MIDEAST UNDERNEWS

WHAT THE US TROOPS ARE REALLY DOING IN IRAQ

2009-07-01T14:02:00.000-07:00

Rep Dennis Kucinich - The withdrawal of some U.S. combat troops from Iraq’s cities is welcome and long overdue news. However, it is important to remember that this is not the same as a withdrawal of U.S. troops and contractors from Iraq.

U.S. troop combat missions throughout Iraq are not scheduled to end until more than a year from now in August of 2010. In addition, U.S. troops are not scheduled for a complete withdrawal for another two and a half years on December 31, 2011. Rather, U.S. troops are leaving Iraqi cities for military bases in Iraq. They are still in Iraq, and they can be summoned back at any time.

This is not a great victory for peace. On May 19, the Christian Science Monitor reported that Iraqi and U.S. military officials virtually redrew the city limits of Baghdad in order to consider the Army’s Forward Operating Base Falcon as outside the city, despite every map of Baghdad clearly showing it within city limits. In fact, according to the SOFA, U.S. troops can remain at any agreed upon facility. The reported reason for this decision is to ensure U.S. troops are able to ‘help maintain security in south Baghdad along what were the fault lines in the sectarian war.’

In reality, this is a small step toward Iraqi sovereignty as Iraqi security forces begin assuming greater control over security operations, but it is a long way from independence and a withdrawal of the U.S. military presence.

RED CROSS ATTACKS ISRAEL'S TREATMENT OF GAZA

2009-06-30T12:43:00.000-07:00

Antiwar - The Red Cross issued a report on the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip, declaring that it had left the tiny enclave's 1.5 million residents in despair, and that import procedures were keeping even basic medical items like painkillers and X-ray film developers from entering the strip.

The strip has been blockaded for years, and the massive damage caused by the Israeli air campaign against the strip and the subsequent military invasion in January have left the most heavily hit regions looking "like the epicenter of a massive earthquake," according to the report. The Israeli government has refused to allow cement or other building materials in to repair the damage.

The United Nations has also been investigating reports of war crimes in the Israeli invasion, and today child psychologist Dr. Iyad Sarraj reported that about 20 percent of Gaza's children suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome as a result of the violence they witnessed during the onslaught.

AIPAC REALLY WORRIED AS ISRAEL'S REPUTATION TANKS

2009-06-30T11:40:00.001-07:00

Links, Australia - The movement to call Israel to account for its crimes against the Palestinian people is growing, it is “invading the mainstream discourse, becoming part of the constant and unrelenting drumbeat against Israel”. It could eventually threaten the existence of the Jewish state by undermining the support it receives from its strongest backer, the US government.

That was the message of alarm delivered by the executive director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Howard Kohr, to the AIPAC Policy Conference on May 3. . .

ohr’s address focused on the growing power of the international movement against Israel’s criminal behaviour, identifying support for boycotts, divestment and sanctions as a particularly worrisome development.

Kohr pointed to a variety of statements and actions against Israel’s onslaught on Palestinians in Gaza, including demonstrations in Spain and Germany. He noted that 400 British academics had demanded that Britain’s Science Museum cancel an event highlighting the work of Israeli scientists and that an Italian trade union called for a boycott of Israeli products.

“Incredibly, there now is even an Israel Apartheid Week conducted in cities across the globe”, he added. . .

He voiced particular concern over the movement’s progress in the United States “where Israel stands accused of apartheid and genocide, where Zionism equals racism, where a former president of the United States can publicly accuse Israel of apartheid.”. . .

"What we are witnessing is the attempted delegitimization of Israel; the systematic sowing of doubt that Israel is a nation that has forfeited the world’s concern; a nation whose actions are, in the strict meaning of the term, indefensible. This is more than the simple spewing of hatred. This is a conscious campaign to shift policy, to transform the way Israel is treated by its friends to a state that deserves not our support, but our contempt; not our protection, but pressured to change its essential nature. . .

"I’m not saying that these allegations have become accepted. But they have become acceptable. More and more they are invading the mainstream discourse, becoming part of the constant and unrelenting drumbeat against Israel. These voices are laying the predicate for an abandonment. They’re making the case for Israel’s unworthiness to be allowed what is for any nation the first and most fundamental of rights: the right to self-defense... They are preparing us for a world in which Israel stands alone, isolated, and at risk. . .

"Now, there’s little we can do to stop the boycotts of Israeli goods launched in London or Lisbon or Rome. There’s little we can do to stop Israel Apartheid Week. But there is much we can do to stop this campaign from taking hold here. Here where it matters the most, in Washington, where United States policy is forged, we must stop the delegitimization of Israel. We must not let it penetrate the halls of Congress and the counsels of our president."

ARMY BANS REPORTER FOR REFUSING TO "HIGHLIGHT" GOOD NEWS ABOUT IRAQ

2009-06-25T09:26:00.001-07:00

Stars & Stripes - Asserting that Stars and Stripes "refused to highlight" good news in Iraq that the U.S. military wanted to emphasize, Army officials have barred a Stripes reporter from embedding with a unit of the 1st Cavalry Division that is attempting to secure the violent city of Mosul.

Officials said Stripes reporter Heath Druzin, who covered operations of the division's 3rd Heavy Brigade Combat Team in February and March, would not be permitted to rejoin the unit for another reporting tour because, among other things, he wrote in a March 8 story that many Iraqi residents of Mosul would like the American soldiers to leave and hand over security tasks to Iraqi forces.

"Despite the opportunity to visit areas of the city where Iraqi Army leaders, soldiers, national police and Iraqi police displayed commitment to partnership, Mr. Druzin refused to highlight any of this news," Major Ramona Bellard, a public affairs officer, wrote in denying Druzin's embed request.

Bellard also alleged that Druzin used quotes out of context, "behaved unprofessionally" and persisted in asking Army officials for permission to use a computer to file a story during a communications-blackout period.

Additionally, Col. Gary Volesky, the 3rd Brigade's commander, asserted that Druzin "would not answer questions about stories he was writing."

Terry Leonard, editorial director of Stars and Stripes, said Druzin's reporting in Mosul had been consistently accurate and fair and he denied all of the Army's allegations. Leonard noted, for example, that reporters are not required to answer a commander's questions about their plans for future stories.

He said the newspaper had spent more than three weeks appealing Druzin's banishment to senior commanders in Iraq as well as public affairs officials at the Pentagon, but had been repeatedly rebuffed.

Instead, Army officials offered to allow a different Stripes reporter to embed with the 3rd Brigade, or in the alternative, to allow Druzin to embed with a different Army unit in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk. Leonard rejected those offers on the grounds that the military has no right to try to deflect coverage away from Mosul or choose which Stripes reporters will be allowed to cover its operations.

"To deny Mr. Druzin an embed under the reasons stated by Maj. Bellard is a direct challenge to the editorial independence of this newspaper," Leonard wrote in his appeal. "That independence is mandated by Congress. The denial of the embed constitutes an attempt at censorship and it is also an illegal prior restraint under federal law. … The military cannot tell us what stories to write or not write."

Leonard also noted that, although Stars and Stripes receives some federal funding through the Defense Department to offset the extraordinary costs of distributing the newspaper to U.S. troops in war zones, the newspaper's reporting is not subject to Pentagon authority.

The Army's denial of Druzin's embed request appears to violate the Pentagon's established ground rules regarding embedded reporters, which state: "These ground rules recognize the inherent right of the media to cover combat operations and are in no way intended to prevent release of embarrassing, negative or derogatory information.". . .

IRAN

2009-06-24T13:41:00.000-07:00

Sam Smith - It's looking more and more like

Iran

is another battle between their bad guys and ours. The media and the pols keep foistering the illusion that it is just a struggle of virtue vs. evil. Obama even seems shocked at the suggestion that the CIA might be involved, when - as have we pointed out - its designated hitter, the National Endowment for Democracy, certainly is and the whole affair has some of the smell of not terribly clever agents trying to manipulate matters in Iran and with the American public. If this isn't what is happening, then it's the first time since Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Venezuela, Chile etc, that it hasn't been. It's all part of the great American road show. Some days it even feels like the Bush run up to Iraq. Get everyone incensed and then attack.

Since we tend to forget how many times we have been deceived in such situations, there is a not surprising tendency to accept whatever noble myth is being perpetuated, even if our new hero once made a name for himself by getting Americans killed. It may all work out all right this time, but it helps to remember that it hardly ever has in the past and that just because there are two sides to the question doesn't mean they can't both be for the worse.

Jeff Stein, CQ Politics - He may yet turn out to be the avatar of Iranian democracy, but three decades ago Mir-Hossein Mousavi was waging a terrorist war on the United States that included bloody attacks on the U.S. embassy and Marine Corps barracks in Beirut.

Mousavi, prime minister for most of the 1980s, personally selected his point man for the Beirut terror campaign, Ali Akbar Mohtashemi-pur, and dispatched him to Damascus as

Iran

's ambassador, according to former CIA and military officials.

The ambassador in turn hosted several meetings of the cell that would carry out the Beirut attacks, which were overheard by the National Security Agency.

"We had a tap on the Iranian ambassador to

Lebanon

," retired Navy Admiral James "Ace" Lyons related by telephone Monday. In 1983 Lyons was deputy chief of Naval Operations, and deeply involved in the events in

Lebanon

.

"The Iranian ambassador received instructions from the foreign minister to have various groups target U.S. personnel in Lebanon, but in particular to carry out a 'spectacular action' against the Marines," said Lyons.

"He was prime minister," Lyons said of Mousavi, "so he didn't get down to the details at the lowest levels. "But he was in a principal position and had to be aware of what was going on."

Lyons, sometimes called "the father" of the Navy SEALs' Red Cell counter-terror unit, also fingered Mousavi for the 1988 truck bombing of the U.S. Navy's Fleet Center in Naples, Italy, that killed five persons, including the first Navy woman to die in a terrorist attack.

Bob Baer agrees that Mousavi, who has been celebrated in the West for sparking street demonstrations against the Teheran regime since he lost the elections, was directing the overall 1980s terror campaign.

But Baer, a former CIA Middle East field officer whose exploits were dramatized in the George Clooney movie "Syriana," places Mousavi even closer to the Beirut bombings.

"He dealt directly with Imad Mughniyah," who ran the Beirut terrorist campaign and was "the man largely held responsible for both attacks," Baer wrote in Time over the weekend.

Chris Hedges, Truthdig - "The central story of Iran over the last 200 years has been national humiliation at the hands of foreign powers who have subjugated and looted the country," Stephen Kinzer, the author of "All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror," told me. "For a long time the perpetrators were the British and Russians. Beginning in 1953, the

United States

began taking over that role. In that year, the American and British secret services overthrew an elected government, wiped away Iranian democracy, and set the country on the path to dictatorship."

"Then, in the 1980s, the U.S. sided with Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war, providing him with military equipment and intelligence that helped make it possible for his army to kill hundreds of thousands of Iranians," Kinzer said. "Given this history, the moral credibility of the U.S. to pose as a promoter of democracy in

Iran

is close to nil.

"Especially ludicrous is the sight of people in Washington calling for intervention on behalf of democracy in Iran when just last year they were calling for the bombing of

Iran

. If they had had their way then, many of the brave protesters on the streets of Tehran today-the ones they hold up as heroes of democracy-would be dead now."

I am no friend of the Iranian regime, which helped create and arm Hezbollah, is certainly meddling in

Iraq

, has persecuted human rights activists, gays, women and religious and ethnic minorities, embraces racism and intolerance and uses its power to deny popular will. But I do not remember Iran orchestrating a coup in the

United States

to replace an elected government with a brutal dictator who for decades persecuted, assassinated and imprisoned democracy activists. I do not remember

Iran

arming and funding a neighboring state to wage war against our country.

Iran

never shot down one of our passenger jets as did the USS Vincennes-caustically nicknamed Robocruiser by the crews of other American vessels-when in June 1988 it fired missiles at an Airbus filled with Iranian civilians, killing everyone on board. Iran is not sponsoring terrorism within the United States, as our intelligence services currently do in

Iran

. The attacks on Iranian soil include suicide bombings, kidnappings, beheadings, sabotage and "targeted assassinations" of government officials, scientists and other Iranian leaders. . .

We are, and have long been, the primary engine for radicalism in the Middle East. The greatest favor we can do for democracy activists in Iran, as well as in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Gulf and the dictatorships that dot North Africa, is withdraw our troops from the region and begin to speak to Iranians and the rest of the Muslim world in the civilized language of diplomacy, respect and mutual interests. . .

BBC - Iranian riot police and militiamen appear to have put a halt to protests in the capital, after days of clashes over a disputed presidential election. Residents say the city is quiet, though opposition supporters have called for a day of mourning for those killed during the protests.

One of the three defeated candidates, Mohsen Rezai, a conservative, has now withdrawn his complaint about the poll.

The pro-government Iran Daily newspaper said four of the six players who wore green wristbands during a World Cup qualifier against South Korea in Seoul had been retired from the national team.

Mohsen Rezai, a former leader of the Revolutionary Guards, said he had withdrawn his complaints about the vote in the interests of

Iran

's national security. "I see it as my responsibility to encourage myself and others to control the current situation," Mr Rezai was quoted as saying in a letter to the Guardian Council. He had previously claimed to have won more votes than the official tally, which placed him third in the poll.

Amid ongoing restrictions on media, Western media outlets reported that 25 journalists and other staff at a newspaper owned by Mir Hossein Mousavi, the main challenger to President Ahmadinejad, had been arrested.

Robert Dreyfuss, Nation - A newly released statistical study of the rigged election by Chatham House raises enormous questions about the validity of the Interior Ministry's reported vote totals. And Mousavi himself is making the point, in detailed fashion, that the vote was bogus. The Chatham House analysis, while wonky and full of detailed charts, provides the clearest evidence yet that Ahmadinejad and Co. rigged the vote.

It shows, for instance, that in at least ten provinces, in order to have amassed the vote totals given to him, Ahmadinejad would have had to have won all the voters who backed him in 2005, all of the voters who, last time, voted for the centrist candidacy of Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, all of the voters who, last time, sat out the election and didn't vote at all, and -- on top of that -- up to 44 percent of the voters who, in 2005, backed the reformist slate. . . It also notes, wryly, that "in two conservative provinces, Mazandaran and Yazd, a turnout of more than 100 percent was recorded."

Telegraph, UK, 2007 - President George W Bush has given the CIA approval to launch covert "black" operations to achieve regime change in

Iran

, intelligence sources have revealed. Mr Bush has signed an official document endorsing CIA plans for a propaganda and disinformation campaign intended to destabilize, and eventually topple, the theocratic rule of the mullahs. . .

The CIA will also be allowed to supply communications equipment which would enable opposition groups in

Iran

to work together and bypass internet censorship by the clerical regime.

Pak Alert - Former Pakistani Army General Mirza Aslam Beig claims the US Central Intelligence Agency has distributed 400 million dollars inside

Iran

to evoke a revolution. In a phone interview with the Pashto Radio on Monday, General Beig said that there is undisputed intelligence proving the US interference in

Iran

. "The documents prove that the CIA spent 400 million dollars inside

Iran

to prop up a colorful-hollow revolution following the election," he added. Pakistan's former army chief of joint staff went on to say that the US wanted to disturb the situation in

Iran

and bring to power a pro-US government.

AND NOW A WORD ABOUT THAT FAMOUS IRANIAN REFORM GROUP: THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR DEMOCRACY

2009-06-23T11:29:00.000-07:00

Paul Roberts, Counterpunch - The Mousavi protests have set up Iran either for a US puppet government or for a military strike. The mullahs are in a lose-lose situation. Even if the mullahs hold together and suppress the protests, the legitimacy of the Iranian government in the eyes of the outside world has been damaged. Obama's diplomatic approach is over before it started. The neo-cons and Israel have won. . .

In Iran's system, election fraud has no purpose, because a small select group of ruling mullahs select the candidates who are put on the ballot. If they don't like an aspiring candidate, they simply don't put him on the ballot.

When the liberal reformer Khatami ran for president, he won with 70 per cent of the vote and served from 1997-2005. If the mullahs didn't defraud Khatami of his win, it seems unlikely they would defraud an establishment figure like Mousavi, who was foreign minister in the most conservative government, and is backed by another establishment figure, Rafsanjani.

As Mousavi was seen as Rafsanjani's man, why is it "unbelievable" that Ahmadinejad defeated Mousavi by the same margin that he defeated Rafsanjani in the previous election?

Neoconservative Kenneth Timmerman let the cat out of the bag that there was an orchestrated "color revolution" in the works. Before the election, Timmerman wrote: "there's talk of a 'green revolution' in Tehran." Why would protests be organized prior to a vote and announcement of the outcome? Organized protests waiting in the wings are not spontaneous responses to a stolen election.

Timmerman's organization, Foundation for Democracy, is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy for the explicit purpose of promoting democracy in Iran. According to Timmerman, NED money was funneled to "pro-Mousavi groups who have ties to non-governmental organizations outside Iran that the National Endowment for Democracy funds.". . .

Jared Israel, Emperor's Clothes, 2005 - People in the US - and all over the world - were originally told it was necessary to launch a military attack on Afghanistan to get rid of the Taliban and to arrest Osama bin Laden. But as far back as December, [Undersecretary of State Elizabeth Jones] said something quite different in the media-free privacy of the U.S. Senate. She explained that no matter what happened in Afghanistan, the US and its allies would stay and "assist" the Central Asian Republics. However, "that assistance was conditional on economic and democratic reforms and the observance of human rights. . . In her Senate testimony, Undersecretary Jones made it clear she wishes to transform the Central Asia Republics into US protectorates. She didn't say it outright, of course, but she used easily decipherable code. "The USA believes, Jones said, that "certain countries" in the region should noticeably step up their economic reforms and democratic processes, the observance of human rights and the formation of a strong civil society.". . .

"Civil society" is strengthened when USAID, the National Endowment for Democracy and other government agencies in the U.S., Norway, Holland and Germany, as well as seemingly private groups, like the CIA-connected Open Society Foundation of George Soros, move in. What do these agencies do? They fund people who work for the Empire in the guise of "democratic" this and "human rights" that and "institutes for economic reform" and "independent media." In the words of Allen Weinstein, the man who conceived the National Endowment of Democracy: "'A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA."

Kim Scipes Labor Notes, 2004 - The AFL-CIO is once again on the scene, this time in Venezuela, just as it was in Chile in 1973. Once again, its operations in that country are being funded by the U.S. government. This time, the money is being laundered through the quasi-governmental National Endowment for Democracy, hidden from AFL-CIO members and the American public. Once again, it is being used to support the efforts of reactionary labor and business leaders, helping to destabilize a democratically-elected government that has made major efforts to alleviate poverty, carried out significant land reform in both urban and rural areas, and striven to change political institutions that have long worked to marginalize those at the lowest rungs in society.

B.Raman, South Asia Analysis Group, 2004 - The post-Watergate enquiries into the activities of the Central Intelligence Agency of the US exposed details of its covert political activities in other countries in order to promote US foreign policy objectives. Amongst such activities were the secret funding of individuals, political parties and non-governmental organizations favorable to US interests and funneling of money to counter the activities of those considered anti-US. . .

After his election in November, 1980, and before his taking-over as the President in January, 1981, Mr. Reagan appointed a transition group headed by the late William Casey, an attorney and one of his campaign managers, who was to later take over as the CIA Director, to recommend measures for strengthening the USA's intelligence capability abroad.
One of its recommendations was to revive covert political activities. Since there might have been opposition from the Congress and public opinion to this task being re-entrusted to the CIA, it suggested that this be given to an NGO with no ostensible links with the CIA.

The matter was further examined in 1981-82 by the American Political Foundation's Democracy Program Study and Research Group and, finally, the National Endowment for Democracy was born under a congressional enactment of 1983 as a "non-profit, non-governmental, bipartisan, grant-making organization to help strengthen democratic institutions around the world."

Though it is projected as an NGO, it is actually a quasi-governmental organization because until 1994 it was run exclusively from funds voted by the Congress (average of about US $6 million per annum in the 1980s and now about US $30 million) as part of the budget of the US Information Agency. Since 1994, it has been accepting contributions from the private sector to supplement the congressional appropriations. . .

Since its inception, the NED and its affiliates have been mired in controversy in the US itself as well as abroad. Amongst its strongest supporters in the US is the Heritage Foundation of Washington DC, a conservative think tank, which played an active role in influencing the policies of the Reagan and Bush Administrations. . .

Amongst the critics of the NED are Ms. Barbara Conry, a foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute of Washington D.C. and Mr. Ralph McGehee, stated to be a former CIA official. In a paper of November 8,1993, Ms.Conry said: "NED is resented (abroad) as American interference; it is often further resented because it attempts to deceive foreigners into viewing its programs as private assistance. . . On a number of occasions, NED has taken advantage of its alleged private status to influence foreign elections, an activity that is beyond the scope of AID (Agency For International Development) or USIA and would otherwise be possible only through a CIA covert operation. . .

Another NGO of the US has said: "NED engages in much of the same kinds of interference in the internal affairs of foreign countries which were the hallmark of the CIA. The NED has financed, advised and supported in many ways selected political parties, election campaigns, unions, student groups, book publishers, newspapers, other media, even guerillas in Afghanistan and, in general, organizations and individuals which mesh well with the gears of the globalized-economy machine. . .

The governments and movements whom the NED targets call it destabilization."

Bill Blum, Third World Traveler - NED likes to refer to itself as an NGO (non-governmental organization) because this helps to maintain a certain credibility abroad that an official US government agency might not have. But NGO is the wrong category. NED is a GO. . . In effect, the CIA has been laundering money through NED. . .

In a multitude of ways, NED meddles in the internal affairs of foreign countries by supplying funds, technical know-how, training, educational materials, computers, fax machines, copiers, automobiles and so on, to selected political groups, civic organizations, labor unions, dissident movements, student groups, book publishers, newspapers, other media, etc. NED programs generally impart the basic philosophy that working people and other citizens are best served under a system of free enterprise, class cooperation, collective bargaining, minimal government intervention in the economy and opposition to socialism in any shape or form. A free market economy is equated with democracy, reform and growth, and the merits of foreign investment are emphasized.

Ukrainian Weekly, 2003 - Mr. Yushchenko began his meetings with senior [Bush] administration officials on February 5 with Vice-President Richard Cheney and concluded them on February 7 with Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. . . Our Ukraine deputies were the guests of honor at two evening receptions. One was hosted by three organizations involved in democracy-building efforts in Ukraine - the National Endowment for Democracy, the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute. . .

Cato Institute - The National Endowment for Democracy is a foreign policy loose cannon. Promoting democracy is a nebulous objective that can be manipulated to justify any whim of the special-interest groups--the Republican and Democratic parties, organized labor, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce--that control most of NED's funds. As those groups execute their own foreign policies, they often work against American interests and meddle needlessly in the affairs of other countries, under- mining the democratic movements NED was designed to assist. Moreover, the end of the Cold War has nullified any usefulness that such an organization might ever have had. There is no longer a rival superpower mounting an effective ideological challenge, and democracy is progressing remarkably well on its own. NED, which also has a history of corruption and financial mismanagement, is superfluous at best and often destructive. Through the endowment, the American taxpayer has paid for special-interest groups to harass the duly elected governments of friendly countries, interfere in foreign elections, and foster the corruption of democratic movements.

Bill Blum, Rogue States - The Endowment played an important role in the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s, funding key components of Oliver North's shadowy "Project Democracy" network, which privatized US foreign policy, waged war, ran arms and drugs and engaged in other equally charming activities. . .

Harry Kelber, Labor Educator - Hardly any union member knows anything about the AFL-CIO's American Center for International Labor Solidarity, because it operates largely as a clandestine organization. It was established in 1997 to replace the four regional organizations under former AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland, whose staffs had worked with CIA agents to destabilize democratically-elected governments in the Dominican Republic, Guyana and Chile and to undermine governments that were either friendly to the then Soviet Union or hostile to American business interests. . .

Solidarity Center gets three-quarters of its budget from government sources, with annual grants from the State Department, the Agency for International Development, the Labor Department and the National Endowment for Democracy. The AFL-CIO also donates a significant amount to the Center. Repeated attempts to get a complete list of donors and the amount of their contributions have been rebuffed. . .

Boston Globe, 2002 - Over the two years preceding the thwarted coup in April against President Hugo Chavez, a US-funded pro-democracy group financed a range of antigovernment programs, including some that have come under scrutiny for the way they spent their money. An examination of grants of more than $1 million, given to organizations in Venezuela by the National Endowment for Democracy, has found that US tax money financed several Chavez opponents, including two organizations prominent in the protests that led up to the coup. The documents and interviews also report that money sent to one US-funded organization never reached its intended target and that another organization apparently falsified its Venezuelan accomplishments. An endowment-funded trip to Washington by Chavez opponents may have accelerated the events leading to the April 11 uprising. The revolt against Chavez fell apart after two days, allowing him to return to power. The United States soon came under a barrage of criticism for appearing to support the coup against a democratically elected president, apparently in contradiction to US policy to strengthen democracy in Latin America.

THE TOWN THAT LOVES BIG BROTHER

2009-06-22T11:42:00.000-07:00

LA Times - Some 165 closed-circuit TV cameras soon will provide live, round-the-clock scrutiny of nearly every street, park and other public space used by the 55,000 residents and [Lancaster PA's] many tourists. That's more outdoor cameras than are used by many major cities, including San Francisco and Boston.

Unlike anywhere else, cash-strapped Lancaster outsourced its surveillance to a private nonprofit group that hires civilians to tilt, pan and zoom the cameras -- and to call police if they spot suspicious activity. No government agency is directly involved.

Perhaps most surprising, the near-saturation surveillance of a community that saw four murders last year has sparked little public debate about whether the benefits for law enforcement outweigh the loss of privacy.

"Years ago, there's no way we could do this," said Keith Sadler, Lancaster's police chief. "It brings to mind Big Brother, George Orwell and '1984.' It's just funny how Americans have softened on these issues. . .

A few dozen people attended four community meetings held last spring to discuss what sponsors called "this exciting public safety initiative." But opposition has grown since big red bulbs, which shield the video cameras, began appearing on corner after corner.

Mary Pat Donnellon, head of Mission Research, a local software company, vowed to move if she finds one on her block. "I don't want to live like that," she said. "I'm not afraid. And I don't need to be under surveillance."

"No one has the right to know who goes in and out my front door," agreed David Mowrer, a laborer for a company that supplies quarry pits. "That's my business. That's not what America is about."

Hundreds of municipalities -- including Los Angeles and at least 36 other California cities -- have built or expanded camera networks since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. In most cases, Department of Homeland Security grants helped cover the cost.

In the most ambitious project, New York City police announced plans several years ago to link 3,000 public and private security cameras across Lower Manhattan designed to help deter, track and detect terrorists. The network is not yet complete. . .

Only a few communities have said no. In February, the city council in Cambridge, Mass., voted not to use eight cameras already purchased with federal funds for fear police would improperly spy on residents. Officials in nearby Brookline are considering switching off a dozen cameras for the same reason.

IRAN ELECTION CONT'D

2009-06-22T11:38:00.000-07:00

Because the American media likes to think in simple bipolar terms, it has neatly divided the Iran election issue into good guys vs. bad guys, ignoring possibilities such as that Ahmadinejad may have stolen votes but not enough to flip the results or that Mousavi's sorry record hardly suggests that he is a reformer. At present, the electoral evidence against Ahmadinejad - beyond vote manipulation well known to other countries such as the U.S. - is indecisive and election polls in the week prior to the vote conflicted widely. This is, in short, still an open case although the evidence is tending against Ahmadinejad. A few things to keep in mind:

- Ahmadinejad's vote margin is about the same as in his previous election.

- A number of areas reported more votes than were registered. Even the national Guardian Council admitted that there was an overvote in 50 cities. The Ahmadinejad crowd argues that this is possible because one doesn't have to vote in the place where one is registered. On the other hand, Mousavi says that 14 million unused ballots are missing, which clearly offers opportunities for fraud.

- If there was vote manipulation it would be apparent at the sub-national level. According to historian Juan Cole, says Wikipedia, "there were several anomalies in the election results. Official reports gave Ahmadinejad 57% of the vote in the city of Tabriz despite the fact that this was the capital of Moussavi's home province, Eastern Azerbaijan, where Moussavi's rallies were well attended and which has traditionally given good turnouts for even "minor presidential candidates" who came from the province. Ahmadinejad also won Tehran by over 50%, even though his popularity in larger cities is considered to be low."

- Both candidates offered similar foreign policies. Reported the BBC: "in foreign affairs, [Mousavi] seems to be offering little change on major issues." Mousavi, it appears, would be easier on the

U.S.

- They differed, however, significantly on domestic matters. Notes Wikipedia, "Debates about the economy played the biggest role in the campaign, with the global economic recession looming in people's minds. About one in five Iranians live under the poverty line, inflation is at about 25 percent, and unemployment is at over 12.5 percent . . . Mousavi advocated further privatization of the economy towards a free market with a tight monetary policy in comparison to Ahmadinejad's populist fiscal policy, with Ahmadinejad making measures to fight poverty a key principle in his campaign. Mousavi drew his electoral base from the middle and upper classes while Ahmadinejad drew support from the urban poor and rural residents. Civil servants, police officers, pensioners, and others dependent on the government also contributed to Ahmadinejad's base. He made financial support from the business class against him into a theme of attack. BBC News described his campaign as "one that foresees the death of capitalism."

- In the week before the election, major polls were in massive conflict. Four had Ahmadinejad leading comfortably; five had him losing. Further, says Wikipedia, "The opinion polls in

Iran

have been considered unreliable. A number of polls conducted between relatively small voting groups, like university students and workers, have been reported as election propaganda. More general polls reported in the media do not state the polling organization nor the basic facts about the methodology. The results show a high variance and depend heavily on who is reporting the poll. In 2002, the polling organization Ayandeh and another polling organization was closed and its directors were arrested. The director of Ayandeh, Abbas Abdi, spent several years in prison. . .

"An independent poll, conducted by Terror Free Tomorrow: The Center for Public Opinion, a nonprofit institute that researches attitudes toward extremism, found that Ahmadinejad was leading by a margin of 2 to 1. 34% said they'd vote for Ahmadinejad, 14% favored Mousavi. . . The poll was taken from May 11 to May 20. . . Polling itself was funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Writing in the Washington Post, pollsters Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty have used this to suggest that Ahmadinejad's apparent victory might reflect the will of the Iranian people. . . " This poll was early in the campaign.

- Also from Wikipedia: "BBC Iranian affairs analyst Sadeq Saba found abnormalities in the way results were announced. Instead of results by province, the 'results came in blocks of millions of votes,' with very little difference between the blocks in the percentages going to each candidate. . . . Another anomaly, according to British-based researcher Ali Alizadeh, is that a large turnout did not favor the opposition, since in elections, both in

Iran

and abroad, 'those who usually don't vote, i.e. the silent majority, only come out when they want to change the status quo.'

- Wikipedia - "Blogger and statistician Nate Silver on June 13 wrote that a statistical analysis of the official results was ultimately inconclusive as far as determining that there was election fraud. On June 15, Silver posted regional results that he had received from a student of Iranian Studies at the University of St Andrews, who had translated them from the original Farsi. He compared Ahmadinejad's 2009 results with the conservative candidates' results in the first round of the 2005 election (Ahmadinejad, Larijani and Ghalibaf), and found the results from certain provinces to be suspicious. While conservative candidates in Lorestan received only 20% in 2005, Ahmadinejad reportedly got 71% in 2009. In Tehran, on the other hand, the conservative vote was relatively speaking lower than in the previous election. Silver further compared the votes for Ahmadinejad only, and found the correlation between 2005 and 2009 to be "fairly weak". He did, however, warn against differences between the two elections and changes over time, and declined to make a judgment on the validity of the official result. Silver disagrees with claims that the mere size of the alleged fraud makes it unlikely, explaining that the lack of election monitors means that actual ballots did not need to be faked and hence fraud 'is simply a matter of changing numbers on a spreadsheet.'"

- Wikipedia - Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett, CEO of STRATEGA, argue that Ahmadinejad got almost the same percentage of votes in this election as in the 2005 election where he received 61.69% and no claims of fraud were put foreward. They further suggest that the shock over the result is "self-generated" and due to "wishful thinking". They also point out that Ahmadinejad was seen by most Iranians as having won the nationally televised debates, especially the one with Mousavi. The Leveretts state that the notion that a high turnout would favor Mousavi is based on nothing more than assumptions. In response to the claim by some experts that Mousavi was more likely to have won in the Azeri majority provinces because of his Azeri background, they point out that Ahmadinejad speaks fluent Azeri as a result of his eight years of service as an official in two Azeri-majority provinces and that he during his campaigning quoted Azeri and Turkish poetry. . . .

- "On 21 June, Chatham House and Institute of Iranian Studies of the University of St. Andrews . . . compared voting results in the 2005 first round and 2009. In 10 provinces, Ahmadinejad could not have achieved his reported totals through retaining his own 2005 voters, winning every voter who voted for other conservatives in 2005, winning every Rafsanjani voter, and winning every single 2005 non-voter who turned out in 2009. He would also have get Reformist voters to defect to him.

- "Columbia University Ph.D. candidates Bernd Beber and Alexandra Scacco have released an analysis concluding that the digit patterns of the election results contain characteristics of human manipulation. The regional vote totals possess oddities including too many sevens in the last digits and too few fives, as well as too few non-adjacent digits. The authors of the report conclude that the chances of such a spread occurring naturally are only one chance in 200."

THE MOUSSAVI HIS SUPPORTERS DON'T REMEMBER

2009-06-20T19:38:00.000-07:00

CNN - He's been labeled by many as the "reformist," a man who can take Iran beyond the truculent anti-Western rhetoric of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

So, when Iran's government announced over the weekend that Mir Hossein Moussavi had lost in his bid to become the country's next president, young Iranians took to the streets by the thousands alleging ballot fraud.

Thousands of others around the globe championed the cause on social-networking Web sites and agreed to wear green on Monday in solidarity with Moussavi's supporters.

But what is often lost in the outrage is whether Iran would look different under a Moussavi presidency.

Though the 67-year old is credited for successfully navigating the Iranian economy as prime minister during a bloody eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s, he also was a hard-liner whom the Economist described as a "firm radical."

He, like most Iranians in power, does not believe in the existence of Israel. He defended the taking of hostages at the U.S. Embassy in Iran in 1979, which led to the break in ties between the countries.

He was part of a regime that regularly executed dissidents and backed the fatwa against British author Salman Rushdie.

And as late as April, he opposed suspending the country's nuclear-enrichment program but said it would not be diverted to weapons use. . .

Moussavi was named prime minister in 1980. A year earlier, Iran had become an Islamic republic after the ruling monarchy was overthrown and Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was forced into exile.

The same year, a group of students in support of the Islamic revolution took 52 Americans hostage and held them for 444 days.

In an interview with The New York Times in 1981, Moussavi defended the hostage-taking as the beginning of "second stage of our revolution."

"It was after this that we rediscovered our true Islamic identity," he said. . .

In 1988, author Salman Rushdie released his fourth novel, 'The Satanic Verses,' which Iran said insulted Islam. The country's supreme leader called for the death of Rushdie. And Moussavi, in a radio broadcast, said the order would be carried out.

Moussavi told the Financial Times in April that he would not halt Iran's uranium enrichment program if he were president. "No one in Iran would accept suspension," he said.

Since his stint as prime minister, Moussavi has been absent from politics. For the past 10 years, his official job has been to head the state-owned Art Center. He is a painter.

The long "20 years of silence," as the Iranian media dubbed it, is working to Moussavi's advantage.

Of Iran's population of 70 million, almost 60 percent are younger than 28 -- too young to have lived through the 1979 revolution. To them, Moussavi represents a sea change from Ahmadinejad.

While the president calls the Holocaust a myth, Moussavi has condemned the killing of Jews.

While Ahmadinejad has unleashed the morality police to ensure that women cover their hair in public, Moussavi has pledged his support for women's rights.

Most importantly, the youth are unhappy about the faltering economy under Ahmadinejad, with the unemployment rate topping 30 percent by some accounts. They are hungry for anyone who represents change, analysts have said.

"We have really an interesting moment of historic irony here," Afshin Molavi, a fellow at the New America Foundation, said on the CNN talk show Fareed Zakaria GPS.

"Moussavi is a child of the revolution. Moussavi was never a real reformer, either, when he was prime minister.

"And now he's being faced with the question: Should he unleash the young people out onto the streets who supported him -- thus threatening the very system that he fought for?"

ISRAELI PILOTS KNEW US SPY SHIP WAS AMERICAN BEFORE ATTACK

2009-06-18T13:33:00.000-07:00

Jeff Stein, CQ - Israeli air control twice told pilots during the 1967 Six Day War that a U.S. spy ship they were attacking was American, according to a new book on the USS Liberty affair.

Israel has always claimed that the June 8, 1967 attack on the spy ship Liberty, which killed 34 U.S. Navy sailors and wounded another 170, many seriously, was a case of mistaken identity, a "tragic accident."

But according to "The Attack on the Liberty: The Untold Story of Israel's Deadly 1967 Assault on a U.S. Spy Ship," by James Scott, Israeli pilots who radioed the Liberty's hull number to their air controller were told two times that the spy ship was "probably American."

Nevertheless, Israeli fighters jets and torpedo boats continued to attack the spy ship, which was flying an American flag and plying international waters as it monitored Israeli and Egyptian radio traffic during the June 1967 war.

Israel's goal in the brutal air and sea assault on the Liberty was twofold, says Scott, whose father served on the Liberty: to prevent the spy ship from learning about Israeli troop movements, and to kill anyone aboard who could later identify the attacking aircraft as Israeli.

Despite Israel's eventual annihilation of Arab forces in less than a week, in its opening hours and days the outcome of the war was far from certain.

And Israel could not be certain of American support in those days. . .

Israel never wavered from its stance that the attack on the Liberty was anything but a mistake, although angry U.S. officials had quickly concluded it was deliberate.

Besides repeatedly raking the defenseless ship with cannon fire and bombs, Israeli jets also dropped napalm on American sailors running about the deck trying to save the ship, reports Scott, an award winning former reporter for the Charleston Post and Courier.

"There clearly were individuals inside Israel's chain of command who knew this was an American ship in time to prevent the fatal torpedo boat attack that left more than two dozen of the Liberty's sailors dead," Scott says.

Yet the Israelis informed Johnson administration officials that they were innocent -- and outraged by such suggestions.

That prompted the State Department's number two official, Nicholas B. Katzenbach, to summon Israel's ambassador Abraham Harman, Scott writes.

"The secret memo of the meeting," Scott writes, "declassified 33 years later, records Katzenbach telling the Israeli ambassador" that Tel Aviv's initial protest "contains some statements they might find hard to live with if the text some day became public."

THE REVOLUTION IS NOT 14O CHARACTERS LONG

2009-06-18T11:27:00.000-07:00

Wired - Before we all have a collective Twittergasm about the short-messaging service's use in

Iran

, let's breathe for a second. Yes, it's useful; yes, it's great for following the events here in the

U.S.

; yes, it might one day be a driving tool for revolution. But it's an overstatement to call it "the medium of the movement," as Time did.

We have no idea how many Tweets are spreading through RSS, Facebook pages, and text-messages. Nor do we know how info gets into every Twitter feed. But there's evidence that the reach of some of the most prominent Iranian Green Revolution Tweeters may not be as great as it first appears. For example, many of the Iranian tweeters described in the Western press seem to have between 10,000 and 30,000 followers. That's a lot; but Ashton Kutcher it ain't. And many of those followers are in the U.S. Check out @Change_for_Iran, @persiankiwi, @StopAhmadi, @persiankiwi, or @mousavi1388 and you'll see a lot of American names. At least in the first few pages, it seems to be about a third who are clearly in the U.S.

English-language tweeters of course have English-language followers. But Twitter isn't set up to make Farsi use easy (for example, you can't search for Farsi posts in the language section of Twitter's advanced search feature). In fact, the always helpful Nancy Scola has done a search on Twitter of all users who have listed their location as within 250 miles of Tehran. One interesting result: there are posts there only in Spanish, German, and English.

This afternoon, I emailed UCSD professor Babak Rahimi, the author of "Internet & Politics in Post-revolutionary Iran" and someone who is in Tehran right now covering the events. I asked what he thought of my hunch that we in the Western press are over-hyping the impact of Twitter. Here's what he said:

"I very much agree with you. The Twitter factor is present, but not as significant as, say, cell phone or social networking sites… [granted, it's hard to separate these out -- nms] I just wonder (or worry) how the U.S. media is projecting its own image of

Iran

into what is going here on the ground."

Charting Stocks - Anyone using Twitter over the past few days knows that the topic of the Iranian election has been the most popular. Thousands of tweets and retweets alleging that the election was a fraud, calling for protests in Iran, and even urging followers hack various Iranian news websites (which they did successfully. . .

Were these legitimate Iranian people or the works of a propaganda machine? I became curious and decided to investigate the origins of the information. In doing so, I narrowed it down to a handful of people who have accounted for 30,000 Iran related tweets in the past few days. Each of them had some striking similarities:

1. They each created their twitter accounts on Saturday June 13th.

2. Each had extremely high number of Tweets since creating their profiles.

3. “IranElection” was each of their most popular keyword

4. With some very small exceptions, each were posting in English.

5. Half of them had the exact same profile photo

6. Each had thousands of followers, with only a few friends. Most of their friends were each other.

Why were these tweets in English? Why were all of these profiles obsessed with Iran? It became obvious that this was the work of a team of people with an interest in destabilizing Iran. . .

I narrowed the spammers down to three of the most persistent - @StopAhmadi @IranRiggedElect @Change_For_Iran

I decided to do a google search for two of the three. The first page to come up was Jerusalem Post which is a right wing pro-Israeli newspaper.

JPost actually ran a story about [how] three people “who joined the social network mere hours ago have already amassed thousands of followers.” Why would a news organization post a story about 3 people who just joined twitter hours earlier? . . . JPost was the first (and only to my knowledge) major news source that mentioned these 3 spammers. . .

These twitting spammers began crying foul before the final votes were even counted, just as Mousavi had. The spammer @IranRiggedElect created his profile before a winner was announced and preformed the public service of informing us in the United States, in English and every 10 minutes, of the unfair election. He did so unselfishly, and without any regard for his fellow friends and citizens of

Iran

, who don’t speak English and don’t use Twitter/

THE COMPLEXITIES OF IRAN

2009-06-18T11:07:00.000-07:00

Alexander, an Iranian reader of the Angry Arab - In the past, Palestinian liberation was a cause championed by the Iranian secular left, but nowadays it is strongly associated with the religious right. This is not due only to Ahmadinejad (every Iranian leader since Khomeini has expressed the idea that Palestine is a "Muslim issue" that Iranians should be concerned about) but it has gotten worse under Ahmadinejad. It's not just the statements he makes in international settings, but more importantly the way the issue is used domestically in order to distract people from their own issues. People are told not to protest economic stagnation, repressive government, etc. because they shouldn't complain when Palestinians have it so much worse. "Pray for Gaza" is shoved down their throats in the same breath as "fix your hijab."

In addition, many people resent the fact that the Iranian state spends so much money on Palestinian and Lebanese affairs when there is such poverty and underdevelopment at home. Incidentally, one of the popular (and hyperbolic) chants at the protests that are going on right now is "mardom chera neshastin, Iran shode Felestin!" (People, why are you sitting down? Iran has become Palestine!"). . . .

It is frustrating that everyone I talk to from Pakistan to Egypt loves Ahmadinejad and is shocked to hear that many Iranians think he is ineffective and embarrassing. Meanwhile every Westerner seems to think that Mousavi is a great reformist or revolutionary, and some kind of saintly figure beloved by all. He's an opportunist crook. That being said, I support the students and protesters in Iran, even the ones chanting Mousavi's name. I believe they are putting their lives on the line to fight for greater freedom, accountability, and democracy within the Islamic Republic, and they have to couch that in the language of Islam and presidential politics in order to avoid even greater repression than that which they already face. A friend who is in Iran right now confirms: "half the kids throwing rocks at the police didn't even vote." To me, that means that they are not fighting for a Mousavi presidency, but for more freedom, which they must hide under a green Mousavi banner in order to have legitimacy in the eyes of the state.

NETANYAHU CALLED FOR 'LIMITED PALESTINIAN STATE' 6 YEARS AGO

2009-06-16T07:32:00.000-07:00

Philip Weiss, Mondoweiss - AIPAC has hailed the Netanyahu speech as a "bold" step. But six years ago Netanyahu wrote a Washington Post op-ed in which he called for "a limited Palestinian state." Bibi in June 2003:

"The guiding principle is this: The Palestinians would be given all the powers needed to govern themselves but none of the powers that could threaten Israel. Put simply, the solution is full self-government for the Palestinians with vital security powers retained by Israel. For example, the Palestinians would have internal security and police forces but not an army. They would be able to establish diplomatic relations with other countries but not to forge military pacts. They could import goods and merchandise but not weapons and armaments. Control over Palestinian daily life would be in the hands of the Palestinians alone, but security control over borders, ports and airspace would remain in Israel's hands."

PAKISTAN SOLD SUSPECTS FOR GITMO LIKE SLAVES

2009-06-10T15:09:00.001-07:00

Clive Stafford Smith, New Statesman, UK - World leaders should take their cue from

Pakistan

's self-appointed president, General Pervez Musharraf, and publish memoirs while still in office. It is good to know what is really going on. Last month he went to

America

, partly to meet with President Bush, and partly to hawk his book, In the Line of Fire, on TV talk shows.

The published extracts show that Musharraf has done some kissing and telling. He describes how the US threatened to bomb Pakistan immediately after the 11 September 2001 attacks if his government did not co-operate in the war on terror ("Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age!" exclaimed the then US deputy secretary of state, Richard Armitage). He also spills the beans about shipping centrifuges to North Korea, and how his country's nuclear deterrent was not even operational when Pakistan threatened

India

in 1999.

One interesting nugget involves Pakistan's sale of hundreds of stray Arabs to the Americans, for shipment to Bagram air force base and on to Guantanamo Bay. Many of my clients in Cuba insist that, far from being captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan, they were grabbed in Pakistan and flogged to the Americans, like slaves at auction. Predictably enough, for five years the Bush administration has remained very quiet on this issue, but Musharraf's book sheds new light.

"Many members of al-Qaeda fled Afghanistan and crossed the border into

Pakistan

," he writes. "We have played cat and mouse with them . . . We have captured 689 and handed over 369 to the United States. We have earned bounties totaling millions of dollars. Those who habitually accuse us of 'not doing enough' in the war on terror should simply ask the CIA how much prize money it has paid to the government of

Pakistan

."

As his revelations set people arguing, so more truths came out. Rather than condemning or denying the bounty program, the

department of justice complained about who had received the loot. "We didn't know about this," said a justice official. "It should not happen. These bounty payments are for private individuals who help to trace terrorists on the FBI's most wanted list, not foreign governments."

Musharraf backed down, agreeing that the money be given to individuals rather than the government. So, that makes it OK?

The payments help us see why so many innocent prisoners ended up in Guantanamo Bay. Musharraf writes that "millions" were paid for 369 prisoners - the minimum rate was apparently $5,000, enough to tempt a poor Pakistani to shop an unwanted Arab to the Americans, gift-wrapped with a story that he was up to no good in Afghanistan. . .

Musharraf admits to detaining more than 600 suspects;

sources suggest the true figure may be twice as high. Recent official data shows that only 5 per cent of prisoners at Guantanamo were captured by US forces. The rest were sold by Afghanistan and Pakistan. . .

Clive Stafford Smith is the legal director of Reprieve, a UK charity fighting for the lives of people facing the death penalty and other human-rights abuses. He represents 36 prisoners in Guantanamo.

ISRAELI MINISTER'S WEIRD THREATS AGAINST THE U.S.

2009-06-10T13:10:00.000-07:00

Jerusalem Post - In a sign of growing concern in Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s government over U.S. President Barack Obama’s Middle East policies, Minister-without-Portfolio Yossi Peled proposed Israeli sanctions on the

U.S.

in a letter to cabinet ministers on Sunday.

In the 11-page letter, obtained by the Jerusalem Post from a minister on Monday, Peled recommends steps Israel can take to compensate for the shift in American policy, which he believes has become hostile to Israel. . .

"The minister suggests reconsidering military and civilian purchases from the U.S., selling sensitive equipment that the Washington opposes distributing internationally, and allowing other countries that compete with the U.S. to get involved with the peace process and be given a foothold for their military forces and intelligence agencies."

Anti-War - The irony of someone "reconsidering military and civilian purchases" which are being made, or will be made, with our money is a real hoot - but the laughs are just starting.

There’s just one conceivable answer to the suggestion that Israel should start "selling sensitive equipment that Washington opposes distributing internationally." When did they ever stop? The Israelis have been stealing U.S. technology and selling it to the Chinese - for one example - for years, much to Washington’s chagrin. So does this mean they’re going to be doing it openly, instead of sneaking around and doing it on the sly?

As for the idea of giving "other countries that compete with the

U.S.

" a military foothold - go for it, Yossi! I can hardly wait until the Venezuelan army arrives to guard the Wall of Separation. And no doubt the Chinese - grateful for all the high-tech weaponry you’ve stolen on their behalf - will be more than happy to guard the illegal settlements you’re building (with our tax dollars).

And although the French would be grateful, I’m sure, if the Israelis switched from Boeing to Airbus - as Peled suggests - they probably wouldn’t want to get involved militarily. . .

Oh, but we haven’t even gotten to the best part . . .

"In what may be his most controversial suggestion, Peled recommends intervening in American congressional races to weaken Obama and asking American Jewish donors not to contribute to Democratic congressional candidates. He predicted that this would result in Democratic candidates pressuring Obama to become more pro-Israel."

Israel intervene in

U.S.

politics - why, what a novel idea! If Peled hadn’t suggested it, it would never - ever - have occurred to me. . .

The laughs just keep on coming:

"Peled called for the formation of a new body intended to influence American public opinion. The groups he suggests courting include Hispanic Americans and labor unions in industries that benefit from Israeli military acquisitions.". . .

Seriously, though, what gets me are the disingenuous responses to the Peled sanctions campaign from our pro-Israel lobbyists. "He’s right," said Shoshana Bryen, senior director for security policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, but maybe he shouldn’t talk so loud: "She warned that such expressions could ‘take on a life of their own,’" the Post reports, "and that some of Peled’s policy prescriptions could be less than helpful for the Jewish state."

Well, yes, Bryen does have a point: what if the

U.S.

suddenly stopped the $3 billion-plus in annual aid to the Jewish state? That might prove less than helpful, to be sure. . .

ON PRESIDENTIAL WORDS ABOUT THE MID EAST

2009-06-09T12:01:00.001-07:00

John Caruso, Distant Ocean - I decided to read Obama's speech again, but this time with a mind cleared of all prejudice and preconceptions-and as much as it pains me to say so given how hard I've been on him in the past, I have to admit I was impressed to hear an American politician (finally) say some of these things. Let's look at a few excerpts. First, there was the deference for Muslim culture and traditions:

"We have great respect for the commitment that all Muslims make to faith, family, and education. And Americans of many backgrounds seek to learn more about the rich tradition of Islam. . . I have asked young Americans to study the language and customs of the broader Middle East. And for the first time in our nation's history, we have added a Koran to the White House Library.". . .

The flip side of his respect for Islam was the way he used the secular and inclusive "E Pluribus Unum" to characterize the U.S. rather than the more divisive or religious alternatives favored by some other presidents I could mention:

"Our country's citizens come from diverse backgrounds and cultures, which has enabled us to realize the vision embodied in our first national motto: 'E Pluribus Unum,' meaning 'Out of many, one.'"

These are all just platitudes, you might say (and I wouldn't argue with you) -but consider the importance of this respectful approach, given the audience. And in any case, there were plenty of specifics as well, like his commitment to a state of Palestine and his recognition of the suffering of the Palestinians:

"I'm committed to two democratic states -- Israel and Palestine -- living side-by-side in peace and security. I'm committed to a Palestinian state that has territorial integrity and will live peacefully with the Jewish state of Israel. . .

"Israel also has a large stake in the success of a democratic Palestine. Permanent occupation threatens Israel's identity and democracy. A stable, peaceful Palestinian state is necessary to achieve the security that Israel longs for. So I challenge Israel to take concrete steps to support the emergence of a viable, credible Palestinian state. . .

"Israeli settlement activity in occupied territories must stop. And the occupation must end through withdrawal to secure and recognize boundaries consistent with United Nations Resolutions 242 and 338. . . Israel should also show a respect, a respect for and concern about the dignity of the Palestinian people who are and will be their neighbors."

And then there were his thoughtful overtures to the people of Iran and his embrace of multilateralism on a host of global issues. . .

"Let me speak directly to the citizens of Iran: America respects you, and we respect your country. We respect your right to choose your own future and win your own freedom. And our nation hopes one day to be the closest of friends with a free and democratic Iran. . . "

Yes, it was quite a speech. After reading it a second time I think I can almost begin to understand the ecstatic praise so many liberals offered Obama after they heard it (which I admit I first thought was not only embarrassing but dangerously naive). After all, who could fail to respond to such an intelligent, thoughtful, nuanced, articulate, compassionate attempt to begin a genuine dialogue with the rest of the world? . . .

There's just one problem: none of these quotes were actually taken from Barack Obama's speech. Not a single word. They are quotes from an American president, though. No points for guessing which one at this point, but if you need a hint I can tell you that he was in office from January of 2001 through January of 2009. . .

HILLARY CLINTON THREATENS IRAQ-TYPE WAR AGAINST IRAN

2009-06-08T12:09:00.001-07:00

Anti War - Citing the disastrous 2003 US invasion of Iraq as an example, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that by continuing to refuse to abandon its civilian nuclear program, Iran was risking the possibility of an invasion by the US or "some other enemy that would do that to them."

The comments came during an interview on ABC's "This Week" program, and when asked by interviewer and former Clinton-era official George Stephanopoulus, Secretary Clinton reiterated "that's right, as a first strike.". . .

Already six years in, the Iraq occupation has killed thousands of US soldiers, sucked trillions from the American economy, and is stretching the military to its limits.

OBAMA'S AFGHAN WAR CHIEF LINKED TO TORTURE

2009-06-08T12:01:00.001-07:00

Democracy Now - Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal formerly served as commander of the Joint Special Operations Command from 2003 to 2008. During that time, he oversaw a secretive program to hunt down and assassinate suspected terrorists around the globe. Last year, lawmakers delayed Stanley McChrystal’s nomination for a key position because of questions about prisoner abuse by forces under his command. Many of the reports of abuse center on Camp Nama, a US base near Baghdad’s airport where Special Operations troops ran an interrogation and detention center.The abuses including beating prisoners with rifle butts, stripping them naked, subjecting them to extreme cold and sleep deprivation, and using them for target practice in paintball games.

ANOTHER OBAMA PROMISE DOWN THE DRAIN

2009-05-27T13:29:00.001-07:00

According to Army chief of Staff George Casey, the Army is prepared to keep troops in Iraq and Afghanistan for another decade. Said Casey, "Global trends are pushing in the wrong direction."

BUSH'S MID EAST POLICY BASED ON BIBLICAL MYTH

2009-05-25T07:36:00.000-07:00

Clive Anderson, CounterPunch - The revelation this month in GQ Magazine that Donald Rumsfeld as Defense Secretary embellished top-secret wartime memos with quotations from the Bible prompts a question. Why did he believe he could influence President Bush by that means?. . .

In 2003 while lobbying leaders to put together the Coalition of the Willing, President Bush spoke to France's President Jacques Chirac. Bush wove a story about how the Biblical creatures Gog and Magog were at work in the Middle East and how they must be defeated.

In Genesis and Ezekiel Gog and Magog are forces of the Apocalypse who are prophesied to come out of the north and destroy Israel unless stopped. The Book of Revelation took up the Old Testament prophesy:

"And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them."

Bush believed the time had now come for that battle, telling Chirac:

"This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people's enemies before a New Age begins".

The story of the conversation emerged only because the Elyse Palace, baffled by Bush's words, sought advice from Thomas Romer, a professor of theology at the University of Lausanne. Four years later, Romer gave an account in the September 2007 issue of the university's review, Allez savoir. The article apparently went unnoticed, although it was referred to in a French newspaper.

The story has now been confirmed by Chirac himself in a new book, published in France in March, by journalist Jean Claude Maurice. Chirac is said to have been stupefied and disturbed by Bush's invocation of Biblical prophesy to justify the war in Iraq and "wondered how someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs".

In the same year he spoke to Chirac, Bush had reportedly said to the Palestinian foreign minister that he was on "a mission from God" in launching the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and was receiving commands from the Lord. . .

There is a curious coda to this story. While a senior at Yale University George W. Bush was a member of the exclusive and secretive Skull & Bones society. His father, George H.W. Bush had also been a "Bonesman", as indeed had his father. Skull & Bones' initiates are assigned or take on nicknames. And what was George Bush Senior's nickname? "Magog".

SIX WAYS WE'RE EXPANDING THE AF-PAK WAR

2009-05-22T10:12:00.001-07:00

Tom Engelhardt, Anti-War - The early moves of the Obama administration, when combined with the momentum of the situation it inherited, have resulted in the expansion of the Af-Pak War in at least six areas, which only presage further expansion in the months to come:

1. Expanding Troop Commitment: In February, President Obama ordered a "surge" of 17,000 extra troops into Afghanistan, increasing U.S. forces there by 50 percent. (Then-commander McKiernan had called for 30,000 new troops.) In March, another 4,000 American military advisers and trainers were promised. . .

2. Expanding CIA Drone War: The CIA is running an escalating secret drone war in the skies over the Pakistani borderlands with Afghanistan, a "targeted" assassination program of the sort that McChrystal specialized in while in Iraq. Since last September, more than three dozen drone attacks – the Los Angeles Times put the number at 55 – have been launched, as opposed to 10 in 2006-2007. . .

3. Expanding Air Force Drone War: The U.S. Air Force now seems to be getting into the act as well. There are conflicting reports about just what it is trying to do, but it has evidently brought its own set of Predator and Reaper drones into play in Pakistani skies, in conjunction, it seems, with a somewhat reluctant Pakistani military. Though the outlines of this program are foggy at best, this nonetheless represents an expansion of the war.

4. Expanding Political Interference: Quite a different kind of escalation is also underway. Washington is evidently attempting to insert yet another figure from the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld era into the Afghan mix. Not so long ago, Zalmay Khalilzad, the neocon former American viceroy in Kabul and then Baghdad, was considering making a run for the Afghan presidency against Hamid Karzai, the leader the Obama administration is desperate to ditch. In March, reports – hotly denied by Holbrooke and others – broke in the British press of a U.S./British plan to "undermine President Karzai of Afghanistan by forcing him to install a powerful chief of staff to run the government." Karzai, so the rumors went, would be reduced to "figurehead" status, while a "chief executive with prime ministerial-style powers" not provided for in the Afghan constitution would essentially take over the running of the weak and corrupt government.

This week, Helene Cooper reported on the front page of the New York Times that Khalilzad would be that man. He "could assume a powerful, unelected position inside the Afghan government under a plan he is discussing with Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, according to senior American and Afghan officials." He would then be "the chief executive officer of Afghanistan.". . .

5. Expanding War in Pakistan: Meanwhile, in Pakistan itself, mayhem has ensued, again in significant part thanks to Washington, whose disastrous Afghan war and escalating drone attacks have helped to destabilize the Pashtun regions of the country. Now, the Pakistani military pushed and threatened by Washington (with the loss of military aid, among other things) – has smashed full force into the districts of Buner and Swat, which had, in recent months, been largely taken over by the Islamic fundamentalist guerrillas we call “the Pakistani Taliban.”. . .

With nearly 1.5 million Pakistanis turned into refugees just since the latest offensive began, UN officials are suggesting that this could be the worst refugee crisis since the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Talk about the destabilization of a country. . .

6. Expanding Civilian Death Toll and Blowback: As Taliban attacks in Afghanistan rise and that loose guerrilla force (more like a coalition of various Islamist, tribal, warlord, and criminal groups) spreads into new areas, the American air war in Afghanistan continues to take a heavy toll on Afghan civilians, while manufacturing ever more enemies as well as deep resentment and protest in that country. . .

AFGHANISTAN AND THE MARCH OF FOLLY

2009-05-21T13:27:00.000-07:00

Norman Solomon, Counterpunch - To understand what's up with President Obama as he escalates the war in Afghanistan, there may be no better place to look than a book published 25 years ago. "The March of Folly," by historian Barbara Tuchman, is a chilling assessment of how very smart people in power can do very stupid things -- how a war effort, ordered from on high, goes from tic to repetition compulsion to obsession -- and how we, with undue deference and lethal restraint, pay our respects to the dominant moral torpor to such an extent that mass slaughter becomes normalized in our names.

What happens among policymakers is a "process of self-hypnosis," Tuchman writes. After recounting examples from the Trojan War to the British moves against rebellious American colonists, she devotes the closing chapters of "The March of Folly" to the long arc of the U.S. war in Vietnam. The parallels with the current escalation of the war in Afghanistan are more than uncanny; they speak of deeply rooted patterns. . .

The dynamic that Tuchman describes as operative in the first years of the 1960s, while the Vietnam War gained momentum, is no less relevant today: "For the ruler it is easier, once he has entered a policy box, to stay inside. For the lesser official it is better, for the sake of his position, not to make waves, not to press evidence that the chief will find painful to accept. Psychologists call the process of screening out discordant information 'cognitive dissonance,' an academic disguise for 'Don't confuse me with the facts.'" Along the way, cognitive dissonance "causes alternatives to be 'deselected since even thinking about them entails conflicts.'". . .

During the mid-1960s, while American troops poured into Vietnam, "enormity of the stakes was the new self-hypnosis," Tuchman comments. She quotes the wisdom -- conventional and self-evident -- of New York Times military correspondent Hanson Baldwin, who wrote in 1966 that U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam would bring "political, psychological and military catastrophe," signaling that the United States "had decided to abdicate as a great power."

Many Americans are eager to think of our nation as supremely civilized even in warfare; the conceits of noble self-restraint have been trumpeted by many a president even while the Pentagon's carnage apparatus kept spinning into overdrive. "Limited war is not nicer or kinder or more just than all-out war, as its proponents would have it," Tuchman notes. "It kills with the same finality.". . .

"The American mentality counted on superior might," Tuchman commented, "but a tank cannot disperse wasps." In Vietnam, the independent journalist Michael Herr wrote, the U.S. military's violent capacities were awesome: "Our machine was devastating. And versatile. It could do everything but stop."

U.S. TO GIVE $55 TO EACH PAKISTANI IT'S CHASED OUT OF SWAT VALLEY

2009-05-20T12:13:00.001-07:00

Christian Science Monitor - With Pakistan facing its worst refugee crisis since partition from India 60 years ago, the US is providing $110 million in emergency assistance for as many as 2 million refugees who have fled fighting in the Swat Valley.

The United States often provides emergency aid in such circumstances, but the sizable assistance announced Tuesday by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has a particular objective: to ease the hardship of Pakistanis who have been routed from their homes by fighting that the Pakistani military has pursued, at US insistence, against the Taliban

UNDERVIEWS: A DIFFERENT LOOK AT PAKISTAN

2009-05-17T14:36:00.000-07:00

From a Bill Moyers interview with historian Juan Cole, author of "Engagin the Muslim World" and Shahan Mufti, back from a six month of tour of covering Pakistan for Global Post.

BILL MOYERS: What's missing from the reporting and the analysis we're getting from Pakistan?

SHAHAN MUFTI: One thing that's missing, obviously, that's hard to get into reporting is context. But also hard information. Hard fact. So we're hearing about this military operation going on in the north of Pakistan right now. Yet there are no reporters, no reporters on the ground. . .

There's very little room to independently confirm a lot of the information. Especially in this most recent offensive. That is a huge thing that reporters in Pakistan I know are dealing with. They're referring to "alleged" military operations.

So they're in a position where they can't even independently confirm that an entire military operation took place. Let alone the figures of the Taliban militants dead, or how many civilian casualties there are, or how many armed forces-- people in the armed forces have died. So that is one thing that's very troubling, as a reporter.

BILL MOYERS: Who are the Taliban and what do they want? What are their goals?

JUAN COLE: There are, like, five different groups that we're swooping up and calling the Taliban. The Taliban, properly speaking, are seminary students. They were those refugee boys, many of them orphans, who went through the seminaries or Madrassas in northern Pakistan back in the nineties. And then who emerged as a fighting force. Then you have the old war lords who had fought with the Soviet Union, and were allied with the United States. . . They have formed insurgent groups to fight the Americans now. Because they had fought the Soviet occupation, they now see an American occupation, so they've turned on the United States. They were former allies. So we're calling them Taliban.

And then you have a lot of probably disorganized villagers whose poppy crops, for instance, were burned. And they're angry. So they'll hit a NATO or American checkpoint. . . And then the groups in northern Pakistan who are yet another group. And we're calling it all Taliban.

BILL MOYERS: How many of them?

JUAN COLE:Well, how many of them is impossible to know. But in Pakistan the estimates for fighters are small. 15 thousand. And the current military operation in the Swat Valley is pitting 15 thousand Pakistani troops against 4 thousand Taliban fighters.

That's what's being said. This is small. And the idea [is] that these 4 thousand Taliban in Swat Valley, you know, can take over the capital of the country, or that they're going to spread into the other provinces, which are ethnic provinces, like the Punjab and Sindh, where they're very, very unpopular.

We have a Gallup Poll now, 60 percent of the Punjabis, who are the majority group in Pakistan, say that it's very negative that there should be Taliban operating in Pakistan. And only ten percent say that it's a positive. So in Pakistan, as a whole, this is a small group. It's not a mainstream, big, mass movement.

BILL MOYERS: But how do you explain this mass exodus of. . . maybe a million people on the move out of that northwest region where the fighting is going on?

SHAHAN MUFTI: Well, it's very clear that why that happened is because the Pakistan army asked, or wanted the people, the civilian population, to move out of there because it . . . is being fought as a guerilla war. So the militants are embedding themselves into the civilian population, which is their strength. . .

JUAN COLE: The Pakistani military is a . . . traditional, almost central European kind of military. It was formed to fight India and most of the tanks and the troops are down on the border between India and Pakistan. And they're not trained to do counterinsurgency or counterterrorism.

So their idea of putting down the Taliban is to invade the Swat Valley. And if you've got 15,000 troops with artillery, helicopter gunships, fighter jets, operating a military operation in a valley with a million people in it, [it] is going to produce massive displacement. . .

JUAN COLE: Well I have to be careful here. Because, on the one hand, I don't want to be interpreted as saying this is not a problem. I mean, you've got several thousand militants operating in the North-West Frontier Province. This is a problem. And it wasn't like that, you know, even ten years ago. The idea of Pakistani Taliban is a new idea. The Taliban were always an Afghan phenomenon. So it is a problem. And it needs to be dealt with. But what I'm saying is that let's just have a sense of proportion here.

The North-West Frontier Province is 10 percent of the Pakistan population. That's where this stuff is happening. And most of it is actually happening not in the province itself, but in the federally administrated tribal regions. Which are kind of like our Indian reservations. Only 3.5 million people live there. It's the size of, like, New Hampshire. Pakistan is a country as big as California, Oregon and Washington rolled up in one, with a population of 165 million. So to take this threat, which is a threat locally, to the federally administrated tribal areas, to parts of the North-West Frontier Province, and to magnify it and to say, "Whoa, the Pakistani government is six months from falling, the Taliban is going to get their hands on nuclear weapons." The kinds of things that are being said in Washington, are just fantastical and some kind of science fiction film. How would these guys, with the Kalashnikov machine guns, take over a country that has an army of 550 thousand? [And] which has tanks and artillery and fighter jets? How would they even know here the nuclear weapons are? . . .

BILL MOYERS: We just talked two days ago, to a Pakistan journalist in Lahore, who told us that public tolerance for the Taliban, as you have said, has diminished as the militants have broken their commitments, moved into other regions, and become ever more oppressive, looting and kidnapping. And they don't want them there. They don't want that, right?. . .

JUAN COLE: You should remember that Pakistan has a large middle class. And it's grown enormously in the last ten years. These are urban white-collar people, well educated, hooked in with international media, and half of them are women.

They're lawyers. They're in the judicial system. They're politicians. And they are very threatened by what they call the Talibanization. And they're coming out and speaking against it, and they are extremely influential. You should remember, Pakistan actually has had a woman prime minister. And that social class of middle class and upper class women are very powerful.

BILL MOYERS: Threatened by the Shariah law about the hard-line Islamic attitude toward women? Is that what you mean?

JUAN COLE: That's right. That's right. They don't like the Taliban repression of women at all.

BILL MOYERS: The message coming loud and clear, from both Obama in Washington, and Zardari in Pakistan, is that the Taliban are on the rise. And that they represent, as others have said, an existential threat to Pakistan. You're not denying that this is a problem. But you're not seeing it as this life-and-death matter for the state of Pakistan?

SHAHAN MUFTI: You don't feel it on the ground there. Because, if you're in a city, like Lahore, or if you're in a city of like 16 million, like Karachi, or if you're in a city that looks like southern California, in Islamabad, even if you're in the tribal areas, or in Peshawar, a huge city of its own, which is right in the North-West Frontier, which is Pashtun there is not this sense that the Taliban are coming tomorrow morning, or next week, or the week after. . .

Pakistanis, a lot of them, still see the Taliban as a fringe movement, which they are. The numbers say that. And a fringe movement with is able to wreak a lot of havoc. Especially through its suicide bombings. This tool of suicide bombings is very hard to control. And so people are obviously concerned with how their lives are changing. But this threat of the state falling, I think, nobody in that country takes that too seriously.

BILL MOYERS: In whose interest is it that we're getting the story from Washington and the Pakistani government that it's at the brink of chaos that is coming the Taliban are on the rise?

JUAN COLE: I think it's cynical. And I think that it's a way for Washington to put pressure on the Pakistani civilian and military elites to do what Washington wants them to do. . .

BILL MOYERS: Which is?

JUAN COLE: Well, they wanted this big military campaign against the Taliban in the Swat Valley. Washington is alarmed at the spread of the Taliban in the North-West Frontier Province because it has implications for the security of southern Afghanistan, and therefore for US troops and NATO troops in Afghanistan. And so, from their point of view, this is a big crisis.

They don't want more safe havens for the Taliban in Afghanistan who are killing US troops. And they were upset with the Pakistani elite for not taking this problem more seriously. . . . Sort of saying that Pakistan is unstable, or it's about to fall, or the nukes are in danger, all of this sort of thing, is a signal to Islamabad that you had better get serious about this, because it matters to us. So this is Washington strong-arming Pakistan.

SHAHAN MUFTI: I think you're right on. And I think it's problematic because this really harks back to the period right before the Iraq War. . . where there was this hype that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. . .

And it's unfortunate that the press did play its part in that problem. And the press is, once again I think, playing its unfortunate part where it is relaying all of these opinions that are coming from intelligence sources or whatever, and ruling this as information. And all of a sudden we're seeing the same sort of almost hysteria.

BILL MOYERS: Do you agree with Shahan, that you're seeing a repeat of the-

JUAN COLE: Yes. Yes.

BILL MOYERS: Official propaganda being disseminated as news?

JUAN COLE: Yes. I think that's exactly what's going on. I mean, especially with regard to the nuclear issue. There is no way on God's green earth that these scruffy tribal fundamentalists, in the North-West Frontier Province, are having anything to do with Pakistan's nuclear weapons. Which, by the way, are stored in secret places, and they're not assembled. And assembling them is a complicated process which requires various high-level military and civilian authorizations. And to put that nuclear issue front and forward is just a way of scaring the American public and putting pressure on Pakistan to do something they didn't want to do.

BILL MOYERS: Why isn't Pakistan doing more to control the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan and up in that northwest region? Why isn't it more effective?

JUAN COLE: You know, I get very nervous when I hear people talking about controlling that region. It's not controllable. And nobody has ever controlled it. Winston Churchill was down there when he was a young man trying to control it. . .

I've also heard President Obama talking about, you know, Pakistan needs to control this area, and so forth. I don't think they understand the scale of what you're talking about here. This is just a very vast, rugged, arid region which--thinly populated. Local people know the ground much better. The best you can do is, I think, make deals with the tribal chieftains to calm things down. . .

BILL MOYERS: Is our presence there giving the Taliban a unity they wouldn't have had without presence?

SHAHAN MUFTI: On the Pakistani side, for sure. I mean, that is their rallying call now. That as well as their religious call. But definitely American presence in the region is what is really giving them a rallying call among youth of the tribal areas who are caught in poverty and cycles of poverty. And it is their rallying call of the foreign invader. . .

BILL MOYERS: So what does the United States do?

JUAN COLE: Well, the important thing to underline is [that] the Pakistani public doesn't like some US policies, like the war in Afghanistan. But opinion polling shows. . . that they like the United States. And if you ask them, "Well, what would you, what would make better relations with the United States?" They say, "Well, give us civilian development aid. We don't need any more weapons from you." If we can do things for the Pakistan public that they need done for them, they say in opinion polls that that's going to really raise their view of the United States. . .

BILL MOYERS: Both of you seem much more optimistic about Pakistan than I've heard many people talk about it in a long time.

JUAN COLE: That's because we lived there. It doesn't look like what it looks like on the outside. Americans think that Pakistanis are fundamentalists. And almost none of them are. You know, there are religious people [but] they're like Mexican Catholics. They go to shrines and pray for things. And the Taliban hate that. . . And then there's this big urban middle class which is just growing like crazy. And they're all watching Indian movies, and dreaming about being in Bollywood. And . . . the economy has been doing good the last few years. You know, five, six, seven percent growth. I think it was the second largest growth in Asia. . . I can't understand why there isn't more appreciation for the good news that's come out.

You know, in the past two years, the Pakistani public has demanded an end to a military dictatorship. On the grounds that it was violating the rule of law. They demanded free and fair parliamentary elections. They accomplished them. . . The largest party they put in is the left of center or centrist secular party. They then went to the streets to demand the reinstatement of the secular civil Supreme Court. And you've had, really, hundreds of thousands of people involved in this movement for the restoration of democracy and the restoration of the rule of law. If this had happened any other place in the world, it would be reported in Washington as a good news story. Here, we've been told that it's a crisis. That it's a sign of instability and nuclear armed nation. I don't understand that.

SHAHAN MUFTI: For decades the problem with Pakistan is that the army keeps disrupting the power balance and here the Pakistani people deliver a moment, the night that the Chief Justice got reinstated it was around 3:00 AM. And there were people gathered out, thousands of people gathered outside his house. And, in one corner, there were young students playing the guitar and singing nationalist songs.

And then the Islamists came with their flags and they were chanting, "Allah is great." And then the Justice Party people came and they were singing-- they were doing a cappella versions of nationalist songs.

And to see that all of these people had somehow come around, the absolutely secular to the very staunch Islamists, had come around [to] this movement because they somehow, to them, it meant a step towards a stronger democracy. . .

IS U.S. USING INCENDIARY WEAPONS IN AFGHANISTAN?

2009-05-15T11:51:00.001-07:00

David Hambling, Wired - More than a year ago, I came across a curious line item, buried in an an inventory report outlining all of the U.S. Army's equipment in Afghanistan. It was for a bazooka that fired controversial incendiary rockets. At the time, the Army denied using the weapon, which relies on a napalm-like substance that burns skin on contact, and the matter seemed to end there. But I couldn't help thinking about that line item again this week as a new furor has arisen over the use of incendiary weapons in . . .

When there were allegations that the U.S. used incendiaries against civilians in an air strike on the village of Garni, the Pentagon not only denied the claims but has just declassified documents showing that the Taliban have themselves used white phosphorus bombs.

The inventory, published by Wikileaks, includes a register of all U.S. Army equipment in Afghanistan. Among the vast quantity of gear listed is a type of 66mm rocket launcher, referred to only by its reference number. Using this number it can be identified as the M202A1 "FLame Assault SHoulder weapon"� or FLASH. There are two entries for FLASH launchers held by different units.

FLASH is four-barreled bazooka firing rockets loaded with an incendiary mixture. It was developed during the Vietnam era to replace flamethrowers, producing the same type of effects but with much greater range and accuracy. On impact a rocket scatters burning incendiary over a twenty-meter radius. The original filler for the rockets was; this was replaced with thickened triethylaluminum, a liquid which spontaneously combusts in air and burns at high temperature. TEA reacts violently with water, so the fire must be put out with dirt or sand. A safety data sheet says that TEA is corrosive, burns skin on contact and is extremely dangerous if inhaled.

The U.S. Army manual for the weapon says FLASH is intended to be used against "enemy gun emplacements, fortified positions, and unarmored vehicles. It is also used for fighting in streets and villages."� It would be useful against caves and defensive positions in the rocky terrain of Afghanistan. The rockets are accurate enough to go through a window at 125 meters, or a bunker aperture at fifty meters. Maximum range for a larger target is five hundred meters. . .

The Geneva Protocol does not ban flame or incendiary weapons, but prohibits them from being used on or near concentrations of civilians. . .

Dan Smith, Senior Fellow for Military Affairs at the Washington peace lobbying group Friends Committee on National Legislation, says the current legislation on flame weapons is abhorrent. . .