9/11 probe - Deception again

PV Vivekanand

BY NAMING a hand-picked group of peopled mostly deemed as Republican loyalists to conduct an investigations into "intelligence" failure in Iraq, the Bush administration is seen as trying to conceal the real fact of the affair -- intelligence data was tailored to suit and facilitate the administration's determination to launch war against Iraq.
The argument among American commentators today is that the so-called neoconservatives — read as pro-Israeli hardliners — in Washington were determined to wage on Iraq from the day George Bush entered the White House in 2001.
Such an argument was rife in the Middle East but it has gathered so much strength in Washington today that the administration is accused of creating the right atmosphere and conditions to launch military action against Iraq and went about it ruthlessly, picking and choosing information that suited its purposes and discarding anything that could raise questions about its intentions.
The "independent" investigation has been ordered with the predetermined objective that it would come up with a tailor-made finding exenorating Bush and the hardline neoconservatives around him of the political crime of deliberately waging an unprovoked war based on false and misleading claims that they themselves had created in the first place, argues Barry Grey, writing on the World Socialist Web Site.
That is one of the many salvos against Washington.
"Claims Iraq had nuclear weapons, death rays, vans of death, drones of death, mobile germ labs, poison gas factories, hidden weapons depots, long-ranged missiles, links to Al Qaeda — all were false," says The only thing real: Iraq's oil," says by Eric Margolis, a syndicated foreign affairs columnist and broadcaster, and author of War at the Top of the World - The Struggle for Afghanistan, Kashmir, and Tibet.
The New York Times recently carried an article recalling that US Secretary of State Collin Powell appeared at the United Nations Security Council in February 2003 that the evidence added up to "facts" and "not assertions" that Iraq had large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and that it was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program and building a fleet of advanced missiles.
"Powell's testimony, delivered at a moment of high suspense as American forces gathered in the Gulf region, was widely seen as the most powerful and persuasive presentation of the Bush administration's case that Iraq was bristling with horrific weapons. His reputation for caution and care gave it added credibility," said the New York Times.
"A year later, some of the statements made by Powell have been confirmed, but many of his gravest findings have been upended by David A. Kay, who until Jan. 23 was Washington's chief weapons inspector...," notes the paper.
The emerging consensus among American commentators is that
Bush and his people, having failed to tconvince the world that Saddam Hussein was somehow linked to Al Qaeda and thus to the Sept.11 attacks, came up with charges that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction and posed a security threat to the US and the rest of the world.
Now, having invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam but failing to come up with any proof that he had any weapons of mass destruction, the Bush administration is engaged in an effort to exonerate itself by blaming intelligence failure for the pre-war claims.
Bush this week shifted his rationale for the war saying Saddam had the capability to build weapons of mass destruction and he needed to be removed. Saddam having the capability was enough reason for war, he argued.
As a footnote, Bush also asserted that he had done a big favour for the people of Iraq by removing Saddam. Of course, Bush stayed away from recalling that prior to the war he himself had rattled off a list of specific quantities of chemical weapons like nerve gas and biological weapons and cited them as offering a legitimate reason for invading Iraq and toppling Saddam.
The very structure of the investigating panel indicates that the outcome of the inquiry would clear the administration saying that US intelligence agencies "misread" information and reached the conclusion that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction and advised senior administration officals accordingly. These officials in turn conveyed the information to people closest to Bush like Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, National Security Adviser Condaleeza Rice and Powell, who in turn advised Bush, and the president acted accordingly; and that solves the problem, according to the thinking of those who are orchestrating the exercise now.
Washington describes the investigators as independent. But there is little of any independence about the group.
Retired federal judge Laurence Silberman, who co-chairs the investigating panel, is known as a long-time Republic supporters and has a record of having cleared senior Republican administration officials of any wrongdoing in past cases, points out Grey in an article on World Socialist Web Site under the title "Bush’s Iraq commission and the 'intelligence failure' fraud."
Grey specifically efers to the infamous Iran-Contra scandal during the Reagan adminstration years. (The scandal stemmed from a revelation that Reagan had authorised a secret operation to finance and arm, in violation of US law, the contra death squads that killed tens of thousands of people in Nicaragua. Silberman played a key role in sabotaging the investigation by Iran-Contra independent counsel Lawrence Walsh).
Grey argues:
"Bush brought into his administration precisely those extreme militarists such as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz who had for the better part of a decade been campaigning for a new war to “finish the job” left undone by the Gulf war of 1991—overthrowing the Baathist regime, occupying Iraq, and seizing control of its oil resources. Both he and Cheney had the closest ties to American oil and energy conglomerates that stood to benefit most immediately and directly from this imperialist enterprise.
"The evidence is, by now, voluminous that Bush and his top advisers came to power with the determination to invade Iraq. What they lacked was a pretext. The terrorist attacks of Sept.11, 2001, provided them with precisely the casus belli they had been seeking, and they eagerly seized on it, even though they knew Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the hijack-bombings and had no links to Al Qaeda.
"Far from being misled, Bush and his co-conspirators proceeded to concoct a case for waging an unprovoked war, relying on the complicity of the Democratic Party and the media. A central preoccupation of the administration became the fabrication of intelligence."

Suspect timing

The timing of the expected submission of the inquiry panel's report — until after the November elections — is also suspect. No doubt, the timing is set to serve the purpose of concealing the real facts and pre-empt any political fallout from the report, argues Bush opponents.
Most telling is the mandated task of the panel — determining why there was an "intelligence failure" that led to conflicting claims and statements by Bush and his closest aides like Vice-President Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell and others on Iraq's alleged stocks of weapons of mass destruction.
The whole premise of this assertion sidesteps any investigations into determining whether these false claims were issued with the sole objective of justifying the war and those who made the claims knew that they were based on doctored intelligence reports.
The investigation should have been entrusted with a non-partisan group and ordered to focus on the behind-the-scene conduct of Bush and others around him as they plotted the war against Iraq. Such an inquiry, if conducted in transparency and objectivity, would have revealed the truth of the political conspiracy and disinformation campaign that the administration waged in order to build the case against Saddam.
That anyone in the administration who opposed that approach was booted out was evident in the dismissal of Paul O’Neill as treasury secretary last year. O'Neill has revealed that the Bush administration started discussing means to set the ground for invading and occupying Iraq as soon as Bush assumed office in January 2001. He stated that the overthrow of Saddam was a priority topic at the first National Security Council meeting of the Bush administration and that he had access to documents that clearly indicated that the administration was planning the invasion and occupation of Iraq and exploitation of its oil reserves in the first days after assuming office.
Rumseld himself is said to have advocated seizing the Sept.11 attacks as the pretext for war against Iraq and preparing for invasion and occupation of that country in less than 24 hours after the aerial assaults in New York and Washington. The war on Afghanistan was only the fore-runner of the action against Iraq.
When one speaks about "intelligence failure," the agency that would be faulted should be the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). In the case of Iraq, the CIA had done its job, but its findings were twisted and used selectively and often out-of-context to serve the purpose of those who were determined to wage war on Iraq.
A honest and objective investigation would reveal that
Rumsfeld and his associates at the Defence Department had set up their own intelligence operation, called the Office of Special Plans.
This operation skirted all intelligence agencies of the US, including the CIA, and created, twisted and filtered information in a manner that a case for war against Iraq was built on dubious grounds.
Apart from discrediting and twisting CIA findings that there was no evidence that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, the Office of Special Plans adopted the view that the CIA was undermining the OSP findings.
Laurie Mylroie, who is close to Cheney and other hardliners in Washington, has accused the CIA and the State Department of "systematically" discrediting "critical intelligence about Saddam’s regime, including indisputable evidence of its possession of weapons of mass destruction.”
According to Washington insiders, these bent upon discrediting the State Department and the CIA included Cheney, Rumsfeld, Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Wolfowitz' deputy Douglas Feith and Pentagon adviser Richard Perle.
Kenneth Pollack, a former CIA analyst, has provided an insight to the workings of the Office of Special Plans. He says that the Bush ddministration gave "greatest credence to accounts that presented the most lurid picture of Iraqi activities. In many cases intelligence analysts were distrustful of those sources, or knew unequivocally that they were wrong. But when they said so, they were not heeded...."
The administration aslo drew heavily on newspaper articles that conformed to the views of administration officials, he says.
"To a great extent OSP personnel ‘cherry-picked’ the intelligence they passed on, selecting reports that supported the Administration’s pre-existing position and ignoring all the rest," says Pollack.
A particular example, he says, was the way the OSP accepted every "report" given by the anti-Saddam Iraqi National Congress (INC) headed by Ahmed Chalabi on Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction and rejected reports given by trained intelligence officers because the INC was saying what the OSP "wanted to hear."
In turn, the OSP passed "raw, unverified intelligence straight to the cabinet level as gospel," says Pollack.
Such formal submission of reports was made an integral part of the OSP activities since the senior administration officials who made public statements based wanted to back up themselves.
The Washington Post wrote in June 1003 that Cheney and one of his top aides had tried to pressure the CIA "into producing more categorical and blood-curdling assessments of Iraq’s chemical, biological and nuclear weapons capacities" and “sent signals, intended or otherwise, that a certain output was desired from here.”
The Post went on to say that Iraq analyst at the CIA were under pressure to find information or write reports in a way that would help the administration make the case that going into Iraq was urgent.
Seymour Hersh wrote in the New Yorker magazine in October 2003: “The administration eventually got its way, a former CIA official said. ‘The analysts at the CIA were beaten down defending their assertions. And, they blame George Tenet for not protecting them. I’ve never seen a government like this.’”
No doubt these reports will be reviewed as routine by the new investigators, but it is unlikely that the officials will be questioned whether they were aware that the documents were based on doctored intelligence and they were filing it away for a situation where they were asked what their sources were.
The Bush administration is hoping that ordering an "independent" investigation will put to rest questions about the duplicity of its approach to war and the issue would not cast clouds on Bush's re-election chances.
But it might not be the case. In the days, weeks and months ahead, there would be more revelations and political horse-trading in Washington — plus a potential failure of Washington's political efforts in Iraq — that could raise more serious and focused questions about why the war itself. And those questions would refuse to be shelved, given the added ammunition Bush's Democrat rivals have found in their arsenal.
Bill van Auken, leader of the Socialist Equality Party of the US, summarised what many Americans feel today.
He says that the Iraq embroglio was "not a matter of miscalculations or exaggerations by intelligence agents."
"The administration repeatedly claimed that it had irrefutable evidence that Iraq had several hundred tonnes of chemical and biological weapons and was on the verge of obtaining nuclear weapons," Van Auken points out. "Top officials insisted that they even knew the precise whereabouts of these weapons. Now, with the first anniversary of the war approaching, they are forced to admit that not a single vial of such material is to be found in all of Iraq.
"If no weapons were there, clearly there existed no verified evidence that they were there, something that United Nations inspectors attested to before the war began. The inescapable conclusion is that the government manufactured a pretext for dragging the American people into war. As a result, tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed. At least 525 US soldiers have lost their lives and thousands more have been wounded.
"This would be the starting point for any genuinely independent investigation. The questions before such a panel would include: Who was responsible for lying to the American people and to the world in order to carry out an illegal war? Whose interests—hidden behind the false claims about WMD—were served by this war? How was the administration allowed to get away with it?"

The in-house battle in Iran

PV Vviekanand

The reformists and conservative hard-liners in Iran
are locked in a bitter battle after the powerful
religious establishment arbitrarily used its powers to
disqualify reform-minded candidates from running in
the next parliamentary elections with an obvious view
to pre-empting them continuing to enjoy a majority in
parliament. The dispute might sound like technical ,
but it is not as much as a political crisis as it is
a fight for survival for both sides, for giving in to
the other means the end for either side and easy
solutions would not be easy.
The uproar in Iran following the rejection of more
than 3,500 people as candidates in next month's
parliamentary elections is not a simple political
crisis. It is a crucial tug-of-war between the
hard-line conservative camp represented by the
powerful Guardians Council and liberal reformists who
seek to steer a fresh political and economic course
for the country away from the path dictated by the
theocrats who control the religious establishment.
Ultimately, the ongoing battle will determine whether
the people of Iran would gain the power to rule their
country or the hard-line conservatives — the
religious establishment — would strengthen their upper
hand in determining what is good and bad for their
people.
The omnipresent element in the equation is the steady
pressure the US has been applying on Tehran after the
invasion and occupation of Iraq. And this has made it
a bitter struggle for survival of both conservatives
and liberal reformists.
The conservatives fear is high that at some point the
American pressure would penetrate the ranks of the
liberal camp and that would signal a dramatic change
in the shape and nature of the county -- meaning the
demise of the superiority of the theocratic camp. They
want to pre-empt not only another liberal majority in
parliament – Majlis — but also cut down the strength
of reformists in the legislative body.
For the liberals, accepting the hard-line-imposed
conditions means nothing but saying good-bye to their
political future.
On the external front, their attempts to present a
more moderate face of Iran have been dealt a severe
blow, particularly that Tehran often boasts about its
regular elections and the country's status as an
"Islamic democracy."
The claims are often compared with the reality that an
unelected body has control over elections and only an
unelected official can overrule that body.
The struggle has been simmering for after it burst
forth when moderate Mohammed Khatami was elected
president in 1997 and set out a liberal agenda which,
he hoped, would address some of the basic economic
woes of his people and advance the country towards
returning to the mainstream world politics.
However, Khatami soon found out that the president's
wings were clipped already since the religious
establishment held all the aces and could veto him at
will; the Guardian Council held powers that superseded
those of the presidency.
Beyond that is the absolute authority of the council
to decide who could seek power in the country through
elections, and it exercised that authority this month
by rejecting 3,533 out of 8,144 prospective candidates
for the Feb.20 elections, including some 80 serving
members of the Majlis.
Several ministers and vice presidents in the
government had submitted their resignations in
protest at the mass disqualification of candidates.
However, they were expected to stay on in their jobs
pending appeals lodged with the Guardians Council.
The council has lifted the ban on 200 candidates, but
that seen as cosmetic. Most of the reformists were
expected to remain banned by the time the council
concluded its review.
The Guardians Council argued that the rejections were
made on the basis of "data collected from reliable
sources and the investigations conducted in
[applicants'] neighbourhoods."
Most of the rejected individuals are connected with
the reformist 2nd of Khordad coalition, which is named
after the date of President Khatami's election on May
23, 1997.
However, the stated reason for disqualifying them
include applicants' alleged drug abuse, links with
banned groups, or lack of Iranian nationality.
Throughout his presidency -- and particularly in his
second term — Khatami had to content with opposition
to his liberal approach from the religious
establishment, which also exercised control over the
judiciary as well as the security forces of the
country.
Any sign of political dissent challenging the absolute
authority of the conservatives was immediately put
down; moves adopted by Khatami to address some of the
basic problems were shot down; reformists pro-reform
journalists who spoke out were jailed; and liberal
activists had to content with threats to their life.
In the 1997 and 2001 elections, Iranians voted
overwhelmingly for liberals and reformists but the
elected candidates, despite their commitment,
seriousness and devotion, could achieve little since
they were restrained by the system itself that favours
the entrenched hard-liners, who, by virtue of the
powers given to them, could override them at any
point and at any time.
The actual executive powers of the Khatami government
is severely curtailed and its options are limited in
exercising what should be the legitimate rights of an
executive authority. It is even more ironic that the
government enjoys a majority in the legislative
assembly but the MPs are helpless in view of the
constitutional bindings under which they have to
function.
It is not as if the hard-liners are short-sighted in
strategy. A recent report in the Washington Post
summarised that the relative relaxation of the strict
dress code and a ban on make-up, and the strict
enforcement of laws against watching satellite
channels, men and women holding hands in public and
similar moves are the hard-liners' way of giving the
people "more of what they want and divert attention
from the reformists' demand for a more powerful
democratic say for the people.
The stand-off is indeed a battle of wits and wills as
much as it is a struggle for survival for both sides.
And an easy way does not look any near.

Hossein Khomeini back in Iran

pv vivekanand

HOSSEIN Khomeini, grandson of the late Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini — founder of the Islamic republic —
has been placed under restrictions in the Iranian holy
city of Qom where he quietly returned after spending
more than six months outside the country calling for
American military intervention against the thecratic
regime in power in Tehran.
Hossein Khomeini, 46, who was last in the US where he
had delivered a series of lectures denouncing the
clerical regime in Tehran, was pressured into
returning to Iran because his wife and family were not
allowed to leave the country to join him, according to
sources.
He had left Iran in July and crossed to Iraq where he
lived for some time before going to the US on a visit
sponsored by the Iranian American community and backed
by the Bush administration, which is seeking "regime
change" in Tehran.
He gave a series interviews to the press and also
spoke at several gatherings in the US saying the
theocratic regime in power in Iran today had betrayed
the founding principles of the Islamic republic as
envisaged by his grandfather and that he favoured
American military intervention in the country if that
was needed to remove the hardliners from the country's
leadership. He favoured the reforms sought by
President Mohammed Khatami, a moderate aligned with
the reformist camp, although he did not fully agree
with Khatami's stated positions.
It was then seen that Washington was trying to use the
Khomeini name to advance its efforts for a regime
change in Iran.
The Tehran government reacted cooly to his criticism.
Spokesmen said Hossein Khomeini was exercising his
right to free speech and the Iranian government had no
comment on him.
However, Iran insiders said the conservative camp of
hardline theocrats seethed in anger at his criticism
and had engineered his return by applying pressure
through his family. "He was told his family would
never be allowed to leave Iran and he would be better
off returning to Qom and confine himself to religous
studies in there," said a source. "At Qom's Hawzah
Al-Ilmiyah, he has been told not to make political
statements or meet foreign visitors," according to the
source.
He returned to Iran in mid-January and since then been
questioned by agents of the conservative camp led by
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who wields supreme powers in
the country.
The hardliners also control the bulk of the security
and intelligence network as well as the judiciary, and
hence their operations do not always come under the
scrutiny of the government.
It was also believed that Hossein Khomeini was adviced
by the US to return home and "work from within" to
bring about changes. His return home comes amid a
bitter struggle between the reformist camp led by
Khatami and the hardliners who want to clip the wings
of the reformists by using their special powers to
deny the reformist a majority in parliament in Feb.20
elections.
Hossein Khomeini is the son of Mustafa Khomeini, who
died of a heart attack in Al Najaf one year before the
1979 Iranian revolution. His uncle Ahmad Khomeini
was killed in 1995, reportedly by the Iranian regime,
after he bitterly criticized the regime's policies.
Hossein Khomeini said in commetns during his stay
outside the country that "Iran needs a democratic
system that does not use religion as a tool to repress
the people and suffocate society." He also called for
the need to "separate religion from the state and to
end the despotic theocracy" in Iran.
He said Iran is on the verge of a popular revolution,
adding: "Freedom is more important than bread. If the
Americans can provide it, then let them come."

'Sting' missile deal

pv vivekanand

HEMANT LAKHANI, a British national of Indian origin,
who is accused of trying to smuggle shoulder-fired
missiles into the US and offering help to obtain a
"dirty bomb" for use by alleged terrorists, has denied
all charges and is scheduled to make his defence
motions in April at a court in New Jersey.
Lakhani, 68, a London resident, was arrested in Newark
in August in a "sting" operation mounted by US,
Brtiish and Russian intelligence. He faces charges of
trying to sell anti-aircraft missiles, offering to
obtain a radioactive "dirty bomb" -- - a rudimentary
device using radioactive materials -- and to procure
anti-aircraft guns, tanks, armoured personnel
carriers, radar systems and C-4 explosives for use by
terrorists.
In the same case, New York diamond dealer Yehuda
Abraham, 75, is charged with money laundering in
connection with the alleged missile smuggling plot,
and Indian citizen Moinuddeen Ahmed Hameed, 38, is
charged with helping to transfer cash for alleged
missile purchases.
Abraham remains free on a $6 million bail. Lakhani and
Hameed remain in US police custody.
No trial date has been set but the accused are asked
to to appear in court on April 26 when therr defence
motions will be heard.
It is expected that it would take several monhs after
April for the trial to start.
He faces up to 25 years in jail if convicted.
The case has raised eyebrows throughout the world
since the operation that led to Lakhani's arrest made
little sense. He is a Hindu by birth and is not
reported to have any "terror" links and trapping him
in an elaborate sting was not seen to have served any
purpose except to serve the American interest of
having to keep alive the image of security threat that
the US is facing.
In formal terms, Lakhani charged with one count of
"attempting to provide material support to
terrorists", one count of unlawful brokering of
foreign defence articles, two counts of money
laundering, and one count of attempting to import
merchandise into the US by means of false statements.
Accounts in the press shortly after Lakhani's arrest
indicated that both ends of the "sting operation" --
the people who offered to arrange the missiles and
other weapons and explosives as well as those who
offered to buy them — were American intelligence
operatives and he was trapped because of he was
desperate for the money that he thought he could make
from the purported deal.
Speculation is that the FBI wanted to use the case in
order to focus world attention on the threat of
shoulder-mounted missiles against aircraft after
unknown assailants narrowly missed an Israeli charter
flight taking off from Mombasa, Kenya.
Another missile missed a US military jet taking off
from Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia.
The sting began when a Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI) agent posed as a "Muslim activist" of a Somali
militant group and contacted Lakhani saying he wanted
to buy 50 shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles from
Russia.
The agent, who insisted that the missile should be
effective against aircraft and even suggested
St.Petersburg as the possible source for the missiles,
also made a down payment of $30,000 for the purchase
of one missile, according to reports. The total worth
of the deal was said to be $5 million for 50 missiles,
with a 10 per cent "down payment" to be made when a
"sample" missile was shown to the "Somali" militant in
the US.
On the other end, in St.Peterburg, other FBI agents,
in co-ordination with their British and Russian
counterparts, offered to sell Lakhani the missiles. A
Russian arms factory, also working with US
intelligence, then provided Lakhani with a
Russian-made shoulder-launched SA-18 Igla missile. The
weapon was "neutralised" at the source of origin, but
Lakhani did not know that.
The missile was shipped to the US and Lakhani flew to
Newark to "close the deal." That was when he was
arrested, five months after the "sting" was launched.
The key prosecution evidence is expected to a
collection of over 150 audio and video tapes which
purportedly show him offering to sell the missiles and
other weapons and discussing how to best "terrorise"
Americans with them. He is also said to have commented
that he was an admirer of Osama Bin Laden.
"On many occasions in recorded conversations he
referred to... Osama Bin Laden as a hero who had done
something right and set the Americans straight,"
according to US Attorney Christopher Christie.
Lakhani is also shown speaking of of shooting down a
commercial aircraft to "shake the economy" of the US,
according to Christie.
The shipment of one Igla missile — described in
freight documents as medical equipment — was allowed
into the US with the full knowledge and co-operation
of US officials and was stored at a warehouse. When
Lakhani collected the shipment and returned to his
Newark hotel, he was arrested.
A short time later, Yehuda Abraham and Moinuddeen
Ahmed Hameed, an Indian citizen living in Malaysia,
were arrested from Abraham's New York gem dealership
on Fifth Avenue and charged with helping to finance
the deal.

Empire of Blood

PV VIVEKANAND

The Project for the New American Century envisions the forced creation and imposition on the world of Pax Americana, or American peace. It means creating a global empire that ensures the energy security of the United States and American domination of every part of this planet. Within the Middle Eastern context, this would easily explain why the US concocted the story that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and fraudulently manufactured proof to support that lie and threw in, for good measures, the contention that Saddam Hussein had links with Al Qaeda and posed a direct security threat to the American people. And it also explains why the US so closely aligned with Israel at the cost of its ties with the Arab and Muslim world and is gunning for Iran.
There was no intelligence failure, there was no misreading of evidence and there was no misguiding indication. The Bush administration set its objective as invasion and occupation of Iraq and then worked its way backwards to create a path leading to it. "Evidence" was manufactured whenever the need arose in the dedicated campaign to invade a sovereign country thousands of kilometres from the American shore in order to serve the interests of imperial America.
Anything that cropped up was either dismissed as irrelevant or explained away to fit in the overall scheme of things. Had there been a genuine WMD or terror threat from Iraq, it would have manifested itself. The hawks in the Bush administration would not have had to come up with fabricated charges like Saddam Hussein wanting to buy uranium from Niger and even had drones capable of hitting the US with chemical or biological weapons; nor would British Prime Minister Tony Blair's "intelligence" agencies have had to "sex up" reports on Iraq's military capabilities with outdated university theses.
It is now established that there is no ground for continued insistence that the invasion of Iraq and ouster of Saddam Hussein served to protect Americans from 9/11-style terror attacks using chemical and biological weapons.
The massive 1,000-page report prepared by the Iraq Survey Group led by American Charles Duelfer has eliminated any excuse or pretext for such insistence. The report established that Iraq had no WMD, was not engaged in any effort to develop it and its 1980s ability to produce WMD had all but eroded at the time when the US-led invading forces went into the country last year.
The 9/11 attacks helped Washington's plans to invade and occupy Iraq since they offered the Bush administration a pretext to portray Saddam as terror threat by linking him with Al Qaeda.

Lure of oil

The reality was that the US wanted to grab a piece of oil-rich real estate in the Middle East in order to secure its energy security, and, in the bargain, set up an advanced military base in the region and also get rid of a potential military threat to Washington's strategic partner, ally and protégé, Israel.
That was what happened, but what the US did not count on was messing up what it had hoped would be a smooth transition to an American-friendly regime to replace Saddam. It has proved a catastrophic humanitarian crisis and military imbroglio that defies solution.
A document drawn up in 2000 showed that George W Bush and his cabinet were planning a premeditated attack on Iraq to secure "regime change" even before he took power in January 2001.
The document, officially titled "Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century," was written in September 2000 by the neo-conservative think-tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC). The brains behind it included Dick Cheney, who went to become Bush's vice- president, Donald Rumsfeld, who was named defence secretary by Bush, Paul Wolfowitz, who now serves as Rumsfeld's deputy, Bush's younger brother Jeb and Lewis Libby, who is now Cheney's chief of staff.
In fact, the document was a refurbished version of a plan drawn up by Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz two years earlier. The plan was sent in January 1998 to the then president, Bill Clinton, saying:
"The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing.
"In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.
"We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your administration's attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power. This will require a full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts."
Well, Clinton did not have enough time to prepare the ground for an invasion of Iraq, and hence Bush inherited it and implemented it. Rest is history.

Colonising the world

Have a closer look at the 1998 call on Clinton. It talks only about the removal of Saddam from power "in the long term." It talks nothing about any plan beyond it. Obviously, the idea was to retain Iraq as an American colony with whatever that entails.
In fact, the 2000 report identified Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an "axis of evil" and Bush was only borrowing the term from the report when he started using it in late 2002.
While the report had highlighted the "nuclear" threat posed by the three countries grouped in the "axis of evil," the US military invaded and occupied the one country among the three which did not have any nuclear programme at all.
The report listed 27 people as having been closely involved in preparation of the document. Six of them assumed key defence and foreign policy positions in the Bush administration.
It was interesting to hear Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, acknowledging the truth this week that the US would have still gone to war on Iraq even if it had known that Saddam possessed no WMD. But Rice gave it a nice twist.
"He was someone who had an insatiable appetite for weapons of mass destruction. He had the means, he had the intent, he had the money to do it," said Rice. "You were never going to break the link between Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction. And now we know that, had we waited, he would have gotten out of the sanctions, he would have undermined them by both trying to pay off people on the Security Council and doing what he could to keep his expertise in place," she said.
Perhaps Rice should spare a little time and remind herself that Chevron -- the company in which she occupied a director's seat before joining the administration -- was among the recipients of Saddam's "oil vouchers."
Her further comments on the war were even more hilarious. "Because we invaded the country, because we were able to interview the scientists and get the documents that Saddam Hussein had refused to give to the United Nations, we now know that he did not have those stockpiles," she said.
Wow! We thought the US had irrefutable evidence that Saddam had WMD before the first American military tank crossed the border to Iraq on March 20, 2003; we had no idea that the US motive behind the war was to determine whether or not Saddam had WMD.
Rice's next comment took the cake, if indeed one was left.
"He (Saddam) would have gotten out of the sanctions, and rebuilt his weapons of mass destruction programmes," Rice said. "We know he had the means to do so, it was only a matter of time. And it was time for us to take care of this threat."
So, as far as Washington was concerned, it was enough that Saddam had a wishlist of WMD and not necessarily possess them in order for the US to strike.
That brings up the question: Who authorised the US to invade any country simply because that country wished it had WMD?
Well, that where the Project for a New American Century, or Pax Americana comes into play.
Under that doctrine, the US reserves for itself the right to take any action it deems fit not only to protect its interests anywhere in the world but also to establish itself as a global empire which will have the sole responsibility as the policeman of planet Earth.

Building bases

That is further supported by reports saying that amid the fierce guerrilla war in Iraq, the US military is building more than a dozen "enduring bases" in the country to set up a permanent military presence in the Gulf.
The bases run from Kirkuk in the north to Basra in the north and are given names like Camp Victory (adjoining Baghdad airport), Camp Renegade (in Kirkuk) etc. The two American hostages beheaded last month were working as civil engineers constructing a base in Taji, north of Baghdad,
The Pentagon has not released any details of the planned bases to the public. However, it is expected that between 50,000 and 60,000 American soldiers would be housed at these bases in Iraq once Washington realises its hoped-for goal of pacifying Iraq by next year. The plan, in principle, is a repeat of what the US did in Japan after World War II.
The only top official to indirectly refer to the plan for bases in Iraq was Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who mentioned it even before the US forces invaded that country last year. The US already has bases in Kuwait and Qatar.
Installing a token government in Baghdad through elections in January and then drawing up a permanent constitution leading to fresh elections to another government in 2006 is the American definition of pacifying Iraq.
The building of the bases is parallel and separate from the ongoing US military operations in Iraq.
The US bases in Iraq will serve the military to keep a close eye on developments in the region and move forces to quickly intervene in any area where Washington perceives its interests to be threatened.
The presence will also serve as a reminder to the countries in the region that the US has at its disposal the military capability to invade and occupy countries and remove regimes.
Supplementing the American military presence in Iraq will be Israel's strength. Israel, with only sx million people, is counted among the top 10 strongest countries in the world.
However, Iran is a wild card in the game. The US has to neutralise the Iranians since the US military cannot afford to have its bases in Iraq within Iranian missile range as long as Tehran remains hostile to Washington.
The annual cost of maintaining the bases in Iraq is estimated at between $5 billion and $7 billion, according to Gordon Adams, director of Security Policy Studies at George Washington University in Washington.
The US maintains 890 military installations in foreign countries, ranging from major air force facilities to smaller installations, say a radar station. It is expected that the planned bases in Iraq would enable the Pentagon to close a few of those facilities.
However, the key question remains unanswered: It is widely accepted that a majority of Iraqis oppose the US presence in the country. How would they accept to have permanent American military bases in their land?
But then, what the people of Iraq think is not as important as what the US wants.
Rumsfeld has dismissed suggestions that the US covets Iraqi territory by maintaining bases, but then one only has to remember that the US military still has bases in Japan, nearly 60 years after World War II ended.
The National Security Strategy outlined by President Bush on Sept.20, 2002 -- or the so-called Bush Doctrine -- outlines a newly aggressive military and foreign policy, including pre-emptive attack against those who threaten American interests.
The doctrine bases itself on the neoconservative document of 2000.
As David R Francis, a respected American journalist known for objective and accurate writing, put it, the strategy "includes a plan for permanent American military and economic domination of every region on the globe, unfettered by international treaty or concern. And to make that plan a reality, it envisions a stark expansion of our global military presence."
He quotes from the report:
"The United States will require bases and stations within and beyond Western Europe and Northeast Asia as well as temporary access arrangements for the long-distance deployment of US troops."
While Bush sought to create an impression that the National Security Strategy was inspired by the Sept.11 attacks, Francis notes, the same language is used in the 2002 report.
Francis writes:
"It advocates the 'transformation' of the US military to meet its expanded obligations, including the cancellation of such outmoded defence programmes as the Crusader artillery system. That's exactly the message being preached by Rumsfeld and others.
"It urges the development of small nuclear warheads "required in targeting the very deep, underground hardened bunkers that are being built by many of our potential adversaries." (Francis notes that the Republican-dominated House of Representatives has given the Pentagon the green light to develop such a weapon, called the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, while the Senate has so far balked at approving it).
"To preserve the Pax Americana, the report says US forces will be required to perform 'constabulary duties' -- the United States acting as policeman of the world -- and says that such actions 'demand American political leadership rather than that of the United Nations.'
"To meet those responsibilities, and to ensure that no country dares to challenge the United States, the report advocates a much larger military presence spread over more of the globe, in addition to the roughly 130 nations in which US troops are already deployed."
According to Francis, the report's recommendation that the US needs permanent military bases in the Middle East, in Southeast Europe, in Latin America and in Southeast Asia is being followed. He notes that the Bush administration rushed to install US troops in Georgia and the Philippines, as well as our eagerness to send military advisers to assist in the civil war in Colombia.
"The 2000 report directly acknowledges its debt to a still earlier document, drafted in 1992 by the Defence Department. That document had also envisioned the US as a colossus astride the world, imposing its will and keeping world peace through military and economic power," says Francis. . When leaked in final draft form, however, the proposal drew so much criticism that it was hastily withdrawn and repudiated by George Bush Senior, he says.

Alliance with Israel

Donald Kagan, a professor of classical Greek history at Yale and an influential advocate of a more aggressive foreign policy who served as served as co-chairman of the 2000 New Century project "willingly embraces the idea that the United States would establish permanent military bases in a post-war Iraq."
"I think that's highly possible," Francis quotes Kagan as saying. "We will probably need a major concentration of forces in the Middle East over a long period of time. That will come at a price, but think of the price of not having it. When we have economic problems, it's been caused by disruptions in our oil supply. If we have a force in Iraq, there will be no disruption in oil supplies."
That brings in the alliance between the US and Israel and the American quest to ensure its energy security by not allowing any Arab/Muslim country in the Middle East to reach a position where it could call the shots in the international oil market.
The strength of the US-Israel alliance is conventionally attributed to the powerful political and financial strengths and influence of the pro-Israeli lobby in Washington as well as to the image of Israel as the only democracy in the Middle East sharing American "values."
However, equally important in this equation is the US anxiety to ensure the steady flow of oil from the Middle East to suit American interests.
Proponents of this theory argue that the US has been retaining and is continuing to strengthen its relationship with Israel in order not to allow an Arab/Muslim country in the Middle East to emerge as the dominant regional power that could undermine the US quest for energy security for Americans based on Arab and Muslim oil. That explains why the US was silent when Israel bombed Iraq's Osirak nuclear plant in 1981 and why Washington today supports Israel's contention that Iran poses a threat to it by seeking nuclear weapon-capability.

Oil dependency

A report written by Erich Marquardt appearing on www.pinr.com underlines this point. Marquardt writes:
"The primary motives behind US support of Israel can be explained by Washington's foreign policy aims of securing a Middle East capable of producing a stable supply of oil at a low price that buoys the economies of oil dependent countries. Israel, a state that is dependent on the United States due to its strategic and cultural isolation in a region that is hostile to its existence, can be relied on by Washington to assist in maintaining the status quo by preventing any Middle Eastern country from accruing enough power to alter the regional balance in a way that would damage the interests of the United States and other oil dependent countries."
Michael T Klare, a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and author of Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Petroleum Dependency, points out that America's dependence on imported petroleum has been growing steadily since 1972.
Domestic production in the US was 11.6 million barrels per day in 1972 and today it stands at 9mbpd and is expected to continue to decline.
"Even if some oil is eventually extracted from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, as the Bush administration desires, this downward trend will not be reversed " he asserts.
On the other hand, the total oil consumption in the US today is estimated at around 20 million barrels per day and is expected to hit 29mbpd by 2025.
"This means ever more of the nation's total petroleum supply will have to be imported - 11mbpd today (about 55 per cent of total US consumption) but 20mbpd/d in 2025 (69 per cent of consumption)," says Klare.
In an implicit reference to the Middle East, Klare notes that an increasing share of that oil will come from "hostile, war-torn countries in the developing world, not from friendly, stable countries such as Canada or Norway. "
"Because oil is viewed as the primary motive for US involvement in these (hostile) areas, and because the giant US oil corporations are seen as the very embodiment of US power, anything to do with oil - pipelines, wells, refineries, loading platforms - is seen by insurgents as a legitimate and attractive target for attack; hence the raids on pipelines in Iraq, on oil-company offices in Saudi Arabia, and on oil tankers in Yemen," according to Klaire.
Klare notes that the US military is having a tough time ensuring the security of oil installations in Iraq, meaning that the very objective of the war remains under threat.

Blood and oil

"Iraq has developed into a two-front war: the battles for control over Iraq's cities and the constant struggle to protect its far-flung petroleum infrastructure against sabotage and attack," he says. "The first contest has been widely reported in the US press; the second has received far less attention."
He points out: "Iraq is hardly the only country where US troops are risking their lives on a daily basis to protect the flow of petroleum. In Colombia, Saudi Arabia and the Republic of Georgia, US personnel are also spending their days and nights protecting pipelines and refineries, or supervising the local forces assigned to this mission.
"American sailors are now on oil-protection patrol in the Gulf, the Arabian Sea, the South China Sea, and along other sea routes that deliver oil to the United States and its allies. In fact, the US military is increasingly being converted into a global oil-protection service."
And the going is getting tougher for American forces, he notes.
"With thousands of kilometers of pipeline and hundreds of major facilities at risk, this task will prove endlessly demanding -- and unrelievedly hazardous," he says.
"While anti-terrorism and traditional national-security rhetoric will be employed to explain risky deployments abroad, a growing number of American soldiers and sailors will be committed to the protection of overseas oilfields, pipelines, refineries and tanker routes," Klare observes. "And because these facilities are likely to come under increasing attack from guerrillas and terrorists, the risk to American lives will grow accordingly. Inevitably, Americans will pay a higher price in blood for every additional litre of oil they obtain from abroad."
Seen in that vein, although Klare does not refer to that aspect, the natural Israeli role is to step in and take over part of the American policeman's job at some point or another; and countries like Iraq (had it remained under the Saddam regime) and Iran would challenge that Israeli role, and hence the need to ensure that they are reshaped to suit American interests. That is what happened in Iraq, and Iran would be subjected to similar treatment if the US plans go ahead as they were drawn up by the Project for the New American Century that aims to create a global American empire.

Man who betrayed Iraq

THE MAN who "betrayed Iraq" and gave the tip-off that
led to the capture of Saddam Hussein was a distant
relative of the ousted president, according to Iraqi
sources in Tikrit. The sources identified the man as
Qusai Rasoul, who they say was among the most trusted
Saddam loyalist at one point.
"We are almost sure that this animal and son of a
bitch was the one who gave the information to the
Americans," said one source speaking in Arabic using
the term "heyawan" (animal) and "ibn al khalb" (son of
a bitch) to describe him. "He should not have broken
down under questioning no matter what, but it seems he
did and this makes him a traitor of Iraq. We will
never forgive him. We will give him a death worse than
a dog's."
According to the sources, Qusai Rasoul was among a
dozen people picked up by American soldiers about a
week before Saddam's capture on Saturday and
reportedly subjected to intense questioning.
A few of those questioned were released two days
later, and they told fellow Tikriti loyalists of
Saddam after the capture of the former president that
they believed Qusai Rasoul was the man who fingered
the ousted leader.
"It was not as if the others knew where Saddam was and
they did not talk," said the source. "They, like most
others, did not know but they knew that Qusai Rasoul
could have some idea."
Qusai Rasoul is believed to be still held under US
custody and it is unlikely that he would be entitled
to the $25 million bounty on Saddam's head since he
had not volunteered the information and gave it out
under pressure.
"We are searching for him now, and he would die a slow
and painful death when we catch him," said the
source. "All the people Tikrit would take part in his
execution by tearing him apart."
The information provided by Qusai Rasoul was the name
of another man whom he perhaps knew was sheltering the
ousted leader. That man was Qais Al Namek, who once
served Saddam in Baghdad but retired several years ago
and returned to his home and farming in Al Dawr,
located about 25 kilometres northeast of Tikrit.
According to the US military, a 600-member American
military unit - a special task force mandated to
ferret out Saddam — made a beeline for Al Dawr after
receiving "actionable intelligence" about Saddam's
whereabouts. They laid siege to Namek's home as well
as his nearby farmhouse. It was in an underground
cellar in the yard of the farmhouse that they
discovered Saddam and arrested him. The two targets
were the areas codenamed Wolverine 1 and Wolverine 2
in the American operation.
While the Tikriti sources were not privy to details of
the raid and arrest, they said if it was true that
Saddam was found hiding inside a cellar in Al Dawr,
then it was definitely at Namek's farmhouse.
Arrested along with Saddam was Namek's two sons, who
were present at the site, according to other sources.
A red and white taxi, which was apparently used by
Saddam to move around, was owned by one of the sons.
That was also hauled away by the American soldiers,
obviously hoping it might provide some clue to the
places that Saddam might have frequented.
None of the Tikrit sources who spoke to Manorama knew
where the elder Qais Al Namek was or even whether he
was alive or dead or in American captivity.
According to the sources, Qais Al Namek, a schoolmate
of Saddam, was enlisted into the private circles the
president in the 70s, but he left Baghdad a few years
ago complaining of ill-health.
It was since he did not figure in any American list of
people who were believed close to the president at the
time of his ouster from power that Namek's home or
farmhouse did not figure high in the toppled leader's
suspected hideout.
At the same time, the sources in Tikrit said they
believed -- although they did not actually know
specifics — that the Namek hideout could have been
among the dozens of such cellars where Saddam could
have been hiding since he went underground following
the fall of Baghdad to US forces.
"There are dozens like Nameks who would give their
life to Saddam," commented the source.
That declaration confirms the belief that it was
highly unlikely that Saddam spent all the time since
April at Namek's farmhouse. He would have changed
places very frequently. This means that he had to have
Namek-like hideouts to retire to whenever the American
heat got closer to him.
However, the US force hunting for Saddam had not
reported finding any such empty cellars during their
failed effort to locate Saddam on Saturday. But that
did not mean there were not any since the US would
have kept it a tightly guarded secret that they had
some clue to the means of hiding adopted by Saddam

Nuclear Israel and Mideast

PV Vivekanand

THE LIBYAN decision to abandon programmes to develop weapons of mass destruction may or may not have anything to do with what the world saw happening in Iraq in the name of WMD, but it raises again one of the key concerns of the countries of the Middle East — the Israeli arsenal of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.
It has for long been a demand of the countries of the Middle East that the region be free of weapons of mass destruction. It was also one of the key objectives of the Arab-Israeli peace process launched in Madrid in 1991. Several rounds of talks were held indeed after the Madrid conference, but Israel's deceptive approach to the issue torpedoed the effort.
We have heard US President George Bush welcoming the Libyan move and calling on other nations to recognize that the pursuit of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons brings not influence or prestige, but "isolation and otherwise unwelcome consequences."
But we did not hear the US president mention Israel. Would it be that Bush forgot that Israel possesses one of the largest stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. Granted that it might not have tonnes and tonnes of chemical or biological weapons stored, but it is known that Israel has perfected the techniques and keeps in battle readiness the components to make such weapons at short notice. That is not to mention its nuclear arsenal of up to 200 warheads and indeed more than that of the UK.
Perhaps Washington might not want to mention Israel's stocks and continuing pursuit of WMD if only because US assistance in material and technology might have had a lot to do with what is in Israel's possession now.
Israel always got away with refusing to deny or confirm its possession of WMD but asserting only that it would not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons in the Middle East. The US not only went along with the Israeli posture but also protected its "strategic partner" in the Middle East whenver pressure mounted on it to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
The US always used its diplomatic clout at the UN to ward off the pressure on Israel to sign the NPT and allow the UN to inspect its nuclear facilities. In the latest round, four years ago, Washington got tough with Egypt and warned Cairo to stay off Israel's case.
Of course, it was part of the established pattern that international law has two faces when it comes to the US and its allies, particularly Israel.
If our memory serves us right, Israel has often cited the need to defend itself against Iraqi and Libyan weapons in order to justify, however implictly, its own weapons programmes.
Today, Iraq's weapons are no more (that, if it had any to start with at the beginning of the war that led to the ouster of the Saddam Hussein regime), and Libya has announced it is abandoning all its WMD programmes. Isn't time Washington turned its focus onto Israel?

Saddam readied guerrilla war

pv vivekanand

CLEAR signs have emerged that Saddam Hussein had known he would be toppled and he and his supporters planned for a guerrilla war for nearly one year before the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq in March and April this year, according to Western and Arab intelligence sources.
The finding is rather startling, the sources admitted, given Saddam's rhetorics and defiance of the US in the run-up to the war and the way Iraqi defences collapsed under a deal American intelligence made with senior Iraqi miltiary officers.
"We're sure American intelligence has also come across the information that Saddam had been planning the intense guerrilla war that is taking place today in post-war Iraq," said a Western intelligence source. "They (American intelligence) are not disclosing the information, and European intelligence agencies don't feel obliged to share their fingings with the Americans either," added the source.
Arab intelligence sources also confirmed that they had found out that Saddam had ordered a close-knit group of supporters — who were and are not known even to his top aides — to prepare for "the war of resistance" against the US sometime in the second quarter of 2002.
"There was a steady diversion of arms and ammunition from the stores of the Iraqi miltiary to unknown destinations and those who questioned it were told it was being done under the direct orders of Saddam himself," said an Arab source.
"All indications are that Saddam was fully aware that he stood no chance against the US military might and that he would be ousted from power," said the source. "Saddam was not known to be a military strategist - a weak one at that if any thing - and his option was to make it as costly as possilble for the Americans to maintain their control of post-war Iraq."
The revelations are surprising since they confound all theories forward so far to explain the mounting intensity of resistance attacks against American and allied forces that constitute the coalition forces occupying Iraq.
According to the Arab intelligence source, Osama Bin Laden and Saddam had no organised links prior to or after the Sept.11, 2001, when Bin Laden's Al Qaeda activists slammed three hijacked airplanes to New York's World Trade Center towes and Washington's Pentagon.
"Saddam had invited Bin Laden to take shelter in Iraq following the August 1998 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania but Bin Laden turned down the invitation since he had nothing but contempt for Saddam and his polices," said the source.
According to the source, Al Qaeda fighters and sympathisers — Sudanese, Yemenis, Egyptians, Algerians and others  — drifted into Iraq before and after the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq this year, but "they are not there as an organised group under a central command."
"They are in small groups but have contacts with the underground resistance that is supplying them with arms and ammunition to wage surprise attacks on the Americans in Iraq," said the Arab source.
This account was confrmed by the European intelligence source.
"What we are seeing in Iraq today are un-coordinated but effective attacks against the occupation forces," said the source. "It had surprised us to see that there was a steady source of supply of rockets, mortars and short-range projectiles as well as RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) that were being used in the attacks," the source said. "But soon it became apparent that there are weapons and ammunition stored in strategic locations in the country although it is difficult to pinpoint the storage areas," added the source.
According to the source, the Americans are being "more lucky than being efficient" in locating the hidden weapons. In the last six months, the US military has announced the seizure of major hauls of weapons in less than a dozen sites.
"That is only a scratch on the surface, according to information available to us," said the European source.

Another Vietnam in Iraq?

By PV Vivekanand

Has the US found its second Vietnam in Iraq?Although some experts already see a Vietnam-like scenario emerging in Iraq, others think the situation has not reached that point but that it is definitely a possibility. General consensus is that it would take a few more attacks claiming casualties in double digits to drive home the reality that the US has failed to "pacify" Iraqis, and this would intensify the war of attrition.
Is it possible that the US might decide to withdraw from Iraq? Hardly likely, given that the strategic objectives of the invasion and occupation of Iraq do not leave any room for such thoughts in Washington.
Is it possible for the US to shift strategy and hope to win over the people of Iraq to its side as a benevolent occupier?It seems difficult, given that the US military is in a vengeful mode and treats Iraqis will brutality, contempt and hostility.
The US military does not seem to accept that it has a responsibility to bring about normal life for Iraqis in an atmosphere of safety and security if only because the chaos that prevail in the country today is the direct result of American actions, Saddam Hussein or no Saddam.
American soldiers storm houses without discrimination, haul away people without justification and subject even women to humiliating bodysearches, reports from Baghdad say.
They are unable to check revenge killings, thefts and lootings and left the task of ensuring law and order to redrafted members of Saddam's police force whose motives are suspect at best.
Women are too scared to go out fearing rape and harassment and are thus denied the role they should be playing in the society.
The growing hostility towards Americans among Iraq was perhaps summarised in the words of Abdullah Oman, 18, carried by the Associated Press this week.
"They are watching us die and laughing. They humiliate us. They handcuffed me and arrested me in front of my parents late one night because I stood on my house porch after curfew."
Oman, like hundreds of other Iraqi boys, will willingly join the resistance and fight the Americans since he does not believe the US military occupying his country has his interests in mind.


Growing anti-US feelings

The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) underlined the dilemma the US faces in a recent report that warns of growing popular support for the forces challenging the US occupation of Iraq and says efforts to rebuild the country could collapse without immediate corrective action.
The CIA analysis reportedly suggests that the escalation of the US military campaign against guerrillas could cause new civilian casualties and drive more Iraqis to the side of the insurgents. It also says that the inability of US forces to crush the guerrillas is convincing growing numbers of Iraqis that the occupation can be defeated.
The report is said to warn that none of the postwar Iraqi political institutions and leaders has shown an ability to govern the country or even make progress on drafting a constitution or holding an election.
The American strategists and decision makers might need a CIA report like that to understand, if they wish to, the realities on the ground in Iraq. But people in the region do not have to read such reports to draw up a clear picture of the situation in Iraq and realise what is going wrong where for the Americans, starting with the very decision that seems to have been made years ago to invade and occupy Iraq citing whatever reasons and justifications they could cite.

Invalid reasons

It is essential to note here that none of the reasons that the US cited as having left Washington with no choice but to wage war on Iraq has been proved true.
It is surprising that US President George W Bush and his senior aides continue to insist that the reasons they cited for the war were very valid. There are a few questions that many are desperate to ask them without any trimmings and demand clear-cut, non-evasive and truthful answers. They include:
-- You had said Iraq possessed and was continuing to produce massive stocks of weapons of mass destruction which was a threat to American security and indeed the world. Now, six months after securing absolute military control of the country, where are those weapons of mass destruction?
-- You had said Iraq was linked to Al Qaeda and was somehow involved in the Sept.11 attacks and the invasion of that country was part of the US-led war against terrorism. Where is the proof?
-- Your argument today is that the ouster of Saddam meant liberation for the people of Iraq. Aren't today the people of Iraq subjected to brutal occupation that seems like a leaf taken from the Israeli occupation of the Palestinians?
— You argue that the Iraqi Governing Council is in charge of things in Iraq. But, as members of the council have affirmed, they are forced to take orders from the US overseer in Iraq, Paul Bremer, who retains absolute authority over anything and everything concerning the council's purported mission. How could you blame the council for the slow pace in work towards a constitution and general elections?
In the meantime, the ground reality in Iraq is a vicious circle. As American soldiers seeth with fury and hit back at suspected Iraqis with a vengeance after every resistance attack, they are making it all the more difficult for moves to convince the Iraqis that the US means "well" for them. If anything, the US military is making more enemies in Iraq every day.

'Foreign fighters'

Who is behind the mounting attacks against US and other coalition forces in Iraq?
It is difficult to say. No doubt, Saddam loyalists have a role in the operations but it would be a gross exaggeration to conclude that the ousted president is running the war of resistance. He might want to do that and might even think he is doing it, but his circle of influence is relatively limited but is indeed effective in inflicting casualties among the American forces.
An American commander recently declared that "foreign" fighters were behind the increasing anti-US attacks in Iraq. One would have thought that the American commander was as much an Iraqi as a descendant of Haroun Al Rasheed and had a national duty to protect Iraq from non-Iraqis.
It is certain that non-Iraqi Arabs play a prominent role the attacks, but it is unclear whether Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda is the leading force among them.
US officials and members of the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) have said foreign volunteers, including some from Al Qaeda, have slipped across the borders into Iraq to take part in a "holy war" against the US-led occupation.
"We're seeing Yemenis, we're seeing Sudanese, we're seeing Syrians and Egyptians, to name a few," according to a senior US commander.
Sources in Ammans said Jordanians and Palestinians were also among those fighting the Americans in Iraq.
What the Americans fail to realise and accept is that it does not need Bin Laden or Al Qaeda to fuel anti-US sentiments or orchestrate attacks. There are millions who see the American approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict and Muslims in general as totally biased and thus consider Washington as part of the problem at par with Israel.
If anything, the US, by maintaining the presence of over 15,000 soldiers in Iraq, has offered a perfect target for attacks. It might not be an exaggeration to say that some of the guerrillas in Iraq are more concerned with inflicting as much damage to the US military than worrying about the US occupation of the country. For many of them, dying while staging an attack against the US is only performing their duty in defence of the Arab and Muslim causes.

Suspect neighbours

The first suspects in the American mind are Iraq's neighbours.
The Iranian role, if any at all, in anti-occupation attacks in Iraq is at best murky. It is highly unlikely that the Iranian government would involve itself in such actions, particularly given that Tehran is acutely aware that it is being targeted for "regime change" and anything and everything it does could be used in the US-led campaign against it.
At the same time, Tehran would not sit idle if Iranian interests among the 15 million and plus Shiites of Iraq -- 60 per cent of the population by some accounts —  are undermined. It would like to use its influence through the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and ensure that its interests are protected. So far, there is no evidence that SCIRI has undertaken any anti-US attack in Iraq and it is clear the group wants a major share of power in post-war Iraq through a peaceful transition. The group is confident that it would be able to secure a major slice of power in Iraq if democratic elections were to be held.
There are indeed hardline groups within Iran with enough influence and financial clout to support anti-US attacks across the border in Iraq. Again, no evidence has emerged of such activities yet.
Tehran would also like to eliminate the main Iranian opposition group, Mujahedeen e-Khalq, which had upto 30,000 members in camps in Iraq with the blessing of the Saddam regime. The group has been disarmed by the US, but Washington is not ready to accept the Iranian demand that its members be handed over to Tehran. It remains a serious sore point in the already tense relationship between Washington and Tehran.
Syria has rejected American charges that it is allowing anti-US guerrillas to enter Iraq along its borders; so has Saudi Arabia. It is highly unlikely that either of them would allow such infiltration, but it is a possibility that the porous desert frontier is being used by guerrillas to enter Iraq. The same applies to Jordan, which has always found it difficult to patrol its border with Iraq against drug and weapon smugglers.
Turkey has its own interests to protect in northern Iraq and the Ankara government could be expected to check infiltration across the border to Iraq. However, there are militant anti-US groups in Turkey and it cannot be ruled out that some of them are active in Iraq. Furthermore, it is seen natural that Turkish agents are present in Iraq to pursue Ankara's interests in preventing the Iraqi Kurds from setting up an independent state in the north of the country.
Kuwait recently imposed controls over access to areas near its border with Iraq, apparently after intelligence reports indicated guerrilla infiltration.

Long-term strategy

What are the prospects for an American decision to quit Iraq?
Very little at this point in time.
Reports in the mainstream American media have exposed that hardliners in the Bush administration had planned the invasion and occupation of Iraq as part of an American strategy aimed at gaining control of the international oil market, maintaining a strong American military presence in the Arabian Gulf as a deterrent, and removing Iraq as a potential threat to Israel, Washington's "strategic ally" in the Middle East.
Having accomplished the three objectives through the war against Iraq, Washington has just set out to implement other actions that would entrench the US in the region. Against that reality, entertaining any thought of withdrawal from Iraq is out of question no matter what cost Washington has to pay in American soldiers' lives.
That is definitely the impression one gets from reading between the lines of the affirmations of President Bush and his aides that the US would not be forced into "prematurely" leaving Iraq.
For all technical purposes, the "maturity" will be accomplished when "democracy" is established in Iraq and Iraqis assume control of their country. For practical purposes, in the view of many Arabs, the "maturity" that the US seeks would be a stage where whoever is in power in Iraq would take orders from Washington without raising any question whatsoever and allow the country and its people be used as a weapon from within the Arab heartland to undermine Arab interests.
As such, for those Arabs and a majority of Iraqis, and indeed many others in the world, there is little sincerity in American promises. They view any American move in the Middle East as aimed solely at serving American and Israeli interests.
US President George W Bush has asserted that those behind the attacks against US and allied forces in Iraq are extremists trying to install a Taliban-style regime in Afghanistan.
Well, whoever was behind that advise to the US president knows little about the history of Iraq and its people. Religious hardline sentiments were never a dominant factor among Iraqis, and there has been little sign of any strong Iraqi group advocating a Taliban-style regime there.
Documentary evidence have appeared in the American press showing that grabbing control of Middle Eastern oil wells as a strategic weapon was being planned as far back as 1975. Against that revelations, it would take much more than words from Washington to convince the Arabs that Bush and his aides mean it when they affirm their resolve to "rebuild" Iraq. For the sceptics, the lofty declarations from Washington only mean that the American administration is using "rebuilding" Iraq as a pretext to maintain and expand the American presence in the region and achieve absolute US domination of the world.
For the world at large, it is a matter of the sole superpower of the world challenging anyone and everyone. "We are the United States of America and we intend to accomplish whatever we wish. Dare us at your peril" -- this is message they are seeing in American actions around the globe.
What does this all mean for the hapless majority in Iraq? When would their suffering end?
Turned into pawns in a wider gameplan, they have little say in the rules of the game.
But, will a suspension of guerrilla attacks lead to an improvement in the daily life of an Iraqi family. Perhaps yes, but not as long as Americans remain in absolute control and consider Iraq as its backyard.

No Saddam negotiation

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A REPORT on Sunday that Saddam Hussein is in secret negotiations with US forces in Iraq has been summarily dismissed as unfounded by highly informed intelligence sources and diplomats in the region.
"There is little evidence on the ground to support the report," said a senior source who is in a position to know what is going on in Iraq round-the-clock.
The source was referring to a report in London's Sunday Mirror repor that Saddam was demanding safe passage to the former Soviet republic of Belarus in exchange for information on weapons of mass destruction and his bank accounts.
"It is at best laughable since someone has misled the paper's correspondent, " said the source. "The fact is that the coalition forces occupying Iraq have no clue whatsover at this point as to where Saddam could be, who his supporters are and how he manages to keep himself away from getting caught," said the source.
"It is highly unlikely that Saddam would bargain with the US and flee the country," said a senior Arab diplomat in the region. "It is not in Saddam to do so."
If anything, said the Arab diplomat, "the continuing attacks that inflict daily casualties on the forces occupying Iraq should be seen as a major morale booster for Saddam, regardless of whether it is his loyalists or others who are staging the attacks."
According to the Sunday Mirror report, the purported negotiations with Saddam are conducted with the knowledge of US President George W. Bush, who is being kept up to date on the talks by his national security adviser Condoleeza Rice who is coordinating negotiations led by US general Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of US forces in Iraq.
"A representative of Saddam in Western-style civilian clothes came to coalition people at Tikrit at sunset on September 12. He led them to a house where the security official was waiting," said a senior Iraqi quoted in the Sunday Mirror.
"The discussions are now going on under the direct authority of Sanchez," the source said, according to the newspaper.
The source, a man, maintained that Saddam had decided to seek a deal " because he is desperate, trapped and finding fewer and fewer people willing to give him shelter," the report said.
Even in the hypothesis that there is any substance to the report, Saddam "should be aware that the US would rather have him dead rather than taking him alive," said a senior European source. "It might be a big boost for Bush to get Saddam alive, given that the US has failed so far to get Osama Bin Laden.
"However, then the US would be burdened with the obligation to unveil the whereabouts the weapons of mass destruction that it alleges were stockpiled by Saddam since they would have Saddam himself to question."
"The fact is," said the European source, "there was never any weapons of mass destruction of the size and nature that the Americans and British cited as the reason for going to war."
"If Saddam is caught and still Bush is unable to unearth the alleged stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, said it would seal Bush's political future for good," said another observer. "Don't forget, Bush has been forced to retract his implict claims earlier that Saddam was also linked to the Sept.11 attacks.""Americans might be lethargic, but they are not stupid to be taken by the argument that the president never said Saddam was behind the attack," added the observer. "Bush never explicitly said so, but he certainly gave a convincing impression to his people that Saddam was indeed responsible for Sept.11."

Arab media slowly catching up

Session on Western media and Iraq

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The Arab media showed that it is moving towards holding its ground against the continuing assault by the Western media during the recent war on Iraq and were more objective in its coverage of the conflict when compared to the Western media.
However, the Arab media have to go a long way ahead before it could actually do the job they are supposed to do in terms of being instrumental in changes in the society.
This was the consensus at discussions held here on Wednesday as part of Arab Media Summit 2003, which ended later in the day.
The session, held under the title "Iraq as a case study: Western media coverage," was moderated by Peter Arnett, a former CNN correspondent who gained prominence during the 1991 Gulf war by virtue of him being the only American television reporter in who remained in Iraq throughout the military conflict.
According to Arnett, there need not be much of a classification between the Western and Arab television channels since news organisations borrowed each other's footage.
He referred to the arrangement between CNN and Al Jazeera television during the Afghanistan whereby the American network heavily used Al Jazeera footage.
In a broader context, Arnett described the recent war against Iraq as a continuation of the 1991 Gulf war, and said it "did not have to take place."
"This is a 13-year war. It was a pre-emptive war. The US and UK did not have to launch it," he said. "In the case of World War II, there was no choice as it was a war of survival. But this war angered the Arab World as it did not have to take place," said Arnett.
He said it was a question of credibility and trust.
He recalled British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Iraq could launch its alleged weapons of mass destruction ((WMD) with a 45-minute notice and US Secretary of State Colin Powell laid out a full dossier against Iraq at the UN.
"The Iraqi side said we not have any WMD, you can search anywhere and that's what the UN did," he said. "But then, Saddam Hussein did not have any credibility," he said.
Arnett was employed by the American networks NBC and National Geographic for covering the recent Iraq war. But they fired him for saying on Iraqi TV that the US war plan had failed.
In his comments here on Wednesday, he criticised the decision to sack him.
"As journalists, we need to know the other side, we should know the other side," he said.
Arnett said CNN had brought back war reporting to the forefront. "War reporting was on a decline. CNN's success during the first war motivated others," he said. "
However, he argued that while the US had won the war on the military front, it has lost the "information war."
"Today, it is impossible for anyone to control the media. There is no embedding anymore," he said referring to the unprecedented way that American journalists were allowed to accompany military units which invaded Iraq.
Jihad Al Khazen, director and writer of the Al Hayat newspaper, said the Arab media had outdone the Western media in objectively covering war.
Clive Myrie, a BBC correspondent, said the issue should not be reduced to a beauty contest between the Arab and Western media.
"We are all involved in getting to the truth and that is what we should be doing," he said.
Arguing against certain Arab perceptions that the Western media is biased against the Arabs, he said the Western media is not a single monolith that thinks alike but consists of various perspectives and processes.
Myrie, who was one of the "embedded" journalists with the US Marines during the Iraq war, said he was viewing the war from the perspective of the men in the US army unit.
He said he had formed bonds with soldiers in the units and the impact this had on maintaining standards of objective journalism.
"They were feeding me and helping me in my task and gave me a front row seat to see the war but I still had the freedom to be objective in reporting the war," he said.
Arnett said that the concept of embedded journalists was a brilliant masterstroke of the Pentagon in trying to turn coverage of the war in their favour. The coverage of embedded journalists, he noted was perceived as highly reliable.
Janine Digiovanni, a correspondent of The Times, highlighted the need for journalists to work in underreported regions of the world like Chechnya.
She said there were several regions of the world that deserved to be covered because of the appalling abuse of human rights but were not covered because they did not have oil or pipelines or vast natural resources.
"More often than not these stories were in Africa where the level of violence and massacre is beyond horrific."
She talked about how she was one on the only three journalists to witness the fall of Grozny in Chechnya.
She also related how she was horrified by the level of damage created by Israeli tanks which levelled the West Bank town of Jenin in April 2002.
She said she was proud to see what the British press had written about what happened in the town.
However, she was less than proud of her American colleagues, whom she accused of burying the Jenin story, or brushed it off because it was not considered a massacre.

Arabic talk shows - Hard Talk

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ARAB television talk shows that were a magnet for Arabs when they were launched a few years ago have now turned into boring shouting matches that lack objectivity or focus, with the audience prompted to switch to other channels, participants in a round-table debate here agreed on Wednesday.
The need of the day to improve the shows is to bring in more professionalism in terms of research and background material in order to enlighten the audience and link them to the issue being discussed, they said.
Equally important is a sense of purpose for talk shows rather than a goal of "bashing" people, said Tim Sebastian, who hosts the celebrated "Hard Talk" show of the British Broadcasting Corporation.
The general consensus at the one-hour discussion —"Western and Arabic TV Talk shows: Differences and Similarities — on the sidelines of Arab Media Summit 2003 was that Arab satellite channels like Al Jazeera started off with an impact and offering a forum for Arabs to express their opinion and highlight Arab causes and viewpoints. The channels assumed more prominence with their coverage of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, but the talk shows declined in quality and content, according to the participants, most of whom were highly critical of Al Jazeera in particular.
The main complaint that was heard was that Arab television talk shows tend to be have less substance and are more oriented towards pleasing the audience through highly-charged debate.
At the same time, it was also observed that Arab television talks shows have not yet reached a level where they could be compared to the mature productions of the West as yet.
It was also debated whether Arabs interviewed on Western programmes like "hard talk" had sufficient mastery of English or suffered from lack of ability to be articulate self.
Commenting on complaints that many Arab figures participating in talk shows and interviews on Western television tend to leave wrong ideas and impression, Khaled Al Maeena, editor-in-chief of Arab News, made an emphatic point that those who do not think they qualify to take part should stay away from such shows because they end up giving wrong impressions and ideas. This is particularly applicable for senior government officials, he said.
Any personality who accepts an invitation to a talk show or interview should do his or homework and should prepare self to answer questions with authority, he said.
"Anyone who respects himself and is not qualified to speak on tv, should not go on air — whatever tv that is," said Maeena.
Also discussed was self-censorship by hosts — something that Sebastian said he never exercised in his 27 years with the BBC — and the need for television channels to ensure that their staff are not persecuted as a result of criticism on air.
According to Sebastian, "politics is a performing art" and "part of the interviewee's job is communication."
It is very important that every talk show should produce "new ideas.... new information" and this what makes successful talk shows, he said.
Western talk shows like his programme, he said, are not public relations exercises or entertainment. It is part of the democratic process where politicians and government leaders are held accountable in public.
He said research into the issues to be raised during the show or interview is an integral part of the professional approach; so is an post-event analysis of what it produced.
"Nobody gives anything to a journalist as a right. He has to go out and get it," he said.
"Rights evolve because people keep pushing for their freedom and what they want. One of the ways is through the TV," he said.
Sebastian said that he felt there is more openness from Middle Eastern governments, but there is also more self-censorship in the media.
"You have to keep pushing the boundaries. We have a right to hold our leadership to account because they affect our lives. It doesn't matter if you ruffle a few ministerial feathers, these are issues of life and death for many people," he said.
"For the purpose of the interviews, I take the opposing point of view because it is not very interesting to sit opposite and agree," he said.

Points of media convergence

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THE ARAB and Western media should focus on points of convergence rather than divergence and should accept that the fundamental principles guiding their work are the same, a prominent Arab writer and commentator said on Tuesday.
Khaled Al Maeena, editor-in-chief of Arab News, was addressing the first working session of the Arab Media Summit in Dubai.
In his short but comprehensive comment, Maeena told the session held under the title "Complicity? Responsibility? Liability? The Role of Media in the Modern War," Maeena tackled the various problems faced by the Arab media in addressing domestic Arab and international audiences.
He highlighted that the Arab media were fighting the stereotypes imposed on them.
"There's nothing called the Western media but only entities like the US media, European media and the British press," he said, adding that the US and British media had "distinguished themselves" from "Western media."
In the broader context, "while we do have some suspicion about each other, we can focus on areas of convergence," he said.
Maeena submitted that a new face of journalism was put forward during the Iraq war early this year. with the so-called embedded reporters donning uniforms and blatantly taking sides.
He called it compliance as well as complicity.
"Let me tell you, I'm not in the blame game," he said. "But at the same time it's a fact that a great chunk of the US media complied with the powers that be during the Iraq war.
"We know that there are people in the US who are with us. But the media have helped develop a situation in which Muslims and Islam are looked down upon as sub-human. The US media has helped create a fear psychosis," Maeena told the session, which was moderated by CNN's Nic Robertson.
Earlier in the session, Tim Sebastian of BBC's "Hard Talk" underlined the importance of having an media that asks for accountability and questions everyone concerns.
While expressing reservations over targeting the West for all the criticism, he said the Arab world needed do an introspection on how open they are to the outside world.
"What's your definition of truth? The truth that will help you keep your job or the truth that will get you fired?" Sebastian asked pointing out to a UN report which says not a single Arab country has freedom of press. "A free press is also a fallible press. But I prefer it to the alternative," he said.
The veteran BBC journalist denounced what he said was the practice of using war reporting as a yard stick of patriotism. The media should not take anything dished out to them by the officials at face value, he said.
"A questioning media is a key ingredient of any modern democracy," he said. "Nobody should be sent out to war without a reason. When the press asks 'why?' it deserves an answer from the powers that be," he said.
Robert Menard, chief executive officer of the France-based Journalists Sans Frontiers, voiced regret that governments which care little for press freedom expects the press to tell them the truth whatever be the risks involved.
"Even governments, which imprison and harass reporters for trying to find the truth never fail to lecture on press freedom. Truth is more and more becoming a casualty in conflicts," said Menard.
He noted that nearly 50 journalists were either killed or wounded in the three-year-old Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation.
"How can we be giving lessons to journalists without taking into account their safety?" asked Menard.
Hamdi Qandeel, a prominent television personality from Egypt, asserted that the situation in the Arab world has not changed much from the 1960s when military used to be the only permissible source of information for the press.
The situation is changing fast, he said and pointed out to the way
Qatar's Al Jazeera television and Abu Dhabi TV covered the Iraq and the quality of their reports.
Such a qualitative shift is a promise to everyone that there is hope for the Arab media to expand and improve itself so as to convey the Arab point of view to the audience.
The second interactive session of the day held under the title
"Media: The Ultimate Weapon of Mass Destruction" and was moderated by Gavin Esler of the BBC.
Dr Azmi Bishara, Arab member of the Israeli Knesset, asserted that what he called politics of identity was a major hindrance to the Arabs to bring their real issues to the international community.
"The Arab media is always concerned with the politics of identity. It is always about 'we' and 'them,' either the Arabs versus the West or the Arabs versus Israel," said Bishara. "This disguises the more important issues concerning the oppressed people in the region, for example, the oppressed in Iraq," said Bishara, who represents Nazreth in the Knesset.
He criticised a large section of the Arab media for accepting the American media's versions in the name of rationality and pragmatism. However, the Arab media pose much less of a danger in spreading misinformation than the Western media because of the former's lack of credibility, he said.
Danny Schechter, a prominent writer from Washington, said it was wrong to label all American journalists anti-Arab. He pointed out that many American journalists were aware of the imbalances and were fighting disinformation and deception in the American media that were particularly highlighted during the coverage of the Iraq war.
At the same time, he conceded that many American journalists consider it as patriotism to accept the administration's point of view and be guided by it without question.
According to Schechter, the American media failed to show a great deal about the Iraq war to the American public. Such failure was deliberate, he said, since the media purposely held back information from the public. "The media can be judged more by its omissions," Schechter said.
Paul-Marie De La Gorce, a French journalist, slammed the US administration for having orchestrated what he said was a campaign of lies and deception in order to build the case for war against Iraq.
Specifically referring to the US allegations that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, he noted that no such weapon has been found in post-war Iraq.
Mohammed Al Sayed Saeed of Egypt's Al Ahram newspaper also referred to the American media build-up for war.
"Countries do not go to war because of interests but due to images," he said. "Media bombard minds with images that fill it with ideas and penetrate minds."
On Tuesday, three interaction sessions are the highlights of the Arab Media Summit, which will culminate with the presentation of the Arab Journalism Awards.
Among those attending the interactive sessions are Peter Arnett, a former CNN correspondent, Jihad Al Khazen of Al Hayat and former Palestinian minister Dr Hanan Ashrawi.

Wake-up calls at Arab Media Summit

October
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STRONG calls were heard in Dubai on Tuesday for retrospection by the Arab information media and a fresh strategy and perspective aimed at raising medial professionalism in the Arab World.
Leading the call was UAE Minister of Information Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who, in a harsh-hitting key note address at the opening of Arab Media Summit 2003, criticised the Arab media of having failed to expose the realities of the Gulf crisis and not presenting the actual picture of the military situation before the recent war on Iraq.
Sheikh Abdullah and others speakers at the forum, which was opened by ubai Crown Prince and UAE Defence Minister General Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum in the presence of German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, emphasised the need for a sweeping rethink on the part of the Arab media with a view to effectively presenting the Arab viewpoint effectively to the international community.
The forum -- held under the tile "War & the Media" — also heard calls for a new perspective on the concept of press freedom with responsibility and admissions by Western journalists that objectivity and accuracy were often lacking in the non-Arab media too.
Sheikh Mohammed told the gathering, the third of its kind, that the interaction between Arab and non-Arab media personalities also brought to the fore the prevailing sense of distrust as well as allegations of one-sided and 'selective' approach to truth in journalism.
Sheikh Mohammed lamented that the Arab countries have become the exporters of bad news over a long period now.
New disputes are springing up and the dispute over water is predicted to take the centrestage of Arab politics in the future, he reminded.
"Can we , if not an Arab nation, at least form a limited liability company with human beings as its capital," Sheikh Mohammed asked, concluding his speech with a strong condemnation of the Israeli aggression on Syria.
Schroeder in his speech sought the help of the media in reducing the hostile preconceptions between people in the Arab World as well as in the West. "The European Union is looking towards building meaningful relationship with the GCC countries. The Arab media can greatly contribute in this regard as it is in the threshold of an information revolution facilitated by excellent infrastructure," he remarked.
Schroeder said that while freedom is undoubtedly a precondition for prosperity, the media should make responsible use of this freedom.
In what was hailed as the some of the most refreshing comment heard from an Arab minister of information, Sheikh Abdullah regreted that the recent war on Iraq once again exposed the failure of the Arab media in distinguishing between fact and propaganda.
"Before the war, Arab media failed to reveal the true nature of the Iraqi regime...but dealt with it as if it were a peaceful government and portrayed the conflict as simply one between Western powers and an Arab regime ready to confront and challenge them in the name of Arab honour and sovereignty," he told the gathering.
"Arab media distanced itself from reality and helped mislead public opinion by supplying unrealistic suppositions about the possible outcome of the conflict," Sheikh Abdullah said.
Sheikh Abdullah said that if the region's media had adopted an objective approach and exposed the real situation where that the military balance was tilted in favour of coalition forces, there would not have been such "panic and frustration" in the Middle East.
"Arab media must take an objective stand and not allow anything to prevent us from self-criticism and evaluation to achieve a media which informs, not misleads, which explains, not distorts," he said. "We must accept that there are mistakes and weaknesses in our governments and societies..." The opening session was followed by two interactive sessions, one on "Complicity? Responsibility? Liability? The Role of Media in the Modern War" and the second on "Media: The Ultimate Weapon of Mass Destruction.'
Addressing the first of these interactive sessions, were Tim Sebastian of BBC's "Hard Talk," who denounced the practice of using war reporting as a yard stick of patriotism. The media should not take anything dished out to them by the officials at face value. A questioning media is a key ingredient of any modern democracy. Nobody should be sent out to war without a reason, he said.ed.
Robert Menard, chief executive officer of the France-based Journalists Sans Frontiers, regretted that even governments who care little for press freedom expects the press to tell them the truth whatever be the risks involved.
Hamdi Qandeel, a television presenter from Egypt, lamented that the situation in the Arab world has not changed much from the 1960s when military used to be the only permissible source of information for the press. However, coverage by Al Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV during the recent war in Iraq held out a promise for those who strive to put across the Arab point of view to the public, he added.
Khalid Al Maena, editor-in-chief of Arab News, in his brief but comprehensive speech summarised the conflicts and dilemmas faced by the Arab media in taking the message to the rest of the world and in fighting the stereotypes imposed on it. "There's nothing called the Western media but only entities like the US media, European media and the British press. While we do have some suspicion about each other, we can focus on areas of convergence," he suggested.
Nic Robertson of CNN was the moderator at the session while the second interactive session was moderated by Gavin Esler of BBC. Speakers at the second session included Dr Azmi Bishara, Arab member of the Israeli Knesset, Danny Schechter, writer from Washington, Paul-Marie De La Gorce, correspondent from France and Dr Mohammed Al Sayed Saeed of Egypt's Al Ahram newspaper.
Bishara said that the stress on politics of identity was not helping Arabs to project the real issues to the rest of the world. "The Arab media is always concerned with the politics of identity. It is always about 'we' and 'them,' either the Arabs versus the West or the Arabs versus Israel. This disguises the more important issues concerning the oppressed people in the region, for example, the oppressed in Iraq," Bishara said.
Schechter expressed his opposition to grouping together all American journalists as anti-Arab, citing that many of them have been putting up a fight against the wave of misnformation and deception in the US press, as was seen during the recent Iraq war. He, however, admitted that many US journalists almost consider it their "patriotic duty" to accept the establishment's point of view.
De La Gorce termed America's campaign against Iraq on the issue of weapons of mass destruction as one of lies and deception. Sayed Saeed, referring to the American campaign said that countries do not go to war because of interests but due to images.
The summit concludes on Wednesday with the Arab Media Awards ceremony.

Hossein Khomeini in US

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

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