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News :: International Relations |
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AWARE News Notes 031019 |
Current rating: 0 |
by C. G. Estabrook
Email: cge (nospam) shout.net (unverified!) |
21 Oct 2003
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Notes from last week's 'war on terrorism' -- prepared
for the AWARE meeting, Sunday, October 19, 2003.
[AWARE -- Anti-War Anti-Racism Effort -- is a group of people from C-U and environs who are opposed to the policies of the US government -- neo-imperialism and the transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich, at home and abroad. We hold open meetings every Sunday 5-7PM at the Urbana Independent Media Center (218 W. Main St.) to discuss the situation and plan a variety of responses. The selections and comments below, however, represent my views and not necessarily those of AWARE as a whole or of particular members. (Sources are cited after each selection, e.g., HAARETZ 1012 = the Israeli paper Ha(TM)aretz for October 12.) --CGE] |
THE NEXT WAR AGAINST TERRORISM? “Israel is prepared to launch an attack on Iran's nuclear sites in order to prevent them from being operational, the German weekly magazine Der Spiegel reported Saturday. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday that Israel has the capability to fire nuclear warheads from submarines.” [HAARETZ 1012] “Former [Israeli] Deputy Defense Minister Efraim Sneh called the assertion that Israel had made the Harpoon nuclear impossible ... Ted Hooton, editor of Jane's Naval Weapon Systems in London, echoed Sneh's assessment, saying problems with payload weight would put the Harpoon out of balance, limiting its range and accuracy ... While Israel has never acknowledged it has nuclear weapons of its own, Israeli and foreign experts believe it possesses 100-200 nuclear devices and has the capability to deliver them via American-made F-15 and F-16 warplanes and the Jericho II missile, based on a prototype Israel developed with France in the 1960s. The ability to deliver nuclear weapons from submarines would significantly enhance Israel's reported nuclear deterrent, by shielding the launch platform from all but the most sophisticated countermeasures. According to the Times story, Israel would use Dolphin class diesel-powered submarines acquired from Germany to launch the nuclear-armed Harpoon missiles. Israel has three such submarines in its arsenal.” [AP 1013]
CRIMES OF THIS WAR. “Amnesty International condemns in the strongest terms the large-scale destruction by the Israeli army of Palestinian homes in a refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah, which made homeless hundreds of people, including many children and elderly people. Wanton destruction constitutes a war crime.” [AMNESTY.ORG 1013]
HONOR AMONG THIEVES. “U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said on Tuesday that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld remained in charge of Iraq's rebuilding despite a White House reorganization seen as diluting his power ... Administration officials also said on Tuesday the Pentagon was planning a new office for Iraq to oversee tens of billions of dollars in contracts, taking away some power held by the U.S. Agency for International Development. USAID, which falls under the auspices of the State Department, has been responsible for handing out many of the lucrative reconstruction projects in Iraq along with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.” [REUTERS 1014]
WE'RE ALL ON THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER. G. Monbiot: “...from June last year ... Bush has made 41 major speeches to live audiences. Of these, 14 - just over a third - were delivered to military personnel or veterans ... this commander-in-chief goes far beyond the patriotic blandishments of previous leaders. He sometimes dresses up in the uniform of the troops he is meeting. He quotes their mottoes and songs, retells their internal jokes, mimics their slang. He informs the ‘dog-faced soldiers’ that they are ‘the rock of Marne’, or asks naval cadets whether they gave ‘the left-handed salute to Tecumseh, the God of 2.0’. The television audience is mystified, but the men love him for it. He is, or so his speeches suggest, one of them. He starts by leading them in chants of ‘Hoo-ah! Hoo-ah!’, then plasters them with praise and reminds them that their pay, healthcare and housing (unlike those of any other workers in America) are being upgraded. After this, they will cheer everything he says. So he uses these occasions to attack his opponents and announce new and often controversial policies. The marines were the first to be told about his interstate electricity grid; he instructed the American Legion about the reform of the Medicare program; last week he explained his plans for the taxation of small businesses to the national guard. The troops may not have the faintest idea what he's talking about, but they cheer him to the rafters anyway.” [GUARDIAN 1014]
TERRORIST STATE. “Israeli tanks and bulldozers moved back into the Rafah refugee camp in the Gaza Strip Tuesday, just days after the Israeli army destroyed about 100 houses, leaving some 2,000 people homeless and eight, including two children, dead. At the same time, the Israeli army ordered 15 Palestinians being held without trial to be permanently deported from the West Bank to Gaza - a move denounced by Israeli and international human rights groups as illegal.” [INDEPENDENT 1015]
MR. SHARON, TEAR DOWN THIS WALL. “The United States has vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israel's controversial West Bank barrier. The draft, introduced by Arab states, declared that the structure was illegal under international law and that construction must be halted.” [BBC 1015] “Palestinian U.N. envoy Nasser al-Kidwa said Arab states would now take his draft resolution to the 191-nation U.N. General Assembly, where the United States, Israel's closest ally, has no veto and the Palestinians enjoy strong support.” [REUTERS 1015] David Landau: “David Landau: This kind of fence, now being planned by the government, will not create a separation between Israel and the Palestinians. It will separate between Israelis and Israelis, and between Palestinians and Palestinians. Hopefully, it will block terrorism, but it will also block the creation of a viable and territorially contiguous Palestinian state. Thus, it will prevent the implementation of the two-state solution - the only option that can preserve Israel's character as a Jewish, democratic state. [HAARETZ 1017]
WHY DO THEY HATE US? “The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, Wednesday urged America to recognise that terrorists can ‘have serious moral goals’. He said that while terrorism must always be condemned, it was wrong to assume its perpetrators were devoid of political rationality. ‘It is possible to use unspeakably wicked means to pursue an aim that is shared by those who would not dream of acting in the same way, an aim that is intelligible or desirable.’ He said that in ignoring this, in its criticism of al-Qa'eda, America ‘loses the power of self-criticism and becomes trapped in a self-referential morality.’” [TELEGRAPH 1015]
NOW THEY TELL US. “The person responsible for analyzing the Iraqi weapons threat for Colin Powell says the Secretary of State misinformed Americans during his speech at the U.N. last winter. Greg Thielmann tells [CBS] that at the time of Powell’s speech, Iraq didn’t pose an imminent threat to anyone -- not even its own neighbors [on 60 Minutes II] ... he believes the decision to go to war was made first and then the intelligence was interpreted to fit that conclusion. “The main problem was that the senior administration officials have what I call faith-based intelligence,” says Thielmann. “They knew what they wanted the intelligence to show. They were really blind and deaf to any kind of countervailing information the intelligence community would produce” ... Steve Allinson and a dozen other U.N. inspectors in Iraq also watched Powell’s speech. “Various people would laugh at various times [during Powell’s speech] because the information he was presenting was just, you know, didn't mean anything -- had no meaning,” says Allinson. [CBS 1015]
WHERE DO TERRORISTS COME FROM? “War in Iraq has swollen the ranks of al Qaeda and galvanized the Islamic militant group's will, the International Institute for Strategic Studies said on Wednesday in its annual report. The 2003-2004 edition of the British-based think-tank's annual bible for defense analysts, The Military Balance, said Washington's assertions after the Iraq conflict that it had turned the corner in the war on terror were ‘over-confident.’ The report, widely considered an authoritative text on the military capabilities of states and militant groups worldwide, could prove fodder for critics of the U.S.-British invasion and of the reconstruction effort that has followed in Iraq.” [REUTERS 1015]
CAN’T KEEP THE POODLE ON THE PORCH. “Tony Blair, UK prime minister, has dismayed the Bush administration, which believes he has embraced European Union efforts to set up an independent military structure outside Nato. The US has received mixed signals from London despite assurances from UK diplomats that Britain would seek to scupper such moves.” [FT 1015]
NOW THEY TELL US (II). “Halliburton, the Houston company with a no-bid contract to restore Iraq's oil industry, is charging U.S. taxpayers exorbitant prices to import gasoline into Iraq, two Democratic congressmen said Wednesday. Reps. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and John Dingell, D-Mich., wrote the Bush administration that the company's KBR subsidiary is billing the Army between $1.62 and $1.70 per gallon, while Iraqis are charged between 4 cents and 15 cents at the pump ... In a further move against Halliburton, Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., announced Wednesday he would propose barring the government from awarding Iraq reconstruction contracts to companies that maintain close financial ties to the president, vice president or members of the president's Cabinet. Lautenberg wants the measure added to an $87 billion reconstruction bill for Iraq and Afghanistan. Cheney receives deferred payments from Halliburton and also has stock options.” [AP 1015]
WINNING HEARTS AND MINDS. P. Cockburn: “New babies are being named Saddam by their parents in this oil refinery town [Baiji] 160 miles north of Baghdad, such is the hostility to the US occupation, an official at the local births and deaths registration office said. Iraqis queued yesterday for new dinar banknotes with pictures of Babylonian rulers and a 10th century Iraqi mathematician in place of a smiling Saddam Hussein. But in Baiji, ‘Long live Saddam’ slogans are scrawled everywhere. The mayor's office and a building which housed a pro-American opposition party are burned out, having been set on fire by demonstrators who brandished pictures of the former Iraqi leader. A local sheikh said: ‘The people have decided that the disasters they suffer under the Americans are worse than those they suffered under Saddam Hussein.’ He pointed to a small pit in the concrete in the courtyard of his house where a grenade had exploded, thrown by someone who thought him too close to the Americans.” [INDEPENDENT 1016]
HOW DARE THEY ATTACK US? “The ambush on a US ‘diplomatic convoy’ in Gaza on Wednesday threatens to turn another page in the long war known as Israel-Palestine. The roadside bomb wrecked one car and killed three US officials while traveling into Gaza under a Palestinian Authority police escort just south of the Strip's main Eretz crossing into Israel. Among the dead were junior diplomats and CIA agents, said Israeli and Palestinian media sources. Yasser Arafat denounced the attack as a ‘crime’, aware that it could harden even further American attitudes toward his leadership and/or precipitate the US-administration's already ‘disengaged’ posture toward the Israel-Palestinian conflict into an all-out flight. Palestinian Prime Minister, Ahmed Qurei (better known as Abu Ala) vowed to open an investigation into those responsible for the ambush. He too needs all the American help he can get. Israel said it underscored its demand that the PA ‘dismantle the terrorist infrastructure’ in the PA areas.” [AHRAM 1016]
MERCHANTS OF DEATH. “The United States sells more arms than any other country, and Saudi Arabia leads the world for buying arms among developing countries while India spent 900 million dollars on weapons, a report from the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) said on Wednesday. The United States holds a 40.3 per cent market share in arms sales, raking in $10.241 billion from sales in 2002, according to the IISS annual report The Military Balance 2003-2004, on arms around the world. Saudi Arabia spent an estimated $5.2 billion in 2002 buying weapons, despite having reduced arms purchases from the 1995-1998 period, the report said.India and the United Arab Emirates each spent $900 million on weapons. Britain, the world's second-largest arms seller, sold $4.7 billion worth of weapons in 2002 and has a 18.5 per cent market share. It is followed by Russia ($3.1 billion and 12.2 per cent market share) and France ($1.8 billion and 7.1 per cent market share). China comes fifth down the list selling $800 million worth of arms in 2002 (3.1 per cent market share), followed by Ukraine at $600 million, Germany at $500 million (two per cent market share) and Italy at $400 million (1.6 per cent market share). Israel, the world's ninth-largest arms seller, brought in $300 million from sales in 2002, followed by Brazil at $200 million.” [AFP 1016]
THE NEXT WAR AGAINST TERRORISM? (II) “Tens of thousands of poor indigenous Bolivians marched into the capital on Thursday as their leaders rejected President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada's attempt to defuse a deadly revolt, declaring they would protest until the ‘butcher’ quit. The demonstrators filed downhill from the poor outskirts of La Paz, exploding dynamite sticks and shouting slogans such as ‘Goni (a nickname for the president) is a murderer.’ Indigenous leaders said his offer to change some of his hated U.S.-backed, free-market policies was too little, too late.” [REUTERS 1017] “Bolivian President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada stepped down Friday amid intensifying protests by indigenous groups over his proposal to route a natural-gas pipeline to the U.S. and Mexico through Chile.” [SLATE 1019]
FRAGGING FRAGMENTS. “It weighs more than a thousand pounds, so carting it away could present a few logistical problems for the average looter. But the fact remains that there is a very nice 15-foot-long missile, in mint condition, there for the taking, at one of Saddam Hussein's defense factories a few miles west of here. The missile, along with a dozen ready-to-fire 107-millimeter antitank rounds, just a few feet away, is part of a problem that the American military has only begun to grapple with: as much as one million tons of ammunition is scattered around Iraq, much of it unguarded -- like the armaments here -- simply because the United States does not have the personnel to keep watch.” [NYT 1017]
WE’LL MAKE A ‘CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS.’ “Three U.S. soldiers and two Iraqi police officers were killed in an overnight firefight with Shiite Muslims in the holy city of Karbala, as religious tensions there continue to rise.” [PBS 1017] “Four MPs were killed in separate incidents in Iraq -- three in a firefight in the holy city of Karbala, and another by a roadside bomb in Baghdad. [In Karbala] soldiers were engaged by bodyguards of Mahmoud Hassani, a minor Shiite cleric ‘neither well thought of nor well known.’ The paper regards the incident as evidence that anti-American sentiment is rising among the up-till-now relatively peaceful Shiite majority. Counting these most recent deaths, 101 U.S. soldiers have been killed in combat in Iraq since President Bush declared an end to major hostilities May 1.” [WP 1018 via SLATE] “Three weeks ago Hamas' spiritual leader said American policies in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine meant that the Bush administration had ‘declared war on Islam’.” [AHRAM 1017]
WHY DON’T WE HEAR THE ALTERNATIVES? Patrick Seale: “Sharon's main worry ... and the reason for his haste [in the building of a ‘Greater Israel’ on the ruins of Palestinian nationalism], is that George W. Bush could be thrown out of office at next year's US presidential election -- and with him the whole band of pro-Israeli neoconservatives which have set the administration's agenda since Sept. 11, 2001. These are the men who pressed for war against Iraq as a first step toward reshaping the geopolitics of the entire Middle East. But the sluggish US economy, the mess in Iraq, and the anti-American anger sweeping the Arab and Muslim world are now making Bush look vulnerable. A Democrat in the White House may not be so tolerant of Israel's foolhardy ambitions or so ready to endorse the neocons' aggressive policies. Sharon has other worries closer to home. The political fallout from the current police investigations of his two sons, Omri and Gilad, for alleged sharp practice and bribe-taking could drive Sharon himself from office in 2004. And to compound his fears, the Israeli left which for the past two years has seemed terminally ill and politically irrelevant is showing faint signs of revival. Leading opposition figures such as Yossi Beilin, Amram Mitzna and Avraham Burg have joined with Palestinian moderates, led by Yasser Abed Rabbo, in drafting a detailed peace plan for a two-state solution -- the so-called Geneva Accords. The plan, the result of two years of secret negotiations funded by the Swiss government, is due to be signed formally in Geneva next month, putting flesh on the bones of the tentative agreements reached at Taba in January 2001. It represents everything that Sharon and his friends detest and which he has spent his life seeking to destroy. It provides for an Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders (with some marginal modifications) to allow for the emergence of a viable Palestinian state; some major settlements close to the Green Line to be annexed to Israel but those deep inside Palestinian territory to be evacuated; Jerusalem as a shared capital; Palestinian sovereignty over the Haram al-Sharif (Temple Mount); Israeli sovereignty over the Wailing Wall and the Jewish quarter of the Old City; and -- a major Palestinian concession -- the abandonment of the ‘right of return’ to towns and villages lost in 1948. An international force would monitor implementation of the plan while radical Palestinian groups would be tamed and shut down ... [Sharon] has reacted to the Geneva Accords with barely suppressed rage. ‘By what right,’ he snorted, ‘are left-wing people proposing moves that Israel can never do, nor will ever do!’” [DAILY STAR (LB) 1017]
HERETICAL AND STUPID. “The general leading the hunt for Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein has publicly declared that the Christian God is ‘bigger’ than Allah, who is a false ‘idol’, and believes the war on terrorism is a fight with Satan, it emerged yesterday.Investigative reporters from the Los Angeles Times and NBC television have dug up two years' worth of seemingly incendiary comments from Lt Gen William ‘Jerry’ Boykin, the newly promoted deputy undersecretary of state of defence for intelligence.Gen Boykin has repeatedly told Christian groups and prayer meetings that President George W Bush was chosen by God to lead the global fight against Satan. He told one gathering: ‘Why is this man in the White House? The majority of Americans did not vote for him. He's in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this.’In January, he told Baptists in Florida about a victory over a Muslim warlord in Somalia, who had boasted that Allah would protect him from American capture. ‘I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real god and his was an idol,’ Gen Boykin said. He also emerged from the conflict with a photograph of the Somalian capital Mogadishu bearing a strange dark mark. He has said this showed ‘the principalities of darkness. . . a demonic presence in that city that God revealed to me as the enemy’.On the Middle East, Gen Boykin told an Oregon church in June that America could not ignore its Judaeo-Christian roots. ‘Our religion came from Judaism and therefore [Islamic] radicals will hate us forever.’ In the same month, Gen Boykin told an Oklahoma congregation that Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were not the enemy. ‘Our enemy is a spiritual enemy because we are a nation of believers. . . His name is Satan.’ The disclosures will doubtless be seized on by Muslim critics as proof that the US-led war on terrorism is a crusade against Islam. It is a charge that Mr Bush has worked hard to refute. Though careful to respect minority religions within its ranks, the US military is strikingly devout from top to bottom. Mr Bush and several key figures in his administration are staunch Christian conservatives. Few outside the Pentagon noticed when Gen Boykin, a 13-year member of Delta Force, the top-secret commando unit modelled on the SAS, was promoted this summer, with responsibility for speeding the flow of top-secret intelligence to commandos hunting bin Laden and other high-value targets. At a routine press conference yesterday, Donald Rumsfeld, the normally confident defence secretary, appeared wrong-footed by the controversy. He hailed the general's ‘outstanding record’ and said his comments were made ‘in his private capacity’.” [TELEGRAPH UK 1017]
UH, RIGHT. Howard Dean, 10/13/03: “The fact is that we wouldn't be (in Iraq) if it weren't for Democrats like Senator Kerry.”
AND FROM THE OFFICIAL DEMOCRAT. “...the 1993 siege of David Koresh's Mount Carmel commune in Waco, Texas, where four law-enforcement officers were killed and nearly 90 civilians - men, women and children - massacred by being shot and/or burned alive. Those seeking an investigation of his part in the Waco outrage say that Clark not only played a hidden role in the military-style assault on the Branch Davidians, but easily could have refused to participate in what was a clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act that bars use of the U.S. military for civilian law-enforcement activities. Although Clark never publicly has discussed his role in the attack on the Branch Davidians and did not respond to Insight's requests for an interview to discuss his role at Waco, there are indisputable facts that confirm he had knowledge of the grim plans to bring the standoff to an end. Between August 1992 and April 1994, Clark was commander of the 1st Cavalry Division of the Army's III Corps at Fort Hood, Texas. According to a report by the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the list of military personnel and equipment used at Waco included: 15 active-duty military personnel, 13 Texas National Guard personnel, nine Bradley fighting vehicles, five combat-engineer vehicles, one tank-retrieval vehicle and two M1A1 Abrams tanks. Additionally, Fort Hood reportedly was used for much of the training for the bloody attack on the Davidians and their children.” [INSIGHT 1015]
DOESN’T MEAN A THING. “Santa Cruz Mayor Emily Reilly is warning her constituents in this liberal beach town not to jump to conspiracy theories about several unusual events involving her bakery in the days since the city council decided to challenge President Bush. It was Reilly who, after a Santa Cruz City Council vote on Sept. 9, sent a letter to Washington asking the U.S. House Judiciary Committee to consider impeaching President Bush Four days later, a sophisticated burglar pried moulding off a window at Emily's Good Things to Eat bakery, evaded a motion detector and stole an old computer hard drive and the hard-drive backup. Then, on Sept. 17, Emily's Good Things To Eat bakery was visited by an agent of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, who introduced himself, showed his identification, and looked around. He asked if they used artificial coloring (heavens no!) or if they transported anything across the state lines (they've been known to mail cookie-grams) ... June Hoffmann, who co-owns the downtown Hoffman's Bakery Cafe, said that in almost two decades of shaping marzipan and kneading breads, she's never been visited by the FDA. Bakers were baffled as well at the House of Bread. ‘Not one of our ten House of Breads has ever been visited by the FDA,’ said Sheila McCann. ‘I'd say this sounds a little bit suspect.’ Late Wednesday night, the city of Arcata followed in Santa Cruz's footsteps, unanimously adopting a letter urging the Judiciary Committee to investigate whether the Bush administration violated the constitution by exaggerating the threat posed by Iraq before the war. Arcata council member Dave Meserve was in Washington on Thursday, hoping to hand-deliver Arcata's letter on Capitol Hill while attending a conference of representatives of the 188 cities and three states that have publicly opposed the U.S. Patriot Act.” [AP 1016]
GET HIM OUT. “A new ABC/Washington Post poll has found that only 46 percent of voters in the U.S. would now vote to re-elect [sic] Bush marking Bush's weakest showing to date. And nearly 60 percent of Americans say the number of U.S. casualties in Iraq has become unacceptable.” [DN 1015]
THE NEXT WAR AGAINST TERRORISM? (III) “The U.S. House of Representatives voted 398-4 Wednesday to impose news sanctions against Syria ... tensions increased along the Syrian-Iraq border. Agence France Press is reporting that U.S. forces killed several men identified as foreign fighters along the border.” [DN 1019]
WHAT WE HAVE HERE IS A FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE. A soon-to-be-published book titled The Faith of George W. Bush reports that during his run for president, George W. Bush told a Texas preacher, ‘I feel like God wants me to run for president. I can't explain it, but I sense my country is going to need me... I know it won't be easy on me or my family, but God wants me to do it.’ [DN 1019]
ALTHO’ AMERICANS ARE OPPOSED. “Congress overwhelmingly approved $87 billion of military and reconstruction funds for use in Iraq and Afghanistan, granting the Bush administration the vast majority of what he asked for when he sent an omnibus plan to Capitol Hill in early September. Both chambers ended up trimming about $2 billion worth of prisons, hospitals, and garbage trucks from the original proposal, with the Senate straying further still from the White House's wish list by designating $10 billion in reconstruction aid as a loan to be paid back out of future Iraqi oil revenues. The Senate also added $1.3 billion in health-care benefits for veterans and excised about $200 million earmarked for importing petroleum into Iraq, amid claims by some lawmakers that a subsidiary of Halliburton was improperly inflating prices for such services. A conference committee will hash out the differences between the House and Senate versions of the package next week ... Sen. John Kerry, Sen. John Edwards and Rep. Dennis Kucinich voted against the plan, while Rep. Dick Gephardt and Sen. Joe Lieberman were in favor.” [NYT 1018 via SLATE]
HIDDEN CHARGES. “In addition to the $55 billion the U.S. and World Bank estimate will be needed to rebuild Iraq over the next five years, the country is carrying between $300 billion and $400 billion in international debt, including nearly $200 billion in unpaid reparations from the first Gulf War.” [LAT 1018 via SLATE]
NOTE THE DATE. “In April 2002 the State Department assigned 200 Iraqi business leaders, lawyers, and engineers to 17 working groups charged with outlining the major challenges of a U.S. occupation, the NYT explains. The resulting 2,000-page report was more realistic about the dilapidated state of Iraqi infrastructure and civil society than the Pentagon's reconstruction planners were. It also predicted that a power vacuum immediately after Saddam Hussein's fall could lead to widespread looting, and that a quick dismantling of the Iraqi army might cause disgruntled ex-soldiers to attack the U.S. The Defense Department's reconstruction office did not learn about the report until less than a month before the start of the war. According to ‘State Department officials,’ the Pentagon blocked efforts by the military's chief reconstruction official to appoint one of the report's coordinators as his adviser.” [SLATE 1019] On Friday, the UN Security Council approved a US resolution that made the occupation of Iraq "multinational" -- but with the US in charge...
IT’S ALSO A PRISON, INTERROGATION, AND PERHAPS TORTURE CENTER. “The former Saddam International Airport now houses Iraq's first Burger King ... its sales have reached the top 10 among all Burger King franchises on Earth in the five months since it opened ... even with A limited menu, and with competition from the Bob Hope dining facility at the airport -- which is free and serves 8,000 meals a day -- Burger King's daily sales are between $15,000 and $18,000, military officials say. The restaurant probably owes much of its success to its location. The sprawling, heavily fortified airport complex, the nerve center of the U.S. military's operations in Iraq, provides a captive clientele of more than 6,000 soldiers, plus contractors and other civilians. In addition, Washington dignitaries fly in and out, and all mail for U.S. forces in Iraq arrives here.” [WP 1019]
NOTE THE ‘FREE MARKET’ PROVISIONS. “The NYT reefers a dispatch from Kabul on the imminent publication of the proposed new constitution for Afghanistan. The document was drawn up by a commission of 35 ‘lawyers and experts’ appointed by President Hamid Karzai. To solicit citizen input, the commission sent out half a million questionnaires and got back 100,000. The proposed government will have centralized (i.e., non-federal) authority, with a president who appoints a prime minister, a bicameral legislature, an independent judiciary, and some human rights and free-market guarantees. Most Afghanis worry that the new government will be entirely secularist, so the commissioners decided to call the new nation the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and include language that ‘no law will be made which will oppose Islamic principles.’ A ‘grand assembly’ of 500 people, many of them conservative Islamists, will convene on Dec. 10 to debate the constitution's adoption.” [SLATE 1019]
"Trying to determine what is going on in the world
by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the
time by watching the second hand of a clock."
--Ben Hecht (1894-1964)
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