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December 17, 2004
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Cuba retaliated for the U.S. diplomatic mission’s Christmas display supporting Cuban dissidents by putting up a billboard Friday emblazoned with photographs of American soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners and a huge swastika overlaid with a “Made in the U.S.A” stamp.
The billboard, erected overnight facing the U.S. Interest Section’s offices, stands on the Malecon, Havana’s famed coastal highway.
Posted by: b | Dec 17 2004 23:18 utc | 1
Published on Friday, December 17, 2004 by TomDispatch.com
America’s Sinister Plan for Falluja
by Michael Schwartz
The chilling reality of what Falluja has become is only now seeping out, as the American military continues to block almost all access to the city, whether to reporters, its former residents, or aid groups like the Red Crescent Society. The date of access keeps being postponed, partly because of ongoing fighting — only this week more air strikes were called in and fighting “in pockets” remains fierce (despite American pronouncements of success weeks ago) — and partly because of the difficulties military commanders have faced in attempting to prettify their ugly handiwork. Residents will now officially be denied entry until at least December 24; and even then, only the heads of households will be allowed in, a few at a time, to assess damage to their residences in the largely destroyed city.
With a few notable exceptions the media has accepted the recent virtual news blackout in Falluja. The ongoing fighting in the city, especially in “cleared” neighborhoods, is proving an embarrassment and so, while military spokesmen continue to announce American casualties, they now come not from the city itself but, far more vaguely, from “al Anbar province” of which the city is a part. Fifty American soldiers died in the taking of the city; 20 more died in the following weeks — before the reports stopped. Iraqi civilian casualties remain unknown and accounts of what’s happened in the city, except from the point of view of embedded reporters (and so of American troops) remain scarce indeed. With only a few exceptions (notably Anthony Shadid of the Washington Post), American reporters have neglected to cull news from refugee camps or Baghdad hospitals, where survivors of the siege are now congregating.
Intrepid independent and foreign reporters are doing a better job (most notably Dahr Jamail, whose dispatches are indispensable), but even they have been handicapped by lack of access to the city itself. At least Jamail did the next best thing, interviewing a Red Crescent worker who was among the handful of NGO personnel allowed briefly into the wreckage that was Falluja.
A report by Katarina Kratovac of the Associated Press (picked by the Washington Post) about military plans for managing Falluja once it is pacified (if it ever is) proved a notable exception to the arid coverage in the major media. Kratovac based her piece on briefings by the military leadership, notably Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler, commander of the Marines in Iraq. By combining her evidence with some resourceful reporting by Dahr Jamail (and bits and pieces of information from reports printed up elsewhere), a reasonably sharp vision of the conditions the U.S. is planning for Falluja’s “liberated” residents comes into focus. When they are finally allowed to return, if all goes as the Americans imagine, here’s what the city’s residents may face:
* Entry and exit from the city will be restricted. According to General Sattler, only five roads into the city will remain open. The rest will be blocked by “sand berms” — read, mountains of earth that will make them impassible. Checkpoints will be established at each of the five entry points, manned by U.S. troops, and everyone entering will be “photographed, fingerprinted and have iris scans taken before being issued ID cards.” Though Sattler reassured American reporters that the process would only take 10 minutes, the implication is that entry and exit from the city will depend solely on valid ID cards properly proffered, a system akin to the pass-card system used during the apartheid era in South Africa.
* Fallujans are to wear their universal identity cards in plain sight at all times. The ID cards will, according to Dahr Jamail’s information, be made into badges that contain the individual’s home address. This sort of system has no purpose except to allow for the monitoring of everyone in the city, so that ongoing American patrols can quickly determine if someone is not a registered citizen or is suspiciously far from their home neighborhood.
* No private automobiles will be allowed inside the city. This is a “precaution against car bombs,” which Sattler called “the deadliest weapons in the insurgent arsenal.” As a district is opened to repopulation, the returning residents will be forced to park their cars outside the city and will be bused to their homes. How they will get around afterwards has not been announced. How they will transport reconstruction materials to rebuild their devastated property is also a mystery.
* Only those Fallujans cleared through American intelligence vettings will be allowed to work on the reconstruction of the city. Since Falluja is currently devastated and almost all employment will, at least temporarily, derive from whatever reconstruction aid the U.S. provides, this means that the Americans plan to retain a life-and-death grip on the city. Only those deemed by them to be non-insurgents (based on notoriously faulty American intelligence) will be able to support themselves or their families.
* Those engaged in reconstruction work — that is, work — in the city may be organized into “work brigades.” The best information indicates that these will be military-style battalions commanded by the American or Iraqi armed forces. Here, as in other parts of the plan, the motive is clearly to maintain strict surveillance over males of military age, all of whom will be considered potential insurgents.
In case the overarching meaning of all this has eluded you, Major Francis Piccoli, a spokesman for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, which is leading the occupation of Falluja, spelled it out for the AP’s Kratovac: “Some may see this as a ‘Big Brother is watching over you’ experiment, but in reality it’s a simple security measure to keep the insurgents from coming back.” Actually, it is undoubtedly meant to be both; and since, in the end, it is likely to fail (at least, if the “success” of other American plans in Iraq is taken as precedent), it may prove less revealing of Falluja’s actual future than of the failure of the American counterinsurgency effort in Iraq and of the desperation of American strategists. In this context, the most revealing element of the plan may be the banning of all cars, the enforcement of which, all by itself, would make the city unlivable; and which therefore demonstrates both the impracticality of the U.S. vision and a callous disregard for the needs and rights of the Fallujans.
These dystopian plans are a direct consequence of the fact that the conquest of Falluja, despite the destruction of the city, visibly did not accomplish its primary goal: “[To] wipe out militants and insurgents and break the back of guerrillas in Falluja.” Even taking American kill figures at face value, the battle for the city was hardly a full-scale success. Before the assault on the city began, American intelligence estimated that there were 5,000 insurgents inside. General Sattler himself conceded that the final official count was 1,200 fighters killed and no more than 2,000 suspected guerrillas captured. (This assumes, of course, that it was possible in the heat of the battle and its grim aftermath to tell whether any dead man of fighting age was an “insurgent,” a “suspected insurgent,” or just a dead civilian.) At least a couple of thousand resistance fighters previously residing in Falluja are, then, still “at large” — not counting the undoubtedly sizeable number of displaced residents now angry enough to take up arms. As a consequence, were the U.S. to allow the outraged residents of Falluja to return unmolested, they would simply face a new struggle in the ruins of the city (as, in fact, continues to be the case anyway). This would leave the extensive devastation of whole neighborhoods as the sole legacy of the invasion.
American desperation is expressed in a willingness to treat all Fallujans as part of the insurgency — the inevitable fate of an occupying army that tries to “root out” a popular resistance. As General Sattler explains, speaking of the plan for the “repopulation” of the city, “Once we’ve cleared each and every house in a sector, then the Iraqi government will make the notification of residents of that particular sector that they are encouraged to return.” In other words, each section of the city must be entirely emptied of life, so that the military can be sure not even one suspect insurgent has infiltrated the new order. (As is evident, this is but another American occupation fantasy, since the insurgents still hiding in the city have evidently proven all too adept at “repopulating” emptied neighborhoods themselves.)
The ongoing policy of house-to-house inspections, combined with ultra-tight security regulations aimed at not allowing suspected guerrillas to reenter the city, is supposed to insure that everyone inside the Fallujan perimeter will not only be disarmed but obedient to occupation demands and desires. The name tags and the high-tech identity cards are meant to guard against both forgeries and unlawful movement within the city. The military-style work gangs are to insure that everyone is under close supervision at all times. The restricted entry points are clearly meant to keep all weapons out. Assumedly kept out as well will be most or all reporters (they tend to inflame public opinion), most medical personnel (they tend to “exaggerate” civilian casualties), and most Sunni clerics (they oppose the occupation and support the insurgency).. We can also expect close scrutiny of computers (which can be used for nefarious communications), ambulances (which have been used to smuggle weapons and guerrillas), medicines (which can be used to patch up wounded fighters who might still be hiding somewhere), and so on.
It is not much of a reach to see that, at least in their fantasies, U.S. planners would like to set up what sociologists call a “total institution.” Like a mental hospital or a prison, Falluja, at least as reimagined by the Americans, will be a place where constant surveillance equals daily life and the capacity to interdict “suspicious” behavior (however defined) is the norm. But “total institution” might be too sanitized a term to describe activities which so clearly violate international law as well as fundamental morality. Those looking for a descriptor with more emotional bite might consider one of those used by correspondent Pepe Escobar of the Asia Times: either “American gulag” for those who enjoy Stalinist imagery or “concentration camp” for those who prefer the Nazi version of the same. But maybe we should just call it a plain old police (city-)state.
Where will such plans lead? Well, for one thing, we can confidently predict that nothing we might recognize as an election will take place in Falluja at the end of January. (Remember, it was to liberate Fallujans from the grip of “terrorists” and to pave the way for electoral free choice that the Bush administration claimed it was taking the city in the first place.) With the current date for allowing the first residents to return set for December 24 — heads of household only to assess property damage — and the process of repopulation supposedly moving step-by-step, from north to south, across neighborhoods and over time, it’s almost inconceivable that a majority of Fallujans will have returned by late January (if they are even willing to return under the conditions set by the Americans). Latest reports are that it will take six months to a year simply to restore electricity to the city. So organizing elections seems unlikely indeed.
The magnitude of the devastation and the brutality of the American plan are what’s likely to occupy the full attention of Fallujans for the foreseeable future — and their reactions to these dual disasters represent the biggest question mark of the moment. However, the history of the Iraq war thus far, and the history of guerrilla wars in general, suggest that there will simply be a new round of struggle, and that carefully laid military plans will begin to disintegrate with the very first arrivals. There is no predicting what form the new struggle will take, but the U.S. military is going to have a great deal of difficulty controlling a large number of rebellious, angry people inside the gates of America’s new mini-police state. This is why the military command has kept almost all of the original attack force in the city, in anticipation of the need for tight patrols by a multitude of American troops. (And it also explains why so many other locations around the country have suddenly found themselves without an American troop presence.)
The Falluja police-state strategy represents a sign of weakness, not strength. The new Falluja imagined by American planners is a desperate, ad hoc response to the failure of the battle to “break the back of the guerrillas.” Like the initial attack on the city, it too is doomed to failure, though it has the perverse “promise” of deepening the suffering of the Iraqis.
Michael Schwartz, Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, has written extensively on popular protest and insurgency, and on American business and government dynamics. His work on Iraq has appeared at TomDispatch, Asia Times, and ZNet and in Contexts and Z Magazine. His books include Radical Politics and Social Structure, The Power Structure of American Business (with Beth Mintz), and Social Policy and the Conservative Agenda (edited, with Clarence Lo) His email address is Ms42@optonline.net.
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 18 2004 0:05 utc | 2
Posted by: Anonymous | Dec 18 2004 3:42 utc | 4
From link just above Stoy’scomment comes this quote:
“Researchers also found that respondents who paid more attention to television news were more likely to fear terrorist attacks and support limiting the rights of Muslim Americans.”
So, let’s keep up the links here to educate each other!
Posted by: jj | Dec 18 2004 3:58 utc | 6
Posted by: Anonymous | Dec 18 2004 5:06 utc | 7
Fallujah, the movie.
Bruckheimer should just do The Fall of Tehran now.
Posted by: slothrop | Dec 18 2004 6:10 utc | 8
slothrop
I have the title
“Escape to Victory”
My name is Michael Caine, not a lot of people know that.
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Dec 18 2004 8:35 utc | 9
How Iran will fight back
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
Excerpt:
A week-long combined air and ground maneuver has just concluded in five of the southern and western provinces of Iran, mesmerizing foreign observers, who have described as “spectacular” the massive display of high-tech, mobile operations, including rapid-deployment forces relying on squadrons of helicopters, air lifts, missiles, as well as hundreds of tanks and tens of thousands of well-coordinated personnel using live munition. Simultaneously, some 25,000 volunteers have so far signed up at newly established draft centers for “suicide attacks” against any potential intruders in what is commonly termed “asymmetrical warfare”.
— Kaveh L Afrasiabi , PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran’s Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and “Iran’s Foreign Policy Since 9/11”, Brown’s Journal of World Affairs, co-authored with former deputy foreign minister Abbas Maleki, No 2, 2003. He teaches political science at Tehran University.
Asia Times 16.12.04
Posted by: Blackie | Dec 18 2004 16:07 utc | 11
Just for your amusement
“You’ll Know We’re
Red State Christians
By Our Hate”
(Based upon the “outdated” hippy hymn.
“They’ll know we are Christians by our Love”)
Composed from posts from Republicans and
Neo-clowns that speak (to the shame of real Christians)
for the religious right
on AOL Message Boards
We have won the election
Now you all must conform
We have won the election
Now you all must comform
Drop your outdated love talk
And submit to the norm
And they’ll know we are Christians
Of the Right, Of the Right
If you’re gay or Pagan
We’ll put out your lights
We would burn all the witches
We would burn all the gays
We would take all the ni-g-rs
And put them in their place
We’d deport all the Muslims
If they spit on our grace
And they’ll know we are Christians
Of the Right, of the Right
We can’t wait to burn
Another cross
At night
The old faith is stupid
It only made us weak
F-ck the Gentle Shepherd
That put the church to sleep
We have real power now
Tremble when we speak!
And you’ll know we are Christians
of the Right of the Right
They’ll find out that
Only might make right
All hail to Dick Cheney
All hail to low priced oil
And all hail to the dollar
For which we all toil
And All Hail to Big Buisness
With whom we divide the Spoils
And they’ll know we are Christians
Of the Right, of the Right,
You are welcome friend
If you’re straight, male, and white.
Posted by: Diogenes | Dec 18 2004 18:47 utc | 12
“Already at the Conference on Nuclear Arms in Hamburg, Oct. 2003, Dr. Katsuma Yagasaki, Prof. of Science at the University of Ryukyus, Okinawa, reported the US had dropped the equivalent of 250,000 times the radioactive nuclear waste dropped on Nagasaki in Iraq. Different from Nagasaki, however, the contamination in Iraq is widespread, dispersed over entire regions of the country, bullets, strewn casings, armor, fragments, shrapnel… all containing radioactive waste”
stephen smith – common dreams
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 18 2004 20:21 utc | 13
Contractor Argues U.S. Fraud Law Does Not Cover Iraqi Funds
Attorneys for a U.S.-based security company accused of setting up sham companies in a multimillion-dollar fraud scheme in Iraq are contending in court that the firm cannot be sued under a key federal anti-corruption law because the allegedly stolen money belonged to Iraqis, not Americans.
The potentially precedent-setting case could undercut fraud claims involving billions of dollars in reconstruction contracts that were issued by the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority and paid for with money belonging to the Iraqi people.
Arguments broke out in federal court Friday over two fundamental questions: whether the CPA, which had ruled occupied Iraq, can be considered a U.S. agency, and whether fraud involving Iraqi money can be subject to suits under the False Claims Act, considered one of the federal government’s most important tools against fraud.
I guess they will win this one. The CPA was not a US government entity and the money was Iraqi money. Why should anyone care about fraud?
Posted by: b | Dec 19 2004 12:06 utc | 14
New SAT Questions Replace Evolution with Creation
“Students attending school in districts that have phased out the teaching of evolution will no longer be forced to answer SAT questions about the controversial theory. Instead, they’ll answer questions about the six days in which God created the earth and the great flood that took place 4,300 years ago.”
New version of test to be administered in ‘red’ states of Georgia, Kansas
By Cole Walters
Swift Report, 16.12.04
Posted by: Blackie | Dec 19 2004 12:35 utc | 15
blackie, i assumed it was a joke. but a scary joke.
Posted by: semper fubar | Dec 19 2004 14:27 utc | 16
A historical reminder by Eric Margolis.
West has bloodied hands
Who was the first high government official to authorize use of mustard gas against rebellious Kurdish tribesmen in Iraq?
If your answer was Saddam Hussein’s cousin, the notorious “Chemical Ali” — aka Ali Hassan al-Majid — you’re wrong.
The correct answer: Sainted Winston Churchill. As colonial secretary and secretary for war and air, he authorized the RAF in the 1920s to routinely use mustard gas against rebellious Kurdish tribesmen in Iraq and against Pashtun tribes on British India’s northwest frontier.
…
What’s the difference between the U.S. destroying the rebellious Iraqi city of Fallujah and Saddam destroying rebellious Halabja? What difference does it make if you’re killed by poison gas, artillery or 2,000-pound bombs?
“Chemical Ali” was a brute of the worst kind in a regime filled with sadists. I personally experienced the terror of Saddam’s sinister regime over 25 years, culminating in threats to hang me as a spy.
…
The Reagan administration and Thatcher government were up to their ears in backing Iraq’s aggression, apparently with the intention to overthrow Iran’s Islamic government and seize its oil. Italy, Germany, France, South Africa, Belgium, Yugoslavia, Brazil, Chile and the USSR all aided Saddam’s war effort against Iran, which was even more a victim of naked aggression than was Kuwait in 1991.
I’d argue senior officials of those nations that abetted Saddam’s aggression against Iran and supplied him with chemicals and gas should also stand trial with Ali and Saddam.
What an irony it is to see U.S. forces in Iraq now behaving with much the same punitive ferocity as Saddam’s army and police — bombing rebellious cities, arresting thousands, terrorizing innocent civilians, torturing captives and sending in tanks to crush resistance.
In other words, Saddamism without Saddam. A decade ago, this column predicted that when the U.S. finally overthrew Saddam, it would need to find a new Saddam.
Finally, let’s not forget that when Saddam’s regime committed many of its worst atrocities against rebellious Kurds and Shiites, it was still a close ally of Washington and London. The West paid for and supplied Saddam’s bullets, tanks, gas and germs. He was our regional SOB.
Posted by: Fran | Dec 19 2004 16:48 utc | 17
Makes you feel like puking.
Time names President Bush Person of the Year
NEW YORK (Reuters) — U.S. President George W. Bush’s bold, uncompromising leadership and his clear-cut election victory made him Time magazine’s Person of the Year for 2004, its managing editor said Sunday.
Time chose Bush “for sticking to his guns (literally and figuratively), for reshaping the rules of politics to fit his 10-gallon-hat leadership style and for persuading a majority of voters this time around that he deserved to be in the White House for another four years,” Jim Kelly wrote in the magazine.
Posted by: Fran | Dec 19 2004 16:57 utc | 18
fran
i’m already at the toilet sending last weeks lettuce to my Maker
& to not waste time – i am also vomiting everything to with the so called show trials that will take place in iraq – fucking justice – perhaps bernhard will remind us of that justice – of roland freiser – the mad nazi judge – who made justice something of a dadaist notion – the sad & eveil freiser – his heritage is & will be played out as american justice
i’ll stay by the bowl in case i think of anything else
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 19 2004 17:02 utc | 19
from the above link:
It has to be reproduced here:
By Bertolt Brecht; From A German War Primer
WHEN THE LEADERS SPEAK OF PEACE
The common folk know
That war is coming.
When the leaders curse war
The mobilization order is already written out.
THE WAR WHICH IS COMING
Is not the first one. There were
Other wars before it.
When the last one came to an end
There were conquerors and conquered.
Among the conquered the common people
Starved. Among the conquerors
The common people starved too.
THOSE AT THE TOP SAY COMRADESHIP
Reigns in the army.
The truth of this is seen
In the cookhouse.
In their hearts should be
The selfsame courage. But
On their plates
Are two kinds of rations.
THOSE AT THE TOP SAY:
This way to glory.
Those down below say:
This way to the grave.
THOSE WHO TAKE THE MEAT FROM THE TABLE
Teach contentment.
Those for whom the contribution is destined
Demand sacrifice.
Those who eat their fill speak to the hungry
Of wonderful times to come.
Those who lead the country into the abyss
Call ruling too difficult
For ordinary men.
GENERAL, YOUR TANK IS A POWERFUL VEHICLE
It smashes down forests and crushes a hundred men.
But it has one defect:
It needs a driver.
General, your bomber is powerful.
It flies faster than a storm and carries more than an elephant.
But it has one defect:
It needs a mechanic.
General, man is very useful.
He can fly and he can kill.
But he has one defect:
He can think.
WHEN IT COMES TO MARCHING MANY DO NOT KNOW
That their enemy is marching at their head.
The voice which gives them their orders
Is their enemy’s voice and
The man who speaks of the enemy
Is the enemy himself.
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Dec 19 2004 18:11 utc | 21
reading that issue of gi special on the heels of stan goff’s rousing speech pointed out in the i am not a … thread yesterday. this is the type of information that needs to be widely broadcast so that all those somnambulist ribbon-touting “patriots” might also awaken. not that i am taking to task anyone who mouths the (for me) empty sloganeering of ‘support our troops’, and not that i believe it is even likely that all it takes is for others to wake up and we will magically set about to resolve these dire problems that require our attention, but that the cogs in the machine can and are monkeywrenching the system, that the arms and legs might deny the body whole of its souless & destructive employment, is a sign of hope. the more feet that can get in this doorway and keep the jamb open, the better off the world will be.
as for time’s poty award, history repeats itself, in a very incestous loop at that
Posted by: b real | Dec 19 2004 19:02 utc | 22
rgiap
not orthodoxy, just some clarity. I realize now that my comment was querulous. But, in these parlous times, when the so-called “liberals” are no more than vegan fascists, what is needed is some common understanding about the diagnosis of social pathologies. This agreement, this basis for leftist critique, is lacking everywhere.
Posted by: slothrop | Dec 19 2004 19:28 utc | 23
semper fubar, Yes, it becomes difficult to tell spoofs from truths in an unreal world. Satire mocks echoes and now pre-figures – when I first saw it I thought Oh No!
Posted by: Blackie | Dec 19 2004 21:03 utc | 24
I’m new at this, but I’ve been reading your commentaries on various subjects ever since Billmon bailed. Thank you for their insight.
Re rgiap’s excerpt from Stephan Smith’s (aka Stephan Said) article on Common Dreams, I urge you to read the entire lengthy thing at http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1217-28.htm.
Posted by: hobbitess | Dec 20 2004 0:43 utc | 25
To A Swedish Kind of Death (if you’re out there): Snooooooooooow. Even in my crummy red state.
Posted by: beq | Dec 20 2004 0:51 utc | 26
@ Beq:
congratulations. Our snow melted away a week ago (darn those greenhouse gases) but they say we will new fresh snow wednesday and thursday. Just in time for chrismas.
Posted by: A swedish kind of death | Dec 20 2004 2:30 utc | 27
Thanks Muchly for the link to Time Man of War, I mean Man of the Year, from another time.
Why don’t we consider who we would choose for POTY?
I nominate Bev Harris for telling us the shape of things to come.
Posted by: jj | Dec 20 2004 3:31 utc | 28
Antiwar.com has a
link to Whitewash as Public Service,
Benjamin DeMott’s trenchant review of the 9/11
commission’s report. The nub of this devastating
critique:
At the core of all these failures lies a deep wariness of earnest, well-informed public debate. And the wariness is rooted, clearly, in a conception of the nature of citizen virtue that (1) strips the critical instinct of its standing as essential equipment for the competent democratic mind, and (2) finds merit in the consumer credulity that relishes pop culture and shrugs off buyer-beware warnings. The ideal readers of The 9/11 Commission Report are those who resemble the Commission itself in believing that a strong inclination to trust the word of highly placed others is evidence of personal moral distinction. As the Report’s project becomes ever more visibly that of sanctifying equivocation and deference, the Commissioners retreat ever further from evaluating the behavior of which their interviews and research nonetheless allow brief glimpses—behavior on which fair judgments of character and intelligence could and should have been based. Issues of commitment and responsibility are time and again reconfigured as matters of opinion, or as puzzles of memory, or as pointlessly distracting “partisan” squabbles…
Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Dec 20 2004 7:06 utc | 30
Hannah K. O’Luthon, DeMott underplays the considerable fact that the 9/11 report gathers a lot of damning material between its covers, hardly a minor achievement given the resistance of the authorities to the entire project. As a literary critic, DeMott might have acknowledged the rhetorical gap between this presentation of damning evidence (which speaks for itself), and the manner of its presentation (which speaks for the Commission’s timidity or prudence). In point of fact, the rhetoric of the 9/11 Report is somewhat closer to the rhetoric of the Pentagon Papers than to that of the Warren Commission Report, but unlike the Pentagon Papers, the 9/11 Report was produced (like the Warren Commission Report) by a commission of aspiring statesmen (as DeMott himself puts it). Taking this context into account, the 9/11 Report can be read a sign of modest progress, at least where the work of such commissions is concerned.
Posted by: alabama | Dec 20 2004 7:57 utc | 31
Just for fun: Democracy in action in the EU!
“It isn’t fair to let people vote if they want Turkey in or not let’s just pretend people don’t matter and since their decisions would be opposed to mine, let’s just have a select committee to decide on everything.”
And if you think only US pols were great at Orwellian speak, there’s this fine gem: Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul reiterated on Sunday that the formula does not constitute recognition. “We signed nothing that implies direct or indirect recognition of the Greek-Cypriot party,” he said.
However, on Sunday, Dutch Foreign Minister Ben Bot, whose country holds the European Union presidency, said the agreement had amounted to an “informal recognition of Cyprus”.
Me thinks minister Bot has fallen victim to one of Holland’s legalised product.
The “we agree to join you, but of course we don’t recognise one of the members and will do as if it doesn’t exist” line is quite funny. I think France and Germany should try it with UK, as long as Bliar is PM there.
Posted by: CluelessJoe | Dec 20 2004 8:10 utc | 32
@ alabama
I confess to having read only the executive summary of the report, which, however, I found
to be substantially as characterized by DeMott.
I will take up the dreary task of looking at it more closely during the Xmas vacation, but I freely admit to seeing it more as a whitewash than an exposé.
I’m reminded of Sam Ervin’s classic remark about the two ways of depicting an equine: you can either draw a detailed and accurate picture of a horse, or you
dan draw such a picture and add the title “This is a horse”. I hope you’ll forgive a bit of elitism
if I say that I think that the U.S. electorate needs the second type of illustration.
Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Dec 20 2004 8:31 utc | 33
DeA- Great, but short of a world leader I thght. they chose Americans. It’s a bitch trying to come up w/an American who has done something valuable. Bev rendered the most valuable service to trying to open the eyes of the Republic of anyoe I could think of. But I admit, it was not meant to be the final word.
DeA- I hope for enjoyment you’re following the voyage of the Magic Munchkin from Britain, Ellen MacArthur (teamellen.com) on her solo circumnavigation in her trimaran. Satellite is sending back fun pictures. She’s 5’2″ – what maybe 100lbs, all alone in the Southern Ocean w/seas like mountains (up to 40′ the other night) & icebergs not too many days ahead. Happily, she hasn’t written about having to climb her 90′ mast yet!! BBC has 2 excellent articles. She can climb it in 5 mins.-presumably in flat seas- and return in 2mins!! Seems more courageous to me than soldiers in Iraq who are merely following orders for fear of the consequences, doing they know not what.
Meanwhile, back on terra firma, Robt. Reich has finally named the rhinoceros in the main hall. The talk is Social Security, but the topic should be China.
To relate that to our discussion of Iraq, I’m beginning to think we underestimated the importance of China in Iraq invasion. The power of China is really increasing exponentially now and I am more and more convinced that Am. elites invaded in desperate effort to get choke hold on Chinese oil supplies in last ditch effort to balance out the fact that they have spent the last decade plus handing China all our factories – often literally packing them up in toto & moving them over. And if that wasn’t destructive enough, they blew out the budget so that China would have chokehold on the Treasury, as it were. And then we listen to USgov blathering about National Security……Little Late, to be worrying about that, guys.
So, anybody have any thoughts on l’affaire d’Iraq as attempted Leverage over China??
Posted by: jj | Dec 20 2004 9:38 utc | 34
REVISITING THE OSIRAQ ATTACK
The 1981 attack by Israel on Iraq’s Osiraq nuclear reactor complex has
become an archetype of “counterproliferation,” the use of force to
prevent or reverse the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction.
The Osiraq attack is reviewed in a recent Masters thesis based on
interviews with Israeli officials and a study of some more or less
unfamiliar source documents.
The author concludes generally that the attack did indeed slow down the
Iraqi WMD program, but that it had other less favorable unintended
consequences, had no deterrent effect, and is unlikely to serve as a
useful model for similar actions in the future.
See “Israel’s Attack on Osiraq: A Model for Future Preventive Strikes?”
by Peter Scott Ford, Naval Postgraduate School Masters Thesis,
September 2004:
http://www.fas.org/man/eprint/ford.pdf
Exerpt:
Israel’s attack on Osiraq was a bold preventive strike. It reinforced Israel’s
doctrine regarding nuclear weapons. According to Menachem Begin, “Israel would not
tolerate any nuclear weapons in the region.”2 Israel still enforces this Begin Doctrine
today. The thesis determines lasting lessons from the first attack. These lessons are
important as the world anticipates an Iranian nuclear weapon in several years.3
The purpose of the thesis is to determine the strategic implications of the 1981
Israeli attack on Iraq’s Osiraq nuclear reactor complex. What are the lasting effects of
using non-conventional weapons as a means of counterproliferation against a nuclear
threat? The strike “killed” the Iraqi nuclear capability in the short term, but did this
action diminish the long-term nuclear threat to Israel? This watershed event in the
Middle East created new regional military and political realities,4 forcing nuclear
proliferators to harden nuclear facilities that increased the cost to any regional country of
going nuclear. However, the long-term consequences of the attack are global. A
preventive strike would no longer be so easy to get away with, nor would the required
intelligence assessments about nuclear proliferators be as easy, due to a near universal
emphasis on denial and deception following the Osiraq raid. This paper identifies several
lasting ramifications United States policymakers contend with resulting from this strike.
The overarching question of this thesis is whether the Israeli Strike on Osiraq was
an effective counter to Iraq’s nuclear weapons program. Evaluating the strategic factors
that drove Israel to attack Osiraq frames the problem. How and when Israeli
policymakers carried out the strike reveals the empirical results. Finally, the short and
long-term military, political, and diplomatic results paint a more complete picture of the
strategic implications of this strike.
The thesis argues that the Osiraq strike had two major purposes. First, it slowed
down the Iraqi nuclear weapons program. Second, it achieved domestic political benefits
at a critical juncture. The strike had several unintended consequences, however. Other
nuclear proliferators hardened their nuclear facilities or sought redundant facilities.
These efforts reduced the time succeeding preventive strikes would buy. Furthermore,
Saddam Hussein did not sacrifice his goal of developing nuclear weapons, but he did
significantly change tactics to achieve this goal. Although the preventive strike has
several short-term benefits, this action demonstrated that deterrence is not a long-term
effect of such strikes. In fact, it is more likely that a country will restart a nuclear
weapons program as soon as it clears the rubble.
C. KEY FINDINGS
This thesis confirms the short-term benefits of a successful preventive strike. It
also illustrates the long-term drawbacks a nation must be ready for prior to ordering a
preventive strike. A successful preventive strike, especially a conventional weapons
strike on a non-conventional sight like Osiraq, serves to buy time for the striker. In the
case of Osiraq, the first modern conventional strike on a nuclear reactor, the strike bought
Israel at least five to ten years of reprieve from an Iraqi nuclear threat. Another side
effect of a preventive strike is the concomitant international media blitz the strike draws.
The media results are both positive and negative. In the long-term however, a preventive
strike such as Osiraq may reinforce a state’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons. Such was
the case with Iraq.
The second conclusion of this thesis points to the importance of the diplomatic
process of nonproliferation. Israeli decision makers attempted to counter Iraq’s nuclear
plans diplomatically for seven years before concluding a military option was the only
appropriate solution. Israeli policymakers justified the strike based on their perception of
apparent U.S. indifference toward Iraq’s nuclear proliferation. U.S. diplomats had many
more tools at their disposal to allay Israeli fears that went unused.
The next preventive strike against a nuclear proliferator will neither be as
successful nor buy as much time as the first. Other nations seeking a nuclear option also
have learned valuable lessons from the strike on Osiraq. Second, the media backlash
after a strike will radicalize the proliferator’s stance toward accomplishing the goal of
going nuclear. Third, as the global hegemon, U.S. decision makers should balance the
4
weight of nonproliferation system management wisely against valuable alliance
considerations. Decision makers should make every attempt to work within the confines
of current global constructs for stability. If this means taking diplomatic and economic
actions against proliferators or pushing Israel to abandon the Begin doctrine, then quick
decisive action is best done through International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) or
United Nations (UN) auspices with full United States backing. Lastly, U.S. leaders must
weigh the potential misperception between slow, steady pressure to reverse proliferation,
and Israel’s view of state survival. If U.S. policymakers fail to take decisive action,
Israeli decision makers may once again take preventive military action.
Posted by: Pat | Dec 20 2004 10:14 utc | 35
I’d forgotten that wonderful quote from Sam Erwin, Hannah K. O’Luthon. As for elitist comments, here’s a pertinent slider from a sketch by Hawthorne called “Old News”: “Most people are so constituted that they can be virtuous only in a certain routine; and an irregular course of public affairs demoralizes them” (Part III, “The Old Tory”).
Posted by: alabama | Dec 20 2004 15:58 utc | 36
Killing people who attend funerals.
rgiap and others are certainly correct: the Qutb-Zawahiri islamism is hopelessly reactionary. The demonic violence against the shia will likely avert a struggle for national liberation in Iraq. And these idiots play the tool of American imperialism far better than the al Qaeda fiction ever could.
“Many Shiites are hopeful that they will produce a Shiite-dominated government that will pave the way for the end of the U.S. occupation.”
Dream on.
Posted by: slothrop | Dec 20 2004 18:19 utc | 37
The Bakhtiyaris are to be sent to Pakistan. To Australia’s shame. By Bob Ellis.
And so the story moves towards its end. The Bakhtiyari family’s phones have been confiscated and they wait in the Baxter detention centre to be taken to Pakistan. They are asking to go to Afghanistan because that is where they come from, but Amanda Vanstone won’t let them go there. Although they speak no Pakistani language and speak Farsi, the language of their home region of Uruzgan in accents appropriate to the region, they will go instead to Quetta, in Pakistan. How do we know they come from Afghanistan? Well, the Governor of Sharestan said they did in a document signed on September 7, 2002, naming all the children. Roqia Bakhtiyari’s brother, Muzar Ali, voted, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council, in the Afghan election of last October 9, a right he has as a registered (and investigated) Afghan citizen.
Justice Kenneth Hayne of Australia’s High Court, moreover, said on Monday of last week they may well be Afghans. “It is at least arguable,” he said while ruling the baby, Mazhar, though born in Adelaide, was somehow not an Australian, “that the applicant’s parents are both citizens of Afghanistan as they claim”.
They look and sound like Afghan Hazaras. The father Ali, when I showed him a cricket game on television, was mystified by it, unusual in a Pakistani, and asked me only if Ponting was an Afghan. The mother, Roqia, when asked, identified Afghan tribal recipes for bread and sour milk, and told how her village celebrated the birth of children.
But where was that village and what is its name? Ali drew a map that showed in central Uruzgan a village called Charkh next to a village called Chenar under mountains called Daikwidi. They are all there where he said they were, but an Australian reporter, Alastair McLeod, later killed, went to a place 160 kilometres north of the real one. The translator he brought with him belonged to the murderous Northern Alliance, and to him, of course, the fearful villagers in subsequent valleys professed unanimous ignorance of everything. Bakhtiyari? Never heard of him. Roqia’s brother, Muzar, dumped in Quetta so peremptorily that the immigration officers with him were arrested for lacking visas, went back to the real Charkh and got and sent proof that Ali and Roqia are who they said they are. No court has yet considered this.
Asked yesterday if she had read their file, Amanda Vanstone said she hadn’t. Asked if she had seen any evidence that they were Pakistanis, she said she hadn’t. Asked if she’d seen, or anyone had seen, their Pakistani birth certificates, she agreed there weren’t any. She said, however, that they had had a “fair go” – including, apparently, 32 months behind razor wire – and that fair go was now, sadly, fading to black. She never visited Woomera and, though a lawyer, never looked at the evidence.
That Ali is a Pakistani depends on a document that is not signed or dated and indicates one Akhbar Ali to have been born in Quetta, Pakistan. The names of his family – Mariam, Zakia, Sikander and Ghazanfar – are not those of Ali Bakhtiyari’s family. On this alone, an unsigned, undated document with the wrong names in it, he is held to be from Pakistan, none of whose languages he or his children speak.
Alamdar is in year 11 at St Ignatius’ College and doing scholastically well. Montazar, in year 10, is thought a world-class soccer player and won the school medal for his ability. The little girls Nagina, Samina and Amina have made friends at school who are now crying on talkback radio.
What has all this suffering been about? Well, for the Government to admit it was wrong and by its significant errors and cover-ups caused more suffering than Lindy Chamberlain’s family endured would raise the question of the many libels it has committed against this family. It let it be known, for instance, that Ali was an “electrical plumber” from Quetta but never gave the address of his shop. It let it be known he was a rich man with businesses in Saudi Arabia, and Alan Ramsey, the fool, printed this in his column. It let it be known, last week, that Roqia was so stressed with parenting that she would be better off in Quetta, begging with her family on the streets.
And it did not let it be known there is a tiny village called Quetta, not far from Charkh. Which may be where the confusion began.
It has got, in short, a lot of answer for, and pay damages for, perhaps, in what may turn out to be – if our democracy survives – Australia’s Dreyfus case.
It began, of course, as cover-ups usually do, with an honest mistake. Roqia couldn’t identify some Afghan currency. But it was Northern Alliance currency, then unknown in her district. When she was rejected because of this, and it found out Ali had already been accepted – correctly – as a fugitive from the Taliban, it had to prove his story also was false. And it told so many tales about him that no one remembers now any more what it is they said he did wrong.
He did nothing wrong, of course, just try to save his family from slaughter by selling up and risking all on a perilous journey to a better, kinder land.
And now the story moves towards its end.
Merry Christmas, Bakhtiyaris?
Bah, humbug.
melbourne age
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 20 2004 20:01 utc | 38
Changing the subject again.
I strongly recommend a visit to The Truth Seeker at
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=2596
The above link is to the latest in a series of posts by a German intel guy. After warning his CIA and FBI contacts of a planned (by Wolfowitz) nuclear attack on a major US city, and seeing no response, he is going public with the warning.
Also read his piece called “The Library”, and the short editorial disclaimer at the top of the index page. Apparently the site has done some digging to confirm at least part of his allegation. Still at this point this is one of those take-it-or-leave-it stories that you will believe or not depending on your own POV.
In short, the plan is to level the city of Houston on December 27, six days from now. With sufficient public awareness this plan will likely be cancelled, so it is certainly worth making a big fuss immediately, spread it far and wide. Even if you give this intelligence zero credibility it will cause you no pain to spread the word anyway.
Posted by: rapt | Dec 21 2004 15:00 utc | 39