Dubya's Capitalism

Seen on: YouTube

While advocating regulatory reform and new rules on accounting and fraud, President George W. Bush yesterday said world leaders should rely on capitalism and free markets to see them through the financial turmoil.

Selling-War to America

What do the arch hawks of the Bush administration, such as Paul Wolfowitz, have in common with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard?

Answer: they both fêted Ahmad Chalabi, the former Iraqi banker who put “regime change” in Baghdad at the top of US agenda. Chalabi attracts adoration and enmity in equal measure and has courted controversy through his life.

Chalabi comes across here as a charismatic, Machiavellian individual, fascinated with the world of intelligence from the beginning. He moved the Washington establishment towards the invasion of Iraq but appears to have paid no thought about what to do afterwards, except that he wanted a central role.

There is much detail here about how he took tens of millions of dollars, first from the CIA, with whom he fell out; then from the State department, with whom he fell out; and then from the defence department, with whom he fell out. Government auditors struggled in vain to discover how this money was spent.

Chalabi often promised more than he delivered. He was to provide troops for the Free Iraqi Forces, which the Pentagon would train to enter Iraq.

A training centre was established, where 1,100 US soldiers and trainers waited, but Chalabi sent nobody. The programme cost an estimated $200m and the number of Iraqis trained was, in the words of a general, “teeny-tiny”.

Via FT

The Most-Wanted List

On Feb. 13, Imad Mughniyeh, of Hizbollah, was assassinated in Damascus. "The world is a better place without this man in it," State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack said: "one way or the other he was brought to justice."

Joy was unconstrained in Israel too, as "one of the U.S. and Israel's most wanted men" was brought to justice, the London Financial Times reported.

Under the heading, "A militant wanted the world over," an accompanying story reported that he was "superseded on the most-wanted list by Osama bin Laden" after 9/11 and so ranked only second among "the most wanted."

The terminology is accurate enough, according to the rules of Anglo-American discourse, which defines "the world" as the political class in Washington and London (and whoever happens to agree with them on specific matters).

Following the Terror Trail
In the present case, if "the world" were extended to the world, we might find some other candidates for the honor of most hated arch-criminal.

The Financial Times reports that most of the charges against Moughniyeh are unsubstantiated, but "one of the very few times when his involvement can be ascertained with certainty [is in] the hijacking of a TWA plane in 1985."

Car Bomb
the 1985 Tunis bombing was a severe terrorist crime, or the crime for which Moughniyeh's "involvement can be ascertained with certainty". But even the Tunis bombing had competitors for the prize for worst terrorist atrocity.

One challenger was a car-bombing in Beirut right outside a mosque, timed to go off as worshippers were leaving Friday prayers. It killed 80 people and wounded 256. Most of the dead were girls and women, who had been leaving the mosque, though the ferocity of the blast "burned babies in their beds," and "blew away three children as they walked home from the mosque."

The intended target had been the Shi'ite cleric Sheikh Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, who escaped. The bombing was carried out by Reagan's CIA and his Saudi allies, with Britain's help, and was specifically authorized by CIA Director William Casey, according to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward's account in his book Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA, 1981-1987.

Killing without Intent
Another allegation is that Moughniyeh "masterminded" the bombing of Israel's embassy in Buenos Aires on March 17, 1992, killing 29 people, in response to Israel's "assassination of former Hizbollah leader Abbas Al-Mussawi in an air attack in southern Lebanon." Israel proudly took credit for it.

The world might have some interest in the rest of the story. Al-Mussawi was murdered with a U.S.-supplied helicopter, well north of Israel's illegal "security zone" in southern Lebanon. He was on his way to Sidon from the village of Jibshit, where he had spoken at the memorial for another Imam murdered by Israeli forces. The helicopter attack also killed his wife and five-year old child.

This is only a small sample of facts that the world might find of interest in connection with the alleged responsibility of Moughniyeh for the retaliatory terrorist act in Buenos Aires. The more vulgar apologists for U.S. and Israeli crimes solemnly explain that, while Arabs purposely kill people, the U.S. and Israel, being democratic societies, do not intend to do so.

"Terrorist Villagers"
A third competitor for the Mideast terrorism prize was Prime Minister Peres' "Iron Fist" operations in southern Lebanese territories then occupied by Israel. The targets were what the Israeli high command called "terrorist villagers."

Peres's crimes in this case sank to new depths of "calculated brutality and arbitrary murder" in the words of a Western diplomat familiar with the area, an assessment amply supported by direct coverage.

To repeat once again, we can distinguish three categories of crimes: murder with intent, accidental killing, and murder with foreknowledge but without specific intent. Israeli and U.S. atrocities typically fall into the third category.

Thus, when Israel destroys Gaza's power supply or sets up barriers to travel in the West Bank, it does not specifically intend to murder the particular people who will die from polluted water or in ambulances that cannot reach hospitals.

If, for a moment, we can adopt the perspective of the world, we might ask which criminals are "wanted the world over."

Adapted via Chomsky.info

Ahmadinejad Scorns US & Israel

Iranian President Mahmoud-Ahmadinejad has accused US President George Bush of "sowing the seeds of division" during his recent Middle-East visit.

"The Zionist entity is not lacking new weapons in its arsenal, but I believe it will not save it from its doomed collapse," - Ahmadinejad

Mr Ahmadinejad said Mr Bush had brought a "message of confrontation" during his tour, during which he warned Arab allies that Iran posed a threat.

Israel says Tehran could have a nuclear bomb by 2010 and has warned an Iranian nuclear weapon would threaten its existence.

White-House Overwrote E-Mail

E-mail messages sent and received by White-House personnel during the first three years of the Bush-administration were routinely "recycled,".

During the period in question, the Bush presidency faced some of its biggest controversies, including the Iraq-war.

Two federal statutes require presidential-communications, including e-mails involving senior White House aides, to be preserved for the nation's historical record.

Some historians responded to the court disclosure yesterday by urging that the White House's actions be thoroughly probed.

"There certainly could have been hugely important-materials there . . . and of course they're not owned by President Bush or anybody in the administration, they're owned by the public," said presidential historian Robert-Dallek.

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said he has no reason to believe any E-mails were deliberately destroyed.

The court filing said tapes were recycled before October 2003, and at that point, the White House "began preserving and storing all backup tapes."

Via Washington-Post

The Truth About Iran

Re > “Bush Urges Unity Against Iran”

President-Bush continues to beat a dead horse in his attempts to persuade the Arab world to take a hostile stance against Iran. The Arab states of the Gulf region are deeply tied to Iran by historical ethnic and economic ties.

The United Arab Emirates alone are the repository for hundreds of millions of dollars (and euros) of Iranian investment. Powerful bilingual trading families span the Gulf, with members in both Iran and Arab states.

The idea that a little jawboning by a United States president could change centuries-old patterns is patently absurd.

The United States would do well to first understand the culture of the regions in which it hopes to hold sway, and then work with the existing cultural-patterns, rather than trying to turn-nations against those with whom they have longstanding interdependent relations.

William O. Beeman

Minneapolis, Jan. 14, 2008

Chairman of the department of anthropology at the University of Minnesota.

Via NYT

Image Day - A Child's Play

A US soldier from the 2nd Squadron, 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment, plays with a young girl during a patrol in Baghdad, 13 January 2008.

After talks yesterday with General David Petraeus, the commander of US forces in Iraq, and US ambassador to Baghdad Ryan-Crocker, US President Geroge W. Bush told reporters that his goal of reducing troop numbers in Iraq by July was on track but called on Syria and Iran to stop fuelling-violence in Iraq.

> AFP/Getty Images

US strikes Al-Qaeda in Iraq

Seen on: YouTube

It's one of the biggest air-strikes in Iraq since the 2003 invasion. The US military says it carried out a 10-minute bombardment of suspected Al-Qaeda safehavens.

'Al-Qaeda in Iraq'

Seen on: YouTube

The Bush administration is building its new-case to stay in Iraq as a war against Al-Qaeda. However, it is not the largest group fighting in Iraq-today.

Iraq-Offensive: Clear out militants

US forces are solidifying control over some of the most persistent militant strongholds of Al-Qaeda in Iraq northeast of Baghdad, drawing on a new counterinsurgency model.

In Kuwait, President-Bush conceded that until last year, "our strategy simply wasn't working," with Iraq riven by sectarian violence and Sunni and Shiite militants strengthening their grip.

"Al-Qaeda ... will continue to target the innocent with violence," Mr. Bush said. "But we've dealt Al Qaeda in Iraq heavy blows, and it now faces a growing uprising of ordinary Iraqis who want to live peaceful lives."

Via CS-Monitor

Estimating 'Iran'

Seen on: YouTube

Is the Bush-Administration planning to manipulate the estimate for Iran?

What-Happened in the Persian-Gulf?

Doubts have intensified over the nature of an alleged aggressive confrontation by Iranian patrol boats and American warships in the Persian-Gulf.

The Persian Gulf was the focus of the Iraq-Iran War that lasted from 1980 - 88.

It has similarities with the incident in 88, when in the same Strait of Hormuz, the USS Vincennes shot-down an Iranian civilian-airliner.

Iranian version
The Iranians have issued their own video, in which one of their sailors, in a much higher and quite different voice from the one which issued the "warning", asks the US ships who they are and what course they are on.

He gets a dusty reply that the US vessels are in international waters.

Beyond the propaganda
Tensions between Iran and the US have diminished recently following the US National Intelligence Estimate that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.

There are still serious points of potential-conflict between the two, with Iran always determined to exert its influence in the region.

Via BBC/Guardian-Unlimited

Q & A: President-Bush

Q: Mr. President George Bush — you launched war against Iraq after the Iraqi leadership refused to implement UN resolutions.

My question now is, what is the problem to ask Israel just to accept and respect the United-Nations resolutions relating to Palestine?

Bush: Yes, but tell me the-part about the U.N. thing again?

> Read full-text from IHT

Has Olmert's time come?

King Solomon, the wisest man in the world, said that there is a time and a season for everything.

Yesterday, the Olmert-Barak-Livni government announced that it is going to begin-negotiations on the 'core-issues' with 'moderate' Mahmoud-Abbas.

Via Israel Matzav

Bush lands in search for peace

President-Bush opened his first presidential trip to Israel, seeking to build momentum for stalled Mid-east peace talks.

"We see a new opportunity for peace here in the holy land and for freedom across the region," Bush said at Ben-Gurion International Airport just before noon.

> Extensive coverage of George Bush's visit in Israel

Via AP