April 24, 2008 by dandelionsalad

CIA Acknowledges It Has More Than 7000 Documents Relating To Secret Detention Program, Rendition & Torture

www.amnestyusa.org
For Immediate Release
April 23, 2008
Contact:
Sharon Singh, AIUSA, 202 544 0200 x 289, ssingh@aiusa.org
Jen Nessel, CCR, 212 614 6449, jnessel@ccrjustice.org
Veerle Opgenhaffen, NYU IHRC/CHRGJ, 212 992 8186, opgenhaffen@juris.law.nyu.edu

Human Right Groups Charge Documents Reveal CIA Stonewalled Congressional Oversight Committees; CIA Says Many Documents too Sensitive to Release

(New York and Washington, DC)—The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) must stop stonewalling congressional oversight committees and release vital documents related to the program of secret detentions, renditions, and torture, three prominent human rights groups said today. Amnesty International USA (AIUSA), the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the International Human Rights Clinic at NYU School of Law (NYU IHRC) reiterated their call for information, following the CIA’s filing of a summary judgment motion this week to end a lawsuit and avoid turning over more than 7000 documents related to its secret “ghost” detention and extraordinary rendition program. This motion is in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed in federal court last June by these groups. The organizations will file their response brief next month.

Among other assertions, the CIA claimed that it did not have to release the documents because many consist of correspondence with the White House or top Bush administration officials, or because they are between parties seeking legal advice on the programs, including guidance on the legality of certain interrogation procedures. The CIA confirmed that it requested—and received—legal advice from attorneys at the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel concerning these procedures.

“For the first time, the CIA has acknowledged that extensive records exist relating to its use of enforced disappearances and secret prisons,” said Curt Goering, AIUSA senior deputy executive director. “Given what we already know about documents written by Bush administration officials trying to justify torture and other human rights crimes, one does not need a fertile imagination to conclude that the real reason for refusing to disclose these documents has more to do with avoiding disclosure of criminal activity than national security.”

The CIA’s admission that it possesses at least 7000 documents relating to rendition, secret detention and torture generated renewed calls by the human rights groups for transparency and accountability from the government.

“The Freedom of Information Act is one of the major checks on government criminality in this country,” said CCR Executive Director Vincent Warren. “The CIA has acknowledged that it has well over 7000 documents that relate to the torture and disappearance of men. These include some of our clients, like Majid Khan, who were known to be in the program. The public needs to know what crimes were committed in our name and how they were justified. This has been the most secretive, least transparent administration in history, and it is well past time for accountability.”

AIUSA, CCR, and NYU IHRC have filed FOIA requests with several U.S. government agencies, including the CIA. These FOIA requests sought information about individuals who are—or have been—held by the U.S. government or detained with U.S. involvement, and about whom there is no public record. The requests also sought information about the government’s legal justifications for its secret detention and extraordinary rendition program. Comprehensive information about the identities and locations of prisoners in CIA custody—as well as the conditions of their detention and the specific interrogation methods used against them— has never been publicly revealed. This lack of transparency continues to prevent scrutiny by the public or the courts and leaves detainees vulnerable to abuse and torture.

Although the CIA did release a paltry number of documents in response to the FOIA request, most were already in the public domain, such as newspaper articles and a single copy of the Fourth Geneva Convention which governs the treatment of civilians in times of war. The limited relevant documents that were released were documents pertaining to briefings demanded by the House and Senate Intelligence Committees regarding various aspects of the overseas detention and interrogation program.

Documents released to plaintiffs by the CIA demonstrate that many within the government itself have been unable to obtain accurate information from the CIA. These documents, which include letters from Members of Congress to the CIA, demonstrate a pattern of withholding information from Congress. In a pointed bipartisan letter on October 16, 2003, then-Chair and Ranking Member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence requested that CIA Director George Tenet provide senior level briefings on the treatment of, and information obtained by, three men known to be held in secret CIA detention, admonishing the CIA by stating that the committee was “frustrated with the quality of the information” provided in past briefings.

The CIA appears to have avoided answering detailed requests for specific information, responding instead with form letters and references to briefings. These practices led to a forceful letter from Senator Carl Levin, Current Chairman of the Senate Committee on Armed Services, (then the Ranking Member) who was attempting to investigate CIA involvement in detainee deaths. In a letter dated Oct. 24, 2005, Senator Levin noted that “[t]he lack of CIA cooperation with the investigations to date has left significant omissions in the record.” The CIA’s failure to cooperate with members of Congress demonstrates the need for public scrutiny of the secret detention and extraordinary rendition program under FOIA.

“The CIA has employed illegal techniques such as torture, enforced disappearances, and extraordinary rendition,” said Meg Satterthwaite, Director of the NYU IHRC. “It cannot use FOIA exemptions as a shield to hide its violations of U.S. and international law.”

In its legal filings, the CIA acknowledged that this program “will continue.” Some prisoners have been transferred to prisons in other countries for proxy detention where they face the risk of torture and where they continue to be held secretly, without charge or trial. Human rights reports indicate that the fate and whereabouts of at least 30 people believed to have been held in secret U.S. custody remain unknown.

In September 2006, President Bush publicly acknowledged the existence of CIA-operated secret prisons. At the same time, 14 detainees from these facilities were transferred to Guantánamo and several more have arrived since. The administration has admitted to using so-called “alternative interrogation procedures” on those held in the CIA program, including waterboarding. The international community and the United States, in other contexts, have unequivocally deemed these techniques torture.

For more information or copies of the CIA’s legal filings and released documents, please contact ssingh@aiusa.org, jnessel@ccrjustice.org or opgenhaffen@juris.law.nyu.edu.

For more information about the organizations involved, please see their websites: http://www.amnestyusa.org, http://www.ccrjustice.org, or http://www.chrgj.org. To see the most recent documents from this CIA filing, go to http://www.ccrjustice.org/newsroom/press-releases/cia-foia-documents.

h/t: CLG

April 24, 2008 by dandelionsalad

9/11 Contradictions: When Did Cheney Enter the Underground Bunker?

Dandelion Salad

by David Ray Griffin
Global Research, April 24, 2008
The Canadian

With regard to the morning of 9/11, everyone agrees that at some time after 9:03 (when the South Tower of the World Trade Center was struck) and before 10:00, Vice President Dick Cheney went down to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC), sometimes simply called the “bunker,” under the east wing of the White House. Everyone also agrees that, once there, Cheney was in charge—that he was either making decisions or relaying decisions from President Bush. But there is enormous disagreement as to exactly when Cheney entered the PEOC.

According to The 9/11 Commission Report, Cheney arrived “shortly before 10:00, perhaps at 9:58” (The 9/11 Commission Report [henceforth 9/11CR], 40). This official time, however, contradicts almost all previous reports, some of which had him there before 9:20. This difference is important because, if the 9/11 Commission’s time is correct, Cheney was not in charge in the PEOC when the Pentagon was struck, or for most of the period during which United Flight 93 was approaching Washington. But if the reports that have him there by 9:20 are correct, he was in charge in the PEOC all that time.

Mineta’s Report of Cheney’s Early Arrival

The most well-known statement contradicting the 9/11 Commission was made by Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta during his public testimony to the 9/11 Commission on May 23, 2003. Saying that he “arrived at the PEOC at about 9:20 AM,” Mineta reported that he then overheard part of an ongoing conversation, which had obviously begun before he arrived, between a young man and Vice President Cheney. This conversation was about a plane coming toward Washington and ended with Cheney confirming that “the orders still stand.” When Commissioner Timothy Roemer later asked Mineta how long after his arrival he overheard this conversation about whether the orders still stood, Mineta replied: “Probably about five or six minutes.” This would mean, Roemer pointed out, “about 9:25 or 9:26.”

This is a remarkable contradiction. Given the fact that Cheney, according to Mineta, had been engaged in an ongoing exchange, he must have been in the PEOC for several minutes before Mineta’s 9:20 arrival. If Cheney had been there since 9:15, there would be a 43-minute contradiction between Mineta’s testimony and The 9/11 Commission Report. Why would such an enormous contradiction exist?

One possible explanation would be that Mineta was wrong. His story, however, is in line with that of many other witnesses.

Other Reports Supporting Cheney’s Early Arrival

Richard Clarke reported that he, Cheney, and Condoleezza Rice had a brief meeting shortly after 9:03, following which the Secret Service wanted Cheney and Rice to go down to the PEOC. Rice, however, first went with Clarke to the White House’s Video Teleconferencing Center, where Clarke was to set up a video conference, which began at about 9:10. After spending a few minutes there, Rice said, according to Clarke: “You’re going to need some decisions quickly. I’m going to the PEOC to be with the Vice President. Tell us what you need.” At about 9:15, Norman Mineta arrived and Clarke “suggested he join the Vice President” (Against All Enemies, 2-5). Clarke thereby implied that Cheney was in the PEOC several minutes prior to 9:15.

In an ABC News program on the first anniversary of 9/11, Cheney’s White House photographer David Bohrer reported that, shortly after 9:00, some Secret Service agents came into Cheney’s office and said, “Sir, you have to come with us.” During this same program, Rice said: “As I was trying to find all of the principals, the Secret Service came in and said, ‘You have to leave now for the bunker. The Vice President’s already there. There may be a plane headed for the White House.’” ABC’s Charles Gibson then said: “In the bunker, the Vice President is joined by Rice and Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta” (“9/11: Interviews by Peter Jennings,” ABC News, September 11, 2002).

The 9/11 Commission’s Late-Arrival Claim

The 9/11 Commission agreed that the vice president was hustled down to the PEOC after word was received that a plane was headed towards the White House. It claimed, however, that this word was not received until 9:33. But even then, according to the Commission, the Secret Service agents immediately received another message, telling them that the aircraft had turned away, so “[n]o move was made to evacuate the Vice President at this time.” It was not until “just before 9:36” that the Secret Service ordered Cheney to go below (9/11CR 39). But even after he entered the underground corridor at 9:37, Cheney did not immediately go to the PEOC. Rather:

Once inside, Vice President Cheney and the agents paused in an area of the tunnel that had a secure phone, a bench, and television. The Vice President asked to speak to the President, but it took time for the call to be connected. He learned in the tunnel that the Pentagon had been hit, and he saw television coverage of the smoke coming from the building. (9/11CR 40)

Next, after Lynne Cheney “joined her husband in the tunnel,” the Commission claimed, “Mrs. Cheney and the Vice President moved from the tunnel to the shelter conference room” after the call ended, which was not until after 9:55. As for Rice, the Commission added, she “entered the conference room shortly after the Vice President” (9/11CR 40).

The contradiction could not be clearer. According to the Commission, Cheney, far from entering the PEOC before 9:20, as Mineta and others said, did not arrive there until about 9:58, 20 minutes after the 9:38 strike on the Pentagon, about which he had learned in the corridor.

Cheney’s Account on Meet the Press

The 9/11 Commission’s account even contradicted that given by Cheney himself in a well-known interview. Speaking to Tim Russert on NBC’s Meet the Press only five days after 9/11, Cheney said: “[A]fter I talked to the president, . . . I went down into . . . the Presidential Emergency Operations Center. . . . [W]hen I arrived there within a short order, we had word the Pentagon’s been hit.” Cheney himself, therefore, indicated that he had entered the PEOC prior to the (9:38) strike on the Pentagon, not 20 minutes after it, as the Commission would later claim.

Dealing with the Contradictions

How did the 9/11 Commission deal with the fact that its claim about the time of Cheney’s arrival in the PEOC had been contradicted by Bohrer, Clarke, Mineta, Rice, several news reports, and even Cheney himself? It simply omitted any mention of these contradictory reports.

Of these omissions, the most important was the Commission’s failure to mention Norman Mineta’s testimony, even though it was given to the Commission in an open hearing—as can be seen by reading the transcript of that session (May 23, 2003). This portion of Mineta’s testimony was also deleted from the official version of the video record of the 9/11 Commission hearings in the 9/11 Commission archives. (It can, however, be viewed on the Internet.)

During an interview for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 2006, Hamilton was asked what “Mineta told the Commission about where Dick Cheney was prior to 10 AM.” Hamilton replied: “I do not recall” (“9/11: Truth, Lies and Conspiracy: Interview: Lee Hamilton,” CBC News, 21 August 2006). It was surprising that Hamilton could not recall, because he had been the one doing the questioning when Mineta told the story of the young man’s conversation with Cheney. Hamilton, moreover, had begun his questioning by saying to Mineta: “You were there [in the PEOC] for a good part of the day. I think you were there with the Vice President.” And Mineta’s exchange with Timothy Roemer, during which it was established that Mineta had arrived at about 9:20, came immediately after Hamilton’s interrogation. And yet Hamilton, not being able to recall any of this, simply said, “we think that Vice President Cheney entered the bunker shortly before 10 o’clock.”

Obliterating Mineta’s Problematic Testimony

To see possible motives for the 9/11 Commission’s efforts to obliterate Mineta’s story from the public record, we need to look at the conversation he reported to the Commission. He said:

During the time that the airplane was coming in to the Pentagon, there was a young man who would come in and say to the Vice President, “The plane is 50 miles out.” “The plane is 30 miles out.” And when it got down to “the plane is 10 miles out,” the young man also said to the Vice President, “Do the orders still stand?” And the Vice President turned and whipped his neck around and said, “Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?”

Mineta’s story had dangerous implications with regard to the strike on the Pentagon, which occurred at 9:38. According to the 9/11 Commission, the military did not know that an aircraft was approaching the Pentagon until 9:36, so that it “had at most one or two minutes to react to the unidentified plane approaching Washington” (9/11CR 34). That claim was essential for explaining, among other things, why the Pentagon had not been evacuated before it was struck—a fact that resulted in 125 deaths. A spokesperson for Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, when asked why this evacuation had not occurred, said: “The Pentagon was simply not aware that this aircraft was coming our way” (Newsday, Sept. 23, 2001). Mineta’s testimony implied, by contrast, that Cheney and others knew that an aircraft was approaching Washington about 12 minutes before that strike.

Even more problematic was the question of the nature of “the orders.” Mineta assumed, he said, that they were orders to have the plane shot down. But the aircraft was not shot down. Also, the expected orders, especially on a day when two hijacked airliners had already crashed into buildings in New York, would have been to shoot down any nonmilitary aircraft entering the “prohibited” airspace over Washington, in which “civilian flying is prohibited at all times” (“Pilots Notified of Restricted Airspace; Violators Face Military Action,” FAA Press Release, September 28, 2001). If those orders had been given, there would have been no reason to ask if they still stood. The question made sense only if the orders were to do something unusual—not to shoot the aircraft down. It appeared, accordingly, that Mineta had inadvertently reported Cheney’s confirmation of stand-down orders.

That Mineta’s report was regarded as dangerous is suggested by the fact that the 9/11 Commission, besides deleting Mineta’s testimony and delaying Cheney’s entrance to the bunker by approximately 45 minutes, also replaced Mineta’s story with a new story about an incoming aircraft. According to The 9/11 Commission Report, here is what really happened:

At 10:02, the communicators in the shelter began receiving reports from the Secret Service of an inbound aircraft. . . . At some time between 10:10 and 10:15, a military aide told the Vice President and others that the aircraft was 80 miles out. Vice President Cheney was asked for authority to engage the aircraft. . . . The Vice President authorized fighter aircraft to engage the inbound plane. . . . The military aide returned a few minutes later, probably between 10:12 and 10:18, and said the aircraft was 60 miles out. He again asked for authorization to engage. The Vice President again said yes. (9/11CR 41)

The 9/11 Commission thereby presented the incoming aircraft story as one that ended with an order for a shoot down, not a stand down. And by having it occur after 10:10, the Commission not only disassociated it from the Pentagon strike but also ruled out the possibility that Cheney’s shootdown authorization might have led to the downing of United Flight 93 (which crashed, according to the Commission, at 10:03).

Given the fact that the 9/11 Commission’s account of Cheney’s descent to the bunker contradicted the testimony of not only Norman Mineta but also many other witnesses, including Cheney himself, Congress and the press need to launch investigations to determine what really happened.

About the writer:

This essay is an abbreviated version of Chapters 2 and 3 of Dr. Griffin’s 9/11 Contradictions: An Open Letter to Congress and the Press (Northampton: Olive Branch, March, 2008).

© Copyright David Ray Griffin, The Canadian, 2008
The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8788

see

Ted Olson’s Report of Phone Calls from Barbara Olson on 9/11: Three Official Denials by David Ray Griffin

Griffin Takes Powerful New Approach to 9/11 Truth

April 24, 2008 by dandelionsalad

Latin America: the attack on democracy By John Pilger

Dandelion Salad

By John Pilger
04/24/08 “ICH”

John Pilger argues that an unreported war is being waged by the US to restore power to the privileged classes at the expense of the poor

Beyond the sound and fury of its conquest of Iraq and campaign against Iran, the world’s dominant power is waging a largely unreported war on another continent – Latin America. Using proxies, Washington aims to restore and reinforce the political control of a privileged group calling itself middle-class, to shift the responsibility for massacres and drug trafficking away from the psychotic regime in Colombia and its mafiosi, and to extinguish hopes raised among Latin America’s impoverished majority by the reform governments of Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia.

In Colombia, the main battleground, the class nature of the war is distorted by the guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the Farc, whose own resort to kidnapping and the drugs trade has provided an instrument with which to smear those who have distinguished Latin America’s epic history of rebellion by opposing the proto-fascism of George W Bush’s regime. “You don’t fight terror with terror,” said President Hugo Chávez as US warplanes bombed to death thousands of civilians in Afghanistan following the 11 September 2001 attacks. Thereafter, he was a marked man. Yet, as every poll has shown, he spoke for the great majority of human beings who have grasped that the “war on terror” is a crusade of domination. Almost alone among national leaders standing up to Bush, Chávez was declared an enemy and his plans for a functioning social democracy independent of the United States a threat to Washington’s grip on Latin America. “Even worse,” wrote the Latin America specialist James Petras, “Chávez’s nationalist policies represented an alternative in Latin America at a time (2000-2003) when mass insurrections, popular uprisings and the collapse of pro-US client rulers (Argentina, Ecuador and Bolivia) were constant front-page news.”

It is impossible to underestimate the threat of this alternative as perceived by the “middle classes” in countries which have an abundance of privilege and poverty. In Venezuela, their “grotesque fantasies of being ruled by a ‘brutal communist dictator'”, to quote Petras, are reminiscent of the paranoia of the white population that backed South Africa’s apartheid regime. Like in South Africa, racism in Venezuela is rampant, with the poor ignored, despised or patronised, and a Caracas shock jock allowed casually to dismiss Chávez, who is of mixed race, as a “monkey”. This fatuous venom has come not only from the super-rich behind their walls in suburbs called Country Club, but from the pretenders to their ranks in middle-level management, journalism, public relations, the arts, education and the other professions, who identify vicariously with all things American. Journalists in broadcasting and the press have played a crucial role – acknowledged by one of the generals and bankers who tried unsuccessfully to overthrow Chávez in 2002. “We couldn’t have done it without them,” he said. “The media were our secret weapon.”

Many of these people regard themselves as liberals, and have the ear of foreign journalists who like to describe themselves as being “on the left”. This is not surprising. When Chávez was first elected in 1998, Venezuela was not an archetypical Latin American tyranny, but a liberal democracy with certain freedoms, run by and for its elite, which had plundered the oil revenue and let crumbs fall to the invisible millions in the barrios. A pact between the two main parties, known as puntofijismo, resembled the convergence of new Labour and the Tories in Britain and Republicans and Democrats in the US. For them, the idea of popular sovereignty was anathema, and still is.

Take higher education. At the taxpayer-funded elite “public” Venezuelan Central University, more than 90 per cent of the students come from the upper and “middle” classes. These and other elite students have been infiltrated by CIA-linked groups and, in defending their privilege, have been lauded by foreign liberals.

With Colombia as its front line, the war on democracy in Latin America has Chávez as its main target. It is not difficult to understand why. One of Chávez’s first acts was to revitalise the oil producers’ organisation Opec and force the oil price to record levels. At the same time he reduced the price of oil for the poorest countries in the Caribbean region and central America, and used Venezuela’s new wealth to pay off debt, notably Argentina’s, and, in effect, expelled the International Monetary Fund from a continent over which it once ruled. He has cut poverty by half – while GDP has risen dramatically. Above all, he gave poor people the confidence to believe that their lives would improve.

The irony is that, unlike Fidel Castro in Cuba, he presented no real threat to the well-off, who have grown richer under his presidency. What he has demonstrated is that a social democracy can prosper and reach out to its poor with genuine welfare, and without the extremes of “neo liberalism” – a decidedly unradical notion once embraced by the British Labour Party. Those ordinary Venezuelans who abstained during last year’s constitutional referendum were protesting that a “moderate” social democracy was not enough while the bureaucrats remained corrupt and the sewers overflowed.

Across the border in Colombia, the US has made Venezuela’s neighbour the Israel of Latin America. Under “Plan Colombia”, more than $6bn in arms, planes, special forces, mercenaries and logistics have been showered on some of the most murderous people on earth: the inheritors of Pinochet’s Chile and the other juntas that terrorised Latin America for a generation, their various gestapos trained at the School of the Americas in Georgia. “We not only taught them how to torture,” a former American trainer told me, “we taught them how to kill, murder, eliminate.” That remains true of Colombia, where government-inspired mass terror has been documented by Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and many others. In a study of 31,656 extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances between 1996 and 2006, the Colombian Commission of Jurists found that 46 per cent had been murdered by right-wing death squads and 14 percent by Farc guerrillas. The para militaries were responsible for most of the three million victims of internal displacement. This misery is a product of Plan Colombia’s pseudo “war on drugs”, whose real purpose has been to eliminate the Farc. To that goal has now been added a war of attrition on the new popular democracies, especially Venezuela.

US special forces “advise” the Colombian military to cross the border into Venezuela and murder and kidnap its citizens and infiltrate paramilitaries, and so test the loyalty of the Venezuelan armed forces. The model is the CIA-run Contra campaign in Honduras in the 1980s that brought down the reformist government in Nicaragua. The defeat of the Farc is now seen as a prelude to an all-out attack on Venezuela if the Vene zuelan elite – reinvigorated by its narrow referendum victory last year – broadens its base in state and local government elections in November.

America’s man and Colombia’s Pinochet is President Álvaro Uribe. In 1991, a declassified report by the US Defence Intelligence Agency revealed the then Senator Uribe as having “worked for the Medellín Cartel” as a “close personal friend” of the cartel’s drugs baron, Pablo Escobar. To date, 62 of his political allies have been investigated for close collaboration with paramilitaries. A feature of his rule has been the fate of journalists who have illuminated his shadows. Last year, four leading journalists received death threats after criticising Uribe. Since 2002, at least 31 journalists have been assassinated in Colombia. Uribe’s other habit is smearing trade unions and human rights workers as “collaborators with the Farc”. This marks them. Colombia’s death squads, wrote Jenny Pearce, author of the acclaimed Under the Eagle: US Intervention in Central America and the Caribbean (1982), “are increasingly active, confident that the president has been so successful in rallying the country against the Farc that little attention will shift to their atrocities”.

Uribe was personally championed by Tony Blair, reflecting Britain’s long-standing, mostly secret role in Latin America. “Counter-insurgency assistance” to the Colombian military, up to its neck in death-squad alliances, includes training by the SAS of units such as the High Mountain Battalions, condemned repeatedly for atrocities. On 8 March, Colombian officers were invited by the Foreign Office to a “counter-insurgency seminar” at the Wilton Park conference centre in southern England. Rarely has the Foreign Office so brazenly paraded the killers it mentors.

The western media’s role follows earlier models, such as the campaigns that cleared the way for the dismemberment of Yugoslavia and the credibility given to lies about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. The softening-up for an attack on Venezuela is well under way, with the repetition of similar lies and smears.

Cocaine trail

On 3 February, the Observer devoted two pages to claims that Chávez was colluding in the Colombian drugs trade. Similarly to the paper’s notorious bogus scares linking Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda, the Observer’s headline read, “Revealed: Chávez role in cocaine trail to Europe”. Allegations were unsubstantiated; hearsay uncorroborated. No source was identified. Indeed, the reporter, clearly trying to cover himself, wrote: “No source I spoke to accused Chávez himself of having a direct role in Colombia’s giant drug trafficking business.”

In fact, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime has reported that Venezuela is fully participating in international anti-drugs programmes and in 2005 seized the third-highest amount of cocaine in the world. Even the Foreign Office minister Kim Howells has referred to “Venezuela’s tre mendous co-operation”.

The drugs smear has recently been reinforced with reports that Chávez has an “increasingly public alliance [with] the Farc” (see “Dangerous liaisons”, New Statesman, 14 April). Again, there is “no evidence”, says the secretary general of the Organisation of American States. At Uribe’s request, and backed by the French government, Chávez played a mediating role in seeking the release of hostages held by the Farc. On 1 March, the negotiations were betrayed by Uribe who, with US logistical assistance, fired missiles at a camp in Ecuador, killing Raú Reyes, the Farc’s highest-level negotiator. An “email” recovered from Reyes’s laptop is said by the Colombian military to show that the Farc has received $300m from Chávez. The allegation is fake. The actual document refers only to Chávez in relation to the hostage exchange. And on 14 April, Chávez angrily criticised the Farc. “If I were a guerrilla,” he said, “I wouldn’t have the need to hold a woman, a man who aren’t soldiers. Free the civilians!”

However, these fantasies have lethal purpose. On 10 March, the Bush administration announced that it had begun the process of placing Venezuela’s popular democracy on a list of “terrorist states”, along with North Korea, Syria, Cuba, Sudan and Iran, the last of which is currently awaiting attack by the world’s leading terrorist state.

This article was first published by the New Statesman

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April 24, 2008 by dandelionsalad

In change of plans, Jenna Bush to wed Saudi Prince, Barbara to marry Chinese General (satire)

Robert

by R J Shulman
Dandelion Salad
featured writer
Robert’s blog post
April 24, 2008

WASHINGTON – Just months after the White House confirmed that Jenna Bush would marry Henry Hagar, the 29 year old son of former Virginia Lieutenant governor John Hagar, President Bush announced that Jenna will be marrying 58 year old Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia. “When the Prince came to me and told me he wanted to marry Jenna,” the President said, “I said, ‘done deal,’ just like on Deal or no Deal that show that I cameo appeared on.” When asked about this sudden change of engagement from Hagar, a man that George W. Bush had called Jenna’s “soulmate,” Bush said, “the Prince is more soulmatey than Henry,” who was promised a job with Blackwater in Iraq. His royal highness Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz had recently been appointed Secretary General of the National Security Council by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah of Suadi Arabia. Jenna, who recently entered a clinic for an unknown ailment was unavailable for comment.

In a related story, Jenna’s twin sister Barbara announced her engagement to General Zhu Chenghu, a top Chinese General. General Zhu had become known in world circles for his comments that he would not rule out the use of nuclear weapons against the United States if there was ever a skirmish over Taiwan. “If I have to for the good of the country,” Barbara said, before she was taken to the hospital for an apparent case of alcohol poisoning, “I’ll marry the wrinkled yellow bastard.”

“My granddaughters were headed for disastrous marriages to weak individuals,” said Barabara Bush, the President’s mother, “so these sudden marriages should work out well for them.” “It will work out for the US,” said Harold Winnokur, a senior researcher at Rand Institute, “as now Saudi Arabia won’t call in the US debt and China will hold off on their long range nuclear missiles, the ones aimed at the US.”

“Georgie is going to have the two sons he always wished he had,” said Laura Bush, who seemed to be moved to tears.” “I am pleased at these arrangements,” said Dick Cheney, “because if those two spoiled brats didn’t choose to marry those fine gentlemen, we would be hit again and hit hard.”

April 24, 2008 by dandelionsalad

Subsidizing Corporate Crime & Rewarding Constitutional Abuses

Dandelion Salad

By Shahid Buttar
ICH
04/24/08 “Huffington Post“

Government handouts to corporations might seem untenable at a time when more and more Americans suffer every day from the impacts of a mounting economic crisis. Yet efforts to bolster the economy have largely taken the form of corporate welfare — much like an appalling effort, in the closing days of the Bush administration, to subsidize corporate violations of the rule of law and individual liberties.

After the Federal Reserve’s $30 billion bailout for investment bank Bear Stearns last month came the Senate’s recent decision to set aside $25 billion in tax breaks for corporate homebuilders, and then last week’s revelation of “a historic collapse in audits” of major corporations by the IRS. All three stories prompted outrage from observers noting the implications for American workers.

But even these insults pale next to another round of corporate welfare currently considered by Congress for the telecom industry — a handout that, despite a smaller price tag, even more thoroughly degrades the public interest by both undermining national security and offending our nation’s fundamental interests in transparency and the rule of law.

Subsidy Via Amnesty

Both houses of Congress recently authorized a constitutionally suspect domestic spying program that violates the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. The Senate also approved, although the House patriotically rejected, a further give-away to telecom companies.

Unlike loan guarantees for Bear Stearns or tax subsidies for condo developers, the Senate’s handout to telecom companies including AT&T, BellSouth and Verizon takes the form of an amnesty: retroactive immunity from nearly 40 pending lawsuits alleging that their participation in the Administration’s surveillance activities illegally (and possibly unconstitutionally) invaded the privacy of millions of law-abiding Americans.

Given the pervasive secrecy surrounding government surveillance, concerned citizens across the country initiated the litigation largely to learn more about the government’s activities. But even the limited information known to the public suggests that the Senate bill effectively subsidizes corporate crime, encourages secrecy, denigrates transparency, offends the rule of law, rewards constitutional subversion — and also undermines national security.

Secret Government and Censorship

First and foremost, the so-called “Terrorist Surveillance Program” (TSP) is the mere tip of an iceberg that remains mostly secret.

Enacted over the dramatic objections of former Attorney General John Ashcroft, the TSP is the only domestic surveillance program confirmed by government sources. Other programs — for which potential challenges could loom in the future — continue to operate in secret, including a data-mining scheme run by the National Security Agency (NSA) that reportedly duplicates the “Total Information Awareness” program affirmatively rejected by Congress.

In late 2005, The New York Times exposed the TSP in an investigative report that the White House stonewalled for over a year and attempted to censor. Like the revelation of the Nixon administration’s (far less ambitious) surveillance operations, the story deeply shook the Washington establishment. However, in sharp contrast to the Watergate era, the contemporary abuses have only grown worse since their revelation.

The Watergate scandal led to the formation of the Church Committee, the FISA statute (for whose violations telecom companies now seek a public subsidy), and the threatened impeachment and resignation of the President. In contrast, the revelation of today’s domestic spying scandal culminated in congressional permission for previously illegal acts committed by executive officials.

Even before evading accountability for secret programs violating the rights of millions of Americans, Administration officials threatened to prosecute the journalists who exposed their abuses to the public. The reporters pursued both ends and means at the core of the First Amendment, and even delayed publication of their story for over a year based on objections fabricated by the administration. Yet they were framed as criminals, rather than guardians of the public interest.

Transparency and Checks & Balances

Among the principles protected by the Constitution, few compare with the transparency sought by the First Amendment. The reason is simple: government secrecy impedes democracy.

Controversial government programs are theoretically restrained by checks and balances, like legislative oversight and judicial review. But neither Congress nor the courts have a way to check a secret program.

Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) faced this problem when reviewing the TSP in a closed 2003 briefing. After the meeting, he wrote to Vice President Dick Cheney to “reiterate [his] concerns,” noting that “the activities we discussed raise profound oversight issues,” but that, because he is “neither a technician nor an attorney,” his “inability to consult staff or counsel on [his] own” rendered him “unable to fully evaluate, much less endorse these activities.”

Nor is Congress the only branch stymied by secrecy. Domestic spying faced no legal challenges in court until 2006 only because, until then, the TSP had been secret. And the Senate’s bill effectively forces courts to dismiss the numerous suits filed after the program was revealed.

As Sixth Circuit Judge Damon Keith wrote in another context, it is because “[d]emocracies die behind closed doors….[that] the Framers of the First Amendment….protected the people against secret government.” But secrecy pervades the TSP’s history, animates the Administration’s threat to prosecute the journalists who courageously exposed it, and continues to hide from scrutiny the government’s other unconfirmed — but ongoing — surveillance programs.

Each obstruction violates bedrock democratic principles by denying the opportunity for either a legislative or judicial check. Put another way, executive secrecy leaves the President unrestrained by precluding other branches of government, as well as civil society, from pursuing checks and balances.

Secret programs recall those of former Soviet bloc countries during the era of totalitarian rule. The Constitution — and our Republic — has been turned on its head.

Executive Aggrandizement vs. The Rule of Law

Setting aside how secrecy offends democracy, domestic spying also assaults the rule of law on multiple fronts and aggrandizes executive power.

At the outset, the Senate’s immunity provision effectively declares the FISA law void — but only after the fact of violation, and only as it pertains to specific violators. Such procedural arbitrariness makes a mockery of the Rule of Law, even setting aside the substantive illegitimacy of rewarding criminal behavior.

In addition, the TSP shares the same legal pedigree as the infamous “torture memo” recently repudiated by Attorney General Mukasey. Its concoction roiled the executive branch, inspired resistance culminating in threats by senior officials to resign, and bears the fingerprints of the same arch-conservatives whose view of executive power bears no limit. The program embodies a deeply controversial theory attacked from across the ideological spectrum.

The only court to publicly examine the program on its merits declared the TSP unconstitutional, and a separate ruling by a secret court struck down portions of the program, although its precise contours remain unknown. A conservative appellate court dismissed the first ruling on a legal technicality, and since the Supreme Court rejected a petition to appeal the case, the TSP has been effectively insulated from judicial review despite grave concerns about its legal basis.

The TSP stood on thin legal ice — until Congress lay itself (and the American people) at the President’s feet.

Thus, a scheme invading the privacy of millions of law-abiding Americans continues unchecked, despite the constitutional abuses implicit in warrantless surveillance. Private suits pending against the program’s telecom enablers present the only remaining opportunity through which to check the administration’s surveillance activities, especially now that Congress has authorized them to continue.

Moreover, unless suits against the telecom companies are allowed to proceed, the full scope of warrantless surveillance — and the extent to which it may have been abused by an administration already known for politicizing various institutions, including the Justice Department and even the Centers for Disease Control — may never be known.

Finally, the Bush administration’s other surveillance programs stand effectively immune from judicial review or congressional oversight as long as they, too, remain secret. Regarding unconfirmed secret data-mining by the NSA, Senate Intelligence Committee member Ron Wyden (D-OR) recently argued, “There’s not been as much discussion in the Congress as there ought to be.”

Especially given this lack of oversight, private interests should be discouraged from compromising individual liberty interests. The Senate bill instead invites them to disregard their customers’ privacy with impunity.

Immunizing telecom companies for enabling the TSP thus sends the wrong message to other companies that, through other secret programs, continue to help authorities spy on Americans — as well as those, like Qwest, that tried to protect their customers from prying government eyes.

Dragnets vs. Real Security

Transparency, democratic checks & balances, and the rule of law are not the only values undermined by domestic spying. The TSP also hinders counterterrorism efforts. Put simply, sweeping domestic surveillance undermines security by inundating analysts with false leads.

Throughout the debate about re-authorizing FISA, Administration apologists have falsely claimed that domestic spying is necessary to protect the country from a future terrorist attack. Intelligence analysts have repeatedly rejected such red herrings.

Earlier this month, senior counter-terrorism officials and intelligence analysts from agencies including the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and the National Counterterrorism Center hosted a briefing on their assessments of domestic terrorism. One analyst captured a point of consensus by explaining that “having too much data is as much a problem as having too little.”

According to The Washington Post, “Even with 38,000 employees, the NSA is incapable of translating, transcribing and analyzing more than a fraction of the conversations it intercepts.” The New York Times confirms that, in the wake of the 9-11 attacks, “F.B.I. officials repeatedly complained to the [NSA], which was collecting much of the data by eavesdropping on some Americans’ international communications and conducting computer searches…that the unfiltered information was swamping investigators.”

Domestic surveillance not only violates several constitutional principles and tears at the very fabric of our constitutional Republic, but also fails to achieve its purported ends.

Government Handouts to Repeat Recipients

By granting immunity for participating in this ineffective and potentially illegal scheme, the Senate offered the telecom industry — which is no stranger to government largess — yet another corporate handout.

In 2004, Philadelphia announced a municipal wireless plan enabling wi-fi service for its residents at a fraction of the retail cost. The plan enhances efficiency by leveraging economies of scale and encouraging economic development, while also seeking equality by diminishing the digital divide.

But, lobbied by telecom companies, the Pennsylvania state legislature banned other cities from following Philadelphia’s lead. The ensuing state-by-state march against municipal wireless began shortly after Congress passed the 2003 Medicare legislation, which similarly maximized health care costs by prohibiting collective bargaining by government purchasers. Each measure represented an enormous — though politically covert — give-away to corporate interests.

The TSP itself entails corporate handouts to telecom companies. As security analysts monitor, review and track the telephone calls of millions of Americans, they incur millions of dollars in fees. Beyond those charges known to the rogue authorities who oversee the program, companies also have at least sometimes overcharged the government, and some law enforcement authorities have embezzled funds.

Congressional Co-optation

After enabling the most secret and intrusive government program since COINTELPRO, running roughshod over the Fourth Amendment, expanding Presidential power without congressional or judicial authorization, and reaping immense profits while doing so, telecom companies now demand immunity from law-abiding Americans seeking to vindicate their rights.

And instead of responding assertively to defend the Constitution — or even simply maintaining the statutory protections erected by the Watergate-era Church Committee — Congress instead perversely debates whether retroactive immunity is necessary to encourage such corporate crime and constitutional subversion in the future.

Corporate welfare may be offensive in the abstract, but it is even more galling when supporting chronic recipients, and downright odious when used to reward constitutional subversion.

The House bill is the lesser of two evils. Like its Senate counterpart, it abdicates Congress’ responsibility to check the executive and sacrifices constitutional liberties violated by warrantless surveillance. But by allowing in camera (i.e., sealed) judicial review of classified evidence, it at least leaves the courthouse doors open, while allowing corporate defendants to challenge their accusers without violating the Administration’s secrecy.

Policymakers have already abandoned the freedom sought by the framers of the First Amendment, and their successors who passed FISA, by authorizing domestic surveillance in the first instance. But the suits against telecom companies enabling surveillance should proceed. With corporate welfare having already richly padded the telecom industry’s pockets, it should not receive from Congress yet another subsidy for abusing Americans and the Constitution.

Shahid Buttar is a civil rights lawyer, hip-hop MC, independent columnist, grassroots community organizer, singer and poet. Professionally, he directs a program combating racial & religious profiling at a non-profit legal advocacy and educational organization representing the American Muslim community. He also leads a U.S.-based organization supporting the Pakistani lawyers movement in its struggle to defend the Rule of Law.

see

Bailout Bonanza by Ralph Nader

Interview: Ralph Nader Says We’re Living Under Corporate Fascism (link)

April 24, 2008 by dandelionsalad

Michael Franti: Love Me Unique (music video)

Dandelion Salad

Originally posted: April 22, 2008

Updated: April 24, 2008

FrantiV

April 24, 2008
Michael Franti’s Love Me Unique music video from the album ‘Love Kamikaze’ of unreleased material written over a span of 10 years about love and sex that Franti felt didn’t belong on his politically themed albums.

Added: April 22, 2008 (video removed)
Music Video of Michael Franti’s ‘Love Me Unique’ from the album Love Kamikaze, directed by Carla Swanson of Stay Human Films

April 24, 2008 by dandelionsalad

US claims North Korean link to Israeli bombing of Syria (+ vids)

Dandelion Salad

by Ewen MacAskill in Washington
guardian.co.uk
Thursday April 24 2008

The mystery over the Israeli bombing of Syria took a new twist today when US intelligence agencies showed a video claiming that the target had been a nuclear plant being built with North Korean help.

After seven months of silence and evasion from the Bush administration, the CIA director, Michael Hayden, briefed members of the Senate and House armed services, intelligence and foreign affairs committees, saying his weapons specialists found the evidence compelling.

US officials said today the Bush administration was putting the information out in order to clear the decks before doing a deal with North Korea to dismantle its nuclear programme.

A US official who had seen the video said: “We cannot move forward (on a deal with North Korea) unless you acknowledge we are doing this with our eyes wide open. And we are going ahead with our eyes wide open.”

…continued

***

BREAKING! CNN: SYRIA NUCLEAR STUNNER!

VOTERSTHINKdotORG

April 24, 2008
CNN Wolf Blitzer

Vodpod videos no longer available. from www.youtube.com posted with vodpod

***

White House Press Briefing, April 24, 2008

Veracifier

***

Syrian Ambassador Imad Moustapha

VOTERSTHINKdotORG

April 24, 2008
CNN Wolf Blitzer

see

Syrian ambassador rejects US nuclear charges (video)

A Strike in the Dark – What did Israel bomb in Syria? by Seymour M. Hersh

Seymour Hersh: What did Israel bomb in Syria? (video)

Strong Doubts Israeli Air Strike On Syria Hit Nuclear Complex By Sherwood Ross

Report: IAF knocked out Syria radar during Sept. 6 strike By Yossi Melman

Israel’s Syrian Airstrike Was Aimed at Iran by Gareth Porter

US intelligence does not show Syrian nuclear weapons program, officials say by Larisa Alexandrovna

US Bombed Syria: Report

Why did Israel attack Syria? by Jonathan Cook

April 24, 2008 by dandelionsalad

Mosaic News – 4/23/08: World News from the Middle East

Dandelion Salad

Warning

This video may contain images depicting the reality and horror of war/violence and should only be viewed by a mature audience.

linktv

For more: http://linktv.org/originalseries
“19 Killed in US Shelling in Sadr City,” Al Jazeera TV, Qatar
“Somali Army Frees an UAE Ship,” Dubai TV, UAE
“New Wave of Violence Erupts in Somalia,” Al-Alam TV, Iran
“UN is Manipulating Darfur Figures,” Al Jazeera English, Qatar
“US Arrests Israeli Spy,” New TV, Lebanon
“Who Leaked the Israeli Spy Case?,” IBA TV, Israel
“Abbas: Not a Single Palestinian Refugee Will Remian in Lebanon,” Al Arabiya TV, UAE
“Hamas: Meeting with Carter is a Blow to Fatah,” Al Aqsa, Gaza
“Ahmadinejad: The Iranian Nation Will Regain All Its Rights,” IRIB2 TV, Iran
Produced for Link TV by Jamal Dajani.

Vodpod videos no longer available. from www.youtube.com posted with vodpod

April 24, 2008 by dandelionsalad

Tavis Smiley Interviews Don Siegelman (videos)

Dandelion Salad

riphotpotatomash

April 22, 2008

h/t: Hot Potato Mash

see

Siegelman-Don

April 24, 2008 by dandelionsalad

Crisis in Food Prices Threatens Worldwide Starvation: Is it Genocide?

by Richard C. Cook
Dandelion Salad
April 24, 2008

Rising worldwide food prices are resulting in shortages, riots and protests, promises by governments to expand food aid, expressions of concern by international bodies like the World Bank, and stress on household budgets even in developed countries like the U.S. Did this just “happen” or is there a plan?

Continue reading →

April 24, 2008 by dandelionsalad

US student held in solitary confinement on terrorism charges

Dandelion Salad

By Tom Eley
http://www.wsws.org
24 April 2008

In a chilling example of the expanding prosecution of individuals on trumped-up charges of “terrorism,” Syed Hashmi, a 27-year-old US citizen and former student at Brooklyn College in New York City and at London Metropolitan University, is being held in solitary confinement in a federal prison on trumped-up charges of providing material support to Al Qaida. He could face as much as 70 years in prison.

…

The evidence against Hashmi is based on the plea bargain of Mohammed Junaid Babar, another US citizen arrested on five counts of aiding Al Qaida. In exchange for testimony against Hashmi and other cases pending in Canada and the UK, Babar stands to receive a substantially reduced sentence.

According to Babar, he stayed at Hashmi’s London apartment in 2004 en route to Pakistan to deliver items such as raincoats and waterproof socks to an Al Qaida representative. He claimed that Hashmi served as a conduit in this alleged pipeline of non-lethal material, by virtue of the fact that Babar kept the items in the student’s apartment. Hashmi is also accused of allowing Babar to use his cellular phone.

…continued

April 24, 2008 by dandelionsalad

Breaking the Silence – Israeli Soldiers Speak by Stephen Lendman

Dandelion Salad

by Stephen Lendman
Global Research, April 24, 2008

They’re called “Refuseniks” but not for refusing to serve. They’ve done it proudly and courageously, and here’s how “Courage to Refuse” members state their position: Continue reading →

April 24, 2008 by dandelionsalad

Petraeus Hid Maliki Resistance to US Troops in Basra

Dandelion Salad

by Gareth Porter
Global Research, April 23, 2008

WASHINGTON, Apr 17 (IPS) – In testimony before Congressional committees last week, Gen. David Petraeus portrayed Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s late March offensive in Basra as a poorly planned effort that departed from what U.S. officials had expected.

What Petraeus did not reveal is that al-Maliki was deliberately upsetting a Petraeus plan to put U.S. and British forces into Basra for a months-long operation to eliminate the Mahdi Army from the city.

Petraeus referred to a plan for an operation to be carried out in Basra that he and his staff had developed with the head of the Basra Operational Command, Gen. Mohan al-Furayji. But Petraeus carefully dodged a question from Sen. Hillary Clinton about what resources he was planning to deploy to Basra and over what length of time.

Clinton evidently suspected that the plan envisioned the deployment of U.S. troops on a large scale in the Shiite south, despite the fact that the Iraqi government is supposed to be responsible for security there. Petraeus responded vaguely that it was “a phased plan over the course of a number of months during which different actions were going to be pursued.”

Reports in the British press indicated, however, that the campaign plan was based on the assumption that British and U.S. troops would play the central role in an effort to roll up the Mahdi Army in Basra. The Independent reported Mar. 21 that Gen. Furayji had publicly declared there would be a “final battle” in Basra, probably during the summer, and that Britain had already promised to provide military forces for the campaign. It quoted “senior government sources” as saying that Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s earlier pledge to cut the number of British troops in the south from 4,100 to 2,500 would “almost certainly be postponed until at least the end of the year”.

Two days later, the Sunday Mirror quoted a “senior U.S. military source” as saying that the “coalition” would turn its attention to Basra once the “huge operation” in Mosul against al Qaeda and nationalist Sunni insurgents was completed, and that the U.S. was prepared to redeploy “thousands” of U.S. marines to Basra, if necessary.

This plan for a major foreign troop deployment to the south for the first time since the U.S. battles against the Mahdi Army in April 2004 did not sit well with al-Maliki. In 2006 and 2007, he had repeatedly blocked U.S. proposals that U.S. and Iraqi forces target Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army in Baghdad as well as in the south.

When Vice President Dick Cheney, who had previously played the “bad cop” in the George W. Bush administration’s relations with al-Maliki, visited Baghdad in mid-March, one of his objectives was to get al-Maliki to go along with the Petraeus plan to eliminate the commanding position of Sadr’s forces in Basra. Al-Maliki has told Iraqi officials that Cheney put pressure on him to go along with the Basra operation, according one Iraqi source.

After Cheney met briefly with al-Maliki Mar. 17, he discussed the “security situation” with Sadr’s Shiite rival, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, which has been pushing for the destruction of the Mahdi Army. Cheney lavished praise on Hakim, whom he ostentatiously called “my friend”, for “working so hard with the United States and with Iraq’s other leaders to advance the cause of Iraq’s freedom and democracy.” The signal of the Bush administration’s intentions toward Sadr could hardly have been clearer.

The Cheney visit apparently mobilised al-Maliki, but not in the way Cheney had intended.

Four days later, when Petraeus met with al-Maliki’s national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie to talk about the U.S. campaign plan for Basra, al-Rubaie warned Petraeus that al-Maliki had a different plan. Petraeus was apparently told that the operation would last from a week to 10 days — not the several months envisioned in the Petraeus plan.

The main point of al-Maliki’s operation, however, was that it would exclude U.S. troops. As al-Maliki explained in an interview with CNN correspondent Nic Robertson Apr. 7, he had demanded that U.S. and British troops stay out of Basra, “because that would give an excuse to some militant groups to say that this is a foreign force attacking us.”

al-Maliki thus feared that a confrontation between thousands of U.S. and British troops and the Mahdi Army would further inflame the feelings of Shiites in the south about the occupation, with which his own regime has been so tightly linked.

The Shiite south has become the most anti-occupation region in the country. The British polling firm ORB, which has been doing opinion surveys in Iraq since 2005, found in March that 69 percent of respondents in the south believed security would improve if foreign troops were withdrawn, and only 10 percent believed it would get worse.

When al-Maliki met with Petraeus the following morning, according to Petraeus’s spokesman, Petraeus warned against sending “a couple of brigades” into the city, suggesting that he did not consider the scale of the operation to be large enough. Nevertheless, when al-Maliki told him the decision to launch an operation in Basra had already been made and that it would begin in three days, Petraeus agreed to support it.

When the Basra operation became an obvious disaster, however, Washington officials began to question al-Maliki’s motives. On the third day of the operation, as Bush administration officials were reassessing what they described as “a rapidly deteriorating situation in southern Iraq”, one official told the Washington Post’s Peter Baker they were comparing conspiracy theories about why al-Maliki had acted so precipitously.

Although that comment was not explained, it clearly implied that al-Maliki was deliberately undermining the U.S. objective of eliminating the Mahdi Army by using U.S. and British troops.

Bush administration suspicions of al-Maliki’s intentions could not have been eased by the fact that a delegation of pro-government parties traveled to Iran to ask the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to negotiate a ceasefire with the Mahdi Army. That ploy move, which did result in a tenuous ceasefire, raised the possibility that al-Maliki intended from the beginning that the outcome of the Basra operation would be a new agreement that would prevent the deployment of U.S. and British troops to fight the Mahdi Army during the summer.

Bush administration officials have been asserting that the most important thing about the Basra operation is that al-Maliki is now convinced that Iran is really an enemy rather than a friend. But al-Maliki’s Apr. 7 interview with CNN’s Robertson made it clear that he has not budged from his position that his government’s interests lie in an accord between Iran and the United States — not in taking sides against Iran.

“We will always reject the idea of any side using Iraq as a launching pad for its attack on others,” said al-Maliki. “We reject Iran using Iraq to attack the U.S., and at the same time we reject the idea of the U.S. using Iraq to attack Iran…”

Gareth Porter is an historian and national security policy analyst. The paperback edition of his latest book, “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam”, was published in 2006.

The CRG grants permission to cross-post original Global Research articles on community internet sites as long as the text & title are not modified. The source and the author’s copyright must be displayed. For publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: crgeditor@yahoo.com

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April 24, 2008 by dandelionsalad

Confessions of a Renegade Christian

Dandelion Salad

by Case Wagenvoord
Smirking Chimp
April 22, 2008

Two points must be understood before we begin. First, as the title states, I am a renegade Christian. Like Barack Obama and Bill Moyers, I belong to the United Church of Christ (UCC), a delightfully non-creedal church that is quite tolerant of my heresies.

The second point is that, with a few exceptions, Christianity and organized religion are as oil is to water. Historically, Christianity has so much blood on its hands, it is impossible to tell where the fingers ends and the nails begin. All of this violence surfaces as soon as the church gains political power. When Church and State wed, Hell pays for the reception because the child of the union is Death.

The truth is that organized religion chokes on the teachings of Jesus. Early Christians referred to their faith at The Way. For them, the essence of this faith was internalizing Jesus’ teachings and actually living them. The Way included little annoyances like loving your enemies and turning the other cheek. (The Religious Right would have us believe that what Jesus actually said was turn the other’s cheek, with a fistful of knuckles.)

Living the Beatitudes is a pain in the ass, so it is easier for organized religion to get its knickers in a knot over evolution and same-sex marriage.

…continued

April 24, 2008 by dandelionsalad

Will the CIA Kill or Oust Ecuador’s President?

Dandelion Salad

by Jacob G. Hornberger
Hornberger’s Blog
FFF
Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Ecuador’s president Rafael Correa may not be long for this world, both in a political sense and in genuine life-or-death sense. He recently fired his defense minister, army chief of intelligence, and commanders of the army, air force, and joint chiefs.

Why might those firings cost Correa his job or even his life? Because the reason he fired them was that Ecuador’s intelligence systems were “totally infiltrated and subjugated to the CIA.” As other rulers around the world, including democratically elected ones, have learned the hard way, bucking the CIA is a real no-no that sometimes leads to coups and assassinations.

…continued

	The Brief Origins of… on How Debs Became A Socialist, b…
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