The US points to the decreasing number of violent deaths in recent months as a sign the country is being brought under control. Now, however, Aljazeera has obtained pictures which appear to show that Iraq's resistance movements are very much still in operation. The footage shows the inner workings of the Islamic Front for Iraqi Resistance, known as Jami. Formed in 2004, the group's stated aim is to drive ALL foreign forces out of Iraq.
Please Click on the Title to see the video.
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Only Pawns in the Game
By Stephen Fleischman
12/18/07 "ICH " -- -- You can demonize Bush and Cheney (rightfully) until hell freezes over--but it's not going to change anything. Keith Olbermann does it almost every night on his MSNBC television show, but it doesn't change anything. Trashing Bush and Cheney or Hillary or Obama might make a lot of people feel good, but it doesn't change anything. They're only pawns in the game.
The real power resides in the corporate oligarchy that runs this country. It has a strangle hold on America. The only point of an election in our two party-one party system is to determine which one carries out the agenda. If we do something about that, we might be able to change something.
David Korten, author of "When Corporations Rule the World", points out that "the basic design of the private-benefit corporation was created in 1600 when the British crown chartered the British East India Company as what is best described as a legalized criminal syndicate to colonize the resources and economies of distant lands..." Today's American corporations evolved from that.
When you see the feeding frenzy of US corporations in Iraq--Halliburton, Bechtel, Blackwater, and a host of others, you can understand what Korten is talking about.
The corporation is a separate legal entity having its own rights, privileges, and liabilities distinct from those of its members. The private-benefit corporation is just that--a corporation chartered for its own private benefit, but it has to provide some socially positive good. If the corporation, chartered by the state, fails to provide the function for which it is chartered, or misapplies the function, the charter can be revoked. The state giveth and the state can taketh away. But when was the last time you heard of a corporation's charter being revoked?
Over the years, the Supreme Court has bestowed additional blessings on corporations. In effect, it has made them almost human, granting them some of the same rights as US citizens, freedom of speech and freedom of the press, for example. Corporations can express there opinions in public and in the media as you or I can. This gives them enormous power, simply because they have more mullah than you or I. They can buy up commercial television time and print media ads and faux news coverage, because they have the power and the money and besides, they own most of the mainstream media.
As Sarah Stodola says in The Brooklyn Rail, "The Supreme Court has interpreted the Constitution in a manner that has allowed corporations to ascend to unprecedented levels of power. The phenomenon even has a name, and that name is 'corporate personhood.' And corporate personhood, friends, is why corporations are able to buy elections."
So what are we going to do to change all this?
Well, there are some things that can be done, short of revolution. We can start evaluating capitalism, for starters.
Elect a Congress that serves "We the People", not "They, the corporations". Easier said than done. How do you find candidates who are not beholden to corporations, special interests or any ethnic voting block?
I would hate to think we will have to wait for the looming economic collapse to do the job for us. We are living on borrowed time. When purchasing power of the US citizen reaches the end of its rope, the collapse will come. You can take that to the bank.
The Great Depression of the 1930s must have taught us something. When people lose everything they tend to wake up. They look around and see what's been done to them and what they've done to themselves by not paying attention. From their Hoovervilles, the people, hit by the depression, saw Hoover and his rotten administration for what it was, and threw the bums out. They elected new, progressive leaders (FDR Democrats), who saved capitalism with safety nets and a "New Deal".
Can we do something like that again; hopefully before the coming economic collapse? We'd better start trying now, and maybe ease the pain. Here are some things that need to be done.
Reverse Reaganomics. Reinstitute regulation of industry. Make the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), for example, do their jobs, so that we don't have US corporations off-shoring their manufacturing to another country, like China, for example, and then importing their product, like toys, for example, painted with lead, for our children to play with.
Soak the Rich, a phrase coined by FDR when he spoke about the "Economic Royalists" who brought this country to its knees. Instead of cutting taxes for the rich, as Bush has been doing, raise taxes for the rich and their corporate enterprises, as they did during the great depression when FDR laid a tax rate on them of over 90% in the upper brackets.
Marshal Plan on Energy -- Go cold turkey on our addiction to oil. Massive investment in the new technologies of alternative energy sources, wind, solar, geothermal. Halt the return to nuclear, and head off the development of biofuels that will put our food into your gas tanks. We can create new high-tech industries and high-paying jobs with a new energy world.
Single Payer Universal Health Care - end the merry-go-round on health care by political candidates. Get rid of the blood-sucking health insurance companies, once and for all. And make health care for our citizens a right and not a privilege. Any candidate for office will get elected on that platform.
Stop the Hemorrhaging in Afghanistan and Iraq - Four thousand dead American soldiers is four thousand too many. Two trillion dollars to destroy two countries is two trillion dollara that could have been used to rebuild the infrastructure of our country and have enough left to enhance the lives of our young and our old.
David Korten says, "Capitalism, which means quite literally rule by financial capital--by money and those who have it--in disregard of all non-financial values, has triumphed over democracy, markets, justice, life, and spirit. There are other ways to organize human societies to actualize the positive benefits of markets and private ownership. They require strong, active, democratically accountable governments to set and enforce rules that assure costs are internalized, equity is maintained, and market forces are channeled to the service of democracy, justice, life, and spirit."
Yes, we can do all that, if we want to.
Stephen Fleischman, writer-producer-director of documentaries, spent thirty years in Network News at CBS and ABC. His memoir is now in print. See www.Read2greatbooks.com - e-mail stevefl@ca.rr.com
12/18/07 "ICH " -- -- You can demonize Bush and Cheney (rightfully) until hell freezes over--but it's not going to change anything. Keith Olbermann does it almost every night on his MSNBC television show, but it doesn't change anything. Trashing Bush and Cheney or Hillary or Obama might make a lot of people feel good, but it doesn't change anything. They're only pawns in the game.
The real power resides in the corporate oligarchy that runs this country. It has a strangle hold on America. The only point of an election in our two party-one party system is to determine which one carries out the agenda. If we do something about that, we might be able to change something.
David Korten, author of "When Corporations Rule the World", points out that "the basic design of the private-benefit corporation was created in 1600 when the British crown chartered the British East India Company as what is best described as a legalized criminal syndicate to colonize the resources and economies of distant lands..." Today's American corporations evolved from that.
When you see the feeding frenzy of US corporations in Iraq--Halliburton, Bechtel, Blackwater, and a host of others, you can understand what Korten is talking about.
The corporation is a separate legal entity having its own rights, privileges, and liabilities distinct from those of its members. The private-benefit corporation is just that--a corporation chartered for its own private benefit, but it has to provide some socially positive good. If the corporation, chartered by the state, fails to provide the function for which it is chartered, or misapplies the function, the charter can be revoked. The state giveth and the state can taketh away. But when was the last time you heard of a corporation's charter being revoked?
Over the years, the Supreme Court has bestowed additional blessings on corporations. In effect, it has made them almost human, granting them some of the same rights as US citizens, freedom of speech and freedom of the press, for example. Corporations can express there opinions in public and in the media as you or I can. This gives them enormous power, simply because they have more mullah than you or I. They can buy up commercial television time and print media ads and faux news coverage, because they have the power and the money and besides, they own most of the mainstream media.
As Sarah Stodola says in The Brooklyn Rail, "The Supreme Court has interpreted the Constitution in a manner that has allowed corporations to ascend to unprecedented levels of power. The phenomenon even has a name, and that name is 'corporate personhood.' And corporate personhood, friends, is why corporations are able to buy elections."
So what are we going to do to change all this?
Well, there are some things that can be done, short of revolution. We can start evaluating capitalism, for starters.
Elect a Congress that serves "We the People", not "They, the corporations". Easier said than done. How do you find candidates who are not beholden to corporations, special interests or any ethnic voting block?
I would hate to think we will have to wait for the looming economic collapse to do the job for us. We are living on borrowed time. When purchasing power of the US citizen reaches the end of its rope, the collapse will come. You can take that to the bank.
The Great Depression of the 1930s must have taught us something. When people lose everything they tend to wake up. They look around and see what's been done to them and what they've done to themselves by not paying attention. From their Hoovervilles, the people, hit by the depression, saw Hoover and his rotten administration for what it was, and threw the bums out. They elected new, progressive leaders (FDR Democrats), who saved capitalism with safety nets and a "New Deal".
Can we do something like that again; hopefully before the coming economic collapse? We'd better start trying now, and maybe ease the pain. Here are some things that need to be done.
Reverse Reaganomics. Reinstitute regulation of industry. Make the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), for example, do their jobs, so that we don't have US corporations off-shoring their manufacturing to another country, like China, for example, and then importing their product, like toys, for example, painted with lead, for our children to play with.
Soak the Rich, a phrase coined by FDR when he spoke about the "Economic Royalists" who brought this country to its knees. Instead of cutting taxes for the rich, as Bush has been doing, raise taxes for the rich and their corporate enterprises, as they did during the great depression when FDR laid a tax rate on them of over 90% in the upper brackets.
Marshal Plan on Energy -- Go cold turkey on our addiction to oil. Massive investment in the new technologies of alternative energy sources, wind, solar, geothermal. Halt the return to nuclear, and head off the development of biofuels that will put our food into your gas tanks. We can create new high-tech industries and high-paying jobs with a new energy world.
Single Payer Universal Health Care - end the merry-go-round on health care by political candidates. Get rid of the blood-sucking health insurance companies, once and for all. And make health care for our citizens a right and not a privilege. Any candidate for office will get elected on that platform.
Stop the Hemorrhaging in Afghanistan and Iraq - Four thousand dead American soldiers is four thousand too many. Two trillion dollars to destroy two countries is two trillion dollara that could have been used to rebuild the infrastructure of our country and have enough left to enhance the lives of our young and our old.
David Korten says, "Capitalism, which means quite literally rule by financial capital--by money and those who have it--in disregard of all non-financial values, has triumphed over democracy, markets, justice, life, and spirit. There are other ways to organize human societies to actualize the positive benefits of markets and private ownership. They require strong, active, democratically accountable governments to set and enforce rules that assure costs are internalized, equity is maintained, and market forces are channeled to the service of democracy, justice, life, and spirit."
Yes, we can do all that, if we want to.
Stephen Fleischman, writer-producer-director of documentaries, spent thirty years in Network News at CBS and ABC. His memoir is now in print. See www.Read2greatbooks.com - e-mail stevefl@ca.rr.com
Friday, December 14, 2007
Hidden U.S. Deaths Of Gulf Wars
Since Gulf War 1 - 73,846 US Dead, 1,620,906 Disabled
12/13/07 "ICH" -- -- The US department of veteran affairs has issued an official report (See report in full) that appears to confirm 73,000 U.S. troops deaths (Page 6) and 1.6 million "disabled" ( Page 7) by Persian Gulf wars. See report in full pdf format
Ed Note: The conclusions raised by the original article may have been erroneous and as a result the item has been removed pending further research.
12/13/07 "ICH" -- -- The US department of veteran affairs has issued an official report (See report in full) that appears to confirm 73,000 U.S. troops deaths (Page 6) and 1.6 million "disabled" ( Page 7) by Persian Gulf wars. See report in full pdf format
Ed Note: The conclusions raised by the original article may have been erroneous and as a result the item has been removed pending further research.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Resistance and Hope
By Charles Sullivan
12/12/07 "ICH" -- -- If we Americans are nothing more than hopelessly addicted consumers who think of ourselves as an exceptional people with special entitlements; if we see ourselves as god’s morally superior chosen people; if we are selfish and greedy beyond redemption—then we are complicit in all of the horrible crimes that government commits in our name.
The United States has a violent history of atrocity and exploitation that began with the arrival of Christopher Columbus on the shores of North America in 1492. It extends all the way to the present and is guided by the same poisoned ideology—Manifest Destiny.
Those who know history understand that we have never come to grips with the horrible past which has led us to the appalling present. We take great pains to suppress a ghastly history of murder and mayhem in order to convince ourselves that we are not the people who exterminated and enslaved the indigenous people of North America; that we were not the practitioners of racism and chattel slavery questing for treasure on the backs of the oppressed or the murderers of striking workers seeking a living wage and decent working conditions.
Americans need to believe that those events and their effects are safely buried in the past, thereby absolving us from culpability for them in the present; but they will not stay buried and they will pursue us to our graves if we do not acknowledge them and comprehend their implications.
Likewise, we suppress our responsibility in unleashing the plague of global warming on the world and we call it a natural cycle so that we do not have to change our ways. Under the unbearable pressure of inconvenient truths, we ignore them in hopes that they will go away rather than fester and multiply. But if that is who we are and if we are incapable of coming to terms with the repulsive past there is no hope for us. Our fate is already cast and a terrible price will have to be paid by billions of people and countless other species. We will reap as we have sown and misery and death will be our just reward.
If that is indeed the case, then everything that follows this paragraph may be an exercise in futility; albeit it a necessary one.
Despite the considerable evidence that suggests we are collectively—like our ancestors also practitioners of Manifest Destiny, history has disgorged some notable exceptions to the idea of American exceptionalism and entitlement. The people who actively opposed injustice throughout American history and offered fierce resistance are a light in the gathering darkness—a beacon of hope to those living in the present and an inspiration to those who will follow us in the future. Most of them were ordinary people who differed from us only in their willingness to resist the injustice and tyranny of their time.
We have only to follow their example to avoid being ship wrecked in a history that endlessly repeats itself. There may be a way out of hell but it will be wrought with difficulty and characterized by individual and collective struggle. The willingness of enough people to engage in that struggle will determine the outcome and define the future.
From thousands of indigenous uprisings against colonial occupation, to Shay’s rebellion and continuing through heroic acts of revolutionary unionism and the courageous peace activists of today’s Code Pink, America has produced a continuous line of revolutionary thinkers and organizers intent on fundamentally restructuring society, including the redistribution of wealth and power.
America is a nation that has always been divided by socio-economic class with the rich and powerful holding the keys to political empire and advancing the agenda of the moneyed gentry over those of everyone else. Yet we persist in calling our republic a democracy—which suggests that we have no idea what a real democracy should look like.
There has always been strong opposition to the tyranny of unjust government and to the prevailing institutions of oppression and inequality. And where there is resistance to evil, no matter how small or seemingly impotent, there is hope. Resistance, apart from being an act of defiance to illegitimate authority, is also an act of faith akin to planting a seed that has enormous potential to change the world.
Resistance creates hope and hope in turn fuels further resistance. Resistance and hope give birth to a faith that believes that just outcomes are possible through struggle and opposition.
Without resistance there is no hope and no possibility of the transformative change that is so desperately needed. No matter how seemingly futile the gesture of resistance—hope is its byproduct. Hope is born of struggle and defiance to unjust authority. It is born of a rebelliousness that refuses to tolerate the intolerable and moves to oppose it. While it is theoretically possible that people can exist without hope, they cannot flourish and become fully human in its absence.
Where hope is abandoned, fear immediately rushes in to fill the vacuum and tyranny quickly ensues. Lacking hope, we are simply biding our time, stealing from the future and waiting for the end to play out. We are passive spectators on the deck of the Titanic awaiting our fate, whistling in the dark and trying to convince ourselves that these menacing waters are safely navigable through blind reckoning and indifference when in fact, they are not.
The great conservationist Aldo Leopold wisely observed: “One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.” That is also the penalty of having a social conscience. Cultivating a social conscience can be exasperating and it can adversely affect one’s health. But the failure to cultivate a social conscience approaches what Dr. Martin Luther King called, “Spiritual Death.” There are rarely easy ways out of the moral morasses we create. Opposition and struggle are the way but they exact costs that too few are willing to pay. That is why injustice is passed from one generation to the next and injustice so often prevails over justice. Our core beliefs should be non-negotiable. Either we stand by them or we are deluding ourselves.
The situation is exacerbated when our fellow citizens fail to grasp the gravity of the crises and even contribute to the injustice, either deliberately or through unintended ignorance of the important issues. In such times the reward of struggle appears small and the temptation to quit is great. As the flag wavers and prevaricators hold sway and ignorance and darkness, it seems, becomes all pervasive and hope seems like a Utopian dream as dim as the long lost sunlight of a nuclear winter.
In the midst of insidious fear and belligerent nationalism, resistance is never an easy proposition; but it is a critical component of human nature that gives rise to hope and, ultimately, to transformative change and justice. Resistance creates possibilities, whereas capitulation extinguishes them.
There are those who can look the other way in times of peril or during the commission of crimes; and there are those who cannot. We happen to belong to the latter group and we must try to set things right. We are hard-wired that way—it is our nature and it is who we are.
The alternative to resistance is as unthinkable as it is unconscionable. As long as a single voice cries in the wilderness hope exists and better outcomes are possible. It is in our DNA to resist evil and, it is the only principled action available to us. Conscience requires that we act on the knowledge we have, regardless of our numbers or the consequences to ourselves. Other good people will recognize the justice of the cause and a few will join the struggle.
It is said that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. So, too, a movement is born with a single act of resistance that is rooted in conscience.
No one knows if enough people will ever care enough to get involved so we can reach the critical mass necessary to evoke transformative change, which is why it is so imperative to continue the struggle. It is impossible to know where we are on our journey, so we must simply continue the excursion by moving forward which is what defines us as progressives and separates us from the crowd.
Humankind is rarely uplifted by its majority or by those who play it safe by looking the other way in the face of injustice. It is advanced by those who see wrong doing and choose to do something about it—the conscientious few that stand on principle and act in accordance with those principles for the betterment of everyone.
Without principled resistance there is no possibility of transformation from an unjust society to a just society; and no possibility of driving a wooden stake through the heart of the imperialist ambition that is killing our children and the children of other people like us in distant lands in war after war.
Fighting injustice is an antidote to the debilitating despair that casts a dark pall over the nation and across the world. Giving in to that despair can only assure its continuation. Opposition to evil is preferable to capitulation to it; and, moreover, it is the only appropriate response. The beauty and joy is in the struggle, in knowing the rightness of the cause; the stubborn refusal to cooperate with evil or to commit crimes against earth and humanity.
While our struggle often feels lonely and futile, we are rarely as isolated as we think. There are almost certainly kindred spirits in our own communities. Put out your hand to see if anyone takes it. You might just be surprised to know who is there.
For every front line activist there are tens of thousands who agree with them in principle but who remain on the sidelines as spectators. As conditions deteriorate and others come to appreciate our position in the same light as we do, more of them are likely to become involved in the resistance. The untapped potential of our moral supporters is both enormous and grossly under appreciated. Fear and uncertainty is all that keeps us apart but they can be overcome through networking and solidarity.
Sweeping change and justice will never come from the inert masses who occupy the safe middle grounds. As corporate fascism spreads across the planet there are no safe places for anyone but the fascists themselves. Nor will transformation come from the neo-conservative regressives occupying the far right, as embodied by the likes of Trent Lott and Rush Limbaugh and their ideological brethren in corporate America. It will not be enacted through neo-liberals such as Hillary Clinton either, or indeed anyone in the mainstream.
Justice will come, as it always does, from the far left that champion the cause of the disenfranchised and the defenseless. It will be derived from ordinary citizens—people like you and I working for justice and accepting nothing less; by standing up and being counted and refusing to sit down and be quiet. Ordinary people must become interested enough and they must care enough to take ownership of government and demand fair and equal representation by it. But awakening is often a painfully slow process and patience is so difficult when urgency is needed.
Government that is not accountable to the people is accountable to no one. That kind of government can only become fascist and prey upon the people it is supposed to serve. Such government must be abolished and replaced by genuine democracy—government of the people, by the people, for the people—all of the people, not just those with wealth and social status.
Obedience to authority that is not derived from the people themselves will ultimately result in injustice and economic inequity. Obedience can only assure the continuation of the established orthodoxy and a future that is significantly worse than the past and the present combined. If we truly believe in what we claim to hold dear we must be willing to fight for those beliefs without compromising them. Faith that is not driven by principled action is useless—it is not real faith at all.
Yet, despite our best efforts, it may well be that the best we can hope for is to slow the spread of the racist dogma of American exceptionalism that, unfortunately, continues to define us as a nation. Perhaps there are simply too few of us actively engaged in resistance to stop the purveyors of hate and extremism. But even if that is the case and resistance is futile, it does not change the moral imperative to resist. Injustice is wrong and it must be opposed. Stepping out of the way or quitting is to cooperate with the evil we rail against. Apathy and hopelessness are the great enablers of tyranny and we must never give in to them.
Given the enormity of the evil that stalks decency everywhere, rage fatigue and depression are the prevalent symptoms that follow. All of us are susceptible to them to various degrees because we feel so alone and understandably frustrated. The few are expected, as they always are, to do the work of many from which all will benefit in the end.
Dealing with the defining issues of our time and the blundering apathy of the multitudes can be infuriating and demoralizing. We cannot do everything but each of us must do what we can to affect the things we can change. Outrage and anger can be powerful tools for motivation or they can become debilitating liabilities. We must take care that they motivate rather than destroy us. Righteous indignation and fury is a just response to what is being done in our name but it must be harnessed and directed.
Continuous resistance is exhausting and necessary work. It is work that will probably never bring us the admiration of our fellow citizens who are more likely than not to hold us in contempt. People fear what they do not understand and most still subscribe to the myth of American exceptionalism. But it is the most important thing that any of us will ever do. It is for us to show the way and keep hope alive.
In these trying times of doublespeak and group think it is easy to feel overwhelmed and demoralized. But action is the antidote to despair. It is vital that we stay connected to other people engaged in related struggles; that we provide mutual support to and encourage one another to continue a spirited resistance that does not know how to quit. We are rarely as alone as we are lead to believe.
It is immensely helpful to know there are other people out there doing the important work that the times require of each of us. Seeing others engaged in resisting wrong doing may inspire others to take up the cause and a powerful movement may someday be born. It is the certainty of that knowledge that keeps hope alive and makes existence not only bearable, but enjoyable.
I am not expecting anyone to do the impossible or to offer oneself up for crucifixion or martyrdom. I am calling upon all good people to simply live a wholesome and simple and decent life and to uphold the principles of fairness, decency, sharing and empathy for others and, most importantly, justice. An injury to one truly is an injury to all.
Charles Sullivan is a nature photographer, free-lance writer and community activist residing in the Ridge and Valley Providence of geopolitical West Virginia. He welcomes your comments at csullivan@phreego.com .
12/12/07 "ICH" -- -- If we Americans are nothing more than hopelessly addicted consumers who think of ourselves as an exceptional people with special entitlements; if we see ourselves as god’s morally superior chosen people; if we are selfish and greedy beyond redemption—then we are complicit in all of the horrible crimes that government commits in our name.
The United States has a violent history of atrocity and exploitation that began with the arrival of Christopher Columbus on the shores of North America in 1492. It extends all the way to the present and is guided by the same poisoned ideology—Manifest Destiny.
Those who know history understand that we have never come to grips with the horrible past which has led us to the appalling present. We take great pains to suppress a ghastly history of murder and mayhem in order to convince ourselves that we are not the people who exterminated and enslaved the indigenous people of North America; that we were not the practitioners of racism and chattel slavery questing for treasure on the backs of the oppressed or the murderers of striking workers seeking a living wage and decent working conditions.
Americans need to believe that those events and their effects are safely buried in the past, thereby absolving us from culpability for them in the present; but they will not stay buried and they will pursue us to our graves if we do not acknowledge them and comprehend their implications.
Likewise, we suppress our responsibility in unleashing the plague of global warming on the world and we call it a natural cycle so that we do not have to change our ways. Under the unbearable pressure of inconvenient truths, we ignore them in hopes that they will go away rather than fester and multiply. But if that is who we are and if we are incapable of coming to terms with the repulsive past there is no hope for us. Our fate is already cast and a terrible price will have to be paid by billions of people and countless other species. We will reap as we have sown and misery and death will be our just reward.
If that is indeed the case, then everything that follows this paragraph may be an exercise in futility; albeit it a necessary one.
Despite the considerable evidence that suggests we are collectively—like our ancestors also practitioners of Manifest Destiny, history has disgorged some notable exceptions to the idea of American exceptionalism and entitlement. The people who actively opposed injustice throughout American history and offered fierce resistance are a light in the gathering darkness—a beacon of hope to those living in the present and an inspiration to those who will follow us in the future. Most of them were ordinary people who differed from us only in their willingness to resist the injustice and tyranny of their time.
We have only to follow their example to avoid being ship wrecked in a history that endlessly repeats itself. There may be a way out of hell but it will be wrought with difficulty and characterized by individual and collective struggle. The willingness of enough people to engage in that struggle will determine the outcome and define the future.
From thousands of indigenous uprisings against colonial occupation, to Shay’s rebellion and continuing through heroic acts of revolutionary unionism and the courageous peace activists of today’s Code Pink, America has produced a continuous line of revolutionary thinkers and organizers intent on fundamentally restructuring society, including the redistribution of wealth and power.
America is a nation that has always been divided by socio-economic class with the rich and powerful holding the keys to political empire and advancing the agenda of the moneyed gentry over those of everyone else. Yet we persist in calling our republic a democracy—which suggests that we have no idea what a real democracy should look like.
There has always been strong opposition to the tyranny of unjust government and to the prevailing institutions of oppression and inequality. And where there is resistance to evil, no matter how small or seemingly impotent, there is hope. Resistance, apart from being an act of defiance to illegitimate authority, is also an act of faith akin to planting a seed that has enormous potential to change the world.
Resistance creates hope and hope in turn fuels further resistance. Resistance and hope give birth to a faith that believes that just outcomes are possible through struggle and opposition.
Without resistance there is no hope and no possibility of the transformative change that is so desperately needed. No matter how seemingly futile the gesture of resistance—hope is its byproduct. Hope is born of struggle and defiance to unjust authority. It is born of a rebelliousness that refuses to tolerate the intolerable and moves to oppose it. While it is theoretically possible that people can exist without hope, they cannot flourish and become fully human in its absence.
Where hope is abandoned, fear immediately rushes in to fill the vacuum and tyranny quickly ensues. Lacking hope, we are simply biding our time, stealing from the future and waiting for the end to play out. We are passive spectators on the deck of the Titanic awaiting our fate, whistling in the dark and trying to convince ourselves that these menacing waters are safely navigable through blind reckoning and indifference when in fact, they are not.
The great conservationist Aldo Leopold wisely observed: “One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.” That is also the penalty of having a social conscience. Cultivating a social conscience can be exasperating and it can adversely affect one’s health. But the failure to cultivate a social conscience approaches what Dr. Martin Luther King called, “Spiritual Death.” There are rarely easy ways out of the moral morasses we create. Opposition and struggle are the way but they exact costs that too few are willing to pay. That is why injustice is passed from one generation to the next and injustice so often prevails over justice. Our core beliefs should be non-negotiable. Either we stand by them or we are deluding ourselves.
The situation is exacerbated when our fellow citizens fail to grasp the gravity of the crises and even contribute to the injustice, either deliberately or through unintended ignorance of the important issues. In such times the reward of struggle appears small and the temptation to quit is great. As the flag wavers and prevaricators hold sway and ignorance and darkness, it seems, becomes all pervasive and hope seems like a Utopian dream as dim as the long lost sunlight of a nuclear winter.
In the midst of insidious fear and belligerent nationalism, resistance is never an easy proposition; but it is a critical component of human nature that gives rise to hope and, ultimately, to transformative change and justice. Resistance creates possibilities, whereas capitulation extinguishes them.
There are those who can look the other way in times of peril or during the commission of crimes; and there are those who cannot. We happen to belong to the latter group and we must try to set things right. We are hard-wired that way—it is our nature and it is who we are.
The alternative to resistance is as unthinkable as it is unconscionable. As long as a single voice cries in the wilderness hope exists and better outcomes are possible. It is in our DNA to resist evil and, it is the only principled action available to us. Conscience requires that we act on the knowledge we have, regardless of our numbers or the consequences to ourselves. Other good people will recognize the justice of the cause and a few will join the struggle.
It is said that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. So, too, a movement is born with a single act of resistance that is rooted in conscience.
No one knows if enough people will ever care enough to get involved so we can reach the critical mass necessary to evoke transformative change, which is why it is so imperative to continue the struggle. It is impossible to know where we are on our journey, so we must simply continue the excursion by moving forward which is what defines us as progressives and separates us from the crowd.
Humankind is rarely uplifted by its majority or by those who play it safe by looking the other way in the face of injustice. It is advanced by those who see wrong doing and choose to do something about it—the conscientious few that stand on principle and act in accordance with those principles for the betterment of everyone.
Without principled resistance there is no possibility of transformation from an unjust society to a just society; and no possibility of driving a wooden stake through the heart of the imperialist ambition that is killing our children and the children of other people like us in distant lands in war after war.
Fighting injustice is an antidote to the debilitating despair that casts a dark pall over the nation and across the world. Giving in to that despair can only assure its continuation. Opposition to evil is preferable to capitulation to it; and, moreover, it is the only appropriate response. The beauty and joy is in the struggle, in knowing the rightness of the cause; the stubborn refusal to cooperate with evil or to commit crimes against earth and humanity.
While our struggle often feels lonely and futile, we are rarely as isolated as we think. There are almost certainly kindred spirits in our own communities. Put out your hand to see if anyone takes it. You might just be surprised to know who is there.
For every front line activist there are tens of thousands who agree with them in principle but who remain on the sidelines as spectators. As conditions deteriorate and others come to appreciate our position in the same light as we do, more of them are likely to become involved in the resistance. The untapped potential of our moral supporters is both enormous and grossly under appreciated. Fear and uncertainty is all that keeps us apart but they can be overcome through networking and solidarity.
Sweeping change and justice will never come from the inert masses who occupy the safe middle grounds. As corporate fascism spreads across the planet there are no safe places for anyone but the fascists themselves. Nor will transformation come from the neo-conservative regressives occupying the far right, as embodied by the likes of Trent Lott and Rush Limbaugh and their ideological brethren in corporate America. It will not be enacted through neo-liberals such as Hillary Clinton either, or indeed anyone in the mainstream.
Justice will come, as it always does, from the far left that champion the cause of the disenfranchised and the defenseless. It will be derived from ordinary citizens—people like you and I working for justice and accepting nothing less; by standing up and being counted and refusing to sit down and be quiet. Ordinary people must become interested enough and they must care enough to take ownership of government and demand fair and equal representation by it. But awakening is often a painfully slow process and patience is so difficult when urgency is needed.
Government that is not accountable to the people is accountable to no one. That kind of government can only become fascist and prey upon the people it is supposed to serve. Such government must be abolished and replaced by genuine democracy—government of the people, by the people, for the people—all of the people, not just those with wealth and social status.
Obedience to authority that is not derived from the people themselves will ultimately result in injustice and economic inequity. Obedience can only assure the continuation of the established orthodoxy and a future that is significantly worse than the past and the present combined. If we truly believe in what we claim to hold dear we must be willing to fight for those beliefs without compromising them. Faith that is not driven by principled action is useless—it is not real faith at all.
Yet, despite our best efforts, it may well be that the best we can hope for is to slow the spread of the racist dogma of American exceptionalism that, unfortunately, continues to define us as a nation. Perhaps there are simply too few of us actively engaged in resistance to stop the purveyors of hate and extremism. But even if that is the case and resistance is futile, it does not change the moral imperative to resist. Injustice is wrong and it must be opposed. Stepping out of the way or quitting is to cooperate with the evil we rail against. Apathy and hopelessness are the great enablers of tyranny and we must never give in to them.
Given the enormity of the evil that stalks decency everywhere, rage fatigue and depression are the prevalent symptoms that follow. All of us are susceptible to them to various degrees because we feel so alone and understandably frustrated. The few are expected, as they always are, to do the work of many from which all will benefit in the end.
Dealing with the defining issues of our time and the blundering apathy of the multitudes can be infuriating and demoralizing. We cannot do everything but each of us must do what we can to affect the things we can change. Outrage and anger can be powerful tools for motivation or they can become debilitating liabilities. We must take care that they motivate rather than destroy us. Righteous indignation and fury is a just response to what is being done in our name but it must be harnessed and directed.
Continuous resistance is exhausting and necessary work. It is work that will probably never bring us the admiration of our fellow citizens who are more likely than not to hold us in contempt. People fear what they do not understand and most still subscribe to the myth of American exceptionalism. But it is the most important thing that any of us will ever do. It is for us to show the way and keep hope alive.
In these trying times of doublespeak and group think it is easy to feel overwhelmed and demoralized. But action is the antidote to despair. It is vital that we stay connected to other people engaged in related struggles; that we provide mutual support to and encourage one another to continue a spirited resistance that does not know how to quit. We are rarely as alone as we are lead to believe.
It is immensely helpful to know there are other people out there doing the important work that the times require of each of us. Seeing others engaged in resisting wrong doing may inspire others to take up the cause and a powerful movement may someday be born. It is the certainty of that knowledge that keeps hope alive and makes existence not only bearable, but enjoyable.
I am not expecting anyone to do the impossible or to offer oneself up for crucifixion or martyrdom. I am calling upon all good people to simply live a wholesome and simple and decent life and to uphold the principles of fairness, decency, sharing and empathy for others and, most importantly, justice. An injury to one truly is an injury to all.
Charles Sullivan is a nature photographer, free-lance writer and community activist residing in the Ridge and Valley Providence of geopolitical West Virginia. He welcomes your comments at csullivan@phreego.com .
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Kucinich: Iraq War Funding Deal Is Immoral
WASHINGTON, D.C. (December 10, 2007) — Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) released the following statement before Congress takes up yet another Iraq war funding bill this week:
“It is immoral for Congress to make a deal to keep this war going. It is immoral to keep a war going that is based on lies. And it is immoral to make a deal to claim legislative victories unrelated to the war while at the same time spending money to keep the war going,” Kucinich said.
The House is expected to bring up an omnibus spending package this week. The mechanism and timing for inclusion of Iraq war funding in the bill is not yet decided. One option is for the Senate to amend a House-passed version of the bill to reflect the back room deal on domestic spending. It would reportedly not include Iraq war funding. The Senate would add funding for the Iraq war and send it back to the House.
“In politics, you can make a deal where one party gets its way and the other party gets its way and that’s okay when people don’t die,” Kucinich said.
“This war funding plan shows a distressing lack of concern about the situation of our troops. It shows a disregard for the Democrats’ promise to the American people to end the war.”
“We do not have to fund the war. We have the money to bring the troops home. It does not require a vote. It requires determination and truth.
“This is yet another example of leadership becoming increasingly unwilling to end this war,” Kucinich concluded.
“It is immoral for Congress to make a deal to keep this war going. It is immoral to keep a war going that is based on lies. And it is immoral to make a deal to claim legislative victories unrelated to the war while at the same time spending money to keep the war going,” Kucinich said.
The House is expected to bring up an omnibus spending package this week. The mechanism and timing for inclusion of Iraq war funding in the bill is not yet decided. One option is for the Senate to amend a House-passed version of the bill to reflect the back room deal on domestic spending. It would reportedly not include Iraq war funding. The Senate would add funding for the Iraq war and send it back to the House.
“In politics, you can make a deal where one party gets its way and the other party gets its way and that’s okay when people don’t die,” Kucinich said.
“This war funding plan shows a distressing lack of concern about the situation of our troops. It shows a disregard for the Democrats’ promise to the American people to end the war.”
“We do not have to fund the war. We have the money to bring the troops home. It does not require a vote. It requires determination and truth.
“This is yet another example of leadership becoming increasingly unwilling to end this war,” Kucinich concluded.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Interview in Madrid with the spokesman of the patriotic and nationalist Iraqi Resistance
Interview in Madrid with Abu Muhammad, spokesman of the patriotic and nationalist Iraqi Resistance
“The Iraqi Resistance is the legitimate and sole representative of Iraq”
CEOSI, Madrid, 8 October 2007
IraqSolidaridad (www.iraqsolidaridad.org), 10 December 2007
Translated from Spanish for IraqSolidaridad by Sabah Assir, revised by Ian Douglas
“The Iraqi Resistance has no relation with Al-Qaeda, which has its own vision, strategy, purposes and resources. One part of the assassinations that are now taking place in Iraq are executed by Al-Qaeda and another part by the militias and death squads linked to the political parties [invested in the US-imposed political process and] related to the occupation, but which also count on the assistance of Iran through its intervention in Iraq. […] The objective of the Iraqi Resistance is to achieve a total liberation. When the occupiers leave Iraq we will establish a national democratic, multiparty system, based on free elections; a regime in which all Iraqis that believe in collective rights will participate.”
Between 7 and 16 October 2007, Abu Muhammad, spokesman for the popular Iraqi nationalist resistance, visited Madrid on the invitation of the Spanish Campaign Against the Occupation and for the Sovereignty of Iraq (CEOSI). The interview below was performed by CEOSI during that week.
From the end of 2006, Abu Muhammad has made regular appearances in the Arab media, and also at selected moments in the US and British media, as the spokesman both for the Arab Socialist Baath Party and the Nationalist and Islamic Patriotic Front of Iraq — a platform of anti-occupation organisations which includes diverse communist currents and the Iraqi Patriotic Alliance (IPA) led by Abdel Jabar Al-Kubaysi, who has visited Spain on several occasions, along with other friends in struggle from the IPA.
Following its constitution in October (see below), Abu Muhammad is also spokesman for the coalition of armed groups, the High Command of Combat and Liberation of Iraq.
For the first time since the April 2003, Abu Muhammad has emerged as a publicly accredited reference of a new Iraqi Baathism, committed with other currents of the civil, political and military resistance to the liberation of Iraq from occupation and to the democratic, unified, social reconstruction of Iraq on a basis that is neither sectarian nor confessional.
Abu Muhammad represents the internal renewal of the Iraqi Baath Party, conveying a Baathism explicitly committed to plurality and dialogue with all internal factions that reject the US-led occupation, all of which are called upon to participate in the democratic reconstruction of Iraq’s institutions, outside the schemes of the occupiers and regional regimes that pursue the social rupture and territorial fragmentation of Iraq.
“The one-party [system] is now in the past in our culture; now we are part of the Iraqi patriotic movement. […] Alter its liberation, the Iraqi State will be a national, democratic and pluralist state, guaranteeing human rights and freedoms,” Abu Muhammad concluded in an interview with Al-Jazeera on 18 March 2007.
Abu Muhammad meanwhile vindicates the maintenance of the Iraqi state’s tradition of public and social management of Iraq’s national resources, concretely before the foreseen privatisation of Iraqi oil and key material riches.
Facing Iraq’s US-promoted sectarian forces, Abu Muhammad represents the nationalist and patriotic Iraqi Resistance, in his characterization, secular and non-sectarian, spelling out its clear condemnation of the actions of Al-Qaeda in Iraq — “Another product of the occupation,” he declares — both in their methods of indiscriminate terrorism against civilians and select confessional communities, and for their extreme and reactionary position on social issues, culminating in the proclamation of the Islamic State of Iraq, ethnic cleansing and aggression against the Sunni community, answered on the territory of Iraq by Iraqi armed resistance groups.
Abu Muhammad’s visit to Spain came at a time of intense interest: the effective collapse of the occupation regime, escalating confrontation between the Iraqi Resistance and Al-Qaeda in Iraq, and initiatives aimed at unifying the Iraqi Resistance. Since the end of summer 2007, armed Islamist groups not linked to Al-Qaeda and nationalists have coordinated on several fronts, a step that anticipates the formation of a single military command to lead an advanced struggle against the forces of occupation and their collaborators. In its statement of 30 September 2007 [1], the Iraqi Baath Party called for the unification of resistant groups along non-confessional, anti-sectarian lines, as well as condemning the indiscriminate attacks of Al Qaeda in Iraq, and on Tuesday 2 October, Al-Basrah.net reported the unification of 22 groups of the nationalist current in Iraq (including in the Kurdish areas and southern Iraq), named the High Command of Combat and Liberation of Iraq.
Abu Muhammad represents a key sector in the fight to end the occupation and for the survival of a unified Iraq for all its men, women and children. In this regard, and taking advantage of his visit to Spain, CEOSI has sought to support a dialogue that is inevitable — and that patriotic Iraqis attempt recurrently to establish — in any process of ending the suffering of the Iraqi people, the ultimate destruction of their country, and in grounding the reconstruction of a sovereign and democratic Iraq. His visit proved a unique opportunity to establish direct dialogue with a partner who is an accredited interlocutor of the Iraqi Resistance, non-sectarian, patriotic and democratic. His relation to the interior of Iraq is direct, and for that, he is the highest-level interlocutor CEOSI has welcomed and invited to Spain.
In Madrid, Abu Muhammad held meetings with institutional and political groups in parliament. It was his first visit to Europe, a gesture of appreciation for the Spanish government’s decision to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq in 2004 and encouraging of the role of Spain in resolving the crisis of occupation of his country. During his stay in Madrid, Abu Muhammad held a briefing assembly with CEOSI on 12 October and bilateral meetings with delegates from US and European organizations. Also, Abu Muhammad gave interviews to selected media outlets: La Vanguardia, Cadena SER, Channel Four / CNN+, the Latin American channel Telesur and Diagonal, in addition to the British newspaper The Guardian. [CEOSI]
CEOSI (Q): You are the spokesman both for the Arab Socialist Baath Party and the Nationalist and Islamic Patriotic Front and its newly established unified military command. What has changed in the Baath Party following the invasion of Iraq and the extrajudicial execution of President Saddam Hussein?
Abu Muhammad (A): The Iraqi Baath Party was created more than 60 years ago. It is a patriotic party, nationalist and socialist; a party that seeks to build an independent, developed and civilized state that enjoys the best international relations without exception. The Baath is a patriotic party that believes in political work and freedoms, as confirmed by its founding ideology, its status and mode of operation. But the difficult circumstances, the serious challenges and wars to which Iraq was subject over the past 35 years, made the orientation of the regime centralist, making it hard at times to control the situation.
After the invasion of Iraq, the Baath Party went from being a ruling party to a party in resistance. Thanks to its great experience, and its militant, military and civilian experts, which were incorporated into all factions of the patriotic resistance, both Islamic and nationalist, it began by directing some of the emerging resistance organizations, and guiding others, as well as coordinating with other groups. Thus, the role of the Baath in the resistance proved to be crucial.
The most important changes in the Baath have to do with its politics, not its ideology, which is comprehensive and mature. The Baath is considered an integral part of the Iraqi national movement, part of the popular political movement in the country and an essential part of the Iraqi Resistance. The idea of a single party and singular leadership — of a centralist regime — has disappeared from the thinking of the party and its current policy. Therefore, the Baath looks to the future of the Iraqi state — after the departure of the occupiers — as a pluralistic and democratic state that respects human rights and freedoms; a secular and civic state that has the best relations with every country in the world, including the United States were its government to recognize the rights of Iraq as [expressed] in the programme for liberation and independence [of the Iraqi resistance] [2].
As Baathists, our efforts in the past two or three years have been oriented, on the ground, towards convergence in policy with other currents involved in the struggle against the occupation.
Q: What type of relation is there between the Baath Party and other currents of the resistance?
A: The Baath Party forms part of the National and Islamic Patriotic Front, which is a political structure that was created in the autumn of 2005 [3]. Recently, a new military front was born, the High Command of Combat and Liberation of Iraq, lead by resistance companion Izzat Ibrahim Ad-Duri, which includes 22 patriotic, nationalist and moderate (not Salafists) and Baathist groups [4]. It is proper to say that the majority of the members of this front are Baathist; it includes forces from different independent tendencies; nationalists or patriotic Islamists that believe in the liberation of Iraq and the unity of Iraq [5].
Clearly, we are in a process of convergence of the civil, political and military resistance against the occupation and the political process imposed by the occupiers, and we hope to take new steps in the coming months. A call for a meeting (in Syria) in July had to be cancelled for reason of the international situation.
Q: Does the Iraqi Resistance include factions of Al-Qaeda? Do you consider Al-Qaeda in Iraq as a resistance organization?
A: No, absolutely not. Al-Qaeda is totally separate from the Baath Party and from the patriotic Iraqi Resistance in all its formations. Al-Qaeda did not exist in Iraq before the occupation, which means, that the occupation is responsible for the emergence of the organization, Al-Qaeda in Iraq. For a fact we can say that Al-Qaeda is a creation of the United States.
The Iraqi Resistance has no relation with Al-Qaeda, which has its own vision, strategy, purposes and resources. It has perpetrated international attacks — Spanish society also was struck hard by the terrorist operations perpetrated by Al-Qaeda or its allies and partisans [in Madrid, 11 March 2004]. One part of the assassinations that are now taking place in Iraq are executed by Al-Qaeda and another part by the militias and death squads linked to the political parties [invested in the US-imposed political process and] related to the occupation, but which also count on the assistance of Iran through its intervention in Iraq.
Therefore, there is a difference between the operations of Al-Qaeda and the national popular Iraqi Resistance, whose objective is to protect the Iraqis and give them back their dignity and independence, and restore the sovereignty of their country. The objective of the Iraqi Resistance is to achieve a total liberation. The liberation that the Baath Party and all the patriotic forces of the resistance defend is liberation from the yoke of occupation, which implies the liberation of all Iraq from all the negative consequences of the occupation. We don’t fight the Americans for being Americans, like Al-Qaeda does, but because we reject their presence in our country. When the occupiers leave Iraq we will establish a national democratic, multiparty system, based on free elections; a regime in which all Iraqis that believe in collective rights will participate. And we will have normal and positive relations with all countries of the world, including the US.
Q: According to some media and US military commanders in Iraq, tribal leaders are fighting against Al-Qaeda in cooperation with the Americans. Do you agree with this approach?
A: First of all, when tribes fight against this terrorist organization, they do not do it for the sake of the Americans, or to defend them, but because the Iraqis reject [religious and social] extremism and terrorism [6]. These tribes are fighting against Al-Qaeda because they believe in patriotic thought, nationalist and humanist, and in [civil] tolerance.
We believe Al-Qaeda is a result of the occupation, alien to the nature of Iraqi society, which is tolerant and open. If the United States and its allies get out of Iraq, Al-Qaeda will disappear from Iraq. The occupation is responsible for the emergence of Al-Qaeda in our country. The American occupation, in order to justify its long-term presence in Iraq, is trying to influence some people and say that the root of the problem is Al-Qaeda. In fact, the origin of the problem is not Al-Qaeda (and I am not defending it, because we are against this terrorist organization), but rather the occupation itself: if the occupation leaves, the terrorist operations of Al-Qaeda will end, and if they continue, the nationalist forces will expel Al-Qaeda from the country.
Q: Do you consider the current of Moqtada Al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army a resistance force?
A: Like Al-Qaeda, categorically not. Despite initial positions of collaboration with the resistance (including the participation of resistance brigades in the fighting in Najaf [against the Americans in 2005]), the current of Moqtada Al-Sadr became involved, for their own interests, in the political process sponsored by the occupiers, and the Mahdi Army militia implicated in death squads and the escalation of sectarian [violence]. (They are responsible, for example, for the deaths of 5,000 Baathists in southern Iraq, among other crimes).
Al-Sadr is a young religious man who inherited national prestige from his father, but who has no political coherence. He is a useful tool for Iran in Iraq.
The role of Iran
Q: Is there a civil war between the Sunnis and the Shias?
A: Iraq is not in a state of civil war at the social level, but a political confrontation at various levels and among certain players in their attempt to dominate our country [7]. This conflict is expressed as sectarian fighting between Al-Qaeda and [Shia] militias, but equally there are confrontations between Shia groups [for control of the south of the country], or between Sunni groups involved in or opposed to the political process.
Q: What is the role of Iran in this scene?
A: The Iranian role in Iraq is negative. Iran has taken advantage of the circumstances existing in our country and the fact that Iraqis were involved in their struggle against the occupation to try, through allied [Iraqi] parties (some with Iranian leaders), to intervene in the affairs of Iraq.
[From the beginning of the invasion] Iran has intervened abusively in Iraq through security and intelligence activities, providing arms [to the militias of sectarian Shias], through death squads or [directly] through Iranians associated with the militias of the Shia parties, such as Al-Dawa Party [of Prime Minister Al-Maliki], the Badr Brigades [of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq — SCIRI] or the Mahdi Army [of Moqtada Al-Sadr], among others. Iran has succeeded in creating an area of influence [in the centre and south of the country [8]] because one of its goals is to have an area under its power in Iraq and throughout the Arab region, mainly in the Gulf countries.
Moreover, Iran has benefited from the American presence to put pressure on Washington to get returns on its political and military nuclear programme [9]. But this second objective is not more important than the first one mentioned, to create a zone of influence in Iraq. The two converge.
Q: How is Iran benefiting from the sectarian crisis of Iraq?
A: Iran would benefit greatly from a sectarian schism [in Iraq between Shias and Sunnis]. This is why it encouraged the Shia sectarian parties, militarily and economically, to create and develop militias and death squads. It has channelled millions of dollars and arms for that purpose. These parties and militias went in to kill Iraqis of the other confession: if your identity indicates that you are from another branch of Islam you will be murdered, by the mere fact of being from another confession they would imprison many individuals and after two or three days they would be killed brutally, their bodies thrown into the street.
Moreover, [the intelligence service of] Iran supports Al-Qaeda in Iraq, which perpetrates indiscriminate attacks in the streets, in markets and schools … also killing thousands of innocent Iraqis [Shias and other faiths] to stoke sectarian strife and thus say that the Sunnis kill the Shias, and vice versa.
The main strategic objective of Iran is political; it is neither popular nor social — it is to create a chasm between the Sunnis and Shias, to divide Iraq. Iran seeks to control the region that extends from the centre-south of Iraq, and enters to manipulate the country thanks to its partners. This coincides with the recent proposal of the United States Congress to divide our country.
The proposal of the resistance
Q: What are the demands of the resistance? Are you ready to negotiate with the United States?
A: We have reiterated that if the United States wants to negotiate with the Iraqi Resistance it must first recognize the rights of Iraq. These rights are not the rights of the Baath Party or of certain people; they are the rights of Iraq and its future generations. The US must recognize that the Iraqi national resistance, with all its formations, both armed and political, is the sole and legitimate representative of the Iraqi people. Taking into account that in Iraq there is now a political process [established by the occupiers], I would say that those who are involved in the current occupation regime still have a chance [to abandon it] and must incorporate themselves into the resistant political forces that reject the occupation; they must stop the political process and become part of this resistance to be a legitimate representative of the Iraqi people. The fact that the Iraqi Resistance is the legitimate representative of Iraq, and not the Iraqi parties associated with the occupiers, is confirmed by the latest opinion poll conducted throughout Iraq by CNN and the USA Today magazine. The survey shows that eight out of 10 Iraqis support the Iraqi Resistance, i.e. that 80 per cent of Iraqis support the [armed] struggle against occupation [10]. It is proof that the Iraqi Resistance is the sole and legitimate representative of Iraq.
The second condition [to opening negotiations with the United States] in its complete and unconditional withdrawal from Iraq, as stipulated by international law: the invaders must withdraw from the area they occupy. The third condition: the annulment of all laws enacted under occupation, such as the DeBaathification law, the dissolution of the Iraqi army and the former security forces, or the hydrocarbon law [11], as well as laws that deal with the country’s economic situation under American domination, and so on. In short, the entire political process established under occupation must be annulled because it is illegal, as well as the international provisions that sought to justify it.
Our fourth condition has to do with compensations and reparations for Iraqis who died as a result of the wars, invasion and the embargo [imposed on Iraq between 1990 and 2003] grounded in false allegations and lies that the Americans themselves have acknowledged. The Americans must pay compensation for the 1,500,000 Iraqis that died as a result of the embargo and the 1,000,000 Iraqis that have died since the start of the occupation [12]. We’re talking about 2,500,000 Iraqis killed, not counting the number of injured and handicapped, and the physical destruction caused.
Finally, the United States must release all prisoners [13] and put an end to all assaults, arrests and persecution of innocent Iraqis, and the rape and violation of women and children.
If the Americans accept these rights, then we are ready to have a dialogue with them — not to discuss [these rights] but to implement them, without making concessions. If the Americans do not recognize these rights, I reiterate to the international community in general and to American society in particular that the Iraqi Resistance will continue fighting, generation after generation, whatever the sacrifices, to totally liberate Iraq from the occupation and its collaborators, sectarianism and terrorism.
Q: Recently, you have denied what former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said; that there are contacts between the US and the resistance you represent.
A: Yes, it is untrue. We are aware of attempts by the Americans to open channels of communication with the Iraqi Resistance, but there has been no dialogue whatsoever. There won’t be any, as I said, until US recognizes the legitimate rights of Iraq that I have just enumerated.
The example of Basra
Q: Can Basra be an example? After the partial withdrawal of British troops, pro-Iranian militia and the security forces of the present government fight for control of the city.
A: In principal we do not believe in partial solutions or in the partial withdrawal [of occupation troops from Iraq]: absolutely not accepted. Neither do we accept a partial solution, nor the presence of military bases in Iraq [14]. We want the invaders, the Americans, the British and their allies, as well as all the elements associated with them, to announce their complete and unconditional withdrawal from Iraq.
But as a first step, if the Americans or the British think to withdraw from Iraqi cities [to their barracks], to end punitive operations on the Iraqi population — the massacres and the daily tension — and in order not to hinder their normal lives, it can be positive. However, after this confidence-building measure, they should withdraw unconditionally from across all of Iraq, and in the shortest possible time. This is possible if the Americans recognize the rights of Iraqis mentioned earlier and sit at the negotiating table with the Iraqi Resistance in order to develop a timetable accepted by all for their withdrawal from the country.
In addition, the manoeuvres — the withdrawal of forces here to deploy them there — are hindrance tactics that we reject and that are not going to stop the growing operations of the Iraqi Resistance.
Occupiers and mercenaries
Q: What is the role of mercenaries in Iraq?
A: When American army commanders assert that the number of its forces [in Iraq] is 160,000 soldiers, they are telling the world and the societies of America and Europe one of their biggest lies.
The number of mercenaries operating within the private security company framework and fighting alongside American forces, killing Iraqis without any possibility of prosecution, is estimated at more than 180,000, of whom up to 60,000 could be foreigners and the rest Iraqis hired [by these companies] [15]. As reported, [foreign mercenaries] gain a lot of money — sometimes their salaries exceed $30,000 dollars a month, a salary that exceeds that of the American secretary of defense. Mercenaries have committed crimes against the people; they have killed innocent Iraqis just because they suspect that there are fighters hiding in some area. They deploy their aircraft, armoured vehicles and heavy weapons. Proof of that is what happened in Nusur Square in Baghdad [in the neighbourhood of Al-Mansur, September 2007], in which 24 Iraqis were killed just because they were on the street when convoy of [Blackwater] mercenaries passed by. According to diverse sources, mercenaries from all over the world are fighting with the United States Army and Marines. A good part of the participants in the second battle of Fallujah [November 2005] were mercenaries.
Q: How many operations does the resistance carry out daily?
A: According to American commanders — who acknowledged this themselves two weeks ago — the resistance carries out around 177 daily operations. In reality, the figure is much higher: together, the various resistance formations accomplish about 300 military operations daily against the American forces, and their international and domestic allies. The attacks that target civilians are perpetrated by the occupation, mercenaries, by Al-Qaeda and by the militias and death squads supported by the United States and Iran.
Q: Does the resistance help American soldiers that want to abandon their posts?
A: American soldiers serving in Iraq suffer from grave deception; we are convinced of that. Bush has humiliated the United States in Iraq, has humiliated the people and the American army. Bush has damaged the image of the American people in the world, in the Arab region, and in Iraq. Indeed, many American soldiers are trying to flee the country and it is true that members of the Iraqi Resistance facilitate their flight [16].
We appeal to all American soldiers to flee Iraq before it is too late; that will save their lives, because the Iraqi Resistance is not going to stop until it expels the last of them from Iraqi territory.
Q: Where do these soldiers go?
A: Normally they flee through the north [of Iraq] through Turkey to Europe. And many of the soldiers on leave in the US are trying not to go back to Iraq despite the incentives, threats and pressure exerted on them. Therefore, President Bush and the previous and current secretary of defense decided that American military units that complete their missions in Iraq should remain in the country, fearing that their members do not come back.
The dangers of civil war
Q: In the event that American troops withdraw from Iraq, would there be a civil war in the country?
A: Can there be any further worsening of the situation in Iraq from what is happening now in the country with the presence of the Americans? As I said, there are 160,000 American soldiers and at least 180,000 mercenaries; in total 340,000 troops. The overall number of the so-called Iraqi army and police, according to the occupiers, reaches to half a million, raising the figure to 840,000 soldiers in total. In addition, we have the allied forces, including the British. Therefore, there are in Iraq more than one million armed men, but the security situation is deteriorating.
The killing continues and the violence increases. The reason is the presence of the Americans, mercenaries, militias and policemen who formed [mafia-like] bands and death squads who murder Iraqis in prisons so ruthlessly, through beheadings, for example, among other methods. This did not happen in the darkest days of Iraq. The occupation of Iraq is what has caused this chaos, sectarian strife, and terrorism. And, in spite of this, [the Americans] are still saying they have come to Iraq to bring security. The Americans are responsible for the deterioration of the illegitimate [security] forces [they] built on a sectarian basis. We are confident that following the departure of Americans from Iraq many of the structures they established will be defeated and destroyed, if they do not collapse before then.
The national Iraqi Resistance, with all its factions and its members, is on the increase and has the potential and means to control Iraq and the security situation in short order after the occupation.
Q: Why did you choose Spain as your first destination in Europe and outside the Middle East?
A: I visited Madrid by invitation of the brothers and sisters of the Spanish Campaign Against Occupation and for the Sovereignty of Iraq, which prior to the occupation — during the period of [UN Security Council imposed] sanctions — continued solidarity activities with Iraq in the framework of the international campaign of denunciation of the embargo. After that, this campaign continues to struggle against the occupation and supports the Iraqi people. Therefore, I came here to meet with activists and Spanish friends, and others of other countries, in order to clarify our vision on how we will free ourselves from the occupation, and how to help the Iraqi people from a political and human perspective.
Moreover, this invitation is not alien to the majority position of Spanish society and its humane stance against the war and the occupation. My visit to Spain is an appreciation for the Spanish decision [in 2004] to withdraw its forces from Iraq, a courageous decision taken by the government and endorsed by parliament and society. This is a matter of gratitude for the Iraqi people, because this measure indicates that the country as a whole, its society and its institutions, concluded that the occupation was a mistake and a crime, and that the war launched against Iraq had no basis and was illegitimate; an invasion whose sole aim was to destroy this important country, both regionally and internationally.
We hope that Spain plays a renewed role in supporting the Iraqi people in their effort to liberate themselves from the occupation and escape the destruction it brings.
Notes of IraqSolidarity:
1. See: “With the US congress insisting to divide Iraq, there is no more room today for discussion or debate; the decisive hour has come and every one should choose his real trench […] US and Iranian insistence on fuelling and heightening sectarian (fitna) ill feeling in Iraq and the systematic destruction of every normal human life in our homeland were interconnected steps designed to pave the way for the right environment to divide Iraq […] Therefore, the time for talk is over! What is requested from all Iraqi Resistance factions and all Iraqi patriotic forces should be the following:
i- The immediate unity of all Resistance factions. The non-existence of unity of all the Iraqi Resistance factions, and relying on ideological understanding, is a dangerous lacuna […] The US exploited this breach in Al-Anbar to strike all the Resistance factions under the pretext of fighting Al-Qaeda. In the past, every one, including those who spread the Islamic faith, used to strike deals with non-Muslims to accelerate victory. In modern times, peoples got rid of colonialism through a global alliance that included all anti-colonialists forces, be they clerics or atheists, as happened in Vietnam. So will those who use now infidelity and faith as criteria to divide the Resistance and the Iraqi patriotic movement ever comprehend that this is exactly what serves the Occupation and helps it stay, instead of forcing it to withdraw? Our Party, therefore, sincerely calls upon all the combating organizations to set aside their divisions and to hold onto a real unity of all combatants and transform the groups newly formed into a global combating unity that includes all factions without exception. This is the most important step to achieving victory, and to foil and wreck the US Occupation and Iran's tactics to divide the Resistance.
ii- Get rid of any ideological rows between Resistance factions for the time being, for any disagreement now can turn into real ill feeling (fitna)! That is why all should avoid mutual suspicion or criticizing each other.
iii- The Iraqi patriotic forces that back the Resistance should unite too in a global front that includes everybody. Indeed! Any delay is a sign of lack of awareness regarding what is going on in Iraq and on how to confront dangers.”
Original source: Baath Party Statement: Let's foil, with the unity of the armed Resistance, the conspiracy to divide Iraq (English).
2. See The Political Program of the Baath and its National Resistance: (The Program of Liberation and Independence). The Baath reaffirms its commitment to a democratic and unified Iraq through resistance. See also Rabie El-Hashim: The Baathists recover their strength and provide a common agenda to the National Resistance (Spanish).
3. See IraqSolidaridad: Creation of the Nationalist and Islamic Patriotic Front in Iraq: the armed resistance is coordinated under the direction of the Supreme Military Council of the ‘Mujahidins’ (Spanish).
4. See in Rebellion: “Communiqué of the National Liberation Front of Iraq: 22 groups of the Iraqi Resistance meet in Baghdad.”
5. Six Islamist armed groups, also opposed to Al-Qaeda, announced on 11 October 2007 the formation of their own military front, which includes the Islamic Army in Iraq, the Army of Mujahidins, Ansar Al-Sunna, the Army of Al-Fatihin, the Islamic Front for the Iraqi Resistance (Jami) and the Iraqi Hamas. The Brigades of the Revolution of 1920 are outside after several internal divisions caused by the involvement of some of its units in operations against Al-Qaeda in coordination with US troops, for example in Diyala. In its communiqué of 14 points, the new Islamist alliance pledges to continue the armed struggle against the occupiers. Its formation was anticipated by an appeal from the Association of Muslim Scholars — the highest Sunni religious institution — for the unification of armed groups, leaving aside their differences on the future political system (whether the state is of an Islamic character or not) of Iraq.
6. See IraqSolidaridad: Ali Al-Fadhily: The Pentagon failed in its attempt to take advantage of growing popular opposition to the actions of Al-Qaeda. The Salvation Council of Al-Anbar, sponsored by USA, has been dissolved (Spanish).
7. “... Why are so many massacres perpetrated in an organized manner in Baghdad? The answer is that the sectarian Badr Brigade militia [of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, led by Abdel Aziz Al-Hakim], the Mahdi Army [of Moqtada Al-Sadr] and the Al-Dawa Party [of Nouri Al-Malaki] — all these formations are supported by Iran (in some areas organized directly by Iranians) — want to control Baghdad because they know that the Americans are losing the battle against the Resistance, and therefore, if they control Baghdad they can control the entire country. The sectarian militias believe that their crimes could lead to Iraqi patriots leaving the city. Although it is the occupation itself that is responsible for what happens in Iraq, Iran also provides tremendous support to these militias. Fortunately, the Iraqi Resistance has been able to thwart its project with the help of the popular support. Therefore, I assure you that the civil and sectarian war, that the US and Iran plan to camouflage their impotence in Iraq, will not take place due to the national and social cohesion of our people “ Interview in Al-Wahda, 11 December 2006, reproduced in Hicham Awda: Interview with Abu Mohammed, spokesman for the Baath Party. Baathists confirm the closure of contacts with the United States and its commitment to a democratic Iraq (Spanish).
8. See IraqSolidaridad: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad: British troops are inhibited in the Basra by Shia sectarian militia. “Welcome to Tehran”: Iran takes control of Basra (Spanish).
9. See IraqSolidaridad: The US and Iran have set up a bilateral committee on security in Iraq. Carlos Varea: The Bush administration assumed that their stay in Iraq depends on the attitude of Tehran. The US and Iran start talks on Iraq in Baghdad (Spanish).
10. See IraqSolidaridad: Global Policy Forum (X): Iraqi society believes that the United States is deliberately provoking civil war to remain in the country. Iraqi public opinion and the economic cost of the occupation (Spanish).
11. See IraqSolidaridad: James Cogan: Al-Maliki under strong pressure from the US and with a serious internal crisis. The Iraqi government adopts a new draft of the oil law (Spanish).
12. An estimated 650,000 Iraqis were killed until 2006, according to the Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore (Maryland, USA) and the Faculty of Medicine, Al-Mustansiriya University Baghdad, see IraqSolidaridad: Information note of CEOSI: 650,000 Iraqis died as a result of the occupation, 2.5 per cent of the population. A new report from the Johns Hopkins University and Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad (Spanish).
13. More than 40,000 detainees, according to the latest official figure recognized by the occupiers and the Iraqi government. See IraqSolidaridad Report: ‘Global Policy Forum’ (III): The occupiers have kept thousands of Iraqi detainees in clandestine prisons. Arrests and prisons: absolute defenceless prisoners (Spanish).
14. See IraqSolidaridad Report: ‘Global Policy Forum’ (I): At the beginning of 2007 there were in Iraq 55 major American facilities. US bases in Iraq and the new embassy in Baghdad (Spanish).
15. Integrating these forces in the so-called Facilities Protection Service or Provision of Security Forces, approved at the time by Paul Bremer, see IraqSolidaridad: 146,000 Iraqis make up private armies without any control (Spanish) and Dahr Jamail and Ali Al-Fadily: Facilities Protection Force hosts death squads. 70 per cent of the Iraqi police forces are infiltrated by sectarian militias and mafias (English).
16. See IraqSolidaridad: Tim McGirk: Massacre in Haditha. On 19 November 2006 US marines assassinated 15 civilians in Haditha, and related news of occupation troops in Iraq (Spanish).
Spanish Campaign Against the Occupation and for the Sovereignty of Iraq (CEOSI)
http://www.iraqsolidaridad.org/2007/docs/10-12-07-Entrevista_Abu_Mohamad_ingles.html
Saturday, December 08, 2007
Our Troops Must Leave Iraq
Published on Tuesday, December 4, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
Our Troops Must Leave Iraq
by Walter Cronkite and David Krieger
The American people no longer support the war in Iraq. The war is being carried on by a stubborn president who, like Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon during the Vietnam War, does not want to lose. But from the beginning this has been an ill-considered and poorly prosecuted war that, like the Vietnam War, has diminished respect for America. We believe Mr. Bush would like to drag the war on long enough to hand it off to another president.
The war in Iraq reminds us of the tragedy of the Vietnam War. Both wars began with false assertions by the president to the American people and the Congress. Like Vietnam, the Iraq War has introduced a new vocabulary: “shock and awe,” “mission accomplished,” “the surge.” Like Vietnam, we have destroyed cities in order to save them. It is not a strategy for success.
The Bush administration has attempted to forestall ending the war by putting in more troops, but more troops will not solve the problem. We have lost the hearts and minds of most of the Iraqi people, and victory no longer seems to be even a remote possibility. It is time to end our occupation of Iraq, and bring our troops home.
This war has had only limited body counts. There are reports that more than one million Iraqis have died in the war. These reports cannot be corroborated because the US military does not make public the number of the Iraqi dead and injured. There are also reports that some four million Iraqis have been displaced and are refugees either abroad or within their own country. Iraqis with the resources to leave the country have left. They are frightened. They don’t trust the US, its allies or its mercenaries to protect them and their interests.
We know more about the body counts of American soldiers in Iraq. Some 4,000 American soldiers have been killed in this war, about a third more than the number of people who died in the terrorist attacks of 9/11. And some 28,000 American soldiers have suffered debilitating injuries. Many more have been affected by the trauma of war in ways that they will have to live with for the rest of their lives - ways that will have serious effects not only on their lives and the lives of their loved ones, but on society as a whole. Due to woefully inadequate resources being provided, our injured soldiers are not receiving the medical treatment and mental health care that they deserve.
The invasion of Iraq was illegal from the start. Not only was Congress lied to in order to secure its support for the invasion of Iraq, but the war lacked the support of the United Nations Security Council and thus was an aggressive war initiated on the false pretenses of weapons of mass destruction. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Nor has any assertion of a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda proven to be true. In the end, democracy has not come to Iraq. Its government is still being forced to bend to the will of the US administration.
What the war has accomplished is the undermining of US credibility throughout the world, the weakening of our military forces, and the erosion of our Bill of Rights. Nobel Laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz calculates that the war is costing American tax payers more than $1 trillion. This amount could double if we continue the war. Each minute we are spending $500,000 in Iraq. Our losses are incalculable. It is time to remove our military forces from Iraq.
We must ask ourselves whether continuing to pursue this war is benefiting the American people or weakening us. We must ask whether continuing the war is benefiting the Iraqi people or inflicting greater suffering upon them. We believe the answer to these inquiries is that both the American and Iraqi people would benefit by ending the US military presence in Iraq.
Moving forward is not complicated, but it will require courage. Step one is to proceed with the rapid withdrawal of US troops from Iraq and hand over the responsibility for the security of Iraq to Iraqi forces. Step two is to remove our military bases from Iraq and to turn Iraqi oil over to Iraqis. Step three is to provide resources to the Iraqis to rebuild the infrastructure that has been destroyed in the war.
Congress must act. Although Congress never declared war, as required by the Constitution, they did give the president the authority to invade Iraq. Congress must now withdraw that authority and cease its funding of the war.
It is not likely, however, that Congress will act unless the American people make their voices heard with unmistakable clarity. That is the way the Vietnam War was brought to an end. It is the way that the Iraq War will also be brought to an end. The only question is whether it will be now, or whether the war will drag on, with all the suffering that implies, to an even more tragic, costly and degrading defeat. We will be a better, stronger and more decent country to bring the troops home now.
Walter Cronkite is the former long-time anchor for CBS Evening News. David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.
Our Troops Must Leave Iraq
by Walter Cronkite and David Krieger
The American people no longer support the war in Iraq. The war is being carried on by a stubborn president who, like Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon during the Vietnam War, does not want to lose. But from the beginning this has been an ill-considered and poorly prosecuted war that, like the Vietnam War, has diminished respect for America. We believe Mr. Bush would like to drag the war on long enough to hand it off to another president.
The war in Iraq reminds us of the tragedy of the Vietnam War. Both wars began with false assertions by the president to the American people and the Congress. Like Vietnam, the Iraq War has introduced a new vocabulary: “shock and awe,” “mission accomplished,” “the surge.” Like Vietnam, we have destroyed cities in order to save them. It is not a strategy for success.
The Bush administration has attempted to forestall ending the war by putting in more troops, but more troops will not solve the problem. We have lost the hearts and minds of most of the Iraqi people, and victory no longer seems to be even a remote possibility. It is time to end our occupation of Iraq, and bring our troops home.
This war has had only limited body counts. There are reports that more than one million Iraqis have died in the war. These reports cannot be corroborated because the US military does not make public the number of the Iraqi dead and injured. There are also reports that some four million Iraqis have been displaced and are refugees either abroad or within their own country. Iraqis with the resources to leave the country have left. They are frightened. They don’t trust the US, its allies or its mercenaries to protect them and their interests.
We know more about the body counts of American soldiers in Iraq. Some 4,000 American soldiers have been killed in this war, about a third more than the number of people who died in the terrorist attacks of 9/11. And some 28,000 American soldiers have suffered debilitating injuries. Many more have been affected by the trauma of war in ways that they will have to live with for the rest of their lives - ways that will have serious effects not only on their lives and the lives of their loved ones, but on society as a whole. Due to woefully inadequate resources being provided, our injured soldiers are not receiving the medical treatment and mental health care that they deserve.
The invasion of Iraq was illegal from the start. Not only was Congress lied to in order to secure its support for the invasion of Iraq, but the war lacked the support of the United Nations Security Council and thus was an aggressive war initiated on the false pretenses of weapons of mass destruction. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Nor has any assertion of a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda proven to be true. In the end, democracy has not come to Iraq. Its government is still being forced to bend to the will of the US administration.
What the war has accomplished is the undermining of US credibility throughout the world, the weakening of our military forces, and the erosion of our Bill of Rights. Nobel Laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz calculates that the war is costing American tax payers more than $1 trillion. This amount could double if we continue the war. Each minute we are spending $500,000 in Iraq. Our losses are incalculable. It is time to remove our military forces from Iraq.
We must ask ourselves whether continuing to pursue this war is benefiting the American people or weakening us. We must ask whether continuing the war is benefiting the Iraqi people or inflicting greater suffering upon them. We believe the answer to these inquiries is that both the American and Iraqi people would benefit by ending the US military presence in Iraq.
Moving forward is not complicated, but it will require courage. Step one is to proceed with the rapid withdrawal of US troops from Iraq and hand over the responsibility for the security of Iraq to Iraqi forces. Step two is to remove our military bases from Iraq and to turn Iraqi oil over to Iraqis. Step three is to provide resources to the Iraqis to rebuild the infrastructure that has been destroyed in the war.
Congress must act. Although Congress never declared war, as required by the Constitution, they did give the president the authority to invade Iraq. Congress must now withdraw that authority and cease its funding of the war.
It is not likely, however, that Congress will act unless the American people make their voices heard with unmistakable clarity. That is the way the Vietnam War was brought to an end. It is the way that the Iraq War will also be brought to an end. The only question is whether it will be now, or whether the war will drag on, with all the suffering that implies, to an even more tragic, costly and degrading defeat. We will be a better, stronger and more decent country to bring the troops home now.
Walter Cronkite is the former long-time anchor for CBS Evening News. David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.
"You, Mr.. Bush, are a bald-faced liar."
To See the video Click on the Title.
Finally, as promised, a Special Comment about the President's cataclysmic deception about Iran.
---
There are few choices more terrifying than the one Mr.. Bush has left us with tonight.
We have either a president who is too dishonest to restrain himself from invoking World War Three about Iran at least six weeks after he had to have known that the analogy would be fantastic, irresponsible hyperbole -- or we have a president too transcendently stupid not to have asked -- at what now appears to have been a series of opportunities to do so -- whether the fairy tales he either created or was fed, were still even remotely plausible.
A pathological presidential liar, or an idiot-in-chief. It is the nightmare scenario of political science fiction: A critical juncture in our history and, contained in either answer, a president manifestly unfit to serve, and behind him in the vice presidency: an unapologetic war-monger who has long been seeing a world visible only to himself.
After Ms Perino's announcement from the White House late last night, the timeline is inescapable and clear.
In August the President was told by his hand-picked Major Domo of intelligence Mike McConnell, a flinty, high-strung-looking, worrying-warrior who will always see more clouds than silver linings, that what "everybody thought" about Iran might be, in essence, crap.
Yet on October 17th the President said of Iran and its president Ahmadinejad:
"I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War Three, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge to make a nuclear weapon."
And as he said that, Mr.. Bush knew that at bare minimum there was a strong chance that his rhetoric was nothing more than words with which to scare the Iranians.
Or was it, Sir, to scare the Americans?
Does Iran not really fit into the equation here? Have you just scribbled it into the fill-in-the-blank on the same template you used, to scare us about Iraq?
In August, any commander-in-chief still able-minded or uncorrupted or both, Sir, would have invoked the quality the job most requires: mental flexibility.
A bright man, or an honest man, would have realized no later than the McConnell briefing that the only true danger about Iran was the damage that could be done by an unhinged, irrational Chicken Little of a president, shooting his mouth off, backed up by only his own hysteria and his own delusions of omniscience.
Not Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mr. Bush.
The Chicken Little of presidents is the one, Sir, that you see in the mirror.
And the mind reels at the thought of a Vice President fully briefed on the revised Intel as long as two weeks ago -- briefed on the fact that Iran abandoned its pursuit of this imminent threat four years ago -- who never bothered to mention it to his boss.
It is nearly forgotten today, but throughout much of Ronald Reagan's presidency it was widely believed that he was little more than a front-man for some never-viewed, behind-the-scenes, string-puller.
Today, as evidenced by this latest remarkable, historic malfeasance, it is inescapable, that Dick Cheney is either this president's evil ventriloquist, or he thinks he is.
What servant of any of the 42 previous presidents could possibly withhold information of this urgency and gravity, and wind up back at his desk the next morning, instead of winding up before a Congressional investigation -- or a criminal one?
Mr. Bush -- if you can still hear us -- if you did not previously agree to this scenario in which Dick Cheney is the actual detective and you're Remington Steele -- you must disenthrall yourself: Mr. Cheney has usurped your constitutional powers, cut you out of the information loop, and led you down the path to an unprecedented presidency in which the facts are optional, the Intel is valued less than the hunch, and the assistant runs the store.
The problem is, Sir, your assistant is robbing you -- and your country -- blind.
Not merely in monetary terms, Mr.. Bush, but more importantly of the traditions and righteousness for which we have stood, at great risk, for centuries: Honesty, Law, Moral Force.
Mr.. Cheney has helped, Sir, to make your Administration into the kind our ancestors saw in the 1860's and 1870's and 1880's -- the ones that abandoned Reconstruction, and sent this country marching backwards into the pit of American Apartheid.
Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland...
Presidents who will be remembered only in a blur of failure, Mr.. Bush.
Presidents who will be remembered only as functions of those who opposed them -- the opponents whom history proved right.
Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland... Bush.
Would that we could let this President off the hook by seeing him only as marionette or moron.
But a study of the mutation of his language about Iran proves that though he may not be very good at it, he is, himself, still a manipulative, Machiavellian, snake-oil salesman.
The Bushian etymology was tracked by Dan Froomkin at the Washington Post's website.
It is staggering.
March 31st: "Iran is trying to develop a nuclear weapon..."
June 5th: Iran's "pursuit of nuclear weapons..."
June 19th: "consequences to the Iranian government if they continue to pursue a nuclear weapon..."
July 12th: "the same regime in Iran that is pursuing nuclear weapons..."
August 6th: "this is a government that has proclaimed its desire to build a nuclear weapon..."
Notice a pattern?
Trying to develop, build or pursue a nuclear weapon.
Then, sometime between August 6th and August 9th, those terms are suddenly swapped out, so subtly that only in retrospect can we see that somebody has warned the President, not only that he has gone out too far on the limb of terror -- but there may not even be a tree there...
McConnell, or someone, must have briefed him then.
August 9th: "They have expressed their desire to be able to enrich uranium, which we believe is a step toward having a nuclear weapons program..."
August 28th: "Iran's active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons..."
October 4th: "you should not have the know-how on how to make a (nuclear) weapon..."
October 17th: "until they suspend and/or make it clear that they, that their statements aren't real, yeah, I believe they want to have the **capacity**, the **knowledge**, in order to make a nuclear weapon."
Before August 9th, it's: Trying to develop, build or pursue a nuclear weapon.
After August 9th, it's: Desire, pursuit, want...knowledge technology know-how to enrich uranium.
And we are to believe, Mr.. Bush, that the National Intelligence Estimate this week talks of the Iranians suspending their nuclear weapons program in 2003...
And you talked of the Iranians suspending their nuclear weapons program on October 17th...
And that's just a coincidence?
---
And we are to believe, Mr.. Bush, that nobody told you any of this until last week?
Your insistence that you were not briefed on the NIE until last week might be legally true -- something like "what the definition of is is -- but with the subject matter being not interns but the threat of nuclear war.
Legally, it might save you from some war crimes trial... but ethically, it is a lie.
It is indefensible.
You have been yelling threats into a phone for nearly four months, after the guy on the other end had already hung up.
You, Mr.. Bush, are a bald-faced liar.
--
And more over, you have just revealed that John Bolton, and Norman Podhoretz, and the Wall Street Journal Editorial board, are also bald-faced liars.
We are to believe that the Intel Community, or maybe the State Department, cooked the raw intelligence about Iran, falsely diminished the Iranian nuclear threat, to make you look bad?
And you proceeded to let them make you look bad?
---
You not only knew all of this about Iran, in early August...
But you also knew... it was... accurate.
And instead of sharing this good news with the people you have obviously forgotten you represent...
You merely fine-tuned your terrorizing of those people, to legally cover your own backside...
While you filled the factual gap with sadistic visions of -- as you phrased it on August 28th: a quote "nuclear holocaust" -- and, as you phrased it on October 17th, quote: "World War Three."
---
My comments, Mr. Bush, are often dismissed as simple repetitions of the phrase "George Bush has no business being president."
Well, guess what?
Tonight: hanged by your own words... convicted by your own deliberate lies...
You, sir, have no business... being president.
---
Good night, and good luck.
Finally, as promised, a Special Comment about the President's cataclysmic deception about Iran.
---
There are few choices more terrifying than the one Mr.. Bush has left us with tonight.
We have either a president who is too dishonest to restrain himself from invoking World War Three about Iran at least six weeks after he had to have known that the analogy would be fantastic, irresponsible hyperbole -- or we have a president too transcendently stupid not to have asked -- at what now appears to have been a series of opportunities to do so -- whether the fairy tales he either created or was fed, were still even remotely plausible.
A pathological presidential liar, or an idiot-in-chief. It is the nightmare scenario of political science fiction: A critical juncture in our history and, contained in either answer, a president manifestly unfit to serve, and behind him in the vice presidency: an unapologetic war-monger who has long been seeing a world visible only to himself.
After Ms Perino's announcement from the White House late last night, the timeline is inescapable and clear.
In August the President was told by his hand-picked Major Domo of intelligence Mike McConnell, a flinty, high-strung-looking, worrying-warrior who will always see more clouds than silver linings, that what "everybody thought" about Iran might be, in essence, crap.
Yet on October 17th the President said of Iran and its president Ahmadinejad:
"I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War Three, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge to make a nuclear weapon."
And as he said that, Mr.. Bush knew that at bare minimum there was a strong chance that his rhetoric was nothing more than words with which to scare the Iranians.
Or was it, Sir, to scare the Americans?
Does Iran not really fit into the equation here? Have you just scribbled it into the fill-in-the-blank on the same template you used, to scare us about Iraq?
In August, any commander-in-chief still able-minded or uncorrupted or both, Sir, would have invoked the quality the job most requires: mental flexibility.
A bright man, or an honest man, would have realized no later than the McConnell briefing that the only true danger about Iran was the damage that could be done by an unhinged, irrational Chicken Little of a president, shooting his mouth off, backed up by only his own hysteria and his own delusions of omniscience.
Not Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mr. Bush.
The Chicken Little of presidents is the one, Sir, that you see in the mirror.
And the mind reels at the thought of a Vice President fully briefed on the revised Intel as long as two weeks ago -- briefed on the fact that Iran abandoned its pursuit of this imminent threat four years ago -- who never bothered to mention it to his boss.
It is nearly forgotten today, but throughout much of Ronald Reagan's presidency it was widely believed that he was little more than a front-man for some never-viewed, behind-the-scenes, string-puller.
Today, as evidenced by this latest remarkable, historic malfeasance, it is inescapable, that Dick Cheney is either this president's evil ventriloquist, or he thinks he is.
What servant of any of the 42 previous presidents could possibly withhold information of this urgency and gravity, and wind up back at his desk the next morning, instead of winding up before a Congressional investigation -- or a criminal one?
Mr. Bush -- if you can still hear us -- if you did not previously agree to this scenario in which Dick Cheney is the actual detective and you're Remington Steele -- you must disenthrall yourself: Mr. Cheney has usurped your constitutional powers, cut you out of the information loop, and led you down the path to an unprecedented presidency in which the facts are optional, the Intel is valued less than the hunch, and the assistant runs the store.
The problem is, Sir, your assistant is robbing you -- and your country -- blind.
Not merely in monetary terms, Mr.. Bush, but more importantly of the traditions and righteousness for which we have stood, at great risk, for centuries: Honesty, Law, Moral Force.
Mr.. Cheney has helped, Sir, to make your Administration into the kind our ancestors saw in the 1860's and 1870's and 1880's -- the ones that abandoned Reconstruction, and sent this country marching backwards into the pit of American Apartheid.
Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland...
Presidents who will be remembered only in a blur of failure, Mr.. Bush.
Presidents who will be remembered only as functions of those who opposed them -- the opponents whom history proved right.
Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland... Bush.
Would that we could let this President off the hook by seeing him only as marionette or moron.
But a study of the mutation of his language about Iran proves that though he may not be very good at it, he is, himself, still a manipulative, Machiavellian, snake-oil salesman.
The Bushian etymology was tracked by Dan Froomkin at the Washington Post's website.
It is staggering.
March 31st: "Iran is trying to develop a nuclear weapon..."
June 5th: Iran's "pursuit of nuclear weapons..."
June 19th: "consequences to the Iranian government if they continue to pursue a nuclear weapon..."
July 12th: "the same regime in Iran that is pursuing nuclear weapons..."
August 6th: "this is a government that has proclaimed its desire to build a nuclear weapon..."
Notice a pattern?
Trying to develop, build or pursue a nuclear weapon.
Then, sometime between August 6th and August 9th, those terms are suddenly swapped out, so subtly that only in retrospect can we see that somebody has warned the President, not only that he has gone out too far on the limb of terror -- but there may not even be a tree there...
McConnell, or someone, must have briefed him then.
August 9th: "They have expressed their desire to be able to enrich uranium, which we believe is a step toward having a nuclear weapons program..."
August 28th: "Iran's active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons..."
October 4th: "you should not have the know-how on how to make a (nuclear) weapon..."
October 17th: "until they suspend and/or make it clear that they, that their statements aren't real, yeah, I believe they want to have the **capacity**, the **knowledge**, in order to make a nuclear weapon."
Before August 9th, it's: Trying to develop, build or pursue a nuclear weapon.
After August 9th, it's: Desire, pursuit, want...knowledge technology know-how to enrich uranium.
And we are to believe, Mr.. Bush, that the National Intelligence Estimate this week talks of the Iranians suspending their nuclear weapons program in 2003...
And you talked of the Iranians suspending their nuclear weapons program on October 17th...
And that's just a coincidence?
---
And we are to believe, Mr.. Bush, that nobody told you any of this until last week?
Your insistence that you were not briefed on the NIE until last week might be legally true -- something like "what the definition of is is -- but with the subject matter being not interns but the threat of nuclear war.
Legally, it might save you from some war crimes trial... but ethically, it is a lie.
It is indefensible.
You have been yelling threats into a phone for nearly four months, after the guy on the other end had already hung up.
You, Mr.. Bush, are a bald-faced liar.
--
And more over, you have just revealed that John Bolton, and Norman Podhoretz, and the Wall Street Journal Editorial board, are also bald-faced liars.
We are to believe that the Intel Community, or maybe the State Department, cooked the raw intelligence about Iran, falsely diminished the Iranian nuclear threat, to make you look bad?
And you proceeded to let them make you look bad?
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You not only knew all of this about Iran, in early August...
But you also knew... it was... accurate.
And instead of sharing this good news with the people you have obviously forgotten you represent...
You merely fine-tuned your terrorizing of those people, to legally cover your own backside...
While you filled the factual gap with sadistic visions of -- as you phrased it on August 28th: a quote "nuclear holocaust" -- and, as you phrased it on October 17th, quote: "World War Three."
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My comments, Mr. Bush, are often dismissed as simple repetitions of the phrase "George Bush has no business being president."
Well, guess what?
Tonight: hanged by your own words... convicted by your own deliberate lies...
You, sir, have no business... being president.
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Good night, and good luck.
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