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Real-time Libya: Who knew what, when?
Friday, June 26, 2009
How I Learned to Love the New World Order – Biden, Joseph R Jr.
How I Learned to Love the New World Order was originally published in the Wall Street Journal April 23, 1992 on page A13.
Imagine my surprise when a Wall Street Journal editorial appointed me dean of the Pat Buchanan school of neo-isolationism. My credentials? Believing that the Pentagon’s new strategy — America as “Globocop” — could render the United States a hollow superpower. All agree we need the military capacity to defend our vital interests — by ourselves when need be. The question is grand strategy. With the Journal’s endorsement, the Pentagon has called for a Pax Americana: The U.S. should cast so large a military shadow that no rival dare emerge.
American hegemony might be a pleasant idea, but is it economically, politically or even militarily wise? Bristling with weapons, we would continue our economic decline, while rising industrial and financial giants in Europe and Asia viewed our military pretensions with indifference or contempt.
Defense Secretary Dick Cheney outdid even the Journal, dipping deep into the well of Cold War argumentation to accuse Pax Americana critics of thinking “America’s world presence is somehow immoral and dangerous.
” Why doesn’t the Journal stop the namecalling, get its schools sorted out, and court an honest debate over America’s proper role in the new world order?
Pat Buchanan’s “America First” preaches martyrdom: We’ve been suckered into fighting “other” people’s battles and defending “other” people’s interests. With our dismal economy, this siren song holds some appeal.
But most Americans, myself included, reject 1930s-style isolationism. They expect to see the strong hand of American leadership in world affairs, and they know that economic retreat would yield nothing other than a lower standard of living. They understand further that many security threats — the spread of high-tech weapons, environmental degradation, overpopulation, narcotics trafficking, migration — require global solutions.
What about America as globocop? First, our 21st-century strategy has to be a shade more clever than Mao’s axiom that power comes from the barrel of a gun. Power also emanates from a solid bank balance, the ability to dominate and penetrate markets, and the economic leverage to wield diplomatic clout.
Second, the plan is passive where it needs to be aggressive. The Journal endorses a global security system in which we destroy rogue-state threats as they arise. Fine, but let’s prevent such problems early rather than curing them late. Having contained Soviet communism until it dissolved, we need a new strategy of “containment” — based, like NATO, on collective action, but directed against weapons proliferation.
The Senate has tried to force China’s leaders to choose between Third World arms sales (1991 profits of $500 million) and open trade with the U.S. (a $12.5 billion annual Chinese surplus). Even though we have convincing intelligence that China’s leaders fear the use of this leverage, the president inexplicably refuses to challenge Beijing.
Weapons containment can’t be foolproof; and against a nuclear-armed North Korea, I would support pre-emptive military action if necessary. But let’s do our best — using supplier restraint and sanctions against outlaw sellers and buyers-to avoid having to round up the posse.
Why not an anti-proliferation “czar” in the cabinet to give this objective the prominence it urgently needs?
Third, Pax Americana is a direct slap at two of our closest allies — Japan and Germany — and a repudiation of one of our panel1. Rather than denigrating collective security, we should regularize the kind of multilateral response we assembled for the Gulf War. Why not breathe life into the U.N. Charter? great postwar triumphs. For years, American leaders argued that building democracy in Europe and Asia would guarantee stability because democracies don’t start wars. Now the Pentagon says we must keep our military large enough to persuade Japan and Germany “not to aspire to a greater role even to protect their legitimate interests.”
How has our success suddenly become a threat? It hasn’t, but the Pentagon plan could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. By insulting Tokyo and Berlin, and arrogating to ourselves military stewardship of the world, we may spark the revival no one wants.
Secretary Cheney says he wants the allies to share the burden on defense matters. But Pax Americana puts us on the wrong end of a paradox: Hegemony means that even our allies can force ever greater U.S. defense spending the more they try to share the burden!
Fourth, collective security doesn’t rule out unilateral action. The Journal says I’m among those who want “Americans . . . to trust their security to a global committee.” But no one advocates that we repeal the “inherent” right of self-defense enshrined in Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.
Secretary Cheney says his plan wouldn’t undermine support for the U.N. Who would know better than the U.N.’s usually understated secretary general? If implemented, says Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the Pentagon’s strategy would spell “the end of the U.N.” Rather than denigrating collective security, we should regularize the kind of multilateral response we assembled for the Gulf War. Why not breathe life into the U.N. Charter? It envisages a permanent commitment of forces, for use by the Security Council. That means a presumption of collective action — but with a U.S. veto.
Rather than defending military extravagance, the Bush administration should be reallocating Pentagon funds to meet more urgent security needs: sustaining democracy in the former Soviet empire; supporting U.N. peacekeepers in Yugoslavia, Cambodia and El Salvador; and rebuilding a weakened and debt-burdened America.''
If Pentagon strategists and their kneejerk supporters could broaden their horizons, they would see how our superpower status is best assured. We must get lean militarily, revitalize American economic strength, and exercise a diplomatic leadership that puts new muscle into institutions of collective security.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Halliburton Settlement Leaves Unsettling Questions
Halliburton Settlement Leaves Unsettling Questions
By Scott Horton
The Justice Department’s long-standing probe of corruption in connection with Halliburton’s Nigerian contracts—a matter of obvious and acute concern to Vice President Dick Cheney—was rushed to a final settlement just before the arrival of the new Obama team at Justice. Under the settlement Halliburton and its former subsidiary KBR are paying $579 million in fines. The New York Times opines today:
…there are a lot of unanswered questions about Halliburton’s practices in Iraq, with numerous complaints of overpricing and ineptitude. Its corporate conduct in the Nigerian scheme is hardly encouraging and should compel tighter scrutiny of its Iraq failures. Across a decade, KBR and Halliburton paid $180 million in bribes to Nigerian officials to secure $6 billion in contracts for building natural gas processing equipment. Under the settlement with federal authorities, Halliburton will pay most of the penalties, with KBR, its subsidiary during the bribery scheme, pleading guilty to hiring international bagmen to regularly grease Nigerian officials with million-dollar satchels of cash. A former KBR executive who deemed bribery a worthwhile cost of doing business now faces prison time.
That’s true. But put aside Iraq for a moment—there are no shortage of “unanswered questions” about the circumstances of this settlement. Consider the timing and circumstances. We start with a Justice Department which is now itself under strong suspicion of having been politically directed from the White House, with a special prosecutor already appointed and indictments now anticipated. In violation of normal procedures, Alberto Gonzales authorized Vice President Cheney and his staff to deal directly with Justice Department officials on matters of interest to them. We have every reason to ask whether this included the very Halliburton deal that the Bush team pushed through Justice before the new tenants arrived.
Why would Cheney care? For one thing, the corrupt dealings that are the focus of the deal occurred almost entirely between 1995–2000, while Dick Cheney was the CEO of Halliburton. For another, Halliburton tapped Cheney, who had no corporate managerial expertise, principally because of his expertise in government relations and because of his established track record in dealing not only with the U.S. government, but with governments around the world. The thought was that Cheney’s black book would help the company develop its rapidly expanding government contracts business. In other words, the multi-billion dollar Nigerian LNG deals were exactly the sort of thing that Cheney was expected to harvest for Halliburton. For a third, as my colleague Ken Silverstein notes, the man at the heart of the $160 million in corrupt payments, Jack Stanley, was hand-picked by Dick Cheney and had a direct report to him. Moreover, can you imagine a CEO under any circumstances simply not knowing about $160 million in grease payments made in connection with sensitive contract negotiations in Nigeria, a country long ranked at the bottom of Transparency International’s corruption lists?
Dick Cheney has long had very good reason to fear a prosecutor’s knock at the door. It might be his clear role in the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame. It might be his authorship of the Bush Administration’s torture policy and his advocacy of warrantless surveillance of tens of millions of Americans. Or it might just be something quite mundane, namely, his role in securing a $2.2 billion contract to build a liquefied natural gas plant in Nigeria by making $160 million in corrupt payments to or for the benefit of government officials.
In any event, the Obama Administration are chumps if they sit back and accept the deal the Bush Justice Department concluded for the benefit of Dick Cheney. The whole matter needs to be reopened and examined independently. Let’s hope they consider Patrick Fitzgerald for the job.
An American Foreign Legion: Is the US Military Now an Imperial Police Force?
A leaner, meaner, higher tech force - that was what George W. Bush and his Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld promised to transform the American military into. Instead, they came close to turning it into a foreign legion. Foreign as in being constantly deployed overseas on imperial errands; foreign as in being ever more reliant on private military contractors; foreign as in being increasingly segregated from the elites that profit most from its actions, yet serve the least in its ranks.
Now would be a good time for President Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to begin to reclaim that military for its proper purpose: to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Now would be a good time to ask exactly why, and for whom, our troops are currently fighting and dying in the urban jungles of Iraq and the hostile hills of Afghanistan.
A few fortnights and forever ago, in the Bush years, our "expeditionary" military came remarkably close to resembling an updated version of the French Foreign Legion in the ways it was conceived and used by those in power - and even, to some extent, in its makeup.
For the metropolitan French elite of an earlier era, the Foreign Legion - best known to Americans from countless old action films - was an assemblage of military adventurers and rootless romantics, volunteers willing to man an army fighting colonial wars in far-flung places. Those wars served the narrow interests of people who weren't particularly concerned about the fate of the legion itself.
It's easy enough to imagine one of them saying, à la Rumsfeld, "You go to war with the legion you have, not the legion you might want or wish to have." Such a blithe statement would have been uncontroversial back then, since the French Foreign Legion was - well - so foreign. Its members, recruited worldwide, but especially from French colonial possessions, were considered expendable, a fate captured in its grim, sardonic motto: "You joined the Legion to die. The Legion will send you where you can die!"
Looking back on the last eight years, what's remarkable is the degree to which Rumsfeld and others in the Bush administration treated the U.S. military in a similarly dismissive manner. Bullying his generals and ignoring their concerns, the Secretary of Defense even dismissed the vulnerability of the troops in Iraq, who, in the early years, motored about in inadequately armored Humvees and other thin-skinned vehicles.
Last year, Vice President Dick Cheney offered another Legionnaire-worthy version of such dismissiveness. Informed that most Americans no longer supported the war in Iraq, he infamously and succinctly countered, "So?" - as if the U.S. military weren't the American people's instrument, but his own private army, fed and supplied by private contractor KBR, the former Halliburton subsidiary whose former CEO was the very same Dick Cheney.
Fond of posing in flight suits, leather jackets, and related pseudo-military gear, President Bush might, on the other hand, have seemed overly invested in the military. Certainly, his tough war talk resonated within conservative circles, and he visibly relished speaking before masses of hooah-ing soldiers. Too often, however, Bush simply used them as patriotic props, while his administration did its best to hide their deaths from public view.
In that way, he and his top officials made our troops into foreigners, in part by making their ultimate sacrifice, their deaths, as foreign to us as was humanly possible. Put another way, his administration made the very idea of national "sacrifice" - by anyone but our troops - foreign to most Americans. In response to the 9/11 attacks, Americans were, as the President famously suggested only 16 days after the attacks, to show their grit by visiting Disney World and shopping till they dropped. Military service instills (and thrives on) an ethic of sacrifice that was, for more than seven years, consciously disavowed domestically.
As the Obama administration begins to deploy U.S. troops back to the Iraq or Afghan war zones for their fourth or fifth tours of duty, I remain amazed at the silent complicity of my country. Why have we been so quiet? Is it because the Bush administration was, in fact, successful in sending our military down the path to foreign legion-hood? Is the fate of our troops no longer of much importance to most Americans?
Diversity is now our societal byword. But how about more class diversity in our military? How about a combat regiment of rich young volunteers from uptown Manhattan? (After all, some of their great-grandfathers probably fought with New York's famed "Silk Stocking" regiment in World War I.) How about more Ivy League recruits like George H.W. Bush and John F. Kennedy, who respectively piloted a dive bomber and a PT boat in World War II? Heck, why not a few prominent Hollywood actors like Jimmy Stewart, who piloted heavy bombers in the flak-filled skies of Europe in that same war?
Caught in the shock and awe of 9/11, we allowed our military to be transformed into a neocon imperial police force. Now, approaching our eighth year in Afghanistan and sixth year in Iraq, what exactly is that force defending? Before President Obama acts to double the number of American boots-on-the-ground in Afghanistan - before even more of our troops are sucked deeper into yet another quagmire - shouldn't we ask this question with renewed urgency? Shouldn't we wonder just why, despite all the reverent words about "our troops," we really seem to care so little about sending them back into the wilderness again and again?
Where indeed is the outcry?
The French Foreign Legionnaires knew better than to expect such an outcry: The elites for whom they fought didn't give a damn about what happened to them. Our military may not yet be a foreign legion - but don't fool yourself, it's getting there.
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William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), taught for six years at the Air Force Academy. He currently teaches at the Pennsylvania College of Technology. A TomDispatch regular, he is the author of "Hindenburg: Icon of German Militarism" (Potomac Press, 2005), among other works. He may be reached at wastore@pct.edu.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Bush claims executive privilege on CIA leak
By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press Writer 24 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - President Bush has asserted executive privilege to prevent Attorney General Michael Mukasey from having to comply with a House panel subpoena for material on the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity.
A House committee chairman, meanwhile, held off on a contempt citation of Mukasey — who had requested the privilege claim — but only as a courtesy to lawmakers not present.
Among the documents sought by House Oversight Chairman Henry Waxman are FBI interviews of Vice President Dick Cheney.
They also include notes about the 2003 State of the Union address, during which President Bush made the case for invading Iraq in part by saying Saddam Hussein was pursuing uranium ore to make a nuclear weapon. That information turned out to be wrong.
Waxman rejected Mukasey's suggestion that Cheney's FBI interview on the CIA leak should be protected by the privilege claim — and therefore not turned over to the panel.
"We'll act in the reasonable and appropriate period of time," Waxman, D-Calif., said. But he made clear that he thinks Mukasey has earned a contempt citation and that he'd schedule a vote on the matter soon.
"This unfounded assertion of executive privilege does not protect a principle; it protects a person," Waxman said. "If the vice president did nothing wrong, what is there to hide?"
The assertion of the privilege is not about hiding anything but rather protecting the separation of powers as well as the integrity of future Justice Department investigations of the White House, Mukasey wrote to Bush in a letter dated Tuesday. Several of the subpoenaed reports, he wrote, summarize conversations between Bush and advisers — are direct presidential communications protected by the privilege.
"I am greatly concerned about the chilling effect that compliance with the committee's subpoena would have on future White House deliberations and White House cooperation with future Justice Department investigations," Mukasey wrote to Bush. "I believe it is legally permissible for you to assert executive privilege with respect to the subpoenaed documents, and I respectfully request that you do so."
White House spokesman Tony Fratto said Bush invoked the privilege on Tuesday.
Waxman said he would wait to hold a vote on Mukasey's contempt citation until all members of the panel had a chance to read up on the matter.
The Bush administration had plenty of warning. Waxman warned last week that he would cite Mukasey with contempt unless the attorney general complied with the subpoena. The House Judiciary Committee also has subpoenaed some of the same documents from Mukasey, as well as information on the leak from other current and former administration officials.
Congressional Democrats want to shed light on the precise roles, if any, that Bush, Cheney and their aides may have played in the leak.
State Department official Richard Armitage first revealed Plame's identity as a CIA operative to columnist Robert Novak, who used former presidential counselor Karl Rove as a confirming source for a 2003 article. Around that time Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, was criticizing Bush's march to war in Iraq.
Cheney's then-chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, also was involved in the leak and was convicted of perjury, obstruction and lying to the FBI. Last July, Bush commuted Libby's 2 1/2-year sentence, sparing him from serving any prison time.
Libby told the FBI in 2003 that it was possible that Cheney ordered him to reveal Plame's identity to reporters.
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Associated Press writer Lara Jakes Jordan contributed to this report.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080716/ap_on_go_pr_wh/cia_leak
Saturday, June 14, 2008
THE ILLEGITIMATE AND DISASTROUS U.S. MILITARY OCCUPATION OF IRAQ
Monday, June 16, 2008
The Illegitimate and Disastrous U.S. Military Occupation of Iraq
"The president [George W. Bush] is strongly motivated to string out the [Iraq] war until he leaves office, in order to avoid taking responsibility for the defeat he has caused and persisted in making greater each year for more than three years."
General William Odom, former head of the National Security Agency (NSA) under President Ronald Reagan
"In beloved Iraq, blood is flowing between brothers, in the shadow of an illegitimate foreign occupation, and abhorrent sectarianism threatens a civil war."
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, March 29, 2007
“After [this] war [against Iraq] has ended, the United States will have to rebuild much more than the country of Iraq. We will have to rebuild America's image around the globe.”
Sen. Robert Byrd, (D-W.Va), March 19, 2003
The Iraqi Parliament is on record as being against the US-led military occupation of their country. Moreover, most Iraqis resent Americans occupying their country and the Bush-Cheney administration's requests to do it forever by maintaining nearly 60 military bases in their country. The Bush-Cheney administration has even threatened the puppet Iraqi government to withhold some $50 billion of Iraq's money held as reserves at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, if the Iraqi government does not sign what is also called a "strategic alliance" agreement to prolong U.S. occupation indefinitely and turn Iraq into a permanent American colony.
Indeed, after the illegal military invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the United Nations was forced to extend a mandate of occupation to the United States. Thus, in June 2004, the U.N. Security Council adopted Resolution 1546 that recognized the de facto occupation of Iraq by American-led military forces and kept Iraq subject to the Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter, which authorizes the use of force in Iraq. The mandate was supposed to be terminated at the end of 2005, but was extended. It is that U.N. mandate authorizing an American presence in Iraq that finally expires on December 31 of this year. After that date, there will be no legal basis for U.S. military forces to be on Iraqi soil and the Iraqi government would regain its entire authority.
That's what the Bush-Cheney administration wants to avoid by pressing the Iraqis to sign a so-called long-term “security agreement”, which would not require approval by the U.S. Congress (because it would not be a treaty, although this is playing with words in order to escape the scrutiny of U.S. lawmakers), and which would keep real Iraqi authority to a nominal level and concentrate most of political power in American hands. In other words, the Bush-Cheney administration wants a puppet government in Baghdad in perpetuity. We may add that this is precisely what Republican presidential Candidate McCain also wants.
In the future, as now, Americans in Iraq (American troops, contractors and private security guards) would have full legal immunity for their actions, even when they steal, rape, kidnap, torture, or murder Iraqis, and could arrest Iraqis and put them in American-run jails. Moreover, the American occupiers would have key Iraqi departments such as Defense, Interior and National Security ministries, as well as armament contracts, under their supervision for ten years, would keep control of Iraqi airspace, would maintain permanent military bases in the country and would retain the right to strike, from within Iraqi territory, any country (read Iran and Syria) they consider to be a threat to their security or contrary to U.S. or Iraqi interests. Some sovereignty and some independence indeed! Even the weak Nouri al-Maliki government thinks it's too much, while Shia Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani is tinkering with the idea of issuing a religious fatwa against the Bush-Cheney's so-called proposed agreement, a move that would likely kill it.
Let's keep in mind that the Bush-Cheney's military occupation of Iraq is doubly illegitimate, besides having been illegal from day one according to international law. First, a solid majority of Americans want American soldiers out of Iraq. Second, a vast majority of Iraqis also want American soldiers out of their country. The irony is that the Bush-Cheney regime pretends to be in Iraq for the sake of "democracy", while they trample on people's demands both in Iraq and in the United States. Some "democracy" indeed. How about fascism and imperialism!
When both the president of Iraq and the King of Saudi Arabia say that the ongoing U.S. military occupation of Iraq is 'illegitimate', and when Turkey has acted on its threats to bomb and invade Northern Iraq, it becomes obvious that the entire Middle East is now turning against the U.S. Bush-Cheney regime and its colonial adventure in that part of the world. The Bush-Cheney regime likes to delude itself and to play on words when it pretends that Iraq is not under an "illegitimate foreign occupation" but that U.S. troops are in that far away country at Iraq's invitation (sic!), citing the after-the-fact U.N. mandate. This is an example of fuzzy and circular thinking. When you don't think straight, you don't act straight. And, on this score, the Bush-Cheney administration is the most crooked you can find.
All that remains to see is whether the Bush-Cheney administration will succeed on three fronts, that is to say, 1- force its puppet government in Baghdad to sign a long-term agreement of dependence toward the United States, 2- bypass Congress and the U.S. Constitution in adopting what would clearly be an international treaty, and finally, 3- tie up the hands of the next president and prevent him from withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq. When you think of it, this is a cynical game of brinksmanship, always on the edge of legality, morality and decency.
___________________________________
Rodrigue Tremblay is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Montreal and can be reached at
mailto:rodrigue.tremblay@%20yahoo.com.
He is the author of the book 'The New American Empire'.
Visit his blog site atwww.thenewamericanempire.com/blog.
Author's Website:http://www.thenewamericanempire.com//
Check Dr. Tremblay's coming book "The Code for Global Ethics" at: www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com/
_____________________________________
Posted, Monday, June 16, 2008, at 5:30 am
Source: http://www.thenewamericanempire.com/blog.html
Thursday, December 27, 2007
ALL DRESSED UP AND NO PLACE TO GO
Monday, December 17, 2007Bush and Cheney: All Dressed up and no Place to Go
by Rodrigue Tremblay
"The leader whose thinking process most resembles [Adolf] Hitler's is our own president. —Like Hitler, (George W.) Bush's ideological beliefs have blinded him to reality, and like Hitler, he seems impervious to advice that conflicts with his beliefs."
Charley Reese
"When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader. "
Plato, (428/427-348/347 B.C.), ancient Greek philosopher
"If the war is enlarged in the next 20 months to include Iran— if that happens—for the next 20 years the United States is going to be bogged down in a war which spans Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and then you can forget about American global leadership."
Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter
For many months, the Bush-Cheney administration and its Neocon allies in Congress and in the media have been inching toward a fresh new war against Iran, possibly using nuclear weapons, under the same flimsy pretext that it had used, in 2003, to launch an illegal war of aggression against Iraq. The military gear had been positioned, with three full armadas in or around the Gulf of Hormuz, and the propaganda machine was running full time to persuade the American people that a state of perpetual war was in their interests.
But something happened on the road to war. On December 3, Michael McConnell, Director of the National Intelligence Council, dropped a political bomb. His office—in close collaboration with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the fifteen other U.S. Intelligence agencies, regrouped under the umbrella of the United States Intelligence Community (IC)—issued a devastating report about the veracity of the claims made for months by the Administration that Iran was actively engaged in developing a nuclear arms program. The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) report said, "We judge that in the fall of 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program....We assess with moderate confidence Tehran has not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007." The Director of the US National Council issued also a most unusual statement, saying that "the decision to release an unclassified version of the key judgments of this NIE [report] was made when it was determined that doing so was in the interest of our nation’s security. The Intelligence Community is on the record publicly with numerous statements based on our 2005 assessment on Iran. Since our understanding of Iran’s capabilities has changed, we felt it was important to release this information to ensure that an accurate presentation is available." In other words, even if the Intelligence Community felt that the disclosure would undermine a key Bush-Cheney policy, they were ready to go public with the damaging report for the sake of national interest.
The very claim of a nuclear Iran has been used by President George W. Bush to push to the limit, at the United Nations and in Congress, to obtain some cover for a bombing campaign against Iran. In fact, as recently as October 17, the American president had used the apocalyptic term of a possible "World War III," even raising the specter of a nuclear holocaust, to draw the darkest picture possible if Iran was not prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons, thus ending Israel's nuclear monopoly in the Middle East. Vice President Dick Cheney has also claimed that Iran had a "fairly robust new nuclear program," and that had to be stopped by all means. Indeed, for months, the person in the Bush administration who most wanted a hot conflict with Iran has been Vice President Dick Cheney.
Well, it turns out that both Bush and Cheney knew, at least since last August, that the Director of National Intelligence had concluded that Iran had abandoned its nuclear arms program as far back as 2003, four years earlier. The report had the effect of pulling the rug out from under any plan for a preemptive attack against Iran that the Bush-Cheney administration intended to implement in the near term. This was good economic news. Immediately, the price of oil receded from its lofty level around $100 a barrel, an indication that the market had factored in some probability of supply disruptions early in 2008.
Left naked, Bush is now uttering lies and absurdities. First, there was his claim that he had "only learned of the new intelligence assessment" the week before, when it is a fact that the President is briefed every morning by the Director of the United States Intelligence Community (IC). Quickly, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, contradicted him. Hadley said that "Bush was first told in August or September about intelligence indicating Iran had halted its weapons program." And Senator Rockefeller confirmed that "the president knew, even as he was saying 'World War III' and all that kind of stuff." And, second, Bush professed about not being deterred by mere facts: "The [National Intelligence Estimates that Iran has no nuclear weapons program] doesn't do anything to change my opinion about the danger Iran poses to the world—quite the contrary." I don't know which of these two statements undermine the most President Bush's credibility, if there is any left.
Where does all this leave the warmongering Neocon crowd? They are scurrying in all directions with op-eds in far right media to discredit the U.S. Intelligence Community, trying to rekindle the flames of war against Iran. This a crowd that revolves around the pro-Israel Lobby in the U.S., led by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and by some Washington-based pro-Israel "think-tanks" such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). They have been pushing for an illegal attack against Iran, using nuclear arms, for years. They have all the reasons now to be displeased. They have used their enormous influence within the Bush-Cheney administration and within the leadership of both Congressional parties to attack Iran, and all these efforts seem to have been made for nil.
Indeed, the Israel Lobby, led in Congress by Sen. Joseph Lieberman (Ind-Conn.), has been strongly influencing some prominent so-called Bush Democrats to join in the war frenzy against Iran. As its point-man in Congress, Senator Joe Lieberman (Ind-Conn) has been calling for the U.S. bombing of Iran every other week, dutifully doing the round of Sunday morning public affairs TV shows. The Neocons have not been deterred by the fact that bombing another country without provocation is an international crime of high order. According to the Nuremberg Charter, it is even a crime punishable by death.
So far, all U.N. resolutions about sanctions against Iran have been specifically framed under Article 41, which entails "measures not involving the use of armed force." It is most doubtful that China and Russia, two Security Council members, will ever accept a resolution that would impose sanctions against Iran under U.N. Article 42, which allows the use of military force "to restore international peace and stability," now that official American intelligence assessments state that there is no Iran nuclear arms program. The United Nations is not going to serve as cover for military operations against Iran.
And the U.S. Congress, especially the non-neocon Democrats, will be increasingly reluctant to give the Bush-Cheney administration a blank check to launch a war against Iran. Last September, the U.S. Senate came very close to handing the Bush-Cheney administration a blank check for military strikes against Iran, when 75 Senators voted in favor of the so-called Kyle-Lieberman non-binding resolution. Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), along with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), voted in favor of the resolution. This was counteracted last November 1, by 30 U.S. Senators, none of them Republican, led by Senator Jim Webb, from Virginia, who sent a letter to President George W. Bush stressing that the Administration did not have the legal authority to attack Iran without congressional approval.
In the past, Senator and presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) has even accused Bush of playing down the threat of a nuclear Iran and has called for swift action at the United Nations to impose sanctions on the Iranian government. Similarly, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) ostensibly capitulated to Bush, after having attended AIPAC's annual meeting, stripping from a war finance bill the provision that would have forced Bush to go to Congress before launching an attack on Iran.
Now, with the NIE report officially out, it will be increasingly difficult for the Democratic leadership in Congress to pussycat with the Bush-Cheney administration regarding any future unprovoked aggression against Iran.
Last February, Admiral William Fallon, the head the Central Command (CENTCOM), expressed strong opposition to an administration plan to increase the number of carrier strike groups in the Persian Gulf from two to three, and he vowed privately there would be no war against Iran as long as he was chief of CENTCOM. And last June, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei said that an attack on Iran over its refusal to freeze programs that could make nuclear weapons would be "an Act of Madness.''
For the time being, cooler-headed individuals have prevailed over the ideologues and the warmongers. As a result, the planned Bush-Cheney-Lieberman war against Iran has been sidetracked. With the subprime financial crisis scheduled to pick up steam in the first half of 2008, it is good news that a fabricated geopolitical crisis has so far been avoided. The main question now is to ask whether Bush and Cheney have the gall to ignore the official intelligence report and invent new lies to justify a war against Iran. Stay tuned for more on this incredible saga.
Rodrigue Tremblay is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Montreal and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@yahoo.com
He is the author of the book 'The New American Empire'
Visit his blog site at: www.thenewamericanempire.com/blog.
Author's Website: www.thenewamericanempire.com/
Check Dr. Tremblay's coming book "The Code for Global Ethics" at: www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com/
Posted, Monday, December 17, 2007, at 5:30 am
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Sunday, September 16, 2007
THE NOT SO SUPER NAFTA HIGHWAY
By Dana Gabriel http://newworldordermustbestopped.com/DanasBlog.html
The NAFTA Superhighway is an integral part of the agenda to merge the U.S.,
Canada, and Mexico into a North American Union. The Trans-Texas Corridor
(TTC) is to be the first leg of the proposed superhighway, which would then
go through the heartland of America all the way to Canada. We have already
witnessed some of America's infrastructure being sold or leased to foreign
interests. The TTC is being built by a Spanish company who will lease and
operate it as a toll road. The plan is to unload cheap Chinese goods in
Mexican Pacific ports and use the NAFTA Superhighway to deliver the products
to U.S. consumers. The first stop for many trucks and railway cars from
Mexico would be the Kansas City Customs port. It is to be a Mexican inland
port, staffed by Mexicans, and will be considered Mexican soil. There are
also plans to build an inland port in San Antonio to keep up with the
expected increased container traffic. The NAFTA Superhighway is a threat to
our freedoms and will further undermine our national security and
sovereignty.
The TTC is to be the first section of the NAFTA Superhighway that is to be
built throughout Texas, with the link from the Mexican border to Oklahoma
set to be the highest priority. The Spanish company Cintra is to finance,
build, and lease the TTC, operating it as a toll road. This huge project
will encompass more than 4,000 miles of tollways, with talk of further
expansions. It will include 1,200 foot corridors with separate lanes for
passenger vehicles and large trucks. It will also include railway lines for
freight and commuter trains, along with broadband and telecommunication
services, oil, and water lines. Many have heard that the TTC will create
jobs and lead to less traffic. What hasn't been as widely reported is that
this project will mean the loss of as much as 584,000 acres of prime farm
and ranch land. It will displace upwards of one million people from their
private property. Not only will it be devastating to farmers and ranchers
alike, but some entire rural communities will be bypassed or cut off as a
result of the TTC. Many local town newspapers that fall in its path have
been bought up by a company with close ties to Cintra in an effort to try
and silence the ever growing opposition to the TTC.
A bill was passed by an overwhelming majority in Texas that would have
placed a two year moratorium on any public/private partnerships involving
toll road projects financed and operated by foreign companies. This would
have killed the TTC for two years and given more time to expose this agenda,
including the massive amounts of corruption and cronyism associated with
this project. Texas Governor Rick Perry vetoed the bill and in the process
saved the TTC. There are now discussions to extend it into Mexico and link
up with the Mexican ports of Manzanillo and Lazaro Cardenas. It has been
dubbed the Trans North America Corridor. The Texas Department of
Transportation also has plans to tie the TTC project to benefit ports in
Houston and Corpus Christi. The TTC will not end at the Texas border. It is
only the first part of the NAFTA Superhighway and the further integration
into a North American Union.
The Chinese company Hutchinson Whampoa who operate both ends of the Panama
Canal are currently investing millions of dollars to expand deep-water ports
on Mexico's Pacific Coast. The NAFTA Superhighway is to be developed as a
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) based corridor. Hutchinson Whampoa
will be placing RFID tags on containers leaving China, and Savi Networks
will collect payments on the millions of containers accessing the
superhighway in association with the North America's SuperCorridor
Coalition. Savi Networks will be responsible for placing RFID sensors along
the superhighway, which will be used to track shipment containers. It is
interesting to note that Hustchinson Whampoa also operate the Mexican ports
at Manzanillo and Lazaro Cardenas, and have 49% ownership in Savi Networks.
The Chinese deep-water port at Yangshan is being expanded in anticipation of
the increased flow of containers that will be shipped to North America.
China is one of the forces behind the plan for a NAFTA Superhighway, which
will clearly benefit them as well as many multinational corporations.
Despite the best efforts from the mainstream media to present those who
believe there is a plan to construct a superhighway as conspiracy nuts, the
public is becoming more educated and resistance is mounting. Even with
substantial evidence, those like Vice President Dick Cheney in a letter to a
constituent say that there is no such plan. His approval ratings have hit
rock bottom, his reputation is severely tarnished, and his integrity is
questionable to say the least. He might not be the right person to try and
debunk the NAFTA Superhighway. In an effort to deceive using word semantics,
the North American Superhighway Coalition changed its name to the North
America's SuperCorridor Coalition in the late 90's. If such a plan doesn't
exist, then I guess that makes all those who have introduced resolutions
expressing opposition to a NAFTA Superhighway as crazy as the rest of us. At
the recent Security Prosperity and Partnership Summit closing press
conference, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper stated, “There's not
going to be any NAFTA Superhighway connecting the three nations, and it's
not going to go interplanetary, either.” Like it or not, this agenda is
real, and Jerome Corsi, author of the book, 'The Late Great USA:The Coming
Merger with Mexico and Canada' has recently been honored with a Project
Censored award for his efforts in exposing the NAFTA Superhighway.
The web of deceit associated with the NAFTA Superhighway is never ending. It
is not surprising that you would find someone like Republican presidential
candidate Rudy Giuliani's Houston law firm representing Cintra, the Spanish
Company who will be leasing the TTC and operating it as a toll road. It's
not enough that Giuliani made millions off the war on terrorism. Texas
Governor Rick Perry's sleaze is also well documented, and he is just another
lap dog for the global elite. He has made the TTC his crusade, and he will
do anything to see it become a reality. It will be multinational
corporations and those with political connections who will benefit from this
agenda. The NAFTA Superhighway is the necessary infrastructure needed for
the creation of a North American Union. It will serve as a highway for cheap
Chinese goods and cheap labor from Mexico and Latin America. It is also part
of a fortress North American control grid that is being implemented, and
will be used to track, trace, and tax the population. This is a threat to
our privacy, freedoms, security, and sovereignty. Texas is on the front
lines fighting the New World Order. If we stop the Trans-Texas Corridor then
we stop the NAFTA Superhighway, and put a dent in plans for a North American
Union.
Monday, July 23, 2007
WATCH FOR ANOTHER 911
My wake-up call: Watch for another 9/11-WMD experienceBy Paul Craig Roberts
Online Journal Guest Writer
Jul 20, 2007, 01:02
This is a wake-up call that we are about to experience another 9/11-WMD experience.
The wake-up call is unlikely to be effective, because the American attitude toward government changed fundamentally 70-odd years ago. Prior to the 1930s, Americans were suspicious of government, but with the arrival of the Great Depression, Tojo, and Hitler, President Franklin D. Roosevelt convinced Americans that government existed to protect them from rapacious private interests and foreign threats. Today, Americans are more likely to give the benefit of the doubt to government than they are to family members, friends, and those who would warn them about the government’s protection.
Intelligent observers are puzzled that President Bush is persisting in a futile and unpopular war at the obvious expense of his party’s electoral chances in 2008.
In the July 18 Los Angeles Times (“Bush the Albatross”), Ronald Brownstein reminds us that Bush’s behavior is disastrous for his political party. Unpopular presidents “have consistently undercut their party in the next election.” Brownstein reports that “88 percent of voters who disapproved of the retiring president’s job performance voted against his party’s nominee in past elections. . . . On average, 80 percent of voters who disapproved of a president’s performance have voted against his party’s candidates even in House races since 1986.”
Brownstein notes that with Bush’s dismal approval rating, this implies a total wipeout of the Republicans in 2008.
A number of pundits have concluded that the reason the Democrats have not brought a halt to Bush’s follies is that they expect Bush’s unpopular policies to provide them with a landslide victory next year.
There is a problem with this reasoning. It assumes that Cheney, Rove, and the Republicans are ignorant of these facts or are content for the Republican Party to be destroyed after Bush has his warmonger-police state fling. “After me, the deluge.”
Isn’t it more likely that Cheney and Rove have in mind events that will, once again, rally the people behind President Bush and the Republican Party, that is fighting the “war on terror” that the Democrats “want to lose”?
Such events could take a number of forms. As even diehard Republican Patrick J. Buchanan observed on July 17, with three US aircraft carrier battle groups in congested waters off Iran, another Tonkin Gulf incident could easily be engineered to set us at war with Iran.
If Bush’s intentions were merely to bomb a nuclear reactor, he would not need three carrier strike forces.
Lately, the administration has switched to blaming Iran for the war in Iraq. The US Senate has already lined up behind the latest lie with a 97-0 vote to condemn Iran.
Alternatively, false flag “terrorist” strikes could be orchestrated in the US. The Bush administration has already infiltrated some dissident groups and encouraged them to participate in terrorist talk, for which they were arrested. It is possible that the administration could provoke some groups to actual acts of violence.
Many Americans dismiss suspicion of their government as treasonous, and most believe conspiracy to be impossible “because someone would talk.”
There is no basis in any known fact for this opinion.
According to polls, 36 percent of the American people disbelieve the 9/11 Commission Report. Despite this lack of confidence, and despite the numerous omissions and errors in the report, it has proven impossible to have an independent investigation of 9/11 or to examine the official explanation in public debate. Even experts and people with a lifetime of distinguished public service are dismissed as “conspiracy theorists,” “kooks,” and “traitors” if they question the official explanation of 9/11. This despite the fact that war in the Middle East, a long-planned goal of Bush’s neoconservative administration, could not have been initiated without a “new Pearl Harbor.”
That powerfully constructed steel buildings could suddenly turn to dust because they were struck by two flimsy aluminum airliners and experienced small fires on a few floors that burned for a short time appears unexceptionable to a majority of Americans.
Moreover, people have talked. Hundreds of them. Firefighters, police, janitors, and others report hearing and experiencing a series of explosions in upper floors and massive explosions in the underground basements. This eyewitness testimony was kept under wraps for three or more years until the official explanation had taken root. The oral histories were finally forced loose by Freedom Of Information Act suits. The eyewitness reports of explosion after explosion had no effect.
Larry Silverstein, who received billions of dollars in insurance payments for the destroyed buildings, talked. He said on public television that the order was given “to pull” building 7. His stunning admission had no effect.
The Bush administration is preparing us for more terrorist attacks. The latest intelligence report says that Al Qaeda has regrouped, rebuilt, and has the ability to come after us again. "Al Qaeda will intensify its efforts to put operatives here," says the report.
Security operatives, such as Michael Chertoff, and various instruments of administration propaganda have warned that we will be attacked before next year’s election. Chertoff is not a person who wants to be known as Chicken Little for telling us that the sky is falling.
Bush has the Republican Party in such a mess that it cannot survive without another 9/11. Whether authentic or orchestrated, an attack will activate Bush’s new executive orders, which create a dictatorial police state in event of “national emergency.” [See here.]
The UK government is hand-in-glove with the Bush administration and will provide cover or verification for whatever claim the Bush administration advances. So will the right-wing governments in Canada and Australia. That takes care of the English-speaking world from which contrary explanations might reach the American people.
It is possible that Bush is now too weak, that suspicion is too great, and that there is too much internal resistance in the federal bureaucracy and military for any such scenario. If so, then my prediction prior to the invasion that the US invasion of Iraq will destroy Bush, the Republican Party, and the conservative movement will be proven true. The Democrats’ strategy of doing nothing except making sure Bush gets his way will produce the landslide that they expect.
However, this assumes that Cheney, Rove, and their neoconservative allies have lost their cunning and their manipulative skills. It is difficult to imagine a more dangerous assumption for Democrats and the American people to make.
Once the US experiences new attacks, Bush will be vindicated. His voice will be confident as he speaks to the nation:
“My administration knew that there would be more attacks from these terrorists who hate us and our way of life and are determined to destroy every one of us. If only more of you had believed me and supported my war on terror these new attacks would not have happened. Our security efforts were impaired by the Democrats’ determined attempts to surrender to the terrorists by forcing our withdrawal from Iraq and by civil libertarian assaults on our necessary security measures. If only more Americans had trusted their government, this would not have happened.”
And so on. Anyone should be able to write the script.
Paul Craig Roberts [email him] was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider's Account of Policymaking in Washington; Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice. Click here for Peter Brimelow’s Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts about the recent epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.Copyright © 1998-2007 Online Journal
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Source: http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_2214.shtml
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
BUSH PRESIDENCY ENTERS TERMINAL PHASE
Not so for Bush, whose public approval ratings, according to polls released in just the past week, have reached all-time lows and whose influence - even over his own party - appears to be declining at warp speed.
The latter phenomenon was demonstrated to devastating effect last week when 37 of the Senate's 49 Republicans deserted the president on a critical procedural vote that appears to have doomed Bush's hopes for comprehensive immigration reform through the remaining 18 months of his term in office.
The vote marked the defeat of the most important and probably the easiest of his second term's four top domestic priorities that also included changing the social security system, easing taxes, and legislation designed to discourage tort litigation and class action suits. "He is now almost zero-for four," noted the Washington Post.
But the immigration bill's defeat was just one of a whole series of events last week that appeared to diminish whatever residual political strength Bush enjoyed going into the summer months.
This was compounded on Monday when Bush intervening to prevent vice presidential aide I Lewis "Scooter" Libby from going to jail. The president, in a statement, said the two-and-a-half year jail sentence imposed last month on Libby, who was found guilty of perjury in a case linked to the Iraq war, was "excessive". Libby still faces a US$250,000 fine. Pollster.com reported this month that "a Rasmussen automated poll (which if anything may over-represent the opinions of well informed Americans) shows Libby's favorable rating [for a pardon] at just 19% overall (and 34% among Republicans".
With regard to Iraq, the week began with a declaration of independence - and total frustration - by two key Republican senators, ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Richard Lugar and George Voinovich, over Bush's determination to maintain his "surge" strategy beyond next autumn.
A floor speech by Lugar, which was also hailed by former Senate Armed Services Committee chairman John Warner, appeared to confirm that Bush, his military commanders and diplomatic officers in Baghdad have no more than 75 days - or until mid-September - to produce a dramatic turnaround in Iraq or face irresistible political pressure in Congress to begin withdrawing combat troops by early 2008 at the very latest.
In a subsequent interview, Lugar compared his speech to his break with Ronald Reagan over the latter's veto of anti-apartheid legislation in the mid-1980s. Lugar played a key role in getting Congress to override the veto, the only time Congress did so during Reagan's eight years in office.
The week ended with the expiration on Friday of Bush's five-year-old "fast-track" authority to negotiate new trade agreements and a vow by the Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives to oppose a pending trade deal with South Korea and another with Colombia.
Renewing fast-track authority, which permits the president to submit new trade accords to Congress for an up-or-down vote without the possibility of any amendments, was another top administration priority that now appears to have fallen by the wayside.
If those setbacks were not enough, the Post ran an unprecedented investigative series during the week on the role of Dick Cheney which depicted the president as essentially the young dauphin to the vice president's Cardinal Richelieu - something that has long been understood by Washington insiders, but whose operational specifics were until now somewhat elusive.
What the series disclosed, according to the Post's veteran, if endlessly forgiving, political columnist, David Broder, was "a vice president who used the broad authority given him by a complaisant chief executive to bend the decision-making process to his own ends and purposes, often overriding cabinet officers and other executive branch officials along the way".
The series, which provided new grist for the mills of talk-show hosts and comedians who dominate late-night television, served only to further diminish Bush. His approval ratings in successive public opinion polls have now dropped to their lowest level ever and are approaching those of Richard Nixon just before his resignation from office in the wake of the Watergate scandal and his impeachment in 1974.
That the series coincided with Cheney's unprecedented and widely mocked insistence that he did not have to abide by certain secrecy rules because, as president of the Senate, he was not part of the executive branch, only added to the derision leveled against the administration.
Indeed, Cheney's own approval ratings, like Bush's, have dropped to historical lows. Just 28% said they approved of his handling of his job in a CBS News poll taken late last week, down from 35% in early 2006, and a high of 56% in August 2002, the same month that he launched the administration's own campaign to rally support for invading Iraq.
The same CBS poll found Bush at a record low of 27%, just one percentage point higher than the all-time, all-poll low recorded by Newsweek the previous week. Fox News, whose surveys have generally shown higher approval rates than other polls, also reported its all-time low last week at 31%.
Bush's public approval rating fell below 50% in most polls between his re-election in November 2004 and his second-term inauguration two months later and has not recovered since, giving him the record for the "longest sustained rejection by the American public" in modern US history, according to the Post.
While vehement right-wing Republican opposition to the immigration bill helped explain the Bush's latest plunge in the polls, Iraq remains the single-most important factor to the president's unpopularity.
In last week's CBS poll, 23% of respondents said they approved of his handling of the war, while 70%, including one-third of all self-identified Republicans, said they disapproved. Moreover, a whopping 77% of respondents said the war was going either "somewhat" (30%) or "very badly" (47%).
A record 40% said all troops should be withdrawn, while another 26% said they favored a decreasing the number of troops there now. A CNN poll taken a few days before showed similar numbers.
With elections 16 months away, Republican incumbents are increasingly aware that Bush/Cheney has become a serious drag on their political aspirations. And, as the election draws near, the pressure to break with the White House - absent a major change of course, at least in Iraq - will become irresistible, just as it did last week on the immigration bill.
(Inter Press Service)
Source: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IG04Ak06.html