Thnxgvn

I will be away "celebrating genocide" for the rest of the week. I'll resume posting some time Monday or Tuesday, hopefully.

The moral case for war was a distraction

George Monbiot reminds us that, "Whatever the argument for toppling Saddam on humanitarian grounds may have been, this is not why Bush and Blair went to war."

The Miami Model

So $8.5 million of the Iraq bill was spent on bringing the war home. To Miami.

If what transpired down in Florida this past week is "what democracy looks like," then we have a serious problem on our hands.

Military Actively Involved in Domestic Spying

"Preoccupied with the war in Iraq and still traumatized by Sept. 11, 2001," William Arkin writes in the LA Times, "the American public has paid little attention to some of what is being done inside the United States in the name of anti-terrorism. Under the banner of 'homeland security,' the military and intelligence communities are implementing far-reaching changes that blur the lines between terrorism and other kinds of crises and will break down long-established barriers to military action and surveillance within the U.S."

The war you didn't see on TV news

Take some time out to watch this CBC documentary, "Deadline Iraq - Uncensored Stories of the War," which features stories from journalists that never saw air time during the war. For further background, see the film's accompanying website.

Consulting the fellow occupier

"Facing a bloody insurgency by guerrillas who label it an 'occupier,'" the LA Times reports, "the U.S. military has quietly turned to an ally experienced with occupation and uprisings: Israel."

Here's a gem from the article:

U.S. officials were particularly interested in the "balancing act" that Israeli officials say they have tried to pursue between fighting armed groups and trying to spare civilians during decades of patrolling the occupied territories.

In what world does the IDF do an adequate job "sparing civilians"? Certainly not in this one.

Destined for disaster

In a preview of his forthcoming book, Chalmers Johnson examines "the inescapable consequences of the national policies American elites chose after September 11, 2001," what he terms "the sorrows of empire."

Four sorrows, it seems to me, are certain to be visited on the United States. Their cumulative effect guarantees that the U.S. will cease to resemble the country outlined in the Constitution of 1787. First, there will be a state of perpetual war, leading to more terrorism against Americans wherever they may be and a spreading reliance on nuclear weapons among smaller nations as they try to ward off the imperial juggernaut. Second is a loss of democracy and Constitutional rights as the presidency eclipses Congress and is itself transformed from a co-equal "executive branch" of government into a military junta. Third is the replacement of truth by propaganda, disinformation, and the glorification of war, power, and the military legions. Lastly, there is bankruptcy, as the United States pours its economic resources into ever more grandiose military projects and shortchanges the education, health, and safety of its citizens.

...In my judgment, American imperialism and militarism are so far advanced and obstacles to its further growth have been so completely neutralized that the decline of the U.S. has already begun. The country is following the path already taken by its erstwhile adversary in the cold war, the former Soviet Union.

...There is only one development that could conceivably stop this cancerous process, and that is for the people to retake control of Congress, reform it and the election laws to make it a genuine assembly of democratic representatives, and cut off the supply of money to the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency.

...I fear, however, that the U.S. has indeed crossed the Rubicon and that there is no way to restore Constitutional government short of a revolutionary rehabilitation of American democracy. Without root and branch reform, Nemesis awaits. She is the goddess of revenge, the punisher of pride and arrogance, and the United States is on course for a rendezvous with her.

Looking for an authentic war on terror

Compare the $87 billion allotted for an illegal, foolish war with the $2.4 billion earmarked for the worldwide AIDS initiative.

Bush's priorities are, indeed, out of whack.

Update: Coincidentally, UNAIDS just released their annual report on the epidemic. It found that 3 million people died from AIDS in 2003 and another 5 million acquired HIV, bringing the total number infected to between 34 million and 46 million worldwide. (thanks for the tip, D)

Politics & pipelines in Georgia

Concerning recent developments in Georgia, the Toronto Globe & Mail's Mark MacKinnon writes, "It looked like a popular, bloodless revolution on the streets. Behind the scenes, it smells more like another victory for the United States over Russia in the post-Cold War international chess game."

Terrorist Logic: Elect Bush in '04

David J. Rothkopf asks you to imagine it's Election Day 2004: "As you walk to your local polling place, you can't help but notice how different this day is from past first Tuesdays in November. A Humvee bearing the markings of your local National Guard unit is stationed outside, as are Guardsmen carrying assault rifles. Would-be voters glance at parked cars and passersby with palpable unease and suspicion..."

Sabotaging the environment

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lays out Bush's crimes against nature in Rolling Stone:

George W. Bush will go down in history as America's worst environmental president. In a ferocious three-year attack, the Bush administration has initiated more than 200 major rollbacks of America's environmental laws, weakening the protection of our country's air, water, public lands and wildlife. Cloaked in meticulously crafted language designed to deceive the public, the administration intends to eliminate the nation's most important environmental laws by the end of the year. Under the guidance of Republican pollster Frank Luntz, the Bush White House has actively hidden its anti-environmental program behind deceptive rhetoric, telegenic spokespeople, secrecy and the intimidation of scientists and bureaucrats. The Bush attack was not entirely unexpected. George W. Bush had the grimmest environmental record of any governor during his tenure in Texas. Texas became number one in air and water pollution and in the release of toxic chemicals. In his six years in Austin, he championed a short-term pollution-based prosperity, which enriched his political contributors and corporate cronies by lowering the quality of life for everyone else. Now President Bush is set to do the same to America. After three years, his policies are already bearing fruit, diminishing standards of living for millions of Americans.

EUMC pulls report on anti-semitism

According to the Financial Times, the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) "has shelved a report on anti-semitism because the study concluded Muslims and pro-Palestinian groups were behind many of the incidents it examined."

While this lede is certainly eye-catching, the FT's report doesn't do a good job outlining the story. Many of the details offered are hazy and vague, mostly because of the way the story is sourced. Hopefully things will be clarified in the coming days.

Update: Following the news of the EUMC report and a controversial EU poll, Ariel Sharon has branded Europeans as inherently anti-semitic, equated criticism of Israel with anti-semitism, and warned that "an ever strengthening Muslim presence in Europe...endangers the life of Jewish people” in an interview with EUpolitix.com.

Update II: The EUMC has published the report.

Bush's meeting w/ grieving relatives

A lot of people were wondering how Dubya's meet-up with the relatives of the British war dead was going to play out. Severin Carrell of the Independent has the report. For the most part, Bush impressed the folks with his sincerity.

The Predator Class

Holy cow. Check this out:

I believe there is now a professional, well-trained elite, supported by large institutions, that is adept and willing to use corrupt practices to accumulate wealth. Despite assurances from game-theorists and anthropologists that the criminal cadre in the species remains a constant percentage over time, I believe today's mainstream, sanitized, and institutionally sanctioned financial crime rackets are being run by a new breed of crook. There have always been scandals and crooks in the history of American money, but our predator class is a distinct creation of the late 20th century.

I believe there is no way the counter-class made up of regulators, watchdogs and do-gooders and hack columnists can match wits with the predator class. Today's piles of money are so huge, great fortunes can be amassed by swiping the tiniest of slices in the wiliest of ways long before picked pockets are discovered.

Where's this passage from? No, not Monthly Review. How about the pen of the Editorial Director of CBSNews.com.

Georgia Coup

I am admittedly ignorant about Georgian politics, but the BBC is closely covering today's coup attempt. Here's a timeline, Q&A, and a photo gallery. Also see this Google news link for periodic updates.

Unprecedented

With all that's happened in the past 3 years, it's easy to forget what got us to this point. Namely, how GW Bush "won" the 2000 election.

Felon voter purges, blatant conflicts of interest, the "Brooks Brothers Riot," racially skewed voting patterns, Supreme Court shenanigans, butterfly ballots, "Jews for Buchanan," etc. It's all laid out in the documentary "Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election," which you can now watch online in its entirety.

Reviving COINTELPRO?

Yet more evidence that protests are being conflated with terrorism in the eyes of the US government. From the NY Times:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has collected extensive information on the tactics, training and organization of antiwar demonstrators and has advised local law enforcement officials to report any suspicious activity at protests to its counterterrorism squads, according to interviews and a confidential bureau memorandum.

The memorandum, which the bureau sent to local law enforcement agencies last month in advance of antiwar demonstrations in Washington and San Francisco, detailed how protesters have sometimes used "training camps" to rehearse for demonstrations, the Internet to raise money and gas masks to defend against tear gas. The memorandum analyzed lawful activities like recruiting demonstrators, as well as illegal activities like using fake documentation to get into a secured site.

Hmm. What's that other group that infamously uses "training camps"?

The article from the Times points out that law enforcement views these tactics as legitimate, but critics warn that we're reverting to the days of an out-of-control FBI and legitimizing the return of COINTELPRO.

Bush just wants to get the boys home

Ramtanu Maitra examines Afghanistan's "road map" to stability in today's Asia Times.

In the past few weeks, neocon bagman and oil kingpin Zalmay Khalilzad has been put in charge of accelerating reconstruction in the war-torn nation, hoping to usher in nationwide elections by the summer of 2004.

What's the rush? Why the summer of 2004? Well, according to Maitra,

Because then Bush would be in a position to declare the attainment of America's minimum objective in Afghanistan - removal of the Taliban and the ushering in of "democracy" in the form of a fair poll. Bush can then bring back some of the 12,000 American troops now risking their lives in Afghanistan every hour of the day. That, says the re-election crowd and their hangers-on, would push the president up a few notches in opinion polls.

The article makes it clear that Afghanistan is close to descending into chaos, once again. The authority of the Karzai government is being challenged from multiple angles -- from northern warlords, resurgent Taliban in the south, and Pakistani tampering from the east. Khalilzad has been entrusted with cobbling together some kind of coalition, including "good Taliban," that will keep Afghanistan's central government propped up until the elections. The US will then cut and run after announcing a formal transition to democracy. The driving factor in all of this, of course, is not what's in the best interests of Afghans, but what's in the best interests of George W. Bush's re-election campaign.

As we all know, the Bush administration touts "lessons learned" from 9/11 at every opportunity. But perhaps the most pertinent lesson of that day, the danger of treating Afghanistan like a political football, is clearly not one of them.

The war on terror that creates the preconditions for more terror

A bunch of articles have popped up in the past few days warning of Al Qaeda's resurgence.

Most of the pieces link the recent spate of bombings in Turkey and Saudi Arabia with a new strategy that, according to the LA Times, "illustrates that Al Qaeda has survived by mutating into a more decentralized network relying on local allies to launch more frequent attacks on varied targets." In other words, the group is now more into franchising than carrying out its own operations.

Time Magazine elaborates:

The paradox of al-Qaeda in the two years since 9/11 has been that while the efforts of U.S. and allied intelligence agencies have battered its core transnational networks, al-Qaeda as a movement or an idea — as distinct from a narrow clandestine organizational network — has actually grown. Analysts believe the international intelligence and security cooperation has severely impeded al-Qaeda's ability to conduct highly sophisticated transnational terror operations such as the attacks in New York and Washington, but that Bin Laden's movement has adapted by morphing into a far more decentralized entity relying principally on the structures and energies of pre-existing local groups ideologically in synch with al-Qaeda.

Thus, Dave Montgomery and Warren P. Strobel of Knight Ridder Newspapers warn that the group "is as lethal as ever, despite the U.S.-led war on terrorism. The organization essentially is reinventing itself to compensate for losses in its ranks."

Now, where does Iraq fit into this scenario? Montgomery and Strobel report that, to correspond with this reorganization, "the United States has diverted more than half the manpower and technology that had been targeted on al-Qaida to the war in Iraq."

Furthermore, Germany's foreign spy chief has warned that "Anti-American and anti-Western sentiment is growing out of anger at the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," which Al Qaeda is exploiting to help fill its ranks. He's not yelling at the wind, either. Recall the Pew Center poll from a few months ago, "Views of a Changing World 2003," which found that Anti-American sentiment went through the roof over the past year. As one might suspect, the animosity is greatest in the Muslim world.

The war on terror, in short, is breeding more terrorists and more people sympathetic to Al Qaeda's aims. Bush can trumpet the point that the US is hunting down and killing "evil-doers," but the simple fact is that US policy, rather than "draining the swamp" of discontent, is filling it to the point of overflow.

Constitution to be dropped with major terrorist attack, says Franks

According to right wing website NewsMax.com, General Tommy Franks suggests in an interview with Cigar Aficionado that "if the United States is hit with a weapon of mass destruction that inflicts large casualties, the Constitution will likely be discarded in favor of a military form of government."

Bush ad foreshadows broader campaign strategy

"Some are now attacking the president for attacking the terrorists."

This is the line being parroted by a new Republican party TV spot in Iowa and New Hampshire ahead of the primaries.

So it begins...

Patriot Act Expansion Moves Through Congress

"Congress is poised to approve new legislation that amounts to the first substantive expansion of the controversial USA Patriot Act since it was approved just after the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon," Jim Lobe reports.

Tricky Dick

Someone tell Dick Cheney his cover is being blown.

Newsweek recently did a cover story on how our man from Wyoming, often working hard behind the scenes, obscured from public view, drove the US to war. This week, the New Republic takes a deeper look at Cheney the Radical.

Assassins R Us

I missed this from a few days ago. Looks like the US is starting up the equivalent of a 21st century Phoenix Program in order to "fight terrorism."

Famed "blowback" theorist Chalmers Johnson explains,

As the Iraqi resistance expands and perfects its attacks, the American military, like so many occupying armies before it, is turning to methods of warfare long outlawed by civilized nations – assassinations and reprisals against civilians. When it comes to the first, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has long been on record as wanting Saddam Hussein and the leaders of al-Qaeda and the Taliban brought in "dead or alive," with emphasis on the former.

Now, according to a November 7th front-page piece in the New York Times, the Pentagon, in conjunction with the CIA, has announced the creation of a new "task force" – polite language for an assassination squad – to accomplish these ends. "The new Special Operations organization," according to reporters Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt, "is designed to act with greater speed on intelligence tips about 'high-value targets' and not be contained within the borders where American conventional forces are operating in Iraq and Afghanistan." In other words, this death squad, composed of U.S. Army Special Forces troops, can run down its quarry in countries like Yemen, Saudi Arabia, or Pakistan but presumably also (if the occasion required it) in France, Germany, or even the United States itself.

As Johnson sardonically notes, if it's good for the Israelis, it surely must be good for the Americans. Some more madness to contemplate...

BTW - Johnson wrote one of the best pieces on how the Bush administration drove the US to war in Iraq. It's adapted from his forthcoming book, which should be out in January.

Dubya loves Michael

Sayeth William Rivers Pitt:

For a while we had the Petersons to obsess the mainstream television media. Then we had Kobe Bryant, and for a bit both stories ran concurrently with 'Breaking News' announcements throughout daily coverage. Neither managed to seize national attention, and so periodically CNN and the other networks were forced to mention that the fighting in Iraq is getting a lot of Americans killed, the promised weapons of mass destruction have not been found, and no one but Dick Cheney can say that Iraq was involved in September 11 without looking like a total blithering idiot.

And then, like a surgically enhanced cavalry charge, Michael Jackson blasts to the forefront to rescue the mainstream media from perhaps being required to cover matters of substance. The ability for these talking heads to natter on for weeks and weeks about Jackson, previous charges against him, his musical history, his personal oddities, his baby-dangling antics, and "Oh my goodness, what do we tell the children?" is pretty much bottomless, but we will spend the next several weeks, again, racing to that bottom as quickly as television signals can travel through a coaxial cable.

Unfortunately, Pitt is quite right. Things are only going to get worse as the Jacko story "develops."

If you needed a reminder of why media reform is urgently needed in the US, all you had to do was watch television news today. Absolutely disgraceful.

Selling Iraq as part of the 'war on terrorism'

"If 'terrorism' is going to be used as an umbrella term so large that it covers attacks on military troops occupying a country," Norman Solomon avers, "then the word becomes nothing more than an instrument of propaganda."

Growing desperate

Doug Feith's "leaked" memo to the Weekly Standard is an indication of neocon desperation, says Jim Lobe.

Update: Newsweek also chimes in on the memo. Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball write that the memo recycles "claims that were first advanced by some top Bush administration officials more than a year ago—and were largely discounted at the time by the U.S. intelligence community."

War illegal, says Perle

Richard Perle admits the Iraq war was illegal. Nice to see him joining the chorus.

Perle went on to say that "in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing." Amusing twist of logic here: one of the arguments used to justify the war was that Iraq had been thumbing its nose at international law, specifically UN Resolutions (hello, Israel).

That the US decided to break international law and flout the UN charter allegedly to enforce the resolutions is one of the more blatantly Orwellian developments of the past year.

Update: Dubya one-ups Perle: the war that breached the UN charter was necessary to, yes, save the UN. Talk about Orwellian...

From NAFTA to FTAA

As thousands of activists descend on Miami for FTAA protests, David Bacon takes a look at NAFTA at 10.

"As demonstration and debate unfold, in the eye of the storm is the one free trade agreement that already provides an idea of what the Americas can expect from the Bush free trade plan," he writes. "In just a few short weeks, the North American Free Trade Agreement will be ten years old. And for FTAA's opponents, that ten-year history of devastation, wreaked in Mexico and the US both, will be the key argument in stopping its extension to the rest of Latin America."

Keep track of the protests in Miami via Infoshop and the FTAA IMC.

Sent off to be tortured by the Justice Department

Maher Arar's horrific journey to torture-prone Syria was approved by a "senior Justice Department official," the Washington Post reports.

See no evil

Make no mistake, says an editorial in the Australian newspaper The Age, "The fighting in Iraq is real. But one aspect of war Americans now see only in the movies: the solemn homecoming for the dead."

HR 3077 and Osama U

Michelle Goldberg of Salon writes that the lobbying of prominent neoconservatives like Stanley Kurtz has lead to the passage of a recent bill in the House of Representatives, the International Studies in Higher Education Act, which could "require university international studies departments to show more support for American foreign policy or risk their federal funding."

Goldberg explains what's going on here:

The International Studies in Higher Education Act would not grant the government the power to exclude voices from Middle Eastern studies departments, but it would give the government a role in defining which views need to be included in the academic mainstream. The seven-member board it creates would make recommendations to Congress about how the centers "might better reflect the national needs related to the homeland security," and make sure that programs "reflect diverse perspectives and represent the full range of views on world regions, foreign languages, and international affairs." Two members of the board would represent national security agencies, while others would be appointed by Congress and the administration.

The bill also mandates that centers allow government recruiters full access to students in the centers. In the past, professors have resisted cooperating with national security agencies, fearing that if the line between independent research and government intelligence was blurred, they and their students might be targeted as American agents while studying abroad.

And because the bill mandates that centers train students for government service, [Martin] Kramer hopes students who plan to pursue fields useful to national defense will be given special consideration when fellowships are awarded. Right now, he says, "If you're interested in gender in eighth century Cairo, you're just as likely to receive a grant as if you're interested in the discourse of Osama bin Laden. Studying gender in eighth century Cairo is perfectly valid, but I'm not sure it's a taxpayer priority."

Of course, right now all this is speculative -- the bill remains just a bill. "This is a bill that's passed the House," says Terry Hartle, senior vice president of the American Council on Education, the country's foremost higher education lobby. "There are several other steps in the process. Obviously a lot of people remain very concerned about the bill. People will continue to try and perfect it."

Some harsher critics charge that the purpose of the bill is to mandate that academics be satraps of the empire. Others say it's an indication that "Osama bin Laden may be winning the war against the United States."

Honor the Vets

Look who is and isn't marchin' down in Florida:

A group of 30 military veterans critical of the war in Iraq hoped to use Tuesday's Veterans Day parade to call attention to the increasingly deadly conflict but instead found themselves fighting for something much more fundamental.

Members of Veterans For Peace and Vietnam Veterans Against the War were yanked off a downtown Tallahassee street, directly in front of the Old Capitol, while marching in the holiday parade they had legitimately registered in.

As organizers allowed the parade to roll on -- including veterans from various wars, several high school marching bands and even a group of young women from the local Hooters restaurant -- the anti-war veterans were ordered onto sidewalks where they passed out leaflets and displayed a banner reading, "Honor the Warrior, Not the War."

Of course! Spit on the veterans with inconvenient political views, but march on you patriotic Hooters waitresses!

Bringing back the draft?

$28 million to get the Selective Service System up and running by June 15, 2005? If so, that puts this announcement in an entirely different context.

Prince Charles, terrorist sympathizer

No, not really...although I'm sure some folks would jump to that conclusion because of this article:

Prince Charles, who welcomed George Bush to Britain last night, has not been to the US for the last six years on the advice of the Foreign Office, according to a source familiar with the negotiations.

It emerged last night that the Prince of Wales has strong pro-Palestinian views and is privately critical of US policy in the Middle East conflict.

British diplomats, acting in conjunction with Downing Street, fear that Prince Charles's views might have created embarrassment on a visit to Washington.

The source, who is familiar with the discussions over possible visits by the Prince of Wales to the US, said: "It [concern over Charles travelling to the US] revolves around the perception that the Prince of Wales is fairly Arabist. He has, in American terms and international terms, fairly dodgy views on Israel.

"He thinks American policy on the Middle East is complete madness and he used to express that quite loudly to a lot of people, including ministers and various ambassadors."

The Palestinization of Iraq

"Hey, this is just like Gaza, isn't it?"

Indeed it is. Especially now that "the U.S. military has begun destroying the homes of suspected guerrilla fighters in Iraq's Sunni Triangle, evacuating women and children, then leveling their houses with heavy weaponry," as Jeff Wilkinson reports.

Baghdad Burning provides an up close and personal perspective of the disturbing developments in and around Tikrit.

Hidden In Plain Sight

A terrorist training camp in the United States?!?! Where? How about right here.

Iraq: "Too Uncertain To Call"

Anthony Cordesman of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has released a new study on how things are going in Iraq. These are some of its major findings, according to the Independent:

• "It says attacks on Americans by Sunni Iraqis will continue 'until the day the US leaves.'"



• "The Iraqi resistance movement is believed to have a war chest of up to $1bn - with a further $3bn hidden in Syria - and it is paying between $25 and $500 for each attack on US forces." (sidenote: on to Syria!)



• "95 per cent of the threat is from former regime loyalists and that suicide bombings are being carried out largely by foreigners."



• "US soldiers are dying because of the ideological approach of the administration, and 'four years into office, the Bush national security team is not a team.'"



• "the administration [is] preparing the ground for 'a defeat by underplaying the risks, issuing provocative and jingoistic speeches, and minimising real-world costs and risks.'"



• "The report concludes that there is an overall problem with the US administration's advocacy of 'democracy' in the Middle East. 'It is largely advocating undefined slogans, not practical and balanced specifics.' It was often seen as showing contempt for Arab societies, or as a prelude to new US efforts at regime change."

Despite such a grim assessment, the Independent reports that there "is little in the track record of the US administration to suggest that Dr Cordesman's recommendations will be carried out, particularly at a time when Washington wants to show results on the ground in Iraq in the months before the presidential election."

After all, Cordesman's July study, which warned the administration that it had a three-month window to assert control in Iraq or risk facing a "Third Gulf war," was generally ignored. This one will be, too.

Go back where you came from

If you're interested in how Dubya's sojourn to Britain goes over the next few days, keep an eye on UK Indymedia and this website, which pledges to track Bush wherever he goes in London.

Coopting the resistance

Things are not going well in the Sunni Triangle for US forces, so it'll be interesting to see if the Bush administration adopts Blair's proposal for a "Sunni strategy." This new policy, the Telegraph explains, is meant "to drain support from pro-Saddam Hussein gunmen" by allowing "Saddam's former ruling Ba'ath party to relaunch and contest elections."

In short, the plan would aim to coopt the resistance by bringing elements into the formal political culture of Iraq. Who says we never negotiate with "terrorists."

Probing memos and intelligence

Walter Pincus of the Washington Post reports that the Feith memo that caused such a ruckus over the weekend is going to be investigated by the Justice Department. The CIA has made a mandatory request for a probe and it looks like the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence may throw its hat into the ring, too.

My guess is that they won't have to look much further than Feith to find the source of the leak. Doug's been on shaky ground for a few months, so he probably decided to go out with the guns blazin' before being formally released from his duties at the Pentagon.

As for whether the memo rings true, the Weekly Standard may think so, but it's pretty clear that it reflects the same "let's throw in everything that substantiates our claim no matter how tenuous or inaccurate it may be" technique that we saw deployed to shocking degrees in the run up to war, culminating in Colin Powell's disgraceful performance before the UN in February.

As the Post reports,

While Stephen F. Hayes, author of the Weekly Standard article, concluded that "there can no longer be any serious argument about whether Saddam Hussein's Iraq worked with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to plot against Americans," some critics of the administration policy came to a different conclusion.

W. Patrick Lang, former head of the Middle East section of the DIA, said yesterday that the Standard article "is a listing of a mass of unconfirmed reports, many of which themselves indicate that the two groups continued to try to establish some sort of relationship. If they had such a productive relationship, why did they have to keep trying?"

Another former senior intelligence official said the memo is not an intelligence product but rather "data points...among the millions of holdings of the intelligence agencies, many of which are simply not thought likely to be true."

And in related news, Sen. Jay Rockefeller explains why a thorough investigation of Iraq intelligence is needed and how Republicans are trying to block such an investigation.

Are we shopping our way straight to the unemployment line?

"The real story of Wal-Mart," writes Charles Fishman, "the story that never gets told, is the story of the pressure the biggest retailer relentlessly applies to its suppliers in the name of bringing us 'every day low prices.' It's the story of what that pressure does to the companies Wal-Mart does business with, to U.S. manufacturing, and to the economy as a whole."

FBI to collect more DNA

"DNA profiles from hundreds of thousands of juvenile offenders and adults arrested but not convicted of crimes could be added to the FBI's national DNA crime-fighting program under a proposed law moving through Congress," USA Today reports.

"The law, if enacted, would be the greatest single expansion of the federal government's power to collect and use DNA since the FBI's national database was created in 1992."

The terror of the Taliban is back

Jason Burke of the Observer reports on the re-emergence of a stronger, better coordinated Taliban in Afghanistan.

"The Taliban are expanding fast," he writes. "The deputy governor of Zabul admits most of his province is now controlled by the militia. Most of Oruzgan province and around half of Kandahar province is now beyond government authority."

Not only is the group mobilizing quickly, its political leadership has developed a coherent strategy for dealing with the Karzai government and US presence, according to Burke:

In June, Mullah Omar set up a 10-man leadership council to co-ordinate a new strategy aimed at cutting south-eastern Afghanistan off from the rest of the country. Their aim, according to Western diplomats in Kabul, is to make the region too insecure for development work.

'If the Taliban can prevent the benefits of postwar reconstruction reaching local people, the disillusionment and alienation created will boost support,' one said.

So far, the strategy is working. International aid organisations are restricting their operations in the south-east. 'It's just too damned dangerous these days,' said one NGO security officer.

This strategy seems to resonate with what's happening in Iraq, too.

Update: "Two years after the Taliban regime fled Kabul in the face of U.S.-led coalition forces," the Washington Post's Walter Pincus reported on Saturday, "Gen. John Abizaid, the head of the U.S. Central Command, has described daily combat operations in Afghanistan as 'every bit as much and every bit as difficult as those that go on in Iraq.'"

PAM returns

There was a big deal made of the Pentagon's idea for a Policy Analysis Market (PAM) back in July. The project, which was ultimately scrapped, wound up costing John Poindexter his job.

Now it looks like the idea has been resurrected, this time "free of government involvement."

Update: CNN reports on the return of PAM.

Top Iraqi Scientist Flees

The AP reports:

The Iraqi scientist who headed Saddam Hussein's long-range missile program has fled to neighboring Iran, a country identified as a state sponsor of terrorism with a successful missile program and nuclear ambitions, U.S. officers involved in the weapons hunt told The Associated Press.

Dr. Modher Sadeq-Saba al-Tamimi's departure comes as top weapons makers from Saddam's deposed regime find themselves eight months out of work but with skills that could be lucrative to militaries or terrorist organizations in neighboring countries. U.S. officials have said some are already in Syria and Jordan.

Experts long feared the collapse of Saddam's rule could lead to the kind of scientific brain-drain the United States tried to prevent as the former Soviet Union collapsed. But the Bush administration had no plan for Iraqi scientists and instead officials suggested they could be tried for war crimes.

...Two members of the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency involved in questioning scientists in custody told AP the Iraqis continue to deny the existence of illicit weapons programs in Iraq. Dozens of Iraqi scientists have been questioned and less than 30 remain in custody. All of them, including senior members of Saddam's regime, have been subjected to lie-detector tests, which have come up clean on weapons questioning, the DIA officers said.

But U.S. scientists and weapons experts, who all spoke on condition of anonymity, said they're having trouble finding some Iraqi experts in Iraq and have no way of tracking ones they've met.

This story can be read as a) further proof that Iraq had no WMD program b) an implicit indictment of the Bush claim that invading Iraq would make the world safer from WMD proliferation or c) a story that rationalizes future interventions in neighboring states, say Syria and Iran. Take your pick.

Update: "The Bush administration is working on a $16 million plan to keep Iraqi scientists occupied with peaceful research at home instead of taking their expertise to countries or terrorist organizations that could threaten the United States," reports the AP.

Fixed

Keep on top of e-voting/Diebold issues via a new blog devoted to the emerging scandal, Black Box Notes.

"Case Closed" for the neocons

Pro-warriors are hyperventilating over a memo from Douglas Feith, coordinator of the infamous Office of Special Plans, to the Senate Intelligence Committee that is investigating how the Bush administration handled the intelligence on Iraq prior to war. Dated October 27, 2003, the document purports to detail cooperation between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden dating back to the early 1990s.

The memo was leaked to the Weekly Standard, the flagship neoconservative publication run by PNAC head Bill Kristol. Stephen Hayes, a staff writer at the magazine who has been pushing the Iraq-Al Qaeda link for some time, has written up an article about the memo in this week's edition of the magazine.

Update: The Pentagon has labelled Feith's memo "inaccurate" in a press release that was issued today. The DOD statement also indicates that the intelligence cited by Feith did not deal with "the substantive issue of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaida, and it drew no conclusions."

Update II: Hayes responds to the Pentagon memo, while Slate's Jack Shafer wonders why the non Murdoch-owned press is avoiding Hayes' scoop. Josh Marshall, on the other hand, says the memo consists of nothing new - "just an effort by the usual suspects at the Pentagon to push the already-discredited al Qaeda link because so much else that they’ve been involved with has gone so badly."

Update III: Jim Lobe and Newsweek's team of Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball also weigh in with skeptical takes on the memo.

Obscuring the effects of the wall

I recently posted about a UN report on the "separation barrier" being built by Israel in the West Bank. The report warned that 700,000 Palestinians would be harmed by the wall's construction and 14.5% of the West Bank would be annexed to Israel.

But, according to the News Butcher, this estimate "flagrantly obscures the planned extent of the wall by only considering wall segments that have been officially approved by the Israeli cabinet." In actuality,

Israeli Army recommendations, backed by settler council demands, indicate that the likely route of the wall will annex territory closer to the 40 to 50 percent range, according to Stop the Wall.

While the UN report, and US media reports, for example for the New York Times, focus on the western side of the wall, the elephant in the room is the eastern side of the wall, which has already begun construction southeast of Jenin near the town of Tayasir, according to Stop the Wall maps.

Because of the focus only on the cabinet-approved portions of the wall, few people in the US realize that the eventual wall is planned to completely enclose and greatly reduce Palestinian territory, not just separate it from the current Israeli territory.

So, to summarize, the situation is much worse than is being presented in the media.

9,000+ casualties

UPI reports that US casualties from the Iraq war have topped 9,000.

In addition to the 397 service members who have died and the 1,967 wounded, 6,861 troops were medically evacuated for non-combat conditions between March 19 and Oct. 30, the Army Surgeon General's office said.

That brings total casualties among all services to more than 9,200, and represents an increase of nearly 3,000 non-combat medical evacuations reported since the first week of October. The Army offered no immediate explanation for the increase.

"We don't do body counts"

In the Boston Globe, Derrick Z. Jackson writes that the establishment's failure to account for civilian casualties is "the most disgusting and least discussed aspect of President Bush's invasion and occupation of Iraq."

"Just one Iraqi civilian death is horrible blood on our hands given that the attack on Iraq appears to have been based on a lie. Yes, Saddam Hussein killed thousands of his own people. But an American massacre does not make things right. If Americans have half the humanity they claim, they will no longer accept Bush at face value when his officers say, 'We don't do body counts.'"

Acquiescence

"There is a horrible scandal eating away the heart of the American body politic," writes Chris Floyd. "Among the many corrupted currents loosed upon the nation by the Bush Regime, this scandal is perhaps the worst, for it abets all the others and breeds new pestilence, new perversions at every turn."

This scandal comes not from the highest echelons of corporate power, the hallowed halls of Congress, or the obscured workings at Langley. Rather, it comes from within our own hearts and minds...the scandal is us.

Betrayed?

"So just who truly supported the troops?" asks Don Williams. "Those who sent them to Iraq with no clear plan for bringing them home again or those who warned, don't go there, it's a quagmire?"

And speaking of supporting the troops, the Department of Defense is cutting family benefits for soldiers and blocking compensation for POWs from the first Gulf War.

Israel flouting road map

A secret Israeli memo penned at the behest of Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, which was leaked to Reuters, admits that Israel has been blatantly ignoring the general outline of the much-vaunted (if nonetheless bankrupt) "roadmap" to peace.

"Our claim that Israel has fulfilled its side of the (peace) road map is seen as lacking credibility because not only have we not evacuated the illegal outposts, we are working in every way to whitewash their existence and build more," the memo says.

Burying brutal truths about war

Salon's Eric Boehlert reports on the Toledo Blade's four-part series, "Buried Secrets, Brutal Truths," which details "how, in 1967, an elite Army paratrooper unit named Tiger Force went on a seven-month killing spree in South Vietnam, targeting unarmed farmers, women and children. The paper also uncovered for the first time that a secret four-year Army investigation had concluded that 18 members of Tiger Force had committed war crimes, but no charges were ever brought. Instead, the investigation was simply filed away in 1975, during Donald Rumsfeld's first run as secretary of defense."

Boehlert notes that the series is likely to be a Pulitzer Prize finalist next year and is getting widespread coverage in the foreign press. In the United States, however, it's being ignored.

Considering that the "parallels with Vietnam are asserting themselves again and again in Iraq," it's likely prudent to consider the lessons and experiences of that disastrous conflagration from 30+ years ago, lest we commit the same errors and atrocities.

Selectively editing the record on 9/11

What did Bush know before 9/11 attacks? This is the question the Bush administration doesn't seem to want the world to know the answer to, as it is doing its damnedest to keep the 9/11 commission from getting an unedited view of the President's Daily Brief (PDB) before the attacks.

The NY Times reports that a deal has been cut to allow the White House to selectively edit the PDB documents before they are turned over, to the chagrin of an umbrella group of victims' families and two Democrats on the 9/11 panel.

Gov't moves to restrict academic freedom

Congress is moving to place restrictions on the way international relations is taught in American colleges, according to the News Butcher.

Bush foreign policy 'creates risks for US companies'

According to the Financial Times, the business community isn't happy with the way Bush is handling US foreign policy.

US multinational companies are "acutely worried" about the business consequences of Bush administration foreign policy, according to a new report from Control Risks, a UK-based international security consultancy.

"The consequences of Bush's foreign policy have created new risks - and exacerbated existing risks - for US companies around the world," the report says. The company's RiskMap 2004 report describes US foreign policy as "the most important single factor driving the development of global risk".

It says many in the private sector "believe that US unilateralism is creating a security paradox: by using US power unilaterally and aggressively in pursuit of global stability, the Bush administration is in fact creating precisely the opposite effect."

It says that for companies such as McDonald's and Coca-Cola, dealing with anti-American sentiment is not new. "However, US companies that never previously worried about the connotations of their national origin are acutely worried about a new wave of popular resentment in other parts of the world against US policies," it says. Long-standing boycotts of US products in the Middle East and parts of south-east Asia had been reinvigorated, a point emphasised by the rapid success of brands such as Mecca-Cola and Qibla Cola.

If I were Bush, I'd be very worried about this. Re-election is going to be mighty difficult if big business isn't 100% behind him.

How the GOP will spin Iraq

Iraq is a mess right now, so it's going to be interesting to see how the Bush handlers spin it in the coming months before the '04 election.

Anne E. Kornblut of the Boston Globe gives us a sneak peek of what to expect:

Faced with growing public uneasiness over Iraq, Republican Party officials intend to change the terms of the political debate heading into next year's election by focusing on the "doctrine of preemption," portraying President Bush as a visionary acting to prevent future terrorist attacks on US soil despite the costs and casualties involved overseas.

The strategy will involve the dismissal of Democrats as the party of "protests, pessimism and political hate speech," Ed Gillespie, Republican National Committee chairman, wrote in a recent memo to party officials -- a move designed to shift attention toward Bush's broader foreign policy objectives rather than the accounts of bloodshed. Republicans hope to convince voters that Democrats are too indecisive and faint-hearted -- and perhaps unpatriotic -- to protect US interests, arguing that inaction during the Clinton years led to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Iraq on the verge of crisis, says the CIA

Someone has leaked word of a top-secret report by the CIA on the situation in Iraq to the press. The Guardian provides a summary of the report, along with an assessment of the impact it's having in Washington:

The report, an "appraisal of situation" commissioned by the CIA director, George Tenet, and written by the CIA station chief in Baghdad, said that the insurgency was gaining ground among the population, and already numbers in the tens of thousands.

One military intelligence assessment now estimates the insurgents' strength at 50,000. Analysts cautioned that such a figure was speculative, but it does indicate a deep-rooted revolt on a far greater scale than the Pentagon had led the administration to believe.

An intelligence source in Washington familiar with the CIA report described it as a "bleak assessment that the resistance is broad, strong and getting stronger".

"It says we are going to lose the situation unless there is a rapid and dramatic change of course," the source said.

"There are thousands in the resistance - not just a core of Ba'athists. They are in the thousands, and growing every day. Not all those people are actually firing, but providing support, shelter and all that."

Although, the report was an internal CIA document it was widely circulated within the administration. Even more unusually, it carried an endorsement by Paul Bremer, the civilian head of the US-run occupation of Iraq - a possible sign that he was seeking to bypass his superiors in the Pentagon and send a message directly to President George Bush on how bad the situation has become.

The Independent reports that this foreshadows a "political shake-up" to come, which the NY Times confirms with a story about how the Bush administration is "moving up its timetable for self-government in Iraq," vowing to "try to hold elections in the first half of next year and turn civilian authority over to a temporary government before a new constitution is written."

To put it another way: the Bushies are hitting the panic button.

Avoiding peace

To say that the case for war in Iraq was built on lies is no longer controversial. Frankly, it shouldn't have been controversial prior to the war, but that's another issue altogether.

Nonetheless, George Monbiot writes that a whole new "set of lies is only now beginning to come to light. Even if all the claims Bush and Blair made about their enemies and their motives had been true, and all their objectives had been legal and just, there may still have been no need to go to war. For, as we discovered last week, Saddam proposed to give Bush and Blair almost everything they wanted before a shot had been fired. Our governments appear both to have withheld this information from the public and to have lied to us about the possibilities for diplomacy."

And even worse, Monbiot reminds us, "The same thing happened before the war with Afghanistan."

Clamping Down

To deal with the increased attacks on troops and other parties within Iraq, the US military is vowing to "get tough" in Baghdad.

Does "getting tough" include tying up women and children? How about arresting men for criticising the occupational authorities? Is there any wonder why the Iraqis are skeptical about US motives?

The three-month window has closed; the US military is likely getting the "Third Gulf War" it was warned about...

Collateral damage in Iraq: 22-55k killed

Medact, a British-based humanitarian group, has issued a report entitled "Continuing Collateral Damage: The health and environmental costs of war on Iraq." According to the Guardian, the report found that 22,000 to 55,000 people have been killed by the war thus far, including up to 9,565 civilians.

Furthermore,

disruption to the country's health was...considerable, says the report's author, Dr Sabya Farooq, pointing to dangers such as leftover explosives and ammunition - Unicef has said this has hurt more than 1,000 children - landmines, and risks of cancers from toxic dust from weapons with depleted uranium.

"The mental and physical health of already weakened and unhealthy people is being damaged further," the report says. "Shortages of clean water, adequate food and power leads to an increase in diseases that is likely to result in more deaths than those directly caused by the conflict."

It adds: "The absence of reliable data, the failure of occupying forces to provide full information, and the deteriorated security situation which caused most UN staff and many non-government organisations to leave have led to an information black hole of unique proportions."

You might recall that Medact issued a report prior to the war that warned that between 49,000 and 261,000 people might die because of the impending conflict.

Wounded, ill, and crippled from war

The LA Times reports on the "Hospital front" of the Iraq war.

Bush accuser dead

Apparently, the 38-year old Texas woman who filed suit against George W. Bush for sexual assault is dead from a gunshot wound to the head. The investigating coroner has labelled it a suicide.

Draft after '04?

Is the draft coming back? If so, Maureen Farrell explains why dodging it will be a bit trickier this time around.

Media Reform

Following the first National Conference on Media Reform, Bob McChesney and John Nichols offer some ideas for what should be the future agenda of the media reform movement.

"We have to make media policy part of the 2004 presidential debate and all the campaigns that will follow it," they urge. "And we have to make it a part of the kitchen-table debates where the real course of America can, and should, be plotted. To do that, the media reform movement that captured the imagination of antiwar activists and others in 2003 must burrow just as deeply into labor, church, farm and community groups, which are only beginning to recognize how their ideals and ambitions are being damaged. If the initial challenge was one of perception--making media an issue--the next challenge is one of organization. 'Media reform has become an issue for millions of Americans,' says Bernie Sanders. 'Now, we've got to make media reform more than an issue. We have to make it a reality for all Americans.'"

Also check out Bill Moyers' keynote address to this past weekend's conference in Madison, Wisconsin.

Israeli fence 'will harm one in three Palestinians'

According to Justin Huggler of the Independent, a new report by the UN warns that Israel's construction of the "separation barrier" in the West Bank has "severe humanitarian consequences" for nearly 700,000 Palestinians.

More than 274,000 will be stranded outside the wall because Israel refuses to build it along the internationally recognised Green Line. Thousands will be forced to apply for Israeli military permits to live in their own homes.

But the consequences will reach further, the report warns. A further 400,000 Palestinians will be cut off from their farmland, their jobs, universities and schools. "This means that approximately 680,000 - 30 per cent of the Palestinian population in the West Bank - will be directly harmed by the wall," the UN said in a report.

The "fence" - a series of concrete walls, deep trenches and double fences fitted with electronic sensors - has attracted international condemnation. Palestinians call it "Israel's Berlin Wall". Even the US, Israel's main ally, says it is not happy with the route. Israel says the purpose is to prevent Palestinian suicide bombers and other attackers crossing into Israel.

Only 11 per cent of the route approved so far runs along the Green Line, according to yesterday's UN report. The result is that 210,000 acres, or 14.5 per cent of the West Bank, excluding East Jerusalem, will be cut off from the rest of the West Bank by the wall.

In other words, this is a blatant land grab. Or, as James Brooks says, "a vehicle for the more rapid and overt methods of large-scale ethnic cleansing."

Double Standards

Saving Private Lynch; ignoring Specialist Shoshana Johnson. I'm sure race has nothing to do with it, right?

Leave no child behind

In order to deal with budget crunches, rural school systems in at least 11 states -- including Kentucky, Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, Louisiana, Arkansas, New Mexico, Oregon, South Dakota, Wisconsin and Wyoming -- have shifted to a four-day school week.

Stop the wall!

Neve Gordon summarizes what's at stake with Israel's construction of the "separation barrier" in and along the West Bank:

The facts on the ground lay bare that the Apartheid wall, which was ostensibly built to satisfy security needs, is in fact being used as an extremely efficient weapon of dispossession and abuse. Rhetoric aside, the Palestinians' land is being stolen, basic rights to freedom of movement and livelihood are systematically violated, and the rights to education, health and even burial are contravened. The instruments of violation are not only guns, tanks and airplanes, but Caterpillar bulldozers and Fiat tractors.

If the wall is completed, then 50 percent of the West Bank will be annexed to Israel, and there will be no possibility of creating a viable Palestinian state. Moreover, it will not solve Israel's security problems, but rather exacerbate them. By engendering extreme pressure on the Palestinian people, who are already living under dire circumstances, it fosters their sense that there are no prospects for the future, thus motivating people to join extremist groups like the Hamas and Islamic Jihad; indeed, the wall only increases the hatred towards the occupiers and promotes bloody attacks.

What baffles the Israeli peace camp is the international silence. A state among nations is placing thousands of people in ghettoes, forcing them to live in subhuman conditions, and not even a murmur of protest can be heard from the world leaders.

On November 9th, these international leaders have a unique opportunity to raise their voice against the Apartheid wall and 36 years of Israeli occupation. On this day, the world will be commemorating the 14th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall and the 65th anniversary of "Kristallnacht," the state orchestrated pogrom against Jews in Nazi Germany.

The international leaders should tell Prime Minister Sharon that at this historical moment he has an option between walls and ethnic cleansing, on the one hand, and open borders and freedom, on the other. They should also let him know, in unequivocal terms, that they will use all necessary means to ensure that Israel will choose the latter.

For further background, check out this fact sheet and FAQ. Here is a breakdown of the protests going on around the world today.

NORAD subpoenaed

The 9/11 commission is wondering about the failure to defend the skies on 9/11, so it has voted to "subpoena the Pentagon for documents related to the activities of U.S. air defenses on the day of the terrorist hijackings," according to the AP.

Brutal tactics

Black Hawk down. The US response? Collective punishment, a la the Israelis. And, hey, why not take a few hostages while they're at it...

Prevent Ethnicide

Going where few writers dare to tread, Kathleen and Bill Christison take on the racist underpinnings of Zionism in a long article on Counterpunch.

"What Israel is doing to the Palestinians is not genocide," they conclude. "It is not a holocaust, but it is, unmistakably, ethnicide. It is, unmistakably, racism. Israel worries constantly, and its American friends worry, about the destruction of Israel. We are all made to think always about the existential threat to Israel, to the Jewish people. But the nation in imminent danger of elimination today is not Israel but the Palestinians. Such a policy of national destruction must not be allowed to stand."

Update: In a similarly-themed article, Leila Farsakh addresses whether Israel is "a racist apartheid state" in Le Monde Diplomatique.

300k in Iraqi mass graves

"Saddam Hussein's government is believed to have buried as many as 300,000 opponents in 263 mass graves that dot the Iraqi landscape," the AP reports.

Bringing Democracy to the Mid East

Jim Lobe reports on Bush's speech claiming a shift in US policy in the Mid East: mistakes have been made, of course, but now the US is going to be promoting democracy there. Really. Honest.

To make things more absurd, Bush asserted this new policy before the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), those lovable thugs that engage in subversive activities previously undertaken by the CIA. The NED was last seen trying to help overthrow Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in the infamous near-coup of 2002.

But getting back to the speech at hand, Bill Vann of the WSWS puts it well when he says,

There is an element of madness in the assumption that such a policy can be implemented without any regard for the bitter legacy of colonialism in the Middle East and the history of protracted and bloody struggles waged by national movements against foreign domination. This delusion that the Arab peoples are ready to welcome US armies sent in the name of “democracy” is already producing a tragedy in Iraq. Its extension throughout the region will ignite popular revolt and bring US imperialism face-to-face with catastrophe.

Mainstream publications also weighed in with varying degrees of skepticism and cynicism to Bush's pronouncement. Notably, the Washington Post called the speech "Idealism in the Face Of a Troubled Reality," while Time Magazine and the Financial Times each threw some cold water on this allegedly bold new initiative.

Stop asking questions!

"The Bush White House, irritated by pesky questions from congressional Democrats about how the administration is using taxpayer money, has developed an efficient solution," the Washington Post reports. "It will not entertain any more questions from opposition lawmakers."

US torture by proxy

As promised, the US government has been outsourcing torture. Of course, human rights groups are up in arms over this. Maher Arar's horrific experience in Syria is what has prompted this discussion of torture in the media.

This revelation has Matt Bivens asking, "can someone explain the difference between George W. Bush's 'enemy combatant' and Josef Stalin's 'enemy of the people'?"

No Clue

Marian Wilkinson of the Sydney Morning Herald investigates the anthrax attacks from 2 years ago in the United States. Nice to know that you have to turn to newspapers on the other side of the globe to get any decent cover of this issue...

Wounded?

How many US soldiers have been wounded in combat in Iraq? Conventional wisdom right now says about 2,000. Recent reports indicate, however, that the real number may be closer to 7,000.

"Uncovered"

The Independent reports:

An unprecedented array of US intelligence professionals, diplomats and former Pentagon officials have gone on record to lambast the Bush administration for its distortion of the case for war against Iraq. In their view, the very foundations of intelligence-gathering have been damaged in ways that could take years, even decades, to repair.

A new documentary film beginning to circulate in the United States features one powerful condemnation after another, from the sort of people who usually stay discreetly in the shadows - a former director of the CIA, two former assistant secretaries of defence, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia and even the man who served as President Bush's Secretary of the Army until just a few months ago.

Check out the film in question, "Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War," if you're interested.

Blowing Smoke

Towards the end of last week, a memo was leaked to Fox News' Sean Hannity regarding the investigation of pre-war intelligence on Iraq. According to the GOP, the memo is an indication that Democrats are trying to exploit the investigation to gain political points. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is demanding that the author of the memo "identify himself or herself...disavow this partisan attack in its entirety" and issue "a personal apology" to the chair of the Select Committee on Intelligence. Frist went on to issue a veiled threat that the investigation will grind to a halt until the admission comes forth.

Talk about chutzpah! The memo is not nearly as nefarious as is being suggested (go ahead, read it), and the way it's being handled by GOP leadership is entirely hypocritical. Remember, this outrage is coming from the same party which has been doing its damnedest to sweep the Plame leak investigation under the rug.

Where's the demand that President Bush force whomever leaked Plame's role with the CIA to "identify himself or herself"? Or when will the President forcefully "disavow" that leak "in its entirety," rather than hiding behind Scott McClellan's obfuscations?

Josh Marshall explains what's going on here.

"Conspiracy Theories"

Here's something I don't think you'll be seeing on American television anytime soon: "Consipiracy Theories: Uncovering the facts behind the myths of September 11, 2001"

In a special season premiere investigation the fifth estate's Bob McKeown finds that even the most outlandish conspiracy theory may have its basis in a legitimate question.

In the course of separating fact from fiction, Bob delves into the labyrinthine and surprising ties between the Bushes and the Bin Ladens.

What he finds out may startle you as much as any conspiracy theory.

Damn Canadians. Don't they realize they're not supposed to be investigating this stuff?

Anyway, you can view the program online here. Also be sure to check out the accompanying material at the fifth estate's website.

Welcome back!

According to the Washington Times, the US is welcoming the Taliban back into the fold in Afghanistan.

The United States has released from custody in Afghanistan the former Taliban foreign minister as part of a strategy to recruit elements of the former regime into the U.S.-backed government of President Hamid Karzai.

Afghan and Pakistani officials said the Karzai government has been negotiating with the former minister, Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, to entice elements of the Taliban to join the government.

The Asia Times has been reporting about the wooing of the Taliban by the Karzai government for several months now, so this news does not come as a shock. Nonetheless, it puts the lie to our "moral clarity" in this war on terror...

Iraq tried to make deal to avert war

The NY Times reports that Saddam Hussein tried to reach out to the United States to make a last minute deal to avert war, starting in February 2003.

The overtures made via back channels and informal communication networks were repeatedly rebuffed by the US.

Reagan Remembered

By now, you've no doubt heard that CBS has capitulated to right-wing pressure and is shifting its miniseries about Ronald Reagan over to Showtime.

This episode isn't merely a pop-culture sideshow; it illustrates much of the right wing's strength and the amazing institutional structure linking a variety of like-minded, although far from identical, conservatives (be they in politics, business, or religion). These interests can be mobilized at will to exert enormous pressures on the way the cultural and political institutions of this country function.

As one might suspect, David Walsh of the WSWS delivers a pretty hard-hitting indictment of the controversy over the film. His conclusion is worth highlighting:

The episode reveals not only the enormous influence, far out of proportion to its level of popular support, that the ultra-right exercises in US politics and media affairs, it also demonstrates the considerable sensitivity within the political and media establishment to any attempt to puncture the Reagan myth. For two decades this mediocre actor-turned-front-man for the most reactionary sections of the corporate elite has been assiduously built up by the media as a towering political and historical figure.

This myth-making has served a definite ideological purpose—to provide legitimacy to domestic policies that effected a vast enrichment of the ruling elite and the most privileged layers of the middle class at the expense of the broad mass of working people, and foreign policies that undermined post-World War II international relations and ushered in a new period of militarism and great power conflict.

The American corporate and political elite fears that any deflating of the Reagan myth runs the risk of undermining the credibility of its entire social and political set-up.

Thus Ronny isn't lionized because he was a tough-talking, funny guy. What Reagan is remembered for (and what he is not) plays a crucial role in secruring a base of legitimacy for the right wing's efforts to further militarize society and strip away the remaining vestiges of the welfare state.

And if you think things are bad now, just wait until the Gipper kicks the bucket and the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project really kicks into gear...

Building a Knowledge Society

What's wrong with the Arab world? This is a question typically asked by Orientalists like Bernard Lewis and Western apologists like Fouad Ajami, but it is also the question addressed in a new report by the UN Development Program, "Building a Knowledge Society."

Writing in Ha'aretz, Zvi Bar'el summarizes the report thusly:

This is the second report the UN has published on the Arab world, and this time focuses Arab knowledge society, or rather the failure of that society.

The list of figures presented in the report on the status of knowledge in Arab countries should arouse more than a little anxiety not only in the Arab countries, but also in the developed countries.

The figures indicate that only about 0.2 percent of the gross domestic product of Arab countries is dedicated to R&D, unlike 3 percent in Japan and 2.2 percent in Israel.

One of the implications of this figure is that the technology that is parachuted in from the West to Arab countries does not undergo an assimilation process, and there is no incentive for developing local science and technology.

In effect, the report continues, the Arab countries have no national and governmental infrastructure for the systematic promotion of science and research. The authors provide a few impressive statistics. The average level of computerization in the Arab countries is 18 computers per 1,000 persons, compared to a world average of about 78 computers per 1,000 persons; only 1.6 percent of the population of Arab countries is hooked to the Internet, compared to 35-40 percent in developed countries, and the number of telephone lines is only about a fifth of the accepted figure even in developing countries.

Bar'el has much more to say, so read on.

Deficiencies in the Arab world abound, like they do all over the globe, and it is important that indigenous leaders tackle them head on so that complex, multifaceted solutions can be formulated. It's also imperative that criticism is not left solely in the hands of polemicists who aim to tell us what is exactly "wrong" with the "Arab mind" for the sake of political demonization, not for cultural regeneration.

For these reasons, I hope this report from the UN is embraced by those looking to improve life throughout the Middle East, and not just those looking to champion the superiority of the West or, alas, Israel.

The Pulse of the USA

The Guardian's Julian Borger just finished up a three-part series on the state of America. Part one dealt with poverty; part two with the healthcare crisis; and part three with growing inequality. They're all worth reading.

Lost forever

More here. Many, many more here - without images.