America's voice is heard

America is delivering it's verdict on Bush and the war in Iraq as we speak and early indications are that the results will be damning.

Already the Republicans have conceded that they have lost control of the House of Representatives which they have maintained for the past twelve years. The Democrats need three seats to take control of the Senate although that, at the moment, looks like a much tougher call, although they have already made some Senate gains.

However, what is exposed as a myth, even at this early stage, is the image of Karl Rove as the political wizard who delivers miracles. He had promised that the Republicans would retain both houses, a promise that was so audacious that it set off some worry in the Democratic camp; but it was a promise that proved to be simply impossible to deliver upon.

The methods used to try and deliver led to what some are calling the dirtiest election campaign yet with some voters threatened with arrest of they attempted to vote:

Early yesterday morning, Tim Daly of Clarendon, Virginia found a message on his voice mail threatening him with arrest if he showed up to vote.

"This is the Virginia Elections Commission," the message said. " We've determined you are registered in New York to vote. Therefore, you will not be allowed to cast your vote... If you do show up, you will be charged criminally."

Mr Daly, who has lived and voted in Virginia since 1998, quickly figured out this was not the Virginia Elections Commission at all, but a rogue operation intended to intimidate Democratic Party sympathisers like himself.

In several states, Democrats - especially African Americans - complained that they had been called and told the location of their precinct had changed, when it hadn't.

These sleaze-ball tactics have come to typify Republican electioneering, where - under Rove's tutelage - victory for victory's sake has become more important than any principles or policy.

There seemed no limits to the depths that the Republicans would stoop to:

In Maryland, a sample ballot paper was distributed around polling stations which described the Republican candidates for governor and Senate as Democrats. The guides were being handed out by homeless people bused in from neighbouring Pennsylvania. The Post reports that one homeless person recruited at a shelter in Philadelphia was greeted by the Republican governor of Maryland's wife, and given t-shirts.

The Republicans in Maryland have already admitted distributed a "Democrats official voter guide" purporting to carry an endorsement from former National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) president Kweisi Mfume and two other senior black Maryland politicians for the Republican candidates Bob Ehrlich and Michael Steele.

The Republicans says the fliers are above board and not deceptive - arguing that they are identified by text saying they have been produced by the Ehrlich and Steele campaigns. The Democrats have reacted angrily. "In terms of the dirty tricks, well, we found one thing in Maryland where the polling places had literature that said that [Kweisi] Mfume endorses both the Republican candidates for governor and senator. That is totally false. We want to make it clear it's false," said New York Democratic senator Charles Schumer.

Bush sounded initially optimistic, perhaps confident on the basis that he and Rove have won every election they have ever fought together:

"Do your duty, cast your ballot and let your voice be heard," President Bush exhorted for his part, after voting at dawn in Crawford, Texas, near his ranch. Immediately afterwards Mr Bush flew back to Washington, to await the results of an election that was largely a referendum on his presidency.

Well, the US did as he requested and the voices damning his policies are being heard loud and clear throughout the States.

Tony Snow attempted to put a positive spin on what was actually a damning defeat:

White House spokesman Tony Snow said the outcome of the elections, in which Democrats were projected to win control of the House and pick up several Senate seats, was "not what we would've hoped." "But it also gets us to a point: Democrats have spent a lot of time complaining about what the president has done. This is an opportunity for them to kind of stand up," Snow said.

The Democrats sounded very confident of meeting Snow's challenge:

Amid scenes of jubilation at the Democratic party headquarters in Washington, Nancy Pelosi, who is set to become the first female House Speaker in US history, threw down the gauntlet to the president on Iraq. "Tonight is a great victory for the American people," Ms Pelosi said.

"We cannot continue down this catastrophic path. So we say to the president: 'Mr President, we need a new direction in Iraq. Let us work together to find a solution to the war in Iraq.'"

The question now is how Bush, a President used to controlling both houses and who, up until now, has had his power challenged only by Republicans who always eventually cave in and give him exactly what he wants, will react to a changed political landscape. Now Bush will have to learn compromise if he wants to get any of his bills through. The days of "The Decider" are most certainly over and, unless Bush can learn to govern in an entirely new way, he will spend his last two years as a lame duck President.

On a personal note, I hope the Democrats use their new found power to hold this administration to account.

I know that Pelosi has promised not to attempt to impeach Bush, but that is still no reason for the Democrats not to immediately start hearings and attempt to lift the veil of almost maniacal secrecy that has surrounded this White House.

Let's start to shine some light into their darkest corners.

UPDATE:

From the wonderful Billmon:

Update 2:45 AM ET: Since it was Bush who said that if the Democrats win America loses, I suppose the only remaining question is whether he'll fly to Pakistan to offer our surrender to Bin Ladin or invite Bin Ladin to come to Washington.

Maybe they could do it on the deck of the battleship Missouri -- just for old time's sake.

tag: Republican, mid-term, elections, November, United, States, Bush, Democrat, election, victory

A revolutionary's revival

Call me perverse, but I think there's something wonderful about Reagan's old nemesis Daniel Ortega sweeping back into power in Nicaragua.

Even old Ollie North made his way there to declare a victory for Ortega to be "the worst thing" for Nicaraguans. Because, after the carnage that Reagan and North inflicted on Nicaragua throughout the eighties, Ollie really is the best man to tell Nicaraguans what is good for them.

Failed Reagan administration efforts to oust Ortega capped a legacy of U.S. meddling in this desperately poor nation of 5.7 million people, starting with adventurer William Walker's quest to annex Nicaragua as a slave state in the 1850s. Skirting a ban on U.S. training and funding of the contras, Reagan aides financed the rebels in their bloody civil war by illegally selling arms to Iran in the Iran-Contra scandal.

So the Nicaraguan election has yielded the result that the Bush administration most feared. Let's hope, as Americans go to the polls today, that it's a portent of things to come.

tag: Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, Oliver North, election, victory,

Tetchy Blair on the defensive over hanging of Saddam

As George Bush is hoping that the sentencing of Saddam to death might give him some sort of boost in the mid term elections, his greatest ally - Tony Blair - was finding himself in a very awkward position yesterday regarding the Iraqi court's decision.

The death penalty is outlawed in all EU country's and Tony Blair was left squirming as he tried to set out his position on the verdict.

Mr Blair was on the defensive over the gap between the sentence of the Iraqi authorities and his Government's opposition to capital punishment. After trying to hide behind the words of Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, a tetchy Mr Blair told reporters: "That is just enough, thank you very much. I happen to want to express myself in my own way if you don't mind." Eventually, he said: "We are against the death penalty, whether it's Saddam or anybody else."

This is a position that was reflected across the whole of the European political spectrum:

Romano Prodi, the Italian Prime Minister, who had lunch with Mr Blair at Number 10 yesterday, said: "Italy is against the death penalty. So even in such a dramatic case as Saddam Hussein we still think the death penalty must not be put into action."

Philippe Douste-Blazy, the French foreign minister, said France and the EU were opposed to the death penalty and wanted to see it abolished worldwide. " So for purely ethical reasons, Saddam Hussein should not suffer the death penalty," he said. "But above all, you also have to think that the situation in Iraq is excessively worrying and we are on the brink of civil war."

The death penalty remains an anomaly in a country as culturally advanced as the US and aligns it with nations such as Iraq and Iran rather than with country's like Britain and Spain, who one would expect to the US's more natural social partners.

So whilst Bush is able to brag about Saddam's imminent execution, Blair can afford himself no such luxury as the people of Europe are of the opinion that killing is wrong, whether it is done by the individual or by the state.

Of course, we have only arrived at this impasse because Bush and Blair insisted that Saddam should be tried by Iraqis rather than the more sensible option of dispatching him to the Hague, which would have been a much more appropriate place to try someone for crimes against humanity.

Bush's natural distaste for all forms of internationalism rendered this option a non-starter and laid the groundwork for a trial that has largely been regarded as farcical. Saddam has not been tried by a group of his peers as most of us assumed, but instead by a series of judges, some of whom were instantly replaced if they were deemed to be too sympathetic to the accused.

By hanging Saddam, the coalition will instantly create a martyr to certain parts of the Iraqi populace. This is the worst of all possible outcomes and will probably only add to the unrest within an already deeply troubled country.

A far better option would have been to leave the old tyrant to rot in the Hague, powerless and impotent.

And then the rest of the planet could have concentrated on how to set about getting Bush and Blair to join him for the supreme crime against peace that was the war in Iraq.

Oh sorry, I'm forgetting, war criminals only come from the Balkans and the Middle East.

tag: Blair, Saddam, death penalty, death sentence, EU,

Freedom 2006

As the US goes to the polls I offer this timely reminder of what's at stake. It's been anonymously posted on YouTube, but it's more effective than many other ads I've seen.



tag: mid-term, elections, November, Bush, Republican, Freedom,

Say it today. Please.

Today America gives it's verdict on George Bush and his war in Iraq. It gives it's verdict on the man who has claimed unprecedented powers never before claimed by any American president.

On the campaign trail Bush made his final appeal to the voters:

"Our principles are the principles of the majority of the people in this country," he said at a rally in Arkansas.

"We're going to win this election because we're right on the big issues.

Torture is not an American principle. And it is for this reason, and a myriad of others, that the US should reject Bush and his immoral philosophy.

There have been the inevitable stories about Republicans closing the gap, but seriously, when you begin a campaign that far behind, the gap simply has to close at some point; but that does not mean that victory is going to be in the hands of the Republicans. The polls still make dire reading for the GOP, they are simply not as dire as they were a month ago.

A USA Today/Gallup poll published yesterday gave the Democrats a seven point edge, leading the Republicans by 51% to 44%. But that was down from a 13-point margin two weeks ago. The USA Today poll also showed Democrats struggling to win all six seats they need to take control of the Senate.

A poll from the Pew Research Centre for the People and the Press on Sunday showed a steeper erosion in the Democratic lead, with the party polling 47% and the Republicans 43% among likely voters, compared to an 11-point gap two weeks ago. And an ABC/Washington Post poll showed Republicans cutting into the 14-point lead the Democrats held two weeks ago, reducing their advantage to six points.

It is typical of the media that the leading story is the closing of the gap rather than of the Democratic lead. In all of the polls quoted above the Dems still lead by a considerable margin.

What is undeniable is that support for Bush is haemorrhaging, with even his neo-con buddies falling over themselves to put distance between Bush and his war in Iraq and their previous support for both.

It is said that governments lose elections rather than challengers win them, and that may be just as well for the Democrats who have failed to find any unified message other than that they are not Republicans.

But in today's climate that is actually enough to justify victory.

Bush and Cheney's claims that the war in Iraq is going well are as delusional as the power Bush now claims for the executive is tyrannical. The Democrats could have ran on a message of "This man must be stopped" and they would have found ringing support throughout the planet.

It's always very hard at the time of an American election for someone like myself, living thousands of miles away, to gauge the mood of the country.

I can only offer my American cousins the viewpoint of one of America's allies overseas.

We desperately need America back. The America that we grew up admiring. The place that we longed to visit.

A country that stood for freedom and democracy and human rights.

There is no way most Americans can fathom the levels of despair and shock we have felt as we witnessed Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. The profound disappointment as we watched a Republican Congress hand a US President the power to torture. The numbed horror as we watched the removal of Habeas Corpus as a fundamental human right within the American legal system.

The world needs America. For if we lose America as a bastion of all that is good then we are left with nothing.

That is why this election is so important, not only to the residents of the USA, but to the rest of us all around the planet.

Bush now claims that the values he espouses are the values of the majority of people in the United States.

I do not believe that to be true. I cannot believe that is true.

Our profound wish is that we can be given back the America of values that we all so admired.

The power to bring this about lies in the hands of the American people. From the Mother Country I can send only this impassioned plea: Stand up for the values that made your nation great. Send a clear message around the planet that torture is not an American value.

For your sake, and for ours, stop this man from devaluing a reputation that your nation took decades to build and which he has besmirched in such a shockingly short period of time.

Abu Ghraib is not an American value. Guantanamo Bay is not an American value. Torture is not an American value.

Now all we want is for Americans to stand up and say this.

Say it today. Please.

tag: Republican, mid-term, elections, November, American values, principles, Bush

White House Caught Doctoring "Mission Accomplished" Video

Apparently the Bush administration has taken the Winston Churchill quote "History is written by the victors" into the video age. The official White House website is now sporting a very different version of President Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech. In this exclusive video, Inside Minnesota Politics' Mike McIntee shows how the "Mission Accomplished" banner on the USS Abraham Lincoln has apparently been crudely cropped out of the video.



tag: Republican, Bush, war on terror, Iraq, mission accomplished,

Olbermann on 'RoboCalls'

tag: Olbermann, Democrat, Republican, mid-term, elections, November, phone calls, robocall, Rove, dirty tricks,

Two Wrongs

New video from the Dems.



tag: mid-term, elections, November, Dick, Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld, Rumsfeld must go, "Stay the course", chemical weapons, Republican, Democrat

Bill Maher New Rules: What Democrats Should Do

tag: Bill Maher, Republican, mid-term, elections, November, Iraq, withdrawal, pull-out, what to say, obstructionists,

Bush Trumpets Iraq Verdict to Rally Support

As I predicted yesterday, George Bush has wasted no time in using the death sentence passed on Saddam Hussein as a tool in his quest to stave off devastation at Tuesday's polls. The Republican Party still claim that the timing of the verdict was made on an Iraqi timetable and was not done to aid them in the mid-terms.

“Today we witnessed a landmark event in the history of Iraq: Saddam Hussein was convicted and sentenced to death by the Iraqi High Tribunal,” Mr. Bush said to roars of approval in a hockey auditorium packed with supporters in Grand Island, Neb. “Saddam Hussein’s trial is a milestone in the Iraqi people’s efforts to replace the rule of a tyrant with the rule of law.”

Leaving aside the highly dubious timing of the sentencing, it is still unlikely to be enough to save the Republicans come Tuesday morning.

The New York Times, for the first time in it's history, is backing not a single Republican candidate. The reason they have done so is why Bush should lose on Tuesday:

For us, the breaking point came over the Republicans’ attempt to undermine the fundamental checks and balances that have safeguarded American democracy since its inception. The fact that the White House, House and Senate are all controlled by one party is not a threat to the balance of powers, as long as everyone understands the roles assigned to each by the Constitution. But over the past two years, the White House has made it clear that it claims sweeping powers that go well beyond any acceptable limits. Rather than doing their duty to curb these excesses, the Congressional Republicans have dedicated themselves to removing restraints on the president’s ability to do whatever he wants. To paraphrase Tom DeLay, the Republicans feel you don’t need to have oversight hearings if your party is in control of everything.

An administration convinced of its own perpetual rightness and a partisan Congress determined to deflect all criticism of the chief executive has been the recipe for what we live with today.

This administration have gathered power to the executive in a way that is unprecedented in American history, with a President who now claims that he, himself, is above the law.

He has dispensed with Habeas Corpus and has granted himself the power to pronounce any citizen an "enemy combatant". Once he has declared that citizen an "enemy combatant", that person loses all right to an independent trial and no court in the US has any power to oversee the decision the President has made.

It is the kind of absolute power that dictators like Idi Amin have claimed is theirs. The idea that this kind of power is being claimed by an American President is highly alarming.

Normally, one would have hoped that in a system built on checks and balances, that the Republican party itself would have acted as some form of legislative brakes on a runaway President hell-bent on claiming the power of a king. However, this Republican Party have bent over backwards to give Bush whatever power he claimed, even granting him the disgraceful right to torture.

They have forgone any right to be deemed sensible enough to continue to hold such legislative power and every opinion poll suggests that they are, on Wednesday morning, going to wake up to a new political reality in which this power has been prised from their grasp.

This is certainly the hope of the rest of the planet.

Ronald Reagan once famously described America as "the shining city on the hill". And whilst there are many of us who feel the US never quite lived up to that level of hyperbole, we nevertheless never expected her to fall so far from her ideals as she has been allowed to fall under this disgraceful administration.

It is time for Americans to take America back. And whilst this will not be fully possible for another two years, tomorrow they have the opportunity to put the brakes on a runaway administration.

As the Conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan said recently, "This is not an election anymore, this is an intervention. Someone has to be held accountable."

I couldn't agree more. It is time to rein in Bush's power and hold these extremists to account.

Click title for article.

tag: United, States, Bush, mid-term, elections, November, Saddam, Hussein, sentence, Iraq, Military Commissions Act, 2006, enemy combatant, interrogation techniques, Geneva Conventions, "Stay the course", trial verdict, Habeas Corpus, Republicans

Robert Fisk: This was a guilty verdict on America as well

The most interesting thing about the trial of Saddam is that he was tried for one of his lesser crimes.

Why?

Because had we tried him for some of his more ghastly crimes we would have found our own fingerprints all over the murder weapons.

Robert Fisk reports:

So America's one-time ally has been sentenced to death for war crimes he committed when he was Washington's best friend in the Arab world. America knew all about his atrocities and even supplied the gas - along with the British, of course - yet there we were yesterday declaring it to be, in the White House's words, another "great day for Iraq". That's what Tony Blair announced when Saddam Hussein was pulled from his hole in the ground on 13 December 2003. And now we're going to string him up, and it's another great day.

Of course, it couldn't happen to a better man. Nor a worse. It couldn't be a more just verdict - nor a more hypocritical one. It's difficult to think of a more suitable monster for the gallows, preferably dispatched by his executioner, the equally monstrous hangman of Abu Ghraib prison, Abu Widad, who would strike his victims on the head with an axe if they dared to condemn the leader of the Iraqi Socialist Baath Party before he hanged them. But Abu Widad was himself hanged at Abu Ghraib in 1985 after accepting a bribe to put a reprieved prisoner to death instead of the condemned man. But we can't mention Abu Ghraib these days because we have followed Saddam's trail of shame into the very same institution. And so by hanging this awful man, we hope - don't we? - to look better than him, to remind Iraqis that life is better now than it was under Saddam.

Only so ghastly is the hell-disaster that we have inflicted upon Iraq that we cannot even say that. Life is now worse. Or rather, death is now visited upon even more Iraqis than Saddam was able to inflict on his Shias and Kurds and - yes, in Fallujah of all places - his Sunnis, too. So we cannot even claim moral superiority. For if Saddam's immorality and wickedness are to be the yardstick against which all our iniquities are judged, what does that say about us? We only sexually abused prisoners and killed a few of them and murdered some suspects and carried out a few rapes and illegally invaded a country which cost Iraq a mere 600,000 lives ("more or less", as George Bush Jnr said when he claimed the figure to be only 30,000). Saddam was much worse. We can't be put on trial. We can't be hanged.

"Allahu Akbar," the awful man shouted - God is greater. No surprise there. He it was who insisted these words should be inscribed upon the Iraqi flag, the same flag which now hangs over the palace of the government that has condemned him after a trial at which the former Iraqi mass murderer was formally forbidden from describing his relationship with Donald Rumsfeld, now George Bush's Secretary of Defence. Remember that handshake? Nor, of course, was he permitted to talk about the support he received from George Bush Snr, the current US President's father. Little wonder, then, that Iraqi officials claimed last week the Americans had been urging them to sentence Saddam before the mid-term US elections.

Anyone who said the verdict was designed to help the Republicans, Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, blurted out yesterday, must be "smoking rope". Well, Tony, that rather depends on what kind of rope it might be. Snow, after all, claimed yesterday that the Saddam verdict - not the trial itself, please note - was "scrupulous and fair". The judges will publish "everything they used to come to their verdict."

No doubt. Because here are a few of the things that Saddam was not allowed to comment upon: sales of chemicals to his Nazi-style regime so blatant - so appalling - that he has been sentenced to hang on a localised massacre of Shias rather than the wholesale gassing of Kurds over which George W Bush and Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara were so exercised when they decided to depose Saddam in 2003 - or was it in 2002? Or 2001? Some of Saddam's pesticides came from Germany (of course). But on 25 May 1994, the US Senate's Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs produced a report entitled "United States Chemical and Biological Warfare-related Dual-use exports to Iraq and their possible impact on the Health Consequences (sic) of the Persian Gulf War".

This was the 1991 war which prompted our liberation of Kuwait, and the report informed Congress about US government-approved shipments of biological agents sent by American companies to Iraq from 1985 or earlier. These included Bacillus anthracis, which produces anthrax; Clostridium botulinum; Histoplasma capsulatum; Brucella melitensis; Clostridium perfringens and Escherichia coli. The same report stated that the US provided Saddam with "dual use" licensed materials which assisted in the development of chemical, biological and missile-system programmes, including chemical warfare agent production facility plant and technical drawings (provided as pesticide production facility plans).

Yes, well I can well see why Saddam wasn't permitted to talk about this. John Reid, the British Home Secretary, said that Saddam's hanging "was a sovereign decision by a sovereign nation". Thank heavens he didn't mention the £200,000 worth of thiodiglycol, one of two components of mustard gas we exported to Baghdad in 1988, and another £50,000 worth of the same vile substances the following year.

We also sent thionyl chloride to Iraq in 1988 at a price of only £26,000. Yes, I know these could be used to make ballpoint ink and fabric dyes. But this was the same country - Britain - that would, eight years later, prohibit the sale of diphtheria vaccine to Iraqi children on the grounds that it could be used for - you guessed it - "weapons of mass destruction".

Now in theory, I know, the Kurds have a chance for their own trial of Saddam, to hang him high for the thousands of Kurds gassed at Halabja. This would certainly keep him alive beyond the 30-day death sentence review period. But would the Americans and British dare touch a trial in which we would have not only to describe how Saddam got his filthy gas but why the CIA - in the immediate aftermath of the Iraqi war crimes against Halabja - told US diplomats in the Middle East to claim that the gas used on the Kurds was dropped by the Iranians rather than the Iraqis (Saddam still being at the time our favourite ally rather than our favourite war criminal). Just as we in the West were silent when Saddam massacred 180,000 Kurds during the great ethnic cleansing of 1987 and 1988.

And - dare we go so deep into this betrayal of the Iraqis we loved so much that we invaded their country? - then we would have to convict Saddam of murdering countless thousands of Shia Muslims as well as Kurds after they staged an uprising against the Baathist regime at our specific request - thousands whom we betrayed by leaving them to fight off Saddam's brutal hordes on their own. "Rioting," is how Lord Blair's meretricious "dodgy dossier" described these atrocities in 2002 - because, of course, to call them an "uprising" (which they were) would invite us to ask ourselves who contrived to provoke this bloodbath. Answer: us.

I and my colleagues watched this tragedy. I travelled on the hospital trains that brought the Iranians back from the 1980-88 war front, their gas wounds bubbling in giant blisters on their arms and faces, giving birth to smaller blisters that wobbled on top of their wounds. The British and Americans didn't want to know. I talked to the victims of Halabja. The Americans didn't want to know. My Associated Press colleague Mohamed Salaam saw the Iranian dead lying gassed in their thousands on the battlefields east of Basra. The Americans and the British didn't care.

But now we are to give the Iraqi people bread and circuses, the final hanging of Saddam, twisting, twisting slowly in the wind. We have won. We have inflicted justice upon the man whose country we invaded and eviscerated and caused to break apart. No, there is no sympathy for this man. "President Saddam Hussein has no fear of being executed," Bouchra Khalil, a Lebanese lawyer on his team, said in Beirut a few days ago. "He will not come out of prison to count his days and years in exile in Qatar or any other place. He will come out of prison to go to the presidency or to his grave." It looks like the grave. Keitel went there. Ceausescu went there. Milosevic escaped sentence.

The odd thing is that Iraq is now swamped with mass murderers, guilty of rape and massacre and throat-slitting and torture in the years since our "liberation" of Iraq. Many of them work for the Iraqi government we are currently supporting, democratically elected, of course. And these war criminals, in some cases, are paid by us, through the ministries we set up under this democratic government. And they will not be tried. Or hanged. That is the extent of our cynicism. And our shame. Have ever justice and hypocrisy been so obscenely joined?

Click title for source.

tag: Saddam, trial, sentence, death by hanging, hypocrisy, justice, Robert Fisk,

Olmert to press on with Gaza offensive

Let's look at this in perspective. Palestinian rocket fire into Israeli territory is annoying but hardly the greatest danger than any nation has ever faced. Indeed, in the last four years this highly ineffective form of warfare has succeeded in killing eight Israelis and three foreign workers. Now let's remember that figure. ELEVEN people killed in FOUR years.

In order to supposedly stop this rocket fire the Israelis have been bombarding the Gaza Strip and have killed more than THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY people in the last FOUR MONTHS.

This is what Europeans complain about when they speak of a disproportionate response.

Now, should this rocket fire cease? Of course it should, especially as it is met with such a lunatic response. It is in the Palestinians best interests to stop such rocket fire.

However, that does not in any way alleviate the dreadful disproportionality of the Israeli response to these attacks. The IDF are one of the world's most technically advanced army's and they are facing an unarmed civilian population who simply want their own state.

The IDF frequently use the full power of that army in response to crude home made weaponry that is of a largely symbolic value. The idea that the State of Israel is actually under serious threat from this home made arsenal is laughable, but the Israeli response to this is not.

The real question that is often ignored in all of this arguing regarding proportionality is how does Israel come to live in peace with her neighbours?

Forgotten in all of this is the fact that the Saudis have already placed a peace plan on the table as recently as March 2003. The plan was effectively ignored by Washington.

The main points of the plan are:

• Israel is required to withdraw from all territories seized in 1967 - the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.

• In return, all Arab states offer normal diplomatic relations - including a peace deal that recognises Israel's right to exist and secures its borders.

• The plan was formally announced at an Arab League summit in Beirut in March 2003.

There is nothing in this plan that is in any way revolutionary. Indeed, all of the above is required of Israel under UN resolution 242.

Other parts of the plan that can be gleaned from an interview given to the New York Times newspaper by Crown Prince Abdullah include:

Reports suggest that the Saudi plan allows for Israeli sovereignty over the Western or Wailing Wall in Jerusalem - one of Judaism's holiest sites.

The same reports suggest that the plan allows for the transfer of some areas of the West Bank to Israel in return for equivalent transfers to a Palestinian state.

It is also suggested that the issue of the right of return for Palestinian refugees to Israel has been dropped or sidestepped. This issue is crucial because many Israelis see the Palestinian claim to the right of return as a fundamental demographic threat to the idea of Israel as a state for Jewish people.

The Israelis can continue to carry out their hugely disproportionate attacks on the Palestinians, with all the worldwide opprobrium that encourages or they can sit down and negotiate.

One of the greatest failings of George Bush's presidency is that he has done nothing to rein in the violence in the Middle East - indeed, at times he has seemed to encourage it - and he has done nothing to foster negotiations between Israel and her neighbours.

The end result, as the war between Israel and Hizbullah attested to, is an Israeli state that is less safe now than it was six years ago when George W. Bush entered the White House.

The idea that Israel can use it's military superiority to ensure her safety was exposed as a fantasy by the war with Hizbullah. Conventional forces will only protect Israel from conventional armies, and that is not what she is up against.

Rather than engaging in this brutality against the people of Gaza the Israelis would be better served by negotiating with the leaders of Hamas and finally bringing sixty years of madness to an end.

The Saudi plan and George Bush's Road Map continue to lie stagnant on the table. It is high time for Israel to abandon the neo-con myth that violence can bring about peace through the humiliation of your neighbours and to begin to negotiate.

Towards the end of his Prime Ministership even that old warhorse Ariel Sharon had realised the futility of his actions and was preparing to hand back Gaza and the West Bank. Olmert, himself, was elected to carry out this plan.

It remains the only way forward. Israel's actions in Gaza needlessly isolate her from world opinion. The Israeli electorate showed that they were ready for peace when they elected Olmert to disengage from Gaza and the West Bank. Olmert's mistake was to attempt to do so unilaterally with no input from the Palestinians.

As Churchill memorably said, "it's time for Jaw-Jaw, not War-War".

Related Articles:

Author accuses government of failure of leadership

"Any logical person in Israel or Palestine knows today the lines of a possible settlement of the conflict between the two people," he said. "Talk to the Palestinian people, talk to the sorrow and the deep wounds they have. Acknowledge their ongoing suffering. Doing so will in no way diminish your or Israel's position."

tag: Israel, Palestine, Road Map, Gaza Strip, rocket attacks, IDF, Israeli incursions, operation, neo-cons

Lieberman threatens to murder Palestinian PM and Foreign Minister as bombardment of Gaza continues.

I wonder if Ehud Olmert is regretting yet his decision to welcome the fascist Avigdor Lieberman to join his cabinet as Deputy Prime Minister.

Lieberman has stated:

"If the soldier (Gilad Shalit) is not returned immediately, [Palestinian Prime Minister] Ismail Haniyeh and [Foreign Minister] Mahmoud Zahar can join the company of the shahids," Lieberman said, using the name given to suicide bombers.

Threats from government officials to murder another administration's elected officials really is a step too far, so much so that even other members of the Israeli government have called for Lieberman to be censured:

In response to Lieberman's threats, Defense Minister Amir Peretz told the London-based Daily Telegraph that "these words cause unnecessary agitation. The government needs to censure them."

Meanwhile Olmert is refusing to say when Israel will stop it's current bombardment of the citizens of Gaza which has taken 27 lives this weekend alone.

Olmert told ministers at the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem. "The operation is limited in time but we have no intention of announcing when it will end."

"When we reach the conclusion that the effectiveness of the operation is bringing us closer to reaching the goals, we will definitely pull our forces out of Gaza," he added. "We have no intention to occupy Gaza."

The lack of condemnation worldwide as Israel continues this brutal assault on the Palestinians is startling. And, once again, Israel appears to be claiming that they are behaving in a highly moral manner.

"Who has the moral right to come to us with complaints?" Sneh told Army Radio, after Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar of Hamas said that IAF bombings in Gaza could kill kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

Referring to Qassam rocket attacks against the Negev following Israel's 2005 withdrawal from the Strip, Sneh said "After the IDF left Gaza, these terrorists turned Beit Hanun into a base for launching rockets solely at a civilian population.

"All those who are crying out should be directing that cry at Hamas, and not at us," he said.

Israel have now started air strikes in Gaza which have killed at least seven people, one of whom was a 12-year-old girl.

No doubt the Israelis would say that this is collateral damage and the only thing we can expect from a terrorist organisation who hide amongst the people.

I wonder if this policy would be considered appropriate were other nations to emulate it?

For instance, the notorious Haitian death squad leader Emmanuel Constant continues to live in New York.

Constant is the founder of the FRAPH (Front for Advancement of Progress in Haiti), the paramilitary group that carried out most of the state terror in the early 1990s under the military junta that overthrew president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Haiti has requested that the US extradite this murderer, a request that the US has so far refused to comply with. Indeed, the Haitian government made a request shortly after 9-11, at the same time as the US were requesting that the Taliban hand over bin Laden.

The US did not even bother to reply to the request.

Now, as the US were then able to bomb Afghanistan freely (as a nation harbouring a fugitive from justice), would it be acceptable for Haiti to have taken out Emmanuel Constant with an Israeli-style missile attack on Queens? And if a certain number of Americans were killed during the process, would this be regarded as "collateral damage"?

Israel continues to behave in the Occupied Territories in a fashion that would not be accepted were any other nation to emulate this behaviour towards any western nation. Why do we accept this?

Indeed, why is there no condemnation of the fascist Lieberman's appointment to such an important Israeli cabinet position?

In Israel itself there is widespread condemnation over Lieberman's remarks "urging Israel to redraw its map to "exchange" part of the Arab population and create a more "homogenous Jewish state," as a solution to Israel's Arab minority "problem.""

Israel's Deputy Prime Minister is openly calling for ethnic cleansing, the very reason that the west intervened in former Yugoslavia. Nor he is he even mildly apologetic about what he has called for:

Lieberman told Army Radio earlier Sunday, "if we want to safeguard Israel's character as a Jewish and Zionist state, there is no other solution," adding that the separation should be "consensual."

"The reason for the [Israeli-Palestinian] conflict is not territory, not occupation, not settlers or settlements, rather friction between the two peoples and the two religions.

"Everywhere, the world over, no matter if it's the former Yugoslavia or the Caucasus region in Russia, or Northern Ireland, wherever there are two peoples and two religions, there is friction."

According to Lieberman, Israel had no alternative but to move toward "exchanges of populations and territory, in order to create the most homogeneously Jewish state."

Every time Ahmadinejad makes any comment regarding Israel it is, rightly, written about in our national newspapers. George Bush and Tony Blair have both quoted Ahmadinejad often because of the intemperate language he has used towards the Israelis.

Why is there this silence when the Israeli deputy PM is calling for the Palestinians to be ethnically cleansed?

Indeed, there appears to be one rule for the west and one for the rest of the planet. The people of Northern Ireland would not have accepted us killing eleven of their citizens in order to kill one member of the IRA. Indeed, the world would have, rightly, united in condemnation against us.

Why are we allowing Israel to behave in this way towards the Palestinians?

tag: Israel, Palestine, Israeli incursions, operation, Lieberman, Deputy Prime Minister, ethnic cleansing,

Bush & Blair: The Iraq fantasy

Neither will admit that Iraq is a disaster. But while their state of denial may cost votes in Washington and London, on the frontline in the Middle East, it continues to cost lives.

By Patrick Cockburn Published: 05 November 2006

"When does the incompetence end and the crime begin?" asked an appalled German Chancellor in the First World War when the German army commander said he intended to resume his bloody and doomed assaults on the French fortress city of Verdun.

The same could be said of the disastrous policies of George Bush and Tony Blair in Iraq. At least 3,000 Iraqis and 100 American soldiers are dying every month. The failure of the US and Britain at every level in Iraq is obvious to all. But the White House and Downing Street have lived in a state of permanent denial. On the Downing Street website are listed 10 "Big Issues" affecting the Prime Minister, but Iraq is not one of them.

The picture of what is happening in Iraq put out by Messrs Bush and Blair no longer touches reality at any point. They claim US and British troops are present because Iraqis want them there. But a detailed poll of Iraqi attitudes by WorldPublicOpinion.org, published six weeks ago, shows that 71 per of Iraqis want the withdrawal of US-led forces within a year. No less than 74 per cent of Shia and 91 per cent of Sunni say they want American and British troops out. Only in Kurdistan, where there are few foreign troops, does a majority support the occupation.

Hostility to the American and British troops has a direct and lethal consequence for the soldiers on the ground. The same poll shows that 92 per cent of Sunni and 62 per cent of Shia approve of attacks on US-led forces. This is the real explanation for the strength of the insurgency: it is widely popular.

For the past three-and-a-half years in Iraq, one needed to close both eyes very hard or live in Baghdad's Green Zone not to see that the occupation was detested by most Iraqis. At places where US Humvees had been blown up or US soldiers killed or wounded there were usually Iraqis dancing for joy.

Supposedly, the centrepiece of American and British policy is to stay "until the job is done" and hand over to Iraqi army and police who will cope with powerful militias like the Mehdi Army. But in police stations in many parts of southern Iraq, photographs pinned to the wall include one of British armoured vehicles erupting in flames, beside a portrait of Muqtada al-Sadr, the leader of the Mehdi Army.

In the first year of the occupation it could be argued that Bush and Blair were simply incompetent: they did not understand Iraq, were misinformed by Iraqi exiles, or were simply ignorant and arrogant. But they must know that for two-and-a-half years they have controlled only islands of territory in Iraq. "The Americans haven't even been able to take over Haifa Street [a Sunni insurgent stronghold] though it's only 400 yards from the Green Zone," a senior Iraqi security official exclaimed to me last week.

But the refusal to admit, as the British army commander Sir Richard Dannatt pointed out, that the occupation generates resistance in Iraq, means that no new and more successful policy can be devised. It is this that is criminal. And it is all the worse because the rational explanation for Mr Bush's persistence in bankrupt policies in Iraq is that he has always given priority to domestic politics. Holding power in Washington was more important than real success in Baghdad.

It is easy enough to say that Mr Bush lives in a world of fantasy in Iraq. His aides are notoriously averse to giving him bad news. Officials who do so lose their jobs. But this probably underestimates the man. After 9/11 he successfully presented himself as the security president. For the first time since the 1920s, the Republicans held the presidency and both houses of Congress. The war in Afghanistan was successful at little cost. He thought the same would be true in Iraq.

There was a spurious series of highly publicised turning points in the war, such as the capture of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the return of sovereignty to Iraq and the recapture of Fallujah in 2004, the elections and referendum on the constitution of 2005.

In each case reality was always different. Nobody in Iraq thought Saddam was the leader of the resistance, and his capture had no effect on the insurgency. The return of sovereignty had little meaning: last week the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, admitted that he could not move a company of Iraqi troops without US permission.

Fallujah was very publicly stormed by the US Marines in November 2004, but a few days later the insurgents, in an operation hardly mentioned by the administration, captured the much larger city of Mosul in northern Iraq, seizing arms worth $40m (£21m). The elections and referendum in 2005 deeply divided Iraq's communities along sectarian and ethnic lines, and led directly to civil war in central Iraq.

The US media was under extreme pressure to report the non-existent good news that the White House accused them of ignoring.

I used to think how absurd it was for me to risk my life by visiting the Green Zone, the entrances to which were among the most bombed targets in Iraq, to see diplomats who claimed that the butchery in Iraq was much exaggerated. But when I asked them if they would like to come and have lunch in my hotel outside the zone, they always threw up their hands in horror and said their security men would never allow it.

The fantasy picture of Iraq purveyed by Mr Bush and Mr Blair is now being exposed. The Potemkin village they constructed to divert attention from what was really happening in Iraq is finally going up in flames.

But it is too late for the Iraqis, Americans and British who died because they were unwitting actors in this fiction, carefully concocted by the White House and Downing Street to show progress where there is frustration, and victory where there is only defeat.

The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq by Patrick Cockburn has just been published by Verso

Click title for source.

tag: Iraq, withdrawal, Bush, "Stay the course", "Staying the course", Blair, Iraq war, failure,

Pummeling the victim

By Rima Merriman, The Electronic Intifada, 3 November 2006

The terrible imbalance of power between the Israelis and Palestinians makes it impossible for Israel, regardless of which government is in power, to deal with the Palestinians in any way except through a lens of assumed moral, cultural, and racial superiority, as though military prowess equates with civilization and home-made rockets equate with savagery and a sub-human status.

The savagery, though, belongs to Israel and to anyone who has the power to stop a bully in his bloody pummeling of a much weaker opponent but instead stands aside, watching under the cover of the manufactured excuse that the bully is defending himself against his hapless victim.

Europe may be looking askance at Iran's attempt to arm itself, but really, that's a coin Europe understands very well. When the Middle East and North Africa were under the control of the European powers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, they certainly loved this notion that there is a hierarchy of races and civilizations and that they belonged to the superior one -- primarily as a result of their military power. As a French writer put it, "The basic legitimation of conquest over native peoples is the conviction of our superiority, not merely our mechanical, economic, and military superiority, but our moral superiority."

The current savage spectacle of the beating up of Gaza ("conquest" is too fancy a word for what's happening) is rooted in this kind of thinking. It's what makes Moslems cheer for Iran's attempts to arm itself to a point that will move it magically out of the shameful circle of terrorism/evil into the fancy circle of a "power". It seems that's the avenue that will bring it and the Islam it represents moral superiority in the eyes of the US and Europe.

The Israeli exercise of power over its subject people in the occupied Palestinian territories (OPT) takes on many different shapes. One is military, as in using its powerful arsenal of weapons to go into Palestinians towns and cities on a daily basis and find and slaughter selected people at will -- as in sweeping into Beit Hanoun in the Gaza Strip and mowing whatever stands in its way, even people taking refuge from its civilized terror in a mosque. When Israel's present campaign in Gaza is all over (is this still "Summer Rain" or have the Israelis moved into "Winter Blues"?), the Palestinians will no doubt crawl out from under the rubble and look for uncivilized ways to take revenge.

Then there are the refined democratic deliberations that Israel exercises through its various cabinets at the same time it has some Palestinian cabinet members under lock and key, the most recent of whom is the Palestinian Minister of Labor, kidnapped on November second.

The Israeli diplomatic-security cabinet (responsible for "strategic-political-defensive issues", naturally, as Israel's armed forces must constantly defend and subdue what they conquered by force) met the other day and voted to keep up the "military pressure" on Hamas in the Gaza Strip; to allow General Keith Dayton, the American security coordinator in the occupied territories, to arm and train forces loyal to Mahmoud Abbas; and to grant the request of the US to allow the Badr Brigade, a wing of the Palestine Liberation Army that is currently stationed in Jordan, to relocate to the occupied territories.

And speaking of "relocations", the Israeli diplomatic-security cabinet, which should be called "The Israeli Cabinet for the further Subjugation and Containment of the Palestinian People", gave cursory attention to a tool the Israeli government has long used in order to effect what many justly see as ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the OPT, including Jerusalem. Since Israel controls the population registry of Palestinians in the OPT as well as the borders of the territories with the outside world, it controls who is permitted to have a Palestinian ID; who is permitted to enter the OPT; who is permitted to live there; who is permitted to work there; and who is permitted to live in Jerusalem specifically. Israel gives a very limited number of visas and permits - far, far below the need and the demand.

This power and control on Israel's part manifests itself in various damaging and isolating ways for Palestinians, but the most egregious manifestation is family break-up. Israel is not issuing permits to thousands of spouses and close family members of Palestinians who hold various nationalities to reside in the OPT. This is a policy that Israel has practiced with various refinements since the Oslo Accords. One of these refinements foils the attempts (through the procuring of tourist visas at the border) of Palestinian expatriate nationals as well as regular nationals of every country in the world who are looking to live in the OPT in order to be united with their families or in order to work in the OPT and contribute to its development.

In response to "sharp" criticism from the US and EU for preventing their nationals from procuring residency permits in the OPT, the diplomatic-security cabinet ratified a request by Defense Minister Amir Peretz, according to Haaretz, "to 'launder' the presence in the West Bank of some 5,000 Palestinians who hold American or European passports." Unfortunately, this gesture comprises barely a single underwear from the dirty wash that Israel needs to launder. Furthermore, it is bound to create internal conflict among the Palestinians. How are they supposed to fairly divvy up this gift of 5,000 permits? Perhaps they will organize a lottery.

There are thousands of nationals of less powerful countries than the US and the EU who have a right to live with their families in the occupied territories. Many of these, for example, are Jordanians. Even though Jordan has a so-called peace treaty with Israel, it apparently has no clout to ask the Israeli government to process the thousands of family unification applications that families have already filed on behalf of some of its citizens (Israel is currently sitting on more than 120,000 such applications). Thousands of other nationalities are currently living "illegally" in the OPT with their families afraid to speak up, imprisoned in their homes.

Back to Gaza, the majority of whose captive population is made up of refugees from cities and towns now within Israeli borders. One sadly notes no discussion in Israel's diplomatic-security cabinet, as it was considering the Gaza Strip and Israel's fancy "defensive" attacks on it, of a plan to return these people to their homes or to compensate them - a basic right for those people codified in international law.

Click title for source.

tag: Israel, Palestine, Road Map, Gaza Strip, West Bank,

Breaking News: Death penalty for Saddam Hussein

Prepare for Iraq to ignite.

Saddam Hussein was convicted and sentenced Sunday to death by hanging for war crimes in the 1982 killings of 148 people in the town of Dujail, as the former leader, trembling, shouted "God is great!"

As he, his half brother and another senior official in his regime were convicted and sentenced to hang, Saddam yelled out, "Long live the people and death to their enemies. Long live the glorious nation, and death to its enemies!"

Some feared the verdicts could intensify Iraq's sectarian violence after a trial that stretched over nine months in 39 sessions and ended nearly 3.5 months ago. Clashes immediately broke out Sunday in north Baghdad's heavily Sunni Azamiyah district, and a Sunni political leader condemned the court decision.

"This government will be responsible for the consequences, with the deaths of hundreds, thousands or even hundreds of thousands, whose blood will be shed," Salih al-Mutlaq, the Sunni politician, told the al-Arabiya satellite television station.

During Sunday's hearing, Saddam initially refused the chief judge's order to rise; two bailiffs lifted the ousted ruler to his feet and he remained standing through the sentencing.

Before the session began, one of Saddam's lawyers, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, was ejected from the courtroom after handing the judge a memorandum in which he called the trial a travesty.

Chief Judge Raouf Abdul-Rahman pointed to Clark and said in English, "Get out."

In addition to the former Iraqi dictator and Barzan Ibrahim, his former intelligence chief and half brother, the Iraqi High Tribunal convicted and sentenced Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the head of Iraq's former Revolutionary Court, to death by hanging. Iraq's former Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan was convicted of premeditated murder and sentenced to life in prison.

Three other co-defendants were convicted of murder and torture and sentenced to up to 15 years in prison.

One defendant was acquitted for lack of evidence.

The guilty verdict for Saddam is expected to enrage hard-liners among Saddam's fellow Sunnis, who made up the bulk of the former ruling class. The country's majority Shiites, who were persecuted under the former leader but now largely control the government, will likely view the outcome as a cause of celebration.

Click title for source.

tag: Saddam, Hussein, sentenced, death, hanging,

Curfew as Iraq braces for verdict on Saddam

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has said of the upcoming Saddam trial verdict, 'We hope that the verdict will give this man what he deserves for the crimes he committed against the Iraqi people.'

'The Iraqi people will express their happiness in a way they see fit and we will call on the Iraqi people ... to remain calm and express their happiness in ... a way that does not risk their lives.'

However, even as he spoke of Iraqi's forthcoming joy at the verdict he simultaneously announced a curfew from 6am today "until further notice". Perhaps he fears the celebrations will be so ecstatic that they will threaten public order? Or perhaps the reason for the curfew is that he thinks the announcement of Saddam's death sentence might spark public outrage amongst some sectors of the populace.

The timing of the verdict, days before the US mid-term elections, makes cynics like myself suspicious that the hand of Rove is at work here and that he was hoping that Saddam's death sentence would help Bush in the final days of the campaign, although I'm sure when this plan was formulated that Rove and the others had no idea that Bush and the Republican Party would be facing such meltdown that the death sentence would have little effect on the eventual election outcome.

Certainly Saddam's lawyers seem to think that the announcement of Saddam's punishment will only set off greater violence, a view that may be secretly shared by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, hence the indefinite and total curfew.

One of Saddam's international legal team - former US attorney-general Ramsey Clark - said that a death sentence for crimes against humanity would be 'victor's justice' and would fuel violence in Iraq for decades.

'It's an unfair trial in more ways than you can count. Where have we seen a trial take place in the midst of such uncontrollable violence?

'To let there be worse than victors' justice and the revenge of all enemies at a time like this for Iraq is something history and humanity should not have to bear,' Clark said before flying to Baghdad.

'It will create violence, maybe for generations to come. The trial will go down in history as a disaster for justice. It just went on for too long, with lawyers killed and judges kicked off. When you think of all the things people have said, it's very difficult to see anything happening except a death sentence.'

It certainly is hard to portray the trial as anything other than "victor's justice" with a result that all of us knew before the trial even began.

And when one considers that two trial judges were fired for being "too lenient" to Saddam, the impression is only enhanced.

Saddam's chief lawyer, Khalil al-Dulaimi, said the verdict had been timed to boost President George W. Bush before US mid-term elections on Tuesday and urged a delay.

Many feel the trial has deepened animosities between communities since the American-led invasion. In the village of Awja, Saddam's birthplace in the Sunni heartland of Salahaddin province, many asked for his release. 'If they want peace in Iraq, we demand they stop this farce trial run by Bush and his aides,' said Ahmad al-Nasiri.

As Bush faces mounting criticism over the war, a death sentence two days ahead of tight US congressional polls could be portrayed as a vindication of his policy to overthrow Saddam. And while US officials say Washington has had no say over the court's decisions, throughout the case Iraqi court officials have consulted closely with - and, sources close to the court say, been firmly guided by - US embassy lawyers.

What is clear is the amount the US has invested politically in the trial. In a recent briefing, a US official close to the court said the trial was more significant than those against former strongmen such as Slobodan Milosevic.

'Saddam is being tried by his own people and in his own land,' the official said. 'That is what this trial is about.'

If you believe that, you really will believe anything.

Click title for source.

tag: Saddam, trial verdict, , Iraq, Iraq war, , mid-term, elections, November, Republican, Bush, Rove,

KEITH OLBERMANN, Nov 3: Nuke DIY on the Internet - posted by Republicans

tag: Olbermann, Bush, Republican, mid-term, elections, nuclear, plans, internet,

Papers sold to military: ‘Rumsfeld must go’

Just days after President Bush publicly gave his strong support for his Secretary of Defence, a family of publications that cater to the military are calling for Rumsfeld to go.

The editorial, released to NBC News on Friday ahead of its Monday publication date, stated, "It is one thing for the majority of Americans to think Rumsfeld has failed. But when the nation's current military leaders start to break publicly with their defense secretary, then it is clear that he is losing control of the institution he ostensibly leads."

The editorial will appear just one day before the midterm election, in which GOP candidates have been losing ground, according to recent polls.

"This is not about the midterm elections," continued the editorial, which will appear in the Army Times, Air Force Times, Navy Times, and Marine Corps Times on Monday. "Regardless of which party wins Nov. 7, the time has come, Mr. President, to face the hard bruising truth: Donald Rumsfeld must go."

On Wednesday, Bush said in an interview that he wanted both the Vice President and the Secretary of Defence to stay until the end of his administration.

As Christopher Hitchens said in an extraordinary interview (which you can view here) firing people has never been Bush's strong point. He seems to be unable to see when someone has failed in their allotted task.

As Andrew Sullivan says in the same interview, "Here's a President who said that Michael Brown was doing 'a heck of a job' with Katrina. And now he's a President saying that Donald Rumsfeld has done a fantastic job in Iraq. It's the same denial. If you believe Michael Brown did a 'heck of a job' with Katrina, then you maybe believe Donald Rumsfeld has done a great job in Iraq. It's unhinged. In my view it suggests this man has lost his mind. No-one, objectively, can look at the way this war was conducted - whether you were for it as I was, or against it - and see that it's been done well. It's a disaster."

These are people who could normally be expected to carry the administration's Lie du Jour and run with it. It is becoming obvious that, when it comes to Iraq, the lie is simply becoming unsustainable.

There has been much effort made by some of Bush's supporters to try and place the blame for the debacle on to the shoulders of the generals on the ground. However, given the fact that Rumsfeld is known to have micro-managed the armed forces to the point of obsession, this is a charge that really isn't going to stick.

Now, just as Blair is facing across the Atlantic, the armed forces themselves are coming into open dispute with the administration.

The essential arrogance that has driven the Bush administration has demanded that the word of the Commander in Chief is sacrosanct and, as Bush is "The Decider", what he says goes. Everyone else is reduced to mere pawns to be moved across the board at the executives will.

All great military commanders know that this, whilst perhaps true on paper is - in actuality - a fantasy. Leaders lead and their leadership should possess qualities that naturally mean others wish, almost instinctively, to follow them.

For a group of people so in love with war and all things militaristic, the Bush administration is woefully short of people with any actual military experience. Perhaps it was this lack of any actual experience with the military that led Bush and his cohorts to believe that they could lead grown men like lemmings off a cliff.

Indeed, in the run up to this war I was struck by the fact that people with actual military experience, like Powell, opposed the war whilst the Chickenhawks were it's loudest proponents.

Bush may have donned the fighters pilot's suit for a photo-op, but that does not make him a fighter.

Arrogance and hubris have led Bush, Rumsfeld and the gang to this precipice. Now the people that they "lead" are calling for Rumsfeld's head.

If Bush has any sense, he should give it to them.

Click title for source.

UPDATE:

Billmon has covered the same story and, as always, is worth reading. A Taster:

Long ago, I worked for the company that owns the military Times publications, although my own paper was aimed at the civilian side of the government (we called our small corner of the newsroom "the demilitarized zone.") Maybe things have changed in 20 years but I can assure you that back then the Times papers were even more mindlessly pro-military than the Pentagon itself (which is kind of like being more Catholic than the pope, but with superior firepower). If they're taking aim at the SecDef -- and timing their battery fire for maximum political effect -- it's reasonable to believe that the generals have reached a point that in many countries would be followed in short order by a military coup.

Read the rest here.

tag: Rumsfeld, Bush, Army Times, Air Force Times, Navy Times, Marine Corps Times, Rumsfeld must go, open revolt,

Israeli troops fire on women in mosque siege

Israeli troops have opened fire on a group of women in the Gaza Strip as they walked past tanks into the town of Beit Hanoun yesterday morning.

One woman was killed and another ten injured.

Elham Hamad, 48, said she left her house in Beit Hanoun at 5am yesterday with two of her daughters-in-law to join the march into the centre of the town. Her son Mazen, 30, like hundreds of other men from the town had been held by Israeli troops for questioning.

"There were about 30 women in our group, all in the main street. We were moving into the town and passing by the Israeli tanks. We carried two white flags. They didn't ask us to stop and then suddenly we saw them shooting at us," she said. "I was hit but there were no ambulances. We were calling for them but there was nothing." Her husband found a donkey cart and put the injured women on the back and led them out of the town to waiting ambulances. Mrs Hamad was hit on the forehead and in the left shoulder and was yesterday being treated at the al-Ouda hospital in Gaza.

Her daughter-in-law, Asma, 23, was in the bed next to her. She was hit just above her left ankle and suffered a broken leg. She heard the call to march on her radio early yesterday. "We wanted to see what had happened to the youngsters who were taken by the Israelis," she said. "There were tanks on the road in front of us but without telling us anything they started shooting at us." Other women on the street helped them into a nearby house, where they were briefly treated, until they could find their way out of the town.

There has been widespread concern about the escalating violence in the Gaza Strip where Israeli operations continue as they have done since the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit.

The Israelis now say they are acting to prevent rocket fire from the strip, although I can think of no recent deaths to occur from these rocket attacks; certainly these rocket attacks hardly seem to represent a sufficient danger to justify the deaths of the 34 Palestinians that have been killed in the West Bank and Gaza since Wednesday, including 19 fatalities on Friday alone.

The Israelis say they are examining the claims of the women, although the IDF are stating that snipers were hiding amongst the women. Strangely, the bullets managed to injure only the females in the group and mysteriously avoiding any contact with any "snipers".

The women were wanting to know what had happened to their men after the Israelis had ordered over loudspeakers for all men in the town between the age of 16 and 45 to present themselves for questioning. Hundreds were held and interrogated.

This seems an extraordinary practice, to round up all males of a certain age, and it certainly a move that is unlikely to subdue tensions.

The rising levels of violence in Gaza have even alarmed Margaret Beckett, Britain's foreign secretary, and brought condemnation from a British government that refused to call for a ceasefire whilst Israel bombed Lebanon some months ago.

Beckett, said she was concerned by the increased violence and civilian deaths. "Israel has a right to defend itself but any action should be proportionate and in accordance with international humanitarian law," she said.

Kofi Annan has gone even further saying that Israel's operation in Northern Gaza was the reason for the increase in violence on the strip.

Predictably, the US State Department saw things differently.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack reiterated also the Bush administration's view that Israel had a right to defend itself.

The statement issued by Annan's spokesman urged Israel to exercise maximum restraint, do its utmost to protect civilians and to refrain from further escalation in an already grave situation.

"He also calls on Palestinian militants to stop firing rockets at Israeli civilian targets," the statement said.

McCormack went further, saying it was important the Palestinian Authority stop the rocket attacks and dismantle terrorist organizations and terrorist groups.

"That's a little more difficult when you have a terrorist organization actually at the head of the government, that holds the rein of government," he said, referring to the militant Hamas group.

"The UN has a point of view," McCormack said.

So, McCormack doesn't merely want the rocket attacks to end, he is calling for the complete dismantlement of all terrorist groups, including Hamas - the democratically elected leaders of Palestine.

Leaving aside the hypocrisy of the US - who claim to be wanting to export democratic values - calling for the dismantlement of a democratically elected government, we also have to accept that - given McCormack's extraordinary demands - the Israeli operation can continue almost indefinitely with America's blessing. After all, these are not demands that look likely to be achieved overnight.

I am reading Bob Woodward's "State of Denial" at the moment and have been quite stunned at how often, and forcefully, - prior to 9-11 - Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia warned Bush that the US's knee-jerk support for Israel was poisoning relations in the region, especially with moderate Arab governments.

At one point Bandar even carried a message to Bush from the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia which stated, "What pained the Crown Prince more is the continuance of American ignorance of Israel upholding policies as if a drop of Jewish blood is equal to a thousand Palestinian lives.

He went as far as to say, "Therefore the Crown Prince will not communicate in any form, type or shape with you, and Saudi Arabia will take all it's political, economic and security decisions based on how it sees it's own interest in the region without taking into account American interests anymore because it is obvious that the United States has taken a strategic decision adopting Sharon's policies."

Powell apparently followed Bandar out of the Oval Office, cornering him saying, "What the fuck are you doing? You're putting the fear of God into everybody here. You scared the shit out of everybody!"

To which Bandar replied, "I don't give a damn what you feel. We are scared ourselves."

Bush apparently assured the Crown Prince by letter that he had the best interests of the Palestinians at heart and that the US had not adopted Israeli policies.

When one reads of events like yesterday's shootings, and America's predictably one sided reaction to it, one can't help but think it might be time for the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia to hit Bush with another missive.

Click title for source.

tag: Israel, Palestine, Gaza Strip, rocket attacks, IDF, Israeli incursions, operation, UN, United Nations, Kofi Annan, Sean McCormack, US State Department, Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Bush, Powell, Bandar,