9/11 - a deep inside look

The mysterious cross that appeared in the rubbles of 9/11. It was actually a building beam welded together



These are the 9/11 suicide hijackers identified by the US government. Some of them are alive, and the US has not been able to explain how it identified living people as dead.






Bush being told of the attack in New York on 9/11






This was written in one year ago. The subject is still fresh and hence I have opted to keep it on top

THERE is a sudden surge in contentions that the
official US government version of the Sept.11, 2001
attacks was the "biggest lie" ever told. The whole
scenario explanations provided by various
investigating agencies do not fit in with each other.
The Bush administration has been very secretive about
the affair, often giving contradictions and illogical
explanations.
From the very beginning there were suggestions that
Israel's Mossad secret agency was behind the attacks,
which led to a series of events that greatly benefited
Israeli interests. This included a big strain in
relations between the US and Arab and Muslim worlds —
whom Israel considers as its worst enemies. In
addition, and equally important, was the US invasion
of Iraq that resulted in eliminating the reign of
Saddam Hussein, who, among the Arabs, posed the
greatest challenge to Israel's expansionist ambitions
and its quest for regional domination. Today, the US
is going after Syria and Iran, the two other countries
which pose a challenge to Israel's objectives in the
Middle East.
The US is waging a self-styled war on terrorism, and
the obvious targets are Arabs and Muslims.
Let us also not forget that Israel did not have to
send a single soldier or fire a single bullet to
remove Saddam from power and render Iraq as a
crippled, devastated country which would take decades
to get on its own feet let alone rebuild its military
capabilities to a level that it had under the reign of
Saddam Hussein.
It might be shocking for some people to read the
theory that it was Mossad and not Al Qaeda which
pulled the strings from behind the scenes. Some might
even be indignant to hear suggestions that it was not
Osama Bin Laden but Mossad planners who plotted and at
least partially executed the Sept.11 attacks. To such
indignant people - some of whom even take pride that a
Muslim like Bin Laden managed to strike such a big
blow like the Sept.11 attacks against the world's sole
superpower, I say this: Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda
operatives could not have carried out the attacks
without meticulous planning months in advance with
help from people who had not only deep intelligence
connections in the US but also the opportunity and
ability to create the right conditions to stage the
attacks. Those people could not be Al Qaeda
operatives. They had to be people with high
connections within the American security and aviation
systems with deep knowledge of how the systems worked
and what are the best means to set up misleading
information and signs that pointed in the direction
that Arab Muslims were behind the attacks.
The most obvious names that come up is: Israel and
Mossad.
Intelligence information now clearly indicates that
Mossad knew in advance about the Sept.11 attacks in
the US because its agents, Jews pretending to be Arab
militants with an anti-American agenda, had penetrated
the ranks of Al Qaeda months before the attacks and
were closely involved in planning the assaults,
according to highly informed intelligence sources.
Mossad actually helped Al Qaeda carry out the attacks
by providing logistics and then stepped back to allow
the Arab hijackers go ahead with the plans for the
attacks.
American intelligence agencies sensed the Mossad
agent's contacts with the Sept.11 hijackers and this
prompted the Israeli spy network to inform the CIA and
other US agencies that attacks were being planned but
without giving any specific information. Today, the
passing on of the information that attacks were being
planned is cited as Mossad's "good faith" relations
with the CIA and the US.
However, intelligence sources say that Mossad had
deliberately misled the CIA in order to save itself
from the accusation that it was helping the hijackers.
For all technical purposes, Mossad told its American
counterparts that its agents were keeping an eye on Al
Qaeda agents and were in touch with them only to help
foil the group's plans, but in actually the Mossad
operatives co-operated closely with the hijackers and
helped them with hard information (gained through
Mossad intelligence operations) on the American
aviation security system and other logistic support.
Intelligence agencies now have definite and proven
information that two Mossad cells of six Egyptian and
Yemeni born Jews were given training at a secret base
in Israel's Naqeeb desert in early 2001, months before
the Sept.11 attacks, on how to penetrate Al Qaeda. All
of them spoke fluent Arabic and knew how to behave as
pious Muslims, offering regular prayers and were given
close training to act as devoted to the Arab and
Muslim causes. One of the cells went to Amsterdam
and worked under the control of Mossad's Europe
station, which based at Schipol airport within the El
Al (Israeli airline) complex there. They later made
contact in Hamburg with Mohammed Atta, the lead
hijacker on Sept.11, and offered their help to carry
out sabotage attacks against the US. At that point,
Atta is believed to have been planning the Sept.11
attacks and therefore he readily accepted the offer
from the Mossad team without any idea that they were
from the enemy camp.
Another Mossad cell went to New York and then to
Florida, where they contacted several of the would-be
hijackers based in information provided by Atta in
good faith to the Mossad group in Hamburg. In August
2001, a month before the attacks, the Mossad team in
Europe flew to Boston, the US, with some of the
would-be hijackers who were living in Hamburg.
Parallel to the secret operations with Atta in Europe
and the US, dozens of Mossad agents were also active
securing information on "loopholes" in the American
security system to help execute the Sept.11 attacks.
American intelligence agencies had grown suspicious of
some of the Mossad agents, some of whom pretended to
be art students, and this left Mossad with no choice
but to admit to the CIA that they were its agents who
were keeping an eye on Bin Laden's group and they had
come across information that the group was planning
attacks in the US.
Between mid-August 2001 and early September, the then
Mossad chief Efraim Halevy sent two "warnings" to the
CIA of the possibility of such attacks. The CIA noted
the warnings and acknowledged them, but the agency
found the warning as "too non-specific." The FBI was
also informed.
Mossad did not give any specifics about the expected
date of the attack or targets although it knew these
details in advance, according to the sources. Mossad
wanted not only to escape from American suspicions
raised by the Israeli agents' involvement with the
Atta group but also to ensure that the Sept.11 attacks
went ahead. That is why it deliberately withheld
detailed information about the date and target.
American intelligence agents were sceptical of the
Mossad version, but they had no concrete evidence of a
direct Mossad involvement in the attacks and hence the
silence so far in the intelligence circles across the
Atlantic.
Now, there are classified documents available with
European and American intelligence agents which offer
indicators that Mossad agents were not simply spying
on the Al Qaeda hijackers but were also actually
deeply involved in the planning and supporting the
execution of the plans with logistics.
However, Mossad places the blame squarely at the door
of American intelligence agencies saying the CIA did
not take the warnings of the attacks seriously. Mossad
also claims that it had such difficulty getting the
CIA to heed the warnings that it even used the Russian
intelligence agency and and the German BND
intellegence agency to repeat the warnings to the CIA,
but that the American agency failed to take proper
note.
Fox News correspondent Carl Cameron reported in
December 2001 after months of investigations that,
since Sept.11, "more than 60 Israelis have been
arrested or detained, either under the new patriot
anti-terrorism law, or for immigration violations. A
handful of active Israeli military personnel were
among those detained, according to investigators, who
say some of the detainees also failed polygraph
questions when asked about alleged surveillance
activities against and in the United States.
"There is no indication that the Israelis were
involved in the 9/11 attacks, but investigators
suspect that they Israelis may have gathered
intelligence about the attacks in advance, and not
shared it. A highly placed investigator said there are
'tie-ins.' But when asked for details, he flatly
refused to describe them, saying, 'evidence linking
these Israelis to 9/11 is classified. I cannot tell
you about evidence that has been gathered. It's
classified information.'
"Numerous classified documents obtained by Fox News
indicate that even prior to Sept.11, as many as 140
other Israelis had been detained or arrested in a
secretive and sprawling investigation into suspected
espionage by Israelis in the United States, " said
Cameron.
Interestingly, Cameron was immediately told to halt
his investigations. His reports which were put on the
Foxnews website were removed from the site.
How did Mossad gain inside information about Al
Qaeda's communications?
Again, the Mossad team played yet another deception.
Mossad had obtained a US-developed powerful
case-management software through dubious means and
provided it to Al Qaeda, which used it to spy on
American agencies which could have detected and
prevented the Sept.11, 2001 attacks.
At the same time, the software also allowed Mossad
itself to monitor Al Qaeda communications using
computers and also access Al Qaeda databases.
The software, called PROMIS and developed by Inslaw
Inc, an American company, was not
supposed to have been available to any non-US
government, agency, individual or commercial entity or
organisation, was passed on to Mossad by American
officials in the Pentagon recruited by the Israeli spy
agency.
Israeli experts, who are known to lead the global
scene in military and intelligence software, modified
the programme and passed it on to Al Qaeda through
Mossad agents posing as Palestinian supporters of Al
Qaeda.
While Al Qaeda could use that programme to hack into
the most defended and protected databases, Mossad also
planted another programme — described as a 'trap door'
—  in Al Qaeda computers that allowed the Israelis to
monitor Osama Bin Laden's follower's activities in
cyberspace. Simply put, Mossad agents could access and
monitor the computers using the Israeli-modified
version of PROMIS and thus keep themselves abreast of
Al Qaeda operatives' communications and database.
It is like having a powerful long-range microphone
planted right under the nose of your
adversary.
There is no way Mossad would not have known how Al
Qaeda operatives used the software in facilitating
preparations for the Sept.11 attacks since Mossad
itself was using the trap door in the software to
monitor Al Qaeda computers.
The FBI discovered the indirect Mossad-Qaeda link
while investigating an Israeli spy, Lawrence Franklin,
a top Pentagon analyst on Iran, who passed on
sensitive and top-secret documents about US plans for
regime change in Tehran.
It has been proved that nearly 130 Israeli
intelligence agents were arrested in the days
immediately after Sept.11. All of them were allowed to
leave the US after a few months after questioning,
but the world never knew what they had "confessed" to
their Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) or Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) questioners.
Here comes the clinch: Five of the Israelis were
arrested when they were seen filming the attacks from
a point which offered the best view of the World Trade
Centre towers which were hit. They were seen
congratulating each other and dancing and this aroused
the suspicion of a woman who notified New York police
because they looked Middle Eastern and possibly Arabs.
Witnesses saw them jumping for joy in Liberty State
Park after the initial impact. Later on, other
witnesses saw them celebrating on a roof in and still
more witnesses later saw them celebrating with
shaking hands and congratulating each other in a
Jersey City parking area.
"It looked like they're hooked in with this. It
looked like they knew what was going to happen when
they were at Liberty State Park," said a witness.
One anonymous phone call to the authorities actually
led police to close down all of New York's bridges and
tunnels. The mystery caller told police a group of
Palestinians were mixing a bomb inside of a white van
headed for the Holland Tunnel.
Police then issued a “Be-on-the-Lookout” alert for a
white mini-van heading for the city's bridges and
tunnels from New Jersey. When a van fitting that
exact description was stopped just before crossing
into New York, the suspicious “Middle-Easterners”
were apprehended. And they turned out be Israelis.
However, the van was nowhere near Holland Tunnel as
the mystery call told police.
It appeared that the caller wanted police to focus on
Holland Tunnel while the actual van was somewhere
else. In the van, police found maps of the city with
certain places highlighted, box cutters (the same
items that the hijackers supposedly used), $4,700
cash stuffed in a sock, and foreign passports. Bomb
sniffing dogs were brought to the van and that they
reacted as if they had smelled explosives.
The FBI seized and developed their photos, one of
which shows one of the four flicking a cigarette
lighter in front of the smouldering ruins in an
apparently celebratory gesture.
The FBI found that the Israelis worked for a moving
company known as Urban Moving Systems. An American
employee of Urban Moving Systems said a majority of
his co-workers were Israelis and they were all joking
about the attacks. Urban Moving System's Israeli
owner, Dominick Suter, was questioned and released
with instructions that he should report to police
whenever asked to do so. But a few days later, he
abandoned his business and fled the US for Israel.
Obviously, he was in such a hurry to leave the US that
s ome of Urban Moving System's customers were left
with their furniture stranded in storage facilities.
The FBI was established that the five detained
Israelis were in fact Mossad agents. The agency
released them after 71 days in custody. No detail of
their statement was ever released to the media.
In the meantime, American mainstream media was told,
implictly or explictly, to focus on Bin Laden and soon
thousands reports started appearing suggesting that
the Yemeni origin Saudi was behind the attacks.
The propaganda machinery told readers, listeners and
viewers that Muslims were “medieval” and wanted to
destroy the because they envied American wealth and
way of life.
Bin Laden strongly denied any role in the attacks.
"I was not involved in the September 11 attacks in
the United States nor did I have knowledge of the
attacks," he said in a statement. "There exists a
government within a government within the United
States. The United States should try to trace the
perpetrators of these attacks within itself; to the
people who want to make the present century a century
of conflict between Islam and Christianity. That
secret government must be asked as to who carried out
the attacks. The American system is totally in
control of the Jews, whose first priority is Israel,
not the United States."
There is no evidence, be it hard or circumstantial,
to link the Al Qaeda was involved in the attacks. On
the other hand, there is enough evidence suggesting
Israelis were very busy framing Arabs for terror
plots against America.

Remote control?

Then there is the "mystery" of frozen/jammed
communications between the hijacked 9/11 airplaes and
ground control and the accuracy with which they hit
the two World Trade Centre towers as if by remote
control.
An interesting revelation is that a US-based company,
System Planning Corporation (SPC) designs,
manufactures and distributes highly sophisticated
technology that enables an operator to fly by remote
control as many as eight different airborne vehicles
at the same time from one position either on the
ground or airborne (www.sysplan.com/Radar/CTS).
More importantly, SPC, which is headquartered in
Arlington, Virginia, has the technology to take over
the controls of an airborne plane already in flight
and could "hijack hijackers" and bring the plane down
safely.
The catch here is: Dov Zakheim, an American Jewish
rabbi, served as the head of SPC's international
division until Bush appointed him under-secretary of
defence and comptroller of the Pentagon (Zakheim
resigned from the Pentagon job in March last year
saying that his duties were exhausting).
Zakheim co-authored an article, "Rebuilding America's
Defences: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New
Century," published by The Project for a New American
Century in September 2000.
A segment in the books says that "the process of
transformation, even if it brings revolutionary
change, is likely to be a long one, absent some
catastrophic and catalysing — like a new Pearl
Harbour."
Implicit in Rabbi Dov Zakheim's argument is the theory
that a false flag intelligence operation would
trigger a response by the USA that would be good for
Israe.
The means consisted of the aforementioned remote
control of airborne vehicle technologies as well as
the nurturing, creative accounting at the Pentagon to
pay for such an operation.
The opportunity was Zakheim's closeness to the
Command/Control/Communications in Washington and its
Zionist neo-conservatives determined to provoke a war
with Saddam Hussein.
Aassinations and leaving red herrings that point at
Arabs as culprits. These actions started even before
Israel was created in 1948. An outstanding example is
a series of bombings at Jewish businesses and
community centres as well as at least one synagogue in
Iraq in the 40s and 50s that were blamed on Arabs
seeking to kill Jews and the government running a
pogom against Jews. The bombings terrified thousands
of the Iraqi Jews into migrating to Israel; that was
the very objective of the Israeli agents who carried
out the blasts. This has been admitted by several
prominent Iraqi Jews who migrated to Israel made
themselves successful politicians in the Jewish state.
It is also documents in the book, Ben Gurion's
Scandals: How the Haganah & the Mossad Eliminated
Jews, written by Naem Giladi, an Iraqi Jew. The book
says one of the Israeli aims behind the action was to
import raw Jewish labour to work in newly-vacated
farmlands and to fill in the military ranks.
"About 125,000 Jews left Iraq for Israel in the late
1940s and into 1952, most because they had been lied
to and put into a panic by what I came to learn were
Zionist bombs," Giladi said in an interview in 1998.
He said he had documents, "including some that I
illegally copied from the archives at Yad Vashem (war
memorial in occupied Jerusalem)," which "confirm what
I saw myself, what I was told by other witnesses, and
what reputable historians and others have written
concerning the Zionist bombings in Iraq, Arab peace
overtures that were rebuffed, and incidents of
violence and death inflicted by Jews on Jews in the
cause of creating Israel."
Wilbur Crane Eveland, a former senior officer in the
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), writes in his book,
Ropes of Sand:
"In attempts to portray the Iraqis as anti-American
and to terrorise the Jews, the Zionists planted bombs
in the US Information Service library and in
synagogues. Soon leaflets began to appear urging Jews
to flee to Israel. . . .
"Although the Iraqi police later provided (the US)
embassy with evidence to show that the synagogue and
library bombings, as well as the anti-Jewish and
anti-American leaflet campaigns, had been the work of
an underground Zionist organisation, most of the world
believed reports that Arab terrorism had motivated the
flight of the Iraqi Jews whom the Zionists had
'rescued' really just in order to increase Israel's
Jewish population."
In the early 1950s, a book was published in Iraq, in
Arabic, titled Venom of the Zionist Viper, written by
one of the Iraqi investigators of the 1950-51
bombings. The author implicates the Israelis,
specifically one of the emissaries sent by Israel,
Mordechai Ben-Porat. As soon as the book came out, all
copies just disappeared, even from libraries. The word
was that agents of the Israeli Mossad, working through
the US embassy, bought up all the books and destroyed
them.
Other examples of such Israeli deceptive operations
are:
In 1954, Israeli agents working in Egypt planted bombs
in several buildings, mostly targeting American and
British interests, in Cairo and Alexandria. They
planted evidence implicating Arabs as the culprits
with a view to alienating the US and UK from Egypt.
However, the plot blew up on Israel's face when one
of the bombs exploded prematurely and allowed.
Egyptian police to capture one bombers who in turn led
them to the Israeli spy ring.
Some of them were Israeli nationals and others were
Egyptian Jews.
They were put on trial and sentenced to prison terms
of upto 15 years.
Veteran British journalist David Hirst wrote in his
book The Gun and the Olive Branch:
"The trial established that the bombings had indeed
been carried out by an Israeli espionage and terrorist
network. This was headed by Colonel Avraharn Dar
--alias John Darling-- and a core of professionals who
had set themselves up in Egypt under various guises.
They had recruited a number of Egyptian Jews; one of
them was a young woman, Marcelle Ninio, who worked in
the offices of a British company.
"Naturally, the eventual exposure of such an
organizsation was not going to improve the lot of the
vast majority of Egyptian Jews who wanted no-thing to
do with Zionism. There were still at least 50,000 Jews
in Egypt; there had been something over 60,000 in
1947, more than half of whom were actually foreign
nationals. During the first Arab-Israeli war of 1948,
the populace had some times vented its frustration
against them, and some were killed in mob violence or
by terrorist bombs. In spite of this, and of the
revolutionary upheaval which followed four years
later, few Jews-including the foreign nationals-left
the country, and fewer still went to Israel. A Jewish
journalist insisted: 'We, Egyptian Jews, feel secure
in our homeland, Egypt'."
Despite irrefutable evidence that it was behind
"Operation Susannah" — which later came to be known as
the Lavon affair —  Israel maintained that the whole
episode was stage-managed by "anti-Semites."
As the trial progressed in Egypt, Israel opted to turn
its then defence minister Pinhas Lavon as the
scapegoat. Lavon was brought down by the scandal and
the real intelligence operatives behind the plot were
never brought to light.
In 1967, Israel warplanes attacked the American spy
ship USS Liberty and killed 35 American sailors and
crippled the vessels in what it said was a mistake
despite all indications that it knew it was an
American ship. Captain Ward Boston, who served as
adviser for the Navy's Court of Inquiry into the
attack, has revealed that the Court of Inquiry was
ordered by the then president Lyndon Johnson to
conclude that the attack was an accident,
Military experts have found that Israel had used
unmarked aircraft and boats in the actual attack,
indicating that Israel intended to sink the US ship
and frame Egypt for the attack, tricking the US into
the war against Egypt.
In 1986, Mossad tricked the then president, Ronald
Reagan, into bombing Libya by means of a radio
transmitter planted in the Libyan capital, Tripoli.
The secret broadcasting device, known was Trojan,
sent out Israeli-engineered false messages to American
and British listening stations, according to a former
Mossad agent.
The misinformation transmitted through the device
led to framing Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi in the
April 1986 bombing of a disco in Berlin frequented by
American servicemen. A court in Germany tried the case
and ruled that Libya was behind the bombing in which
two Americans were killed and nearly 80 people were
injured..
Prominent among the evidence produced in court against
Libya were "secret communications in Arabic" picked up
American intelligence and which were said to be
"instructions" to Libyan agents to carry out the
bombing.
This revelation has come from Vctor Ostrovsky, 60, a
Canadian-born Jew who emigrated to Israel in 1950, who
says he became an agent of the Mossad in 1984 but quit
the agency in 1998 in "disgust." According to
Ostrovsky, he was among a Mossad team which sneaked
into Tripoli, Libya, on the night of Feb. 17, 1986,
from the Mediterranean in mini-submarines and planted
the "trojan" in an apartment rented by a Mossad agent
there.
The planted "trojan" was used by Mossad to transmit
messages in Arabic that were then rebroadcast from
Tripoli, to make it look as if Qadhati had been
communicating with his agents about upcoming militant
attacks, among them the 1986 Berlin bombing.
How does this Israeli record fit into the 9/11
scenario.
Until now, it has not been established who was on the
four hijacked planes. The Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) admits that the only hard
evidence are the names used by the hijackers on
forged identification documents. At least seven of
the men whose names were on those IDs have been found
to be alive. One of them died bin 1999. None of the
names of the alleged hijackers were on the passenger
lists of the four hijacked planes. Yet, the net (false
or true) impression is that all of them were Arab
Muslims.
Some of these men behaved strangely on the night
before 9/11/2001. They visited bars and strip
night-clubs and behaved as if they wanted to be
noticed and remembered by all they met.
This behaviour in itself is unseemingly of any devout
Muslim willing to commit suicide would spend the night
before his death violating the tenets of their faith.
Intelligence experts believe that a false trail was
being ahead of the hijackings.
It has now been established that only two Israelis —
both aboard the hijacked planes — were killed in the
9/11 attacks although reports claim that upto 130
Israelis were killed.
Some reports suggest that Israelis were given an
advance warning not to go to work at the World Trade
Center towers on 9-11. I don't think the reports are that credible.
Two employees of Odigo, an Israeli company with
offices located near the World Trade Centre towers,
received warning messages sent before the four planes
had even left the ground, thus establishing that that
someone in Israel knew of the attacks ahead of time.

US owes it to the world

PV Vivekanand

NONE of the findings of various investigations, official and unofficial, into the Sept.11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington has satisfactorily and logically provided answers to the multitude of questions that were raised immediately after the unprecedented terrorist attack against the US. Washington has not released the full report of the findings of the official investigation.
The key question had always been: How could a group of Middle Eastern Arab Muslims penetrate the high-security American aviation system, mislead the country's air defences into inaction despite reported hijackings and then slam the aircraft into landmarks in New York and Washington?
There had to help from within. Who provided that help, why and how?
It had to someone or an organisation or group that stood to benefit from the fallout of the attacks. There is no doubt that Israel was the sole beneficiary of the attacks, which resulted in a deep schism between the Arab/Muslim worlds and the US and were used as a pretext for the invasion of Iraq and ouster of a regime which was deemed to be a hurdle in Israel's quest for regional domination. Next targets in the US-led war against terror that was launched post-9/11 are two other sworn enemies of Israel — Iran and Syria. It is only a matter of time and method before the US destabilises both countries and thus remove them as potential threats or challenges to Israel.
As such, it is only natural that one would look a bit closer at the scenario and realise that the Israelis possess the cunningness, intelligence, technology, and expertise and, above all, the right connections in the corridors of power in Washington to have carried out of a false flag operation and ensured that Arabs and Muslims were blamed for it.
It would not be the first of last time Israel carried out such an operation.
The meticulously recorded facts — supported by American official documents and intelligence findings accepted as accurate by the US establishment — presented in the memorandum drawn up by respected lawyer Gerald Shea give a massive boost to the suspicion — indeed conviction of many — that Israel was behind the 9/11 attacks.
The Bush administration owes it not only to the Americans but also the entire international community to conduct a public inquiry into the issues raised in the Shea memorandum and let is findings be known to the world if only because the 9/11 attacks changed the face of the world forever, with the developing world paying the highest price.

Divine retribution?

pv vivekanand
Christian evangelists and many ordinary Americans say Katrina and Rita are divine retribution to the aggressive US policies, particularly the invasion of Iraq, and Washington's almost unlimited support for Israel's brutality, arrogance, intrasigence and stubbornness against the Palestinian independence struggle. This is the impression one gets from the thousands of messages flying across the Internet.
Anti-war activists agree and assert that the Bush administration was damaged badly as a result of Katrina and Rita because it had lied through its teeth to justify the invasion of Iraq, produced false witnesses and testimonies and broke God's commandments for the sake of global dominance, control of oil and Israeli interests.
Other say Hurricane Katrina particularly targeted New Orleans because of what they see as the debauchery of life there, including the free-wheeling gay and lesbian movements as well as the abortionists there.
Hardline Jews contend that God punished the US for pressuring Israel into withdrawing from the Gaza Strip, and there is more to come.
Many others say that the real targets of God's wrath are the neoconservatives behind President George W Bush. Their political and bureaucratic careers are poised to collapse when the nation takes account of Katrina and Rita sooner or later, and few would be able to escape the net.
Critics note that Katrina and Rita targeted some of the most economically sensitive areas of the US; the Gulf Coast which has America's largest seaport and is the country's key route for imports and exports, and Texas, which houses the country's oil resources. Some 20 oil refineries are located in the path of Rita, and if they are damaged, then the cost of a gallon of patrol would rise to upto $5, thus fuelling public resentment against the government.
The argument of divine retribution becomes all the more significant beause Texas is Bush's homestate.
Salon magazine took particular pleasure in pointing out that Bush himself used the pulpit at a national prayer service to shed personal responsibility for New Orleans by pointing his finger at God. 
However, it all falls back into politics, and particularly the Middle East.
British Member of Parliament George Galloway, who was targeted by the neocons for political elimination because of his criticism of the war against Iraq, seemed to have summarised the feeling of many when he said after hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans:
"The scenes from the stricken city almost defy belief. Many, many thousands of people left to die in what is the richest, most powerful country on Earth. This obscenity is as far from a natural disaster as George Bush and the US elite are from the suffering masses of New Orleans. The images of Bush luxuriating at his ranch and of his secretary of state shopping for $7,000 shoes while disaster swamped the US Gulf Coast will haunt this administration.
"In the most terrible way imaginable they show to the whole world that it is not only the lives of people in Baghdad, Fallujah and Palestine that Bush holds cheap. It is also his own citizens — the black and poor people left behind with no food, water or shelter. This is not simply manslaughter through incompetence, though the White House's incompetence abounds. It is murder — for Bush was warned four years ago of the threat to New Orleans, as surely as he was warned of the disaster that would come of his war on Iraq. ...
"His is the America of Halliburton, the M-16 rifle, the cluster bomb, the gated communities of the rich and of the billionaires he grew up with in Texas. There is another America. It is the land of the poor of Louisiana, it is the land of the young men and women economically conscripted into the military. It is the land of the glorious multiethnic mix that was New Orleans, it is the land of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and of great struggles for justice."
It might indeed be rhetoric, but it is the kind of language most Americans understand without difficulty, particularly now that the shortcomings of the Bush administration in handling the hurricane crisis have been exposed to the American public.
Adding fuel to the fire was an assertion by a tabloid quoting a doctor that raised questions about the president's personal life.
The National Inquirer, a tabloid better known for devoting its front pages to gossip about celebrity divorces, quoed Dr. Justin Frank, a Washington D.C. psychiatrist and author of Bush On The Couch: Inside The Mind Of The President, as saying that Bush is drinking again.
“I do think that Bush is drinking again. Alcoholics who are not in any programme, like the president, have a hard time when stress gets to be great," Dr Frank was quoted as saying. "I think it's a concern that Bush disappears during times of stress. He spends so much time on his ranch. It's very frightening.”
Frank is described as a highly-respected psychiatrist at George Washington University and his book about the president’s problems has been praised by other psychiatric experts.
White House rumours about the president’s drinking began circulating last year in the West Wing along with questions about possible abuse of prescription drugs. They report wide mood swings, cancelled meetings and an ever-decreasing number of aides with direct access to Bush.
Bush had admitted to be an alcoholic earlier but he said he quit drinking without help from any organised programme.
The president's problems do not end there.
A massive anti-war demonstration was taking place in Washington on Saturday with organisers expecting more than 100,000 marchers amid growing public concern about the course of the Iraq war.
Cindy Sheehan, who lost her 24-year old son in Iraq and whose protests have galvanised the anti-war movement, was leading the protesters.
Sheehan, who camped outside Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas for 25 days demanding a meeting with the president that was never granted, organised peace caravans driving through the US before converging on Washington on Saturday.
The movement has triggered intense debate across the US about the war and how the administration misled the US Congress and people that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the US and therefore he had to be ousted through invasion and occupation of Iraq.
It is not simply Sheehan who motivated the anti-war movement into taking the cause against war to the streets of America. There has been a marked change in the approach of many (non-corporate) television channels, radios and newspapers in their coverage of the Iraq war and vivid images from Iraq are now brought home to the Americans unlike the first year of the war when only "positive" news were broadcast by most channels.
Whether Americans are now concerned about the deception of the administration that set the ground for the war, they are now asking for a timetable for calling the American troops home from Iraq, something the administration is unable or is not willing to provide (mainly because ending the US military presence in Iraq is not in the schedule during the Bush administration's term in office).
The anti-administration build-up is growing, and it would only gather strength, given the almost impossible situations facing Bush at home and in Iraq. The president could do with a major diversion somewhere and his critics are speculating what it would be.

Tip of an iceberg

PV Vivekanand

IT IS no secret that some of the people who wield influential positions in post-war Iraq are not exactly known for keeping their paws to themselves when it comes to money, particularly when it belongs to someone else. Reports that up to $1 billion were siphoned away from funds earmarked to equip the Iraqi security forces do not come as a surprise. Surely, it is only the tip of an iceberg. If one cares to dig deeper, then there would be much more worse scandals waiting to be uncovered.
That might indeed be the case, but the US could not escape from its responsibility and share of blame for the mess-up in Iraq. The ill-planned and misguided military action has led to untold suffering for the people of Iraq, one of the richest oil countries in the region. They live in a perpetual state of terror and deprived of a decent level of amenities in life. They were promised the sky at one point, and today they have gone deep into an abysss of uncertainty and fear. And now they are told that money that should have been spent on improving their security has gone missing, thus sparking further frustration and despair over themselves and the fate of their country.
A close review of American administration of funds allocated for Iraq, whether coming from American taxpayers or from the sales of Iraqi oil, since the invasion of that country in March 2003 shows a we-could-not-care-less approach. Tens of billions of dollars have been spent in Iraq, and the bulk of the money going to certain favoured destinations. There has always been a grossly inflated version of spending in Iraq on the American side, and this has definitely contributed to a confidence in Baghdad that anyone could get away with anything.
Had the Bush administration took the early signs of mismanagement and corruption seriously enough to launch a thorough and transparent investigation, pinpointed the blame and took to task those responsible, then it would have been the best message that Washington does take things seriously and has the best of interests of Iraq and its people at heart.
It did not happen, and even audited reports of Iraq accounts that brought out gross irregularities and violations were shelved aside. The people named in the audit reports were not even questioned, as far as the international community knows today.
What better example could the US set for those in a position to dip their hands into the Iraqi honeypot?

Taken for a ride

PV Vivekanand

IF the American invasion and occupation of Iraq carried out through a web of lies and deception has led to a total mess-up, taking the country to the point of disintegration along sectarian lines, much worse is the Washington-guided financial management of both American and Iraqi funds. Evidence is mounting that the commercial interests of a few American corporate giants played an equal role in whatever other considerations that the administration of President George W Bush had in charting and implementing the grand design to seek absolute control of oil-rich Iraq. Today, having spent — at least on paper — billions of dollars for reconstructing Iraq, the US or the people of Iraq have little to show in terms of improved living conditions. But then, bettering the life of Iraqis through spending American money was never a consideration in Washington and the prime objective, it would definitely seem, was to reap billions for friends of the neoconservative camp in the corridors of American power, writes PV Vivekanand.
APART FROM the US quest to turn Iraq into a key pillar of its empire of bases and remove a potential threat to Israel's domination of the Middle East, the invasion and occupation of Iraq had another dimension: Allowing hand-picked American corporates to earn billion of dollars, whether through supply of weapons and military equipment as well as fuel and food to the US military, or through control of the oil resources of Iraq. True, no American oil company has been able to serve its long-term interests in Iraq so far, if only because of the intensity of the insurgeny there. However, US firms, most of them linked to the Republican Party and leading members of the neoconservative camp in Washington, have been reaping a rich harvest from the tens of billions of dollars of US money being spent in Iraq. Indeed, it is the business of the American people and government to decide who should get what from American taxpayers' money, but not so when it comes to the natural resources that belong to the people of Iraq.
As allegations fly that someone, somewhere siphoned off $1 billion that were supposed to have been spent on building Iraq's security forces, the reality is also emerging that someone, someone had also channelled away billions of dollars of Iraqi oil money that should have been spent on rebuilding the shattered country.
As looting erupted in Baghdad and cities and towns elsewhere in the country following the collapse of the Saddam Hussein regime in April 2003, the favourite  term used to describe the looters was "Ali Baba," the Arabian tales character who stole from the loot of a gang of thieves. Few gave a second thought that the name was perhaps misused since Ali Baba could not be described as a thief in a broader sense.
Indeed, that is so symptomatic of Iraq. Few, least of all the Americans, took the trouble of understanding the country and its people. The US-led coalition went to Iraq with an agenda that had little do with democracy and human rights or the welfare of the people of that country, and more to do with American/Israeli strategic interests, and, in the bargain, nudging aside billions of dollars in the way of corporates like Halliburton and Bechtel.
Again, that money was mostly American. And today, US officials have confirmed that key rebuilding projects in Iraq are grinding to a halt because American money is running out and security has diverted funds intended for electricity, water and sanitation.
As a result, according to James Jeffrey, a senior state department adviser on Iraq, projects to rebuild the country's infrastructure have been downsized, postponed or abandoned because the $24 billion budget approved by Congress has been dwarfed by the scale of the task.
"We have scaled back our projects in many areas," Jeffrey told a congressional committee in Washington this month. "We do not have the money."
The net sum of conclusions emerging from various auditing reports, official and unofficial, about the American funds spent, both for continuing the war and to rebuild Iraq, is that there had been a systematic pattern of spending that benefited none other than private American companies which are given no-bid contracts.
It was reported as far back as October 2003 that basic reconstruction in Iraq would cost less than half the amount requested by the Bush administration from the US Congress.
A joint report prepared by the United Nations and World Bank estimated that $9 billion were needed for reconstruction in Iraq in 2004 where as the amount that the US government had sought from Congress was $18.6 billion.
In every sector, the US estimate was double that of the UN estimate, clearly indicating that figures were purposely inflated to benefit the corporates.
. For example, while the Bush administration sought $5.7 billion for rebuilding the country’s electricity system, the UN-World Bank report put the price tag at $2.38 billion. Similarly, for rebuilding the water and sanitation infrastructure, the administration hd asked for $3.77 billion, while the joint report estimates that less than $1.9 billion is needed.
Beyond that, the Bush administration had estimated that $55 billion will be needed for Iraqi reconstruction between 2004 and 2007. While there was no comparable UN/World Bank estimate, independent think-tanks estimated the requirement at less than half that amount.
Where did the money disappear?
Today, very few people actually seem to know how much was actually spent in reconstructing Iraq although there is little sign of any reconstruction. Iraqis continue to suffer from water and power shortages and there is little in the way of employment opportunities except perhaps in the high-risk security forces.
The pattern of mismanagement of funds was established in the audit reports of the accounts of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) that was disbanded on June 28, 2004.
But that was not American money. It was Iraqi money, and no one seems to be bothered anymore to hold to account those who misappropriated it.
Paul Bremer, who headed the CPA, left behind what turned out to be a gross misuse of proceeds of Iraqi oil exports to benefit American contractors, with the major beneficiary being Halliburton.
There were three sources of funding for the war and occupation of Iraq. The first was $65 billion directly allocated as military spending by the US Congress and administered by the US Defence Department. It was American taxpayer's money.
The second was $18.4 billion, also approved by the US Congress, but administered by the CPA. Again, it was American taxpayer's money and supposed to be spent on reconstruction of Iraq along with $16 billion or so pledged by other countries.
The third was the Development Fund for Iraq, which represented proceeds from Iraq's oil exports and leftover money from the oil-for-food programme that the UN ran in co-ordination with the Saddam Hussein regime. The fund handled about $20 billion by the time the CPA was disbanded when the US handed over "sovereignty" to the interim government in June 2004.
The first war chest was further replished by another $87 billion, but the bulk of it was earmarked for direct military spending.
From the $18.4 billion allocation for reconstructing Iraq, the CPA spent only two per cent since allocating American funds for reconstruction projects in Iraq had many riders and it was easier to dipping into the Development of Iraq Fund — which was strictly Iraqi money.
The Pentagon has not yet explain just how Halliburton gained possession of Iraqi funds when neither the US Congress nor the Iraqi government authorised their transfer to Halliburton in the first place. But no one is asking for an explanation either.

Saddam's 'billions'

Iyad Allawi, the first post-Saddam Iraqi prime minister, and several other Iraqi officials and politicians said shortly after Saddam was captured in late 2003 that British and American intelligence had located up to $40 billion in secret funds stashed away from the toppled president.
The clues to the "secret funds," they said at that time, were provided by none other than Saddam, who revealed details of secret accounts in international banks during questioning.
The assertion immediately drew scepticism. It was elementary that it was
impossible to hide that kind of money for anyone, let alone Saddam, who was under the tightest-ever monitoring since 1990.
Let us, for argument's sake, agree that Saddam had stashed away such money and had given clues to where it was, then the US should have definitely located it. What happened to that money then?
We have heard scant little about the "Saddam billions"in the last 20 months.
Or was it that the same people or at least some of them who were behind the massive cash scam in Iraq did recover the money and then decided "finders keepers?"

Destination Damascus

pv vivekanand

WASHINGTON is cranking up pressure on Syria on several fronts, and many in the Middle East see it as heralding an Iraq-style scenario for that country regardless of whatever it does to ward off the threat.
The thrust of the American campaign is the charge that the Syrian government is not only doing enough to check the flow of international jihadists into Iraq through the borders but also that it is actually encouraging guerrillas to enter Iraq and fight the US-led coalition forces and their allies there.
Parallel to that is the diplomatic pressure stemming from allegations that the Syrian regime was responsible for the February assassination of Lebanon's former prime minister, Rafiq Al Hariri.
Another charge against Damascus is linked to the Palestinian war of resistance against Israel. Washington insists that Syria-based leaders of militant groups such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad and leftist factions are plotting and implementing anti-Israeli attacks, and this amounts to Syrian support for "international terrorism."
Yet another assault is coming through human rights groups as well as the State Department which accuse the Syrian authorities of gross violations of human rights — by continued detention of "political prisoners," denying the civil rights and freedoms of the Syrian people and arbitrary jailing and torture of dissidents.
Syria is also accused of harbouring Nazi war criminals and refusing to surrender them for trial, presumably in Israel, for "crime against humanity" (read Jews).
The US is also working on the internal political front in Syria by offering assistance to Syrian activists living in exile and within the country to stir unrest among Syrians. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is spearheading that effort through meetings and contacts with leaders of the Syrian community living in the US and elsewhere who do not agree with the policies of the government of President Bashar Al Assad.
The pressure has been stepped up in recent weeks and many observers see a link between the mounting insurgency in Iraq and Washington's efforts to spark serious developments in the Syrian context. They believe that the US is seeking to to divert world attention and possibly create a strategy to alleviate the pressure the US faces from Iraqi and international jihadist groups resisting the American military presence in post-war Iraq while also building a case for "regime change" in Damascus.
An overwhelming number of Arabs, in the Gulf and elsewhere, believe that it is only a matter of time before the US arrives at a point where it feels that it has built enough pressure and through it an international consensus that Syria should be "punished" for its alleged role in the Iraqi insurgency, in the Hariri assassination and in supporting international terrorism.
They liken the situation to the build-up to the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq. Many of them had foreseen as far back as December 2001 — when the US was waging war in Afghanistan — that it was Iraq's turn next and there was nothing Saddam Hussein could have done to pre-empt the American invasion that followed more than 15 months later.
It has since been established that all justifications that the Bush administration cited for action against Saddam Hussein had any substance. If anything, it has more or less been proved that the US government doctored intelligence reports to convince the international Congress and people that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and was somehow linked to the Sept.11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington.
A similar situation is unfolding now for Syria, they say.
They do not believe that the Syrian leadership was naive enough to think that it could get away with murdering Hariri and to overlook that Damascus was emerging as a top priority target for an American-engineered "regime change" because Israel-specific considerations.
As such, Damascus could not have undertaken an action that was sure to be exploited by hostile forces into launching anti-Syrian action on the regional and international action.
Therefore, they argue, Syria is being set up through "planted" evidence and doctored intelligence finds that would be placed in the way of the UN investigations into the Hariri murder. They are convinced that the UN inquiries would soon reach the conclusion that "orders" for assassinating Hariri had come from the "top ranks" of power in Syria and this would be followed by UN Security Council sanctions against Damascus, setting the ground for eventual action that would destabilise the Bashar Al Assad regime.
What is subject to conjecture at this point is whether such action would involve outright military intervention or whether the pro-Israeli neoconservative camp in Washington would wait until they feel they have built enough internal challenges to the Syrian regime before supporting a revolt against Bashar Al Assad.
Not many believe that the Bush administration would engage itself in another military adventure in the region as long as the Iraqi crisis rages out of control. Washington could not but be aware that the "strategic alliance" between Syria and Iran would automatically bring the Iranians into the equation in the event of an American military intervention in Syria. The US has also to make allowances for unpredictable anti-American action by Lebanon's Hizbollah and other factions allied with Syria.
People in the Middle East have no doubts over the American motivation for action against Syria. They have a rather simplified view of the situation: There is no possibility of an Israeli-Syrian peace agreement under the given geopolitical imperatives for the two sides. Israel, which occupies Syria's Golan Heights and counts on it as the key source of its water, would never relinquish the area. No Syrian government, least of all the Bashar regime, would ever accept a peace deal that does not involve the return of the Golan to Syrian sovereignty and hope to survive in power in Damascus.
As such, the only way out of the impasse is to destabilise Syria and create an American-friendly regime in Damascus that could be pressed into making compromises accept a peace deal on Israel's terms. That is where ultimate objective of the mounting pressure against Damascus, and, it has become embedded in the Arab mind that the only question is when the US would launch action on the ground.

'US using Zarqawi name'

A prominent Shiite religious leader of Iraq has said that Jordanian militant Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, an associate of Osama Bin Laden and said to be the mastermind of the rising insurgency in Iraq, was killed sometime ago and that the US forces are using his name to justify the occupation of the country.
Sheikh Jawad Al Khalessi, imam of the Shiite mosque Al Kadhemiya in Baghdad and a senior religious leader, made the comment in an interview with the French newspaper Le Monde.
Khalessi is currently in France to attend an inter-faith meeting in Sant' Egidio, in Lyon.
He told Le Monde that the US forces were trying to terrify the Shiites into moving closer to the US and therefore they were citing Zarqawi's name — and not that of Iraqi Sunnis — so that they could stay in the country citing a need to stay to fight Zarqawi.
Khalessi also said laid out a three-point proposal for the US to get out of the crisis in Iraq.

Following is the Le Monde interview in a question and answer format:

Question: Abu Musab Al Zarqawi declared the "all-out war" with the Shiites and perpetrated the bloodiest massacre in Baghda on Wednesday Sep. 14, since the beginning of the war in Iraq. What do you think of this declaration?

ANSWER: I do not think that Abu Musab Al Zarqawi exists as such. He is only one invention of the occupants to divide the people because he was killed in the north of Iraq at the beginning of the war when he was with the group of Ansar Al Isla in Kurdistan (in northern Iraq). His family in Jordan even conducted a funeral service for him. Abu Musab AL Zarqawi is thus a toy used by the Americans, an excuse to continue the occupation.


QUESTION: It is a pretext not to leave Iraq. But why declare an "all-out war" with the Shiites?

QUESTION: In order to bring them closer the occupying forces. In this manner, the Shiites will find refuge near the Americans rather than join resistance. The Shiites are takin part in resistance to the south, as the recent made attacks testify, in particular, in Basra.

QUESTION: However, it has been just announced that Najaf had passed under the control of the Iraqi forces and that other cities of the South were going to follow?

ANSWER: It is not true. In reality, it is propaganda aimed at the media. Actually, the Iraqi forces do not control the situation and the troops of occupation remain with the periphery to intervene as soon as there are problems.

QUESTION: The draft Constitution adopted will be subjected to a referendum on Oct.15. What do you think about it?

ANSWER: It is a text adopted with haste to answer the agenda of the Americans. It does not reflect the hopes of the Iraqi people, who are worried more over their daily survival and safety. The project was concocted in the "green zone" in Baghdad under the instructions of the American ambassador. A British specialist in Iraq has said: "The draft constitution is like one arranging the deckchairs on the bridge of Titanic... and (like Titanic) Iraq is also sinking.

QUESTION: : Will the referendum be a success, like the elections of Jan. 30?

ANSWER: Personally, I call for boycotting it, but if my fellow-citizens decide to go to vote "no" we will not oppose it. In any event, George Bush has prepared a declaration affirming that this consultation was a success and progress on the way of the democracy. But what will that change for Iraq?

QUESTION: In your opinion, what are the solutions to save Iraq?

ANSWER: First there should be a timetable for withdrawal of foreign troops. Secondly Iraq's national resources should be placed under the supervision of the UN and used for in the service of the country. Thirdl a national dialogue should be launched for elections to be continued under international supervision. If the occupation continues, the situation only will only worsen and more Iraqis will join resistance.

Half full or half empty?

PV Vivekanand

ISRAEL has completed its much-heralded withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and sent out a message that its government had taken a major political risk by dragging out many of the Jewish settlers who were living there. The next logical step is for Israel to relax its stranglehold on life in Gaza and also follow up with similar measures in the West Bank. However, Israel itself has created realities on the ground as well as political conditions designed to create deadlocks and forestall any meaningful moves towards ending its occupation of the West Bank. This is in line with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's deceptive designs aimed at freezing the "peace process" with the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
The scenes that erupted in the Gaza Strip after the last Israeli soldier left the area on Monday after 38 years of brutal occupation were described as chaotic by the Israeli and international media while the Arab and Third World media called them celebrations.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, thousands of people crossed the Israel-free crossing point between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. Again, the Israeli media raised concerns that the people coming in were "terrorists carrying arms and explosives" whereas most of them they were actually using their first opportunity to cross into Gaza and vice-versa to meet their family members for the first time in five years, and taste the air of freedom.
Indeed, for many of them it would have been their first visit to Gaza since 1967, when Israel occupied the area; and many Egyptians also crossed into the Gaza Strip to voice their solidarity with the Palestinians.
This kind of contrasting depictions of developments in Palestine will only continue, with Israel trying to highlight "failures" of the Palestinian leadership to administer the Gaza Strip. These "failures" will be cited in the future as a key Israeli argument against returning the West Bank to the Palestinians if negotiations would ever reach that crucial point — a prospect which remains doubtful at this juncture.
Egypt is not spared either. For weeks, the Israeli media had been steadily referring to the July 2005 and October 2004 bombings in Sharm Al Sheikh and Taba and suggesting that Egyptian forces were not capable of ensuring the security of the border with Gaza. Again, that was a build-up that culminated in Israeli accusations that the Egyptian government failed to live up to delivering on its "obligations" under accords worked out by American mediators for co-ordination on post-evacuation security in the area.
The Israeli build-up also included assertions that the Al Qaeda group had set up presence in the region and it was planning Iraq-style attacks in Israel as well as against Palestinians involved in efforts to find a negotiated settlement with the Jewish state.
Most notable was an Israeli suggestion on Wednesday that the spontaneity of Palestinian celebrations "was exploited if not generated by the Hamas and Jihad Islami... groups...
"With the help of Egyptian troops, they used the tide of people to cover the illegal transfer from northern Sinai into the Gaza Strip of hundreds of terrorists with sidearms, Qassam missiles, long-range rockets, and anti-tank and ground-air missiles," it said.
There are two ways of looking at Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, which had always been a source of troubles for Israel.
It was good riddance for Israel to quit Gaza and evacuate the 8,000 and plus settlers from the strip since it no longer has to maintain an army presence there at a high cost. It was also an opportunity for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to tell the world that he was unilaterally withdrawing from an area which was seized in war and it was a gesture that highlighted his "commitment to work out peace" with the Palestinians.
It was known that all Israeli governments since the 70s wanted to quit the Gaza Strip because they had no advantages in continuing to occupy it. Nor did Gaza have any "nationalist" or "religious" importance that prompted Israel not to let it go whereas most Israelis consider the West Bank is part of the "promised land" and would not want to return it to the Palestinians.

Crossroads in Palestine

PV Vivekanand



Israel is out of the Gaza Strip after occupying the area for 38 years. For all technical purposes, the Israeli departure from Gaza should herald an end to the Jewish state's occupation of the West Bank, including Arab East Jerusalem, and make way for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state there. That was what was envisaged when the Arab-Israeli peace process was launched in Madrid in late 1991 under international auspices and co-sponsorship of the US and the then Soviet Union. It was clearly understood that the relevant UN Security Council resolutions would be the basis for an eventual Arab-Israeli peace agreement involving the Palestinains, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.
A lot of water has flown under the bridge since then, with the key players being replaced and that leading to a scrambling of the process, mainly because of Israel's refusal to abide by agreements and the principle of land in exchange for peace. Gone are any reference to the UN Security Council resolutions.
Today, we stand at crossroads. Israel left the Gaza Strip only because it was not in its interests to continue its occupation of the Mediterranen costal strip which was a hotbed of Palestinian resistance and it was proving too costly for the Jewish state to maintain its military and civilian presence there.
What we do suspect is that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon wants to put a fullstop to here and consider the evacuation of the Gaza Strip an end in itself and refuse to apply the same criteria to the West Bank. He has created situations that would create uncertainties and conditions that he could cite as obstacles to any effort to discussing the future status of the West Bank and Jerusalem and thus deadlock the process.
Keeping the Gazans as virtual prisoners and denying them access to the outside world, including the West Bank, is a central pillar of Sharon's strategy to frustrate the Palestinians against their leadership and turn them away from expecting anything positive from negotiations. That is the kind of game the Israelis have always played and there is no reason to expect Sharon to be any different.
At this juncture, the various Palestinian factions face the challenge of unifying their positions and presenting a common front that overrides all Israeli designs and leaves Sharon with no option but to negotiate peace based on Israeli departure from the West Bank. Some compromises would have to be made on both sides, but the essence of land for peace should remain undiluted.
This is the challenge facing the Palestinians today if they were to call Sharon's bluff and foil his plans to close the door on reliquishing the West Bank.
Without the Palestinians rising to the challenge, the so-called peace process would breathe its last at the borders of Gaza.


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Terrorist or freedom fighter?

by pv vivekanand


"The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organised group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons." This is how the American Heritage Dictionary defines terrorism.
The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Politics defines terrorism with a note that it is a term with "no agreement amongst government or academic analysts," but that "(it is) almost invariably used in a pejorative sense, most frequently to describe life-threatening actions perpetrated by politically motivated self-appointed sub-state groups. But if such actions are carried out on behalf of a widely approved cause, say the Maquis seeking to destabilise the government of Vichy France then the term 'terrorism' is avoided and something more friendly is substituted. In short, one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter."
This is precisely what is snagging ongoing efforts at the United Nations to come with a universally acceptable definition for terrorism.
For many years, diplomats at the UN have been grappling with the question, often with the United States pitted against Arab countries' efforts not to allow the "terrorism" label to be attached to legitimate Palestinian resistance against Israel's occupation of Palestinian land.
The debate was particularly sharp during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, where Washington described the mujahedeen and their supporters — including Osama Bin Laden — fighting the Red Army as freedom fighters. The US refused to accord the same status to the Palestinian groups waging a war of resistance to liberate their land from Israel.
How does the US itself define terrorism?
The US National Counter Terrorism Center (NCTC) describes a terrorist act as one which is "premeditated; perpetrated by a subnational or clandestine agent; politically motivated, potentially including religious, philosophical, or culturally symbolic motivations; violent; and perpetrated against a noncombatant target."
However, there is some small print attached to this definition that is designed to ward off accusations of terror against the US and its allies, particularly Israel. That says terrorism could never be inflicted by a state. Again, keeping in mind that this could be used by states hostile to the US, the American definition also adds that there are states which "sponsor" terrorism but not directly engaged in acts of terror.
Appearing in the US State Department's list of countries "sponsoring" terrorism are Syria and Sudan as well as Libya, which is expected to be removed from the list as part of an American-Libyan deal over the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.
Groups listed as terrorist include Al Qaeda Hizbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad and several other Middle East-based organisations.
A British list of 21 "terrorist organisations" prepared in the last 1990s included six Islamic groups, four anti-Israel groups, eight separatist groups and three opposition groups. The list included Hizbollah, which though armed, is a legal political party in Lebanon and its member are elected to parliament.
Again, the discrimination in approach is further highlighted when it is noted that the Kurdistan Workers Party, which is active in Turkey, was in the list, but other Iraqi groups such as the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which were active in Iraq against Saddam Hussein, were excluded.
Similarly, the Mujahedeen e-Khalaq, an Iranian dissident group then based in Iraq with Saddam's blessing, was outlawed, but not the Iraqi National Council based in London and similar to the Mujahedeen e-Khalq in concept was not if only because the US supported the anti-Saddam group.
Until now, the United Nations has not accepted any definition of terrorism as being authoritative. A 1988 document titled "academic consensus definition," written by terrorism expert AP Schmid and widely used by social scientists, says:
"Terrorism is an anxiety-inspiring method of repeated violent action, employed by (semi-) clandestine individual, group or state actors, for idiosyncratic, criminal or political reasons, whereby — in contrast to assassination — the direct targets of violence are not the main targets. The immediate human victims of violence are generally chosen randomly (targets of opportunity) or selectively (representative or symbolic targets) from a target population, and serve as message generators. Threat- and violence-based communication processes between terrorist (organisation), (imperilled) victims, and main targets are used to man's terror, a target of demands, or a target of attention, depending on whether intimidation, coercion, or propaganda is primarily sought."
The debate at the UN was reported to have produced a draft resolution on Monday. It calls on all UN states to take steps to "prohibit by law incitement to commit a terrorism act or acts."
Governments will also be committed to "deny safe haven to any persons with respect to whom there is credible and relevant information giving serious reasons for considering that they have been guilty of such conduct."

Mystery apartment

pv vivekanand

THE Feb.14 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Al Hariri was masterminded from a luxury apartment in the heart of Beirut equipped with some of the most advanced equipment that overrode all electronic safety and security measures installed in the convoy carrying Hariri. Also found in the apartment were fingerprints of two former Lebanese security officers and two unnamed Syrian army generals. This is part of the finding of the UN investigations into the Hariri assassination that changed the shape of the Lebanese-Syrian relationship to the benefit of Israel and its allies.
According to sources familar with the UN investigation, the discovery of the advanced gear in the apartment, located in the posh Hamra neighbourhood of Beirut, raises a key question:
The advance jamming gear found inside the apartment as well as the equipment installed in Hariri's vehicles were made in the US and included many key components manufactured and supplied by Israel under secret contracts with the US. Such equipment could not be bought by Lebanon or Syria under American export regulations. That meant the involvement of a third party (or Israel itself. Israel is the only other country which manufacturers such equipment).
Implictly it also suggests that Israel was behind setting up the apartment that was used to control and carry out the bombing that killed Hariri and 20 others, and that Israeli agents the fingerprints of the suspects and planted them inside the premises.
How did the apartment remain intact with all the equipment in position months after the Hariri killing and particularly that it was also known that the pro-Syrian Lebanese generals were under investigation? Someone could have easily removed the equipment and destroyed all evidence that the apartment existed. No one did so, and for all anyone knows those accused in the case were not even aware of the existence of the apartment. Unless of course, the apartment was located and sealed before anyone could tamper with it.
The UN investigation team led by German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis is said to have "discovered" the secret apartment. It is not clear when, but the UN team had arrived in Beirut in a few days after the blast that blew up Hariri's convoy and killed the former prime minister and 20 others.
The more than 15 vehicles with darkened windscreens that accompanied Hariri wherever he went in Lebanon — with few people knowing which vehicle carried him — were equipped with the latest state-of-the art security equipment. The security level of the convoy was as good as that of the US president.
It had electronic hardware for detecting and defusing explosives, locating suicide bombers or other armed men in the path of the convoy and jamming their firing mechanisms. The equipment could pick up electronic signals emitted from the immediate vicinity of the convoy and listen to telephone calls, including from mobiles and block listening devices homing in on phone or communications devices operating from the convoy.
In July 2001, the Middle East Intelligence Bulletin had reported, “When Lebanon's billionaire prime minister travels around Beirut, everyone takes notice. His limousine is equipped with a device designed to thwart would-be carbombers by deactivating nearby cell phones, leaving a continuous trail of irritated bystanders in its wake.”
The equipment found in the Beirut apartment is said to be more advanced. It was customised to override all the devices fitted in Hariri's convoy as if the same manufacturer had produced it since whoever designed it had to have the right co-ordinates of the Hariri security gear.
This is said to the be the finding of electronic experts the UN investigator requested from the US and France.
How did such equipment end up in Lebanon?
Without official co-operation from Washington and help from US intelligence agencies, the UN team would never be able to get to the bottom of the affair.
It is unlikely that the Bush administration or US intelligence agencies would offer such help to the UN team unless with the predetermined objective of implicating Syria. If the indications are otherwise, then Mhelis, the investigator, would have to leave the question unanswered.
In the meantime, the fingerprints found in the Beirut apartment allowed the Lebanese prosecutor to file a formal case charging four pro-Syrian Lebanese officers, former chief of public security Jamil Al Sayyed, the former head of internal security Ali Al Hajj, former chief of military intelligence Raymond Azar and commander of the Republican Guard Mustafa Hamdan.
Also found were fingerprints identified as belonging to unidentified Syrian generals and linking them directly to the assassination.
However, that is in no way conclusive evidence since technology allows the replanting of fingerprints.
That is the argument of many regional experts who are convinced that Syria was framed and implicated in the killing.

Trap is closing on Syria

September 7, 2005
Trap is closing on Syria

The scenario scripted with the UN Security Council demand issued in September 2004 for Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon and launched with the February 2005 killing of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri is running to the letter, and the noose is tightening around Syria. The question is only peripheral whether Israel alone spurn the rope or whether the US was party to the plot to evict Syria from Lebanon and set it up for regime change, one of the key goals of US President George W Bush's second term. It is not as much of Lebanon that is in play in the scenario. It has more to do with removing Syria as a hurdle in the way of Israeli designs in the region, and the unfolding events, although different in specifics, are very similar to the way Iraq's Saddam Hussein was rail-roaded into the US-led invasion of his country and his ouster. Hariri simply happened to be picked as the sacrificial goat.
On the surface, everything fits in into the jigsaw puzzle, and few could challenge at this juncture the allegation that Syria was behind the Hariri assassination in light of the motivation, circumstances and evidence cited so far. However, these are too pat and convincing that they appear to be orchestrated in a manner similar to the way that the US dealt with Iraq with a bulldozing approach that brushed aside anything and everything that did not fit into its designs and resorted to gross deception in order to justify the invasion of that country in March 2003.
In the case of Syria, the concept is not much different. If Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction were the justification for the war against Iraq, it is Syria's alleged role in the Hariri assassination that is providing the pretext for action against Damascus.
The scenario goes: Hariri, once Syria's ally, was turning against Damascus's domination of his country and he revolted and quit office when the Syrian leadership intervened to forcibly extend the term of President Emile Lahoud against the wishes of a majority of Lebanese politicians in late last year.
From that point, Hariri was marked for "elimination." Add to that, carefully placed "leaks" from Israel that it was in secret contacts with Hariri through Washington and that the Lebanese billionaire politician was inclined towards cutting Lebanon away from Syria and enter a separate peace agreement with the Jewish state.
For all technical purposes, it provided all the more reason for Syria to remove Hariri from the scene, especially that he had resigned as prime minister after the row over Lahoud and appeared to be headed for a landslide victory in elections this year.
So, the motive was established. Then came the task of creating the circumstances. It was relatively easy since many people in senior positions in Lebanese security and intelligence agencies were pro-Syrian and all one needed was to pick some them and build a case against them by planting evidence.
It could not be ruled out that some of them might have worked for Israel without them even being aware of it. Or they were bought or persuaded under some pretext. Anyway, it is a safe bet that some of the top people who were handling Hariri's security and Lebanese security and intelligence officers were picked and set up as the culprits even before the assassination was carried out.
On Feb.14, the curtains went up. The multi-vehicle security convoy carrying Hariri exploded in Beirut, killing the former prime minister and 20 others.
It was not even clear whether it was a suicide bombing or someone had set off up to 600 kilogrammes of remote-controlled explosives. First reports that Hariri was killed by a car bomb were challenged by evidence that the explosives could have been buried beneath the seafront avenue where the blasts took place.. A unique photograph handed to The Independent newspaper of London, which was purportedly taken about 36 hours before the bombing. It shows a drain cover in the road at the exact spot where the explosives went off.
One thing was clear: The operation went like a precision surgery and had all the hallmarks of a professional group supported by the resources and intelligence information that would be available only to a government. The description fit on Syria like a glove (if only because it was designed and tailor-made to fit Syria).
Then, it appeared that the chief of Hariri's security was not travelling in the convoy, and that he also removed key evidence — wreckage of the vehicles —  from the scene, or at least that what we have been told. Simultaneously, unsourced reports suggested that the man was a Syrian spy and was passing on information about Hariri's movements to Syrian intelligence and that Hariri had known about it and used to keep him away from key events.
Demonstrations erupted immediately after Hariri's death calling for Syrian departure from Lebanon, the resignation of the pro-Syrian government, including the president himself, and an international investigation into the Hariri killing.
Parallel to that the US and France — the former colonial power which ruled Lebanon and Syria — stepped up international pressure, and eventually Syria had no choice but to withdraw from Lebanon in April in line with UN Security Council Resolution 1569 of September 2004.
Then came stories of how Syrian security and intelligence agents had the run of Lebanon and how brutally they used to treat the Lebanese people and how Damascus dominated every facet of life in Lebanon; and, of course, how the Syrian regime was gaining billions of dollars through its occupation of Lebanon and domination of the business scene plus remittances of hundreds of thousands of Syrian expatriate workers.
All of these came to an end when the last Syrian soldier left Lebanon, ending 29 years of Syrian military presence launched under an Arab League mandate at the height of a civil war in Lebanon.
Under nudging from Washington and Paris, the UN launched an investigation into the Hariri assassination, but the predetermination that Syria was behind the killing was and remains the backdrop to the inquiry.
It reached a decisive point last month when the Lebanese prosecutor filed a formal case charging four pro-Syrian Lebanese officers, former chief of public security Jamil Al Sayyed, the former head of internal security Ali Al Hajj, former chief of military intelligence Raymond Azar and commander of the presidential guard Mustafa Hamdan, with complicity in the Feb.14 bombing.
Parallel to the UN investigations, charges were regularly levelled that Syria was not co-operating with the investigators, led by German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis.
Damascus, which has rejected allegations that it had engineered the killing and said it was always ready to co-operate with the investigations, has now invited Mehlis to Syria to possibly question Syrian military officers who served in Lebanon and perhaps others too.
Mehlis' UN mandate runs out on Sept.15 but this is expected to be extended.
That is where the story rests at this juncture in time.
For most observers of the Middle Eastern scene, it never made sense that Syria was behind the Hariri assassination because Damascus could not have but been aware that it stood to lose everything by Hariri's death.
And in fact, it did lose much. As already noted, it had to withdraw its military from Lebanon under humiliating circumstances; several hundred thousand Syrians lost their jobs in Lebanon and the Syrian government was deprived of several billion dollars in annual earnings through Lebanon; and Damascus was internationally condemned and the American allegation that it supports international terrorism was strengthened. Damascus also lost Lebanon as leverage in potential dealings with Israel.
And a staunchly anti-Syrian government has taken office in Beirut after a coalition led by Hariri's family swept elections held in May.
Surely, Syria would have known the repercussions and consequences of assassinating Hariri, particularly at a time when the US was intensifying pressure on Damascus citing the alleged Syrian role in the Iraqi insurgency and its support for Palestinian "terrorism" (read legitimate resistance against occupation).
Most definitely, Syria is the biggest loser in the bargain, and, apart from the people of Lebanon who are now free to exercise their right to self-determination, the only other beneficiaries from the Hariri assassination are Israel and the US.
Therefore, the conclusion of many is that Israel, which has the strongest and sophisticated intelligence network and advanced spying, surveillance and communication equipment, carried out the killing and created and planted evidence that pointed the accusing finger at Syria.
Under this scenario, many believe that Washington had at least known about the plot and endorsed it but might not have played a direct role in it.
While the Israeli motivation was clear — it wanted to separate Lebanon and Syria so that it could work on the former for a separate peace agreement with no Syrian say in it, the US had a military objective, according to Wayne Madsen is a Washington-based journalist and columnist and the co-author of "America's Nightmare: The Presidency of George Bush II."
Madsen wrote in March that the US wanted to build a military base in northern Lebanon but it would not have been possible while Syria called the shots in Beirut and Hariri himself was opposed to the idea.
Israel and the US were also upset that Hariri was joining hands with the Lebanese Hizbollah movement ahead of the elections that were held in June this year. Hariri had held a series of meetings with Hizbollah meetings since late last year and had appeared to be closing an election deal with the group, an avowed enemy of Israel. So the former prime minister was picked as the sacrifical goat.
Shortly after Hariri's death, it was reported that even without a formal agreement with Lebanon, the contract for the proposed northern Lebanese air base had been granted by the Pentagon to Jacobs Engineering Group of Pasadena, California. Other construction support will be provided by Bechtel Corporation.
The air base — said to be the size of massive American Al Udeid air base in Qatar — is reportedly to be used as a transit and logistics hub for US forces in the region and to monitor movements in the Mediterranean.
There is indeed the chance that someone in the Syria regime, for reasons best known to himself (and definitely not in the service of Syrian interests), had played a role in the Hariri assassination. But, as many veterans in the region observe, in the murky cloak-and-dagger business of intelligence work one could never say who bought whom and when and what elements were at play.
However, that changes little on the ground. The original script-writers are steering the events in Lebanon by the nose towards destabilising Syria and add further to the already fearsome uncertainties in the region.

Corporate media enemy #1

pv vivekanand

HAD a catastrophe like hurrican Katrina hit any part of the ancient Roman empire, it would have taken months for the news to reach other parts of the world and, even at that, the truth about the extent of the disaster would not have been known. It might have taken weeks for the empire to order help for the victims (if indeed if it chose to bother about its subjects). After all, messages had to sent on horseback and only on a need-to-know basis. Such was the status of communications, say 2,000 years ago, and that was perhaps one of the reasons that the Roman empire lasted for about 500 years (BC27-AD476).
In today's era of the American empire, it takes nanoseconds for news to travel. The world knew that a hurricane was expected to hit the US Gulf Coast, saw it when it happened and witnessed the chaos it unleashed, causing thousands of deaths and wreaking havoc in one of the most sensitive area of the American empire within minutes after it occurred.
However, it was not the mainstream media of the US which brought the realities and magnitude of the disaster to the Americans and international community at large. It was through the thousands of blog sites in cyberspace that millions of people realised the gravity of the situation.
Indeed, the mainstream media did have their role, but it could not be compared with the effect that the messages that appeared on the blogsites that raised demands that the US government answer why rescue and relief work was delayed for three days and an array of related questions directly linked the American invasion and occupation of Iraq.
It is no secret that the mainstream or corporate media in the US did not live up to their professional obligations to the public during the build-up to the Iraq war or even after the invasion. If anything, they played along with the administration's campaign to build a case for invading Iraq on false pretexts and many Americans see them even as a party to the war itself because they misled the people by focusing on administration claims and downplaying or simply ignoring facts that belied the government's claims.
That grave shortcoming was highlighted during the Katrina crisis, and it was an opportunity for the "accused" to make amends. And a few of them did grab the chance and started reporting the truth and asking the right questions — for the first time since Sept.11, 2001.
Well, they could not have done otherwise in only becasue the evidence was so clear to everyone.
For the first time since Sept.11, 2001 a handful of reporters from the corporate media institutions — newspapers, radios and television channels — started carrying criticism of the Bush administration that it was being inept, dangerous and deceptive. They refused to play the public relations and spin game organised by the White House.
And those who refused to continue to prop up the smoke-screen for the administration were widely praised, if only because they were seen as doing what they should have been doing since Sept.11, 2001.
However, there is hesitation and reluctance on the part of many others to live up to their professional obligations and they are targeted in a campaign mounted in cyberspace: They are being called the worst name in the US:  Corporate Media — America's #1 Enemy.
"The corprate media have been complicit in criminally deceiving the American people. Never before have Americans been so uninformed and misinformed about so many vital issues," says a comment on www.tvnewslies.com. "It's time to call a spade a spade. This is no laughing matter. The corporate media are undermining democracy by failing to inform the American people of the harm being done to our environment, to our economy, to our rights as citizens and to our humanity. They distract us with trivial stories that we used to have to read about in the supermarket tabloids.
"They have not only failed to inform us, they have actively deceived us. They are our enemy."
In April 2003, one month into the US invasion of Iraq, Kanak Mani Dixit wrote from Nepal:" One casualty of the war on Iraq has been the image of Western media as the exemplar of journalistic accomplishment.....
"It started after September 11, 2001, when television, press and radio began to ply the American public with what it wanted to hear about the rest of the world. This was then force-fed to the rest of the world. In the run-up to Gulf War II, the American press did not question or caution, at one with the weak-kneed representatives and senators who gave George W. Bush carte blanche to misrepresent his way to war.
"Perhaps the worst hour of Western journalism is when its embeds or operatives — hardly journalists — reported on heroics on the desert road to Baghdad, while displaying an unwillingness to present any direct connection between the blazing night sky on television and the death and maiming of civilians on the ground."
Although many have welcomed the newfound "courage" of some corporate media journalists to question the official versions coming out of the White House in the wake of the Katrina disaster, the change is nowhere near the desired level, some others argue.
"The momentary outcry in New Orleans was an anomaly, not a trend," says www.tvnewslies.com. "It was an emotional response to unimaginable suffering that could not be denied by those who saw it up close. That’s all it was."
The article argues: "Even as this is being written, the blame is already shifting in aftermath of Katrina. The Bush administration is throwing the onus of ineptitude onto the local authorities in Louisiana and many in the corporate media are going along with the ruse. At this very moment some reporters have taken to drawn military press releases rather than filing
firsthand reports."
"Had the corporate media shamed the devil from day one, so many people might be alive today. The war against Iraq, like flooding of New Orleans, need never have happened.  So much suffering, so much death and so much destruction might have been avoided if questions had been asked in time and if truthful answers had been demanded.  But they were not asked, and even the simplest truth has yet to emerge.
"The task then, is up to us.  We, alone, must try to shame the devil. At this very moment, because there has been a crack in the wall of silence, we have an opening to do just that. For the first time ever, there was outrage, there was horror, and there was rebellion in the ranks of the corporate media.  Surely it was impulsive and unplanned, but it was real. We can take advantage of this momentary glitch in their armour and storm the media Bastille in its moment of weakness."
And how to go about doing it?
The writer suggests that the American people confront the corporate media.
When and where is the forum to do so?
"The time is September 24, 2005," says the writer referring to the date where tens of thousands of anti-war protesters are expected to converge on the US capital in response to a call made by Cindy Sheehan, an American woman who lost her son in the Iraq war.
"The goal is to show the nation and the world that we will no longer allow this administration, with the complicity of the media, to continue on its path of failure and destruction. The corporate news media will be in attendance, and we can challenge them wherever we see them.
"Ask them the questions they should have asked. Record their answers, or their evasions. Film the media as they film the protesters. Challenge their silence. Challenge their betrayal.  Carry signs that expose the media for the culprits they are. Accuse them of their betrayal and demand that they start asking the questions they have avoided for all this time. Let then know you know what they are and let the nation and world know what they have done. We can do it.  We really can."

Waterloo in Lousiana?

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Bush faces fury

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


pv vivekanand

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

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

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

They know the answers, all of them no.

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

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

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

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

Track record

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

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

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

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

There goes the democracy argument through the window.

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

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

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

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

The US invaded and occupied Iraq because of several reasons:

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

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

Empire building

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

War spending

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

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

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

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

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

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

American fury

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Democrats split

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

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

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

He writes:

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

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

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

Gone wrong

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

Raimundo writes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Long haul

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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