Missed door or new window?

The stroke that hit Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and put him out of political circulation early this month and ahead of Palestinian and Israeli elections has also spooked the wheels of regional politics in the short term. Sharon was deemed as the only Israeli leader who could adopt and push through difficult and bold decisions in order to make even an Israeli version of peace with the Palestinians based on relinquishing part of the territories occupied since 1967. However, regardless of fresh strategies and policies and whoever emerges as Sharon's successor, the core picture has not changed much and is unlikely to change either because of the uncompromising positions of the two sides, writes PV Vivekanand.

Some see Sharon's demise from the political scene as a missed opportunity for an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. Some interpret it as a major setback for the Bush administration's hopes of resolving the Palestinian problem and removing one of major causes of anti-US sentiments in the Arab and Muslim worlds. Others see it as blessing in disguise because Sharon's vision of peace with the Palestinians would only have aggravated the conflict and his departure from the scene clears the way for more pragmatic Israeli forces to work for a more equitable solution than Sharon envisaged. Yet some others believe that uncompromising hardliners would take over the Israeli political scene in Sharon's absence and damage all prospects for fair and just peace.
One thing is abundantly clear: Uncertainty is the only certainty in the post-Sharon political equation in the run-up to the March elections in Israel. Any meaningful movement in the so-called peace process would remain frozen, and the result of Palestinian legislative elections this month would emerge as a key factor that would influence the course of all efforts for an Israeli-Palestinian solution.
Until Tuesday, it was assumed that Sharon's health crisis could only worsen and thus threaten the chances of his new party, Kadima, securing a dominating number of seats in the March elections to the Knesset (parliament) without a charismatic leader able to keep its ranks of leftists and rightists together. However, doctors declared on Tuesday that Sharon was out of immediate danger and could improve in the weeks ahead although a physical return to active politics ahead of the elections has been ruled out. The extent of the damage his brain suffered also remains to be assessed.
The assertion that he is out of danger meant that he would remain a father figure — a newly created image following the massive stroke he suffered on Jan.4 — and his party could do well as expected in the polls.
Surveys have showed that Kadima has even boosted its public approval ratings despite Sharon's collapse.
The party leads the list of expected winners in the elections, followed by the Labour party led by trade union leader Amir Peretz, and Sharon's former right-wing Likud chaired by Benjamin Netanyahu.
According to two recent surveys, Kadima, which is free to forge an alliance with the Labour, would win 44 and 45 seats in the 120-member parliament, Labour 16 to 18, and Likud between 13 and 15.
Before Sharon collapsed, polls showed that Kadima could bag 40 seats.

Leadership vacuum

In real terms, Sharon has left a leadership vacuum that is unlikely to be filled by any other Israeli leader with matching political acumen and strength.
Ehud Olmert, who inherited Sharon's mantle only because he happened to be deputy prime minister and thus the legal interim successor for 100 days, is not seen to possess what it takes to lead Israel. He does not have the stature and authority to make the kind of bold decisions for which Sharon acquired fame and also became notorious as "Mr Bulldozer" during his military and political careers since the 1960s.
Elderly statesman Shimon Peres of the Labour Party, who has served as prime minister in the past, has aligned himself with Kadima but he has affirmed that he has no prime ministerial ambitions. In any event, he is no longer leader of his party, which in any case is not expected to take a dominating position in the elections.
With Olmert deemed as too weak for a prime minister, and given that Israelis elect their prime minister through direct voting parallel to the parliamentary elections, the room is wider for Netanyahu, Sharon's arch-rival who quit the government in protest against the prime minister's decision to end Israel's occupation of the Gaza Strip last year.
Netanyahu's departure from the cabinet was largely a political gimmick aimed at challenging Sharon in the Likud bloc, the party to which both belonged before the latter quit and set up Kadima. Sharon is also one of the founders of Likud, which was formed 30 years ago.
During the mid-90s, after Israel handed over most of the Gaza Strip to the Palestinians and allowed the late Yasser Arafat to set up his base there under the interim 1993 Oslo agreements, Netanyahu had always insisted that he would have nothing to do with the Mediterranean coastal strip and would gladly give up the entire territory to the Palestinians. He pledged to retain the West Bank at whatever the cost and argued that continued occupation of the Gaza Strip was too costly and a source of continued trouble for Israel.
His opposition to Sharon's move to quit Gaza was a dramatic reversal of that position, a fact that went largely unnoticed in the media.
The switch was obviously aimed at currying political favour with Jewish settlers in the occupied territories.
Netanyahu could consolidate his position by appealing to the "security" mindset of the Israelis as well as claiming to represent Israel "nationalism" that rules out the creation of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank.
On the other hand, analysts say that Sharon, by evacuating the Gaza Strip and making bold statements, has prepared his people to accept that it is not in the country's interest to hang on to the occupied territories and that some compromises have to be made.
According to political analyst Bary Rubin, Sharon "embodied a new national consensus, accepted by at least two-thirds of the population, that reflects deep-seated changes in the country and its situation."
"From the left comes the idea that, in return for full peace, Israel is ready to withdraw from most of the territory captured in 1967 and accept a Palestinian state. From the right, the consensus acknowledges that currently there is no Palestinian partner for real peace.
"The left's advocacy of territorial withdrawal gained currency as a result of a general recognition that holding onto land, especially Palestinian-populated areas, is not in the national interest. Israel does not intend to claim this land in the future, never derived any economic benefit from it, and now regards staying there as a security problem rather than an asset. With the cold war over, the USSR gone, and the Arab world weakened, a conventional war with the armies of Arab states is no longer likely, rendering obsolete the strategic considerations underlying Israel's occupation of this territory."
That is Sharon's legacy, Rubin argues, adding that "it was Sharon who sensed a sea change in Israeli sentiment and acted upon it. But Sharon was the messenger, not the message. The era of Israeli pragmatism that he opened will not end with his departure."
Well, not many are sure how far the perceived pragmatism would go.

Recipe for trouble

The compromises advocated by Sharon could only lead to creating more troubles on both sides.
It was leaked out in late December that Sharon's vision of peace with the Palestinians was based on further unilateral moves: withdrawal from certain selected areas of the West Bank, and allowing for a temporary Palestinian state in part of the West Bank and in Gaza.
That was seen as a perfect recipe for trouble since evacuating parts of the West Bank without consulting the Palestinians would not address the core issues such as the status of Arab East Jerusalem and the right of return of Palestinian refugees, and this means setting a fertile ground for not only fomenting Palestinian unrest and armed resistance but also for extremist groups like Al Qaeda and others to grow roots in Palestine.
Unilateral withdrawals would be touted by armed groups as their victory.
That is a prospect that is worrying the Americans, and that explains the intense contacts between US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and this week's arrival in the Middle East of two American troubleshooters, Assistant Secretary of State David Welch and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams.
Effectively, Sharon had engineered the US into a position where Washington relied on him to take initiatives towards a settlement with the Palestinians, and his absence from the scene has left the Bush administration wondering what direction it should take to keep the so-called peace process alive and kicking.
Sharon had skillfully nudged President George W Bush into endorsing the Israeli position that the Jewish state would retain the bulk of the illegal settlements it has built in the West Bank and that the Palestinian refugees' right of return was not an issue that would be entertained.
For most people in the Middle East, it was shocking and surprising to hear Bush describe Sharon "as a man of peace," given the Israeli prime minister's consistent record of obvious hostility towards the Palestinians and his proven role in the 1982 massacre of Palestinian refugees in two Beirut camps as well as his approval of heavy-handed military action against Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Sharon also gathered notoriety by professing that Jordan was the "alternative homeland" for the Palestinians and advocated the expulsion of Arab Israelis and Palestinians across the River Jordan.
Indeed, Bush is now worried that without Sharon in the scene he may have lost the one chance he will get to realise his declared goal of seeing two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace before his term ends in 2007.
"Bush has a stance but not a strategy" for the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, says William Quandt, who as a senior White House advisor during the Carter administration helped negotiate the Camp David accords. "He supported Sharon," Quandt told the Los Angeles Times recently.
Meaningful progress towards an Israeli-Palestinian settlement would help Bush on several fronts: It would tone down criticism from the Europeans, a diversion from the crisis in Iraq and perhaps dilution in the enthusiasm of Arab volunteers to fight the US forces there, and strengthening his hand in dealing with Iran, whose nuclear programmes are a source of concern for Israel and thus also to the US.
The immediate American priority — as represented in the Welsh-Abrams mission — is to shore up the agreements made with Sharon linked to the withdrawal from Gaza and prevent any small incident from spinning out of control in the new climate of uncertainty and in the absence of strong leadership.

Palestinian view

The Palestinians loath Sharon for his record of actions against them.
A Palestinian group, the Popular Resistance Committees, issued a statement hailing "the downfall of Dracula."
Sharon will remain forever associated with the 1982 massacres in Beirut where he, as Israeli defence minister, invaded Lebanon to rout the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and allowed allied Lebanese militiamen to slaughter hundreds of Palestinians, including women and children, in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps of the Lebanese capital.
The Palestinian sentiment has only been intensified by his project of building a 700-kilometre "separation" wall crisscrossing the West Bank that would eventually be the "border" between Israel and Palestinian areas, but would take in large swaths of Palestinian territory in the name of "security" for Israelis — Jewish settlers living in the illegal colonies built on occupied territory.
Abbas, the Palestinian president who is maintaining a platform of non-violence as the ground for a negotiated settlement with Israel, has expressed his concerns over Sharon's status to Israeli leaders. Some of his associates, including Deputy Prime Minister Nabil Shaath and Saeb Erakat, a negotiator, fear that the vacuum left behind by Sharon would only spell trouble for the Palestinians.
"Sharon's absence could turn things upside down," according to Erekat, who is fearful that as Israeli political factions competed to fill the void, the Israeli military might step up its offensive against Palestinian resistance groups.
"There is a lot of uncertainty about how and where the Israelis will go with the end of the Sharon era," says Shaath.
Palestinians acknowledge that Sharon had the ability to take and implement bold decisions that no other Israeli leader would dare to take let alone implement, but that is no consolation for them.
According to Hani Al Masri, a Palestinian political analyst, Sharon had already done massive damage to the Palestinian cause by erasing the issues of Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees from the centrestage with Washington's support and his departure from active politics would be no loss for the Palestinians.
"In the short term, the situation will be worse for the Palestinians because of the confusion and power vacuum that Sharon's absence will leave, just like what happened when Arafat died" in 2004, said Masri. "But in the long term, it will be better for the Palestinians because Israel will not have the strong leader it just lost."
Masri also feels that Israeli power politics dictate that Sharon's successor might be tempted to take an even harder line against the Palestinians in order to consolidate domestic support.
Helping any Sharon successor would be the financial straits of the PNA, which is struggling with a cash crunch to pay staff salaries. Donor countries are applying pressure for more transparency and accountability, but the changes are too slow if only because of the perceived need to keep fractional leaders satisfied. The PNA has been accused of rampant corruption, and the donors are firm that Abbas remove graft from the authority's corridors.
The net sum of the situation is that the PNA could not afford to hang on to "hardline" demands and would come under intense pressure make Israeli-dictated compromises sooner or later on the fundamental issues. It would then depend on Sharon's successor to make the best of the situation and seek to impose an Israeli-tailored version of peace on the Palestinians.

American concern

The US is anxious to ensure that the Palestinians do indeed vote on Jan.25 as scheduled because Washington knows that delays would only mean strengthening of groups like Hamas as opposed to Abbas's mainstream Fatah.
Rice said last week that there was no reason to delay the elections as Palestinian leaders have threatened.
"It's our view that they ought to be held and that people ought to campaign and put themselves on the line and try to convince the population that they will do better," Rice said. At the same time, the US also wants to make sure that the elections do not produce Hamas as the winner.
A Hamas victory of a sizable number of seats — around 40 per cent according to opinion poll predictions  —  in the Palestinian legislative assembly is enough to sound the death bell for the all-too-important "road map for peace" — a proposal drafted and endorsed by the US, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia. The Palestinians have also accepted it, and Israel says that it also accepts it but with reservations, and hence the only blueprint on the table.
The proposal demands that the Palestinian National Authority disarm all militants, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which is affiliated with Abbas's Fatah itself.
The three groups are not ready to disarm and this in itself is a non-starter for any movement on the road map.
The Palestinians seem to be unsure of how to take Sharon's indisposition, but they know that they could not expect some of their key demands to be met in a potential agreement if it were to be negotiated with him.
On the two key issues, Jerusalem and refugees' right of return, Sharon is known to be adamant that he would not accept the Palestinian demands.
Kadima's platform calls for the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, but it is the perceived shape of the new state that is worrisome.
It has been reported that Sharon was pushing the US to pressure the Palestinians into accepting more West Bank territory instead of Arab East Jerusalem. However, no Palestinian leader would be able to accept such a proposal, just as no Israeli leader would be ready to give up Arab East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state. Again, a non-starter.
Predictably, hardline groups such as Hamas and others see Sharon's political demise as inconsequential since they believe that no Israeli leader would ever make a fair and just peace agreement with the Palestinians. Indeed, Hamas's platform is based on a call that the state of Israel be dismantled, with all Jews who migrated there return to their places of origin, leaving pre-1948 Palestine where an Islamic state should be created.
So, where is the "missed opportunity"?

Malayalees in the Gulf - life has to go on

January 2006

Malayalees in the Gulf - life has to go on


AS the old joke goes, the first astronaut to land on the moon found a Malayalee thattukada there. The joke symbolises the adventerous spirit of the Malayalees in going places in search of a livelihood. In real life, it is nowhere truly visible as it is in the oil-rich Gulf area, where more than two million Keralites live today. For them, the Gulf once represented the land of dreams where they could make their fortunes. Today, the dreams remain dreams for an overwhelming majority of them, making just enough to lead a moderate life. Many simply scrape through and have to keep tight reins on themselves in order to make sure his or her family gets the monthy cheque of a few thousand rupees.
For many, dreams have turned to nightmares if only for the smallest miscalculation and in other cases for no fault of their own.
Indeed, a small percentage of them have made it big in business, beginning with traditional trading, clothing, gold and food. A slightly larger number are running groceries, thattukads and service agencies (tailoring, hairdressing etc). The majority are employed, and they are the one who represent the overall picture of an average Gulf Malayalee.
Gulf Malayalees are generally respected for their commitment to work and general principles in life. That is something they have retained throughout the decades despite the off-and-on cases involving illegal activities such as sale of liquor and prostitution as well as cheating.
Oldtimers who landed in the Gulf shores during the early part of the "migration wave" in the early 70s — many of them smuggled themselves aboard motor launches which disgorged them off the coast under the cover of darkness — say they were lucky. At that time, the local residents welcomed them with open hands and employed them, and they managed to legalise their status as years went by.
It was then normal for the employers — who were beginning to experience the oil wealth that poured dollars into their coffers — to plan expanding their business and activities. Again, naturally, they sought help from their employees to recruit more staff. And this led to a swelling of the ranks of Malayalees (and indeed other Indians and non-Indians) in the Gulf countries. And the multiplication continued for many years, and is still continuing. But there is a marked difference.
During the first few years of the oil boom, an employee was trusted so much to the extent that the employer, or "sponsor," would sign on any paper presented to him. No one would think twice before securing hundreds of employment visas and entrusting their Malayalee employees to get the new employees.
But then, many Malayalee employees — and of course others too — abused the privilege and made money out of the so-called "visa business." And they taught the "locals" that there was money to be made from selling visas.
Soon, the scene became so corrupt that many Arab employers themselves were corrupted into making money from offering employment, today many of them ask how much they could get in return for using their status as a "local" to "sponsor" businesses or secure "job visas" for sale.
In the Gulf scene today, hundreds of Malayalees are paying and are ready to pay tens of thousands of rupees — the last I heard was that it cost Rs150,000 in India for a "job visa" in the UAE — in return for employment in the Gulf. For them, the Gulf still remains the "land of gold, milk and honey." They don't realise that they are walking to a life of misery because of diminishing salaries and rising cost of living and bitter competition in the employment market.
It does not need an empirical survey to determine that more than half of Keralites living in the Gulf make less than Rs12,000 per month. The lucky among them have company "accommodation" — like six or eight to a room and one toilet for 40 or 50 people — and the luckier minority would even have "company food."
The unanswered question is: How and when would they be able to make up for the Rs150,000 they paid their "agents."
With the real estate boom shooting up, there is a high demand for skilled and unskilled construction workers, but not many Malayalees are among the unskilled; that is a sector dominated by people from other states of India like Andhra Pradesh and northern areas.
In the UAE, rents have shot up and cost of living has also skyrockets as a result of a nearly 40 per cent increase in the prices fuel in the last two years. This mostly affects the average Malayalee family, whose combined income (husband and wife) is, say, less than 4,000 dirhams (around Rs50,000). They would be lucky to set aside 500 dirhams as saving or to be sent home to the family every month. And if they have schoolgoing children, then there is nothing left to save at the end of the month.
There is no way out for many of them except to continue to live here, hoping a miracle would happen and save them from their life of misery.
Then there is the ever-present trap of debts — bank loans and credit cards. There are thousands of Malayalees in the Gulf who are paying a good part of their income to settle their bank loans and credit cards. It is a never-ending process and most of them could not even think of ever returning home for good because of their liabilities in the Gulf.
There are of course Malayalees who occupy key positions in major business corporations, banks, insurance companies and other commercial entities. It is no exaggeration that they represent the backbone of the companies they work for. Their employers would find it difficult to replace them. They are also "active members" of the community, and, they, supported by family members, cousins and relatives as well as friends, are the ones who take the lead in organising "Onam" festivals in the Gulf.
In fact, occasions like Onam, Vishu and Christmans, and the daily Iftar meals during the holy month of Ramadan and of course the Eid festivals represent a forum and platform for Keralites from all walks of life to get together, to get to know each other and interact with each other. And hence the relevance of those "exciting" occasions and festivities in the Gulf.
Then there is the rising number of Malayalee women who are lured into the Gulf with employment promises only to be forced into the flesh trade. Dozens of cases are reported every month in the UAE alone, with some of them involving torture and brutality of a level that surpasses the worst place for it all — Mumbai. And who are behind the racket? None other than Malayalees themselves.
They are the rotten eggs in the basket, but their stink has not really affected the majority of Malayalees in the Gulf.
Despite the downturn in the attractions of life in the Gulf, not many Malayalees are ready to pack up and go home if only because they face a bleak future there in terms of employment. They have no option but to continue to live here with hopes that something would happen to turn their life around and set it on the "right track."
Life has to continue, no matter what. Isn't it?

US-Iran move: More than meets the eye

More than meets the eye


BY PV VIVEKANAND

PRESIDENT George W. Bush's move to establish direct contacts with Iran and seek Tehran's help in containing the insurgency in Iraq is indeed an acknowledgement of the reality that regional stability and security depends to a large extent on Iranian behaviour.
However, given the imcompabilities in the ideological, political and military postures maintained by the US and Iran, any assessment of the move has to go beyond conventional wisdom.
Answers to questions like whether the US sees it as a strategic imperative to make friends with Iran or whether it is short-term ploy would give an insight to the moves, but not the real answer.
The real answer, or the key if you will, rests with Israel, and it would be the Israelis and their powerful friends in Washington's corridors of power who would decide when and where to draw a line in American moves to enlist Iran's help.

High-level contact

US Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad confirmed on Sunday that the president had assigned him to reach out to Iran in the first high-level US contact with Tehran in decades.
No doubt, the Bush administration is feeling the heat over the war in Iraq, given the surge in pressure even from the Republican camp to check the negativism surrounding the party itself as a result of the growing crisis in that country.
It would have been unthinkable a few months for Washington even to establish direct contact with Tehran, let alone seek Iranian help to check the insurgency in Iraq. The reality has always been there on the ground: Iran is a regional player and it could not be waived away in whatever regional equation the US seeks to cook up in the Middle East.
Iran has its own interests in Iraq. The Iranians are uneasy over the US presence in their neighbour since they are aware that they have been targeted for "regime change" in the second Bush term at the White House.
Theorists assert that Iran could not be expected to be an enthusiastic partner in any move to contain the insurgency in Iraq as long as the US military maintains presence in that country. For the Iranians, the US military presence in Iraq is a constant reminder that they could find themselves in American gunsights when the US military digs its feet deep into Iraq and firms up its foothold.
The US military presence in Afghanistan, justified in the name of the continuing hunt for Osama Bin Laden and Mullah Omar and their Al Qaeda and Taliban followers, fuels the Iranian uneasiness.
Add to that persistent reports that the US and Israel are one tick away from launching military action against Iran's nuclear facilities, but are holding back only because the operation has to be well-planned and all-embracing to be successful.
Another account says that the US might indeed stage a "false-flag" operation that would justify full-fledged military action against Iran.
In July of this year, a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operative, Philip Giraldi, commented on the American Conservative:
"The Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice-President Dick Cheney's office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons."
This assertion sounds credible because a short spurt of action against some of Iran's nuclear facilities could result in deeper trouble for the US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Tehran has clearly stated that it would hold the US responsible even if Israelis attacked its nuclear facilities. Holding the US responsible translates into Iranian retaliation against the American forces present in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as US installations elsewhere in the region. Whether the Iranians would retaliate in such a manner is subject to debate and speculation, but the seriousness of that possibility could not be underplayed.
Therefore, any American military action against Iraq has to be full-fledged and no punches could be pulled, according to expert thinking.
Jorge Hirsch, a respected professor whose authoritative comments on nuclear issues have drawn international acclaim, says that Washington has put together all the elements it needs to justify military action against Iran.
"Unlike in the case of Iraq, it will happen without warning, and most of the justifications will be issued after the fact," he says. "We will wake up one day to learn that facilities in Iran have been bombed in a joint US-Israeli attack. It may even take another couple of days for the revelation that some of the US bombs were nuclear."
If this assertion is accurate, then how could the American decision to establish direct contacts with Iran be analysed?
The obvious answer is that given the imbroglio the US faces in Iraq and the mounting criticism at home, the Bush administration appeared to have reached the decision that making friends with Iran is the most desirable course of action in its efforts to contain the Iraq insurgency.
At the same time, it could only be seen as a short-term strategy even in the hypothesis that Tehran extends its full co-operation to the US to put out the guerrilla war in Iraq. The reason is simple: Israel, the only nuclear-armed country in the region, would not rest until Iran is deprived of all means and abilities to produce a nuclear weapon in the foreseeable future.
By its own words and deeds, Washington has clearly established that it could not be expected to work against what Israel considers as its own strategic interests. We have seen and are continuing to see that concept at work in Iraq and Washington's steady moves to trap Syria in an international deadlock as the prelude to regime change in Damascus.
Clearly there is something more than that meets the eye in the American move towards Iran. Hopefully, the days ahead would reveal what it is, even if in fragments.

The European impetus

PV Vivekanand
THE ELEMENTS that a British Foreign Office docucment highlighted in the systematic Israeli move to deny the Palestinian people their rights in Arab East Jerusalem were always known. The only new element, highly significant indeed it is, is that they found their way into
a document compiled by the British government in its capacity as president of the European Union and placed for consideration before the bloc.
While the unusual British move is welcomed, the Arab World would have also liked to see an honest British assessment of the realistic possibilities of Israeli-Palestinian peace encompassing the future of the West Bank and the fate of Palestinian refugees in the diaspora.
As it is, the "confidential" Foreign Office report presents the European Union (EU) with an opportunity to guage the prospect of Israeli-Palestinian peace
The document, according to the Guardian newspaper, says Israel is seeking to annexe Arab East Jerusalem through a series of systematic moves, including using illegal Jewish settlement construction and the West Bank "separation" barrier.
What we would like to add to the document is the other measures that Israel had been following and is continuing to follow in Arab East Jersualem, which it occupied in the 1967 war. These include a blanket denial of permission for Palestinians to construct new building or even carry out repair or expansion work at existing structures, demolition of Palestinian-owned buildings at the slightest pretext and refusal to allow the return of Arab East Jerusalem residents if they had stayed outside for a certain period time — earlier it used to be seven years and this has been cut down to two years now. Add to that direct and indirect encouragement for Jewish purchase of Palestinian-owned land in Arab East Jerusalem. *
Jerusalem Palestinians who acquired foreign passports and entering Palestine, either through the crossings from Jordan or Israeli ports, face particular trouble gaining entry. Refusal of entry is always a possibility.
Palestinians living elsewhere in the occupied West Bank are not allowed to enter Arab East Jerusalem, except, in principle, without a prior permission which is hard to obtain (Taxi-drivers who carry anyone without such permission from the West Bank to Jersalem face fines of up to several hundred dollars per each passenger).
In 2001, Israel closed down Orient House, the Palestinian headquarters in Arab East Jerusalem, claiming that papers found there showed that the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), which was headquartered in the building, was suppporting "terrorist" actions.
The overall thrust of the Israeli measures is creating facts on the ground that would pre-empt a peace agreement by trying to put the future of Arab East Jerusalem beyond negotiation so that it would never become a Palestinian capital. Significantly, the approach risks driving Palestinians living in the city into hardlinel groups, as the Guardian puts it.
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw presented the Foreign Office document to an EU council of ministers meeting last week with recommendations to counter the Israeli policy, but the council put off debate on it under pressure from Italy, the Guardian reported.
One of the recommendations is recognition of Palestinian political activities in Arab East Jerusalem. This would mean EU officials holding meetings with Palestinian National Authority (PNA) officials in Arab East Jerusalem.
Indeed, this was the case until a few years ago when most visiting foreign dignitaries used to meet PNA officials at Orient House despite fierce Israeli protests. No such meeting has taken place since 2001 when Israeli took over the building.
The details in the British Foreign Office report do not matter as much as whether the EU clearly understands Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's sinister plans to grab as much as possible of West Bank territory and leave the Palestinians with truncated chunks of land that would render unviable a Palestinian state with geographical continuity in an agreement he would like to call a peace accord.
The "separation," "security" or "apartheid" wall that Israel is building along the West Bank is clearly the Jewish state's version of border between Israeli-populated areas (settlements and plus some) of the territory and Palestinian majority parts.
The Foreign Office takes note that the vast concrete barrier, is being used to expropriate Arab land in and around Arab East Jerusalem. "This de facto annexation of Palestinian land will be irreversible without very large-scale forced evacuations of settlers and the re-routing of the barrier," it says.
"When the barrier is completed, Israel will control all access to East Jerusalem, cutting off its Palestinian satellite cities of Bethlehem and Ramallah, and the West Bank beyond. This will have serious ... consequences for the Palestinians," it says.
"Israel's main motivation is almost certainly demographic ... the Jerusalem master plan has an explicit goal to keep the proportion of Palestinian Jerusalemites at no more than 30 per cent of the total."
This would make a two-state solution impossible because a core demand of the Palestinians is for sovereignty over Arab East Jersusalem.
The report should be the catalyst for the European Union to step out of the shadows and assert itself as an influential player in the effort for peace in the Middle East.
It is not that the Europeans have not tried. Indeed, the bloc is one of the four powers behind the "roadmap" for peace in the Middle East along with the US, Russia and the United Nations. However, all past EU efforts to assert its rightful role were thwarted by the US, which always confined the Europeans to the role of bankrollers of Middle Eastern peace agreements and denied them any political role.
The British paper, which clearly documents Israel's concerted campaign to usurp one of the central pillars of any peace accord — Arab East Jerusalem — should open European eyes to the reality on the ground that the Jewish state is bent upon imposing its conditions on the Palestinians and therefore there is little sense in pursuing peace in the present direction.
The Europeans have the clout — after all they are Israel's largest export market — to pressure the Jewish state, and it is a factor often mentioned by member of European Parliament sympathetic to the Palestinian case if only because they know from close quarters the realities of the conflict. The question is: How far the European would shake themselves out of their lethargic attitude towards the Middle Eastern conflict and whether they would stand up and resist American pressure to keep out of the equation.

Americans are angry

  Panorama

Americans are angry: White House in crisis


The people of America are furious over the course their government is taking them and they are speaking up in unprecedented terms and language
Revelations that imply an administration in disarray and a see-through game of shifting blames in Washington but yet retaining the central theme of keeping the truth away from the public have added fuel to the fury.
Charges that whoever is questioning the administration's policy is dishonest and unpatriotic seem to have been the proverbial straw and given rise to a flurry of indignant and angry responses from the American people.
The mainstream corporate media would not give them a platform to air their grievances and vent their anger at the policies of their government. They have to confine themselves to the cyberspace, but their voice is now being heard. And it is only a matter of time before the corporate media would be forced to remove their self-imposed veils and try to do what they were supposed to do in the first place: Speak the truth and be objective. If they don't, then they would be out and haunted for having been party to one of the grossest deception which has come to be called the "lie of the century." (www.whatreallyhappened.com).
At this given point in time, the Bush administration is reeling back from pointed accusations that include:
The administration lied to American people and Congress into accepting that Iraq was linked to the Sept.11, 2001 attacks and had weapons of mass destruction that posed a threat to American national security. When it was proved that Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden had no links (and thus no Iraq/Sept.11 link either) and Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, the war was justified as aimed at "liberating" the people of Iraq and leading them into democracy. And the "liberated" people -- or at least some of them -- are hitting back and killing Americans, and Iraq is termed as the den of international terrorism, "liberation" or no liberation.
(That the administration knew that there was little substance to the charge that Iraq had no links with 9/11 has come out in a recently declassified Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) document (DITSUM 044-02).
Robert Scheer observes in The Nation: "This smoking-gun document proves the Bush administration's key evidence for the apocryphal Osama Bin Laden-Saddam Hussein alliance, said by Bush to involve training in the use of weapons of mass destruction, was built upon the testimony of a prisoner who, according to the DIA, was probably 'intentionally misleading the debriefers'.")
The administration has yet to provide a clear answer to the American people why the US military went to war against Iraq.
Another grave charge is that the administration prevented the "truth" of the 9/11 attacks from the American people and deliberately suppressed information citing national security and imperatives of intelligence gathering.
The administration resorted to aggressive vendetta against anyone who spoke up against the war and questioned Washington's motivations in invading and occupying Iraq. That is the net scenario emerging from the Valerie Plame affair, where people as high as Vice-President Robert Cheney and even the president himself could be implicated for having been party, directly or indirectly, to outing a secret operative of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), one of the very same people the administration was supposed to protect and defend.
The administration has no compassion for American lives and could not care less about the number of American soldiers killed in Iraq and elsewhere as long as they are kept away from American television screens and newspapers.
These are the key points being raised by commentators, analysts and observers as well as honest-to-God American people without any political agenda.
Hit from many sides with such accusations, the Bush administration is fighting back, but the arguments it makes are deemed by most critics to be steering away from the core issue of American national interests.
The administration is not dissuaded. It is continuing to follow an aggressive approach by trying to discredit and silence critics.

Patriotism and criticism

A simple but clear reflection of the seething American anger over these issues -- not to mention the administration's handling of hurricane Katrina and Rita and the economic problems within the US -- could be seen in a comment written by Doug Thompson on www.capitolhillblue.com.
Thompson, publisher of the site, is credited with 46 years of work in various capacities, including some years in the corridors of power in Capitol Hill, but mostly as a writer and journalist.
In his latest article, Thompson gives vent to his anger at Cheney for criticising Republican Senator John Murtha for calling on the administration to withdraw the US military from Iraq.
Asserting that Cheney himself avoided serving the military during the Vietnam War by "multiple deferments," while Murtha served the US Marines for 37 years and had won several military honours, Thompson delivers a broadside salvo at the vice-president and other politicians:
"American politics is cursed with chicken-hawk politicians who do everything in their power to avoid serving their country and then vote to send other Americans to fight and die for their questionable wars. Bill Clinton used falsified documents to secure and keep his student deferments in place. Congress is littered with false patriots, Republican and Democrat alike, who avoided military service. And the biggest warmonger of them all, George W. Bush, needed daddy's connections to ride out the war at home in the safety of the Texas Air National Guard and couldn't even complete that service."
"It's bad enough when Bush uses Veterans Day, a holiday where we are supposed to honour those who serve our country, to spread his Iraq invasion propaganda and criticise those who dare question his failed policies. As Americans we have the freedom to agree or disagree with war but it is our duty to serve her when she calls. Draft dodgers are the worst kind of traitors to our country. They avoided the call and are nothing but despicable."
Another posting (www.uruknet.com/ ?p=18002&hd =0&size=1&l=x) delves into the same subject and asserts:
"The only people buying this Bush/Cheney tent show are the never-say-die entrenched Republicans and those suffering from Alzheimer's. What a charade, both of them feigning indignity and charging that the Iraq war critics are irresponsible and unpatriotic for questioning their claims that the 'neocon' Bush gang was only honestly mistaken when they spoon fed bogus prewar intelligence to Congress and the American people. In truth, it is irresponsible and unpatriotic to not question these men who are benefiting by this war and who have not convincingly proven a need for this war, which has cost the lives of two thousand and counting of our bravest men and women as well as the maiming of tens of thousand more."

'Truth of 9/11'

It is not simply the deceptive war against Iraq and the American lives lost there and the more than $200 billion spent on war that is bothering the Americans. They have seen a policy pattern, decisions and statements which they interpret as designed to deceive them and keep them in the dark in the name of national security.
Even more intriguing is the theory that the Sept.11 attacks were an "inside job."

Here is an interesting web posting: www.indybay.org/news/ 2005/11/1784820.php)
"What does questioning 9/11 mean? I think everyone is open to questions about what the US knew about Al Qaeda before 9/11 and what the US had done in earlier years to aid it. There is probably also room for doubt as to whether Al Qaeda really carried out 9/11 to the same extent as there is room for doubt about the London bombings; Al Qaeda never really existed as a centralised organisation with a clear hierarchy of command and control even in the official version of things so asking whether Al Qaeda did something doesn't even have a clear yes/no answer.
"There is also clear room for doubt about USA motives behind Afghanistan since (Osama) Bin Laden was never caught and the US still dropped troop levels and started to focus on Iraq (which everyone knows had no links to 9/11). If you bring up questions like these you will get an overwhelmingly positive response from most on the left and not get dismissed.
"There are other questions that seem legitimate but probably won't get clear responses since the technical nature of concern makes them sound conspiratorial even though everyone knows they are open questions. "What was the names of all those who carried out the 9/11 attacks?

"Did all the hijackers know it was a suicide mission?

"How exactly did they take over a plane with box cutters?

"How did cellphones work from within one of the airplanes?

"How did the WTC towers fall?

"How much was due to fire and how much to the impact?"

Why are such allegations and questions being given a sudden boost?

Sidney Blumenthal writes on Salon.com: "The Senate's decision last week to launch an investigation into the administration's role in prewar disinformation, after the Democrats forced the issue in a rare secret session, has provoked a furious presidential reaction.
"The Senate Intelligence Committee, under Republican leadership, connived with the White House to prevent a promised investigation into the administration's involvement in prewar intelligence. Its revival by Democrats is precisely the proximate cause that has triggered Bush's paroxysm of revenge."
Richard Cohen, a columnist, writes on New York Daily News (www.nydailynews.com/news/col/story/366489p-311821c.html):
At the moment, no one can have confidence in the Bush administration. Almost three years into the war, the world is not safer, the Middle East is less stable and Americans and others die for a mission that is not what it once was called: A fight for democracy. It would be nice, as well as important, to know how we got into this mess -- nice for us, important for the president. It wasn't that he had the wrong facts. It was that the right ones didn't matter."

Media manipulation

Manipulation of the media's yet another charge against the administration. It has emerged that some of the mainstream newspapers, which were until recently considered as highly credible, are known to have carried misleading reports in the build-up to the war against Iraq and ignoring key questions that any respectable media institutions should have asked and demanded answers.
These reports played a key role in convincing the Americans that there was indeed a case against Iraq. Little did they know that many of the reports originated within the administration and neoconservative camp and were cycled through several channels before ending up with the newspapers.
Additionally, according to www.commondreams.org, the Bush administration was behind "bogus and deceptive" news items.
Says www.commondreams.org: Under Bush administration directives, at least 20 federal agencies have produced and distributed scores, perhaps hundreds, of "video news segments" out of a $254 million slush fund. These bogus and deceptive stories have been broadcast on television stations nationwide without any acknowledgment that they were prepared by the government rather than local journalists. The segments- -- which trumpet Administration "successes" -- promote its controversial line on issues like Medicare reform and feature Americans "thanking" Bush -- have been labelled "covert propaganda" by the Government Accountability Office.

'Rigged' elections?

Then there is the charge that the Republican-led neoconservatives rigged the 2004 presidential elections.
Analysts who closely studied the pattern of voting are questioning how Bush won the election despite trailing in most state and national polls.
They note that he won despite an approval rating of less than 50 per cent, "usually the death knell for an incumbent presidential candidate" (TIA), a poster on DemocraticUnderground.Com).
The posting notes that Bush won despite trailing in the three national exit polls three timelines on election day from 4pmto 12:22am (13,047 respondents) by a steady 48 to 52 per cent, "miraculously winning the final exit poll (with only 613 additional respondents, totaling 13,660)."
TIA, using various elements of the national and state exit polls and other data sources, produces results that are thorough, detailed, sober and compelling. He shows all data and calculations, while encouraging others to check his math. Only once did he make a minor math error, after asking DUers to check his calculation of probability that at least 16 states would deviate beyond their exit poll margin of error and go for Bush. The answer turned out to be one in 19 trillion.
Will Pitt, who has done extensive analysis on election numbers, says "To believe Bush won the election, you must also believe...." and he lists 35 points that are worth serious consideration (organikrecords.com/corporatenewslies/tobelievetrifold.pdf).

Defiant administration

The final picture that emerges is that of an angry American public and a defiant administration influenced by neoconservatives who refuse to acknowledge that they went wrong not only in plotting and executing the war against Iraq but also have taken the American people for granted. They continue to spoon feed information, but people in cyberspace are not willing to buy it.
To a large extent, most Americans are relying more on the Internet for information, commentaries and analysis than the corporate media. No doubt, the arguments cited here have reached millions of Americans and they are demanding answers.
No doubt, there would be more "revelations" in the days and weeks ahead that would add to the questions being raised, piling up pressure on the administration and contributing to the growing fear among the ranks of the neocons that they could be held to account. Indeed, not many of them might stampede, but there is already enough heat in Washington to make them restless and perhaps deprive them of sleep.
Members of Congress from within Bush's Republican camp are also growing increasingly anxious that the present state of affairs does not bode well for the party in next year's mid-term elections to the legislature.
The Republicans also seem to have realised that it is no longer a matter of critics giving vent to their hostility through hard-hitting commentaries in the media or bloggsites. They should know that it is the people of America who are demanding answers to key questions like whether their president lied to them in order to build a case against Iraq and whether similar action is being planned against Syria and Iran if only to serve Israel's interests.
Beset with such crises, the neocons, who have proved that they would stop at nothing to achieve their goal of American domination of the globe among other things (including giving priority to Israeli interests rather those of the US), are more likely to orchestrate an action that they would hope would take American public attention away from the crises in Washington.
However, the questions of the American public could not be waived away. They are here to stay until they are answered, honestly and truthfully, but such answers, as and when offered, would spell doom for the Bush administration.



with inputs from web sources

Attention!!!! Diversion ahead!!!!

THERE IS a widespread belief among American as well as international political observers, commentators and analysts that the hawks in the Bush administration might be tempted to stage a false-flag operation, either in the US or outside, in order to create a diversion of attention from the mounting crises Washington is facing today.
In fact, many are of the opinion that the crises are so serious that they represent a situation graver than that faced by Richard Nixon shortly before his resigned in the wake of the Watergate sandal.
President George W Bush himself and people close to him, including Vice-President Richard Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfled, are putting up a brave front against scathing criticism in the American media and the equally important blogsites. However, reports quoting "sources" in the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon paint a different picture that shows an administration in disarray.
Bush himself has confined access to himself to a handful of people and White House meetings end up without conclusion, according to the reports. The president is said to lose his temper more often than not, he lapses into broodings, forcing his chief of staff Andrew Card to step in and speak up for the president, say the reports, which also suggest that Card himself might resign from his job soon.
It will be an understatement that the Bush administration officials are worried.
Former Cheney associate Lewis Libby has been indicted for perjury in a case that has deep ramifications for the administration's credibility and public confidence in the White House. More indictments are expected. Congress is expected soon to issue a report on whether pre-war intelligence was manipulated to suit the hardliners' quest to wage war against Iraq. The report need not indict the administration (after all Congress is dominated by the Republicans), but those preparing it have to take into consideration the growing voices within the electorate demanding truth and oblige them with a minimum level of credibility.
There seems to be a growing feeling that the neoconservative structure could collpase like a house of cards, bringing down even innocent administration officials. As a result, more "leaks" of what actually took place in the build-up to the war could be expected in the days ahead. These leaks could come from administration bureaucrats who had no choice but to follow orders from up, hoping that they would not be held to account if they volunteered information and thus establish, off-the-record at this point perhaps, that they were not party to planning anything and that they were simply obeying instructions from their bosses.
Definitely, the hawkish neoconservatives, who orchestrated the invasion of Iraq and continued occupation of that country, should be closely watching from the lines. They should be simply dumb not to recognise that things are coming to a head-on clash within the administration and in American political circles and soon it would be time for reckoning.
Members of Congress from within Bush's Republican camp are also growing increasingly restless that the present state of affairs does not bode well for the party in next year's mid-term elections to the legislature.
The Republicans also seem to have realised that it is no longer a matter of critics giving vent to their hostility through hard-hitting commentaries in the media or blogsites. They should know that it is the people of America who are demanding answers to key questions like whether their president lied to them in order to build a case against Iraq and whether similar action is being planned against Syria and Iran if only to serve Israel's interests.
Beset with such crises, the neocons, who have proved that they would stop at nothing to achieve their goal of American domination of the globe among other things (they are accused even of rigging Bush's re-election in some states), are more likely to orchestrate an action that would take American public attention away from the crises in Washington. It could come in the form of a major crisis with Syria or Iran and somewhere else. The neocons' objective will be to create a situation of national emergency that would also provide a platform for the president to reassert that he remains committed to protecting American national security and national interests, whether in terms of domestic policies or external intervention. That is the net conclusion of many seasoned analysts who are familar with the way the neocons function.
For many observers, it is only a question of whether any American agency or clandestine group would be involved in staging the operation, whatever it might be, or the neocons would call upon the services of their protege — or shall we say master — Israel.
Israeli intelligence reports have been suggesting that Lebanon's Hizbollah was being prepared for action against Israel across the border, particularly at the occupied Shebaa Farms area, at the behest of Syria.
On Monday, it was reported that Hizbollah fighters launched an intense bombardment of Israeli positions on the volatile area.
Israel said its forces killed five Hizbollah fighters while Hizbollah's Al Manar television said one person had been killed and two wounded.
The question remained open on Monday whether this flare-up, which occurred on the eve of Lebanon's independence day, would trigger a chain of events leading to a major military escalation that could pose the pretext for any neocon-engineered diversionary action.
Israel could easily argue that it was provoked into expanding the stand-off becasuse of Hizbollah attacks prompted by Syrian pressure. However, it is routine that Hizbollah does something across the border on every Lebanese independence day, and therefore the "advance" intelligence warning implicating Syria could be the just the ruse the Israeli could be seeking.
In the meantime, Syria remains under intense pressure over the UN investigating panel's finding that some top Syrian intelligence officers were involved in February bombing that killed Lebanon's former prime minister Rafiq Hariri in Beirut. Syria is also accused of "not doing enough" to stop the alleged infiltration of insurgents across the Syrian border into Iraq to fight the US-led coalition forces there.
It was reported last month that one of the options entertained by the US hawks was to bomb a few Syrian border villages saying they were sheltering anti-US insurgents bound for Iraq. At that time, the option was reportedly shelved at the behest of Rice, who wanted to give diplomacy and UN sanctions a chance and a little more time to work against Syria.
However, the possibility remains alive that those who proposed the border bombings might prevail this time around, particularly given the gravity of the political crises plaguing Washington.
Also being cooked in Washington is action against Iran in the name of Tehran's nuclear programmes. Many fear that Israel, for whom it is unacceptable that anyone in the Middle Eastern neighbourhood going nuclear, whether for peaceful purposes or otherwise, might carry out an attack against Iran's nuclear installations. Such an operation has to be major since, according to experts, it would take more than 300 substained bombings to deprive Iran of the ability to resume its nuclear work.
If that happens, it is a sure bet that Iran would hit back but the targets would be the American forces across the border in Iraq as well as Afghanistan who are sitting ducks for Iran's short- and medium-range missiles.
It is anyone's guess what could happen as and when Iran retaliates against the American forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.
These are hypotheses and what could actually happen could be anything anywhere. The only certainty is that the neocons, who, by definition and nature, refuse to accept that their policies have been going wrong for American interests, will opt for a false-flag operation sooner than later.

Ex-insiders speak out, It ain't flattering

PV Vivekanand

PEOPLE who once served the administration of George W Bush Junior have started talking, strengthening the argument of critics that something is seriously wrong in American policy-making and implementation, and things are going wholesale wrong in Washington.
That revelation is not exactly new to us in the Middle East, but the significance here is that the American people are being told by former American officials — rather than officials and media from the Arab and Muslim world (supposedly having an anti-US with an agenda) — that their country is being steered in the wrong direction that would take them nowhere but to a major catastrophe.
We know that things had been and are going wrong in Washington. Otherwise, we would not have seen the world's sole superpower being led by the nose by Israel and its powerful lobbyists in Washington. We would not have seen the US government building a false case for war and invading and occupying Iraq based on falsified intelligence reports and baseless justifications.
Effectively, the Bush administration is telling the international community that the US is determined to implement an agenda for global domination based on its military might.
It matters the least whether the world, including the people of the United States, likes it or otherwise.
Isn't it enough that it was people close to the US vice president and indeed the national security adviser himself who (allegedly) exposed an undercover Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operative if only to punish her husband for daring to question the administration's deception in setting the ground for the war against Iraq?
Well, that shows the one-track mind of the neoconservatives in Washington who would stop at nothing while pursuing their extremist agenda.
The neoconservatives are a group of hard-liners who believe that the US should become the new Roman empire because they think the US has the military clout to do so and the rest of the world should pledge allegiance to it. Those who refuse to stand aside for the US need to be eliminated, they argue.
That is bad news indeed. But the worst is that the neoconservatives themselves appear to owe allegiance to Israel rather than the US.
Now, people who served with the Bush administration during the first term and some who left mid-way have begun to speak out, among them former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, who says that he had advised the president that an American occupation of Iraq would be politically and militarily untenable.
Beyond that, however, was Scowcroft's firm opposition to the neoconservatives' wheeling and dealings in Washington.
The neoconservatives believe in the export of democracy, by violence if that is required, Scowcroft said in a recent interview with the New Yorker.. "How do the neocons bring democracy to Iraq? You invade, you threaten and pressure, you evangelise." And now, Scowcroft said, the US is suffering from the consequences of what he calls "that brand of revolutionary utopianism. "This was said to be part of the war on terror, but Iraq feeds terrorism," he said.
Notably, Scowcroft spoke the same thing even before the war.
In August of 2002, seven months before the US invaded Iraq, Scowcroft upset wrote an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal. under the headline "Don't attack Saddam."
He argued that an invasion of Iraq would deflect American attention from the war on terrorism, and that it would do nothing to solve the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis, which he has long believed is the primary source of unhappiness in the Middle East.
The reason Scowcroft opted for the media as a platform to express his idea was also clear: There was no one in the White House who was in a mood to listen to him. They were so much engrossed in preparing for war that they could not even stand anyone advising against it.
Unlike the current Bush administration, which is unambiguously pro-Israel, Scowcroft, James Baker, and others associated of George Bush Senior — the 41st president of the US — believe that Israel's settlement policies provoke Arab anger, and that American foreign policy should reflect the fact that there are far more Arabs than Israelis in the world.
Scowcroft had always warned that President Bush was getting too close to Israel .
In October 2004, he said in an interview with London's Financial Times that the Bush administration was "mesmerised" by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
"Sharon just has him (Bush) wrapped around his little finger," Scowcroft said. "I think the president is mesmerised."
"When there is a suicide attack (followed by a reprisal) Sharon calls the president and says, 'I'm on the front line of terrorism', and the president says, 'Yes, you are...' He (Sharon)) has been nothing but trouble," Scowcroft told the Financial Times.

'Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal'

Another former administration official who has spoken out is Lawrence Wilkerson, who served Collin Powell as his chief of staff at the State Department from 2001 to early 2005.
Wilkerson pins the blame on Vice-President Richard Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
According to Wilkerson, the Bush administration's foreign policy had been hijacked by the "Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal."
"What I saw was a cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made," he said.
According to Wilkerson, as a result of the "cabal's" actions, Bush has exposed the US to more dangers and more vulnerable, not less, to future crises than the case was when he entered the White House in January 2001.
Wilkerson has also disclosed that the administration was beset by secrecy, arrogance and internal feuding.
The net result was a weakened government unable to handle serious crises.
"I would say that we have courted disaster, in Iraq, in North Korea, in Iran, generally with regard to domestic crises like Katrina, Rita - and I could go on back," he said. "We haven't done very well on anything like that in a long time."

Neocons and neoconvicts

PV Vivekanand

US PRESIDENT George W Bush is facing the most critical phase of his second-term presidency. American commentators say he could quit office or be forced to do so before his term ends because of the mounting evidence that he was being string-pulled by the neoconservative camp into his undoings in foreign as well as domestic policies.
The Watergate scandal which brought down the Nixon administration in the 70s is seen by many as paling in comparison with the track record of the Bush administration, which is described by majority of Americans as the worst government they ever had.
The Bush administration is seen as bulldozing its way through regardless of the founding principles of the United States of America and binding international conventions and treaties and thus bringing shame and indignation to the American people, for whom their status as the world's most admirable democracy and transparently governed country used to be a source of pride.
On the foreign policy front, it is becoming increasingly clear that notwithstanding all claims to the contrary by Bush and people close to him, Iraq has been and remains a misadventure.
Starting with revelations that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was based on a pack of deliberate lies — make no mistake, it was not intelligence failures but doctored intelligence that went into the plot — and that the US military had been committing serious war crimes against the people of Iraq, the trap is closing around the Bush administration with disclosures that some of his senior staff members also indulged in crimes bordering on treason in their effort to defend the Iraq war and silence all critics.
The almost unlimited support in every sphere that the US is extending to Israel at the cost of American interests at home and abroad has become a talking point among American people who wonder whether their decision-makers are more loyal to the Jewish state that their own country.
Bush and his vice-president, Robert Cheney, are continuing to draw scathing criticism for their defence of torture against terror suspects both from the American Congress and people.
The US president suffered one of the worst humiliations in his South American backyard during in his recent visit to Argentina and his arch enemy, Chavez of Venezuela, thumped his nose at Bush, with massive anti-US demonstrations using some of the most vile languages being used to denounce American policy.
Add to that a perpetual fear of insecurity for the people of the US and a worsening economy.
Bush's personality has also come under close scrutiny, with claims that he is increasingly turning to tantrums, and access to the president is being limited to a handful of family members and senior aides.
And then there are opinion surveys which show that an overwhelming number of Americans who believe that their president lied to them into accepting the war against Iraq as a matter of their national security.
The US military has been forced to admit that Iraqi detainees were systematically subjected to brutal torture and dehumanisation, and that American forces used chemical weapons — white phosphorus is a chemical weapon regardless of all "technical" arguments — in their offensives in Iraq.
More than 2,000 American soldiers have died and more than 17,000 maimed since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Between 30,000 and 100,000 Iraqis have died as a direct or indirect result of the American invasion and occupation.
The US has spent over $200 billion for the wars in Afghanistan, but it has lost control over Iraq.
A recent commentary in Pravda focused on the security situation in Iraq and said:
"The US forces have lost control of the situation. Eyewitnesses (say) that the troops are rarely to be seen on the streets — they spend their time avoiding the population in huge convoys travelling back and forth on the outskirts of the cities and the ones who exert direct control are the gangs of armed men on practically every street corner.
"The tactic used by the Bush regime is to repeat that the Iraq policy was a resounding success because the people are now free. Free? To do what? They can't even go down the road for bread these days without fearing for their lives. Women can't walk around freely. They aren't even free to wear what they like.
"So who is responsible and who is accountable? In any state of law, in any civilised nation in the world, this regime would have been deposed for gross incompetence, and worse, mass murder, war crimes, being responsible for acts of torture and for breaking practically every law in the international code. The finger points at the Bush regime, each and every one of this clique of elitists who put their corporate interests before the dignity of their country."
Pravda quotes Houzan Mahmoud, an Iraqi political activist who fights for women's rights and is a member of the Worker Communist Party of Iraq, as saying that women were better off under Saddam Hussein.
"We used to have one reactionary dictator. Now we have tens of them springing up, who deny women the rights they had achieved before. Women are expected to walk around in veils and if they refuse, they can be beheaded in daylight."
The internal crisis that Bush is facing is continuing to mushroom. It started with the indictment of Cheney's powerful neocon chief of staff, Lewis Libby, for perjury and obstruction of justice for outing Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) covert agent Valerie Plame.
Administration officials are trying to portray the affair as a case of leakage of Plame's name to the media. However, it is now an open secret that the "outing" was not just a leakage but was part of the wider conspiracy that led to the war against Iraq and the neocons behind it were ready to sacrifice US intelligence agents to serve their purpose.
However, they might be held to account, reports indicate. And there seems to be panic in the neocon camp ahead of presentation of evidence by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to a grand jury in his two year-old investigation into the Plame outing. Fitzgerald, known as a no-nonsense prosecutor, is seeking a criminal indictment against an undetermined number of senior officials in the Bush administration for playing some sort of role in the leak.
What has clearly emerged in Washington is a network that involves senior officials in the administration, including top aides to the president and vice-president, and in every position of any power of significance who are interlinked, whether in the case of doctored Iraq intelligence or spying for Israel or covering up the tell-tale tracks that lead to the conclusion that whatever policy decisions were taken and implemented were not coincidence or shortcomings, but deliberate moves to carry out the neoconservative agenda.
The defences put up by the administration against criticism are far from convincing.
While Bush's Republican camp in Capitol Hill is protecting the administration to an extent, there are also some Republicans who willing to question Bush on Iraq. Apparently, they are apprehensive of how the public's concerns will affect next year's mid-term congressional elections. Both the US Senate and House of Representatives are controlled by the Republicans, but chinks are appearing in the armour.
The US Senate recently voted down a Democratic call for a definite timetable for the US military to leave Iraq, but the Republicans told the president that he should have a clear strategy for "the successful completion of the mission" in Iraq.
On Friday, Representative John Murth a, a Democrat, who is known for his strong views on matters of national defence and military, demanded that the US military quit Iraq "at the earliest practicable date."
"The war in Iraq is not going as advertised. It's a flawed policy wrapped in illusion. The American public is way ahead of the members of Congress," said Murtha.
"The United States and coalition troops have done all they can in Iraq. But it's time for a change in direction," Murtha said. "Our military is suffering. The future of our country is at risk. We cannot continue on the present course. It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interest of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or the ... Gulf region. "
The criticism is significant because Murtha had argued for the war and had accepted at face value intelligence reports presented to Congress setting out the justification for action against Iraq.
However, his latest call was voted down with an overwhelming majority.
Apparently in reply to the Democrats' push, the president declared on Saturday that there would be no early troop withdrawal before Iraq is stabilised.
However, those defences are not getting anywhere. The anti-war movement is growing momentum both in the US Congress and American people.
Senator Chuck Hagel, delivered a scathing speech in Washington last week.
"Trust and confidence in the United States has been seriously eroded," Hagel said. "We are seen by many in the Middle East as an obstacle to peace, an aggressor and an occupier. Our policies are a significant source of friction. ... We have made very bad decision we could possibly make. ... The problem now is how to get out without further destabilising the Middle East."
Well, withdrawing from Iraq appears to the last thing in the administration's consideration because quitting the country without installing a US-friendly government and firmly establishing a constitutional basis for maintaining a strong American military presence there was never an option.
On the face of that determination, any call for ending the military presence in Iraq would remain lines drawn in water.
In the meantime, the growing voice of dissent within the US could mushroom and engulf the administration if the judicial process takes its right course. It looks like doing so, and that could prove to be the straw that broke the camel's back. The latest slogan coming out of Washington is: "The neocons should be turned into neoconvicts."

Finger on the pulse

Putting the finger on the pulse

Abu Dhabi Crown Prince and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces General Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan has exposed one of the key elements in the so-called phenomenon of terrorism in the Muslim World. During a visit to Jordan as an expression of the UAE's solidarity with the Hashemite kingdom following the despicable bombings there on Oct.9 that killed dozens of innocent people, including women and children who were attending the joyous occasion of a wedding reception, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed criticised Islamic religious leaders and scholars for not speaking up and taking faith-based action against terorrists.
"There should be a firm stand by Islamic clerics and scholars who live among us against this terrorism," he said. "If they do not declare them (terrorists) apostate, the least they could do is to drive them out of the faith."
"We should ask ourselves a genuine question and say if there is not going to be a sincere stand against such irreligious and inhuman acts, they will flourish. Personally, I blame the clerics and Islamic scholars who live among us and with us.," he said.
The Abu Dhabi Crown Prince put the finger on the pulse when he pointed out that terrorism "came to us in the name of Islam, so there is no point trying to throw it in other direction. We should be the ones who should confront and resist it."
Inherent in Sheikh Mohammed's words were the reminder that only a handful of Islamic scholars and religious leaders have actually spoken up against terrorism carried out in the name of Islam and denounced it as unacceptable to the faith no matter what.
Others might have many reasons for not speaking up, but there could not be any justification for remaining silent at a time the faith is being targeted for assault on many fronts, including its gross misuse by terrorists. That was one of the messages that Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed wanted to convey in his frank statements.
It is a strong reminder to Muslim religious leaders in authority that they have the responsibility to adopt an unwavering stand against terrorism in the name of religion and should ex-communicate those Muslims who carry out heinous attacks and hide behind the smoke-screen of Islam.
That is the least the religious leaders and scholars could do to help the fight against terrorist actions that has come to be very conveniently but mistakenly termed as "Islamic terrorism."

Turning point in terror

Ahmad Fadil Al Khalayleh, also known as Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant blamed for most of the suicide bombings and ambushes against the US-led forces and allies in Iraq, has claimed responsibility for the Oct.9 bombings in Amman, Jordan, that killed nearly 60 people. The attacks showed that Zarqawi, bloated by what he sees as his "success" in Iraq, is seeking to export his brand of extremism to Iraq's neighbours and signal worse days ahead. However, the bombings, whose victims were mainly Arabs and Muslims and included women and children attending a marriage reception, have drawn wide condemnation from Arabs and Muslims. People are shell-shocked and are genuinely angry. The attacks could expose weak links in Zarqawi's ranks and perhaps even lead to the beginning of the end of the dreaded militant. In the meantime, the US faces painful decisions and compromises as options which Washington is unlikely to favour, writes PV Vivekanand.

In October, a letter surfaced purportedly written by Ayman Al Zawahiri, said to be deputy leader of Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda, calling on Zarqawi to adopt a four-phased strategy beginning with concentrating on evicting the US military from Iraq, followed by supporting the creation of an Islamic caliphate there, expanding the "wave of jihad secular countries" neighbouring Iraq and then confronting Israel.
Some viewed the message as genuine while others saw it as a forgery by the Shiites of Iraq who have been targeted by Zarqawi's group.
A message described as coming from Zarqawi in response said the Zawahiri letter was not authentic and asserted that it was doctored by the Americans as a piece of propaganda.
Then came the Amman bombings, which were interpreted by many as Zarqawi having borrowed from Zawahiri the idea of expanding "the wave of jihad" but jumping the gun since that phase was supposed to come only after the Americans left Iraq and an Islamic caliphate was created there.
Either way, going by the theory that Zarqawi was indeed behind the bombings that killed more than 57 people in three hotels in the Jordanian capital, Amman, there is only obvious conclusion: Zarqawi has shot himself in the foot by targeting Arabs and Muslims for his terrorist attacks and that too at a wedding reception attended by women and children. And the gangrene would only grow.
Zarqawi obviously meant to show to the world that he could stage bombings outside Iraq and is expanding his area of operations, and that he could draw on Iraqi supporters to carry out suicide bombings and similar actions anywhere.
However, the bombings have backfired. If anything, Zarqawi has lost his "standing" — if he had any at all — among those who saw him as resisting the mighty US military in Iraq.
The "Al Qaeda in Iraq" website which claimed responsibility for the bombings asserted that the attacks were directed against Israelis, members of Western intelligence agencies and their Shiite accomplices.
It described the targeted hotels as "a backyard for the enemies of religion, the Jews and Crusaders, and a dirty hideout for the nation's apostate traitors, as well as a safe haven for the intelligence services of the infidels, where they plot their conspiracies against Muslims."
The attacks were in response to "the conspiracy against the Sunnis whose blood and honour were shed by Crusaders and the Shiites."
The contradiction between the claim and the results of the bombings is glaring.
A list of the dead included four Americans, but none of them was a member of any active branch of the US military. Most of the dead in Amman were Jordanians and Palestinians and included women and children. An Israeli who died turned out to be of Arab origin.
Two senior Palestinian intelligence officials were killed in the blast — Major-General Bashir Nafeh, head of the Palestinian National Authority's military intelligence, and Colonel Abed Allun, a high-ranking security official.
The vast majority of the victims of the blasts were Sunni Muslims whereas Zarqawi is a Sunni and Al Qaeda in Iraq is described by the Western media as waging terrorist attacks against Shiites.
The bombings drew curses against Zarqawi and calls for revenge from Jordanians.
"He is no longer a true warrior against US occupation. Zarqawi has gone too far. This cannot be justified in any way," was the typical comment of a Jordanian after the bombing. "He is not killing Americans, he is killing Muslims."
Another comment was: "Islam has not sanctioned killing of children. Zarqawi's actions in Iraq are just doing a lot of harm. For him it's an open war against America where nothing is sacred. The suicide bombers kill themselves and don't care about any one."
Yet another was: "By killing Jordanians here in Jordan, civilian Jordanians going to a wedding, they did something that not even a Jew would do."
Thousands of Jordanians took to the streets of Amman in the days that followed the bombings to curse Zarqawi. "Burn in hell Abu Musab Zarqawi," the protesters chanted
It could have been argued to a point that Zarqawi could find supporters and possible recruits from among the Jordanians of Palestinian origin who are frustrated with the failure of efforts to liberate Palestine from Israeli occupation. However, the bombings dealt a serious blow to such assumptions.

A target for long

For many in this part of the world, the Amman bombings did not come as a total surprise. Jordan, which has signed a peace treaty with Israel, is closely associated with the US and has been a target for militants for decades. Its Hashemite leadership advocates a negotiated settlement to the Arab-Israeli conflict — the Palestinian problem and Israel's occupation of Syria's Golan Heights — as opposed to the hardliners' policy of armed struggle.
Jordan has a history of having suffered militant attacks. It was among the first to be targeted by the so-called Arab Afghans, Arabs who volunteered to fight against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan during the 1980s and returned home when the Red Army withdrew from that country.
Arab Afghans were led by people like Osama Bin Laden, whose mentor was Abdullah Azzam, a Jordanian of Palestinian origin. Azzam was killed in Afghanistan in the late 80s.
More than half of Jordan's five million citizens are of Palestinian origin who were ousted from their homeland when the state of Israel was created in 1948 and again when Israel occupied the West Bank in the 1967 war.
During the early 90s, the first signs emerged of an organised Arab Afghan movement taking shape in Jordan. Dozens of groups directly or indirectly aligned with Bin Laden and his associates were bust in Jordan since then. Many were given jail sentences, and Zarqawi, who hails from a prominent Jordanian tribe from the East Bank of River Jordan, was one of them although no link was established between Bin Laden and Zarqawi.
Zarqawi spent several years in jail before being released under a general amnesty offered by the late King Hussein.
Jordan's perceived pro-Western policies and its close links with the US as well as most Western European countries had drawn the ire of the militants for whom the US and Europe are bitter enemies.
Several senior Jordanian diplomats were assassinated and many other targeted for killing since the 1970s because of the kingdom's advocacy of moderation and dialogue which did not suit militant thinking.
Exploding bombs in Jordan had another significance: The security and intelligence agencies of the kingdom are considered to be among the most efficient and effective in the Middle East. For the mindset of a militant, it is a big achievement to break through Jordan's net of intelligence and agents, informants and security forces.

'Expanding' network

Zarqawi declared that he was aligning with Bin Laden last year (as opposed to the belief of many until that time that the two were allies since the days of the Afghan conflict) and adopted the name "Al Qaeda of the Two Rivers" (Euphrates and Tigris).
Most of his extremist loyalists were so far seen to be "foreign" militants converging in Iraq to carry out anti-US attacks if only because of their bitter hostility towards American policies and actions towards the Arabs and Muslims, including the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and support for Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands.
In general terms, intelligence experts say Zarqawi has indeed drawn extremists bent upon "serving the cause of jihad" even if it meant giving up their lives. Now he is seen to be seeking to expand the Iraqi insurgency into a regional conflict and might even be trying to demonstrate his growing independence from Al Qaeda.
By sending four Iraqis, including a husband and wife, to carry out the Amman bombings, Zarqawi could be sending a message that he could draw from Iraqi supporters to carry out suicide bombers.
The woman in the group, Sajidah Mubarak Atrus Al Rishawi, who failed to detonate a belt bomb at Amman's Radisson SAS hotel while her husband exploded himself, is now in Jordanian custody.
Sajidah is an Iraqi from the Al Bu Rishiyyah clan which hails from the Al Tawa region near Ramadi in the Al Anbar province bordering Jordan.
Her motive to undertake the failed suicide bombing is linked to the death of three of her brothers in the hands of the US military in Iraq.
She reportedly insisted during her interrogation by Jordanian intelligence officers that she is fighting "the infidels and apostates from among the Muslims."
Her husband, Ali Husain Al Shamari, had married her only very recently and the couple did not have children.
Intelligence sources believe Shamari married her Sajidah in order to make it legitimate for her to accompany him from Iraq on the suicide mission in Amman.
Jordanian officials say that Sajidah, 35, knows virtually nothing about religion and that she never got beyond sixth grade in school. According to the London-based Al Hayat Arabic daily, Sajidah was asked by her Jordanian interrogators about the turmoil (fitnah) her action would have caused, she asked "what does this word "fitnah" mean?"
She is said to have told the interrogators that all the members of her family were members of Al Qaeda and she used terminology that suggested that she was a full-fledged Al Qaeda extremist.
In addition to her three brothers who were said to have been slain by US soldiers in clashes in the Iraqi town of Falluja and elsewhere in the Al Anbar province of Iraq, she also lost her sister's husband, Nidal Arabiyat.
A Jordanian, Arabiyat was described as a Jordanian explosives expert who was killed in Iraq last year. He had been in Afghanistan in 1999 for explosives training and then came back to join Zarqawi in Iraq in 2003, intelligence information shows.
Sajidah was arrested in the town of Salt, outside Amman, where she had gone in search of the family of her brother-in-law after fleeing the scene of the bombing.

The 'mystery'


Mystery surrounds a report that all Israelis were told to evacuate hotels in Amman shortly before the bombing. The report, which was carried by the Haaretz newspaper, was subsequently "withdrawn."
According to the Haaretz report, a "number of Israelis staying at the Radisson SAS were evacuated before the bombing by Jordanian security forces, apparently due to a specific security alert."
The report was carried in Haartez print editions on Oct.9. On the same day, a few hours after the newspaper was printed and circulated, a report appearing on the paper's Internet edition said:
"There is no truth to reports that Israelis staying at the Radisson SAS hotel in Amman on Wednesday were evacuated by Jordanian security forces before the bombing that took place there."
The original article disappeared from Haaretz' website, but a second article is still available on the website containing the retracted paragraph (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/643691.html)
Several Israeli businessmen were staying at Amman's Radisson SAS hotel.
According to the first report, they were also told to check out of the hotel by the Israeli embassy in Amman and they were escorted back to Israel across the River Jordan by security personnel.
Israel's counter-terror headquarters had, on Wednesday, recommended Israeli citizens not travel in Jordan. 
Israeli travel recommendations regarding Jordan were tightened a few months ago, but many Israelis still visit the country, including the ancient city of Petra in the south of the country.
The report that Israelis were evacuated from Jordan shortly before the bombing is a reminiscent of a report after the Sept.11, 2001 attacks in the US that nearly 4,000 Jews who worked at New York's World Trade Towers were told to stay away from work on that day. That report originated with Al Manar television of Lebanon's Hizbollah group and Iran's Kahyan International evening newspaper.
The report was never confirmed. However, it has been confirmed that an Israeli company with offices in New York had received an advance email saying the World Trade Center Towers were targeted for attack.
 Similarly, less than two hours after bombings rocked London's transportation system on July 7, the Associated Press reported that former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had received advance warning of the pending attacks. Netanyahu, staying in London at the time, was scheduled to address a conference near the site of one of the blasts, but according to the AP report he cancelled his talk. Hundreds of other media outlets around the world picked up the AP report, which later was retracted.


UAE's call

During a visit he paid to Jordan accompanied Sheikha Fatima Bin Mubarak to express solidarity with Jordanians following the bombings, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces General Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan emphasised that Islamic scholars had a major role to play in the fight against terror.
"There should be a firm stand by Islamic clerics and scholars who live among us against this terrorism. If they do not declare them (terrorists) apostate, the least they could do is to drive them out of the faith," said Sheikh Mohammed. "We should ask ourselves a genuine question and say if there is not going to be a sincere stand against such irreligious and inhuman acts, they will flourish. Personally, I blame the clerics and Islamic scholars who live among us and with us."
"Terrorism," Sheikh Mohammed went on, "came to us in the name of Islam, so there is no point trying to throw it in other direction. We should be the ones who should confront and resist it."
Sheikh Mohammed spoke the mind of people everyone shocked by the wanton killing in Amman when he asked: "What reason or logic justifies the killing of children, women or elderly people (gathered) in a celebration?"

A turning point

Middle Eastern experts believe that the Amman bombings could be a turning point for not only the Arab and regional role in the fight against terror but also for the insurgency in Iraq. Governments have pledged solidarity with Jordan and have also stepped up their anti-terrorism vigil and intelligence agencies have gone into full swing to identify potential risks and suspects. Laws against money-laundering and other terror-related suspect activities are being toughened in several countries and there is an increased awareness of the possibility of spillovers from Iraq.
Political analysts say that the danger would not be removed from the region without finding and implementing a fair and comprehensive solution to the Iraq crisis.
The US, which calls the shots in Iraq and elsewhere, is finding such a solution elusive. There could be several scenarios that could restore stability to Iraq, but all of them would involve compromises that Washington is unlikely or even unable to make, given its geopolitical strategies and objectives inherent in its invasion and occupation of Iraq. That means only one thing: Continued turmoil in the region.

If it quacks like a duck...

"If it walks like a duck,
and quacks like a duck...."





WASHINGTON'S denials that the US military used a deadly chemical against Iraqi forces during the march towards Baghdad in 2003 and against residents of the Iraqi town of Falluja in 2004 have been challenged by records kept by American soldiers and entries reproduced in military journals as well as a report filed by an "embedded" American journalist. If that was not enough, the Washington Post has carried a report affirming that the chemical was indeed used during the Falluja assault.
The charge that US forces used white phosphorus was levelled in a documentary made and broadcast by Italy's RAI television last week.
The documentary, "Falluja, La strage nascosta” (Falluja, The Concealed Massacre), showed what it said was white phosphorus shells being fired and "melted" bodies of dozens of Iraqis, including women and children. Such "melting," according to medical experts, is caused by white phosphorus.The documentary showed residents of Falluja, a former American solider who was part of the assault against that town and Italian journalist Giuliana Sgregna, who was kidnapped by Iraqis, then nearly killed by US troops following her release, as saying that they had irrefutable proof that white phosphorus was used in the assault.
Immediately after the documentary was broadcast, the US military denied that it used white phosphorus against civilians. It confirmed, however, that US forces had dropped MK 77 firebombs, which the RAI documentary compared with napalm, against "military" targets in Iraq. The US military also said that it used white phosphorus only for "illumination purposes" in military action.
Another US statement asserted that white phosphorus was not a chemical weapon.
All these arguments have been rejected by recorded evidence.
The use of white phosphorus in the assault against Falluja has been affirmed by several sources.
The March 2004 edition of Field Artillery Magazine carried an article entitled "The Fight for Falluja" containing a diary entry by Stephen D, an American soldier.
The entry says: "WP (white phosphorus rounds) proved to be an effective and versatile munitions. We used it for screening missions at two breeches and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes when we could not get effects on them with HE (high explosives). We fired 'shake and bake' missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out."
The Infantry Magazine of the US military carried a blow-by-blow of a US military operation in Iraq:
"The Iraqis in one observation post attempted to flee but were fixed with white phosphorus fires. As they attempted to flee again, white phosphorus rounds impacted the vehicle and set it on fire. The section continued to fire a mix of high explosive and white phosphorus rounds into the objective area. The section fired more than 80 rounds in support of the mission."
Darrin Mortensen of the North County Times, an "embedded" journalist with the US forces involved in the assault against Falluja, reported in April 2004 that white phosphorus was indeed used. In a long report about the attack on the rebellious town, Mortenson refers to Corporal Nicholas Bogert, 22, of Morris, New York.
"Bogert is a mortar team leader who directed his men to fire round after round of high explosives and white phosphorus charges into the city...., never knowing what the targets were or what damage the resulting explosions caused," said the report, which also had a graphic description attacks using white phosphorus.
The Washington Post reported the Falluja assault in late 2004.
It quoted an army captain as saying: "Usually we keep the gloves on. For this operation, we took the gloves off.
"Some artillery guns fired white phosphorous rounds that create a screen of fire that cannot be extinguished with water," said the Washington Post. "Insurgents reported being attacked with a substance that melted their skin, a reaction consistent with white phosphorous burns."
The Post quoted Kamal Hadeethi, a physician at a regional hospital, ass saying: "The corpses of the mujahedeen which we received were burned, and some corpses were melted."
"A rain of fire descended on the city," said Ahmad Tareq Al Deraji, a biologist and Falluja resident. "People who were exposed to those multicoloured substance began to burn. We found people with bizarre wounds — their bodies burned but their clothes intact."
Medical analysis says: "Exposure to white phosphorus may cause burns and irritation, liver, kidney, heart, lung, or bone damage, and death. Breathing white phosphorus for short periods may cause coughing and irritation of the throat and lungs. Breathing white phosphorus for long periods may cause a condition known as 'phossy jaw' which involves poor wound healing of the mouth and breakdown of the jaw bone. Eating or drinking small amounts of white phosphorus may cause liver, heart, or kidney damage, vomiting, stomach cramps, drowsiness, or death. We do not know what the effects are from eating or drinking very small amounts of white phosphorus-containing substances over long periods of time. Skin contact with burning white phosphorus may burn skin or cause liver, heart, and kidney damage."
Photographs of victims of attacks using white phosphorus clearly show how body parts could "melt" as a result of a white phosphorus attack.
The US State Department issued a denial late last year of what it called "widespread myths" about the use of illegal weapons in Falluja.
"Phosphorus shells are not outlawed. US forces have used them very sparingly in Falluja, for illumination purposes. They were fired into the air to illuminate enemy positions at night, not at enemy fighters," the US statement said.
The US Defence Department said in Nov.12, 2004 statement:
"The United States categorically denies the use of chemical weapons at anytime in Iraq, which includes the ongoing Falluja operation. Furthermore, the United States does not under any circumstance support or condone the development, production, acquisition, transfer or use of chemical weapons by any country. All chemical weapons currently possessed by the United States have been declared to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and are being destroyed in the United States in accordance with our obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention."
The American argument that white phosphorus is not banned and is not a chemical weapon is countered by scientific findings and simple logic.
The US is not a signatory of an international treaty restricting the use of white phosphorus devices.
Therefore, the United States is not technically in violation of any treaty obligations.
However, in practical terms, the use of white phosphorus could not be human or unlike the use of chemical weapons, given the deadly effect of the material. As the adage goes, "if it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, you can reasonably be sure it is a duck."
The revelations become all the more ironic against the US accusation against Saddam Hussein that he used chemical weapons against his own people. While there cannot be any justification for Saddam's brutality, the US should be the last to level such accusations when seen in light of its own use of material like white phosphorus and depleted uranium shells in Iraq.
The affair also poses a challenge to American corporate media, which have been vying with each other in recent weeks to convince the public about how sorry they were they did not report the truth that Saddam did not have weapons of mass destruction.
Their proclamations are derided by many who point out that their claim that they were deceived along with everyone else contradicts the fact that pretty much everyone else knew what was going on.
Surely, the US military's alleged use of white phosphorus against Iraq and Washington's efforts to downplay its implications do pose an opportunity for the corporate media to investigate it and get to the truth.