Bill Moyers: When Are We Going to See Democracy In Pakistan? [VIDEO]
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Bill Moyers: When Are We Going to See Democracy In Pakistan? [VIDEO]
Post by Bill Moyers
Video: It's now a contest between guns and power versus people and truth. More »
Former Prime Minister Bhutto Under House Detention in Pakistan: Police also arrest 5,000 of her followers
Pakistan unrest grows: February vote declared, but opposition leader is detained
Anger at Decree Runs Deep in Pakistanis
Western myths and Pakistani realities
'Mideast atomic programs apocalyptic': Strategic Affairs Minister Avigdor Lieberman -- tells Post he also fears Pakistani developments might lead nukes to 'radical hands'
http://www.mlive.com/columns/aanews/index.....xml&coll=2
More From The Ann Arbor News
Danger lurks in use of term 'Islamofascism'
Thursday, November 08, 2007
If language is a window on the world, a deliberate smudging of that window will make it harder to see the world clearly and comprehend it. So it is with the highly ideological term "Islamofascist,'' a label that is being wielded as a blunt weapon in a left-right debate and has been carelessly bandied about by some presidential candidates.
Recently, the former leftist turned rightist David Horowitz promoted something called "Islamofascism Awareness Week'' on college campuses. The implication was that the academic left has so lost its bearings that it can no longer recognize its historic enemy, the old fascist wolf, under that beast's new disguise. Another apparent aim was to discredit scholars who insist on making careful distinctions among the various movements and ideologies that are grouped under the rubric of political Islam.
Transparent as the intentions of Horowitz may be, the Republican candidates' use of "Islamofascism'' is cruder still, and may cause considerably more harm. Just before he dropped out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination, Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas spoke of a threat from Islamofascism during a visit to the Boston Globe. Rudy Giuliani - whose foreign policy adviser, Norman Podhoretz, just published a book touting World War IV against Islamofascism - commonly derides the Democrats because they "couldn't even utter the word 'Islamic terrorism.''' And former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, while using the less obfuscatory term "radical Islamic jihadists,'' has been striving to keep up with his competition by putting out a television ad titled "Jihad'' and invoking what he calls "a military threat unlike anything we've known before.''
The next American president will need to have a lucid understanding of the threats facing this country. One of those threats undeniably comes from al-Qaida and like-minded groups. But the bands that swear allegiance to Osama bin Laden must be seen for what they are: stateless fanatics with a purist nostalgia for a seventh-century political and social order. Their primary goal is to overthrow regimes in the Muslim world they disdain as insufficiently Islamic.
Al-Qaida and company cannot be compared with the fascist powers ruled by Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco - neither for their ideas nor for their military power. The Nazis scorned religion, wanting to make the state the sole object of worship. Bin Laden and Hitler might share a proclivity for cruelty and killing, but for little else. Hitler cherished the operas of Wagner; bin Laden and his Taliban allies have been known to put musicians to the lash for playing music at a wedding. And bin Laden has no panzer divisions.
The intellectually lazy analogy of Islamism to fascism has another unwelcome effect. It obscures the significant differences that exist among disparate governments, movements and terrorist networks in the Muslim world. If all Islamists are carelessly labeled Islamofascists, it becomes practically impossible to distinguish the democratic, free-market, pro-European governing party of Turkey from the Taliban; or either of those Sunni parties from the Lebanese Shi'ite movement Hezbollah; or those three from Palestinian Hamas; or those four from al-Qaida.
Americans have already paid a terrible price for a president's belated discovery that there were two sects of Muslims in Iraq: Sunni and Shi'ite. It is precisely because the security threats of the 21st century are so different from those of the last century that the next president must be free of tendentious simplifications such as Islamofascism.
Loose talk about Islamofascism or Islamic terrorism also carries noxious undertones. Such labels intimate that there is something inherently dangerous about all Muslims. And there is a subtext to those terms, an implication that the West faces an inevitable worldwide clash of religions and civilizations.
There need not be any such apocalyptic conflict. One way to prevent it is to give things their proper names - and not to allow the threat from bin Laden and similar fringe groups to be blown out of proportion by ideologues indulging in loose talk about a third or fourth World War.
The Boston Globe
More From The Ann Arbor News
Danger lurks in use of term 'Islamofascism'
Thursday, November 08, 2007
If language is a window on the world, a deliberate smudging of that window will make it harder to see the world clearly and comprehend it. So it is with the highly ideological term "Islamofascist,'' a label that is being wielded as a blunt weapon in a left-right debate and has been carelessly bandied about by some presidential candidates.
Recently, the former leftist turned rightist David Horowitz promoted something called "Islamofascism Awareness Week'' on college campuses. The implication was that the academic left has so lost its bearings that it can no longer recognize its historic enemy, the old fascist wolf, under that beast's new disguise. Another apparent aim was to discredit scholars who insist on making careful distinctions among the various movements and ideologies that are grouped under the rubric of political Islam.
Transparent as the intentions of Horowitz may be, the Republican candidates' use of "Islamofascism'' is cruder still, and may cause considerably more harm. Just before he dropped out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination, Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas spoke of a threat from Islamofascism during a visit to the Boston Globe. Rudy Giuliani - whose foreign policy adviser, Norman Podhoretz, just published a book touting World War IV against Islamofascism - commonly derides the Democrats because they "couldn't even utter the word 'Islamic terrorism.''' And former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, while using the less obfuscatory term "radical Islamic jihadists,'' has been striving to keep up with his competition by putting out a television ad titled "Jihad'' and invoking what he calls "a military threat unlike anything we've known before.''
The next American president will need to have a lucid understanding of the threats facing this country. One of those threats undeniably comes from al-Qaida and like-minded groups. But the bands that swear allegiance to Osama bin Laden must be seen for what they are: stateless fanatics with a purist nostalgia for a seventh-century political and social order. Their primary goal is to overthrow regimes in the Muslim world they disdain as insufficiently Islamic.
Al-Qaida and company cannot be compared with the fascist powers ruled by Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco - neither for their ideas nor for their military power. The Nazis scorned religion, wanting to make the state the sole object of worship. Bin Laden and Hitler might share a proclivity for cruelty and killing, but for little else. Hitler cherished the operas of Wagner; bin Laden and his Taliban allies have been known to put musicians to the lash for playing music at a wedding. And bin Laden has no panzer divisions.
The intellectually lazy analogy of Islamism to fascism has another unwelcome effect. It obscures the significant differences that exist among disparate governments, movements and terrorist networks in the Muslim world. If all Islamists are carelessly labeled Islamofascists, it becomes practically impossible to distinguish the democratic, free-market, pro-European governing party of Turkey from the Taliban; or either of those Sunni parties from the Lebanese Shi'ite movement Hezbollah; or those three from Palestinian Hamas; or those four from al-Qaida.
Americans have already paid a terrible price for a president's belated discovery that there were two sects of Muslims in Iraq: Sunni and Shi'ite. It is precisely because the security threats of the 21st century are so different from those of the last century that the next president must be free of tendentious simplifications such as Islamofascism.
Loose talk about Islamofascism or Islamic terrorism also carries noxious undertones. Such labels intimate that there is something inherently dangerous about all Muslims. And there is a subtext to those terms, an implication that the West faces an inevitable worldwide clash of religions and civilizations.
There need not be any such apocalyptic conflict. One way to prevent it is to give things their proper names - and not to allow the threat from bin Laden and similar fringe groups to be blown out of proportion by ideologues indulging in loose talk about a third or fourth World War.
The Boston Globe
http://www.antiwar.com/bock/?articleid=11889 November 10, 2007 Pakistan: In Too Deep
by Alan Bock Except for the hardly inconsequential difference that the U.S. is not conducting a military occupation, Pakistan is similar to Iraq in at least one important way. Once the initial mistake was made, it has become difficult for the United States to extricate itself (if it wanted to, which this administration almost certainly does not) and leave, changing the nature of the commitment or hunkering down will have results that can be spun as the unfortunate consequences of the U.S. not hanging tougher.
After 9/11, when it became obvious the United States was going to invade Afghanistan and would have a fairly substantial chance of ousting the Taliban regime (if not necessarily to manage the transition to anything like a decent society there) Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf made a strategic/tactical choice.
Musharraf’s secret police agency, the ISI, had been heavily involved in subsidizing, advising and sometimes lending concrete human assistance to the Taliban regime. To be fair, it was seen by some (though not all, the ISI was and is riddled with jihadist sympathizers and supported the huge network of radical madrassas throughout Pakistan teaching nothing much but rote memorization of the Koran and jihad) as a force for stability in a country that was pretty chaotic. But Musharraf, helped along by a few no-nonsense phone calls and visits from U.S. officials, decided that the Taliban was likely to be defeated and that at least for the next foreseeable period, it was prudent to cast one’s lot with the United States. So he did.
One can understand U.S. officials being pleased by this turn of events, and in fact Pakistan has been of some assistance in the vaunted "global war on terror," to the extent that U.S. officials occasionally looked beyond the quicksand of Iraq to notice that there were a few real threats out there in addition to the manufactured threat of Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction and ties to al-Qaeda. The mistake was to believe he was sincere.
Bush, like many intellectually incurious people who are impatient with details, places great stock in his supposedly preternatural ability to "size up" people after a brief encounter (remember his ability to look into Vladimir Putin’s soul?). A meeting or two with Musharraf allowed him to convince himself that Pervez was his kind of fella.
Well if you think about it, there are similarities between Musharraf, an army general who came to power in a bloodless coup in 1999 and has never paid anything more than lip service to such quaint notions as democracy, liberty and the importance of a civil society independent of the rulers of a country, and President Bush.
The Bushlet, with a little help from his friends, proved fairly adept at playing the democratic game at the raw and almost irrelevant level of finding ways to garner votes. But his relentless grasping for more "plenary" executive power – fed no doubt by Dick Cheney, who had been pining over the loss of institutional presidential power since Watergate – shows him to be a political leader with a lot more of the monarchist or autocrat than the instinctive democrat or libertarian. He uses words like "freedom" and "democracy" handily enough, but he presses for limitations on freedom and increased exercises of governmental power kept secret from and therefore unaccountable to the people.
It may be fruitless to wonder what goes on in that underused mind of his, but it may be something like a notion that limitations on freedom and increases in surveillance and government power are all not only necessary but desirable in the service of what he just might conceive of as a "higher" form of freedom than the rabble can understand – though in practice it translates into more power, perquisites and money for him and his circle. In short, it’s more than possible that Musharraf, who has virtually no democratic instincts or impulses, really is Bush’s kind of fella.
But I digress.
The upshot, from the administration’s perspective, was that Musharraf was not only deemed a reliable ally in the "war on terror," but an "indispensable" (former intelligence czar John Negroponte actually used the word within the last few days) cog in the wheel of the great American imperial enterprise. So the administration lavished money (at least $10 billion since 9/11, probably a good bit more if you could track the covert stuff) on Pakistan and pretended to believe that he was really some kind of democrat deep down inside, determined not only to defeat al-Qaeda and other nasty folk, but to bring his country ever closer to being a true democracy.
Many American officials, almost certainly including Bush himself, probably even managed to convince themselves that this was the case. Unless you have a certain cold and calculating Metternichian cast of mind, it is difficult for many people – especially many Americans – to acknowledge openly that you are supporting a leader in another country strictly on the basis of a cold-blooded calculation of what your interests are and how that person can advance them, caring not a whit whether that person is a saint or a sinner. Bush can calculate in that way, I suspect, but I suspect he feels more comfortable when he can convince himself that he’s really operating not out of cold interest, but in service of some higher ideal, like promoting democracy or paving the way for the spread of Christianity.
Fortunately – I was going to say for him but not for us, but in the longer perspective is it really all that fortunate for him? – he seldom has much trouble convincing himself, no matter how far-fetched the case, or how wide the gap between noble words and sordid actions.
So Bush kept sending the money and praising Musharraf extravagantly whenever the two met or when some development in Pakistan created a perceived need to comment. He had measured the man himself, after all, and it would be a sign of weakness to alter that original estimation.
So when Musharraf declared martial law – excuse me, a state of emergency – and began jailing opposition party members and journalists, it took Bush several days to process the information. And even when he finally made the phone call to tell his old buddy Perv that he really should take off that army uniform and hold elections as scheduled, he didn’t (unless there’s something we haven’t been told, which wouldn’t be all that unusual, but I suspect this would have been trumpeted) mention the idea of freeing all those "enemy combatants." And he went so far as to claim that unlike in Burma/Myanmar, Pakistan had actually been on the road to democracy, so it deserved to have some slack cut.
As a result of offering unquestioning support for a natural dictator who could mouth the phrases associated with democracy just often enough, the U.S. confronts a situation in Pakistan in which almost all the likely alternatives are unsavory. The Taliban and al-Qaeda really are resurgent in the border territories, and whatever relatively moderate and/or secular elements remain in Pakistan (long ago they used to be dominant) are utterly sick of Musharraf. The most ungovernable country in the world, as some have described it, is becoming less governable by the day (which in an existential sense might be a point in its favor, but in the short run looks rather chaotic and violent).
It’s hard to see anything less than disastrous in the next few weeks and months.
And, of course, the notion that Bush is the least bit sincere in his protestations that his relentless desire to intervene in the affairs of other countries has the slightest relationship to promoting democracy in anything other than an incantatory sense is now in shreds. From now on invoking the desire to spread democracy can only provoke sneers and guffaws.
Nice work.
by Alan Bock Except for the hardly inconsequential difference that the U.S. is not conducting a military occupation, Pakistan is similar to Iraq in at least one important way. Once the initial mistake was made, it has become difficult for the United States to extricate itself (if it wanted to, which this administration almost certainly does not) and leave, changing the nature of the commitment or hunkering down will have results that can be spun as the unfortunate consequences of the U.S. not hanging tougher.
After 9/11, when it became obvious the United States was going to invade Afghanistan and would have a fairly substantial chance of ousting the Taliban regime (if not necessarily to manage the transition to anything like a decent society there) Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf made a strategic/tactical choice.
Musharraf’s secret police agency, the ISI, had been heavily involved in subsidizing, advising and sometimes lending concrete human assistance to the Taliban regime. To be fair, it was seen by some (though not all, the ISI was and is riddled with jihadist sympathizers and supported the huge network of radical madrassas throughout Pakistan teaching nothing much but rote memorization of the Koran and jihad) as a force for stability in a country that was pretty chaotic. But Musharraf, helped along by a few no-nonsense phone calls and visits from U.S. officials, decided that the Taliban was likely to be defeated and that at least for the next foreseeable period, it was prudent to cast one’s lot with the United States. So he did.
One can understand U.S. officials being pleased by this turn of events, and in fact Pakistan has been of some assistance in the vaunted "global war on terror," to the extent that U.S. officials occasionally looked beyond the quicksand of Iraq to notice that there were a few real threats out there in addition to the manufactured threat of Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction and ties to al-Qaeda. The mistake was to believe he was sincere.
Bush, like many intellectually incurious people who are impatient with details, places great stock in his supposedly preternatural ability to "size up" people after a brief encounter (remember his ability to look into Vladimir Putin’s soul?). A meeting or two with Musharraf allowed him to convince himself that Pervez was his kind of fella.
Well if you think about it, there are similarities between Musharraf, an army general who came to power in a bloodless coup in 1999 and has never paid anything more than lip service to such quaint notions as democracy, liberty and the importance of a civil society independent of the rulers of a country, and President Bush.
The Bushlet, with a little help from his friends, proved fairly adept at playing the democratic game at the raw and almost irrelevant level of finding ways to garner votes. But his relentless grasping for more "plenary" executive power – fed no doubt by Dick Cheney, who had been pining over the loss of institutional presidential power since Watergate – shows him to be a political leader with a lot more of the monarchist or autocrat than the instinctive democrat or libertarian. He uses words like "freedom" and "democracy" handily enough, but he presses for limitations on freedom and increased exercises of governmental power kept secret from and therefore unaccountable to the people.
It may be fruitless to wonder what goes on in that underused mind of his, but it may be something like a notion that limitations on freedom and increases in surveillance and government power are all not only necessary but desirable in the service of what he just might conceive of as a "higher" form of freedom than the rabble can understand – though in practice it translates into more power, perquisites and money for him and his circle. In short, it’s more than possible that Musharraf, who has virtually no democratic instincts or impulses, really is Bush’s kind of fella.
But I digress.
The upshot, from the administration’s perspective, was that Musharraf was not only deemed a reliable ally in the "war on terror," but an "indispensable" (former intelligence czar John Negroponte actually used the word within the last few days) cog in the wheel of the great American imperial enterprise. So the administration lavished money (at least $10 billion since 9/11, probably a good bit more if you could track the covert stuff) on Pakistan and pretended to believe that he was really some kind of democrat deep down inside, determined not only to defeat al-Qaeda and other nasty folk, but to bring his country ever closer to being a true democracy.
Many American officials, almost certainly including Bush himself, probably even managed to convince themselves that this was the case. Unless you have a certain cold and calculating Metternichian cast of mind, it is difficult for many people – especially many Americans – to acknowledge openly that you are supporting a leader in another country strictly on the basis of a cold-blooded calculation of what your interests are and how that person can advance them, caring not a whit whether that person is a saint or a sinner. Bush can calculate in that way, I suspect, but I suspect he feels more comfortable when he can convince himself that he’s really operating not out of cold interest, but in service of some higher ideal, like promoting democracy or paving the way for the spread of Christianity.
Fortunately – I was going to say for him but not for us, but in the longer perspective is it really all that fortunate for him? – he seldom has much trouble convincing himself, no matter how far-fetched the case, or how wide the gap between noble words and sordid actions.
So Bush kept sending the money and praising Musharraf extravagantly whenever the two met or when some development in Pakistan created a perceived need to comment. He had measured the man himself, after all, and it would be a sign of weakness to alter that original estimation.
So when Musharraf declared martial law – excuse me, a state of emergency – and began jailing opposition party members and journalists, it took Bush several days to process the information. And even when he finally made the phone call to tell his old buddy Perv that he really should take off that army uniform and hold elections as scheduled, he didn’t (unless there’s something we haven’t been told, which wouldn’t be all that unusual, but I suspect this would have been trumpeted) mention the idea of freeing all those "enemy combatants." And he went so far as to claim that unlike in Burma/Myanmar, Pakistan had actually been on the road to democracy, so it deserved to have some slack cut.
As a result of offering unquestioning support for a natural dictator who could mouth the phrases associated with democracy just often enough, the U.S. confronts a situation in Pakistan in which almost all the likely alternatives are unsavory. The Taliban and al-Qaeda really are resurgent in the border territories, and whatever relatively moderate and/or secular elements remain in Pakistan (long ago they used to be dominant) are utterly sick of Musharraf. The most ungovernable country in the world, as some have described it, is becoming less governable by the day (which in an existential sense might be a point in its favor, but in the short run looks rather chaotic and violent).
It’s hard to see anything less than disastrous in the next few weeks and months.
And, of course, the notion that Bush is the least bit sincere in his protestations that his relentless desire to intervene in the affairs of other countries has the slightest relationship to promoting democracy in anything other than an incantatory sense is now in shreds. From now on invoking the desire to spread democracy can only provoke sneers and guffaws.
Nice work.
Paying for the Wars' Wounded
by Colonel Daniel Smith, USA (Ret.) The Bureau of the Census has issued a lengthy summary of "facts" about the nation's 23.7 million veterans in time for Veteran's Day. Considering that there are two significant ongoing armed conflicts involving U.S. forces, I expected that there would be some "facts" dealing with Iraq and Afghanistan.
Nothing was disaggregated. Well, nearly nothing. Where detail was provided, it rarely was framed by war as opposed to education, age or ethnicity.
One statistic I did expect was the number of troops "wounded in hostile engagements" who had been discharged from service and transferred to veterans' medical care. (According to the Pentagon, total U.S. wounded from enemy action in Iraq is 28,327 and in Afghanistan 1,708.) But this also was not there even though that number – along with projections for future years – has to exist within the Veterans Administration (VA) so its staff can prepare their annual budget request.
Medical Care
Thinking these two items might be linked, I re-read the notice looking for spending just on veterans' medical care. Dead last was total spending by the VA in 2006 and a breakout between medical and non-medical spending for that year.
As a veteran who uses the military medical system, I could not help but wonder if the placement of this information was nothing more than happenstance, a fading echo of the recently revealed mishandling of war wounded and not a harbinger of the how the wounded from Iraq and Afghanistan will be regarded in the priorities of future administrations.
Actually, the census report raised more questions than it answered. Looking through the Bush administration's proposed Fiscal Year 2008 Budget submission turned up the following:
[b]Supporting the Troops[/b]
The public comprehends the principle that if the nation sends its youth to war, it owes those young men and women the best medical care regardless of cost should they be wounded. This distinction is a variation of the classic "support the troops – support the war" dichotomy that scares and scars politicians. In an age of 15-second sound bites, all that need be said is "Senator (or Representative) X voted against funding our troops in the field," letting the silence of the syllogistic "therefore" be completed by the voter: that in refusing to vote for the military's budget request the congressional incumbent doesn't care about either the dead or the living.
Regardless of the precipitating event, once the armed forces are "on the ground," the president of the United States is in the enviable position to blackmail Congress into providing funds for the troops fighting for "God, country, and the American way." It doesn't seem to make any difference which party controls Congress or occupies the White House. The worst political sin is to be susceptible to the charge of "not supporting the troops."
Ironically, even when the wars they wage are as widely unpopular as today's operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, presidents can blackmail the American people the same way – and they get away with it for the same reason: no one wants to be accused of not standing up for the troops or appear to be unwilling to give them the best of everything. This stems from the belief that the United States is always justified in going to war, that God is on "our side" (or at the very least, is not on the "other" side).
The Warriors
In accepting the demise of the conscript army and the emergence of the modern military professional, the American public assigned the responsibility for military defense to a class of people – the Warriors – and in typical fashion, turned their attention elsewhere. This left as the main advocates for post-military service benefits (other than the formal institutions of government) the traditional veterans' advocacy organizations such as the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), AMVETS, and the American Legion.
In peacetime, this façade of a "caring" nation could be maintained with little more than the ritual appearance by the "commander-in-chief" (and in election years by candidates for president) at veterans' conventions and the odd extra half-billion or billion dollars in additional spending that was never enough to catch up with needed improvements in the military and veterans health systems.
Under pressure from two wars, the "center" could not sustain itself or conceal the dichotomy between excellent medicine and paralyzing administrative requirements.
Walter Reed Effect
Then came what could be termed the "Walter Reed effect": the "fall-out" from investigative reporting by The Washington Post of substandard living arrangements for seriously wounded soldiers, of insufficient numbers of trained case workers for the number of wounded, and the expectation of hospital administrative staff that the wounded could traverse a very convoluted medical bureaucracy without substantial help. All this, together with the seeming indifference of general officers and administrative personnel toward those with psychological trauma or more evident brain injuries, rekindled empathy for the war-wounded among large segments of the U.S. public.
Initially, this renewed concern for the warriors and the question of why their care was so remiss did not cross into questioning the war itself, perhaps because one could, in the early days, talk war without having to talk veterans. And when veterans were mentioned, the traditional veterans groups stepped forward, as they had in the past, and generally supported the president's policy.
It would not be too long, however, before voices of returned soldiers, wounded or not, and of the survivors of those killed in Iraq and Afghanistan were raised in protest – first singly and then collectively in new groups such as Iraq Veterans Against the War, Veterans Against the Iraq War, and even among the veterans of the Vietnam War.
As the extent of the deficiencies became clearer, as more and more members of Congress visited hospitals and saw first-hand the extensive physical and mental injuries, as they learned of the extensive treatments that would have to last a lifetime, they at last began to fathom the woeful under funding of veteran's health and rehabilitation costs.
The apparent callousness of top Army officials to the status quo did not sit well with the public. This perception of official indifference acted as a catalyst to re-engage the American public on the issue of why these wars with their ever-increasing casualties hadn't ended.
Vets Find Their Voices
Veterans of the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan began to find their voice-in-opposition and to take on the issue of inadequate care for the wounded. And since the wounded remain distinctive personalities, because they are not hidden away from society, they cannot be treated as an undifferentiated class – like those who are killed and usually become, other than for their loved ones who remain, more of a statistic than a memory.
Indeed, today's wounded (and today's 3,858 dead in Iraq and 459 in Afghanistan) present the public with an opportunity to start to end the fighting, the dying, and the maiming that seem to be endemic in the "social contract" of modern nation states. How? By bringing face-to-face those who serve with those who first asked them to serve, sent them to "care" for (that is, to fight for) the nation, and in so doing created a moral and even a legal reciprocal obligations to care for the wounded who "cared" for the nation when asked.
While this approach might seem to leave a huge gap through which to drive a tank army, it would strip away the sterile masks that protect those who make war from those who "do" war – at the maker's behest and in the name of the "people" who often have absolutely no say in the decision for war.
It's different today than during the Vietnam War, when even wounded veterans were sometimes reviled and taunted as "baby-killers." Vietnam may have been the tipping point, for that was the first U.S. television war. The horrendous wounds from Iraq and Afghanistan have moved the public beyond the halfway point of transitioning from a warrior mentality and myth to a culture and outlook that celebrate peace.
The challenge is how to keep together the need for adequate appropriations to care for the wounded for as long as necessary with the realization that those who need long-term care once were able-bodied men and women. Still to be traversed is the gap between the recognition of the cost of caring for the wounded and caring about – that is, rejecting – the reasons why politicians opt for war in the first instance.
Meanwhile, the number of mercenaries (politely termed "security contractors" in the mainstream media and political debate) just in Iraq is reportedly between 20,000 and 30,000. That's more than some countries have in their whole armed forces.
So now there is another consideration: will the public, and the Congress, in rebelling against the cost of paying for war and the war-wounded, opt for a fully mercenary force to wage our wars?
That was what Rome did. History records the outcome.
by Colonel Daniel Smith, USA (Ret.) The Bureau of the Census has issued a lengthy summary of "facts" about the nation's 23.7 million veterans in time for Veteran's Day. Considering that there are two significant ongoing armed conflicts involving U.S. forces, I expected that there would be some "facts" dealing with Iraq and Afghanistan.
Nothing was disaggregated. Well, nearly nothing. Where detail was provided, it rarely was framed by war as opposed to education, age or ethnicity.
One statistic I did expect was the number of troops "wounded in hostile engagements" who had been discharged from service and transferred to veterans' medical care. (According to the Pentagon, total U.S. wounded from enemy action in Iraq is 28,327 and in Afghanistan 1,708.) But this also was not there even though that number – along with projections for future years – has to exist within the Veterans Administration (VA) so its staff can prepare their annual budget request.
Medical Care
Thinking these two items might be linked, I re-read the notice looking for spending just on veterans' medical care. Dead last was total spending by the VA in 2006 and a breakout between medical and non-medical spending for that year.
As a veteran who uses the military medical system, I could not help but wonder if the placement of this information was nothing more than happenstance, a fading echo of the recently revealed mishandling of war wounded and not a harbinger of the how the wounded from Iraq and Afghanistan will be regarded in the priorities of future administrations.
Actually, the census report raised more questions than it answered. Looking through the Bush administration's proposed Fiscal Year 2008 Budget submission turned up the following:
- In 2006, the Bush administration's budget request for the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) was still less than half ($31.3 billion) the total request ($75.7 billion) for the Department of Veterans Affairs.
- In 2007, the VHA's budget request actually dropped from about 43% of the total Veterans Administration proposed budget to 40%. Congress added $1.8 billion in the 2007 supplemental.
- The White House however, does not seem able to fathom the long-term medical costs of the Iraq War and its Afghanistan operations. Although it appears that VHA will be funded at $37.2 billion for 2008, the administration projects a 2% drop in funding for 2009 and a repeat of this lower level in 2010. That's just incomprehensible given that the wars are not likely to be over by then.
[b]Supporting the Troops[/b]
The public comprehends the principle that if the nation sends its youth to war, it owes those young men and women the best medical care regardless of cost should they be wounded. This distinction is a variation of the classic "support the troops – support the war" dichotomy that scares and scars politicians. In an age of 15-second sound bites, all that need be said is "Senator (or Representative) X voted against funding our troops in the field," letting the silence of the syllogistic "therefore" be completed by the voter: that in refusing to vote for the military's budget request the congressional incumbent doesn't care about either the dead or the living.
Regardless of the precipitating event, once the armed forces are "on the ground," the president of the United States is in the enviable position to blackmail Congress into providing funds for the troops fighting for "God, country, and the American way." It doesn't seem to make any difference which party controls Congress or occupies the White House. The worst political sin is to be susceptible to the charge of "not supporting the troops."
Ironically, even when the wars they wage are as widely unpopular as today's operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, presidents can blackmail the American people the same way – and they get away with it for the same reason: no one wants to be accused of not standing up for the troops or appear to be unwilling to give them the best of everything. This stems from the belief that the United States is always justified in going to war, that God is on "our side" (or at the very least, is not on the "other" side).
The Warriors
In accepting the demise of the conscript army and the emergence of the modern military professional, the American public assigned the responsibility for military defense to a class of people – the Warriors – and in typical fashion, turned their attention elsewhere. This left as the main advocates for post-military service benefits (other than the formal institutions of government) the traditional veterans' advocacy organizations such as the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), AMVETS, and the American Legion.
In peacetime, this façade of a "caring" nation could be maintained with little more than the ritual appearance by the "commander-in-chief" (and in election years by candidates for president) at veterans' conventions and the odd extra half-billion or billion dollars in additional spending that was never enough to catch up with needed improvements in the military and veterans health systems.
Under pressure from two wars, the "center" could not sustain itself or conceal the dichotomy between excellent medicine and paralyzing administrative requirements.
Walter Reed Effect
Then came what could be termed the "Walter Reed effect": the "fall-out" from investigative reporting by The Washington Post of substandard living arrangements for seriously wounded soldiers, of insufficient numbers of trained case workers for the number of wounded, and the expectation of hospital administrative staff that the wounded could traverse a very convoluted medical bureaucracy without substantial help. All this, together with the seeming indifference of general officers and administrative personnel toward those with psychological trauma or more evident brain injuries, rekindled empathy for the war-wounded among large segments of the U.S. public.
Initially, this renewed concern for the warriors and the question of why their care was so remiss did not cross into questioning the war itself, perhaps because one could, in the early days, talk war without having to talk veterans. And when veterans were mentioned, the traditional veterans groups stepped forward, as they had in the past, and generally supported the president's policy.
It would not be too long, however, before voices of returned soldiers, wounded or not, and of the survivors of those killed in Iraq and Afghanistan were raised in protest – first singly and then collectively in new groups such as Iraq Veterans Against the War, Veterans Against the Iraq War, and even among the veterans of the Vietnam War.
As the extent of the deficiencies became clearer, as more and more members of Congress visited hospitals and saw first-hand the extensive physical and mental injuries, as they learned of the extensive treatments that would have to last a lifetime, they at last began to fathom the woeful under funding of veteran's health and rehabilitation costs.
The apparent callousness of top Army officials to the status quo did not sit well with the public. This perception of official indifference acted as a catalyst to re-engage the American public on the issue of why these wars with their ever-increasing casualties hadn't ended.
Vets Find Their Voices
Veterans of the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan began to find their voice-in-opposition and to take on the issue of inadequate care for the wounded. And since the wounded remain distinctive personalities, because they are not hidden away from society, they cannot be treated as an undifferentiated class – like those who are killed and usually become, other than for their loved ones who remain, more of a statistic than a memory.
Indeed, today's wounded (and today's 3,858 dead in Iraq and 459 in Afghanistan) present the public with an opportunity to start to end the fighting, the dying, and the maiming that seem to be endemic in the "social contract" of modern nation states. How? By bringing face-to-face those who serve with those who first asked them to serve, sent them to "care" for (that is, to fight for) the nation, and in so doing created a moral and even a legal reciprocal obligations to care for the wounded who "cared" for the nation when asked.
While this approach might seem to leave a huge gap through which to drive a tank army, it would strip away the sterile masks that protect those who make war from those who "do" war – at the maker's behest and in the name of the "people" who often have absolutely no say in the decision for war.
It's different today than during the Vietnam War, when even wounded veterans were sometimes reviled and taunted as "baby-killers." Vietnam may have been the tipping point, for that was the first U.S. television war. The horrendous wounds from Iraq and Afghanistan have moved the public beyond the halfway point of transitioning from a warrior mentality and myth to a culture and outlook that celebrate peace.
The challenge is how to keep together the need for adequate appropriations to care for the wounded for as long as necessary with the realization that those who need long-term care once were able-bodied men and women. Still to be traversed is the gap between the recognition of the cost of caring for the wounded and caring about – that is, rejecting – the reasons why politicians opt for war in the first instance.
Meanwhile, the number of mercenaries (politely termed "security contractors" in the mainstream media and political debate) just in Iraq is reportedly between 20,000 and 30,000. That's more than some countries have in their whole armed forces.
So now there is another consideration: will the public, and the Congress, in rebelling against the cost of paying for war and the war-wounded, opt for a fully mercenary force to wage our wars?
That was what Rome did. History records the outcome.
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/co...t_id=1003670200
Memo to Media: I Witnessed 'Waterboarding' -- And, Yes, It is Torture
Four decades ago, as a reporter in Vietnam, I saw what it was like. When you hog-tie a human being, tilt him head down, stuff a rag in his mouth and over his nostrils and pour water onto the rag slowly and steadily to the point where his lungs start to fill with water, that is torture.
By Joseph L. Galloway
(November 08, 2007) -- Did Bill Clinton have sex with that woman? Is Elvis Presley really dead? Is the Pope Catholic? Does a bear do his ablutions in the woods? Is waterboarding torture? The answer to all of these questions, put simply, is yes.
All of Judge Michael Mukasey's artful dodging and word play to avoid acknowledging the obvious to the august members of Senate Judiciary Committee does nothing to change the fact.
When you hog-tie a human being, tilt him head down, stuff a rag in his mouth and over his nostrils and pour water onto the rag slowly and steadily to the point where his lungs start to fill with water and he's suffocating and drowning, that is torture.
Four decades ago in the field in Vietnam, I saw a suspected Viet Cong waterboarded by South Vietnamese Army troops. The American Army advisers who were attached to the Vietnamese unit turned their backs and walked away before the torture began. It was then a Vietnamese affair and something they couldn't be associated with.
The victim was taken to the edge of death. His body was wracked with spasms as he fought for air. The soldier holding the five-gallon kerosene tin filled with muddy water from a nearby stream kept pouring it slowly onto the rag, and the victim desperately sucking for even a little air kept inhaling that water instead.
It seemed to go on forever. Did the suspect talk? I'm sure he did. I'm sure he told his torturers whatever he thought they wanted to hear, whether it was true or not. But I didn't see the end of it because one of the American advisers came to me and told me I had to leave; that I couldn't watch this interrogation, if that's what it was, any longer.
That adviser knew that water torture was torture; he knew that it was outlawed by the Geneva Convention; he knew that he couldn't be a party to it; and he knew that he didn't want me to witness such brutality.
Every member of the Senate Judiciary Committee knows that waterboarding is torture, even the majority who voted to send Judge Mukasey's nomination to be attorney general, America's chief law enforcement official, to the floor for a vote.
Waterboarding was torture when it was used during the Spanish Inquisition; it was torture when it was used on Filipino rebels during the 1890s; it was torture when the Japanese Army used it on prisoners in World War II; it was torture when it was used by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia; and it's torture when CIA officers or others use it on terrorists.
When George W. Bush was the governor of Texas, the state investigated, indicted, convicted and sentenced to prison for 10 years a county sheriff who, with his deputies, had waterboarded a criminal suspect. That sheriff got no pardon from Gov. Bush.
Waterboarding is torture in the eyes of all civilized peoples, no matter how desperately President George W. Bush tries to rewrite the English language, with which he has only a passing familiarity, anyway. No matter how desperately his entire administration tries to redefine the word "torture" to cover the fact that not only have they acquiesced in its use, but they also have ordered its use.
The president, Vice President Dick Cheney, and their cronies and legal mouthpieces such as David Addington, John Yoo and Alberto Gonzales are doing all they can to avoid one day facing the bar of justice, at home or in The Hague, and being called to account for crimes against humanity.
They want a blank check pardon, and they'll continue searching for attorneys general and judges and justices and senators and members of Congress who'll hand them their stay-out-of-jail-free cards.
As they squirm and wriggle and lie and quibble and cut deals with senators, they claim that "harsh interrogation methods" are necessary to prevent another 9/11. But as terrified as they are by terrorists, they also fear that one day they may be treated no better than some fallen South American dictator or Cambodian despot or hapless Texas sheriff; that they might not be able to leave a guarded, gated compounds in Dallas or Crawford, a ranch in New Mexico or the shores of Chesapeake Bay for fear of arrest and extradition.
No more shopping trips to Paris. No vacations on the Costa Brava. No interludes on some billionaire buddy's yacht in the Caribbean. No jetting around the world making speeches to fat cats at $1 million a pop like other former presidents. Even Canada would be off-limits.
Now the Democrats, or some of them, are conspiring with them to seat an attorney general who will help facilitate the ever more frantic search for ex post facto immunity for their crimes. Shame on them! There's such a thing as too loyal an opposition; too cowardly an opposition; too craven an opposition.
Waterboarding is torture. Decent people have acknowledged that for centuries. We sent Japanese war criminals to the gallows for using it. We sent a Texas sheriff to prison for using it. One day, an ex-president and those who helped him and those he ordered to torture fellow human beings may have to plea bargain for their lives and their freedom.
***
Related: Why isn't the media, or the military, seriously probing the shocking number of "noncombat" deaths among U.S. troops in Iraq? Read about it here:
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/co...t_id=1003668890
Joseph L. Galloway (gmitchell@editorandpublisher.com) was one of the leading war correspondents of our time and winner of the Bronze Star for valor in Vietnam. He is co-author of "We Were Soldiers Once...and Young" and currently writes a syndicated column on military affairs for McClatchy/Tribune.
Memo to Media: I Witnessed 'Waterboarding' -- And, Yes, It is Torture
Four decades ago, as a reporter in Vietnam, I saw what it was like. When you hog-tie a human being, tilt him head down, stuff a rag in his mouth and over his nostrils and pour water onto the rag slowly and steadily to the point where his lungs start to fill with water, that is torture.
By Joseph L. Galloway
(November 08, 2007) -- Did Bill Clinton have sex with that woman? Is Elvis Presley really dead? Is the Pope Catholic? Does a bear do his ablutions in the woods? Is waterboarding torture? The answer to all of these questions, put simply, is yes.
All of Judge Michael Mukasey's artful dodging and word play to avoid acknowledging the obvious to the august members of Senate Judiciary Committee does nothing to change the fact.
When you hog-tie a human being, tilt him head down, stuff a rag in his mouth and over his nostrils and pour water onto the rag slowly and steadily to the point where his lungs start to fill with water and he's suffocating and drowning, that is torture.
Four decades ago in the field in Vietnam, I saw a suspected Viet Cong waterboarded by South Vietnamese Army troops. The American Army advisers who were attached to the Vietnamese unit turned their backs and walked away before the torture began. It was then a Vietnamese affair and something they couldn't be associated with.
The victim was taken to the edge of death. His body was wracked with spasms as he fought for air. The soldier holding the five-gallon kerosene tin filled with muddy water from a nearby stream kept pouring it slowly onto the rag, and the victim desperately sucking for even a little air kept inhaling that water instead.
It seemed to go on forever. Did the suspect talk? I'm sure he did. I'm sure he told his torturers whatever he thought they wanted to hear, whether it was true or not. But I didn't see the end of it because one of the American advisers came to me and told me I had to leave; that I couldn't watch this interrogation, if that's what it was, any longer.
That adviser knew that water torture was torture; he knew that it was outlawed by the Geneva Convention; he knew that he couldn't be a party to it; and he knew that he didn't want me to witness such brutality.
Every member of the Senate Judiciary Committee knows that waterboarding is torture, even the majority who voted to send Judge Mukasey's nomination to be attorney general, America's chief law enforcement official, to the floor for a vote.
Waterboarding was torture when it was used during the Spanish Inquisition; it was torture when it was used on Filipino rebels during the 1890s; it was torture when the Japanese Army used it on prisoners in World War II; it was torture when it was used by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia; and it's torture when CIA officers or others use it on terrorists.
When George W. Bush was the governor of Texas, the state investigated, indicted, convicted and sentenced to prison for 10 years a county sheriff who, with his deputies, had waterboarded a criminal suspect. That sheriff got no pardon from Gov. Bush.
Waterboarding is torture in the eyes of all civilized peoples, no matter how desperately President George W. Bush tries to rewrite the English language, with which he has only a passing familiarity, anyway. No matter how desperately his entire administration tries to redefine the word "torture" to cover the fact that not only have they acquiesced in its use, but they also have ordered its use.
The president, Vice President Dick Cheney, and their cronies and legal mouthpieces such as David Addington, John Yoo and Alberto Gonzales are doing all they can to avoid one day facing the bar of justice, at home or in The Hague, and being called to account for crimes against humanity.
They want a blank check pardon, and they'll continue searching for attorneys general and judges and justices and senators and members of Congress who'll hand them their stay-out-of-jail-free cards.
As they squirm and wriggle and lie and quibble and cut deals with senators, they claim that "harsh interrogation methods" are necessary to prevent another 9/11. But as terrified as they are by terrorists, they also fear that one day they may be treated no better than some fallen South American dictator or Cambodian despot or hapless Texas sheriff; that they might not be able to leave a guarded, gated compounds in Dallas or Crawford, a ranch in New Mexico or the shores of Chesapeake Bay for fear of arrest and extradition.
No more shopping trips to Paris. No vacations on the Costa Brava. No interludes on some billionaire buddy's yacht in the Caribbean. No jetting around the world making speeches to fat cats at $1 million a pop like other former presidents. Even Canada would be off-limits.
Now the Democrats, or some of them, are conspiring with them to seat an attorney general who will help facilitate the ever more frantic search for ex post facto immunity for their crimes. Shame on them! There's such a thing as too loyal an opposition; too cowardly an opposition; too craven an opposition.
Waterboarding is torture. Decent people have acknowledged that for centuries. We sent Japanese war criminals to the gallows for using it. We sent a Texas sheriff to prison for using it. One day, an ex-president and those who helped him and those he ordered to torture fellow human beings may have to plea bargain for their lives and their freedom.
***
Related: Why isn't the media, or the military, seriously probing the shocking number of "noncombat" deaths among U.S. troops in Iraq? Read about it here:
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/co...t_id=1003668890
Joseph L. Galloway (gmitchell@editorandpublisher.com) was one of the leading war correspondents of our time and winner of the Bronze Star for valor in Vietnam. He is co-author of "We Were Soldiers Once...and Young" and currently writes a syndicated column on military affairs for McClatchy/Tribune.
Bush's Favorite Lie
By Robert Parry
November 9, 2007
When cataloguing George W. Bush's lies – even if you stick just to his fabrications about the Iraq War and the "war on terror" – there are so many to choose from, it's hard to pick a favorite.
There's the one about how before Sept. 11, 2001, Americans thought that "oceans protected us" – although perhaps not from Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles armed with nuclear warheads, which during the Cold War had school children hiding under desks and homeowners buying bomb shelters.
After taking office in January 2001, Bush was so confident about the protective oceans that he pushed aggressively for a "Star Wars" missile defense system.
Or there's Bush's oft-repeated claim that al-Qaeda terrorists are poised to dominate the world through a caliphate "stretching from Spain to Indonesia," though in reality they are a bunch of crazed misfits forcibly exiled from their own countries and now living in caves along the Afghan-Pakistani border.
Bush also insists that Americans must heed what Osama bin Laden says, like when this homicidal maniac supposedly calls Iraq the "central front" in the "war on terror," the American people must keep troops there indefinitely.
But it's never explained why it makes sense for the United States to let bin Laden's public declarations shape Washington's policies.
There's a chance, you see, that bin Laden is either completely nuts or perhaps clever enough to bait Bush into taking actions that actually help al-Qaeda, like getting the United States bogged down in Iraq, alienating the Muslim world and diverting military resources away from where bin Laden is hiding.
Indeed, the evidence from captured (internal rather than public) al-Qaeda communications indicates that bin Laden's high command considers Afghanistan and Pakistan – not Iraq – their central front.
In 2005, for instance, one intercepted letter, purportedly written by al-Qaeda's No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri, asked fighters in Iraq to send $100,000 to headquarters back on the Afghan-Pakistani border. If Bush were right – and al-Qaeda considered Iraq the "central front" – one might expect that the money would be going in the opposite direction. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Al-Qaeda's Fragile Foothold."]
Personal Favorite
But my personal favorite Bush lie is when he insists that the United States invaded Iraq to enforce a United Nations resolution and that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein "chose war" by barring U.N. weapons inspectors.
Bush dusted off that old canard on Nov. 7 while standing next to French President Nicolas Sarkozy during a press conference at George Washington's estate at Mount Vernon in Virginia.
Responding to a question from a French journalist about Bush's dispute with France over the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, the U.S. president said:
"We had a difference of opinion with your great country over whether or not I should have used military force to enforce U.N. demands. … I just want to remind you that [U.N. Resolution] 1441 was supported by France and the United States, which clearly said to the dictator, you will disclose, disarm, or face serious consequences. Now, I'm the kind of person that when somebody says something, I take them for their word."
Bush has made this same false argument scores of times dating back to July 2003, several months after the invasion when it was becoming clear that Saddam Hussein had told the truth when his government reported to the U.N. in 2002 that Iraq's WMD stockpiles had been eliminated.
Hussein also relented in fall 2002, allowing U.N. weapons inspectors to travel freely around Iraq checking out suspected WMD sites. The U.N. inspectors found nothing and reported growing Iraqi cooperation in the early months of 2003. In other words, Hussein was complying with Resolution 1441.
Nevertheless, Bush was determined to invade Iraq and tried to get the U.N. Security Council to go along. However, France and most other members of the Security Council rebuffed Bush and sought more time for the inspectors.
Then, in defiance of the U.N. – and in violation of the U.N. Charter which prohibits aggressive wars – Bush forced out the U.N. inspectors and launched his "shock and awe" assault. After a bloody three-week campaign, U.S.-led forces toppled Hussein's government, but found no WMD caches.
Instead of admitting the obvious facts – that he had launched an unprovoked war on false pretenses – Bush rewrote the history. Starting at a White House press briefing on July 14, 2003, Bush began insisting that he had no choice but to invade Iraq because Hussein wouldn't let the U.N. inspectors in.
Bush told reporters: "We gave him [Saddam Hussein] a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power."
Bush's Litany
Facing no contradiction from the White House press corps, Bush repeated this lie in varied forms over the next four-plus years as part of his litany defending the invasion.
On Jan. 27, 2004, for example, Bush said, "We went to the United Nations, of course, and got an overwhelming resolution – 1441 – unanimous resolution, that said to Saddam, you must disclose and destroy your weapons programs, which obviously meant the world felt he had such programs. He chose defiance. It was his choice to make, and he did not let us in."
As the years went by, Bush's lie and its unchallenged retelling took on the color of truth.
At a March 21, 2006, news conference, Bush again blamed the war on Hussein's defiance of U.N. demands for unfettered inspections.
"I was hoping to solve this [Iraq] problem diplomatically," Bush said. "The world said, 'Disarm, disclose or face serious consequences.' … We worked to make sure that Saddam Hussein heard the message of the world. And when he chose to deny the inspectors, when he chose not to disclose, then I had the difficult decision to make to remove him. And we did."
At a press conference on May 24, 2007, Bush offered a short-hand version, even inviting the journalists to remember the invented history.
"As you might remember back then, we tried the diplomatic route: [U.N. Resolution] 1441 was a unanimous vote in the Security Council that said disclose, disarm or face serious consequences. So the choice was his [Hussein's] to make. And he made a choice that has subsequently caused him to lose his life."
Not only have Washington journalists stayed consistently silent in the face of this false history, some have even adopted Bush's lie as their own. For instance, in a July 2004 interview, ABC's veteran newsman Ted Koppel used it to explain why he – Koppel – thought the invasion of Iraq was justified.
"It did not make logical sense that Saddam Hussein, whose armies had been defeated once before by the United States and the Coalition, would be prepared to lose control over his country if all he had to do was say, 'All right, U.N., come on in, check it out,'" Koppel told Amy Goodman, host of "Democracy Now."
Of course, Hussein did tell the U.N. to "come on in, check it out." But that was in the real world, not in the faux reality that governs modern Washington.
Bush's Iraq lies are now entering a new political generation, seeping into Campaign 2008. At the Republican debate on June 5, 2007, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney defended Bush's invasion on the grounds that Hussein refused to let U.N. weapons inspectors in to search for WMD.
If Saddam "had opened up his country to I.A.E.A. inspectors, and they'd come in and they'd found that there were no weapons of mass destruction," the war might have been averted, Romney said.
Not surprisingly, Romney's false statement was no more challenged by the CNN debate moderators than Bush's earlier versions had been. By constant repetition, Bush has transformed his lie into what passes for truth in modern American politics.
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com.
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/110807.html
By Robert Parry
November 9, 2007
When cataloguing George W. Bush's lies – even if you stick just to his fabrications about the Iraq War and the "war on terror" – there are so many to choose from, it's hard to pick a favorite.
There's the one about how before Sept. 11, 2001, Americans thought that "oceans protected us" – although perhaps not from Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles armed with nuclear warheads, which during the Cold War had school children hiding under desks and homeowners buying bomb shelters.
After taking office in January 2001, Bush was so confident about the protective oceans that he pushed aggressively for a "Star Wars" missile defense system.
Or there's Bush's oft-repeated claim that al-Qaeda terrorists are poised to dominate the world through a caliphate "stretching from Spain to Indonesia," though in reality they are a bunch of crazed misfits forcibly exiled from their own countries and now living in caves along the Afghan-Pakistani border.
Bush also insists that Americans must heed what Osama bin Laden says, like when this homicidal maniac supposedly calls Iraq the "central front" in the "war on terror," the American people must keep troops there indefinitely.
But it's never explained why it makes sense for the United States to let bin Laden's public declarations shape Washington's policies.
There's a chance, you see, that bin Laden is either completely nuts or perhaps clever enough to bait Bush into taking actions that actually help al-Qaeda, like getting the United States bogged down in Iraq, alienating the Muslim world and diverting military resources away from where bin Laden is hiding.
Indeed, the evidence from captured (internal rather than public) al-Qaeda communications indicates that bin Laden's high command considers Afghanistan and Pakistan – not Iraq – their central front.
In 2005, for instance, one intercepted letter, purportedly written by al-Qaeda's No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri, asked fighters in Iraq to send $100,000 to headquarters back on the Afghan-Pakistani border. If Bush were right – and al-Qaeda considered Iraq the "central front" – one might expect that the money would be going in the opposite direction. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Al-Qaeda's Fragile Foothold."]
Personal Favorite
But my personal favorite Bush lie is when he insists that the United States invaded Iraq to enforce a United Nations resolution and that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein "chose war" by barring U.N. weapons inspectors.
Bush dusted off that old canard on Nov. 7 while standing next to French President Nicolas Sarkozy during a press conference at George Washington's estate at Mount Vernon in Virginia.
Responding to a question from a French journalist about Bush's dispute with France over the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, the U.S. president said:
"We had a difference of opinion with your great country over whether or not I should have used military force to enforce U.N. demands. … I just want to remind you that [U.N. Resolution] 1441 was supported by France and the United States, which clearly said to the dictator, you will disclose, disarm, or face serious consequences. Now, I'm the kind of person that when somebody says something, I take them for their word."
Bush has made this same false argument scores of times dating back to July 2003, several months after the invasion when it was becoming clear that Saddam Hussein had told the truth when his government reported to the U.N. in 2002 that Iraq's WMD stockpiles had been eliminated.
Hussein also relented in fall 2002, allowing U.N. weapons inspectors to travel freely around Iraq checking out suspected WMD sites. The U.N. inspectors found nothing and reported growing Iraqi cooperation in the early months of 2003. In other words, Hussein was complying with Resolution 1441.
Nevertheless, Bush was determined to invade Iraq and tried to get the U.N. Security Council to go along. However, France and most other members of the Security Council rebuffed Bush and sought more time for the inspectors.
Then, in defiance of the U.N. – and in violation of the U.N. Charter which prohibits aggressive wars – Bush forced out the U.N. inspectors and launched his "shock and awe" assault. After a bloody three-week campaign, U.S.-led forces toppled Hussein's government, but found no WMD caches.
Instead of admitting the obvious facts – that he had launched an unprovoked war on false pretenses – Bush rewrote the history. Starting at a White House press briefing on July 14, 2003, Bush began insisting that he had no choice but to invade Iraq because Hussein wouldn't let the U.N. inspectors in.
Bush told reporters: "We gave him [Saddam Hussein] a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power."
Bush's Litany
Facing no contradiction from the White House press corps, Bush repeated this lie in varied forms over the next four-plus years as part of his litany defending the invasion.
On Jan. 27, 2004, for example, Bush said, "We went to the United Nations, of course, and got an overwhelming resolution – 1441 – unanimous resolution, that said to Saddam, you must disclose and destroy your weapons programs, which obviously meant the world felt he had such programs. He chose defiance. It was his choice to make, and he did not let us in."
As the years went by, Bush's lie and its unchallenged retelling took on the color of truth.
At a March 21, 2006, news conference, Bush again blamed the war on Hussein's defiance of U.N. demands for unfettered inspections.
"I was hoping to solve this [Iraq] problem diplomatically," Bush said. "The world said, 'Disarm, disclose or face serious consequences.' … We worked to make sure that Saddam Hussein heard the message of the world. And when he chose to deny the inspectors, when he chose not to disclose, then I had the difficult decision to make to remove him. And we did."
At a press conference on May 24, 2007, Bush offered a short-hand version, even inviting the journalists to remember the invented history.
"As you might remember back then, we tried the diplomatic route: [U.N. Resolution] 1441 was a unanimous vote in the Security Council that said disclose, disarm or face serious consequences. So the choice was his [Hussein's] to make. And he made a choice that has subsequently caused him to lose his life."
Not only have Washington journalists stayed consistently silent in the face of this false history, some have even adopted Bush's lie as their own. For instance, in a July 2004 interview, ABC's veteran newsman Ted Koppel used it to explain why he – Koppel – thought the invasion of Iraq was justified.
"It did not make logical sense that Saddam Hussein, whose armies had been defeated once before by the United States and the Coalition, would be prepared to lose control over his country if all he had to do was say, 'All right, U.N., come on in, check it out,'" Koppel told Amy Goodman, host of "Democracy Now."
Of course, Hussein did tell the U.N. to "come on in, check it out." But that was in the real world, not in the faux reality that governs modern Washington.
Bush's Iraq lies are now entering a new political generation, seeping into Campaign 2008. At the Republican debate on June 5, 2007, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney defended Bush's invasion on the grounds that Hussein refused to let U.N. weapons inspectors in to search for WMD.
If Saddam "had opened up his country to I.A.E.A. inspectors, and they'd come in and they'd found that there were no weapons of mass destruction," the war might have been averted, Romney said.
Not surprisingly, Romney's false statement was no more challenged by the CNN debate moderators than Bush's earlier versions had been. By constant repetition, Bush has transformed his lie into what passes for truth in modern American politics.
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com.
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/110807.html
http://www.counterpunch.org/gresh11102007.html
How to Turn a Region Into a Graveyard
Uncle Sam's New Backyard
By ALAIN GRESH
When the US decided that its backyard would in future be a greater Middle East --from Pakistan to Morocco --it imagined that it could rearrange the region to suit itself. The results have been disastrous and will be long-lasting.
The United States undersecretary of state, Nicholas Burns, said this year: "Ten years ago Europe was the epicentre of American foreign policy. This was how things stood from April 1917, when Woodrow Wilson sent one million American troops to the Western Front, through to President Clinton's intervention in Kosovo in 1999. For the better part of the 20th century, Europe was our primary, vital focus." But, he added, everything had changed and the Middle East was now, for President George Bush and his successors, "the place that Europe once was for the administrations of the 20th century" .
President Bush had said much the same a while earlier: "The challenge playing out across the broader Middle East is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of our time. On one side are those who believe in freedom and moderation. On the other side are extremists who kill the innocent, and have declared their intention to destroy our way of life" .
This broader Middle East is an ill-defined area extending from Pakistan, through the Horn of Africa to Morocco. Since 9/11 it has become the main theatre for the deployment of US military power and the decisive, even the sole, battlefield in what the US sees as a global conflict. The region's oil resources and strategic position, and the presence of Israel, have made it a US priority, particularly since the French and British began to withdraw after 1956. As Philippe Croz-Vincent has pointed out in a subtle analysis of the "American moment", the Middle East has replaced Latin America as the US backyard (Vertiges de la puissance. Le moment américain au Moyen-Orient, La Découverte, Paris, 2007). But with a major difference: Latin America was never a crucial battlefield in a third world war.
The landscape of the Middle East has been redrawn. This was the objective of Pentagon strategists and the neo-conservatives; but it is doubtful whether the results match their dreams of remodelling the region to secure the lasting hold that the French and British established after the first world war.
Western forces are directly involved in ferocious conflicts across the broader Middle East. Afghanistan has collapsed into chaos, dragging US and Nato troops down with it. It will be hard to heal the wounds in Iraq, where religious and ethnic rivalries and resistance to foreign occupation have caused hundreds of thousands of casualties --more, according to some observers, than the Rwandan genocide.
Lebanon is mired in a silent civil war between Fuad Siniora's government and the opposition, centred on Hizbullah and Michel Aoun's Free Patriotic Movement; despite a significant UN presence, the war with Israel could resume at any moment. Colonization and repression have accelerated the geographical and social fragmentation of Palestine, and the possibly irreversible collapse of the national movement. Since Ethiopia's US-backed intervention in December 2006, Somalia has been called the "new front in the war on terror". Then there are Darfur, the tensions in Pakistan, a "terrorist threat" in North Africa and the possibility of a new confrontation between Syria and Israel.
All these conflicts have been subsumed into a US world view that projects a specific meaning on to them. During and after the cold war, the US (like the Soviet Union) viewed any crisis in the light of the East-West conflict. So the issue in Nicaragua during the 1970s and 1980s was not the Sandinista struggle against a brutal dictatorship in an attempt to build a fairer society, but the danger that the country might become part of an "evil empire" . This cost the people of Nicaragua a decade of war and destruction. The US is indifferent to the problems of the Palestinians, the crisis in Somalia or the sectarian conflict in Lebanon; it is fixated on a global confrontation between good and evil. And this discourse feeds al-Qaida's vision of a continuing war against Jews and crusaders.
This dichotomy has turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy, which local forces have exploited for their own ends. Somalia's transitional federal government --corrupt, incompetent warlords --persuaded the White House that international terrorism was at work. The US responded by encouraging Ethiopian military intervention in an attempt to expel the Union of Islamic Courts forces that had seized Mogadishu six months previously . Global preconceptions eclipsed the real internal situation. Christian Ethiopia's invasion of its Muslim neighbour served only to enhance the credibility of ultra-radical Islamist groups.
Lebanon is a fragile entity that depends upon a subtle sectarian alchemy. By deciding to support one side against the other, the US and France made any internal resolution more difficult. Lebanon has become a battleground where the West and its allies can confront Iran and Syria. And any compromise, however necessary, is in danger of being perceived as a victory for the "forces of evil".
As they have multiplied, the conflicts have become interrelated. Weapons, combatants and skills move across porous frontiers, sometimes in the wake of hundreds of thousands of refugees driven into exile by the fighting. Over the past two years combat techniques pioneered in Iraq have spread to Afghanistan --the use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) against troop transports, and suicide bombings, which were unknown during the Soviet occupation (and which have now also spread to Algeria).
This summer, in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp in Lebanon, hundreds of fighters, many of them foreigners who fought in Iraq, held out for more than three months against the Lebanese army. There are thousands of Arab, Pakistani and central Asian combatants now on the loose, all trained in Iraq. Others, trained by the US and Pakistan to resist the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, migrated to terrorist groups in Egypt, Algeria and elsewhere, as well as into al-Qaida. All these wars have encouraged a profitable trade: weapons handed out to the Iraqi security forces are now in the hands of Turkish criminals.
All this, on top of decades of dictatorship and corruption, has helped weaken states in the region. Some, like Afghanistan, have collapsed. The current break-up of Iraq is not due solely to the present conflict. A 13-year embargo (1990-2003) undermined the state and opened the door to Salafist (Sunni) influence, which filtered in along clandestine routes from Jordan with food, medicine, weapons and radical ideas. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey and Syria, unable to ignore the instability on their borders, are all directly or indirectly pursuing their own agendas within Iraq. Attempts to rebuild central authority in Lebanon have fizzled out. The Palestinian Authority is dependent upon foreign military and economic aid, and the support of the Israeli government. Areas like Iraqi Kurdistan and Gaza are becoming autonomous and feeding the separatist ambitions of Turkey's Kurds and the Baluch of Iran and Pakistan.
The unprecedented influence of armed groups makes any negotiation more difficult. They hold the whip hand in Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia. Hizbullah dominates Lebanon; Hamas controls Gaza. They have proved formidably effective against the US in Iraq and against Nato in Afghanistan.
In Lebanon, Hizbullah held out for 33 days against the Israelis and changed the rules of the game: for the first time since 1948-49 a significant number of Israeli civilians were forced to abandon their homes. Despite being holed up in Gaza, Hamas is still capable of launching rockets into Israel. (On October 7 a Katyusha-type missile, more accurate and of longer range than the Qassam, was fired from Gaza into Israel.)
Rudimentary, but effective and easily replaceable, munitions (IEDs, Qassam rockets, anti-tank weapons) define the limits of US and Israeli military power.
The late Ze'ev Schiff, military correspondent of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, gave a realistic assessment: "Even if we declare dozens of times that Hamas is under pressure and wants a ceasefire, it will not erase the fact that in the battle for Sderot, Israel has in effect been defeated [it] is experiencing something in Sderot that it has not experienced since the war of independence, if ever: the enemy has silenced an entire city and brought normal life there to a halt" .
The political impasse in Palestine, the fragmentation of states and US military interventions have created a suicidal sense of despair and lend weight to the extremist assertions of al-Qaida.
On August 31, 2006, following the kidnapping in Gaza by an unknown group of two Fox News journalists, the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan published an article on the third generation of Islamist militants emerging in Palestine to challenge Hamas and Islamic Jihad. They were described as having no mass support, rejecting any compromise, refusing to play by the rules of the political game, not targeting just Israelis and not limiting their demands to Palestine. The ability of groups claiming allegiance to al-Qaida to develop in Iraq and Afghanistan, to penetrate the Palestinian camps in Lebanon and establish themselves in North Africa and Somalia demonstrates the pressure that ideological extremism is capable of exerting on fragile borders.
The nationalism that has structured the broader Middle East since 1918 is now under threat from the resurgence of ethnic and religious identity --a process encouraged, consciously or not, by General David Petraeus, the current US commander in Iraq, who led the 101st Airborne Division that captured Mosul in 2003.
One of his first decisions was to create an elected council to represent the city, with separate polls for Kurds, Arabs, Turkmens and Christians. No mention of Iraqis. By reducing the region to a mosaic of minorities, US policy forces everyone to identify with their community, to the detriment of any national or other loyalty. This undermines national cohesion and fosters conflict in Iraq now and possibly in Syria and Iran tomorrow. It encourages outside regional or international parties to intervene, manipulating local factions in pursuit of their own interests. Israel has been particularly guilty of this since the 1980s.
During Bush's first term, the neocons developed the doctrine of "constructive instability" in the Middle East . As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said while Israel was bombing Lebanon in July 2006: "What we're seeing here is, in a sense, the growing --the birth pangs of a new Middle East; and whatever we do, we have to be certain that we're pushing forward to the new Middle East, not going back to the old Middle East."
The cynicism of her remarks provoked caustic comments at the time, but she was, in a sense, right: since 9/11 we have witnessed the emergence of a new Middle East that bears no resemblance to anything that US politicians might have envisaged, and which has become a major and lasting destabilising factor in the world.
Alain Gresh is editor of Le Monde diplomatique and a specialist on the Middle East
Translated by Donald Hounam
Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair write: This article appears in the November edition of the excellent monthly Le Monde Diplomatique, whose English language edition can be found at mondediplo.com. This full text appears by agreement with Le Monde Diplomatique. CounterPunch features one or two articles from LMD every month.
How to Turn a Region Into a Graveyard
Uncle Sam's New Backyard
By ALAIN GRESH
When the US decided that its backyard would in future be a greater Middle East --from Pakistan to Morocco --it imagined that it could rearrange the region to suit itself. The results have been disastrous and will be long-lasting.
The United States undersecretary of state, Nicholas Burns, said this year: "Ten years ago Europe was the epicentre of American foreign policy. This was how things stood from April 1917, when Woodrow Wilson sent one million American troops to the Western Front, through to President Clinton's intervention in Kosovo in 1999. For the better part of the 20th century, Europe was our primary, vital focus." But, he added, everything had changed and the Middle East was now, for President George Bush and his successors, "the place that Europe once was for the administrations of the 20th century" .
President Bush had said much the same a while earlier: "The challenge playing out across the broader Middle East is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of our time. On one side are those who believe in freedom and moderation. On the other side are extremists who kill the innocent, and have declared their intention to destroy our way of life" .
This broader Middle East is an ill-defined area extending from Pakistan, through the Horn of Africa to Morocco. Since 9/11 it has become the main theatre for the deployment of US military power and the decisive, even the sole, battlefield in what the US sees as a global conflict. The region's oil resources and strategic position, and the presence of Israel, have made it a US priority, particularly since the French and British began to withdraw after 1956. As Philippe Croz-Vincent has pointed out in a subtle analysis of the "American moment", the Middle East has replaced Latin America as the US backyard (Vertiges de la puissance. Le moment américain au Moyen-Orient, La Découverte, Paris, 2007). But with a major difference: Latin America was never a crucial battlefield in a third world war.
The landscape of the Middle East has been redrawn. This was the objective of Pentagon strategists and the neo-conservatives; but it is doubtful whether the results match their dreams of remodelling the region to secure the lasting hold that the French and British established after the first world war.
Western forces are directly involved in ferocious conflicts across the broader Middle East. Afghanistan has collapsed into chaos, dragging US and Nato troops down with it. It will be hard to heal the wounds in Iraq, where religious and ethnic rivalries and resistance to foreign occupation have caused hundreds of thousands of casualties --more, according to some observers, than the Rwandan genocide.
Lebanon is mired in a silent civil war between Fuad Siniora's government and the opposition, centred on Hizbullah and Michel Aoun's Free Patriotic Movement; despite a significant UN presence, the war with Israel could resume at any moment. Colonization and repression have accelerated the geographical and social fragmentation of Palestine, and the possibly irreversible collapse of the national movement. Since Ethiopia's US-backed intervention in December 2006, Somalia has been called the "new front in the war on terror". Then there are Darfur, the tensions in Pakistan, a "terrorist threat" in North Africa and the possibility of a new confrontation between Syria and Israel.
All these conflicts have been subsumed into a US world view that projects a specific meaning on to them. During and after the cold war, the US (like the Soviet Union) viewed any crisis in the light of the East-West conflict. So the issue in Nicaragua during the 1970s and 1980s was not the Sandinista struggle against a brutal dictatorship in an attempt to build a fairer society, but the danger that the country might become part of an "evil empire" . This cost the people of Nicaragua a decade of war and destruction. The US is indifferent to the problems of the Palestinians, the crisis in Somalia or the sectarian conflict in Lebanon; it is fixated on a global confrontation between good and evil. And this discourse feeds al-Qaida's vision of a continuing war against Jews and crusaders.
This dichotomy has turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy, which local forces have exploited for their own ends. Somalia's transitional federal government --corrupt, incompetent warlords --persuaded the White House that international terrorism was at work. The US responded by encouraging Ethiopian military intervention in an attempt to expel the Union of Islamic Courts forces that had seized Mogadishu six months previously . Global preconceptions eclipsed the real internal situation. Christian Ethiopia's invasion of its Muslim neighbour served only to enhance the credibility of ultra-radical Islamist groups.
Lebanon is a fragile entity that depends upon a subtle sectarian alchemy. By deciding to support one side against the other, the US and France made any internal resolution more difficult. Lebanon has become a battleground where the West and its allies can confront Iran and Syria. And any compromise, however necessary, is in danger of being perceived as a victory for the "forces of evil".
As they have multiplied, the conflicts have become interrelated. Weapons, combatants and skills move across porous frontiers, sometimes in the wake of hundreds of thousands of refugees driven into exile by the fighting. Over the past two years combat techniques pioneered in Iraq have spread to Afghanistan --the use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) against troop transports, and suicide bombings, which were unknown during the Soviet occupation (and which have now also spread to Algeria).
This summer, in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp in Lebanon, hundreds of fighters, many of them foreigners who fought in Iraq, held out for more than three months against the Lebanese army. There are thousands of Arab, Pakistani and central Asian combatants now on the loose, all trained in Iraq. Others, trained by the US and Pakistan to resist the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, migrated to terrorist groups in Egypt, Algeria and elsewhere, as well as into al-Qaida. All these wars have encouraged a profitable trade: weapons handed out to the Iraqi security forces are now in the hands of Turkish criminals.
All this, on top of decades of dictatorship and corruption, has helped weaken states in the region. Some, like Afghanistan, have collapsed. The current break-up of Iraq is not due solely to the present conflict. A 13-year embargo (1990-2003) undermined the state and opened the door to Salafist (Sunni) influence, which filtered in along clandestine routes from Jordan with food, medicine, weapons and radical ideas. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey and Syria, unable to ignore the instability on their borders, are all directly or indirectly pursuing their own agendas within Iraq. Attempts to rebuild central authority in Lebanon have fizzled out. The Palestinian Authority is dependent upon foreign military and economic aid, and the support of the Israeli government. Areas like Iraqi Kurdistan and Gaza are becoming autonomous and feeding the separatist ambitions of Turkey's Kurds and the Baluch of Iran and Pakistan.
The unprecedented influence of armed groups makes any negotiation more difficult. They hold the whip hand in Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia. Hizbullah dominates Lebanon; Hamas controls Gaza. They have proved formidably effective against the US in Iraq and against Nato in Afghanistan.
In Lebanon, Hizbullah held out for 33 days against the Israelis and changed the rules of the game: for the first time since 1948-49 a significant number of Israeli civilians were forced to abandon their homes. Despite being holed up in Gaza, Hamas is still capable of launching rockets into Israel. (On October 7 a Katyusha-type missile, more accurate and of longer range than the Qassam, was fired from Gaza into Israel.)
Rudimentary, but effective and easily replaceable, munitions (IEDs, Qassam rockets, anti-tank weapons) define the limits of US and Israeli military power.
The late Ze'ev Schiff, military correspondent of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, gave a realistic assessment: "Even if we declare dozens of times that Hamas is under pressure and wants a ceasefire, it will not erase the fact that in the battle for Sderot, Israel has in effect been defeated [it] is experiencing something in Sderot that it has not experienced since the war of independence, if ever: the enemy has silenced an entire city and brought normal life there to a halt" .
The political impasse in Palestine, the fragmentation of states and US military interventions have created a suicidal sense of despair and lend weight to the extremist assertions of al-Qaida.
On August 31, 2006, following the kidnapping in Gaza by an unknown group of two Fox News journalists, the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan published an article on the third generation of Islamist militants emerging in Palestine to challenge Hamas and Islamic Jihad. They were described as having no mass support, rejecting any compromise, refusing to play by the rules of the political game, not targeting just Israelis and not limiting their demands to Palestine. The ability of groups claiming allegiance to al-Qaida to develop in Iraq and Afghanistan, to penetrate the Palestinian camps in Lebanon and establish themselves in North Africa and Somalia demonstrates the pressure that ideological extremism is capable of exerting on fragile borders.
The nationalism that has structured the broader Middle East since 1918 is now under threat from the resurgence of ethnic and religious identity --a process encouraged, consciously or not, by General David Petraeus, the current US commander in Iraq, who led the 101st Airborne Division that captured Mosul in 2003.
One of his first decisions was to create an elected council to represent the city, with separate polls for Kurds, Arabs, Turkmens and Christians. No mention of Iraqis. By reducing the region to a mosaic of minorities, US policy forces everyone to identify with their community, to the detriment of any national or other loyalty. This undermines national cohesion and fosters conflict in Iraq now and possibly in Syria and Iran tomorrow. It encourages outside regional or international parties to intervene, manipulating local factions in pursuit of their own interests. Israel has been particularly guilty of this since the 1980s.
During Bush's first term, the neocons developed the doctrine of "constructive instability" in the Middle East . As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said while Israel was bombing Lebanon in July 2006: "What we're seeing here is, in a sense, the growing --the birth pangs of a new Middle East; and whatever we do, we have to be certain that we're pushing forward to the new Middle East, not going back to the old Middle East."
The cynicism of her remarks provoked caustic comments at the time, but she was, in a sense, right: since 9/11 we have witnessed the emergence of a new Middle East that bears no resemblance to anything that US politicians might have envisaged, and which has become a major and lasting destabilising factor in the world.
Alain Gresh is editor of Le Monde diplomatique and a specialist on the Middle East
Translated by Donald Hounam
Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair write: This article appears in the November edition of the excellent monthly Le Monde Diplomatique, whose English language edition can be found at mondediplo.com. This full text appears by agreement with Le Monde Diplomatique. CounterPunch features one or two articles from LMD every month.
For Whom the Closing Bell Tolls
The Last Dead Bull on Wall Street
By MIKE WHITNEY
What a week for the stock market. On Wednesday the market took a 360 point nosedive followed, two days later, by a 220 point belly-flop. By the time it was over, the trading pits looked more like a sausage-packing plant than the world's financial epicenter. After the bell, downcast traders could be seen tiptoeing through the carnage on their way to the local liquor store to load up on "Stoly" and boxes of Franzia---anything that would steady their nerves and put the week behind them.
Everyone could see it coming; the train-wreck. It was mostly carry-over from the night before when Asian stocks took a thumping on reports of slower growth in the US and growing troubles in the credit markets. That put the first domino in motion. Fed chief Bernanke's announcement that the economy will face "a sharp slowdown from the housing market's contraction" and an "inflationary surge from sharply higher oil prices and the weaker dollar", didn't help either. His remarks triggered a blow-off in the currency markets while equities were frog-marched to the chopping-block.
The Shanghai market took the worst hit dropping nearly 5% before the trading-day ended. Taiwan and Hong Kong followed suit, sliding 3.9% and 3.2% respectively. Share prices in Japan fell 2%. The next morning, Wall Street crashed. It was a massacre.
This is a bear market now. The last bull was dragged from the Street on Friday with a harpoon in its chest.
The subprime contagion has now spread beyond the US and Europe to markets in the Far East. No one is fooled by Bernanke's sunny predictions that the economy will bounce back next year with a strong showing in the first quarter. That's baloney and everyone knows it. The economy has stumbled down the elevator shaft and is just waiting to hit bottom. Consumer confidence is flagging, housing is falling, foreign capital is fleeing, and the greenback is one flush away from the sewage-treatment plant. Bernanke's soothing bromides are meaningless.
"I don't see any significant change in the broad holdings of dollars around the world. Dollars remain the dominant reserve asset and I expect that to continue to be the case," Bernanke said to the Congressional Economic Committee.
Really? So why is the greenback plummeting if people aren't dumping it, Ben? What an absurd comment. The dollar has lost 63% against the euro and dropped to record lows against a basket of world currencies. Foreign central banks and investors have been ditching it as fast as they can before it loses more value. The dollar's tumble has been the most dazzling currency-flameout in modern times and Bernanke is acting like he's still asleep at the switch. It's madness.
The greenback is getting clobbered by the Fed's "low-interest" snake oil and the gargantuan current account deficit. If Bernanke clips rates again to bail out the stock market, the dollar will slip into irreversible respiratory failure. Food and oil prices will shoot to the moon overnight and the remains of the greenback will be carted off to the nearest boneyard.
September's trade deficit was another blow to the waning dollar. The Census Bureau reported on Friday that the deficit clocked in at $56.5 billion. That's $684 billion per annum! Bush has been crowing about the "shrinking deficit", but the numbers are nothing to boast about. We're still borrowing more than we're producing. We're still living beyond our means. The lower numbers just reflect the decline in home construction which is import-intensive. The fact is, we're addicted to debt-fueled consumption and forgotten that, eventually, the trillions that we've borrowed from foreign creditors, will have to be repaid. If the dollar is replaced as the world's reserve currency, then we'll have to pay back $9 trillion of outstanding debt. We might as well hang out the "Foreclosed" sign right now and get fitted for Chinese workers-suits.
This is from Bloomberg News:
"As the dollar tumbles, concern is growing that its weakness may augur the end of the U.S. currency's 62-year reign as the world's specie of choice for trade, financial transactions and central-bank reserves..The dollar owes its position as the world's premier international currency to its status as a haven during times of turmoil, the absence of a suitable rival, weak domestic demand in other countries and plain old inertia. Geopolitics also play a role."Nonsense. Who believes this rubbish? The dollar is the so-called "international currency" because the Federal Reserve and its well-heeled patrons are the directors of the US-Euro-Japan banking cabal which is at the center of the global Fiat money scam. There's nothing more to it than that. Notice the recent "unilateral" clamp-down on Iran by the US-led banking syndicate. The action was initiated without UN approval for the simple reason that the UN, the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO and thousands of NGOs are just more of the Central Banks' prime properties. Don't expect the father to ask the child for permission to punish one of his errant children. The banks are the one's who really call the shots and--behind the curtain of feigned respectability---they are the driving force behind the endless wars.
The Fed's plan to "devalue" our way to prosperity appears to have hit a few ill-placed speed-bumps. The stock market is hanging by a thread and consumer confidence is at its lowest ebb since the start of the Iraq War. The falling dollar is expected to put a damper on Christmas spending and knock equities for a loop. That can't be good for economy--especially when 72% of GDP comes from consumer spending.
We're already begun to see the telltale signs that the consumer is loosing ground and about to slip into a debt-induced coma.
According to data from the University of Michigan:
"Consumer confidence reached its lowest level in more than two years this month amid concerns over record-high oil prices, continued trouble in the housing market and higher inflationAlthough consumer attitudes deteriorated across the board, the substantial drop in expectations contributed heavily to the sizeable decline in the overall index."The average working stiff doesn't put any stock in Bernanke's palavering. He sees what's going on for himself every time he pulls up to the gas pump or goes the grocery store. He doesn't need the University of Michigan to tell him he's getting screwed; he knows it! The economy is sinking, inflation is skyrocketing, and the country is adrift. Every farthing in the public till has been shoveled into a black hole in the Middle East. Does Bernanke really think working people don't know that? Everyone knows that. Everyone knows the economy is on life-support; just like everyone knows the country is collapsing from mismanagement. Even the flag-waving, war-mongering maniacs on the Wall Street Journal's op-ed page are starting to shutter from the avalanche of bad news. They see what's going on and they're scared---scared sh**less.
Unfortunately, the sudden shift in consumer sentiment is the hurting retailers who depend on Christmas to carry them through the year. We've already seen the sluggishness in housing and auto sales. Now it's showing up in retail. Abercrombie, American Eagle, Ann Taylor, Chicos, Dillards, The Gap and Nordstrom are all reporting sagging sales. Walmart, Lowes and the other big-box stores are lowering their projections as well. It's going to be a lean Christmas.
The poor US consumer is finally maxed-out and can't tap into his home equity anymore for presto-credit. He's mortgaged "to the hilt" and he's already run up 6 or 7 credit cards to their limit. In fact, credit card debt is a growing concern for the banks, too.
The commercial banks are the victims' of their own success. After years of seductive promotions and saturation mailings the credit card industry is at its zenith leaving consumers with a staggering bill of nearly $1 trillion. ($915 billion) More and more customers are finding themselves unable to make even minimum payments on their balances and defaults are piling up at a record pace. This is the next phase of the subprime fiasco and it has the potential to be nearly as disruptive as the housing meltdown. The problem is complex, too. After all, most credit card debt in the last 6 years has been "securitized" and passed on to investors in the secondary market. (pension funds, hedge funds etc.) That means we can expect more tremors in the stock market as corporate earnings go south after credit card-backed bonds are downgraded. It's just more of the same "structured finance" chicanery; debt stacked on debt, until the whole edifice caves in.
It's looking more and more like Reagan's "shining city on the hill" was erected on a mountain of toxic debt. It's a wonder it hasn't sunk already.
The country is headed for recession and there's nothing that Bernanke can do to stop it. The only question is whether we'll be facing a colossal economy-busting meltdown like 1929 or a milder 5 or 6-year slump. That's up to the Federal Reserve. If the Fed chief decides to pit himself against the falling markets by slashing rates and destroying the currency; then we are likely to be digging-out for years. But if Bernanke steps aside, and lets the chips fall where they may, then the pace of recovery will be quicker.
Whatever choice he makes, there's no avoiding the inevitable downturn. The hammer is poised to strike the anvil. The stock market will fall, the over-extended banks and hedge funds will collapse, and the country will go into a protracted, economic tailspin. That much is certain. Economic fundamentals can only be shrugged off for so long. When markets correct it's like a tidal-surge that sweeps-away the deadwood of bad bets and over-levered investments leaving behind a broad-expanse of empty beach.
Recession is a normal part of the business cycle. It can't be avoided. The economy needs to unwind so debts can get written off and businesses can retool for the future. The upcoming recession is shaping up to be worse than its predecessors---a real doozey.
The damage caused by the Fed's excessive credit has been considerable. It'll take years to mop up the red ink and set the house aright. The markets are in a shambles, investors have been battered and confidence is gone.
Structured finance has been an unmitigated disaster. It needs to be scrapped. We need a new financial system for a new epoch; a system that is heavily regulated and supervised to discourage the crooks and con-artists; a system that it maintains its essential link to the real, productive underlying economy and avoids the galaxy of complex derivatives, "securitized" liabilities, and opaque debt-instruments that have brought on the present crisis; a system that responds to the needs of working people and takes into consideration the looming problems of environmental degradation, resource scarcity, and climate change; a system that reinvests in communities, education and health-care rather than fattening the bottom-line of corporate racketeers and brandy-drooling elites. It's time to remove the rotten scaffolding and rebuild the whole contraption brick by brick.
The system is broken. Maybe Greenspan did us all a favor by blowing it up with his "low interest" dynamite. Good riddance.
http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney11102007.html
Did He Really Say That?
Musharraf and the Drunk Uncle
By MOHAMMED HANIF
Pakistan's General Pervez Musharraf deserves our sympathy. Not because he has been forced to carry out a coup against his own regime, not because his troops are being kidnapped en masse by Pakistani Taliban and then awarded Rs 500 for good behaviour, not because he himself has become a prisoner in his Army House and can't even nip out for coffee and Paan as he used to, but because he has utterly lost his grip over grammar.
In my 15 years in journalism, I have covered three coups. And as I walked towards my office last Saturday, I had the cynicism of someone who has seen it all before. As I entered the BBC offices on a chilly Saturday afternoon in London, a senior Pakistan hand, who like me had interrupted his cosy weekend to cover the story, wondered aloud why the general was taking so long before appearing on national television and explaining his actions.
"His speech writer is too old for all this excitement. He is probably taking his time," I said. Barrister Sharifuddin Peerzada has midwifed every single coup in Pakistan and when General Musharraf took over in 1999, we had to wait until 3 am for him to address the nation. The nation listened to his 10 minutes of neatly turned out verbosity and, relieved, went to sleep. Peerzada may lack in democratic credentials, but he cares about his syntax. Last Saturday as I arrived at my desk, Musharraf had already started his address. And it was immediately clear to me that he had fallen into that aging dictator's familiar trap: He had written his own speech.
I exaggerate because he only occasionally glanced at his notes and for 40 minutes talked, well, gibberish; the kind of stuff that only journalists and think-tank- /wallah/s would take seriously. I was so unsettled "not by what he was saying, but by the way he was saying it " that I listened to the entire speech again last night.
I have been accused of punctuation abuse often enough to take these things in my stride, but for the 40 minutes that General Musharraf spoke in Urdu, he didn't use one proper sentence.
He replaced his verbs with hand gestures, nouns slipped off his shrugged shoulders, adjectives quivered under his desk.
And when he said, "Extremists have gone very extreme," it suddenly occurred to me why his speech pattern seemed so familiar. He was that uncle that you get stranded with at a family gathering when everybody else has gone to sleep but there is still some whisky left in the bottle. And uncle thinks he is about to say something very profound - if you would only pour him one last one.
Consider this; in the middle of his speech when everyone was silently urging him to get to the point, losing the thread of his diatribe about how judicial activism was responsible for the rise of jihadis in Pakistan, he abruptly said, "I have imposed emergency," then looked into the camera, waved his hand in a dismissive gesture and said, "You must have seen it on TV."
He forgot to mention that he had pulled the plug on /all/ television channels except the State-run television. It might sound like old-school dictator talk, but just imagine if somebody took away your television and then told you, 'Oh, did you see that thing on TV?'
For those who haven't suffered General Musharraf's regime directly, he can come across as a rakish figure, a daredevil who easily switches between his camouflage commando uniform and designer suits and then half sleeved shirts for attending fashion shows - his favourite cultural activity before he was forced to abandon it because of security concerns.
His CV is impressive: Here is a man who can manage the frontline on America's war and terror, get rid of three prime ministers and scores of generals and still find time to write an autobiography and then get George W Bush to endorse it in front of the world media.
I visited Delhi soon after Musharraf's failed Agra summit and he seemed to have earned the grudging respect of the Delhi elite. My Indian colleagues looked at stone-faced Vajpayee and wondered, why can't the new shining India have a handsome leader like Musharraf. One south Delhi resident claimed that his wife had started watching Pakistani channels obsessively just to get a glimpse of our commando President.
I reminded my Indian friend of Musharraf's Kargil adventure. "How come you have forgotten your Kargil widows so soon?" I said. "Well come off it, he is a bit of a matinee idol from the fifties," I was told. I am not a big fan of period Bollywood, so I kept quiet.
As I watched the speech this Saturday, I wondered if my Indian friend's wife saw the same Musharraf that I saw on my screen. He was like that uncle that I mentioned earlier, who after a couple of drinks not only wants to explain the meaning of life, but also why he is the most misunderstood man in the world, how your aunt never valued him, why the world is run by a cabal of Jewish gays and why Japanese technology is a disgrace.
You want to take the bottle away and tell him to get some sleep. He wants to tell you he loves you more than his own son and now can you pour him another drink.
I am not even remotely suggesting that Musharraf was drunk when he addressed the nation. No, it was something far more sinister. He seemed to be having an out of body experience, there he sat in his /sherwani /reading an order written by his uniformed alter ego, wagging a finger at himself, accusing his own government of spreading terrorism.
And let's not forget that when I say Pakistani government, I mean General Pervez Musharraf.
Here are some random things he said. And trust me, these things were said quite randomly:
Yes, he did say, "Extremism / bahut /extreme /ho //gaya // hai / (/extremism has become too extreme /)."At one point he appeared wistful when reminiscing about his first three years in power - "/mera /total control /thha / (/I had total control /)." You were almost tempted to ask: What happened then, uncle?
"/Hum se koi darta hi nahin /(/nobody is scared of us anymore /)."
"Islamabad /mein /extremist /bharay houay hain /(/Islamabad// is full of extremists/)."
"/Hakumat ke andar hakumat bana rakhi hai/ (/there is a government within government/)."
"/Har waqt bas /court /ke chakkar lagatey rehtay hain /(/officials are being asked to go to the courts every other day /)."
"Officials /ki beizzati kartay hain /(/officials are being insulted by the judiciary/)."
But obviously, uncle didn't need any prompting. He launched into his routine about three stages of democracy. He claimed he was about to launch the third and final phase of democracy (the way he said it, he managed to make it sound like the Final Solution). And just when you thought he was about to make his point, he took an abrupt turn and plunged into a deep pool of self pity.
This involved a long-winded anecdote about how the Supreme Court judges would rather attend a colleagues' daughter's wedding rather than just get it over with and decide that he is a constitutional President.
As I said, I have heard some dictator speeches in my life, but nobody has gone so far as to mention someone's daughter's wedding for imposing martial law in the country.
When for the last few minutes of his speech he addressed his audience in the West in English, I suddenly felt a deep sense of humiliation. This part of his speech was scripted. Sentences began and ended. I felt humiliated that my President not only thinks that we are not evolved enough for things like democracy and human rights, but because we can't even handle concepts like proper syntax and grammar.
Abraham Lincoln was quoted. The slow and painful evolution of Western democracy was evoked. Idealists were told to manage their expectations and then there was the obligatory poetic flourish: "I would not let this country commit suicide."
Sure, a colleague chipped in, I would rather strangle it with my own hands.
As he closed his speech with a rather poetic "forever Pakistan, forever," and the national anthem started to play, it occurred to me that our whole nation is probably feeling like a Kargil widow by now. With no cable television to console her sorrows.
Mohammed Hanif is the head of BBC's Urdu Service. His novel A Case of Exploding Mangoes will be published by Random House India next year.
http://www.counterpunch.org/hanif11092007.html
Monopoly Power
Pakistan and the Israel Lobby
By BADRUDDIN KHAN
Recent events in Pakistan should serve as a wake up call. There is more to the Mideast region than Israel and its Arab antagonists. The Israel Lobby has been successful in inducing the United States into mis-allocating its resources to protect Israeli interests, and this is now having a profound and lasting impact. It is time for supporters of the Israel Lobby to face up to the fact that what is good for Israel is not necessarily good for the United States. The Mideast is not best viewed through Israeli interests, and there is much more at stake than Israel's welfare.
Pakistan is for all practical purposes under martial law. This is hardly a surprise outcome. Management of the "war on terror" was delegated by the Bush administration to strongman General Pervez Musharraf, who quickly fell in line after being presented with the alternative of Pakistan being bombed into the stone-age. Musharraf has managed the situation as well as he could, given his pre-condition that he stay in power (the economy, for example, has grown nicely during his tenure). This pre-condition, however, is clearly not acceptable to Pakistanis, and he is now being forced into elections. For the US, the shift in focus from Afghanistan, Bin Laden, and Al Qaeda to Iraq, Iran, and Israel's interests has proved to be seriously distracting.
Our Mideast strategy is managed directly or indirectly by the Israel Lobby. This Lobby functions as a "monopoly" in the manner of Microsoft. Until recently, no alternate viewpoints were seriously considered, and the Israel Lobby has represented itself as the establishment. Monopolies, however, corrupt the system; Microsoft distorted the software industry, and the Israel Lobby is corrupting our body politic. We are now seeing clear and tangible evidence of the consequences of this betrayal of American interests. Rather than pursue Bin Laden, vanquish the Taliban, and guide Pakistan towards democracy, the Bush administration was misdirected into attacking Iraq, and US power is now being targeted at Israel's perceived enemies such as Iran.
The Israel Lobby has labored at caricaturizing Muslims as natural enemies of the United States. It has succeeded in skillfully amplifying Israel's contempt and fear of Arabs, into contempt and fear of Muslims by mainstream Americans. This has required a sustained campaign, and the results speak for themselves: after 9/11 80%+ of Muslims the world over were pro-US, and today a similar percentage is anti-US. Such swings in public opinion are not accidental, and reflect US actions under the "war on terror", and a calculated strategy to provoke an adversary into being.
There are now numerous excellent and well documented books that describe the Israel Lobby, its machinations, and the detrimental impact of its pervasive influence. It is time for us to switch our priorities to other countries that are being neglected at our peril, foreign policy things that matter, reduce the importance of Israel and its concerns, and refocus to American interests.
Badruddin Khan lives in San Francisco. He can be reached at: bkhan@hotmail.com
http://www.counterpunch.org/khan11092007.html
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?con...va&aid=7301
US Military Weaknesses: Top Pentagon Brass reluctant to wage war on Iran
by Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, November 10, 2007
While US attack plans against Iran are in an advanced state of readiness, there are growing divisions between the military and the White House regarding these attacks.
"U.S. defense officials have signaled that up-to-date attack plans are available if needed in the escalating crisis over Iran's nuclear aims, although no strike appears imminent.... Among the possible targets, in addition to nuclear installations like the centrifuge plant at Natanz: Iran's ballistic missile sites, Republican Guard bases, and naval warfare assets that Tehran could use in a retaliatory closure of the Straits of Hormuz, a vital artery for the flow of Gulf oil." (AP, November 8, 2007)
These ongoing war preparations are consistent with official statements and political threats directed against Iran by the US president and vice president. On October 12, President Bush dropped a bombshell by intimating that the confrontation with Iran could lead to a "World War III". In a recent TV interview Bush clarified that the reason he mentioned World War III was "because this is a country [Iran] that has defied the IAEA..." This statement is a barefaced lie by the US head of State. The IAEA confirmed in an August report the civilian nature of Iran's nuclear program.
Vice President Dick Cheney stated on Oct. 21 that the United States that Iran would face "serious consequences" if it did not conform to US demands regarding its nuclear program. Cheney is still committed to triggering a pretext, including a "Second 911" or a "catatrophic emergency" in the US, which would provide a justification for waging war on Iran.
Meanwhile, presidential candidates Republican Rudi Giuliani and Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton have tacitly endorsed the administration's stance on Iran.
These aggressive White House statements are in contrast with those emanating from the US military.
The new chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen, who took office in early October, while broadly supportive of the White House, has acknowledged US military weaknesses. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan "may have undermined the military's ability to fight wars against major adversaries - including Iran." ( quoted in Haaretz, October 22, 2007).
"...the risks could be very, very high.... We're in a conflict in two countries out there right now... We have to be incredibly thoughtful about the potential of in fact getting into a conflict with a third country in that part of the world."
In an interview with the New York Times, Mullen stated :
“We have to be incredibly thoughtful about ... getting into a conflict with a third country [Iran] in that part of the world.”
Mullen's hesitations to wage war on Iran are not based on a divergent political stance but on a realistic assessment of US military capabilities. Admiral Mullen recognizes that the US military is overstretched and that in relation to Iraq, the US military is facing serious problems in military recruitment.
Moreover, tacitly acknowledged by the Pentagon, US and coalition forces are facing fierce resistance in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
Adm. William Fallon, Commander of US Central Command (USCENTCOM) and a staunch supporter of Bush-Cheney war plans, has also played down the possibility of a war with Iran. “We are not going to do Iran on my watch.” Fallon is acutely aware of Iran's ability to retaliate militarily and inflict significant losses to US and coalition forces.
On the Diplomatic Front
Meanwhile, the White House is pressuring Germany and France to impose tough economic sanctions on Iran.
President Sarkozy expressed his unbending support of the US president in his speech to the US Congress. Bush and Sarkozy presented at a November 7 Press Conference, in what was described by political analysts as a "joint front" calling for the imposition of tough economic sanctions against Iran.
On Saturday November 10, German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrived at Bush's Texas ranch for talks with president Bush. Merkel stated that : "if Iran does not give way, [Germany] is prepared for further and tougher sanctions."
What is now emerging are efforts on the part of Washington to isolate Iran. Through ongoing negotiations with Germany and France, Washington is pushing for the imposition of an economic sanctions regime (under European Union auspices) directed against Tehran. What is at stake are European business interests, including EU oil companies, in Iran. Vice President Cheney has threatened European multinationals in a November 8 statement, that if they remain in Iran they will have trouble doing business in the US. (Guardian, November 9, 2007)
Global Research Articles by Michel Chossudovsky
US Military Weaknesses: Top Pentagon Brass reluctant to wage war on Iran
by Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, November 10, 2007
While US attack plans against Iran are in an advanced state of readiness, there are growing divisions between the military and the White House regarding these attacks.
"U.S. defense officials have signaled that up-to-date attack plans are available if needed in the escalating crisis over Iran's nuclear aims, although no strike appears imminent.... Among the possible targets, in addition to nuclear installations like the centrifuge plant at Natanz: Iran's ballistic missile sites, Republican Guard bases, and naval warfare assets that Tehran could use in a retaliatory closure of the Straits of Hormuz, a vital artery for the flow of Gulf oil." (AP, November 8, 2007)
These ongoing war preparations are consistent with official statements and political threats directed against Iran by the US president and vice president. On October 12, President Bush dropped a bombshell by intimating that the confrontation with Iran could lead to a "World War III". In a recent TV interview Bush clarified that the reason he mentioned World War III was "because this is a country [Iran] that has defied the IAEA..." This statement is a barefaced lie by the US head of State. The IAEA confirmed in an August report the civilian nature of Iran's nuclear program.
Vice President Dick Cheney stated on Oct. 21 that the United States that Iran would face "serious consequences" if it did not conform to US demands regarding its nuclear program. Cheney is still committed to triggering a pretext, including a "Second 911" or a "catatrophic emergency" in the US, which would provide a justification for waging war on Iran.
Meanwhile, presidential candidates Republican Rudi Giuliani and Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton have tacitly endorsed the administration's stance on Iran.
These aggressive White House statements are in contrast with those emanating from the US military.
The new chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen, who took office in early October, while broadly supportive of the White House, has acknowledged US military weaknesses. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan "may have undermined the military's ability to fight wars against major adversaries - including Iran." ( quoted in Haaretz, October 22, 2007).
"...the risks could be very, very high.... We're in a conflict in two countries out there right now... We have to be incredibly thoughtful about the potential of in fact getting into a conflict with a third country in that part of the world."
In an interview with the New York Times, Mullen stated :
“We have to be incredibly thoughtful about ... getting into a conflict with a third country [Iran] in that part of the world.”
Mullen's hesitations to wage war on Iran are not based on a divergent political stance but on a realistic assessment of US military capabilities. Admiral Mullen recognizes that the US military is overstretched and that in relation to Iraq, the US military is facing serious problems in military recruitment.
Moreover, tacitly acknowledged by the Pentagon, US and coalition forces are facing fierce resistance in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
Adm. William Fallon, Commander of US Central Command (USCENTCOM) and a staunch supporter of Bush-Cheney war plans, has also played down the possibility of a war with Iran. “We are not going to do Iran on my watch.” Fallon is acutely aware of Iran's ability to retaliate militarily and inflict significant losses to US and coalition forces.
On the Diplomatic Front
Meanwhile, the White House is pressuring Germany and France to impose tough economic sanctions on Iran.
President Sarkozy expressed his unbending support of the US president in his speech to the US Congress. Bush and Sarkozy presented at a November 7 Press Conference, in what was described by political analysts as a "joint front" calling for the imposition of tough economic sanctions against Iran.
On Saturday November 10, German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrived at Bush's Texas ranch for talks with president Bush. Merkel stated that : "if Iran does not give way, [Germany] is prepared for further and tougher sanctions."
What is now emerging are efforts on the part of Washington to isolate Iran. Through ongoing negotiations with Germany and France, Washington is pushing for the imposition of an economic sanctions regime (under European Union auspices) directed against Tehran. What is at stake are European business interests, including EU oil companies, in Iran. Vice President Cheney has threatened European multinationals in a November 8 statement, that if they remain in Iran they will have trouble doing business in the US. (Guardian, November 9, 2007)
Global Research Articles by Michel Chossudovsky
How Cheney Cooked the Intelligence on Iran
by Gareth Porter
Global Research, November 10, 2007 Huffington Post - 2007-11-09
As I reported for Inter Press Service this week, Dick Cheney has been trying to pressure intelligence analysts who have not drunk the neocon kool-aid on Iran to go along with his line on the issues at stake in a National Intelligence Estimate on Iran that the White House has been holding up for more than a year. Think Progress immediately noted the parallel between the Cheney's effort to get an Iran NIE that is more to his liking and the way he pushed intelligence analysts to accept the fabrications the neocons were pushing in on Iraq in 2002.
The similarities between Cheney's efforts to cook the intelligence on Iraq and on Iran are worth noting, but so are the differences. Cheney may have had a bigger impact in shaping the intelligence estimate on Iran to fit the policy he is pursuing than was the case on Iraq in 2002.
The Washington Post reported in June 2003 that Cheney and his chief of staff Scooter Libby had visited CIA analysts several times in 2002 to get them to reexamine their skeptical analysis on the WMD issue. But equally important, the Post quoted a "senior agency official" as saying that speeches by Cheney in August 2002 charging Saddam with having a nuclear weapons program "sent signals, intended or otherwise, that a certain output was desired from here."
The effect was achieved despite the fact that the October 2002 NIE on Iraqi WMD was done very quickly, because it had been forced on the White House in September by the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Sen. Bob Graham. The White House had only just begun to roll out its propaganda campaign on the fictive Iraqi nuclear weapons program at that point.
Now flash forward to autumn 2006. Cheney had a draft NIE on Iraq that he didn't like. The intelligence community had already issued an NIE on Iran in spring 2005 that had concluded Iran's nuclear program would not progress to the point of having the capability to produce a nuclear weapon until sometime between 2010 and 2015. The new draft Iran estimate was still reportedly offering a similar analysis. Cheney wanted it to endorse the neocons' alarmist view that Iran could acquire the knowledge with which to make nuclear weapons much sooner than that.
Furthermore, Cheney needed an NIE that would support the policy of attacking Iran over its alleged role in Iraq and seizing supposed Iranian "Quds force" personnel there. He wanted it to endorse the charge that Iran is supplying armor-piercing weapons to Shiites in Iraq who were killing American troops. But the draft NIE didn't do that, according to former CIA analyst Philip Giraldi.
So part of Cheney's strategy was to keep sending the draft back for further work while he was creating a new political atmosphere on Iran's role in Iraq. He began in early 2007 to use the U.S. military command in Iraq to wage an intensive propaganda campaign on how the Iranians were supplying EFPs to anti-U.S. Shiite guerrillas through the Quds force. Ignoring intelligence available to the military that EFPs were being manufactured in machine shops in Iraq, Gen. Petraeus and his subordinates formulated a new narrative that would dominate media coverage and political discourse on the issue of Iran and Iraq.
That Iranian EFP narrative has now been repeated without any alternative view being reflected in the media for ten months. The complete dominance of that narrative in the society for so long has certainly had its effect on the NIE process. As a former CIA intelligence officer told me, "Look, most of the intelligence analysts are young guys with less than ten years of experience. A lot of them are willing to give the administration line on Iran the benefit of the doubt."
My sources suggest that the analysts ready to go along with the new narrative are now the majority. Nevertheless, some intelligence analysts on Iran are reportedly still refusing to say that there is concrete evidence to support the official line that the Iranian regime is exporting EFPs to Iraq. They are insisting on including their dissenting views on the issue in the NIE.
That is why the new Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell, under orders from Cheney, has refused to circulate the NIE until all dissenting views on the issue have been removed.
There has been no comparable administration propaganda campaign over Iran's nuclear program, so Cheney's tactics were more direct. Last April the chairman of the National Intelligence Council, Thomas Fingar, who presides over the NIEs, was made to go on National Public Radio and declare that the intelligence community was reevaluating whether its judgment on how soon Iran might produce a nuclear weapon needed to be revised. Fingar said the estimate "might change" and vowed that the analysts were "serious about reexamining old evidence". He even revealed the fact that the NIE on Iran was being delayed because of the reexamination.
Although he didn't say so explicitly, Fingar's statement left little doubt that the White House had forced the reexamination of the analysts' judgment on the Iranian nuclear program by holding the NIE hostage. How successful that hardball tactic has been in getting language more acceptable to Cheney is still not known, but there were still differences of view on the issue in the draft NIE as of last month, according to my sources.
These approaches to cooking the intelligence on Iran are even more nefarious than Cheney's direct approach on Iraq in 2002. They will certainly give Cheney language supporting his belligerent policy that he can leak to the press and use to keep Congress in line. Hopefully responsible officials with access to whatever dissenting views remain will leak those to anti-war Democrats,
Global Research Articles by Gareth Porter
by Gareth Porter
Global Research, November 10, 2007 Huffington Post - 2007-11-09
As I reported for Inter Press Service this week, Dick Cheney has been trying to pressure intelligence analysts who have not drunk the neocon kool-aid on Iran to go along with his line on the issues at stake in a National Intelligence Estimate on Iran that the White House has been holding up for more than a year. Think Progress immediately noted the parallel between the Cheney's effort to get an Iran NIE that is more to his liking and the way he pushed intelligence analysts to accept the fabrications the neocons were pushing in on Iraq in 2002.
The similarities between Cheney's efforts to cook the intelligence on Iraq and on Iran are worth noting, but so are the differences. Cheney may have had a bigger impact in shaping the intelligence estimate on Iran to fit the policy he is pursuing than was the case on Iraq in 2002.
The Washington Post reported in June 2003 that Cheney and his chief of staff Scooter Libby had visited CIA analysts several times in 2002 to get them to reexamine their skeptical analysis on the WMD issue. But equally important, the Post quoted a "senior agency official" as saying that speeches by Cheney in August 2002 charging Saddam with having a nuclear weapons program "sent signals, intended or otherwise, that a certain output was desired from here."
The effect was achieved despite the fact that the October 2002 NIE on Iraqi WMD was done very quickly, because it had been forced on the White House in September by the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Sen. Bob Graham. The White House had only just begun to roll out its propaganda campaign on the fictive Iraqi nuclear weapons program at that point.
Now flash forward to autumn 2006. Cheney had a draft NIE on Iraq that he didn't like. The intelligence community had already issued an NIE on Iran in spring 2005 that had concluded Iran's nuclear program would not progress to the point of having the capability to produce a nuclear weapon until sometime between 2010 and 2015. The new draft Iran estimate was still reportedly offering a similar analysis. Cheney wanted it to endorse the neocons' alarmist view that Iran could acquire the knowledge with which to make nuclear weapons much sooner than that.
Furthermore, Cheney needed an NIE that would support the policy of attacking Iran over its alleged role in Iraq and seizing supposed Iranian "Quds force" personnel there. He wanted it to endorse the charge that Iran is supplying armor-piercing weapons to Shiites in Iraq who were killing American troops. But the draft NIE didn't do that, according to former CIA analyst Philip Giraldi.
So part of Cheney's strategy was to keep sending the draft back for further work while he was creating a new political atmosphere on Iran's role in Iraq. He began in early 2007 to use the U.S. military command in Iraq to wage an intensive propaganda campaign on how the Iranians were supplying EFPs to anti-U.S. Shiite guerrillas through the Quds force. Ignoring intelligence available to the military that EFPs were being manufactured in machine shops in Iraq, Gen. Petraeus and his subordinates formulated a new narrative that would dominate media coverage and political discourse on the issue of Iran and Iraq.
That Iranian EFP narrative has now been repeated without any alternative view being reflected in the media for ten months. The complete dominance of that narrative in the society for so long has certainly had its effect on the NIE process. As a former CIA intelligence officer told me, "Look, most of the intelligence analysts are young guys with less than ten years of experience. A lot of them are willing to give the administration line on Iran the benefit of the doubt."
My sources suggest that the analysts ready to go along with the new narrative are now the majority. Nevertheless, some intelligence analysts on Iran are reportedly still refusing to say that there is concrete evidence to support the official line that the Iranian regime is exporting EFPs to Iraq. They are insisting on including their dissenting views on the issue in the NIE.
That is why the new Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell, under orders from Cheney, has refused to circulate the NIE until all dissenting views on the issue have been removed.
There has been no comparable administration propaganda campaign over Iran's nuclear program, so Cheney's tactics were more direct. Last April the chairman of the National Intelligence Council, Thomas Fingar, who presides over the NIEs, was made to go on National Public Radio and declare that the intelligence community was reevaluating whether its judgment on how soon Iran might produce a nuclear weapon needed to be revised. Fingar said the estimate "might change" and vowed that the analysts were "serious about reexamining old evidence". He even revealed the fact that the NIE on Iran was being delayed because of the reexamination.
Although he didn't say so explicitly, Fingar's statement left little doubt that the White House had forced the reexamination of the analysts' judgment on the Iranian nuclear program by holding the NIE hostage. How successful that hardball tactic has been in getting language more acceptable to Cheney is still not known, but there were still differences of view on the issue in the draft NIE as of last month, according to my sources.
These approaches to cooking the intelligence on Iran are even more nefarious than Cheney's direct approach on Iraq in 2002. They will certainly give Cheney language supporting his belligerent policy that he can leak to the press and use to keep Congress in line. Hopefully responsible officials with access to whatever dissenting views remain will leak those to anti-war Democrats,
Global Research Articles by Gareth Porter
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?con...;articleId=1988
The Dangers of a Middle East Nuclear War
New Pentagon Doctrine: Mini-Nukes are "Safe for the Surrounding Civilian Population"
by Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, February 17, 2006
This article elaborates on two earlier texts by the author:
Nuclear War against Iran, January 2006
Planned US-Israeli Attack on Iran, May 2005
"Current US nuclear weapons policy is immoral, illegal, militarily unnecessary, and dreadfully dangerous. The risk of an accidental or inadvertent nuclear launch is unacceptably high.
Far from reducing these risks, the Bush administration has signaled that it is committed to keeping the US nuclear arsenal as a mainstay of its military power - a commitment that is simultaneously eroding the international norms that have limited the spread of nuclear weapons and fissile materials for 50 years.
Much of the current US nuclear policy has been in place since before I was secretary of defense, and it has only grown more dangerous and diplomatically destructive in the intervening years."
(Robert S. McNamara, US Secretary of Defense under the Kennedy and Johnson administrations)
The Bush administration's new nuclear doctrine contains specific "guidelines" which allow for "preemptive" nuclear strikes against "rogue enemies" which "possess" or are "developing" weapons of mass destruction (WMD). (2001 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) and Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations (DJNO)).
The preemptive nuclear doctrine (DJNO), which applies to Iran and North Korea calls for "offensive and defensive integration". It explicitly allows the preemptive use of thermonuclear weapons in conventional war theaters.
In the showdown with Tehran over its alleged nuclear weapons program, these Pentagon "guidelines" would allow, subject to presidential approval, for the launching of punitive bombings using "mini-nukes" or tactical thermonuclear weapons.
While the "guidelines" do not exclude other (more deadly) categories of nukes in the US and/or Israeli nuclear arsenal, Pentagon "scenarios" in the Middle East are currently limited to the use of tactical nuclear weapons including the B61-11 bunker buster bomb. This particular version of the bunker buster is a thermonuclear bomb, a so-called Nuclear Earth Penetrator or NEP. It is a Weapon of Mass Destruction in the real sense of the word. Its utilization by the US or Israel in the Middle East war theater would trigger a nuclear holocaust.
B61-11 NEP Thermonuclear Bomb
History of the B61 Thermonuclear Bomb
The B-61 thermonuclear bomb, first produced in 1966, is described as a light weight nuclear device. Its construction essentially extends the technology of the older version of tactical nuclear warheads. (for further details see, http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Weapons/B61.html .
The B61-11 earth-penetrating version of the B61 was developed in the immediate wake of the Cold War under the Clinton administration. It was configured initially to have a "low" 10 kiloton yield, 66.6 percent of a Hiroshima bomb, for (post-Cold War) battlefield operations:
"In October 1993, Harold Smith, Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Atomic Energy, sought approval to develop an alternative to the B53 high-yield nuclear bomb, which was the principal "bunker buster" weapon in the U.S. arsenal. The B53 was also the heaviest payload nuke in use, weighing 8,900 pounds, and only deployable from the B-52 bombers. Under the guise of "weapons modernization," Smith was pushing the development of the B61-Mod 11.
... The B61-11 was developed and put into the stockpile without full-scale nuclear tests. Some critics have maintained that the B61-11 is a new nuclear weapon, but the US has said all along that the B61-11 is not new, but a modification of older B61s to give the weapon an earth-penetrating capability to destroy buried targets...."
(http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/systems/b61.htm)
The B61-11 was intended for the Middle East. The Clinton administration had in fact threatened to use it against Libya, suggesting that Libya's alleged underground chemical weapons facility at Tarhunah "might be a target of the then-newly deployed B61-11 earth-penetrating nuclear weapon." ( The Record (Bergen County, NJ) February 23, 2003.)
Military documents distinguish between the NEP and the "mini-nuke" which are nuclear weapons with a yield of less than 10 kilotons (two thirds of a Hiroshima bomb). The NEP can have a yield of up to a 1000 kilotons, or seventy times a Hiroshima bomb.
This distinction between mini-nukes and NEPs is in many regard misleading. In practice there is no dividing line. We are broadly dealing with the same type of weaponry: the B61-11 has several "available yields", ranging from "low yields" of less than one kiloton, to mid-range and up to the 1000 kiloton bomb. In all cases, the radioactive fallout is devastating. Moreover, the B61 series of thermonuclear weapons includes several models with distinct specifications: the B61-11, the B61-3, B61- 4, B61-7 and B61-10. Each of these bombs has several "available yields".
What is contemplated for theater use is the "low yield" 10 kt bomb, two thirds of a Hiroshima bomb.
Mini-Nukes in Conventional War Theaters
There are indications that the Bush administration does not exclude using thermonuclear bunker buster bombs in the Middle East war theater. These weapons were specifically developed for use in post Cold War "conventional conflicts with third world nations".
In October 2001, in the immediate wake of 9/11, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld envisaged the use of the B61-11 in Afghanistan. The targets were Al Qaeda cave bunkers in the Tora Bora mountains.
Rumsfeld stated at the time that while the "conventional" bunker buster bombs "'are going to be able to do the job', ... he did not rule out the eventual use of nuclear weapons." (Quoted in the Houston Chronicle, 20 October 2001, italics added.)
The use of the B61-11 was also contemplated during the 2003 bombing and invasion of Iraq. In this regard, the B61-11 was described as "a precise, earth-penetrating low-yield nuclear weapon against high-value underground targets", which included Saddam Hussein's underground bunkers:
"If Saddam was arguably the highest value target in Iraq, then a good case could be made for using a nuclear weapon like the B61-11 to assure killing him and decapitating the regime" (.Defense News, December 8, 2003).
There is no documentary evidence, however, that the B61-11 was used against Iraq.
A B-2A bomber releases a test version of the new B61-11 gravity bomb over the Tonopah Test Range in Nevada, November 20, 1996
"Safe for Civilians"
The B61-11 is categorized as a "deep earth penetrating bomb" capable of "destroying the deepest and most hardened of underground bunkers, which the conventional warheads are not capable of doing". The B61-11s can be delivered in much same way as the conventional bunker buster bomb, from a B-2. a 5B-2 stealth bomber or from an F-16 aircraft.
"military officials and leaders of America's
The Dangers of a Middle East Nuclear War
New Pentagon Doctrine: Mini-Nukes are "Safe for the Surrounding Civilian Population"
by Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, February 17, 2006
This article elaborates on two earlier texts by the author:
Nuclear War against Iran, January 2006
Planned US-Israeli Attack on Iran, May 2005
"Current US nuclear weapons policy is immoral, illegal, militarily unnecessary, and dreadfully dangerous. The risk of an accidental or inadvertent nuclear launch is unacceptably high.
Far from reducing these risks, the Bush administration has signaled that it is committed to keeping the US nuclear arsenal as a mainstay of its military power - a commitment that is simultaneously eroding the international norms that have limited the spread of nuclear weapons and fissile materials for 50 years.
Much of the current US nuclear policy has been in place since before I was secretary of defense, and it has only grown more dangerous and diplomatically destructive in the intervening years."
(Robert S. McNamara, US Secretary of Defense under the Kennedy and Johnson administrations)
The Bush administration's new nuclear doctrine contains specific "guidelines" which allow for "preemptive" nuclear strikes against "rogue enemies" which "possess" or are "developing" weapons of mass destruction (WMD). (2001 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) and Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations (DJNO)).
The preemptive nuclear doctrine (DJNO), which applies to Iran and North Korea calls for "offensive and defensive integration". It explicitly allows the preemptive use of thermonuclear weapons in conventional war theaters.
In the showdown with Tehran over its alleged nuclear weapons program, these Pentagon "guidelines" would allow, subject to presidential approval, for the launching of punitive bombings using "mini-nukes" or tactical thermonuclear weapons.
While the "guidelines" do not exclude other (more deadly) categories of nukes in the US and/or Israeli nuclear arsenal, Pentagon "scenarios" in the Middle East are currently limited to the use of tactical nuclear weapons including the B61-11 bunker buster bomb. This particular version of the bunker buster is a thermonuclear bomb, a so-called Nuclear Earth Penetrator or NEP. It is a Weapon of Mass Destruction in the real sense of the word. Its utilization by the US or Israel in the Middle East war theater would trigger a nuclear holocaust.
B61-11 NEP Thermonuclear Bomb
History of the B61 Thermonuclear Bomb
The B-61 thermonuclear bomb, first produced in 1966, is described as a light weight nuclear device. Its construction essentially extends the technology of the older version of tactical nuclear warheads. (for further details see, http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Weapons/B61.html .
The B61-11 earth-penetrating version of the B61 was developed in the immediate wake of the Cold War under the Clinton administration. It was configured initially to have a "low" 10 kiloton yield, 66.6 percent of a Hiroshima bomb, for (post-Cold War) battlefield operations:
"In October 1993, Harold Smith, Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Atomic Energy, sought approval to develop an alternative to the B53 high-yield nuclear bomb, which was the principal "bunker buster" weapon in the U.S. arsenal. The B53 was also the heaviest payload nuke in use, weighing 8,900 pounds, and only deployable from the B-52 bombers. Under the guise of "weapons modernization," Smith was pushing the development of the B61-Mod 11.
... The B61-11 was developed and put into the stockpile without full-scale nuclear tests. Some critics have maintained that the B61-11 is a new nuclear weapon, but the US has said all along that the B61-11 is not new, but a modification of older B61s to give the weapon an earth-penetrating capability to destroy buried targets...."
(http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/systems/b61.htm)
The B61-11 was intended for the Middle East. The Clinton administration had in fact threatened to use it against Libya, suggesting that Libya's alleged underground chemical weapons facility at Tarhunah "might be a target of the then-newly deployed B61-11 earth-penetrating nuclear weapon." ( The Record (Bergen County, NJ) February 23, 2003.)
Military documents distinguish between the NEP and the "mini-nuke" which are nuclear weapons with a yield of less than 10 kilotons (two thirds of a Hiroshima bomb). The NEP can have a yield of up to a 1000 kilotons, or seventy times a Hiroshima bomb.
This distinction between mini-nukes and NEPs is in many regard misleading. In practice there is no dividing line. We are broadly dealing with the same type of weaponry: the B61-11 has several "available yields", ranging from "low yields" of less than one kiloton, to mid-range and up to the 1000 kiloton bomb. In all cases, the radioactive fallout is devastating. Moreover, the B61 series of thermonuclear weapons includes several models with distinct specifications: the B61-11, the B61-3, B61- 4, B61-7 and B61-10. Each of these bombs has several "available yields".
What is contemplated for theater use is the "low yield" 10 kt bomb, two thirds of a Hiroshima bomb.
Mini-Nukes in Conventional War Theaters
There are indications that the Bush administration does not exclude using thermonuclear bunker buster bombs in the Middle East war theater. These weapons were specifically developed for use in post Cold War "conventional conflicts with third world nations".
In October 2001, in the immediate wake of 9/11, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld envisaged the use of the B61-11 in Afghanistan. The targets were Al Qaeda cave bunkers in the Tora Bora mountains.
Rumsfeld stated at the time that while the "conventional" bunker buster bombs "'are going to be able to do the job', ... he did not rule out the eventual use of nuclear weapons." (Quoted in the Houston Chronicle, 20 October 2001, italics added.)
The use of the B61-11 was also contemplated during the 2003 bombing and invasion of Iraq. In this regard, the B61-11 was described as "a precise, earth-penetrating low-yield nuclear weapon against high-value underground targets", which included Saddam Hussein's underground bunkers:
"If Saddam was arguably the highest value target in Iraq, then a good case could be made for using a nuclear weapon like the B61-11 to assure killing him and decapitating the regime" (.Defense News, December 8, 2003).
There is no documentary evidence, however, that the B61-11 was used against Iraq.
A B-2A bomber releases a test version of the new B61-11 gravity bomb over the Tonopah Test Range in Nevada, November 20, 1996
"Safe for Civilians"
The B61-11 is categorized as a "deep earth penetrating bomb" capable of "destroying the deepest and most hardened of underground bunkers, which the conventional warheads are not capable of doing". The B61-11s can be delivered in much same way as the conventional bunker buster bomb, from a B-2. a 5B-2 stealth bomber or from an F-16 aircraft.
"military officials and leaders of America's