What lies ahead for Lebanon

June 24, 2005

What lies ahead for Lebanon

THE PEOPLE of Lebanon, the Arabs at large and the international community are fascinated by the fast pace of events in Lebanon that has taken everyone by surprise since the Feb.14 assassination of former prime minister Rafiq Al Hariri. Many analysts tend to describe the developments in Lebanon as the "cedar revolution."
Syria has been forced to withdraw its military from Lebanon — thus ending nearly three decades of its absolute dominance of its neighbour. The country held parliamentary elections that saw the anti-Syrian opposition securing an eight-seat majority in the 129-member assembly.
And the Lebanese are set to embark on a new era in their modern history, but they have to deal with numerous wild cards that could spring surprises, writes PV Vivekanand.
With the bloc led by Saadeddine Al Hariri, son of the slain prime minister, sweeping the polls on an anti-Syrian reform ticket plus of course the sympathy factor, the stage is set for the next but crucial phase of Lebanese politics. No matter what the perspective, reshaping Lebanon's relations with Syria is one of the top priorities of the new government and that is where it might run into serious problems.
Those problems will stem from the differing priorities of the various groups that make up Lebanon's political mosaic.
According to election returns and party affiliations, the "Lebanese national opposition," a coalition led by Saadeddine Al Hariri, won 72 seats, enabling to form the next government. Hariri's coalition includes the Progressive Socialist Party of Walid Junblatt with 14 seats, the Lebanese Forces Party of jailed Samir Geagea with six seats and the Qornet Shehwan grouping with six seats.
The Shiite Hizbollah and its ally Amal won a total of 35 seats. Former general Michael Aoun, who returned from exile in May, won 21 seats after he made an alliance with pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud when he found himself without any allies.
All groupings have differing and conflicting priorities and these could emerge with force once a government is installed, most probably with Saadeddine Al Hariri as prime minister and Junblatt as well as Geagea's wife and the widow of slain president Bashir Germayel assuming key positions.
According to analyst Dr. Walid Phares, a professor of Middle East Studies and senior fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, the new political map is:
Hariri, a Sunni who is backed by Saudi Arabia and the US, tops the list. He is supported by Junblatt, who, according to Phares, is anti-American. The two of them "control the legislature with backing from a smaller number of Christian legislators who are historically anti-Syrian but have joined the alliance to achieve interim or tactical agendas," says the analyst.
Hizbollah and Amal stand second, and with them the remnants of the pro-Syrian regime. They will ally themselves to any government that will protect them from the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1559 which calls forr their disarmament.
Aoun, with the largest bloc of the Christian MPs, is third and has begun from a position of weakness, but perhaps he will emerge as the loudest voice, Phares predicts.
Aoun backs the call for Hizbollah to be disarmed but considers the confrontation with Syria over.
The Hariri camp wants to take Lebanon totally away from the Syrian orbit and set it on a course of its own while maintaining Beirut-Damascus relationship in a tight frame. It will be a delicate rope-trick since the Syrians will be closely watching every Lebanese move for signs that Beirut is succumbing to American pressure to cut a seperate peace deal with Israel without Syria having any say.
Few politicians and commentators have bothered to recall that the US had given an implicit green signal to Syria in 1990 to have its way in Lebanon in return for Damascus joining the coalition which evicted Iraq from Kuwait through war in early 1991. The US maintained that position until it became clear that Syria would not sign on the Israeli-dotted lines in a peace agreement. Syria's opposition to the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq in March 2003 sealed the course of the American action against Damascus. Indeed, it could even be argued that Syria did not respect its side of the 1990 bargain by opposing the Iraq war of 2003.
Today, the US backs the Hariri camp as well as all other forces opposed to Syria, and there are strong indications that Washington would seek to cut Lebanon out of the overall Arab-Israeli equation and work out such a separate Lebanese-Israeli deal. Whether a Hariri-led government would be amenable to that remains to be seen.
In principle, Lebanon does not have any territorial dispute with Israel after the UN Security Council ruled last year that the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms area belongs to Syria and not to Lebanon.
Israel occupied the area from Syria in the 1967 war, but Damascus had since then argued that it belonged to Lebanon. That was seen as a ploy to keep Lebanon engaged in the Arab-Israeli conflict since groups like Hizbollah could wage continued resistance against the Jewish state even after the Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 1999.
The US-engineered resolution adopted by the UN Security Council did away with that.
An Israeli-Lebanese peace agreement would leave Syria on its own to deal with the Jewish state's occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights, and Damascus could be expected to fight that eventuality with tooth and nail. And here would be the key role of groups like the Shiite Hizbollah and Amal, which will block such moves.
At the same time, they would also have to withstand pressure for them to be disarmed, and the Hariri bloc seems have given them some assurance that this would not be done. However, the next item on the American agenda in Lebanon is disarming Hizbollah and Palestinian groups in camps in the south of the country. This was affirmed by US Assistant Secretary of State Liz Cheney during a meeting with Arab journalists this week.
Therefore, the tacit, temporary alliance that the Hariri camp had with Hizbollah mediated by Druze leader Junblatt will be put to test sooner than later.
In the meantime, Syria also expect increased American pressure.
That was made clear when Washington accused Syria of being behind the killing of George Hawi, former chief of Lebanon's Communist Party and a harsh critic of Syria,. It is the third prominent assassination of an anti-Syrian Lebanese figure. The first two were Hariri, who was killed in a bomb blast on Feb.14, and journalist Samir Kassis, a bitter critic of Syria, who died in a bombing this month.
While the immediate conclusion is that Syria was behind the three killings, a quick scrutiny of the realities on the ground would indicate that there is something wrong in following conventional thinking to decide that the Syrians are eliminating anti-Syrian voices in Lebanon.
In fact, Damascus and its allies in Lebanon lost a lot as a result of the killings and stand to lose much more in the days ahead.
We have seen the Syrians being forced to end its nearly 30 years of dominance in Lebanon following the Hariri assassination and international pressure mounting on Damascus to stay away from Lebanese affairs.
We know that the Syrians are not stupid or naive enough to think that they could get aay with killing people like Hariri and Kassis. They would know that the first accusing figure would be levelled against them. They would know that the US is waiting to grab any opportunity that came along to step up pressure against Syria. They would know that such assassinations would only bring immense strains on Syrian-Lebanese relations. They would also know that they would be the end losers in Lebanon.
Who benefited indirectly from the killings? Whover hated Syria's role in Lebanon and wanted to end it.
This would mean a majority of the people of Lebanon and Israel.
Are there people capable of carrying out such precision assassinations present in Lebanon? Yes, the pro-Syrian Lebanese secutity agencies.
Will they do that, knowing well that Syria will have to pay the price? No.
Then who could have done it? Anyone who has a state intelligence aparata and strong intelligence presence in Lebanon.
Who would that be? None other than Israel.
Israel got rid of Syria from Lebanon. Now, it could seek to deal directly with Lebanon away from Syrian influence and strike an agreement that removes Lebanon from the overall Arab-Israeli equation. That would also leave Syria as the last holdout against signing peace with Israel.
The killing of Hawi was strange. He was not a real threat to the pro-Syrian government; nor was he a danger to Syria itself. Lebanese media have noted that Hawi was not engaged in remarkable or delicate political activities and his ideas did not affect anybody, even if he was close to the opposition against Syrian tutelage.
"Just as Kassir's assassination took place soon after the first round of the parliamentary elections in Beirut, Hawi's assassination came after the wrap-up of the final round of parliamentary elections, as if Lebanon is destined to walk through a minefield before reaching the safe shores of freedom," wrote Beirut's Daily Star newspaper.
"All the politicians who condemned Hawi's assassination unanimously agreed the country is not secure — with or without international fostering; with the presence of a government fully subject to Syria's influence or one independent and free of Syria's hegemony," wrote the paper.
Security Forces have arrested five Syrian nationals shortly after the murder of Hawi in a car bomb. They were to be hiding on the roof of a nearby building, but nothing else was reported about them beyond that.
Junblatt, who says he fears that Syria is tageting him, asserted that "The one who doesn't want Lebanon to gain its independence and freedom and wants chaos to prevail is the one behind murdering Hawi."
President Lahoud rejected charges that he was somehow involved in the killing. He vowed to uncover those responsible for this "barbaric crime," saying all state capacities would be mobilied to achieve this goal.
"Every time Lebanon advances new steps to keep law and order, evil hands destabilise the situation again," said Lahoud.
"With regard to the persistent suggestion that the president is linked to the so-called security state, everyone knows that he does not directly supervise the security agencies," he pointed out.
What happens next in Lebanon?
There is indeed fear that any politician could be killed at any juncture and this would figure as a key consideration for any political move in the country in the days ahead. While the obvious "beneficiary" from such a state of fear is Syria — as most anti-Syrians argue — it has to be remembered that Israel, which is indeed enthusiastic that it could now play its own game in Lebanon — stands to gain the most.
In the meantime, it is highly unlikely that an objective and realistic investigation into the Hariri, Kassis and Hrawi killings would produce irrefutable evidence as to who the perpetrators were. The assassinations were professional, indicating the involvement of a state-run intelligence network; and Israel's Mossad has the best expertise and indeed experience in carrying out such actions and leaving no trace of its involvement. Regardless of whether Syria had anything to do with any or all of the killings, Damascus is targeted for American action. And we could expect the determined American action taking its course just as we saw Washington bulldozing its way into invading and occupying Iraq through deception.
Caught in the equation would be Lebanon, and it is upto the new leadership that has emerged from the elections to make the best of the situation. In order to do that, the various political forces of the country have to come together on a common platform, and that is the most daunting task awaiting them.

Rice and Arab democracy

IT WAS indeed an "important" speech that US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made in Cairo on Monday emphasising the need for democratic reforms in the Middle East. But it only served to emphasise the selective American vision as to who should do what and how in the region and the double standards that the US has always followed when dealing with this region.
Rice told the region's leaders not to fear their people's free choice — a great idea and concept of course. But she also used the forum to single out Egypt, Syria and Iran as countries which should transform themselves.
We all know that there are major shortcomings in the Egyptian political system, and it would take time before politicians entrenched in the corridors of power would accept the inevitability of change. There would a lot of political fireworks before the system would be open for circles other than the ruling party. The Egyptians are dealing with it, and, sooner or later, there will be changes in Egypt, but the US would not be able to impose them except in a peripheral context. The Egyptians themselves will have to take care of them.
In Syria, we have seen that the regime of Bashar Al Assad has taken serious steps towards reforms.
Assad is following a skilful political approach: He wants his people to see tangible and positive changes in their daily life in terms of living standards and, more importantly perhaps, the basic freedom of choice. He has lifted scores of restrictions that were solid features of life for the Syrians for decades. He has also initiated a series of economic reforms that would hopefully lead to better opportunities for his people.
Assad has charted a course starting with ensuring that his reforms do make a positive impact on people's life and then going on to introduce political reforms. He wants to prove it to his people that he could deliver what he promises. He has realised that only then he could hope for an absolute and unquestionable popular endorsement as the political leader of the country.
The US should accept the sequence and pace of events rather than trying to demand an overnight transformation of a political system that has existed for decades. What is it that the US wants in Syria? A French-style revolution?
Iran is a different kettle of fish altogether. For a majority of Iranians — Shiites — politics and religion go together and thus the Iranian political system does not conform to what Washington might see as ideal. The US is barking up the wrong tree by insisting on Iran having democracy of a style and shape that is acceptable to Washington. What the US wants in Iran is a sweeping change in a belief and conviction based on faith. How could that be acceptable to the Iranians? There might or might not be problems with the Iranian-style of democracy and governance, but it is the Iranians to decide what reforms they would like to accept. The US, or anyone else for that matter, has no business to dictate terms for change in any society except of course the Americans themselves (Let us not forget the resounding allegations within the US that the last presidential elections were rigged in some states. We don't recollect Rice talking about that either. Can't she do something about addressing those charges?).
Rice spoke about the people's freedom of choice. Surely, such a noble approach should be welcome to forces which are seeking changes in the Arab World.
However, we see a paradox here.
For starters, let us see how many opposition leaders — wherever they have been clearly identified — opted to join their voices to the American effort. Well, practically none.
Egypt's powerful Muslim Brotherhood, which could easily win elections if it is allowed to run as a political party and field candidates — hit the nail on the head by dismissing Rice's visit.
"We know that the US administration is not a benevolent organisation or a charity," said Mohammed Habib of the Brotherhood. "Its interests and agenda are not those of the Egyptian people."
Even the Kefaya (Enough) movement, the most active group in Egypt seeking reforms, turned down an invitation to meet Rice.
In principle, few in the Arab World dispute that the region needs reform. The Arabs agree with the US that ordinary people should have a direct role and say in the running of their affairs, but that is where the agreement stops. The Arabs are suspicious of the American agenda in the Middle East. They are aware of the American record while dealing with human rights and democracy. They know that democracy means little to the US when compared with what it considers as its strategic interests. That the US is driving for reforms in certain countries in itself is suspect because it is no coincidence that those countries happen to be hurdles in the American quest to achieve its strategic goals and serve its priorities where a genuine desire for democracy is far down the list.

American hypocrisy

Some of the scenes from Abu Ghraib.

June 11 2005

American hypocrisy








AMONG THE conditions that the US has cited for not to withhold payments to the UN is a demand that the world body bar countries that violated human rights from UN human rights organisations. Well, if we go by what the London-based Amnesty International has to say about it, then the first country that should be kept away from UN human rights organisations is none other than the United States of America itself, followed by some of its closest allies.
The US demand is yet another milestone in the hypocritical policies adopted by the Bush administration. The world needs no pointed presentation of the systematic violations of human rights by the US.
Of course, Washington would reject the accusations and call them absurd. Perhaps, the only point, if you will, in its favour is that the rights of American citizens are not violated except those of American Muslims, particularly if they are of Arab origin.
Amnesty has recorded violations of the human rights by American soldiers, intelligence operatives, interrogators and officials. In sum, these records fully support Amnesty's description that the American detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, Cub, is a modern "gulag" — Stalinist-period labour camps and jails in the Soviet Union.
In addition are the findings that the US maintains secret detention facilities in "friendly" countries where the Central Intelligence Agency and its affiliated agencies and groups have a free hand in subjecting the detainees to any form of humiliation, torture and punishment that they deem fit.
Accodding to Amnesty Director William Shultz, "the United States is maintaining an archipelago of prisons around the world, many of them secret prisons into which people are being literally disappeared, held in indefinite, incommunicado detention without access to lawyers or a judicial system, or to their families, and in some cases at least we know that they are being mistreated, abused, tortured and even killed. And those are similar at least in character, if not in size, to what happened in the Gulag."
The US demand that the UN "reform" itself came last week with a congressional committee narrowly approving legislation. The bill says that the US would withhold half of its annual $500 million contribution unless the world body tstreamlined its bureaucracy, barred countries that violated human rights from UN human rights bodies and created an independent oversight board and ethics office.
The effort to get the bill approved was led by Henry Hyde, Republican chairman of the House of Representatives international relations committee.
He argued that the bill was the only way to force the UN to adopt reforms. “You can't have reform if you don't withhold dues," he said.
The Bush administration has said it does not approve of the legislation. However, it is not seen as resisting it either.
The Senate could take up the issue and adopt a similar move. After all, there are many US senators who are gunning for the UN, among them Norm Coleman, the Minnesota Republican who has led an investigation into the UN's role in the Iraq oil-for-food scandal.
With John Bolton, a bitter critic of the UN who reportedly does not believe in the world body, poised to be approved as US ambassador to the organisation, the ground seems to be set for a battle over reforms.
There are critics who think the legislation on UN funding is linked to Bolton's nomination, which has been opposed by many members of the US Congress. They believe that the Bush administration prompted Republican members of Congress to get the bill approved in order to show that one of Bolton's prime tasks at the UN will be reform.
The US withheld dues to the UN for more than 10 years before settling it in September 2003.
Few doubt that the UN needs reform in its bureaucracy and financial administration as well as dispensation of services.
Beyond that, however, is the need for the world body to be re-established as the sole authority that not only upholds international law but also enforces it. It should have enough clout and teeth to supercede violating governments and apply world conventions and laws without discrimination and away from the threat of being undermined by actions of individual governments.
A cursory review of the UN's record will demonstrate without ambiguity that the US is in the forefront of countries which always used the UN Charter to their convenience. And now the US wants the world body to adopt American-designed reforms in return for funding.
The irony and paradox is clear even in a hypothesis. If the UN were to adopt the US demand for barring member states that violated human rights from UN human rights organisations, then the first to qualify for the punitive measure — apart from the US itself — would be some of the closest allies of the US, starting with Israel. Not very likely. So what is the purpose of the whole exercise? To selectively target countries which do not toe the American line?

Getting away with murder

June 7 2005

Getting away with murder

THE FIRST time Israel got away with murder of Americans was in 1967 when unmarked Israeli aircraft and torpedo boats launched a vicious attack on the USS Liberty, killing 34 US sailors and wounding 171.
As survivors of the June 8 attack prepare to mark its anniversary this week, reminders are stark of a series of incidents since then which have shown that American administrations, whether Republican or Democrat, have not been able to withstand Israel's influence in the corridors of power in Washington that has allowed the Jewish state to exploit the "strategic relationship" it has with the US for the last four decades.
These included theft and resale of American technology to rivals of the US, spying in America and using the information to benefit Israel as American expense and steering American policies in a direction that has worked against American interests and made enemies for the US as well as undertaking false flag operations designed to trigger American actions against Arabs and Muslims.
There are strong indications that Israel also played a key role in the Sept.11, 2001 attacks that were blamed on Osama Bin Laden and acted as a catalyst for American military action against Iraq and Afghanistan, with signs emerging of action being planned against Iran and Syria. All these actions have benefited and will benefit Israel at the expense of American-Arab/Muslim relations.
If no one in American politics is not talking about it, it is simply because of the immense clout Israel wields in the US. It is not an exaggeration to state that Israeli intelligence agencies possess enough and more information on American politicians that could be used anytime to pressure the victims into seeing things the Israeli way. In addition are the big shots in American economy who directly or indirectly control the US banking and media industries.
It has been well established that Israel had carried out the attack on the USS Liberty with a view to tricking the US into war with Egypt. No American was supposed to have survived the bombing of the communications and spying ship in the Red Sea.
It clearly fitted in with the Israeli motto: "By Way Of Deception Thou Shalt Do War."
There are many indications that Israel applied pressure in Washington in order to mask the truth in the Liberty episode. This started with the recall of two rescue teams of aircraft dispatched from the aircraft carriers America and Saratoga to aid the USS Liberty. Both were ordered to return to base before reaching the Liberty on direct orders of from the Lyndon B Johnson administration.
Congress has never launched an investigation into the attack and a military inquiry was told by the Johnson administration to conclude that it was a case of "mistaken identity" — never mind that the Liberty flew a huge stars and stripes on its deck and the ship was bristling with communication antennas, clearly indicating that it could not be an Arab vessel since no Arab country possessed such a ship.
So much for the Israeli argument that the attack was an accident and that the assailants thought they were attacking an Egyptian horse carrier ship. Never mind that horse carrier ships do not fly the US flag and have dish antennas all over them. Never mind that the attacks came after clearly marked Israeli aircraft flew over the ship several times to identify it before unmarked boats and planes attacked it. , Never mind why Israel used unmarked aircraft if it really thought the ship was Egyptian and a legitimate target in a situation of war.
American analysts have for long concluded that the use of unmarked boats and planes established that Israel intended to frame Egypt for the sinking to drag the US into the war on Israel's side.
More importantly, some of the Israelis who took part in the attack have told survivors years after the incident that they knew they were attacking an American ship.
In 1982, an Israeli pilot approached Liberty survivors and revealed that he had recognised the Liberty as American immediately, so informed his headquarters, and was told to ignore the American flag and continue his attack. He refused to do so and returned to base, where he was arrested.
Even today, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is refusing to release the daily briefings of Johnson at the time.
Legal motions and sworn declarations filed in federal court this week have refuted Bush administration claims that the CIA can never release the daily briefs given to Johnson in the 1960s because that would damage national security and violate presidential privilege. The fate of the case remain uncertain.
The CIA has filed a sworn declaration with the court claiming that every single word of the two specific briefs had to be kept secret because release would contribute to a "mosaic" of knowledge about sources and methods and violate presidential privilege. But it does not explain why 30 briefs or excerpts of briefs of the same period already have been publicly released without any harm.
The facts of the Liberty case are clear:
In 1967, Liberty was the most sophisticated intelligence-gathering ship of the US.
On June 8, at the height of the Arab-Israeli war, Liberty was in international waters of the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of the Sinai Peninsula when it was attacked without warning by Israeli aircraft and torpedo boats.
At 8am, eight Israeli reconnaissance flights flew over the ship, which was flying a large American flag. Six hours later, waves of low-flying Israeli Mystere and Mirage-III fighter-bombers repeatedly attacked the vessel with rockets, napalm, and cannon. The air attacks concentrated on the ship's electronic antennas and dishes. The Liberty was left afire, listing sharply. Eight of her crew lay dead, a hundred seriously wounded, including the captain, Commander William McGonagle.
Twenty-five minutes later, , three Israeli torpedo boats attacked, raking and burning the ship. A torpedo hit the Liberty midship, precisely where the signals intelligence systems were located. Twenty-five more Americans died.
When crewmen lowered life rafts to rescue personnel and in preparation for abandoning ship if necessary, the torpedo boats machine-gunned the life rafts and crewmen.
The attacks lasted a little over two hours. During that time, Liberty's calls for help reached the US Sixth Fleet, despite Israeli jamming efforts, and the carriers Saratoga and America launched aircraft to assist the beleaguered vessel. But that help never arrived. The aircraft were recalled on direct orders from the White House.
Liberty was crippled, but it limped it to a neutral port, with 34 of its sailors dead and another 171, including its captain wounded.
Less than an hour after the attack, Israel told Washington its forces had committed a "tragic error" and claimed it had mistaken the Liberty for an ancient Egyptian horse transport. However, the then US secretary of state, Dean Rusk, and Joint Chiefs of Staff head, Admiral Thomas Moorer, insisted the Israeli attack was deliberate and designed to sink the Liberty. Three different reports drawn up by the Central Intelligence Agency said that the then Israeli defence minister, Moshe Dayan, had personally ordered the attack.
However, the White House overrode all such assertions and reports.
The Liberty's surviving crew members were told to remain silent about the attack and were warned that they could be court-martialled if they talked. They were not called to testify in a navy court of inquiry, and the US Congress never convened an investigation of the incident.
McGonagle, captain of the Liberty, was quietly awarded the Medal of Honour for his and his men's heroism, but it was not presented by the president at the White House — as was the custom — but at an obscure ceremony at a naval yard. The graves of the Liberty's crew member's were inscribed "Died in the Eastern Mediterranean" with no reference that they had given their lives in hostile action.
Why did the Israelis attack the ship?
Apart from its desire to involve the American in a war against Egypt, Israel had several other reasons to stage the attack. These included a fear that the US ship was intercepting Israeli military communications that indicated plans to seize and occupy the Golan Heights and also showed that Israeli agents were masquerading over the radio as Arab military commanders, including the late King Hussein of Jordan, and giving misleading instructions to their units.
Washington had warned Israel not to invade Syria, which had remained inactive while Israel fought Egypt. Israel's offensive against Syria was abruptly postponed when the Liberty appeared off Sinai, but the planned action that led to the seizure of the Golan was carried out once the US ship was put out of action. Israel's claim that Syria had attacked it could have been disproved by the Liberty, which could also have shown that Israel had exploited Arab-Israeli tensions in May-June 1967 to launch a long-planned war to invade and annex the West Bank, Jerusalem, Golan and Sinai.
Why did Washington opted to cover up the incident, which is described as "America's worst shameful secret"?
Some say that Johnson preferred to cover up the attack rather than anger a key constituency and major financial backer of the Democratic Party.
A member of the Johnson White House has said he believed that Johnson offered Jewish liberals unconditional backing of Israel, and a cover-up of the Liberty attack in exchange for the liberals toning down their strident criticism of his policies in the then raging Vietnam War.
But the issue is not dead. Survivors of the Israeli attack are striving to keep the flame alive, and, perhaps, at some point, it might come out without ambiguity that the US administration chose to stand by Israel than its own soldiers. However, the Liberty attack fades in signifiance when seen against what Israel had been doing with the US since then. Today, isn't it clear that the thousands of American soldiers who were killed and maimed in action in Iraq went down fighting a proxyy war for Israel?
And the US administration is continuing to cover up.

Rove and the deception

June 5 2005

pv vivekanand

Karl Rove, a senior political adviser to US President George W Bush, is said to be the key White House person who "arranged" to have Valerie Plame identified as an operative of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Why would a senior White House official identify a CIA agent and thus cause immense harm not only to the person involved but also the agency as well national security?
Well, it has to do with Iraq and the Bush administration's campaign of deception in the run-up to the US-led invasion and occupation of that country. It was the Bush administration's way of punishing someone who dared to declare that the government was fabricating evidence against Iraq. Specifically, the "leak" targeted Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who investigated and found as untrue an American charge that Saddam Hussein had bought nuclear material from Niger. Well, it would have been okay if Wilson had simply done his job and filed a report to the government and kept quiet about it. He did more than that. He publicly disputed the administration's effort to establish that Iraq had bought nuclear material from Niger.
From the point of view of those who were plotting the war against Iraq, Wilson needed to be countered immediately if only to serve as a firm warning to others in the administration who were privvy to the truth that intelligence reports and other "evidence" were being fixed to strengthen the case of war against Iraq (as has been established by the infamous Downing Street memos). The result: It was "leaked" to the press that Wilson's wife was a spy for the CIA. The catch here is that she was not a CIA employee but an undercover agent.
Under the law, revealing such information means undermining national security and is an offence under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982.
An unnamed secret agent was reportedly executed in a "hostile foreign country" as a direct result of the White House leak.
Rove, if indeed he is the source of the "leak," could face an indictment for perjury since he had denied that he was the source in front of a grand jury.
Rove, whose official title is White House deputy chief of staff, is very close to Bush and is credited with engineering the president's re-election last year.
The first revelation that Plame was a CIA spy came in a column written by syndicated right-wing columnist Robert Novak .
The column immediately sparked accusations that he had blown the cover of an undercover agent and thus placing both her and her sources in physical danger.
At the time, Wilson said he believed that Rove was the source, but the accusation was dismissed by the White House as "totally ridiculous."
The Justice Department named a special counsel, Patrick Fitzgerald, to investigate the case, and now the investigations are coming to a close and hence media focus on the affair.
Novak has reportedly reached a deal with the special prosecutor. He has been under an order not to talk about the case at all, but has said that people will be "surprised" when the name of the source is revealed.
Two other reporters, Matt Cooper from Time magazine and Judith Miller from the New York Times, who followed up the story could go to jail for upto 18 months beginning on Wednesday on charges of contempt of court unless they reveal their sources (Miller is facing jail time for refusing to reveal sources she developed during her reporting, even though she did not write a report on Plame or Wilson).
Cooper and Miller have submitted papers requesting house arrest or particular prisons if they had to be jailed, after the supreme court refused to hear their appeal.
Time magazine has surrendered Cooper's notes to the prosecutor and perhaps Cooper might get off the hook . Among the notes are emails showing that Rove was one of the sources for the story, according to reports.
Cooper wrote in an article "Some government officials have noted to Time in interviews... that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is a CIA official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction."
Rove testified before a federal grand jury that he only talked to the press about Plame after her name appeared in Novak's column. The documents handed over by Time would mean that Rove lied under oath and this sets the ground for a perjury indictment.
Rove is not talking these days. His lawyer insists that Rove "did not tell any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA."
As charges and denials fly across Washington, the episode should indeed be seen as a reflection of the determination of the Bush administration to effectively deal with political opponents.
Investigations have shown that President George W Bush himself and his vice-president, Dick Cheney, did know of the "leak" but did nothing to prevent it. Surely, the list of people who knew does not end with them sincethe decision to "punish" Ambassador Wilson for speaking up against doctored intelligence reports was surely taken collectively by the neoconservative camp which plotted and orchestrated the invasion of Iraq.
The case should not be seen strictly within the confines of the law as a matter of perjury and US national security. It is yet another nail on the coffin of the Bush administration's deception of the people of American people to justify the invasion of Iraq.
The administration had set up the Office of Special Plans to circumvent the CIA in producing intelligence intelligence reports to justify the war against Iraq. The allegation that Saddam bought nuclear material from Niger had originated in the UK and passed on to the OSP, which readily grabbed it.
The main source for "intelligence" for the OSP was data gathered (read produced) by Israeli intelligence agencies particularly Mossad and information provided by Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress (INC).
Interestingly, Judith Miller of the New York Times was the main conduit through which the INC passed on false information about Iraq that were turned into "authoritative intelligence information" — which has now been proved to have been hollow.



Use the following in a box:

Bush shifts to WWRs


US President George W Bush, in an interview with Britain's ITV1 on Monday ahead of the Group of Eight (G8) summit in Scotland, cited women without rights as one of the reasons for the war against Iraq. Some commentators see the comment as replacing the "weapons of mass destruction (WMD)" argument with "women without rights (WWR)."
One of the questions raised by the interviewer was: "Mr President, if I can move on to the question of Iraq, when we last spoke before the Iraq war, I asked you about Saddam Hussein and you said this, and I quote: 'He harbours and develops weapons of mass destruction, make no mistake about it.'
"Well, today, no WMD, the war has cost 1,700 American lives, many more Iraqi civilians killed, hundreds of billions of dollars in cost to your country. Can you understand why some people in your country are now beginning to wonder whether it was really worth it?"
Bush replied: "Absolutely. I mean, when you turn on your TV set every day and see this incredible violence and the havoc that is wreaked as a result of these killers, I'm sure why people are getting discouraged. And that's why I spoke to the nation last night and reminded people that this is a — Iraq is a part of this global war on terror. And the reason why foreign fighters are flocking into Iraq is because they want to drive us out of the region.
"See, these folks represent an ideology that is based upon hate and kind of a narrow vision of mankind — women don't have rights. And I believe this is an ideological movement. And I know that they want to use suicide bombers and assassinations and attacks on the World Trade Centre, and the attacks in Madrid, to try to shake our will and to achieve an objective, which is to topple governments."

Keeping the truth away

June 4 2005

Keeping the truth away

New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer is being accused of stonewalling an effort by a group of American citizens who are demanding a criminal investigation against the Bush administration for alleged complicity in the Sept.11, 2001 attacks.
The group of citizens submitted a petition to Spitzer on Oct.28, 2004 presenting what is described as a compelling case against the government version of the circumstances of the attack. The petition says the government version lacks credibility, has too many loopholes and raises more questions that it answers.
The basis for the petition is indications that senior officials in the government had known beforehand about the Sept.11 attacks but did nothing to prevent them.
The petition given to Spitzer is only one of many expressions of rejection of the Bush administration's "conclusions" about the attacks. Hundreds of websites are carrying different explanations but all pointing to one thing — the government knew in advance about the attacks but did nothing to prevent them because the attacks themselves were part of an American military strategy. The strategy aimed at consolidating American military supremacy around the world and helping Israel's quest for regional domination. It meant eliminating regimes that are deemed to be a challenge to the US, including countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, North Korea and Libya (which, incidentally, has mended fences with the US since then, with Muammar Qadhafi abandoning his quest for weapons of mass destruction and handing over vital information about militant groups to American intelligence agencies).
According to those who favour this theory, the implementation of the strategy needed an incident that would justify American military action, and the Sept. 11 attacks offered the perfect justification.
According to a spokesman for Spitzer, the Oct.28 petition is still under investigation. However, other sourcs say that Sptizer has no intention to actively investigate it since it may disrupt his plans to run for governor in 2006 and he is under pressure from Washington against doing anything to follow up on the 27-page petition.
Signatories to the petition include victims and families of victims and first responders to the attacks on the World Trade Centre towers in New York, They wanted Spitzer toc conduct an investigation and present its findings to a grand jury, leading to criminal charges being filed against senior Bush administration officials.
The petition rejects findings of previous investigations, including the inquiry conducted by the official 9/11 Commission, and says that none of these addressed the key charge of possibility of government foreknowledge or complicity in the attacks.
Now that it seems that Spitzer would not initiate an inquiry, the petitioners are exploring the possibility of forming an independent citizen grand juries in order to get at the truth.
The petition says that the attacks were an inside job and that administration officials should be investigated for a series of crimes, including murder, enterprise corruption and obstruction of justice.
It says there was a massive government-supported conspiracy and cover-up concerning the attacks.
A recent Zogby Poll has found that more than two-thirds of residents of New York are unsatisfied with the official findings of investigations and want a fresh and independent investigation into the attacks.
The survery found that 49 per cent of those polled believed high-ranking government officials knew about the impending attacks and did nothing to stop them.
Activists have prepared a massive databank of
information, including specific facts about US government complicity with those who carried out the attacks, detailed timelines of the failure of defence systems, data on the explosions and structural demise of the WTC towers and the Pentagon and Flight 93 as well as a thorough analysis of the government agencies to destroy evidence.
Among the outstanding contradictions between the official version of the 9/11 attacks and other accounts is the revelation that several of the 19 "suicide hijackers" named by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) are still alive.
Saudi Arabian pilot Waleed Al Shehri was one of five men that the FBI said had crashed American Airlines flight 11 into the World Trade Center.
Shehri, whose photograph appeared in newspapers and on television around the world, was in Morocco at the time of the attack.
In a report carried by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) on Sept.23, 2001, Shehri admited that he attended flight training school at Daytona Beach in the United States, and is indeed the same Waleed Al Shehri to whom the FBI has been referring.
However, he says, left the US in September 2000, joined the Saudia airlines and was in Morocco in September 2001 on a trainng course.
Abdul Aziz Al Omari, another Saud whose name appears in the list of 19, was working as an engineer with Saudi Telcoms in Saudi Arabia in September 2001. The FBI has his passport, which he says he had lost while studying in Denver.
He says he is an engineer with Saudi Telecoms, and that he lost his passport while studying in Denver.
Two other "9/11 suicide hijackers," Saeed Alghamdi and Khalid Al Midhar, have also surfaced, refuting the FBI contention that they were among those who died in the attacks.
These are the four known "suicide hijackers" still alive.
At that time, the FBI did concede that the identity of some of the hijackers were not established beyond doubt.
However, nothing has been done further in this regard, and this is taken by critics as a sign that the FBI had "fabricated" the first list itself and why bother with investigating lies.
A statement made in December 2001 by US President George W Bush takes the cake.
He said he had actually watched the first plane hitting the World Trade Center tower as he was sitting outside a classroom in a Florida school which he was visiting on the morning of Sept.11.
"Atually, I was in a classroom talking about a reading program that works," Bush said.  "I was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower -- the TV was obviously on.  And I used to fly, myself, and I said, well, there's one terrible pilot.  I said, it must have been a horrible accident. But I was whisked off there, I didn't have much time to think about it.  And I was sitting in the classroom, and Andy Card, my chief of staff, who is sitting over here, walked in and said, 'A second plane has hit the tower, America is under attack'."
The clinch here is that the first footage of the first plane hittting the tower came at least 45 minutes after the actual incident. No television channel broadcast the attack alive (it is illogical to expect it either). Bush was "sitting outside the classroom" at the time of the attack and there was no way whatsover that he or anyone else could have seen it real-time live on television.
Indeed, it does not mean much except that Bush might have had a memory lapse.
But many Americans remember that the official version of the 9/11 attacks is full of loopholes and inconsistencies and they are demanding answers.
David Ray Griffin,

Bush shielded from probe

pv vivekanand

NEW YORK Attorney General Eliot Spitzer is being accused of stonewalling an effort by a group of American citizens who are demanding a criminal investigation against the Bush administration for alleged complicity in the Sept.11, 2001 attacks.
The group of citizens submitted a petition to Spitzer on Oct.28, 2004 presenting what is described as a compelling case against the government version of the circumstances of the attack. The petition says the government version lacks credibility, has too many loopholes and raises more questions that it answers.
The basis for the petition is indications that senior officials in the government had known beforehand about the Sept.11 attacks but did nothing to prevent them.
The petition given to Spitzer is only one of many expressions of rejection of the Bush administration's "conclusions" about the attacks. Hundreds of websites are carrying different explanations but all pointing to one thing -- the government knew in advance about the attacks but did nothing to prevent them because the attacks themselves were part of an American military strategy. The strategy aimed at consolidating American military supremacy around the world and helping Israel's quest for regional domination. It meant eliminating regimes that are deemed to be a challenge to the US, including countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, North Korea and Libya (which, incidentally, has mended fences with the US since then, with Muammar Qadhafi abandoning his quest for weapons of mass destruction and handing over vital information about militant groups to American intelligence agencies).
According to those who favour this theory, the implementation of the strategy needed an incident that would justify American military action, and the Sept.11 attacks offered the perfect justification.
According to a spokesman for Spitzer, the Oct.28 petition is still under investigation. However, other sources say that Sptizer has no intention to actively investigate it since it may disrupt his plans to run for governor in 2006 and he is under pressure from Washington against doing anything to follow up on the 27-page petition.
Signatories to the petition include victims and families of victims and first responders to the attacks on the World Trade Centre towers in New York. They wanted Spitzer to conduct an investigation and present its findings to a grand jury, leading to criminal charges being filed against senior Bush administration officials.
The petition rejects findings of previous investigations, including the inquiry conducted by the official 9/11 Commission, and says that none of these addressed the key charge of possibility of government foreknowledge or complicity in the attacks.
Now that it seems that Spitzer would not initiate an inquiry, the petitioners are exploring the possibility of forming an independent citizen grand jury in order to get at the truth.

An 'inside job'

The petition says that the attacks were an inside job and that administration officials should be investigated for a series of crimes, including murder, enterprise corruption and obstruction of justice.
It says there was a massive government-supported conspiracy and cover-up concerning the attacks.
A recent Zogby Poll has found that more than two-thirds of residents of New York are unsatisfied with the official findings of investigations and want a fresh and independent investigation into the attacks.
The survey found that 49 per cent of those polled believed high-ranking government officials knew about the impending attacks and did nothing to stop them.
Activists have prepared a massive data bank of information, including specific facts about US government complicity with those who carried out the attacks, detailed timelines of the failure of defence systems, data on the explosions and structural demise of the WTC towers and the Pentagon and Flight 93 as well as a thorough analysis of the government agencies to destroy evidence.
Among the outstanding contradictions between the official version of the 9/11 attacks and other accounts is the revelation that several of the 19 "suicide hijackers" named by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) are still alive.
Saudi Arabian pilot Waleed Al Shehri was one of five men that the FBI said had crashed American Airlines flight 11 into the World Trade Center.
Shehri, whose photograph appeared in newspapers and on television around the world, was in Morocco at the time of the attack.
In a report carried by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) on Sept.23, 2001, Shehri admitted that he attended flight training school at Daytona Beach in the United States, and is indeed the same Waleed Al Shehri to whom the FBI has been referring.
However, he says, he left the US in September 2000, joined the Saudia airlines and was in Morocco in September 2001 on a training course.
Abdul Aziz Al Omari, another Saudi whose name appears in the list of 19, was working as an engineer with Saudi Telcoms in Saudi Arabia in September 2001. The FBI has his passport, which he says he had lost while studying in Denver.
Two other "9/11 suicide hijackers," Saeed Alghamdi and Khalid Al Midhar, have also surfaced, refuting the FBI contention that they were among those who died in the attacks.
These are the four known "suicide hijackers" still alive.
At that time, the FBI did concede that the identity of some of the hijackers were not established beyond doubt.
However, nothing has been done further in this regard, and this is taken by critics as a sign that the FBI had "fabricated" the first list itself and why bother with investigating lies.

What Bush saw

A statement made in December 2001 by US President George W Bush takes the cake.
He said he had actually watched the first plane hitting the World Trade Center tower as he was sitting outside a classroom in a Florida school which he was visiting on the morning of Sept.11.
"Actually, I was in a classroom talking about a reading program that works," Bush said. "I was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower -- the TV was obviously on. And I used to fly, myself, and I said, well, there's one terrible pilot. I said, it must have been a horrible accident. But I was whisked off there, I didn't have much time to think about it. And I was sitting in the classroom, and Andy Card, my chief of staff, who is sitting over here, walked in and said, 'A second plane has hit the tower, America is under attack'."
The clinch here is that the first footage of the first plane hitting the tower came at least 45 minutes after the actual incident. No television channel broadcast the attack alive (it is illogical to expect it either). Bush was "sitting outside the classroom" at the time of the attack and there was no way whatsoever that he or anyone else could have seen it real-time live on television.
Indeed, it does not mean much except that Bush might have had a memory lapse.

Full of loopholes

But many Americans remember that the official version of the 9/11 attacks is full of loopholes and inconsistencies and they are demanding answers.
David Ray Griffin, in his book The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, highlights numerous consistencies in the panel's report, which he says, "is constructed in support of one big lie: that the official story about 9/11 is true."
Among these consistencies are questions like how the FBI reported that some of the "suicide hijackers" went around the night before drinking alcohol and eating pork while frequenting lap dance bars and also explains them as "hardcore fanatic Muslims."
The publicly released passenger manifestos of the hijacked flights does no contain any Arab name.
Fire has never, before or after 9/11, caused steel-frame buildings to collapse (The theory here is that explosives were prepositioned inside the tower buildings). The steel from the WTC buildings was quickly removed from the crime scene and shipped overseas before it could be analysed for evidence of explosives.
No investigation whether the damage done to the Pentagon was consistent with the impact of a Boeing 757 going several hundred kilometres per hour (The theory here is that an airplane never hit the Pentagon. US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at one point referred to "the missile (used) to damage" the Pentagon.
Unusual purchases of stock options of companies prior to 9/11. These stock options gained hundreds of millions of dollars following the attacks.
Definitely, there is much more than meets the eye in the Sept.11 attacks. The world, particularly people in the Middle East, had sensed it, and now, it seems, more and more Americans are becoming aware of the yawning gaps in the official version of the incidents. At some point or another, the truth will be out and, surely, it would be a rewriting of history as we know it today.

Sumthin is cooking

May 29 2005
Something is cooking
.... and it stinks

by 'Inad Khairallah (pen name)

Is there a pattern in recent events that indicates a drive to provoke Muslims around the world to a point where a massive terror attack in the US or elsewhere could be pinned against them in order to justify another American military adventure in the Middle East, possibly against Syria or Iran?
The events could indeed be unrelated and just coincidence. However, given the emerging evidence that the Sept.11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington could have had the Bush administration's complicty, direct or indirect, and were part of a build-up for American military intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq, one has to give these events a careful scrutiny.
The series of events started with the now retracted Newsweek report that the Holy Quran was desecrated by American soldiers at Guantanamo Bay. The retraction of the report failed to convince most people, who believe that the magazine acted under official American pressure to do so and the desecration did take place. Interestingly, reports of desecration of the Holy Book had come out as far back as 2002 and there is a grey area there why the Newsweek report triggered such violent protests.
Then came details of how Afghan prisoners were abused by American soldiers and much publicised story of how an Afghan taxi driver — whose apparent innocence was highlighted — ad his legs beaten and was then hung by his wrists until he died.
Then came the photographs of Saddam Hussein in his underwear. Such photographs could not have come but from American officers guarding the detention facility where he is being held. The release of such photos was clearly aimed at enraging Muslims around the world rather than, as claimed by some, as a message to the Iraqi insurgents still loyal to the toppled president.
Later in the same week, an American senator declared publicly that Israel comes first and foremost in American policy considerations in the Middle East and that the security of the Jewish state was the top priority for the US. Creation of a Palestinian state, said Senator Gordon Smith, was being considered only if it was "possible."
Smith did not break any new ground in making the announcement, but the timing of his affirmation of what most people in the Middle East has known for long is suspect.
The final event in the series so far was the visit of US first lady to Laura Bush to occupied Jerusalem. Reports suggest that the visit was added at the last minute. Indeed, she was heckled by Palestinians who were enraged that she found it fit to visit Palestine while it is known that her husband and the entire administration stood firmly behind Israel against Palestinian rights.
Again, Laura Bush's visit to the Haram Al Sharif complex reminded many of the infamous trip made there by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in October 2000 that triggered the second Palestinian uprising.
A commentary appearing on a non-partisan anti-war website says: "Sources continue to report that Bush and his neocon advisors are planning more wars in the Mideast, with Iran leading the list because of Israel's desire to bomb the Iranian reactor complex before the Russians can begin the fueling process. But the people of the United States are weary of war, weary of flag-draped coffins, weary of tax dollars vanishing into thin air by the billions. Half of all Americans know Bush lied about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Most Americans don't think Iraq has been worth the cost. Adding a new war on top of the existing ones means a draft, as the current forces are stretched thin. The American people are not going to like that either.
"So, the war hawks need a new "event", a new 9-11, which they hope will restore public support for more wars. And, if one is going to stage a new fake terror event and frame Muslims for it, then one has to create the impression that Muslims are angry enough to do something like that. Too much doubt exists about 9-11 in the public mind for half measures; the next staged event has to be a real convincer. Hence, a series of small incidents that slowly increase Muslim anger towards America.
"Somewhere, in the dark rooms ... the next 'terror' attack is being planned....."

Muslim anger unleashed

May 21 2005

Anger unleashed

pv vivekanand

American-Muslim relations have been under strain for some years, thanks to Israel's concerted campaign since the 1990s to pinpoint Muslims as the enemy after the communist collapse following the disintegration of the Soviet Union. It would be a narrow view to judge that the wave of anti-American sentiment that swept through the Muslim World was triggered solely by the Newsweek report.

The Bush administration might want to accept that view in order to keep veiled the realities of the American-Muslim relationship over the years.

For decades, Muslims around the world have been seething with anger over American policies towards Islamic countries, particularly in the Middle East. Then came the firm affirmation in 2000 that the US was dropping all pretences and siding with Israel and seeking to impose an Israeli version of regional peace on the Arabs and Muslims, including acceptance of Israel's claim to Jerusalem, the third holiest shrine in Islam.

Then came the US-led war against Afghanistan. Muslims did not protest much over Afghanistan because the US cited Sept.11 as the reason for that war, and not many Muslims agreed with the way the Taliban were running the country anyway.

(Let no one forget at this juncture that fresh evidence has emerged indicating that there was much more than that met the eye in the Sept.11 attacks and that suspicions have been strengthened that Israeli secret agents played a key role in the assaults that were blamed on Al Qaeda. The Bush administration was a willing victim to be led by the nose into following a course of events that added to the strain in relations with the Muslim World to the benefit of Israel).

The way the Americans treated the prisoners taken in Afghanistan and the scenes from Guantanamo Bay that were beamed around the world showing hooded and handcuffed detainees being paraded around like animals did irreparable damage to the Muslim attitude towards American officialdom.

Add to that the American decision that Geneva Conventions and other international treaties and agreements governing prisoners of war would not be applied to the detainees in Guantanamo; and then the reports that the scenes of humiliation and torture at Abu Ghraib were only a re-enactment of what was going on in Guantanamo.

Muslims heard with gritted teeth the declarations by American government leaders that the Muslims were jealous and hated the American way of life because they could not enjoy the same was behind the Sept.11 attacks.

The Muslims watched in silence as the Americans led the invasion of Iraq and went to work to reshape that troubled country to suit American and Israeli interests. But the US failed to bring peace and calm to the people of Iraq, and, whether Washington realises/accepts it or not, the Muslims hold it responsible for the suffering of the Iraqis today.

Overriding factor

Throughout these episodes, the overriding factor is the painful Arab/Muslim awareness that the US-Israeli combine is following a definite script that undermined Arab/Muslim interests and that Arabs/Muslims are unable to do anything about it.

Then came the report that the Holy Quran was desecrated, and the pent-up Muslim anger and frustration exploded.

At least 17 people died and hundreds injured in the protests sparked by the Newsweek report that the Holy Book was desecrated by American soldiers at Guantanamo Bay. Then Newsweek retracted the report saying that it could have got the story wrong.

In the original report, Newsweek investigative reporter Michael Isikoff quoted an unidentified source in the US Defence Department as saying that he had read the account of desecration of the Holy Book in a document being prepared by the US Southern Command (SouthCom) on the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo. Newsweek cited the incident as one among numerous already-reported abuses, including similar toilet-flushing incidents in the past.

The Washington Post recalls that James Yee, a former Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo, who was investigated and cleared of charges of mishandling classified material, had reported that guards' mishandling and mistreatment of detainees' Qurans led the prisoners to launch a hunger strike in March 2002. The strike ended only when military leaders issued an apology to the detainees over the camp loudspeaker, but mishandling of the Holy Book persisted.

"The (guards) tore the Quran to pieces in front of us, threw it into the toilet," former detainee Aryat Vahitov told Russian television in June 2004.

Dozens of detainees -- including four British Muslims -- have said Guantanamo Bay detention officials and military guards engaged in widespread religious and sexual humiliation of detainees. Detainees said the goal was to make them feel impure, shake their faith and try to gain information.

Against these reports, the Newsweek retraction is seen with scepticism by many who believe that the magazine was pressured into issuing it.

In the minds of many, the Newsweek episode is no longer relevant since they are convinced that the US is capable of doing much more than desecrating the Holy Quran and that the source of their anger.

In its retraction statement, the magazine said the unnamed Pentagon source was no longer sure that he had read an investigation report detailing the alleged desecration.

"Based on what we know now, we are retracting our original story that an internal military investigation had uncovered (Holy Quran) abuse at Guantanamo Bay," said Newsweek. It left open the possibility that the Pentagon source had indeed read about the incident in another document.

Explove remark

In any event, the damage was already done, as the Defence Department spokesman, Lawrence DiRita, observed in an explosive remark when told what the source had said: "People are dead because of what this son of a bitch (the unidentified Pentagon source) said. How could he be credible now?"

How many people died? 17. And why? Someone made a "mistake" and saw something in a confidential report that was not there.

American commentators have gone to town with DiRita's comment, but their approach is far sharper than DiRita's.

They point out to emerging evidence that the Bush administration had decided to invade Iraq shortly after the Sept.11 attacks and began fixing intelligence to suit the purpose and to make the American public believe that Saddam Hussein posed a serious threat to the US and its allies. Recently leaked minutes of a July 2002 meeting between Prime Minister Tony Blair and his closest advisers show that the head of the intelligence agency MI6 reported after talks in the US that Bush had decided on war and that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

A part of the leaked document -- Secret and Strictly Personnel: UK Eyes only -- says: "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD (weapons of mass destruction). But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC (National Security Council) had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."

Another paragraph says: "It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force."

How many people died in the Iraq war and since then in that country? Between 30,000 and 35,000; and dozens more are dying every day.

And why? Someone somewhere lied in order to serve Israel's interests by going to war against Iraq.

Now, what did the White House have to say about the Newsweek episode?

"The report has had serious consequences," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan. "People have lost their lives. The image of the United States has been damaged abroad."

Well, the one question that McClellan would not like to be asked is:

What is the status of the US image around the world, given the old/fresh revelations that the Bush administration doctored intelligence reports in order to justify the war against Iraq, a war which British Member of Parliament George Galloway rightly described as being based on a "pack of lies?"

Newsweek had the decency to admit that it could have got the story wrong and express regret over its consequences.

Can that be said about the Bush administration over its deception?

US on a rope trick

May 19 2005

US on a rope-trick in Karimov crisis

pv vivekanand

THE US has switched tracks on the crisis in Uzbekistan after having taken a position that while it had concerns over the human rights situation under the reign of President Islam Karimov it was more concerned over the surge of Islamists in the ex-Soviet republic.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Monday let off a salvo calling for political reforms in Uzbekistan. It was surprising. However, when seen against the backdrop of the anti-American uproar caused by the Newsweek report alleging desecration of the Holy Quran by American soldiers, it becomes clear why the US, as represented by Rice, had a sudden change of mind against the former Soviet republic, which is an important American ally in the US-led war on terror.

The world has been seeing a pattern where US allies are free to violate human rights and engage in brutal crackdown against dissidents without censure from Washington. It is all the more acceptable to the US if the dissidents happen to be "Islamists." That is the message that was clearly sent out when the Uzbek crisis erupted: The US appears to signal that it was more worried about the forced release of some prisoners from an Uzbek prison than the massacre of hundreds of people by Karimov's security forces.

"We have had concerns about human rights in Uzbekistan, but we are concerned about the outbreak of violence, particularly by some members of a terrorist organisation that were freed from prison," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan on Friday. "And we urge both the government and the demonstrators to exercise restraint at this time. The people of Uzbekistan want to see a more representative and democratic government, but that should come through peaceful means, not through violence. And that's what our message is."

Rice statement

Obviously, the world sensed from the statement that little could be expected from the US in terms of changes in Uzbekistan despite the crisis.

Then came the Rice statement on Monday that the Uzbek system was "too closed" and the country needed political reforms. It was the Bush administration's first implicit criticism of the Karimov regime, which has ruled the Central Asian republic with an iron grip since it became independent after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

(The State Department issued another statement on Monday saying it was "deeply disturbed" by reports that soldiers in Uzbekistan fired on unarmed civilians).

"We have been encouraging the government to make reforms, to make it possible for people to have a political life," said Rice. "This is a country that needs, in a sense, pressure valves that come from a more open political system," she said.

Was it a sudden realisation that Uzbekistan stood in need of reform?

Wasn't it known to the US that Karimov has ruled Uzbekistan since 1989 and is is one of the last Soviet-era rulers still in power. He has been accused of gross violation of human rights, rigging elections, shaping the constitution to suit self-interests and oppression of whoever challenged him as well as institutionalisation of torture.

But then, the US is a staunch supporter of Karimov's declared stand against "Muslim extremists" and Washington had always opted to look the other way when considering Karimov's track record in power.

Karimov's main challengers are two Islamist groups, Hizb Al Tahrir and a faction which is allegedly linked with Al Qaeda. Both groups are avowedly anti-American, and Washington could not but be a partner in Karimov's fight against these groups. Therefore, it was only natural that the US expressed more concern that 23 people accused of being "Muslim extremists" were released from prison than massacres were committed by Karimov's forces. As of Tuesday, some 800 people were confirmed killed while thousands were displaced from their homes because of the violence.

Some commentators saw the days that passed between the first White House statement on the crisis and Rice's implicit criticism of Karimov as reflecting the dilemma facing the Bush administration. On the one hand is the avowed Amerian drive to encouraging and even imposing democracy around the world and on the other hand is Washington's anxiety not to antagonise a key ally in the anti-terror war which hosts American support bases for the war in Afghanistan and is also said to be one among the dozens of countries where US has detained prisoners taken elsewhere.

However, the days between the two position statements saw Muslim anger exploding against the US over the Holy Quran desecration report.

Pushing reforms

No doubt, Washington strategists realised that maintaining a cool approach to the crisis in Uzbekistan in the name of "Muslim extremism" while Muslim fury is boiling over was not exactly the best approach; and hence the volte-face signalled by Rice.

It remains to be seen whether Washington would follow up Rice's word with practical action to nudge Karimov to settle the crisis and launch a reform process that would bring about meaningful changes in the country.

Indeed, the US has the option of doing nothing after expressing displeasure over whatever is going on in Uzbekistan and hoping that Karimov would be able to suppress the unrest, with business back to normal in a few days.

However, intelligence reports indicate that Karimov is facing an uphill task.

While he blames "Muslim extremists" for the crisis, many others say the unrest is linked to a long-term demand for political reform.

The Andijan area where the unrest broke out is known to be a poor locality but also a hotbed of militancy.

"All we want is freedom from hunger. Uzbeks live like dirt," these were the words of one of the 23 men who were freed from jail on Friday. The 23, most of them businessmen, faced charges of belonging to an Islamic group called Akramia, named after Akram Tahir Yuldashev, leader of the Al Qaeda-linked Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), who was sentenced in absentia to 17 years in prison in 1999.

Like other Islamist groups elsewhere, Akramia is said to be involved in social welfare work and has set up small businesses that provide employment.

Although the group is said to be linked to the IMU, Uzbek prosecutors say that the fugitives are associated with what Karimov called "a faction of Hizb Al Tahrir."

They are believed to be linked to a wider group of likeminded organisaitons seeking to set up an Islamic state in the broad Ferghana Valley which straddles Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

The IMU was founded in 1989 and is said to have about 3,000 members compared with Hizb Al Tahrir's 5,000 members.

IMU members fought alongside the Taliban during the American war against Afghanistan in 2001 and since the Taliban were ousted, the group has declared war on the American air force and special forces presence in the country.

Hizb Al Tahrir, which has been outlawed in most of Central Asia as well as Russia, is a larger group. Some 500 of its members are in detention in Uzbekistan.

Hizb Al Tahrir was founded in 1953 in Jerusalem by Taqiuddin al Nabhani, an appeals court judge. It is now present in Western Europe, Central Asia, and China's far west and seeks to establish a worldwide caliphate, ostensibly through peaceful political means.

The group, led by Walid Omran who lives in exile, is said to have bases in the southeastern Ferghana region near the border with Tajikistan. It runs "education centres," but the authorities say these are breeding grounds for militants.

About 2,000 prisoners were freed during Friday's storming of the Andijan jail, and they fled with guns and ammunitions as well as grenades. They are said to be hiding near the Kyrgyz border, and Karimov's forces face a tough task to bring them to heel.

Beyond the borders

Given Karimov's alliance with the US and the Islamists' avowed opposition to Washington's policies, the Uzbek crisis assumes a larger dimension beyond the borders of the country. And that is where Karimov finds his biggest challenge since even if he manages to supress Uzbek members of the militant groups, he would still have to reckon with external elements filtering into the country in a situation almost similar to that in Iraq.

Caught in the middle would be the US facing the option of letting go of its alliance (a highly unlikely prospect) or exposing itself to mounting Muslim anger, further fuelled by the deaths of at least 800 people in the last five days in Uzbekistan.

Treading a middle line is only a short-term option because what has been sparked in Uzbekistan does not hold out any prospect of being put down in a hurry.

Double barrels from Galloway

PV Vivekanand

GEORGE Galloway, former Labour party member of the British parliament and currently leader of Respect Party and MP representing Respect in the Commons, is scheduled to appear before the US Senate Permanent Sub-committee on Investigations to testify on charges that US officials benefited from the UN's oil-for-food programme with Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
The forum, scheduled for Tuesday, will be titled "Oil For Influence: How Saddam Used Oil to Reward Politicians and Terrorist Entities Under the United Nations Oil-for-Food Programme."
Galloway, who had close relations with Saddam and visited Iraq several times and held talks with the then Iraqi president twice — in 1994 and 2002 —  was expelled from Labour for criticising the British government's alliance with the Bush administration in the invasion and occupation of Iraq two years earlier.
He also faced allegations that he had taken money from Saddam. These allegations, aired through a British and an American newspaper, were found to be unfounded -- or at least not proven in a court of law -- when Galloway went to a British court with the issue. It was proved that Saddam oil ministry documents produced as evidence against Galloway were not authentic. He won £150,000 in damages from London's Daily Telegraph, which was also left with a legal bill of about £1.2 million (By the way, The Daily Telegraph is owned by the Hollinger Corporation, which allegedly has ties with Richard Perle, one of the leading pro-Israeli neoconservatives in Washington).
The American politicians behind new charges against Galloway and the "invitation" issued to him to present himself before the Senate committee are trying to portray it as a hostile hearing where the British politician would be asked uncomfortable questions implicating himself in the oil-for-food scam and his alleged receipt of funds from Saddam. However, they might find themselves on the receiving end since Galloway seems to be relishing the offered opportunity to take the grandstand and blast away at the US-led, British-backed invasion and occupation of Iraq.
It is also a foregone conclusion that Galloway would use the opportunity to slam American/British policy in the Middle East and bring out the Israeli aspect of the war against Iraq.

Parallel games

There are two parallel political games unfolding in Washington.

One has to do with the old/new allegations that US President George W Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair had decided in July 2002 to take military action against Iraq in order to topple Saddam regardless whatever the international community and the United Nations had to say about it.
Observers in the Middle East say that, even without the fresh evidence to this effect contained in British documents leaked to the press recently, it was abundantly clear that by early 2002 the US was determined to wage war on Iraq, and that diplomacy and the UN Charter could not have prevented the Bush administration from going ahead with the plan.
A part of a document -- "Secret and Strictly Personnel: UK Eyes Only" -- which summarises discussions held on July 23, 2002, says: "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD (weapons of mass destruction). But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC (National Security Council) had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."
Another paragraph says: "It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force."
Now, in light of the document, the Bush administration faces tough questioning on the issue. A group of 89 Democrats in the US Congress has asked Bush, a Republican, for an explanation. Bush has not commented on the allegation nor on the effort by the Congress members to hold him accountable for deceiving the American legislature and people.

The AIPAC angle

The other political game is played by neoconservative Republicans who are also seen as seeking to divert attention from the ongoing scandal involving the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the all-too powerful Israeli lobby which yields unchallenged political and economic clout in Washington.
Two senior AIPAC officials are accused of recruiting a Pentagon analyst as a spy for Israel and securing classified information from him and passing it on to Israel.
Some American analysts believe that certain members of the US Senate are trying to highlight the Galloway case and thus divert American public attention from the AIPAC case in which Larry Franklin, the Pentagon and Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) official has been indicted for passing top secret classified information to the two AIPAC officials.
However, there is a strong linkage between the two cases.
The so-called "fresh" evidence some US senators cite against Galloway has apparently come from interviews conducted with Iraq's former vice-president, Taha Yassin Ramadan, and deputy prime minister, Tareq Aziz.
Ramadan and Aziz are awaiting war crimes trials in Iraq. They were investigated by Salam Chalabi, a nephew of Ahmad Chalabi, a former Iraqi exile and one-time favourite to be successor to Saddam but who fell out with the administration when it was found that he was feeding false intelligence information and had connections with Iranian intelligence.
Salam Chalabi's law partner in the US is Marc Zell who in turn is a law partner of Douglas Feith, who headed the department where the Aipac-linked spy Larry Franklin worked at the Pentagon. Like Perle, Feith is also among the top neocons in Washington.
Obviously, Salam Chalabi passed on the "fresh" evidence against Galloway to the senators who are behind the effort to discredit political rivals in the US as well as the Brtish politician in the bargain.
The charge against Galloway is led by Republican Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota, who alleges that the Brtish MP received up to 20 million barrels of free Iraqi oil between 2000 and 2003 from Saddam's government.

Why the witchhunt?

Wayne Madsen, a contributing editor writing on onjournal.com, offers an explanation why the neocons are targeting Galloway.
He points out that Galloway, in the May 5 British elections, "made easy work of his Labour Party opponent and Tony Blair sycophant, Oona King, an African-Jewish daughter of -- ironically -- an African-American draft evader from the Vietnam War. King was one of Tony Blair's most ardent supporters for his decision to join Bush in a genocidal war against Iraq. For that, she earned the support of the international neoconservative network of influence holders and peddlers that can, according to a senior Bush administration official, create their own reality because of their ownership of much of the international media. However, King also earned the enmity of her large Muslim constituency in East London's Bethnal Green and Bow district. They rejected King and threw their political weight behind Galloway.
"There is little doubt that the neocons in the British Labour Party are working hand-in-glove with people like (Republican Senator Norm) Coleman (of Minnesota) and his neocon friends and political supporters in AIPAC to punish Galloway and make it hard for him to use his reinstated House of Commons platform to launch expected fierce broadsides against Blair and other pro-Iraq War Labourites, most notably Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, Defence Secretary John Reid, and former defence secretary Geoff Hoon."
Galloway has dismissed the charges against him as unfounded and fabricated with ulterior motives.
He has categorically stated: "I have never traded in a barrel of oil, or any vouchers for it. I have never seen a barrel of oil apart from the one the Sun newspaper (of London) deposited in my front garden.
"And no one has acted on my behalf, trading in oil -- Middle Eastern, olive, patchouli or any other -- or in vouchers, whatever they are.
"Isn't it strange and contrary to natural justice you might think that I have written and e-mailed repeatedly asking for the opportunity to appear before the committee to provide evidence and rebut their assumptions and they have yet to respond, while apparently making a judgement?"
If anything, instead of discrediting Galloway, the US senators are now offering the firebrand British MP with a forum from where he could blast the US and British governments.
Galloway has promised as much: "I'll be there to give them both barrels -- verbal guns, of course, not oil."




RE: Double barrels from George Galloway


This is precisely what happened.

George Galloway, Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow (UK), delivered this statement on 2005-05-18 to US Senators who have accused him of corruption.


Senator, I am not now, nor have I ever been, an oil trader. and neither has anyone on my behalf. I have never seen a barrel of oil, owned one, bought one, sold one — and neither has anyone on my behalf.

Now I know that standards have slipped in the last few years in Washington, but for a lawyer you are remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice. I am here today but last week you already found me guilty. You traduced my name around the world without ever having asked me a single question, without ever having contacted me, without ever written to me or telephoned me, without any attempt to contact me whatsoever. And you call that justice.
Now I want to deal with the pages that relate to me in this dossier and I want to point out areas where there are — let's be charitable and say errors. Then I want to put this in the context where I believe it ought to be. On the very first page of your document about me you assert that I have had 'many meetings' with Saddam Hussein. This is false.
I have had two meetings with Saddam Hussein, once in 1994 and once in August of 2002. By no stretch of the English language can that be described as "many meetings" with Saddam Hussein.
As a matter of fact, I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns. I met him to try and bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war, and on the second of the two occasions, I met him to try and persuade him to let Dr Hans Blix and the United Nations weapons inspectors back into the country — a rather better use of two meetings with Saddam Hussein than your own Secretary of State for Defence made of his.
I was an opponent of Saddam Hussein when British and Americans governments and businessmen were selling him guns and gas. I used to demonstrate outside the Iraqi embassy when British and American officials were going in and doing commerce.
You will see from the official parliamentary record, Hansard, from the 15th March 1990 onwards, voluminous evidence that I have a rather better record of opposition to Saddam Hussein than you do and than any other member of the British or American governments do.
Now you say in this document, you quote a source, you have the gall to quote a source, without ever having asked me whether the allegation from the source is true, that I am 'the owner of a company which has made substantial profits from trading in Iraqi oil'.
Senator, I do not own any companies, beyond a small company whose entire purpose, whose sole purpose, is to receive the income from my journalistic earnings from my employer, Associated Newspapers, in London. I do not own a company that's been trading in Iraqi oil. And you have no business to carry a quotation, utterly unsubstantiated and false, implying otherwise.
Now you have nothing on me, Senator, except my name on lists of names from Iraq, many of which have been drawn up after the installation of your puppet government in Baghdad. If you had any of the letters against me that you had against Zhirinovsky, and even Pasqua, they would have been up there in your slideshow for the members of your committee today.
You have my name on lists provided to you by the Duelfer inquiry, provided to him by the convicted bank robber, and fraudster and conman Ahmed Chalabi who many people to their credit in your country now realise played a decisive role in leading your country into the disaster in Iraq.
There were 270 names on that list originally. That's somehow been filleted down to the names you chose to deal with in this committee. Some of the names on that committee included the former secretary to his Holiness Pope John Paul II, the former head of the African National Congress Presidential office and many others who had one defining characteristic in common: they all stood against the policy of sanctions and war which you vociferously prosecuted and which has led us to this disaster.
You quote Mr Dahar Yassein Ramadan. Well, you have something on me, I've never met Mr Dahar Yassein Ramadan. Your sub-committee apparently has. But I do know that he's your prisoner, I believe he's in Abu Ghraib prison. I believe he is facing war crimes charges, punishable by death. In these circumstances, knowing what the world knows about how you treat prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison, in Bagram Airbase, in Guantanamo Bay, including I may say, British citizens being held in those places.
I'm not sure how much credibility anyone would put on anything you manage to get from a prisoner in those circumstances. But you quote 13 words from Dahar Yassein Ramadan whom I have never met. If he said what he said, then he is wrong.
And if you had any evidence that I had ever engaged in any actual oil transaction, if you had any evidence that anybody ever gave me any money, it would be before the public and before this committee today because I agreed with your Mr Greenblatt [Mark Greenblatt, legal counsel on the committee].
Your Mr Greenblatt was absolutely correct. What counts is not the names on the paper, what counts is where's the money. Senator? Who paid me hundreds of thousands of dollars of money? The answer to that is nobody. And if you had anybody who ever paid me a penny, you would have produced them today.
Now you refer at length to a company names in these documents as Aredio Petroleum. I say to you under oath here today: I have never heard of this company, I have never met anyone from this company. This company has never paid a penny to me and I'll tell you something else: I can assure you that Aredio Petroleum has never paid a single penny to the Mariam Appeal Campaign. Not a thin dime. I don't know who Aredio Petroleum are, but I daresay if you were to ask them they would confirm that they have never met me or ever paid me a penny.
Whilst I'm on that subject, who is this senior former regime official that you spoke to yesterday? Don't you think I have a right to know? Don't you think the Committee and the public have a right to know who this senior former regime official you were quoting against me interviewed yesterday actually is?
Now, one of the most serious of the mistakes you have made in this set of documents is, to be frank, such a schoolboy howler as to make a fool of the efforts that you have made. You assert on page 19, not once but twice, that the documents that you are referring to cover a different period in time from the documents covered by The Daily Telegraph which were a subject of a libel action won by me in the High Court in England late last year.
You state that The Daily Telegraph article cited documents from 1992 and 1993 whilst you are dealing with documents dating from 2001. Senator, The Daily Telegraph's documents date identically to the documents that you were dealing with in your report here. None of The Daily Telegraph's documents dealt with a period of 1992, 1993. I had never set foot in Iraq until late in 1993 — never in my life. There could possibly be no documents relating to Oil-for-Food matters in 1992, 1993, for the Oil-for-Food scheme did not exist at that time.
And yet you've allocated a full section of this document to claiming that your documents are from a different era to the Daily Telegraph documents when the opposite is true. Your documents and the Daily Telegraph documents deal with exactly the same period.
But perhaps you were confusing the Daily Telegraph action with the Christian Science Monitor. The Christian Science Monitor did indeed publish on its front pages a set of allegations against me very similar to the ones that your committee have made. They did indeed rely on documents which started in 1992, 1993. These documents were unmasked by the Christian Science Monitor themselves as forgeries.
Now, the neo-con websites and newspapers in which you're such a hero, senator, were all absolutely cock-a-hoop at the publication of the Christian Science Monitor documents, they were all absolutely convinced of their authenticity. They were all absolutely convinced that these documents showed me receiving $10 million from the Saddam regime. And they were all lies.
In the same week as the Daily Telegraph published their documents against me, the Christian Science Monitor published theirs which turned out to be forgeries and the British newspaper, Mail on Sunday, purchased a third set of documents which also upon forensic examination turned out to be forgeries. So there's nothing fanciful about this. Nothing at all fanciful about it.
The existence of forged documents implicating me in commercial activities with the Iraqi regime is a proven fact. It's a proven fact that these forged documents existed and were being circulated amongst right-wing newspapers in Baghdad and around the world in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Iraqi regime.
Now, Senator, I gave my heart and soul to oppose the policy that you promoted. I gave my political life's blood to try to stop the mass killing of Iraqis by the sanctions on Iraq which killed one million Iraqis, most of them children, most of them died before they even knew that they were Iraqis, but they died for no other reason other than that they were Iraqis with the misfortune to born at that time. I gave my heart and soul to stop you committing the disaster that you did commit in invading Iraq. And I told the world that your case for the war was a pack of lies.
I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11 2001. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning.
Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies.
If the world had listened to Kofi Annan, whose dismissal you demanded, if the world had listened to President Chirac who you want to paint as some kind of corrupt traitor, if the world had listened to me and the anti-war movement in Britain, we would not be in the disaster that we are in today. Senator, this is the mother of all smokescreens. You are trying to divert attention from the crimes that you supported, from the theft of billions of dollars of Iraq's wealth.
Have a look at the real Oil-for-Food scandal. Have a look at the 14 months you were in charge of Baghdad, the first 14 months when $8.8 billion of Iraq's wealth went missing on your watch. Have a look at Haliburton and other American corporations that stole not only Iraq's money, but the money of the American taxpayer.
Have a look at the oil that you didn't even meter, that you were shipping out of the country and selling, the proceeds of which went who knows where? Have a look at the $800 million you gave to American military commanders to hand out around the country without even counting it or weighing it.
Have a look at the real scandal breaking in the newspapers today, revealed in the earlier testimony in this committee. That the biggest sanctions busters were not me or Russian politicians or French politicians. The real sanctions busters were your own companies with the connivance of your own Government.


Quote ends...

A personal note: I am looking for a CD of this speech./... The neocons were stunned.... obviously... That is Galloway for you. I have had the honour of meeting him several times in Amman, Jordan.. I genuinely like him.