Cutting through the machinations and effects of the US empire
More colors coming out
Syringa vulgaris
Forsythia
Yes, the sky was that blue earlier today. Some of the colors were so bright on my trip to Unity that it hurt to look. Everything was crystal clear and sun drenched. But it remains quite cool, around 10°C during the day, and dropping to -4 or -5°C overnight. Fire danger remains high despite greening.
Infamous date in the annuls of Death & Destruction
Fascist bombing of Guernica happened April 26, 1937
Chernobyl, 20 years ago today
He thinks it's ``clean'' and ``safe'':PRESIDENT BUSH (2-25-2006): I proposed an Advanced Energy Initiative to take advantage of new technologies. Under this Initiative, we will change how we power our homes and offices by investing in clean coal technology, solar and wind power, and clean, safe nuclear energy. And we will change how we power our cars and trucks by investing in hybrid vehicles, pollution-free cars that run on hydrogen...
What he doesn't tell you about the hydrogen (does he know what it is?) is that it is not a primary source of energy. Where do you suppose they think the hydrogen will come from? Nukes, of course!!
Bearing Point still at work
It's been a blockbuster couple of days on Democracy Now! More on today's Daniel Ellsberg interview later...
For now, I want to point out a Democracy Now! interview important for anyone caring to understand what is really going on in Iraq. Surprise! The operation is very, very far from a ``failure'', if we consider measures of ``success'' from the point of view of Bush-connected elites.
Of course the invasion and failure of reconstruction of basic services have been a disaster for the Iraqi people. But the chokehold the American invaders have put on Iraq's economy and oil is exactly what these vultures have wanted all along. The Iraqi people have been damned by their overlord, President Bush, for the valuable commidity over which they live.
According to Antonia Juhasz, visiting scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and author of the recent book, "The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time," the radical neo-liberal economic program the Bush administration has tried to impose on Iraq threatens to leave Iraq's economy and oil reserves largely in the hands of multinational corporations.ANTONIA JUHASZ: You know, in the report that you were quoting in the beginning of the hour, which said that the reconstruction failed because of poor planning, it’s a myth that there was not a post-war planning done by the Bush administration. The reason why it failed was because the interests it was serving were U.S. multinationals, not reconstruction in Iraq.
Long-time readers of Deep Blade Journal will recognize the name BearingPoint. Extensive material on the planned neoliberal transformation of Iraq is available here, and in the Reference document I produced 2 1/2 years ago when we were setting up opposition to the U Maine ``Doing Business in Iraq" conference.
That plan was ready two months before the invasion. It was written by BearingPoint, Inc., a company based in Virginia that received a $250 million contract to rewrite the entire economy of Iraq. It drafted that new economy. That new economy was put into place systematically by L. Paul Bremer, the head of the occupation government of Iraq for 14 months, who implemented exactly one hundred orders, basically all of which are still in place today. And everyone who is watching who is familiar with the policies of the World Trade Organization, the North American Free Trade Agreement, the World Bank, the I.M.F., will understand the orders.
They implement some of the most radical corporate globalization ideas, such as free investment rules for multinational corporations. That means corporations can enter Iraq, and they essentially don't have to contribute at all to the economy of Iraq. The most harmful provision thus far has been the national treatment provision, which meant that the Iraqis could not give preference to Iraqi companies or workers in the reconstruction, and therefore, U.S. companies received preference in the reconstruction. They hired workers who weren't even from Iraq, in most cases, and utterly bungled the reconstruction.
And the most important company, in my mind, to receive blame is the Bechtel Corporation of San Francisco. They have received $2.8 billion to rebuild water, electricity and sewage systems, the most important systems in the life of an Iraqi. After the first Gulf War, the Iraqis rebuilt these systems in three months' time. It’s been three years, and, as you said, those services are still below pre-war levels.
See more recent posts here and here for more information on the plan for US multinationals to control and dominate Iraq's oil--a fight that they are pretty much winning, according to Antonia Juhasz.
Worthwhile PBS News Hour debate on ``good'' CIA leaks
I'm a bit late posting this. But check out Monday's edition of the PBS News Hour featuring a debate between Richard Kerr, who was with the CIA for 32 years and was deputy director of central intelligence under the first President Bush, and Ray McGovern who was a CIA analyst for 27 years, now a member of the group Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
Kerr take a hardline position against the now-denied presumption that fired CIA employee Mary McCarthy leaked information about CIA secret prison camps to the Washington Post. I concur with McGovern, however, that it is essential for the public to know about government activities that constitute war crimes:KERR: ... After all, CIA functions as an organization that does illegal things overseas. ...
The video for the segment is available at the News Hour site. It's very good material at a time when the Bush Administration is starting to play harder and harder ball in its game to conceal its despicable activities.
MCGOVERN: That's the reason these prisons are overseas, because there is U.S. law, 18 U.S. Code 2441, the War Crimes Act, which forbids these activities, torture, rendition, putting people, disappearing people, and so forth. And so that's why these things are created overseas.
But my point is: This is not American. This is not the country that we serve. And when we see this happening, somebody has to speak out.
President Bush: ``Human trafficking is one of the worst offenses against human dignity. Our nation is determined to fight that crime abroad and at home.’’ July 16, 2004
Chicago Tribune: ``Violations of human-trafficking laws and other abuses by contractors involving possibly thousands of foreign workers on American bases...’’ Iraq war contractors ordered to end abuses: Tribune series detailed undocumented pipeline of foreign workers into Iraq, and abuses perpetrated along the way. By Cam Simpson; Tribune Washington bureau; April 23, 2006
Now read this: ``Disgrace'' by digby.
Pukingly disgusting. The administration of President Bush is setting new 21st Century lowpoints in the vile world history of slavery, so that it can construct it's imperial edifice in SW Asia. I've written about this in one other recent post.
Yuck, ick. I want to take a shower now, and try to remove these horrors which the aloof cruelty President Bush and his minions are bringing the world.
Springing
Not sure what this is, they're in the front yard
After a little rain last weekend, the weather has dried rapidly. Some wildfires have flared up. Winds have been very strong until today. A strong, dry wind whipped up a big fire in a 170-year-old church in Palmyra, about 40 miles from here.
On Tuesday April 18, the Peace & Justice Center of Eastern Maine had an amazing, wonderful event. Tibetan Buddhist monk KHEN RINPOCHE GESHE LOBZANG TSETAN spoke in Bangor, Maine on "Finding Inner Peace in a Time of Conflict."
The podcast for the entire program along with more information is now available at http://peacecast.us.
Even those who attended in person will appreciate this podcast of the program because the cavernous echoes in the church made listening difficult. We were forced to move there after the crowd of over 120 people overwhelmed the Peace Center. For this recording Geshe Lobzang Tsetan was close-miked and the sound of his voice is especially clear in the playback, while the echoes are much muted.
Dandelions!
Sure sign of northern spring
My mom was not fond of the massive crop of dandelions we would get this time of year where I grew up in Minnesota. I'd give anything to be able to hear her (& my dad too) curse 'em.
It's funny, I rather like 'em and would never raise a spreader of poison against 'em. The greens make an excellent salad.
Mom is gone two years today.
Deep Blade Journal has the essential document concerning the history of Iraq and weaponizable bioweapons material:
United States exports of biological materials to Iraq: Compromising the credibility of international law by Geoffrey Holland (pdf format, 463kb download)
The only time Iraq ever had a real, functioning bioweapons development program was during the years (up to 1990) when it was supported by the US. Geoffrey Holland makes a convincing case that the illegality under international law of the export of weaponizable biotoxins to Iraq has never adequately been investigated. He has campaigned for several years now for a formal international process to address these charges.
Deep Blade Journal since its first year has traced this story
Secret, contemporaneous report within the Pentagon itself debunked the notion that this laughable trailer meant in the dubious remarks of President Bush on Polish television (May 29, 2003) that, ``We found the weapons of mass destruction.''
The hand-picked weapons inspector President Bush sent to Iraq in the spring of 2003, David Kay, later would say, ``This is the one that's damning.''
He was talking about phony defector Curveball's story on mobile bioweapons labs and how it was used to stir up support for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. These units supposedly were one in the same with those famously projected in the UN slide show by then Secretary of State Colin Powell on February 5, 2003. The media had cooperated with the propaganda effort by uncritically hyping the story for months during fall 2002 and winter 2003 with tales of Saddam's ``Hell on Wheels'' and ``Winnebagos of Death.''
After the president's ``mission accomplished'' events in May 2003, a widely-released story on May 7, 2003 read,The Pentagon said Wednesday it may have recovered an Iraqi mobile biological weapons lab, the first such announcement since the start of the war to disarm the government of President Saddam Hussein.
Later that month, a breathless CIA document describing the trailers using graphics similar to Powell's (still here on the internet!) purported to show the ``strongest evidence to date that Iraq was hiding a biological warfare program.''
American forces in Iraq are doing tests on a trailer that matches the description of such laboratories, given by various sources including a defector who says he helped operate one, Defense Department officials said.
"On the smoking gun, I don't know," Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone said when asked whether this was a breakthrough in the coalition search for weapons of mass destruction.
Cambone also announced that some 2,100 people will be sent to Iraq to augment the weapons hunt as well as the search for information on government leaders, terrorists, war crimes, atrocities and Iraqi prisoners of war. The effort will be headed by Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Cambone said.
He said initial tests have been done on a trailer truck taken into custody April 19 at a Kurdish checkpoint in northern Iraq. It is painted in a military color scheme, was found on a transporter normally used for tanks and — as an Iraqi defector has described Iraq's mobile labs — contains a fermenter and a system to capture exhaust gases, he said.
"While some of the equipment on the trailer could have been used for purposes other than biological weapons agent production, U.S. and U.K. technical experts have concluded that the unit does not appear to perform any function beyond what the defector said it was for, which is the production of biological agents," Cambone said...
Evidently this juiced-up story and document, totally at odds with what the Pentagon in secret was finding out about the trailers for itself, was designed to feed a remarkable post-war propaganda effort claiming WMD were found. Read the cited Deep Blade post for more detail and extensive analysis.
For those needing more proof that President Bush, Vice President Cheney, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, and other officials had a predilection for hyping false WMD stories while secret internal reports to the contrary were available, the Washington Post today revealed that,A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq -- not made public until now -- had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement.
This internal assessment confirms what has been on the record for a long time. Shortly after the Bush remarks on Polish TV, a June 15, 2003 story in The Observer reported that a British team who had examined the trailers determined
The contents of the final report, ``Final Technical Engineering Exploitation Report on Iraqi Suspected Biological Weapons-Associated Trailers,'' remain classified. But interviews reveal that the technical team was unequivocal in its conclusion that the trailers were not intended to manufacture biological weapons. Those interviewed took care not to discuss the classified portions of their work.
``There was no connection to anything biological,'' said one expert who studied the trailers. Another recalled an epithet that came to be associated with the trailers: ``the biggest sand toilets in the world.''They are not mobile germ warfare laboratories. You could not use them for making biological weapons. They do not even look like them. They are exactly what the Iraqis said they were - facilities for the production of hydrogen gas to fill balloons.
The June 2004 Deep Blade post referenced above traces many more months of promotion of the bioweapons falsehoods. The last liar standing apparently was Dick Cheney, who claimed in January 2004 that the trailers meant there was ``conclusive evidence, if you will, that he [Saddam] did, in fact, have programs for weapons of mass destruction.''
Obviously to me, all of this shows a persistent, intentional trail of falsehoods released by the Bush administration to the public -- both pre-war and post-war -- in order to maintain consent for the aggression.
Seymour Hersh pulls back the covers
Grave and gathering threat to the security of Iran
Let me be very clear that I'm as troubled as anyone about proliferation and acquisition of nuclear capability by Iran. But my God! Let's turn around the Bush Doctrine of preventive war. According to Hersh, the US already has troops preparing for war inside Iran. Good Lord! Wouldn't that give Iran an Article 51 case for self defense against American aggression? Hersh says,... the American combat troops now operating in Iran would be in position to mark the critical targets with laser beams, to insure bombing accuracy and to minimize civilian casualties. As of early winter, I was told by the government consultant with close ties to civilians in the Pentagon, the units were also working with minority groups in Iran, including the Azeris, in the north, the Baluchis, in the southeast, and the Kurds, in the northeast. The troops ``are studying the terrain, and giving away walking-around money to ethnic tribes, and recruiting scouts from local tribes and shepherds" ...
Not only that, Hersh says,the military's initial option plans, as presented to the White House by the Pentagon this winter, calls for the use of a bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon, such as the B61-11, against underground nuclear sites
Doesn't the planning revealed by Hersh show who the real advanced nuclear powers in the Middle East/Persian Gulf region are? Certainly the US. And Israel too. Should not it be reasonable to look at that situation from the Iranian point of view? Iran faces in Israel what may well be a full-blown nuclear triad, plus whatever the US has nearby, which must be substantial if these bunker buster strikes are on the option table. That's all gotta seem to Iran to be far beyond what ``deterrence'' would require.
Any tiny international move to inject some ``fairness'' into negotiations, like the ElBaradei mission to Israel in the summer of 2004, strikes a brick wall.
Every bit of pressure is allowed to be placed upon Iran, but none on Israel. In July 2004, Sharon declared that Israel's "no show, no tell" policy of nuclear ambiguity would not even be discussed.
"I don't know what he [ElBaradei] is coming to see," Mr. Sharon said. "Israel has to hold in its hand all the elements of power necessary to protect itself by itself. Our policy of ambiguity on nuclear arms has proved its worth, and it will continue."
Talk like that of a secret, ``ambiguous'' arsenal by Iran on a claim of self-protection would invite immediate preventive strikes, wouldn't it?
A sure way to achieve progress in regional nuclear disarmament--international discussion of US and Israeli arsenals--is closed. Instead, aggressive, messianic war against a major Islamic country is preferred by the White House.
Think whatever you will about hardline Iranian President Ahmadinejad, who according to Hersh, ``may have been involved in terrorist activities in the late eighties." But a nuclear attack on Iran over its research facilities--facilities that have not been proven illegal under international law--surely would be one of the most aggressive attacks in world history and would mark the bitter end of the American-inspired post-WWII international system
Gray day
Veazie volunteer firefighters ``training''
Spring brushpile
Last Sunday, part of a train carrying product from the now-closed paper mill in Old Town went into the Penobscot after derailing at a curve in Bangor, just a couple of miles from here. It was pretty spectacular, with a fire starting in some of the cars carrying the paper.
Meanwhile, we're piling up another sort of jetsam from the yard at the side of the road. The town does a spring brush pickup, but it's hard to predict when they'll actually get over here. It could be the next week, or it could be a month from now before they haul this away.
Note that some rain, even some snow, this week has alleviated the fire danger.
Open letter to Maine PBS MaineWatch program
Dear Ms. Albright,
This message concerns the recent re-broadcast of the 2004 interview with the late Caspar Weinberger. You may recall our earlier correspondence on this matter. Even though the former defense secretary unfortunately has died, I would like now to renew many of my previous comments. Obviously Mr. Weinberger is no longer available to respond to criticism and some may view an examination of the truth in history to be tantamount to trampling on a grave.
But don't you think that many of the assertions now standing as the MaineWatch view of Iraq and the Reagan legacy justifiably ought to be reviewed? This state is full of people who are working on these issues from a peace perspective, day-in and day-out.
For example, why don't you send some MaineWatch cameras over to the Hope Festival at the University of Maine on April 22? You'll find thousands of public broadcasting supporters there--ready, willing, and able to give you a ton of the sort of "balance" I suggest below.
So, as a very creative producer, I would ask you to please figure out a way to address the following concerns about the Weinberger interview in the sensitive manner in which I know you are capable:
Lack of Balance In the Weinberger interview, highly controversial, unabashed pro-war views about the invasion and occupation of Iraq were presented. Please, Ms. Albright, consider producing for MaineWatch a similar 20-minute segment featuring local peace activists. For the most part, MaineWatch programs over the last three years have completely ignored the vigorous peace movement that is ongoing here in Maine. Way back, during the run-up to the Iraq war, the one MaineWatch segment that covered Maine people who rode busses to the large Washington DC peace demonstration in January 2003 was carefully balanced by an interview with a retired military man. Should not this episode be afforded some kind of parallel treatment, especially considering that almost everything the peace movement was saying then has turned out to be true three years later?
Unchallenged assertions Mr. Weinberger's made questionable and entirely unchallenged assertions about Iraq and other matters. Many of these statements are factually unsupportable. For example, Mr. Weinberger said that the people who bombed the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were "still getting paid by Saddam Hussein’s government." This goes much farther than even the case that dubiously had been made by the Bush administration on evidence from discredited intelligence sources--that "Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda" (President Bush, Jan. 28, 2003 and at other times).
Iran-Contra indictment While the program did include a question to Mr. Weinberger about being indicted (then pardoned by President George H. W. Bush) in the Iran-Contra investigation, he just brushed off his indictment as the politically motivated action of an out-of-control special prosecutor. In reality, substantial evidence indicated Mr. Weinberger told lies about his diaries on the Iran-Contra affair. That is what led to the indictment. Should we believe now that truth was told in this interview?
Arming Iraq On justification for war on Saddam Hussein, Mr. Weinberber stated that "you can’t deal with people like that, you can’t negotiate with liars." But the obvious contradiction entirely missing from this interview and all other recent hagiography is that Weinberger did deal with Saddam at a high level and in secret. One of his major Pentagon foreign policy projects in the 1980s was the vigorous armament of Saddam Hussein. The effort included removal of Iraq from the terror-sponsor list and the offerings of envoy Donald Rumsfeld during more than one friendly visit to the palaces in Baghdad. Rumsfeld lobbied Saddam in favor of an oil pipeline project desired by Weinberger's (and then-Secretary-of State George Shultz's) former employer, Bechtel Corporation. The arms program was deeply illegal and was conducted despite Iraq's use of chemical weapons. Later, this led to a less-investigated, less-reported, but even more explosive scandal called "Iraqgate." Weinberger was a figure right at the heart of Iraqgate.
Nuclear legacy Caspar Weinberger was a tireless proponent of the nuclear arms race. The nuclear arsenal he hysterically promoted while alive will haunt the world for decades to come.
Back in June 2004, you offered an interview with former Senator George Mitchell as a "useful balance." This is fine, but is inadequate in addressing the concerns I have here. Senator Mitchell had cautioned against a long occupation of Iraq and was concerned about effects on foreign relations, but as far as I can tell from looking up his pre-war statements, he never was really opposed to the war, as long as it was swift.
It is unfortunate that MPBN's MaineWatch has failed to cover in any substantial way one of the many visible and vigorous peace movement activities that surrounded the 3rd anniversary of the war, while giving substantial time for the one-sided, pro-war views of the late Caspar Weinberger.
Eric
``Démarche''
What? Sovereign?
Times:BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 3 — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Jack Straw, the British foreign minister, forcefully demanded today that the Iraqi leadership form a unified government as quickly as possible to end a power vacuum in which sectarian bloodletting has been rampant.
There is a sense that all of this is getting out of control. It became no secret last week that President Bush wants Iraqi interim Prime Minister Ibrahim al Jaafari out. According to a source cited by Juan Cole, the maneuvers associated with the surprise visit to Baghdad may just represent a ``successful'' effort to ``break up the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance bloc in parliament and to sideline Ibrahim Jaafari.''
So much for Iraqi sovereignty. As Iraqis exert independence from its American occupiers, the American fist pounds back. The true level of violence the US actually promotes is not much discussed, but evidence is that Americans are actually the source of quite a bit of it. It's a dangerous game. I have my doubts that squelching of the violence is high on the list of Rice's priorities.
