On October 5, people everywhere will walk out of school, take off work, and come to the downtowns & townsquares and set out from there, going through the streets and calling on many more to join us - making a powerful statement: "NO! THIS REGIME DOES NOT REPRESENT US! AND WE WILL DRIVE IT OUT!"
What difference will the Oct. 5 protests make?...
By Lisa Goddard / CNN
WASHINGTON -- Two Presbyterian ministers were among 71 people arrested during a series of peaceful protests against the Iraq war Tuesday, said a spokeswoman for a group participating in the protests.
Demonstrators held sit-ins, prayer services and sing-alongs at four locations in the Capitol complex, including the central atrium of the Senate Hart Office Building.
The demonstrations were reminiscent of the Vietnam era, with protesters strumming guitars, singing peace songs, holding flowers and wearing hats made of balloons.
Senate staffers watched the demonstrators from their offices. Protesters said that several workers gave them a thumbs-up or other signs of approval.
"We are trying to protest a lack of civil liberties and to try and end a war culture," said protester Alex Bryan of New York.
Thirty-three of those arrested were charged with unlawful conduct inside the Hart Building, said Sgt. Kimberly Schneider of the Capitol Police.
Thirty-eight more demonstrators were arrested at separate protests near the Capitol, she said. Of those, 23 were charged with crossing a police line and 15 were charged with demonstrating without a permit.
All of those arrested were cooperative with police, Schneider said.
The National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance, which has organized dozens of anti-war protests around the country, coordinated Tuesday's effort, which included several religious and secular groups.
Among those arrested during the demonstrations were two Presbyterian ministers, a Catholic activist and a member of a Quaker group, said Jennifer Kuiper, spokeswoman for The Declaration of Peace, one of the groups participating in the protests.
Both groups apparently expected participants to be arrested. On a notice posted at The Declaration of Peace Web site, the protests are described as an "interfaith religious procession around the Capitol, followed by peace presence and nonviolent resistance, including risking arrest at the U.S. Senate."
The National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance Web site adds, "Those willing to engage in nonviolent acts of civil resistance against the war and occupation are encouraged to join us. We also enthusiastically call upon those who cannot risk arrest, but who are willing to support those who do."
Despite a rising tide of war opposition, the protesters said they represent no party or political movement.
Baptist minister Jamie Washam of Wisconsin, who led an interfaith service during the protests, said she is adamantly opposed to the war.
"My congregation wants peace," she said. "And I think it's an offense to God."
Tuesday's events in Washington were part of 375 protests and other activities being held around the country this week in opposition to the war, according to The Declaration of Peace.
There were hundreds of arrests in a protest organized by the National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance a year ago. On September 26, 2005, 371 people were arrested during the "Resist and Remember" protest in Washington, one of the organization's founders, Gordon Clark, wrote in an online article.
Of those, 104 were arrested at the White House for refusing to leave after being denied an audience with President Bush, Clark wrote.
September 26th, 2006 8:06 pm
Peaceful Iraq war protests prompt 71 arrests
September 26th, 2006 7:35 pm
Students, parents unite to stop calls from military recruiters
September 26th, 2006 7:05 pm
Iraq is 'cause celebre' for extremists
September 26th, 2006 3:14 pm
Four peace activists are arrested
September 26th, 2006 12:23 pm
Torture Victim Had No Terror Link, Canada Told U.S.
September 26th, 2006 3:11 am
CIA paid Pakistan for catching al Qaeda: Musharraf
September 26th, 2006 2:40 am
Detainee Measure to Have Fewer Restrictions
September 26th, 2006 12:58 am
6 arrested at anti-war protest in Charlotte
September 25th, 2006 11:37 pm
Three Retired Officers Demand Rumsfeld's Resignation
September 25th, 2006 9:44 pm
Activists push peace declaration, at least four arrested
By JONATHAN COOK
Nazareth.
The trajectory of a long-running campaign that gave birth this month to the preposterous all-party British parliamentary report into anti-Semitism in the UK can be traced back to intensive lobbying by the Israeli government that began more than four years ago, in early 2002.
At that time, as Ariel Sharon was shredding the tattered remains of the Oslo accords by reinvading West Bank towns handed over to the Palestinian Authority in his destructive rampage known as Operation Defensive Shield, he drafted the Israeli media into the fray. Local newspapers began endlessly highlighting concerns about the rise of a "new anti-Semitism", a theme that was rapidly and enthusiastically taken up by the muscular Zionist lobby in the US.
It was not the first time, of course, that Israel had called on American loyalists to help it out of trouble. In Beyond Chutzpah, Norman Finkelstein documents the advent of claims about a new anti-Semitism to Israel's lacklustre performance in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. On that occasion, it was hoped, the charge of anti-Semitism could be deployed against critics to reduce pressure on Israel to return Sinai to Egypt and negotiate with the Palestinians.
Israel alerted the world to another wave of anti-Semitism in the early 1980s, just as it came under unprecedented criticism for its invasion and occupation of Lebanon. What distinguished the new anti-Semitism from traditional anti-Jewish racism of the kind that led to Germany's death camps, said its promoters, was that this time it embraced the progressive left rather than the far right.
The fresh claims about a new anti-Semitism began life in the spring of 2002, with the English-language website of Israel's respected liberal daily newspaper, Haaretz, flagging for many months a special online supplement of articles on the "New anti-Semitism", warning that the "age-old hatred" was being revived in Europe and America. The refrain was soon taken up the Jerusalem Post, a rightwing English-language newspaper regularly used by the Israeli establishment to shore up support for its policies among Diaspora Jews.
Like its precursors, argued Israel's apologists, the latest wave of anti-Semitism was the responsibility of Western progressive movements -- though with a fresh twist. An ever-present but largely latent Western anti-Semitism was being stoked into frenzy by the growing political and intellectual influence of extremist Muslim immigrants. The implication was that an unholy alliance had been spawned between the left and militant Islam.
Such views were first aired by senior members of Sharon's cabinet. In an interview in the Jerusalem Post in November 2002, for example, Binyamin Netanyahu warned that latent anti-Semitism was again becoming active:
"In my view, there are many in Europe who oppose anti-Semitism, and many governments and leaders who oppose anti-Semitism, but the strain exists there. It is ignoring reality to say that it is not present. It has now been wedded to and stimulated by the more potent and more overt force of anti-Semitism, which is Islamic anti-Semitism coming from some of the Islamic minorities in European countries. This is often disguised as anti-Zionism."
Netanyahu proposed "lancing the boil" by beginning an aggressive public relations campaign of "self-defence". A month later Israel's president, Moshe Katsav, picked on the softest target of all, warning during a state 
visit that the fight against anti-Semitism must begin in Germany, where "voices of anti-Semitism can be heard".
But, as ever, the main target of the new anti-Semitism campaign were audiences in the US, Israel's generous patron. There, members of the Israel lobby were turning into a chorus of doom.
In the early stages of the campaign, the lobby's real motivation was not concealed: it wanted to smother a fledgling debate by American civil society, particularly the churches and universities, to divest -- withdraw their substantial investments -- from Israel in response to Operation Defensive Shield.
In October 2002, after Israel had effectively reoccupied the West Bank, the ever-reliable Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League, lumped in critics who were calling for divestment from Israel with the new anti-Semites. He urged a new body established by the Israeli government called the Forum for Co-ordinating the Struggle against anti-Semitism to articulate clearly "what we know in our hearts and guts: when that line [to anti-Semitism] is crossed".
A fortnight later Foxman had got into his stride, warning that Jews were more vulnerable than at any time since the Second World War. "I did not believe in my lifetime that I or we would be preoccupied on the level that we are, or [face] the intensity of anti-Semitism that we are experiencing," he told the Jerusalem Post.
Echoing Netanyahu's warning, Foxman added that the rapid spread of the new anti-Semitism had been made possible by the communications revolution, mainly the internet, which was allowing Muslims to relay their hate messages across the world within seconds, infecting people around the globe.
It is now clear that Israel and its loyalists had three main goals in mind as they began their campaign. Two were familiar motives from previous attempts at highlighting a "new anti-Semitism". The third was new.
The first aim, and possibly the best understood, was to stifle all criticism of Israel, particularly in the US. During the course of 2003 it became increasingly apparent to journalists like myself that the American media, and soon much of the European media, was growing shy of printing even the mild criticism of Israel it usually allowed. By the time Israel began stepping up the pace of construction of its monstrous wall across the West Bank in spring 2003, editors were reluctant to touch the story.
As the fourth estate fell silent, so did many of the progressive voices in our universities and churches. Divestment was entirely removed from the agenda. McCarthyite organisations like CampusWatch helped enforce the reign of intimidation. Academics who stood their ground, like Columbia University's Joseph Massad, attracted the vindictive attention of new activist groups like the David Project.
A second, less noticed, goal was an urgent desire to prevent any slippage in the numbers of Jews inside Israel that might benefit the Palestinians as the two ethnic groups approached demographic parity in the area know to Israelis as Greater Israel and to Palestinians as historic Palestine.
Demography had been a long-standing obsession of the Zionist movement: during the 1948 war, the Israeli army terrorised away or forcibly removed some 80 per cent of the Palestinians living inside the borders of what became Israel to guarantee its new status as a Jewish state.
But by the turn of the millennium, following Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, and the rapid growth of the oppressed Palestinian populations both in the occupied territories and inside Israel, demography had been pushed to the top of Israel's policy agenda again.
During the second intifada, as the Palestinians fought back against Israel's war machine with a wave of suicide bombs on buses in major Israeli cities, Sharon's government feared that well-off Israeli Jews might start to regard Europe and America as a safer bet than Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. The danger was that the demographic battle might be lost as Israeli Jews emigrated.
By suggesting that Europe in particular had become a hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism, it was hoped that Israeli Jews, many of whom have more than one passport, would be afraid to leave. A survey by the Jewish Agency taken as early as May 2002 showed, for example, that 84 per cent of Israelis believed anti-Semitism had again become a serious threat to world Jewry.
At the same time Israeli politicians concentrated their attention on the two European countries with the largest Jewish populations, Britain and France, both of which also have significant numbers of immigrant Muslims. They highlighted a supposed rise in anti-Semitism in these two countries in the hope of attracting their Jewish populations to Israel.
In France, for example, peculiar anti-Semitic attacks were given plenty of media coverage: from a senior rabbi who was stabbed (by himself, as it later turned out) to a young Jewish woman attacked on a train by anti-Semitic thugs (except, as it later emerged, she was not Jewish).
Sharon took advantage of the manufactured climate of fear in July 2004 to claim that France was in the grip of "the wildest anti-Semitism", urging French Jews to come to Israel.
The third goal, however, had not seen before. It tied the rise of a new anti-Semitism with the increase of Islamic fundamentalism in the West, implying that Muslim extremists were asserting an ideological control over Western thinking. It chimed well with the post 9-11 atmosphere.
In this spirit, American Jewish academics like David Goldhagen characterised anti-Semitism as constantly "evolving". In a piece entitled "The Globalisation of anti-Semitism" published in the American Jewish weekly Forward in May 2003, Goldhagen argued that Europe had exported its classical racist anti-Semitism to the Arab world, which in turn was reinfecting the West.
"Then the Arab countries re-exported the new hybrid demonology back to Europe and, using the United Nations and other international institutions, to other countries around the world. In Germany, France, Great Britain and elsewhere, today's intensive anti-Semitic expression and agitation uses old tropes once applied to local Jews -- charges of sowing disorder, wanting to subjugate others -- with new content overwhelmingly directed at Jews outside their countries."
This theory of a "free-floating" contagion of hatred towards Jews, being spread by Arabs and their sympathisers through the internet, media and international bodies, found many admirers. The British neo-conservative journalist Melanie Philips claimed popularly, if ludicrously, that British identity was being subverted and pushed out by an Islamic identity that was turning her country into a capital of terror, "Londonistan".
This final goal of the proponents of "the new anti-Semitism" was so successful because it could be easily conflated with other ideas associated with America's war on terror, such as the clash of civilisations. If it was "us" versus "them", then the new anti-Semitism posited from the outset that the Jews were on the side of the angels. It fell to the Christian West to decide whether to make a pact with good (Judaism, Israel, civilisation) or evil (Islam, Osama bin Laden, Londonistan).
We are far from reaching the end of this treacherous road, both because the White House is bankrupt of policy initiatives apart from its war on terror, and because Israel's place is for the moment assured at the heart of the US administration's neoconservative agenda.
That was made clear last week when Netanyahu, the most popular politician in Israel, added yet another layer of lethal mischief to the neoconservative spin machine as it gears up to confront Iran over its nuclear ambitions. Netanyahu compared Iran and its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to Adolf Hitler.
"Hitler went out on a world campaign first, and then tried to get nuclear weapons. Iran is trying to get nuclear arms first. Therefore from that perspective, it is much more dangerous," Netanyahu told Israel's anti-terrorism policymakers.
Netanyahu's implication was transparent: Iran is looking for another Final Solution, this one targeting Israel as well as world Jewry. The moment of reckoning is near at hand, according to Tzipi Livni, Israel's foreign minister, who claims against all the evidence that Iran is only months away from posssessing nuclear weapons.
"International terrorism is a mistaken term," Netanyahu added, "not because it doesn't exist, but because the problem is international militant Islam. That is the movement that operates terror on the international level, and that is the movement that is preparing the ultimate terror, nuclear terrorism."
Faced with the evil designs of the "Islamic fascists", such as those in Iran, Israel's nuclear arsenal -- and the nuclear Holocaust Israel can and appears prepared to unleash -- may be presented as the civilised world's salvation.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. He is the author of the forthcoming "Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State" published by Pluto Press, and available in the United States from the University of Michigan Press. His website is www.jkcook.net
AMY GOODMAN:AMY GOODMAN: Mr. President Hugo Chavez, your assessment of president Bush, of the invasion and occupation of Iraq? And do you think if it weren't Iraq, it would have been Venezuela?
PRESIDENT HUGO CHAVEZ: The imperialist government of Mr. Bush planned. What is the U.S. government looking for? And the elite governing this country? They're looking for oil. This is part of the crisis that is looming in the horizon. You should know that the U.S., I already said this, 5% of the world population lives in this country and you consume 25% of the energy. That this consumption is partially rational, I am convinced that the U.S. people will wake up to the reality of things. Yesterday morning, we were coming from the airport for instance, it was the traffic jam time, it was very packed in the highway coming from the airport here. I talked to the people in my car, looked outside, looked at the cars surrounding us. Out of a hundred cars, ninety-nine were occupied by a single person, the driver only. Cars occupying the highways, and burning fuel, how many gallons of fuel were burned yesterday morning, polluting the environment? That's the extreme of individualism. And public transportation, we don’t see large buses coming from the airport here. So this is pure individualism, this is capitalism.
This planet cannot stand this model any longer. I think developed countries-- so-called developed countries should reflect upon the way of living and the waste of energy. And the government knows this. The big trans-nationals know this. The U.S. only has 20 billion barrels of oil in reserve. It seems as though there is no more oil around. Venezuela has 300 billion barrels of oil in reserves. Iraq has like 150 billion barrels of oil. Iran, close to 300 billion barrels of reserve. Oil for 200 years of course. Now, it is clear that the U.S. government wants that oil. That's why they planned, first they tried to get the Venezuelan oil and, of course the coup, they staged against us. That was an oil-motivated coup. They want to have the control over Venezuelan oil before going for the Iraq, for Iraq’s oil.
They failed in Venezuela. So they went to attack Iraq. And the soldiers. And when I saw on TV how they were broadcasting in the evening news of the tanks attacking Baghdad, advancing toward Baghdad, and they said the Baghdad population were going to receive the American marines with flowers. I said, those people are nuts. They're insane. These people have been combating for centuries. This is the Mesopotamian people. I know a little bit of the spirit of the Arab countries. Those are warriors, ten times more warriors than we are. They've been struggling in war for many centuries. They're going to receive, not with flowers, they're going to resist the occupation. That's the reality we are facing today. The U.S. government, they fooled the U.S. soldiers, telling them, no, its going to be a piece of cake, that your going to be received as heroes, that the Arabian girls will throw flowers at them. They are drowning in a quagmire of blood and it is very painful. That’s the risk that is hovering over the world today. They are now threatening Iraq. There are still threats over Venezuela. They still think about assassinating me. There are also plans to invade Venezuela. Now, when you know the way of thinking of those in the White House, any insanity is possible. Now, let me tell you this, if the imperialist government of the White House led an invasion against Venezuela, well, the war of 100 years will be unleashed in South America. Because with our teeth, with our nails with our knees, we will go to struggle and defend our dignity in South America. Now, I aspire and I pray to God that this will never occur. We want peace. We want life. We want to have eternal relations with these sisters countries, sister nations.
The U.S. people have a major role to play to solve, to save this planet. Because we're talking about the government. I was reading recently, Noam Chomsky, I read him very frequently. And in one of his most recent books, Chomsky, I would like very much to shake hands with Chomsky. I've been reading him for a while. I admire him enormously. The name of the book is “Hegemony or Survival” its what Rosa Luxemburg used to say, “socialism or barbarism.” We changed to Capitalism, and we’re going back to the caveman. Chomsky in his book, he says that two superpowers in this world and I was really shocked by that idea. I think he’s right after all. I think the key to save the world is one super power, this government? And it’s military power? Might? Fear? Technological might space power, economic might and so on. But what is the other superpower that could perhaps stop this government. That could even put an end to imperialism so we can have a true democracy to help the peoples of the world.
The U.S. Government which will be fully aware of the needs of Africa, the needs of the poor. Let's assume that we have a government here in the United States that overnight decides to cut in half the military expenses and withdraw the troops from around the world and declare it is the champion of peace of the world and declare itself an enemy of imperialism and then devote billions of dollars to the poor. Last year the defense budget was $400 billion in military defense. Just for one single year. One single year. For those $400 billion we can go to Africa, in the poor countries of Asia, in the Caribbean and Latin America, we can help them.
I’ve learned to appreciate the thinking of John Kennedy. John Kennedy once said, and that's why he was assassinated, listen to the South, he said once. The recent revolution going on in the south in Africa, in Asia, and Latin America. It was in the 1960's, where the people, the black power was raging. Che Guevara said, one, two, three, Japan, and Vietnam and Asia. The world was fed up with misery and inequities. As he said, the cause of all the revolution is poverty. And he said this sentence, today more than ever is valid, he said, those who shut down the doors to peaceful resolutions open the doors to violent revolutions. That's a reality. I do believe that the U.S. people – is the other super power that Noam Chomsky is referring to. What is the other super power? Public opinion. The peoples of the world. That's the other super power. And the U.S. People have a major responsibility in the world. I think that we're going to save the world. And I hope that you take part in this struggle in the same way we are doing today. And many other people, women and men in this country, in this soil.
AMY GOODMAN: Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez in a rare interview speaking with Democracy Now! and Pacifica Radio at the Venezuelan ambassador to the U.N.'s home in New York. Coming up, the president speaks about the Cuban, anti-Castro militant Luis Posada as well as the role of the media and the aborted coup against Chavez. This is Democracy Now! stay with us. [break]
MARGARET PRESCOD: President Chavez, speaking of the other super power, the Bush administration via Rumsfeld referred to you as a threat to the region. Many of us translating that on a grass root level assume that means that you're doing something that really rattles the Bush administration and means also that you're wildly popular in the region. Which we have seen. I want you to comment on two things. In relation to women and also the relationship between the middle class and the grassroots. You're the only president who has said that to deal with poverty, you have to give power to the poor, 70% of whom are women. Why did you say this? And how are you putting it into practice? And also in relation to the middle class and the grassroots of that relationship, some of us have often seen how middle class professionals who are used to being in charge, instead of putting their skills at the service of the grassroots, cling to power and keep the grassroots out. How are you addressing the class issue in Venezuela so that the movement here can learn from it?
PRESIDENT HUGO CHAVEZ: That's a very important issue you are raising there. Because you are touching the core, the very core of any transformation process. Beat reformists, beat revolutionaries, beat an abrupt process or aggressive process, moderate or radical. In any transformation process, social transformation process, economic transformation process, political-- is doomed to fail without the participation of the grassroots and the population. The people, the communities, they are like the fuel. They are the fuel of revolution, of the processes. Without them there's no revolution. It’s like water. It's just a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen. Or air, oxygen is important for this mixture to occur. That is why when you go to the plenary sessions of the U.N., I feel like oxygen is missing there. Because it is so removed from the reality of the people, of the needs of the people.
You ask me then, in the Bolivarian revolution, the role of the grassroots communities, the women and men, as well of course. But the grassroots and communities, their role is vital, and it’s more dynamic. It's very beautiful in the roles they have to play. Just to give you an idea of some of the experiences we have had in Venezuela. I leave for Venezuela this weekend. Next week we are going to have an event in Caracas with thousands of people who are part of the Urban Land Committee, the C.T.U. in Spanish. These committees of urban land are all over the country. They are in each neighborhood, poor neighborhood. You have a committee. The members of this committee should watch the whole neighborhood. And then they draft the map of the neighborhood. They go house by house, family by family and they assess all the problems. If they lack running water or if some of the houses are unstable and they could fall down. How many children they have. The schools. The health care system in the neighborhood and so on. So these are the urban land communities.
We also have the technical commissions of water. These technical commissions of water interact with the urban land committee. They take care of the water supply and also the sewage system. There are other technical groups to take care of energy supply, electricity supply especially. We have also the health committee. The rural land committees in the rural areas. We also have housing cooperatives. In large networks of grassroots organizations, as you know, in the constitution that we have drafted, in the government we foster these grassroots movements. Here we have been trying the democratic model. It is the revolutionary democracy. But it is not only a representative democracy. It is a participatory democracy and beyond that it is a fully and meaningful democracy. And Abraham Lincoln already said this: the government of the people, for the people and by the people. That what we say here is to transfer power to the people, especially the poorest of the poor. If you want to get rid of poverty, we need to empower the poor. Not to treat them like beggars. And this week we're going to give money, we’re going to give financial resources to these neighborhood committees, grassroots organizations, we’re going to give them technical resources, equipment, we are going to carry out the housing schemes, infrastructure schemes, water supply, electricity supply schemes. So this is a beautiful task we are conducting.
Because there, we are reducing to zero, the possibility of corruption because we give the money to the population themselves. And they put it in the bank, they help to make withdrawals and then execute the budget. They have to save some money also. And, of course, the money is to better used. They do the social oversight of the use of the moneys. Efficiency, because the work will profit them. It not a private company that is going to do the job and they take the profit and in the end the community is poorer than before.
And let me tell you this. In all these committees, cooperatives, the women play a major role. Without women there would be no revolution. Artists are never wrong when they paint revolution with the beautiful dress and with the sword. On the horse or by foot. Because revolution is a woman. A woman is the revolution. But the poverty also is the face of the woman. And the hopes is also woman. And nature is also woman. There will be no probability of success without the creative participation and the powerful participation of women.
MARGARET PRESCOD: Thank you.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Mr. President, there's no longer any doubt that the majority of the people in Venezuela support your government. But there are still those in Venezuela who say that you are using that majority support to stamp out the dissident views. Recently, I participated in a forum at Columbia University with Gustavo Cisnero, the head of Venevision, where he insisted that you are not allowing a free press to continue to function in Venezuela. I asked him, well what is the press of Venezuela doing organizing political coups? But I'd like you to talk about the role of the press in your democratic revolution and the importance of the press in general in communicating ideas to the mass of the people.
PRESIDENT HUGO CHAVEZ: Ignacio Ramonet recently wrote a piece called “The Media Dictatorship” because most of the media, not only in Venezuela but all over the world as well, they are in the hands of very powerful people. Very powerful economic people. For instance this person you refer to is a clear example of that. And he was one of the ones taking part in the coup in that time. And he use all his media power and all the private channels in Venezuela and all the media, the press, newspapers and private TV stations even succeeded in fooling the international public opinion for some time. They depicted me as a tyrant who massacred his people. The tyrant was defeated, was overthrown, was toppled. However, a few hours after that, the people who toppled the tyrant brought the tyrant back. So they were naked before the world, of course. So that is one of the problems the world is facing today, the media’s tyranny and that we have been denouncing around the world. However, at the same time we are very encouraged by the fact that we have excellent shows.
Every day the more the truth is being revealed in the Hurricane. I was watching CNN during the Katrina disaster, and you can see how the journalists-- I remember a lady who was in the eye of the hurricane, Inez Fered, I think the name of this lady. I watched a lot of TV at the time during Katrina. Well she started to interview people and telling the truth. And then another journalist, and they started to criticize the government for the way they reacted to the tragedy. So the powers could not silence the truth. Not even through CNN. And other media, large media. Now in Venezuela we have full freedom of the press. I doubt very much that there is any other country where freedom of the speech is so respected in Venezuela. For instance, Luis Zapatero, the president of the Spanish government, he arrived late, and I waited for him in the palace the next day. When he saw me, he told me, Chavez, I had many news about you and about freedom of speech. Now, this morning I saw two hours of TV shows. And I read the papers. I have no doubt in my mind that here you have full and total freedom of speech. And this will continue to be so. And all these rumors and attacks against us are totally untrue. And I think here in the United States you have a journalist in jail because she did not reveal her sources. This has never, in other parts of our history, never happened. Journalists who were in jail and journalists killed or persecuted. Today, there is total freedom Venezuela. This is part of the dynamic of the revolutionary democracy. And what the capitalists of the media do not forgive us, forgive the people because we have demonstrated that the people are fully aware of the reality defeat the media campaign.
You ask about the middle class. I forgot to mention the middle classes. This is important. The same struggles -- the same reality that was discovered openly in the world is touching today the middle class. In Venezuela, middle class’s current is appearing all over the country. And they are adding up. They are joining the process. After the coup there is this movement called middle class in positive this is a movement which is growing every day. When the medical doctors, the Cuban doctors arrived in Venezuela. The media launched a campaign against these Cuban doctors. And they succeeded in making the middle class to oppose the presence of the Cuban doctors in Venezuela. They succeeded in preventing Venezuelan doctors to join these health care schemes. It was insanity, total insanity. Today, however, we have thousands of Venezuelan doctors joining the Cuban doctors in these programs. We have dentists, ophthalmologists, and the “Into the Neighborhood” project, the health care program, today, two hundred million of doctors seeing patients in poor neighborhoods. We have twenty-five million people. It means that it’s four times the population. It’s like each Venezuelan has gone to the doctor four times, and these being free of charge procedures with the medication. The Venezuelan doctors today are joining this scheme. And together with Castro, we have signed an agreement to form, to train two hundred thousand doctors in ten years. To train them in South America, Africa and the U.S., social doctors, doctors who are not charging, those who are saving lives. People who are giving a lending hand to the poor. That’s the medical doctors we need. We have also started a project called “The Miracle Project,” and we put this project today to be at the disposal of the U.S. If you know someone – tomorrow when you show this broadcast this show and you have people who have eye problems and they cannot afford an eye surgery, please, go to the Venezuelan Consulate in the U.S. Go to the U.S. Embassy in Washington. Go to CITGO. We can guarantee the transportation of these people to Caracas and Havana free, totally free of charge. These people could undergo eye surgery. This year we have conducted close to 100,000 eye surgeries, cataracts. In children, when you do not operate these cataracts, they can go blind, cornea operations, estavism, myopia and many others. You wear glasses and you are writing pretty well, right? If you remove your glasses, you cannot read. It’s going to be difficult. The same thing. I am 51 years old. So I have problems with my eyes. I need glasses. There are people who cannot read because no one has told them that they should wear glasses. They don't have glasses to read – millions of human beings. So we have this plan with Fidel, and we have agreed to do this in the next 10 years, and we have already started, 2005 to 2015, we are going to operate to conduct eye surgery to a million people. 600,000 people per year. That's a miracle surgery. And that includes the U.S. people, especially the poorest of the poor. Help us to help these people who are suffering from eye diseases.
AMY GOODMAN: Mr. President, I know you have to go, but why are you calling for the extradition of Luis Posada to Venezuela?
PRESIDENT HUGO CHAVEZ: Well, you know that this gentleman – there is ample evidence that this guy is a terrorist, clear evidence that he took part and he masterminded, among many other terrorist attacks, in the blowing the Cuban plane that was coming from Barbados to Caracas. It was blown up, and 73 people died as a result of this terrorist attack. But also in Venezuela this person occupied a senior position in the political police force, and there are many evidences of tortures, of people missing as a result of his acts. It was in the 1960's and the 1970's. So this gentleman, Posada, was already condemned in Venezuela for the blowing of the plane. He was in jail, but he fled. He escaped with the connivance of friends in jail. So we have the duty, once we located him – and we located him here in the U.S. – well it is our duty to request that he is extradited to Venezuela because he is a murderer. He is an assassin. He's a terrorist. He's a very dangerous person. He has caused a lot of harm, and he could even cause more harm, by himself and in a network he is leading, because he is very active. If he were in jail, he would be the mastermind of the terrorist network that already took part in the coup attempt in Venezuela, like snipers for instance, they were sent to kill people. So they blame me for those deaths. So this person should be extradited in Venezuela.
BY ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN, Chicago Sun Times
Thirty-two years ago, President Gerald Ford created a political firestorm by pardoning former President Richard Nixon of all crimes he may have committed in Watergate -- and lost his election as a result. Now, President Bush, to avoid a similar public outcry, is quietly trying to pardon himself of any crimes connected with the torture and mistreatment of U.S. detainees.
The ''pardon'' is buried in Bush's proposed legislation to create a new kind of military tribunal for cases involving top al-Qaida operatives. The ''pardon'' provision has nothing to do with the tribunals. Instead, it guts the War Crimes Act of 1996, a federal law that makes it a crime, in some cases punishable by death, to mistreat detainees in violation of the Geneva Conventions and makes the new, weaker terms of the War Crimes Act retroactive to 9/11.
Press accounts of the provision have described it as providing immunity for CIA interrogators. But its terms cover the president and other top officials because the act applies to any U.S. national.
Avoiding prosecution under the War Crimes Act has been an obsession of this administration since shortly after 9/11. In a January 2002 memorandum to the president, then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales pointed out the problem of prosecution for detainee mistreatment under the War Crimes Act. He notes that given the vague language of the statute, no one could predict what future ''prosecutors and independent counsels'' might do if they decided to bring charges under the act. As an author of the 1978 special prosecutor statute, I know that independent counsels (who used to be called ''special prosecutors'' prior to the statute's reauthorization in 1994) aren't for low-level government officials such as CIA interrogators, but for the president and his Cabinet. It is clear that Gonzales was concerned about top administration officials.
Gonzales also understood that the specter of prosecution could hang over top administration officials involved in detainee mistreatment throughout their lives. Because there is no statute of limitations in cases where death resulted from the mistreatment, prosecutors far into the future, not appointed by Bush or beholden to him, would be making the decisions whether to prosecute.
To ''reduce the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act,'' Gonzales recommended that Bush not apply the Geneva Conventions to al-Qaida and the Taliban. Since the War Crimes Act carried out the Geneva Conventions, Gonzales reasoned that if the Conventions didn't apply, neither did the War Crimes Act. Bush implemented the recommendation on Feb. 7, 2002.
When the Supreme Court recently decided that the Conventions did apply to al-Qaida and Taliban detainees, the possibility of criminal liability for high-level administration officials reared its ugly head again.
What to do? The administration has apparently decided to secure immunity from prosecution through legislation. Under cover of the controversy involving the military tribunals and whether they could use hearsay or coerced evidence, the administration is trying to pardon itself, hoping that no one will notice. The urgent timetable has to do more than anything with the possibility that the next Congress may be controlled by Democrats, who will not permit such a provision to be adopted.
Creating immunity retroactively for violating the law sets a terrible precedent. The president takes an oath of office to uphold the Constitution; that document requires him to obey the laws, not violate them. A president who knowingly and deliberately violates U.S. criminal laws should not be able to use stealth tactics to immunize himself from liability, and Congress should not go along.
Elizabeth Holtzman, a former New York congresswoman, is co-author with Cynthia L. Cooper of The Impeachment of George W. Bush: A Practical Guide for Concerned Citizens.
On September 10 and 11, ABC is planning to air a “docudrama” called Path to 9/11, billed by writer Cyrus Nowrasteh as “an objective telling of the events of 9/11.”
The first night of Path to 9/11 has a dramatic scene where former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger refuses to give the order to the CIA to take out bin Laden — even though CIA agents, along with the Northern Alliance, have his house surrounded. Rush Limbaugh, who refers to Nowrasteh as “a friend of mine,” reviews the action:
So the CIA, the Northern Alliance, surrounding a house where bin Laden is in Afghanistan, they’re on the verge of capturing, but they need final approval from the Clinton administration in order to proceed.
So they phoned Washington. They phoned the White House. Clinton and his senior staff refused to give authorization for the capture of bin Laden because they’re afraid of political fallout if the mission should go wrong, and if civilians were harmed…Now, the CIA agent in this is portrayed as being astonished. “Are you kidding?” He asked Berger over and over, “Is this really what you guys want?”
Berger then doesn’t answer after giving his first admonition, “You guys go in on your own. If you go in we’re not sanctioning this, we’re not approving this,” and Berger just hangs up on the agent after not answering any of his questions.
ThinkProgress has obtained a response to this scene from Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism czar for Bush I, Clinton and Bush II, and now counterterrorism adviser to ABC:
1. Contrary to the movie, no US military or CIA personnel were on the ground in Afghanistan and saw bin Laden.
2. Contrary to the movie, the head of the Northern Alliance, Masood, was no where near the alleged bin Laden camp and did not see UBL.
3. Contrary to the movie, the CIA Director actually said that he could not recommend a strike on the camp because the information was single sourced and we would have no way to know if bin Laden was in the target area by the time a cruise missile hit it.
In short, this scene — which makes the incendiary claim that the Clinton administration passed on a surefire chance to kill or catch bin Laden — never happened. It was completely made up by Nowrasteh.
The actual history is quite different. According to the 9/11 Commission Report (pg. 199), then-CIA Director George Tenet had the authority from President Clinton to kill Bin Laden. Roger Cressy, former NSC director for counterterrorism, has written, “Mr. Clinton approved every request made of him by the CIA and the U.S. military involving using force against bin Laden and al-Qaeda.”
by Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!, and David Goodman
From the authors of the New York Times bestseller The Exception to the Rulers comes a new book that pushes back against official lies and spin and gives voice to the silenced majority.
In Static, the sister-brother team of Amy Goodman, journalist and host of the popular international TV and radio news show Democracy Now!, and investigative journalist David Goodman once again take on government liars, corporate profiteers, and the media that has acted as their megaphone. They expose how the Bush administration has manipulated and fabricated news and how the corporate media has worked hand in glove with the powerful to deceive the public. They report on the many people who have taken a stand and are fighting back, but whose stories go too often untold.
September 1st, 2006
Obligations
By Cindy Sheehan
I bought land in Crawford, TX to conduct our Camp Caseys until the horrendous nightmare of an occupation ends in Iraq or/and until our world no longer has to suffer under the Bush Regime. But our land will also be a permanent place for peace and as a bastion of hope and refuge for soldiers whether they want to be in the military or not.
So many other people have literally put their blood, sweat and tears into Camp Casey III and all of the previous Camp Caseys---wonderful peace activists who give up many days, but in most cases, many weeks to come to hot, sweaty, dry, and dusty Crawford, Texas to show BushCo, our country and our world, that there are people in our nation who love peace with freedom so much that they are willing to drop their own lives to make such things realities in our lifetimes.
Camp Casey has not received the media coverage that we enjoyed (or not) last summer---because Cut and Run George has spent less time in Crawford this year than Camp Casey has. For some reason, the media follows him.
All of our hard work and every penny that I have spent was made abundantly worthwhile today when Mark Wilkerson, a 22 year old Army Specialist out of Ft. Hood, who has been AWOL for 19 months heard our call of sanctuary and came to Camp Casey to spend his last few days of freedom before turning himself in to military authorities at Ft. Hood.
After one tour in Iraq, Mark decided that the war, which he initially supported was as illegal and immoral as he was hearing some people say. He tried very hard to go through the proper channels to attain Conscientious Objector status, but he was denied. So instead of being redeployed to Iraq for a 2 nd time, he decided to go AWOL.
He heard our call for sanctuary at Camp Casey and he came. He found a home and a new family who love and support him fully. Mark is anxious to pay whatever price he has to pay for his decision and then to work with us in the Camp Casey Peace Institute and in the peace field.
One question that I heard the media that were there ask him over and over again went something like this: "don't you feel that when you take an oath you have an obligation to fulfill?" Mark handled this question wonderfully stating that he also has an obligation to follow his own conscience. Knowing that this war is both illegal and immoral by all rational and sane standards, he could not morally participate in the war crimes and crimes against humanity forced on everyone by our lying leaders.
I watch a lot of news and I read reports of Bush's rare press conferences, and I have never seen any one ask George Bush the same question asked of Mark. The commander in chief did not fulfill his obligation during the Vietnam War. He was transferred to the Alabama Air National Guard, and despite a reward, that no one has come forward to claim saying anyone saw him there---he never reported for duty. I would like the same question asked of the president as was asked repeatedly of Wilkerson. How can he dare send a 22 year old Spc 4 to Iraq to fight, perhaps die and perhaps kill innocent people in a FUBAR excuse for a war, when he used all of his daddy's connections to get out of the FUBAR excuse of a war that his generation had to fight, die, and kill innocent people for?
Along with most of the Republican Senators, Congresspeople, Executive Branch, and Dick "I had other priorities" Cheney, I have no problem with anyone who did whatever they had to do to not go to Vietnam. What I surely do have a problem with is while they ran from the military industrial complex in the 60's and 70's they feed our children to the ravenous monster in the next century's first war for greed. Congress also abrogated its Constitutional responsibility to declare war and handed the keys to the war machine to an irresponsible deserter and his vice-draft dodger. Additionally, our commander in chief has an obligation to use his troops wisely---not recklessly and negligently. And what about the obligation to tell the truth to your country?
Instead of having the dubious "courage" of asking a brave young man full of integrity and honor the question of fulfilling an obligation, I would love for one of the press corps to ask the same question of Mark and Casey's commander in chief. George had all the advantages of his East Coast birth and daddy's wealth and cronies---so, he just didn't have to show up if he didn't want to. Mark did not have such advantages, he had to live in fear of discovery for over a year and a half. The rich always send the children of the poor to die to make themselves richer.
The peace movement needs to encourage all the soldiers to lay down their weapons and refuse to die or kill innocent people for the cowards in DC and the war machine. We as peace people need to support them with our moral support and monetary support so they feel comfortable doing so. We as peace people need to work on stopping the next war and work on giving families information and alternatives to their children putting on the uniform of the war profiteers. College is too expensive and they have no jobs in their communities, we need to wrest away money from the War Department and give it back to our future: our children.
War will only continue if we keep giving our kids to the war machine to chew up and spit out for their wicked profits.
To find more information on how to help young people get out of going to a war, please go to The GI Rights Hotline.
To find more information on obtaining C.O. Status please go to the Conscientious Objectors Web Site.
To find more information about alternatives to joining the military, please go to American Friends' Service Committee.
I wish I had all of this info before my oldest child came home in a body bag.
An ass kicking isn't just getting bitch slapped, it's getting viciously, relentlessly pummeled to the point where you are forever changed.
To get a handle on how badly
" type="hidden"> SEARCHOsama Bin laden, enraged by U.S. efforts to dominate Middle Eastern governments, culture and economics dating back decades, flips his lid when secular
" type="hidden"> SEARCHNeo Cons and conservatives like Bill O'Reilly interpret "driven from the Middle East" to mean "wiped off the face of the earth." You don't wipe 25% of the world's oil market- the economic engine driving explosive growth in oil consumption- off the face of the earth if you come from the Royal Family of Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden correctly recognizes Arabs "can't drink the oil." The petroleum industry is the life blood of the Middle East. The fact that America still exists given the vulnerabilities this country faces five years after 9/11 tells you what Al Qaeda wants.
Bin Laden's only way to reduce American influence in the Middle East is to make the cost of dominating the region outweigh the benefit. Bin Laden realizes he can't bankrupt the U.S. with just one attack. America is too vast and strong and supported for even a massive terror attack to create the sustained economic blood letting required to get the U.S. to quit the Middle East. While devastating, any single attack will only wake a sleeping giant, making further attacks on U.S. soil harder and harder to pull off. Each subsequent gashing will be smaller and less effective, only making it harder to bleed America from within. However Bin Laden believes if 9/11 comes off as planned the U.S. will invade
" type="hidden"> SEARCHBin Laden said to anyone listening he wants to get the U.S. military en masse in the Middle East. Today's
" type="hidden"> SEARCHNovember 2000. The newly elected Neo Con compliments AQ plans quite nicely. Bin Laden knows Neo Con Nation, obsessed with a morality only they understand, wants to use U.S. military power to re-create the world in the likeness of George Bush, especially in the Middle East. Perfect. An attack on the U.S. is far more likely to result in an Afghan invasion with Neo Cons in power. Al Qaeda desperately wants Neo Cons to go for the brass ring. Today Cheney says Ned Lamont's victory emboldens Al Qaeda types. No no no no no. Al Qaeda loves a good Neo Con. Only a Neo Con would invade Iraq after 9/11 and let Afghanistan turn to shit.
Neo Cons believe a zero tolerance confrontational policy will get Radical Islam to re-think their extremist/terrorist tactics and force moderate Muslims to rise up against their radical governments creating a democracy domino effect that will justify all American activities in the Middle East and make the world happy and safe and lovely. Bin Laden knows nothing of the sort will happen. I have no idea why Neo Cons would believe such a thing. There is absolutely no evidence to support this theory. When Muslims, moderates, radicals, whoever, are pushed into a corner they do not shrink and get all shocked and awed and become introspective and go for long morning walks and read Emerson under a tree and mull things over. They swarm like killer bees.
And that's not just crazy ass radical Islam jihad freaks. Anybody would do the same. In 1941 did Americans re-think their policies and overthrow their government after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor? Did the English do anything of the kind during Hitler's blitzkreig? Did the North Vietnamese reconsider communism as American B-52's streaked across their skies? Did North Vietnamese peasants rise up against their leaders after fifteen years of intense almost daily bombing? They weren't interested in hitching their wagons to American wealth. They were under attack. They didn't say "Thank GOD the Americans are attacking us! Now we can drive Buicks!" They moved into rat holes and hung pictures. In 1939 Polish foot soldiers, some of whom were armed only with wooden swords, rushed Hitler's tanks. Presumably they were not caught up in some kind of agonizing reappraisal of their national identity as they went into battle. Nobody has ever responded to an attack the way Neo Cons predicted radical Islam would behave in the face of Shock and Awe. All you smart asses out there are thinking "what about the French?" Fine. But which Muslims, which terrorists, exactly, did Bush and Cheney think were going to get shocked and awed into buying Derek Jeter jerseys? Neo Cons have a serious reality problem resulting in one strategic and tactical disaster after another. If insanity is any distance from reality, Neo Cons are insane. Remember wealth and insanity are not mutually exclusive.
Ten days after Bush is elected, according to former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, Bush decides to invade Iraq, telling his staff to "find a way to do it." Seeing the preparations taking place all around them, Al Qaeda knows Bush is going to invade Iraq years before he does and possibly whether or not 9/11 succeeds. Plenty of time for Bin Laden to plan, recruit, raise money and stockpile weapons.
At first Al Qaeda is stunned Bush wants Iraq- it plays right into their hands- they never expected such good fortune. From the AQ point of view Iraq is a perfect opportunity to bleed America. The U.S. had just finished neutralizing Hussein in the first Gulf War, and had kept him in check since.
" type="hidden"> SEARCH
Vice President Cheney said on 9/16/01 that Saddam Hussein was not a threat. He said, "Saddam Hussein is bottled up."
The U.S. invading a neutralized oil rich Islamic country with nothing to do with the 9/11 would make it easy for Al Qaeda to claim America did not care for peace or the lives of Arabs but wanted only oil and regional dominance. The world will no doubt support the Afghanistan invasion. Fuck 'em. But Invading Iraq will wash away the sympathy 9/11 will create for America. AQ recruitment will sky-rocket.
Hussein's defenses are no match for American power. That's the good news. The U.S. will establish its presence quickly and permanently- we're building at least twelve permanent military bases in Iraq. That will create plenty of hugely expensive targets. A U.S. invasion will provide an opening into Iraq Al Qaeda and Iran could not create while Hussein was in power. Taking out Hussein did Bin Laden a favor. No doubt Bin Laden has sent Bush a number of expensive thank you cards over the years.
Al Qaeda plans on exploiting five sources of anti-U.S. terror In Iraq: 1) Themselves, 2) the Ba'athists, 3) Iran, 4) Iraqi religious tensions, and 5) Civil War. Al Qaeda knows if they are to be defeated in the Middle East the U.S. will have to kill every last Al Qaeda soldier. Not likely given the recruiting bonanza AQ will have after the invasion. To overcome internal resistance in Iraq they'll have to kill many thousands of innocent people, turning average citizens against U.S. forces. Ba'ath loyalists will work to ruin Bush's post war plans in any possible way they can. To stop Iran's interference Bush will have to invade Iran and do to it what the U.S. and the Soviets did to Germany in World War 2, requiring decades, trillions of dollars and millions of deaths. Iraq has a huge border with Iran, unlike New York City, making it far easier to carry out attacks on U.S. assets. Iraq is nearly bursting with repressed religious hatreds going back hundreds of years, and is held together only by Hussein. Marines who are trained only to kill will have to manage these tensions in order to prevent all out civil war without using Hussein's iron fist tactics. It is easy to see they will fail. Once it is clear the US can't keep a lid on things civil war will explode, further draining U.S. resources. The U.S. will be forced to stay and bleed or cede Iraq to Iran.
If Bush invades Iraq, AQ and Iran will have more targets than ever before, more and better access to those targets, and they will use less resources more efficiently. AQ will be able to count on considerable local support, and will operate with little or no interference of the type found in the U.S. such as a wary, alert public, electronic surveillance and those pesky
" type="hidden"> SEARCHThe biggest Al Qaeda asset in any U.S. invasion, however, will be Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsy's lean and mean military philosophy will make sure U.S. forces are tired, stretched thin, over worked, constantly under pressure, doing jobs they are not trained to do and exposed to violence - terror - hello - on a daily basis.
For some inexplicable reason, this dreary nightmare scenario is where Bush wants to be. It seems to Al Qaeda Bush is actually cooperating with their plans. Bin Laden knows as early as February of 2000 that it will be impossible for the U.S. to create a functional democratic oil producing Iraqi government. While Afghanistan held little hope to hurt the U.S., Iraq's realities promise great things for Al Qaeda.
9/11/2001. Things go about as well for Al Qaeda as they could hope.
Soon thereafter Bush, rightly, invades Afghanistan. 90% of Americans and most of the world is with him. Bush botches the job. The Taliban gets bitch slapped, but he doesn't kick ass- he goes in late with too few forces and lets Bin Laden escape. Soon Al Qaeda and The Taliban will re-assert themselves.
Within days after 9/11 Bush begins pushing for an invasion of Iraq. Bush takes Al Qaeda's bait hook line and sinker, as if Bush was following an Al Qaeda script. Bin Laden is amazed the US is falling into the trap so easily. Bush talks "Shock And Awe", as if defeating Hussein's army and the Republican Guard will be the main obstacle to securing Iraq, completely ignoring the fact that terrorists don't want to hitch their wagons to U.S. power and will wreak havoc. Only a small occupying force will be in their way. US media makes bold predictions that Iraq will fall in weeks and months. Bonus! Al Qaeda wins yet another psychological advantage: since Bush lets America believe a quick, easy, cheap victory is likely, enormous frustration and resentment will arise when Al Qaeda unleashes waves of self sustaining violence and brings re-construction to a halt.
Bush says the sale of Iraqi oil will pay for turning Iraq into a model democracy, which means the U.S. won't be budgeting money for the occupation. Al Qaeda now knows exactly how to drain the U.S. treasurey and that their efforts will work. Cheney says "greeted as liberators"- which means US officials, incredibly, do not expect the insurgency Al Qaeda and Iran are working towards- yet another advantage. The U.S. will have an inadequate plan to suppress the insurrection. Al Qaeda is positively drooling in anticipation.
The White House insists invading Iraq will make America safer. Why? Because somehow we'll fight Al Qaeda there and not here. Bringing Al Qaeda into Iraq was Bush's plan all along. Guess what Iraq? I'm gonna bring all the worlds' terrorists to your front yard so they aren't in America. No doubt the Iraqi people were thrilled. What a sickening, cowardly, stupid strategy. Bush expected Iraqis to put up with an onslaught of terrorism so terrorists who've spent years embedding themselves in Amercia at enormous risk and expense will uproot themselves and head to Iraq? Nonsense. Even if Al Qaeda wanted to abandon access to trillions of dollars worth of U.S. assets in America to stop an invasion they desperately want, there is no world wide terrorist defensive coordinator moving operatives around like chess pieces. Little Osama didn't grow up playing football. Bin Laden provides strategy, tactics, training, money and equipment, tells his operatives to do their worst as best they can then sets them loose. He's not even in contact with most of them. There are plenty of Al Qaeda soldiers in the Middle East ready to bleed American forces- none from the U.S. would be needed. Iraqis knew as Bush rolled into Baghdad they'd be flooded with terrorists and the U.S. would gain nothing in return. Yet another recruiting advantage for Bin Laden. Today Bush actually wonders why Iraqis aren't grateful for his many gifts to the Iraqi people, like tearing down Hussein's statues. We're fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq all right, but Al Qaeda never left America. We could not have more inept leadership if a cold, greasy bag of freedom fries sat in the Oval Office.
Bin Laden tries to keep his excitement contained- a U.S. invasion of Iraq is a long shot, he figures, incorrectly assuming the U.S. can still act in its best interests. After all, from a U.S. strategic point of view it makes no sense. Surely Americans will see an Iraqi invasion plays to Al Qaeda's strengths. Bush can be counted on to exploit America for his own ends, but what about the U.S. Congress? Will they roll over?
March 2003. The US invades Iraq validating Al Qaeda in the eyes of many Muslims. Bin Laden's dream comes true. He is convinced Allah put Bush in office to bring down America- or is in posession of his body- or something! There must be some explanation for how stupid the U.S. has become. Osama now has access to the U.S. military in not one but two theaters he controls and finally can do something he could never do with Hussein in power- overrun Iraq. As expected, the world, seeing no Iraqi connection to 9/11, does not like the invasion. Even the countries that actually go along with Bush have small percentages of their populations actually supporting the war. The U.S. will be going in alone for all practical purposes.
Things continue to break Al Qaeda's way with stunning ease. Al Qaeda doesn't have to do much of their own killing and dying to put a serious hurt on Uncle Sam- Baath loyalists are fierce, dedicated and unrelenting, do most of the dirty work and require little motivating. Meanwhile sectarian divisions in Iraq fester and boil over without much provocation. Iraqis fight themselves using up more and more U.S. resources that would otherwise be used in Afghanistan and Pakistan to kill Al Qaeda, just as the State Department predicted. The US is now mostly unfocused on Al Qaeda.
Radical Iran, backed by China and largely ignored by wait and see Russia, swoops into Iraq bolstering radical elements and destroying US troops and resources as planned. Al Qaeda has no trouble getting its soldiers into the Iraqi police force and mililtary. Had Bush not disbanded the Iraqi military it would have been much harder to infiltrate. Could this be going any better, Osama asks himself? Now with the war actually on they can recruit, train, secure their supply routes and sources, collect on monies promised in the event Bush invades and stockpile their weapons as other forces drag down the U.S. Ignoring reality, or insane, Cheney says the insurgency is in its last throws.
Al Qaeda goes about re-establishing themselves in Afghanistan and Pakistan with new recruits, money, weapons and updated tactics. Afghanistan rebounds Al Qaeda's way so they begin fomenting simoultaneous unrest all over Iraq. Whenever the US cleans out a city, Al Qaeda, Iran or Iraqi insurgents swoop back in when the exausted troops leave and reestablish themselves easy as pie. The US is constantly moving, stretching, reconquering and rebuilding, exausting its troops physically and emotionally.
By 2004 America is perfectly positioned to bleed to death. "Bring it on!" says Bush as if he is in a position of strength. AQ pours now abundant resources into Afghanistan while the US struggles to keep enough soldiers on the ground as recruitment levels drop and budget deficits sky rocket, further indebting the US to the Chinese. The civil war is now so apparent even Bush has to address the issue. Bush's policies, which delivered the mighty US into the hands of Al Qaeda and Iran, lose credibility, weakening the US's ability to fight a focused, cogent war on terror as Americans debate what to do next.
By July, 2005 Al Qaeda has succeeded in withstanding the best blow the US has to offer (Iraq???) and has come out the other side financially, strategically and spiritually stronger than before, all without expending significant resources. Re-taking Afghanistan is only a matter of time. The mighty US is tied up in a quagmire, weakened and confused. Who'd have thought it would be so easy?
Katrina hits. The entire U.S. Government is focused on Iraq. The national guard is in Iraq. Bin Laden thinks Allah has finally started kicking Great Satan ass. Bush is too blind to recognize he must either admit defeat and let Iran have Iraq or break his country's back. Once he entered Iraq Bush lost everything.
July 2006
With the U.S. neutralized Iran is free to begin their long awaited assault on Israel.
Iran encourages Hezbollah to increase the pressure on Israel, Israel defends itself, Iran fans the flames. The now dramatically impotent US watches with frustration. "Send Kofi down there to straighten things out..." says a dazed, impotent Bush. If the US stretches its resources to try and handle Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel simoultaneously, Iran will have its way with all three. If the US does nothing to help Israel, Israel dies. If the US fully commits its armed forces to the Middle East then
" type="hidden"> SEARCHAt this point the Bush ass kicking has reached the stage where he's losing consciousness. His legs are rubber and his eyes are rolling up in his head, unfocused and empty. His arms uselessly flail at shadows. He's about to drop, and when he does, that's when the real pummeling will start. Since he is the world wide cop there is no one to stop him from getting beat to death.
China financed our $9 trillion budget deficit and continues to pay for our war as they support elements that drain away the money we borrow, forcing us deeper into their debt. China can cut off the cash spigot and pull the plug on our war anytime they want, or dig us deeper into debt by further destabilizing the middle east through Iran. They can violate our intellectual properties, rip off our products, undercut us everywhere, and we'll just have to like it. They have us by the balls. Its as if Bush, like the Manchurian Candidate, is a Chinese puppet put in place to insure Chinese ascendancy. He's either that or the worst geo-political strategist of all time. The Chinese ambassador to the U.S. recently told Rumsfeld to "shut up" about Chinese defense spending. Rummy did just that. Within 50 years the President of The United States will be a Chinese puppet the way the Shah of Iran was once our puppet.
Today Al Qaeda thinks they can break our back by pressuring our allies to withdraw economic and military support. That is why we haven't seen any significant attack pan out on our shores since 9/11. It's got nothing to do with Bush's inept wire tapping bullshit. However, if this approach does not begin to bear fruit soon Bin Laden will refocus his resources directly on us. At that point we'll be in for a rough ride.
George Bush, your ass is being thoroughly kicked. And it's not over yet. Not for you, not for the next President, and not for America.
