FYI

I'll resume posting within the next few days.

No withdrawal

Tom Engelhardt tackles the "enduring bases" in Iraq question:

Since the invasion of Saddam's Iraq, those bases -- call them what you will -- have been at the heart of the Bush administration's "reconstruction" of the country. To this day, those Little Americas, with their KBR-lands, their Pizza Huts, their stop signs, and their miniature golf courses remain at the secret heart of Bush administration "reconstruction" policy. As long as KBR keeps building them, making their facilities ever more enduring (and ever more valuable), there can be no genuine "withdrawal" from Iraq, nor even an intention of doing so. Right now, despite the recent visits of a couple of reporters, those super-bases remain enswathed in a kind of policy silence. The Bush administration does not discuss them (other than to deny their permanency from time to time). No presidential speeches deal with them. No plans for them are debated in Congress. The opposition Democrats generally ignore them and the press -- with the exception of the odd columnist -- won't even put the words "base," "permanent," and "Iraq" in the same paragraph.

It may be hard to do, given the skimpy coverage, but keep your eyes directed at our "super-bases." Until the administration blinks on them, there will be no withdrawal from Iraq.

Wow. Maybe Jay Bookman was right all those years ago. Who'd a thunk it?

Ousting Hamas

The American love affair with "democracy" strikes again:

The United States and Israel are discussing ways to destabilize the Palestinian government so that newly elected Hamas officials will fail and elections will be called again, according to Israeli officials and Western diplomats.

The intention is to starve the Palestinian Authority of money and international connections to the point where, some months from now, its president, Mahmoud Abbas, is compelled to call a new election. The hope is that Palestinians will be so unhappy with life under Hamas that they will return to office a reformed and chastened Fatah movement.

Par for the course. And people wonder why the Arab world chokes on Bush's sermons...

Additional reading on Hamas happenings, here.

Lnx

Sorry, but I'm pressed for time. Here are some links to hold you over for a bit:

* The Guardian runs down some of the main claims of the Oxford Research Group's new report on the potential consequences of an American/Israeli attack on Iran.

* "The U.S. intelligence community's top Middle East analyst from 2000 to 2005 has accused the George W. Bush administration of distorting and politicising intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war," reports Jim Lobe. Paul Pillar, formerly the CIA's esteemed expert on the Near East and South Asia, lays out the case in a Foreign Affairs article that appeared last Friday. As Lobe relates, "Pillar's charges that the administration 'cherry-picked' and otherwise manipulated the intelligence process in order to take the country to war are the most serious since the leak of the so-called 'Downing Street Memo' to the London Sunday Times last May."

* Dahr Jamail notes that Iraq is, conveniently, "Out of Sight, Out of Mind."

* It's a long road back for many American soldiers in Iraq. Particularly those who have suffered grievous wounds.

* Fred Kaplan looks at some of the latest data on Iraq and asks, incredulously, "What have we been doing over there for nearly three years? Have we mucked things up entirely? Can anything be done—is it too late to rally some massive multinational effort—to keep this ravaged country from collapsing? Is anybody in the Bush administration looking at these graphs and asking the inescapable questions, much less seeking some practical answers?"

* Knight Ridder's Nancy Youssef notes that, in many ways, it's back to the future in Iraq.

* We're going to have to get used to wars for oil, claims Michael Klare.

* Ilan Pappe wonders, "Why is the history of modern Palestine such a matter of debate? Why is it still regarded as a complex, indeed obscure, chapter in contemporary history that cannot be easily deciphered? Any abecedarian student of its past who comes to it with clean hands would immediately recognize that in fact its story is very simple. For that matter it is not vastly different from other colonialist instances or tales of national liberation."

* Unfortunately, America's use of torture is going to continue no matter what John McCain and Congress do, argues Alfred W. McCoy.

* Again, you'd think a revelation that Cheney and other "senior officials" authorized Scooter Libby's leaking of Valerie Plame's identity would garner more attention than it has.

* Doug Ireland has some questions about Dick Cheney's "shooting accident" over the weekend.

* Hurricane Katrina offers us a nice snapshot of the US government at work.

* Greg Tate reviews some recent books on hip hop culture.

Thugs vs. wimps

Screwing over the masses

More on the vulgarity that is Bush's budget, here.

Punishing PBS

What's a great way to keep the sheeple ignorant? Decimate one of the few broadcast outlets that gets anywhere close to what we might reasonably call "the truth."

Spying for "useful" information

I want to point you to two converging memes on Bush's NSA spying program which, frankly, didn't hit home for me until recently.

To start with, Thomas Powers floated this idea in his review of James Risen's new book (via American Samizdat):

[F]ar from saving "thousands of lives," as claimed by Vice President Dick Cheney in December 2005, the NSA program never led investigators to a genuine terrorist not already under suspicion, nor did it help them to expose any dangerous plots. So why did the administration continue this lumbering effort for three years? Outsiders sometimes find it tempting to dismiss such wheel-spinning as bureaucratic silliness, but I believe that the Judiciary Committee will find, if it is willing to persist, that within the large pointless program there exists a small, sharply focused program that delivers something the White House really wants. This it will never confess willingly.

Now what could that "sharply focused program" be aiming at? Paul Craig Roberts (via Arthur Silber) has a hunch:

Having eliminated internal opposition, the Bush administration is now using blackmail obtained through illegal spying on American citizens to silence the media and the opposition party.

Before flinching at my assertion of blackmail, ask yourself why President Bush refuses to obey the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The purpose of the FISA court is to ensure that administrations do not spy for partisan political reasons. The warrant requirement is to ensure that a panel of independent federal judges hears a legitimate reason for the spying, thus protecting a president from the temptation to abuse the powers of government. The only reason for the Bush administration to evade the court is that the Bush administration had no legitimate reasons for its spying. This should be obvious even to a naif.

Let me also remind you that when the Bush administration unleashed the NSA against the UN Security Council prior to the war, they were probably doing it for similar reasons: blackmailing individual members.

So I wouldn't put this beyond the Bushies, by any means. This is about the only thing that makes sense when you think about why Gonzales and co. are so adamant that getting a FISA warrant is unnecessary. They're trying to get at "useful" information, and you can bet your bottom dollar that it has nothing to do with the threat of terrorism.

See no evil

Unkle Karl may have been hard at work at the shredder. You'd think this might warrant some attention, but nope.

Nor is the new DSM worthy of much discussion, it seems.

The blinders of universalism

There's an apt comparison between 2005 France and 1967 America, argues Thomas Sugrue.

(via political theory)

Freedom & responsibility

This is a great round-up of opinion on the Mohamed cartoon controversy.

Cornering Iran

Whenever you hear the words "Iran" and "nuclear program" in close proximity over the next few weeks, please think of this:

The George W. Bush administration's adoption of a policy of threatening to use military force against Iran disregarded a series of official intelligence estimates going back many years that consistently judged Iran's fear of a U.S. attack to be a major motivating factor in its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Two former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officials who were directly involved in producing CIA estimates on Iran revealed in separate interviews with IPS that the National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) on Iran have consistently portrayed its concerns about the military threat posed by the United States as a central consideration in Tehran's pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability.

Paul Pillar, who managed the writing of all NIEs on Iran from 2000 to 2005 as the national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia, told IPS that all of the NIEs on Iran during that period addressed the Iranian fears of U.S. attack explicitly and related their desire for nuclear weapons to those fears.

Logically, then, if the predominant concern of the US and Israel is to prevent Iran from pursuing nuclear weapons, then the firebrand rhetoric coming out of Washington and Tel Aviv should abate considerably.

But if the alleged nuclear program is being used largely to ramp up the threat of Iran to the West in order to justify pre-existing goals of regime change, as I claim, then I doubt you'll hear much of a change in tone as we get down to the wire. So stay tuned.

One month in Iraq

Illustrated.

Gathering Momentum, Headed for Iran

Norman Solomon remarks that it sure is a perverted dance the Bush administration and Iran's Ahmadinejad are currently engaged in.

Alas, it's more than likely that things are going to get even worse. Around Washington, it's almost as if the clock got turned back to the Fall of 2002...

Apartheid revived?

Chris McGreal, introducing the first part of a special report for the Guardian:

Perhaps the real question is how Israel came to be in the same league as apartheid South Africa, whether by mirroring laws and political strategies, or in the suffering caused. And how it is that the government of a people who suffered so much at the hands of discrimination and hatred came to secretly embrace a regime led by men who once stood on the docks of Cape Town and chanted: "Send back the Jews."

Yes, McGreal is tackling that nasty little tale about the links between Israel and the apartheid regime of South Africa. It's a story that should make everyone a bit uneasy, especially Zionists.

The two-part feature is available here and here.

The Bush Budget

In all seriousness, this is no way to run a country.

Underhanded accounting tricks, pet political projects, gutting of important social programs while ramping up "defense" spending...I guess that's what you should come to expect when something like the Bush budget is announced. The chutzpah is still jaw dropping, though.

Orwellian

Oh boy. Perle is such a piece of work.

Locked away

National Journal has done a survey of the inmates being held at Gitmo. Unsurprisingly, the findings are rather appalling:

Many of them [the detainees] are not accused of hostilities against the United States or its allies. Most, when captured, were innocent of any terrorist activity, were Taliban foot soldiers at worst, and were often far less than that. And some, perhaps many, are guilty only of being foreigners in Afghanistan or Pakistan at the wrong time. And much of the evidence -- even the classified evidence -- gathered by the Defense Department against these men is flimsy, second-, third-, fourth- or 12th-hand. It's based largely on admissions by the detainees themselves or on coerced, or worse, interrogations of their fellow inmates, some of whom have been proved to be liars.

...One thing about these detainees is very clear: Notwithstanding Rumsfeld's description, the majority of them were not caught by American soldiers on the battlefield. They came into American custody from third parties, mostly from Pakistan, some after targeted raids there, most after a dragnet for Arabs after 9/11.

During the Cold War, Americans were constantly admonished to thank their lucky stars that they lived in a free society which did its damnedest to protect legal rights. Sure, there were some glaring contradictions, notably in that nether region called the South where darker folk didn't quite have the full protection of the state behind them (indeed, the state was often complicit in the persecution). But there was no "secret police" here, and the chance of being whisked away by stormtroopers to some prison where there'd be no legal redress for you was marginal.

No more. Today this country openly embraces the same tactics we crucify totalitarian regimes for. Worse still, the US now openly enlists totalitarian regimes to help with the "dirty work." Most of the casualties of this policy are darker skinned peoples from the other side of the world. Thus, in our deeply racist culture, little uproar.

Nevertheless, ask yourself: what's to prevent the state from doing this to you?

Islam vs. Secularism?

As usual, Robert Fisk has some cogent thoughts about what's going on in the world. This time he's commenting on the uproar over the inflammatory cartoons of the Prophet Mohamed:

For many Muslims, the "Islamic" reaction to this affair is an embarrassment. There is good reason to believe that Muslims would like to see some element of reform introduced to their religion. If this cartoon had advanced the cause of those who want to debate this issue, no-one would have minded. But it was clearly intended to be provocative. It was so outrageous that it only caused reaction.

And this is not a great time to heat up the old Samuel Huntingdon garbage about a "clash of civilisations". Iran now has a clerical government again. So, to all intents and purposes, does Iraq (which was not supposed to end up with a democratically elected clerical administration, but that's what happens when you topple dictators). In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood won 20 per cent of the seats in the recent parliamentary elections. Now we have Hamas in charge of "Palestine". There's a message here, isn't there? That America's policies--"regime change" in the Middle East--are not achieving their ends. These millions of voters were preferring Islam to the corrupt regimes which we imposed on them.

For the Danish cartoon to be dumped on top of this fire is dangerous indeed.

In any event, it's not about whether the Prophet should be pictured. The Koran does not forbid images of the Prophet even though millions of Muslims do. The problem is that these cartoons portrayed Mohamed as a bin Laden-type image of violence. They portrayed Islam as a violent religion. It is not. Or do we want to make it so?

Personally, I'm curious if we'll be hearing much about the sanctity of free speech once this appears in Iran.

Although it strikes me as a tad bit childish, I think that's a better way of making the point that some scabs are best left unpicked. Better, at least, than burning down embassies.

Onward

I have little time or energy to reconstruct developments over the past two weeks or so. The most pressing concerns -- the Hamas victory and saber-rattling over Iranian nuclear ambitions -- are rather significant, but usually for the opposite reasons than those gnawed about in the dominant media. Cutting to the chase: Hamas' ascent to formal political control over Palestinian politics and Iran's nuclear machinations are threats to Israel and the US only to the extent that the latter parties decide to make them threats.

If Israel expects Hamas to be as pliant as Fatah was and as willing to accept demands for one-sided "reform" while Israel flaunts its expansionist project, then Hamas is likely to respond violently. Likewise, if the US bullies Iran and tries to use the UN as a direct policy making arm -- something that will inevitably fail because of Chinese and Russian interests -- then Iran is likely to respond belligerently and, if attacked or destabilized, violently.

To reiterate, these separate crises are crises only so far as the US and Israel continues riding them to realize pre-existing political goals that, invariably, punish Palestinians and Iranians. If, on the other hand, the US and Israel rethink things and start to make inroads that are fair and even-handed on Palestinian national aspirations and nuclear proliferation in general, then we probably don't have too much to worry about. Suffice it to say, though, such an epiphany is not very likely.

I don't have much else to say on either topic at the moment and, unfortunately, there's a paucity of good reading to recommend. The Iranian storyline is not new, so your best bet is to keep an eye on the chess moves over the next month or so. We should have a better idea of how far the US and Israel are willing to go by March.

Regarding the Hamas victory, let me recommend what Tony Karon, Gilbert Achcar, and Adam Hanieh have to say. Rahul Mahajan has some nice thoughts, as well, but they're colored by a bit of (well-placed) cynicism. Additionally, Ian Fisher has been doing some good reporting for the NY Times, which I hope will keep him on this beat. A 2003 article by Fisher provides some good background on how and why Hamas has catapulted past Fatah in recent years.

Unrelated to the issues above, here are some links that have stood out to me, and are worth holding on to or perusing:

* Yet another Downing Street Memo has been leaked. This one outlines plans by the Bush administration to dress up an American aircraft as a UN flight and float it over Iraq prior to the war. The hope was that it would be shot at, thus providing a nice and simple justification for the invasion when it was becoming clear that the UN was not going to rubber stamp an assault.

* A British humanitarian group, Reprieve, recently released a report on the state of detainees at Gitmo last month. It's available here and makes for some unpleasant reading. Unsurprisingly, it didn't render a blip on the American media's radar.

* The Super Bowl went down in Detroit. A good time was had by all, no doubt.

* Again we learn that Bush's NSA spying is not only illegal, but also fruitless. Also see Thomas Powers' NYRB essay, "The Biggest Secret."

* Tyler Zimmer offers up the "Truth About Universal Health Care." He writes, "The trouble with UHC isn't that it's politically infeasible, financially ruinous, or inefficient, because none of the above is true. The largest impediment to implementing UHC is that it has yet to receive a fair trial in this country."

* With each Bush SOTU comes more lies, exaggerations, and half-truths. You should be used to it by now.

* More money's going to be blown on Iraq. Some oil revenue is reportedly funding the insurgency, too.

* Capitalism vs. a habitable planet? Is it really that stark a choice? Robert Newman thinks so. As do I.

* New Orleans as a "chocolate city"? Ooh, can't say that. White folks get mad. Meanwhile, the poor folks, a disproportionate number of whom are black, get driven out...

* Adam Curtis' famed documentary, "The Power of Nightmares," is back online: Part I, Part II, and Part III.