Friday, July 02, 2004

BUSH OR KERRY: IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE

Haaretz: Kerry position paper outlines support for Israel

WASHINGTON - In a position paper outlining his stance on Israel, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry promises not to negotiate with Yasser Arafat and expresses support for Israel's right to defend itself by attacking terrorist organizations

The paper, entitled "John Kerry: Strengthening Israel's Security and Bolstering the U.S.-Israel Special Relationship," was sent in mid-June to a group of people in the Jewish community as part of the Kerry attempt to maintain contact with Jewish supporters in the United States and to clarify his positions on Israel.

Kerry, who previously spoke against the separation fence at a gathering of the Arab-American Institute, is now seeking to correct that impression: "The security fence is a legitimate act of self-defense erected in response to the wave of terror attacks against Israeli citizens."

PROPAGANDA WATCH: IRAK, HALABJA 1988

VIDEO Part 1: CIA Analysis: The Predicament Mr. Bush And The Pentagon Have Gotten US Into
CIA analyst Stephen Pelletiere (ret. prof at the Army War College) says that after Desert Storm, when Iraq refused to bow to US. pressure, holding out against American dominance, George W. Bush fabricated the present crisis so as to, once and for all, beat the Iraqis into submission - to control oil..."
Recorded. Jan. 29, 2003; part 1 of a 2 parts: 16 min

Video Part 2: Q & A With CIA Analyst Stephen Pelletiere

Retired Army War College prof. and CIA analyst (6 years) answers questions ranging from the gassing of the Kurds in Halabja [Iraq was not responsible, nor was it genocide by the Iranians], to Israel's push for war on Iraq; and the "chief enemy of the peace movement, the media."

(Note to webmasters: Please do not hot link to this video file. This Is a privately funded and reader supported

PROPAGANDA WATCH: IRAK, HALABJA 1988

Toronto Star: Did Saddam Hussein Gas His Own People?
Reality Checks Needed During War

No doubt, Saddam has mistreated Kurds during his rule. But it's misleading to say, so simply and without context, that he killed his own people by gassing 5,000 Kurds at Halabja

Halabja (pop. 80,000) is a small Kurdish city in northern Iraq. On Wednesday, the Star reminded readers that Saddam Hussein's Iraqi army killed 5,000 Kurds in a 1988 chemical weapons attack on Halabja near the end of a bloody, eight-year war with Iran.

The statement that Saddam was responsible for gassing the Kurds — his own people — was straightforward.

Indeed, U.S. President George W. Bush has used similar language about the disaster at Halabja in making a case for a military strike to oust Saddam.

Yet the Star also reported, in a Jan. 31 Opinion page column, that there's reason to believe the story about Saddam "gassing his own people" at Halabja may not even be true

Let's fast-forward to Jan. 31 of this year, when The New York Times published an opinion piece by Stephen C. Pelletiere, the CIA's senior political analyst on Iraq during the 1980s.

In the article, Pelletiere said the only thing known for certain was that "Kurds were bombarded with poison gas that day at Halabja. We cannot say with any certainty that Iraqi chemical weapons killed the Kurds."

Pelletiere said the gassing occurred during a battle between Iraqis and Iranians.

The former CIA official revealed that immediately after the battle the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency investigated and produced a classified report that said it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds.



NEW LAYOUT

The Blog is undergoing some changes in the design.
I try to make it a bit more readable. There may be some more changes
in the coming days
"FREE" IRAQ

Guardian: US will override Baghdad in war on terrorism
Military strikes may continue, warns general

American commanders will risk launching high-profile military actions at targets in Iraq even if they go directly against the wishes of the new Iraqi government, a senior US general said yesterday.
Lieutenant General Thomas Metz, the second most senior American officer in Iraq and the force's tactical operations commander, said the US military was prepared to risk provoking "friction" with the new government in strikes against "professional terrorists".



VIDEO: MIDDLE EAST NEWS

Mosic TV: Mosaic: World News Reports From Middle East TV For 06/30/04

The nation's only uncensored compilation of daily television news reports from more than 15 countries in the Middle East. QuickTime Video.
IRAQ: SADDAM TRIAL

The Independent: No mention of power cuts and violence at trial of the century by Robert Fisk

Now it is time for bread and circuses. Keep the people distracted. Show them Saddam. Remind them what it used to be like. Make them grateful. Make Saddam pay. Show his face once more across the world so that his victims will think about the past, not the present. Charge him. Before the full majesty of Iraq's new "democratic" law. And may George Bush win the next American election.

That's pretty much how it looked from Baghdad yesterday. Forget the 12-hour power cuts and the violence and the kidnappings and the insurgency. Let's go back again to the gruesome days of Baathist rule, let's revisit once more the theatre of cruelty - back to all those war crimes and crimes against humanity with which the Monster will be charged. Let's take another look at Tariq Aziz and "Chemical" Ali and the rest. Isn't this why we came to Iraq - to rescue the Iraqis from the Beast of Baghdad?

"CHECK IT"
IRAQ: SADDAM TRIAL

Guardian: A show trial
The trial of Saddam is a distraction tactic that will do nothing to stop the growing Iraqi resistance, argues George Galloway

Today is the start of a show trial. It's intended to deflect attention from the absolute failure of the occupation to either get the electricity and water back on, still less to subdue the Iraqi resistance - which is giving them a bloody good hiding all over the country. I think it will fail in that regard, just as the capture of Saddam Hussein last December failed.

The dog that did not bark is the Iraqi invasion of Iran, with which - lo and behold - Saddam is not to be charged. Why? Because he invaded Iran at the behest of the US and Britain. He fought the Iranian army and attacked the Iranian cities - and the civilians within them - with weapons given to him by Britain and America and with maps supplied personally by Donald Rumsfeld. The trial could scarcely cover the invasion of a foreign country by Iraq in which a million people died when we would have to be indicted as co-conspirators.

IRAQ WAR: PROPAGANDA WATCH

Columbia Journalism Review: How Chalabi Played the Press
Judith Miller is on it, but she’s hardly alone. Ahmad Chalabi’s defectors told stories to a lot of reporters who now wish they’d kept their distance
NEW IRAQ: SADDAM

The Australian: It's illegal: top defence lawyer

THE group of Arab and foreign lawyers engaged to defend Saddam Hussein has ignited a furious debate over the legality of the special Iraqi tribunal, and claims the process will inevitably lead to the former dictator's conviction and execution.

Even before Saddam and 11 former Iraqi officials appeared in court last night to face war crimes charges, Mohammad Rashdan, lead lawyer in the 20-strong defence team, condemned the tribunal as "illegal and unjust".

The Jordanian lawyer's team, which includes US academic Curtis Doebbler, French barrister Emmanuel Ludot, Swiss lawyer Marc Henzelin, and leading British lawyer Giovanni Di Stefano, has been hired by Sajida Khairallah, Saddam's first wife, and their three daughters, to defend the former president
NEW IRAQ: SADDAM

Freerepublic: Defiant Saddam Rejects War Crimes Charges

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A defiant Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) rejected charges of war crimes and genocide against him in a court appearance Thursday, telling a judge "this is all theater, the real criminal is Bush," according to a reporter in an official media pool.

Saddam's hands were cuffed when he was brought to the court but the shackles were removed for the 30-minute arraignment at Camp Victory, a former Saddam palace on the outskirts of Baghdad.

"I am Saddam Hussein, the president of Iraq," Saddam twice said, according to the CNN reporter, who described him as alternately downcast and defiant. Other times, he appeared confused

Thursday, July 01, 2004

NEW IRAQ

Truth Out: Embracing Saddam-Lite

Poor Mr. Bush. Like bad sex, his hurried consummation of Iraq's mini-sovereignty left everything to be desired. Only a handful of people celebrated the occasion, while his Baghdad stand-in Jerry Bremer could hardly wait to jet away from the chaos he had conjured.

No wonder the ex-Viceroy ran. Over 150,000 American soldiers and mercenaries remain, with talk in Washington of many more to come. Halliburton, Bechtel, and other GOP corporate donors rapidly construct American military bases throughout Iraq, slowly rebuild the country's utilities, and effectively run both the oil fields and local media. Hand-picked Iraqis only front the show, their power tightly curbed by decrees, contracts, and secret understandings that Bremer put in place before he fled. Sovereignty is bliss, Sweetheart, but is that all there is?

How clever Washington was, the official spin-masters tell us. By holding the formal transition two days early, Team Bush wrong-footed an expected terrorist attack, Perhaps they did. But only willing fools - like ABC's Peter Jennings, who graced the event - played along with the overweening pretense. Iraqis who still oppose the suddenly "non-occupying" American troops will easily find their targets, chief among them Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and other interim leaders, who appear to many as collaborators selling out their country to the Yanks.

NEW IRAQ

MSNBC: Dictator-in-Waiting?

Iraq’s new prime minister will do whatever needs doing to impose order on the current chaos. Let’s not pretend he’s a nascent democrat

Wednesday, June 30, 2004

USA: PROPAGANDA WATCH

Washington Post: FRANK TALK

A leaked memo by Republican advisor Frank Luntz advises GOP
politicians to avoid the words "preemption" and "war in Iraq" when
talking about the Bush administration's pre-emptive war in Iraq.
"To do so is to undermine your message from the start," he advises.
"Your efforts are about 'the principles of prevention and
protection' in the greater 'War on Terror.'" Luntz also recommends
that "No speech about homeland security or Iraq should begin
without a reference to 9/11."
PR WATCH

New York Times: More Demand for Guerilla Marketing

LOOK at this as an art form," said Helen Wallace MacDonald, an energetic "field agent" in a guerrilla marketing street team, as she searched a Manhattan subway station for places to affix static-cling stickers that promote Le Tigre apparel. "I'm serious," she said.

Soon Ms. MacDonald, 25, found an outlet, smoothing the Tigre logo - a sprinting tiger - over part of an ad for a temporary Target store in Bridgehampton, N.Y.

The stickers are easily removed, but Le Tigre is banking on this guerrilla campaign to leave a mark on the minds of young, trend-conscious consumers.

In doing so, Le Tigre joins the front line of guerrilla marketing, a broad range of advertising methods that strives to strike when people least expect it. Though publicity stunts have been turning heads forever, mainstream marketers are increasingly turning to guerrilla tactics as consumers prove more difficult to reach with traditional advertising
MICROSOFT: PROPAGANDA WATCH

Deltoid: When Think Tanks Attack

Australian blogger Tim Lambert has taken a closer look at some of
the think tanks that have emerged as critics of open source
software, which threatens Microsoft's position in the marketplace.
"Why are all these think tanks so down on Open Source?" Lambert
asks. "Well, the Small Business Survival Committee is concerned
that using open source will expose small business to the risk of
lawsuits. Citizens Against Government Waste is concerned that the
Government might waste money on Open Source. Defenders of Property
Rights is concerned that Open Source might be a threat to
intellectual property rights. However, I was able to detect a
common theme to all their criticism. They all seem to be funded by
Microsoft." Lambert also notes that many of them, such as the
Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, have participated in previous
campaigns to deny the dangers of tobacco and global warming, while
receiving funding from the tobacco and fossil fuel industries.
PROPAGANDA WATCH

Antiwar: The 'Prop-Agenda' at War

In their widely quoted book Weapons of Mass Deception, Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber argued in 2003 that the U.S. government
used the shock of the 9/11 attacks to justify an invasion of Iraq.
Bush counter-terrorism coordinator Richard Clarke further denounces
President George Bush for using the attacks as a pretext for the
war in his book Against All Enemies published last March. For
propaganda expert Nancy Snow ... 'if war is the paint, then
propaganda is the paint primer that makes possible the total
devotion of the public to the just cause of the state in wartime.'

When on April 9, 2003 the statue of Saddam was finally brought down
in Baghdad's Firdos Square, U.S. media commentators rushed to assign
iconic connotations to the toppling, ranking it alongside the fall of
the Berlin Wall or the protesters opposing tanks at Tiananmen Square.

"Jubilant Iraqis Swarm the Streets of Capital," Rampton and Stauber quoted
The New York Times as saying. The main papers and television channels in
the U.S. showed the same scene and proffered similar comments.

But a BBC photo sequence of the statue's fall displayed a sparse crowd of
approximately 200 people, they observe; a Reuters long-shot photo of
Firdos Square showed that it was nearly empty, sealed off by U.S. tanks.

USA: MEDIA WATCH

Washington Post: THE ENEMY PRESS

After New York Times reporter Eric Lichtblau wrote a story
reporting that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had collected
extensive information on antiwar demonstrators, FBI spokeswoman
Cassandra Chandler sent around a memo urging agency officials to
"please avoid providing information to this reporter," and the
Justice Department revoked his press credentials.
PROPAGANDA WATCH: IRAQ HANDOVER

Juan Cole: POWER PLAY
The "handover of power" to Iraq is "a publicity stunt and has
almost no substance to it," says Middle East history professor Juan
Cole. "Gwen Ifill said on US television on Sunday that she had
talked to Condaleeza Rice, and that her hope was that when
something went wrong in Iraq, the journalists would now grill
Allawi about it rather than the Bush administration. (Or words to
that effect.) Ifill seems to me to have given away the whole Bush
show. That's what this whole thing is about. It is Public Relations
and manipulation of journalists. Let's see if they fall for it."


Tuesday, June 29, 2004

NEW "DEMOCRATIC" IRAQ

NEW YORK TIMES: Who Lost Iraq? By PAUL KRUGMAN

The formal occupation of Iraq came to an ignominious end yesterday with a furtive ceremony, held two days early to foil insurgent attacks, and a swift airborne exit for the chief administrator. In reality, the occupation will continue under another name, most likely until a hostile Iraqi populace demands that we leave. But it's already worth asking why things went so wrong.

The Iraq venture may have been doomed from the start — but we'll never know for sure because the Bush administration made such a mess of the occupation. Future historians will view it as a case study of how not to run a country.

Up to a point, the numbers in the Brookings Institution's invaluable Iraq Index tell the tale. Figures on the electricity supply and oil production show a pattern of fitful recovery and frequent reversals; figures on insurgent attacks and civilian casualties show a security situation that got progressively worse, not better; public opinion polls show an occupation that squandered the initial good will.
VIDEO: MIDDLE EAST NEWS

Mosaic TV: World News Reports From Middle East TV For 06/28/04:

The nation's only uncensored compilation of daily television news reports from more than 15 countries in the Middle East. QuickTime Video.
NEW "DEMOCRATIC" IRAQ

Guardian: Iraqis have lived this lie before
The British transfer of sovereignty in the 20s was equally meaningless

In Iraq, we have an expression: same donkey, different saddle. Iraq's long-heralded interim government has now formally assumed sovereignty. Official labels and tags have duly changed. The US administrator will now be an ambassador, while Sheikh Ghazi al Yawar and Iyad Allawi, US-appointed members of the former governing council, are to be known as president and prime minister.
To formalise the change, the UN has already issued a resolution under which "multinational forces" will replace "US-led forces". On the issue of control over US troops, the message is clear: the US forces are there to stay only because "Iraqi people" has asked them to. But which Iraqi people? Do they mean the new administration headed by the CIA's Iyad Allawi? And why does all this sound strangely familiar?
NEW "DEMOCRATIC" IRAQ

The Star: A pitiful occasion for the people by Robert Fisk

Beirut - So, in the end, America's enemies set the date.

The handover of "full sovereignty" was secretly brought forward so that the ex-CIA intelligence officer who is now premier of Iraq could avoid another bloody offensive by America's enemies.

What was supposed to be the most important date in Iraq's modern history was changed - like a birthday party, because it might rain on Wednesday.

Pitiful is the word that comes to mind.

Here we were, handing "full sovereignty" to the people of Iraq - "full", of course, providing we forget the 160 000 foreign soldiers whom Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has apparently asked to stay on in Iraq, "full" providing we forget the 3 000 US diplomats in Baghdad who will constitute the largest US embassy in the world.

And we never even told the Iraqi people we had changed the date.

Few, save of course for the Iraqis, understood the cruellest paradox of the event.

For it was the new Iraqi Foreign Minister - should we not put his title, too, into quotation marks? - who chose to leak "bringing forward" of "sovereignty in Iraq" at the Nato summit in Turkey.

CHECK IT
NEW DEMOCRATIC IRAQ

Newsasia: Nine killed on first day of Iraq government, Turkish hostages freed

Three US soldiers and six Iraqis were killed in violence on the first day of business for Iraq's new government after it formally regained sovereignty from the US-led coalition.

As Ankara hailed the release of three Turks kidnapped in Iraq and threatened with decapitation, US President George W. Bush said NATO's agreement to train the new Iraqi army was "a crucial success for the Iraqi people".
NEW DEMOCRATIC IRAQ

Informationclearinghouse: John Pilger On Iraq And The Future
America will wake up to the deaths of their children in Iraq'
Campaigning journalist John Pilger has vehemently opposed the Bush-Blair ‘war on terror’. With power due to be handed to the Iraqi people on Wednesday, Torcuil Crichton asked for his thoughts on that country’s future, and the prospects for world peace

Aljazeera: Foreign Hands Behind Iraq Blasts Say Experts
Iraqi experts accused 'foreign hands' of being behind the deadly string of random attacks in the war-torn country in an attempt to stir unrest ahead of the handover of power to Iraqis
The vicious cycle of violence will give reason to the overstay of the US-led occupation in the country after the power handover, he said.

YAHOO News: Iraqi Militants Kill US Soldier - Report
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi militants killed an American soldier they have held hostage for nearly three months, saying the killing was because the U.S. government did not change its policy in Iraq, Al-Jazeera television reported Tuesday.
News of the killing of Spc. Keith M. Maupin, 20, of Batavia, Ohio, came hours after the United States returned sovereignty in Iraq to an interim government. The report did not say when Maupin was killed.

Independent: Another Bloody Day In Iraq As US Transfers Power By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad and Leyla Linton
Two car bombs in the city of Hillah that killed at least 23 civilians and a rocket attack that left dead two children who were playing on the bank of the Tigris River in Baghdad have raised the political temperature before Wednesday's transfer of sovereignty.

A further 58 people were injured in the blasts in Hillah, south of Baghdad, including Noor Ahmed, a two-year-old whose right arm had to be amputated.

Yesterday's rocket attack in Baghdad, which came as President George Bush posed for a photograph with other Nato leaders in an Ottoman palace in Istanbul, was followed by the seizure of a US Marine. The hostage, like three Turks whose capture was announced on Saturday, has been threatened with beheading.


Monday, June 28, 2004

NEW IRAQ: 28.06.2004

Spiegel: Die geknebelte Demokratie
Die USA haben die Macht zwei Tage früher als vorgesehen an die irakische Übergangsregierung abgegeben. Doch ihr Plan für die Stabilisierung des Landes könnte ebenso scheitern wie der Großbritanniens nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg, als der Irak im Chaos versank. Die neuen Herrscher bieten Radikalen zu viele Angriffsfläche.

Independent: Power handed over to new Iraq government
The US-led coalition handed over sovereignty to the new Iraqi government today - two days earlier than planned.

The surprise move - formally ending the occupation by coalition forces - took place in a low-key ceremony in Baghdad's heavily-guarded Green Zone.

British and US officials said the transfer of power had been brought forward to "seize the political initiative" from anti-coalition militants who have been waging a bloody terrorist campaign.