of the biggest terror
attack?
We have even heard absurd assertions that those behind
the attacks were motivated by frustration over their
failure to reach the American level of life and
economic prosperity. Such narrow-minded concepts are
not even worthy of being dignified by any further
comment.
The real reason is in the background but will not
manifest itself in all that it entails unless the US
suspends its knee-jerk military reaction stemming from
an overwhelming sense of being wronged and of
self-indignation backed by a conviction of being
superior to everyone in the international scene.
The real reason for the growing confrontational mood
that threatens to destablise international life is
America's policy of riding roughshod over all
international norms and seeking to target those who
do not fall in line with American interests.
The continuing military ride based on the cowboy-style
"you’re either with us or against us” insistence
would only worsen the situation because the global
situation could not be narrowed down to such
simplification.
Americans should learn to make a distinction between
vengeful emotions and the cold, hard facts of modern
political history and come to grips with political,
cultural, and historical dimensions of the
relationship between the Arab World and the US.
Instead of framing the Arabs into the mold of an
eternal enemy, they should try to understand that the
Arabs were the worst sufferers from the one-track
American approach in the Middle East; and, they stand
to suffer even worse if the US presses ahead with its
designs to reshape the Middle East, starting with its
goal of "regime change" in Iraq.
Have the American public ever been given an
opportunity to reflect on the fact that an
overwhelming majority of the Arabs respect what the US
stands for in terms of principles but hold in contempt
their official policy of being blind to the state
terrorism practised by their "most important strategic
ally" -- Israel?
Have the American public ever been given an
opportunity to absorb that the Arab World is opposed
to terrorism in all its manifestations and has been
and is a partner in the US-led war on terror in all
parts of the world, but that they make a distinction
when it comes to imposition of solutions that seek to
serve strictly American and indeed Israeli interests
in the Middle East?
The first anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks not be
an occasion for the Americans to work themselves into
building a rage but should be an opportunity for them
to scrutinise themselves and their place in the world
and realise that answers to these troubling questions
are within themselves.
And once they realise the true answers to those
questions, then that would be the beginning of a new
world order that would ensure justice, freedom and
dignity for all.

Turkey eager for spoils

pv vivekanand

TURKEY seems to be preparing to claim its spoils of war even before the first shot is fired in the possible US military strike against Iraq. Its deputy speaker of parliament has suggested that the government should declare autonomy for the Turkmen community living in northern Iraq, inlcuding the oil-rich Kirkuk area.
Murat Sokmenoglu's demand was described as a response to Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani's comment that his people would "never allow Turks to take over even a millimetre" of their soil if Turkey move in to destroy a possible Kurdish state in northern Iraq, but the assertions are ominous and are signalling the shape of events to come.
Seen coupled with Turkish Defense Minister Sabahattin Cakmakoglu's recent assertions that Turkey had "historic rights" to parts of northern Iraq -- including Kirkuk and Mosul -- and his demand that the US deal with the supposedly 2.5 million strong Turkmen community in northern Iraq, it would seem a certainty that Ankara would move in to make good its claims as and when the US launches military action against Iraq.
There is more to the Turkish posture. Many nationalist Turks maintain that parts of northen Iraq, including Kirkuk and Mosul, were taken away form their country (along with other areas controlled by the Ottoman empire) when Britain and France redrew the map of the region after the collapse of the Ottoman empire at the end of World War I.
The 1924 Lausanne Treaty signed by Britan, France, Italy, Japan, Greece, Romania and when subsequently became Yugoslavia on the one hand and Turkey on the other laid out the new borders of the remnants of the Ottoman empire. While the provisions of the treaty laid out the new borders and territories of Turkey without major dispute -- except in the case of Greece -- the Turkish-Iraqi frontiers posed a problem.
The treaty put off the issue and said that the frontier between Turkey and Iraq shall be laid down in friendly arrangement to be concluded between Turkey and Great Britain within nine months from the signing of the treaty on July 23, 1924.
In the event of no agreement being reached between the two Governments within the time mentioned, the dispute shall be referred to the Council of the League of Nations, it said.
Under the treaty, the Turkish and British governments reciprocally undertook that, pending the decision to be reached on the subject of the frontier, no military or other movement shall take place which might modify in any way the present state of the territories of which the final fate will depend upon that decision.
The issue was subsequently resolved with Turkey getting little of northern Iraq and the Kirkuk-Mosul becoming part of Iraq. Turkey had no option but to accept the deal.
However, as the latest comments indicate, Turks see the potential conflict in Iraq expected to be triggered by US military strikes as an opportunity to go back in history and reclaim what they believe as theirs.
Turkey is a vehement opponent of the Kurdish dream of creating an independent Kurdistan in northern Iraq bordering Turkey, Syria and Iran. Ankara fears that the entity would be the forerunner of an expanded Kurdistan that could dig deep into what is Turkish soil today and destablise Turkey, which has a sizeable Kurdish minority.
Northern Iraqi Kurds led by the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan had already set up a de facto state in the region which has been outside Baghdad's control since the 1991 Gulf war.
Against the common Turkish threats, KDP leader Masoud Barzani and PUK leader Jalal Talabani were reported to have met on Saturday in the Kurdish-held region for the first time in almost two years.
The two were believed to have discussed the growing tension with Turkey and agreed to send an Iraqi Kurdish delegation to Ankara to discuss the issue and receive a similar Turkish team.
Indeed, urgency was added to the moves by the comments made by Sokmenoglu, the deputy speaker of Turkey, who lambasted Barzani as an "imprudent clan leader."
Noting that the Iraqi Kurdish groups have already a de facto state, Sokmenoglu said that "the time has come for Ankara to announce an autonomous Turkmen region" which also includes the Kirkuk area.
The war of words between Turkey and the Kurdish groups were sparked when it became clear that the US was determined to bring about a "regime change" in Baghdad, opening up the way for unpredictable consequences in the region.
Obviously, Ankara wants to pull the rug from under the feet of the Kurdish plans to set up an independent state by taking over Kirkuk, the most important oil-producing centre in northern Iraq.
Confidential reports say that Turkey has told Washington that it would not oppose an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq if it excluded Kirkuk, which would brought under Ankara's control.
The message, say the reports, was conveyed by Hussein Qifriq Aughlu, a hig -ranking officer in Turkish army, to US Assistant Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.
Aughlu, who was reportedly armed with maps from the turn of the century, stated clearly that Turkey would interfere directly if a Kurdish state was established including Kirkuk, "If a condition not acceptable to us developed in north Iraq, especially in Kirkuk, as the consequences of your military operations that would be very sensitive to us and I would like to inform you that we shall interfere directly in the region in case a Kurdish state with Kirkuk is established,” he was reported to have told Wolfowitz.
Washington has not made any public comment on the Turkish posture, but is is known that the US opposes most of Turkey's demands in return for support for the possible US military action in Iraq, and hence the uncertainty and latent tension between Ankara and Washington over President George W Bush's avowed goal of a "regime change" in Baghdad.
Kirkuk is the largest city in northern Iraq and the Turkmen community (also called Turcoman) calls it an "Azeri city" since a good number of the residents in the area speak the Azeri language, but they use the Arabic script and many have Arabic or Kurdish as a second language.
Turkmen are found in Erbil, Mosul/Ninawa and Deyalah provinces as well as villages southeast of Kirkuk.
The Turkmen are represented by the Turkmen Front, established in 1995 with the merger of several Turkmen political and social organisations.
The Turkmen are third largest ethnic group in Iraq after the Arabs and Kurds and have historically formed a cultural buffer zone between the Arabs in the south and the Kurds in the north.
The Iraqi constitution of 1925 granted both Turkmen and Kurds the right to use their own languages in schools, government offices and press. However, in 1972 the Iraqi government prohibited the both the study of the Turkmen language and the Turkmen media and in 1973 any reference to the Turkmen was omitted from the provisional constitution. The revamped Iraqi Constitution of 1990 states that the "people of Iraq consists of Arabs and Kurds." Kirkuk is one of the key oil centres of Iraq. The first commercial oil field in Iraq was developed in Kirkuk in 1927. Today pipelines connect Turkey to the Mediterranean ports of Tripoli in Lebanon and Yumurtalik in Turkey.
There is little doubt that Iraqi Kurds would fight tooth and nail if Turkey were to make good its threat; indeed a Turkish-Kurdish confrontation parallel to a US-led invasion of Baghad with the aim of toppling Saddam Hussein is only one of the many possible developments that would destablise the entire Middle East.
"If Iraqi Kurds seeking separation and accepted the existing crumbs without Kirkuk, most probably Saddam Hussein would have been the first one in history who recognised an independent Kurdish state," according to RM Ahmad, a Kurdish writer

Bush-Bin Laden links

PV Vivekanand

The Sept.11 saga has been given a dramatically new twist by a report that four airplanes carrying Saudi nationals, including several members of the mainstream Bin Laden family, were allowed to fly out of the United States two days after the aerial attacks in New York and Washington when US airspace was closed for passenger traffic and flights required special permission from the authorities.
The report, carried by the American magazine Vanity Fair, raises questions about the Bush family's close relationship with the Saudis, and Saudi investments in the Carlyle Group, the private equity firm where former Secretary of State James Baker is a senior counsellor and former president George HW Bush is senior adviser.
The implication in the article is that the Bush administration, influenced by personal connections as well as the diplomatic clout that the Saudi ambassador to Washington enjoyed, allowed members of the Saudi ruling family and others close to them as well as members of the mainstream Bin Laden family -- which had disowned Osama Bin Laden -- to leave the US. They appeared to be in a hurry to the US following the Sept.11 attacks when it was slowly emerging that at least some of the 19 suicide hijackers were Saudi nationals.
The question is raised in the article itself:
"How was it possible that, just as President Bush declared a no-holds-barred global war on terror that would send hundreds of thousands of troops to Afghanistan and Iraq, and just as Osama Bin Laden became public enemy number one and the target of a worldwide manhunt, the White House would expedite the departure of so many potential witnesses, incluidng two dozen relatives of the man behind the attack itself?"
However, there is no suggestion that any of those who left had anything to do with the Sept.11 attacks, but that they might had had an inkling that they could face questioning by American authorities in view of their association, even by acquaintance, with any of the hijackers.
At the same time, two cousins of Osama Bin Laden had a record of affiliation with a Muslim organisation in the US; again, there is no suggestion or evidence that this group had any links with Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda, which is blamed for the Sept.11 attack.
The article appearing in this week's Vanity Fair quotes former White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke as saying that the Bush administration allowed the flights carrying up to 140 Saudis to leave the US without being interviewed or interrogated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Every passenger plane leaving the US after Sept.11 had to have special permission to take off, but in the case of the four planes were given special clearance by top officials, and the FBI was not involved at all, says the article.
Vanity Fair said the White House had declined comment on the report, but it quoted a a source insidethe White House as saying that there no evidence to suggest that the White House ever authorised such flights.
According to Vanity Fair write Craig Unger, private detective and former Florida police officer Dan Grossi had received a call on Sept.13 asking him to escort Saudi students on a flight from Tampa to Lexington, Kentucky, even though private planes were still grounded in the aftermath of the attacks.
"I was told it would take White House approval," Unger quotes Grossi as saying. However, t when the plane's pilot showed up, they took off.
In the report, Clarke says he chaired a crisis group — the Counterterrorism Security Group of the National Security Council — at the White House andits meering were attended by Vice President Dick Cheney and National-Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA director George Tenet and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld "came and went."
"Somebody brought to us for approval the decision to let an airplane filled with Saudis, including members of the Bin Laden family, leave the country," Clarke is quoted as saying.
"My role was to say that it can't happen until the FBI approves it. And so the FBI. was asked — we had a live connection to the FBI — and we asked the FBI to make sure that they were satisfied that everybody getting on that plane was someone . . okay.. to leave. And they came back and said yes, it was fine with them. So we said, 'Fine, let it happen. . . . I asked them if they had any objection to the entire event-to Saudis leaving the country at a time when aircraft were banned from flying."
Clarke, who is now working for the private sector, could not recall who had asked him for approval but said it was probably the FBI or the State Department.
Both the FBI and the State Department denied that the request came from them.
Vanity Fair quoted a State Department source as implying that Saudi Arabian Ambasasdor to the US Prince Bandar Bin Sultan Bin Abdul Aziz, one of the most influential foreign diplomats in Washington, could have obtained permission for the flights from authorities higher than the State Department, meaning the White House.
"The likes of Prince Bandar does not need the State Department to get this done," the source told the magazine. According to Saudi Arabia's director of information, Nail Al Jubeir, the flights had been requested by the Saudis and were authorised "at the highest level of the US government."

Following is a part of a a verbatim summary of the report provided by Vanity Fair.

Quote:

After the September 11 attacks, Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, was in Washington orchestrating the exodus of about 140 Saudis scattered throughout the country who were members of, or close to, the House of Saud, which rules Saudi Arabia, and the Bin Laden family.
By coincidence, even before the attacks, Bandar had been scheduled to meet President Bush in the White House on Sept.13, 2001, to discuss the Middle East peace process.
The meeting took place as planned.
Nail Al Jubeir tells Unger that he does not know if Bandar and the president discussed getting the bin Ladens and other Saudis back to Saudi Arabia.
Some Saudis tried to get their planes to leave before the F.B.I. had even identified who was on them, Unger reports. "I recall getting into a big flap with Bandar's office about whether they would leave without us knowing who was on the plane," an FBI agent says.
"Bandar wanted the plane to take off, and we were stressing that the plane was not leaving until we knew exactly who was on it."
Dale Watson, the FBI's former head of counterterrorism, tells Unger that while the Saudis were identified, "they were not subject to serious interviews or interrogations."
The bureau has declined to release the Saudis' identities.
The wealthy Bin Laden family long ago broke with their terrorist brother, Osama, but Unger reports that some members of the family have had links to militant Islam.
Abdullah and Omar Bin Laden had been under FBI investigation for their involvement with the American branch of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), which has published writings by one of Osama bin Laden's principal intellectual influences.
According to documents obtained by the Public Education Center in Washington, the file on Abdullah and Omar was reopened on Sept.19, 2001, while the Saudi repatriation was under way. A security official who served under George W. Bush tells Unger,
"WAMY was involved in terrorist-support activity. There's no doubt about it."
The Saudis' planes took off from or landed in Los Angeles, Washington, DC, Houston, Cleveland, Orlando, Tampa, Lexington, Kentucky-and Newark and Boston, both of which had been points of origin for the Sept.11 attacks.
"We were in the midst of the worst terrorist act in history," Tom Kinton, director of aviation at Boston's Logan airport, tells Unger, "and here we were seeing an evacuation of the Bin Ladens! . . .
"I wanted to go to the highest authorities in Washington. This was a call for them. But this was not just some mystery flight dropping into Logan. It had been to three major airports already, and we were the last stop. It was known. The federal authorities knew what it was doing. And we were told to let it come."
"I asked [the FBI] to make sure that no one inappropriate was leaving," Clarke tells Unger.
Clarke assumed the FBI had vetted the bin Ladens prior to Sept. 11. "I have no idea if they did a good job. I'm not in any position to second-guess the FBI."
Prince Bandar has had a 20-year friendship with former president George HW Bush.
Unger questions whether the long-standing Bush-Saudi relationship could have influenced the administration. The latest in a line of business links between the Bush family and the Saudis involves the Carlyle Group, a private-equity firm for which George HW Bush is a senior advisor and former secretary of state James Baker III is a senior counsellor.
The Carlyle Group has received $80 million in Saudi investment, Unger reports, including $2 million from the Bin Ladens which was returned to them after Sept.11.
In 1995, Abdulrahman and Sultan Bin Mahfouz invested "in the neighbourhood of $30 million" in the Carlyle Group, according to family attorney Cherif Sedky.
Abdulrahman Bin Mafouz was a director of the Muwafaq Foundation, which has been designated by the U.S. Treasury Department as "an Al Qaeda front." (Carlyle categorically denies that the Bin Mahfouzes are now or have ever been investors.) Clarke believes the decision to let the Saudis go was made because "there's a realisation that we have to work with the government we've got in Saudi Arabia. The alternatives could be far worse. The most likely replacement to the House of Saud is likely to be more hostile-in fact, extremely hostile-to the US."
Unquote...