Author: ghandi

Crossposted at Empire Burlesque

Two excellent pieces provide a strong counterpoint to Bush’s mendacious blather about victory and progress in his predatory war on Iraq. First, Salim Lone, former spokesman for the UN mission in Iraq, in the Guardian: The Nadir of Occupation.

In American proconsul Paul Bremer’s 2003 master plan, last week’s election was meant to be the culminating act in entrenching democratic rule in Iraq. Instead it marks the nadir of the American enterprise there. The brutal failure of that enterprise, and of the similarly unlawful tactics employed in the war on terror, has boosted terrorist ranks worldwide, dealt grievous blows to the notion that human rights and the rule of law are essential elements in building democracy, and brought the US’s standing to its lowest point in generations.

But the real victim of the war is Iraq. Despite the exercise of awesome US power and the expenditure of billions of dollars, the security situation grows worse by the month. Iraq remains the most violent country in the world, with a leadership that dare not set foot among its people. But President Bush is not prepared to countenance any compromise in his original war goals. Despite recent talk of pulling down troop levels, he finally declared that "we will settle for nothing less than victory".

The carnage in Iraq is not primarily caused by the insurgents. It is the death squads run by the Shia and Kurdish militias – according to former US diplomat James Dobbins, now with the Rand Corporation – who bring about a greater threat of civil war….

Last week’s election will do nothing to hasten the winding-down of the occupation, which is the principal obstacle to peace in Iraq, and the country is breaking down into violent communal fiefdoms. The US introduced sectarianism in Iraq as one of its very first acts of occupation, by reorganising this secular nation’s politics along explicitly religious and ethnic lines. This was purportedly done to crush the Ba’ath party, but the larger target was Arab nationalism, as was the case when Israel encouraged Hamas as a counterpoint to the PLO.

This election, apart from the fact that it is taking place under occupation, was held amid such insecurity and violence that few candidates dared to campaign in public. In addition, all three main presidential candidates are long-term exiles, and two of them, Allawi and Ahmed Chalabi, are known to have been in the pay of US security services. This election will not enhance Iraqi sovereignty or the new government’s legitimacy, nor would it be recognised as free and fair in any democratic country.

Next up, Steve Gilliard gives us this brilliant juxtapostion of speeches by warmongering propagandists: Bush’s ‘Total War’ Speech. The comparisons are chilling and Steve has laid it out well; go read the whole thing.

Crossposted at Empire Burlesque

Crossposted at Empire Burlesque

So now we know: Next time the fire will come in Iran. The blow will be delivered by proxy, but that will not spare the true perpetrator from the firestorm of blowback and unintended consequences that will follow. Even now, the gruesome deaths of many innocent people in many lands are growing in futurity’s womb.

The Rubicon of the new war was crossed on Oct. 27. Oddly enough for this renewal of the ancient enmity between the heirs of Athens and Persia, the decisive event occurred on the edge of the Arctic Circle, at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, where a Russian rocket lifted an Iranian spy satellite, the Sinah-1, into orbit. This launch, scarcely noticed at the time, has accelerated the inevitable strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities: Israel is now readying an attack for no later than the end of March, The Sunday Times reports.

The order, from embattled Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, puts Israel’s special forces at the "highest stage of readiness" for the strike. While Iran’s plan to begin enriching uranium — which will give it the capability of building a nuclear bomb — is the precipitating factor, the budding Iranian space program is a "point of no return" for Sharon, and that is what is driving the actual timing of the strike. The Sinah-1 is just the first of several Iranian satellites set for Russian launches in the coming months.

Thus the Iranians will soon have a satellite network in place to give them early warning of an Israeli attack, although it will still be a pale echo of the far more powerful Israeli and American space spies that can track the slightest movement of a Tehran mullah’s beard. What’s more, late last month Russia signed a $1 billion contract to sell Iran an advanced defense system that can destroy guided missiles and laser-guided bombs, the Sunday Times reports. This too will be ready in the next few months.

There is of course another "precipitating factor": the Israeli elections on Mar. 28. Sharon, who has left the Likud Party to form his own cult-of-personality party, faces a fractious electorate, with his former comrades guaranteeing an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites if Sharon is too "weak" to do it before the vote. He may well decide to rally the nation — and stave off this lunge from the right — with a blow against Tehran. Such a move would doubtless be popular at home; everyone agrees that Iran cannot be allowed to have the kind of nuclear weapons that Israel itself possesses in such bristling abundance.

The move will be popular in Washington as well. Only a fool would believe that the fools in the Bush Regime have abandoned their bloody-minded ambitions for "full-spectrum dominance" in the Middle East, just because Iraq has turned to goo in their hands. To these schemers, Iraq has always been merely a stepping-stone toward the "far enemy," Iran. Indeed, they used Saddam himself for years as a useful stick to bash the Iranians, until he stepped out of line with his attack on the Bush family’s longtime business partners, the Kuwaiti royals. Murder, torture and military aggression are always welcome in the service of Washington’s power elites, but defiance is not allowed.
Saddam’s defiance lasted only a few months before he was broken in the first Gulf War, but Iran has thumbed its nose at Washington for 25 years. To the Potomac power-junkies, Iran has never been properly punished for dumping their puppet, the Shah, and seizing the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. (The 600,000 Iranians killed by Saddam’s U.S.-backed armies don’t count in this brutal calculus; the Tehran regime still stands, unrepentant.) Yes, these things matter to those who seek to mask their inadequacies and magnify their importance by identifying their own psyches with some mass, abstract entity — the nation, the volk, the ummah, the tribe, etc. Like Osama, still smarting from the Crusades, the Bushists are equally willing to kill innocent people to assuage the psychic pain of past "humiliations."

But while this endemic lunacy of our human kind plays its part, the real bottom line for the Bushists is, well, the bottom line. Iran itself is but a stepping-stone to the ultimate goal: putting U.S.-controlled hands on the spigots of Middle Eastern and Central Asian oil, thus providing a brake to control the political rise of China and India, and ensuring a "new American century" of unchallenged profit and privilege. For the elite, of course; as always, the suckers back home will get stuck with the bills and the body bags from these geopolitical games.

A nuclear-armed Iran would lie athwart this golden road to glory like a mighty Persian rampart, so the scaffolding must be swept aside soon, before the walls are complete. The Bush regime has already begun a "low-intensity" covert war against Iran, using the Mujahadeen el-Khalq terrorist group to map potential targets and carry out bombings, Common Dreams reports. MEK is a bizarre Iranian militarist cult that once murdered American officials, then allied with Saddam in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War. Afterwards, they remained in Saddam’s employ, acting as brutal enforcers in his crackdowns on Shiites and Kurds; the cruelty of their tortures was legendary. Yet Bush has eagerly taken these Saddamite terrorists into his service, Newsweek reports.

With hardline Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — yet another made-to-order goon ripe for demonizing — as frontman for an odious regime, Bush and Sharon will have little trouble whipping up war fever for the attack. In the next few months, we’ll see the usual charade of "diplomacy" as military plans are finalized. But the fire is coming; the future is already groaning with death.

Israel readies forces for strike on nuclear Iran
The Sunday Times, Dec. 11, 2005

Iran-s No Longer Moscow-s Satellite
Kommersant, Oct. 28, 2005

The Coming Wars
New Yorker, Jan. 24, 2005

The US War with Iran has Already Begun
CommonDreams, June 20, 2005

Consider the Source:MEK
Newsweek, May 19, 2005

Neocons’ Pet Iranian Revolutionaries Accused of Torture
Antiwar. com, May 20, 2005

Members of Congress Address MEK Convention
The Agonist, April 14, 2005

Attacking Iran
TomDispatch, March 1, 2005

America Would Back Israel in Attack on Iran, Says Bush
The Daily Telegraph, Feb. 18, 2005

Israel denies plans to attack Iran
Jerusalem Post, Dec. 11, 2005

Russian rocket launches batch of tiny satellites
Spaceflight Now, Oct. 27, 2005

Iran Snaps Up Space Technology
CNN, Nov. 29, 2005

Hawks Plan ‘Peaceful’ Regime Change in Iran
Antiwar.com, Dec. 22, 2004

Iran War Drums Beat Harder
Antiwar.com, Jan. 11, 2005

New York Blood Center

READ AT YOUR OWN RISK:

Open Letter to America from a Canadian
From the Baltimore Chronicle and Sentinel

Let’s start with some of the responses…. over 600 and counting at the newspaper.

BATCH OF LETTERS RECEIVED IN RESPONSE TO W.R. McDOUGALL’S “OPEN LETTER TO AMERICA FROM A CANADIAN

Also, Mr. McDougall, I might suggest if you are trying to learn of the world from television, you might try PBS rather than "Cops". There is more I could add, but I hear McDonald’s dinner bell. I must rush to my armored Humm-Vee, firing my AR-15 in the air as I go. You see I must have my daily ration of Big Macs, dripping with pesticides and other genetic poisons. If only you could watch my mad dash to my 3 mpg gas-guzzler you might even take note of the sprig of mistletoe dangling from a belt loop on the back of my Levi’s.

Have a nice day,
Robert Davis
An American in Texas

At least I still have my guns. That’s more than most Canucks can say. I’ll kill any motherf—er who tries to take my guns, for any reason.

Don Thompson

Fuck you! You French-Canadian pussy bitch . Take away our Air-Missile Defense away and watch your country full of pansy cowardly mounted fag turncoats turn to Communism when u get invaded. I and many others that i know live a great life here in the great U.S.of A. Millions try to come here from other countries for that reason. What do Canadians heat your houses with.What do your cars run on, for that matter where do your cars come from? What about medical tech,or tech in general. You would still be in stone ages if not for the USA!!! If you dont like our policies migrate your PUSSY ASS down here and run for President and change things ? Thats how we do things here PANSY BITCH!!!!!!!!! So sit back and enjoy the ride or SHUT THE FUCK UP and move to Iraq where your pathetic views might be welcome . Good luck you commie bitch!

Charles Heppenstall

Now let’s see what pissed them off!

Open Letter to America from a Canadian

by W.R. McDougall

Dear America:

And so it has come to this. Your once-great nation has fallen into madness, an affliction of mass denial that brings shivers up the spines of millions outside your borders. Yours is a sick nation. But most of you carry on as though nothing at all is the matter.

Dark, evil operations run rampant in the secret corners of your government institutions. A dubiously constituted government pursues war at will anywhere on earth, discussing nuclear options that become points for cheerful chatter over lunch. Your military and intelligence agencies employ terrorist tactics around the globe even as they insist that such tactics are necessary in the fight against terrorism.

You have become a nation of monsters, America. Hypocrites. Murderers. Fools.

Your constitution is a shambles thanks to "national security" measures resulting from what might well be U.S.-government-sanctioned terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington D.C., covert provocations designed to justify a malevolent, poisonous, oil-based military economy.

Never mind that earth-friendly technology already exists to once and for all end dependence on oil, coal and nuclear energy from huge, out-of-control utilities and corporations. You would rather pay through the nose for your insecure comforts, wouldn’t you America, and make others pay with their blood.

At the same time, you stand by as the Israelis’ secular Zionists–whom you support through the supply of arms and money–slaughter untold numbers of innocents in the West Bank, then blame the Palestinians for bringing the terror upon themselves. (True, there are abominable Arab suicide bombers in Israel’s midst. But are they not driven to madness and desperation by your infernal support of international terrorist politics?)

As I write these words, you support a nation run by a convicted murderer by the name of Ariel Sharon who with impunity is carrying out war crimes as cruel and horrendous as those of other sadistic tyrants in history. And you say, in your utter cynicism, ‘When will these Palestinians bring this war to an end?’

You recklessly wage combat on other fronts, too. At home, your War on Drugs is a disastrous 30-year folly–a gigantic con game designed to benefit lethal cartels, corrupt politicians and menacing intelligence agencies across the planet…..

With your government’s support, crooked multinationals like Monsanto buy up the world’s water supplies, and take possession of the world’s vegetation through Frankenstein technology already known to cause illness.

Does the FDA care about any of this? It does not. It has long been on the bandwagon to foist genetically altered food on the Guinea Pigs of the country–including every man, woman and child on America’s increasingly toxic soil.

Never mind that earth-friendly technology already exists to once and for all end dependence on oil, coal and nuclear energy from huge, out-of-control utilities and corporations. You would rather pay through the nose for your insecure comforts, wouldn’t you America, and make others pay with their blood.

You are a nation of suckers, America, to be bled dry of your hard-earned pay through outrageous bank schemes, Wall Street rip-offs and fake government budget grabs. Your Pentagon cannot account for trillions in lost dollars.

Does this bother you? Not in the least.

Your whole economy is controlled by what is for the most part ravenous, international private banking interests in the form of The Federal Reserve, which with your government’s consent leads you down the garden path to certain financial ruin thanks to a national debt you will never be able to repay.

How is it that private banks are responsible for issuing your currency? How is it that they are allowed to charge ridiculous interest rates on what they issue? By decree, this was supposed to be the responsibility of your government, which could create its own currency without charging interest.

Do you realize your congress could dismiss these banks in an instant if it so wished? But don’t ever count on it. More important matters are pressing. The upcoming election needs investment.

Quote:Go get your ten-billionth burger, America. Fatten your already fat asses with bacteria-and-hormone-ridden meat and do nothing as you sit stupefied before your mind-numbing television sets awaiting the next episode of sad families being humiliated on "Cops."

These very same money men are the ones who, through unmonitored and unrepresentative world committees, are driving countries like Argentina into hopeless debt and social upheaval. These greedy overlords are creating strife and suffering on a scale too tragic for words in nation after nation. Just look at Africa.

They’ve got their sights on America, now, too; disrupting economic stability through so-called free trade initiatives and provisions for special favors and the endless flow of cash to corporate monstrosities like Enron.

Amid all this, where are those who are supposed to represent your interests, America? For the most part, your congressional representatives are nothing but swine gathering at the corporate troughs. Your president is a white-collar thug, a hypocrite who through his actions celebrates war, repression and greed even as he gives lip service to peace, freedom and justice.

George W. Bush deceives you daily, the war monger hiding behind a phony patriotism. He is an Enron buddy boy, a spoiled child lying in his teeth about his past and current dirty deeds.

Does he care about you America? Hardly. This is altogether obvious to those outside your borders who are politically aware and awake to the world around them.

You were never concerned about the disgraceful practices of George’s ruthless father, either, a Bin-Laden cohort and friend to criminals and killers in global drug, oil and terrorist enterprises. Iran. Vietnam. El Salvador. Chile. Guatemala. Iraq. And on and on. The never-ending bully-boy story of blood, guns, drugs and money.

Go get your ten-billionth burger, America. Fatten your already fat asses with bacteria-and-hormone-ridden meat and do nothing as you sit stupefied before your mind-numbing television sets awaiting the next episode of sad families being humiliated on “Cops.”

Does any of this matter? No, it’s simply time to eat.

Go get your ten-billionth burger, America. Fatten your already fat asses with bacteria-and-hormone-ridden meat and do nothing as you sit stupefied before your mind-numbing television sets awaiting the next episode of sad families being humiliated on "Cops."

Few among you are the least bit concerned that no real investigation of 911 has taken place, that no serious investigation of the anthrax attacks is moving forward, that no authentic investigation of Enron, or the murder of one of its top executives, is underway.

How many of you give the slightest damn about the totalitarian measures your government is taking to keep its secret meetings, grubby files and treasonous activities from your eyes?….

When did you stop caring, America? Was it after your own FBI and intelligence agencies plotted the murder of President John F. Kennedy? Or is this just the raving lunacy of the conspiracy nut? What does your gut tell you, America? Is something a little amiss here?

Forget about it. Have some Pepto-Bismol.

Today, in futility, your own government goes to court against itself for information you are entitled to by law. But this is hardly deemed vital news in the community. It is a fleeting reference in an electronic sea of meaningless banter. For proof, just look to all the spineless wimps who constitute your mainstream news media.

Today, you excoriate, ridicule and ostracize the brave and true among you. Your best investigative journalists are fired from their jobs and ignored. Congress’s few courageous souls are laughed at and dismissed out of hand as crackpots. The most honest and conscientious political leader in the country, Ralph Nader, is a powerless, near-invisible curiosity easily side-lined by hired goons.

America, you are a goddamn shame.

What law matters now in your despicable state? What justice? What truth?

When will you wake up?

If you had your druthers, you would right now gather your courage, take to the streets and march on Washington D.C in the millions. But I know you will do no such thing. The vast majority of you are spiritually, emotionally and intellectually dead.

As I write these words, I can only imagine what additional horrors your shadow government might be planning in what will surely be an attempt to justify militarism and totalitarianism on a universal scale. A nuclear explosion in one of your cities, perhaps? A massive bio-chemical attack?

Or perhaps it will be some Arab terrorist who finally commits the terrible deed, his last thought before death being the promises you made to him before you killed his family.

I put this up for comment.

Link to article

Serial Killer Confesses to 30,000 Murders; Receives Applause
"I done kilt me 10 times as many as old Osama ever done," Exults Bush

From the New York Daily News:

"I would say 30,000, more or less, have died as a result of the initial incursion and the ongoing violence against Iraqis," Bush said…"I made a tough decision. And knowing what I know today, I’d make the decision again."

Knowing what I know today….that there were no weapons of mass destruction, there were not any active programs for weapons of mass destruction, that the weapons of mass destruction had been destroyed in 1991, that there was no Iraqi link to al Qaeda or 9/11, that Iranian-backed theocrats would come to rule the country with death squads and torture, that by his own (lowball) admission, 30,000 Iraqis would be slaughtered and tens of thousands of Americans left dead or maimed….Bush would make that decision again.

Crossposted at Empire Burlesque

Says it all, doesn’t it? Again, by Bush’s own confession, the war really wasn’t about any of the ostensible reasons he offered before the invasion. Because even if those reasons lacked all substance — which even Bush now acknowledges is the case — he would make that decision again.

So what was the war for? Profits. Power. Petrochemicals. And the need of weak, soul-damaged men for violence and death to assert their "dominance" and maintain their illusion of superiority.

"Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas in incarnadine,
Making the green one red."
— Macbeth

Crossposted at Empire Burlesque

MI6 and CIA ‘sent student to Morocco to be tortured

An Ethiopian claims that his confession to al-Qaeda bomb plot was signed after being tortured in a Moroccan jail and claims torturers used scalpel on his chest and penis as he was hung, ‘strappado’ from his wrists from the ceiling. The British government and CIA are now facing complicity in the affair due to the Extraordinary Rendition program.

Agencies said he was part of a plot to buy uranium in Asia, bring it to the US and build a ‘dirty bomb’ in league with Jose Padilla, a US citizen. Funny enough, now that the torture allegations used against Mohammed came out, the claims against Padilla were subsequently dropped. He now faces a civil charge of supporting al-Qaeda financially.

He was stripped naked, photographed, given an enema and put on a plane with shackles, earphones and a blindfold.

All this as Britain’s loftiest judges lay down the law on torture.

Lord Hoffman: "The use of torture is dishonourable. It corrupts and degrades the state which uses it and the legal system which accepts it … Many people in the United States have felt their country dishonoured by its use of torture outside the jurisdiction and its practice of extra-legal ‘rendition’ of suspects to countries where they would be tortured. The rejection of torture … has a special iconic importance as the touchstone of a humane and civilised legal system."

Lord Hope: "Torture is one of most evil practices known to man. Once torture has become acclimatised in a legal system it spreads like an infectious disease, hardening and brutalising those who have become accustomed to its use.

Lord Brown: "Torture is an unqualified evil. It can never be justified. Rather it must always be punished."

Lord Bingham: "The English common law has regarded torture and its fruits with abhorrence for over 500 years … I am startled, even a little dismayed, at the suggestion (and the acceptance by the court of appeal majority) that this deeply-rooted tradition and an international obligation solemnly and explicitly undertaken can be overridden … The issue is one of constitutional principle, whether evidence obtained by torturing another human being may lawfully be admitted against a party to proceedings in a British court … To that question I would give a very clear negative answer."

Lord Nicholls: "Torture is not acceptable. This is a bedrock moral principle in this country. For centuries the common law has set its face against torture … Torture attracts universal condemnation. No civilised society condones its use. Unhappily, condemnatory words are not always matched by conduct."

Word is leaking now that the EU has known and allowed the CIA to tour Europe with their enema bags, black costumes and leather for several years – snatching those deemed ‘terrorists’ and hauling them off to torture dens in a string of countries around the world -or even just getting ‘rid’ of them as Bush alluded to in his 2003 SOTU speech.

This was vividly demonstrated in one of the revolting scenes in recent American history: Bush’s State of the Union address in January 2003, delivered to Congress and televised nationwide during the final frenzy of war-drum beating before the assault on Iraq. Trumpeting his successes in the Terror War, Bush claimed that "more than 3,000 suspected terrorists" had been arrested worldwide – "and many others have met a different fate." His face then took on the characteristic leer, the strange, sickly half-smile it acquires whenever he speaks of killing people: "Let’s put it this way. They are no longer a problem."

Pinter video (swf,wmv,flv), podcast (mp3)and transcript link here…

Crossposted at Empire Burlesque

by Chris Floyd,

The only defense for the indefensible is to be offensive, it seems. The Bush Faction has obviously n.decided to stop refuting allegations about torture and just openly embrace the heinous practice instead. You’ve got Bush vowing to veto torture restrictions, you’ve got Cheney twisting arms on Capitol Hill to preserve the Faction’s inalienable right to beat people to death — and now you’ve got Condi Rice traipsing off to Europe to tell America’s allies to stop all their whining about extraordinary rendition, secret prisons and the CIA kidnapping people in their countries.

In a remarkable display of brass, Rice tried to have it both ways, both denying that the U.S. tortures anyone then saying that American "interrogation techniques" have saved European lives by thwarting terrorist plots.
She offered no proof of this, of course, and she said nothing at all about the growing number of innocent people caught up in the rendition process. (This is a well-known diplomatic technique: if you just close your eyes and pretend something isn’t there, why, it just goes away! Metternich used it all the time.) Basically, Condi’s message to the Eurosissies boiled down to this: "We’re saving your sorry butts with our rough stuff, so shut up already."

But doubtless to her great surprise, Condi is finding that the usual Bushist shtick of playing the 9/11 card — "Whatever we do is OK because we’re keeping the terrorists from getting you!" — doesn’t work on the other side of the water. (Except with the yappy little lapdog Tony Blair, of course, who is bidding fair to outdo his master in stripping away ancient liberties and ruling solely by fear.) The Europeans have dealt with terrorism for decades — centuries — and don’t require lessons from Crawford clodhoppers on the subject. They are also past masters at recognizing bullshit — having dispensed so much of it down through the ages — so Condi’s heaping helpings of hokum are falling flat.

But what is most surprising is that even the Washington Post’s editorialists — of all people — have also got Condi’s number. The Post is infamous for its heroic contortions in defense of Bushist miscreancy, but in a piece on Rice’s rendition rhetoric, the paper nailed it solid:

[Excerpt]: In an attempt to quell a growing storm in Europe over the CIA’s secret prisons, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday issued a defense based on the same legalistic jujitsu and morally obtuse double talk that led the Bush administration into a swamp of human rights abuses in the first place. Ms. Rice insisted that the U.S. government "does not authorize or condone torture" of detainees. What she didn’t say is that President Bush’s political appointees have redefined the term "torture" so that it does not cover practices, such as simulated drowning, mock execution and "cold cells," that have long been considered abusive by authorities such as her State Department.

Ms. Rice said, "It is also U.S. policy that authorized interrogation will be consistent with U.S. obligations under the Convention Against Torture, which prohibit cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment." What she didn’t explain is that, under this administration’s eccentric definition of "U.S. obligations," cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment is not prohibited as long as it does not occur on U.S. territory. That is the reason for the secret prisons that the CIA has established in European countries and other locations around the world, and for the "renditions" of detainees to countries such as Egypt and Jordan: so that the administration can violate the very treaty Ms. Rice claims it is upholding.[End excerpt]

If the Bushists have lost the well-wadded, ever-deferential conventional wisdom-peddlers on the Washington Post editorial board, they really are in trouble.

Next is a Guardian roundup of human rights experts giving their view on Rice’s tortured reasoning, with the admirably straightforward headline: "US defence of tactic makes no sense, say legal experts." A few choice quotes:

[Excerpt]: Her assurances that spiriting terror suspects away to clandestine prisons is a legitimate tactic did not carry much weight with human rights organisations or legal scholars yesterday. They argued that the sole use of extraordinary rendition was to transport a suspect to a locale that was beyond the reach of the law – and so at risk of torture.

"The argument makes no sense unless there is an assumption that the purpose of rendition is to send people to a place where things could be done to them that could not be done in the United States," said David Luban, a law professor at Georgetown University who is presently a visiting professor at Stanford University. "Rendition doesn’t become a tool in the war against terror unless people are being sent to a place where they can be interrogated harshly."

…"The reason she is able to say that the United States does not engage in torture is that the administration has redefined torture to exclude any technique that they use," said Tom Malinowski, Washington director of Human Rights Watch. "What makes this awkward for Secretary Rice is that the state department has continued to condemn as torture techniques such as waterboarding when they are used by other countries – in other words the very techniques the CIA has used against these high level detainees."

Other critics noted yesterday that the utility of information gathered under duress was also unclear. Some intelligence gathered from such suspects has proved unreliable most notoriously in the case of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, who told his interrogators before the war in Iraq that Saddam Hussein’s regime was training al-Qaida terrorists in the use of chemical and biological weapons. Al-Libi later recanted, but the flawed intelligence was used by the then secretary of state, Colin Powell, in March 2003 to make his case for war to the United Nations. [End excerpt]

Ah, but here I must dissent from these learned Thebans. It is most incorrect to say that the information gleaned from whomping the tarwater out of al-Libi lacked utility. On the contrary, it was precisely what was required for the successful promulgation of Administration policy. The false connection between Saddam and 9/11 was perhaps the most crucial element in the deliberate manipulation of public opinion in favor of the war. As no real evidence for the connection existed, it had to be manufactured. And as any bent cop or crooked prosecutor will tell you, a false confession is the best way to sell a rotten case.

Crossposted at Empire Burlesque

From 1998 to 2000, Chris Floyd was the editor of Science & Spirit, an Oxford quarterly journal dealing with the contentious relationship between science and religion. His work there included interviews with such thinkers as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Steven Pinker, Frans de Waal, V.S. Ramachandran and others. He also worked with contributors from around the world – Islamic scientists, Jewish theologians, militant atheists, Nobel Prize-winning physicists, and authors such as Freeman Dyson, Paul Davies, Lisa Jardine, A.N. Wilson, John Polkinghorne and others. He also writes a weekly column called Global Eye for the Moscow Times and St. Petersburg Times.

This is an extended version of a column appearing in the Dec. 2 edition of The Moscow Times (tomorrow).

Cross posted at Empire Burlesque – Chris Floyd’s Blog

The recent revelations about the virulent spread of death squads ravaging Iraq have only confirmed for many people the lethal incompetence of the Bush Regime, whose brutal bungling appears to have unleashed the demon of sectarian strife in the conquered land. The general reaction, even among some war supporters, has been bitter derision: "Jeez, these bozos couldn’t boil an egg without causing collateral damage."

But what if the truth is even more sinister? What if this murderous chaos is not the fruit of rank incompetence but instead the desired product of carefully crafted, efficiently managed White House policy?

Investigative journalist Max Fuller marshals a convincing case for this dread conclusion in a remarkable work of synthesis drawn from information buried in reams of mainstream news stories and public Pentagon documents.

Piling fact on damning fact, he shows that the vast majority of atrocities now attributed to "rogue" Shiite and Sunni militias are in fact the work of government-controlled commandos and "special forces," trained by Americans, "advised" by Americans and run largely by former CIA assets, Global Research reports.

We first reported here in June 2003 that the U.S. was already hiring Saddam’s security muscle for "special ops" against the nascent insurgency and re-opening his torture haven, Abu Ghraib. Meanwhile, powerful Shiite militias – including Talibanic religious extremists armed and trained by Iran – were loosed upon the land. As direct "Coalition" rule gave way to various "interim" and "elected" Iraqi governments, these violent gangs were formally incorporated into the Iraqi Interior Ministry, where the supposedly inimical Sunni and Shiite units often share officers and divvy up territories.

Bush helpfully supplied these savage gangs – who are killing dozens of people each week, Knight-Ridder reports – with American advisers who made their "counter-insurgency" bones forming right-wing death squads in Colombia and El Salvador. Indeed, Bush insiders have openly bragged of "riding with the bad boys" and exercising the "Salvador option," lauding the Reagan-backed counter-insurgency program that slaughtered tens of thousands of civilians, Newsweek reports. Bush has also provided a "state-of-the-art command, control and communications center" to coordinate the operation of his Iraqi "commandos," as the Pentagon’s own news site, DefendAmerica, reports. The Iraqi people can go without electricity, fuel and medicine, but by God, Bush’s "bad boys" will roll in clover as they carry out their murders and mutilations.

For months, stories from the Shiite south and Sunni center have reported the same phenomenon: people being summarily seized by large groups of armed men wearing police commando uniforms, packing high-priced Glocks, using sophisticated radios and driving Toyota Land Cruisers with police markings. The captives are taken off and never seen again – unless they turn up with a load of other corpses days or weeks later, bearing marks of the gruesome tortures they suffered before the ritual shot in the head. Needless to say, these mass murders under police aegis are rarely investigated by the police.

Earlier this year, one enterprising Knight-Ridder reporter, Yasser Salihee, actually found several eyewitnesses willing to testify to the involvement of the U.S.-backed commandos in 12 such murders. The offer was shrugged off by the Interior Ministry’s spokesman – an American "adviser" and veteran bones-maker from the Colombian ops. In the end, it didn’t matter; Salihee was shot dead by a U.S. sniper at a checkpoint a few days afterwards.

The Bushists may have been forced to ditch their idiotic fantasies of "cakewalking" into a compliant satrapy, but they have by no means abandoned their chief goals in the war: milking Iraq dry and planting a permanent military "footprint" on the nation’s neck. If direct control through a plausible puppet is no longer possible, then fomenting bloody chaos and sectarian strife is the best way to weaken the state. The Bushists are happy to make common cause with thugs and zealots in order to prevent the establishment of a strong national government that might balk at the ongoing "privatizations" that have continued apace behind the smokescreen of violence, and the planned opening of Iraq’s oil reserves to select foreign investors – a potential transfer of some $200 billion of Iraqi people’s wealth into the hands of a few Bush cronies, the Independent reports.

The violence is already dividing the county into more rigid sectarian enclaves, the New York Times reports, as Shiites flee Sunni commandos and Sunnis flee Shiite militias in the grim tag-team of their joint endeavor. It’s all grist for the Bushist mill: an atomized, terrorized, internally riven society is much easier to manipulate. And of course, a steady stream of bloodshed provides a justification for maintaining a substantial American military presence, even as politic plans for partial "withdrawal" are bandied about.

There’s nothing new in this; Bush is simply following a well-thumbed playbook. For example, in 1953 the CIA bankrolled Islamic fundamentalists and secular goon squads to destabilize the democratic government of Iran – which selfishly wanted to control its own oil – and pave the way for the puppet Shah, as the agency’s own histories recount. In 1971, CIA officials admitted carrying out more than 21,000 "extra-judicial killings" in its "Phoenix" counter-insurgency operation in Vietnam. (The true number of victims is certainly much higher.) In 1979, the CIA began sponsoring the most violent Islamic extremist groups in Afghanistan – supplying money, arms, even jihad primers for schoolchildren – to destabilize the secular, Soviet-allied government and provoke the Kremlin into a costly intervention, as Robert Dreyfus details in his new book, Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam. Later, Saudi magnate Osama bin Laden – whose family firm helped kick-start George W. Bush’s business career – joined the operation, and his men were sent to America for "anti-Soviet" terrorist training, as the BBC’s Greg Palast reports. And of course, these examples only scratch the scorched-earth surface of America’s double-dealings in this deathly shadow world.

This bi-partisan policy has been remarkably consistent for more than half a century: to augment the wealth and power of the elite, American leaders have supported – or created – vicious gangs of killers and cranks to foment unrest, eliminate opponents and terrorize whole nations into submission. The resulting carnage in the target countries – and inevitable blowback against ordinary Americans – means nothing to these Great Gamesters; it’s merely the price of doing business. Bush’s "incompetence" is just a mask for stone-cold calculation.

CF

Link to article…

The column below  appears in the Nov. 25 edition of The Moscow Times.

Last week, America’s troubled sleep was shattered by a trumpet blast of truth sounding deep in Washington’s corridors of power, where the rule of the Lie has held sway for so long. This intrusion of reality into the bloodstained fantasy-land of the Bush Regime comes late in the day for the moribund Republic – perhaps too late – but it has struck a mighty blow against the Lie’s adherents, driving them into spasms of hysterical panic, like rats exposed suddenly to the light.

The unlikely instigator of this historic upheaval was U.S. Representative John Murtha, the 73-year-old conservative Democrat and warhawk, one of many "opposition" leaders who once strongly backed George W. Bush’s murderous folly in Iraq. Murtha, a Vietnam vet, has been a stalwart of the military-industrial complex for decades, supporting American wars around the world and showering legislative largess on the weapons industry – which has obligingly kicked back lobbying contracts to his kin and friends, the Los Angeles Times reports.

But a penchant for typical backroom grease is not necessarily incompatible with political courage. And Murtha showed plenty of the latter when he rocked the Washington establishment with a truly revolutionary act in these degraded times: stating the obvious. Calling Bush’s war "a flawed policy wrapped in an illusion," Murtha said American forces should "redeploy" out of Iraq immediately; otherwise, Iraqis will never feel free, the insurgency will grow, terrorism will spread, and America will sink further into debt and dishonor, putting the nation’s very survival at stake.

This riot of understatement has been self-evident to most sentient beings for a long time; that it is now sinking into the occluded consciousness of Potomac power-players is a turning point of genuine significance. Although Murtha was immediately assaulted in one of the most raucous displays of bile ever seen in Congress – with Bushist attack dogs labelling the war-wounded Pentagon patron a coward, a traitor, and a terrorist-appeaser – his volte-face has brought the so-called "extremist" anti-war position of swift withdrawal squarely into the political mainstream, and it won’t go away now. And why should it? After all, it just happens to be the position of a majority of the American people, as poll after poll reveals.

None of this means the Bush nightmare is over, of course; not by the longest shot. This gang will grow ever more vicious as their support crumbles; in fact, it’s a good bet that the worst is yet to come. The Bushists know that they have prison sentences hanging over their heads if they ever lose their grip on power. They will either do "whatever it takes" keep the whip hand – in which case we are in for political and social strife the likes of which America has not seen since the Civil War – or, at the very least, they will make things bad enough that the nation’s power elite will negotiate a settlement, as in Richard Nixon’s day: we won’t prosecute you if you’ll just go away. In any case, it won’t be pleasant.

So no false hopes of a new day dawning. Let’s not forget what happened after the "new dawn" following Nixon’s departure: six years later, Ronald Reagan was in office with an even worse crew – a  lunatic fringe of aggressive militarists, hard-Right ideologues and religious extremists allied with rapacious corporate elitists, all bent on destroying the idea of a common good beyond the raw and brutal bottom line. This poison has gone deep into the American bloodstream, and its virulence has been increased a thousandfold by the current regime. Bush’s exit from the stage won’t cure the body politic of this wasting disease.

Nor will it halt the voracious system of dominance and empire that has driven American foreign policy – under Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives – for the past 60 years, covering the earth with more than 700 military bases while waging ceaseless war, directly and by proxy. Indeed, war profiteering has become essential to the wealth and power of the elite, and is now deeply "embedded" in the American economy as a whole. Bush accelerated this all-devouring engine into overdrive; but he didn’t create it, and his departure won’t derail it.

Thus even if the Bush Regime collapses entirely, we will still face an uphill battle against "Bushism" and all the long-term currents it represents. We must also guard against something even worse rising in its place. For the Bush years have shown how fragile American democracy is, how relatively little it takes for a predatory faction to seize the state and manipulate the public, cow the opposition, intimidate the press and use violence in pursuit of loot and power. The template is there now, and it’s entirely conceivable, perhaps inevitable, that some new would-be dictator – more competent, more subtle, more adroit than the ludicrous klutz from Crawford – will use it to create a more efficient and durable instrument of domination.

Still, the immediate task at hand – ending the bloody war crime in Iraq and restoring some vestige of legality and reality to American politics – is a tall enough order. So we should take heart from events like Murtha’s declaration and Bush’s free-fall in the polls. There has been a shift in the political landscape, which provides cautious but credible grounds for hope of some measure of change – not a false triumphalism, for there is never any final "triumph" in human affairs; there is only the continual, never-ending task of trying to rise above our worst instincts. But for the first time in years, the sun of possibility has broken through the stinking murk of the Bush Imperium.

Chris Floyd – Empire Burlesque