AS THE WORLD SQUIRMS

Wednesday – December 13, 2006

Trenchant Political Comment, Videos and More…

~Note: Articles & commentaries contained herein may have hotlinks, emphasis and formatting added to afford an additional perspective.~

~Favorite Quotes~

IRAQ: Compounding the Folly

Michael S. Rozeff

12.13.06

(Excerpt)

The Iraq Study Group Report echoes President Bush’s belated recognition that democracy in Iraq "will depend primarily on the actions of the Iraqi people," yet it still holds to the discredited theory that the U.S. armed forces, wealth, and assistance can help determine the sex of and give birth to a new and unified Iraqi democratic state. But if a people does not want a government or a democracy that fits U.S. specifications, what can the U.S. do about it short of imposing such a government, an action that, as in Iran, can only lead to long-run problems? And should the U.S. be in the business of encouraging the modern, over-powerful, and dysfunctional welfare state anyway?

If this Report’s writers and top Administration officials have their way, a pullout will be very slow. They are still seeking outcomes beyond U.S. control and attainment, such as a stable Iraqi state ruling a peaceful Iraq. The Report calls for a temporary increase in U.S. armed forces in Iraq along with numerous other measures that not only do not remove the U.S. from Iraq, they increase American involvement and commitment.

Strangely, the Report maintains the hope of American success in Iraq even as it views as "implausible" that the Iraqis will avert an "unfolding civil war." While recognizing and spelling out the hopeless situation, the Report nevertheless calls for a last ditch and concerted effort to salvage something out of the Iraq debacle. Playing poker or the stock market in this way, by failing to cut losses, leads to bigger losses. Only the illusion that one controls the game, the market, or the Iraq situation is what keeps the player in a losing game, meeting every raise and raising the stakes even higher. The U.S. political establishment, as reflected in this Report, still thinks it has what it takes to win the game of shaping the world to U.S. tastes. It fears that if it loses this hand in Iraq, the U.S. will be set back for many years to come. If this and succeeding administrations keep increasing the size of the pot, and there are no indications that they will not, then, unless the American people see the light, the prospect of financial ruin will provide the last and final sanction to terminate the excessive and unrealistic U.S. ambitions.

Pope issues warning on limits of fighting the war on terror

The Scotsman – Edinburgh

12.13.06

(Excerpt)

POPE Benedict said yesterday that states had to set ethical limits on what could be done to protect their people from terrorism and that some countries had flouted international humanitarian law in recent wars.

The Pope made his comments in an annual message for the Roman Catholic Church's World Day of Peace, celebrated on 1 January. The message, traditionally sent to governments and international organisations, repeated his belief that war in God's name was never justified.

Calls for Olmert to resign after nuclear gaffe

Luke Harding in Berlin and Duncan Campbell

Guardian Unlimited - London
12.12.06

(Excerpt)

Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, was today trying to fend off accusations of ineptitude and calls for his resignation after he accidentally acknowledged for the first time that Israel had nuclear weapons.

After decades in which Israel has stuck to a doctrine of nuclear ambiguity, Mr Olmert let slip during an interview in Germany that Israel did indeed have weapons of mass destruction. He told Germany's Sat.1 channel last night: "Iran, openly, explicitly and publicly, threatens to wipe Israel off the map. Can you say that this is the same level, when they are aspiring to have nuclear weapons, as America, France, Israel and Russia?"

Robert Gates: Incoming U.S. Secretary of Defense reveals that Israel is a Partner in US Sponsored Nuclear Threat against Iran

Globalresearch.ca (via AP)

12.9.06

(Excerpt)

Robert Gates, the incoming Secretary of Defense has candidly acknowledged that Iran is "surrounded" by nukes and is the object of a US sponsored nuclear threat.

“They [the Iranians] are surrounded by powers with nuclear weapons—Pakistan to their east, the Russians to the north, the Israelis to the west and us [the United States] in the Persian Gulf,” (Senate Committee confirmation hearing).

By acknowledging the role of Israeli nukes in the Middle East war theater, the new Secretary of Defense has revealed a new phase of the “game plan” against Iran.

Secretary Gates seems to have omitted that India is also a nuclear power in close proximity to Iran and that Britain has nuclear capabilities deployed in the Persian Gulf. Also omitted from Secretary Gates' statement is the fact that U.S. made tactical nuclear weapons are deployed in Turkey and four other "non-nuclear" EU member states including Holland, Belgium, Italy and Germany.

Israel, Alone
The nuclear cat is out of the bag – and Olmert issues a warning…

Justin Raimondo

Antiwar.com

12.13.06

(Excerpt)

The Lobby is reeling. For the first time since the Eisenhower era, our Israeli-centric policy in the Middle East is being openly and successfully challenged. In the past, Israel's amen corner in the U.S. has been able to effectively neutralize all critics by smearing them, and the charge of "anti-Semitism" has been applied with an absurdly broad brush to everyone from Gore Vidal to Pat Buchanan and all points in between. However, this case is getting increasingly hard to make. Are we now to believe that the U.S. Department of Justice, Harvard University, Baker and the Bush I crowd, and Jimmy Carter are all part of a vast anti-Semitic conspiracy?

Surely not. With the British endorsement of the Baker group's conclusions, one would also have to include Tony Blair among the conspirators. When Mearsheimer and Walt published their paper, the Lobby likened them to David Duke. They can't pull that, however, with Baker's wise men, a former president, and the British prime minister. The Lobby has cried wolf once too often. Tony Judt, who has taken more than a few hits from the tireless efforts of the amen corner, recently noted the new atmosphere of glasnost when it comes to discussing the "special" status of American-Israeli relations:

"What seems to me the case is that if you keep pushing, if you insist there at least be a discussion of the Mearsheimer-Walt paper … even a discussion about the failure to discuss it, something does change. And it seems to me there's a shift."

The Israelis recognize this shift, and Olmert's alleged slip of the tongue is their answer. The "clean break" strategy embraced by the Israelis, predicated on the invasion and occupation of Iraq by the Americans, has so far played out pretty much as outlined in a notorious game plan drawn up by top U.S. policymakers, including neocon point-man and former Defense Policy Board official Richard Perle, former Deputy Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, and David Wurmser, currently Dick Cheney's top adviser on Middle Eastern affairs.

The agenda put forth in this widely cited 1996 document, intended as advice to then-incoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was meant to confront the central conundrum at the heart of the Zionist predicament: how to overcome its essential dependence on the West. As a settler colony, implanted by force of arms and sustained by aid from abroad, Israel has from the start been dependent on outside forces to ensure its survival. What was needed, argued the Clean Breakers, was a new offensive that would repudiate the concept of "land for peace" and set Israel free from Western-imposed constraints. Invoking the "right of hot pursuit," Israel would launch periodic invasions of Palestinian and Lebanese territory – and set the stage for strikes against Syria and Iran.

The road to Damascus and Tehran would run through Baghdad, however, as the authors of "A Clean Break" put it:

"Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq – an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right – as a means of foiling Syria's regional ambitions."

Syria and Lebanon were seen by the Clean Breakers as the front line in their battle to expand the frontiers of Israeli power. Following a successful campaign to "redefine Iraq," it would be possible to envision a "profound" shift in the regional "strategic balance of power." Jordan would be drawn into the new order, and the Israelis would succeed in "diverting Syria's attention by using Lebanese opposition elements to destabilize Syrian control of Lebanon."

Who Makes Foreign Policy?

“The media, Congress, and the American public all seem to have accepted something that is patently untrue: namely, that foreign policy is the domain of the president and not Congress. This is absolutely not the case and directly contrary to what our founding fathers wanted.”

U.S. Representative Ron Paul (R-TX)
12.11.06

The Iraq Study Group released its report last week, giving the president several recommendations to consider in prosecuting the war. Similarly, the incoming Democratic leaders in Congress promise to urge the President to take a new course in Iraq. Meanwhile, one newly elected member of Congress was asked on national television about the Iraq war. She responded by saying she had no real opinion, and that foreign policy was “up to the president.”

In each instance, it is assumed that the president will make Iraq policy. I’m not talking about the details of actual military operations in Iraq; I’m talking about the broader policy questions of how long our troops will stay, how many will stay, and how victory will be defined.

The media, Congress, and the American public all seem to have accepted something that is patently untrue: namely, that foreign policy is the domain of the president and not Congress. This is absolutely not the case and directly contrary to what our founding fathers wanted.

The role of the president as Commander in Chief is to direct our armed forces in carrying out policies established by the American people through their representatives in Congress. He is not authorized to make those policies. He is an administrator, not a policy maker. Foreign policy, like all federal policy, must be made by Congress. To allow otherwise is to act in contravention of the Constitution.

Library of Congress scholar Louis Fisher, writing in The Oxford Companion to American Military History, summarizes presidential war power:

The president's authority was carefully constrained. The power to repel sudden attacks represented an emergency measure that allowed the president, when Congress was not in session, to take actions necessary to repel sudden attacks either against the mainland of the United States or against American troops abroad. It did not authorize the president to take the country into full-scale war or mount an offensive attack against another nation.

But it’s not simply the decision to wage war that is left to Congress. Consider also the words of James Madison:

Those who are to conduct a war cannot in the nature of things, be proper or safe judges, whether a war ought to be commenced, continued, or concluded. They are barred from the latter functions by a great principle in free government, analogous to that which separates the sword from the purse, or the power of executing from the power of enacting laws (italics added).

So Congress is charged not only with deciding when to go to war, but also how to conduct-- and bring to a conclusion-- properly declared wars. Of course the administration has some role to play in making treaties, and the State Department should pursue beneficial diplomacy. But the notion that presidents should establish our broader foreign policy is dangerous and wrong. No single individual should be entrusted with the awesome responsibility of deciding when to send our troops abroad, how to employ them once abroad, and when to bring them home. This is why the founders wanted Congress, the body most directly accountable to the public, to make critical decisions about war and peace.

It is shameful that Congress ceded so much of its proper authority over foreign policy to successive presidents during the 20^th century, especially when it failed to declare war in Korea, Vietnam, Kosovo, and Iraq. It’s puzzling that Congress is so willing to give away one of its most important powers, when most members from both parties work incessantly to expand the role of Congress in domestic matters. By transferring its role in foreign policy to the President, Congress not only violates the Constitution, but also disenfranchises the American electorate.

AFGHANISTAN: The Vultures Are Circling NATO

Syed Saleem Shahzad

Asia Times – Hong Kong

12.13.06

(Excerpt)

KARACHI - In the plains of southwestern Afghanistan, confident Taliban move around openly with their weaponry, to the frustration of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Afghan National Army (ANA) troops who can see them, but seem helpless in containing them.

Indeed, foreign troops are mostly held hostage in their bases, and their alternatives are stark: conduct aerial bombings in which civilians would surely be heavy casualties, or pull out.

The mood on the ground in Afghanistan is that the latter option will prevail.

"It was really fun to fight with the Soviets [in the 1980s], but not so with the Americans. I remember once, mujahideen besieged three Soviet soldiers. They were injured and they had the chance to retreat and be airlifted. But they refused and fought till their last. They had a certain level of conviction. The Americans do not have this," Khuda-i-Rahim told Asia Times Online.

Khuda-i-Rahim is a veteran commander. He lost a leg, both arms and some sight in a bomb explosion in Kandahar while fighting against Russian troops. He spent some time in the US in the 1980s and now lives in Baghran in the northernmost district of Helmand province.

"They [Americans] hear the sound of a single bullet fired in the air and they do not dare to go to the place where the bullet was fired. The Russians stayed in Afghanistan for 11 years because of their conviction, but against the determination of the Afghan resistance they finally withdrew. I don't see a chance that once there is a national uprising like the one against the Russians, the Americans will stay for a few months," said Khuda-i-Rahim.

The current Afghan insurgency is widely viewed as a highly ideologically motivated movement along the lines of al-Qaeda and similar to the Taliban uprising of the mid-1990s in which fanatical madrassa-educated youths seized power.

Certainly, the present Afghan resistance against foreign troops and the administration of President Hamid Karzai is undoubtedly led by Taliban leader Mullah Omar and Islam is unquestionably the binding force. Nevertheless, at ground level the field command is in the hands of seasoned commanders who fought against the Soviets and who are driven more by Afghan traditions than by ideology.

The Afghan battle strategy has always been based on preserving strength by appearing to give way to the enemy by letting them parade through the country in search operations that only upset the population.

For the invaders, this is exhausting and brings small results. The resistance, meanwhile, is everywhere, watching and waiting like vultures, ready to swoop. Such is the situation in the Sangin district of Helmand province, just 2.5 kilometers from Kandahar city.

Pinochet's Death Spares the Bush Family

Robert Parry

Consortiumnews.com
12.12.06

(Excerpt)

Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s death on Dec. 10 means the Bush Family can breathe a little bit easier, knowing that criminal proceedings against Chile’s notorious dictator can no longer implicate his longtime friend and protector, former President George H.W. Bush.

Although Chilean investigations against other defendants may continue, the cases against Pinochet end with his death of a heart attack at the age of 91. Pinochet’s death from natural causes also marks a victory for world leaders, including George H.W. and George W. Bush, who shielded Pinochet from justice over the past three decades.

The Bush Family’s role in the Pinochet cover-up began in 1976 when then-CIA Director George H.W. Bush diverted investigators away from Pinochet’s guilt in a car bombing in Washington that killed political rival Orlando Letelier and an American, Ronni Moffitt.

The cover-up stretched into the presidency of George W. Bush when he sidetracked an FBI recommendation to indict Pinochet in the Letelier-Moffitt murders.

Over those intervening 30 years, Pinochet allegedly engaged in a variety of illicit operations, including terrorism, torture, murder, drug trafficking, money-laundering and illicit arms shipments – sometimes with the official collusion of the U.S. government.

In the 1980s, when George H.W. Bush was Vice President, Pinochet’s regime helped funnel weapons to the Nicaraguan contra rebels and to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, an operation that also implicated then-CIA official Robert M. Gates, who will be the next U.S. Secretary of Defense.

When Pinochet faced perhaps his greatest risk of prosecution – in 1998 when he was detained in London pending extradition to Spain on charges of murdering Spanish citizens – former President George H.W. Bush protested Pinochet’s arrest, calling it “a travesty of justice” and joining in a successful appeal to the British courts to let Pinochet go home to Chile.

Once Pinochet was returned to Chile, the wily ex-dictator employed a legal strategy of political obstruction and assertions of ill health to avert prosecution. Until his death, he retained influential friends in the Chilean power structure and in key foreign capitals, especially Washington.

~ VIDEO: Jimmy Carter on ‘Hardball’ ~

Former U.S. President’s Bestselling Book Denouncing Israel 'Apartheid' Draws Bitter Attack From U.S. Israel Lobby

By Karen DeYoung

Washington Post Staff Writer

12.7.06
(Excerpt)

A veteran Middle East scholar affiliated with the Carter Center in Atlanta resigned his position there Monday in an escalating controversy over former president Jimmy Carter's bestselling book on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The book, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," traces the ups and downs of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process beginning with Carter's 1977-1980 presidency and the historic peace accord he negotiated between Israel and Egypt and continuing to the present. Although it apportions blame to Israel, the Palestinians and outside parties -- including the United States -- for the failure of decades of peace efforts, it is sharply critical of Israeli policy and concludes that "Israel's continued control and colonization of Palestinian land have been the primary obstacles to a comprehensive peace agreement in the Holy Land."

Speaking frankly about Israel and Palestine

Jimmy Carter says his recent book is drawing

knee-jerk accusations of anti-Israel bias.

Jimmy Carter

Opinion: Op Ed - Los Angeles Times

12.8.06

(Excerpt)

With some degree of reluctance and some uncertainty about the reception my book would receive, I used maps, text and documents to describe the situation accurately and to analyze the only possible path to peace: Israelis and Palestinians living side by side within their own internationally recognized boundaries. These options are consistent with key U.N. resolutions supported by the U.S. and Israel, official American policy since 1967, agreements consummated by Israeli leaders and their governments in 1978 and 1993 (for which they earned Nobel Peace Prizes), the Arab League's offer to recognize Israel in 2002 and the International Quartet's "Roadmap for Peace," which has been accepted by the PLO and largely rejected by Israel.

The book is devoted to circumstances and events in Palestine and not in Israel, where democracy prevails and citizens live together and are legally guaranteed equal status.

Although I have spent only a week or so on a book tour so far, it is already possible to judge public and media reaction. Sales are brisk, and I have had interesting interviews on TV, including "Larry King Live," "Hardball," "Meet the Press," "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer," the "Charlie Rose" show, C-SPAN and others. But I have seen few news stories in major newspapers about what I have written.

Book reviews in the mainstream media have been written mostly by representatives of Jewish organizations [Context] who would be unlikely to visit the occupied territories, and their primary criticism is that the book is anti-Israel. Two members of Congress have been publicly critical. Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for instance, issued a statement (before the book was published) saying that "he does not speak for the Democratic Party on Israel." Some reviews posted on Amazon.com call me "anti-Semitic," and others accuse the book of "lies" and "distortions." A former Carter Center fellow has taken issue with it, and Alan Dershowitz called the book's title "indecent."

Out in the real world, however, the response has been overwhelmingly positive. I've signed books in five stores, with more than 1,000 buyers at each site. I've had one negative remark — that I should be tried for treason — and one caller on C-SPAN said that I was an anti-Semite. My most troubling experience has been the rejection of my offers to speak, for free, about the book on university campuses with high Jewish enrollment and to answer questions from students and professors. I have been most encouraged by prominent Jewish citizens and members of Congress who have thanked me privately for presenting the facts and some new ideas.

The book describes the abominable oppression and persecution in the occupied Palestinian territories, with a rigid system of required passes and strict segregation between Palestine's citizens and Jewish settlers in the West Bank. An enormous imprisonment wall is now under construction, snaking through what is left of Palestine to encompass more and more land for Israeli settlers. In many ways, this is more oppressive than what blacks lived under in South Africa during apartheid. I have made it clear that the motivation is not racism but the desire of a minority of Israelis to confiscate and colonize choice sites in Palestine, and then to forcefully suppress any objections from the displaced citizens. Obviously, I condemn any acts of terrorism or violence against innocent civilians, and I present information about the terrible casualties on both sides.

The ultimate purpose of my book is to present facts about the Middle East that are largely unknown in America, to precipitate discussion and to help restart peace talks (now absent for six years) that can lead to permanent peace for Israel and its neighbors. Another hope is that Jews and other Americans who share this same goal might be motivated to express their views, even publicly, and perhaps in concert. I would be glad to help with that effort.

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)

IRAQ: Compounding the Folly

Pope issues warning on limits of fighting the war on terror

Calls for Olmert to resign after nuclear gaffe

Israel, Alone The nuclear cat is out of the bag – and Olmert issues a warning…

Speaking frankly about Israel and Palestine

Israel, Alone
The nuclear cat is out of the bag – and Olmert issues a warning…