AS THE WORLD SQUIRMS

‘The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.’

~George Orwell

Tuesday: 20 Iraqis Killed, Up to 150 Kidnapped in Baghdad

'Up to 150' abducted in Baghdad

By Aseel Kami

Reuters

11.14.06

BAGHDAD, Nov 14 (Reuters) - Gunmen in Iraqi police uniforms rounded up as many as 100 men at a government building in central Baghdad on Tuesday, in what may be the biggest mass kidnap seen in a city becoming used to such violence.

Blair: Iran, Syria needed for Iraq solution

The Scotsman

11.14.06

In his annual foreign policy lecture to the City of London, Mr Blair accepted that both Iran and Syria have supported terrorism, but said the two nations now face a "strategic choice" about their relations with the West.

"They help the Middle East peace process, not hinder it; they stop supporting terrorism in Lebanon or Iraq; and they abide by, not flout, their international obligations. In that case, a new partnership is possible," he said. "Alternatively, they face the consequences of not doing so: isolation."

Mr Blair's suggestion that Tehran and Damascus could be partners for Britain and the United States would once have been unthinkable.

Iran was named by George Bush, the US president, in 2002 as a member of an "Axis of Evil".

But both British and American strategies for the Middle East are being revised after more than three years of post-war turmoil in Iraq, and the electoral drubbing suffered by Mr Bush's Republican Party in last week's mid-term Congressional elections.

Martyn Turner, Ireland, The Irish Times

Yielding to Israel, Bush quickly rebuffs British ally Blair on peace role for Iran

Barry Schweid, Washington
The Age – Australia

November 15, 2006

US PRESIDENT George Bush has reassured Israel that America will not back away from its view that Iran and its nuclear program are a world threat, despite British Prime Minister Tony Blair suggesting Tehran and Syria could have a role in stabilising Iraq under "a new partnership".

With Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert at his side, Mr Bush continued his tough talk, saying a nuclear-armed Iran would not only threaten Israel but loom as an "incredibly destabilising" threat to the region and the world. He said that while his Administration was willing to discuss a way forward in relations, Iran must agree to verifiably suspend its uranium enrichment activities or face international isolation.

Rainer Hachfeld, Berlin, Germany, Neues Deutschland

Rumsfeld faces suit in Germany over alleged war crimes

International Herald Tribune
By Mark Landler / The New York Times

11.14.06

Emboldened by his resignation last week, lawyers on Tuesday asked a German prosecutor to investigate Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on allegations of war crimes, stemming from the treatment of prisoners held in military jails in Iraq and Cuba.

The 220-page lawsuit, filed with the German federal prosecutor in Karlsruhe, names 11 other current and former American officials, including Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, whom it claims either ordered the torture of prisoners or drafted laws that legitimated its use.

Jewish JINSA/PNAC Neocons Want Iran to be Bombed Next

No cakewalk in the park?

By Arnaud de Borchgrave
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published November 13, 2006

The neo-conservatives (neocons) who gave us the "cakewalk" prediction for Iraq before the war are now plugging "a walk in the park" in Iran -- i.e., a U.S. bombing campaign to consign the mullahs' nuclear ambitions to oblivion, or at least to retard the advent of an Iranian bomb for a few years, hoping that in the interim good democrats would rise up and send the clerics and their Revolutionary Guards packing.

Two Washington-based representatives of a global Fortune 100 company told their visiting senior executive this week a bombing campaign of Iran 's nuclear facilities "is inevitable while Mr. Bush is in the White House." The incredulous CEO thought his Washington eyes and ears were overstating the case. They assured him they were deadly serious.

Leading neocon Richard Perle, who led the intellectual charge for the ill-fated invasion of Iraq , believes two B-2 bombers, each with 16 independently targeted weapons systems, could punch out Iran 's nuclear lights. No Air Force expert we could find agreed. But the Pentagon's Air Force generals believe it can be done -- and successfully -- with a much larger operation, including five nights of bombing, some 400 aim points, 75 requiring deep penetration ordnance. Time magazine estimates 1,500 such aim points, or "viable targets," related to Iran 's widely scattered nuclear development complex. The Navy, with its carrier task forces and ship-launched cruise missiles, does not share the same degree of certainty.

No one has worked more assiduously for military action than Michael Ledeen, a neocon field marshal, who writes frequently about the "horrors" of Iran 's mullahocracy. His National Review Online commentary Nov. 1 was headlined "Delay." Mr. Ledeen has grown impatient over Mr. Bush's dangerous postponement of what he considers inevitable. "If the president knows Iran is waging war on us," wrote Mr. Ledeen, "he is obliged to respond; the only appropriate question is about the method, not the substance. If he does not know, then he should remove those officials who were obliged to tell him, and get some people who will tell the truth."

The truth has become an increasingly rare commodity in Washington . Mr. Ledeen concludes the president knows the truth, but thinks he may lack the political capital to directly challenge the mullahs. More likely, Mr. Bush's thinking has changed when confronted by the intelligence community's assessment of Iran 's retaliatory capabilities. They are described as "formidable." These include mining the Strait of Hormuz , the channel for two-fifths of the world's oil traffic, which would send oil prices skyrocketing to $200 per barrel almost overnight.

Israel-Lobby Wants Pentagon Purged Of Those Suspected Of Being ‘Hostile’ To Israel

Hostility to Zionism Seen as ‘Major Threat’

AFP

By Michael Collins Piper

11.20.06 (Issue)

A leading voice of the pro-Israel lobby is pushing for an old-style “witch-hunt”—under the guise of “homeland security”—to identify (and expel) individuals in the U.S. government and our military who are suspected of being hostile to Israel.

The call for a witch-hunt is based on the outlandish thesis that “Islamo-fascists” and Muslim “jihadist” operatives and, perhaps more particularly, their “sympathizers”—however loosely defined—have infested America’s defense, national security and federal law enforcement community.

The witch-hunt was proposed in the fall 2006 issue of the small-circulation—but highly influential—Journal of International Security Affairs published by the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). JINSA has been one of the frontline forces in the fanatically pro-Israel “neo-conservative” circles directing foreign policy under George W. Bush.

The Democrats Don't Care

Screw the Palestinians, Full Steam Ahead

By KATHLEEN and BILL CHRISTISON (Former CIA )

11.13.06

At a panel on the defense and foreign policy impact of the midterm election, sponsored two days after the election by Congressional Quarterly, Steven Simon, late of the Clinton administration and still a member of the Democratic, pro-Zionist mainstream at the Council on Foreign Relations, pronounced on prospects for Palestinian-Israeli peace and essentially declared it not worth anyone's effort. Using words, a tone, and a body language that clearly betrayed his own disinterest, he said that Hamas is "there" (exaggerated shrug), that the Israeli government is in turmoil after its Lebanon "contretemps" (dismissive wave of the hand), that both sides are incapable of significant movement, and that therefore there is no incentive for anyone, Democrat or Republican, to intervene (casual frown indicating an unfortunate reality about which serious people need not concern themselves). There is simply no prospect for more unilateral Israeli withdrawals and therefore for any progress toward peace, Simon said in conclusion -- signaling not only a total lack of concern but an utter ignorance of just what it is that might bring progress, as if Israeli unilateralism were truly the ticket to peace.

Thus spake the Democratic oracle. Not that anyone who knows the Palestinian-Israeli situation from other than the selective focus of the Zionist perspective had any expectations in the first place. No one ever thought the new Democratic Congress would hop to and put pressure on Israel to make peace. Just remember John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, to say nothing of Bill Clinton, when any question of the Democrats' stance arises. And don't forget Nancy Pelosi, who rushed to condemn Jimmy Carter for using the word "apartheid" in the title of his new book and for whom, according to a Jewish Telegraphic Agency profile, support for Israel is personal and "heartfelt." One Jewish activist and long-time friend described her as "incredibly loyal" (interesting term) and as feeling Jewish and Israeli issues "in her soul."

Kathleen Christison is a former CIA political analyst and has worked on Middle East issues for 30 years. She is the author of Perceptions of Palestine and The Wound of Dispossession.

Bill Christison was a senior official of the CIA. He served as a National Intelligence Officer and as Director of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political Analysis. They spent October 2006 in Palestine and on a speaking tour of Ireland sponsored by the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

Patrick Chappatte, the Geneva daily "Le Temps", Sunday edition of the Neue Zurcher Zeitung., weekly cartoon for the International Herald Tribune.

Poll: Most Americans Would Pull Troops Out of Iraq

Angus Reid

11.14.06

- Most adults in the United States believe their country’s participation in the coalition effort should come to an end soon or over the next 12 months, according to a poll by Rasmussen Reports. 28 per cent of respondents support bringing home all soldiers from Iraq immediately.

News & Comment

White House: Detainees Have No Rights

11.13.06

The Bush administration said Monday that Guantanamo Bay prisoners have no right to challenge their detentions in civilian courts and that lawsuits by hundreds of detainees should be dismissed.

In court documents filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the Justice Department defended the military's authority to arrest people overseas and detain them indefinitely without access to courts.

It's the first time that argument has been spelled out since President Bush signed a law last month setting up military commissions for the thousands of foreigners being held in U.S. prisons abroad.

Arab League criticizes U.S. veto on a U.N. resolution for Palestinians

The International Herald Tribune

11.11.06

CAIRO, Egypt: The Arab League strongly criticized the United States for vetoing Saturday a U.N. Security Council draft resolution that sought to condemn an Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip and demand Israeli troops pull out of the territory.

Republicans? They Deserved to Lose

by Jacob G. Hornberger

The Future of Freedom Foundation

November 8, 2006

The truth, no matter how discomforting Republicans might find it, is that President George W. Bush is nothing more than a variation of Bill Clinton — and a worst one at that. Sharing Clinton’s socialist conviction that the federal government is an agent of morality through its “compassionate” confiscation and redistribution of wealth, Bush has far exceeded Clinton in social-welfare spending. No one can reasonably deny that Bush and his Republican congressmen have been bigger big-government men than Clinton and his Democratic cohorts.

After all, it’s not as if the Republican members of Congress have opposed any of Bush’s big-government actions. Instead, Republicans in Congress have served Bush as loyally and obediently as their rubber-stamp counterparts in the Iraqi congress did for Saddam Hussein.

How many departments were abolished when Republicans controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress? How many agencies? How many spending bills were vetoed? How many pork-barrel projects were jettisoned? How much was federal spending reduced?

Washington officials tell contractors Iraq reconstruction needs another $100B+

Nov. 13, 2006 at 7:48AM

Washington Times

The civil reconstruction of Iraq will cost at least $100 billion, U.S. officials in Baghdad told Iraqi contractors who are vying for some of the work.

"United Nations and World Bank estimates approximated Iraq's infrastructure needs to be about $60 billion (before the 2003 invasion). But this was before we had an opportunity to fully assess the condition of Iraq's infrastructure. After careful analysis, the infrastructure needs have been estimated well over $100 billion," said Terry F. Bautista, director of business management of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Gulf Region Division.

Bautista spoke Nov. 4 at the Al Rasheed Hotel in the Green Zone in Baghdad to a group of about 300 Iraqi contractors.

“People should not be afraid of their government.

Governments should be afraid of their people.”

An extraordinarily prescient TV interview with General Norman Schwarzkopf and Robert Gates - Deputy National Security Advisor to Former President George Bush Sr.

Why Invading Iraq Was A Very Stupid Idea…

(Click on blinking dot above for video)

Oliver Schopf, Austria, Der Standard